Note to Peter Cunningham: Read Ravitch’s Death and Life
On January 20, 2015, education historian Diane Ravitch wrote an open letter to Senator Lamar Alexander regarding the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the most recent revision of which is No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In her letter, Ravitch refers to her time as Alexander’s assistant secretary of education (research) from 1991 to 1993.
Alexander is drafting the Senate’s next version of ESEA.
At its heart, Ravitch’s letter is an appeal for Alexander to abandon the federal mandate for standardized testing in grades 3 through 8.
When I initially read Ravitch’s appeal, two thoughts occurred to me. The first was that Ravitch and Alexander have known one another for decades, with Alexander choosing Ravitch as assistant secretary of education despite his being a Republican and her being a Democrat– which means she must have impressed him enough to set aside issues of political party. The second thought was that Alexander is surely aware of Ravitch’s dramatic change of perspective regarding the value of standardized testing in the American classroom from the time of her 1990s appointment to present day, 2015.
The richness of Ravitch’s communication with Alexander regarding ESEA reauthorization rests in the background with her well-documented change of perspective on standardized-test-driven reform. Her views on accountability and choice were once aligned with Alexander’s, and now, several years, two books, and 17 million Ravitch-blog page views following her realization that she could no longer endorse test-driven education reform, here she is, offering her conscience-wrestled perspective to a man who thought enough of the soundness of her advice to pen the words, “Read anything Diane Ravitch writes about education,” in his own personal book of advice.
And remarkably, in this era of the corporate and philanthropic purchasing of education reform voices and bodies, Ravitch has not accepted a dime from anyone to foster her change of perspective. It was all her, borne of an increasingly-evidence-based conviction that the education reforms she so valued and for which she fiercely advocated from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s simply would not work.
Those whose education reform voices have been purchased try to portray Ravitch as duplicitous for now denying the value of a corporate model of education reform, a model dependent upon standardized test scores to damn traditional schools and teachers and hand districts over to under-regulated, miracle-lacking “choice.” (For a fresh example of the state-run, charter-promoting failure, see this post on New Orleans Recovery School District {RSD} 2014 ACT scores.)
Today, I read of such a targeted mischaracterizing of Ravitch, written on February 2, 2015, by former Arne Duncan staffer Peter Cunningham, who started a pro-corporate-reform blog with $12 million in reformer cash. Cunningham decided that he would come several years late to the party and point out to the American public that Ravitch has changed her views on test-driven reforms.
News flash, Cunningham: We already know.
Our knowing is why Ravitch is “at the very top of a list of the 200 most influential scholars in America,” as you point out in the opening of your post. We know what she stands for, and it is the community school.
Not good enough for Cunningham, who writes in the comments section of his own post, “I have certainly changed my mind at times and I do not fault Professor Ravitch for changing her mind. But on everything?”
When “everything” is the entire education folio that bankrupts public school systems in favor of a largely unaccountable, under-regulated education business, then yes, “everything.”
Cunningham, who supports Arne Duncan and accepts millions in corporate-reform-promoting philanthropic cash, is reluctant to acknowledge as much. Therefore, in his February 2, 2015, post, he decides to create what he calls the “other” letter Ravitch supposedly wrote to Alexander, one in which Cunningham cuts and pastes excerpts Note to Peter Cunningham: Read Ravitch’s Death and Life | deutsch29:
Big Education Ape: An Open Letter to Lamar Alexander: Don't Forget Rule #84 in 'The Little Plaid Book' | Diane Ravitch http://bit.ly/1yrCpud
Big Education Ape: Rule No. 84: Diane Ravitch's Other Letter to Lamar Alexander | Peter Cunningham http://bit.ly/1Dy9G6X