Edward F. Berger reports that districts across the state–all but a handful of small rural ones–voted to adopt school bond issues, despite a campaign by the Koch brothers, ALEC, and other forces intent on killing public schools.
Despite choices everywhere, nearly 90% of parents still choose public schools. And despite nonstop propaganda, parents and seniors voted to fund their community public schools.
Berger writes:
It has been over twenty years since frustrated educators, idealists, and those wanting to destroy public education offered School Choice, and partial schools, as options for parents. These experiments have been given more than a fair test. The results of this gamble are now clear. The great majority of parents – nearly 90% – have examined the options and support community public comprehensive schools with full curricula and services. They demand schools with democratically elected school boards and complete financial accountability. There is no doubt about what parents, educators, and citizens want and what children need. The frightening thing is that a minority in power ignore the will of the people.
There can be no doubt that parents reject the school choice option. Most parents never placed their children in incomplete education programs. A majority of those who let their children be experimented on have regretted their decisions. Many are now aware that that public comprehensive schools offer much more than partial schools. Children need more than drilling and practice just to pass tests in math, English, and a few select subjects. Yet the political forces and the self-appointed reformers that have taken control of states and local school districts refuse to respond to the will of the great majority. None of these self-aggrandized kings have ever been vetted, trained, or are experienced as educators, yet they force their ideologies on the great majority.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“How the ALEC stole the Public from Public Education.” A school board talk.
Bravo! Thanks for the post. The January “rally in Tally”, I hope it’s a great success. The students and the community deserve to see an ALEC carcass in every state. ALEC’s opponents are indeed, angels, in service, to children.
It’s been the same in Idaho, ALEC legislation, and Albertson Foundation using suspect data to convince the voters education is failing and holding “retreats” for legislators. Money talks and nonprofits are in the lobbying business.
http://www.idahoednews.org/news/idaho-leaders-lawmakers-retreat-to-study-education-issues/#.VnlhBfkrKM8
We had the same result in Ohio, but boy it gets harder and harder to replace the state revenue that ed reformers cut.
It’s a double whammy for public school advocates, because we lose state funding under ed reform governance and we also have to push back against the ed reform privatization campaigns that rely on bashing public schools.
I feel as if people here are catching on to the fact that when Governor Kasich and the legislature cut funding it just means they send less of the money we send to Columbus back to public schools. Instead it disappears into the black box of “choice” funding and consultants and state test and punish programs and is never seen or heard from again. It goes in but it never comes back. 🙂
I have been looking at the takeover of teacher education, with the Gates-funded National Center for Teacher Quality serving as an ” incubator” for an Inspectorate that will use a rating scheme not unlike the current one in U.S. News and World Report, but with a set of “key indicators” for ratings honed and piloted in multiple teacher education programs.
The plan is literally to replace (dump) all accreditation protocols for teacher education other than that formalized by the new Gates funded Inspectorate.
The system is in the works with a $3.8 million grant. It will be based on the Inspectorate system in Great Britain, and no surprise, Pearson is at the table’ Lso ETS. Both are looking forward to adding some additional tests for students who decide they want to enter a teacher preparation program, more tests while they are enrolled, endless tracking and judgments of coursework, to a point of down-grading teacher education programs that fail to teach specific concepts and from specific texts. Forget academic freedom for faculty who are engaged in teacher preparation. No criticism allowed, full compliance of teachers and students.
In addition to Pearson tests, possibly others from ETS, only top performers on SATs, the training methods and “exemplary” performances of teachers are to be modeled with the faculty at Relay Graduate School, those who honed the Teach for America leadership protocols (relentless this and that), and the no- nonsense methods of Doug Lemov. Add the Gates stipulation for Common Core compliant teacher education.
Nowhere have I found any belief that the next generation of teachers should be professionals. All that matters is their effectiveness as measured by test score increments, compliance with teacher observation forms, scoring properly on student surveys, and versions of customer satisfaction surveys. And this is touted, propagandized as upgrading teacher preparation to a point where there is no longer any need for learning after being hired. The boast is that first year teachers will “perform” better than third years teachers.
Among other opportunistic features of the new regime are practice teaching online with five or six avatars scripted to act up and respond to the correct response from the real practicing teacher. This amid much rhetoric about “student-centered” teaching, as if no teacher ever a job assignment with over handful of students, or in a school with high rates of absentees, or students who migrate in or out.
After looking at a lot of the “key indicators” for judging teacher education programs and new teachers, I was struck by the absolutism in the rhetoric, preoccupation with making “accurate” judgments as if every nook and cranny of human experience could be known, and there was a master tablet or code for discerning the CORRECT judgments for teaching every aspect of everything.
Freud might have called this idea a case of anal compulsiveness elevated to policy and practice.
America needs to understand the value of its free public education system which has served our nation well. We would not have achieved all we have without strong public schools. Public schools are a cornerstone of democratic principles. There is no reason for us to emulate the British with their classism. obsession with being right, and narrow view of the world. America has no royalty, and upward mobility has been possible in most cases through an individual’s own effort and talent. Our public schools reflect what is right about America, opportunity and second chances. We need to abandon the idea that rating and ranking will change outcomes. We need more open doors, not closed minds. Forget Pearson and the British gate keeping system; America should continue to strive to be about opportunity for all.
FYI, I saw ’60 Minutes’ interview with the actor, Michael Caine, on Sunday. He talked about his first big chance in the movie,’Zulu.’ He played a snobby British officer, a racist set in his ways, that so underestimates the Zulu force, he leads his troops into a massacre. His comment was,”Thank God, we had an American director. If the director had been British, I never would have been cast because I’m a cockney. He never would have seen me as a British officer.” Michael Caine owes his career to an American that gave him a chance.
LHC,
I’d like to know how the Gates-funded NCTQ will demonstrate/prove that their approach is superior to what excellent teacher programs already do. (I’m most familiar w Rutgers GSE, The College of NJ/Trenton State, Seton Hall in my state; am sure readers in other states would cite programs they admire.)
A former college president alerted me to some quirks of US News’s college ranking system. A person can read them for cocktail party banter, or for horoscope type amusement.
Ed reform leadership and brain trust are now deciding to drop “failing schools” as their go-to description for every public school in the country.
I can’t help but notice this occurred right around the time they achieved nearly lock-step dominance in the federal and state governments.
Now that they’re running things and have been for a decade it’s time to drop the political campaign that labels all public schools as “failing”, because if public schools are failing then ed reform is failing. I guess we’re supposed to be grateful the relentless public school bashing no longer works for them politically and it’s (now) time to talk about ed reform successes.
https://www.the74million.org/article/we-asked-the-experts-8-common-but-worthless-education-phrases-that-should-die-in-2015
Duncan’s out selling ed tech again:
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-12-22-connecting-the-pieces-to-prepare-america-s-schools-for-21st-century-learning
I don’t trust ed reformers in the tech sector as far as I can throw them with putting technology into schools, any more than I would trust food processors/marketers to manage the food available in schools. If we wouldn’t let Nabisco run the school lunch program (and I hope we wouldn’t) then we shouldn’t let Google or Facebook run the school tech program. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It means they have a conflict.
I think the federal role should be restricted to infrastructure- access to connectivity. There’s just too much potential for commercializing this, “creating a market”, if they go further than that. It will end badly for public schools. There will be regret and if schools make irresponsible decisions the public will punish them for that, by withholding funding.
The original concept of Charter Schools was so exciting with the premise that teachers and parents would have input on the education of the children.
But it was all bait and switch.
The reality is like a horror movie where children are treated like animals in a Pavlov experiment.
Yet the original premise, not the reality, is the propaganda which is being spread around to justify these prison like settings.
No wonder parents still choose public over charter. Now we just need to get the message out so that changes can be made in the current educational philosophy which has gripped our nation’s leaders. And the new Federal law seems to be more of the same and not much movement towards a rational approach in the care of our youngsters.
The vote in Arizona shows that most citizens support public schools. When they have a chance to show that support, they are choosing public education. Just as we have a system of checks and balances at the federal level, we need more on the state and local level. In most states one group of tainted individuals have the power to decide the fate of public education in a state or city. The decision is generally in the hands of a governor or mayor, The decision to transfer educational responsibility to a corporation should have to be put in the hands of the taxpayers through a public vote. Only then, can we put a halt to the hijacking of democracy instead of a system in which billionaires buy the necessary people to forward their privatization agenda.
Positive news.
Is it really accurate to claim that 90% of Americans have rejected choice? (17% of Arizona’s public school students are enrolled in charter schools, by the way.)
How many children are in districts or states where there aren’t charters, period, or where the nearest charter is an insurmountable distance from their residence? How many children live nearby a charter and apply for entry, but don’t get a seat and end up at a district school instead?
Public opinion polls show strong, consistent support for charters and choice. In the most recent Gallup/PDK poll, Americans supported charters by a margin of 64-25, and universal public school choice within districts by a margin of 67-25.
Many people who send their kids to district schools have exercised a form of choice by choosing which school district and catchment area to live in. How much choice a parent has greatly depends on the size of their bank account, as well as the color of their skin. Economically at-risk people of color living in urban areas didn’t have much in the way of choice until charters came along. Fortunately for them, those schools are providing some excellent options: https://urbancharters.stanford.edu/download/Urban%20Charter%20School%20Study%20Report%20on%2041%20Regions.pdf.
There are a lot of differences between charters from state to state, urban vs suburban, etc, but they all have one thing in common: they wouldn’t exist if people were entirely happy with their district school.
As long as Wall Street can make 10-18% return on charter school debt and, hedge all risks, charters will exist. As long as there are anti-union oligarchs, with deep pockets, charters will exist. As long as the U.S. allows 158 wealthy families to write the nation’s laws, they will exist. As long as scheming campaign donors, dominate capitols, they’ll exist.
In a recent paper, funded by the Walton’s and Enron’s John Arnold, there was even the admission that Columbus, Ohio, residents don’t support charter schools.
And, the gut punch… charter schools are being rammed down the throats of Ohioans, with a Dept. of Ed., $71 million dollar bribe.
Reminder: Ohio is among the states with the most corruption, in the charter school industry (refer to articles by reporter Doug Livingston, Akron Beacon Journal) and, among the worst performing charters(KnowYourCharter.com).
Linda, how, specifically, do the things you’ve cited here influence actual families to choose to enroll their child in a charter school?
Tim,
Polls show that a large number of Americans don’t know what a charter is. They surely don’t know that charters skim the most motivated students and limit or exclude the kids they don’t want. Nor do they know that most studies show that charters don’t perform better than public schools.
Diane,
Presumably the people who have no idea what a charter school is answered “Don’t Know” in the PDK/Gallup poll (11%). The public school parents who were polled responded even more favorably to the idea of charters, 66-27, and choice within districts, 67-25. The question was phrased simply, succinctly, and neutrally–“Do you favor or oppose the idea of charter schools?” I’m sure a push-poll type question would have yielded different results, the same way it would for any subject: “Would you support or oppose a public education system where the quality of a child’s school is largely determined by how much money her parents have?”
To answer your other question, yes, charters currently enroll 6% of the nation’s K-12 aged population, but that number will only increase as charter openings far outpace closings, and new charters fill out their grades. Private schools enroll 11%, and an estimated 3% of families choose to home school. 20% of the nation’s children have opted out of traditional district schooling.
Tim, a tiny proportion of American children are in charters. Is it 6%?
In marketing survey classes, students are taught to avoid the expected, outcome bias from questions like, “Do you favor or oppose THE IDEA of charter schools”. The percentage of
parents/students who, when given an option, take a lax alternative, is a matter of both anecdote and record.
To be, on point and brief, individual choice makes for poor policy in education, as many conservatives and progressives have documented. The marketplace has limits in terms of efficacy.
You know that. The purpose of privatized education is
schemes like Goldman Sachs’ social impact bonds, interest on charter school debt for Wall Street and, self-dealing.
Americans set up a democratic process for the education of students, with the intent to serve society’s interest. To manipulate the largesse of the 99%, by taking their collective money, which was intended for their children, is evil.
It was recently reported that the University of Dayton, will no longer accept Koch grants.
I hope it leads a trend in university, leadership integrity.