Rachel Levy, a mother and public school activist in Virginia, explains here the lesson of the recent Democratic campaign for governor: Real Democrats support public schools.
Dr. Ralph Northam, Lt. Governor, was a strong supporter of public schools. He won the support of the Virginia Education Association and public school allies across the state.
Tom Perriello had the support of veterans of the Obama administration, Elizabeth Earren, and Bernie Sanders. He also had ties in the past with DFER.
Northam won handily.
Will the national Democratic Party get the message?
Real Democrats support public schools, teachers, and unions. Real Democrats do not support charter schools, high-stakes testing, VAM, or privatization of public schools by charter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think that it is interesting that Bernie Sanders endorsed the candidate with ties to DFER. It seems that Bernie’s support for “public charter schools” and his unwillingness to even imagine that there could be anything wrong with them was not just an anomaly.
Tim Kaine also supported public schools far more so than Democrats like Warren.
That doesn’t mean that Bernie and Warren don’t stand for the right things on many issues. But so did Hillary Clinton. And instead of shooting ourselves in a circular firing squad the progressives should be trying to elect candidates that have historically shown that when it comes to complicated and complex issues, they think for themselves.
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That Tim Kaine thing was interesting. I don’t think there’s another Democrat who is an actual, vocal advocate FOR public schools. An actual passion for public schools, not reluctant grudging “support”.
There’s ONE anyway! 🙂
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From Tim Kaine’s Wikipedia page: Q In 1976, he graduated from Rockhurst High School, a Jesuit all-boys preparatory school in Kansas City, Missouri END Q
Like many politicians, who claim to support publicly-operated schools, he went to a non-public school. Hypocrite first-class.
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Tim Kaine’s children attended desegregated public schools in Richmond. He and his wife belong to a majority black church. There is nothing hypocritical about attending a religious school or private school that you or your parents pay for. Tim Kaine’s parents didn’t try to get the public to pay for his religious schooling. They paid for it themselves. No hypocrisy there. Patriotism.
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Al Franken has supported public schools although he attended a private school. Franken’s daughter taught in the Bronx for some time.http://www.ontheissues.org/Social/Al_Franken_Education.htm
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Al Franken, who claims to “support” publicly-operated schools, sends his children to a private school which costs $44,000 per year. see
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/07/sen-al-franken-opposed-to-school-choice-except-for-own-kids-44kyear-private-school/
Another first-class HYPOCRITE!
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It is not hypocritical to send your child to a private school if you pay for it yourself. That is every parent’s right and choice. The public schools are free for all students. If you don’t want to use a public service and prefer a private service, pay for it. Nothing hypocritical about it at all.
The true hypocrites are the billionaires who want to drain money away from public schools to pay for private and religious schools. They are hurting a democratic institution that serves all students and discriminates against none.
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Mayor Bill de Blasio! If Mike Bloomberg is considered a national leader as a big city Mayor, de Blasio should be, too.
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Charles – you still seem to be making the argument that the poor deserve the same choices in education as the rich. Otherwise, people are “hypocrites first class”. Do I have that right?
Again, I’ll ask, in what other areas do the poor deserve the same choices as the rich? I’d like to drive a Ferrari (hell, I’ll settle for a Lexus) – should the government give me a transportation voucher for that? I’d like to eat at Gibson’s steak house every night. Food voucher? A mansion might be nice, so can I have a housing voucher?
Incidentally, I’m not fond of the library in my town. Can I get a government Amazon voucher? Our local park is pretty run down – could I get a voucher to build my own private park? And don’t even get me started on the roads – potholes everywhere, jammed in all directions. I want a voucher to build my own roads!
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Dienne,
If you don’t like the public swimming pool, you should get a voucher to build your own and have the same choices as rich people.
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Charles: I attended a private school in high school and I have taught at a public school for 30 years. Perhaps I am a hypocrite, but it is not on account of that
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Tim Kaine was Governor of Virginia before he was Senator. He has a long and established record of supporting public education. As Diane mentioned, he and his wife sent their three children to integrated public schools in Richmond.
Senator Kaine’s wife, Anne Holton, is the daughter of a former Republican Governor of Virginia, Linwood Holton, who was responsible for integrating Virginia’s public schools in the 1970’s. Anne herself attended newly integrated public schools. Anne became a lawyer and has dedicated her life’s work to children. She was a family court judge in Richmond for many years and an advocate for foster children. From 2014-2016 she was Virginia’s Secretary of Education. She resigned when her husband ran with Hillary.
It’s the country’s loss that Tim Kaine & Anne Holton aren’t living in the VP residence right now because both would have been strong voices in support of public education. A silver lining is that America’s loss is Virginia’s gain. Recently Governor McAuliffe appointed Anne Holton as one of 8 members of Virginia’s state board of education, so our state will benefit from her guiding hand.
I might add that these two – Tim & Anne – are beloved in Virginia and especially by educators, parents and students. I met them once at a #PutKidsFirst rally in Richmond. No politicians were invited as speakers but Tim & Anne came anyway on a Saturday afternoon in their hometown to the capitol grounds to listen. People readily recognize Tim and he’s gracious to speak to all. Anne isn’t as recognizable (or wasn’t at that time in 2015) but I recognized her as our Ed Secretary. She, my 13 year old daughter & I had a pleasant chat about Virginia’s schools & Finnish education for about 10-15 minutes while everyone else wanted their pictures taken with Tim. They are both down-to-earth people and entirely approachable.
Virginia is lucky to have Senator Kaine, Governor McAufliffe and hopefully our next Governor Ralph Northam. I might add that Senator Mark Warner has been a reliable supporter of public education both as Governor and Senator as well. He had a brief flirtation with DFER during the early Obama years but appears to have broken with them.
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@Dienne: Your comments and analogies are false and incorrect. When it comes to educational choice, people all up and down the economic ladder, deserve to have control and choice as to the spending of their education dollars. And this means, K-12, vocational/technical and higher education.
The comparison of education to transportation is false. The government has several entitlement programs, which we have discussed before. Food (food stamps), Housing (Chapter 8), Medical (Medicaid), etc. In each of these programs, the recipients are given the choice of where to redeem their vouchers. No one is suggesting that food-stamp recipients get enough money to purchase prime rib, lobster, and Chablis for every meal. But, food stamp recipients get the choice in where to redeem their vouchers, and wide latitude in which foods to buy with the vouchers. As long as the spending is for food for human consumption, then fine.
The government is spending money on education. Most people send their children to the publicly-operated school in their area of residence (This is terribly unfair to poor people, who live in school districts with an inadequate tax base). Vouchers, will give people the opportunity to have more control over where to have their government-supplied education dollars to be spent. They will be able to “opt-out” of the publicly-operated school, and be able to direct the pre-existing spending, into an alternate school of their choice. This might be a religiously-operated school, a private school, a military school, or a home school.
No one is suggesting that giving people control over their government-provided educational spending will enable people to have the same choices as the wealthy. BUT- educational vouchers, will enable parents/children to exercise the same level of CONTROL over their educational spending, as more wealthy people.
Continuing to compare school choice to parks, police, roads, swimming pools, etc. is a false comparison.
I cannot get anyone to explain to me, the difference between giving people choices and control over their government-provided education dollars for higher education (BEOG), and doing the exact same thing, at the K-12 level. If a person gets a BEOG, and chooses to attend a publicly-operated university, no one has a problem. No one is suggesting that recipients of BEOGs be given an amount equivalent to the tuition at an expensive, Ivy-League college.
Why can’t supporters of the publicly-operated school monopoly be honest, and admit the truth? School-choice opponents want to protect the NEA/AFT/AFSCME union jobs. School-choice opponents (primarily on the left), want to have control over children’s minds, and indoctrinate them, so that they will vote for liberal/progressive politicians.
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Charles,
I do not belong to a union. I do not have tenure. I do not seek to protect union jobs.
I support public schools. I support the teaching profession. Teaching is not a job for amateurs.
I oppose privatization of public schools.
The only two nations–Chile and Sweden–that have turned their schools over to the free market have turned disastrous. Both have experienced intense social stratification. Chile has seen massive street demonstrations against the voucher system. The government that supported privatization was voted out of office. The new government has a mandate to rebuild an egalitarian system of public education. Sweden has experienced intense social stratification as well. And on the international tests, Sweden’s scores plummeted.
Why should we be like Sweden or Chile? Why not emulate Finland, which copied our ideas and brought them to fruition? Equity creates excellence.
Charles, I have decided you are a brick. You never hear anyone unless they speak libertarian.
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Charles,
You know little to nothing about education. I can’t let your extremist views go unanswered so I waste an inordinate amount of time responding to your comments and your citation of rightwing reports and publications. Enough. I don’t want to block you, but I Have to stop wasting time answering the same uninformed comments.
If public schools, which enroll nearly 90% of the children, have indoctrinated them in leftist views and poisoned them against rightwing candidates, then they have surely failed to do that. Or, contrary to your rightwing reading, they don’t indoctrinate very well–or at all.
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I am 1000% in favor of emulating the successes which other nations have experienced. If Finland’s educational system has ideas which can be imported to this country, I say great. After all, the Germans invented the autobahns, and Eisenhower brought the interstate and defense highway system to the USA. The Japanese have the “bullet trains”, and there are proposals to bring high-speed trains to this nation. Fantastic.
I am not stuck like “epoxy glue” to school choice. There are many ways, which publicly-operated schools can improve, and thus make the concept of opting-out moot.
One way, which almost everyone agrees on, in equity of funding. I am horrified that publicly-operated schools in wealthy suburbs are “Taj Mahals”, and publicly-operated schools in the inner cities, with inadequate tax bases, are terrible. Some years ago, there was a book called “Savage Inequalities” which broached this very issue.
Using property tax revenues to support publicly-operated schools, results in “educational apartheid”, and the children in inner-city schools are denied the same educational opportunities as suburban kids.
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Charles, for once, you said something I agree with. Equitable schooling begins with equitable funding. And, yes, please read Pasi Sahlberg’s “Finnish Lessons.”
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Charles,
Your arguments were made by the racist segregationists in the 1950s and 60s when the south was forced to allow students of color into their all-white “public schools”.
If only people like you were around. Those racist “public” schools could have re-invented themselves as a charter and received all the funding they wanted. Sure, they’d “accept” a non-white student, who they were free to suspend, humiliate, punish, fail until he “chose” to leave. Milton Friedman was on their side saying that “choice” is fine because that’s the kind of country we are in.
How DARE you compare this to colleges?
The better comparison is your desire to give a voucher to senior citizens to buy their health insurance on the private market. You would be delighted because 80 year olds could “choose” whatever health insurance plan they wanted! And the plans could spend inordinate amounts of tax dollars advertising to the healthy 65 year olds and additional monies figuring out a quasi legal way to get them to leave once they turn out to be too expensive to insure. No oversight necessary! Because CHOICE will save them all.
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I’ve come to the conclusion Democrats don’t care about winning state races. They’ve decided they’ll focus exclusively on the Presidency.
Public schools are too boring and conventional for them to bother with. Haven’t you heard? Public schools are the status quo that is holding them back from innovating.
Voters and their “19th century factory model schools” are not the concern of the Best and Brightest. They have to be “dragged, kicking and screaming” to embrace privatization.
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The Democrats obviously don’t even care about winning National races. Not even the Presidency.
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Democrats need to work harder at the local level. They are trying to fight gerrymandering, but it is difficult when they don’t have the majority in either the house or senate. Democrats saw what obstructionism was at play when they only had the presidency. They need more authentic progressives.
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Democrats will only care if the public, parents of public school students especially, make support of public schools a decisive factor in thier votes and by extension in the outcome of elections. Sadly that will never be the case in federal elections, but it could and sometimes does happen at the state and local level.
The most challenging part is that we have to be willing to sustain the fight for a very long time. The plutocrats aren’t going to just quit because of moderate resistance. That said, there is hope. My deep red county voted down our ALEC-owned governor’s attempted cash and building grab on behalf of charters last November. We even got public support from my entirely Republican school board and from other Republican school boards around Georgia.
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The targeted beneficiaries of the activities and talking points of Democratic Party’s hierarchy will be the richest 1%, unless Podesto and the Center for American Progress are forced out of the Party.
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Public schools, by being available to everyone with public oversight, have been a backbone of the community. By not supporting public education with those elements, it’s like turning their back on the community.
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Sending tax dollars to corporations outside the community is a disinvestment in the local community. Spreading tax dollars more thinly to serve “choice” dilutes the impact of local public schools. Good for corporations, and bad for local taxpayers and students!
