Parent Revolution Expose Ravitch's Lies

It’s great to see Parent Revolution exposing Ravitch’s endless lies (it must be deliberate because, even in her echo chamber, she can’t be this ill-informed, right???):

Her latest is a blog posting (‘The Unfairness of the Parent Trigger” 6/14/2013) in which she pushes the conspiracy theory that Parent Revolution executive director, Ben Austin, was responsible for writing California’s Parent Trigger regulations.

…Here’s what Dr. Ravitch knows – and what she’s conveniently choosing to ignore:

Ben Austin was NOT on the California State Board of Education (SBE) when the Parent Trigger regulations were written and then voted upon. As Dr. Ravitch has (gleefully) highlighted in previous blogs, Ben was removed from the SBE by incoming Governor Jerry Brown, who replaced sitting SBE members with his own appointees.

One of the Brown appointees replacing Ben was Patricia Rucker who was then – and still is – a paid lobbyist for the California Teachers Association (CTA). She voted for the regulations with which Dr. Ravitch has such heartburn.

You did not misread that: the principal lobbyist for the teacher’s union – along with every other member of Governor Brown’s State Board – voted for the regulations Dr. Ravitch claims were supposedly written by Ben Austin as a conspiracy to gag educators. It’s another claim with no basis in actual reality.

This is just one example of how Dr. Ravitch and others have a tendency to play fast-and-loose with the truth, not only on Parent Trigger and Parent Revolution, but also with a wide-range of education reform issues.

That’s why we’ve just launched our “Truth in Ed Reform” (www.truthinedreform.org) to begin separating fact from fiction – and calling-out those who want to push and perpetuate myths, conspiracy theories and fabrications.