Indiana Superintendent Tony Bennett is running for re-election. He has raised more than $1 million from supporters of an anti-public school agenda.
He just received $25,000 from a gubernatorial candidate who wants vouchers for private and religious schools with NO accountability.
Way to go in handing out public dollars with zero accountability for their use.
Just more evidence that the voucher advocates no longer even pretend that vouchers will improve education.
Their goal is to destroy public education.
Wake up, parents and citizens of Indiana.
It is not teachers who are in peril. It is the public sector.
It is the public schools of Indiana, once a source of great civic pride, now slated for demolition by a rightwing wrecking crew.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Go Diane!!
The quality of your info and passion are so impressive!!
Have you ever debated Jon Schnur? Or someone who ‘represents’ the administration as he did in a debate that Teachers College sponsored recently? Do you have a strategy and an agent to work on getting on the national level TV opportunities?
Can we connect when you are in Chicago Nov 16th? Before your talk at 3pm?
20 minutes to think about Post Election strategy for cities like Chicago to stop the privatization take over?
Are you tracking on our efforts for the public to take back our Chicago Board of Education from the Mayor? Recent Chicago Tribune poll shows that 70 percent of the voters want this to happen. Just the kind of feedback the Mayor and his major funders need for his privatization strategy.
Hope we can connect with you are in town.
John Simmons
312 519 6655
jsimmons@strategiclearning.org
I would love to debate Jon Schnur or Rhee or anyone else.
Next week, I will be on a panel with Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the NY State Board of Regents, on Oct 31.
And on Nov 1, I debate Joe Williams, the former newspaper reporter who is now executive director of DFER at a business summit in NYC.
No time in Chicago on this visit. I have events from the minute I arrive until I leave.
Remember, the “Beachhead” for the Educational Reformers (A.K.A. Privatizers) is the low-income, minority community. (If you don’t believe it, go to any “Ed Reform” website and tell me how many black kids do you see in those photos, as opposed to white kids?)
And, if you talk to an so-called Ed Reformer, they’ll always lead with some bull$%** talking points about “It’s not fair to the poor and minority kids to be denied choice and be forced to go to bad schools! And that’s why I’m for charters, vouchers, and against teachers unions!” (Or at least against any rules that would actually allow a teachers union to be effective.)
And, because of the billions they have from the Big Three Foundations (Broad, Gates, Walmart, eh, I mean, “Walton”, as if there’s a real difference) they can effectively bribe a small number of people in the minority community, knowing from the outset that these communities are always lacking funds. It’s a vicious, cruel and cynical game plan; but they’re determined to get what they want, and they know they’ll find the least resistance here.
Outreach to the minority community is always essential. But now, regarding education, it’s even more so. The invaders have landed. They have their beachhead. Now, we’re beginning to push them back, just like you would a swarm of ants at a picnic. It won’t be easy. And it WILL be a long-term struggle. But we who value Education for All, will prevail.
This is Indiana we’re talking about here. It’s a red state where the gubernatorial candidate (Mike Pence) you mentioned leads in the polls by 13%…the same margin that Romney leads Obama.
When people hear that Pence is backing Bennett that will get him more votes…not fewer. The majority in this state have swallowed the right wing crap completely.
The number of teachers who continue to vote against their own interests is astonishing. I read a discussion on Facebook, where a group of young teachers were talking about how bad things are under Race to the Top. The idea only reinforced their desire to get Obama out of office. I told them that if they think things are bad now, wait till Romney takes over in D.C., and Pence takes over in Indianapolis.
A few years ago we had a superintendent who no one liked because he gave us bad news. I will never forget what he said at the beginning of the year system wide gathering in his last year. He was talking about the budget…and the right wing attacks on public education…it was right around the time when Milwaukee and Cleveland had started their voucher systems. To the 600 or so educators gathered in the high school auditorium, he said…or more correctly, he understated, “Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.”
It looks the same now.
(Forgive my pessimism. I get these fits of frustration now and then. I just don’t understand how people can’t see what this going on here.)
The vouchers are only the tip (and possibly the least dangerous part) of the iceberg. Bennett has already proposed issuing licenses (including special ed, fine arts ed, etc.) to anyone who has earned a bachelor’s degree and can pass a content knowledge test. He’s actively pressing universities to eliminate pedagogy classes. He (with Gov. Mitch Daniels) pushed through legislation that capped all undergraduate programs at 120 hours – meaning almost all education programs in the state are going to have to eliminate courses but somehow provide more effective teachers. He wants to use the test scores of alumni teachers’ students as part of a process to rate teacher preparation program with an A-F “grades”. Scariest of all, though, he wants all teacher licenses to be for 5 years with renewal contingent on earning an ‘effective’ or ‘highly effective’ rating on annual teacher evaluations (based heavily on student test scores) for 3 out of those 5 years. Incidentally, that’s using a new evaluation system that’s still being piloted. The list goes on.
No one seems interested in any of these changes – just the vouchers… If he gets his way, he’ll be able to circumvent the union protections through his licensure process and replace the well-qualified teachers with untrained ‘content knowledge experts’. At that point, the vouchers won’t matter because public schools won’t have any legs left to stand on.
Hi, I can’t reach the teacher’s letter control – clicking on it.
Can you resend
The blogs are great, thanks!!
John Simmons, Chicago