Open Letter to Dr. Diane Ravitch from Ben Austin
Ben Austin, via a kind email:
Parents, educators, and education advocates have a lot in common when it comes to a kids-first first agenda. But we can never seize that common ground if those with whom we disagree are deemed to be "evil" and sentenced to Hell, as you did last week in your now infamous blog post.
If we can't start from that basic premise, then we are no more mature than the children we endeavor to serve. We cannot purport to encourage tolerance and discourage bullying on the schoolyard if the adults in charge of the schoolyard can't adhere to those same basic principles.
For the past year, the organization for which I serve as executive director - Parent Revolution - has been working with parents from the Watts neighborhood community school Weigand Avenue Elementary to help turnaround their failing school. Although there appear to be some areas of improvement at the school, Weigand is currently ranked 15th worst of nearly 500 elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), and has been on a continual overall downward slide for the past 3-4 years under its current school leadership.
Four years is a long time for parents to wait for improvements in a failing school, despite even the best of intentions from dedicated professionals like Weigand's current principal. Unfortunately, the current principal was unable to make the progress needed to turnaround the school.
In 2011 many of these same parents petitioned along with Weigand's teachers to oust their failed principal, but had no real power to force change, and the principal retained her job. Every teacher who signed that 2011 petition is now gone, and the school has gotten even worse since then.
Many of the kids have now "graduated" without having learned basic skills. Currently, more than half of kids at Weigand cannot read, write, or do math at grade level.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 11, 2013 1:59 AM
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