[intro]
The rise of the Religious Right has coincided with the privatization movement in public schools. While some may feel that this is coincidental, there is reason to believe there is a directly causal relationship between these two factors. Two scholars, from different disciplines, will discuss how their work comes together to help explain the history and current state of efforts to diminish, if not dismantle, the American public education system. Katherine Stewart has written on the rise and increasing power of the Religious Right in her book The Power Worshipers. She will be joined by Diane Ravitch who has written extensively on education and, in her recent book Slaying Goliath, explores the history of the school privatization movement and the efforts to oppose it.
Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
Link to register: https://18308a.blackbaudhosting.com/18308a/Will-Public-Education-Survive-A-Look-at-the-Threats-to-Education-Systems-from-Privatization–Reli
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s the ed reform echo chamber line on public schools in the pandemic:
“Before the COVID meteor knocked them for a loop, school districts were the primary providers of child care, nutrition, recreation and education — not to mention the largest employers of adults — in their communities. By the time our crisis has passed, families, school staff and district administrators will have spent at least a full frantic year cobbling together alternatives to the bundle of school services districts once provided.
Many districts labored mightily to respond, and there are inspiring examples of rapid adaptation. But when students could no longer gather safely in school buildings manned by school staff, learning for many children halted and an essential community safety net suddenly vanished. The pandemic reminded us that, sooner or later, single points of failure will, inevitably, fail.
To paraphrase Maya Angelou, when a system shows you what it is, believe it.”
Public schools and the public school students who attend them get no practical or worthwhile effort or assistance because “public education policy” is utterly dominated by an “ed reform movement” that is devoted to replacing them with the privatized systems they prefer.
Until we get some people in government and policy who actually support our schools and extend practical effort on their behalf public school students will be ignored and neglected, as they have been both before the pandemic and during it.
They have no interest in assisting our students or working on their behalf. What they’re interested in is creating privatized systems, and that’s ALL they work on.
And if Joe Biden hires out of this echo chamber we will get exactly the same thing we got with Bush, then Obama, then Trump. Nothing. Public school students will get nothing.
hardest truth: Biden is just as susceptible now as he was during his VP years to believing reformer hype
Not sure why you think that. During Biden’s VP years, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were also using ed reform-speak like “no child should be bound by zipcode” and “I support PUBLIC charter schools” (huh – did that mean non-profit?) In 2017, Bernie was campaigning for a DFER democrat of the month (!) running against a pro-public school democrat in the primary for Virginia Governor. Imagine what Virginia would be like right now if the DFER dem won??
But Warren and Bernie got woke! More Democrats are getting woke, while the Republicans are now all-in on complete privatization and spending taxpayer money to fund religious schools (which means taking it from the public school budgets).
The Biden “Victory” Fund is sponsoring a virtual conversation with – guess who? Arne & John King.Does the Biden campaign really think Arne will attract teachers to come out & vote for him?
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2020/09/dear-joe-biden.html
The price of admission is $5,600 and on the bottom end, an “attendee” pays $100.
I am not surprised, but I am disappointed once more in democrats. The deform crowd is backed by lots of money that buys them access to candidates. This is a concern, particularly since several of Biden’s early posts from the NEA conference in Houston last year have magically disappeared as well. We still must vote for Biden to save democracy, but I agree this is pure BS.
Here’s Betsy DeVos and the pandemic and public schools:
“Betsy DeVos: We’re learning that particularly K-12 education has got to do more to be flexible and responsive and really customized in some way to every child’s education. And we’ve not had a lot of that in K-12 education. So I think it’s pushing people in really good and positive ways to think differently about it in the future.
Sharyl: There have been pushes for education reform for many years, but not a lot of agreement on what reforms need to be done. Have you put any thought into the notion that we are sort of going through a forced form of education reform with the changes? Will things ever be the same in our public schools, in our colleges, after these changes and accommodations they’ve had to make?
DeVos: In places where schools are not being responsive and not meeting the needs of the families and their community, parents are taking their own volition and forming small micro schools or learning pods, as some are calling them, or homeschooling. And I think this is a great development because they’re going to be able to assess whether this is the right answer for them longer term or some new combination that they hadn’t thought of maybe six months ago. But the students that I’m really concerned about are those that are most vulnerable, whose parents don’t have the resources to make these kinds of decisions and hire a tutor or share a teacher with four other families or whatever the case is. And it’s really imperative that we advance this notion of school choice, which means empowering those families with the resources that are spent on their children to be able to take and use in the environment that’s going to work for their kids”
This is identical to the ed reform echo chamber approach at Gates or Walton or any of their university department or think tanks.
