Michael Krasny is one of the best book interviewers in the nation. I love to appear on his show because he asks good questions. And that brings out the best in me.
This reader thinks you should listen:
“This might not be news to Diane’s readers, but I wanted to mention that her September 30 interview on KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasny is well worth a listen. You can find it on the NPR smart phone app or listen here: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201309300900
“I liked this one especially because in addition to the powerful indictment of “reform” the world needs to hear, there were some fairly nuanced questions and answers.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
OK, not only does Diane Ravitch write compellingly, but she is also astonishingly articulate and incisive when speaking impromptu. What a wonderful interview! I urge every reader of this blog to have a listen. Wonderful. There are many great moments in this interview. Treat yourselves to it!
Perhaps one day after the current deforms crash around everyone’s ears, Diane Ravitch will be U.S. Secretary of Education. One can dream. . . .
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In response to a question about how nimble non-public schools can be, Dr. Ravitch says, in this interview,
“If deregulating schools is a great idea, then our public authorities should be deregulating public schools, but instead they deregulate charter schools and strangle the public schools with regulation. . . . Very reactionary legislatures are literally strangling the public schools.”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
And when asked about high rates of truancy, she says, basically, “Well, if I were a child and my school did nothing but test prep all the time, I would be truant too. I would go somewhere an play.”
It’s so delightful, in this dark time, to hear such sanity.
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cx: “AND play,” of course
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Some of the regulations on traditional public schools are aimed at controing the behavour of the polititions in charge of what is typically the largest local employer. As long as there are a small group of polititions in charge of as many as 80,000 employees (LAUSD has a little more than this), there will need to be limits on deregulation.
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On contemporary history exit exams:
“The history questions are actually fairly vapid. What typically happens on history questions is that they don’t expect that you will know much about history. They will present you with a graph and ask you a question, ‘In what year was production higher?'”
Yes. Yes. Yes. What we are seeing is all skills, all the time, especially in history and in ELA. Knowledge is treated as though it were irrelevant. And because the tests are written in such a way, are skills-oriented, we end up with dumbed down, content-free “and now for something completely different” skills-based curricula of the kind being turned out by the big-box store educational publishers in response to NCLB and RttT. Moral: The standards-and-testing movement has exactly the opposite effects that its backers think that it is having–it leads to the production of incoherent curricula taught using test-oriented pedagogical strategies, with predictable disastrous effects. Good teachers find that they have to try to steal time away from what they are being hammered to do in order to sneak in, between the test prep exercises and lessons, a little actual teaching in their subjects.
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Diane ended with, “… I think a lot of what we are discussing is a great distraction from the high poverty and dramatic income inequality in our society.”
Exactly. And corporate “reformers” have been able to take in big bucks from public funds while creating this diversion.
That says it all.
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