This post by Peter Greene appeared in Forbes, where he is now a regular contributor, explaining the real world of education to non-educators.
It is Greene’s perceptive review of SLAYING GOLIATH, which will be officially published on January 21.
To my delight, he describes this blog as “the Rick’s Cafe” of the Resistance to what is wrongly termed “reform,” but which I have renamed Disruption. Call it what it is.
He goes straight to the heart of the book:
This is the story of the last decade of public education in this country. It’s a far-ranging story that covers every corner of the nation and dozens of different issues. It’s the story of people with great power and people who would seem at first glance to have no power at all. Ravitch is telling a saga here that is broad in scope and rich in detail. Up until now, nobody has managed to capture the full breadth and depth of the battle over the next direction for U.S. public education, but Ravitch renders the complex and multi-character clear and comprehensible without sacrificing the full scope of what’s been happening.
Ravitch details how the folks she dubs the Disruptors first codified their ideas into law with No Child Left Behind and went on to push a vision of a test-and-punish regime, privately owned and operated schools, and circumventing democratic processes. The disruption movement has given us charter schools, high stakes testing, and the de-professionalization of teaching. It has used the real problems of inequity and underserved communities to justify false solutions….
Fans of education reform will undoubtedly disagree with some of Ravitch’s conclusions and analysis. That’s fine. What’s history without some debate. This book still provides the most complete, compact, detail-filled narrative of what has been happening to U.S. education since the Reagan administration release A Nation At Risk.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Another great review. And, how fitting Diane’s latest book comes out the day after Dr. King day. I didn’t think about that connection when I first heard the date months ago.
Between Diane’s book and charters no longer being universally gushed about in the presidential race, the so-called “reformers” are fighting back hard right now. The so-called “reformers’ ” clearly orchestrated effort is to put faces of color at the front of their operations and slam anyone who questions or calls out the astroturf as racist.
They’ve gotten some supposedly impartial press more openly on their side than ever — most obviously NY Times reporters Eliza Shapiro and Erica Green.
It’s been easy to observe over the years that the whole “reform” sector gets the memo about whatever the latest PR strategy is. In the recent past, a strategy has called for pulling back on slamming teachers and their unions so aggressively, but the newest one also redoubles the viciousness against and blaming of teachers’ unions.
An interesting side twist that I hadn’t seen before is for the “reformers” to openly cheer and praise the Waltons and Walmart. They used to treat the entire Walton/Walmart connection like a bad odor in the room and just never mention it. They haven’t quite tried that with DeVos and Trump, though — that still goes unmentioned.
I think it’s sort of useful to be aware that there’s a memo with the latest strategy, whatever it may be, knowing what to expect till the next memo goes out.
Caroline,
You have just touched on one of the most fascinating and thus far impenetrable aspects of the current Disruption movement. It has long been obvious that they have a common set of talking points with precisely the same vocabulary. Your zip code should not determine your destiny,” “a system of great schools, not a great school system,” choice is “the civil rights issue of our time.” Etc.
Where is the hymnal? Who crafted it? How do they find out when a new phrase has been poll-tested and added? Was it written by a marketing and branding team?
I would say yes to the last question — and a highly sophisticated one. The Hoover Institution or another super-wealthy and highly skilled operation?
Yes, I agree that a marketing and branding team created the “reform” hymnal, even to the point of calling it “reform” instead of “Let’s blow up the whole school system and start from scratch.”
I can’t pin it down.
“Think tank” talking?
Deformers have actually been saying “Let’s blow up the whole school system and start from scratch”for a long time now.
But most people thought they were just being hyperbolic.
They were not.
A lot of the deformers did not even try to hide what they were doing and some (like Bill Gates) were quite clear about their goals.
Sadly, few people listened carefully to what he was saying. Like the AFT and NEA leaders, they were too distracted by the money Gates was waving in the faces.
