Archives for category: Bush, Jeb
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Understanding the Online Scandal in Maine

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2012 //
12

If you read this article about how online companies bought American education, you would not be at all shocked or surprised by the scandal in Maine. There, the state commissioner of education is following the instructions of Jeb Bush’s education advisor and implementing the ALEC model legislation to change the laws to bring in for-profit online corporations.

Corporations will make millions. Many children in Maine will get a lousy education, and the taxpayers in Maine will be ripped off.

That’s known these days as reform.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Reform, For-Profit, On-Line Education

For-Profit Online Charter Scandal

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2012 //
18

Maine’s State Commissioner of Education Stephen Bowen went to San Francisco to hear Jeb Bush tout the glories of for-profit online charter schools. Jeb Bush’s foundation paid for the trip. The commissioner met with Jeb’s chief education aide, Patricia Levesque, whose company lobbies for the online corporations. She promised help.

This is what the Maine Sunday Telegram found after getting access to public records of the correspondence:

Bowen was preparing an aggressive reform drive on initiatives intended to dramatically expand and deregulate online education in Maine, but he felt overwhelmed.

“I have no ‘political’ staff who I can work with to move this stuff through the process,” he emailed her from his office.

Levesque replied not to worry; her staff in Florida would be happy to suggest policies, write laws and gubernatorial decrees, and develop strategies to ensure they were implemented.

“When you suggested there might be a way for us to get some policy help, it was all I could do not to jump for joy,” Bowen wrote Levesque from his office.

“Let us help,” she responded.

So was a partnership formed between Maine’s top education official and a foundation entangled with the very companies that stand to make millions of dollars from the policies it advocates.

In the months that followed, according to more than 1,000 pages of emails obtained by a public records request, the commissioner would rely on the foundation to provide him with key portions of his education agenda. These included draft laws, the content of the administration’s digital education strategy and the text ofGov. Paul LePage’s Feb. 1 executive order on digital education.

A Maine Sunday Telegram investigation found large portions of Maine’s digital education agenda are being guided behind the scenes by out-of-state companies that stand to capitalize on the changes, especially the nation’s two largest online education providers.

K12 Inc. of Herndon, Va., and Connections Education, the Baltimore-based subsidiary of education publishing giant Pearson, are both seeking to expand online offerings and to open full-time virtual charter schools in Maine, with taxpayers paying the tuition for the students who use the services.

Categories ALEC, Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Privatization

More about Milk and Choice

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
5

A teacher in New York City wrote to tell me that he worked in the dairy industry for many years before becoming a teacher.

When he read about Jeb Bush touting the virtues of choosing schools the way we choose milk, he laughed.

Did you know, he wrote, that a small number of big corporations control the dairy industry. No matter what label is on the carton, the odds are that you are buying from agri-business, not a small producer. There are really only two kinds of milk–skim and cream–and all the others are variations, built from one or the other.

In many places, you think you are choosing, but all the milk comes from the same corporation.

The illusion of choice.

That’s not what gets me, though. What gets me is that Jeb’s argument is intended to dissolve any sense of public responsibility for basic services.

Some things ought not be privatized.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

Maybe Choosing Schools Is Like Choosing Toothpaste?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
13

Deborah Meier writes to comment on Jeb Bush’s claim that choosing schools should be like choosing milk. Could have said cereal. There, two or three corporations own all the different brands.

Re Jeb Bush’s analogy—choosing schools is like choosing milk as you wander down the aisle.  Among the kinds of milk he listed were  milk for people who can’t drink milk.     Well, I suppose there are indeed some schools that are for people who “can’t be educated” (in his mind).

What a startling picture-metaphor.  Creepy?   The schools are, for Jeb,  just another brand on the market with fancy packaging, millions spent in promotion, and success dependent on making a profit.  Worse still is the very mindset that would create such a metaphor.   It could have been worse—I suppose.  He could have chosen toothpaste…or….

Categories Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Vouchers

How Is a School Like Milk?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
29

Jeb Bush spoke to the Republican National Convention on his favorite subject: how to save American education by privatizing it.

Bush said that choosing a school should be like buying milk.

This came from a newspaper report:

    “Everywhere in our lives, we get the chance to choose,” he said in aprepared version of his remarks sent to reporters. “Go down any supermarket aisle – you’ll find an incredible selection of milk. You can get whole milk, 2% milk, low-fat milk or skim milk. Organic milk, and milk with extra Vitamin D. There’s flavored milk- chocolate, strawberry or vanilla – and it doesn’t even taste like milk. They even make milk for people who can’t drink milk.”
    “Shouldn’t parents have that kind of choice in schools?” Bush said.

He agrees with Condoleeza Rice that education is “the civil rights issue of our time.”

But how can this be?

Is shopping for milk a civil right? How are these comparable?

This is not a good analogy.

Isn’t public education a public responsibility? Isn’t it a public good? How can it be compared to something as trivial as shopping for milk?

You can see where he is going with this analogy. An end to public education, a welcome mat for the privatizers, the for-profit schools, the for-profit online corporations.

Anyone is welcome to produce their own brand of milk, funded by taxpayers.

They can buy the high-priced milk, if they can afford it. They can buy the plain milk, or if they are poor, they can buy the rancid milk. It’s their choice.

