Diane Ravitch--Prodigal daughter returns with a bang!

Friday night I walked a few blocks west on Wilshire to the awesome Gothic revival Immanuel Presbyterian Church to hear a speech by Diane Ravitch.  She was sponsored by my union, United Teachers Los Angeles; the union headquarters is right across the street. 

(Before going into the church I took the opportunity to walk by the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools at the site of the old Ambassador Hotel.  It’s a magnificent building, a real asset to the community.  Along Wilshire is a wonderful pocket park with references to RFK and other popular leaders.  I don’t know why there has been so much whining and complaining about this new school.  The architecture is immeasurably superior to most of the pompous faux Renaissance and gaudy post-modernist eyesores that are springing up all over downtown.  The site offers a wide swath of green lawn in front of a sweeping arc of glass and steel fronted by an elegant little art-deco homage.  And thousands of children can go to school in their own neighborhood!)

Diane Ravitch is a brilliant historian of education.  She is also a prodigal daughter who has come in from the cold of Reaganism and privatization to the warmth of the classroom teachers who struggle every day to meet the needs of our country’s children.  She used to be a shill for the conservatives’ efforts to dismantle the public schools, but then saw the truth that teachers are achieving daily miracles on shoestring budgets rendered inadequate by the diversion of public resources to enrich the corporate oligarchs.

In her speech she laid out just how devastating is the attack on public education, started in the Reagan administration and continuing unabated until now when even Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are promoting the fraudulent nostrums of charter schools, privatization, testing and merit pay.  As she pointed out, the current wave of “reform” pairs deep budget cuts with an abandonment of the original intent of federal education programs to provide equal education for all. 

Her analysis is thorough and frankly very depressing.  After all if even Obama is singing the discredited tunes of charter schools and merit pay, what hope do we have?  The audience was mostly teachers and school administrators, with a couple of board members (LaMotte and Zimmer), and they cheered loudly as Ms Ravitch ticked off these elements of the “dominant narrative” and showed how each is unsubstantiated and even contrary to the evidence.  For example, study after study has showed that on the average charter schools perform worse that public schools, and yet even a smart guy like Obama continues to invoke the mantra of charter schools as a solution to our problems. (Check out Laura Clawson's comments on research about charter schools.)

I had a great time catching up with old friends from my activist days in UTLA. Most of the old friends were surprised to hear that I was back in the classroom since people rarely return to that situation.  I was also glad to kill the fattened calf to welcome this prodigal daughter back into the fold.  Unfortunately I didn’t really get any help with my main challenge these days:  teaching writing and reading to a passel of lively 7th grade boys. 

As Ms Ravitch described the systematic vilification of public schools and teachers, I realized that we were just the last target standing of the “safety net” for the middle class in American society.   So just as the industrial labor unions were blamed for driving industry out of the US, now the teacher unions are being blamed for ruining public education. 

The “dominant narrative,” Ms Ravitch’s term, is the same:  all of the great institutions that created the most dynamic and prosperous middle class in history (USA, 1950-1980) have been systematically targeted for destruction in order to transfer vast wealth to an oligarchic elite of banksters and ponzi schemers who sell out their country every chance they get.    Affordable housing, secure employment and retirement, health care and now public education both K-12 and college--these institutions allowed the middle class to thrive, and all have been decimated by Reaganism.  

Ms Ravitch is a historian and not a political strategist.  She doesn’t know how to defeat  this attack, nor does anyone else.  The sheer power wielded by the likes of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Arne Duncan, and now Oprah Winfrey has co-opted our putative allies in the Democratic Party, so we’re on our own together with the parents and children we serve. 

Our best hope may lie in a younger generation that believes in finding common solutions to common problems, that looks for success in collaboration rather than competition, that pays attention to the weakest link in the chain in order to preserve the whole chain.

And guess what?  That generation is in my classroom every day!