With school starting tomorrow (and in some districts it has already started), I know you won’t have as much time to read these posts. The typical teacher, according to the Scholastic-Gates survey, works an 11-hour day. And from your comments, I know that most of the readers of the blog are teachers. I know there are also parents, principals, superintendents, school board members, journalists, concerned citizens–and, I hope, students as well.
So I will try to restrain myself, not post as many times each day. But it will be hard. People send me articles from all over the nation, and even from other countries.
My impulse is to share.
I’ll just have to develop a huge backlog. That way, when my fall schedule of travel and lecturing begins, my blog will be on auto-pilot, posting every day even if I am on the road.
I will continue to post the great comments of readers about their own insights into the education issues of the day.
By the way, my first lecture this fall will be in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on September 18. I was invited to speak by the Benwood Foundation. If you are in the area, please try to attend.
Then I will be in Austin, Texas, on September 30 speaking at the annual convention of the TASA and TSBA, the administrators and school boards. I speak in the morning. That afternoon, I will speak to parents and teachers and anyone else who wants to show up at an Austin high school, thanks to the invitation of the Austin Independent School District. I’ll post the details when I know them. Come on over, y’all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is so much going on in education it is nearly impossible to keep up with it all. Thank you, Diane, for your efforts in making the public–and especially teachers–aware of what is really happening.
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I’m happy to read lots of posts. I come to this site looking for education news more than any other source of information, and I often rely on the information you collate here to explain to people the dangers of corporate reform policies.
Having said that, the posts that you have shared about good news have been heartening. They’ll be welcomed when I am eating breakfast before going to work (5:00 a.m., so I hope you’re up early).
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Please keep us up-to-date on your schedule so we may have the chance to meet you and hear you speak. Thank you for everything. I try to check in at night and on the weekends.
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Hi Diane
SHARE, SHARE. SHARE. KEEP ON SHARING ALL YOU CAN.
BEST WISHES ON YOUR SHARING TRIP TO TEXAS.
PHIL kALDAHL NEBRASKA
________________________________
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Keep the posts coming, Diane. I’ll will read them in the evening.
Thanks for your tireless efforts.
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Oops … Scratch the “will”.
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Diane, I was just thinking this morning how I was going to work your blog into my day. I’m also up early at 4:30 so reading you while having breakfast will work for me.
Please send updated information on your visit to Austin. I have family and friends in Austin (I am from San Antonio) and I will share it with all of them on Facebook. I already copied your last paragraph and posted it to give them a heads up.
I saw you last summer in the Bronx at their Educational Conference and you were amazing. What I remember most was your energy.
Thank you for your continued voice.
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Thank you Dr. Ravitch for all you do. Keep us posted on your schedule. It would be lovely to have a chance to hear you speak!
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Good morning…I didn’t know where to share this but I thought it was vital to conversations about school districts and their financial management successes and failures.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/10-inviolable-rules-for-dealing-with-wall-street/2012/08/30/177adc9a-f2c1-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_story.html
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The article mentions “the Poway Unified School District in San Diego. It took a page from the Greek school of bad finance, agreeing to an exotic and costly bit of Wall Street shenanigans. Despite the district’s strong tax base and good credit rating, its officials bought a complex Wall Street-originated exotic loan offering.”
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My grandchildren attend schools in Poway. Thanks for this information, which I’ll forward to my son and daughter-in-law. I wonder if the residents of Poway know about it.
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Linda….here’s a link to the text of the bond offering.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/09/105000149-70-go-bonds-poway-unified-school-district-2008-election-series-b-san-diego-county-ca/
One of the basic tenets of lending (or borrowing) is to not finance something for a period longer than the useful life of the asset. And, better yet, for less than the useful life. I wonder what they have invested in that will last 40 years? I wonder if they considered that with the payments packed into the last 20 years, when maintenance and repair costs grow higher and enhancements needed, their costs then will be much higher than normal. But, apparently they did not consider these things. The actions of this school’s Super and the board are scary.
I speculate that in the end this will be blamed on those “greedy public school teachers.” They still have pensions. Their healthcare coverage includes a dental plan. They are “bankrupting and destroying our country. We must punish them and crush their union before it’s too late.”
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Oiy, this is painful to read.
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/education/article_c83343e8-ddd5-11e1-bfca-001a4bcf887a.html
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The Poway deal sounds like what the state of Illinois did to teacher pensions. Years ago they did some fancy footwork and financed the state pension obligations in such a way that it is only now, twenty years later that the repayments are becoming astronomical. Now they are trying to take it out of teachers hides. They used money that should have been paid to the pension funds to keep taxes low and fund tax breaks for corporations.
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Thanks for thinking of us. I have learned to manage you and your posts by skimming each day and prioritizing. I am a dedicated blogger (Does Experience Count?), and I do not know how you do what you do. I would post once a day if I could find the time. You do multiple posts a day–even though you swore you were going to cut out posting on the weekends. I believe that there is a book deadline looming,… People are always asking me how I find out about all the things I come to know. The answer invariably is NPR or the Diane Ravitch blog.
We very much want to explore the idea of you coming to speak in Delaware.
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Any chance of you coming to New York?
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I will spend lots of time in the midwest this fall. Will post schedule.
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Let us know if you come to Baton Rouge.
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thanks I was in Lafayette on March 1 to speak to La School Boards Assn.
I offered to speak to Baton Rouge newspapers, radio, TV, and oddly enough, none was interested.
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Diane, I urge you to keep posting as you are (unless you can’t because of your travel schedule0. I am retired, so I may not have the best perspective on this as a working teacher would, but it is important to get the information out there.
I many times selectively pass on your posts to friends and on email lists, etc. Sometimes some posts are more relevant to my local situation than others, etc. Everyone will have to judge what time they have to read all of your posts, but just the fact that the information posted on your blog means the information is beginning to circulate. Maybe not the day you post it, but over a period of time.
Your site has become an important source for people wanting to be informed about the attack on public education. Many people feel isolated even though they are strongly against what is going on. You give us hope and courage to resist. Please keep doing what you are doing!
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Thank you, Ken. I sometimes worry about giving readers too much stuff. But letters like yours encourage me to keep sharing.
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Diane,
I will be up at 5 AM to prepare for the coming NYC DOE school year. Already received an email from my principal sharing the excitement for implementing common core and new teacher evaluations. The madness in NYC continues….
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Thank you for all of your posts! I come to this site each day to update myself on what is happening in the U.S. It also helps me support my pro-public education cause with those who don’t get it.
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Share as you can, I’ll be catching up when I can. You have reminded me I’m not insane, alone, or not perceiving things correctly. I continue to fight and enlist others to join.
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Thank you, Kevin. That’s why I do it. So people like you know that you are not crazy; you are not alone; and the attack on our public schools is unprecedented and national.
Knowledge is power, to coin a phrase.
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Keep sharing! We can catch up on the weekends. We need the momentum to keep going.
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Thanks for all you do.. Keep posting and we’ll find a way to do our homework. You are a vital link to endless resources that we all need to be abreast of in this classic battle of the classes.
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Louisiana has already been at school for about 3 weeks. I think they started around August 10th. 90-100 degree weather and they are stuck in school already, in uniforms no less, and some schools don’t allow short pants. Early starting was started as a concession to the testing mentality, giving 3-4 more weeks of “learning” before the April standardized tests. But get this, the age cut off is September 30 so we get some really young kids in Pre-K. In Georgia they began starting early at first, we knew, to try to sneak into a year-around schedule which both parents and teachers opposed. That has never been proven to increase learning retention plus it puts an extra burden on the parents to find child care during the longer breaks. Then last year in Baton Rouge the privately run RSD schools did not have spring break the same week as the publics so my neighbor lost her teenage daughter whom she depends upon to watch the younger ones while she works. Early starts also increase utility bills because the air conditioning has to run longer and harder in August than it does in May. Top that off with the worst part of hurricane season being from mid-August to mid-September. Pointe Coupee, a rural system with a lot of problems was out all last week for Isaac. No telling how long Plaquemenes Parish and St. John the Baptist (LaPlace) will be out for the flooding. The former kind of expects to get hurricane damage, being an isthmus between the Mississippi River and the Gulf, but the latter had not had bad flooding since 1983 and the theory is that strengthening the levees to save New Orleans gave the water no where to go. Hurricane Katrina was last week 7 years ago. Hurricane Isaac was last week on the same day. If they had waited to start school until after Labor Day Tuesday there would have been no days lost in August this year and school would never have opened after Katrina. Maybe if the schools had still been sealed up for the summer the damage would not have been as bad and they would still have real public schools in New Orleans. Such is the thinking of the conservative South. Never do what is best for the children, only what will make the politicians look good.
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Yall heard about the school south of Dallas Texas that got a $68 million dollar stadium paid for with bonds. I think bonds are taxpayer money. Why did they not have to raise the money from private sources? Didn’t Texas postpone buying new textbooks last year or the year before because of money shortages??????????
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Do what you can, when you can, Diane!
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Thank you, Kathy, I try that every day.
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Keep us posted on your schedule. Coming anywhere near the Toledo, OH area? If not, I’ll just keep reading your emails. Travel safely this month and always.
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I will be speaking in Columbus, Ohio, on October 16 at a rally organized by former Deputy Commissioner Bill Phillips.
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You are an oasis in the desert. Forgive me for being dramatic, but I am having a difficult time expressing what this blog has been for me.
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I am OK with multiple posts per day. However, if you want to cut back, here’s a suggestion from another blog I read: Post once or twice per day with the stuff you think everyone should know about immediately, then do a “roundup” of links to other interesting stories at maybe weren’t as pressing or would take longer to explore. If you put the roundup on Friday pm or Saturday am, people can use the flexibility of the weekend to catch up.
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Keep posting, Diane! We need you. I need you.
Today is my 20th day of school. If you count workdays and weekends, it’s my 31st day. During the first three weeks of that time, I worked every school day from 6am to 6pm and 6 hours every Saturday and 6 hours every Sunday. This doesn’t count all the evenings I worked at home, typically until midnight.
That’s what teachers do. And I did it like most of us – willingly and without compensation or recognition.
Just as an FYI, I live in a right-to-work state.
Please keep posting. I make time every day to read your blog AND the links you post AND the comments.
You and Twitter are my connection to the world of education news.
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