This piece about “disruption” was cross-posted on Huffington Post, meaning that I wrote it this morning, got an invitation from HuffPost to write something, and offered to put this post in both places.
I may do this with future blogs, to help spread the message of hope and good cheer about the growing movement to free our schools from the heavy hands of the corporate reformers.
Feel free to go to Huffington Post and leave a comment on the article there.
This is part of our message, those of us who are trying to change the narrative.
Let’s work together to inform the public that the train has not left the station.
There is nothing inevitable about current misguided policies.
The train has not left the station.
The train is headed right for a cliff.
It is time to change direction.
And it is happening.
Americans like their neighborhood public schools.
They don’t want to see them closed and replaced by a school to which they must apply for admission.
They don’t like standardized testing.
They love their teachers.
They don’t want their teachers rated by the test scores of their students.
Common sense will win.
I promise.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you, Dr. Ravitch.
Yes, our movement is growing, thanks largely to you. Thank you, Diane Ravitch!
Thank you, Diane: corporate school reform is nothing more than ALECspeak for: we really aren’t interested in transforming public schools, as much as we’re focused on transferring public education monies to our head fund managers on Wall Street.
Ed deformers have all the big money. But teachers have the truth. No amount of money can beat that.
Those of us who teach with our hearts refuse to be defeated by the deformities in current policy. Every voice is needed so there is no confusion about what is right!
Speaking truth to power as always, Ms. Ravitch! Teachers and public schools are not the problem…that’s just what those who seek to profit from education would have you think. We will not be scapegoats any longer. We are through being silent. We are legion and we are #badassteachers! Thank you for your support and leadership.
I love your message, Dr. Ravitch. I am inspired by your optimism and constant hopefulness.
When I supported President Obama for his second term, I had misgivings because of Arne Duncan and what was happening with the RTTT. I now believe that the current education policies of our government, supported by all of these super rich foundations are as dangerous and destructive (perhaps more so) as George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. Both of these misguided endeavors were/are based on false assumptions. The “leaders” in charge are deaf to any criticism and blind to the evidence in front of them. While the Iraq war has cost a lot of American lives and left thousands of young soldiers maimed with their lives in a shambles, the misguided “war” on public education may have even more dire consequences for our children and the future of our nation.
Thanks Diane Ravitch for your energetic, tireless efforts in fighting this war for our children and your “Paul Revere ride of early warning” to wake us up to what is really happening.
Tell it sister. Sing it.
Diane, your optimism is an always refreshing tonic.
Thank you.
I would comment on HuffPost, but they’ve banned me for calling Sugata Mitra a charlatan. One insult and you’re kicked out of the agora forever. Mitra is the winner of the TED Education Prize who runs around declaring “knowledge is obsolete” and that kids can learn better if you replace teachers with computers. His TED talk was filled with transparent lies and repackaged ideas stolen from John Dewey. His self-styled “intelligent” TED audience lapped it up uncritically. Another TED charlatan is Sir Ken Robinson.
Off thread, but speaking of John Deasy (George Buzzetti’s favorite person), I have to ask, “Where are you, George?” I, for one, am worried about you. Long time, no comments.
George Buzzetti was disabled by the software and he will be back. This has happened from time to time to other readers, and I ask my technical helpers to figure out what went Wong. Sometimes it is a server or browser issue. I have no idea what that means, as all I know how to do is write. Maybe it is the NSA monitoring the blog and kicking off certain readers.
Disruption is happening in public education without the input or support of students and teachers. The type of disruption that is needed in public education is the disruption that is occurring when teachers run the schools. This disruption is just getting into the conversation:
Education Evolving Launches “Teachers in Partnership” Initiative
If teachers are to be accountable for student learning teachers should control what matters for student learning. It’s a serious mistake to be trying to push accountability down to the classroom while pulling authority up to the district office, up to the state level and up to the national government.
A good many people want to teach but many, once in teaching, don’t want to stay. Turnover is a big problem. If this country is going to improve retention teaching will have to offer them a really good job and a really good career.
The question of ‘teacher quality’ isn’t as simple as conventional ‘reform’ suggests. It’s not a matter just of individual skills and attitudes. ‘Teacher quality’ depends partly on how the school is organized and run.
On July 25, in Washington, Education Evolving put these propositions to about a dozen of the individuals and organizations most closely involved with teachers and teaching.
Present in the group we convened were: Jo Anderson, Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Education; Katherine Bassett, Executive Director, National Network of State Teachers of the Year; Barnett Berry, CEO, Center on Teaching Quality; Kathy Buzad, American Federation of Teachers; Tom Carroll, President, National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future; Candace Crawford, Executive Director, Teach Plus DC; Richard Ingersoll, School of Education, University of Pennsylvania; Charles Kerchner, Claremont Graduate University; Dal Lawrence, Toledo Federation of Teachers; Fran Lawrence, Executive Vice President, American Federation of Teachers; John Merrow, Learning Matters / PBS NewsHour; Lori Nazareno, Center on Teaching Quality and co-founder of a partnership school in Denver CO; Ron Thorpe, President and CEO, National Board of Professional Teaching Standards; Tom Toch and Taylor White, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Adam Urbanski, Teachers Union Reform Network and President, Rochester (NY) Teachers Association; John Wright, Office of the Chief Learning Officer, National Education Association.
E|E has for a number of years been helping advance the idea that teachers, like white-dollar professionals in other fields, might organize partnerships to run a school, a department of a high school or a learning program district-wide.
The story is told in Trusting Teachers with School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots, by Kim Farris-Berg and Edward Dirkswager, published in 2012.
The partnership idea turns out to link closely with the efforts by a number of these organizations concerned that conventional ‘reform,’ with its scripting of teachers’ work, is driving out some of the best teachers from America’s schools.
Both the major unions, the AFT and the NEA, are interested in building teaching as a profession.
Tom Carroll at NCTAF stresses the importance of teacher collaboration to successful school ‘turnarounds’.
Richard Ingersoll reported from his research (published in Who Controls Teachers’ Work) that schools work better where teacher roles are larger.
In negotiations currently in Rochester NY the union and the new superintendent are currently negotiating a way to build the partnership idea into the new district contract.
This partnership idea, the idea of moving away from the boss/worker model that has been a given in traditional school, is a part of the strategy of innovation being urged by Education Evolving. The thought is not that this is ‘the right way’; simply that to succeed with its effort to improve schools and learning American education policy cannot limit itself to marginal changes in traditional school.
Those from E|E stressed, too, that the idea is essentially to increase the autonomy of the school and to enlarge teachers’ role in the school. This might involve organizing the school formally as a partnership or workers’ cooperative, but equally might involve simply a shift in roles within a school organized in the traditional single-leader model.
Cross posting is a great way to broaden the readership beyond those of us who are obsessed with education and who stop everything to read the latest post on this blog!
GO PUBLIC! Thanks Diane.
Thanks Diane. GO PUBLIC!