Arthur Goldstein has taught in New York City public schools for almost thirty years. He has been trying to figure when and how teachers and public schools became objects of scorn rather than respect. He found it in “Reign of Error.”
He writes:
In Reign of Error, Ravitch demonstrates how, by ignoring poverty, America has managed to shift blame to public schools for its consequences. That’s clear when the Governor of New York declares schools with poor test scores deserve the “death penalty,” and the mayor of Chicago closes 50 schools in one fell swoop. The fact that all so-called failing schools have high percentages of high-needs kids is either attributed to coincidence or ignored completely. Standard practice is to replace them with privately run schools that generally perform either no better or much worse. Still, no one can argue they don’t place more tax money into the pockets of investors.
Reign of Error shows us corporate reform is largely about where the money goes. Americans are led to believe teachers earn too much, and entrepreneurs like Rupert Murdoch and the Walmart family earn too little. To correct this inequity, corporate reformers work to erase collective bargaining, unionism, teacher tenure, and other outrages that have left middle-class people able to make a living. This, of course, is all done in the name of helping children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We see daily examples of dis-respect for teachers. Another case – here in St. Paul a progressive district school was forced to move from one building to another 2 years ago, and now the district is demanding that it move again. The teachers and parents don’t want to move but the district is demanding it.
In today’s St. Paul newspaper, an assistant supt is quoted as saying that the school “was succeeding beyond all expectations” – apparently it exceeded all expectations from central office administrators – but certainly not for the parents, educator and students.
http://www.twincities.com/education/ci_24134221/st-paul-weighs-moving-open-world-school-west?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com
The district also just walked out of negotiations with the union:
http://www.twincities.com/education/ci_24134510/st-paul-school-district-walks-out-teacher-contract
Yes, there is something deeply wrong with the existing district school board operated structure in many places.
For some of us, it’s well past time to truly empower teachers, giving them a chance to create new public schools – that’s the idea behind the Boston & LA (district) pilot schools, and the charter movement.
LikeLike
Don’t know if you saw this review, I found it by way of Jerzy Jazzman:
Interesting Quote:
Reign of Error | Deborah Meier on Education
…
“Reign of Error lays out step by step the relentless thirty year drive to either centralize the education of the young—on one hand—or divest it entirely into privatized hands on the other. Finally, the two sides have joined forces on a strategy that simultaneously does both. While this coalition has many old roots, in its current form it began with the fanfare around the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983). Ravitch was, at that time, a supporter of this bold statement that more or less accused America’s teachers and school boards of a plot to undermine American health and welfare of the international scene. We were, said the signers, at risk of becoming a second rate nation if we didn’t take this crisis seriously. I asked my colleague on the NBPTS, AFT leader Al Shanker, why he had signed on. He said it was a good strategy because only in a crisis is the nation willing to put the money into schooling needed to make it really first-rate. He said—as I recall (paraphrased), ‘It’s true our schools are not as bad as the report suggests, but we are entering a new period and they either have to change dramatically or what the report accuses them of will become true. We need a smarter citizenry”
LikeLike