Recently, Checker Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute wrote an open letter to you, proposing that you stay the course with the failed reforms of the past fifteen years. Marc Tucker wrote an open letter to you, disagreeing with Checker. He said that all of Checker’s proposals were tinkering at the margins (Teach for America, New Leaders, scholarships, charter schools), and he recommended that you invest in improving the education system with an eye to the high-performing nations of the world. If Marc was thinking about Finland, my personal favorite, I endorse what he says; Finland emphasizes highly educated teachers, minimal testing, pre-school education, medical care, no charters, no vouchers, and lots of emphasis on creativity and play.
You may be tired of receiving open letters. But I want to put in my open letter now that it is open-letter season.
Dear Mark and Priscilla,
I hope you won’t mind some unsolicited advice from someone you don’t know. I am writing you because you have the resources and the energy to make a real difference in the lives of millions of children and families, as well as their teachers and schools. Your great wealth can be squandered–as it was in Newark–where your $100 million gift disappeared down a very dark hole and did nothing for the children of that city. Or your great wealth can be used to strengthen the one institution that touches the lives of most children: their public school.
I am a historian of American education. I used to be part of the “reform movement,” but after too many years, I recognized that the reforms popular among policy makers are useless and counterproductive. I defected from the reform movement, because it has the wrong diagnosis and the wrong solutions. I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history. I hope you too want to use your influence to make a genuine difference in the lives of children, instead of fattening the vast self-serving reform machine, which is already awash in millions and millions of dollars, all chasing the same failed ideas.
You need to understand that reformers live in an echo chamber. They talk to one another, they tell one another the same stories, they learn nothing new. They are sure that American public schools are failing, that public school teachers are ineffective, and that the steady application of standards, tests, punishments, and rewards will transform the lives of children; they believe that schools with low test scores should be privatized, turned into charters, and one day soon, there will be no more poverty. These assumptions are untethered to reality. Standards and tests will not help the children who typically score in the bottom half. Reformers slander a vital democratic institution and the millions of teachers who work for low pay because they have a sense of mission.
Despite what you may have heard, the test scores of American students are at their highest point ever. High school graduation rates are at an all-time high. Dropout rates are at an all-time low.
Why the continuing despair about the state of the schools? Some of it comes from elites who never set foot in a public school. They attended the best private schools, and they look down on public schools and their teachers with condescension.
I am not suggesting that all is well. In fact, the great crisis in our society, reflected in our schools, is a direct result of the high rates of childhood poverty. To our shame, we have the highest rate of child poverty of any advanced nation. Nearly one-quarter of our nation’s children are growing up without food security, without assurance of a decent home, without access to regular medical care.
Surely you are aware of the work of Nadine Powell Harris, who has gathered powerful evidence of the lasting effects of childhood trauma. The trauma she describes is closely correlated with extreme poverty and the stress of poverty. And yet reformers blame the public schools and their teachers for the failure of our society! Why have other countries made successful efforts to reduce childhood poverty, but we have not?
Priscilla, I have read that you attributed your personal success to public school teachers who encouraged you. Today, there are millions of teachers working to encourage and inspire children just like you, working to convince them to believe in themselves. These teachers do so despite the vilification that reformers continually direct at them.
Here is my advice to you:
Please join the fight to preserve and strengthen public schools.
Please do not contribute to the movement to privatize public schools.
Please support efforts to create community schools, which are equipped to meet the needs of children.
Please support efforts to establish medical clinics in every school, where children can receive dental care, routine check-ups, and be tested for vision problems, hearing problems, and lead in their blood.
Please insist that schools have the resources to meet the emotional and psychological needs of children.
Please use your influence to assure that every school has a library with a librarian and lots of books and computers.
Please support the right of teachers to bargain collectively. Unions built our middle class, and that middle class is now feeling stressed and under siege.
Please do not support efforts to eliminate the due process rights of teachers. Schools need stability, and teachers need to know that their academic freedom is protected.
Please understand that the expansion of charter schools harms public schools, which enroll the vast majority of children. Charter schools are not better than public schools. Those that get high test scores often do so by keeping out the children who might get low scores. Charter schools, including those that cherrypick their students, take resources away from public schools, as well as their best students.
Mark and Priscilla, we are at a critical juncture: the very survival of public education is at risk.
Public schools welcome all students: those with disabilities, those who don’t speak English, those who have low test scores. They teach us to live with others who are different from ourselves and our family. They are a basic, essential democratic institution. Schools are not businesses. They are a public service, a part of our common inheritance as citizens.
Do no harm. Strengthen democracy. Strengthen the public schools whose doors are open to all. Stand with the parents and educators who say no to privatization.
The privatizers don’t need you. They have a herd of billionaires in their fold.
We need you. Please help us transform our public schools into the great instrument of democracy and social justice that they must be.
Join the Network for Public Education and support the parents and educators across the nation who are trying, often with bare hands, to roll back the deluge of money dedicated to high-stakes testing and privatization.
We need you. Bill Gates and Eli Broad do not.
Diane Ravitch
From Finn’s letter (closing):
“You didn’t set out to “tweak” or “improve” or even “change” the system that existed. You set about to invent something no one had ever imagined. Bring that spirit into education. Focus not on the system but on innovators—in the charter movement and beyond—who are also creating something wholly new.”
And they cannot name one “wholly new” innovation in two decades of charter experimenting. Not one. Not a single new and unique and workable idea that can be successfully scaled up to 50 million students in 100,000 public schools implemented by 3 million teachers. Not one.
I honestly think the Zuckerberg Chan fortune would be better spent repairing crumbling schools, supplying science labs, improving school bands and orchestras with new instruments, providing school theatre departments with sets, and air conditioning the countless city classrooms in which teachers and students are now forced to work under inhumane conditions for several months a year.
Exactly right!
And furthermore, it is people like Finn and his ilk, that promoted policies that have literally suffocated innovation in public schools through Common Core standards and test-and-punish reform. By forcing teachers and administrators to devote all of their time and efforts on one thing: improving standardized test scores, the opportunity costs for new ideas have been incalculable.
And to think that the most restrictive and controlling educational environments in America – charter schools – are somehow a playground of “wholly new” innovation – spawning ideas that will revolutionize schools, is simply too ridiculous to think about.
Wow. Great letter, Diane. You hit it out of the park. Just bookmarked this one.
Thank you, Diane Ravitch. I hope Chan and Zuckerberg read it.
I hope they read this. A few relevant links – Please remind them that there is no solid educational research supporting the mass transition that benefits the ed tech industy with the push for 1:1 programs, personalized, online completency-based learning.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emily-talmage/mark-zuckerberg-education-former-classmate_b_8576352.html
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-personalized-learning
Is there something fundamentally wrong with 5 billionaires having so much power and influence in a public system EVEN IF they are “good people” who believe they are doing “good work”?
Let’s give them “good people” and “good works”. Just hand them that, no questions asked.
Now, is there still something wrong with 5 billionaires having so much power and influence in a public system? I think there is. We are trading something away for this money. Nothing is free. We’re exchanging agency and democratic process for money.
If that’s the deal we’re making let’s at least admit those are the terms of this transaction.
I can live with that,although I don’t agree with it. What I can’t stand is pretending these billions of dollars are “gifts”.
Chiara,
You are right. Isn’t it pathetic that Checker Finn, Marc Tucker, and I are pleading with one of the nation’s billionaires for help in determining the course of our nation’s education system, which is supposed to be a bulwark of democracy?
I do not think we should be pleading with billionaires for where they should spend their money. The only thing we should be pleading with them is that they should stop spending their money on public causes.
“Schools need stability,”
And, more importantly, children need stability and continuity, they need teachers who teach them for years, who taught their older sisters, parents, who will teach their younger brothers, their own children.
When my two grown children were in elementary school I was active in the PTO. A very nice lady who works at a local bank came to us and asked if her bank could come in and set up a “bank” in the school. The kids would learn how to save money because they would get a cute little passbook with the bank’s name and all sorts of promotional items. The bank would run the program, because after all, it’s their money.
We turned it down. We didn’t think it was a worthwhile exchange, where we give up all input and control.
That’s a transaction. No one had to say it and no one involved was offended when it was treated like a transaction. . It’s an exchange of something we held that has value in exchange for the bank’s funding. Not a gift. A deal.
We would do better with the billionaire gifts if we stopped kidding ourselves and making this into whether people are “good” or “bad”. I don’t know if they’re good or bad people and I don’t care. That’s not the issue. The issue is whether the transaction makes sense as an exchange of value for value.
Oh, Diane, what a wonderful letter! It so clearly explains the crisis our public schools are facing. I would love for this letter to be on the front page of every newspaper (and digital news entity) in the country. You make the case for supporting public education succinctly and powerfully. I like the point you made that public schools need his resources more than the multi-billionaire funded reform movement.
Please find as many ways to share this letter as possible. Thank you for your efforts on behalf on public school children throughout our country, and for your continuing support of teachers.
Drake straw,
I am happy to report that the editor at the Huffington Post read the letter and asked to repost it there. I of course eagerly agreed.
The US Department of Education is using public funding to support and expand a whole new category of for-profit providers:
“Arne Duncan @arneduncan Aug 18
So important that short-term tech courses, where skill acquisition leads to real jobs, have access to Pell funding.”
But don’t worry. They say they’ll regulate it this time. Which is exactly what they said about for-profit colleges and for-profit charter school operators.
I’m not clear on why the public is funding GE employee training. Has GE fallen on hard times or something? Why are we paying to train their employees? Can’t they pay to train their own employees or did all the extra cash go to executive compensation?
When did it become the responsibility of the public to pay for job training for specific companies and sectors? What happened to entry level jobs at these places, where they invest their own money in their own employees?
This is risk-shifting, from the private sector to the public sector. We’re picking up the risk and the sector is getting a windfall benefit. If these employees we trained don’t work out at these companies the private sector entity has their exposure covered. It’s win/win for them and win/lose for the public.
I think this is called socialize the risk, privatize the benefit
Shouldn’t privatization get a big kick in the butt because of the recent call to end private prisons http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37124183
It seems to me that one of the main differences between a franchise like Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, and charter schools is that charter school operators are not putting up their own money or credit. They have no real “skin in the game”. They have socialized the risk. From a business point of view this is powerful incentive to invest in school reform.
“When did it become the responsibility of the public to pay for job training for specific companies and sectors? What happened to entry level jobs at these places, where they invest their own money in their own employees?”
This is exactly where higher education is heading.
I now see, I am behind with this news prison.
Somehow Diane, I am remind of the scene from Predator2 when the Alien came bursting though the Wall past the old lady with the broomstick, followed by Danny Glover. Glover announces to the old lady “I’m a cop”. Her hilarious response ” I don’t think he gives a sh t ” For the billionaires club this is not about children or education.
The indigestion I will deal with. When I get the urge to start throwing bricks, I’ll take you up on the Zoloft .
Great letter, great service.
How about an open video letter on You Tube that says the same thing?
I think Diane should do a Ted Talk.
I agree.
The people I know who wanted the opportunity to talk at local Ted events, about the transmutation of education, were turned down.
We can all speculate about why.
Facebook’s board includes among others, Reed Hastings, who called for an end to democratically elected school boards, Marc Andreesen, who praised the colonialist period in India, Erskine Bowles, who is part of hedge funder Pete Peterson’s attempt to destroy Social Security and Peter Thiel, who described, as an oxymoron, the right of women to vote and capitalistic democracy. Z-berg was not a hypocrite when he personally invested in the for profit schools-in-a-box, despite, a
parent ‘s plea, “Don’t make money on our poor backs”, because the investment matched the view of members of his board. He is a hypocrite for allowing his wife to vote.