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To answer your question, Diane:
Ha ha ah ha ha ha he he ah ha ha ah ha ha ha. . . that’s a good one!
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“Perriello had, well, relationships with the neo-liberal, market-based reformers that the Obama administration, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, favored and that have been known to ally themselves with the Virginia GOP on state-level education reform matters. Yes, these were Democrats, but ones who have largely turned their backs on public education”
Some how Diane I have a serious issue putting together a few labels here .
Economic populism is diametrically opposed to neo liberalism on every level.
So the candidate that has the support of the two most progressive members of the Senate, public enemy number 1 and 2 ,in corporate America’s assault on the country, is somehow a neo-liberal.
I would offer a different explanation . In a party that has totally lost its way . A party that viewed Bill Clinton as leading them to the promised land and Barrack Obama as being the second coming. Opposing that establishment was not a wise career move for any politician, no less a young politician. As Diane Ravitch bought into the mantra of the reformers so did these politicians. It was easy it was a bipartisan assault bought into by the whole “ESTABLISHMENT” . Pushed by Bush and then the fearless leader OBAMA. A party no different than the other party when it comes to keeping the spigot to corporate money and careers open. It was easy.
But once you decide to oppose the establishment and challenge them, you break those bonds. The more you reject one part of the neo liberal assault, the more you reject all parts of that assault . Sanders and Warren ran against Obama make no mistake about that. They ran against the neo liberal assault . Wall Street was the code name for that assault and education is a part of that assault . Theirs was a minority position in the Senate and their own party on most issues.
So if you ask me do I trust the left-wing economic populist or the guy who describes himself as economically conservative but socially liberal. The guy who became the IDC lone Democrat of Virginia . I am going with the populists . For you the change on education was easy it was your life’s work. For a Sanders, a Warren or perhaps a Perriello
it was one more issue that they had to challenge the establishment of their own party on.
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If Mayor de Blasio can challenge his party on it. then Sanders and Warren — in very safe seats — have no excuse.
Why can’t you accept that Sanders and Warren are true believers in “public” charters? They are exactly like Obama who has absolutely no interest in taking the time and effort to learn about the complexities of issues and prefers to use talking points. (Warren DOES care when it comes to banking and finance issues.)
The reason I liked Hillary Clinton was because from what I see she wants to learn about issues and tackle them in their complexity. While that may not always put her on the side that I prefer, at least I feel as if she is approaching the issue after considering some of the complexities. She is a workaholic wonk. I hope whoever the next Democratic President is will put her to work on issues because we need a lot more than slogans to change this country.
For me education is the MOST important thing. If you don’t have public education — if you sell it out to the highest bidder — you might as well forget about the rest of the progressive agenda. It’s hard to imagine the vision of K-12 education offered by Bernie, Warren, and Perriello leading to great economic reforms. They don’t even recognize that there is broad public support that they could tap into if they weren’t rushing to embrace those wonderful “public charter schools” that they believe in so strongly.
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NYC public school parent
They have what have you missed . The Sanders statement on Public charters could probably have come out of Albert Shankers mouth.
I serious doubt that either Sanders or Warren would consider Success Academies model a Public Charter. Sanders nor warren at this point are endorsing anything that would favor privatization . The model that we are all objecting to is one in which Public dollars are diverted to private profit.
So my guess is had Diane sat down to discuss this with Sanders, he would say that a Public Charter would be administered by the district with the Teachers and staff being free to experiment more than they are in a regular Public School. That those teachers would have the same contractual protections as any other teacher in the district and that they be required to have the same qualifications as any other teacher in the State. That is not the reality that we are faced .
But the reason I do not trust Hillary as far as I could throw her is that on every issue she flip flopped quicker than you could toss a coin . As many times as necessary . She did a complete 180 between the time she secured the nomination and the time the platform committee met.
Than another 180 when she realized the well orchestrated Hollywood show that was the Democratic Convention . Was about to look like Chicago .
Mind you I did vote for her . Then I went home to take a shower. Just follow DEEP THROATS advice when it comes to Hillary’s positions.
FOLLOW THE MONEY.
https://dfer.org/dfer-statement-on-clinton-announcement/
View at Medium.com
What day is today I’ll tell you what position she will have . But like Thomas Donahue of the National Chamber of Commerce said about Hillary “Don’t worry what she says in public she’s with us. “
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/09/27/elizabeth-warren-comes-out-against-raising-cap-on-charter-schools-in-massachusetts/?utm_term=.a7060f17f248
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Joel,
In choice between a politician who says this:
“Many charter schools in Massachusetts are producing extraordinary results for our students, and we should celebrate the hard work of those teachers and spread what’s working to other schools.” (and then mentions the children “left behind” without any mention of what “left behind” means) — Elizabeth Warren
And a politician who says this:
MOST charter schools “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them………..And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody,” she said, “and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.”’ — Hillary Clinton
I know exactly who I believe has done their homework on charters.
When I hear Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders give one acknowledgement about the high suspension and attrition rates that lead to the “exemplary results” that Warren loves about charters, I will believe that she understands or cares anything about the issue.
It is a year since BLM and the NAACP pointed out what was wrong with even those “exemplary” charters. Maybe you can find a single quote that would convince me that Warren or Sanders understand Hillary Clinton’s very clear point that charters are not taking or keeping the hardest-to-teach kids. Because what I see is Warren repeating the DFER talking points about how “some” charters are producing “EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS” for students without a single acknowledgment of the suspensions and attritions and “don’t even enroll if you aren’t willing to do all that we demand” that the charters getting “extraordinary results” use.
To me, it is Hillary Clinton who is far more like Diane Ravitch. She actually studies the issues instead of mouthing convenient talking points. I heard President Obama mouthing a lot of nice talking points too. But when it came to having curiosity and examining the issue, he was MIA and so were his policies.
And I don’t feel like giving a pass to politicians who can’t do the right thing and call out what is wrong with charters. Either they are too lazy, too ignorant, too scared to offend powerful people, or too co-opted.
I’d rather vote for a conservative with the intellectual curiosity and honesty of Diane Ravitch than a progressive who is too lazy to understand what he is fighting for. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any conservatives like that in education. And even among many progressive politicians that intellectual curiosity is absolutely missing.
So I support Bill de Blasio, Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton when it comes to education. And I support Warren and Sanders on economic issues while being 99% certain they will sell out public education in a minute all the while thinking they are not because they just don’t have a clue about what the opposition to charters is all about. And there is no excuse for that. Especially a year after the BLM and NAACP call for a moratorium.
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^^and “Albert Shanker’s mouth”???
When, 20 years ago? That makes it okay?
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mercedes-schneider/hillary-clinton-charter-schools_b_8882774.html
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Joel, thank you for that interesting article. One comment by Mercedes Schneider stood out to me:
“It seems quite popular to support “high quality” charter schools without supporting any solid, systematic course of fiscal and other operational accountability for such schools.”
And here is Elizabeth Warren’s statement opposing DeVos:
https://www.warren.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1404
“This includes a letter sent to me from the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association about Mrs. DeVos’s devastating record of promoting for-profit and online charter schools with virtually no accountability or oversight for how well these schools actually serve students and families. Unlike the successful, thoughtful, and innovative education policies we have implemented in Massachusetts with regard to public charter schools, the policies Mrs. DeVos has bankrolled have drained valuable taxpayer dollars out of the public education system in Michigan and left kids worse off.”
“…UNLIKE THE SUCCESSFUL, THOUGHTFUL, AND INNOVATIVE EDUCATION POLICIES WE HAVE IMPLEMENTED IN MASSACHUSETTS WITH REGARD TO PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS…”
Is that now the “progressive” viewpoint? No need for any close look at how the “successful Massachusetts public charter schools” like John King’s own Roxbury Prep Charter School “one of the highest-performing urban middle schools in the state, closed the racial achievement gap, and outperformed not only the Boston district schools but also schools in the city’s affluent suburbs.” (From King’s bio)
Lots of great “high quality” public charters for Warren, and very likely Bernie Sanders, to brag about over the next few years. And if you think public education will have a chance when the “progressives” like Warren don’t challenge the narrative that all you need are more Roxbury Preps to teach public schools how to do it right.
I prefer my politicians a little more educated about the issue. Funny how it is Warren enabling those “high quality” quarter schools to continue bragging about their results without challenging their very premise to be teaching the same students. At least I know Hillary Clinton is aware of the difference. And as long as progressives like Warren do what Mercedes Schneider criticizes — supporting those “high quality charters” in a vacuum — the real damage to public education is not going to be addressed.
No doubt if Hillary was making the kind of statements Warren keeps making about how great Massachusetts “high quality charters” were you’d be insisting she was in the pocket of Eli Broad.
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I suspect that if we asked all the currently “REAL’ Democrats to stand, most would remain seated unless they pulled a “TRUMP” and lied.
In the future when we catch someone lying, tell them they “Pulled a Trump.”
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Great political slogan (oh that it would become truth): REAL DEMOCRATS SUPPORT PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
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That must mean there are not many real Democrats.
At least not in DC.
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There is much to agree with here, in both Joel Herman’s & NYCpsp’s comments. As a Bernie supporter, if I may speak about my experiences during the Dem primary: many of us who are public school teachers or retired p.s.t.s were rather upset–no., make that REALLY upset– that education issues were NOT being addressed on either the campaign trails, town halls or in the debates. EXTREMELY distressing was the fact that those (we) who I just mentioned were trying–REALLY trying–to get the message to the Bernie campaign that they had to smarten up as to public schools, what’s been going on (gee, we’ve been reading this blog–& some others like it–for–how long?) in U.S. education (e.g., all the terrible, almost irreversible damage done for decades, & the bulk of it–yes, the BULK of it–by the Obama Admin. & Arne Duncan {ohhh–let’s see–make National Teachers Week also National Charter Schools Week; vilify Central Falls, R.I. teachers; overly praise charters’; put NCLB on steroids w/R.3T., & not only TEST, TEST & MORE TEST, but test PREP ALL year, & make sure you buy those Pear$on test PREP material$; &–all the rest all of us know–ad nauseum [& I DO mean NAUSEUM]}). What was said to many of us by Bernie campaign people, “Thank you. We’ll take that into consideration.” REALLY?! One of us was a delegate–a DELEGATE–who could not get a simple message across—“You need the teachers & the parents.” But, no–not listened to, not heard. So, utlimately, Bernie remained pretty uninformed, education-wise.
A HUUUUGE mistake. Otherwise, his message was sound & clear & I think, had he been elected & had to then deal w/the D.o.Ed., he would have picked someone on our side
(Diane, perhaps), or would have, by that time, met w/education professionals (do some of you know what some of his campaign people were like?). Anyway, I say again–UNinformed (or UNDERinformed).
As for Warren, I can’t speak for her (those of you in MA can, I’m sure). MA being the home of Jonathan Kozol surely must account for something (i.e., I would hope she’d read his books–at least Death at an Early Age {still, unfortunately, the case, & the just-as-current, albeit TWENTY SIX YEARS OLD–sickening}Savage Inequalities).
That having been said, I do believe they’re two of the best we have, &, having volunteered long & hard for Bernie, I’d do it all over again. For Elizabeth, as well.
Although, next time, we have to DEMAND that they do their homework…that their people
give them Diane’s number, that their people put Kozol’s books into their hands.
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Retired, what you say is especially sad because Bernie is a product of Brooklyn public schools and a member of the Senate committee in charge of education issues (HELP committtee).
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Perhaps he delegated that task to Jane.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/04/jane_sanders_bernie_and_i_stan.html
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You’re right about demanding. Unless we DEMAND politicians to address education issues in a less than superficial way, they won’t. It’s that simple.
In Virginia, Tom Perriello didn’t want to talk about education or his DFER ties on the primary campaign trail. But a small group of parents and teachers in Virginia’s 2nd largest county, Prince William, demanded it. Our group arranged well-attended & separate education events in our county with Tom Perriello and Ralph Northam. We did our homework and asked questions. Events were recorded on Facebook Live and local media reported on our exchanges about charters & DFER. We got Perriello on the record. We never gave up. We did more research into his donor list & connected the dots, realizing that although he now claimed he was opposed to charter schools, he was potentially a Trojan horse for the privatizers to invade Virginia, a state that has largely resisted their snake oil.
