Open Letter to Georgia Teachers « Diane Ravitch's blog

Open Letter to Georgia Teachers « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Open Letter to Georgia Teachers

by dianerav

In my experience, if you want to find a sympathetic ear in the media for public education, find someone who has a relative who teaches. Jon Stewart never fell for the teacher-bashing mania because his mother was a teacher. I have been interviewed on several occasions by talk show hosts who confessed that their mother or father was a teacher. They know how hard teachers work, and they share my outrage at the negative treatment of teachers and public schools today.
Yesterday someone sent me an article by Dick Yarbrough, a columnist in Georgia, thanking teachers for making it through another year. I immediately sensed that he had teachers in the family. Towards the end of his article, he mentions that four members of his family are teachers. That’s why he can’t stomach the absurd claims by

These Folks Love Their School

by dianerav

What happens to a small town in Idaho whose residents loves their public school, support it, paint the building, fix it up, tax themselves to pay for it, but is suffering because of state budget cuts? Raise taxes? Well, they are already paying 17 times the rate of the state’s wealthy districts. Because of its low property values, it can’t squeeze out enough to keep up with expenses. Meanwhile, the state wants to put everyone in online classes. That won’t help this school. It will still have the same bills to pay.
This is one of the saddest stories I read this week.
Why do so-called reformers avoid any discussion of how to help districts that don’t have a big enough tax base to support the school they love?
Diane