This Ravitch thing. Debbie Meier gets it.
This past week I started off not really invested in the whole Diane Ravitch thing with Bloomberg.
But the more I thought about it, the more I thought the Post article was a mugging and reflected the darkness of the times where government agencies. even NY’s DOE, keep files on dissidents.
And yet there was this nagging problem. Ravitch was not a spokesperson for me. I hate being in a position of defending people who…well…don’t speak for me.
But in the point-counter point blog on EdWeek, where Ravitch and Debbie Meier exchange thoughts weekly, Debbie reminded me of the real point:
If they even think of intimidating you, just imagine who else has a right to be fearful. We all have a stake in this—probably least of all you, Diane!
On the subject of Ohio charters, Rotherham is so busted.
There on the front page of this morning’s NY Times is Sam Dillon’s story on the muck and mire that characterizes charter schools in Ohio. The Ohio teacher’s union warned from the beginning that the state’s charter laws were so crummy that all kinds of junk schools would be allowed to fly.Dillon reports:
Attorney General Marc Dann is suing to close three failing charter schools and says he is investigating dozens of others. It is the first effort by any attorney general to close low-performing charter schools.Gov. Ted Strickland said he wanted to carry out his own crackdown.“Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality,” he said. “But the way they’ve been implemented in Ohio has been shameful. I think charter schools have been harmful, very harmful, to Ohio students.”
More from Dillon:
Behind the Ohio charter failures are systemic weaknesses that include loopholes in oversight, a law allowing 70 government and private agencies to authorize new charters, and financial incentives that encourage sponsors to let schools stay open.
Now, one would expect that the wing-nuts like those at the Fordham Foundation would think that the present law is a fine way to do business and that all this talk from the Ohio AG and the governor is just a teacher union and Democratic Party plot. And they do not fail to live up to expectations:
“These suits are the latest in a long line of Democratic assaults on the charter school program in Ohio,” said Terry Ryan, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which sponsors several Ohio charter schools.
But, what of our Democratic friend Andy Rotherham? Hmmm. Let me see. If I Google “Eduwonk” and “Ohio Charters” I get a post from back on October 5th where Rotherham gets into an argument with the UFT’s Leo Casey over the very issue of Ohio charters.You can read it yourself and you’ll see that the essence of Rotherham’s attack on Casey is that Casey is painting Ohio charters with too broad a brush, and it was really the union’s fault that there wasn’t enough oversight.
…In Ohio, plenty of charter supporters were calling for improvements, too. Especially the better quality schools. Because, however, the teachers’ unions in Ohio were more interested in killing the charter law than fixing it, it was difficult to put together a coalition to at once improve the law and deal with problems like White Hat Management because it was tough to cobble together a pro-charter, pro-quality, and pro-accountability center from which to build politically.
Let’s jump ahead to today’s Eduwonk. Now Rotherham is writing a different story.Now the “narrative,” as Rotherham would like to say, has changed from what is happening in Ohio is a union assault on charter schools to, well, there are poor performing regular public schools too and why isn’t anyone going after them and besides Ohio is “anomalous.”So busted.
