In 2010, I traveled to California to talk about my new book “The Death and Life of the Great American School Syatem: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” It was a startling reversal of my views, and I met many people who were thrilled to find an author who supported their deeply held revulsion to the current system. I met parent activists, including Caroline Grannan. We stayed in touch over the years. She went to work for a major newspaper and was careful not to make her views public. The following is an article that she published anonymously in 2018. I recently saw it on Twitter and realized that it was now safe to post her name.

–Guest post created by a longtime Northern California parent volunteer education advocate

• Charter schools take resources away from the public schools, harming public schools and their students. All charter schools do…