70 People Brave Frigid Weather to Raise Concerns about School Choice
Wednesday was so cold in greater Cleveland that schools were closed across the region, but by 7:00 PM, 70 people had arrived at our high school cafeteria whose doors had been opened for the second week of our community conversation about Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error. (You can read about our first session here.)
A retired, and much beloved, high school guidance counselor driving in from rural Newbury reported that as he made his way to our meeting, his car radio blared an ad from Ohio’s most notorious on-line academy, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT): “Schools across Ohio are closed due to the weather, but our school is always open. At ECOT your child will never miss school because of cold weather.”
“Can you imagine,” asked a school administrator, “what people would say if we spent part of our school district’s budget for radio advertising? People would say we were wasting the taxpayers’ money, but nobody ever says that about ECOT!”
After the meeting, as people bundled up to go home, I asked several of them how they felt about the conversation they had been having. Had talking about the book caused them to think any differently about challenges for public education? Had any particular concern developed for them as they were reading and discussing? Here is some of what people told me:
- “I know something about the use of data in education. It used to be that we consulted