Dive Brief:

• The teacher union-friendly Alliance for Quality Education launched a Twitter campaign attacking education reform advocate and former CNN anchor Campbell Brown.  
• The Twitter handle @RealCampBrown was created by the organization and ridicules Brown for things like obscuring transparency by not naming any of the funders of her ed reform group, the Partnership for Educational Justice.  
• Brown recently made waves when her organization spearheaded a Vergara v. California copycat suit in New York.  

Dive Insight:

A spokesman for Alliance for Quality Education told the New York Daily News that they do not condone profane tweets directed at Campbell Brown by others. While the AQE's parody handle may have been a low shot, it definitely raised many points. A recent article in Salon also deals with the fact that Brown is not sharing who her donors are, despite the fact that her own group aims to "bring transparency" to education. The word "transparency" has taken on a funny meaning in education circles. For Brown, "transparency" means test scores and the accountability that tests can bring. By having students take tests, reformers believe they will have a better handle on how well teachers are teaching. There is another form of transparency, however, that is equally valuable in education and that is monetary transparency. Understanding where power is coming from and the weight behind a policy is important, especially if one is advocating open information.