Slaying Goliath
Slaying Goliath
The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools
By Diane Ravitch
Penguin Books
The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools
By Diane Ravitch
Penguin Books
Dear friends and colleagues,
Three cheers for Slaying Goliath.
Diane Ravitch and I have been agonizing together over the fate of public education (and the fate of teacher unions) for a long time. As usual we have different takes on it from time to time. This time our differences about this or that person or situation are definitely minor.
Three cheers for Slaying Goliath.
Diane Ravitch and I have been agonizing together over the fate of public education (and the fate of teacher unions) for a long time. As usual we have different takes on it from time to time. This time our differences about this or that person or situation are definitely minor.
I am a supporter of the singleton self-governing charters started by teachers like myself who did not have the good luck I did. I essentially was given the chance—along with many, many friends, starting in the mid-1970s, to create several charter-like schools in East Harlem within the regular New York City system and again in the 1990s in the Boston school system. These exciting opportunities led to many dozens, maybe hundreds, of mostly small successful innovative schools throughout the country. Most resembled what Al Shanker had hoped for, which Ravitch reminds us of favorably (and that I had forgotten).
But this enthusiasm for teacher-led innovations—never the dominant trend amongst reformers—has gradually disappeared. It is this that makes me ambivalent about attacking charters “in general” when there are hundreds that resemble the work we did CONTINUE READING: Slaying Goliath | Deborah Meier on Education