There used to be a well-known saying: “You can’t fight City Hall.”
Change that to: “You can’t fight the charter lobby.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio ran for mayor with the promise that he would fight the charter lobby. He was a public school parent and had served on a community school board. I believed him. I endorsed him.
Then after he was elected, the billionaires showed him who runs education policy in Albany. Governor Cuomo, the recipient of large sums from the financial industry, became the charter cheerleader, even though charters enrolled only 3% of the children in the state. The Republican-led State Senate gives the charter industry whatever it wants. The charter industry’s best friend is State Senate Republican leader John Flanagan, who loves loves loves charters, but not in his own district on Long Island. Call him Senator NIMBY.
De Blasio wanted charters to pay rent if they could afford it. The legislature required the City to give free space to charters, even though public schools are overcrowded, and to pay their rent if they locate in private space.
In the recent legislative session, the mayor was told that the only way to get a two-year extension of mayoral control was to revive 22 charters that had been closed or abandoned for various reasons.
Now the mayor is seeking a “truce” with the private charter industry that sucks the students it wants from the public schools.
Sad.
Mayoral control is a failed experiment. New York City needs an independent Board of Education, which chooses the Chancellor and to whom the Chancellor reports. The Mayor should make appointments to that board, along with the borough presidents. Candidates should be screened for their qualifications and experience by an independent review board of civic leaders, a process used in the past.
The city needs a board prepared to support and defend the 1.1 million students in public schools, to provide a public forum for grievances, and to listen to their parents and communities.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you have money, you can buy city hall
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I was beyond disappointed to learn of this news. Not sure what his long game is, but so much damage can be done to children in a very short amount of time.
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DeBlasio is no match for the hedge fund vulture capitalists from Wall St. These unprincipaled financiers follow a scorched earth policy on the road to profit. NYC should end mayoral control in favor of an elected board in order to fairly represent the 1.1 million students in the city. Mayors can be bought or bullied.
This story should be a cautionary tale to states that are considering charter schools. Work with your public schools. Invest in your local students and community through improving public education. Charters are a lot of hype and spin. They will drain your community schools dry for no better results. You state will also be besieged by by a gigantic charter lobby that will become entrenched and create a formidable political machine back by dark money. They will extort acquiescence from state and city representatives. They will buy support for their schools in order to gain control of your public money that will shipped off to a corporation outside the local community.
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Unfortunately, as we saw in the Los Angeles school board elections, political seats can also be bought.
There is no good answer. I would have gladly traded Mayoral control to stop unethical charter operators from continuing to expand their reprehensible and dishonest practices. But the only concessions were administrative ones. I hope the Mayor rewards the ethical charters with space while telling the ones who go on public television to announce that so many of their non-white kindergarten students are violent that they have no choice but to suspend them to get lost.
Here is the real fact that journalists are missing. The charters do not want the Mayor to give them their rent subsidies because the free rent they get is worth so much more than they acknowledge and its cost is borne by ONLY public school students. The more that charters get to be free-riders, the more money charters can claim public schools “waste” because the cost of all that free rent for charters is paid by public school children, not theirs.
The cost of charters has never been properly assessed. Bloomberg forced public school students to pay for his rich charter friends’ free rent and it was an appalling action. It is very expensive for the city to maintain the buildings and ALL that cost is charged to public school students. Just like all the pensions of retired teachers are charged only to them. Charters are truly awash with funding and with free rent their “charter maintenance organizations” can take thousands for each student to pay outrageously high salaries to administrators with the ethics of Donald Trump.
Public schools have budgets that are often less than $8,000 per student to pay for the non-rent costs of education. Charter schools get nearly $14,000 for those same costs. And that extra money per pupil adds up fast — especially if your Charter Maintenance Organization is taking a few thousand off the top per student. Just think, if you take $2,000 for each student and your charter chain teaches 10,000 students that is TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS right in the pocket of large charter chain parent organizations like Success Academy. That’s twenty million each year! No wonder they want to expand. And with the free rent they still have $12,000/student to spend which is significantly more than any public school’s budget. Plus they can get rid of expensive students with no oversight!
Charters are getting very rich at the public trough. While public school students go without. And until journalists start covering charters like they are FINALLY covering Donald Trump’s endless lies, they will continue to get even richer.
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How did this inequitable situation come to be in NYC, & what was the justification? This seems to be unique to NYC– that charter schools get a per-pupil revenue amounting to 3/4 of the city per-pupil expenditure– but then are reqd to be housed ‘free’ by the taxpayers. W/RE costs being what they are in NYC, that feature surely means charter-school pupils are getting more than pubsch students. (Let alone the inequities thatensue from charter co-location in pubschs).
