From a reader in Arizona. Being a reformster means never being accountable when your promises don’t pan out:
“What does private/public partnership really mean?
“Well, in Arizona it means alliances that enable seamless, chameleon–like, transitions from one high profile, high-paying, private or public policy position, to the other.
“Here are a few examples:
“THEN: Rebecca Gau, Director of the Office of Education Innovation for Governor Jan Brewer was responsible for implementing the Education Reform Agenda, after work at the Morrison Institute of Public Policy and AZ Charter Schools Association.
“NOW: Rebecca Gau is the Executive Director of Arizona’s Stand For Children, and organization that advocates for school leaders, quality teachers and excellent schools for every child and high academic standards. Stand For Children is currently involving itself in a local public school board matter in the title one, Alhambra Unified School District. Curious? Indeed, because Stand For Children featured a former Alhambra superintendent, Dr. Karen Williams, on their website two years ago.
“The organization offers a Stand University for Parents, advocates for children and features blog pieces on why OPTING-IN for testing, is the way to go. But, whose children is Stand For Children, standing for?
“THEN: Pearl Chang Esau served as the Executive Director of Teach For America, Phoenix and was responsible for growing the number of corps member leaders who teach for two years in hard-to-staff public and charter schools before launching their own careers.
“NOW: Pearl Esau is the Executive Director of Expect More Arizona, “The movement (Where did I hear that word? Ah, yes,TFA promos) dedicated to building the collective public will needed to achieve a world-class education for all Arizona students.”
“THEN: Greg Miller founder of Challenge Schools (charter group) was appointed to the Arizona Board of Education and served on the Charter School Board.
“NOW: Greg Miller is the President of the Arizona State Board of Education, and a charter millionaire (see Glass: http://ed2worlds.blogspot.ca/2015/02/arizona-has-no-concept-of-conflict-of.html?m=1
challenging an elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
“THEN: Eileen Klein, formerly with state government in Florida, was paid to serve as Chief of Staff for Governor Brewer, and Director of Policy for the Arizona House of Representatives and chief advisor to the majority leadership. During her tenure in the administration of the governor, the Arizona Commerce Authority, the state’s leading public/private economic development organization and launching Arizona Ready, an education reform plan to align statewide education goals across the P-20 spectrum, began. She worked with the Arizona Board of Regents to develop a performance-based funding model for the university system. She is a former Arizona Board of Education member.
“NOW: Eileen Klein is finishing out a three year contract (2013-2016) as President of the Arizona Board of Regents and the Arizona Higher Education Enterprise (AHEE) at a time when state funding cuts to the three public universities amounts to $99 million dollars and several community college funding is eliminated entirely.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks for such careful documentation.
Can you get this careful record from other states??
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Arizona appears to be an arid place for human empathy. Today, Senator McCain)–a man who wanted to be our President– inserted into a military bill, at the last minute, the giveaway of Indian lands to a foreign company. Such mendacity!
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opinion/selling-off-apache-holy-land.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
I try hard not to be overwhelmed by the callousness that surrounds us, which is rampant in the attitude of our citizens towards the eduction of our citizenry, to the predicament of our teachers who are dedicated ,educated Americans…the kind of people that have always been a model and an inspiration to our citizens. Affluent Americans send their kids to private schools, but the people I meet in those circles give not a hoot about the poverty stricken minorities or the middle class which is mired in poverty, too. Yet, so many of them are descended from impoverished immigrants who had a ‘foot up; because our schools accepted anyone who wanted to learn.
The people who are deforming education today, like the ones you name in this post, and in other posts, are pitiless toward our nations’ poor children, and pitiful as human being
IN this must read article, Paul Krugman writes today about the callous attitude of too many people:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opinion/paul-krugman-the-insecure-american.html?emc=edit_th_20150529&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717
“But all too many affluent Americans — and, in particular, members of our political elite — seem to have no sense of how the other half lives. I am not, or not only, talking about right-wing contempt for the poor, although the dominance of compassionless conservatism is a sight to behold. According to the Pew Research Center, more than three-quarters of conservatives believe that the poor “have it easy” thanks to government benefits; only 1 in 7 believe that the poor “have hard lives. And this attitude translates into policy.”
It’s embarrassing to live here.
I am embarrassed to live in a country where this egotist can hold up our democracy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/29/paul-lepage-income-tax_n_7472038.html?ir=Politics?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003
Lenny Isenberg has written a post at his blog which everyone should read
http://www.perdaily.com/2015/05/the-irrational-holding-in-the.html
I copy it here:
The irrational holding in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) by the United States Supreme Court equates the unlimited spending of money with 1st Amendment free speech. This should be seen as not just a perversion of the 1st Amendment, but also a wake up call concerning the amassing of disproportionate and undemocratic political power by super-rich corporate interests. If nothing else, Citizens United should make people aware that the core principle of separation of power built into the constitution no longer functions, when unlimited amounts of money are allowed to flow into and control and limited what needs to be the unfettered discretion that all three branches of government must have in a true democracy.
If, as Lord Action said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” the absolute power now given to the few super rich to control who has power in all three branches of government has clearly cancelled out the checks and balances and separation of powers so carefully constructed by our Founding Fathers.
In order to deal with this frontal attack on our democracy, the constitution must not only be amended to rein in what has become unbridled corporate power, before it finally obliterates our democracy in favor of the oligarchy we are already well on our way to achieving, but it must also address the fundamental breakdown of the core constitutional principle of separation of power and its predictable consequence of no checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government that has led to epidemic levels of corruption of virtually all governmental function.
There are two ways that a constitutional amendment can be passed. One, where two-thirds of Congress passes an amendment without presidental signature that is ultimately ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures. This has been and continues to be the preferred method for amending the constitution. But is it best and still capable of addressing the myriad of problems with the United States Constitution that are no longer susceptible to fixing piecemeal through either government action or the amendment process?
To effectively deal with this unpleasant reality of centralization of power in fewer and fewer corporate hands under perversions of constitutional law like the Citizens’ United Supreme Court holding, a new constitutional convention made up of representatives sent from all the states that meet and amend all aspects of the constitution that might have worked in 1789 and after, but clearly no longer work and remain effective after 226 years for limiting the disproportionate and undemocratic control that corporate interests now openly threaten our democracy with. Distortions of core civil rights like free speech and press by monopoly capital that sees 5 corporations owning virtually all media in this country need to either be addressed by a new constitutional convention or our democratic is clearly doomed.
A new constitutional convention conviened by the request of two-thirds of state legislatures would not only be more appropriate for dealing with Citizens’ United and related civil rights distortion cases, but also dealing with the fact that the checks and balances between the three branches of government no longer seem to function as an effective separation of power to stop corporate manipulation of all government power within all three branches at local, state, and federal levels of government.
In a more positive light, we should be grateful that these checks and balances lasted for 226 years, but clearly they no longer function to stop the disproportionate control and abuse of power by corporate interests that now ramrod things like Citizens’ United into to law. Even monopolistic agglomerations of power that we stopped in the 1950s and 1960s are now rubber stamped by all branches of government that are clearly under exclusive corporate influence to the exclusion of any other interest.
What has caused the decline and fall of prior civilizations is their failure to evolve their governmental structures over time to address threats that didn’t exist when the country’s governing structure was initially put together- they failed to evolve. Like any other organism biological or political, government needs to evolve if it wants to survive. It is this failure of our present government to adapt to technology and the amassing of heretofore unimaginable levels of wealth that is the greatest threat to our continuation as anything that even remotely resembles a democracy.
When this country started, corporations existed at the will of the government. Now it seems we have arrived at a point where government at all levels exists at the will of the corporation, whose exclusive raison d’etre is the amoral amassing of wealth, no matter what the cost to our society or the democratic process. Such monomaniacal behavior, if it existed in the human body would be called a cancer.
Citizens United, disengenuously equates the spending of millions of dollars by the uber rich with free speak. In reality, such now legally acceptable behavior actually threatens free speak for the majority of Americans in favor of the “free speech” of only that minority of Americans and their undemocratic limited corporate interests.
Being a reformster also means never being without a job. One can go to work for a very profitable non-profit, or one can start her own very profitable non-profit (Students First); or one can step down from said profitable non-profit and sell fertilizer (same Rheeformster). I don’t know what Wendy Kopp is up to these days but I would guess her ugly head is rearing itself somewhere where the dollar$ are…they always do, those reformers. The musical chairs of Broad Superintendents always land good jobs too, be they profitable non-profits, government appointments (King, Duncan?) or entirely new super jobs in different states. Tenacity. What a shame all that evil talent can’t be used for good.
“What does private/public partnership really mean?
It means legalizing the pilfering of public monies by private entities in exchange for campaign contributions to those politicians who promise to keep the public coffers open to those who would steal from the rest of us.
The governor just sent out a request for proposals (RFP) for 2000 new prison beds while the state legally owes public schools 1.2 billion dollars..