Chamber of Commerce keeps its 'education reformers' to a short and biased list
This is an excellent column (Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post, October 25, 2011), but I must point out that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the national press corps have a lot in common. They anoint the same few people as education experts. And I can prove it. For one year I I counted "experts" appearing in media accounts of RTTT. See Race to the Top and the Bill Gates Connection: Who gets to speak about what schools need?--Extra! September 2010 (http://www.fair.org/index.phy?page=4147)
Charles Barone, above, is one of the experts regularly quoted by America's corporate media on the subject of the failure of the nation's public schools and the need for "reform."This is the press corps that calls on representatives from The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Democrats for Education Reform, a political PAC, some 40 times each but don't seem to know Richard Rothstein's phone number. Over a year's time Rothstein was never quoted. Nor was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation money connection to the "experts" ever mentioned. The press never provided even a hint that the persons quoted had a dog in the race. NOTE: Extra! is published by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
Comment on The Washington Post blog
By Valerie Strauss
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce just convened a group of prominent people in the education world to take a comprehensive look at the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative and its impact on school reform around the country.
Race to the Top, the administration’s chief education initiative, is a competition that required states to apply for a share of a total of about $4 billion by promising to implement school reforms that were in part focused on the (unfortunate) primacy of standardized testing as the basis of evaluating schools, students, teachers and principals.
Eleven states and the District of Columbia have won money in two competitive Race rounds, and this year, $200 million will be divided to winners in the Race’s Early Learning Challenge. (I will take the time to note that the release issued by the Chamber of Commerce — the world’s largest business federation — that announced Friday’s gathering said that 12 states had won Race to the Top money, lumping the District in with other states, when, of course, it is but a city that is too often compared, unfairly, to states. End of digression.)
Here’s a list of people who were listed as speakers at the Friday event, on the chamber’s website:
Charles Barone, Director of Federal Policy, Democrats for Education Reform Steven Brill, Author, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools (who served as moderator) Christopher T. Cross, Partner, Cross & Joftus Daniel Cruce, Deputy Secretary and Chief of Staff, Delaware Department of Education Shelby Dietz, Research Associate, Center on Education Policy Pascal (Pat) D. Forgione Jr. Ph.D., Distinguished Presidential Scholar and Executive Director, Center for K-12 Assessment and Performance Management Paul Pastorek, Former Louisiana State Superintendent of Education & Member Emeritus, Chiefs for Change Michael J. Petrilli, Executive Vice President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute Kate Walsh, President, National Council on Teacher Quality Ann Whalen, Director, Policy and Program Implementation, Implementation and Support Unit, U.S. Department of Education Cheryl Oldham, Vice President and Executive Director, Institute for a Competitive Workforce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Accomplished people, all of them. But do they represent the wide range of thought that exists in the world of education about Race to the Top? You know the answer is no. Another omission all too common in discussions about school reform in Washington is anybody who has anything to do with teaching children on a daily basis. Teachers, for example, and principals. But why ask them anything about school reform? What could people who work with kids every day know about what works and what doesn’t in reforming schools? Certainly nothing some school reformers are willing to hear
— Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Answer Sheet
2011-10-25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/who-is-missing-from-this-lineup-to-evaluate-race-to-the-top/2011/10/21/gIQA1byBBM_blog.html
