Archives for category: Education Reform
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New Hampshire: Join the Fight to Save Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2021 //
7

Rightwing Republicans in New Hampshire are determined to give away public school dollars to religious schools, private schools, home schoolers, for-profit schools, and anyone who claims to be operating a “school.”

If you live in New Hampshire, you can join with others to stop this raid on public money.

“Reaching Higher New Hampshire” is forming a state network for those interested in public education, to serve as an information-sharing and networking hub. It’s first meeting is on March 10 at 3 p.m. They be covering vouchers, funding/state budget, the State Board and DOE, and a few other topics. If you’re interested in joining, please fill out this form or send an email to Christina Pretorius at christina@reachinghighernh.org

People united can defeat a raid on the people’s common good.

Categories Education Reform

New Hampshire: Bitter Fight Over Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2021 //
9

Parents and educators overwhelmingly oppose the New Hampshire voucher proposal, which would be the most expansive in the country. In terms of turnout, voucher opponents outnumber proponents by 6-1. Proponents claim that it is only educators who oppose vouchers, but many parents turned out to testify against the legislation.

Yet the Republican sponsors of the bill are forging ahead, claiming that so few children want a voucher that it would have no impact on the budget. In fact, the bill would have the state pick up the cost of tuition for children currently attending religious and private schools, and would fund homeschoolers as well. Critics estimate the cost at $100 million per year.

As background to the discussion, take a look at the research on vouchers. This report from the Center for American Progress finds that using a voucher is equivalent to missing about one-third of a year in school. Yet 23 states, including New Hampshire, are going full speed ahead to enact a harmful and demonstrably ineffective waste of public dollars.

The Senate’s school voucher bill drew a crowd debating the merits and liabilities of the program that would allow parents to receive state money to find the best educational fit for their child.

But opponents called Senate Bill 130 the latest attempt to privatize education and alleged it would set up a parallel education system with one tier for the well-to-do and the other for those who cannot afford an alternative for their children.

They said the proposal would be the most expansive educational choice program in the country and the most lax, with little accountability or transparency.

Supporters said the pandemic has heightened awareness that every child learns differently and needs options and choices to reach their full potential.They said the program would not only help students, it would save state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, although opponents claimed it would cost the state that much money.

The House had a nearly identical bill, but the House Education Committee decided to hold the bill for a year to try to improve some of the flaws.The ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. Mel Myler, D-Hopkinton, urged his Senate counterparts to either do that or recommend killing the bill...

One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Glenn Cordelli, R-Tuftonboro, said the House hearing on House Bill 20 drew 1,100 parents in support showing grassroots support. And he said a recent poll indicates 70 percent of New Hampshire adults approve of vouchers.

He did not say that nearly 7,000 people signed in opposition to the House bill.“On one side you have lobbyists and advocates and on the other side are parents,” Cordelli said. “It is the school units versus the kids.”

Carl Ladd, executive director of the NH School Administrators Association took issue with Cordelli’s statement.“This school system versus student argument implies that advocates for public education are anti-student, that is a real disservice to educators,” Ladd said. “I really take umbrage at that particular characterization…”

The student’s parents would receive the basic state adequacy grant of about $3,700 as well as additional money if the student qualified for free or reduced lunches, special education services, English as a Second Language instruction, or failed to reach English proficiency.

The average grant is estimated to be $4,600.

Will $4,600 be enough to gain admission to an elite private school? No. It will be enough to pay for a low-quality private or religious school that hires uncertified teachers and cannot match the offerings or facilities of the public schools. Or you might think of it as a transfer of public funds to students already in private/religious schools and home-schooled.

The Commissioner claimed that between 0.01 to 2.43 percent of eligible students would use the voucher. So, choose your rationale: either vouchers are wildly popular or hardly anyone will want one.

Commissioner Edelblut’s goal is to wipe out public schools. The people of New Hampshire will have to stop him. He is not a conservative. He is an anarchist.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Failure, Funding, New Hampshire, Vouchers

Join Me Tonight to Talk with Two Super Guests

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2021 //
18

Tonight March 3, I am zooming with Jennifer Berkshire and Charles Siler to discuss the privatization movement. Charles has a unique perspective: he was part of it.

Jennifer is co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door with historian Jack Schneider..

Charles worked in the belly of the beast at the Goldwater Institute, and then he had an epiphany and walked out into the sunlight.

Join us!

WATCH: Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Jennifer Berkshire and Charles Siler

Categories Education Reform, Privatization

Go to This Link to See Best Posts of the Day

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2021 //
11

Peter Greene is listing the best blog posts of the day here on the NPE website.

Don’t miss his selection!

Categories Education Reform

A Grand Virtual Festival to Honor Sir Ken Robinson

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2021 //
3

Sir Ken Robinson inspired educators around the world with his vision of child-centered schools that focused on imagination, creativity, the arts, and the joy of learning.

Sadly, he died last August at the age of 70.

His daughter Kate Robinson has organized a virtual celebration of his life and work on March 4, called “Imagine If…”

I hope you will watch it.

The New York Times said this about him:

Ken Robinson, a dynamic, influential proponent of stimulating the creativity of students that has too often been squelched by schools in the service of conformity, died on Aug. 21 at his home in London. He was 70.

His daughter, Kate Robinson, said the cause was cancer.

A British-born teacher, author and lecturer, Mr. Robinson viewed large school systems as sclerotic, squeezing the creative juices out of children by overemphasizing standardized testing and subjects like mathematics and science over the arts and humanities.

“There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches dance every day to children the way we teach them mathematics,” he said during a TED Talk in 2006 that has been downloaded 67 million times, the most in the lecture organization’s history. “I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time, if they’re allowed to.”


Categories Arts Education, Childhood, Creativity, Education Reform, Joy

My Latest: 20 Years of Failed Reforms

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2021 //
81

I wrote this article for The Progressive. It describes the failed bipartisan consensus of the past 20 years.

It’s my view of what Joe Biden needs to do to reverse the toxic legacy of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core, and the current Every Student Succeeds Act.

With the Biden administration’s decision about testing, he’s off to a bad start.

The article begins:

President Joe Biden will have his work cut out in repairing the damage done to U.S. education caused by Donald Trump and his one-time Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. But Biden and his Secretary of Education nominee, Miguel Cardona, must also reverse at least twenty years of federal education policy, starting over with measures that allow teachers to teach and children to learn without fear of federal sanctions.

Since the enactment of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002, the nation’s public schools have been required to administer standardized tests in reading and mathematics to every student in grades three through eight, a practice unknown in any high-performing nation. These tests have high stakes for students (who might fail to be promoted), teachers (who might be fired if their students’ test scores don’t rise), and schools (which might be closed if test scores don’t go up).

We have poured billions of dollars into that fake corporate-style reform and achieved little other than demoralized teachers.and students.

In addition, three successive presidential administrations—Bush, Obama, and Trump—have pressured school districts to accept privately managed charter schools. Educators and parents have tried to fend off a powerful and well-funded privatization movement that promotes privately managed charter schools and vouchers as the cure for low test scores (which they are not). This so-called reform movement has paid little attention to the need for adequate and equitable resources.

Categories Education Reform

Where to Find a Collection of the Best Blog Posts

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2021 //
2

It used to be here, but no more.

Peter Greene has graciously accepted responsibility for posting the best of the bloggers.

Go here to see his selections:

https://networkforpubliceducation.org/best-posts/

I will find a way to get this link permanently engraved on the top of the blog. Soon.

Categories Education Reform

A New Direction for This Blog

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2021 //
53

I started this blog in April 2012, because I had a lot of things I wanted to say, more than I could put into a tweet. Since that time, I have posted commentaries more than 26,000 times. Most of the posts have been about testing and privatization because they are, in my view, destroying public education and real education. But I have also posted humor, political commentary, poetry, and whatever I felt like sharing with you. You have sent about 625,000 comments. I have read them all. A few weeks ago, the number of page views passed 38 million.

