John Thompson: Vergara Show Trial Highlights Gates Foundation Snake Oil
Guest post by John Thompson.
I hope the judge in Vergara v. California understands that the plaintiffs want to do more than strike down five laws that protect the rights of the state's teachers. It is a part of a corporate assault on unions, collective bargaining and, perhaps, even on public education. The trial is a venue for market-driven reformers' high-dollar publicity campaign, for presenting adorable images of students who they claim are victims of the due process rights of teachers. That is why expert witnesses, like the Gates Foundation's Tom Kane, present so many beautiful multi-colored graphics bolstered by misleading numbers.
Ed Source's Louis Freedberg is particularly good at following the money behindVergara. Freedberg explains that Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch founded Students Matter, apparently for the purpose of filing the lawsuit. He filled the organization's board with venture capitalist luminaries and longtime advocates for market-driven school reform. Vergara's media blitz was choreographed by the communications firm of Griffin/Schein. Freedberg described the kickoff of the media campaign:
Within minutes of the trial's opening at 10 a.m., reporters received an email "live from the courtroom" with a 54-slide Power Point outlining the plaintiffs' case, as well as a"Trial Tracker" that promised daily highlights and quotes, as well as footage from the trial. Before 6 p.m., at the end of the day, another email blast declared that "California Students Get Their Day in Court."
I previously explained the ways that two of Tom Kane's Powerpoint slides actually are based on evidence that argues against Vergara. Kane uses value-added modeling to argue that the legal