Diane Ravitch Interviewed on the Jon Stewart TV Show

Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System," appeared on the Jon Stewart show on March 3rd.   You can view the clip here:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-3-2011/diane-ravitch

Happening This Week

Dear readers,

I want to personally invite you all to attend two terrific events happening on the UW-Madison campus this week. I will be speaking at both and hope to see many of you there.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Department of Educational Policy Studies will be holding its annual conference. The topic is The Obama Education Agenda: Principles, Policies, and Prospects.

The speaker for the opening session, Tuesday night at 7 pm at the Union Theater, is none other than Diane Ravitch. (You can bet Liam is excited!) She will be talking about "The Future of Public Education."

On Wednesday there will be several panels and a lunchtime session featuring former Wisconsin congressman David Obey. You might've seen the video of Dave attempting to get into the Wisconsin State Capitol building recently -- I sure hope he talks about that. Take a look at the full agenda, and note that the title for my talk has been revised -- I will now be speaking on Saving Public Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: The Case for Pragmatic Idealism.

In addition, Wednesday night there will be a teach-in about the New Badger Partnership-- Chancellor Biddy Martin's vision for our public flagship. It will take place from 7-9 pm in Humanities room 2650. Panelists include: Steve Stern: Associate Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff Programs, Chad Goldberg: Associate Professor in the Sociology Dept. and Vice President, United Faculty & Academic Staff (UFAS), AFT 223, and Ben Manski: Executive Director of the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution.

There's plenty to do around here and a great need to get involved. Come join us!

This week, the real reformers finally broke through!

On Thursday night, Diane Ravitch with her usual incisiveness pointed out the importance of poverty and the unfairness of teacher-bashing on Jon Stewart’s the Daily Show.

According to Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet, Ravitch’s book shot up from #758 on Amazon's list to #35 by the next afternoon.

Jon Stewart showed a short clip of the segment on Fox News debate, to ridicule the commentators’ attack on the “greed” of teachers, while defending the huge bonuses and salaries of Wall Street financiers and bankers whose irresponsible behavior caused the economic collapse in the first place.

On CNN, Matt Damon criticized President Obama's education policies:

“He misinterpreted his mandate…This idea that we’re tying teachers’ salaries to how their kids are performing do on tests. That kind of mechanistic thinking has nothing to do with higher order thinking; we’re training them, were not teaching them.”

Julie Cavanagh, NYC public school teacher and one of the leaders of the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM), was brilliant on NY1's Inside City Hall, pointing out the importance of teacher experience (and class size), in opposition to the push by Mayor Bloomberg and Michelle Rhee to eliminate seniority protections for teachers.

The New York Times, the home of conventional wisdom, featured an extended article about how the scapegoating of teachers has gotten out of hand. (See also FAIR's critique of the article's claim that teachers are actually scorned by the majority of Americans, rather than simply by those in power.)

Thursday's To the Point, a national NPR radio show, also featured Diane, Kay McSpadden, a teacher from South Carolina, and I. Ms. McSpadden said that many people in her state regularly blame the teachers union for the poor performance of their schools, yet there is no teachers union in South Carolina!

A perfect example of how with the collusion of the media, the corporate CEOs and the elected officials whom they control have conveniently created a fictional bogeyman, as a distraction from the real problem that afflict our schools: rampant budget cuts, inequitable funding, large classes, lack of parental input into decision-making, and an overemphasis on testing and privatization.

Let’s hope this is just the beginning of a reversal in which the real educational reformers will finally get a chance to present their perspective in the major media, and the privateers are no longer able to monopolize the airwaves through their wealth and influence – though they have no research and no common sense to back them up.

The clip of Matt Damon on CNN is below:

Change of venue for Diane Ravitch viewing party!

Reminder to join Diane, me and other parent activists and colleagues tonight at 9:30 PM to celebrate and watch her appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Due to technical difficulties; the venue for tonight's viewing party has changed:

When: Thursday, March 3, at 9:30 PM -11:30 PM

Where: Club Room, Affinia Hotel, 155 E. 50 St. (off 3rd Ave.)

Tickets are $50; $25 for students/teachers; contributions are tax-deductible.

To order tickets, and for more info, please click here:

http://www.nycharities.org/events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=3295

thanks!

Goin' to a Party

What could be a better birthday gift for a Real Reformer than going to a viewing party later tonight for Diane Ravitch's appearance on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show?" Well, it wasn't all too easy to make this happen and required more delicate negotiations than a Bloomberg/UFT contract. Or a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

You see, birthdays are a big thing for my wife and tonight she is taking me out to "One if by Land, Two if by Sea" on Barrow St. where I get to nibble on my yearly dose of Beef Wellington.

So, when Leonie announced Class Size Matters was hosting a viewing party tonight from 9:30-11:30 [NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE BELOW] with Diane as the guest at the Hotel Benjamin and since we'll be in the city anyway and since dinner will be over by 9 - hmmmmm.

I opened up negotiations with a woman who I am about to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary with - a woman who has had it up to here over my ed obsession even 9 years after I retired.

I was forceful: "It's my birthday," I whined.

I tried bribery: "You don't even have to get my birthday eclair this year." (I got 4 of them - yum.)

I was persuasive. "Leonie needs me to tape it."

I was suave. "Think how much more romantic I will be on our upcoming anniversary trip to Paris."

Finally, I used charm: "I'm spending 2 hours each way driving to Philly to visit your brother's daughter and granddaughter on Saturday. Don't I get something for doing it?"

See you tonight.

Ahhhh, the art of negotiation.

CHANGE OF VENUE TONIGHT:

The Club Room, Affinia Hotel

155 East 50th Street
New York, NY 10022
50th and 3^rd

An updated map is located here: http://www.nycharities.org/events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=3295

Related:
Alexander Russo tries to take down Ravitch - over changing her mind- but doesn't address the content of what she is saying.

Sharon left a comment:

At least Ravitch is willing to talk about the exceedingly high U.S. child poverty rate and its effects, and understands that urban public schools are dealing with an even higher proportion of suffering children from that group -- more now than ever before.
For some reason, Duncan, Obama, and the others don't seem to be willing to utter one meaningful word about the topic. Talk about having one's head in the sand!
Just under the warped, manipulative, and undemocratic approach of the big education "venture philanthropists" (Ravitch's Billionaire Boys Club framing is perfect), the biggest problem I have with the reformers is how they seem to live in a fantasy world where the effects of poverty don't matter. They seem to think public schools and their teachers are somehow powerful enough ("if they only tried!" - stomp feet, stomp feet, stomp feet) to overcome those effects. They come off as silly romantics who believe, in their heart of hearts, that EVERY single American child who suffers from the nightmare consequences of lifelong and generational poverty could become upper-middle class -- if only the teacher unions were all dead and charter schools reined the world. And if isn't happening fast enough, too many of these are people perfectly willing to resort to expressions of contempt.
I am so sick of Gates, Bloomberg, Rhee, Canada, Duncan, Oprah, Kopp, John Legend, etc. being given so much primetime airtime to spout off their side. At long last, tonight the world will get to hear a different point of view.
Maybe TDS should get started on lining up Richard Rothstein next.

I left this comment:

Content, content, content Alexander. I saw you at Ravitch's appearance at the Parents Across America event where she spoke for 38 minutes. She laid out a blueprint on the failures of the ed deform movement - boom, boom, boom. one after another. Now in this post you have not one word about the content but it's all about her changing her mind and how certain she is. Where do you stand on what she was saying? Why not address those points - What if I said the same things Diane does - which I do and I was a critic of hers before her conversion. I have always been certain. But so what if Ravitch saw the light? I put up a video of her at PAA - http://vimeo.com/19755379 maybe watch it again and address what she was saying, not her certainty in saying it.
And by the way, maybe I missed it but I didn't notice anything posted by you about that event. How about the Seattle, Chicago (which you should know) or the New Orleans story where parent "choice" has come down to KIPP or KIPP? Which by the way, many of we critics of charters have been predicting with much certainty is what the charter game is all about.

Come join us watch Diane Ravitch on the Daily Show on Thursday!

Diane Ravitch, the country’s foremost defender of evidence-based rather than faith-based education reform, will be a guest on the Daily Show starring Jon Stewart, this Thursday. This is a great breakthrough and reverses a long media black-out of opposing points of view on education issues.

Please join Diane, other parent activists and me for a viewing party starting at 9:30 PM at the Benjamin Hotel to celebrate and watch the show together, in a fundraiser for Parents Across America, a new national group committed to putting the parent voice back in public education:

When: Thursday, March 3, at 9:30 PM -11:30 PM

Where: Club Room, Affinia Hotel, 155 E. 50 St. (off 3rd Ave.) NOTE: change of venue!

Tickets are $50; $25 for students/teachers; contributions are tax-deductible.

To order tickets, and for more info, please click here:

http://www.nycharities.org/events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=3295

Also, check out Jon Stewart last night on the Daily Show – defending hard-working and underpaid teachers who are being called “greedy,” while too many of our elected officials and commentators seem to be defending the obscene bonuses of bankers instead. During the segment, Jon reveals his mother was a teacher.

He ends by satirically proposing that our kids be outsourced to China to be taught overseas. Actually this is no joke: Rick Hess and other edu-entrepreneurs are advocating that teaching be done online, and outsourced to places like Singapore. Come join us Thursday, and watch Diane eviscerate such hare-brained ideas to undermine our public schools.

The Daily Show - Crisis in Dairyland - Odor in the Capitol Building
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

UPDATE Parents Across America

Last Update - Weds, Feb. 9, 9:45PM
NOTE UPDATED BROAD LIVING DEAD POSTER TO INCLUDE MORE TWEEDIES:

I found last night's PAA event organized by Leonie Haimson and parents from, well, across America, a powerful experience and a sense that the resistance to ed deform is growing.

