Ted Mitchell, CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, was selected by the Obama administration to hold the #2 job at the U.S. Department of Education. Mitchell is a strong proponent of privatization. The NewSchools Venture Fund exists to promote privatization. Of course, we should not be surprised that Arne Duncan chose the CEO of NSVF for the second most important job in the Department. After all, he invited Joanne Weiss, then CEO of NSVF, to run Race to the Top, then made her his chief of staff. From the beginning of this administration in 2009, public schools were considered obsolete and given a back seat.
Politico.com reports:
TED TALKS: Ted Mitchell, nominated to oversee higher education at the Education Department, filed his financial disclosure statement – and his connections to charter schools and education technology run deep. The CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, Mitchell sits on at least a dozen boards of non-profit organizations and for-profit companies, including two ed-tech firms, a seed fund for blended learning schools, a charter network and Khan Academy. The 44-page financial disclosure form also lists Mitchell’s numerous – but generally small – investments in technology and education companies, including the publishing house McGraw-Hill, Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Apollo Group, the for-profit company that owns the University of Phoenix.
– Mitchell is also an adviser to Salmon River Capital, a venture capital firm that has invested heavily in online, for-profit Capella University. If confirmed as under secretary, Mitchell would focus on higher education. One contentious issue the department is facing includes the regulation of for-profit colleges. Department spokeswoman Dorie Turner Nolt said Mitchell is in the process of resigning from all boards on which he sits. “Under our ethics policies, Ted won’t be able to participate in any matter pertaining to an organization where he sat on the board for at least a year,” Nolt said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But can he play basketball????
Jack in Chillicothe
_____
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First chuckle of the day;)
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Obama’s Secret Plan to Lose the Midterm Elections —
Again❢
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I’ve completely given up on the federal side. They are so far gone there’s no chance they’ll back off the market-based dogma now.
My worry is they’ll destroy any chance for us to remove the ed reform governors at the state level.
I don’t think public ed will remain strong or even viable another 4 years in OH, MI, PA, FL and WI under ed reform governors. Public schools have just taken take hit after hit after hit. It’s the double whammy, federal ed reformers and state ed reformers, that’s killing us.
Public schools are political orphans re: both state and federal in these states. They have no state-actor advocates in either system. I feel lucky to have a local school board, or we’d be completely out of luck.
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Not to be pedantic, Diane, but isn’t there a misspelling on the first line of this post? It should read,”New Schools Vulture Fund.”
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Yes….
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http://thehill.com/blogs/regwatch/pending-regs/198653-battle-rages-at-the-white-house-over-for-profit-colleges
“Education advocates and representatives of the for-profit college industry are flocking to the White House as the two sides spar over regulations meant to ensure schools are doing enough to prepare students for the job market.
Advocacy groups say the regulations have already been watered down under pressure from industry groups, while private colleges warn that overly restrictive rules could cost millions of would-be students access to education.
“Even after the Department made multiple changes requested by the for-profit college industry representatives that dramatically weakened the draft regulation, the for-profit college industry representatives objected to it,” a coalition of more than 50 watchdog and advocacy groups wrote this month in a letter to Obama.”
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“Oversight of for-profit colleges and universities by the U.S. Department of Education — which declined to discuss the case, or to talk about for-profit colleges — has been thwarted by the colleges’ lobbying and legal challenges.
But now, states and other federal agencies are stepping in.
Attorneys general from across the country are investigating for-profit colleges accused of leaving students with heavy loan debt and without marketable job skills. At least 32 states are working together to investigate the schools, while several more are working independently on similar cases.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed suit against Corinthian Colleges (COCO) in October. And last summer, New York announced a $10.25 million settlement with industry giant Career Education Corp (CECO). over claims it inflated graduates’ job-placement rates.
In cooperation with several states, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently sued ITT Educational Services (ESI), which operates about 150 schools under the names ITT Technical Institute and Daniel Webster College, for predatory lending practices, including pushing students into high-interest loans they couldn’t repay. It’s the CFPB’s first such lawsuit.”
http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/12/pf/college/for-profit-colleges/
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Fight the Privatization of Education: Oppose the Nomination of Ted Mitchell
http://activism.thenation.com/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=13320&tag=ta320
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“Since Post-9/11 GI Bill went into effect in August 2009, the federal government has paid more than $30 billion in tuition and benefits, the Department of Veterans Affairs said Friday. The VA said this money has now helped 1 million vets, service members and their families get college degrees or technical training.
Most of this money goes to for-profit colleges and universities. In fact, eight of the 10 schools receiving the most GI Bill dollars are for-profits, according to a 2012 report from the Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP).
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, accuses some for-profits of using “predatory and deceptive tactics to target service members and veterans for enrollment” in order to tap their federal educational benefits.
Last week, Harkin and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., introduced the Protecting Our Students and Taxpayers Act (POST), which would reduce the percentage of revenue for-profit schools can earn from federal financial aid to 85 percent, down from the current 90 percent.
Durbin believes too much federal money is going to an industry that “often provides a greater return on taxpayer investment to its administrators and investors than it does to its students.”
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/11/11/for-profit-colleges-preying-on-veterans-gi-bill/
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Can’t trust a politician.
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Mitchell is a strong advocate of more schools developed by local teachers and administrators, along with community groups and families. Some call this “privatization” others call it expansion of democracy and opportunity.
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“Some” people, like you and those who fund your front organization, Joe, find it in their interest to call charters an “expansion of democracy, ” which is a straight-out falsehood, since charter schools are growing fastest where local democratic control has been taken away.
To call them an expansion of “opportunity” is also a falsehood, since charters enroll and retain students selectively, and every tax dollar spent on a private-managed charter school is a dollar taken from students in real public schools.
While there may be increased opportunity for a small group of charter school students, since studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of charter schools fare no better or worse than public schools, in fact the main “opportunities” are provided to their funders, vendors and managers.
In other words, the “opportunities” are being taken advantage of, literally, by the people who fund you, Joe.
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I’m dying to know if the governors of NJ, MI, OH, PA, FL and the mayor of Chicago are claiming privatizing public schools as “private sector job growth” when they make the transfer.
Wouldn’t that be a hoot? They transfer public dollars to private companies and crow about private sector growth.
When Christie outsources probation to private companies, is that “private sector job growth”?
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In many places the people who are using charters are low income families and families who can’t get their kids into quasi-private elite selective admission magnet schools, or can’t afford to live in affluent suburbs that in some cases hire detectives to keep students out that they “don’t want” – and can’t afford to live in the affluent suburbs.
There also are some great district public schools that do a superb job with their students.
We support both – terrific district & terrific charter public schools.
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Joe Nathan, in NYC, Success Academy has millions of dollars in assets, has billionaire hedge fund managers on its board, excludes kids with disabilities, and demands free public space. When it gets free public space, it pushes out poor black and Hispanic kids. It displaces kids with disabilities. How do you feel about that?
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As mentioned earlier, I think the salaries for several charter directors in NYC are excessive. One of several ways that any public school should be evaluated is on its rate of student retention. As to co-location, I’ve seen it work wonderfully and badly.
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Joe, your perfunctory squeeks about vouchers and excessive charter management pay are understood here for what they are: attempts to inoculate yourself against people seeing what you and your funders are really doing.
It’s a literal shame that your legacy as an educator has been soiled by your working and shilling for those who seek to destroy public education and your fellow teachers.
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Continued attacks and name-calling reflect precisely what some educators complain others are doing.
Al Shanker was right in the mid-1980’s when he explained what happened to those who tried to create new (district) options – they could look forward to among other things, “Outright hostility.”
People all over the nation who have tried to create within district options have been subject to this for decades – it isn’t just about charters.
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That’s nothing new, Joe, in any field of endeavor. We talk about the importance of innovation, but very few people in any walk of life are ready to embrace it if it takes them out of their comfort zone. That is why classroom autonomy can be so important. The current love affair with Danielson and Marzano stifles creativity and innovation since they are generally being used as weapons to get teachers to toe the party line. The same holds true with the USDOE initiatives. If only charters had fulfilled their initial promise…
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In Ohio, the newspapers and Plunderbund frequently report on charter management corruption.
With privatization, tax dollars intended for students, instead, line the pockets of people, who fight against any oversight by the government.
Privatization is opportunistic exploitation, it is not opportunity. And, it is oligarchy, not democracy.
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http://www.salon.com/2014/03/13/christies_charter_school_nightmare_white_flight_and_they%E2%80%99re_bankrupting_us/
Really sad (and brave) piece on what’s happening to Hoboken Public Schools under ed reformer Chris Christie:
“While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie deals with burgeoning scandals surrounding accusations he used the Port Authority and development deals for political ends, he now finds himself in a flap surrounding charter schools in Hoboken.
As charters in the city have exploded in number and size, “they’re fostering white flight, and they’re bankrupting us,” the city’s school board head charged in a Wednesday interview.
“We are creating separate but equal school systems,” warned Hoboken Board of Education president Leon Gold. (As Salon has reported, Christie-style ed reform has also sparked controversy in Newark.)
Gold, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Engineering & Applied Science, decried the Christie administration’s approval of the HoLa charter school’s bid to add middle school grades, which was opposed by the city’s superintendent. (Gold emphasized that he is speaking in a personal capacity, and not on behalf of the entire Board of Education.) State data shows that 11 percent of HoLa students qualify for reduced-cost or free lunch, whereas 72 percent of their counterparts in Hoboken’s traditional public schools do, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. Ninety percent of charter enrollment costs are paid by the Hoboken school district.”
There’s just no concern for the effect of any of this on existing public schools. I don’t even see a real recognition that they are in a SYSTEM, and when you pull on one string, the fabric changes and maybe not for the better. I’d say it’s remarkable but I’m not sure it is. If it’s all “my child, my choice” this is probably the inevitable result.
