I recently read your piece titled, “Stop the Madness,” in NEA Today. It was excellent. The points you made about privatization, and the impact of the corporate “foundations” are spot-on. You left out one point, which is that the reforms these groups advocate are largely in their own self-interest, not the interest of our children or the nation at large.

My question to you and to a broader audience, is this: “Why did it take so long for you to come to the same conclusion that most teachers reached ten (or frankly many more) years ago?”

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the fact that a person of your standing is speaking out. It’s simply that educators’ voices have yet to be heard. Any objections we voice are perceived as “whining” by incompetent teachers who don’t want to have to compete, be subjected to “objective” measures, or be held accountable. Most of us knew when the movement began under Ronald Regan that the “wisdom of the market” was at odds with the goals of public education, that “privatization” was a recipe for failure. However, conservatives are a righteous lot, and nothing if not tenacious.

Many years ago I had a conversation with an insurance salesman about the value of the “market model” in public education. My argument went something like this: If a neighboring school district had developed a highly effective science curriculum, but wouldn’t share it with the school his daughter attended, how would he feel about it? After all, I argued, if schools were competitive and not collaborative institutions, it would be foolish to “give away” an advantage that one school system held over another. His answer, and I quote, was, “Gee, I never thought about it that way.” Obviously.

I will continue to do my job, educating children, to the best of my ability, but without the false hope that the public’s ideas about the nature and purpose of education will change any time soon. It is far too difficult to undo something than to have done it right in the first place. That much is clear.

About twelve years ago I was introduced to your work in education by a college professor. Since then I have been busy trying to find my soul in the world of education. I have literally just completed reading your book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Thank you for service to your country! This book has confirmed what I have felt for a few years now and with the research I would not have been able to find. While I am not the quickest of readers, it was quite enjoyable!

You mentioned the problems of reform movements and efforts. What would you say regarding the current technophiles that are cramming the use of technologies down the educational windpipe? Is there any research that substantiates the use of technology in the classroom as improving the education of children? Does computer use improve reading skills, mathematic skills, and understanding of civics, arts, music, etc.? Am I the only one that sees the use of technology as a step backwards for the development of future generations?

You repeatedly mentioned the curricula in Massachusetts, California, and Texas. New Jersey has recently revised its curriculum in social studies. How does this new standard compare to those of other states? Do you feel that the use of revisionist histories (H. Zinn) is good for the education of students?

Thank you for your time in addressing these questions.

I am simply writing to say I very much liked your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.  As a matter of fact, I am having my graduate students read it this semester, which will be followed by a class discussion and a viewing of your March 10 C-SPAN interview with Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss.

Again, Dr. Ravitch, great job on your book! By the way, I highly suggested to policymakers and others in Louisiana that they read The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

Let me begin by saying that I loved your most recent book and I hope that those in current positions to impact education reform read it. I am a former elementary and special education teacher who has taught in two of the best charter schools in Pittsburgh. I decided to leave the profession to attend graduate school because I have experienced what has become of education, which you accurately describe in your book. Morally I could no longer subject my students to an amount of testing that is dehumanizing. Currently, I am attending the University of Pittsburgh and plan to graduate in December with a master’s degree in Social and Comparative Analysis in Education.

After working on my master’s, reading your book and watching the implementation of legislation that will continually erode public education, I feel the urgent need to act; however I am not sure what exactly to do. I think there needs to be a counter-narrative that does not come solely from teachers’ unions. When arguments about preserving public education come from teachers unions, they seem to be so often discredited as support for the status quo. I think that we need a movement of scholars, teachers, students, and parents that begins to voice their discontent with accountability and choice reform. We need to put education back into the hands of educators instead of government officials and titans of industry. So many Americans do not even realize who is beginning to run our education system.

I guess I need to rephrase what I said earlier from “I do not know what to do” to “I do not know how to do it.” I think that your book may be a catalyst for this movement and I would like to contribute to this cause but I have no idea how. I am beginning my research paper and I would like to use it to help with continuing the counter-narrative. I have written to the president to explain what education has become and received a response that defends their legislation. I need an outlet, a role in the defense of the professionalism of teachers and of public education.

If you have any suggestions as to what I can do to further this very important cause please let me know. I long to make a difference. Thank you for all of your work and the courage it took to write The Life and Death of the Great American School System. It is a voice of reason and I thank you for it.

I’ve just finished reading your most recent book—thank you for presenting such a clear and articulate case against ideas about accountability and choice that seem sound and logical on the surface, but have a corrosive effect on public education.

I teach in Alberta, Canada, and in light of reading Death and Life I thought I’d pass on to you the outline of the accountability system my province has devised to assess the performance of a school. Alberta has a well-established testing program, but the Pillar of Accountability balances test data with a range of other measures to create a more varied and holistic picture of what’s happening at a school and within a jurisdiction.

While far from perfect, as a teacher in this province I feel comfortable with a system of measurement/accountability that doesn’t single me out as an individual (individual performance is left completely to the principal and administration within each school), that takes a variety of factors beyond exam scores into account, and that doesn’t have short-term punitive and coercive consequences attached. I am accountable for my performance and am committed to improvement, both personally and within my school, but I don’t have to walk into my classroom every day burdened by the fear of harsh consequences attached to narrow and imprecise performance measures. I certainly feel extremely fortunate when I compare my situation to those that many of my colleagues in the United States face in their schools and communities.

You may well have come across this type of accountability framework in the course of your research, whether from Alberta or other school systems, but thought it was worth sending in any case.

Thank you again for such a precise, lucid illumination of the issues facing public education in America. I follow the public discourse surrounding American education with great interest, not just as a matter of personal and professional curiosity but also with the knowledge that what happens in America often makes its way across the 49th parallel—a phenomenon of particular concern given the fact that Alberta is generally considered the most right-wing Canadian province. That curiosity led me to Death and Life, and I was richly rewarded with a thoughtful, courageous piece of analysis.

I have been a teacher for 25 years, and there is a long legacy of teachers in my family. I heard you speak on the radio with Doug Henwood this morning. Thank you so much for your work.

When I retired, I wanted to do what you are doing. When I saw that this country didn’t get health care reform right, when keeping people alive is not a priority, I gave up on the idea that educating people would be. I use to have a particular chip on my shoulder about being female and how that made it all the more easy to exploit teachers. I now see the world more in terms of haves v. have-nots, no matter the have-not subgroup.

You are the first person I have heard, ever, that has represented teachers. Most of the teachers I work with are not able to look at their situation as honestly. I cannot thank you enough.

I’ve recently finished The Death and Life of the Great American School System. It was very fulfilling to understand the beginnings of these institutions that are trying to bring change to public schools. Your book struck a chord with me, as Charter Schools and Top-Down Reforms are currently plaguing the district where I am employed. What’s interesting is that most of the examples you provide come from the urban setting. I am here to tell you that your arguments are just as valid for rural settings.

Fort Sage Unified, my employer, sits nestled in the high deserts of the Eastern Sierra in Northern California. We are approximately 50 miles north of Reno, Nevada. In the 50 years of its existence, the school system served the children of Sierra Army Depot and its civilian employees. During the 1990s, the Clinton Administration oversaw a Force reduction of military installations, and Sierra was one of them. The district suffered a tremendous loss of students and funding, and the community was forever transformed.

When the families of high-ranking officers and civilian employees scattered across the country, it brought down the average family income in the area. The installation switched from employing full-time positions to employing temporary employees who could be laid off when specific missions were completed. As the Army left, the community’s infrastructure began to erode. Lush lawns and stately looking government buildings began to brown and crumble.

In this environment, a recommendation was made to close one of the elementary schools in our area. The parents of this elementary school banded together and formed a Charter School in order to retain an elementary school in their area. The school board allowed the Charter to exist, and a competitor was born in the late ’90s.

The Charter School operates within the district, and it currently competes for the same pool of students in our small area. They have a lottery system and boast of high test scores. It is no surprise that parents (who’ll endure the process) choose to send their children to the Charter. Although specific allegations have not yet been proven true, it is suggested that the school turns away special-need and at-risk students through its lottery process. In the end the public school takes on the task of educating “who’s left.”

So you see, Dr. Ravitch, your points and insights also apply to small rural schools. They are almost magnified with our small numbers. One thing is certain: we have a passionate staff (four of whom are alumni of the district, including myself) who are committed to helping our local youth reach out from their humble beginnings and strive for great things.

Your work has recharged the batteries, and I plan to share it with my coworkers and administration.

I watched you on CNN on the old TV in my classroom one afternoon after Left Back was published. I purchased that book and The Language Police and now your latest. Education needs your hand and the country must listen to you.

When Left Back was published, Barstow Unified (CA) was just beginning to dumb down a high school English curriculum that I and several young, energetic teachers created in 1964. Our English program was seventeen semester courses covering the gamut of English topics and allowed for freshman entry anywhere along the sequence if an entrance exam demonstrated their expertise. Our curriculum labored through the years as parts of it were hacked away and then it was replaced by “read and do” not long after Left Back. When the district decided that test scores were too poor and raising them demanded programmed presentation of subject matter (the superintendent copied San Diego’s Blueprint), I retired because I would no longer be allowed to teach. That was 2009.

My wife (who also taught English and history in Barstow) and I have feared the demise of education from the time business was given the power to determine what should be taught. Neither of us is sure the country can back away from the brink. Perhaps your latest book can begin weaving a safety net and your voice will encourage others to speak.

My life was education, 24/7/365. Everything I saw, read, did, and wondered about made it into my English classes. (I was hired to teach Latin and did until 1978, with another two-year stint from 1989–1991.) The problems of education are many, and you have discussed nearly everything my wife and I bemoan. May I be so bold as to add:

I repeat that unless our nation rejects the business paradigm immediately, we will lose the ideals the country was founded on and become the broken democracy that was predicted in the ’60s as I’m sure you remember.

If you have gotten this far, thank you for your time. There are still educators around, many fewer than there used to be. If the climate were different, my wife and I might even return to the classroom.

I recently read your book and immediately bought a copy for our superintendent of schools. I am starting my 45th year of teaching math this fall and still love my job very much. Even before I read your book, I was preaching to others how the testing of our children is ruining our educational system. I feel that there is a job to be done! I have reread Chapter 11 several times. YOU HAVE HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD! I am an advocate of your suggestions. We (all educators) must get rid of this ridiculous testing. Thank you for your enlightening thoughts.

Having admired your work over the years, I was excited to read your new book on the American school system. This is one of the best books that I’ve read on schooling and deserves a prominent place on every educator’s bookshelf.

As a former fellow with Dr. John Goodlad, I am particularly interested in teaching for democratic practice. You mentioned many times, in the course of the book, the importance that schools play in maintaining (and moving forward in) a healthy democracy. I thank you for that. I also thank you for your tireless work in presenting a comprehensive portrait of testing, accountability, and schools of choice. Your historical and objective perspective on these issues was invaluable in terms of establishing the roots and progression of these issues in American schools.

I must say that, many times, I felt very discouraged as I read about how we have undermined our educational system. This discouragement, I believe, is actually a good thing as it points to the direction that we must take to build excellent schools.

Again, thank you for writing this book. It will remain in the forefront of my personal library on books about schooling, teaching, and learning.

I know you are very busy, but I just heard your interview from April on a rebroadcast on NPR radio (I was on my way home from my ninth softball game of the week...because I have no life) and I can’t get your words out of my mind, what mind I have left (retired 2 years).

I am a 30+ year career teacher (public schools) who has finished coursework for a Ph.D. in curriculum development at the University of Oklahoma. My dissertation research is complete, “Journaling Across the Curriculum.” I am sharing this information only so you will have a very small profile of who I am, educationally.

I have always been considered an outstanding educator. I know this because my parents and students and principals have told me so. Also, because I know who I am, and I am a great teacher.

I am no longer in the classroom because of the reasons you cited in your interview. I was not ready to retire, and I long every day to be back in the classroom with my beloved students. It is especially difficult now, as it is “back-to-school time.” When I left, I had parents calling me and begging and cajoling, and offering bribes for me to reconsider. I could no longer deal with the poor administration procedures, which included everything you addressed in your interview. Eight of the best of the fourth-grade faculty left that year. No administrator asked why.

I have a slogan that I put on my business cards: “It’s all about the kids.”

Obviously, I don’t get it....

I don’t know if you will get to read this email, but I feel better having written it and knowing that there is in fact someone out there that actually knows what is going on.

As a community journalist covering education, I was delighted when a teacher in Greenport last week waved your column, “Stop the Madness,” at board members and complained about having to teach to the test. I can’t believe any teacher worth the title needs a test to identify which students need assistance and which don’t. I know the intention of NCLB was good, but unintended consequences have resulted in districts paying more money for these tests, in some cases manipulating results, and our kids aren’t getting any more proficient because of them.

Bravo to you for your wonderful column and for all you have done and are doing to make a real difference in our educational process.

I just finished the last complete paragraph on page 184. I had to pause because I started feeling queasy. The problem is that I have not even made it to the chapter about the billionaires.

I hope that this book is the catalyst to bring about change. Could it be the Nation at Risk for the new millennium? I pray it is.

Thank you for rendering these details in such fine form and speaking for so many who feel helpless against the tide of the so-called change agents.

I wanted to write you to thank you for your book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I bought your book twice. The first time, I left it on an airplane. The second time, I read it cover to cover in one night.

I have spent the last two years making many of the points you make in your book in informal policy discussions while a student at the University of Oxford. Since I left college, I have taught at a Green Dot School and studied as an education researcher. I have become increasingly disenchanted with the so-called reform movement. As a mathematician, I abhor the indiscriminate and fallacious use of data that abounds in these circles. As a historian, and true believer in the liberal arts, I am utterly discouraged by the narrowing of the curriculum. So, I am extremely glad that someone of your talents and knowledge has written such a clear, well researched, evenhanded, and challenging book pointing out the serious deficiencies and myriad dangers of the current political situation.

As I finished your book last night, I was brought to tears by the simplicity and power with which you argue for a strong, deep, content-driven curriculum. Your advocacy for teachers as examples of free and professional intellectuals able to teach the content in their own style is dead on. Yet, I awoke to the latest public smear piece (fraught with methodological gloss) by Jason Song of the LA Times, and felt powerless. On page 222, you ask, “Who will stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?” I know that I must be one of these people. I am unsure how.

But again, thank you.

I read your book with great interest. I have, at various times in my life, been a public school student, a public school teacher, part of a family of public school teachers, a homeschooling parent, and the parent of a child in public school. First, I would like to offer my thanks for an evenhanded, intelligent assessment of what is and what is not working in the public schools. Particularly in the current political climate, I admire your courage.

I have seen all of the drawbacks of charter schools, the triumphs and drawbacks of public schools, and the problems related to the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top initiatives which you outlined so well in your book. However, I have had a unique perspective, given that education has been the family occupation for so many years and my child is a special education student, and I would like to outline some additional problems in public education.
 

After such a dispiriting list, I think it’s also important for me to say that public schools do many things well. As I mentioned before, I feel my child received an exemplary education in middle school. My child has grown immensely, has goals, and works hard to achieve those goals. While I cannot say that my education was stellar—it was definitely not as safe—I remember two or three teachers with great fondness, and I know that my family members worked tirelessly to serve their students. There is not a place in the world to which I have traveled with these people when we have not run into someone’s student, who tells one or another of them how much difference that person made in the student’s life. Having worked in the corporate sector, I can honestly say that if the average corporation managed assets with the care that the average teacher does, we would be out of the recession.

I hope the public policy makers will take your words to heart. You gave voice to many of my grave concerns.

I am a school director in Pennsylvania. I wanted to send you some links to show you what is going on in this state, as we approach a gubernatorial election in November. I am writing because I am afraid for education both in PA and in this country. I see the Obama policies, and the policies being promoted by the leaders in our State House and Senate Education Committees and our Governor (and gubernatorial candidates), as a clear and present threat to the future of public education. We have just been through a contentious battle regarding graduation exams, a battle that was lost because the game wasn’t played fairly by those in power. Looking back on that issue, we are now seeing that the exam issue was all part of a bigger agenda, one promoted by the NGA and funded by the foundation tycoons. There is agreement by the leaders of both parties in our state on this reform agenda of testing, accountability, and choice. There is no dissent between the two parties to provide a healthy opposition, so it is moving at full force. Do you have any suggestions for those of us who are not yet ready to give up? Is there anything we can do short of keeping our finger in the hole of the dike?

I feel very fortunate that I was able to see a video of your speech at the NEA’s summer meeting. I have attended eight of the last ten NEA RA’s. I was unable to attend the meeting this year because I am working on my Master’s degree in education. I have taught kindergarten, third grade, and fourth grade. After 20 years, my administration has seen fit to tell me to teach eighth grade this year.

What you said in your speech is exactly what I have heard from many veteran teachers. I have posted your speech on Facebook and emailed it to friends. In my eyes and in the eyes of many educators you are a gigantic HERO.

Thank you for advocating for students and teachers. Mr. Duncan, President Obama and all those who have been in the White House and Congress need to know that the business model is not a correct model for education. I wish I could say I had time to read your books. I will buy them. I will be working 6 a.m.–4 p.m. every day until we “officially” start, and I officially start to get paid again in two weeks. Then I will normally work til 6 p.m., but often later, and take work home with me. Graduate school starts August 30.

If you’d ever like to hear what is going on in education from a 20-year veteran elementary and now junior high school teacher, I will take the time to answer any questions that you have. At present Illinois can not decide if they will continue to use their “frameworks” or the national core standards which Illinois has adopted. Different administrators give me different answers.

Thank you very much for what you do. If there is anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask.

I recently finished reading your new book. I want to thank you for so eloquently stating what I have only been able to say through gritted teeth: current education policy is killing public education.

I have been teaching in a well-run Title I public school in Brooklyn for over ten years. I have always had my head and my heart firmly ensconced in my work as a teacher. I haven’t been very active in the union. I pay my dues and go to a rally from time to time. Recently, after removing my head from my lesson plans and my students’ needs for a few minutes, I’ve come to realize that much of the general public thinks my colleagues and I are lazy and selfish. We are bringing down the economy with our desire for our own retirement funds. We fail America’s children. How dare we not want to be fired for teaching struggling students? Why would I not want to get less pay for choosing to work with children who are not rich, not white, and not born into families who speak English? Apparently, I am the root of America’s ills.

Naturally, this makes me upset. Then I read an article you wrote in the AFT magazine. I started telling anyone who would listen, that only educators should write education policy. I read your blog. I read your book. And now, I have a very strong urge to do something about it. Your book has pointed out the naked emperor. I would like to be involved in crafting him a fine suit.

I am just not sure what to do next. I am interested in applying to Harvard’s new Doctor of Education Leadership Program. Mostly because it is free and because it is Harvard, so I’m sure I could get an influential job once I get my degree. People might listen to me. After looking at their list of professors and partner groups, it seems that if they were to accept me, I would probably be the black sheep of the program. Maybe they need a black sheep. I don’t know. I could also apply to for the doctoral program in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. I’m a little limited in what I’m able to spend and where I’m able to go. But I want to help. I want to change things. I’m not a very pushy or persuasive person, so I don’t even know if policy would be the right arena for me. I do two things well. I can teach and I can write. I’m also a pretty good student. Do you have any suggestions for me? What should I do with myself? I need to do something.

Thank you for writing the book. Thank you, also, for reading this.

First of all, it is an honor to e-mail you. You are the first author I have ever been moved to contact. However, I feel compelled to do so today, largely due to how you have affected one of my struggles as an aspiring educational leader.

My name is Steven Lin. Not only am I a fifth grade teacher in Chesapeake, Virginia, but I am also a doctoral student of educational policy at the George Washington University. I grew up in union-heavy Pennsylvania and attended Penn State’s College of Education, where professors staunchly defended strong instruction and pedagogy. Interestingly, my training was indeed heavily constructivist. You are right that Mrs. Ratliff wouldn’t have stood a chance, nor would some of my great former teachers, such as Dr. Lechnar and Mrs. Wyngaard. I bought into these undergraduate instructional viewpoints, but struggled years later in “right-to-work” Virginia to reconcile those ideals (of strong and nurturing instruction) with a GWU master’s program in school administration that preached the decisiveness and efficiency of the business world. I found my master’s program to be extremely valuable, but I sensed and could not yet pinpoint a disconnect between the governance ideologies I had been fed, and the instructional ideals in which I had been trained.

I am not necessarily a die-hard defender of teacher unions, but I have continued to wonder why so many of their ideas (of Shanker’s professional or Chase’s new unionism), or the instructional research of Darling-Hammond, have never gained substantial media attention. The monopoly of business reform models has truly silenced alternate views. Like you, I eventually became swept up in the ideologies of reform movements, and soon I began to lose touch with the idealism and reality of true instruction. This reckless embrace of free-market reform models was short-lived, thankfully, as your book helped to reaffirm my original devotion to the seemingly impossible vision of quality education for all. It is a worthy vision that cannot be met with any one “silver bullet.”

Upon finishing your book for a class taught by Dr. Mary Futrell (former NEA president), I quickly wrote a personal letter to myself, reflective of my thoughts at that fleeting moment. As an author, I thought that you might have received many critical reviews for your book. However, the four images I have attached (for the 4 pages of handwriting) is an example of how you’ve motivated at least one obscure and faceless teacher in the American public education system.

Thank you!

I am a middle school teacher in Pittsburg (PA) Public Schools.

I have just read Death and Life. I write partly to thank you for the work you have done to give us this strong tool in our work to save public education, and to make it work for our children.

I could write pages here with specific comments about how true your words are, and how they resonate for me, my colleagues, our children, etc., etc. I will save those words for others as I continue to encourage them to read, and discuss, what you have written. I assume you see plenty of such messages—at least I hope so as I know such reactions are widespread.

My second, and more important message, has to do with “what next.” As you know, we who are out here “in the trenches” have to deal daily with the current realities and challenges our schools face. Your book helps us all to realize we are far from alone, and lets us see the forest when we have been buried in analyzing and trying to fix the sick trees in our own cities. I believe your work will help foster the kind of national sharing of information and ideas that we so desperately need among the troops, the actual teachers in the schools. I hope that you will be interested in, and perhaps want to learn more about, the ways individual locals of teachers’ unions are trying to maneuver through the challenges.

It is not news to you that many, if not most, of our school districts are struggling for money. There seems to be plenty out there for killing young people in wars, but for teaching them...I still find it hard to believe that school districts have to compete against one another for federal monies. I suppose it should not be surprising in this era of business practices, but how abhorrent to think that “my schools” get money at the expense of someone else’s. In this disgraceful situation, school districts and teachers’ organizations that might otherwise be able to resist the pressures you so aptly describe to move away from good practices, find that to keep our heads above water, and to keep our children in actual buildings with actual teachers, we have to make compromises we could not have foreseen.

