Ravitch Endorses Four Atlanta School Board Candidates
Education advocate, professor and author Diane Ravitch spoke in Atlanta today to a group of potential voters. Ravitch’s organization, The Network for Public Education, has endorsed some candidates in next week’s Atlanta school board race.
Hear the audio version of this story.
Ravitch says she wants to help restore public education by stopping the privatization of schools. She blames privatization, in part, on the charter schools movement. Charter schools are public schools, but some accept private investments. Nine APS school board seats will be in play next Tuesday. Ravitch’s group has endorsed four candidates: Cynthia Briscoe Brown, Ed Johnson, Mary Palmer, and Nisha Simama. Ravitch says they carefully considered all of the candidates beforehand.
“We asked for resumes and statements from all the candidates, including the people from Teach for America,” she says. “And the four that we selected were the ones that were the most committed to public education.”
Ravitch doesn’t support Teach for America, a federal program that trains college graduates to teach in high-needs areas for a minimum of two years. Ravitch says her group didn’t end up supporting any of those candidates. But, she adds, they didn’t donate to the candidates they endorsed.
“We have no money,” she says. “And, as you well know, Mayor Reed has collected lots of money and I just read in the Atlanta Journal that he’s getting money from the Koch brothers.”
A Reed-backed Political Action Committee has backed eight different candidates. The Super PAC includes Georgia Pacific, which is owned by Koch Industries.
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