You be the Judge: Are the @DFER_News Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing?
You be the judge. This post will discuss the highlights— or perhaps lowlights— of the Democrats For Education Reform (DFERs), a very powerful Wall Street funded organization who some say are seeking to profit from public education. The Seattle Education blog argued,
Democrats for Education Reform is a political action committee supported largely by hedge fund managers favoring charter schools, merit-pay tied to test scores, high-stakes testing, school choice (including vouchers and tuition tax credits in some cases), mayoral control, and alternative teacher preparation programs.
Jeff Bryant reported on the framing that the DFERs prefer,
In an interview featured on the website of a conservative D.C.-based think tank, [Marc Porter Magee] has stated his intentions of “breaking up the old ways of thinking in the Democratic Party … by asking: How could we solve conservative problems with liberal means, and liberal problems with conservative means?”
On their website the DFERs tell us that,
- We support policies which stimulate the creation of new, accountable public schools and which simultaneously close down failing schools
- We support mechanisms that allow parents to select excellent schools for their children, and where education dollars follow each child to their school.
- We support governance structures which hold leaders responsible, while giving them the tools to effectuate change. We believe in empowering mayors to lead urban school districts, so that they can be held accountable by the electorate.
- We support policies that allow school principals and their school communities to select their teams of educators, holding them accountable for student performance but allowing them flexibility to exercise sound, professional judgment.
- We support clearly-articulated national standards and expectations for core subject areas, while allowing states and local districts to determine how best to make sure that all students are reaching those standards.
Fairly innocuous— none of that sounds controversial on its face. But are they actually wolves in sheep’s clothing?
So who are the DFERs? You be the judge.
In this post I will run through a recent timeline of events and coverage of the DFERs.
2007: The Daily Kos reported,
The loudest voices were those of a new organization calling themselves Democrats for Education reform (DFER), led by young extremely wealthy hedge fund operators from New York City. In the May 31, 2007 issue of New York Sun there was a report about one of the first victories of DFER: “A money manager recently sent an e-mail to some partners, congratulating them on an investment of $1 million that yielded an estimated $400 million. TheYou be the Judge: Are the @DFER_News Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing? | Cloaking Inequity:
