Will Corporate Reformers Ever Admit They Were Wrong?
By John Thompson.
t’s sure fun to watch corporate school reformers forming a circular firing squad. For a generation, conservative and neoliberal reformers sang from the same hymnal, even as they privately suppressed their many internal disagreements. Now, accountability-driven, charter-driven neoliberal micromanagers are openly attacking their former allies who were primarily devoted to a market-driven agenda.
After years of denigrating classroom teachers and unions who did not see the supposed righteousness of test-driven, competition-driven reform, neoliberals now condemn conservatives with the same venom for not agreeing to the top-down imposition of incentives and disincentives. Now they ridicule conservatives, as they did educators, for not agreeing that a corporate system of rewards and punishment are supposedly essential to making education reform the “civil rights movement of the 21st century.”
We can unambiguously celebrate this new education civil war because conservative reformers deserve equal criticism. Too many of them are completely preoccupied with the free market, and merely beating down the public sector and unions. They’ve gone along with the “it’s about the kids” spin, but their hearts obviously weren’t in it. The principle that they truly embrace is their version of: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”
In fact, the single best – and most honest – illustration of the frustration prompted by the multi-front counterattacks being launched against conservative reformers was revealed at the beginning of article that ordinarily would have been a victory lap. The Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke wrote in the Daily Signal, “It was an honor to be at this White House event to watch Trump, along with Vice President Mike Pence and Will Corporate Reformers Ever Admit They Were Wrong? - Living in Dialogue:
