Valerie Strauss conducted a written Q&A exchange with me over the weekend.
She asked good questions. She wanted to know what I had changed in the revision of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.
She asked me what I would say to President Obama if I had the chance to sit down with him.
She asked what I thought Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would do.
I thought it was a good opportunity to sum up what is happening right now.
As an aside, readers of this blog might be interested to note that our old friend Virginia SGP comments and claims that he was “censored” on my blog. Happily, a reader of this blog pointed out that he was limited to only four comments a day, which is not censorship. If I posted everything he sent in, he would have had 10-12 comments a day. And then there was the problem that he often used his space to slam and slander people he disagreed with. Not me, but others. He has left us, sadly. I no longer have to read a dozen comments of his daily and decide which to post.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks. Reposted.
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Well said!
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Good job. Good interviewer. Memoir an excellent idea.
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The virginiasgp guy wasn’t here to learn. There are plenty of self-appointed “experts” who talk at or past, but never with teachers. He is a long line of people with other degrees who assume teachers need lectured because, after all, those of us who are teaching or have taught have no idea what we are doing.
These Reformers burn bright, then quickly fade.
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I surely do not think VirginaSGP has the capacity to be reasonable that some do. Perhaps some other important people, however, have your ability to evolve with new insights, Diane. Wellesley did good by you… I like your idea of having a U.S. Secretary of Education Darling-Hammond. Along those lines, I have a follow up question for you which I do not presume to expect to be answered, but would be delighted if you so wish. You said, “I renounced my support for high-stakes testing and charter schools. People in public life these days are not known for saying “I was wrong.” I did.” What was your thought process as you changed your views about testing and charter schools? Do you think it is possible for any longtime supporters of “reform” to replicate that process?
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Good questions, LCT: “What was your thought process as you changed your views about testing and charter schools? Do you think it is possible for any longtime supporters of “reform” to replicate that process?”
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No apologies for the length of this trip down memory lane…
With profuse apologies to Robert Browning for these two poorly re-imagined (i.e., mangled) lines from his “To A Louse: On Seeing One On A Lady’s Bonnet, At Church” (1786), perhaps VirginiaSGP is constantly repeating this silly little ditty:
“Oh would Rheephorm the gift give us
To skewer ourselves worse than others skewer us!”
I beg one and all to remember VirginiaSGP as truly one of a kind, that Outlier Among Rheephorm “Thought” Leaders, whose deft touch with data analytics made him truly one of the few “sane” people to post comments on this blog.
I am sure that there are few higher points on any thread following any posting on this blog than the one to which I provide the following—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/07/09/lyndsey-layton-arne-duncan-will-stay-on-until-the-last-buzzer/comment-page-1/
Just the opening segment of his version of Disneyland’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride:
[start]
KrazyTA is trying to obfuscate once again.
1. No teacher is going to raise a student from the 13th percentile in absolute test scores to the 90th percentile. Ain’t going to happen. If the teacher raises the student from the 13th to the 15th percentile, that would be excellent. In VAMs and SGPs, teachers are rated based on growth compared to similar kids.
[end]
Read the rest. It’s a rheephorm classic.
Now earlier in the above thread he delivered himself of the following paean of praise:
[start]
I know you are not talking about the greatest civil rights leader since the 1960’s? Unlike most teachers and activists like Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch, who couldn’t care less about kids, Arne Duncan has actually leveraged growth data to put effective teachers in schools. There is a reason that none of these activists have a STEM background and fundamentally do not understand the data/formulas.
[end]
Yet even “the greatest civil rights leader since the 1960’s” doesn’t hold a match to—hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be a bumpy ride!—
[start]
Btw, my personal hero is Michelle Rhee. While I respect the civil tone of Arne and Joel Kline, there was nothing like watching Michelle on TV telling principals they would have to perform or else the students would get a principal who you. A principal that that those students deserved! Wasn’t sure I could find this video but it is very inspirational, don’t you think?
