Nancy Bailey is a retired teacher and a terrific blogger. She and I co-authored a book called EdSpeak and DoubleTalk: A Glossary to Decipher Hypocrisy and Save Public Schooling. We have never met in person but I asked her to help me revise a similar book that I published a decade earlier; it had become obsolete. Now it is the go-to book to understand education jargon and decipher hoaxes. It was a joy to work with her. Nancy wrote this post for me while I was out of commission having surgery.
Why I Write About Students and Public Schools
Democratic Public Schools
Ensuring that the public has access to good public schools after Covid-19 is more critical than ever. We cannot go back to continuous high-stakes testing and schools that punish teachers and students, especially our youngest learners. Schools should also not be allowed to continue to collect unregulated data through online assessments. Parents need stronger FERPA laws.
I think we have also learned with this pandemic that parents and students value public schools, that technology is a tool but can never replace the classroom.
Americans own our schools through a democratically elected school board, or at least we should. We lose that ownership when outsiders with ulterior motives to privatize or change schooling’s nature make schools more like a business. They convert the system to charter schools or change curriculums to serve companies that will make money on the school district’s new plan.
The more involved corporations become with public education, the more changes occur within public schools. Common Core, high-stakes standardized tests, the reliance on AP classes and SAT and ACT testing from the College Board, and many tech programs convert public schooling to a privatized system.
It is crucial to protect public schools from individuals or corporations who wish to remove the “public” in public schools. Parents should be able to be involved in how their schools function. We need parents, teachers, and the community to be active participants in how public schools serve children bringing Americans together.
School choice fans believe parents should choose their school, but this is a false argument. Most private school administrators will determine who to accept to the school. Charter schools may choose students by lottery, which is not parent choice either. Even if a student is randomly selected, charter schools can always counsel students out.
Charter schools were initially supposed to be for teachers to run. The charters doing the best jobs are likely run by or highly influenced by real teachers. But many charters are run by Educational Management Operations (EMOs) that set the rules and are prone to scandal. For years, charter schools have primarily served children of color, often with harshly run curriculum and punishing discipline.
It is hard to see why America needs two systems of education. It further divides people, and charter schools are still substandard to a well-run public school system. Charters that work, run by real teachers, could become alternative schools in a public school system.
Helping students work together in public schools—students with all kinds of backgrounds and students of color—will bring us together as a nation. The diversity in our country should be cherished, not destroyed by privatization.
When public schools are valued, when school boards are elected and work with the constituents to better schooling for all children, it is the best that democracy can be. We must afford every child a chance to learn in a well-managed, excellently staffed public school.
Teaching
I learned to be a special education teacher in the seventies when the All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 became law. It was amazing to see schools open their doors for all children, and universities begin offering specialized classes for different special education areas. I saw it as a shining moment in America.
My undergraduate degree was to teach students with emotional disabilities, with a minor in elementary education. I took challenging coursework. My student teaching took place at one of the best residential treatment centers in the nation, Hawthorn Center, along with an elementary school near Detroit where teachers worked well together, especially in reading.
Hawthorn Center has struggled with funding since I student taught there, yet many parents desperately search for residential treatment. The elementary school where I student taught closed long ago. I struggle to understand this.
In the meantime, Teach for America claims that you can teach with five weeks of training, or maybe it is six weeks now. Many from this group go on to lead schools in states and the nation when they never had the kind of preparation necessary to teach children!
Writing
I write about these issues and more. It is sometimes overwhelming that public schools have so many concerns and how children and teens face such hurdles to get good schooling in America. There is no reason why this country should not have the best public school system in the world for all children!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let me guess, now that covid doesnt service your immediate political needs and you now know it only ensures you have no job to go back to, you’re ready to join the masks off movement….
Typical and transparent. You wont score any points. Folks look for people like me who knew it all along. And im telling them to dump the public school system, pick up a cellphone, and download k-12 instead. Yer still fked. A cellphone can teach students better. Cross class in computer programming or get left behind by everyone who could put down their ego and listen to common sense. Open your own virtual school or petition to run a work hall class or remedial studies for failures. Testing for this exorcize began a year ago.
Reach down, pick up your balls, and get to work.
Thank you Ms. Bailey, for this common sense, beautiful article. I too went to college for “special education “ in the early 1970’s and because I was a duel Sp.Ed./ Elementary Ed major I student taught in a treatment center for the handicapped, and in two inner city schools in Bridgeport, CT. I then went on to teach for 4 years in the inner city of Boston, MA where I started my graduate courses in Literacy Studies at BC. We moved to LI, NY where I finished my degree at LIU, and took a break (from teaching, not learning. I took out every book on reading instruction from our local library!) to raise our 4 daughters. I went back to teaching as a reading specialist at 45 years old, continued to read, attend conferences and be trained for different reading intervention programs until I finally retired recently at 70 years old. I read these educational blogs every day and continue to learn all I can about effective reading instruction. ( We now have 13 grandchildren, so I continue to read with children!)
I believe that’s what makes a lifelong dedicated public school teacher, not a training session given during one summer! I thank you and our hero, Dr. Ravitch, for all you are doing to save America’s public schools from billionaires, outsiders, business people, non-educators, and “educational “ book publishers.
Thank you, Joanne, for your response. Your experience sounds like mine, so I know you understand how different it was then. And I’m glad you continue to learn.
I am so happy to see Diane blogging again and that all seems to have gone well with the surgery.
I hope you will be dancing in the streets, with a mask of course, real soon, Diane!