Wearing a T-shirt with an image of a prominent Nazi war criminal might be enough to get a student sent home. But the Washington Association of School Administrators thinks it is OK to share public-relations advice from a prominent Nazi war criminal if you’re trying to get school administrators to be effective advocates.
The Washington Policy Center’s Liv Finne recently noted how a WASA slideshow titled “Who’s Telling Your Story?” included a quote from Joseph Goebbels, complete with photo. There was also a quote and photo from another famous humanitarian, Vladimir Lenin.
To be fair, Aristotle and George Bernard Shaw also had their own slides. But the ancient Greek philosopher and Nobel laureate were ahead of a half-dozen slides filled with quotes from the League of Education Voters, Freedom Foundation, Democrats for Education Reform, Stand for Children, the Washington Roundtable/Partnership for Learning, and Finne herself.
Goebbels and Lenin, and their observations about what happens when a lie is told often enough, followed the quotes from the various education-reform groups. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist – or a school administrator – to connect the dots.
WASA has reason to demean the groups quoted in the slideshow. They are reformers, and WASA represents the status quo. But come on.
The WASA lobbyist who posted the slideshow wasn’t foolish enough to give the Goebbels-Lenin treatment to things our Senate majority has said about our Education Equality Act – even though that legislation is all about reforming the K-12 funding system, and therefore opposed by those who are desperate to keep the status quo.
Still, WASA finds ways to take a swing at us. Like when we brought the House Democrats’ tax package (the largest tax increase in state history) before the Senate budget committee for a hearing on April 26, in the form of a Senate bill. The WASA lobbyist was right there to testify in support. Two days before, in a report to WASA members, he had described the upcoming hearing as “gamesmanship.”
Gamesmanship? This from an organization that took part in the campaign about the so-called “levy cliff.” And don’t forget the administrators (Seattle School District and elsewhere) who have eye-popping compensation packages ($354,000 in salary and benefits, in Seattle) in districts that have seen huge jumps in funding, and still plead poverty.
And people wonder why education-funding reform has been such a tough nut to crack.