Needless to say, Bush said nothing about the research showing that charter schools and voucher schools get similar results to public schools; and that the online for-profit schools get decidedly worse results.

But this is not about the kids. It is about letting the free market have its way with the kids.

 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Vouchers

Charters Hope to Open in Florida’s Top County

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2012 //
7

Three charter schools want to open in St. John’s County in Florida, which is the state’s highest ranking county.

Some of the state legislators, including one of the state senate’s most avid supporters of charters, are surprised. They thought that charters were supposed to rescue students in failing schools, but St. John’s County is known for its excellent public schools.

If approved, the charters will siphon almost $13 million out of the public school budget, requiring at least 200 teacher layoffs. School officials are alarmed. The excellent public schools of St. John’s County won’t be quite so excellent in the future. This is the kind of competition that Jeb Bush put into place, which he wants to replicate across the nation.

Two of the charters would be run by a for-profit charter chain that is already collecting $158 million in revenues from South Florida charters, which includes an annual profit to the firm of $9 million. It’s a very good business indeed.

A reader who runs a charter school wrote a week or so ago and insisted that charters are not deregulated; he asked for examples of state laws and regulations that charters are not required to meet. Here are some that apply in Florida, according to this article:

PUBLIC SCHOOL VS. CHARTER SCHOOL
A 2012 law passed by the Legislature makes charter schools part of the state’s public education program and thus makes charter schools public schools. Tax money can now go to the charters.
The law also gives charter schools what some see as preferential treatment, including now receiving all the state’s building money, which once went to public schools.
Charter schools do have to administer the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. They may or may not get a school grade.
Charter schools are not bound to the Sunshine State Standards or the upcoming Common Core standards.
Charter schools do not have to meet the Classroom Size Amendment, which sets the number of students in certain classes.
Charter schools don’t have to meet the same building standards required of traditional public schools, which face tougher standards than regular building codes.
Charter schools have parent contracts including requiring parents to fulfill certain contractual items. If the parents fail to keep their side of the bargain, their children can be removed from the schools.
Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

About that Digital Learning Council

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2012 //
5

Coach Bob Sikes put together a blog about the corporate supporters of Jeb Bush’s crusade for digital learning.

If you go back and read the report of the “Ten Elements of Digital Learning,” I suggest you scan the acknowledgments and you will find a representative of almost every corporation trying to sell hardware or software to the schools.

The other thing you need to know about the report is that it is based on zero evidence. It cites a US Department of Education study of evidence-based policy for online instruction, and that is supposed to impress the casual reader and make him/her think there is evidence to put every child online as much as possible. But I read that study and it says (p. 53) we don’t know enough about online instruction to make decisions in the K-12 area. There have been only five studies, not enough, the report says.

The accumulating evidence from places like Ohio and Pennsylvania is that online virtual schools are driven more by profit than by a desire to produce better education.

I just finished a chapter on this subject, and feel incensed that so much effort is being expended to spread the gospel on virtual schooling in the absence of evidence about where, where, and to whom. Certainly online instruction is important and necessary, but there is no support in research to have millions of chlldren home schooled in front of a computer, with the virtual school collecting millions of dollars while teachers have classes of 60:1, 100:1, even 200:1, at low pay.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Privatization

What You Need to Know about For-Profit Online Schools

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2012 //
5

This is a stunning article. A real journalistic achievement.

It shows in remarkable detail how certain politicians and investors and entrepreneurs are working together to privatize public education and to generate huge profits for certain companies.

Read this.

Categories ALEC, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, K12 Inc., Luna, Tom, On-Line Education

The Ten Elements of Digital Learning

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
14

Doing some research on for-profit virtual schools, I come across study after study about their poor performance, high attrition rates, and low graduation rates.

But then I discovered a document produced by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellent Education and Bob Wise’s Alliance for Excellent Education. It is called “the Ten Elements of Digital Learning” and it is a rallying cry for deregulation and proliferation of every manner of virtual education, including for-profit virtual charters.

Among other recommendations, it says that teachers should not be certified, as that would hamper innovation and diminish quality. It claims that digital learning will transform education, close the achievement gaps, and narrow the income divide in American society. It promises the world, in short. Digital learning is the magic bullet, so it says.

It does not take note of the studies that say that digital schools underperform brick-and-mortar schools.

The report was funded by–no surprise–the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation.

Maybe it is the Magna Carta of virtual schooling. But the gap between promise and reality is a giant canyon.

Categories Broad Foundation, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, On-Line Education, Technology, Computers

Investigating The E-Scam in Ohio

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2012 //
1

Ohio is utopia for sham reform. In that state, two major charter operators have given generously to politicians, and their campaign contributions have been ilke yeast in an oven. A small amount goes a long, long way in returns to them.

The good news is that the word is getting out. This article in a Cincinnati journal sets out the indisputable facts about the e-schools: Big profits for the owners, poor education for the kids.

Eventually the public will understand that they are being bamboozled, and some politicians might stand up and stop this raid on the public treasury–and the lives of kids. It’s just a shame that the U.S. Department of Education is not launching a nationwide investigation into e-scam.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Ohio, On-Line Education, Technology, Computers, U.S. Department of Education
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