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Retweet of Ravitch

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Stop saying "some charter schools are good". It's the EXISTENCE of charters and their impact on the entire system of public education that's the problem. Privately-run schools getting public funds needs to end. #Schoolchoiceweek #FalseChoices

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Stop saying "some charter schools are good". It's the EXISTENCE of charters and their impact on the entire system of public education that's the problem. Privately-run schools getting public funds needs to end. #Schoolchoiceweek #FalseChoices

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Stop saying "some charter schools are good". It's the EXISTENCE of charters and their impact on the entire system of public education that's the problem. Privately-run schools getting public funds needs to end. #Schoolchoiceweek #FalseChoices
— 𝓜𝓼. 𝓚𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓮 (@CTUSpecialEd) January 23, 2018

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Stop saying "some charter schools are good". It's the EXISTENCE of charters and their impact on the entire system of public education that's the problem. Privately-run schools getting public funds needs to end. #Schoolchoiceweek #FalseChoices

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Stop saying "some charter schools are good". It's the EXISTENCE of charters and their impact on the entire system of public education that's the problem. Privately-run schools getting public funds needs to end. #Schoolchoiceweek #FalseChoices

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Stop saying "some charter schools are good". It's the EXISTENCE of charters and their impact on the entire system of public education that's the problem. Privately-run schools getting public funds needs to end. #Schoolchoiceweek #FalseChoices

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This article is a transcript of an inter view Diane had. When you read through you see here opinions about here stance on government involvement in schools and other common questions she is asked about education.

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EducationWorld is pleased to present this article contributed by C.M. Rubin. The piece is part of Rubin's online interview series Global Search for Education, in which she joins globally renowned thought leaders as they explore big-picture education questions that all nations face. For this series and her other online series "How Will We Read?", she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award. Rubin is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland.

I am honored to share the perspectives of Diane Ravitch as we continue discussion of the issues that will be a priority for President Obama during his second term.

Diane Ravitch (left) and C.M. Rubin

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a distinguished historian of American education. She is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. She served as Assistant Secretary of Education for Research and Improvement in the administration of President George H.W. Bush and was appointed to two terms on the National Assessment Governing Board by the Clinton administration. Ravitch is the author or editor of over 20 books on education, including the national bestseller The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books).

What should the role of federal government be in K-12 education? How much more funding should be given to education reform, and in what major areas should it be spent?

The federal government has certain roles that have been consistent since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965:

First, to equalize spending for the neediest districts, especially those that enroll children who are poor.

Second, to protect the civil rights of children.

Third, to provide accurate and timely information about the condition and progress of education, including support for the no-stakes National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Fourth, to fund the education of children with disabilities.

Fifth, to aid low-income students who enroll in college.

The basic mission of the U.S. Department of Education is to support equality of educational opportunity. It is NOT the role of the Department of Education to foist its own unproven preferences - like evaluating teachers by student test scores or charter schools or merit pay - on states and districts.

What would be your position on improving the teaching profession, including recruitment, teacher training, compensation and assignment to low-income schools?

I would like to see higher standards for entry into schools of education. I would wish that every teacher has a four-year degree in a content area, so they are knowledgeable in the subjects they will teach, and a fifth year of study of education, including cognitive science, adolescent psychology, assessment, cultural diversity, the sociology of the family and the community, and the history, politics and economics of education.

Photo courtesy of Jack Miller
and Diane Ravitch

No one should be allowed to teach who does not have a year of study that includes practice teaching and research. I would also disallow education degrees earned online. Teachers should be paid more for taking on additional responsibilities; they should not have their pay or evaluation tied to test scores of students.

Teaching should be a prestigious career. Those who enter teaching should be well prepared and expect to make a career in education.

What would be your position on school choice, including charter schools and their expansion, private schools, vouchers and investment in inadequately staffed and facilitated low-income schools?

I oppose school choice outside the public school system. I oppose private management of public schools. I oppose for-profit schools. I fear that in time we will see the re-emergence of a dual system of schools in our cities, with charters for the able and public schools serving the rejects from charter schools. I see district after district where charters drain funding and top students away from the public schools. It makes no sense.

I oppose vouchers. I believe that it is a public duty to provide a good public school with adequate resources and a rich curriculum in every neighborhood. Every school should have the staff and resources it needs to provide a full curriculum, after-school activities and appropriate services for students.

