In my travels these past few years, one of the most remarkable people I met was Kipp Dawson in Pittsburgh. She is a middle school teacher who is dedicated to her work and her students. She is a warrior for social and economic justice. Before she became a teacher, she spent ten years as a coal miner. I knew about her before I met her and expected to meet an Amazon. But Kipp is diminutive in size with a mighty heart. If I have not already named her to the honor roll of champions, I add her now for her tenacity in fighting for children and public schools.
She wrote:
“The article which follows is a vicious attack on public schools in Pittsburgh, and thus, by extension, on our public schools as a whole. It is on the front page of the Forum section of today’s Pittsburgh Post Gazette. I post it as a call to action to all of those who are fighting to save and improve our public schools, and against those who are working double-time to shut us down.
“Here is the response I just posted on the Post-Gazette page:
“No.
“Ms. Amankulor makes it personal, and I respond, at first, in kind.
“Like her, my family is biracial (my white mom married my black dad in 1952). Like her, I am from Northern California, via NYC, to Pittsburgh, though I have been here since 1977. LIke her, my grandmother was an Eastern European Jew who escaped the Holocaust by finding refuge, and becoming a social justice fighter, here in the U.S. (though she soon lost her husband to murder at the hands of xenophobic anti-Semites in Erie in 1922 — motivated much like the anti-immigrants of today). Like her, my passion is for our children. BUT.
“Unlike Ms. Amankulor, I have allied myself with those children — all of them — and WITH our public schools, even as Ms. Amankulor and her organization have been part of the billionaire-backed forces who first undermined our schools via hostile “reforms,” then stood back, looked at the problems they helped to create, pointed fingers at our public schools, and called them “failing,” even as their “solutions” are to do even more to destroy one of our most basic democratic institutions.
“The “reforms” included closing schools, overcrowding and under-resourcing those that remained, sending Gates-funded “evaluators” to terrorize teachers and drive out many who would not be thusly debased, replace trained teachers with untrained TFA-style passing-through young people (some of whom were highly motivated and so badly mistrained), destroy elected school boards and replace them (not here; not yet) with appointed anti-public-school politicians (Philadelphia and Chicago being among the most outstanding), and then use them to shut us — public education — down, by any means necessary.
“Please, everyone who cares, read up on PennCAN. Please read Diane Ravitch’s prescient book, “Reign of Error,” which predicted this demise.
“Then join us to do the hard but necessary work to make our PUBLIC schools the schools all of our children deserve. ALL of our children.”
Kipp Dawson
Diane Ravitch's blog 
All of DC is promoting charter schools today- they’ll have members of Congress in attendance. the US Department of Education, all kinds of powerful folks.
When do our elected representatives show up for “public schools week”? Can we expect them to start showing the same kind of passion and dedication to our schools, or is this sudden burst of effort limited to charters and vouchers?
How do charter schools manage to get all these big shots to appear – I don’t think my House member has ever darkened the door of an Ohio public school, let alone attended an event celebrating and promoting public schools.
What’s the secret? How do public schools get this kind of pr and marketing?
It sounds like Pittsburgh is gentrifying due to expanded opportunities there. If they believe charters will provide excellence, they are misinformed. Some charters get high scores from cherry picking and discarding students. This process does not improve outcomes for the vast number of poor students that are left in under resourced public schools as a result of charter drain and political manipulations. The disinvestment in public education is a deliberate attempt to make them fail to put them on the road to segregated privatization. IMHO the best hope of opportunity for all are well funded, integrated public schools with professional teachers and wrap around services for poor families. This approach will provide the maximum opportunity to the most students in the most cost effective way. While you may not be able to totally erase “the gap,” you will put a huge dent in it.
I read the article, I do not find it a “Vicious attack”. And the background piece on the urgent need to improve Pittsburgh schools is interesting.
I suggest you do some research on who funds PennCAN and why.
I suggest a topic: A school here in Fairfax is planning to change their name from J.E.B. Stuart. The county will spend $1 MILLION dollars to make the change. see
https://fairfaxfreecitizen.com/2017/05/21/jeb-stuart-hs-name-change-1m-waste-fx-county-school-board/
There is a piece in the June 2017 National Geographic Magazine that describes people like Charles.
The title is “Why We Lie, the science behind our complicated relationship with the truth”
To be clear, I do not think Charles is one of the liars. He’s one of the people that believes the liars. Quote, “Researchers have shown that we (people that think like Charles) are especially prone to accepting lies that affirm our (their) worldview.”
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/lying-hoax-false-fibs-science/
Every time I read something like this, I think: “Is it time yet to follow Thomas Jefferson’s advice about nourishing the tree of liberty”?
According to her bio, Rachel Amankulor was a lawyer for Success Academy Charter Schools previously.
Was it highly paid to defend the counseling out of children whose parents had eagerly signed up so their kid could attend the “best” charter? Was it highly paid to dash their dreams? What was Rachel Amankulor thinking to herself as the charter school where she worked was suspending untold numbers of those 5 year olds until their parents got the message that their kid was not wanted? She has some chutzpah writing about her conversation with a boy named Thomas who could have been one of those many Kindergarten children — as many as 20% of them — who were suspended when they acted out after being humiliated, punished and publicly shamed for not knowing the right answers. Would Ms. Amankulor have helped to counsel him out to a different school that was a better fit? Was she complicit?
Funny how there was not one mention in the article about how only some kids are worthy of attending charter schools while the ones who can’t shape up at age 5 are brutally weeded out. How convenient she forgot to mention her charter school experience is working for the chain that has embraced Betsy DeVos’ vision for education. The chain that has “got to go” lists and model teachers whose teaching methods — punishing children who don’t know the right answer and tearing up their paper — were CELEBRATED until one of the assistant teachers who apparently had the moral core that the rest of the school lacked decided to videotape what she felt was not right in the hopes of putting a stop to it.
It took one assistant teacher with the ethics no one else at the school had to question the reprehensible practices. The practices Amankulor’s legal work were helping to enable. And now she wants to bring her schools to Pittsburgh? Hopefully the Pittsbirgh voters will reject her no-excuses charters that she envisions for the students she approves of while the ones she deems unacceptable are left to rot.
Anyone who worked for the highest suspending charter school in NY and looked the other way as many very young children were psychologically brutalized into leaving has no business being in education at all.