Maine’s State Commissioner of Education Stephen Bowen went to San Francisco to hear Jeb Bush tout the glories of for-profit online charter schools. Jeb Bush’s foundation paid for the trip. The commissioner met with Jeb’s chief education aide, Patricia Levesque, whose company lobbies for the online corporations. She promised help.
Bowen was preparing an aggressive reform drive on initiatives intended to dramatically expand and deregulate online education in Maine, but he felt overwhelmed.
“I have no ‘political’ staff who I can work with to move this stuff through the process,” he emailed her from his office.
Levesque replied not to worry; her staff in Florida would be happy to suggest policies, write laws and gubernatorial decrees, and develop strategies to ensure they were implemented.
“When you suggested there might be a way for us to get some policy help, it was all I could do not to jump for joy,” Bowen wrote Levesque from his office.
“Let us help,” she responded.
So was a partnership formed between Maine’s top education official and a foundation entangled with the very companies that stand to make millions of dollars from the policies it advocates.
In the months that followed, according to more than 1,000 pages of emails obtained by a public records request, the commissioner would rely on the foundation to provide him with key portions of his education agenda. These included draft laws, the content of the administration’s digital education strategy and the text ofGov. Paul LePage’s Feb. 1 executive order on digital education.
A Maine Sunday Telegram investigation found large portions of Maine’s digital education agenda are being guided behind the scenes by out-of-state companies that stand to capitalize on the changes, especially the nation’s two largest online education providers.
K12 Inc. of Herndon, Va., and Connections Education, the Baltimore-based subsidiary of education publishing giant Pearson, are both seeking to expand online offerings and to open full-time virtual charter schools in Maine, with taxpayers paying the tuition for the students who use the services.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For once the Press Herald acted like a real newspaper. The “follow the money” graphic showing how LePage and Bowen are tied in to the charters, Bush, and ALEC is excellent.
We have to get the word out to parents and the public in general to stop this bald-faced graft of our public schools and state tax revenues. I hope to work with the Maine Education Association and my local Rep. to start drafting legislation that will at least for hearings to bring this out into the open.
Boss Tweed used to call this “honest graft.”
Graft, yes. Honest, not so sure.
Ahh..Boss Tweed. After whom a court house in NYC is named. Does that tell you something?
funnily enough, the NYC Department of Education headquarters is in the Tweed Courthouse.
At least they openly honor graft and crooks. You can’t accuse them of hypocrisy there! All they need is a Tammany Hall boulevard leading to it.
K12 seems to be a problem in Wisconsin too:
Virtual schools dropping for-profit vendors
from Greenbay Press Gazette
“The Northern Ozaukee School District’s Wisconsin Virtual Learning has been independent since dropping K12 after the 2008-09 school year. And Grantsburg’s iForward and Waukesha’s eAchieve Academy contracted with K12 through 2011-12, but both will be fully independent in the coming year after acrimonious splits.
“It’s been our experience that the interest of their shareholders is the most critical deciding factor when decisions are being made,” Rick Nettesheim, principal of eAchieve. “They may say they have the best interests of students in mind, and I’m sure their teachers care about their students just as much as our teachers care about students, but the people making decisions do have to answer to shareholders, and I think that’s a conflict of interests.”
K12 has drawn criticism nationally for the way it prioritizes profitability and academic achievement, and Nettesheim said his school is glad to be free of the company. They had contracted with K12 for two years for logistics such as laptops, software and marketing after K12 bought out the company eAchieve originally used.
Although eAchieve — previously known as IQ Academy — severed ties with K12 after the 2011-12 school year, K12 has left “inaccurate and misleading” information on an IQ Academy website despite repeated requests from the school to remove it, Nettesheim said. The site prominently displays a phone number that routes callers to Wisconsin Virtual Academy — the lone remaining K12 school in Wisconsin — and it states that IQ Academy is not accepting enrollment for the 2012-13 school year, directing visitors to the WVA site.”
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20120828/GPG019802/308280121/Virtual-schools-dropping-profit-vendors?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CGPG-News&nclick_check=1
It’s interesting that in those states which slashed public school teaching jobs (ironically, held by people in the local communities), they have simultaneously expanded the use of virtual schools like K12Inc, which are employing “teachers” in other states. Also, K12Inc is the largest “education” donor to Indiana Republican Sup. of Public Instruction ,Tony Bennett’s, campaign. He’s an ALEC member and so is K12Inc.
If this is happening in Maine, then you know it has got to be happening elsewhere. With friends like Levesque, who could want for anything more??? Many Mainers will find these kinds of behind-the-scenes, out-of-state, out of local control machinations repugnant. They are an independent bunch and don’t much cotton to people from away trying to run the show. Apparently, you can’t get heah from theah–at least not from Florida. Comm. Bowen should be shown the door. Gov. LePage should not gain a second term. Paul LePage is the guy who caused the lovely “history of labor in Maine” murals on the walls of the Department of Labor Building in Augusta to be removed and locked away without ever having seen them himself. They included panels showing shoe factory workers, lumber jacks, and fisher folk–scenes that an underling deemed offensive to BUSINESS.
If the story in Maine wasn’t so sadly true, wouldn’t it make a good story plot? The characters could be very well developed.
Last week a state senator from Chattanooga made news in TN for citing K12’s abysmal test scores as reason for an official inquiry:
‘”This is a case of government letting down our students and our taxpayers,’ said Sen. Andy Berke, a Democrat. ‘It defies common sense.’
Based on test scores showing the virtual academy performed in the bottom 11 percent of schools across the state, Berke has asked Delores Gresham, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, to look into the issue.”
The TN legislature gave approval to K12 last year with little, if any, thought about the quality of the education they provide or the funding issues that could ensue. Several weeks after granting K12 approval, Governor Haslam said he was just beginning to learn the details of the bill.
Does any politician really understand the bills they introduce or vote on? I bet the percentage is very low.
Maybe public education has failed if we keep voting in ignorant politicians. Either that or the monied elite just buys said ignorant politicians off. Maybe even both, eh?
The problem in Maine has been party-line voting and setting key votes, like the outrageous education bills, for the very last moment of the legislative session when no one has time to think clearly. I do blame the Democrats in part for not getting louder about this behavior, but this is largely about the abuse of legislative procedures.
Conflicts of interest?
Craig Barrett is on the board of the online charter school K12 Inc., with revenues of half a billion annually.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100929005840/en/Retired-CEOChairman-Intel-Dr.-Craig-Barrett-Joins
Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, also appointed Craig Barrett to her education council.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2011/12/02/20111202intel-ceo-brewer-education-council.html
Craig Barrett is also the chair of Achieve, the organization that created the Common Core standards for all of us and is creating the PARCC assessments and the national NGSS science standards.
http://www.achieve.org/our-board-directors
Conflicts of interest?
K12 in Texas charter school too, hmmm another Bush State
A rip off
Diane
Interlocking boards, no-bid contracts, machine party politics. What if the longer school day is really about carving out time for online classes to replace teachers?
In Texas, to make government small enough to drown in a bathtub, public education has to dramatically reduced in size. Two things are on the agenda for spring 2013: vouchers for private schools and elimination of the the Teacher Retirement System. Virtual schools are a part of the “fix”.