OH: Turn Schools Over To Businessmen

Back in September, Ohio's Governor (and lonely failed Presidential candidate) John Kasich decided to unravel a puzzle-- the mismatch between Ohio's open jobs and unemployed workers.

One might think that a possible answer might be that the hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers whose jobs have been outsourced or robo-sourced do not match up with the new jobs available in the state. But Kasich decided to focus on the idea that schools were not cranking out the kind of meat widgets and cogs required by corporate leaders.

So Kasich sicced his Executive Workforce Board on the problem. The EWB is usually billed as "made up of legislators, business leaders, labor leaders, educators and others." If we break down the actual list of twenty-eight members, we get one governor, four legislators (state and fed), one county commissioner, one union guy (IUOE), one superintendent of a CTO, one emeritus community college president, the Ohio higher ed chancellor, and eighteen business and investment guys. Also, zero representatives of any sort from the K-12 public education system.

The board's recommendations include these four "top" items:

* Establish stronger connections between schools and businesses so that schools produce grads with the skills businesses want
* Fill in the skills gap so that schools produce grads with the skills businesses want
* Build awareness of employment paths that don't involve college so that grads will do a better job of graduating with the skills businesses want
* Rebrand libraries as continuous learning centers so that former grads can go learn about the skills businesses want

Just in case I haven't drawn the pattern out for you clearly enough, here are some other items from the list of forty recommendations from the board:

* Require schools to offer project-based learning
* Require school leaders to "engage" with local business leaders
* Create an "in-demand jobs" week
* Expand business engagement opportunities
* Leverage effective practices
* Create state-level data analytics infrastructure
* Focus on early employability and career readiness
* Foster a statewide learning culture

Yeah, I'm not sure what "early employability" refers to. Maybe bringing back child labor? And that fostering a statewide learning culture-- right on point, folks. I'll bet nobody has ever thought of that, and it will probably revolutionize Ohio education. 

But wait-- there's more. Some of these could be implemented by setting up middle schoolers with local businesses (so, yes to child labor?). And a personal favorite-- why not give businesses and chambers of commerce three seats on every school board in Ohio? Non-voting seats, mind you, but they would be right there, keeping all those elected officials from being distracted by, you know, stuff that voters want, and guaranteeing that the voices of business interest won't be lost in the crowd of educators and teachers and people who know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to running school districts.

Remember-- this is coming from a board that includes just two members who have any connection to education of any kind. 

I get it. We don't do our students any favors by graduating them fully-qualified to repair horse-drawn carriages or manufacture quill pens. And I am a huge fan of vocational-technical education.

But we are here to serve the interests of the students and the community first and foremost. Serving the interests of businesses is way, way down the list, particularly in this age in which business (and Ohio is just loaded with the ghosts of these guys) feels absolutely no loyalty to its workers or the community that it calls home.


I will offer business leaders the same deal I have offered them for years-- I will prepare a student specifically to work at your business if you will guarantee that student a job for life. But to train ten students for a line of work so that business can pick three and discard the other seven, and then five years from now also discard those three in favor of cheaper Chinese labor-- that is an absolute dereliction of duty for the public education system.

My job is to prepare my students to have the life that they want. My job is not to prepare meat widgets to be corporate fodder. The modern business community has proven repeatedly that it doesn't give a rat's rear about the lives of its corporate drones, and that means it's all the more necessary that public education should care.

Contrary to what amoral bloodsuckers like Rex Tillerson assert, public schools are not turning out "products" to be "consumed" by businesses. We turn out human beings, and we are trying to get them ready for life. Work is certainly part of having a life, but it is not the only thing and certainly not the only important thing.

John Kasich, you will be unsurprised to learn, thinks the board's recommendations are excellent and he can't wait to implement every single one. I know that responsible Ohioans who care about public education must get tired of saying, "Stop, no, that's a terrible idea." But it's time to say it again.

John King and the Devils

King was at the Center for American Progress today (a place that has to be a little grey these days, given their history of providing interim employment for all those folks who were supposed to be going to work in the Clinton administration) to issue a clarion call for a better educational future (For The Chidren, of course). But as always, the devil is in details, and there is a mighty swarm of devils hovering around this speech.

Here are the highlights, as presented by the USED release, and the details that bedevil King's pretty words.

