The privatization movement is built on the ideology of “a backpack full of cash.” Give the money to the family and let them spend it where and how they want. The money is not actually in the child’s backpack, but handed out to families to spend as they wish. If they want their child to attend a religious school or a private school or a for-profit school or a virtual charter school or home school, here is a voucher worth $5,000.
This approach discounts the obligation of the community and society to provide certain basic goods and services that are available to everyone. We have public beaches, public parks, public transportation, police, firefighters, and other goods and services that are the responsibility of government. We pay taxes to maintain public schools, even if we don’t have children ourselves. We pay taxes to maintain public schools, even if our own children are grown and are no long in school. We pay taxes to maintain public schools, even if our own children attended private schools. That’s what a community does to make sure every child is educated. It is the job of the polity to assure that all public schools have equitable and adequate resources.
The “bait and switch” of the school choice is to individualize the social obligation and turn it into a consumer choice. This is a deceptive way of evading society’s obligation to ensure that every school, wherever it is located, has equitable and adequate resources. All schools should have the resources they need for the children they serve: well-tended buildings, a library with up-to-date technology, a full arts program, experienced teachers, small classes, a curriculum that includes history, science, civics, mathematics, literature and foreign languages.
But some very rich people don’t like paying taxes so poor kids can have what their children have, and they have persuaded many legislators to buy into the hoax of school choice. Persuasion takes the form of campaign contributions, and they are very generous with their efforts to evade taxes that serve the good of all.
This reader explains:
I just don’t get why it is so hard to get the message across that we are not purchasing our own child’s education, we are providing a public good that educates all children. We are not buying the right to use roads or police and fire services, we are participating in the funding of those common goods for the entire community.
This situation points out the importance of avoiding public/private partnerships or at least structuring them much differently (to avoid huge tax write-offs). If everyone pays their taxes, the needs of the community will be met through that common collection. When private sources get to direct what happens, that means the common good has been sabotaged. No private entity should be dictating what the common good will be.
Laura Chapman is a retired arts educator and a tireless researcher. After she read a post about the disappointing history of education technology and its constant self-promotion, she wrote a post about the current frenzy to buy and build new forms of education technology for the classroom. While most parents and teachers will welcome the return to full-time, face-to-face instruction, many entrepreneurs are betting that the sky is the limit for new technologies. The market is booming!
She writes:
A February 14, 2021 report from EdSurge Biz is all about a deluge of venture capital pouring into the edtech industry and with high hopes of getting a big return on their dollars. In the span of only two days three transactions for US edtech companies totaled over $1 billion. An example of big deals and high hopes is Renaissance’s $650 million acquisition of Nearpod.
Renaissance enables one-click use of ClassLink and Clever. More than 13,000 schools use the Renaissance performance tracking dashboards assembled as “myIGDIs“ (Individual Growth & Development Indicators) for early childhood. The indicators are displayed in colorful dashboards. These displays show at least one “kindergarten readiness score” for early literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional development.
Renaissance also markets “Star” assessments with a claim that these are “highly predictive of performance on state and other high-stakes tests.” There are Star tests for Early Literacy K-3; Literacy growth, K–12; Math for grades 1 to 12; Star elementary school “Curriculum-based tests” in reading and math; Bilingual tests for reading, math, and early literacy for emerging bilingual students… and more (custom tests). https://www.renaissance.com/products/star-assessments.
Renaissance’s acquisition of the Nearpod platform provides a way for teachers to upload and distribute digital lessons in the form of interactive slide decks. The platform also tracks student progress and interactions with the materials.
Nearpod has since expanded this “toolbox” with features that let teachers create quizzes, offer virtual reality content for digital field trips, and embed mini-games into lessons. There is also a library of over 15,000 pre-made lessons from third-party providers including Amplify, Desmos, iCivics and Teaching Tolerance. In 2020, an estimated 19.5 million lessons were taught on Nearpod, marking a six-fold increase from the previous year, according to its CEO Pep Carrera.
“The pandemic really accelerated the need for teachers to find ways to continue doing things that were once easily done in classrooms,” he said in an interview. Today, the platform is used by 75 percent of all U.S. public school districts. Nearpod offers some of its content and tools for free and sells licenses to individual teachers, schools and districts. see https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-01-13-a-record-year-amid-a-pandemic-us-edtech-raises-2-2-billion-in-2020
Other deals
HOBSONS SPLIT AND SOLD: Hobsons, a provider of college planning, readiness and enrollment tools since 1974, will be broken up and sold. PowerSchool will be acquiring its college and career-planning tools, Naviance and Intersect; EAB will purchase the student engagement service, Starfish. These two are expected to net Hobson’s owner $410 million.
CODECADEMY COMEBACK: Long before coding boot camps were a thing, there were startups like Codecademy building web-based tools to teach programming. Now, a decade after it launched, the New York-based company continues to grow, selling to colleges and companies and—perhaps most importantly—achieving profitability. That long, steady growth has been rewarded with a $40 million investment led by Owl Ventures”
Kahoot, the Norweigian provider of a game-based learning platform, has acquired Whiteboard.fi, a Finnish developer of digital whiteboard tools for teachers and students, in a deal worth up to $12 million.
Photomath, a San Francisco-based developer of a math problem-solving app, has raised $23 million in a Series B round led by Menlo Ventures, and joined by GSV Ventures, Learn Capital, Cherubic Ventures and Goodwater Capital.
Praxis Labs, a New York-based provider of virtual-reality educational programs for workplaces, has raised $3.2 million in a seed round led by SoftBank’s OB Opportunity Fund, and joined by Norwest Venture Partners, Emerson Collective, Ulu Ventures, Precursor Ventures and Firework VC.”
These ventures dismiss the need for face-to-face deliberations about education and from early childhood to college readiness. Many focus on the required subjects for tests and capitalize on the high stakes attached to test scores. They have contributed to the truncated curriculum in schools. Most substitute “artificial intelligence” and marketing for the work of professionals in education.
Tom Ultican explains why he spends so much of his time fighting for public schools.
The original cause for my supporting public education was that my rancher father married a school teacher. Growing up on a southern Idaho ranch, I learned many philosophical and theoretical reasons for supporting the establishment and maintenance of public schools from my mother. However, it was from watching mom and her dedicated colleagues in action that I learned to truly respect and appreciate public school.
I remember stories of my father being warned that he better not treat that women wrong. For several years in a row she won the Elmore County sharp shooting contest. She didn’t like to chop a chicken’s head off so she would pull out her rifle and shoot it off.
Mom had some old school attitudes but maintained a mind of her own. There was a period in which she had to come home at lunch time and milk the cow. One Friday, after having to chase the cow across King Hill creek again, she had had enough; didn’t discuss it just loaded that cow into a trailer and took it to market.
In my home, there was no doubt about the value of education and also an abiding belief that the American public education system was unparalleled. My father was a high school basketball referee and an ardent supporter of music study.
As was common in the community, school events were family events. Helping the local school was one of the main missions of our civic organizations whether it was building viewing stands at the football field or sewing costumes for school plays.
My grandfather was an immigrant from Scotland who came to America on the Lusitania. Three years after his arrival that ship was sunk by a German U-boat killing 1,800 passengers and further pushing America into engaging with World War I.
It was through family in Scotland that my mother became familiar with the British Education system. She learned of its high stakes testing which was deciding a child’s education path; if that education would continue and weather it would be academic or vocational. To her, the great advantage for America’s schools was they did not have these kinds of tests determining a child’s future. American students were not immersed in testing hell.
Instead of being sorted out by testing, American students had multiple opportunities to reenter the education system in whatever capacity they desired. Immature 11-year olds, did not have their futures decided by dubious testing results.
Still today, Idaho has a greater than 90% white population making it one of the whitest places in the world. It used to be even whiter.
I did not meet a Black person until I was a 17 years-old high school student. That year the University of Idaho Vandaleers gave a concert at my high school. A local rancher’s wife threw an after party for the choir and that is where I met Ray McDonald. Not only was he a talented singer, he was also one of the top running backs in America who would soon be drafted in the second round by the Washington DC professional football team. All I really remember is I was star struck and he was a friendly guy who played piano.
Although there was very little racial diversity in the community there was significant religious diversity. We had Mormons, Mennonites, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Assembly of God and other denominations attending our schools.
In a 2001 interview conducted at the Gathering, Richard DeVos lamented that it was awful that public schools had replaced churches as the center of communities. He did not identify whose church was going to be accepted as the community center.
The unifying factor in Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho was the public schools. Children from rich families and poor families grew up together in those schools. At school functions, parents from the disparate religious sects came together and formed common bonds. Political decisions concerning community governance were developed through these school based relationships.
Public schools became the foundation for democratic governance in the region plus it was literally where people voted. To me, it is unfeasible that a healthy American democracy does not include a healthy public school system.
America’s Founding Fathers Believed in Public Education
The second and third presidents of the United States advocated powerfully for public education. Thomas Jefferson saw education as the cause for developing out of common farmers the enlightened citizenry that would take the rational action a successful republican democracy requires. Jefferson contended,
“The qualifications for self government are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training.”
When Jefferson who was a former ambassador to France was queried about the French Revolution, he responded, “It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action.” He called for the establishment of universal free public education claiming it as a requisite for the survival of a democratic republic.
Jefferson and his peer John Adams were integral to the founding of the United States. Jefferson is credited as the main author of the Declaration of Independence. Our system of government with its bi-cameral legislative branch, judicial branch and executive branch came about in great measure because of John Adams’ advocacy.
Like Jefferson, Adams also saw public education as crucial for the survival of our fledgling democracy. In a 1775 essay, he wrote:
“reformation must begin with the Body of the People which can be done only, to affect, in their Educations. the Whole People must take upon themselvs the Education of the Whole People and must be willing to bear the expences of it. there should not be a district of one Mile Square without a school in it, not founded by a Charitable individual but maintained at the expence of the People themselves”
Shortly before the American Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had published the controversial novel Emile, or On Education. He was widely condemned by the ruling elite for the religious views expressed in the book. However, the main portion of the book was about education. Rousseau’s character in the book was a tutor for children of the wealthy. That was the nature of education in the 18thcentury. Only children of the wealthy had the wherewithal to be educated by private tutors or in one of the few private schools.
Jefferson and Adams were calling for egalitarian progress giving common people the tools required to be self-governing. They were calling for a public school system.
It was the Massachusetts education advocate, Horace Mann, who more than any American political leader was responsible for the nationwide spread of public schools. With the challenges of industrialization, immigration and urbanization, public schools became the fabric of social integration. Horace Mann became the spokes-person for schools being that instrument.
It was Mann’s point of view that children in the common school were to receive a common moral education based on the general principles of the Bible and on common virtues. The moral values to be taught in public school were Protestant values and the political values were those of republican democracy.
Integrating the Protestant religious view into the common schools caused a split in communities. The burgeoning Catholic immigrant population did not want their children indoctrinated with an anti-Catholic ideology. Following the civil war, these influences irrupted into the “Bible Wars.” Author Katherine Stewart shared that it was in this atmosphere that “President Ulysses S. Grant declared that if a new civil war were to erupt, it would be fought not across the Mason-Dixon Line but at the door of the common schoolhouse.”
Stewart also shared an insightful admonition from Grant:
“Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. With these safeguards I believe the battles which created the Army of Tennessee will not have been fought in vain.”
Early in the 20th century, public schools had been established serving every community from coast to coast. The results from this vast American public education experiment shine like a lighthouse beacon on the path of Democracy and social happiness. A nation that entered the century as a 2nd rate power ended the century as the undisputed world leader in literacy, economy, military power, industrial might, cultural influence and more.
Today, unbelievably, more and more forces are agitating to undo public education and even American Democracy itself.
As the 21st century dawned, the American public education system was facing a billionaire financed attack. Instead of financially enhancing public schools, libertarians called them “failures” and too expensive. They called public schools “monopolies” shutting out private business that would surely outperform “government schools.” Hopefully the aphorism attributed Lincoln is true: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
When I served in the George H.W. Bush administration, I was Assistant Secretary for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
OERI, as it was then called, had almost no discretionary money. There was very little opportunity for any initiatives, which may have been a good thing at that time. I became very involved in advocacy for national standards, which I now regret. I also spoke up for the national goals (remember them?), most of which were out of reach (like, we will be first in the world in math and science by the year 2000). OERI has since been pretentiously renamed the “Institute for Education Sciences.”
However, there is one thing that I am very proud of. I initiated a statistical review of the history of American education and the best brains in the Office of Research gathered the data to show the progress of education. It was published in 1992.
I still refer to it when writing essays that require historical information about education.
It should have been updated by now, but it has not been.
It is a wonderful resource for scholars and others engaged in research about education.
This is the introduction that I wrote in 1992:
Diane Ravitch Assistant Secretary
As an historian of education, I have been a regular consumer of education statistics from the U.S. Department of Education. For many years, I kept the Department’s telephone number in my address book and computer directory. It did not take long to discover there was one person to whom I should address all my queries: Vance Grant. In my many telephone calls for information, I discovered he is the man who knows what data and statistics have been gathered over the years by the Department of Education. No matter how exotic my question, Dr. Grant could always tell me, without delay, whether the information existed; usually, he produced it himself. When I asked a statistical question, I could often hear the whir of an adding machine in the back- ground, even after the advent of the electronic calculator.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find myself in the position of Assistant Secretary of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), the very home of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The latter agency is headed by Emerson Elliott, the first presidentially appointed Commissioner of Education Statistics. And imagine my delight when I encountered Vance Grant, face to face, for the first time. The voice on the telephone, always cheerful and confident, belonged to a man employed by the Department or Office of Education since 1955.
Vance Grant, a Senior Education Program Specialist, and Tom Snyder, NCES’ Chief of the Compilations and Special Studies Branch in the Data Development Division, prepared 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. They did so enthusiastically, because—like me—they knew it was needed. Historians of education customarily must consult multiple, often disparate, sources to find and collect the information in this one volume. They can never be sure if the data they locate are consistent and reliable. This compilation aggregates all relevant statistics about the history of our educational system in one convenient book. It will, I believe, become a classic, an indispensable volume in every library and on every education scholar’s bookshelf, one that will be periodically updated. Vance Grant’s and Tom Snyder’s careful preparation of this report substantially enriches our knowledge of American education. But collecting these historical data in one volume not only benefits professional historians. As a Nation, we need to develop an historical perspective in analyzing change. Too often, newspapers report important political, economic, or social events without supplying the necessary historical context. We are all now accustomed to reading headlines about the latest test scores. Whether up or down, they invariably overstate the meaning of a single year’s change. And the same short-sightedness often flaws journalistic reports of other major educational trends.
Historical Context
One does not need to be an historian to recognize the tremendous importance of historical context. Each of us should be able to assess events, ideas, and trends with reliable knowledge of what has hap- pened in the past. If we cannot, our ability to understand and make sense of events will be distorted. This volume would become a reference for all who wish to make informed judgments about American education. We must struggle mightily against the contemporary tendency towards presentism, the idea inspired by television journalism that today’s news has no precedent. As we struggle to preserve history, we preserve our human capacity to construct meaning and to reach independent judgment.
In an age when we are awash with information and instantaneous news, it is meaning, understanding, and judgment that are in short supply. This collection of historical statistics about American education provides its readers with the perspective they need to understand how far we have come in our national commitment to education and how far we must still go in pursuit of our ideals.
I especially thank Vance Grant and Tom Snyder for their untiring efforts in assembling this book. Without their dedication, and without Emerson Elliott’s support for the importance of this work, it would never have happened.
Emerson was the career civil servant who directed the National Center for Educational Statistics, which was the heart of the original Department of Education, created in 1867. As I mentioned, in the thirty years since this publication was issued, it has not been updated. What a shame.
Steve Ruis writes in his blog that “class warfare” is over, finished, kaput. The top .001% won. They made out like bandits during the pandemic while most people struggled to pay the mortgage or the rent. No wonder they prefer to claim that charter schools and vouchers will raise up the poor. Of course, they won’t.
He writes:
From an article in The Guardian on Forbes magazine’s latest list of billionaires:
“Forbes annual billionaire poll includes a record-breaking 2,755 billionaires, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once again topping the list. Elon Musk, zoomed into second place with a $151bn fortune, up $126.4bn from a year ago, when he ranked No 31 and was worth “just” $24.6bn.”
“Elon Musk, zoomed into second place with a $151bn fortune, up $126.4bn from a year ago.”
“Together the plutocrats added $5tn to their wealth for a combined fortune of $13.1tn, up from $8tn on the 2020 list. A record 493 people joined the list this year – one new billionaire every 17 hours. The majority, 205, were in China. But the gains were widespread with gains across the world.”
“But it was the incredibly wealthy who made the biggest gains. The 0.001% did even better than their lesser peers. The top 10 richest people on the list are worth $1.15tn, up from $686bn last year.”
Andrea Gabor is the Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism at Baruch College, which is part of the City University of New York. Gabor has written insightful articles about education in the New York Times and at Bloomberg.com. She is the author of After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Education Reform.
The following is a summary of a chapter in her forthcoming book, MEDIA CAPTURE: HOW MONEY, DIGITAL PLATFORMS, AND GOVERNMENTS CONTROL THE NEWS, which will be published by Columbia University Press in June. She prepared this excerpt for this blog.
She writes:
For the past twenty years, American K-12 education has been on the receiving end of Big Philanthropy’s efforts to reengineer public schools based on free-market ideas, with foundation-funded private operators taking over large swaths of school districts in cities like Los Angeles and New Orleans.
Between 2000 and 2005 alone, three foundations—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation—quadrupled their spending on K–12 education to $400 million. By 2010, the top 15 foundations had spent $844 million on public education.
Moreover, these Big Philanthropies coordinated their spending, investing in what Harvard’s Jal Mehta and Johns Hopkins’s Steven Teles call “jurisdictional challengers”—efforts aimed atupending traditional educational institutions, in particular public schools and school boards. Instead, the foundations funded a range of private and public institutions, including charter-management organizations and alternative teacher-development institutions such as Teach for America, as well as school-board candidates who would back the philanthropists’ reform agenda and help break the “monopoly” of public-school districts.
Diane Ravitch and a slew of other academics, bloggers and writers have documented the growing influence of Big Philanthropy and its convergence with federal education policies, especially under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, creating what the political scientist Sarah Reckhow calls “a perfect storm.”
As part of its soup-to-nuts strategy designed to maximize the impact of its gifts and expand its influence, Big Philanthropy has expanded its reach to universities, think tanks, government institutions, and the news media.
My chapter, “Media Capture and the Corporate Education-Reform Philanthropies,” in Media Capture, explores the efforts of the Big Philanthropy to shape public opinion by ratcheting up its spending on advocacy and, in particular, by investing in local news organizations. The philanthropies have supported education coverage at a range of mainstream publications—investments that often helped promote the foundations’ education-reform agenda. In addition, they have founded publications specifically dedicated to selling their market-oriented approach to education.
For the news media, battered by internet companies such as Craigslist and Facebook, which have siphoned off advertising revenue, funding from philanthropies comes at an opportune time. Nor can private foundations be faulted for supporting the news media, especially given the rise of “alternative facts” and demagoguery during the Trump era. Foundation funding has long been important to a range of respected news organizations such as The New York Times and National Public Radio, as well as established education publications, such as Education Week.This is not to say that this funding has unleashed a spate of pro-reform coverage. Indeed, I have published essays critical of the education-reform philanthropies in many foundation-funded publications. However, logic suggests that publications desirous of repeat tranches of funding will at least moderate their critical coverage.
What is particularly troubling are the large contributions to local news organizations—many of them earmarked specifically for education coverage—by foundations that explicitly support the takeover of local schools and districts by private operators. My chapter explores how philanthropic support of news organizations—including new publications founded and run by education-reform advocates—is aimed at creating a receptive audience for the foundations’ education-reform agenda.
The Gates Foundation’s effort to influence local and national policy via the news media is a case in point.
The Gates Foundation alone devoted $1 billion in the decade from 2000 to 2010 to so-called policy and advocacy, a tenth of the foundation’s $3 billion-a-year spending, according to an investigation by The Seattle Times.
Although much of that money went to analyze policy questions—such as the efficacy of vaccine-funding strategies—“the ‘advocacy’ side of the equation is essentially public relations: an attempt to influence decision-makers and sway public opinion.”
The Seattle Times showed how the Gates Foundation funding goes far beyond providing general support for cash-strapped news organizations:
“To garner attention for the issues it cares about, the foundation has invested millions in training programs for journalists. It funds research on the most effective ways to craft media messages. Gates-backed think tanks turn out media fact sheets and newspaper opinion pieces. Magazines and scientific journals get Gates money to publish research and articles. Experts coached in Gates-funded programs write columns that appear in media outlets from The New York Times to The Huffington Post, while digital portals blur the line between journalism and spin.”
Indeed, Gates usually “stipulates” that its funding be used for reporting on issues the philanthropy supports—whether curing diseases such as HIV or improving U.S. education. And although Gates does not appear to dictate specific stories, the Seattle Times noted: “Few of the news organizations that get Gates money have produced any critical coverage of foundation programs.”
The Seattle Times story was written before the newspaper accepted a $530,000 grant, in 2013, the bulk of it from the Gates Foundation, to launch the Education Lab. The paper described the venture as “a partnership between The Seattle Times and Solutions Journalism Network” that will explore “promising programs and innovations inside early-education programs, K–12 schools and colleges that are addressing some of the biggest challenges facing public education.” The Gates Foundation contributed $450,000, with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation funding the rest.
In a blog post, the newspaper addressed the potential conflict of interest posed by the grant: “The Seattle Times would neither seek nor accept a grant that did not give us full editorial control over what is published. Generally, when a grant is made, there is agreement on a specific project or a broad area of reporting it will support.” The newspaper earmarked its funding for so-called “solutions journalism.”
It may be laudable for a publication to focus on “solutions” to societal problems. But almost by definition, a mission that effectively targets “success stories” diminishes journalism’s vital watchdog role.
Then too, Gates’s influence extends well beyond Seattle. The Associated Press documented the Gates foundation’s soup-to-nuts effort, in 2015, to influence education policy in Tennessee.
“In Tennessee, a Gates-funded advocacy group had a say in the state’s new education plan, with its leader sitting on an important advising committee. A media outlet given money by Gates to cover the new law then published a story about research funded by Gates. And many Gates-funded groups have become the de facto experts who lead the conversation in local communities. Gates also dedicated millions of dollars to protect Common Core as the new law unfolded.”
Meanwhile, the same year in Los Angeles, fellow philanthropist,Eli Broad, identified Gates as a key potential investor in his $490 million plan to dramatically grow the city’s charter-school sector. The plan included a six-year $21.4 million “investment” in “organizing and advocacy,” including “engaging the media”and “strategic messaging.” (The charter-expansion plan itself followed an $800,000 investment by a Broad-led group of philanthropists to fund an initiative at The Los Angeles Times to expand the paper’s coverage of K–12 education.) In 2016, Gates invested close to $25 million in Broad’s charter-expansion plan.
The Gates Foundation also served as a junior partner in one of the most audacious, coordinated efforts by Big Philanthropy to influence coverage of the education-reform story—the establishment, in 2015, of The 74 Million, which has become the house organ of the education-reform movement. The 74 has been a reliable voice in favor of the charter-school movement, and against teachers’ unions. In 2016, it published The Founders, a hagiography of the education-reform movement. And it has served as a Greek chorus of praise for the education reforms in New Orleans, the nation’s first all-charter district, while ignoring the experiment’s considerable failings.
Key contributors to the publication, which boasts a $4 million-annual budget, were the Walton Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation. Soon after it’s founding, The 74 acquired a local education publication, the L.A. School Report, which itself had been heavily funded by Broad. In 2016, Gatescontributed, albeit a relatively modest $26,000, to The 74.
Jeanne Kaplan is a veteran civil rights activist who was elected to serve two terms on the Denver school board. She has been active in multiple campaigns to stop privatization and over-testing and energize a genuine effort to improve the public schools. She wrote this piece for this blog.
THE SISYPHEAN TASK IN DENVER
The dictionary defines Sisyphean task as something you keep doing but never gets completed, an endless task. In Greek mythology Sisyphus is punished by the god Zeus and is tasked with endlessly pushing a rock up a steep mountain, only to have it roll back down each time he nears the top. I will leave the deeper philosophical meanings to others. Simply interpreted, public education advocates residing in the Queen City of the Rockies, “transformers” if you will, will find similarities to this story as we reflect on our battle to defeat “education reform.” In Denver’s case the Sisyphean task master has not been a vengeful god, but rather a school board member or a school board itself which through their betrayals continues to keep “transformers” tasked with pushing the education transformational rock up the mountain.
Call it the Sisyphean Challenge, Groundhog Day, a Broken Record, Déjà vu. However you describe it, these “transformers” are experiencing another setback in their attempts to stop or at least slow down the business-based “education reform” model. In 2009 Denver voters thought they had put an end to the then still budding “education reform” movement. “Transformers” won four of seven seats on the school board but quickly lost that advantage when, within hours of the election, one supposed “transformer” flipped sides. For the next ten years education reformers had free reign in Denver. Four to three boards became a six to one board, became a seven to zero board. All for “education reform.” Forward ten years to today. “Transformers” once again gained control of the Denver School Board in theory. This time the transformer majority was believed to be 5-2. But local education reformers – with a lot of help from national reform partners – once again figured out how to get their privatization agenda through this hypothetically anti-privatization 5-2 Board. By consistently voting to renew and re-establish privatization policies and projects, today’s Board has deprived Denver voters once again of reaching the mountain top, and usually by a 6-1 vote. And from today’s perspective the rock has once again rolled down the mountain.
The below listed organizations, initiatives and foundations have all had their hand in preventing educational transformation in Denver. The list is thorough but not comprehensive:
1 – A+ Colorado
30 – Empower Schools
2 – Adolph Coors Foundation
31 – Gates Family Foundation
3 – Anschutz Family Foundation
32 – Janus Fund
4 – Bellwether Education Partners
33 – KIPP – Knowledge is Power Program
5 – Bezos Family Foundation
34 – Koch Family Foundations
6 – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
35 – Laura and John Arnold Foundation
7 – Bloomberg Philanthropies
36 – Laurene Powell Jobs – Emerson Collective
8 – Boardhawk
37 – Leadership for Educational Equity
9 – CareerWise
38 – Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
10 – Chalkbeat
39 – Lyra Learning – Innovation Zones
11 – Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
40 – Michael and Susan Dell Foundation
12 – Schusterman Family Foundation
41 – Moonshot
13 – Chiefs for Change
42 – PIE Network (Policy Innovators in Ed)
14 – City Fund
43 – Piton/Gary Community Investments
15 – City Year
44 – Relay Graduate School of Education
16 – Colorado Health Foundation
45 – Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation
17 – Colorado Succeeds
46 – RootEd
18 – Community Engagement & Partners
47 – Rose Foundation
19 – Daniels Fund
48 – School Board Partners
20 – Democrats for Education Reform
49 – Stand for Children
21 – Denver Families of Public Schools
50 – Students First
22 – Denver Foundation
51 – Teach for America
23 – Denver Scholarship Foundation
52 – The Broad Academy/The Broad Center
24 – Donnell-Kay Foundation
53 – Third Way
25 – EdLeadLeadership
54 – TNTP
26 – Education Pioneers
55 – Transform Education Now (TEN Can)
27 – Education Reform Now
56 – Wallace Foundation
28 – Education Trust
57 – Walton Family Foundation
29 – Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
Below are some of the reform ventures coaxed through by these groups. Many have been used to maintain the failing status quo. Some have been used to make money for friends and colleagues. Some have been outright failures. But by its failure to address them or by its continued tolerance of them, the DPS Board has sanctioned the continuation of privatization in our city:
· At a time when education reform was truly hanging on by a thread in Denver, the Board assured its continued existence for the foreseeable future by voting to renew the use of the racially biased state accountability system, going even further into reformland by promising to develop a new accountability “dashboard” (a key “reformer” tenet). While testing is state mandated, the District did not even explore the possibility of waiving its obligation to rely on this system. This one decision has also allowed the proliferation of many of the above listed groups and has given new life to the overall privatization movement. A lot of new players are making a lot of new money from the public education system in Denver. After all, what is the business model really about if it is not about making money? This one vote has allowed the continuation of some of the most divisive and punitive practices such as:
1. Relying on high stakes testing even though the Board has given lip service to wanting a waiver this year due to COVID;
2. Relying on a non-transparent Choice system, which some believe is being used to fill unwanted charters;
3. Ranking of schools and continued competition resulting in winners and losers among students and schools;
4. Relying on Student Based Budgeting where the money follows the student;
5. Marketing of schools, whereby wealthier schools and schools with their own board of directors (charters and Innovation Zone schools) have a distinct advantage;
6. Giving bonuses to employees of schools based on test scores.
Other recent reform-oriented Board decisions include:
· Voting to renew or extend all 13 charter school contracts that were up this year even when some were struggling for enrollment and academic success. The Board claimed it did not want to disrupt kids and families. Portfolio model.
· Promoting school MERGERS as opposed to school CLOSURES for under enrolled neighborhood schools, somehow thinking voters won’t notice that merging schools results in the same failed policy as school closures, that campaign promises have been broken, and that charter schools are being treated differently. Portfolio model.
· Voting to approve new Innovation Zones, the hybrid portfolio model that supposedly gives schools more independence while, unlike charters, is still under the control of the school board. These Innovation Zones do, however, have their own administrative staff as well as their own boards and have ushered in their own cottage industry. Portfolio Model.
· Working with City Fund funded School Board Partners for Board training. City Fund is a relative newcomer to the education privatization world and is largely financed by Netflix Reed Hastings and John Arnold of Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Locally, City Fund has dropped $21 million into Denver’s own RootEd to assure “every child in Denver has the opportunity and support to achieve success in school, college and their chosen career.” This needs to be done equitably, of course! And only within a non-union school! Grant funding from private sources to promote private interests.
· Hiring a Broad trained Superintendent search company, Alma Advisory Group. Alma has also been involved in executive searches for both City Fund and The Broad Academy, two quintessential privatizers. More than four months have gone by since DPS Superintendent Susana Cordova resigned. Four metro Denver school districts have had superintendent vacancies this winter. Two have already found their leaders. Denver is still holding community meetings which if they follow DPS history, will end up be ing rather meaningless. Most importantly, will this “reform” inclined group be able to bring a wide-ranging group of candidates forward? The Broad Academy, training leaders in education reform.
· Continuing to allow and expand non-licensed teachers and administrators from programs such as Teach for American and Relay Graduate School of Education into DPS’ schools and continuing to tell the public they are just as qualified as professional educators. Anyone can teach!
Why do these examples matter, you might ask?
For starters, review the list of organizations and people pushing privatization. The sheer number is staggering. Then check out the similarity of language in their missions, visions, and goals and the uniformity of strategies and messaging.
· Every child deserves a great school.
· Every school deserves all the support it needs to ensure equity.
· Every school should have parent and community partners.
· Every school should be anti-racist, celebrate diversity, be inclusive.
These are all worthy goals, albeit very general ones. But what is the overall strategy to achieve them? Privatization and the business model focusing on innovative and charter schools using an accountability system based on high stakes testing to define success seems to be their answer. And in spite of claims that “reformers” are agnostic as to the type of school they foster, there are a few common characteristics they demand in their privatized schools:
· the ability to hire and fire anyone at any time; employees do not have to be licensed; at-will employees if you will. That’s right. No unions in innovation or charter schools. Anyone can teach.
· an accountability system based on high stakes tests; schools and employees evaluated and punished by the results of these racially inappropriate tests.
· market-driven criteria used to define school success. Winners and losers, competition, closures, choice, chaos, churn.
· “learning loss,” the pandemic-based slogan, must be addressed by unrelenting dependency on high stakes testing. No test waivers for this crazy school year. “Reformers” must have that data, and they must remind everyone that in spite of Herculean efforts on many fronts, public education has failed.
Add to this scenario the amount of money being spent to further this agenda. Determining this takes some patience because the tax records are often difficult to find and decipher. Then try to deduce who is benefitting from each program. This also takes some digging, for let me assure you, public education has spawned not a cottage industry but rather a mansion industry! Search the group you are interested in and check out its board and staff. And finally, look at the effect all of this has had on kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn’t it always about the kids? In reality few of these extra ventures have had any effect on kids. Fewer still touch kids directly.
Each privately funded unit on this list has had a privatized DPS connection of some sort. Some initiatives are duplicative. Some are very narrowly focused. Some purport to be THE ANSWER to public education’s struggles. There is no tolerance for differing beliefs. Yet, after 15 years of experimentation Denver’s students remain mired in mediocrity, suffering from an ever narrowing curriculum and dependent on evaluations, ratings, and a definition of success based on racially biased tests. Nationally, Denver Public Schools remains a leader in implementing “education reform” but alas, it also remains a leader in teacher and principal turnover and home to one of the largest achievement/opportunity gaps in the nation.
We in Denver have been subjected to the high-octane version of “education reform” for more than 15 years. Choice, charters, competition, closures have resulted in three unequal tiers of schools (charter schools, innovation zones, neighborhood schools). Reformers call this “the portfolio model.” I call it structural chaos. Michael Fullan calls it fragmentation, a system wrongly focused on “academics obsession, machine intelligence, and austerity.” To those privatizers who say, “but you have no solution,” Fullan has one that would turn public education on its head and could possibly produce what all of us involved in the public education scene say we want: robust, equitable education for all. Fullan has a solution for whole system success that would be focused on the human elements of public education: learning and well-being, social intelligence, and equality of investments. But in order for anything like this to work the superintendent and the board must be on the same page. Elections matter. And candidates need to understand what is at stake and what they have been elected to do.
Public education is the cornerstone of our democracy. (Given today’s America it might have slipped to second place behind voting rights). I ran for school board on that belief, I witnessed its importance through the lives of my immigrant parents. I do not believe our democracy will survive without public education, but the cornerstone must change. Radically. Dramatically.
Imagine if all of the efforts of those 50 plus organizations were combined into one united movement focused on an anti-racist, equitable systemic change. And imagine how truly revolutionary, transformative and unifying this movement could be if it included voices and ideas not aligned with the business model but with people who are willing to truly look at things differently, people who were willing to be honest and show leadership. Imagine how during this unique time in our nation’s history this new system could have resulted in a new and exciting way of delivering and evaluating teaching and learning, well-being, equity and equality. Imagine how exciting this unique time in Denver could been had we taken advantage of this opportunity. , Instead, DPS decided to continue with the status where money and power continue to rule, where a business model has been buttressed to portray a non-existent success, and where an elected Board of Education has turned its back on its mandate.
Historically “transformers” in Denver have been dogged in their attempts to get that rock to the mountain’s peak. We have kept fighting even when betrayed by school board members, even when organization after organization has put down roots to continue the mirage of success, even when untold millions of dollars have been invested in programs that have yet to make a significant difference in educational outcomes. Can we in Denver defy Greek mythology and end this Sisyphean nightmare? Or are there too many yet unknown obstacles in our path to stop us once again? Elections will decide. Time will tell.
Julian Vasquez Heilig, Jameson Brewer, and Frank Adamson have written a peer-reviewed analysis of the politics of school choice. As Heilig wrote in his description of the analysis, “Modern notions of “markets” and “choice” in schooling stem from the libertarian ideas Milton Friedman espoused in the 1950s. Considering the underlying politics of school choice, it is important to examine the ramifications of neoliberal and collective ideology on market-based school choice research. In this chapter we point out that much of the research suggesting positive findings is continually conducted and promoted by neoliberal ideologically-driven organizations.” I would add to their analysis that Milton Friedman was not the sole originator of the ideology of “school choice.” As I wrote in the New York Review of Books, Friedman shares that dubious distinction with white Southern politicians who were adamantly opposed to the Brown decision and desegregation.
About a decade ago, when policy elites were bashing teachers on a regular basis, Ken Futernick was writing about the challenges that teachers face every day, including lack of support by administrators and poor working conditions. Recently, he has been creating podcasts in which teachers explain how they teach about important issues of the day, like teaching about racism and the Black Lives Matter movement, teaching during the pandemic, and teaching history in a way that is relevant to all students. He shared these three podcasts with me.
Brown University Psychology Professor Malik Boykin Teaches about Prejudice and Invites us to Dance for FreedomMalik Boykin (aka Malik Starx) is an accomplished musician and a professor of psychology at Brown University where he teaches a course on stigma and prejudice. Boykin shares two transformational teacher stories–the first from second grade when he was sent to the principal’s office for raising questions about Christopher Columbus. The second is about Dr. Jaia John, his social psychology professor at Howard University who carved out time at the start each class for students to share a poem, a personal story, or even a musical performance that had some relation to the course content.
Inspired by Dr. John, Boykin became a social psychologist and, like John, encourages his students to share something personal at the start of his classes. One of his students, Gabrielle Tanksley, describes what it’s like to be one of Boykin’s students, and she reads an extraordinary poem she shared recently in class. Starx wrote and performed “Dancing for Freedom,” the soundtrack played in this Teacher Story episode. At the end, he reflects on the inspiration for the song.
The Power of Stories and Early RelationshipsWhen 4th grade teacher Miriam Marecek turned down the lights and lit the reading candle, magic happened. Pediatrician and journalist Perri Klass describes what it was like being one of Ms. Marecek’s students and the impact it’s had on her life and professional career. Now, as national medical director for Reach Out and Read, Dr. Klass, promotes reading aloud together starting at birth.
In this episode she says, “If children grow up in literacy, rich environments, if there’s a lot of back and forth…they will, by the time they come to school, understand how books work. They will understand how print works. They will understand all kinds of things about stories and sequence that will help tremendously with learning to read. This is about growing up, enjoying the back and forth around early literacy in books with the other people in your family.”
Three Educators Reflect on How to Teach about the Insurrection Like most Americans, these three veteran teachers were horrified as they learned about the insurrection at the nation’s Capitol on January 6th, 2021. But each of them had to decide how to address this highly controversial topic with their students. What’s the proper role for a teacher with an event like this? What if some students’ parents or the students themselves supported the insurrection? Is there any way to talk about this and other controversial topics with very young students? Listen in as each teacher reflects on these and several other challenging questions.
My spouse and I have a wonderful dog named Mitzi. She is a 57-varieties mixed breed. When people ask me what she is, I say she is a genuine pedigreed Muttheimer. She is black with white paws and weighs 100 pounds. She may be the sweetest dog I have ever known.
But Mitzi has one problem. Since puppyhood, she has suffered from bouts of diarrhea. A few years back, I used metronidazole, which was prescribed by the veterinarian. One time, her diarrhea was so bad in the middle of the night that I rushed her to a vet clinic, where they gave her the same drug and charged me with $250. Then I learned I could buy it online without a prescription because it is used to treat bacteria in fish-tank fish. I passed along that advice and was chastised for advising a medical treatment for other people’s dogs.
So I now offer you a far better treatment. A few months ago, Mitzi got the ailment again. The metronidazole didn’t help her; it was completely ineffective. So I went online, read reviews of other products, and found something new. It is basically Kaopectate for dogs, called Pro-Pectalin. It has no drugs in it that require a prescription. It works like a charm. I grind it up, mix it with her food, and within a day, she was feeling herself again.
I wrote this in late March. I am in intensive care in the hospital now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 