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Not unique to NYC- Gates-funded Hechinger Report praised a contractor school in Baltimore and bashed public schools. The writer didn’t mentioned that the contractor school got $9,137 per pupil and the public school got $5,300. Hechinger didn’t note the lawsuit filed by the contractor school demanding even more money.
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Bethtree wrote “How did this inequitable situation come to be in NYC?”
The $8000/student figure cited is taken from school-based principals’ budgets that include nothing beyond cash salaries for teachers, some (but not all) school-based staff, and books and supplies.
What isn’t included in these budgets? Fringe benefits: health insurance, dental, vision, and disability. Pensions and retiree health care. School nurses, paras, crossing guards, safety officers, and custodians. Many hundreds of DOE employees not based in schools–central admin and district staff. Busing and matrons. Food and lunch aides. Energy and all facilities costs–chairs, desks, computers, etc/-including $2.4 billion in capital debt service. I’m sure there are many things I’m missing but you get the idea.
$8000/student is what it costs to pay teachers’ cash salaries alone, most likely at a relatively affluent school. The full cost to educate a child in an NYC DOE school in 2016-2017 was $25,087; see what’s labeled as page three in this document: http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/education-indicators-budgets-2017.pdf. It will approach $27,000 in 2017-2018.
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Tim,
You just proved the benefit of charters. No pensions, no health benefits for teachers. No paras. No school nurses.
No wonder teachers leave charters at an alarming rate.
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No, what I proved is that someone claiming that NYC DOE schools are spending just $8,000 per student is either misinformed or attempting to deliberately mislead others.
All charter schools in New York City provide employees with health insurance and retirement benefits and all comply with state and federal laws regarding student health services. It’s just that they do these things at less cost to taxpayers.
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Tim,
It helps if your teachers don’t stay around long enough to get a pension and are young so unlikely to need health coverage.
It also keeps costs down to exclude kids with disabilities.
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Three-year and five-year teacher turnover rates at the high-poverty NYC DOE traditional district schools that the vast majority of charter-going students are zoned for are 55% and 68%, respectively. Teacher retention is an issue at all high-needs schools.
Click to access 2014teacherdemographics.pdf
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Tim is absolutely wrong about the galaxy budgets which is the money it takes to run a public school without rent and building costs.
The galaxy budgets absolutely include the costs of paras in the school. And social workers. And physical and occupational therapists. And all the things needed when you are obligated to teach EVERY child instead of just every child who can be taught by your inexperienced teachers while counseling out the rest.
The only thing missing is the cost of benefits for the CURRENT teachers. And given that most current teachers don’t get particularly generous medical or pension benefits, even adding a generous % of salary as a cost.
Charter schools insist that their budgets should be based on a public school budget in which public school students are charged for every single retired teacher’s pension and health care benefits — even if that teacher retired 30 years ago. It has nothing to do with how much it costs to educate current students nor how much public schools spend to teach those students.
Furthermore, Tim insists that public school students be charged for the rent of charter school students! When he says “public schools spend $25,000 per student each year, he means that public schools spend it to underwrite half the costs of those charter school students. Their buses, their buildings, their maintenance, the bureaucracy that allows Tim’s hero Eva Moiskowitz to suspend a 5 year old over and over again and tell the parent that their child will be better served elsewhere and happily shows them the door. Without that bureaucracy, the charter schools couldn’t throw away kids like garbage knowing that the so-called “bureaucracy” that those public school students are charged for will pick up the pieces of their mistreatment. Disgusting.
Everyone understands how outrageous the Republican health care plan is. You can’t have one private insurance system that makes a lot of money by only insures the healthiest Americans while they can get rid of any enrollee who gets too sick. You can’t have a second plan that must take all comers while the private plan can turn them away or insure them UNTIL they get too sick to allow them to profit from their premiums. But the charter folks think that is just dandy because that is the plan they have been running in their schools for the last decade. Like the Republican health care plan, Tim’s “charters get to teach the cheapest children with no oversight to make sure they don’t send them away once they cut into profits” is immoral and unethical.
That bureaucracy that public school students are charged for is what allows charters to throw away kids and use the savings to pay their CEOs (and their PR flacks) enormous salaries. So it’s particularly disgusting when charters claim that they deserve $5,000 per student MORE than public schools because of the difficult job they do in recognizing which children are worthy and which need to be thrown away with the garbage and sent to public schools to teach.
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Perhaps we can do the calculation backwards. If NYC Public spends $8,000 per student and there are 1,100,000 students in the district, spending should be $8,800,000,000 (about $8.8 billion). NYC Public lists total expenditure of $28,396,948,599 (see http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DBOR/SBER/default.htm). If NYC Public School Parent is correct and the only thing missing from the $8,000 per student figure is current teacher benefits, this would mean that current teacher benefits cost NYC public spends $19,596,948,599 on current teacher benefits.
The idea that NYC Public spends over twice as much on current teacher benefits than it spends on everything else seems implausible to me, so I think that the $8,000 figure must leave out much more than just current teacher benefits.
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TE,
School systems have many costs that are not part of per-pupil instruction, including the costs of heat, light, and air-conditioning; the maintenance of aging buildings; custodial services; school buses; security; nurses, psychologists, librarians, and other non-instructional personnel; the high costs of students with profound disabilities (who are never admitted by charters and religious schools); dozens of other costs associated with running over 1,000 school buildings for 1.1 million children.
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Dr. Ravitch,
It is good to see that we agree that poster NYC public school parent is “absolutely wrong” about the galaxy budget, not poster Tim. There are many essential costs of education not included in the $8,000 per pupil figure.
It is good to correct NYC public school parent’s error before other readers come to believe that $8,000 per pupil is anywhere close to the expenditure per pupil in NYC.
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TE,
We do not agree. Fixed costs such as custodial staff and maintenance are not instructional costs per pupil.
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I’ve read that The Chrisitan Science Monitor is a respected media source. Knowing that, if it is accurate, here’s an interesting piece: How much education funding should go directly to classrooms? This piece is dated January 2006 so it is not only out of date but obviously never met its goals.
“His organization, First Class Education, aims for all 50 states and the District of Columbia to reallocate school spending so that at least 65 cents on every dollar goes directly into the classroom – on books and teacher pay – by the end of 2008.”
In 2006, “Currently, the national average classroom spending is about 61.5 cents on the dollar, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).”
https://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0125/p01s03-legn.html
If that old 2006 average holds today, then New York is spending about $12,600 in the classroom for each student and not $20,610. The rest goes to administration, support outside of the classroom, utilities, infrastructure, and maintenance.
But what does this tell us about a state like Utah where the spending is about $6,500 per student. That translated to less than $4,000 spend in the classroom for each student.
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Dr. Ravitch,
NYC Public School Parent stated that “Public schools have budgets that are often less than $8,000 per student to pay for the non-rent costs of education”.
I would include “the costs of heat, light, and air-conditioning; the maintenance of aging buildings; custodial services; school buses; security; nurses, psychologists, librarians, and other non-instructional personnel; the high costs of students with profound disabilities” as non-rent costs of education and therefore, according to NYC Public School Parent, included in the $8,000 figure. Do you think otherwise?
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TE,
One of the reasons I didn’t want you on my blog the last time you were here Daily is that you expect me to engage in constant debate with you. Sorry.
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Dr. Ravitch,
My initial post was not addressed to any statement you made, but rather the discussion between the unusually silent NYC public school parent and Tim.
I was surprised that you agreed that the non-rent costs of education were indeed much higher than NYC public school parent had claimed, even more surprised when you later denied that you were disagreeing with with NYC public school parent.
Of course you should feel free to respond or not respond to any of my posts.
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TE, your last comment was addressed to me. If you know how to run a school system for 1.1 million children, most of whom are black and brown, most of whom are impoverished, please send your ideas along. I don’t think there is anything comparable in Kansas.
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Teachers are really easily fooled. We know the GOP is a bunch of sellouts to the charter school industry. Republicans crave charter school contributions. Without them the GOP would not control the NYS Senate. It’s somewhat similar across the country.
But, what teachers can’t get a grasp on is that Democrats are just as bad. President Obama made Arne Duncan secretary of education and signed off on all the terrible testing and teacher evaluation rules, but a laundry list of regulations that suffocated districts. Andrew Cuomo has backed NYS charter schools, signed legislation establishing new reduced benefit and higher contribution pension tiers, longer probationary period, sickening teacher evaluation rules, etc.
NYSUT Vote-COPE gave millions of dollars to Assembly Democrats who then with “heavy hearts” voted into law some of Cuomo’s and the Senate GOP’s worst “reforms” to our profession.
NYSUT is one of the lamest unions in the USA.
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Oh I think if you’ve followed this blog for yrs as I have, you’d know there are plenty of teachers– at least the ones here, & those at BAT too– who are well aware that Dems followed Repubs down the accountability>>privatization rabbit hole. The folks you need to convince are those Dem voters– many of whom consider themselves progressives– who are still preaching hi-stakes accountability for pubschs, leading to unregulated privately-run [but publically-pd] ‘choice’ schools…. I guarantee you most of them think they are do-gooders supporting choice for inner-city minorities, unaware that every civil-rights group over the course of 2016 called for a moratorium on charters.
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And more importantly, we need to school folks like Warren & Sanders– & find new Dem candidates who get this.
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Bernie does not get this. Why do his supporters in public education delude themselves about that?
Bernie fought hard for the DFER candidate in Virginia who was opposed by someone who actually DID support public education — just like Tim Kaine did when he was Governor.
Those civil rights groups who were calling for a moratorium on charters are the same people who appeared at Hillary’s DNC. The same group who supported her candidacy. The so-called “progressive” movement that Bernie leads does not care enough to even learn the issues regarding public schools. If they did, Bernie would never have spent so much effort to elect a DFER candidate while in 6 months saying almost nothing about public schools. He has a bully pulpit but using it for public education? I won’t hold my breath.
And Mayor de Blasio DID. I wonder if Bernie will campaign for some 3rd party opponent to make sure that some right wing charter supporting Mayor destroys public schools in NYC.
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Unions in other states are not much better. Their priorities are 1.) giving into management at every opportunity (to the detriment of students and teachers) and 2.) supporting politicians hand-picked by legislative leaders and their donors regardless of how much damage occurs to public schools and students.
Supporting Obama with little reservations and with hardly any pushback against his wrecking-ball approach to public schools did the AFT no favors.
Member solidarity? Meh.
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If you belong to a union, what are you doing to change what you don’t like?
I’m disappointed with all the belly aching I’ve been reading in comment threads here about unions not doing this or not doing that. Even when I was teaching and was a member of a local California local branch (with about 700 members) of CTA/NEA, I heard other teachers complaining but never doing anything to bring about change – no effort at all. Only grumbles and glowering expressions when the topic came up.
But when I didn’t like what was going on, I joined with another teacher, we became reps for the middle school where we were teaching at the time and we joined other teachers and helped bring about change in our local. We shook things up by digging for facts once we were reps and revealing to the members we represented the shenanigans that were going on.
Eventually because of other new reps joining that local’s leadership council we got rid of the elected local president that wasn’t representing her members properly and replaced her with someone that shifted priorities. At the time, we were teaching six classes with no planning period. With the new leadership, we fought for five classes and a planning period and won after a long dirty battle with district administration. We also found locals we could support and helped them get elected by going door to door after school to get them elected to the school board. And that new school board, after we won, got rid of the micromanaging autocratic superintendent and hired someone else that was more progressive.
But, the harsh reality is that this war never ends. Once you win one battle, you must be ready for the next one. The forces of darkness will never go away.
I think complaining and not getting involved in bringing about change is defeatist BS and plays into the hands of the union hating, baiting, autocratic billionaires. If you belong to a labor union and you don’t like what that union’s elected leadership is doing, remember that you belong to a democratic organization and through the vote of the members and new leadership, labor unions can clean house and change direction.
The billionaires do not lead Democratic organizations. They almost all think exactly like Trump when it comes to who should be making all the decisions.
Once the labor unions are gone, thanks to help from belly aching members who do nothing to bring about change in their democratic labor unions, the day will come when workers have no say, no voice, no rights and those workers will live in fear and think they are fortunate to even earn poverty wages with no benefits.
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Amen!
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The evidence is overwhelming that the corporate charter movement is a failed experiment when it comes to the education of all children, but it hasn’t failed its main purpose: to make a profit from public funds and boost the wealth of the already wealthy and make more millionaires and billionaires who are mostly parasites sucking the blood out of civilization.
That’s why the charter school industry manufactures false facts or cherry picks valid existing facts to look like it is succeeding when it comes to teaching children, because to them, they are not failures. They never got into education to improve learning, but to make money. And it is okay to lie to achieve your original agenda of wealth acquisition.
If we have learned anything from #FakePresident Trump, it is the art of the lie to stay in business and keep the money flowing no matter who gets hurt.
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Yes indeed. And the ed paradigm is reflected in all public goods: infrastructure, parks, libraries, postal sys, prisons.
Hence my political priorities:
1. Overturn or legislate away the Cit-United decision.
2. All elective campaigns at every level financed publically.
3. Minimum 5-yr downtime before elected or appointed officials [once leaving office] are allowed to register as lobbyists.
4. (My most out-there reqt:) 1:1 parity in lobbying: for every private lobbyist in a given area, there must be a lobbyist representing voters
5. Measures taken to ensure funding to audit compliance w/voter-interest legislation, e.g., antitrust, consumer-protection, nepotism, conflict-of-interest, fraud, etc
6. Gerrymandering? (Haven’t figured that issue out yet…)
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#6 – No gerrymandering – No districts that look like cancer spreading through a body or a crazy spider web. All districts must be a four-sided square or a rectangle.
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I guess I’m not surprised.
I have the following impression. Please correct it, if in error.
As I recall, DeBlasio appointed a chancellor who appeared to declare war on the charters. Immediately, he lost an opportunity to educate the public about charters’ misrepresented claims of great success with low performing students.
