In his semi-regular email to supporters, allies, and hate-readers, Whitney Tilson led one item with this subheading:
Hillary (and Bill) have a long history of breaking with the teachers’ unions, which bodes well:
Tilson is a leading light of DFER (Democrats for Education Reform), a group of faux Democrat, hedge fundy, union-hating, privateering reformsters. These are exactly the people who love Clinton when she's getting all Wall Street warm and corporate cozy, but who become alarmed when she starts talking crazy, like suggesting that charter schools don't actually serve all students.
But in his email, Tilson wants to re-assure everyone that Clinton can be counted on to break with unions just as soon as she's elected. Here are his historical supports:
…after Bill got elected governor four years later, many of his early boosters from labor felt betrayed.
Specifically, the teachers unions were infuriated over the couple’s
advocacy of an education reform proposal
that mandated teacher testing. The National Education Association and
its Arkansas affiliate worked against the Clintons after they backed the
measure in 1983.
— Hillary’s first significant public role was heading an education commission for Bill,
a precursor to her role as health care czar in his first term. The
efforts she supported were heartily endorsed by the business
community, including a dark-money nonprofit group funded by WalMart
founder Sam Walton. (Tom and Matea Gold explored this in part one of
their story on the Clinton money machine yesterday, which
you can read here.)
— Hillary was booed by teachers when she showed up at education forums as Arkansas First Lady to pitch her proposal.
“I believe the governor’s teacher testing bill has done
inestimable damage to the Arkansas teaching profession and to the image
of this state,” Peggy Nabors, the president of the Arkansas Education
Assn, wrote in a 1983 letter to her members. She called
it “a radical departure from what educators or the makers of
standardized test themselves believe is appropriate or fair.” She added
that the proposal “represents the final indignity” and closed by urging
teachers to “make a contribution to political candidates
who will support a more progressive education program.”
Lots of folks have suggested that Clinton can be trusted just about as far as you can throw the giant pile of money that Wall Street and corporate interests have invested in her. And I am one of them-- from where I sit, Clinton isn't any better for education than Jeb! unless you prefer to be smiled at while you're being gutted.
But it certainly tells us something about where we are and who she is that a group like DFER is out there re-assuring the money men that Clinton can be trusted to "break with" the teachers' unions, as if that's a basis for endorsing her. God, but 2016 is going to be a long year in politics.
Showing posts with label Whitney Tilson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Whitney Tilson. Show all posts
Monday, January 11, 2016
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
TeachStrong Gathers More Anti-Teacher Moss
Just a few weeks ago, TeachStrong burst upon the scene, declaring itself ready to lift up the teaching profession with its nine steps of teacher swellness.
TS represented an odd assortment of groups, apparently led by the Center for American Progress and including such strange bedfellows as NEA and TFA, AFT and EducationPost. What could these groups answer together? How should we train teachers? Do we love public schools? In fact the whole thing had a random, cobbled-together look right up to the point that any observer asked, "Which of you groups would like to back Hillary Clinton for President" at which point a new spirit of unanimity entered the room.
Well, it's only getting weirder. CAP announced that ten more groups have signed on, including DFER and Education Reform Now (two arms of the same nominally-Dem reformy octopus), the Albert Shanker Institute, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
DFER is the most surprising entry, as DFER and their head honcho Whitney Tilson have not been subtle in their belief that teachers generally suck more than ever before and that evil, stinky teachers unions are a huge obstacle to making schools great. (You can find both ideas in this slide show and peppered throughout Tilson's blog).
Remember that scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier where Cap is in an elevator, and as it stops at each floor, it fills up with more and more people who are there to kick his ass? I wonder if the wise union leaders who signed us up for TeachStrong are starting to feel like that yet.
I do not know what TeachStrong's actual agenda is, other than pushing a blandly vague education-flavored agenda that it hopes to inject into the election (by way of any particular candidate, do you think?) But whatever it's about, it becomes increasingly obvious that NEA and AFT have no reason and no excuse to be involved. If they can team up with CAP and DFER while prematurely endorsing Clinton, it would seem that there is absolutely nobody that the unions would call out for destructive anti-public ed, anti-teacher, anti-teacher union policies-- as long as those people call themselves Democrats.
TS represented an odd assortment of groups, apparently led by the Center for American Progress and including such strange bedfellows as NEA and TFA, AFT and EducationPost. What could these groups answer together? How should we train teachers? Do we love public schools? In fact the whole thing had a random, cobbled-together look right up to the point that any observer asked, "Which of you groups would like to back Hillary Clinton for President" at which point a new spirit of unanimity entered the room.
Well, it's only getting weirder. CAP announced that ten more groups have signed on, including DFER and Education Reform Now (two arms of the same nominally-Dem reformy octopus), the Albert Shanker Institute, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.
DFER is the most surprising entry, as DFER and their head honcho Whitney Tilson have not been subtle in their belief that teachers generally suck more than ever before and that evil, stinky teachers unions are a huge obstacle to making schools great. (You can find both ideas in this slide show and peppered throughout Tilson's blog).
Remember that scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier where Cap is in an elevator, and as it stops at each floor, it fills up with more and more people who are there to kick his ass? I wonder if the wise union leaders who signed us up for TeachStrong are starting to feel like that yet.