[end]
*The above is from a posting on this blog of 7-14-2015 entitled “David Berliner: Why Poverty and Inequality Matter More than Schools and Teachers: LINK FIXED!!”*
Yet this Master of Mathematical Disaster who lectured us on the the Scientific Method and kept warning us to steer clear of “metaphysical excuses” didn’t have the faintest clue that he had mercilessly flayed—
His one and only Michelle Rhee! She was Ms. 13th-to-90th-Percentile! *Only problem: neither her principal nor her coworkers nor files paper or digital confirm this educational equivalent of walking on water.*
Plus who could forget his sterling pronouncements about IQ being the dreaded elephant in the room!?!?! And who could forget his undying opposition to—Michelle Rhee and John Deasy and others excepted—bullying!?!?
I could go on, but when someone has set the bar so high—¿low?—perhaps it’s time to ask him to go easy on himself.
So what does all this come to, metaphysical excuses aside? Well, no need for really old and dead Greek guys, perhaps a fresher Frenchman will do—
“Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
Oh me oh my.
What he have said about self-ridicule?
😎
P.S. To be fair, since French (or German or Russian or Arabic or Chinese or Japanese) aren’t STEM subjects, no one who’s rheeally smart would understand what a furriner would say in any case. Although, to be balanced, Mr. Virginia seems not to have understood the plain English of the ASA: “Research on VAMs has been fairly consistent that aspects of educational effectiveness that are measurable and within teacher control represent a small part of the total variation in student test scores or growth; most estimates in the literature attribute between 1% and 14% of the total variability to teachers.”
Just sayin’…
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Presidential candidates keep their cabinet picks secret before the election, so people really have no idea what they are voting for.
Unless I am mistaken, Linda Darling-Hammond was actually Obama’s “adviser” on education during his first campaign, leading some to believe that she would become Sec of Ed.
How do we know that Clinton will not leave John King in place?
Why would King have even accepted the job unless he thought (because he was assured?) that there was a good chance that he would be able to keep the job if Clinton won?
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Poet,
LDH was Obama’s education advisor. DFER and TFA opposed her. She was kicked out at the last minute.
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Cross-posting my comment on the WaPo article here:
Given the tsunami of data-mining educational platforms and digital badging and credentialing we’ve been drowning in since the passage of the ESSA this past winter, I was disappointed to see no mention algorithmic personalized learning by either Ms. Strauss or Ms. Ravitch in this lengthy interview.
Given Ms. Ravitch’s position in the ed-activism community, I would very much like to hear where she stands on Competency/Proficiency Based education and the incursion of corporate interests into the realm of Performance Based Assessments and whole child instruction (or I want to track your child’s behavioral and emotional states at all times).
If Ms. Ravitch is updating her book, it is imperative that she recognize the privatization of public education in the US, and globally for that matter, has entered a new age-one of 1:1 devices, micro-data, bio-metric monitoring, and other means of surveillance of teachers, students, and classrooms.
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2014 paper on new forms of accountability by Linda Darling Hammond in partnership with CCSO’s Gene Without and Linda Pittenger (underwritten by the Hewlett Foundation): http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1724/1334
For those familiar with the language of next-gen ed-reform, you’ll recognize a lot. If LDH is appointed as our next Secretary of Education, we’ll likely be looking at an era of digital portfolios and embedded online assessments. I don’t foresee any happy endings here.
Bios of the co-authors: http://sites.education.uky.edu/ncie/
GENE WILHOIT, executive director, has led the Council of Chief State School Officers and National Association of State Boards of Education in Washington, D.C., and served as state education commissioner in both Arkansas and Kentucky. He is a well-recognized voice for high expectations, responsive accountability systems, and innovation in student learning experiences and outcomes. Gene’s career began as a teacher, and his work continues to focus on the inspiration and empowerment gained from new knowledge and skills.
LINDA PITTENGER, chief operating officer, worked as strategic initiative director for the Innovation Lab Network at the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, D.C., before returning to Kentucky to launch the Center. Prior to joining CCSSO, Linda was director of Secondary and Virtual Learning at the Kentucky Department of Education, a title that followed years of helping to lead Kentucky’s efforts to wire and connect schools statewide to the Internet and electronic learning opportunities.
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I have had similar concerns about what I have heard about Linda Darling Hammond. She has sounded more and more like she would have made an admirable candidate for Education secretary under Obama. Perhaps she would have been less tone deaf than Duncan, but she espouses a lot of what we have been fighting against.
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The link to the paper doesn’t seem to be opening properly. You can download the PDF here: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/1724
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Yes, Yes to the memoir idea!!!
You have so many important things to share and a truly unique perspective given your background, education, and job history. Your willingness to so openly and articulately alter your course on past policy decisions and opinions is admirable beyond measure. You are an exemplar for what a friend calls “intelligent disobedience – when to say no when what you’re told to do is wrong.”
You speak truth to power, despite the many powerful voices that contradict you and try to discredit you.
And you have created a welcoming public place for all of us to be heard who desire to comment (and rant) about all things public ed. Most media sources have been woefully silent on what’s really going on. Public discussion still reflects serious lack of understanding. But here in dianeravitch.net-land, we are heard.
And we hear you.
Thank you.
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Diane is much too modest. Dr. Ravitch is the person who could best lead the department of education back from the brink and preserve our public education system. No protestations about age, either – instead of a one-woman show, you’d have lots of help!
If Maddy Albright could be Secretary of State until the age of 64 and HRC can be POTUS at 70, there’s no reason to leave another woman of Wellesley out of the equation.
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” My first choice would be Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University.”
I wonder who else were in the running before this recommendation was made… Do you have a more detailed justification than the few sentences in the interview?
Was Linda D-H a K-12 teacher at any time?
Is there a webpage that briefly describes Linda D-H’s vision in US K-12 education?
Btw, this is a pretty good “endorsement” of Linda D-H.
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I see some of her vision here
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/03/16/24darling-hammond.h30.html
Yes, my vision is that in 10 years, the United States, like other high-achieving nations, will recruit top teaching candidates, prepare them well in state-of-the-art training programs (free of charge), and support them for career-long success in high-quality schools. Today, by contrast, teachers go into debt to enter a career that pays noticeably less than their alternatives—especially if they work in high-poverty schools— and reach the profession through a smorgasbord of training options, from excellent to awful, often followed by little mentoring or help. As a result, while some teachers are well prepared, many students in needy schools experience a revolving door of inexperienced and underprepared teachers.
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From https://newrepublic.com/article/63704/education-wars
Darling-Hammond has also gone after No Child Left Behind (nclb), which reformers see as a flawed but important bipartisan law that calls for raising accountability standards, enhancing student testing requirements, and closing the achievement gap among students of differing racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. In a May 2007 article in The Nation, she wrote that the country needs “something much more than [nclb] and much different.” Last fall, she penned an op-ed criticizing high-stakes testing, a measure many reformers support. It didn’t help that, during the campaign, she signed an education manifesto at odds with a rival, tough-minded reform agenda. (Both documents were circulated and hotly debated at the Democratic convention this year.) “The ideas associated with Darling-Hammond are ones that educators love because they’re warm and fuzzy,” says Petrilli of the Fordham Institute. “They’re not tough, not admitting that sometimes adults aren’t doing their jobs.”
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“The ideas associated with Darling-Hammond are ones that educators love because they’re warm and fuzzy,” says Petrilli of the Fordham Institute. “They’re not tough, not admitting that sometimes adults aren’t doing their jobs.”
The either-or-thinking of Petrelli is crude, sexist, and absurd. Educators are soft and fuzzy reeks with the same sort of sexism in Trump’s be tough-be great language. I will be happy to provide a list of adults in education who are both tough and wrong.
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In fact, why are “being tough” and “working hard” such generally admirable goals in the first place?
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