What would be your strategy to address the domestic and international achievement gaps, including your position on early childhood education, standardized testing, on-line modular education, and teacher/principal accountability?

I think we should stress early childhood education. The U.S. lags far behind the rest of the world in establishing high-quality early childhood education. I think we should minimize the use of standardized testing, use it only for diagnostic purposes, not for accountability, not for rewards or punishments or school closings. Standardized tests reflect gaps, they don't close them. The online schools have very poor results and do nothing to improve achievement.

The best way to improve achievement is to improve the standard of living of our poorest children while improving the curriculum at all schools and the professional supports for teachers. One important reform would be to make sure that every child has a regular medical check-up, that every school has access to a health clinic and/or a school nurse. In the schools that serve the neediest children, class sizes should be reduced to no more than 20.

What would be your position on curriculum reform, including the role of the arts, the treatment of ethics, and the adoption of blended online learning?

I believe that every school should have a full and balanced curriculum, with a rich arts program, history, civics, geography, mathematics, the sciences, foreign languages and literature. Every school should have a library with a full range of resources, including computers and the Internet.

I would ban for-profit schooling.

What would be your position on how to make college affordable for more qualified low-income students?

The federal government should increase subsidies for college for low-income and middle-income students. Education is a basic human right, and it should not be denied because of inability to pay. Young people should not be buried in debt when they finish college. We can't expect to increase college enrollment rates if young people cannot afford to go. I also think the government should be extremely vigilant in policing for-profit colleges, where the attrition rates are extremely high and young people drop out with heavy debt and no education.

Education World®
Copyright © 2012 Education World

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Diane Ravitch Talks Education | Education World

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EducationWorld is pleased to present this article contributed by C.M. Rubin. The piece is part of Rubin's online interview series Global Search for Education, in which she joins globally renowned thought leaders as they explore big-picture education questions that all nations face.

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"Betsy DeVos approves PARCC as Official Common Core Test. Didn’t she say last week at AEI that Common Core was “dead.” It is alive and thriving in the Trump era." (Ravitich, 2017)

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By guest blogger Catherine Gewertz
The PARCC test has won an unusual nod of approval from the U.S. Department of Education: It got an unconditional thumbs-up as an assessment that complies with the federal rules governing how well tests measure mastery of states' academic standards.

Sound obscure? Well, it is. But it's also significant, because it means that one PARCC state (Yes, just one. More on that in a second.) has now won the official federal stamp of approval.

"This is really great news," said Arthur VanderVeen, the CEO of New Meridian, the company that manages the PARCC consortium. "We think this confirms that the states that administer the PARCC test, or [use] its test content, are administering the highest quality assessment that's available."

Here's the obscure part, with explanations and caveats:

Those of you who follow every tiny detail of assessment policy-heaven help you-will be embarrassingly familiar with the department's "peer review" process. This is where the recent action about PARCC took place. In a letter dated Jan. 11, the U.S. Education Department concluded that Maryland's use of PARCC in grades 3-8 and high school meets all the requirements in federal law.

A year ago, the department told Maryland that it needed more evidence that PARCC meets federal requirements in a number of areas, including whether the exam "measures the full breadth and depth" of its academic standards.
The Federal Review Process
The Education Department's peer-review requirements focus heavily on how well a state's assessment fully reflects its academic standards. All states must submit their assessments and standards for review periodically.

When they do that, it's more common for them to receive ratings that fall short of complete approvals. They're likely to get a "substantially meets requirements," or "partially meets requirements." (See recent examples of the department's findings on Wisconsin and Wyoming when they submitted their use of the ACT college-entrance exam for peer review.)

Typically in those situations, the department asks states to provide more evidence in places where the tests fell short. For instance, department officials could ask for alignment studies that demonstrate the test sufficiently covers a state's standards. Or it could ask for evidence of appropriate accommodations policies.

It can take rounds of back and forth, over months-and sometimes years-for states to submit sufficient evidence to win complete approval. And as insiders know, states just keep right on using those same tests with students while they're seeking full approval from the department. Theoretically, the department can withhold Title I funds from states for using tests that don't meet muster. But experts are hard-pressed to cite cases where that's actually happened.

States that use the Smarter Balanced assessment have been going through peer review, and have gotten ratings of "substantially" meeting federal requirements, but none have yet received a "meets requirements" designation.
What's Next for PARCC States
Maryland's letter of approval is noteworthy because it confers on PARCC an official blessing for use in that state. It could also indicate a good chance that the five other states that use PARCC-Colorado, the District of Columbia, Illinois, New Jersey, and New Mexico-could get the same result when they go through peer review.

The most recent round of peer-review letters to those states, in January 2017, showed mixed results: Illinois' use of PARCC got a "partially meets" requirements, and the other four states got a "substantially meets" requirements.

As they submit more evidence, in search of a "meets requirements" designation, they're not that likely to stumble on the question of whether PARCC aligns to their academic standards, since all PARCC states use the common core, or a close cousin of it, said Scott Marion, the executive director of the Center for Assessment, which advises states on testing issues.

The PARCC states could stumble, though, over other key questions of peer review, such as their accommodations and whether they test all students, as required by federal law, Marion said.

VanderVeen also noted that PARCC states are moving toward a more flexible assessment model, in which they might incorporate some of PARCC's content into their state testing regimens, as Louisiana and Massachusetts do, without using the whole exam. While that allows states to customize the test, it also means that full approval in peer review isn't a lock, given each state's unique use of the test.

The wonks and nerds among you can paw through the feds' letters to PARCC states to see exactly where they fell short last year. You can see the department's peer-review letters to all the states here, dating back to 2005. (Or not. Depending on your level of assessment wonkiness.)

For more stories about how the U.S. Department of Education reviews standards and assessments, see:
Federal Peer-Review of Tests Begins Again U.S. Review of Standards, Tests, Enters New Phase

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PARCC Common-Core Test Gets Federal Approval

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By guest blogger Catherine Gewertz The PARCC test has won an unusual nod of approval from the U.S. Department of Education: It got an unconditional thumbs-up as an assessment that complies with the federal rules governing how well tests measure mastery of states' academic standards. Sound obscure? Well, it is.

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Education World. (2012). Diane Ravitch Talks Education. educationworld. Retrieved from http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/rubin/election-education-issues-ravitch.shtml

Gewertz, C. ( January 23, 2018). PARCC Common-Core Test Gets Federal Approval. Editorial Projects in Education. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2018/01/parcc_common-core_test_gets_federal_approval.html

Ravitch, D. (2018). Diane Ravitch's blog. Retrieved from https://dianeravitch.net/

Ravitch, D. (2018). About Diane. dianeravitch. Retrieved from http://dianeravitch.com/about-diane/

Srauss, V. ( 13 June, 2016). Dina Ravitch to Obama. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/06/13/diane-ravitch-to-obama-i-will-never-understand-why-you-decided-to-align-your-education-policy-with-that-of-george-w-bush/?utm_term=.171ff5ecfc74

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‘I will never understand why you decided to align your education policy with that of George W. Bush’

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‘I will never understand why you decided to align your education policy with that of George W. Bush’

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Diane Ravitch has been the titular leader of the grass-roots movement against corporate school reform since 2010, when her book " The Death and Life of the Great American School System " was published and quickly became a bestseller. (In fact, readers of the the pro-reform journal Education Next named it the most important book of the first decade of the 2000s.) In the book, she explained why she dropped her support for No Child Left Behind, the chief education initiative of former president George W. Bush and standardized test-based school reform. Now she has updated the book and explained why she has again changed her view on at least one important issue. This post is a Q&A I had with Ravitch about her book and the state of the public education.

The reason Ravitch's change of position mattered was because of her position in the education world. A well-respected education historian and author, she worked from 1991 to 1993 as assistant secretary in charge of research and improvement in the Education Department of President George H.W. Bush and served as counsel to then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander (who is now the chairman of the Senate education committee). She was a supporter of No Child Left Behind, the chief education initiative of President George W. Bush, and was at the White House as part of a select group when Bush first outlined No Child Left Behind, a moment that at the time made her "excited and optimistic" about the future of public education.

But her opinion changed as NCLB was implemented, and she heard from teachers about the negative effects it was having on teaching and learning. She began to research the law's effects and concluded that it had led to a serious narrowing of curriculum that reduced or eliminated science, the arts and other subjects; an obsession with test prep and testing; and plunging morale among teachers. In 2013, she formed an advocacy group called the Network for Public Education as a counter to Michelle Rhee's then-influential StudentsFirst and like-minded organizations that were pushing the privatization of public education and test-based "accountability."

