We have quite an amazing collection of readers on this blog. I often post your comments, because they are well-written, succinct, informative, and besides which, most of you know know more about teaching and the everyday life of the classroom than I do.
If your name was inadvertently omitted, let me know and I will add it.
A reader who goes by the name “Homeless Educator” sent this comment.
“Diane, I think the regular contributors to your blog are heroes as well, because the discussions here can be very enlightening to a confused public, supportive to weary educators, and aid in widely spreading the message about the attacks on public education, as well as of the imminent need to protect our schools and children from profiteers, here and abroad. If HE forgot you, please send your name. Or join the conversation. Whenever I think of suspending or ending the blog, I think of you and get a new charge of energy. We have a space for discussion and debate on this blog unlike anything else on the Internet.
“Here are some of them, in no particular order –just basically off the top of my head, so I hope I don’t offend anyone who is omitted:”
KrazyTA
democracy
Lloyd Lofthouse
Linda
jcgrim
GregB
Christine Langhoff
Chiara
retired teacher
WestCoastTeacher
Joel Herman
Ellen Lubic
Karen Wolfe
SomeDAMpoet
m4potw Back2Basic May King
Bethree5
John Ogozalek
booklady
carolmalaysia
gitapik
ira shor
Norwegian Filmmaker
joe prichard
Laura H Chapman
Threatened Out West
alphawolf1
Concerned
speduktr
Zorba
Catherine Blanche King
Duane E. Swacker, sitting in for Noel Wilson
Left Coast Teacher
retiredbutmissthekids
ciedie aech
2old2teach
Kathyirwin1
Kenneth Bernstein
Máté Wierdl
Yvonne Siu-Runyan
Carl Peterson
Arthur Camins
Ponderosa
Educator
Robert Skeels, Cynthia Liu
Carl Peterson
Mark Naison
Geronimo
Diane Ravitch's blog 
diane, i regularly read your blog. and though i’ve only posted a time or two, i share periodically posts widely. your effort is a means of sourcing experiences from colleagues and peers from around the nation whose experiences are akin to mine and often far more articulate than i can manage.
robert raymond
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Thanks, Robert!
That comment validates my efforts.
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Left off some of my faves…Arthur Camins, Ponderosa, Catherine, Educator, and the occasional insights of Robert Skeels, Cynthia Liu, and Carl Peterson…and Mark Naison of course.
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and Josh Liebner who writes often under his Native American nom de plume.
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Love your blog Diane!
Ralph Ratto
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Thanks for doing this. It’s important for the public to know there are many educators who support this progressive agenda.
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yes! This blog is a great example of how a reader collective can add perspective and context to make posts cover issues more thoroughly
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Please add me: Judy Conte: jgconte42@yahoo.com
Sent from my iPad
>
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Awwwwwww! We’re blushing!
Seriously, Diane, we appreciate all that you do. Your voice is needed now more than ever. Thank you.
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Though I have not written in quite a while, I still read your blog faithfully. It has had a large impact on my life. Several years ago I began sharing your posts with the staff at my school through our school email. That caught the attention of my principal at the time who was one of those “no excuses” reformy Kool-Aide drinkers, and who unsuccessfully tried to shut me down. My emails also caught the eye of our local union leader, who encouraged me to get more involved. I am now president of my local union, something I never thought I could do ten years ago!
So, thank you for all you do for public education. One never knows the true impact one makes on the lives of others, so I’m glad I finally have the chance to tell you. That small pebble tossed in the pond can make quite a wave!
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Good for you, Lehrer!
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Diane, Although I don’t comment often, I read most everything you post. I often share the knowledge I gain from your posts with my colleagues. You are very much appreciated. Please don’t leave us.
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Here, here! I love to read all these bloggers and commentators! Our parents, teachers, and children need your insights and voices to keep us informed and motivated to fight public school privatization and false “reforms”! Long live democracy and public education!
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YOU are my hero. Your blog offers A+ research as well as an opportunity to learn from others’ experience and wisdom. Amid all the noise from wacky ideologs, greedy industrialists and ivory tower meddlers, yours is the voice of reason and fact. Thank you.
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I love this blog community you have created, Diane. Thank you for helping me find my voice as an education activist.
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Karen Wolfe’s tireless efforts and insights n LA have truly been heroic!
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Feel free to add my name:
Norwegian Filmmaker
I am not an American, but I have a vested interest in protecting teacher relatives of mine who live here and from allowing this mayhem from spreading to Norway.
