Readers of this blog know that we are collecting letters to send to President Obama by October 17.
Please join us in opposing high-stakes testing and privatization.
We call this action the Campaign for Our Public Schools.
Instructions on where to send your email are here.
Lets begin now to make our voices heard.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dear President Obama:
Public education in the US is at a crossroads, and, since this issue is intertwined with our future as a nation, it is one that needs to be dealt with now. Unfortunately, US education is increasingly being taken over by the power of the big money of, e.g., the Broads, the Waltons, the Gateses, while behind the scenes their minions through ALEC ( American Legislative Exchange Council) are formulating legislation to foster their schemes. These are people who have been successful and are expert in business and politics. What, though, is making them and politicians, who are usually lawyers, suddenly expert in the field of education? It is true that education is becoming a big business (because there is so much money floating around for education), but education is not business; it is people. Education is increasingly being judged by business standards—by tests, while students and teachers are being trained not to collaborate but to compete. Teachers are being minimalized in their profession, the one in which they are the experts (Can you imagine teachers telling the bar associations how to operate?)
Now public school money, already lessened by this economy, is being diluted to be shared with charter schools, which are often not judged by the same standards, and in most cases produce comparable or poorer results. In some states their teachers do not even need certification, and often they can teach acceptably anything they choose; e, g, the teaching of evolution can be omitted. Often charters hire TFA (Teach for America) graduates, idealistic young people who have not been properly trained to teach, while at the same time making a mockery of those who are there and have worked hard to get a teaching degree.
Teachers’ unions are increasingly being attacked. These unions primarily stand up for the teachers’ rights, but they are also the advocates for students, since they know and work so closely with them. Teachers see the class counts being increased, while the art and music classes decrease, and for the students’ good they protest. They see students being judged by number and not for creativity. Teachers, like lawyers, scientists and doctors, have “rotten apples” among their number, but usually teachers are the most caring of people. Till recently teachers, public schools and unions were revered in the US. What has happened?
These subjects of privatization, merit pay, teaching to the test and unions are huge topics. They need prodigious thinking and action by Pres. Obama, who has too easily gone along with the “business people and methods.”
Most urgently, the country must deal first with the subject of poverty. About 22% of US children live in poverty. Diane Ravitch, renowned education historian and the voice of reason in this debate, insists that poverty is at the basis of the problem of American education, and she is right. Poverty is the problem with which the US government needs to now deal. Teachers cannot beat the problem of poverty on their own, although many state governments are trying to balance state budgets on the backs of teachers. We are becoming in many ways a selfish country. We are so busy trying not to pay more taxes that we are depriving our young, our future, of what they need. We need to become less I and more we.
I have written this with over thirty-five years of teaching experience in both Catholic and public schools and on the elementary, high school and college levels. I am profoundly disturbed by what I am seeing happen in education, to which I have devoted such a huge segment of my life.
Anne O’Neill Kellers
“These subjects of privatization, merit pay, teaching to the test and unions are huge topics. They need prodigious thinking and action by Pres. Obama, who has too easily gone along with the “business people and methods.” ”
Can I suggest you make this section more active and more personal? Something like, “With all due respect, Mr. President, you have too easily gone along with the “business people and methods” on issues of privatization, merit pay, teaching to the test and unions. These are serious concerns, and you need to think seriously and act responsibly to address them.”
Don’t let Obama off the hook for his personal involvement in this situation.
Here’s a copy of my letter which I emailed to Anthony Cody and sent to the White House:
Dear President Obama,
I am concerned about what is happening to public education. My own childhood was idyllic, and I was fortunate to have received an outstanding education in the Great Neck Public Schools on Long Island. I have stayed in touch with many of my teachers and classmates, and we all have indelible memories of theater performances and concerts, charity fundraising and activism, and growing up in a community that valued youth and education.
Today I am a professor of childhood education at Mercy College in New York. I was also an elementary school teacher, and chose to move to academe because I felt I had something to offer future teachers. During my doctoral program at the University of Michigan, I spent two years supervising student teachers in the Detroit Public Schools. It changed my life. On the one hand, I was surrounded by young children who were loving, eager to learn and to make friendships, and who had resiliency in droves. On the other hand, I saw a crumbling infrastructure around them and appalling conditions in their schools and communities. As someone who grew up around New York City, in an ever-evolving multicultural environment, I was also struck by how profoundly segregated Detroit was.
In the decade that followed those experiences, I have witnessed all around me the devastating effects of high stakes testing. My frustration at the inability of my colleagues in academe to do something about this obsession with competition, with data, and with pitting schools and districts against one another led me to abandon membership in the American Educational Research Association. I stopped reading research and began to focus on the news of what was happening on the ground. The blogging world was doing a better job of covering the unfolding disaster than mainstream journalism, and I began to add my own voice of concern.
On October 17, we are uniting our voices in the hopes that you will listen. Your administration has exacerbated the problems in public education with Race to the Top, the endorsement of value-added measures of teacher quality, the exponential growth of charter school chains, and the belief that technology can replace teachers. You have the power to reverse this downward spiral. Your words and actions can help us move from an obsession with competition to an embracing of collaboration. Teaching well requires an environment in which trust is the most important value, so that ideas can be aired and shared, and children as well as adults can flourish and grow. Our testing system is broken, outdated, and tells us very little about what children know and can do, and yet for some reason the costs associated with reforming assessments are seen as prohibitive.
The apple, Mr. President, is rotten at the core. Please plant the seeds that will help us grow into the future.
Send it again on October 17.
I am a little confused. Are we expected to email our letters directly to Cody or the White House?? I really think if it’s the former, then the intent of this campaign is truly lost. Our emails shouldn’t be going through another party. The purpose of a mass email campaign is to send it directly to Obama with no “go-between”.
You can do as you choose just let us know so we can count you
Anthony will forward a big bundle to the White House on October 18
Diane Ravitch
As per your original campaign, I said I would support it and I intent to do so. I will send my own email and I will let you know Diane. But I do not think having one person send a mass bundle is the same campaign you first suggested that excited me. Having people send their own emails was such a better plan. This on the other hand is just an extension of Cody’s “Letters to Obama” which to date has yielded no great gains. I thought all of us doing this on our own would have a greater impact. But now that impact will be lost.
I already alerted my readers and my friends to send an email on the 17th after you first announced it. And that’s the date I will send it. I just envisioned 100s of emails hitting the WH server on the same day and NOT under the banner of a 3rd party. Needless to say, I think the original plan was so much better.