Those of you who read this blog regularly have often read insightful articles by Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network.
In this post, Jeff interviews Becky Pringle of the NEA about charters, vouchers, and other efforts to withdraw support from public schools. They were both at Netroots, a gathering of politically active progressives.
Are progressives waking up to the dangers of privatization?
In the Democratic primary in Georgia, a candidate who supported the creation of an “opportunity district” was scorned by fellow Democrats. In Virginia, a Democratic candidate who had been pals with prominent charter supporters lost the primary for governor.
Read the article and listen to the podcast.
Jeff begins like this:
Every year Netroots Nation is arguably the most important annual event in the progressive community and a barometer of what’s on the minds of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” At this year’s event in Atlanta, the headline-making happening was Democratic primary candidate for Georgia governor Rep. Stacey Evans being shouted down by protestors holding signs saying, “Stacey Evans = Betsy DeVos,” “School Vouchers ≠ Progressive,” and “Trust Black Women” (Evans’ opponent in the primary is Georgia Rep. Stacey Abrams, who is African American.)
Protesters circulated leaflets comparing Evan’s past votes on education-related bills to positions DeVos espouses. This included her support for a constitutional amendment in 2015 that would allow the state to convert public schools to charter school management, her support for a “Parent Trigger” that would allow petition drives to convert public schools to charters, and her support of a school voucher program.
Message: Progressives support public schools, not charters or vouchers. If ALEC supports it, it is not progressive.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think the politics are much simpler than that.
The “liberal” ed reform position is literally indistinguishable from the conservative ed reform position.
They are so much alike it makes no difference which one you vote for. That’s not hyperbole. It’s simple truth. Compare Obama to DeVos to Kasich. They’re all the same.
You can see Democrats struggling with this. They try to change the subject to preK or college because they KNOW there isn’t enough difference on K-12 to bother with.
I would bet 50 dollars that in ten years every single mainstream national Democrat will be supporting “backpack vouchers”. They don’t HAVE a liberal theory or plan for public education. They simply adopted the plan conservatives had and slapped a new label on it.
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Chiara, I find some exaggerations here but you are correct about pre-school or college (or both) being the main referents for discussion of public education. For the excluded middle, K-12, focus on anything related to tech, especially STEM.
Backback vouchers is a goodie. That term of art could have come from Knowledgeworks or the phrasemakers at the Gates Foundation.
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I know charters are higher percentages in certain cities, but national Democrats must realize they’re running in places OTHER than DC, LA and Chicago, right?
It just amazes me that they don’t speak to public school parents AT ALL. You would think political practicality would ensure SOME effort to offer public school parents and kids SOMETHING positive.
I listen to them and it’s just irrelevant if you’re not a charter or private school parent. There’s vast stretches of the country they just omit.
You would NEVER KNOW listening to ed reformers in Ohio that most Ohio children attend public schools. You would think the numbers were flipped- that it’s 90-10 charters/vouchers.
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I have never understood how teacher’s unions — both at the national level and at state and local levels — have not thought it necessary to spend big money on advertising a constant flow of positive public school outcomes. The “people” don’t seem to gain much of a clue about anything but what they are told by media, so use of the media must be the answer.
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“…I find some exaggerations here….”
Such as?
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Can we describe the billions of dollars invested in just lobbying and campaigning for privatization in terms of what that money could do for public schools the philanthropist’s home state or a system like Detroit or Chicago?
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The $65+ million that the state of Ohio is trying to get back from the state’s contractor schools would have bought education for kids. The schools in court have a reported 70% truancy rate (assuming the student lists were made up of real kids). Ohio has allocated $500,000 in taxpayer funds for legal fees to claw back the community’s dollars from the operators.
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Too bad, Bryant didn’t ask about the Pahara Institute Fellow who served on top NEA committees. From 2010-2014, he served as the President of the 13,000 member Massachusetts Teachers Association. Too bad, the NEA doesn’t know union membership is a lot less in the private sector.
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I find it offensive that some Democrats would concede that funding education equitably would be too expensive. This is a lie! If you want to talk about wasting money, let’s consider all the waste, fraud and diluted resources in public schools from charters and/or vouchers. If you want to consider waste, consider how much money we have blown in Iraq and Afghanistan. We seem to find money for useless wars.
Democrats should buck up and find their “grit” and progressive message if they want the party to move forward. The young people of this country smell a rat when they are addressed with meaningless slogans without substance like “A Better Deal.” The Republicans are gaining more support among young people than the Democrats. They need to wake up and stop favoring Wall St. and Silicon Valley over Main St, and this includes getting behind equitable public education.
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“I find it offensive that some Democrats would concede that funding education equitably would be too expensive.”
I might believe that they actually believe that the day they say that funding endless war is “too expensive”.
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Democrats should consider that jails cost a lot more than schools. Do they really think that all this “choice” is money well spent? While a few students are winners, there are a lot more losers, especially when all the waste, fraud and profit are factored in, and public schools are tossed on the scrap heap. Nobody, including many Democrats, is looking at the meager beneficial results of a few cherry picking charters, the lack of improvement at many of them and the total waste of cyber schools. Many Democrats are too cowardly to speak out because they don’t want to tick off big donors. Nobody is looking at the inefficiency of parallel splinter schools with depleted resources. Democrats need to start being honest with this country and themselves.
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“If you want to consider waste, consider how much money we have blown in Iraq and Afghanistan. We seem to find money for useless wars.”
Only to the tune of $1,000,000,000,000.00/year.
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The DEMs have shown me nothing. I am not a REP. I am a registered DEM and the requests for money for their agenda has NOTHING about supporting public ecucation and public school teachers. I write back in the comment section (if there is a place to comment) and obviously I don’t matter a wit to them.
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The only way that public education will be good for ALL children again is if it becomes apolitical. Get the politics out of education, plain and simple. The USDE was a good idea, but it turned into a behemoth of free marketing and political lobbying at the expense of children. Until the USDE is redesigned/restructured, this will always be a problem. I wonder what Jimmy Carter thinks of the USDE after all these years? It doesn’t matter which political party…this is all so wrong for all children.
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There are many things, that both conservatives and liberal/progressives agree on. One of them, is to ABOLISH the Dept of Ed. Education can and should be the sole responsibility of the states/municipalities.
How has our nation progressed to the point, that some nameless faceless bureaucrat can dictate policy to the nation’s schools? One size fits all, does not work in education!
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Charles,
What we can never abolish is the obligation of the federal government to protect the civil rights of students and teachers (since 1964); or the obligation of the federal government to send money to schools enrolling impoverished students (since 1965); or the obligation of the federal government (since 1867) to collect accurate information about the condition of education.
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Lisa,
In my view, the Department of Education is not odious, although its present leadership is. What is odious is the laws passed by Congress in 2001 and in 2015 telling schools how to reform themselves, how often to test children, and how to remedy low test scores.
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“. . . how to remedy low test scores.”
The absurdity of that policy position, that of using standardized test scores for anything cannot be stated often or strongly enough.
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As long as students are sorted by birth year with high stakes standardized tests, pubic education will not be good for all children. Childrens brains develop at different rates. Just from my non representative samples of progressives and liberals that I know, lots of white liberals are very happy to send their children to predominantly white middle class majority charter schools and have not even set foot in district schools.
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“Stunned that nobody is pointing out that [D.C. Public Schools] is now on pace w/ charter schools in math and outperforming in ELA on #PARCC,” tweeted Kaya Henderson, former chancellor of DC Public Schools. “Every time charters outpaced [D.C. Public Schools], it was highlighted at the press conference. #DCPS deserves its victory lap. #DCPSRising.”
The numbers go back and forth year over year, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in what set of schools is “better” based on PARCCscores but Kaya Henderson should not be at ALL surprised that DC ed reformers promote charter schools and ignore public schools.
That’s a constant. Public schools are the “default” schools, the less-valuable schools, the “19th century” “dead end” schools as our US Department of Education describes them.
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Thanks Diane. I thought Pringle was excellent, especially her reminder to Progressives that they need to reconnect to their commitment to the common good.
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Economic Game theory (minimax)
Public school proponents could win, against privatizers, with two messaging strategies
(1) local dollars spent locally and (2) democratically elected school boards, not corporate or contractor management. Those messaging strategies run counter to the goals of big business. If Democrats’ David Brock (Media Matters and Share Blue), DFER and CAP wanted to help local communities instead of big business, we would see it in the messaging.
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