I still find it remarkable that the adults who were involved in this saw no possibility of a downside. Who doesn’t consider the downside when they’re creating a parallel system? How crazily irresponsible and reckless is that?
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http://www.minnpost.com/learning-curve/2010/11/suits-against-profit-universities-including-capella-raise-question-do-shareho
“Mitchell is also an adviser to Salmon River Capital, a venture capital firm that has invested heavily in online, for-profit Capella University.”
Maybe he can discuss this at his confirmation hearing, since he’s an adviser:
“The university recently joined the long list of publicly traded education companies hit with class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of angry shareholders.
The Police Pension Fund of Peoria has filed suit [PDF] in U.S. District Court for Minnesota, claiming that the company misled investors about its business practices in order to inflate the price of its stock.
“The company had been engaging in abusive and fraudulent recruiting and financial aid lending practices, thereby increasing Capella’s student enrollment and revenues,” the suit claims.”
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An expansion of opportunity for families would be federal & state governments supporting their rights to collectively bargain in the workplace thus raising wages & dignity for working people & allowing families greater access to the middle class.
All the charter/privatization expansion paid for by the rest of us in the name of “democracy” is a smoke screen that skirts the real civil rights issue of greater economic opportunity.
That’s what Obama & Democrats ought to be talking about.
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“That’s what Obama & Democrats ought to be talking about.”
I don’t know that I would assume they care all that much about winning. Other than the minimum wage, which won’t pass anyway, their economic agenda is almost indistinguishable from that of Republicans.
They want trade deals, tax cuts on the corporate rate, and privatization of as many public services to contractors as they can possibly ship out the door. The rest is details.
Maybe they don’t care about the composition of Congress. Why would they? Losing the Senate might even work to their benefit on the trade deals.
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Both better job opportunities and better schools are civil rights issues.
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I have been unable to find the article you quoted on Politico – please share the link!
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Here is the article about Ted Mitchell: http://www.politico.com/morningeducation/0314/morningeducation13256.html
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This is very discouraging news. Not enough pressure from educators to stop this privatization of our public schools.
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Well, when we post on these blogs, we’re basically preaching to the choir here.
What we need to do as educators is to organize as many public school parents and students that we can – state by state, city by city, town by town, and have some massive rallies of our own to march on the state capitols and Washington.
How about it, Doctor Ravitch? Let’s have some good old 60’s activism here- letter writing campaigns, protests, whatever it takes to get the message to these politicians that we’re not happy with what they’re doing to our public education system.
Count me in when the revolution begins…….
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http://www.brennerbrief.com/public-education-in-america-socialism-solution/
Here’s the vice chair of the education committee in the Ohio legislature, a HUGE ed reform proponent:
“So how do we improve our education system so students learn the basics, and learn how to think? The only long-run solution is to move to a more privatized system. We must move to a system where the tax dollars follow the student to whichever school they choose. We do this through scholarships and Pell Grants for college students, why not primary education? A system where the parents and students have the ultimate say, not state and federal legislators, not unions, not government bureaucrats. In a free market system parents and students are free to go where the product and results are better. Common core and standardized tests under such a system will not be necessary, because the schools that fail will go out of business. Government will not be there to prop them up with more tax dollars and increased regulations. Successful schools will thrive. The free-market system works for cars, furniture, housing, restaurants, and to a lesser degree higher education, so why can’t it work for our primary education system?”
We need to do something that was done about 25 years ago in the former Soviet Union and eastern bloc: sell off the existing buildings, equipment and real estate to those in the private sector. The private sector includes our existing teachers, superintendents, management and everyday taxpayers. It will not be an easy transition and it will take open-minded people who want successful students, not those who want to fight turf wars and a hanging on of a failed system. Society should at least start with some of the worst school systems. Bust up the education monopolies and do not settle for the lowest common denominator. Privatize everything and the results will speak for themselves.”
He (of course!) attended public schools including a public university, and it wasn’t “socialism” then but now that he has to pay for it he wants it all sold off.
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Chiara Duggan: another money quote—
“Privatize everything and the results will speak for themselves.”
English-to-English translation: “unfettered greed will answer every need.”
No matter how many times the charterites/privatizers fail, they keep recycling the same failed ideas and plans hoping, well, Albert Einstein said it well:
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Thank you for this item.
😎
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I voted fpr Obama twice and generally like him, but that the hell is he doing promoting people who are not strongly supportive of public education?
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Obama is a sell out, pure and simple. I’m glad I didn’t vote for him, went Green twice.
Most of these Democrats, in my view, are DINOs, including Governor Cuomo and the President.
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Race to the Top V2.0 for higher education. It’s coming to a State near you.
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‘ “Under our ethics policies, Ted won’t be able to participate in any matter pertaining to an organization where he sat on the board for at least a year,” Nolt said.’
Under their ethics policies, it sounds like he shouldn’t be able to do anything for a year that services the charter or for profit sector. That sounds like he will spend the first year doing his best to destroy public education.
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