Archives for the month of: September, 2015
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Mercedes Schneider: Washington State Charters Vow to Stay Open

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2015 //
12

Mercedes Schneider reports that the few charters in Washington State intend to stay open with private funding and continue to seek public funding.

A few days ago, the Eashington State Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that charter schools are not entitled to state funding because they are not “common schools,” as defined in the state constitution. They do not have democratic control but are run by private boards.

“Thus, the nine charter schools in Washington State in 2015-16 will almost certainly not be funded using public money. However, as Komo News reports, all nine schools vow that they will remain open this school year by raising the estimated $14 million they need via private donations.

“Note, however, that the intention is that charter schools draw public money and not just survive on private funds. So, these nine charters’ surviving the year on private donations is certainly a short-term fix. The public can watch to see who steps up with the temporary millions– unless the money does not come from a nonprofit– in which case the public might not know who is financing the effort.

“Meanwhile, as Komo News notes, the Washington State Charter Schools Association plans to petition the Washington State Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling (and to perhaps turn to the dissenting opinion of three judges who stated that they agreed that charter schools are not common (i.e., public) schools, but that they should be able to be funded via the general fund.”

Hmmm. Wonder who will put up $14 million? Maybe the same small group of billionaires who put up $17 million to pass the referendum on charters, which passed by about 1%.

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Washington State

Roxana Marachi: An Open Letter to the California State Board of Education

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2015 //
17

Roxana Marachi, a professor at San Jose State University in California, wrote an open letter to the State Board of Education. She warned them that the results of the Smarter Balanced Assessments, which will be released today, are not valid or reliable or fair. “False data are false data. Period. And to compare future results with current 2015 scores as “baseline” would be just as fraudulent as it would be to promote the 2015 scores as somehow valid.”

Students who are English learners will be harmed significantly by these tests, since SBAC itself predicted a failure rate of 90%, she writes.

These tests violate the most basic principles of the the American Psychological Association:

“We know from decades of research that beliefs matter in student learning and motivation. Without an understanding that the scores are meaningless, students will be likely to internalize failing labels with corresponding beliefs about their academic potential. And unless otherwise informed, families will be likely to believe what the State Department of Education communicates about their children’s readiness for college and career based on an assessment that fails to meet basic standards for testing and accountability.

“Jonathan Pelto has written extensively about SmarterBalanced testing in Connecticut:

“Considering that many of the world’s greatest scientists, authors, actors, teachers and leaders were once English Language Learners one would think the public education system in the United States would be designed to promote and support opportunities for those who need extra help learning the English Language. Moreover you would think education policymakers would be working to find ways to take advantage of the opportunities that having a multilingual population present.”

Marachi writes:

“This seems an ethical dilemma for educational leaders. If they are to be honest with students and families and communicate truthfully that the test scores are meaningless, they would have to acknowledge that the public has been misled (whether knowingly or not) by those promoting the assessments. Acknowledging the current situation would also include accepting the fact that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted (and are slated to continue to be wasted) should the assessments continue to fail meeting basic standards for testing and accountability.

“Yet, what appears to be the case is that the invalid tests are being falsely promoted as accurate measures of “college and career readiness.” The LA Times just published a piece entitled, “‘Don’t Panic’ Officials Say as California Braces for Lower Student Test Results.” It appears state officials are fully aware of the potential harm and motivational fallout yet “Don’t Panic” is the best message being offered as a remedy rather than full disclosure about the lack of validity of the tests.”

Marachi quotes Dr. Doug McRae, a testing expert, who said:

“Including current scores in student academic records without evidence of validity, reliability, and fairness of the assessments would be “immoral, unethical, unprofessional, and to say the least, totally irresponsible.”

Marachi closes with a Million-dollar Challenge, which should be addressed to every state board member in the nation, as well as to Secretary Arne Duncan, who funded these tests, as well as to David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards.

