Years ago, there was buzz about New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s tendency to quote taxi drivers to capture the view of the “man on the street.” Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for public Education, has recently noticed that Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute has a similar journalistic gambit. He picks up policy clues from Uber drivers.
She writes:
It seems like Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank that loves all things school choice, has an extraordinary gift for bringing out the inner Betsy DeVos in every Uber Driver he meets.
Recently, the Hessian Uber adventure was a story about how his Uber driver hates student loan forgiveness. Yes, of course, that must be true. An Uber driver would be absolutely furious if they or their brother, son, or daughter had some help with their crushing student debt. Everyone knows that Uber drivers only hang with the 2%.
When I call an Uber, I never get the same driver, but Rick gets repeats. Just a few months ago, that same driver picked up Rick and gave him an earful about the Newton, Massachusetts, teacher strike. For the second time, she even let Rick take her picture in the rearview mirror and put it in Ed Next.
However, that Uber driver is not nearly as outraged as the teacher-bashing Uber driver Rick met in 2018. She was even willing to throw her own teacher husband under the bus (or should I say, cab). And Rick got it all down, along with her picture.
Please don’t confuse that Uber driver with the very well-informed driver Rick met in 2016 who told Rick that “reformers used to take great joy in seeing traditional school districts pilloried by John Stossel …” Now that is one interesting Uber driver. I never heard of John Stossel. All of this pillory talk was part of a deeper conversation about Jon Oliver’s very funny show criticizing charter schools. This Uber driver defended public schools, but by the end of the ride, Rick had set him straight.
I don’t take Ubers. I prefer yellow cabs. We talk about traffic, the weather, or the price of gas. These Uber rides must be absolutely exhausting for poor Rick. Maybe next time, he should call a Lyft.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Really Frederick? Mr. Brandeis U (BA), Harvard U (M.Ed, MA, PhD.), are you pretending some Uber influence, will cause the rulers change policies?
I have taken Uber
Uber and Lyft are both neoliberal schemes that further enrich the wealthy class while those that labor, use their personal vehicles, insurance and gas, to enrich the wealthy and gain a few crumbs for their efforts. These companies are the perfect metaphor for how the privatization of education operates. It transfers wealth from the working class to the wealthy while those that do the actual work see little economic gain or security from their efforts, while unaccountable tax dollars flow to those at the top of the scheme. Hess is a spin doctor for the ultra-wealthy that concoct false narratives to get working people to vote against their own self-interests.
Hess opposes forgiving student debt because his handlers are making big money from the young people that are carrying the crushing debt. We can blame the young people for their choices. However, we should also admit that they were influenced by years of rhetoric that convinced them that college was their entree to a high paying job that, of course, that never materialized.
Rick Hess is a really nice guy who has always been good to me, even when we disagreed. A gentleman. But Rick works for AEI, which is a conservative think tank. Betsy DeVos is a big funder of AEI. When one is surrounded by conservatives or liberals, it encourages convergent thinking.
I agree. Rick is a very nice person. It is sad he got involved with AEI.
So, my Uber driver this morning argued that “theory” as derived from the work of Derrida and his disciples undermines the core raison d’être of scholarship , which is the pursuit of truth, as well as–and this he argued was even more fundamental–the very means by which communication of any kind occurs or is possible–the notion that the communicator believes what he or she says to be true. This, he explained, was the principle articulated by language philosopher Paul Grice–that communication depends upon the assumption of truthfulness, something that is not possible if every statement, including all propositions, carries and asserts, as well, its shadow.
I once took five taxis in a city, one after another. And all five were driven by Harry Chapin!
Mine had a shaved head and a Mohawk and kept going on about rescuing Iris.
that is a good one!!
I find that most Uber drivers share this position. Perhaps it’s different in Europe, with its Continental openness to radical ideas.
Nope. I just checked with all the Uber drivers in Europe; they share this position. Glad I was able to catch them when they weren’t talking political economics with Hess.
Anyone who thinks that much about Derrida in this society is either a professor of philosophy/linguistics or drives for Uber.
Those Uber drivers think they’re better than everyone else. So high and mighty.
Do you need a Ph.D. To drive an Uber?
No. They describe themselves as independent scholars. You do need a comfortable, working, good-looking car and expertise in everything.
Bob— ROFL!!
These are Rick Hess’ “Sir” stories.
A detail about the Newton teacher strike. It went on for 11 days, in a town where the median home value is $1,463,000 and median household income is $176,000. Part of the reason it went on so long was an insistence on a raise for paraprofessionals whose average salary was $35,000.
Uber drivers might understand.
Trump often tells “Sir” stories. Usually they are fake. Remember when he said the head of a very large European nation asked how he felt about members of NATO not paying their share. Supposedly this head of state addressed the ex-president as “sir.” Believe that?
People call me up, they say, “Sir, if there were a Nobel Prize for blog comments, it would go to Robert Shepherd.” It’s true. My father’s housekeeper got lost once in Cambridge and wandered onto the campus of MIT, where she was immediately hailed as smarter than Einstein, smarter than Trump’s uncle, even! That’s where I get my stable genius, from my father’s housekeeper. Inherited it from her. I call it the racehorse theory of blog commentary genius. Guy came up to me the other day, said, “The country’s lucky you’re holding the line against those unstable geniuses. Now if they would just start nuking hurricanes and sweeping forests to stop forest fires.”
Bob, you did it. You cracked me up, stable genius!
Now, Mr. Ed. There was a stable genius.
“Sir” stories
exactly
I recently read an older piece on Rick Hess at the Harvard Graduate School of Education magazine. I was more than a little awe-struck from things like these:
• he taught “9th- and 10th-graders in his world geography, civics, and free enterprise classes at Scotlandville High School in Baton Rouge…”
So, he was deep into the “market” thing early on.
• according to Hess, teaching was “was a very limited part of my career. I don’t imagine that it should give me some authority or that I have any deep insights from it.”
And yet, he positions himself as a genuine authority.
• ”School never interested him much until he joined the newspaper at W.T. Woodson High. He was more Robert Novak than Bob Woodward…”
So, he’s been a blowhard for a long time.
• ”After two years that were simultaneously thrilling and unbearably frustrating, he quit.”
He QUIT. After TWO years.
• Hess says that “I’m a conservative because I am hugely skeptical of human foresight. I’m hugely skeptical that we can design big, complicated policies that do what we want them to do.”
Maybe Hess never heard of the New Deal, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Perhaps he skipped over studying anything about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Maybe he never heard of the Apollo Program. Perhaps he’s never heard of Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid. Maybe he’s unaware of the Hubbell and James Webb space telescopes. That statement by Hess is just plain, well, dumb.
• ”One of Hess’ core beliefs is that government is at its best when it gets out the way and helps only around the edges. “
Hmmm. I think I hear the Great Depression and the Great Recession calling, Rick. Hey Rick, were you alive during Trump’s botched Covid response? Have you been paying ATTENTION to what happened on January 6, 2021 and its aftermath?
• ”Do I think that charter schools on average do a better job moving reading and math scores? Very marginally. Do I think charter schools are better schools on average? It’s not clear. But I think charter schools open a door that creates hugely empowering opportunities.”
Dear god, bro. Do I think that the “expensive dietary supplements” that Alex Jones sells — like “Super Male Vitality” drops, “Lung Cleanse Plus Spray” and “Prostaguard” pills — or like “Alpha Power” or “Nano Silver toothpaste” and “Superblue Silver Immune Gargle” — actually WORK and are good for me, despite the lack of any medical or scientific basis?
Dude, who cares? Alex Jones has been “empowered” with $60 million a year in sales! He’s gotta be helping somebody, right?
As I have noted before, Fred Hess is a guy who unabashedly believes in the “market” and who has written that “competition only works when it hurts.”
In terms of school vouchers and competition, Hess wrote this nonsense:
“The absence of competition means that public schools, like other government agencies, typically are not subjected to this kind of discipline. No matter how inefficient, employees have little to fear. Subjecting school systems to real competition would indeed produce more effective schools –and other benefits as well. It would provide quality control beyond that afforded by standardized testing, empower entrepreneurial educators to offer alternatives to reigning orthodoxies, and permit good schools to multiply without waiting for permission from resistant district leaders.”
In other words, fear in the workplace is a “GOOD” thing. It leads to “effectiveness.” It causes “quality control.” It fosters the proliferation of “good schools.”
To the best of my knowledge, this is utter and complete garbage.
Rick Hess may be a nice guy, but no one should take him seriously.