“We
need to say it's wrong, and if that doesn't work, engage in direct action, it's
time to organize, demonstrate, and agitate…” ~ Diane Ravitch, in
Sacramento 1/20/12
The Sacramento Bee has a
promotion of Michelle Rhee this morning.
Here are other viewpoints.
Diane Ravitch’s extraordinary visit to Sacramento on Friday,
Jan. 20, left the 3000 people in attendance with a clear message of what
those of us who care deeply about public education must do to stand up to and reject
the privatization of our schools and the treatment of our children as commodities
whose value is measured by “bubble tests.” Michelle Rhee, disgraced
former-chancellor of the Washington D.C. public schools and wife of Sacramento
mayor Kevin Johnson, is the standard-bearer of the privateers, raising millions
of dollars through her organization, StudentsFirst, from the likes of the Koch Bros
and Rupert Murdoch to advance an agenda of union-busting, school vouchers
and public school give-aways to private interests. The national
headquarters of StudentsFirst happens to be located right here in Sacramento.
Lori Jablonski. Sacramento
Teacher.
See prior posts on Ravitch.
Cosmo Garvin. Sacramento News and
Review. Jan.19, 2012,
Bill Gates too is spreading the
gospel of more testing and technology in the classroom. Even President Barack
Obama is getting in on the school-reform act. He followed No Child Left Behind
reforms with his own Race to the Top initiative, raising the stakes even higher
for schools who lag on test scores.
The testing-and-accountability
craze has swept the nation—but here and there are pockets of resistance, led by
education historian Diane Ravitch. She was assistant secretary of education
under Bush I, and was once a believer in testing and charter schools. She now
also believes that Rhee and Gates and the other would-be reformers are actually
hurting education, as she lays out in her book The Death and Life of the
Great American School System. See prior posts on Ravitch at www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com.
Read the entire piece at Sacramento
News and Review. http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/teachers-superman-the-anti-michelle/content?oid=4910832
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