I do not know what TeachStrong's actual agenda is, other than pushing a blandly vague education-flavored agenda that it hopes to inject into the election (by way of any particular candidate, do you think?) But whatever it's about, it becomes increasingly obvious that NEA and AFT have no reason and no excuse to be involved. If they can team up with CAP and DFER while prematurely endorsing Clinton, it would seem that there is absolutely nobody that the unions would call out for destructive anti-public ed, anti-teacher, anti-teacher union policies-- as long as those people call themselves Democrats.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Reformster Poker Benefit
So, got a quarter million dollars burning a hole in your pocket and looking for a way to support the school privatization movement? Then I have the event for you!
It's the Sixth Annual Take 'Em To School Poker Tournament to benefit the fine folks at Education Reform Now. The evening of conspicuous consumption will be on Wednesday, July 22 at Gotham Hall in NYC, and it will be somewhat astonishing. The event will be hosted by Phil Hellmuth and include poker pros Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Andy Frankenberger, and Layne Flack.
On top of that, special guest players will include Hank Azaria, James Blake, Billy Crudup, David Einhorn, Seth Gilliam, Allan Houston, Brian Koppelman, Alex Kovalev, Marc Lasry, John Starks, and Vince Van Patten. So whether you like sporty folks or voice actors from the Simpsons, you've got a chance to rub special elbows.
You can have a table with two of those special guests for the low, low registration fee of $250,000 (the Royal Flush Table). No, I did not stutter or mistype. If five years' worth of teacher salary is too steep, settle for the Straight Flush Table for only $100,000. Only one special guest for you, but hey, if you wanted two guests, you should have been more rich. You can get a table of ten with amenities for $50K or just a plain boring table for $20K. If you don't have friends, you can get a single seat for $2,000, and if you're just there to gawk, eat, drink, and play casino games, $250 is now looking like a highly reasonable cost.
It sure beats a bake sale. Who throws a party like this? Well, co-chair of the event is our old friend Whitney Tilson, which makes sense, since Education Reform Now is just another variation on DFER-- neo-lib high-rolling hedge funding education privatizers who do fun things like try to defeat local anti-reform candidates and have silly philosopher retreats to think deep thoughts about reform.
Frankly, I like the idea of the Network for Public Education or BATs buying a table or two, then sitting there making rude comments about charter schools, common core, and testing all night. But I'm afraid that my exclusive tailor, Jean-Claude Pennee, could not whip up something appropriate in time. And I'm sure it takes a certain level of wealth to set up and participate in an event like this without feeling a twinge of shame or irony. On the website for the event we can find information like this:
Mississippi’s average per pupil expenditure is $7,890 per year while New Jersey’s is $17,620, a disparity reflected across the nation. There is a ceiling, however, on what can be achieved through traditional approaches to resource re-allocation.
These are exactly the same people who declare that we have to get teacher pay under control and that you cannot improve public education by throwing money at it. Yes, throwing money at the education of children across America is a waste of money, money that could be spent on much more valuable and important things. But when the rich want to spend an evening throwing money at each other-- well, that's just good sense and great fun.
It's the Sixth Annual Take 'Em To School Poker Tournament to benefit the fine folks at Education Reform Now. The evening of conspicuous consumption will be on Wednesday, July 22 at Gotham Hall in NYC, and it will be somewhat astonishing. The event will be hosted by Phil Hellmuth and include poker pros Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Andy Frankenberger, and Layne Flack.
On top of that, special guest players will include Hank Azaria, James Blake, Billy Crudup, David Einhorn, Seth Gilliam, Allan Houston, Brian Koppelman, Alex Kovalev, Marc Lasry, John Starks, and Vince Van Patten. So whether you like sporty folks or voice actors from the Simpsons, you've got a chance to rub special elbows.
You can have a table with two of those special guests for the low, low registration fee of $250,000 (the Royal Flush Table). No, I did not stutter or mistype. If five years' worth of teacher salary is too steep, settle for the Straight Flush Table for only $100,000. Only one special guest for you, but hey, if you wanted two guests, you should have been more rich. You can get a table of ten with amenities for $50K or just a plain boring table for $20K. If you don't have friends, you can get a single seat for $2,000, and if you're just there to gawk, eat, drink, and play casino games, $250 is now looking like a highly reasonable cost.
It sure beats a bake sale. Who throws a party like this? Well, co-chair of the event is our old friend Whitney Tilson, which makes sense, since Education Reform Now is just another variation on DFER-- neo-lib high-rolling hedge funding education privatizers who do fun things like try to defeat local anti-reform candidates and have silly philosopher retreats to think deep thoughts about reform.
Frankly, I like the idea of the Network for Public Education or BATs buying a table or two, then sitting there making rude comments about charter schools, common core, and testing all night. But I'm afraid that my exclusive tailor, Jean-Claude Pennee, could not whip up something appropriate in time. And I'm sure it takes a certain level of wealth to set up and participate in an event like this without feeling a twinge of shame or irony. On the website for the event we can find information like this:
Mississippi’s average per pupil expenditure is $7,890 per year while New Jersey’s is $17,620, a disparity reflected across the nation. There is a ceiling, however, on what can be achieved through traditional approaches to resource re-allocation.
These are exactly the same people who declare that we have to get teacher pay under control and that you cannot improve public education by throwing money at it. Yes, throwing money at the education of children across America is a waste of money, money that could be spent on much more valuable and important things. But when the rich want to spend an evening throwing money at each other-- well, that's just good sense and great fun.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Who Put the D in DFER?
