Archives for the month of: February, 2019
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Bill and Melinda Gates: Ignore the Critics, We Know Best

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2019 //
114

 

Bill and Melinda Gates ignore critics of their philanthropic efforts to change society as they wish. They even host weekly meetings with other billionaires, like Mark Zuckerberg and Charles Koch, to share ideas about redesigning the world.

In an article in Forbes, Gates defended his record and blamed me for the failure of the Common Core standards, which happened because I used the phrase “billionaire boys club” in my 2010 book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Resting and Choice Are Undermining Education.” Actually, the book scarcely mentioned Common Core, Which was not yet complete when the book went to press but it specifically criticized the hubris of Gates, Walton, and Broad for foisting their half-baked ideas on American public education, even though they are unelected and unaccountable.. I pointed out that they threw their weight around merely because they are billionaires, and I referred to them as the Billionaires Boys Club.

Yes, they do undermine democracy. The truth hurts.

It is gratifying to know that my pen is able to get his attention. I regret that he has refused to meet with me over the past decade. I have some good ideas for him. But he doesn’t listen.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy

Florida: DeSantis Wants Another Voucher Program to Steal Money from Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2019 //
89

 

 

New Governor Ron DeSantis wants another voucher program that would take money directly from public school funding.

Current voucher programs drain $1 billion from public schools. Their teachers need not be certified. They are free to discriminate. They teach religious myths. They don’t take state tests.

Florida’s legislaturehatespublic schools. The master puppeteer is Jeb Bush. The state commissioner of education Richard Corcoran said recently that he would like-to voucherize the entire State. His wife runs a charter school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform

Cashing in on Kids: The School Security Gold Rush

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2019 //
19

In the Public Interest is a nonpartisan organization that tracks the privatization of public services and assets.

Its latest report:

Is school security the next gold rush? A year after the harrowing school shooting in Parkland, Florida, investor cash is pouring into the school security market. But big money was already being spent on unproven technology shielded from public view. “Schools and other education-related buyers are the fifth-biggest market for surveillance systems across the world but the top market in the United States, with $2.7 billion in revenue in 2017.” The Washington Post

A warning to D.C.’s education leaders. A former board member at Indianapolis Public Schools describes her experience working with former superintendent Dr. Lewis Ferebee, who also happens to the D.C. mayor’s choice for the next D.C. Public Schools chancellor: “Under Dr. Ferebee’s leadership, we created ‘Innovation Network Schools’— partnerships between IPS and charter schools. But it turned out that Innovation Network Schools aren’t really partnerships at all. In fact, they’re an underhanded way of turning over public resources and assets to private hands.” 730DC

Huge salaries for charter school leadership. Journalist Rachel Cohen digs into charter school administrator salaries in Washington, D.C., revealing startling figures: “The head of Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School and the highest-paid charter official in D.C., received a 24 percent salary increase between 2015 and 2016, from $248,000 to $307,000. Then, in 2017, she received another 76 percent increase, bumping her compensation to $541,000.” Washington City Paper

Police in school don’t make students of color feel safer. Rann Miller of the 21st Century Community Learning Center critiques the final report from President Trump’s Federal Commission on School Safety: “The recommendations from Trump’s school safety panel benefit school privatizers, and institutions like prisons, at the expense of people of color. It’s the American way.” The Progressive

“Wherever there’s a battle over public education lately, a billionaire is somehow involved.” Jacobin Magazine weighs in on the upcoming Oakland teachers strike: “Although charter schools don’t improve student outcomes, they have all sorts of destructive impacts. As noted above, they massively drain resources from public schools. In the 2016–17 school year alone, Oakland Unifed School District lost over $57 million in revenue to charter schools, according to a report by In the Public Interest.” Jacobin

ICYMI: the U.S. spends more on its prison system than it does on public schools. The country’s incarceration rates have more than tripled over the past three decades, even as crime rates have fallen. During the same period, government spending on K-12 education increased by 107 percent. Daily Mail

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Guns in Schools, Privatization, Safety

Oakland Teachers Will Strike February 21!

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2019 //
5

BREAKING BAY AREA NEWS: In a news conference this afternoon, the 3,000-member Oakland Education Association union set a strike date of Thursday, Feb. 21. Please see OEA news release below…..