I recently decided that it was too much to continue the pace, a minimum of four posts, sometimes 5, 6, 7, 8 times a day. Obviously, I enjoyed it and I loved sharing what interested me with you, as well as your feedback. I learned so much from your comments, because you told me and everyone else what was happening in your town, your school, your state. Thank you for being such a strong and active community of readers and commenters.

One of the things that I am proudest of with this blog is that it has been a platform for so many other bloggers. I helped them reach a larger audience, and some now have their own well-established, well-earned reputations for wisdom and insight.

So here is the new plan. I will post my original comments and articles. I will post news and reports about the Network for Public Education. I will post original articles that have not appeared anywhere else, such as the brilliant commentaries by our reader Laura Chapman. I will report research that is not likely to get wide circulation if it interests me. I may occasionally post breaking news bulletins of interest to the community. With rare exceptions, I will no longer repost blogs by others.

Other bloggers have important articles, and they will still be posted, but not by me. That role has been assigned to the new Network for Public Education website, and it will be curated by the estimable and tireless Peter Greene. So I will urge you again and again to open the NPE link so you can see the great work that other bloggers are doing.

If you have a post that you want to share, send it to Carol Burris at cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org.

If you want to read Peter Greene’s choices of the best posts of the day, go to this link.

https://networkforpubliceducation.org/best-posts/

Thus, in the near future, expect to receive fewer posts from me. Maybe one or two or none a day.

We will see how that goes. Meanwhile, browse the 26,000 posts and be sure to read the new stuff. I love this community and I want to keep you in my living room.

Categories Education Reform, Personal

Mercedes Schneider: The Story Behind the New Orleans Takeover

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2021 //
9

Mercedes Schneider is a native of Louisiana and she has lived through its recent history. She understands the state and city’s long, deeply ingrained racism. In this post, where she reviews Douglas Harris’s recent book Charter School City, she points out that he is oblivious to that history and context. He describes the state takeover (by affluent white elites) of the district as “reform.” He is focused on test scores and other data. She refuses to connect today’s disempowerment of the city’s black community from the long history of white power, exercised by those who see no need to engage the community in discussions about their children.

It’s an excellent read.

Categories Education Reform, New Orleans

Victoria E.M. Cain: A Brief and Sobering History of Technology in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2021 //
19

During the pandemic, most schools turned to remote learning as a matter of necessity. Some in the education biz think that the pandemic has created a new market for their products. Actually, most parents and students are eager for real schools with real teachers to open again. Contrary to popular myth, teachers too want schools to reopen, as soon as they are safe for staff and students.

Historian Victoria E.M. Cain of Northeastern University has written an engaging account of the hype associated with new technology in the classroom. It is a tool, it should be used appropriately, but it is not a replacement for teachers.

She writes:

The lessons for today’s enthusiasts are clear. It is wise to be humble about the possibilities of classroom technology. No one would deny that technology can provide invaluable tools to improve learning. (What teacher today would not want to have classroom access to the internet?) Too often, though, instead of being seen as a tool to help schools, new technology has been embraced as a silver-bullet solution to daunting educational crises. In desperate times, desperate leaders have clutched at overblown promises, investing in unproven ideas without demanding reasonable evidence of efficacy. 

In the current pandemic, it might be tempting for education leaders to hope that if only we can find the right balance of learning management systems, home Wi-Fi access, and teacher training, we can continue to provide the same education we always have, virus or no virus. But it is not that easy, and it never has been.  

If we have learned anything from the past two centuries, it is this: New technologies provide assistance, not solutions. Whether it was Lancasterian school buildings in the 19th century, television in the 20th, or Zoom classrooms today, new technology will not solve our problems on its own. In the past, overhasty investment has wasted millions of dollars. Perhaps more pernicious, it has given well-meaning reformers false confidence that they have taken care of the issue. It is far better to take an approach that might not be popular or simple, one that acknowledges the scope of the crisis and the variety of solutions we will need to address it. We need to avoid the temptation to grasp too quickly at a single technological response. 

Wise counsel. Hope and hoax are both four-letter words that start with the same two letters. Hype is also a four-letter word.

Categories Education Reform, History, Hoax, Hope, Innovation, Technology
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