Happy New Year! I hope 2017 brings you health, happiness, and good times with family and friends.
2017 will be a dangerous time for our nation.
Somehow, a man was elected as president who has no experience or qualifications or knowledge. He is not a “populist,” the term adopted by the media. He is a white nationalist and a plutocrat who said whatever he needed to say to get elected. He has chosen as his Secretary of Education a woman who is a zealot for religious education and private providers. She is not an educator. She has never worked in education. She did not got to public schools, nor did her children. She does not like public schools. She is contemptuous of our public schools. She likes charter schools, cyber charters, vouchers, and anything other than public schools. She is a billionaire who has spread millions to elect other zealots for school choice, despite the fact that it is no solution to the problems of public education, and despite the fact that every dollar that goes to a charter school or voucher school is taken away from a public school. She seeks the destruction of public education.
We will stand strong in support of the commons. We will not let this pampered billionaire destroy what belongs to us. We will fight her in the states and in the districts. We will reach out to our elected officials, local and state and Congressional. We will remind them that the public schools are an essential part of our democracy. We will ask Republicans and Democrats alike to defend our public schools against the Trump administration’s determination to privatize them.
Join the fight. Stand with your allies. Join the Network for Public Education. It will not be an easy struggle, but it is a worthy one. It is a fight for democracy against autocracy. We are citizens first, not consumers. We will fight to maintain separation between church and state. We will fight for our democratic legacy. We will fight for democratically controlled community schools that accept ALL children, no matter when they show up, no matter whether they can speak English or whether they have disabilities.
This is the challenge for the next four years. It begins in a few weeks.
Do not be afraid. We have numbers. We must fight to sustain our democracy and our public schools. We will and we hope you will join us.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And Happy New Year to you, Diane! Thanks for your tenacity and brilliant advocacy on behalf of all American children. You are a national treasure and I’m sure I’m not alone in expressing gratitude for your work.
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Agree.
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Thank you for this – we will be fighting a war and these are our marching orders.
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Y próspero año nuevo a ti también, Diane.
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“Join the fight. Stand with your allies. Join the Network for Public Education. It will not be an easy struggle, but it is a worthy one. It is a fight for democracy against autocracy. We are citizens first, not consumers. We will fight to maintain separation between church and state. We will fight for our democratic legacy. We will fight for democratically controlled community schools that accept ALL children, no matter when they show up, no matter whether they can speak English or whether they have disabilities.”
YEP!!
“This is the challenge for the next four years. It begins in a few weeks.”
Not exactly. It began at the turn of the century with NCLB and has been ongoing ever since. We need to turn up the heat even more, now, not just in a few weeks.
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Flipping channels, just watched “13 Days ” again.
Assume that 90% was Hollywood bluster. Yet I still can’t see that Narcissist moron sitting in that seat .
Yet our greatest struggle will not be with the Republicans it will be with the Democrats who drink from the same cesspool of corporate money as the Republicans. The only difference is they are being played or perhaps we are being played.
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-resolution-for-2017-keep-reminding-trump-that-he-has-no-mandate/
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SyFy has it’s annual Twilight Zone marathon today. Perhaps there are some clues in these episodes about how to get through this new year.
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A1/2 Tunguska meteor event hitting Washington would be an act of god and drain the swamp.
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You wouldn’t be referring to yourself when you’ll be in DC on January 20, would you? My wife will be marching with you.
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I’ll be there on the 21st the day after the inauguration though there will be some there o the 20th to disrupt the inauguration .
But I am hoping for an act of God. Lightning hitting the podium in January would be a message of biblical proportions to his evangelical supporters. It would turn this secular humanist into a true believer.
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Touche, GregB! (Albeit sad commentary as to the state of the nation/world.)
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I’m with you! We need to advocate for curriculum that teaches students how to think critically about the media. This seems to be the skill missing that fostered this political climate– my bias is evident here, but as a 32 year veteran of the classroom, I know how little attention critical thinking is afforded in today’s educational environment. Some claim we need to produce better workers. Others declare common core standards are the panacea. There’s a good reason critical thinking gets short shrift–students who learn to think would realize that a fraud is being perpetuated on America’s school children and public education. The current “reform ” movement resembles the scene in “The Wizard of Oz” where the wizard says, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Trump is like that–he asks people not to pay attention to the facts and truth. Teachers know what’s going on; readers of this blog know what’s going on. We now need a stronger emphasis in classrooms on knowing how to separate fact from fiction and to think critically about information. I shudder to think that compliant workers might have the hidden objective of the reformists. We must do better.
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Even though some of us KNOW that we have the numbers, I still puzzle as to why we refuse to use those numbers to protect our children against increasingly inappropriate educational practices. I teach in one of the larger districts in NYS, where differentiated instruction was the expectation when I started. Raising test scores is now the only thing that matters, no matter how much damage is done to children, their present and their future. When does the tide begin to turn?! I am a retiree and continue to substitute teach because I want to see first hand what takes place in classrooms. Unfortunately, many of my retired colleagues have no interest in even hearing about the abysmal state of affairs in schools where we once taught. It is heartbreaking. We are the ones with the time, the resources, and freedom to work for students, our colleagues in classrooms, and all their families.
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Numbers mean nothing. Teachers are not the best informed sector of the populace. Within the small group of my acquaintanceship, there is no agreement on political matters.
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Exactly, and I’ve found most teachers to be very conservative, don’t rock the boat types. Nice folk and all just very timid in thinking and in challenging those malpractices that they are instructed to implement.
They’d have made Good Germans in the 1930s.
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There’s a lot of fear among teachers, who, in general, tend to be a compliant bunch. The problem is, that if one teacher stands up, and no support is given from colleagues, that teacher is left to twist in the wind alone. I have fought for YEARS to convince my colleagues that we ALL need to fight together, but I cannot get ONE teacher on board. It’s frustrating.
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I have friends that will not even post a comment on a blog. I have been fighting my own private battle for years. The unions will be severely punished when the next version of Friedrichs hits the Supreme Court. The entire country will be a right to work state.
There is a NJ case seeking to end LIFO for teachers. The superintendent of my district is planning a RIF and he hopes to be given free reign to reconfigure the staff.
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Abigail Shure
Right to Work was only one feature of Taft Hartley. The most damaging one, was the outlawing of secondary boycotts. Eventually the essential repeal of the Wagner act may have a bright side . You would finally have a ban on semi automatic weapons.
You might want to ask Lloyd for an explanation on that. .
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Joel,
Please define “semi-automatic” weapons. As it is every one of my guns, is a “semi-automatic”. Damn near all guns are (except muzzle loaders and certain single shot bolt loaders and shotguns.) TIA, Duane
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I’m not sure how much “girding” I’m going to be doing this morning. I was holding a small confetti cannon the wrong way just before midnight and fired the thing into my stomach. No harm done. See, that extra weight in the midsection does serve a purpose sometimes.
I looked up the idea of “girding ones loins” on google just now….curious. A woman’s how-to version on pinterest is pretty intense. I like the image of the woman with the sword. Though, you know, “The blog is mightier than ….. etc….”
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John,
Stay away from weapons, even if they are full of confetti!
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The lesson to be taken away from John’s incident is that all weapons should be considered to be loaded and that one should never point a gun at anything/one that one does not want to shoot. Proper gun handling is the first lesson one should learn before touching a weapon. Gun control is what it is called. (sorry, couldn’t resist that last one)
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Happy new year
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Buon Capodanno a tutti! I just wish the best to our gracious and courageous host, Diane, and to all the commenters who frequent this amazing blog. Have a great year in spite of the vicious ogre who will occupy the White House along with all the misbegotten humanoids that he has appointed to his administration.
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I challenge any city in the nation to match the St. Louis Post Dispatch in starting their readers with anything like this to get their education reporting started off just right.
Front page feature of a rural school district of one elementary school district of 75 students, accompanied by a photo of four students and a teacher. They are educated at a fraction of the per pupil cost of St. Louis area districts, but have test scores that rival the best. About a third qualify for free or reduced lunch prices. The teachers average pay is a third less than the average MO teacher’s salary. They provide a photo of the superintendent of the superintendent mopping a spill in a rest room. Needless to say…all students are white, and there are apparently no irresponsible parents.
