First, just in case you missed it in the PR flurry-- no, the Dyett hunger strikers did not "win," and yes, the hunger strike is still going on.
The twelve parents and community members who began going without solid foods over three weeks ago are still standing up for the same issues they were standing up for when this began. The Chicago school system, run by the mayor and not by any sort of elected school board, would like to close the school and replace it with one more privatized education. Or maybe they would really just like to replace it with a nice parking lot for the Coming Someday Obama Presidential Library.
What they don't want to do is listen to the community. So last week they announced that Dyett would stay open as a "compromise" school in a process that would continue to lock out community voices (which was aptly symbolized at the big press conference when the strikers were literally locked outside). This is a loose definition of "compromise," like a mugger who says, "Well, if you don't want to give me all your money, let's compromise and you can just give me most of your money."
The hope was that the public would listen as far as "Dyett will remain open..." and then just stop paying attention, which is the kind of cynical bullshit that gives Chicago politics a bad name. But it was at least marginally successful for five or ten minutes. Supporters were posting links to the news and tagging them "Victory." Eric Zorn, who unleashed a Trib column's worth of asshattery on the strikers, followed up with a non-retraction retraction that declared the strikers victorious and advising them to enjoy their big win and go home, which pretty well exemplified the reaction that Chicago Big Cheeses were angling for.
In retrospect, it seems likely that school chief's hint earlier that Dyett wasn't even necessary was a bargaining tactic, a set-up so that taking the school away from the community instead of flat-out closing it would seem like a generous concession by CPS, and not simply what they had intended to do (and what the organizers had been striking about) in the first place.
So why should those of us around the rest of the country be paying attention? Because this is a bald-faced, shameless display of everything wrong with the reformster privatization movement. It's not simply that non-educators will hand over a public school to other non-educators to commit amateur-hour educational malpractice. The handling of Dyett also displays plainly how the privatization movement is not just an attack on education, but an attack on the democratic rights of people who are not white, not wealthy, and not well-connected.
This is about shutting the community out of the process, about making sure that the people of Bronzeville have no say in any of this, about a political process so devoted to locking community members outside that it considers giving them half-assed lip service as a major concession.
Peter Cunningham, former Arne Duncan mouthpiece and an old Chicago hand, took to his $12 million website to tut-tut at the strikers, suggesting that they "honor the public process," a variation on the old "why don't these protesters just work within the system." But that's what's particularly notable about the Dyett community members-- they have done absolutely everything that the system asked of them. They have played by the rules for years and years, from developing a solid plan backed by community members, respectable institutions, and capable professionals. They submitted a formal proposal (and they did it on time) and they waited patiently while Chicago Public Schools hemmed and hawed and stalled (in a process that wasn't very public at all). Even when the Dyett strikers finally took action, it was not disruptive or destructive to anything but their own bodies.
If anybody can offer advice about what the Dyett folks could have done better, differently, I'd be thrilled to hear it. But the only other option that folks seem to want them to exercise is "Shut up, go home, and let your Betters decide the fate of your neighborhood school without all your yammering in the background."
Dyett cuts straight to the central question of turnovers, takeovers, achievement school districts, charterization, and privatization-- why, exactly, should rich and powerful people with no real ties to the community have more say in how the community's schools are run than the people who actually live there?
Jitu Brown put it pretty plainly--
You are not better than us. You are not smarter than us. And you do not love these children more than we do.
And so we have to ask reformsters: Do you want to argue one of those three point? Because that should be an interesting conversation. And if you don't contest any of those assertions, then on what basis are you taking over the community's school? Even if we let the assertion that the school is failing slide, the question remains-- why are you stripping the community of a voice in its own school? Because you're better, you're smarter, or you love the students more? And if it's not one of those three, then what is it?
What gives you the right to suspend democracy for a community?
Dyett still matters because the issue is not resolved and the strikers have not yet won. Dyett still matters because the fate of Dyett will have a huge impact on that community. And Dyett still matters because the issues being battled there are the same issues faced by every community in this country where the rich and powerful have decided to suspend democracy for certain communities.
Follow #FightForDyett on twitter. Check in with websites like this one. You can donate to the organization here. You can get a national perspective from articles like this one. And if you're in the area, there's a Labor Day rally at 5:00 PM. Spread the word. Speak out. Dyett matters, and the folks who are standing up for that school are standing up for all of us.
Showing posts with label Peter Cunningham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Cunningham. Show all posts
Monday, September 7, 2015
Friday, May 1, 2015
Edushyster: Peter Cunningham's Woes
I have now met Jennifer "Edushyster" Berkshire, and I totally get it. I don't believe there is a human being on the planet who, upon sitting down with her, would not want to answer every question just to prolong the conversation and once you're talking, well, lying to the woman would be like kicking a puppy.
So it makes perfect sense that just about anybody would be willing to talk to her, even if she is on the Pro-Public Education side of the fence.
She's just put up an interview with Peter Cunningham, the former Arne Duncan wordifier who now runs Education Post, a pro-reformster political war room style rapid response operation (I knew I'd moved up in the blogging world when they took the time to spank me personally).
I don't imagine there are people who read this blog who do not also read Edushyster, but I'm going to keep linking/exhorting you to head over and check out this interview while I note a few of my own responses here.
There are a couple of eyebrow-raisers in the interview that really underline the differences between the reformsters and the pro-public ed side of these debates. In particular, Cunningham notes that many reformsters feel isolated and under attack. When explaining how Broad approached him about starting EP, Cunningham says
There was a broad feeling that the anti-reform community was very effective at piling on and that no one was organizing that on our side.
Organized?! Organized!!?? It is possible that Broad et al have simply misdiagnosed their problem. Because I'm pretty sure that the pro-public ed advocate world, at least the part of it that I've seen, is not organized at all. But we believe what we are writing, so much so that the vast majority of us do it for free in our spare time (I am eating a bag lunch at my desk as I type this), and we pass on the things we read that we agree with.
In fact, it occurs to me that contrary to what one might expect, we are the people using the Free Market version of distributing ideas-- we create, we put it out there, we let it sink or swim in the marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, the reformsters try to mount some sort of Central Planning approach, where they pay people to come up with ideas, pay people to promote those ideas, pay people to write about those ideas, and try to buy the marketplace so that their products can be prominently displayed.
It is the exact same mistake that they have brought to education reform-- the inability to distinguish between the appearance of success and actual success. If students look like they are succeeding (i.e. scoring high on tests they've been carefully prepped for), then they must be learning. If it looks like everybody is talking about our ideas (i.e. we bought lots of website space and hired cool writers and graphics), then we must be winning hearts and minds.
But what is Cunningham to do to save these poor beleaguered millionaires in their cushy offices (who are probably not eating a bag lunch at their desks as I type this-- isolated and alone in my classroom, I might add)?
I’ve created the ability to swarm, because everyone felt like they were being swarmed. We now have people who will, when asked, lean in on the debate, when people feel like they’re just under siege.
"Lean in" is a great way to put it. I've been "leaned in" upon. It just feels kind of mean, and definitely not like an attempt to create a better conversation. Which is, well, odd , because I've actually had some certainly fine conversations with people on the other side of the edu-fence. It's really not impossible, or even difficult.
Cunningham himself has proven capable of critiquing the reformster party line. But he's been hired to do a job, and he's doing it. Which is perhaps part of the problem.
Mind you, I'm not by any stretch of the imagination claiming that I am extra-noble or super-swell because I toil away in unfunded obscurity. There are people (Jennifer is one of them) who do this as their main gig and ought to be getting deservedly rich for it; the fact that I'm not doesn't make me a better person.
But it tells us something about the two sides of the fence that the separate pastures are fertilized with such different-- yeah, let's drop that analogy. It says something that if all the money evaporated from the pro-public ed movement, things wouldn't change much at all. But take away Gates money and Broad money and Walton money, and we wouldn't be having these conversations. Reform has consistently side-stepped both the democratic process and the marketplace of ideas, adopting instead the corporate boss model of, "I'm paying your salary. Do as I say." Since democracy and the market place of ideas started fighting back, reformsters have been trying to adapt. But it's hard. And lonely.
Cunningham notes that by 2012-2013, pro-public ed was "very effectively calling a lot of reform ideas into question." Well, not exactly. They were effectively pointing out that a lot of reform ideas were crap. Marketing and PR do not necessarily beat actual substance. But Cunningham is a man who's been given a giant pile of money to hire swarms and bloggers and a big, shiny website, so he's going to spend it. for at least two more years. Read the edushyster interview.
So it makes perfect sense that just about anybody would be willing to talk to her, even if she is on the Pro-Public Education side of the fence.
She's just put up an interview with Peter Cunningham, the former Arne Duncan wordifier who now runs Education Post, a pro-reformster political war room style rapid response operation (I knew I'd moved up in the blogging world when they took the time to spank me personally).
I don't imagine there are people who read this blog who do not also read Edushyster, but I'm going to keep linking/exhorting you to head over and check out this interview while I note a few of my own responses here.
There are a couple of eyebrow-raisers in the interview that really underline the differences between the reformsters and the pro-public ed side of these debates. In particular, Cunningham notes that many reformsters feel isolated and under attack. When explaining how Broad approached him about starting EP, Cunningham says
There was a broad feeling that the anti-reform community was very effective at piling on and that no one was organizing that on our side.
Organized?! Organized!!?? It is possible that Broad et al have simply misdiagnosed their problem. Because I'm pretty sure that the pro-public ed advocate world, at least the part of it that I've seen, is not organized at all. But we believe what we are writing, so much so that the vast majority of us do it for free in our spare time (I am eating a bag lunch at my desk as I type this), and we pass on the things we read that we agree with.
In fact, it occurs to me that contrary to what one might expect, we are the people using the Free Market version of distributing ideas-- we create, we put it out there, we let it sink or swim in the marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, the reformsters try to mount some sort of Central Planning approach, where they pay people to come up with ideas, pay people to promote those ideas, pay people to write about those ideas, and try to buy the marketplace so that their products can be prominently displayed.
It is the exact same mistake that they have brought to education reform-- the inability to distinguish between the appearance of success and actual success. If students look like they are succeeding (i.e. scoring high on tests they've been carefully prepped for), then they must be learning. If it looks like everybody is talking about our ideas (i.e. we bought lots of website space and hired cool writers and graphics), then we must be winning hearts and minds.
But what is Cunningham to do to save these poor beleaguered millionaires in their cushy offices (who are probably not eating a bag lunch at their desks as I type this-- isolated and alone in my classroom, I might add)?
I’ve created the ability to swarm, because everyone felt like they were being swarmed. We now have people who will, when asked, lean in on the debate, when people feel like they’re just under siege.
"Lean in" is a great way to put it. I've been "leaned in" upon. It just feels kind of mean, and definitely not like an attempt to create a better conversation. Which is, well, odd , because I've actually had some certainly fine conversations with people on the other side of the edu-fence. It's really not impossible, or even difficult.
Cunningham himself has proven capable of critiquing the reformster party line. But he's been hired to do a job, and he's doing it. Which is perhaps part of the problem.
Mind you, I'm not by any stretch of the imagination claiming that I am extra-noble or super-swell because I toil away in unfunded obscurity. There are people (Jennifer is one of them) who do this as their main gig and ought to be getting deservedly rich for it; the fact that I'm not doesn't make me a better person.
But it tells us something about the two sides of the fence that the separate pastures are fertilized with such different-- yeah, let's drop that analogy. It says something that if all the money evaporated from the pro-public ed movement, things wouldn't change much at all. But take away Gates money and Broad money and Walton money, and we wouldn't be having these conversations. Reform has consistently side-stepped both the democratic process and the marketplace of ideas, adopting instead the corporate boss model of, "I'm paying your salary. Do as I say." Since democracy and the market place of ideas started fighting back, reformsters have been trying to adapt. But it's hard. And lonely.
Cunningham notes that by 2012-2013, pro-public ed was "very effectively calling a lot of reform ideas into question." Well, not exactly. They were effectively pointing out that a lot of reform ideas were crap. Marketing and PR do not necessarily beat actual substance. But Cunningham is a man who's been given a giant pile of money to hire swarms and bloggers and a big, shiny website, so he's going to spend it. for at least two more years. Read the edushyster interview.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Goliath and the Changing Ed Conversation
If you want to see a story confirming that there are, in fact, limits to what one can accomplish with money, power and connections, look no further that Education Post. It's a giant, dusty monument to some of the differences that truly separate the reformsters from the defenders of traditional public education.
Education Post debuted on September 1st to considerable fanfare, including a nice infomercial on the launch in Washington Post. The head honcho was (and still is) Peter Cunningham. Cunningham is an old Chicago hand who traveled to DC with Arne Duncan to become the voice of Duncan's office (some others characterized him as its brains). The site was bankrolled ($12 million) by money from Bloomsburg, Broad and Walton philanthropies. It proposed to make the education debates more civil and pleasant and reasoned and based on facts-not-anecdotes, and all of that noble purpose lasted about as long as it took to post the first handful of articles that established that Education Post would be shilling hard for the Obama administration's reformster agenda. Fittingly enough, their logo features a bulhorn, not ordinarily a weapon of choice for civil, reasoned conversation.
EdWeek covered the launch and tossed up this detail about the site's function:
Education Post also will have a “rapid response” capacity to “knock down false narratives” and will focus on “hot spots” around the country where conflicts with national implications are playing out, Cunningham said.
The Washington Post profile included this:
Cunningham said some of the group's work will be behind the scenes, drafting op-ed articles for policymakers, educators, and others, as well as providing strategic advice. But a more public effort
will involve writing blog posts and responding to public misconceptions.
So what we're really talking about is a campaign politics style PR attack office determined to blitzkreig its way into control of the narrative. And they followed through swiftly. The very day I ran my first piece about the site, I had two contributors? employees? operatives? whatever you want to call thems all up in my twitter with some spicy "So when did you stop beating your wife?" challenges. Cunningham called out Jose Luis Vilson within the first week on the site.
Three weeks later the site tried to take on Carol Burris, decided to dial it back, and still mounted a weak non-conversational assault. And after that, things just got quiet.
In the first few days, the site had drawn many dissenting posts in the comments section. Those were swiftly erased. In response to the complaints, EdPost tweeted "Hoping for a better conversation. Stay tuned." But that conversation never happened-- not even a chorus of happy sock puppets to sing the praises of the stable of writers. Education Post became one more demonstration that the opposite of love is indifference.
It certainly wasn't that people on either side of the education debates hate to converse. Mike Petrilli, Andy Smarick, and Rick Hess are just three examples of hard-driving reformsters who are perfectly capable of having intelligent conversations with public school advocates.
But Education Post was not really interested in a conversation. Instead, they revealed themselves fairly quickly to be a twelve million dollar troll. They had said they wanted to amplify the voices of reformy success stories, but they also devoted time to playing gotcha with voices on the side of public education. They added a feature where they marked up pro-public-ed documents with red pen, like a petulant schoolmarm, and that didn't seem like a conversation starter, either. But clearly they had hoped that they could be at the center of education policy firestorms, and they had a box of matches and a tank of gasoline already to go but... well, nobody wanted to play. Time and again they set out the bait, grabbed ahold of their club, and waited under their bridge but.... crickets.
This is not the first time reformsters have tried to harness the interwebs and some of that social medias the kids are all tweetering about, and it's not the first time that reformsters have failed miserably doing so (see Jeb Bush/FEE's now defunct "Learn More Go Further" campaign for another example). But this might be the most expensive.
I thought I'd check to see how big the fail was, and plugged some sites into the admittedly-imperfect site Alexa.com, which ranks all the websites in the world by traffic. Here's what I got (we'll stick with US ranks and ignore the international). This is the rank in America as roughly estimated by Alexa:
EducationPost-- 223,516
Diane Ravitch's blog-- 20,380
So, Ravitch, with a staff of one and a budget of maybe a hundred bucks, cleaned their clocks. Is it their politics? Let's see what the very-reformy thinky tank Fordham Foundation site clocks in at:
EdExcellence-- 67,360
So, no, it's possible to draw some attention from their side of the tracks. Maybe other sites rank higher because they've been around longer? How about Living in Dialogue, a pro-public ed website launched at just about the same time, for considerably less that $12 million.
Living in Dialogue-- 138,616
How do they compare to a simple high school English teacher who (even though I've been online longer) just blogs in his spare time with a budget of $0.00?
Curmudgucation-- 119,612
I've checked other independent public ed bloggers, and the results are similar. We can also check metrics like sites linking in to the site-- EducationPost has 81, which is not an impressive number.
Bottom line-- in money spent per number people getting the message, EducationPost is at the bottom of the heap. It's proof once again that while the reformsters can keep outspending everybody else, that doesn't mean they're actually convincing anybody else. The reformster movement is lifted up by a giant bag of hot air, and that air is heated by constantly burning a giant pile of money. When the money runs out, or is withdrawn, the balloon will deflate and the reformster initiative will float back to earth with the rest of us.
