A few days ago, I posted teacher Stuart Egan’s description of the attack on public schools in North Carolina, which identified the malefactors who are luring kids to charter schools, religious schools, cyber charters, and home schools, driving down public school enrollment to 81%.
Egan received a response from a staff member of the North Carolina Department of Instruction, which is led by Mark Johnson, former TFA who marches to the tune of the Tea Party and has no conscience of his own, no vision for the 81%, no concern about the quality of education in the state’s charter or religious schools. How does TFA find the people who advocate and act so strongly against public schools that enroll the majority of students? Will TFA ever be held accountable for them?
Here is the comment:
“This is so spot on. Everyone should translate ‘choice’ into ‘undermining of public schools’, because that is exactly what it is. The most sickening part is how low-income families and those of children with disabilities have been targeted, cajoled, hoodwinked and bamboozled into believing that choice automatically equates to quality. (Anyone who considers themselves conservative should be outraged at this profound misuse of their tax dollars.)
“Unfortunately, I get to witness this erosion and implosion every day at DPI. I just met another of my colleagues whose job was eliminated by the General Assembly’s draconian cuts and our puppet superintendent’s ‘just following orders’ approach. It was so sad to see this person, who was providing passionate, competent and knowledgeable support to eastern NC schools trying mightily to serve their markedly low-income populations, tossed aside in this ponzi scheme to dangle ‘school choice’ in front of needy families. It’s like eliminating the road crew that is fixing potholes and cracks on I-95 and using the public’s money to build a flimsy expensive two-lane highway right next to it that has no markings, guardrails, speed limits or enforcement (with full kickbacks going to the private paving company). ‘Hey mom and dad — let your kids ride on this shiny new road because you’ll have a choice, and we all know choice is better!’
“EdNC put out an excellent article a few days ago: https://www.ednc.org/2018/07/11/steep-cuts-to-north-carolinas-education-agency-hurt-low-performing-schools-the-most/. It perfectly spells out the absurdity in our agency and our feckless leadership. We’re told ‘shh, be quiet; this is a sensitive time’ for all our colleagues who were laid off, when in reality there should be a loud leader fighting for his folks every step of the way, even if the jobs could not be saved. You see, that’s how the damage really occurs here in our agency — not by vocal or visible action of those who ultimately have to answer to their supervisor every day, month and year, but by the SILENCE and joint inaction of the only ones in the agency who AREN’T supervised. The superintendent has no official boss and writes no annual work plan like the rest of us; instead, he gets a four-year ride and won’t have a whiff of accountability for another two and half years, long after the damage has been done. Meanwhile, scores of good people continue to walk out the door, either voluntarily or involuntarily, and the Public Schools of North Carolina will continue to suffer for it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, A HOAX. Public Schools are BETTER, much better than charter schools.
Charter Schools are like junk food.
From Bob Braun’s Facebook site: RUSH IN TODAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF FIRE SALE PRICES ON HUNDREDS OF COMPUTERS, SMART BOARDS, AND OTHER BACK TO SCHOOL ITEMS–All brought to you by yet another failure of a publicly funded, privately operated charter school–this one The Lady Liberty Charter School in Newark, established and run by friends and associates of Christoper Cerf the man who was so bad for city public schools–but so good for charter grifters. Lady Liberty was shut down by the state but, curiously, it was allowed to open a new school year in the fall despite some very bad reports. Just three years ago it used millions in public funds to build a new facility–and we’re still paying the interest on that debt and will be for years. Now it is auctioning off all its publicly-paid-for supples and equipment from its private developer owned site at 746 Sandford Avenue. Check out the Willner Auction website and run don’t walk to pick up some bargains. After all, you’ve already paid for them.
Bob Braun does not play around, he is vehemently opposed to charter schools. He sees them for what they really are: private contractors that drain funds and resources from the REAL and ACTUAL public schools.
We seen these types of “thumb on the scale” tactics used wherever leadership has been co-opted by “reform.” It may be that a state passes an unfair law that favors charters or vouchers like the recent Florida law that gives charters equal access to building funds as public schools. It may be in the bottom 5% law that will provide a steady flow of students to the charter industry. Often it occurs through creating conditions to funnel students into charters by school closures to clear a path for gentrification in a city. Often it is an aggressive marketing “head hunting” campaign that is often directed at minority families in poor neighborhoods. Parents should realize that the research on charters is in, and there are no magic bullets. The charters will choose where they believe children belong, and they will often have more “choice” than parents in this arrangement.
The only antidote to such unfair practice is to vote out the complicit parties and vote in public school advocates. It is unfortunate that the teaching profession is under assault as we are facing a severe teacher shortage. It is unfortunate we are losing dedicated teachers caught in the crosshairs of political groups that want to destroy a valuable public asset and want to turn the responsibility over to amateurs of varying quality. I enjoyed the road analogy in the post. Unfortunately, the unmarked road on the side in some instances is a road that leads to nowhere.
This October 10, 2011 article about Art Pope by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker gave me insight into what has happened to public education in North Carolina. The article is long, but this excerpt on education is eye-catching. Here’s the link and the excerpt follows. Mayer has since written more articles about Pope following this one. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/10/state-for-sale?currentPage=all
State for Sale,
A conservative multimillionaire has taken control in North Carolina, one of 2012’s top battlegrounds. By Jane Mayer
“Pope’s network has campaigned to slash education budgets, which is a controversial move. George Leef, the director of research at the Center for Higher Education Policy, has described the funding of higher education as “a boondoggle” that robs taxpayers, and Shaw has demanded that the legislature “starve the beast.” Last spring, the Republican majority voted to cut four hundred and fourteen million dollars from the state-university budget—a sixteen-per-cent reduction. Funds were also severely cut for public schools and preschool programs. Even though public opinion overwhelmingly supported leaving a penny sales tax in place, in order to sustain education funding, Republican legislators instituted the cut anyway, overriding a veto by Perdue, the Democratic governor. (Many of the Republicans had signed a no-tax pledge promoted by Americans for Prosperity.) At the university level, the cuts are expected to result in layoffs, tuition hikes, and fewer scholarships, even though the state’s constitution specifically requires that higher education be made as free “as practicable” to all residents. The former U.N.C. president Bill Friday told me that the changes may place higher education out of reach for many poor and middle-income families. “What are you doing, closing the door to them?” he asked. “That’s the war that’s on. It’s against the role that government can play. I think it’s really tragic. That’s what made North Carolina different—it was far ahead. We’re going through a crisis.”
At the same time that Pope’s network has been fighting to get university budgets cut, Pope has offered to fund academic programs in subjects that he deems worthwhile, like Western civilization and free-market economics. Some faculty members have seen Pope’s offers as attempts to buy academic control. Burley Mitchell, a Democratic member of the university system’s board of governors, defended Pope as “seriously interested in the betterment of the university. He’s certainly been a generous supporter.” But in 2004, faculty protested a grant proposal from Pope that would have amounted to as much as twenty-five million dollars, and the proposal was eventually scrapped. Bill Race, the former chairman of the classics department at U.N.C.-Chapel Hill, told me, “The Pope machine is narrow-minded and mean-spirited and poisoned the university.” Pope reacted angrily to the notion that some professors consider his money tainted. “We’re in retailing!” he said. “It’s not as if it’s blood diamonds!”
The issue of academic control surfaced again in September, when the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy offered to help fund a Western-philosophy course that the university had included in budget cuts. At the same time, the center publicly ridiculed other courses, such as one on the culture of the Beat Generation. Some faculty members objected to an outside political organization trying to hold sway over which courses survived. “It’s sad and blatant,” Cat Warren, an English professor at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, who has been critical of Pope, says. “This is an organization that succeeds in getting higher education defunded, and then uses those cutbacks as a way to increase its leverage and influence over course content.”
Pope, she believes, has already encroached too far on the economics department at N.C. State, where he has donated more than half a million dollars for free-market-related programs. The grant has funded annual lectures, all of which have been given by prominent conservative and free-market thinkers. The speakers are picked by Steven Margolis, the former department chair, and Andrew Taylor, a political-science professor who is a columnist for Carolina Journal, a John Locke Foundation publication. “I’m pretty sure we would not invite Paul Krugman,” Margolis told me. A dozen members of the economics faculty have been listed as “John Locke Foundation Affiliates.” Among them is Roy Cordato, of the John Locke Foundation. His previous research, including a paper he wrote opposing cigarette taxes, was funded, in part, by tobacco companies. Like Pope, he strongly opposes government efforts to combat climate change. Warren says, “I find it incredibly troubling that there are all these faculty members associated with this particular foundation.”
The John Locke Foundation, meanwhile, is sponsoring what it calls the North Carolina History Project, an online teaching tool aimed at reorienting the study of the state’s history away from social movements and government and toward the celebration of the “personal creation of wealth.” Fitzsimon, of NC Policy Watch, says, “It’s all part of Pope’s plan to build up more institutional support for his philosophy. He’s very savvy about not leaving any strategy unaddressed.”
Last year, Pope garnered national attention when North Carolina Democrats accused Pope of engineering, in 2009, the re-segregation of public schools in Wake County, which includes Raleigh. Conservative board members, elected with the support of Pope and Tea Party activists, overturned a program that used busing to achieve economic diversity in schools—a program that the Washington Post had called “one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts.” The new school board pledged, instead, to send more students to neighborhood schools. Pope was the second-largest individual contributor to the local Republican Party, which helped fund the school-board candidates’ campaigns. The largest contributor was Bob Luddy, who is a board member at the John Locke Foundation and at the Civitas Institute. Americans for Prosperity provided additional support for anti-busing activists, describing them as “freedom loving” and their opponents as “radical union organizers.”
The Reverend William Barber, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., which has filed a civil-rights complaint with the Justice Department, says that the new board wants to racially divide one of the largest, and best, public-school systems in the country. “Civitas pushes this extreme, ultra-right-wing agenda,” he says. “The first thing the school board did was start putting black children back into their so-called neighborhoods. The concept first came out of the lips of George Wallace.” Pope told me, “No one that I know of wants to re-segregate the Wake County schools!” He called himself “a big education reformer” who ardently supports charter schools; one of his three children attended such a school.
Bob Hall, the Democracy North Carolina director, sees Pope’s involvement in education as part of a long-term strategy. “It’s about how you shape the future,” Hall says. “It’s one thing to build a building, another to shape a generation’s minds. That’s what they’re after—ideology. Pope is pushing a world view, not just a business deal.” Hall notes that, because the state legislature appoints the university trustees, “Pope’s got trustee influence now, too.” In fact, the General Assembly recently placed Fred Eshelman, the founding director of Real Jobs NC, on the university system’s board of governors. The husband of another Pope functionary, meanwhile, was just appointed to the state’s public-television board.”
“Pope reacted angrily to the notion that some professors consider his money tainted. “We’re in retailing!” he said. “It’s not as if it’s blood diamonds!”
Boycott Roses. It’s Art Pope’s discount store chain.