Can You Believe This?

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1. M. Schneider says:

   February 9, 2013 at 11:48 pm

   Deregulation will take education to the scale of a national bailout. It will be 2008 all over again for deregulatory foolishness.

   What does it take to learn from gross financial blunders? How many crises of grand proportions?

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2. Cheryl says:

   February 10, 2013 at 12:56 am

   Bureaucracies so big & so wide & apparently unaccountable to anyone. Even when they’re caught cheating & stealing there are no consequences.
   No Cash Left Behind.
   Where is the outrage?

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3. TC says:

   February 10, 2013 at 1:27 am

   Provider – Sunken Treasure Tutoring, LLC
   Location – Fountain of flowing funds, FL

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4. LG says:

   February 10, 2013 at 5:49 am

   Well they are exposed now, but I’m betting that nothing will be done about it.

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5. tamicee says:

   February 10, 2013 at 8:16 am

   I just emailed the link to this article to one of my parents. He uses one of the companies mentioned for his son.
   Egads.

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6. Linda says:

   February 10, 2013 at 8:28 am

   Why is accountability only applied to teachers? See this excerpt. Why isn’t the Florida commissioner, governor, or Arne Ducan responsible for this mess? When are they held responsible?

   Ignoring misdeeds

   Every year, the state Education Department misses chances to crack down on troubled tutoring firms.

   The agency keeps files documenting problems, including dozens of formal complaints and letters from school districts that outline serious misdeeds.

   Yet regulators have done little with the information. They can’t even locate written complaints gathered during the tutoring program’s first six years in Florida.

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7. kb1459 says:

   February 10, 2013 at 8:35 am

   This is so disturbing on so many levels.

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8. mtomas3 says:

   February 10, 2013 at 10:11 am

   Amazing. . .Does anyone really believe that a “criminal record” in capitalist “America” have any moral or social significance?

   With an unconscionable rate of incarceration disproportionate among populations–and youth–of color, where petty crimes of survival are intermixed with violent ones born of disproportional want and misery among the most impoverished, the inevitable mental and dispositional instabilities, misogyny born of a society that precipitates misogyny, and the utter ambivalence if not outright protection from social, economic, and political crime, never mind incidences of rape, incest, and murder, among the privileged and powerful; in the context of all that, you want to argue that a lack of a “criminal record” to seek “public dollars” is an obstacle to the regulation of education?

   Public schools–inclusive of segregating charters–not private schools have served as unwitting if not conscious engines of the prison industrial complex that is become itself even more privatized. The result is that those “don’t make it” in the public schools, if they are not rich and powerful are doomed to misery and suffering as impoverished under- or unemployed, or they make the decision–with limited choices–to engage in petty and violent crime (sometimes both at the same time) OR they find themselves literally driven mad by the inescapable conclusion that “It” is all useless and stacked against them.

   And, here “we” are making debater’s points about a state’s immorality in allowing “criminals” to gain access to “public dollars”..

   Such a point would rightfully be a telling argument if indeed the real criminals in this society–the rich and powerful bankers and billionaires who have created this ungodly (or perhaps many of you think it actually”godly”?) society–were , in fact, determined to be and prosecuted as criminals. But that is a world none of us inhabit.To make such a “point” about “deregulation” belies an utterly privileged and self-righteous morality that has more in common with the “de-regulators” you claim to oppose,but in the end only wish to “return” to a more “public” form of education whose outcomes remain as devastating to the public–especially the most oppressed among us–as the dystopia that has been created by our “good and proper” moral men and women who pretend not to be criminals.

   Perhaps before you check yourself as a “progressive educator”, you might want to check your understanding about the world in which we live. Or, at least go back and read a little V. Hugo. Do some “damn thing” other than opine about criminal records and de-regulation with the petulance and arrogance of a 12 year old from the privileged suburbs (all apologies to 12 year-olds with parents who have inundated them with notions of privilege and entitlement, or worse, criminal abuse).

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   • LG says:

     February 10, 2013 at 10:49 am

     So you’ve read Henry Giroux, have you? He makes excellent points about the “prisons” of urban public schools, but I don’t believe even a brilliant mind like his would think that criminals should be involved in tutoring public school children.

     Your commentary, while powerful, does nothing to discredit Dr. Ravitch’s points that public money is appropriated for private enterprise wherein criminals have access to not only the money, but worse, the children.

     If you wish to be an anarchist because you feel put down by “the man,” feel free, but you have no right to chastise those of us who seek to protect children from those with so little integrity that they would deign to take advantage of society. There are merits to a lawful society–those with a voice can and should be active in using it.

     If you are so hell-bent on calling public schools prisons, then perhaps you feel that criminal background checks are unnecessary for employment in the public schools. After all, criminals run amok and these folks are just operating prisons anyway, right?

     Please, be careful you don’t fall. Your soapbox is extremely shaky.

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     • mtomas3 says:

       February 10, 2013 at 12:07 pm

       Nope, not shaky at all, firmly standing on the ground and “not on no stinking soapbox.”. I made my point–implied by your response.

       I don’t call public schools “prisons”–though it is a term many youth call them. Interesting that you make such an implication from what I wrote; i guess that is your “privilege”. I was recently remarking elsewhere that the impulse to accuse and project one’s class “morality” and conservatism is more a tradition of the far right than of the far left. Apparently, I should have been more circumspect to include the ersatz “progressive” left. But then, I am not sure and cannot really tell if you actually reflect “progressive” politics or right wing politics. In any case, such thinking could not possibly convey progressive without quotation marks.

       And, it is interesting that recognizing the nature and biased class morality of our society constitutes in your mind a connection with public school as “prisons” (again, your formulation not mine) and calling for an end to criminal background checks; though, you do know that there have been at least a “few” instances where criminal background checks have failed to “identify” certified and “backgrounded” teachers who engaged in sexual predation and other forms of illegal activity, right? I am tempted to “hyperbolize” about such a comment, but in the spirit of unconditional positive regard, i won’t.

       It isn’t me you should worry about falling and failing.

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     • LG says:

       February 10, 2013 at 12:41 pm

       Let’s go back to your original post, shall we?

       “Amazing. . .Does anyone really believe that a ‘criminal record’ in capitalist ‘America’ have any moral or social significance?”

       Your characterization of “capitalist ‘America’ ” does not color public institutions. In fact, capital enterprise is not run by the public–it is allowed, by the public spheres, to operate. Therefore seeking to point out “how unfair it is that apples are not like oranges” is an exercise in futility.

       “Public schools–inclusive of segregating charters–not private schools have served as unwitting if not conscious engines of the prison industrial complex that is become itself even more privatized.”

       Pardon. Your implication is that “engines of the prison industrial complex” are complicit in sustaining prisons. The fact that you feel THAT point is MUCH MORE FORGIVABLE than coming right out and calling schools “prisons” is astounding.

       “Perhaps before you check yourself as a ‘progressive educator’, you might want to check your understanding about the world in which we live. Or, at least go back and read a little V. Hugo. Do some ‘damn thing’ other than opine about criminal records and de-regulation with the petulance and arrogance of a 12 year old from the privileged suburbs (all apologies to 12 year-olds with parents who have inundated them with notions of privilege and entitlement, or worse, criminal abuse).”

       “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck…” Pretend all you want, but those are indeed soapbox statements. You would be well-served by adopting a little humility in regard to how you characterize the host of this blog. I believe she is doing far more than one ” ‘damn thing’ other than opine about criminal records and de-regulation with the petulance and arrogance of a 12 year old from the privileged suburbs.”

       P.S. My politics have nothing to do with my criticism of your chastising commentary, nor should they. The mere fact that you see an individual’s politics as a platform for their debate only shows that you cannot see the issues for what they are and instead pin a person to the ideas of a collective. Not everyone has a political agenda as you are implying. Again, I’m sorry if you were ever wronged by the establishment, but not every issue is “black and white.”

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     • mtomas3 says:

       February 10, 2013 at 1:21 pm

       Like I said, you make an inference to bolster your point of view, but fail to allow that your inferences are equally vulnerable. It is not really the space to address your patent apology and somewhat “Bonapartist” idea that public institutions “allow” for capitalist enterprise and that these same public institutions–I assume you include the education system here as well the government–are owned and controlled by capitalist interests and, therefore, part and parcel of that enterprise. Governments are based in the dominant class that they are built to preserve and maintain. The earth exists in form and substance from aggregation and devolution of silica and minerals in a process of convection based in molten lava, which is generated by nuclear and thermal flows; Would you deny that a mountain range is one outcome of such an “engine” even if the snow, cold, and heights are so utterly different from their genesis? So, because teachers and schools, designed primarily to produce the outcomes we see even if those same teachers and schools have no witting interest in producing all of those outcomes does not obviate the role that they may play no matter how inadvertent it may appear. To use a metaphor of a “prison industrial complex” to describe the effects of the great combination of social inequality, capitalist accumulation, and schooling is a phenomenological description from the view of those who suffer under it.

       My point that using moralistic arguments about “criminal records” and access to public dollars as a convenient argument was that it is an argument accessible only to the all too common belief that “criminality” is a constant that holds true regardless the class or community in which one may be a part. It is an argument, as I said and that now you reinforce, requiring a biased class view of who “criminals” are, that our–capitalist–legal system defends, and upon which all sorts of moralistic “innovations” (such as criminal background checks) are made to reinforce the idea that the most oppressed in society need our (welly, apparently your)–capitalist–moral compass to guide into accepting.

       Indeed, all that was originally meant is that you cannot make off-handed moralistic quips about de-regulated practices in public funding allowing “criminals” to have access when the whole of public access to “public dollars” is precisely skewed to allow the exploitation by actual criminals “legalized” by policy and practice of a–CAPITALIST–government and its “public institutions”.

       Oh, and my “you”s in this blog are not simply directed at one person, Dr. Ravitch. However, if “doing something” includes voting for the very same person promoting the end of public education as we know it through the privatization model, public funding model (i.e., RTTT) and teacher evaluation model (VAM) that she opposes, I can only say that such “action” is at least contradictory if not disingenuous. I have a right to make that case from every possible perspective, which I do. if that is a “soapbox” then so is everyone else’s. Or, as the Denzel Washington character in the movie “Glory” remarked upon the Union fight against slavery and being asked to carry the U.S. flag into battle “ain’t nobody here clean”. We are all doing what we need to do. It would just be nice if we didn’t consider those on whose behalf we purport to fight so ignorant that we/they do not see behind our “motivations”. It would just be nice if we were at least to act consistently upon our convictions–not supporting those we oppose as some ersatz tradition of “compromise” and “practicality–and determining more principled stands,beliefs, and morality that sees society and reality as it actually is. At least then we will be able to fight effectively for what it should be.

       Done here, so don’t expect another reply.

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     • LG says:

       February 10, 2013 at 1:44 pm

       It’s a sad commentary when one despairs so completely as to characterize working within an imperfect system (regardless of whether the work is toward improving it) as an act of complicity with its flaws. I especially enjoyed the earth analogy…as if physical nature and human nature are motivated by the same stimuli.

       Perhaps one could only escape the flaws of humanity by escaping humanity altogether? If the earth can be so flawed, perhaps Mars would be a better place to live and thrive. I understand that there is no human life there at all.

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     • susannunes says:

       February 10, 2013 at 4:38 pm

       The reason teachers are caught as predators is because they are FIRST-TIME CONVICTED OFFENDERS when they are caught and convicted. There are few who EVER slip through the cracks who already have been convicted because it will show up on a criminal background check, REQUIRED in all states before you can even get certified as a teacher.

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   • retiredbutmissthekids says:

     February 10, 2013 at 2:22 pm

     Spot on, mtomas3! Just look at Michael Milken (K-12)!

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     • susannunes says:

       February 10, 2013 at 4:41 pm

       Milken is a white-collar crook. That doesn’t count.

       I believe K-12 also exists in Oregon, yet somehow it is allowed to exist given the fact that if you have a criminal record of any kind, you are not allowed to operate a school, let alone teach, in the state.

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9. bbetzen says:

   February 10, 2013 at 10:43 am

   This mornings Dallas Morning News had a “Can you believe this?” article about our own charter school applications being received here in Texas. Apparently many applications have sections copied from other applications in their own applications. Some of the materiel copied includes identical descriptions of the public meetings charters are supposed to have to document public support for their application. How is this any different from students copying from classmates on an assignment? Is this “innovative?” See more details at http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20130209-four-texas-charter-school-proposals-contain-copied-passages.ece

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