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Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

KEEP UP/ CATCH UP WITH DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG 

A site to discuss better education for all

Slaying Goliath

 The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and 

the Fight to Save America's Public Schools

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Susan Edelman: Bloomberg’s Test Score Con

by dianeravitch / 42min

Strange as it may seem, the best education reporter in New York City works for Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. Her name is Susan Edelman, and she regularly reports on what is happening in the city’s schools without fear or favor. Unlike the New York Times, where reporters cycle in and out of the education beat, Sue has been writing on the subject for many years. One of her best articles appeared

Riverhead, N.Y.: Good Public Schools Starved by Cuomo Tax Cap and Charter

87by dianeravitch / 20h

A mother in the Riverhead, New York, School District wrote an opinion article about underinvestment in the small city’s public schools. Years ago, Governor Cuomo slapped a tax cap of 2% on all districts to prove his conservative credentials. In addition, Riverhead has a charter school siphoning off millions of dollars and now wants to expand. This week, voters must pass a bond issue to meet the b

Diane Joins the Illustrious Klonsky Brothers on “Hitting Left” in Chicago

by dianeravitch / 21h

This is a really great podcast that I enjoyed taping with brothers Mike and Fred Klonsky on their podcast “Hitting Left” while I was in Chicago. We borrowed time from our host Mario Smith, because the show occurred while Mario was on the air. Start with the photograph of the four of us holding baseball bats, the better to hit left with. Mike and Fred are veteran activists. While Mike was a leader

AFT supports Three Democratic Candidates

75by dianeravitch / 22h

The American Federation of Teachers Issued this statement yesterday: Press Release American Federation of Teachers Passes Resolution to Encourage Support for 3 of the 2020 Democratic Primary Candidates For Release: Thursday, February 20, 2020 Contact: Oriana Korin 202-374-6103 Oriana.Korin@aft.org http://www.aft.org WASHINGTON—In a telephone town hall on Thursday night with thousands of American

Ross Douhat: Will Democrat’s Nominate a Smart Plutocrat to Replace a Stupid One?

by dianeravitch / 23h

Ross Douhat is a conservative columnist for the New York Times. Maybe he wrote this column to help Trump, yet it rings true. He writes: For a long time the notion of a Michael Bloomberg presidential candidacy seemed like a Manhattan fancy, a conceit with elite appeal but no mass constituency, a fantasy for Acela riders who imagine that the American people are clamoring for a rich person’s idea of

Tom Ultican Doesn’t Like Amplify One Bit

by dianeravitch / 1d

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics in California, doesn’t like Amplify. He doesn’t like its focus on profit and he doesn’t like its pedagogy. He traces its provenance from Joel Klein to Rupert Murdoch to Laurene Powell Jobs. it started with high promise and claims that it would transform American education but the business went south when its first big client complai

FEB 20

Book Tour Reaches Chicago!

by dianeravitch / 1d

Last night I spoke at the conference hall of the Chicago Teachers Union. Today began with an interview at WGN-TV. It’s a short segment but I said what I needed to day about the condition of education. Enjoy!

When Bloomberg Compared the AARP to the NRA

53by dianeravitch / 1d

Remember “loose lips sink ships”? I think that was a World War 1 poster, warning defense workers to be careful what they said. Apparently no one ever passed that warning to Mike Bloomberg. Given that he is a billionaire, he feels free to insult at will. This post reports a public forum where he compared the AARP to the NRA, complaining that they were a single-issue group that would fight any effo

Andrea Gabor: Betsy DeVos’s Voucher Obsession Could Boomerang on Republicans

100+by dianeravitch / 1d

Veteran journalist Andrea Gabor explains that Betsy DeVos got the Trump administration to commit fully behind her voucher obsession, rolling some 29 or 30 programs into a block grant, including the toxic federal Charter Schools Program. In exchange, the Trump administration is seeking $5 billion for national voucher program. It is certain not to be approved by Congress, but meanwhile the Supreme

Virginia: GOP Chair Stalks Democrat Leading Gun Control Effort

by dianeravitch / 1d

So this is what America has come to. The chairman of a local Republican party in Virginia threatened a Democratic legislator leading the campaign to restrict access to assault weapons. He threatened to kill him and marched outside his home with weapons. A Democratic lawmaker who is leading an effort to ban assault weapons in Virginia has asked local prosecutors to consider pressing charges agains

David Dayen: An Election of Plutocrat Vs. Plutocrat

by dianeravitch / 1d

David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, expresses his concern about billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who is a plutocrat and an autocrat. In many ways, Dayen writes, Bloomberg is like Trump, only richer. How strange would it be for the Democrats to nominate a Republican to run against Trump. He writes: I have been on the record as saying that Michael Bloomberg will never become the p

Montana: School Choice Doesn’t Make Sense Here

28by dianeravitch / 2d

Sarah Vowell is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times where this article appeared. Proponents of vouchers often claim that the state prohibitions on public funding of religious schools were birthed in anti-Catholic bigotry, based on the Blaine Amendment, which was offered as a Constitutional amendment after the Civil War but failed to be adopted. Many states wrote their own “baby B

FEB 19

Washington Post: The Case Against Sanders

20by dianeravitch / 2d

If Senator Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, you can be sure that Trump will redbait him on a daily basis. Sanders will be “red meat” for Trump’s ridicule. If you support Sanders, you will hate this column. Be forewarned. For a preview of what lies ahead, read this column from the Washington Post by Megan McArdle. The world of comic books, in which characters are constantly dying and

Study: Stop-and-Frisk Increased Dropout Rate

34by dianeravitch / 2d

Matt Barnum and Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat report that a new study of Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policy found that it increased the dropout rate, especially for black boys, who were most likely to be stopped and frisked.

Heather Gautney and Eric Blanc: Bloomberg’s Ed Reform Ideology Would Be a Disaster for Public Schools

62by dianeravitch / 2d

Heather Gautney and Eric Blanc warn in the Guardian the Michael Bloomberg’s ideas abou t education would be a disaster for the nation. He is the only candidate whose ideas about education are in synch with those of Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and Arne Duncan. The authors are both supporting Bernie Sanders. Affer persuading the legislature to give him total control of the city’s 1.1 million public

Jeff Bryant: The Planned Demolition of Public Education in America

31by dianeravitch / 2d

Jeff Bryant writes in the Progressive about the Trump-DeVos budget and their plan to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, which incensed the charter industry. The charter industry was certain they had a friend in Betsy DeVos, how could she have abandoned them? Bryant quotes me as saying that the far-right foundations and think tanks embraced charters thirty years ago because they were e

Wisconsin: School Choice is Causing Ruinous Damage to Public Schools

by dianeravitch / 2d

Two Wisconsin legislators published an opinion piece about the harm that school choice is doing to the state’s public schools. Jon Erpenbach and Sondy Pope object to the way that vouchers have taken money away from public schools without the compose top of the governed. It hasn’t been long since many Wisconsinites have had to vote on referendums to keep their public school doors open, and now in

Florida: Charter Drain Causing School Closures in Broward County

33by dianeravitch / 3d

About 30 public schools in Broward County may close due to loss of students to charter schools. The original purpose of charter schools was to collaborate with public schools, not to destroy them. Unfortunately, the charter industry is so well represented in the legislature that they have a distinctive edge over real public schools. The wife of the State Commissiomer of Educatuon Richard Corcoran

FEB 18

This Story Made Me Cry: A Mother and Child, Separated for 2 1/2 Years

42by dianeravitch / 3d

Can this be America? The Trump administration separated parents and children at the border. This mother and child were separated in 2017. The mother was deported to Guatemala, the child sent to live with an aunt in Fort Myers. They communicate by cellphone. One child. One mother. Not so far from Mar-a-Lago. Gratuitous and pointless cruelty. Not a rapist or murderer. A mother and a child. FORT MYE

