Dear Friends,
NPE wishes you happy holidays and Merry Christmas! Open the link to learn about our plans for 2022.
Join us in our work of supporting, defending, and improving our nation’s public schools. Join the 350,000 devotees of public schools who are part of NPE. Help us to fight budget cuts and privatization of our most valuable public assets. Help us defeat the billionaires and grifters who want to grab the funding of public schools and devote it to charters and vouchers. Stand with us as we press for reduced class sizes and the misuse of tests and technology.
2021 has brought both good and bad news for our public schools.
Schools were able to open, and although COVID is surging and difficult to manage, our students are in class with the teachers they love. We thank all of our educators for their heroic efforts during such difficult times.
The bad news is that a new war on public schools has begun. Public schools and teachers became a target after the 2008 recession; sadly, it is happening again. Post-2008 brought teacher evaluations by test scores, Common Core testing, and a push for charter schools. This time we face book-banning, anti-CRT laws, and more charter schools and vouchers.
Here is a quote from The New York Times:
Chris Rufo, the right-wing intellectual entrepreneur behind the anti-critical race theory campaign, told me last month that the next phase of his offensive will be a push for school choice, including private school vouchers, charter schools, and home-schooling. “The public schools are waging war against American children and American families,” he said, so families should have “a fundamental right to exit.”
The Network for Public Education will defend our communities’ right to have well-funded, neighborhood schools open to all students and governed by the public. We believe in the ultimate goodness of our communities, even when times are dark. Public education is a pillar of our democracy; privatized “choice” is its wrecking ball. We must fight it in all of its forms.
Won’t you help us keep the lights on and continue the fight? Please give generously.
On behalf of NPE,
Diane Ravitch, President
Carol Burris, Executive Director
Darcie Cimarusti, Communications Director
Marla Kilfoyle, Grassroots Coordinator
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Much joy to Diane, Carol, Darcie, and Marla, and to their loved ones, now and throughout the year. Thank you for all that you do!
Thank you, Bob!
And to my teacher friends on this blog, a story:
Sent to me by a friend. Best wishes to all:
Don’t be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
-the Talmud
Thank you, Greg!
Amen. Now, off to see the grandkids!
“The public schools are waging war against American children and American families,” Chris Rufo said, so families should have “a fundamental right to exit.”
As usual, the Chris Rufos of this country turns TRUTH upside down. The truth based on facts reveals that it is the Chris Rufos of this country that are waging war not only on America’s children and their parents but teachers and the U.S. Constitution, too.
If they want to exit, let them go first. But by an exit, I mean. move out of the United States, go to North Korea, Iran, or Russia.
Leave us alone! Stop working to turn the Untied STates into a kleptocrats dream and a leaving hell for everyone else.
Oh, and take their MAGA deplorables and DT with them. If they want a Putin, Kim Jong-un, or an Ali Khamenei as their leader, then leave.
A special holiday greeting to all who post here. You folks are like family.