In this light, I think you might find the work of the Pittsburgh Federation of Schools to be of interest. As you know, we are one of the school districts which has received a grant from the Gates Foundation, with the usual strings attached. I believe our local leadership is doing an exemplary job trying to make things work for our children, and for our teachers, under extraordinarily challenging circumstances. This means meeting the demands of the Gates funders but every step along the way, fighting (with some important successes) to resist the negatives. This is neither easy nor mapped out for us by any strong, successful examples. Therefore, I believe, the Pittsburgh teachers are among the trailblazers whose work will have implications for our colleagues and children in other places.

I am confident you are following the work of teachers’ unions in other hotspots. I am trying to stay more abreast of the work my colleagues are doing so that we can share experiences more quickly, help one another avoid pitfalls and gain from our successes. Your book has lit this fire under me in a way I cannot ignore (its worth the heat!).

I am just a teacher—and a parent of public school daughters and a member of our society which, as you so aptly describe, desperately needs our children to have access to real education. While I am a member of the executive board of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, I write this to you only in my individual capacity. In that mode, again please accept my gratitude, and my collegial handshake in this ongoing battle we share.

Thank you for the informative summer read, especially the extensive “Notes” addendum. As a proud classroom teacher with four generations of the like, dating back to the 1880s, I find it most important to remain current of the education debate and your book was very enlightening. It has become increasingly difficult to stay positive about our public schools over my many years with the barrage of negative attacks coming from so many sides. My dear, departed father, who taught through the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s, would often counsel me on fighting the good fight and would end by saying, “It sounds as if nothing much has changed from my time, son, and yet, look how far we’ve come.”

When entering the education debate, I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Robert Frost, “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.”

So Professor, keep up the “good fight” and continue keeping us informed in your balanced way. Our public schools are worth the effort.

I recently read your speech to the 2010 NEA Representative Assembly, and I wanted to write and thank you for standing up for teachers. I just came from a local union meeting. We have not had a raise since 2007 and we are currently at an impasse on our contract and headed to mediation. The biggest sticking point is incremental pay increases. Our administration wants us to “suspend” them temporarily. This, as I’m sure you realize, looks like a very slippery slope right into merit pay.

I have been a teacher for over 25 years. I have experienced the ebbing and flowing of the professional atmosphere many times. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lower ebb. I’m tired of picking up the newspaper and reading about how greedy we teachers are and how we should be glad we have jobs. That’s why your speech struck such a chord with me. I was so happy to find someone who will speak out for us. Again, many thanks from a grateful teacher.

I am writing to you as a great admirer of your work, as an educator, and as a parent concerned about my daughters’ futures. Thank you for your continued efforts to promote a rational discussion on public education, reform, and great public schools. I’ve read your last two books and your recently published article in NEA Today. It seems as though all of your research and rational thought on school reform gets shoved aside when it is easier for elected officials to politicize education reform and for media outlets to score ratings by blaming public school teachers, unions, and reducing student achievement to a single test score. I am a long-time educator in the state of New Jersey where the relentless attacks by the Governor and the Commissioner of Education have really hurt teacher morale. As you are well aware, New Jersey has many of the top public schools in the country and I am very proud to be part of one such district. I’ve invested nearly my entire career as an educator in the West Morris Regional High School District in Long Valley, NJ. The pushes for charter schools and vouchers, the elimination of tenure, and Race to the Top merit-based pay incentives are not the answers to the state’s budgetary woes. Since the Governor is more interested in the national attention that a media war with the NJEA brings him, it seems the ability for the two sides to sit down and have a rational discussion is futile.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I’m not the rare type of teacher that politicians love to highlight as the reason for failing schools. In addition to teaching students of every ability level and mentoring new teachers, I’ve authored numerous published articles, lesson plans, and book reviews. I’ve served as a board member and the treasurer for the New Jersey Council for History Education—the nation’s largest state history council. I present to teachers all over the country on effective history teaching strategies through my work with organizations such as the National Council for History Education and Gilder-Lehrman. I was the recipient of the first Paul Gagnon Prize in History—a national award given to a history teacher demonstrating outstanding historical scholarship. Yet, it seems as though my numerous letters and e-mails to NJ’s politicians have been relegated to the trash bin or “spam” folder. They seem more concerned with riding the tide of bashing educators in order to get re-elected. It’s led me, for the first time in my life, to question my career choice.

As a parent (incidentally, I live in Pennsylvania and teach in New Jersey), I have written to my hometown school board and I have had personal conversations with both board members and PA state legislators about their attacks on teachers, easy “fix-all” plans, and draconian budget cuts. It seems that no matter where I turn, teachers become scapegoats for the state’s financial and political woes. Unfortunately, it seems that the only experience with schools that policymakers have is that they once went. Unfortunately, it’s the students who suffer. I hope that these problems and attacks are effects of the economic downturn, but I fear that it will be tougher to undo the damage that’s already been done. I would encourage you to continue your phenomenal research and writing on education. It’s nice to know that there are those with your credentials and status who may have the ear of policymakers. I hope your efforts yield positive results and some of these politicians see the light. If there is any way I can help, please feel free to contact me.

I am about to begin my twenty-fourth year of teaching. I love what I do, I love the students whom I teach, and the people with whom I work. Our schools are high performing, and children really do receive a top quality education, from start to finish in all subject areas.

I have been following your comments on Facebook for quite some time, and have commented on many of your postings. I have been reading The Death and Life... all while I am following the national trends in education. New Jersey, as you may know, is facing a major crossroads on how education is delivered. This weekend, I had occasion to speak with two friends who teach outside of New Jersey—one in the Raleigh, North Carolina are and the other in Arizona. The horror stories that they shared with me about non-union public schools in NC and “the CEO of our school” and “the company that runs our school” in Arizona have made it impossible for me to sleep.

I guess that I am writing to you today to ask just what people like me can do to help save public school education. I commented on the Facebook group that it’s too bad that the teachers’ unions are only viewed by the American public as being self-preservationist groups concerned only with salaries, benefits, and job security, and not as respected organizations who are trained, college educated experts in their field. I guess that if the American Medical Association argued for salaries, they too would have their opinions and experience discounted.

Anyway, it’s no surprise that the trends in education are being dictated not by educational need, but by economic conditions.

Public educations seems to have no advocates in government. President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Congress and countless governors and state legislators all believe that they have the answers. Every day we seem to hear things about the economy and national debt like, “we can’t leave this problem to our children and grandchildren.” However, I believe that if the trends in education continue, we will not only leave them with an unrealizable debt, but also without the tools and knowledge to address the problem.

A few months ago, my brother and I got into a discussion about unions, tenure, seniority, etc. —the hot-button items. He asked me why I, as a tenured teacher, should enjoy the benefits of seniority and job protection. I turned around and said that I believed the question should be reversed—why shouldn’t other workers have those benefits. Have we taken competition so far in the corporate and business world that we have entirely forgotten about cooperation? Whenever there is a competition—a “race” you might say—there can only be one winner. I think this is the problem with the nation’s educational direction, and indeed with the entire American economic situation. Perhaps rather than education being made to follow a business model, businesses should look to education for the model.

Well, I’m sure this must all seem like I’m babbling on at this point.

I would love an opportunity to meet you, perhaps to work with you or for you. I believe you are the nation’s strongest advocate for public education today. It would be great if you could address the New Jersey state legislature soon, and I hope that your message can reach the President and Congress.

I pray that it’s not too late.

I just finished reading your book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I am a public high school history teacher—about to enter my 36th year of doing what I love: teaching world history to high school students. Thank you so much for your great book. My wife, a retired teacher, said I could have written it, because it expresses in so many ways my beliefs and ideas about public education in our country. I am so frustrated by the present trends and fads (as I call them) taking over our education system. I believe in what I (we—teachers) do so strongly, to the depth of my soul. I love teaching and can’t image either retiring or having it be ruined by the so-called reforms being forced on us. I am writing for two reasons—to thank you for your book, and to ask what we can do.

I also attended the NEA RA in New Orleans this July, and heard you speak. I intend to share both your book and speech with my superintendent and principal, as well as the members of our board of education. I am an active union member, one of the ones being constantly bashed by seemingly everyone. I became active in the union over 30 years ago because I believed it was the only way to attract and retain the highest-quality teachers, by providing them with the best working conditions. I still believe that.

As you perceptively point out, the entire debate about improving our schools, something I am certainly always in favor of, must start with a difficult but necessary discussion about what it is we want our students to learn. On my list would be not only specific factual content of every course, but also such more complex concepts as engendering a love of learning and of history, curiosity, appreciation of music and the arts, sense of community service, creativity and thinking-outside the-box, and the ability to question sources and authority. How can we discuss measuring student performance when we haven’t clearly established what it is we want them to learn? As you point out, it shouldn’t be just math and language arts skills!!

My school, a suburban school of about 2,000 students, just hired a new principal. He is young, ambitious, data-driven, test-driven and “on his way up,” whatever that means. We already have been told we must standardize all exams and instruction, which, to me, in teaching world history, is dangerous. A current event happens, and it is not in the curriculum, and I can’t talk about it, encourage my students to debate it? Our state, in a failed attempt to qualify for Obama’s Race to the Top money, passed a litany of “reforms,” such as creating data banks to track every student and teacher by test results, and finding ways to more closely attach teacher evaluation (and, I assume, eventually pay) to student test scores. All of this troubles me. I wear a shirt that says “A child is more than a test score.” Many parents in the public stop and compliment me, Sadly, the people in charge don’t.

Interestingly, I supported and even worked for the election of Barack Obama. I still like and support him—he is intelligent and courageous in his willingness to attack big problems. But I am slowly losing my enthusiasm for him because of his positions on education. He may find his re-election more difficult than he thinks if he loses the support of teachers, who were huge supporters of his in his first election. I am sending him a letter after finishing this one, expressing much of what I am telling you. Sadly, I am not optimistic my letter will have an impact. I believe he is a good man, but is wrong on this issue.

Let me share some of my thoughts about where we should go from here. As a strong union member, as well as a strong advocate for teachers and teaching our students as well as we can, I believe we do need some real reform. Our union and teachers can’t simply say no to every new idea. Yes, we must embrace accountability, but only that which starts with what we want students to learn, and then measures that in a complex, varied way. We do need to get rid of ineffective teachers, and there are some. We need to find ways to attract and retain the best teachers, and what that means is complex. We need to strengthen our public schools, because they are the only ones that seek to educate everyone. I cringe when I hear that our schools are failing. They are not. We try to teach everyone, no matter what their disability, and that makes us better than schools in many countries that don’t do that. To me, the failure that has caused all this ruckus is inner-city schools with high dropout rates and very low test results. I do believe the roots of those failures are socio-economic, and that we don’t fix those schools without socio-economic change. We need to convince inner-city families that education is important, the key to a better life. My daughter, bless her, is in her fourth year of teaching special education in a middle school in the Bronx, a school that is listed as very dangerous and seems to have several indications of failure. She is very frustrated, by the school administration, the union, the violence in her school, the troubles of her students, and the resistance other teachers have to teaching kids better. She may not last much longer there—her mental health is at issue!

Sooo—what can we do? What do we do? Many of my colleagues suggest I retire. I don’t want to—it would be easy to walk away and say “who cares.” But I do care. I want to fight. Fight not against change, but fight for effective change, against all the bad ideas out there. Schools aren’t businesses, and my students aren’t nuts and bolts on an assembly line. My students learn to love history as much as I do. Getting people to read your book certainly would be a step in the right direction. I believe we (teachers), through our union (our only avenue) need to propose positive, effective, thoughtful reforms. We need to be part of the decision making. Sadly, many of the younger teachers aren’t even interested in that—they are afraid to fight or are apathetic about it. Can WE create a think tank and get funding from some wealthy source? How can we get frustrated, beaten-down teachers to unite and fight back? I suppose our union is our best chance—and I DO have faith that enough of our union leaders and members not only really care, but are open-minded enough to create effective change and then work for it.

Let me close before I babble too much. Thank you again for your wonderful book—I will share it with as many people as I can. If you have suggestions for me, I would welcome them. I care, and always will, about teaching our young people in the best ways possible. Let’s get to it now.

I just finished The Death and Life of the Great American School System, and I really, really enjoyed it and learned a great deal from it. I think you’ve done a real service for genuine educational reform. Incidentally, one reason I’m particularly motivated to write to you is that for some time I’ve found myself on opposite sides from you on educational issues. Another is that I think it takes real courage and deep intellectual, professional, and personal courage to so publicly recant former views.

Although I am not a public figure, I have found it necessary to do something similar. I am a typical San Francisco progressive/liberal/leftist. At one time I was a Maoist (Progressive Labor Party, if you recall that sect), then a strong defender of the Soviet Union. I’m still on the left but hopefully a little saner now and not afraid to identify myself as a Democrat as well as a democrat (and, I suppose, a democratic socialist).

I taught public school from 1968–2005, when I retired (though I still work part-time supervising student teachers for the University of San Francisco). For 34 of those 37 years I taught at the same high school I attended (George Washington HS in San Francisco) where from 1984–2005 I was chair of the Social Studies Department. (I’ve also taught both creative and expository writing, and a few other English classes. I definitely admire your commitment to the importance of good writing.) I think I’ve been quite an excellent teacher for the most part, but I, too, flirted with some of the fads that have so often dotted the educational landscape. It took me a while to realize that a clear and solid curriculum is the backbone of any successful school or school system and that just being a “cool” and popular teacher really isn’t worth a whole lot.

For some time I’ve thought that the two most important educational reforms would be the doubling of teachers’ salaries and the institution of small high schools. I still believe in the first, though with some quid pro quo on teachers’ parts. Sadly, the second, as you point out in what might be my favorite chapter (“The Billionaire Boys Club”) seems not to have been particularly effective where tried. Also for some time I’ve thought that perhaps the worst contemporary trend in public schooling has been the imposition of high-stakes tests. I actually thought I knew a great deal about this issue, but I have to tell you that I learned so much more from your book. Also for some time I’ve believed that we, like many other countries we tend to compare ourselves to, should have a national curriculum. I agree with you that the creation of such a curriculum would be daunting but doable.

Once again, thank you so much for a terrific, and terrifically important, book. And best wishes as you continue with your distinguished career.

I am a high school English teacher in Pittsburgh, PA. I am taking graduate courses to renew my certification and stumbled across your article while researching for an annotated bibliography in a course on research methodology. I found myself nodding in agreement to everything you were saying about choice and accountability. Though I have only been teaching for five years, I have followed a similar course of thought in the past decade, from undergrad through my first five years of teaching.

Our school district and teachers’ union ratified a contract this month that probably qualifies us to pursue “Race to the Top” funds, and I believe the contract will result in irreparable damage to our district and perhaps even to other teachers throughout the country. Among other things, this contract places all newly hired teachers on a merit pay plan based on student scores and links current teachers’ salaries to student scores at least on some level. I believe this contract is basically the result of Washington’s leveraging funding based on high-stakes testing and that the contract will negate many of the positive changes that have been occurring in Pittsburgh.

All this to say thank you for trumpeting your opinion about the incredible flaws in NCLB’s ideology and implementation. I assure you that there are many classroom teachers, myself included, that (though we feel powerless against them) would love to challenge the “think tanks” in Washington and take back our profession.

I am hoping this message gets to Dr. Ravitch.

I have heard in your interviews the “talking point” (not in the propaganda sense) regarding the effects of high stakes testing in terms of narrowing of curriculum—such as against history, etc.

I want to share a true anecdote—just because this actually happened and someone other than powerless me should know about it.

If anybody ever challenges you on this point feel free to use this. I am a high school history and government teacher in Florida (ground zero in this crap) and a few years back, when our principal was finally forced to “freak out” over test scores, we had a meeting prior to the school year regarding strategies for improvement. (In fairness to him, he was “old school” and had resisted paying attention to all of the politics of this, but was now forced by pressure from above to “care.”) He had decided to “use” the 10th grade world history teachers as surrogate English teachers. His plan was to use this prep book they had spent a lot of money on and give it to the history teachers and they would use it TWICE a week in their classes. In other words, they would be required to stop teaching history and teach reading/writing using this book 2 out of every 5 days of instruction. One teacher, concerned about the effect of, essentially, losing 2 days a week of curriculum, raised her hand and asked, and I quote, “What about being able to cover our curriculum?” To which he replied, and I quote again, “History doesn’t matter.” I was shocked, and I wasn’t the only one—there was a hush that fell over the room. And sadly, this guy had been a former history teacher. It was the crystallizing moment when I realized that EVERY prediction about high stakes testing by its critics since the 80s had been right and was now taking root. Not that I had doubted them. But with that tiny exchange, it couldn’t have been more stark. I will never forget this.

Also—quick tip for you on some raw data available. I don’t know about the results in other counties, but when our FCAT scores came out this year, our local paper created a database to look up scores, etc. So I did what I always do—looked up the scores in my school and other schools in my county (try to figure how screwed we are for the coming year) and in the county I used to work at. If you go to the website and look up scores for Orange County high schools, you will find an amazing indictment of charter schools. Quick background: Ever since Jeb Bush pushed this through, Orange County has been an absolute affirmation that SES is what is at work here. The richest school in the county, Winter Park, has been an A school ever since this started more than 10 years ago. The three poorest schools, Evans, Jones, and Oak Ridge, have been D’s and F’s. It couldn’t be more clear. Well, anyway, I always check this pattern to see if it holds, and of course, this year, yet again, it did. BUT, then I checked something that is new: they had data on the Charter Schools! I almost fell out of my seat. Their scores were 9 times out of 10, ABYSMAL! They made our lowest “performing” poverty stricken schools look GOOD. Of course, not a peep from all of the pro-charter school clowns writing for this very newspaper in their columns week after week. Not a PEEP. NO ONE’s talking about it that I can tell. So... you might wanna check it out.

Of course, now Florida is switching to End of Course Exams....which are a LITTLE better... at least now I’ll be judged on what I TEACH, rather than how good an English teacher I am... but still...

Anyway—to be honest I want you to know that back when I was in grad school studying this stuff, you were one of my (political) “enemies”! The fact that you have had the courage and integrity to publicly admit to a change of heart—when so many will just dig in and defend their position no matter what—is so very admirable. I salute you.

Sorry for the rambling...

I understand your e-mail has been flooded with teachers’ comments on The Death and Life of the Great American School System; however, I had to add my humble thanks. This is, without a doubt, the single best treatise on American education I have ever read and a work of great insight. If only administrators who crunch numbers would read this and take heart! I have recommended it to many of my colleagues and hope we can start an issues discussion group based on the book.

I can’t thank you enough for so eloquently voicing what teachers know in their hearts to be true. I am a high school social studies teacher and also a college psychology instructor. My college insists that our students are “customers” and we must deliver instruction as if it were produce in a grocery bag. I am at the point of retirement after 35 years of teaching and I deplore the misdirection education is/has been embracing. My younger hires in the department are an apt example of the mistakes: they are well-meaning but have no depth of knowledge in their licensed areas and have stripped the curriculum down to simplistic pabulum. They teach to their tests and hand out grades as if they were candy. All of this to please the administration with high-scoring students (indicating their “success” in the classroom) and to avoid having to speak with parents who are used to their students being “given” high grades.

Much work remains to be done but please, please continue to write and speak out in favor of what you have advocated so well in your book. Teaching is a humanizing profession, one which prospers only insofar as we can honestly connect with our students, excite them, and challenge them. Mandated testing will serve none of this and will only destroy what education used to bring to America.

Thank you so much!

Thank you for your great book on the history of American education for the last 30 years, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education! Your book much helped put my teaching career in perspective and made me realize just how out of control the current climate is for education (or is it testication now). I just finished my 20th year of teaching in teaching social studies in the state of Virginia and have witnessed how much our current test-driven (rather than test-informed!) culture of education has seemingly taking us a step backward in teaching and learning. Whereas a decade ago I did creative projects and critical thinking exercises with my students, now it is all about content and getting students ready for their tests (be it the state SOLs in Virginia or the AP and IB tests our students take). Even the latest learning management system our school system has bought into has nothing really to do with helping students further their education and our pedagogy rather than to beautifully display test scores for students and various group cohorts that administrators can now easily analyze.

I am a teacher. I just finished reading your book The Death And Life of the Great American School System

I loved it! It has given me hope that someone at the top will understand what kids and teachers are going through.

Has Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Eli Broad, or President Obama commented on your book?

I’d like to know what they have to say.

I am writing to thank you for your latest book, chronicling your journey from educational testing/choice advocate to skeptic. The reasons you provide for your apostasy and what NCLB has promoted and threatens are devastatingly spot-on. I know your examples and insights are accurate because I observed or lived many of them.

Until my retirement a year ago as a public school educator, I had last been a middle school (7–9) administrator (first as an assistant principal and then as a principal) for 16 years in a suburban district. (For what it’s worth, my school, fortunately, always made AYP.) Prior to that, I was an elementary and middle school teacher for 24 years in Philadelphia, where I was also active with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. Like you, my K–12 education was in city schools. My primary understanding of current charter schools has come only through teacher candidates who have taught in them and parents whose children attended.

The NCLB/data-driven/accountability movement, as well-intentioned as it may have originally seemed, has turned out to be an addiction which vote seekers of all stripes cannot resist. It provides them a perfect fit with a sound-bite world and desire for digital, unchallenged conclusions. I do hope your book helps spur some push-back with a commitment toward thriving and real public school “systems” that promote a rich and full curriculum and an understanding of the broad scope of what it takes for students to achieve.

Thank you for writing this clearly written and well-substantiated book in defense of Public Education at this critical juncture. I sent the following message to my public elementary school colleagues here in Eureka, California, and have since purchased five more copies of your book which I am sending to the members of our school board, urging them to read it as well.

I just finished reading your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I have been teaching in Cleveland Schools for 18 years and for most of those 18 years I have felt like standing up and screaming “what the heck are we doing and why are we doing it??!! ” This year I told my students that I had a vision that I would barricade the door on the first day of the test and refuse to give it, get arrested, and twenty years from now be like the Rosa Parks of education.

I am writing to express my gratitude for your writing The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

It gives a glimmer of hope that there are individuals who can still critically analyze the reality of what is going on in the current market-based, data-driven educational climate. I am hoping it will help point out that the market-based-reform emperor has no clothes.

I am the sole teacher of the gifted and talented in a small, affluent, nationally recognized school. You would think that we would not be feeling the carrot-and-stick pressures that are a direct result of NCLB and Race to the Top. Think again.

During the past couple of years, there has been a virtual takeover of our school by a data-driven instruction model, with an emphasis on documentation and accountability. At the primary level, it sometimes seems that the teachers spend more time administering DRA tests than teaching reading. We have high tech test prep programs which translates into computers being periodically inaccessible to the students who need them for other purposes while test practice is happening. There have been a number of complaints about the dumbing down of curriculum by a number of our most experienced teachers. And, frighteningly, our new governor is embracing most, if not all, of the market-place dogma that you so eloquently worked to discredit.

