A reader shares more details about the new Commissioner of Education in Texas. He is deeply embedded in the movement that wants to privatize public schools, make testing the goal of education, and take away teachers’ pensions.
“It gets worse:
“From San Antonio Express News:
“The news was met with unease and apprehension by leaders of education groups, who said Morath’s appointment continued a troubling trend to weaken the state’s focus on public education while increasing attention on testing and privatization. Advocates of school vouchers, charter schools and more rigorous accountability praised the choice, calling Morath a reformer who would push Texas toward more creative ideas for school improvement….
“Morath was the main supporter of a failed attempt to create the state’s first “home-rule” district, an initiative bankrolled by Houston-based billionaire and former hedge fund manager John Arnold of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. It would have allowed the district to largely break off from state control, opting out of many of Texas’ accountability and oversight mechanisms…
Morath is on the advisory board of Texans for Education Reform, which has spearheaded much of the state’s focus on charter school expansion, opportunity school districts and other “school choice” initiatives in recent years….”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gross. Another billionaire pick for a government post. Are people sick and tired of this yet? Texans figured out the testing scam ahead of everyone else. Maybe they’ll reject the privatization scam first too.
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He made his fortune selling technology to the federal government. https://mykidzliberty.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/education-week-in-review/
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If Texas wants to secede from the union
I say go for it
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Morath is nowhere near a billionaire, but he was still a political pick. In my opinion, he’s just a horrible human being.
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Right, but he’s closely connected to Arnold.
Arnold isn’t just in Texas. He’s in Ohio too. They give out grants to promote charter schools, but it’s the usual billionaire bait and switch, where the grant covers the start-up cost of the billionaires preferred policy but not the ongoing expense. The ongoing expense is then shoved off on the public.
It’s really a great deal for the wealthy donor. Arnold pays 1.5 million dollars to Cleveland, and Cleveland adopts Arnold’s directives and picks up the continuing cost of Arnold’s initiative. It’s a way to direct public policy and spending without going thru the risk and trouble of getting elected.
Nothing these people donate is “free”. It always, always comes with a continuing cost that the public will pick up. Cleveland will pay and pay and pay in return for that 1.5 million “donation”. They would do better borrowing the money and paying interest.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/06/clevelands_mingling_of_charter.html
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“Gov. Rick Snyder said Monday he’s “open” to disbanding his controversial Education Achievement Authority if it’s part of a deal with the Legislature to overhaul public education governance in Detroit.
The Republican governor started the authority three years ago to try to turn around 15 low-performing schools in the Detroit district.”
Snyder, Rhee, Broad and the rest pushed really hard to expand the EAA thru the whole state in 2012. They were stopped only because there were a couple of dissenters in the legislature. One state lawmaker actually had to use a FOIA demand to find out what they were planning for the EAA- she’s an elected state lawmaker and she couldn’t get information without a demand for emails.
Imagine if they (now) had to shut down a state-wide experiment instead of an experiment on 15 schools?
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2015/12/14/snyder-end-eaa-education-achievement-authority/77306098/
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John & Laura ARNOLD = ENRON scam money + natural gas FRACKING money.
Enron Billionaire Arnold Has a Problem with Librarians’ Pensions
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He’s listed as a funder of the Massachusetts privatization report too.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Until educators, administrators, teachers, and support staff stand up and fight for what is right we will continue down this road. +
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Diane I am really tired and beat down reading the stories here on your blog each day. More and more the stories are all basically the same and that is these creepy people are coming into education and ripping it apart using money money money and more money and most of it coming from us the tax paying public. The smoke and mirrors for which they are doing it makes it appear that its all about privatization but the people will pick up the tab for the privatization and the real teachers are losing out…bla bla bla every day its the same story. My question is when will this end or will it never end until these so called other people get their way.
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Same ole story,
I report what is happening. You can yawn and ignore it, or get involved and try to stop it. The purpose of this blog is to educate; if you don’t want to know what’s going on, don’t read it.
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Diane,
Keep an eye on Gov Kasich’s new Education Advisor in Ohio. It will be interesting.
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