DFER stands for Democrats for Education Reform, a group that has the distinction of possessing a name in which none of the words are accurate.
The Democrat part is a fun piece of trivia. One of the key founders of DFER is Whitney Tilson, a big time hedge fund manager (you can read more about him here). Leonie Haimson has a great quote from the film version of Tilson's magnum opus about ed reform, "A Right Denied," and it's a dream of mine that every time somebody searches for DFER on line, this quote comes up.
“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”
It's kind of genius. Like if I wanted to keep Wal-Mart out of town, just declaring myself a Wal-Mart executive and announcing repeatedly that Wal-Mart doesn't want to build in my town and convincing a bunch of actual Wal-Mart executives to join my organization and to start promoting my anti-building-in-my-town agenda.
Watch DFER's video or read their statements of belief and vision. Their narrative is clear. Public schools are failing because entrenched bureaucracy and those damn teacher unions have ruined everything. So we need to blow up public schools by using standards to create tests that will provide proof of how much public schools suck; then we can replace them with charters and choice.
DFER may have started as a thinly-disguised attempt to infiltrate the Democratic party, but they have bought their way in quite successfully in some regions. The intro video features a parade of elected Dem officials (though it's not recent-- in the video Cory Booker is still mayor of Newark) who are proud to lay the responsibility for failing public schools on the backs of teachers.
Why tell this story? Again-- most of the names behind DFER are big time hedge fund managers. Ripping open markets is a win-win; you have the satisfaction of helping lesser beings with your superior knowledge, and you can make a buttload of cash. You can see both on display in this insider story of the charterista assault on Bridgeport. You can also make your contributions to politicians running in key education elections (right now DFER would like to help Anthony Williams become mayor of Philly).
DFER is no more Democratic than my dog. There's not enough space between their positions and the positions of the conservative Fordham Institute (though I think, on balance, Fordham is generally more respectful of teachers). But for the privatizers to be effective, they need to work both sides of the aisle. Also, RFER would sound too much like a pot advocacy group.
So they're not really Democrats. And they don't want to reform education-- they just want to privatize it and reduce teachers to easily replaced widgets. And they aren't particularly interested in education other than as a sector of the economy. I suppose I have no beef with their use of the word "for," as long as they put it with the things that they are really for-- privatization and profit. So, Apoliticals Supporting Privatization and Profit. ASPP. Much better.
The Democrat part is a fun piece of trivia. One of the key founders of DFER is Whitney Tilson, a big time hedge fund manager (you can read more about him here). Leonie Haimson has a great quote from the film version of Tilson's magnum opus about ed reform, "A Right Denied," and it's a dream of mine that every time somebody searches for DFER on line, this quote comes up.
“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”
It's kind of genius. Like if I wanted to keep Wal-Mart out of town, just declaring myself a Wal-Mart executive and announcing repeatedly that Wal-Mart doesn't want to build in my town and convincing a bunch of actual Wal-Mart executives to join my organization and to start promoting my anti-building-in-my-town agenda.
Watch DFER's video or read their statements of belief and vision. Their narrative is clear. Public schools are failing because entrenched bureaucracy and those damn teacher unions have ruined everything. So we need to blow up public schools by using standards to create tests that will provide proof of how much public schools suck; then we can replace them with charters and choice.
DFER may have started as a thinly-disguised attempt to infiltrate the Democratic party, but they have bought their way in quite successfully in some regions. The intro video features a parade of elected Dem officials (though it's not recent-- in the video Cory Booker is still mayor of Newark) who are proud to lay the responsibility for failing public schools on the backs of teachers.
Why tell this story? Again-- most of the names behind DFER are big time hedge fund managers. Ripping open markets is a win-win; you have the satisfaction of helping lesser beings with your superior knowledge, and you can make a buttload of cash. You can see both on display in this insider story of the charterista assault on Bridgeport. You can also make your contributions to politicians running in key education elections (right now DFER would like to help Anthony Williams become mayor of Philly).
DFER is no more Democratic than my dog. There's not enough space between their positions and the positions of the conservative Fordham Institute (though I think, on balance, Fordham is generally more respectful of teachers). But for the privatizers to be effective, they need to work both sides of the aisle. Also, RFER would sound too much like a pot advocacy group.
So they're not really Democrats. And they don't want to reform education-- they just want to privatize it and reduce teachers to easily replaced widgets. And they aren't particularly interested in education other than as a sector of the economy. I suppose I have no beef with their use of the word "for," as long as they put it with the things that they are really for-- privatization and profit. So, Apoliticals Supporting Privatization and Profit. ASPP. Much better.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Whitney Tilson Is Better Than You
When we're talking about the kind of hedge-fund managing, faux-Democrat, rich fat cat, anti-public ed reformsters who are driving much of the modern ed reform agenda, we're talking about guys like Whitney Tilson.
The Tilson Story
Tilson is a walking Great Story-- his parents are educators who met while serving in the Peace Corps. Tilson's father earned a doctorate in education at Stanford, which adds the story-worthy detail that young Whitney was a participant in Stanford's famous marshmallow experiment. That's an apt biographical detail. The original interpretation of the experiment was essentially that some children are better than others because they have the right character traits. More recent follow-up research suggests that a bigger lesson is that it's a hell of a lot easier to show desired character traits when you live in a stable environment.
Tilson became a big name in the world of value investing, and he has used his gabillions to fuel the charter school world. He's a big backer of KIPP, TFA and DFER. He is nominally a liberal Democrat, but he has no love for teachers and some pretty clear dislike for their unions.
He recently surfaced in an article by The Nation about how the billionaire boys club is remaking the New York City Schools in their own chartery profit-generating image. Tilson, in his weekly-ish ed reform newsletter, dismissed the article as "a silly hatchet job" and told his own version of how a bunch of Very Rich White Guys have commandeered the biggest apple of them all.
The true story here is very simple and the opposite of sinister – it’s inspiring to me: a number of very successful New Yorkers – believing in the power of education and that every kid deserves a fair shot at the American dream, and disgusted with an educational system that does just the opposite, in which the color of your skin and your zip code pretty much determine the quality of public school a kid gets, an unjust reality that goes on, year in and year out, not because the system is broken, but because it operates just the way it’s supposed to, to serve the economic interests of the adults in the system and the political interests of the gutless weasel politicians who kowtow to them – decided to donate millions of dollars, despite having absolutely nothing to gain personally, to create a counter-weight to the status quo, in which the unions historically said “Jump!” and the governor and legislature would respond, “How high?!”
Tilson likes to characterize himself as a scrappy underdog.
I’m very proud to say that we’ve been enormously successful. Despite being outmanned, outspent, and outgunned 100:1, a small group of incredible people – in part the funders, but more importantly the people on the ground – have turned the tables on the entrenched powers, in part by, yes, finding and strongly supporting a courageous ally in Gov. Cuomo.
I am not sure in which alternate reality these billionaires have been outspent or outgunned, but it is a standard part of the reformster narrative that they are heroic fighters, fearlessly taking on entrenched and powerful forces who are bent on imprisoning students everywhere in dark dungeons of desperation and failure.
It's not about the greed
I have long believed that those who explain reformster motivation by resorting to greed are likely wrong. From techno-system guys like Gates to value investors like Tilson, there's something else working. Here's a quote from that same Tilson letter
We are winning this titanic struggle (albeit in a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back way), not because we’re all-powerful billionaires, but because, to quote MLK, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Or this quote from Sir Michael Barber, head of Pearson, commenting on the challenge of remaking education into a global digitized system:
Be that as it may, the aspiration to meet these challenges is right
Or the Lyndsay Layton interview with Bill Gates, in which Gates is truly thrown by the mere suggestion that he's in this for the bucks.
These are all people who believe they are serving a higher moral purpose, that they personally understand how the world should be reshaped in a way that other people simply don't. And they have an obligation to circumvent democratic institutions, traditional systems and the disagreeing humans who stand in their way because they know better.
They are armed with vast fortunes and wide-ranging connections, and just like the robber barons before them, they sense that these powers are not the result of random good fortune, but the validation and proof that they really are better than other people, that they have some better, wiser grasp of the world and how it does, and should, work. They do not necessarily revel in the power; in fact, they often use the language of obligation-- it's a thing they have to do. It's, you know, a burden that this rich white guys must pick up.
Will their reforms bring them more money and power? Sure. But that's not the goal-- it's just the proof that they were right. After all, if they weren't smart and strong and better than the average person, they wouldn't be so rich and powerful.
Now, does greed help drive the ed reform engines? Certainly. But that's because once these super-powered elite form their vision of how to remake the world, there is a ton of money to be made by helping them do it, and so a whole swarm of people interested in that money travel in their wake. Philosophically, it really does mirror the symbiosis of 19th century European colonialism. Nobody could sell conquering Africa as baldfaced conquest and exploitation-- but once that colonization was sold as a way to give lesser people the benefits of superior European culture, knowledge, worldview, pants, and religion, the profiteers could adopt the proper language and spread over the continent like locusts.
In the "meritocratic" universe, there are The Right Sort of People and The Wrong Sort of People. The Betters are successful and wise, and this is evident in their success and wealth and innate superior character. They should run things. The Wrong Sort of People need accountability to keep them in line, to guide them to do the correct thing (you will note that we never call for accountability for the Betters-- they don't need it, and their success proves they don't need it).
So what's does Tilson really think?
Tilson's education views seem to have coalesced fairly early in the current ed reform cycle; in 2009 he gave a presentation in DC that was his attempt to create An Inconvenient Truth for the education biz. "A Right Denied" exists as a website, a set of power point slides, and a documentary. I worked my way through the slide show, which I think is an excellent summary (although, at 292 slides, not a very brief one) of the DFER corporate Democrat point of view.
The problem
Tilson starts by documenting the correlation between education and employment, earnings, and long-term health. I don't think many people dispute the correlation-- the argument is about what it means. The DFER/Duncan position is that education is the cause of everything else. I think it's far more likely that lower educational results come from the same place as the other issues-- poverty.
Tilson also notes that scores on some tests have stagnated, and there's lots to argue about there (can you really compare SAT results when the population taking the test has been steadily changing as we try to convince every student that she must go to college), as well as the question of what standardized tests actually measure. But it is a critical element of the DFER view that schools must be accountable, by which they mean the Help must show their Betters what they are up to.
Tilson also wants us to know that we've been spending more and more on education (he does not address the question of "on what," and consider issues such as increased mandates for more special ed teachers in schools). That's okay-- his basic point is clear. We've been spending tons of money on education and not getting bang for our buck.
Tilson knows why-- three reasons:
1) Teacher quality has been falling rapidly over the past few decades.
2) Our school systems have become more dysfunctional, bureaucratic, and unaccountable.
3) As a nation, we have been so rich for so long that we have become lazy and complacent. Our youth are spending more time watching tv, listening to iPods, playing video games.
Tilson illustrates this with two photos-- one showing neat, well-dressed Chinese youngsters politely lined up, and the other an unruly crowd of shirtless frat boys. Kids these days! He then shows some data to support his last point. Points 1 and 2 get no supporting evidence at all right now.
Some critical gaps
Gap #1. We don't send enough students to college, and too few of those finish. No idea why that completion rate is low. It would be interesting to see the numbers on students who drop out of college because they can't afford to finish it.
Gap #2. The achievement gap, by race and poverty. Starting in kindergarten and through college (this is where he shows some numbers about college affordability). But the bottom line here is that "the color of your skin and your zip code are almost entirely determinative of the quality of public education this nation provides. This is deeply, profoundly wrong." I have no beef with Tilson on this point.
The solutions
Here's where it just gets very weird, random, and profoundly intellectually sloppy.
There are too many systems "dominated by the Three Pillars of Mediocrity." Quick-- before you scroll down, can you think of three policies that make it hard to improve poor schools. Did you guess systemic underfunding, lack of support, or absence of fundamental infrastructure and resources? Incorrect. It's those damn teachers. They have tenure, a pay scale, and seniority.
Tilson says if you want to fix any broken system (because how different could schools be from any other system), you take these four steps:
1) Adopt the right strategy and tactics
2) Hire and train great leaders and then empower them
3) Measure results
4) Hold people accountable
A patronizing patrician approach is embedded here, too. Note that there is no step for consulting with the people who are already in the system. Our assumption, once again, is that some people are better than others, and you need to put those who are better in charge.
Tilson holds up Florida as an example of this type of system overhaul. And it's here that we hit a point that the Nation article really did get wrong. They accused Tilson of not wanting to spend any money on schools, but in slide #90, he makes it clear that spending more money is not a solution-- unless the money is tied to reforms. It's the fetal form of the reformster adage "Throwing money at public schools is wasteful, but throwing money at charters and test publishers is awesome."
Of course, you might not be able to reform the system, in which case you need to replace it, and here come a slew of slides about the miraculous miracle that is New Orleans, featuring the usual selective slices of data (incidentally, we also get the prediction that by 2016 there will be almost no failing schools in NOLA. So that's a win).
And now for a word...
Next up-- an advertisement for charters, especially the KIPP system for which Tilson sits on the board.
Those damn teachers
Did you know that teachers are the most important in-school factor in student achievement (aka test scores)? Well, here come a bunch of pull quotes from the infamous (and unsupportable) Chetty study to tell you so. And we'll throw in some Eric Hanushek baloney about firing our way to excellence as well.
Tilson boils the teacher problem down to two factors-- teacher quality has been declining for decades, and talent is unfairly distributed.
So here we are back at one of the fundamental assumptions of the DFER/Duncan worldview-- some people are just better than others, and that betterness reveals itself in All the Right Places. They will be better at school, they will get better jobs, they will do better on standardized tests, and ultimately they will make more money. So when we look for these markers, we aren't really measuring anything in particular-- we're just looking for the markers of success that signal one of the Chosen Few (and yes-- astute readers will note that modern corporate meritocrats have a great deal in common with our Puritan forebears).
So-- we "know" that we aren't getting the Right People into teaching because they don't mostly graduate at the top of their class or get the best SAT scores. Meanwhile, the schools of education lack accountability-- and in the meritocratic view of the world, accountability is what we need in order to make the Lesser Humans behave properly.
Implicit in this world view is that being a Better or a Lesser is fairly hard to change. It's wired in, like good breeding. That's why Lessers need "accountability," because only carrots and sticks (and mostly sticks) will get them to overcome their fundamental Lesser nature. This is also the rationale behind testing for students (no fourth grade for you until you pass this reading test, kid)-- only by strong actions can we force them to overcome their inherently lesser natures.
In the meantime, we need to sort out the Right Sort of People from the Wrong Sort of People in teaching and fire our way to excellence (by removing the Wrong Sort of People). This is why DFER types love Teach for America-- it selects teachers by using the markers of true excellence (wealth, good grades, the Right Schools) so that The Right Sort of People will be put in the classroom. TFA even systematically addresses one of the inherent contradictions of the DFER view-- if you really are the Right Kind of Person, you'll be doing something more successful and wealth-making than merely being a teacher, so it's okay if you only do it for a while.
Unfair distribution is more of the same. We know that the Bad Teachers are ending up in poor schools because none of the markers of Being Better are there. No high tests scores, degrees from the Right Sort of School.
And behind it all-- the damn unions, which are composed of the Wrong Sort of Person and try to protect the Wrong Sort of Person from having to be accountable to their Betters.
Goofus and Gallant
Tilson finishes with some action items, some things that you should or should not do.
