Jeff Bryant assesses the confusion within the Democratic party over “education reform.”
Some Democrats (too few) have realized that preservation of public schools are part of the party’s fundamental agenda. Others (like New York Governor Cuomo, Colorado’s Congressman Jared Polis, and Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy have embraced charter schools and other parts of the rightwing agenda).
The bottom line, however, is that teachers in public schools and union members can’t be expected to turn out to vote for politicians, regardless of their party, who share the agenda of Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump.
So, no matter how uncomfortable it may be for elected officials like Cuomo to acknowledge, their advocacy for charter schools mirrors the views of ALEC, the anti-union Walton family, the Koch brothers, and DeVos.
Trump said that there are “many sides” to the events in Charlottesville. Charter advocates would have us believe that privately managed schools should be embraced by Democrats; they would have us forget that more than 90% of charters are non-union.
The reality is that public school teachers and their unions are a core element of the Democratic party base. If the Democrats abandon their base, they can’t win elections. The hedge fund managers may fund their campaigns, but they can’t turn out the vote.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks. And right on!
I wonder how John Oliver got so educated about the charter school scam. It’s so rare that anyone really has a clue about the true negative impacts of charter schools. In any case, thanks John for getting the message out, the more the better.
More like, “The Growing Divide and Collusion Over Reform” There I fixed the title for you.
Diane: Below is a link and snips from an article in The Guardian about the meaning and history of “neo-liberalism.” The article is relevant to this discussion because it helps answer the question: “What are these forces that we in education are fighting, and how did they get that way?”
The article is long but goes to the influences of scientific positivism on the field of economics, and how the adoption of that view set the conditions for moral relativism and the present capitalist-profit-competition-only mindset that seems to have covered the globe. Anyone involved with education for any length of time will recognize the same deeper-set problems as they emerged also in education The article reveals how pervasive the philosophical distortions are to the entire social and political fabric of a culture and how they helped bring the economics-is-everything idea to govern our present situation. In human developmental terms, the article puts the present economics-only views as an over-reach into the social and cultural arena where it has taken over lie a cancer, and its acceptance by powerful people as an expression the lowest level of human moral and ethical development. First a few snips, then the link:
“In short, ‘neoliberalism’ is not simply a name for pro-market policies, or for the compromises with finance capitalism made by failing social democratic parties. It is a name for a premise that, quietly, has come to regulate all we practise and believe: that competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity.” . . .
“Over the past few years, as debates have turned uglier, the word” (neoliberalism) “has become a rhetorical weapon, a way for anyone left of centre to incriminate those even an inch to their right. (No wonder centrists say it’s a meaningless insult: they’re the ones most meaningfully insulted by it.) But ‘neoliberalism’ is more than a gratifyingly righteous jibe. It is also, in its way, a pair of eyeglasses.” . . .
“Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most admired by Thatcher and Reagan helped shape the ideal of society as a kind of universal market (and not, for example, a polis, a civil sphere or a kind of family) and of human beings as profit-and-loss calculators (and not bearers of grace, or of inalienable rights and duties). Of course the goal was to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and – always – to cut taxes and deregulate. But ‘neoliberalism’ indicates something more than a standard rightwing wish list. It was a way of reordering social reality, and of rethinking our status as individuals.” . . .
“Still peering through the lens, you see how, no less than the welfare state, the free market is a human invention. You see how pervasively we are now urged to think of ourselves as proprietors of our own talents and initiative, how glibly we are told to compete and adapt. You see the extent to which a language formerly confined to chalkboard simplifications describing commodity markets (competition, perfect information, rational behaviour) has been applied to all of society, until it has invaded the grit of our personal lives, and how the attitude of the salesman has become enmeshed in all modes of self-expression.”. . .
“No sooner had neoliberalism been certified as real, and no sooner had it made clear the universal hypocrisy of the market, than the populists and authoritarians came to power.” . . .”Everything about the postwar political culture lay in favour of John Maynard Keynes, and an expanded role for the state in managing the economy. But everything about the postwar academic culture lay in favour of Hayek’s Big Idea. Before the war, even the most rightwing economist thought of the market as a means to a limited end, to the efficient allocation of scarce resources. From the time of Adam Smith in the mid-1700s, and up to that of the founding members of the Chicago school in the postwar years, it was commonplace to believe that the ultimate ends of society and of life, were established in the non-economic sphere.”. . .
“Markets may be human facsimiles of natural systems, and like the universe itself, they may be authorless and valueless. But the application of Hayek’s Big Idea to every aspect of our lives negates what is most distinctive about us. That is, it assigns what is most human about human beings – our minds and our volition – to algorithms and markets, leaving us to mimic, zombie-like, the shrunken idealisations of economic models. Supersizing Hayek’s idea and radically upgrading the price system into a kind of social omniscience means radically downgrading the importance of our individual capacity to reason – our ability to provide and evaluate justifications for our actions and beliefs.” . . .
“As a result, the public sphere – the space where we offer up reasons, and contest the reasons of others – ceases to be a space for deliberation, and becomes a market in clicks, likes and retweets. The internet is personal preference magnified by algorithm; a pseudo-public space that echoes the voice already inside our head. Rather than a space of debate in which we make our way, as a society, toward consensus, now there is a mutual-affirmation apparatus banally referred to as a “marketplace of ideas”. What looks like something public and lucid is only an extension of our own pre-existing opinions, prejudices and beliefs, while the authority of institutions and experts has been displaced by the aggregative logic of big data. When we access the world through a search engine, its results are ranked, as the founder of Google puts it, ‘recursively’ – by an infinity of individual users functioning as a market, continuously and in real time.” . .
“It was Hayek who showed us how to get from the hopeless condition of human partiality to the majestic objectivity of science. Hayek’s Big Idea acts as the missing link between our subjective human nature, and nature itself. In so doing, it puts any value that cannot be expressed as a price – as the verdict of a market – on an equally unsure footing, as nothing more than opinion, preference, folklore or superstition.” . . . According to the logic of Hayek’s Big Idea, these expressions of human subjectivity are meaningless without ratification by the market – as Friedman said, they are nothing but relativism, each as good as any other. When the only objective truth is determined by the market, all other values have the status of mere opinions; everything else is relativist hot air.” . . .
“But Friedman’s ‘relativism’ is a charge that can be thrown at any claim based on human reason. It is a nonsense insult, as all humanistic pursuits are ‘relative’ in a way the sciences are not. They are relative to the (private) condition of having a mind, and the (public) need to reason and understand even when we can’t expect scientific proof. When our debates are no longer resolved by deliberation over reasons, then the whimsies of power will determine the outcome.” . . .
“When we abandoned, for its embarrassing residue of subjectivity, reason as a form of truth, and made science the sole arbiter of both the real and the true, we created a void that pseudo-science was happy to fill.” END QUOTED MATERIAL
LINK:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=The+Long+Read+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=240063&subid=19479502&CMP=longread_collection
Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world
http://www.theguardian.com
The long read: The word has become a rhetorical weapon, but it properly names the reigning ideology of our era – one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human
Just an artsie who reads a lot here, so offering this for your correction/ comment.
It seems that Hayek himself did not apply his Big Idea to every sphere.
In 1943, he makes a good case for govt-run health insurance, FEMA-type endeavors, & welfare supplements: https://sites.google.com/site/wapshottkeyneshayek/hayek-on-health-care-social-safety-nets-and-public-housing
And his thoughts on public education are worth reading. He tries to strike a balance between govt-mgd & voucherized private ed, to summarize: for sure govt should provide basic [elem] ed to all, & should probably find a way to subsidize advanced ed to student reps of every group (ethnic, SES) who show capacity. I like that he is skeptical of testing as regards capacity for advanced ed, & (in 1960!) predicted the danger that centralized govt would use psychologogical advances in a manipulative, harmful way thro testing.
Click to access Hayek%20on%20Education.PDF
bethree5 Like most thinkers, I’m sure Hayek’s thought changed over the years. And like most thinkers whose ideas “take off” into others’ minds, they easily can be misinterpreted, are always taken at the level and horizon of the reader, such as it is, and/or misapplied. Neither did Hayek experience what is emerging today, as capitalism moves from an economic foundation of culture to a singular principle governing both mind and culture to the detriment of all-things-truly-human. Did Haye know about the misuse of and obsessions about algorithms? Or did the article say he was responsible for “supersizing” his ideas to become a coverall mindset? (And the writer suggests its influence in both parties.)
For me, I never studied Hayek closely. However, I thought the Guardian article was more about charting that movement–a movement of ideas that were implemented by many others, than about blaming Hayek. Considering the morphing influence of positivism and relativism on entire cultures for centuries, if it hadn’t been Hayek, it would have been someone else who took a (probably) good insight and brought their own already-learned philosophical distortions to it–ending up with another warp of polymorphic thought that, when spread around, fit someone else’s low intelligent, moral, and even spiritual horizons, e.g., Reagan.
That was economics, however, and this is education. The same warped philosophical movements of positivism and relativism that “infected” the last century’s economics can be identified as also underpinning many of our current problems in education. The article was particularly relevant, however, because it also shows the broad outlines of the thought of both the oligarch/authoritarians and the Wall Street crowd who just want to make money on the education of children–all but theirs. So it strikes at the foundation of both economics AND education. The hyper-objectivity of positivism and the obfuscation of ethics and morality in economics via relativism (and responsibility for the political system that mothered them all) didn’t happen in a philosophical vacuum.
And then there’s Betsy DeVos who is apparently all of the above AND an “alternative Christian.” God help us.
Sorry, meant to say also, re: Hayek on public ed. He devotes considerable thought to the ideal of equal opportunity to ed in our multi-ethnic/ SES democracy. He delves into the tension between the ideal & the limits of social funding capacity, pointing out the many pitfalls that can occur when a centralized ed sys decides how to distribute available funds. His main concern seems to be twofold: (a)making sure all obtain at minimum the degree of ed absolutely necessary to advance a democratic society and (b) the availability of a wide variety of other options, such as [he thinks ] the market could provide, to promote innovation/ ‘cross-pollenization’.
**bethree5*** says about Hayek: “His main concern seems to be twofold: (a)making sure all obtain at minimum the degree of ed absolutely necessary to advance a democratic society and (b) the availability of a wide variety of other options, such as [he thinks ] the market could provide, to promote innovation/ ‘cross-pollenization’.”
Music to my ears as long as he doesn’t mean to destroy public institutions, e.g., education. Today “cross-pollenization” would be double-speak for “eventually taking over public schools because they embody ‘unfair competition.'” He probably meant a cross-pollenization of ideas? Ha! The joke is on him.
As I read your note, I think it wouldn’t be the first time in history that a brilliant writer had what they thought was a great idea that, when implemented, ended up doing exactly the opposite of what they said they wanted to do, e.g., as you say, Hayek’s “main concern” was “to advance of a democratic society.” Again, ha! The difference today is that, instead of blindly and with good intentions preparing the way to destroy public education and along with it, democracy itself, it seems many actually want to make that happen.
Haha, Catherine I took a dinner break & you answered me already! Thanks for food for thought. I see I shall now have to read up on positivism & relativism! 😉
Catherine re yr 8:46 comment “The difference today is that, instead of blindly and with good intentions preparing the way to destroy public education and along with it, democracy itself, it seems many actually want to make that happen.”
How true, as are yr general comments re perhaps-brilliant thought-pieces on the big social picture cherry-picked for their application to narrow & venal agendas.
Reminds me of Shankar’s proposal for publically-funded district charters as innovative labs feeding data back into the district for implementation. Over30 yrs we have seen that idea-germ cherry-picked & adapted to a spectrum of far-flung agendas including everything from temporary bandaid alternatives to poor local schools, to ways for religious or ethnic/cultural groups to have their cake & eat it too, to profit-centered & nepotist orgs to feed/ fraud at the public teat, to a handy method for austerity-minded govrs to chop ed budgets.
bethree5 Aren’t human beings wonderful.
I just wanted to thank you, Catherine, for alighting my attention to that Guardian article. It’s a must read. So is the International Monetary Fund thesis on which it’s based.
LeftCoastTeacher Glad to help. The other link in the Guardian article is to another Guardian article (see below). Written last year, it’s also good read and gives a cogent analysis of neo-liberalism–gives a good view of WHY things are like that are presently with the push to privatize public institutions.
My own interest is the philosophical roots of such movements and their problems–positivism is at the root of the over-reach of statistics in education (not statistics as such but their over-reach) as well as the disrespect and disenfranchisement of teachers and their unions.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
Thank you again, Catherine. I believe I now understand so much more: how Trump and Brexit supporters came to be, Walmartization, why Bill Gates has been such a schmuck, from where NCLB came, from where Big Data came… and how vital it is to end neoliberalism and revive liberalism before a crisis allows nationalist totalitarianism to become irreversible. Scary stuff.
I don’t think there is any confusion at all within the Democrats. There are those who are all for reform, those who are pro-public education, and those who are not very vocal about educational policy unless someone twists their arm and incentivizes them to take a stand . . . whatever that stand might be.
Democrats know exactly what they want: they want to survive in their position, in their office, and stay in power as long as they can for as best as they can. They are not interested in taking a stand nearly as much as they are interested in staying in office.
That’s what the problem is. At least DFERs are honest about who they are and you know what to expect. I excoriate them, but they are more visible than most of the others, who do not come forth and tell us what it is exactly that they feel about public education vs. charters and vouchers.
They are ALL in a bubble or ivory tower, and you can only survive there for so long in tough times. Sooner or later, someone’s pitchfork or torch is bound to burst that bubble or burn down that tower . . . .
Which is why I am so frustrated with the current crop of neoliberal D’s being pushed for president: Kamala Harris, Deval Patrick, Corey Booker.
The DNC is behaving in a very venal matter, hoping to cruise to victory on identity politics while masking their pro-Wall Street agenda.
eleanor,
Do not worry. That strategy backfired big time last go round. The Democrats show little indication of getting their act together based on an honest assessment of their misperceptions of the state of the union. In the meantime, neo-fascists of all persuasions are enjoying their day in the sun.
I copied comments that were made my Kamala Harris. Seems pretty decent to me:
….
1.)President Trump just launched a discriminatory attack on transgender service members in our military…His decision to ban transgender Americans from serving is cruel, un-American, and not in our national interest.
2.)Republican leadership in the Senate is so desperate to pass their “health care” bill that they’re cutting obscene backroom deals and rushing a revised bill, which no one has seen, to the floor this week — all in a craven attempt to steal health insurance away from millions of Americans so they can give their wealthy donors a tax break
3.)Since the 2016 election, Trump has used false voter fraud claims to justify his loss in the popular vote. To prop up his unsubstantiated allegations, he has created a “voter fraud commission” that is nothing more than a sham run by people with a long history of disenfranchising voters.
4.)After flunking her confirmation hearings, it is clear that Betsy DeVos is not qualified to be Secretary of Education. Her views run counter to what I believe is in the best interest of the vast majority of California students. I will be opposing her nomination and am asking you to join me in this fight.
5.) I intend to do everything in my power to build a coalition of people who can block Trump’s Muslim ban and protect the fundamental rights of refugees and religious communities in our country.
Trump, Trump, Trump. Republicans, Republicans, Republicans. Blah, blah, blah. It’s so easy to bash Trump and the Republicans. What I’m looking for in a Democratic candidate – what will set said hypothetical candidate apart from the neoliberals – is one who can look at (and condemn) the Democratic Party and their craven support of Wall Street and American imperialism in service to stateless multinational corporations. That’s what Bernie did and that’s why he was wildly popular. Until the Democratic Party can start doing that, or until we get a viable third party, we’re going to keep getting Republicans in office. Kamala Harris isn’t it. Nor are Maggie Hassan or Kristen Gillebrand whom I hear from nearly every day telling me why their so outraged about Trump’s latest outrage.
I want to hear Kamala Harris on the subject of public schools
Well said, dienne 77
We know that Deval Patrick and Corey Booker love charters. We don’t know that about Harris. Wait and see. If all possible 2020 candidates, Booker is the worst, re education. He and Chris Christie tried to turn Newark into the New Orleans of the north.
Diane, I found the following on Harris’ campaign website, and it does not give me a great deal of confidence in her. Perhaps I am too cynical.( I believe she gave herself some wiggle room with the use of the term “public charters.”).
“Fostering Innovation In The Education System: Many parts of our education system were constructed 100 years ago to train a workforce that is very different from the one we will need in the future. Kamala believes public schools, including public charters, should be incubators for education innovation. Successful new methods and practices should spread throughout the public school system to ensure that students have the advantages of the latest developments in educational innovation.”
https://kamalaharris.org/issues/education/
Eleanor,
That kind of boilerplate makes me uneasy. Our education system is not in need of endless “innovation” and “disruption.” It is in need of stability and clarity of purpose. It is in need of equitable and adequate funding. It is in need of supports for families, students, and communities. And public schools are not charter schools, and charter schools are not public schools.
Please, help me sit down with Kamala Harris.
The very use of the term “public charter school” is a tell that the speaker is either ignorant or deceptive. The term is an oxymoron, proven by the fact that so-called education reformers have never been heard to utter the phrase “private charter school.” After all, the existence of the “public charter schools” so beloved by so-called reformers logically presupposes its inverse, the private charter school. But where is this fugitive creature? The reformers can’t bring themselves to say it, because they’re everywhere, but misnamed “public” by the hustlers promoting them.
There are no public charter schools; they are private entries receiving public money, as they never hesitate to admit when faced with a unionization drive by their exploited teachers.
A basic tactic of every supporter of public education should be to call out elected officials or candidates who try to hide behind the term “public charter school.” The response should always be, “Charters are not public schools: what are you going to do to help the public schools?”
M Fiorello: hear, hear!
Another tell is the canard about public schools operating on a system that was designed 100 years ago for a different society. Anyone who actually thinks that hasn’t set foot in a school in at least 30 years. However, I don’t believe that most people who peddle that line actually believe it. It’s just a convenient marketing gimmick to promote the latest “innovative” [sic] approach to education. “Innovative” of course means “computer taught” [sic].
That canard is total BS because schools all over the world operate in a similar manner–with teachers, classrooms, students. Different configurations, but the same basic “grammar of schooling.”
Bernie Sanders used the term “public charter schools”.
Is he ignorant or deceptive?
^^^http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/03/15/470376273/bernie-sanders-says-he-opposes-private-charter-schools-what-does-that-mean
“Reform” has always been a top down, unauthentic movement led by Republicans, Wall St. and Silicon Valley. While the beginning of charter schools may have been motivated by a desire to help poor students, the movement was quickly usurped by moneyed interests with ulterior motives. The past twenty years of dismal results, waste, and fraud have proven that most charters offer no scalable solutions. They harm public schools, create chaos for children and increase segregation. None of these are results to extol. They should be rebuked by Democrats who should focus their efforts on fair funding for all public schools. Public schools are a cornerstone of democratic principles, and they are our best hope of providing opportunity for all.
retired teacher Yes; and I know many here in the U.S. were taught about those principles in their own early education. However; me thinks we’d better “double-down” on teaching students to understand those principles–presently we are seeing evidence that too many didn’t “get it.”
Public schools are also a safeguard against increasing fractionalization.
Democrats need to part ways on this topic with Clinton and Obama, and right the ship. If they won’t, it’s time for a new Progressive Party!
Serious in-depth ed of Democratic voters is reqd. I live in a wealthy NJ suburb & find that 100% of my well-educated, well-informed liberal friends [except public teachers, of course] automatically buy into whatever Obama & Booker are/ were selling when it comes to pubsch/ charters. That’s because (a)their kids already got thro K-12 before charters (or Common Core! Or PARCC!) were an issue (b) [related] they don’t focus on publ ed w/the degree of nuance it deserves [considering it counts for 75% of their ourageously-high property taxes] — & are clueless re: the changes of the last decade (c)they tend to lump charters in w/ ‘poor/ minority’ issues: sounds like a good thing for those people, I’ll throw some taxes their way.
The Center for American Progress is funded by Walton’s and Gates. CAP’s education policy V.P. is a former TFA’er. CAP promotes Dems like Corey Booker. CAP’s ed plan in Forbes, published after Hillary’s loss, calls for student outcome measures in universities. Dems leading the Gates/Walton ed agenda was and is the defining national issue.
If Dems appear to be waffling, it is only to erode the chances of a 3rd party until it is too late. For that reason, I will no longer feel like I am between a rock and a hard place.
America is not a democracy. Pretending it is, helped Dems betray their base and America.
When Randi was willing to fight against the nurses union instead of enlisting their aid for education policy, so that she could serve the candidate of CAP and Podesto, it was a clarion call.
Too many Democrats, such as the Clintons, Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, Feinstein, Booker, Kamala Harris, and Deval Patrick, are Corporate Democrats, so they see “reform” through the corporate lens.
That, unfortunately, accords with DeVos:
Betsy DeVos’s “School Choice” Is Really Crony Capitalism
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41637-betsy-devos-s-school-choice-is-really-crony-capitalism
Not coincidentally, that was in the wake of an unsuccessful struggle by Dems to pass an amendment to the ’76 campaign reform law. Started as an attempt to rein in corporate campaign financing, it was already being back-doored by ‘individual expenditure’, an end-run around contribution caps. A WaPo article at the time summarized the issue as “viewing the independent committees as ‘exploiting loopholes that should be closed’ or as ‘a constitutional right to expenditures to express oneself.” Dems lost. 1980 campaign spending increased by a quantum leap. [Just another step in the legal trail that culminated in the 2010 Cit-United decision.]
So before you trash every Dem leader as a morally deficient sell-out to corporate capitalism, think about the legal structure we citizens have tacitly supported via our choice of congressional representatives for the last 40+ yrs– the campaign laws that underwrite the system of PACs etc: it pretty much guarantees that anyone running for office will have to pander to Big Corp Money. To my mind, that is the machine we have to turn around before we will see a return to representation of citizen/ voter interests.
It’s funny because I think Democrats could have pulled it off if they had simply supported BOTH public schools and charter schools, but they didn’t.
They took it all the way- they decided they should attack and then abandon public schools while promoting charter schools. It was just a dumb decision.
It made them indistinguishable from Republicans which besides being wrong and unfair to public school parents and students, was also just stupid. If there are only two choices you don’t BECOME the same as the single other choice.
Why should I vote for them? I know why I shouldn’t vote for Republicans but that’s not enough. Have you read Pollis on public education? He is literally identical to John Kasich. Six one, half dozen the other.
They present it as “bipartisan” but that doesn’t mean anything. The Iraq War was bipartisan. Deregulating the financial sector was bipartisan. “Bipartisan” is just as likely to mean “wrong” as it is to mean “right”. Confusing “bipartisan” with “smart” seems to me to be such a basic error in THINKING I’m always amazed at how many people believe it.
Dem Rep. Lujan of New Mexico doesn’t help the cause of public education, either.
THANK YOU, Diane!
And THANK YOU Jeff Bryant! TRUE!
Whenever the DNC or a DEM asks for comments, I tell the sender that the DNC had better fess up they are wrong and SUPPORT PUBLIC SCHOOLS and PUBLIC School Teachers, two of this country’s National TREASURES!
I probably am wasting my time, but I keep hoping that maybe someone will read my message and pass it on.
So far, my message seem to have fallen no where or maybe even deaf ears. The DNC had better change it’s course because their neoliberal agenda have failed them and this country.
Yup. And, Diane has been on top of this issue for YEARS. Maybe if the Democratic Party leadership had taken the time to read, listen to and really think about the ideas discussed on this site then Trump would not be our president today? Everyone’s always harping on the blue collar, factory workers who didn’t turn out for Hillary. What about the public school teachers the Democrats have turned off -who didn’t vote or didn’t donate money or just plain were not fired up?
The money guys gave Pres. Obama’s 2012 campaign 4 times the amount the unions gave him.
Linda,
Steve Brill wrote a book celebrating the hedge fund managers and the creation of DFER. It is called CLASS WARFARE. The book is tough to read because he thinks of charters and hedge fund managers as heroic, but it does document the Founding meeting of DFER in a NYC luxury apartment. The speaker was Barack Obama. 2005.
Teachers are the most significant part of the Dem base. They are in every district. They organize, make phone calls, go door to door. They vote. The Dem party kicked them out.
Diane, I believe that the democrats are not worried about abandoning the base. They are working on a two fold strategy. First, they believe that the union workers will look at trump & company and say “the democrats are not fighting for my rights, but the trump republicans are very bad, we won’t ever vote for them, we have no third party choice, we will vote for the lesser of two evils, the democrats”. Then, the democrats will continue to appeal to traditionally right leaning campaign contributions, thus winning elections based upon votes from unions with financing and policies from right wing contributions.
Bryan Kauffman Referring to your note, do you think that “needle-threading” is responsible for the Clinton win of the popular votes?
The reformer bottom line is profits. He who dies with the most money……
They don’t give a rat’s rear about the kids. If they cared about the kids they would stop circumventing laws and legalities to get that “in” into the ed business. TFA would cease to exist. They would stop lobbying to undermine public education, teachers, best practices, etc. They would stop defunding extracurricular health programs.
They would stop opening up “masters mills” like Relay. Politicians and, yes, educators, would stop legitimizing Supes Academy, by stopping the appointments of its “graduates.” They would stop using language like “scholar” to describe 5 year olds in Pre-K. They would close down their “academies” that produce little result other than compliant minorities who are, daily, mistreated, caused to walk in silent lines, with “mouth bubbles,” and receive suspensions for the wrong color sock, etc.
Its all about the money and the real estate deals.
Until EVERYONE understands that, and the doublespeak stops, and the disgusting underbelly of the reformers is spread far and wide, there can be no true conversations about reform.
YES. We must do everything we can to make people look directly at the doublespeak. Those who doggedly hang on to their charters-are-good message must be notably associated with publicly repeated statements such as: “[A]dvocacy for charter schools mirrors the views of ALEC, the anti-union Walton family, the Koch brothers, and [Trump] DeVos.” Perhaps the overwhelming insanity coming out of Wash. DC these days can embarrass some into renouncing complicity.
ciedie aech Yes–and the super-wealthy Mercer family and their support of Bannon and Brietbart (probably spelled wrongly) makes me feel sick to my stomach.
If anything needs to be “taken back,” it’s the democracy–taken back away from the political whims of super-rich oligarchs and their overstepping brute power ($$$) to the principles that rest power in the people and those who LEGITIMATELY represent us.
Spencer is the co-founder of Renaissance Technologies, one of the earliest quantitative hedge funds.
Interestingly, the other co-founder is James Simons, who is known to generously butter the bread of the Democrats.
Unlike most financial industry operators who are called “brilliant” in the media, these two men, Simons in particular, are known to be brilliant, accomplished scientists, who’ve used their talents to succeed in the casino known as Wall Street.
The company is somewhat publicity shy, and a useful tactic for supporters of public education/opponents of Trump might be to publicly shame it for its connection to Trump/De Vos/privatization.
Yu hit the nail on the head. again. Will share on facebook.
How Online Real Estate Companies Are Making School Segregation Worse
School ratings tools on sites like Zillow and Trulia routinely steer home buyers to the whitest, most affluent schools.
By Jennifer Berkshire / AlterNet
…the real estate sites rely on test score data as their measure for determining which schools are the best, what Schneider refers to as “demographic data in disguise.”…
http://www.alternet.org/real-estate-school-segregation#.WZwl_vY6E-U.gmail