Eli Broad, “ed reform” philanthropist, doesn’t know squat about public education

by David Safier

Eli Broad comes from the "I have more money than you, so I know more about everything than you do" school of thought. He's one of the gazillionaires funding the conservative/neoliberal "education reform" movement with his Broad Foundation.

Broad has a commentary in Ed Week (subscription only) where he makes an ass of himself, though he's too ignorant about education to know it. He cites all the usual, and reasonably accurate, facts and figures showing how bad our schools are, says education is "the civil rights issue of our time" — a favorite Romney line — and makes some feel-good general statements about what we should do to improve education.

But here are two things Broad writes that show he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

Broad was in high school "not long after World War II," he writes. Let's make it somewhere in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He says we had the top graduation rates in the world back then and our schools were the best in the world. That's no longer true, he says.

Eli, let me tell you something. When you were in high school, only about 45% of high school aged youth were in school. Today it's more like 85%. If we expelled the bottom 40% of our students, our schools would have a comparable population to the one you attended, and they would certainly have higher achievement and graduation rates. The comparison you make between two very different educational worlds is senseless.

Then he says, "Frankly, I'm not sure how far I would get if I attended public school today."

Really, Eli? You don't seem to be aware, no one attends "public school." Students attend a specific public school. Do you think you could get a good enough education at, say, Tucson's University High or any number of top quality high schools in the Tucson area and around the country? Of course you could. In fact, the education at today's best schools is probably far better than what you got at your post-WWII school.

This mindless blending of all schools into something called "public schools" is ridiculous. We have terrific schools, reasonably good schools, mediocre schools and terrible schools in this country. Our major education problem isn't with the first two categories, or even the first three, though of course all of them could be better than they are. It's with those terrible schools which we desperately need to improve. Lumping all our schools together is a sign of lack of understanding on your part, or of propagandistic flimflam.

Oh, and Eli? The charter schools you love so much are "public" schools as well. You don't seem clear on the concept that "public" means "publicly funded," and that includes charters.

People as rich as Eli Broad aren't used to being criticized, so they are famous for saying idiotic things and having people just smile and nod. But Mr. Broad, that doesn't make you any less ignorant.