[lbo-talk] ravitch talks to jon stewart

[Alan Rudy]

The thing that really set me off - and I'm working from memory here - was
when Ravitch pointed out that our upper middle class kids do very well but
that our 33% (again, memory...) childhood poverty rate is infinitely more to
blame for low test scores than teachers, Stewart nevertheless responded by
saying that giving poor parents a choice between (large,) scary, chaotic and
lousy urban schools and smaller, more regimented and nicer charters couldn't
be a bad thing.  I think she then missed a chance to say 1) that charter's
don't on average get better results from equivalent groups of kids and 2)
"choice" means busting unions, cutting salaries, privatizing services and
perpetual 3-5 year burn out ratios... though I'd have preferred it if she'd
just said that schools are being scapegoated for the consequences of
neoliberalim's exacerbation of social inequality and that no "education"
program is going to solve the problems with education if education's
problems aren't primiarly rooted in education.

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>wrote:


> The only thing I remember along these lines is his saying that charter
> schools "aren't the problem," so he did seem to want to argue that while
> they aren't the solution, they aren't the problem, whereas I get the
> impression from Ravitch that she thinks they are very much a part of the
> problem, insofar as they distract us from solving the genuine problems.
>
> But in general I got the feeling that he is actually pretty solid on (a)
> teachers getting a bad rap, and (b) teacher unions getting a bad rap. I may
> watch it again later, though, and see if I think differently.
>
> And here's the link, for anyone intereted:
> http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-3-2011/diane-ravitch
>
> On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 11:24 PM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > it seemed to me Stewart was more resistant than I expected... made me
> > wonder
> > if he's sending his kids to a charter school.
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 11:40 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > I would link, but it's just aired and I think they wait until it airs
> on
> > > the
> > > west coast to post it?
> > >
> > > Anyway, nothing earth-shattering to this crowd, but still a good
> > interview.
> > > ___________________________________
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> > >
>