So here it is folks. Stephanie Simon of Reuters attended that private equity investors’ conference at an elite Manhattan setting and the boys are looking to make money from selling their stuff to the schools, running schools, teaching math, investing in new ventures of all kinds.
This is what many suspected but found hard to believe. The Wall Street crowd says this is their moment.
They see the steady advance of privatization and for-profit ventures and they love it.
They know that the purpose of the new academic standards is to create winners and losers, and they will invest in product to sell to both ends of the spectrum.
They will monetize the children, outsource the teaching, do anything that turns a buck.
Who will stop them?
We know Romney won’t. Will Obama?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What would stop them? A focus on academic excellence. You can offer a student a quality math education using quality text books. You do not need software or a white board or anything like that.
Saxon Math, Singapore Math, Dolciani Algebra, etc.
Simple. Good text book good teacher = academic excellence.
They will capitalize because the public schools were set up for failure.
They embraced fuzzy math, OBE, Constructivism, etc. and the schools of ed have not properly prepared the teachers academically.
Of course they are going to sweep in and capitalize on this failure.
The question i have is, why did the NEA and so many others allow this to happen?
Why didn’t the NEA focus on the failures in public ed instead of worrying about their political power?
Why did they leave the teachers out there as the ones who would ultimately pay the price?
Remember, the Govt. has to break the leg first, before they can fix it.
I’ve read your posts and have one question that perhaps only you can answer. It seems to be a recurrent theme of yours. You state, “public schools were set up for failure”. When did this happen? Was this always the case? What support do you have for this statement/thesis? Are you involved in education in any way other than being a mom? Do you show up at local BOE hearings and testify? I’m curious.
The NEA didn’t allow anything because the NEA is not in charge of our schools. The NEA does not have anything close to that kind of influence or power. Schools are overwhelmingly controlled by local school boards and by the host states.
Yes, I’m curious to know what the “failures in public ed” really are and from what source this claim has come.
It’s called the Big Lie. Repeat the lie often enough and people believe it.
The teachers unions do not create curriculum, select textbooks, hire teachers, train teachers, etc. They cannot be blamed for all of the fads that made their way through education. This whole knee-jerk “blame the union” thing is the problem. I’ve always seen the unions’ role as protecting working conditions wereas organizations related to specific subjects or colleges would play more of a role in curriculum decisions.
Failure? What failure? The only failure is the level of poverty in the country. American students in schools with low levels of poverty have the highest achievement scores in the world.
Since when did the NEA, AFT, public schools or public school teachers have any power over the level of poverty in the country?
Sorry Diane. Obama won’t. Sadly, he’s gone above and beyond anyone’s expectations with tacit support from the AFT and NEA. Time for another viable political party.
The only people capable of stopping them would be parents and children. A little media support and critical analysis (left, right or in-between) would also help.
I agree. Obama and the Democratic Party have consistently made working people pay for the economic crisis. The unions can’t defend us because the capitalist class can set up wherever workers are cheapest. That may be less so with teachers, but to counter that, Obama’s crowd has championed charter schools, testing and privatization. You are completely correct: this situation of steady destruction of living standards and social gains must be fought politically with a democratic, mass party of the working people. I think such a party would be required to adopt a socialist program, but a program to defend us would that party’s task to develop.
Obama won’t. I’m not voting FOR Obama as much as I’m voting AGAINST Romney. If Romney were an old style Goldwater Republican, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat. Someone needs to step in and with the stroke of a pen bust the Department of Education into a million pieces.
I feel that Obama has already thrown teachers under the bus with Race to the Top. I’m also ready for a new political party.
The only way to stop them is for students to refuse to attend these schools, and for teachers to refuse to teach. A general Education Strike. They can’t make money if no one comes.
Or a national opt out of testing movement which is happening on a small scale. About what percent opting out would make the tests invalid? Anyone know?
Parents across America support this movement.
“About what percent opting out would make the tests invalid? ”
The tests are already invalid.
See Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577 “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at: http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5index.html
Sad to say it, but you should be ashamed of yourself to even ask if Obama will do anything. He definitely will not do anything to stop the worst ravages of ed deform. Like almost every other politician in the USA, Obama is a shill for big business.
As much as I’d like more educators to speak out, I believe vehement opposition from large groups of parents has the best chance at stemming the tide of corporatizing public education. As much as politicians swoon at companies’ promises to cut costs, they’re more moved, I think, by real prospects of being voted out of office.
Not to worry, the rite wing is working is working as hard as they can to take the voters out of the equation.
Gee, Jon. I thought that’s what happened when the $4.35 Billion Race to the Top was voted on in the Democratic House and Senate and signed by the President…and the mandates were never voted on by any taxpayer or state legislature. That wasn’t a right wing vote at all. Regardless of what you might think of NCLB, at least the plan had legislative approval. RTTT was a blank check and Arne Duncan (not a right winger the last time I looked), shut out voters in his education blueprint. Am I missing something here? Can you explain your comment?
It ain’t me, Babe, if you’re lookin’ for someone to defend ObamArne on education.
But I’m from Michigan, so I know who’s working the hardest to take the electorate out of the election.
Please tell me how the right wing is trying to take the voters out of the equation. What is the right doing that isn’t in Race to the Top mandates which was signed by the Dems?
I’m in no way giving the Republicans a pass. I think it’s a bipartisan push by the elites. But please explain how it’s the right wing and not the left side doing the same thing. My Democrat governor in MO is pretty much doing the RTTT dance with all the mandates (teacher accountability, common core, etc) and I don’t see the left blasting him.
Surely you’ve heard of ALEC and its concerted program of voter suppression. Well, we have all that with a vengeance in Michigan, all the while that the only provable and most egregious election fraud has been carried out by our Republican Speaker of the Michigan House:
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120720/OPINION01/207200439
Yes, of course I have heard of ALEC and I don’t like the organization a bit. One of my state senators was treasurer and I don’t like how taxpayers interests have been co-opted by special interests. Even though it is primarily Republican, my Dem governor is putting reforms through that follow its educational blueprint…which has morphed into this administration’s blueprint. I don’t like ALEC any better than I like Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee or David Coleman. ALEC and the other side want the same goals. So there’s little difference in my mind between the left and the right in educational reform.
.
My initial comment was in reply to Dufrense’s comment:
My point was that the right wing is working the hardest to deprive the people of the power to vote them out of office.
I think we agree about the all-around blame for education policy.
Shot by Romney, strangled by Obama… or?
That’s for parents, teachers and students to decide.
This is an interesting quote from the article:
Critics see the newest rush to private vendors as more worrisome because school districts are outsourcing not just supplies but the very core of education: the daily interaction between student and teacher, the presentation of new material, the quick checks to see which kids have risen to the challenge and which are hopelessly confused.
“Hopelessly confused” Is this hyperbole or an evaluative statement? If a student is “hopelessly confused” in this new corporate style school system, what does the system do? My fellow teachers, we see confusion (as the Buddha pointed out) as the gateway to knowledge.
I wonder if there is an App for “hopeless confusion”?
The Democratic Party and top union bureaucrats are all part of the drive for privatization. Look at who has joined the Broad Foundation Board of Directors:
Andy Stern, senior fellow at Columbia University. Previously, during his 15-year tenure as president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union, the nation’s second largest labor union, Stern called for health care reform and the creation of workplace conditions that support, rather than hinder, employees from performing their jobs.
Representative Harold Ford, Jr., a former five-term Congressman and chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, who is currently managing director and senior client relationship manager at Morgan Stanley and professor of public policy at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. On the House committee on education and the workforce, Ford sought results-oriented solutions to address issues of American workforce preparedness and social challenges faced by faith and community based groups.
Lawrence H. Summers, president emeritus of Harvard University, and a top economic advisor during the Obama and Clinton administrations. As assistant to the president for economic policy under President Obama, director of the National Economic Council, secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and vice president of development economics and chief economist of the World Bank, Summers has for decades been at the forefront of efforts to strengthen the United States economy.
Paul Pastorek, former Louisiana state superintendent of education and former president of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. His 20-year career to improve public education in Louisiana began after volunteering in a New Orleans inner city junior high school. During Pastorek’s superintendency, Louisiana showed unprecedented increases in graduation rates and standardized test scores. Pastorek is currently chief counsel for the aerospace and defense contractor EADS North America.
Click to access 643-120725newtbcboard.pdf
Not true Democrats from the democratic wing of the Democratic party. They’re basically conservaDems or Dinos.
Stern is an anomaly. Unions are Broad’s enemies and teachers in these private endeavors certainly won’t be unionized.
Arne Duncan was on the Board of the Broad Foundation for several years before he became Secretary of Education. The 2009 Mission Statement of the Broad Foundation said this when he was appointed:
Page 5
“The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. secretary of education, marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned. With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.”
Page 10
“Prior to becoming U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, where he hosted 23 Broad Residents. Duncan now has five Broad Residents and alumni working with him in the U.S. Department of Education.”
Click to access 101-2009.10%20annual%20report.pdf
Thanks for that info, philaken, disturbing as it is. What more is there to say? We all know what the problem is. The question is: what are we going to do about it?
Opt out of testing…http://unitedoptout.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/standardized-testing-national-opt-out-day_n_1190322.html
Last year, stress about Pennsylvania’s state standardized tests
caused third grader John Michael Rosenblum to start scratching himself so hard in his sleep that he bled. That’s when his mother Michele Gray knew she’d had enough.
So she opted out. “I realized standardized testing isn’t serving our communities or schools,” Gray says. “The amount of money we spend for these tests is in the tens of millions. Couldn’t that be spent on other things, like more teachers?”
After conducting some research and finding The Huffington Post blog of opt-out advocate and Penn State University associate professor of education Timothy Slekar, Gray decided to pull her son John Michael and his brother, Ted, out of standardized testing. Instead, after consulting with her school, they spent test periods on writing projects and constructing small machines.
Gray is part of a small but vocal group of teachers and parents who want to end high-stakes testing — and the real work starts tomorrow, with National Opt Out Day, an event marked by teach-ins across the country.
We must form new organizations to free teachers from the stranglehold of the Democratic Party and the NEA/AFT bureaucrats who support it. Active retirees, like myself, can do some of the initial organizing going back to our former colleagues to begin the process. Sounds really hard, but I see no other way to fight back. Perhaps we can begin using Facebook and the other networks to create contacts across the country. Also, I wouldn’t expect too much from current opposition caucuses like the CORE in Chicago. They seem to be all talk.
Randi Weingarten has been working with the Broad Foundation for ten years.
In the 2009 Mission Statement of the Broad Foundation, Page 11
“Teacher unions have always been a formidable voice in public
education. We decided at the onset of our work to invest in
smart, progressive labor leaders like Randi Weingarten, head of
the United Federation of Teachers in New York City for more
than a decade and now president of the American Federation
of Teachers (AFT). We partnered with Weingarten to fund two
union-run charter schools in Brooklyn and to fund New York
City’s first incentive-based compensation program for schools,
as well as the AFT’s Innovation Fund. We had previously
helped advance pay for performance programs in Denver and
Houston, but we were particularly encouraged to see New York
City embrace the plan.” (More references to her in this Statement.)
Click to access 101-2009.10%20annual%20report.pdf
And today:
Teacher union boss bends to school reform winds:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-politics-teachers-unionbre86u1td-20120731,0,7913720,full.story
This education reform is going through with a Democrat president. He won’t stop it. His Democratic buddies such as Michelle Rhee and Scott Joftus are making too much money:
http://www.missourieducationwatchdog.com/2012/06/common-core-is-money-making-venture-and.html
This is a bipartisan push. It’s the elites in both parties taking advantage of the system of mercantilism. It’s just the educational version of Solyndra!!!! Set up a contrived system propped up by taxpayer dollars and then pick who you want to reap the benefits from this government controlled system.
No politician will stop it. It’s up to the teachers to stand up and the parents to walk away with their feet and tax dollars the districts get for their children.
I agree that public education was set up to fail, at least in the last several decades. You can’t expect schools to be able to reach unattainable goals as in NCLB. You also cannot under any circumstance (which seems to be the underlying premise of this administration), that equal opportunity comes with the guarantee of equal outcome.
Obama enabled it much more than Bush or anyone else.
Which causes me to wonder why NEA and AFT all endorsed him far in advance of their respective conventions. He not only threw teachers under the bus, he backed up and with Arne Duncan ran them over several times. Heck, it phoned it in to the NEA convention and they orgasmically ate it up. Fellow teachers,- wake up. Now. Before it’s too late.
Was Joe Biden there?
It is up to the teachers, as it is up to the workers, staffs and employees in every industry and in every school district everywhere. When a former leader like Andy Stern joins the other side, you know a new direction can only come from the ranks.
Funny.
They want to suck on the shrinking public teat, yet would complain about any government regulation of the financial market.
Is it just me, or does it seem like this country is starting to resemble a plutocracy, covered by a thin veneer of democracy? Consider Wisconsin, where Walker was only able to retain his seat due to a huge infusion of cash from out of state. Similarly, the vast majority of the balance of the funding for the pro-side of WA’s charter school fight comes from less than 200 people.
One can likely predict with a high amount of accuracy who/what will win an election solely by looking at which side has the most funding…
We are caught in the dilemma of having to support a “side” (the Democratic Party) only because the other side is so much more vicious. The Democrats are, in the final analysis, wedded to the financial aristocracy/plutocracy. History has to cut a new channel to the open sea!
It’s the difference between those who sold their souls to the Devil — and those who are just leasing.
No one says it will be easy, but I think the Dems can still be saved.
sweet analogy
Perhaps it’s “poetic justice,” but the corporate privateers themselves may have just provided the perfect “teachable moment” that educators can use to enlighten parents, the general public, and our duly elected representatives of what is at stake for the future of education and our nation’s children. Huffington Post is running the Reuters story and as of this writing there are over 1000 comments, plus many tweets, giving a strong impression of being opposed to, or at least not in favor of, privatization of our public schools. It seems that more than a few of us don’t want our schools and children to be taken advantage of by the same people who caused most of the financial problems we’re all having in the first place. Why should they now profit off our children? Having this story break in advance of SOS, “Teachers Rock,” and “Won’t Back Down” is a gift of good timing that can only help in letting the truth be known to all who will listen. This may even prove to be a major turning point for the better, or so we should hope.
Moving parents and the public at large to the side of public school teachers is without doubt a good thing, but governments have to be voted in and out and as long as the Democrats and Republicans remain controlled by their financial and corporate contributors and benefactors, how can we get the change we need?
We should all be upset when they try to sell this as the “civil rights movement of our time” while they plan on controlling the city schools. The disenfranchised are the poor people of color in our cities. Their children will be exploited for the profits of these greedy vultures.
Unless our elected officials have kids in these schools, I don’t see many of them doing anything.
Sad to say, but this would never happen in the wealthier suburbs.
As mentioned this was also linked on the huffington post, but look at all the comments and check out the video at the bottom. Kids and parents protesting and opting out of testing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/private-firms-eyeing-prof_n_1732856.html
I plan to start leafleting my local high school come the first day back to urge parents to opt out of testing.
Great idea…when you work out the verbiage will you post here? Leave them all over the building, public library, BOE meetings! Yes!
I am oing to use a version of the national Opt Out organization’s leaflet. Check out the web site.
Obama will not stop them, either…
FIRE DUNCAN! Hire Ravitch!
I wonder if there is an App for “hopeless confusion”? Sounds like a blog post title. I laughed out loud. I’m not doing that much these days.
