When star baseball players were caught cheating, they were shunned. We had to come to terms with the fact that their inflated numbers weren't humanly possible. When Armstrong was caught doping, we abandoned the "livestrong" story and realized that he hadn't accomplished what we thought he had accomplished.
They were no longer heroes.
But when we find out about the rampant cheating in Chicago, we still kept Arne Duncan as the Secretary of Education. When the huge Washington Miracle turned out to be far from miraculous, America still hailed Rhee as a hero.
This is not meant as an attack on individual people. Arne, Michelle, Bill and the gang - they might be nice people (though I'm guessing that firing a principal on national television might not qualify as kindness). But rather a critique on how we treat educational reformers.
And regardless of their smiles, their actions go virtually unchecked. Corporate reformers have bought public education and sadly the media has bought their faulty narrative. And as a public school teacher, I'm just not buying it.
Not that he's necessarily a reformer but here's a ed leader who got caught.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/tdsb-head-chris-spence-resigns-over-plagiarism-controversy/article7167752/?page=all
Wow. Interesting, Dean.
DeleteStudentsFirst and Rhee are reformers of the worst kind. It is clear that they haven't taken the time to clearly explore the underlying structures and processes of a system designed expressly to leave some behind so they propose solutions aimed at the wrong problems. Perhaps a good dose of Russell Ackoff might help them understand the difference between transform and reform.
ReplyDeleteIt is the Gallup folks we should be listening to: http://www.desmoinesmetro.com/pdfs/Education/BrandonBusteed.pdf and his actual speech this past Monday: http://www.iptv.org/video/detail.cfm/31988/itt_20130113_brandon_busteed
Yeah, pretty sickening, actually. The news ought to be doing an expose.
DeleteI'm confused.
ReplyDeleteArne, Michelle, and Bill have all hurt American children through their vanity. Why not attack their actions?
We keep failing to protect what matters because we confuse niceness with kindness. What is a mere inconvenience for us can be devastating to a first grader.
I'm not defending their actions. I'm criticizing their actions rather than who they are as people. The truth is that they could very well be delusional, misguided people whose actions are hurting children. There might be more good intentions there than we know.
DeleteBut this much I do know:
What they're selling is poison. They might seem like snake oil salespeople, but they're selling poison.