You should join DFER. Ask questions of the ignorant, gutless politicians (clearly the Wrong Sort of People who have been elected by the Wrong Sort of People-- stupid democracy, anyway).
Don't allow reform opponents to define the debate (I have to tell you-- viewing myself through Tilson's eyes, I am a freaking giant). Also, don't think advocacy is cheap.
And stay positive, and don't get lost in fantasy:
It's nice to fantasize about an 18-day, Egypt-style revolution that throws out the old order, that's not going to happen. The system is much too big, too entrenched, and too decentralized to fix quickly.
Is it really nice to fantasize about public education being completely removed in a violent revolution? Interesting thought, that.
Here's one thing that is not on Tilson's to-do list-- empower the people who actually live in poor and minority neighborhoods by getting systemic barriers out of their way so that they can better have a voice in their own governance and local education. In fact, even listening to those voices is not on the list.
Tilson and the Worst Kind of Democrat Caricature
So what's the real problem? The Wrong Sort of People are in charge, and Kids These Days have turned into miserable slackers. Poor and minority students are being abandoned in the mess that comes from letting The Wrong Sort of People be in charge. We need to put the Right Sort of People in charge through any means possible, so that they can take care of the Lesser Folks who need their largesse and assistance. Having things like a Race to the Top make sense because we can then separate out the Right Kind of People from the Wrong Kind of People. The Betters will raise expectations, hold peoples' feet to the fire, and get a warm glow of satisfaction from knowing that they made life better for people who were, of course, incapable of making life better for themselves. And in doing so, they will be acting as a force for good and justice and truth in the universe (and they will be richly rewarded because virtue always leads to great rewards).
Yes, this all dovetails beautifully with the goals and aims of profiteers, the folks who just want a chance to crack open the golden egg of education and feed on the giant omelet of money that can be made from it. But when you separate the DFER-style agenda from the profiteering, you can see the kind of paternalistic elitist we-know-better-than-you cartoon Democrat that Tea Partiers and other hard-right folks deeply hate.
This is what you get when you cross real needs, real issues and real concerns (like the need to provide better schooling to poor and minority students in this country) with a particular wacky worldview that is more old-world aristocratic than American. But I'll remind you that Tilson's slides are from 2009, and they contain pretty much every single talking point we've heard from the current administration since Race to the Top was launched. While I may have Whitney Tilson outnumbered and outgunned, I'm just a high school English teacher with a blog and he's an investment whiz with the ear of world leaders. I'm pretty sure I don't represent a very big threat to him, but without ever having met me or knowing who I am, he's ready to kick my ass.
The Tilson Story
Tilson is a walking Great Story-- his parents are educators who met while serving in the Peace Corps. Tilson's father earned a doctorate in education at Stanford, which adds the story-worthy detail that young Whitney was a participant in Stanford's famous marshmallow experiment. That's an apt biographical detail. The original interpretation of the experiment was essentially that some children are better than others because they have the right character traits. More recent follow-up research suggests that a bigger lesson is that it's a hell of a lot easier to show desired character traits when you live in a stable environment.
Tilson became a big name in the world of value investing, and he has used his gabillions to fuel the charter school world. He's a big backer of KIPP, TFA and DFER. He is nominally a liberal Democrat, but he has no love for teachers and some pretty clear dislike for their unions.
He recently surfaced in an article by The Nation about how the billionaire boys club is remaking the New York City Schools in their own chartery profit-generating image. Tilson, in his weekly-ish ed reform newsletter, dismissed the article as "a silly hatchet job" and told his own version of how a bunch of Very Rich White Guys have commandeered the biggest apple of them all.
The true story here is very simple and the opposite of sinister – it’s inspiring to me: a number of very successful New Yorkers – believing in the power of education and that every kid deserves a fair shot at the American dream, and disgusted with an educational system that does just the opposite, in which the color of your skin and your zip code pretty much determine the quality of public school a kid gets, an unjust reality that goes on, year in and year out, not because the system is broken, but because it operates just the way it’s supposed to, to serve the economic interests of the adults in the system and the political interests of the gutless weasel politicians who kowtow to them – decided to donate millions of dollars, despite having absolutely nothing to gain personally, to create a counter-weight to the status quo, in which the unions historically said “Jump!” and the governor and legislature would respond, “How high?!”
Tilson likes to characterize himself as a scrappy underdog.
I’m very proud to say that we’ve been enormously successful. Despite being outmanned, outspent, and outgunned 100:1, a small group of incredible people – in part the funders, but more importantly the people on the ground – have turned the tables on the entrenched powers, in part by, yes, finding and strongly supporting a courageous ally in Gov. Cuomo.
I am not sure in which alternate reality these billionaires have been outspent or outgunned, but it is a standard part of the reformster narrative that they are heroic fighters, fearlessly taking on entrenched and powerful forces who are bent on imprisoning students everywhere in dark dungeons of desperation and failure.
It's not about the greed
I have long believed that those who explain reformster motivation by resorting to greed are likely wrong. From techno-system guys like Gates to value investors like Tilson, there's something else working. Here's a quote from that same Tilson letter
We are winning this titanic struggle (albeit in a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back way), not because we’re all-powerful billionaires, but because, to quote MLK, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Or this quote from Sir Michael Barber, head of Pearson, commenting on the challenge of remaking education into a global digitized system:
Be that as it may, the aspiration to meet these challenges is right
Or the Lyndsay Layton interview with Bill Gates, in which Gates is truly thrown by the mere suggestion that he's in this for the bucks.
