Jan Resseger, tireless champion for social and economic justice, reflects on the fading reputation of the charter industry. The decision by the Trump administration to axe the federal Charter Schools Program (DeVos’s slush fund for corporate charter chains) is the latest affront to an industry that once was regarded as the great hope for innovation and effectiveness but got overwhelmed by scandals and profiteering.
Resseger credits the dramatic turn in the public reputation of the charter industry to the work of the Network for Public Education and its executive director Carol Burris.
Burris brings to her work the experience of a veteran educator, a teacher and principal who spots scams quickly. Burris also has a rock solid sense of integrity that makes her unwilling to tolerate organizations that are designed to benefit the adults, not the students. She is the quintessential embodiment of the “David” I wrote about in my book SLAYING GOLIATH. She works with passion and dedication because of a sense of mission, not for love of money. She is a mortal threat to the Goliaths who wear the fake mantel of education reform. She can’t be bought and she can’t be stopped. Unlike the hirelings of Goliath, she really does work for the children, for whom she has worked all her life.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Without Burris and NPE the public would remain unaware of many of the scandals, waste and fraud in the charter industry. It takes stamina to commitment do the type of sleuthing required to unearth information the charter proponents would prefer to bury or ignore. So many cowardly and crooked members of the government would prefer to look the other way. Thankfully, we still have The Freedom of Information Act. In addition to all the data collection, we should thank Carol Burris for her analysis and publications as a result of her tireless efforts on behalf of our country’s young people.
I concur. I would add that Diane’s blog has helped to make all of this good work known to a larger audience, as had the work of Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post, who has also published about the work of NPE.
Yes!!!
Jeffrey Lischin, a self described charter school expert and developer of ‘many charters”, and he says also a well known educator, this AM took me to task and finally called me a Trumpster for challenging his comments on how great charters are…all happened on my Facebook page. I do not know any more about him other than his self description, but his views that charters are doing amazingly fine work at educating all children, and particularly inner city students, flies in the face of the facts. I recommended he read Reign of Error and follow Diane Ravitch info to learn facts that also have academic citations…he continued to be insulting and single minded. Anyone who writes here might chime in on my FB page and let him know there are others who disagree with his income making perspective. As a novice to FB I am learning ever more about the wildly disparate human condition. Thanks Diane for educating us with facts.
I went to FB to see if I could lend you a hand, Ellen, but I didn’t see the post you reference above. But I do see lots of good stuff on your page.
I have very mixed feelings about FB. Its myriad problems and the impact it had on the election in 2016 are well documented and troubling.
On the other hand…for years it’s been a great way for me to keep in contact with former students. (I don’t accept requests to link to students until they graduate, typically.) My wife also works the night shift and with the spotty cell phone coverage we have in these mountains FB gives me a good way to hear how her night has been.
I’m on Twitter primarily because my son uses it so much. And, I see Diane on there, too. But I have to admit that some of the stuff my former students put on there I don’t even understand. (Talk about being an old fart.)
Your phrase “wildly disparate human condition”, yeah, that’s spot on. The older I get the more amazed I am at the sheer quirkiness of possible human behavior. It is amazing isn’t it? Wonderful. And, scary.
Of course, FB and the internet at large aren’t the sort of safe “living room” that I enjoy on Diane’s blog. (Or Rick’s Cafe as Peter Greene described the site, wonderfully.) I was just thinking about that description this morning.
I regularly do some lessons with my classes about civility and most the students tend to agree that all this new technology has tended to make the country less civil. They see it. We see it. What to do about the problem….it remains a real conundrum.
Getting a new president would sure be a good start, though.
On that note, I’m going to get away from this machine and go out and cut some brush -by hand. It’s about the only thing I have in common with President George W. Bush….our love of cutting brush, ha, ha.
Take care.
thanks John…great to have you now as a new FB friend. I avoided joining for so many decades, but with the looming teachers’ strike last year, many teacher friends urged me to join to be able to support the strike. So for the past year I have been caught up in it all. As a public policy educator it does give me a vast audience to proffer my opinions in essays and comments, and I take delight in communicating with so many interesting people around the US and around the world. The down side is the nastiness factor…but I see that I can, in my dotage,, have a TEFLON hide and deal with it all.. However FB is definitely addicting…so like you…I am about to go outdoors in our 70 degree sunshine and water the yard and the potted plants…wishing you and all colleagues here a happy Sunday. Addendum…thanks Laura Chapman for all the education you present to us.
Dear John and Ellen,
I was on Facebook for a brief while. Then I got really annoyed with the power that Zuckerberg exercises in our society, and his refusal to prohibit scurrilous lies. All media do that. There are general rules of civility that govern what gets in the media. But not FB.
My tolerance ended. I severed all ties. But one time I looked at what I thought was my dead account, and it was never terminated. It’s waiting for me.i won’t go back.
There are a number of differences between Twitter and Facebook, including the former’s decision to ban political ads.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/twitter-bans-political-ads-after-facebook-refused-to-do-so.html
I have to say, though, that I will forever associate Twitter with the worst days of the Trump regime. Yeah, I know he’s just one person using that platform. One out of many millions. But use it Trump has, with much malignant effect.
