EduShyster went to the first national conference of the Network for Public Education, and it reminded her of the Biblical story of David and Goliath.
Our Goliath is the giant billionaire who only talks to people who agree with him. When he first encounters puny David, his first thought is, “Who is paying him? Must be the teachers’ union.” Goliath loves money so much that he cannot imagine anyone who is not motivated by money. He can’t understand–he cannot even imagine–that 400 parents, educators, students, academics, and concerned supporters of public education met in Austin and paid their own way! No corporate sponsorship! No union subsidy! Just people who wanted to be there because they are passionate about keeping Goliath’s hands off their school.
EduShyster’s sister, a teacher in Illinois who has watched Goliath swing his axe at her school, wrote a comment that appears in the post. She left the conference excited to know she is not alone. She has many allies. They are everywhere. Her allies have slingshots. And they are not afraid.
Tremble, Goliath. You too will fall. For all your bluster and money, you are hurting kids. Even though you own the U.S. Department of Education, you will not prevail. You will not prevail because your “reforms” not only hurt kids, they hurt teachers. They don’t make education better. They damage communities. Everything you do fails. You are a loser. Got that? A loser.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wait, I thought Eva Moskowitz was David and Bill De Blasio was Goliath. Rupert Murdoch and Mortimer Zuckerman told me so.
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Yes, poor little Eva getting beat up by the big, mean mayor! There was a bizarre scene on Morning Joe just now wherein a success academy teacher and five or six of his middle schoolers were on the set. The children were working in desks on math or something, and Mika was wandering among them as if they were exotic zoo animals- How smart! How beautiful!- and touting the amazing things that take place at success academies…things that happened with regularity in many good public schools for decades (but occur less often since the advent of NCLB and RTTT as well as the financial starvation in many places). My! They even have science every day beginning in kindergarten, often taught through hands-on activities. Of course the space for their science lab was probably stolen from an existing public school and I am sure they received funding from corporate sponsors to stock the lab…but good on ya, Eva.
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Tomorrow the media celebrities and philanthropists and finance sector bigwigs will tour a good, solid public school, one of the tens of thousands that get absolutely no attention or appreciation decade after decade.
Oh, wait, no they won’t.
There are no solid public schools. There are only “failure factories” and then totally miraculous and awesome charter schools.
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Exactly, Chiarra. Their arrogance amazes me on almost a daily basis now.
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Have any of the celebrity hosts or guests on Morning Joe ever darkened the door of a public school?
How do they even know what goes on in a public school?
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Thanks to those who put it on. It was interesting and motivating, and I’m sure it was a huge amount of work behind the scenes.
It’s tough for public school parents because anyone who doesn’t go along with this 100% is apparently a “faux parent” or a “special interest” or someone with a “political agenda”.
That’s how ed reformers have described local parents who disagree with them in, respectively, Tennessee, New York and Newark. We don’t exist, according to them.
It’s like the Velveteen Rabbit or something. The only way parents “become real” is to love privately-managed, publicly-funded schools, endless (and ridiculous) grading and ranking schemes, and cheerleading every wasteful, profit-driven fad that comes down the pike.
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Losers surrounded by yes men and ass kissers who tell them what they want to hear to reinforce their losing goals.
Losers who have billions of dollars.
Losers who are persistent and hate to lose or be told they are wrong.
Losers who will still be wealthy even if they win and destroy the public schools leaving America; its democracy in ruins and poverty spreading like a rampant terminal cancer.
Hitler hated to lose. He told his generals near the end of his Nazi Empire that his people had failed him and they deserved to suffer as much as possible for that.
These billionaire oligarch robber barons and wolves of Sesame Street are cut from the same cloth as a Hitler or Stalin. Don’t expect them to see the error of their ways and just stop after decades of spreading lies and buying people to achieve their goals.
Dig in, we have a long fight ahead of us and when this war is over, public eduction in the United States may be in ruins and have to be rebuilt from the ground up just as Germany and Japan were rebuilt through the Marshall Plan.
I suggest we start studying Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. Cadets at West Point study this book and so do corporate CEOs.
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Let us teachers study Churchill as well. He recognized the nazis for what they were long before anyone else and stood up for what was right when lesser men were prepared to surrender.
“The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
Also: “Never, never, never give in.”
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Yes, “Never, never, never give in.”
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Those losers better watch out…Diane has some pretty awesome and powerful boots.
😉
Wish I could have been there.
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