Here is a site that takes a hard look at the profit-making end of education, and it is booming. Business is amazingly good, what with all the new opportunities for testing, test prepping, outsourcing, online stuff, new technologies.
Meanwhile, your public officials are trying to figure out how to cut teachers’ pensions.
Remember the old saying: “A promise made is a debt unpaid.”
The new version is: “Promises are meant to be broken.”
Edushyster has done it again.
Here, Edushyster defends Joel Klein against the outrageous claim that Rupert Murdoch is trying to make a profit by selling lots of stuff to the schools. It’s all about collaboration. It’s all about replacing teachers with technology to help with budgetary issues. It’s all about reform.
If you ask leading privatizers where are the examples of success for their theories, they will surely point to New York City.
Surely you heard about the “New York City miracle.” Australia is redesigning its national system because of the success of the alleged miracle.
But what about New York City? More than 100 schools closed, and hundreds of new schools opened. More than 100 new charters. School report cards. Testing and accountability. Constant evaluation and data-based-decision-making.
As New Yorkers know, the claims of a “New York City miracle” collapsed in 2010 when the State Education Department acknowledged that it had lowered the passing mark on state tests. When the scores were recalibrated, the miracle went up in smoke.
Now the people of New York City weigh in. A new Marist poll finds that 49% of New Yorkers say that the public schools are worse now than 20 years ago; only 23% say they are better. The rest are undecided.
Why so much public discontent? Budget cuts. Overcrowded classrooms. Charter co-locations pitting parents against parents.
After a decade of privatization and high-stakes testing in NYC, the public is fed up. And the miracle is gone.
PS: Would someone let the Australian government know?
Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute summarizes “What’s Next” for reformers (some prefer to call them privatizers).
Race to the Top was a great coup for the privatizers/reformers.
Now they plan to follow up with a direct assault on schools of education, abetted by NCTQ’s forthcoming rankings, to be published by US News. NCTQ was created by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation a dozen years ago, and saved at the outset by a $5 million grant from Secretary of Education Rod Paige. In 2005, it got caught up in a federal investigation for taking money from the Department to speak well of NCLB. Read here to learn more about NCTQ.
The privatizers intend to move on principal evaluation, to make it more like teacher evaluation (test scores matter).
Pension reform will be high on their agenda.
Privatizers will promote digital learning by removing seat time requirements and following the guidance of former Governor Jeb Bush on this subject. No mention is made of the negative evaluations of cyber charters, both by Stanford’s CREDO and the National Education Policy Center, or of exposes that appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post about the awful performance of cyber charters.
Gird your loins, folks, the privatizers are flush with victories in Wisconsin, Louisiana, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Florida, and other states, and they are coming back to do some more reforming.
Readers of this blog know that we are collecting letters to send to President Obama by October 17.
Please join us in opposing high-stakes testing and privatization.
We call this action the Campaign for Our Public Schools.
Instructions on where to send your email are here.
Lets begin now to make our voices heard.
Will he hear what teachers are saying?
Any chance he will hear us?
This reader thought of a novel approach.
Here’s a hard-hitting investigative report on the money pouring into California to beat the unions by cutting off dues collections. The face of this campaign is Gloria Romero, who flipped to the right and is now the face of Democrats for Education Reform, the pro-privatization Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group.
Seems the Koch brothers tossed in a few million, which makes it hard to maintain the pretense that the anti-union campaign is warm, fuzzy and progressive.
The only error that I spotted is calling ALEC “neoconservative.” It is a reactionary organization pushing radical schemes to suppress voter rights, relax gun control, crush unions, relax environmental regulation, and privatize public education, among other things.
Corporate reform privatizers like Joel Klein, Jeb Bush, Michael Bloomberg, and Mitt Romney like to boast of the glories of a marketplace for schools. They want parents to be consumers, armed with test scores and school report cards and grades. In that great come-and-get-it-day, all schools will be excellent when they compete. That’s why all those programs on all those channels on your TV dial are excellent, and why every product in the marketplace is excellent. Ah, the glories of deregulation!
This teacher describes the new marketplace:
I just spent this past weekend in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Visiting several Autumn festivals I noticed private and charter schools had set up tents in every festival/fair I attended. Right next to the honey and jewelry dealers these ‘privateers’ were peddling their wares. I even saw one at a tag sale!
The good news is that they all were sitting there with no one at their tent.
Wonder if they were unionized Mitt?
What does it say when you need to sit in a tent and peddle the virtue of your school?
The Pennsylvania Secretary of Education changed the state testing rules, without federal approval, to boost the scores of charters. The change involved treating charter schools as if they are districts, not schools. This reduced the number of charters that failed to make adequate yearly progress.
The chief legal counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association said “the change might give the Legislature the false impression that charter schools outperform traditional public schools as they consider bills supported by Corbett to expand the number of charter schools and change how they are authorized in Pennsylvania.”
PSBA pointed out that the new formula overstates the performance of charters. Because of the formula, “…44 of the 77 charter schools that PDE has recently classified as having made AYP for 2011-12 in fact fell short of the targets for academic performance that other public schools had to meet, some even declining in proficiency percentages rather than making gains.”
This is the intersection of politics and education, where the data are adjusted for political ends.
This morning, I made a contribution to Marie Corfield’s campaign. She is a teacher running for the New Jersey legislature. She will be a thorn in Governor Chris Christie’s side as he slams teachers and their union and tries to cut their pensions and destroy public education.
Jersey Jazzman reminds us here that you can help without sending any money. You can help by asking the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee to help her. Just click on the link. I did that too.
Folks, Marie needs help NOW – it won’t cost you a cent and it will take literally one minute! Read about it here:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/10/marie-corfield-for-nj-assembly.html
Just tell the DLCC to support Marie’s race – that’s it! Again, it will take one minute, it won’t cost you a thing, and it will annoy the heck outta Chris Christie!
All my fellow teachers, I’m asking you to step up on this one. We need to let this great teacher and great candidate know that we take care of our own. Please do this by Tuesday, when the DLCC nominations end.
Thanks!
Diane Ravitch's blog 