“In closing and in the spirit of critical thinking, I respectfully request that the State Board of Education take on the following challenge. The ultimate endorsement of confidence in your release of SBAC scores would be for each Board Member to publicly take the 11th Grade SBAC Math/ELA tests and to publish your scores at the next State Board of Education meeting. If the assessments are confirmed to be functional and can be verified as accurately, securely, and fairly assessing skills necessary for “college and career readiness”, then every State Board Trustee (all of whom are assumed to be college-educated and career-successful) should receive scores that exceed passing performance. At the very least, this process should allow you the opportunity to fully endorse the assessment product that has been bought and administered to children.

“If this request is declined or somehow otherwise considered unfair, then why would you demand the same of youth entrusted to your care?”

Categories California, Common Core, English Language Learners, Injustice, Standardized Testing, Students

Carol Burris: What Do the Falling SAT Scores Tell Us About Corporate Education “Reform”?

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2015 //
31

There has been much discussion about the sharp decline of SAT scores. Some (including its sponsor, the College Board) attribute the decline to an increase in the number of test-takers. Others say that the decline can be attributed by the increased diversity of the test-takers, meaning that when more low-scoring students take the tests, the scores go down.

Carol Burris took the time to review the data and come up with a data-driven discussion of what really happened.

The bottom line, she writes, is that the score decline was large and significant:

SAT scores for the Class of 2015 were the lowest since the test was revised and re-normed in 2005. The score drop in one year was 7 points — a drop that Inside Higher Ed characterized as significant.

She says there was very minimal increase in the number of students taking the tests.

Between 2014 and 2015:

11 states saw an increase in the proportion of seniors who took the SAT.
3 states remained exactly the same.
36 states saw decreases in the percentages of members of the Class of 2015 taking the test when compared with 2014.

What about the assumption that the increase in fee waiver students is responsible for the decline? It implies that a greater proportion of test takers come from low-income households. The increase in fee waivers does not necessarily mean, however, that the percentage of low-income test takers has increased. It could be attributed to more students being encouraged to apply for the waiver. In fact, the percentage of low-income students who are test-takers has been remarkably stable.

The diversity of the test-takers is relatively stable:

Here are the percentages of test takers with family incomes below $20,000 during the past five years: 2011 — 13 percent, 2012 — 14 percent, 2013 — 14 percent, 2014 — 13 percent, 2015 — 14 percent. That same stability runs across all bands of income.

And what of the College Board’s claim that this is “the most diverse group ever”? Time Magazine implied that the increase in fee waiver students and increases in diversity are the cause of the decline.

How much has diversity increased? Since 2011 the percentage of Black or African American students taking the test has been a steady 13 percent every year. There have been small proportional increases in 2 of the 3 categories that describe students who are Hispanic or Latino, but there are also small proportional increases in Asian students and international students whose test scores exceed the average by large amounts. Asian students’ average scores this year were a whooping 164 points above the total average. They are hardly dragging scores down.

And in this year of the big drop, the proportions of Black, Latino/Hispanic and Asian test takers are exactly the same as they were in 2014.

What does the decline mean? What does the College Board advise the schools to do?

Burris writes:

Nearly every article on the topic included the same quote from the chief of assessment of the College Board, Cyndie Schmeiser:

“Simply doing the same things we have been doing is not going to improve these numbers. This is a call to action to do something different to propel more students to readiness.”

Well, riddle me this one: Does Ms. Schmeiser talk to her boss? College Board chief David Coleman certainly created “something different” back in 2010. And given that the Class of 2015 had five years of exposure to his Common Core State Standards (of which he was the co-author of the English Language Standards), as well as spending their entire school career in the era of NCLB accountability, it doesn’t look like “something different” is working very well.

Of course, his new solution is to make next year’s newly designed SATs align with the Common Core. Expect ACT registration, which is already on the rise, to increase.

Reformers like Coleman are now the status quo, and the evidence of the effectiveness of their strategies have yet to appear. And if the past four years of SATs are a measure, then their reforms are having a negative effect on scores.

Reflecting on the dropping SAT scores, corporate reform super-fan, Mike Petrilli, of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute asked this question in The Washington Post, “Why is education reform hitting a wall in high school?”

