A comment from Florida:
Making public education unbearable is all part of the privatizers’ plan to destabilize public education. I hear parents discussing alternative placements for their children other than public schools here in Florida because the public schools are “mostly about testing.” This is Jeb Bush’s legacy. Recently Jeb Bush met with Governor Scott in what the media termed an “education summit.” It was probably like a couple of hyenas trying to decide which end of a fallen zebra to strip first.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Totally love the hyena image!
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It is a great image indeed. This from wikipedia:
“Hyenas, especially spotted hyenas, are known for killing as much as 95% of the animals they eat,”
With regards to their impact on public education, sounds about right . . .
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Absolutely right. The private war on public education is not about education, not about good teaching or deep learning, or about what kids need to become strong students, or what families need from their local schools to nurture them and their communities. It’s about theft, period, the private commercial seizure of the vast budgets and assets of public schools, transferring them to private hands, enriching private entrepreneurs and religious schools with the tax monies once set aside for public units. Hollowing out the public sector so that public schools lose capacity, morale, and appeal is absolutely essential to the success of this theft. We are the targets of crime initiated by the private sector and enabled by their cronies in government.
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I feel like the Roberto Benigni in, “Life Is Beautiful.”
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I often have called on that very same analogy. We have to shield children from what is really going on.
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More ridiculous results on teacher rankings from the data-driven crowd:
At 26 and with four years of teaching music at Eisenhower Middle School in Albuquerque under his belt, Nick Prior is ready to take his career to its next phase.
That would mean advancing from a state-certified Level 1 instructor to Level 2, which would bump his modest salary from $30,000 a year to $40,000 a year. Prior leads six choir groups at the school, half of which have earned state awards. One of the choir groups that Prior leads even took home a Best Showmanship and a Best Musicianship award when it competed nationally at Los Alamitos “Xtravaganza” last year in California.
This year, Prior scored just 112 out of 200 possible points on his state-mandated teacher evaluation, ranking him “minimally effective.”
It’s also a dramatic drop from last year’s evaluation, when Prior scored a “highly effective” ranking. That’s because this year, half of Prior’s evaluation is based on student standardized test score improvements”
How much did the public pay for this garbage ranking system? Looks like New Mexico got ripped off.
http://nmpoliticalreport.com/4280/4280/
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Interesting to be sure.
Jeb can now crow about the number of people going to charters.
That will “prove” that charters are the will of the people.
Diabolically clever.
What hubris ad nauseum
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Public schools get a lot of flack from the school choice crowd, but school choice supporters don’t white wash everyone as merely “in it for the money.” They characterize public education (without choice) as either 1) locked into a system that inhibits good teachers from teaching as they know how, 2) forcing children to attend schools their parents find extensive fault with, or 3) influenced by unions paid to serve teachers rather than students or families.
Who in their right mind would say any educator is in it for the money? Though a handful of leaders may have found ways to make money from the system (some union leaders, politicians, consultants, corporate leaders), the average private sector teacher gets at least 30% less than their public school counterpart, and families want more personalized schools – which the public sector intrinsically opposes.
The greatest money issue isn’t about greed but parental choice, “Why must only a certain brand of secular education receive public money when a wide sector of the public wants something different?” Public policies are to serve citizens – Not control them!
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Craig, for what it is worth, every high-performing nation in the world has a public school system, not charters or vouchers. School choice is not an issue anywhere except here; it was implemented in Chile and Sweden and by all reports, is not working very well. It increases every kind of segregation: racial, economic, religious, class.
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Diane/Robert, I couldn’t care less about how we “compare” with other countries. The whole comparison argument assumes there is some “best” education for everyone… Or some universal rubric for evaluation. Further, though I believe parents should have much greater authority over their child’s education, I don’t like all the attention Charters get… as a model, they don’t give parents much say or provide an ideologically rich education.
I am convinced the future health of US society will be found in ideologically rich private schools shaped and chosen by caring parents. Religious schools may lead to more school segregation based on religion and sometimes race (ex: Lutherans tend to be white), but our rich religious heritage also provided the power that invigorated MLK, inspired America’s value of life and liberty, its concern for the poor, and the sick… Our secular public education model is shallow and our “democratic” education model is unfixable. Just look at education history over the past century or continue trying to fix it today – good luck!
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Craig, 90% of our people went to public schools. Somehow we became the most powerful nation on earth. I’m not willing to throw our public schools away on a hunch.
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Craig,
If our federal tax dollars were not used to fuel expensive components such as failing war campaigns (how much has Iraq cost us when they had no WMD?) and off shore tax havens for corporations, just to name a very few, we would have enough money to properly fund public schools, and the need for charters would disappear.
Finland has public schools.
We have a scandalous child poverty rate of 24% compared to 2.3% in Finland and 7% in France, and even those impoverished in France do not have to be concerned about housing or healthcare, because the the former has a major program to ensure everyone has a roof over their head (une habitation supplementaire) and the latter is nationalized.
Charters used to exist here as laboratories of experimentation, and now they are seen as a cure and end up utilized as a perfect opportunity for not well intending people to monetize and profit from. It’s disgusting. Look at all the real estate deals with charters occurring in Florida. Charters do not play by the same rules for the most part, and the vast majority of them offer little to no transparency for the parents and taxpayer. There are exceptions, but the small tiny minority cannot and should not determine policy for the vast majority of educational law when it comes to market driven “choice”.
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The system is still in place in Ohio, EVASS with a proprietary VAM for 50% of the evaluation and those ridiculous SLOs for teachers of non-tested subjects, scored on 25 “gothca” criteria, no reliability and validity for this exercise in predicting the increments in test scores that your students should receive, depending on their pretest scores or prior year scores–tinkering with a lite modification of this sham process is permitted but the options put you is different gotcha territory.
