KPFA Bensky's One Sided Programming Favors Privatization

On Behalf Of Peter Farruggio
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 11:55 AM
Subject: [KPFAed] Sunday Salon


Listening to L Bensky's Sunday Salon program on the Oakland
schools. 2nd hour: I guess he agrees with the current
"journalistic" philosophy of balance. He has a semi-standardista
small school principal, Yotunde Reeves (Excel) who is advocating test
prep as "realistic" and the principal of the American Indian Charter
school, Dr Ben Chavis, who sounds like a typical minority
neo-con. "OUSD proved they can't manage their money, so you BET the
state demanded control in exchange for giving them a loan" And he
gave the same old line about "Notice how it's only the MINORITY
people here who accept the need to raise test scores?"

(As I shared with Susan Harman, Chavis' charter middle school may be
good, but it deserves no special credit for its higher than average
test scores, as they have very few English Learners or students who
were ever English Learners in their elementary years. This means
that almost all of his students come from English speaking homes,
including Latinos, and also have "pushy parents," since it's a magnet
school. The schools in the nearby Fruitvale/High St district are
loaded with non-English speakers who are tested in English every
year. I know that most of their teachers could do at least as good a
job with Chavis' students as his teachers do, so he gets no bragging
rights from me.)

And now L Bensky solicits comment from an African American principal
(Santa Fe School) in the audience and she raves on defending
standards and testing, ala Education Trust.

Note to Ed Committee: We need to recruit minority colleagues to
appear on KPFA to speak out against these minority
standardistas. This is their most potent weapon: the Condoleezas
and Clarence Thomases who dip into the old race-baiting bag to shut
us up and defend the corporate standardista agenda. As I listen, now
the discussion has put the testing critics on the defensive. We need
to get beyond this! Who advised Bensky on composing his panel? KPFA
needs to be different from the mainstream media, to offer a voice to
the alternative. The conservatives are able to potshot and muddy the
points about inadequate funding (Chavis made fun of it) and
inappropriate testing!!!!!

Seems to me that Ward was again able to use his minions to defend his
image in a place (KPFA) where he should have been exposed. In sum,
the show's clearest message was pretty much that of Education
Trust: thanks to standards and high stakes testing, we now can hold
teachers "accountable" as the best way to improve minority education.

I hope I'm overreacting, but it sounded like worse than a wasted
program, and more like a setback.

By the way, how far back was this program conceived? I only heard
about it a few days ago. Was the Ed Collective ever consulted, even
informally? For example, the one parent he had was an African
American woman from the KIPP Academy in West Oakland. In sum, she
sounded glad to have her kid in a non-chaotic school, which is good
for her; but she didn't have much of a broader perspective on the
Oakland schools. I know we could have found a bunch of more savvy
Latino parents from the regular schools who would have a lot
different message, but that would have required a translator. I give
the program an "F" for panel composition.

Oh, and in the first hour, they had Alex Katz, the Ed reporter from
the Oakland Trib, on the panel, and Bensky kept turning to him to
answer factual questions as if he were an authority on all education
matters. Katz is a typical modern journalist, that is a stenographer
for those in power. He may know what Ahhnold or particular
legislators have said or done, but he doesn't seem to know much about
teaching or curriculum or testing and evaluation. It's not right to
give him undeserved authority.

Pete Farruggio