She became a fierce critic of President Obama's education policies and his chief education initiative, Race to the Top, which was a multi-billion-dollar competition in which states (and later districts) could win federal funds by promising to adopt controversial reforms, including the Common Core State Standards, charter schools and systems that evaluated teachers by student test scores.

Today she is a senior research scholar at New York University, and she blogs daily here.

Here's the conversation I had with Ravitch about the new edition of the book, which will be available later this month, and about school reform in general.
Your book was a blockbuster when it came out. What effect do you think it had on the school reform debate then, and why did you decide to update it now?
When the book first appeared, it created a sensation because I had been an assistant secretary of education in the first Bush administration and was supportive of such Republican policies as testing, choice, competition, and accountability. I was also a member of conservative think tanks, and I had long been known as a supporter of No Child Left Behind and charter schools. The book was immediately hailed and reviled because I renounced my support for high-stakes testing and charter schools. People in public life these days are not known for saying "I was wrong." I did.

As time passed, I realized that there was one key point in the book that I found embarrassing. In the final chapter, I reiterated my long-standing support for national standards and a national curriculum. Occasionally, I got letters from readers asking how I could justify that position. I couldn't.

The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that national standards and a national curriculum was another truly bad idea. But I couldn't rewrite the book to change that portion, because it would mean resetting pages, which publishers don't do.

When the publisher of Basic Books approached me last year and invited me to "revise at will," without regard to the need to reset pages and chapters, I was thrilled because I could finally make the changes I wanted to make from the original edition.

I quite bluntly admit in the book that the pursuit of national standards, national curriculum and national tests is a dead-end. There seems to be an assumption that if every child is exposed to exactly the same material at the same time, achievement gaps between children from rich homes and poor homes will close. If the curriculum is over the heads of the students, and if the tests are made harder, achievement will rise. I now think all of this is nonsense.

Even in states that have the same standards and tests, there are achievement gaps, reflecting wealth and poverty. Politicians continue to claim that making tests harder will make students smarter. But tests are not an instructional method; they are a measure. The athlete who can't jump over a 5′ bar won't jump higher if you raise it to 6′.

What we now know, because of the failure of the Common Core, is that increasing the difficulty of the material to be learned and the rigor of the tests widen the achievement gaps. Children who are already struggling to keep up will fall farther behind.

I have come to understand that improving schools must proceed along with improving the lives of children. If we think that a standardized curriculum and tests will eliminate poverty and raise up all children, we are wasting time and money that should be spent on reducing class sizes, raising teachers' salaries, increasing time for the arts, and making sure that all children have the decent homes, the medical care, and the food security that enables them to be ready to learn.
Abandoning the idea of national standards raises the question of whether you think standards-based education has any value. Does it?
There is great confusion about national standards and a national curriculum. The Common Core, for example, is both. It addresses both the content of instruction and the difficulty of instruction. It is far too specific and attempts to standardize every school in the nation. When you travel the country and see how much diversity there is - geographic, racial, economic, social - you see how pointless it is to try to force the delivery of the same exact content in every city, town, hamlet and agricultural area. The designers of the Common Core decided that American kids have it too easy in school, so they increased the pace of instruction and made the tests harder. The result is that most children fail the Common Core tests, and that is a terrible thing to do to little children. They should have both challenge and success, not be branded as failures in third grade.

