Thanks to Some DAMpoet:
“The Path Not Taken” (apologies to Robert Frost)
Two paths diverged in a public school,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, help and tool
I looked down one, like a teaching fool
To how it lent to the student growth
Then took the other, as much more fair,
And having for taps the better claim
Because it was psycho and wanted power,
And as for empathy and care,
Had torn the students apart for game,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this for the Fates
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two paths diverged in a school, and for Gates,
I took the one of Norman Bates,
And that has made all the difference.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I repeat here a tribute I made on the thread of a 10-5-2015 posting here:
[start]
SomeDAM Poet:
TARGO!
I cannot pretend to even compete with the laurels you have fairly won on this blog, but let present something I have misused, er, used before:
I MET a Traveler from a ravaged land,
Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert that used to be called public
education. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those rheephormista
passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is RHEEPHORM, King of Innovative
Disruption.”
Look on my works ye big gubmint monopoly
schools, and despair!
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
[With profuse apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley and his poem OZYMANDIAS]
[end]
The laurels still rest firmly on your head.
😎
My apologies to the truly great blog poet — that Norman Bates line made me belly laugh — and also to Robert Frost, as I too am in a poetic mood.
from Fire and Ice, Donny and Hill
Some say the world will end in Donald,
Some say in Hill.
From tasting the wrath of Arnold
I hold with those who favor Donald.
But if I had to twice get killed,
Since Rhee I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction Hill
Is also great
And fits the bill.
By the way, I didn’t mean to go off topic. I was following a Norman Bates to Donald Trump thread of thought.
Thanks poet, you made my day as I golfed with a retired teacher. Retiring he said made him feel 20 years younger. The additional years teaching to reach 30 years he said would have all been wasted on medical care and therapy. Your poem says it all!
Hope DAM’s post doesn’t get taken down for improving on Frost’s poem! ☺️
Yes. Public education is for sale. Who’s surprised that education was the next valuable oasis for the same sort of entrepreneurs who created Big Banks, Big Pharma, and Big Oil?
The lure of the schools … with the ever-repeating money stream via taxes … was just too, too luscious not to attract these flies. And now, at the same moment they are creating charter school kingdoms, they are fattening their odds and slimming their risks by ruining the long-standing public school system.
These charters are ostensible saviors of the last resort for children stuck in failing educational mills … mostly found in cities for now. But the inner cities are only the starting block for their designs. They see education in an entirely new structure and with an outcome never before considered … profit.
To cull some schools from the system … a few at a time for now … sets the pattern. These charter school operators can then manipulate the “success” story, chest-beat their efforts, entice other disenchanted sub-groups, and then grow their movement … and do so by siphoning off public school dollars that further cripple the remaining public schools not yet gathered up by these long-range education hoodlums.
It’s a build and destroy mission.
Dismantle pubic schools through inadequate funding and through skewered assessment results … think Common Core! … that shine an unhappy light on school and teacher performances. This, of course, stirs up the emotions and allows for charter operators to bully their way into new situations … which, in turn, allow others to come forward to reap profits from arming these new schools with all of the most modern accoutrements … computers, software, learning materials, infrastructures of all sorts all provided by … guess who? … fellow entrepreneurs who have, in all likelihood, struck a mutually profitable agreement with lots of others.
So the spigots are open … and the tax monies formerly designed to fund one of the most successful public education systems ever … now drain into the pockets of entrepreneurs who are more about flash than about substance. Classroom performance is now superseded by the bottom line.
These charter/privatized schools will come to dominate the scene … and then the schools will become more and more like like race cars … covered with product logos and insignias of all sorts.
We’re likely to see high school sport scoreboards with product info flashing all game long. Many a campus will be decorated by signage that speaks to the generosity of business X and Y. And … are you ready for this? Schools will actually be named … perhaps stealthily … after business interests. We might not get a Whopper High School, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get something called the MicroSoft Magnet School for Technology. You know … something extra sexy that would awe the ordinary taxpayer into a state of gratefulness. I know. I know. It sounds awful … and it is … but that’s how the game will play out.
Sports’ uniforms will look like those patchy outfits race drivers wear … with logos all over the place. Cafeteria foods will be franchised out … even transportation will be “Uberized” in some fashion because … well … if there’s money to be made, they’ll make it.
Teachers will be company men and women. Orientated just as other workers are … and rah-rahed into embracing the company spirit and well-being. Students are the product … spit and polish the product just well enough to get by quality control and … and you’ll be a-okay.
All of the older teachers will have been retired or run out of the system by these magnificent evaluation devices no one really understands, but they get the job done. And those too young to retire will simply quit because they will not have the intestines for what is unfolding.
So, there you have it. Schools will have new ownership, but the same funding … your tax dollars. The faculties will have been rinsed clean of old blood and new, conforming folks will be installed because they do exactly as they’re told … and read from the curriculum scripts exactly as they are written.
The schools will purchase equipment and vast materials from fellow entrepreneurs who are in on the “share”. They’ll receive “donations” … actually advertising fees … from phony civic-minded entities that wish to maximize their exposure in order to maximize their advertising clout.
Politicians will undoubtedly share in the looting of the public schools by getting loot from the looters. I’m sure you can follow that.
And the two most screwed-over interest groups will be the parents and the children. The parents and others in society will have zero control over their tax dollars and their children’s education. And their children will be short-changed not for a few years … but for as long as they might live.
So, there’s the future. More and more control by fewer and fewer powerful people who control powerful mechanisms to become more powerful every day. And as their power grows, our power shrinks.
Don’t bother with the blame. It’s too late. Bother with the solution. Otherwise this nation is looking at very dark days.
Denis Ian