Jeannie Kaplan was twice elected to the school board in Denver. She has long been active in civil rights and education issues. She has been a persistent and vocal critic of school closings, choice, and boasting about paltry gains in test scores. She was ignored by the “Reformers” like Michael Bennett and Tom Boasberg. As “Reform” money poured into Denver elections, the grassroots candidates she favored were defeated time and again, and Denver’s school board became unanimous for disruption.

When she recently read a blunt admission by her fellow Coloradan Van Schoales that “reform as we know it, is over,” she was astonished, outraged, and not amused.

Here is her response.

She summarized it in the title of her post: “OMG, ICYMI, SMDH.”

For a translation, open the link.

She begins:

Soooooo…it appears   “The education reform movement as we have known it is over.”  This from none other than “education reformer” extraordinaire, Van Schoales,  writing in the May 6, 2019 Education Week: Education Reform as We Know It Is Over.  What Have We Learned? Along his way to becoming the president of Colorado’s own reform-oriented “oversight” committee, A+ Colorado , Van has worked at Denver’s Piton Foundation and Education Reform Now (ERN), the advocacy arm of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).  He has also been integrally involved with starting and supporting local charter schools and drafting statewide education reform-oriented legislation. When Denver media has needed a quote to support “education reform” outcomes, whom have they called?  Not Ghost Busters!  No, their go-to guy has been Van Schoales. So his partial about face in his recent post in Education Week is quite surprising.  In his words:

 “There are three primary reasons that education reforms failed to live up to our expectations: too few teacher-led reforms, a lack of real community support from those most impacted, and a lack of focus on policy change for public schools across the board, not just the lowest of low-performing schools.” 

Gee.  Who knew?

If I weren’t so darn mad, I’d be shedding tears of laughter.  If we hadn’t fought and fought and fought against “education reform” for the last 15 years, foretelling the recent conclusions of ed reformers,” the whole education reform movement could be viewed as a bad joke.  If we the taxpayers hadn’t spent hundreds of millions of dollars and if we the people hadn’t lost at least a generation of students and teachers to the chaos and churn and complete lack of common sense of “education reform,” we could all be lifting a glass of whatever to toasting “we told you so.”  If only the past 15 years could have been a bad dream, and we could all be like Dorothy and wake up in our safe places, wiping out the nightmare. But alas, that is not the case. And even with these mea culpas coming from unexpected places, most reformers are still unwilling to fully accept the disasters they have wrought upon community after community, most of which just happen to be populated primarily by people of color.