Archives for the month of: March, 2020
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A Visit with the Mother of the Resistance, Karen Lewis

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2020 //
12

Last week, I had a whirlwind visit to Chicago to talk about my new book. Fortunately before my flight to Charleston, West Virginia, I had time in the morning to visit Karen Lewis at an assisted living facility where the care is excellent.

Karen is a brilliant charismatic woman who taught science in the Chicago public schools for more than 20 years. In 2010, Karen led a faction of the Chicago Teachers Union called the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, which swept to victory in the union elections. She became president of the CTU. She was a strategic organizer who worked to build alliances with parent and community groups. In 2012, the CTU voted to strike. The legislature, egged on by Gates-funded Stand for Children, passed a law that they thought would make a strike impossible by requiring a vote of 75% of the membership. Karen and her team won the approval of about 90% of the members and led a successful strike that had the support of parents and communities because they understood that teachers were striking for their children.

Karen was an articulate and greatly admired visionary. She planned to run for mayor against Rahm Emanuel in 2015, and her own polling suggested that she would beat him handily.

Tragically, Karen was diagnosed with a brain tumor in October 2014. Since then, she has had a series of setbacks, including a stroke. Life is so unfair. Karen is only 66.

When I saw her, she was happy that I visited. As I expected, she is disabled and has limited mobility. But despite the terrible blows that life has dealt her, she is spirited, still has a sense of humor, and is interested in what’s happening in the world. I told her that wherever I go, people remember her as the Mother of the Resistance. They remember that she stood up to a bully and won. I showed her the photo of her in my book and told her that her legacy is there whenever teachers stand together and demand better conditions for teaching and learning. I told her she was the spark that lit the fire by her example and the powerful union she created. I told her she will never be forgotten.

She was a strong labor leader, a saucy woman who was fearless, wise, and funny.

I was glad I saw her but sad to see the tragedy she endured when she was at the peak of her promise. Her beloved husband John sees her every day and has been by her side through the best of times and the worst of times.

I wrote a note in the book I gave her. Simply, “Karen, I love you. Diane.”

Categories Chicago, Education Reform, Resistance, Union

Peter Greene: Whatever Happened to AltSchool?

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2020 //
10

I don’t know why, but I find it fascinating to read about entrepreneurial ventures in education that launch with dazzling publicity, then quietly disappear. For some reason, entrepreneurs with no education experience think it should be easy to revolutionize schooling. Bill Gates has been reinventing American education for about 20 years. Laurene Powell Jobs started the Emerson Collective and the XQ Initiative to reinvent the high school and put on a show on all three networks to launch. SamuelAbrams wrote an excellent book about the high-flying adventures of Chris Whittle and the Edison Project, called Education and the Commercial Mindset. Joel Klein persuaded Rupert Murdoch to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in his plan to revolutionize American education with a program called Amplify, which Murdoch unloaded in a fire sale to Laurene Powell Jobs (Klein now works for an online health insurance company called OSCAR, founded by Jared Kushner’s brother). Jonathan Knee wrote a book called Class Clowns: How the Smartest Investors Lost Billions in Education.

And here is a new entry about the dangers of amateurs reinventing education.

Peter Greene tells the story of the glorious rise and inglorious descent of AltSchool.

It was founded by alumni of Google. They raised large sums of money from investors. What could go wrong?

Greene begins:

You remember AltSchool, the miraculous Silicon Valley technoschool that was going to Change the Game. We’ve checked in on them from time to time, and it’s time to see what has happened since the Altschool ship ran aground on the shores of reality a while ago.

After two years of tinkering and tweaking, AltSchool burst on the scene with a flurry of PR in 2015. Founded by Max Ventilla, formerly of Google, and Bharat Mediratta, also a Googlite, it was going to bring technology and personalization to new heights. Like a wired-up free school, it would let students and teachers just sort of amble through the forest of education. Teachers would capture moments of demonstrated learning on video, students would do work on modules on computer, and it would all be crunched in a back room full of IT whizzes who would churn out personalized learning stuff for the students. The school set up some branch schools, lab schools, hither and yon. All the big names wanted to invest– Zuckerberg, Powell Jobs, etc.

They had money. They had ideas. All they were lacking was knowledge and experience.

You will want to read the rest. It’s a cautionary tale for other entrepreneurs.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Failure, Innovation, Technology

TIME: How Michael Bloomberg Undermines Democracy by Big Spending in Local School Board Races

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2020 //
13

One of the themes of my new book SLAYING GOLIATH is that billionaires are disrupting education by buying control of school districts and states. That, in conjunction with the federal government’s mean-spirited and useless mandate for annual standardized testing (no high-performing nation tests every child every year in grades 3-8), has posed a mortal threat to public schools.

TIME magazine published an article showing how one of our best known billionaires, Michael Bloomberg, has undermined democracy by buying local school board races and making it impossible for local people to compete with his spending.

The article begins:

School board elections are usually local affairs, with candidates soliciting money from neighbors at pizza parties and dragging along friends to knock on doors and ask for votes.

That’s what Chris Jackson expected when he decided to run for the school board in Oakland, Calif., in 2016. He’d previously been elected to the board of the City College of San Francisco and thought he knew how to build the ground game to win in Oakland. He started gathering endorsements—from the state superintendent of public schools and city council members and the Alameda County Democratic Party—and began raising money, feeling optimistic about his chances. By October, he’d raised almost $12,000. But Jackson did not plan for Michael Bloomberg.

In October of 2016, a few weeks before the election, Bloomberg gave $300,000 to the political action committee sponsored by Go Public Schools Advocates, an Oakland-based nonprofit that supports charter schools. The committee, Families and Educators for Public Education, then spent $153,000 in support of James Harris, Jackson’s opponent. Dwarfed by funding, Jackson watched as the PAC paid for web ads and campaign literature and phone banking for Harris, and then as it posted an attack ad about Jackson on Facebook. “It’s so disappointing to work hard, gather volunteers, and then see an out-of-towner like Bloomberg drop hundreds of thousands of dollars and just win through no effort but money,” Jackson, a special-education teacher in Oakland, says.

Bloomberg was not the only donor to Families and Educators for Public Education, but his $300,000 stands out. In the campaign-finance records, there are pages upon pages of donors who gave $10 or $25 apiece; the second-biggest contribution on the filing in which Bloomberg’s donation was disclosed was $250 from a retiree. “There’s no way outsiders should have more speech in Oakland than the actual residents and voters do,” Jackson says.

A couple of years ago, the Network for Public Education Action published a report documenting how billionaires are hijacking local and state school board elections. They flood the races with money, making it impossible for a local person to compete. In most cases, they buy elections in districts and states where they are not residents. There are also organizations like Democrats for Education Reform (hedge fund managers) who bundle money and make huge donations from their members who also do not live in the districts.

Bloomberg is not the only billionaire playing this anti-democratic game. There are also the Walton family, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Doris Fisher (Banana Republic and the GAP), John Arnold (ex-Enron), and Reed Hastings (Netflix).

What is the goal of all this money? Electing school board members who are committed to opening new charters and fighting any accountability for existing charters.

Say it for what it is: It is an attack on our democracy by the monied elite. It allows them to buy what they want, instead of respecting voters’ wishes.

The principle of one man, one vote dies when money swamps elections.

As a postscript, may I express my delight to see the new TIME coverage of education. We used to get adoring portraits of Michelle Rhee and attacks on teachers from TIME. No more. Now they are looking at the attack on democracy by billionaires.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Education Reform

Los Angeles: Charter Industry Pours More Millions into School Board Election

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2020 //
14

Sara Roos writes in the new L.A. Education Examiner that more charter millions are flowing into the school board race. The biggest spender is billionaire Bill Bloomfield, who has thus far spent nearly $4 million to defeat pro-publics school incumbents. He says he is “against special interests,” but fails to recognize or admit that he alone is putting his thumb on the scale to support a pro-charter candidate. The charter industry, backed by a long list of billionaires, is a special interest with far deeper pockets than the union.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Tennessee: Parents and Advocates Will Hold Press Briefing Against Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2020 //
11

Last year,Tennessee passed a voucher bill targeting only two urban districts, despite the fact that their legislators opposed it. The controversial bill passed by one vote, and the vote was delayed for last-minute arm twisting. Parents from the affected districts are holding a press briefing tomorrow along with civil tights groups opposed to diversion of public funds to private schools.

MEDIA ADVISORY
February 28, 2020

Media Contact: Ashley Levett
(334) 296-0084 / ashley.levett@splcenter.org

Tennessee Parents and Advocates to Host Press Briefing on Monday

TENNESSEE – On Monday, March 2, parents and advocates of public school children in Metro Nashville Public Schools and Shelby County Schools will host a telephonic press briefing to announce steps to address the unlawful diversion of public school funding in Nashville and Memphis to private school vouchers.

During the call, public school parents in Nashville and Memphis will outline their concerns with the Tennessee Education Savings Account (ESA) voucher law, which passed by a single vote in May 2019 over the objections of state legislators, parents and community members in Shelby and Davidson counties – which are the counties targeted by the law.

For call-in details, please RSVP to Ashley Levett at ashley.levett@splcenter.org.

WHO: Parents of public school children in Memphis and Tennessee; the ACLU of Tennessee; pro bono by the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP; the Southern Poverty Law Center and Education Law Center, which collaborate on the Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) campaign

WHAT: Telephonic press briefing to announce steps to address the unlawful diversion of public school funding in Nashville and Memphis to private school vouchers

WHEN: Monday, March 2, 2020 at 1:00 p.m. CT

WHERE: Please RSVP to Ashley Levett to receive the call-in details at ashley.levett@splcenter.org

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Categories Civil Rights, Education Reform, Memphis, Nashville, Tennessee, Vouchers

The Intercept: Bloomberg Hires Democratic Party Leaders in Texas And California

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2020 //
55

Mike Bloomberg knows there are many ways to buy an election. Such as flooding airwaves with campaign commercials.

Then there is hiring the vice-chair of the state Democratic Parties in Texas and California. In addition to their influence in the party, they just happen to be superdelegates who will get to cast a vote if no candidate wins a majority of votes on the first round. Have any other candidates thought of putting superdelegates on their campaign payroll? Doesn’t it appear kind of like a conflict of interest or a bribe?

Why not hire all the superdelegates to guarantee their second ballot vote at the convention?

FORMER NEW YORK City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has hired two state Democratic party vice chairs in Super Tuesday states with two of the top three highest number of pledged delegates. Bloomberg hired Texas Democratic Party Vice Chair Carla Brailey as a senior adviser to his campaign in December, and he hired California State Democratic Party Vice Chair Alexandra Rooker for a similar role in January.

Both Brailey and Rooker are superdelegates who will likely vote for the Democratic presidential nominee at the party’s national convention this summer. Hiring the leadership of a state party doesn’t appear to break any campaign laws, but it indicates Bloomberg’s intent to effectively purchase political support, said Brendan Fischer, the federal reform program director at the Campaign Legal Center. “This does seem to fit a longstanding pattern of Bloomberg using his billions to help generate support among political elites,” he said.

Rooker is one of two members of Bloomberg’s campaign staff who also sits on the Democratic National Committee’s rules committee, which recommends rules for the convention, the convention agenda, the convention’s permanent officers, amendments to the party’s charter, and other resolutions. In November, the month he entered the presidential race, Bloomberg gave $320,000 to the DNC, his first contributions to the committee since 1998. (He was a registered Republican from 2001 to 2007, after which he became an independent. He registered as a Democrat in 2018.) He also donated $10,000 to the Texas Democratic Party, where Brailey has been vice chair since June 2018, as well as $10,000 to the California Democratic Party. Brailey, Rooker, and the Bloomberg campaign did not respond to requests for comment on their hiring.

Brailey rose through the local Washington Democratic Party structure, as a protege of former Mayor Adrian Fenty, who was himself the patron of current D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a high-profile backer of Bloomberg.

Bloomberg will appear on the ballot for the first time on Super Tuesday, March 3. His campaign has poured tens of millions of dollars into both Texas and California where there are 228 and 416 delegates up for grabs, respectively.

In California, Bloomberg has hired a number of party alums in addition to Rooker, who was also previously a vice president and shop steward for the Communication Workers Association Local 9400. Former state Democratic Party executive director Chris Masami Myers is leading Bloomberg’s California strategy, and Courtni Pugh is a senior adviser focusing on outreach to black and Latino voters; Pugh previously led Sen. Kamala Harris’s California strategy before she dropped out of the presidential race in December. Bloomberg has spent at least $46.3 million on television ads in California so far, has dozens of offices there, and his campaign has said they planned to hire at least 800 staffers in the state. (They had hired around 300 staffers by the first week of February.)

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Categories Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Education Reform

Mike Rose Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2020 //
2

Mike Rose is a thinker, writer, and scholar whose works I greatly admire. He has the capacity to identify with the lives of those he writes about and to understand their point of view. He tends to align himself with those who live on the margins, not the rich and powerful who enjoy the exercise of power over others, the others who who did not choose to be the subjects of the powerful.

I was therefore deeply gratified to read his thoughtful review of SLAYING GOLIATH. He recognized that the underlying them was about power and control. Who makes decisions? By what right do they impose their will on others?and, how can those without power stand up for themselves and prevail? Whose narrative will dominate decision-making?

He writes:


The story told in Slaying Goliath is primarily a story of the clash between the long-dominant Goliath and the emergent and energized David, a story of power and politics, of grass-roots activism, of organizing and mobilizing— and a story of recapturing a narrative. I am also taken by a parallel story that runs through the book, one that is certainly present in Ravitch’s telling, but that, given my current fixation, I’d like to highlight. It is a story about knowledge and power—knowledge about schools and children and the art and science of teaching.

As I wrote earlier, there are multiple actors and multiple motives involved in the so-called school reforms of the last few decades, but one dominant characteristic a number of them share is a reliance on ideas and language drawn from business schools, economics, and the high-tech sector: the use of standardized tests to measure learning; the application of those tests to assess teacher effectiveness through “value-added” methodology; the creation of curriculum standards with the intention of systematizing instruction as well as the development of scripts and routinized behavioral techniques to direct and improve teaching; computer-based instruction to “personalize” learning. This technocratic orientation also encourages a certain kind of systems-level thinking: what are the mechanisms, the “levers” that will yield broad systemic change? The structural or technological magic bullet.
There is value in asking the kinds of questions the critics ask— How do we know students are learning? Can we improve teacher quality? —and certainly value in taking a broad, systems-level perspective on schooling. The problem is that the solutions the technocratic orientation yield tend toward the mechanistic and simplified. As I argued in Why School?, the faith in technology can lead to a belief that complex human problems can be framed as engineering problems, their social and political messiness factored away. Hand-in-glove is an epistemological insularity, a lack of knowledge about social and cultural conditions—or worse, a willful discounting of those conditions as irrelevant. It is telling how rarely one hears any references to history or culture in the technologists’ discourse. Also minimized is the value of on-the-ground, craft knowledge; experience in classrooms is not as valuable as abstract knowledge of organizational dynamics and technological principles and processes. A professor of management tells a class of aspiring principals that the more they know about the particulars of instruction, the less effective they’ll be, for that nitty-gritty knowledge will blur their perception of the problem and the application of universal principles of management —as fitting for a hospital or a manufacturing plant as a school…

After decades of Goliath’s public relations success in stomping all over the public schools and those who work them (remember that Forbes tagline “the largest, most dysfunctional field of all”), David and his slingshot crew were able to change the story, reach the public with what they knew, with a different way of seeing the everyday life in our schools: Kids without nurses or librarians; overcrowded classrooms; testing gone off the rails; teachers living paycheck to paycheck, if they could make it that far; parents giving first-person testimony about what their neighborhood school means to them. Ravitch is correct in characterizing this shift in perception as remarkable. The story she tells is a compelling political drama, and an account of the formation of social policy, and a master class for activists. It is also an epic tale about knowledge, whose knowledge counts, and what can happen when a kind of knowledge that has long been distorted and discounted gains authority and power. That is quite a story to tell.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Vouchers
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