This former 15-year high school principal can answer your question, Mr. Petrilli. Education reform isn’t hitting a wall. It is the wall.

Categories Education Reform

Why the Dyett Hunger Strike Is Not Over

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2015 //
7

Julie Vassilatos explains what the Dyett hunger strike is about and why the 12 protestors are not giving up.

She also shows who stood with the superintendent of schools (not the Dyett 12) and who is funding them. Follow the money. Would you be surprised to learn that the people at Claypool’s side took money from the notorious Stand for Children, from Hedge funders at Democrats for Education Reform, and from the billionaire Eli Broad, who wants to privatize public schools?

“We are in every neighborhood in Chicago. We are many, and we stand with the Fight for Dyett because we believe in democracy, neighborhoods, public schools, and local community. We are of every color and every demographic. We are everywhere.

“There are, certainly, some who do not stand with the Fight for Dyett.

“They also do not stand for democratic schools, local autonomy, or elected school boards.

“They also do not oppose privatization, test-and-punish curricula, school closings, community disinvestment, unprofessional teaching staff, or manipulations and machinations of powers outside of the community upon the community and against its will.

“And these people were standing with Forrest Claypool on Thursday afternoon at the press conference where CPS declared that they had resolved the Dyett crisis.”

“Oh–you say–but–but those people at that press conference, they were–weren’t they?–black–all of them. They were black community leaders. Weren’t they? Isn’t that what the newspapers said? They would know all about the fight facing Dyett, and all public schools everywhere–right?

“Oh, they do.

“But all those people standing up there–like props–all of them have fought against their own communities, and with good reason.

“They receive large amounts of money from the very sources of the destruction of our public schools.

“Today we’ll just take the politicians that flanked Forrest.

“State Representative Christian Mitchell. He has received $127,000 from Stand for Children and $34,000 from Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), both of which are organizations dedicated to forwarding the purposes of corporate education control. He has received $12,800 from Noble Network Board Member David Weinberg (who in turn has given $10,500 to DFER, $10,000 to Stand for Children, and $10,000 to Stand for Children PAC), and $10,000 from Eli Broad, two prominent, and spectacularly wealthy, generals in the corporate ed control army.

“Just saying.

“Will Burns, who continues to insist he is and always has been for Dyett, has managed to stand in the way of the community’s every move to keep its school. Burns has received $1690 from DFER, $2,500 from the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, $7,900 from Noble Network Board member John Rowe (who has in turn given $10K to Stand for Children), $21,500 from Noble Network Board member Weinberg, and more than $51,000 from Rahm’s campaign. In addition, in May he was given the plum of chairing the Education Committee with its budget of more than $200K. Furthermore, while he has received no money from Stand for Children himself, oddly enough he has contributed over $17K to them. He’s received small campaign donations from for CPS Board of Ed members David Vitale and Andrea Zopp as well, which seems to me personally inappropriate, although it is surely legal.”

Which side are you on?

Categories Chicago, Resistance

Edward F. Berger: Greedy Reformers Are Splintering Our Communities

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2015 //
14

Edward Berger, who lives in Arizona, has joined with friends and neighbors to try to save their public schools from the corporate vandals of “reform.”

In this brilliant article, he explains the toxic consequences of reforms that shatter and splinter the community. Their message: Our schools are failing (they are not); our educators are terrible (they are not); we must turn to privatization (we should not).

He writes:

There are forces at work that are so destructive they can shatter the hopes and dreams of our citizens and splinter our communities. Our communities serve the needs of citizens via good schools, good medical facilities, good policing, good and great services in almost every area. However, there are forces of greed and power that have come back to haunt us from the Industrial Age and The Age of Robber Barons when individuals – responsible to no one – ground fellow human beings into dust. Their control of America became a license to rape, rip, and run.

