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North Carolina: State Superintendent Goes ALEC

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2018 //
6

The state superintendent of North Carolina is an alumnus of Teach for America. He defeated an experienced educator. Mark Johnson is determined to privatize and destroy public education in North Carolina. He has fought to aggrandize power over the state’s public schools and to diminish the role of the State Board of Education. He just hired a chief of staff who is a charter school leader.

Johnson recently brought the Meister of Corporate Reform, Jeb Bush, to win his approval for the strategy and pace of privatization.

Has TFA become a silent partner of ALEC?

Stuart Egan, an NBCT High School Teacher in North Carolina, describes Mark Johmson’s reign of error here.

The “Department of Private Interest” – DPI’s Transformation Under Mark Johnson

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, ALEC, Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization

Sue Legg: Behind the Scenes in the Battle for Public Schools in Florida

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2018 //
5

Sue Legg is a retired assessment and evaluation expert who worked for three decades at the Florida Department of Education; she is past president of the Alachua County (Florida) League of Women Voters.

She writes:

>Amendment 8 Behind the Scenes: Political ideology, religion, dark money, billionaires, and of course, the money trail

Florida’s 652 charters run the gamut from small ‘mom and pop’ charters to large chains organized by for-profit management companies. Some serve children and districts well. Many others tell different stories. They involve not only political ideology but also religion, dark money networks, billionaires, and of course, self-interest.

The Erika Donalds version of the charter story starts simply. A small group of members seceded from the Florida School Boards Association (FSBA) in 2015 to form the Florida Coalition of School Board Members (FCSBM). Erika Donalds, a member of the Collier County school board and wife of Florida Representative Byron Donalds, fronts this coalition, but the political network behind it is extensive. It goes all the way to our nation’s capital.

About 14 of the 50 alternative school board association members have been publicly identified, including:

Rebecca Negron, who has just been defeated for a seat on the Martin County school board even though her supporters raised over $250,000 to unsuccessfully attack her opponent. She is the wife of Senate President Joe Negron. Senator Negron wrote the initial legislation for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program to give corporate taxes to private schools.

Some FCSBM members also have strong dark money ties to national conservative political advocacy groups.

Erika Donalds openly displays the Americans for Prosperity logo on her Collier 912 Freedom Council website. This is a tea party group supported by the Koch brothers and others.

In the March 29, 2018, article in the Tampa Bay Times, Speaker of the Florida House Richard Corcoran’s wife Ann, who operates her own charter school, is identified.

Shawn Frost, who is Chair of the Indian River school board, is part of this coalition.

He announced in the Indian River Guardian that he expects to be appointed to the Florida State Board of Education. Frost reported campaign contributions from Betsy DeVos, the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Education. In 2014, Frost received $20,000 in campaign contributions from the American Federation of Children run by Betsy DeVos. Frost lives in Vero Beach, but maintains a room in his father’s house in Indian River to meet the residence requirements for being on the school board. He is also the head of MVP Strategy and Policy which specializes in consulting for school board races.

A Duval School Board member Scott Shine has reportedly joined the FCSBM. He withdrew from his 2018 reelection campaign due to ‘personal attacks’.

Sarasota school board members Erik Robinson, a former Republican Party Chairman and Bridgit Ziegler are listed members. Ziegler’s campaign reported $45,000 in donations from the out of state Phoenix Media LLC. According to the Herald Tribune, the money was funneled through a PAC run by fellow board member Erik Robinson, who is often called ‘The Prince of Dark Money’.

Some FCSBM members are collaborating to build a Florida chain of Classical Academy Charters. This isn’t just any group of charter schools. They are sponsored by the Hillsdale College Barney Charter School Initiative. The College, located in Michigan, has a long religious/conservative/libertarian agenda. The DeVos immediate family and close business associates have several Hillsdale graduates. \The Barney (SmithBarney) and Stanton Foundations fund the initiative. There are 17 of these charters nationwide. In Florida, there are four: Mason in Naples, Pineapple Cove in Palm Bay, St. Johns in Fleming Island, and the newly formed Pineapple Cove in West Melbourne. Donalds and her husband have been active with the Mason Classical Academy in Collier County. Donalds is currently seeking to add a Classical Academy in Martin County where Rebecca Negron was running for school board.

