In an article in the New York Times magazine, Joel Klein asserted that his company’s products were needed because spending on education had doubled in recent decades had doubled but achievement remained flat. This assertion was wrong but went unchallenged.
In this article, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute sets the record straight.
The blogger EduSanity has written an open letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, urging him to read “Reign of Error.”
In the interests of finding common ground, as Sam Chsltain has urged, Secretary Duncan should take a few hours and learn what is in my book.
We know very well what Secretary Duncan says and believes. It is reported regularly in the national media.
True dialogue requires a two-way conversation. That means that Sectetary Duncan should listen as well as talk and issue mandates.
Without dialogue, common ground is impossible.
How would the Secretary’s policies change if he were to read “Reign of Error”?
Would he recognize that schools “fail” when they are overwhelmed with needy children and lack the resources to give them the help they need?
Would he abandon test-based evaluations of teachers and principals in response to the evidence or lack thereof ?
Darcie Cimarusti, aka Mother Crusader, reviewed “Reign of Error” for public radio WHYY.
She explains how she got involved in the battle to save her community public schools:
It wasn’t long ago that I had never heard of Diane Ravitch.
I had kids in New Jersey public schools, a teacher husband, and even worked a brief stint in the for-profit education world as the Director of two different Sylvan Learning Centers in New York City, but my depth of knowledge about public education was embarrassingly shallow.
All that changed in 2010 when an application for a charter school was submitted in my small New Jersey town. At first I was dimly aware of what a charter school would mean to the schools my daughters would attend. But the more I learned, the more concerned I became.
Then in April of 2011 I happened to catch WHYY’s Terry Gross’ interview Diane Ravitch on Fresh Air.
And suddenly everything made sense.
She explained that charter schools had veered significantly from their original intent. She warned that charters had morphed into “an enormous entrepreneurial activity” and that charters no longer saw “themselves as collaborators with public schools but business competitors.”
This was exactly what was happening in my town. A charter was moving in and it seemed there was nothing we could do to stop it.
I reached out to Dr. Ravitch via social media for help and advice. With her encouragement, I rallied my entire community, and neighboring communities as well, and before I knew it we had defeated the charter.
It was an incredible journey from everyday parent to public education advocate. I am quite certain that were it not for Dr. Ravitch, and her belief that ordinary parents have the power to turn the tide on the corporate reform movement, my daughters’ schools would now be financially devastated by a charter my town didn’t need or want.
Ravitch’s new book
In Reign of Error, The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Our Public Schools, Dr. Ravitch makes it clear that the current reform agenda, consisting of high-stakes standardized testing, charters, vouchers, parent trigger legislation and school closures, does little more than privatize our public schools and the money that flows through them. The reform agenda does nothing to address the actual problem plaguing large, urban districts like Philadelphia.
It does nothing to address poverty.
Dr. Ravitch makes it quite clear that school reform alone will not lift children out of the cycle of poverty that plagues their communities. “The reformers’ belief that fixing schools will fix poverty has no basis in reality, experience, or evidence,” Ravitch writes in Reign of Error. “It delays the steps necessary to heal our society and help children.”
She presents real solutions, not only to improve our public schools, but also to improve the lives of the children who walk their halls. She focuses on the whole child, calling for prenatal care for women to reduce pre-term births, high-quality early childhood education, a rich curriculum for all children, smaller class sizes, and the elimination of high-stakes standardized testing.
These are all common sense reforms that resonate for parents. This is the kind of societal shift that parents truly want to see for their children, and their children’s children.
Reformers have sold parents a narrative of public school failure that has allowed them to seize control of the conversation regarding how to “fix” our children’s “broken” schools.
But Dr. Ravitch demonstrates quite clearly in Reign of Error that our schools are actually stronger than they’ve ever been, with higher achievement and graduation rates for children across all demographic groups.
“Public education is not broken” she says, “It is not failing or declining. The diagnosis is wrong, and the solutions of the corporate reformers are wrong.”
The current state of the Philadelphia school system should serve as a testament to the fact that the last decade of corporate reform has left the majority of Philadelphia’s public school children without the resources they need to succeed. Without a doubt, it is time for a more balanced approach.
“The public is beginning to understand, to see the pattern on the rug, and to realize that they are being fooled into giving up what belongs to them.”
Parents, don’t be fooled by the rhetoric and empty promises of the reform movement. We intrinsically know that strong, healthy children thrive in a safe, clean neighborhood school with small classes and a rich curriculum. This is what all children deserve, and we as parents should accept nothing less for our own children, and want nothing less for each and every child.
Dr. Ravitch’s appearance this evening at the Philadelphia Free Library coincides with the release of Reign of Error. I encourage parents to go hear her, to grab a copy of her book and to read it from cover to cover. If you are concerned with the current state of the Philadelphia public schools, and want to do something to effect positive change, then really listen to what she has to say.
I can almost guarantee that if you do, she will awaken the “sleeping giant” within.
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Darcie Cimarusti is a former member of the Highland Park Board of Education in New Jersey. She is a member of Save our Schools NJ. She writes the blog Mother Crusader.
