The Network for Public Education has created a toolkit to help you fight back against the DeVostation of our public schools.
Here are the one-pagers you need to answer questions about charters, vouchers, and privatization.
Here is an interactive map that shows where every state has gone with the DeVos agenda.
Here is the information you need to get involved, tell your friends, share with your neighbors, and fight the attacks on public education.
By the way, the NPE membership has climbed to 350,000. We have members in every state, ready to write their legislators and to schedule meetings with them. We are helping our members organize to support their public schools.
Please join us!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The toolkit provides important information for all Americans. I hope it goes viral.
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I feel as if voucher cheerleaders have to address this:
“Republican Arizona lawmakers on Thursday dramatically expanded a school voucher program by extending eligibility to all 1.1 million state schoolchildren despite vehement opposition from Democrats who believe it will undercut public education and cost taxpayers untold millions of dollars.
It now heads to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who tweeted that he expected to sign the measure Thursday night.
“When parents have more choices, kids win,” his tweet said.
The proposal that had languished for weeks reappeared after a Republican Senate opponent negotiated a growth cap he called permanent but Democrats said could be swept away with a single vote. The deal cleared the way for his support and the measure’s Senate passage.
Republican backers call the measure a needed school choice expansion, but opponents argued it will benefit the wealthy, who they say will use state money to pay for private education they would fund anyway.”
The public was told this was about saving low income children from failing public schools.
It’s become more and more obvious in state after state that this is NOT what this is about.
Did they mislead the public when they sold “choice” and can we now at least get an honest answer on what the end goal is here? If the objective is to wind down public schools the least they could do is inform the parents and children IN those schools that their schools have been slated for de-funding and eventual elimination.
It matters. Now. Why? Because 90% of kids are in the disfavored public sector schools. They and their parents should know states are abandoning these systems. I mean for goodness sakes- it’s only fair to TELL THEM they’re IN the sector that is due to be eliminated. This song and dance about “agnostics” is clearly not true based on what we’re seeing in states so what is true? It’s 50 million kids and parents. Tell them.
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I know it’s a lot to ask but I’d like to see some attention paid to what seems to me to be a huge ed reform push on “personalized learning” in public schools.
The scale of the sales and marketing effort gives me pause.
They don’t have any evidence this huge investment adds value for children, yet they’re ramping it up as fast as they possibly can. If you read ed reformers, as I do, this started with the absolute veneration of Summit charter schools and it’s all larded up with meaningless phrases about ’empowerment” and “21st century” that come straight out of the same tech sector that are selling product TO public schools
The tech sector is a business. They’re salespeople That doesn’t make them bad- it makes them salespeople. Beware of ed reformers peddling sales pitches disguised as “personalized learning”.
https://www.the74million.org/article/will-personalized-learning-become-the-new-normal-inside-rhode-islands-statewide-tech-initiative
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Thank you. FYI this group which is dealing with this: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stopPBE/?ref=br_rs
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This is the best on the Rhode Island take over that I have seen.
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Diane: It’s nothing less than the systematization of resistance to some very bad ideas, and to a similar systematization by ALEC and others who have systematized communication of those bad ideas.
It makes me wonder: though public schools do not deserve the fantasy hyper-criticism that is coming from the other side who want to destroy them in the name of privatization and profit, Is there a similar plan to show how to make public schools and the systems that support it better? Just thinking . . .
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CBK, my plan is included in the closing chapters of Reign of Error.
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Diane: Thanks. I have to admit that I haven’t read it yet.
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CBK,
Please read Reign of Error. It puts the past 15 years into perspective.
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Diane Is the plan posted on-line in any way? If not, doing so would connect both online and reading audiences. (Forgive me if It’s done already.)
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Matching states with virtual charter schools, to the states that have colleges represented in the Gates-funded Frontier Set program, 10 out of 16 are found.
Frontier Set’s goal is, “to create new institutional delivery methods”.
The plot is to take, from Americans, an education system created for opportunity for income equality and, let the pieces fall into a two-tier colonial model.
Gates gave $2.2 mil. in education grants to the Center for American Progress. The tone of CAP’s plan for a replacement for college accreditation (November in Forbes) is similar to Rubio’s accreditation plan (Sunshine State News link at CHEA.org.)
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Harvard University, education reform’s capital, isn’t on the list of 30 colleges finding “new institutional delivery methods”, gratis of the Gates Foundation.
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The toolkit is very helpful for those trying to defend their public schools. Perhaps at some point NPE should post information on pro-education candidates. We need to support policymakers that support public schools and rebuke those that attack. Many people do not follow elections that closely. It also may be difficult for some people to discern who is the better candidate, especially when they often avoid the education topic deliberately to conceal their motives.
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Retired Teacher,
NPE Action endorses pro-public education candidates. We endorse those who apply for our endorsement, who answer a questionnaire about their views on privatization and testing, and who check out with our local affiliates.
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Excellent! Thank you and the NPE. I’ve copied and pasted the link on to the Notes on my phone. Nice to have an easy reference.
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