For all who believe that strong, equitable public education is central to a healthy democracy and a thriving economy, now is the moment for us to set aside the policy differences that we have let divide us, and move forward together courageously to defend and extend this fundamental American institution,

Says the guy who as New York honcho, charter school boss, and education secretary, has tried to shrink the reach of public education by pushing for charter expansion. Can charters be expanded without damage to public schools? I believe it might be theoretically possible, but not with the literally zero-sum policy that is the norm right now.

And there is the same problem here as with every call to Unity ever issued-- exactly whose "differences" are we going to set aside, and whose vision are we going to unite behind. "Let's unify for the sake of the children," can just be a polite way to say, "Shut up and just go along with me."

As reported by USED, King called "on those who have been on either side of debates over issues including testing, accountability, charter schools, and effective teaching to come together around shared values." But it's hard to forget that this is the same guy who canceled public meetings in New York state because parents and teachers (whom he characterized as "special interests") wanted to disagree, vocally, with him. 

Today we have a choice to make. We can continue to argue amongst ourselves about our disagreements. Or we can work together in pursuit of larger goals.

Again, these are hollow words if King is unwilling to own his contribution to the argument.

 But I am saying that we can reject false dichotomies and disparaging rhetoric. We can stop questioning our natural allies’ intentions and fight side by side for the belief that every student in America has the right to a great public education.

Man, those devil-filled details. Which false dichotomies, exactly? And which natural allies? Because as an advocate for public education, I haven't had a natural ally in the USED for years now, and my natural ally is certainly not someone who thinks that public schools should be pushed aside by charters, nor am I allied with someone who thinks that amateur hour untested generally crappy standards should be pushed into every classroom, and I'm especially not allied with someone who thinks I should be judged by my students' standardized test results.

King runs the list of accomplishments of the last eight years. More graduates. Fewer dropouts. More kids in pre-school. Check. Achievement gaps closing. Mmmmm.... not so sure on that one. More black and Latino college students, and a really diverse group of graduates. Sure. This all conveniently skips the many goals that this administration set for education which were not so successful or admirable-- Common Core, increased data mining, ubiquitous high stakes testing, and test-driven teacher evaluation systems that would drive a system for moving "good" teachers around and driving "bad" ones out.

We must continue to press on, firm in the knowledge that when we pull others up, they do not pull us down. When the light of opportunity shines on those who lack it, it does not dim for those already in its glow.

What pretty words. But in calling for the future, King draws attention to the most devilish detail of all-- he is about to be replaced by someone who has no interest in his legacy or in progressive programs, yet who shares many of this administration's goals. There is a future for US public education, and it's an ugly one, building on the very worst of the previous sixteen years-- but John King is unlikely to be part of it.

Some details will be different, and they won't. We'll have the same feverish pursuit of charters and choice, the same attempts to beat down the teaching profession, the same test-centered approach to schooling, even the same low-key love-that-dares-not-speak-its-name pursuit of Common-like Core-ish standards. But instead of wrapping it in the language of equity and social justice, we'll get it all wrapped up in free market Jesus.

I understand the urge to run around and speak to the issues one last time, but the hardest detail, the unkindest devil of all, is this-- it doesn't make a lick of difference what John King has to say about education at this point.

Checker Finn Admits Defeat

Has a prominent reformster given up. Not quite-- but the PISA and TIMSS results have given Chester Finn pause as well as a moment of perhaps inadvertent admission that twenty-five years of reforminess have been a failure.

I can never quite get myself into the whole podcast thing, but a friend recommended I check out a recent episode of the Fordham Foundation's Gadfly podcast and it was... illuminating.

Not actually Robert Pondiscio

The show actually starts with a quick audioquote of "What Does Gadfly Say," an in-house wacky video that Fordham made a few years back, and, well, it's brave of them to keep bringing it up. But wackiness, or perhaps just mid-level jauntiness, is the tone we're after here. So no super-serious Masters of the Universe or Evil Geniuses, but just the gang hangin' out and talkin' ed policy. The program is hosted by Alyssa Schwenk and Robert Pondiscio, and they start with some introductory banter. Schwenk introduces Pondiscio as the "Adele of education reform" and I don't know what to do with that-- he's actually a talented young British woman? Pondiscio  gets a bonus point for working in "Isn't it pretty to think so," from the end of Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises. So, we're wacky, but also well-read.

Checker Finn is given a "who needs no introduction" introduction; if you think he does, know that he is one of the Old Guard of reformsterism, long-time cheese-in-chief of Fordham, current VP of the Maryland Board of Education, frequent scolder of Kids These Days, champion of charter marketing, and common core cheerleader. He's also game for the wackiness, noting that his father had a cousin named Adele-- "does that help?"

But now it's time for business, and that means PISA and TIMSS scores. Finn notes that these measures of education achievement have placed the US in the "middle of the pack" for a very long time and that nothing has really changed in the last three years. Minor gains here, minor losses there, but all three agree that there's a bit of a "blind man's elephant effect" with the scores, meaning you can find whatever you want in the data. Finn bottom-lines it-- achievement is essentially flat, and that flatness is confirmed by NAEP, SAT, ACT, etc etc etc. We are flat, stalled. Pondiscio offers "educationally becalmed" and Finn reaches into his bag and comes up with "beset" noting it was once used to indicate a ship that was locked into the ice. So, no ambiguity about the flatness.

(It is somewhere right around here that I realize that Finn's voice reminds me of Peter Schickele. Do with that what you will. )

Pondiscio notes that the results include survey info showing that fifteen-year-olds like science more than they used to and might even like a career there. Finn pooh-poohs that there's a long history of Kids These Days thinking they're doing well when they're not (damn kids with their participation trophies and the rap music and the baggy pants). And Pondiscio asks if it will eventually hurt the US economy if we fail to catch up and I would like to ask, to whom? Where is the nation that is starting to eat our economic lunch because of their superior test-taking skills? Are we not being hurt in part because of other nations' superior Willing To Work for Subsistence Wages in Dangerous Conditions skills, and are those skills measured by the PISA? Finn says that middle of the pack will not be good enough and Pondiscio wants to know if we're running out of time, which I suppose seems like a reasonable question given that reformsters have been chicken littling this for over thirty years, at least since A Nation At Risk warned that we were going to get clobbered Any Day Now.

And here comes Finn's rather startling admission. He notes that it's been a gradual down, so it will probably be a gradual up, a slow slog. And then he says

If you look at the last twenty-five years at all the reforming we've been doing and still see [scores staying] flat and slow slog as the main outcome, it's pretty discouraging.

So then Finn and Pondiscio get into a discussion of how, after twenty-five years of failed reform policies, the reform movement needs to abandon its big failures and consider new directions in education policy, starting with greater dialogue with trained education professionals. Ha! Just kidding. They don't talk about that at all. Having noted that the policies they've pushed and pursued for twenty-five years have not produced the results they hoped for, at all, these guys then move on to discuss other stuff.

That other stuff includes a frank discussion of how their insistence on policies like Common Core have not only failed to produce results, but have also eroded public faith in the institutions of both schools and government, creating a backlash that helped pave the way for a monster like Trump to make "get rid of common core" part of his campaign and ride into office, and they feel bad about that and in the future should be more careful about-- ha!! Kidding again! They have no such discussion.

No, mostly they go on to note that "outsourcing to China" is not the only threat to jobs and lots of jobs are being lost to automation, and next someone says, "So I guess that stuff about having to be more competitive with other countries isn't all that important after all and we need to educate our students to compete with robots!!" and--oh, wait. That was me saying that, rather loudly, at my computer. Finn and Pondiscio just shift into crystal ball mode to consider some future issues.

Do the slightly better TIMSS forecast a better PISA in the future? Pondiscio asks what the forecast is for 2019. Finn glumly notes that the forecast is "flat," because twenty years of experience make it clear that "flat" is the safe call.

Can we steal ideas from the better-scoring PISA countries, like, say, non-tracking? Finn says probably not, because they are different countries. And by the way, Finland did a little worse this time, and China, finally forced to stop cheating quite so baldly on the test, did a lot worse. Finn indulges his personal sense of schadenfreude, and I don't blame him a bit.

Petrilli asks "If you are Trump's ed secretary, do you pay attention to any of this?" My answer is that, obviously, if you are Trump or Trump's secretary of anything, you don't pay attention to facts or data or expertise or anything except your own personal agenda. But Finn says ignore the policy advice (OECD is anti-ESSA and anti-Trump) but use all thermometers available to take education's temperature.

Which would sound like eminently reasonable advice if it weren't coming from people who keep saying. "Well, the data says our reform policies are failing, so let's just keep doing them more." Because when you're hammering on the wrong nail in the wrong spot, the obvious solution is to hammer harder.

I mean, maybe the PISA is one more thermometer, but if you know the temperature and you know it hasn't budged in twenty-five years and you know your stovetop hasn't budged it a bit, what more do you need to know? Taking the temperature is a pointless exercise if you're going to ignore the data that you have collected. There was a time when reformsters could argue that their ideas were new and just being launched and we had to wait a few years to see if they really worked. We waited. We can see. They didn't work. What else do you want to know?

Love and Kindness

This past weekend, my son got married. I took a personal day Friday to help decorate for the reception and the rehearsal dinner. Our wild and crazy bachelor party involved bowling (which we did not very well). Then on Saturday, my son and daughter-in-law were married on the stage of the same community theater in which they met almost a decade ago. Family members who couldn't be there because of health or distance issues watched via facebook live. Then there was food and dancing in the Elks club ballroom.

It was a good wedding, and like the best weddings brought together a wide assortment of people from the couple's life plus aunts, uncles, siblings, nieces, nephews, etc etc etc. There were plenty of people there, and it was good to see everyone.

For those of us who are divorced and remarried, even the most joyful and trouble-free weddings come with a side order of Thoughtful Reflection. For the last couple of years I have periodically posted references to a study on what makes relationships last, and lo and behold, this morning there was another article about the study from two years ago, right there on my facebook feed (h/t Anthony Cody).

Emily Esfahani Smith covered the study for the Atlantic, and the subheading pretty much summarizes the findings -- "Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity."

Smith takes us back to the work of John Gottman of the Gottman Institute, an outfit set up to help couples "build and maintain loving, healthy relationships based on scientific studies." So what does some of that science say?

In 1986 Gottman and Robert Levenson (University of Washington) set up "The Love Lab," which was apparently way less sexy than it sounds. One of their big studies involved electrodes and measuring physiological responses. They sorted the couples into "masters" and "disasters" and looked for differences. With disasters, they found that physiological responses, even in simple seemingly harmless conversations, were heightened flight-or-fight mode. Even when discussing simple topics, "having a conversation sitting next to their spouse was, to their bodies, like facing off with a saber-toothed tiger." Masters, on the other hand, stayed calm, as if they felt safe and comfortable.

The masters maintained long, healthy relationships; the disasters' relationships were messy, difficult, unhappy, and often fully broken.

Now, this is worth keeping in mind when it comes to your marriage or primary relationship, but let's think about it in terms of another relationship-- that between teacher and student. Does it not make sense that when a student doesn't feel safe, when even the simplest interaction triggers a physiological flight-or-fight reflex, that student's connection to the teacher and therefor to the material, the school, the classroom, the whole educational experience-- all of those lines are going to be at best intermittently shaky and at worse just plain busted and down.

If a student feels unsafe in the classroom, the relationship with the teacher is broken and everything suffers.

Gottman went on to examine how that safety could be established or broken. What he found was subtle and simple and profound all at once. Gottman saw that couples in the course of a normal day made "bids" each other's attention and connection, at which point their partner could either turn toward them or turn away. Those who turned away became the disasters.

How good is Gottman's science? He can predict with about 94% accuracy what the future holds for a couple, regardless of factors like wealth, children and even sexual orientation.

The number one destructive factor? Contempt. The cold shoulder. The number one relationship healer and strengthener? Kindness.

Again, the implications beyond the realm of marriage seem obvious to me. Students who feel dismissed or ignored will be beaten down. Those who experience kindness and generosity of spirit-- their relationship with school will thrive, and so will they. This also seems like a model for understanding classroom dynamics; as a first grade teacher, my wife must have handled roughly six million "bids" a day from her students, while my high school juniors make fewer, and they're far more subtle.

The older I get, the more certain I am that kindness is hugely important (though I don't think kindness always looks like a warm, fuzzy Care Bear). There is science on my side; mean people really do suck, and they really do have a hard time building good relationships. We seem to have entered a pronounced mean streak as a country; the challenge will be to remember that unkind, ungenerous meanness is not beaten by more of the same.

Here's the rest of my weekend story. Sunday they headed off to her parents' to swap out some wedding paraphernalia, but instead they put their car in a ditch. So instead of heading home to spend a few days off basking in newlyweddedness, they've been staying at my house with nothing much to do but wait on repairs, play with their dog, hang around each other, play games. It has been my privilege to be the father in the house who gets to watch them be their newlyweddy selves. Yeah, they're in love, but being young and in love is easy. What's more heartwarming is to see how kind and generous and thoughtful they are too each other. Kindness really is the nutrient that makes everything else grow strong.

