A reader posted this comment:
My children did go to the local public school. The percentage of Title I students has grown at the neighborhood school. We are still living in the same house since 1977. My neighborhood was once considered middle class. Not now. So, no I did not send my kids to charters or private schools. My oldest son and middle daughter did great in public school. The youngest struggled with focusing due to ADHD. He did okay until high school. We had to advocate for him. The difference being that we knew how. Many of our Title I parents do not know how to advocate or are so busy with their own problems (struggling to find work, just trying to survive) that they don’t have or take the time. I think my children received good educations in the public schools. I think all the testing, lack of money, etc. has made public education suffer. I would also say that the majority of my children’s teachers were very good teachers. I think I was a good teacher, as well. Another part of public school that I liked was the diversity. I have adult children who have friends from all walks of life. That is the way it should be.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This parent is without a doubt a great teacher. Thanks for maintaining faith in the public schools. Teachers can not do it alone.
The dedication of teachers, matched with like-minded parents is the ultimate beauty of any successful school experience. Our children deserve no less.
Thank you for your comment.
I teach at a school that sounds similar to the situation you describe.
I cannot tell you how much we (the faculty) appreciate the families that have “stuck with us”, and thus advocate for the school and our students out in the community.
We have had many parents tell us how glad they were that they stayed, despite all the “Spanish kids” (What our students are referred to as by some of the neighborhood residents), and the constant questioning from family and other neighbors (“aren’t you worried your kid will get “beat up””?, “Your kid won’t get into a good college”, etc).
By the way: we have no students from Spain, we have not had a fight of any consequence in many years and plenty of our students..of all ethnicities..get accepted to good colleges!
Unsurprisingly, the residents who speak ill if our school have no child here, and have never set foot in the building. They don’t know the teachers, they have not spoken to any of our kids.
Many of them talk about being “trapped in a failing school district”. They use a lot of coded language. Fellow Southerners will know what I mean.
I cannot escape the feeling that many of those who bear false witness have a different agenda.
How sad and amazing it is that we have the perfect storm of factors which will continue to provide the ongoing front of the “failing school” that needs fixing through the federal/state control mechanisms of “Education Reform!” Busy parents who don’t have time to understand all the variables yet easily buy into the “transparency” and “accountability” of standardized testing, children who are victims of all the testing who are losing out every single day that they “prepare” for that one indicator of their success, all the valuable learning time lost to create uni-dimensional students, teachers being victimized to do what they know in their heart does not meet the needs of diverse student populations, Phd. reformers standing in front of the dashboard of education adjusting one dial after another and masterfully manipulating children and families to further some agenda – it is a sad time for this society. How do we reverse this course, and get back to doing what the children who stand before us really need?
Interesting! Our small district school is run well mostly by women. We have loved all of our children’s teachers. They truly enjoy children. I really believe the more parents are involved with the school and have a hands on approach to the curriculem the better the students progress. And you don’t have to be wealthy to volunteer in your local school.
Public schools do work for our children…and part of how that happens is when we work for our public schools, as teachers, parents and community members. Thank you for saying so.
Yes, thank you for speaking up for all the students in your school. You got me thinking…
The “failing schools” claim is now used to justify every kind of atrocity against the children in the schools, but somehow this never results in improved schools. When Jon Stewart asked Michelle Rhee to name a place where reform had produced good schools, she couldn’t even fake it. So, what have they been doing?
I just encountered a definition of “disruptive innovation”, which I had not understood at all before. Education entrepreneurs preach it all the time, waving towards a vague idea that randomly damaging our education system to disrupt the status quo will somehow open new opportunities for improvement. Consider Duncan’s famous observation that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans schools.
The actual theory of disruptive innovation doesn’t look for improvement, though. The goal of the disruption is to maximize profit by degrading the product!
