Archives for the month of: April, 2017
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Texas: The True Goal of the School Choice Movement

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
20

This article was written by Dan Currie, a member of Pastors for Texas Children. He explains that the real goal of the school choice movement is to eliminate public schools.

He writes:

Many years ago, Jerry Falwell articulated the goal of the school choice movement well when he said, “I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”

Since the beginning of the religious right movement with Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Robertson and others, the aim has been to destroy public education in America. Today they are closer than ever to achieving their goal because it is now being promoted by the president, his education secretary Betsy DeVos and Republican leaders in Texas government including the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, agriculture commissioner and land commissioner.

This is what you have elected in Texas, my friends, by choosing party over sanity.

Vouchers, school choice, education savings accounts — they are all code words intended to mask the real aim of this movement: destroy public education in America and turn all schools into institutions of religious indoctrination.

Trump’s intentions are clear. His first choice for Secretary of Education was Jerry Falwell, Jr., according to Falwell himself. Trump sent his own children to private schools where the tuition is $50,000 a year or more. No voucher would allow a student to attend those schools.

Currie writes about the destructive effect that vouchers would have on public schools in his own home county:

I live in the Wall ISD. If 20 students get $5,000 apiece to leave the public school to attend a private school, Wall ISD will lose close to $130,000 that can’t be replaced. That money is just lost. No teacher can be fired, no bus route stopped, no money on utilities saved — they just lose the money.

So let me speak bluntly to my friends in the Wall ISD (and you can apply this to any ISD in our area) — when you keep electing right-wing, religious right Republicans at the state and national level, you are voting to close our schools. Please figure that out before it’s too late.

The Texas Senate passed voucher legislation, by a vote of 18-13. It was defeated overwhelmingly by a bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives. Given that vouchers are the personal obsession of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, expect this zombie to rise again.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Texas, Vouchers

Michael Fiorillo: The Not-So-Secret Agenda of the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
12

Reader Michael Fiorello commented on an article about charter schools. It is no accident that the Walton family (the richest family in America, thanks to Walmart) is spending $200 million annually on charter schools. It is not about children; they could do a lot with $200 million to help children in their home state of Arkansas. They could build health clinics or provide nurses for every school in a poor community. They could pay their parents $15 an hour. But, no, they want charter schools, and they will give $200 million a year for five years (that is $1 billion) to create new charter schools. Why? They hate unions. As Michael notes below, more than 90% of charters are non-union.

He writes:

There are issues of control woven throughout the charter issue, separate from the looting they are prone to.

There is the desire to have iron control of the labor force, explaining why charters are over ninety percent non-union: the desire, as seen virtually everywhere else in the labor markets, to replace full-time employment with temporary/ contingent labor, the desire to pay teachers less, and the desire to have them under the thumb of management, which is much more difficult to maintain in a union, career-oriented environment where institutional memory has value. Thus, it’s no accident that charters have such extreme staff turnover, and often have teachers working from scripted lessons. As has occurred in so many other industries, the de-skilling of the workforce is a management axiom.

There is also a social engineering aspect of charter schools, especially prevalent among the “no excuses” chains (KIPP, Success Academies, Uncommon Schools, et. al.), which are obsessed with herding and controlling children in punitive, Skinner Box- type environments. It’s about training children, not educating them, to be docile and obedient, no matter the oppressiveness of the environment, prepping them for the lack of autonomy they’ll face in the adult workforce, and preventing them from having even an inkling that another world is possible.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Unions

Mercedes Schneider on Tenure at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
23

If you were irked by Checker Finn’s article calling for an end to teacher tenure, you will enjoy Mercedes Schneider’s biting commentary on “tenure” at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. She opens up the tax returns of TBF and reveals executive salaries. Working for a think tank in D.C. pays far more than teaching.

I was a founding board member of TBF, back when it started. Checker’s father was chairman of the board, and Checker was chosen to be executive director. Mr. Thomas B. Fordham was an executive in Dayton, Ohio, and Mr. Finn, Sr., was his lawyer. When Fordham’s widow died, Mr. Finn Sr. created the foundation in accordance with the will. Mr. Fordham had invested in blue chip stocks many years ago and never sold them, so he left a considerable estate.

As TBF became increasingly ideological and rightwing, and as I turned against the rightwing agenda of privatization and high-stakes testing, I left the board. That was 2009. I opposed TBF becoming an authorizer of charter schools in Ohio. I lost. I opposed seeking funding from Gates, on the grounds that it would compromise our freedom to criticize Gates. I lost. There comes a time when you realize it is time to part ways.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Russ Walsh: School Choice and the Faustian Bargain

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
25

In the wake of Betsy and Randi’s visit together to a public school in Ohio, Russ Walsh reflects on how school choice affects democracy. Every dollar that goes to a charter or voucher is taken away from public schools like those they visited. “Choice” means budget cuts to the public school, and it means that public dollars go to privately controlled schools.


“While the school that DeVos and Weingarten visited is in a heavily Republican district in Ohio, the voters there are no fans of school choice. As one voter put it, vouchers are “like theft.” “It’s saying we passed a levy to go to our school district, and it’s going somewhere else.” Exactly. School choice is theft of our tax dollars and theft of our democracy.

Choice sounds so democratic, so quintessentially American that voucher and charter school champions keep using the term to hoodwink people into thinking that choice in schooling is a good thing. I suggest that those of us who oppose vouchers and charter schools call school choice what it is in the eyes of that Ohio voter, tax theft. The government collects our taxes in order to provide essential services to all of us. There is no choice involved, we all must pay taxes (unless, apparently, we are hugely wealthy). Those essential services include providing for a military, promoting research on health and welfare, providing for police and fire protection, and funding public schools. When money is diverted from the support of the public schools, it amounts to, as the Ohio voter said, theft. Or maybe another way to say it is “taxation without representation”, since voters have no voice and no oversight of how tax money is spent in schools that receive money through vouchers or charters.

It should be readily apparent that corporate education reformers are anti-democracy. In city after city around the country democratically elected school boards have been replaced by boards appointed by the mayor or governor. In Philadelphia, an appointed board has been in place for nearly two decades and the deterioration of the schools has continued unabated. In Detroit, in Betsy DeVos’ home state, the state took over the schools and has systematically led them into chaos. And let us remember that DeVos has spent millions to get legislation passed in Michigan that limits any kind of oversight for voucher and charter schools. So quite literally these schools are stealing public funds with no accountability as to how they spend it…

When parents send their children to charter schools or voucher schools, they are looking for a better opportunity for their children. We can all understand the appeal of that. What parents may not realize is that they have entered into a Faustian bargain. In order to get this shiny new toy of a voucher, they must give up their voice in their child’s education. No elected school board, no independent audit, no budget vote, no say in school policies.

In this drama, Betsy DeVos plays a willing Mephistopheles, offering choice, but getting you to sign away your voice. Without a voice, there is no democracy.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

How Jeb Bush and His Foundation for Educational Excellence Profited Their Corporate Sponsors

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
31

This is not a new article but it remains timely and worthy of your attention.

Jeb Bush runs an organization called the Foundation for Educational Excellence. Betsy DeVos was a member of his board. FEE receives corporate contributions. It works closely with ALEC, the rightwing corporate-sponsored organization that lobbies for charters, vouchers, and against teachers’ unions and tenure.

In the Public Interest was able to obtain a trove of emails that revealed the influence of FEE in several states, including Florida, New Mexico, Maine, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Rhode Island.

The e-mails are between the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a group Bush set up called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current and former state education commissioners who support Bush’s agenda of school reform, which includes school choice, online education, retention of third-graders who can’t read and school accountability systems based on standardized tests. That includes evaluating teachers based on student test scores and grading schools A-F based on test scores. John White of Louisiana is a current member, as is Tony Bennett, the new commissioner of Florida who got the job after Indiana voters rejected his Bush-style reforms last November and tossed him out of office.

Donald Cohen, chair of the nonprofit In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and responsible for contracting in the public sector, said the e-mails show how education companies that have been known to contribute to the foundation are using the organization “to move an education agenda that may or not be in our interests but are in theirs.”

He said companies ask the foundation to help state officials pass laws and regulations that make it easier to expand charter schools, require students to take online education courses, and do other things that could result in business and profits for them. The e-mails show, Cohen said, that Bush’s foundation would often do this with the help of Chiefs for Change and other affiliated groups.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing

Arthur Goldstein on the Madness at Central Park East 1

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
3

Deborah Meier created an oasis of child-centered education at Central Park East 1?in East Harlem. Parents from out-of-district enrolled. It was different from other public schools.

Deborah Meier left, convinced that her school was in safe hands.

But the system took control. The system does not like rebellion.

Parents are now protesting a principal determined to quash Deborah Meier’s vision.

Arthur Goldstein writes about it here:

http://nyceducator.com/2017/04/unsafe-at-any-speed-at-cpe-1.html?m=1

Categories Education Reform, New York City

Mike Klonsky: What Was Gained by Randi’s Visit with Betsy?

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
23

Mike Klonsky says: Nothing.

You cannot turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2017/04/randis-school-visit-gambit-with-betsy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+mikeklonsky+(SmallTalk)&m=1

Categories Betsy DeVos

Carl Paladino: More Reason to Remove Him

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2017 //
5

The State Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia has scheduled a hearing on whether to remove Buffalo school trustee Carl Paladino for racially offensive remarks made last December in print.

As Leonie Haimson writes here, there is another reason to discipline the billionaire real estate developer.

He violated student privacy laws.

Categories New York, Privacy and Privacy Rights

SomeDam Poet: How I Will Celebrate Earth Day

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2017 //
10

Ruminations on Earth Day in the Trump era, by SomeDam Poet:

“How I plan to celebrate earth day”

For Earth Day Forty Seven
I plan to chop a tree
To honor Earthly Heaven
I’ll drill in Arctic sea

I’ll open up a pipeline
That brings the oil to you
Pollute the river lifeline
With tar and other goo

I’ll bring back dirty coal
And with it, lung disease
The things enviros stole
Through hugging of the trees

I’ll shutter EPA
And end the Species Act
Polluters shouldn’t pay
And grizzlies should be sacked

I’ll celebrate the day
For glory of the Earth
No matter what you say
I’ll smoke, for what it’s worth

Categories Environment, Humor

Busted Pencils on the New Documentary: “Backpack Full of Cash”

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2017 //
16

Tim Slekar regularly posts podcasts of high value to the resistance, to those fighting privatization and high stakes testing.

This episode features an interview with Sarah Mondale and Vera Aronow, the veteran filmmakers whose new documentary tells the story of the organized assault on public education. Please take the time to listen.

In 2001, Sarah Mondale and Sarah Patton made a four-part documentary called “School,” which ran on PBS and was turned into a book.

The new film is titled “Backpack Full of Cash,” the term corporate reformers use to describe their goal: every child with a backpack full of cash, taking it anywhere he or she chooses.

It is narrated by Matt Damon.

We should all call PBS, which recently ran a series opposing public schools and touting the glories of the free market, and urge them to give airtime to this documentary. PBS is probably trying to curry favor with the Trump administration to stop the defunding of public television. It is sad, don’t you think, that public television gives airtime to a show attacking public education?

Send emails to: http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/feedback/

Categories Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, School Choice
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