When I wrote Barr Foundation K-12 Interest Groups Throw Their Weight (and Dollars) Around in May I closed with a quote from Anand Giridharadas, “What wealthy people do is rig the discourse.” That is where I should have started and added “and the Boston Globe helps.” So here is The Barr Foundation and the Boston Globe “Rig the Discourse.”
I was reminded of this when reading a Globe follow-up on the legislative failure of the paper’s favored “evidence-based” reading approach, Literacy reform bill dies, but new reading program gets $20 million investment. That report referred back to the May Globe report that caught my eye, Poll: Most Massachusetts parents think state should require the ‘science of reading’ in classrooms. Both of the Globe pieces heavily tilt to the assumption that the ‘science of reading’ is an evidence-based slam dunk and not at all controversial. (It’s only the awful unions and school superintendents standing in the way of certain progress.)
To kick off this post I’m going to repeat the first paragraph from my May piece, then go into more detail about the Globe’s cheerleading.
The Barr Foundation Family of K-12 Interest Groups has had a heady two days with a story in the Barr funded Boston Globe touting a poll commissioned by the Barr funded Education Trust from the Barr funded MassInc Polling Group with remarks from Keri Rodrigues of the Barr funded National Parents Union and Lisa Lazare of Barr funded Educators for Excellence, presented at an event held by the Education Trust and moderated by the Globe reporter who wrote the story.
The ”Science of Reading” a Tool of School Privatizers
According to “Literacy Reform Dies” “Advocates were unsuccessful in pushing through a literacy reform bill that would have required school districts to use an evidence-based approach to teaching kindergarteners through third graders how to read.” “Literacy Reform Dies” was based in part and links to “Poll” which begins
Most Massachusetts parents think the Bay State should require scientifically-based reading instruction in schools, according to a new statewide poll of roughly 1,500 parents released Monday.
The poll, conducted by the MassINC Polling Group between April 8 and May 2, found a combined 84 percent of parents believe schools definitely or probably should be required to use “evidence-based” reading curriculum, or teaching materials supported by a vast amount of scientific research. That research, often referred to as the “science of reading,” shows most students will need explicit instruction in phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension, to become successful readers.
(We have no idea what most Massachusetts parents think about the ‘science of reading’, at least not based on the poll the Globe was promoting. See Below).
I’m not an education expert but I can tell you that the science of reading the Globe is pushing is not a slam dunk, because I asked academic experts. Here is what education Professor Josh Cowen messaged me. Prof. Cowen is author of The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers. You should buy it and read it. From. Prof. Cowen:
The reading experts I know are all behind what I call the science of reading. As opposed to the Science of Reading, which is a political push. The literature does support many of the pieces stressed in the “science of reading” research but the Science of Reading is 100% about undermining public schools.
I also asked education Professor Paul Thomas of Furman University, He responded “At the core of the SOR movement is an effort to clear the reading program market for new programs (again).” And he sent me some of his posts on the topic
https://radicalscholarship.com/2024/06/06/science-of-movements-as-trojan-horse-education-reform/
Education reform in the US primarily creates churn—new standards, new programs, new materials, new teacher training, etc.—that serves the needs of the market, not parents or their children. That churn is promoted by education reform influencers who only gain if schools, teachers, and students are perpetually viewed as failing—permanent crisis. …
The “science of” movements are yet another cycle of Trojan Horse education reform.
The media has now spoken directly into that conservative machine with the “science of reading” (SOR) movement that follows the tired and destructive pattern begun under Reagan in the 1980s.
https://radicalscholarship.com/2024/03/27/the-reading-league-science-or-grift/
The Reading League represents that, for the most part, the SOR movement is less about science and more a grift.
https://radicalscholarship.com/2022/10/27/the-high-cost-of-marketing-educational-crisis/
As a key example, many (if not most) teachers of reading in the U.S. now are being told that their university training was useless, and that they need new training in the “science of reading.” And education corporations are lining up to sell schools that training, a story sold with the “science of reading” label (see about LETRS). . . .
Take a little journey to Education Week‘s web site and note that flurry of ads for the “science of reading,”
The current reading war driven by the “science of reading” movement is also mired in emotional anecdotes, personal attacks, and a steady diet of mainstream media misinformation. (emphasis added).
Here’s a peer-reviewed study, What You See Is Not What You Get: Science of Reading Reforms as a Guise for Standardization, Centralization, and Privatization and an excerpt from the summary:
Positioned in the wider sociopolitical context of neoliberal education reforms, SOR advocacy becomes a performance that obscures privatizers’ efforts to use literacy legislation as a mechanism for securing a market share for their products and services.
In other words, science of reading, to use Thomas’s term, is a grift.
Diane Ravitch did a long post on the phoniness of “Science of Reading” Literacy Experts: There Is No “Science of Reading.
Let the education eggheads have it out, not my thing. But I do want to leave you with this: the Globe portrayal of SOR as brilliant progress held up only by those evil teachers’ unions and superintendents is hogwash.
Who Did the Not Globe Talk To?
Teachers, superintendents, or school committee members, with one exception. In two slam dunk stories, here is the Globe news team providing the other side in the SOR debate, it its entirety: From Poll, one sentence:
Opponents of the legislation include the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which has previously criticized the bill as “a flawed, one-size-fits-all approach to a complex task.”
No quote from any educator, superintendent, or school committee member. I asked the MTA communications director, who told me they were never contacted for the Poll story.
This is from Literacy Reform Bill Dies:
Mary Bourque, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, said that the bill was a “top-down” approach, leaving little room for teachers — the education experts — to make the calls for their students.