“I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this free country—the people through their governmental agents, or a few ruthless and domineering men whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1907)

The cycle is repeating. We see it fracturing our own community as school and community college funding has been systematically cut off. The facts are clear. Our really outstanding schools have been driven into deep financial trouble. These problems are not caused by bad education or bad anything the schools have done. Certainly, the schools need and will always need to keep working to evolve and get better, but that is not why they are in trouble. The majority of parents enroll their children in district schools that have the wide range of expertise, services, and programs they need. If you are a parent of a child in school, you should be outraged and fighting like a wounded mother bear for your child’s school and education future. Our community schools suffer because a political agenda – an ideology – is attempting to starve and destroy them.

The reality is that the forces that control how our tax dollars are distributed have attacked and wounded our community schools. At this time, we cannot expect those who have coordinated these attacks on America’s future to adequately fund public schools. If we are to save our schools and our free society, our Prescott community must commit to adequate funding and insist on quality education for our children. That requires that We The People dig deeper into our pockets and pass the upcoming bond issue and override. If we do not do this, our community will never recover. Area schools will not survive. Our children will be irreparably damaged. We already see the impact of funding cuts and school closures as dollars and students have been siphoned away from public education and the District is being forced to close schools.

What hurts communities the most is the spawned divisiveness that has grouped people around planted lies and destructive ideologies. In our past, people, regardless of religion, political beliefs, or limited understanding, worked together to build local government and collectively provide the services the community needs. There were always disagreements, but they were resolved. There were always fringe individuals and groups that screamed “No New Taxes,” but as demands for more and better services increase and more people are served, every reasonable person knows that these services are necessary and really a great deal….

The attacks on public schools and educated people are increasing in force. An inculcated belief that public education must be killed because it cannot be fixed has become a common mantra. Other schools were formed – partial schools, charter schools – a few developed exemplary programs. All took funds away from the district schools. Hundreds of millions of dollars remain unaccounted for and the entire public education system is weakened and severely damaged. A large percentage of this money went to duplicate facilities and services the public is already providing. Rather than merge new and effective programs into the existing system, as was the original plan, the alternative schools are encouraged to define the district public schools as wrong.

Corporate raiders use the Press to convince American parents that the American education system has failed, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary. They base this presumed failure on skewed test scores. They ignore what schools actually do. As they spin these lies continually, people without crap detectors begin to believe them. Those who have taken power use it to bypass or infiltrate elected school boards, privatize schools, and open new schools without public accountability so they can steal money that taxpayers think goes for kids. They use their power to take over elected bodies and financially attack and starve excellent public schools and community programs – kill them – and steal the tax dollars. They use ill-gained political power to allow school operators to build Real Estate empires while supporting Legislators who stop calls for accountability. They call this privatization.

I find it impossible to do this essay justice by excerpting parts of it. It is so thoughtful, so beautifully written, so clear and compelling, that I urge you to open the link and read it all.

Categories Arizona, Democracy, Supporting public schools

LA Times Fires Publisher

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2015 //
15

Los Angeles Times publisher Austin Beutner was fired. Was it something he said? Something he published?

But here’s one speculation.

Categories Media

The Opt Out Movement Is Parent-Led and Can’t Be Captured or Stopped

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2015 //
67

I recently read James Scott’s “Two Cheers for Anarchism,” which is a good read. Scott is a professor at Yale who wrote one of my favorite books, “Seeing Like a State.” It explains as well as anything I have ever read how grandiose top-down plans fail  because they ignore the people way down there on the ground, the people who actually know how things work, not how the planners think they ought to work.

In “Two Cheers for Anarchism,” Scott makes an important point about movements. He says that authentic grassroots movements do not have a single leader. They have many leaders, and as one drops away, another takes his place. That struck me as a good definition of today’s opt out movement. There are a few well-known leaders, like Peg Robertson in Colorado and Jeanette Deutermann on Long Island, but the true leadership is everywhere.

The only way that critics can attack the opt out parents is to claim that they have been duped by the teachers’ unions. Really? The parents of 220,000 children in New York decided to refuse the tests so they could follow the diktat of the unions? How insulting to parents! The one thing that every parent has in common is that they care about their children. They care about them more than the politicians do. They care about them more than the editorial boards of the tabloids do.

Who leads the opt out movement? Everyone and no one. Its leaders are everywhere. And they know exactly what they are doing.

Here is a statement by parents in the Hudson Valley of New York.

Its title: Parents Assert Their Right To Refuse Harmful Testing Practices To Protect Children from State Sanctioned Harm

These parents can’t be bought, and they can’t be bullied. And they vote.

Categories Education Reform

Fairtest: The Weekly Review of Testing Resistance and Reform

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2015 //
1

With school doors now opening across the U.S., FairTest kicks off its 30th Anniversary of advocacy for assessments that are valid, open and educationally useful. Working with grassroots activists across the country, we are currently making great progress to roll back test misuse and overuse in both the K-12 and university admissions arenas, as our weekly new clip summaries demonstrate. You can help build an even stronger assessment reform movement by making a special contribution today:

https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/fairtest

National Latest SAT Scores Raise New Alarms Over “Test-and-Punish” Schooling
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/03/latest-sat-scores-raise-new-alarms-over-test-and-punish-education

National Dropping Admissions Exam Requirements Improves Colleges’ Diversity
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/08/pf/college/sat-college-diversity/

Multiple States Computer Testing Administration SNAFUS Render Data Useless
http://www.news3lv.com/content/news/story/Schools-have-incomplete-data-with-stoppage-of/N1m0sUVdJ0uYyKnwPMa2-A.cspx

List of Jurisdictions Experiencing Computer Testing Problems 2013-2015
http://fairtest.org/computerized-testing-problems-2013-2015

California How Districts Are Developing New Measures of School Quality

How the CORE districts are designing new measures of school quality

California Governor Supports Bill for Retroactive Exit Exam Repeal
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Legislation-would-retroactively-suspend-Exit-Exam-6486231.php

Florida Independent Report Finds Computerized Test Scores Should Not Be Used for Student-Level Consequences
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/testing/florida-tests-shouldnt-be-used-for-student-level-consequences-report-says/2243631

Florida Inside Look at Rocky Start for State’s New Exams
http://www.bradenton.com/2015/09/08/5979585_an-inside-look-at-the-rocky-start.html?rh=1

Florida Student Tests Deserve an “F”
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-floridas-student-tests-deserve-an-f/2243924

Georgia Last Teacher in Atlanta Cheating Scandal Sentenced to One Year in Jail
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/crime-law/mother-of-infant-last-aps-teacher-to-be-sentenced-/nnWM5/

Idaho Boise School Board Leads Push to Replace Smarter Balanced Assessments

Boise leads new push to replace SBAC tests

Indiana Indiana New Vendor But Testing Concerns Linger
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2015/09/04/new-vendor-istep-concerns-linger/71721420/

Indiana Accountability Pause Would Reaffirm State’s Commitment to Education
http://www.journalgazette.net/opinion/editorials/Account-ability-8586585

Maine Superintendent Decries Testing Mandates
http://www.mdislander.com/maine-news/education-news/superintendent-decries-mandated-tests

Maryland Educators Say Testing Is Chipping Away at Teaching
http://marylandreporter.com/2015/09/03/testing-chipping-away-at-teaching-educators-say/

Minnesota Educators Call for Deep Reductions in Testing Requirements
http://www.startribune.com/teachers-union-wants-to-limit-high-stakes-tests-to-fifth-eighth-grades/325210121/

Missouri First Year of Online Testing Is Challenge for Schools
http://www.wgem.com/story/29934884/2015/09/01/first-year-of-online-testing-proves-challenge-for-local-schools

Montana Recovers $375,000 From Vendor of Botched Spring Exams; State Withholds Other Testing Payments
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/montana-recovers-k-for-spring-testing-glitches/article_c07c96c2-cb5c-5132-8c7b-2bce29b517cd.html

New Jersey Lawsuit Demands State Stop Using PARCC, SAT Tests for Graduation
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/education/high-school-students-and-parents-sue-state-over-new-parcc/article_7bb4a5e2-51a5-11e5-bddc-4b69fe2265d5.html

New Jersey As School Returns, Testing Issue Has Not Faded
http://www.northjersey.com/news/as-school-returns-state-testing-issue-hasn-t-faded-1.1401967

New Mexico Judge to Hear Request to Suspend State Teacher Evaluation System
http://m.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/judge-to-hear-union-s-request-for-suspension-of-teacher/article_c5070301-1c91-5319-9b1f-2fd846367e79.html?mode=jqm

New York Opt-Out Letter Gains Traction Even Before Schools Open
http://wamc.org/post/opt-out-letter-circulates#stream/0

New York Superintendent Slams Evaluation System in Letter to Teachers, Principals
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/michael-hynes-patchogue-medford-superintendent-slams-evaluation-system-in-letter-to-teachers-1.10798592

Vermont State Surprised By Number of Districts Offering to Test New Quality Review System

State surprised by number of schools to test quality review program

Virginia Pressure Around State Test Prep Begins on First Day of School
http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/2015/09/03/pressure–sol-test-prep-begins–first-day–school/71647136/

Washington Testing a Major Issue in Seattle Teacher Strike Vote

It’s unanimous, Seattle teachers vote to strike and this is why

Washington Too Much Testing in High Schools Should End
http://sammamishreview.com/2015/09/01/editorial-too-much-testing-in-high-schools-should-end

Why Some Progressives Fall for “Accountability” and Phony Education Reform
http://www.alternet.org/education/why-even-progressive-democrats-fall-accountability-and-phony-education-reform

To Measure, Or to Assess Learning? Human Judgment Is Not the Problem, It’s the Solution
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/08/26/we-must-teach-for-range-and-depth.html

Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director
FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing
office- (239) 395-6773 fax- (239) 395-6779
mobile- (239) 699-0468
web- http://www.fairtest.org

Categories Resistance, Standardized Testing

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post Goes Bonkers

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2015 //
31

Can you believe this?

While everyone else is complaining that Governor Cuomo is crushing teachers with his punitive and research-less teacher evaluation plan, the New York Post complains that Governor Cuomo has capitulated to the teachers’ union by ordering a new review of the Common Core standards and assessments. Imagine that! The governor actually might have cared that 220,000 children opted out; he no doubt realized that 220,000 children might have 400,000 or so parents, and they vote. The New York Post seems unaware that in a democracy, it is usually a good idea to pay attention to mass movements.

The Post feels certain that Cuomo is kowtowing to those horrible teachers’ unions, always the enemy (the teachers’ union has now morphed into George Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984,” the quintessential enemy of the State).

Read the editorial. The Post will not be satisfied until there are mass firings of teachers.

Here are the closing lines:

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: The unions and the politicians they control will make sure no system ever lets schools shed rotten teachers.

The only hope for kids is to flee these failure factories — to flee to charters or private schools, or out of New York altogether.

Oh, dear, where should families flee to?

Not to Connecticut; it has teachers’ unions.

Not to New Jersey; it has teachers’ unions.

Not to Massachusetts; it has teachers’ unions.

Not to Pennsylvania; it has teachers’ unions.

Flee, families, flee!

Flee to Tennessee! Flee to Mississippi! Flee to North Carolina! Flee to the Deep South! Flee to any state without a teachers’ union.

You won’t get better education but at least you can be sure that the teachers are without any representation.

Oh, and by the way, do the writers and workers at the New York Post belong to a union? Or is it a non-union shop?

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Unions

The Waltons’ War Against Public Schools and How Regular Folks Beat Them in Their Own Backyard

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2015 //
15

Learn how the Waltons–the billionaires who own Walmart–are trying to replace public schools with privately managed charters and vouchers and to eliminate teachers’ unions. Learn how the people of Arkansas said no and defeated them in the state the Waltons think they own.

This article, by Kali Holloway, describes how the billionaires got beaten in their attempt to privatize all of Arkansas’s public schools.

