ESSA Questions? Ask Diane Ravitch to Ask Lamar Alexander

“I still wonder why we, over time, don’t make every public school a charter school.” He continued, “You couldn’t do it all overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter#sthash.y5Y6mha1.dpuf

“I still wonder why we, over time, don’t make every public school a charter school.” He continued, “You couldn’t do it all overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter#sthash.y5Y6mha1.dpuf

“I still wonder why we, over time, don’t make every public school a charter school.” He continued, “You couldn’t do it all overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter#sthash.y5Y6mha1.dpuf

“I still wonder why we, over time, don’t make every public school a charter school.” He continued, “You couldn’t do it all overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years. - See more at: http://www.aft.org/ae/winter2014-2015/kahlenberg_potter#sthash.y5Y6mha1.dpuf

I don't know why we, over time, don't make every public school a charter school....You could not do it overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years." --Lamar Alexander, 2013

--> Lamar Alexander has spent the last thirty years working in one capacity or another to realize the Reagan dream of privatizing public schools.  
First as governor of Tennessee in the 1980s, he poured millions of scarce education dollars into an unwieldy and unfair performance pay scheme that gave recognition and pay raises principally to teachers in well-funded leafy suburbs.  

In the early 1990s, Alexander used his leverage as U. S. Secretary of Education to attempt to reward his former business associate, Chris Whittle, with federal contracts to fund hundreds of Whittle's corporate Edison Schools.

As Secretary, Alexander also worked closely with Diane Ravitch to promote the creation of national curriculum standards, and he worked closely with Bill Clinton to raise the conjoined policymaking influence of the National Governors Association and the Business Roundtable.  As a result, the NGA would come to have tremendous influence in shaping the carpet bombing testing strategy used in the NCLB war on public schools.

After 2002 when Alexander was elected to the U. S. Senate, he worked to solidify the testing accountability influence of NCLB, and just in time for the final push for the reauthorization of ESEA, he was named Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

With the help of his old friend, Diane Ravitch, who helped to quell any fears of and to tamp down any resistance to the new states rights version of ESEA, Alexander was able to push through a bill that now has the best chance ever to attain his goal of complete privatization of all public schools, via corporate charter. 

So if you have any questions about how ESSA will help children or parents or teachers or public schools, NPE wants you to ask Diane to ask Lamar.  What a nice couple they would make!

. . . .I think it is important to stop looking for purity among our allies. We don’t want to be a tiny band of zealots. We want—I want, maybe not “we”–everyone who shares a commitment to children, to the teaching profession, and to public schools, to join together to change the climate of opinion. We can’t do that by demonizing those who approach the issues differently but share our goals. Progressive social movements die when they spend as much energy criticizing their allies as they do with their adversaries.--Diane Ravitch comment below this post.