Archives for the month of: September, 2012
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Philadelphia’s Astonishing Decision

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2012 //
11

According to this article, Philadelphia will spend an additional $7,000 per student to open many new charter schools. It will cost the district $139 million over the next five years.

24% of the district’s students are currently in charters. The School Reform Commission, acting on the advice of the Boston Consulting Group, wants to increase that proportion to 40%.

What is the record of charter schools in Philadelphia to date?

Does the business community and civic leadership remember what happened the last time that Philadelphia adopted privatization? Or did they forget?

Philadelphia has been under state control for years. No one is pushing for privatization but the elites who don’t send their children to public schools in Philadelphia.

Maybe the state and the School Reform Commission should let the citizens take charge of their schools and find out what the parents and citizens of Philadelphia want to do with their schools and their children.

Categories Boston Consulting Group, Charter Schools, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

More about Milk and Choice

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
5

A teacher in New York City wrote to tell me that he worked in the dairy industry for many years before becoming a teacher.

When he read about Jeb Bush touting the virtues of choosing schools the way we choose milk, he laughed.

Did you know, he wrote, that a small number of big corporations control the dairy industry. No matter what label is on the carton, the odds are that you are buying from agri-business, not a small producer. There are really only two kinds of milk–skim and cream–and all the others are variations, built from one or the other.

In many places, you think you are choosing, but all the milk comes from the same corporation.

The illusion of choice.

That’s not what gets me, though. What gets me is that Jeb’s argument is intended to dissolve any sense of public responsibility for basic services.

Some things ought not be privatized.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

Why Did We Forget About Integration?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
16

A good discussion on NPR about an important issue that has been swept under the rug.

The combination of racial segregation and poverty is toxic.

Categories Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Maybe Choosing Schools Is Like Choosing Toothpaste?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
13

Deborah Meier writes to comment on Jeb Bush’s claim that choosing schools should be like choosing milk. Could have said cereal. There, two or three corporations own all the different brands.

Re Jeb Bush’s analogy—choosing schools is like choosing milk as you wander down the aisle.  Among the kinds of milk he listed were  milk for people who can’t drink milk.     Well, I suppose there are indeed some schools that are for people who “can’t be educated” (in his mind).

What a startling picture-metaphor.  Creepy?   The schools are, for Jeb,  just another brand on the market with fancy packaging, millions spent in promotion, and success dependent on making a profit.  Worse still is the very mindset that would create such a metaphor.   It could have been worse—I suppose.  He could have chosen toothpaste…or….

Categories Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Vouchers

A New Set of Class Rules

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
5

Gary Stager is visiting a tiny nation abroad, whose name I can’t spell without peeking, and it has adopted a new Constitution.

Gary says that teachers could save a lot of time if they simply adopted the Constitution of Uzupis and used it as their class rules.

Categories Education Reform, Humor

The Biggest Lie about Unions

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
71

A reader responds to someone who lambasted the unions for preventing the firing of bad teachers:

Only poor administrators can’t fire poor teachers.  There has never been a union contract anywhere, ever that didn’t allow for a competent principal to remove an incompetent tenured teacher.  And it’s even easier to just non-renew a loser before they become tenured.  This is the biggest of all the lies told about unionized teachers.

Categories Principals, Teacher Tenure, Unions

Brits Deal with Same Attacks on Schools

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
6

It was eerie reading this article. Change the names and you would think it was Arne Duncan speaking. Same rhetoric. Different country.

Wheree do these people come from?

What’s their end game?

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM)

A Brave State School Board Member

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
14

Lottie Beebe, an elected member of the state school board in Louisiana, spoke out bravely at the last meeting.

She decried the privatization of public education.

She questioned why the state was spending nearly $1 million to bring in ill-trained TFA members even as districts are paying an additional $2,000-4,000 for each TFA recruit.

She asked why the board had hired a TFA person to be its executive director.

She was, of course, voted down.

Governor Bobby Jindal controls the board.

The last person elected to the board is the executive director of TFA in New Orleans.

Lottie Beebe believes in public education; she believes that children should have well-prepared professional teachers.

She is out of fashion.

But she is right. When we compare ourselves to the top-performing nations in the world, they all have strong public school systems staffed by professional educators.

Now I will have to create a new category for brave members of state and local school boards. I hope it is a long list.

Categories Honor Roll, Louisiana, Privatization, Teach for America TFA

What Do Teachers Do Best?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
1

A good post by Glen Brown on his blog.

It explains very simply what teachers do best.

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

How Is a School Like Milk?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
29

Jeb Bush spoke to the Republican National Convention on his favorite subject: how to save American education by privatizing it.

Bush said that choosing a school should be like buying milk.

This came from a newspaper report:

    “Everywhere in our lives, we get the chance to choose,” he said in aprepared version of his remarks sent to reporters. “Go down any supermarket aisle – you’ll find an incredible selection of milk. You can get whole milk, 2% milk, low-fat milk or skim milk. Organic milk, and milk with extra Vitamin D. There’s flavored milk- chocolate, strawberry or vanilla – and it doesn’t even taste like milk. They even make milk for people who can’t drink milk.”
    “Shouldn’t parents have that kind of choice in schools?” Bush said.

He agrees with Condoleeza Rice that education is “the civil rights issue of our time.”

But how can this be?

Is shopping for milk a civil right? How are these comparable?

This is not a good analogy.

Isn’t public education a public responsibility? Isn’t it a public good? How can it be compared to something as trivial as shopping for milk?

You can see where he is going with this analogy. An end to public education, a welcome mat for the privatizers, the for-profit schools, the for-profit online corporations.

Anyone is welcome to produce their own brand of milk, funded by taxpayers.

They can buy the high-priced milk, if they can afford it. They can buy the plain milk, or if they are poor, they can buy the rancid milk. It’s their choice.

Needless to say, Bush said nothing about the research showing that charter schools and voucher schools get similar results to public schools; and that the online for-profit schools get decidedly worse results.

But this is not about the kids. It is about letting the free market have its way with the kids.

 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Vouchers
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