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Why I Do Not Support Cory Booker

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2019 //
19

Cory Booker has a long and well-documented record of disparaging public schools and enthusiastically supporting charters, even vouchers. Now, he says he will dedicate himself to public schools and stop privatization, as if he had not been one of the leading cheerleaders for both charters and vouchers for the past two decades.

Valerie Strauss wrote here about his deep ties over the years to Betsy DeVos. 

Booker began his advocacy for vouchers twenty years ago.

“In 1999, Booker was a member of the Municipal Council of Newark and worked with conservatives to form an organization that sought to create a voucher program and bring charter schools to New Jersey.”

He helped Dick and Betsy DeVos try to sell vouchers in Michigan in 2000. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful. As Jennifer Berkshire pointed out in her article about Booker’s help for the DeVos voucher campaign, the DeVos family spent millions, but the people of Michigan rejected vouchers by a vote of 69-31%.

When Booker ran for mayor of Newark in 2001, the DeVos family contributed $1,000 to his campaign. Cheapskates.

Veteran journalist Dale Russakoff wrote a book called The Prize about Cory Booker’s alliance with Republican Governor Chris Christie and their determination to turn Newark into the “New Orleans of the North” by privatizing as many public schools as possible. Booker was a favorite of Wall Street and philanthrocapitalists, and he and Christie persuaded Mark Zuckerberg to put up $100 million to spur privatization in Newark.

Regular readers of this blog have read the many posts by blogger Jersey Jazzman (Mark Weber) about the statistical legerdemain that Newark charters play, the cream-skimming they do to get the students they want and exclude those that might pull down their test scores..

If you open the link at NPE Action, you will see that Booker’s campaigns have drawn the campaign funding of the usual billionaires and Wall Street hedge funders who have done their best to undermine public education.

Booker was feted by rightwing think tanks like the Manhattan Institute and named a “champion of charters” by the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools in 2017.

But his support for vouchers was not long, long ago.

In 2012, he endorsed Governor Chris Christie’s voucher proposal.

In 2016, he addressed Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children to express his support for their mission of replacing public schools with charters and vouchers.

Due to his contempt for one of our most important public, democratic institutions, I cannot support Cory Booker.

If he is the Democratic candidate, which seems unlikely, I will hold my nose and vote for him, because any Democrat is better than Trump. Even Cory Booker.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Which Democratic Candidates Are the 1% Supporting?

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2019 //
57

Forbes very helpfully published a list of the candidates who have received contributions from billionaires.

Here it is.

Are you surprised?

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform

“Stand for Children” Folds in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2019 //
10

Once upon a time, long ago, a man named Jonah Edelman founded a group called Stand for Children. Edelman had instant credibility because he was the son of civil rights leader Marion Wright Edelman.

Somewhere, somehow, around 2009, Stand for Children decided to change its focus. So it became a grantee of the Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation,  and an advocate for charter schools, high-stakes testing and test-based teacher evaluation. Gates and other billionaires gave millions to Stand to act as a pass-through.

Stand was active in Illinois, fighting against the Chicago Teachers Union. It funded pro-charter candidates in local elections such as Nashville. It was active in Massachusetts, trying to pass a referendum in 2016 to lift the state limit on charter school expansion. That referendum failed.

But, reports U Mass professor Maurice Cunningham, the money people in Massachusetts shut off the spigot, and Stand for Children is leaving, perhaps for another assignment.

Cunningham is a specialist in tracking Dark Money and the ways that the elites are undermining democracy.

What we learn from this tale is that there is no “reform movement.” It has no grassroots. It is a phenomenon of wealthy elites trying to buy public policy.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Stand for Children

Alert: Koch Brothers Are Paying Operatives to Sow Discord in NAACP

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2019 //
56

 

Rebecca Klein, education editor of Huffington Post, broke the story that rightwing groups have infiltrated NAACP chapters in California to create a fake rebellion against the organization’s 2016 call for a moratorium on new charters. The resolution passed by the National Civil Rights Group demands a halt until charters agree to be accountable, to cease diverting money from public schools, and to stop pushing out students they don’t want.

When three local NAACP branches in California passed April resolutions opposing the national group’s call for a charter school moratorium, school choice advocates greeted the news with glee. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVosvoiced her support in an interview. The Wall Street Journal published a flattering editorial about the move, describing it as a welcome “revolt.”

But leaders at the California state NAACP say this so-called “revolt” is fake news. They say the main member who pushed these actions ― a woman named Christina Laster ― is being paid by a right-wing group connected to the Koch brothers to infiltrate the organization and sow chaos. They also note that, despite the media attention, these resolutions were dead on arrival at the national organization for failure to follow proper submission protocol or rejection by higher committees.

In July, California leadership asked the national NAACP to initiate an investigation into the three branches ― Southwest Riverside, San Diego and San Bernardino ― and their leaders’ motivations.

“It’s definitely a funded and deliberate effort to try and do a hostile takeover,” said Rick Callender, the second vice president for the California Hawaii NAACP…

Laster works for the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank that’s an affiliate of the State Policy Network. According to a 2012 report from theCenter for Media and Democracy, the State Policy Network is a main driver of legislation created by the pro-business American Legislative Exchange Counsel and has deep ties to Charles and David Koch, the energy billionaires who spend vast sums of money to promote conservative causes and candidates. The California Policy Center is dedicated to pushing education reform causes, with a focus on beating back the state’s teachers union. The group has been behind a number of lawsuits designed to hurt unions’ bottom lines.

An officer of the San Diego branch of the NAACP is  employed by the California Charter Schools Association, the charter lobby.

“These are people on the payroll of charter school associations and payroll of organizations that are trying to attack the greatest civil rights organization in the U.S.,” said Callender.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fake, Koch Brothers, Privatization

My Talk with Nicholas Hanauer, a Defector from the Rich Reformer Club

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2019 //
66

 

I was thrilled to read the recent article by Nick Hanauer in The Atlantic, where he publicly announced his defection from the blame-public-Schools-first club. He realized that schools alone can’t “fix” poverty and that the biggest problem in our society is income inequality and wage stagnation.

I know of Nick Hanauer as someone who has given millions of dollars to promote charter schools, and now he said he had changed his mind. I know what it’s like to stun your friends and enemies alike by admitting error.

I messaged him on Twitter, and he responded by inviting me to chat on his podcast called “Pitchfork  Economics.” Here is the result. 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Joe Biden: Where Does He Stand on Race to the Top?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2019 //
38

I have not endorsed a candidate, and I will vote for anyone nominated by the Democratic party to run against Trump. He is the worst, most ignorant, most unqualified president in our history, and we cannot have four more years of his vile policies.

I am expressing my views about the candidates in the Democratic primaries and will continue to do so.

I am not a one-issue voter but I sincerely hope that Democrats have a candidate who will reverse the ruinous education policies of the past four decades. Our nation has invested in standards, testing, accountability, and choice with nothing to show for it.

Many states today spend less on education than they did eleven years ago, and millions of teachers are not paid or respected as professionals. Many states cut taxes and cut their education budgets yet expanded privatization by charters and vouchers, diverting even more money away from the public schools that most students attend.

At the present moment, the leading candidate is Joe Biden.

Biden is a very likable guy, to be sure, who knows how to connect with regular people.

NPE Action has found nothing problematic in his donors or affiliations, no evidence that the billionaires or DFER are pulling the strings.

He has been in public life for many decades and has made some bad decisions and cast some bad votes in his past. He should come right out and say so.

Joe Biden is very proud that Barack Obama selected him as his Vice-President, and that the Obama-Biden ticket won twice, in 2008 and 2012.

I voted for them both times.

But I loathed Race to the Top, Obama’s education policy. Does Joe Biden?

Race to the Top failed by every measure.

States collectively spent billions of dollars to comply with its directives while failing to invest in students and teachers.

Because of RTTT, we got more privately managed charter schools; more high-stakes testing of students; evaluating teachers by test scores of their students; closing hundreds or even thousands of public schools because their test scores were low (almost all—maybe all—of them in impoverished communities of color); and Common Core standards.

None of these policies has been successful unless you are a believer in disruption for its own sake. The states that adopted Common Core spent billions of dollars on new tests, new textbooks, new computers, new teacher training, new everything. The charter schools open and close with regularity, introducing instability and scandal. Some of the few states that resisted Race to the Top and Common Core (like Nebraska) actually outperformed those that followed Duncan’s agenda.

The national upshot: NAEP scores have been flat from 2007-2017. If we were “racing to the Top,” we didn’t get there.

The very idea of a “race” implies a few winners and a lot of losers. This is the wrong concept to apply to K-12 education, where our goal should be to enable every student to find a path to a successful life.

I want to hear Joe Biden talk about Race to the Top.

I want to know how he feels about spending $440 million this year to fund corporate charter chains.

I know he has said that he opposes for-profit charters, but every candidate says that.

I want to hear him state clearly whether he embraces the Obama education policies or renounces them.

I want to hear what he will do to rebuild America’s public schools and restore their prestige as the gateways to opportunity.

He announced his plan at an AFT event in Houston. He has always been a friend of organized labor.

He is opposed to vouchers. He opposes DeVos and  Trump, like every other Democratic candidate. He wants to invest in pre-K and in low-income schools, all to the good.

But where does he stand on the central tenets of Race to the Top?

is he ready to lead us out of the maze in which federal education policy has been stuck since the Reagan years?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Laura Chapman: A Letter to Senator Sherrod Brown

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2019 //
16

This is a model of a letter to a Senator or Member of Congress. It was written by Laura Chapman of Cincinnati to one of her Senators. It is clear and based on evidence.

Dear Senator Brown,

I recently received an email from you, intended as a response to my prior effort to understand your position on federal funding for charter schools and so-called “choice” programs beloved by Secretary DeVos.

You gave an uninformed response to my concerns about federal money pouring into the coffers of the charter school industry, money often added to by state funds and non-trival sums in private dollars.

Please pay attention. More than one third of federally funded charter schools, funded at $1.billion, never opened or closed soon after opening.

You should be investigating why Betsy Devos is treating our tax dollars as a personal slush fund for corporate charter schools while ignoring well documented evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse and cronyism in how these funds are used.

Charter school advocates posture about “high-quality schools” just like you do. In fact, many charter schools are terrible. Consider these facts.

Ohio 2018 report cards for 257 charter schools.

__235 charter schools received a grade of D or F (not exactly high quality).
__15 charter schools earned a C, merely average (not exactly high quality).
__ 4 charter schools had a grade of B
__ 3 charter schools had a grade of A.

Most federal funds are flowing to corporate chains with off-the-shelf franchise plans, hostility to collective bargaining, and an aversion to public schools with democratically elected school boards.

Charter schools claim to be public until they are sued in court. They are routinely draining money from local public schools while claiming to be underfunded.

Most charter schools do not need federal funds. They are being supported by billionaires and many Republicans who want to privatize public institutions, public services, public lands and natural resources.

Charter schools are not lacking in funds and should not be given more from the federal budget.

Please read this report before you respond. The three-page Executive Summary is a must read. https://www.scribd.com/document/403089110/Asleep-at-the-Wheel-final-Online-Version

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Ohio, U.S. Department of Education

Bernie Sanders Speaks to UTLA leadership Conference about His Agenda

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2019 //
37

Bernie Sanders recently was invited by the United Teachers of Los Angeles to speak to its Leadership Conference.

I was invited to make a tape introducing him. I did but you won’t see it or hear it. Technical problems. Just wait. You will hear Bernie loud and clear. He is still the only candidate with a thoughtful education agenda.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, Testing

Domingo Morel: State Takeover is the Wrong Answer for Providence Schools

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2019 //
12

 

Domingo Morel is a scholar of state takeovers. He wrote a book called Takeover:  Race, Education, and American Democracy. He was also a member of the team from Johns Hopkins that studied the problems of the Providence schools. And, what’s more, he is a graduate of the Providence public schools.

In other words, he has solid credentials to speak about the future of the Providence public schools. The schools are already under mayoral control, so discount that magic bullet that reformers usually prefer.

He knows from his study of state takeovers that they do not address root causes of school dysfunction.

Consider this:

As a scholar of state takeovers of school districts, I have seen how communities desperate to improve their schools placed their hopes in state takeovers, only to be disappointed. While the long-term effects of takeovers on student achievement often fail to meet expectations, the effects on community engagement are devastating. In most takeovers, states remove local entities — school boards, administrators, teachers, parents and community organizations — from decision-making about their schools.

Those who have read the Johns Hopkins report are aware that the absence of community engagement is a major issue in the Providence Schools. Demographic differences are a major reason. Students of color represent more than 85% of the student population and English Language Learners represent nearly 30%, while more than 80% of the teachers are white. These differences are not trivial…

To help cultivate community engagement, the state could partner with a collective of community organizations, including Parents Leading for Educational Equity, ProvParents, the Equity Institute, the Latino Policy Institute, CYCLE and the Providence Student Union, which have come together over concerns with the Providence schools.

Finally, state officials should examine their role in contributing to the current conditions in Providence. State funding, particularly to support English Language Learners and facilities, has been inadequate. In addition, the absence of a pipeline for teachers of color is a state failure.

What a surprising set of recommendations: increase the pipeline of teachers of color. Build community engagement. Work with community organizations. Increase state funding.

He might also have added: Reduce class sizes. Provide wraparound services for students and adults. Open health clinics for families in the schools or communities. Improve and increase early childhood education. Beef up arts education and performance spaces in every school.

It takes a village, not a flock of hedge fund managers or a passel of fly-by billionaires hawking charter schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Class size, Creativity, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Providence, Rhode Island

Los Angeles: I Feel Sorry for Nick Melvoin

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2019 //
46

 

Nick Melvoin was elected to the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District with the most money ever spent on a school board election in American history. The money came from the charter lobby.

It was not hard to assume that he owed an enormous debt of gratitude to Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, Richard Riordan, Bill Bloomfield, and the other uber-rich who funded his election.

Yet, I feel sorry for Nick, whom I have never met.

Michael Kohlhaas just posted emails from his treasure trove of leaked materials that show that Nick was so indebted to the charter lobby that he asked them to write the resolutions that would benefit them. He didn’t write them himself. He asked the California Charter Schools Association to do it for him.

This has got to be deeply humiliating because it shows him to be a complete sellout, a tool.

I am embarrassed for him.

Kohlhaas finds it ironic that the Los Angeles Times endorsed Nick because he would be “an independent thinker.” It turns out that he is not an independent thinker. He is owned by the charter industry and he knows it.

Kohlhaas begins:

We’ve already seen that LAUSD officials, both elected and appointed, have a sickening penchant for sharing confidential materials with Charter lobbyists, giving them advance input into official policy proposals, and so on. I’ve recently reported, e.g., on an episode from September 2018 where Austin Beutner allowed Cassy Horton and Jed Wallace of the California Charter School Association to vet an upcoming speech and also to talk in advance with his speechwriterto explain what they thought ought to be included. Convicted felon slash former schoolboard member Ref Rodriguez did the same thing in March 2018 with respect to a board proposal.

And it turns out that, beginning in January 2018, LAUSD Board member and charter school bootlicker Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin1was involved in a very similar scheme having to do with LAUSD policies on school facilities, a subject which sounds tedious but is actually bureaucratic code for real estate, a subject which is at the very center of the zillionaire plan to loot the public treasure-stores for their own gain.2

Basically the proposal, which seems never to have made it out of the secret meetings, would have called for LAUSD to list all its facilities so that the privatizers could choose which ones to target, to allocate facilities between charter schools and public schools based on excellence and student success rather than on need, to authorize a putatively neutral third party to settle disputes over co-location offers, to study how to sell or lease LAUSD property to charters, and to do something complicated with bonds used to fund facilities. It all seems incredibly shady, shady beyond belief.

No one knows how Kohlhaas got these emails but no one has questioned their veracity.

What he has revealed so far is the worst kind of corruption: intellectual corruption, moral corruption, ethical corruption. That may be even worse than dollar corruption because it shows a hole in your soul.

There must be many people trembling to think what might come next.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization
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