TIME: How “Education Reform” Has Failed America

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1. Bob Shepherd says:

   February 6, 2020 at 9:30 am

   Congrats, Diane! Reposted on Facebook.

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2. retired teacher says:

   February 6, 2020 at 9:53 am

   It is fantastic that your book is getting attention from national publications. I don’t know how you do it. You are not only doing a book tour; you are also meeting with activists along the way while keeping your blog going. Please pace yourself as you are also recovering from the flu.

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3. carolmalaysia says:

   February 6, 2020 at 9:54 am

   I sent the TIME article to state Blockhead Senator Niemeyer [R-IN] and state Representative Chyung [D-IN] along with my comment.

   Great article!! You are amazing!!

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4. John Ogozalek says:

   February 6, 2020 at 9:56 am

   Very cool ….great news.

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5. Catherine King says:

   February 6, 2020 at 10:33 am

   Diane Ravitch . . . . making a difference. CBK

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   • Bob Shepherd says:

     February 6, 2020 at 1:40 pm

     YES!!!!!

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6. Bob Shepherd says:

   February 6, 2020 at 10:36 am

   When I turn from this blog to another medium, I am blown away by how fundamentally ignorant most people, including most journalists, are about basic matters dealing with education. They just take it on faith that their kids’ state tests measure what they purport to measure. They think that because their state standards have a state-specific name, those standards are not the Common [sic] Core [sic]. They think that giving parents “choice” must be, prima facie. They don’t question it when they’re told that public schools are “failing.” So, these articles and Diane’s book are very, very important. There’s a lot of educating people to do.

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   • Bob Shepherd says:

     February 6, 2020 at 10:42 am

     cx: They think that giving parents “choice” must be, prima facie.a good thing.

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   • SomeDAM Poet says:

     February 6, 2020 at 11:16 am

     There is a very big irony in the fact that so many journalists have taken up the mindless public-teacher and -school bashing without so much as a thought.

     They have been quick to ” critique” public education but what they should really be doing is taking a very critical look at their own profession.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       February 6, 2020 at 12:32 pm

       without so much as a thought

       ALAS!!!!!

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   • ciedie aech says:

     February 6, 2020 at 12:43 pm

     An essential word: fundamentally. Over and over the nation’s ‘news’ will grasp this point or that about the devastating invasions into public education, but in general they will take no time to look deeper. It is the very foundation of ed. reform which is both dangerous and wrongheaded, but our media remains “fundamentally ignorant” of that fact.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       February 6, 2020 at 1:03 pm

       Part of this is a result of the devastating effect that online “news” has had on print and conventional broadcast journalism. Many of the news aggregators, today, pay NOTHING or next to nothing for any story (e.g., Huffington Post), and those media that used to employ investigative journalists can’t afford to compete for advertising dollars against companies that get that many eyeballs that cheaply. Journalism in the U.S. is in real trouble, and the oligarchs like it that way. It takes time to look more deeply. Time and money.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       February 6, 2020 at 1:05 pm

       Many articles that appear in the online news aggregator sources, these days, are barely disguised press releases. A PR firm writes a “news story” and embeds references in it to products (or to trends that inffuence the sales of products) and then distribute these through aggregators.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       February 6, 2020 at 1:20 pm

       I consider myself lucky to have worked as a writer when I did. It’s become MUCH harder to do so, now. There has been enormous consolidation among publishing houses, and the few that remain rarely publish anything that is not by someone who is famous already, has millions of social media followers, or is is already extremely well published. Most of the best-selling novelists now run little factories that hire people to churn out books under the authors’ names. Almost nothing is published now that doesn’t come through an agent, and agents are in the business of identifying and promoting surefire deals. Very, very, very, very rarely, some editor might discover some new talent in an MFA program or at a writer’s conference, but it’s much more likely that that new novel will be by the young woman who took that trip to Ibiza with the publisher’s granddaughter who brought the old man to lunch with her at the Russian Tea Room. LOL. In the old days, fiction writers could support themselves between novels by publishing short stories in magazines, but few magazines carry fiction anymore, and those that do are circle jerks for the most part or little literary or online magazines that are read by few and that pay little or nothing. Those news aggregators that run original pieces also pay little or nothing, usually. I did a lot of writing, over the years, for educational publishers. In the 1980s, 35 years ago, when I was just a kid, I could typically get $150 or so per page from these people. Now, freelancers working for the development houses that supply the educational publishers typically pay a small fraction of that (often, now, $12-$25 per page). They get what they pay for, formulaic junk, but that’s what they are looking for now–since the Common [sic] Core [sic], the ed publishing work has become highly scripted and standardized and of very low quality.

