It is so rare to find a mainstream newspaper that supports public schools and opposes privatization, that it is worth paying attention when you see one. Our reader Chiara sent this one in. If you see one in your city or state, send it in. Iowa has long been renowned for its excellent public schools. Community support is a big part of that excellence. Thank you, Des Moines Register!
The editorial begins like this:
Let’s just call the “school choice” movement what it really is: an effort to funnel taxpayer dollars from public schools to vouchers, private schools and home schools. Supporters seem to believe Iowa children are being held hostage in collapsing government education institutions.
“If there’s a public school that’s failing, we have a responsibility to those children that we give them the best opportunity possible,” said Sen. Mark Chelgren, a Republican from Ottumwa.
Actually, if schools are failing, the Iowa Legislature has a responsibility to help fix them, which includes adequately funding them. Despite the rhetoric of Chelgren and other school-choice advocates, Iowa parents have numerous choices in educating their children.
That is exactly right. When a school has low test scores, help it. Support the kids and the teachers. Don’t kill public education by betting on vouchers (a proven failure) and charters (privately run schools that typically do no better than the public schools they replace).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“When a school has low test scores, help it.”
I think I see the point to this statement, but it does not get us away a from all this testing. Any testing we do should be done after we help schools filled with students who are difficult to teach. Test students after they have had a chance to succeed, not before. This is the way teachers use tests that we give if we can.
Perhaps this is what you mean, and I need to do a close reading.
This paper has belonged to the Gannett Company (founded in 1906) since 1985.
“Gannett’s assets include the national newspaper USA Today and the erstwhile weekly USA Weekend. Its largest non-national newspaper is The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona. Other significant newspapers include The Indianapolis Star, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York, The Des Moines Register, the Detroit Free Press, The News-Press in Fort Myers, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Great Falls Tribune.”
Has anyone noticed if any of Gannett’s other newspapers have published pro-public education pieces? There’s a much longer list further down the Wiki page on this company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gannett_Company
Although Roy beat me to the punch in quoting the following, I have to comment further.
“When a school has low test scores, help it.”
I’m not sure to what we should ascribe the language and rationo-logical traps into which we, many times unknowingly fall into. This simple statement has many of those traps, although not explicitly stated-falsehoods implied and outright rationo-logical mistakes.
First, the test score(s) cannot be assigned to the school as the score is just a statement (albeit a very lacking one) on the interaction of the student with the test at a particular time and place-nothing more. It cannot be assigned to the school nor attached to the student as the student is a participation in an event that is being described by the score.
Second, why would we use a COMPLETELY INVALID process, standardized tests (as proven by Noel Wilson in his 1997 dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”) and their results to judge anything. Crap in, crap out is an aphorism that is aptly applied to the standards and testing malpractices. Or. . .
Doing the Wrong Thing Righter
The standards and testing regime malpractices belong in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Why we continue to give any credence whatsoever to those malpractices is beyond my comprehension. Maybe if I smoked a big bowl of hashish laced with opium while drinking Ouzo or Slivovitz I might begin to understand but I doubt it.