Perdido Street has a great piece on the hatchet job that the Post has done on the new Diane Ravitch book. His critique of the piece is far better than anything I could have ever articulated and shreds the review from the Post to pieces. One sentiment he expressed that caught my attention the most is this:
"That the Post published an attack on Ravitch that is this personal and this fraudulent just goes to show how much she and her arguments are getting under the skin of the corporate reformers"
They sure are. I'm finishing the Ravitch book now and it is a lucid, fair portrayal of what the reform movement has become and, as Ravitch shows, what it truly was all along. What's more, the book coincides with the contraction of the war on teachers and on public education. It is a contraction that was caused, as Perdido points out, by people like Ravitch.
It's no wonder why the hatchet had been swung: With the disgrace of Rhee and Hall (and, I predict more of these high name reformers) and with "anger" pieces from reformers bring published more and more, there is a sense of desperation in the reform camp that, to even a layman like me watching from a distance, is unmistakable. And now Ravitch is going to release this powerhouse and take all of the air out of the room. The attacks on her makes perfect sense to me.
Gandhi (actually, labor leader Nicholas Klein in 1914) on struggles like this: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win".
Ravitch is about to be #winning.
(PS...NO ONE reads newspapers anymore!)
All the local papers endorsed Quinn. She got clobbered. You're right about newspapers. And about Ravitch too.
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