When we speak of standards-based education, you raise the question of whether there is value in making sure that every student learns the same material at the same pace. I no longer see any value in that approach. What makes most sense to me is a child-centered education, where knowledgeable and experienced teachers set the pace based on their understanding of the children they teach. Children have different needs. They are not little cookie-cutter people. Some learn quickly and are ready to learn more, and they should be encouraged to do so. Others have trouble reading, and they should get the help they need when they need it. Most children will learn best when asked to become actively engaged in what they are learning: when they are making a model, building a design on the computer, writing a story, figuring things out, and solving problems. When they do these things as part of a team, so much the better.
If "standards" implies teaching all kids the same thing at the same time, then wouldn't that be the same problem for state standards?
The most appropriate "standards" are actually guidelines, determined to avoid unnecessary duplication of courses. State standards can reasonably require, for example, that state history should be taught in fourth grade or that U.S. history will be taught in certain grades and world history in others. But state standards should not go into close detail about what to teach or how to teach it. There should be standards for new teachers, for example, they should have a degree in the subject they plan to teach, and they should have a master's degree that demonstrates their knowledge of pedagogy, child psychology, and other aspects of education/or a master's degree in their subject. They should have certification to teach. They should pass a state test of their literacy and numeracy. Once they are admitted into the profession, they should have the autonomy to design their courses, if they wish, or to introduce different methods. Autonomy, within professional limits, is part of the definition of a professional.
What impact do you think the anti-corporate reform movement has had on education policy?
The number of teachers and parents who understand that the future of public education is at risk is far greater today than it was in 2010. Along with Anthony Cody, a wonderful teacher and blogger, I started an organization called the Network for Public Education, which holds annual conferences and sponsors research; we also have a political action group that endorses candidates. We don't have much money, but I think we have made an impact. Some of the candidates we endorsed have won, although they were vastly outspent. Our annual gatherings bring together activists from across the country, who discover that they are not alone. We have even introduced pro-public education groups that operate within the same state but didn't know about the others. We have fought against high-stakes testing and privatization. We are no longer a lone voice. The opt-out movement led the fight against high-stakes testing, and they were responsible for changing the education leadership of the state of New York. They are a real power in the state; they organize parents and regularly meet with legislators. Groups like United Opt Out have developed parent awareness of the pernicious uses of testing.

Some of the high-profile names in the so-called reform movement have left the stage. Tony Bennett of Indiana, once called "the reformiest of the reformers," is gone, after the embarrassment of a grade-fixing scandal to benefit a charter owner who contributed to his campaign. Michelle Rhee, once the face of the movement, is in seclusion. Joel Klein, the scourge of teachers, is now in the online health-care business. The much-vaunted Tennessee Achievement School District (which promised to raise the lowest 5 percent of schools in the state to the top 25 percent) failed. The "Waiting for Superman" propaganda campaign has fizzled.

Fewer people today believe that charters have some special magic; more people understand now that those with the highest scores exclude low-performing students or push them out. The virtual charter industry, which in my view is a Ponzi scheme, has been thoroughly debunked by research reports and newspaper exposes (the latest one was by Jessica Calefati in the San Jose Mercury News).

The press in Ohio has been all over ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), which is one of the lowest performing schools in the state, but whose owner has collected nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer money - and is the biggest donor to Republican elected officials in the state. The press is beginning to understand that profiteers and entrepreneurs are siphoning money away from public schools through arcane charter real estate deals. The Detroit Free Press ran a week-long expose of the charter industry in 2014, showing that it collects a billion dollars a year in public funds yet has no accountability.

Film makers and investigative journalists have begun to ask why corporate chains and charters run by foreign nationals (like the Gulen chain) are allowed to take the place of democratically controlled public schools.

Our biggest failure to date is that we have not been able to break through to government officials. Neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton showed that they understood the widespread parent opposition to high-stakes testing or the dangers of privatization.

There is a great deal of money flowing freely from billionaires like the Walton family (Walmart), Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, John Arnold and many more to promote privatization. For the past five years, the charter industry has been spending freely to buy elections. Case in point is California, where the California Charter School Association has poured millions of dollars this year into state legislative races, knocking off liberal Democrats and substituting privatization-friendly conservative Democrats.

The irony today is that many of the leading figures in the Democratic Party support some of the same education policies as the right-wing extremists in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which supports charters and vouchers, opening the classroom to uncertified teachers, and eliminating the job protections of teachers.

