This is an evolving definition. Stand for Children began in Portland, Oregon, as a grassroots organization to advocate for more funding for public schools (readers in Portland and elsewhere, correct me if I am wrong).

At some point in the past two or three years, Stand shifted priorities and discovered that it would have far greater impact if it aligned itself with the financiers behind the corporate reform movement. Their numbers are small, but their wallet is large. They want more privately managed charts, and Stand was okay with that, after all, charters provide an escape from “bad” public schools. They want teachers to serve at-will, with no job protections (after all, don’t job protections protect “bad” teachers). They want teachers to be evaluated by student test scores (after all, isn’t that a good way to identify and boot those “bad” teachers).

And until we hear a different account from Stand’s founder, Jonah Edelman, we must conclude that it is now a very well-funded arm of the corporate reform movement. Some of its original supporters in Portland removed their names. Some of its original sponsors removed their names. One, who shall remain nameless, told me that she now thinks of Stand as “Stand ON Children.”

Stand has pushed the corporate reforms–anti-public school, anti-teacher, anti-union–in several states, notably in Illinois (where they wrote a new law that was supposed to make it impossible for Chicago teachers to strike by setting a threshold of 75% approval–but CTU got a 90% approval vote), and in Massachusetts (where they threatened a ballot referendum to achieve their goals with a heavily-funded PR campaign (the union capitulated to avoid the punitive language that would have been on the ballot, as well as the costs of fighting it).

If any reader can add to this description, or contradict it with better information, let me know.

A reader comments about Stand:

In response to a post this morning:

A number of readers have responded with good comments to the ongoing discussion of “college-for-all.”

I love education, love learning, and want everyone to be able to get as much education as they want, but I have my doubts about the goal of college for all.

Maybe the most irritating aspect of this issue is that college has become unaffordable for many, many young people. They may want to go to college, but they can’t pay the costs, and our state and federal government is content to saddle them with heavy debt that they will spend years repaying. We can’t have a goal of being “first in the world” in college graduates if the cost of college continues to soar.

Also, I am not sure why it is important to be first in the world. So what if we are seventh or twelfth in the world? Why does it matter? I think we should aim for the goal of being first in the world in college affordability. Then let everyone get the education they need and want, when they need it and want it.

I think that our leaders and policymakers pretend that if everyone goes to college, everyone will make more money because college graduates make more money than high school graduates or high school dropouts. This is specious reasoning. Having more educated people is good for the economy, but if everyone has a college degree, then a college degree will not produce any economic gains for those who hold it. If everyone has a college degree, then a college degree would become the minimum credential needed for any kind of job. Then, to see a differential in economic return, people would need to have at least a master’s degree or a doctorate. Producing more college degrees does not produce more high-paying jobs.

I admit that I don’t have the answer to all the questions I raise. Many of the readers of this blog know more than I do, which is why I like to reprint their comments for a larger audience. I read all the comments and learn from them.

Here are some responses to the question of whether “college for all” should be a national goal. I think it was Bill Gates (who else?) who suggested this goal. I have visited many classrooms for children in first-grade, second-grade, third-grade, etc. where college banners decorated the walls. May I say I found it creepy?

Ann Larson sent this unusually thoughtful commentary, in which she argues that college-for-all is not even an important question. She added in her comment: ”

More comments:

In high school education, we talk a lot about getting kids into college, and we know that, due to the economics of higher education, there really is a college for everyone, ready to take their money and offer them a spot. What we talk far less about is whether the kids who got in stay and succeed in college. Very few high schools do follow-up studies on their graduates. Who has the money? And why would we ask a question that we don’t want to know the answer to?

If we did ask, however, and find out the truth about how many students from even high-performing high schools can’t manage to graduate (or, for some of them, even make it through freshman year), then maybe we would help high school students think more strategically about their futures. Not necessarily about whether further education is appropriate, but about what kind? A four-year liberal arts degree? Or an 6-month or 18-month or two-year certification course that ends in a qualification for a decent job?

The latter would be a better choice for so many students, were they not all being raised to believe that not going to college right after high school, as if college were merely 13th grade, is a disgrace.

Here’s another:

Diana Senechal  imagines a conversation between a principal and a parent to discuss the teacher’s’ value-added ratings. This is the conversation that Mayor Bloomberg hopes will happen in every school. He wants every principal to contact every parent and tell them the rating of their child’s teacher. I blogged about that recently.

But what would the principal say if he thinks it is wrong to make teachers’ ratings public? What would she or he say if they honestly believe that the ratings are so inaccurate that they are worthless?

Lance Hill in New Orleans knows what it is like to have no democratic control of schools funded with taxpayer dollars (so do people in New York City, but that’s another topic).

He writes:

A note from a teacher who was one of those rehired for a turnaround school.

Thank you, Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan, for the unnecessary damage you inflict on schools, communities, students and teachers, all the while publicly proclaiming that it’s “for the children.”

I received the following comment from Kenya Bradshaw, the executive director of Stand for Children in Tennessee. She was responding to the posts about the transition plan for merging Shelby County and Memphis. The transition plan envisions an expansion of the number and proportion of students in privately managed charter schools, from 4% to 19%, and a transfer of $212 million out of the Memphis public school budget.

Ms. Bradshaw seems to be a sincere and committed person, and I suspect she has no idea of the enmity that Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children generated by his performance a year ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival, when he boasted of stripping away job protections from teachers in Illinois, specifically in Chicago. Or the enmity he created when he launched a campaign in Massachusetts to eliminate teacher job protections. Or the enmity he gained by converting Stand for Children into a multi-million dollar corporate organization that advocates for privatization as well as the reduction of teachers’ job status. There was a time when Stand for Children was a grassroots advocacy group that actually stood for children. Now, it is part of the corporate reform movement that is pushing the untested and often failed ideas of the wealthiest, most powerful people in this nation on children and school teachers.

I’d like to hear Jonah Edelman explain why he thinks it is a good idea to strip teachers of all job protections, leaving them at the mercy of communities that might fire them for teaching evolution or the wrong novel. And why he thinks it is a progressive idea to hand public schools and children over to entrepreneurs.

I have always had mixed feelings about local control. On one hand, I think it is very important for people to feel a sense of pride, belonging, ownership, and engagement in their local school. On the other, I don’t want the school to reflect nothing more than what the local people already know and believe. That way, no one every learns anything new or is challenged to rethink what they know. Education is about tradition but it is also about encountering and grappling with new ideas.

So, I don’t want to seem wishy-washy, but I recognize that there is merit to both sides of the argument and that, as in so many things, a sensible balance is needed between the forces of localism and those who push against localism. I should add that, these days, I find no case to be made for federal control of curriculum, as the federal bureaucrats are even less thoughtful, less imaginative, and more rule-bound than their local counterparts. At least one can engage the local bureaucrats in conversation, and the conversation is possible. There is no way to engage the federal bureaucrats, because they are so distant and also so powerful. Once they gain control, it’s hard to hear dissent at all.

That said, I thought you might enjoy reading what Diana Senechal has to say about local control in response to a post earlier this morning (my note: growing up in Houston, where we almost never saw snow, we read “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and yes, we imagined what it must be like to experience what Robert Frost described):