How Do We Counter The Sophisticated P.R. Operations Of The Corporate Deformers?

The battle over the UFT contract agreement has gotten me thinking about public relations and messaging.

Earlier I wrote a post asking people to start thinking through the p.r. war that is sure to come if the UFT contract agreement is voted down.

My argument basically was this:

Contracts are not negotiated in isolation of the political environment - what gets reported in the press, the propaganda that gets spewed, affects negotiations.

Even more importantly, it affects the kind of support teachers can get from the public on a whole host of things, not just contract negotiations, but school policies, charter vs. trad schools, etc.

We have to start to find effective ways to get our message out in the face of a hostile corporate print press and electronic news media.

This is true not just in this contract fight but in the fight against the corporate reform agenda and its proponents as a whole

What first spurred this on for me was watching the fight between Eva Moskowitz and Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio had the moral high ground here when his chancellor announced that three Success Academies co-locations were being canceled - one of which would have taken space away from special needs kids, another of which would have put young elementary school kids in the same building where high school kids rioted in the recent past.

Despite de Blasio inhabiting the moral high ground in this battle, Moskowitz went on a p.r. offensive worthy of a presidential campaign, reached out to Governor Andrew Cuomo and other charter-friendly politicians with entreaties and campaign cash and, in the end, thoroughly routed de Blasio.

Moskowitz managed to do what GOP consultant Karl Rove always said political campaigns should do - she made her own weakness into a strength and her opponents strength into a weakness.

Eva played the victim here, messaging to the public through press conferences and ads that played over and over that her "kids" were being thrown out onto the street by the charter-hating Mayor de Blasio.

The truth was, Eva was throwing deaf kids out of their school space, but de Blasio and Farina never got that message out to the public and wound up smeared as the villains in the charter wars.

This was a sophisticated and masterful p.r. operation, one that was most certainly helped by the $4 million+ Moskowitz and her hedge fundie friends could spend on ads.

Nonetheless we should not dismiss the masterfulness and sophistication of the Eva p.r. operation just because she had the money to get her message out.

Instead we must find ways to match the sophistication and masterfulness in the messaging wars against the deformers and their destructive agenda, and do it without the help of the money that Moskowitz has behind her.

We know we cannot count on the unions because they are playing for their own interests and those often do not coincide with the interests of teachers looking to protect traditional public schools, the teaching profession, etc.

I stand in awe of what Karen Lewis and CTU managed to do in Chicago, reaching out to parents in a long-term effort to find common cause against the deformers.

I see some of the same happening in the battle against Common Core, the Endless Testing regime and APPR teacher evaluations.

While many parents are not necessarily going to go out of their way to fight for fair evaluations for teachers, they show much more willingness to do so when it becomes apparent that APPR evaluations are behind so much of the Endless Testing.

When it was just teachers complaining about Common Core, the papers were pretty brutal toward CCSS critics.

But when parents joined the protests, suddenly the paper coverage got a lot more nuanced and fair (in Newsday in particular.)

I think there are some lessons here that we can use going forward as we try and combat the messaging of the deformers in the p.r. wars.

More and more, I am becoming convinced that we must get more sophisticated and masterful in how we approach the p.r. wars against the deform movement - not just in the contract battle, but in the whole "war" against corporate reform.

I know there is a lot of anger and fury among teachers that has been building up for over a decade.

I share this anger and fury with you.

I don't think coming from a place of anger and fury is a terribly effective way to actually get the outcomes we want, either short-term or long-term, however.

So, finding a way to channel our anger and fury and get a coherent message out despite the millions of dollars the other side has for p.r. - this must be our task going forward.

Regent Harry Phillips: John King A "Good Guy," Regents Won't Fire Him

After a week of getting beat up in the press and on the Internet with nary a prominent education reform voice coming to defend him, NYSED Commissioner John King received support from a member of the Board of Regents:

A member of the state Education Department’s Board of Regents said Commissioner John King has made mistakes in his handling of a contentious public forum and its aftermath, but said the board has no plans to replace him.

In a phone interview with Gannett’s Albany Bureau, Harry Phillips, a Regent from Hartsdale, Westchester County, offered an assessment of King’s handling of the cancellation of four forums hosted by the state Parent Teacher Association, which was spurred by a forum in Poughkeepsie last week that quickly became contentious during a brief public-comment period.

But despite increasing pressure from the state teacher’s union and advocacy groups and two lawmakers calling for King’s ouster, Phillips said a change in leadership is not in the cards.

“The commissioner made a few mistakes and he understands it. The board understands it,” Phillips said. “He’s a good, smart guy, and the Regents are not going to get rid of John King.”

Phillips said King made errors in his handling of the Poughkeepsie forum—particularly when it came to the length of his presentation and response to pre-written questions, which lasted for more than an hour and left little time for public comment. He also said King misused the phrase “special interests” when he said the Poughkeepsie forum was “co-opted.”

Said Phillips:

“One, (King) should not have spoken so long. He should have left more time for public comments. He shouldn’t have been so sensitive. He misused the word special interest when he meant people from all over the state who came merely just to heckle. Not everyone was there just to heckle, but some people were and I think he got carried away with that.”

Philips left an additional comment after the story:

Sorry you didn’t have room to include my views on common core and our errors in implementation, including cut scores that were too high. We introduced CCLS too soon and were not sensitive to how teachers, parents and students would take so many failing grades.We were trying get the same % that passed Regents ELA and Math college and career ready: 75 on ELA and 80 on math.

For what it's worth, even the Regents seem to realize the Shock Doctrine they employed with the Common Core tests this past year has done more damage to the education reform agenda they're trying to impose than anything else.

Does this mean they plan any mid-course correction on that agenda?

It does not.

NYSED Commissioner King said this week there would be no mid-course corrections.

The APPR teacher evaluation system would continue to be tied to Common Core tests.

The Common Core standards will continue to be rolled out.

NYSED will seek to have the Engage NY Common Core lessons taught to as many children in the state as possible.

The Common Core tests will continue to be given in NY State.

From the comment Phillips added after the story, it seems that at least one member of the Regents realizes the tactical mistakes they made in their reform roll-out but doesn't think they need to change anything about the agenda to solve the public furor over it.

The way I read the Philips comments, they're going to work on the propaganda and the messaging, they're going to back John King up but surround him with adults who will rein in his petulance and arrogance, and just hope they can fool the public into buying their agenda.

Let's see how that works for them