There has always been a problem with using the word “Reformer” to describe those who wanted to impose privatization on public education and strangle the public schools with high-stakes testing and mandates up the kazoo while deregulating the privately managed schools.

Now there is a small but growing number of former reformers who say they are not “reformers.” Robin Lake was one (she ran the Center for Reinventing Public Education for many years). Then along comes Chris Cerf.

Peter Greene analyzes Cerf’s discomfort with the language, mainly because for some reason, the word “reform” now is in bad repute. Whose fault was that? Maybe too many people began to understand that “reform” meant closing public schools and replacing them with unaccountable privately managed charter schools.

Cerf continues to believe all the reformer ideas were swell–charter schools, high-stakes testing, etc.–but misunderstood.

Greene writes:

Look, lots of ed reform figures have taken a moment to examine their choices and programs. Some, like Rick Hess, have pressed for uncomfortable truths all along, and some are just showing up at the party. But if reformsters like Perf think the solution is to insist that their ideas were awesome and they were just thwarted by a vast conspiracy of naughty public ed fans, they are going to stay stuck right where they are, the reformy equivalent of that fifty-year-old paunchy guy on the porch who is still telling anyone who will listen how he should have won that big football game in high school.

You guys screwed up. In some big ways, and some small ways. In avoidable ways, and in ways that are baked into your ideas. In lots of ways related to your amateur status coupled with your unwillingness to listen to trained professionals. You can face all of that, or you can just keep stamping your feet.

I recommend the former. Look, in public ed we confront our failures all the time, often in real time as we watch a lesson plan crash and burn right in front of us. Being able to face failure is a basic survival technique in the classroom. I recommend that Cerf and those like him try it out, because this kind of whiny self-justification with a touch of moral one-upmanship is not abroad look on anyone. I offer this advice in the spirit of the season because, really, if they ignore it, they will only disappear from view that much faster, which would not be the worst thing for those of us who support public ed.