Douglas County, Colorado, has a school board that is enthralled with choice and apparently disdains public education.
Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett spoke in Douglas County on September 25. According to the local media, he was well compensated. Rick Hess has also been busy consulting and promoting the school board’s plan to bust free of the cage of government schools.
Unless the public selects a new school board, Douglas County might become the first district to privatize public education.
EduShyster provides her typical dazzling overview of the situation. Unfortunately, there is not much humor here. Some of the nation’s wealthiest choice advocates have decided that Douglas County will be a fine Petri dish for a Milton Friedman-style experiment, along the lines already established in Chile and now unwinding there.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why is an affluent district targeted? Deformers have silently accepted that they can never defeat poverty by ignoring it so they are setting themselves up to pretend that their agenda works by going into a district that is already a success due to it’s demographics. They have realized that the only way they can succeed is by riding the coat tails of those who are already a success. One wonders how far they will drag this district down and how angry they will make parents before they are evicted.
Do we really need Douglass Colorado to provide the example?
The entire country of Chile has already embarked down this destructive path.
Thank you, Dr. Ravitch. You are my hero. I LOVED being able to hear you in Denver last night and loved being able to talk to you a little bit while you signed my book. I laughed a little as the person in charge of the signing worked to move us along. 🙂
Douglas County is a crazy place right now
We are so lucky to have so many people fighting this madness.
And we are so lucky to have people like you, Anthony Cody, Peggy Roberston, The Edushyster, Angela Engel, Tim and Shaun, and Kris Nielsen who are willing to help us understand even more what’s at stake here.
You give us the energy and courage to keep walking the streets. They may have Bennett and Hess as well as the money, but WE have heart and integrity on our side. Our fight is everyone’s fight in this nation to save our public schools!!
Did you happen to see Mr. Bennett in your hotel lobby this morning? I would LOVE to hear a conversation between the two of you!!
Was the Douglas County Board elected? If not, then it’s easier to understand why this happened; the mayor or whoever selected these people obviously had this wired from the start and found the compliant cohorts to carry out this Ayn Rand Experiment with little or no engagement from parents, taxpayers and teachers.
If they were elected, did they run on this issue? Did they say to voters that if elected, “I plan to turn over your public schools to a bunch of private companies—but I assure you that these enterprises promise to always put profit maximization behind the needs of our students…trust me, and them…”
Puget,
It is my understanding that the current school board came in with a huge political agenda from the extreme right. They carefully planned a huge political agenda against the community members that ran here staring in 2009. We are an experiment for the reform movement in more affluent areas.
They won because people had no idea who they were and they talked real nice and said the right words for a very conservative area.
They also have Koch money as well as other finances from outside sources. Our previous candidates were up against some big money.
We have some amazing grass roots groups like Douglas County Parents, Voices, and Taxpayers for Public Education fighting hard.
We have 4 very qualified candidates who knew they would be harassed and vilified by this current regime. Scholting, Keim, Chase, and Hodges.
The Republican party in Douglas County is putting in a million dollars alone in this fight.
Someone once told me they would eat their babies to win this election. I thought that was a little extreme, but lately, I am not so sure. They are ruthless.
Get ready to have you pockets picked.
Yes, they were elected, and they throw that in our faces at every opportunity. That is where the democratic process ended for these people. No care for what the public wishes along the way, or input from constituents about how to compromise on some vital changes. No collaboration, respect or integrity. (Unless you count 75 people out of 2,000+ in favor of creating a voucher program as acting on behalf of the majority of Douglas County!)
I probably voted for some of these current board members very ignorantly. I had no idea of their political connections because party affiliation is not on the ballots, and I had paid no attention. NO MORE. I now know better and am working as hard as I possibly can to get everyone around me and beyond engaged in this election. It is too important to be complacent.
As a note: some of the current board members won their seats due to split votes between opposing candidates, so it was no landslide. And not a huge % of the Douglas County population even voted.
There are actually only two candidates for each of the 4 district seats up for election. I think that was a monumental feat in and of itself. The Douglas County GOP has endorsed and financially backed (with lots of $$$) their 4 candidates, including 2 incumbents. The other 4 candidates are endorsed by everyone else!
Thank you Diane Ravitch for expressing your concern for us, here in Douglas County. I was not able to meet you while you were here, but want you to know your support is much appreciated. It is not a comfortable feeling to be caught in the throes of such a pivotal, political, plight. Please keep sending good voo-joo our way.
InBloom…wants ALL the data on kids. Isn’t this pedophilia?
Yes, it’s Bill Bennett and the American Enterprise Institute but don’t you dare accuse these folks of having a political or ideological agenda.
They’re simply “agnostics” looking at “what works”, and, incidentally, making some serious money. That “what works” just happens to coincide exactly with elite conservative opinion on privatizing public entities like public schools is pure coincidence.
I continue to wonder about the well-intentioned liberals in the reform movement. Do they know yet how completely and utterly they got played? What do you think it will take?
Followers of Diane Ravitch should also read, “Brave New Schools” by Berit Kjos. Also, read, or re-read, “1984” and “Brave New World”.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/cyber-schools-flunk-but-tax-money-keeps-flowing-97375.html#.UkRSZJuMIwo.twitter
Good piece on cybercharters in Politico. I don’t know what it says about ed reform, but Politico seems to be one of the few media outlets that are actually examining this stuff.
I wouldn’t have predicted that 🙂
Coverage of “virtual charters,” mostly negative, has been expanding a lot lately. It’ll probably get a lot bigger, too, because it’s an easy story for people to follow and it rings the right bells for broad appeal. People like to read about how their tax dollars are being misused (“They paid $8,000 for a wrench?!”). And people still love to read about how the Internet is a scam.
Jefferson County Public Schools now allows parents to opt-out of inBloom.
Who is driving the inBloom agenda?
https://sites.google.com/site/schoolbelongstothechildren/breaking-n
What do you want to know about the Gates Foundation?
http://kalw.org/post/today-your-call-what-do-you-want-know-about-gates-foundation#disqus_thread
Below you will find the link to the contract between inBloom and Jefferson County signed by Stacey Childress (Amplify/inBloom) and Greg Mortimer (Chief Information Officer, Jefferson County).
It’s interesting that a significant correction had to be made on pg. 25. The contract names the Illinois State Board of Education instead of the Colorado State Board of Education. Childress and Mortimer initial (SC and GM) to note the correction.
If inBloom is careless with a major for-profit corporate contract by naming the wrong state education agency, how will inBloom ensure student and teacher data security for millions of individuals over decades?
It seems parents in Illinois need to be on guard since Illinois was named in the Colorado contract.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzY2hvb2xiZWxvbmdzdG90aGVjaGlsZHJlbnxneDplNDkzNzIyOGRjNzkyNjY
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/06/12/an-exchange-on-controversial-100-million-student-database/
http://www.jeffcopublicschools.org/departments/profiles/?department_id=32
Click to access WG_Stacey_Childress_Board_Press_Release_01.pdf
Cambridge, Mass, a suburb, has offered a variety of options among k-8 schools for many years. Here’s what they say about this:
http://www3.cpsd.us/media/theme/Pro-Cambridge/network/10516/media/CPS%20Redesign/documents/Schools/Schools_at_a_Glance_2013_14.pdf?rev=1
Among other things, they say that “Choice promotes academic excellence in all schools.”…”class sizes will be kept small at all schools…families are not limited to their neighborhood school and may seek out a location, structure, schedule and model that fits their childrens’ needs.”
A number of Minneapolis and St. Paul suburbs offer various options/choices to their families.