This is a comment by one of our frequent participants, identified as Teacher Ed:
Virtually every component of corporate “reform” imposed across this country is based on disasters that “reformers” have fabricated and tyrannical racketeering. Clearly, this is being done in order to privatize public education and raid tax dollars, while diverting attention away from the real disasters of poverty, a severe decline in the number of jobs with livable wages, a diminishing middle class and the inequitable distribution of wealth.
Are we supposed to wait until the perpetrators turn the screws and receive their dues for each part of this scheme before lawsuits can be filed? Is that how it works with the mob, too –payoffs have to be made first by victims before anything can be done about all the threats and dire consequences to result from not kowtowing to demands?
Is it possible to file a lawsuit that addresses virtually ALL of the components of the corporate “reform” business plan that is rapidly unravelling the fabric of American education? Maybe the ACLU could manage it, if only someone who cares would help fund it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Teacher Ed is right. File a lawsuit similar to Brown v BOE 60 years ago! So let’s create a law suit committee to research how. State Courts or Federal Courts? Who has “standing” to file? Questions to research. Diane’s network must have lawyers following her comments. We need a task force. Network Public Ed. should tackle forming this task force.
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It would need to be a federal civil rights lawsuit. The people who would have standing to file would be an adult representing a child that has been harmed by the above policies. For VAM, it could be a teacher (or a large group of teachers) that suffered discriminatory harm.
There are so many unjust policies though, whether it be testing, CCSS, Teacher Evaluation, Vouchers/Charters, that you’d need a lawsuit for each probably to demonstrate harm by each practice (or alternatively, target one that makes the others fall apart without a chimeric twist to make them legal until challenged again).
And then, the lawsuits would probably fail at some state level before getting appealed to the federal level until it winds up with the Supreme Court who don’t need to follow the laws of the land since they can strike down those laws without having their hands tied by the legislature which has been a very vogue thing to do lately (tying specifically into legislation what judges can and can’t rule on in cases of dispute).
The Supreme Court is the only body that isn’t concerned with who buttered their bread, but, were chosen with scrupulous care that their beliefs would follow a particular ideology prior to confirmation since they don’t have quite the same financial Conflict of Interest issues even judges might have (if appointed).
Bottom line: Without the lawsuits really being filed yet except for a handful of challenges to state level policies that were foisted at the federal level and enacted at the state, it will probably still be a decade before we get SCOTUS rulings on them seeing as winding through the courts takes years and years to have a ruling, an appeal, remanded to the lower court with guidance, appeal again to SCOTUS, etc.
The courts can’t save us – by the time we get justice, there won’t be schools left to save and righting the ship will be fiscally impossible with the amount of money that will be mismanaged at that point, not to mention the real estate, building conditions, technology updates, and other technical stuff that will either be not owned by the district, be underfunded, lost to fiscal mismanagement, and years of disinvestment by buying services rather than building institutions that would need to be made up for just to arrive where we are now.
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I contacted the NYCLU because a group of parents of special needs students wanted to file a lawsuit. They turned us down with no explanation. I have tried and continue to try to find any organization willing to take this on. They all say it is too expensive, and/or they don’t have the resources/manpower.
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The special education advocates and national organizations need to join in this fight to save public education. They petitioned the courts in 1975 to require education services for special education students. Unfortunately, the spirit of the law never matched the funding. With significant new brain based research we are doing a better job of identifying and servicing these students. This in turn has caused a significant increase in the per pupil cost of special education. Where is the commitment to special education in the Reform movement? I don’t hear it ever mentioned except to read about some charters that do not accept all students. We need to hear from the organizations that advocate for these students.
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Yes, dismantle the deptartment of education. That is the only way if people are brave enough to do it.
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janinelargent; if the fed dept is gone you will be left with the bureaucrats in your own state (plus governor and legislature) and do you trust them sufficiently? when it comes to education? or health etc? I think there are goals that we need to address across the states but the current flawed policies by A. Duncan et al do not represent the best of what we should be doing. getting back to the ESEA is significant
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quote: “a severe decline in the number of jobs with livable wages,” this is why it is fraud when they sell parents on “career ready” because there are no careers in the offing……. they have made up a logic design that says “people don’t have skills so we can’t hire them ” then the next step they “sell” the curriculum and tests to fit into their own logic plan of “if only these students were better trained they would find work”… the whole logic model is wrong; it is Dickensian ….. the schools should not be in the business of creating egg crates with deciles and quartiles of test scores so that the gates to the future livelihood (earning a living) and life goals get locked up even tighter …. when they are on NPR claiming we have “surplus people” I know the sanguine talking points …
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You might find this article interesting:
http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages-microsoft-report-distorts/
It’s from 2012, but the message is the same. Schools are pumping out more STEM workers with 21st century skills, but Microsoft still needs to hire foreigners who will work for less. There are a lot of buried stories about how hard it is for scientists and engineers to find work these days. It makes me wonder whether this movement to churn out robotron children who can only think like engineers is really worth the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars, that is education reform and common core.
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You can file it. You can also file a lawsuit against God if you’re willing to pay the filing fee. Both will be dismissed. I’m surprised Teacher Ed doesn’t know this.
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I did not know that racketeering was legal when politicians, appointed officials and their billionaire sponsors engage in it.
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If you’re truly interested, the first question is, what is “racketeering”? The law is not an informal conversation or debate.
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If you have something constructive to add from the legalistic bully pulpit you have chosen to assume, then say it. Otherwise, please stop the pedantic goating and quit treating teachers like we’re imbeciles.
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Let me be clearer: No, it is not “possible to file a [meritorious] lawsuit that addresses virtually ALL of the components of the corporate ‘reform’ business plan that is rapidly unravelling the fabric of American education.” There are many reasons why not, they would all sound pedantic (and I know you don’t like that!). In a nutshell, it’s just far too broad.
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“A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket were not to exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering.[1] Particularly, the potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with the specific intent to engender continual patronage for this party. An archetype is the protection racket, wherein a person or group indicates that they could protect a store from potential damage, damage that the same person or group would otherwise inflict, while the correlation of threat and protection may be more or less deniably veiled, distinguishing it from the more direct act of extortion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime)
They might not be the mob, but it sure sounds to me like politicians and their posse, including the officials they have appointed and the billionaires who back them, are entrenched in organized racketeering in education. I’m guessing it would take a much more skilled lawyer than Flerp! to argue such a convoluted case, since it involves seasoned lawmakers who’ve either condoned it or looked the other way, including when appointees like Arne Duncan have circumvented the Constitution.
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There has been a bipartisan effort that has been building up to the privatization of public education across America since 1983, with the publication of “A Nation at Risk,” during the Reagan administration, and which was proven to be a manufactured crisis in the Sandia Report. Still, it was heavily promoted in both parties by neoliberal followers of Milton Friedman, who sought the privation of public education since the 50s and reiterated it in the 90s. Ever since Obama was elected, cash strapped states suffering from the economic crash were coerced to lift caps on privatized schools, i.e., charters, in order to receive funds under Race to the Top, and public schools have been privatized across the country at record speed.
Diane described the business plan in “Reign of Error.” There is plenty of evidence indicating that no one benefits more from the privatization of public services such as education than profiteers, including cronies and relatives of politicians, like Joe Biden’s brother, entrepreneurs, big business, testing and curriculum companies, as well as non-educators masquerading in “non-profits” with bloated six figure incomes.
It took the first black president in our nation from Clinton’s neoliberal Democratic party to bring this GOP birthed business plan to fruition. Just as it took a Secretary of Education serving in the administration of a former professor of Constitutional law to put into action the components of the business plan that are the most damaging to the public good and the most beneficial to profiteers, AND which violate federalism, it is going to take a very astute legal team to figure out the best way to bring this matter to court, with the greatest likelihood of success.
Meanwhile, funders need to be located, and each of us needs to do what we can to ensure that corrupt politicians are voted out of office.
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The ACLU is on to of it in Delaware. Maybe it’ll catch on. http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/12/16/federal-civil-rights-complaint-charter-school-segregation
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the corruption — since time immemorial; civil war era Washburn had to investigate why shoddy shoes were supplied to the soldiers; Robert Kennedy — one of his first investigations was corruption among contractors providing military clothing. I haven’t looked up the details lately but I remember seeking out the Washburn investigation to show my nephew last year at the holiday season. It’s the racketeering that invades politics…. corruption and greed ; they see the schools as a market for the greed and profiteering and it is worthy of discussion and dialogue ; get back to the elected officials , write the newspapers, be vigilant . They have built a fantastic hype around this one with computers being the deus ex machina which creates technology bubbles over and over again in the economy.
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A few years,ago, I asked the law firm of David Boise to help is in this fight. They never replied and now we know why. They have been hired in NY by the Billionaire Boys Club to help destroy the Evil Teachers Association. As for the ACLU, I am a member in California and about to revoke my membership and stop paying monthly fees because they also have been hired by the BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB in the case in California to remove ALL teachers rights and blame ALL teachers as the reason a hand full of students from low socioeconomic schools failed to do well. My right to Due Process caused these students to do poorly in their schools miles away from where I teach!? Am I living in the Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits? Now I understand why many people believe in Aliens( not the ones from other countries)because some of them are now in charge of our Democracy!
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I know this question doesn’t fit here, but given the push to make education more efficient through various reform schemes, it seems like an important question to ask.
Does more efficiently always mean better?
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I know we have had a “cult of efficiency” in several decades…..
I know this question doesn’t fit here, but given the push to make education more efficient through various reform schemes, it seems like an important question to ask. Does more efficiently always mean better?
the question I need to ask is: we trade off our professional autonomy in pursuit of accountability (as measured by the VAM or “tests”)…. the tools and the efficiency of productivity are in that context for me….
jeanhaverhill@aol.com
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I highly doubt most artists would list efficiency as a critical component of their work. However, the politicians and billionaires calling the shots in education are all about the business model and seem incapable of comprehending that teaching is both an art and a science. They are no more willing to acknowledge artistry in education than they are to recognize the importance of human interactions in learning, or the validity of genuine science over junk science and the opinions proffered by the belief-tanks they fund.
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I had the same thought.
Surely, the Sistine Chapel could be more efficiently painted — uniformly and in a single color — with modern spray painting technology. Would that be better?
I actually think this applies not just to art, but to anything where real value is important. (Note: economists have managed to devalue even the word “value”)
Houses that are built with ‘efficiency’ at the fore are often more like trailers than real houses.
And software that is produced with a focus on “efficiency” (maximum profit) turns out like Microsoft Windows. But given that a window is basically a hole, I guess the name is apt, right?
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So, we reduce the success of teaching and learning to a standardized test score. How much more efficient can you get? Now if we could only figure out what to do with all the rejects…
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agree with the position that all of this “reform” in education is because corporations see millions of dollars in public education and have decided to raid the pot of “gold”. These “reforms” will benefit business, ruin public schools that are well run, further disenfanchise schools in poorer districts, and turn young high achieving students away from becoming teachers. Which elected officials have the guts to stop this?
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What about a lawsuit on behalf of children’s education, similar to the Childrens Trust, related to climate change?
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Yes, I was wondering about that as well.
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