Emeritus Professor Jack Hassard Reviews My Book
I first read of Georgia State University Emeritus Professor Jack Hassard in connection to his work on the Gates funding of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
In my search of Gates’ CCSS spending, I examined spending specific to the keyword “Common Core” with one addition (Fordham Institute). The total Gates CCSS spending from my search was $173.5 million.
Hassard broadened his search beyond the term, “Common Core.” His total is $2.3 billion.
I admire Hassard’s work. Thus, it was my pleasure to learn that he was reading my book, A Chronicle of Echoes, and in an email, he wrote that it was “fabulous.”
In my chapter on the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), I mention NCTQ’s attempt to clean up its website following the time of my writing a series of NCTQ blog posts December 2012 to February 2013. I note that even though NCTQ sanitized its website, I published the former content and associated links, anyway.
Hassard wrote to remind me of the website snapshot tool, the “Way Back Machine.”
He was also gracious enough to write this review of my book on Amazon.com.
I bolded my favorite statements.
By Jack Hassard on May 8, 2014
Dr Mercedes Schneider’s book arrived the other day and I was thrilled to see the names and chapters devoted to many of those who I have written about on my blog. But you won’t find the kind of writing in Mercedes’s book about these individuals and organization anywhere else. In my own view, Mercedes Schneider is at the vanguard of voices who are uncovering the harm that the people featured in her book are inflicting on public education. In amazing detail and wonderfully written you’ll be taken on journeys into the minds of corporate and education thieves, many of whom have become wealthy on the backs of American school students and teachers.
And here in this book we have at our fingertips answers to important questions about how such a limited number of individual’s faces crop-up in various media outlets as the experts on public schools. If you want to find how to get wealthy and have a really big office, read about Joel Klein in chapter 1. Find out how Teach for America is transforming teacher education into a temp business by reading the Wendy Kopp story in chapter 3. You’ll find important episodes about characters including Eva Moskovitz, Michelle Rhee, Erik Hanushek, Arne Duncan, David Coleman, Chester Finn, and others. You’ll also find out about organizations that fund each other in the name of reform, but in the end seek to dismantle public education. Welcome to TFA, the New Teacher Project, the National Council on Teacher Quality (not), the Aspen Institute, the Gates Foundation, and cousins Walton and Broad.
And the best is yet to come as she saves the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the nation’s bill mill for the last chapter.
The content of the book is thoroughly researched and authenticated. If you read her blog, you’ll certainly enjoy this book.
This is a must read book. [Emphasis added.]