If We Vote Yes on Georgia’s Opportunity School District, We’re Doing the Wrong Thing

The Artofteachingscience.org blog is up and running.  All of my sites were hacked around October 5, and its taken quite awhile to get all the files cleaned and free of malicious content (malware) that attacked my sites.  This site is one of thousands that are compromised every day.  I spent more than 20 years traveling to Russia, maybe I was acted by some Russian cyber sleuths.  Or maybe, since I responded on Donald Trump’s Twitter account telling how incredibly awful his candidacy for President is, and that if anyone is corrupt, unlawful, a misogynist, or racist, it’s him. In any case, I’ve purchased protection against further incoming viruses, worms, adware, and any other malicious programs lurking in cyber space ready to attack at any time.

I thought it was important to continue with the campaign to defeat Nathan Deal’s Opportunity School District (OSD) by bringing Ed Johnson into the conversation.  Ed Johnson has been an active critic of the Governor’s OSD, which is Amendment 1 on the Georgia ballot on November 8.  Those voting yes will approve the Governor’s take over of so-called “chronically failing schools,” while those voting no will keep the integrity of community based education, and keep these schools away from the profiteers waiting on the boarders to stream into the state and set up charter schools.

So, here we begin.

I received a letter from Ed Johnson as a follow-up to a conversations he had with Rep. Joyce Chandler (GA) at an Opportunity School District issues public forum in Atlanta about three weeks ago.

Ed Johnson, who is not only an advocate for quality public education, but is a disciplined scholar on systems education, which has been championed by W. Edwards Deming, Russell L. Ackoff and others.

Good day, Rep. Joyce Chandler.

Just a short follow-up to say it was a pleasure meeting and talking with you at last evening’s public forum on OSD issues hosted by BOOK, or Better Options for Our Kids.

As I mentioned, I hold a keen, long-standing interest in improving our public education systems and in inviting others to understand they can be improved and not merely changed, as the Opportunity School District would do (this link takes to an in-depth analysis of the OSD, and supports the views of Ed Johnson).

But, alas, some people conflate improvement and change. Whereas improvement requires the hard, complex work of learning and getting ever newer knowledge, change requires only the easy, simplistic work of doing something different, as OSD and charter school proponents so often assert. Do the wrong thing – and OSD is so obviously the wrong thing to do – will only make matters worse, much worse.

This is much the reason, earlier on, in an open letter, I informed Gov. Nathan Deal of several proven better ways than the known-to-fail Opportunity School District way. Of course, others know of better ways than the OSD way.

I invite you to my open letter to Gov. Deal and his reply, at the link below. The link will take you to the web site of Jack Hassard, Professor Emeritus of Science Education at Georgia State University and a former high school teacher.

Governor Deal Exchanges Letters with Ed Johnson–Ships Passing in the Night

If you would care to discuss further, it will be my pleasure.

With kind regards, I am

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA
(404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com