Archives for the year of: 2014
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Why I Don’t Care About the “Reading Wars” Anymore

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2014 //
67

Many years ago, in the 1990s and the early years of this century, I was a vigorous participant in what was known as “the reading wars.” I supported phonics and opposed whole language. I was influenced by the work of Jeanne Chall at Harvard, who described the ebb and flow of reading philosophies. I wrote many articles explaining why phonics was crucial and why whole language was deficient. In my book, “Left Back” (2000), I wrote an overview of the reading wars and showed the deficiencies of whole language.

In 1997, Congress created the National Reading Panel, composed of literacy experts who mostly supported phonics. Its report in 2000 strongly endorsed explicit phonics instruction. In 2001, No Child Left Behind included a program called Reading First, which gave large sums to districts that gave preference to phonics. Phonics was winning, for sure. Proponents of whole language (which valued meaning over the mechanics or reading) began calling their program “balanced literacy” to remove the implication that they opposed phonics.

By 2001, it seemed clear that phonics had won the war. But in 2006, the Reading First program blew up; not only were the evaluations unimpressive, but there were allegations of self-dealing and conflicts of interest as some phonics promoters were pushing their own textbooks. And the “war” itself lost steam.

As for me, I no longer think this “war” is a worthy cause. Reading teachers understand that students need both phonics and meaning. They know that children need to be able to sound out words but that it is boring to do that for weeks on end. Children need meaning. They get it when their teachers read to them, and they get it when they learn to read by themselves.

I am no reading expert, but I can see good sense in both approaches. I have seen balanced literacy classes where children were enjoying reading. I understand the importance of phonics as a tool to help children get off to a strong start. Wise teachers know when and how to use the literacy approach they need. Children’s needs are different. Good teachers know that and don’t need to be told by legislators how to teach. (And for older children, I love grammar, spelling, and diagramming sentences).

I read recently that NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina was reviving balanced literacy in the New York City schools, and some of my old allies wrote to ask if I was outraged. No, I was not. Balanced literacy can co-exist with phonics. Children need both decoding and meaning. Most important, they need to learn the joy of reading. It unlocks the door to the storehouse of knowledge.

I am no longer a combatant in the reading wars. What matters most today is the survival of public education. We must stop nonsensical curriculum wars and stand together for equitable funding, stable staffing, and community support for community schools.

Categories Curriculum, NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Paul Horton: A Letter to the Albuquerque Journal

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2014 //
18

While visiting his sister in Albuquerque, Paul Horton encountered the same corporate reform claptrap that he read regularly in the Chicago Tribune and sent the following letter to the editor:

“Dear Editor,

I read your banner article, “SBA scores in NM lower now than five years ago” with great interest. As a teacher with thirty-two years experience, I am very concerned with the obsessive focus on SBA scores in the article.

While I understand that lower test scores might be a concern, I am more concerned with the scripted response of Hannah Skandera, New Mexico Education Secretary designate.

Ms. Skandera is clearly on the bandwagon of a national education reform movement that is funded by the Walton Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the American Legislative Exchange Council that is heavily funded by the Koch brothers.

Ms. Skandera clearly serves the interests of these organizations and not the children of New Mexico. Her agenda insures that millions of hard-earned tax dollars of the citizens of New Mexico will flow to Pearson Education, an English company that has taken over the standardized testing industry in the United States.

The biggest issue facing the students in New Mexico is increasing levels of poverty exacerbated by increasing levels of income inequality. Your education reporters need to disaggregate the SBA scores to correlate them to average income levels in schools and districts.

Ms. Skandera will tell you in the coming months that scores for the new PARCC tests will decline by 30% on average. She does not tell you that Pearson Education will control the determination of “cut scores.” This is a part of the script that she will continue to read. She has no real direct knowledge of education issues, she is simply following the “toolkit” that is being used in many other states and the citizens of New Mexico are being played for suckers.

In point of fact, the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) has been measuring student achievement for over forty years and it remains the best and most accurate reflection of student achievement across the United States. The fact that scores across the country have flattened on average over the last several years is mostly the result of increasing poverty, rising income inequality, and the deteriorating living conditions and shortage of jobs in urban and rural areas all over the country.

Even more important, the current flattening and decline of scores in areas where poverty is prevalent is more the result of the failure of national policies that focus teaching on producing higher test scores. In this regard, the NCLB and Mr. Duncan’s Race to the Top (RttT) are only making these issues worse with their obsessive focus on standardized testing and the defunding of public schools.

The citizens of the great state of New Mexico need to stop paying Pearson Education and start paying for lowering class size, hiring more special education teachers, librarians, art teachers, language teachers, and clinical social workers.

Human investment, not investment in education corporations, will lead to better results for the state of New Mexico. Ms. Skandera is more concerned about pleasing Pearson Education that the parents of New Mexico. Wake up and smell the green chilies cooking! Pearson Education does not care about your kids!

Paul Horton
History teacher and former APS student
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools
phorton@ucls.uchicago.edu
http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu”

Categories New Mexico, Pearson, Testing

Feds Turn Down NY’s Testing Accommodations for Students withDisabilities

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2014 //
57

New York proposed to exempt up to 2% of students with severe disabilities from federally required state tests.

The U.S. Department of Education said no. Last year, 95% of students with disabilities failed the new Common Core tests in New York.

Leaders of national organizations supposedly representing students with disabilities hailed the DOE’s de is ion to hold these students to the same standards, which the overwhelming majority will fail.

Peter Goodman wrote about the Common Core exams:

“Parents and teachers across the state protested – the exams were poorly prepared, school staffs not trained and parents of SWD were especially critical – the tests were far beyond the cognitive ability of their children and were emotionally harmful. After months of discussions the state, in its application for an extension of the NCLB Flexibility Waiver asked for a change.

New York State had proposed allowing up to 2 percent of New York students with severe disabilities to be tested at their instructional ability — not their chronological grade year — up to two full grade levels below current grade level. The change would, for example, allow a 5th grader with autism to be tested on exams written for third graders.

New York State has abandoned the Regents Competency test, and, in spite of the SWD safety net (the passing Regents score for SWD is a grade of 55) the barrier to graduation for SWD was substantial even before the implementation of the Common Core exams.

Students, due to their cognitive disabilities, who had no chance of passing the exam, were forced to sit in rooms for hours taking exams, to their teachers and parents it was a cruel punishment.”

Goodman writes:

“The feds, and some of the advocates, seem to be saying SWD have a cognitive illness that is curable within classrooms, which with the accommodations and teacher preparation SWD can achieve proficient scores on Common Core exams. I would agree that is a goal; however, for many students no matter the accommodation, no matter the skills of the teacher, their cognitive impairment will never allow the student to score proficient on the Common Core exams as presently constituted.

The current requirement violates the Eighth Amendment; it is a “cruel and unusual punishment.” To force students to sit for hours staring at pages and pages of problems well beyond their cognitive skills are damaging to the student.

It saddens me that so-called advocates are willing to sacrifice students for their own ideology.

We should develop tools, for examples, portfolios of student work aligned to IEP goals, instead of timed exams, as evidence of student progress.

The gap between the United States Department of Education and parents and teachers is incredible. The best decisions impacting children are made in classrooms by teachers and school leaders. The further from the classroom the more wrong-headed the decision.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Special Education, Testing

Peter Greene: What Happens When the Little People Push Back?

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2014 //
50

Why did Campbell Brown pretend to be frightened of the protestors outside Stephen Colbert’s studio?

Why does she need to pretend that she is on the side of “the kids” when no one believes it?

Peter Greene thinks he has the answers:

“Campbell Brown’s appearance on the Colbert Report included one of the popular reformster mini-themes– the desire to be insulated from any manner of dialogue.

“Granted, this is not exclusive to reformsters– there are many groups of people in American society who have trouble distinguishing between being disagreed with and being oppressed. But among the privileged there seem to be some folks who just find it too, too unpleasant when the little people try to talk back to them.

“She Who Will Not Be Named said, in dialogue with Jack Schneider, that “reformers are under attack every day from unions.” Campbell Brown herself has previously decried the suffering she suffered because Big Meanies picked on her for not following rules of disclosure. I mean, can’t she just, like, you know, DO stuff?

“So on Colbert, Brown mounted the defense of her super-secret backers list by declaring that these poor defenseless deep-pocketed must be protected by people like this scary radical–

“Yes, poster board, once you’ve hit it with a magic marker or two, can be dangerous as hell.

“There are several takeaways from close reading the complaint.

“* Acknowledgement. The crowd outside Colbert was not epic, traffic-closing, window-shattering, riot-birthing huge. But (as with the modest-sized BATs gathering in DC), the folks inside the building rightly recognize it as the tip of an iceberg. When Brown says she wants to protect her donors from those people out there, she’s acknowledging that there are a lot of people “out there.” We’ve come a long way from the days when reform opponents were characterized as tiny fringe elements.

“* Privilege. Once again, we hear the plaintive cry of the Child of Privilege who finds democracy unpleasant and messy. “Look, all we want to do is make the country run the way we think it should. Is that too much to ask? Why do people keep interrupting us by, like, talking and stuff? We should be able to do this without interference.” Nobody has acknowledged this as baldly as Reed Hastings (at least, not on tape) but there is this repeated impatience in reformsterland with the business of democracy. Shut up, do as you’re told by your betters, and don’t talk back. And some like Brown don’t just find little people talking back inconvenient, but really upsetting. This is not how things work in their world. In their world, a Presidential candidate should be able to talk about how awful the lower class is in this country in a posh room being served by a waitstaff composed of lower class folks (and it is deeply shocking if one of them makes a video of it).

“* Cluelessness. There are times when I believe that some of the reformsters really don’t get that they have started a fight. Brown just wants to gut the foundations of teaching as a career; why are teachers saying mean things about her? I just jabbed the bear with a pointy stick and kicked her in the face; why does she want to bite me? I mean, on one level, she’s not wrong. When we find out who’s financing Brown’s little mini-series on court-based activism, we will undoubtedly have a few words for those people, and some of them will not be nice.

“But it will still be an uneven fight. On one side, we’ll have teachers writing strongly worded letters and blogs and– well, I was going to say speaking out in the media, but of course that’s crazy, because what media outlet would interview a teacher. But we’ll have words, and we’ll use them to “attack” these folks, who will undoubtedly turn out to be unelected gabillionaires who are answerable to nobody, least of all, little people. On their side will be millions of dollars, high-powered lawyers, the federal Department of Education, and the mainstream media outlets.

“Given the disparity in power, influence and tools, one wonders why folks like Brown even care. What are they afraid of? I can think of two possibilities.

“One is that they feel their victory is assured, but they are leery of sacrificing the fiction of democracy. They don’t really want to have to come out and say, “Okay, we’re not playing any more. We didn’t want to have to say this, but in our current system you have no say, and we’re just going to do what we want. We were hoping the illusion of democracy would keep you quiet, but play time is over. This isn’t a democracy any more, and what we say goes.”

“The other is that they know democracy is NOT dead, and given enough noise and political pressure, politicians will have to listen not just to the money, but to some people as well. If people decide to actually pick up democracy and use it like a pointy stick aimed at overinflated balloons, something’s going to pop. If enough people start talking about the emperor’s new clothes, the whole court is going to get caught parading naked, embarrassed, out of power, and finally having to face what they really look like.

“I would like to pick the second, please.”

Categories Resistance, Teacher Tenure

Ohio: Another Charter School in Trouble

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2014 //
11

Deregulation sounds like a swell idea. Get rid of all those government regulations and innovation will flourish. That’s the theory.

But many regulations serve important purposes, especially where taxpayer dollars are concerned; they screen out unqualified people; they monitor how the money is spent; they prevent frauds and scams. Take away regulation, take away government oversight, and the door will be open to the greedy and the opportunistic.

We saw that in the financial sector, where companies like Enron and Madoff used lax regulation to profit at the expense of investors.

When the same ideas of deregulation are imported from business to education, the conviction that an unfettered market will unleash innovation and success–the results are predictable. We should know by now that these principles don’t work in education (and some would argue that the spectacular collapse of the economy in 2008 proved they don’t work in business either.)

What the unfettered free market allows into education is unqualified leadership and lax oversight. How can anyone argue that this strategy will improve education? A few schools may prosper but many will flounder and fail.

Here is the story of FCI Academy charter school, which was founded by Bishop Edgar Allen Posey, his wife, and a third person. The campus is on the grounds of Bishop Posey’s church, the Living Faith Apostolic Church in Columbus. The school was in financial trouble, and it fired 17 staff members. It plans to open again this fall.

The fired teachers were skeptical:

“Some of the laid-off teachers doubted that kids will be getting a quality education next year at FCI.

“It’s just been mass chaos,” said Tina Geygan, who is one of the teachers let go. “We were having kids drop out like flies.”

“Annette McFarland, a middle-school science teacher at FCI who also was laid off, said she can’t see how the school could reopen in the fall.

“Just my own personal opinion, but I don’t know how they can,” having lost so many of the staff members, McFarland said.

“Blair Miller, who taught at the school under a one-year substitute-teaching license, said he can’t imagine the school hiring anyone for less than the former staff members were making. The father of three made $25,000 a year, putting him close to officially living in poverty.

“You can’t pay very much lower,” said Miller, 25, who took the FCI job right out of college with an education degree. “I’m going to be honest with you, I was hired to be paraprofessional, but I was teaching a full-time class.”

“Miller taught middle school language arts and math, he said.

“According to its 2012-13 state report card, FCI spent 44.8 percent of its revenue on classroom instruction, compared with a state average of 67.5 percent. The school met 6 out of 24 state performance standards, earning an F. It scored a D on its performance index, which gives credit for how many students scored well on proficiency tests despite the overall standards met.”

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition explains here what the failure of the FCI Academy charter school means for Ohio.

“FCI Academy charter school is another poster child to prompt state and federal agencies to expand investigations to all charter schools

The July 25 Dispatch article-Charter lays off 17 but plans to reopen-is about a charter school in financial trouble, but accompanying details in the article signal a need for a full-scale investigation.

FCI charter school is on the campus of Living Faith Apostolic Church in Columbus. It was founded by the Church’s leader, his wife and one other person. The Church leader’s wife is president of the school’s board. There may be something wrong with this picture. It doesn’t pass the smell test-Church leader’s wife is president of the board and the school is housed on Church property. 3314.03(A)(11)(c) of the Ohio Revised Code states: “The school will be nonsectarian in its programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations, and will not be operated by a sectarian school or religious institution.”

In recent weeks the Horizon Science Academies, managed by Concept Schools, a Gulen Islamic-associated company, has been the target of state and federal investigations in Ohio and in many other states. Investigations should be extended to all charter schools beginning with the for-profits, such as White Hat, ECOT, Ohio Virtual Academy operated by K-12, Inc. and Imagine Schools.

Charter schools in Ohio spent over $900 million of funds belonging to public school districts. In most cases, there has been scant scrutiny of these publicly-funded, private, and in most cases, secretly-operated quasi-education organizations. It is time for ODE and the sponsors of these charter schools to give taxpayers the facts about these stealthy operations.

The governor’s office and the Ohio Department of Education, who have recently been concerned about four teachers and their role in exposing alleged illegal practices at a Dayton Gulen charter school, also need to explain how the FCI Academy is compliant with state laws that govern the formation, operation, and performance of schools that serve Ohio children. Hopefully the answer citizens receive about these questions is as swift as the attacks generated by the governor’s office and ODE on the four courageous charter school teachers and their role as whistleblowers.”

William Phillis
Ohio E & A
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Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Sara Roos: Vote for George McKenna for the Los Angeles School Board District 1

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2014 //
5

Sara Roos is a biostatistician and the parents of two children in the public schools of Los Angeles.

 

In this post, she explains the difference between George McKenna and Alex Johnson, who are running against one another for the LAUSD seat in District 1.

 

Read the post for her numerous links to support her statements.

 

This is what Sara Roos says about Johnson, who works for County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas:

 

“At the age of 33, Mr Johnson has accrued basically zero track record in issues educational, either politically or pedagogically or theoretically or practically. He does, however, nicely reflect his bosses’ readiness to assert opinions educational a propos of no experience or background in the matter at all, as this account of County Supervisor Ridley-Thomas, his aide Alex Johnson and chief-of staff, attests. All three politicos cheerfully admit to having never read the thoughtfully crafted 29-page opinion regarding a Culver City charter school – before rejecting outright the school board’s denial of this petition. Without permitting the deliberations of local elected political leaders or education experts to derail their well-buttressed pre-conceived convictions, nary a whiff of public education advocacy was permitted sway. These three officials asserted their right to an unreflective, uninformed support for the rejected petition because of “a philosophical difference [with the Culver City Unified School District board president] about charter schools”.
“Just so, this episode accurately encapsulates the arcane board race in LAUSD1 too. It’s about charter schools.”

 

This is a race that has been recapitulated with its underlying distinction over and over and over again all across this nation of ours. In our local school board elections, the body politic has weighed in cumulatively not once, not twice but in the three successive school board elections against the candidates allied with the political – that is not pedagogical but political – ideology of privatizing public education.
The first of these recent elections was won by Bennett Kayser over Luis Sanchez, candidate of privatizing champion, former-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of the moribund Coalition For School Reform. The second of these wins pitted LAUSD board incumbent Steve Zimmer against millions of dollars corralled from across this nation, foremost among them from Mike Bloomberg, school privatizing, billionaire mayor of New York City. And most recent in the LAUSD series was Mónica Ratliff vanquishing challenger Antonio Sanchez, backed by a breathtaking constellation of corporate reformers.
Now we meet yet the latest iteration of this Borg-like incursion of corporatizers intent on subsuming our children’s schooling. Alex Johnson, having shallow education bona fides but deep political patronage roots, must be understood in that context so charmingly articulated by his padrone, as The Candidate From Charter Land. Alex Johnson may not be an educator or parent or theoretician, but his political placement enables those who seek public monies to underwrite essentially private schooling enterprises. That is, Alex Johnson derives utility by enabling charter schools and those who would champion them.

 

So, if you think LAUSD needs more charters, Johnson is your guy.

 

What does Sara Roos say about McKenna? He is a professional educator.

 

Sara Roos concludes:

 

Vote for George McKenna on the first day back at school:
Tuesday, August 12, 2014.

 

 

What do the voters want? We will find out on August 22.

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Los Angeles

Fact-Checking Campbell Brown: She Doesn’t Know Much about Research or Teaching

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2014 //
26

In Valerie Strauss’s blog “The Answer Sheet” in the “Washington Post,” Professor Alyssa Hadley Dunn subjected Campbell Brown’s statements on the Stephen Colbert show to a fact check. Dunn, who taught high school English, is now an assistant professor of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.

Dunn compares what Brown says to what research shows.

She concludes: “Quite simply: there is no research demonstrating causation between teacher tenure laws and lower rates of student achievement, which is the entire argument behind the lawsuit.”

Categories Teacher Tenure

Mercedes Schneider Transcribes Stephen Colbert’s Interview of Campbell Brown

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2014 //
10

Mercedes Schneider decided to do something unusual for her birthday. She transcribed Stephen Colbert’s interview of Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor who is leading the battle to take the right to due process (aka a fair hearing) away from teachers. She thinks that doing so will produce a great teacher in every classroom. How will this happen? No one knows.

Here is the transcript.

Categories Teacher Tenure

Jersey Jazzman: Campbell Brown, Meet Mike Mignone

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2014 //
21

You know who Campbell Brown is: she is the former CNN anchor who wants to get rid of teacher tenure. She apparently thinks that teachers should be fired if someone in charge wants to fire them

You may not know Mike Mignone. He is a veteran middle-school math teacher in Belleville, New Jersey, and also president of his union.

When the school board awarded a contract for $2 million to install a surveillance system (not a security system) to a relative of a school board member, Mike Mignone blew the whistle on the deal.

JJ wrote:

“As Mignone’s lawyer puts it: in October, he found out; in November, he spoke out; in December, tenure charges were filed against him. Mignone, who had always had excellent reviews, suddenly found out he would be up on charges that included (get ready for this one) answering students’ questions about the surveillance system. According to Mignone, his students asked him questions about whether they were being monitored; he took a few minutes out of class and gave them some honest answers. That, in this board’s and this superintendent’s minds, counts as a fireable offense.”