It’s the same.
If we continue to hire ed reformers we will continue to see no effort or investment in the public schools our kids attend, for a very good reason- none of them support public schools. There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the DeVos approach and mainstream ed reform. They’re the same.
Our schools and students haven’t been supported over the past 20 years because policy and government are utterly dominated by an echo chamber of people who don’t support public schools. We should stop hiring them. They don’t return any value to 90% of students in the country. They’re working full time on something else entirely- privatizing educational services.
“rise of the religious right”
Every American should read the remarks of Atty Gen. William Barrr posted at the Justice Department website 9-23-2020. The speech was given at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on the occasion of Barr’s receipt of their Christifideles Laici award. The Breakfast is modeled after the National Prayer Breakfast, a political/religious group that includes politicians, businessmen, etc. The Catholic group includes members Leonard Leo, Joseph Cella, Rick Santorum,… Two prior speakers at the function were Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, a critic of Pope Francis, and Antonin Scalia (Amy Barrett clerked for him).
In the speech, Barr provides background about the rise of Catholic influence in politics. He attributes it to Pope John Paul II and says it began 15 years ago.
In the ultimate irony, Barr said in the speech, God disposes us to do justice, to love mercy and to comport ourselves with charity, humility…. Barr reinstated the practice of federal executions.
In the speech, he quotes a priest, people must be governed by a universal moral order.
He says that militant secularists work to exclude religious people from bringing a religious perspective to bear on conversations about the common good. Not surprisingly, he praises the Catholic wins in the Espinosa, Biel and Little Sisters of the Poor SCOTUS cases.
He blames a hollowing out of religion for urban violence, drug abuse and
“broken families” , not growing income disparity and racial injustice. He credits the success the conservative religious have had to hard work advocating for sound jurisprudential philosophies and appointing principled judges to state and federal courts.
We don’t have to live it to know that in courts, the Church and its rich members are going to receive favored treatment from the “principled” judges. And, punishment will be reserved for the 99% who aren’t living the “moral order’. We’re already experiencing it.
We will only succeed in uncovering the scam of privatization when we subvert the racist system of education that all schools are forced to follow!
The link to this event:
https://masshist.org/calendar
Thanks. I am registered and looking forward to this.
Should be fascinating!
Or here:
https://18308a.blackbaudhosting.com/18308a/Will-Public-Education-Survive-A-Look-at-the-Threats-to-Education-Systems-from-Privatization–Reli
Ed reform’s sum total contribution to public school students in the pandemic:
5000 think pieces on how we don’t need public schools and instead should have a system of contract educational providers
successful lobbying for private and charter school funding and a huge national campaign for a massive voucher expansion
Is your kid in a public school? Too bad for them. Not a priority. In fact, 8 months into this no one in the ed reform echo chamber (which includes government) has done a lick of work that is even relevant to them, let alone helpful.
If your public school managed to cobble something together be aware that they did that without any assistance from the thousands of full time employees of the ed reform movement or the US Department of Education or state education agencies. They were all working on “reinventing” – pursuing their ideological vision that doesn’t include your kid or your kid’s school. 90% of US students and families ignored, again.
I guess if I would be remiss if I failed to mention when ed reformers in government DID expend some effort on students in public schools. There were the two times they used our kids to promote Donald Trump’s re-election with the campaign events around reopening and Donald Trump’s custom history curriculum which I suppose they’ll be jamming into the public schools they don’t support and didn’t attend.
So our 50 million were mentioned. They just weren’t assisted or supported in any way.
Public school students were SUCH a low priority in federal and DC and policy circles the CDC couldn’t even be bothered to issue school guidelines until after our schools were open.
20,000 full time paid “public education advocates” in ed reform and no one works on public schools. The last priority. Always. Our students. The unfashionable default. The afterthoughts.
The register button will not allow us to register, even if I paste URL in my browser. Could you send me the link attend on Wednesday to hear you and Katherine Stewart? Thank you, Nancy and Clark Gilpin nygilpin@gmail.com
On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 8:31 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” [intro] The rise of the Religious Right has > coincided with the privatization movement in public schools. While some may > feel that this is coincidental, there is reason to believe there is a > directly causal relationship between these two f” >
This is the link to register
https://www.masshist.org/calendar/event?event=3349
Will this be recorded? I have a dr. appt. at 4:00 and then a 2-hour drive back to Greenport.
Yes