Morning Shots

May 10, 2013

Our PALs in CA, in a lovely email about how much of a difference a great teacher can make in a child’s life, shared John Legend’s rendition of an 80s anthem celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week, calling on our students to celebrate their “true colors.”

Legend is among dozens of past CER EdReformie honorees. As CER turns 20, we’ll be honoring more education reformers at our Conference & Gala on October 9 at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. You don’t want to miss it! Stay tuned here– CER At 20 Conference & Gala registration will be up soon!

May 9, 2013

I should be curled up in the Fetal position…

Diane Ravitch’s blog is full of comments about me and my family… apparently in an attempt to discredit my integrity. Weird. Apparently, I do not understand the constitution or the concept of federalism and need a civics lesson, too. Ugh. My head is moving quickly toward my feet…

Also, I’m married to a man who teaches at a parochial school (Oh my Lord, save me from the fires of hell!) and my own kids went to said school. It must have needed to be said – the suggestion being that I’m married to a radical and none of us like public education. Push me farther into the abyss of fetal centrism. I never realized how bad I was.

But I’m not curled up, at all. In fact, I’m amused. That Diane Ravitch hosts such people on her blog is a mystery, which I will explore in more detail in my book. In fact, I devote almost a whole chapter to Diane and our numerous communications during the 90s that I’ve cherished.

The blog comments noted above are allegedly related to my statement about the Louisiana Supreme Court decision, and my belief that it can and should be appealed to the US Supreme Court. 10th amendment not withstanding, I have good cause to suggest this, and plan to write a bit about it in the near future (though like any good competitive “team” I wont’ be sharing all my secrets – that would be akin to giving the other guys the playbook!). But before I can spend time doing that, I did find it flattering that so many people want to presuppose so much about

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May 8, 2013

Postcards from the Past 
A new, occasional blog post by CER President Jeanne Allen in commemoration of CER’s 20th Anniversary in business and the historical events that have taken place during our history.

It was January, 1997. It was Pennsylvania. The letter began:

“I recently read with considerable interest your account of the charter school debate in Pennsylvania…I’m not sure who your source was for that account but I thought I’d take the opportunity…to give you the rest of the story…”

The letter was from the president of the PA School Boards Association, Thomas Gentzel, and he was angry that we called the pending proposal in PA a “lousy” charter bill, because it vested all the authority to create charters with school boards. We said at the time, that doing so might make the Blob content, but that it would never lead to charters being created.

Indeed, back then, and even now, school boards associations are more antagonistic about charter school bills that spread the authority for chartering to other entities, like universities, or Mayors, or independent entities completely. The fact is that any division of power for them is a loss of power.

This recently played out again in Mississippi, as it does in every state when charters come up. Republican leaders who wanted desperately to do something about their state’s very weak charter school law admitted that the school board members and superintendents back home were putting heavy pressure on them to limit chartering to only the failing school districts, so that they would not have any schools opening in their districts. On top of that, they opposed multiple authorizers. They always do of course, but retaining sole authority of charter schools to school

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