Aaron Pallas, professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, asks, what’s the worst that can happen with the U.S. Department of Education and Congress leading the effort to privatize public education. He has two scenarios: one is the worst-case scenario where the administration does maximum damage to public education and the teaching profession; the other foresees structural limitations on the damage they can inflict and offers hope for surviving the next four years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s clear what the corporate sector wants. Commercial online schools on the model of broadband cable TV services, funded by the taxpayers on the model of the defense industry. Why do we know they want that? Because it’s the sweetest of the sweets deal for them they can currently imagine. But give them time, they always dream bigger.
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Teachers? You can forget about teachers. Teachers will go the way of supermarket checkout clerks, replaced by automation, media moguls at the top of the edumericial industry and “content producers” at the bottom — there’s a lot of old, out of work, Hollywood soap opera hacks who will do just fine for that.
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I propose a third scenario to Trump-DeVos’ reign of terror. When the horrible ideas for ESSA emerge, there is widespread resistance from parents, social justice groups and teachers’ unions. Democrats in Congress wake up and start supporting strong public education. While a few right wing parents accept vouchers for their children, most parents reject them and pressure states to adequately fund public schools. It never hurts to dream!
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This is literally the first thing I’ve read that mentions PUBLIC schools under Trump and DeVos.
Every single piece from the ed reform echo chamber is solely focused on Trump and vouchers and charters. To me it’s evidence of how public schools are simply not valued in ed reform.
It’s amazing on a lot of levels, but perhaps the most disturbing part of it is how it ignores systemic effects of ed reform. It’s as if charters and vouchers exist apart from public schools and that is of course NOT TRUE. Trump privatization push will effect every existing public school in the country. This is ignored in ed reform and that’s insane.
It worries me for kids in public schools. They don’t have a single advocate in their own federal government. They will lose, and lose big. Their schools have simply disappeared in elite circles. They’re omitted.
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Chiara: you are quite right to come back to this point over and over again…
You make it clear that rheephorm accountability is not just deeply flawed but deliberately misleading. It’s all about making decisions, non-mathematical, about what is valued and what is not valued. AcCOUNTability—if you leave out of the count what you DON’T value (and measure and mention), and you include in the count what you DO value (and measure and mention), then it all makes perfect ₵ent¢.
Snappy slogans aimed at niche customers aside, it’s about counting up all that $tudent $ucce$$. In their bidness lingo, that’s the bottom line.
If that weren’t true, they would be all in for the kind of strict transparency and oversight that guarantees (as much as humanly possible) that privatization and charters and vouchers would indeed be “the rising tide that lifts all [public school] boats.”
Translation from rheephormish to plain English: corporate education reform is the rheephorm tsunami that threatens to destroy all in its path.
With the caveat, as always, that its nostrums and panaceas and proven failures are only for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. For THEIR OWN CHILDREN, Lakeside School and the like…
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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DC abandoning public schools might not be all bad. If they aren’t supporting our schools we have no reason to hire than as consultants, take direction from them or adopt their reforms.
It may be an opportunity for public schools to break free from what has become an echo chamber.
The leverage they had was funding. If they’re focused on pulling funding from public schools public schools no longer owe them compliance or deference. We’ll owe that to the people who will provide more and more of the financial support for our schools- local people.
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The loss of what was Title 1 funds will cause a budget shortfall in many districts with poor students. Districts mostly paid or partly paid the salaries compensatory reading and math instruction as well as ESL. Some of the funds were used to purchase materials to instruct these students. The whole idea of giving all the funds to a few students for an alternative school while ignoring the needs of the rest, is a poor use of the funds.
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Perhaps you are right .
20 billion divided by 51 Million students. Three hundred and ninety dollars per child . Once you subtract the cost of implementing Federal programs like Common Core and the testing and data collection that comes with it. The Federal contribution is a lot less .
My district has a 234,000,000 dollar school budget . 390 dollars times X the 10,000 students equals a small fraction of that budget ,less than 2%. Perhaps states rights is not that bad an Idea and a diminished role for the Federal Government is not that bad an Idea. An idea that should be expanded to other areas. Like transplantation, Water works and higher education. .Those “Coastal Elite” states that choose to invest in infra structure including education would fare a lot better keeping their money at home .
I for one am getting tired of fighting to send my money to the taker states . Those that chose to teach creation and hire unqualified teachers should be free to do so. We can see how that woks for them in the long run. Tired of sending my tax dollars to Oklahoma to pay for their Tornadoes as their elected officials seek to block spending for other disasters Nation Wide . Let the cattle pick up the tab.
There was tremendous apprehension when Textile and other industries moved to the South to take advantage of low taxes and slave labor. It didn’t take long to move to even cheaper labor markets out of the country.
So if you don’t want to tax your people to pay for the infrastructure needed for the future ,don’t count on my hard earned tax dollars to pick up the tab in your slacker state.
Not quite serious but it feels good to vent. Especially when it is an Electoral College that has delivered us to this point.
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Woks works same difference . White out please
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I’m focusing on the best, most powerful impact we can have organizing grassroots across the country. I see Standing Rock and Mass. Ballot Question 2 as just two examples of our potential.
Mary
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I see that but public schools deserve federal representation.
