Yesterday was the third birthday of this blog. I started the blog on April 26, 2012. Today it reached 20 million page views!
Thank you to every reader who enjoys the content or who reads it as a reality check about the toxic, failed policies called “reform.” (Or both.) The mainstream media are infatuated with the reformers’ bold ideas to disrupt the education of the nation’s children.
But guess what? Their ideas don’t work. Their ideas hurt children. Their ideas close schools and hurt communities. Their ideas demoralize teachers. They focus everyone on test scores. Thry don’t improve education, they cheapen it.
Education has civic and humane purposes that can’t be measured by a standardized test.
Educating children is hard work that requires dedicated service and a commitment to the children, not for a year or two, but as a career.
Thank you for keeping me going with uour suggestions, your links to local events, and your support. Thank you for reading. Thank you for your loyalty.
This current madness will not last. Don’t quit, stand tall and keep teaching, keep fighting for better education.
Please join the Network for Public Education. Come to our next annual conference. Protect your children. Do what you love. Help is on the way. We are many. They are few. We will win.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It would be interesting to see the timeline when you hit 1 million, 5 million, 10 million, 15 million.
I will probably show a shorter time from between each milestone.
I agree!
Would make a great exponential function story problem!
Spoken like a true mathematician…:-)
Actually on April 6 the day after 19 million hits I predicted 20 million in 2 weeks. I was wrong- it was 3 weeks. So math teachers- what is this blogs rate of growth?
17 million: January 28, 2015
18 million: March 6, 2015
19 million : April 5, 2015
20 million: April 27 2015
There are more data points of course but this was all I had time to look up.
Excellent. Using those numbers, the site is growing by 93.29% per year (the regression is y = 16.09*(1.9329)^t where t is in years since 1/1/2015. The r^2 correlation is an incredibly high 0.992, suggesting that this is true exponential growth, but I’ll note that this model predicts the 21 million mark to be reached in 27.46 days. The growth rate is only rising!
Good, subversive, real life math problem:
“If the leading blog of the Resistance to the take-over of public education, written by Diane Ravitch, hit 19 million views on April 5, 2015 and each day there is a growing awareness of the corporate destruction of the cornerstone of our democracy, how long will it take until the privatizers grow bored and seek out new targets?”
But caution!
Statistics cannot tell the whole story, cannot predict outside events which have an impact on the hypotheticals. Perhaps if not for the tragedy in Nepal, the blog would have reached 20 million yesterday?
Not every thing that matters is counted. Not every thing that is counted matters.
Thank you for starting the Network for Public Education and organizing the conference.
I had such an amazing time being surrounded by folks with the WE CAN/WE WILL stance. My experience will carry me through until next year. Please share with the board/staff my many thanks for bringing together so many talented and caring people.
We need heroes and the conference reminded me that they are, in fact, all around us.
Thank you Diane for being a voice!
Happy Blog birthday and congrats on the 20 million! This blog and everyone associated with it are stopping and reversing the damage that has been done to public education. Thank you Diane! You educate us, we receive the news here, but we receive a lot of hope. 🙂
I have shared links to your site to the entire faculty at my school, so hopefully you have picked up a few readers that way. Question: if we have a story we think you may find worthy of posting, what is the best way to send it to you? Do you prefer that we just post it in the comments section of a relevant blog entry? Congratulations on the success of the blog, and thank you for all you do for public education.
I believe you do a GREAT job!!! It is hard to keep your anger in check and get your point across and you have that gift!!! I watched some of your questions to Randi Weingardener and Lily ___ and I was very impressed by your timing and calmness as they answer questions. I was reading the chat going on at the same time between people who were very unhappy with some of there responses. You are able to keep your cool about issues and get your point across very well!!! Keep leading and we will be watching and supporting you. Thank you!!!
de acuerdo
Superlative!!
Amen.
Thank you for your work.
Blogs are becoming an increasingly important mechanism to combat corporate education reform. Thankfully, we have two blogs in Seattle that cover education reform. Both of these blogs are starting to get recognition within mainstream media.
You are welcome, and thank you for being a dependable source of truth in a world where “lies, and the lying liars who tell them”*, have become the rule.
*vSenator Al Franken’s title for his book on this subject, which he wrote after completing a genuine study.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/11/highereducation.news1
YAAAAAAAYYYY!
Each new view translates to several more people – teachers, administrators, parents, students – who learn that they are neither crazy nor alone.
And thanks for a WONDERFUL, POWERFUL, JOYFUL conference which included so many of the people above.
Thank You!
Congratulations, Diane, and thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!! You are the true leader of this movement, and the results of all of your hard work are finally coming to fruition!!!
“Protect your children. Do what you love. Help is on the way. We are many. They are few. We will win.”
Bill Gates spends a fortune on PR and messaging. He could not buy more perfect, simple, and clear “messaging” than this.
“Buying the Message”
Gates may buy it
But some of us don’t
He will try it
But we just won’t
Who said those beautiful words?
Who else but Diane Ravitch!
I figured it was Diane, but I wanted to make sure. This is my battle cry.
You are the driving force that makes a difference. Thank you.
Congratulations, Diane, on the wonderful achievement of 20 million blog hits! Wow. But not surprising. The movement grows, people garner hope and sanity will prevail; kids (and committed, dedicated educators) deserve it.
I can’t help but find myself wondering, with all of the police incidents lately (wrongful shootings of unarmed people, mistreatment of people taken into custody, etc.), if the reformers will “smell a market” in this arena and begin pushing for charter police forces, and “Police for America” six week training programs! Let’s blow up that public service monopoly. Maybe it’ll work as well as education reform!
Diane – you are the MacDonald’s of blogs. Now servng 20 million! Here’s to the next twenty.
“Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discuss better education for all.”
In the best American tradition:
“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”
¿?
The William Lloyd Garrison way.
Even when the going gets rough you stick to your principles:
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” [Frederick Douglass]
And just what might be the attraction of this blog? Some homegrown talent reminds us to:
“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” [Mark Twain]
Color the vast majority of the viewers of this blog gratified and astonished.
😎
“Education has civic and humane purposes that can’t be measured by a standardized test.”
I think I would have thrown in the teaching towel awhile ago if it had not been for your blog.
It’s reading statements like the one above that keep me going.
Thank you, Dr. Ravitch.
Sometimes I think I just don’t fit into a school that no longer sees developmental appropriate as important. I think that maybe I should return to private school. But then I think about the kids…….and keep plugging. I get tired of my administrators comparing children.
Thank you, Diane…
20 million hits in just three years is an astonishing feat! Thank you for all your good work.
“Education has civic and humane purposes that can’t be measured by a standardized test.
Educating children is hard work that requires dedicated service and a commitment to the children, not for a year or two, but as a career. ” DIANE RAVITCH.
Munro’s commentary: Down with the “Scantron God”! I couldn’t agree more.