Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute summarizes “What’s Next” for reformers (some prefer to call them privatizers).
Race to the Top was a great coup for the privatizers/reformers.
Now they plan to follow up with a direct assault on schools of education, abetted by NCTQ’s forthcoming rankings, to be published by US News. NCTQ was created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation a dozen years ago, and saved at the outset by a $5 million grant from Secretary of Education Rod Paige. In 2005, it got caught up in a federal investigation for taking money from the Department to speak well of NCLB. Read here to learn more about NCTQ.
The privatizers intend to move on principal evaluation, to make it more like teacher evaluation (test scores matter).
Pension reform will be high on their agenda.
Privatizers will promote digital learning by removing seat time requirements and following the guidance of former Governor Jeb Bush on this subject. No mention is made of the negative evaluations of cyber charters, both by Stanford’s CREDO and the National Education Policy Center, or of exposes that appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post about the awful performance of cyber charters.
Gird your loins, folks, the privatizers are flush with victories in Wisconsin, Louisiana, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Florida, and other states, and they are coming back to do some more reforming.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We are falling down the rabbit hole.
Wrong verb tense. Have fallen.
And, just in the nick of time, we will call them out … and their house of cards will tumble.
I nominate Michelle Rhee as the Queen of Hearts. Sorry to quote Wikipedia but the description there seemed apt: She is a foul-tempered monarch, that Carroll himself pictured as “a blind fury”, and who is quick to decree death sentences at the slightest offense. Her most famous line, one which she repeats often, is “Off with their heads!”
I am going to buy Amtrak… And the US Coast Guard… And then the PO and NASA… Monopoly is a great game! Maybe we should contract for US Senator services… And hire the President from a larger pool of applicants. I would definitely privatize the State of Michigan National Guard and Dearborn police! Etc.
Do see Tony Judt “Ill Fares the Land”… His last book… Very important statement on our current mess.
Best, Neal
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
“Maybe we should contract for US Senator services.”
Too late. Deeper pockets than ours already have.
If your serious about buying Amtrak or the USPS, I think the government would be happy to sell.
here’s my first response:
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2012/10/thompson-take-a-breather.html
“Stranglehold of local control”? Really? That’s what afflicts local communities who are seeing the impact of state disinvestment, outside agitators flooding their school board races with propaganda, and new mandates redirecting their tax money to private pockets? Seems that today’s conservatives, like Perilli, have a problem with democracy. And their “solution” is to diminish it.
Very disturbing read. Note especially that they are going to hijack the issue of equitable school funding as a means to privatize and line the pockets of profiteers. We need to stop pretending that there is way to engage these people in discussion as if they share our interests. This is profiteering clear and simple.
My institutions Ed school is launching an online MA program. They expect it to be a cash cow.
All because of a President that is clueless about education.
Not clueless. Mendacious.
This is nothing more than a bank heist. Let’s call it what it is.
It truly is a heist, but of a Commons/Public Good, which makes it so much more egregious.
In reading the blogs of Diane and Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post, I have been wondering lately why can’t we do what the reformers have been doing so successfully? Why can’t we form non-profits that solicit funds from rich people (Soros?) To advocate for public schools? To get the word out that public schools have been and are continuing to do a lot of good in America? To create real research-based counter arguments to merit pay and charters and such? To get the word out how we really compare to the schools in other countries? To counter all the misinformation out there about schooling in America? To create documentaries that counter the awful movies about teachers we’ve seen lately? To inform the public what teaching is all about?
This is along the lines of what I mean: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/09-1
I’m with you, mathcsm. So, how do we go about this?
Good idea, Jack. The reason that the privatizers make so much noise is because they appeal to very rich people who think that the government can’t do anything right. It also appeals to people who want to sell stuff to schools, like Rupert Murdoch. I do my best to put the research out for the public to see. None of the privatizer remedies has any evidence behind it. I have not yet found a billionaire willing to fight this fight on behalf of the common good. But I am looking.
The article on the spoiled heiress in California said that Steven Spielberg and Barbara Streisand helped raise millions of $$$$ to support Prop 30.
These celebrities are well known as Progressive thinkers who believe in social justice, so I think they would be outraged if the were fully informed of the corporate scam to privatize public education across the nation, such as through ALEC sponsored parent trigger laws, charters and the Won’t Back Down (WBD) propaganda film campaign.
I would suggest a concerted effort be made to contact them and solicit their support. I tried on Twitter but without success, however, I don’t think Spielberg is active there, so I also tweeted his good friends and neighbors, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson –but to no avail. (This was regarding the truth about the faux Teachers Rock event to initiate the promotion of WBD.)
Maybe a letter sent directly to their production companies from you might get through, Diane, unless you know a better way of reaching out to them.
We are trying hard to push back against Pearson’s Teacher Performance Assessment and New York State’s attempt to use Program Profiles to track program effectiveness based on our teacher candidates’ future students’ test scores. Please see the information here:
https://sites.google.com/site/educatorsconcerned/home
Read and consider signing the petition and contacting state officials.
Has anyone else noticed that while the corporate sponsored “No Excuses” education “reformers” tout “poverty is not destiny,” they clearly think that ACT/SAT scores ARE destiny? They believe in tossing high school juniors to the junk pile based on the results of one test on one day in kids’ lives.
I do not agree. I was trained to not make major life decisions based on the results of ONE test. I also think there is something very wrong with a society that gives up on its adolescents and young adults.
I have had many college students who clearly need help with ELA skills and I give it to them, because I don’t think it’s ever too late to learn.
That’s another major difference between skilled veteran educators and pseudo-educators, such as TFAers with five weeks training and two years experience as temp teachers. They leave the classroom in droves and many are urged to go on to high paying crony appointments where they can dictate education policy. We have the persistence they claim to want to instill in children but do not demonstrate themselves, except in service to the almighty dollar