ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is the key organization today in education reform.
Forget party labels. ALEC–funded by big corporations and enrolling some 2,000 state legislators–is calling the shots on charter schools, vouchers, right-to-work legislation, online charter schools, and many other topics that are at the forefront of “reform” in such far-right states as Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and many others.
ALEC had a p.r. problem a year ago when a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, was shot and killed in Florida by a man who used the ALEC legislation “stand your ground” as his defense. The publicity was so intense and negative that many corporations dropped their sponsorship. But most did not.
If you want to peek inside their closed doors, read this comment from an informed observer:
ALEC has finally named a private chair to their Education Task Force, Jonathan Butcher from the Goldwater Institute. He replaces Mickey Revenaugh, VP of Connections who resigned about a year ago after the company was acquired by Pearson. Rep Greg Forristall from Iowa was appointed several months ago as the public chair, succeeding Rep David Casas from Georgia.
Current Members of the Education Task force are not listed on the ALEC site. A number of corporations have dropped or not renewed their ALEC membership as well as legislators.
The next task force summit is May 2-3 in Oklahoma City.
The annual meeting will be in Chicago Aug 7-9.
The list of state chairmen may be out of date as a Texas legislator is listed who retired at the close of the last lege session.
Sources for information on ALEC include Center for Media and Democracy, ALEC Exposed and People for the American Way.
This month, ALEC announced for the first time they are publicly releasing some of their model legislation.
Chairs
Public Chair: Rep. Greg Forristall, Iowa
Private Chair: Jonathan Butcher, Goldwater Institute
Staff
Lindsay Russell, Director
Ed Walton, Legislative Analyst
Questions? Email us.
The mission of ALEC’s Education Task Force is to promote excellence in the nation’s educational system, to advance reforms through parental choice, to support efficiency, accountability, and transparency in all educational institutions, and to ensure America’s youth are given the opportunity to succeed.
Follow ALEC’s Education Task Force on Twitter @ALEC_Ed
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Foundation Directory is available for free through public libraries. It is a wealth of information on donations to selected non-profits, such as the Charter School Growth Fund ($22.9m from Walton, $12.5m from Gates in 2011). Follow the money…
Michael Langford,
Do you have an online link for the foundation gifts?
I previously posted the list for Walton, the foundation whose focus is privatization.
Readers may be shocked to read who asked for money from the nation’s most reactionary foundation.
http://waltonfamilyfoundation.org/about/2012-grant-report#education
The Gates list is so huge that it was daunting.
Diane
Yesterday, I went to the library with my laptop, to use their online FD database. Later, at home, I could still search. (access is supposed to be linked to the library’s IP address) Walton has 3 foundations, Walton, Walton Family, and Wal-Mart. I’m no pro, but it’s a fairly straightforward keyword search. I’ll take a look, and e-mail anything interesting. M
btw, you ROCK
btw, you ROCK
btw, you ROCK
how to find personnel
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No le entiendo a Ud.
A machine would likely give you a good score on this essay .
The last time I read broken German was…oh, never. Ahmad, would it be possible for you to post again in English?
Wisconsin freshman Congressman Mark Pocan attended ALEC when he was a representative in the Wisconsin Assembly. He attended as a mole and reported from the inside, then came home and talked about his experience. Very frightening. http://progressive.org/pocan_alec_watch_new_orleans.html
Don’t you think it interesting that ALEC has “transparency” in all educational institutions as one of its goals? As a suffering victim of a Broad Academy run system, I can guarantee that transparency is the LAST thing our queen wants. The lobotomized school board conducts most of its business behind closed doors, and then validates their previously made decisions (aka, doing what they’re told to do) in front of the public. People are allowed 3 minutes each for any comments, which are not even listened to at meetings. It’s transparent all right. Transparently disrespectful.
Bill Moyers did a good show on ALEC; Mark Pocan is featured in it, if I remember correctly.
ALEC is a shining example of the trend to bypass popular discussion and awareness in implementing partisan agendas; as Moyers points out, they’re acting at the state and local level where there isn’t as much public awareness. It’s also where a lot of educational policy is shaped.
