I really don’t want to give indigestion to the corporate
reformers so early in the day, but I have this one consolation:
there are so few of them. Put them all together in one room, and
they might fill the grand ballroom of the Hyatt-Regency. That is,
if they each bring a friend.
But I will tell the good news because it
proves yet again that we are many, and they are few.
This blog has now had more than 7 million page views since it debuted on April
24, 2012. The readers are fed up with attacks on one of our
society’s most precious democratic institutions: our public
schools. They are looking for an alternate source of news,
information, and analysis. They find it here.
They also find dissenting views, because unlike most of the mainstream media, we
are not afraid of debate and dissent.
We find and honor the heroes of American education. We know that some principals and teachers
have died for their students, and we grieve for them.
But we also recognize that there are heroes who stand up for their students
by fighting injustice and destructive ideas. We know that this kind
of courage can get one fired, so we recognize it for what it is:
Heroism. Courage. Integrity. We maintain an honor roll for those
who fight for the kids and for good education every day, who stick
their necks out and take risks.
The pseudo-reformers call me names because I criticize their attacks on teachers and public education.
They don’t think it is mean when they close schools, fire teachers,
fire principals, shatter communities. They think they are leading a
new civil rights movement when they demand the establishment of a
dual school system.
They not only flatter themselves but dishonor the legacy of the real civil rights movement, in which people died
to establish a just polity. They borrow the terminology of the
civil rights movement while substituting the goal–school
choice–of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.
We cannot have great, education by having one set of publicly funded schools (charters
and vouchers) that pick and choose their students, kicking out the
losers, excluding students with disabilities and English learners,
and operating free of state laws, and a second publicly funded
system, required to take all students, including those rejected or
ejected by the other system.
Great school systems aim for equity,
as the Finnish scholar Pasi Sahlberg says, and get excellence.
Finland has a unitary system, no charters, no vouchers, no Teach
for Finland, very little poverty, and a great school system. Also
no standardized testing until the end of secondary school. Think
about it.
And think about this: 7 million page views in less than
18 months. We are rising. Faux reform is failing everywhere. The
tide is indeed turning.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
MAZAL TOV! I am honored to be counted as 1 of the 7,000,000 and to “stand” shoulder to shoulder in the cause.
Because of some of the classes I teach and my involvement with after school programs, I get a chance to really interact with a lot of public school teachers, educational faculty, and parents. Also as a parent myself, I talk to many other parents about education. I find it pretty amazing that, despite the money and publicity funneled into the reform movement, no one is buying. I can’t see how the current paradigm of standardized tests and corporate reform can hang on for much longer. I hope my experiences are representative of everywhere!
Back to work! Just kidding 🙂
Don’t know if you saw this. Cleveland ministers protest “recruiting gimmicks” used by charter schools.
Sigh. Ohio continues to lower the bar for ed reformers:
“A new charter school that parked an ice cream truck behind a Cleveland school district school this summer to attract students has angered neighborhood parents and a regional coalition of churches.
Officials of the Greater Cleveland Congregations and parents of students at Case Elementary School on the near East Side gathered Monday to call that recruiting effort unacceptable and to seek assurances from the new East Preparatory Academy charter school that it aims to provide quality education and not just make profits off students.
Led by Pastor Richard Gibson of Elizabeth Baptist Church, a group of parents and clergy walked from Case to East Preparatory, in the former Immaculate Conception Parish school building at 4129 Superior Avenue, to hand the principal a letter asking school leadership to meet with them.
Principal Joy Beasley met the group at the door and refused to accept the letter, telling the group to mail it. She said she could not accept the letter because it would distract her from educating children at the school.”
I cannot imagine how this ends. I suppose public schools have to respond in kind and hand out ice cream and electronic gadgets?
Where are the grownups in the reform movement?
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/10/charter_school_recruiting_gimm.html
In my district, schools are given an online source of “marketing tools” to prepare for the “Open Enrollment School Fair”. My district also speaks ad nauseum about providing “customer service”. Whatever happened to “teaching in a neighborhood school?”
Reblogged this on CNY Teacher and commented:
Diane Ravitch continues to be a beacon of reason in an otherwise dark and stormy ed-reform world.
“We cannot have great education by having one set of publicly funded schools (charters and vouchers) that pick and choose their students, kicking out the losers, excluding students with disabilities and English learners, and operating free of state laws, and a second publicly funded system, required to take all students, including those rejected or ejected by the other system. “
I think I might single-handedly count for at least one million of those page views. I’m addicted.
I’m right there with ya Dienne. It’s my life line right now. I know sometimes I carry on in my posts and preach and put my foot in my mouth (get full of myself), but every day I learn something new and get inspired to keep doing what I believe in. . .working hard for kids and a system that is welcoming for all children in the US at no immediate, bottom line financial gain to a stockholder.
my comments, not my posts (I know those are not really interchangeable terms but many use them that way)
Dienne & Joanna Best: often, human beings get things right only by making lots of mistakes. And by admitting they don’t know everything and need the help of others to work through a conundrum.
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” [Eugene Ionesco]
Keep questioning, keep posting, I will keep reading.
And how did the owner of this blog get to so many views? “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” [Mark Twain]
Gratify and astonish to the tune of seven million—and increasing daily. And as Dr. Steve Perry (“America’s Most Trusted Educator”—rheeally!—it’s on his website in capitals and big letters don’t lie) never lets us forget:
“Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t.”
Even a broken clock is right two times a day.
🙂
Thanks, KTA. I’ve promised myself not to write at 1:45 a.m. anymore. That’s when I get in trouble.
Sometimes I’m tempted to just go back to song lyrics. 🙂
KTA, Joanna,…
I heard the best quote today: “Your best teacher is your last mistake.” (Ralph Nader?) I must be pretty well educated by now.
Anyone know how we could find out how many posts we have done?
Although I might be a little afraid to know.
Keep posting Dienne, Joanna, and KTA and all the rest. Maybe we can fill one Quixotic Quest Bandwagon and start on a second!!
Beautifully said.
You only learn by breaking things. To learn to be a top flight mechanic you break a lot of things especially if you race. No one has the knowledge magically. It is a process.
Diane Ravich’s process is tearing down the walls of the billionaires as really they are made of wet toilet paper with a magic coating that makes it look strong. In reality there is no structure there and this blog with the commenters and all the subjects are stopping the “Divide and Conquer” and forming Cooperation and organization with full information. That they cannot defend against with fantasy and ideology.
Diane, thanks for starting and doing this. We are taking them down. Just in the last day we are preparing to do a video hook up between N.Y. and L.A. This is going to be fun. This is how we stop them. We trade knowledge and actions which work. This is how you learn and win.
“. . . wet toilet paper with a magic coating. . .”-TOGA
Dang, got my acronym wrong-TAGO!!
I am going to name my next chicken TAGO. Of course after they grow up I can’t tell them apart because I only raise one breed. But it will be there in spirit.
If it’s a hen hopefully it will be a good egg layer!
I don’t eat my chickens, btw. They are just for eggs. And good company.
No, George, most people don’t “only learn by breaking things.” Attention and motivation are required for learning, not “creative destruction” –which is the corporate “reform” approach.
We don’t have to be bulls in every single china shop to learn that some things really are fragile and require care. That includes people with whom we should be forming alliances and “forming Cooperation and organization with full information.”
I think you owe Ratliff an apology for publicly trying to break her.
Huh?
See his comment yesterday here: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/09/ipads-in-lewisville-texas-and-lausd-how-did-lausd-go-wrong/
Congratulations Diane!
Thank you to the wonderfully inspiring group of people who also educate me and keep me coming back here with your informative and insightful comments and personal experiences
I second this “atta WOMAN” for Diane!
WOW! That’s great!
Once again, Dr. Ravitch, you have nailed it. God bless you.
Here’s to 7 million more in the next year!
Diane Ravitch is the Joan of Arc who is managing to survive strongly and burn the reformers at the stake . . . . where they belong. . . . .
Thank you Diane, and thank you to all readers who empower me and each other to transform ourselves and be the best activists we are capable of.
This will still be a long protracted fight with an unpleasant trajectory, but I am convinced that there is hope as long as we keep on voicing ourselves and educating the public with the most powerful weapon: the truth.
The Ravitch blog accomplishes just that.
I have long called Professor Ravitch our Ida Tarbell, our Ida Wells-Barnett, our Upton Sinclair. But these days, as I think about the massive forces arrayed against her, I am thinking of her, instead, as our David and of her blog as the sling that may well fell the giant.
But one must not underestimate the size of those forces. Read my post about inBloom under Professor Ravitch’s post entitled “Andrea Gabor: inBloom, Student Data: Follow the Money.” Read Mercedes Schneider’s posts about who paid for the Common core. The new “standards,” the new tests, inBloom, the new teacher evaluations, Amplify, the tablet sales, the DOE’s facilitation of all these–these are ALL part of a carefully conceived and interdependent strategic plan. And that plan is all contained, in embryo, in this statement by Arne Duncan’s Chief of Staff:
“The new standards are about creating a national market for products that can be brought to scale.”
Several years ago, Duncan’s DOE issued its “Blueprint” for U.S. education. That blueprint called for a) creation of a national database of student responses and test scores, b) creation of new online national tests based on the new national standards, c) getting a computer in the hands of every kid. It’s the Gates/Murdoch inBloom/Amplify strategic plan.
Imagine, a single national database of student responses and test scores hooked up to adaptive online curricula, with inBloom as the gateway, the toll-taker, for delivery of that curricula. Once that database was of any real size, switching from it to another provider would be impossible. It would be, in effect, a monopoly. And every educational transaction would provide the owners of that monopoly with a cut.
I think that very, very few people have put these pieces together, even though how they fit is plain to see when one gives them a bit of thought.
The standards, the tests, the computers, the national database–these are all part of the strategic plan of a new business that seeks to dominate U.S. K-12 education as Microsoft has dominated the world market in personal computer operating systems. Over time, many, many billions of dollars are at stake.
And Duncan’s DOE has been the facilitator of all this. Carrying out this strategic plan has been a MASSIVE undertaking, but the folks implementing it–Gates and Murdoch–have money, power, and influence unprecedented in history.
There are some well-meaning people among the deformers. They have been played beautifully.
One woman, one blog, against THAT.
David against Goliath. Winston against Ingsoc and Big Brother.
Amen! Your points are right on!
Very impressive.
I need people to understand the need for online schooling. 1st- more money into brick&mortar schools has not and will not change the fact that the “no bullying” policy is and will be woefully neglected. The “we can’t be sure who did what” excuse is in full swing in many schools. When a child with no or few friends is not backed up on claim after claim by anyone and the children doing the bullying have all their friends to back up the lies, what happens to that bullyied child? I’ll tell you. Depression, low self esteem, sometimes self harm, sometimes to the cruel end of suicide. Online schooling saved my daughter. All she ever wanted was to have friends, go to school, and be a normal kid. She wanted very much to end it all. She’s been an outgoing girl her whole life. I’ve watched my girl slip away from who she always was and wanted to be. Yes, she is still lonely. Without the constant attacks in her life she is slowly coming back. This is the second year she has been out of the public school. I’m thankful every day that I didn’t loose her for good, rejoice in every real smile she gives. She is my blessing and so is her online school. Many children, not just mine, are relived of the massive bullying they endure in public schools by coming to online schools. It makes me wonder just how many children it has saved. Instead of thinking they just need to grow tougher skin, why not think of what you can say to your own children about bullying. And how they treat others. It wasn’t just a few mean kids. It was the majority of the kids. From small and large verbal assaults to things being thrown. I knew a lady who’s son had mouse traps set off on him. The school (not the same as ours) dismissed it as a joke. Please don’t look at these online school as a bad thing. It could be your child in need of rescue. It could be your child or his/her friend are the reason there is such a need for these schools. Just think.
But the most important reason for online schools is $$$$$$$$. They take money from every school district in the state–and by every account, and by many studies–deliver a subpar education.
Diane is RIGHT about online schools. Here her wise words.
Overall, the whole tax-loop hole for the rich, controlling/funding public schools system stinks, is in need of a major overhaul. Getting corporations out of designing education is one thing, but exposing the truth of why USA dumbs down education here in the first place is better told by Charlotte Iserbyt. John Gatto is another one who tells it like it is, youtube them both to hear why its been such a failure and lets get serious about revamping education for all students by connecting the subjects and embracing immersion curriculum that do not turn kids into 45 minute attention span ADHD prescription patients because its us doing it them in the way we condition them to think.
At this point, our education system is just a travesty of outdated ideologies and extreme one-side males reign supreme views churning out the same abusive results.
It is absolutely time for revision, particularly as exposed in “The Revisionaries” the movie, those revisions cloud reality about what is really the truth of our world, and that world has ignored womens and girls needs to the extend of making them less than human. Rape culture, wars, all these problems stem from refusal to expose depraved egotism in favor of a system which continues to coddle tyrants and continues to let them get away with it.
Example: Hypahtia – we never hear about her do we!! And there is a reason for that and why schools don’t/won’t admit what has historically been done to women to perfect corporate hostile take over of everything. That is the real SIN of human kind against all creation, not the lies and the bull shit we were indoctrinated into believing. Pox on the system, am done with it, just waiting for the rest of my peers to catch up with the lies.
new to your blog. Was wondering if you are familiar with Charlote Iserbyts writings and book The dumbing down of America. She has several interesting videos on the subject on utube. She gives a very interesting chronological history of this whole mess from the 30’s on.
Jay,
If America has been dumbed down sine the 1930s, how did our nation become the largest economy in the world? This makes no sense. Why are people fleeing here? Why don’t they flee to countries with higher test scores?
That is not what i said.. Try watching one of her videos and then maybe you will be educated enough to make a less attacking statement, and see and understand a different point of view.What does the largest economy in the world and people fleeing here have anything to do with the subject at hand.. Who would not want to flee here when they can get everything for nothing.Hows that for a mindless statement