There is likewise a shift in mentality that steers teachers away from doing anything that is not “measurable,” which I feel does not take real learning into account. This can be especially detrimental to the highly creative and gifted students who pretty much live outside the proverbial box, and find, to their horror, that they will be forced back into it. To give a specific example, a lower-grade Socratic seminar was criticized because the students’ discussion did not have a predictable and measurable outcome to specific questions. It would be an insult to even have to explain to anyone the folly of that idea.

All things considered, I am very wary of the idea of the various ways that have been suggested to evaluate teacher performance. You gave some excellent reasons against tying teacher evaluations to student test scores. I would also like to add that administrative evaluations where the emphasis is on how well the teachers are “sticking to the program” are likewise ludicrous.

As a person who had previously had a career as a research analyst, I am well aware of how statistics can be misinterpreted, or even abused to push an agenda. I find it odious that educational decisions are being made by business gurus, test development companies, and statisticians for who have less vested interest in the children than in their profit margin.

Thank you, thank you, for pointing out the fallacies of the current mentality.

I just pray that some of the powers that be will actually listen for once.

I just completed reading your book (The Death and Life of the Great American School System) and everything you write about is accurate. I have been an elementary public school teacher for the past five years, and all the emphasis is on teaching math and reading. While I agree with the framework of NCLB, such as AYP and meeting the needs of all subgroups, I don’t believe multiple-choice testing by itself is the appropriate method of evaluation.

I continually keep reminding my colleagues not to abandon the other essential core subjects such as science, social studies, and health. (We do not have art class.) The best argument I can make to other fellow teachers is to try and integrate these subjects into their reading and math curriculum. I also point out that their students will expand their vocabulary and comprehension, which will lead to higher scores anyway. However, it is a tough sell when all the pressure from the state tests is solely based on math and reading.

Anyway I just wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed your book and appreciate your dedication to the profession of teaching. Take care.

Many roses to you for being honored with the NEA Friend of Education Award at the National Education Association Representative Assembly. I have just received a copy of your acceptance speech from two delegates who heard you address the Assembly.

One wrote Diane’s speech “was really great...There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that she is a great friend of PUBLIC EDUCATION.” The other wrote, “I was impressed by what Diane had to say....It is high time to blow the whistle on NCLB and the insane testing that results.”

You deserve this honor. Your Death and Life of the Great American School System is leading teachers and their organizations to rational positions on educational reforms. Punishments of quality teachers and schools followed false top-down promises based on false assessments.

Grassroots reality started to boom after your book was published. The book is producing ground-up honest messages to education leaders both in and out of teachers’ organizations. Fight for public education. Defend public schools against false prophets. Use honest facts. Reason well. Great.

FIGHTING IS NECESSARY AS 52 NEBRASKA SCHOOLS WERE ON THE HIT LIST THIS SPRING TO BE CLOSED, TEACHERS FIRED, ETC. RESULTING FROM DUNCAN’S EFFORTS. SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS IN OTHER STATES WERE ALSO ON HIT LISTS.

Thanks for all you do for education.

I spent xxx years in a charter running the school for the founder. He lacked education experience, and it showed. However, he was a master of data spin and manipulation. Early on, he had the notice of a lot of top people including Richard Reilly, Gerald Tirrozzi and [our senator]. Currently he is on the NCLB failure list and I am not sure how they handled the “fire the teachers and principals” stage. His lack of teaching and business background are not helping him. You are right on about how charters work. I became a master at keeping out the most difficult and finding ways to move on the most difficult. I think his problem since I left is his greed to fill seats, and he lacks experience in the signals of the troubled enrollment. In one example he took a student in haste, and because his mother was knowledgeable it took me almost 2 years to get him out, and that was because he brought a gun to school. (He is currently incarcerated for dealing drugs I believe.) I see so many of the same problems you have brought up with our current super. He suffers from PHDitis! He thinks every great idea must come from a PHD so we have hired many who have had little experience or success in classroom and have many theoretical ideas, and we run off on the “flavor of the week idea.” We have lots of great catch phrases like “accountability for all”; only the teachers are held accountable and students are not really required to perform. (There is a topic I could write my own book about, but it better sell because I would be out of a job for my criticism of our system.)

Anyway, again thanks for the book. To me you wrote nothing revolutionary. Anybody in the trenches for at least 5 years can see every bit of it.

I started teaching in 1964 and retired in 2006. All but 8 years were in Philadelphia. Five of those years were at a private junior college, three years at community colleges. I also taught adjunct at a state college near where I live. In 1964, like many young teachers, I was idealistic. I was certain we could correct the problems we faced in our public schools. Over and over again the fads, the quick cheap fixes, created by people with little, if any, teaching experience kept coming and going. When NCLB arrived we realized what it was all about, a way to destroy public schools. By 2006 I was the department chair, the “teacher leader,” in our high school Social Studies Department confronted by self-righteous people from the main administration who knew it all and a principal who didn’t enforce discipline in what had been one of the best kept secrets in Philadelphia. I was disgusted and retired, but I hadn’t lost hope. I thought that Barack Obama would change things but you know what happened. When he appointed someone who was not a teacher, an amateur educator, as his Secretary of Education, I was very disappointed. I thought the new president would have realized that NCLB from Bush and now under him was based on the same kinds of faulty research that had fueled all the other “reforms” that had been tried.

I don’t understand how someone as brilliant as Obama can fall for this. Why doesn’t he realize that all he is doing is the same things that have failed before? Why does he expect a different outcome now?

Dr. Ravitch, I, along with thousands of experienced teachers, know what the problems are and how to fix them. You wrote about what we know in your book. Being progressive politically we had high hopes when Obama was elected. Is there any way we can get to him so his administration will do the right thing? Our children are at stake.

I would like to be able to talk to you about these issues.

Thanks for the book and the excellent history writing.

I know you must receive hundreds if not thousands of emails each day. I hope you will take the time to read mine.

I recently finished reading your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I also just finished reading your speech to the recent NEA convention. Thank you for both of those and thank you for all you do and say on behalf of teachers.

I am an ESL teacher in DC Public Schools. I left a very successful [career]and joined the DC Teaching Fellows program—an alternative certification program with which I’m sure you’re familiar. To be honest, I was like most people who go through those programs: I intended to stay for a couple years and return to my previous career/vocation. XXX years later, I’m still here.

I entered that program because I have always enjoyed teaching... However, I live in DC and had heard horror stories about DC Public Schools. As a resident of the District, I wanted to help students and get a firsthand look for myself. I chose ESL because they are a “minority among minorities” in both our school systems and our country.

I was fed the propaganda as I came through the DC Teaching Fellows program that we “newbies” and career switchers were the answer to failed public education. We were to be the reformers who would save the children of DC. Veteran teachers were incompetent, lazy and ineffective. I bought into it. During my first year teaching, I began to see the light. Were it not for those “incompetent, lazy and ineffective” veteran teachers, I probably wouldn’t be teaching any longer. I soon found them to be collegial, helpful, encouraging and possessing a wealth of knowledge and skills which they graciously imparted to me.

Now I have just completed my XXX year as an ESL teacher and am now holding workshops for other ESL teachers and imparting strategies I have learned and developed over the course of my brief teaching career. I would not be in the position to do that had it not been for those veteran teachers who helped me early on.

As you well know, we are under assault nationally and locally here in DC—especially under the “leadership” of Michelle Rhee. I hailed her arrival but soon changed my mind about her. Aside from the fact that she is not qualified for the position she holds, I have watched her repeatedly disrespect teachers in DC as she continues to hold us accountable for things which are totally out of our control. Our union is completely ineffective as it is embroiled in its own internal discord. I could go on and on but I’m sure you already know much about the nightmare unfolding here in DC Public Schools.

What can we as teachers do to combat the current contempt for us and our profession and our unions? Most of us in DC Public Schools are afraid to speak out for fear of losing our jobs now that we have a new evaluation system and there is no recourse for teachers who disagree with the scores we receive from principals and master educators. How can our collective voices be heard? Who, besides you, will stand up for us? I am willing to speak out—and have—because I believe injustice is injustice and must always be spoken out against. I know there is no easy answer. I guess what I’m saying is “thank you” for all you have done and continue to do, but what can we do? You are a beacon of hope to those of us who are on the front lines and are continually assaulted by our principals and superintendents/chancellors. Please continue to speak for us and speak out against the assault on public educators. You give many of us the courage to speak out as well.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I just completed reading your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System and wanted to simply say thank you. In the fall, I will be entering my 19th year of teaching in a public urban setting. I have been very active with the Toledo Federation of Teachers, home of the teacher peer review system, that you mentioned in your book. Also, two of our comprehensive high schools were converted to small school several years ago through Knowledge Works. Sadly, one closed this year due to low enrollment.

It is refreshing to read an author who admits to a complete change in philosophy and backs it up with data. Your entire book hit home for me as though it pertained directly to Toledo Public Schools and the trials we face on a daily basis. Your summation of the importance of curriculum justifies what educators already knew.

On behalf of my fellow peers, thank you for standing up to the billionaires and reformists who continue to wave their magic wand.

I write again so soon because I neglected to thank you for the great service you are doing for American education and American democracy. Although there are others who are speaking up for kids, teachers, and public schools, yours is the one voice that is being heard by the public at large and—I hope—by those in power. Many of us just keep on doing what we can and hoping that, ultimately, our voices will be loud enough and persistent enough to penetrate the wall of ignorance and mean-spiritedness that surrounds our lawmakers.

For me, the great glory of the American school system of the recent past was its inclusiveness and forgiveness. I think first of all of the World War II veterans who made careers and lives because of the GI Bill, of myself who never would have gone to college if it hadn’t been for a state scholarship and a waitress job, and then of three of my own children who were given second chances to make it through college when they blew their initial opportunities. Finally, I think of the (too few) poor and minority kids who have made it because some schools and some teachers cared about them. For the sake of all the children now in school and those to come, we must do whatever it takes to rescue our public schools, return them to their past virtues, guide them past the potholes of false reform, and push them forward to the greatness they can yet achieve.

I am quite certain that, growing up in the shadow of Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, I am a descendant of one of the revolutionaries of the mid-18th century. I, too, am a professional educator, with over thirty years of diverse experiences as a classroom teacher, building-level instructional leader, and a district-level administrator. My experiences range from the western mountains of Virginia and North Carolina, to literally the streets of San Francisco; with learning experiences in Ohio and urban centers of Florida. Over the past decade, I have helplessly watched our public schools morph into “learning environments” with negative cultures, authoritative leadership styles and what I call administrivia! One can only imagine the consequences I have faced for voicing my difference of opinion. From my perspective, my fellow colleagues could be compared to lemmings, or simply, educators who feared retribution, if they voiced their differing opinions.

Increasingly, frenetic district administrators and school-level instructional leaders have exponentially increased their stinging attitudes/behaviors, their directives, and cumbersome administrivia. My last year as an instructional leader could be characterized as simply rebellious. I knew that our students were capable of learning; yet, I employed a totally opposite strategy to increase students’ learning—a positive school culture with collaborative leadership/teacher empowerment, and I diminished the effects of administrivia. I recall telling our team to concentrate their efforts on teaching the individual student and making the all-important connection with each student. Furthermore, I stated that if our attention was on the individual, our students would achieve at a maximal level. Within one year, the students at our school (highest reduced/free meal percentage in the district) scored an average of 26 point increase on Virginia’s Standards of Learning End-of-Year Assessments!

Upon the publication of your book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, I immediately obtained a copy and read it cover-to-cover! With a sigh of relief, your words served as evidence that I was not living in the Twilight Zone or simply having a nightmare about the state-of-affairs of our public schools! Sadly, your book is singing to the choir. Only those who have the power to make meaningful and progressive reform of our public schools are the true stakeholders—PARENTS and others who are immune or resistant to a subtle form of brainwashing!

One sentence in your book was quite provocative, “Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.” That statement serves as a catalyst for those who have the strength and the convictions to inspire the true stakeholders out of their sense of complacency and unwarranted trust of today’s policymakers for the good of our children and their futures!

A great decision of our time is quickly approaching in four years; yet, the American populace remains unaware of the dire consequences. Those with the knowledge and understanding are obligated to convey to all stakeholders the issues involved, and the resulting consequences. I certainly would appreciate your thoughts about achieving such a goal. I, do, have some of my own. Thank you for your attention to my concerns!

I am Mrs. Ratliff. I am being forced to retire.

I’ve taught English at Wilson High School, in Washington, DC, for fifteen years. For my AP students, my classes, according to the students, are the hardest but most rewarding classes they’ve taken. I assign thirty 500-word essays for my juniors, fifteen 1,000-word essays for my seniors. I read and comment on all of ‘em. We read nine novels, many short stories, articles from the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. Students take seven essay tests, all of which I read and grade.

I also teach grade-level students in a course where there is constant reading and writing. At our large urban high school, there’s a huge gap between AP students and grade-level students. I try to bridge this as best I can. Students in those classes seem to appreciate my respect for them and my efforts to provide all students with decent education.

Three years ago, I helped students revive our dormant school newspaper. We’ve published monthly issues for the past three years. For the past dozen years, I’ve been faculty advisor for the six theater productions we do each year, building sets, settling disputes, keeping the drama on the stage, and not off of it.

Two years ago Chancellor Michelle Rhee hired a new principal. He enforced a level of discipline and conformity in the classroom, using the new system-wide evaluation IMPACT program. Over the years, I’ve never received very high numbers on any of these evaluation instruments. I’ve depended on the principal understanding that there were many ways to be an effective teacher. Not any more. If I don’t retire next week, I face being terminated for low IMPACT scores. This would mean loss of pension and health insurance. For a 62-year old cancer survivor, and my 61 year old wife, we’ve got to avoid that prospect.

There’s been a letter-writing campaign by parents and students, seeking to assert my value as a teacher and contributor to the school community, to no avail. Our school newspaper did publish articles this year, critical of the principal and some of his policies. My hunch is that this is what is driving the effort to place low classroom evaluation numbers on me.

I was taking this assault rather personally. I thought I was the only one getting creamed. Thanks for writing your recent The Death and Life of the Great American School System. It is some comfort to realize I’m caught in a tsunami. I wanted to let you know, too, how all this misbegotten ideology drives away a hard-working, dedicated, passionate high school English teacher.

If you’re curious, I could go on, both with levels of details, and documentation of what I’ve said here. But from reading your book, I imagine you know this sad story quite well. This is a consolation, that someone does understand.

I wish to congratulate you on your book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Your current conclusions are those that I have been attached to for the last thirty five years. I have been at odds with the testing mania, choice, accountability and the many other panaceas that have crept over the educational landscape. I have, in fact, a list of panaceas that we have tried for short periods of time, never long enough to see if they work.

Although born in Brooklyn in 1938, my wife and I came to Pennsylvania in the early sixties and have been advocates for rural schools in our Commonwealth for many years. In the early 1990s, the organization that I helped to start, the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools (PARSS) sued the Commonwealth on the basis of an inequitable funding system. We were in court for about 10 years. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania punted on the issue and said that the issue was not justiciable (the only court in the U.S. not to give a yes-or-no answer).

After going through the chairs of education, I retired to join my wife’s consulting firm (she pays me $5,000 a year, but the benefits are excellent). The firm is devoted to seeing that rural children have an opportunity to go to college. We established two rural scholarship programs, funded by two billionaires, Andy McKelvey of Monster.com and Gerry Lenfest (sold his cable company to Comcast for 7.5 billion dollars). I am now on the Pennsylvania State Board of Education. Sometimes, I am the lone voice for rural schools and for a diminution of our confounded reliance on high stakes testing. I have succeeded in getting an 11th grade test dumped by 2013 to be replaced with end-of-course tests (how about that for going backwards to regents exams). These end of course tests can be created by the local school district and validated, or one can use the state created test (more dough for testing companies).

I have purchased and distributed your book to all of the 21 state board members. A private citizen has purchased 100 of your tome and has distributed them to many members of the legislature. All this to say thank you for taking a fresh look at what is happening to our public school system in the U.S. I still believe that it is the best system in the world, even when our leaders compare us to Singapore (happy caning), China and India. Do we really want to be like them? Best wishes to you in your future endeavors. As with J.D. Salinger, I await your next publication. Hope it is not going to take as long as his will.

I am writing to follow up and let you know that we ended up raising over $2200 and purchased 100 copies of your book.

Today a group of 6 school board members from around the state went to Harrisburg to deliver those books at the Capitol. It gave us an opportunity to discuss these issues with several of our legislators. We are still working on getting some press.

It takes time and effort to turn a large ship—thanks again for writing The Death and Life; I am hoping it will help us mobilize and focus the effort needed to do so.

I understand that the Delaware County Intermediate Unit has invited you to speak to a Southeastern Pennsylvania regional group of school board members, administrators and other education advocates. I am hoping that you might be able to fit us into your busy schedule.

Here’s an update on the three hedge fund managers and charter school supporters who contributed to State Senator Anthony Williams gubernatorial campaign; school choice has become the crack cocaine of foundation and political giving:

“Pa. ’s Record Campaign Donors: Trio Give $5 Million Plus to Sen. Williams”

No one had ever donated anywhere close to this much cash for a political campaign in Pennsylvania. Previous reports showed that a trio of executives at Susquehanna International Group in Bala Cynwyd already had ventured far into historic territory by giving at least $3 million to support State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams’ Democratic primary race for governor.

“The three executives had said through a spokesman before the primary that they were backing Williams because they liked his stance on school choice, particularly the use of publicly funded vouchers to enable more families to pay for private education. ”

Thank you for being the voice in the wilderness for education. I just finished reading The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I have been hoping that someone with influence would write that book since the inception of NCLB.

I appreciate your suggestions in the last chapter, but what can be done to reform the reformers? When Pat Robertson and Reverend Al Sharpton are on the same side on educational issues, what hope is there that the wrongheaded policies that are destroying education will change? What can we as educators do or say? No one has listened to us for nine years.

Do you have any suggestions for actions we can take as teachers? I hope it’s not too late.

Thank you for your attention. You are one of the few who do pay attention.

Recently I have felt compelled to do things that I would never have done before. Last year I spoke at 5 school board meetings, carefully writing my 3 minute speeches to express my mounting feelings of discontent. I caught your interview on C-Span during Spring break and immediately went out and bought your book. I read it in 2 days. It was so exciting to read your words because they spoke my thoughts and feelings so clearly. I had a teacher in the 7th grade named Mr. James Herndon (he’ll always be Mr. Herndon to me). It was a contained class for labeled “immature” students (I am mentioned twice in his chapter “The Stream of Life” in How To Survive in Your Native Land). He remains today the single most influential teacher I have ever known. While rereading his book Notes From A School-Teacher I noticed your comment on the back cover. Yes indeed the world of the policymaker is light years away from the world of the schoolteacher, these truths have not changed in over 35 years, or if you count back to when I was in 7th grade, well let’s just say ... since 1967?

My school has decided with its new Principal/Superintendent on board that buying into “programs” is the answer to all of our discipline and low performance problems. So we now have Bridges to Kindergarten, Pathways to a Positive Future, Steps to Respect, Turn Around/No Excuses University, and Race to the Top...all this “walking” is exhausting...where is the teaching? where is the content? I feel like a hamster on a wheel moving, working, yeah, getting tired but getting nowhere really.

Thanks for your words.

Thank you so much for researching and writing The Death and Life of the Great American School System and thanks especially for your extensive documentation and cogent analysis of the evidence.

I teach high school math and science in a small town in northwest Colorado. Our staff experienced conditions similar to those you describe in the San Diego school system until the then principal moved up to superintendent in another district (bless them). Our new principal at least appreciates good classroom instruction and has some common sense, but we continue to labor under the mandates of NCLB and new state follies. It’s really discouraging: we do our best to help kids learn and grow, but we’re told we’re never good enough, test scores are never good enough. Your book provides a lot of comfort and hope. It is reassuring to know that our (general faculty) concerns about testing and accountability are shared by someone with your credentials who can convey the evidence and the message.

Thank you for your timely response on the current state of public education under NCLB in The Death and Life of the Great American School System. As a high school principal I am frustrated about the disruptive nature of this legislation. As Dr. Seymour Sarason so eloquently said many times, the standardized test scores tell us next to nothing about what goes on in a classroom on a daily basis.

I constantly feel that I walk a tightrope as I try to promote good teaching while playing the game of standardized testing. I can tell you that I have many good teachers—from the same mold as Mrs. Ratliff, at Eastside High School in Greenville, SC. I believe it is my job to protect them from the disruptive nature of current educational policy, to allow them to provide the very best educational experiences for students. This is no small task, as any downturn in test scores or the graduation rate sends waves of concern about possible problems at the school.

All this occurs while we try to promote sustained silent reading, argumentative research and writing, inquiry-based instruction and other student-centered instruction that attempts to make the theoretical nature of high school courses more relevant for students. Then, the 67 question multiple-choice U.S. History End of Course test, for example, provides no assessment of students’ development of the historian’s craft of researching and writing. You can guess what gets sacrificed as teachers worry about judgments made about them based on these test scores!

I completed my dissertation in 2007 and published it as a book, Breaking the Cycle of Failed School Reform: What Five Failed Reforms Tell Us. I based my qualitative research on Dr. Sarason’s ideas about why reform predictably fails. I started from the beginning of public education in America, with the Lancastrian Plan, and researched the development of schooling and reform to the present day. Much to my chagrin, I found that our school reform attempts follow the same path and they all fail as a result.

It is my hope that Arne Duncan and other educational policy experts will read your book and gain an understanding of the field of education and what is at stake at this moment in time. Based on what I have learned about policy experts to this point, I know that I should not hold my breath on this. Furthermore, I think we are finding out that Mr. Duncan and his Race to the Top are taking NCLB to new lows. I again say thank you for your analysis of the current state of educational policy, and maybe it can serve as a beacon of light in this moment of turbulence.

I just finished your book and I want to thank you for all that you’ve done on behalf of public education, for articulating so clearly what so many of us educators are thinking, and for helping us understand the route of public education and how it ended up where it is today. Your book has inspired me to continue to stand up “to improving the schools, infusing them with the substance of genuine learning and reviving the conditions that make learning possible.”

I am a fourth-grade teacher in Mankato, MN and have two children enrolled in the district. I am honored to be in the position that I am in. I feel so fortunate to wake up every day and have the opportunity to work toward a common goal of helping our students to reach their potential and become all that they can be. To quote John Dewey, I feel strongly “that what every parent wants for their own children, so too should a community want for all its children.” I am increasingly concerned about the direction that education in the U.S., and Mankato in particular, is going as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act that was passed in 2002. As a result of this concern that I feel on a regular basis in the classroom and at home with my own two children, I have spent many hours researching NCLB and reading numerous articles and books written by leading educators in the U.S. to get their perspective on the latest information regarding the affect of this law on education and our public schools. I recently finished reading your latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I wish that all educators and policy makers would read it. To say that I am deeply concerned about what you and these other educators say about the impact of this law on K–12 education, and the direction that education in general is going, is an understatement. Sadly, our schools have become “test prep centers” forcing students to memorize correct answers for standardized tests and teaching to the test, reducing instructional time for subjects not required by NCLB, limiting the quality of education in an effort to raise test scores. I fear that if we don’t do something to change the perception that high test scores are equivalent to a good education we are going to have a generation of students who receive an inferior education and look upon learning as a means to a high test score rather than as a lifelong goal. We may have students who score high on a reading test but won’t want to read tomorrow. I also know the frustration of teachers who are rapidly becoming burned out by the ever-increasing mandates being imposed upon them in an effort to raise test scores. We are so busy trying to appease these NCLB mandates handed down to districts, which in effect censor teachers and force conformity, that we often neglect to stop and question the pedagogy of all that we are doing. True teaching cannot be done under such circumstances. To once again echo the words of John Dewey, “Education should be seen as a process of living, not solely a preparation for future living. To take children seriously is to value them for who they are right now rather than seeing them as adults-in-the-making.”

Thank you again, Diane, for helping to give me hope that American public education can be saved. I am going to accept your challenge “to create a renaissance in education, one that goes well beyond the basic skills that have recently been the singular focus of federal activity, a renaissance that seeks to teach the best that has been thought and known and done in every field of endeavor.”

In closing, I would like ask you what can I do to be most effective in promoting change.

I manage money and I’m black. I am distressed by the barrage of mail I’ve been getting from fellow money managers who somehow think there is a fairly easy solution to educating the “underclass” by using charter schools. I’d like to share with you a few points from my experience which may help you contextualize my concern.
 

With my experiences as a backdrop, I’m somewhat concerned that groups such as DFER (Democrats for education reform) are receiving so much positive press.

As I have begun to research education I wonder if you can point me in the right direction?
 

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I read your article last evening. As a classroom teacher with 30+ years experience, I just completed the absolute worst year in the classroom I have ever endured (and it was NOT the fault of my students—they were great). This year I was told what to teach, when to teach, how to teach, how long to teach, who to teach, who not to teach, and how often to test. My students were assessed with easily more than 120 tests of one shape or another within the first 6 months of the school year. My ability to make decisions about what is best for my students was taken away by an overzealous attempt to impose “consistency” within my grade group. My school hired an outside consultant who threatened us with our jobs, demanded that everyone comply, and required us to submit data on test results on a weekly basis. If your class didn’t do well, you were certainly going to be in trouble. In addition, my class was visited at least twice a month by the consultant, two superintendents, principal, assistant principal, reading coach, math coach, and sometimes even more people. If I was not teaching exactly what they wanted to see, I was in trouble. My ability to have any academic freedom was completely taken away and my students were denied the best education I could provide for them. Please understand, my credentials are impeccable. I am board certified, have a master’s degree in educational leadership, have been documented with the highest scores on my team, and absolutely love what I do. I want to be a teacher, but just can not continue within this toxic educational environment.

This year I have tried to speak out against these many disgusting practices of testing, teaching to the test, or as you called it, “institutionalized cheating.” I have felt like a voice in the wilderness. The response has been: “Get used to it. It is what is coming down the pike.” We are in desperate need of voices like yours to bring sanity back to education. Please, please, please continue to speak out about this debacle and help us restore the focus of education back to the child and NOT the test score. I will enthusiastically share your article with fellow educators in an effort to save the future of public school education. I just wish I could do more. If you have any other positive suggestions as to what I can do to help, please let me know.

Thank you for speaking out. Let’s hope it is not too late.

I just finished reading your book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I ordered it in advance, based upon the early reviews I read in Education Week. I have since been talking it up at my school, and both my Principal and Assistant Principal have purchased your book, too. Much of your book’s allure was its careful review of the history of education in America. I have been teaching for 24 years and fit the description of a poor beginning teacher. I had no master teacher to help; I just found a way that works—at the expense of a couple of years of students trying to learn from me! Reading your accounts of the stirrings of “Back to Basics” movement and early forms of standardized testing was like a walk down Memory Lane. I remember hearing about the “Pendulum” from the older teachers, but I embraced each new trend with enthusiasm and rigor. Eventually, I became disillusioned, too, with each new program and never getting the results I had hoped for. Your book helped me understand the “why and how” of each new movement. Now, I am tired and discouraged.

I voted for Obama, hoping that he would “see the light.” I have become increasingly disappointed after his Race to the Top program. He is the same old corporate puppet in a new disguise. I believe that we are witnessing the end of equal opportunity by equal access to equal education in America. I am sad for the recent and future generations of “testing” kids. Our schools cannot teach quality, when we teach multiple-choice tests. Our nation may never recover from the losses of multiple generations of drone lessons. It is no wonder so many kids play exciting video games full of color and creative plots, when their classes have zero creativity. As we close equal access to quality, we become less of a democracy. The America for which my father fought for (and for which I teach with pride) will become a video available on a side aisle in Walmart.

I hope it’s not too late. I plan to teach for several more years and want to take action, but I do not know where to start. What can I do?

Thanks again, Diane. You are my new hero!

I recently finished your new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, and I wanted to thank you. My wife and I started teaching as part of Teach For America in 1999 (we met in Houston!). Your book clarified the last ten years for me. We were stuck in the trees and could not see the forest, so to speak. Now I have a more complete understanding of the challenges I faced as a public school teacher in Baltimore, then New Orleans, then Connecticut.

I want you to know that there are many teachers out there like my wife and I, who consider our craft an art but are left silent by the well-funded and unceasing calls for charter schools, vouchers, blind accountability and “teaching to the test.” I think your life’s work, talent and insight make you the perfect person to aggressively lead the backlash against the current state of education. You have the support of many more than you think. Please keep making your voice heard, for the rest of us.

Thank you for writing your book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. It was heartening to me to read your comments and support for public education. More then ever before, teachers and public education are under an extraordinary attack by the government. As you so aptly point out, this attack is not just from the right, but from the left as well. People with no understanding of education or of children and families are making decisions that we will all live to regret.

I saw in the late 1980s when the business community was outraged that we had students graduating from high schools and universities, who could not work cooperatively with others to problems solve and to develop creative solutions. This was after nearly a decade of “back to basics” where teachers were instructed by the state department of education to avoid the methodologies that addressed those concerns. It was no surprise to teachers these problems arose, but how unfortunate for those students who were denied the education teachers wanted to supply and knew would serve them well.

President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are a huge disappointment to me. With their stance on public education, I could have voted Republican and gotten the same results. Dismantling public education to me, is analogous to dismantling democracy. This drive toward the use of data as the sole indicator of student and teacher success is on a path to disaster. I have been a teacher since 1973 and I have never seen more irresponsible and arrogant attitudes toward public education as I am now experiencing on both a state and federal level. In the past, as educators, we knew we could wait out the current “reform” movement. We knew politicians or administration would come to their senses. This time, the damage may be too great to repair.

In the state of New Jersey, our Governor, Chris Christie, in his irrational desire to “break” the teachers’ union, is willing to sacrifice our neediest students with his budget cuts and denigration of teachers. His is willing to cut the school breakfast program, literally taking food out of the mouths of our children, to force concessions from teachers. Where has the morality gone in our elected officials? When did it happen that teachers became the enemy of the people instead the problem solvers?

My concern is that leaders who need to read and understand the issues you raise in your book are not doing so. There is a vision, no matter how misguided, that they will persist in achieving. President Obama and Secretary Duncan believe their “business model” will work to improve education. It will not. Bullying and demeaning teachers will not help to forge the personal relationships with students and families which are necessary for a successful school and educational system. Trust is built and sustained over time.

I know in your book, you point out the 1960s and 1970s as a time of “do your own thing” in education. There have been many publications that malign that time as one detrimental to public education in our country. When I look back at the beginning of my career, I see it differently. Out of that time of freedom and experimentation came the roots of reading and writing workshop, literature circles using authentic children’s literature instead of basal readers to engage our students in reading and thinking, the use of manipulatives in teaching mathematics, inquiry-based science, the use of strategies for classroom management now taught through the Northeast Foundation and Responsive Classroom, and the work done by the Johnsons in the cooperative learning model. When teachers are given support and freedom to solve problems, it can happen. It is not just the data that helps to inform instruction. For many years we had little data, but our students thrived.

Do we have problems in public education in our country? Definitely. Can continuous and meaningful professional development for teachers in which they have investment and choice help? Yes. Can support for students and parent help? Yes. No one wants to address the issue of poverty in our nation. Living in poverty, with poor prenatal and early childhood health care makes a difference. Having urban children exposed to much greater amounts of lead makes a difference in their cognitive abilities and physical health needs. Absenteeism is a problem, violence is a problem. Blaming teachers and thinking data collection will solve the problems is missing the point completely. I am so happy you have pointed this out in your book.

Consistent, coherent, sustained and rigorous curricula, with a common set of national standards, are necessary for success. This can be achieved through thoughtful and informed leadership, effective tools for evaluation, and teacher support. We need to make changes to our educational system. It is clear we are not achieving at the level we would all like. Is the answer a national curriculum? I’m not sure that is possible, but to continue along the present path is also unacceptable.

All our students need to be educated to the best of their abilities, but I do not believe all need to attend college. I am always grateful to the technicians who service my appliance, the mechanics who fix my car, the grocery clerks, the trash collectors and every person in my community who serves an important role through his or her work. The problem as I see it, is the lack of respect for the people who do those jobs. They need to be honored and valued and not seen as failures of the system because they chose not to attend college. Unrealistic goals for schools hurt all students. More technical schools are needed, but I never hear anything about funding for them. In New Jersey, there are waiting lists to get into them.

Clear goals in education are important. Equally important is the teacher’s role to guide, stimulate, and excite students about learning. Teaching our students to know themselves and others, to value their own strengths, and appreciate those of others, and to become citizens who can think and solve problems are often those intangibles that don’t show up on “the test.”

Please continue to be the voice of reason in what feels like a great void of clear and rational thinking in regard to the direction we need to take to save public schools in our country.

Thank you for The Death and Life of the Great American School System. As an educator actively seeking leadership opportunities that do not take me out of the classroom, I found the critical overview of the trends and ideas of the last thirty years to be a valuable framework for understanding the forces that shape my professional life.

As a president of an NEA local, I was particularly interested in the chapter entitled “What would Mrs. Ratliff do?” This chapter covered its subject admirably, but left one important point out.

The traditional teacher salary schedule, combined with the pension system, is a deferred compensation system. In other words, a teacher accepts a lower salary in the early years with the understanding that it will be made up in later years through professional compensation and a pension that guarantees a dignified retirement. This is a social as well as legal contract, with a clear set of rules that give teachers a road map to a middle class existence. Millions of educators have bought into this social contract, and invested their careers and educations with the expectation that the modest rewards of the system would come through playing by the rules.

The important point is that millions of people played by the rules with the expectation that the rules would be followed by decision makers. This has several important policy implications.

First and most important is tenure—a hot-button word in this day and age! Without a robust system for due process in the workplace, the system of deferred compensation becomes a scam. In order to reap the deferred rewards of the system teachers need a reasonable expectation that they can last long enough in that system to receive in later years what they were denied in earlier years. Due process, negotiated by unions and administered through a strong system of grievances and arbitration, speaks to that expectation.

What is unfair about efforts to change teacher compensation is that government has reaped the benefits of the deferred compensation system up front—paying younger, less educated teachers less means decision makers have less revenue to raise. The bulk of school budgets here in Vermont pay for teacher salaries and benefits. The effect is exaggerated by the fact that some 50% of teachers wash out in the first five years.

So when I look at merit pay schemes, conversion of pensions to 403b plans, proposals to end tenure, and complaints about the uselessness of graduate study, I smell decision makers trying to weasel out of the back end costs of a system that has fiscally benefited the public for fifty years.

I suppose I would be less suspicious if I saw any sign that the intent was to pay teachers fairly and proportionally throughout their careers. But I do not believe our leaders have the political spine to raise the revenues necessary to achieve this goal, especially during a painful recession. No, the pain of the recession is turned against educators. Decision makers double down on teachers, combining the pain and fear of crisis-driven layoffs with threats of permanent structural changes to the social contract on which millions have built their lives and careers.

To this end Michelle Rhee got it at least partially right in Washington, DC. Agreeing to offer teachers increases in compensation in exchange for opting out of the traditional system is in fact a morally defensible approach—teachers get paid at the time they do the work instead of having to wait for it. But funding this change with foundation money is both politically gutless and unsustainable. It is politically gutless because it evades the hard decisions about where the revenue to fund a public good is going to come from. It is unsustainable because what happens to this new compensation system when the political and economic winds shift and foundations switch their focus and their cash to other initiatives? I fear that the teachers who opt for the new system will find themselves bereft.

The tradition of salary grids, with its system of steps and columns to reward teachers for longevity and education, has served education tolerably well for a long time. Like any system it has flaws, and some people will game it. We have to understand what we, as a society, will be giving up in making structural changes to the tradition of teacher compensation. Can we really predict the consequences?

The salary schedule is a complex and arcane topic, involving considerable technical understanding as well a good feel for math. In my experience, a large proportion of teachers fail to understand their own compensation (another cost saving for school districts). Due process, too, is complex and arcane, involving an understanding of contract language, past practice, timelines, and a body of case law built up from decades of court decisions and binding arbitration. These two systems are inextricably intertwined. Understanding the whole requires subtlety of thought and broad grasp of a variety of disciplines.

Unfortunately, this type of understanding does not lend itself easily to a world of sound bites and inflammatory rhetoric. On the other hand, representing this whole as a matter of basic fairness speaks to a fundamental middle class American value—playing by the rules. Everyone understands fairness.

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your fantastic new book. I’m a public school math teacher in Naperville, IL, just finishing my third year in the classroom and I felt like I didn’t know much about educational policy—but your book has helped quite a bit with that.

I know you get emails like this pretty often, but I teach in a very affluent community, in a school known for its quality education. I love my job, and I feel like I’m very good at it, but I wonder if I’m really helping the students who need the most help. That’s clearly not the case. When I think about what it would take to pull me from my current job and put me into an inner city school (say, in the Chicago Public School system), the list of incentives would have to be pretty long... I think that’s what’s so frustrating as an educator. From what I’ve seen, so many of the teachers who have excellent educations themselves and are *real* teachers in every sense of the word (kind of like your Mrs. Ratliff) have no desire to work in those schools and do everything they can to get into schools like mine—including young teachers who are graduating from their certification programs. I don’t see the city schools doing enough to persuade that group to teach there. But I hope that can be fixed in time.

Anyway, thanks for reading this email. I am certainly paying more attention to stories about this topic after having read it.

I just finished reading your wonderful and thought-provoking new book on American education.

Not that I look for confirmation of my own views, but it was nice to see someone with your expertise dissect many of the facile claims made by education reformers.

Just from my experience in a teaching program, the bulk of the program was dedicated to teaching strategies and classroom management. When we would ask what specifically to teach, we were told to follow the state standards. But as you point out in your book, the standards were mostly just “vacuous verbiage.” Fortunately for me and my cohort, my school received a grant from the U.S. government to improve HS history education. This allowed our program to buy TCI’s “History Alive” curriculum, as well as bring in a trainer to give us 40 hours of training on how to use the program correctly. This was a tremendous benefit for my program, which got me wondering about all the school districts that do not get the benefit of a grant providing them high-quality curriculum in particular subjects. This disparity in access to curriculum must result in disparate outcomes, which I believe gets back to your point about developing strong curriculum and standards.

On to my question...

Recently with the controversy over textbooks in Texas, I started to wonder why at the HS level there exists a strong textbook industry. There seems to be a lot of wasted money on textbooks. Here is my question: Why hasn’t the federal government—or even at the state level—hired a group of education experts to write textbooks that can be put in the public domain, allowing each school to download and copy the book and distribute it to their students? With a method like this, it seems costs could be reduced considerably, and with new educational research, modifications could be made to the text to keep it current with the most effective teaching strategies. Since the books will essentially be copied or printed from say a PDF file, there would be no need to have bulky, expensive 2nd/3rd/4th editions of books.

Maybe I am just naive, but is there a reason the textbook industry gets a piece of this lucrative pie?

Finally, just as an anecdote about markets and school performance. I taught in Korea for close to four years at different English academies. Korea has a very competitive English school market. But, as almost anyone who has taught at a Hagwon in Korea can tell you, this competition most certainly does not lead to better-performing schools. Sometimes markets produce junk, and the private English academy system in Korea mostly does that. What competition led to, or at least from what I saw, were two things: parental tyranny and fads. Keeping parents happy was a constant concern of the directors, especially since the market was so competitive an unhappy parent could pull their kid out at any time and enroll their child five minutes later at a school one door down. Schools also, similar to businesses, were constantly marketing the newest, most exciting, and most effective way to teach English, leading to a mass exodus from one school to the hot new thing, only to have the process repeat itself again in the end. Overall, competition didn’t make things better, it just ensured there was not continuity.

Again, thank you for writing a very good book.

I just purchased 17 copies of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

I purchased your book in such numbers so I could send a copy to each member of my state board of education (North Carolina). I will also send a copy to my state’s governor (Bev Perdue) and two prominent business leaders connected to national school reform efforts. My plan is, for what it is worth, to send your book and a brief letter to explain why I am opposed the RttT. I have spoken publicly against teacher tenure in the past and am not entirely opposed to standardized testing. I cannot, however, support RttT’s apparent emphasis on connecting student test scores to teacher evaluations (even though my students have been assessed to have achieved “high growth” on value-added measures each of the last four years).

I am, basically, utterly disappointed by RttT and am sending copies of your book for policymakers to read because such an effort seems like the most beneficial action I can take right now.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are ever in North Carolina. I would also greatly appreciate any advice you might provide to help classroom teachers like me. What can we do to get policymakers to take us seriously?!!!

I just finished a first draft of my review and your interview with me concerning some of the issues you raised in your book and wish to thank you again both for your critique and responses to my questions. I am sure you have been heartened by many favorable comments concerning both your writing and your personal commitment (as well as savaged by your detractors) but I would like you to know that since teaching has been my life for over forty-five years, and that of my parents before me, stretching well over sixty years, I wish there were more people like you in the education field with the wisdom, personal integrity and—I believe—courage to present your ideas unblinkingly in an area that has become too cluttered with ideology, political machinations and intellectual dishonesty.

Although I certainly understand if you have no time to pursue our correspondence further, I can say that in this area, I feel I have finally found an intellectual soul-mate who has the highest standards for excellence in education and is as unafraid of criticizing, as I try to, the intellectual straight-jacket of “political correctness” as you are of the crassness of “marketplace” ideology in place of learning.

Using “Measure and Punish,” Bellevue East Senior High and 51 other Nebraska schools were recently labeled Persistently Low Achieving Schools by the Nebraska State Department of Education and the Governor by speeding up deadlines and making stricter No Child Left Behind measurements.

The graduation rate requirements for high schools was changed from 65 percent to 75 percent, and lack-of-proficiency reading and mathematics subgroup test scores were used earlier than required by NCLB to produce the 52 Persistently Low Achieving School designations.

School districts are being bribed with American Recovery Act funds. The school districts have about a month to apply, if they wish, for these funds for their PLAS and to accept the NCLB punishments that come with the funds.

These are the NCLB punishments which you have discussed so well.

Attached is an issue of Education News which I started 44 years ago and still write for and edit for the Bellevue Public Schools. Also attached are three stories that I could not fit into this issue. Because we only have one more issue before school closes this week for the summer, only one or two of these three will be printed.

Thanks for your words and thoughts in The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

This Old Teacher tried to use your valuable words and thoughts fairly and accurately in Education News.

I enjoy your Mrs. Ratliff. I taught English for 50 years, 41 at Bellevue East Senior High and 15–20 years (part time) at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I also enjoyed one year on a teaching Fulbright at government College for Men in Peshawar, Pakistan. Teaching has been fun.

Your writings uplift the spirits of educators depressed by attacks on American education.

If you would like updates on NCLB in Nebraska, I would be happy to send them to you for your national collection.

Best wishes to you and your staff as you make your important contributions to American education.

I am the husband of a first-grade teacher as well as a very conservative Republican who has always been puzzled by the conflict of beliefs when it comes to the teaching profession. I knew what the best solutions were, yet I was unable to justify in my free-market philosophy and beliefs—but your scholarly work had brought me to a wonderful place of comfort. I believe Conservatism’s core is reality and validation by demonstration which your work clearly promotes and illuminates. This is what all Conservatives need to realize. The area where I was most ignorant concerned the foundation influences when it comes to school issues, which also explains the media spin. I have a great fear that any educational improvements can be realized as we slide toward demeaning, and punishing, teachers (doctors and all by academics and government workers), charter schools ... but when someone as articulate as you keeps presenting the facts, it encourages many of the masses and as in my case strengthens my understanding and resolve.

Thanks so much!

I was truly moved by your concluding statements the other day at Lynn University. I almost jumped up and cheered when I heard you specifically address music as being important and then go on to explain why. I am a music teacher in a center school (pre-kindergarten through high school, the lowest one percent of the student population). I have a degree in music, a master’s in special education, gifted endorsement, and an endorsement for students with severe disabilities. There isn’t any good research on high-stakes testing that is valid, reliable, and fair for this population that I know of. Even if I were asked to develop curriculum and the testing for this population, since students with severe disabilities are not a homogeneous group, it would be impossible. They have Individual Education Plans on purpose. It took me four years to teach a student to reach out when asked to do so and strum my guitar as I played the chords. There is no way I know of to keep these students on grade level even with Access Points and measure their achievement in ways that provide quick, cheap, and standardized data collection.

I understand the thrust to not keep students with low IQs perpetual babies. However, to legislate that all students on a certain grade level learn specific things even when a student is on the pre-symbolic level and then hook a teacher’s pay to that student’s achievement of that information is impossible to fathom. So we are a failing school by design.

I sent videos of the lowest students in my school to Tallahassee when SB6 was being debated, because most people have no idea of what the lowest one percent of the student population is like. I have written federal and state legislators frequently about the absurdity of what’s going on. Many of our students have severe health issues that impact their learning. Many factors are beyond a teacher’s control. Sadly the political machine’s agenda seems more important than my students’ lives.

I was disheartened to not see coverage of your talk in the local media. I don’t know what it will take for people to snap to and work together on the education issues.

I don’t know if you remember me. I was part of the 1987 History—Social Science Framework Committee that changed the way history is taught in the schools.

First, I must commend you for your recent wonderful book on The Death And Life Of The Great American School System. Finally, someone has come forward to corroborate what so many in the teaching profession have believed about the market approach to teaching that relies on competition, choice, excessive testing and accountability, and deregulation. I have often admired not only the substance but the way you write. It is like reading a novel as I anticipate what the ending will be of a particular problem or situation. I felt the same way about The Troubled Crusade.

I have often thought about our work on the framework. During the two years we labored on it, we changed the emphasis from a social studies viewpoint to one that is focused on history. I remember giving a brief talk to the committee on the nature of the social studies approach in the previous framework with its emphasis on broad generalization from sociology and anthropology vs. a historical approach emphasizing the actions and passions of people in the past. The final result of all our deliberations was (and still is) a magnificent achievement.

However, there is one area in which more needs to be done. We stated that history is “A Story Well Told” as I recall, but never really spelled out, in detail, just what this means. Since the textbook is, and will on doubt remain, the primary teaching source, there is a need for some strong leadership, something like a framework to give it an official imprimatur, to delineate the broad elements to be considered in writing a history textbook. A few, among others, that come to mind are:
 

Of course, this just scratches the surface. Many more elements need to be added.

I received my ED.D. at UCLA and taught Curriculum Design at California Lutheran University. At neither institution was there a connection, at least at the secondary level, between the history department and the methods courses in education. The same could be said about the other curriculum areas. At C.C.N.Y., in the halcyon days when the college was known as the “poor man’s Harvard,“ we had a course in the methods of teaching the social studies. We need to reverse the present specialization and fragmentation.

I hope you will pardon the diatribe. However, I blame you. Your book brought back the wonderful experience I had working with you, Charlotte Crabtree, and the rest of the committee. I look forward to reading more about your ideas in the future.

Thank you for a great book. It answered so many questions about the current state of education in America and it did make me feel that my district (Albuquerque, New Mexico) is not unique in the problems that it is facing. But unfortunately, it is getting worse and I see no light at the end of the tunnel. For the past 9 years I was the librarian at a public middle school with an increasingly small enrollment (578 down from 800 nine years ago). I loved being the librarian and just this year I obtained my national board status in Library/Media. Next year, due to deep district-wide budget cuts, I will be teaching 2 classes and my time in the library will drop to about half. The list of “things” that my public school can no longer offer to students increases with each passing year. Our school has no art, no home economics, no choir, no drama, no shop, no newspaper class, no foreign language, and next year no student council and only a half open library. The year after (2011/2012) there is a rumor that there will be no music and I can only assume that the library will be closed full-time. I know you do not support the charter school movement, but from what I have seen in my district, the charter schools are the only schools that can offer students anything beyond 4 walls and a teacher. A short 5 minute walk from my school is a well-established performing arts charter school housed in portables that sings with music, the sound of dance classes, student painted signs, colorful student planted flowerbeds and a spirit of joy that my school does not have. I am beginning to think that all schools should be charter schools, and then maybe district expenses would be trimmed and maybe my 60-year-old neighborhood school could once again “sing” with some of the things that its old classrooms were designed for such as art, music and chorus, shop and home economics. Oh, by the way, here is some data to back up my belief that school libraries are important. I checked out over 7,000 books out of a collection of a little more than 14,000 books this year.

I watched the program yesterday because I am very much interested in the charter school situation.

First let me tell you that I am an ordinary citizen who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. I am 47 years of age. I have a public school education and only went as far as a two-year degree from CUNY. At present, my youngest son is a student in CUNY. I am not someone who is well read in the field of education. However, I have always felt strongly about how important the education system is and how it is failing.

I, too, agree with you one hundred percent that charter schools (the way they are being run) are not the answer. I, too, believe that it is common sense that the entire school system be changed and improved and not just a very small percentage. It is just outrageous to me that some charter schools are put right into another public school, taking space and programs away from a system that is already overcrowded and underfunded. It so happens that my son’s junior high school was chosen to have a charter school added. The parents in my neighborhood (Marine Park) went nuts. They immediately took action and fought it. Even though my children have been out of middle school for some time, I was still furious and paid attention to see what the outcome would be. The parents won this battle but I feel that the war is just beginning. There are so many people out there who don’t see the whole picture and think the charter schools are the greatest thing. I also don’t believe that the criteria for being admitted to a charter school is being followed. I happen to know two parents whose children were accepted or are applying to charter schools. I truly believe that the lottery system that is supposed to be used is not working and am sure that some type of screening is taking place.

The future of this country is our students. Why do our politicians NOT see this?

P.S. Now that I’ve seen the list of books you authored, some will be going on my reading list.

I am a third-term school board member in suburban Philadelphia and I am writing on behalf of the Southeastern Pennsylvania School Districts’ Education Coalition. Founded in 2006, SPSDEC is a grassroots, informal public education advocacy network of 124 school board members and administrators from 62 school districts, primarily in suburban Philadelphia but also reaching suburban Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley.

We have been grappling with the testing and choice juggernaut and your book has really resonated with us.

The PA Senate Education Committee recently voted out of committee an “Education Empowerment” bill sponsored by the Chairman, Jeff Piccola. It would continue the focus on choice and state takeover of struggling districts. The state has had control of the impoverished Chester-Upland School District since 2000 with dismal results; in 2008-09, just 18 percent of Chester-Upland’s 11th-graders passed the state PSSA reading test.

Coincidentally, a wealthy Chester-Upland charter school owner has given copious amounts of money to the Republican Party and it was recently reported that he has given $136,000 to PA gubernatorial front-runner Republican Tom Corbett.

However, this is bi-partisan: a couple weeks ago it was reported that three hedge fund managers who share Democratic gubernatorial candidate Senator Anthony Williams’ passion for charter schools had given a whopping $1.5 million to his campaign.

We are working to get copies of your latest book into the hands of at least 115 Pennsylvania education policymakers. These include:

The newly designated Secretary of Education, Tom Gluck

The Chairman and members of the State Board of Education

The Executive Directors of the General Assembly’s Education Committees (these are the folks
      most likely to actually read the book)

All members of the PA Senate Education Committee

All members of the PA House Education Committee

PA Senate Leadership

PA House Leadership

Pennsylvania’s Federal Congressmen and Senators

PA Gubernatorial candidates

Please see the attached email that was sent to our entire SPSDEC network this morning, asking them to pledge a few dollars to support the effort; so far we have pledges totaling $1070—not a bad start. We are also working on media coverage.

We are hoping that you might be able to lend some support, perhaps by providing a note that we could attach or by signing the books. Our goal is to educate our policymakers, promote public dialogue and hopefully impact public policy. We are open to any suggestions.

I’m in the middle of your book and am very glad that someone is finally making public the stupidity of the “accountability” movement. For some time I’ve worried about the trend to siphon off the students with the best-educated and most activist parents from our public schools. The schools certainly need improvement, especially those in low-income parts of our larger cities, but giving frequent multiple-choice tests will not solve the problem and, as you point out, will almost certainly make it worse.

I am also worried about several trends that will discourage exactly the kind of young person we need in our schools from entering teaching. It seems to me that more than half of the letters to the editor regarding education show a complete lack of respect for teachers and a real hate for their unions. There is also the periodic and worsening threat of layoffs: whenever the economy worsens education suffers. Not only are young teachers fired, but the remaining teachers are faced with even larger classes and deteriorating facilities.

Keep the pressure on!

Anyone who cares about our country would do well to read this book. Anyone who wants to know about the challenges that the teaching profession has faced in these last decades will be enlightened by this book. I have been reading Diane Ravitch for almost 30 years, and I have admired and have been encouraged by her “teacherly” wisdom all this time, especially in the way that she regards the importance of teachers well educated in their subject matter, a high-quality curriculum for all students, and the inextricable link between the best that our way of life has to offer and our public school system. This book is one of the finest and may certainly be the most timely that she has written. It is a thoughtful, steady gaze that articulates what many educators have believed and felt in these dark decades of education “reform” where teachers and principals have been reduced to managers on an assembly line system. Thank you, Dr. Ravitch, for expressing your belief in and support for teachers and principals! You have given us courage and heart. You have begun a new conversation where our thoughts are being raised back above the minimum standard to the high goals of what an education is truly meant to be.

I am a Denver Public Schools teacher and saw a clip of your speech in Denver. Thank you very much for speaking out against this bill and for speaking in support of teachers. I think many teachers do not have an issue with the idea of restructuring the evaluation system, I think the problem is how the government is approaching this topic. How can they hold teachers accountable for a test that is meaningless to students? Or that many students do not take? There has been no conversation regarding those issues. It is sad that the conversation is solely based around what teachers aren’t doing and no one is considering what teachers are doing. Thank you for mentioning the demoralization and undercutting. I see what skills my students need and in spite of standardized tests, endless assessments required by the district, and a curriculum with so many holes I could drive through them, I try very hard to find ways to engage and give them the big things. How to read, how to write and how to think.

Again, thank you for your support. I hope that someone of your stature and influence can help direct our state in a more positive direction.

I want to thank you for your latest book. I was a high school English teacher for many years and currently work in higher education, preparing teachers for success in the classroom. I was drawn to your book for obvious reasons: former insider changes her view, but as a serious opponent of NCLB from the beginning (I taught in Texas), I felt I would find validation. I did, for the most part, find that validation. I was also apprehensive with the notion that choice or free markets were not the answer (or at least a step in the right direction) to our problems. Based on the title, I found myself 50% on board and 50% in opposition.

I have to tell you that I found the book very enlightening, particularly the second half. Since I agreed with everything in the beginning, I found the second half to serve as a vehicle to challenge my experiences, philosophies, and perceptions. Those challenges made me think hard. You presented a strong case, and I would be less than sincere if I didn’t confess that I now look at the choice and privatization model through a different lens.

Thank you for your sincerity, honesty, and diligence in presenting your case. Thank you for causing me to reflect. And thank you for always treating my beloved profession with honor and dignity.

My copy of your latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, finally arrived at my home in Melbourne Australia two weeks ago. It took me two days to read but much longer to absorb its message and its importance for educators generally. I congratulate you. I found it a deeply thoughtful and even moving work. Your defense of the American Public School system and your summation of the way forward for schools in the U.S.A. is quite masterly.

I spent 40 years in secondary education in Australia as teacher, principal and acting inspector. I have been retired from teaching now for nearly fifteen years but the pain of seeing a once proud public education system in my country progressively decline to the point where public schools are under attack from many sections of society has been difficult to witness. I feel for the many former educators in your country who regularly contribute to discussions on educational reform. Their collective observations and wisdom, gleaned from (collectively) thousands of years of classroom experience seems to hold the key to the way forward if only their voices can be heard.

In Australia we seem to be at a watershed in school reform. On the one hand we have seen the recent release of the key elements of a truly national curriculum for discussion and consultation. This has been years in creation and offers in my opinion a real way forward. As an old history teacher I’m delighted to see this subject restored to its rightful place in the curriculum and I’m delighted to see some real effort made in the curriculum to give teachers real direction and guidance.

However as from 2009 we now have national testing in English and Mathematics in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in all Australian schools. The Australian Government at the beginning of this year created a website which summarizes the English and Mathematics results from the 2009 national tests for 10,000 public, private and Catholic schools in Australia. This release has also coincided with a visit to Australia of Chancellor Klein from NYC to consult with and advise leading educational decision-makers in this country. As a marker of English in this national testing program I hope that the results will be used diagnostically to improve English (and Mathematics) in our primary and secondary schools and not merely to “name and shame“ underperforming schools. It is not yet too late here to avoid the testing excesses evident in many states in the U.S.A.

Finally I strongly support your notion outlined in DLGASS that our schools need leaders who are experienced and strong master teachers. In the state of South Australia where I taught, most observers agree that the ‘golden age’ of public education extended from the late 1960s and 1970s until the early 1980s when an appreciable decline in public schools began. Twice a year the principals from this era continue to meet for lunch. Many are now in their seventies, eighties and even nineties. All had a strong, extended and successful teaching background before their appointment as principals and the majority also had a history of curriculum leadership in their chosen teaching field. Unfortunately I see too many school leaders today coming to the profession with a history of educational faddism rather than expertise in classroom methodology and curriculum development.

Best wishes as your continue in your travels to ’spread the word.’ I truly believe DLGASS has the potential to initiate real change for good in all American schools.

I am a California teacher. I am frustrated; feel powerless; angry; impassioned. What can I do to halt this political onslaught on our profession? Your input is greatly appreciated. I feel NO ONE is listening and I want to be heard. Help.

I want to thank you for writing your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I heard a book talk on KGO radio recently and immediately bought it (yes, I recently bought a kindle, so it was IMMEDIATELY).

I am a retired teacher (as of June 2009) and special educator. I came into education when everyone, including the custodian, at my school in Santa Barbara, California, had a teaching credential. My first job was as an aide. I went from English major intent on teaching high school in 1970 to special education because (1) that’s where there were jobs and (2) I was appalled by the lack of reading skills in high school and junior high school where I student taught.

Your book and your talk both resonated with me and disturbed me, and I say that with highest praise. I could never quite master the p.c. language and thought of what education was doing since about the mid-90s in my district in Newark, CA. Everything you have said was/is happening right down to this very small district. When I began, our staff would determine a focus for improvement each year. When I left, everything had spun so out of control that multiple multiple new “trainings” were being thrown at us every month. I used to joke that “they” would listen to me if I prefaced any opinion with “research says...”

I felt I was within a sequel to “The Emperor’s New Clothes” if you get my comparison.

I left with a frustration about education, not about the kids. I am volunteering (I joke that the retirement is being paid for me to stay away) 3 hours a day in an ELD classroom and in a general education 6th grade class. I can work with students, model teach with younger colleagues, and not have any of the paperwork that is absolutely burying special and general education teachers. It is fun!

Thank you for speaking up. I had considered running for the school board in my small town/district, but decided against it because the issues are too deep and the mindset too set. However, I am recommending your book to our superintendent and to each member of the school board, personally. I was considered an excellent teacher, but my program of improvement was internal. I knew my weaknesses and strengths. I never felt “they” were asking the right questions, the things that I saw as incomplete and bothersome. Instead, inservice and staff development were done to us. Often there were issues teachers felt needed to be explored and discussed, but... All the while, teachers are vilified in the media. I was patient for a long time (maybe next year, they’ll...). It never happened. When NCLB said “jump,” administrators seemed to say “how high.”

I needn’t go over my frustrations with education with you. Thank you for speaking up. Thank you for doing the research to validate what teachers all over this nation are feeling.

Ditto all the teachers thanking you for speaking the truth about current education reforms, and boy, do you nail that truth in your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

I just want to ask one question: what can a teacher/ordinary citizen do to help spread the word about how public education is under attack?

A little background on myself: I am a teacher at an urban high school in Stockton, California. When I attended high school in the ’90s, I was a stellar student, but our school had a bad reputation because it was located in a poor community and was plagued with problems related to gangs and poverty. However, I enjoyed the “underdog” status of my school and scoffed at kids from private schools who were scared to come to our campus. After I graduated, I attended UCLA and volunteered to tutor in an area notoriously known as “South Central.” Motivated by knowing the difference I could make in students’ lives, I applied to UCLA’s credential/master’s program and got a job teaching English at an LAUSD middle school in 2004. That’s when the disillusionment began.

What follows in this letter may seem like a rant, but it is a testimony that underscores the arguments made in your book.

When I started teaching, the realization that teaching was difficult was no big deal. It was just an awakening that my journey as an educator had begun. I was even excited gaining more experience and feeling like I was becoming a better teacher. What was a big deal was the feeling that the school environment could not let me grow as an educator, although I wanted to stay there and help the kids. Teaching was all about compliance because the school had to impose interventions to show that they were “improving” under NCLB law. I was assigned to teach a scripted reading program, but at English department meetings, our “literacy coach” demonstrated new ideas that were contradictory to the program the school had bought for me to teach. The program emphasized phonics and sounds, but the literacy coach suggested whole language strategies. When I pointed out this contradiction, the literacy coach agreed with me but did not know what to do about it. For her job was to deliver strategies, and mine was to deliver the script; all in an effort to show “improvement.” This was not real collaboration.

There were numerous trainings for this reading program, involving going to hotels and being fed a fancy lunch, and the “trainers” constantly asked for our feedback. For each concern about the possibility that this program did not work, the trainers suggested a new strategy, or suggested that perhaps we were not following the script faithfully enough. When I look back, what was I thinking addressing my concerns? These trainers are paid by the program to promote it! They even discouraged, no, condemned, the idea of supplementing the program with reading a class novel, or reading anything for that matter, outside of the script.

Then there was discipline. Some students were too unruly for me to handle, but I was made to feel inadequate for not being able reach defiant students. One administrator told me to “get tough,” and another told me to “make learning fun.” The bottom line was that the counselors and administrators were too busy to handle many students flooding into the office for disciplinary problems, and too many suspensions looked bad on the school’s record. My memory of “bad kids” throughout my schooling years was that if they were disruptive, they were sent out for good. Or, if they returned, they had to improve their behavior to stay in the classroom. I even have memories of very caring teachers reaching out to troubled students and turning them around. But at the school where I taught, students sent out with a referral were sometimes “spit back” to the classroom because the assistant principal did not think the infraction was worthy of his or her attention. I cannot imagine being a kid and having to learn in such an environment, or seeing the teacher’s authority undermined in such a way.

Notice how I said the “assistant principal” dealt with the referral because the principal did not believe it was her job to deal with discipline. After my second year at the school, she even called me into her office to address the number of referrals I had sent and to ask what is wrong. It was meant to be a non-evaluative and warm conversation, and it was, but after that experience, I had an “Oh, I should have said that!” moment. This is what I wanted to say: “My kids are misbehaving, but I am in the principal’s office. What is wrong with this picture?”

Shortly before my second year of teaching at that school ended, I called one of my favorite high school teachers to talk about my challenges. She said, “Come back home to Stockton, you will be hired in heartbeat!” So I did.

Teaching at my former high school, I felt on top of the world knowing that as many of my best teachers had retired, I, as a former student, was carrying on the legacy. Many of my colleagues are also former students who take great pride in the school and have made my work environment feel like home. The students are overall more cooperative than my students in LA, but I may partly feel that way because I have more experience in managing a class.

Yet, we serve a needy population, we are in program improvement under NCLB, and in my 4th year teaching at my former high school, I am seeing the problems I faced in LAUSD creep into our school dynamic. For one, our principal is telling us teachers that it is the “quality of instruction” that will influence our students’ attendance and behavior. Before, when he was an assistant principal (our school has had 3 princiapls in my 4 years), he vehemently backed up teachers having to deal with discipline problems, and I believe he continues to try to do so, but it seems there is growing pressure on him to get the issue out of his hair, out of any discussion on improving our school, and solely into the hands of the teachers.

English teachers are compelled to give out periodic “formative assessments” that are written by people in the district office and that fly above the heads of many of our students who lack reading proficiency. Instead of meeting the kids at the level where they are, we are compelled to show evidence of “data driven instruction,” even though it does not take data to notice that many of our students have come to high school lacking basic skills. Instead of planning novel-based lessons that our kids might enjoy or planning much-needed grammar instruction, English department meetings involve looking at what questions students missed on the assessment and pointing out what standards we should emphasize more. Meanwhile, adminstrators hover around our meetings to make sure we are productive. Their ominous pressence stifles honest conversation.

Teachers are offered trainings in teaching strategies from a company that specializes in instructional data. Honestly, these trainings can be helpful, but what is bothersome is that they preach the idea that if these instructional strategies are mastered, students, ALL students, can be taught at grade level. Perhaps this faith in instructional strategies helps to justify the rigorous pacing guides and formative assessments given for English, and it makes me feel I am being injust if I feel some of my some of my students need to go back to basics.

When teaching a class of varied English ability, common sense tells me to take time to brush up students’ grammar or get them in the habit of writing. To understand figures of speech such as metaphors or personification, it is appropriate for students to delve into a text in depth and learn by the context. But every two weeks, an assessment comes in, and that puts pressure on me to just deliver “mini lessons” to students or review the rote definitions of literary terms so I can be sure they get the answer right. I wonder, am I bad teacher for doing this? My students may get certain questions right, so the data may show that I am a good teacher. But I wonder if certain terms on which they were tested have imprinted in their memory, or does their next English teacher have to review this information again? I feel most disappointed in myself when I know I have checked off everything from our pacing guide, used every strategy I learned in training, and probably helped students on the assessments, yet see that my students are not better readers and writers than they were before.

With Title 1 money, our school also purchased a “non-scripted” literacy program that all freshman and sophomores must take along with their English class. The program and its trainers claim to be “non-scripted,” and the visits from the program’s creators claim to be “non-evaluative.” The trainings are not as fancy as the literacy trainings in LAUSD, so I thought our district was wiser with money, but again, concerns about the program’s effectiveness during the program’s trainings lead to more suggestions of strategies. When I talk with our department chair about weaknesses in the program’s lesson plans, she suggests I email the creators. When I boldly ask her if we teachers have to take on this program, her response is, “But the district bought it. This is for our program improvement.”

After all that has been said, I want to stress that I personally like and appreciate my colleagues in higher positions, and I believe they are doing the best they can. But it seems that systemically, they are not put in positions to work with us teachers in the interest of our students. I am deeply disturbed by students’ low reading and critical thinking skills, but it seems it is the job of administrators to only be disturbed by the numbers. I have been personally praised by some administrators as an “excellent teacher,” but in formal settings, the adminstration also tells me, tells me more often, in fact, that I better push the kids harder because we are a few points away from being labelled a “persistently low performing school” under Race to the Top. The staff and administration try to invoke pride and promote excellence in hopes that we can be labelled a “blue ribbon” school, but this “spirit” masks the ongoing threat that our kids are not making the mark, and it will be all our fault if they do not. Administrators have the task of somehow balancing enthusiasm and encouragement with reality and threat. Even the most caring teacher will wonder: is it worth the effort when the apathetic students, or even the students who just need a little encouragement, but accept mediocre performance, get away scott free?

This is what spirit looked like when I, my older cousins, and sister attended the high school. Teachers were motivated by excellence, not testing. I overheard that in the English department, egos clashed on what novels to teach. These disagreements seem like a luxury now, and many of my former teachers, like Ms. Ratliff, do not know what they would do in this current environment. Some disheartened veteran teachers at our school accept what is going on because retirement is just a few years away. Those who already retired echo a sentiment of getting out at the right time. At a national level, many teachers are retirement ready, but who is going to take their place now if teaching has become test preparation and scrutiny of the student’s performance as a reflection of none other than the teacher?

Today, I no longer enjoy the “underdog” status of my school. The need of many of our students was once the impetus for me to serve as a teacher, but I feel that teaching in an urban school is entering a trap where the challenges of our population make it easy for anyone to look like a bad teacher. I am not using the challenges of our community as an excuse for low performance, but I believe teachers should be able to openly discuss how these challenges affect the classroom and school environment without being brushed off as ineffective. They should also have greater say in appropriate intervention programs for the students with whom they interact daily. But rather than looking into comprehensive efforts to help struggling students and parents, or turning down an intervention package created by a company, it’s easier, and perhaps cheaper, to say that it was the teacher who failed.