Kudos to the school district students and staff, but…what does this have to do with reporting on education in Missouri? Readers in a state which has gone several years without providing full funding to the foundation forumula will get one message from this article loud and clear…gosh, we must be paying teachers way too much money. As for the 885 thousand MO students not in this school….nothing else matters very much.
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Joe,
Now there’s a model! Not.
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Why do you say that this district isn’t a model that we might look upon for guidance in the teaching and learning process?
Other than the fact that the writer is using standardized test scores as an assessing device and Missouri’s insane “data driven” scorecard. Unfortunately, it appears that those tests and scores might play a huge role in the school’s curriculum.
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Some comments….Washington University in St. Louis
Fascinatging article about a community running a school that not only works, but teaches all the big dogs how to make kids see what community really means. Impressive……3 likes
Webster University
You have missed a very important aspect of (the district’s) success. The parents are invested in the children’s education. Regardless if income level, parents invested in their kids education makes a huge difference. I didn’t go to this school. I did attended one of the local high schools. I know many families from this school.14 likes.
St. Louis feels so good about this. not sure how they feel about the other 885,000 students.
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Joe, please link article. TIA, Duane.
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I have a thread at the PD referring to their education reporting as fake news…seemed like it needed a bump.
There was nothing dishonest about the front page story about the Stain Japan school district, unless you consider the phrase “biggest education successes”. I do not think very good results in educating 75 children isolated from almost every difficulty being encountered in school districts these days qualifies for the label. They are fine people, and fine children, as nearly as I can tell.
But 75 subtracted from 885,148 other students leaves a lot to report about. Simply telling how the St. Louis public schools are organized—is it 24,000, or should the 11,000 in the charter schools also be explained? How many of them are there, and how many boards do they answer to? Does the highly praised KIPP have to go along with the more careful rules regarding suspension in K-3, or do they remain free to do as the 15 bankers in charge of them see fit? The Confluence group will prove interesting if you take a look. I hesitate to criticize Gateway, but it does seem strange that nothing is ever said about whatever the connection is to the Greek political figure Gulen. Worry not—there is no prejudice against white children….at 68% of the student population in a district where the overall population is 81% black, they almost seem preferred.
Still….I guess it does not hurt to have a New Year’s Day front page article about 75 children being well taken care of in a rural area not too far away….and it is not an automatic situation that rural children are all doing so well. I thought the emphasis on how cheaply it is being done was a bit much.
I would not call it fake news. (Not out loud, anyway).
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The StLPD leaves a ton to be desired, not only in it’s reporting, but in it’s headlines for each story. Not to mention the bad writing and editing. Ay ay ay ay ay.
As a kid we got both papers, the PD and Globe Democrat and they were decent enough, although I really wasn’t old enough nor schooled enough to be a grammar nazi-lol.
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For what it’s worth: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/this-small-rural-school-is-one-of-missouri-s-biggest/article_8ec6a110-8859-5582-916c-3b600bdfae52.html
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☞ To Avoid The Abyss
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Here’s a positive story for all to consider in this Bill Moyers’ post. He describes the democratic socialist system in Scandinavia and compares it to our system. Americans decry the high taxes in Scandinavia. Although they pay more, they are investing in the collective good. Our free market capitalism is hardly “free.” It is a rigged market that has created enormous income disparities, and the middle class carries the burden for the wealthy.
“In the US, however, neoliberal politics put the foxes in charge of the henhouse, and capitalists have used the wealth generated by their enterprises (as well as financial and political manipulations) to capture the state and pluck the chickens. They’ve done a masterful job of chewing up organized labor. Today, only 11 percent of American workers belong to a union. In Norway, that number is 52 percent; in Denmark, 67 percent; in Sweden, 70 percent.”
It is a more egalitarian society without the idea of “winners and losers.” The Scandinavian countries are at the top of the The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual report on international well-being. http://billmoyers.com/story/after-living-in-norway-america-feels-backward/#.WGkDBuLfX3B.facebook
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We (as a nation & present company excluded) have been so brain washed in this country to despise unions and to disdain the concept of universal health care. The corporate and the right wing media always publish negative stories about unions and propagandize non stop against any proposal for single payer or universal health care. And so here we are, in 2017, still no universal health care and with Trump, we will be going full speed in reverse.
