Obama's Right Wing School Reform by Diane Ravitch

[proud2BlibKansan]

Recently, I wrote a book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, in which I took issue with a number of currently popular education strategies that I had once supported, and now, seeing their questionable outcomes, challenge. Since then, I have been traveling across the country and have made three dozen speeches. What started out as a conventional book tour—with stops only in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—turned into something else: a whistle-stop campaign to warn against some of the education “reforms” currently in vogue. From the day that the news broke that I had turned against No Child Left Behind—the federal law that nationally enforces a heavy emphasis on testing and accountability—and that I’d come out against against market-based ideas of school choice, I have been overwhelmed with invitations to speak in almost every state.

The result has been exhilarating, exhausting, and ultimately disheartening. The exhilarating part was meeting thousands of teachers and hearing their appreciation for my support of their work. Teachers repeatedly asked if I could voice their opposition to what is now called reform. Many described the challenges they face trying to comply with the unrealistic goals of No Child Left Behind. At Stanford, a teacher from Salinas County broke into tears as she described her students, the children of lettuce pickers, most of whom knew no English. When I spoke in Oakland, a group of teachers drove four hours to hear me and to get copies of my book for every member of their school board.

The disheartening part was recognizing, along with my audiences, that the policies I criticize now have not only the unwavering support of Republicans but also the endorsement of the Obama administration. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been campaigning with Newt Gingrich to enlist bipartisan support for what I believe is a very conservative agenda. For me, the irony of all this is that I broke ranks with my former colleagues at some staunchly conservative think tanks by writing my book at precisely the moment the Obama administration has embraced their ideas. Again and again, I have been asked by talk show hosts (at least the well informed ones), “How did right-wing ideas become the education agenda of the Obama administration?”

My sense is that it has a lot to do with the administration’s connections to the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation. Although both are usually portrayed as liberal or at least Democratic, their funding priorities have merged with those of the very conservative Walton Family Foundation. I explain this curious power elite in a chapter of my book called “The Billionaire Boys Club.”

more ... Nhttp://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jun/10/obamas-right-wing-school-reform/

[Laelth]

1. “How did right-wing ideas become the education agenda of the Obama administration?”

Good question. Evidently, she has an answer, but it isn't pretty.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Great essay by a former believer. K&R

very depressing too. No change from this admin.

[izquierdista]

3. Change you can believe in

It seems it meant "liberal platitudes now, then we'll change it over to the same stuff you've been told to believe in".

[midnight]

4. Congrats on your recent book... I remember when the cast from Friends did a video navigating

Bill Gates' window program. I wonder if this is why/how he decided to jump from computer programs into the education field. Interesting how he dropped out of college, and now has the power to influence our education system. As a parent using a school system on the rails of no child left behind, it was a tool created to make money for those companies designing the tests. I wonder how an educational system breaks the need to test, test, test...

[madrchsod]

5. the new elected teachers union crew in chicago....

is out to bust duncan`s policies in chicago...it`s going to be really interesting to see if they call pull it off. if they do it then maybe other teachers unions across the country can too.

[LWolf]

6. I sincerely hpoe they are successful. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. That is the best news we've had in months. Congrats to Chicago!!

Sure gives me hope.

[mistertrickster]

8. K & R'd. Obama could have been a TRANSFORMATIONAL president like FDR or LBJ.

Instead, he's contenting himself to be a place-holder like W J Clinton.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Well he lost me much like Clinton did

But it didn't take Obama as long.

[mistertrickster]

13. Yup, me too. And I even shook his hand in Topeka and El Dorado.

I loved CANDIDATE Obama. Too bad, President Obama seems to have killed Candidate Obama and buried his body someplace where it can't be found . . .

[MissMarple]

10. Well, good for Diane Ravitch. We need change but the wrong people are driving it.

The teachers' unions need to step up and start advocating for "humane" working conditions for their teachers. They need more on their plate than just opposing policies they don't like, even when they are bad policies. A CEA representative in Denver claimed that a recently passed law for evaluations to have a student achievement component was too much too soon. Well, surprise, surprise many people think it is too little, too late. And they are the one's driving change.

Demanding board support for providing teachers with good leadership, appropriate,fair, and consistent evaluations for teachers, students and principals, goal directed training, individualizing education especially in schools in troubled communities, developing collaborative relationships between teachers focusing on student achievement, and high quality school breakfast and lunch programs should be an immediate priority. And these are just a start.

But do they do that? Apparently not very well or we would be having a very different conversation about school reform. Schools should be continuously evaluating themselves and changing what doesn't work. They are supposed to be learning communities. An English teacher in Denver asked how is it that a child can come into his high school classroom after being in regular classrooms, and passed along and still be reading on a third grade level. Individual teachers cannot address this problem. It is unfair to expect it. The unions need to stand up and say so and demand the things teachers need to do their jobs. And as for middle school and high school teachers having 150 students, don't get me started. They are teaching children not droids.

We must start talking about what schools really need and teachers will get behind it. Don't leave it the billionaire dilettantes.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

11. This is one of the most important issues today. K & R! n/t

n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Have you read Ravitch's book?

It's wonderful.



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465014917/