To Change the Education Narrative, Build a Movement

This morning there was a great segment on the Melissa Harris Perry Show where she interviewed Diane Ravitch about her new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.  I’ve had my disagreements with Harris Perry over education in the past. But it’s obvious that she cares deeply about public education. And it’s been clear to me that, even when her guests have largely accepted the frames of choice and accountability and crisis, she has remained skeptical. Given the dominance of the position Ravitch criticizes, it was nice to have a segment where she, later joined by Pedro Noguera and Trymaine Lee, could lay out the critique of the corporate education reform movement and discuss some of the impacts on students.

That said, there was one question posed by Harris Perry that didn’t get addressed, that I wanted to offer my own answer.

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Why Won’t You Rubes Get Excited About Cory Booker

By David Shankbone (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

[Update below. 8-28-13]

LEAVE CORY BOOKER ALOOOOOOOONE!!!!

Molly Ball is not impressed with “liberal” critics of Cory Booker. (And Paul Waldman agrees with her.)

“Cory Booker is not yet a senator,” Ball warns,”but many on the left have already made up their minds that the onetime Democratic wunderkind is a sellout.” I don’t think anyone thinks Booker is a sellout, which implies that someone was on the side of right and justice and then lost their way. If you want to boil it down to a phrase, ‘bought and paid for’ would be far closed to the truth than ‘sellout’. The attacks are largely a claim that he’s been motivated by ambition and support for the wealthy from the get go.  Progressive criticism of Booker is nothing new. It’s also odd to suggest that people are supposed to wait to criticize someone who’s been on the national stage for a while now, is running for Senate, and who has received effusive praise from many quarters all along. I do admit that I don’t understand the rules of when it’s appropriate to criticize Democratic politicians–not while we’re passing this policy, not before a presidential election, the midterms are coming. Somehow it’s always the wrong time.

If only there was a time when hippie punching was verboten! Even for a day.