I have found an article from 2008 where education evangelist Joel Klein says
So, to me, school reform is all about a system of great schools, not a great school system.
https://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-on-education-evangelist-kleins.html
There is an organization called A system of great schools
https://www.systemofgreatschools.org/
Repeating slogans is the way to establish frames that will capture the crowd. I think liberal people are embarrassed to use this repetitive, echo chamber method.
In the Economist, we can read
Newt Gingrich, while Speaker of the House in the 1990s, encouraged his footsoldiers to repeat focus-group-tested words like “sick”, “pathetic” and “coercion” when talking about Democrats, while parroting “family”, “children” and “liberty” as Republican values.
Unfortunately, the 2013 article is behind paywall
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2013/07/13/the-war-of-the-words
Someone slamming me on Twitter used the line: “Public school defenders pick and choose which parents of color they take seriously.” Some savvy professional crafted that. (Of course it’s BS — naturally anyone “picks and chooses” what voices to take seriously — plopping “parents of color” into that sentence makes it loaded and conveys “you’re a racist” message. And it’s quite legit not to take someone seriously if they’re funded by the Waltons, whether they’re “parents of color” or white guys without kids or whatever.)
Of course, there’s a sub-field of PR specifically on damage control. I know a couple of the people in it (through professional connections) — there’s one specialist here in the Bay Area who if you see him responding on behalf of any organization, you KNOW they know they’re in PR trouble and were willing to spend big to try and get out of it. In the newsroom, reporters roll their eyes when the response comes from him, but he does do it well. I think that’s what’s at work here, only with a “best defense is good offense” strategy.
Caroline, I have no doubt I will get the same line on my Twitter feed. From the same songbook. It is simply bizarre to see the Waltons so crudely use people of color as their fronts to destroy public school districts controlled by people of color. Maybe not bizarre. Just cynical.
Even more bizarre is “people of color” wanting to be used as the Waltons’ front. Witness UNCF, for example.
Ed, always necessary to follow the money. I think Gates is the biggest funder of UNCF, although Waltons might be up there as well.
Yes, money can have an amazing effect on people’s judgment and opinions.
I hope you both make the point that these are ed reformers whose favorite charters have suspended huge numbers of Kindergarten and first grade (!!!) students in schools that have virtually no white students and are majority African-American. Remember, those students are 5 and 6 years old and are in that school because they have attentive, caring parents willing to jump through hoops to get them the best education! What kind of reporters would believe that so many of them would act out violently in kindergarten and first grade and not question it? Reporters like Eliza Shapiro. Would she question it if those students were white and middle class and not African-American?
I hope you simply post this to Erica Green and Eliza Shapiro whenever you are criticized for being racist:
“You both are the education reporters who did not ask a single question when a rich charter school with billionaire donors gave out of school suspensions to 18% of their Kindergarten and first graders. Did you not ask questions because that school had no white students and 94% of the Kindergarten and first graders were African-American?
You are the reporters that accept without question whenever white charter CEOs announce that they have no choice but to give out of school suspensions to huge numbers of African-American 5 and 6 year old children, and never question their innuendoes that those very young children act out so violently that suspending them is necessary to protect the other children.
Would you reporters accept that if the charter CEO was suspending extraordinarily high percentages of middle class white Kindergarten and first grade children and claiming it was because of their violent behavior? Or would you act like journalists and ask questions?”
One has to be racist NOT to question white charter CEOs who insist that so many of their African-American Kindergarten children needed out of school suspensions.
Just take a look at what the NY Times reporters don’t look at because they know it is not necessary when a white charter CEO tells them that her charter school with no white students that year had so many violent 5 and 6 year olds:
DATA for Success Academy Springfield Gardens from the NYSED website so it has been easily available for any reporter who isn’t racist enough to believe in the supposedly violent nature of 5 and 6 year old children who happen to be African-American.
In 2014-2015, 62 first graders — none of them white and 60 of them African-American — began in first grade the year that 18% of the Kindergarten and first graders in the school were deemed by Eva Moskowitz and her staff as violent enough to suspend.
30 of those first graders were male, 32 of them were female.
