A few minutes ago, you received a post from me with no content. It said it was “password protected.”

I was puzzled and wondered if someone had hacked into my blog.

But then I remembered that I had asked a friend to post a blog for me that contains a lot of graphs. I don’t know how to import graphics (sorry). I asked him to date it November 1, leaving me time to write the introduction and review contents.

He dated it November 1, 2012, and thought no one would see it.

Lots of people did see it.

Sorry for the techno-foul up.

I hope to have the post up in a few days, no password protection.

I really don’t want to give indigestion to the corporate
reformers so early in the day, but I have this one consolation:
there are so few of them. Put them all together in one room, and
they might fill the grand ballroom of the Hyatt-Regency. That is,
if they each bring a friend.

But I will tell the good news because it
proves yet again that we are many, and they are few.

This blog has now had more than 7 million page views since it debuted on April
24, 2012. The readers are fed up with attacks on one of our
society’s most precious democratic institutions: our public
schools. They are looking for an alternate source of news,
information, and analysis. They find it here.

They also find dissenting views, because unlike most of the mainstream media, we
are not afraid of debate and dissent.

We find and honor the heroes of American education. We know that some principals and teachers
have died for their students, and we grieve for them.

But we also recognize that there are heroes who stand up for their students
by fighting injustice and destructive ideas. We know that this kind
of courage can get one fired, so we recognize it for what it is:
Heroism. Courage. Integrity. We maintain an honor roll for those
who fight for the kids and for good education every day, who stick
their necks out and take risks.

The pseudo-reformers call me names because I criticize their attacks on teachers and public education.
They don’t think it is mean when they close schools, fire teachers,
fire principals, shatter communities. They think they are leading a
new civil rights movement when they demand the establishment of a
dual school system.

They not only flatter themselves but dishonor the legacy of the real civil rights movement, in which people died
to establish a just polity. They borrow the terminology of the
civil rights movement while substituting the goal–school
choice–of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.

We cannot have great, education by having one set of publicly funded schools (charters
and vouchers) that pick and choose their students, kicking out the
losers, excluding students with disabilities and English learners,
and operating free of state laws, and a second publicly funded
system, required to take all students, including those rejected or
ejected by the other system.

Great school systems aim for equity,
as the Finnish scholar Pasi Sahlberg says, and get excellence.
Finland has a unitary system, no charters, no vouchers, no Teach
for Finland, very little poverty, and a great school system. Also
no standardized testing until the end of secondary school. Think
about it.

And think about this: 7 million page views in less than
18 months. We are rising. Faux reform is failing everywhere. The
tide is indeed turning.

Here is a good blog by a Los Angeles parent who asks the question, “who is Diane Ravitch?–and explores the answer.

I know who I am.

I am one of eight children, born in Houston and a graduate of the Houston public schools.

I was lucky enough to be admitted to Wellesley College, where my friends included incredibly talented women. I graduated in 1960.

I married a wonderful man two weeks after college, moved to New York City, and began having children. I had three sons, one of whom died of leukemia at the age of two.

I earned a Ph.D. in the history of American education from Columbia University in 1975. My mentor was the great historian Lawrence A. Cremin.

My first book was a history of the New York public school system, published in 1974. It was also my doctoral dissertation.

I was divorced in 1986. My ex-husband and I are good friends.

From 1991-93, I was Assistant Secretary of Education in the first Bush administration. Then I worked as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution for two years.

I missed New York City and moved back to Brooklyn and became an adjunct at New York University. I published more books.

In 1997, the Clinton administration appointed me to serve on the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees federal testing. Secretary Richard Riley reappointed me in 2001, and I served on that board for seven years, learning a lot about testing.

I was a fellow at three different conservative think tanks in the 1990s and early years of this century. The Manhattan Institute, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution.

In 2010, I published a book explaining that the ideas I had thought were good in theory turned out not to work, that they were actually damaging education, and I became a critic of testing, accountability, choice, and competition. My book explained why and how I lost faith in these ideas. It is “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining American Education.”

I have lived with my best friend for the past 25 years.

I still live in Brooklyn. I have written ten or eleven books and edited many more.

I have four grandsons.

My latest book –Reign of Error–is the #1 book in education and the #1 book on public policy as of this moment on amazon.

I am 75 years old.

I have no staff, no research assistant. Whatever appears under my name was written solely by me.

I love what I am doing.

I love children, and I admire those who dedicate their lives to educating children and improving the lives of children, families, and communities.

I want all children to have a wonderful education, not just the basics and testing.

I will work for a better education for all as long as I have strength and breath.

Chris Potter of the Pittsburgh City Paper interviewed me when I was in town. I liked him, and we got along very well.

He got me talking, the sign of a good reporter.