eraBy John Thompson.

Valerie Strauss’s “’Education Reform’ Now a Pejorative Term to Many Progressive Democrats” and Jeff Bryant’s “Education ‘Reform’ Loses the Netroots” are just two of the recent celebrations of the way that Democrats and progressives are rejecting corporate school reform.  Bryant began his hopeful post, “Every year Netroots Nation is arguably the most important annual event in the progressive community and a telling barometer of what is on the minds of, as Howard Dean (and Paul Wellstone before him) put it, ‘the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.’”

He then recalls the dark days of 2011 when too many good and decent persons believed the teacher-bashing propaganda known Waiting for Superman, and many liberals even believed that Michelle Rhee cared more about helping children than defeating unions. Kevin Welner told two Netroots audience members of the Center for American Progress, “Your organization is as bad as the American Enterprise Institute on education.” The CAP staffers walked out.

During Obama’s first term, educators had to worry about the reelection of the Democrat (who we supported,) as we tried to get him to call off his Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan has continued to campaign for everything on the “Billionaires Boys Club” agenda and it is clear that he will continue to overreach and mandate a test and punish, competition-driven regime. So, a grassroots uprising of teachers has forced our unions to call for him to be put him on a “Plan for Improvement.”

Duncan can feign hurt feelings and still pretend that he is not the enemy but the friend of “great teachers.” But, even for a politician with the ability of Duncan to toe the party line, his protests ring hollow. Now, national political reporters are more likely to understand what Education beat reporters have long recognized, and ask why teachers despise Duncan and the Obama administration’s education policies.

I also agree with Larry Cuban that a new, truly progressive era of school reform may be “just around the corner.”  Cuban notes the rise of “parents, educators, and students drawn from the political left and right (e.g. progressives, home schoolers, and Tea Party advocates) opposed to the amount and spread of standardized testing–the op-out movement–including mounting anxiety over new tests for assessing student learning of Common Core Standards.”

Cuban also notes that old-fashioned progressives who still support instruction to the whole child and social justice have survived the contemporary reform assault on their pedagogies. He also sees the “Maker movement” as a potential contributor to reforms that restore project-based and hands-on learning. Cuban also thinks that supporters of first-generation progressive charter schools, and online instructional hybrids that stress “both teacher- and student-centered instruction and learning” could contribute to a new school improvement effort. If we beat back testing, I hope, we who seek schools based trusting emotional relationships, not reward and punishment, could find many allies among those who see technology as a driver of school improvement.

But, the key to the defeat of accountability-driven reform and the rise of a reform era worthy of a 21^st century democracy is found in Sarah Lahm’s “When Education Reform Comes Knocking.”  A volunteer from Students for Education Reform knocked on Lahm’s door. The student’s only knowledge of education reform came from her internship at a charter school.  She explained, “We are just against the teachers’ union, because they give people jobs and then the teachers don’t work very hard. Once they get tenure, they just stop trying to really teach kids.”

Before Lahm’s blood could boil, she took a breath, and a second look at the volunteer. Lahm saw:

She was nice; I could see that. She was willing to talk with me. She was young. If I was in college now, and I was a lot younger and less jaded, it might be me standing at some stranger’s door, trying to convince them that teachers’ unions are the root of all evil.

So, the young SFER volunteer was told what an “astroturf” or fake grassroots interest group is, and how she was unwittingly helping one. Lahm provided a primer on education policy and made a pitch for full service schools, which offer “onsite medical, dental, and mental health clinics, as well as comprehensive academic, athletic, and extracurricular services to students, staff, and families.”

Lahm sent her away with a copy of Diane Ravitch’s book, Reign of Error.

I believe Lahm was right on multiple levels. I’ve seen persons from all backgrounds, generations, and political ideologies who were persuaded by Reign of Error.  I’ve seen supporters of all political persuasions who were like the young volunteer and their “ears really perked up” at the idea “a whole child approach to education.”

Older voters of all ideologies understand that we will be bankrupted by medical crises, and perhaps social discord, if we continue to place test scores over health and citizenship education. The younger generation has endured the educational distortions of the NCLB era, and the even worse bubble-in accountability of the Obama administration. They, and we, share one thing, we “just care a lot about education,” and “we want all children to have a good education.”

Reformers have had their day. For years, they got away with the slander that selfish teachers and unions are to blame for our education problems. Welner was correct to have challenged the CAP reformers in 2011 and Lahm was correct to reach out to a young activist. I have little doubt that we will soon unite the big majority of liberals, reject corporate reform, and commit the Democratic Party to a new humane era of school improvement. Like Larry Cuban, I’m cautiously optimistic that an even bigger tent reform era may be just around the corner.

What do you think? Is it time to take the Democratic party back?