Alaska school board member David Cheezem hopes that Alaska can avoid the costly mistakes that other states are making.
He writes:
“Preparing young people for the future was never easy, but it’s harder today than ever before. We really don’t know what future to prepare them for — what job opportunities they’ll have, what skills they’ll need. All the same, supporting public education has never been more important.
“I think we all know how difficult this is. I think we all feel a little anxious. That very anxiety seems to attract a particular species of snake-oil sales representatives to the education establishment. They exploit our anxieties about the future by screaming, “Our schools are failing! Our schools are failing!” at every opportunity. They spin a fairy tale about lazy, villainous teachers, and shiny new “school reform” heroes. The fairy tale hero sweeps down and takes over the school boards, instigates high-stakes tests, and diverts public school funding into for-profit charter and voucher schools.”
How did he find out about the fairy tale in which Chicken Little is the star? He somehow got an advance copy of “Reign of Error” and he knows to be wary and tread carefully when making decisions about the local public schools and the community’s precious children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am hoping for the same in NC, although we are down the garden path pretty far.
I wonder what those in office will say to distance themselves from Louisiana and Florida when the rap begins to be negative about them (like overwhelmingly negative with people demanding something else). How do you unring that bell?
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I think Ohio is the best bad example, simply because we’ve had this style of reform for so long and we have so many for-profits and so many clearly compromised politicians.
Reformers know it, too. You will never hear an ed reformer talk about the Ohio Miracle. There are no big tv specials on Cleveland, although Cleveland has the same style of reform as New Orleans, no glowing reviews of White Hat Management or the cybercharter chain(s) that are here. We even had a famous reformer! She’s now in Chicago. She’s never mentioned.
Sadly, Michigan seems to be vying for the title of “worst reform state” with reforms that look exactly like what I saw here over the last decade. I am genuinely sorry to see it. They learned nothing from the 16 year experiment next door. It’s a shame. Such a waste.
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We must abandon the pretentiousness of claiming to know the future, the knowledge of which is essential to support any claim to prepare our children for that coming time. We don’t know the future now, we haven’t known it in the past, and we won’t ever know it.
Instead, we need to do what we started to try over a century ago before the original reformers got hold of our public school&mdasg;a true liberal arts education that included not only math and science, but history, literature, the arts, and languages. It was the original reformers and the then-new graduate schools of education that destroyed this plan, the result of the NEA’s famous Committee of Ten, with claims that they had a place for everyone and democracy was served when everyone was in their place. That was nonsense then and it’s still nonsense now.
Trying to structure our educational system on the idea that school is nothing more than training for a future we already understand is insane. Our children are left without the skills and development to participate fully in politics and reflect on their own lives. They live in fear that their jobs will be rendered obsolete one day, and will then be considered obsolete and untrainible themselves. The only people who benefit are the charlatans and fraudsters who peddle their educational snake oil of technologies and techniques that will bring utopia. The fact that they’ve been so successful at this for over a century is enough to make one cry.
The best education for the best is the best education for all. The day Americans realize and accept this, and stop using schools as day care centers cum vocational training sites is the day we’ll start having effective education.
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The less we know, the more we try to control.
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Spot on M&S! Excellent comment!
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What a beautifully laid our argument in the full article. He is using reason the opposite of the billionaires. Reason is the death knell of the billionaires. Use Reason with the rules of “The Art of War.”
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Must be that clean Alaska air! How refreshing to read/hear that someone responsible for schools is invested!
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Thank you so much, Diane! As for the ARC, this is my other job: http://www.goodbooksbadcoffee.com
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Excellent article! Alaskans are lucky to have Mr. Cheezem on their School Board. We need people like him to run for every Office or position available.
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