The next year (2015-2016) the 2nd grade class had 65 students, which looks perfectly normal to a lazy reporter who accepts without question the supposedly violent natures of so many African-American 5 and 6 year olds.
But that 2nd grade class had only 25 males and 40 females.
Since is highly doubtful that any of the boys in that first grade class of African-American students that Eva Moskowitz deemed so violent decided to identify as girls instead of boys during the year that Eva Moskowitz claimed so many of them acted out violently and needed suspending, it is clear that there is a bait and switch going on in the students in the school.
The bait is to recruit as many students as possible, discourage many from even enrolling, but if their parents do enroll them and Success Academy doesn’t want them, they are replaced with OTHER students who come in later and who it is documented are pre-tested by the network before being allowed to join a higher grade.
Reporters like Eliza Shapiro are too lazy to dig into the records, so she is overly impressed that this charter school is retaining all their students! Is Eliza Shapiro so certain that all those first grade students had gender reassignments between starting first grade and starting 2nd grade, during the year when Eva Moskowitz claimed she had to suspend to many because of their supposedly violent actions?
And what happened with that group of children that Eliza Shapiro apparently believes were turned from disproportionately violent 6 year olds to high performing scholars (with 5 of the boys deciding to identify as girls!) when that group moved up the next year to 3rd grade (the first testing year).
That 3rd grade class had only 20 boys and 37 girls in 2016-2017!
A first grade class with 30 boys becomes a 3rd grade class of 20 boys. A full 1/3 of the boys disappeared. Poof! or as Eliza Shapiro likely believes, most of them just started identifying as girls which gives Eliza Shapiro the excuse not to have to question it ever. No need to question what a charter CEO claims when “very important billionaires” support those charters.
And what happened when it was time to take the state tests? Only 18 3rd grade boys took the state tests.
To recap in case Eliza Shapiro or Erica Greene decide to read this:
Success Academy Springfield Gardens starts with a first grade class of 30 boys and that year Eva Moskowitz claimed it was absolutely necessary to give 18% of the students out of school suspensions — some of them more than once – despite the OLDEST students in the school being in first grade.
Despite starting with 30 boys in first grade, only 18 boys took the 3rd grade state tests.
Forty percent of the boys who enrolled in and attended that charter school in 1st grade DISAPPEARED from the cohort before 3rd grade testing. But Eliza Shapiro marvels at 99% passing rates on state tests for 3rd graders because she seems to believe it is impossible to find any African-American students in a city of 1.1 million public school students to cherry pick. Did 40% of the boys disappear? Eliza Shapiro puts her hands over her ears and says “na na na I can’t hear you I’m too busy reporting on African-American parents that Walton Family and other rich billionaires tell me I should report on and the others are invisible to me as I believe that there just aren’t any African-American or Latinx students doing well in NYC public schools to explain that miracle of a charter getting such fantastic proficiency rates with their 3rd graders! Who cares if 40% of the boys disappeared — I certainly don’t!”
I doubt very much if Eliza Shapiro would refuse to ask any questions if 40% of the white boys in a school disappeared from their cohort between first and 3rd grade and the school was bragging about high proficiency rates on state exams.
And that is true racism.
What’s been surprising for me has been how there’s been absolutely no effort in “the movement” to offer anything positive to public school students and families.
The ed reformers in Ohio do nothing for public schools in the state. It is 100% a negative agenda. So many of the ed reform movers and shakers are political professionals and marketing types one would think it would occur to them that they MIGHT want to think about offering some benefit to the 90% who don’t attend charters and private schools, but it never does.
It’s an amazing omission and evidence, I think, of what an echo chamber ed reform is.
How do you manage to spend your days employed full time in “public education” and somehow miss 90% of students? It’s mindboggling.
You will read FAR more about labor unions that public schools or public school students on ed reform sites. Our students and families just don’t exist in this world.
I think it would have been to their advantage to offer something positive to public schools and public school students. It would have worked out BETTER for them had they done so.
But it either didn’t occur to them or their ideological beliefs opposing labor unions and public entities forbid it, so here were are- we have a whole set of public and private sector “public education” experts who are either actively harmful or completely irrelevant to 90% of students and families.
Charters and private schools would have been BETTER OFF without the attacks on public schools, but it’s like they couldn’t help themselves. They had to diminish and demean our schools and students to promote their own.
Chiara,
Right again. The charter promoters started by saying that wanted to help public schools, they wanted to collaborate, blah, blah, blah. First, it turned out that had no models to share. Then they pointed to New Orleans as their model district: no public schools.
like most nutty attacks which end up controlling the conversation and then controlling policy (I think of McCarthyism for example), there are likely only a few dedicated anti-public-school voices orchestrating and pushing the game
The “reformers” on Twitter are going really berserk today, and clearly this is all about Diane’s book.
I expect the “reformers” to go berserk.
What is appalling is when education reporters seem to be too lazy to do anything but rewrite the reformer organization press releases and only interview the parents who the ed reformers hold out to them, while completely ignoring all the other parents, as if the many parents who testified for the NAACP report are just not as worthy as those held out by Walton-approved reform organizations. Apparently, African-American or Latinx parents who are not supported by Walton or Gates money simply do not exist for those education reporters.
In some cases, it may not be laziness. A long, long, long parade of former education reporters has left the struggling news business and gone into lower-stress jobs in the billionaire-funded so-called education “reform” sector.
That is not the case with any immediate co-workers of mine, I will note, but I can name many, including from my geographical region.
Also, in some cases, top editors have fallen for the hype and are directing the coverage. I know that happened when a columnist friend slipped a puffy little mention of KIPP into a multi-subject column. I asked how that happened, and her editor had met someone at a party who had requested the item. You get the picture.
In other words, those reporters may have future career changes in mind as they decide whom to interview and whom to leave out.
I could imagine that the pro-charter reporting in the NY Times in which all African-American parents who had issues with charters are ignored in favor of those who praise charters is because the reporters are thinking about pleasing certain people who are rich and powerful and are in a position to do something for their careers. And the middle class or low-income public school parents and middle class teachers are not in that position. I could imagine that ignoring the voices of all parents in the NAACP report as worthless while only seeking quotes from parents the charters present to them is all about pleasing the rich and powerful and journalistic ethics are not nearly as important to them.
That does explain why an Eliza Shapiro would not be at all curious about why a white charter CEO would insist that 18% of the 5 and 6 year old students in one of her charters were violent enough to deserve out of school suspensions.
It does explain why Eliza Shapiro would never question why a largely African-American charter school that claimed that 18% of their 5 and 6 year olds were violent would then have 40% of the first grade boys missing by the time that cohort took 3rd grade state tests. It’s not racism that accounts for her not being curious at all about what is clearly a huge oddity. It is simply that if those in power are not interested, then neither is she.
Instead, Shapiro does the kind of “investigative reporting” that those in power approve of. She has posted the truly laughable twitter comment that she reported on “the other side” when she wrote an article last July about how charters were taking criticism so seriously and were now perfect!
Now THAT’s the kind of “fair and balanced” reporting that the Waltons (and Fox News) would love! Eliza Shapiro’s article she claims “shows the other side” in which she interviewed only charter supporters with a single comment by a Manhattan local councilman who wasn’t a rabid charter supporter!
But just in case the Waltons were still disturbed that she allowed in a single comment by someone that wasn’t pro-charter among all the pro-charter voices, Eliza Shapiro made certain to include “the other side” – quotes from charter voices who believe very young charter students frequently need to be treated very harshly and suspended.
For Eliza Shapiro there are two sides to reporting on charters. The first side is the pro-charter side. The other side is the pro-charter side that has racist undertones and insists that high suspension rates for the very youngest children is the only way to deal with their violent natures. There is not a side that includes public school parents or parents critical of charters in Eliza Shapiro’s universe.
