Charles P. Pierce blogs for Esquire, and he is always on target.
In this post, he proposes that the Democrats pay attention to the privatization of public education. Like, hello, who is taking over our public schools and turning them into business opportunities?
His article: “Reminder: Education is Not a Damn Marketplace.”
This is the proposition that he wants Democrats to debate:
Resolved: No matter how noble the original motives, public school “reform” as pursued by private interests in general, and by plutocratic dilettantes in particular, has been an abject failure and an almost limitless vista of low-rent scams and high-tech brigandage.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have been saying this forever at Oped news.
http://www.opednews.com/Series/PRIVITIZATION-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150925-546.html
It will never happen. Democrats nor Republicans do not want to make the big money donors unhappy. They need the money to get elected. To hell with the Public Schools, Students, Teachers, and Parents. Not to mention the future of the United States of America.
Agreed, but it goes deeper than just the money. It becomes a social network where the elected official in pursuit of money , is on the golf course or at the cocktail party with the donor class constantly. The concerns of the donor, become the concerns of the politician.
They are not playing golf with teachers , at the local pub with plumbers or at the supermarket with struggling moms.
Congress is listening to the Aspen Institute, who until a few weeks ago, included David Koch’s photo, as a board member. Gates funds Aspen’s “Senior Congressional Education Staff Network”, “Pahara Aspen Institute”, etc.. Madelyn Albright is an Aspen board member. Reportedly her firm’s client list includes hedge funder Paul Singer. Reportedly, she is on the board of hedge funder, Pete Peterson’s latest attempt to undermine Social Security.
They’re convinced if they just “regulate” all of these problems will be solved.
Detroit has 40% charter schools and it’s a mess. The ed reform conclusion? It’s not a failure of choice, it’s a failure of regulation.
So what if this completely contradicts their own theory of “choice” which was that competition would improve ALL schools. They’re going to fail again in Detroit, because the Michigan legislature rolled over the lawmakers Detroit elected. This is the 3rd time ed reform has taken exactly the same heavy-handed approach to privatizing schools over the objections of the lawmakers people in Detroit elected. They learned absolutely nothing.
It’s not fair to taxpayers to pay for bureaucratic oversight to prevent or punish fraud that is attracted to the charter school industry. The process has proven to be easily manipulated and ineffective (Ohio, Indiana, Florida,….).
Shut charters down. Deny Wall Street its10-18% return on charter school debt. Rely on the current accountability built into the public school system, which has been very effective.
IMO, Democrats are hopelessly smitten with market-based ed reform.
I think the best we can hope for is they don’t actively damage existing public schools, just thru a combination of recklessness and a complete and utter disinterest in “traditional” schools. This same thing happened when DC deregulated the finance sector in the 1990s’. It was like stopping a train with a tricycle. All dissenters were rolled over or ignored.
Part of it is Democrats don’t actually have a “public school platform”. Republicans just filled an existing void. The “marketplace of ideas” only has one store and it’s “privatization”.
I don’t know Chiara. Sen. Sherrod Brown wasn’t even able to find the fraud until last week. Certainly, his staff read Wohlstetter’s December, 2015, paper about Columbus. The paper made the point that it was high level state politicians (Republicans) who wanted charters, and support was lacking everywhere else. The first criteria, identified in the research, was “political support”, the last was “quality”. In Brown’s letter, last week, he wanted operators, like the Walton-funded Fordham, to still get the US Dept. of Ed.’s charter expansion money. People, who are “love-smitten”, may be blind. But, the whole plutocrat thing is a different animal.
So succinctly stated! This is exactly what Hillary and tbe rest needto understand and support.
I love reading CPP. His ability to tackle the foundations of a societal issue with a biting tone makes him a must-read, most of the time. This is not one of them.
Instead, in this post, he borrows the bulk of it from other sources without any research/context of his own, tosses in a few aphoristic complaints, and then concludes with the catchy-tagline: “education’s not a damn marketplace.” (which I agree with!)
This is not CPP’s best effort or finest work. I don’t fault him for this, as he has other topics that he spends much more time with.
However, this is the problem! When mainstream/influential writers wade into the education discussion, they do so either sloppily or half-heartily, and the resulting pieces are limited to a fault. Oh what I would pay to have CPP give education his best effort!
This is not a simple discussion with a simple solution, and simplistic aphorisms won’t get us anywhere.
