John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, wrote a three part series on education “Reform” and politics in his state.
This is part 2.
The Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli seemed to be whistling through the graveyard in “The End of Education Policy.” The corporate reformer argued that “Our own Cold War pitted reformers against traditional education groups; we have fought each other to a draw, and reached something approaching homeostasis. Resistance to education reform has not collapsed like the Soviet Union did. Far from it. But there have been major changes that are now institutionalized and won’t be easily undone, at least for the next decade.”
https://edexcellence.net/articles/the-end-of-education-policy
In fact, the failed school “reform” experiment is losing politically as the public rejects test-driven, competition-driven reform. The Billionaires Boys Club and federal and state governments have wasted billions of dollars on their theories. Now their political campaign is stumbling.
Not surprisingly, the attempt to use the stresses of high stakes testing and nonstop competition between schools to remedy the stresses of poverty and trauma, created a fiasco. They used increased segregation by charter schools to counter the stress of racial segregation. They even used untested and unreliable value-added models, that are biased against teachers in high-challenge schools, in order to recruit more talent to those schools!?!?!
The Obama administration and edu-philanthropists tried to entice charters into serving more high-poverty students with hundreds of millions of dollars of grants. As the reliable Hechinger Report’s Jill Barshay explains, only 18 percent on the era’s innovations produced “any positive impact on student achievement,” and “some of these positive impacts were very tiny.” And even in many charters that initially claimed to produce big test scores gains, the result was “‘quiet churn’ of students from year to year, which slows achievement for both students who change schools and those who stay.”
High student mobility in Milwaukee stalls achievement, despite well-planned school reforms
The Hechinger Report’s Caroline Preston describes a state-authorized charter school in Seminole, Ok. as a test case as to “whether these privately operated, publicly funded schools can open in small communities without eroding public education.” The article’s title, “A rural Charter School Splits an Oklahoma Town.” The subtitle is: A businessman makes an end run around community opponents. Now, he wants to expand others like it,” should serve as a warning.
Even though it seems inexplicable, especially in a state that has too many rural school systems, Oklahoma allows charters in small towns like Seminole that only has around 1,600 students. If the charter school could meet its goal of serving as many as 700 students, the public school system would be wrecked.
Even more illogical is a law that allows the state Board of Education to override local decisions on granting charters. And due to one of the “reforms” in the full corporate reform agenda which was adopted at the beginning of the decade, the board is dominated in true believers by choice and the edu-politics of destruction for blowing up the “status quo.” It’s unlikely that the board will ever meet a charter application that it doesn’t love. Even if the charter isn’t capable of helping kids, it hurts the privatizers’ opponents.
Preston explains that the charter founder, Paul Campbell, runs a company, Enviro Systems, that wants graduates who could staff his business. She notes that Campbell lacked knowledge about schools, but his “can-do, pro-business attitude fits in with the ethos of this working class, Trump-supporting town.”
However, many patrons believed:
It could inappropriately blur the lines between schools and the workplace. Opponents also felt that Campbell, who had no background in education, had put together a proposal pockmarked with problems, one that didn’t offer students any opportunities they couldn’t already get from existing programs. Church services grew tense. Friendships soured.
At first glance, it might seem like Seminole is lucky that the charter’s goal was 60 students in the first year, and it only served 29. But the overall threat remains. As a former school board member said, “she worried the charter school would be a private school ‘in sheep’s clothing,’ benefiting only students of families with the means to sort out the school’s application process and ferry their kids to and from school.” And sure enough, about 45 percent the charter’s inaugural class qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, in contrast to 73 percent in the Seminole district.
And once again, Fordham’s Mike Petrilli stakes out a position about schools, a community, and a state he doesn’t know. Petrilli says of Campbell, “More power to him.” He endorses Campbell’s “vision of helping lift local school performance with market-style inducements. ‘Here is a person who is trying to bring up the quality of education in the community. He’s an employer; this is where a lot of the energy for education reform has come from, the employers who find they are just not getting the workers they need or they don’t have the schools to recruit people into the community.’”
The point should be clear. Charters have failed in terms of school improvement. Regardless of whether charter expansion is spun as a “portfolio” or an “innovation” school, it is a tool for economic gain as opposed to an education investment.
In urban districts, privatization is a means to spur gentrification, as well as to break unions. My approach has been to schmooze with Oklahoma City leaders, hoping to ground policy decisions in at least some education facts. As one of the most powerful and candid business leaders told me in response, “You may be right. I don’t know that much about education.” But low-performing schools make economic development more difficult, and “I believe economic growth will lift all boats.”
As will be explained in the next post, political and business leaders are still hearing nonstop spin from Fordham, edu-philanthropists, and portfolio advocates, and their pitch often sounds pretty good to business people who don’t know much about education.
I think Petrilli should refrain from using the world “institutionalized.” To him it means “dug in,” just like the enemy we know him to be. To us in means what ought to be done with him and his ilk. But gobs of money have a way of delaying needed comeuppances.
The edu-philanthropists and portfolio advocates are not interested in improved outcomes for students. They are interested in improved financial gain for themselves. They are opportunists and carpetbaggers that could care less if they destroy communities and public schools. More people are catching on to the fact that privatization undermines public schools and increases segregation. Privatization offers no scalable solutions or “innovation” for education. It only serves to enrich the already wealthy while it creates separate and unequal schools for targeted students.
Karma would be if one of Petrilli’s kids (mind you, his kids attend public school in the swanky Bethesda suburb with 0 poverty and lots of excess $$$$$) decides to drop out of school to become a stocker at the local Target. That would be a killer for cockroach Mikey! I always tell my kids that it is more important to be happy in life than to have a bunch of money. Money can buy some comfort, but it really can’t buy happiness. I’m sorry, but I actually HATE Mike Petrilli….and Finn, Smarick and Pondiscio and every time I hear their names or listen to their blathering babble, it makes my stomach churn and has me seething inside. I don’t think that I have actually ever HATED people this much and I have never met a single one!
You can add Duncan to the blathering babble list. These guys know their fake “movement” is running out of steam, and they are grasping at straws to breathe some life into what is really vulture capitalism. They keep trying to look authentic, but their opportunity and zip code speeches are all lies. They just want to keep the $$$ flowing from their handlers and villainthropists.
Yeah, I know. But I live in MD…..stink tank central and the land of vulture capitalism with every single one of these A–holes having a hand in our education system. MD is completely “deformed” and it stinks having kids attending public schools here. It’s my momma bear coming out!
yes; they need to keep creating the chaos which allows money to flow
Karma would be if a charter school with hundreds of millions of dollars in backing opened up in Bethesda to recruit high performing students and get rid of the unwanted ones, and drew away all the highest performing students from Petrilli’s kids’ school while throwing back every single expensive one and his kids’ school now had to spend disproportionately huge amounts of money to teach all the students the charter decided were too expensive to bother with.
And then karma would kick in when Petrilli’s kids won the “open” lottery for a seat in the charter school, but the charter school administrators decided to give Petrilli’s children the exact treatment that Petrilli insists that low-income African-American children must have and every single time any of his children stopped sitting straight up without moving and their hands were not folded quietly in their laps, his children were immediately targeted for punishment and humiliation. If his children did anything at all beyond sit quietly without moving a muscle, they were targeted because a teacher’s eyes never left them. Each time they moved a muscle wrong, the severest punishment and humiliation was given to Petrilli’s children while the favored students in the charter were allowed to be normal children.
Think they would last there? Petrilli’s children would be given constant out of school suspensions for daring to unclasp their hands for a second to scratch an itch, and be so psychologically damaged after getting the treatment that Petrilli insists charters must be free to give to all low-income African-American children they want to get rid of, that Petrilli would pull them. And then they would be back in their Bethesda public school that is now made up of mostly students with the most severe social needs, while the well-funded charter recruits more kids easy to teach and makes sure that the public school Petrilli’s kids go to pay for the expensive education of the ones they send back.
But don’t worry, we’d all know that the real reason Petrilli’s kids didn’t last in that high performing charter was because Petrilli’s children were just as naturally violent as Petrilli insists that so many African-American 5 year old children are when charters target them for removal. We’d all know that Petrilli’s children’s being targeted for constant punishment and humiliation was of course because that was what they “needed” — just like Petrilli insists that so many African-American 5 year olds “needed” that due to their own violent natures.
It’s not like Petrilli is a hypocrite, right? It’s not like he’d change his tune in a minute if the rich people who he embarrasses himself kowtowing to told him to change his tune. In the end, for Petrilli it is all about the rich people who pay his bill — he will parrot whatever they tell him to say.
I’d like to see three things happen. (1) The next time a villainthropist dies, a large gathering of the public attends the funeral and spits on his/her coffin.
(2) His/her heirs are made aware, at the funeral, that business as usual won’t be continuing.
(3) Media covers the protest extensively.
It should have started with Paul Allen’s death.
“Choice is great, but if having choice is undermining the dominant choice that the majority of families rely on and have relied on for decades or longer, then what good ultimately is that doing?” he said.”
Well, just tough luck for those people. They have no advocates for their schools at all and their students weren’t even considered when the charter was rubber stamped and jammed into the system.
They’ll just have to suck it up and allow this businessman to redesign the kind of school system he prefers- one that provides him with off-the-shelf employees who meet his specific needs.
The students in the public schools were the dead-last priority when this scheme was hatched. They had NO advocates at all. They weren’t even at the table, and no one in ed reform cares if they lose in this deal.
20 years into this “movement” they’re still denying that privatization comes with downside and risk. They’re still clinging to the fairy tale notion that every interested party can have a school designed for their individuals needs, and that no compromises or trade-offs will have to be made.
It’s a lie. “Choice” comes with downside. The downside in THIS community will be signifigant- they will end up with weaker public schools in return for the charter. Ed reformers don’t even know if this is a NET gain- they don’t care. They work ONLY for the charter operators and charter students.
How is charter promoters advocating exclusively for charters any different than public school advocates advocating exclusively for public schools?
Why is one group portrayed as intrinsically well-intentioned and ethically pure and the other portrayed as “protecting the status quo”?
This businessman, the chamber of commerce and ed reformers advocate EXCLUSIVELY for charter and private schools. How is that different than a labor union working for public schools?
Why should I be impressed by charter cheerleaders promoting their preferred schools, but horrified by labor unions promoting public schools? They’re both lobbying for resources and power. Attributing some lofty moral goal exclusively to charter lobbyists is silly- ed reformers flatter themselves with assuming we all believe this.
Maybe the businessman should consider training his employees the next time he opens a facility.
Old fashioned, I know, the idea that a private entity should cover the costs of training their employees, instead of billing the public for job training.
Public schools were not actually intended to provide him with an off the shelf low wage employees. That’s not why we set them up.
He seems to be confusing public education and “my employee training”. That happens a lot in ed reform.
I know ed reformers aren’t big on history- they seem to feel they invented all the various school schemes that have ever existed- but they might want to look into “company towns” before advocating for local businesses to design, plan and run public schools:
https://www.history.com/news/5-famous-company-towns
This has been tried.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has offices in Ohio and in Washington, D.C.
I saw, secondhand, recently, one of the consequences of its nefarious influence in Ohio when a friend sent me the schedule for orientation for the first-grader she will be enrolling this year. Almost all of the orientation day for parents is devoted to Ohio’s version of the Common Core State Standards and to information about the coming standardized testing.
Welcome to school, everyone! Let’s talk test prep.
Ed reformers in the statehouse and governor’s mansion in Ohio have outsourced their entire job to Fordham.
Fordham tells that what to do, and they do it.
I can accurately predict what Ohio lawmakers will propose by finding out what Fordham is pushing. It’s a 1/1 match.
It’s a shame. We’re paying thousands of adults in government in Columbus and rather than speak to Ohio public school families, teachers, or graduates, they all take marching orders from a DC lobbying group. I don’t know if it’s laziness, political capture or a lack of critical thinking skills but I’m pretty sure the public in Ohio aren’t paying thousands of state employees to cut and paste ed reform slogans into state law.
horrific!!!
I don’t know if it’s laziness, political capture or a lack of critical thinking skills
None of the above. It’s money. Billionaire Boys’ Club money. Rivers of it.
Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown could speak up but, he’s too busy cozying up with Republican Sen. Portman.
Linda and others from Ohio,
Tell us about Sen. Sherrod Brown. From afar, he looks like the real thing. Is he?
Brown talks a good game in the absence of real conviction.
IMO, as a Dem., he’s been able to be elected in Ohio repeatedly while the state turned stupid and Republican because he hasn’t raised the ire of the Charles and David Koch camp.
He’s a political animal. His biggest claim to fame was going to bat for pensioners of G.M. I think he saw votes and packaged it as he was man with compassion fighting for the underdog.
Ocasio-Cortez seems trust worthy. Brown seems like Chuck Schumer.
You’re right Bob
It’s all about money.
Petrilli gets paid $300k a year, six times the average teacher salary in the US.
Not a bad gig.
Sherrod is the only candidate to whom I have contributed, by my meager standards, a lot of money. I’ve also written some LTEs in support of and defending him that have been published. That was in 2012. He has great political instincts and acts on them, which is essential to be a Democrat in Ohio because the state party is utterly incompetent and has no clue what a Democrat is supposed to stand for. His ties are more with the national party. He has very strong union support and walks a fine line, quite admirably from an objective viewpoint, of supporting the things they want, like tariffs, while still being passionately liberal on social issues. In other words, he gets a lot of votes from the classic Reagan Democrats, many of whom voted for Individual-1.
I voted for him in 2018 but did not contribute (although I had his sign in my yard) and gave his campaign staffers an earful when they called. One of the reasons my enthusiasm cooled was that he had Cory Booker headlining many of his campaign fundraising events. That’s getting right up to the line of deal breaker for me.
I honestly don’t know what his core views on education issues are, which is worrying to me because I think I pay more attention than most. He has been very chameleon-like. While he has been opposed to ECOT, for example, he falls into the trap of trying to differentiate between “public” and for-profit charter schools. He’s wishy-washy on the former, solidly opposed to the latter…very much like many prominent Democrats. One of the main reasons, I think, is because education has never been high on his radar screen and, although I don’t know if he’s still there, his education legislative assistant a few years ago was a TFA alum. He is very good on banking and finance issues, which is understandable given his committee assignments.
His greatest gift, in my opinion, is the one that all great politicians share. He remembers you and the issues you’re interested in, regardless of how long ago it was that he met you. (Bill Clinton still is the master of this.) He has weekly constituent coffees on the Hill and takes time to speak to everyone in the room. He listens and, even though he may not agree, he tries very hard to understand where you’re coming from with your views. He is, most importantly in my opinion, possible to educate and that’s why I won’t give up on him and continue to vote for him.
And his wife is Connie Shultz, who many of the people here will recognize. She softens his rough edges and helps his populist cred. The bottom line is that I would support him for president, but I’d be one of his harshest critics on issues where I think he is wrong. But rather than dismiss his opposition from the Left, he would try to figure out why they disagree with him rather than dismiss them outright. He might not be on your side in the end, but you can be confident that he thought seriously about it before opposing you.
Lastly, when I moved to Ohio, he was the member of Congress of the community to which I moved. Because of my work at that time and my knowledge of individuals in Congress. He wasn’t the reason I moved here, but I liked the idea of living in a community where people would elect someone like him, especially after having always had reactionary Republicans as my reps. Unfortunately my community has been gerrymandered into oblivion, much like Austin, TX, so that the voting strength of Democrats had been diluted. I literally can see three congressional districts when I stand outside my front door. His success and effectiveness as a congressman put this community on the bullseye of Republicans when they redrew districts. I think he would have a hard time being reelected to the House, but he’s a strong shoo-in of a state candidate. That says something important about him.
I meant to write: “Because of my work at that time and my knowledge of individuals in Congress, that appealed to me.”
“banking and finance issues”. A knowledgeable commenter said, Brown “always caves” when it comes to the vote.
It was reported that Sen. Portman and Brown entered the Senate together to signify their cohesiveness when the new Senate was convened recently.
Brown has a pattern of failing to help fellow Democrats get elected in Ohio. Charitably speaking, maybe he doesn’t want to waste his political capital on candidates he doesn’t think can win.
