Archives for the month of: September, 2018
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Mercedes Schneider: The Billionaires Behind TFA’s Drive for Power

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2018 //
11

Mercedes Schneider will lead a workshop at the Network for Public Education conference in Indianapolis on Oct 20-21 about how to be a financial sleuth. Find out who is funding the “rephormers” in your state or community.

In this post, she gives a lesson and unmasks TFA’s drive for political power.

Teach for America presents itself as a wholesome charity and raises money to send fresh-faced, inexperienced young college graduates into needy schools. At its inception, it was supposed to fill vacant positions, but now TFA will cheerfully replace experienced teachers for districts trying to save money. TFA is also the labor force for non-union charter schools (i.e. scabs), with the energy to work 70-hour Weeks and no family obligations.

TFA has a political arm, which is not so well known. It is called Leaders for Educational Equity (LEE),which is deceptively named, like all rephorm groups (which swear they are in this business “for the kids,” for “equity,” to ”close achievement gaps,” etc.).

Schneider investigated the funding behind LEE. You will not be surprised to learn it is the usual billionaires.

“According to the LEE site, LEE membership is free to all TFAers. And why not? The purpose of TFA and its related orgs is to catapult those who taught for five minutes into positions of power and authority over the American classroom.

“Such catapulting requires loads of money– which brings us to those financially-loaded, Leaders in Education PAC donors:

“The PAC is primarily funded by members of the Walton family (note that Carrie Penner is Carrie Walton Penner) and by Arthur Rock. Michael Bloomberg makes an appearance, as does Purdue Pharma-OxyContin first son and venture capitalist, Jonathan Sackler.”

Aren’t you relieved to know that the opioid billions of the Sackler family are being spent on helping TFA grads gain political power, in addition to the expansion of the charter industry?

Wherever you see the name Walton, you can be sure they are pushing non-union charters and a vision of corporate charter chains that reflect the Walmart ideals of cheap and fast and everywhere.

I am in the middle of reading “Winners Take All,” and hear the author’s words in my head. The elites like to destroy public institutions, then offer to step in and solve the problems they created by funding a new institution, under their control.

Teach for America is meant to undermine the teaching profession by offering up eager and idealistic young people who are happy to work for a meager salary that won’t support a family or a decent standard of living. They provide the workers for the charters beloved by billionaires, whose purpose is to drain resources and destroy the public schools.

Be informed. Vote.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Teach for America, Teachers, Unions

Arkansas: The Abusive Treatment of a First-Year Music Teacher

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2018 //
89

Sometimes teachers complain that their schools have too many regulations, too many routines.

This music teacher, a professional violinist who signed up to teach in a charter school in Arkansas dedicated to the arts and dear to the heart of Alice Walton, learned about the perils of teaching in a school where everything was deregulated and there were no routines.

Someone thought that a school where decisions are made on the fly and teachers are always on their own was a good ideal maybe this was someone’s idea of innovation.

No, it was not innovative. It was chaotic. It was abusive in the eyes of this teacher. It was disorderly and unpredictable.

Don’t the arts require practice and discipline? Can teachers flourish when there is no respect for them?

Who thought that an atmosphere of chaos and disrespect was a good idea?

The article begins:

“When I started teaching orchestra at Arkansas Arts Academy High School last fall, I didn’t know much about the state of public education in Arkansas. My entire career — 15 years — had been spent as a performing violinist: concertmaster of the Fort Smith Symphony, concertmaster and principal viola with the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, composer/director of Storybook Strings, and a freelancer with touring groups like “Book of Mormon” and Harry Connick, Jr. I also had a long history of teaching private lessons, with a background in the Suzuki method.

“What I did NOT have was an Arkansas teacher’s license, or any previous training to become a public school teacher.

“That’s okay!” the principal assured me. “We’re a charter school. We have waivers from teacher licensure requirements, as long as you have a bachelor’s degree and relevant professional experience!”

“Cool,” I thought. “I know music. I teach music. I can learn everything else on the job.” So I signed up to teach, half-time, trusting in the experience and good faith of my administration and fellow teachers to help me learn the ropes.