We continue to fight because we believe in democracy. We believe that as the public begins to understand that these "reformers" want to privatize their neighborhood school, they will resist. Once public consciousness is aroused, our numbers will beat their money and hired publicists.
Did you change/add anything else in the book aside from the issue of standards?
Yes, in the original book, I tried to rescue the reputation of the 1983 report "A Nation at Risk." I pointed out in the initial edition that the report, produced by a presidential commission, did not mention school choice and barely mentioned testing. But I could not rescue it any more. Its role in promoting the fiction that the economy rises or falls because of the schools is undeniable. It was written when Americans were keenly aware that the auto industry had been captured by the Japanese. No use blaming the schools for that. It was an economic decision. When the economy recovered, no one thanked the schools. Third graders, eighth graders, 12th graders can't be blamed for shifting economic trends. So in the revision, I had to criticize "A Nation at Risk" for failing to note the social and economic context in which children live and for treating the schools mainly as a source of supplying workers for global competition.
If you could sit down and speak with President Obama, what would you want to tell him about education policy?
President Obama, I wish I could have talked to you back in 2008 or 2009. I will never understand why you decided to align your education policy with that of George W. Bush. I still remember the times you said the right things about teachers (respect them) and testing (there are too many and they take too much time away from learning), but your policies emphasized the very things that you denounced rhetorically. I wish you had started early on with a program that rewarded states that developed actionable plans for desegregating districts. If you had, we would be a very different nation today. I wish you had never put forth Race to the Top. I wish you understood the damage that standardized testing does to children, especially children of color. Standardized tests are normed on a bell curve. Bell curves never close. There is always a top half and a bottom half, and the most advantaged kids always cluster at the top. What if we awarded drivers' licenses on a bell curve? Half the people in this country would never qualify to drive.

You know, we just celebrated the life of Muhammad Ali, and one of the articles said he wasn't very successful in school but he loved physical education and art. Think of another Muhammad Ali today. He would be told he was a failure starting in third grade. He would be labeled a failure again and again until he stopped believing in himself. People have all kinds of talents and potential that is not measured in a standardized test, yet your administration has made them the measure of all children.

I would also give him an earful about charter schools, which his administration prioritized and poured billions into. I won't point out that their test scores are on average no better than public schools, and that many are far worse. What I would point out is that his administration has subsidized the establishment (or re-establishment) of a dual school system: two publicly funded systems. One gets to choose its students, the other must take everyone. Public schools in many jurisdictions are in danger of falling into bankruptcy because the charters are draining children and resources from them. Why do we need two school systems funded by the public? Why is one democratically controlled, while the other has private management? Why have you tolerated the growth of for-profit public schools? I wish you had cut off all public funding of for-profit schools long ago and set caps on executive compensation for those that are nonprofits.

If only we could have had this conversation sooner!
Who should be the next U.S. education secretary?
It should be someone who is not associated with the Bush-Obama legacy of high-stakes testing and privatization. It should be someone who understands the importance of strengthening and improving public education. My first choice would be Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University. I know she was associated with the development of one of the Common Core tests (the Smarter Balanced Assessment) and also the EdTPA, which teacher candidates must pass to enter the field. But there are few people in the nation as knowledgeable as Linda about the need for equity for students and a high-quality teaching profession. She would be a forceful advocate for the needs of children and public schools.
If Hillary Clinton is elected, do you think she will do anything different than President Obama has?
My first guess is that she will follow the same policies as Obama, but within the confines of the new federal law, ESSA [Every Student Succeeds Act]. The ESSA is only marginally better than No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top. Many of her advisers come from the [nonprofit] Center for American Progress, which has strongly supported testing, test-based teacher evaluation, Common Core, charter schools, and all of the other errors of the Obama administration.

But she is a very smart woman. I am hopeful that she will forge her own path. The tip-off will be when she picks a secretary of education. If it is John King, we can expect no changes.
And what do you think Donald Trump would do to public education if he becomes president?
He has said two things:

1) I love charter schools

2) I will get rid of Common Core.

I am willing to bet that he has no idea what Common Core or charters are. He doesn't know that the president and the Education Department has no power to "get rid of Common Core." The charter industry should welcome its new friend, one who shares their disregard for our public schools.

He is a guy who "loves the uneducated." So my guess is that he will want to encourage more people to be uneducated. He is the kind of person that we teach our children NOT to be: a bully who ridicules and belittles others, a guy who engages in ethnic and religious stereotypes, a guy who is uncivil, crude, and boastful. He is no role model for our children.
If you were to write another book, what would it be?
If I stop blogging long enough to write another book, it would be a memoir. Doesn't everyone want to write a memoir? I have lived for 78 years. I was born in Houston, Texas, where I was third of eight children. My earliest memories are of growing up during World War 2. My parents owned a mom-and-pop liquor store. My mother was born in Bessarabia [in Eastern Europe] and graduated high school, an accomplishment of which she was very proud. My father was a high school dropout who grew up in Georgia and aspired to sing and dance in vaudeville. I went to public schools in Houston, then to Wellesley College, which changed my life. Subsequently I married, had children, earned a doctorate in history of education. I have lived through so many changes, and I would like to reflect on how America has changed.

