“This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters”.
Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat summarized recent polls about public schools and noticed a sharp contrast between parents of public school students and non-parents.
Parents who have children in public schools are satisfied with them, based on their experience. But the general public swallows the negative narrative spewed by the mainstream media and rightwing politicians and thus has a sour view of public schools. This gap in perception has persisted for many years but seems to be increasing as Republican politicians like Texas’s Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis amp up their attacks on public schools.
Since it is not newsworthy to report that most parents are satisfied with their children’s public schools, the media loves to publish stories about crises and failure. Eventually, it becomes the conventional wisdom.
We have heard scare stories about the public schools with great intensity since the publication of the ominous “A Nation at Risk” report in 1983. That report, we now know, was purposely distorted to make public schools look bad. The commission that released that hand-wringing report had cooked the books to generate a sense of crisis. And they succeeded. The Reagan administration was alarmed, the nation’s governors were alarmed, the media stoked their fears. And for 40 years, the nation bought the lie.
But one group did not buy the lie: public school parents.
Barnum wrote:
The polling company Gallup has been asking American parents the same question since 1999: Are you satisfied with your oldest child’s education? Every year though January 2020, between two-thirds and 80% said yes.
The pandemic upended many things about American schooling, but not this long-standing trend. In Gallup’s most recent poll, conducted late last year, 80% of parents said they were somewhat or completely satisfied with their child’s school, which in most cases was a public school. This was actually a bit higher than in most years before the pandemic. A string of other polls, conducted throughout the pandemic, have shown similar results.
“Contrary to elite or policy wonk opinion, which often is critical of schools, there have been years and years worth of data saying that families in general like their local public schools,” said Andy Smarick, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A courageous mother explains why she is concerned about the promotion of gender theory and transgenderism to children in public schools https://youtu.be/wzoPZwa4dWo
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After watching your YouTube video, I do not think you know what the word courageous means. Tell you what, I’ll see your YouTube video and raise you a YouTube video. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYvt8IIwC2s, and then we can discuss what it means to have courage and what it means to be a coward.
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Thank you for sharing. I watched the video. Nice message.
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Doreen– Perspective: she’s actually speaking out about one picture book, present in 20% of the county’s elementary schools. Most likely a copy in the school library. We don’t know how many times (if ever) a classroom teacher reads this to the students. I don’t think you can square this as “the promotion of gender theory and transgenderism to children in public schools.”
Note the heading in bold to left below the image: TFP Student Action. (Tradition, Family, Property) It’s an ultra-rw org with a grass-roots (?) subgroup of Catholic activist volunteers, focused mainly on college campuses. Assume that means TFP posted the speech.
Now for my opinion on the book! [I taught PreK/K age for 20 yrs (ret in 2020), plus raised 3 kids of my own.] Sadly I must put this one on the scrap heap, along with maybe 3 others of the dozen or so in the latest batch of cutting-edge picture books designed for PreK-2. It goes in my category “Middle-School Concepts Delivered in Baby Talk.” Also fits another personal category “Preachy and Ham-Handed.” But one thumbs up for announcing right on its cover “A Gender Identity Book”! (for the unwary 😁)
Seriously though, it’s not going to ruin a kid for life to hear it read aloud.
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Indoctrination in colleges and schools. Fear is used to sell the climatism and create child climate cops. 29-34:00 mins Where did the 97% come from? 34-37:10 mins
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I don’t think you need to be afraid of climate police children. Those uniforms and badges are just adorable Halloween costumes, you know. They’re not real.
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Doreen, ya gotta stop watching that TFP Student Action youtube channel!
Video interview of Marc Morano [google this rwnj politico who started career working for Rush Limbaugh, & has no creds in science whatsoever]. His main points are: (1) US pubschool students are so immersed in climate change indoctrination K12, that by the time they reach college they can’t think straight on the subject; (2) those who disagree are shouted down from every branch of society from Hollywood to whatever [the usual rw whine, “I’m being canceled!”]; (3)there’s no legislative remedy for climate change so why bother.
Morano does, however, make an excellent point about checking sources, in the “97%” [of scientists agree] segment. (Good topic for a high school study.) I wonder what I would find if I thoroughly checked some of his claims? E.g., teachers all over US in K12 pubschools parking even youngest students in front of scary videos showing one natural disaster after another, with the strong message that “only YOU [young kids] can stop this!”
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Thank you and let me know what you uncover.
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Of course there is no crisis n our public schools, it was drummed up by greedy capitalists dying to get their hands on one of the few remaining large (and real) sources of capital–public school spending. They will say or do anything to get their rapacious mitts on that pile of cash.
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YES, indeed!
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Playing devil’s advocate here—couldn’t this be read to mean that parents have never had a real problem with all of the terrible things that have happened to public education over the last 24 years? The testing regime, the Common Core, etc.—all along, parents have overwhelmingly remained happy with their public schools.
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Perhaps it suggests that parents don’t really pay that much attention to what’s happening in their local public schools?
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Parents’ opinions may be based on their lack of insight, but it may also be due to the fact that the war on public education has been waged somewhat differently in various states and communities. While everyone has been impacted by all the testing, red states and urban areas have been subjected to the worst of it including school closures, teacher purges and now reckless universal vouchers that have no academic merit at all. Their main purpose is to dismantle public schools. In the news this morning in Florida, it was reported that universal vouchers will cost the state at least $2.5 billion dollars, and the costs are climbing with the largest amounts going to those that can already afford to send their children to private schools.
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You create a false equivalency, Flerp. One might dislike the Supreme Court’s recent decision about abortion, but that would not lead her to dislike her doctor or drop her medical insurance. Similarly, one might dislike the federal government’s obsession with using test scores to attack and privatize public education, but that should not lead her to dislike her child’s teacher or drop out of her public school.
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Maybe, I don’t know. If you truly hate the annual test requirement and you hate that your kid’s teachers are “teaching to the test,” why wouldn’t you prefer your kid to go to a school where that wasn’t mandated?
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Regents Exam test prep in NYC’s elite district schools is just as much a harmful waste of time as Common Core test prep in the district’s public public schools. Private schools are unregulated and may or may not have qualified instructors. Charter schools have even more test prep than do public schools. Public schools open to the general public are your best option. Talk to the teachers. Talk to the principal.
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“Regents Exam test prep in NYC’s elite district schools is just as much a harmful waste of time as Common Core test prep in the district’s public public schools. ”
LCT, what does that mean? There is commonly minimal test prep in the neighborhood and “elite district” (whatever that means) schools.
Unfortunately, it is often the most vulnerable, economically disadvantaged students who are usually stuck in public schools that have the most exam prep.
In more affluent public schools, most of the “exam prep” is affluent parents paying for private tutors, not in the classrooms.
FLERP!, did your kids have a different experience in NYC public schools, where they did a lot of “exam prep” (either for state tests or Regents), similar to a typical Success Academy student? Or was it far less invasive in the curriculum? Did you also find that privately paid test prep was more common than non-stop test prep during the school day?
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A few weeks ago, a couple described their experiences as students in NYC years ago. The husband went to Catholic schools and was terrified of the nuns who used corporal punishment, which he now thinks is the right way to educate children. The wife went to Stuvy and told me the English teacher she remembered most spent every single minute of class trying to make sure every student passed the Regents, which she now thinks is the right way to educate children. Anecdotal, I know, but that’s what I have.
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LCT, from what I recall, the Regents exams were nonevents for Stuy students. My daughter considered the tests so easy that they required no prep. I don’t remember any complaints about in-class test prep.
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Okay, so now that we’re debating whether there is test prep in every single exclusive high school class or none at all and perhaps realizing that it’s not an all or none thing, maybe it would be good to note that test prep in non-exclusive public high schools also exists in some classrooms but not all. We mustn’t paint with such wide brushes. Public schools are neither failing nor test prep factories.
Therefore, I return to my original point, that you might (should) be appalled by mandates to conduct high stakes testing, but that should not necessarily compel you to abandon your local public school. I guarantee your daughter would have gotten a first class education in my regular, public class that serves students from all over Los Angeles, from sleeping in yachts in the marinas to cars under the overpasses. No test prep.
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“The wife went to Stuy and told me the English teacher she remembered most spent every single minute of class trying to make sure every student passed the Regents…”
Agree with flerp! that this sounds highly implausible. Definitely not now, and unlikely even decades ago. Unless she meant every single minute of one single day’s class out of the 180 class days.
The English Regents is given to 11th grade students and at Stuy that class would be similar to or even more advanced than a typical high school honors English class. Spending every single minute of a class “trying to make sure every student passed the Regents” would be like a teacher spending every single day teaching students in an honors Algebra class how to pass a 5th grade math test. A short review is going to cover a review of the multiplication/division contents for students who already have the math proficiency to learn Algebra quickly.
However, that she relayed this story to you does speak of how people can (perhaps unintentionally) twist reality to fit their own narratives. It’s not even truly “anecdotal” – it’s invoking something that would have never happened as this non-event offered an important lesson, and then drawing conclusions from it. It’s more likely a teacher would just not teach at all than spend every day all year reviewing for a Regents exam.
Unfortunately, the entire ed reform movement seems to be shaped by anecdotes like this one – invoking some parent who is thrilled with the test prep, no-excuses discipline that ed reformers promote (for other people’s children) and then funding flawed and questionable studies that appear to “prove” that schools that have no excuses discipline and massive test prep are better.
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FLERP– actually, if you look over the PDK polls (not mentioned in this article), you will see that there is a decline over the last 2+ decades. K12 parent ratings of their local schools ran in the 75%-80+% range for a long time– but declined incrementally in those yrs; today more like 59%-67%. I like their polls particularly because they always include focus on some current pubschool issue. They ask questions like are your local teachers underpaid [resounding ‘yes’], would you want your children to go into teaching [resounding ‘no’].
Hard to know how to parse the decline, but timing does correlate to ed-deform. [Or, could be due to more intense negative media re: pubschool quality…]
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Interesting, that is a very big decline. Do you have a link to the polls?
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The general public swallows
a narrative. A gap in the
“faculties of discernment”,
empowers the false narratives.
This has persisted for
many years and seems to be
increasing.
A system or process, that
FAILS to enlighten,
or cultivate critical
thinking, paves the way
for false narratives.
“Testing is good,
there is no crisis…”
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“A system or process, that
FAILS to enlighten,
or cultivate critical
thinking, paves the way
for false narratives.”
Beautifully said. Thank you!
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Results from another survey that doesn’t ask any tough questions. Nope, I will never be satisfied with
1. the over testing
2. the common bore curriculum
3. test prep as curriculum
4. kids sitting in front of computers as learning
5. the never ending surveys and questionnaires
6. the obsessive data collection
7. the lack of autonomy for teachers, VAM etc
8. the rating/ranking/sorting of the show ponies (children) for acclaim in US News and World Report
9. kids sitting in run down, seedy buildings without A/C & heat
10. kids being denied recess, PE, art, music in lieu of more test prep
Must I keep going?….sounds like I’m not very happy with public schools
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If school systems stopped wasting money on tests, test prep, data collection, etc, they would have the funds needed to fix schools, build newer, include A/C and heating, etc in their schools as well as pay teachers a living wage.
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I agree!
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If school systems were allowed to stop wasting money on tests,…they would have the money needed to fix schools,…
Maybe. That certainly would be my wish. I’m thinking that the states might find other ways to use that money since they were underfunding schools before tests, etc. were paramount if the schools were not using local funds for the testing and data collection mania..
I’m guessing that Lisa lives in a community that has either drunk or been forced to drink the Koolaid, but, apparently, a majority of parents still send their children to public schools they LIKE! I don’t doubt that Lisa has a genuine reason to be dissatisfied with her local public schools. However, generalizing to ALL public schools as the media and pundits have done is obviously illegitimate.
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When the failing public schools’ narrative started, the media and many politicians overstated the problem. While it was mostly about urban education, instead of addressing funding inequities with plans to help urban students, opportunists saw a chance to disrupt the whole institution by diverting public funds into private pockets. Vouchers are the next step for those that want to destroy the common good.
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Susan and the others concurring:
I don’t know about other states but in the Show Me State building/maintenance/capital funds are mandated by law to be segregated from those used for the teaching and learning process such as salaries, books, curriculum etc. . . .
The reason being that a district goes to the taxpayers with ballot issues saying that the funds will be dedicated to either one or the other. A district cannot willy nilly move funds from one to the other.
So what you suggest cannot happen.
Again, I don’t know how other states operate so please everyone, help enlighten us if it is not the same in your state.
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Thanks for that note of skepticism, speduktr. Certainly true in my state’s [NJ’s] poorer urbs that school infrastructure update or even basic maintenance was ignored/ underfunded for yrs before onset of the testing regime. To the point where in 2010 when Cerf/ Zuckerberg/ Cami Anderson engineered the “One Newark” massive transition to charter schools, many parents were simply running away from ceiling leaks, blackmold, heating/ cooling issues, vermin et al.
Agree we can’t attribute the 2/3 majority A/B rating of local schools in PDK poll (parents of K12 parents) simply as a factor of testing regime. We can agree that’s an overall bad thing, but it affects different districts—and different students—differently. If it were a monolith effect, we wouldn’t see so many happy with their local districts, would we? Or—are we just looking at FLERP’s speculation that parents aren’t paying attention (or don’t know any better)?] My guess: we are looking at a majority whose schools may have had their curriculum/ learning time downsized, but until it directly impinges on music art sports et al (what keeps kids happy), isn’t noticed.
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Duane, seems to be the same here in NJ. Don’t know about law, but maintenance for sure is a separate section on local budget, and capital improvements are handled by bond—completely separate.
I’m noticing, because one of our 2 middle schools [the 100-yo one] is starting a façade renovation that turned up serious roof support issue, doubling $s/ time reqd. Even with new issue, it’s all covered [so far] by surplus, tho residents are starting to squawk that this sort of project usually ends up more expensive than anticipated. Wish I knew more about how/ where in budget that surplus is accumulated. True: despite 2010 state 2% cap on prop tax increases, we stayed below it for some years… is that where they got it from? [general revenue]. I think so, because even the initial plan of façade reno was reqd because of deterioration over time…
Pretty sure any of our capital improvements [additions/ modifications] require floating a bond.
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Definitely are funds that are allocated for specific infrastructure in my state isthrough bonds, but we also have the ability to tweak things with general revenue in the normal budget. Then, of course, the amount of funding you can get through bonds is dependent on your financial health. Poor districts are not going to be able to fund the projects that are typical in a wealthy community by any means.
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thanks, speduktr that makes sense. And with bond issues, they depend on local approval, which is from time to time denied. Even tho the town is on the wealthy side, the RE taxes are skyhigh, so that dampens enthusiasm.
Somehow the other middle school is freaking ASTROTURFING a bunch of their grounds despite continual pushback from residents. So I guess it’s not always about bonds subject to approval 😡
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Lisa,
Anyone who doesn’t agree with your 10 points shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the teaching and learning process in public schools.
Sadly, far too many, almost all actually, GAGA Good German type adminimals and teachers actively implement those educational malpractices.
Why?
They are too afraid of losing their jobs to stand up and do what is ethical and just by not implementing such malpractices. A couple of thoughts to better illustrate what I am getting at:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American author and philosopher [my additions]
“Should we therefore forgo our self-interest? Of course not. But it [self-interest] must be subordinate to justice, not the other way around. . . . To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value?. . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.”—Comte-Sponville [my additions]
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Duane,
Are you counseling parents to “vote with their feet” as LisaM did and abandon public education and start supporting vouchers and privatization and schools that don’t have to kowtow to the union teachers and union administrators who were looking out for their own paychecks and always putting their own needs over what is best for the students? After all, that’s a good solution for the affluent parents even if it does leave behind the most vulnerable at-risk students who are stuck having to be taught by those union teachers and “German type adminimals” who “are too afraid of losing their jobs to stand up and do what is ethical”.
I read yours and LisaM’s comments and I think about how those parents who now are happy in their public schools keep hearing that kind of non-stop anti-public school rhetoric and are convinced would be doing a great service for public education if they completely abandon all support of public schools and instead start supporting vouchers and privately operated charter schools.
If public school parents everywhere “vote with their feet” by pulling their children from public schools and demand vouchers and more privately operated charter school “choice”, that would send a strong message to public schools to stop being so bad, right? The more parents with some resources completely abandon public schools for all the reasons you and LisaM present, the more public schools are sure to get better. Once public schools are despised and demonized for all the reasons that you and LisaM keep amplifying, and once public schools have lost the support of the vast majority of parents who thought they were good but after reading you and LisaM’s comments, now join you in voting with their feet and abandoning them and their support, public schools are sure to get better.
I read comments like yours and LisaM’s making parents like me just despise public schools, and I wonder what you hope to achieve? When parents start hating public schools and support vouchers so that public education is starved of funding because the majority of students are now in a private school paid for by government funds, that will make things better?
Diane Ravitch makes thoughtful, important criticism of public education. You and LisaM just rant about how evil public schools, and remind parents that public school teachers and “adminimals” “are too afraid of losing their jobs to stand up and do what is ethical and just by not implementing such malpractices.” You present easy scapegoats that completely ignores the complexities of how ideas by people who SUPPORT public schools got misused by the right.
You both seem to believe that public schools are to blame for the problems of public schools and there is an easy solution – parents should start abandoning public schools in droves and work hard to amplify your view of how terrible public schools are. Only by destroying public schools completely and making sure parents “send a message” by abandoning them – even the result is the complete empowerment of privatized education and the complete destruction of unions and public schools – can that “perfect” progressive public education ever happen, right? If you believe that, I have dozens of billionaire-supported ed reform organizations you can join who agree with your view and desperately want you to amplify it to more parents.
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nycpsp– I read both Duane & LisaM’s posts as recommending the public stand up for what is right and just in their public schools– use public pressure, teachers strikes, parent/student Opt-Out, et al pressure on govt, & support of like-minded political candidates— whatever it takes to rightside the ship. Not to stand back and do nothing, which automatically gives the advantage to those pushing for publicly-paid, privatized alternatives.
What criticisms the public may read at this blog need to be understood as recommended improvements to the pubschsystem, not recommendations to abandon it. Anyone who reads here regularly knows that.
What needs reforming in both govtl policy, & media coverage of ed issues, is the understanding that the nation’s public school system needs to be improved/ reformed [1st priority, undoing “ed reform”], not that “criticism” means we need tax-supported alternatives that cripple it.
Fortunately, we at least now (thanks to our blog host) have NPE, which advocates full-throatedly for pubschoolsystem & makes all that clear. Next up, we could use full-throated support from our two natl teachers’ unions for the sort of anti-ed-deforms needed pronto, & support of common-sense improvements going forward.
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Yes!
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Please, everyone! The purpose of the tests is to make parents fear public schools and think of themselves as customers choosing schools in a competitive marketplace, thus ending public education. So, with everyone complaining about schools instead of tests, we lose. Billionaires win.
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Thank you, LCT!
I have a long comment in moderation that makes this same point. Diane Ravitch is able to talk about the problems in education without creating a false narrative where public schools are demoralizing, unappealing, awful places with no redeeming qualities.
As more and more parents hear this false narrative — especially when they hear this false narrative repeated by people who iodentify themselves as strong supporters of public education, public schools face a real danger. What happens when parents buy into Duane and LisaM’s narrative and conclude that the way to fix public schools is to abandon them. Hey parents, if you really care about public education, abandon your public school and use your voucher to go to a private school instead — that will “send a message” to public schools and will make them better.
Whether it’s public education or the Democratic party, the right is so good at getting our side to help legitimize and amplify their false narratives. The teachers and adminimals at public schools actively implement educational malpractices. The only way to save public schools is to abandon them and “send a message”. That is exactly what the ed reformers want because it doesn’t help make public schools better, it helps destroy them faster.
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nycpsp– you seem to be transmogrifying your concern about Dems complaining about Dem party [instead of putting blame where it belongs– lambasting Rep party for creating the problems]—onto the pubschool ed issue. Govt ed policy is not so simple: there are still plenty of neoliberal Dems who support privatization of public ed funds, & Dems who are ignorant of the issues regardless of their politics. We who support strong national publicschool ed system need to be very clear about what that means, in policy terms. We cannot just stand back and “not criticize.” As we’ve seen (for 20+ yrs), that silence gets us nowhere.
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Sometimes, the comments read like a global condemnation rather than criticism of particular practices that have been observed or experienced by the commenter. “In my experience” is probably a better opener to many comments than “In my opinion,” mine (most definitely) included.
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bethree5,
I thought I made it clear that I admire the kind of criticism of public schools that Diane Ravitch and NPE makes, which sounds very different than reading the comments of LisaM and Duane above.
“What criticisms the public may read at this blog need to be understood as recommended improvements to the pubschsystem, not recommendations to abandon it. Anyone who reads here regularly knows that.”
Anyone who reads Diane Ravitch’s posts knows that. Anyone who reads LisaM’s posts or Duane’s would certainly be understandably concerned that a public school system with no redeeming qualities should be run away from as soon as possible. And yes, I do think comparison to the criticisms of the Dems is apt.
There is a way to make criticisms about a political party when you want to make the party better, not undermine it by convincing the public that the party has no redeeming qualities and abandoning it is the only way to “save” it. (FYI, that is how Republicans criticize their own party so not to damage the brand.) And there are ways to make criticisms about public schools when you want to make the public schools better, not undermine them by convincing the public that public schools have no redeeming qualities and need to be abandoned to make them better.
Diane Ravitch and many others here excel at making the right kind of criticisms. They aren’t afraid to criticize, but they do it in a way that makes it clear that those institutions (public schools and Democratic party) are still doing good, even with their flaws. The criticism is about making them much better, not that they have no value at all unless they have achieved a state of perfection.
I believe public schools are doing good, that despite their many flaws, they are still doing good. They aren’t doing nearly as much good as they should be doing. They have seriously flaws. But that is very different than saying that public schools practice education malpractice — that’s a phrase privatizers love! — and public schools are a NEGATIVE institution that do damage to our country. There is a difference between presenting public schools as worthy institutions with serious imperfections, and presenting public schools as worthless institutions until all of their flaws are gone.
When criticism is about presenting public schools (or Democrats) as a negative institution, people turn away from it.
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Gotcha, nycpsp
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Reminds me of what Diane said in her 2010 Life and Death book. Parents tend to like their own public schools. Still true.
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I have a longer comment in moderation.
In short, parents may tend to like their own public schools now, but if they keep hearing the kind of rhetoric that Duane and LisaM use, they will surely join the movement to abandon them to “send a message” to those who caused the problem – the union teachers and adminimals who are “almost all actually, GAGA Good German type adminimals and teachers actively implement those educational malpractices.”
I feel like it is the “we have to destroy it to make it better” propaganda that has successfully convinced the public to vote to undermine the very things they support.
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“elite or policy wonk opinion, which often is critical of schools”
is a nice way to refer to the greedy, power-hungry, extreme-right, fanatical, religious-freak, MAGA fascists that want to get rid of the U.S. Constitution that stands in the way of them installing a brutal theocracy that would control every element of our lives.
it’s time to stop being nice and call them what they really are
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Those pundits/ politicians despairing of decline in pubschool ed should check out this report published one year ago by EducationNext [the publishing arm of the very conservative Hoover Institute]: https://www.educationnext.org/half-century-of-student-progress-nationwide-first-comprehensive-analysis-finds-gains-test-scores/
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re: Lisa’s 10 item list – – – Remember the good old days when a list like that was the majority of the content, columns, and criticisms in this blog? Remember getting excited about new book coming out the criticized high stakes testing, that exposed the foolish prospect of evaluating teachers with test scores, that actually devoted data on class size… the reading wars, the math wars, quality teacher preparation and more?
The very core of educating children in America (all of them) is the existence of public schools and a country grounded for the “common good.” So many articles, columns, and blogs about education filled the screens daily.
It is tragic that this blog has necessarily shifted to issues of politics, shameful ventures making money off the backs of children, overt racism and segregation, having to defend teachers (well beyond what unions probably ever envisioned as topics) screams volumes of where too many mean and selfish “elected officials'” priorities fall.
Sure those 10 issues are real and should have parents marching to school board meetings.
Maybe we need the “Moms for Real Educational Issues” brigade to show up and pin the racist, book burning, anti-history folks in the chairs for their response on them. Make them actually talk about education (or look pretty stupid not being able to). If they are so proud of being “disrupters” and anti-government, turn them loose on these issues.
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The reason that there are numerous parent groups disrupting school board meetings and wanting to disrupt the whole system is because for the past 10-15 years (? Arne Duncan), sane, calm, caring, and involved parents were ignored at best OR told to shut up at worst. We pulled our kids out of public schools or our kids aged out. What is left are the gaslit parents….and they are angry, crazy and border on dangerous. Parents really don’t like it when their children are unhappy or considered uneducated (by using test scores). When will the madness end?…..Biden made a promise and he sure hasn’t kept it.
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“What is left are the gaslit parents….and they are angry, crazy and border on dangerous.”
That is a nasty smear of every parent who sends their kids to public school. I know plenty of anti-testing parents and they did not abandon their public schools like you did, nor did they spew anti LGBTQ and rhetoric and anti-trans and racist fear mongering to undermine public schools. You are right that those anti-testing parents were ignored, but they didn’t turn into the anti-LGBTQ, racist public school haters who disrupt board meetings and win board seats thanks to generous funding from far right billionaires. Anti-testing parents are the ones now fighting against the faux public school parents who often aren’t even public school parents at all, yet are the loudest and angriest.
And the parents disrupting board meetings aren’t anti-testing. Not sure where you got that idea. The anti-testing parents aren’t the ones demanding that content that makes the right wing Christian parents feel uncomfortable be banned.
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One of my ongoing concerns is that the negative press has caused us to turn on one another; including on this blog. Districts on teachers, teachers on principals, principals on teachers…This list goes on. When the North Carolina passed its “ABC”s legislation in the mid 1990s (One of the Models for NCLB), I believed that the entire premise was so ludicrous that the Education establishment would reject it. Instead, Superintendents used it to promote their own agendas with such hogwash as “choice” districts, or as a way to get rid of principals and teachers who wouldn’t fall in line. The media simply lapped this up as evidence that school staff were finally be held to account for their “mediocrity.” Books such as “90 for 90” were published with blatant lies and the private sector produced tech products that had little impact on learning. Yet, here we are following the same practices that caused this mess in the first place. Milton Friedman’s goal win the 1950s was to bring down the public schools. Too many disciples continue to follow his lead.
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