I have had many exchanges with “reformers” who denied that they wanted to destroy public education and replace it with a privatized system. No, they insisted, competition will be good for the public schools. Charters and vouchers will improve public schools. I disagreed because I had heard many of their allies speak truthfully about their desire to privatize the public spending on education, behind closed doors, back when I was with them.
Now we know that competition doesn’t improve public schools. It takes money away from public schools. It weakens them.
But what do “reformers” want? Let them tell you. Jeanne Allen, who founded the Center for Education Reform after working for the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation in D.C., has advocated for charters and vouchers for more than two decades. In a few weeks, she will offer a seminar at the Center called “The Decline and Fall of the U.S. Education System – The Development of a Movement.”
That’s the goal of reform. Weakening and privatizing public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Scary stuff Diane. There is really an Ed Reform University now??? Check out the 10 week “free” course – http://university.edreform.com/ Thanks for alerting us to this.
I love that it’s ten weeks, online and ‘free’. “You too can be an education expert in only TEN WEEKS!”
They also put “faculty” in quotes.
Later they refer to them as adjuncts so that’s more honest. They love then some “adjuncts”. The laser-like focus on cheap labor in ed reform is very inspiring, I must say. In true corporate fashion, the tippy-to of the employee pyramid get all the money.
Of Course, the financial industry want a piece of K-12 and higher ed public money so Arne’s greasing the skids for them.
One of this organization’s partners sells–big surprise–software technology for a “mobile education platform”.
https://www.qualcomm.com/products/qlearn
Many of these so-called reformers appear to have business interests. I’m shocked!
It’s not so much they want to privatize education that they want to limit it. Our political discourse has been so polluted with nutjob neoliberal ideas, people don’t recognize these folks want to limit any upward mobility among the masses. I fully expect a movement to legalize child labor in this country. There won’t be any public financing of schools at the end of the day, so if parents can’t get their kids educated, they can work in sweatshops.
Shades of Dickens coming to America in 2015.
Public education will be a dumping ground for charter school rejects.
Plus, the neediest students that require the most intensive help will be in an impoverished school. They will be like lepers. Whenever a group is marginalized, they are more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior.
This is gross. Thanks, Diane.
“Reform” (Arnetha Frankly)
What you want
Teacher, I got it
What you need
You know I got it
All I’m askin’
Is for a little reform when you’re at school (just a little bit)
You baby (just a little bit) when you’re at school
(just a little bit) teacher (just a little bit)
I ain’t gonna do you wrong when you’re gone
Ain’t gonna do you wrong cause I don’t wanna
All I’m askin’
Is for a little reform when you’re at school (just a little bit)
You baby (just a little bit) when you’re at school (just a little bit)
Yeah (just a little bit)
I’m about to give you all of my money
And all I’m askin’ in return, honey
Is to give me my profits
When you’re at school (just a, just a, just a, just a)
You baby (just a, just a, just a, just a)
When you’re at school (just a little bit)
Yeah (just a little bit)
Ooo, my test is
Sweeter than honey
And guess what?
So is my money
All I want you to do for me
Is give it for me when you’re at school (re, re, re ,re)
Yeah baby (re, re, re ,re)
Give it for me (reform, just a little bit)
When you’re at school, now (just a little bit)
R-E-F-O-R-M see?
Find out what it means to me
R-E-F-O-R-M see?
Take care, TFA
Oh (VAM it to me, VAM it to me
VAM it to me, VAM it to me)
A little reform (VAM it to me, VAM it to me
VAM it to me, VAM it to me)
Whoa, babe (just a little bit)
A little reform (just a little bit)
You get fired (just a little bit)
Keep on testin’ (just a little bit)
You’re runnin’ out of fool (just a little bit)
And I am lyin’ (just a little bit)
(re, re, re, re) When you’re at school
(re, re, re ,re) ‘form
Or you might walk in (reform, just a little bit)
And find out you’re gone (just a little bit)
I got to have (just a little bit)
A little reform (just a little bit)
I love Aretha Franklin! I’m shocked at the advances the deformers have already made. It is very scary. It is the final way the billionaires can make even more money. Everything else has been sent overseas. As an older teacher, it is very hard to observe these horrible, horrible changes. The PARCC assessments are developmentally inappropriate coupled with severe lack of instructional time, so the scores will be unsatisfactory. Only time will tell if public school systems can survive this abuse. Yes, it is frightening. I mourn for the children and the younger teachers.
They don’t care if privatization works…they just want your tax dollars. I have to ask just how much money do some people need? http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30875633
I want to “Develop a Movement.” But probably not the same kind…
I developed a movement overnight, and dropped a load this morning after my coffee.
Donna! 🙂
Y’all gettin into my territory now!
They should rename the course, Exploitation 101. As along as we continue on this misguided path, there will be those that will seek to profit from it. Jeb Bush and Michael Milken immediately come to mind. Putting a price on the heads of American children is wrong on so many levels. Too bad POTUS has his head in the sand!
YES, of course, WE educators and academics need to continue to explain what is wrong with the current ‘reform’ and narrative about education, but –to a public that thrives on Harry Potter and The Hunger Games and is inundated with false information about a complex science, what is needed is a campaign to educate them about WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE… what the science shows, so they can tell ‘poop’ from shinola when they hear it.Exactly, and we have known this for how long?
It is the public which is in the dark. How else can it be with almost sixteen thousand districts doing their thing, in 50 states,, while the media is in the hands of the very people who seek to end public education and create a dumbed down population which they can control. The wealth of those orchestrating the ‘reform’ is staggering.
“The 80 wealthiest people in the world altogether own $1.9 trillion, the report found, nearly the same amount shared by the 3.5 billion people who occupy the bottom half of the world’s income scale. (Last year, it took 85 billionaires to equal that figure.) And the richest 1 percent of the population, who number in the millions, control nearly half of the world’s total wealth, a share that is also increasing.”
So, let me be clear, while we educators, here, know exactly what is happening, the folks out there are being sold a bill of goods by the plutocrats, while we have no PUBLIC VOICE. And we expect change?
And one more question: Who are the people ‘out there’; who are OUR citizens , whom we cannot seem to reach with the truth about the ‘testing’ narrative?
Can we tell by the programs that they watch – the media that they prefer — who they are?
The demographics show that most ” YA books are purchased by readers age 30 to 44, says A.O Scott in his essay about television: “In one way or another… nobody knows how to be a grown-up anymore. Adulthood as we have known it has become conceptually untenable. ” Scott ponders :” Maybe nobody grows up anymore, but everyone gets older.”
But, friends, these are the audience for the Duncan narrative, and the Heritage Foundation propaganda.
Scott continues: ” bemoaning the general immaturity of contemporary culture would be as obtuse as declaring it the coolest thing ever. A crisis of authority is not for the faint of heart. It can be scary and weird and ambiguous. But it can be a lot of fun, too. The best and most authentic cultural products of our time manage to be all of those things. They imagine a world where no one is in charge and no one necessarily knows what’s going on, where identities are in perpetual flux. Mothers and fathers act like teenagers; little children are wise beyond their years. Girls light out for the territory and boys cloister themselves in secret gardens. We have more stories, pictures and arguments than we know what to do with, and each one of them presses on our attention with a claim of uniqueness, a demand to be recognized as special. The world is our playground, without a dad or a mom in sight.”
And these folks certainly are not listening to TEACHERS. They are not interested in what real educators have to offer — the historical perspective about what it means to be an adult human being.
Seems like a plan for those who control everything!
So, our road is clear… the public needs GRASP THAT THEY HAVE A STAKE in this…they need to know WHAT the destruction means for their future and for the future of their own children.
‘THEY NEED TO KOW ‘WAHT’S IN IT FOR THEM’ before the pay attention.
They need to be challenged to take up the gauntlet and force the legislature to follow the science of learning, not the ‘mantra about teaching” which is sold to them?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Learning-not-Teacher-evalu-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-111001-956.html
Last word: I am old. I am in my seventh decade and I have noticed something about research. In all sciences when the definitive research is uncovered, in medicine or rocket science, it is applied. No one is using leeches anymore.
However, in the science of learning, there is ALWAYS ANOTHER voice, holding up a ‘study’ that works in Oshkohs, but not anywhere else, and foisting it as the new ‘magic elixir’! So many of these voices are like Joel Klein… not even a teacher, or like John Deasy who lines his pockets as LA kids fall into poverty.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
No real evidence is required by a public that DOES NOT GRASP the difference between the words “learning” or “teaching”, let alone the COMPLEXITIES of the human brain where the ACQUISITION OF SKILLS is the OBJECTIVE.