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As a public school teacher, I feel I owe my very ability to teach to Diane Ravitch. It is no hyperbole to say that if not for her, I would have been replaced by temps and iPads by now. Diane leads. Diane is my hero. I greatly value having my username (I wish I were more comfortable using my real name on the web) on the honor roll of my hero’s great blog. I’m a pretty darn good teacher too, so I also not so humbly thank you on behalf of all my students past and future. Thank you, yet again, Diane.
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Add my name. I’m so glad you are keeping all of us up to date on the ‘Betsy DeVos advocates’ across the country.
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If You have time to add it~~
My name is:
David Bremenstuhl,, Education Laureate [am a retired educator who taught from University level to Elementary school level]
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Wow! I never thought of myself as a heroine, just a “not rich” teacher on a FIXED income plus plain OLD, too.
Thank you, Homeless Educator and Diane.
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Very cool to be on this list. Thanks to everyone who contributes.
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I have looked at other conversations in other places on other topics. Nowhere else is there such an attention to the justification of attitudes by citing factual information. Though emotional, most participants in the discussions here look to explain the rational underpinning of their thoughts. Most other places I have been quickly degenerate into name calling and hackneyed phrases.
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Diane
You are my idol and have been since your Rise and Fall book came out. I was in Philly when you spoke to a ballroom full of mathematics teachers several years ago- your standing ovation was well deserved! I, too, don’t often post, but I do share your blog with colleagues and future teachers who need to be aware of what is happening in other states so we can be prepared for when these things spread further into Rhode Island.
Thank you for all you do and thank you as well to all your loyal contributors…keep up the good work and keep fighting the good fight.
Susan L. Osberg
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HA Hurley
Dedicated reader, follower, fighting for public education & a contributor.
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Thank you.
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Cosmic Thinker was a wise and frequent commenter who added insight. She is missed.
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I’m tickled to be on the list. Thank you.
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I am humbled to know you think of me as a ‘regular’, Diane, & proud to be one. Though I bring parental experience of ’90’s/’00’s SpEd pgms, my contributions as a teacher (PT for-lang preK enrichment to various regional preK’s) are minor compared to other teachers here.
I have learned tremendously from this site.
When I came onboard in 2010, I’d just been squeezed out of a 9-yr preK enrichment gig by a new employee daycare director who brought in bean-counting/ more teacher-directed seat-time/ less unstructured play– in the name of NJ Abbott-school stds, w/the aim of plumping enrollment w/local state-subsidized students. For those kids, any enrichment which was not math-Engl-phys-ed got pushed past 9-3:30 curriculum hrs (too late in day for most preK’s): they lost art, music, computer, & for-langs. I blamed it on Christie…
[At about the same time, I was suddenly cut off from longtime UK teacher-resources for early-for-lang-learning resources. UK had been ahead of US by yrs in ELL (early-lang-learning). As part of the EU, they’d found themselves odd man out in terms of multi-lingualism, & had embarked in ’90’s on agressive, progressive ELL program devpt which was bearing fruit, & they shared their resources freely. But in late 2000’s, ‘capitalism’ took hold, & resources were available, but at a cost. For a brief period, every teacher was an entrepreneur, selling curriculum for bucks. Then conservative UK politics began shutting down ELL in the 2010’s… The ELL forum I’d long subscribed to was shut down, & soon after, the BBC internet channels supplying free games & lessons disappeared… This helped me understand that early-language-learning was being politicized as part of ‘globalism’ & thus associated w/’liberals’.]
At that time– in 2010– my own kids were just squeaking thro K12 pubsch pre-common-core/PARCC, so I didn’t see the annual testing that was starting to happen on the ground…
Then in 2011 it happened again in a low-inc PreK: for-lang enrichment suddenly shifted from a.m. to post-3:40pm, accompanied by 2/3 reduction in enrollment…
That year I picked up a midsch tutoring gig & became aware of “NJASK” (the NJ version of NCLB 3rd-8th annual testing)… The same autumn, thro hs teachers in one of my local choral groups, I learned how teachers had been plunged– on one month’s notice– into a pprwk-heavy, hi-stakes Marzano evaluation program. I immediately connected that to something I hadn’t fully registered the year before: my sis, a teacher/admin in upstate-NY had shared their new Danielson-teacher-evaln w/me. It struck me as identical to the [easily-gamed] MBO sys imposed on the corp constr projects I’d worked on in the ’80’s [she agreed].
