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Teacher, author, and Huffington Post blogger Dan Brown sent me the following explanation of his remarks on the dangerous, yet increasingly common, assumption that education reform requires "de-Baathification" of American public education:

My eyebrow-raising de-Baathification reference at the education blogger conference was the first question to Newt Gingrich following his jovial-yet-dangerous remarks about replacing public school's "monopoly of failure."

According to Gingrich (and many others), American public schools are irreparably obsolete and pretty much anyone within the current system will leap to defend that failure because they are defending their own reputation and interests. He specifically cites a 3-pronged axis of dysfunction: schools of education, departments of education, and unionized bureaucracy. This slaps a label on anyone working in public education as contaminated by the system.
This wholesale dismissal of teachers' and school leaders' ideas paves the way for ideologues to impose their will.

When I asked my question, I opened by briefly recognizing that we all seem to agree there is substantial room for improvement in American public schools and we all want to better the system. However, this automatic dismissal of everyone currently within the struggling system seems parallel to the disastrous de-Baathification process following the US invasion of Iraq. Everyone affiliated in any way with Sadaam's party was outcast from decision making (or even a job). This exclusion of such vast intellectual and human resources was a calamity. Isn't labelling everyone within public education as corrupted "defenders of the monopoly of failure" a similar fiasco in the making?

That was my question to Gingrich, who smoothly brushed it off with an anecdote about a white Detroit philanthropist being turned away from donating money to black schools. He maintained that the monopoly of failure must be replaced.

Framing the debate on public schools' problems this way is dangerous. It puts public school advocates in the uncomfortable position of propounding change yet denying that all public schools are a wild wild west of zero substantive learning. It makes the "blow up the schools!" hawks look tough and the reformers who want to talk about nuance and incremental change like wusses.

In my rookie teacher memoir, THE GREAT EXPECTATIONS SCHOOL, I try to bring out that even in the toughest schools, there are so many excellent students and teachers, and they deserve the support to thrive. To me, this does not equate to putting them all in schools under corporate control, as is insinuated by the language of "monopoly of failure."

Update (5/19/08)
Dan Brown offers a more complete account of his encounter with Newt Gingrich on his blog