The last week before the campaign when we discovered Perriello was still accepting donations from corporate ed reformers (e.g., Emerson Collective, aka Arne Duncan), one of us wrote a persuasive essay citing our research. Another lined up a statewide Democratic political blog to post it. However, when the pro-Perriello blog editor refused, members of our group contacted Diane and six reporters from The Washington Post, including Valerie Strauss. Kudos to Diane for helping our cause and posting it. It went viral in the ed world, appearing in The Daily Kos, Rachel Levy & other ed blogs. Virginia BATS and others reposted it. Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post contacted both campaigns for comment and wrote a story the day before the primary election.
Perriello’s campaign was worried enough that two days before the election his policy director penned a response on Medium defending his public ed bonafides. Imagine that! If he is to ever run for public office again (& there are rumors that some are encouraging him to run for Congress), he is now on record of opposing charters and reducing standardized testing! This is contrary to his public record from 2008-2014 as a member of Congress and President & CEO of the CAP Action Fund.
We didn’t have to question Ralph Northam aggressively like we did Perriello because he has a proven record in our state of supporting public education. As Lt. Governor, he has vowed to follow in the footsteps of Governor Terri McAuliffe who has been a great supporter of public education (as is Tim Kaine and his wife Anne Holton, former Va Sec of Ed and recently appointed to the State Board of Ed by Governor McAuluffe). Northam was also endorsed by the VEA.
When questioned in the education forums we held in Prince William County, Northam was also more open to ideas from high performing countries such as Finland. He gladly accepted two books on Finnish education to read (Pasi Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessins and Tim Walker’s Taught by Finland). In contrast, Perriello’s response was “We’re not Finland.”
Takeaways: it only takes a small group of activists – parents & teachers alike – to do what we did. Do your homework, invite candidates to public forums focused exclusively on education, do your research, invite media, record it, write essays or blogs, try to get them posted and if they say no go over their heads (thanks Diane & Valerie!), bring your passion, & spend some $$ buying books to give as gifts. Maybe they will throw them in the trash or maybe they will read them. (And let the authors know that an important candidate promised to read his or her book. One might just blog about it and encourage his almost 30,000 followers – many of whom live in your state – to vote for your pro-public school candidate…thank you Tim Walker author of Taught By Finland!!!)
Next up: this Friday night our small group is meeting the newly elected Democratic candidate for the 13th District in Virginia’s House of Delegates for dinner at a diner. We will start our conversation with her about public education. And right now I need to order a couple of books on Amazon….
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I might add, do not underestimate the power of parents and teachers to turn this ship around. In Virginia, K-12 public education is over 1/3 of our budget, 100,000+ teachers, nearly 1,300,000 students and all of the families. If you can reach this block of voters, pro-public ed candidates can win elections. As a parent myself, I do not know one parent – either Republican or Democrat – who supports standardized testing.
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Joel–as to your comment at 12:05 AM–thank you. I was thinking that, and this is a wonderful article in The Nation, but the fact that this information didn’t make it into the msm is the problem, & it was a grave oversight of the campaign to NOT include these views when Bernie was out stumping, in front of tens of thousands of people.
Among other mistakes made.
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MAB–you are SO right! Congratulations on the results of your hard work (and doing your homework!). Research & question, question, question.
“Power concedes nothing without demands.”–Frederick Douglass
That having been said, I’m against abolishing homework (well, not that which is excessive, or that consists of mindless worksheets aligned to “standardized” test prepping).
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Thanks, retiredbutmissthekids! It was exhiliarating as this unfolded because we felt pressure to get this information about Tom Perriello out to the public before primary day on June 13th. We only discovered the Arne Duncan donation on June 6th (which connected his past DFER ties to the present), so we had just days to write something and get it posted or published.
I might add that a few members of our group are involved in the local Democratic party and on the education subcommittee. They were responsible for reaching out to both campaigns to arrange education-specific round tables and town halls. It’s key to get candidates into these public forums so they are forced to deal with K-12 education issues and answer questions. We have reason to believe that it was these forums that helped Mr. Perriello change his views on some issues of the reformers’ agenda. At the very least, it helped him come to the realization that the backlash against corporate education is very real.
Finally, I might add that our county has an active Facebook page on public education with 1,000+ members. Believe it or not, most of the active members are predominantly conservative. However, members of our group post and comment regularly on this page to provide the counter-narrative. We’ve come to learn that our voices speak for many teachers & parents who are silent out of fear for retribution on the job or in the community. Privately they thank us for expressing their views, too.
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This is amazing! I am so glad that Perriello didn’t win. It is so frustrating to me so see people giving Bernie Sanders a pass all the time or trusting the people who he endorses to be good on public education when Bernie himself is not.
It would be a simple matter for EVERY Democrat to say “we believe in accountability. And accountability means that we will publish the attrition rates and suspension rates of every charter school so parents understand the chances that their child will be able to remain in the school.”
The Common Data Set for universities is very helpful. They track the same students who enter as freshmen to see if they graduate 4 or 5 years later. Colleges can’t fudge the numbers by adding students later to make it look like they are doing a better job.
There needs to be a Common Data Set for charters. They receive public money and we should know where it goes.
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NYCppp: Great comments, as usual. I don’t think, however, that Bernie is “not good” on public ed. (Read the link to The Nation article on Joel Herman’s 6/29, 12:05 AM comment)–the article would confirm that he is, indeed, pro-publics & against charters. As I’d stated before, HE needed to STATE that EVERY time he was in the public arena.
Having said that, however–NO pass for him RE: his support of Perriello, as well as the Heath Mello (Omaha mayoral race) debacle. He is so caught up in his mantra (although I do not argue that–like Senor Swacker’s Wilson rant, what Bernie says bears repeating &, because he has, his “radical” {not} ideas have caught on–imagine people shouting out for a single-payer health system, even some Dem legislators!)
I hope there are some Our Revolution/Bernie top dogs reading this blog (& well they should)–PLEASE get on the ball, people. VET these state & local candidates on the education issues before sending Bernie out to stump for them (but how’s about having him do so for Linda Weber in N.J.? &–this time–Tim Canova in FL?).
&–BTW, Diane, meant to write I agree w/you as to your 6/28, 8:14 AM comment. Some of us were pretty mad that Sen. Sanders voted for the ESSA. What’s the story on the HELP Committee? (Think I’ll do some homework myself!)
Still, he & Warren are two of the best out there. So, again, if any close to them are reading this, tell them to read this blog–& get educated!
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Bernie has his central issues. Education is not one of them.
The Dems on HELP Committee fought for more testing. They became attached to the absurd idea that NCLB was a civil rights issue. Dems fought to keep AYP and fortunately lost.
They really need to hear from parents and teachers.
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When I say Bernie is “not good” on public education I mean that he shows very little interest in it. And I didn’t find the interview with Jane Sanders to be especially consoling.
Public education needs real advocates who understand the issues. I don’t find it helpful to have Jane Sanders saying “we support the Chicago teachers union” because it paints the issues exactly as the reformers want — all about the union. The rest of that Nation interview was unenlightening. I’m glad Jane knows that Bill Gates has “very pure motives”. I’m glad she supports “progressive” education and is skeptical of testing (but not entirely opposed). She demonstrated little understanding of the problems of the privatization movement.
I have said this ad nauseam but Hillary’s comments about charter schools showed me she understood the issue:
“Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.
So I want parents to be able to exercise choice WITHIN the public school system — not outside of it — but within it because I am still a firm believer that the public school system is one of the real pillars of our democracy and it is a path for opportunity.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/11/08/hillary-clinton-most-charter-schools-dont-take-the-hardest-to-teach-kids-or-if-they-do-they-dont-keep-them/?utm_term=.bb6a75f271db
When I see Bernie Sanders, Jane Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or other “progressive” democrats doing more than mouthing platitudes about “supporting unions” that do more harm than good, I will be happy.
The fight against privatization — the fight FOR public schools — is not about “the union” . Hillary Clinton explained what it was about in a way that parents can understand. It’s a shame that the progressives don’t care enough to do the same. And if Sanders or Warren bothered to read why the NAACP wants a moratorium they could make a better case for public schools. But Jane’s interview only convinced me she knew almost nothing and didn’t even know what she didn’t know.
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Here is the direct link to the Jane Sanders interview in The Nation:
https://www.thenation.com/article/jane-sanders-has-some-harsh-words-for-our-public-education-system/
I feel as if half the things she is saying could be used to justify some more “public charter schools” that offer that “progressive education”.
And there is not a word about the fact that there is no REAL accountability nor transparency. And calling out the reformers about what accountability really means (Hint: It does not mean only looking at the standardized test scores of the kids who are allowed to remain in the charter regardless of whether 10% or 60% of them are missing.)
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