Monitored and Ignored: Ravitch and the Rest of Us
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Damn Good Education Daily |
Last week former Department of Education communications director Peter Cunningham wrote a post that seems to be a sort of preemptive strike on Diane Ravitch, anticipating the release of her book, Reign of Error, the Hoax of Privatization and the Danger to America's Public Schools.
Paul Thomas offered a cogent reply to Cunningham's post here. Cunningham's critique of Ravitch is remarkable for its lack of substance. He seizes on her critique of the purposely engineered high failure rates on New York's Common Core tests as evidence that she wants to lower standards. He even goes so far as to suggest that she is implying that poor and minority students "are not college material." This is classic straw man material. Misrepresent someone, then attack the effigy you have erected.
But I have been thinking about another subtext in his piece. He writes:
During the Obama administration's first term, I served as Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education, where one of my jobs was to monitor criticism of our policies and develop our responses. One of the people I monitored pretty closely was Diane Ravitch.
A blogger named RagingHorse has posted an interesting interpretation of this, with the provocative headline, "What Right Does the US Department of Education Have to 'Monitor' Diane Ravitch".
He (or she) writes:
The US Department of Education "monitored " Diane Ravitch ? And others ? Who are they ? To what end ? Does this mean that the DOE, like the FBI and the CIA and the NSA is building dossiers on those, like Dr. Ravitch, who have the temerity to point out their inconsistencies, absurdities, failure and lies?
I am also disgusted and wonder, how many more critics did Mr. Cunningham "monitor? " What does it mean to 'monitor" somebody? Do taxpayers know that their money is paying for this ? Does Congress ? What has this to do with education ? Is there now a Monitoring