John Thompson here writes about his reaction to the annual conference of the Network for Public Education, where the implicit theme was that David is beating Goliath, but Goliath just keeps stumbling forward, crushing public schools and advancing privatization, with no evidence of success. I argued, in the opening address of the conference, that the Reformers are akin to Goliath, and that Goliath has failed and failed again but is so powerful that he continues to wreak destruction on communities. He is among the Walking Dead. He is, in fact, a zombie.
Thompson was a teacher in Oklahoma; he recently retired. He lives in the belly of the beast, a state where Goliathians control the legislature and the governorship. At least they don’t pretend to be “progressives.” They are DeVos-Trump extremists, with links to ALEC and the Koch brothers.
Thompson admits that he was slow in realizing that the Reformers are intent on undermining public schools and that they were acting in concert. But he is convinced now, not only that they are doing so, but that their promises have not been kept and that, in fact, they have failed wherever they set their sights.
He ends with this:
Knowing that Indianapolis is at the heart of the dying, but still dangerous corporate reform movement, I expected that Chalkbeat would choose its words carefully and make sure that its reporting didn’t threaten its donations from Goliath. Chalkbeat Indianapolis didn’t cover the NPE conference but Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat New York has been covering Indiana’s Mind Trust and its successor, the City Fund. (Chalkbeat Indiana has since linked to WFYI Indianapolis’s report on one of the city’s 20 “innovation schools” which is receiving $1.3 million in management fees.)
This leads to the biggest question that I brought to the NPE. We Oklahomans have failed to communicate with our state’s edu-philanthropists on how their science-based, holistic early education and trauma-informed instruction programs and the Indianapolis Goliath are inherently incompatible. We know that the City Fund seems to have its eye on Deborah Gist’s Tulsa Public schools. We could use some help from NPE conference participants in explaining to Tulsa philanthropists why their “portfolio model” is likely to undermine their contributions to high quality pre-k, just like it did in New Orleans.
As a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood and a board member for the ACLU/OK, I developed great respect for the Kaiser and Schusterman foundations and other Tulsa philanthropists. I still struggle to understand how those leaders could not see how their humane, evidence-based programs are threatened by Goliath’s data-driven, reward and punish corporate reforms. But one of the first people I saw in Indianapolis was Tom Ultican, and he gave me information on the $200,000 Schusterman donated to California privatizers such as Antonio Villaraigosa and Marshall Tuck. If nothing else, I would like to explain to the philanthropists why educators can’t lower our guard and stop defending ourselves against their scorched earth tactics. I’d appreciate any help the NPE can provide in explaining why we will fight Goliath to the end.
Imagine that. Chalkbeat has an outpost in Indianapolis, but did not think it was worth its time to send a reporter to cover a conference of 500 educators from across the country that took place in Indianapolis! Is that media bias? Would their funders (Walton, Gates, etc.) have objected if they sent a reporter to write about a major event in their city?
This makes me very sad. I have been writing about the war on public education, when the ploy in the plot was to remove the professional practitioners so they could be replaced by novice teachers who would follow the mandates of the deformers.
that was 2 decades ago.
Goliath is the cabal that is undermining everything. An ignorant population is the goal, but the profit that privatizing education brings to the zillionaires is the gravy.
The Master Plan”
Initial step‘s to break their will
Second step’s to tame
Final step’s to work the mill
With robots, all the same
Dearest my spirit sister:
How are you lately? I am not well in thinking and writing as much as I want to do. I need to sleep a lot more than normal people in order to calm my nerve system as well as to be able to function in eat, walk and think properly.
However, I truly appreciate my disability because this helps me to sympathize with certain greedy and ignorant in both savage and educated people. I thought that I quit being greedy since I was in the ocean for 7 hours with full of hope in humanity in the past 40 years.
However, the truth is that I realize being kind, considerate and logical in a reality is the best and much beyond materialistic possession in any stage of human life. I hope that you are healthy and happy with your loved ones. Most of all, your past experience should prevent or release you from being frustrated and having bad blood pressure.
Have a beautiful Thanksgiving Holiday and enjoy a loving relationship with family and friend. I think of you and love you always, your faithful spirit sister, May
Dearest May,
Please recover your health and strength.
Diane
May, you are such a beautiful caring person. Hope you get well. Have a love-filled Thanksgiving. I’m sending my best to you.
Carol Ring
Schererville, IN
May–
Feel better (sleep is good & healthful), & I hope your health improves: your writing is still strong, with your words full of wisdom.
