Conor Williams is being coy to the point of outright dishonesty when he writes “I get told that I’m a secret agent for Pearson, Bill Gates, the United Nations, and sometimes even the Muslim Brotherhood” as if all such accusations are equally loony. In fact, Mr. Williams’ salary at the New America Foundation is heavily subsidized byThe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation, two major players in the war on public education, educators and their unions that goes by the innocuous nom de guerre of “education reform.” (Here’s the webpage that says so: http://newamerica.net/about/funding.)
How naive of me to think that what Conor does for a living is only legal in Nevada.
As a scholar of John Dewey, please do not invoke his name to justify your erroneous argument that it is somehow undemocratic to criticize, chastise and ignore the ideas Campbell Brown and her anti-teacher allies. In numerous works, which you have either not read or grossly misunderstood, (especially Public and Its Problems and Liberalism and Social Action) Dewey demonstrated a keen understanding of the distorting effects of money and corporate interests on Public debate. Of course Dewey would have given these people an initial hearing, but after thoroughly dismissing their free-market “reforms” and calling them for them to be forthcoming in their funding sources and motivations, he would have initiated a withering critique of their work much like that faced by Brown and Rhee. Do not forget that Dewey held AFT membership card #1 in his local, and was a aggressive trade unionist, calling on teachers to think of themselves as workers and advocating not only for the protection of professional professional prerogatives, and higher pay, but also criticizing a situation where teachers face “increasing responsibilities with decreasing resources.” His ending to the essay “The Crisis in Education” (Late Works, Vol. 9) rings true today, and you should remember it next time you invoke Dewey’s name to defend the enemies of public education and teacher tenure. “Teacher’s organizations are very valuable. . . but there is none of them that I know except for the American Federation of Teachers that stands constantly, openly and AGGRESSIVELY [emphasis, jk] for the realization of the social function of the profession and for raising the moral, intellectual and social level of the profession as a profession.”
You mean this this Conor P. Williams: http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2013/09/25/60826 He really, really doesn’t like being responded to, does he???
He’s someone that likes to dish it out, but he sure can’t take it…
The right-wing has thoroughly hijacked the “Reform moment.” Virtually all the ‘reform’ groups are right-wing hacks and ‘reformers’ are right-wing weasels. Everything has become so political that now is not Not NOT the time for any real reformers to hit the scene; they will automatically be suspect eg Conor P. Williams, PhD ( who is unGoogleable, which is only doable by the most sophisticated of political campaigns)
This is the front page of the “Real Campbell Brown” site
A registered Republican with no background in education, she is running a political campaign that will harm teachers, kids, and struggling families. She is funded by Wall Street conservatives who will profit directly from her efforts to demonize teachers, dismantle public schools, and attack Democrats who support due process.
Which is all true. Then…
Just as Rhee faced ugly rhetoric about her race and gender, Brown’s positions have already been dismissed on account of her looks.
…with a link to a completely different site - NYmag.
I’m guessing because the “Real Campbell Brown” site sticks to facts, which interferes with the “cheap smears and sexism” theory so dishonestly being framed here.
One thing I will never forgive the Clintons and the Obamas for is joining with the hyper reactionary Goldman Sachs types in this phony reform movement. It’s nothing but a union-busting attempt to make money out of pulling up the roots of public education, using phony metrics and fake “big data.” If people can’t see the flaws behind grading teachers on the marks their students get, I despair. Genuine educational experimentation? Fine. We haven’t seen it.
Seriously, does Campbell Brown have compromising photos of Josh Marshall? This is the second puff piece defending Brown without offering a single critique of her “ideas”.
I can never understand why no one on education, especially in the news business, addresses one of the leading public education advocates in this country, Jonathon Kozol, who has been writing on inequality in our schools for a very long time. He’s 78 years old now. He’s also an American treasure, much like Howard Zinn was and is to our understanding of American History. His book, “Savage Inequalities” is a must read.
Though one might not agree with everything he sees or advocates for by way of our educational system in the US, his work has been seminal in how many see how we got to the disastrous state of education that we see today. He’s a huge advocate of early pre-school education, Head Start, and spent many hours in direct work with impoverished populations in developing his sociological analysis on our system of teaching and learning in our country.
