bombshell, this beautiful bat woman. she was portrayed by her look. male killers are never portrayed according to their books. she is this gorgeous killer. she uses beautiful woman who has an iron heart. ..

more description is given about her dress and her clothing than about anything else tells us about what society proceeded these women of the time. i don't think the media has changed how we perceive women who kill. i think we are still curious, still titillated by it. whether it's casey anthony or susan smith, whoever, we are always asking the question, how can a mother killed? how can women kill? i think we still of those things, stereotypes that women are somehow different. and maybe because of the statistics women are different, women don't kill as much and maybe we ought to be curious i bet. but the fact is women do kill. i'm not sure women go for any different reason than anybody else. it's anger, frustration, revenge, desperation, abuse.

so those kinds of things compel women to do. immediate coverage has always been the same. the difference is in the print, from print to video, and the difference is also in terms of with the extent of the coverage. we now hear about murderers in florida, in arizona and elsewhere, whereas in the 1930s we would have only known about the particular small town places in our own particular small towns. so it may seem like it's a greater epidemic. it may seem like we've seen a huge increase in the number of women who kill. i think that's by and large a product of perception because media coverage. we are watching everyone everywhere through the media. so read the book, you will get both a smattering of gender studies and kennedy academic

analysis -- how stereotypes affect what we do. you also get the strong narrative of the particular cases and what happened from the background of the woman 30 actual murder investigation and trial. it punctuate it nicely but i think what you'll come away with israeli a complex and nuanced understanding of why women kill. and that it's part of us. we put that value on it. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to italy pennsylvania and the many of the cities visited by our local content vehicles, go to c-span.org/localcontent. her. >> now on booktv, diane ravitch reports that public schools discourse and graduation rates are the highest they've ever been, but federal programs

like no child left behind and race to the top wrongfully give the impression that our teachers and students are underperforming. this is about one hour. >> so, my official copy hasn't come from amazon yet, so my dogeared copy is with me tonight, of this delightful, wonderful, important, impressive, compelling and must read book. i get to be a very short at this podium right now. today is the publication date, the actual publication date of diane's book. and i get to introduce her to all of you. now, you are saying what is "the new yorker" doing in philadelphia introducing diane ravitch. but as you know, once you get

arrested of the town, you are of the town. [applause] >> and i notice there's no handcuffs today. i would normally do as i'm on my tv does, i would normally tell you how many books diane has written, and how many distinguished roles she's had serving more presidents than i can actually recite. how long we've known each other over two decades. she won't let me tell you anything more. how we're are both addicted to twitter. she has many more followers than i do. you can read all of that in wikipedia. i think about diane differently. i think about diane the way that kids i taught in brooklyn used to hold me to the standards they used to hold me to. and what they would say to me often ask for they trusted me

was, you have to walk your walk, not just talk the talk. and diane walks the walk every single day. and she is a fierce advocate for our democracy, for our just society, for our children, for those who work with children, and for our public schools, and the roles that those schools had in our society. you all know she is a highly respected educator and historian, but she has become a beloved, when i see beloved i mean a beloved activist and leader. and here's why. diane is a brilliant as she is compassionate. those who know her would say she is as compassionate as she is brilliant. and about a decade ago, we both

watched mayor bloomberg in new york city take this concept of accountability and distort it in such an anti-democratic and anti-children way, that she started her own journey of thinking about what was going on in terms of education. she looked at the reforms that were going on at that point, the ones that were gussied up as choice and competition, and she saw that they didn't work. and she spoke in a way that nobody else would. but what she's done now is even more impressive and more important. because with this new book, diane doesn't simply pull back the curtain on jargon artest

obsession -- [inaudible] what she does is she talks with the great truths about what is working and what isn't working. with a clarity and a consistency that links chart and, -- that lacks jargon, that lacks -- in his simplicity is so compelling that it's hard to walk away from it. and i'm so delighted that she's doing this in philly on the first day that this book comes out, because of which have all gone through in philly. with the austerity, with the way in which schools have opened this week without art, without music, without libraries,

without nurses, without counselors. kids sitting on the floor because there's not enough desks. classist swollen to 60 kids, multiple grades sharing the same classroom. what diane has done for us is she has created a context about why the things that happened in the last two years are wrong, and what we need to actually ensure we reclaim the promise and the potential of public education. and with that, our democracy, and with that, our society. so it is my great honor and privilege to introduce to you dr. diane ravitch. [applause]