While they did catch a lot of flak for the Stand Your Ground legislation involved in the Trayvon Martin case, they managed to implement Right to Work legislation in Wisconsin and Michigan, which has an impact on unions (including teachers).
Sorry you are frustrated with your local board. Lots of others are frustrated with their boards too. That’s one of the reasons we have a charter public school movement.
Also, I usually disagree with ALEC.
There are other powerful groups suggesting to legislators what they should do in education. These include state affiliates of the National Education Association and in some states, affiliates of the Am Federation of Teachers.
ALEC doesn’t “suggest to legislators.” ALEC sits corporate representatives down alongside legislators and they write legislation together. And no legislation moves forward that doesn’t appeal to both groups. So the corporate reps have veto power over the proposed legislation. Then those legislators take the laws and introduce them in their states. Why should this one group have such influential access to our lawmakers? It’s a sick example of corporate control.
Joe, there is a huge difference between teachers unions and ALEC. Unions have national, state and local entities that are affiliated, but locals operate within the confines of their own contracts. ALEC legislation is in the majority of the states, and there is little difference in the education “reform” laws that these state legislators, along with their governors, are advocating. Teachers unions operate at many levels often with vast differences between associations. ALEC-influenced legislation is copycat and everywhere.
Another difference: Teachers unions advocate for public schools, and that includes the quality-of-life of those without which these schools could not operate–the education professionals. ALEC advocates for power and tax money to get out of the hands of the locally elected school boards who serve the people all under the smokescreen called “parental choice.” Sorry, as a taxpayer who is currently not a parent, where is MY choice to see that my tax money serves the community? I have a vested interest in my community schools since I would like to see the future caretakers of this community educated, not just the ones lucky enough to win a lottery for enrollment while siphoning money from the unlucky ones’ schools. The concept of Parental Choice is an insult to the citizenry.
If you cannot see how the funneling of public money into private enterprise is a bad thing, you will never understand why so many public educators do not support the current ALEC-inspired charter school laws that are popping up in state after state. I know your heart is in the right place, but any hint of privatization or unregulated use of public funding for institutions that cannot, by their very nature, serve the entire public is a travesty. You are an active poster on this site which shows you are willing to keep working on the disconnect between charters and public schools. If you truly want to reconcile these issues, why not lobby for better charter laws?
Yes there is a huge difference between unions and ALEC, and I often disagree with ALEC.
A key debate in this country is which kind of options will low income families have.
Wealthy people can (and have) moved to exclusive suburbs. Wealthy people can (and have) paid for their kids to learn how to take tests so that can pass the tests needed to get into the quasi private “magnet” schools that use admissions tests.
How ironic that a number of people here criticize using tests to judge schools and educators but are perfectly ok with allowing those tests to determine who gets into a school.
Could some charter laws be improved? Sure. Actually working on that all over the country.
Yes, I understand some people are disgusted by outrageous created by some for profit groups. I’ve been disgusted for 42 years in public education by the shoddy products that some companies produce. There also are some great products (sometimes from companies created by educators, like Free Spirit Press, started by a former Minnesota public school teacher.)
Should we provide more opportunities to create new options WITHIN districts? Yes (although I’ve heard little support here for the terrific Pilot Schools created in Boston district public school educators. And what about the great district school choice program in East Harlem?
That helped inspire the charter law in Minnesota when Al Shanker pointed out that district educators who want to create new options often are “treated like traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lock step.” Educators all over the country agreed and agree with that.
Finally, LG, every one of the more than 40 charter laws makes clear these schools are public.
Lots of denial here.
“Finally, LG, every one of the more than 40 charter laws makes clear these schools are public.
Lots of denial here.”
So basically, you’re saying that charter schools are public because the laws say so? Over a hundred years ago, the laws claimed that blacks were not equal to whites. Did the laws make that notion true?
Charter schools do not, cannot, will not and need not enroll EVERY student as long as there are limits on enrollment. Now if one follows the logic of this realty, one would be able to conlude that limiting student enrollment must mean that some children of the general public are not going to be served by the school. Therefore, it is not a public institution no matter how much the lawmakers want to say it is.
To add insult to injury, charter schools can and do take public money to partially fund their operations as if that money should follow the child wherever the child’s family chooses for him/her to go to school. And yet again, that money does not belong to the child–it belongs to the community. That money helps to run the entire school and all the peripheral services necessary to do so en masse.
The myth that per-pupil funding belongs to each child individually (and by extension, the family of each child individually) is what has perpetuated this theft of public money by charter organizations. If per-pupil funding truly “belongs” to the family of the children in the community, how do you reconcile the fact that families utilize different amounts of public funding depending on the number of children they have? How is it fair that one family gets only the per-pupil funding for one child while another gets it for five, yet they could live in the same kind of house with the same property values and pay the same in property taxes? Shouldn’t the families with more children get less than those with less or none? And where are the tax breaks for the households who use NO per pupil funding?
You don’t reconcile any of this because all tax money goes to infrastructure for the community. Here is another way of looking at it: I don’t ask for my share of the road improvement funds to help me drive on toll roads instead of other state roads that run though my community. I pay the tolls to use the better roads, and I pay my tax money for upkeep of the non-toll roads even if I do not use them.
The justification of “per-pupil funding following children to charters” is one of the bigget snow jobs of the “reform” movement, and the “charters save the poor kids” argument is the other.
The arguments for “parental choice” are flawed. That money belongs to the community and its truly PUBLIC systems.
LG You criticize the idea that dollars should follow students. So – families shouldn’t be able to choose schools within a district? Every youngster should attend an assigned school? (Except of course those families that can afford to move?)
You mention that you are not a parent. But it appears that you are willing to tell low income parents that they have no options. Right?
As to the comparison of charter laws with those that kept African Americans down:
Rosa Parks spent part of the last decade of her life trying to create charters. The African American Democrat who was the first African American elected to the St. Paul City Council, was appointed by a liberal Democrat gov to be Mn Commissioner of Human Rights founded and directs a highly regard charter in St. Paul.
Something something that expands opportunities for many African Americans to laws that restricted opportunities for African Americans is sad.
So tell me, how do you feel about the quasi-private magnet schools created all over the country that screen out kids who can’t pass admissions tests? Do you want all students whose can’t afford to move to stay at an assigned school?
A fascinating analysis of the concept of “belongs to” or “owns” LG. You forget, however, that the laws of a state direct how the revenue devoted to “public” education is to be expended. I would argue that it does NOT belong to the “public school system” to the exclusion of all other recipient entities. That would mean that the public schools systems had a monopoly on education. Now, a state’s laws permit private schools for those wealthy enough to pay both their taxes and the tuition at such a private school. I presume you have no quarrel with that part of a state’s education act. Homeschoolers too pay taxes for the support of public schools, but by not enrolling deprive the public school system in whose district they live from collecting the per pupil grant they would otherwise bring in. I conceive that you might have an objection to that. But would you feel that parents should be forced to send their kids to a public school? Finally we come to a parent who pays taxes and sends her student to a charter school, for which the charter receives the foundation grant that would otherwise go to the public school system in the district in which the family resides. That is what I gather you object to. There has been a change in public sentiment over the last fifty years about this matter. To you it may be a myth (in the sense of untruth) that a state’s foundation grant belongs to the family and follows the kid to whatever school the family suggests. But this is now permitted by law. I will grant you that there has been a nasty slippage of terminology from “public education” to “publicly funded education.” The latter is now accepted as legitimate, though you do not. Why has the public then voted for administrations and legislatures which accept the modified definition of what a free public education is under a state’s constitution? In my opinion, it was driven by dissatisfaction with the public schools by enough parents to outvote the teachers employed by the public education system. WHY were a majority of the voters so dissatisfied with what the public schools were doing that they elected representatives who approved laws to undercut the public school systems? I think that is what happened, but WHY it happened is another matter. What do you think, LG, if you accept my version of the history (which you may not—perhaps the legislators were bought by the companies who wanted to attach their hoses to the public revenue water main), so bothered the voters that they would not give their support any longer to an education system that its employees thought was working pretty well? How come they preferred “choice” to public education? Were they just too dumb? Had they been miseducated? Had their minds been corrupted by their preachers, pastors, and priests to want something that the employees of the public education systems thought they didn’t need or shouldn’t have? Who can argue with “choice”? Shouldn’t we all have “freedom of choice”? What’s better than having a choice? Than deciding for oneself what one wants. Isn’t choice the good old American way? We get to choose where we live. We get to choose whom we marry. We get to choose at which store we purchase. We get to choose where we drive? We get to choose which movie to see at the movieplex. We get to choose which church we go to. Why not, they said to themselves, shouldn’t we have a choice as to what kind of education we can get for our children? Instead of being forced to eat at the government run cafeteria, why can’t I choose some other kind of restaurant, maybe a vegetarian cafe, and still have the government pay for it? Why not indeed. Was it possibly the kind of food being served at the government restaurant that did not find favor with every kid’s parent? Maybe the family liked bagels and couldn’t get bagels at the government restaurant. Do you think, LG, that that might have been the difficulty? Thus, educational funding has become like a food stamp card. You can use it almost anywhere. You don’t have to go to Government Cafeteria to fill your mind any more. Does this metaphor persuade you, LG, that parents should be able to use their educard at any grocery store that accepts it? It’s still public funding. Isn’t it “theirs” as much as the money loaded on to a “bridge card” belongs to the person receiving it? Now metaphor is not argument, of course, but I think the analogy is helpful, and in fact I support it. If you are for food stamps (bridge card), I don’t see why you wouldn’t be for public funding of education that follows the child.
“LG You criticize the idea that dollars should follow students. So – families shouldn’t be able to choose schools within a district? Every youngster should attend an assigned school? (Except of course those families that can afford to move?)”
Neighborhood schools are community schools. I criticize the ideas that would take away the opportunities for children to attend them. If the schools are unsafe, it is the job of the community, both local and greater, to improve conditions within the community. There have been hundreds of posts on this blog and others illustrating the value of neighborhood schools and the desperation of many families in at-risk neighborhoods who face school closures they feel are unfair and would create a new set of hardships for them. I urge you to read these posts.
“You mention that you are not a parent. But it appears that you are willing to tell low income parents that they have no options. Right?”
That is how you frame the argument, but you misrepresent me by making a false inference. By keeping local control and supporting state aid (this is the “greater community” to which I refer above), parents will have the schools they deserve. Unfortunately, state help is at an all-time low, and community programs to help these families are not robust enough or are non-existent. In effect, lawmakers are failing these communities by mismanaging school funding formulas and inviting radical school reforms in without addressing the problems OF THE COMMUNITIES to provide living conditions conducive to student learning. These living conditions leave people little options for any real quality of life.
By interpreting that my wanting to help improve communities and to support their schools is the same as taking away options from low-income parents, you are mischaracterizing my statement. Nice spin, but it is an unfair leap you are making. This is another snowjob argument touted by privatizers: “How can you not ‘save the children?!?!?’ ” It’s a tired diatribe of fallacies wrapped in a talking point that has become a catch-all for promoting every school under the sun…except a community public school.
Fortunately thanks to public school choice programs, millions of low income parents have the options that you would deny them.
“As to the comparison of charter laws with those that kept African Americans down:
Rosa Parks spent part of the last decade of her life trying to create charters. The African American Democrat who was the first African American elected to the St. Paul City Council, was appointed by a liberal Democrat gov to be Mn Commissioner of Human Rights founded and directs a highly regard charter in St. Paul.
Something something that expands opportunities for many African Americans to laws that restricted opportunities for African Americans is sad.”
If you are talking about charter schools as they were originally intended to be–partnered with the public school system, know that many of today’s charter laws do not support the same charter concept that was originated by Albert Shanker. It may be irresponsible to use the original concept as justification for the privatizing scheme of today’s charter businesses. But let’s get back to your original point that if it is a law, it must be founded in truth! Do you see how weak that argument is, or would you rather side-step it by making a connection? each week.
“So tell me, how do you feel about the quasi-private magnet schools created all over the country that screen out kids who can’t pass admissions tests?”
What is meant by “quasi-private?” It’s either a public magnet or it’s a private school. Magnet schools that are part of their public systems offer programs to meet the needs of the students who apply for them just as special needs programs offer assistance to the children who have been identified as special learners The “magnet schools” in my district run in the neighborhood buildings by offering classes taught by district faculty that specialize in that program of study. The students in these programs share services in the buildings. All the schools come under the same district budget. They are public schools because they accept no money from private investors, and they are completely run by the elected school boards. The majority of charters cannot say the same. So are you attempting an apples-to-oranges argument to prove a point about “choice?”
“Do you want all students whose can’t afford to move to stay at an assigned school?”
Do you want to support a law that allows children to be segregated into the “lucky in lotteries” and the “unlucky in lotteries” while ignoring the greater problems of a broken community and its poor quality-of-life? Sounds like educational triage to me–save some, but leave the others.
I want all students to have schools that serve their communities, not schools that segregate them by lottery. When will privatizers and other “reformers” stop blaming schools for the problems of a community? Those who want to “save” children should start with supporting them by keeping education in their neighborhoods.
“Fortunately thanks to public school choice programs, millions of low income parents have the options that you would deny them.”
I respectfully disagree with your disparaging mischaracterization of my comments. I’m starting to believe you have nothing more than talking points as the “evidence” to support your entrepreneurship in education. Unlike those in this debate who paint the issues with falsely impassioned hyperbole, I do not profit from being an educator. However, my community is richer for having education available to all children–yes, even those from “the hood” behind my street. I’m happy to support our neighborhood schools, unlike those who would rather break them apart because of some “superhero” complex that has taken over the psyche.
“But would you feel that parents should be forced to send their kids to a public school?”
No, I do not, and parents are not “forced” to do anything except pay into the commons, like everyone else, and be certain their child is enrolled in a school. If they choose to send their children to a non-public school, that is their right…however their tax money, as mine, belongs to the commons, Harlan, which oversees the regulation of the systems for which the tax money provides. You call it a monopoly as if there is no public accountability on the part of its school board managers–which is entirely false. Nice try, but your terminology does not fit. In fact, this is a big flaw in the “choice” argument. I’m surprised you’ve never figured this out.
“There has been a change in public sentiment over the last fifty years about this matter. To you it may be a myth (in the sense of untruth) that a state’s foundation grant belongs to the family and follows the kid to whatever school the family suggests. But this is now permitted by law.”
Slavery was permitted by law at one time, too, Harlan. You have presented yet another weak argument.
“I will grant you that there has been a nasty slippage of terminology from ‘public education’ to ‘publicly funded education.’ The latter is now accepted as legitimate, though you do not.”
Again, slavery was accepted as “legitimate.”
“Why has the public then voted for administrations and legislatures which accept the modified definition of what a free public education is under a state’s constitution?”
You have presented no evidence that the “majority” of voters were “so dissatisfied with what the public schools were doing that they elected representatives who approved laws to undercut the public school system.” People elect politicians to run their towns and states for many reasons. If you think that they ran on the platform of “undercutting public eduction,” you would be incorrect. No politician would frame their stance in that way. It’s political suicide.
“I think that is what happened, but WHY it happened is another matter. What do you think…so bothered the voters that they would not give their support any longer to an education system that its employees thought was working pretty well? How come they preferred “choice” to public education? Were they just too dumb?”
Again, where is your proof that the majority of voters vote for the funneling of their public tax money into private institutions? Do you have peer-reviewed research to support this statement, Harlan, or do you just get your misinformation from Fox News polls?
Many of the legislators in this country have added the “education” issue to their platform as of late by stating they were for improving it. Who isn’t for improving education? What many do not tell the public is how. There have been countless movements by ordinary citizens to fight some of the education legislation that has reared its ugly head seemingly everywhere. Peruse this blog to learn about demonstration after demonstration by citizens who are fed up with politicians dictating to the people on education issues and taking away their local control.
“Who can argue with ‘choice’? Shouldn’t we all have ‘freedom of choice’? What’s better than having a choice? Than deciding for oneself what one wants. Isn’t choice the good old American way?”
Choice is an individual right, but we still have an obligation as a citizenry to our society. We can choose whether or not to use the systems managed by the state, but we still agree to have and support these systems as they “promote the general welfare.” This hands-on approach to government was the whole premise of leaving the king of England behind in the first place. No one is suggesting your choices should be taking away. Just don’t touch community money to serve your private whims. You would be served well, Harlan, by a little less economics and a lot more political science.
“We get to choose whom we marry.”
Not according to some right-wing conservatives, we do not. I suppose “choice” is a convenient argument, Harlan, when it serves the whims of the rich, powerful, and influential. The morally vacant get away with making inhuman mandates on the populace which are then supported, and with vigor, by the intellectually vacant. If THOSE are the voters to whom you refer in this post, I would love to see evidence that they are in the majority.
“We get to choose at which store we purchase. We get to choose where we drive? We get to choose which movie to see at the movieplex. We get to choose which church we go to.”
We get to choose whether or not we shoot guns, but when we make choices that harm the populace, we lose our rights. Taking funding away from public schools is harming the populace and should be unconstitutional. The government has already given public funding to private institutions by way of tax breaks and opportunities to share transportation costs for religious schools. Unfortunately, by doing so, this act opens up a floodgate of other hands that are out trying to strip the public coffers of its biggest revenue source: per-pupil funding.
“Instead of being forced to eat at the government run cafeteria, why can’t I choose some other kind of restaurant, maybe a vegetarian cafe, and still have the government pay for it?”
This is because you live in a society that provides the “food” for the public as part of its commons. You have every right to “eat” where you wish if you have the means, but since you live in this society, Harlan, you pay into said society for that right. I’m sorry that doesn’t seem fair to you, Harlan, but who said life is fair? You can leave this society if you don’t like it–you have that choice, too.
“Now metaphor is not argument, of course, but I think the analogy is helpful, and in fact I support it. If you are for food stamps (bridge card), I don’t see why you wouldn’t be for public funding of education that follows the child.”
Here is the flaw in your analogy. Food stamps are part of the social safety net; education is not. It is a guaranteed right of the commons. They are both part of the infrastructure. However, education ensures that all members of society have access to the intellectual development necessary to continue making sound and informed choices as a representative democracy. Food stamps are available to those who need them, but are not provided to all because not everyone needs them. Everyone needs education. An analogy between food stamps and charters is a false one. Food stamps are regulated by the government whereas partially-private charter schools are not. Only public schools are.
The politicians with the most power continue to infiltrate the governing bodies of the commons. As those in the advertisement industry have learned, you can say something that is false over and over until people believe it’s true. By stating your “take” on “what the public wants,” Harlan, you join the ranks of those who engage in the act of imbalanced messaging.
You say quite correctly, “You can leave this society if you don’t like it–you have that choice, too.” Yes, I do, and I am glad of it. I also have the right to try to change the rules through elections if I don’t like them. You do too.
I don’t know what your snide remark about marriage alludes to, but I suspect it has to do with gay marriage. The majority I think does support gay marriage, but legislation hasn’t yet caught up with sentiment. Some conservatives do still oppose it on the grounds that “marriage” between a man and a woman is the healthiest environment in which children can grow up. I do buy that argument, but the variety of family arrangements is pretty various these days, and the difficulties of raising children by oneself without the help of a partner are so great that one can hardly wish to deny standard marriage benefits to any couple of whatever gender who are willing to undertake such child raising. And, in fact, the rigors of life and the joys are such that being without a partner, even if one is childless, to endure and celebrate them are such that they too should have equal rights. Or so it seems to me.
Now, you say further: “We get to choose whether or not we shoot guns, but when we make choices that harm the populace, we lose our rights. Taking funding away from public schools is harming the populace and should be unconstitutional.” There might be a difference of opinion about that. I like to think education is essential to the functioning of a free society, but the federal constitution specifically excludes a national system of education. That is the option of the states. All fifty states do have such a provision in their constitutions, but if they did not, the federal constitution does not deem “education” a right, like life, or liberty, or pursuit of happiness that it protects through the 14th amendment. In a general and loose sense, yes, of course, every child ought to have an education that fits him or her to life effectively in the society. But that does not, in my view, equate to a guaranteed opportunity to go to an organized school. I don’t consider “public school” to be like an initiation ritual that every member of the tribe must go through to continue on into adulthood within the tribe or culture. It used to serve that function, at least in my personal experience, but the public schools no longer function effectively as the standard initiation ritual they used to because the public schools no longer teach universally the fundamental value of American culture, which I take to be self-reliance (Emerson). The destruction of the public schools MAY be required in order to restore that value to primacy.
Would you agree?
Yes, I’m well aware of my rights to try to change the rules through elections. I am probably more active than the average citizen in that regard. However, my point is that we still have choices, but we also still must support each other. This is how we’ve prospered as a country and why people clamber to come to America. We still have a better quality-of-life than those in a large percentage of the world.
“I don’t know what your snide remark about marriage alludes to..” It alludes to the rights of some people being held into question by the very same group of people who are asking the government not to interfere in their own business. It was meant to point out the hypocrisy of certain political groups to interfere only on issues they would like to control.
(I do find it comical that you deem a comment I’ve made to be “snide” when you vacillate from acting like a gentleman to talking down to those whom you address. For instance, do you really need to reiterate a person’s name several times when making a point? So we can agree to be “more sensitive” or not–doesn’t matter to me at this point.)
“I like to think education is essential to the functioning of a free society, but the federal constitution specifically excludes a national system of education. That is the option of the states. All fifty states do have such a provision in their constitutions, but if they did not, the federal constitution does not deem “education” a right, like life, or liberty, or pursuit of happiness that it protects through the 14th amendment. In a general and loose sense, yes, of course, every child ought to have an education that fits him or her to life effectively in the society.”
Of course the systems are local–that is not the issue. The issue is whether or not public eduction supports the commons on any level. If it does not, then why does my tax money go to support ANY child’s education? I do not have the choice of whether or not I would like a portion of my earnings to go toward educating children that I have never had the fortune of parenting. Yet, my earnings are taken from me, and now you’re proposing that my earnings go to support institutions that allow private businesses and their shareholders to make a profit. So how can you justify that? I have no problem with supporting public education for the good of this society.
“I don’t consider “public school” to be like an initiation ritual that every member of the tribe must go through to continue on into adulthood within the tribe or culture. It used to serve that function, at least in my personal experience, but the public schools no longer function effectively as the standard initiation ritual they used to because the public schools no longer teach universally the fundamental value of American culture, which I take to be self-reliance (Emerson). The destruction of the public schools MAY be required in order to restore that value to primacy.
Would you agree?”
I would not. Public schools are the last bastion of our American public culture. Without them, those with the privilege of being born into better economic situations will eventually be the only ones who would be educated. Taken to its end, that kind of trend would set us back to the days where a noble class enjoyed privileges and the peasants were kept ignorant. If you think our schools are broken, please tell me how they are without injecting the rhetoric of individuals vs. communities. We have individual choices in this country. We also have communities to support. Going too far in either direction is unwise, but there are some systems that we MUST support, and one of them is a public education system where all people, without exclusion, have access to an education that is run by the elected public boards of the people.
I believe that the equal opportunity is provided by the per pupil foundation grant, which the family is free to use in charters, online schools, or in the public school system.
ALEC writes legislation to weaken and even dismantle public education. NEA and AFT lobby on strengthening public education. There is a huge difference. The reasons we have a charter public or private movement is because ALEC’s bosses support the movement. It might be prudent to ask why the Koch brothers, Waltons, Gates, Broad, DeVoss, Bloomberg, Anschutz and friends support charters.
There were many charter public school laws before ALEC got involved.
Transparency is not at all a part of ALEC’s workings. It’s extremely difficult to find out what goes on between ALEC & your legislators. I wrote to Indiana’s Speaker of the House inquiring which legislators would be attending an ALEC event in Wyoming shortly after the Trayvon Martin killing & got a letter from the General Assembly legal counsel telling me they didn’t have to provide me with a list of names as to who was attending along with a bunch of legal jargon. Why would this be so secretive?
If you are upset with your local board then keep working to remove them. Simply turning to a charter school will not solve the problem you are experiencing.
At least the NEA & AFT support democratically run public schools & they advocate for fhe rights of ALL kids. No matter their SES, cognitive skill level, their level of achievement etc…. Their members are in our public schools doing this work every day.
Whenever I see the name Pearson, I cringe. Pearson is the financial behemoth benefitingfrom the corporate takeover of education. Follow the money for understanding of whatreally is behind the deforming of the publicschool system.
Sandy Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 12:07:52 +0000 To: sjhume@msn.com
I clicked on the Alec link, and found one of it’s news articles tying school choice policies to student achievement. They” identify trends,” which is a statistical way of manipulation. Correlation does NOT equal causation which is what they try to gloss over in the article. Sickening.
And let’s not forget about all the attorneys who are counseling ALEC and think tanks that seek to privatize education. How they can call themselves facilitators of the law and justice is astonishing . . .
See:
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-influence-of-corporations-is-having.html?view=snapshot
and click on the image to enlarge and read.
How ALEC short circuits democracy.
ALEC rock – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXUPDAMc_6o
Diane, you need to check your facts on the Trayvon Martin case. Trayvon nearly beat the community watch person to death before he shot Trayvon in legitimate self defense. Trayvon is the one who should have backed off and identified himself, but instead he attacked the community watch person. You don’t hear about the case any more because the media got it wrong. Stand-your-ground is good law. Stick to education.
How does anyone know for sure what was wrong or what was right in that case anyway, Harlan? Was the media wrong because you were there witnessing it, or was it wrong because you say so?
He hasn’t been tried yet, but he will be, and the true facts will be known beyond the liberal media’s amnesia. I’m just criticizing your willful ignorance of the case.
Mr. Underhill – Diane is intelligent enough to make a decision as to the value of the stand-your-ground-law, which is a very bad law. In the context of ALEC making policy and crafting legislation that law is an example of how the interests of corporations destroy communities. Just as LG is pointing out that the corporate interests of companies such as Pearson do no serve the students or the communities where the students attend school.
Of course she is. I don’t purport to offer more than opinion, but on this blog it is often a surprise to many that there even IS another opinion. But the real question is Why is stand your ground bad law, not whether ALEC offered legislators model bills. I don’t see how stand your ground benefits corporations and destroys communities. There should be a third consideration, in any case, and that is how does legislation infringe on individual rights? The 2nd Amendment prohibits the Federal Government from infringing on the individual’s “right” to keep and bear arms. Stand your ground is but a manifestation of an intrinsic, individual right each of us has. The Supreme Court has twice affirmed it. I suspect there will be further tests arising from some of the new state laws after Newtown. But just referencing common sense, I don’t see why anyone should be required to run from someone who is attacking them. They should not be attacked by malefactors, and stand your ground, recognizes that their duty does not require them to retreat in the face of attack. It might be prudent in many cases to do so, but stand your ground simply clarifies that it is not a duty.
My constant theme is merely that the states are out of money (I believe because of waste in the education system), and thus will be turning to as much automation as possible. Pearson may save the districts money, though I suspect it will not.
What does it mean to “serve students”? Or to “serve communities”? I think that some things the community public schools are doing serve neither students nor communities even now, let along the individual. I like to look at how much of the tax revenue goes into actual classroom instruction. In my town’s schools the percentage is 53%. A national movement for accountability asks for no less than 60%. I prefer to see something closer to 80% of a schools expense going directly to classroom teaching. Government bureaus are not known for loving low overhead.
Isn’t membership by legislators in a private organization that lobbies legislators a conflict-of-interest? Sounds to me that this clearly should be against the law. I would also posit that it should also be against the law for a lawmaker to be a member of a union…to be fair. Am I crazy? (Well, am I crazy for THIS reason?) 😛
ALEC’s been around since the 70s, but the general public didn’t know about ALEC until the Trayvon Martin case. Most of their members are right wing GOP and corporations. They have been purposely stealth, which has enabled their success.
“Today virtually no piece of legislation can get passed unless it has the ok from corporate America.”