Mercedes. Schneider read an article in Forbes about Carrie Walton Penner, the family member now in charge of education strategy for the Walton Family Foundation. Schneider blew a fuse. Maybe more than one. Carrie wants lots and lots of charters so that the free market will force the public schools to compete. Just like Walmart forces mom-and-pop stores to compete by cutting prices and forcing them out of business.
Schneider writes about the Walmart business model. While family members are billionaires, Walmart workers work for low wages, and some apply for food stamps. Walmart, she says, has even used prison labor to cut costs.
Walmart is closely allied with ALEC and favors the model legislation that helps big corporations and the 1%.
What really annoys Schneider is that Carrie promotes YES Prep as a model for the nation because, allegedly, 100% of its graduates enroll in four-year colleges. Since Schneider had only recently deconstructed the YES Prep story, she was flummoxed that the Forbes writer reported the tale without investigating the backstory. Like the 40% attrition rate. Like the schools’ requirement that students get accepted into a four-year college or they can’t graduate.
She concludes:
“This Forbes writer brushes off criticism of the likes of YES Prep as the “anticharter crowd derid[ing] the gains.”
“I’m fine with this labeling. I certainly do “deride” so-called “gains” that are little more that student deselection via student-handbook-encouraged attrition.
“But I will make a deal:
“When Carrie Walton Penner enrolls her children at a predominately-TFA-staffed charter school as their principal means of formal education, and when she publicizes their test scores as evidence that the charter model she promoted for other people’s children has served her children well, then I will consider the charters that she pays for with money that should go to paying Walmart workers a living wage as being “successful.”
“Not a minute sooner.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mercedes Schneider is a wonder. The Walton family name is the only reason Forbes gave this person a platform. She is another “know nothing about education” billionaire.
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You mean:”This person” as the writer of the Forbes article and not Mercedes, right?!?
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Thank you Duane for your explanation in the thread “about Crazy in Georgia?” regarding PEOPLE and SOCIETY.
I was writing a reply to you, then the thread is disappeared due to my mistake in pressing the wrong key which I don’t know how it happens.
However, I think that you are a philosopher in both modern and traditional aspects, as you write:
“the Accident of Birth”, and “that no one in 1% or in the mass can have a control over what becomes/is.”
In a way, I love your idea. However, who on earth wants to be born in a country, a family, in a bad shape of body, mind and spirit? Back2basic
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Obviously a conspiracy theory.
Everyone knows the incredibly wealthy people who buy US politicians are well-intentioned and want only what is best for us.
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How many times are journalists going to fall for the “100% college acceptance” scam?
I mean really. How hard is it to figure out that “100% of 60% remaining” after 4 years isn’t “100%” except in bizarro world?
If my local public school lost the bottom 40% between freshman and senior year they’d have “100%” college acceptance too. Is there a school that wouldn’t?
Duncan promotes these claims too, on his twitter feed, which is just cringe-worthy. Is he innumerate? Didn’t he graduate from Harvard?
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On the first day of my college Economics 101 class, the very first thing that we students saw on the chalkboard (yes… back then there were chalkboards(!)) when we entered the classroom was “OPM,” written in giant letters in bright white chalk. I had no idea what it meant. The professor began the class by saying the following words: “If you remember nothing else from my class, please remember these three letters; they stand for ‘Other People’s Money.’ Whenever possible, don’t use your own money to make money; make money by using OTHER PEOPLE’S money.” The push for charter schools and education reform immediately brought OPM to mind — except that I have modified it: I now refer to education reform as “OPK” or “OPC.” OTHER PEOPLE’S KIDS, or OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN (including mine).
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Deborah, what wonderful post. Other people’s money (OPM) is the linchpin of speculation and fraud on Wall St. This was one of the reasons Occupy Wall St. was so popular – the 99% lost their life savings and the1% banksters were repaid with our money (and more…)
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NPR should stop calling itself public media. I don’t know how much money npr gets from Walton, but they sure attribute Walton money a lot.
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My big question is this for moves like YES Prep uses:
If the public school exists as the “fall back” position for failing students so charters can succeed, what happens when public schools all finally fail out from being saturated with hard-to-reach students and then charters are forced to take them.
