Arne Duncan criticizes Diane Ravitch...says she is insulting teachers, principals, and students.

madfloridian

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Fri Jun-03-11 05:04 PM
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Arne Duncan criticizes Diane Ravitch...says she is insulting teachers, principals, and students.

And that they are all proving her wrong.

When the DOE makes you a personal target in a Democratic administration...that's a problem.

Arne's words came through Jonathan Alter. I think it's a little insulting for him to speak this way about a former assistant Secretary of Education. She knows more about learning and teaching than Arne or Jonathan. In fact for the Secretary of Education to get that personal is really a little shocking to me.

Mike Klonsky first mentions these personal statements by Arne at his blog.

Diane Ravitch is right on point with her critique of corporate-style school reform and with her exposes of so-called "turnaround miracles."

How do I know she's hitting the mark? Arne Duncan is using the full power of the DOE's overstaffed and over-budgeted PR department to launch personal attacks on Diane. Even during the Bush administration, when hack journalists like Armstrong Williams were paid big bucks to promote No Child Left Behind, I can't recall former secretaries of ed using willing writers to launch such vicious personal vendettas against individual critical educators.

Here is more about Arne's words about Diane Ravitch.

Arne appears to have shamelessly used Jonathan Alter to get the word out about his feelings about Ravitch.

Alter's column

Please note Alter's use of the words "status quo" and "obstructionist"...two of the favorite words of reformers to be used against those who support public education.

Unfortunately, the forces of the status quo are still working overtime. Obstructionists with a talent for caricature are determined to discredit important progress under way in some of the poorest school districts in the country.

The leader of this rear-guard action is Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University who was an assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush. She�s the education world�s very own Whittaker Chambers, the famous communist turned strident anti-communist of the 1940s. Ravitch moved the other way, from right to left, where she now uses phony empiricism to rationalize almost every tired argument offered by teachers unions.

That's mean and spiteful. There are no redeeming qualities to those words.

Pretty ugly words, but he's not done yet. He quotes Arne Duncan.

Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama�s normally mild- mannered education secretary, has finally had enough. �Diane Ravitch is in denial and she is insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country who are proving her wrong every day,� he said when I asked about Ravitch this week.

This is not the first time Alter has been sicced on Ravitch when she crossed the reformers. From December 2010:

Jonathan Alter, billionaire Gates diss Ravitch, teachers, liberals.

When I asked Gates about Ravitch, you could see the Micro-hard hombre who once steamrolled software competitors: �Does she like the status quo? Is she sticking up for decline? Does she really like 400-page (union) contracts? Does she think all those �dropout factories� are lonely? If there�s some other magic way to reduce the dropout rate, we�re all ears.� Gates understands that charters aren�t a silver bullet, and that many don�t perform. But he doesn�t have patience for critics who spend their days tearing down KIPP schools and other models that produce results.

I did a news search on her name, and it appears she really angered some people several times this week. It seems mostly to be the powerful moneyed reformers who are taking public education out of the hands of the people.

In fact this week she really had strong words about how Bill Gates and his foundation are speaking about teachers.

From NPR:

"I have no doubt that the movement Bill Gates has launched has created enormous hostility toward teachers," says Diane Ravitch, who has been studying American education for 40 years.

The New York University professor has emerged as the most outspoken critic of the foundation's approach.

"It's like all accountability for educational failure is suddenly plopped on the heads of teachers, and this is wrong," she says.

Moreover, Ravitch contends that when the foundation supports think tanks, academics and others who agree with its point of view, it drowns out other voices. NPR is among those organizations receiving money from the Gates Foundation. Referring to Bill Gates, she says, one man shouldn't have so much power."

When I write about the New Normal in education, I realize it really won't make a difference. Their side is too powerful, and ours is not.

I see the way teachers are thought of here now at a Democratic forum, and I realize it took a Democrat to finally push the reforms through. We fought George Bush's efforts, but now we are accepting those same goals.

Maybe someone will think about it more than they would have ordinarily. Maybe some will think to themselves that when a Secretary of Education is attacking a former assistant Secretary of Education because she stands up for public schools and teachers..that there is a problem.

Or maybe not.