AFT: He Who is Not the Enemy of My Enemy is My Enemy, Or Something.

AFTie Ed faults Education Sector's new Connecting the Dots about the Walton Family Foundation's support of the charter school movement for not being what it isn't--a report about Wal-Mart's anti-union activities. Why? Because, says Ed:

Wal-Mart attacks unions and those workers who want to form one. There is no reason to see their support for charter schooling as anything other than part of that attack.

Really? "No reason"? "Anything other"? There's basic aversion to empiricism here that runs throughout a lot of what gets written on the AFT blog. It's the main reason teachers unions are increasingly getting left out of real debates about education policy.

Look, Wal-Mart is, without a doubt, a stridently anti-union corporation. I think this is an inherently immoral position and Wal-Mart deserves pretty much all the blame it gets on this front. People have a right to organize and bargain collectively, whether you like it or not. Taking away that right is wrong, period.

So it's perfectly reasonable to wonder if Walton Family Foundation is pursuing an anti-union agenda through its philanthropic activities. It makes sense to use a gimlet eye in examining their motives and funding choices.

But having asked the question, you still have to answer it. Fairly, using actual facts and data. Particularly when it comes to an issue like charter schools, which are supported by people and organizations of all political stripes, including those who are as pro-union as they come. People should read the report and draw their own conclusions, but personally I find the idea that it's all just a stealth anti-union campaign to be ludricous and unserious. Choice, markets, entrepeneurship, innovation--these are really issues that deserve to be debated on their own terms. There's a certain narcissism to the belief that all your enemies think about is you.

Similary, AFTie Beth recently said of the North Carolina AYP growth model experiment:

What’s the point? Apparently, in NC, no schools made AYP just because of their growth model. It’s a lot of work for states and the feds to submit and analyze plans. If it is not helping, why continue with the process?

The point of growth models is to identify schools that are missing absolute performance standards but are making a lot of growth. What if the North Carolina didn't identify any such schools because there, you know, aren't any?

To say that it's not "helping" is to give the game away -- to AFTie Beth the issue isn't what's true or false. The issue is what helps the cause. If the facts support the cause, great. If they don't, that's their fault. This is why far too many education policy issues are hopelessly politicized, and why students get stuck with irrational systems as a result.