Wishing you all the best, and thankful for your uplifting comments.
Keep ’em coming!!
Dearest Dr. Ravivitch, carolmalaysia, and retiredbutmissthekids:
Please accept my heartfelt appreciation and thanks for your kind words.
I am the luckiest survivor from shipwreck, and more than lucky that I have a chance to read wisdom ideas from Dr. Ravitch, both of you and all of veteran educators in this education blog.
I have grown to be civilized from 1978 up to today thanks to Dr. Ravitch’s education blog which cultivate and educate my humanity.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. May God bless you all with health and happiness with all of your loved ones.
Respectfully yours,
May King, XOXOXO
May: I am continuously amazed at the beauty of your words. Thank you!!!! There is beauty and love inside you and it comes out in these magnificent writings that you post. Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving and many, many, many, many more. God bless you.
hardest truth to continue reading from so many great anti-testing/anti-reform writers: I was writing about this TWO DECADES ago…
It was a pleasure spending time with John Thompson in Indianapolis. I have always looked up to John for his obvious wisdom, knowledge and passion. If you have not read his book “A Teacher’s Tale” do yourself a favor and get a copy.
John points to one of the more puzzling aspects of the billionaire driven destruction of public education; how come? How did they completely lose track of the devastating effect on education that privatizing schools has had? I do not believe these are inherently evil people but their immense wealth is subverting democracy and possibly that is the problem. The wisdom of the masses is superior to any single individual or small group of like minded people with similar experience. Large foundations have become as much forces for evil as good if not more so.
To teacher tultican:
Thank you for your wisdom in the second last sentence –
“The wisdom of the masses is superior to any single individual or small group of like minded people with similar experience.”
I also trust that Dr. Ravitch’s heart and soul represents for both conscientious American Educators and global conscientious educators. This means that Dr. Ravitch’s wisdom IS SUPERIOR, according to your wisdom as the above conclusion sentence.
I hope that all parents will have unified to be a strong force to build A WRAPPED AROUND PUBLIC EDUCATION and FREE INTUITION FOR K-12 education to all students regardless of being homeless or rich background.
These students will have a chance to communicate and understand the true meaning of humanity within their own boundary and ability at each stage of their lives. Yes, the peace in the world will come true along with the compassion in all of these young generations’ mind and heart.
That is how important and noble TEACHING PROFESSION to have CONSCIENTIOUS EDUCATORS. Back2basic
“The wisdom of the masses is superior to any single individual or small group of like minded people with similar experience. ”
I will have to consider that. Collective decision is only better for government if it protects the rights of the minority opinion or group. Booker T Washington was quoted recently in this forum with the suggestion that a majority opinion was not the only requirement to achieve correctness.
The problem with the privatization of schools is that it ignores process in favor of personal desire. Instead of trying to sell its ideas in a school board meeting, it attempts subterfuge to get its way. Justifying the behavior after the fact, we get the retoric.
“Large foundations have become as much forces for evil as good if not more so.”
I do not understand this viewpoint. How can we expect people who collect their billions from and at the expense of the 99% to be the sources of good?
The only proper thing they can do is pay up all their billions in taxes.
Frankly, I am tired of “We need to be political, practical; we need to work with philanthropists ” I say, let’s not. If we show them “respect” if we try to “explain” things to them, we just confirm for them, that they are exceptional people. They are exceptional exceptional modern day criminals, who undermine democracy any way they can.
No, inherently they are not evil people, just what they do is evil. But then what is the definition of an evil person? Isn’t it that they act evil?
Who cares if they were not born evil? What they do now is evil, and it’s futile to think, we can appeal to them in any way with some nicely formulated arguments what we think is good. There is no need for it.
There is no need or possibility for a “balanced” evaluation of these people. When somebody robs a bank or commits a murder, we do not say “he was not born evil, he was so nice before” and then let him off the hook. No he, goes to prison. So why let billionaires off the hook? How are they special?
You’re surprised that Chalkbeat failed to publish an article on the NPE conference? I’m sure they sent someone…
…to spy on you, and to take notes for future pieces that uphold their tradition of painting the reformist agenda in the most positive, reasonable light.
I don’t like Chalkbeat. It is biased. I did write to the editor of Chalkbeat. I had to.
It’s very frustrating to read Chalkbeat exactly for the reason you say. On the other hand, they are basically the only source on local educational news here in Memphis. One simply cannot afford not to read them.
See this: The right’s push to privatize school took a major beating in the midterms | Alternet
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/school-privatization-agenda-took-major-beating-midterms
Excellent!