He could have instituted major audits of charters’ claims and traditional NYC PS by auditing:
– enrollment and transfer out, suspension, expulsion policies;
– how effective they are in improving student mastery of core subject matter;
– teacher turnover;
– use of public funds: % for management; teachers; supplies; support staff, etc.
So, most of the public was left with the political pro- vs anti-choice arguments that cloud the issue.
Lost opportunity.
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Mayor de Blasio has absolutely no authority to audit anything with regards to charters.
In fact, Success Academy sued to prevent any audits. Finally the NYC Controller Scott Stringer was “allowed” to do what seems to be ONLY a “financial” audit. The suspension and attrition records seem to be beyond his scope. It took years for him to complete it and I suspect it involved a lot of legal fights on what he had access to.
However the SUNY Charter Institute does have power to audit anything they want in charters.
The SUNY Charter Institute has made it clear over and over again that as long as you are delivering high test scores it is absolutely fine for your charter to have as many got to go lists, suspend as many 5 year olds, and make as many outrageous and misleading claims as Donald Trump. They are complicit. It’s a shame because if SUNY was not acting like the Republican Party and took its oversight job seriously, charters might have done some good. Instead, they have bled public schools dry and promoted some of of the ugliest racism I have ever seen. It is not surprising that both Black Lives Matters and the NAACP have called for a moratorium. It is not surprising that Eva Moskowitz has embraced Betsy DeVos and the values DeVos has promoted for decades. It is not surprising that not one charter school leader is willing to call out her dishonesty.
And SUNY has absolutely no interest in learning how many students leave high performing charters.
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^^You are also wrong about de Blasio appointing a chancellor “who appeared to declare war on the charters”. He did no such thing.
The only thing that happened is that Mayor Bloomberg — as he was leaving office — unaccountably gave one favored charter school a promise of a bunch of free spaces in public schools to expand. When Mayor de Blasio reviewed them, he found that one would have displaced an entire school serving severely handicapped children! He decided to approve SOME of Bloomberg’s giveaway to his billionaire buddies and hold up some others.
Mayor de Blasio decided to treat Bloomberg’s favorite charter school like every other charter school. But because of the propaganda campaign bought and paid for by right wing Trump supporting billionaires, poorly informed people like you felt free to repeat the nonsense that de Blasio and Farina hated all charters. You are wrong. I hope it was not intentional.
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Cuomo out maneuvered de Blasio repeatedly. Charters will continue to suck blood out of NYC public schools. The next step for the charter industry is the deprofessionalization of teachers. Children are mere data points to be advanced along a continuum.
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I know, I know, the cynical one again. But I have to ask, do we have evidence that de Blasio actually capitulated to a powerful lobby, or did he pull an Obama and just shrug, “well, gee, that’s the best I could do” while he’s actually been in bed with them all along? What evidence do we have that he actually fought? I know he’s said a lot of pretty words about making charters pay rent and be regulated and such like things, but words are easy and if I learned anything from Obama, it’s not to be fooled by them. I don’t live in New York, and I haven’t followed de Blasio that closely, but my Spidey senses get a decidedly Obama-like tingle from him. Any New Yorkers have a closer perspective?
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Your Spidey sense is working just as well as it did when you used it to judge Hillary Clinton.
But with so called “progressives” like you willing to believe the very worst about political candidates who are actually fighting for progressive causes, no doubt the world will soon know that Mayor de Blasio is a big sell out. Maybe we can have a nice right wing candidate instead. After all, like Trump, it can’t be any worse than the co-opted de Blasio. And I’m sure after you read some more right wing propaganda disguised as coming from Bernie bros, you will be certain that even Eva Moskowitz can be no worse than the co-opted Mayor de Blasio. So why not vote for some 3rd party candidate who can’t win?
I knew this would happen — that Mayor de Blasio would get the Hillary Clinton treatment and progressives that should have known better will turn against him for “selling out”. And soon NYC will join the rest of the country in embracing the Trump agenda. After all, as you keep saying, it’s no worse than those sell-out Democrats like Mayor de Blasio! Destroy them all.
Please, do the right wing a favor and start your attacks on de Blasio right now just like you did to Hillary. Your smugness will serve you well while I watch the NYC public school system drain away. And you can feel good that you did to NYC what you did to America. You really showed us how to win the progressive fight. Thank you.
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“Your Spidey sense is working just as well as it did when you used it to judge Hillary Clinton.”
Good, thought so.
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Incidentally, NYCPSP, while your attacks are cute, you (once again) failed to provide what I asked for: evidence. Getting indignant is not a substitute.
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I agree with your sentiment, NYC public school parent. How does a pro-democracy person fight men like David Brock? His Share Blue site described the “Youngest Dems” as planning to “..help big business”, (subsequently edited out of the article). The same article expressed an opinion about schools that DFER and tech tyrants like Gates could have written (also later edited out). If Dems continue to promote hedge-fund and contractor school- loving Corey Booker, where is the hope?
ALEC, on the right and left.
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Linda and dienne77,
I happen to agree with you both that Obama’s education policy was disastrous and if it was OBAMA who had been running for President again I might have been as disgusted as you were. However, Obama never pretended to be pro-public schools. Instead, he said the kind of meaningless things your idols Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren did. Remember how Bernie and Warren kept praising those “public” charter schools without having a clue as to what they were talking about? Well, that’s just like Obama. Not Hillary.
Hillary understood exactly how charters get top results and stated it for the record — they push out kids. It might have been nice to hear your idols Sanders or Warren acknowledge that. And the reason I get so mad — which I know I should not — is seeing people like dienne77 making every excuse in the book for Bernie Sanders’ clueless statements on charters that have done so much damage. While at the same time being so quick to attack one of the few democrats — Hillary Clinton — who actually understood the issues and was willing to go on record about them. And choose a VP candidate like Tim Kaine who also understood. Can you imagine if they had won and we actually had an honest discussion about charters instead of the fake PR that substitutes for debate on the issue? I can, which is why I am so upset at Bernie supporters who claimed to care about public education and refused to vote for Hillary because they had already decided she was as bad or worse than Obama and no evidence in the world would ever convince them that Bernie wasn’t their savior while Hillary planned to double down on Obama’s “charters can do anything they want” policy. Obama never talked about charters pushing out kids. Arne Duncan never talked about that. Bernie Sanders never talked about that. Hillary did. So did Bill de Blasio so I shouldn’t be surprised at how much you are ready to despise his education policies without a shred of evidence. Because of that “spidey sense” you have about progressive Democrats who get attacked by right wing billionaires.
So it does not surprise me at all to see self-defined pro-public school progressives attacking Mayor de Blasio. You couldn’t recognize a friend of public education — like Tim Kaine — because the enemies of public education delight in playing you for fools. Sure, attack Mayor de Blasio because he isn’t a “real” friend like Bernie who you always make excuses for instead of characterizing Bernie’s lack of support for public schools as corrupt as you do whenever it is a Democrat.
And if you work in education and can’t do a google search to find out Mayor de Blasio’s positions on education because you prefer to hear what some anonymous commentator says? Did you even READ the Politico article that Diane Ravitch linked to here? In fact, education reporter Eliza Shapiro is one of the few that tries to dig deeper and if you read the article to the end — as well as read the links WITHIN the article, you will see that Mayor de Blasio’s support for public education is NOT like Bernie Sanders. De Blasio is actually fighting FOR public schools. Bernie is not. So it’s ironic to hear your idea that Bernie will lead a new political party that you like because it attacks Democrat politicians that actually support public schools like Tim Kaine, De Blasio and Hillary Clinton as sell-outs.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Embrace the politicians that don’t care one whit about public schools and attack the ones that do as “sell-outs” because they are fighting and not succeeding. Truly, I expect the demise of public education if the people who actually care about it can’t distinguish a friend from an enemy. And Bernie is not your friend. He doesn’t care. He sits on a committee that oversees education and he still doesn’t care enough to learn about the issues. At least that is the kindest interpretation. The least kind is that he hated his public school teachers and thinks you are all like them and will support you because of “labor” but his heart isn’t in it because why should he support such lazy teachers when there are those wonderful “public charters” he keeps praising.
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Just as a point of clarification- Dienne and I likely have little in common. De Blasio seems like he would be the better candidate in almost any political race.
I share your frustration about Bernie and public schools. Bernie got votes in the primary because he spoke out against Wall Street. Hillary’s campaign had at the top, CAP and John Podesto. Podesto is in a video available on-line in which he sits on a dais with Jeb Bush and Chester Finn. He ask donors to support candidates who will work to privatize schools. Two weeks after Hillary’s loss, CAP published a plan in Forbes to accredit universities based on student outcome measures.
.
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With Hillary it is always guilt by association. David Brock likes her and he’s for privatization. John Podesta ran her campaign and Eli Broad is her best pal so she must be lying through her teeth because after all, her entire life has been about rewarding the rich and abandoning the poor and vulnerable. Wrong. I don’t care who “ran her campaign.” I care about HER and what she stands for and has spent her life doing: Studying the issues. Considering how to balance competing interests. Trying to make things better for vulnerable groups. Making mistakes. LEARNING from her mistakes. Trying to do the right thing. And being one of the only politicians who was willing to point out the obvious — that charters do well because they get rid of kids who don’t do well. On public school issues I trust Hillary far more than I trust Bernie who either didn’t like his own public school experience or just doesn’t care. She chose Tim Kaine for VP, not Corey Booker. Not one of the DFER-approved candidates like the one Bernie campaigned for. Her first action as the Democratic candidate and she chose one of the few pro-public school Democrats still around. And yet those who claim to be pro-public schools were happy to let Trump win because they were just 100% certain there was absolutely no difference between their positions.
I sound like a broken record, but I have to repeat what happened once again. When Hillary won the Democratic primary she pivoted LEFT. Every other Democrat — Obama included — pivoted right in the general election. Not Hillary. It was obvious to me that she believed that having Trump on the ballot would allow her to run as a progressive and still win — which would give her a legitimate mandate. The reason the Republicans have had Hillary derangement syndrome for 20 years is because they KNEW that! They were terrified of her winning because not only is she progressive, but she is the “do-gooder workaholic chick” who knows how to get things done. It makes her annoying as anything but she was going to work like crazy for the progressive agenda. It’s outrageous for anyone to think she wanted to run to be a conservative — why would she bother?
That’s why I am still so angry. This country lost an excellent chance to enact a progressive agenda because they believed the propaganda. And now I see it happening again with Mayor de Blasio. Is he perfect? Of course not — he has the same flaws every politician does, just like Hillary did. Is he the tool of the right wing as dienne77’s “spidey sense” tells her? Only if you ignore everything he has fought for (and accomplished) for the last 4 years and fall for right wing propaganda that will paint him as corrupt, the tool of big business, or whatever will work to get gullible people not to vote for him. It worked amazingly well in getting them to hate Hillary because of the propaganda told them their “spidey sense” was correct. And as long as so-called progressives keep rejecting progressive politicians because of guilt by association propaganda telling them this person is corrupt instead of examining what this person is actually doing and has done during the entirety of their career, they are playing right into the right wing’s hand.
And seeing posts like dienne77’s implying that there is something wrong with de Blasio’s CHARACTER — just like she did with Hillary Clinton — because her “spidey sense” makes her turn the Mayor’s perfectly reasonable actions into something that is corrupt and wrong and selling out to the highest bidder? There was nothing in this post nor in the Politico article it linked to that should have led dienne77 to even suggest such a thing, so why would she jump to that conclusion?
There are legitimate things to criticize de Blasio on just like there are legitimate things to criticize Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton. But they are all politicians fighting for the right thing. Why is dienne77 is so determined to attack the CHARACTER of democratic politicians who right wing billionaires are determined to defeat? Why is she repeating the talking points that the right wing is trying so hard to push so a progressive candidate will lose support?
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NYC public school parent About Hillary: “This country lost an excellent chance to enact a progressive agenda because they believed the propaganda.” . . . . “They were terrified of her winning because not only is she progressive, but she is the “do-gooder workaholic chick” who knows how to get things done.” . . . “There are legitimate things to criticize de Blasio on just like there are legitimate things to criticize Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton. But they are all politicians fighting for the right thing.”
Well said. And apparently “jumping to conclusions” is dienne77’s preferred method of operations.
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Good questions. The answers might be found in China where the central government hires thousands of trustworthy people to monitor social network sites for any trend that might grow to cause national discord, and when they find something going viral that could disrupt the harmony, they slip in and leave comments to change the topic and/or sabotage and disrupt it any way they can.
But there is a different reason why China’s leaders are doing this. They don’t want any public movement that might stop the modernization of China and the growth of China’s middle class.
The Chinese Communist Party, for all of its faults (and there are many), is the first government in China’s history to actually do something to improve the lifestyles of the people instead of just use them as human beasts of burden and work them to death and then cast them aside like garbage.
Since 1949, there has only been one famine that cost lives and that lasted for about three years. Prior to that, Imperial records going back millennia reveal that droughts and famines rocked China annually causing people to starve to death in one or more provinces. The famine that happened under Mao wasn’t unique.
In 1949, the average lifespan was about 35. Today it is approaching 80.
In 1949, the only people that had modern healthcare was the 1 percent. Today, almost everyone in that country has access to some level of healthcare or the average lifespan wouldn’t have improved so much.
In 1949, about 95 percent of China lived in extreme poverty. Today that number is less than 4 (according to the CIA Factbook) percent and the ratio of China’s middle class is larger than any time in its history and it’s still growing.
Anyway, in the U.S. the opposite is happening. The autocratic billionaires behind the rise of Turmpism, ALEC, etc, are probably funding agents (maybe they all work in India – imagine thousands being paid poverty wages with no benefits working in huge warehouses sitting in front of rows of computer monitors trolling the social media in the U.S.) to infiltrate popular blogs sites like Diane’s and do what they can to distract and disrupt the conversations.
