In education, ALEC is the axis of Failed ideas. It writes model legislation for states to kill unions, reduce the teaching profession to at-will temps, and replace public schools with charter and vouchers. Its sponsors are big corporations. Its members are 2,000 state legislators who want to be corporate puppets.
Valerie Strauss writes here about the ALEC report card. What matters most to ALEC is whether your state has charters, vouchers, cyber charters, homeschooling and for-profit schools. What matters least is whether students are learning anything.
Betsy DeVos is ALEC’s spokeswoman. Coincidentally, Secretary of Education. She parrots their line. Choice. No unions. Choice. No job protections for teachers. Choice. No collective bargaining. Choice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What’s striking about it is how it completely ignores children and parents in public schools.
Which is also true of the US Secretary of Education and most of education reform.
So how did this happen? How did we end up with people who completely ignore the schools NINETY PER CENT of children attend RUNNING public education policy?
Somehow 90% of kids and parents have no representation. Sidelined. Don’t matter.
It’s ridiculous. It’s a ridiculous, ludicrous result and ed reform is such an echo chamber they don’t even see it. They HAPPILY release reports that exclude children and parents in public schools and none of them even recognize the omission.
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I don’t know what we have to do to get representation for kids in public schools.
This is a lecture from ed reformers on how no one should object to additional funding for charter schools, because after all, they’re all about the kids!
“Some have suggested charter and traditional schools can’t continue to coexist for much longer. But we live in two states that are trying to strike a balance, particularly when it comes to funding public schools.
While Colorado and Florida both passed laws to share local tax money with charter schools, the path leading there and the public reaction afterward were strikingly different. Understanding those differences may shed some light on the issue for other states. Perhaps they can learn from the mistakes in our states, and from the things we got right.”
Except this doesn’t apply when public school advocates ask for funding for public schools. Then it’s “defenders of the status quo”.
There isn’t even ROOM in this “movement” for parents and kids in public schools to advocate on behalf of their schools. Only charter school parents may demand additional funding. Public school parents may not.
The only acceptable advocacy in ed reform is advocacy on behalf of charter schools. No public school advocates allowed! If there’s a public school advocate that person is dismissed as “supporting the status quo”
Public schools are the designated losers. Any objection to that is impermissible.
I mean, come on. These folks are so biased it’s ludicrous.
http://educationpost.org/colorado-funding-charter-schools/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Choice&utm_content=FBChoiceColoradoFundingCharterSchoolsLwMv
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WORTH REPEATING: These folks are so biased it’s ludicrous.
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Since it’s behind a paywall, here’s some excerpts:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/08/13/this-alec-state-report-card-speaks-volumes-about-betsy-devoss-education-agenda/?utm_term=.cad1eb97c252
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WASHINGTON POST:
“So, on ALEC’s report card:
Click to access 2016-ALEC-Education-Report-Card_Final_Web.pdf
” … the state that comes in last — at No. 51, because ALEC apparently decided to make the District of Columbia a state for the sake of its ranking, even though ALEC would not support legislation doing so — is Nebraska, where more than 45 percent of adults have some kind of college degree. Nebraska, however, does not allow any charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately run, often by for-profit companies — nor does it allow vouchers or voucher-like programs, which use public money to pay for public and private school tuition and other educational expenses.
“No. 50 is Wyoming, which has a high school graduation rate of nearly 90 percent but also doesn’t allow charters or vouchers, gets a bad score on digital learning and on home schooling regulation. Its academic standards were rated B-plus, but that didn’t much matter.
“The No. 1 state is Arizona, which this year passed a new law that allows all schoolchildren to apply for “scholarships” that allow them to use public money for religious and private school tuition. It has low scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and a low graduation rate, but that didn’t it stop from taking the top “spot.
“No. 2 is Florida, the state that DeVos likes to praise — not because she has a house there and her family owns a professional basketball team there but for its charter schools and voucher-like programs, which have plowed billions of public dollars into private and religious school tuition.
“Maryland, with some of the nation’s best public schools, is ranked 41st, because though charters schools are allowed, there are very few of them, and the same is true regarding vouchers and voucher-like programs.
“Virginia is ranked 48th. It allows charters, but there are only nine in the state, and it has limited private school tuition programs.
“But Washington, D.C., a consistently troubled urban school district, is ranked 6th; it has a thriving charter sector that threatens to overtake the traditional schools in terms of enrollment and the only federally founded voucher program in the country.
“You get the idea. It’s all about choice. As is DeVos.”
“As Diane Ravitch noted on her blog here
the ALEC report card differs significantly from the one released by Ravitch’s nonprofit advocacy group, the Network for Public Education:
Click to access NPE-Report-Card-Smaller.pdf
“On that rating, Arizona earned an F.
“The Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit watchdog group, says ALEC is intending to ramp up efforts to spread vouchers and voucher-like programs in states across the country and roll back Title IX protections for sexual assault victims.
“DeVos’s Education Department is examining possible changes to Obama-era guidance on enforcing Title IX in school sexual assault cases, and ALEC wants to give those accused of the assaults more rights.”
