A reader comments:
To the corporate moguls this is a game of chess, their winnings being billions of dollars.
They have been playing this game for many years now.
The big problem is that they never informed anyone what or whom they were playing against. They just kept making their moves while their opponents never realized they were in their game and therefore never had a chance to make a move.
We are now at the point of check.
If we take RTTT then checkmate, they win.
If we take the NCLB waivers, checkmate they win.
The only thing we can do is call this for what it is, outrageous.
We have to protest their game as destructive to our society and detrimental to students’ education. Now, as before, we have no moves.
We must knock over the board in protest!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t forget to change the game after you knock over the board.
Dear Reader,
I do not know who wins but you lose! Somehow you feel a need to justify the change that is coming. Why should “they” inform you? Who are you? Who are “We”? You are trying to protect a ship that is sinking.
people are organizing. GAME ON!
I don’t think of it like that. I think synergy will somehow come about. Call me Pollyanna, but I that is what I think. I refuse to give in to despair. Good can come from all of this. Good will come from all of this.
Polllyanna,
Where were the screams when NCLB wanted 100% passing rate?
Everyone went along doing their jobs, increasing scores, teaching to the test, knowing that they really couldn’t expect us to have 100% passing. Now we are facing evaluation based on test scores, schools closing, budgets diminishing, loss of Tenure rights, diminished pay scales and many are still hiding from these facts with the thought that it won’t effect me!
Profiteers are picking us apart, state by state, city by city. Too many think that there are not animals out there that would destroy Public education for a profit. Too many still think, this won’t effect me!
I still can’t hear the screaming!
Exactly, Tim! We WERE NOT screaming when 100% proficiency was stated as THE expectation…we WERE LAUGHING!!! Laughing like idiots, I can see now. But we WERE LAUGHING then…bc it ws impossible, no, IMPLAUSIBLE, to think that someone out there could/would TRULY THINK 100% proficiency on ANYthing along those iines was an ACTUAL POSSIBILITY! i mean, i had always thougt that everyone KNEW it was an Impossibility, & so, I laughed just as hard alongside my colleagues. It had to be a joke.
Clearly, & so very sadly, it wasn’t a joke. & it certainly wasn’t funny. Nor am I laughing…I’ve since resigned (just a month and a half ago, actually), and I am putting forth every effort I have in fighting this INSANITY. bc that’s all it is to me today. It sickens me and disgusts me.
Power does not respect Truth — it respects only Power. Many of us have been speaking Truth for a long time now. The only good Truth can do in the situation is to inform and organize, with the ultimate goal of gaining mobilizing the Power which is the only thing that Power really respects.
The money muscle behind the corporate education reform movement doesn’t care who is “right” and who is “wrong”. It cares if the Power of the opposition is a threat, and if that threat can be overcome or is better off left alone. That is all it cares about.
I think society may have to wait until the destructiveness of all of this becomes apparent in the failure in the taken over schools. Believe me most of the charters here in Louisiana are failing big time, but the general populace doesn’t realize this. The media isn’t emphasizing their very poor results, but eventually the house of cards will crumble. However, by that time, many of our GOOD career teachers will retire, as they are doing right and left here, very few students are going into education, and the corporate raiders won’t be able to get enough TFA kids to fill all the vacancies. Jindal is on his last few years, with a 30% approval rating. John White will go then for sure if not sooner. You can only bully the populace so much and then they rise up against it.
If only the cheating in DC under Michelle Rhee would be investigated and publicized, they corporate bubble would burst.
You may be right. The response to this deform takeover will have to be national. Since it is happening all over, systematically destroying public education, educators have to direct a national movement to act for our students and communities. But act we must, sitting back and hoping that we can get through this period will be the death of us all.
youre right, and thats exactly what i have hoped for myself to do since recently resigning after nearly 15 years in the Boston Public Schools. My question is, HOW? I feel like it definitely needs to come from the inside out, at this point, as it appears youre saying paula. anyway, ive started blogging, but have alreadsy let it lapse a little but hope to start up again in the coming days. but other than that, what can I do? ive also testified in front of the joint educational committee on charter schools and mcas bills, but thaT process is SO SLOW; this is an emergency were facing now, so its almost like we need to mobilize the teachers nationwide somehow. or is that an impossibility? idk
Please read my long comment on the Ravitch post earlier today on UTLA and our LAUSD election. It spells out the convoluted reporting in the LA Times today.
I am working on the Monica Ratliff election to the bitter end and urge you all to contact everyone you know who will vote on Tuesday, to support Ratliff.
This race is the key exemplar of how dirty even Dem politics can be, so Chicago-like even in California. UTLA has been blackmailed by some of our State House Dems to endorse the worst candidate, their ‘boy’ Sanchez whom the corporate vultures own, the privatizers of our public schools, the implementers of standardized testing for profit.
It all stinks…but I have no time to re-post my analysis to today’s LA Times article on UTLA by Howard Blume. If you want some insight into why and how our election is totally tainted by the oligarchic billioiniares and their toadies, this will help to understand Ca. State politics.
And keep in mind that Perez, our Speaker of the House, is the nephew of Villaraigosa who brags to all who will listen that he and Deasy will close as many schools as they can, he who was himself Speaker in the olden days…wielders of great power. Perez was only a legislator for a nano second when he srangely was voted Speaker. It is all so incestuous and dark.
Thank you Diane for hanging in with us in California and making it possible for us all to interact.
addendum…please keep in mind that Mayor Villaraigosa is probably going to run for Governor of California in the next election, and being a younger guy, surely has his eye on the White House…so he will kiss up to the billionaire profiteers endlessly.
Same goes for Michelle Rhee, and too many others. Who has the purse has the power!
Joanna, wish I could believe in positive synergy but having been in the political trenches for a long lifetime, I can only believe in working for the better until you drop. There is no magic in politics nor in human nature.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgeYScYe8wI How to play chess properly. As long as they are making the rules, they will win the game. “Anarchy doesn’t mean out of control; it just means out of their control.”
Love the video. Maybe the last move in the video should be used instead of knocking the board over!:)
Ed reform is cancer, not a game.