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Is it possible that part of Hillary’s loss can be attributed to pollsters reporting Hillary was a guaranteed win, which led lukewarm, potential voters to stay home? Pollsters identified the primary source of info. for their predictions as the campaigns, themselves (i.e. CAP and Podesto?)
At the taping of Trumpland, Michael Moore said he supported Hillary because he couldn’t “live without hope”. It was among the most profoundly sad statements I have ever heard.
NYC public school parent, we can agree, NEVER vote Republican.
But, people like me can be sorrowful about big money that makes alternative politicians to the Republican Party use weak messaging and succumb to formidable forces among the richest 0.1%.
Experts who study the history of governmental collapse, identify concentration of wealth as the indicator. The U.S. is at that level of concentrated wealth. Six Walton heirs have wealth equivalent to 40%
of Americans. Rhetorically, why didn’t Hillary say that? In hindsight, votes for losing candidates always represent a type of waste. If a significant rallying cry is made by the candidate that ultimately loses, it’s a building block for the future. Do Democratic voters know if Hillary and Bill are distancing themselves from Bloomberg/tech tyrants and Wall Street?
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Wow, NYC public school parent’s reply was so stinging. I would suggest rather that DiBlasio was a little too politic– finding himself up against an entrenched big-money system, & not seeing how to overcome it, he caved– perhaps prematurely, underestimating the power of his bully pulpit– fearing that if he pushes the envelope too far, he will not be re-elected & cannot hope to accomplish more in a 2nd term.
OK, I guess that sounds a lot like Obama– but then again, I don’t see Obama the same way you do. During his first term, he rescued us from another Great Depression by supporting failing industries w/fed funds, most of which rebounded & pd back the debt plus interest. During the same period, he pushed through our first natl healthcare act, which tho flawed & unpopular, has turned around the natl narrative in a few short years: Rep voters are demanding healthcare from their reps as a right not a privilege, & many perspicacious voters are calling for a single-payer system… Though surely, Obama showed neolib colors in trade, & in education… but then again, he stood up against drug-war-era-mandated sentences, & made moves against privatized prisons…
Back to DiBlasio: he seems pusillanimous in contrast to Obama.
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bethree5,
you are correct that I was too “stinging”. I admit I am angry at the so-called pro-public school progressives who cannot recognize a friend of public education when they see one.
It is truly outrageous to compare de Blasio to Obama. If anything, Bernie Sanders is far closer to Obama on education than de Blasio. The Mayor spent the last 4 years fighting for the right things for public education even when it made him the object of a billionaire -funded nasty ad campaign and PR campaign to undermine his agenda. Still, HE PERSISTED. And got universal pre-k. And fought for REAL oversight of it to the very end.
I was a huge Bernie supporter but there is a lot more to governing than talk. There is action. the Mayor has taken action over and over again to support public schools. He fought for money for Renewal schools that serve the most difficult kids despite knowing that he would be attacked because it is near impossible to get fast results unless you act in the unethical way charters do. He is trying to do the right thing for public education and for that he gets so-called “progressives’ who are swayed by whatever right wing propaganda out there sways them to call him a sell-out. Because their “spidey sense” kicks in. More like their inclination to decide progressives aren’t perfect when they fight and lose and their adoration of the progressives that are all talk and too lazy to learn about what the public school issues are all about.
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Some good news- The CFPB restored our rights to take companies to court with class action law suits. We all need to tell our senators and representatives to support the CFPB.
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Diane Apparenlty EdWeek has gotten on board with a marketing page Edweek Market Brief for “education companies.” Here’s the latest free “introductory” notice. The quotation marks around “research” and “evidence” are theirs, not mine:
ALL QUOTED BELOW
Research & Evidence: What K-12 Companies Need to Show Schools
Edweek Market Brief
What Kind of “Research” Do K-12 Companies Need for Their Products?
This webinar is a rebroadcast of an event that originally aired on Jan. 18th, 2017.
Education providers often hear that school officials want research or “evidence” that their products and services are effective. But what kind of research or evidence do schools really want? And just as important, what are simple and low-cost strategies K-12 companies can use to build a research base for their products? This webinar offers practical tips for companies, and also explores how changes in the new federal law, ESSA, will change the research standards for school providers.
Guests:
Bart Epstein, CEO, Jefferson Education Accelerator
Steven Glazerman, director, Educator Impact Laboratory, Mathematica Policy Research
Alexandra Resch, associate director and senior researcher, Mathematica Policy Research
This webinar is moderated by Sean Cavanagh, managing editor, Education Week Market Brief
Thursday, July 20, 2017, 2 to 3 p.m. ET
Regularly $195, but as a Market Brief member you receive FREE access to this webinar! Get your discount code here
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Sickening. Where are the “brave” ones?
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