 

Mike Myslinski

Headquarters Communications

California Teachers Association

1705 Murchison Drive

Burlingame, CA 94010

650-552-5324

408-921-5769 (cell)

www.cta.org

 

NEWS RELEASE 

February 16, 2019

 

Oakland Education Association

272 East 12th Street

Oakland, CA 94606

510-763-4020

www.oaklandea.org

 

Contacts:

–OEA President Keith Brown on cell at 510-866-8280.

–Mike Myslinski with CTA Communications on cell at 408-921-5769.

On Twitter: @oaklandea, #Unite4OaklandKids, #WeAreOEA, #RedForEd, #WeAreCTA

OEA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oakland Education Association Sets Strike Date

of Thursday, Feb. 21, to Fight for Oakland Schools 

Priorities Remain – Smaller Class Sizes, More Support for Students,

Living Wages and a Halt to Destructive School Closures

 

OAKLAND – To stand and fight for the quality schools that all Oakland students deserve, educators in Oakland Unified School District will go on strike on Thursday, Feb. 21, the president of the 3,000-member Oakland Education Association (OEA) announced at a news conference today where he was flanked by parents, students and teachers standing in solidarity.

 

“Bargaining with the district has not — in two years — produced an agreement that will pay teachers enough to allow them to stay in Oakland, or make class sizes more conducive to teaching and learning, or provide our students with the supports they need to thrive,” OEA President Keith Brown said.  “The only option that Oakland teachers, parents and students have left to win the schools Oakland students truly deserve, and to take control of our school district back from the control of billionaire campaign donors, is for the 3,000 members of the Oakland Education Association to go on strike.”

 

In key areas such as salaries and hiring more counselors to support students, a new report by a neutral state-appointed fact-finder comes somewhat closer to what educators are demanding than what the district is offering, but still does not go far enough, Brown said. The new report is non-binding. It’s release means that educators can legally strike.

 

For example, the report by fact-finder Najeeb Khoury recommends 6 percent in retroactive raises – 3 percent in 2017-18 school year and 3 percent this year – but no guaranteed raise for 2019-2020, while the last final offer by the district was only 5 percent over three years. Oakland educators are seeking 12 percent over three years to help halt the district’s teacher retention crisis. The report also supports hiring more counselors and reducing the student-to-counselor ratio from 600:1 to 500:1. OEA had sought a 250:1 ratio.

 

Years of district neglect, overspending at the top, and the unregulated growth of the charter industry have starved Oakland schools of necessary resources, OEA President Brown said. One in five Oakland educators leaves the district each year due to low pay, leaving nearly 600 classrooms without an experienced teacher last school year. Class sizes are high, and students are without full-time nurses and an adequate number of counselors. Yet, OUSD received $23 million in additional revenue this year, and receives 25 percent more funding per student than the average unified school district statewide, Brown said.

 

“There is only one party in our bargaining with Oakland Unified School District that is pushing to improve our public schools for 36,000 Oakland students, and that is the Oakland Education Association,” said Brown. “It is time for the Oakland school board and our superintendent to make a choice – are they on the side of the billionaires who fund their campaigns and are pushing for more draconian budget cuts and school closures that will further hurt our kids, or are they on the side of teachers, students, and parents fighting for the schools Oakland students deserve?”

 

In an open letter to Oakland teachers, parents and students on Friday, Brown declared, “We are in a struggle for the soul of public education in Oakland, and billionaires can’t teach our kids.” He criticized school board members who were backed by billionaires for pushing a competition-based “portfolio” model for Oakland that “has led to a patchwork of privatization, school closures, and unimproved student outcomes in districts like New Orleans, Newark and Detroit.”

 

Brown said the fact-finder supports OEA’s bargaining goals by finding that the district’s “teacher retention crisis is much worse than the state average and must be addressed, that lower class sizes will help improve educational outcomes for students, and that more supports for students are possible. Further, the report affirms that the unchecked growth of charter schools is creating a systemic inequity that is starving our public schools of the resources they need to thrive.”

 

The entire fact-finder’s report is posted on the union’s website: www.oaklandea.org. The full and comprehensive OEA presentation to the fact-finder – titled “Remedying Educational Malpractice,” with extensive data supporting the union’s positions – is also posted on the website and can be foundhere.

 

Oakland educators plan to strike for smaller class sizes, more school counselors and nurses to adequately support students, and living wages to allow educators to stay in Oakland. Teachers are also calling for a halt to a billionaire-backed plan to close up to 24 neighborhood schools in primarily African American and Latinx Oakland neighborhoods. In addition to being disruptive and destabilizing for students and communities, school closures will also lead to further loss of students to charter schools – privately managed, but publicly funded schools that make up 30 percent of student enrollment in Oakland, and are already costing Oakland schools over $57 million a year, according to a key study.

 

The OEA union announced Feb. 4 that 95 percent of educators who took part in a strike authorization vote cast ballots in favor of allowing their union leaders to call a strike, if necessary, and strike preparations are continuing. The OEA Executive Board backed the strike option.

 

There is a groundswell of community support for Oakland educators. OEA is a co-sponsor of theBread For Ed campaign that has raised more than $46,000 to feed students in a district where an overwhelming number of children are low-income and depend on free or reduced-price meals during school. The OEA Membership Assistance Fund has raised more than $20,000 through a Go Fund Me drive. In addition, over 25 Bay Area CTA teachers’ union chapters have donated more than $20,000 to the Membership Assistance Fund as well.

 

The OEA is affiliated with the California Teachers Association, which coordinated a statewide#RedForEd day of action at public schools on Friday, Feb. 15,  to show support for Oakland educators in their fight for the quality schools all students deserve – see more information here. The Oakland showdown comes after many recent teacher strikes around the nation about protecting public schools and students, including the successful January strike in Los Angeles Unified School District by more than 30,000 members of the United Teachers Los Angeles union.

 

Oakland educators have been working without a contract since July 2017 and are the lowest-paid in Alameda County.

 

The news conference today was broadcast live on the Oakland Education Association Facebook page and is archived there:https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/

 

“We will strike with our parents, whose overwhelming support in the last few weeks has been felt by every single teacher in Oakland,” said OEA President Brown, who is a teacher at Bret Harte Middle School. “We will strike for our students, we will strike for educational justice, we will strike for racial justice, and we will strike for the future of public education in Oakland. Our students, families, and community are the center of everything Oakland educators do, and we are all in the fight for the schools Oakland students deserve together.”

###

The Oakland Education Association represents 3,000 OUSD educators, including teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, therapists, substitutes, and early childhood and adult teachers. OEA is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3 million-member National Education Association.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Class size, Education Reform, Oakland, Resistance, Teacher Pay

TFA Warns Its Oakland Recruits Not to Strike or Risk Losing Thousands of Dollars

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2019 //
19

 

Teach for America has received huge sums from Walton and other anti-union foundations on the assumption that they would be the teachers in nom-unioncharters. But what happens when they work in a union district like Oakland? This AP article by journalist Sally Ho says that TFA warns its corps members to cross the picket line or risk losing Americorps funds that lure them into TFA. The young people who are tempted to join TFA should be aware that they will be expected to act as scabs.

Categories Oakland, Teach for America, Union

Keith Benson: Who Truly Represents the Black Community and Its Aspirations?

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2019 //
13

 

Dr. Keith Benson of the Camden (NJ) Education Association. In this essay, he analyzes the rise of Black leaders who represent the privatization movement and compares them to those who continue for a just and equitable public school system.

Whic side are you on?

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization, Racism

Bill Phillis: Time to Repeal Ohio’s Disastrous HB 70, State Takeover Bill

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2019 //
2

When did Republicans turn against local control of public schools? When did they decide thatstate bureaucracies were superior to elected school boards?

 

Bill Phillis reports on his blog:

 

Lorain City School Board President asking the Governor to intervene in the chaos HB 70 is causing in Lorain
When Lorain Schools were snatched away from the elected Board of Education, board members initially embraced the transference in a move to improve educational opportunities. But soon thereafter, they found the “new deal” was a failure and began to push back. Former Board President Tony Dimacchia has been very active in pressing for relief from the menaces of HB 70.
Now, new President of the Lorain Board of Education Mark Ballard has written to the Governor asking for repeal of HB 70. Mr. Ballard contends he is being denied his right to fulfill his role as an elected board member.
Every Ohioan that favors democratic community control of public schools should be lobbying for the complete repeal of HB 70 of the 131st General Assembly.
HB 70 was concocted by a State Superintendent and a Governor, both of whom have moved on. The time is right to rid Ohio of this disastrous policy claptrap.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org

 

 

Categories Ohio, Republicans

Ohio: Rightwing Think Tank Aide Attacks Hero of Public Education

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2019 //
12

 

Ohio has one of the worst charter sectors in the country.

