Latest News and Comment from Education

Thursday, December 22, 2011

All Things Education: When single-issue advocacy causes multiple-issue empowerment

All Things Education: When single-issue advocacy causes multiple-issue empowerment:

When single-issue advocacy causes multiple-issue empowerment

Education journalist Joy Removits recently wrote this article on the education "reform" lobby. The article was not particularly remarkable, but I did discern a bit of pivoting on the part of some of the organizations, such as Students First, Stand for Children, and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) Removits wrote about. In particular, they talked about being "single-issue" advocates and financially backing politicians only based on their advocacy of issues the reform lobby pushes. For example, Removits wrote,
Melton stressed that StudentsFirst is a single-issue group. "We support candidates that have positions on other issues we don't support," he said.
Now, I can see agreeing with someone on one issue even when you disagree with them on most others. I, for, example, agree with Ron Paul's position that the War on Terror and the War on Drugs have been disasters, and have resulted most detrimentally in a War on Civil Liberties and a War on Dissent. But would I go so far as to