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Diane Ravitch to Obama: 'I will never understand why you decided to align your education policy with that of George W. Bush'

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The historian and public education advocate has updated her 2010 best-selling book, which helped launch the movement against corporate school reform. Here's what's different, what she would tell Obama if he would listen, her thoughts on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and more.

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In Diane's Blog she discusses some political issues she has with the education system. She publishes daily and keeps here self up to date about new standards and requirements for schools. As you read through the blog you can see her fight for the education system to become better.

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Many Twitter users are fearful for the future of the popular social media site since it was purchased by Elon Musk. He is taking the company private and will be the sole proprietor. He has said he is an absolutist on free speech, which raises questions about whether he will tolerate hate speech, lies, propaganda, anti-vaxxers, disinformation, even Donald Trump, who was permanently banned from Twitter for inciting violence.

Now, the concern about Musk was stoked when he retweeted gossip from a free weekly (the Santa Monica Observer) that Paul Pelosi was drunk, high on drugs, and got into a fight with a man he picked up at a gay bar.

Musk posted that there was a "tiny possibility" that this was true. As readers began to react with incredulity that the new owner would spread unsubstantiated gossip, Musk deleted his tweet. Musk has 112 million followers on Twitter.

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote:
Musk responded Sunday at 5:15 a.m. Pacific time with a tweet that said, "There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye," and posted a link to a baseless, anti-LGBTQ article in the Santa Monica Observer. By 10:30 a.m. Sunday, the message and link had been retweeted more than 30,000 times and liked more than 110,000 times, before being deleted less than an hour later. Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Santa Monica Observer was "notorious for publishing false news," and once claimed "that Hillary Clinton had died and that a body double had been sent to debate Donald Trump."
Axios posted that the Santa Monica Observer is not a trustworthy site.
Why it matters: Musk linked to an article from the Santa Monica Observer, a website known for years for publishing false stories.

The site "is anything but trustworthy," according to an executive at NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalists to rate news and information sites.

The site has a trust score of 44.5 out of 100 points on NewsGuard's rating scale for trustworthiness, due to repeatedly publishing numerous conspiracy theories and false claims about politics, the pandemic and more.

The site gets a red-rating and a warning for readers that says: "Proceed with caution: This website fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards."

Responsible people in the media fact-check. Musk didn't think it was necessary. This does not bode well for the future of Twitter.

We have had our fill of conspiracy theories in the past six years.

It's awful to think that the sole owner of Twitter will be a dupe for conspiracy theories and gossip and spread them to his millions of readers.

Just for laughs, read this article in The Intercept, which predicts that Elon Musk will regret his purchase of Twitter.

It begins:
ELON MUSK (and his consortium of much smaller investors) now owns Twitter. We need to take seriously the possibility that this will end up being one of the funniest things that's ever happened. That's because as of this moment, it looks like Musk dug a big hole in the forest, carefully filled it with punji sticks and crocodiles, and then jumped in.

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Many Twitter users are fearful for the future of the popular social media site since it was purchased by Elon Musk. He is taking the company private and will be the sole proprietor.

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Diane's Twitter where she updates viewers on her opinions on current and past problems.

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Diane's website where she states who she is and what she has done for education.

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Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. She is the Founder and President of the Network for Public Education (NPE).

Diane Ravitch's Blog is dianeravitch.net and has received more than 36 million hits.

From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. She was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards.

From 1997 to 2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal testing program. She was appointed by the Clinton administration's Secretary of Education Richard Riley in 1997 and reappointed by him in 2001. From 1995 until 2005, she held the Brown Chair in Education Studies at the Brookings Institution and edited Brookings Papers on Education Policy. Before entering government service, she was an Adjunct Professor of History and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Diane made the list of "Thinkers, Doers, and Dreamers" in Politico Magazine, for Standing up for Teachers, not Tests: Politico Magazine's Top 50.

