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Los Angeles: Superintendent Beutner Meets Often with Privatization Advocates, Not Public School Leaders

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2018 //
6

Hedge fund manager Austin Beutner, superintendent of schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District, has lots of time to meet with Eli Broad, Peter Cunningham, the head of the California Charter Schools Association, and a long list of charter leaders and privatization advocates.

The teachers’ union, which has already authorized a strike, fought to get Beutner to release his calendar. He resisted, and now we know why.

Here is the story.

Of course, he has also met with union leaders, which is inevitable. But he has an unusual availability to charter school leaders and their lobbyists.

Perhaps Beutner could arrange a visit by Betsy DeVos. He could show her the progress he has made in undermining the public schools that he is supposed to lead.

This was LAUSD’s comment on Beutner’s calendar.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Lies, Los Angeles, Privatization

Peter Greene: None Dare Call It “Philanthropy”

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2018 //
26

In this post, Peter Greene spells out the difference between philanthropy and the desire to control the lives of others.

One is generous, the other is a blunt use of power to gratify one’s own ego.

One helps people achieve the goals they have set for themselves, the other imposes the donor’s will on unwilling and resistant recipients, whose voice is silenced.

“Modern fauxlanthropy is not about helping people; it’s about buying control, about hiring people to promote your own program and ideas. It’s about doing an end run around the entire democratic process, even creating positions that never existed, like Curriculum Director of the United States, and then using sheer force of money to appoint yourself to that position. It’s about buying compliance.

“It is privatization. It is about taking a section of the public sector and buying control of it so that you can run it as if it was your own personal possession.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Injustice, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Shame, Walton Foundation

Breitbart Loves Marshall Tuck as the “Choice” Candidate for California Superintendent of Public Instruction

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2018 //
3

Earlier this summer, the rightwing rag Breitbart posted a very positive article about Marshall Tuck, who is running to become California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Breitbart, long associated with Steve Bannon and white-nationalist policies, identifies Tuck as pro-charter school and anti-union.

The article correctly notes that Tuck received only 5% of the votes at the state Democratic convention.

The overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates to the convention endorsed Tuck’s opponent, Tony Thurmond.

There are many reasons to vote for Tony Thurmond, including his experience as a social worker and his demonstrated concern for students, not corporate interests.

If you want Eli Broad and the other billionaires to control public education and privatize it, then Tuck’s your man.

If you want public schools to remain public and accountable to democratically elected school boards, vote for Tony Thurmond.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Why Philanthropy Is Bad for Democracy: An Interview with Anand Giridharadas

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2018 //
28

This article expresses our frustration with arrogant, clueless billionaires like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Betsy DeVos, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings, the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and Mark Zuckerberg. We have long known that they don’t like democracy. It gets in the way of their grand plans to change the world. Why should we—the targets of their plans—have any say? Those of us who are not billionaires think that they should stop rearranging our lives. We don’t want them to disrupt our lives and our institutions. We believe in the idea of one person, one vote. We are losing faith in democracy because these plutocrats have more than one vote. They use their vast resources to buy elections and, what is even cheaper, to buy politicians.

Anand Giridharadas frequented their circles, mainly at the Aspen Institute, which made the mistake of inviting him to join them as a Fellow. He confirms what we suspected. These people are a threat to democracy. They think they are “doing good,” but they are destroying democracy.

It begins:

“In 2015, the journalist Anand Giridharadas was a fellow at the Aspen Institute, a confab of moneyed “thought leaders” where TED-style discourse dominates: ostensibly nonpolitical, often counterintuitive, but never too polemical. In his own speech that year, Giridharadas broke with protocol, accusing his audience of perpetuating the very social problems they thought they were solving through philanthropy. He described what he called the Aspen Consensus: “The winners of our age must be challenged to do more good, but never, ever tell them to do less harm.” The response, he said, was mixed. One private-equity figure called him an “asshole” that evening, but another investor said he’d voiced the struggle of her life. David Brooks, in a New York Times column, called the speech “courageous.” That lecture grew into Winners Take All, Giridharadas’s new jeremiad against philanthropy as we know it. He weaves together scenes at billionaires’ gatherings, profiles of insiders who struggle with ethical conflicts, and a broader history of how America’s wealth inequality and philanthropy grew in tandem.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Democracy, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Walton Foundation

Beware the Elites Who Want to Change the World.

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2018 //
30

This is an unusually good opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times a few days ago.

Think Gates, Zuckerberg, Walton, Hastings, Koch, and many more who use their wealth to impose their ideas on what they consider lesser lives.

The author is Anand Giridharadas.

Please note the mention of charter schools, a bone used by the elites to distract us from wealth inequality and the necessity of providing a better education for all.

It begins:

“Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been co-opted by the rich and the powerful.

“Change the world. Improve lives. Invent something new,” McKinsey & Company’s recruiting materials say. “Sit back, relax, and change the world,” tweets the World Economic Forum, host of the Davos conference. “Let’s raise the capital that builds the things that change the world,” a Morgan Stanley ad says. Walmart, recruiting a software engineer, seeks an “eagerness to change the world.” Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says, “The best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company.”

“At first, you think: Rich people making a difference — so generous! Until you consider that America might not be in the fix it’s in had we not fallen for the kind of change these winners have been selling: fake change.

“Fake change isn’t evil; it’s milquetoast. It is change the powerful can tolerate. It’s the shoes or socks or tote bag you bought which promised to change the world. It’s that one awesome charter school — not equally funded public schools for all. It is Lean In Circles to empower women — not universal preschool. It is impact investing — not the closing of the carried-interest loophole.

“Of course, world-changing initiatives funded by the winners of market capitalism do heal the sick, enrich the poor and save lives. But even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm.

“What their “change” leaves undisturbed is our winners-take-all economy, which siphons the gains from progress upward. The average pretax income of America’s top 1 percent has more than tripled since 1980, and that of the top 0.001 percent has risen more than sevenfold, even as the average income of the bottom half of Americans stagnated around $16,000, adjusted for inflation, according to a paper by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

“American elites are monopolizing progress, and monopolies can be broken. Aggressive policies to protect workers, redistribute income, and make education and health affordable would bring real change. But such measures could also prove expensive for the winners. Which gives them a strong interest in convincing the public that they can help out within the system that so benefits the winners.”

There is more, if it is not behind a paywall.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Fake, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hypocrisy, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Mike Petrilli: In the Face of So Many Setbacks, Where Does Reform Go From Here?

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2018 //
28

Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, one of the leading advocacy groups in the Corporate Reform Movement, offers advice and consolation to fellow Reformers.

“After two decades of mostly-forward movement and many big wins, the last few years have been a tough patch for education reform. The populist right has attacked standards, testing, and accountability, with particular emphasis on the Common Core, as well as testing itself. The election of Donald Trump and appointment of Betsy DeVos, meanwhile, have made school choice and charter schools toxic on much of the progressive left. And the 2017 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate a “lost decade” of academic achievement. All of these trends have left policymakers and philanthropists feeling glum about reform, given the growing narrative that, like so many efforts before it, the modern wave hasn’t worked or delivered the goods, yet has produced much friction, fractiousness, and furor.”

Take heart, he says. The children of America need us to privatize their schools, bust teachers’ unions, and Judge their teachers by student test scores. Remember when they all laughed at NCLB, but now “we” know that it was a great success?

It’s true that NAEP scores have been flat for a decade. It’s true that charters close almost as often as they open. It’s true that the charter industry is riddled with fraud, waste, and abuse.

But stick with proven leaders like the hedge fund managers, Bill Gates, and DeVos.

Sorry to be snarky, Mike, but I couldn’t resist.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Testing, Trump, VAM, Vouchers

LAUSD Chief Picks TFA-Broadie from Nation’s Lowest Performing State as Chief of Staff

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2018 //
21

Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner, new to the education world, has defined himself by his first big hire. He selected Rebecca Kockler, the Louisiana Department of Education’s assistant superintendent for academic content to be his chief of staff. Like her boss, John White, Kockler is both TFA and Broadie. (For the initiated, that means they both got a little bit of teaching experience as recruits for Teach for America and are “graduates” of Eli Broad’s unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, whose “graduates” are taught top-down management, the value of closing schools and replacing them with private management, and other reformer tricks of the trade. John Thompson recently wrote a series of posts here about the dismal record of Broadies.)

Mercedes Schneider, researcher and high school teacher in Louisiana, reviews Kockler’s TFA career in TFA here, which was mysteriously absent from the LAUSD press release. Also unmentioned in the press release was her Broadie history. Mercedes knows more about the Louisiana Department of Education and its new chief of staff than LAUSD. To be fair to the person who wrote the press release, Mercedes notes that Kockler deleted her Linked In bio that describes her TFA history. But Mercedes has it.

Both the LAUSD press release and the Broad Center agree that Louisiana is one of the “fastest improving” states in the nation.

But is that true? Nope. Its NAEP scores declined significantly from 2015 to 2017.

What is especially irksome about the LAUSD press release linked above is that it refers to Louisiana’s academic standards as “a national model.” Who would look to a state that scrapes the very bottom of NAEP rankings as “a national model”? Maybe it is a model of how to fail while boasting of success. Maybe it is a model of Trumpian rhetoric that turns lemons into lemonade.

Consider this report in the New Orleans Advocate on 2017 NAEP.:

“In the latest snapshot of education achievement, scores for Louisiana public school fourth-graders plunged to or near the bottom of the nation in reading and math.

“In addition, eighth-graders finished 50th among the states and the District of Columbia in math and 48th in reading…

In 2015, fourth-graders finished 43rd in the U. S. in reading and 45th in math….

“But both scores dropped five points – to 212 and 229 out of 500 respectively – during tests administered to 2,700 students last year.

“That means fourth-grade math scores finished 51st while fourth-grade reading scores are 49th.

“The group that oversees the exams, the National Center for Education Statistics, said both drops are statistically significant.”

Why not tell the truth? Beutner hired the academic director of one of the lowest performing states in the nation, where NAEP scores fell in the latest assessment. He was impressed by her credentials in TFA, and she came highly recommended by his friend Eli Broad.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reformers, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fake, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Teach for America

Tom Ultican on Philadelphia, Another School Choice Failure

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2018 //
7

Tom Ultican, recently retired teacher of physics, has embarked on a mission to cover the Destroy Public Education movement. His posts have taken him to several cities, where the school choice movement has destroyed public education without putting anything better in its place. In fact, the “new” schools are usually worse than the public schools.

In his latest foray, he studies the destruction wrought by the Destroy Public Education movement on the public schools of Philadelphia.

The trouble started when Republican Governor Tom Ridge hired the Edison Project to conduct a study of the Philadelphia public schools and come up with solutions (such as, taking charge of the entire district themselves, nothing like conflict of interest to stir the commercial juices.)

Ultican relies heavily on Samuel Abrams’ excellent book Education and the Commercial Mindset, which began life as a study of Chris Whittle’s Edison Project.

Things went downhill from there. The whole point of “reform” was not to make the schools better, but to save money.

“Edison’s report was not impartial. Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News called it a charade. (Abrams 116) The report was overly critical of the school district and recommended that the Edison Project be put in charge of running it. Edison also called for reforming “failing” schools by turning them into charter schools.

“Helen Gym (now on the Philadelphia city council) speaking for Asian Americans United, asked, “If this [privatization] is so innovative why aren’t they doing it in Lower Merion.” (Abrams 114) This turns out to have been a perceptive question. Lower Merion is 85% white and rich. Still today, there appear to be no charter schools in Lower Merion Township. Charter schools mostly exist in poor communities without the political capital to protect their schools.”

Broadies, Broadies everywhere! Closing public schools. Starving them. Opening charters. Destroying the district. The great Charade of “Reform.”

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Philadelphia, Privatization

John Thompson: How Broadie Superintendents Nearly Destroyed Oakland Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2018 //
9

John Thompson, teacher and historian, has been investigating the track record of Superintendents “trained” by the unaccredited Broad Foundation.

He writes:

Across the nation, educators have seen the harm done to public education by Broad Academy superintendents. But what do we see when we take a step back and think through their patterns of behavior? And what do we see when looking at Oakland, for instance, where four Broad graduates have run the district? When Broad focuses so intently on one school system, what does the record of its leaders say about education “reform?”

Perhaps the most powerful indictment of an Oakland-connected Broadie, Antwan Wilson, was written by conservative reformer Max Eden, who is one of the many new critics of the data-driven micromanaging which Broad exemplifies. This is crucial because more and more reformers are acknowledging that their accountability-driven theories have failed; apparently, these corporate reformers are now gambling everything on choice, and placing their bets on charters that don’t face the oversight that once was contemplated by many neoliberal reformers.

And that is the first obvious pattern which emerged from Oakland. Before the first Broad manager (Randy Ward) was appointed, Oakland had 15 charters. Six years later, after Oakland experienced three Broad superintendents, it had 34. By the time Antwan Wilson left, the district had 44. As was explained in 2016 by the New York Times Motoko Rich, Wilson faced “a rebellion by teachers and some parents against his plan to allow families to use a single form to apply to any of the city’s 86 district-run schools or 44 charter campuses, all of which are competing for a shrinking number of students.” The likely scenario was that the common application form would result in a New Orleans-style charter portfolio model.

Second, the Oakland Broad experience provides another example about the way that their corporate reformers are untroubled by behaviors that most people see as scandalous. Its four Broad leaders all came with a history of dubious behaviors, or when they left they were caught up in questionable activities.

Vincent Matthews (Broad Class of 2006) had been the principal of a Edison Charter Academy in Noe Valley which had been in danger of losing its charter because it had been criticized for pushing out black students with low test scores. Kimberly Statham (2003) had resigned as chief academic officer of the Howard County Schools following allegations of a grade changing scandal involving her daughter.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/incoming-sf-schools-superintendent-takes-measured-stance-charters/

http://www.baltimoresun.com/bs-mtblog-2007-10-where_are_they_now_kimberly_a-story.html

Randy Ward (2003) left Oakland for San Diego where he resigned, after being placed on administrative leave. The San Diego County Office of Education had been thrown into turmoil as a forensic audit examined “concerns related to certain expenditures and compensation” for top education officials.

I’d add an observation about one controversy involving Michelle Fort-Merrill, “a close confidant to former superintendent Ward,” who earned a salary of $161,000. A whistle-blower won a civil lawsuit after accusing Fort-Merrill and others of “playing favorites with public education money by awarding lucrative legal contracts to friends.” He successfully claimed that his due process rights were violated.

When Fort-Merrill was terminated, she sued saying her due process rights were violated. Isn’t it hypocritical for corporate reformers to use charter expansions and data-driven evaluations for an all-out assault on educators’ due process rights while using those rights to protect their huge salaries?
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sdut-tensions-rise-at-county-office-of-education-2016jul14-story.html

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/sd-me-county-schools-audit-20170714-story.html

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/mar/02/ticker-lawsuit-top-lawsuit-office-education/#

Only after Antwan Wilson left Oakland and became Washington D.C.’s chancellor, did his full record become apparent. As Valerie Strauss noteds “It was no secret that when Wilson departed the Oakland Unified School District 2½ years after arriving, he left a budget deficit of about $30 million behind.” But subsequent analyses showed:

While Wilson was superintendent in Oakland, the district overspent its budget in some areas, but spent substantially below budgeted amounts in other categories, according to data from the Board of Education. During the 2016-2017 school year, $10.4 million was budgeted for “classified supervisors and administrators” while $22.2 million was spent, according to the Board of Education. In the same year, $21.4 million was budgeted for professional and consulting services, but $28.2 million was spent.

Wilson spent huge amounts of money, creating new, unbudgeted positions and he paid more than what was customary. Strauss noted, “In 2013, before Wilson arrived in Oakland, only four administrators earned more than $200,000; two years later, at least 26 did.”

But Wilson spent less on books and supplies for classrooms than was budgeted. In 2015-2016, Strauss recalls, “$18.6 million was budgeted, but only $12.3 million was spent, according to board data. In 2016-2017, $20.1 million was budgeted for books and other school supplies, but only $6.8 million was spent.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/11/21/new-d-c-schools-chancellor-under-scrutiny-for-overspending-in-california-district-he-led/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.26d4816495f4

https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2018/04/27/antwan-wilson-no-longer-working-as-a-consultant-for-denver-public-schools/

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2018/01/30/books_cooked_at_dc_schools_will_star_chancellor_answer_110250.html

Wilson was forced to resign in D.C. after violating rules when transferring his daughter to one of the city’s most desirable high schools. This followed a Washington Post report that “an internal investigation has uncovered signs of widespread enrollment fraud” at a desirable school.

And these violations were revealed about the time that it was learned that Wilson had been warned of the Ballou High School graduation scandal. Moreover, these revelations followed Washington Post discovery that “the dramatic decrease in school suspension rates was also fake.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-mayor-muriel-bowser-called-her-ousted-school-chancellors-action-indefensible-the-chancellor-says-bowser-knew-about-it-for-months/2018/03/05/d909cbc3-6e34-49f8-995f-22e1dd2ea5aa_story.html?utm_term=.1f04bdaca4ee

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/some-dc-high-schools-reported-only-a-small-fraction-of-suspensions/2017/07/17/045c387e-5762-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html?utm_term=.33d5f5ed4ce0

In other words, Wilson, the fourth Broad superintendent of Oakland, found himself in a very similar situation in D.C., being the third in the line of corporate reformers that began with Michelle Rhee. My sense is that the mess he helped create in Oakland illustrates a pattern which is similar to the one that was started by Michelle Rhee. Even if Broad superintendents were not so cavalier about violating the norms of honest behsvior, their data-driven mentality would still create inevitable scandals. Plus, the more that Broad and other corporate reformers double-down on a single district, the more damage will become too serious to be covered up any longer.

For instance, D.C.’s data-driven, competition-driven reforms created “a Culture of Passing and Graduating Students.” A review of FY16-17 DCPS graduates found that 34.% of students graduated with the assistance of policy violations.

Click to access Report%20on%20DCPS%20Graduation%20and%20Attendance%20Outcomes%20-%20Alvarez%26Marsal.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/before-a-graduation-scandal-made-headlines-teachers-at-dcs-ballou-high-raised-an-alarm/2018/01/06/ad49f198-df6a-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html?utm_term=.d92ab9db4468

Click to access Report%20on%20DCPS%20Graduation%20and%20Attendance%20Outcomes%20-%20Alvarez%26Marsal.pdf

The unraveling of D.C.’s claims of transformational success is crucial because it was once the heart of the Billionaires Boys Club’s vision for American schools. Nobody dared to claim that Oakland was a great success, but as the Motoko Rich’s article articulates, it became the “Heart of Drive to Transform Urban Schools.”

Not only did Broad train four of Oakland’s superintendents, but:

It has granted about $6 million for staff development and other programs over the last decade. The Broad Center, which runs the superintendents’ academy, has subsidized the salaries of at least 10 ex-business managers who moved into administrative jobs at the district office.

Broadies may have had “modest success in raising student achievement” but in the environment they created there is no reason to believe that those “achievement” gains are real. It failed to solve the district’s financial problems, and it dramatically expanded charters.

So, what is next?

Broad has been helping to fund the campaigns to elect its corporate reformers in elections throughout California. Its failure to improve Los Angeles, Oakland, and other districts is interpreted as more evidence against public education norms. Rather than admit that their social engineering has failed, Broad et. al are doubling down on the edu-politics of destruction.

Categories Broad Foundation, California, Corporate Reformers, Oakland

Tom Ultican: How NCLB and Charters Killed the Public Schools of Inglewood, California

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2018 //
14

This is the most important story you will read today. It is a warning about where School Choice is heading, what it will do to the democratic institution of the public schools, what it has already done to the schools of one district in California. If we don’t reverse the tide, more districts will be drowned by choice and debt.

Retired physics teacher Tom Ultican has been researching the Destroy Pubkic Education movement. This movement creates nothing positive. It tears down what once belonged to the community, paid for with their tax dollars.

The story of Inglewood, California, is a textbook case of the destruction of a small district, brought low by NCLB, then strangled and left for dead by a series of Broad-trained superintendents and the steady expansion of privately managed charter schools.

The story of Inglewood is an indictment of the so-called reform movement, which destroyed the public schools of that district.

Are Public Schools in Inglewood, California a Warning?

Ultican begins:

“In 2006, the relatively small Inglewood Unified School District (IUSD) had over 18,000 students and was a fiscally sound competent system. Today, IUSD has 8,400 students, is 30% privatized and drowning in debt. In 2012, the state of California took over the district, usurped the authority of the elected school board and installed a “State Trustee” to run it. IUSD is on its sixth state appointed trustee in six years.

“This crisis was created by politicians and wealthy elites. It did not just happen. Understanding the privatization of Inglewood’s schools through the choice agenda is instructive of the path that could lead to the end of public schools in California…

“NCLB set the table. Students in poor communities were guaranteed to produce bad test results. Billionaires were pouring huge money into developing the charter school industry. State leaders were putting privatization friendly leaders in charge of school districts. The state trustees were never in place long enough to provide stable leadership.

“Eli Broad attended public school and went on to become the only person ever to develop two Fortune 500 companies, Sun America and KB Homes. Broad, who is worth $6 billion, decided that public schools should be privatized and established a school for administrators to promote his ideology.

“In Oakland, the first state trustee was a Broad Academy graduate named Randy Ward and three more of the next 6 superintendents who followed Ward were also Broad trained. Oakland suffered nine superintendents in 13 years.

“In Inglewood, one trustee was a charter school founder who was concurrently serving as a board member of the charter school and the last two superintendents were Broad trained. Inglewood received six state appointed trustees in six years.

“How much longer before large school districts like San Diego and Los Angeles – with 25% or more of their students in privatized schools – are forced into bankruptcy and taken over by the state? Both districts are currently running massive deficits caused primarily by charter school privatization and unfair special education costs.”

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Testing
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