What I Said About NCLB and Standardized Testing a Decade Ago

In 2011, I was interviewed by Terri Gross on “Fresh Air,” her NPR program. When my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. When it was published, there was quite a lot of speculation about why I changed my views. Apparently, no one ever has a change of mind or heart. I have been consistent over the years in admitting that I was wrong when I supported charter schools, testing, and accountability. It was really hard for some people to accept the plain statement, “I was wrong.”

On the 10th anniversary of this interview, I post it now (I didn’t have a blog in 2011).

The book became a national bestseller, a first for me. (My next book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement, was also a national bestseller).

I had a wonderful appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart about Death and Life. When I heard I was invited on his show, I had never heard of it. I watched the day before I appeared. Stewart interviewed Caroline Kennedy, and my heart sank, thinking what a nerd I was. When I went on the show, the booker had me wait in the wings until he announced me. As he started to announce me, the audience began applauding loudly in anticipation of a celebrity, but the applause died down when they realized I was no celebrity, no big name. I hesitated behind the curtain, and the booker gave me a sharp shove that propelled me onto the stage. Jon Stewart was very kind to me, and I truly liked him. The next day, the book was the number one nonfiction book on Amazon. Seeing it rise to number one was one of the most thrilling moments of my professional life!

I appeared again on The Daily Show when Reign of Error was published.

Again, he was wonderful, and he helped propel the book to the bestseller list. No one was sadder when he retired than I.

retired teacher says:

April 16, 2021 at 10:14 am

Stewart remains politically engaged. He is known for fighting to get benefits for first responders after 9/11. He is now working to help veterans get benefits as well. The overseas military uses burn pits on a regular basis, and it causes long term lung damage. Stewart is trying to hold the government responsible for lung damage that veterans sustained while deployed.

April 16, 2021 at 11:19 am

Thanks for the clip on your appearance on the Stewart show. Ten or eleven years ago we knew we were on the wrong path, but we believed that evidence would prove that privatized charters were a bad idea. Today we know just how politically corrupt privatization is. Evidence means nothing, and in some states charters spawned vouchers and bizarre ESAs. Private interests continue to create an array of financial products to gain access to public money. We now have to contend with so many privately funded “think tanks and foundations” whose main objective is attack public schools and gain access to public money by any means necessary.

bpollock42 says:

April 16, 2021 at 12:05 pm

I know it’s not fair to place this on the shoulders of one person, but how many of us have wondered if Jon Stewart had remained on the Daily Show whether Trump would have been elected? I know he is politically active today and I’ve contributed to his very worthwhile causes, but it’s not the same as his constructive use of his ability to use his talents to get people to listen to and focus on the issues while on the wider audience of the Daily Show.

leftcoastteacher says:

April 16, 2021 at 12:24 pm

I have thought the same thing, but I understand. How long can a truly good person endure having to publicly support billionaire tech libertarians who took over the Democratic Party? I know it’s sometimes necessary, but it is not easy.

NYC public school parent says:

April 16, 2021 at 1:13 pm

I have thought the same thing!

The brilliance of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is that it held a mirror up to the so-called “liberal” media. The rise of Trump (and in fact the rise of the right wing) could not have happened without a complicit media ready to elevate every minor Democratic misstep into a huge scandal, while normalizing the very real neo-fascism and corruption of the Republican party.

Even today, the NYT still regularly gives credibility to the most outrageous right wing claims, by presenting it as a “both sides” issue.

The Daily Show excelled at showing clips of reporters saying the most inane and gullible things, and I do believe most of those non-Fox News reporters did not want to look like idiots and started checking their normalizing of right wing talking points. In 2016, with Stewart off air, the so-called liberal media did nothing but amplify those right wing lies, and there was no one with a large audience who could shame them enough to stop.

I think that if Jon Stewart was doing a daily news comedy show about education reporting, and skewered the inane “both sides” reporting of education issues as presented in the NYT, reporters would be better. John Oliver did a good piece, but what is needed is calling out the embarrassing reporting of those education journalists by name the way Jon Stewart’s clips on the Daily Show did.

The right wing can’t be shamed. They don’t care. But the reporters who cover them in mainstream (or so-called “liberal”) media have legitimized lies because no one has shamed them. By demonstrating the idiocy — and the racism — of education reporters whose reporting accepts without question the racist lie that extraordinarily high numbers of African American 5 year olds are very violent and dangerous in their kindergarten classes and only charter school CEOs recognize and address the very violent natures of those kindergarten children, Jon Stewart might shame education reporters enough to stop their racist acceptance of the lies that charter CEOs tell them, just like Stewart likely would have shamed political reporters into stopping their acceptance of the false narratives and lies that Trump and the Republicans told.

The rise of the right wing isn’t because of Fox News and far right media. It is because the mainstream media started believing right wing criticism and believing that if they didn’t present a right wing lie as having equal weight with the truth, they were “biased”. Mainstream media stopped standing up for truth and their coverage was driven by a fear of whether Fox News would criticize it too much.