The privatizers are on the move again in Florida. They want to send billions more to unaccountable, low-quality voucher schools. They will take money away from your public schools to pay for vouchers for religious schools where students are not required to take state tests and teachers are not required to be certified. Stop the Steal of public education!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
School board members in Florida receive compensation for serving on the local school board. The state legislature is in the process of eliminating compensation for service on school boards. This move is likely intended to weaken advocacy and representation for public schools to set the stage for expanding ESAs. “On Friday, at the House Secondary Education & Career Development Subcommittee meeting, members voted along party lines to move forward with a proposed constitutional amendment (HJR 1461) that would bar compensation of county school board members.”https://floridapolitics.com/archives/411583-house-committee-moves-forward-with-joint-resolution-to-stop-paying-school-board-members/
Thank you for posting this. As the author of this “Stop SB 48 leaflet, I would like to call readers’ attention to the fact that Protect Our Public Schools (POPS) Manasota has a “Stop SB 48 Tool Kit” on its website, http://www.popsmanasota.org. Also check out two articles I wrote for “Critical Times,” one on the dangers of SB 48 and the other on one of the major Florida (and national) school privatization operatives, John Kirtley, a protege of Betsy DeVos, and major pusher of all forms of school privatization including education savings accounts. The articles can be accessed on the Stop 48 tool kit website listed above as well as at http://www.criticaltimes.org. As I say in my article, Florida’s SB 48 legislation, if passed, will create the apparatus to totally privatize education in Florida. Educational savings accounts are much more dangerous than vouchers as ESAs put the funding directly with the students–what the privatizers have wanted all along.
Carol Lerner
popsmanasota@gmail.com
I can’t wait to see the “e commerce site modeled after Amazon” where people will go to redeem the low value voucher they traded public schools for- good God.
The Best and Brightest in ed reform come up with these privatization schemes. It’s just junk. They’re replacing governance with cheap, shoddy, commercial gimmicks.
It’s just a shame. Will people really fall for this? They’ll trade a comprehensive K-12 public education for a low value gift card to the ed reform marketplace? It’s an absolute rip off.
Remember when the entire ed reform echo chamber insisted repeatedly that they were NOT privatizing K-12 education? Took great umbrage that anyone even said it?
Just a flat out lie. The moment they gained a majority in these state legislatures it was open season on public education. Take note also- they have not done ONE thing for the public school students in these states. Nothing. The public is now paying thousands of ed reformers in government who return no value at all to students in public schools. They contribute nothing.
The “pod” concept they’re all pushing in unison is classic ed reform too. The “pod” operates by either not paying the “teachers” at all or giving them “grants” of 25,000.
A low wage “movement”. Aggressively anti-union and promotes rock bottom wages for people who work in their “schools”.
Arne Duncan was out promoting an ed reform scheme to use 100% unpaid tutors to bring students up to speed after the pandemic. The free tutors were permitted to beg parents for compensation, but only on a voluntary basis. In ed reform world this is a “job” where you beg individuals to contribute to your salary.
They’re VERY innovative. The “innovation” consists of not paying people for work. They think they invented this.
Billions spent on ed reform think tanks and their “innovation” is outsource everything to government contractors. Gates and Walton are getting robbed.
!!!!!!
When ed reformers blanket the country and tell us they want to “reinvent” schools this is the reality of what they do- they chop up public systems and sell them off in pieces to a bunch of completely unregulated contractors.
All that babbling about “equity” and “excellence” comes down to a cut-rate voucher that represents a 50% cut in public education funding and a website selling educational product.
The next thing we’ll see is ed reformers move away from standardized testing. They can police and punish public schools with mandates but they aren’t going to be able to do that in the completely privatized systems they’re all pushing.
They won’t be able to track these kids at all, let alone order them to take 15 tests a year. Pretty soon it will become clear that the ONLY schools that are subject to ed reform “accountability” are the public schools they disfavor. Public schools will object to that, and they should.
This completely incoherent and nonsensical “movement” will be hoisted on their own petard when their zeal for privatization conflicts with their determination to test and punish. The “marketplace” ideological requirements they all recite will win that battle and all of a sudden their committment to “equity” with testing will go under the privatization bus.
The pro-public school candidate won statewide in Wisconsin yesterday:
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2021/04/06/jill-underly-set-become-next-wisconsin-superintendent-schools/7110761002/
Both Betsy DeVos and Arne Duncan backed the ed reform candidate, who lost:
“Kerr was backed largely by conservatives, but also touted a couple endorsements from Democrats: state Sen. Lena Taylor and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has supported expanding charter schools. ”
DeVos and Duncan are now backing the same candidates? The ed reform agenda is indistinguishable from that promoted by DeVos? Wow.
Chiara,
That’s wonderful news! A supporter of public schools elected Wisconsin Superintendent!
No one can say what kind of education is best. Is it best to teach people to be fools? Obviously not but thats exactly what schools already teach. Teaching people through, and to, respect for argumentum ad populum is just teaching people to be the same fool as the guy infront of them following someone else off a bridge. Only a fool would take that lesson to mean you should teach disrespect for authority but just look at how many people thought that? Yes, a hoard of well trained slaves can accomplish great tasks but so can a mob of free people if they can all respect reasoning. However, obviously, not all people can be reasonable. Especially people who assert beyond all else that they are infact reasonable without question. It’s a well defined right of people to have religious freedom. People have a right to have it taught to their children regardless of anyones arbitrary opinions and subjective facts. Does that leave children vulnerable to indoctrination camps? What else it there? For fact, everything we think we know is just a collectivist delusion.
Example: shape of the earth, choose the best answer
A) flat
B) round
C) depends on your opinion
D) depends in someone else’s opinion
E) all of the above
D) none of the above
Okay, so if you have bent space where objects collect or where you have enough objects bending space where they all gather into a comparably large mass, what shape is it from a three dimensional perspective and/or is that a perspective that might have the best perspective to make that guess?
Have you ever heard of, what some people call, a tesseract?
Knowing that concepts of three dimensional space do not govern actual 4 dimensional space…. Is the earth flat, or is it round and what kind of idiots are you except the exact same idiots you just called a bunch of idiots?
I can see that there should be manditory standard test but i cant see there should be a mandatory standard score.
The real problem is, we have a real and valid conspiracy. Not just a theory. Its been known for at least three decades that humans and everything else on earth cannot gestate in space, being this is irrifutable proof by all current religious standards(assuming a current religion has to be at least 100 years old) of the theory of evolution? No religion i ever heard of had an explanation for why people cant gestate in space and science has no proof a centrifuge could work instread of geotropics, why is that? Dont know? Why not? It should be absolutely central in your mind before you go psng trillions to develop martian spacerock humping robots… Doncha think? Cuz if you need the earth’s bent space then you need the earths exact angle of bent space. Mars wont do ya for it. You can only colonise mars with eunuchs and nuns. How many generations is that going to last? “Nope” thats how many. So, question begs, how is it they’ve known that for over 3 decades and you had no honest clue?
Folks, 8 billion people on the planet, you’re saying 1 to 4 billion chances for there to be a conspiracy, could just be a crazy theory? Who put in your disgusting slimey minds that the obvious is just, “crazy conspiracy theory?”
Whatever folks, never before now has your whole world been teeter-tottering on the edge of self annihilation, if there were a conspiracy, what can you guess it’s plans are? Ignore is the derivative of ignorance, schmuckos.
And did you think they wouldnt make a deal for someone to honestly tell you who you’d never honestly listen to?
(:
Gth
The russia collusion probe was just to check trump if he too colluded, not to try and expose collision lol. For fact, what did it honestly expose? How effective would a probe be if anyone knew what it was for? We’re talking about the fbi here peeps. “Hey, im going to tell you what im looking for so you know exactly what to hide…” Sound worth 5mill? Does it? The only time before that i had ever even heard someone use the word collusion was when hillbillary was talking about world leaders colluding about it. Seems only the dixiecrats are sure they have the keys to the federal fallout shelter. And guess who you just put in the potus yet again? Fools, racism is just a reified equivocation fallacy and tool of nepotists in service of aristocrats to control slave minds like yours.
Lemmings or buffalo, you’re heading to another cliff, it’s the only place any of you seem to want to go.
“If you cant beat them, join them.” What you learn in public school
“If you cant beat them, lead them off a cliff.” ~al gore 1997
“Just sit back, heckle, and eat popcorn” ~me, your “saviour” lol, go die.