That is what Michael Winerip writes about in today's New York Times in a piece titled In Public School Efforts, a Common Background: Private Education Let me list those whom he mentions:
Three of the four original sponsors of No Child Left Behind
Sen. Judd Gregg Phillips Exeter, Exeter NH
Sen. Ted Kennedy Milton Adademy, Milton MA
John Boehner Archbishop Moeller, Cincinnati OH
The Bush Brothers, George W and Jeb, both Phillips Andover in MA
President Barack Obama Punahoe School, Honolulu HA
Sec. of Education Arne Duncan U of Chicago Lab School, Chicago IL
Michelle Rhee Maumee Valley Country Day School, Toledo, Oh
Mitt Romney Cranbrook School Bloomfield Hills MI
Davis Guggenheim ("Waiting for Superman") Sidwell Friends School, Washington DC
Bill Gates Lakeside School, Seattle WA
Chester Finn President of the Fordham Foundation Phillips Exeter
David Levin, co-founder of KIPP Riverdale Country Day School, Bronx NY
Cathy Black, immediate past Chancellor NYC Schools Aquinas Dominican High School, Chicago
Merryll H. Tisch Chair NY State Board of Regents Ramaz School, NY City (Manhattan)
David M Steiner, NY State Commissioner of Education Perse School, Cambridge, England
Steven Brill - advocate for charters Deerfield Academy, Deerfield MA
Marc Sternberg Deputy Chancellor NYC who moves charters into public buildings
Episcopal School, Baton Rouge, La
Let me offer a few observations from Winerip and a few comments of my own
Winerip offers the following framing before listing all the people whose schooling I have noted above the fold:
Those who call themselves reformers are a diverse group, men and women of every political stripe and of every race and ethnicity.
But there is one thing that characterizes a surprisingly large number of the people who are transforming public schools: they attended private schools.
Which raises the question: Does a private school background give them a much-needed distance and fresh perspective to better critique and remake traditional public schools? Does it make them distrust public schools — or even worse — poison their perception of them? Or does it make any difference?
Your call.
What is interesting is how few of these reformers have ANY experience of public schools. The Obama children have gone to private schools. Michelle Obama did attend public school in Chicago (although her high school was one of the elite schools in the city), and is on record saying - as Winerip notes - that she is opposed to the use of standardized tests because she would have been excluded by them. Few of the children of these elite have attended public schools, although Arne Duncan's kids are now in the schools in Arlington VA where I have lived since 1982 and in which I taught for one year. Most have no teaching experience in a public school setting, although Dave Levin did teach in an inner city public school in Houston before he and Michael Feinberg founded KIPP. And of course Michelle Rhee was a participant in Teach for America in Baltimore before moving on to other things.
What is interesting is how disproportionate the representation of those from non-public schooling among the voices that get the loudest megaphones to speak about public schools. It is one reason many of us who devote our professional lives to public schools complain about the imbalance of the public discourse: our voices are excluded, or minimized as they were at Education Nation - remember the teacher summit, where 1/3 of the voices heard were from charters when they educated about 5% of the nation's school children?
I want to quote one more piece from Winerip:
Today, the consensus is that there is little difference between President Obama and former President George W. Bush when it comes to education policy. Nor is it easy to distinguish differences between the secretary of education under Mr. Bush, Margaret Spellings, and the current secretary, Arne Duncan.
Perhaps this was best put relatively early in the new administration when Diane Ravitch - who by the way is a graduate of public schools in Houston TX - described Arne Duncan as Margaret Spellings in drag.
While those of us paying close attention found a lot wanting in Obama's education policy during the campaign, at least in his speeches he promised something different than the kind of continuation of Bush education policy we have seen.
In my diary earlier this morning, America's elites have a duty to the rest of us, I explored a column by E. J. Dionne in which he discussed the idea of noblesse oblige, which seemed a part of the ethics of earlier generations of wealthy and powerful. As I wrote that piece, I wondered if anyone would raise the issue of the likes of Bill Gates pouring tons of money into education as a counter. I don't mind the idea that such millionaires and billionaires want to improve schools, I just wish they would step back and listen to those who really know public schools. And some of those wealthy, like hedge fund operator Whitney Tilsen (whom Winerip notes is responsible for the founding of what I consider the misnamed Democrats for Education Reform) seem to have other agendas in their involvement with schools, including for some profiting from the process of chartering. In my diary yesterday, Miracle schools, vouchers and all that educational flim-flam, I pointed at a piece by Diane Ravitch which listed some questions educational journalists should be asking about what is happening in education.
I think Winerip has done all of us an important service. To the questions listed by Ravitch, perhaps we need some additional ones.
What is your experience of public schools as either student, parent or teacher?
What qualifies you to be deciding or heavily influencing what happens in public schools?
To what voices do you listen in forming your positions on public education?
Why do you listen to those voices?
What attention do you give to the voices of public school educational professionals? Why or why not?
Or perhaps we can simply start with the question I used for my title, derived from the column by Winerip:
Why are so many education "reformers" graduates of non-public schools?
Public schools are an important part of the commons of America. They are in the process of being diminished and dismantled.
