Archives for category: Network for Public Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Chiara: Who Speaks for the Millions in Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2016 //
21

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.  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.

Categories Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Carol Burris: Help Us Fight the Nomination of Betsy DeVos!

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2016 //
7

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.

 

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/2016/12/join-us-in-stopping-the-confirmation-of-devos-npe-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 🙂

 

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/2016/12/join-us-in-stopping-the-confirmation-of-devos-npe-toolkit/

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Peter Greene: We Missed You at the Party

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2016 //
17

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.

Categories Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund

Please Give Generously to the Network for Public Education and Help Us Protect Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2016 //
8

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.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Resistance, Vouchers

A Busy Day in the Life of a Fighter for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2016 //
9

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!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Parents, Privatization, Resistance

Allies Should Work Together, But Not Everyone Agrees

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2016 //
117

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.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB, Network for Public Education, Resistance, Standardized Testing

Congratulations to the Dyett Hunger Strikers!

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2016 //
11

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.

Categories Chicago, Democracy, Emanuel, Rahm, Honor Roll, Network for Public Education, Resistance

28 Million Page Views, and Still Going Strong! Thank You!

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2016 //
29

Yesterday the blog passed the 28 million mark. That is the number of page views, the number of times that someone opened a post.

Something important is happening. It is happening step by step, but it is happening. The tide is turning.

The key to saving our schools is collaboration among allies. The Network for Public Education has developed an awesome national website called the Grassroots Education Network. Open it, and you will see your state. Click on it and you will see the name of organizations working together to support better public schools, schools open to everyone, no lottery. If you don’t see the name of your organization, contact Carol Burris, the executive director of NPE and give her the information.

The public is waking up to the fraud perpetrated by the privatizers, the corporate reformers, the privateers, whatever you call them. They dare not say what they really want.

They have no interest whatever in “reforming the public schools.” They want to disrupt them, blow them up, shut them down, and replace them with private management.

The public is wising up.

Sometimes it takes a comedian to tell the truth, as John Oliver did recently.

Day after day, the national media tell stories of charter scams, online charter scams, real estate frauds, self-enrichment schemes, charters run by religious organizations, charters run by foreign nationals, charters destroying local communities, charters cherrypicking the kids they want. How do they never see the pattern in the rug?

After 15 years of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and now ESSA, what reform victories are there? The Tennessee Achievement School District has failed to make a difference despite its bold promises. The Michigan Educational Achievement Authority has failed, utterly failed. Firing teachers and staff and closing schools is not reform: It’s disruption.

After 15 years of Reform-That-Dare-Not-Speak-Its-True-Name (Privatization), the pushback is happening, and it is real.

We will not simply preserve public education. We will stand together to make American public education better than it has ever been, for every child in every zip code.

Categories Network for Public Education, Resistance, Supporting public schools

Corporate Education Reformers Are Running Scared

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2016 //
79

Molly Knefel writes in Truthout about the meeting at the Democratic convention with Clinton staffers and the hedge fund managers’ Democrats for Education Reform.

I am fully prepared for any disappointment that Clinton will bring and still hoping for any sign that she will support public schools, public school teachers, and the students who attend public schools.

It is satisfying to see that DFER spokesmen are fearful that Clinton might actually support the “social justice” goals of me, the Network for Public Education, and the millions of parents and teachers who feel betrayed by the so-called “reform” movement.

On other other hand, it is shocking to see Clinton staffers defending George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind legislation. We thought that one had died and been buried, and yet here they are–representatives of the Democratic nominee–praising NCLB and its emphasis on accountability. It is a tired chestnut that NCLB alerted us to achievement gaps. That is utter nonsense. Everyone knew there were achievement gaps between different groups, and NCLB did nothing about them. Nothing. Testing does not close achievement gaps.

I suport Hillary Clinton. I will vote for her. But I will be a tough critic when her staff says dumb things that refute common sense and evidence about the harm that NCLB has done, especially to the most vulnerable children.

It is time for truth: Everything promoted by the corporate reform movement–charter schools, vouchers, evaluating teachers by test scores, closing schools that have low test scores (and high numbers of needy students)–has failed.

Their numbers are small. They represent hedge fund money, but very few people.

Their critics, however, represent millions of parents and educators and people who love their community public schools.

We are many, and they are few.

And, yes, Jonathan Alter, the Network for Public Education will continue to fight for social justice for children, for improving their lives as well as their schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Testing

The Network for Public Education Speaks Out Against the Violence and Killings of the Past Week

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2016 //
13

The Network for Public Education released a statement drafted by its executive director Carol Burris and approved by the board.

This week we have been shocked and horrified ​by the shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile in Minneapolis by police. The Network for Public Education sends our deepest condolences to their families and friends. We strongly condemn the racial profiling and disparate justice that culminates in violence against Black Americans.

Our​ deep sympathies also go to the families and friends of Lorne Ahrens, Michael Smith, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa and Brent Thompson, the police officers who lost their lives protecting those engaged in a peaceful march–killed by a gunman with a deliberate agenda of violent vengeance against the police​.
At this weekend’s Save our Schools March in Washington D.C.​, Reverend Doctor William Barber, II reminded us that we must show our children how we work together to solve the injustice, violence and conflicts that confront our nation.

He said, “Each shot was heard around the world and each shot inflicted more wounds on our nation’s soul….and if you are a true human being, you are outraged at the death of anybody. We must choose to do better, we must choose to be more human. We must choose to be more loving and more just.”

As an advocacy group that seeks equitable educational opportunities for all children, The Network for Public Education​ joins with those demanding justice, and ​those who stand for non-violence and peaceful advocacy.
Our children cannot learn when they live in a state of fear and despair. We must educate our students to fight and change these systems. We need to support them to lead all of us to a better world. ​

Reverend Barber’s speech begins at minute 10:00. You can hear it in its entirety here.

Categories Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »