A blogger called ” Don’t Forget South Central” reviewed
“Reign of Error” in relation to the children and schools of that
much maligned and abused city. This is a cry from the bottom of the
well, who knows that his or her dedication has been met with
contempt by the powerful. A sample: “Reign of Error concludes that
disparaging schools makes it easier for the public to accept their
destruction and re-creation as private entities. Schools are being
closed in cities nationwide and its all based on a false premise,
that schools are failing. We are not failing! We are working with
children that come to school under the most difficult circumstances
in recent memory. Has the Great Recession affected you? It has
affected families from poverty even more so. Yet our graduation
rates are up. More children can read and do math. We outscore
students from other countries when you factor for poverty. Reign of
Error rejects the labeling of schools as failures and rightly
assigns responsibility to district administrators who fail to act
when they become aware that a school is under-resourced and all
they offer is labels and blame. “Just as the Chicano art mural
above rejects the label of minority, we educators reject the label
of failures. Hold us accountable for what we is within our reach
and fix what isn’t. How to start doing this? Read the book.”
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The first sentence says it all. Disparaging schools based on standardized testing is a scheme designed to privatize public education. And a tremendous waste of resources which could be applied to hiring teachers back in Philly and putting counselors and support staff back as well. Here in Pennsylvania the School Performance Profiles were just released and the Newspapers trumpet that almost half of the “worst” schools in the state are in Philadelphia. These scores will now be read by the public, with the encouragement of the state and it’s DOE, as proof that the teachers and the administrators in Philly are failing, when the truth is that the scores simply correlate with relative poverty and a school’s zip code. I teach in a suburban middle school and our SPP was close to 92 100; my wife who teaches in a life skills class with severely reduced resources in a Phila public school, well her school scored under 60. So, the lesson according to the state and the media for uninformed parents will be that my school has great teachers (which it does) while my wife’s school has bad teachers (in fact they are saints) who need to be replaced by charter school test preppers while scrapping seniority and other union protections.
I am hopeful that Diane’s message is getting out and that there are enough parents joining forces to stand up to the corporate interests and opt their children out from this disaster.
One wonders what more evidence is necessary to understand that poverty is the underlying issue when it comes to student achievement. Perhaps those that refuse to accept this are in denial and are not prepared to tackle the hard realities that face us.
Thanks to Professor Ravitch, they may finally come to their senses and begin to examine what kinds of changes are necessary to improve our educational system.
I am glad to see this from the perspective of someone really in the “failing” districts. As you can imagine, in NC I don’t get the chance to ask people from LA what they think (only a cousin who teachers in Anneheim and he did not seem to feel threatened by the privatization movement). Others on the outside too often, I think, take on the “well it was so huge and full of problems I think something radical had to be done.” Glad to read this and know about her blog.
If anyone really wants to help Philly, please go to The Philly Inquire often. Comment on education articles to teach the public there what is happening. When I read comments on that site I feel sick and helpless based on the ignorance and support for what is going on there. Commenters say ridiculous things on that newspaper’s site