Mike Klonsky Was Right - Duncan DID Have A "Ravitch Group"

Remember back in 2011 when Mike Klonsky posted about rumors that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had convened a "Ravitch Group" to dig up dirt on Duncan critic Diane Ravitch and feed it to the press to undercut her credibility and damage her public standing?

I remember - I even blogged about it at NYCEducator.com in a post called "Arne Duncan's Dirty Tricks" back on August 6, 2011.

At the time, Duncan's spokesperson, Justin Hamilton tweeted that rumors of a "Ravitch Group" created by Duncan to dish dirt on Diane ought to be put on the shelf next to rumors of "Black Helicopters."

With the acknowledgement today from former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education, Peter Cunningham, that he had the job to "monitor criticism of our policies and develop our responses" and "one of the people I monitored pretty closely was Diane Ravitch," Klonsky's post about Duncan's "Ravitch Group" rumors turns out to be very, very prescient.

Turns out Duncan did indeed have a "Ravitch Group" that was "monitoring" her "pretty closely" and developing responses to her criticism (i.e., dishing dirt to Duncan- and Obama-friendly journalists like Jonathan Alter and David Brooks to use in their columns on education reform.)

They may not have called this an "enemies list" or anything like that, but this pushback strategy within Duncan's DOE is indeed Nixonian in breadth and scope.

Somebody ought to ask Arne Duncan about the "Ravitch Group" again.

Why is Ravitch so threatening to Arne and his Merry Men and Women in Reform at the USDOE that they have convened a group to target her, a group that still seems to be functioning, given the anti-Ravitch piece Cunningham posted at Huffington Post as a preemptive strike before her new book on education reform is published?

Does Arne Duncan's Dept. Of Education Have Their Own "Enemies List"?

A former Obama administration p.r. guy at Arne Duncan's Department of Education attacked Diane Ravitch in a blog piece that made it to Huffington Post.

It's a piece full of vitriol, ad hominem attacks and unsubstantiated claims against Ravitch, a preemptive strike of education reform propaganda meant to discredit her before her new book on the reform movement is published.

I will leave the pushbacks on the piece to others, like Paul Thomas at @ The Chalk Face, who tears apart the post piece by piece and shows it to be nothing more than "partisan politics being played out in the compliant online media."

But one thing I did want to post about, though Raging Horse got to it before I did, is how the writer of the anti-Ravtich vitriol, former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education, Peter Cunningham, described what he did at the DOE:

One of my jobs was to monitor criticism of our policies and develop our responses. One of the people I monitored pretty closely was Diane Ravitch.

The Obama administration was accused of having an "enemies list" when the story broke that the administration may have been using the IRS to punish political opponents and groups.

While much of that scandal turned out to be overblown, I find Cunningham's publicly admitting that part of his job at the USDOE was to monitor opponents to the Obama administration's education policies and "develop" administration "responses" eerily similar to that story of the IRS being used for payback or the NSA "monitoring" the phone calls of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Where does the overreach of this administration end?  Why would the USDOE use taxpayer money to monitor its opponents and develop pushback responses?  How large was this monitoring program and who else was "monitored"?

As Raging Horse noted:

The US Department of Education “monitored ” Diane Ravitch ? And others ? To what end ? Does this mean that the DOE, like the FBI and the CIA and the NSA is building dossiers on those, like Dr. Ravitch, who have the temerity to point out their inconsistencies, absurdities, failure and lies?

I suppose I should not be surprised that an administration that would shred the constitution to preserve the NSA’s ability to have total surveillance over every American citizen would so casually monitor education critics but I am.

It is becoming more and more apparent that Barack Obama, the former Constitutional law professor, has torn the Constitution to shreds since he took power in 2009.

Drone bombings, the kill list, NSA spying, the war on whistleblowers, the torture of Bradley Manning, NCLB waivers that make new mandates (a power the USDOE does not have), mandating those without health insurance buy private insurance - the list of questionable or clearly unconstitutional Obama policies is growing more extensive by the year.

And now we have a former functionary at Arne Duncan's Department of Education admitting they "monitor" and track opponents of Obama education policies at the USDOE like it's no biggie.

As Raging Horse said, who else are they monitoring?  And to what end?

Let me add a couple of questions to his.

Do they have an "enemies list" at Arne Duncan's DOE? 

And if they do, what are they doing with that list other than using it for propaganda push back purposes?