You think it can’t happen here?
You think your state is immune?
Read about the war on public education in Texas and think again.
Some part of this radical agenda is being promoted in almost every state.
Yours too.
This comment was written by Bonnie Lesley of “Texas Kids Can’t Wait”:
“I worry a lot whether public schools will continue to exist in some states. Our organization, Texas Kids Cant Wait, has felt overwhelmed at times this legislative session about the sheer number of privatization bills, all either sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick or by someone close to him. We have been battling a big charter (what is in reality the gateway drug to privatization) expansion bill, a parent-trigger bill, opportunity scholarships, taxpayer savings grants, achievement district, “FamiliesFirstSchools”, home-rule districts, vouchers for kids with disabilities, online course expansion, numerous bills to close public schools and turn them over to private charter companies, and on and on. A friend said it is as if they threw a whole bowl full of spaghetti at the wall, believing something would stick.
Every one of the ALEC bills we have seen introduced in other states has been introduced in Texas this year.
The privatizers have also held hostage the very popular bills such as HB 5 to reduce testing significantly unless their privatization bills advanced, and advance they have. So lots of folks are playing poker with kids’s lives and futures.
What keeps many of us fighting 20 hours a day and digging into our own pockets to fund the work is our understanding that these bills are not the end game. We’ve read the web sites, beginning with Milton Freidman’s epistle on the Cato Institute’s website, that lay out the insidious plan we are seeing played out. We have also read Naomi Klein’s brilliant book, Shock Doctrine.
First, impose ridiculous standards and assessments on every school.
Second, create cut points on the assessments to guarantee high rates of failure. (I was in the room when it was done in the State of Delaware, protesting all the way, but losing).
Third, implement draconian accountability systems designed to close as many schools as possible. Then W took the plan national with NCLB.
Fourth, use the accountability system to undermine the credibility and trust that almost everyone gave to public schools. increase the difficulty of reaching goals annually.
Fifth, de-professionalize educators with alternative certification, merit pay, evaluations tied to test scores, scripted curriculum, attacks on professional organizations, phony research that tries to make the case that credentials and experience don’t matter, etc.
Sixth, start privatization with public funded charters with a promise that they will be laboratories of innovation. Many of us fell for that falsehood. Apply pressure each legislative session to implement more and more of them. Then Arne Duncan did so on steroids.
Seventh, use Madison Avenue messaging to name bills to further trick people into acceptance, if not support, of every conceivable voucher scheme. The big push now as states implement Freidman austerity budgets to create a crisis is to portray vouchers as a cheaper way to “save” schools. The bills that would force local boards to sell off publicly owned facilities for $1 each is also part of the overall scheme not only to destroy our schools, but also to make it fiscally impossible for us to recover them if we ever again elect a sane government. Too, districts had to make cuts in their budgets in precisely the areas that research says matter most: quality teachers, preschool, small classes, interventions for struggling students, and rigorous expectations and curriculum. See our report: http://www.equitycenter.org. Click on book, Money STILL Matters in bottom right corner.
Eighth, totally destroy public education with so-called universal vouchers. They have literally already published the handbook. You can find it numerous places on the web.
Ninth, start eliminating the vouchers and charters, little by little.
And, tenth, totally eliminate the costs of education from local, state, and national budgets, thereby providing another huge transfer of wealth through huge tax cuts to the already-billionaire class.
And then only the wealthy will have schools for their kids.
Aw, you may say. They can’t do that! My response is that yes, they most certainly will unless you and I stop it!”
Does anything good in education come out of Texas? Stories like these remind me of the “Texas Miracle.” I think Bonnie, the writer of the article, nails the gameplan of these privatizers-to-be. This testing craze has gone on long enough. Aren’t standardized tests designed, by nature, to allow for a certain percentage of guaranteed failure to begin with? If too many fail, they make it easier. Too many with good scores? Make it harder.
Seems to me, if you make the tests hard enough, more kids will score low, and you can then throw a “failing” label on a school.
There are some amazing people in Texas fighting the high-stakes testing, including superintendents, school boards, teachers, and parents. Unfortunately, there some radicals in the Legislature who hate public education.
“Does anything good in education come out of Texas?”
Perhaps our hostess on this blog?
I count her as a good thing in education from TX!
But seriously Zak…I do get you.
Just trying to add a bit of levity.
Thank you so much for using my comments!
And, as always, thank you for your brilliant and untiring commitment to public education.
Sent from my iPad Bonnie A. Lesley, Ed.D. 1205 Windstone Dr. Waco, TX 76712 254-848-4483 254-855-0594 (cell)
Stand strong as you already have been Bonnie, you’re not alone!
Don’t worry, the radicals are shooting themselves in the foot. Over time they will look like Jindal and the whole house of cards will collapse. Just keep fighting.
Thank you Bonnie for all you do.
Texas has a very strong, united army fighting for public schools and fighting for all TX children. Don’t despair. I empathize with how overwhelming the battle can be but TX made great strides because of champions like you.
When we’re down and out in FL, it’s your TX coalitions that inspire us. You’re moving this in the right direction. That’s what counts.
Interesting analysis, and I like the way it’s broken down into steps. So it seems like the premise of this post is that the primary reason voucher/charter schools exist is to ultimately eliminate public education as an institution. Am I reading this correctly?
If so, is this the main argument against a public-school voucher system? Or are there others reasons why a voucher system would be less effective than our current public school model?
Matthew, the evidence on a voucher system is clear. Look to Milwaukee. 23 years of vouchers. Voucher students score no better than public school students. Voucher schools warned by US Department of Justice to stop excluding students with disabilities. And Milwaukee is one of nation’s lowest performing districts.
A few other reasons to ban the voucher idea.
http://billmoyers.com/content/interactive-map-voucher-schools-teaching-creationism/#disqus_thread
Hey, it’s Charter Appreciation Week, dontcha know!?
Daily Kos • Instead of Teacher Appreciation Week, President Obama asks us to celebrate Charter School Week
The fact that every public school teacher in the country isn’t already out on strike to celebrate it proves they don’t have a clue what’s coming …
I just sent an email to the White House asking when we can expect Obama to sign Sasha and Malia up for KIPP.
Tell him to enroll them in the EAA in Detroit since it has “improved”.
Kind of like strep throat appreciation week.
Jon aren’t you from Mich? How did you like this one? Duncan came to town to see the EAA and DPS. What a joke. Who told Roberts to “blow the district up?”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/02/1206404/-Detroit-Schools-Emergency-Mgr-Roberts-to-leave-says-he-was-told-to-blow-up-dismantle-district
Jon: Unions are under full attack by the same extremists across the country. Texas is the ideal place to push this agenda because teachers have no legal right to strike or negotiate.
Se, Dan Patrick: “Patrick’s first marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, Janetlea “Jan” Patricia Patrick (née Rankin), is a former teacher.” From Wikipedia.
As a high school history and social studies teacher, I couldn’t help but be deeply fearful of anything coming out of Texas about education after the Texas State Board of Education drew up new guidelines for their U.S. History textbooks several years ago. According to these guidelines, slavery did not happen in the U.S.; it was simply the triangular trade. The Women’s Rights and Women’s Suffrage movements are only minor footnotes in which Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton receive only minor mention (Alice Paul receives none), but Phyllis Schafly got most of an entire chapter. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who guided us out of the depression and through the Second World War, and was elected to four terms) received an entire paragraph while Ronald Reagan got a full chapter. Texas’ educational policies are spurious at best and dishonest in reality. It’s disgusting!
textbook doubleplusungood refs slavery rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling
What?
Newspeak, translating as “The history textbook is very unsatisfactory because it includes references to slavery. Please revise entirely and submit for review and approval before filing.”
Obviously it goes without saying that all prior versions of the textbook must go down the memory hole.
Thanks for the clarification!
My AP US History book was banned by the TExas board of Education because it had the word Penis in it… and also to follow up with what Bill is saying… about the different view of history.. there was a push to eliminate Cesar Chavez from our state standards because he was no important.. but we have to teach Barry Goldwater and Phyllis Schflay.. go figure
Iowa resisted the deformers for a long time but elected a Republican governor in 2010 and we have had to endure a constant onslaught of reformy ALEC inspired bilge. I used to think of Iowa as a common-sense and conservative (in the sense of not rushing to judgment or indulging in latest fad) with a genuine regard and support for education. Unfortunately, the orchestration of business leaders, outside money from the usual suspects, and the transformation of the state department of ed and board of ed into an arm of the governor is having an unfortunate impact. The demise of the Des Moines Register as a voice of reason in education is not helping either. The only thing that saves us from becoming like Texas is a Senate with a razor thin majority.
add: majority of Democrats.
Look at Michigan and it will make you thankful. Tea Party gov. and Repub controlled congress.
“Ninth, start eliminating the vouchers and charters, little by little.”
Could someone explain this for me? I always thought vouchers+charters, acting as a black hole sucking up all public education money, is the final stage.
It’s like a drug dealer getting you hooked on their stuff for free, and then turning around and letting you pay for it – at exorbitant prices – all on your own.
By stage 9, the government will have so little money left that there won’t be a need to siphon it off into the hands of the rich – it will already be there. So there won’t be a need for government-provided education to serve that function (serving the function of actual education will be a hazy memory by then). If you want education for your kid, in any form at all, you will need to pay for it yourself.
But the government (federal or state) will still have its education budget, right? Did you mean that all that money will go to private schools (maybe still in the form of vouchers?) and parents would still have to pay on top of that?
See step 10.
There will be no need for charters when all EduMarts are owned and operated by private corporations, more like defense contractors than anything else.
EduMarts will be funded the same way as the DoD — does the Department of Defense send you a voucher to support your militia of choice? — token governmental oversight that mostly overlooks with no real accountability to the public.
Those who are behind this are opposed to government having any involvement in education at all. This is part of the larger agenda of turning government into the sock puppet of the oligarchs so that we the people are left with naught but the illusion of votes that mean nothing. The USA is nothing more than a commodity to be exploited by them.
Very good. That is their plan. Total destruction is what they want for total control. Remember Germany, Soviet Russia, Mao’s China and Kim Il Jung’s North Korea. This is where they want us to go. Is this what you want?
About two years ago, I started saying that we’d one day be petitioning the US Senate for a “public option” in K-12 education, as we tried (and failed) to do with the health care reform law.
At that time it was hyperbole, but now it’s starting to look more and more likely.
Could we really lose the whole public system with no one other than teachers and parents in urban areas fighting it, or even realizing it’s happening?
Twenty, forty, 100 years from now, will that be Obama’s legacy? The US President who privatized US K-12 public education?
There’s “deep democracy” work to be done. Our schools are just one of many public arenas where market-driven solutions are increasingly the only solutions that our civic officials are allowed to consider. Scratch beneath the surface of nearly any civic concern (campaign finance, climate change, health care, income gap, workplace rights, home foreclosure, fair taxes), and underneath you’ll find that your community’s constitutional rights are bumping up against so-called “rights” for corporations. If you’ve begun to suspect that the diminishing of our democratic values goes back further than the Citizens United or even the “corporate personhood” Supreme Court decisions…congratulations, you’re on your way to moving past party politics and conventional activism.
Ms. Lesley provides more excellent evidence of just how smoothly our existing legal and governmental structure is operating. As Bill Moyers says, “The system isn’t broken; it’s fixed.” Corporations are neither “good” nor “bad” but simply fiscal vehicles functioning in perfect accord with legal doctrines that have been carefully constructed for over 100 years. It’s past time for us to carefully craft specific legal challenges that publicly reveal those specific doctrines. And it has to start at the local level. Our state & federal governments are utterly captured: elected officials that don’t subscribe to the belief that commercial interests must have veto power over all other interests do not remain in office for long. But 150 municipalities are leading the way, demonstrating that genuine democracy is possible and can happen when We The People enact rights-based municipal laws first and then drive those changes upward.
It’s crucial to understand that it doesn’t matter which particular issue is of concern: school privatization, gun control, campaign finance, housing foreclosures, environmental destruction, or universal healthcare–corporate minorities are currently legally empowered to override majorities of actual people.
“Rights-based” lawmaking is a fast-growing strategy to reassert democracy. And this strategic tool has a successful track record: in the past 10 years, over 150 municipalities have enacted such “rights-based” ordinances. You could join them and place a rights-based ballot initiative before YOUR town’s voters in 2014 or 2015. What would YOUR group want it to say? The following bill of rights is a template. Feel free to delete/cut/paste as if you were the decision-maker that your state constitution and Declaration of Independence says you are. To learn more, especially about the sole essential ingredient shared by all “rights-based” ordinances—Article 7 at the end of this template—please visit celdf.org and click on “Get Involved: Campaign in Your Community” and “Resources: Ordinances” or email Kenny Jones at kennykaren1@yahoo.com.
Anytown USA Community Bill of Rights TEMPLATE
1) Right to Community-Run Public Education. Residents of the City of Anytown have a right to a public educational system managed by the community, which shall also be free from corporate influence. The community-run educational system shall consist of parents, teachers, students, local government, and other residents whose duty it will be to oversee curriculum development, assessment, funding, facilities, and technology. Corporations shall not be allowed to influence in any way policies or decisions of the community-run educational system.
2a) Right to Clean Government. Residents of the City of Anytown have the right to clean government, which shall include the right to a municipal legislative process free from corporate control and influence.
2b) Right to Fair Elections. Residents of the City of Anytown have the right to fair elections, which shall include the right to an electoral process free from corporate influence and voter suppression.
3) Right to Constitutional Protections in the Workplace. Employees shall possess United States and Oregon Bill of Rights’ constitutional protections in every workplace within the City of Anytown, and workers in unionized workplaces shall possess the right to collective bargaining.
4) Rights for Nature. Ecosystems and natural communities within the City of Anytown possess inalienable rights to exist and flourish. The rights of rivers, streams, and aquifers shall include the right to sustainable recharge, flows sufficient to protect native fish habitat, and clean water. The City of Anytown and any resident of the City or group of residents have standing to enforce and protect these rights.
5a) Right to a Citizen-Managed and Accountable Police Force. Residents of the City of Anytown have a right to a police force managed by a civilian police chief overseen by an elected citizen police review commission, as well as a police ombudsman appointed by that review commission, who possesses independent and investigatory powers.
5b) Right to Be Free from Unjustified Excessive and Deadly Force. All people within the City of Anytown have a right to be free from use of unjustified excessive or deadly force by law enforcement. Excessive force shall mean but not be limited to law enforcement incidences where there is no active assault of another individual(s), threats to assault another individual(s), or deliberate fleeing from law enforcement. Deadly force shall mean but not be limited to firearms, Tasers, electroshock weapons, and batons.
6) Right To Affordable, Safe, and Secure Housing. All residents of the City of Anytown have the right to affordable housing, right to be free from housing discrimination, and the right to be free from unfair housing foreclosure. The City shall ensure the availability of low-income housing stock sufficient to meet the needs of the low-income housing community. People and families may only be denied renting or buying of a dwelling for non-discriminatory reasons and may only be evicted from their residence for non-discriminatory causes. Home foreclosure proceedings shall not commence prior to a determination that no other financing options are available to maintain home ownership, as conducted by a city appointed citizen committee.
7) Right to Subordinate Corporate Powers to People’s Rights. Corporations and other business entities which violate the rights secured by this Charter shall not be deemed to be “persons,” nor possess any other legal rights, privileges, powers, or protections which would interfere with the enforcement of rights enumerated by this Charter.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education and commented:
Wow….This plan sounds right on track. I have a 3 and 5 year old that still need an education. Just not sure it will be in the State of Texas.
I think you underestimate the “plan”. It’s not a transfer of wealth; it’s a transfer of power. When only the rich can get a real education they need not worry about anyone challenging their leadership in the sectors of society that require substantial education. It eliminates competition for their kids and ensures they will HAVE TO BE the leaders of tomorrow. Naked power grab better describes the direction of the plan.