Carol Burris led the delegation from the Network for Public Education at the Public Education Forum in Pittsburgh. Here are her reflections on the candidates;
There were roughly 1000 attendees at yesterday’s Public Education Forum 2020. The group was diverse in both race and age. Students accompanied by parents sat side by side with senior citizens. It was a captivated audience, the vast majority of whom stayed until the end at around 4:00 pm.
Outside the forum there was a small protest. When I entered the building in the morning, I counted 35 people. One news report said that the protest grew to 100. Michael Bennet was the only candidate who engaged with the protestors—that encounter can be viewed here.
Support was voiced by the candidates for community schools, increased school funding for Title I schools, increased pay for teachers, support for unions, fully-funded pre-schools, increasing the number of teachers of color, student loan forgiveness, and other equity issues which have commonly appeared in candidates’ platforms. In short, it was a positive agenda that acknowledged that resources do matter and recognized the complex difficulties that our schools and our teachers face.
It is not my intent to influence anyone’s vote with this account. What follows is my review of the candidates’ performance by giving each the award I believe they most deserve based on what I heard during the forum as well as with speaking with others afterwards.
My award for Best Performance is shared by Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. I thought their answers were the sharpest, but I am willing to acknowledge I may see the world through my gender lens.
Upon entering the stage, Elizabeth Warren received cheers. Many stood and applauded. Warren stood her ground when the interviewer claimed she wanted to defund charter schools (she does not). She logically argued her platform on charter schools and ended by saying, “Public school money needs to stay in public schools,” which earned loud applause. She argued throughout for increased funding for public education, funded by her proposed wealth tax.
Klobuchar won hearts with the story of her mom who taught elementary school until she was 70 years old. Her mom would dress up as a Monarch butterfly every year when teaching a unit on butterflies. Klobuchar recounted how a former student with a disability came to her mother’s funeral due to the kindness mom had extended to him long after he left her class. She was warm and encouraging when a nervous student came to the microphone to ask a question. Many in the audience who were not familiar with the candidate were impressed.
The You Still Don’t Get it Award goes to Michael Bennet.
The first audience question came from a New Orleans student, Maria Harmon, who expressed concerns about charter schools, which she said are “targeting black and brown children without delivering on their promise of equity.” Maria referred to the Washington Post’s story on our Network for Public Education report, Still Asleep at the Wheel. Her question on charter school accountability received loud applause.
Bennet claimed that in Denver only the Denver School Board can authorize a charter school. What he did not mention is that the Denver Board’s decision to not authorize a charter school can be overturned by the state board. From the Colorado State Board of Education website—
“The State Board may also, upon its own motion, decide to review any charter decision of a local board of education. Under the act, the State Board has the authority to direct the local board to grant, deny, or revoke the charter.”
So much for local control. Like other pro-charter Democrats, Bennet tried to create a false distinction between “private” and “public” charter schools, saying there are only public charter schools in Denver. “We don’t have private charters,” he said. Denver’s charters are managed by private boards. In addition, Denver allows charter schools to be managed by for-profit CMOs. For example, Life Skills Denver Charter School, was operated by the notorious for-profit White Hat Management Corporation. It was open throughout Bennet’s term as superintendent and was finally shut down by his successor, Tom Boasberg. I have no idea how Bennet’s defines a “private” charter school.
During the interview he defended his merit pay program, which has been largely abandoned, as well as the evaluation of schools by growth scores.
Bennet’s suggestion that the school year be longer and that students attend school six days a week was not well received by students and teachers in the audience.
Bennet told us he was “against privatization” and then left to meet with the charter school parents who were protesting the event.
The Most Loved Award goes to Bernie Sanders
When Bernie came on the stage, nearly everyone was on their feet applauding. He made a vigorous case against high-stakes testing (it was noted by the moderators that he had voted against NCLB) as well for increased funding for public schools. Bernie was Bernie, and the crowd loved it. His refusal to sit down resulted in the moderators getting up from their chairs to ask their questions.
The award for Best DFER in Disguise goes to Pete Buttigieg
Mayor Pete’s melodious even-toned voice was soothing, but no one I spoke with seemed impressed. He received polite applause. When he told the audience that a guy on his policy team (I assume Raj Chetty with whom he attended college) had done a study that showed the positive impact of “great teachers” on students’ economic futures, eyebrows went up. That study was often used by Arne Duncan to justify the evaluation of teachers by test scores. His teacher training plan sounded an awful lot like Teach for America to me. Rachel Cohen recently reported that prominent charter schools supporters have been doing fundraisers for Mayor Pete. With Booker and Bennet tanking, it is likely DFERs are looking to Buttigieg as their candidate.
The James Joyce Award goes to Joe Biden
Biden was animated and immersed in his usual stream of consciousness style. Listening to Biden is rather like reading Joyce’s Ulysses. You are just not quite sure where his inner Molly Bloom is going next.
While he did not distance himself from Race to the Top, which I believe was not mentioned at all throughout the forum, I think he said he was against high-stakes testing (sometimes it is hard to tell with Joe). He got a smile from me with his line, “If I’m president, Betsy DeVos’ whole thing from charter schools to ignoring sexual harassment is done.” He was warmly received and frequently applauded. Afterwards many I spoke with said that although he is not their first choice, they would support him if he were the candidate or seemed to have the best chance of beating Trump.
The Nice Guys Finish Last Award goes to Tom Steyer
Those I spoke with characterized the billionaire activist as a well-meaning guy whose funds would be better spent supporting a candidate with progressive ideas. My assessment is that he cares and wants to make a difference. He demonstrates none of the know-it-all arrogance of Bill Gates or Michael Bloomberg. I hope he will remain on the side of public schools when the campaign is over.
All in all, the forum was a day well spent.
Carol Burris: Thank you for this run-down on the event. (I love the James Joyce award for Biden.) But I have to add that any mention of Betsy tends to push my snark button: I guess she’ll have to work on her resume again (That’s code for “bank account”). CBK
Carol Burris for Secretary of Education!!!!
“his inner Molly Bloom”–Oh my sweet Lord, I can’t stop laughing!!!
“yes my mountain flower, yes!”
Yes…yes 🙂
Oh my God Yes!
OK. We have a second. All in favor, say, “Aye.”
This is a fantastic summary! Thank you very much, Carol Burris!
Carol. This is wonderful. Thanks for thr apt awards and some hearty laughs. You nailed every one.
Wonderful summary, thank you! Can I please ask–What will it take to put on the table the urgent need to greatly reduce class size if we are serious about enhancing student learning? How come this key issue with such research backup never gets to the table in a forum sponsored by teacher union presidents? Second, when will the racist heart of the funding inequity get on the agenda, that zip code and family income determine how much is spent on the public schools a kid attends? Thank you again.
When will the racist heart of the funding inequity get on the agenda?
YES!!!!! It’s freaking time!!!!
Some candidates are dancing around this one, but they don’t put it in these stark, true terms. They need to do so.
Years ago Indiana conducted a program that I believe was called Prime Time to limit class size Gr K-2 to 18, I think. What were the results?
While smaller class sizes would be stupendous K-12, if budgets allowed for just K-2, I think it would have an impact.
Agreed!
I would imagine that reducing class size is job #1 if and when the Title I funding is tripled and actually reaches high need schools. It was not mentioned during the event, but I’m sure the organizers have it in mind. Good on you for bringing it up specifically.
time well spent…..show me a drop of 6 or 7 points for Buttegieg……and watch the media squirm out of blaming it on anything related to education.
So I have not commented on the presidential run of Michael Bennet, but his latest solution to the education crisis is so outrageous that I feel I must weigh in. His idea that mostly black and brown children need to spend a 6th day drilling and killing to get those damn stubborn test scores up while mostly white children spend their 6th day taking their myriad of private lessons shows how little he understands the inequities of our society or how little he understands the purpose of public education. And, of course, he talked to charter school folks. He is the one who opened the flood gates of privatization in Denver.
Thank you, Carol, for your informative and entertaining recap of the forum.
Jeannie Kaplan
Former DPS Board Member while Michael Bennet was superintendent
Raj Chetty (aka, VAManujan) is on Buttigieg’s policy team bragging to Pete about his Nobel prize winning study?
What a surprise.
Ha ha ha ha!
I was not impressed with the questions from moderators or even the audience. Were the questions vetted because not one person asked Pete about his association with DFER, TFA or even Reed Hastings. Nor did anyone catch Bennett’s mischaracterization of public charters. I only saw the first 2 candidates. But will review the others.
No mention of Booker chickening out. Mr. Charter himself!
The saddest part for me was this should have been broadcast live on MSNBC instead of streamed, Education had not been an issue in the debates, and as far as I’m concerned Carol needs to be a moderator when it does become an issue worth debating!
Please try to get this published as an op ed in the Times so Pete is forced to answer why he or his husband thinks policy is made through studies like VAM because he’s going down the Duncan road!
Pete’s advisors are John King, Duncan’s successor, and Jim Shelton, ex-Gates, Ed-Duncan, ex-Race to Top, ex-ChanZuckerberg
I think the questions were designed to avoid controversy. The corporate media does not want to stir up a hornet’s nest with other corporate media. As Singer noted, the questions were pre-screened. The emphasis was on what the candidates will do for public education, not what has been done to it.
Good point
I watched almost every minute online and I’ve read three articles on the event already – (Chalkbeat, Steven Singer and this one) – my takeaways of the event are below:
It’s high time K-12 education was discussed in depth in a presidential campaign. To get a “mainstream” media outlet to cover this without having a lot of stage-managed ed reform propaganda is impressive. Rehema Ellis did ask Sen. Warren questions from the perspective of charter parents who want better options for “more involved” families, but after some back and forth, Warren ended with the general platitude “public money should stay in public schools”.
Warren has been hinting recently that opening new charter schools prevents or slows the fixing of ALL schools across-the-board. But because it’s bad optics to tell charter parents they need to look beyond their own families and think about all kids, she kept it to a generalization, delivered with passion. It was a strong moment for her, but did not really resolve the core dispute – that charters are dividing us, academically segregating kids and introducing competition into a sector where it does not belong.
Another big moment was Denisha Jones’ question to Joe Biden about standardized testing. The way she framed it (and the audience cheering), Biden agreed immediately that it should be ended, forgetting that standardized testing expanded under the Obama administration and greatly increased punitive stakes for low test scores.
I can’t remember Biden ever saying he opposed standardized tests before. The NPE scorecard says “Although he has a long history in governance, Biden’s positions on testing and vouchers are difficult to discern” (he voted for NCLB in 2001 and said he regretted it by 2007). So this seems like the biggest news of the day. Immediately, right wing sites like Daily Caller and RedState put out articles knocking Biden for pandering to the crowd and Dr. Jones, who linked standardized testing to racism and eugenics.
Biden’s answer was hard to follow – he said teachers should create the curriculum, which sounds like he agrees standardized testing forces a cookie-cut curriculum on schools, but he was not exactly playing to the crowd when he said “there’s some lousy teachers out there” and “I’m not saying every teacher is a great teacher”.
I was also disappointed Buttigieg was not asked about his pro-charter donors, like Reed Hastings, and his ties to corporate reformers like former Ed Secretary John King. I would have liked to hear Klobuchar and Steyer asked about charters and charter PAC donations too.
In the Chalkbeat coverage, I thought they dissed the event sponsors, saying only that it sponsored by “teachers unions and their allies”. I think they don’t get that unions have not been really been leading the opposition to privatization. I also saw some pro-charter parents post a photo of some cops on twitter, saying the police prevented them from attending the forum. They left out that it was sold out and they didn’t have a ticket…
Great piece, Joe! Now, if Biden can remember what he said about standardized testing a day from now. . . .
Re: “Dr. Jones, who linked standardized testing to racism and eugenics”
There are, ofc, many parallels between Corporate Education Deform and the Eugenics Movement.
Both were funded, in the US, by a handful of oligarchs.
Both were propagated via astroturf groups, including media and think tanks, funded by those oligarchs.
Both were superficially compelling pseudosciences based on garbage “data.”
Actually understanding the issues involved was, in both cases, beyond the reach or grasp of a great many people.
Both led to significant federal and state legislation that was lobbied for and supported by many American politicians who received contributions from the corporate oligarchs.
Both involved collections of large databases.
Both relied heavily on invalid and unreliable statistical techniques. (It’s not true that you can “prove anything with statistics.” You can prove anything with lousy statistics.)
Both were sold to the public using scare tactics comparing the US to other nations.
Both ignored the actual most significant causal issue–economic inequity/poverty.
Both relied upon invalid tests.
Both had devastating consequences for the targeted populations.
Both were treated superficially and shallowly in the media, which led to widespread misunderstanding of the issues involved.
In the mid-twentieth century, the Eugenics Records Office on Long Island, supported by U.S. billionaires, issued a report calling for the serilization of the bottom 10 percent of the U.S. population based on scores on IQ tests in order to protect our genetic stock.
A really great book could be written about these parallels.
Biden would be lucky if could remember what he just said an hour from now.
He’s got Bidenzheimers.
Bidenzheimers
Bidenzheimers– takes your mind
Puts it in a coma kind
Memory’s a total loss
Just like used-up dental floss
(PS, I have been hoping to use dental floss in a poem for some time. Now I can check it off my to do list)
And creating a wonderful image with it: a used dental floss flowing freely in Joezheimer’s brain.
Bidenzheimers is also known as Joe’sheimers
FYI, Joe and Al are distantly related.
“Klobuchar recounted how a former student with a disability came to her mother’s funeral due to the kindness mom had extended to him long after he left her class. ”
The warmth and caring of a teacher are the main thing to empahsize when we talk about teachers and education. The humanity of a teacher is the one thing that cannot be evaluated by science, and if a candidate emphasizes the psychological aspects of education will have an easy time to sell all the other stuff we care about: reduce tests, homework, class time, class size, technology, increase breaks, personal interactions, financial support for schools and teachers.
The warmth and caring of a teacher are the main thing to empahsize when we talk about teachers and education.”
Except if we are talking about Michelle Rhee, in which case we should emphasize her ice cold demeanor and totally uncaring attitude — and, of course, her broomstick.
Other than that, a very good point.
Máté Wierdl for Secretary of Ed!
Maybe you could take a couple years off from proving the Riemann hypothesis (The probability that anyone else will prove it in that time is pretty low, given the number of mathematician stars who have tried and failed over the last 150 years. Then again,maybe VAManujan (aka, Raj Chetty) can do it, if anyone can.
YES!!!
I wish that were true, but I fear those kinds of stories without any context don’t really help change the public’s mind about the real changes that are needed. That’s why DFER Dems always seem willing to praise individual teachers.
The privatizers always hold out dedicated charter school teachers, too. In fact, the underlying subtext of the ed reform movement is that they are just making sure every child has a school with only warm and caring teachers and one reason public schools are bad is because the union says that those good teachers get laid off before the lazy ones who have tenure. And bad teachers can’t get fired.
I didn’t hear much about how hard it is for those warm and caring teachers to do their jobs because of the systematic assault on public schools by ed reformers who don’t want to spend the money that allows them to succeed.
How many protesters were outside at the forum? Here is Chalkbeat’s take
One ongoing conflict was visible, though largely offstage. Parents and advocates for charter schools gathered outside the event to say their message was not being heard, both by candidates and the event organizers.
It was a striking juxtaposition, and one that showed how the political winds have shifted in recent years. Whereas President Obama supported the expansion of charter schools and accountability measures for teachers, those who want to be the next Democratic president have taken a very different approach. Among Democrats, charter school advocates are now playing defense, while teachers unions and philosophically aligned groups are in the driver’s seat.
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/12/14/democratic-presidential-candidates-education-forum-charter-schools/
Those who want to be the next Democratic president have taken a very different approach. ”
Hiding under the bleachers.
Or staying home with the flu.
Just a little reminder that teachers are Bernie Sanders’s biggest supporters. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/10/education-reform-more-to-bernie-sanders/
Why would anybody read an article which calls public education an “industry”?
Warren received $2.6 million from the education industry