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Oh, and don’t forget.
The other key factor in a state’s ranking on the ALEC report is how much a state spends on education — the less the better.
The more a certaim state cheaps out / the less it spends on funding schools … the higher its ALEC score (with a state’s low NAEP test scores being totally ignored).
The more your state taxes/spends on funding schools … the lower your ALEC score.(with extremely high NAPE test scores being totally ignored.)
ALEC loves the former because this starves the traditional public schools —- starves them into low achievement that ALEC and its bought-and-paid-for politicians can then use to justify privatization, charters, vouchers, etc.
ALEC hates the latter because THEY KNOW this will lead to higher academic achievement, and that will slow their efforts to privatize schools, and expand vouchers, charters, etc.
ALEC: Damn those states with academically successful schools! They’re making it harder for us to privatize their schools!!!
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Yes, ALEC’s No. 2-ranked state Florida is where, thanks to ALEC’s “Don’t-regulate-charters-one-iota!” legislation, it’s perfectly legal for convicted arsonists to run charter schools.
I just found a really great education story out of Florida — the state that Trump, Secretary Devos, Michelle Rhee, Jeb Bush, and countless others claim has the nation’s most successfully “reformed” educational system.
(As I recall, Meg Whitman, current California Governor Brown’s right-wing Republican opponent in 2010, was asked about her plans for education, should she win. Back during the 2010 campaign, she said, “We’re going to do everything that they’re doing now in Florida. That state’s system will be our role model.” Uh huh. I bet you would have.)
Here’s that new Florida story:
http://www.bradenton.com/news/local/education/article160181454.html
Apparently, having an lengthy criminal record that includes multiple convictions / prison sentences for arson(!!!), grand theft, and check fraud couldn’t stop Lori Bergeron from ascending to the presidency of a prominent charter school board in Bradenton, Florida .
Alas, Bergeron’s life on the straight-and-narrow in Florida’s school choice Utopia didn’t last long, as she was recently caught — and convicted of — robbing and embezzling the charter school blind. She did so through her writing of checks to herself out of the school’s bank account.
She plead guilty after the police executed a court-approved taping of her phone conversations, where she gloated and blabbed away about all that she had gotten away with (or rather, THOUGHT that she had).
Back to the joint for YOU, Sweetheart!
Gee, with an extensive rap sheet such as hers, who would have EVER predicted that — after being placed in the presidency of a charter school board, with full authority to write checks from the school’s bank account as she pleased — she would EVER do such a larcenous thing? You know… stealing from children’s education and all that.
People down there are shocked … JUST SHOCKED at what has happened.
Remember, though, that … thanks to ALEC and to Jeb Bush & others … this is all “technically legal”, including putting convicted arsonists in charge of privately-managed charter schools that are funded by the taxpayers.
Maybe it’s time for Florida’s leaders to enact legislation to better regulate its charters, one that includes some minimum standards or mandatory qualifications for Florida’s charter school operators and board members.
Hmmm… let’s see. How would that look?
Let’s give it a whack, now, shall we?
—————————————————
STATE OF FLORIDA — Department of Public Instruction
Mandatory Criteria For All Prospective Charter School
Executives / Board Members:
Regulation 1) Must NEVER have served time for Arson.
Regulation 2) …
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Florida’s overall results are fairly mediocre, and they will most likely deteriorate further from the bad, no good, horrible law that Scott just signed which will hand more money to charters. http://www.ocala.com/opinion/20170709/editorial-charter-schools-bill-is-bad-law
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I resent that ALEC and DeVos are constantly pushing ed tech on public schools.
We’re not their new market. If all they’re interested in is public schools allocating billions of dollars to product they can go sell somewhere else. I’m not interested in providing public school students as some kind of product testers for the “9 billion dollar” industry they’re all salivating over.
It’s bad enough we’re supposed to test the products. We’re also supposed to pay for the privilege. They can pay us, then we’ll consider it.
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That is what I believe will happen in Arizona, ALEC’s experimental laboratory of educational disaster. They will try to push tech in every way, all ways. Their main objective, I believe, is the cheapest form of what can be called education. Arizona will show us what a state looks like when it disinvests the at the max in the common good of public education. They will get deprofessionalized warm bodies posing as “teachers” and lots of depersonalized learning. If they can sell this as “education,” it will be coming to a state near you soon.
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Oh, look. The federal employees at the US Department of Education are pushing cheap online classes to lower income rural public school students again!
“Three years later, the technology profile of this small, rural city and farming community in the city of Fordland is quite different: Students now can choose to learn one of four languages, instead of only Spanish, which had been capped at Spanish 2. They can take online credit-recovery classes, choose among five online dual-credit college courses, and access an online learning center with a variety of classes taught by area high school teachers. And the district is partnering with a nearby urban district to provide on-demand, upper-level courses in 2017-18.”
Why don’t lower income rural students get teachers? Why are they advocating sticking them all in front of a screen?
I know ed reform has worked hard to cut public school budgets since 2010, but are online classes really comparable to live classes? All the research says “no”, so why the huge sales effort from the ed reform “movement”?
