The Network for Public Education and the NPE Action Fund has created a toolkit for citizens to use to protest the confirmation of a totally unqualified person for Secretary of Education. Billionaire Betsy is a lobbyist for vouchers and charters. She has wrecked the schools of her home state. Do not let her ruin the nation’s public schools. Resist!
Please use the toolkit to let your Senators know that you oppose her confirmation.
Happy New Year! I hope 2017 brings you health, happiness, and good times with family and friends.
2017 will be a dangerous time for our nation.
Somehow, a man was elected as president who has no experience or qualifications or knowledge. He is not a “populist,” the term adopted by the media. He is a white nationalist and a plutocrat who said whatever he needed to say to get elected. He has chosen as his Secretary of Education a woman who is a zealot for religious education and private providers. She is not an educator. She has never worked in education. She did not got to public schools, nor did her children. She does not like public schools. She is contemptuous of our public schools. She likes charter schools, cyber charters, vouchers, and anything other than public schools. She is a billionaire who has spread millions to elect other zealots for school choice, despite the fact that it is no solution to the problems of public education, and despite the fact that every dollar that goes to a charter school or voucher school is taken away from a public school. She seeks the destruction of public education.
We will stand strong in support of the commons. We will not let this pampered billionaire destroy what belongs to us. We will fight her in the states and in the districts. We will reach out to our elected officials, local and state and Congressional. We will remind them that the public schools are an essential part of our democracy. We will ask Republicans and Democrats alike to defend our public schools against the Trump administration’s determination to privatize them.
Join the fight. Stand with your allies. Join the Network for Public Education. It will not be an easy struggle, but it is a worthy one. It is a fight for democracy against autocracy. We are citizens first, not consumers. We will fight to maintain separation between church and state. We will fight for our democratic legacy. We will fight for democratically controlled community schools that accept ALL children, no matter when they show up, no matter whether they can speak English or whether they have disabilities.
This is the challenge for the next four years. It begins in a few weeks.
Do not be afraid. We have numbers. We must fight to sustain our democracy and our public schools. We will and we hope you will join us.
Veteran journalist John Merrow suggests “thoughtful gifts” for those who make year-end donations.
I am pleased to see that the Network for public Education is one of the worthy groups he recommends.
Thank you, John! And happy 2017!
A reader in Ohio named Chiara left the following succinct comment:
It’s maybe a good time to be a public school supporter🙂
Ed reform has embraced DeVos/Trump.
The “agnostics” are marginalized and irrelevant- the privatization zealots are now “the movement”. They don’t even discuss public schools anymore- they fight over when privatization should be regulated or unregulated.
It’s a huge opportunity. They’ve abandoned 90% of schools and it’s such an echo chamber they don’t even see it.
So privatization will have 100 Senators, The President, the USDOE, hundreds of House members and 10% of students and families.
Public schools will have no representation or advocates at the federal level, but public schools will have 90% of students and families. Just think about how nuts that is and you see the opportunity.
There’s an opening for some entity or group(s) to represent the interests of 90% of children and families. That COULD be new people with appealing and practical ideas that actually BENEFIT existing public schools. Imagine that! 🙂
Join the Network for Public Education and help us support public schools. Â We can help you find your state and/or local group that shares your passion to preserve public schools as a foundation of our democracy.
Carol Burris sent an email to all members of the Network for Public Education with a list of ways that you can express your opposition to the nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. She is uniquely unfit for the office, as she has no relevant experience, and she is on record in opposition to public education. Her efforts in Detroit and in Michigan have harmed the children of that city and state. She supports charter schools, whether nonprofit or for-profit, vouchers, online charter schools, and everything else but public schools. If she is confirmed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, she will do whatever she can to turn public funds over to private and religious schools. Please join with us in opposing her nomination.
Dear friends of public schools,
If you are receiving this email, I know that is who you are–someone who understands the vital role that public education plays in democracy. You understand that a patchwork quilt of for-profit charters, charter chains, online schools, and vouchers schools cannot work in a democracy.
You understand that public schools will be starved and become the “dumping ground” for children no one wants.
Which brings us to Betsy DeVos, who has made it clear that only the “free market” matters, not quality. She claims to be on a mission from God. That is extremism we cannot have at the helm of our education system.
We will probably not be able to stop her confirmation, but we can make it a big deal.
We can work to ensure that no Democrat votes for her.
We can raise public awareness. We can send a warning shot across the bow.
And who knows, maybe, just maybe, a few Republicans will vote against her as well.
During the next few months the Network for Public Education will be involved in a campaign to accomplish the above.
Here is a link to our toolkit.
It is designed to use the holiday recess as a time when Senators are bombarded with pressure to vote no on DeVos.
It provides sample letters, phone scripts and a letter to the editor.
We will be tracking how many engage in these actions so that we have feedback on effectiveness to share with other organizations.
Our senate email campaign motivated near 100k to send an email. But that was easy, these actions take more time.
However, they are also far more effective.
Take the time to do them yourself and then share the link.
Post the link everywhere.
There will be future NPE Actions. This is our first and we will learn from it.
Trump will pass. But if he destroys public education that will undermine our Democracy for generations.
Here is that link again 🙂
On Sunday, the 11th of December, the Network for Public Education Action Fund held a dinner in my honor. It was a fundraiser, and we raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000. This will help us beat the billionaires at their own game! They have money, we have numbers of people, who work because of conviction, not because of money. There were 140 seats that evening, and all were sold, a full house. As I said in my remarks, if each person there was a letter, we were a perfect 140-character tweet. Carol Burris created a beautiful, multi-color journal to celebrate the event.
Peter Greene was not able to be with us, as it conflicted with his son’s marriage (Congratulations! Mazel Tov!). But he nonetheless shared his very fulsome thoughts, for which I am deeply grateful. We missed Peter. The bloggers present were amazing, including EduShyster, Gary Rubinstein, Jersey Jazzman, Mitchell Robinson (from Michigan), Mark Naison, Mother Crusader (Darcie Cimarusti), Anthony Cody (from California), Leonie Haimson, Jeannie Kaplan (from Denver), Jonathan Pelto, Andrea Gabor, Arthur Camins, Julian Vasquez Heilig (from California), Arthur Goldstein, and more. These are the people who dominate social media on behalf of education, and they do it all for free, like me. Also in attendance was a star-studded cast of college classmates, educators, BATS, clergy (a rabbi, a priest, and a minister, Charles Foster Johnson, the leader of Pastors for Texas Children, who flew in for the occasion), old friends, and new friends, as well as my two sons. At one point, I said to a member of the Blogging Fraternity, we are missing some of our best friends, like Peter Greene, Mercedes Schneider, Steven Singer, Paul Thomas, and so many others. I knew that they were with us in spirit.
For the next four years, we will man the barricades of social  media, we will be in the streets, we will work with our friends and allies, and we will not be silent. We will repel the vandals who storm the gates of public schools in search of plunder, profit, and power.
Today is #GivingTuesday. Please give whatever you can to the Network for Public Education and help us as we fight efforts to privatize our public schools.
The Network has generated nearly 75,000 emails to members of the Senate, urging them not to confirm Betsy DeVos, who supports charters and vouchers, not public schools.
Please open this link and add your name. Share it with your friends. Our goal is to reach 100,000 emails. We can do it.
It is wrong to appoint a Secretary of Education who opposes public schools. Her nomination should be opposed by Republicans and Democrats alike. Republicans are supposed to be protectors of tradition and community values. Public education is a central American tradition. Republicans serve on local school boards and state school boards. They too should vote to oppose DeVos’ radical attack on public education.
“When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”
― Garrison Keillor, “Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America”
Please stand up against the vandals who would destroy the mortar that holds the community together.
And please give generously so we can fight on your behalf and on behalf of America’s children.
You will enjoy reading about Leonie Haimson’s busy and productive day. Leonie is a fighter for smaller class size, better funding for schools, and student privacy. She is founder of Class Size Matters and Student Privacy Matters. She is tireless (and unpaid). She is the most frightening antagonist for education reformers because they can’t understand people who are motivated by principle, not profit.
She started the day at the Harvard Club, outside the doors, protesting with other activists against the billionaires and dark money behind Question 2 in Massachusetts. Inside, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker had come to talk to the conservative Manhattan Institute about his efforts to lift the charter cap, thus expanding privatization of public education.
That afternoon, she learned that she and other allies had come a judicial decision to open the meetings of School Leadership Teams to the public.
She wrote:
“The Appellate court heard arguments from both sides on January 21, 2016 — and took nearly a year to rule. But finally, in another slam-dunk, unanimous decision, they reaffirmed the lower Court ruling that SLT’s are public bodies in state governance law, and thus their meetings must be open to the public. Much thanks goes to Michael Thomas, Tish James and the attorneys from NY Lawyers for Public Interest and Advocates for Justice who represented the Public Advocate and Class Size Matters in court.”
Leonie is on many boards, including the Network for Public Education and New York State Allies for Public Education, which organized the successful statewide parent opt out. She is already a hero of this blog. She is the right person to take on the billionaires. They can’t buy her or beat her.
Go, Leonie, go!
Jim Horn has a website called “Schools Matter.” He opposes corporate reform, as I do.
I have never met him. I hear he doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. I thought we were fighting for the same goals.
The first time I became aware of his hostility was when he posted a photograph of me with the caption, “Nice face job, Diane.” Very puzzling as I have never had a facelift. Sexist too. I ignored him.
When Anthony Cody and I decided to create the Network for Public Education, aiming to build alliances among the many individuals and groups fighting against corporate reform, we selected a board and announced our existence. Horn emailed to say that he was going to attack us because we included a much admired NBCT African American teacher from Mississippi. Horn discovered that she had written an article praising merit pay. Many emails went back and forth among him, Anthony, and me. He decided not to poison us at our birth.
But he has an intense and personal animus towards me. Again, I can’t explain it. I don’t know why.
I thought I would share with you his latest blast, which was (I assume) a response to my post about how progressive movements die when they turn on one another. In the post, I urged us all to work together towards our shared agenda. Apparently he is angry that I supported ESSA; I supported it because it eliminated NCLB (No Child Left Behind), AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), and VAM (value-added modeling or test-based teacher evaluations). If ESSA had not passed, NCLB would still be federal law, and John King would have the authoritarian power that Arne Duncan had over the nation’s schools. If I were writing the law, I would have eliminated all federal mandates for accountability and testing, but I was not writing the law.
Despite what he writes, we are on the same side of the issues. Like him, I oppose standardized testing, other than for sampling purposes. I oppose evaluation of teachers by test scores. I oppose segregation. I support equitable and ample funding of schools. I support teacher professionalism and collective bargaining. I support public education and oppose privatization. Yet he says I am his enemy. He wants us to fail.
This is what Jim Horn wrote yesterday:
Today’s Communique to the Ravitch Forces
After what seems to me to have been a pretty effective skirmish, the Ravitch forces have climbed out of their tent at their permanent Basecamp, stomping the ground and waving their, um, whatevers. For those Ravitch acolytes who are not too drunk on revenge to read, here’s something to ponder, as I am working on a next book today and don’t have time to attend to your whining.
In everything I have seen from D. Ravitch and the band of intellectual eunuchs who comprise the NPE echo chamber, a theme stands out, which is that we cannot afford to fight among ourselves, that allies cannot be ripped asunder, that we must stick together in the same tent, blah blah. So let me speak to Diane directly here, and I hope that all of her disciples will read this carefully.
The problem is, Diane, our goals are not the same. My goals are ending testing accountability in all forms, ending segregated classrooms in all forms, and ending corporate education reform in all forms. I can’t work toward those goals with any effect while misleaders like you and the union suits are cutting deals on ESSA to guarantee another generation of testing accountability, segregated classrooms, and corporate control. Have you read the history of NCLB?
We are on different sides of these issues, regardless of how much braying and foot stomping you are able to stir up. We are not allies. I am your enemy. Get used to it.
In Chicago, hunger strikers sat in front of Dyett High School, demanding that Mayor Emanuel keep the school open.
They wanted an open enrollment neighborhood high school, and Dyett was the last one in the city.
Not only is the school open, the city spent $14 million to renovate it. It reopened as an arts-themed neighborhood high school.
Total victory for our friend Jitu Brown and his steadfast, courageous allies.
Jitu would be the first to say that he does not deserve credit or recognition. But he was there every day. He led. The hunger strikers won.
Jitu Brown hereby joins the honor roll of this blog. I am happy to say that he is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 