Dear Reformy Bloggers: B’Bye

UPDATE: Peter Cunningham is a former Assistant Secretary of Education and Laura Waters's publisher at Education Post. He comes here to defend her in the comments below. Hilarity ensues...


I'm going to keep this short because one of my New Years resolutions is to stop engaging folks who are not serious. But I do want the following on the record before I move on:

Laura Waters is having a debate with Stephen Danley about Camden schooling. As far as I'm concerned, anything Stephen does is worth checking out, so here's Stephen's latest contribution:

First of all, there is no need to concoct a completely facetious account of what I hypothetically argue. My email is on the Rutgers website and I’m active on twitter. Why put words in my mouth then argue with a straw man? If Laura had the courtesy to actually ask me about her hospital analogy, I would have told her that communities are often fiercely protective of their hospitals, and that often the “poorer” hospital is the one serving the poorest population (the community least likely to be able to pay). In contrast to Laura’s stereotyping of me as someone only interested in “academic exercise,” I actually participated in protests in New Orleans around this very issue. After Hurricane Katrina, Charity Hospital was closed, in part because it’s business model of serving low-income residents was not considered viable in the long-term. A new research hospital was to open which focused less on this non-profitable clientele. Sound familiar? [emphasis mine]

As a matter of fact, yes. But I'm not talking about the hospital; I'm talking about Laura Waters completely mischaracterizing someone else's words.

Because this is what Waters does. She mischaracterizes the views of the dead so badly their families have to call her out on it. She omitted crucial context in her attempted takedown of a post by Matt DiCarlo about teacher quality. She tries to critique my work even after she admits she's unable to understand its statistical techniques. She attributes quotes to me I never said; she only retracted them after I called her on it.

Want the latest example of how Laura Waters will completely misrepresent what someone actually says and believes? Here's how she quoted Newark Mayor Ras Baraka:

Eric Dawson, a new blogger at The Newark Report (and host of the internet radio show Real Talk Radio) has managed in one short week to thoroughly irritate Mayor Ras Baraka. How thoroughly? The Mayor has posted a two-part vlog on YouTube that attempts to rebut Dawson’s accusations that Baraka is ineffectively managing city violence (there were 105 murders in Newark in 2015) and that Baraka is undermining school choice.

In the first clip Mayor Baraka says that “a guy named Eric Dawson...hasn’t stopped campaigning” (Dawson supported Baraka’s opponent Shavar Jeffries, who is now Director of Democrats for Education Reform) and has “tried to defame my name." Dawson, he says, "has a “personal vendetta” against him,  and is “creating damage” because  “the kids won’t be saved as long as we’re divided.” Dawson’s reporting, including this recent post in which he describes how a Baraka supporter put Abdul Muhammad in a chokehold during an anti-crime press conference, is “salacious" and  designed to “aggravate and divide the people of Newark.” Dawson's late father, Newark politician Carl Sharif, “ intones the Mayor, wouldn’t approve.”

In the second video clip, Mayor Baraka defends his Dec. 17th letter to Education Commissioner David Hespe requesting that the D.O.E. freeze all charter school expansion. (Dawson broke the story last week. The Newark City Council responded by sending its own letter to Comm. Hespe explaining the need in Newark for charter school expansion.)

Towards the beginning of the video, Baraka reads the letter in its entirety, including the passage where he says, “I am writing to request that, at this time, your Office not approve any further expansion of enrollment in these or any other Newark Charter Schools…”

Then Baraka says that it is “an outright lie that I want to close charter schools and we don’t want to expand.” 

Confused? Me too. Maybe the Mayor will clarify his stance in his next YouTube installment.

First of all, that's the entire post; I say this just so no one can accuse me of taking Waters out of context. Second, the bolding is not mine; it's Waters's. Her argument is plain: Baraka at one moment wrote that he was against charter expansion, but then claimed later he is not against expansion.

Now, notice that Waters uses an ellipses (...) at the end of Baraka's sentence. Why wouldn't she just quote the entire sentence -- just as I've done here for her?

Well, if you click on the very link in Waters's own post, you can read Baraka's entire letter. What comes after that ellipses?

“I am writing to request that, at this time, your Office not approve any further expansion of enrollment in these or any other Newark Charter Schools until such time as the NPS budget shortfalls can be addressed to make certain all schools have the resources needed to deliver a high quality education to their students. I further ask that you assign a team to thoroughly examine the budget and the resources needed in NPS schools, and develop a comprehensive plan to restore essential programs and staff to support our students and their teachers. My administration is prepared to work with you to ensure that this budget assessment is completed within the next six months." [emphasis mine]

Baraka does, in fact, want a temporary halt to the expansion of charters in Newark, until such time as the damage that is being done by the state's "hold charters harmless" policies can be addressed. Baraka has proposed addressing this within six months. So he is not against charters, and he is not against eventual charter expansion; in fact, he caught some grief from Bob Braun among others for not fighting against charter expansion hard enough.

Unlike Waters, I went to Newark during the last mayoral campaign and listened to what the future mayor had to say about education during a special press conference. Over and over, he insisted he was not against charter schools; he was only against advantaging one group of students over another. He couldn't have been more clear, just as he couldn't be more clear here.

If Laura Waters doesn't understand Ras Baraka's consistent position on charter schools, that's on her, and not him.

Waters's omission of Baraka's entire quote is a cheap ploy that's offered in place of any actual argument against Baraka's policy. You don't think NPS is suffering because of charter expansion?  You don't think the situation calls for a moratorium on charter expansion? Fine -- make your case. But mischaracterizing the mayor by deliberately removing the context of his statement is just about as mendacious as it gets.

Mendacity bothers me, but I'm a fairly cynical guy so I usually expect it. Ignorance makes me grit my teeth, but it's so pervasive I'm growing somewhat immune.

No, what's really bothers me is laziness. If Laura Waters wants to debate Ras Baraka or Stephen Danley or me or anyone else, by all means, go for it. But it's just plain old lazy to twist someone's words into an argument that's easy to defeat. It's lazy to remove all nuance from someone's words and then pretend that you've caught them in a contradiction.

I suppose Peter Cunningham will send out his reformy blog swarm when I restate this, but what the hell: Laura Waters is not a serious commentator on education policy. And I just don't have the time anymore to debate people who are not serious.

So goodbye, Laura, and good luck.

h/t Mother Crusader

ADDING: Here's the Honorable Ras Baraka in his own words:



The man's a poet and the son of a poet (a great poet); he knows his way around words pretty damn well. Maybe you disagree with him, and that's fine. But, again: if you're "confused" by his very simple words, that's not his fault -- it's yours.

ADDING: Yet another time when I had to correct Waters's characterization of my work. Scroll down to see my objections; note Waters only corrected ONE of them.

You can't have a good-faith argument with someone who does this to you. B'Bye, Laura.