[rayiner]

I feel like this is grasping at straws. Facebook’s head of news co-founded a site in 2015 that promotes school choice, something supported by a majority of people and a super majority of people of color: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/school-choice-strong-....

The articles posted on this site were critical of Warren because of Warren’s opposition to school choice, but has also criticized the other Democratic candidates for taking the same position: https://www.the74million.org/article/stewart-the-democratic-....

The attempt to make it seem like the criticism of Warren on this site has anything to do with Facebook is pretty weak. The site was started long before Warren said anything critical about Facebook. The site also has a good faith basis for being critical of Warren in this front. Warren’s opposition to school choice highlights a distressing fissure within the Democratic Party: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/19/08/ednext-poll-democrats...

> African American Democrats support targeted school vouchers, universal vouchers, and charter schools at 70%, 60%, and 55%, respectively. Among Hispanic Democrats, support for the three policies is at 67%, 60%, and 47%. On the other hand, just 40% of non-Hispanic White Democrats support targeted vouchers, 46% support universal vouchers, and 33% support charter schools.

The site is addressing a real debate within the Democratic Party, consistent with its founding principles, not using some contrived pretext to attack Warren for her comments about Facebook.

[Miner49er]

This article posted to HN yesterday is better IMO: https://popular.info/p/facebooks-top-news-executive-has

It points out Brown is friends with Betsy DeVos.

It points out that Eric Owens, a far-right regular writer for the Daily Caller, has written 11 articles for The 74.

I agree that the part about Warren is grasping at straws a bit. I think it's more interesting that Brown is right leaning, yet she's in charge of FB News. So far, FB News is showing many signs it will be right biased. This just adds more evidence.

The other evidence is the inclusion of Breitbart, but no leftist publications. Also, the fact that Zuckerberg has been having dinners with far-right figures, but no leftists.

[vuln]

Zuckerburg has already danced with the left.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/03/19/why-are...

https://reason.com/2018/03/23/cambridge-analytics-dust-up-re...

[darawk]

I'm not sure what the message is here, though. Should the person running FB news have no political affiliations at all? Because if that's the standard, then it seems what you'll get is just people hiding their political affiliations, which doesn't seem particularly good for anyone.

[fzeroracer]

No, the point is that Facebook has been trying to position itself as an arbiter of political neutrality while consistently taking actions that obviously indicates the bias it has.

You can't claim you have no position while simultaneously taking actions that benefit one side or another. If they're going to go that route, they might as well just come out and say what their bias is rather than gaslighting people into thinking that they're neutral.

[darawk]

Which actions are those? This person was taking sided actions outside the context of FB. Which actions is FB taking that benefit one side?

[rayiner]

So what if Brown is friends with someone who shares a commitment to school choice? School choice isn’t a “right-leaning” position. Most of the OECD has it in some form. In Sweden and Denmark, you can get a voucher to go to private religious school. The UN Declaration of Human rights underscores the right of parents to choose how to educate their kids, including religious education if they so desire.

If Facebook treated Brown’s advocacy for school choice as disqualifying, that would actually be an indicator of extreme left-wing bias.

[alecb]

Ah yes, "school choice", a nice rebranding effort for privatizing another industry so Betsy Devos and other aspiring oligarchs can destroy a public good for their profit.

[EpicEng]

Tell that to the kids going to schools with massive gang problems. Even if they want to succeed it's a constant battle. My wife teaches at one of these schools and she has no problem understanding why kids would want out.

[Barrin92]

the correct response would be to one 1. fight the gang problems 2. stop tying school funding to localities which perpetuates poor districts being poor and underfunded.

Clearly the solution can't be privatized 'school choice' because the people who need it the most will probably not be able to afford it, and it segregates society further, giving everyone even less stake in repairing their communities. It's a self-defeating cycle.

[macspoofing]

>the correct response would be to one 1. fight the gang problems 2. stop tying school funding to localities which perpetuates poor districts being poor and underfunded.

Don't be dense. Those are generational issues to solve. There is enough inertia in the system that solutions if there are any, will take decades to manifest. You know this. And nobody will sacrifice their children at the altar of 'social justice' as espoused online by 20something who doesn't know any better. No, they want their children to be safe, and get a quality education.

[EpicEng]

But it's not happening, so it's not reasonable to expect these voters to rely on hope while their kids are suffering.

[gotoeleven]

An open society isn't going to work if people can't tolerate disagreement.

[DataWorker]

I think you’re being downvoted because Devos, like most education free market pushers, isn’t looking to profit on school choice. People really think free markets are better. Similar to UBI, people like the idea of freedom.

[r00fus]

> People really think free markets are better.

Sure - despite being proven that charter schools (ie, free choice) have worse or equivalent scores to public schools [1]. There is not agreement here, there is controversy and the facts are not on the so-called "free markets" side.

[1] http://www.nea.org/home/33177.htm

[macspoofing]

Honestly, no surprise (though 'equivalent' is more correct - nea.org isn't a dispassionate objective observer). The dirty secret in education is the quality of instruction, the condition of the building and the textbooks, whether or not iPads are readily available, all of that take a backseat to the circumstances in the child's private life. Stable home and engaged parents that take a personal interest in the child's education will mean those children will do well. We try to put too much on schools and teachers to make up gaps in parenting. A student that drops out or graduates functionally illiterate is a failure of the parents, not the school systems.

Having said that, don't dismiss the idea of choice. Parents, for all kinds of reasons, may not want to be funneled to the specific school or schools they are limited to geographically, and may want to have a different kind of instruction (i.e. they want CHOICE). Opponents of 'school choice' always miss this point.

[r00fus]

Choice for "some" is at odds with fair access for all.

Charter school discriminate in responsiveness to requests [1] in admissions against special-needs and the poor (ie, the hard cases). Public schools simply can't do this.

[1] https://www.futurity.org/charter-schools-students-1937902/

[macspoofing]

>Choice for "some" is at odds with fair access for all

So instead of implementing policies to make sure the choice is available to all, your approach is to remove this choice from everyone and funnel them through the same monolithic system?

Nothing you argued, even if true (and I suspect you're not an objective observer either), is unsolvable through policy or regulatory changes.

[macspoofing]

Why not try a charitable interpretation of 'school choice'? People I know that support vouchers and charter schools do so because they genuinely care about quality education. Maybe they are misguided, but they certainly aren't doing it to create EVIL profit for the EVIL billionaire class.

As a general principle, decentralization is good.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

If they care about the quality of education then they should take steps to ensure that public education is higher quality. Perhaps starting by not voting for people who want to dismantle it.

[macspoofing]

As I said, that's a separate issue. All I asked of OP is to not impune motives on people who mean well.

Charter and voucher schools ARE public education, they just aren't part of the traditional monolithic bureaucracy. The ability to try different approaches and run different experiments to see if it results in different outcomes, and make fast adjustments, free from the existing hierarchy, is the quality improvement that proponents are striving for.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Charter and voucher schools ARE public education, they just aren't part of the traditional monolithic bureaucracy.

They also traditionally get to pick and choose who can attend, which often means excluding costly students like any that have disabilities.

> The ability to try different approaches and run different experiments to see if it results in different outcomes, and make fast adjustments, free from the existing hierarchy, is the quality improvement that proponents are striving for.

Great. Let's apply "move fast and break things" to education. What could possibly go wrong?

[macspoofing]

>They also traditionally get to pick and choose who can attend, which often means excluding costly students like any that have disabilities.

We both know that's not why you take issue with school choice because these kinds of issues can be easily adjusted through policy changes - but you're not proposing policy changes. You want to completely get rid of the entire thing.

And by the way, in the cases of kids with extreme behavioural issues, those kids are also routinely expelled from the public system schools. So again, what are you arguing?

>Let's apply "move fast and break things" to education. What could possibly go wrong?

Can you try and not distort arguments? Nobody except you argued this.

[EpicEng]

Right, except they have children already and things need to change very quickly to benefit them, and most of us just don't have the time or energy.

It's not reasonable to expect everyone to crusade for reform. I want what's best for my kids now, and if that's a charter school, that's what I'm aiming for.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

And it's that kind of short-term thinking that creates a lot of the world's problems in the first place.

[EpicEng]

Please. It's been decades, not months. These problems are still here. Voters are supposed to just hope it gets better instead of doing what's best for their children?

[fcarraldo]

The National Review has a right wing bias, and has been called the “bible of American conservatism”. Since “school choice” is a conservative policy, it’s unsurprising that the NR ran an article that purports that it’s a popular policy. If we look at the source for the polls the article is based on, they cite polls from a lobbyist group specifically built to push policy on “school choice”.

This doesn’t seem like a reputable source for making the argument that voters actually support this policy.

[rayiner]

This survey, conducted by among other people a professor at the Harvard School of Education, found similar results: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/19/08/ednext-poll-democrats...

School choice isn’t a “conservative” policy. Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc., have extensive school choice. The US is actually an outlier in the OECD for prohibiting private schools from getting any public funding: http://www.oecd.org/education/School-choice-and-school-vouch...