Recently, five of our high school feeder schools have been labelled “persistently low performing” (PLP) and are compelled to undergo one of 4 draconian measures imposed by Race to the Top: close down, convert to a charter, fire at least half the staff, or undergo several changes that comply with RtTT. On Monday, April 19, an editorial in our local paper commented on the low performing schools. The editorial said that it is not certain these reforms “will work,” but low performance is “unacceptable,” and that this is a “civil rights issue.” I wrote a letter to the editor reiterating the editorial’s very point that there is no evidence that the reforms will work, but there is plenty of evidence (and I quoted your book for that one) that top-down reforms DO NOT work.

But what can I do? I really believe that public education is the cornerstone of our democracy, and what I was taught in public school has inspired me to serve this country and be an informed citizen. I thank you for exposing how the current reform climate is imposed in an undemocratic way, and I want to do everything I can to share my experience and your findings with as many people as possible who will listen. Where is the best place to start?

And again, for your work, and for reaching the bottom of this letter, I thank you!

The other day I heard you discussing your new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I could not believe what I was hearing: someone espousing the same concerns about public education that I have. I ran out and purchased a copy immediately. I just finished reading it and you are right on target. You have hit the nail on the head. I agree with you wholeheartedly! Are we the only ones that feel this way about public education?

I am a former educator in North Carolina (35 years) and South Carolina (10 years). I was not a politician, not a reformer, nothing more than just an educator wanting the best for students and teachers. I can’t say that my time (10 years) in South Carolina was positive or filled with fun. Matter of fact, it was downright frustrating.

I loved working with students and teachers and I wanted to make a positive impact. I wanted to make a difference, to enhance to public school system, but I ran into opposition at every turn. Opposition from politicians, from various publics and parents, from Superintendents, from other entities; all opposed to change, to adhering to law or policy, and/or to changing the “Status Quo”, at any cost. Everyone seems to want only their agenda to be addressed.

All of these things that you have pointed out in your book impacted everything that I was directed to do in my school. It became unbearable and very stressful. Many times I was left out on the proverbial tree limb by myself. I, like you, began to see the death of the public school system.

As well as agreeing with your concerns, I also have my Issues from an Administrator’s point of view:
 

Please continue working to get your ideas and facts before the American Public. You are doing a great job.

You are my hero! Actually, you have been my hero for about 25 years or so. I briefly met you at a conference in Fresno, and I have devoured your books since then.

In a recent article, you wrote,

“Education is a slow, arduous process that requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum.”

Truer words were never spoken. There is no magic bullet for improvement in student achievement, though many (in both political parties) would tell us otherwise. I have taught for 34 years, and one thing that I have learned is that there are no easy answers.

Real progress comes about in a slow, incremental fashion. It took me quite a few years to figure out what works in the classroom, and although that may seem to reflect poorly on me, I think that it is typical for teachers (at least the honest ones). Simply put, teaching is ... difficult.

As it turns out, I did develop into an effective teacher. I teach both AP U.S. History and AP U.S. Government & Politics. Nearly all of my students pass the AP exam. I’m a consultant for the College Board and ETS and have traveled far and wide in training AP teachers. But if you had observed me in my first few years of teaching, you might not have been very optimistic! In my case, it took time to develop. That is why your quotation really struck home with me.

Keep up the good work, Diane!

I am a native Houstonian and a product of both public and private schools here. I attended University of Houston for my undergraduate in education and received a master’s degree in elementary science at U of H. I love being a teacher and the meaningful feeling of having an impact on children. I am in my 28th year teaching in the HISD. My years have been spent primarily teaching minority and poverty children. I would love to teach for several more years...if I can outlast the fear and mean spirit which is being promoted.

The program coordinator of our new math program (Reasoning Mind) recommended your book to me last week after I had a discussion about the TAKS test and all of the implications of value-added. I was complaining about all of the intangible variables and the variables that a teacher does not have control over that are overlooked with our new EVASS (value-added) system. This was introduced by the previous superintendent as a way to offer merit pay. However, this new superintendent has made it clear that he intends on using value-added as a means to fire teachers. His name is Terry Grier and he is from San Diego.

When I began reading your book this weekend, I could not put it down! I have never read a book that so precisely describes the types of changes that have been proposed in HISD and how eloquently you put into words what I felt so strongly was wrong with all of the rash implementations. Teaching to the TAKS is taking all of the creativity and fun out of my days with the kids.

Unfortunately, Houston does not have a strong union to fight what we are being led into. I am so worried about what the future holds for this school district. I wish every school board member would have to read your book so they could gain a sense of history about what they are affirming and maybe think about better solutions for our students.

I have recommended this book to so many people already and have ordered three more copies to give to others.

I would love to know when you might be speaking in our area. Where can I find your speaking calendar?

I am so grateful that you have brought to the public’s attention the errors in value-added “hard” data.

Thanks so much for your book!

I heard your recent NPR interview (Diane Rehm, I believe), and I wanted to share a few thoughts with you. First, a bit about me so you understand the context of my observations. I am by training a social psychologist, with a subspecialty and one-time consulting practice in testing and measurement. When the Flint campus sought its first accreditation independent of the main (Ann Arbor) campus, the provost established an ad-hoc committee to develop assessment procedures. I spent nine years on the committee, my last couple as its chair. The procedures we developed became something of a model for the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges. It has worked extremely well precisely because it conformed to some very fundamental principles of validation, which No Child Left Behind blatantly (if not intentionally) ignored.

The first principle is that no assessment can be used at the same time for both counseling and for administrative decisions (retention, increment, tenure, promotion). As you emphasized (and as every organizational psychologist with an ounce of brains wailed when No Child was first described), all this does is promote cheating and teaching to the exam (much as does the staatsexamen in Germany). This principle is so basic that it’s often covered in the very first chapter of introductory texts on workplace performance evaluation.

Accordingly, in the very first meeting of the committee, we established an absolute firewall. Department chairs, deans, and executive committees would never be permitted to see individual raw data; they would see only departmental pooled data. This action did not immediately eliminate faculty resistance, but it went further in that regard than even you might imagine. The same should apply to K–12 teachers’ unions.

Like you, I don’t think the problem is testing—any more than the problem with a badly built house is with the hammers and saws. The problem in both cases is how potentially useful tools should be used. Many of the current difficulties would be reduced or eliminated if it were clear that

For untenured faculty, course evaluations—if used for administrative decisions—therefore have the effect of motivating both grade inflation and the dumbing down of course content.

I hope these observations are consistent with your own views, and where they are not, I hope you will give them some thought.

I not only learned a whole lot from your book, but the writing itself is superb and it was enjoyable reading. Part of that enjoyment was in seeing you nail down all the problems with the direction in which we have been tending.

The situation is worse than I thought, in that I did not know a lot about the three big foundations working together with similar agendas, or the extent of their support of advocacy groups and think tanks. I had noticed some cool receptions when asked for reviews of my publications from people in places that I have known and respected for decades. This is all very scary, as we move toward a partnership between foundations and the Department of Education, with a lot the critical eyes we have counted perhaps half closing them. You are right that it is test misuse and not testing itself that has gone astray. We know how to make good tests in NAEP, for example, or for AP.

I was on the standards-based reform wagon from the NCTM standards through about the 1994 ESEA amendments, which is about where the “hijacking” began, with publications with titles like Too Much Testing of the Wrong Kind, and Too Little of the Right Kind (about 2000), and Staying on Course in Standards Based Reform (about 2001)...where I was trying to document where it was going off course.

I hope your book marks some turning point in understanding what has been happening and the harm it is causing, but we seem to be digging the hole deeper.

I have a point of disagreement, concerning what was happening before the Nation At Risk report, but will leave it until sometime later. This email is an unqualified congratulations on a job well done.

I am sitting on my patio reading your book, and I am so excited that someone finally “gets it.” It is as though you are in our heads and saying the things that teachers all around me are saying. I am a 3rd grade teacher and also on the school board in the county in which I live. My husband is an assistant principal. As you can imagine, education is the most talked-about topic at our home. We live in Lauderdale County, Tennessee. Our claim to fame here is that we have the highest unemployment rate in Tennessee, and at one point we were 5th in the nation. Things are very bleak here. We are also in a county where our scores in some of the schools are not where they need to be according to the criteria for NCLB. We will more that likely go into “corrective action” next year. Now on top of all of that, we in Tennessee have been chosen to receive RTTT funding. Yippee. I hope you recognized the sarcasm. While the legislators are expressing joy, the teachers are moaning at the thought of more hoops through which to jump.

Our county recently sponsored a Q and A with the state Senate Majority Leader and the Senate Chairman of the Education Committee. About 100 teachers showed up, which was a HUGE success. We walked away knowing that a lot of Q’s had been asked, but no A’s were given.

We are creating a committee here locally to go speak before the education committee in Nashville. They need to understand what they are doing is a “one size fits all” solution that will not fit the XL mess we have in our county. We have children who have a whole set of problems at home that negatively impact their education. This situation is never taken into consideration by legislators. We may not get very far, but we feel it is something that has to be done. Your book will greatly help us in our endeavor. All credit will be given to you of course, and I intend to pass out a few books to the legislators as well.

I wish we could have you come to our county for a book signing/education summit. We cannot offer you much in monetary gains, but it would help Tennesseans learn more about the wrong direction this country is headed in education. If something like this is ever possible, please keep us in mind. We have a wonderful young superintendent who would be very supportive of this endeavor.

Thank you once again for your book. Teachers all over are reading it.

I work in rural development in Alabama, and last year we did a study of 10 high-poverty, high-performing rural schools around the state, which we called Lessons Learned from Rural Schools. It was one of the most heartwarming projects I’ve tackled in a career now spanning 40+ years.

In a nutshell, too few people seem to genuinely care about rural schools. This is partly because for the last 50 years, rural areas have sent their best and brightest off to college never to return, and consequently the “education foundation” of rural communities has steadily eroded. Now we’re trying to convince folks who have never really valued education that education is important.

And in many cases, communities have no clue what good schools look or feel like because they’ve never been exposed to one. It’s like trying to tell someone what banana pudding tastes like when they have never heard of a banana.

As I read your book, I underlined LOTS of passages and then took the liberty of compiling about eight pages of these, which I sent to probably 100 or so people. Had some interesting responses.

Just Wednesday I sat in a meeting of perhaps 200 folks at a rural school, and someone who runs a very successful IT company asked “How do you mine your data?”

I cringed because I knew that the questioner was thinking, “Don’t I have just the technology to help you do a better job of mining your data.” I immediately thought of some of the comments in your book.

To me, data is like a metal detector. It aims you in a certain direction. However, you damn well better have a shovel with you to do some digging or you will never find your treasure.

Yes, we used data to point us toward those 10 outstanding rural schools. But we also drove 10,000 miles and did more than 300 interviews in trying to figure out what the data did not tell us about those communities and their schools.

Alabama is one of 10 states without charter schools, so our Republican governor began a big push to get charter legislation so we would have a better shot at RTT funds (according to him). Unfortunately, this was far more about politics than education. The governor knew this bill would be opposed by the Alabama Education Association, and in this election year, he was looking more for political points than anything else. The legislation did not get passed, and Alabama did not do well in RTT competition (37 out of 41). But the governor never said that even with charter schools, our application was dead in the water, nor does he ever say this bill was also opposed by the superintendents assocation or the school board association.

And a close friend who worked on the application told me, “I’m not sure we want this money, because if we get it, Washington will have our left testicle in a safe deposit box somewhere in DC.”

Oh, just ordered 10 copies of your book to give to each of the principals of the schools we studied last year.

I rarely contact people out of the blue, but I’m compelled to write to thank you so much for your interview on KPFA this morning. Your insight, experience, perspective and articulate presentation of the the state of public education nearly brought tears to my eyes. How refreshing to have someone who has spent a lifetime fully engaged in their profession, and STILL willing to reflect with integrity (not positioned in ideology).

As an advocate of youth community engagement, I was so inspired to hear an educational leader affirm that America’s public schools should prepare our students not only with academic proficiency, but with the skills necessary for civic leadership—love of learning and critical thinking.

I am a retired high school science teacher and finally, finally someone with some authority is recognizing and stating emphatically everything I and my colleagues have been saying for the last ten years. I listened to the entire hour with you and Ronn Owens and I agreed with everything you said. Ronn has educational authorities on every so often, including our State Superintendent of Schools, and these people have these lofty unachievable goals and make statements that make one wonder if they have ever been in front of a class of kids. For 35 years I faced 150–160 kids a day and I am sorry, but not everyone can achieve at 100% or even at grade level. You actually said it. Thank you so much. I am anxious to read your book and am going to send a link of the podcast of this morning’s program to all of my teacher friends. I have been retired for 13 years and still wake up in the middle of the night writing and rewriting letters to the editor about the craziness of the totally unrealistic expectations that are being forced upon the education system in this country. Thank you for having the “guts” to change your mind about the horribly flawed “No Child Left Behind” program. I am an Obama supporter, but he doesn’t get it much better than Bush 2 when it comes to education. Why can’t some of these folks, besides yourself, look at the data, talk to classroom teachers and realize what is happening?

I just finished reading your most recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I want to first thank you for the courage it took for you to publish this. I admire you for your honest reflection of the journey you have been on. Your ideas about what is really important about the public schools are right on. I agree with you that the current administration has jumped on the “free market” bandwagon and is setting policy that is dangerous to the future of our nation. Thank you for exposing the truth through this thought-filled expose.

Thank you for sharing the research of the great charter school “choice” experiments that are ongoing in our country through your writings. I was unaware of the extent of the influence that Gates and the other “Billionaires” were having in urban communities. I had no idea... I live in AZ, where our charter school growth has succeeded in contributing to a serious “stranglehold” in our state budget and the weakening of strong communities. I live in a more rural area of the state, so our communities tend to value the local public schools, but the charter schools give us a run for our money. A vast majority of parents bring their kids back to the public schools. I think our young parents need to be educated.

I am a proud and experienced teacher and school administrator (32+ years). I have been on a reflective journey of my own this year. My position as Director of Special Services was eliminated at the end of last school year to effectuate economies in the district. Feeling the effects of what you might describe as “reform fatigue,” I elected to take the year off and go back to school to complete the certification requirements to become a school superintendent. I was hoping to renew my vision for the future of public education and re-energize for the next phase of my professional life. As I complete the final courses this semester and prepare for the “illustrious” test that will determine whether or not I will be an effective school superintendent, I have contemplated whether or not I even want to continue in this field. Our state faces drastic budget cuts. People are pitted against each other for survival. School boards and interest groups put so much pressure on the schools. The purposes of the schools are changing. It is a time when I question if public education will survive the pressures.

I have wonderful memories of some great teachers and of having great moments as an exceptional teacher. I wonder if I would “measure up” in today’s standards. I am thankful AZ was not chosen for “Race to the Top.” Most people think the “writing is on the wall” and that we will all be required to follow their guidelines. Is there no one willing to fight this strange initiative? I have often asked, “What will we do for money?” People will jump through all kinds of unnatural and inappropriate “hoops” for it.

Teaching is my greatest gift and love (except for my family, of course). Yet, in this climate of “data-driven” decision making, I lose my enthusiasm for the work in this field. Spending hours disaggregating data and pressuring teachers to improve their test scores is not my idea of fulfilling work. And I wonder, “Will I ever find the place to lead and serve that will embrace the core values that our public schools have held in striving to give every child access to a rich curriculum and meaningful learning activities?” I have to believe and “stay the course.” This is my life.

I pray that President Obama, Arnie Duncan and others read your book and seriously contemplate the many questions you posed throughout your book. If they do, I am sure they will experience enlightenment at some level (if that is possible). The “good old boys” seem to have a new agenda, and it’s not good for kids. Yet, they seem mightily determined... Does evidence change their thinking?

Again, thank you for your book, your life’s work, and the influence you continue to have on many powerful people in our government. I am inspired and encouraged. God bless you!

Once again, thank you for your outstanding scholarship!

Three years ago, I had to return to the high school classroom when my husband and I moved home to be closer to my ailing father. I quickly learned that the state tests dominated every facet of instruction and that the “slowest” children were expected to pass every test. I was judged by the extent to which I could take those who had previously failed the tests and “carry” them into the passing column. As you note in your book, teachers’ efforts are moved exclusively to the lowest common denominator. Students who already “get it” are ignored.

I wrote to you about a month ago after hearing about your book on NPR. In that email, I said that I was looking forward to reading the book. I found the book to be excellent and, especially, liked the chapter about the billionaire boys’ club. That chapter has implications for Race to the Top, which put NCLB on steroids. I attended a Michigan legislative hearing regarding my state and its response to Race to the Top. The initiatives proposed by the legislators of Michigan were not school reform initiatives, but closing public school initiatives. I found their discourse to be quite sad.

By the way, I called the public school superintendents in this area and recommended the book.

I am currently on the Denver Public School Board, one of the minority who does not believe in the “REFORM” movement as currently defined. I am also in the middle of your book and am reading it very slowly so I can absorb all of your wisdom. You have given me renewed hope to speak out about things I believe are not in the best interests of our kids and our schools. Thank you very much for that! The sad part of the story is what I have been reading from San Diego and New York could easily be what is happening in Denver right now without any long-lasting positive results to date. And the philosophical debate has become fairly rancorous with good guys and bad guys, winners and losers in every situation.

I am so delighted that you are coming to Denver and I will be able to hear you in person. I have postponed a trip to the East Coast to hear you, because you have been a heroine of mine even before your latest book arrived. I have carried one of your quotes with me all during my re-election campaign last year, because your vision of public education is one you and I share.

Again, thank you for your vision, your willingness to admit mistakes in judgment, and your courage to fight for excellent educational opportunities for all public school children. I look very forward to hearing you at Manual on April 30.

I am inspired by your eloquent description of the pitfalls in NCLB. Thank you so much for speaking up and describing so well the realities of what we do day to day. I’ve been a teacher for 25 years. I love children. I’ve always felt proud to be a part of our great Public School System.

However, since NCLB it’s a different story. The measurement tools are inaccurate, to say the least. Yet we base all program design on these scores. We’ve neglected many of the important aspects of nurturing our students toward adulthood in the name of hurdling over a mountain of narrow test items. I’ve become ashamed of what we do.

The worst part is that our blinders prevent us from seeing the miracles happening everyday. The child who finally becomes engaged after traumatic events made it nearly impossible to do so. The child who made leaps in their scholastic ability, though still not up to the arbitrary bar. The child who suddenly sees reading as a delightful activity.

I will be following your every word. Thank you so so much.

I’d like to thank you for writing your most recent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I just finished reading it and it was a refreshing take on what is happening in public education and how we have come to where we are. Reading it reawakened my passion for education, and I can’t thank you enough for that.

I’d also like to share a bit of my story and ask for some advice—I’ll try to be as brief as possible. In 2009 I graduated and joined Teach for America. I was assigned to the Mid-Atlantic region as a middle school science teacher. I was and am outraged by the inequalities our education system perpetuates and so happy to become a corps member and try to do something about it. I’ve come to view the summer institute that began my “trial by fire” as close to a brainwashing experience. In two months, we were taught the “formula” for becoming a great teacher and told that keeping track of data was an essential part of being successful. I completely bought into this idea.

When I finally received my teaching assignment, three days before the school year began, it was as a K-8 science “prep” teacher. I saw nearly every class in the school once a week and was expected to teach them “science.” The grade teachers were supposed to be covering the subject as well, and I was to do the experiments, but I quickly realized that no science was being taught to any students (other than the 7th and 8th graders) except what was taught in my class. My school was so focused on testing that very little time was given to anything but English and math. We even had two completely scripted programs for the subjects that required every teacher in the building to read out of a book for two periods a day. I was at a loss about how to approach a years worth of science curriculum in one class a week. I came up with several versions of long-term plans for how to teach students as much science as I could, but was barely able to keep up myself. I majored in philosophy as an undergraduate and had only taken one ‘rocks for jocks’ class since high school.

My experience was hellish. I was sworn out on a daily basis and usually totally unable to get through a lesson. Many students told me I was not a real teacher, just a “prep” teacher. Most read far below grade level and had incredibly weak groundings in science. And the worst part was my inability teach the students who really were ready to learn. I was also unable to keep track of data for over 500 students and didn’t understand how to apply TFA’s approach to my classroom.

In December, after continually meeting with failure, I decided that I was not helping anyone by continuing in my current position. It was a difficult decision, but as you pointed out, “If teachers are treated with condescension by administrations, expected to work in badly maintained buildings, assigned to large classes of poorly prepared students, confronted by unruly students, and compelled to meet unrealistic goals, they are not likely to gain a sense of personal and professional satisfaction.” I have also come to view TFA as a stopgap measure that allows those in power to act as though something is being done while real problems go unaddressed. TFA will not close the achievement gap, and pretending that it will only hinders progress.

Reading your book has reminded me that I am still committed to improving education, even though my first experience was not a positive one. I am unsure of how to get involved again and hoping you could offer a few words of advice. I like the idea of working on a big picture level, though I do think I need to understand what happens in the classroom before I assume to understand how to influence policy for the better.

Thank you for reading this too-long email, and I hope to hear from you soon.

I just finished reading your wonderful book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I work in a school that is considered exemplary in its focus on data and accountability. The teachers (mostly very talented and intelligent young women) are justifiably fearful of speaking out against the leadership, and are silently miserable and questioning whether or not they can continue in this career choice.

Are you optimistic about the future of American public education, i.e., that this movement may turn around or at least put in balance with other theoretical orientations?

What do you think is the best way for school staff to invest their energy in making a difference toward ending the overemphasis on data and blindly applying business models to education?

I just want to thank you for your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. You have helped to focus and crystallize the many thoughts and emotions I have had in response to the implementation of NCLB. I have deeply grieved for my students as I witnessed the devastating effects of this law on learning.

I am in my 37th year of teaching as a special education/reading specialist teacher and greatly enjoy working with 5th and 6th grade children in a rural school district in central Pennsylvania. I deeply yearn to impart a love for learning and the excitement that comes from engaging with the great ideas inherent in literature and history. Right now we are preparing for the April test mania. So much instructional time is wasted that would be better spent in classroom instruction. Will we ever come to our senses and recover the richness of our heritage and traditions that were so much a part of my growing up years where the neighborhood schools flourished and prospered? I truly believe that a deep renewal will need to take place in our souls as a people for this to happen. I hope your book will be widely read and have a sobering effect on the educational community.

I intend to share your book with our new curriculum director, with whom I have been working closely, as we are in the process of adopting a new reading program.

I am a person who’s taught for many, many years and loved just about every minute. I just finished reading The Death and Life of the Great American School System and am overjoyed. To me, it is the best, most comprehensive, most accurate account of schools and education that I’ve ever read. Today I will lend my copy to the superintendent of the district in which I work. Yesterday I wrote to the Maine Commissioner of Education and the Governor (and also to my legislators) suggesting they read the book.

