In 2010, I attended an Oklahoma legislative committee meeting where most lawmakers were reading a New Yorker article, Steve Brill’s “The Rubber Room.” It was full of attacks on teachers. Legislators found his narrative persuasive, and it contributed to the passage of the most destructive education bill I ever witnessed.
I then reached out to Brill, trying to share the social and cognitive science that explained why he was using invalid and unreliable data in support of a blame game that would undermine teaching and learning.
So, I was curious about what he now believes. After all, the subtitle for a recent interview with him was:
But, Brill, a non-educator, still sticks with an anti-teacher ideology, propagated by “astro-turf think tanks” that rejected the scientific method when trying to use venture capitalism procedures for transforming traditional public schools. Even after those reward-and-punish policies demonstrably failed, Brill says, “in public education, I think there’s a pretty good argument that the people abusing and undermining the system are actually the teachers .”