>> thank you so much, randi. i can't think of anyone that i would rather have introduced me -- [inaudible] spent not working? sorry. i wanted to thank randi because she came here specifically to introduce me. i am very grateful to her. i'm grateful to her for her friendship, for her leadership, for the courage that she showed him standing up for teachers. i'm very happy to be at a philadelphia free library, particularly because today is the day that my book is published and i can't tell you what that means to an author to be on publication day. as i was sitting in the room back there, which i guess is

called a greenroom, i looked on amazon and i discovered that my book is number 105 on the first day applaud mac -- and i know from years of looking at amazon a lot of books ahead of it are cookbooks. [laughter] it's the number one ranked book in outlook policy on amazon.com. it just came out today. so i'm really excited and pumped. i'm also excited to be here in philadelphia. you are ground zero. pennsylvania is ground zero for the destruction and privatization of public education. [applause] when he had the stories and i want to gather them, schools without guidance counselors, schools without social workers, schools with a libra seven closed and he said why are the children learning, they are missing something.

most parents wouldn't stand for this. why do we permit it to happen. before i go into my talk about the book, i want to mention to that last spring i helped fight back. and organization that would be attacked to fight for public education. we won't raise much money but what we will do is hand out a good housekeeping seal of approval to those candidates and school board races that are actually fighting for public education because there's so many of what we call groups that are miss named that are really for public education. we are a group of parents, parent activists, teachers, scholars. and the group is called the network for public education. we will be endorsing candidates. we have endorsed a few. in fact, we just had a winning slate in connecticut the other day. [applause]

the working families supporting group. so i'm going to ask you, i know your cell phones are turned off but i'm going to ask you, if you have the possibility of making this note that you should text -- i don't have to do this sort of thing but i'm telling you -- [laughter] text you will get alerts about your schools in pennsylvania and specifically in philadelphia. because with all schools across the country. i'll say it again. the text is 4nte and then put in

888777. i hope that's correct. what i wanted is to have my book started. it starts with a couple of quotations that summarize what i'm about and what the book is about. first of all what i consider to be the most seal the lines of john dewey, and it's a message i think that pertains to what's going on in public education today come with the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the committee want for all of its children. any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely, and acted upon it destroys our democracy. we don't live that. we live in a world where we want the best for our children and allowing other children to of circumstances that we would not tolerate for our children. so i would like to remind us of those words of -- that's the theme of this book. the of the quotation at the beginning of the book is from a crusty old conservative, john

adams said in 1785, the whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. there should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves. that's the definition of public education. [applause] and i asked my editor, it was possible to put in a quatrain summer, and she said that pages already filled a. you can get the in the book anymore, too late. so i'm going to get what i didn't get in the book but i carry in my head all the time. this is an old english saying a couple hundred years old. it goes like this. the law does punishment or woman that steals the goose from off

the comments but less the greater fellow who steals the common from the goose. [applause] the present state constitution says, this is my last quotation, agenda a simmer shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the commonwealth. notice it does not say each town and each school district is on its own. but it is the responsibly of the state of pennsylvania to provide for the maintenance and support of public education in every part of pennsylvania. cannot let a district go bankrupt and then handed over to a charter operator for profit. [applause] now, these days we hear this term reform throw it around and we're supposedly engaged in this era of school reform, but some

of the term reform has become corrupted. it refers to budget cuts, to firing teachers, firing social workers, firing guidance councils, firing libraries, closing public schools, turning public dollars over to private management entrepreneurs, and pretending that test scores are the most important outcome of schooling. all of this is called reform. many teachers and presents today, and i've met them all of the country, feel that somehow in ways that they don't understand they have become public enemies. they are disrespected. sometimes it seems that eliminating public education has become the goal of this movement that calls itself school reform. this is nuts. so what i have described in the book, and i've had a debate with the editor about the title because "reign of error" is sort of a hard title.

lots of people can't spell. [laughter] but the other telco she said what it which is called the book competition read and she loved it and she is a distinguished editor, she said why don't we just call it hope? we thought about that for about a week and we thought, too sensational. can't do that. i'm a scholar. what the book describes is a series of hope. the first hope was left behind. [applause] >> twelve years ago congress passed is because they were told there was a texas medical but that was a hoax. there was no texas medical. now the whole country is stuck with this regime of carrots and sticks and testing kids every year and a giant hoax. didn't have the next hoax called race to the top. race to the top which is recently criticized in a report that a group in d.c. called the

broader, bolder approach in the american association of school superintendents. what they conclude is it's not working. i said it three years ago it wasn't going to work because it's in gop 2.0. it's more teachings to this. it's demoralizing teachers. is leading more school closures and the bottom line is why are we racing to the top? what is the top? i don't know what the top is. do you know what the top is? we're talking about our children. do you want your family to race to the top of the neighborhood? where is your neighborhood? winners and losers, that's what a race to the top is about. by the promise of american education is opportunities. not a system of winners and losers. [applause] then comes the narrative on

which these hoaxes are built and the narratives is another hoax. it's the negative that says our public schools are declining and failing. spinning is double, sheep and it's like, our schools are broken, obsolete. the test scores are declining. the graduation rates ask them but where the dropout crisis. we're losing the international competition. what i show in my book in a series of chapters called facts about the international discourse, facts, all of this is wrong. test scores today, i'm looking only at the federal exams as it's called the national assessment, i was soviets on the board, the test scores today are the highest they've ever been in history. for white students, blacks and hispanic students and asian students. the highest they've ever been in history. when you hear that from any of the leaders, they are

perpetuating the hope for fairly. graduation rate, high school graduation rates are the highest they've ever been in history. for white students, black students, expenses and asian student to you won't hear that either. why can i read and no one else can? i can figure that out. then we have the dropout crisis. the dropout rates today are the lowest they have ever been in american history. that's another big surprise. it was a surprise to me. then comes the complex story about the international test scores. we are 14, 12 or 26, whatever the numbers are. it's all nonsense. the first international test were given in 1964. we came in last. then 50 years since then we have surpassed all the other 11 nations because the test scores

were not a predictor of our military supremacy, our technological innovation. they were just test scores. i'm not saying task force don't matter, but they don't predict anything. they don't predict the future. when people tell you about the tablet test scores, they are talking about the test that were given in 2009. devotee but the more recent and national tests in which our students tied with finland in mathematics. black students in massachusetts got the same scores as the students of finland. should not have been the headline? of course budget in her about that. the only person who wrote about it actually was, there's a blog called the daily howler, and he writes about the media. he said look at these headlines. they say we're falling behind again. nonsense. we did just this was all the

other european countries, the countries of higher scores, like singapore, japan, hong kong where there ministers of education are trying to figure out how can we act away from this test obsession because we don't have creativity. what has made this a great country, it's not discourse but our creativity, our risk-taking, our innovation. [applause] then comes the hoax that says the private sector does it better. wrong. here's what the private sector does. what the private sector does very well, they engage in risk management. you get rid of the losers and you keep the winners. it's like the strategy that many school districts have been told, treating your schools as if you have a stock portfolio. you close the low performing schools, geeky the

high-performance schools -- you keep the high performing schools. these are children, not stocks. what the charter schools do is the same strategy of risk management. and that is to say the way is to keep up kids with severe disabilities. [applause] keep up the children who english language learners. they take very few of them. kick out the kids who get low test scores and then say, while law, a miracle. -- voilà, a miracle. why did you kick out the entire entering grade in the third year? he denied it on tv but he did. he kicked out and our first class because in three years he was unable to match the scores of some of the charte charter s. one day in may he called the kids in any said because this

board told him they were very embarrassed by the discourse and he said you're out of your an entire grade was dismissed. that's risk management. then we hear that technology is going to bring about amazing progress. i'm not opposed to technology. i used about 24/7 and we all dio and we all will and the kids need to learn technology but we are being sold a bill of goods. pennsylvania is a state that has more -- [inaudible] they are a scam. they rip off every district in the state. they recruit, recruit, recruit. thethey bring in decades, the ks drop out. they have a very high dropout rate. very low graduation rate. it's a real big problem with motivation. but the biggest of these cyber charters is on the new stock exchange.

the ceo, his background is mckinsey and goldman sachs. [inaudible] but rather on enrollment because the nature of these companies is they have to keep the enrollment up. there are many teachers who are monitoring anywhere from 100-150 children. that is not education but it's also a way of transferring public dollars into a corporation to give a computer to homeschoolers. so the state is paying $10,000 a penchant nothing from it except a computer, whatever that may cost, but it's a ripoff of the state. i can tell coming hundreds of millions of dollars your state has wasted on these cyber charters, nor can it be because i haven't calculated how many thousands of dollars to cyber charter operators have donated the politicians in the state of pennsylvania. and i have a chapter in the

book, i think chapter 17 called trouble in -- happen to be to get the most overrun with terrible cyber chatters to get terrible results and never get close down. so there is some areas in which accountability doesn't matter. when i can do it doesn't matter is when you give a contribution to politicians. so another of these great ideas which we have to give bill credit to race to the top is this idea that you can find teachers who are bad based on the discourse the students. this is a very stupid idea. [laughter] [applause] i call it a stupid idea it because there's a mountain of research that shows that you don't identify, teach because of

a looking at tepco's. you're looking for the students. the teacher who has let us to a class of gifted children, it's common to our excelling in the computer says she is supposed to get them did not and she can't get them past the cd. so she gets a very low rating you she didn't get a big test score boat. the teacher is teaching english language on, her kids may not go up as much as they can get things they should and she gets a low rating. the teachers teaching learning disabled, the sam same thing has to be teachers or take on the most challenging tasks are likely to get the lowest rating. this is what the research says. the research also says that the measures, the ratings teachers get are so unstable that a teacher would be graded one year highly effective and the next year an effective. when teachers are asked what happened to change, they say i have no idea.

i don't know why. i was doing exactly the same thing i was doing last year. their districts, in houston they fired the teacher of the year. [laughter] there were teachers who got a bonus one year and were fired the next you. nobody knows why. one of the scholars recently wrote the truth of the matter is no one understands these very complicated formulas. no one, not even the people who designed to understand them. so behind this desire to evaluate teachers is to find the bad teachers and find them. there's an economist at the hoover institution who said, who has argued that welcome we've tried to help teachers that didn't produce and so the best way for the discourse ago is to fire the bottom 5% of teachers every year.

what does that do for morale? just imagine but you don't know if it's going to be you. the bottom line is there's no other country in the world who is doing this but if it was such a good idea what are we the only ones who thought of it? the truth of the matter is, as linda at the stanford once said in a court case which was testifying against a town, you cannot fire your way to finland. [laughter] another way to put is you cannot fire your way to excellence. the truth is that the threat of firing, the insecurity that it introduces, the knowledge that teachers have that these measures are so unstable and so unfair, demoralizes teachers. we have that now in the last few years report after report, one coming from the metlife survey which is than ever you.

another was funded by gates and scholastic found massive demoralization among both teachers and principals. why? [inaudible] again they feel the public interest, comes from all the so-called reformers who hold them accountable. those who blame them for low performance. and the insecurity there's been introduced into their lives. and the sense that they're supposed to teach with one another for higher test scores. this is so unprofessional, and everyone, teachers want to be treated as professionals. then comes an idea that has been popularized by the so-called reformers. one of the ways to improve performance is tenure. the reason i oppose this, teacher tenure in k-12 does not mean the same thing it does in higher education. in higher education when you tenure you do have a job for

life unless you do something -- if you you become a mass murder you will probably loose your job, but if you're a capable to do it means is you have to process the judge understand any teaching professor -- profession, in the first five years after people enter it, about 40% leave because teaching is such a difficult job. many teachers feel they're not getting the support they need, they don't have the leadership they want. they don't have a family support. 40% of people who enter teaching it wanted to be teachers are gone. so those who survived and you get seniority, have a right to a hearing if someone's to five and. i don't think that such a terrible thing. i think it's basic fairness. the reason that tenure mattered is because absent tenure they were not the academic tenure. there will be parts of this country where the word evolution will never be heard again.

[applause] students will learn nothing about climate change because it's controversial. there will be books that are banned because someone in the community objects to it. that's why teachers, once they have proven themselves and once they are administrators, due process after three or four years or whatever the state law is, should have tenure. those rabble-rousers who go around saying take the tenure a way are wrong because they're not considering the consequences. [applause] part of their critique of teachers is based on another hoax. maybe it's not a hoax. and that is the belief that the teacher is the main determinant

of whether students get higher or lower test scores. this is not true. study after study, social science over many decades as demonstrated that the single most important predictor of test scores is family income. [applause] family income is related to family education. it's related to opportunities. it's related to children's chances to hear a rich vocabulary, to go to the museum, to go to libra, to go to summer camp to that family activities. and it's related to children on the other extreme not having the opportunities. not having adequate medical care, not living in a safe neighborhood. kids start off in some cases heavily burdened by these circumstances of life or and, of course, i'm not saying that teachers don't make a difference. i think teachers are like change. we cannot shift the burden of

society's failure on to the backs of teachers. [applause] now, one of the other hoaxes of our day that is very positive is the notion that it's become very popular recently, that is young college graduates and young people graduated in june, did five weeks of training and their excellent teachers by september. [applause] and what's more, they will get higher test scores than someone who's been in a classroom for five or 10 or 15 years. they will be gone in two years. we should turn over teaching to these young people knowing that they will be gone in two years and will have to continually replace them with other young people. this is not what any good high-performing country in the world does, whether we're

talking about singapore, japan, finland, canada, australia. we're talking about countries that have built a teaching profession. not a revolving door. [applause] now, i'm not saying this to criticize teach for america because i think there is really wonderful young people join teach for america. i think they're very well-qualified to be teaching assistants. [laughter] i think we should consider them to be -- no one who joined the peace corps is than deemed to be a foreign service officer. they go to the kennedy and they do whatever work needs to be done, which they are capable of doing, if they do not become overnight ambassadors or foreign service officers. another hoax, my book, is this notion that kids will get higher

test scores if the teachers are offered merit pay. now, you have read an article the other day in one of the local papers by michelle rhee saying the solution to all of philadelphia's problems is that you don't have reformers pay. gosh, i wish she would read my book. [applause] because if she did what should learn is merit pay has been tried again and again for 100 years but it has never worked. you have to ask yourself when it fails so consistently, no matter what the report is, why? first of all, teachers are already doing the best they know how, offering them a reward doesn't mean they're suddenly going to say aha, bring out my good lessons. [applause] so if you want to get better teaching, maybe you better do some investment in human resources or professional

development. but simply dangling a reward if of them is actually demoralizing. reason why is because it causes people to compete for the doughnut, but dollars, and they stop collaborating. the way a school succeeds through -- is through collaboration. [applause] you don't want teachers to sit at the table and say i'm going to hold back and not tell them what i know about maria or johnny. it's my secret. no. you wanting to share what they know so together the staff can work out issues that children have and they will not do that when money is the reward. this just never works. national had an experiment over two years and the prize was $15,000 for teachers with great scores. at the end of experiment both the control group an experiment the group got the same result.

the money could make any difference. it's been tried in chicago. it was tried in new york. it was a somewhat different plan, and yet people can't give up. performance the and merit pay is going to make kids work harder, it's not the teachers they need to work harder, it's the kids. i remember many years ago, let me get this straight, the kids will work harder because you're offering the teacher a prize? [laughter] i don't get it. another of the hoaxes that is really frustrating is when he is a reformer and say, oh, don't talk about poverty. poverty is an excuse. let's ignore the fact that the top 10% in this country are now taking the more than 50% of the income. that doesn't matter. let's get that out of the discussion. let's not talk about the income inequality in this country that now is larger than at any point

in the past century. let's not discuss the. the fact is that poverty really hurts kids. when kids don't get medical treatment, when they don't have an eye checkup and they have a vision problem, when they don't have their hearing checked, when they have asthma, when at some of the illness that is totally preventable but they haven't seen a doctor, that hurts. when you don't have a meal at home, when they don't know if they'll have a home, all these things get in the way of concentrating on school work. so when they tell you that poverty is an excuse for bad teachers, it's a hoax. what they don't want to talk about is what really matters, which is why do we tolerate the fact that almost a quarter of our children are living in poverty? and we lead the world, the events nations of the world in child poverty in. [applause] and the hoax that is popular in recent years is that charters

and doctors will say -- safe for kids from failing schools. i could get into this age of failing public schools. this was a drum that almost didn't exist until about 12 years ago. shortly before no child left behind. i had a former graduate student who have done a nexis lexis search. we talked about children's needs, children with issues, problems. what do we do to help kids? instead now we're closing the schools because the schools are failing. and what do we know about charters? what we know is that when they serve the same children they don't get different results. some get high scores, some get low scores. on average there is a difference except for the charters that have very high attrition rates and exploits the neediest children. we do know a lot about vouchers and there are some good charter schools. i'm not knocking charter schools but we know this about vouchers. vouchers take money directly from public education.

they are not 17 states that have some form of voucher program. there are three districts that now have a track record with vouchers. milwaukee, which is good at voucher program in 1990, cleveland where the voucher program started in 1995, d.c., 2003 to their having evaluation repeatedly of these three cities. that has yet to be one that says that poor kids in voucher schools to better than their peers in regular public schools. it takes money away from the public school and benefits no one. another one of these folks is that if schools compete they will get better. we know now that that is not true. milwaukee is the perfect case of that. milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990 but it's also had -- there are three sectors, the voucher

sector and shrinking public sector. women look at the national progress and compare cities are doing, milwaukee is one of the lowest performing cities in the united states. so the rising tide lifted no boats in milwaukee. competition did nothing. then when the reformers want to say privatization will create dramatic gains, look at new orleans. schools are so much better now than before the hurricane. the hurricane wiped out the unions. it also wiped out public education. and now more than 80% of the kids in charter and they are making gains every year. what they don't tell you is that the new orleans district, the recovering school districts, is out of 70 dishes and the state of louisiana, depending on how you count it, either number 69 or 70 in the entire state. they are one of the worst districts in entire state of

louisiana, but that are better than they were last year. they are just a low performing school. now, there's also amongst the hoaxes, this idea that the way to really fix schools is to close them. this is called a turnaround. i find the term so objectional because it sounds like it's such a nice word. and we're going to be a turnaround. we're going to closure school, fire the staff and send the kids someplace else. this does nothing to help the children. it doesn't help children learn to read. it doesn't help children learn to speak english if they don't speak english. it decimates communities. what was the anchor and the heart of their community. it's a terrible thing to close schools but the only reason to close a school is because everyone was way and are not children anymore.

another hoax that's very poppe in some states is that kids can pass the test if the way to fix that promise to make the tests harder. what we need is read or -- rigger. i spent several years blogging with your friend deborah meier and she said to me can whenever you hear the word rigor, think of rigor mortis. [laughter] but here's the thing with making the tests harder. if a child can't jump over the bar when it's set at fort hood, it really won't help if you raise it to succeed. [laughter] you will just have more kids falling and not making it over the bar. it helps -- itself that's needed, not higher standards and harder tests. then we had what i considered another to i don't know which of these is the greatest hoax, but the hoaxes anyone can teach,

anyone can be a principal, anyone can be a superintendent. this is such forward thinking that it takes us right back to the early 19th century. there's also the hoax that testing is the best measure of school quality. that's wrong. testing, especially standardized testing, is a measure of family income and education. as i said before it is a measure of opportunity to learn, not the testability. the problem we had recent is the common core test is that the test were given in april. the results came back in august, and no one is allowed to see the questions will be actors or how to perform. they just give scores. now, you can still pack them in and say what's the purpose of testing? the purpose of testing is the diagnostics. it's supposed to save you quickly, not six monthly, john is having trouble with addition,

subtraction, fractions, whatever. maria needs help with something else. and the standardized test they won't let yo you see the questis on the and his you know diagnostic purpose. it's as if you went to the doctor and he said he to have a problem, come back in six months. [laughter] i'm not going to tell you what it is but i've got some medicine for you. so what i considered the biggest hoax of all is the claim that is frequently made. privatization between charters and vouchers is the civil rights issue of our time. someone just sent me an article from a north carolina newspaper and someone made the claim, if dr. king were alive today he would be fighting for choice. get kids out of public schools, which is an outrage. it's purpose is to turn parents into consumers instead of

citizens. [applause] citizens recognize they have a responsibility for the common good. consumers look at only for what's best for themselves and their own children. we all have an obligation to support public schools. it's in interest of our society. it's in the interest of the common will and will. it's not just say for my child and tough you. you live in philadelphia, that's no problem. no, it's our problem. [applause] >> so in this discussion i'd like to inject a few realities. one is that children start off life with different advantages and different disadvantages. and that society has an

obligation to try to level the playing field. schools are part of that. schools can help but they cannot do it alone. there is an achievement gap on the first day of school that starts at home when children are exposed to different opportunities and vocabulary and experiences. and so when i finished my last book, the critics said you don't have solutions. where are your solutions? i had to write this book because i had a solution. the first is we should provide as a society for prenatal care for all women who cannot afford prenatal care. [applause] i'm saying this as a practical matter because the research is again overwhelming and documented in my book. that women who do not get prenatal care have children with

their little legs and cognitive deficiencies. these children will then join special education and we'll pay as a society hundreds of thousands of dollars when we might have helped those women to have healthy babies with a very small investment at the beginning. and there was a survey done last year by the march of dimes in united nations, we are 32nd, 12 are would've another, think about this. they found we were i think once had 30 in the world ranking alongside somalia in the provision of prenatal care for women. that's a disgrace. let's talk about that instead of kids test scores. we should have early childhood education for all children. [applause] again, the research on this is

indisputable. and yet "the economist" magazine last year ranked the european nations, the north american nation and we came in 24th in early childhood education. we are not doing a good job on that level. what do we need to help children achieve and do well in school, be ready for school? we need smaller classes. [applause] >> the research is very clear that the special in the early grades and a special for children who are having learning problems, smaller classes allow them have more time with her teacher, and this is very important. what else do we need? we need in every school a full t enriched curriculum including arts and physical education, history and literature. [applause] science, mathematics, online which is. this is what we expect as a matter of course.

i was in public schools in houston, texas. we had all those things and i wasn't in a private school. y. will be able to do it so we decades ago and we can't afford to do this anymore? i don't understand. is it because we're diverting all that money did testing corporations and to consultants? [applause] we have our priorities messed up. here's another thing that would raise achievement across the board, and that would be to attach a health clinic to every school in a poor community. [applause] at the very least schools should of school nurses to refer children to the health clinic if they need. [applause] schools need wraparound services. they need parent education, adult education, school psychologists, social workers, libraries, afterschool programs, summer programs. but they don't have it.

