Investigative reporter Stephanie Simon of Politico reports on the most bizarre school board race in the nation: Douglas County, Colorado.
There, a powerful coalition of rightwing extremists has gained control of the school board and is determined to turn education into a free market, where competition and choice replace public education. They want vouchers, charter schools, and differentiated pay for teachers.
Simon writes: “The conservatives who control the board have neutered the teachers union, prodded neighborhood elementary schools to compete with one another for market share, directed tax money to pay for religious education and imposed a novel pay scale that values teachers by their subjects, so a young man teaching algebra to eighth graders can make $20,000 a year more than a colleague teaching world history down the hall.”
The future of this free-market policy will determined in the school board election, where powerful rightwing ideologues have funded the pro-market members of the board, and teachers’ unions and parents are funding those opposed to the elimination of public education.
The Koch brothers have contributed $350,000 to the free-market campaigners. They would, if they could, privatize all of what we now know as public education. The current board, fighting to maintain control, hired conservative icon Bill Bennett for $50,000 to be a consultant. It also hired Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute to write a paper praising the district’s initiatives, for $35,000.
Among the changes that conservatives admire:
Pushing the free market farther still, the board has urged district elementary schools to compete with one another for enrollment, rather than simply serving all students in the neighborhood. Principals are encouraged to budget creatively so they can develop a marketable niche, a practice that has left some schools without art or music teachers as they build up science programs or bring in foreign-language classes. Then there’s the market-pay system, in which a first grade teacher is valued, and paid, more than a second grade teacher and teaching physics far outweighs teaching art.
Some parents are upset, like one who told Simon that what bothered her most was “the splintering of her community.
“Five years ago, Scott said, all the kids on the block walked together to the local elementary school. Now, each family goes their own way — some to charters, some to private schools and some to public schools across town that have successfully marketed themselves as worth the drive. She has stuck with her neighborhood school, but often thinks of pulling up stakes.
“It’s truly broken up the community,” Scott said, “and it’s sad.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The differentiated pay scheme is nothing more than sex discrimination, as secondary science teachers tend to be male, while elementary teachers tend to be female.
This whole scheme is absolutely insane. It must be stopped.
I disagree with this. In my 20 years in education, when I go to conferences with other science teachers, I sit in a room that is over 50% female almost every time.
Utah does this too. Teachers that majored in math or science and teach certain math and science secondary subjects get about $7000 more per year than those of us who teach English or Language Arts or Special Ed or Elementary.
I’m going to state something very unpopular. Let me start with, I am a female and a high school math teacher. I’m very proud to be both. I work in a district where every year there are 20 to 30 long term substitutes sitting in secondary mathematics classrooms. Our state only requires 18 hours of college credit, no degree, to substitute. I’ve met math teachers in our district who have poor content or teaching skills, very often both. Principals have to “settle” for anyone with a math endorsement because there just aren’t enough teacher of high quality to go around. Currently there is no perk in our state, other than a very small retirement incentive, to teach in a high needs area.
How do districts attract more teachers into math and science and also special ed? I was once asked by the president of NCTM many years ago how I felt about differentiating pay for teachers based on subject area. I naively answered I thought it was a bad idea because it would be detrimental to the school community. Which apparently from the comments here, it is. However, when I think about students sitting for years with math teachers who don’t inspire, don’t challenge beyond a worksheet, and many times can’t communicate or connect with students, I realized this… It’s a detriment to students if we can’t create a bigger pool of teachers to choose from in high demand areas.
Is more pay the answer? That I don’t know, but I do know something needs to change. It would be a good thing for students and schools.
The salary bands as they exist in Douglas County are ridiculous, and are based purely on supply and demand. We’re now paying certain teachers more because their positions typically have fewer applicants, not because of expertise, advanced training, or effectiveness in the classroom. It’s nice to say that high school math or science teachers should make more, but who are they going to teach calculus and physics to if we don’t have good teachers in the lower grades to give students a strong foundation? I live in Douglas County. Although the Colorado Department of Education numbers for the 2012-2013 school year haven’t been released yet, people who have been tracking staff turnover show that we’ve lost 25% of our teachers and 50% of our building level administrators over the past 2 years. If we’re not successful on Tuesday, I fear that our community will implode even further.
Furthermore, are people doing one thing about combatting this instead of saying it is merely “sad”?
susannunes,
I am a teacher in Douglas County, and yes, our parents have been an AMAZING force for us. The (mostly Republican) parents here have waged an all out grassroots WAR on the reform school board. Watch the news Tuesday, and I think you will see another group of privatizers go down in flames.
Yes, people are doing something about this. Ms. Scott, the parent quoted in the article, has easily spent 3-5 nights a week for the past 6+ months out educating the community at house parties. I know, because I scheduled many of them. Parents have also been active writing letters to various news outlets, rallying across our county (which covers 900 square miles), supporting teachers, painting cars (with our candidates’ names), canvassing neighborhoods, making phone calls, etc. We don’t have a lot of money, but we do have a lot of people. One local dad made a documentary about the district (www.reformersmovie.com – look for it soon!) that is phenomenal and had served to educate many more people. With our election just a few days away, many of us spent a beautiful Saturday here in Douglas County working for a change. There were canvassing efforts, phone banks, and rallies in all 4 of our big population centers. Most of us are just getting home (it’s after 6 in Colorado as I write this). We all have kids, so we’re doing this between their activities and our other family responsibilities. This will continue for the next 3 days, then we’ll anxiously await to see if we were successful.
Educating our children involves many different teachers working together as a community. The idea of differentiated pay works against this. The message it teaches is that some people are more important than others. We need to work toward creating a world in which every person matters.
“The message it teaches is that some people are more important than others. ”
Yep, that’s what the edudeformers want. Obviously those with the most money are the most important!
Reblogged this on Carolina Mountain Blue and commented:
What’s happening out in Douglas Co., Colorado is but a portend of what could happen nationally if the right-wing, free-market ideologues ever get their hands fully around the world of public education.
Lots of $$$$$ in Douglas County.
We (parents and community members) are working night and day to combat this travesty.
Check out these 100% volunteer groups for more info.
http://www.DouglasCountyParents.com
http://www.StrongSchoolsCoalition.org
http://www.TaxpayersforPublicEducation
Just wanted to point out again how bizarre it is that Stephanie Simon of Politico is the one and only national journalist covering this. I think she’s great, but it is remarkable that there is one. One person.
Talk about complete capture of both politicians AND media. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this, to this extent.
Is this, too, the civil rights issue of our time? Completely privatizing an upscale, high-performing suburban district? I’m a little confused about the civil rights issue here.
I know very few reformers attended public schools, but has it ever occurred to them how divided this country will be when most children don’t even have public schools in common? I suppose we can all rally ’round our common interest in the S&P 500.
Knowing of these instances around the country keeps me vigilant about trying to figure out how to prevent these situations in my city and county.
My school is a wonderful blend of haves and have nots. It has seen a huge shift in demographics over the last eight years, becoming 30% Hispanic and seeing an increase in Title I and free and reduced lunch. But the balance with involved affluent parents (and I might add involved non-affluent families) creates a wonderfully supportive and positive environment.
Today the PTO hosted a fall festival. It rained off and on, and folks huddled under the portico with hot chocolate and popcorn, all in good spirits. Spanish and English were being freely spoken and there were smiles on all the faces.
Dark clouds loomed in the distance (rain), and our school of 680 children, nestled in the gorgeous Blue Ridge mountains (leaves changing), across from Vista Industrial park and adjacent to a Borg Warner facility, hosted a day of hayrides and games for the children, with bins of used books for families to take. And while I cherish these events and feel they are tribute to the community strength a public school can offer, I am all too aware of the threats going on around us. In fact, I spoke with one mother there with her three adorable, well-behaved boys who have just moved down from Detroit. I told her I had seen the 60 Minutes about Detroit and we Amened the notion of not letting what happened to their schools happen to ours.
I hope and pray that today was a snapshot of our normal, despite the new normal our superintendent is acquiescing to (I am aware that some districts are sending RttT money back, and I wish mine would do the same). I fear that it might remain a fleeting memory of the good ole days of public school and it creates an anxiety in me that is far worse than even the fear.
But then, today, while pondering these things as I watched my son playing on the school yard amid the worries I have and the rain clouds in the distance (symbolic, to me) there appeared a beautiful rainbow. It faded in and out of brightness, but it was there–smiling down on us.
I would never suggest that a child come to understand nature through Hebrew accounts of creation, but if the rainbow was good enough for Noah, it’s good enough for my own hope that we will be able to preserve the public’s schools, places where all children are welcome and the principles of democratic society and the value of community are realized. That rainbow meant a lot to me today. In fact, it will carry me through the week.
And what do the special education teachers get paid? Minimum wage perhaps? After all businessmen don’t see our children as being worth much.
Almost everything listed here that they plan to do is already happening in Chicago—a city that hasn’t had a Republican mayor for more than 80 years. But our Democratic mayor gave the keynote address at Jeb Bush’s ed reform summit a couple weeks ago. Super depressing…
It’s a great point. I’m sure you’ve noticed but there’s absolutely no difference between “liberal” and “conservative” reformers. None.
For a while liberals clung to “opposing vouchers”, but that went under the bus here lately, and they probably only hung onto it as long as they did because vouchers poll poorly.
Now the two groups are identical.
Charters, especially mom-and-pop charters, were never anything but the opening front in destroying the public schools, and a lead-in to vouchers.
“It is vital that these reforms continue as a national model, and now this model has become the next battlefield of reform,” Bush wrote in a piece for National Review Online Friday.
So, can we all now stop pretending privatization is NOT the national goal of reform?
I mean, this is getting silly. Do they even listen to themselves? Privatization = national model.
Can you say “Shock Doctrine”?
Do teachers with graduate degrees generally get paid more than teachers with a bachelor degree?
About $5,000 or $6,000 more in NC. But National Boards get a tiny bit more (the message being that National Boards are worth more in the classroom).
I am a music teacher and a Masters in music appealed to me more than the National Boards (I looked into both), so that was the route I went even if I get paid slightly less–I wanted a Masters in music.
Albeit any new Masters degrees after this year will no longer get that extra bump in salary, unless we get a new General Assembly, which I think is likely.
In this case it’s right wingers but let’s not forget how many Obamas, Rahmbos, Quinns, Cuomos and Bookers are running around wrapped in the donkey flag. Any one of the above would sign off on the exact same nonsense given half a chance.
Yes, it happened in NC. A Democratic governor led us down the RttT garden path. And old blue dog Dems from the 80s have bought in to the rigor, technology, VAM, testing madness. I left the Democratic Party over it. It is sickening to me.
This is my prediction of will happen in this situation. The voters who want this situation will get what they wish for.
As schools drop subjects like art and music, the highest income parents and the most caring parents among the lower incomes will leave this district, because those parents want experiences like art and music for their children.
This will result in the county having a harder-to-teach populace, since the students from good homes will have left. This will increase the need for special ed. teachers, who will not be willing to work there, since they will be paid less than their counterparts in other districts where teacher pay is equitable. This will lead to further cuts in funding for the existing schools because, obviously, they’re failing and need an incentive to improve. Then . . . Oh wait. This isn’t a prediction. This is the history of privatization of schools.
check out one parent’s fight to opt out in Delaware: http://elizabethscheinberg.blogspot.com/
What confuses me is that I didn’t know that Arne Duncan was a right wing extremist. Last I checked, he is fully endorsed and supported by a left wing liberal president.
Point is, stop using labels when they aren’t helpful. Focus on fighting for the kids!
this is the REAL Duncan
A charterite/privatizer by any other name is still an edubully and an edufraud.
Use or don’t use any other label as you like.
John Young: thank you for the video.
🙂
If the Obomber is “a left wing liberal president” then I’m a monkey’s uncle. And I’ve got some great ocean front property for sale cheaply for you up at the Lake of the Ozarks in the Show Me State. It’s not too far of a drive up from RazorBack territory.
There was a very good diary about this issue on October 30th (“Dark Forces at Work in the Douglas County School Board Races: Why YOU Should Care”) written by a resident of Douglas County.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/30/1251766/-Dark-Forces-At-Work-in-the-Douglas-County-School-Board-Races-Why-YOU-Should-Care
Denver has similar issues in their school board election.
http://www.westword.com/2013-10-03/news/denver-public-schools-board-race/full/
Hess has said before that Doug County is the place where corporate “reformers” had been hoping to start making major inroads into privatizing education in suburbia. I wondered why we hadn’t heard much about the Koch brothers’ involvement in corporate education “reform” before, because if there is big money to be made, you can be sure they will be there. Now I know why. There’s bigger money to be made in wealthy suburbia than in poor inner cities.
Now that the opportunities for profiteers to rip off natural resources from Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, we’ve been seeing this ramping up of privatization efforts in America. I can’t believe that is a coincidence. When those who can never have enough money are seeing our children’s schools as the next major place for them to implement a scorched earth policy as carpetbaggers and, snake-oil salesmen, and that is condoned and even promoted by government officials, you know that we have a very serious problem on our hands.
One can only hope that the voters there choose their children over these pseudo “reformers” who seek to control public education in their communities, so they can raid their public education funds.
The free market is about serving people with money. Any free market based education system will do the same.
What???
I have taught elementary music for over 15 years here in Colorado. The people in my community value the arts. This story of Douglas County Schools is terrible. I can’t believe the people in that community have stood by and let this horrific act play out in their district. There are students that are successful in my class and find joy in my classes. Some of them struggle in other classes at school. Some of them have come back years later and thanked me for allowing them to be successful (even if they didn’t major in music/play and instrument as an adult/etc.) There are other school districts in Colorado that are currently fighting to prevent what is happening in Douglas County. I can’t believe it hasn’t gotten more attention. For instance, in Loveland, Colorado there are four candidates running for school board that have been financed and supported by The Koch Brothers (big time reformers). I know it comes as a surprise, but I don’t think the Koch Brothers have ever even visited Loveland let alone had children in the district. Why is a local school board election being funded by them? Why isn’t this making the news? It’s wrong and someone in the media is missing a terrific opportunity to expose an “agenda” taking place in public education.
My thanks go out to the well-heeled Republican people of Douglas County, Colorado, for standing up to defend their own children, and other people’s children, too. There are too many well-heeled members of both parties who lack the moral and intellectual courage to oppose the power of billionaire bullies.
I’m a lifelong Democrat, and I’m ashamed of my party. Obama has packed the US DOE with revolving-door staff from the Gates Foundation and other billionaire monopolists, and awarded to private interests the power to enforce their data-driven nightmare on other people’s children. Everybody who tolerates that is also supporting the Koch brothers and the Walton heirs in their attacks on working people and working class families.
I’m not moving an inch from my progressive political convictions, but who gave outside billionaires the authority to punish and beat down our children, anyway? If you aim to stop them, I’m with you. Everybody shake hands now, and let’s get to work creating a new political center on a better axis.
Stand up, whatever party you’re in, or when they come for your schools, there won’t be anybody left to support you.
“Stand up, whatever party you’re in. . . ”
How about “Stand up, give up whatever party you’re in. . . ”
Be a GDI.
That’s what I is now. . . and I like it that way.
(I got your acronym right away). 🙂
There is a very simple solution for parents. Step up snd do your damn job as a parent!! YOU brought these children into this world now step up and take care of them. RIP THOSE CHILDREN OUT OF THE SYSTEM AND HOME SCHOOL and do it yesterday.
What about the children of foreign refugee parents? Many of these parents don’t speak English.
How does one “home school” their children when both parents are working more than one job just to make ends meet.
“RIP THOSE CHILDREN. . .” Why?
Is it because those heathen godless public schools with their union thug lazy ass teachers aren’t doing their jobs?
Karen–the point is, we shouldn’t have to take our children out of public school and home school them. Public schools should be what communities need and want them to be. They do, afterall, belong to the public (well, they did. . .until our leadership sold them for certain employment with Gates money after their leadership tenure was up, or whatever it was that motivated them to follow the Race to the Top garden path, pulling the rest of us with them).
I work THREE jobs, Karen. When, exactly, am I supposed to home school? That is not the answer. Goodie for you that you are financially able to do it.
If even 5% of the current public school population homeschooled for a year, it would get our nation’s and the reformers’ attentions. Although most people do work more than 1 job (I work three myself), it is possible to homeschool your kids. It’s called sacrifice. Sell your home that has too big of a mortgage and move into a cheap apartment. That frees up several hundred dollars/month for most people right there. The real issue is that most, middle class people put their careers ahead of their kids’ education. I teach my kids math and science, my wife does english language arts, history, and art. We also teach them guitar and piano (music).
Is that easy to do? No. Does it cost us a lot, both in terms of “lost” income and in actual cost? YES. But is it worth it, and is it possible? YES.
Once again, I am stating this is possible for most middle class families. Not for lower class.
Concerning the Koch brothers and political money:
I have mentioned this before but would urge all U. S. citizens to read
Why Nations Fail. A superlative book with impeccable research. It covers humankind from earliest historical accounts to the present, planet wide.
One of the main reasons for failures is for the monetary discrepancy between the richest and the poorest. Several reasons for this. Again, I would urge everyone to familiarize themselves with its contents.
No, public education will not die in Douglas County. Parents have spent years, including countless hours on the ground, working to inform and share the facts about what is happening in our school district. In less than three days, our efforts will be rewarded and we will succeed at flipping the board that has caused so much damage in DCSD. The extreme right wing has severely underestimated the power of a community (from ALL political backgrounds, to stand up together for our children.
We should be courageous and move in the opposite direction from the so-called corporate reformers, the for-profit charter schoolmasters, and the naysayers of American public education. Administrators, teachers, staff, parents, students and concerned citizens should follow what is happening to American education. It is a violent, destructive force against public education.
The landscape is changing; on the horizon, we do not see public schools or parish schools. We see a disproportionate number of for-profit charter schools and schools serving segregated populations. The closure of neighborhood public and parochial schools widen the gaps, decreasing opportunities to grow and prosper. The demise of neighborhood schools adversely impacts the community life and spirit.
We see the end of public school funding and with that, the end of the significant role public schools play in democratizing our young citizens. In this model, the for-profit schools control the market place and the market values.
Here’s a new study that says Catholic Schools are no better than public schools. It’s just that the Catholic school kids enter kindergarten at a higher level. In fact, the public schools actually slightly decrease the achievement gap.
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2013/study-catholic-schools-not-superior-to-public-schools/