Nancy Flanagan, a retired music teacher in Michigan, NBCT, 30+ years of experience, is one of our best teacher-bloggers. Unlike the pundits who observe the schools from 30,000 feet above ground, Nancy knows whereof she speaks.

In this post, she tries to understand what is behind all the snarky comments and previews of my book, which will debut tomorrow. Some people who never read it denounced it. Some who did said, “yes-but,” and some who know they will definitely not like it nonetheless say they are my “friend” or that I was their “mentor.”

This is her punchline:

I am guessing that on Tuesday there will be an outpouring of positive reviews (spoiler: mine), but right now, the conversation is focused on a kind of general unwillingness to say: this book calls it as Ravitch sees it, and there are a lot of practitioners who increasingly believe she sees it as it is.

Nancy writes:

“If I had read Ravitch’s book five years ago, I may have thought it harsh. When you’re going off to school every day, critiques of education policy take a backseat to lesson plans, and what’s coming downstream from administrators and the school board. But the mass of evidence Ravitch collected in the very recent past, and her conclusions, are stunning.

It’s clear that have [we have] moved precipitously into an entirely new era of public education. People are scrambling to take sides, and it’s pretty clear that lots of publishers, organizations, nonprofits, thought leaders and decision-makers don’t want to come down too hard on their funding streams and future prospects. There’s been a sea change in thinking about the core value of public education in American life–swings in civic opinion, changes in revenue sources, an open invitation to make a foundational public good “entrepreneurial.”

Nancy’s review of the book will appear in the next day or two. But she is right here. I could not have written “Reign of Error” five years ago because circumstances were very different. What has happened since 2009 has indeed been breathtaking. Some of our political leaders welcome the introduction of venture capital into public education. Some sneer at teachers openly, treating them as bottom-feeders, although those who sneer would not last an hour in a classroom.

Five years ago, I would not have said that the future of public education is on the line. Today, it is.

Please take the time to read Kenneth Bernstein’s fine review of “Reign of Error” at the Daily Kos.

TeacherKen, as he is known online, has read the book carefully and taken the time to explain its major themes.

I think you will enjoy reading his thoughtful review.

I know I will take my lumps for leading the charge against the attacks on public education.

I am grateful that those with many years of experience in the classroom, like TeacherKen, appreciate the book.

These words from TeacherKen will resonate with me when I find myself the target of those who sling mud at me rather than engage in civil debate.

TeacherKen writes:

I find myself very much in tune with the thrust of this book.  As important as her previous book was, Ravitch has outdone that with this magnum opus.  

In the beginning, she laid out what she intended to do.  As should be clear, I believe she more than achieved her goals.  It is the opinion of this reviewer, me, a retired teacher who returned to the classroom to make a difference, in part at the urging of Ravitch, that this book is by far her finest work, and is something with which everyone truly concerned about education should read.

I am going to allow Ravitch to close this review, by quoting in their entirety her final three paragraphs, while noting that her final sentence is clearly a push-back at the rhetoric used by some in the “reform” movement.

If you care about the future of public education, and if you care about the future of American democracy (because the two are inextricably intertwined), read this book.

Salon printed today a lengthy excerpt from “Reign of Error.”

Enjoy.

On the other hand, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post printed a very strongly worded attack on me personally and on the book, calling its arguments “ridiculous.”

Blogger Perdido Street School describes the article in the New York Post in this way:

The writer “accuses Ravitch of making stuff up, ignoring scientific evidence, being a hair-shirt-wearing zealot, engaging in nepotism and taking bribes from the teachers unions.

It’s a hit piece that uses harangue, invective and personal attacks to try and destroy her arguments that the education reform movement is actually a privatization movement.”

And goes on to add:

These attacks serve only to try and marginalize Ravitch as a crazy person, a zealot, and in the case of the New Republic attack, corrupt and vengeful.

They have no place in the Post review, but since the whole Smith review is just vitriol masking as a rebuttal of Ravitch’s book, I see why the writer has so many there. 

That the Post published an attack on Ravitch that is this personal and this fraudulent just goes to show how much she and her arguments are getting under the skin of the corporate reformers.

A few years ago, every time you saw an education story in the news, it almost always contained a corporate reform agenda frame to it.

But that is no longer the case these days, as the reform agenda narrative about charters, choice, merit pay and the like gets challenged.

Diane Ravitch is not the sole reason why the reform agenda gets challenged these days in the media and the culture, but she is certainly a large part of the reason why because she has been the most prominent and outspoken in her challenges to the reform movement and those promoting it.

It is clear from the viciousness of the personal attacks against her that the corporate education reformers and their allies in the corporate media are not taking her critiques lightly.

In a strange way, the more vicious they get, the clearer it becomes that the arguments against the corporate reform agenda made by Ravitch and other critics are starting to take hold.