Bloomberg Surges into Second Place, Behind Sanders

300+by dianeravitch / 3d

From Politico today: Of all the Democratic candidates, Michael Bloomberg has the worst record on education. His education policies mirrored George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind. He was fully invested in high-stakes testing, data-based decision-making, closing schools with low scores instead of helping them, opening new schools and then closing those schools, creating selective schools that chose

Oklahoma: Gulen-Style Online Charter School Obtains Names and Addresses of Students for Recreuitment

32by dianeravitch / 3d

Oklahoma has just experienced a fraud involving an online charter school called EPIC, which was accused of collecting money for ghost students and billing for excessive administrative overhead. It’s amazing how many of the big scandals in charter land involve the highly profitable online charters. Now parents in Oklahoma are outraged that a new virtual charter obtained the names and addresses of

Alex Pareene: Michael Bloomberg’s “Polite” Authoritarianism

53by dianeravitch / 3d

Alex Pareene, staff writer at the New Republic, reminds us of Michael Bloomberg’s intolerance of dissent abd his casual disdain of civil liberties. He writes here about the mass arrests of people suspected of wanting to protest the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004. He mentions in passing the Occupy Wall Street protest, in which a ragtag group of protestors occupied a small

Brookings: The Political Strategy Behind Much of Michael Bloomberg’s Charitable Donations

22by dianeravitch / 3d

Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution wrote one of the most insightful columns that I have read about the candidacy of Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg’s net worth is more than $50 billion. He has given generously to many charitable causes. But he has also used his charitable donations to advance his political ambitions. In recent years, he has given millions of dollars to mayors across the

National Education Policy Center: Are Zillow and Real Estate Agents Promoting Segregation?

52by dianeravitch / 3d

Are Zillow and Realtors Contributing to School Segregation? : \\\\ How do renters or buyers judge the quality of the schools zoned to their prospective homes? Often it starts not with schools or teachers or students, but with the real estate industry. Two recent pieces of investigative journalism call attention to a prominent flaw with this system: Realtors and real estate websites alike share as

Black Agenda Report: The Looting of Oakland’s Public Schools by Broadies

78by dianeravitch / 4d

This is an astonishing report about the destruction and privatization of public schools in Oakland, California, and the billionaires who facilitated the looting of that city. The article by Eugene Stovall appeared in “Black Agenda Report.” The audacity of this attack on public education is astonishing. The mechanism for the destroyers were graduates of the Broad Academy, known as Broadies. Since

FEB 17

California: Charter Schools Advocates Distribute Vile, Anti-Semitic Poster of School Board Member Scott Schmerelson

1Kby dianeravitch / 4d

A front group for the California Charter Schools lobby, which calls itself “Families and Teachers United,” released a flyer that attacked school board member Scott Schmerelson, a pro-public school member of the LAUSD school board and well-qualified educator. Schmerelson has been endorsed by every Democratic club in Los Angeles. The scurrilous flyer accuses him of investing in mutual funds that in

How Private Equity Looted One of NYC’s Favorite Grocery Stores

31by dianeravitch / 4d

We have a problem in this society. We have many problems. One of them is the role of private equity in destroying products and services that were once household names. Here is an example: One of the stores that many New Yorkers love is Fairway Markets. It started as one store on the Upper West Side. It was the place to go for an amazing selection of cheeses and fresh produce and dozens of varieti

Oklahoma: Should the State Superintendent be Elected or Appointed by the Governor?

by dianeravitch / 4d

Oklahoma has an elected state superintendent of schools. Her name is Joy Hofmeister. Amazingly, she is a strong friend of public schools, and has done her best to shield them from a penny-pinching, anti-education legislature that puts tax cuts first, children last. So of course, the conservative Republican governor Kevin Stitt thinks it is time to get rid of the elected superintendent and give hi

