Archives for category: Accountability
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Tom Ultican: The NewSchools Venture Fund, Masters of Disruption

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2020 //
9

This is one of the most important posts you will read today, this week, this month. If you want to understand the hoax of so-called “education reform,” read this post. Share it with your friends. Tweet it. Put it in Facebook. It rips the veil away from the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Thomas Ultican has found the beating heart of the Disruption movement, the organization where plans are hatched and funded to destroy public schools. He tells the story of the NewSchools Venture Fund, where very wealthy people collaborate to undermine and privatize one of our most essential democratic institutions: our public schools.

He begins this important post:


The New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF) is the Swiss army knife of public school privatization. It promotes education technology development, bankrolls charter school creation, develops charter management organizations and sponsors school leadership training groups. Since its founding in 1998, a small group of people with extraordinary wealth have been munificent in their support. NSVF is a significant asset in the billionaire funded drive to end democratically run public schools and replace them with privatized corporate structures.

Read this remarkable account that ties together the masters of the universe, who have decided to rearrange the lives of lesser mortals, that is, people who lack their vast wealth and political connections.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Technology

Gates-Funded Fordham Institute Says New Florida Standards Are No Good

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2020 //
12

The rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute has rejected Florida’s effort to replace the Common Core standards, which were wholly funded by the Gates Foundation. When the Common Core was released a decade ago, Gates paid millions to Fordham to evaluate them.

Politico Morning Education reports:

GATES FOUNDATION-BACKED INSTITUTE CALLS FLORIDA’S NEW K-12 STANDARDS ‘WEAK’: The Fordham Institute said the state’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking standards, which came from a push from Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Common Core and to set a national example, are in need of “significant and immediate revisions.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a supporter of Common Core, backs the institute.

— “As for other states, they should indeed look for model standards, but they won’t find them in Florida,” wrote Fordham Institute President Michael Petrilli and Amber Northern, senior vice president of research. The study also says Florida leaders are unlikely to reexamine the new standards “anytime soon.”

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Reform, Florida, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Arkansas: Preparing to Sell the Children to Tech Entrepreneurs

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2020 //
13

Cathy Frye is a veteran journalist who worked for the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, then quit when she decided she could no longer stomach being part of the Walton Goubdation machine.

She writes here about the plan to outsource schooling this fall to a tech corporation that is under investigation.

She writes:

I got curious and took a little gander today at the Arkansas Public School Center’s website. And yep, there it was – APSRC’s latest attempt to help its digital “learning” providers by – once again – taking advantage of the pandemic’s effects on public schools.

Pay attention, folks: This partnership – announced today – involves the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, the Arkansas Department of Education and an outfit known as Lincoln Learning Solutions. This partnership will affect how public schools operate during the 2020-2021 school year.

APSRC and the Arkansas Department of Education are endorsing a digital learning provider that is currently under investigation by the Pennsylvania State Auditor General’s Office.

Why an investigation? Because a five-year audit revealed that Lincoln Learning Solutions had received more than $110 million in taxpayer dollars. Now, Arkansas’ parents and schools are about to get sucker-punched in a similar fashion.

You can also be sure that someway, somehow, APSRC Executive Director Scott Smith will also find a way to profit from this. Smith does not believe in MOUs that offer no benefit to his Walton-backed empire – er, I mean, “non-profit” organization.

I dealt with digital-provider “representatives” – not educators but salesmen – for three years. They expected free vendor booths at each APSRC conference. They also expected to be wined and dined on APSRC’s tab. Initially, they got what they wanted via a grant awarded to APSRC’s teaching and learning department. But when the money ran out, they still expected to be wooed and catered to. And Smith didn’t seem to mind, which tells me that APSRC also was making money by supporting these digital providers.

APSRC has been trying for years – well before my time there – to sell this digital-learning crap to Arkansas schools. Problem is, this crap, aside from being crap, has been too pricey even for the better-off districts.

Open the link and read the rest. The Waltons are happy to disrupt public schools at any time.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Technology, Walton Foundation

Pennsylvania: Charter Leader Steps Down After Writing that Floyd Protestors “Disgust” Her

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2020 //
38

The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools [sic] announced that its executive director had stepped down.

This followed the controversy that erupted after she wrote on her Facebook page that the protests over George Floyd’s brutal killing disgusted her, then removed the post. Too late.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Pennsylvania, Racism

Insult of the Day in the Wall Street Journal

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2020 //
44

The Wall Street Journal, which has a teacher-bashing, union-hating pro-privatization editorial board, published an editorial warning about the dangers of policing the police.

The editorial included these sentences.

“There’s a case for police reforms, in particular more public transparency about offenses by individual officers. Union rules negotiated under collective bargaining make it hard to punish offending officers, much as unions do for bad public school teachers. By all means let’s debate other policies and accountability in using force.”

So, police brutality is the union’s fault. And killer cops are just like those “bad teachers” whose students don’t get high test scores. Clearly, the WSJ didn’t get the memo about the consistent failure of test-based accountability as a means of evaluating teachers.

Do I detect a false equivalency?

Other nations have police unions and a minuscule number of police killings, compared to the U.S. And since when did low test scores become comparable to a brazen act of crushing a man’s windpipe?

Categories Accountability, Media, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Please Join Amy Frogge and Me on Wednesday!

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2020 //
0

Amy Frogge has been in the trenches in Nashville, leading the fight for better schools for all. She is a mother of children in Nashville public schools, a lawyer, and a member of the Metro Nashvillle school board.

She has been a leader in the resistance to charters and vouchers.

We will have an open Zoom chat on Wednesday.

Join us!

Let’s talk!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Nashville, Privatization, Vouchers

A Classic: John Oliver on Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2020 //
3

In 2016, John Oliver presented a shocking episode about charter schools.

It has been viewed by 12 million people.

Oliver was the first and possibly the only major media figure to discover that charter schools had some serious problems.

Some close in the middle of the year.

Watch his clip with John Kasich comparing education to getting more pepperoni on a slice of pizza.

Watch his clip of a charter operator quoting Scripture to excuse her criminal behavior.

Watch the clip of the owner of the for-profit White Hat charter chain, who says that “education is first, last, and always a business.”

Give John Oliver credit for being first to expose waste, fraud, and abuse in a new and very profitable industry.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Fraud

Video: Watch Bill Gates Defend His Decision to Fund the Common Core

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2020 //
12

This is a fascinating interview of Bill Gates in 2014 by Washington Post reporter Lyndsey Layton.

Layton wrote a comprehensive account of how the Common Core was funded single-handed by Gates. Gates engineered a “swift revolution,” a near coup, by subsidizing and promulgating the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), with cheerleading by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

CCSS may have been the biggest policy disaster in the history of U.S. education. States and districts spent billions of dollars to implement new standards, new tests, new teacher training, new software, new textbooks, new professional development, all in pursuit of illusory standardization.

The U.S. Department of Education paid $360 million for two consortia to develop tests (PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Consortium). The consortia started life with almost every state but most have now dropped out. Gates paid for everything else. By some estimates, he invested as much as $2 billion subsidizing the writing, development, evaluation, and promotion of CCSS.

The Common Core was adopted by almost every state because states had to adopt common standards if they wanted to be eligible to compete for a portion of nearly $5 billion in Race to the Top funding. Arne Duncan worked closely with the Gates Foundation, and several former Gates officials worked for Duncan. States, still staggering from the 2008 recession, needed the money. Race to the Top and CCSS were a package deal meant to standardize American education.

If the goal was to raise test scores (it was) and to close or narrow achievement gaps (it was), both Race to the Top and Common Core failed. Neither happened. Read my book SLAYING GOLIATH, which contains the data.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Testing

Watch Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2020 //
29

I just finished the four-part series streaming on Netflix titled “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.”

It is an engrossing program, and it rightly focuses on the voices of the survivors (the women who speak out clearly prefer to be known as “survivors,” not “victims.”)

The indictment of Epstein is powerful. He lured scores of young, underage girls to his mansion in Palm Beach for his sexual pleasure. Some say that he engaged hundreds of girls, some as young as 14.

Epstein lived a life of splendor. In addition to his home in Palm Beach, he owned a mansion in Manhattan, a beautiful spread in New Mexico, an apartment in Paris, but he claimed that his home was an island that he owned called Little St. James, also referred to as Pedophile Island or Orgy Island. He also owned two jets.

You will see some celebrities, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Alan Dershowitz. They appear in photographs with Epstein, but their memory of any relationship with him has faded. Jeffrey who?

Nothing is said about his relationship with Harvard, although he is seen wearing a a Harvard sweatshirt.

The fact that he taught at the private Dalton School in New York City is noted, which was curious since he never earned a college degree. Not mentioned is that he was hired by the Uber-conservative Headmaster Donald Barr, father of the current Attorney General William Barr.

The chief villain of the series Obviously is Epstein, as is his chief enabler Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the conservative British media mogul Robert Maxwell.

Another major villain is Alexander Acosta, who was the U.S. Attorney in Florida, who should have prosecuted Epstein years ago for sex trafficking of minors but instead made a secret sweetheart deal that allowed Epstein to get a short sentence that permitted him to leave jail six days a week, twelve hours a day to do as he wished. Trump named Acosta as Secretary of Labor, but when his velvet glove treatment of Epstein was revealed, he was forced to resign.

The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein were persistent in demanding accountability. For years, they thought that he would always be protected by his wealth and powerful connections. They were scarred for life by this monster.

The last episode raises questions about whether he committed suicide or was murdered. When you see his cell, it is hard to imagine that he hanged himself.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty

G.F. Brandenburg: How to Be an Anti-Fascist Without Breaking a Sweat

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2020 //
17

G.F. Brandenburg reposts an essay by Talia Levin about how she infiltrated various far-right extremist groups by join8ngbthem under an alias and joined their website.

She describes how she created Facebook pages with false identities to insinuate herself into far-right networks.

She writes:

I use a fake Facebook account, which I’ve used dozens of times for this and similar purposes. The name is false, and the profile is built out with an array of far-right groups, “patriotic” interests, and dog-whistle posts designed to maintain plausibility. I’ve made so many accounts on so many apps over the past few years that I have to take care not to lose track of my pseudonyms. Although it kicked into high gear during research for my book on the online far right, infiltrating hate groups isn’t just a strange hobby or a journalistic endeavor; it’s antifascism.

She reminds me that we should all be “anti-fascist.” We fought a war in the early 1940s to rid the world of fascism.

Shouldn’t we all be anti-fascist?”

Why is Trump so terrified of a group called Antifa?

Categories Accountability, Fascism, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »