Sara Mosle reviewed
my book in The Atlantic, which is unusual because it
won’t be published for another month. I have read Sara’s work over
the years and always found her thoughtful. She is now teaching in a
charter school. There are a few things I don’t agree with here,
starting with the claim that I was the “architect” of the corporate
reform movement. I had nothing to do with the writing of No Child
Left Behind or Race to the Top. At worst, I was a cheerleader for NCLB on
the sidelines, but that doesn’t make me the “architect.” And I publicly recanted my support three years ago.
I also question her implied suggestion that I am far too energetic for a
woman my age, that I blog too much, tweet too much, am too active
altogether. Maybe I should retire to a rocker and take up knitting.
You can’t really evaluate what she writes because no one except the
publisher and a few advance readers has actually read the book. But
clearly she was not happy about my criticism of charter schools.
She is fond of KIPP. It gets high test scores. I don’t like the
idea of charter chains, it is true. I think they destroy
communities and some get their high scores by excluding the most
needy students.
KIPP may be a wonderful chain, but it has yet to
accept the challenge of managing an entire district, leaving no
child behind. KIPP is one charter chain of 100-plus schools, but there are more than 6,000 charters, some good, some mediocre, some run by incompetents some run to take advantage of tax breaks. Typically, research concludes that charters get the same results when they enroll the same demographic. What, exactly, is the rationale for having a dual system, one that can push out kids it doesn’t want, the other required to take them all?
I was disappointed that Sara did not directly address
the central theme of the book, which is my criticism of
privatization and the danger it poses to the very survival of
public education. I think that deserved discussion.
Despite my reservations, I am grateful to have received a relatively even-handed review
from a knowledgeable journalist whose work I have respected over
the years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Speaking for many, I am sure, I look forward to being able to read the book itself.
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I will look at this review, but I am so looking forward to your new book, and I hope you do an awful lot of press to introduce your work to the world, and not just education insiders…
Your last book caused me to beg you to come to California to make site visits to workaday teachers and their supporters, including me, and I was thrilled that you were able to do so.
I look forward to this book’s publication, for the last one, was a really important work that packed a wallup against the forces of the corporate reformers…
Btw, I believe the privatization/charterization movement is not only harmful to public education, but also to democracy itself…
Carry on…
Alex Berg
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Thanks, Alex, I will be in California in late September and early October. In Sacramento, Berkeley, Stanford, and Los Angeles.
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If you will ‘stick to your knitting’, you will have to move to North Carolina.
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Or Florida, Louisiana, Wisonsin . . .
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A remarkably even-handed review of her review. ;^)
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The author is right about one thing: the tide has turned on the corporate education movement. Ironic to see the movement led by Michelle Rhee accuse their critics of being “polemicists”.
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Sara Mosle should be ashamed of herself. Not only does she use many of the methods of propaganda writing in her “review” of your book, her personal attack of you as a woman of a certain age is loathsome. If Rush Limbaugh had said the same, he would be labeled a sexist. As a woman writing with the purpose of holding you up for ridicule, Mosle resorts to a sexist smear method. Shame on her.
Recently at a save our school event, I had a young man make a similar comment to me. (I am a retired, white bearded, male teacher.) Being from the South Side of Chicago, I had no inhibitions replying to him in no uncertain terms.
If I ever meet Sara, I will tell her what to do with her “smoke and mirrors review” – paper cuts and all.
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Should we have a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court Justices or politicians? Is it the opinion that when someone actually reaches the age when they can speak from authority and experience, they should be relegated to a nursing home to spittle and drool their thoughts?
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Reviewing a book that has yet to be published. I know it a common practice, but is it really a book if the public can’t read it?
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Lance, it is rare that a book is reviewed a month before publication.
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Then it is a preemptive strike, not a review.
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I don’t know if they still do, but during my time at college, half the class might be knitting during a lecture or seminar. I never reached the stage where I didn’t have to think about what I was doing and I gave up after one very sad scarf. Good knitters do not have to devote a lot of brain power to the process. It becomes automatic; it would not slow you down at all, Diane. I wish you could write back to her, “I already knit.”