New Hampshire Seeks to Pilot Online Pre-Schooling and Tries Again for Charters

300+by dianeravitch / 5d

New Hampshire’s Governor is a Trump-style extremist, Chris Sununu, whose father John advised the first President Bush. Sununu appointed Frank Edelblut as state commissioner of education. The state commissioner home-schooled his children and follows the ideology of Betsy DeVos. He thinks government money should go wherever children go, regardless of who gets the money. That’s called “Learning Ever

FEB 16

Jan Resseger Credits NPE for Exposing Charter Scams

47by dianeravitch / 5d

Jan Resseger, tireless champion for social and economic justice, reflects on the fading reputation of the charter industry. The decision by the Trump administration to axe the federal Charter Schools Program (DeVos’s slush fund for corporate charter chains) is the latest affront to an industry that once was regarded as the great hope for innovation and effectiveness but got overwhelmed by scandal

Oklahoma: EPIC Virtual Charter School Penalized $530,000 for Excessive Administrative Costs

25by dianeravitch / 5d

There is not much to admire in Oklahoma’s penurious funding of its public schools. But there is one admirable law on the books. Schools are not permitted to spend excessive amounts on administrative overhead. And when they do, they are penalized. Epic One on One virtual charter school has been penalized more than $530,000 for exceeding the state limit on administrative spending, a limit imposed b

Arizona: Charter School Principal Pleads Guilty to Fraud

27by dianeravitch / 5d

The principal of the Discovery Creemos Charter School pled guilty to inflating enrollment and stealing $2.5 million from the state and federal governments. The former principal of the shuttered Discovery Creemos Academy pleaded guilty Friday to participating in a $2.5 million scheme to inflate enrollment at the defunct charter school. Harold Cadiz, 55, faces up to 12 ½ years in prison after plead

Laura Chapman: Aaron Churchill, Minister of Information for Privatization in Ohio

42by dianeravitch / 6d

The munificently-funded Thomas B. Fordham Institute, based in D.C., controls Educatuon Policy, graduation requirements, curriculum, and testing in Ohio. Mr. Fordham, for whom the institute is named, had no known interest in education, but his namesake is part of the rightwing ALEC nexus, where contempt for public schools, hatred for unions, contempt for gun control and environmental regulation ar

FEB 15

Jesse Hagopian and I Speak in Seattle

by dianeravitch / 6d

When I spoke at Town Hall in Seattle, I was introduced by Garfield High School teacher Jesse Garfield. Jess is one of the heroes in SLAYING GOLIATH. Here is the conversation..

Steve Hinnefeld: The Stench of Virtual Charter Schools

49by dianeravitch / 6d

Steve Hinnefeld writes about education in Indiana. In this post, he explains the deep corruption in the virtual charter industry and how the frauds were facilitated by generous gifts to key politicians. He writes: We’ve known something fishy was going on with virtual charter schools since 2017, when a Chalkbeat Indiana investigation exposed shady business practices and lousy test scores and gradu

Detroit: A Cautionary Tale of a Promising Charter School That Was Doomed to Fail

38by dianeravitch / 6d

This is an extraordinary story, which I hope you will read to the end. It was published by Chalkbeat . A group of concerned leaders in Detroit, including some retired educators, decided to open a charter school. They won the endorsement of the city’s leading philanthropies. They won a federal grant from the Charter Schools Program. The school struggled from the beginning. It struggled initially t

Indiana: Two Virtual Charter Schools Steal More Than $68 Million from State

100+by dianeravitch / 6d

The biggest and worst charter scandals are perpetrated by virtual charter schools. Why do states tolerate their waste, fraud, and abuse? The only online charters should be operated and supervised by public officials, not by grifters and entrepreneurs. Indiana was just scammed of more than $68 million by two virtual charters. This was money that should have spent on children and in classrooms to r

Jersey Jazzman: Sorry, Jersey Charters, You Can’t Have It Both Ways

35by dianeravitch / 7d

Jersey Jazzman notes that charters in his state are on the horns of a dilemma: on one hand, public school advocates are suing to block charter expansion, because they drain away public school funding: on the other hand, charters 

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all