Because it’s cheaper and they can palm any old garbage off on a public school and no one will care?
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Ed reformers took funding from public school students and transferred it to private schools, leaving public schools to starve:
“This spring, while public school districts serving minority families and disabled children couldn’t afford basic supplies or comforts, Arizona’s legislature approved the broadest, most flexible interpretation of what Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, and her allies tout as “school choice.” Governor Douglas Anthony Ducey, buoyed by fellow Republicans on both sides of the statehouse, signed a law expanding Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, Arizona’s take on school vouchers. Typically, vouchers use tax dollars to pay private institutions; through E.S.A.’s, money that could otherwise fund public education is loaded directly onto debit cards that select parents can use to subsidize private tuition and related expenses. Similar programs exist elsewhere — in Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee — though those limit eligibility to families with children who are disabled; Nevada developed an unrestricted program, but courts have blocked its funding. More than any other state, Arizona has managed to bolster E.S.A.’s as a way to advance alternatives to traditional schooling. That makes it a model for conservatives across the country, yet Piehl and her colleagues view the legislature’s decision as the latest example of a disturbing trend: divestment from public education.”
Blatantly unfair and biased against kids who attend public schools. They simply made a choice- they would divest from public schools and invest in the private schools they prefer.
Public school parents and students should speak up. The lawmakers and state employees you’re paying take you, your children and your schools for granted. They feel they can do this without political accountability. Let them know they can’t.
If politicians don’t support public schools, stop supporting those politicians.
https://harpers.org/archive/2017/09/class-dismissed/#pq=SJHTKr
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Studies show that — surprise, surprise! — teachers with more training and more education (i.e. union member teachers) are more effective and productive than those non-union teachers with less training and education:
Check out this one:
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“Many studies find that unions increase worker productivity. A “meta-analysis” of economic studies shows that there is a positive association between unions and productivity in the United States. While unions have the largest impact on manufacturing productivity, the researchers find that “unions have a positive and statistically significant positive effect on productivity in U.S. education of 7 percent.” Another paper suggests that public schools with labor organizations are more productive by 3 percent.
“In general, members of unions tend to be more productive due to high-skill training. Over half of union members who are educators, trainers, and librarians have a master’s degree or higher (Figure 2). Compared to their nonunion counterparts, members of teachers’ unions are 16 percentage points more likely to have advanced degrees – which increase the quality and skills of the employee. In addition, union employees earn 22 percent more than non-members in educational occupations. Union teachers also work 14 percent more hours per week than nonunion teachers.
” … ”
“The state-level data shows that average student test scores increase as unionization increases (Figure 3). Four different models were used: fourth grade reading, fourth grade math, eighth grade reading, and eighth grade math. Figure 3 plots the average test score of students (compared to the national average) by the average union coverage rate of educators in all 50 states. There is a moderate, positive correlation between teachers’ unions and better test scores.”
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Aren’t those unionized, credentialed teachers supposed to be ineffective and lazy?
Oh, and what about the effects of small class sizes? — something pushed by those lazy, ineffective teachers in unions:
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“Similarly, smaller class sizes also tend to increase the average students’ test scores (Figure 4). As class size gets larger, the average test scores declines. Having smaller class sizes allows educators to spend more time with students who may have questions or need help. States with smaller class sizes on average have stronger student test scores.
“Finally, Figure 5 puts it all together to show the correlation of teachers’ unions and average class size on student test scores. Based on scores in nationally standardized tests (fourth grade reading and math and eighth grade reading and math), greater union membership of educators tends to have a positive impact on student test scores while larger class sizes tend to have a negative effect.
“In the statistical analyses, teachers’ unions had a positive impact on fourth grade reading, eighth grade math, and eighth grade reading – but did not show a statistical correlation in fourth grade math.
“In general, a 10 percentage-point increase in teachers’ union coverage in a state tends to increase test scores by 1.1 to 1.4 points compared to the national average.
“Meanwhile, class size has significant impacts in all four models:
“An increase of one student per teacher is statistically associated with a 0.8 to 1.1 point drop in student test scores compared to the national average.
“Conversely, smaller class sizes improve student test scores.”
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And here’s more from the study’s Summary:
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“Taxpayers get what they pay for.
“Sure, unionized teachers earn 22 percent more on average than nonunion teachers.
“But they also work 14 percent more hours per week and are better educated. Union teachers are 16 percentage-points more likely to have a master’s or other advanced degree than nonunion teachers.
“In addition, a 10 percentage-point increase in the share of teachers that are covered by labor organizations is generally associated with a 1.1-1.4 point increase in student test scores. Teachers’ unions also often fight for smaller class sizes. To the extent that they are successful at reducing class size, teachers unions have another positive impact on student outcomes: For every one-student decrease in class size, test scores tend to improve by 0.8-1.1 points.
“Ultimately, the decline of teachers’ unionization across the United States may have negative consequences on student outcomes and long-term economic growth.”
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“Its members are 2,000 state legislators who want to be corporate puppets.”
Is there a list of these names with their exact affiliations?
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