This fabulous graphic is a summary of my speech at the conference on “The State of American Democracy,” identified by the acronym SAD. The conference was sponsored by Oberlin College at the college in Oberlin, Ohio, and it will be held with different participants in three other locations over the next several months. I spoke about the “War on Public Education.” In my talk, I forgot to mention that more than 90-95% of charters are non-union, and that their primary sponsor is the Walton Family Foundation, which is anti-union. That was an important omission in an audience that is mostly comprised of progressives. Jonathan Alter, who is very knowledgeable about national politics, leapt up to defend charter schools and objected to being lumped in with the DeVos agenda, which includes both charter schools and vouchers; Jon loves KIPP. I cited Katherine Stewart, who said in her article in “The American Prospect” that religious extremists had made “useful idiots” of the charter movement.
Early in my talk, I asked how many of those in the room had gone to public schools, and about 90% of the 300 or so people raised their hands. That included the new President of Oberlin College, Carmen Twillie Ambar, who graduated from public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the first African American female president of this historic college.
This is the wonderful graphic that was created as I spoke, by a brilliant artist, Jo Byrne (seeyourwords.com):
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I wish I had known that you were in my general “neighborhood.” I would have liked to attend. Based on what the graphic shows, you have taught us well. It contains all the elements of my stump speech when I talk to others about public education. I do, however, always cite the source and encourage everyone to read your books and blog. Wish I could take credit for sounding so brilliantly informed. 😁
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I hope you can post some links to your talk or some print version.
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“Education War”
The education war
Bipartisan at Core
To charterize the poor
And launderize the lore
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And standardize the store
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And turn us into dumbest and poor . . .
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IMPORTANT last line, launderize the lore, which is perhaps the most long-term damaging
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Great article. And, I love the graphic by Jo Byrne. My old eyes are having a bit of trouble seeing the details in the graphic. I don’t know if there’s a way to see a bigger version? I did check out the site, seeyourwords.com. Very cool.
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The Stewart article is top notch! Worth sharing with others who wonder why we are such kooks about public education. And sad that the acronym SAD is so appropriate!
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On a Mac, I dragged the image to Preview and created a PDF. It does make it large enough to read. I can see where the Waltons and the anti-union forces are missing, as Diane noted above. The graphic artist Jo Byrne is great. Worth employing for capturing complexity in a visual.
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I included the Waltons in my talk, even said that attacking unions was one of the three big goals.
But it was in the Q&A where I should have responded to pro-charter statement with role of charters in getting rid of unions
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John:
On a Mac, if you hold down the command key and simultaneously hit the + sign, the screen will be enlarged. To shrink it back down, Command key and – sign.
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What would be useful is to make the graphic into an image map so that clicking on each part would bring up relevant posts found on this blog and/or on the NPE site.
Just like a search on this blog (eg, of Race to the Top) does.
Diane could make the image map a header for the blog.
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SDP,
I wish I knew how to do that!
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It’s actually pretty easy.
Maybe I will do it.
No promises though😀
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Diane,
Here’s a link to the image map I created.
http://damthology.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
If you want I can send the html code by email and explain what you need to do to include it as the header for your blog.
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That’s fabulous, SDP, but I am a technological dummy. Send me the code and I will forward it to my tech helper.
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PS, send to my NYU address
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You could probably do it, Diane, if you wanted. It would take some time learning. Or call young geek, or Tableau and they will do it for you. Does any one here have the skills to do it for Diane here? Because it’s a great idea, SomeDam Poet!
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This is great! I shared it with all my administration and it will go on my justice wall at school.
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So sorry I missed your visit to my alma mater. So proud, once again, that my college recognizes the excellence of outstanding leaders like you!
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Great article! Some right wing Christians certainly have a twisted view of the world, The most absurd assertion is that environmentalists are “worshiping” the earth. Environmentalists want to protect the earth from man’s recklessness so that future generations will have a life worth living on this planet. There is no worship involved. DeVos wants to forward the “kingdom of God.” She should do this on her own time. As head of the DOE she has a responsibility to all students. So far she has chosen to ignore 90% of the students that attend public schools.
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Conservatives should be conservationists
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Some are. Consider Theodore Roosevelt.
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Conservatives recoiled from Trump’s decision to allow importation of Elephant trophies.
Conservatives are supposed to conserve, not destroy.
That’s why they should protect traditional public schools. To protect tradition and community and continuity.
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Don’t bet your ranch on that happening. Conservatives want to limit the reach and power of government. That is why many (not all) conservatives want to put a stop to the top-down socialist monopoly called public schools.
Conservatives broke up the “trusts”, and in the 21st century, conservatives will break up the new “trusts”.
Watch and see.
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The new “conservatives,” like DeVos, don’t believe in conservative. They are anarchists and worshippers of Mammon.
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