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I once read a funny bumper sticker. It said:
“I knit so I don’t kill people.”
I must skip the fake review by the charter trianer or I will have to take up knitting.
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Wish I could edit…trainer…sorry.
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When I was young, my mom dragged me along to meeting after meeting as a LWV president and school board member. She had to sit long hours, waiting for “executive sessions” to end, or just listening to testimony. She could never sit still, and this quieted her need to be doing something productive with her hands. Didn’t seem to affect her ability to rabble rouse. Too bad I didn’t learn her skill of knitting, but I’m good at the other. I tried learning knitting when I was pregnant and after my twins were born, but didn’t have the uninterrupted time to get into the rhythm, or concentration. You can do both. Can’t wait to see Diane in Denver in September!
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Diane — I respectfully disagree with your analysis of her review, which I read with disgust, and for your respect for her previous reporting, which I’ve also read. Her frame for her review is “on the one hand, on the other hand,” but she struggled to find anything wrong with your analysis. That is why she accused you of being too energetic — she had nothing to say on the “on the other hand” side of her ledger. She is very obviously (to me) undergoing a bit of a wake-up, kinda like a cult adherent’s dawning awareness that their world is about to crumble. Maybe it’s the irrefutable evidence and logic of your argument. Or maybe working in a charter school is “schooling” her in the lies and deceptions of the “reforms” she has embraced. Also, as you pointed out, she sort of missed the whole point of your writings, that “education reform” is not about civil rights or helping minority kids or improving the teaching profession or anything else that is good and just. “Reform” is about the triumph of run-amuck capitalism in the public sphere and the destruction of the most important building block of our democracy.
BTW I think one of the reasons why there is a problem with the public’s perception of the validity of the “reformers” logic is that many if not most people have not had civics in school. They don’t know what our shared American values REALLY are. Maybe that’s one of the subjects that needs to be restored to our schools when the Hyper-testing era is over, as it surely will be.
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From your point of view, dorothy from brooklyn, what ARE “our shared American values” which presumably public schools teach and that charters, vouchers, and private schools do NOT teach? What would that ‘civics’ course teach?
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Harlan — As a teacher in a private school for 30 years, you no doubt are aware of what I meant by “our shared American values” — to whit, the right of EVERY American child to a decent public education, and the right of EVERY American to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as well as to every right enunciated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Our grand “American Experiment” differs from other polities in that our system enfranchises EVERYONE, not just the elite, and educates EVERYONE, not just those children who make it into private or charter schools. By excluding children with disabilities from their schools, charter operators have, IMHO, departed from those American principles and set up an educational system for some and not all. That’s un-American.
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I can certainly concur that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are shared American values, as well as the enfranchisement of all. I am wondering where either in the Declaration, or in the Federal constitution you find language saying a child has a right to an education. Of course, every state constitution has some provision for providing a free public education for all. But that could be removed from a state’s constitution, just like a prohibition against gay marriage, and the federal government would not recognize a “right” to an education. Is not that true?
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Hooray Dorothy in Brooklyn – Bring Civics back as a stand-alone, along with a lot of other humanity-oriented core subjects.
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” a woman my age”
this woman is a teacher!???…….. oh that’s right she’s in a charter
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One more thought. Apparently now “social media” has become a term of oppobrium. I don’t recall Diane launching an instagram attack on her detractors, but since when has a blog or a tweet become philistine weapons?
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You can attack with instagram? I thought it was just a photo site.
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I read the article and was a bit underwhelmed. There was more on Diane’s history and background (and apparently some of that was wrong) and less on the substance of the book. There was a kind of “can’t we all get along” whiny tone to the Mosle’s article that I didn’t like.
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Diane, what is the title of your new book?
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The title of my new book is “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.”
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I have already ordered your new book and look forward to reading it when it comes out in September. Your position at the forefront of public backlash aganist the corporate privatization of public schools makes this new book a must read for me; and your unbelievable energy in marshalling support for public education is an inspiration for us all, regardless of your age. This war aganist public education must be defeated. Our democracy depends on an educated citizenry, not an elete class of priviledged wealthy folks who receive all the benefits and decide who gets what. That situation is why we rebelled aganist the English.
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“This war aganist[sic] public education must be defeated. Our democracy depends on an educated citizenry, not an elete [sic] class of priviledged [sic] wealthy folks who receive all the benefits and decide who gets what. That situation is why we rebelled aganist [sic] the English.”
I presume you are referring to the large numbers of top administration people currently vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, hob nobbing with others of the central party elite.
Did we rebel against the English in order to have public education?
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Sarah’s review was interesting.
I wonder exactly about the percentage of LD, low income, and ELL children her charter school contains. What are the demographics of the children she teaches?
If we are to increase charterization, then I say let all the charters across the nation form a national charter educator’s union. . . . with someone not like Randi Weingarten to lead it . . . .
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Very much looking forward to reading this one, Diane. You always deliver a wonderful book.
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Everybody’s going to die of jealousy, but I actually did get my hands on somebody’s friend’s advance copy of the book. I’m not surprised Mosle is trying to change the subject in advance with her clumsily concocted personal cat fight.
Let’s look instead at the flow of Sara Mosle’s historical argument with herself:
“A former compatriot, Ravitch was perfectly poised to lead the mid-course correction the reform movement acutely needed.”
“Although the reformist camp was more diverse than Ravitch acknowledged, its more hard-line proponents circled the wagons.They declined to scrutinize even the obvious excesses of their movement… ”
“Ravitch was no longer engaging with her critics. She was rallying a base that grew rapidly as anti-testing fervor spread.”
“Ravitch presents Reign of Error as an overture to dialogue with opponents, but her subtitle suggests otherwise: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. ”
“The book reads like a campaign manual against “corporate reformers.”
So, Sara, are you an “opponent” who isn’t inside those circled wagons? Are you among the “diverse” reformers who just wouldn’t or couldn’t pursue a “midcourse correction” of your “movement”, which you imagined to be heading someplace other than the fraud Diane has documented? If you don’t support the privatization hoax, what exactly do you oppose in her work of decisively exposing it?
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Send it to me please?
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Alas, I did not keep my hands on it. Sorry.
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The kindest thing I can say about Sara’s review is that it reminded me somewhat of a typical evaluation of an excellent teacher. Supervisors are told they must write SOME criticisms, so they often invent some kind if eduspeakese to comply.
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I can’t wait to purchase your book. It will be a bestseller because most of us will buy it.
Personally I’d like to see charters as they were originally intended: Schools where teachers could try new ideas. However, these schools MUST be nonprofit and under strict oversight regarding the money. They would have to accept all the children within the attendance area. Schools like KIPP should not be allowed to attract and maintain a select population, as long as they accept public funds. Yes, these schools DO get better results but so does Holy Angels Academy and almost every other school that encourages a select student population. That’s a no-brainer. To “scale up” KIPP, all you’d have to do is demand that parents apply and sign a contract to abide by the rules. When they don’t, the student is asked to leave. I’ll bet that policy exists in every successful private and parochial school in the country.
Another change I’d like to see is (limited) open enrollment in all public schools. In this way a parent who is not satisfied with a neighborhood school could apply to a school in another town. To make this work, the receiving school would have to have the freedom to accept or reject the out-of-boundary student. In order to improve the education of low-income children, it’s imperative to get them out of impoverished schools and neighborhoods. We’ve got to find a way to fight segregation because it sends a terrible message to children of color. Perhaps the federal government could pay affluent suburban schools a significant amount of money for every low-income child it accepts from another district.
Anyway, the best thing about Dr. Ravitch and her book is the fact that she has mobilized teachers and parents against the fraud of the so-called “reform” movement. There will be no reform unless it comes from the people who actually educate the children. I am so excited that teachers have now become a formidable opponent to fraudulent “reform” just as I knew they would be. Never underestimate the power of the American schoolteacher!
“When the largest stakeholders in any endeavor are seen as the opposition, you will fail.”
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The KIPP school in Buffalo was closed by the state after poor test results and a scandal where the under qualified principal was administering corporal punishment. However, this school was located in one of the poorest areas of the city and was full of minority students. They were definitely not an elitist school. However, in spite of the above, if the only evaluation tool was the students’ test scores, it was doomed from day one.
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“I also question her implied suggestion that I am far too energetic for a
woman my age, that I blog too much, tweet too much, am too active
altogether. Maybe I should retire to a rocker and take up knitting.”
I question it too, but I’m not surprised. A lot of education reform seems to value youth very highly, over experience, certainly. Most of the punditry and politician narratives around TFA are centered around “freshness” and “energy” which is just code for “young”.
I wonder why that aspect doesn’t get more attention, because it’s one of the most disturbing trends in the private sector, where middle aged employees are not given credit for “value added” by experience but instead are replaced by younger (and cheaper) workers. A high turnover workplace used to be considered a sign of poor management, now it’s a legit business model. Since ed reform is dominated (at the high levels, anyway) by people who came from the private sector, I wouldn’t be surprised if they brought that particular business model with them into education.
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Exactly when is the tipping point? When does a good teacher become incompetent? Is it when they get their first colonoscopy or is it the day the AARP card arrives in their mail box?
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Oh dear. Guess I’m on the way to incompetence. And I knit, too!
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Not a direct comment, Diane….but i have been follow your blog for a bit and have some questions. (I have attempted to obtain your email address, to send a private email, but you don’t post it in any obvious place, so i’ll resort to this.
in no particular order….
1.Some of your writers claim there are no or little CCS publication of teaching materials? Seems crazy that there are no teach unit and even lesson plans available for purchase, or being shared on teacher networks. Could it be true that a new CSS teacher has to invent it all by himself?
2. A lot of CSS stuff i have seen seems familiar. Wasn’t some of this stuff in use 3 decades or more? (I have not been a teacher, but i was involved with the education of my kids a long time ago
3. Incessant testing is excessive. It bothered me in old NCLB days, and it seems worse now. But the real problem seems to be the emphasis on Charter Schools, a clear abdication of the state’s responsibility,constitutional in many states, to provide a good free public education. State money without accountability seems obscene to me.
4. Don’t most charters have obligation to take on the general population including at risk kids? How do they get away with not?
5. I believe that real problem is parents who either won’t or can’t spend enough time and effort reading with their kids. Raising children seems rather tough these days. Maybe it was easier years ago. But I agree that the current crop of “reform” solutions don’t seem to be making it.
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Barry, I was able to find on line curriculum material offered by the New York State Department of Education for High School English. It listed readings and writing goals for each “module” (i.e. 9 week grading period)(4 modules a year). It didn’t look much different from what I had been teaching on my own for 30 years in a private school. Furthermore, in addition to the ‘chestnuts’ (HAMLET, HEART OF DARKNESS, etc.) there were some new authors and new stories and plays and poems that looked well worth teaching, and interesting to me as a teacher, were I to be teaching in NYState.
I loathe the data collection aspect of the CCSS testing regiment, but in terms of recommended content (by the state), ’embodiment’ as I think it is called, I found nothing to which as an experienced teacher I would take exception.
New York State seems to have supplied a method of embodying the rather abstract CCSS ELA High School skills and goals which I think would work for me, given the chance to adapt to the students who actually show up in my classrooms.
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I am looking forward to reading your new book. I will be sharing it with others that I know who like me, until I started reading this blog had never thought about education being completely privatized.
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Diane
The day you announced that you had finished your new book, I placed an order with Amazon. I am anxiously awaiting its appearance in my Kindle.
You and I are in the same age range and I resent anyone implying that you are too old to be doing what you are doing.
I teach pre-k and intend to as long as I am fit. I run circles around colleagues half my age and knit while doing it. What does knitting have to do with anything? How rude.
I have, over the years, read all of your books and suggest them to students whom I teach at a local college. I must admit I particularly like “The Language Police” I remember reading it on the way to a toy show and quoting you from time to time to my husband who was driving. Thanks to cell phones, I called a few friends to share some of your more brilliant observations.
I went to the Bronx by subway-no easy feat from South Brooklyn-the year that the Bronx had its 1st annual Bronx Education summit. I remember you received a standing ovation and one of my treasures is a signed copy of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”
Anytime I get discouraged or think to myself that I’m too old for this and I should give it up, I read one of your blogs and am re-energized.
You can, if you want, knit and bog at the same time. I often do that.
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I am looking forward to reading it Ordered it through Amazon. I am reading The death of Public Education and I can,t put it down Thanks for educating me. I have been a public school teacher for 20 years and it so bothers me what we have done to our curriculum . The reason I teach is all about the children. I am effective, positive and love my profession. These Gods of Education make me feel terrible and disrespected . I will not let that happen to me anymore. I will fight all the way for our schools and kids.
Thanks for giving me courage!!!
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Diane, if you “retire and take up knitting,” I will come to New York myself to get you to snap out of it. 🙂
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Remind me to tell you what a disaster I was in Home Economics in junior high school when the assignment was to make a skirt.
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I’ve had the privilege of reading an ARC of “Reign of Error.” It is an important book for anyone interested in preserving what’s left of our democracy. I’m president of my local board of education and the ARC is making the rounds among my colleagues. I look forward to meeting you when you visit our town in November. A lot of suburban districts feel insulated from the privatization movement, but we’ve seen firsthand how even independent suburban charters are an inefficient use of tightly-capped public resources that benefit a few while not reflecting diverse learning populations. We dodged the bullet of a language-immersion charter and sued the commissioner of education to prevent a circumventing of charter rules to approve virtual charters. The threat to EVERYONE is very real, which makes “Reign” required reading even for those happy with their schools in communities that are willing to fund open public education. We must remain vigilant.
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Diane – Where is the implication in the review that you are “far too energetic for a woman my age? The only thing I see about this is her assertion that “Ravitch had taken to social media with the fervor of a teenager”
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Give it up Joe. Don’t you have better things to do.
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More invitations to self-censorship, friend from the beautiful state of Connecticut? Are you part of Diane’s Praetorian guard that you must cross your lance in front of her when some delegate from Gaul is admitted to audience?
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Yes, isn’t the post a bit petty, Harlan? I do feel protective especially when they got nothing and they appear desperate. I hope I haven’t disappointed you. I should ignore I suppose. Back to reading.
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Or, you could address the substance of the review and consider your own response to Mosle’s assertion:
“Although the reformist camp was more diverse than Ravitch acknowledged, its more hard-line proponents circled the wagons.They declined to scrutinize even the obvious excesses of their movement… ”
Remember just Wednesday, how “frightening” it was that Jonathan Plucker teaches in a college? He’s one of those “diverse” reformers who finally dared to criticize the corporate reform propaganda stream about poverty. And you attacked him for imagining such a thing even existed out there to be criticized?
Mosle is trying to accomplish that same feat of self-deception: She criticises Diane for not blurring away real attributes of Corporate Reform. But then she slipped up and admitted there are circled wagons somewhere.
Listen to the things she sees inside the circled wagons, but not in her own advocacy:
“They declined to scrutinize even the obvious excesses of their movement: the zealotry of D.C.’s superintendent of schools, Michelle Rhee, who soon found herself linked to a cheating scandal; the shady for-profit charters and so-called cyber schools with no record of serving disadvantaged children; the hastily adopted and unproven teacher-assessment schemes; a pricey new bureaucracy of McKinsey-style reform consultants, deployed even as classroom budgets were gutted.”
So, who are the “they”? Neither of you (non-corporate reformers?) can bring yourselves to criticize them directly, but you both fault those who do. Are you them, or not?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-saving-philosophy/201003/detangling-the-knot-self-deception
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Some of us have been strongly criticizing parts of the charter movement, as we strongly criticized the movement for public (district) school choice program that allowed creation of elite magnet schools that used standardized tests to decide which kids could attend.
Some of us have also strongly criticized the silly practices of trying to “prove” that district or charters are better. Here’s one of many examples
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/50494982.html
There are many things I disagree with in the review but that’s a discussion for another day.
Still wondering what caused Diane to say this: ” also question her implied suggestion that I am far too energetic for a woman my age, that I blog too much, tweet too much, am too active
altogether.”
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It’s her blog, not yours.
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Linda, my comment was a response to this suggestion from chem teacher: :Or, you could address the substance of the review and consider your own response to Mosle’s assertion…”
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My response was to your response nitpicking Diane’s critique of Sarah’s statement about her youthful energy. You attempt the same diversion tactics as one other reader when a post doesn’t bolster your preconceived notions and all of YOUR experiences.
Now you want a reader to stick to the substance of the review when you started off with:
“Diane – Where is the implication in the review that you are “far too energetic for a woman my age? The only thing I see about this is her assertion that “Ravitch had taken to social media with the fervor of a teenager”
I suggest you follow your own advice, Joe.
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It was a very ageist statement, no?
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Robert, I thought it was a compliment. But I suppose you could view it that way. Thanks for sharing your view.
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Ok, we have been warned about the “angle” in this review. But as politicians say: “If my name is spelled right” it is good PR. Magazines always have lag time. This when it appears will keep the points Diane makes “going” and that is worth $$$$ for our cause.
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I find the review bizarre. Mosle praises many of Diane’s achievements, but hedges the praise with mysterious qualifications and a tone of forboding, as if she’s unhappy that Diane has been proven right all the time. Maybe such a tone is inevitable in a review written by a thoughtful teacher at a charter school. Charter schools must be brimming with internal conflict these days.
Note what she says about parents toward the end of the review:
“I hope I’m not alone in searching her new book for traces of the writer who, as recently as 2010, could still see beyond a politicized landscape to understand what draws many hard-pressed parents to charters. They’re not set on this curriculum or that pedagogy, as some reformers suggest. They’re looking, as Ravitch appreciated, for academic “havens”–which is what parents at the inner city school where I teach, once nominally parochial and now a charter, often tell me. They want a place where their children can join peers already driven to achieve in school–a search with another bleak trade-off. The departure of these students leaves other peers, without parents resourceful enough to find better alternatives, stranded in schools that become all the harder to improve.”
Get that? She admits that what parents of charter school students most often desire is exclusivity. They don’t want their kids in the same school with a bunch of slack-offs. The charter school movement is about privatization and profit, but the profiteers have succeeded by exploiting the whispered desire of Americans to escape an egalitarian landscape.
And to be fair, such issues as discipline (and laws that prevent effective discipline), lack of alternative programs for troubled kids, etc. are enormous issues in public schools. Those issues are either politically sensitive or expensive to address effectively, so they go unaddressed; hence the popularity of charters as an escape valve.
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People make decisions about which schools their children will attend for a vast array of reasons.
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Yes, and your point is?
It would be nice to have that understanding of human complexity when standardized test scores are published.
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Relevant to the issues of testing, unions, school choice & districts (all of which Diane Ravitch apparently discusses in her new book), Colleague (not relative) Linda Nathan founded one of the first, and very successful Boston (District) Pilot Schools – one focused on the arts. Linda participated in the Occupy DOE event.
She now has joined the Boston district administration. She’ll be sharing observations here. Should be fascinating & relevant to many people. Here’s a link to Linda’s blog: http://lindanathan.com/
Her “insider” discussion seems useful as people consider what is and is not possible in urban district public schools. Also relevant for those discussing what state and national policies will help and hurt school level efforts to improve their work with students.
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this review seems to be on the mark
EDUCATION
Defector from the school reform consensus
Review by Jeff Bale
Issue #71: Reviews
Share
The Death and Life of the Great American School System:
How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education
By Diane Ravitch
Basic Books, 2010 · 296 pages · $27.00
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