Thing is that many of my students have long since moved on from Facebook. My daughter inspired me to go to school one day and tell my classes I had a “Finsta” as a joke and to see the reaction of the kids. (I don’t have the time to keep up with Instagram and certainly not Tik Tok. Which is funny in a way since they are so…fast.)
But it’s hard to avoid all this….
I’d prefer NOT to have an EZ pass tracking my car and I’ve gotten away with it up until now. But the last time I traveled the Mass Pike I had to pay significantly higher tolls as a result. (Soon to be coming to the New York State Thruway, too!)
And, how long can I put off carrying around a smartphone following my every move? Will I still be able to function as a classroom teacher without one?
I was thinking today about a custodian who is now retired from our school. He was a Vietnam vet who would come by my classroom once in a while to talk. He returned from the service after the TET offensive and grew his hair long just like the hippies. It’s still that way today.
“The world I knew is gone,” he would say to me. “That world…
is…gone.”
Indeed.
In Bloomberg, you will find a man enamored of the surveillance state.
Diane, the only GOOD thing about the Bloomberg candidacy is that I’m about to start a unit tomorrow morning on campaign ads and how politicians try to buy their way into office. I’ve done the unit for years. What timing. It’s just the way it worked out.
As I’ve mentioned, we get Scranton, PA TV on our antenna and I’ve been watching Mike B. love bomb Northeast Pennsylvania for weeks now. He’s even on the local, top 40 radio station trying to swing this swing state -my God.
One of the most preposterous Bloomberg ads is “Small Towns” featuring the song by John Cougar Mellencamp. I almost fell off the couch when I saw it.
Mike is going to make small towns….bigger (!) And, keep our kids here with all the good jobs he’ll bring to us.
I’ve taught in a small town for decades. Wait until rural America really starts to focus in on Mikey boy’s stand on gun laws. He’ll be run out of the (small) town on the proverbial rail. (Though he did get votes in Dixville Notch, NH…??)
I will say I enjoyed Bloomberg’s ad taking aim at Trump’s bullying. It’s good and, of course, true, so true. I think this link will work…. I believe the ad is called “There’s a bully in the White House.” Hah! Takes one to know one.
The enemy of my enemy is my….no,,,,not that.
Of course, some true Trumpsters will actually love the ad, too. It could backfire.
For anyone out there who feels the need to take a walk down amnesia lane and look a campaign ads from years gone by, Livingroom Candidate is a great site. I use it with my government classes. Watch the Eisenhower ones. Ah, simpler times. I like Ike. (Don’t like Mike.)
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/
My students work in groups to make their own video campaign ads and it doesn’t take them long to “get” how these things are constructed. But then again, we all get it. Then they get us. Well, a lot of us.
BTW this has been a very productive post on here. It’s helped me corral some of these links. Whewww…teaching in this video-based culture is a lot of work. I’m going to go eat breakfast.
Thanks for the link, John. Your unit on political advertising is perfectly timed. Teaching students to think critically is one of the best lessons in this era of disinformation. Maybe they can avoid another #45.
I would like to agree with you and John on the human condition comment. The hostility you encounter on the various blogs and comment platforms make me think of the psychological studies that I have read about over the years concerning the importance of informal social controls to society.
Now, John, as for clearing brush, I hope you pile it for our avian friends. Good brush piles make for an interesting back yard where birds can hide from predators, then creep out to eat your offerings on those cold days. This is especially good for invasive plant species, which can escape from piles off in the woods, but will not escape your gaze in the backyard.
There’s quite a row of brush, especially after last winter’s work. And, I’ve been feeding the birds a lot the lost few cold (actually wintry) days.
Take care.
Thank you for the kind words, Diane and Jan.
they are deeply warranted
Definitely more good news. If only people like Carol Burris were running the government in D.C.
Agreed. Carol, bowing low to you! Blessings upon you and yours!
I will not do Facebook, Twitter, or other “social media.”
I am grateful for moderated blogs, online reports from investigative journalists, and email.
Funny thing is that Facebook and Twitter force me (in a way) to listen to perspectives I often don’t agree with or even understand -STILL, three long, long years into the Trump regime. I have a couple of very conservative “friends” on FB who are particularly intelligent and thoughtful. What they say about politics really bugs me at times but I end up reading their comments anyway. Well, most the time.
Of course, there’s a lot of raw crap on social media, too. Really bad, extreme stuff I filter out, I avoid. Talk about an evil, scary side of America.
And, even much of the more moderate conservative stuff just gets tedious after a while. The hypocrisy lately has just been ridiculous.
But then again.Laura, I listen to “Democracy Now” on the radio and find myself switching that channel sometimes, too.
But, yeah, real journalism is the gold standard. I subscribe to way too many newspapers -coast to coast. I was going to dump one a few months ago and just didn’t have the heart, ha, ha.
Take care.
Jan is right in praise of NPE, but does not give herself enough credit in being one of our nation’s leaders in exposing the privatization disruption to our public education.