Bill Moyers reports on ALEC this week.
I hope he pays attention to what ALEC is doing to American education.
It has a bold agenda of privatization. It has model legislation for charter schools and vouchers.
It wants to destroy the teaching profession. It has model legislation for alternative certification so anyone can teach.
It promotes cyber charters, even though they get terrible results for children.
It has written model legislation so that governors can create a charter commission to over-ride the wishes of local school boards.
ALEC’s proudest moment these days is its “parent trigger” legislation, which is being promoted by the film “Won’t Back Down.”
I hope Bill Moyers pays attention to these things.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My perception of ALEC in education is to promote privatization and market opportunities for investors. I don’t see their agenda as overtly out to destroy public education. I think they are wholly indifferent to what happens to private education.
In Washington state, the proposed charter initiative includes a “parent trigger” component that allows any school to be taken over by its parents or staff or both, even if it’s a successful, high scoring school. This overtly crosses a new threshold, as until now the conversion or take over candidates have been unsuccessful, low scoring schools.
I look forward to see what Moyer has to say about ALEC.
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Oh, yes, that are out to destroy public education. They don’t believe the government is competent to run anything.
They want to privatize it so as to remove the “public” adjective. Everything in the free market.
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There is nothing free market about military contracts, and that is the model the privateers are shooting for here.
What they want is taxpayer dollars going straight into corporate coffers, with all due sham of token public oversight that is totally undermined by the secrecy of back-room, sweetheart, pork barrel dealings and no limit to cost overruns.
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Moyers did address ALEC’s agenda in education! He mentioned the goal to privatize education and he diagramed how a company like K12 Inc. benefits.
Wisconsin State Representative Mark Pocan, who joined ALEC in order to see it from the inside, was interviewed, too. Pocan stated that the ALEC agenda is most definitely to dismantle public education. He also gave an example of how the intent of their legislation may be cloaked, such as when representatives in his state tried to pass a bill to award special education “scholarships”… Here’s an article about Pocan’s work to expose ALEC: http://open.salon.com/blog/steve_klingaman/2012/05/31/alec_dismantling_public_education_drip_by_drip
Be sure to catch the Moyers’ show, which is being rebroadcast throughout the weekend.
BTW, there’s another organization that is similar to ALEC, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB): http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Federation_of_Independent_Business
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I so hope we can get those who support public schools and teachers to speak out, even if we don’t have a lot of money and a power structure to fund us.
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ALEC, and its vast network of state-based “think” tanks, don’t call them public schools. They call them “government schools”, to their minds, the ultimate insult.
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I have in my hand The State Factor, V. 14 No. 2, Jan 1988 from the American Legislative Exchange Council. It’s topic is “America’s Civic Illiteracy: A Course for State Policy.” The six sections, about one page each, are:
Civic Illiteracy in America
Civic Education Laws in the States
An Emerging Consensus* (mentioning Paul Simon and Bob Dole)
Special Obstacles to Civic Education (mentioning the NEA)
A Prescription for Civic Literacy
Ending Civic Illiteracy
The last 3 (of 12) pages contain 15 endnotes and a reprint of S. Con. Res. 92, Dec 3, 1987, which encourages secondary school students study the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist Papers.
*The footnote on page 5 reads, “This situation is particularly ironic in view of the fact that the primary reason for establishing universal free education in America was to educate citizens for democatic participation in the constitutional government.”
It won’t take much to convince a general assembly (or a court) that, after 25 years of inaction on a bipartisan consensus, public education is due for a “SpaceX Moment.” Folks from the cybersecurity world call that a “vulnerability.” Vulnerabilities are best addressed before they are found live in the wild.
To elaborate on (an apocryphal?) John Wayne quote, “Life is tough. Life is tougher if the lawyers and lobbyists you union employs are stupid.”
BTW, in the last quarter century has NEA Today published anything on this critical topic of comparable scope, detail, and quality? (Or is NEA banking on a members unable to recognize the deficiencies of the staff work they underwrite?)
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So where is the model legislation to address weaknesses in civics education exposed by NAEP?
Not here, at the “alternative to ALEC” touted by Moyers:
Click to access Civics_in_Schools_Model_Act.pdf
Inaction on a bipartisan consensus–conspiracy of the right or incompetence of the left?
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I find it very persuasive that this is a hostile takeover of education by the big media companies* on the model of military contracting. They want to control educational and cultural policy just as the big arms manufacturers want to control foreign policy — in the way that is most remunerative to them and which makes a mockery of representative government.
*Oh, wait, aren’t the media companies and the military contractors already somewhat connected?
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Checkout the Federal New Market Tax Credit prgm. Created by Federal legislation, implemented in 2000. Investors in charter schools for low-income communities get a 39% tax credit. Combine this with a credit for job creation, construction loans, fees for managing schools, etc…investors can double their money with a revenue stream from taxpayer $ within seven years. Lots of incentives to demonize teachers, underfund public schools, push poor test-takers and special needs kids into public schools, close “failing schools” and open charters. Corporations want access to the billions of $ spent on U.S. education. Sadly Obama’s “Race to the Top” is playing a substantial role in promoting charter schools. To get Federal $, states must agree to open more charters. It requires states to rely on High-stake testing that narrows curriculum and pushes out our neediest students, destroying quality education but giving huge profits to companies selling tests and test prep material. None of these policies have been proven to be successful–checkout Renaissance program in Chicago.
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