Jeff Bryant describes the brave teachers who decided to fight the Koch brothers’ plan to introduce universal vouchers in Arizona.
The rightwing strategy has been to take a bite, then another bite, than another bite, until every student is eligible for a voucher.
The teachers fought to get a referendum on the ballot on November 6. The Koch brothers sent their legal team to defeat the referendum and keep it off the ballot.
The teachers fought for a referendum called #InvestinED, to create a dedicated funding source for public schools. That referendum was knocked off the ballot for narrow technical reasons.
The schools in Arizona are underfunded. The vast majority of students attend public schools. The Koch brothers believe that no one should pay taxes, especially not billionaires like them.
VOTE NO ON PROP 305 to defeat vouchers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane Ravitch’s monument will be the most revered on the sacred ground where the heroes of the war between democracy and oligarchy are honored. Gratitude for Jeff Bryant, Ralph Wilson, Jane Mayer, Nancy MacLean, Lee Fang, Naomi Klein, Tom Steyer, Jimmy Carter, Bernie Sanders,…. will find its place there, as well. Also venerated at the site will be the work of the SPLC, NPE, America’s Future, WFP, Our Revolution, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Huffpo, UnKochMyCampus… .
The location for the damned will be reserved for Bill and Melinda Gates, John and Laura Arnold, Pete Peterson, Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Adelson, the Waltons, DFER,Eli and Edythe Broad, Doris Fisher, Whitney Tilson, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, AFP, the Federalist Society, Judicial Watch, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Scalia, Uhlein, ALEC politicians, Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Fox, Donald Trump and his backer, Vladimir Putin…
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Linda,
THANK YOU.
I agree.
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Linda,
Thank you, I would be happy to join that team in that place!
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I think ed reform is headed towards funding all K-12 education with a (low value) voucher.
I don’t know how the plan works without voucherizing the whole system. The goal is too fragmented and deregulated to work any other way.
They want a deregulated market where people shop for education services- it’s not just “schools” either- they’re all (lockstep, as usual) putting forth plans for publicly-funded purchase of various educational products and services- tutoring, test prep, even field trips. It’ll be a mass of unregulated private contractors with a 7k subsidy per student.
They’ve floated this before- Michigan funded an experimental program that involved a single voucher per student to purchase educational services, but it was considered radical and the public opposed it. Now it’s mainstream in ed reform.
A low value per student voucher would achieve three ed reform goals- total privatization, eradicating labor unions, and cutting costs for public education.
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and one more reform goal: strategically separate those who can afford privatized services from those who cannot (and can thus be shepherded completely out of the education game)
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I was reading one of the ed reform plans, this one put forth by 50CAN- there are hundreds of ed reform groups but they all promote the same things because it’s all the same people- literally the exact same 150 people run all the groups.
It was amusing to read because of how pie in the sky it is- their “vision” somehow includes public schools as an option, yet none of them support public schools in any practical or useful way. They seem to be assuming public schools will just be there in the background acting as a public sector back-up for the experiments, forever. It’s a fantasy but it’s an appealing fantasy because in edreformworld everyone gets exactly what they want and there are no tradeoffs of any kind.
The fantasy hasn’t even worked in Michigan. Michigan ended up with areas with NO public schools as a result of these experiments. There was no choice at all- it was attend a for-private national charter chain or move to another area.
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Jeb Bush’s lobbying group lauds Arizona as an ed reform success model. The single factor they use is extent of privatization- the adherence to the ideological goals of the “movement”.
Arizona is good because Arizona is privatized. Arizona will be better when Arizona is privatized more. That’s the extent of the “rigor” in the movement- privatized = better.
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It is clear by now that the Corporate Owned Ripofflichen Party (CORP) and their financier friends aim to convert public education into just another Corporate Owned Service Industry (COSI) on the model of the telecom sector.
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Gates/Zuckerberg’s schools-in-a-box, THE player in a monopoly market.
Gates publicly pronounced the strategy – “different brands on a large scale”.
Where were the AFT and NEA in 2003 and all of the intervening years?
Why, in 2018, aren’t suburban, rural, and small city mayors condemning and rejecting the venture “philanthropy” of Gates?
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This is the newest ed reform lobbying group:
http://p2tomorrow.org/2018/11/pathway-2-tomorrow-awards-24-proposals-with-15000/
You’ll recognize all the names of the ed reformers running it and advising it and on the board- it’s the same 150 people who run everything in ed reform.
They allocate grants, but the money only goes to people who adhere to the agenda, therefore reinforcing the echo chamber effect. No dissenters allowed. They boast that they all agree on everything but of course they all agree on everything- no one who bucks the ed reform line gets invited or funded.
It’s circular- the way to get invited or hired or funded is to adopt the privatization line, and then they point to the fact that they all agree as proof that they’re right. If they weren’t right they all wouldn’t agree on “solutions”. They create an echo chamber and then point to the echo chamber they created as validation of their theories. It’s loony tunes.
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Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy- of course.
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Johns Hopkins’ Director of the Institute for Education Policy is David Steiner- He’s on the Maryland state Board of Education with Chester Finn. He’s also on Relay’s Board.
Recently, a bill was introduced in Maryland to add a layer to the state’s education bureaucracy and, of course, the prescription was for a layer that was a PRIVATE organization. The idea is promoted by the corporate funded Center for American Progress. Never has an organization’s title been more misleading.
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David Steiner was dean of Hunter College School of Education (CUNY). While there, he opened a KIPP-teacher training program called TeachU. That became the basis for Relay. He was then state commissioner of education, and approved a waiver for publisher Cathie Black to become Michael Blooomberg’s hand-picked Chancellor of the NYC public schools. She lasted 90 days. While he was in charge of the State Education Department, he led the effort to win Race to the Top funding, which committed New York to the Common Core and to VAM.
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The assistant director at Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy is Ashley Berner, author of “Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School”. After I read the review, “The book argues the structure of public education is a key factor in the failure of America’s public ed system”, it was easy for me to categorize it as trash. Being a glutton for punishment, I read a page at the beginning of the book which was posted online. Noticeably absent from Berner’s discussion of the forces influencing ed policy, was any mention of the billions pouring in to privatize, which come from the richest 0.1% in the tech industry and hedge funds. Shame on her.
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Steiner’s rejection of quality education for the kids of the middle class and poor who built this nation and grew it, earns him a place with the damned, who shun American democracy.
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One of the favorite tropes of ed reformers is that public school teachers are sex offenders and have all kinds of disciplinary records.
It’s amusing, because how do they think this will work in the fragmented, privatized “educational contractors” schemes they all promote? The only reason they know anything about public school teachers is systems and labor unions regulate and keep records. They’re mistaking “knowing about a problem” with “having a problem”
There aren’t any stats on charter and private school teacher disciplinary actions or problems not because there aren’t problems with charter and private school teachers but because no one keeps centralized records.
That’s how sloppy this is- they look at the extensive documentation of public school teachers and see problems and it never occurs to them that they have no information at all on charter school teachers. No information = no problems.
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You say Q The Koch brothers believe that no one should pay taxes, END Q
Where in the world, did you ever come with that statement? Cite your source please!
No government can function without taxes.
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Deeds, Charles, not words.
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OK, so what “deeds” to you attribute to these people, that they are advocating that no one pays taxes? I can understand that rich people, (and most people) would like to pay less taxes. But how did you arrive at a conclusion that the Kochs are advocating that no one should pay taxes? I do not get it.
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They want to abolish Social Security and Medicare. Read Nancy McLean’s excellent “Democracy in Chains.” I cant discuss complex issues with unless you inform yourself. Read Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money.”
Have you ever heard of ALEC?
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I am familiar with these publications. And I am well aware of ALEC, I have hit their website.
No one likes taxes, but we must pay them.
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Thanks Diane!
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