Steven Singer, a teacher in Pennsylvania, went with a group of colleagues to meet with Rep. Dan Miller of New Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Miller had been a history teacher; his aide had been a teacher.
“We crowded together in his tiny district office to talk about how standardized testing is destroying public schools.
“Which brings me to the second strangest thing – Rep. Miller didn’t just agree with us, he did so knowledgeably.”
But why, the teachers wondered, does the state continue to mandate harmful policies?
“Republicans have dominated state education policy for years. They still do. But in Miller we have someone who actually has a say in one of the most critical areas in the state. And he knows what he’s talking about, takes time to meet with real live educators and sympathizes with our cause.
“Which brings me to perhaps the strangest aspect of the whole meeting – Miller’s analysis why more isn’t being done to combat the testing industry.
“The groundswell isn’t there,” he said. “You’re still the fringe.”
Singer asks: where is the middle? Is there a mainstream? Or is it just the lunatic fringe that mandates harmful pixies and the lunatic cringe trying to restore common sense? Is there a middle?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Once again I am stating that the lunatic fringe is not the Republican lunatics alone…they are led by the Dem lunatics like Eli Broad, and sadly,even my Senator Diane Feinstein.
I attended a LAWAC dinner this past week where Feinstein was the speaker. She was introduced by Emporer of the Universe, owner of all things and people, Eli Broad. He lauded her almost as much as he lauded himself.
Then Feinstein graciously thanked him for his into and said how much she admired and thanked him for his generous work in not only the art world, but wonderful his contributions are to education. So much for Feinstein.
I recently spoke to the former beloved self proclaimed liberal Congressman Henry Waxman, and asked him about his stance on charter schools…his answer “I love charter schools”….so Steve and ship mates here, remember Obama/Duncan and all their supporters who are Dems determined to kill off public schools and replace them with publicly funded…but privately run, charter schools.
DC is hopeless. They are head over heels in love with ed reform.
I listened to the Senate debate and it wasn’t a debate at all.
They’re arguing over whether the states or the federal government should impose the same policy they all agree on. That’s the extent of the “debate”- which level of government should put in the same set of policies.
I turned it off when All Franken solved the testing problem by suggesting we just test them constantly using adaptive software – that way they won’t know all we do is test them because it will be like a game.
100% madly and completely in love. They’re gone. The lemmings are off the cliff.
That is depressing, Ellen!
It should not take a groundswell to do what’s right because it’s right, but a groundswell is needed to overwhelm the influence of money and the access it buys in our political system. The influence of money insures that any who oppose it will be replaced by one who does not, by a compliant shill. We must demand that our elected representatives do what’s right based on facts and evidence and promise to back them up when they do by confronting the lies that will be used against us all. A long slog to be sure, but no other choice exists until money no longer plays a role. I think there are enough of us now to do that.
“The groundswell isn’t there,” he said.”
“It should not take a groundswell to do what’s right. . . ”
Well, Jon, you obviously aren’t bilingual in the Lingua Politica. In Lingua Politica “groundswell” actually means “money” in plain English. We know where that “groundswell” is and it’s not in our bank accounts.
As I’ve said before, naysayers, againsts and anti-s seldom win. The best they can do is chip away in one area while losing ground in another. The teaching profession and their unions in collaboration with parents need an executable plan. Lay out a coordinated, consensus driven action plan that focuses on what we are for and how it can be achieved then push the hell out of it at the local, state, and federal level. Quit whining and complaining about what the reformers are doing to education. The state of Washington court decision is an example “chip away”. It targeted education funds. It was an argument in semantics. Believe me, the state will slither around that roadblock in short order probably by reducing the education funds pool then by supporting charters from the general fund or something similar.
You expect the unions to help our cause? Where have you been? The unions are NOT helping teachers. They’re in bed with the “reformers!” They’re being financially propped up by the very people who are supposed to represent education! If the only way we can win is for the unions to take charge, we have already lost.
The national unions, yes and some of the state unions, but when we get down to the grassroots locals where teachers work with high rates of children who live in poverty, there is resistance. Think Chicago for one example.
Have you all not been reading the comments of LAUSD teachers for the past few years? Their local union, UTLA, has not done much to help them. Since many of the the union administrators read this site, it would be helpful if they would join in the discussion and give us a rationale about how they operate.
As to a “groundswell” of activists, I applaud the Chicago teachers who continue to bravely fight back…and certainly on the West Coast, Washington State plaudits for the vote of legislators against charters. LA is a whole different ball game. Those with teaching jobs are either looking the other way and praying they can coast through to retirement, or they are terrified to open their mouths fearing teacher jail.
If you read the LA Times front page ‘soft’ article today on the machinations of the former Supt. John Deasy (who is being investigated by the FBI and the SEC and who might be indicted on various felony charges which the Times neglected to mention), this is who billionaire Eli Broad appointed as the lead infiltrator to turn 50% of LAUSD public schools to charters, “rapidly.”
You might commiserate with LA taxpayers, students, and teachers, as Eli’s billions and his profligate use of cash and powerful terror tactics have ruled the district, and districts across the nation, since, in 2000, he started the hell hole of CEO business model training called the Broad Academy. In only 15 years he has damned teachers, colluded with the Waltons and the Wassermans and other recipients of corporate welfare in tax write-offs (who are usually the silver spoon bunch who never worked but are heirs of those who did) to bring down the entire American union movement and the great universal system of public education.
This is the greatest Robber Baron scheme in history…using public funding for private profiteering with NO need for investment to reap the rewards. No wonder the hedge fund master minds love this.
Spot on! We do need an executable plan. I am tired of whining and reading about our moral high-ground when we do nothing to move forward.
While I sympathize with your irritation with naysayers, I disagree that what works has not been presented. Broad national goals have been suggested over and over again. Diane can probably recite them in her sleep. To ask for a single vision is a mistake. There are many successful programs that would lose if we start to try to “scale up” some one model to a national level. That is the big problem with edTPA. There are many successful teacher preparation programs that would be destroyed by the demands of edTPA. Trying to create a national model that everyone must follow is contrary to everything we know about learning. THERE IS NO ONE WAY!!!
If someone is hitting you over the head with a hammer, the top priority is to get them to stop.
I would not call that “whining”.
Whether apocryphal or not, the exchange between Henry David Thoreau [note: he opposed the Mexican-American war and slavery] and Ralph Waldo Emerson sometime in July 1846 concerning the former’s refusal to pay taxes to what he considered an unjust state:
Emerson: “David, what are you doing in jail?”
Thoreau: “Ralph, what are you doing outside?”
One man. In jail. A fringe.
“The success of any great moral enterprise does not depend upon numbers.” [William Lloyd Garrison]
But before you get to the groundswell you start with a “fringe” like, say, the real civil rights movement.
That’s the way I see it…
😎
Thank you Krazy…Thoreau writes on Civil Disobedience, and this should be required reading for all students, and all activists who want a plan of resistance.
Put it together with Sun Zu and Art of War….and all we need is a leader.
We need more than just a leader. We need a well armed army ready to go.
Add to this reading James Baldwin and The Fire Next Time.
Who will organize and start the revolution?
How about Chris Hedges to lead a revolution?
We are not just on the fringe of lunacy for education, but also for what it means to be middle and working class, for healthcare, for fair taxation, and for waging war. . . . This is all about the overclass and the rest of us, nothing more, nothing less, and education is but a part of it.
If we dumb ourselves down even more and do it systemically through fund starved schools, the masses will not resist the overclass and it will make it all the easier to just give in and to go along merely to get along.
All part of the plan, no?
Exactly Robert…It is the New Normal with the 1% (ALEC) taking it all, just because they can.
