Anthony Cody has a stunning article this week about what is happening in Louisiana.
The expansion of vouchers and charters will facilitate the re-segregation of the schools, he predicts.
Governor Jindal eliminated all funding for public libraries in his new budget.
The TFA Commissioner has put a young and unqualified TFA alum in charge of teacher evaluation.
The freight train of reform (aka privatization) is running full blast in that unfortunate state.
Arne Duncan will be there any day now to congratulate Governor Jindal on the progress made in “reforming” the schools.
And lots of thanks to the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, and Teach for America for turning the clock back to 1950 and calling it “reform.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Whether segregation is the goal or not, it is most definitely the consequence. I shared the stats on this last year at http://nogginstrain.blogspot.com/2011/08/charter-schools-segregation-through.html
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This was an interesting read – thanks. I find this appalling.
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Dear Dr. Ravitch: A teacher in my district brought me this quote from an interview between Good Housekeeping Magazine and Ann Romney in the November 2012 issue:
*GH: Can you tell me, what campaign issue is closest to your heart? *
*AR: *I’ve been a First Lady of the State. I have seen what happens to people’s lives if they don’t get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers’ unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system.
Read more: Ann Romney Interview – Mitt Romney 2012 Presidential Campaign – Good Housekeeping
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How would she know? Her children went to elite private schools, not charter schools.
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Massachusetts improved education by listening to Sandra Stotsky, not by implementing ALEC proposals. Ann Romney appears to be repeating campaign talking points. Dr. Ravitch is right to ask “How would she know.” In fact few people do know. Whatever Massachusetts did, it doesn’t appear to have become model legislation anywhere. Was the formula for success even replicated elsewhere in New England?
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Whatever Massachusetts did …
Early childhood, strong curriculum, equalizing spending, teacher prep, others? somewhere, there should be a case study on Education Reform Act of 1993, McDuffey, and Hancock. Not likely to be complete without elaboration from Justice Greaney and Dr. Stotsky, though.
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I don’t believe segregation is the goal, but it will certainly come about as a side light. Charter and private schools are all about school choice and not parent or student choice. Unlike the public schools where government orders segregation, charter schools will avoid that. They will also avoid ESL, driver’s education and so forth. Private schools get the cream of the crop. If some of the cream sours, they are out in disgrace to the public school.
The goal here is to create a 3 tier and cheaper system. The rich may send their children to the best private schools anywhere in the world. The best of the the rest will go to charter schools. The rest will be jammed in public schools with lower wages, smaller pensions, larger classroom, unfunded mandates etc. to artificially inflate the cost per graduate to document their argument that public schools are no good. Public schools are designed to fail.
In public schools, the student is never held responsible. Some how the teacher is to perform magic and create a lust for learning.
Teachers are always blamed and thus are very stressed out. The result is a huge turn over rate. I’m retired 6 years. There are 200 teacher/administrators at my old school. If I walked in today, I would only recognize 6. The rest quit or went to other schools for more money or hoping for a better deal.
You can’t out source teaching, so above is the plot to reduce costs.
Will this produce a graduate of equal or better quality? Of course not. The student is responsible for nothing. Mean while, there is child care, prenatal care, I’m a new day group on classroom time, I’m a new Mommy on classroom time, I get a physical on classroom time, I’m just screwed up group on classroom time, I’m pregnant so I get out of class 5 minutes early and reach the next class 15 minutes late. and the list goes on and on.
I always wondered how students could learn when they miss 35 days of school in a semester and the other days come late. They the students take the state test and use the scan tron sheet for drawing paper and the school is held responsible.
As I said, a system designed to fail. It is like blaming the race car driver for losing the race when there is water in the gas tank and all the lug nuts are left loose. It must be the driver’s fault.
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“As I said, a system designed to fail. It is like blaming the race car driver for losing the race when there is water in the gas tank and all the lug nuts are left loose. It must be the driver’s fault.”
This feels familiar!