In 2015, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post agreed that Ohio’s Charters had become a national joke.  Margaret Raymond, leader of CREDO, which conducts studies of state charter sectors, said to Ohioans, “Be glad that you have Nevada, so you are not the worst,” referring to Ohio’s charters.

Two-thirds of Ohio’s charters are rated failing by the state. Enrollment in charters is falling. The number of charters is declining. Ohio’s failing  charter schools drain $1 billion a year from Ohio’s public schools.

Why is Ohio taking $1 Billion a year from public schools to sustain failing charter schools?

In short, Ohio’s charter sector is a disaster.

So now is exactly the time when Aaron Churchill of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute attacks Bill Phillis, the retired assistant superintendent of education, a courtly gentleman who has warned about the fiscal dangers of charters for Ohio public schools for years and whose warnings have been prophetic.

Bill Phillis is a hero of education in Ohio and in the nation. He is paid by no one to tell the truth.

Aaron Churchill works for a rightwing think tank that is funded by Gates, and a long list of foundations, whose purpose is to advance the cause of privatization. (I was a founding member of that organization at a time when its endowment of $40 million was considered adequate, and I opposed the pursuit of outside funding, then turned against TBF’s goal of privatization.) TBF sponsors charter schools in Ohio (another decision I opposed because I don’t believe think tanks should sponsor charter schools).

Other than his employment at TBF, I have no idea who Churchill is. I think he owes Mr. Phillis a personal apology.

As you will see from this link, Stephen Dyer, former legislator, came to Bill Phillis’s defense.

As did Denis Smith, who worked in the Ohio Department of Education charter office.

As do I.

Stephen Dyer wrote in defense of Bill Phillis,

“I guess what I’m most disappointed by though is Churchill’s utter lack of deference and respect for Phillis, who more than any single person in the history of the state has held politicians’ feet to the fire on equal and adequate funding for all students.

”Frankly, Phillis has forgotten more education funding and policy than either I or Churchill will ever know. Churchill’s cheap, ad hominem attacks on this man who has spent his life fighting for all kids to receive a world-class education is truly distressing.”

This is a time when decent people echo the words of attorney Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy at the celebrated Army-McCarthy hearings, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Nancy Bailey: NCLB Is Gone But Continues to Ruin the Joy of Reading for Young Children

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2019 //
89

 

Nancy Bailey reviews the impact of No Child Left Behind and its ill-fated “Reading First” component. NCLB came to be a hated law yet stayed on the booksfrom 2002 until 2015, when it was replaced by the slightly less odious “Every Student Succeeds Act.” As if a federal law could make every student succeed.

Bailey writes that the demand that every child should learn to read in kindergarten is developmentally unsound and unrealistic.

The combination of NCLB, Race to the Top, and Common Core is frightful for young children.

“Teachers and their ed. schools are blamed when kindergartners don’t show up in first grade reading. Yet in years past we never expected kindergartners to read.

“It is developmentally inappropriate! We have monumental research by early childhood developmental researchers that goes back years. We know what is developmentally important to teach at what times.

“It’s important to remember too that students were never doing badly as indicated by NCLB proponents. Poverty was the real culprit when it came to student achievement.

“As far as learning to read goes, language develops from the moment a child is born, and there are many wonderful ways to promote the joy of reading.

“Some children easily acquire reading skills without formal phonics instruction. They are curious about words and are able to sound letters out as they listen to and enjoy picture books. They may read well before they start school.

“Other children learn a little later. And some with disabilities may need extra assistance with a formal phonics program.

“Repeatedly testing young children to find out how they read at such an early age would be better spent reading out loud lovely, funny, engaging picture books, and letting children develop their language skills through play!”

 

How NCLB is Still Destroying Reading for Children 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, NCLB, Race to the Top

Why Doesn’t Trump Like Dogs?

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2019 //
67

I have never been without a dog. I love dogs. I miss the ones I have lost. I especially miss Molly, a Tibetan terrier, who was funny and lovable. She died of lymphoma. I miss Lady, a cocker spaniel, who was a rescue. She always curled herself around my feet and slept on the floor next to my bed. Now we have Mitzi, a 92-pound sweetheart, 57 varieties of dog, all wonderful.

Who doesn’t love dogs? Donald Trump.

Molly Roberts wrote in the Washington Post:

 

“How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn?” President Trump asked during his rally in El Paso on Monday night.

The question was rhetorical — part of a meandering monologue that started with a shout-out to German shepherds for their bomb-sniffing skills and ended with an explanation of the president’s petlessness. But there’s an answer, and it offers another window into the Trumpian worldview.

The last time the White House lawn didn’t have a president walking a dog on it was in 1901. That’s nearly 120 years of canine constancy before Trump came along and decided to pass. Maybe these men just liked dogs, or maybe they knew that liking dogs meant their constituents liking them.

Warren G. Harding’s Laddie Boy is widely hailed as the first celebrity presidential dog. The Airedale terrier, an historian told The Post’s Caitlin Gibson, was meant to convey “warmth and approachability” after Woodrow Wilson’s comparative stiffness during his tenure. Richard Nixon, accused of corruption during his campaign for the vice presidency in 1952, famously resurrected Republican support in a speech declaring that one gift he would never return was a black-and-white dog named Checkers.

Other dogs, from Lyndon B. Johnson’s beagles to Bo Obama, have inspired public obsessions and even children’s books. George H.W. Bush’s dog, Millie, even “wrote” her own. There’s a reason Mitt Romney caught so much criticism for strapping his own family pooch to the roof of a car: Americans see a fondness for hounds as a sign of humanity. Our attraction to these loyal and innocent creatures is supposed to be instinctual and almost universal; man loving dogs is part of what makes man man, and if we are alike in nothing else at least we are alike in this.

Trump isn’t interested. He said so himself Monday: Feigning a desire for an animal he doesn’t “have any time” for would feel “phony,” and “that’s not the relationship I have with my people.”

Maybe there’s something admirable in this dedication to genuineness. So what if Trump’s contempt for the four-legged proves that he lacks a heart, soul or any other human-making attribute? But look at Trump’s history of hound-related remarks, and his scorn is more telling than just that.

Trump has talked about dogs before. A lot, in bizarre fashion.

“Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!” he remarked of former adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

“Union Leader” — a newspaper — “refuses to comment as to why they were kicked out of the ABC News debate like a dog,” he barked.

“Good work by General [John F.] Kelly for quickly firing that dog!” he exclaimed after Omarosa Manigault Newman’s ignominious departure from the White House.

These misbegotten similes have prompted arunning gag among commentators who wonder, only half ironically, if the president knows what a dog is. The speculation may seem glib, but it speaks to a real disconnect: Trump’s understanding of the dog as something to be fired, dumped and kicked doesn’t jibe with the general view of the meaningful relationship between people and dogs — the same relationship that has led past presidents, and the public, to view dog ownership as so humanizing. To Trump, dogs serve an opposing purpose. He uses them to dehumanize instead.

By comparing people to canines to portray both as pathetic, Trump establishes distance between some men and women and other men and women, instead of commonality. It’s a favorite trick of his. Undocumented immigrants, the president has said, will “infest” the country. They are “animals.” And indeed, Trump’s highest praise for dogs so far seems to have come during this week’s rally with his ode to the German shepherd delivered as part of his case for a wall to keep Mexicans out of the country.

None of this is surprising, but it is clarifying. Trump is right, after all: Appeals to humanity are not the relationship he has with his people. He doesn’t win his supporters, or keep them around, with paeans to what brings us together. On the contrary, the allure of his campaign to white Americans worried about displacement in a browning America was how it defined itself in opposition to the other. There’s no room for softness there. Walking on the White House lawn with a dog would ruin the image. It would look nice, and it would look human, and because of those things it would also look weak.

A fake quotation made the rounds on social media this fall, spreading far enough that fact-checkers had to debunk it: “I never understood why people like dogs. Dogs are disgusting,” it read, with the president’s name falsely appended. “As if we needed another reason . . .” mused the accompanying meme. Trump never said those words, and we don’t need another reason for condemning his agenda. But the words he has said, from firing to dumping to kicking to lawn-walking, remind us of the reasons we already have.

Categories Education Reform
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