An A-Plus Method of Liberating Money

The Very Conservative Heritage Foundation has posted on Facebook a video with their six suggestions for the first 100 days of Betsy DeVos's attempt to drive the Department of Education into the privatization ditch (they might have phrased it a little differently).

1. Support states as they work to exit Common Core.
2. Call on Congress to pass the A-Plus Act returning power to the states.
3. Reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship
4. Cancel the Department of Education guidance on transgender bathrooms.
5. Rescind the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed education regulations.
6. Create Education Savings Accounts for children at Bureau of Indian Education schools.

Some of these are old familiar friends, like getting rid of Common Core (or at least that name for one-size-fits-all bone-headed unproven amateur-created standards), policing student peeing, or maintaining the DC school choice program. There's even the slightly creative idea of using Native American students as lab rats for one more foot-in-the-door voucher program.

But #2 may seem unfamiliar, or like a ghost from the past. It may seem an especially odd thing for anyone to suggest DeVos get behind, because for most of its long, sad life, the A-Plus Act has been pitched as an alternative to No Child Left Behind (in fact, it stands for Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success Act, not to be confused with other A-Plus acts, because naming legislation is hard). But there are reasons it remains appealing to folks like the Heritage crowd.

That lamprey is mighty uncomfortable

It has been a Heritage Foundation favorite, and they have an expansive history of the act and how it fits in the long storied history of federal government Power Grabbing. The big selling point of the A-Plus Act was the freedom to opt out of No Child Left Behind (at the time, nobody realized that the term "opt out" would be policy garlic to some undead policies). But while "opt out of NCLB" was on the marquee, inside the lobby, more wonky and powerful features were being pitched.

A-Plus was supposed to make decision-making more local, by letting state government decide how to use federal funds and which programs to continue and which to ax. Basically, the act was meant to turn all federal ed support funds into a big stringless bale of money that states could dispose of in whatever manner suited them. This was a gift of money so loose, opaque, and accountability-free that even some reformsters thought it was a bridge too far. Fans pushed back, but the act still languished.

Still, the act shambles on. It was pitched in 2007 at the very moment that Congress was beginning the long re-authorization slog. Then again in 2011. And last year some Congressmen were still trying to attach A-Plus to the ESSA, like a lamprey latched onto the butt of a giant elephant seal.

The purpose of the A-Plus Act has always been pretty clear. It is hard to hoover up all those federal public tax dollars for education when they come attached with all these rules and regulations like "you have to spend this money on helping poor kids read" or "you have to show that you spent that money on actual education stuff." This goes well beyond even the accountability mavens of ed reform-- when your big criticism of public ed is that it's neither transparent nor accountable enough, a program that says "Just throw money at the states and trust that it will land somewhere useful" can't seem like much of an improvement.

The Heritage Foundation smells opportunity. They were excited about welcoming DeVos to USED, and they released a similar action list for her (so she could become a "transformative leader") a few weeks ago. That time they skipped A-Plus and instead proposed the old backpacks full of cash that follow the kids around.

The principle remains the same. Banks are really infringing on our freedom by putting their money in vaults and guarding it; to really let freedom ring, the money should just be set out on the sidewalk. Restaurants limit our freedom by not letting us walk into the kitchen and take whatever food we're hungry for. And governments hogtie our freedom by insisting on all sorts of rules and regulations and proof that the money taxpayers handed over is being used for the purpose for which it was taken. Now is the time to bring back true freedom, because after all, America is only great when a man can reach out and grab whatever he wants without anyone telling him no. That kind of country is not just great-- it is A-Plus!!

DeVos Speaks (Sort of)

Poor Betsy DeVos. She has recently spent time on the Donald Trump "Thank You These rallies Are The Only Part I Liked About Running for President" Tour, complaining that the media is spreading "false news" about her. I suppose that she could address that by actually, you know, speaking to the press directly, but apparently she is spending time prepping for her confirmation hearing. Her appearances at Herr Trump's rallies haven't been covered in great detail, but thanks to the faux journalist power I call "Making It Up," I'm prepared to present the full text of one of her most recent tour speeches.

