Frank Splitt is a retired electrical engineer with a distinguished resume and wide-ranging interests, including education. A friend gave him the hostile review of SLAYING GOLIATH that appeared in The New York Times. He decided to read the book and reach his own judgment. He wrote the following review for Amazon:
An Educational Whodunit with a Happy Ending
For anyone still wondering about what happened to the highly touted education reform programs, such as Common Core, Race to the Top, and Value Added Measures, wonder no more. Diane Ravitch puts on her education historian hat once again—telling a page-turning story.
It’s a whodunit that begins by naming the villains (Goliaths), the millionaires and billionaires who targeted America’s public schools—labeling these schools as poorly managed havens for bad teachers who are protected by their powerful unions.
The villains aimed to replace public schools with charter schools and/or voucher programs while ferreting out so-called bad teachers on the basis of student test scores. For some, public schools presented a rich marketing opportunity ripe for the taking. And take they did with the cooperation of federal, state, and local governments. At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Education under the administrations of President’s George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, and Donald J. Trump have all been deeply complicit to varying degrees.
The heroes (Davids) in the story are the teachers, students, administrators, and parents who formed the ill-funded, passionate resistance to the privatization and corporatization of America’s public school system. It was this passionate resistance that slayed Goliath.
I would also count Diane Ravitch among these heroes. She sees public education as a basic public responsibility—warning Americans not to be persuaded by a false crisis narrative to privatize it while urging parents, educators, and other concerned citizens to join together to strengthen our public schools and preserve them for future generations.
In this book, Ravitch has exposed the rampant corruption involved with the villain’s takeovers, the baseless notion of evaluating teacher via student test scores, as well as the damage done to communities, schools, students and teachers that will take years to heal, especially so while dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although this is not another book about education reform per se, one is left to wonder where American public education would be today if the Goliaths respected the sound principle of giving to meet needs instead of giving to impose their ideas and take control of K-12 education in America.
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My thanks go to primary teachers Holly Rothstein Balk, Katianne Rothstein Olson, Chelsea Gabzdyl, and Margaret Zamzow Wenzelman, as well as high school teachers Margaret Mangan, (the late) Joseph Hafenscher and to retired Illinois State Board of Education staff member Michael Mangan, for their insights into the Common Core State Standards, Value Added Measures, and the impact of the standards and related over-the-top testing regimes on school administrators, teachers, and their students.
This is a must read book for parents, teachers, government officials, and other concerned citizens as well.
Outstanding review. And spot on.
I have recommended your book to everyone since I first read it. As president of our local school board, it helps me to be vigilant for threats to our public schools and to keep pressure up for government funding so schools do not get seduced by billionaires’ dangled dollars. Thank you for your meticulous research and the clear narrative I get to use in public.
yes: the narrative is becoming KNOWN
Loved it. Need more like it.
This book has helped me address the continuing onslaught of threats under the guise of seductive help by those for whom our econ system has paved the way. As a public school board president, Thank you for the research and frame and words to keep preserving publicly funded public schools.
It is always a joy when non-educators understand the hidden agenda behind so-called reform. This is an accurate review of the book. More parents and community members should read the book as it is also about the economics by transferring public funds to corporations. it is about trying to demolish the common good.
A great and accurate review. The corporate agenda has shown little concern for changes which would improve lives. It is therefore a benefit for us all that Ms. Ravitch and others have worked hard to keep Public Education where it belongs, in the hands of the people.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.