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It Takes A Potemkin Village to Educate A Child
08/27/08
03:56:34 am, Categories: Announcements [A] David Hoff at Ed Week covers the battle between the Democratic school reformers, who advocate tough accountability, higher standards for teachers, and public school choice, and the "Broader, Bolder" folks, who supposedly want to expand health and social services to boost academic achievement, at the convention in Denver.
Drew University professor Patrick McGuinn describes the debate in epic terms:
"The outcome of the struggle within the Democratic Party is going to be crucial for the future of education reform.”
But we got news for ya. There ain’t no battle. Unlike the school reformers, who are working hard to push their policies, and are in large measure succeeding, the Broader, Bolder folks are not really doing anything to enact the changes they advocate. In fact, they just threw a championship fight.
Case in point: California.
Where is "Broader, Bolder"? Nowhere to be found.
There is no sign of "Broader, Bolder" or the Economic Policy Institute, where "Broader, Bolder" is headquartered, on the website sponsored by California’s children’s health care advocates who have vigorously opposed the cuts and who clearly could use all the help they could get.
There is nothing about the cuts on "Broader’s" website (in fact, aside from breaking their arms patting themselves on the back at the time of their launch, there’s nothing much on the site at all).
There is nothing from The California Teachers Union - the 340,000-member affiliate of the 3.2 million-member National Education Association which has touted the "Broader" initiative - on its website about the slashing of California health care, although CTA does protest the cuts to the state’s Class Size Reduction program (which hasn’t worked out so well for California’s poor and minority schoolchildren) as well as cuts to arts and music programs.
Are we surprised? No.
Everyone on the inside-game (including us) has strongly suspected that "Broader, Bolder" is about distracting the public from school reform - "hocus, pocus, change the focus" - not expanding health care and social services, and we said as much here when the program was launched. And now, sadly, there’s concrete proof.
But you’d at least think they’d try to make it look good.
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