February 25, 2011

Questions for Diane Ravitch?

Diane Ravitch, education historianPhoto: Jack Miller

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Do you have a question for Diane Ravitch? If you care about the future of public education or teacher unions, you probably should. In addition to being a prolific education historian, Ravitch is most well-known as a conservative who supports teacher unions, and opposes charters and No Child Left Behind. What makes her perspectives especially fascinating, no matter where you stand on these issues, is that less than seven years ago she was on the opposite side of the fight. Ravitch used to serve in George H.W. Bush’s administration championing No Child Left Behind accountability measures, charters, and teacher merit pay among other controversial reforms before she changed her mind, somewhere around 2004.

I am thrilled to interview Ravitch for Mother Jones Monday, and hope you’ll share your questions for her in the comment section below this blog post. Please post them by Monday, Feb. 28, 6am PST. To kick it off, here are some questions in my notebook:

What does your education reform agenda look like?

You believe that the testing and standards in NCLB have been extremely damaging to schools. What other external measures can we use to make sure that students across the country are proficient in the basic subjects?

What will happen, if teachers in Wisconsin lose their collective bargaining rights?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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