An Action Guide

By dianeravitch

September 3, 2012 //

A reader asked me to post this action guide again.

To support public education, good sense, and the teaching profession:

Do what you can when you can where you can and do it often.

Categories Ravitch, Diane

11 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

ReTiredbutMisstheKids says:

September 3, 2012 at 3:44 pm

I forwarded this to EVERYONE the other day. Thank you!

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Tim McFarland says:

September 3, 2012 at 5:48 pm

I think you may be too modest to write this, but important items to add to your action list are reading your latest book and signing up for your blog posts. Before one takes action, one must be aware of the issues involved. In that, you are my teacher and mentor.

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- Candace McCall says:
  
  September 3, 2012 at 7:06 pm
  
  Agreed.
  
  Reply
Linda says:

September 3, 2012 at 5:59 pm

Diane,

Please consider posting the audio of CTU President Karen Lewis at today’s Labor Day Rally:

http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/audio-of-ctu-prez-karen-lewis-at-todays-huge-chicago-labor-day-rally-in-support-of-a-fair-contract/

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Lynda Costagliola says:

September 3, 2012 at 6:30 pm

Awesome! Thank you!

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Candace McCall says:

September 3, 2012 at 7:07 pm

Wonderful list Diane–thanks or everything!

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Teacher111 says:

September 3, 2012 at 8:51 pm

I don’t know if you’ve touched on this, but here you go…

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-09-03/features/os-pre-k-test-disagreement-2-20120903_1_preschools-new-test-child-care-management

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crazycrawfish says:

September 3, 2012 at 9:50 pm

I think we should push for charters and virtual schools to get value added scores. Not all at-risk youth are created equally. Schools like KIPP selectively unenroll less committed students and parents so they have further differentiated their student subgroup beyond simple poverty. In theory, Value Added calculations take into account a student’s previous achievment, which may have already been higher than average for their subgroup, and calculates an expected score increase at a student level. We see that some charters do better than some public schools, but even that may be an illusion, a calculable result Achieved by simply keeping the best swimmers in the pool rather than teaching every kid, regardless of background, how to swim.

Sent from my Samsung smartphone on AT&T

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- Linda says:
  
  September 3, 2012 at 9:51 pm
  
  And how do we know they are not cheating?
  
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  - crazycrawfish says:
    
    September 3, 2012 at 10:30 pm
    
    They won’t do it, but if they did, of course they would cheat. 🙂 They make the formula so complicated no one can follow (at least not the majority of the general public), they make rationalized judgement calls that support their ideas about what they data should look like, they add the variables they like and exclude the ones they don’t, or that would be too inconvientent to collect (but probably more important) and they hoard the data internally which is made all the easier thanks to FERPA. But if we could just get a hold of the raw numbers from someone who’s had too much of the koolaid wouldn’t that be a delicious study to publish?
Eric says:

September 3, 2012 at 11:15 pm

“federal and state regulations are harming their schools and what must be done to remove these burdens”

The official US position is that Fed and states are working together to fulfill US obligations under human rights treaties (e.g. CERD). What unionized teachers owe the nation is an explanation of how their actions/contracts/endorsements/litigation/lobbying are consistent with these treaties.

It’s not enough to accuse the US of a “human rights” “whitewash” (which the ACLU has done). The necessary message is American educators support implementation of treaties such a CERD–here’s our plan an no one has a better plan.

Anything less is a license to privatize. Even if it doesn’t work, providing choice is a necessary remedy if the state can’t compel attendance at a failing school.

NEA members might ask why the old “new unionism” wasn’t leveraged on behalf of CERD implementation. (You wouldn’t want the courts to ask this question first!)

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