This is Paul B. Farrell, in MarketWatch, quoting the New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar, who is explaining Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation in technically advanced markets:
“In industry after industry, Christensen discovered, the new technologies that had brought the big, established companies to their knees weren’t better or more advanced — they were actually worse. The new products were low-end, dumb, shoddy, and in almost every way inferior. But the new products were usually cheaper and easier to use … Christensen called these low-end products disruptive technologies.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/capitalism-is-so-broken-it-cant-be-fixed-2013-02-23?siteid=yhoof2
Entrepreneurs and their political toadies don’t bother anymore to claim that their virtual education products are delivering superior education. They’re attacking your school, bent on installing a lower-quality product, with the idea that the degradation of our educational capacity will create new profit centers.
It is hard to separate better and cheaper in the way that Clayton Christiansen does. A simpler and cheaper cellphone gives African citizens access to information and a formal banking system that would not be available if the only cell phone was an iPhone.
The “cheaper” base-model cell phones predated the iPhone, so they’re not disrupting it. The invention of the cell phone itself is a genuine technological breakthrough, and a triumph of engineering, as is the satellite network that backs it up. Newer base models are more sophisticated in ways that don’t degrade the product at all.
I remember when Telstar was launched. I knew what it would eventually mean, even then, because I used a ham radio (and morse code!). I rode up into the Witchita mountains with a young soldier from Fort Sill, to watch it rise for the first time with a spotter scope. I had assumed that’s what the edupreneurs meant when they claimed disruptive innovations, and I knew they were just full of it.
You’re right that the story of technical innovation is much more complicated than Christiansen seems to present, but I’ve only spent about 3 hours on his work. I don’t think I agree with him, but he’s talking about one dynamic in marketing innovation, specifically not the transformational new technical breakthroughs.
My example of the iPhone was premature. We have not seen the full implications of that technology yet. Perhaps an older one: the printing press. Certainly less elegant than the manuscript, but it changed the.world because it was less expensive.
Better and cheaper aren’t even issues in the disruptive Educational marketing game. Only profit matters. Especially if you capture regulatory control, you can degrade quality to reduce cost, then mandate public funding to maximize profits. There’s no public sector, and no free market, to stop you.
I’ll quote again from Farrell:
“Christensen’s theory of innovation showed how “true revolutions occur, creating new markets and wreaking havoc within industries. Think: the PC, the MP3, the transistor radio.”
The wheel is still spinning on applications of internet and satellite “technology” in education. I’m a visionary and innovator myself, but in our classrooms, profit seekers are trying to freeze out wondrous real advances for their own advantage. Don’t confuse innovation with mean-minded little schemes to curtail and monetize other people’s inventions. The emperor is naked, and has no actual innovations to offer.
If you want to think more deeply than opportunistic market manipulation, here’s Anil Dash’s magnificent rumination on the internet, The Web We Lost:
http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-we-lost.html
He also understands the wheels are still spinning, and proposes ways to bring the internet back into the commons, where (like public education) it belongs.
As it seems to be turning out, the Internet revolution seems to be primarily about communication. It has to have a large impact on teaching and learning, but we will have to wait a couple more decades for things to work themselves out.
Right now gifted and talented students are leveraging the communication possibilities of the Internet into faster and deeper learning. Education is far more in the commons than it has ever been in the past if students have access to the Internet and the desire to make use of it.
I loved this. The thing that rings a bell the most is where the reader states : “We are still living in the same house since 1977. My neighborhood was once considered middle class. Not now.” Often school’s attendance is determined by school districts. With the economy the way it is, families are forced from great districts into not so great ones and forced to ‘make do’ socially, educationally and it tarnishes generations because of – once again money. It is not the fault of anyone in particular, it is, however life and the economy is not going to get any better in the next 5 years. By then, our kids – ages 15, 11, and 6 year old twins will be so far ingrained in our educational system and awful district that I’ve completely thrown in the towel. I give up. I don’t desire to apply for another magnet, neither do I desire to do ‘volunteer’ investigation work to find the kinks at every school in every corner of our city. Fix education everywhere for every child. Use the resources available, become collaborators and communicators – one day at a time.