Diane Ravitch, introduced by Leonie Haimson: 38 strong minutes:
http://vimeo.com/19755379

Here is an excellent 5 minutes from Julie Menin, chair of Community Board 1 in lower Manhattan with some comments from Leonie Haimson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gieAYxCIC2I

More videos in this space as they are processed. I have to leave Diane Ravitch till tomorrow because it is almost 40 minutes and take hours.

I extracted some stills from the video.

Sharon Higgins, of awesome Perimeter Primate blog, Oakland

Karran Harper Royal, New Orleans

I am processing the video as fast as I can and will put up links in this post over the next day or two - I'll put a link at the top of the sidebar. I forgot to mention that our pals from Rochester who are battling former Klein slug and Broad Academy grad Jean Claude-Brizard were in the house last night - I met a bunch of them when they came to town on July 5 to protest mayoral control and held a demo at Malcolm Smith's Queens office. This time they were joined by teacher Mark Friedman who blogs at the Colorado-based Failing Schools blog.

And guess who was in the house? Remember that great blog Chancellors New Clothes? Both of them were there and it was to nice to see them. They are thinking of restarting the blog. Hope they do.

As I was watching one parent after another present the horror story of ed deform going on in their city, I felt I was watching a version of the Night of the Living Dead, starring graduates of the Broad Academy. A quick email to David Bellel and Voila:

media advisory for Parents Across America Feb. 7 education forum with Diane Ravitch

MEDIA ADVISORY

CONTACT:

Julie Woestehoff

pure@pureparents.org

773-715-3989

Leonie Haimson

classsizematters@gmail.com

917-435-9329

New national organization, Parents Across America,

launches with inaugural education forum in NYC

featuring Diane Ravitch

NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2011 ­­– Diane Ravitch, a national authority on education policy, will be the keynote speaker at the kickoff event for Parents Across America (PAA), a new national public education advocacy organization, on Monday Feb. 7 in NYC. Ravitch will address the topic: “Are our schools going in the right direction? What parents should do.”

This public forum will be held at 6 p.m. at PS/IS 89 in Lower Manhattan, 201 Warren St. Sponsors include: Parents Across America, Class Size Matters, Community Board 1 and the PS/IS 89 PTA.

WHAT: Forum and discussion on public education featuring Diane Ravitch and a panel of parent activists from around the nation.

WHEN: Monday, Feb.7 at 6 p.m. Admission free. Reservations are required and can be made online at: http://bit.ly/h0Adv1

WHERE: PS/IS 89 – Liberty School, 201 Warren Street (Lower Manhattan), New York, N.Y. 10282. (Map here. Directions: take the A, C, E, 1, 2, 3 to Chambers; or the N, R, 4,5,6 to City Hall.).

WHY: This forum represents the first effort by a national grassroots parent organization to present their vision of positive progressive education reform –- a perspective PAA believes has been so far ignored in the national debate on education –- and what’s wrong with the current policies being imposed on our schools.

The evening will feature a talk by Dr. Ravitch, followed by comments from PAA panelists and a Q&A session with the audience. The PAA panelists will include: Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, Karran Royal Harper of the Pyramid Community Parent Resource Center and an education advocate in New Orleans, Rita Solnet of Testing is not Teaching in Florida, and Sue Peters of Seattle Education 2010. Other parent leaders participating will include Julie Woestehoff of Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) in Chicago, Dora Taylor of Seattle Education 2010, Caroline Grannan of San Francisco, Andrea Mérida, Denver school board member and a founding member of Democrats for Excellent Neighborhood School Education, Pamela Grundy, a parent activist from North Carolina, Sharon Higgins of Oakland, whose blogs include The Broad Report and Charter School Scandals, and Mark Mishler from Albany, N.Y.

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University, an education historian and author of many books, including the bestselling "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education" (2010). She was recently awarded the Daniel Moynihan Prize by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Charles Eliot Award from the New England Association of Schools & Colleges. From 1991-93, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H. W. Bush. From 1997- 2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal testing program.

Parents Across America (PAA) is a new grassroots organization comprised of parent leaders throughout the nation who are advocating for positive and progressive educational reforms. Founding members hail from New York (Albany, NYC), California (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland), Florida (Boca Raton), Texas (Houston), North Carolina (Charlotte, Durham), Illinois (Chicago), Louisiana (New Orleans), and Washington State (Seattle).

PAA supports reforms that work, focused on strengthening public schools rather than closing them, providing smaller classes, increasing parent involvement, and a well-rounded curriculum, rather than the current policies of privatization and punitive test-based accountability. PAA believes that parent voices must be heard in the national dialogue on public education.

Visit: www.parentsacrossamerica.org

& the PAA Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123352677681840&ref=ts

Our children, our schools, our voices.

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