MEDIA WATCH: DFER pushes slick attacks against Garfield High MAP boycott -- penned by a 'fourth grade teacher' (charter school variety) who is now a DFER 'policy analyst'
Back in the days before the movement against using body counts for "assessments" became stronger in Chicago (and across the USA), the late Jerry Bracey (whose books everyone should get and read before they go out of print forever) devoted an annual column in the Phi Delta Kappan to what he called the "Rotten Apple Awards." The "Rotten Apples" were awarded to the hacks and flacks who pushed corporate test-based "school reform" with the most mendacious vigor. In order to award the "Rotten Apples," of course, Jerry had to read what the Rotters wrote.
By the early 21st Century, the Phi Delta Kappan had been purchased, effectively, by the Broad Foundation, as Susan Ohanian, Jerry, and I reported at various points. (They didn't buy PDK outright; they just gave so much money to it that PDK effectively became just another mouthpiece for corporate test-based so-called "reform"). Suddenly, Bracey was told that the "Rotten Apples" would no longer be published in the PDK. For a time, the PDK continued publishing Bracey's annual "Bracey Report," but the "Rotten Apples" wound up being published after that in Substance.
The sellout by the editors of the PDK, like that by so many others in charge of the professional associations and journals