The Death and Life of the Great American School System
Educational historian Diane Ravitch will
make a presentation in Sacramento on Jan. 20, 2012 sponsored by local CTA
affiliates- that is good. The
public needs this conversation and teachers need this support. The Bee story on Jan 12 unfortunately
uses a misleading headline- Testing Critic to address teachers. The issue is
testing and more. And, the public
needs to consider what is happening to their schools- not only teachers.
The
Bee article by Melody Gutierrez is
reasonable, while the general reporting on education in national newspapers,
magazines and television leaves much to be desired. Ravitch’s book and her presentations will offer a
small but important counter story.
Why
do many reporters not report on the realities of school change?
They too often rely upon the wisdom of selected “spokespersons” and other
elites.
They have been sold a
framework of a corporate view of
accountability. Corporate sponsored networks and think tanks such as the the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Broad Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute, and the Olin Foundation provide
“experts” prepared to give an opinion on short notice to meet a reporters
deadline. Most reporters assume
that these notables are telling the truth when in fact they are promoting a
particular propaganda such as in the film “Waiting for Superman”. Who do they not talk with? They fail to interview experienced
teachers and professionals who have worked for decades to improve the quality
of inner city schools.
The Obama Administration’s
appointment of Arne Duncan was symptomatic of the problem. He represents the kind of corporate/media approach to
reform. So, reporters can go
to the corporate funded foundations and provide “balance” by asking the
appointees of the government- they get the same story. In particular recently they have been
turning to the Gates and Broad Foundations or the conservative Democrats for Education Reform.
What
the foundations and the Millionaires Boy’s Clubs are saying is fundamentally
misleading. They are deliberately
distorting the story. However
reporters think that these foundations have smart people so they must know what
they are talking about. See Diane Ravitch. The Death and Life of the Great American School System:
How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. 2010.
There are layers of influence that tell reporters what is
the “correct” side of the story.
Reporters seldom go to people who might provide an unsafe viewpoint-
like people who have worked in the schools for years. For more on this see Mike Rose. Why School?
Reporters typically develop sources and they writer for
these sources. They don’t want to offend their sources or to indicate that they don’t
understand the issues. Reporters
also know what the owners of the newspapers and journals think. And, except for professional journals,
the news paper owners think very much like the Business Roundtable and the
Chamber of Commerce. In the last twenty years media ownership has become highly
concentrated.
Now, reporters and editors are disturbed to learn that growing sectors
of the public do not trust their reporting. In particular teachers do not trust the reporting – it is so
often misinformed. This is an unconscious class bias of the media- looking up
to the selected expertise of those funded by the foundations and looking down
on everyday teachers and others actually working in the schools.
There is a well developed media structure focused on the think tanks and
foundations and revealed in the film which regularly repeats a series of mis
information. See my review of
Waiting for Superman. They
persistently distribute misinformation.
In Waiting for
Superman, the film maker distorts the needed discussion of school reform by
citing only one side of the debate- that of the Billionaire Boy’s Club and their well funded
spokespersons. The film decries
the teachers unions as a special interest while reporting on Bill Gates, the
Olin Foundation, the Bradley foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the entire
raft of very conservative economic interests as if they were neutral. They are not. Their declared interest is the shrink the public
sector – as in public schools- and to spend less money on tax supported
institutions. A second goal
of several of these foundations is to defeat the power of teachers unions and
the Democratic Party- that is the primary goal of Democrats for Education Reform. And, who do they represent ? See articles on this here. https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/
So, this blog along with several others has a viewpoint, and part of the
effort is to counter the opinions and perspectives of the Billionaire Boy’s
Clubs, the Democrats for Education reform, and similar foundation funded
efforts. The effort is to provide
a variety of views to counter the biased view of the general press. Diane Ravitch in her book, The
Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are
Undermining Education, (2010) has written an excellent expose of the misguided,
anti democratic corporate abuse of
public education.
There are, of course, others providing these
views also including the journals of the professional organizations and a few
notable bloggers such as the blog The Answer Sheet by Valerie Strauss at the
Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/
For
your information. Diane Ravitch is
a moderate, centrist at best on school issues. In my books I have often criticized her role in
education. Prior to about 2008 she
was a major advocate of conservative school reform, an opponent of
feminism, and the architect
of the negative and destructive exclusion of
Mexican American and Chicano history from California public schools. See here.
https://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/chicano-mexican-american-digital-history-project/why-california-students-do-not-know-chicano-latino-history
No comments:
Post a Comment