Peter Greene reports on an NPR program explaining charter schools. Perhaps you thought the program would give equal time to charter advocates and charter critics. Perhaps you thought you thought the program might explain why charters are controversial. Perhaps you thought that NPR–supposedly a bastion of liberalism–might explain why Trump, DeVos, the Koch brothers, the Waltons, and every red-state governor–loves them. Or why blue-state Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly not to allow more of them.
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/03/npr-explains-charter-schools.html?spref=tw
If you thought that, you guessed by now that none of those things happened.
Claudio Sanchez of NPR interviewed three charter cheerleaders and tossed them softball questions.
Maybe this is what NPR had to do to justify the subsidy it gets from the Walton Family Foundation.
For shame.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s all make sure that T***p reads this post. Then he’ll call for doubling PBS’s budget instead of zeroing out public broadcasting!
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My observation for the last two years is that NPR has not fairly balanced coverage of the charter industry and public schools. My memory is of glowing reports of how charters provide such wonderful opportunities. I do not remember any report on the problems or abuses of the charter industry. I would conclude that Public Broadcasting has provided a lot of free advertising for the charter industry.
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And, so very sadly, I have found the same to be true with PBS.
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ciedie aech: At least in their science programs, PBS commonly names the Koch’s as contributors.
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And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Catherine. Think I remember hearing thanks to the Walton Family Foundation, as well.
No coincidence that they’ve gone easy on the assault on public education in their programming.
We can expect more (much more) of the same once Trump slashes or eliminates funding for public broadcasting. The billionaires will pony up more and expect a commensurate return on their investment.
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Such a terrible thing, to lose either NPR or PBS, yet so hard to feel sorry for either one as Trump comes in to slash their funding….how can they not see their complicity in getting us to this point?
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….again, the reformer/privatizer/charter industry’s main victory has been, thus far, their ability to co-opt and convince both sides of the political spectrum. On the right the slick corporate, neo-liberal language of “the market,” “efficiency,” and “value” (of course mixed with a hatred of unions and public sector anything.) On the left, the use of the language of social justice, liberation, and also the imagery of “artisanal” schools that can be selected specifically for young Dylan’s many academic gifts. Lefties are salved by the social justice and liberation piece so they can think the browner kids in the neighborhoods where they don’t live are being done right by, and of course within their neighborhoods they can choose, just like at the farmers market, the most perfect fit for said young Dylan and his wildly high potential.
The privatizing industry has dominated this narrative on both sides and has been successful in the face of virtually no in-kind challenge or push-back from our side. (Academic papers and studies notwithstanding).
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From Peter’s post: “Rees lists off her favorite features. “A local school district does not tell charters when to open or close their doors, what kind of curriculum to use, what company to contract for food or paper. Charters have the freedom to hire teachers without a union contract.”
We could say the same cheerful note about the charter healthcare system or the charter internet service system we have been experiencing.
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I don’t know about other parts of the country, but here in Memphis, NPR is heavily supported by Gates and the Waltons.
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It’s a national effort on their part, Mate. Koch brothers are there, too…they just don’t have the name brand on their companies.
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VOUCHERS and CATHOLIC EDUCATION: New report:
“Charlotte Hays: WASHINGTON — A new study entitled, “Beyond the Classroom: The Implications of School Vouchers for Church Finances,” suggests that, while voucher-supported parish schools may prevent a church from closing, the parishes may pay a big cost. The study indicates that voucher expansion dries up contributions from parishioners and leads to a decline in non-educational religious activity.
“The Templeton Foundation-funded study, released as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, looked at the finances of Catholic churches in Milwaukee that operate parish schools. The “Milwaukee Parental Choice Program” is the oldest voucher program in the U.S. It started 26 years ago and works with voucher programs in both Catholic and other schools.
At a time when President Donald Trump’s new secretary for education . . . ” More:
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/do-voucher-programs-help-or-hurt-catholic-schools
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Then you’d think, Catholic speak up against donations to their students in the form of vouchers.