During the 1980s and 1990s and into the early years of the twenty-first century-as a writer, professor, assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush, and member of prestigious conservative think tanks, such as the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret task force at the hoover institution-Diane Ravitch was a leading advocate of conservative ideas for fixing America's education system, including charter schools, standards, accountability, and high-stakes standardized testing. But about 2006-07, she began to realize that these policies were not working. She began to criticize them and to criticize the federal law called "No child left behind." with the publication of the death and life of the great American school system: how testing and choice are undermining education, she became one of the most outspoken critics of ideas she once championed.

She is the author of:

Slaying Goliath (2020).

The Wisdom and Wit of Diane Ravitch (2019).

Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools (2014)

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010)

Edspeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon (2007)

The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2003)

Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform (2000)

National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide (1995)

What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (with Chester Finn, Jr.) [1987]

The Schools We Deserve (1985)

The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980 (1983)

The Revisionists Revised (1978)

The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973 (1974)

In addition, she has edited fourteen books, including The American Reader (1991); The English Reader (with Michael Ravitch) [2006]; The Democracy Reader (with Abigail Thernstrom) [1992];Forgotten Heroes of American Education (with Wesley Null) [2007]; Learning from the Past (with Maris Vinovskis) [1995]; and New Schools for a New Century (with Joseph Viteritti) [1997]. She has written more than 500 articles and reviews for scholarly and popular publications.

She has lectured in Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, the former Soviet Union, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia, Germany, Japan, Nicaragua, and throughout the United States. Her lectures on democracy and civic education have been translated by the USIA into many languages, including Polish, Spanish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Belarussian, and Ukrainian. Her books have been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Swedish, and Japanese.

She is an honorary life trustee of the New York Public Library and a former Guggenheim Fellow. She was a member of the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University) from 1999 to 2009. She was a member of the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation from 1996 to 2009.

In 1989, she advised Teachers Solidarity and the Ministry of Education in Poland. In 1991, the Polish Government awarded her a medal for her work on behalf of Solidarity.

She was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education (1979); the Society of American Historians (1984); the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985); and as the Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences (2002). She was selected as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in 1984-85, the first person chosen from the field of education studies. She was awarded the Henry Allen Moe prize in the humanities by the American Philosophical Society in 1986. In 1988, she was designated an "honorary citizen of the state of California" by the State Legislature in recognition of her contributions to the state's history curriculum and its human rights curriculum. In 1989, she received the Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award. She was honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1992. The Library of Congress invited her to deliver lectures in 1993 in honor of the 250th birthday of Thomas Jefferson. She received the Leadership Award of the Klingenstein Institute at Teachers College in 1994 and the Horace Kidger Award of the New England History Teachers Association in 1998.

In 2004, she received the Leadership Award of the New York City Council of Supervisors and Administrators. In 2005, she received the John Dewey award from the United Federation of Teachers of New York City; the Gaudium Award of the Breukelein Institute; and the Uncommon Book Award from the Hoover Institution. In 2006, the Kenneth J. Bialkin/Citigroup Public Service Award was conferred on her.

In 2010, the National Education Association selected her as its "Friend of Education" for the year, and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges conferred its Charles W. Eliot Award on her. In 2011, she was honored with the Outstanding Friend of Education Award from the Horace Mann League; the American Education Award from the American Association of School Administrators; the National Association of Secondary School Principals' Distinguished Service Award; and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Teachers College at Columbia University. In June of 2011, she received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. In 2014, she received the Grawemeyer Award from the University of Louisville for the death and life of the great American school system.

She was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, by the following institutions: Williams College; Reed College; Amherst College; the State University of New York; Ramapo College; St. Joseph's College of New York; Siena College; Middlebury College Language Schools; Columbia College Chicago; Queens College, City University of New York; Manhattanville College; and Union College.

A native of Houston, she is a graduate of the Houston public schools. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1960 and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1975.

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Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. She is the Founder and President of the Network for Public Education (NPE). Diane Ravitch's Blog is dianeravitch.net and has received more than 36 million hits.

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Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2014)

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010)

Edspeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon (2007)

The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2003)

Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform (2000)

National Standards in American Education: A Citizen’s Guide (1995)

What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (with Chester Finn, Jr.) [1987]

The Schools We Deserve (1985)

The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 (1983)

The Revisionists Revised (1978)

The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973 (1974)