In response to an earlier post by Robert Shepherd, asking whether it might be possible to find common ground on contentious issues, Ira Shor, a professor at the City University of New York, answers:
“Dr. Shepherd sounds like a person of good will who is extremely uncomfortable with the rash, untested, arrogant impositions of high-stakes testing so profitable to corps. like Pearson, and through which govt. officials like Jindal, Emanuel, Cuomo, Christie, etc., make whimsical decisions to disrupt communities, families, kids, and teachers, none of whom send their own kids to pub schls. The opposition consolidated by the brilliant work of Dr. Ravitch has not done any damage to pub schls, kids, teachers, or families, so to represent the issue as good will on both sides is unfortunately to define a moral equivalence of power and action which simply does not exist. The unholy alliance of govt, big biz, and billionaires has been on a warpath to seize the vast assets of pub schls and segregate them so that one huge chunk of under-regulated and overfunded pvt charter schls operates with a free hand to score profits while the other chunk of over-regulated and under-funded “regular” pub schls operates with 2 hands tied behind its back. The sides are nakedly drawn here, leaving no middle ground to play in a phantom middle.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 