I know we’ve gone over this before, especially with respect to his views on education—which I still don’t know—and I agree with your assessment about the relationship with Portman (who is the master of smarmy vileness). But regarding his support for Ohio Dems, he has been forced to go it alone because of the gross malfeasance of the state party. Let’s look at the record on the past three governor’s elections. They abandoned Strickland and never brought up Kasich’s record. They recruited FitzGerald in the next election, a colorless, poll-driven candidate who could not explain to me what Democrats stand for.
And most recently Cordray tried to say nothing in the hope it would get him elected and tweeted this after he lost: “It occurred to that I am now freed from the constraints of running for or holding public office. So I can speak more naturally now about things that matter to Ohio and our nation, and share my own more light-hearted thoughts. You can pay attention or not, just as you choose.” To which I responded: “I voted for you. I had your sign in my yard. I talked about you with my neighbors. This is the most pathetic statement I’ve seen in a while. ‘So I can speak more naturally about things that matter…’ Isn’t this why one does public service? Good riddance.” You can lay that at Brown’s feet.
Greg,
Respectfully, the time has passed when we could excuse Dem. politicians for lacking knowledge about education privatization. If Brown’s staff listens and they don’t correct the points you make, the silence is the message, which is done to keep your support. It was very disheartening for me to accept the truth about Brown because I also sent him campaign contributions.
As comparison, it stretches credulity to think the “liberal”, Gates-funded Center for American Progress doesn’t know that TFA is anti-union. (CAP’s staff are former TFAers) or, that Neera Tanden selected a former Aspire executive to run CAP’s disaster capitalism efforts in Puerto Rico, without knowledge about privatization. CAP’s hiring of a former director of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education to direct CAP’s education innovation policy sends an intended message. CAP’s preference for Cory Booker is not without their understanding that the hedge funds of DFER are his champion. None of this has escaped Brown’s staff’s understanding.
Whoops, meant to write “you CANNOT lay that on Brown’s feet.”
to cut and paste ed reform slogans into state law. That’s so very well said, Chiara!!!
‘ ““I believe economic growth will lift all boats.” ‘
Even if this little ditty is true, I don’t see how it translates into business should run schools or schools should be training facilities for businesses. I am with Chiara when it comes to job training. That job is the responsibility of the employer.
Don’t know much about Okkahoma (with apologies to Sam Cool and Mike Petrilli)
Don’t know much about Oklahoma
Don’t know much about Barack Obama
Don’t know much about a science book,
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know Reform is true
And I know that if you love it, too,
What a wonderful world this would be
Don’t know much about geography,
Don’t know much trigonometry
Don’t know much about algebra,
Don’t know what a slide rule is for
But I do know one and one is three
And and I know if you could only see
What a wonderful world this would be
Now, I don’t claim to be an “A” student,
But I’m tryin’ to be
For maybe by being an “A” student, baby,
I can win your dollars for me
Don’t know much about Oklahoma
Don’t know much about Barack Obama
Don’t know much about a science book,
Don’t know much about the french I took
But I do know Reform is true
And I know that if you love it, too,
What a wonderful world this would be
Oklahoma
Barack Obama
Science book
French I took
But I do know Reform is true
And I know that if you love it too,
What a wonderful world this would be
Sam Cooke, but apologies to Sam Cool for the autocorrect
Uh, oh. Ed reform thinks tanks insist they have to privatize the public school system in order to prepare students for the “gig economy”:
“As you know if you’re a faithful reader of this blog, the “gig economy” is largely a myth. So how did two prominent researchers, Alan Krueger of Princeton University and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, manage to screw up so badly, predicting in 2015 that gig employment was rising rapidly and was poised to change the American economy permanently? To their credit, they have now published a working paper that digs into where they went wrong”
25 ed reform slogans just became invalid. Why are they so consistently vulnerable to faddish and dumb economic theories? How can they instill critical thinking in schools when they don’t do any themselves?
It would be easier to write what Petrilli does know about Oklahoma (or any other topic). Here, I’ll start:
Knowledge of a topic no longer serves as a prerequisite for discussion.
Discussions and evidence aren’t prerequisites for decisions in an oligarchy. Ask Bill Gates.
Gates likes to claim he is data driven.
But what he really has in mind is this
Data driven
When data are driven
Along for the ride
They never are given
A chance to decide