Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Peter Cunningham's reform apologia: 'Fighting segregation and poverty too expensive'.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Peter Cunningham's reform apologia: 'Fighting segregation and poverty too expensive'.:

Peter Cunningham's reform apologia: 'Fighting segregation and poverty too expensive'.

Sign reads: "We want equal & segregated schools"

Peter Cunningham's latest apologia for school segregation, in U.S. News & World Report, is basically a defense of current reform policies that have been shown to re-segregate schools. It represents more than just the opinion of a lone education gadfly. Cunningham is paid millions to speak for some of the most powerful and wealthiest among those who influence national ed policy.

It's run up the flag pole at a time when corporate-style "reform" has come under attack fromcivil rights groups and teacher unions, and appear to be losing their cachet, even within the Democratic Party establishment.

Cunningham tries to come off as a tormented soul, torn between his personal and "pragmatic" side, the latter arguing that ending poverty and integration are just too "politically difficult and financially expensive" and therefore, instead of spending hundreds of billions more to reduce poverty and reduce segregation, we should just "double down on our efforts to improve schools."

At a recent DFER-sponsored forum at the DNC, Cunningham laid out his anti-deseg line in an obvious attempt to influence Clinton's education agenda. He answered a question about school integration this way:

"Maybe the fight's not worth it. It's a good thing; we all think integration is good. But it's been a long fight, we've had middling success. At the same time, we have lots and lots of schools filled with kids of one race, one background, that are doing great. 

There nothing original in Cunningham's comments. If they strike you as a throwback to Plessy v. Ferguson and the separate-but-equal doctrine, you're definitely on to something. As we Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Peter Cunningham's reform apologia: 'Fighting segregation and poverty too expensive'.: