Wishing Away Goliath, Part 3

Jim Horn

Last updated May 17, 2020

Parts 1 and 2 here and here.

In Part 3, I probe Diane Ravitch's continuing neglect of the historical origins of NCLB, which was signed into law in 2002.  I also provide examples of her persistent soft-pedaling of the roles played by conservative think tank dwellers and education industry consultants with whom Ravitch worked during thirty years as a Republican education policy insider joined, as she was, in an aggressive, well-funded effort to sabotage public education in the United States.

Based on Diane's account from 2010, her support for No Child Left Behind "remained strong" until she attended an AEI conference on November 20, 2006, which Checker Finn and Rick Hess had put together to examine "whether the major remedies prescribed by NCLB — especially choice and after-school tutoring — were effective."

According to Diane, it was only when she left that meeting in 2006 that she had the dawning realization "that the sanctions embedded in NCLB were, in fact, not only ineffective but certain to contribute to the privatization of large chunks of public education."

She follows that recounted flash of insight with this: "I wonder whether the members of Congress intended this outcome. I doubt that they did."

Well, yes, many did intend that outcome, Diane, as has been documented in several books, numerous magazine articles, and ample policy analyses.  Congress did know about the NCLB's intended privatization, and to assure that outcome, a majority of legislators 1) approved the requirement that 100 percent of school children would be "proficient" in reading and math by 2014, and 2) included charter school conversion as a central remedy for failing schools.

As George W. Bush's Assistant Secretary of Education, Professor Susan Neuman, told Time Magazine in 2008, NCLB was a "Trojan Horse for the choice agenda — a way to expose the failure of public education and 'blow it up a bit'."

During the months leading up to NCLB passage, a number of hair-on-fire warnings were issued.  Did education policy maven, Diane Ravitch, miss the Staiger and Kane op-ed in the New York Times in the late summer of 2001 prior to Congressional passage of NCLB?  Doubtful, since Diane edited a volume in 2002, which included this piece that echoed the 2001 op-ed:

Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O Staiger, "Volatility in School Test Scores: Implications for Test-Based Accountability Systems."  In Diane Ravitch (Ed.), Brookings Papers on Education 2002.  Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002.

Two clips from that Kane and Staiger NYTimes op-ed:

The central flaw is that both versions of this bill place far too much emphasis on year-to-year changes in test scores. Under either, every school in America would have to generate an increase in test scores each and every year or face penalties like having to allow its students to transfer to another public school, being converted into a charter school or being taken over by a private contractor.

Both bills would be particularly harsh on racially diverse schools. Each school would be expected to achieve not only an increase in test scores for the school as a whole, but increases for each and every racial or ethnic group as well. Because each group's scores fluctuate depending upon the particular students being tested each year, it is rare to see every group's performance moving upward in the same year. Black and Latino students are more likely than white students to be enrolled in highly diverse schools, so their schools would be more likely than others to be arbitrarily disrupted by a poorly designed formula.

As we noted not so many years back, academics weren't the only people worried about what was about to unfold in 2001:

As White House staff, congressional aides, and a small contingent of think tank insiders huddled in Washington during the summer of 2001 to compile the final version of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), state policymakers worried about new accountability demands that the legislation was to include.  In July, Missouri’s assistant commissioner of education, Stephen Barr, had described the 12-year window for achieving 100 percent student proficiency in reading and math as “an impossible dream,” and in the same article from The New York Times, Pennsylvania’s secretary of education, Charles Zogby said, “It’s unrealistic to think that in some places where 90 percent of the children are below basic that we’re going to turn this around in 10 years. And then everybody is going to throw up their hands and say none of this is possible” (para 29).

Elizabeth Debray's (2006) excellent ed policy history notes that two months earlier in April 2001, Dr. Joseph Johnson, who served as compensatory education director for the Bush Administration,

. . .  told the National Association of Federal Education Program Administrators in April 2001: "People are looking at the data and saying, 'This is going to be catastrophic because there are going to be so many low-performing schools and this isn't going to work'." Though Johnson himself urged a more positive response, by June he had submitted his resignation.

Even with an abundance of proof to the contrary, all of Ravitch's three books written since 2010 have essentially recycled the same gloss on No Child Left Behind, which repeatedly depict NCLB advocates as innocently misguided, strategically shortsighted, and/or naively well-intentioned individuals. 

In Slaying Goliath, which represents Diane's latest retelling of the story to save public schools from the onslaught of corporate education reform, she continues to proclaim a weird kind of erroneous innocence for those front-line ideologues in the No Child Left Behind school privatization scheme.  In an unfortunate example of self-plagiarism in Slaying Goliath, Diane recycles a paragraph from a letter she wrote to Lamar Alexander, originally published at Huffington Post in 2015:

. . . . I remember a panel discussion in early 2002 at the Willard Hotel soon after NCLB was signed. You were on the panel. I was in the audience, and I stood up and asked you whether you truly believed that 100% of all children in grades 3-8 would be “proficient” by 2014. You answered, “No, Diane, but we think it is good to have goals.” Well, based on goals that you knew were out of reach, teachers and principals have been fired, and many schools — beloved in their communities — have been closed.

In the recycled version that ends up (without citation) in Slaying Goliath, Ravitch writes: 

At the time, I attended an event in Washington, D.C., at the Willard Hotel, sponsored by the conservative Hoover Institution, where my former boss in the George H. W. Bush administration, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, was on a panel discussing the new law.  I stood up in the audience and asked whether he truly expected that 'every student' would be proficient by 2014.  He responded, 'No, Diane, we don't expect that, but it's good to have goals.'  Little did he know that many school would be closed and many teachers and principals would be fired because they could not accomplish what was patently impossible (p. 20).

Little did he know?  Lamar Alexander has long served as providing the "velvet gloves" for handling bare-knuckled policies developed by the likes of Checker Finn, Bill Bennett, the Manhattan Institute, and the Bush family. (As Thomas Toch recounted in 1991, one of Alexander's aides once told a reporter, "Finn's ideas are a lot more palatable in Lamar's velvet gloves.")

There are a couple of things that are striking about Ravitch's recollection of the Willard Hotel incident from 2002. The first is Diane's acknowledgement that she knew in 2002 that NCLB was setting schools up for failure with impossible proficiency targets.  The second is that, even though Diane knew this in 2002, she continued to support NCLB until late 2006.  And third: Diane is on the record in her 2010 book as saying that she only figured out in 2006 that the sanctions written into NCLB would lead to "privatization of large chunks of public education." 

Is that clear?  I know--it makes my head hurt, too. 

What is clear, however, in the 10 years of publishing since the Ravitch conversion is Diane's repeated attempt to portray the crowd she once ran with as having failed in well-intentioned efforts to improve education. What she ignores are the facts that 1) corporate education reform has not failed, and 2) corporate education reformers' initiatives were never intended to improve public schools but, rather, to make them weaker and more susceptible to the disease of corporate parasitism.  Rather than having failed to achieve the good, corporate education has succeeded in achieving the bad.

By continuing to miss this crucial distinction, Diane persists in a charade that has the effect of protecting the purveyors of privatization and, thus, her own complicity in their evil schemes, both past and present.  And by whitewashing the past, Diane denies history its purgative power, thus assuring that her salvation remains as incomplete as her heavily-edited confessions. 

Meanwhile, Diane's readers are left with bad information and false hopes for illusory victories built upon erroneous impressions. 

In Part 4, I will examine the real story behind the suppression of the Sandia Report in 1991, which occurred when Diane was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education, Lamar "Velvet Gloves" Alexander.  Diane was at the original briefing when researchers at the Department of Energy shared their findings on the condition of American public schools, which ran contrary to the lies and distortions that Reagan/Bush insiders had manufactured to beat down public schools and open the door to school vouchers and other forms of privatization and monetization.  In Slaying Goliath, Diane finally comes as close as she ever has yet to acknowledging the lies and deceit for which she earned the designation as the conservative talk show host of the corporate education reformers.

Weingarten: AFT "very much aligned" with TURN

In 1997 the Clinton Administration was well on the way to realizing its goal of 3,000 charter schools by the year 2000, and the future looked bright for corporate education reformers of the charter industry.  Both Republican and Democratic corporate ed reformers were jumping on the charter bandwagon.  Even so, a significant stumbling block remained: teachers' unions.

Albert Shanker, who served as AFT president until his death in February 1997, had once been a champion of charter schools as centers of innovation, but by the early 1990s, Shanker came to understand that charter schools were quickly morphing into tools to corporatize and privatize public education.  Although Shanker had hoped that charters would provide diverse progressive experiments that could help to integrate public schools, Shanker recoiled at the segregated, exploitative charters that embodied the preferred paternalistic model of corporate philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad.

Shanker's death offered an opportunity that Eli Broad would not miss to shape the future of AFT in Broad's image.  

Broad was quick to provide several million reasons for AFT's new president, Sandra Feldman, to restore AFT's positive vision of charter schools and to embrace the agenda of corporate ed reformers.  The implantation of the corporate cancer, The Union Reform Network (TURN), was the result of Broad's efforts, which then and now was led by AFT corporate mouthpiece, Adam Urbanski.

Like a disease eating away the union body that Shanker had built up during the previous two decades, TURN sought to make AFT and NEA into assets for advancing the corporate reform agenda.  AFT President, Sandra Feldman did not disappoint the corporate reformers, as she embraced charter schools, as well as a steroidal levels of testing accountability that came with NCLB in 2001.  She helped design NCLB, which was used to soften public resistance to the spread of more charters to replace the "failing" public schools.

Feldman was also an advocate for NCLB's utterly corrupt Reading First, which spent billions of federal dollars to promote programs that proved to be total failures in terms of improving children's reading skills and interests.

Feldman's successor, Charles McElroy, continued Feldman's policies during a transitional period from 2004 to 2008, and he helped to prepare the ground for the coming of Randi Weingarten, corporate reformers' choice to lead AFT for another generation of lucrative charterizing. The year before Weingarten was installed as AFT president, McElroy bizarrely testified that charters had helped AFT "accomplish the things we have been fighting for."

Since 1997, TURN has metastisized in 34 AFT and NEA affiliates, and the national TURN office lists Michael Mulgrew and Adam Urbanski among its leaders. 

Before becoming Randi Weingarten's choice for AFT's Executive VP, Mary Ann Ricker served as president of St. Paul's AFT affiliate, which has been a hotbed of TURN activity since 2005, when Ricker became President of the local.  For instance,  Ricker was instrumental in establishing the Minnesota Guild of Public Charter Schools, a charter school authorizer created by the ST. Paul AFT local and funded in part by the national union, AFT.  The Minnesota Guild has been responsible providing financial support for some of the lowest-rated charter schools in St. Paul.  Read this piece to get the big picture on AFT complicity in Minnesota's charter industry.

So now it comes as no surprise that Randi Weingarten has come out with a full-throated endorsement of the TURN agenda, which would make the AFT and NEA more effective weapons of corporate education reform's war on public education:

Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, told In These Times she can recall when her former union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in New York City, became a founding TURN member. At the time, she says, UFT was seen as a “risk-taking” local for joining this reform-minded coalition. Today, however, Weingarten says TURN is seen not as unusual—but as the standard operating procedure for teachers’ unions. She added that AFT’s values are “very much aligned” with TURN’s. Weingarten, and the union is proud to join with TURN to turn their ideas into reality. 

The NEA did not return multiple requests for comment.

Weingarten's announcement follows Diane Ravitch's recent endorsement of the TURN agenda. With such high-powered endorsements of the corporate ed agenda, we may expect to see, perhaps, the eventual awakening of the parents and teachers who have been lulled into supporting the enemies of the values that public education advocates hold dear.

What A. Lincoln and D. Ravitch Have in Common

The recent interview with Trump's Chief of Staff, John Kelly, got me thinking about compromise, the status quo, and resistance to the status quo.  Kelly seems to think that the failure to compromise resulted in the Civil War, and so it might seem to those who believe there was some way to preserve slavery and democracy at the same time in the same place.

Kelly would like to suggest, of course, that there must be a way today to preserve segregation/white supremacy and the Union at the same time, and in the same place.  Some way to normalize Trump's most loyal supporters and to give their militant and lethal hate some equal place within American democracy as those who believe in equality.  

After all, honoring the rights of white supremacists and fighting for those rights is what fine men like Robert E. Lee did, according to Kelly, and his service to his slave state in that cause should be revered and preserved.  In short, Kelly would have us believe that duty and honor are not dependent upon moral conduct and ethical principles in any way.  Apparently, Mr. Kelly believes as much.

As a follow-up to an earlier piece in the Washington Post, an article today tells a bit of American history that Kelly should read, that we all should read, as I did today with open mouth.  As I read about the Constitutional Amendment that was passed by Congress and signed by Lincoln to block any federal effort to end slavery in the states, I was reminded of my own ignorance (stunned, I tell you!) regarding the debate and initiatives in 1861 to neutralize the hostile threats by slavery supporters and their secessionist political leaders.

The WaPo article is based on research that Daniel Croft offers in his book, and it presents in compact fashion the story of the efforts during the first days of the the Lincoln Administration to stem talk of secession and civil war.  Having refused to entertain the idea of expanding slavery to the Territories, Lincoln did, in fact, accept a constitutional amendment put together by Senator Seward that would disallow any federal effort to interfere with slavery as it was then practiced by the existing states:  

“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of people held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”

The amendment was approved by both houses of Congress early in 1861, signed by Lincoln before the end of February, and sent to the states for ratification by state legislatures.  In fact, Kentucky was able to ratify the constitutional Amendment before the War broke out in April 1861, with Ohio and Rhode Island following suit in the first bloody weeks of the War.  

Compromise had not been enough, however.  

The more important lesson is that if it had been enough, we would likely be living a slave nation today, rather than a nation where a large minority of white supremacists look back longingly to the era when owning humans was legal.

The War reminds us that the realization of freedom and democracy carry a heavy cost that cannot be bargained down with cheap compromises.  Avoiding that heavy cost has always been the work of equivocators, cowards, and those who benefit from the status quo.  

In recent years, in my tiny corner of the freedom debate in education, I have listened to FairTest talk about opposing the "overuse" of inhumane and racist testing in schools, while ignoring the need to end finally, after a hundred years, any such testing at all.  

More recently, I have read NPE's statement that calls for a charter school moratorium, one that does not interfere with the current 7,800 charter schools that segregate and abuse children every school day.

I listened, amazed, a couple of years ago, when Diane Ravitch declared that ESSA was the best compromise that public school advocates could hope for as a replacement for NCLB, even though the law continues the policy of mandated and racist standardized tests for labeling and shutting down five percent of public schools each year.

As these "successful" compromises have been made and lucrative deals cut, I have emphasized the necessity for the resistance to dehumanizing and anti-democratic school corporatization to maintain the same unyielding and unwavering position as that of the abolitionists of the 19th Century, who opposed slavery in any form, in any place, for anyone, at any time.

Rather than working overtime to placate the corporate reformers with deadly compromises that enshrine the corporate education status quo and the dehumanizing schools thus created, we need NPE, FairTest and the other milquetoast liberal pretenders to become what Abraham Lincoln never dreamed he would become after years of compromise: an abolitionist.

That would mean the abolition of 1) standardized testing, 2) segregated classrooms of any kind, 3) corporate influence in public education policy.

 

Change starts with individual acts of moral courage.

from Wrench in the Gears
September 26, 2017

It seems impossible until the day it becomes inevitable.

Change starts with individual acts of moral courage.

I posted the above comment on my Facebook page as an accompaniment to this article discussing growth of the protest movement within the NFL that manifested itself this past Sunday. On that day numerous players and owners allied themselves with a small but tenacious group of protestors who had joined Colin Kaepernick in the year since he first sat then took a knee during the playing of the national anthem. His intention: to draw attention to police brutality and oppression of people of color. You can read the transcript of Kaepernick’s comments and rationale here. Recognizing that our mythic “America” is built on genocide and the enslavement of people of color for profit is foundational to being able to move forward towards achieving any semblance of a just society. The fact that white supremacist violence erupted in Charlottesville not quite a year after Kaepernick’s initial protest makes it clear many are not yet ready to take that bitter pill and reconcile our brutal past with our present reality.

Kaepernick stood alone for a long time. There were consequences for him, emotionally and financially. He came to understand systems of oppression, and while he could have used his privilege to stake a place where those systems would be less likely to impact him, he instead chose to put himself in the center of the storm. In this individual gesture he became the pebble with the power to unleash the avalanche.

The status quo resists change mightily. There is too much power and profit riding on the continuous, uninterrupted operation of oppressive systems. Those of us watching recent developments in artificial intelligence, smart city surveillance, the Internet of Things, Blockchain, and impact investing realize the capacity to inflict harm on black and brown communities is about to rise exponentially. Outliers who question become targets of criticism, their message intentionally obscured by character attacks, criticism of the appropriateness of the method protest and other technicalities. Let us talk about anything other than the issues being raised, because recognizing and organizing around those issues could compel change, perhaps revolutionary change. Change is a threat.

While one expects criticism from those holding opposing views, people contemplating direct action outside acceptable norms of group-sanctioned protest must realize that criticism and obfuscation may also come from those technically allied with your cause. There are those who will propose a more “moderate” approach. Such tactics have the appearance of resistance, but are not intended to actually tip the apple cart. There is no meaningful change without risk. Actions taken within the comfort of groupthink may make one feel popular and accepted but are unlikely to push the envelope in any significant way.

American brutality comes in many forms: sometimes physical, sometimes financial, sometimes spiritual. Sometimes it looks like this.

This is the next wave of oppression, and it is rolling into classrooms across our nation and across the globe. Once again, communities of color will be targeted for tech-based interventions under the guise of bridging the “digital divide.” Though over time no one will be safe from the onslaught of financialization. As Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Reed Hasting, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates make their next moves I pose this question:

Will you be a Kaepernick?

Or will you hang back, waiting for some higher authority to sanction your protest?

Five things one person can do today to begin disrupting the Ed Reform 2.0 agenda:

Click here to read the rest of the post.

Another Critical Scholar Banned by Diane

It's not often that the unofficial matriarch of anti-ed reform gets called out for her support of the corporate education forces that she would, otherwise, have us believe that she opposes.  When it does happen, however, as it did a couple days ago when Emily Talmage questioned Diane's recent gush about the virtues of the MacArthur Foundation, Ravitch's reaction is entirely predictable: she accuses those with the temerity to question her professional judgment or her policy positions as "lashing out" with personal attacks against her.    

It is Diane's ruthless cultivation of sympathy among her followers, then, that takes the focus off the questions raised about her positions and puts it on the motives of the person who raises the questions.  In doing so, Ravitch transforms the skeptical questioner into a mendacious meanie, whose criticism, then, can be dismissed outright.  

Ravitch, then, effectively uses the personal attack strategy that she attributes to others in order to neutralize any criticism of her own positions, which are predictably aligned with DNC neoliberals and increasingly out of touch with reality. 

You should go to the Talmage page first and read the post that has Diane's Basecamp followers waving their limp swords at the imaginary attacker.  And then read Ravitch's response.  I think you will see what I mean.

You might want to read the comments as well at the Ravitch blog.  Among them, this comment below: 

As I see it, the state-finance nexus (banks/financial markets/corporations; state, federal and municipal governments; NGOs; philanthrocapitalists; DNC/RNC; white supremacy, colonialism, militarized austerity, etc.) that’s driving Ed Reform 2.0 is maintained by duplicitous mission statements, promotions, pronouncements, marketing agendas and ideological/cultural narratives. This profiteering web of deceit also relies on dedicated pundits like Ravitch, who earnestly, implicitly and duplicitously promote and normalize this agenda, while presenting themselves as benevolent agents of the common good.

That comment, in turn, raised Dr. Ravitch's hackles even further.  So much, in fact, that she has censored all further comment from a UMass PhD (my bolds): 

One of the rules of the blog is that I don’t post comments that insult me. The blog is my living room, and I expect people to act civilly, even though we debate, disagree, and hash out our differences. It is a lively room, and I try to keep the conversation civil, which is not always easy. 

I am making an exception in this case because it is useful for other readers to hear your voice and understand that those of us who fight privatization, high-stakes testing, standardization, and the replacement of teachers by algorithms are not united. If you think I am your enemy, you have a very strange understanding of what I have written in books, articles, and daily blogs for the past several years. 

Since you have identified me as an enemy of the cause I fight for every day, I will ask you not to return here again.

This, again, is pure Ravitch: Use the cover of civility to ruthlessly remove any opposition.

If you have had your comments censored by the Ravitch crew at her blog for being uncomfortably honest, send us your offending comments, and we will post them here for public scrutiny.  

Ravitch Doubles Down on NAACP Charter Embrace

Last October the NAACP passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on the approval of new charter schools.  The resolution did nothing for the millions of segregated children already suffering in the penal no excuses charters that no NAACP Board member would ever allow for his or her own children, but it was a decision that, nonetheless, freaked out the multi-billion dollar charter industry and the abusive, well-paid overseers who run the charter reform schools.
  
As a result of NAACP call for a moratorium last fall, the billionaires went to work to put pressure on the NAACP to recant.  The NAACP, an organization largely dependent upon the generosity of corporate foundations, the philanthrocapitalists, and their corporate unions, caved to the pressure.  Less than a year after the squeeze began, members of the NAACP Board issued a report that ignores the moratorium by making recommendations for how new charters are to approved. The report provides a clear signal that the moratorium is now irrelevant.  

The NAACP report won the praise of the DNC/AFT/NEA/NPE.  As schoolmarm to the nation's neoliberals, Diane Ravitch went so far as put the NAACP in her blog's Honor Roll.  

On August 8, Ravitch took the opportunity to praise once again the new NAACP position, which mirrors the AFT/NEA/NPE position on charters.  Here are the two NAACP points regarding charters that Ravitch posted on her blog:

4. Mandate a rigorous [charter] authorizing and renewal process. States with the fewest authorizers have the best charters. Only local school districts should be allowed to authorize charters, based on their needs.

      . . . .

5. Eliminate for-profit charter schools and for-profit charter management companies that control nonprofit charters. Not a dollar of federal, state or local money should go to for-profit charters. The report notes that the widespread reports of misconduct of for-profit charters and their for-profit managers is reason enough to forbid them. As for-profits, they have an “inherent conflict of interest,” and may well put the interest of their investors over those of students. 

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Ravitch then asks:  Now, I ask you, what part of these five recommendations suggests that the NAACP is wrong? That it was doing the bidding of teachers’ unions?"  

The second part of your question I will answer with a question: Does anyone believe that it's a coincidence that the NAACP position on charters now mirrors the AFT/NEA/NPE position?  Or is the NAACP seeking refuge inside the DNC education tent?  Can they afford to support a moratorium that the DNC, which still run by the Clintonians, is not supporting?

As to why the NAACP/NEA/AFT/NPE position is wrong:  As I have noted most recently, putting local boards in charge of deciding which charter chain gangs get approval does nothing to staunch the flow of education dollars into the pockets of charter operators. It just makes local boards complicit in the corruption.

And as for the weak call to eliminate for-profit charters, here's what I said about that a couple of weeks ago:

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. . . the majority of charters have always been of the “non-profit” variety, with only 13 percent of the nation’s 7,500 charters run by for-profit companies.  Insisting that all charters become “non-profit” will only guarantee that that state and local education dollars will continue to fill the coffers of the charter industry, which thrives by claiming “non-profit” status for their segregated cultural sterilization schools based on the KIPP Model. 

 
Which, of course, is the final and most egregious "wrong" associated with the NAACP position: it ignores the damage being done to children in the neo-eugenic psychological neutering camps that are the chosen solution to controlling the urban poor.

 

NAACP Dumps Charter Moratorium And Wins Ravitch "Honor Roll" Status

Last October the NAACP adopted a resolution calling for a moratorium on the authorization of new charter schools.  Even though the new position did nothing to help the millions of children already trapped and abused in thousands of apartheid "no excuses" charter schools in 45 states, the resolution was viewed as the beginning of a societal shift away from the paternalistic "broken windows" school model that billionaires, hedge funders, and corporate foundations have supported for two decades as the final solution for urban pre-K-12 education.

In adopting the new resolution against charter expansion, however, the NAACP found itself outside the political mainstream and, thus, upstream from the primary flow of cash that sustains the organization's top-heavy hierarchy.  Then, as the AFT and NEA moved "all in" with their bet on a charter-embracing DNC that was/is owned by the Clintonians, the NAACP found itself further isolated and cut off from political influence and union generosity.

The result has been a quiet death of the moratorium accompanied by a new charter-friendly policy by the NAACP.  Not surprisingly, it is policy that mirrors the positions of AFT and NEA and NPE, which will be front and center in the 2018 midterm election year.

How does the NAACP explain its reversal?  Easy.  As Diane Ravitch explains, the NAACP has simply, though "boldly," asserted that charter schools now are public schools and, therefore, incapable of draining public money away:

The NAACP report boldly acknowledges that charters are part of a public-funded system. It says that it makes no sense to strip funding from the public schools that enroll the great majority of students in order to fund a parallel system that is usually no better than the public system and often worse.

Got that?  If charters are now "public," how can charters be stripping money away to a "parallel system?!"  Charters, then, are no longer part of the problem--they are part of the solution!  Bingo.

A month ago before the new NAACP report was released, Ravitch was thoroughly convinced by reading Rebecca Klein' dissembling at HuffPo that the moratorium would remain intact. She had this say then:

I am very impressed that the NAACP did not succumb to the big-money behind the privatization movement. That shows their genuine commitment to the children and families for whom they fight.

And what about now, after it has become clear that the NAACP capitulated and has, in fact, become the parrots of the AFT/NEA/NPE position for embracing charters. As you might imagine, now Ravitch is even more impressed by her new allies:

Like every national organization, the NAACP relies on major donors to survive. By standing strong against privatization of public schools, the NAACP has demonstrated courage and integrity. I add the NAACP to the honor roll of this blog, with admiration and respect.

 Remember, now, boys and girls: charter schools are public schools, so they can no longer be accused of privatizing.

NPE Action Helps Halt Dead Bill

The NEA/AFT support group at NPE are declaring victory over a Congressional bill that had been shelved weeks before Diane Ravitch rallied the unwary and naive to sign an online letter to stop what was already dead.

Ravitch, in the meantime, was able to add thousands of unsuspecting souls to her database for future efforts to pry dollars from them to support her role in promoting AFT/NEA/DNC talking points.

And now that it has become common knowledge that H.R.610 was never ever close to a vote and posed no real threat, Ravitch has quickly claimed victory.

In doing so, she and her NEA/AFT patrons ask for your continued financial support.  

Sanders on "Enormous Neglect" and "Ultimate Failure" of Democratic Party

Please share with the BATs and NPE and AFT and NEA and FairTest and Basecamp bloggers and all the other pathetic asshats and hangers-on who have supported the demise of teaching and public education by loyally supporting the failed policies embraced by the DNC and the Clintons. 

No more complicity, collaboration, or compromise.  Your way has brought us the horrors of Trump, and your day is done!

DeVos Will Make Democrats' Charter Plan Easier to Sell

A few years back Diane Ravitch was forced to admit openly what the opponents of testing accountability knew when No Child Left Behind became law: the ridiculous goal of 100% percent student proficiency in reading and math could never be met, and the fanciful imposition of such a pipe dream would wreak havoc across the entire K-12 education universe.

By the time Ravitch finally came around to acceding the dangerous fantasy that she had loyally promoted along with her fellow charter and voucher supporters at the Hoover Institution, almost half the schools in the U. S. had already been labeled as failures, and a reckless and corrupt corporate feeding frenzy had been set into motion by Ravitch's free market chums.  Tutoring companies were draining billions in federal dollars by cramming poor children for tests they would never pass; the scandal-ridden Reading First gang was shoving its antiquarian reading techniques nationwide to really bad effect; alternate teacher certification scams had been federally incentivized; charter schools, both virtual and physical, were springing up like mushrooms in cow paddies after a rain, and a whole new industry of sponsored fake education research by corporate foundation "think" tanks had become an acceptable occupation for under-employed academics.

During the seven years since Ravitch's lucrative conversion experience, Diane has made it clear that she maintains one foot solidly on the side of the corporate education reformers who brought us the NCLB disaster.  It took her until 2013 to admit her stubborn wrongheadedness on Common Core, even while maintaining even today her support for "voluntary" national standards--whatever that means.  Today she maintains her enthusiasm for shoveling Core Knowledge into the heads of children, just as she remains a supporter of ridiculously high NAEP standards that have been used by "reformers" for years to bludgeon the public schools for their low scores.

In early 2015, her crucial support for NCLB 2.0, which is better known as ESSA, made her culpablility undeniable. This was followed by a year of propagandizing for the longtime charter supporter, Hillary Clinton, while pretending to be the most determined foe of school corporatization.  Diane's blog was used to soft-pedal Weingarten's autocratic choice of Clinton over Sanders, just as it was used to obfuscate Hillary's supportive position on corporate welfare charters.  And it was her political soulmate, Randi Weingarten, who put the final flourishes on the Democratic platform, which clearly supported charter schools while pretending to do the opposite.

Her recent outlining for Jay Mathews the kind of charter schools she would support signals that she is ready to swing both legs onto the side of the charter fence.  Along with the NEA's Eskelsen, AFT's Weingarten, and the troglodytes running the DNC, Ravitch is clearly signaling surrender on charters to Team Trump, even before the first inaugural dance.

Ravitch, as lead propagandist for the corporate unions, will use the Betsy DeVos nomination to make the Dem position of supporting "non-profit" segregated no excuses charters seem most reasonable in comparison.  It is not a coincidence that Ravitch is suddenly playing footsie with charter spokesman, Jay Mathews.

The ESSA, which could not have happened without NPE, NEA, and AFT support, will continue intact, thus allowing Trump, too, to appear reasonable in letting public schools die a slower death than Sister Betsy would have preferred.  And thus the bipartisan dismantling of public education is likely to continue on schedule.  The biggest change we are likely to see in Washington are the corporate Democrats from the Gates Foundation heavily reinforced by the corporate Republicans from the Walton Foundation.

Oh yes, don't forget to send your next donation to NPE.  Ravitch and the corporate unions need your support to buy a whole new supply of whitewash.

Ravitch's Pick, Betsy Devos, Is Also Trump's Pick

When Diane Ravitch came out with a statement of support (satirical, was it?) for Betsy Devos as Secretary of Education, I had just finished reading Jay Mathews' column that celebrates the coalescing of his and Diane's views on charter schools.  Here's part of their ongoing dialogue between Mathews and Ravitch:

I asked Ravitch: Would you shut down charters altogether, even if some were run by dedicated educators who were giving students more than they got in their regular public schools? At this critical moment for charter schools, with Ravitch so influential on the anti-charter side, her answer is important. 

“I would call a moratorium for all new charters,” Ravitch said. “All charters would be required to be financially and academically transparent.” She would ban for-profit charters. Charters would have to fill all empty seats each year, she said, so average test scores would not rise just because low-performing students had left. Charters would have to have the same demographics as regular schools in their neighborhoods, she said, with the same portion of students with disabilities and students learning English.

It's too bad that Ravitch still advocates for more special needs students suffering in the no excuses hell schools, where they receive few services if any.  And it's too bad she remains silent on the zero tolerance forms of cultural sterilization that the KIPP Model has made infamous.  Somehow she and the troglodytes of the DNC believe that more children being damaged in charters that drain public education budgets is a good thing.  

Surely the selection of Betsy Devos, whose is an avid for-profit charter fan, will make the NEA/AFT/NPE/DNC embrace of "non-profit" charters sound more reasonable to the clueless sheeple who still embrace her neoliberalism.

Ms. DeVos and her husband, Dick, have been the propelling force behind the rapid expansion of charter schools in Michigan, as founders of the Great Lakes Education Project. The state has one of the most generous charter school laws in the nation, allowing an unusually large number of colleges, universities, and school districts to grant charters, with little state oversight.

An unusually high percentage of the charters — about 80 percent — are operated for profit. In Detroit, which has the nation’s second-highest share of students in charter schools, the charters have been characterized by a high churn of students, teachers, as well as the companies that operate the schools. Even groups that support charters have pushed to establish stricter oversight, but legislation to do so failed last spring, largely because of lobbying by the DeVos’ group.

The chart is from Mother Jones. 

Irrelevant Ravitch Finds Silver Lining in Trump Election

For the past months, Diane Ravitch has turned her blog over to promoting the DNC's failed presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.  (By the way, the Democratic Party has decided that the humiliating loss is Clinton's fault, even though it was the DNC and its media henchmen who made sure that Sanders didn't win and that Clinton did--even as everyone who was asked told the Democratic establishment that Sanders had a better shot at beating Trump).

Not even a historic and devastating loss of all three branches of the federal government, however, can quell Diane's enthusiasm for her own heroic possibilities to save the world, one speech at a time.  Witness her latest sunny spinning on the rise to power by the fascist demogogue, Donald Trump. 

Our fight for public education continues. Now, with Donald Trump as President, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) works in our favor. He will turn over federal funds to the states without strings, and we will fight in every state to make sure that those funds are allocated to provide a better education for all children. From the results in Massachusetts and Georgia, we know that the majority is on the side of public schools.

We will win some, we will lose some, but we won’t give up. We will do what is right for children. We will defend teachers and the teaching profession. We will defend democratically-controlled public education. We will protect the public good.

How does Ravitch know what Trump will do?  What is the source of her information?  Is this from Lamar's office?  Or did Diane's crystal ball tell her all this, and is that why she supported ESSA to begin with?  So that Donald Trump could turn it into "our favor?"

And finally, here's something to take those election coup blues away.  Diane ends her post with another ad for the next NPE talk festival in Oakland next Fall (ED will likely be dismantled by then).  But there should be ample opportunity to talk tough and to get autographed books.  Oh, and don't forget to send a check.

Do not despair. Join the Network for Public Education. Plan to join us next October in Oakland, California, and help us plan for the future.

Here is a more sane and sobering assessment of Trump's education $20 voucher plan, with a few more details and bit more connection to reality.

Under Trump's plan, 11 million low-income students would have to split $20 billion. That comes out to a little over $1,800 per student, an amount unlikely to cover tuition at any decent private school when the national average private school tuition is over $11,000.

But it gets worse. This plan to "reprioritize" federal funds would decimate existing federal programs for low-income kids. The largest of those programs, Title I, serves over 24 million of the nation's students, including 66 percent of black students and 68 percent of Hispanic students. So at least 13 million kids would no longer receive services.

Trump's plan has strings, Diane.  Many strings that will make many ropes and many nooses.

The Unbearable Costs of "Unity"

The other day after I posted my communique to the Ravitch forces that reiterated my conclusion that we are NOT allied but, rather, that her actions have made me the enemy, Norm Scott spent some of his valuable time to send me a comment to say that too much time had been devoted to the debate about who is an ally and who is an enemy.  Here is part of his comment:

. . . . I think the amount of time and energy going into this debate pushes this to the ledge. What is the point when there are so many horrible forces on the attack? She is an incrementalist - I don't think that works but I don't have to spend my time addressing that issue because I would rather go after Randi and crew and ed deformers. I would rather have the new Ravitch than the old one. . . .Why not let ESSA come apart?

Here is my response to Norm. 

If too much time has been devoted to this issue, then I am wondering why you are helping to keep it alive by suggesting I let Diane and NPE go their merry way, all the while pretending to be against all the policies that their enthused endorsement of ESSA has enabled. Your preferred solution, it seems, is to "let ESSA come apart." I suppose like NCLB's coming apart, which took almost a decade and a half, and time enough to entirely unhinge the public school system and to waste money on 7,000 charter schools where children and teachers are regularly abused.

Sorry, I don't have that kind of time. Besides, how can ESSA "come apart" when Diane and the corporate unions are hellbent to get it implemented. The Ravitch books and blogs are very effective in maintaining the pretense that she is leading a network of resistance, and it's even fun to read sometimes, but it keeps the impetus to organize and fight contained. It's all talk and no action. Of course, that is her primary purpose.

She is not an incrementalist--she is a policy schizophrenic. 

This morning Norm offered this sadly disappointing follow-up comment:

I guess you think your work will have a major impact. I don't think that way about my work. I'm just a small cog - and there was a time when you and I were a tiny minority of people fighting ed deform -- I'm going back 15 years for me. ESSA is not the main enemy - the charter movement is and as long as Ravitch is on that case I am not wasting time attacking her. Or the corporate assault which she deals with it. ESSA will come apart but your war on Ravitch will do nothing to stop ESSA. I was part of the war on NCLB when our union supported it back in 2003 and 04. All we can do is point out what will happen and as it does people will sign on. Your attacks on her and her crew don't move the ball forward because building a force to take on the main issues is primary in this war. I was one of her critics before her change of mind. Her book helped moblize [sic] so many teachers and others. So she left out the union role but I can live with it. Is she perfect? Far from it. I'm not looking for perfection. Our enemies have nukes and we have pee shooters. Any pees Ravitch shoots at them is better than none. We should do our work and support things Ravitch and NPE do when they do it right - I have morphed from a lone warrior as I get older -- I bet I have less time left than you. I'll be long gone and the battle will still be on.

My response to Norm:

Notwithstanding your sad lecturing, Norm, to "do our work and support things Ravitch and NPE do when they are right," I am of the opinion that this is the same kind of thought disorder that has plagued you and other good union members for a long time.  It clearly suggests that even though we know the leadership is corrupt and sadistic, we should celebrate when they open the torture chamber door and throw us a bone.  

So very sad. And I'm sorry you are feeling are feeling sorry for yourself today.

But let's talk about the issues you raise here.  

If, as you say, the charter movement is the main enemy, Norm, then I am wondering why you are not a little incensed by the fact that Ravitch's endorsement of ESSA, which will provide billions of dollars for another generation of partially-online, no excuses charter schools.  I think you have to weigh that heavy support for ESSA against the speeches, blog fluff, and book stuff, which have made Diane a lot of money since her ostensible conversion a few years back.  

Diane has consistently stated her opposition only to the "for profit" charters, even though they constitute a tiny percentage of the 7,000 charters nationwide.  This July she this as buffer to criticism of the Clintons' longtime support for charters: 

At the very least, we can be glad that Clinton is opposed to the for-profits, which rip off taxpayers and divert public funding to their stockholders and owners. Let’s hope that means she is prepared to cut off federal funding that goes to the scam artists of the charter world.

Yes, well, let's hope in one hand, spit in the other, and see which fills up first.  Clinton is onboard the charter train, which is one of the chief reasons Diane and the unions to put their support behind ESSA.

You should remember, Norm, that I, too, was very vocal in supporting Diane's 2008 move away from supporting NCLB policies.  I went so far as to review one of Ravitch's book, which she linked from her blog with this note: 

. . . . Jim Horn has been a thorn in the side of the know-nothings [CorpEd] for many years. He’s smart, he’s tough, and he has a long memory.

In this review of “Reign of Error,” he reminds me of my own long sojourn in the wilderness of bad ideas. Now, I am happy to say, he welcomes me into the fold as an ally in the fight to preserve public education.

Since posting that review in 2013, I have become critical of Diane Ravitch's positions on a number of issues.  Here's just a few.

Early in 2016, she called me out by name, along with others, for questioning connections between FairTest and CorpEd.  In doing so, she didn't hesitate to go on the attack, all in the name of maintaining unity: 

Deborah Meier, a long-time leader of genuine school reform and an opponent of standardized testing, read an article by Jim Horn of “Schools Matter” that referenced a simmering feud among allies. The basis for the article was a series of posts (see here and here) and comments on this blog. Several readers watched the angry comments and wondered what was going on.

As you will see in Horn’s piece, he and others are angry at Fairtest, which has led the fight against high-stakes testing for many years. Horn, Mary Porter, and Emily Talmadge warned that Fairtest was taking Gates money and was no longer trustworthy. Lisa Guisbond of Fairtest replied several times on the blog, insisting that Fairtest had not sold out, that it had taken a one-times Gates grant of $5,000 to study performance assessment. There was a lot of back and forth. . . .

Are you still reading, Norm?  Then three days ago when Diane Ravitch posted "Allies Should Work Together, But Not Everyone Agrees," she pretended to not know who I am or why I would, in any way, be upset with NPE or Diane Ravitch. 

". . . he has an intense and personal animus towards me. Again, I can’t explain it. I don’t know why. . . . I have never met him. I hear he doesn’t like me. I don’t know why."

Would you attribute this lie, Norm, to her dotage or to her disingenuous nature?   I think you know that Ravitch knows why there is smoke in her tent and why activists are sawing at the guy lines.  

She knows, too, that as long as she can feign ignorance and pretend that she is being stalked by psychopath, she does not have to respond to her decision in 2015 to cut backroom deals for supporting ESSA.  Or maybe she did not cut deals at all--maybe she simply accepted what Lamar Alexander was offering.  

As long as Diane can convince you and her other readers that her pea shooter blog is more important than the big guns she puts on the table to support ESSA's corporate education reforms, she will never be held accountable for the treacherous acts already committed and future ones made to order for those who don't recall the past.

So Norm or anyone else should stop pestering those who do not support ESSA or ESSA supporters.  We are not allies, and we are not united.  Period.

Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2

Since Diane Ravitch has chosen to slime me in her most recent blog post, I have decided to publish some of the dozens of emails that I have exchanged with Ravitch since her highly advertised conversion from neoconservative elitism to neoliberal elitism.  It is important, I think, to read these emails for the facts that Ravitch has ignored in order to depict me the dangerous, misogynistic, and racist bad guy.

Soon after NPE was created, I wrote to Diane in March 2013 to better understand her choice of two NPE board members who had advanced the concept of performance pay for teachers.  NPE board members, Anthony Cody and Renee Moore, had promoted performance pay for teachers as a good idea, while working with crackpot, Barnett Berry, whose neoliberal think tank in North Carolina has provided and promoted a number of bad ideas, e.g., Relay, to NCATE, the Gates Foundation, and other oligarchic groups.

After leaving  Berry’s nest, Cody had since backtracked on the performance pay idea, but when Renee Moore was chosen as an NPE Board member, she remained available on the lecture circuit to promote bonus pay for teachers.

Below is part of that exchange.  You may note that Diane was using some of the same tactics then as now.

On Mar 10, 2013, at 11:54 AM, James Horn <ontogenyx@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Diane,

I am working on a piece on the Network for Public Education, and I wondering if you would share with me how you came to be associated with this organization, since it seems to reflect a philosophical shift from your earlier statement in your email last May (see below).

Also, I know that you have written about "zombie ideas" like merit or performance pay.  Two of your officers, Cody and Moore, have a published history of supporting performance pay and the use of test scores to (partially at least) make high stakes decisions such as promotion and pay.  They were part of Barnett Berry's big push a few years ago for a performance pay scheme, and Moore wrote a chapter in Berry's fanciful look at education in 2030--"teacherpreneurs," etc. etc. (As an aside, it appears that Berry supplied NCATE with  their crackpot idea about making TeacherU/Relay a model for teacher ed.  

Moore's specialty, it seems, is performance pay.  She is still on the road, it appears, promoting this zombie idea:

 http://www.tqsource.org/webcasts/payforteach/pptpresentations.php

I plan to write to both Anthony and Renee for their comments, but before I do, I wanted to write you first.  

Also, I am wondering if you can share with me the process for choosing/electing officers. btw, I cannot think of anyone I would rather see heading up a legitimate organization to fight the billionaires and corporate bloodsuckers than you.

. . . .

While I would love to see an umbrella group emerge that would help consolidate and focus our efforts, such an org has to beyond reproach and imminent scandal.  I think you and Heilig fit that criteria, from where I sit. 

What we don't need is another group to attempt to coopt and neutralize the growing urge for action to end high stakes standardized testing.  Change will happen when people demand change and act upon those demands (see Texas or Chicago).  It won't happen from sitting congressional offices talking to post-adolescent staffers supplied by the Gates Foundation.

Thanks, in advance.

Best,

Jim

Subject: Re: questions re new org

Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 12:24:57 -0400

To: ontogenyx@gmail.com

Jim,

Anthony had the original idea for starting a PAC to fight the corporate reformers. He asked me to work with him. I was happy to do so.

Together we selected a small group of people to work with us. In time, we hope to expand our board. We are just getting started. 

I can't say that I have read every single thing that every board member has said or written, but every single person agreed to our launch statement. We are all opposed to high-stakes testing, mass school closings,privatization, and evaluation of educators by test scores. 

I hope you will help us with what we are trying to do: build a network of grassroots groups and individuals across the country to fight back. No loyalty tests.

I am, as you know, unalterably opposed to merit pay or any rewards or punishments tied to test scores. I think educators should be paid more for doing more, for getting advanced degrees, for taking on more responsibility, but not for higher test scores.

Diane

On Mar 11, 2013, at 8:58 AM, James Horn <ontogenyx@gmail.com> wrote:

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/01/15/the-best-resources-for-learning-why-teacher-merit-pay-is-a-bad-idea/

On Mar 12, 2013, at 1:25 PM, Diane Ravitch <gardendr@gmail.com> wrote:

Jim,

Did you notice that I wrote three of the articles on Larry's list?

Really, get over your paranoia. Neither I nor anyone in our group is a secret agent of the Billionaire Boys Club.

Diane

On Mar 12, 2013, at 1:35 PM, James Horn <ontogenyx@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, I did notice that.  It makes all the more puzzling as to why you and Anthony would name as one of your Directors a person who is actively engaged in spreading the pro-performance pay message.  

http://www.tqsource.org/webcasts/payforteach/pptpresentations.php

I can smile at your calling me a nitpicker, but calling me paranoid for asking a legitimate question that remains unanswered doesn't amuse me.   

Still waiting to hear from Renee.

Jim

On Mar 12, 2013, at 3:51 PM, Diane Ravitch <gardendr@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm sorry for calling you paranoid. 

I don't understand why you are so eager to take down a group that agrees with what you want because one member wrote something you disagree with --and I disagree with.

Nobody's right all the time. I was wrong for years.

Now we are uniting to try to stop a massive onslaught against the very idea of public education. The barbarians are at the gate. This is not the time to quarrel amongst ourselves.

Diane

On Mar 12, 2013, at 4:37 PM, James Horn <ontogenyx@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for the link to Renee's blog.  That was the first place I left a message--no email listed.

Hi Renee,

I am doing a story on the Network for Public Schools, and I would like to talk with you about your involvement.

Please email me at your convenience.

Thank you.

Jim Horn, PhD

Cambridge College

Schools Matter

So if either of you would like to share with Renee that I would like to communicate with her, I will be most appreciative.  I hope that you have her email address, since leaving a note on her blog doesn't seem to be the most effective means of communication.  I don't expect you to give to me, but I would appreciate you letting her know that I have this question:  How do you square your public position on performance pay and high stakes testing for evaluation of teachers with the position of NPE?

In terms of "taking down a group," that is not my desire or intent now, just as it was not my intent or desire during the Bob George fiasco with SOS.   If there is anything to be learned from the SOS debacle, it is that people will not support an outfit that prefers to attack those who ask questions rather than providing straightforward and transparent responses to what anyone would find as serious inconsistency.  Now that is something I truly do NOT understand. 

Jim

On Mar 12, 2013, at 4:48 PM, Diane Ravitch wrote:

No one attacked you, Jim. 

Disagreement is not an attack. 

Renee is an NBCT teacher. 

We admire her dedication, her competence, her experience, and her passion for teaching.

Diane

The following exchange is from March 23.

Subject: Re: please share with all of your officers and members

From: ontogenyx@gmail.com

Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:24:56 -0400

Anthony and Diane, 

I held off on having anything to say about NPE until I returned to town.  Just got back.  I was disappointed to find no email response from Renee Moore or any further clarification on appointing an officer (Director) whose public and ongoing support of pay for test score schemes runs counter to public remarks by both of you.

I would like to offer one more opportunity to say something about how your officer's enthusiasm for performance pay and her involvement in the corporate futurology piece, Teaching 2030, squares with this and much else from Diane's latest newsletter:

We support assessments that are used to support children and teachers, not to punish or stigmatize them or to hand out monetary rewards.

Should the officers of your organization be aligned with and  supportive of the organization's goals?

Thanks much.

Jim

On Mar 23, 2013, at 1:04 PM, Anthony Cody <anthony_cody@hotmail.com> wrote:

Jim,

Renee has been tied up with travel and family issues, so she has not had much time to spend on our project. 

If you have time, I would be interested in talking about this over the phone. I will be available tomorrow afternoon, from around 2 pm eastern to 5 eastern.

I will be available on my cell, at ______________.

anthony

Diane Ravitch wrote March 23, 2016 at 1:22 PM:

Jim,

I confess that I have not read everything single thing that every officer and board member has ever written. If anyone did the same to me, they would have nothing to do with me, as I have written many articles over the years that I now regret. 

The principles of our group are clear. What we are for and what we are against is explicit. I see no reason to ask anyone to sign a loyalty oath.

Why don't you join us?

Diane

________________

Then in November 2013 I sent this note to Diane during her recovery from a fall:

On Nov 8, 2013, at 8:27 PM, James Horn <ontogenyx@gmail.com> wrote:

I am hoping this unscheduled break in the action leaves you rested and ready to raise hell soon with the CorpEd losers.  Take your time, don't rush, listen to the docs.  We need Diane Ravitch well!

Warm regards,

Jim H

On November 8, 2013 at 8:34 PM, Diane Ravitch wrote:

Thank you, Jim, I will be after them as soon as I recover.

Diane

So despite Diane’s most recent angry and defamatory allegations, I hold no malice toward her as a person.  The steep uptick of her support for the corporate unions and the Wall Street Democrats since 2013, and her key support for the next generation of corporate ed reform in ESSA have put Diane Ravitch in an ideological No man’s land or on the other side of the battle lines from those who stand against segregated education, testing accountability, and corporate profiteering in education. 

Unfortunately for her, most of what she has done can’t be undone with another well-timed mea culpa.  As my grandfather might say, she has made her bed and now she has sleep in it.