Privatizing education in a democracy is like cutting a tree from its roots–if the tree is education, the roots are the principles of inclusion, participation, and responsibility that are central to the sustenance of a democratic form of government (small d). Education of “the people” must remain connected with its political, social, legal, and cultural roots, and unfettered by the intrusive takeover of private interests. Diane’s open letter speaks to: Why?
Those in power of private institutions are too often beholden more to those private interests than to the open political ground they, themselves, stand on. This makes them not only stupid, but dangerous. Privatization may even look good in some cases, and in the short term, the tree can look alive. But in the long term, the tree is set to die. Specifically, . . .
Privateers gain the choices of not only WHO gets educated but WHO teaches and WHAT gets taught. Instead of being driven by democratic principles (education for all), those choices fall into the politically-arbitrary hands of those who can be driven by other interests. Instead of “for the people,” the choice is rooted in “for my interests.” Private interests compete with public interests in the minds of those who are privately “interested.” And those interests are commonly money-making. As Diane says: “Schools are not businesses.” And there’s the rub: Democracies can be capitalistic, but capitalism in its present form is not democratic.
On the darker side, then, those in power can more-easily determine WHO is worthy and unworthy of education in the first place: “those with disabilities, those who don’t speak English, those who have low test scores” or those who are poor or have dark skin or hail from a different religious background. Further, they chose WHO teaches in schools where, behind hiring practices and processes is the active striving to become unregulated by rules that would flow directly from democratic principles. Finally, they choose WHAT gets taught, which can now more easily be steered towards “interested” ideologies and away from the open inquiry that might throw unflattering light on those private-institution interests. The legitimate “interests” are public, and in purveying the light of education for all, regardless of private interests. And THAT set of principles is what makes the United States “exceptional.”
Further, and as Paulo Freire knew, voter suppression can occur by omission. It begins with maintaining illiteracy and the absence of access to education. It’s those potential voters who would best know about and vote for the strengthening of all public institutions, especially education. As separated from their democratic roots, however, those who let private interests take the lead in their thinking can way-too-easily come to support the destruction of the very democratic institutions that, ironically, they depend on for their own good living.
Well said, and greatly extends the “Why?” of Diane’s open letter.
May I have your permission to copy and distribute your commentary in its entirety?
My concern…
http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/vergara-v-california-concerns
To Ed Johnson: Thank you for your comments. You have my permission to share at will. Note also that it’s a general comment about privatization in a democracy of foundational-Constitutional concerns where, with little change, we can replace “privatization of education” with “privatization of “prisons.” Only it seems the hidden but foreshadowed failure is quicker and more obvious in prisons than for the more slippery slope of education. Best, Catherine
LOVE IT! RE-POSTED IT HERE: http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/An-Open-Letter-to-Mark-Zuc-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Education-No-Child–_Education-Testing-160819-885.html
LLOYD HAS THE RIGHT IDEA
As I have mentioned to you personally for a long time, IMAGES and videos get the attention of a population that DOES NOT READ. OUT CITIZENS hear ENDLESSLY and see tRump and here his messages AND THOSE of the very perpetrators of the collapse of our society.
I want to see YOUR face, and hear your voice, as I did on that seminar from th NPE.
I want the public to hear YOU tell it as it is, as you did here.
I want what YOU said to go viral.
When I finally put up my blog, SPEAKING AS A TEACHER, I intend to feature clips of me SPEAKING… something I did to great effect over 4 decades in from of our youngest Americans. I cannot depend on the written word to counter-act the lies spit from the mouth of the pundits who are owned by the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf Also http://https://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/24/the-educational-industrial-complex/
YOU ARE NO LITTLE OLD LADY. You are our Diana of the hunt… whose words are the arrows that will hit the target… our people who have been bamboozled for too long:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
and given ‘magic elixirs’ by con men and charlatans…businessmen not educators who are attempting to make education into MARKET PLACE. WE SAW WHAT THE DID TO THE HEALTH “INDUSTRY!”
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
The Zuckerbergs focus on expanding ed tech and online learning. Wish you’d critiqued this as well as offered some additional positive reforms. Community schools are all the fashion now and in the end lead to improvements but are largely unproven..
I agree! Perhaps you can add this to your Huffington Post letter.
Great idea to write them directly! I hope that Chan (isn’t she a pediatrician?) realizes JUST HOW DEVASTATING poverty is to the lives of our nation’s impoverished children (so rapidly on the increase)! Glad you referenced the TED Talk about this subject Diane! I would add…. No amount of education can eradicate the devastation on the physical and mental well being of children who are always in dire stress. Working on Democracy (real democracy) will help bring up the middle class and help those who are impoverished to have a chance to get out of this condition (with tangible strategies not “pseudo reformist ones”). Education (public education) at this point can serve as a progressive healing of our nation by starting at the foundation – the education of our youth. It will take time – no instant fix and if any “expert” has instant solutions, there motivations should be suspect!
Wonderful letter and great news that Huffington Post will put into circulation.
The timing is excellent.
Trump’s next topic is “education.” I imagine that his new staff has grasped and amped up all of the reformy lies, with Hillary and her teacher unions clearly responsible for killing the hopes and dreams of all of the little children, all of them, every one forced to attend terrible public schools. He will kill the Common Core, dump it, dump it, put it in the dumper, shred it, shred it, dump it in the biggest shredder ever. (Still trying to get the hang of the iterations and variations.)
I hope that someone can do full recordings and transcripts of his statements on education, along with those of Hillary. I hope even more that Diane’s letter penetrates the hearts and minds of Hillary’s closest advisors and the candidate herself.
Wishful thinking.
A friend who knows Trump’s new campaign manager Steve Bannon told me that he would close every public school, if he could, and give everyone a voucher to find their own education
A noble letter, but in my opinion, you might as well have written an open letter to Bill Gates telling him to cut it out.
Mark Zuckerberg is not our friend.
None of the philanthro-capitalists are, for that matter.
The benefit of an open letter is that it is open, and it may reach a small part of the public, getting them to reconsider — and potentially, build pressure on the oligarchs. I suppose that may be your goal, I don’t know. But if Mark Zuckerberg read this and said, “gee, now I learned something. I’m gonna go home and rethink my life.” — I would eat my detective hat, with dirt on top.
EdDetective,
The purpose of an Open Letter is to send a bold message. You never know who will read it. You never know whose eyes may be opened. It is a chance, a gamble, no downside.
“It is a chance, a gamble, no downside.”
As long as you have an ample amount of time and energy, and very low expectations.
That may describe you, and yet, perhaps not all your fans and readers.
Ed,
My goal is not to waste my limited time and energy, but to inform the public. The charter industry smothers the media with lies. I want to counter them with the only tooli have: words.
Ed Detective… Did a bit of reading up on Chan’s bio. Well… her parents were immigrants, and she went to an urban public school in a working class town. Maybe these facts coupled with her pediatrician expertise will enable her “to see the light”! An open letter is better than no letter and especially when it comes from a known education historian.
Diane, I understand that. But I do not want the public to have hope and faith in someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who in my opinion, we should clearly stand against — not beg and try to convince. He is part of the dishonest and fake generosity of the billionaire class; he is not an ally of workers or the public, he is an exploiter of them.
Teachers tried bartering with Bill Gates, and I wonder if any good came from it. The appeal to philanthropists easily distracts from grassroots organizing and systemic solutions.
But, it is your prerogative what you do. This is just how I see it, and I won’t deny something good “could” come from it. I am offering one perspective that I believe will help to keep readers wary, a check and balance on this entire method.
artseagal, maybe Dr. Chan could play a good role — but I would remain very skeptical, and continue to organize through other channels.
Dr. Ravitch’s open letter is a perfect letter which is like the sun that shines all corners of dark money’s dirty tricks.
I agree with artseagal about Dr. Chan’s background. Moreover, according to the movie about billionaire Zuckerberg’s Face Book’s story, Mark was treated as a nerd by all snobbish rich Harvard students of his time.