Erika Donalds has more than running a charter school on her mind. She was appointed by the governor to the Florida Constitutional Revision Commission (CRC) which is convened every twenty years to consider proposals to amend the constitution. Donalds is a strategist to divide the Florida public schools into two separate systems, one for ‘independent schools’ and one for public schools established by locally elected school boards. Essentially, it would allow one system for charters and private schools receiving tax credit scholarships and one for traditional public schools.

This year the CRC was plagued with ‘log rolling’. It is a technique to bundle dissimilar proposals into one law. There is a spate of these ‘logs’ projected to be on the November ballot. Multiple lawsuits have been filed against them, and the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the League of Women Voters was correct in its opposition to at least one. This proposed Amendment 8 to the Florida constitution must be withdrawn from the November ballot. How this amendment came to be is a story in itself.

Amendment 8 combines three separate proposals: school board term limits, civics literacy and a clause stating that school boards are only responsible for schools they create. This third proposal is the heart of the amendment. The title for the amendment, however, is: “School Board Term Limits and Duties; Public Schools”. Voters might be in favor of one part of the combined proposals but opposed to another. It was a ‘take it or leave it’ strategy. The wording, even the title was intended to confuse voters.

Term limits and civics education may seem innocuous, but they are not.

Erika Donalds is also the Florida sponsor for the US Term Limits organization. This group has a well-documented conservative political agenda that targets school boards to create more opportunities to influence policy. The Koch brothers founded the US Term Limits group. The civics course requirement proposed by CRC member Gaetz, the former President of the Florida Senate, made no sense. Civics was already required by the Florida Department of Education. Former Governor Bob Graham, long a champion of civics education, stated that not only is Amendment 8 a hodge podge, it is not even good for civics education. The CATO Institute has a major focus on civics education and provides free civics material to k12 schools. Its message is clear. According to the Huffington Post, the CATO group states: “The minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. Low taxes and less regulation allow people to prosper. Government assistance harms the poor. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty.”

The third component of Amendment 8 was to remove local school board control over the authorization of new charter schools. This too represented the national move to privatize our schools by creating charters and funding vouchers to private schools. In the proposed Amendment 8, however, the schools were called ‘independent’, not charter schools. Florida Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart stated that removing local school board control over the establishment of charter schools goes too far. CRC member Patricia Levesque, CEO of Jeb Bush’s education foundation however, supported the amendment as did Marva Johnson, the President of the State Board of Education.

Erika Donalds formed a Political Action Committee called ‘8 is Great’ to sway voters to support Amendment 8. According to the Vero Communique, Howard Rich, a wealthy New York real estate investor, invested $100,000 in the ‘8 is Great’ PAC. Rich serves on the Board of the CATO institute which was founded by the Koch brothers. David Koch ran for Vice President of the U.S. in 1980 on a platform opposing social security, the FBI, the CIA and pubic schools. The billionaire Koch brothers have a long and intensive interest in promoting school choice through their Americans for Prosperity organization. They are concentrating on Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. Their presence takes many forms. Watch for everything from donations to school board races, charter and voucher expansion efforts and state election campaigns. John Kirtley, the founder of Step Up for Children was a major donor. Step Up is the agency that administers a billion dollars for the Florida Corporate Tax Credit Scholarships for private schools. Indian River School Board member Shawn Frost and Duval School Board member Scott Shine have joined the PAC according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Recognizing that term limits and civics education are popular among many voters, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Wells submitted a brief to the Florida League of Women Voters in which he stated: “This change from local county school board control…is hidden by packaging the change with what are thought to be attractive proposals for term limits and civics education.” These schools were planned to be charter schools but the word ‘independent’ was substituted for the word ‘charter’.

There is a watchdog coalition of about 20 public interest groups, headed by the League, to follow and evaluate CRC proposed amendments. Amendment 8 was identified early by the coalition as part of a package of amendments intended to seize local control from city and county governments. The League of Women Voters and the Southern Poverty Law Center joined forces to file a lawsuit against Amendment 8 asking that Amendment 8 be removed from the November ballot. The suit claimed that the amendment was deliberately vague and intended to confuse the public. The circuit court in Tallahassee agreed. The State filed an appeal.

The Appellate Court immediately referred the case to the Florida Supreme Court saying, “The case involves a question of great public importance and requires immediate resolution by the Supreme Court.” The vagueness of the amendment language and its misleading title: “School Board Term Limits and Duties; Public Schools” was the basis for the justices’ 4 to 3 ruling against Amendment 8. The decision puts a roadblock in the effort to create an alternative charter school system. Some legislators will no doubt continue to push proposals to remove any local school board control of charter schools. In reality, local public schools have very limited responsibility to oversee charters, but they and the local press can shine a spotlight on what is at stake.

After sixteen years of choice, it is clear that choice divides communities, segregates children, and dissipates funding without making any appreciable improvement in student achievement. The Supreme Court has another case before it now, ‘Citizens for Strong Schools vs. Florida State Board of Education’ that has been working its way through the courts since 2009. The plaintiffs contend that Florida’s choice policy has failed to adequately fund schools and does not provide the quality education for all children that the Florida constitution requires. Of particular interest is whether there should be justiciable standards to define a ‘quality education’. The hearing is set for November 8. The future of our public school system will depend upon the ruling from the bench. The future of our public school system will depend on the ruling from the bench.

In the lawsuit that Sue Legg refers to in the last paragraph, a group called “Citizens for Strong Schools” argues that the state “is funding two separate systems of public education through its use of privately-run yet publicly funded charter schools, and vouchers that allow kids to attend private schools for varying reasons. Opponents say such programs take money away from traditional public schools.” Florida courts have rejected that argument in the past.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Resistance, School Choice

Laura Chapman: In Search of the Tentacles of the Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2018 //
64

Laura Chapman, retired arts educator and diligent researcher, has created a partial portrait of the privatization movement.

My guess is that the privatization movement consists of a small but significant number of billionaires and several hundred of their lackeys, shills, and front groups. As you will see, it is almost impossible to tell the Republicans from the Democrats.

Laura writes:

I have been building some spreadsheets on who is funding what. There are so many interconnected initiatives that Jeb Bush and friends are part of.

For example. Bush’s projects are connected with another big reform outfit: Partners for Innovation in Education (PIE) an outfit with at least 180 affiliates (in my spreadsheet) all connected to many others and all seeking national, state, and large metro area policies that favor charter school expansion (marketed as innovative), along with Teach for America (mostly on the job training), and active interference with teacher union contracts.

The PIE website still includes a guide for “Rabble Rousers” who were given quidance on how to work on legislated policy changes to favor charters, TFA and privatizers and how to enlist active support from civic and business organizations. It is a guide for lobbying and controlling narratives about education in the press.

The 47-page PIE Rabble Rousers handbook (2010 funded by the Joyce Foundation) includes this statement about the process of changing state policy:

“Most of the groups we spoke with (about shaping state polcies) declined to involve educators on their governing boards; if they did so, those groups do not make up a majority of the governing board. The rationale was clear enough: if the goal is to be a voice for the public’s interest, educator involvement confuses that message. As one group leader explained: “Educators already have the overwhelming voice in our state capital through their various associations. If we brought the interest lobby to our meetings, our discussion would get rutted in the same issues that already complicate the public debate. Our goal is to have a conversation that looks at the issues differently, considering only the students without the adult agendas.” An even blunter explanation was: “We tell our teacher associations that when they invite our leaders to vote on their boards, we will include union representation on ours (p. 32).” http://pie-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/rabble-rousers.pdf

Since that 2010 publication, PIE has shifted its strategy to include carefully selected educators. Most are working in charter schools or they have been willing to be indoctrinated into PIE’s agenda. Indocrination is the correct word.

In Oakland, CA, for example, the bait for PIE’s program has been a two-year “fellowship” with $1000 for the first year, and $2000 for the second year for attendance at two-hour meetings twice monthly plus readings and research. (I could not determine if the “year” was a calendar year nine month school year). In a series of tasks, the Oakland Fellows were given preferred data about their union to think about, along with model language for changes.

There are similar programs in multiple metro areas and states, with teachers working as if hired hands of PIE, token payments or emblems of prestige by virtue of becoming “fellows” or “ambassadors.”

Here is a list of organizations and financial supporters of “teacher voice” in the PIE Network–all recruiting teachers to advocate for policies favoring TFA, charters, and dismantlying unions and more under the banner of “innovation.”

Advance Illinois “Every Student World Ready”; Chalk Board Project; Ed Allies (Minnesota); Educators for High Standards; Go Public Schools (Oakland CA); Hope Street Group (multiple states); National Network of Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY, nominated by governors of states and celebrated by the Council of Chief State School Officers); Rodel Foundation of Delaware; State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE, Tennessee); Stand for Children Louisiana; Teach Strong (National, with one year “ambassadors” who lobby politicians), Educators for Excellence (in Boston, Chicago, Connecticut, Los Angeles , Minnesota, New York); Teach Plus (in California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts); and Texas Aspires.

PIE Board members are powerbrokers. Many are veterans of reformy projects to undermine public education through draconian standard-setting, exemptions for and expansions of charter schools, and killing collective bargaining by teachers.
1. Derrell Bradford, Executive VP of 50CAN, recruits state executive directors, fellows, and YouCAN advocates; known for leadership of legislated tenure reform in New Jersey.
2. Rachael Canter, Executive Dir. and co-founder of Mississippi First. Two years Teach for America; successfully lobbied for Mississippi Charter Schools Act of 2013.
3. Jonah Edelman, co-founder and CEO of Stand for Children Leadership Center and Stand For Children with affiliates in 11 states (Edelman is son of civil rights activist and lawyer Marian Wright Edelman). A political scholar (Ph.D Oxford, Yale) with deep family connections to the Democratic Party. SFC works for privatization with major funding from the Gates and Walton foundations among others. Major promoter of Read-by-Grade-Three policy.
4. Chris Korsmo, CEO of the League of Education Voters, backed by The Broad Foundation and supporters of projects to undermine teacher unions.
5. Scott Laband, President of Colorado Succeeds, coalition of business executives for corporate friendly education, including school policies that subsidize workforce preparation.
6. Patricia Levesque, CEO Foundation for Excellence. Was Jeb Bush’s Chief of Staff for education promoting corporate friendly education, six years as Staff Director for education policy in the Florida.
7. Lillian M. Lowery, Ed.D. V.P. of Ed Trust’s PreK-12 Policy, Research, and Practice, former state superintendent of schools in Maryland and state secretary of education in Delaware.
8. Nina Rees, President and CEO of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, first Deputy Under Secretary for Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.
9. Aimee Rogstad Guidera, former president and CEO of the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign for enganced surveillance of K-12 school and “teacher of record” performance, with a variant tracking workforce outcomes of pre-K to post-seconfary workforce outcomes.
10. Evan Stone, Co-CEO and Co-Founder in 2010 of Educators for Excellence. Yale University thesis on No Child Left Behind in urban school systems, Master degree in teaching, Pace University.
11. Suzanne Kubach, Executive Dir. PIE Network. Appointed to California State Board of Education, former Chair of Los Angeles Charter School Board. Ph.D. in Education Policy, University of Southern California.
12. Tim Taylor, co-founder and Executive Dir. America Succeeds, founder of Colorado Succeeds, seeking corporate friendly policies.
13. Jamie Woodson, Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE), Former legislative leader for expansion of Tennessee’s public charter schools. J.D., the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

And that is just for starters. What “innovative policies” are being marketed in your state, by whom, and why?

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Republicans

Who Are the Funders of Jeb Bush’s School Privatization Efforts?

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2018 //
31

Jeb Bush has been promoting school choice and disparaging public s hoops for years. Betsy DeVos was a member of the board of his Foundation for Excellence in Education until Trump chose her as Secretary of Education.

Jeb Bush invented the nutty notion of giving a letter grade to schools.

Jeb Bush zealously believes in high-stakes standardized testing and VAM. In Jeb’s Odel, Testing and letter grades are mechanisms to promote privatization.

Who funds his foundation?

See the list here.

The biggest donors in 2017 were Gates, Bloomberg, and Walton, each having given Jeb more than $1 Million for his privatization campaigns.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bloomberg, Michael, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, School Choice, Segregation, Standardized Testing, Vouchers, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Florida Outrage! Voucher and Charter Advocates Try to Sneak Constitutional Amendment onto the Ballot to Repeal Requirement for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2018 //
25

Someone is trying to pull a fast one on the people of Florida. Voters are supposed to consider an amendment to the State Constitution that bundles several different proposals into a single amendment, to the utter confusion of voters, who will not be able to vote individually on the proposed changes.

The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida filed a brief to the panel of his former colleagues, asking that they either seek justification for this bundling or toss it off the ballot.

How can it be possible to justify an effort to mislead and trick voters?

One member of the Constitutional Revision Commission was Patricia Levesque, who heads Jeb Bush’s foundation; she said that the state constitution was obsolete because it did not contemplate the creation of charter schools, online education or other innovations of the current era. Another Commission member is a charter school founder, who claimed that the current wording in the state constitution was designed to protect the “education monopoly.”

Retired Florida chief justice Harry Lee Anstead has asked his former panel to require justification for why six proposed constitutional amendments including Amendment 8 should remain on the November ballot, or to toss them out.

Anstead, joined by former Florida Elections commissioner Robert Barnas, contend in their filing to the state Supreme Court that the six proposals from the Constitution Revision Commission are unconstitutionally bundled, preventing voters from making a simple “yes” or “no” decision on them.

They challenge Amendment 8, which includes three ideas collectively grouped under education, as well as amendments 6 (rights of crime victims), 7 (first responder and military survivor benefits), 9 (offshore oil drilling and vaping), 10 (state and local government structure), and 11 (property rights).

Their key argument:

“Petitioners submit herein that each and every one of the foregoing proposed revisions bundles independent and unrelated proposals in a single ballot question in a manner that requires a voter to vote ‘yes’ for a proposal that the voter opposes in order to vote ‘yes’ for an independent and unrelated proposal the voter supports and to vote ‘no’ for a proposal the voter supports in order to vote ‘no’ for an independent and unrelated proposal the voter opposes. This is logrolling and a form of issue gerrymandering that violates the First Amendment right of the voter to vote for or against specific independent and unrelated proposals to amend the constitution without paying the price of supporting a measure the voter opposes or opposing a measure the voter supports.”

The plaintiffs recognize the CRC’s ability to propose a comprehensive revision of the state constitution. However, they argue, this would require several discrete amendments and not a single overarching one.

The CRC has instead bundled independent and unrelated items, they argue: “All are beyond the power the Constitution has bestowed upon the Constitution Revision Commission and must be removed from the ballot.”

Additionally, regarding Amendment 8, they specify that the proposal does not clearly state its intent.

“This ballot language is clearly and deceptive misleading because it does not disclose to the voter that the proposed amendment to Article IX § 4(b), adding the language ‘established by the district school board,’ eliminates the constitutional requirement in Article IX § 1(a) that Florida have a uniform …system of free public schools, which has been a continuous constitutional imperative in Florida beginning with the Constitution of 1868. This measure seeks sub silentio to subvert decisions such as Bush v. Holmes, 919 So. 2d 392 (Fla. 2006),” they write. “This subterfuge must not be perpetuated upon Florida voters.”

One senses the hand of Jeb Bush in this subterfuge.

Never forget: Dark money never sleeps.

This is a quote from the first link, dated August 14, 2018:

Retired Florida chief justice Harry Lee Anstead has asked his former panel to require justification for why six proposed constitutional amendments including Amendment 8 should remain on the November ballot, or to toss them out.

Anstead, joined by former Florida Elections commissioner Robert Barnas, contend in their filing to the state Supreme Court that the six proposals from the Constitution Revision Commission are unconstitutionally bundled, preventing voters from making a simple “yes” or “no” decision on them.

They challenge Amendment 8, which includes three ideas collectively grouped under education, as well as amendments 6 (rights of crime victims), 7 (first responder and military survivor benefits), 9 (offshore oil drilling and vaping), 10 (state and local government structure), and 11 (property rights).

Their key argument:

“Petitioners submit herein that each and every one of the foregoing proposed revisions bundles independent and unrelated proposals in a single ballot question in a manner that requires a voter to vote ‘yes’ for a proposal that the voter opposes in order to vote ‘yes’ for an independent and unrelated proposal the voter supports and to vote ‘no’ for a proposal the voter supports in order to vote ‘no’ for an independent and unrelated proposal the voter opposes. This is logrolling and a form of issue gerrymandering that violates the First Amendment right of the voter to vote for or against specific independent and unrelated proposals to amend the constitution without paying the price of supporting a measure the voter opposes or opposing a measure the voter supports.”

The plaintiffs recognize the CRC’s ability to propose a comprehensive revision of the state constitution. However, they argue, this would require several discrete amendments and not a single overarching one.

The CRC has instead bundled independent and unrelated items, they argue: “All are beyond the power the Constitution has bestowed upon the Constitution Revision Commission and must be removed from the ballot.”

This is the second, published April 16, 2018:

Despite calls to treat each idea separately, the Florida Constitution Revision Commission has sent a proposal to voters that would set school board member term limits, require civic education in public schools, and allow for the creation of a state charter school authorizer.

Commission member Roberto Martinez, a former State Board of Education chairman and key legal adviser to Jeb Bush, pressed the panel Monday to unbundle the package [P 6003].

The portion to give control of some public schools to an entity other than a local school board would be a “game changer” that would radically alter public education governance, Martinez argued. Voters should have a clear understanding of the proposal and then decide on its own merits — not because it’s tied to another concept, he said.

“These are three separate issues,” former state senator Chris Smith said in agreement. “I don’t even realize how I’m going to vote. I’m strong on some of it. I’m against some of it.”

The opposition reflected a growing drumbeat across Florida, where several organizations have raised concerns about the “power grab” they suggested Republican government leaders are attempting. They had a coordinated campaign in newspapers over the weekend, signaling this could likely be a most challenged ballot item, and wrote a letter to CRC chairman Carlos Beruff asking for each proposal to be taken up independently.

Beruff was among the 22 members to vote against unbundling the proposals, and among the 27 to support placing the package on the November ballot. A proposal needed 22 votes to advance.

Unlike those who suggested the measure would decimate local control of public education, supporters of the initiative said the ideas “absolutely” belong together because they are all part of Article IX.

They contended it would unshackle the Legislature in any future efforts to come up with new ideas to improve the system.

The current constitutional language of Article IX authorizes local school boards to operate, supervise and control all free public schools within their jurisdiction. The amendment would limit that authority to the schools “established by the district school board.”

That has been read by many observers as a method to allow creation of an unelected state charter school approval system, which in the past has been rejected in court because of this section of the constitution.

Commission member Patricia Levesque, who heads Jeb Bush’s education foundation, argued that a state charter authorizer is not spelled out in the proposal. Rather, Levesque said, the idea is to upgrade 50-year-old language written when Florida’s population was less than half of what it is now.

Floridians did not contemplate charter schools, online education, dual enrollment or other ideas that have emerged since. Levesque contended that new concepts face political hurdles because of the constitution, and called for the change.

Commission member Erika Donalds, a Collier County School Board member and charter school founder, said the constitution needs to be forward looking.

“When these reforms run their course, will [lawmakers] be able to respond?” asked Donalds, who is attempting to open charter schools outside Collier County.

The time has come, she suggested, to get rid of the “unfair, antiquated” wording that is used to “protect the education monopoly,” and to give parents more opportunities for school choice.

“It is our duty to take the hogtie off the Legislature,” said Donalds, whose husband serves in the state House and recently sponsored a measure to create a private school scholarship for students who claim to be bullied in public school.

Commission member Frank Kruppenbacher, a longtime lawyer for district and charter schools, rejected that the Legislature cannot make any education reforms it wishes.

“What it needs is the leadership to do it,” he said, noting all the initiatives that have been implemented over the years.

Kruppenbacher was among the 10 members to vote against the proposal. The others were Martinez, former Florida Bar president Hank Coxe, state Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, State Board of Education members Tom Grady and Marva Johnson, former state Sen. Arthenia Joyner, state Sen. Darryl Rouson, Indian River County Commissioner Bob Solari, and Florida education commissioner Pam Stewart.

The ballot measure would require 60 percent voter approval to become effective.

One other education proposal, which would allow high-performing school districts to avoid certain portions of the state education code similar to charter schools, is to be considered separately. Commission Style and Drafting chairman Brecht Heuchan explained that the fourth proposal could not fit with the others and meet the wording limitations for amendments.

UPDATE: The “innovation school districts” proposal failed 13-23.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida, Fraud, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Louisiana Bracing for Lower School Grades, Which Will Clear the Way for More Privatization

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2018 //
25

Mercedes Schneider reports that the state of Louisiana has recalibrated letter grades for the state’s schools, which will lead to a dramatic increase in the number of “failing schools.”

The number of A rated schools will decrease by 38%.

The number of F rated schools will increase by 57%.

Ominously, this means that more districts will be eligible for charter schools.

She notes:

“Of course, the great irony here is that most charter schools in Louisiana are concentrated in New Orleans, and 40 percent of those scored D or F in 2017— prior to the anticipated, 57 percent increase in F-graded schools. But in the view of market-based ed reform, it is okay for charter schools have Fs because theoretically, these can be replaced by new charter schools ad infinitum with charter-closure churn being branded as a success.

“In 2010, Louisiana state ed board (BESE) president, Penny Dastugue, commented that “people can relate to letter grades,” implying that letter grades are simple.

“The shifting criteria behind them is not “simple”; it is simplistic, and as such, it is destructive and feeds a joyless, authoritarian, fear-centered atmosphere in schools and systems unfortunate enough to not have access to hefty doses of wealth, privilege, or the capacity for selective admission.”

Dropping grades across the board is a hasty maneuver to drop more schools into the F category so they can be handed off to private corporations.

Please note that, as I have written here on many occasions in the past, giving a letter grade to a school is a very stupid idea. It was pioneered by Jeb Bush in Florida as a way to label schools for state takeover and privatization. Imagine if your child came home with a single letter grade. You would go to the school the next day and raise the roof. What a dumb idea to think that all the facets of your child’s knowledge, skills, interests, activities, and performance could be reduced to a single letter.

Then think of doing the same to a school with 500 students and staff. This is madness. No, it is sheer malevolent stupidity.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Louisiana, Privatization, Testing

Ohio: Kasich Blocks Effort to Kill or Revise Stupid A-F School Grades

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2018 //
12

Some sensible Ohio legislators recognize that the A-F letter grades for schools (invented by Jeb Bush to accelerate privatization) measures nothing more than the wealth or poverty of the district. They would like to revise the simplistic letter grade to a “data dashboard,” reflecting the manic love of all things data.

But John Kasich stands in the way. While pretending to be a moderate Republican for the National media, he is still a right winger at heart.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Testing

Bob Wise: Building the Digital Future in the Classroom (Beware!)

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2018 //
63

 

Bob Wise is a former Governor of West Virginia and currently president of the Gates-funded Alliance for Excellent Education. He co-authored a report in 2010 with Jeb Bush called Digital Learning NOW, which attempted to promote a vast expansion of technology in the school and classroom with minimal oversight.(I wrote about the report in my book “Reign of Error.”) The purpose of the Wise-Bush report was to urge states to spend more on hardware and software, lest they fail to prepare for the future and/or fall behind other states. The report was financed by the EDTech industry. Each year, the Digital Learning Council issues a “report card” and grades the state by whether they have spent enough on technology. Here is the 2014 report. Such reports rely on the instincts of state officials to want to be #1, even if the goal is wrong. Who would want to be #1, for instance, in infant mortality. Behind the report card is a marketing strategy.

Maine, under its current Governor Paul LePage, jumped aboard Wise and Bush’s digital learning train. A seasoned reporter, Colin Woodard, followed the money and produced this scathing critique, which won the prestigious Grorge Polk Award in 2012 for Education Reporting.

In this article, Wise continues to push technology, but does so on the assumption that there is a “diminishing supply of teachers” and “static state budgets.” Teachers in states like his own West Virginia are fighting those assumptions, on the belief that teachers can and must be paid more and that corporations should pay higher taxes. The possibilities of paying teachers a professional salary and expanding the tax rolls are not on Wise’s agenda.

Funny, I wrote an article in the same publication about the risks of misuse of technology. I mentioned the risk to student privacy; the failure of cybercharters; the lack of evidence for “blended learning” or “personalized learning”; the money spent by tech companies to place obsolete or ineffective products.

Wise mentions none of these risks. He is a cheerleader for EdTech.

Here is an axiom: Learning happens most and best when children interact with human teachers who are in the same room.

Buyer beware. Caveat emptor.

Categories Budget Cuts, Bush, Jeb, Funding

Where Was the National Democratic Party During the West Virginia Teachers Strike?

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2018 //
82

 

An article in the Daily Beast asks the question that is the title of this post.

Another question: Where was President Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stripped away collective bargaining, and union members encircled the State Capitol in protest? Answer: absent.

They did, however, find time in March 2011 to fly to Miami to join Jeb Bush in celebrating a “turnaround school” whose staff had been replaced. (A month later, the same high school was listed by the state as a “failing school” slated for closure, but the national media had moved on.)

Categories Bush, Jeb, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Florida, Obama, Turnaround Schools, Unions, Walker, Scott, West Virginia

Carol Burris on Education Savings Accounts: A Recipe for Dumbing Down America

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2018 //
12

If you were a billionaire and you wanted to make the  American people totally gullible, you would dream up ways to keep them far removed from schools and teachers that teach them how to think critically.

You would embrace “education savings accounts,” which are vouchers by another name, which remove from the state any responsibility to educate any child. Just give every student a debit card, to be used at will.

Carol Burris explains the hoax here.

Parents pledge not to enroll their son or daughter in a public school or a charter school. In exchange, they get nearly all of what the school would have spent (usually 90 percent) placed on a debit card or in an account. The remaining 10 percent is used to fund program administration.

Parents can use the money for private or religious school tuition, online learning, books, hippotherapy (horseback riding for therapeutic purposes) and home schooling — or they can choose to spend minimal dollars on K-12 education and save for college.

There is no obligation that the curriculum that is used to teach students who use ESAs to attend private schools be developmentally appropriate, challenging or even accurate. Although a few states require parents to promise that their children receive instruction in reading, grammar, mathematics, science and social studies, what content is taught and what is learned is immaterial.

If at this point you are thinking that most taxpayers would view such an unaccountable and unregulated system as one in which families could easily be victimized by misinformation, false claims, profiteering and fraud, you would be right. This is not lost on the proponents of ESAs. That is why they have developed all kinds of language to make ESAs seem hip and cutting edge, when they are really advocating a return to a time before the 1830s when schooling was a haphazard event for all but the wealthy.

See how cool it is? Parents pledge not to enroll their children in a public school or a charter school. The family gets a debit card and goes shopping. Destroy public education. Just like Uber or Amazon, except this is education. This is our future. These are our children.

The people behind this are the super-rich. What do you think they have in mind? They send their own children to elite private schools. The ESA won’t cover that. Are they mad? Are they stupid? Are they vicious? What gives?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Fraud, Funding, Vouchers
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