Surely to the surprise of the California Charter School Association, Eli Broad, Reed Hastings and the other billionaires who funded his election campaign, Nick Melvoin told EdSource in California that his election was not about expanding the number of charter schools.
No, what he is about is seeing public schools replicate the successes of charter schools. Melvoin was a TFA teacher for two years, so he knows what a successful school should be doing. For some reason, charter schools have discovered the secrets of success but public schools have not.
I don’t think districts like LAUSD have learned lessons from the charter movement the way that it was initially intended. I’ll ask charter principals, “Has the district come and asked what’s working and how to replicate it?” They laugh, as if that’s a crazy question, given the political climate. I’d like to see an increase in schools that are serving kids. I’m much less interested in whether that is a district school or a charter or a magnet school. I’d like to see us cross-pollinate, elevate the work of educators and have LAUSD lead the nation in terms of how to navigate this new public school ecosystem.
At no point in the interview does he suggest that charters can learn from successful public schools.
Nor does he acknowledge the number of charter operators who have been caught and prosecuted for theft, or the common practice of pushing out or excluding students with disabilities.
Maybe that’s the lesson the public schools can learn. Don’t accept kids who might cause your school scores to drop.
But what will Melvoin propose to do for the kids that no one wants?
He has hired Sarah Angel to be his chief of staff. Angel currently works for the California Charter Schools Association. But don’t interpret this as a signal that he is the puppet of the charter industry. We will judge him by deeds, not words.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Melvoin was a TFA teacher for two years, so he knows what a successful school should be doing.”
Your subtle sarcasm gets better and better, Diane!!
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Thanks, Duane!
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Yeah, I was going to ask: do I, by any chance, detect a note of sarcasm in this post?
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When I translate what he says with what he has done and said in the past, it looks like he wants traditional public schools to be as exclusive as corporate charters so they too will throw out the most challenging students to teach and support boot-camp bully tactics to abuse young children and beat them into drone submission as good, obedient consumers who think it is right to pile up massive credit card debt to boost profits of corporations.
This also means cutting out any classes that can’t be tested with secretive tests that profit corps like Pearson, and classes that ae deemed a drag on profits.
There go the arts.
There goes PE.
There goes recess.
There goes sleep.
There go the sports.
There goes adequate nutrition.
All gone.
But technology and screen time are added and the money flows to Silicon Valley.
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He said in the LA Times how he wants district schools to emulate charter scams. He wants test scores to be 40% of teachers’ evaluations, test-based churn and burn. The teachers union better stop whining about Washington D.C. and start gearing up for a battle against SBAC. Of course, Melvoin will also vote to approve charters. We’ve heard that song and dance bef.
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“He wants test scores to be 40% of teachers’ evaluations”
Hmmmm. . .
Why 40%?
How about 66.7%?
or maybe 25%?
or even 99%?
perhaps .01%?
The percentage makes no difference when the data that one is using is as COMPLETELY INVALID as are student standardized test scores are. Crap in crap out. This ain’t rocket surgery! (just saw that one somewhere, recently) Deeply embedded cultural memes such as the educational standards and standardized testing regime are are very difficult to dislodge-It’s the way things are, don’cha know?
Ay ay effin ay. When, oh when, will those harmful educational malpractices finally be chipped away enough to dislodge and sink into the depths of history???
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“Crap in and Crap out”
Yep, but let’s go one better and fill a dump truck with this smelly stuff to give it back and leave it piled against his front door and garage door, a mountain of it.
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Back in the mid-80s when I lived in MA there was a public service commercial on the tube. It showed a guy driving down the road and he threw a fast food bag of trash out the window. It then cut to show a trash truck backing up to the guys front porch and dumping all the trash as the guy is opening the door. Thought it was an effective commercial!
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Who was the recent president that had a truckload of broccoli dumped, I think, in front of the White House?
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see: http://articles.latimes.com/1990-03-27/news/mn-263_1_white-house-press
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Thanks, it was the 1st Bush. I hope there will never be a 3rd Bush in the White House.
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For fifteen years, incoming teachers have been wrongly and wrongfully taught to believe scores on annual state tests are the valid purpose of public education. Melvoin is one.
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He said that all thru the campaign, which is why I was surprised that ed reformers insisted it was a referendum on charters. He went to great lengths to deny it was a referendum on charters and the minute he won the ed reform lobby all immediately contradicted him.
I don’t know what’s true. He either said it because he thought it was a political risk to make it about charters in a district where 70% of kids don’t attend charters or he said it because he meant it. Either way, though, he did make a point of insisting he wasn’t about charters.
A lot of ed reformers do this, actually. They DON’T actually run on charters. Take whatever you want from that but it’s true. Listen to Scott Walker sometime. You know what he actually runs on? Increasing funding for PUBLIC schools. Now I’m no expert on Wisconsin politics but I would bet he is. For some reason he feels he must appear to support public schools.
I see this in Ohio. My state representative is down in Columbus bashing public schools like crazy. When he shows up at our school he waxes poetic on the hard-working folk of the heartland and their community schools. There’s a REAL disconnect. There must be a reason for that.
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“I’m much less interested in whether that is a district school or a charter or a magnet school. I’d like to see us cross-pollinate, elevate the work of educators and have LAUSD lead the nation in terms of how to navigate this new public school ecosystem.”
Okay I’ll issue a challenge to anyone who cares to read ed reform sites.
Go look for an ed reformer who promotes a public school. Any public school.
They like this “agnostic” formulation a lot but it’s absolutely meaningless. They don’t promote or support public schools- not anywhere.
Show me one time any of them have intervened on behalf of a public school in the same way they jump into local races to expand vouchers or charters. You won’t find one.
Arne Duncan ONLY intervenes when he’s promoting charter expansion. He jumped into LA to promote charters and he just jumped into NYC to promote charters. Not a peep out of any of them on behalf of public schools. There are Pennsylvania school districts that are absolutely reeling under the effects of privatization. They get no national ed reform advocacy. It’s crickets. The kids in those districts are just collateral damage to be rolled over on the way to the privatization promised land. They went into Toledo and “flooded” with charter schools. Their word. It was chaos for Toledo Public Schools and that’s where most of the kids are! No one cared. They patted themselves on the back for the awesome “disruption” and took off for the next city, which was Youngstown. Not a backward look.
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The notion that billionaires pushing charter expansion dropped $15 million dollars into Nick’s and Kelly’s campaigns, but that, once in office, Nick and Kelly will not follow those billionaires’ wishes to wipe out democratically-controlled public schools in favor or privately-managed charter school is patently absurd, and frankly, defies common sense.
Nick once wrote that “a hostile takeover of Los Angeles’ schools” — presumably turning the schools over to those same billionaire backers — “is what LAUSD needs.”
At least, he was honest back then.
However, during his campaign, Nick disavowed the ‘hostile takeover” comment, claiming that this was “misunderstood.” Yeah, right. Whatever you say.
Indeed, the push for charters was noticeably absent in what came out of Nick’s campaign, replaced by a phony, calculated “I love all schools — charter public, whatever”^ pose, — combined with a multi-miliion-dollar, multi-media *”Steve Zimmer is evil!” onslaught, the indescribably viciousness of which not only Los Angeles, but the country has never before seen.
Again, that unprecedented onslaught excluded the whole matter of charter schools — a successful strategy dictated to Nick by his campaign strategists, which he followed to the letter, and apparently stillis, as evidenced in this interview.
I’d respect Nick a lot more if he just admitted, “Yeah. That’s right. We’re going to shove charters down the community’s throat, and privatize their schools, and wipe out democratic control of schools whether the public wants it or not. My billionaire backers and I know better than the community does as to what’s good for ’em, so yeah, folks, that’s EXACTLY what’s going to happen. Anybody got a problem with that, you can go pound sand with the now-out-of-office Steve Zimmer.”
This “I love all schools” facade or pose is all to get Los Angeles’ proponents of saving public schools to put their guard down and relax before the billionaires’ massive privatization effort charges forth in all its fury, and making it easier for this privatization to happen.
As Sun-Tzu says about war — and politics is war, of course: “War often involves the art of deception.”
And that’s all this interview is — deception.
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“Indeed, the push for charters was noticeably absent in what came out of Nick’s campaign, replaced by a phony, calculated “I love all schools — charter public, whatever”^ pose”
They all say this. Doesn’t matter what Party or what level of government. This is the official line.
However. The facts don’t match the rhetoric. Maybe he will support LA public schools but he will be the only one who followed thru if he does.
It interests me politically. They must have been relying on something when they changed from “charter schools rock! public schools suck!” to “we’re agnostics!” – so what was that? Some recognition that maybe the frontal attack mode wasn’t paying political dividends anymore? These are big bucks races. Political pros. You really can’t over-estimate how cynical those people are. They live in an ethics-free zone and they run the ed reform political arm.
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Melvoin ran a thoroughly dishonest campaign both about his own record and Zimmer’s. I don’t believe anything he says. But it’s still good to keep track of his statements and point out the hypocrisies for the public record.
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This is The 74. There is plenty of advocacy (honest and not so honest) promoting charters and vouchers.
https://www.the74million.org/
The public school side? A litany of woes. It’s all bad news in public-school-land!
If I only read what this lobby churns out I would flee public schools too. God, if I listened to Betsy DeVos I would pull my kid TODAY. According to her they’re all headed to prison and that’s after years of bullying and mediocre lazy teachers and being surrounded by “flat earthers” and “status quo protectors” and “19th century factoring learning”.
This is a deliberate narrative. It’s too pervasive to be accidental and so many of the words and whole phrases are the same it’s a kind of closed-circle chant.
There is a way to measure, though. The measure for public school parents should be public schools. They were promised “improving public schools”. If ed reform isn’t improving public schools then at some point they should be held accountable for either not improving public schools or a kind of bait and switch- by “improving” they meant “replacing” with the schools they prefer. None of them run on that.
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Does anyone nremember the expose done on THE 74 by Jennifer Berkshire (then calling herself Edushyster) just before THE 74 just went on-line?
A prominent (unnamed) reporter interviewed for a job with Campbell’s THE 74 — at the time on the verge of going live — then reported back to Jennifer the astonishing conversation she had while interviewing.
One of Campbell’s functionaries told the reporter applying to work there that THE 74’s reporters —i ncluding her, should she get hired — would be barred from doing any reporting that was critical of charter schools, or of school privatization, and that any charter school scandals — even those that that hit the mainstream media and became national stories — must be ignored as well.
Here’s that story:
http://edushyster.com/will-the-74-investigate-charter-scandals/
Well, that’s basically what’s happened since. Regarding all the scandals with Eva Moskowitz & Success Academy, scandals that got national coverage on PBS and elsewhere … as far as Campbell Brown, THE 74and — in Ms. Lyuton’s words — “the 74’s roster of smart, veteran journalists” are concerned, it’s like the Success Academy scandals never even happened. They wrote not one word about all of that.
This is like how the old Soviet news outlet TASS used to operate.
The same thing happened to LA School Report, once Campbell Brown and THE 74 took it over.
Another thing you notice is that in Edushyster’s article is that the operation that’s running THE 74 is the “Mercury” P.R. group, the same group that Walmart uses in its suppression of any budding unionism in its stores. A Mercury operative even got caught pretending to be a journalist at an anti-Walmart rally in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, producing some serious bad P.R. for both Mercury and Walmart:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/06/walmart-chinatown-mercury-lobbyist.html
Mercury is also in charge of PR for … wait for it … Eli Broad’s “Great Public Schools Now” plan to convert half of LAUSD school to privately managed charter schools.
So Mercury is running L.A. School Report — controlling 100% of its content — where it will also report on Eli Broad’s “Great Public Schools Now” privatization plan, which Mercury is also doing P.R. for., and furthermore, the California Charter School Association (CCSA) and the Alliance for College-Ready Schools employs Mercury in the suppression of unionism at the Alliance schools — that union suppression alone is funded by a $2,7 million budget derived from dark money donations for which CCSA and the Alliance will not the donors.
WTF???!!!!
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Nick Melvoin is in a bit of a pickle.
Melvoin’s base is Pacific Palisades, where the high school IS a charter school but also has union teachers. And the parents and teachers work very closely together. There isn’t an outside board of billionaires calling the shots with cowed parents terrified of speaking out even if they see wrong doing because they know their kid will be the next target of the school’s administrators.
I don’t think that spouting the privatizers’ line that the teacher’s union is evil is exactly what those union teachers and parents who supported him had in mind.
And unlike typical charters, Pali High serves an entire community plus students from poorer neighborhoods who travel to get there. It can’t simply drum out low-performing kids it doesn’t want like many other charters. And unlike the affluent parents at charters like Success Academy who look the other way when other people’s children are psychologically abused and punished in order to get them out of their school, the parents at Pali High haven’t traded their ethical core in exchange for bragging rights and big donations from right wing billionaires. At least so far.
If Melvoin becomes a tool of the privatization movement, it will be interesting to see whether and how fast the people in Pacific Palisades wise up to his dishonesty.
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“No, what he is about is seeing public schools replicate the successes of charter schools”
Interesting. Bernie Sanders jumped into the school board election fight on the anti-charter side, but the above seems pretty close to his “I’m for public charter schools” position.
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Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He’s got the current bullet points arranged in a nice, tidy, socially acceptable row.
One of the most obvious differences between the majority of charter schools and their public school counterparts is that of unionization.The wolf will cite this as being a major disadvantage for the public sector, despite the studies that show states with strong teachers unions far exceed the educational outcomes of those without union representation.
We’ll know whether any of these newbies are for real if they get seriously involved in creating the same transparencies and systems of accountability in the charter sector as are imposed on the public schools. That along with creating more public awareness of the charter industry’s penchant for excluding special ed and ESL students.
A leveling of the playing field.
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It sounds like a variation on the “I’m agnostic about charter schools” meme that these characters hide behind.
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OMG, what HORRORS!
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I wonder what Corporate Charter success Nick Melvoin is talking about since there has been little to no success when it comes to actual learning – unless he is talking about the success in cherry picking the best test-taking students who are the easiest ones to bully and indoctrinate in those autocratic boot camp style schools and the profits from public dollars that flow to the few who already have grotesque amounts of money.
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That is the bottom line, isn’t it? Test scores are like profit margins.
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Test scores are a weapon that was designed to lead to profits from public money.
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