David Tyack wrote in one of his books that Americans have always had a propensity for confusing wealth for intelligence. And I think for many of the elites in biz, politics, academia, they are blinded by their own elevation to elite status. They cannot believe they and their peers can be catastrophically wrong in their decisions for how the remote and non-elites’ lives can be improved [to the extent that motive is central in their actions]. I began university life as an Assistant Dean of a law college. While young and newly arrived, I wasn’t treated as a presumptively ignorant person across campus. When I moved to a college of education as a faculty member, that changed immediately. I became invisible or stupid to those from better colleges. If I changed that belief personally, nothing shifted the base presumption. So, the poor have nothing to offer, and “educationists” are also too ignorant to know what’s best. Even were they the majority, locally or regionally, they are still fringe, becuz they live beyond the pale of elegance and intellect.
Mike Sacken:
Succinct, relevant, accurate.
Same thing has happened to me. Just one example: while a SpecED TA, I worked for a teacher [I think she did a good job] whose attitude towards me changed completely when she found out that I was more “degreed.” Suddenly I became an equal, and she made it clear she was glad to have someone like me as almost being the same as a second teacher in the classroom.
I didn’t tell her. Someone else did—and then told me how surprised the teacher was.
The heavyweights of the “new civil rights movement of our time” are literally the personifications of the “entitlement mentality”: it’s not their money or celebrity or power connections but some inherent character trait that makes all the former possible.
That’s why they find it insufferable that folks like you and me criticize them. It can’t be true, because they are very special.
Just ask them.
And they should know.
After all, they wouldn’t be well-to-do and famous and movers & shakers if they didn’t possess that special something…
And unlike genuine teaching and writing, it can’t be measured. Except, of course, by $tudent $ucce$$.
😏
Right on…at the Feinstein dinner I mentioned, at my table a complete stranger who “loves Eli,” said to us all…. “he is so rich that he must be doing something right”…. turned to me, and on me, when she heard that I was a professor and said “well, it is well known that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach”. The less rude at the table, gasped.
LOL
I’ve heard that before and I have so much fun with these ignorant fools when they pull that crap. It doesn’t take long before they are avoiding eye contact with me. I imagine them going home and cussing me out and calling me names for daring to confront them in public.
My usual response is: “I worked fifteen years in the private sector starting as a dishwasher at 15 and was in middle management in a large trucking company by my late 20s. And before college, I was a Marine. I fought in Vietnam. The hardest job I’ve ever had was being a classroom teacher working 60 to 100 hours a week. You have no idea how many times I’d rather be back in uniform as a Marine in combat than facing another classroom of difficult to teach children with abusive, un-supportive parents who think like you do who probably tell their child they don’t have to cooperate with the teacher if they don’t want to.”
Ellen Lubic:
You are too kind.
So, a low blow by someone that feels small and wants to make you feel smaller.
As always, KrazyTA here to lend a hand.
The next time you might add:
“And you know, dear, what one of those ancient Greeks said about that…”
Of course, s/he looks back at you in a surprised (and surprisingly vacuous) way:
“Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach. Aristotle said that. But I’m sure you already knew that.”
Then just smile benignly while they writhe and squirm.
😎
And lest we forget, Jesus Christ was a teacher. Buddha. Confucius. And a few others.
I feel like I should tattoo that on my wrist. Otherwise I will go totally blank when I need it as a comeback.
““Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.”
Wrist tattoo.
Krazy…and if you read Aristotle’s Ethics and Moral Responsibility, he said with grace what many of us say with anger, including me, about a just society. Lloyd often includes weapons in his solution. Aristotle also talks about Hemlock (as with Socrates who swallowed that bitter pill) which we might equate to the poison pills offered educators and their supporters.
Read his portion on the Defeaters of Ethical Ascription…that old Greek had far more insight into the human condition than those who wrote the various bibles, IMO. The Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau, whom you regaled us with, learned from Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato, not from the Abrahamic religions.
I see this lack of a groundswell and am astounded that it is considered by many a radical thing to be a “BAT” and work for the future of public schools…. schools for eVeRyOnE that are free of conflict$ of interest. I don’t want to look back one day and know that I did nothing as the power$ that be tried to dismantle an essential cornerstone of this democracy. It’s particularly chilling to have just watched the media blackout of the Dyett hunger strike. Is the money mafia infecting/mi$informing eVeRy level of government and news now?!! Are we still in the United States of America??!
