NYC Educator: Diane Ravitch, Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos

NYC Educator: Diane Ravitch, Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos:

Diane Ravitch, Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos

According to Jim Hightower, yellow stripes and dead armadillos are the only things you'll find in the middle of the road. And yet Jessica Levin, over at Huffington Post, paints corporate reformers as occupying some middle ground. Levin mentions Michelle Rhee as one of these moderate voices. I'm reminded of another quote:

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

~Jonathan Swift

Ms. Levin appears to represent one of the first dunces to venture forth into the arena after having read Ravitch's book. Levin finds hitherto unsung nuance in reforminess:

Ravitch claims all education reformers are bent on promoting privatization, vouchers, and for-profit schools. However, most of those I interviewed have little faith in market solutions to improve schools systemically. They won't actively oppose vouchers because they refuse to tell poor parents what they wouldn't tolerate hearing themselves: "Your kids must stay in this failing school while we spend a decade trying to fix it." But many talked about vouchers and for-profits as distractions more than game changers. 

So let's understand this. The corporate reformers oppose vouchers, but won't say they do. The important thing is what they think, not what they do, and of course to move the kids from so-called failing schools. Whether or not they address the underlying issues that cause low test scores, like poverty, learning disabilities, or lack of English, is of no consequence. Whether the schools prove better, equal, or worse than the "failing" schools is also