Just once, I wish she would write a story about why 40% of the first grade boys would be missing from their cohort 2 years later. But clearly that would not be helpful to her career and I assume that is why those questions will never be asked.
Still, I think those reporters should be called out on their biased reporting. When African-American parents who criticize charters are invisible to reporters, something is really wrong. When those reporters ignore the comprehensive NAACP report and instead decide that the only parents who matter are those who show up to protest Elizabeth Warren because she is simply asking for transparency and oversight of charters, then something is really off about Shapiro’s reporting.
Most parents — even in charters — believe in transparency and oversight. But if the education reporters only interview the parents that those charters hold out to them, they would clearly write every story as if parents in charters hate transparency and oversight and agree that many of their children have a violent propensity that can only be controlled by frequent out of school suspensions.
Many parents in charters readily admit that they like that their charter does not have to teach certain kids and can get rid of them. But you will never hear those parents interviewed by a NY Times reporter when they believe their duty is to report without question the miracle results of charters. And you certainly don’t hear them questioning what it means when private entities can choose which kids they want to teach and return the disproportionately more difficult to teach students to public schools.
NYCPSP, I think it’s sometimes even more specific than this (your quote): “the reporters are thinking about pleasing certain people who are rich and powerful and are in a position to do something for their careers.” There’s an array of plum jobs in the so-called education “reform” sector tempting journalists*, even as news media struggle for survival in the Internet age. Many education reporters have left the building to work in the so-called “reform” sector.
We never know if a reporter is directly angling for a certain job with a certain employer. But the fact that many clearly have** taints all those who just conveniently happen to put a pro-“reform” spin on their education reporting. Additionally, watching the response of those reporters on Twitter to criticism — when it’s openly disdainful of the critics — makes it appear even more likely that that’s what’s happening. If it’s not, those education reporters should probably consider that the history of their colleagues moving into the so-called education “reform” sector makes it more essential that they emphasize their lack of bias.
*I was job-hunting eight or nine years ago at the time Michelle Rhee’s then-hyped-to-the-skies, now-dead StudentsFirst operation was moving to Sacramento, as she was marrying the then-Sacramento mayor, Kevin Johnson. Sacramento is 90 freeway miles from me, so these fabulous-sounding StudentsFirst jobs, ideal for a career-changing journalist with education expertise, kept landing on my radar. I’d think wow, that sounds good, and then see whom the employer was. (In the end, I didn’t change careers.)
**So, so many ex-education reporters, and I’ll just name a few. In my area, former San Francisco Examiner education reporter Nick Driver went to the California Charter Schools Assn. Former Oakland Tribune education reporter Jonathan Schorr (son of famed newsman Daniel) went to KIPP. As I mentioned in a different post, New York Times reporter Edward Wyatt, who did outrageously dishonest Page 1 coverage of Edison Schools back when it was flying high, is now working somewhere in the “reform” sector. Some years ago, the L.A. Times did a horrifying teacher-bashing project devising a rubric of its own to rate teachers and then rating every teacher in LAUSD by name. Two reporters led that project: Jason Felch and Jason Song. Song now works in the so-called education “reform” sector. (Felch was fired from the Times for having sex with a source and I’m not sure what his job is.)
Caroline,
Thank you for that informed comment.
The first aphorism: Follow the Money.
To be fair, it’s complicated. The news business is struggling, with many, many layoffs, and it’s not uncommon for reporters to leave media and get jobs in the area they covered — it makes sense, since they have expertise, and no one could say they should be prevented, but it also potentially taints their coverage. And to be even more fair, some education journalists go into PR for public education, too. (Those would mostly be grittier and lower-paid jobs than flashy “policy” posts with some glittering Walton-funded “reform” operation, though probably more stable in the long run.)
There just happens to be a glaringly obvious mass career path from education journalism to the billionaire-funded so-called education “reform” sector, and it does call into question the ethics and impartiality of the reporting prior to the career change — and really of all education reporting.
There seem to be a very large number of PR jobs in Disruption world, and new orgs popping up with frequency.
Not so many working for established public ed groups.