Archives for the month of: August, 2017
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Ann Cronin: Thank You, NAACP, For Telling the Truth About the Harm Done by Charters

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2017 //
5

Ann Cronin, a retired teacher of English in Connecticut, writes about what charters were supposed to be and how they have failed to fulfill their original promise. Nowhere have they been more disappointing than in Connecticut, where the harsh “no excuses” model prevails. The charters in the Nutmeg State have won generous state funding, thanks to the campaign contributions to Democratic Governor Malloy by hedge fund managers and the OxyContin billionaire Sackler Family.

Cronin thanks the NAACP for speaking truth to power.

She writes:

“An English teacher friend of mine was a finalist for Connecticut Teacher of the Year in the mid 90’s. As one of the culminating steps in the selection process, the four finalists were assigned a topic little was known about at the time. They were instructed to research it and present their findings to an audience.

“The topic was charter schools.There were no charter schools in Connecticut at the time. My friend concluded that the worth of charter schools would depend on the answers to two questions:

“1) Will the innovations created at charter schools inform and improve the public schools that the vast majority of children and adolescents in the U.S. attend?

“2) Will charter schools be held accountable to address student needs as traditional public schools are required to do?

“Fast forward to 2017: We now have had charter schools in Connecticut for 21 years. The answers to my friend’s two questions came from the NAACP.”

The answer to number 1: NO.

The answer to number 2: Not yet.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Los Angeles: The Unprecedented Flood of Campaign Cash That Elected a Pro-Charter Majority to the School Board

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2017 //
20

Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times describes the flood of campaign cash that managed to sink School Board President Steve Zimmer and another candidate and put a pro-charter majority in charge of the school board.

The billionaires pulled out all the stops to gain control of the board. Now the president of the LAUSD board is Ref Rodriguez, who launched a charter chain in LAUSD. Contrary to my first report, Rodriguez stepped down from the board of his charter chain (PUC). But his sympathies are clear.

A last-minute splurge of donations from billionaire Eli Broad and businessman Bill Bloomfield swept the pro-charter candidates to victory. More than $15 million was spent by both sides, the most ever spent on a school board election in American history.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings alone spent more than $7 million. The Waltons added a few shekels.

The billionaires strike again, intent on destroying public education and democracy, and opening even more privately managed, privately owned and nonunion charters.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: A Film You Must See about the Passion for Teaching and the Importance of Human Interaction in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2017 //
4

Mercedes Schneider was invited to screen a film titled “Passion to Teach,” which was produced and directed by career teachers, Bart Nourse and Sandria Parsons.

She loved it! She provides information about how you can arrange a screening.

She writes:

Passion to Teach is a phenomenal film that poignantly defies the processed-food-product nature of top-down, politically-popular, test-score-centered education reforms.

I have two favorite parts. The first involves an assignment in which students and volunteer adults recreate immigrant arrival at Ellis Island and the subsequent application process for gaining US citizenship.

The second involves the end of the film, an ending that celebrates the teacher-student connection that extends well beyond a student’s time in a beloved teacher’s classroom.

However, the major point of the Parsons-Nourse film is not merely to celebrate the teacher-student relationship. It is to fuel pro-public-school activism.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Real Education, Supporting public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Pearson Cuts Thousands of Jobs to Save Money, Shifts to Digital Learning

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
24

Pearson announced it is cutting the jobs of 3,000 employees, to adjust to declining revenues.

“Chief Executive Officer John Fallon has promised to cut annual expenses by 300 million pounds ($394 million) by 2019, as he tries to create a leaner company more focused on digital education.”

Expect a renewed campaign by Pearson lobbyists to sell school leaders on the necessity of digital learning for instruction and assessment. This is also Jeb Bush’s pet passion. The research is thin to nonexistent but the profit motive is powerful.

Categories For-Profit, Technology

Nonprofit Quarterly: Some Very Expensive Lessons for Billionaire School Reformers

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
34

I have found a sensible person writing about school “reform.” His name is Martin Levine and he writes for the Nonprofit Quarterly. Thus far, everything he has written shows a depth of common sense and wisdom that is utterly lacking among the “reformers,” especially the billionaire reformers. He must have gone to public school, unlike those user-wealthy philanthropists who have decided that they can remake American education to fit their own ideology (though never to provide urban kids the same quality of education that the philanthropists enjoyed as children). I see from his bio that he is a graduate of City College of New York, a public institution of higher education, so he is certainly a public school graduate.

Levine’s latest article ponders the failure of “reform” in Detroit. Poor Detroit has been a playground for the meddlesome and clueless rich. But Levine does not describe the collapse of the Education Achievement Authority or of Eli Broad’s failed interventions into Detroit education or DeVos’s endorsement of charters, both for-profit and nonprofit. That will wait for the next chronicler of Detroit’s fate.

Having the ability to invest billions is not enough to guarantee success. That’s one of the lessons a growing list of mega-donors and large foundations is learning from their efforts to transform and improve public education. In many cases, the initiatives they have launched have been more disruptive than effective. Missing from much of their work has been a recognition of the need to work with families and communities and a willingness to engage in the often-messy work of building success from the bottom up.

At the end of June, the multi-year, multimillion-dollar Excellent Schools Detroit announced it was quietly going out of business after seven years of trying to improve the schools of their home city. According to Bridge Michigan, “Excellent Schools Detroit began as a coalition to support the opening of good schools, the closure of underperformers and to grade the city’s traditional, charter and private schools to help inform parents…Excellent Schools Detroit received funding from numerous foundations, including Skillman, The Kresge Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the McGregor Fund.”

He goes on to briefly touch on the Reverse Midas touch of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Whatever they have touched in education has blown up. Unfortunately, they refuse to address the root causes of low performance. Until they do, they will continue to experience failure.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

St. Louis: Who Is Rex Sinquefield?

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
22

Rex Sinquefield is a self-made billionaire in St. Louis. He grew up poor, unlike most of today’s billionaires. He lived in an orphanage. Having pulled himself up from rags to riches, he thinks that everyone else should do the same. He has a passion for protecting his wealth, cutting public services, and reducing taxes. He has no compassion for those less fortunate than himself. None.

Here is what you need to know about him.

“Sinquefield is doing to Missouri what the Koch Brothers are doing to the entire country. For the Koch Brothers and Sinquefield, a lot of the action these days is not at the national but at the state level.

“By examining what Sinquefield is up to in Missouri, you get a sobering glimpse of how the wealthiest conservatives are conducting a low-profile campaign to destroy civil society.

“Sinquefield told The Wall Street Journal in 2012 that his two main interests are “rolling back taxes” and “rescuing education from teachers’ unions.”

“His anti-tax, anti-labor, and anti-public education views are common fare on the right. But what sets Sinquefield apart is the systematic way he has used his millions to try to push his private agenda down the throats of the citizens of Missouri.

“Our review of filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission shows that Sinquefield and his wife spent more than $28 million in disclosed donations in state elections since 2007, plus nearly $2 million more in disclosed donations in federal elections since 2006, for a total of at least $30 million.

“Sinquefield is, in fact, the biggest spender in Missouri politics.

“In 2013, Sinquefield spent more than $3.8 million on disclosed election-related spending, and that was a year without presidential or congressional elections. He gave nearly $1.8 million to Grow Missouri, $850,000 to the anti-union teachgreat.org, and another $750,000 to prop up the Missouri Club for Growth PAC.

“However, these amounts do not include whatever total he spent last year underwriting the Show-Me Institute, which he founded and which has reinforced some of the claims of his favorite political action committees. The total amount he spent on his lobbying arm, Pelopidas, in pushing his agenda last year will never be fully disclosed, as only limited information is available about direct lobbying expenditures. Similarly, the total amount he spent on the PR firm Slay & Associates, which works closely with him, also will not ever be disclosed. These are just a few of the tentacles of his operation to change Missouri laws and public opinion…”

Sinquefeld has lobbied to eliminate limits on campaign contributions and to eliminate state income taxes and property taxes. He has a special passion for eliminating teacher tenure, gutting teachers’ unions, and promoting vouchers.

“Nowhere are Sinquefield’s destructive intentions clearer than in his campaign against public education.

“I hope I don’t offend anyone,” Sinquefield said at a 2012 lecture caught on tape. “There was a published column by a man named Ralph Voss who was a former judge in Missouri,” Sinquefield continued, in response to a question about ending teacher tenure. “[Voss] said, ‘A long time ago, decades ago, the Ku Klux Klan got together and said how can we really hurt the African American children permanently? How can we ruin their lives? And what they designed was the public school system.’ ”

“Sinquefield’s historically inaccurate and inflammatory comments created a backlash from teachers, public school advocates, and African American leaders, who called it “a slap in the face of every educator who has worked tirelessly in a public school to improve the lives of Missouri’s children.”

“The statement would be easy to write off as buffoonery if it didn’t come from Sinquefield, who has poured millions from his personal fortune into efforts to privatize education in the state through voucher programs and attacks on teacher tenure.”

The jewel in his crown is the Show-Me Institute, a libertarian “think tank” that he funds to supply advocacy and research for his ideas.

Got the idea? A billionaire who hates the public sector.

Categories ALEC, Billionaires, Privatization

Donald Cohen: The Billionaire Who Wants to Privatize the St. Louis Airport (and Its Schools)

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
4

Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest, reports on a billionaire’s ambition to privatize the St. Louis airport.

The billionaire in question is Rex Sinquefeld. He is the very same billionaire who pushes charters and vouchers. He just hates anything public.

Cohen writes:

“When the Federal Aviation Administration accepted the city’s application for federal support to privatize Lambert International Airport in April, few were surprised. The Trump administration is pushing for more private financing of infrastructure, and even has proposed a federal bonus for local and state governments that sell or lease assets like roads and airports (called “asset recycling”).

“The bigger the thing you privatize, the more money we’ll give you,” said Gary Cohn, director of Trump’s National Economic Council and former president of Goldman Sachs.

“But many wondered what’s in it for St. Louis. The airport is in good shape both physically and fiscally—it draws in $6 million annually to help fund city services.

“Turns out Sinquefield is singlehandedly bankrolling the application process. He sees it as an trade-off: selling off or leasing the airport to private investors would make up for the lost revenue of lowering taxes.

“Privatizing Lambert International Airport would be foolish for a number of reasons. Without careful scrutiny and protections, such “public-private partnerships” lower job quality and threaten to limit transparency and democratic decision-making for decades. They’re also risky—Chicago lost nearly a billion dollars leasing its downtown meters to Wall Street in 2008.”

Why does Sinquefeld want to sell off the city’s airport? Money and power. More important, shrink the public sector.

“And it has a lot to do with cutting taxes for the rich. Corporate America and Wall Street recognize the value of public assets like roads, airports, and water systems to a healthy society and growing economy. But they don’t want to pay for them—no, they want to profit off of them.

“Trump’s infrastructure agenda is light on details, but we know one thing—it would make a handful of people like Sinquefield even richer, many of them with connections to the president. D.J. Gribbin, Trump’s infrastructure advisor, used to work for Macquarie, an Australian financial firm that just so happens to be one of the investors in play to take over the airport in St. Louis.

“Public goods are meant to benefit everyone, not the few—that’s what makes them public.”

Categories Privatization, St. Louis

Steven Singer: Pity the Corporate Reform Crybabies!

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
127

Steven Singer is sorry, really sorry for the self-proclaimed crybabies who call themselves reformers.

Their efforts to privatize public education were going well, they were under the radar, until Trump and DeVos came along and joined forces with them.

How could they continue to sell charters as a crusade for poor children when Trump and DeVos want the same?

How could they get away with the ridiculous assertion that turning public money over to private contractors was a matter of civil rights, when the most reactionary, anti-civil rights administration in generations shares their cause?

What’s next? Will they hold a joint press conference with DeVos and Jeff Sessions to denounce the NAACP for daring to demand that charters cease to operate for profit and meet minimal standards of financial and academic accountability?

It was bad enough when they took their cues from the Waltons, ALEC, and the Koch brothers. Now their champions are Trump and DeVos.

Sad.

Singer writes:

“It’s gotta’ be tough to be a corporate school reformer these days.

“Betsy DeVos is Education Secretary. Donald Trump is President. Their entire Koch Brothers-funded, ALEC-written agenda is national policy.

“But their stripes are showing – big time.

“The NAACP has turned against their school privatization schemes. The Journey for Justice Alliance is having none of it. The Movement for Black Lives is skeptical. Even their trusty neoliberal Democratic allies are seeking to put some distance between them.

“And it’s making them look… sad.

“You’d think they’d have much to celebrate. Their policies are right up there with voter disenfranchisement, the Muslim ban and building a wall.

“Charter schools – YES! Voucher schools – YES! Public schools – NO.

“High stakes testing is going gangbusters pushed by the federal government with little interference from the states.

“Common Core is in almost every school while the most state legislatures do about it is consider giving it a name change.

“And in every district serving students of color and the poor, budgets are being slashed to pieces to make room for another juicy tax cut for the rich.

“They’ve taken George W. Bush’s education vision – which neoliberal Barack Obama increased – and somehow found a way to double-triple down on it!

“They should be dancing in the streets. But somehow they just don’t feel like dancing.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Hoax, Privatization

Florida: The Wild West of the Privatization and Testing Industries

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
7

Steven J. Klees of the University of Maryland wrote this post. He is former president of the Comparative and International Education Society.

He writes:

This spring, the Florida legislature passed and this summer Governor Rick Scott signed House Bill 7069, a school reform promoted by organizations linked to the Koch Brothers and Betsy DeVos. Florida has been a poster child for conservative ideological education reform for some time. Going beyond even the federal No Child Left Behind – or as the critics call it, No Child Left Un-tested — reform of the elder Bush era, it became one of the most frequent testers of students in the nation. Basically, from February to May, students in Florida prepare for and take an endless array of tests. Florida instituted evaluation of teachers tied to student test scores years ago, motivating teachers to spend the whole year teaching to the test. On top of this testing regime, Florida has enacted many right-wing reforms: eliminating K-12 teacher tenure; grading schools A to F; and changing curricula to emphasize only what is tested, for example, eliminating recess.

Well, after a decade of this, parents began to revolt. Last year, a statewide survey highlighted two priorities for needed school reform: stop all this testing or at least cut way back – and restore recess for our children. PTAs mobilized behind these changes. The Florida State legislature began to respond by formulating the “Recess Bill” – intended to cut testing and restore recess. However, the ending point of this effort was very different than the starting point. Basically, the Recess Bill was hijacked by business – two businesses in particular – the testing industry and the charter school promotors. Testing in Florida is a half billion dollar a year business, and Pearson and other testing companies lobbied hard against cutting testing. Moreover, the budget for public education is $14bn a year, and charter advocates saw the bill as a way to capture a lot more of that money.

The result, passed in the last two hours of the the legislative session, with scarcely any discussion, was House Bill 7069. This terrifying school reform is being called “the death of public education” by its critics. The bill gives a sop to the protesting parents – it restores 20 minutes of daily recess in K-5. But it only eliminates two of the many tests that students are forced to take. It also allows school districts to opt out of evaluating teachers by their students’ test scores. However, this was just the superficial bow that tied up a major reform package that basically turns public education over to private companies to start charter schools.

There were several dimensions to this reform package. Any school in the state that received low or failing grades in the state rating system (Ds and Fs) would be closed and likely re-opened by a private corporate charter school company, the so-called “Schools of Hope.” These and other charter start-ups would be freed from most regulation and oversight by school districts. They would no longer have to test their students to see if they were doing as well as regular public schools. There would be no curriculum guidelines for charters, no need to hire certified teachers. Charter schools would even be exempt from the new recess requirement. For the first time, school districts had to share their money for capital expenditures with the charter schools.

Perhaps most astonishing is that many of the Florida Legislators who designed, promoted, and voted for this bill have strong ties to the charter school industry. Many of them or their families have become wealthy from running charter schools and, with the enactment of HB 7069, stand to make much more money. Yet there was no talk of conflicts of interest or violation of ethics laws. Contrary to Florida’s Sunshine laws, the final version of HB 7069 was put together by the Republican leadership in secret, in the last 3 days of the legislative session, turning a 7-page bill into a 278-page bill by tacking on the content of 55 other school reform bills that had been considered in the past. Analysts are still not sure what this now very complex reform will yield in practice.

There was a strong effort to get Governor Rick Scott to veto the bill as parents, teachers, school administrators, and the general public sent thousands of messages demanding a veto. But, in the final days, the charter school industry responded by giving charter school parents and students incentives, like discounts or extra credit, for sending in messages of support. The resultant legislation will be turning over a substantial segment of public education to unaccountable private sector, often for-profit, corporate managers. And this is what Betsy DeVos wants for the nation.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Parent Groups, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Testing

Department of Education Will Continue to Spend More Than $1 Million Per Month to Protect DeVos

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2017 //
23

Politico reports that the Department of Education will renew the agreement with the U.S. Marshalls Service to protect Secretary Betsy DeVos, which cost nearly $8 million for six months. This occurs at a time when DeVos has enthusiastically endorsed budget cuts of billions to the Department’s programs. One program that she agreed to cut is a $10 million subsidy to the Special Olympics. Should the Dartment pay for her security detail or for opportunities for students with disabilities to demonstrate their athletic accomplishments? She is a billionaire. Why doesn’t she pay for her own security or ask her brother Erik Prince to send over a detail of his mercenaries?

“DEVOS, U.S. MARSHALS SERVICE TO RENEW SECURITY AGREEMENT: The U.S. Marshals Service and the Education Department plan to renew an agreement to continue providing protective services for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a spokesman for the Marshals Service tells Pro Education’s Caitlin Emma. Earlier this year , the Marshals signed a memorandum of understanding with the agency to provide protective services for DeVos for up to four years, “subject to the availability of funds and current threat assessments.” The Education Department at the time agreed to reimburse the Marshals Service an estimated total of $7.78 million for services spanning mid-February through September 30, or the end of the fiscal year. Now, both parties “plan to renew the reimbursement agreement beyond Sept. 30, which will continue the memorandum of understanding between the agencies for the protective detail for Secretary DeVos,” a Marshals Service spokesman said. The spokesman could not provide details about the anticipated cost or length of the reimbursement agreement and could not discuss specifics about threats to DeVos’ safety. The past four Education secretaries have been protected by the Education Department’s own small security force.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts
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