I started this blog on April 24, three months ago.
I began with the following entry:
I decided to start my own blog because I was overusing Twitter and treating it as a miniblog, which it isn’t.
My weekly blog at Bridging Differences is great fun for me, and I love the format of exchanging letters with Deborah Meier. That format creates a certain aura of informality and encourages me to speak freely in a non-academic tone, the way one speaks to a friend. So, I don’t know where this will go, and I don’t know if I will succeed in remembering: 1) how to access my new blog; 2) my user name; 3) my password.
But if I can overcome these hurdles, I look forward to writing blogs on a near-daily basis, unconfined by the 140 character limit of Twitter, thus relieving my Twitter followers of the cascade of tweets that now clutter their Twitter feed from me.
Now it can be told.
I have posted on more than a “near-daily basis.”
I have posted more than 600 pieces, many written by you, the readers.
I have stopped overloading the Twitter feed of my followers on Twitter.
Instead I overload your mailboxes with anywhere from 5-20 posts daily.
Some of my very best posts are written by my readers, for which I thank you.
My readers are teachers, principals, parents, and people who care deeply about education from all over the world.
A friend wrote today and said that he liked the blog. I said that I always react in my head to everything I read. I used to mutter silently to myself. Now I have a blog and I can write a post on the blog instead of muttering.
So, if I am cluttering your mailbox, I apologize for that. You are free not to read the posts.
But I am having too much fun to stop.
And, one thing more, I have no idea how to access the blogsite. I just click on the latest comment to get there. Someday, I’ll have time to learn that little detail.
The good news is that I do remember my password. That’s an accomplishment.
Keep sending me your local news and comments. I learn from you every day.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This a wonderful, fast moving, helpful journal/broadsheet/blog. I look forward to it every day. Comments are great, too. My older daughter is a TFAr who teaches in a high needs school; when I asked if she read it, she wrote back “Diane Ravitch and I are BFFs.” When I consider how deadly some of the other blogs I follow have become – Jane Austen, T.S. Eliot (essentially defunct), Walker Percy – it leads me to reflect that your blog is so subversive and so useful that it will never receive a mainstream award. Sorry, no Wendy Kopp/William Gates Award 4U. You’re just a teacher’s teacher. Thanks.
Thanks, that is a great way to start the day! And send a hug to your daughter.
Happy three months! I enjoy your blog. It is fun to agree (with you or with commenters) sometimes, to disagree at other times, but always to have an opportunity for lively and civil discussion and to learn about topics.
Sometimes I feel like a pineapple trying to race with a hare, in terms of keeping up with it… but in pineapple style, I just wait until I have a minute or two (which invariably expand into more). I won’t stretch the pineapple simile too far, though, as your blog does things a hare would never do, and this comment does not end with a series of multiple-choice questions.
Your blog has become the first thing I read in my very busy day and it is the one thing I consistently check back into that does not fill my stomach with knots or my thoughts with dread around public education.. Your writing clearly delineates and brings notice to bad, unfair, moronic and mendacious people and decisions in a way that rallies others to attention and/or action. Thank you for chronicling and expounding so eloquently in this dark and greedy chapter of education. Your blog serves a vital service.
Thank you. Your support keeps me going!
Congratulations! I just “discovered” your blog a few days ago. Keep the posts coming. I feel more connected to others who share my views on public education and more hopeful that sanity will prevail.
I am the mother of a public school child in Manhattan. I became very interested in NYC education issues when my child was wait listed at our zoned public school last year. Your blog has broadened my understanding about what’s going on across the country. Thank you for providing this great resource.
I start my day here, check in as often as possible and then before bed. I started reading when the blog was new and have grown and expanded my knowledge and understanding of all things “teacher” since. Someone once said this blog is addictive and she was correct. We are struggling to get motivated, actually just willing, to start school again this fall. My peers seem quiet and anxiety has replaced excitement for so many this fall. So many unknowns, so many “new” programs that make so much work for us it is overwhelming and we spend time, behind closed doors, discussing what to to. We now will triage in reverse; trying to figure out what we cannot do without hurting our students, since accomplishing all of it is humanly impossible.
I share so much from your blog, and even the peers who prefer to try and ignore the world of educational policy are beginning to see they can’t escape it and are listening. I love the hope this blog brings, the sharing of burdens that is so important to people in a crisis and the access to intelligent and soul feeding information and thought that is the start of the tsunami of change that will come. Yesterday the local chapter of the NFT had a seminar on the mess here in Louisiana, it was packed. I judged the quality of the presentation by the quality of the information I gain here on your blog: it came close. That is a wonderful thing here; since at work and in the so-called news, there is a void of not just information but of understanding or interest in what is happening!
Thank you for giving us a standard of truth by which to judge all that teachers are told!
Thank you for your loyalty and for your fortitude. You must believe that we will prevail. There is no alternative other than subservience.
I found this blog about a month ago, and I am also addicted. I read The Death and Life… in a masters course on social philosophy of education over a year ago, and have been a Diane Ravitch fan ever since. (It appears that my professor is also a fan.)
This “place” has brought to light so much more of what is going on all over the country, and it also provides a forum for those of us who are feeling the desperation of uncertainty to discuss and hope for the future.
I have been able to commiserate with and learn from many of the readers of this blog, and for that, I am grateful. I have resolved never take this crusade lightly, but it is inspiring to know that there are so many people out there who have not only taken up the fight, but who have made it a great part of their life’s work to do everything they can to preserve public education.
Thank you, Diane, for being one of them and for your dedication to the cause.
Thank you for joining the discussion!
I wouldn’t miss reading your blogs! The comments are as enlightening as your blog topics. I find it a comfortable way to express thoughts and information. It’s as if we are sitting at the kitchen table having a conversation.
Happy blog anniversary, Diane.
So very glad that you are blogging. You and your readers are keeping running record of the inanities of privatization from around the US, and this is invaluable.
Your blog has been a life line.
If an education historian can have “fans”, then Diane Ravitch surely has many and I am one of them! I’ve long enjoyed the “Bridging Differences” blog that Diane co-authors with Deborah Meier. My familiarity with that ongoing conversation prompted me to read Diane’s book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” (the subtitle is typically dropped but I find its message too compelling to abridge). And last summer I was in the sun-drenched audience when Diane and Deborah joined many other informative speakers (such as Jonathan Kozol, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Rita Solnet) on the stage at the Save Our Schools rally in Washington, DC. In short, Diane’s been keeping me in the loop for quite a while now! So when I learned that she had started a new blog all her own, I jumped at the chance to subscribe — on Day 3 of its existence! Thank you, Diane, for sharing this space so generously with your readers — for encouraging a healthy symbiosis between post and comment, each nourishing the other. The details shared here by you and by your readers regularly remind me that New Jersey is not alone in its struggle to protect public education from private profiteering — and neither am I.
Dr. Ravitch – I’ve commented to you before in this space, expressing (along with admiration) my concern that you may be setting a blogpace that will wear you down, distract you from work on your next book, or otherwise reflect the perils of excess. But your remark to the effect that you’re having fun blogging away at this incredible rate gives me reason to change my view. So please keep it up as long as you truly enjoy it. You’re doing us all a great service. Oh, I can’t say I read EVERY blog (or anyway every word!), but what I want to say is that what you are doing is helping to give public school teachers a firmer and richer sense of (what to call it?) professional identity, professional pride, professional consciousness, solidarity. And the more teachers have this, the more all else is likely to follow. Thanks.
Thank you! You are quite right that it takes time away from the book. I am a bit more than half way through it. I seem to have a need to multi-task so what better way to do it than to use the blog to help people get through tough times?
Thank you so very much for this blog. I too love the education I am getting by reading your words and the comments each day. You have not only given us some of your wisdom, but you have given us a place to share our experiences and happenings in relation to the passions you share. You are the wise sage we listen to in our global village. Thank you Diane
Diane, I really appreciate all that you say, have done and continue to do for children, families, communities, teachers and public education. Thanks so much for expanding here, beyond the 140 character limitation of Twitter, which had also been frustrating for some of us who were trying to respond to your tweets.
It’s really wonderful to have the same sense of community here as we like to see in our schools and classrooms, and to be able to share our concerns, hopes, ideas, etc. with others who have also devoted their lives to the best interests of kids, rather than the almighty dollar. Of course, we have the occasional wrangling here with those who are not like-minded, too, but that comes with the territory when we are up against politicians and profiteers who demonize us and our profession.
I look forward to starting the day now by reading your perspectives on important matters. Also looking forward to your new book! Is there a title that you can share yet –or maybe the topic?
Thanks again for all of your hard work!!
Thank you! Everything I write here is a study for the book. No title yet, or many. I think of this site as my favorite neighborhood, without geographical boundaries.
Diane
Happy 3 Months. I had started to think I was alone in feeling there is an organized attack on public education. Only after reading your blog have I understood it is such a large pot of public money that corporations see as an answer to their dreams. Such moves are not improving education, not creating a strengthened citizenship, not a humanistic approach to inspiring and teaching children a love of learning and compassion. To paraphrase, It’s the money stupid.
I spent 35 years within the Chicago Public Schools and over that time I saw Special Education blossom, project learning, cooperative learning, differentiation being introduced and was proud of my 26 years of teaching and ten years of administration. Now I see everything going in the wrong direction and I find a kindred spirit and great knowledge reading your blog and some peace of mind hearing from others. However we got here, we need to turn around before there is no public education, just public choices based on PR and slick ads.
Thank you for all your efforts. Don’t know how I found you just glad I did.
Diane,
You were the “enemy” to me for many years. I bought and read your “Left Back” way back when so I could “keep your friends close and keep my enemies closer” (which from what I’ve read cannot be attributed to anyone in particular although Sun Tzu said something similar and there is an “Arabian”, whatever the definition of “Arabian” is, proverb).
But the thing I admire about you is that you have been willing to look at evidence, admit that your prior thoughts/thinking was wrong (not many of us can do that) and, not only that but then fight against the very thing you extolled. And I thank you for that!
And thanks for giving us “little guys/gals” a chance to have a say in the national debate, those of us who have been ridiculed and more than reprimanded for resisting, to the detriment of our careers, what you are now showing the “national” audience to be the truths for which we have been, literally, persecuted.
Again, thank you, or como decimos en español, ¡mil gracias!
Keep leading (and I’m not a fan of leaders, but you certainly deserve that title, or should I say epitath-ha ha) as a national voice for those of us that generally are not heard, shunted aside, ignored.
Duane
Love your blog. Have been reading it from the beginning. You shine a light on a world that cries for help for its constituents: students, teachers, parents and public school education. Keeping silent is not an option.
One of the best decisions you ever made was starting this blog. It not only gives you the freedom to pick and choose an array of topics, but you are definitely a go-to for many education reporters. My one wish is that our union leaders will stop bowing to the likes of Gates and Duncan. I am sure you are a thorn on their sides as well. But most thorns are attached to beautiful roses. Thank you for being the rose.