A regular commenter on the blog, known as Chiara, reports the composition of West Virginia’s new board for authorizing charter schools. The legislature endorsed new charter schools in a state that has never had them. Several of them will be for-profits. Two will be virtual charters. There are three other entities that can authorize the privately run schools that are publicly funded.
Chiara wrote:
Here’s the oversight of West Virginia’s new charter sector: “Appointees are: former Greater Beckley Christian School head boys basketball coach Brian Helton; John Waltz, the vice president for enrollment management at West Virginia Wesleyan College Upshur County; Dewayne Duncan, a real estate developer in Kanawha County and former Republican candidate for Kanawha County Commission; Karen Bailey-Chapman, owner of public relations firm KB Advocacy in Jefferson County and a board member of the libertarian Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy; and Adam Kissel, a senior fellow at the Cardinal Institute. Kissel, a former deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the U.S. Department of Education for 16 months under former president Donald Trump, said he was excited to get to work on the new board.” Not a single person from a public school, nor anyone who supports public schools. Rigorously screened – only true believer ideological ed reformers are hired. These are the governance systems national ed reformers design and lobby for, so this must be how they envision the privatized systems they’re creating. Packed with fellow ed reform echo chambers, no dissent or different views permitted, and deliberate exclusion of anyone who comes out of a public school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s just amusing to watch the gentle, nurturing approach of ed reformers to charter schools when compared with their 100% negative approach to public schools:
“West Virginia Connections Academy is another virtual charter school applicant. Kissel said he has provided feedback to this applicant and others about ensuring the private company associated with the applicant attends to the civil and constitutional rights of faculty, students and staff.”
They asked the national charter chain to (pretty please) try to adhere to “civil and constitutional rights”
That’s voluntary for charters? We’re just hoping they agree to follow laws?
“Transparency” is where the “ed reform movement” is at their most hypocritical though. The entire echo chamber demand 100% transparency from every public school, but there’s absolutely NO demand for transparency in charters. It’s even worse with the private schools they all lobby to fund with public dollars. There’s no public oversight of voucher schools at all.
One would think a “movement” that included whole university departments would at least look at these issues before continuing to privatize the whole K-12 sector, but there’s no discussion of it at all. Anything even questioning or analyzing the privatization push is disallowed. They count how many charters and vouchers are opened or distributed and that’s the measure of success. More charters and vouchers and fewer public schools means they succeeded. The only measure is ideological. If it’s private, it’s better.
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Go and try to find any real analysis in the ed reform echo chamber of the possible effects to the K-12 system with the huge voucher expansion they all lobbied for and passed this year. There is none. Their ideological approach dictates that private schools will be “better” than public schools so it will come to pass. It’s a belief system.
Any possible downside to vastly expanding unregulated dollars going to private entities with no transparency? They’re not interested. Apparently there are no conceivable downsides of privatizing the whole system. It’s 100% guaranteed upside. It’s just nonsense. They have no earthly idea whether privatized systems will be “better”. None. It’s a massive experiment. If it harms the kids in the public system, well, who cares! Ed reformers didn’t support public schools anyway.
People should be very wary of “experts” who don’t consider downside risk and the entire ed reform echo chamber ignores it. There WILL be tradeoffs. Ignoring them or denying they exist doesn’t make them go away.
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Sometimes, the democratic process lets its enemies right through the door, as is the case in Akron, OH. A right wing “Christian” school leader will walk right into a publicly elected school board office. This is happening everywhere.
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2021/10/20/next-akron-school-board-member-carla-jackson-christian-school/8451712002/
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Hitler came to power by using the Democratic process against itself. No one saw him as a danger until it was too late.
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Talk about using the Democratic process to undermine democracy. Orthodox Jews control the school board of East Ramapo, NY. They divert public funds to their private religious schools. More than 90% of the public school enrollment are black and Hispanic.
“Since 2005, the East Ramapo school board, which covers a few small towns an hour’s drive north-west of New York City, has been controlled by members who represent private yeshivas, or Jewish religious schools, according to a report by the New York state education department. The vast majority of the 26,500 children who attend private schools in the district are white. In contrast, 91% of the 9,000 or so children enrolled in public schools are black and Latino.
In 2009, the board began gutting the public-school system, the report states. Between 2009 and 2014, the board fired over 450 staff, including 160 teachers, three guidance counselors and all social workers. It also cut budgets for athletic and extracurricular activities in half.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/27/school-board-east-ramapo-public-school-funding-private-yeshivas
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One of my former colleagues, who happens to be Jewish, was superintendent of East Ramapo when the ultra-Orthodox took over the district. This man has an Ed.D. from Teachers College, and he is one of the most intelligent and most ethical people I know. When he refused to implement the Hasidim’s theft of public money, he was fired and escorted from the board meeting by a guard. East Ramapo was once a good diverse school district. It is a pity that the state ignores the problem.
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As a Jew, I find this behavior in East Ramapo to be disgusting and unethical
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It sounds like students’ civil rights are being violated.
Isn’t there an organization who could file a lawsuit?
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I would not say that the person who posted the preceding info.in this comment thread was anti-Semitic. If the person who provided the info. was not believed and, the person then posted about similar situations over the following months or years, I would not call him/her anti-Semitic regardless of his/her faith. Granted, the odds of finding similar cases are reduced given the small size of the Jewish population and the fact that 80+% of the demographic believe in the common good. It’s not like Jewish theocrats have offices in almost every state’s capitol with the explicit mandate to promote the Koch network’s agenda for school choice,
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Here’s an example of the hypocrisy on transparency:
“IDEA charter schools sued Attorney General Ken Paxton last week to halt the release of records of its expense accounts sought by a local news outlet. The Progress Times—a publication covering the lower Rio Grande Valley—filed an open-records for those documents more than a year ago. In particular, it sought records for an IDEA executive paid $169,000 a year and, according to his contract, “the actual and incidental costs incurred by the Chief Financial Officer related to the bi-weekly commuting to/from California and/or as otherwise necessary, and the reasonable living and transportation expenses while in the Rio Grande Valley performing his duties for IDEA.”
If you’re in favor of transparency then you should be in favor of it for charter schools.
Demanding transparency from only public schools and giving the whole privatized sector a complete pass on it? How is that a credible position for ed reform? Particularly as one of the goals of the “movement” is to replace every public school. How will the privatized K-12 system be transparent then if it’s not transparent now? When there are no public schools left the privatized systems will become magically transparent? Why would they? It’s an obvious advantage that they’re not.
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ONE: Deranged Trumpists supporting a traitor and wanting to know why they can start killing liberals
TWO: Autocratic child-abusing charter schools and profit-driven, autocratic CEO-managed virtual schools sucking money out of democratically managed community based public school districts while those publicly funded, private schools deny parents any say in their children’s education are another serious terminal cancer in the United States.
In the 1950s, Russian Communist leader, Nikita Khrushchev said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.”
It’s apparent that Putin may be the Russian leader to pull this off with help from the likes of the KOCH network, the Wall-Mart Walton family, Fox FAKE News, and other extreme right fake media sites, TraitorTrump, and his loyalist Trumpist mob that apparently controls the Republican Party.
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I suspect that the Repugnican Party is ready to anoint a Trump Mini-Me with Ivy League credentials that at least make him a peripheral member of the Old Boys’ Club–DeSatan, most likely. Trump appeared to be barely mobile at the end of his presidency. Did you notice the weird way he was standing, leaning forward from his non-waist with his arms hanging in front of him like those of an orangutan? Back brace, I suspect. Didn’t stop FDR, but Trump is no FDR and is far less healthy, physically, mentally, emotionally. The latter two don’t bother his base, but the first undercuts their vision of him as Rambo.
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Put a golf club in his hands and the posture makes sense.
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lol
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As you may know, I left teaching recently, having no desire to continue in this age of top-down micromanagement and test prep.
So, I’m thinking that my next career will be as a low-wire artist. Or cat drover. Or King of Thailand—that looks like fun. Ghost buster? Alienist? Yoga pants designer? Sex symbol? Poet taster? Evolution R&D Engineer? Japanese pop music idol? Mar-a-lago’s resident Vicar of Mammon? Dirigible driver?
Jeez. So many options. I am paralyzed by indecision.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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Sex symbol. The socks on your ears are irresistible.
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LOL. Thanks!
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The real story is one that defenders of public education won’t admit despite ample public testimony from the initiators and originators of school choice legislation.
“…at the inaugural meeting…school choice wasn’t even a thought…After serving as a Catholic School Superintendent in the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston West Virginia and the Diocese of Richmond Virginia….I came to serve as the Indiana Non-Public Education Association Director…At a lunch meeting with my mentor, the former director of the Indiana Catholic Conference, I learned that interested individuals and groups had been laying the groundwork for a private-school choice movement in Indiana….”
The person who wrote the above, posted 4-22-2021 at the Southwestern Indiana Catholic Community Newspaper (the photo at the top of the newsletter is 75 men in clerical collars), continued his description of the campaign in the article. He wrote that he and his mentor were “the voice” for non-public schools as the school choice legislation was being crafted.
The full article is worth a read.
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