The promoters of market-based solutions are never called out on their wanting subsidies, meaning our tax dollars, to become operators of an education business. The weapon of choice in condemning public education is the test score, with the backup graduation rates, and then entry into some post high school education, completing that and getting a job. All of these metrics are also used in arguments that assert, or imply, that education is a Civil Rights issue. Countering this now entrenched narrative is made harder by the ease or making this case and the eagerness of the media to propagate the narrative. Today’s example.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-scandal-of-k-12-education-1467673395
The Democrats “public school platform” is just one of the reasons I am voting for Jill Stein. At this point, both parties are so corrupted that perhaps the entire house needs to burn down so that we can rebuild. I cannot support a party which refuses to end fracking, refuses to condemn the TPP, refuses to support Medicare for All, and who wants to shove a neoliberal war hawk down our throats. The Democrats continue doing the bidding of their hedge fund and billionaire donors. Hillary will acquiesce to whatever plans Alice Walton has for our beleaguered public schools. Their goal is to compartmentalize public education for the children of the great unwashed, so that they are literally penned into classrooms where only math and English matter; to hell with civics, and the visual and performance arts.
However, Hillary, Obama and their hubristic crowd of elites ignore history at their own peril.
I am done with LOTE voting, and I refuse to be hectored into voting for someone based on their skin color or gender. Candidates who run on identity politics are truly the Trojan Horses of our time. I am hoping change comes peacefully, which I think would have been possible had Bernie been the nominee. I think that, for now, all bets are off.
cross posted at Oped News
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Charter-Schools-Not-Perfor-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-School-Failure_Education_Evidence_Reform-160705-245.html#comment605272
with this comment which has embedded links at that address that do not show here… so go there!
“I have been posting the reports by Diane Ravitch for 3 years, here at Oped, and writing about the reason for the failure of public schools — the assault on the professional teacher and their removal from their practices by fabricated chargesand civil rights abuse.
“Until the The Ravitch Blog,and the NPE came along, the only information about the ‘schools’ that the people of this nation could get was from the media, which is totally owned by the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX which created the ‘marketplace’ for educating our kids.
“BE informed about what CAN BE DONE:
GO TO THE NPE website .Share it with friends. WE will continue to support the improvement of public education and to produce studies, reports, meetings, and statements
The other part of NPE is called the NPE Action Fund. It will endorse candidates and produce studies and engage in other activities and public information to support public education.
“It will be too late when the public wakes up.
“here are 15,880 school systems, and the media is hiding there reality that schools are being systematically privatized, state by state. Put ‘PRIVATIZATION’into the search field at the Ravitch blog, and see for your self.
“Put Legislaturein the search field, and see how many states have already handed over the public schools to charter schools. Put charter school failure in the search field and judge for yourself what is happening.
“Tell others to go there and watch THE END of our INSTITUTION of public schools, the ONLY way for our people to achieve income equalityand the American dream
But “Bernie” is for “public charter school”, and last I heard, Warren was pro-voucher.
Bernie’s campaign and Bernie himself never responded to any information that I sent, offering to inform his campaign about the war on public education. He remained clueless. Imagine if he had addressed the issues and acknowledged how legislature s were taking over schools. Imagine the teachers who would have voted for him, if he had shown them that he ‘got it.”
I am more likely to be struck by lightening.
Sorry lightning.
Democratic leaders are certainly (far) more likely to be struck by lightning than by (en)lightening
My imagination, or do there seem to be so many things going on with Clinton(s) that almost zero attention will be paid if she actually shows up to the NEA whatever it is?
Evidence of meager results, tons of waste and fraud in charters will not deter our money obsessed country from jumping down the privatization rabbit hole. So many oligarchs support and embrace the opportunity to make more corporate welfare cash, and they have captured our policymakers to ensure they will prevail. I doubt any type reality check is coming soon; in fact, I don’t even think they are looking. The people in charge want to cash in on the feeding frenzy before the bubble bursts. It will take widespread overt public resistance and perhaps civil disobedience to get our policymakers to pay attention.
You can follow the entire story of the collapse of Public Education If you take the time to go to the links in my COMMENT at my Oped post of Phyllis Bush’s on-the-nose comment about *Observable Reality at this juncture of July 4 and history:
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/We-Must-Make-Our-Democracy-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Agenda_Blogger_Democracy_Democracy-Decay-160704-714.html#comment605226
I have been putting together my blogs, SPEAKING AS A TEACHER (dot-net, dot-org and dot-com, so I had the links at my fingertips. If you go to these links in that long comment, AND THEN, peruse my Series on PRIVITZATION or CHARTER SCHOOL FRAUD (here i used Diane’s extraordinary reports) you WILL have the WHOLE story — INCLUDING glimpses into the assault on teachers, such as those experienced by Lenny Isenberg Lorna Stremcha and myself in the last decade of the 20th century… lon before VAM!
I have posted this link, before, but this video (and the book that Ms. Stremcha wrote when the principal of her school set her up to be assaulted) is the METAPHOR for what happens when low-life scum rise to the top.
LOOK>>>> at t he face of this wonderful Montana woman, because her story should have been front page news, and this video should have gone viral… what a story!