It can seem like the reformsters are winning-- they have the pretty sites, the shiny PR, the well-paid PR rapid response operatives. What they don't have are the people who are pouring their blood and sweat and heart and soul into a cause that is bigger than profit and power.
Meanwhile, EducationPost continues to troll hard, most recently going after activist mom/blogger Sarah Blaine (because you have to stop those moms from messing wit the narrative) and Diane Ravitch herself by pointing out that she used to say different things than she does now, trying to discredit today's education activity by bringing up what she said way back in the day, as if Ravitch hadn't already written a book herself explaining what beliefs changed and why. These trolling runs have not made EducationPost a center of conversation. No firestorm. Not even a smokescreen. Just a short quiet correction from Mercedes Schneider. It is possible that EducationPost could be more efficient by simply posting, "Notice Me, Dammit" as a headline.
But it's a 2015 world, and people mostly understand that you don't feed the trolls (which is why you'll find no links in this story, or any of my newer stuff, to the EducationPost website). More than that, defenders of US public education are coming to understand that not every reformster requires or deserves a response. Paul Thomas once called for Phase Three in the resistance, and perhaps this is it-- a phase in which we realize that we are no longer backed into a corner and no longer have to respond to every cockamamie attack on public education, even as some reformsters try to get us to start up the same old fight. Maybe EducationPost is not about trying to go forward to better conversations, but to actually sucker us into the same old dynamic and thereby preserve the narrative that reformsters are the ones with all the power, while we have to fight and scrape to get our point across. They aren't Goliath. They're just a big troll on life support.
If that's the case, than the irrelevance of EducationPost (because, really, does it matter whether they close up shop or not?) is one more true sign that Things Have Changed, that money can't win everything, and that we all need to have real conversations about the future of American public education, not simply a battle of rapid-response PR blitzes and stale talking points.
The premise of EducationPost was that the conversation about public education was their conversation to be held at their table under their terms. But now they are sitting at the table alone, while more important conversations are held elsewhere. Good news for the rest of us, but if I were Bloomberg, Broad and Walton, I'd want my $12 million back.
Education Post debuted on September 1st to considerable fanfare, including a nice infomercial on the launch in Washington Post. The head honcho was (and still is) Peter Cunningham. Cunningham is an old Chicago hand who traveled to DC with Arne Duncan to become the voice of Duncan's office (some others characterized him as its brains). The site was bankrolled ($12 million) by money from Bloomsburg, Broad and Walton philanthropies. It proposed to make the education debates more civil and pleasant and reasoned and based on facts-not-anecdotes, and all of that noble purpose lasted about as long as it took to post the first handful of articles that established that Education Post would be shilling hard for the Obama administration's reformster agenda. Fittingly enough, their logo features a bulhorn, not ordinarily a weapon of choice for civil, reasoned conversation.
EdWeek covered the launch and tossed up this detail about the site's function:
Education Post also will have a “rapid response” capacity to “knock down false narratives” and will focus on “hot spots” around the country where conflicts with national implications are playing out, Cunningham said.
The Washington Post profile included this:
Cunningham said some of the group's work will be behind the scenes, drafting op-ed articles for policymakers, educators, and others, as well as providing strategic advice. But a more public effort
will involve writing blog posts and responding to public misconceptions.
So what we're really talking about is a campaign politics style PR attack office determined to blitzkreig its way into control of the narrative. And they followed through swiftly. The very day I ran my first piece about the site, I had two contributors? employees? operatives? whatever you want to call thems all up in my twitter with some spicy "So when did you stop beating your wife?" challenges. Cunningham called out Jose Luis Vilson within the first week on the site.
Three weeks later the site tried to take on Carol Burris, decided to dial it back, and still mounted a weak non-conversational assault. And after that, things just got quiet.
In the first few days, the site had drawn many dissenting posts in the comments section. Those were swiftly erased. In response to the complaints, EdPost tweeted "Hoping for a better conversation. Stay tuned." But that conversation never happened-- not even a chorus of happy sock puppets to sing the praises of the stable of writers. Education Post became one more demonstration that the opposite of love is indifference.
It certainly wasn't that people on either side of the education debates hate to converse. Mike Petrilli, Andy Smarick, and Rick Hess are just three examples of hard-driving reformsters who are perfectly capable of having intelligent conversations with public school advocates.