Oh wait, each charter will be free to turn away or counsel out students…so WHO will be responsible for taking students that no charter will take lest they hurt their own statistics? What if you have a situation where there is no public school, and every local charter in a reasonable distance turns students away (or else the student is pushed out and needs to go elsewhere) – what do we do with those students and who will teach them.
Who is accountable?
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I also think it’s misleading for journalists to claim Walton heirs want to “fix” public education.
They don’t do anything for public schools.
If they want to replace public schools with a private system they should say so. They shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind “public schools” when we’re really talking about a narrow focus on opening more and more charter schools.
She’s a charter school advocate. That’s what she is.
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“Fix”, is absolutely the right word to use. As in, “the fix is in”.
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“The Walton Plan”
The “fix” is in
The Walton plan
Is “Win! Win! Win!
For Walton clan
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Just a head’s up on accurate use of language. There isn’t a single word in this piece about the Walton heir has done for an existing public school.
Only in our current ridiculous fake-debate could a piece on “public education” completely ignore the public schools 90% of kids attend.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2014/12/01/sam-waltons-granddaughter-has-plans-to-fix-public-education-in-america/
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Chiara: I think a telephone-book-size volume could be filled with accounts of the enablers of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement—
“Gullible’s Travels.”
It has taken me five years, but I have concluded that it isn’t so much that “journalists” and other MSM advocates for the “new civil rights movement of our time” don’t understand—
They don’t want to understand. They don’t think they need to understand. They firmly believe that repeating eduproduct selling points is what journalism and news reporting are all about. Perhaps, to borrow a bit from a time not so long ago, they are engaging in Pravda-think: parroting the current line of the ‘thought leaders’ of the status quo is the sincerest form of flattery, plus it is the surest way to self-preservation in one’s job and career.
M: the answer to “what do we do with those students and who will teach them” is—
Not waste precious resources and time and effort on Rahm’s “uneducables” and Petrilli’s “non-strivers.” The US of A is “in it to win” and “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” In any race or competition or fight to the death there are winners and losers, and it may be unfortunate, but when it comes to the “ed biz” there will be no “choice” [“voice” having been eliminated] but to engage in the nasty business of educational triage and favor the worthwhile few that will take us to the top over the useless many that will drag us down to defeat.
After all, why take account of those that don’t count? Not students and parents and communities and citizens but customers and clients—you go with what makes the bottom line black, not red. There’s no such thing as “our children” but only “my children” and “your children” and so on.
Chiara & M: the bottom line is the bottom line. Hard data points aka $tudent $ucce$$ is its own reward. As described by a very old and very dead Roman guy long long ago—
“For greed all nature is too little.” [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
😎
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You may be interested in this chart that explains Walmart’s Food Stamp Scam
http://www.jwj.org/walmarts-food-stamp-scam-explained-in-one-easy-chart
And an old friend of mine who is anti union, supports the Walton family’s right to run Walmart any way they want; and he supports the Koch brothers agenda, Bill Gates and all the rest of the 21st century robber barons. This old friend thinks all of these Walmart workers should lose their food stamps and get a second job because they deserve to suffer—-he thinks they are all lazy, deadbeats.
Forbes reported that Walmart Workers earning poverty wages cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion annually—-more than $62 billion every decade.
This is a portrait of the world being created by the billionaire oligarchs, for instance, Bill Gates.
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Remember how Wal-mart stocked only products that were “made in America.” Not any more. It’s all about profit. Their values shift with the profitability tide.
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Remember teachers and friends of public education…spend your holiday dollars any where but Walmart!!! NEVER at Walmart!
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To M:
What if you have a situation where there is no public school, and every local charter in a reasonable distance turns students away (or else the student is pushed out and needs to go elsewhere) – what do we do with those students and who will teach them.
Here is the answer.
Your questions have been answered through the organization of crime, like mafia, terrorists, …Those students may be not interested in academic, but are surely born with streetwise skills. As a result, it depends on their level of intelligence, those students can be recruited for leader assistants or followers. Definitely, their careers would be either bank robbers, kidnappers to wealthy families.
If you cannot beat them, buy them. Yes, the rich will employ them as body guards after all
Who is accountable?
A big YES to society, or tax payers, and all charity organizations. Walmart is one of those charity organization according to the other thread in which Walmart employs prisoners’ labor at the lowest possible wages.
Please consider my sarcasm to your questions. However, this can be double edge sword. Back2basic
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