Archives for the month of: March, 2013
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TFA Wins Award for Hubris

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
20

Louisiana is in a budget crisis, and Governor Bobby Jindal has been closing hospitals that serve indigent patients and other social services for the needy. He has also been trying to find a way to fund his expensive voucher program, since a state court declared it unconstitutional last fall.

But Teach for America is undaunted by the state’s budget crisis. It has applied for a grant of $5 million.

Blogger Louisiana Voice writes:

“According to the project summary submitted with its application, the money would apparently be used to provide 550 to 700 teachers and 1,000 alumni who would serve as teachers, leaders and “positive change agents (whatever that is) in the lowest income schools throughout the greater New Orleans and greater Baton Rouge areas, central Louisiana, Acadiana and the Louisiana Delta.”

But wait. LouisianaVoice has come across three state contracts with TFA totaling almost $1.6 million to recruit, train and place 570 TFA teachers in the Delta region of Louisiana and the Recovery School District.”

Meanwhile, colleges in Louisiana are producing teachers who can’t find jobs.

Shouldn’t Louisiana be encouraging career educators who plan to stay in their jobs and remain in their communities?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Louisiana, Teach for America TFA

Oprah: Is It for Real or a Ploy?

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
38

Last week, I posted a comment from a teacher in Louisiana who watched the first segment of Oprah’s “Blackboard Wars” and was pleasantly surprised to see that the program showed how hard it is for a novice to teach and that charter schools have the same problems as public schools, that they are not a magic solution.

Gary Rubinstein cautions us to be wary. He notes that the struggling teacher is never identified as Teach for America, and that the struggles may be just a set-up to prepare us for redemption and triumph and the familiar story line.

Categories Charter Schools, New Orleans, Teach for America TFA

A Parent Reflects on the LA Election

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
13

This parent was not opposed to charters. She didn’t pay much attention to battles over school issues, although her own children attend a public school in Los Angeles.

But when she realized that millions of dollars were flowing into the school board race, many from out of state, she began to realize that something big was going on.

She realized that the big money was interested in something other than its stated aims. She realized that the rhetoric of “reform” was a cover for privatization of public goods:

“This election, with its shockingly outsized spending has revealed a hidden agenda, as old as the hills. With massive institutions and systems is embedded the opportunity for equally massive personal gain. Prerequisite is private control, wrenched from what was formerly public, democratic governance. Couching this banality of greed in educational ideology has been an effective strategy, but tonight’s results suggest a whisper of increasing awareness and resistance to uncontrolled and unbridled, unjustified change.

“Because the evidence is starting to pour in. The Reform School agenda which seeks to install privately setup small, isolated, corporately run charter schools are at best no worse than their public counterparts, and reach a small, select subset of the public besides. They result in breathtaking segregation and privation and an impoverished educational landscape. They leach public resources. Unaffordable, now, are the rich opportunities of varied educational “services” like music programs and art programs, lending libraries and speech and behavioural therapists. This School Reform Emperor has no clothes, and the evidence while slow to come in, is arriving at last.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Los Angeles, Privatization

How Corporate Reformers Explain Big Loss in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
15

While we were celebrating Steve Zimmer’s thrilling win over Kate Anderson in the Los Angeles school board race, the corporate reform crowd had to figure out how to spin this embarrassing defeat.

Here it is, fresh from Twitter: Deasey kept his school board majority! Monica Garcia was re-elected! Big money saves Deasey!

Inconvenient facts: The billionaires put together about $5 million to beat Steve Zimmer, who is a member of the school board in his first term. Steve is an independent thinker who dared to propose oversight for charters and a moratorium on new charters until the board had established some means of holding them accountable. Steve is also a TFA alum who remained as a public school teacher for 17 years. To the billionaires who own the charter movement, he had to be punished.

Monica Garcia, the board president, had about $1 million of the billionaire fund and four opponents. The man who came in second–Robert Skeels– raised about $20,000.

So now the corporate reformers are exulting that they helped Garcia beat back Skeels.

Really, they are pathetic.

Spare a little sympathy for those who just suffered a huge loss and are trying to salvage something from the wreckage.

Tears for Goliath.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Los Angeles

Chain Store Charter School To Open in Memphis

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
12

Aspire Charter Schools will open in Memphis, its first venture outside of California.

It comes with a big wad of money to guarantee success. The perks are munificent, since the chain has set aside $100,000 for marketing before the school opens this fall under private management.

Philanthropists–eager to prove that privatization works better than public schools–have pledged $28 million to help Aspire take over ten public schools in Memphis over a five-year period. The federal government–eager to support Secretary Duncan’s belief that private management is always superior to public control–has awarded Aspire a tidy $800,000.

You do have to wonder how long that kind of money will be available as new charters open and multiply, or is this just a very high-priced marketing gimmick to sell the idea.

Meanwhile, Aspire is wooing children and parents with games and free trips to California.

One inducement for Aspire to enter the Tennessee market is that Tennessee pays more state tuition per pupil for public schools than California, an amazing fact. Also, Tennessee is a welcoming state for privatization, since far-right Republicans have a super-majority in the legislature and there is a compliant state Commissioner, Kevin Huffman, who is not only Michelle Rhee’s ex-husband but former communications director of TFA.

Last year, Chris Barbic (founder of Yes Prep Academies) moved from Houston to Tennessee to take over the state’s Achievement School District (the usual euphemism for the lowest performing schools) and pledged that all would be in the top 20% in five years. In four years, we will check up on his pledge.

Meanwhile, what is getting firmly rooted is the belief that schools can and should be run like chain stores, with headquarters in another state.

Categories Charter Schools, Tennessee

If Only Mayor Bloomberg Understood Proficiency Rates…

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
8

Matt Di Carlo noticed an odd sentence in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “State of the City” address. The mayor, as is now customary, was applauding his administration for the amazing progress of the schools under his stewardship, and he said the following, in anticipation of the new Common Core assessments:

“But no matter where the definition of proficiency is arbitrarily set on the new tests, I expect that our students’ progress will continue outpacing the rest of the State’s[,] the only meaningful measurement of progress we have.”

Di Carlo skillfully takes apart that sentence to show that the mayor has no idea what he is talking about. If the “definition of proficiency” is “arbitrary,” as the mayor says, then the state tests cannot possibly by “the only meaningful measurement of progress we have.”

Di Carlo provides a graph to show that proficiency rates can be set arbitrarily, in which case they can give whatever answer you want, not a “meaningful measurement of progress.”

I know that Di Carlo won’t agree, but we won’t be able to reclaim education until we stop using statistics to measure what matters most in education. Nor will we be able to have good education until politicians give up their effort to impose their uninformed ideas on the schools and stop claiming credit for work they did not do.

 

Categories Education Reform

How Georgia Politicians Violate State Constitution

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
8

As Anthony Cody explains, the Georgia state constitution is clear:

“No money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly, or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, cult, or religious denomination or of any sectarian institution.”

What part of that is ambiguous. Even the phase “directly or indirectly” says NO.

Yet Georgia has enacted a tax credit plan to divert money from the public treasury to send children to sectarian, religious schools.

It is a back-door voucher.

Where are the lawyers?

Does the state constitution mean nothing?

When did a Georgia conservatives adopt the idea that the constitution means whatever you want it to mean?

Categories Georgia, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

L.A. Upset!

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
48

According to the results posted in the Los Angeles Times, with 100% of the vote counted but not certified, Steve Zimmer won by 52-48%!

Assuming that no one discovers a precinct with thousands of uncounted votes, this is a stunning upset!

Zimmer faced the combined opposition of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, billionaire Eli Broad, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, Michelle Rhee’s teacher-bashing StudentsFirst, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, and an assortment of Hollywood elite executives.

Millions of dollars were amassed to knock Zimmer off the school board.

Score: Zimmer beats billionaires!

Friends, there is a huge lesson here for all of us in the Los Angeles race.

We still live in a democracy. An informed public will not be bought.

Those of us who support public education are many. Those who want to privatize it are few.

Steve Zimmer’s victory is a victory for all who care about the future of our public schools and the well-being of our society. His victory is a vote against privatization of a basic public responsibility.

They can’t buy us and they can’t intimidate us.

We won!

Categories Los Angeles, Support for public schools

LA Election: Early Returns (Gasp!)

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
10

The latest bulletin from Los Angeles: Monica Garcia, with the billionaires’ bundle, easily beat four opponents who had no money, including the fearless Robert Skeels.

But–wow!–the main target of the billionaires, Steve Zimmer, was running ahead of his opponent.

What an upset that would be!

Nearly $5 million was raised by the mayor of Los Angeles and billionaire Eli Broad to knock Steve Zimmer off the school board. Mayor Michael Bloomberg added his $1 million to the anti-Zimmer fund. The maligned and vilified UTLA, which has had the nerve to defend teachers, put about $700,000 into Zimmer’s campaign.

Zimmer is no tool of the UTLA. He is independent, principled, and moderate. His only sin: he offended the powerful privatization movement. He dared to ask questions. He dared to think critically.

I will save the cheering until the results are final, or at least sure.

But I have to say that it would be incredibly exciting if Zimmer does defeat the millions of Bloomberg, Broad, Rhee, Murdoch & company.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles

NY Post: “Obama Blesses Walmart”

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2013 //
7

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post ran an editorial pointing out the irony of Obama selecting the director of the Walmart Foundation to run OMB, the agency that makes decisions about the nation’s spending.

During his 2008 campaign, Obama criticized a hillary Clinton for sitting on the board of Walmart, and he blasted the corporation’s hostility to labor unions and the environment. Norm he praises Walmart for saving consumers’ money.

The Post sees this as a sign that it is time to allow Walmart to open a store in New York City, which will be a death knell for thousands of small businesses.

Categories Obama
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