But Education Post was not really interested in a conversation. Instead, they revealed themselves fairly quickly to be a twelve million dollar troll. They had said they wanted to amplify the voices of reformy success stories, but they also devoted time to playing gotcha with voices on the side of public education. They added a feature where they marked up pro-public-ed documents with red pen, like a petulant schoolmarm, and that didn't seem like a conversation starter, either. But clearly they had hoped that they could be at the center of education policy firestorms, and they had a box of matches and a tank of gasoline already to go but... well, nobody wanted to play. Time and again they set out the bait, grabbed ahold of their club, and waited under their bridge but.... crickets.
This is not the first time reformsters have tried to harness the interwebs and some of that social medias the kids are all tweetering about, and it's not the first time that reformsters have failed miserably doing so (see Jeb Bush/FEE's now defunct "Learn More Go Further" campaign for another example). But this might be the most expensive.
I thought I'd check to see how big the fail was, and plugged some sites into the admittedly-imperfect site Alexa.com, which ranks all the websites in the world by traffic. Here's what I got (we'll stick with US ranks and ignore the international). This is the rank in America as roughly estimated by Alexa:
EducationPost-- 223,516
Diane Ravitch's blog-- 20,380
So, Ravitch, with a staff of one and a budget of maybe a hundred bucks, cleaned their clocks. Is it their politics? Let's see what the very-reformy thinky tank Fordham Foundation site clocks in at:
EdExcellence-- 67,360
So, no, it's possible to draw some attention from their side of the tracks. Maybe other sites rank higher because they've been around longer? How about Living in Dialogue, a pro-public ed website launched at just about the same time, for considerably less that $12 million.
Living in Dialogue-- 138,616
How do they compare to a simple high school English teacher who (even though I've been online longer) just blogs in his spare time with a budget of $0.00?
Curmudgucation-- 119,612
I've checked other independent public ed bloggers, and the results are similar. We can also check metrics like sites linking in to the site-- EducationPost has 81, which is not an impressive number.
Bottom line-- in money spent per number people getting the message, EducationPost is at the bottom of the heap. It's proof once again that while the reformsters can keep outspending everybody else, that doesn't mean they're actually convincing anybody else. The reformster movement is lifted up by a giant bag of hot air, and that air is heated by constantly burning a giant pile of money. When the money runs out, or is withdrawn, the balloon will deflate and the reformster initiative will float back to earth with the rest of us.
It can seem like the reformsters are winning-- they have the pretty sites, the shiny PR, the well-paid PR rapid response operatives. What they don't have are the people who are pouring their blood and sweat and heart and soul into a cause that is bigger than profit and power.
Meanwhile, EducationPost continues to troll hard, most recently going after activist mom/blogger Sarah Blaine (because you have to stop those moms from messing wit the narrative) and Diane Ravitch herself by pointing out that she used to say different things than she does now, trying to discredit today's education activity by bringing up what she said way back in the day, as if Ravitch hadn't already written a book herself explaining what beliefs changed and why. These trolling runs have not made EducationPost a center of conversation. No firestorm. Not even a smokescreen. Just a short quiet correction from Mercedes Schneider. It is possible that EducationPost could be more efficient by simply posting, "Notice Me, Dammit" as a headline.
But it's a 2015 world, and people mostly understand that you don't feed the trolls (which is why you'll find no links in this story, or any of my newer stuff, to the EducationPost website). More than that, defenders of US public education are coming to understand that not every reformster requires or deserves a response. Paul Thomas once called for Phase Three in the resistance, and perhaps this is it-- a phase in which we realize that we are no longer backed into a corner and no longer have to respond to every cockamamie attack on public education, even as some reformsters try to get us to start up the same old fight. Maybe EducationPost is not about trying to go forward to better conversations, but to actually sucker us into the same old dynamic and thereby preserve the narrative that reformsters are the ones with all the power, while we have to fight and scrape to get our point across. They aren't Goliath. They're just a big troll on life support.
If that's the case, than the irrelevance of EducationPost (because, really, does it matter whether they close up shop or not?) is one more true sign that Things Have Changed, that money can't win everything, and that we all need to have real conversations about the future of American public education, not simply a battle of rapid-response PR blitzes and stale talking points.
The premise of EducationPost was that the conversation about public education was their conversation to be held at their table under their terms. But now they are sitting at the table alone, while more important conversations are held elsewhere. Good news for the rest of us, but if I were Bloomberg, Broad and Walton, I'd want my $12 million back.
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