Education Post Goes Postal on John Oliver
By Anthony Cody.
Poor John Oliver. After he did a segment on the insanity of our nation’s testing machine, the field of education’s only multi-million dollar blog, The Education Post, has taken after him with a vengeance. Oliver joins others with the nerve to question the nation’s obsession with standardized tests in being declared an enemy of the poor. (See this post from December for more background on Education Post)
First we got a plaintive “Dear John” letter from someone named Valentina Korkes. Ms. Korkes is “Deputy Director of Policy” at Education Post, and worked for two and a half years for StudentsFirst as a Legislative Projects Manager. Korkes complains to Oliver that he “broke her heart” when he failed to point out the many wonderful ways that “testing and accountability are good for kids.”
And if John Oliver was not devastated enough by this kick to the gut, yesterday Peter Cunningham added his scorn. According to Cunningham, Oliver “throws poor kids under the bus,” by taking the side of their enemies, and failing to enumerate the many benefits of tests. His utterly humorless post concludes:
John Oliver sides with the comfortable bureaucrats, self-serving union leaders, and the complacent middle class that abdicates any responsibility for extending the American Dream beyond their own insular worlds.
As Peter Greene points out, there is one central flaw in this indictment. We have ruled our school system by the accountability systems chosen by these reformers now since 2002. And where can they point to school systems that have been greatly improved?
We have had this regimen of testing, this revenue-generating stream of dis-aggregated data collection for over a decade. For over ten years we have been collecting test scores so that, having measured, we can then fix. So again I ask.Who has been saved?Where is the urban school system where the state has said, “Damn– this school is in trouble. Get some resources and help and support in there stat. Divert tax dollars and raise more. Hire the best educational experts to help.” And then, having sent theEducation Post Goes Postal on John Oliver - Living in Dialogue:
