Have You Heard? Truth in Edvertising

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1. Chiara says:

   April 20, 2017 at 1:15 pm

   Well, they must have considered this cost when they sold “choice” to the public, right?

   No? You mean they told them there was no downside risk at all and it would be all hearts and flowers? And the public bought that?

   Ohio is an ed reform paradise. We immediately adopt any “reform” Jeb Bush dreams up.

   This is what happened:

   http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2016/05/12/selling-our-schools-competition-rise-s-fight-students/83923032/

   So just tack on advertising costs when DeVos presents her magical choice wonderland and then start asking what else she isn’t telling you. Nothing is free. Eradicating a public system comes with risk.

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2. carolmalaysia says:

   April 20, 2017 at 1:20 pm

   Good grief. I was a single parent elementary teacher who had to spend around $1000 each year for supplies while barely surviving on my less than adequate paycheck.

   This is a disgusting waste of tax payer money when public schools are suffering from lack of funding. Why is this garbage behavior acceptable to law makers? I’m tired of the ignorance that dominates.

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   • Chiara says:

     April 20, 2017 at 1:28 pm

     A huge opportunity for marketing people, though:

     Get to know the Success Academy Marketing team! Follow us today (SuccessCharters).

     The advertising in Ohio is already misleading and horrible. They use stats like “parents give us a 97% rating!”

     I once got a slick mailer recruiting my (then) 4th grade son to a charter school that is 60 miles away. That charter has since closed.

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3. Lloyd Lofthouse says:

   April 20, 2017 at 1:29 pm

   Some or most of the money paying for those ads might not be coming from public funds.

   That money might be coming from corporate or billionaire donations. In the corporate world when one corporation wages war to destroy the competition, it isn’t uncommon to sell products below the production cost and spend money advertising those deeply discounted products in a campaign designed to bankrupt competing companies that do not have enough funds to fight back.

   Amazon has been doing this for years. The result caused many corporate bookstore chains to go out of business and now many retail chains are closing their doors and firing thousands of employees.

   Toyota has done this for decades and still does, and this tactic, in addition to building cars that were more dependable, helped Toyota to seduce many customers away from U.S. auto companies where the cars were being built to wear out according to a predetermined schedule forcing consumers to buy another car or spend money to keep the old one running.

   As soon as the battle is won and the community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit traditional public schools are history, then that flow of donated money funding these misleading ad campaigns will slow or dry up, and then we will be reading in the media the misleading propaganda demanding more public funds to support the autocratic, corporate education system that deliberately destroyed the public education system.

   I think this is called a hostile takeover. Corporate capitalism is a vicious, cruel system. Eventually, the competing companies in the corporate education system will turn on each other. The result will be that all the smaller charter school operations will be driven out of business and giant corporations will swallow them all until a real corporate monopoly controls education in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand and any other country they can conquer with these ruthless corporate tactics.

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   • Duane E Swacker says:

     April 20, 2017 at 2:31 pm

     We can only hope your scenario of that natural fact of corporate capitalism’s “desire to destroy competition”, i.e., become a monopoly does not come to fruition. All corporate business is done with that end in mind. (Which points to the complete difference in fundamental purposes of the corporate sector and those of the “public good” sector.)

     How might we prevent that from happening in public education with the money and media allied against the community public schools? It will take the effort of many, many more than are now engaged. And those many more must come from the ranks of the teachers and parents as I don’t see many administrators willing to even begin to risk losing their higher than teachers salaries.

     There are more than enough teachers and parents out there who understand that we can’t continue with the edudeformer educational malpractices.

     A start is to support NPE, BATS and any other organization that is committed to fighting that “desire to destroy competition.”

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     • Lloyd Lofthouse says:

       April 20, 2017 at 5:14 pm

       How many people are members of the almost 6,000 groups that have joined the Indivisibles? The malignant narcissist in the White House, all by himself, may end up being responsible for the majority of voters that did not vote for him to join forces to push back in a very big way while his support base continues to unravel and erode until only the extreme racists and hardcore white evangelicals remain.

       The Indivisibles Now Have Nearly 6,000 Groups Organized to Defeat the Rightwing Agenda

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4. Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

   April 20, 2017 at 2:48 pm

   The citizens of this country have gotten dumber and dumber, because of MARKETING ploys accepted without critical thinking. That is what the CCSS does…addles one’s mind in all ways.

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   • carolmalaysia says:

     April 20, 2017 at 5:15 pm

     Check out this video that shows just how much ‘dumber and dumber’ our society has become. I find it frightening. Charles Manson? Yep, he’s okay to visit the WH says a loyal tRump follower.
     …………

     Lie Witness News – Donald Trump Visitor Log Edition

     Jimmy Kimmel Live

     Published on Apr 19, 2017
     The Trump administration has decided that unlike the Obama administration, they will not be releasing the White House visitor logs of who comes in and out to see the president. So we went onto the street and asked people who identified as pro-Trump about a list of individuals we said visited the White House. None of them are actually on the visitor log but that didn’t stop people from giving their thoughts in a White House guest edition of #LieWitnessNews.

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5. Laura H. Chapman says:

   April 20, 2017 at 4:23 pm

   Over a year ago I witnessed an African American who was trying to recruit parents as they entered or left a large grocery store. The neighborhood was not a good choice as many of the parents send their children to the same Catholic or private schools their parents and grandparents attended.

   Cincinnati Public Schools now has a budget for advertising. In 2016 it was $296,013.

   I know of one very elaborate strategy for marketing, carried out in Memphis Tennessee. I describe it here. https://dianeravitch.net/2016/10/25/laura-chapman-who-protested-at-the-naacp-meeting/

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6. Chiara says:

   April 20, 2017 at 6:16 pm

   Ed reform finally came up with something to offer public school students:

   Caitlin Emma‏Verified account @caitlinzemma 23m23 minutes ago
   More
   More from Van Wert: When asked about school choice concerns in rural America, DeVos held up opportunities offered by virtual schooling

   Virtual classes! Yippee! Public school kids get the “opportunity” to have their teachers replaced by a screen and a canned program.

   DeVos must not know Ohio’s virtual school contractor is right now in court down the road from her, fighting the state’s effort to recover 85 million dollars in over-payments.

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7. Cathy T. Hesse says:

   April 20, 2017 at 8:52 pm

   This is disgusting. Informational gatherings are good but spending this is totally inappropriate

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8. Linda says:

   April 20, 2017 at 9:20 pm

   An Ohio judge was quoted, today, in Dayton’s newspaper. The judge’s comments questioned the e-school model, comparing the operators to Russian oligarchs, “…they’ve probably gotten a billion dollars worth of state funds that would have gone to public schools. In Russia they’re called oligarchs… in Ohio, they’re called influential donors.”

   That’s the legacy of Walton heirs, Bill Gates and privatization advocacy groups like Fordham.

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9. Chiara says:

   April 21, 2017 at 7:46 am

   This is one of the federal voucher bills ed reform is pushing if anyone wants to see what they involve:

   https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/895

   Pay attention to the corporate tax credit. A tax credit allows the company to subtract the amount they pay towards vouchers from their total tax liability.

   There have been lots of ed reform pieces waving away the possibility of a federal voucher scheme, but I disagree. They’re really determined to push one of these through. It’s the one and only reason DeVos was hired.

   They could probably get enough Democrats on board if they combine it with another huge boost in federal funding for charters along with some token funding for pre-K or something. The way to think about this politically is to realize that these are INTRA ed reform battles. There’s the charter faction and the voucher faction. To get a voucher scheme through all they have to do is placate the charter faction. These “debates” are conducted wholly within the echo chamber.

   There is no public school faction 🙂

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