The middle are those people who still don’t know what’s going on and they are confused because of all the noise being dumped on them by the RheeForm propaganda.
I think you are right about that.
Given that there is no mainstream media that has covered education without obvious bias, how can we expect that most people would understand the issues? I came into this blog, not too long after it started, amazed to find that there actually was a place where the corporate mantra was suspect. I was so demoralized by the ignominious end of my teaching career that it was an immense relief to realize that everything I believed about teaching might actually have value. Maybe I wasn’t obsolete and ineffective! The rest of the world seemed to go on just fine without me. The rest of the world still goes on “just fine” until the impact is direct and until they are introduced to an alternative narrative.
Ah, I think we went through a similar awakening. Before I heard about Diane and read “Reign of Error” and then started to read her blog and then other blogs by educators who were also aware, I thought my suspicions that there was a conspiracy out to destroy the public schools was just my often overactive imagination—a suspicion, by the way, that appeared in my head a couple of years after “A Nation at Risk” was released in 1983 and grew as the years went by.
Almost everything that teachers were being forced to do to save the country from ruin was so wrong, so insane and made me and other teachers livid with anger, but what we felt was shrugged off by the top-down administrators who demanded we do as we were told.
Now I know that this entire crises was manged and manufactured from the start by a small number of ruthless monsters manipulating the country, and today we have names and faces. We know who they are. They can’t hide from us anymore.
me too. I was feeling lonely and isolated until I found this blog.
I wonder if (according to Miller) the “fringe” include the 64% of the the public who think there is too much focus on testing in the public schools.
And the 55% of Americans and 63% of public school parents who oppose using student scores on standardized tests as part of teacher evaluations.
(according to recent Gallup Poll)
Miller’s excuse is lame and apparently quite disingenuous.
Not totally disingenuous as he has stated that he hasn’t seen enough “groundswell” yet!! (at least from public education defenders)
It could just be Miller’s groundswell is colored green.
As long as that green is in his pocket, eh!
Having arranged and participated in the conversation that was at the center of Steven’s blog post I feel compelled to respond. I live in the community in which Mr. Miller serves and we are EXTREMELY proud of our neighborhood public schools as they are the centerpiece of our community. It is representatives like Mr. Miller, ones willing to listen to their constituents and ones who spend copious amounts of time hearing how enacted policies are working at ground level, that we need. It is OUR responsibility to gather all available information on our elected officials before we turn him/her into a foe. Please read Steve’s article in its entirety. Please look at this gentleman’s voting record and the community public schools in which his constituents live before you make a judgement. The folks that gathered around in that small room for that meeting learned a great deal from one another and our fight for quality public schools for all children is better for it.
I think many of the posters here recognize that he was speaking the truth from where he sits. If you are not a teacher or a parent of school aged children in a community that has felt the full effects of warped education policy, the public schools are not necessarily on your radar except when the tax bill arrives. While my town prides itself on the public education system it provides, it is a minority of households that even have children in the schools. My neighbors without children rely on the solid reputation for quality schools and the BOE to maintain that reputation. Little attention beyond that understanding is paid to what is going on either here or further afield. I run across people all the time who are unaware of any problems.
Categorizing those who believe testing is destroying public education as “fringe” is nothing more than an attempt to shift the Overton window.
It has much in common with Arne Duncan’s comment about suburban moms.
Legitimate questions.
OMG. That was a NON-ANSWER.
Google reports that the Network for Public Education site may have been hacked; presently, unable to log on to site.
Thank you so much, Diane, for bringing my article to your blog. Are we the fringe? Is there no groundswell against corporate education reform? Or is it just a matter of perception? And how do we change things to once and for all put our education system back on track?
Steve…thank you for writing this and stimulating so much more info from our band of allies. Always enjoy you on the Ed Writers Consortium.
They have money, voice, influence and the ears of the politicians. We don’t have
those things. People not involved really do not understand the truth in all of this.
How can we organize and be heard??