Her storyis OUR story–at the EXTREME
HERE IS Lorna Stremcha’s must read book: “Bravery, Bullies and Blowhards”
OUR stories are also HERE! The stories of those that they TOOK OUT with abuse and harassment, and fabricated charges, before VAM: http://endteacherabuse.org/
There are HUNDREDS OF Teacher stories at Karen Horwitz’s NAPTA site — Human stories of dedicated Americans, totally ignored by a corrupt media! A media that never tired of satires and images of those ‘bad’ teachers’ — whom the union protects.
THIS HAS BEEN OUT THERE FOR ALMOST 2 DECADES! Hidden… like the corruption that riddles the party of NO!
The microcosm that is the bureaucracy of public education systems, is the macrocosm of the United States of America in the 21st Century. Mandelbrot would agree!
Corruption reigns and is unpunished at high levels. I have said this many times, but who listens to me!
How else would a political party promote — from the get-go– a fascist, racist,egomaniac to run for the greatest office of our great nation? How could incompetent, sociopaths get to run local public schools, promoting headlines PRINCIPAL FORM HELL, in the ISSUES of NY Teacher, (but nowhere in the media)
Now THAT is an EQ… what my students identified and called an Essential Question.
BEHIND THE SCENES a lawlessness from the TOP, and corruption all the way to the bottom, became BUSINESS AS USUSAL in the ‘schools’.
Hey, ‘yawl’ know that Anything Goes — to Get the Job Done– collateral damage be damned! Isn’t that the message sold in all our action films and tv series? To rid the schools of tenured teachers principals were given permission to do their worst.
It was only with a total news blackout that this travesty and tragedy could occur!
If the medical practitioners had been removed from hospitals and replaced by trained medics, the institution would crash, too, but it would not go unnoticed as the dead bodies piled up!
Until the truth isOUT THERE, the schools cannot be run properly.
The story of the war on teachers MUST BE OUT THERE, NOW!
The real story and the actual culprits who engineered it are nowhere to be found in the national conversation about The COLLAPSE OF AMERICA’S PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM… what most folks call ‘schools.’ Everyone knows the shi*t hit the fan, but the media points to everything and anything but the culprits.
When the lawlessness against teachers began in earnest, we saw what happens– as night follows day– whenever there are no penalties for the havoc perpetrated by arrogant social dominators, like our new elite. With the cooperation of the unions which looked the other way at administrative criminal behavior, the media covered up the greatest WORKPLACE assault on American civil liberties. Here were the same immoral, unethical and corrupt behaviors were observed during the banking fiasco, and the same corrupt behaviors that gave us the party of NO, at a time when we needed to hear “Yes,” for services for which our government was created.
Here is one more link which I posted in that Oped comment, one I post often, and can be found in many of my comments, when I write about education !
In that LAST CHART we see who perpetrates of this war on the middle class.
Before you move on to the rest of my response: Here is : Wealth In America… 5 charts that you will stay in your mind, and in the last one, we find Koch, Broad, Walton Gates, Pearson, etc..
I know that what I have said here is observable reality to all except those who are ignorant of the facts or impervious to evidence.
*Observable Reality… BTW, was the title of a blog that I wrote way back in 1998, when the big assault on public education had begun and teachers like me were in the crosshairs. I was a recently ‘retired’ teacher, in 2001, and wrote and essay called “New Rules & Regulations” on that blog, because after what I experienced as a celebrated, experienced teacher-practitioner, I grasped we needed a return to civil rights in my workplace.This appeared there in 2001, and was re-posted, here:
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
I have that essay, saved even though it disappeared when Apple took away iWeb, and my first SPEAKING AS A TEACHER site vanished.
So like Apple to forget the users.
Gonna put up my own blog, soon.
and if you read my ‘stuff’ and want to talk to me, message me at my author’s page at Oped News
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
Pierce does some good work summing up the current state of affairs, but he absolutely neglects the role played by the current administration.
It’s as if in Pierce’s world the charter schools just came out of nowhere, like a natural disaster, rather than being pushed by the president and his hand picked Secretary of (Privatizing) Education.
Had it been Romney or McCain would it have been any different. We have a 1.5 party system
Things might have been different.
At least when Bush was in office, the Democrats offered some resistance (small though it was).
With Obama, the Democrats have been like a superconductor, presenting zero resistance.
HRC was booed when she tried to push for public charters in her speech to members attending the NEA-RA today. Hope she was listening.
BEST NEWS all day.
That IS terrific news! I wish union leadership (I’m looking at you, Lily and Randi) would stand up more.
And don’t give me the “we are the union” speech. The local, state, and national leadership won’t even respond to my calls and emails about this nonsense, let alone actually talk to a peon.
Calling charter schools, public, is a false claim that the FTC should be forced to investigate.