Readers of this blog understand the corporate assault on public education. With few exceptions, you know of Bill Gates’ belief that metrics can solve all the world’s problems. You are aware from the events in your state or district that corporate raiders look at the public schools as a way to get rich with their sales pitch for a charter school, a charter chain, a cyberschool, a professional development gig, or new technology.
Again and again, the question arises: How do we get the story to the mainstream media when media giants are cashing in on testing and technology? How can we make the voices of parents and teachers heard?
Here it is. Bob Herbert, who was a columnist for the New York Times, tells the story in his new book, Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America (Doubleday).
Here is Bob Herbert on the reformers’ favorite reform:
“This hit-or-miss attitude—let’s try this, let’s try that—has been a hallmark of school reform efforts in recent years. The experiments trotted out by the big-money crowd have been all over the map. But if there is one broad approach (in addition to the importance of testing) that the corporate-style reformers and privatization advocates have united around, it’s the efficacy of charter schools. Charter schools were supposed to prove beyond a doubt that poverty didn’t matter, that all you had to do was free up schools from the rigidities of the traditional public system and the kids would flourish, no matter how poor they were or how chaotic their home environments.
“Corporate leaders, hedge fund managers and foundations with fabulous sums of money at their disposal lined up in support of charter schools, and politicians were quick to follow. They argued that charters would not only boost test scores and close achievement gaps but also make headway on the vexing problem of racial isolation in schools.
“None of it was true. Charters never came close to living up to the hype. After several years of experimentation and the expenditure of billions of dollars, charter schools and their teachers proved, on the whole, to be no more effective than traditional schools. In many cases, the charters produced worse outcomes. And the levels of racial segregation and isolation in charter schools were often scandalous. While originally conceived a way for teachers to seek new ways to reach the kids who were having the most difficult time, the charter school system instead ended up leaving behind the most disadvantaged youngsters.”
This is a lucid and compelling account of the corporate-driven effort to replace public education–a basic democratic institution–with a market-based, data-driven system of choice and metrics. Herbert sees through the subterfuge s and the double talk. This is an article you should read and a book I plan to order right now.
I think we need to enlist the help of Madison Ave., to create something to the effect of “Got Milk?” for public schools.
Maybe a negative approach like “Got Milken?” or “Who’s Milken American education?”
from the Bob Herbert article:
“When he [Packard] founded [online school] K12 in 2000, one of his two primary financial backers was Michael Milken, the disgraced junk-bond king of the 1970s and 1980s.”
http://kochblocked.com this is clever…maybe they would take on Pearson & Gates…
The hypocrisy of the “upper 5%” reformers is obnoxious and odious, as they seek to get their paws and claws on public money, because times are hard in the private sector (so go after public money). Many, if not most, of these people went to private schools or grew up in a privileged home. Now, they look at the potential to make money marketing to public schools, or better yet, by mandating false measures and assessments upon public schools they hope to make us look bad in order to create “market forces” for their new products and alternative schools, ie. charters.
Maybe they resent the lower 95% getting a free education, maybe the don’t want the masses to get educated as well as they did, which might mean they would lose their empires and dominance in the market?
Maybe endless cycles of reform led by those only interested in the bottom line, not the general social good (by “capital”ists, not “social”ists) lead to pedagogic DEFORM, not reform!!!!!!!
“While originally conceived a way for teachers to seek new ways to reach the kids who were having the most difficult time, the charter school system instead ended up leaving behind the most disadvantaged youngsters.”
Now this is the real CIVIL RIGHTS scandal, not that other malarkey they spout.
When I saw Bob Herbert’s byline on that piece and thought “Finally! The New York Times has someone who is presenting a more critical review on the reform efforts!”
Then I remembered that Bob Herbert doesn’t write for the Times anymore.
@danielkatz2014 I thought the same thing. At least he wasn’t infected by the disease or bug that permeates the news and editorial rooms.
I’m curious as to whether he left of his volition or was forced out.
Here is what I am wondering… Is the public going to get mad enough YET? How many more books do we need? It seems as if every anti “ed reform” reaction is “greeted” with a much larger “reaction” using the full force of mega money from the corporate world. When oh when will the public at large get angry enough to drown out the “ed reformers and all their nonsense”!
The ending of the Bob Herbert excerpt says it all:
“Those who are genuinely interested in improving the quality of education for all American youngsters are faced with two fundamental questions: First, how long can school systems continue to pursue market-based reforms that have failed year after demoralizing year to improve the education of the nation’s most disadvantaged children? And second, why should a small group of America’s richest individuals, families, and foundations be allowed to exercise such overwhelming—and often such toxic—influence over the ways in which public school students are taught…”
They don’t really know. No one here knew about for-profit charter schools. It only came up in 2010-11 because there was a huge political battle over an anti-union law that was (eventually) overturned by referendum.
In my opinion, the word “public” leads people to make a whole set of assumptions about charter schools, which is understandable. So many people went to public schools. They assume “public school” means what it always meant: publicly-owned and run, certainly not for-profit.
People where I live did not know that state law has been changed to where they cannot sell or tear down a public school facility unless they first offer the public property to a charter school. They were shocked.
They expand/modify the laws every year. You’d really have to stay right on top of them.
This is just my impression, but I also think most people tune out when they hear “charter schools” because most people send their kids to public schools, so they think “does not apply to me.” It gets even more confusing in Ohio because we have charters, online charters, vouchers and then a form of (limited) open enrollment for public schools. I had this ridiculous conversation a couple of months ago where we could not tell if this tiny school that used to be a private religious school is now a charter school. I still don’t know. Local opinions seem to differ 🙂
This is a new Ohio website where you can search your district and charters. Every state needs one. It’s easy, and people will know what to search because they can use the name of their local public school.
http://knowyourcharter.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=kyc
I agree; they don’t know. If you don’t have kids being affected by the reformers, or you don’t have a teacher in the family, you just do not know. AND, people may try to tell you…and you may just shrug it off because it doesn’t affect you personally. TAXPAYERS should be incensed over the turning over lock, stock and barrel of our hard earned tax dollars to thieving TFA and charters.
I am incensed that the government gifts my taxes to TFA. How DARE they; and during the government shut down no less. It makes me want to puke.
We need to band together and stop the madness. There should be a class action suit brought against the craziness.
All who are interested in the lamentable history of the ideological wars against public education in the US should read Diane Ravitch’s book, “Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms.” Another important read is “The Manufactured Crisis” by David Berliner and Bruce Biddle that documents the fallacy of the claim the US schools aren’t “competitive” with foreign school systems.
In “Left Back,” William Bagley is quoted back in 1926 lamenting that “In no other country are the professional students of education so influential” [translation: wealthy] and “in no other country is school practice so quickly responsive to suggestions emanating from this group.” That’s because they buy politicians and own the media.
Bombarded with decades of media dysinformation, the typical voter demands politicians to “do something” and politicians in turn put pressure on state education departments. The result is a dismal procession of reforms that fail because (1) the reforms are generated by those “professional students of education,” like Bill Gates instead of arising from actual educators, and (2) because the reforms are perfect examples of the “ready, fire, aim” manner in which politicians go about almost everything. Reforms need to be field-tested like medicines before they are implemented. As with medicines, an adequate filed test takes years before a reform can be properly evaluated. Politicans want to point to having “done something” before the next election cycle. That makes children guinea pigs for untested reform after untested reform. That’s unconscionable.
And then there’s — no way to escape it — racism: Immediately after the Brown v. Board of Education order to racially integrate public schools there was a great “White Flight” from public schools. When parents found out how much private schools cost, the cry for vouchers arose and was championed by the likes of Milton Friedman. The outcry for vouchers died away, however, when it became clear that because neighborhoods were still segregated only token racial integration could take place because children couldn’t attend schools out of their attendance area or distant from their neighborhood. But the outcry for vouchers arose again in 1971 when the Supreme Court ordered busing to end the de facto segregation caused by segregated neighborhoods. When voucher legislation ran into constitutional challenges, voucher proponents concocted the charter school scheme that is ongoing today, along with the voucher campaigns. A key component of the war on public schools has, along with the manufactured “facts” being relentlessly broadcast by the media owned by those “professional students of education,” been to chronically underfund public education so that it has been severely hampered in fulfilling its vital role. Now that public school students are in the majority non-white, expect all these efforts against public schools to intensify.
There’s also a mostly subconscious cultural factor long at work; I call it “The Ichabod Crane Syndrome.” The great flood of immigration into the U.S. during the turn of the 19th century was largely composed of impoverished people fleeing the oppression of European nations dominated by wealthy, well-educated landed gentry. The new U.S. was a place where one needed only a strong back to make a good living as a free man. Nothing but the most rudimentary schooling was needed. These immigrants distrusted educated people and viewed schools and teachers as tools and minions of the upper class to control others. When “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was published in 1820 the portrayal of teacher Ichabod Crane was right on the mark as far as the man-in-the-street (or field or factory) was concerned. That subliminal distrust of well-educated persons has long remained evident on our cultural literature, movies, and TV shows down to this day in which scientists and professors are often portrayed deranged bad buys. At its cultural roots, our nation still has a love-hate attitude toward public education in which the hate/distrust is mostly subliminal, although often overt, and fuels the tendency to “reform” schools and blame teachers for the manufactured problems.
And then there’s the money: As the charter school chains demonstrate every day in countless unoversighted ways, there are hundreds of millions of public tax dollars to be skimmed away under the guise of “choice.” A mountain of money.
“Corporate leaders, hedge fund managers and foundations with fabulous sums of money at their disposal lined up in support of charter schools, and politicians were quick to follow.”
As I read this, I was again reminded of the two thoughts below:
According to the Urban Dictionary, Corporatocracy is “Rule by an oligarchy of corporate elites through the manipulation of a formal democracy. After the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizen’s United case, the movement of the US towards a corporatocracy is complete.”
And from Corporatocracy, Corporatism, Fascism by Jim Kirwan:
“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini
http://www.rense.com/general62/corporatocracy.htm
Do you regularly read commentary by Jim Kirwan and Jeff Rense?
Is this a rhetorical question? If so, it’s a bit arcane for us to fully understand your evident sarcasm.
If you want to play Puck, or Mister Mxyzptlk or just some foolish, doddering, semi-coherent gadfly, can’t you leave we adults alone during your scheduled playtime?
At a minimum, I can leave you alone.
I didn’t really become aware of online charter schools as a “big thing” in this state until I started to see more and more of the kids who go through the juvenile justice system enrolled in them. I don’t mean to imply that all of the kids who are in online charter schools are or have gone thru the juvenile justice system. Instead, I think kids who go thru the system then enroll in online programs because it’s easier than attending high school where they’ll have to show up every day and deal with adults and truancy officers and such. Their parents work so they’re obviously not being supervised although we all pretend they are. What’s worse, I think there are public high schools who are more than happy to steer them in that direction, because it’s easier (and probably cheaper) to just send them home to “go to school” than deal with them.
No wonder Herbert left the Times. . . . . He and the hideous, vainglorious, monstrous neo-liberal Times were no longer a good fit for each other.
Herbert jumped off a sinking ship.
I stopped subscribing to the Times a long time ago and rarely read any of it. It’s become little more than a plutocratic life style rag. . .
Read the Guardian and Politico if you want real news. . . . .
“. . . a plutocratic life style rag.”
Great line RR!
Why, thank you. You will have the ersatz writers (most, not all of them!) to thank and the cringeworthy Schulzberger family to thank.
Be sure to write them a nasty note.
Just send it in a colorful Hallmark. Civility counts, NY Teacher.
Here’s another groovy ultra- progressive billionaire who has made some decisions about US public schools, but will just buy some politicians rather than actually bother getting elected and letting anyone outside ed reform circles in on his plans:
“The work ahead is really hard because we’re at 8 percent of students in California [attending charters], whereas in New Orleans they’re at 90 percent, so we have a lot of catch-up to do,” Hastings said. “So what we have to do is continue to grow and grow.… It’s going to take 20 to 30 years to get to 90 percent of charter kids.”
Hey, I wonder how public schools will fare when they’re run by people whose entire goal is to replace them? Not so great, right? I wonder how our schools will do while 15 billionaires and the politicians they bought are “winding them down”?
http://educationnext.org/disrupting-the-education-monopoly-reed-hastings-interview/
Very alarming. Reed Hastings also gave a talk this year about doing away with elected school boards. I cancelled my Netflix shortly after that. There is nothing “ultra- progressive” about a billionaire who wants to eliminate democracy.
This is Netflix’s Employee Guide so to speak.
Insight into Reed’s mind.
“This hit-or-miss attitude—let’s try this, let’s try that—has been a hallmark of school reform efforts in recent years.”
Do you count from the 1980s as recent?
That’s when the “let’s try this or lets try that” started, and it never ended in the public school district where I taught as the endless corporate reps appeared with promises that would make a difference but never did. All these expensive programs—-often forced on teachers by dictatorial district administration—-did was cost the school district money and headaches for teachers who, for the most part, just wanted to teach without reinventing the wheel every few years.
Oh, yes, Lloyd, I remember the beginning infiltration of the mandatory expensive programs. Someone at district office would purchase the snake oil and then teachers were told to use “fidelity” in implementing. Also remember the “trainings” by sales reps who explained the table of contents with scavenger hunts. What a crock then and what a crock now.
Laura,
The endless cycle of education gurus with promises of magic bullets seems to never end.
“Just say no to Billy an errs”
Ruining schools
And ruining lives
Billionaire fools
With misguided drives
Disrupting the system
However they please
We surely should dis them
And never appease
I thought the penultimate paragraph vividly described the hubris we are up against:
“The amount of money in play is breathtaking. And the fiascos it has wrought put a spotlight on America’s class divide and the damage that members of the elite, with their money and their power and their often misguided but unshakable belief in their talents and their virtue, are inflicting on the less financially fortunate.”
Bob Herbert is a great reporter who covered many important stories as a Times columnist, but he he wrote numerous columns based on the premises of so-called education reform (“failing schools,” “bad teachers,” etc.).
That he is explicitly calling out the edu-profiteers is a strong sign that the narrative is starting to change.
Michael Fiorillo,
I agree about Bob Herbert
I recall several years ago that he called Harlem Village Academy a “miracle” school but it turned out to be the same old exclusion-attrition fraud
Must have learned from that hoax
The only “miracle” about those “miracle schools” is that people keep buying the “miracle”. And to think they were educated people. Specious at best.
Yes, and I wish he were allowed to express his turnaround as a writer for the NYT. . . . . . It is not ironic that he is no longer there.
cross posted at this site
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Bob-Herbert-on-The-Plot-A-in-Best_Web_OpEds-America_Belief_Billionaires_Diane-Ravitch-141010-303.html#comment515459
with this comment and embedded links
You might also wish to hear Bob Herbert interviewed by Bill MOyers.
And there are many books out there which tell the story, the process of how it was done. There is “White Chalk Crime,” by Karen Horwitz!
But there is now, the incredible and gripping story that will demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt how the schools were made to fail… the real-time story of a Montana teacher, Lorna Stremcha, who in her book,”Bravery, Bullies & Blowhards,” lets the reader witness the lawlessness that traveled on the backs of the top-down managers —mandates from principals with no principles.
Schools failed when these political beings took over and withdrew all support for teachers and worse — these administrators made war on teachers because there was not not a shred of accountability under the CONSTITUTION…
* as the unions looked the other way from due process abuse… so tenure could be broken!
There was not not a shred of accountability
*as the media distracted the people with a national narrative of those bad teachers and the need for evaluation, even as one hundred thousand veteran teachers bit the dust, traumatized by lawless bullies.
* because the division of schools districts, 15,880 in 50 states, made it impossible to know what was happening in the schools next door, let alone in NYC (the largest district in the nation) where they decimated the public schools,
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/social-promotion–lausds-prime-mover-for-continued-and-predictable-student-failure–do-they-really-w.htmland in LA, (the second largest district) where corruption was blatant and rampant in order to monetarize education
If you follow my series of links to the TRUTH about the conspiracy to end public education and democracy, you will find many posts by people whom I trust because they speak TRUTH… like Diane Ravitch whose blog is a must if you are serious about following the mayhem, shenanigans and lies that is destroying our future as it destroys the real road to opportunity that only an educated public can traverse.
And to see how our billionaire kings and barons are re-writing our curricula and the rules for our teachers, do not miss Anthony Cody’s book,
“The Educator And The Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges The Gates Foundation”
http://garnpress.com/the-educator-and-the-oligarch-a-teacher-challenges-the-gates-foundation/