JJ wrote: “Mignone was suspended without pay. The only reason he wasn’t fired on the spot was that he was entitled to a tenure hearing. Last night, the results of that hearing were announced at the New Jersey Education Association’s annual summer meeting: Mignone was cleared of most changes, reinstated, and has been awarded back pay. I can think of no better example of why teachers need tenure than Mike Mignone. This courageous teacher and labor leader stood up for the rights of students and teachers, all while saving the taxpayers millions of dollars. But the only reason he has a job today is because he had earned the right to a fair hearing — the very definition of tenure.”

JJ hopes that Mike Mignone is invited to debate Campbell Brown on national television.

Categories Teacher Tenure

Nicholas Meier: What Is Wrong with Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2014 //
52

After many years of being rebuffed at the polls, the pro-voucher forces seemed to have given up. Voucher supporters turned to charter schools as their best hope for wresting public dollars out of public schools and putting them into private hands. But in recent years, vouchers have made a comeback. The Wisconsin legislature approved vouchers for Milwaukee in 1990, and the Supreme Court refused to overturn the law. Then the Ohio legislature approved vouchers in Cleveland, and a Republican-controlled Congress installed vouchers in the D.C. Schools. Other states have enacted tax credits or other means of subsidizing nonpublic schools, and few are willing to cal their voucher programs by their true name. instead they are “opportunity scholarships,” because they know the public doesn’t like vouchers. Thus far, the evaluations have failed to show any academic advantages for voucher schools. Some have a higher graduation rate than their peers in public schools, but their attrition rates are so high that it’s hard to cite the graduation rate (of those who did not drop out) as a victory. Despite the lack of results, and despite the lack of any popular mandate, the voucher movement continues to grow.

As I have learned in various public debates, voucher proponents make outlandish claims. Evidence is irrelevant. They claim success even when none exists.

It is time, I thought, to consider the philosophical and political case against vouchers. In this post, it is stated by Nicholas Meier. It may not surprise you to learn that Nick Meier is the son of famed progressive educator Deborah Meier.

Nick Meier’s first argument against vouchers is economic. Society is unwilling to pay the cost of elite private schools for all.

His second argument is about who gets to choose:

“The other issue is who chooses. Most private schools have selective admission, and limited space. Since unlike public schools they get to choose their students, even if the voucher fully paid for them (which of course it will not), they would still most likely cream the easiest students to teach, leaving the more difficult to teach children in the public schools.

“These two factors in combination would end up subsidizing private schools and middle and upper class families at the expense of public schools and the poor that are left in them. This would further segregate our schooling system into the haves and the have-nots.

“Since I have never heard voucher proponents either suggest that vouchers should be at the levels necessary to have them cover the full cost of most private schools, nor to force private schools to take those children, I find their arguments disingenuous.”

Not even charter schools pass muster, in Meier’s view:

“Why I still do not favor even this [charter schools] is that it fundamentally changes the purpose of public schools. Traditionally we have considered the education of the next generation to be a concern of society as a whole. In fact, virtually every society has considered this to be true throughout history. For this reason, locally elected school boards have governed our public schools.

“Charter schools and voucher systems make schooling a private consumer choice. In the charter and voucher systems consumers choose among the choices offered them, but have no guaranteed right to have a say about the schooling other than making that choice. Those who do not have children in the schools have no say at all. Private schools are run privately, and do not have to answer to the public. Charter schools usually have to answer for test scores and financial responsibility, but even there it is to the state and not in any direct way to the local public. While charter schools have governing boards, they select their own members of those boards. This gives control of the content of schooling to those who run the schools, often for-profit concerns, but even if not, private concerns of some sort. While our government is not perfect, should I really trust those who have private agendas and do not have to answer to the public to decide the how and what of our next generation’s schooling? Public school boards are elected, and have open meetings; private schools do not have to. Even if the charters do have open meetings, they are often run by national organizations and so are inaccessible and would probably just say, “Don’t send you child here if you don’t like our agenda.”

“Vouchers and charters are about redefining the public as consumers rather than citizens, which is part of a larger corporate agenda to destroy public institutions and the limit the power of the public.

“For the above (and other) reasons, I see truly public schools as the only answer for those committed to a democratic society.”

Categories Vouchers
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