We Are Winning the Battle of Ideas- Now It's Time to Win in the Courts and in the Streets

We are winning the battle of ideas in education policy, and by a large margin. . The educational rationale for Common Core, Test Based Teacher Evaluations, School Closings and Charter School Preferences is eroding on every front. Neither research nor experience justify the extravagant claims by proponents of these policies. The collateral damage they inflict is far greater than their gains What's more, the illusion that these policies represent a new form of Civil Rights advocacy, and promote greater equity is collapsing even faster. Gaps in educational performance by race and class continue to increase, while low and moderate income communities targeted for extra attention by School Reformers experience displacement, gentrification and increasing levels of violence.

However, despire the undoubted success of our movement in discrediting current policies, we have had no success at all in slowing their implementation. If anything policy makers have speeded up implementation as they see opposition building. Nowhere can this better be seen in New York where an embattled, unpopular Governor has actually decided to speed up his attack on public education after being bruised in a primary and election.

This means that while maintaining the moral high ground on the battle of ideas, we have to take the struggle against Corporate School Reform into the Courts and the Streets, We have to sue the proponents of every single policy that abuses students, teachers and families, and depending on circumstances, either sabotage them or refuse to implement them

I will leave it up to the readers of this piece to figure out exactly how this should be done. But know this. Being right isn't enough. Convincing people you are right isn't enough either. You have to stop the power brokers in their tracks in the sphere of iBinmplementation. By any means necessary