I have updated my letter to CNN to include the PS at the end. Read it, comment, tell everyone you know about how CNN perates At that time, I had not seen the Ravitch interview video posted, or hearsd about the cleansing of comments. Anyone who still has them (their comments on Rhee, Ravitch, CNN...) and/or access to them re-post. On CNN, here, twitter, facebook, wherever.

Learner's desire to achieve, as a guide for education, has been replaced by the demands of the "free market" for willing participant/victims. -Me, August 2012

   I am writing this as I sit on a couch, at the crack of dawn, with a cup of coffee and a silent house all around me. It won't be silent for much longer. It's about 7:45 AM and I've been up for nearly two hours using this quiet time to build resources and make plans for the start of the school year. Soon my own three girls will begin waking. With any luck they will sit quietly next to me with one of the many books we have brought on vacation. With a little less luck, the sound of Sponge Bob and the construction crew building the house next door will be the back-drop for my thought process. I don't like to take chances, and never have, so I write now. Right now.
   When I was young I had an active imagination. Staying up late watching scary movies; reading books that told tales of suspense and horror...I could blame it on my father-but I loved it, still do, and so does my oldest daughter. Here's how I've explained it to her:

         I "half-believe". There could be things out there-I don't know, ghosts, spirits, whatever. But
         I am not going to just sit quietly and let them get me because I'm not paying attention and
         I'm not going to let them get me from behind because I'm running away. I'm going to watch,
         I'm going to own the place I am in, and I'm going to let them know they can't scare me away.

I tell her about my long walks to the dark milk-house, from the home we lived on across a big yard and  shadowy barns to fill the pitcher for breakfast in the morning. Winter would have a greater "spook factor" because I had just read Salem's Lot (by Stephen King) and I think that eerie tale of vampire terror opens in the dark blistering Maine winter. I tell my daughter how, when dark thoughts began to creep in, I would not allow my feet to move faster. In fact, I deliberately slowed down. Back then, and even now, I felt if something is really coming for you-it's coming. Bring it on. My older cousin Ronnie and  I let the rest of the cousins lock us in the "haunted room" in our grandparents house overnight. It had one of those hook-and-eye latches on the outside of the door.  My dad wasn't a believer, but his sisters swore that room was haunted.
     I would go out alone into the woods at night on purpose, for no other reason than to see what it was like. Part of knowing something is coming is feeling it and hearing it, because seeing it won't always be your first warning. My goal has always been to find out what is out there. To verify the realities and the possibilities and then in knowing them-to not fear them. Fear is  the forfeiture of courage, and as a result the inability to act quickly and with purpose. I won't give that up and I'm likely to act first. When I watch those shows about crazy demon houses with my daughter, those shows where some unsuspecting family is chased from their lovely new home by crazy spirit stuff, I tell her I want to go to that place and say "I'm not sure if I believe, here is your chance. 'Come if yer comin' " (as an old hippie poker adversary used to say as a challenge to all to call his big bet).

I want to spend the night in a place like that. Alone is fine with me. Come if yer comin'.

Well, there are now ghosties in my house. The Kochs, Gates, Rhee, Anschutz...I am even less afraid because their attacks are easy to see coming, even when they try to hide their names and their backers. What I am is sad. The greatest damage, the erosion to our morals and connections to each other, the obligations to preserve democracy...all the foundations of our society are being attacked and our policy makers are the bloodsuckers' guardians. They have been allowed to weaken us over time and now the goal of the free market "reformers" lifting the lids on their coffins is to come and finish us off by draining the last drop from public education. By sucking out the choice, by controlling what is learned by who and how it is taught, the "free market" is planting its own garden and keeping us all just healthy enough to tend it for them. But we see them. We know what they are up to. We have numbers on our side.

Come if yer comin'.

My Letter to CNN on Rhee/Ravitch Segments

Don't know if my post was deleted and re-posted, so here is the post/ letter I mailed to you-which will more or less match the "snail mail" version. As you read (and review other posted comments), please consider "the most trusted name..." slogan, or RHEE-consider it (get it???..ha ha). The mystery of disappearing posts along with the lack of journalistic integrity on the ed-reform issue definitely pushes me away from your network. If I want a load of *&%$ I can listen to the GOP opine on reproduction, the economy, the environment...

CNN
Attn: Randi Kaye
One CNN Center, Box 105366
Atlanta, GA 30303-5366

Re: Michelle Rhee, Diane Ravitch, Public Education

Dear CNN and Randi Kaye,

I tuned in to the August 18th segment featuring Randi Kaye hosting Diane Ravitch. The intent was, I thought, to provide alternate viewpoints and additional information following an earlier Kaye interview with Michelle Rhee. I did not tune in for the Rhee interview, because I know the Rhee narrative. Somehow she has managed to build an education expert’s reputation and career on a resume of suspicion (marred by a poorly investigated cheating scandal that may have propped test-score data) and little real experience or familiarity with public schools and their students. Her claims about public school failures go poorly examined. The data used is misused and/or cherry-picked. The players and their for-profit agenda go unexamined-even as they begin to monopolize on billions of public dollars for more tests and materials that will, in turn, continue to support their agenda (not to mention what Rhee is paid for a single speaking engagement). Needless to say I was thrilled to learn that Ravitch had a chance to come on CNN to provide an alternate view. It is very fashionable for most media outlets to jump on the public school-bashing train, and I internally congratulated CNN on their integrity for doing the right thing. That was before I watched the interview. You would almost think that powerful forces that own significant pieces of media outlets are helping to distract the nation from true causes of our economic struggles. Below is part of the message I posted to Diane’s blog, and on a CNN feedback page.

… There is some political/financial motivation for Randi/CNN to treat the chance to hear from you as instead a chance to discredit your point of view. I had to go and find the Rhee interview Kaye did, because I had avoided it (knowing what I would hear from Rhee). I was more interested in seeing if Rhee had survived the slings and arrows, the cherry picked and invalid use of data, the portrayal of struggles as automatic assumptions of systemic failure...

Rhee got no such treatment. Even questions posed as quasi-criticisms were only softballs lobbed for Rhee to continue Students First PR. Diane gets ambushed with 1 student letter, 1 poverty stricken district/state, data is used selectively to support Kaye’s foregone conclusion, and the devastation profiteering has already caused this nation and the bulk of its children is ignored.

Good teachers will reverse outsourcing and the undermining of the middle class family, Kaye? Really?

Rhee gets “tell us more about what you think”. CNN, Randi Kaye…do you not know Rhee’s history? How she benefits from “reform”? How ALEC really operates and what its legislative agenda is regarding public money to private pockets?

I would like to count on CNN for objective journalism and analysis. I already have one channel I watch for my brainless partisan source of information, just to see what silly thing they will present as news, and to learn how bought and paid for news and PR compare. Randi Kaye’s interview of Diane Ravitch was not only an obvious ambush with an interviewer who had an agenda and foregone conclusions, it was disrespectful to journalism, objective information, and people like me who would like to find both on a channel that should provide it. Please don’t continue to disrespect experts in their field, me, and other serious seekers of information with more transparent agendas and theater. I only have room for one “news” network of clowns in my schedule.

Thank you,

Dan McConnell, Jr.

P.S. I am adding this final note before I go to get an envelope and stamp for this letter. I am mailing this the old fashioned way because I just think it is more personal and respectful. As of this moment, I am not finding the video of the Kaye-Ravitch interview online. The Rhee interview was available and easy to find rather quickly. Your treatment of school reform lacks integrity and the kind of respectful treatment I expect in an organization providing news.

August 30, 2012 at 4:15 pm |