The EdVocate West

In Between

June 16, 2010 at 10:45 pm arunramanathan Leave a comment

So I’m sitting in an airport and about to board a plan to Washington D.C. where we’ll be presenting at an Achieve conference on our work on college and career readiness and I wandered into a bookstore where I saw Diane Ravitch’s book prominently featured among the non-fiction. So I stopped and since I had a couple of hours to kill read a few chapters (I’m a great believer in free content).

I interviewed Diane for my dissertation before she became the apostate of the charter and accountability movement. She was a great interview and had some fascinating insights. I got a big kick out of reading a little bit of her book, especially the chapter on San Diego Unified (where I worked for the last three and a half years). Diane should go back there now and see what life is like with a union-run board and a completely dysfunctional central office run by individual members of the school board. Strange how the pendulum never stops in the middle. Always has to go all the way - one way or the other. I guess that’s how it is with addicts of any stripe. When they see the light, it usually blinds them.

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