I actually believe the Earth revolves around the Sun, but I keep that to myself these days.
What about the popular meme among fundamentalist Christa ins that dinosaurs and man shared the earth at the same time?
I always wonder if the extreme fundamentalists would fly on a plane designed with only Bible math.
For instance, the Bibles detailed instructions for building for the Temple or Noah’s Arc.
Noah’s Arc? TAGO!
“Noah’s Arc”
Bible Math
Like “Noah’s Arc”
Takes a bath
In Jurassic Park
LOL Great! Now if we just had a Jurassic Park where we could offer all the RheeFormers a free weekend pass and then let the raptors and Rex family out to visit the hotel packed with them.
“Rhee-rex” (also spelled “Rhee-wrecks”) running around loose in schools is far more frightening than any Jurassic Park dreamed up in Hollywood.
What about chaining the RheeFormers in the boys bathroom of a high school in the poorest most violent community in the United States? That way, there will be nearby toilets to flush away the turds after the children are done with the deformers who all look to Rhee with envy because she has a witch’s broomstick to escape on, and they don’t.
The middle and working classes revolve around the overclass.
How far have we wandered when teachers advocating for rational thought and learning are fringe, while political leaders telling us we need to “speak American” are mainstream.
Guffaw!
Love it MathVale and Lloyd…going to bed laughing…for a change.
Yes, 5K years ago dinosaurs and humans were put on earth by the Christian god and they all prospered and reproduced…and that is why we rest and watch football on the seventh day.
Anyone in doubt merely should watch TV a little more often!
Miller’s excuse, rather than analysis.
Groundswell? Waiting for global warming to take effect? Sitting on a geyser while waiting for sanity to take effect? Pols who don’t watch the polls?
Teachers are a noble sort and are bound by responsibilities, laws and sometimes colluding unions. They don’t strike or raise hell on a dime. Similarly, parents have heavy responsibilities. How does he expect to detect this groundswell, from a mainstream immersed in biased media?
I don’t know. The best I can suggest to him is to sit on a geyser and ruminate on distant rumbles.
Yes, we are the fringe, but we have made progress even in just gathering together at NPE conference, BATs Teacher Congress and online every day.
I think the most instructive comment coming from the legislator is this: “‘There’s a low level of analysis of bills down there (in Harrisburg).’ Local government usually does a better job.
The representative’s teaching background gives him an edge, he says, but most legislators simply don’t have that knowledge base to draw on.”
We activists have been effective at drawing attention to some of the nonsense of so-called reforms and the need for actual educators to be involved in setting education policy. But now that we have formed our army (I think we already have), I suggest we start doing the tedious work of analyzing legislation and sending recommendations to our lawmakers, or even drafting legislation or amendments to current laws for them to consider. This isn’t that hard; most of us are kept up at night by these concerns anyway. There are thousands of templates online. Here is one: http://web.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa670/670steps.htm
I am with you 100% Karen.
Here is one bill we can work on right now, but I volunteer to join with others in our district, to form new legislation to protect public schools from the vulture Rheeformers.
Below is googled K12NewsNetwork and Schools Matter info on repealing the California Charter School Act of 1992…..
1. Join Voices Against Privatizing Public Education’s efforts to …
thewire.k12newsnetwork.com/…/join-voices-against-privatizing-public-e…
Aug 8, 2015 – You are here: Home / Call to Action / Join Voices Against Privatizing Public Education’s efforts to repeal the California charter school law …
2. Schools Matter: Join Voices Against Privatizing Public …
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2015/…/join-voices-against-privatizing-public.h...
Aug 8, 2015 – Ballot Initiative to REPEAL the CA Charter School Act of 1992 … School Advocates; Bill Freeman- NEA Board member for California; Alita Blanc- … of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and is currently a law student at Peoples …
You can reach, and my group, at
joiningforces4ed@@aol.com
I applaud the effort by the group who created the petition. But we have much more to do to defeat privatization here in California. Getting a measure on the ballot here–let alone getting it passed–is a Sisyphean task.