but if we cared about the achievement gap, the opportunity gap, those are things we be doing, and we are not doing it. this is a somewhat controversial statement in city of philadelphia. we need democratic control of our schools. [applause] having lived in a city where we have not had democratic control of our schools the past dozen years, i can tell you that parents are aging to be about something to say about what the decisions made about their children. every commune should be able to vote in people who care about their schools and vote out the people who make bad decisions. [applause] i mentioned before that i'm not despite the things i said, i'm not opposed to all charters altogether. i think that charter schools were initially supposed to work as collaborates with public

schools around the needs of children. i think there should be charged for children who are not making it in the public schools where they can try new ways of doing things and hope the public schools do a better job. there could be charter schools are dropouts, for children who are autistic or this could be charter schools to meet the needs of children and not charter schools that skim off the best kids and leave the worst, the rejects for the public schools. [applause] and then i want to mention what i consider to be the biggest problem in this society. and that is that we cultivate the most important causes of low academic achievement which are poverty and racial segregation. [applause] >> we have become indifferent as a society. we now live with the philosophy of the poor will always be with us and we don't care. we live with the belief that the

brown decision never happened and it's all over. we applaud schools that all black for all hispanics are all white. that's wrong. we should be any to integrate our society with governmental incentives. -- be aiming. just think of that $5 billion has been wasted on race to the top were used to incentivize communities to have more integration in their schools. we might look like a different society today. just in a few short years. another thing we can do, which is why my solutions, and i have a chapter devoted to, the importance of strengthening the education system. those who are principles should be master teachers. [cheers and applause]

>> it is the principles will evaluate the teachers. they cannot a guy with them and they cannot help them unless they themselves are master teachers. superintendents should be expressed education understand teaching and learning, not general, not admirals. [applause] not businessmen and not lawyers. [laughter] tests should be used appropriately. they should not be used as carrots or sticks. standardized tests should be used sparingly. right before we came in here i showed randi something that our experts said. they said there's no other country that has every child every year. we are the only one to other countries children are tested twice or three times at most in the course of their education. but year-to-year testing is a huge waste of money.

so standardized tests should be used preferably on a sampling basis but it could be used sparingly but as i said before the results come in too late to be diagnostically used. too much emphasis on testing narrows the curriculum only to what's tested. and personally i believe that most testing should be created by teachers. [applause] now, on the same thing a teacher evaluation i did not mean to imply it's unimportant i think all teachers should be evaluated but they should not be evaluated by test scores. they should be evaluated by the professional judgments of their peers and their master teachers who are their principals. the system that i have the money with that i think established them seem to me to be the best in the world unless race to the top tells it is in montgomery county and it's called. assistance and review.

it works like this. a new teacher comes into the system, he or she is assigned a mentor teacher who works with the teaching helps them become better. and then reports the committee of teachers and principals about the progress of the cage. it an expense and tenured teacher burns out or the principals as this teacher is not a good job, i think a teacher is incompetent, that teacher is not fired on the spot. they are given a mentor who then reports to the same committee, i think mr. jones and mr. jones has made great progress. they should be continued if i think mr. jones has had it and it's time to let him go. montgomery county has, in fact, fired over 200 teachers, but done in a professional way not based on test score by the judgment of qualified peers. this is something that has been considered very popular vote with teachers and principals and unions because it's done

collaboratively. schools that are struggling to get time to help, they should not be close. maybe they need smaller classes for children who can't read. maybe they need social workers. maybe they need more valuable instruction. we must treasure public education. must make a stronger. we must make it better. it belongs to all of us. we all responsible whether we're children in public schools or not, whether we are childless, and whether we sent our children to private or religious school, public education is a public responsibility. the purpose of education, not to raise to higher test scores but to repair our children for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. what matters most is that we have schools where students learn to think about the consequences of that action, with a learn to treat others with respect, where they learn how to live and work in a world of rapid change with unpredictability about what the jobs of the future will be.

and where they gain the knowledge and the skills that they need to make our society more just, more simple, and to bring us to that day whether it is, in fact, liberty and justice for all. i should mention that i'm actually very optimistic. i see resistance, buildings all of these hoaxes across the country. i see the state of texas rolling back testing of all places. i see teachers in seattle saying no, we will not give that test. [applause] ..