The personal is always there when you have a large group, some of whom embody and display baser instincts. You’ll find the same kind of sexist slurs about Ann Coulter or Sarah Palin, or Hilary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren.
The teacher/non-teacher divide is more real and more valid. To most classroom teachers PhD stands for piled higher and deeper; every drone in the Ed block had one and nearly every superintendent they work for. Most teachers with ten years in look at you with one criterion of judgement–how long would last in their third hour? Most of the PhD’s I’ve seen telling me how to teach good would get taken apart like a soggy cashew in a tough class.
Michelle Rhee herself told us of how she handled her challenging group of third-graders: when they wouldn’t pass quietly in the hall, she taped their mouths. In my district, if you’d tried that you wouldn’t be there the next day–for your own safety; you’d have parents lining up to flatten you–and after 3, the fathers would come in for more of the same.
Senior Researcher? Until you’ve shown actual skin in an actual game, you’re a cheerleader–or, if you have a PhD, a consultant. And we all know the definition of consultancy: “If you can’t find a solution, at least you can make money off the problem.”
Teaching is a profession! Education is NOT a business!
Conon, what are your teaching credentials? Sure, you have been reporting on it for years but what is your education in the science of education? Do you see non lawyer and non doctor reporters holding themselves up to be experts on the law or medicine? What makes you an expert on education?
Rhee had a long go as an administrator and failed. She is a rightful object of criticism and a perfect example of a non educator acting as an educator.
Duh! So the spokesperson for an organization becomes the target of criticism for the organization.
Finally, most people recognize the agenda to defund public education and make it a for profit business. A dangerous and alarming trend. You can find lots of examples of this where the taxpayers have been left with a high price for a unquestionable failure.
Standard right-wing protocol. When you can’t win an argument on its merits, you complain that the left is being mean and nasty and huwting youw feewings.
Talk about derailing attempts at substantive conversation.
Pot, Kettle…
Oh, I see you’ve already met.
The “reformers” almost always focus on schools themselves, and completely ignore the social context. Rhee’s tactics – merit pay (because teachers are motivated by money, doncha know), (union-busting) charter schools, and testing, testing testing – are supported by no science that says they improve educational outcomes.
Yet she has received enough billionaire funding to produce propaganda films like “Waiting for Superman.” WFS touts the Finnish schools as the ones to emulate – and they are very good schools indeed. WFS omits mentioning that Finnish school teachers are tenured and well-paid too.
But what does science find is a correlate to better educational outcomes? Childhood poverty. In Finland, 2% of the kids are poor. In the U.S. it’s 23%.
That misdirection (“Let’s fix the teachers…pay no attention to the income distribution”) is the point here. All the “reform” directed at ending tenure, or defined-benefit pensions is to disempower one of the last opponents of the oligarchs: Teachers. It has no interest in educating children.
One final note: It’s really part of the MBA mentality to try to measure everything (testing!). But the notion that management is a science is also baloney. See Matthew Stewart’s The Management Myth. All of that so-called management science (Taylorism, etc.) is founded in fraud.
Ugh. I realize TPM is trying to forge new ground, but it would do well to stick to some old-school newspaper conventions. Tell readers at the top what a piece is going to be about, don’t assume they have all the background and don’t write in the first person.
This thing violated all three in the first graph. The words of an old editor occurred to me as I waded into the second: “People don’t want to read all this mess.” I quit by the third.
Rightwingers and NeoLiberal Leftacons shilling for Wall Street is how we got here. Equity firms investing in the Charter School Education Movement, partnering with businesses and colleges, have led to many Universities, that also happen to have Schools of Education for teacher certification coincidentally, and who were initially sought to lend credence to this movement, have since withdrawn their support of this bamboozlement towards our public education system via charters.
It is misdirection as you say…but the Charter School toadies like to define the terms on which the debate rests and repeat their talking points over and over again, as any good rightwinger has long since learned how to do. It’s time for Progressives to stand up to this rape of our public schools by these unaccountable public school charters that have no transparency whatsoever. Nor are they made to account in far too many districts. They should address the student body composition, attrition rates, and basic rights for teachers to unionize within their schools among many basic reporting that all schools have to do that accept tax dollars to fund their operations. Politicians in districts that allow these schools to get away with not having to account for their practices and funding publicly, as all other schools must do, should be held to explain themselves.