Should we just allow these people to completely escape accountability? They can just announce they’ll be exclusively focusing on charters and vouchers and that’s okay with the public who pay them and fund this giant entity?
I feel as if we have a duty to insist someone in DC represent the interests of children in public schools.
It is, after all, part of their job. Their ideological opposition to our schools doesn’t change the terms of this contract.
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It is difficult for public schools to get attention when big money bribes the local representatives. Public schools and their allies must work together to pressure representatives. The only thing that might get their attention is if they fear losing their seat and power.
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Mary will,
Join NPE and help us develop strategies.
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I have been a devoted member from the start and just sent in another contribution a couple of weeks ago. I retire this June and hope to make your next conference NPE is at the center of my vision.
Thanks for NPE and everything else you do.
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Thank you. The next NPE conference will be held in Oakland in mid-October.
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I’m sort of curios how DeVos and Trump see this working as far as public schools. Schools weren’t adopting these ed reform gimmicks because they thought they were fabulous. They were adopting them because funding is a huge stick. DeVos plans on pulling funding from public schools and then somehow insisting public schools continue to comply with whatever she says?
It’s all downside for public schools. They’d have to be nuts to go along with her.
This was always a deal. If DC ed reformers don’t hold up their end what’s the incentive for public schools to go along with the feds? They’ll scold us a lot? Who cares?
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Of course not. I’m seeing the possibility of grassroots representation getting strong enough to force legislative representatives to work for the public – in wide-open public eyes.
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I am in the Scenario #1 camp.
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This to me is an example of the complete disregard for existing public schools:
http://www.epi.org/publication/exploring-the-consequences-of-charter-school-expansion-in-u-s-cities/
It’s a study on the effects of charters on public schools. No one in ed reform bothered to study that? Wow. How is this not biased? One system was just designated not worth studying? They assigned NO value to existing public schools. That has to be the mindset. How do you miss an entire “sector” of children and schools?
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I spent the bulk of the morning plowing through this study. I was impressed by the tone of the summary as they chose to not only look at the economic issues connected to charter expansion, but also the community and social justice issues associated with charter expansion. Ultimately, we must ask an important question. Is all the disruption of creating splinter schools worth what we actually gain?
They looked at fiscal problems that are consequences of charter expansion. As Diane has repeatedly mentioned, charters need regulation and transparency. States should understand the financial implications that have the potential to destabilize the local economy and credit ratings, pension obligations and local debt. This was one of the first articles I have read that dared to look at the impact of charters on the local public schools, economy and the bigger picture. Charters do not exist in a vacuum. This is a must read for policymakers, although I doubt they will take the time it requires!
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Please please stop writing about how public schools are not spoken of as you keep putting this into the universe. I am sure that trump and everyone else knows public schools are there, here and not going any where any time soon. Please try to write positive about public schools rather than posting every day how public schools are forgotten about. Your writing also is somewhat off base leading me to think you are english as a second language person but regardless stop writing negative and start writing positive and the universe will deliver.
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Please please stop writing about how public schools are not spoken of as you keep putting this into the universe. I am sure that trump and everyone else knows public schools are there, here and not going any where any time soon. Please try to write positive about public schools rather than posting every day how public schools are forgotten about. Your writing also is somewhat off base leading me to think you are english as a second language person but regardless stop writing negative and start writing positive and the universe will deliver.
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This entire program of Devos is a complete sham as this woman has no education experience what so ever!! This woman married a guy who earned billions from the amway crap of products. I work in NYC and this woman Ms. Devos reminds me of a school chancellor kathy black who was picked by michael bloomberg when he was mayor of NYC. Kathy Black had no education experience at all, was a billionaire business woman and lasted all but three months!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is three months people not three years. Parents were hysterical and went bananas when this woman kathy black tried to play chancellor, demoralized the system including teachers, students and parents. Ms. Devos seems to be in the same cut of mold with Ms. Black and our US education system is in for a comedy show of errors and confusion you can pretty much bet on it. Trump will then realize that public schools are an American jewel and I am predicting that Ms Devos will not last the 4 years. In Vegas the line is over under 2 1/2 years and I’m taking the under.
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I posted the link to Aaron’s post at Oped, http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/What-s-the-worst-that-coul-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Department-Of-Education_Dept-Of-Education-ED-gov_Education-Costs_Education-Laws-161206-822.html “With this comment taken from Diane’s blog:
“The following is from a wonderful essay by Allison Collins, who lives in the Bay Area and blogs about education. “One of the best ways to sell something is to create a problem that needs to be fixed. This is nothing new, as you can see in this old ad which uses the fear of spinsterhood to sell mouthwash.There are some strong public schools and some that struggle. But talking about our entire public school system like it’s Armageddon is overblown, and does a great disservice to the many dedicated students, families and teachers that pour their time, money and love into our schools. More than anything, this harmful narrative seems to target urban public schools serving low-income, Black and Brown youth. There are hundreds of tiny miracles happening in our urban public schools each day that never get media attention. It’s time we analyzed why the “failing public schools” narrative is so pervasive nowadays. Who benefits when public schools fail?
That said, each day we participate in systems that either reinforce or dismantle the status quo. It’s time for us to start thinking beyond individual anecdotes to analyze the ways our collective choices create our childrens’ schools.”
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