ALTON FRAILEY BUYS 17 COPIES OF DIANE RAVITCH'S THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM:

Since Superintendent Alton Frailey has done every thing possible since his arrival seven years ago to firmly ensconce Outcome Based Education (or Education Reform or Restructured Education or whatever they're going to call it today) into OUR Katy public schools. Parents seem not to care at this point.  Many of them are among the three generations of Americans who have now been educated in OBE steeped public schools, so they don't know the difference between and excellent academic education and the pap that is being taught to their children!

That being the case, imagine my surprise a couple of years ago upon seeing a charge on Superintendent Frailey's expense report for 17 copies of Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System!  The premise of Ms. Ravitch's latest switch in philosophy is, as she says, that  "I will describe the evidence that changed my views about reforms that once seemed promising.  I will explain why I have concluded that most of the reform strategies that school districts, state officials, the Congress, and federal officials are pursuing, that mega-rich foundations are supporting, and that editorial boards are applauding ARE MISTAKEN. [Emphasis mine.] I will attempt to explain how these mistaken policies are corrupting educational values.  I will describe the policies that I believe are necessary ingredients in a good system of public education."

Hello, Ms. Ravitch!  Welcome to the real world.  Cockamamie ideas proliferated by educrats residing in colleges of education have ruined public schools for three generations of students.  I'm glad Diane has come to her senses, however late, and I'm especially glad that Mr. Frailey bought 17 copies of her book--I hope for himself and all his administrators. Now let's hope they read them.  (And I'm guessing that they didn't because three years later nothing has changed! Maybe they, like so many KISD students, can't read!)

Of course they could have been listening to me for the last twenty years and saved themselves a bundle of money and a multitude of wasted lives.

I'll also state my oft made assertion, "There wasn't anything wrong with public education in 1970 when the education professors and the political leftists decided to "reform" it.

In the meantime, Katy ISD students continue to be grouped heterogeneously and receive little if any academic instruction as most of what there was has been replaced by learning test taking strategies. Can anyone even imagine what would happen if KISD schools all of a sudden established ability grouping (which by the way, they have a 7-0 board decision that says they had to do that by 1998 but they never did), all kids got a chance to learn KNOWLEDGE and as much of it as they could, and that they dropped all the silly self-esteem junk and the multiculturalism racist activities, and just returned to what used to be a normal public school education?  All of a sudden SAT scores would go up, children could read and do math,  students could get in to UT and and A&M again as well as Harvard, Princeton and Rice, and parents could know that their kids might be able to afford as adults a house as nice as the ones they grew up in.