“The school didn’t give me a contract until 41 days after I was hired. It was my fourth day of teacher in-service before I found out what my salary would be ($21,187.50) or what employment terms I had signed up for. And those employment terms? They were incredibly vague.

“My contract said “190 half-days,” and “at-will employment.” It also mentioned “a waiver granted by the Arkansas Department of Education” that made Arkansas Arts Academy “exempt from certain laws relating to schools, including specifically many of those relating to employees.” But I trusted the school’s good reputation — I had a friend who taught there, and knew families who sent their kids. Plus, what musician wouldn’t root for the success of an arts academy?

“I should have been more careful. If I had gone to the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) website, I would have learned that the “waiver” in my contract was actually a LOT of waivers, and the ADE grants new ones all the time. Currently, Arkansas Arts Academy High School has 51 waivers in effect, including teachers’ rights to planning periods, duty-free lunches, limitations on before- and after-school duties, and the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act. Arkansas Arts Academy is also exempt from having to provide written personnel policies*** to its employees, which means that there is no handbook telling us how to access our classroom funds, what to bring for fire drills, how to interact with the parent organization, or who to talk to if we need help.

“In the absence of state oversight, and without written personnel policies, things quickly became chaotic.”

Categories Arkansas, Arts Education, Charter Schools, Disruption, Teachers and Teaching

Who Is Hakeem Jeffries?

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2018 //
82

Hakeem Jeffries is a Democratic Congressman from Brooklyn. He is part of the Democratic leadership team. Some people believe he might be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, the successor to Nancy Pelosi. He is a favorite of hedge fund managers and the charter school industry. He recently was honored by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools as an African American charter school leader (why the organization established a racially segregated award is unclear, as it is unclear why Congressman Jeffries would accept it).

It is not “progressive” to support privatization of public services. It is not progressive to support schools staffed by non-union teachers. It is not progressive to support a “movement” that ignores racial segregation and even celebrates it. It is not progressive to support a movement financed by the anti-union Waltons, the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, and ALEC.

Progressives support public schools.

Dorothy Siegel, a longtime activist in the Working Families Party, wrote this comment about Congressman Jeffries:

“I know Hakeem well. I worked very hard to get him elected, first, to the NYS Assembly, and then to Congress, in order to defeat the even worse Democrat Ed Towns. I even raised a bunch of money for him. Then I saw him slip over to the dark side. But, make no mistake, I believe that his embrace of privatization is NOT (as he claims) primarily about wanting poor black and brown kids to get a good education, but about the fact that there is more money and power on that side than on the side of public education. That money, the hedge funders who provide it, and the corporatist establishment Democrats, were the drivers of Hakeem’s political rise. Money and power have totally corrupted him. Hakeem, like Cuomo and Booker, has and will continue to sell out our public schools when they are in the inner sanctum of their party leadership positions. Hakeem’s rise within Congressional Dem leadership is helping him to thwart ALL our efforts to reign in Congressional support for privatization. On education issues, he wis arguably more powerful than all the new progressive congresspeople we will elect in 2018, combined.

“Sad to say, we must recognize that Hakeem is THE ENEMY. He can not be defeated in his very safe Brooklyn seat, so we must all ORGANIZE to EXPOSE him as the corporate shill that he is. We must tell our progressive Congressional friends that it is NOT ok to go along with Dem leadership (Hakeem) on charters and privatization. Believe me, Hakim will have the tools he needs to fight harder for his corporate friends than anyone on our side will have, so we need to be loud and clear. We also have to insist that, for politicians to gain our support, it’s NOT ok to be “progressive” on reproductive choice and Medicare for All, etc, etc, but anything less than TOTALLY AGAINST corporatism and privatization. Time to take a stand!

“BTW, Hakeem was a key supporter of Zellnor Myrie, the victor in one of the races against the IDC traitors we defeated in the NYS Dem primary. We need to watch what Zellnor does in Albany to make sure he doesn’t pay back his mentor by supporting Hakeem’s education agenda. I’m not at all worried about the other five IDC-slayers. They are solidly and deeply pro-public education. Zellnor may be, too, but he will certainly get pressured by Hakeem and that ilk. So we need to let him know that “progressive” means 100% pro-public education.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, New York, Privatization

My Views on the Kavanaugh-Ford Issues

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2018 //
178

When I first heard that a woman accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were both in high school, my first reaction was, “Kids do stupid things, and they can’t be held accountable many years later for what they did as teens.” Mind you, I am dead set against Kavanaugh joining the Supreme Court because he will provide the decisive vote to roll back civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, abortion rights, and the “wall of separation” between church and state. I am also aware that the prisons contain many black men who did stupid things when they were 17, but got caught.

I was not indifferent to the situation of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. I too was a victim of sexual assault when I was only 12, and I never told anyone. I understand why she remained silent for many years. I also understand why this event was seared in her memory, even though the details were not.

What turned me firmly against Kavanaugh was his reaction. He insisted he knew nothing about the allegations. He was adamant.

That means that one of them is lying, and I don’t think it is Dr. Ford.

We now know that the third person that she said was in the room, Mark Judge, has a history of alcoholism and has written about binge drinking in high school. He refuses to testify. We have read that Kavanaugh laughingly said, “What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.” That usually means the wild goings-on in Las Vegas do not get talked about in the world beyond.

I thought Kavanaugh would say, “I did stupid things when I was 17. Sometimes I drank too much. If I did what Dr. Ford said, which I can’t remember, I apologize.”

That would have been the end of it.

Instead, he chose to claim total innocence and cast her as a liar.

The issue now is not when the sexual assault occurred, but who is telling the truth. Right now. Today.

I believe Dr. Ford.

She had nothing to gain and everything to lose by speaking out.

I believe her.

Categories Accountability, Lies

Memphis: Seven Charter Schools Closing Due to Low Academic Performance

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2018 //
13

Sad.

Seven charter schools are closing due to poor performance on tests.

These are schools that were supposed to “save” poor kids from their “failingpublic schools.”

Who will save the students from “failed charter schools?”

“Seven Shelby County charter schools are being forced to close at the end of this school year due to low performance.

The seven schools were listed as “Priority Schools,” meaning they were the most in need of support and improvement.

The State Department of Education designates schools Priority Schools for one of two reasons:

Being in the bottom 5 percent in 2015-16 and 2016-17 AND not meeting the TVAAS safe harbor, which allows schools to not be identified if they are showing high growth.

Having a graduation rate of less than 67 percent in 2017-18.

State law requires that a public charter school agreement shall be revoked or denied renewal if the school is identified as a Priority School for 2017 and beyond.

There were 27 schools placed on the Priority list, including 18 SCS-managed schools. Most will be given time to improve.

Unfortunately, the seven charter schools will have to close.

The seven charter schools that are set to close are as follows:

City University School Girls Preparatory

DuBois ES of Arts Technology

DuBois MS of Leadership and Public Policy

DuBois MS of Arts and Technology

Granville T. Woods Academy of Innovation

Memphis Delta Preparatory Charter

The Excel Center

The DuBois High School of Leadership and Public Policy and DuBois High Schools of Arts and Technology had already closed at the end of the last school year.

Its not “unfortunate” that they are closing. It’s unfortunate that the people of Shelby County were sold a bill of goods.

Will Bill Gates and his billionaire friends be accountable?

No.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Memphis, Privatization, Tennessee

Arizona: What a Joke! Gov. Ducey Wants to Reform Charter Law!

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2018 //
7

Arizona has a Charter Law that ignores nepotism, conflict of interest, Profiteering, frauds, scams, etc.

Now Governor Doug Ducey is in a tight race with educator David Garcia, and Ducey wants to “reform” the charter law! And I have a bridge to sell you if you are that gullible.

Laurie Roberts of the Arizona Republic says that this is hilarious. PS: I love Laurie Roberts and Craig HARRIS of the Arizona Republic, who regularly expose charter corruption (he exposes it, she ridicules it).

She writes, to begin:

“A month ago, Gov. Doug Ducey said he wasn’t concerned that the head of Primavera charter school – which puts just 11 percent of its state funding into instruction — scored an $8.8 million “shareholder distribution” from the for-profit company that runs the online operation.

“I’m not concerned about the CEO,” Ducey told The Republic’s Craig Harris. “That is of very little interest. I’m concerned about the child and the parent and what the child is equipped to do after 12 years of education.”

“Today, Ducey and other Republicans have seen the light and the light is a freight train of public outrage racing right at them as they seek re-election.

“As a result, Ducey is now backing a set of charter school reforms proposed by state Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, who like Ducey is facing a fight to get back to the state Capitol next year.

“While I’m certainly happy to see that Ducey and his Republican colleagues at long last might be willing to plug gaping loopholes that have allowed some charter operators to plunder public money, I have to ask the same question I asked when they suddenly saw the need to prioritize public schools as teachers took to the streets this spring:

“Where’ve you been?”…

“Virtually every year, we hear an outrageous story about a charter school operator who has fundamentally failed the smell test, either by shorting kids or lining their pockets – or both.

“Virtually every year, Democrats in the Legislature propose reforms to fix laughable state laws that require hardly any oversight or public accountability.

“And virtually, every year Republicans ignore all evidence of a problem while joining hands and chanting “school choice, school choice, school choice.” This, to the delight of their dark money pals who shovel campaign money their way.

“Indeed, it is a choice to focus only on charter school successes — and there certainly are some — while ignoring problems rampant in the charter school industry.

“Just last fall, the centrist Grand Canyon Institute released the results of a three-year study that found up to up to 77 percent of charter school holders are using public funds on “potentially questionable financial transactions” — often paying themselves or their various relatives to provide goods and services to their charter schools under a price they get to set, courtesy of no-bid contracts.

“The study found that charter school executives earn on average 50 percent more than their school district counterparts while teachers earn 20 percent less. That classroom spending and academic performance are both lower in charters than in district schools.

“Rather than taking a serious look at those findings, our leaders and the charter school industry labeled the Grand Canyon Institute as “anti charter” and did … nothing.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Valerie Strauss Is Astonished by Betsy DeVos’s Chutzpah

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2018 //
7

Valerie Strauss was dumbfounded by the irony of Betsy DeVos’s speech on Constitution Day.

First, she criticized colleges “for abandoning truth.”

“What she didn’t say was that the president for whom she works utters, on average, more than eight lies a day, according to The Washington Post. His mistruths and exaggerations have become a central feature of his presidency, reported on virtually every day.

“President Trump isn’t the only member of his administration who has been caught abandoning the truth, of course.

“To name just a few: former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI; former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI; Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, who pleaded guilty to crimes including campaign finance violations related to hush money paid to women who allegedly had affairs with Trump. Et cetera.”

Then, she complained that the nation’s schools were failing to teach civics.

“DeVos expressed such pronounced concern about a lack of civics education that you might be surprised to learn that her Education Department sought to cut money for it in the 2018 and 2019 budget proposals. Congress refused to go along.”

Of course, she went on about protecting the Constitution but here is what she did not mention.

“There’s something ironic about DeVos talking about a First Amendment right when she and the administration she works for seem not terribly concerned about another First Amendment right, freedom of the press.

“Putting aside Trump’s constant attacks on the news media as being the “enemy of the people,” the Education Department under DeVos often does not respond to journalists who ask basic questions, and the secretary herself rarely talks to reporters.

“The department also has been aggressive in finding internal leakers of unclassified information. Last year, DeVos asked her agency’s Office of Inspector General to investigate whether grounds existed to criminally prosecute employees who had leaked unclassified information and data to journalists. It cited three incidents, between May and October 2017, in which there appeared to be unauthorized release of information, including publication by The Washington Post of material from the department’s budget proposal before it was publicly released.”

Unclassified information!

Categories Education Reform, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Lies

Peter Greene: DeVos Speaks Out Against Trump..and Herself

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2018 //
13

Peter Greene writes here about a speech that Betsy DeVos gave at the National Constitution Center, defending free speech and truth.

“The final stretch of her speech is remarkably like the home stretch of a sermon. Get out from behind your twitter id and recognize you are talking to real, live human beings. We aren’t all saints. DeVos actually admits to having had some bad ideas. She (or someone in her office) turns some nice phrases, like a call for meeting with “open words and open dialogue, not with closed fists or closed minds.” And she calls to embrace a “Golden rule of free speech: seeking to understand as to be understood.”

“There is so much cognitive dissonance to process here. DeVos works for a man who exemplifies the opposite of everything she is saying. And there is very little one can point to in her own conduct, her own filling of the USED office, to show her stated beliefs in action. What exactly has DeVos done to understand the public education system and the people who are committed to what she once called a “dead end.” What has she done to understand the teachers who work in public schools? What has she done to understand any of her critics since she took office? Or, after all these years, is she comfortable in the belief that she knows everything she needs to know about all those things.”

Categories Academic Freedom, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Fake News, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press

Randy Rainbow Interviews Trump

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2018 //
27

The leading political humorist of our day is Randy Rainbow.

In this post, he interviews Donald J. Trump:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/randy-rainbow-wizard-of-oz-donald-trump-spoof_us_5b864f13e4b0162f471dc475

Categories Education Reform

Peter Greene: Why Top-Down Mandates from Washington Always Fail

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2018 //
28

Congress and the U.S. Department of Education can take different paths as it dispenses money: It can give school districts money to meet certain defined purposes (e.g., equitable resources) or it can give money for school districts to follow instructions and change what teachers are doing. The latter, as Peter Greene reminds us here, always fails. Policy direction, imposed from above on millions of teachers, must pass through multiple layers of interpretation, reinterpretation, and misinterpretation before it reaches the classroom. By then, it bears little resemblance to what was intended, and what was intended may have been misguided and muddled to begin with.

From Outcome Based Education (remember the 90s?) to Common Core to ESSA to a hundred policy initiatives on the state level, the story is usually the same: Policymakers create a policy for K-12 education, it rolls out into the real world, and before too long those same policymakers are declaring, “That’s not what we meant at all.” Explanations generally include “You’re doing it wrong” or “Maybe we should have put a bigger PR push behind it” or “The teachers union thwarted us.” Common Core fans still claim that all Common Core problems are because of trouble with the implementation.

Somehow policymakers never land on another possibility– that the policy they created was lousy. But good or bad, education policy follows a twisty path from the Halls of Power where it’s created to Actual Classrooms where teachers have to live with it. Here are all the twists that can lead to trouble.

Good luck with this

It begins with the policy generators, who might be legislators, or they might be thinky tank lobby policy wonkists who have an idea they want to push. The important detail is that the policy starts with just a handful of people who actually understand it. But the policy’s first obstacle is a larger group of legislators, some of whom have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about, and worse yet, some who don’t even know what they don’t know, but have some thoughts about how the policy could be tweaked. Let’s say for our example that the group doesn’t fiddle too much, and we end up with a simple policy:

Students will learn about how to produce excellence in widgets.

“Excellence” is one of those words that legislators use to get past the fact that they can’t agree on what an excellent widget is. But to implement the policy, teachers will have to know what the expectation is, so the Department of Education next has to “interpret” what the regulation means.
(John King and Lamar Alexander had some spirited disagreements about ESSA on just this point).

If we’re talking about federal regulations, they’ll pass through both federal and state departments of education. Reports, notes, letters, and other guidance tools will be issued by state bureaucrats who have some ideas about what widget excellence should look like and some other ideas about what the policy goals really are here.

The farther removed from the classroom, the less likely that the intended policy will make sense to the individual teachers who are required to implement it.

It is a bit like having the federal or state government do your menu planning and plan the same meal for every family in the state, without providing the food.

Peter has a better metaphor:

You can think of policy implementation as a giant Plinko board with a million slots at the bottom. The policymakers can drop the chip, and not only will it not go exactly where they want, but if they drop a hundred chips at once, they will all end up in a different place. Education policy isn’t just a game of telephone– it’s a game of telephone in which each player whispers to ten other players, until a million people have completely different messages.

This is what some folks are talking about when they demand vociferously that policies and materials be implanted “with fidelity,” which means roughly “do what I tell you and stop thinking for yourself.” But the critical problem is that actual classroom teachers are not involved until the final step. If government insists on a top-down model of education policy, they are never going to get what they think they’re asking for.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, U.S. Department of Education
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