Thank you! Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to see all my friends and neighbors out to greet me here in my hometown of Grand Rapids. Just keep right on applauding. Remember, my family and I can ruin you at any moment. That's it! Cheer, fellow citizens and peasants!!

 There has been a lot of speculation about what kind of Education Secretary I will be. Let me clear that up. I will be a great one!

For one thing, we will be bringing the benefits of school choice. I think all Americans agree that it's important that all businesses, no matter what their zip codes, have an opportunity to get their hands on a piece of the giant mountain of money that funds education in this country. Choice will let us do that. Cheer!!

But we want to do better than that. Everyone should have a chance to grab some of those public tax dollars, including all of the private schools which already exist. Vouchers should be an important part of an education money payout plan because every private school, whether its Baptist or Methodist or Bible Church or Church of God or even Catholic, should have a chance to get a fresh infusion of tax dollars.

Some people have complained that the kind of charter and choice system that I support would lead to a two-tier system of schools, with one well-funded school system for the students from the upper class. To them I can only say one thing-- of course.

You have to understand-- when the founding fathers said that all men were created equal, they didn't mean that all men are actually equal. The Puritans understood that some people are favored by God and therefor blessed with greater prosperity than others. These Chosen are more favored, more suited to take dominion over the rest of creation, more deserving of honor. They're just better.

Are some people better than others just because they're rich? No, that would be ridiculous. They're rich because they're better. People criticize me because every cent I have either was passed to me either by my parents or my husband, but those people are missing the point. God made me rich because I deserve it.

These signs of God's favor and an individual's superiority used to be pretty clearcut, and they used to be the foundation of America. But the founders made one crucial mistake-- they let all sorts of people vote, and over time, those people got uppity. There was a time when America was still great, back when everybody knew his or her place, back when black people and poor people handicapped people and non-Christians didn't try to take things they weren't entitled to. Back when the homosexuals had the decency to pretend they didn't exist. But those days are gone-- ruined by a bunch of uppity people who won't just shut up and listen to those of us who know better. Now homosexuals and blacks and women and Muslims can all strut around like they're perfectly normal and it's we decent Christians who have to hold our tongue and avoid saying simple things like "Jesus hates you and you're going to hell." It's a topsy turvy world.

And it all starts in school.

We let the children of the better class of people mix with the children of Those People. Teachers don't seem to know their place, and insist on teaching things they just shouldn't teach, the kinds of things that students were never taught back when America was great-- certainly not in the fine private schools my children and I attended. That is why I absolutely support the Common Core-- someone has to tell Those People what they should teach. However, I understand that some of you are not fans of Common Core, and so I totally promise that the federal regulations requiring Common Core will be stricken from the law, along with the regulations requiring students to wear clown shoes and the regulations requiring lunch ladies to be certified Yeti's. I guarantee you that in just a few months, all of those laws will be gone, and you will be free to have your state government enforce Common Core under some other name.

We will also do our best to crush both teacher unions and all those other unions, too. Unions are unnatural, a terrible attempt to interfere with the natural order of things. People who want to control working conditions and wages should not choose to be the kind of people who work at those jobs. It is their place to simply do their jobs and let those of us who Know Better make the important decisions.

Government has also interfered with the God-given natural order of things by forcing money to flow to people who don't deserve it. If God wanted Those People to have money, He would have made them rich, and it is not government's place to interfere with that just process. By getting government to takes its paws off schools, a choice and charter system can allow money to again flow to those who actually deserve it. A choice and charter system also allows children of the better people to get their education without having to deal with the children of Those People. Really, isn't it better when people associate with their own kind?


I hear people complain about mobility and opportunity. We still believe in that-- any child who is born into poverty should be free to show that he actually belongs to a better class of people, and he can best do that by becoming rich, remembering that it only counts if he becomes rich on his own, without any kind of help, like Mr. Trump or like me.

I have read the accusation that I want to do away with public schools. This is simply false. We must have public schools, otherwise, where would the children of Those People go to school. But I do not want to have to give up any more of my hard-inherited and hard-married money to educate Those People than is absolutely necessary. Just enough to make them useful as workers should be sufficient. After all, why spend a lot of money educating people who are just going to burn in hell for eternity, anyway?

