Gotcha Gone Wylde

By now pretty much the whole world of NY education has read Katherine Wylde’s attack on Diane Ravitch, the Sun’s revelation about Wylde’s DoE sources, and Ravitch’s principled response. It has already been blogged here at EdWize. For me, Wylde’s letter offers an important lesson about the dangers of the “gotcha” game.  Let me illustrate.  It’s a game that anyone can play:

Wylde attacks Ravitch for a supposed lack of fair-mindedness because Ravitch now seems to oppose ideas she had once championed.

But what could be a greater testament to Ravitch’s fair-mindedness than that she is willing to criticize a school system that bears a passing resemblance to the system she once recommended? A lesser person would have praised this mayor’s version of mayoral control regardless of how it turned out, simply because she had once publicly supported the change. She was, in a sense, invested. A lesser person would not have evolved.

Ms. Wylde, meanwhile, whose partnership is heavily invested in this Department of Education, does not understand about evolving. Ms. Wylde is the CEO of the Partnership for New York, and having beat the drum for Mr. Bloomberg seven years ago, she continues to beat it. Perhaps she is a true believer, but with millions of dollars of partnership donations invested in Department of Education projects (at least 38 million in the Leadership Academy alone), how are we to know?

Yet, incredibly, it is Ms. Wylde who accuses Ms. Ravitch of a lack of objectivity, and not the other way around.

And equally incredible, it is Ms. Wylde who attempts to impugn Ms. Ravitch’s motives, though she can come up with nothing more than an “unhappiness with personalities.”

As to Wylde’s main point? That Ravitch is a hypocrite – implied throughout, and screaming from the Post headline. Well, what could be more hypocritical than for Wylde to claim that Ravitch is not objective, even as Wylde masks her own self interest. Not a word does Wylde offer about her close connections to the DoE. Considering the topic (i.e. can we trust the voice of the message bearer) Wylde owed us full disclosure.

In fact, let’s go further. Wylde not only neglects to disclose; she obfuscates a bit. “Many of us,” she says, “aren’t professionals in the complex world of education policy.”

Wylde not a professional in the world of education? I am heartily glad to see that Wylde recognizes that she is not a professional educator, but to portray herself as an outsider to education would be like portraying Karl Rove as new to politics because he never ran for president.

But that’s just unfair, to parse her words like that.

That’s “gotcha.”

(Full disclosure: I work for a union whose policies Ms. Ravitch sometimes criticizes and sometime supports. I agree with Ms. Ravitch about things pedagogical and look to her as the voice and conscience of education. I have ties to her as both a pen-pal friend and as a fellow bookworm. I once bought three of her books in one day, so I’m kind of heavily invested. She speaks for thousands of teachers and millions of children. When she stops speaking for them, maybe I’ll evolve.)