For Profit Higher Ed —
How the For-Profit Education Business Is a Complete Taxpayer Rip-Off
• http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/for_profit_report/Contents.pdf
And the Common Core is just another door in for these profiteers, as is the edTPA-note the new branding–now being promoted and marketed for Pearson by Stanford and the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education. If we see this in k12—and we see it clearly–why do we pretend to ourselves that the same thing is not happening in teacher education and higher education? Check out the ‘usage plan’ being promoted by the Stanford, AACTE and Pearson triumverate. Too many union leaders, professional organization leaders, and teacher education leaders have been co-opted. We need to start calling out everyone who participates in this privatization–and that goes back to your question Diane: no, Obama, as others have noted, brought us RTTT, NCLB on steroids for the corporate crowd. He will not stop it–he is it.
So many contributors correctly identify the Obama administration as having enabled the privatization of what was once a public education system. The contributors have provided voluminous evidence and compelling personal experience all pointing to a destruction of America’s school system by the same corporate interests that thrived also under the right wing Bush presidency. My question is this: what prevents us from a break with these Democrats and beginning the organization of a new, popular political movement based on our needs and not profit?
“…what prevents us from a break with these Democrats and beginning the organization of a new, popular political movement based on our needs and not profit?”
Power, influence, and money.
A few thoughts: The Democratic party runs on fear-mongering as much as the Bush II campaigns did. We’ve been in led into this pit under the mantra of lesser evil. But I also think there is something deeper at work here that needs analysis. What keeps us even asking if Obama will do the right thing when his behavior has given us no reason to think he would? I have no answers, but there is something going on culturally here, something about conformity, politeness, privilege, denial; some way that our identities are so woven into the system as it is, that it is much too frightening to imagine actually disrupting that system at a deep level. If we are going to make change, we have to give up the story we tell ourselves about the comforts we still have, and probably the material reality of many of those comforts. We have not been taught, and too many have never experienced, the pleasure of solidarity. So we are trapped wishing and fearful, and slowly losing all we think our passivity might be protecting. Each of us, alone and together, needs to explore when and how we will have the courage to break away from what we are given and create something new. Very risky. Deeply rewarding. By the way, Jill Stein is running for President with the Green Party and, while I am dubious about party politics, hers is a platform I can stand with unashamed. I’ll be voting Green.
And what are Stein’s chances of winning? Do you think, in this one election, you are going to be able to effect change? Change takes time. You have to be smart enough to work within the system in order to modify it despite the fact that doing so might go against your ideology at the moment.
Your vote for Stein may as well be a vote for Romney. And when Romney takes office, you can expect wide-spread privatization that Obama would never support.
Congratulations–you are about to forsake a small enemy for a much, much larger one.
Actually, it is really obvious that a vote for Stein is a long view vote, not a short view vote. It is about making a statement that both parties are corrupt and in bed with Wall Street, which I think they are. Beyond corporate education reform, Obama’s cold blooded assassinations and drone murders, support of fracking and off shore drilling, and ongoing surveillance state are deeply problematic. As I wrote in my first post, the question for me is why we refuse to acknowledge his behavior. As someone who lived in MA under Romney, the differences in behavior are minimum. Obama feigns left to win; Romney feigns right. Both occupy a right wing corporatist view that would have startled Nixon. No more fear. A long slow battle to make a new world from outside.
Remember Ross Perot? He was a major candidate in 1992–one that garnered probably the largest amount of votes in recent times of any presidential candidate outside of the two biggest parties. He had a huge following, and ended up with approximately 30% of the votes. That’s staggering. Despite the fact that he lost, many saw his run as the beginning of the end of a two-party system, but there has never been a successful presidential run with an “alternate” win since then.
Now 20 years later, we think we’re going to make a referendum-like statement by voting for a candidate that the majority of the public has never heard of?
I can see that your convictions are well-represented in Stein, but it’s far too late to make a difference with her campaign.
This is not to say that a candidate should not run against the two major party candidates. It’s just politically improbable that one would win without a comparably-funded campaign.
Stein has little chance without the money, power, and influence that others have. It’s a sad reality that our idealist philosophy of voter-referendum does not work against the big political machine at the presidential level. It may be far more prudent to work within the confines of the system to bring about change on other levels. Start with congress so that candidates like Stein have a caucus of support within the system.
I certainly hope she runs again.
They do seem insurmountable. Head for cover.