According to Politico.com, the crucial #2 job at the U. S. Department of Education will go to Ted Mitchell, CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, the nation’s leading promoter of charter schools.
NewSchools strongly supports private sector control of public schools with dollars. It is heavily funded by Gates, Broad, Walton, and technology entrepreneurs committed to “disrupting” public education.
Arne Duncan seems determined to turn all the public schools of the nation into Chicago, where he made his reputation and left the school system in a shambles and the kids in despair.
PS: Leonie Haimson reminded me that NewSchools Venture Fund invests in more than charter chains:
She writes:
“NSVF also invests in a lot of for-profit tech companies looking to make money off data-mining and violation of student privacy.
.@edsurge on @nsvf CEO Mitchell Tapped For @usedgov
https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-10-23-newschools-ceo-ted-mitchell-tapped-for-dept-of-ed-job”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is just as much on Obama than Duncan, but Obama gets a pass. When he signed the law that gave TFA’s 5-week training “highly qualified” status, he made his mark against public school teachers and public education. Even when we win a battle, he is still winning the war. I think Obama knew neither the NEA or AFT would make an issue of this new law, and that’s so disappointing on so many levels. And the back story to this decision is what I really want to know about.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicoleperlroth/2011/09/19/newschools-ceo-ted-mitchell-my-best-idea-for-k-12-education/2/
Public school parents should know who Arne Duncan and President Obama chose to run the nation’s public school system.
This is an interview with Ted Mitchell. Like all ed reformers, he makes no mention of the actual, existing public schools 90% of your kids attend. Instead, he tells of us his dream to turn all public schools into no excuses charter chains:
FORBES: What is your best idea for K-12 education reform?
“Ted Mitchell: Well, we think of education reform in two parts. There’s education reform—that is who has maximized the current production function of education–who is doing schooling as well as it can be done given the constraints we have today. And then there’s what schools should look like in the not too distant future. What are we really aiming at? We call those education 1.0 and education 2.0.
Let’s start with education 1.0 then. Which teachers or schools would you say are doing the best job of reforming the current system? I would highlight not all charter schools but the high performing, no excuses charter schools like KIPP and Aspire. Then there are a
few that are doing the very hardest work of all, which is turning around existing schools. Those are Mastery in Philadelphia and Unlocking Potential in Boston.
They have very high expectations for everyone in the building, kids and adults. They have a culture that supports achievement and they understand that traditionally under-served kids come to school with a set of issues that aren’t their fault—they come to school hungry, they come from broken homes—and these schools take them in whatever circumstances and characteristics they arrive and say: ‘Those are things we can deal with, but they’re not excuses for underachieving.’ The results are that these schools have pretty much eliminated the drop out rate, doubled the graduation rate and doubled the college-going rate of traditionally under-served kids.”
There’s no mention of existing public schools in the entire piece. Mr. Mitchell can’t find a single US public school that merits praise or meets his requirements.
These are not the words of an “agnostic”.
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Anyone who honestly believes in and uses language such as “… maximi(zing) the current production function of education…” should be kept as far away from schools and children as possible.
This attitude may be appropriate in an auto plant or steel mill, but it has no place whatsoever in the world of education.
No wonder everything these people touch is in danger of being destroyed.
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Well on the other hand, Arne and Tom have only three years before they get booted…I hope.
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On another front. The spread of US Educational Imperialism, exploitation and/or Colonization seems to be in full force. The latest on Lady Kopp.
Wendy Kopp goes global
http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/10/leadership/kopp-teach-america-mpw.pr.fortune/index.html
Best news nugget:
Despite the initial success, raising money for Teach for All “has been a real struggle,” Kopp admits.
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Forbes-2011 Ted MItchell’s fix:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nicoleperlroth/2011/09/19/newschools-ceo-ted-mitchell-my-best-idea-for-k-12-education/
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“disrupting” public education is their game.
They tie education and wealth to moral superiority where less educated and debtors
are viewed as morally defective and therefore less than human.
Their “Plan” is to indoctrinate and demand obedience and passivity from the kiddies
as soon as possible. They break their spirit early on by joining a “Small” inventory
of words to inferior. This increases the afflictions of poverty.
Next, wave an ever shrinking carrot beneath their glassy eyes, and for good measure
hope to saddle them with towering student debts that guarantee their subservience.
Once painted into a corner of debt, they will most likely see their debt peonage as
circumstance, when it was clearly by design.
A #2 job for sure, that needs to be flushed…
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You really can’t make this stuff up.
As President Obama seeks to reform the wildly inequitable, crazily inefficient and tragically fragmented for-profit US health care system, he works to turn the US public education system INTO the broken health care system.
I’ll make a bet. In five years the buzz word in public ed will be “fragmentation” and in ten years people will be desperately lobbying for a “public option”.
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Exactly. Obama’s education policies are a failure that he won’t need to deal with in the future. His legacy will be in healthcare reform and, if he gets away with it, social security ‘reform’. I think he gave away public education to the privatizers to leverage his plan to revamp health care.
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It’s amazing to watch it happen.
I was reading how New Orleans kids change schools constantly under reform. Charters have staff high turnover. They open and close. Each new teacher and school must have to get to know the child all over again. There will be gaps.
You know what that’s called in health care? Fragmentation. It’s why we have such lousy results across the population in public health.
In a decade there will be a movement to find kids an “educational home” just like we’re now trying to get people into consistent health care situations; a “medical home.”
You don’t know whether to laugh or cry looking at the two things happening at the same time.
We’re adopting what DIDN’T work in public health to public education.
Why would we do that?
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More like the department of privatizing American education. This is an insult to the wishes of the American people. We don’t want the nation’s schools privatized. No thank you.
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https://twitter.com/newschoolsTed
Here’s “Ted” (or the person in charge of marketing) advertising several charter chains on his Twitter feed.
Look for a public school. You won’t find one.
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I can’t help but wonder why no one will call Obama out on all the educational issues he pretends to be for or against.. Why our teachers unions support him or Arnie Duncan is a mystery to me.
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I can’t knowledgeably speak about the NEA, but there’s no mystery about the AFT: under the mis-leadership of Randi Weingarten, the AFT has been bought off and, notwithstanding empty soundbites and press releases meant to distract the membership, boasts of its “collaboration” (her word, not mine) with the so-called reformers.
The AFT has received funds from the Gates and Broad Foundations – Broad has referred to Weingarten as an “investment” – invited Gates to give the keynote speech at the 2010 AFT convention, and has offered workshops at the Aspen institute (a yearly Woodstock for the 1/10 of 1%) on “non-profit and for-profit opportunities in education.”
There will be no end to the so-called reformers abusingteachers in urban districts until they have a union willing to fight for, not co-manage, them. That cannot occur until Weingarten and Unity Caucus in NYC are repudiated by the rank and file.
Weingarten’s current rhetorical nullity is “solutions-driven unionism.” Indeed, in the eyes of the so-called reformers who invest in her, unionized teachers are the “problem” they’re seeking a “solution” to.
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collaborator, that’s the appropriate term, I think
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Indeed, Robert, I may be dating myself, but when i was coming up “collaborator” was a term of intense disapprobation, since it connoted some rather unpleasant historical events. Yet Weingarten wears the term proudly.
Her legacy is one of utter disgrace.
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Had no idea Weingarten had sunk this low. I’m sickened.
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