These are all people who believe they are serving a higher moral purpose, that they personally understand how the world should be reshaped in a way that other people simply don't. And they have an obligation to circumvent democratic institutions, traditional systems and the disagreeing humans who stand in their way because they know better.
They are armed with vast fortunes and wide-ranging connections, and just like the robber barons before them, they sense that these powers are not the result of random good fortune, but the validation and proof that they really are better than other people, that they have some better, wiser grasp of the world and how it does, and should, work. They do not necessarily revel in the power; in fact, they often use the language of obligation-- it's a thing they have to do. It's, you know, a burden that this rich white guys must pick up.
Will their reforms bring them more money and power? Sure. But that's not the goal-- it's just the proof that they were right. After all, if they weren't smart and strong and better than the average person, they wouldn't be so rich and powerful.
Now, does greed help drive the ed reform engines? Certainly. But that's because once these super-powered elite form their vision of how to remake the world, there is a ton of money to be made by helping them do it, and so a whole swarm of people interested in that money travel in their wake. Philosophically, it really does mirror the symbiosis of 19th century European colonialism. Nobody could sell conquering Africa as baldfaced conquest and exploitation-- but once that colonization was sold as a way to give lesser people the benefits of superior European culture, knowledge, worldview, pants, and religion, the profiteers could adopt the proper language and spread over the continent like locusts.
In the "meritocratic" universe, there are The Right Sort of People and The Wrong Sort of People. The Betters are successful and wise, and this is evident in their success and wealth and innate superior character. They should run things. The Wrong Sort of People need accountability to keep them in line, to guide them to do the correct thing (you will note that we never call for accountability for the Betters-- they don't need it, and their success proves they don't need it).
So what's does Tilson really think?
Tilson's education views seem to have coalesced fairly early in the current ed reform cycle; in 2009 he gave a presentation in DC that was his attempt to create An Inconvenient Truth for the education biz. "A Right Denied" exists as a website, a set of power point slides, and a documentary. I worked my way through the slide show, which I think is an excellent summary (although, at 292 slides, not a very brief one) of the DFER corporate Democrat point of view.
The problem
Tilson starts by documenting the correlation between education and employment, earnings, and long-term health. I don't think many people dispute the correlation-- the argument is about what it means. The DFER/Duncan position is that education is the cause of everything else. I think it's far more likely that lower educational results come from the same place as the other issues-- poverty.
Tilson also notes that scores on some tests have stagnated, and there's lots to argue about there (can you really compare SAT results when the population taking the test has been steadily changing as we try to convince every student that she must go to college), as well as the question of what standardized tests actually measure. But it is a critical element of the DFER view that schools must be accountable, by which they mean the Help must show their Betters what they are up to.
Tilson also wants us to know that we've been spending more and more on education (he does not address the question of "on what," and consider issues such as increased mandates for more special ed teachers in schools). That's okay-- his basic point is clear. We've been spending tons of money on education and not getting bang for our buck.
Tilson knows why-- three reasons:
1) Teacher quality has been falling rapidly over the past few decades.
2) Our school systems have become more dysfunctional, bureaucratic, and unaccountable.
3) As a nation, we have been so rich for so long that we have become lazy and complacent. Our youth are spending more time watching tv, listening to iPods, playing video games.
Tilson illustrates this with two photos-- one showing neat, well-dressed Chinese youngsters politely lined up, and the other an unruly crowd of shirtless frat boys. Kids these days! He then shows some data to support his last point. Points 1 and 2 get no supporting evidence at all right now.
Some critical gaps
Gap #1. We don't send enough students to college, and too few of those finish. No idea why that completion rate is low. It would be interesting to see the numbers on students who drop out of college because they can't afford to finish it.
Gap #2. The achievement gap, by race and poverty. Starting in kindergarten and through college (this is where he shows some numbers about college affordability). But the bottom line here is that "the color of your skin and your zip code are almost entirely determinative of the quality of public education this nation provides. This is deeply, profoundly wrong." I have no beef with Tilson on this point.
The solutions
Here's where it just gets very weird, random, and profoundly intellectually sloppy.
There are too many systems "dominated by the Three Pillars of Mediocrity." Quick-- before you scroll down, can you think of three policies that make it hard to improve poor schools. Did you guess systemic underfunding, lack of support, or absence of fundamental infrastructure and resources? Incorrect. It's those damn teachers. They have tenure, a pay scale, and seniority.
Tilson says if you want to fix any broken system (because how different could schools be from any other system), you take these four steps:
1) Adopt the right strategy and tactics
2) Hire and train great leaders and then empower them
3) Measure results
4) Hold people accountable
A patronizing patrician approach is embedded here, too. Note that there is no step for consulting with the people who are already in the system. Our assumption, once again, is that some people are better than others, and you need to put those who are better in charge.
Tilson holds up Florida as an example of this type of system overhaul. And it's here that we hit a point that the Nation article really did get wrong. They accused Tilson of not wanting to spend any money on schools, but in slide #90, he makes it clear that spending more money is not a solution-- unless the money is tied to reforms. It's the fetal form of the reformster adage "Throwing money at public schools is wasteful, but throwing money at charters and test publishers is awesome."
