Mercedes Schneider has an assignment for you.
If you have some spare time, watch the finesse with which protestors, activists, and students responded to Betsy DeVos at Harvard. They didn’t shout her down. They were not rude. She e er ksed her free speech rights. They made clear that her views are not widely shared.
Classy.
She added injury to insult by releasing millions of dollars in federal funds for charter schools in Massachusetts, despite the fact that voters overwhelmingly rejected them last fall.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you, Mercedes and Diane.
Those Harvard students were more than smart and courageous. Good for them.
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That moderator needs to be called out for jumping in so quickly to protect her, though. Can’t she fend for herself against a question that every journalist SHOULD be asking her?
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The quick response of the moderator was totally warranted.
You have to jump in quick to keep grizzly bears out of the debate.
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I reckon Betsy would prefer taking on a grizzly than a question like that.
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I taught for many years and never saw the natural curiosity of our children “snufffed out” by fourth or fifth grade. In fact, I saw lots of interest in science, and lots of project based learning in the social sciences. Most of the students were engaged and involved except for a couple of slackers, which we would find in any class.
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Until Common Core came along, I never saw snuffing at such an early age.
My nephews were very interested in math — and very good at it — until Common Core reared its ugly head with it’s mandate to explain how they got your answer in N different convoluted ways.
My nephews used to spend most of their homework time using unnecessarily complex methods to explain how they got the answer to simple math problems that would have taken 5 seconds to answer using simple straightforward (tried and true) methods.
It bored them to tears, all but destroying their interest in math.
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True statement. Those who truly care about the future of public schools must take back this narrative: kids in so many schools enjoy their classes, and yet all we ever hear from those who wish to privatize (and who spend so much money spreading their public-schools-are-failing narrative) is that teachers are ineffectual and selfish, classes are dull, kids are disengaged. Killing student interest and engagement through endless testing — well, that part is not public school initiated.
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