Update: New Voices Challenging Reform Critics' "Belief Gap" On Social Media

George Hall Elementary. 99% black. 98% student poverty. All proficient. You're not ready for this discussion until you believe in our kids.

— Citizen Stewart (@citizenstewart) February 24, 2015

For the last few years, claims of success by reform supporters -- a high-poverty school where students are learning at high levels, say -- have regularly been met with detailed takedowns from the likes of Diane Ravitch or Gary Rubinstein, followed by a swarm of followups from reform critics and allies.

But over the weekend things took a somewhat different turn (at least on Sunday, when I last checked in), and it was the mostly white, mostly male reform critics like Rubinstein and Cody who were on the hotseat for expressing a "belief gap" from a handful of Chris Stewart kicked things off (and storified the exchange below).

A number of new voices showed up -- new to me, at least -- in addition to familiar names like Anthony Cody, John Thompson, and Gary Rubinstein.  As you'll see, the issue of research into teacher bias came up several times, including studies like this and this. And 

It wasn't pretty, or conclusive, or anything else. Both sides of this debate have long sufferered from too few black and brown voices and leaders, and still do. But it was somewhat different from the Twitter exchanges I've been following and writing about for the last few years.

Related posts: Reform Opponents Are Winning Online (For Now); Shame On Reform Allies Who Let Rhee Critics "Get Away With It"; Who Influences Education Coverage Better -- Reform Critics Or Funders?; 

Comments

[John]

For the record, the reason why I checked out of the conversation had nothing to do with the color of the persons, although Citizen Stewart started that taunt. Some of it showed up on my email and I had no idea of the full extent of the exchange until I read it here.
I'd hoped that they would be embarrassed by some of their statements, and tried to ask if they had read the piece that seemed to start the exchange.

[John]

I suspect the point of this post is to imply that minorities are "with" the reformers, but at this precise moment @citizenstewart and many of the others in the thread reported on above are "challenging" reform prince Mike Petrilli pretty hard for using minorities, and I quote "as props in your passion play."