In “Poll” the Globe wrote that the poll was conducted by The Education Trust, which receives funding from the Barr Foundation and “(The Barr Foundation also partly funds the Globe’s Great Divide education team.)” It also quoted the Education Trust executive director. In Literacy Reform Bill Dies the Globe quotes Ed Lambert of Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education but does not disclose that MBAE also receives funding from Barr. As I wrote in Banned in Boston Globe: Coverage of Barr Foundation’s K-12 Interest Group Spending the Globe rarely discloses the conflict or appearance of conflict when it relies on individuals for education stories who represent Barr-funded entities.
From Barr Foundation K-12 Interest Groups Throw Their Weight (and Dollars) Around, the results were to be “presented at an event held by the Education Trust and moderated by the Globe reporter who wrote the story.” The forum featured a who’s who of organizations funded by Barr including Education Trust, the MassInc Polling Group, and of course, the Boston Globe. (The forum also featured a representative from National Parents Union. Barr funds its sister organization, Massachusetts Parents United). Understand, the poll is a story manufactured by a set of interests to advance their cause. The Globe reporter hosting the forum wasn’t a case of an important news organization hosting a community informational forum, she was offering the Globe’s prestige for a political cause. So, about that poll . . .
“useless at best and completely false at worst”
The Barr interest groups created a “news” story where none existed—a poll on attitudes about reading. The Barr-funded Education Trust paid the Barr-funded MassInc Polling Group to draft poll questions and put them in the field. I stated in my post my suspicions about the questions asked by MassInc Polling to generate the story but I’m not an expert on survey research, so I sent the story and the poll itself to real experts. First, from academic experts at the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts at Boston:
Lee Hargraves: First, how do respondents know what “evidence-based reading curriculum” means? What is proven? Second, what is the nature of their poll vis-a-vis the sample, response rate, etc.? Is it representative of the population of interest.
Tony Roman said, “If you look at that poll, it is extremely leading, and that is without knowing how they introduce the study. They also never say where the sample comes from. I found it interesting that a large percentage of parents believe their child is doing fine with reading and they have high opinions about teachers. After they are led down a path, they answer a loaded question the way the authors want them to answer. I personally think the results of this survey are useless at best and completely false at worst.”
Jack Fowler responded, “I am pretty confident that Tony’s concerns about the sample are merited. When folks don’t say how they sampled or report a response rate, you can be pretty confident these days that the sample is unlikely to be representative. However, the main issue is the question. My critique would be that it is incomprehensible; that is, that no reasonable person would know what the question was asking, much less what the alternative is. What are “evidence-based” reading materials? What does it mean that materials that have been “proven to work”? While the words seem reassuring enough, and most people would have to say it’s probably a good idea, without having any idea what the state of evidence and research is on a relationship between reading materials and what students need to know, it is impossible to give a meaningful answer to this question.
Carol Consenza: In terms of the sample – MassInc has their “MassVoice Panel”, which is probably where the sample came from. They talk about “The results were weighted with a credibility interval of +/- 3.0 percentage points.” which I’m pretty sure is only used with non-probability, often opt-in, samples. (more discussion on that here: https://aapor.org/statements/understanding-a-credibility-interval-and-how-it-differs-from-the-margin-of-sampling-error-in-a-public-opinion-poll/)
And, as Jack describes, there are MANY problems with the question itself. Though they try to define “evidence-based,” the concept of “proven to work” really isn’t much of a definition. And, as you talk about, at face value, it’s a really hard question to say “no” to.
So, in general, we think there are probably a lot of problems with the survey. And, probably, people should not read too much into the responses to this question.
I also asked Brad Bannon, president of Brad Bannon Communications and Research for his thoughts:
I’ve seen some leading questions in the day but this one takes the cake. . .. The statement doesn’t fairly describe the concept and who could ever disagree with evidence and scientific.
This type of question gives polls and pollsters a bad name. So, feel free to quote me.
Closing Thoughts
There are two important stories involved here, stories that would educate and illuminate the public’s understanding of how political power works. We are not getting those stories.
First is the manufacturing of stories by interest groups to advance their policy position. That is what the poll and the forum were all about. Polls are expensive and as used here, a tool of moneyed interests. Report that instead of presenting unpaid ads for interest groups.
Second, why do we never see any reporting about corporate philanthropies like Barr, the Walton Family Foundation, etc. advancing political causes? The Waltons are billionaires. The Barr Foundation’s benefactor, Amos Hostetter, is a billionaire. They are using their money—channeled through “non-profits”—to bend public policy to their wishes. And I will add, as detailed by professors Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew Lacombe in Billionaires and Stealth Politics, the policy preferences of billionaires on education and other issues are far different than those of the mass of the citizenry. Should billionaires get their way or should the public?
These are the stories people need to understand.
“Our data suggest that the great enthusiasm of wealthy Americans for improving the US educational system mostly focuses on improving effectiveness through relatively low budget, market-oriented reforms, not on spending the very large sums of money that might be necessary to provide high quality public schools, college scholarships, or worker retraining for all Americans.”–Page, Bartels, and Seawright, Billionaires and Stealth Politics
Imagine movie critics who either did not know, or did not care to know, that movies have producers, script writers, directors, financiers, or casting directors, and so based their reviews on the premise that it was the actors alone who created the storyline, dialogue and mise en scene, and that the most successful actors were those who best understood the audience. That is essentially how all politics is covered in 21st century America.—Michael Podhorzer.
[Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is in print.]
Not only do the billionaires and The Glob rig the discourse, they also control the research which rigs the discourse, a trick first engineered by BillyandMelinda Gates.
A pox on them all.
Josh Cowen just did a good job exposing billionaire driven “research” on vouchers in his book The Privateers. This is important and another aspect of interest group politics that media do not cover well, if at all.