My name is Brandy Alexander. I am currently reading your new book and felt compelled to write you. I am from a family of teachers. I have taught 1st grade in South Central Los Angeles for the last 14 years, and I teach teachers part time at Cal State University Los Angeles. I care deeply about public education, and have for some years had these very worries about the state of public education. I am working on a book at this moment which is my story of teaching during NCLB in a profession that I love, and yet I see it moving dangerously into a service position much like an assembly line worker. I am also very worried about the inner-city children that will be the biggest losers in what I see as a move back to a segregated school system, just under a different cloak. I LOVE teaching but have to tell you that the pressure to have students perform at high testing levels, with charters and private businesses taking over public schools, has made me think I need to leave teaching as soon as possible. If I can, I may. Like I said, I care deeply about public education and the children, but fear the worst is not yet here. I am saddened by President Obama and his step in the same direction of NCLB and its supporters; I thought for sure he would see the dangers of deregulating schools and opening the charter flood gates. I hate that Obama is in support of merit pay. I have long been against all of these movements. I work hard at my school, put in plenty of extra hours, co-wrote 5 books for teachers, and do not feel the need to be paid more than my fellow teachers, knowing the problems it will bring. It would be disastrous, creating competition in a place driven by teamwork. I have overseen several student teachers at the college, and many of them have graduated and found work at the charters here in LA. Many of them write me with a array of stories about their time at charters, many of them not so positive. I still hold on to the belief that public education is the one true thing that levels the playing field for all children no matter the background.

I wanted to thank you for writing this book. Finally I feel someone out there is seeing what many of us public education teachers have been seeing since NCLB became law. I have hope, and I still have hope for Obama, yet I remain very, very worried.

I’m sure you have been thanked for many things in your life, but I would like to personally thank you for getting me through my 60-minute workout on the elliptical this morning. The US Postal Service was kind enough to deliver your latest book yesterday afternoon. I decided learning from the past to pave the way for a better future was a suitable read in my quest toward a healthier lifestyle. :-) I haven’t been able to put the book down since.

As someone who is writing a dissertation at Ohio State in educational leadership and a full-time high school administrator, I cannot thank you enough for your continued dedication to the field of education. I’m bursting at the seams to share some of your sentiments with our faculty and my fellow colleagues. You, simply stated, are just what the doctor ordered. Thank you, thank you, and thank you!

Thank you so very much for your book and directing the ensuing discussion in the press and blogosphere. Your book has hit so close to home for our district, which for seven years has been in what California calls Program Improvement. We have been forced to restructure schools, displace students from their neighborhood school, and test excessively. I wince and apologize to my students for giving them yet another test; I teach in a CA Continuation High School, an alternative program for students who have failed through the traditional system—mostly because they are noncompliant, do not do homework, and couldn’t care less about a test. Many of them are working jobs to support their parents, and in many cases, their own children (the teen mom program is also housed at our school).

Your book has encouraged my activism and zeal for a truly public education. I fear that if we continue down the current road, my students will not have access to a diverse, inspiring, rigorous education—they will be put in a compliance testing camp and will just drop out, rather than graduate. This would be a tragedy.

In hope, I have purchased your book for each of our five school board members, and a sixth for our Superintendent of Schools.

I was wondering if you were planning a book signing after the lecture at Berkeley? If so, I’d like to get a book signed for our educational leaders. If not, will you be doing a book signing in northern California in the near future?

Five of us in Tahoe Truckee Unified Schools will be packing a car and leaving right after school to make the four-hour drive to Berkeley for your lecture. We can’t wait!

My wife and I saw you on C-SPAN this morning and couldn’t believe our ears. YOU SPOKE TO OUR HEARTS!!!!

We are teachers. My wife is retired and I have one more year before my retirement. I worked as a musician on Broadway for 20 years and also taught mathematics. Four years ago I transferred as a teacher to the South Bronx after a brief stint as an administrator believing that I could make difference. I have only been met with utter frustration.

Most of my students have horrible basic math skills. I am still teaching “the lowest common denominator” to some of my 11th grade students. Many of my students are below average primarily because of their environment and social/peer pressure. Their SAT scores are amazingly low.

My current problem is that I worked incredibly hard for the past 1.5 years to have 18 students take the NYS Math B Regents exam. I did differentiated instruction, portfolios, before- and after-school tutoring and even convinced an elective’s teacher to allow me to teach math during her period for two weeks prior to the test. NO ONE PASSED!!!

I am utterly frustrated because no one understands how hard I worked for so litte results. Note: I started out my career with a 80% trig pass rate in Manhattan.

My school is SURR and SINI for math and English because of the Regents scores of the class of 2005. Our last principal worked so hard that she died on her way home from work in October 2009. She was wonderful and most supportive. She cared about each child and knew each one by name.

The new principal sees me as a problem because of this passing rate, and I have been assigned (along with everyone else in the math department) to work with a retired math coach who suggests the same things that I have already done without success. EINSTEIN’s DEFINITION OF MADNESS!!!

Who can I talk to for serious guidance? The DOE officials just mumble canned gobbledigook and offer PD sessions that haven’t changed in 20 years.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and your writings.

I recently saw your interview on C-Span2 Book Notes. Your critical analyses of “No Child Left Behind” and the 100% utopian proficiency goals were both accurate and sad.

Back in the late 1980s, I was a proposal reviewer for federal alcohol and drug abuse agencies, one of which had the slogan “A drug free society by the year 2000.” Talk about utopian. That kind of slogan could only have been developed by someone who knew nothing about the history of alcohol and drug use in the United States.

That schools are expected to achieve 100% “proficiency” strikes me as absurd, if for no other reason that intelligence levels vary considerably among students (and superintendents). Didn’t any of these folks ever see (or understand) the normal distribution of IQ scores?

Here in Minneapolis, the public school system’s slogan is “Every child college ready.” That’s equally absurd, and I wonder what it does to the kids who aren’t college ready.

I wonder how the school district defines “college ready” and measures educational “success.” Maybe high school dropouts aren’t part of their equation. And how does being “college ready” fit with all the remedial courses first-year college students have to take because they weren’t “college ready?”

Thanks for your insights.

I am an inner-city high school teacher in southern California. The high school is located in a neighborhood that is economically low, highly dense in population, and culturally Hispanic. I felt the news of what happened in Rhode Island at the center of my heart. In response to that article, I commented to a colleague, “Oh my...! They can do anything to us now.”

Two days later we were informed that two of our high schools and one of our intermediate schools were named under-performing in order to meet and receive the funding offered by “Race to The Top.” We felt bad for our sister schools, but confident about why we had escaped the list. For the past three years, as the bar was raised higher each year, our test scores surpassed it. Last year we were awarded a 6-year accreditation as well, by the WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges Accrediting Commission for Schools) team evaluating the criteria we provided for our school to meet accreditation. Shockingly, at the end of the same week our superintendent held an emergency meeting with us after school to announce that we too, and two more schools in our district, were added to the list.

What do we do now? I am posting articles at my place of work regarding your words and point of view on current and past events on education reform. For a long time it has become more and more difficult to cope with what I am asked to do to kids in the name of education. I keep asking myself, where and how do I respond? I feel so insignificant and invisible. I explore the possibilities of leaving, but I don’t know how to go about it with out committing financial suicide. Yet, I am also afraid to stay. How long can my essence survive participating in what is an antithesis to my core beliefs? Help.

I cannot express enough gratitude for the recent book you wrote! I bought a copy the day your book hit the bookstore shelves and read it rapidly, then passed it on to my principal at my base school. It was perfect timing, as the students were just finishing up the last of the MD State exams, and everyone was feeling so all-consumed by this high-stakes testing. In Title I schools, real education comes to a complete halt months before the actual tests in order to prepare! Fortunately as an art teacher, I am not subjected to test-prepping students so some creative learning goes on DESPITE this climate. I am a public school art teacher in Prince George’s County, Maryland and teach at 4 schools. I “cut my teaching teeth” in the New York City public school system, however. When I read your chapter on NYC, I thought “Finally someone is exposing the ‘emperors that be’ (chancellor, mayor and DOE). Hey, they are not WEARING ANY CLOTHES!” It was so on target and just laid out the facts as they are—FINALLY! No spun data—just real facts.

I had wanted to remain in NYC and teach but really felt that every fiber of my intellectual being was being drained from me. I am not alone in these thoughts, as teachers with high potential and intellectual curiosity are leaving the profession (forced or not) in droves. I had a rigorous academic background and yet couldn’t use my wealth of knowledge in the classroom as I was busy preparing students for standardized tests, going to endless meetings on testing implementation, coordinating testing, and dealing with an administration that enforced very cookie-cutter teaching methodologies—ironically under the guise of “balanced” literacy.

If Bloomberg, Broad and Gates have their way, the NYC model will soon prevail nationwide. By the way, I cheered when I read your chapter on the billionaire club as I had done research on this very subject. Has Obama ever read Haney’s “Myth of the Texas Miracle”? I wondered, “Are there any super-billionaires who actually might oppose what the Broads and Gateses of our nation are doing and might financially support education policy suggestions from a panel of experienced teachers, administrators and academics like yourself without making it a “for (them) profit endeavor”?

Thanks again for championing one of the most important causes of our nation!

I am a teacher in Florida, where Senate Bill 6 is about to strip teachers of—well, just about everything keeping us in the profession. I have been getting more and more depressed about the state of education the last few years, to the point of thinking I must leave teaching.

I happened on your book before even hearing about it this past week at Barnes and Noble, and the next day, after I bought it, started seeing your name everywhere. Reading your book this past week was a breath of fresh air and a tiny ray of hope.

Ironically, just before I bought the book, I wrote a piece for my local newspaper about a lot of the issues you talk about, and it ran in the paper the same day I finished your book.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/opinion/editorials/2010/03/19/fed-up-with-state-tests-but-not-burned-out-on-teaching.html

Lastly, I have been trying to say the things you’re now saying about testing for the past ten years in a local comic strip about teaching that I do on the side. It’s called Mr. Fitz, and if you visit the site, I think you might appreciate some of the humor. I’ve poked fun at the testing (called the U-SKUNK, the Universal SKills UNderstanding and Knowledge test, in the strip) for years. You can see some of the strips at www.mrfitz.com.

Thanks for making my school year less depressing. I love what I do, and I’m good at it, but I feel like both sides of the political spectrum are trying to drive me out. Nobody listens to us.

Thanks for speaking out.

I am a teacher who is totally dismayed at what I see in the classrooms at my school.

My school was an early America’s Choice school and implemented the design with success. After a leadership change, the school was unable to sustain the improvements. Thinking that I could impact learning and teaching in some other way, I left my school to teach at a charter school. While I enjoyed my class at the charter school, I was unhappy with the top-down management style. I was then recruited to became an administrator at a restructuring high school. The challenges at the high school were many. The principal was removed and I decided that I wasn’t willing to continue in that environment. My love is teaching and curriculum, not politics or bureaucracy.

After my three-year walkabout, I returned to my school as a Literacy Coach. In the time I was gone, the school had embraced teaching to quarterly benchmarks and test prep. Previously, the school was well known for quality writing instruction; the focus on testing and the constructed response has totally eclipsed other genres of writing instruction. We were on the way to implementing a constructivist math program. Now math teachers are busy looking at quarterly benchmarks and looking for activities/worksheets to support student achievement on quarterly benchmark tests. I do believe that standards which reflect quality student performance or product are a great help to teachers; the danger is in using narrow assessments that can’t capture what we really need to see when learning is happening.

In the interview you gave Democracy Now, you spoke about the poor education that is being delivered in our current NCLB state. I see it daily. Don’t get me wrong, there are teachers doing great things in their individual classrooms; but there are also classrooms where little learning of importance happens. As Literacy Coach, I am charged with helping teachers implement the school’s curriculum. This seems that it would be relatively straightforward. It’s not. Because of all the emphasis on testing, teachers seem unclear about what they should be teaching and what students should learn beyond the things that are explicit on the state multiple-choice tests. Your comments capture much of my feeling as a practitioner at the school level. Your insights are a bit frightening because I fully understand that true success for our teachers and students cannot be reflected in the multiple-choice test and we seem to be on the no off-ramp ride to test prep land. It is also a bit scary to see the federal government controlling federal funds as a way to force change that will be detrimental rather than positive. Common Core Standards are a good step; proliferation of for-profit charter schools is not. It takes more thought to make positive, sustainable change.

I agree that individually our voices are small and that any true influence will be collective. I’m just not sure how.

Your editorial in the Los Angeles Times on March 14 was like music to my ears. Someone other than me knows the truth. As a Los Angeles teacher it has been frustrating and heart-wrenching to watch public education being given away in pieces to private charters. I have never understood why the decision makers never want to spend any real time doing real research talking with real “in the trenches” teachers to find out what the realities are in schools today. Why are we the adversaries? Why are the only good teachers the “young energetic ones” with less than 8 years of experience? What happened to the value of experience? We want to have our students be successful too. We want them to have a real education, not a test-driven one. It is so depressing to sit in the lunchroom and hear my colleagues voice out loud “after next week (when testing is over), I can finally do some real teaching. I can finally spend time on science, art, and social studies.” These are comments from the least experienced to the most.

In public schools we take all comers, as you stated in your article. We can’t ask for students’ test scores before admitting them or turn away those with special needs, partly because it’s against the law. Why is it legal for the charters? Why don’t they have to comply with IDEA? Why is it legal for them to exclude the behavior problems? We don’t get to mandate parent participation like charters and private schools either. These are issues my school and I personally have experienced. If I could just have 10 less students in my class that in itself would make a difference. Giving teachers paid time to collaborate and work in PLCs would make a difference not test-based teaching. For the sake of kids every where I hope your words reach some decision maker’s ears. Their educational lives are at stake.

I just wanted to personally thank you for the voice of reason you have inserted into the media blather about education. As a teacher who considers this the darkest time my profession has seen in my 26-year career, I have been disenchanted by the lack of thoughtful response to the current condemnation of educators for all that is wrong with American education.

On behalf of my colleagues, and most importantly the students in our classrooms, thank you, thank you, thank you. Keep talking. We do need your help.

I just listened to the podcast today with Diane Rehm, and I cannot agree more wholeheartedly with what you are reporting. I thought Diane was carefully neutral in her questions but very incredulous and finding it hard to believe that what is happening to public education is so destructive. I have been seeing this for years and blame NCLB as a primary culprit. I am a public school teacher of special-needs children age 3-5 in a big, poor, inner-city school district that struggles on all fronts. One of my nagging questions about the merit pay issue is: How am I supposed to qualify for merit pay when my job is to teach the “least of these” babies? Yet we know that early childhood education is the first step and ultimately most important step to later success. As Kurt Vonnegut says: “So it goes.” (I am from Indiana!) Thank you and keep the message up front where everyone can hear and maybe understand.

It was with gratitude that I listened to you yesterday on the Diane Rehm Show, thinking, finally, the voice I have been longing to hear!

For thirty years I’ve worked as a poet in public schools along California’s central coast. First and second graders have always been the finest poets, seeing the world, as they do, for the first time and having the ability to express, free from hesitation, what they see and experience. Till now.

It’s been a gradual decline, yes, but this year, I’m stunned and leave school feeling horribly sad at the end of the day. It seems the children’s imaginations have gone on strike! Thinking for themselves and articulating it in poetry has become extremely difficult. It used to be that poetry, with its anything-goes attitude, was an open door that lead to the room of the imagination. It’s as if the young children haven’t the ability to think. I hesitate to write this, but the room that has been deemed acceptable to draw from has gotten awfully small. Kids aren’t able to move freely there.

So thank you for naming what is true! I am most grateful. I feel less alone.

Cyndy Chase here from Keene State College in NH. I am happy to tell you what I think of your book. I finished it yesterday and I think it is just fantastic. In fact, I am planning to make it required reading in my Education 200 class called Educational Environments, a sophomore-level class that the kids take before going into an intense methods program as juniors. Diane, I have been waiting for this book for 10 years! I have addressed some of the issues, but you have pulled it all together in a readable and organized way. I read it on my Kindle but will be purchasing a hard copy so I can highlight and write margin notes and such.

As we hear more and more about national standards, I was drawn to your observations about curriculum. Now, I have taught for 44 years (hard to believe!) so I understand what curriculum means, but your chapter on the need for a quality curriculum from which to plan for education really hit home with me. I am far more interested in some sort of plan that says what needs to be taught than I am in some political group writing standards for things they know little or nothing about. I guess maybe I could not see the forest for the trees, but I had never thought of curriculum as broadly as the way you presented it. It makes so much sense, and it will be discussed in my classrooms as long as KSC will have me (I am a small-time adjunct). I also liked your observations on all the foundations throwing money at schools. I particularly liked your question regarding who elected Bill Gates????

Call me old if you will but I am passionate about public schools! Without them we will continue to grow apart by race and by social class. As the rich get richer and the numbers of the poor grow, we are setting ourselves up for a classic confrontation that could turn both bloody and violent. I once heard Ira Magaziner say that “we are growing a third world country inside our own borders.” Without access to the means for social mobility for everyone, we are digging our own grave. The best solution, and maybe the cheapest in the long run, is quality public schools for all. Our children deserve no less. I love the bumper sticker that says “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” I have spent most of my career teaching in schools impacted by poverty in one way or another. I know how urban schools can hurt kids. I went to urban schools. After retiring from public school teaching in RI, (don’t get me started about Central Falls!) I taught for nearly 7 years at Community Prep in South Providence, which is an independent school (for grades 3 through 8) that takes promising students from failing urban schools and prepares them for high-quality high schools and colleges.

I come from a long line of teachers. My son is the choral conductor at Wellington High School outside of West Palm Beach. When I told him about your book he emailed back that it was already on his Kindle. My daughter is a social worker at Cooke Academy (a special needs high school) on MacDougal St. in Manhattan. She had not heard of the book before I told her she absolutely had to read it; because at our next family get together it was going to be topic number one for discussion, and she did not want to get “beat out” by her brother. My dad was a teacher, principal and superintendent. My grandmother was a teacher, and her mother before her! My own children grew up discussing educational issues around the dining room table as did I. All of us are products of various public school in Rhode Island.

I could go on and on about the inequalities in urban schools and some of the mistakes we made and continue to make, but you don’t have all day and neither do I. Thanks for asking for my feedback. I hope it is helpful. Don’t hesitate to drop me a line if I can help you get the word out in any way. I sure like all the waves your book is making.

I am a retired school superintendent of Hauppauge school district on Long Island. In reference to your article in the Wall Street Journal, I wholeheartedly agree with your findings. Although I retired eighteen years ago, I have had the continuing experience of following the demise of our educational system as my grandchildren proceed through the public schools. The inception of “No Child Left Behind” made me aware, right from the start, that we were eliminating all the educational experiences in most curriculum areas for the sake of test preparation. It goes beyond the “dumbing down of our schools,” since politicians are putting finance behind test grades rather than sound educational programs. It doesn’t take a college education to recognize that our schools can only improve when we establish excellent curriculum programs and testing based on materials covered by teachers. Once we eliminated the educational objectives that could be measured and stopped advocating workshops for teachers to give them a better understanding of the material being taught, we went down the proverbial slippery slope know as the “dumbing down” of the educational process. I believe that the solution to educating our students is to identify the important areas of curriculum in all subjects and then to identify those objectives that should be tested. This concept is simply criterion-referenced testing and not standardized testing. Just as important is the ongoing support for teachers in both educational materials and sound in-service programs.

I heard you on Diane Rehm this morning—and literally threw my hands in the air (briefly, as I was driving my car) when you said NCLB’s goal of 100% of students passing tests was never attainable, and folks within DoE knew it!

After 25 years of working on education finance policy in Texas, I know many of the folks responsible for crafting NCLB, and while our disagreement has always been respectful and professional, I have had numerous people suggest that I am willing to settle for sub-standard student achievement because I have said that anytime (not just with NCLB) you set a 100% success rate as your goal, you have set yourself up for failure.

I am one of the many on Amazon’s wait list for your book—and I am very much looking forward to reading it.

I am a teacher of the “gifted” students for four schools in my rural, Florida County. I drive 40 miles on Tuesday and Thursday to service students at two of the schools. My home base is an elementary school in my local community as well as the local high school for one Monday monthly. I am in my first year of the “DROP” option of our state. Because my teaching career has spanned the last forty years, including ten of those that I chose to be a “stay at home mother,” I had decided that I would like to retire after this year. After all, I have developed hobbies and interests throughout the years. Most importantly, I have a two-year-old grandbaby, and I’m expecting that my daughter and her husband will have more and my son and his wife will soon have children. That excites me. However, something happened to me this year. I rediscovered “teaching” for the pure joy of teaching! I have just completed a second Teaching Module that will certify me to teach gifted students again next year.

I listened to you on the Diane Rehm Show driving back to my home base this morning in a heavy downpour of rain. I think that I have heard you speak but could not recall. I listened with eagerness because you touched my heartstrings. I respect you with your years of research and expertise in the field of education. You are a real friend to teachers. My husband, who came out of retirement to become an assistant principal, has always believed that the teacher is the key in the classroom. He thinks that the teacher is the connection between those who make directives on the local, state, and national level and between the homes of the children who attend public school.

I know how difficult it is to teach to a test. I see my colleagues frazzled and disappointed because they think that teachers are not respected, as they once “seemed” to be. I believe that one of your listeners stated that has happened since 1957 with the launching of the Russian Sputnik. I was only a child in 1957, but I had an excellent education. I also felt that our nation had a period of treating teachers as professionals.

I am glad that I can use creativity in my teaching. However, I know that there are many controversies about teaching gifted students in the public schools. I think that the public school should be the place to educate all children, including those with brilliant minds.

Your interview inspired me, and I appreciate you and your contribution to education. At times, I think that I may want to become a crusader and advocate for teachers to teach in their classroom. Then, I think about the recent news events about schools closing down and states firing teachers. Then, I take the road most travelled—that of complacency based on my anxiety about my future. I have decided to tell everyone I know (and it’s a large, rural county) about your new book. I plan to purchase one, too. I wish continued success for you.

I am a mere 11 pages into your new book and must write to say thank you. Things have gotten so bad in education from a political standpoint that I have begun saying on a fairly regular basis to my colleagues, “Everyone hates us—even President Obama.” In fact, I’m sad to report that I said that to a group of future teachers from Purdue University who visited my classroom today. I’m not typically a negative guy—I’m active in my township in Indianapolis where my wife and I both teach and where we send our children to school. I’m proud of our organization while recognizing that we do have flaws. But all in all, I love what I do each day and am honored to have the opportunity to try to reach teens in my art class each day.

So, I’m inclined to thank you already for what promises to be a great read. I’ve already recommended the book to two others (I’ve owned it for about 2 hours) and will likely be discussing it for some time. My only hope is that it awakens those who still believe in some of the terribly flawed paths we are currently pursuing.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Its so refreshing to to find someone in a position of power and influence explaining the truth about public education. I taught for 35 years at Jordan High School in the Watts section of Los Angeles. No one who has worked in inner-city schools can have anything but scorn for the misguided attempts at school reform. Whenever I was fortunate to have good students, there were good parents supporting them.