Teachers honored by their peers and by the great performances of their students are judged incompetent by virtue of the hawkers of VAM (SAS) and tests. Districts in Ohio have an optional tweak for so-called “multiple measures” a lip-service to the complaints about the unfairness of the system. One of the options is a student sturvey designed by an economist and marketed by the self-proclaimed, self-promoting “education expert” Charlotte one-size-fits-all-Danielson. Amazing that education policymakers, including legislators, are rarely shamed and blamed as teachers are now.
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I think it’s more of a large-scale screwup with pressures mounting from many sides ensuring further and compounding damage.
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This is definitely part of the plan, and it is working. As more parents pull their children out of public schools, the public schools lose those voices of support. This can create a negative feedback loop or a death spiral.
Continuing to support public schools can become a real dilemma when you realize that your children are wasting so much precious time on such absurd and non-educational tests and related activities. I feel bad dropping off my very smart middle schooler during the last two months of the school year because I know that he will learn nothing at school during testing season. That is sad.
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I wonder how much coordination there was between Jeb Bush and the Obama Administration. It’s really alarming how lockstep this in elite circles. There is literally only one point of view allowed. It reminds me of financial deregulation in the 1990’s. That was universally accepted as “good”. Once the big politician/pundit/expert/media machine gets going it’s almost impossible to stop.
“Several months ago Jeb Bush publicly praised President Obama for selecting Arne Duncan as education secretary. “I think Arne Duncan has done a good job,” the former Florida governor said in this CBS interview. Perhaps to return the favor, Duncan is now scheduled to deliver a keynote address at Bush’s fifth annual Excellence in Action Summit later this month in Washington.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/11/17/jeb-and-arne-together-again/
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Great zinger Diane. I see these so called “reformers” as a pack of lions attacking a wildebeast crossing the Serengeti desert. Unfortunately the teachers resemble those wildebeasts, as they stare in icy silence and resignation as the lions tear apart their comrade. Diane, you must begin to attack this authoritarian system that I have been railing against. We may win these battles against common core and excessive testing and even the evaluation debacle, and still lose the war. You must address the level of intimidation that prevails in the schools today. You must begin to address the issue of authoritarian leadership. If you truly support teachers in this battle, then state in unequivocal terms that teachers should not have to serve in the kind of subservient environment that is par for the course in the schools today. Their former peers are using their positions to wield power beyond their capacity as educators, and the level of resentment is profound. As you know, many of them are taking their marching orders from Bill Gates and his digital henchman. You are the primary voice in support of the teaching profession. If you don’t do it, we may never have a chance to win back the respect that we have lost. Please promote dropping all administrative titles, and replacing them with support designations. It has become intolerable, and most teachers have become resigned to this state of insecurity. Only a strong voice such as yours can effect the kind of revolution that will give them back their due.
Ian
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Kinda late to the party, Ian, to start criticizing the refreshments.
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What can Dr. Ravitch do? She isn’t a billionaire. She has no power in this “system”. No one is listening to the experts anymore. You need to go find a billionaire who is willing to champion your cause. You can find a list of billionaires in every state. They are the ones running this country. Politicians just do what the money tells them to do. Find a more “progressive” billionaire who is willing to do the right thing. They may not care because their kids go to good private schools. That is your only hope. Without money, you don’t have any say at all in this society. One billionaire is worth at least 100 million votes! If you want to change America, become a billionaire, and you can tell the government what to do. You don’t even have to worry about elections, or public speaking. Just create a monopoly of some kind, or destroy all the quaint downtowns with some kind of super-saver-store and you will have power like a god. That’s America!
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Let us see, one billionaire is worth 100 million votes. The voting age population is ~235 million and the turnout in 2012 election was ~129 million. A little over half of them elected Obama. Therefore just one billionaire bought the last election. Can you please identify that person? We do have many many billionaires.
This blog is getting ridiculous with unbelievable hyperbole.
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Go find a smarter blog.
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Raj, Citizens United
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(Chuckle!).
Raj,
You are the living embodiment of ridiculous and hyperbole. You need your own stand up comedy routine, and I will be in the front audience, cheering you on.
If you let me be your agent, all I ask for is 15% for all your bookings . . .
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The Shock Doctrine, complete with descriptions of previous successful shock and awe examples of crisis economics, was published in 2007.
Today, we are the targets.
“Making public education unbearable is all part of the privatizers’ plan to destabilize public education.”
Destabilize is actually too meek a word. The coup is underway.
Refuse to be a willing victim.
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http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
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To which I would add, if there isn’t a crisis, create one.
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This quote for the commentator was amazing.
I don’t want to sound mean or haughty, but let’s not forget that the citizenry, in its choice to not be informed and in its numb addiction to being complicit, also implicitly chooses to be the fallen zebra, when all along the citizenry has the power to be a massive herd of elephants and rhinoceroses that would stamp the living daylight out of the pack of hyenas – and lions and tigers for that matter.
Everyone please sign NPE’s latest petition against high stakes testing. I do not meant to imply, in that request, that readers of this blog fit the description above.
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Cx
I do not mean to imply . . . .
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“the citizenry, in its choice to not be informed and in its numb addiction to being complicit. . . ”
Robert, you (and everyone else) might be interested in this article by Henry A. Giroux: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/19/orwell-huxley-and-americas-plunge-into-authoritarianism/
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Loved this article. I have never read a Giroux piece I did not like. Thank you so much!
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It just seemed to dovetail to the conversation. You’re welcome!!
And I agree about Giroux, although with what Lloyd Lofthouse says about the average attention span of readers it’s kind of scary to think that most won’t read something of such, just gosh darn length.
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