DOES ANYONE grasp how the word ‘objective’ is at the core of the learning experience? I think this was the first thing I learned in 1963 when I began to PRACTICE at becoming a ‘real’ teacher!
Nowhere, out there, can I find Pew’s 3rd level research on Learning (the 8 Principles of learning — the criteria, the ingredients -the very things that must be in place for learning to occur!
Disappeared! I have said this over and over, here, I would not known it existed —
if I had not been the NYC cohort for the research — and attended the LRDC seminars– and seen the Harvard thesis by Lauren Resnick, that was at the heart of it. Maybe I am clueless on google, but while I can find Dr. Resnick’s theory, I cannot find the zillion dollar research in 12 districts across this nation, where tens of thousands o f teachers were observed and assessed in a GENUINE manner, to discover what the heck worked!
Click to access challengestandards.pdf
I have copies of the huge volume: THE NATIONAL PERFORMANCE STANDARDS that came out of THAT research— and which lined the shelves along the walls of the DISRTICT 2 “rubber room:
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
, where I sat for 6 months waiting for someone to tell me why I was not still in my famous practice, working for the 3rd year ON RESEARCH with the LRDC?
Isn’t this a place for some journalist to begin?
Who will get out there and counter the Heritage Foundation nonsense with the truth???
It is so easy to fool our citizens, using that fabulous HD propaganda machine, the ubiquitous TV, and the nonsense of the blogosphere, to subvert the national conversation with a nation of citizens who do not think like adults, and others who have no time to think at all, holding several jobs so they do not have to choose between food and rent.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/08/subverting-the-national-conversation-a.html
Isn’t it time that the public knows what the SCIENCE says about how kids learn?
Isn’t it time for a real , easy to grasp explanation of the the complex thinking and reasoning processES which real teacher-practitioners enable so people can APPLY what they KNOW!
Isn’t it time that someone pointed out the meaning of words like AUTHENTIC & GENUINE, so that a dumbed down public will GRASP WHAT authentic performance ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE (as opposed to a grade on a test) !
Knowing how to recognize real learning and the techniques which ENABLE & FACILITATE IT, is root of the 2 YEARS OF LRDC worships on LEARNING run by the Ph’d staff developers which I attended!!
We need a filmmaker, a documentarian to TELL THE STORY of what it takes for a HUMAN BRAIN to acquire skills and knowledge.
We here at this wonderful teacher’s room get it…. they don’t!!!
Reformers have no consciences, and no heart. They really are the “me” folks. Disgusting in many ways. I don’t know how they sleep at night. All they have is money.
There are movements and there are movements.
There’s the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement and there are bowel movements.
😳
Then there are human rights and civil rights movements.
😊
All movements are not created—or manufactured, astroturf style—equal.
When wealthy and power and prestige almost beyond measure move in a self-serving direction, it is amazing how such a seemingly vast armada can be slowed down, sometimes even stopped in its tracks, when a few people in it—
Refuse to be silent. Speak up. Stand up. Refuse to go along to get along.
Read the first paragraph of the above posting. I was never a part of the charterite/voucherite/privatizer crowd so I can’t say that there was much holding me back from speaking my piece.
It’s a lot different when there’s a lot to be gained—and a lot to be lost—when you’re part of the “next big thing” and you decide that all the $tudent $ucce$$ and influence and celebrity in the world aren’t worth being unable to look in the mirror and be proud of the person looking back at you.
As much as I appreciate it, that first paragraph isn’t just about invaluable insider info. It’s also about the difference an individual can make. Those benefitting from and defending the status quo doesn’t tend to celebrate people that want to do things like ensure a “better education for all.”
And especially for the folks that push “hard data-drivel points” and VAMania and stack ranking, that know the price of everything and the value of nothing, just what do the words and actions of those “shrill” and “strident” dissenters amount to?
Perhaps it would be well to consult some homegrown talent:
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” [Mark Twain]
I do not in any way disparage the former but thank you to the owner of this blog for showing the other kind.