It took me many years and access to funding to finally learn how to teach inner-city students. As a history teacher I was fortunate to have my own fully equipped computer lab. Technology, rightly done, is a powerful tool for educating inner-city youth. I had great success teaching GIS, normally taught in colleges, to high school students and was surprised to see how readily they grasped the complicated program.

I retired five years ago and turned the social studies PowerPoints I created in my classroom into a business. Thousands of teachers all over the U.S. use them. The sad fact was that, while I was teaching, I could get no one in the LAUSD interested in the results I was getting. But that’s another story. Thank you so much for telling the truth.

Your article [WSJ, 3/9/10] is exactly the plight of the schools. The boy I mentor tells me things like, “I don’t have to know THAT for the CRCT test.” Then I tell him, “It’s important to know.”

I think school children can get much more out of school if they have a mentor. There are lots of service organizations that could be encouraged to become long term mentors. Mentoring should become a national program.

I am a 59-year-old white woman and a college graduate. Due to factors beyond my control, I have been living in a lower-income black neighborhood. I took one of the kids named Alex under my wing since he was 6, and he is now 14. He has parents that have good jobs, take care of their 3 kids, but have had no higher education.

Alex and I have gone to the museums, botanical gardens, book signings, hockey games, etc. together. Before I started helping him with his term papers, his grades were mainly C’s and at least one D. Once I started helping with his social studies and English term papers he received high grades on the papers. The idea that he could get good grades and the knowledge on how to continue getting good grades gave him the incentive to try harder in all his classes. Now he has a 3.5 GPA. He wants to be a pilot, so I told him he needs short-term and long-term goals to succeed.

Ms. Ravitch, we need well rounded or college graduate adults to become mentors to children. Alex told me I care more about his grades than his parents. That’s because I know he needs to go to college to become an airline pilot and we have the HOPE Scholarship here in Georgia that he can receive if he gets good grades.

I wish I would have had a mentor when I was in high school. Neither of my parents had been to college and didn’t want it for the girls in our family. It took me many years before I graduated.

You are in the national spotlight. Maybe you could make the case for a national push for mentoring.

As a teacher of twenty-five years and the father of a five-year-old autistic boy, I thank you for your eloquent efforts in defense of public schools. Bridging Differences and your new book give me solace and hope.

I read your newest book this weekend and have to say it left me pleasantly speechless—I don’t think there is anything left to say on the topic of how off-course we have gone in recent years, and why. I certainly found my own experience in the field confirming virtually everything you said, especially the inapplicability of the marketplace model to this most public of public goods. And the final chapter is simply inspiring in laying out an approach to education that should be common-sensical but sadly now reads as quite radical. Every policymaker in the field should read it, and you should do all you can to spread its reach. Congratulations.

Someday, I think there is an even broader book to be written, since some of the same dynamics are at work in health care and in the privatization of other essentially public functions. The problem for the US is that we seem unable to accept any other model for the allocation of goods than the marketplace approach, even when it is clearly ineffective and perhaps even downright dangerous. The corrosive effect of the “creative destruction” that is the marketplace on our national culture—whether in the popular media or the classroom—is also something we should worry about.

All of us who care about public education—and the country more generally—owe you a great debt of thanks for your scholarship, and most of all, for your commitment to the truth. Mrs. Ratliff was right: “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” still describes you pretty well.

I read the book twice word for word. My copy is now with highlights on every page. It appears that we both have been in the game of education for about half a century. The only difference is that I was on the firing line with secondary students every day while you were working with those who supposedly knew more than you did but didn’t. You did something I am not capable of but I respect you for it because I would have been totally frustrated. I might also add that my wife of over forty-eight years also agrees with you wholeheartedly, and she spent thirty years of her life teaching first graders. I have taken so many notes from your book that I was going to use to write you that this would be longer than your book so will try to make just a few comments from my fifty years of experience. None are as a result of formal studies I have done but will add that studies about teaching and education in general are about impossible because of all the variables which the so-called experts don’t understand.

I have served in Keene, NH, Laramie, WY, and West Hartford, CT; I retired after serving twenty-five years in Ashburnham-Westminster, MA. My education consists of BA’s and MA’s from colleges in NH and an MA+30 from the U. of Wyoming. Since my retirement in 1993 I have served as an unpaid volunteer giving back thousands of hours in the system from where I retired. We live in Florida four months and in New England for eight. My life has been one of serving kids and parents and I have never lost my love for education. I am not politically involved and consider myself completely independent with a lot of common sense which isn’t so common anymore.

The results of every study that you referred to in your book were of no surprise. I would have predicted the same. Foundations, whether they be Gates, Broad, Robertson, Dell, or whoever would have done a much bigger service to education if they had given the funds to whatever schools they wished and told them to use as they see fit. The more interference from the outside, the more corruption. In fact I would go so far as to say that most, if not all, were a waste of billions of dollars that could have gone to support schools rather than try to interfere with them. There are no magical fixes in education, no easy cures, and they certainly can’t be operated as a business as many try to do. During my career I came up with a few gimmicks that were helpful to kids for a few years, but any gimmicks and miracles, which don’t exist anyway, don’t last long.

Give me good teachers with good kids and they’ll get a good education. Give me good kids with a less than good teacher and I’ll give you kids with a lesser education. Give me excellent teachers with kids who struggle for whatever reason or are from dysfunctional homes and I’ll give you kids with a lesser education. “You can’t put a quart of water in a pint bottle.” (Not politically correct, but honest.) The large majority of public schools do a good job of educating. Interference by the government will only set them back. I do not understand why every student, good or bad, needs to take the same tests under high-stakes testing. It make no sense and only slows down our most talented students as well as being a waste of funds. From all of my experiences in public education and my knowledge of independent schools and charter schools, I would say that public schools do a better overall job educating when all factors are considered. Independent and charter schools only educate whom they want while true public schools have to educate all who get off the bus.

Teachers. Again in my career, of the hundreds I have worked with, no more than five per cent if that high would I consider poor. There are many factors to consider when evaluating teachers. Some of the best have been only “C” students themselves in college but could get the material across and had the classroom control that is needed. The best teachers I have ever met were trained at “Teacher’s Colleges” and/or state universities. The most inept have been from Ivy League Schools. They just could never understand why kids didn’t learn as easily as they did. A few years the State of Massachusetts tried to recruit teachers from business and industry with no educational training and offered them a 20K bonus. I am not sure whether that program is still around, but the few that came to the school I was working at lasted no more than a year. My guess would be that today fewer than twenty per cent of them are still teaching and few lasted more than a year.

With this I will try to close, as I could easily write all day and have 101 other things I’d like to write but want to play a little golf before it gets dark.

May all your travels be happy ones. You deserve it.

I’m an HISD sub teacher, so I go all over.....

I have to add this—standardized testing cuts both ways...there are bad teachers in the Gifted/Talented program, but because the tests are so easy for those students, those teachers have tenure, because they can draw those test scores around them to “prove” their abilities....

In the meantime, very dedicated, hard-working teachers have their careers on the line:

http://www.examiner.com/x-16144-Houston-Education-Reform-Examiner~y2010m2d21-Addressing-the-fundamentals-an-alternative-to-teacher-blaming-permissive-methods-of-school-reform

I could go on and on about what I’ve seen....but overall, I have to say, we aren’t building a better society....just an Enron/Bernie Madoff culture where numbers rule and common sense is thrown out the window....

I applaud your courageous rethinking about our core public education format.

Retired now, I taught in public school for 25 yrs. in large city & small town schools in four states—New Orleans, LA; Atlanta, GA; Lawrence, KS; and Barrington, RI, my home now. In addition, I taught in part-time grant programs for 10 years in numerous RI public schools.

Our current problem in RI, which the New York Times noticed, is the crisis in Central Falls, where the entire staff of their one high school was threatened with being fired by misguided “hardball” tactics of the superintendent.

CF is close to my heart, as I taught part-time in grant funded programs there. Without hesitation, I would rank CF teachers among the finest I have ever worked with, anywhere, at any time.

RI’s smallest inner-city, Central Falls, is a crucible of poverty, a veritable poster-child of urban woes—chronically depressed, with large numbers of students whose English is a second or third language, a very high rate of student turnover, with many newly arrived families, hard-working but often with only borderline literacy in English. CF high school teachers have minimal resources, yet are excoriated for “low scores, unacceptable graduation rates.”

As you can see, it’s a dismal Dickensian story. Yet, if No Child could redirect its focus on testing, reshape its goals to include flexible levels of measurement, and embrace truly comprehensive school programs, there really is hope for meaningful change.

Is there some way for me to help? Meanwhile, I encourage you to continue your vital efforts in educational policy. Your voice matters.

It is not unusual for historians, political figures, Supreme Court justices, party faithfuls and true believers of all stripes to change their minds in the middle of their career. It is rare, however, that a public figure with the stature of Diane Ravitch demonstrates the courage and chronicles the gradual mind-changing (and game-changing) process so that it is visible, “out-loud” and accessible to those within earshot and who follow her Bridging Differences dialogue with Deborah Meier. The Death and Life of the Great American School System is her latest in a long line of distinguished books, and I think it is not only an amazing accomplishment but a very important book. It must be read, widely.

I have worked for close to half a century in and with public schools and districts across the country. I have been a friend and colleague of, among many others who are deeply concerned with the quality and direction of American public education, e.g., John Goodlad, Seymour Sarason, Robert Stake, Harold “Doc” Howe and Frank Keppel, David Perkins. My first book, Changing Schools Through the Arts, chronicled in great detail the hope, promise and serious obstacles to school change in a network of six urban U.S. school districts. I am reminded on a daily basis as I work in the schools how difficult it is to initiate, implement and most of all sustain change whether in one school or a large number.

What Diane’s book teaches us, or at least reminds us, is the current notion that non-school people such as mayors, generals and lawyers should not be given the power and responsibility to run school systems in a functioning democracy. The research and results are plentiful about the problems, even when (and usually) none of the researchers agree with each other about the causes and results. But schools are complex, old-fashioned entities, essentially social communities, and no one district, school or classroom is like another. Schools tend to be latest-fad addicted, always hoping for the holy grail to solve whatever the latest problem may be, and in a bureaucracy like a school system that never has enough patience, resources or field-based and grass roots intelligence to figure out how to move forward, there is rarely enough time dedicated to gathering stakeholders and evidence for support. Even then, school change is really tough, and shortcuts, arm-twisting and top-down dictates will ultimately not get the job done. What it does, instead, as we witness today, is to force the disintegration of the tenuous structure of the system.

The beauty of Diane’s book is how she does it, disarmingly. Starting with the first chapter, she tells us how and why all this is ‘true’ while she recognizes her earlier mistakes and assumptions and then, through careful analysis of her and others’ recent research, uncovers, chunk by chunk, what doesn’t work, her opinions why, and the unfinished questions and answers that remain. What is particularly impressive for me is her inside look and take on periods in education history with which I am personally and professionally familiar. The chapters on the Standards Movement, the Transformation of District 2 in New York City, the Lessons from San Diego, all the way through to the brilliant Billionaire Boys’ Club, shine a powerful searchlight on what’s gone dead wrong with American education: Corporate America and the addiction to power, money and international supremacy now drive the schools with the worship of the new gods of data, metrics and literacy and easily adjustable numeracy scores.

In my view, Diane has always been a staunch humanist, a rigorous historian and an arts as education advocate. As I watched her recently, gradually find her new way carefully through the last several years, I got more and more excited and nowadays, I am continually thrilled by her blunt and beautifully written thoughts that hit the page and the reader between the eyes. She has given those of us who believe public education is about creating individualized and informed citizens for a democracy a series of arguments for tossing out the hollow blueprints and returning our schools to a focus on content and teaching and learning.

Now, are there magic and final answers to the tremendous challenge of top-notch education in a democracy as young as ours? No, of course not. But the last chapter, Lessons Learned, offers a number of ideas, suggestions that could keep a seminar on this critical topic going for a long, long time.

Thank you, Diane.

I am in my second year of Teach for America. I recently heard your interview on NPR and I admire your new opinions of the education system. I am a huge advocate of public education, and don’t want to see it become completely privatized! All around me, my fellow Teach for America corps members are leaning towards leaving their public school placements for charter schools.

I currently teach in a middle school that has abominably low test scores, no accountability, and an outrageous lack of student responsibility. However, the school is truly a microcosm of the streets outside its walls. If students were siphoned away for testing reasons, the beautiful and natural diversity of this community would be gone. The school needs a major management overhaul, but I really believe the students should stay put.

I cherish my public education and every single experience I had in Berkeley Public Schools. I look forward to reading your book.

The Death and Life of the American Public School System, Diane Ravitch’s new book, is perhaps the most important education policy book you will read this year. The book is highly readable, the arguments irrefutable, the conclusions disturbing. Ravitch persuasively makes the case that the crisis in our schools today is not so much that they are underperforming, as that they are under siege. The schools are being pressured by unaccountable corporate and philanthropic interests that use their vast wealth and political connections to impose technocratic and free-market reforms on the design and delivery of public education. It is ironic that many of this current crop of reforms focus on deregulation at just the moment when we see the devastating results of such policies on the world economy. Despite the fact that the effectiveness of many of these ‘reforms’—charters, threats, and excessive and misguided use of testing—is unproven, they appear impervious to critique in the current climate. Nonetheless, as Ravitch so clearly demonstrates, the corporatist model is antithetical to public education’s civic purposes. It is a profoundly undemocratic turn which could spell the demise of America’s greatest social invention, the public school.

I imagine this is one of 10,000 mails in your inbox. I think you may have single-handedly turned the debate completely around. Your intellectual integrity and persistence is deeply appreciated out here in the hinterlands.

Here in New Orleans, with 61% of the students now in privatized schools, it is easy to see how privatization and the conversion of citizens into consumers has profoundly undermined the ideals of civic engagement and a commitment to the common good. There are virtually no parent groups advocating for the disadvantaged as were common before Katrina; instead, the community is a mirror reflection of the market competition of the charter movement. We have devolved into an atomized community of competing individuals driven by self-interest and self-fulfillment. It is ironic that the call for “civic engagement” was combined with an education policy that undermines that collective engagement at every turn.

I fight everyday to maintain the highest academic standards in my inner-city math and science magnet school classroom. I sometimes wonder why I keep fighting, because my opponents are formidable and many: the local school administration, the education advocacy group whose lawsuit resulted in the decision that established our school and which is ostensibly pushing to better prepare the community’s students for college, all levels of government, the students, and their parents! You’re my new hero! Thank you!!!

Thank you so much for rethinking the issues of education reform. As a retired teacher and former principal of a charter school, I agree with you—we have lost our way. Teachers have seen this for years. Standardized testing is the most negative influence we face, but there are others.

I look at my two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter and her passion for learning as play and I could not send her to what so many schools have become. She would wither.

I really have decided that anyone who makes decisions about schools should do so as if their grandchild would go there. I am a veteran of the math reform effort. What the original NCTM Standards proposed offered so much. The mathematics we teach now, driven by one-dimensional tests, has gotten so far away. I saw this so well in my AP Calculus and AP Stats classes, as kids had lost passion as well as the inclination to explore and to think deeply. It was not the content they lacked, it was the context. For the record, the charter school I helped start in 2008 is Charleston (SC) Charter School for Math and Science. I retired in January (Yes!). Most all of my career has been in traditional and magnet public schools.

Glaser is right—we have lost all semblance of quality and excellence, much less student responsibility for learning. And we did it ourselves by drinking the Kool-Aid.

Ironically, we have better teachers than ever, but they are giving up the fight.

Some charter schools, particularly conversion charters, have made progress, but the charter concept mostly only gives false security at best, and at worst—is sad.

So please continue to raise your voice.

I totally agree with and applaud your change of heart about high-stakes testing, and the fact that you are speaking out about NCLB/RTT bringing about the death of public education. I would love to help you fight for a school system that actually teaches children, and doesn’t reduce education opportunities to the lowest common denominator.

I currently teach in a school that has not made AYP for some years; as a result, we’ve been forced to implement a program called “Teach4Success,” which is absolutely about teaching to the lowest level. It has saddened and sickened the teachers at the school, and made us feel less like teachers and more like robots. Something has got to give. If you are interested, I would love it if you could come visit our high school (I know there are several hoops through which you would have to jump in order to do so, but I think the more you see, the more of a case you could make, although I am not sure at this point who would listen). I also would be willing to help you in any way to bring about some sort of effective change in the education system.

Keep up the good fight; there are many of us with you.

I am impressed with your ability and willingness to publicly change your mind about issues that you have been deeply committed to. At this point I don’t know what I think is the right thing to do re education reform, although I have always been convinced that the publicness of schools must be preserved—but we don’t have enough people willing to really follow the evidence where they think it takes them.

My 4th grade son just completed the TAKS writing portion today, but did you know that he stayed at school until 5:30 p.m. to do this and he wasn’t the last child to leave? He is in the Vanguard program in Houston ISD and many of his classmates stayed after the final school bell (3 p.m.) in order to complete the essay. This absolutely disgusts me to no end. I’ve lost count of the number of classroom hours over the years since he began elementary school that were lost to practice TAKS, TAKS worksheets, TAKS strategies, TAKS benchmarks, etc. His father and I grew up together in public schools in Texas. We were both honor students and passing through the TX public school system took many standardized tests during our academic careers, but never did we spend so much as an hour being “taught the test” (and we always scored well, higher than average I might add). When is this insanity going to end??? If all the time spent on teaching the TAKS test had been spent actually teaching, perhaps those kids would have been able to complete the essay in a reasonable amount of time.

He was uncharacteristically anxious this morning when I dropped him off at school and repeatedly told me that if he didn’t pass the TAKS writing he would not get promoted to 5th grade. According to him, by the way, he would need to get a 3 or 4, which would be commended to pass. I told him that I didn’t believe this to be true and that since he had all A’s & B’s he would not have to worry about grade promotion.

I am deeply saddened by the current state of public education and feel no other alternative but to pursue other options for my children’s future. Given the level of involvement over the last 5 years in active PTA leadership, I feel especially disappointed by the thought that no matter how hard I work I cannot make a difference in our public education experience. Change must come from the top.

I agree wholeheartedly with your newer beliefs, but I am motivated to write because of the joy I felt seeing that someone with your incredible background could change positions and do it with such clarity and class. Thank you, thank you. And thanks to NPR. I will read this book.

Having cut my teeth on your work in graduate school, I must write to tell you that I am heartened by what people consider to be your jumping of ship (NYT 3/3).

I understand it as intellectual honesty, something I believe to be all too rare in the academy—and in debates around school reform. As you show, we should all change direction when evidence points us that way. This is not often the case, as usually we fail to see the evidence or see it and prescribe more of the same. You are right, in schools standardized testing has run roughshod over learning, as the tool has become the task.

I have a 7-year-old in a “good” public school, and sit shaking my head as she fills out worksheets called “mad minutes,” in which she has a minute to do as many math problems as possible. I count the minute, and cringe at the madness.

But I am not writing to commend you for finally switching to the right team. It is more that having a scholar of your magnitude framed as changing course gives us new scholars permission to be wrong—which we all will eventually be if we really try to put our ideas into print and practice—and to learn right across ideological lines. It takes courage to change course on profoundly political issues like school reform, and I commend yours. I hope I will have it when the truth with a small t seems to be somewhere other than where I am.

I hope you won’t think this inappropriate, but I’d like to share with you that while many may be publicly critiquing your change of views, I think it represents fully what it means to be a thoughtful and deliberate public intellectual. For me, it shows how when you are deeply engaged you are also deeply affected and, mostly likely, often deeply changed. Honestly, as a young Black scholar, it just gives me a little more hope that we all really can see and do things differently. I believe that your influence is still very strong and that it will continue to shape the direction of educational thinking and policy.

I really do wish you well in the public space which you are now in, and hope that any fairweather friends are few and far between.

I heard your interview on NPR this morning. After, I went straight to B&N when it opened and bought the first copy sold there. I am/was a public school educator for over fifty years. I will not go into a further introduction of myself as it is in an e-mail that I will send you right after I send this. This book could end up being the greatest positive influence on education in twenty years. I am only into Chapter 3 but cannot disagree with a word you have written. It is simply sensational. The e-mail I will be sending to you I faxed to many Congressmen a week ago when I read that four of them were going to rewrite NCLB. It could have been taken from your book. We have the same problems with the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as most other states do with theirs. I have been involved in the process for the last ten years. It might be a little better than some states, but it has the same and its own problems.

I believe that by the end of this day I will have in one way or the other been partially responsible for getting your book out there. I have suggested to a dozen superintendents that I know that they should not only read the book but get copies for every administrator in their districts. I have also suggested we flood Congress with this book, and that includes President Obama. As far as I am concerned, there is a bigger problem in our educational system than in our health care system. We could save the country billions of dollars by not sending good money after bad if education were overhauled and NCLB were sent to its resting place.

Thanks for writing the book.

This morning, before dawn, I was driving to work (6th and 7th grade, a public middle school, teaching history and language arts) when I heard your interview on NPR. My eyes welled up, and I pulled my truck off the road. I wept with joy—literally—upon hearing your thoughtful, sensible, and spot-on comments about the institution within which I serve.

When I left for work this morning, I was on the edge of resigning. Demoralized by attacks upon intellectual freedom and human curiosity, frustrated by poorly conceived top-down programs, micro-managed by administrators with no actual interest in pedagogy (but with a profound obsession for “accountability”), I had all but given up. Then I heard your comments.

Upon arriving at school, I logged onto the internet and ordered a copy of your book. I look forward to reading it, and I look forward to sharing your insights with my demoralized colleagues.

Finally, we have some hope that the worm may have turned. There will be much to do in the days and years ahead, but the hope remains that America may once again have a system of public education to ensure her democratic future.

Thank you for making my drive to school today somewhat tolerable.

I teach in a school of 73% free/reduced lunch kids. NCLB is a lie, a political bill of goods sold to the American people. It was so obviously written by people (politicians) who have no sense of a classroom that I can’t believe that it’s still on the books.

Your interview today on public radio got me into the door (once again) and gave me hope. We’re not ‘there’ yet (however one defines ‘there’), but at least there is a voice, pointing out that the emperor truly has no clothes.

It doesn’t sound like the Obama Administration, (with some pretty harsh rules for ‘Race to the Top’ funds, and support for the mistreatment of the teachers at Rhode Island’s Central Falls) yet ‘gets it.’ I fear it might get worse, if/before it gets better.

I have taught high school social science for 18 years in Modesto, CA. What we are increasingly noticing is that students have no buy in to the testing craze. And in keeping our courses lock step, everyone on the same page in the textbook each day, we have removed the joy in both teaching and learning. In history, a subject that benefits greatly from current events and the teachable moment, it is no longer possible to provide students with a basis of understanding of the subject taught in a format that is meaningful to them. In English classes students are not encouraged to read what they enjoy and so dread reading...this surely won’t improve our test scores.

Statistically it is impossible for all of our students to be above average, yet that is the bar which has been set.