Of course, you might not be able to reform the system, in which case you need to replace it, and here come a slew of slides about the miraculous miracle that is New Orleans, featuring the usual selective slices of data (incidentally, we also get the prediction that by 2016 there will be almost no failing schools in NOLA. So that's a win).
And now for a word...
Next up-- an advertisement for charters, especially the KIPP system for which Tilson sits on the board.
Those damn teachers
Did you know that teachers are the most important in-school factor in student achievement (aka test scores)? Well, here come a bunch of pull quotes from the infamous (and unsupportable) Chetty study to tell you so. And we'll throw in some Eric Hanushek baloney about firing our way to excellence as well.
Tilson boils the teacher problem down to two factors-- teacher quality has been declining for decades, and talent is unfairly distributed.
So here we are back at one of the fundamental assumptions of the DFER/Duncan worldview-- some people are just better than others, and that betterness reveals itself in All the Right Places. They will be better at school, they will get better jobs, they will do better on standardized tests, and ultimately they will make more money. So when we look for these markers, we aren't really measuring anything in particular-- we're just looking for the markers of success that signal one of the Chosen Few (and yes-- astute readers will note that modern corporate meritocrats have a great deal in common with our Puritan forebears).
So-- we "know" that we aren't getting the Right People into teaching because they don't mostly graduate at the top of their class or get the best SAT scores. Meanwhile, the schools of education lack accountability-- and in the meritocratic view of the world, accountability is what we need in order to make the Lesser Humans behave properly.
Implicit in this world view is that being a Better or a Lesser is fairly hard to change. It's wired in, like good breeding. That's why Lessers need "accountability," because only carrots and sticks (and mostly sticks) will get them to overcome their fundamental Lesser nature. This is also the rationale behind testing for students (no fourth grade for you until you pass this reading test, kid)-- only by strong actions can we force them to overcome their inherently lesser natures.
In the meantime, we need to sort out the Right Sort of People from the Wrong Sort of People in teaching and fire our way to excellence (by removing the Wrong Sort of People). This is why DFER types love Teach for America-- it selects teachers by using the markers of true excellence (wealth, good grades, the Right Schools) so that The Right Sort of People will be put in the classroom. TFA even systematically addresses one of the inherent contradictions of the DFER view-- if you really are the Right Kind of Person, you'll be doing something more successful and wealth-making than merely being a teacher, so it's okay if you only do it for a while.
Unfair distribution is more of the same. We know that the Bad Teachers are ending up in poor schools because none of the markers of Being Better are there. No high tests scores, degrees from the Right Sort of School.
And behind it all-- the damn unions, which are composed of the Wrong Sort of Person and try to protect the Wrong Sort of Person from having to be accountable to their Betters.
Goofus and Gallant
Tilson finishes with some action items, some things that you should or should not do.
You should join DFER. Ask questions of the ignorant, gutless politicians (clearly the Wrong Sort of People who have been elected by the Wrong Sort of People-- stupid democracy, anyway).
Don't allow reform opponents to define the debate (I have to tell you-- viewing myself through Tilson's eyes, I am a freaking giant). Also, don't think advocacy is cheap.
And stay positive, and don't get lost in fantasy:
It's nice to fantasize about an 18-day, Egypt-style revolution that throws out the old order, that's not going to happen. The system is much too big, too entrenched, and too decentralized to fix quickly.
Is it really nice to fantasize about public education being completely removed in a violent revolution? Interesting thought, that.
Here's one thing that is not on Tilson's to-do list-- empower the people who actually live in poor and minority neighborhoods by getting systemic barriers out of their way so that they can better have a voice in their own governance and local education. In fact, even listening to those voices is not on the list.
Tilson and the Worst Kind of Democrat Caricature
So what's the real problem? The Wrong Sort of People are in charge, and Kids These Days have turned into miserable slackers. Poor and minority students are being abandoned in the mess that comes from letting The Wrong Sort of People be in charge. We need to put the Right Sort of People in charge through any means possible, so that they can take care of the Lesser Folks who need their largesse and assistance. Having things like a Race to the Top make sense because we can then separate out the Right Kind of People from the Wrong Kind of People. The Betters will raise expectations, hold peoples' feet to the fire, and get a warm glow of satisfaction from knowing that they made life better for people who were, of course, incapable of making life better for themselves. And in doing so, they will be acting as a force for good and justice and truth in the universe (and they will be richly rewarded because virtue always leads to great rewards).
Yes, this all dovetails beautifully with the goals and aims of profiteers, the folks who just want a chance to crack open the golden egg of education and feed on the giant omelet of money that can be made from it. But when you separate the DFER-style agenda from the profiteering, you can see the kind of paternalistic elitist we-know-better-than-you cartoon Democrat that Tea Partiers and other hard-right folks deeply hate.
This is what you get when you cross real needs, real issues and real concerns (like the need to provide better schooling to poor and minority students in this country) with a particular wacky worldview that is more old-world aristocratic than American. But I'll remind you that Tilson's slides are from 2009, and they contain pretty much every single talking point we've heard from the current administration since Race to the Top was launched. While I may have Whitney Tilson outnumbered and outgunned, I'm just a high school English teacher with a blog and he's an investment whiz with the ear of world leaders. I'm pretty sure I don't represent a very big threat to him, but without ever having met me or knowing who I am, he's ready to kick my ass.
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