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I think there are plenty of “real goals” to go around – profit is probably the biggest, but also segregation (by socioeconomics, especially, but also by race), finding ways to get religious education (“Christianity”) funded by the taxpayers, union busting, elimination of the middle class – the benefits are endless!
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“…when consumers are empowered with choice, the best products will rise to the top…”*
Anytime you hear someone say that, you should turn to them and say, “Do you really want me to believe you’re that stupid?” Anyone who says that is either really blind or really disingenuous. It’s pretty obvious that the *cheapest* products rise to the top, not necessarily the best. The best are reserved for the wealthy.
Wealthy people can get high-quality, hand-made fine furniture from anywhere in the world. Most of us buy our furniture from Value City and hope for the best or we assemble it ourselves from IKEA and keep our insurance up to date. Those of us, that is, who aren’t sleeping on futons and using milk crates for everything else.
If that’s what people want in education too, then by all means, “reform” ho!
* Note, that’s just a quote that Cody uses to start his article, which he spends most of the article refuting. It just seems like it’s so obviously false that it shouldn’t even need refuting.
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‘Anyone who says that is either really blind or really disingenuous.’ OR so aligned with the notion of “choice” as to believe in its power with religious fervor. The word has been so misused by the corporate reformers as to loose its meaning.
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So, you drive a Trabant, right?
The most effective institutional accountability mechanism that humans have yet devised is a policy that gives to unhappy customers the power to take their business elsewhere. Competition between providers of goods and services lowers costs and improves quality.
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These results of re-segregation, intentional or not, will place us on a pathway to a destination this country has been to before. Both class segregation and racial segregation will divide this nation just as it once was and we will face consequences few are prepared to deal with. We have the ability to stop this nonsense in its tracks, but that takes education, the very thing that far right radicals fear the most. For in knowledge lies power. Our everyday lives often keep many from realizing the big picture that is developing before us. It is now for educators to do what we do best; to educate, to inform, to shine the light into the dark corners where these reformers live and plot.
It is I believe, as Diane has said numerous times, the parents, the students, and the people with common sense, who when they realize the danger to their children’s future, will no longer tolerate this madness. Please read the attached post, it is simple yet brutally to the point.
From the Lead Your School Blog
http://leadyourschool.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-lyser-submits-hidden-agenda-of-choice.html
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Diane, I have always thought that re-segregation was a goal of the right and the unintended consequence of stupid, short sided policies on the left. If one studies how tracking was used to segregate classrooms when schools were forced to de-segregate the pattern becomes clear. This is all tracking writ large and it is a reaction to the changing demographics.
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Gentrification of the inner cities has had a unifying effect on middle class, traditional liberals with the right wingers in education that DFER has been able to exploit. They support these stupid edu-policies because they can’t afford to send their kids to the $20,000/yr elite private school but don’t mind having the government subsidize private-like segregated charter schools in their neighborhoods.
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Since I am only one I guess I am suggesting a boycott where possible. Canceling Netflix as soon as I get off this page. Have begun learning Apple and will continue. No more support of Gates products where possible either.
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I canceled Netflix, the NY Times, closed a bank account, never go to Walmart, will never buy a computer again supported by Windows, using Amazon less and less….pretty soon I will be in a closet with a book.
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Keep your computer so you can continue to comment on this blog
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One problem…learned from an Apple employee that GAtes is the largest stockholder of Apple…
Awful all around
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There’s a lot of mythology surrounding the Gates-Jobs dislike but they were actually friends- particularly when they started their businesses. Bitter rivals but still friendly in the hyper-competitive business milieu. Remember, Gates saved Jobs and Apple from going bankrupt in the 1980’s.
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Microsoft invested in Apple in the mid 1990’s to boost Apple stock during a down period. (Dot com craze).
At that time there was a plan to make explorer the browser for Apple products.
Microsoft sold its shares several years ago.
Gates is not a major share holder of Apple.
Here is a current report on the top share holders of Apple.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=AAPL
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Look at the bright side — these children of color who are being cheated out of a decent education will make good recruits for the army which, in the not-too-distant future, will
rise up to smash these forces of regression, including whores like Jindal who sell themselves to the highest bidder.
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But, think of the esated opportunity. It makes me ill to see the glee with which the segregationists and the christian right espouse the ‘right kinds of schools’ choice for the ‘right kinds of families in the deep South.
It is frightening to realize that that John Birchers are going to be vindicated with these heinous acts of greed and malfeasance.
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Sorry not exactly sure what my autocorrect was aiming for with the combo of esated. It was supposed to be wasted. Kids will grow up without the benefit of being around others who are different on many different levels= skin, class, religion and perspective.
We will have lost so many years just to claw our way back to where we currently are.
More elected officials who believe that skin color determines worth, that one religion is the only religion and the fall to ignorance will mean that more will say that the uterus has magic properties under evil circumstances, that embryology and evolution comes from the pits of hell and that shuckin and jivin are terms you use with the leader of the country without a bat of an eye lash.
I feel the insipient creep of a new Dark Age.
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Well Diane, you’ve done it again. Criticize school choice and you qualify for vilianizing by the right. Kyle Olson is at letting the insults fly here: http://eagnews.org/union-apologist-ravitch-says-school-choice-really-means-racial-segregation-of-schools/
Always ad homminom, Kyle is never one to actually engage in a policy debate. But then if you know his background, you realize he’s being paid to attack unions and public schools; “school,reform” is just his cover. All the details are at EAGTruth.com.
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Before your power goes out, please leave a message for edupimp Olson.
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Wow. I want school reform. I believe that my children deserve the best schools we can have. So, you come along and somehow deem my desire to have my children in good schools as some sort of racists. Amazing. I didn’t know there were such idiots really still breathing in this world. If you believe, for one second, that I’m a racist or want to “re-segragate” schools because I believe that our current level of education in this country is a joke based on school performance, then you are completely looney and need to be locked away in an institute before you hurt someone. Our schools are failing our students.
Recently, I went through one of my son’s books looking at some of the “facts” they present. There was a claim that the city of Raleigh, NC was founded because the rivers that met there were able to produce energy and that was a leading factor. Excuse me? What kind of drek is that? I was told by one of my sons that Abraham Lincoln was the worst president we ever had because he started a war. I’ve worked on the math problems with my two school-aged sons and found that they have, in some cases, no less than 3 errors per chapter, and in one case, upwards of 20. What they’re teaching in my children’s schools is a joke. So, I want what’s best for my children and a truly reformed school. One like Sterling Montessori (a charter school near by which is actually ranked one of the top schools in North Carolina) and has a highly mixed ethnic population. So, I’m some sort of racist for wanting to send my child to a school like that? Amazing how you liberal liars believe you can speak for everyone.
What a joke.
Oh, and by the way, in the 1950’s, we were tops in the world in education. Now, we’re near the bottom of first-world countries. So, taking us “back to the 50’s” might not be such a bad thing. Putting schools in communities means that you’re going to get a diverse mix, because, amazingly enough, there are actually diverse populations. Sheesh.
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There were no international tests in the 1950s. I know you hanker to bring back segregation, but if you read some history, you will find that the 1950s was a time of intense criticism of public education.
And no, we are not near the bottom on international tests today. Our high-income students have high scores. Our low-income students have low scores. Because we have a higher proportion of poor students than other nations, it drags down out scores overall.
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Again, you presume, to arrogantly guess that because I want to have my children be able to perform well in schools that are good schools and have different educational plans, that somehow I want segregation. You are an arrogant fool. You have no clue to my intentions, goals, desires, race, creed, color or even my education background, and yet you presume that I am some form of racist.
I suggest that you rethink your foolish and demeaning concepts to address the fact that there are parents out there that want to have what’s best for their children and don’t really care what the racial agenda is for a school board or school system.
I don’t care if the person sitting next to my child is black, white, hispanic, asian, indian, alien or any combination of the above. I want him to be able to have a good quality education and a good quality classroom experience. So, since you seem to be so intelligent that you can deem what I’m thinking, can you please explain to me where in there that I’m saying I want some sort of racial segregation? You can’t. Because there isn’t anything in my statement that shows any sort of racial preferences. What you see is a parent who is passionate about his children’s ability to have a good school.
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(Diane): “I know you hanker to bring back segregation…”
(Paul): “You have no clue to my intentions, goals, desires, race, creed, color or even my education background, and yet you presume that I am some form of racist.”
Operationally defined, nowadays, a racist is a caucasian who disgagrees with a socialist.
Otherwise, the connection between inter-racial animosity and school choice works against Mr. Cody’s and Ms. Ravitch’s argument. Surveys find greater support for vouchers among blacks than among whites and support for vouchers falls as income rises. Parochial schools are more integrated than the cartel’s schools (the “public” schools). Just suggest abolition of assignment by district and see who squeals like a pig.
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“Our high-income students have high scores.” Oh, really? In Hong Kong, Calculus is the standard 11th grade Math course. In the 1996 TIMSS, the Singapore 5th (fifth) percentile score (8th grade Math) was higher than the US 50th (fiftieth) percentile score. If this was IQ, the average US student would qualify as severely retarded by Singapore standards.
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Where would you rather live? Singapore, Shanghai, or Brooklyn?
I made my choice.
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Markets and federalism institutionalize humility on the part of government policy makers. If a policy dispute turns on a matter of taste, numerous local policy regimes or competitive markets allow for the expression of varied tastes while the contest for control over a State-monopoly provider of a good or service must inevitably create unhappy losers (who may comprise the vast majority; imagine the outcome of a nationwide vote on the one size and style of shoes all 14-year-olds must wear. Children are not standard). If a policy dispute turns on a matter of fact, where “What works?” is an empirical question, numerous local policy regimes and competitive markets in goods and services will provide more information than wil a State-monopoly enterprise. A State-monopoly provider of a good or service is like an experiment with one treatment and no controls, a retarded experimental design.
The arguments for State (government, generally) operation of schools do not withstand even cursory examination, and the arguments for subsidy are weak. In abstract, the education industry is a highly unlikely candidate for State (government, generally) operation. The education industry is not a natural monopoly. Beyond a very low level there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education industry as it currently operates. Several lines of evidence support the following generalizations: (a) As institutions displace parents in education decisionmaking, overall system performance falls, and (b) Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically-adept parents (“Well, duh!” as my students would say). Education only marginally qualifies as a public good as economists use the term, and the “public goods” argument implies subsidy and regulation, at most, not State operation of an industry. Furthermore, the commonly drawn implication of the public goods argument, that society as a whole benefits from tax subsidization of public goods, contains a flaw: the State cannot subsidize education without a definition of “education”. Operationally, State institutions define terms (such as “school” and “education) with rules, laws, and procedures. Corporate oversight is a public good and the State itself is a corporation. Oversight of State functions is a public good which the State itself cannot provide. State assumption of responsibility for the provision or subsidization of public goods transforms the free rider problem at the root of public goods analysis but does not eliminate it.
Across much of the US, State constitutions, laws, and district policies restrict parents’ options for the use of the taxpayers’ K-12 education subsidy to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel. This policy originated in Protestant evangelism and anti-Catholic bigotry. The taxpayers’ $500 billion+ per year K-12 education subsidy has become an employment program for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, a source of padded construction and consulting contracts for politically-connected insiders, and a venue for State-worshipful indoctrination. If this is not so, why cannot any student take, at any time, an exit exam (the GED will do) and apply the taxpayers’ $12,000 per pupil-year age 6-18 education subsidy toward post-secondary tuition or toward a wage subsidy at any qualified private-sector employer?
Please read James Tooley’s __The Beautiful Tree__.
Homeschool.
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