This reader read the article by Professor Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske and decided to write to Senator Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
I am so grateful for Helen Ladd’s voice and work.
Here is a letter I just sent to Senator Harkin, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Education:
Senator Harkin,
I urge you to hold a senate hearing to investigate the closings of hundreds of public schools this year around our country. They will be replaced with privately-for-profit managed Charter Schools with no community oversight or process for ever returning them to neighborhood public schools.
Permanent, irreversible damage is happening to our local schools without policy review, or public awareness of the way this movement is being engineered by outside interests.
Please help defend our families and children from this onslaught to break our public schools.
Billions of dollars are being spent by private individuals and corporations to influence this process, along with engineered legislation sponsored by ALEC and other foundations intent on replacing public schools with their own version of education. This is not an innocent pilot project to help our schools.
I urge you to begin the process of investigating this issue that concerns the very heart and soul of our nation.
Sincerely,
Steve Cifka
Retired Classroom Teacher
Parent, Grandparent, Vietnam Vet and father of a soldier leaving for Afghanistan next month.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow Steve. Moving, thoughtful, pointed. Thank you.
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My thanks to Steve Cifka for taking the time to write this letter. His call for an investigation is long overdue.
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Hope Harkin acts quickly. The GOP is already making plans to grab Harkin’s Senate seat when it comes up next year, since he’s retiring. See: Top GOP Donors Seek Greater Say in Senate Races: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/politics/top-gop-donors-seek-greater-say-in-senate-races.html
I’m guessing this means the main GOP tactic is going to be to put up the most conservative candidates who are the least likely to say how conservative they really are.
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This would make a great petition letter. I sent a version to my state and federal senators.
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Of all the politicians, Senator Tom Harkin, has been one of the most vocal and fervent advocates for the learning disabled. I believe he will take note and interest in the serious matter of Mr. Cifka’s letter and plea for an investigation. It is crucial that he act now and not before it is too late. The very students he has worked so hard to bring a level education playing field, such as the disabled, poor, and disenfranchised, will be left behind without the resources and siphoned away dollars for the educational elite plans of sorting and searching for the “value added learner” and the future global workforce. This is not inclusive of those he has championed.
It is a travesty and a shame to think the fast track that this is on could ever be considered as the American Dream or the Education Gateway for ALL children in our beautiful patchwork quilt society. Breaking apart the public school system because some folks are in a hurry to find the commodity of children as their source of wealth and power is beyond the thinking of the civilized American “We The People” country we have dedicated ourselves. Make the system better don’t give up on it or tear it apart!
When this country is no longer about our people and our children, and we can
no longer afford or invest inclusively in their opportunity for the future, we have
betrayed the reason for our birth as a nation. Freedom of opportunity to think,
learn, work, pray or not to pray, dance and sing with hope for a better tomorrow is our promise to the young. Entrepreneurial spirit does not exclude but includes all ideas and respects all contributors and we never know where they will come from or lead us.
Senator Harkin has always been about fairness in education and I hope he will
act now as we are in crises.
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Congressional hearings! That’s a great idea, and Harkin just might do it. He almost made my own personal honor roll with his hearings on the Washington Post’s Kaplan for-profit fleecing of veterans, which took some guts in the face of Graham’s lobbying onslaught.
In fact, Democrats for Education Reform has just unveiled its own panel of newly minted lobbyists, the ‘I’m A DFER’ Speakers Bureau, which “will deploy former elected officials to advance education reform efforts across the country”. They could testify about whether this administration really has closed the revolving door between public service and lucrative for-profit lobbying opportunities.
According to DFER, “The former legislators will be available to testify at committee hearings, address gatherings of state legislators, participate in press events and conference panels, and attend local and national events organized by legislators.”
“Democrats Launch Speakers Bureau To Hold Obama’s Feet To Fire On Education Reform”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2013/01/31/democrats-for-education-reform-launch-speakers-bureau/
The Forbes blogger, James Crotty, seems like a nice enough sort, but he can’t see anything wrong with DFER’s lobbying efforts. He asks for your help: “I need to see evidence of why DFER is such a repugnant group. Where is the empirical data?”
I know many commenters here have lots of empirical data, and I hope they’ll share it with Crotty and Forbes’ business-oriented readers.
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