This past January, nearly 60 years after Arkansas’ first desegregation efforts, the state board of education dissolved Little Rock’s democratically elected local school board, the most racially inclusive and representative of its majority-black constituency in nearly a decade. In making the decision, the state overruled widespread public outcry to take control of the largest school district in the state. Two months later, Walton Family Foundation-backed lobbyists launched a brazen legislative push to allow for broader privatization — or put bluntly, “charterization” — of schools across Arkansas. It was a move many believed revealed a carefully orchestrated effort, begun months prior, to undermine the state’s public school system, destroy its teachers unions and turn public funds into private profits.

Anyone with even a passing interest in public education knows how this story normally ends; one need only look to places like Philadelphia, where Walton dollars have helped launch an explosion of charters, or New Orleans and Detroit, where Walton funds have contributed to a system in which a majority of K-12 students now attend charter schools. Though it is not the only big-money contributor to the education reform movement (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a key player, as are countless millionaire hedge funders, investment bankers and other titans of finance), no single entity has poured more money into the push for “school choice” than the Walton Family Foundation. As a recent report from In the Public Interest and the American Federation of Teachers notes, “the foundation has kick-started more than 1,500 schools, approximately one out of four charters in the country. Over the last five years [WFF] has spent between $63 million and $73 million annually to fuel new charter openings.”

Yet despite the power and money of the Waltons, they got their backside kicked by the people of Arkansas when they tried to take over and privatize the state’s schools.

But this March, Arkansas proved the exception to the ubiquity of Walton rule. Following the introduction of House Bill 1733, which would have vastly expanded the potential for privatization of Arkansas’ public school districts, a collection of grassroots groups, urban and rural school advocates, educators, parents, and other passionate individuals committed to public education mobilized. Recognizing they were out-spent, the collective out-organized the Walton lobby, killing the bill before it even passed out of committee.The bill’s defeat was made all the more significant by the fact that it occurred in the Waltons’ own backyard. Like the family business, Walmart, the Walton dynasty’s philanthropic arm is headquartered in Arkansas. The Waltons loom so large in the state, in politics, banking, education, and of course, big-box retailing, one former Arkansas educator and public school parent told me that when HB1733 appeared, she imagined every public interaction would soon involve a Walton-backed entity. “Before long, you’ll be able to drop your kids off at a Walton charter school and then get your groceries at one of those Walmart Neighborhood Markets.”

In an era in which Walton money is, state by state and district by district, changing one of our most vital public institutions into a guaranteed investment scheme for the rich and powerful and popularizing the neoliberal notion that our schools are so irreparably broken they can only be saved by a new competition-based, market-driven education system, the defeat of HB1733 deserves an up-close look. It’s the rare story of a win that, for reasons both practical and symbolic, should get the attention of everyone who values the institution of public education.

In Arkansas, the Walton putsch began with a state takeover of the Little Rock School District, which had six schools (out of 48) in academic distress. This effectively transferred control from a majority black school board to a white state-level agency. Black voters and parents in Little Rock were left without a voice in the education of their children.

Education advocates didn’t like the swift takeover, nor the installation of non-educators in charge of the state and the district. They were:

“most disturbed by the fact that seven months after the takeover, the state still hadn’t offered a game plan for how it would repair Little Rock’s “academically distressed” schools. If the state had no clear strategy for fixing those schools, why had it bothered to take them over in the first place?

“What’s the plan to make these schools better?” Brenda Robinson, president of the Arkansas Education Association, asked when I spoke to her. “Literally, there’s really not a plan, there’s never been a plan. Right now, you’re still hearing community members out there saying, how are you going to get those six schools out of academic distress and keep the rest out? How are we going to do that? There’s not a definite…roadmap to say how we do this.”

The Walton takeover plan started with Little Rock, but its ambitions were much larger, as revealed by the introduction of HB 1733 in the legislature:

Reportedly written by Scott Smith, head of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, a nonprofit that receives $3 million in grants annually from the Walton Family Foundation, the bill would have granted the state power to take over any district deemed in academic distress in favor of an “Achievement School District.” As Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times wrote, the law would “make all school teachers and administrators fire-at-will employees without due process rights. It would destroy one of the two last remaining teacher union contracts in Arkansas. It allows for the permanent end of democratic control of a school district or those portions of it privatized. It would capture property tax millage voted by taxpayers for specific purposes, including buildings, and give them to private operators. It would allow seizure of buildings for private operators at no cost.”

In short, it looked an awful lot like charter legislation currently being passed around the country, often with the backing of Walton Family Foundation dollars. And that set off alarm bells for those on the side of Arkansas’ public education system.

Education advocates knew that this was a thinly veiled attempt to follow the pattern of New Orleans and the Achievement School District in Tennessee, which takes away all rights and voice from parents and the public.

Rural educators saw a threat in the bill to have the state takeover some or many or all of their schools.

Perhaps equally important in sparking an immediate negative response to the bill among Arkansas public education watchers was its familiarity. During the 2013 legislative session, Walton-backed forces had attempted to pass HB1040, a bill that sought to create a special, autonomous panel to handle all charter-related issues, thereby circumnavigating the state board of education. Though that legislation was defeated, it appeared to Grandon and others to be just the latest in an ongoing series of public school privatization attempts.

“This wasn’t our first dance,” Grandon said of HB1733 when we talked. “We’ve recognized the threat from privatization forces for years. In Arkansas, you can go all the way back to the late ’90s, when there was the Murphy Commission, then the Blue Ribbon Commission. All of those were financed and instigated by the same people who were pushing HB1733, and the purpose was to define public schools as failing and needing not just drastic improvement, but even a whole, ‘Let’s tear them down and rebuild them into something else, because there is no way to fix this monster.’”

Arkansans have become adept at “decoding” privatization attempts, and they decided they were not going to allow the Waltons to take over their public schools. Organizations from across the state agreed to collaborate on a nonpartisan effort to defeat the bill.

What followed was round-the-clock organizing on every possible front. Each group rallied its membership base, creating a groundswell of opposition from across the state that was impossible for House Education Committee Chair Bruce Cozart to ignore. “What you basically had was a collaboration, a combined effort from, you might say, all of the education groups in Arkansas,” Boyce Watkins, advocacy director for Arkansas School Boards Association told me. “And not just them, but the people they touch, which is a significant number of people. Now whenever you have that broad of a base contacting legislators and telling them, we don’t want this, then legislators are put in a position where they listen to that. They’re elected officials.”

 

The coalition of pro-public education groups was so effective that the bill was pulled on March 17, only 11 days after it was introduced.

The Waltons were beaten back, but observers expect them to return with a different strategy.

The education blogger for the Arkansas Times said:

“I also wouldn’t be surprised if that bill comes back written in such a way that it is very limited only to Little Rock, and therefore is more palatable to others within the state that may see Little Rock as a problem needing to be fixed….From my perspective, a lot of that comes from race and class and prejudices that people have that allow them to think about places like New Orleans or inner-city Memphis or Philadelphia or Little Rock as being different. That those are places with pathological problems.”

Neil Sealy said very nearly the same thing when I asked him about looking forward. “I don’t see a New Orleans scenario….But I do see a significant increase in charters. And a busting of the teachers union, a downgrade in certification for teaching, and continued [racial] segregation of the schools to parallel the segregation of the neighborhoods. And my fear is that, we got people to rise up this last session from all over the state, but is that going to happen this time around? I think HB1733 was an extreme bill. And my bet is it’s going to be not as extreme next time. And it could just target Little Rock.”

So, the Waltons will come back with their sure-fire formula for success: Limit the “crisis” to Little Rock, which won’t upset the white folks in rural areas; privatize the schools; get rid of the teachers’ union; lower standards for new teachers; foster more racial segregation.

It is an unlovely, powerless, and mean future that the Waltons have in store for the rest of us, but especially for black people and their children.

Categories Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Walton Foundation
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