Proponents of "education reform" also tend to control the narratives, and the supply of facts. The things you're allowed to read in mainstream newspapers will tend to align with their views.
Romney's op-ed column offers some strong examples of this unfortunate state of affairs. ....
Romney's claim is crazily wrong...
Persistently, the Romneys make gloomy claims of this type. The liberal world sits and stares.
Everyone, of the right and the left, has agreed to this rolling deception. The right pushes this claim for various reasons, financial gain among them. The left says nothing about this deception because manifestly the left doesn't care.
The Daily Howler
I love the Daily Howler's often long commentaries about the failures of our liberal tribe. Bob Somerby spent years teaching in an inner city school so when it comes to education he is especially sharp. While he doesn't take an absolute anti ed deform position he always makes point that no one else does. Here it today's post:
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2017/01/romney-calls-bay-state-schools-number.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyHowler+%28the+daily+howler%29
Romney calls Bay State schools number one!
Fails to list one basic reason: In Sunday's Washington Post, Mitt Romney offered a ringing endorsement of Betsy DeVos, Donald J. Trump's multi-billionaire nominee for secretary of education.
DeVos is a strong proponent of those policies which have long been described as "education reform." Just for the record, people who gain control of the language will often find success in the political wars.
Proponents of "education reform" also tend to control the narratives, and the supply of facts. The things you're allowed to read in mainstream newspapers will tend to align with their views.
Romney's op-ed column offers some strong examples of this unfortunate state of affairs. Consider this passage, in which Romney makes a claim which is virtually required by law within the mainstream press:
ROMNEY (1/8/17): It's important to have someone who will challenge the conventional wisdom and the status quo. In 1970, it cost $56,903 to educate a child from K-12. By 2010, adjusting for inflation, we had raised that spending to $164,426—almost three times as much. Further, the number of people employed in our schools had nearly doubled. But despite the enormous investment, the performance of our kids has shown virtually no improvement."The performance of our kids has shown virtually no improvement?" In major newspapers like the Post, the constant promulgation of such claims is virtually required by Hard Pundit Law.
Everyone has heard these claims a million times by now. That said, Romney's claim is crazily wrong, as we've endlessly noted.
For all major demographic groups, scores have soared since 1970 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the Naep), the federal testing program which Romney specifically cites in his column. That said, it's virtually impossible to learn that fact in the pages of major newspapers like the Post and the New York Times.