It helps to make all the difference in the world.
And you can’t put a price on that.
😎
According to this link Lamar Alexander is proposing leaving all education decisions up to states. This would in essence overturn the Civil Rights Act of 1965. http://thinkprogress.org/education/2015/01/19/3612950/senator-turns-back-on-students-of-color-and-civil-rights-in-new-education-bill/
More than likely SCOTUS is about to do away with disparate outcomes.
I said on my website 5 years ago, If we don’t have a viable alternative to the fiasco of testing ‘Public Schools Will Perish”. Today we still don’t have a plan, and yes, we still see public schools closed.
Go to http://www.wholechildreform.com and take the links for that plan. Also search Dr. Angela Dye and Dr. Victoria Young for creative ideas..
Corporate “reformers” are greedy, two-faced, anti-social liars. The practices of big business are at odds with altruistic goals, because so many of those corporations create products that are consumable and based on PLANNED obsolescence, in order to ensure their continued profits. In contrast, government services and products are made to endure, for the public good. Profiteers don’t want to compete against what is made to last, or what’s tax-funded so ostensibly free, so their PR pawns have set out to galvanize government haters through propaganda campaigns.
Complain as “reformers” and other right wingers in both parties often do about “too much government,” no one takes advantage of government more than big business. They fund astroturf hate groups and imposter “civil rights” leaders, so that companies can continue to profiteer, buy preferential treatment from politicians, receive tax waivers and be allowed to raid public dollars, including for privatizing public services such as education.
Another important example is companies that exploit government by lobbying for and receiving research funding for private gain, such as the Pharmaceutical Industry. Those companies then create products for which THEY ALONE receive all of the profits, not the government that invested in them. Considering its involvement in private companies like this, our government could be doing a lot to lower the costs of medication for people whose health is compromised, but instead it looks the other way and does nothing, to the benefit of private enterprises, not the public good.
That is truly corrupt government and the kind of government that haters should be focusing on today. Instead, they are sheep who have fallen for the lies of leaders who promote the dissemination of inaccurate information regarding the infallibility of unregulated corporations and “free markets.” Many of those involved are the very politicians and companies responsible for recently crashing our economy, but they received no consequences. Corporations got government bail outs instead, from which they took high bonuses and increased their incomes,
Other countries are plagued by neoliberal economic policies and were effected by the crash as well, but their people are much more aware of the cause than most Americans. How disconcerting, embarrassing even, to be living alongside so many people impacted by such policies, but who have allowed themselves to be duped by propaganda in the mainstream media, especially when the truth can be readily found on the Internet, including on sites like this. (Thanks so much, Diane!)
OK folks, it’s FREE, ONLINE and will give you a window into the coming rehash of reformy propaganda. You can sit there and watch as they telegraph their punches. Anyone else signing up to look behind the threadbare curtain of reform? Anyone else want to see who makes the cut of the propaganda machine and will therefore be a thorn in the sides of America’s parents and children? Who will be the first to ask them why they have taken their various positions when the evidence clearly indicates they are false? THERE IS A TON OF LEMONADE WAITING TO BE MADE HERE!
What I don’t get is how no one seems to understand the definition of competition. It literally requires winners and losers. Definitionally, it demands that some succeed and some fail. Without question, the losers will be the most vulnerable students, by definition and design.
The only way to make public schools better is to reduce class size. This is what we need to fight for. It is very simple.
Small class size is a start but not the total solution. More planning time is another but the biggest is a change in the system and philosophy of the education system. Beginning with replacing the test with whole child assessment, replace the out dated failure system with one that makes failure a positive, learning experience,replacing competition with individual learning, and on and on http://www.wholechildreform.com and order my new book
The Broad propaganda machine goes on-line.
And it’s okay that our public schools, mired in bureaucracy and stifled by teachers unions, are given permission to continue their downward spiral. We have solid scientific evidence as to how to improve literacy scores of our nation’s youth, yet teachers unions and bureaucrats within the public school system are great impediments. Charter schools can cut through these impediments. Why should our tax dollars fund mediocrity or worse?
alexanderj1962: the lowest reading scores are in nonunion states like Mississippi.
Alexander, if you want to stop funding mediocrity, then advocate for closing large numbers of charter schools, which get poor results.