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     • GregB says:

       February 6, 2020 at 11:55 pm

       May interest you:
       https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/02/27/can-journalism-be-saved/

       Economics are making newspapers a thing of the past. Education will always gets the short stick. It did so even when the journalism business was robust.

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7. Susan Lee Schwartz says:

   February 6, 2020 at 11:52 am

   It is up at OEN https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Slaying-Goliath-The-Educ-in-General_News-Accountability_Diane-Ravitch_Disruption_Education-200206-96.html

   with 4 comments which I took from my notes and links to reviews of Slaying Goliath.If you go to the address above there are links to everything that I copied below.

   Comment 1
   Education historian, Diane Ravitch, has published a book, “Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools.”
   It is a book about parents, teachers, students, administrators, and other public school advocates across the nation whose grass roots efforts to engage in the fight save America’s schools have created a movement, a book that allows public school advocates the opportunity to step back and see a more complete picture of their combined efforts across cities, states, situations, and years.
   It is a book about us.
   Slaying Goliathwas officially released last week. Read this terrific Q and A with Diane that appeared in the Washington Post here. And be on the lookout to see if Diane is coming to a city near you. Go here to find her book talk schedule for this month and next.

   Comment 2
   Charters and Vouchers are NOT a Choice.
   The Network for Public Education categorically opposes the use of tax dollars for private and parochial schools. If parents wish to educate children in such schools, they should do so with private funds. Public funds should be spent for the common good.
   We encourage you to read about this important study that shows how Indiana’s voucher program has led to a new generation of segregation academies.
   2019 saw a marked increase in the number of reports involving scandalous behavior on the part of charter schools. Here is an important Answer Sheet blog that highlights the top 5 charter scandals of 2019.

   Comment 3
   Gayle Lakin reviews” SLAYING GOLIATH” at Norm Scott’s EdNotes Online.
   “Ravitch heroically and successfully wades through this complicated decades-long haze in her book, Slaying Goliath with her trademark attention to detail. She brings clarity as to how “ed reform” (she prefers “ed disrupters”) birthed charter schools with the intention of privatizing our national education system and how and why this “grand scheme” is currently and fortunately starting to burn out!”

   “No words can possibly convey the degree of spin, erroneous data and persistent support of outright fabrications that became “truths” under a relentless “ed reform” mantra; say it enough, spin it enough, publish it enough, work the system enough and it will become “true” enough. But “enough is enough”! ”

   “What might a reader’s first reaction be? There isn’t a rock big enough for “ed disrupters” to crawl under to escape the raw truths exposed in this book. Ravitch names people and companies (and there are many). She thoroughly explains the tactics of those ultra-wealthy hedge-fund managers, philanthropists, CEO’s, big businesses, politicians and the likes playing into and profiting by the “ed disruption” takeover of our national education system via a “Trojan horse” also known as the charter school (which is assuredly not a public school even though it receives public school funding). ”

   Comment 4
   “The current charter school concept is totally foreign to the original idea put forth by Al Shanker who originally intended for a charter school to be a public school within a public school to serve the needs of outlier learners. Ravitch details Shanker’s actual vision. Who would know better as he spoke to her directly about his vision which she describes in her book!”

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   • Bob Shepherd says:

     February 6, 2020 at 12:35 pm

     Thanks for sharing these, Susan!

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     • Linda says:

       February 7, 2020 at 9:28 am

       Agree

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8. Bob Shepherd says:

   February 6, 2020 at 1:39 pm

   Increasingly, our media are owned by oligarchs, so events like these–the publication of Slaying Goliath and of this essay in the formerly dependably Deformist Time Magazine by someone who a) writes beautifully and b) actually knows important things about education, are extraordinarily important. Bless you, Diane Ravitch! Bless you. Bless you. Bless you!

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