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Mate Wierdl: I don’t know. I’ll watch the newsletters and report if something more is said. In the meantime, watch the “comments” for this article in this (really conservative) newsletter.
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The American Catholic Church is not a monolith. Read the full article. Those interviewed suggest other interpretations of the data. I agree with the opinion that the main problem [at least in Minnesota, but probably many other places, too] is an overall decline in supportive parish membership, which leaves Catholic schools hanging by a thread, so they grasp onto public-tax-supported vouchers, which frees up [declining] membership to offer even less support.
Meanwhile, to your point: I am disappointed (as a Catholic) to read that main Catholic organs like Commonweal & Catholic Register [at least in past] have supported vouchers. But I have also read recent statements by Catholic orgs [wish I could cite, but cannot find] similar to recent statements by, e.g., Texas Protestant preachers, denouncing voucherism on the basis that fed [or state]funding of religious schools will inevitably result in state incursion on [or even control over] curriculum.
Religious schools w/any kind of moral foundation will refuse fed/state funding for fear of control by the state. These folks are even more concerned about separation of church & state than your average taxpayer.They understand that public dollars come with strings attached.
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I wanted to send an e-mail or snail mail letter to this traitor to public education but couldn’t find one. I did find his Twitter page, though.
My suggestion is to FLOOD his Twitter page with Tweets letting him know what you think about his selling out to the Walton family and/or the autocratic, for profit, opaque, often fraudulent and inferior corporate charter school industry.
https://twitter.com/csanchezclaudio?lang=en
This was my Tweet
@CsanchezClaudio
Why no balance 3/1 Charter School piece to show both sides of issue?
I taught in PubEd 30yrs
#K12
#EdBlogNet
#EdReformFraud
I also wanted to discover how long he was a teacher in the classroom but I can’t find that information. He doesn’t even have his own Wiki page.
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He did teach. http://www.npr.org/people/2101122/claudio-sanchez
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I found this piece from 2016 by Sanchez: “Lessons From the School Where I Failed as a Teacher.”
I also had a brief conversation online with him this morning through Twitter. I took screen shots of the conversation. He said he taught for 2 years in one school, the school he writes about.
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/03/14/467800062/lessons-from-the-school-where-i-failed-as-a-teacher
Sanchez also said there will be a follow-up piece that focuses on the critics of corporate Charter schools, and he plans to reach out to Diane Ravitch and include quotes from her in that one.
That’s why I took the screen shots of that Twitter linked conversation. To make sure I had proof to back up what I just wrote in this comment.
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His question as to whether he was a good teacher or not tells it all. Anyone who is asking that question after teaching for two years, especially in a place like he worked, doesn’t really know what it means to be a good teacher. They don’t mention what his undergraduate or post grad study was in, which probably means it wasn’t education. I didn’t have an education degree either and went to work in a private school for multiply handicapped students. I was not a good teacher. I loved my students, but I didn’t know what I was doing. Perhaps I am being too harsh; I’m sure he wasn’t incompetent, but good, really good teaching is not something most novices can claim. A more honest question would have been to ask what it really would have taken to become a good teacher. He didn’t last long enough to know if he had it in him.
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I wish I were a tweeter but that is beyond my capacity. It infuriates me that NPR has no path to respond to this article!
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Twitter is more than sending out a flow of tweets that are about the tweeter and little or nothing else
There are communities of bloggers and writers on Twitter that support each other and use Twitter as more of a promotional site to lead readers/viewers to their Blogs and books.
The 140 character limit is misleading because we can add links and images/photos to a tweet and those images can have more words in them. For instance, educational infographics, and when we belong to ReTweet groups, those Tweets can get a lot of coverage. I belong to several ReTweet groups.
#HistorySaturday
#SundayBlogShare
#MondayBlogs
#ArchiveDay
All of these ReTweet groups are bloggers and their tweets lead to their blogs just like mine do. I ReTweet them and they ReTweet me, and I don’t do it daily. Maybe once or twice a week for a half hour or so.
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Lloyd Lofthouse Thanks for the tweeter-up. (I don’t tweet either–never understood it.)
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It took me awhile to learn how to use Twitter properly. There’s a ratio to ReTweeting. ReTweet 80-percent or more for others and only Tweet 20-percent or less for your own tweets. Also, click links to Blogs when one of the Tweets you are ReTweeting sounds interesting. And if you enjoy the blog post “like” it and/or leave a comment.
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When the fight against Question 2 – which would have allowed for unlimited charters in Massachusetts – was gearing up, my daughter gave me a Twitter tutorial and insisted it was the most effective social media platform for something like a ballot question. I was quite skeptical, but her job is in social media, so I figured she knew something I didn’t. I was impressed at the power it has and I’m a convert, though I do not use any other social media like Facebook..
It’s up to you which people and what outlets you choose to follow, which allows you to create a content stream that suits you. I’m sure there are hidden features I haven’t discovered or don’t use, but a rudimentary base of knowledge is still quite effective.
Try it, you’ll like it.
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NPR and its affiliates, especially WNYC in New York, have been shilling for charters for years.
I guess it’s just a contemporary liberal/pwogwessive thing to be easily taken in by buzz word-laden (“choice,” “civil rights movement of our time,” it’s all for the kids,” etc.) propaganda, and and follow that up with willful obtuseness.
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This is absolutely true, led by WNYC’s incomparable charter cheerleader (oops, I mean “reporter”) Beth Fertig, who has never met a press release from Success Academy or their lobbying arm, Families for Excellent Schools, that she hasn’t dutifully transcribed with the minimal amount of reporting. Fertig’s reporting over the years reminded me exactly of Judith Miller’s reporting in the NY Times about how Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Two women who at one time were probably decent reporters who got lazy and too close to people with power and money and forgot what it meant to be a journalist. Two women who accepted everything the people in power told them with complete and utter credulousness because it was easier not to question. Two women who decided that any evidence that contradicted their dutiful transcribing of press releases and convenient “leaks” was what Trump would call “fake” because it didn’t agree with what they wanted to print.
Miller finally got caught out (and will be forever associated with bad journalism) and Fertig seems to be off the education beat recently. I guess the rich pro-charter organizations found Claudio Sanchez to take her place. And, in the NY Daily News, Ben Chapman. Chapman’s “reporting” is truly worthy of the “Judith Miller stenography award” for doing the bidding of the pro-charter folks without bothering to ask any inconvenient questions to doing any real reporting. Unless it comes to ruining the lives of some poor Bronx Science High School kids with bad judgement. That’s something Ben Chapman will happily spend lots of time to “investigate” and he has proven himself to be utterly devoid of any moral or ethical compass. I love seeing his “exclusives”!!! that are basically rewritten Success Academy press releases extolling some honor they got that dozens or hundreds of public schools (and other charters) receive but don’t pay a PR firm to publicize. When it comes to a charter PR firm needing a friendly reporter to receive that “exclusive” that offers outrageously over the top praise of Success Academy, Chapman is always their man. Like Judith Miller before him, Chapman is so certain that charters are perfect and wonderful that he has no need to spend any time examining evidence to the contrary. Why bother?!! He has “exclusives” to report about how fantastic they are!
Sorry to digress, but if we don’t call out these awful journalists, who “report” in the manner of Judith Miller, they will continue to undermine good policy making and all our children.
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You’re not digressing b bringing up the likes of Fertig; she and the rest of that bunch are awful, and it can’t be pointed out too often
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Glad to hear Beth Fertig has disappeared. Yet you equate her to Judith Miller– a once-fabulous NYT reporter whose one [serious] mistake ruined her career? & can’t imagine why you bring in Ben Chapman. Who cares what NY Daily News says about education? Let’s focus on getting decent ed reporters at NPR & the NYT.
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Precisely why I have decided not to support NPR with donations in the past couple of years. In an attempt to be “fair, and unbiased” (I suppose), they have given more airtime to such softball interviews with “reformers” and people on the far-right political fringes, without asking more critical or incisive questions, all while increasingly marginalizing the voices of the left (and even those more centrist). Walton, Gates et al. certainly have found a venue for advancing their agendas…
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Yes, same with me, Antoinette RYAN. NPR used to be pretty good, but in recent years, they have not, and I stopped giving, for the same reason.
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I hope you and Zorba have let the NPR know why you don’t donate anymore.
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Yes, I have, Duane. And I still occasionally get soliciting letters from them. I reply, restating my reason for no longer giving.
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Are they as bad a AARP??
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No, AARP is much worse. Not necessarily just for donations, but they try and sell you supplemental health insurance all the time.
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Try doing a search on reviews of Waiting for Superman. one of the best….which I will post here again upon request, was made by the former president of the st. louis school board, Peter Downs. I doubt you will find it. It was published in the Beacon, in 2010. Public radio bought the Beacon a couple years later. It remained available for several months, but they removed it. They can jail me, or take my house if they want to. (they did remove it within an hour of my reposting it.) They are irresponsible jerks.
Kjoe777 • a few seconds ago The Many Lies of Waiting for Superman,
Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by St. Louis Public Radio.
https://flaglerlive.com/154… Thanks to you at public radio, we are not allowed to read what Peter Downs said….but this is not bad…. ” The movie is a terrifically effective bit of public-school teacher-bashing, union-bashing propaganda.
As Diane Ravich wrote in an essay on the movie for the New York Review of Books, “Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film’s quiet acknowledgment that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates.”
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“Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by St. Louis Public Radio.” They removed both my posts from a few minutes ago….I admit….this ping ponging is confusing….they simply will not budge on the Peter Downs review, or information related it.
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NPR, which I loved and listened to faithfully from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, has become a real disappointment. So this news surprises me very, very little.
Where is Ian Shoales when we need him?
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“Come to the general and save some…”
“The impulse to fight, like the impulse to run away, is instinctual and reflexive. Sun Tzu taught that anger, hate, and demonizing our enemies are all strategic traps. These mindsets weaken positions rather than strengthening them.
The Nature of Enmity
Understood correctly, the heart of any competition is always dueling philosophies. Positioning is a battle to win supporters and discourage opponents. When we demonize opponents, we are trying to tear down their position, but in doing so, we undermine our chances of success by attracting supporters who are looking for someone to hate rather than a goal to support. The character of these supporters will lead us inevitably in costly conflict. Positions built on philosophies of enmity are inherently weak. Positions built on mutual rewards are inherently strong. Groups bound together by mutual enemies are, to quote Shakespeare, “full of sound and fury signifying nothing” and have been shown throughout history to fall apart once the enemy is defeated.
Establishing winning positions isn’t based on fighting others but in finding common ground with them. Sun Tzu’s strategy is based on positioning, which requires us to see how others think and feel. This requires seeing the world from the perspective of others, empathizing with them.
Negotiations never work with criminals or tyrants because they cannot imagine any possibilities beyond the zero-sum game.They only can imagine their success based on the failure of others. Of course, this most usually results in the failure of all.
Success depends on creativity. Creativity depends on empathy. Empathy is work. It takes work to see the openings created by the needs of others. The fears and desires within a single human heart are complex. Multiply these unknowns times the population of the world and you have a sense of how much opportunity there is in the world.
By working to see each others’ point of views, we develop a better sense of our own position and the opportunities around us. Without that empathy, we do not have the raw materials we need to create position that attract others and win their support.”
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NoBrick: From your note: “Negotiations never work with criminals or tyrants because they cannot imagine any possibilities beyond the zero-sum game.They only can imagine their success based on the failure of others. Of course, this most usually results in the failure of all.,”
Understood in terms of a person’s horizon, it’s not just new learning but a real breakthroughthat is needed in many cases (not all). Commonly, however, new thinking is generated from that “viewpoint” where they/we cannot even recognize that there MIGHT BE another higher/lower horizon to understand (that’s the nature of horizon–we cannot see beyond it).
