John Thompson: How the Billionaire Boys (and Girls) Club Ravaged America’s Public Schools
John Thompson is a historian and a retired teacher in Oklahoma. This article appeared originally in the Oklahoma Observer.
How the Billionaire Boys Club Ravaged America’s Public Schools
SLAYING GOLIATH The Passionate Resistance To Privatization And The Right to Save America’s Public Schools
Diane Ravitch started writing Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools in 2018 as teachers strikes erupted across the nation. These walkouts began in Red states where conservative legislatures drastically cut funding to under-resourced schools. Even in the places with the lowest salaries, like Oklahoma, educators were motivated by terrible working conditions that meant awful learning environments for students.
It wasn’t just the lack of money, and the resulting damage done by huge class sizes, a lack of textbooks, and neglected buildings, that motivated teachers. They also were resisting the disruption caused by corporate school reform, and the damage it had done to their kids. Teachers were sick of teach-to-the-test malpractice, reward and punish cultures and mandates that produce in-one-ear-out-the-other skin-deep instruction. The joy of teaching and learning was being undermined by the privatization of education. Many or most of these CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: How the Billionaire Boys (and Girls) Club Ravaged America’s Public Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog