Who are Democrats for Education Reform?
Joe Williams heads Democrats for Education Reform and its sister organization, Education Reform Now.
DFER advisory board member Joel Greenblatt is a protégé of fallen junk-bond icon Michael Milliken.
Hedge-fund manager John Petry, a DFER board member, co-founded the Harlem Success Academy Charter School with Eva Moskowitz.
Waiting for Superman – a film review Jan. 2011. by Duane Campbell.
In October the film, “Waiting for Superman” dominated the television talk shows, forums, and press with a message that public schools are failing, the teachers’ unions are to blame, and that charter schools are the answer to the problems of public schools. Superman is not only a film about schools, it is also a part of a wider sophisticated assault on unions and particularly public sector unions. In the Fall 2010 election in California Meg Whitman extended the criticism of the teachers union and made it a major issue in her $160 million dollar self financed campaign for Governor. The film and the Whitman campaign illustrate how corporate funding produces a political narrative. The corporations and the foundations involved are distinct, but the process of corporate or oligarchy funding to shape the political and economic dialogue are similar.
The film Waiting for Superman is a part of the effective strategy of corporate take over of education policy and corporate victories in framing the issues of education reform . Historian Diane Ravitch describes this corporate take over in her well written book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System; How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. (2010). There are several specific criticisms of the facts and the framing in the film including Ira Shor of the City University of New York saying “Overall it benefits the hedge fund billionaires now bankrolling charter schools and conservative politicians,” on the site http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org/
Prominent education historian Diane Ravitch, formerly an Under Secretary for Research in the Department of Education during the Reagan Administration, criticizes the film