If you have nothing better to do today or tonight, you might enjoy watching my presentation to a lively audience at the Lensic Center in Santa  Fe, where I spoke about the negative result of eight years of “reform” based on the Florida model.

Since I will soon turn 80 and am ending my lecture career to turn to writing a new book (my last, I assume), I didn’t hold back. The warmth of the audience unleashed me to say what was in my mind and in my heart about the fraud that is now called “reform” (but is really privatization).

New Mexico has the highest rate of child poverty (under the age of 5) in the nation at 36.2%,  five points higher than Mississippi, which is in second place. It also has one of the nation’s highest rates of adult poverty. But the education leaders in New Mexico thought they could cure poverty with testing and teacher evaluation. All of it failed. New Mexico, with all its beauty and splendor, has made no education progress during these past eight years of “reform.”

Jesse Hagopian, teacher and author at Garfield High School in Seattle, who led a strike against mandated standardized testing at that school, introduced me and joined in conversation after I spoke.