Peter Greene delves into 16 policy ideas for education, proffered by Bellwether Education Partners, a consulting group populated by and for reformers.
You will not be surprised that at the top of the list is school choice. Despite any evidence that charter schools are intrinsically superior to public schools, they are the solution put forward, as well as increasing the federal tax breaks to incentivize more investments in charters.
Peter reviews the 16 policies and finds not much new.
He concludes:
Some points worth thinking about, and a whole lot of swift repackagings of the same old reformster profiteering sales pitches. As I said at the top– Clinton already knows all of this and all Trump really wants is a tub of gasoline and a blowtorch, so I’m not sure to whom this pitch is aimed. But it’s on the reformster radar, so it should be on our as well.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bellwether Education Partners is promoting this idea:
WHO offers education, WHERE, and to whom, and by what means does not matter as long as parents can choose….and as long as the only “public” in education is comprised of taxpayers who foot the bill.
Getting this concept installed as the new normal for thinking about public education is part of their mission and the mission of key clients.
Laura, as you well know, this is total abdication of public responsibility for educating the next generation.
4 out of 16 exclusively focus on charters. None of them offer any benefit to kids in existing public schools, with the possible exception of “mentoring” and no school district needs either ed reformers or the federal government to put in a mentoring program.
Standard ed reform, in other words. Charters, charters, charters! Rah! Rah!
Will the preventing child sex trafficking programs be mandated? Where should public schools cut to fund them?
Bellwether is in Kim Smith’s stable of organizations, along with TFA, Pahara Aspen and New Schools Venture Fund, all of which received money from Gates. In her interview in Philanthropy Roundtable, she said “…(NSVF) marching orders…to develop diverse charter schools organizations that produce different brands on a large scale.” When that is coupled with Bill Gates’ investment, in the largest retailer of schools-in-a-box, it’s easy to project where the money of local communities, will go.
Bellwether describes schools as “human capital pipelines”. The use of the term “pipeline”, as a model for kids’ education, demonstrates a lack of decency and compassion.
The proposals all turn what should be a public responsibility over to corporations. Corporations want access to any and all public funds, and there is no higher moral or social interest in their proposals. They just have to buy the right policymakers, and we have new policy that suits them. They want to insert themselves into the equation to make profit from education, social issues and problems. They want to turn education and social services into a corporate welfare system in which they write the rules, make a profit and close the door on democracy. They have managed to do this already in the military industrial complex in which we waste millions on defense contractors. We have already seen the inhumane results of privatized prisons where some prisoners were barely fed, overcrowding was routine, and treatment of costly illnesses like cancer were ignored. By the way, their “interest” in standards for high education gives us a road map of where they plan to invade next.
Other than privatizing public schools, what are the “ideas” of ed reformers?
Go to any of their sites. The vast majority of articles are about one of 2 things- 1. public schools suck, 2. charter schools rock.
https://www.the74million.org/
Is there something else? Testing of course, and stern lectures on “holding public schools accountable” but is there some positive message for public school students inside the echo chamber?
I feel my son has been scolded sufficiently. When do we get to the part where they “improve public schools”? He’s my youngest and I have been listening to the promises from these people for 20 years, through 4 children in public schools. Do they think they’ll get around to “improving public schools” before he graduates?
To understand what SOME successful corporate charter schools really means, it helps to compare CREDO’s 2013 National Study to the 2015, 41-Urban Regions Study. On page 27 of CREDO’s Urban Regions Study is a chart that compares both.
What does that mean? Well, there are 497 urban regions in the United States as reported by the 2010 U.S. Census Urban Area List. That means CREDO compared less than 9 percent of the total urban areas in the United States.
https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-rural-2010.html
In the 41 Urban Regions study, 57 percent of publicly funded, private sector, autocratic, opaque and often fraudulent and inferior corporate charter schools were the same or worse than the community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools. In Reading, that number was 62 percent were worse or the same.
In the 2013 National CREDO study, 71 percent of the autocratic, corporate charters were worse or the same in math. In Reading, that number was 79 percent.
And if you click the following link and carefully read the entire 38 page study from CREDO’s limited urban study, you’ll learn that most of the autocratic, corporate charter schools serve fewer students from these three groups: Special Education, English Language Learners, and students living in poverty.
That means the two school systems do not serve the same students. Sometimes the differences were dramatic . For instance, in Las Vegas where 65 percent of the students in the traditional public schools lived in poverty versus 11 percent in the autocratic ,corporate charter schools; Boston where 30 percent of the students in the traditional schools are English Language Learners compared to 8 percent in the autocratic corporate charter schools.
Click to access Urban%20Charter%20School%20Study%20Report%20on%2041%20Regions.pdf
“Reformers” don’t really care about results. They care more about spin and hype. “Reformers” and our corrupt policymakers ignore the evidence of failure and continue their hostile takeover of public education. They intend to profit from, dominate and control our policies, and it is happening.
Retired Teacher
Agreed.
PROFIT, not a true interest in education, is the corporate way.
There are no teachers in this list. http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-education-secretary-john-b-king-jr-names-six-education-leaders-national-assessment-governing-board?utm_content&utm_medium=email&utm_name&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term
Did the people who were going to demo0nstrate against the reform movement at the debates show up at all? were there enough that they should not been ignored, or did the effort fizzle out before Yesterday?