Performing feats of ledgermain
There’s a big difference between a teacher’s rating on a flawed and invalid evaluation system and her “performance.” Just don’t try and tell that to local media.
Three years ago the Washington, DC based education reform lobbying outfit called 50CAN, along with its wholly-owned Minnesota subsidiary called MinnCAN, came up with an ingenious new plan to pressurize and weaken teachers’ unions: They began a movement to brand their movement’s attacks on public school teachers as the simple proposition of evaluating teachers on their “performance,” versus current practices of evaluating teachers by their seniority, educational achievement, and classroom observations.
The attack wasn’t grounded in research or logic; instead, the organizations used public polling on the subject, purporting to measure public sentiment on teacher retention decisions by pitting teacher seniority versus “performance.” It was a clever, if dishonest tactic, since polling can obscure on the ground realities. Just because the public believes something to be true doesn’t make it true.
Thus if an well-funded organization with deep political connections is actively trying to deceive the public on matters of public import a deceptive poll can be a very effective tool for changing public policy. The real trick of the matter is to convince media and opinion leaders to accept the framing of the issue, no matter how illogical and counter-intuitive the premise.
Normally one would expect those crucial audiences to see through such blatant attempts at propaganda. After all, journalists are social scientists who are supposed to be trained to recognize attempts at public opinion manipulation. Unfortunately media organizations of today have been denuded of experienced reporters, and the money thrown around by movements such as that of the education reformers have turned organizations and people who in other contexts might have been counted on to shed light on sophisticated propaganda campaigns into grifters – people whose careers are predicated on not seeing through the data-induced fog.
But today the fabulists at 50CAN must be giving themselves high-fives – and deservedly so – as media organizations, politicians Performing feats of ledgermain - LeftMN:
Astroturf lobbying refers to political organizations or campaigns that appear to be made up of grassroots activists but are actually organized and run by corporate interests seeking to further their own agendas. Such groups are often typified by innocent-sounding names that have been chosen specifically to disguise the group's true backers