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We have also been brainwashed by the concept that the “free market” is a solution to everything. The truth is the free market is a description of an economic practice, not a solution. It is about a useful as “trickle down” economics. We don’t have a free market; we have a rigged market with endless lobbying and special interest access for corporate power. Just look at how corporations colluding with government have stacked the deck against public education.
Here’s a perfect example of a lame proposal from Ryan to privatize Medicare. It makes zero sense, and the math doesn’t even work. We could even reduce the government’s portion if Big Pharma didn’t prevent negotiating on drug prices. It is a rigged system! https://thinkprogress.org/the-republican-medicare-plan-is-an-atrocity-315e16ebbe0f#.gqfddm2k0
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Can I help .
There are no free markets, never have been, never will be. No matter how small your societal unit someone will be deciding how goods and services are distributed. That is
called Politics.
“Who decides who gets what”
So I am again going to wish everybody a healthy New Year because I doubt it will be a happy one .
I think I’ll go read Dean Bakers new book
Rigged:
How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer
Available as a paperback or free as an E book
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“There are no free markets, never have been, never will be.”
Google Earth recognized one:
When I “flew to it” on google earth it took me to 13, 33 14.99 North and 29 29 42.44 West. Pretty hard to drive there.
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What Bernie said. And “democratic socialism” results in “investing in the collective good,” thus resulting in a “more egalitarian society.”
Just imagine a poverty-free America–an end to childhood hunger, equal opportunities, record employment, fully-funded education & no 1%/99%. Not at all crazy or impossible, but up to us, starting from the bottom up.
I’ve said it before–& I’ll say it again, in 2017–yes, WE can. And we WILL.
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The elite ed reform discussion will not be over whether to privatize public education- that decision had already been made.
Now they’re arguing over whether privatized education systems should be regulated AT ALL:
“In elementary and secondary education, the right mix of competition and regulation can produce impressive results. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, provide competition for traditional public schools. In Massachusetts, where urban charters have delivered spectacular results, the state closely reviews charter application and renewals, closing poor performers.
But some supporters of charter schools disagree with this approach, arguing that parents, not government, should be the sole judge of school quality. In Michigan, Ms. DeVos fought legislation that would have provided tighter government oversight of charter schools.”
There will be “two sides” in this fake debate- those who want to privatize and regulate and those who want to privatize with no regulation. There’s no public school advocates involved at all. Public schools have simply been omitted from consideration going forward.
It’s remarkable to watch- this “movement” goes further and further Right with each reboot.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/upshot/free-market-for-education-economists-generally-dont-buy-it.html?referer=
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Chiara,
I am sure you know that Susan Dynarski is a big supporter of charters, as is Kevin Carey, who recently became a regular commenter for The NY Times.
She pretends to deep knowledge but note the simple factual error in her column. She says that DeVos supported a voucher law in Michigan. Wrong. In 2000, DeVos and her husband sponsored a constitutional amendment to make public funding of religious schools ok. It was overwhelmingly defeated, 69-31%.
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I will continue to join up with and support NPE.
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“…there really are times when the entire history of the world seems to me like one great shipwreck, from which the only imperative is to rescue oneself.” — Henrik Ibsen
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Other than life and death emergencies, individualism is the last thing anyone needs. Collectivism is where most everything is at nowadays, Mr. Ibsen.
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Seems to me that the use of the preposition “at” in this sentence is grammatically incorrect. I also think your definition of individualism is far too limited.
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It’s an idiomatic expression.
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“Somehow, a man was elected as president who has no experience or qualifications or knowledge.”
I have been watching Oliver Stone’s The Untold history of the US on Netflix. Truman was a similarly unqualified president, and he dropped the atomic bomb twice, and single handedly caused cold war. At the 1944 Democratic convention, Truman was nominated as VP despite only 2% of the public wanted him, while 65% wanted Wallace, the residing VP, a Sanders-like progressive.
Clearly, the US electoral system has failed in 1944 with horrible consequences for the whole world in the decades to follow. The US electoral system needs to change.
Here is the relevant part from the Stone documentary on youtube
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