Thanks to this site, I was able to connect the dots, & learn of the national [/intl] scope of the ed-reform phenomenon. I am especially in debt to the hi-qual researchers participating here, namely, Laura Chapman, Mercedes Schneider, Emily Talmage.
Just to bring it full-circle… Check out his link to see how ed-reform is destroying teachers in the UK: https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/teaching-drove-me-a-breakdown-after-17-years-classroom
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I most humbly, and sincerely, ask the readers of this blog to put KrazyTA at the bottom of the above listed participants in “Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discuss better education for all.” Among such distinguished company, it is honor enough to occupy the last position.
😍
At first I was going to come up with my own ordering of those more than three dozen contributors to threads but found that—
Every time I moved some folks up and some folks down, I found new reasons to move them all around again!
😏
So, no need for another round of the misleading abuse and misuse of that abhorrent rheephorm practice of stack ranking.
Yet I found that, regardless of how illogical and perhaps inconsistent it might be of me, I could not help but point to the Muse of this blog—
SomeDAMPoet.
Yet when all is said and done, none of this is possible without this blog.
So if we must put someone at the top of a list—
“A guest never forgets the host who has treated him kindly.” [Homer]
Most krazy props to Diane Ravitch.
Thank you so much for treating us all so kindly.
😎
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Oh YES! KTA MUST be added!!! Her/his insights are invaluable. Thanks for what you do, Krazy!
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I want to thank everyone who contributes to this blog, but especially Diane and Chiara. It’s especially helpful to read someone with extensive knowledge of Ohio, my home state….
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Thank you for the shout out, Homeless Educator.
I only wish there were some way for us to help you to change your nom de plume!
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I have encountered so much hostility to the idea that the Post Dispatch in St. Louis should have a forum dedicated to the discussion of education, (I am barred from making comments after all stories, but I am granted permission to make comments on the all purpose current affairs forum), so much hostility that I have a thread titled: “No education forum? best titles from Diane Ravitch. DAILY” http://interact.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1221795&p=7182574#p7182574
I featured heroes of the blog there today, including comments by Robert Raymond, Dr. Corso, and Jake Jacobs.
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I read. I share, and sometimes, I blog about it. Thank you for the focus you bring to education!
NYC Teacher Abroad – To Love NYC, You Might Need to Leave For A Little While
https://nycteacherabroad.wordpress.com/
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Thanks for posting your link to your blog….loved it, NYC teacher abroad.
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Thanks for checking it out!
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I totally enjoy the information, responses, and discussions. Thank you all!! We have work to do and thank goodness for this community. I know I used the word “thank” several times. Yes, I do feel “thank”ful for Diane and the rest of you.
The list is long, Yeah!
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H.E. & Diane: I am ferklempt (Yiddish adjective, meaning overcome w/emotion)! Some of you might know it from Mike Myers’ portrayal of his former mother-in-law on past SNLs.
Thank you, & this blog is, indeed, a real community, in a safe living room, where REAL dialogue about better education can be accessed.
And, Norwegian Filmmaker, I was going to add you–you provide so many succinct & amusing comments, as well as a P.O.V. that we could only get from someone who lives outside of the U.S., in the “happiest country on Earth” (I have that right, don’t I? Norway is still #1 in happiness?!)
Finally, to end w/something I haven’t written in a while, & something we all believe in, especially in these dangerous days & rough times: yes, WE can…& WE WILL, because we will NEVER give up fighting for good, PUBLIC education.
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Thank you for your kind words.
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“Heroes”
Here is to all
Who blog on this site
Heroes you’re all
Who take up the fight
For freedom for schools
To do what is best
A freedom to choose
At public’s request
The fight to be free
From Broad and from Gates
Be free from their spree
Determine our fates
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SUSAN LEE SCHWARTZ who regularly posts the most crucial education news from Diane’s site at OEN bringing thousands of views. Check out all of Diane’s post at her Series http://www.opednews.com/author/series/author40790.htmll
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and see the quick links to many of Diane’s posts here : http://www.opednews.com/author/quicklinks/author40790.html
like this one https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Los-Angeles-Times-Cheerle-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Billionaires_Conflict_Diane-Ravitch_Education-170630-308.html
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Susan, your insightful comments add so much to this wonderful blog!
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Susan, you are indispensable to this blog!!
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Not sure how I ended up on a list with so many gifted commentators for whom I have such great affection and respect. I am just so happy to have found all of you because I know I’m not alone in my concern about our nation. All of you educate me every day.
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HomelessEducator forgot to include him/herself!
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Ordinary Teacher-Navor Ledesma
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