By John Thompson.

Although I wouldn’t spend too much time eavesdropping on the civil war between liberal and conservative reformers, it is fun to periodically check it out. The first of the loudest shots in their internecine conflict was issued by Fordham’s Robert Pondiscio in the aptly titled post “The Left’s Drive to Push Conservatives Out of Education Reform.” He condemned “social justice warriors” who “no longer feel any compunction about accusing their conservative brethren of racism and worse.” Perhaps because he had done such a great job of stirring up the hornet’s nest, I once thought, Pondiscio took a lower profile for the next couple of months.

During Pondiscio’s seeming sabbatical, his Fordham colleagues have enthusiastically (and I believe correctly) critiqued the Obama administration’s regulatory overreach.  Free of needing to defend their commitment to education as the “civil rights movement of the 21^st century,” these conservatives embraced No Excuses charters, but often they did so with the disclaimer that it is unclear whether they can be scaled up. For instance, Paul Peterson authored a lengthy treatise on the future of reform and only briefly mentioned so-called “high-performing, high-poverty charters.”   Then in a shocking display of the honesty that is rarely practiced by the liberal wing of the reform movement, Peterson acknowledged that expanding those charters is a “slow, arduous process,” and it will be achieved only if they “demonstrate that they can deliver a superior educational experience.”

And that leads to many conservatives publically demonstrating their true love – promoting schools for high performers, as opposed to the fight against poverty.  Recently, the top five posts on the Fordham Flypaper’s web site were: “The High Flyer Takes Off,” “States Should Use ESSA to Do the Right Thing by High Achieving Students,” “High Stakes for High Achievers,” “Bad Policies Harm Bright Kids in Baltimore,” and “Reflections on Gifted Education from the Olympics.”

Such a devotion to “high flyers” could be a blessing.  We teachers could say “goodbye,” and even “go in peace” to conservatives and hope that they will focus on “high achieving” and “bright” kids, and stop attacking those of us who are committed to the poorest children of color.  This could allow conservative reformers a chance to break their decades-long losing streak in terms of actually improving schools.  By concentrating on what they understand – schools of privilege – they might be able to make some schools better and not worse. After all, since wealth supposedly accrues to those who earn it by their hard work and superior brain power, conservatives might produce some successes on their home court that eluded them in ventures into inner city schools. But, Pondiscio then returned and went back to articulating feelings that were once unspoken.

Back when he wrote for the Core Knowledge Blog, Pondiscio used to criticize “false dichotomies” articulated by reformers such as Michelle Rhee.  He criticized Rhee’s “ready, fire, aim rhetorical style,” and he described her version of “No Excuses,” as it was incorporated into her IMPACT teacher evaluation system as “pure lunacy.” Pondiscio also gave voice to the wisdom of bloggers like Claus von Zastrow who criticized Rhee and observed “that school improvement does not necessarily require a death-match between high-profile ‘reformers’ and the education ‘establishment.’”

After he joined the Fordham Institute and pledged his fidelity to the new Rhee, Eva Moskowitz, Pondiscio became uninhibited in his condemnation of opponents of corporate school reform in general and No Excuses charters in particular.  Now, he is even more quotable in describing the civil war that is ripping liberal and conservative reformers apart. Pondiscio proclaims, “a kind of moral panic has set in among certain reformers—on both sides of the aisle, though it seems more pronounced on the Left.” He mourns the loss of the “pugnacious and crusading rhetorical style” of reformers, especially those who are afraid to rebuke the civil rights community, “who cannot be comfortably challenged.” Pondiscio writes, “I can’t believe I’m about to type these words, but I’m starting to miss Michelle Rhee.”

I used to love the quotable but controlled way that Pondiscio criticized reformers’ edu-politics of destruction. Now, it’s fun to read his Rhee-style pronouncements. He recalls accurately that “a generation ago, education reform was a bare-knuckle affair.” Perhaps because he says so within the context of condemning his former partners, Pondiscio is free to write, “After decades of dominance and setting the agenda for American education, we should have a few more successes to point to than a relative handful of successful urban charter schools.” Moreover, he concludes that “if we are unwilling or unable to defend even those meager gains—or worse, if communities that plainly benefit from them have leaders who question their value and want them stopped—something is going very, very wrong.”

To understand the importance of Pondiscio’s candor, we must recall the way that the Billionaires Boys Club united liberals and conservatives in a battle to take over the governance (and potential profits) of public schools. Their top-dollar public relations campaign proclaimed the righteousness of reformers who challenged the supposedly oppressive “status quo.” Their spin masters would have never committed Pondiscio’s PR sin of admitting that their campaign had produced meager gains.  Neither would they approve of his public expression of disdain for erstwhile allies with a background in civil rights.

Although the scenario is playing out differently than she predicted, the splintering of the corporate reform movement is consistent with Diane Ravitch’s prediction that elite reformers won’t be able to deal with the real-world failure of their technocratic theories, and eventually they will return to their yachts.  Conservative reformers must be relieved to be able to focus on the easier task of bettering the schools for the privileged, and not having to reconcile their political and economic worldview with the social justice narrative that reformers have cloaked themselves in. Given the enthusiastic way that both wings of the reform movement have demonized their shared opponents, it must be liberating for the two factions to be able to say openly what they feel about each other.

Neither are the liberals and neoliberals who the elites funded able to cope with defeat, so they are angrily revealing their disdain for anyone who questions the purity of their reform ideology.  And that leads to the next dispute that teachers should monitor and, in this case join. Liberal reformers of all races will need to respond to the observation of Andre Perry,  the former founding Dean of Education at Davenport University, “with few exceptions, donors and chiefs of white-led organizations seldom face black and brown communities to defend policies that have caused demonstrable harm.” As Perry responded to the Democrats for Education Reform’s Shavar Jeffries:

Black folk know too well that no matter how well-meaning white establishments are, they are not black ones. The hiring of black leaders, as well as black representation in charter schools, doesn’t make the charter crusade a black movement or mitigate the impact of institutionalized racism on black and brown communities. … And black people should not be placed in positions to defend this political-power-wrecking strategy.

Something tells me that the fight that Pondiscio chooses to pick will not be as intense as the debate that liberal “reformers” and we progressives who oppose them must have

What do you think? Are conservative reformers more angry with their liberal former allies, who pressed them to pretend that they were civil rights crusaders? Or, are they more angry at the poor people of color in the communities who sometimes made meager gains attributable, perhaps, to school reforms, but who aren’t appropriately thankful? What will the debate between liberal reformers and the civil rights community be like?