What happens further, then, is this: whatever is our specific horizon we project onto the “other” precisely because we cannot see or even consider that there there may be another or better or even different way to view things. For instance, if I think in a horizon that starts with zero-sum-game thinking, or if I am saturated with the capitalist mindset, then I can easily also assume that EVERYONE thinks that way too.
Negotiations, then, become practically impossible, as your note-quote says, without some sort of breakthrough .
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Catherine,
Correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t both Piscitelli’s and your concept of horizons and breakthroughs have as the top level a theological/religious bent?
I’ve just started to read your book and have read 2/3 of Piscitelli’s which seems to have turned into a religio-philosophical treatise/theology away from a more philosophical take on things. Are you saying that these “conversions” (a very theological term at that) are hierachically structured?
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Duane E Swacker: Lonergan and Piscitelli: A theological/religious bent. Yes and no. Yes: Both are religious men, but no, not in an ideological sense that most (in my experience) think.
The philosophical work stands on its own as empirical, however (critical-general empirical method). In fact, my own book points to the same distinction as you do–precisely because I wanted to bring it’s value into the field of education–as a secular endeavor. The most religious thing that I point to is that, among the general questions that we find in conscious functioning is the question for the “mysterious beyond.” (Is it ultimately worthwhile?) All religious institutions and doctrines are an ANSWER to that question. But the question itself is still a question, and not an answer. And it’s part of conscious order.
But your point is one answer to the question that many Lonergan scholars continue to ask: Why isn’t Lonergan’s work more well-known? Most don’t bother to read the fine (and empirically verifiable) philosophical points drawn out in his cognitional theory and epistemology because they assume it’s grounded in some kind of religious doctrine, Jesuit and Catholic, in this case. A sad oversight, to be sure.
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OK, Duane, trying to follow this erudite tangent but can’t find Piscitilli? Please en,ighten or provide link.
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P.s.found Catharine’s book at amazon & tried to get more info at link but clicking on it doesn’t work (tried to copy out the link address but got a 404 message)
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bethree5: I went to Amazon and found my book by typing in (1) my full name (Catherine Blanche King) and (2) then, again, just the book title–but only by using: Finding the Mind: Pedagogy for Verifying . . .
Also, I found Piscitelli’s books by using his full name: Piscitelli, Emile. It has an “e” rather than an “i” in it.
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Read between the radio waves
To fathom NPR
Gates Foundation pays their ways
And keeps them in a jar
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Why was THIS https://dianeravitch.net/2016/09/14/esquire-blogger-charter-schools-are-a-vehicle-for-graft-and-profit/#comments the most recent mainstream media article on charters not Fixed (YES like a dog!) by the people controlling the rest of the outlets? It is nearly six months old. As of yesterday it appears I can’t turn on the radio anymore either. Duly noted, Pierce has only to dip a tiny net into the burbling seas of graft since 1/20 to have his material write itself…sorry for mixed metaphors o ye of teaching prowess ( :
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“sorry for mixed metaphors”
You should be: I have no idea what your comment meant.
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NPR and PBS are both irredeemably corrupted by the money they accept from foundations and corporations.
Can’t speak to PBS news (stopped watching long ago), but the political coverage by NPR is appalling. Would not bother me a bit to see both organizations lose all of their taxpayer funding.
Independent media sources like Democracy Now and The Young Turks are the last bastion of the supposedly free press. Follow the money — the corporate media, and media sponsored by politically motivated foundations, cannot be trusted.
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“Can’t speak to PBS news (stopped watching long ago), but the political coverage by NPR is appalling. Would not bother me a bit to see both organizations lose all of their taxpayer funding.”
Not sure about that. The reason NPR and PBS had to start relying on sponsors more and more was exactly because they lost federal funding. And I think they lost federal funding exactly so that billionaires can start using them for their own purposes.
So instead of killing these programs, it would be better to save them, get them federal funding. Then they would shut up about money, economy and charter schools, and start talking about what and who really matter in life.
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