Diane Ravitch debates StudentsFirst lobbyist
Watch Diane Ravitch dismantle Rhee’s proxy, Tim Melton, on issues of teacher tenure, seniority, testing, and teacher evaluation.
From Minnesota Public Radio. Read the original article here.
Tim Melton left the Michigan House of Representatives to become Rhee’s lobbyist after helping her push her agenda through the Michigan legislature. His status status is that of a revolving door lobbyist—called “perhaps the most pernicious lobbying strategy” by ThinkProgress. Convicted and imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave this explanation of how corrupting the revolving door can be: “You know, when you’re done working on the Hill, we’d very much like you to consider coming to work for us.’ Now the moment I said that to them or
False Choices: the economic argument against market-driven education reform
Written by Michael Diedrich for Minnesota 2020. Read the entire paper here.
“The income-based achievement gap that stands in the way of realizing this goal is significant and lamentable. It is not, however, the result of a school system that has somehow stopped functioning; rather, it is the result of a school system built for one purpose (attendance) that is now being changed to meet a new purpose (achievement).
As a result, policymakers who view education reform solely through the lenses of efficiency and competition will miss key factors of the school system and its structure that confound attempts to simulate a free market. In other words, the mindset that schools are not meeting their new goals because they are an innovation-challenged public monopoly that only needs increased competition to trigger improvement lacks an adequate basis in economic theory.”