I believe this was from Amy's show last week.

Anyway, it's great to see this scholar criticize our supposedly smart president.

We should all note that President Obama's plans are actually dumber than Dubya' education program.

From merit pay, to charter schools, to learning based on rewards and punishments, to reliance on discredit standardized testing, the Obama relies on programs that have already been shown through numerous studies to be without validity.

When do we get a president who bases his or her policies on actual facts?

I mean, I just thought I'd ask.

As with healthcare and many other fields, one of the easiest ways for a for-profit enterprise to make a profit is to prey on their customers, in this case children. As Ravitch relates, many a charter school takes in 100 students and, basically, gets RID of 50-60 of them before graduation. This means they have high test scores and high graduation rates, but what happens to the 50-60 kids they 'fired'? If they aren't educating those 'dumb' kids, how can they call themselves educators?

But these are the people with the large donor campaign cash, and we all know whose vote counts in our 'democracy', dont we?

Children seem to be born creative. At age two they begin to sing amazingly in tune. They don't walk like normal people. Instead they skip, dance, jump a twirl. They don't speak like normal people. Instead their voices are very expressive and almost melodic. When do they lose this? As soon as they go to school. The primary function of most schools is to destroy creativity.
When schools should be building on creative skills especially at early grades, instead they are forced to test for reading and math skills at the expense of creative skills. There is little value placed on imaginative skills.

Money that should be spent on education is gobbled up by MIC. There seems to be limitless amounts of money available for teaching people how to invent enemies and how to kill them.

Outstanding interview!

Ravitch is a brilliant woman. My wife is a 2nd grade teacher and I unfortunately get to see the direct end of NCLB's stick even in Provo, Utah.

Diane Ravitch is who should be advising President Obama. She learns from her mistakes whereas he seems to follow the lead of those who learn how to cover up their mistakes and give us more of the same dysfunction and corruption. As in the financial world, the education has big time corruption with mini Bernie Madoff's making decisions that work for their greed, not our democracy. Two years ago I wrote a book, White Chalk Crime: The REAL Reason Schools Fail, explaining this and predicting where things were going. I called what is going on White Chalk Crime and showed how administrations were breaking laws so they could keep their schools under their thumbs and now they have legislatures making laws they need to have things their way as well as our president following them. 

In my book I showed that these Madoff characters go after principled teachers but make excuses why they could not fire a sexual pervert - read Darlene Goodman story at EndTeacherAbuse.org for an example of this. Bad teachers deflect their corrupt leadership and although they pretend to want to get rid of them, this is as honest as Bernie Madoff wanting to help people earn money.

I show that Neil Bush, Jeb's brother, ran and probably still runs one of the major testing companies. How convenient to keep the dollars pouring in for the family! Besides, test scores are easy to alter and allow dubious leaders to target teachers easily - alter the scores of the teachers trying to report them!

Folks this is a scam; those of you that think that using test scores is about getting rid of bad teachers are unwitting accomplices to the takeover of our democracy. Education is our democracy’s foundation; once corporatized our democracy will be gone.

Of course, some teachers are not aware of the abuse that is used against many if not most principled, effective teachers. This is done covertly and strategically. These naive types make statements supporting getting rid of "bad" teachers, but if you visited EndTeacherAbuse.org you would see that they are not really after them. They are after those who are in the way of White Chalk Crime. 

Randi Weingarten, President of AFT (teachers' union) was on TV last night citing low termination statistics, pretending they don't harass teachers out left and right. She knows all about it because so many of our members have begged her for help to no avail. She knows that principled, quality people are disposed of while the worst teachers are highlighted to keep the "woe is me" propaganda going for those in charge. White Chalk Crime is that despicable - that the union president would aid in covering it up at the expense of dedicated teachers.

Unfortunately President Obama has fallen for this too. Why not? Almost everyone connected to our schools lies, misrepresents, or omits, as she did, and those who don't are silenced so he doesn't hear us! In my book I document that George Bush became known as the education success story due to false drop out rates reported by the Houston Schools. Rod Paige, the superintendent that reported these false scores, became Secy. of Education. And Margaret Spelling who succeeded Rod Paige, had been a lobbyist who had helped make this all happen. Meanwhile the whistleblower that reported this was harassed out of his job. 

Are these the kind of people we trust to protect our democracy - our schools’ purpose? I reported all this two years ago. Diane Ravitch has now spoken out against NCLB aware of how destructive it has been. She says we need to unite and get President Obama to understand what is going on. However, people need to identify NCLB as more than a mistake. It was a deliberate ploy for their nefarious agenda and until this is understood it will be much harder to get people on message. Most people are arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic in their attempt to fix the schools. Ravitch is now seeing the iceberg. What I reported in my book will help us steer away from that iceberg if learned. Otherwise our democracy will be swallowed up as we naively trust the wrong people! And the wrong people include all who fell for White Chalk Crime as well as all who perpetuate it - school boards and administrators as well as our teacher unions.  Although Obama's support of breaking the unions may seem correct to some, it will only put worse people in control of our schools. (I know you think that isn't possible, but it is.) Yet, these unions need to be hung out to dry for their complicity with White Chalk Crime at the same time we identify all the other White Chalk Criminals. We must fumigate this rotten system, not replace bad with bad. Obama must listen to dedicated educators!

No one would listen to Harry Markopolis as he tried to report Bernie Madoff for ten years and so far no one will listen to us for almost 14 years. In ten years billions more were stolen. Much more is at stake as the clock ticks on this education scam. I have it all spelled out in my book. You can become a master warrior for children if only you will just read it!

I will be happy to send a free pdf of my book to anyone who contacts me, which is easily done at EndTeacherAbuse.org or WhiteChalkCrime.com. My name is Karen Horwitz and I will not stop trying to save our schools from the greedy, self-serving people who have up until now successfully duped the public so they can steal our American dream. Our children's futures and the future of this nation are at stake. We must stop falling for their propaganda. Most of all we must stop Obama from falling for their propaganda.