Tensions simmered for a few years before coming to full boil last spring. Many liberals attending the 2016 NewSchools Summit celebrated the conference’s elevation of diversity, with teacher-blogger Marilyn Rhames noting that it “echoed sentiments of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
The conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Robert Pondiscio, however, saw it differently. In a blog post, he warned that the left was trying to “push conservatives out of education reform,” and he proclaimed the collapse of the “informal agreement” between liberals and conservatives in education reform. Pondiscio’s words sparked a summer of education reform bloggers on both sides of the debate scolding each other for being insensitive and jeopardizing the fate of reform.
Under a new administration, the gulf continues to widen. For better or for worse, Secretary DeVos has become the personification of the charter movement in the eyes of the general public. Liberal charter school supporters are terrified that charter schools will now be associated with Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, privatization, and for-profit companies. “God save us from our friends,” wrote Steven Zimmerman of the Coalition of Community Charter Schools, in New York, in a blog post lamenting DeVos’ “market based” reform agenda following the election.
