For meaningful debate on “reform”
I DO not doubt that Lee Sustar has real political differences with the analysis of my blog post "Is There A Corporate Education Reform Movement?" But he so mischaracterizes my argument when he imputes to me the position that "there's really no such thing as a corporate education reform lobby" and contrasts my stance with genuine "opposition to the education reform agenda" that his readers--including me--cannot but be left in the dark as to what those differences might be.
Someone who had not read my post would be surprised to learn that I argued that it was important to have a concept of "'corporate education reform' as a movement that seeks to privatize public schools or remake them in the model of for-profit corporations operating in an educational marketplace," as "those who are committed to the democratic vision of education as a public good need the political clarity provided by that conception [to] confront efforts to privatize public education and eviscerate teacher voice."
It is hard to see how such an explicit formulation can be squared with Sustar's characterization of my analysis, and I am frankly at a complete loss to understand what he would object to in my actual words on this particular question.
Perhaps Sustar's objections lay in my contention that "that thoughtful nuance and careful distinction in political and sociological analysis matter a great deal." My point was that it is a mistake to conceive of the power elite in American society as a homogenous force, with a singular opposition to all progressive political positions: on educational matters, there are important differences, even divisions, within that class. We ignore those divergences, I would insist, at the cost of mounting the broadest and most politically effective opposition to the different elements of "corporate education reform."
This is not an argument that denies the role of power and wealth in American educational politics, as Sustar seems to suggest, but rather a case for seriously grappling with the contradictory and complex ways that power and wealth often play out on the educational terrain. Where there are elements within the power elite that are prepared to join with teachers and their unions in opposition to policies such as the destructive national obsession with standardized testing, I would argue that it is politically counter-productive and self-marginalizing to oppose a common front on such issues.
The bottom line is that I don't really know what Sustar objects to in my analysis because he never actually addresses it, just an unrecognizable caricature of it. At the very best, I could speculate on where his differences might lie, but how would that move the political debate forward? And at the end of the day, that is the pity of it all: for meaningful debate over real political differences is what we need to build the most efficacious opposition to "corporate education reform."
Leo Casey, Albert Shanker Institute, Washington, D.C.