Much like a sin-filled homosexual must be forcibly brought back to rightful behavior, American education can be forced to be The Way I Think It's Supposed To Be. We can serve the chosen folks by giving them the opportunity to rise as God wants them to, we can give their children the opportunity to get a proper education with the proper people, and we can give Those People an opportunity to become compliant, useful tools for the people who should be properly running the country. Education can be the foundation for making America great again as well as a chance to advance God's kingdom and take us one step closer to the theocracy we should be, correcting the country's greatest mistake-- allowing just anybody to vote.

Now, cheer, fellow citizens and peasants! Cheer as if your future and the future of your children depended upon it.

Why Honor Diane Ravitch?

Tonight the Network for Public Education is throwing a shindig in New York to honor Diane Ravitch. In truth, it is also to help raise money for NPE, an organization for which Ravitch is a co-founder.

If you are at all concerned about public education, you are familiar with Ravitch's name, and the general arc of her story that has provided a sort of third-act apostasy-fueled career for her as a public figure. She has plenty of detractors from all sides of the education debates, and some of them are pretty worked up about her. Some of the arguments are the same old purity crusades, resting on the notion that if someone only says The Right Thing 98% of the time, they're ruined goods. I've never been a fan of that theory, but then I'm not much of labels guy, either. Human beings are generally complex and always non-uniform. If I ever meet someone who tells me that they agree with me 100% of the time, I assume they are lying to me.

Ravitch is important because she is the closest thing we have to a central figure in the public education side of the debates. While the reformster movement has manufactured big-time cover-photo public figures (She Who Will Not Be Named, former DC chancellor), won innumerable public posts (Arne Duncan), joined a plethora of billionaires (Eli Broad), and congealed around already-famous figures (Bill Gates), the defenders of public education have no such roster. If I showed a list of prominent reformsters to an average civilian, she would know many of the names. I don't think I could pull off a similar trick with public education advocates. Ravitch is about as close as we get to such a central, recognizable figure.

Part of that is her story. Hanging out with the architects of education reform, then defecting upon the realization that they were following the wrong past. But it is also her relentless attention to the movement and the many people it touches. She blogs endlessly, and a large part of that blogging is amplifying hundreds of voices of people who are invested in all of this. Reading Ravitch's blog not only keeps you informed about what is going out there, but it provides an undeniable sense that you have lots of company, lots of people who care about public education, too. You're not crazy, and you're not alone.

Ravitch has not tried to be a Great Leader, has not enforced an orthodoxy, and has not been getting rich from her activities. Her defection was arguably the worst career move ever, leaving people who write multi-million-dollar checks to fund websites, advocacy groups and think tanks to keep their ideas afloat and pushed on the public. Advocates for public education have no such deep pockets. There is no public education equivalent of a Bill Gates or an Eli Broad.

This, incidentally, why groups like the Network for Public Education need to throw fundraisers. Because Doing Stuff costs money, and money has to come from somewhere. Is NPE perfect? Of course not-- like the Badass Teachers, NPE has occasionally stumbled over other issues, particularly those related to equity and racism. But as far as I'm concerned, NPE is an important group doing important work and providing a far-reaching network of public education advocates.

I'm not there tonight; yesterday my son got married and my dance card is just a little full this weekend. But I can contribute to the cause easily enough via the interwebs, and so can you. 

Does any of this mean that a testimonial dinner is a great idea? Should we be honoring an individual when the movement is so large and wide? Should we be holding up one individual for applause?

Well, I look at it like this-- we honor people as a way of honoring the kinds of values and behaviors that we care about, that we want to see in the world. This is part of how we shape our world-- if we want to see kindness, we have to honor people who show us how to be kind, and that in turn lifts more kindness into the world. If you have any doubts about this, simply look at how honoring more racism and hatred and just-plain-meanness in the election has lifted up a whole depressing load of racism, hatred, and meanness. And I believe with all my heart that if we wait for someone who is the perfect embodiment of our positive values to come along, we will be interrupted by a bunch of people who are perfectly willing to lift up an imperfect evil.

Ravitch has been a fighter, a scholar, a connector, a sharp writer, and a vocal advocate for public education. I have never seen her be anything but kind and generous, and she feeds my belief that I still have at least a few good decades left in me. She is an invaluable leader in a hugely important movement who has stepped up when it would have been easy to sit back. Those, to me, are all qualities well worth honoring, particularly when that helps support a group that does work I believe in. If, like me, you're not going to be in NYC tonight, consider making a contribution-- as I just said yesterday, in these times, we must all do what we can. Thanks to Diane Ravitch, who has done so much.