TODAY'S RAVITCH TWEETS
Too good for just the Twitter column
- Wow- whirlwind tour of Chicago orchestrated by Mike & Susan Klonsky. Great people. Thanks, guys!
- First stop Depaul, overflow crowd of students, teachers, faculty. Great response. 2 drove from Columbus Ohio, 1 from Detroit.
- Next stop U of Ill, where I met Bill Ayers, posed for photo. I cd be elected President by palling around with him. Large crowd.
- Dinner w/ exec comm of Chicago Teachers Union. What a day. Exhausted.
- Sat am meeting with friends of Catalyst, terrific research journal covering Chicago Public Schools. Wish we had it in NYC.
- Sat went to convention center for NSBA. Room packed, over 1,000, they ran out if chairs and turned away overflow late arrivals.
- NSBA response amazing. Standing ovation. Once again, not enough books, sold out.
- Note to Arne: Race to the Top is NCLB on steroids.
I caught Diane at both DePaul & UIC. Loved your intro: "What's a nice traditionalist like Diane doing in a hotbed of progressive education like UIC?" The answer is, she's finding common ground in defense of public education.
ReplyDeleteDiane Ravitch coming to my neck of the woods this week -- Stanford on Wednesday, UC-Berkeley on Thursday!
ReplyDeleteWhat are the chances that she might ever actually be able to meet with President Obama and have a talk with him? She has enough stature with the powerful that it doesn't seem impossible. What would it take?
Ravitch has been great on the main issues. She's still wrong on prescribed curriculum, ie. every student needs this or needs that. She's also wrong on charters, lumping them all together under the corporate business, anti-union model.
ReplyDeleteAn increasing number of education advocates recognize that the charters that do not intend to be part of the corporate business, anti-union model are still part of and empowering it in spite of themselves. Charter schools have turned into an anti-public-education, anti-union juggernaut. Sorry, but it's only to those in deep, stubborn denial that Ravitch is "wrong" on charter schools.
ReplyDelete