David B. Cohen is a high school teacher in Palo Alto and a leader of “Accomplished California Teachers.” He describes his reactions to the book and concludes:
“In exposing the hoaxes and offering solutions, Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error is on solid ground, cogent and well-supported, exposing widely divergent views of how to secure a viable future for kids and schools. For the past decade or more, we’ve tried blaming schools for their own neglect and injecting all sorts of policy and governance disruption into the education ecosystem. Most of that hasn’t worked, and maybe Ravitch’s book will help bring some people around to embracing a truly radical idea: start taking better care of children, families, communities, schools and teachers.”
Peg Robertson is a busy teacher, mom of two active boys, and a leader of the national Opt Out movement. Yet she made time to read Reign of Error. She reports that she appreciates that it is written without academic jargon. The chapters are short. The points are well documented. Every teacher and parent will find useful information to help support their public school.
She writes: “As an activist I find myself continually filing away research, quotes and sound bytes in my head; the Reign of Error has all of these things to support citizens in educating their communities. I can use the Reign of Error to make my message clear and support others in creating action. It is my new Activist Handbook.”
Maybe you have not been anticipating this day as much as I have.
But I can tell you as an author that waiting for “pub date” is excruciating.
It seems like forever between the time you make the final edit and the actual appearance of the book.
I finished about June 1. And now, three and a half months later, it is here.
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and The Danger to America’s Public Schools is available online or, I hope, at your local book store.
It should be in your local public library (if you have one), where you can read it for free.
The great news is that “Reign of Error” debuted at #251 on amazon.com its first day, and was amazon’s #1 rated book in public affairs and policy.
I was in Pittsburgh last night where local parents and teachers organized a rousing pep rally for 1,000 people. The event began with a troupe of about 20 kids masterfully drumming. Later in the program the marching band from once-celebrated Westinghouse High School arrived in uniform. They explained that they had no instruments and have had no consistent band leader for years. A reminder of how Governor Corbett has stripped Pennsylvania’s urban schools of bare necessities. Heartbreaking really. These are talented kids whose enthusiasm is trampled on by indifferent public officials.
I will be in Philadelphia tonight, where the funding situation is even worse.
On September 24, I will be in Denver, then Seattle, Sacramento, Berkeley, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles.
The book has chapters documenting (with graphs from the U.S. Department of Education website) the facts about test scores, about graduation rates, about dropout rates, about international test scores, about college graduation rates, and more.
I look forward to hearing from you when you have had a chance to read it.
I had a wonderful inaugural event in my book tour in Pittsburgh. It was organized by parent activist Jessie Ramey, who writes the blog Yinzercation, and union activist Kipp Dawson. It was co-sponsored by seven local universities, the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, and a galaxy of educational justice groups, including GPS (Great Pittsburgh Schools).
The audience included many elected officials, including the newly elected mayor, school board members, and Superintendent Linda Lane.
The event began with a long and fabulous set played on African drums by about 20 students, who seemed to range in age from 9-13 or so. They were great!
I spoke, then was followed by the Westinghouse high school marching band. They arrived with great vivacity, but their story was heartbreaking. This school, which produced a number of legendary jazz greats, has been decimated by budget cuts. The school’s jazz program was shut down years ago. Now the marching band has no instruments, and their uniforms are hand-md-downs. A speaker, Reverend Thornton, pleaded with the crowd, to make donations to help the band that has neither instruments nor uniforms nor a stable band director.
Anyone want to see the “crisis in American education”? Come see how the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is denying a thorough and efficient education to the children of Pittsburgh. Especially the children of color.
This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Many educators know Eli Broad mainly through the superintendents trained by his institute to view public education as a business: they shut down struggling public schools and replace them with privately managed charter schools.
But here is Eli Broad, lover of the arts, worried about the disappearing middle class:
WEEKEND CONFIDENTIAL
September 13, 2013, 9:42 p.m. ET
Eli Broad’s Entrepreneurial Approach to Philanthropy
Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad on art, education and revitalizing Los Angeles
By ALEXANDRA WOLFE
The philanthropist Eli Broad likes to spend much of his time with artists, whether at his table or by having their work on his walls. Although he made his $7 billion fortune in finance, the 80-year-old Mr. Broad prefers the company of creative types, such as artists Cindy Sherman and Jeff Koons. He even once caught the late Jean-Michel Basquiat smoking pot in his powder room. There’s no way to share these intimate experiences, of course, but he likes to think that at least he’s made it possible for the broad public to experience some of the same artwork.
Mr. Broad and his wife of nearly 60 years, Edythe, have given over $800 million to arts and culture institutions and initiatives in Los Angeles to help transform the city into what he now calls a “cultural capital of the world.” At the same time, he’s using his Broad Foundation’s assets of $2.6 billion to try to keep America’s public schools and medical research institutions world-renowned, too. “I work harder now than when I ran a Fortune 500 company,” he says.
At the end of this month, he’ll announce the 12th winner of the $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education, an award given to an urban school district that has demonstrated the greatest improvement in student performance, and has reduced the achievement gap among low-income and minority students.
Mr. Broad describes his approach to philanthropy as entrepreneurial. Mostly, he says, “what I do is I bet on people.” Mr. Broad himself spends most of his time identifying effective leaders—and then he invests in them and their ideas. He also spends millions of dollars each year coming up with metrics to reveal hard data about performance, and only continues funding a school or institution if it is showing signs of improvement.
His respect for ambitious entrepreneurs could come from his own career, which started with odd jobs such as selling garbage disposals door-to-door and working as a drill press operator at Packard Motor. Born in the Bronx in New York, Mr. Broad moved with his family to Detroit as a child. He went to public school before graduating from Michigan State University. He has since given back to his alma mater by endowing a business school and a graduate school, and by making a $28 million gift to build the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, which opened in fall 2012.
After college, Mr. Broad became a certified public accountant at the age of 20. At 24 he started Kaufman and Broad (now known as KB Home), a company that streamlined construction costs to offer suburban housing with low mortgages. A few years after it went public, he acquired a family-owned insurance business for $52 million that he turned into the retirement savings company SunAmerica. He sold it to American International Group in 1999 for $18 billion, and since 2000 has dedicated all of his time to philanthropy.
The grantee to whom Mr. Broad’s foundation has given the most money is the Broad Institute, a genomic medicine facility he created with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now with over 2,000 employees, it started as the brainchild of the scientist Eric Lander, one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project. The Broads have given $600 million to the institute since 2003.
The Broads have made a big investment in revitalizing downtown L.A., particularly Grand Avenue. (They live in L.A.’s Brentwood neighborhood.) He and former Mayor Richard Riordan spearheaded an effort to build the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003. Mr. Broad gifted an additional $7 million to the Los Angeles Opera this year. “We’re getting more and more cultural tourists,” he says. Mr. Broad is hoping the arts will do for L.A. what artists did for the New York neighborhoods of Soho and Chelsea, making the neighborhoods more lively and desirable.
As the founding chairman and life trustee of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art—and a major donor to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where his $60 million gift helped create the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008—Mr. Broad has unmatched influence in shaping the city’s focus on contemporary art. That power has unnerved some critics, but Mr. Broad doesn’t appear to mind playing a lightning-rod figure.
He is now planning to build another museum called The Broad, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and scheduled to open in late 2014. The new museum will house much of the Broads’ two collections, both personal and belonging to their foundation. In all that includes about 2,000 works, some of which are currently being stored in half a dozen warehouses across southern California. (The Broad Art Foundation has lent out artworks to nearly 500 museums over the years.)
Mr. Broad first began collecting art in the 1970s. His and his wife’s first purchase was a van Gogh drawing for $95,000. They went on to buy a 1939 Picasso, and then a 1923 Matisse drawing. Within a few years, the Broads turned to the contemporary market. They own over 100 Cindy Sherman photographs, as well as a substantial collection of Roy Lichtenstein works from the 1960s to 1990s. Despite Mr. Broad’s penchant for lending, he’s so enamored with a few particular pieces that he prefers to keep them at home in his personal collection, such as a Jeff Koons metallic rabbit sculpture and a 1933 Miró painting his wife loves.
Mr. Broad and his wife bought the works of today’s notable artists so long ago that in some cases they now pay more on art insurance than they paid to acquire the artwork. These days, he says, “Japanese and Korean collectors are buying a lot, along with hedge fund managers and others—in Qatar they spend over a billion a year on art.” It’s an inflow of capital that has changed the market. “The value of the art has gone up dramatically” since he bought his first Cindy Sherman work for $200, he says. Despite the far higher prices, he still buys contemporary art. “Most of the work we buy is produced in the last year or two from artists we know,” he says. He often has early access and sees the work being created in the artists’ own studios.
Along with the social commentary in their artwork, he enjoys artists’ thoughts on “the human condition.” He talks to them about social and global issues, from the disappearance of the middle class to the crisis in Syria. The gap between the rich and poor bothers Mr. Broad, he says, and has been an impetus for his philanthropy. “Artists see the world differently than us businesspeople,” he says. “If I spent all my time with bankers, lawyers and businesspeople, it would be kind of boring.”
A version of this article appeared September 14, 2013, on page C11 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Weekend Confidential: Alexandra Wolfe.
As states cut the budget for public schools, lay off teachers, increase class sizes, fire librarians and social workers, guidance counselors and teacher aides, we hear the same refrain: Sorry, the money’s all gone.
But is it? Read this article and you will find where the money went.
A Korean camera crew showed this photo-essay to me. I think they had a hard time understanding the number of police officers that created “safe passage” for students on their way to school in Chicago.
They came to interview me about how money affects the politics of education in the United States. The producer had a copy of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, translated into Korean. I gave him a copy of Reign of Error to take back to Korea. I asked whether there were any charter schools or vouchers in Korea. He said, “No. But there are alternative schools. The alternative schools are for children who misbehave.”
He asked me again and again to explain why political leaders were closing public schools. He found this concept incomprehensible.
Korea is one of the highest performing nations on international tests. It has the highest proportion of college graduates of any nation in the OECD.
Diane Ravitch's blog 