I deleted it because readers alerted me to questions about its authenticity and purpose.
Then my brother told me that to vote it was necessary to reveal personal information.
This is an outrage. Please don’t participate.
Forgive me for posting a sham.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I was going to nominate YOU!
Nothing to forgive.
You have so much integrity! If reformers could match it, our problems would be well on the way to being over.
Speaking of integrity, I was looking back for some comments that I recalled about a speech given by our school superintendent John Kuhn. I located the article posted on Feb 27, 2013. Interestingly, the comments that I was looking for had been deleted? My colleagues and I recalled one particular one about Supt Kuhn being “all hat and no cattle”. We wanted to pose a question to him at a meeting next week about that very thing. Could you please explain why the comments were deleted and is it your usual policy to delete comments that disagree with your thinking?
Harper, I have not deleted any comments. I don’t do that unless they contain unacceptable curse words.
The comment you are looking for appeared on May 21, 2014, from “Agitated Mom”
So, no apology?
Oops, meant that as “No apology, Harper?”
Why should Diane apologize when she gave enough info for people to readily find that page? I searched Google and found it in about 10 seconds located here –it’s the 3rd comment on the page: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/05/21/john-kuhn-explains-how-budget-cuts-devastate-rural-schools/
Opps. Now I see the correction indicating Holley’s inquiry about an apology was directed to Harper. Sorry.
^^^What Mark K said!
I wish I knew how to verify information the way you do… to sieve through information and know the difference between legit & not-legit is a skill/talent/gift I admire. We are “called” to use our skills/talents/gifts… but no one is perfect. Thank you for everything you do Lady Diane. 🙂
A couple of quick ways to check facts on the internet
1. Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/info/whatsnew.asp
2. Truthorfiction.com http://www.truthorfiction.com
3. or just type in the subject to Google/Yahoo
Well, now that the “Global Guru” nominations are effectively closed (here at least), I would like to officially open the nominations for the “VAMmal Voodoo” distinction.
Would anyone like to second the motion?
Yo.
OK. Now that the nominations are officially open ( Thanks Duane,) I would like to nominate Raj Chetty (aka, the “Chetty picker”) because I believe he perfectly exemplifies everything that we have come to expect in a purveyor of “VAMmal Voodoo”.
Besides, he hasn’t received the economics prize from the Ohwell committee as he expected, so he is probably feeling a bit unappreciated so the VAMmal Voodoo award might help in that regard.
No worse than Facebook or PARCC for that matter.
A non-sequitur, but as a proud parent of students in Fort Wayne, Indiana’s excellent school district, I just have to say:
I will not say that I “hate” Governor Mike Pence. “Hate” is too strong a word, and indeed – such a word is so mutually destructive and imprecise that it would ultimately fail to convey what I really mean.
But our governor is clearly a liar, and indeed a clumsy and oafish liar, at that. He is a small man, and indeed a bit of a doofus (had to almost smile when he decided to start his own state-run media operation a week or two ago, and then quickly back-tracked after he got a face-full of pie)
State Senator David Long used to seem (to me) to have a brain in his head (or in any case, he has a hot wife, so all is good, yes?) before he began advocating for convening a national Constitutional Convention (I’d sooner think that a modern secession movement was a “good” idea; better, anyway, than letting these baboons literally tear up the Constitution of the United States). But his recent remarks denigrating Glenda Ritz (and librarians!) – who won a statewide (un-gerrymandered!) Indiana election, garnering support from the Ohio River to the shores of Lake Michigan (a whole hell of a lot more than David Long can claim), revealed him as being a LOT less substantive than I thought.
But now we look at Governor Pence again, and we see a very small personage; a limp-dick liar who, afterall, was only a damned talk-radio lip-flapper before be became governor…right, David Long?
Mike Pence has the audacity (or invincible ignorance, or contempt for the intelligence of his Hoosier constituency) to BLAME THE MESS THAT IS INDIANA’S MANDATORY STANDARDIZED TESTING REGIMEN ON GLENDA RITZ??? GLENDA RITZ DID THIS??
I mean, Jesus Christ! I think Ms Ritz probably gets hassled just for parking her car at whatever office building she works in, or for daring to walk into her office (let alone for having been a librarian); and NOW…NOW our Bobby Knight look-alike lying governor is trying to blame the ridiculous testing regimen that we inherited from Governor Mitch and the disgraced Tony Bennett on Glenda Ritz? fuhgetaboutit
http://wane.com/2015/02/09/pence-to-hold-press-conference-on-istep-testing/
an excerpt:
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WANE) Indiana Governor Mike Pence has signed an executive order to shorten ISTEP+ testing. The governor announced his decision during a press conference Monday afternoon at the statehouse. Pence claimed the timing issue was a result of a dysfunctional Indiana State Board of Education. “Doubling the time of the test is unacceptable and I won’t stand for it,” Pence said. He suggested taking out a social studies section and a reading section. An outside organization has been hired to find ways to trim the length of the test. However, it’s still up to the state board and the test makers, CTB-McGraw Hill, to make the final cuts.
Oh look!! The testing companies get yet ANOTHER contract, to look at ways to shorten the tests that they have a contract to foist upon our students!
And David Long chimes in with:
Monday afternoon, Indiana Senate President Pro Tem David Long supported the governor’s actions saying, “it is inconceivable that the Indiana Department of Education has allowed the situation to get to this point without making other stakeholders, including the members of the State Board of Education, aware of the concerns involved.”
He goes on to venture that, if only the appointed Board of Ed had been consulted, they could have avoided all this. That bastard can go to hell, too.
Indiana voters clearly saw that Tony Bennett was a charlatan and a liar – and those voters fired his ass and hired Glenda Ritz. (And Tony zipped immediately into Florida, where he then had to resign in disgrace amid stories about criminal activities back home in Indiana…criminality that hasn’t been prosecuted yet, for some reason). And Glenda got many MORE votes than the Bobby Knight look-alike liar who-used-to-be-a-radio-lip-flapper got.
I hope – whatever else happens – that Glenda Ritz runs for governor against Mike Pence, and bounces his sanctimonious ass into the Wabash River (and then he can be our first “Sack-o-shit of the Wabash”)
Not much better in NY, where Governor Cuomo has decided that 20% is too low to evaluate a teacher; 50% of the evaluation of a teacher should come from a test.
Jeez, bro, you really heaped abuse on our poor Leslie-Nielsen lookalike governor. My heart is bleeding purple kool-aid in my pity for the man.
But truth to tell, you’ve actually sugar-coated it.
“Lay on, Macduff, And damned be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’ ”
I think non-Hoosier readers will not pick up on your Indiana-specific reference in your final paragraph–the uniquely Indiana award called “Sagamore of the Wabash”.
WIKIPEDIA says:
The Sagamore of the Wabash is an honorary award created by the state of Indiana during the term of Governor Ralph F. Gates (1945 to 1949). A tri-state meeting was to be held in Louisville with officials from Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Aides to Gates learned that the governor of Kentucky was preparing “Kentucky Colonel” certificates for Gates and Senator Robert A. Taft, who was representing Ohio. The Indiana delegation decided to create an appropriate award to present in return.
The term sagamore was the term used by Algonquian-speaking American Indian tribes of the northeastern United States for the tribal chiefs. The Wabash is the “State River” of Indiana and major tributary of the Ohio River. Each governor since Gates has presented the certificates in his own way. Until 2006, the award was the highest honor which the Governor of Indiana bestows, a personal tribute usually given to those who rendered distinguished service to the state or to the governor.
Any site that ranks Pasi Sahlberg at the bottom and Michele Rhee at the top, is clearly upside down. ( which that site did.)