Gary Rubinstein has followed the failure of the “portfolio model” more closely than anyone in the country. He watched the Tennessee “Achievement School District” as its leaders made bold promises, then departed for lucrative reformy gigs as the ASD collapsed in failure.
In this post, he describes the failure of Nevada’s copycat ASD. ,which was modeled on Tennessee’s ASD, which was modeled on New Orleans’ low-achieving Recovery School District.
He notes that Michigan’s “Education Achievement Authority” failed and was shuttered.
All of which raises the question, why are Corporate Reformers incapable of learning from experience?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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Standards and standardized testing and VAM and school grading were supposed to close achievement gaps and improve educational outcomes. They haven’t. But they have caused enormous distortion and devolution of K-12 pedagogy and curricula. But vampire-like, these continue to be resurrected, year after year, in new forms. Here’s the new state test. Here are the Common [sic] Core [sic] standards with their new state-specific name.
These are enormously destructive. Time to put a stake in them.
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When a much ballyhooed enterprise fails so flagrantly to achieve its advertized purpose, and yet continues and continues and replicates itself in ever new disguises, you can bet it’s succeeding in its actual purpose.
So let’s all wise up to that …
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Precisely. The answer to Diane’s Q is, corporate reformers are learning from the experience; apparently it pays off for enough of the right people to make it their own little moveable feast. The ones incapable of learning are the local dopes who keep voting in the collaborating state govt actors.
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$$$$
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” So even though their ASD is officially ‘abolished,’ it is not like those schools are converted back to public schools. Instead they are now under the State Public Charter School Authority which, I’d guess, has even less accountability than there was under the ASD.”
I think that’s a very important point to raise with the public- the privatization portion of these “experiments” are never undone.
If the public decides to eradicate public schools, they are never, ever getting them back. Every future “reform” will be conducted within the strict confines of the ideological tenets of the ed reform “movement”, and those dictate that private is superior to public, always.
The “experiments” aren’t experiments at all- they’re permanent. They’ll simply switch out contractors. In the case of Michigan, they’ll switch out contractors over and over and over. The basic formula never changes because there’s no real debate in the ed reform movement. They quibble over details and they’re getting MORE ideologically cohesive, not less so- witness how they all lock step support any and all voucher schemes now and witness the COMPLETE lack of pushback to DeVos. It’s more of an echo chamber now than it was even 5 years ago.
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Good point, Chiara.
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The deafening silence among “liberal” ed reformers in response to DeVos is just amazing to me.
They made a deal- she supports charters and vouchers so they’re perfectly willing to throw every public school student and family under the bus in pursuit of that goal.
They don’t defend public school students at all. She could announce tomorrow that she’s closing every public school in the country and as long as she promotes vouchers and charters they’d all go along with it.
They are LOUSY advocates for students in existing public schools which is why our kids really, really deserve their own. They simply don’t have anyone at the table who represents the interests of 90% of students and families. There is no one at these high level policy tiers who works for them. And it shows! Public school students get absolutely nothing out of these reform deals. They’re often not even mentioned. The BEST ed reform offers to public school families and students is they will not immediately harm them. Why is this acceptable? It is SUCH a low bar for performance. We are paying public employees who will only make a grudging concession not to HARM our kids in pursuit of the privatized systems they’re all seeking. We’re paying for that? I’m supposed to seek these people out and pay them when all they offer is a promise not to harm my kid or his school? Wow. Talk about low expectations.
We can do better. We can hire people who actually provide some value or benefit to students in existing public schools. That’s possible.
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“The BEST ed reform offers to public school families and students is they will not immediately harm them.”
Actually I don’t see this. We have been getting attention from “liberal” ed-reformers for 20 yrs. Public schools get the biggest harmful piece, because we’re the biggest market. The “left hand” has harmed us routinely since 2001 with continual testing & data-mining locked in w/ stds-based accountability schemes that remove funding, teachers and entire schools from neediest communities, while concentrating most-exp-to-teach students in enrollments lowered by the “right hand”’s privatized alternatives. Our piece accommodates sw/hw & ed-industry corps & advertisers, billionaire ed whims & now, social-impact investors. Charters & vouchers get to be the stand-in plaything for rw political actors, & the tool of hedge-funders & RE developers.
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Indeed, the very first thing we see is a publis chool budget reduction (due to “economy” or other bs), followed by charter school expansion. There is no quiet period before the storm.
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Here’s what the ed reform movement offers public school students and families:
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
Oct 3
#EducationFreedom is pro-parent and pro-student. It is not anti-public school. If your school is working for your child, stay put. One parent’s freedom to make a choice doesn’t mean anyone else has to make the same choice.”
‘Stay put’.
That’s the sum total of support and effort we can expect from these public employees. They’ve graciously agreed to allow our public schools to exist, but they’re absolutely committing to not actually returning any value to them, investing in them, or indeed expending any effort or work on their behalf at all.
This is not just acceptable in ed reform, it gets one promoted to a leadership position. Nothing for public school kids. Nada. Their schools have been deemed unfashionable and ideologically incorrect, so no one will lift a finger for them.
And we pay thousands of them for this! Whole public university departments! You can’t FIND someone in the echo chamber ranks who will agree to work on behalf of a kid in a public school, even if you pay them!
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“Whole public university departments! ”
What do you mean? And do you have concrete examples?
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And I could accept it. I could accept that I’m paying thousands of federal and state who are ideologically OPPOSED to the public schools 90% of kids attend and do not lift a finger to support them, but it’s even worse than that.
Because these same people ALSO set policy for every public school in the country.
So we have a huge bunch of charter and voucher promoters, people who believe public schools should be eradicated, and not only so they set policy for the schools they promote and support (charters and vouchers) they ALSO set policy for the schools they hope to eradicate- public schools.
How is this fair to public school students? Shouldn’t they have people who support them and their schools writing policy for their schools?
Would ed reformers accept this? If I told them that that people who oppose charters and vouchers would be directing what happens in charter and voucher schools would they accept this? Of course not. That would harm their students!
I don’t want people who don’t support public schools, people who wake up every day and work as hard as they can to replace our schools, RUNNING our schools. Is that too much to ask?
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Why are Corporate Reformers incapable of learning from experience?
Simple answer: They do not experience the reforms they foist on others.
Next version: The reforms were fine, the implementation was flawed.
and so on.
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My view: money keeps this leaky boat afloat
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Our tax dollars are at work.
School takeover models are promoted by one of USDE’s major contractors for “ESSA implementation.”
ESSA requires schools to have report cards that include per-pupil expenditures with the details of these expenditures proportionately calculated for three funding streams: federal, state, and local dollars.
Guidance on preparing these elaborate reports has been outsourced to several interrelated agencies/corporations. One of these is specializes in school turarounds.
Our tax dollars at work can be seen at the Center on School Turnarounds operated by WestEd. https://centeronschoolturnaround.org/about-us/
This (website and identified partners) are funded by a contract under prime award #S283B120015 between the U.S. Department of Education and WestEd. The findings and opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. This site and its contents copyright WestEd. All rights reserved.
The Center on School Turnarounds is just one of a nest full of contractors for ESSA intent on finding reasons to defund public schools. More on the occupants of this nest later.
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Money is the purpose.
It was never about “reform”.
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the ESSENTIAL truth: so long as immediate personal wealth is possible, there will be many players in the game
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Once infected by greed, the greedy have no limits on what they will do to increase their wealth and power.
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I agree. They will never stop privatizing when there is money to be made.
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I’ll never see this in ed reform because it’s an echo chamber and the ed reformers in colleges and universities are as much echo chamber denizens as the actual lobbyists, but just once I would like to see one of their press releases extolling the miracle of “portfolio” systems mention a public school in one of these places.
The public schools (and public school students) simply disappear. They’re addressed with a throw away line at the end of the charter and voucher promotion “60% of students remain in traditional public schools”.
It’a astonishing. They’re supposedly “researchers” in “public education” and they simply disappear whole populations of students who attend the schools they hope to replace.
It’s SUCH an echo chamber none of them notice the omission. If you have the misfortune of attending a PUBLIC school in one of these places rest assured no one will be lifting a finger on your behalf. They barely acknowlege you exist, let alone invest anything in you or exert any effort.
We now have entire state legislative sessions where 90% of students in the state are never mentioned. 10% of the students in Ohio attend charters and private schools, yet our (captured) lawmakers spend session after session exclusively working on charters and vouchers. Our kids no longer exist in Columbus. They simply refuse to work for them.
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Actually I dare say they learned very well: get in the door and generate maximum profits for as long as you can. Once the public catches on and the profits dry up close up shop and leave.
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You are exactly right.
Take the money and run” is the motto.
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The problem is that some of them are playing the “long con” like KIPP, IDEA and Success. They rarely disappear, and they constantly seek out new territory.
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“why are Corporate Reformers incapable of learning from experience?”
A decade ago, I was one of those parents who thought the idea of education reform made sense. I knew that some public schools clearly weren’t working and they usually were the ones where the most disadvantaged and vulnerable students attended who had no other choice. I simply assumed there were people genuinely trying to figure out a better way.
What turned me into an anti-reformer was when I realized that the reformers were blatantly misleading the public because their goal was not how to teach the most vulnerable students, but how to make it appear that charters were a magic bullet solution. I gave reformers the benefit of the doubt for a while, but after hearing lie after lie I realized that the entire ed reform movement was like the Republican Party. It is not that every Republican politician is personally corrupt, just like not every charter is corrupt. But the problem is that the oned who are not corrupt themselves are more than willing to condone the corruption and quietly support leaving those who are most corrupt in power. Those so-called “good” Republicans or “good” charters were complicit, enabling the worst of the corruption. And that told me that deep down, their supposedly “good” reformers would sacrifice the most vulnerable children to further their own careers. Like Republicans in Congress, they are too afraid to speak out. And given that the worst that would happen if they spoke out is that they lose their lucrative positions, their cowardice is clearly self-serving. It’s not as if their lives would be in danger. Just their generous salary.
So I believe corporate reformers are perfectly capable of learning. The problem is that the only thing they want to learn is how to stay in power and keep those who hold the purse strings happy.
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Excellent analysis, nycpsp. The parallel to today’s cowardly Rep legislators is right on. Even though most of this paradigm is foisted on us by our corrupt $-calls-the-shots govtl system, we still have a little piece of democracy left, the vote. Ed-reformers on the right pander to libertarian ideologues and fans of religious schooling. Ed-reformers on the left pander to urban minority voters by offering low-cost, low-quality bandaids for underfunded schools.
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“Why are Corporate Reformers incapable of learning from experience?”
The answer depends on what you think they should learn from their alleged failures. To them, success could be how much money they siphon out of the public trough and add to their wealth. What they learn, if they learn anything, has nothing to do with improving education.
To them, success could be to end up with more than one school system segregating children on the basis of race, sex, religion, and other factors and has nothing to do with improving education.
To them, success could be controlling what all the children are taught with a goal to educate the future working class to be dumb, subservient and willing to work for next to nothing and without medical care so they can die young and not be a financial burden of any kind for the ruling class that the corporate reformers think they belong to.
In conclusion, if they learn anything, they learn how to keep fooling enough people with their lies and misinformation that they want to improve education for all children when clearly that isn’t what their agenda is.
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Why can’t Tennessee do the same as Nevada and close ASD?
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Lack of will.
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BELOW us a great article from / about school privatization currently under way in Tennessee’s neighbor to the north, Kentucky:
https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article235714472.html
Written by a university professor, it outlines Kentucky’s current governor’ Matt Bevin’s step-by-step actions taken to privatize that state’s schools, and severely weaken and eventually bust that states teachers unions. It’s a plan that other al-right governors in other states have already implemented.
The endgame: everyone except charter school operators will be worse off —
— students will be worse off because in both sectors, private charter and soon-to-be-gutted public schools, they will get a worse education, and thus, have worse life outcomes as adults;
— parents will be worse due for the same reason
— communities will be worse due to the same reason
— teachers will be worse off, because in both the private charter and public schools, they will be paid less and treated worse (especially in the private charter sector, where there’s no union protections reining in the bad behavior of the bosses);
— the only sub-group that will be better off — wayyy better off — will be the private charter school operators, who will get rich from running these Walmartt-ized private chartter schools where they will pay un-unionized teachers low wages, while paying themselves the money saved, and, of course, while delivering a worse education.
Again, here’s that article:
https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article235714472.html
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