Advanced Search

Diane Ravitch

[three_col]

  • Diane Ravitch

    newpolitics

    You can hear Diane Ravitch’s revised version of what’s needed for school reform, as well as a very different perspective (my own), in a panel this Friday, March 26, 6:00 PM, at NYU, Silver Room 207.

    Read more

  • Democrats for Education Reform?

    newpolitics

     Anyone who doubts that the Democratic Party has morphed from “liberal” to “neoliberal” in regard to education policy should check out the Democrats for Education Reform (DER).

    Read more

  • Zimbabwe and Rhode Island: The new exemplar for labor

    newpolitics

    “Unions are killing the economy” says Henry Blodget at the Business Insider. He gleefully applauds the firing of every teacher in a Rhode Island school for their arrogance. How dare workers, teachers especially, think they have a voice in their working conditions or salaries? How uppity of teachers to sneer at the bosses’ absolutist control…

    Read more

  • Winds of change in US teacher unions

    newpolitics

    Though you wouldn’t know it from the mass media, which focuses its attention on the way teacher unions impede “educational innovation,” (e.g., standardized testing’s stranglehold; privatization; cuts in funding), we are witnessing a growing swell of reform in teacher unions. Transformation of both national teacher unions is absolutely essential to turn back the neoliberal program…

    Read more

  • Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

    [Editors' note: Howard Zinn, among his multitude of other contributions to the left, was a long-time sponsor of New Politics. We express our deepest sympathies to his family and post here an article by NP board member Steve Shalom that will be appearing in the spring issue of Democratic Left.]  

    Read more

  • 'Bows of pseudo-profundity' and 'moral certitude': Alan Johnson and Democratiya

    newpolitics

    The merger of the online journal Democratiya, with Dissent, provides an obvious point to begin assessing the role of Alan Johnson’s creation. The following is not intended as the last word on this subject, but as a contribution to a process of analysis. The approach here will be to focus on the argumentation used in…

    Read more

  • The Politics of George Clooney’s Help for Haiti Telethon

    newpolitics

    I totally agree with Jesse Lemisch’s astute comments about George Clooney’s extravaganza and its conspicuous avoidance of anything that might be construed as “political.” Of course, in the midst of a colossal disaster, this feel-good spectacle of entertainment icons is inherently political, rife with intended and unintended consequences. First of all, it is hard to…

    Read more

  • George Clooney's Haiti — and Beyond

    newpolitics

    George Clooney (currently in “Up in the Air”) organized on short notice a technically and musically fine two hour fund-raising telethon, “Hope for Haiti,” which was broadcast on January 22 on most networks, many cable channels, on the Web, and both in and beyond the US. Here are two samplers of the music: one and…

    Read more

  • A Hostile Biography of Leon Trotsky

    Robert Service. Trotsky: A Biography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. 600 pages, including end notes, bibliography, index. $35.00. Robert Service’s study is quite readable. The prose is clear, and the story interesting. It follows the basic outline sketched by Trotsky himself in his literary masterpiece My Life, supplemented by Isaac Deutscher’s brilliant trilogy –…

    Read more

  • Dennis Brutus

    Dennis Brutus – celebrated poet, anti-apartheid fighter and lifelong socialist – died last week. As a student activist at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-2000s, I was privileged to know Dennis in the short time before he departed for the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he spent his last years. Throughout the world and for…

    Read more

  • Worth reading: “The Old Man” by Christopher Hitchens

    If you missed “The Old Man,” Christopher Hitchens’ review of Verso’s reissue of Isaac Deutscher’s trilogy about Leon Trotsky, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200407/hitchens do read it. The review describes Trotsky's accomplishments not generally known, for example, his activities as a brilliant war correspondent in the Balkans. But most important of all is the discussion of Trotsky’s polemics against…

    Read more

  • News update: Mexican government to meet with electrical workers, mediators

    The Mexican Secretary of the Interior will meet with the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) and a group of mediators tonight (December 16) some months since President Felipe Calderón liquidated the state-owned Light and Power Company, seized the facilities, and fired of the 44,000 workers. The union, which has sought in the courts the return…

    Read more

  • All the news that's fit to print?

    "All the news that's fit to print" is, of course, the slogan of the New York Times. But who determines what's "fit" and why? We read much liberal hand-wringing about what will become of democracy without daily newspapers and reporters who serve as watchdogs of government. We need an independent press, for sure. But we…

    Read more

  • Propaganda or reportage? The New York Times and education reform

    The New York Times provides a steady diet of glowing PR about the neoliberal policies implemented throughout the world to defund, privatize, and fragment public control of education.

    Read more

  • Middle East: Faint Glimmer of Hope

    There’s a glimmer – a very faint glimmer – of hope arising from recent developments in Palestine. I’m referring to the statement by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) that he will not seek re-election as “president” of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in essence a statement of resignation. If Abu Mazen stands by his resignation, it will…

    Read more

  • What happened to the Mexican Electrical Workers Union?

    Worth listening to: In this podcast from a Canadian radio program, Dan LaBotz discusses the Calderon government's attack on the Mexican Electrical Workers Union, the government’s seizure of the Light and Power Company, the liquidation of the company, and the firing of more than 40,000 workers. Dan explains the political context and reasons for the…

    Read more

  • Cultural relativism

    Are all cultures are equally valid and commendable? asks Peter Tatchell. I just received an email describing speeches Peter Tatchell has delivered on this subject. ( You can follow him with twitter at http://twitter.com/PeterTatchell or Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/cj9y6s ).

    Read more

  • Putting race on a bronze pedestal

    Planning a Columbus Day radio broadcast this year with Native American friends from across the hemisphere brought back a childhood memory. We were talking about that unfortunate human capacity to regard groups of strangers as "others," as qualitatively different, strange, threatening and of lesser worth, and about the town that succeeded in getting rid of…

    Read more

  • Nobel Ironies – The “Not George Bush” Prize

    It seems doubly ironic that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has given its 2009 award to Barack Obama — just a few months after Arizona State University declined to award him the customary, symbolic honorary degree as its commencement speaker. The ASU decision, on the grounds that president Obama “had not yet accomplished enough,” was…

    Read more

  • War in Afghanistan and Pakistan: A critical moment to voice your opposition

    ,

    The President and Congress are reviewing U.S. policy on the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is a critical moment. This may be a turning point for the expanding U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a time when speaking out clearly and unambiguously against war can make a crucial difference. We urge you to sign…

    Read more

  • The tsunami in education – not an act of nature

    A colleague involved in progressive struggles in education since the Civil Rights movement commented to me that changes in education in the past eight years make her feel like she’s standing on the beach at water’s edge and experiencing the sand being sucked out from under her feet. Standardized tests now control the curriculum in…

    Read more