My point is to remind both of Mark and Priscilla that they should not follow the lead of bad and corrupted snobbish rich class who has harmed them when they are NOT rich and famous.
However, since Dr. Priscilla was brought up in Asian Confucius culture, I am sure that her parents cultivate her very well so that she has chosen her career that reflects her compassion toward children.
Hopefully, Dr. Ravitch’s open letter will come across to Dr. Chan’s attention. Yes, a positive impact can deliver with a meeting between Dr. Ravitch and this young and kind couple.
My father always donated to all social causes like schools, hospitals, temples and churches unconditionally. My mother, on the other hand was very alert of con artists and she advised us to donate to only GOOD and TRUE CAUSES = to the exemplary, noble, educated, and reliable campaign leaders who did not have sky rocket salary or commission.
In short, Dr. Chan and Billionaire Zuckerberg will be intelligent enough to recognize the DIFFERENCE
between Dr. Ravitch’s background with 28+ millions followers in her website within 3 years
and those public looters and democratic destroyers who destabilize American Middle Class WHERE both Mark and Priscilla have come from.
May God and Angels bless Dr, Ravitch with success in delivery of an important message to this couple = to strengthen American Democracy for all for many upcoming generations. Back2basic
This is why I love you. As a public school teacher, you speak to me and for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Diane, Thank-you for doing this. The more people speak up, the better. And your voice reaches far and wide. I have 2 additional thoughts. One, be careful of Please # 3. The term “community schools” is being usurped by the reform movement to mean a group of kids around a computer. And second, I would like to see a greater emphasis on restoring education decisions to the trained and practiced, true experts, the teachers. Again, thank-you for all your efforts.
Thanks, Janice. We can’t let the pseudo-reformers steal and corrupt words. Community schools belong to the community, not to corporations. They offer services to children and families. They are used by the community; they don’t use the community against its will.
I would like to begin by thanking this kind and generous couple for wanting to help all children, and not just their own.
This is what I’d like to propose: Please base your efforts on researched-based strategies. We know what works in terms of educating the child but we don’t how (or don’t have the will) to ensure that every child has the basics.
Fortunately Dr. Chan, as a pediatrician, knows what these basics are. I hope this couple stays involved in their philanthropy to make certain that their money goes to the education and care of children. I hope they confine themselves to one community to see if their efforts bear fruit before investing more money and broadening their reach. They should NOT give a massive amount of money to any community or district without knowing exactly where the money will go.
Specifically, this is what I hope the couple will do in one community near them:
Do whatever is necessary to ensure the healthy development of the unborn child;
Help low-income parents to closely monitor the development and health of newborn babies. Traveling nurses to homes is a good idea that has worked elsewhere;
Educate the parents or guardians and make them part of whatever you do. They are crucial to success. If parents are not available, try to provide mentors;
Hire well-educated and experienced teachers and then authorize these people to run schools, preschool through high school;
Pay whatever is necessary to hire and retain excellent teachers;
Place two qualified teachers in one classroom with twenty children or less;
Provide the resources to ensure developmental appropriate instruction to these children (i.e. NOT test prep);
Evaluate the progress of children in an authentic way, by providing professionals who can know and monitor their growth throughout the year;
Provide all children with a broad curriculum, the kind you want for your children. Research tells us that art, music and P.E. are important;
Make certain all children have their basic needs met. If they don’t, explore ways to provide food, shelter and safety.
Seek out help from the people who are devoting their lives to the education of children: our teachers.
Thanks for caring. I wish you the best of luck in continuing your mission. There is no more important one in our nation.
Read this !
The website, “The Other 98%” reports, Mark Z-berg’s Facebook, “transferred billions of dollars of assets out of the US in 2010. The IRS has repeatedly asked for records. There has been no compliance with the request.” If the report is true and taxes, of up to $5 bil., are owed, every American should demand that tax-avoiding corporations pay their taxes. The middle class pays its taxes.