Cremin, I understand that schools do not exist in a vacuum: they reflect the society in which they are embedded. A society with a humane vision has schools that reflect that vision. Our society is very unequal and that inequality is reflected in the schools. Test scores mirror the demographic composition of the school.
After that acknowledgement, Ravitch stated the following as her preferred set of reforms to improve education:. Here are my proposals, as detailed in "Reign of Error.
First, we should provide good prenatal care for all women who become pregnant. This is crucial for the health and well-being of children. Second, young mothers should have nurses and child development specialists who aid them in their child's early years to be sure they get adequate nutrition and health care, as well as learn to interact with them in ways that build their knowledge and curiosity.
Third, we must recognize that the lowest school performance is caused by poverty and segregation, and as a society, we must develop actionable goals to reduce those conditions. Other nations have done it, and so should we. We have the highest rate of child poverty of any advanced nation in the world, and reducing that rate should have high priority.
In school, we should de-emphasize standardized testing; teachers should write their own tests and use them for diagnostic purposes, not for rating and punishing children. Class sizes should be reduced, especially where children have high needs. We should aim for classes of not more than Every school should have a full and rich curriculum, with a range of subject matter, especially in the arts. Every child should have a chance to sing, play an instrument, dance, and engage in joyful activities.
I place great importance on history, civics, foreign language, the sciences, mathematics, and physical education. Teachers should be well prepared for their work, with at least a year of study and practice teaching. Principals should be master teachers.
Education should have as its primary goals the development of good citizens with ethical character who are prepared to care for themselves and contribute to their community and our society.
Educators should be respected by their community and allowed the autonomy to do their work without political interference. Public education is a public responsibility that should not be privatized or outsourced. We should build and sustain the kinds of schools that create the society we want to live in. Ravitch stated that she was opposed to Common Core in early , describing the reforms as "fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation.
In a February blog post, Ravitch continued:. Maybe the standards will be great. Maybe they will be a disaster. Maybe they will improve achievement. Maybe they will widen the achievement gaps between haves and have-nots. Maybe they will cause the children who now struggle to give up altogether. Would the Federal Drug Administration approve the use of a drug with no trials, no concern for possible harm or unintended consequences?
Ravitch is opposed to charter schools , as she believes that they are increasingly moving away from their original purpose to collaborate with public schools, rather than to replace them. According to Ravitch, the root of the low academic performance issue is poverty, and the continual growth of charter schools is harmful to the public school system. She has described the atmosphere that charter schools create as "aggressive and entrepreneurial," and that they fuel the agenda of the corporate elite.
In a letter to The Washington Post , Ravitch stated that she believes teacher merit pay undermines collaboration and teamwork in the public school system. She argued from a historical perspective that merit pay has been tried since the s with no substantial success.
The study measured results over a three-year period and found no conclusive evidence that merit pay contributed to higher test scores. Bush administration, Ravitch maintains that it is "a timetable for the destruction of American public education.
Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act" and that "all this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation.
Ravitch criticized what she calls the "billionaire boys club" and the corporate involvement in education. Ravitch believes that since these three organizations funnel the most money into K education, they control the agenda of the public school system. In a article in The Washington Post , Ravitch stated:. For me, as a historian, the scary part is that our public schools have never before been subject to such a sustained assault on their very foundations.
Sharing a passion for education with her life partner Mary Butz, Dr. Diane Ravitch enjoys spending time with their intertwined families. Citing cooking as one of her limitations, Ravitch prefers to write, even describing her favorite book The Language Police as having almost written itself.
Ravitch, once a staunch supporter of No Child Left Behind, now courageously challenges the legislation for its unanticipated consequences. In this clip, Dr. Ravitch warns against the mounting pressure of high-stakes testing and the growing demand for school choice. Reiterating the importance of a free public education system, one not necessarily improved by competition, Dr.
Diane Ravitch advocates for the needs of teachers. Concerned with the expansion of entrepreneurial schools and standardized testing, Ravitch identifies the "double challenge" facing those who support public education-the simultaneous need to improve schools and reduce poverty. Encouraging graduate students to "find one thing and make it your own," she describes the life experiences that shaped her career as a writer and scholar.
Ravitch shares her desire to write one more great story-her own memoir. Amrein-Beardsley, A. Inside the Academy video interviews with Dr. The governor and some other state officials have maintained that protecting against the virus is a matter of personal responsibility. Judge Lee Yeakel, who made the ruling in the suit filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, determined that the order from the governor violated the Americans With Disabilities Act because it put children with disabilities at risk.
The ruling also prohibits Mr. Paxton from enforcing the order by Mr. Abbott, who has repeatedly opposed Covid-related mandates. Then we learned that the schools had paid for box seats for the San Antonio Spurs basketball games. These are the actions of a private corporation. After you read his report, you will wonder why the state of Texas and the federal government encouraged the chain to expand.
Introduction: Federal and state elected officials, privately funded public policy organizations, and private foundations are financially supporting education reforms to undermine locally governed, community-based school districts. With promotions of expert teachers and more of them, IDEA promises to prepare low-income students for success to and through college. Unfortunately, recent findings reveal a story that is not representative of serving low-income families.
Collectively, these organizations give contingent donations to open campuses in targeted communities, implement specific curriculum, and expand enrollment. In , IDEA had produced 56 high school graduates and no graduate had earned a college degree. Download the pdf here.
Bill Phillis, retired deputy commissioner of education in Ohio, is a staunch advocate for the state system of common schools, which is guaranteed in the state constitution. He founded the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy. The question in Ohio, as in many other states, is why Ohio legislators continue to fund failure.
The original promise of charter and voucher advocates: Charters will out-place school districts. Scott DiMauro, President of the Ohio Education Association, in a November 3 commentary in the Ohio Capital Journal shared a comparison of charter school report card results with real public schools. The results show that charter school kids are the real losers. I remember taking home my report cards when I was in school.
I was a pretty good student; my grades always reflected my passion for subjects I loved, and more importantly, provided some real-time feedback on areas where improvement was needed — Time management, for example, was a skill I had to learn over time.
During my years as a high school social studies teacher, I strived to give that same kind of useful assessment to my students when I was putting report cards together for them. The state puts report cards together for school buildings and districts, too. In spirit, at least, they have the same mission, quantitatively assessing where our publicly funded institutions across the state are succeeding and where there is room for growth.
The data paint a troubling picture. One of the most morally disturbing aspects of the Innovators Charter School proposal for New Bedford and Fall River is the joining of considerable political and economic power to withdraw resources from public education systems that have been historically underfunded.
What is appalling is the deliberate indifference to the impact on our public school systems in New Bedford and Fall River which, together, serve 22, students. As students and families are seduced to exit their public schools, the operating costs in these schools remain the same. This proposal is just more of the same looting of the public school system that we have seen with charter schools.
He teaches high school English in Sylvania, in the northwest of the state. Here he writes about the power of teachers, who are trusted by parents and the community to refute slanders about their schools. About a week before the November 2nd election, a colleague of mine sent me a picture of a campaign literature piece supporting candidates for school board in my community.
The postcard was paid for by the NW Ohio Coalition for Public School Excellence , a group that was not only supporting conservative candidates in my community, but a neighboring community, with the exact same yard signs just different names. These campaign tactics, filled with lies about schools teaching Critical Race Theory, had an interesting impact. At a time when teachers are emotionally and physically exhausted, when they seem to be focused on making it through one day at a time, these campaign lies seemed to tap some reserve of strength and energy teachers did not know they had.
Teachers started posting to social media, pushing back on the CRT lies. They started posting images of the four teacher union-endorsed candidates on their Facebook pages.
They sent text messages to friends and family with the names of the teacher-endorsed candidates. One teacher even wrote a message across the entire back window of her van in excellent teacher handwriting telling community members to support teachers by voting for our endorsed candidates.
The campaign money, the campaign literature, the yard signs, the robo calls… they could not beat the voice of teachers and the voice of truth. David Gamberg recently retired as Superintendent of two contiguous school districts on the North Fork of Long Island: the Southold district and the Greenport district. When the Greenport schools needed a new superintendent, they invited Gamberg to split his time between the two districts. When I was young I never fully knew what my father did for a living.
Eventually learning that he was a truck driver did not dissuade me from following in his footsteps. I never did pursue that line of work.
Nor did I ultimately learn about the industry that he worked in throughout his entire life. I was fortunate to grow up in the America of my youth. My father was a truck driver who did not go to college. I consider myself so fortunate. My mom worked as an aide in a nursing home.
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