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Steven Singer: DFER and DeVos Think Alike about School Reform

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2018 //
24

Steven Singer hits the nail on the head: there is no difference between DFER and DeVos!

He writes:

“Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) put out a new video about what they think it means to be an education progressive.

“And by the political action committee’s definition, Betsy DeVos may be the most “progressive” education secretary ever.

“She champions “public charter schools.” Just like them!

“She is in favor of evaluating teachers on student test scores. Just like them!

“She is a booster for “holding schools accountable” through the use of standardized tests. Just like them!

“And she loves putting public tax dollars into private hands to run schools “more efficiently” by disbanding school boards, closing public debate and choosing exactly which students get to attend privatized schools. Just like… you get the idea.

“But perhaps the most striking similarity between DeVos and DFER is their methodologies.

“DFER announced it again was going to flood Democratic races with tons of campaign cash to bolster candidates who agreed with them. That’s exactly how DeVos gets things done, too!

“She gives politicians bribes to do her bidding! The only difference is she pays her money mostly to Republicans while DFER pays off Democrats. But if both DeVos and DFER are paying to get would-be lawmakers to enact the same policies, what is the difference!?

“Seriously, what is the difference between Betsy DeVos and Democrats for Education Reform?”

Singer concludes that faux progressive groups like DFER, who are indistinguishable from Republicans, are causing many people to abandon the party.

“Why do some progressives vote third party? Because of groups like DFER.

“Voters think something like – if this charter school advocacy group represents what Democrats are all about, I can’t vote Democrat. I need a new party. Hence the surge of Green and other third party votes that is blamed for hurting Democratic candidates.”

DFER and DeVos! Made for each other!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

California: How a Charter School Will Harm One Small Public School

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2018 //
10

California is a state where charters have gone wild.

Rick Hennessy, the part time superintendent of the small Twain Harte School district responds to parents who want to secede to create their own charter school that their action will damage the education of those left behind.


if the charter school is approved, the district will lose $250,000 in the 2019-20 school year and would have to look at the following budget cuts:

Eliminate one full time teacher

Eliminate all art instruction

Eliminate all music instruction

Eliminate the librarian

Eliminate all class trips

Eliminate school counselor

Eliminate purchases of classroom library books

Eliminate Safe School Ambassador

Eliminate Treehouse Program (addresses social adjustment for grades K-3)

The proposed charter school would also have a segregative impact, he writes.

Furthermore, the charter’s petition does not include providing lunches or transportation for their students. Any charter school petition is supposed to recruit or attract the same socio-economic student group that is enrolled in the regular district. Over 60 percent of Twain Harte students ride the bus as well as receive a free or reduced lunch. It seems that the charter petition is targeting middle class or higher families that can provide transportation up the hill; which would seem to rule out most of our current students.

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

Oakland: Charges of Fraud Fly at Gulen-Connected Charter School As Principal Resigns and Leaves the Country

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
49

The Bay Area Technology School, a charter school in Oakland, California, was thrown into chaos and confusion when the principal suddenly resigned and left the country amid a financial investigation.

The school is believed to be part of the Gulen charter network associated with the reclusive imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania, because of the unusual number of Turkish board members.

Just before the end of the last school year, the principal of Oakland’s Bay Area Technology School, Hayri Hatipoglu, suddenly resigned. At least four other senior staff and two of the charter school’s five board members also abruptly quit. As a result, the organization was thrown into chaos. And then Hatipoglu disappeared. According to several sources, he left the country with his family for Australia, where he is a citizen.

Afterwards, the Oakland Unified School District, which is responsible for overseeing the BayTech charter school, opened an investigation. BayTech’s three remaining board members also hired an independent party to carry out their own internal review.

While OUSD and BayTech have both attempted to keep the mini-crisis under wraps, the Express has learned that BayTech’s three remaining board members are accusing Hatipoglu of defrauding the school. They allege that Hatipoglu surreptitiously changed his employment contract to provide himself with three years’ worth of severance pay totaling about $450,000, an unusually large sum for a small school with an annual budget of approximately $3 million. His previous contract provided for only six months of severance pay, a standard in the education sector.

“We believe he changed his contract,” said BayTech board member Fatih Dagdelen in a recent interview. “According to his contract, he’d get paid a six-months salary if he resigned, but all of a sudden his contract said he’d get paid two-and-a-half years further.”

Remaining board members suspect fraud.

In an unusual and unsolicited email to the Express sent on June 28, Hatipoglu wrote that the school’s Turkish board members conspired to punish him for his decision to break ties with a Southern California-based nonprofit. The nonprofit, Accord Institute, happens to be controlled by the followers of a powerful Turkish imam who leads a global Islamic political force called the Gülen movement.

Founded in the 1970s by the religious leader Fethullah Gülen, the Gülen movement is an Islamic-inspired social and political force that globalized as its followers immigrated to Europe, Australia, and the United States. The Turkish government considers the Gülen movement a terrorist organization because its members helped organize the 2016 coup attempt against President Recep Erdogan, and Erdogan has ordered thousands of Gülenists jailed. (The U.S. government, however, does not classify the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization.) Fethullah Gülen currently lives in self-exile in Pennsylvania, but he’s considered one of the most powerful men in Turkish politics. His followers also set up and operate one of the largest chains of charter schools in the U.S. BayTech is one of these schools.

Might I suggest that these events are evidence that public schools that are funded by taxpayers should be subject to public supervision and oversight–not by private and unaccountable boards– and should be staffed by certified teachers and other staff? Charter schools in California operate without any accountability or transparency, which is an open invitation to rob taxpayers.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Gulen Charter Schools, Oakland, Privatization

The Best Quote of the Year

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
7

Do you remember that the 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” warned about the terrible condition of America’s public schools, setting off the frenzy of “reform” that has now fermented into high-stakes testing, privatization, profiteering, closing schools, firing teachers and principals, and enriching testing companies?

Here is a description of the composition of the Commission that wrote the report:

The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. … Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education. It should come as no surprise that a commission dominated by administrators found that the problems of U.S. schools were mainly caused by lazy students and unaccountable teachers. Administrative incompetence was not on the agenda. Nor were poverty, inequality, and racial discrimination.

Perhaps the most famous line in the report was this one:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

A reader of this blog who goes by the tag “Ohio Algebra Teacher” offered a new version of that famous line:

If a foreign country had inflicted upon our public education system what Ed Reform plutocrats and their toadying political sycophants have implemented upon it, we would have considered it an act of war.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Salvatore Babones: The Real Reason that Corporate America, the Right, and Democratic Dupes Have Declared War on Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
13

This is a great article, written in 2015. How could I have missed it!

It was written by Salvator Babones, a professor of sociology at the University of Sydney and the Institute for Policy Studies.

He begins:

When did reform become a dirty word? Thirty years of education reform have brought a barren, test-bound curriculum that stigmatizes students, vilifies teachers, and encourages administrators to commit wholesale fraud in order to hit the testing goals that have been set for them. Strangely, reform has gone from being a progressive cause to being a conservative curse. It used to be that good people pursued reform to make the world a better place, usually by bringing public services under transparent, meritocratic, democratically governed public control. Today, reform more often involves firing people and dismantling public services in the pursuit of private gain. Where did it all go so wrong? Who stole our ever-progressing public sector, and in the process stole one of our most effective words for improving it?

At least so far as education reform is concerned, the answer is clear. The current age of education reform can be traced to the landmark 1983 report A Nation at Risk, subtitled “The Imperative for Educational Reform.” Future dictionaries may mark this report as the turning point when the definition of reform changed from cause to a curse. In 1981 Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell appointed an 18-person commission to look into the state of US schools. He charged the commission with addressing “the widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. No students or recent graduates. No everyday parents. No representatives of parents’ organizations. No social workers, school psychologists, or guidance counselors. No representatives of teacher’s unions (God forbid). Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education.

It should come as no surprise that a commission dominated by administrators found that the problems of U.S. schools were mainly caused by lazy students and unaccountable teachers. Administrative incompetence was not on the agenda. Nor were poverty, inequality, and racial discrimination. A Nation at Risk began from the assumption that our public schools were failing. Of course our public schools were failing. Our public schools are always failing. No investigative panel has ever found that our public schools are succeeding. But if public schools have been failing for so long—if they were already failing in 1983 and have been failing ever since—then very few of us alive today could possibly have had a decent education. So who are we to offer solutions for fixing these failing schools? We are ourselves the products of the very failing schools we propose to fix.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, U.S. education

Should Republican Billionaires Pick Democratic Candidates? Attention, Politico Morning Education.

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2018 //
47

In the education world, we have become accustomed to the intrusion of billionaires into local and state school board races, bundling money for candidates committed to privatizing—not helping—our public schools. The most prominent such group calls itself Democrats for Education Reform, but we have no way of knowing whether its contributors are Republicans or Democrats. Some of its most prominent members are billionaires who donate to both parties, depending on which candidate is likeliest to protect charter schools and low taxes.

This post in the Blog “Crooks & Liars” notes a broader phenomenon of Republican billionaires inserting their money into Democratic primaries to choose rightwing candidates.

I noted on Twitter and on this blog that Politico’s Morning Education recently published a lengthy interview with DFER spokesmen about where they plan to target their millions, which school board elections they plan to invade, without noting that DFER represents Wall Street and contains not a single educator in its midst. Politico didn’t bother to question why hedge fund managers in New York and Connecticut are swaying elections in Colorado and California. Nor did they point out that DFER was censured by the Democratic parties in both states, which said they stop calling themselves Democrats because they represent corporate interests. I don’t know nor does Politico whether DFER is actually a Republican front group with one or two show Democrats.

Politico Morning Education has NEVER interviewed a critic of Corporate Reform, has NEVER discussed the distorting effect of outside money bundled by hedge funders on state and local school board elections. Why do the Waltons—a fiercely anti-union, anti-public school family of billionaires—invest in school board elections across the nation? Why is this story NEVER reported by Politico? Why do they keep hands off the billionaires intent on privatizing public schools?

Conversely, why has Politico never seen fit to interview public school supporters other than National Union leaders? Why have they never interviewed Carol Burris or Anthony Cody or Julian Vasquez Heilig or Jesse Hagopian or the BATS?

When the Network for Public Education released a carefully researched 50-State report ranking states on their support for public schools, Politico did not consider it worthy of even a mention, let alone a paragraph with a link to the report.

What gives at Politico Morning Education?

Categories Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Colorado, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Reform

Harold Meyerson: Shame on Andrew Cuomo!

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2018 //
7

Harold Meyerson, editor of The American Prospect, sent out this commentary on New York’s gubernatorial race. Control of New York’s State Senate hangs in the balance in this election, as well as several seats in Congress. By putting his name on the Independence Party line. Cuomo aids former members of the so-called IDC (the independent Democratic Conference), legislators who were elected as Democrats but caucus with and vote with the Republicans. The members of the IDC collect huge donations from hedge fund managers and charter school advocates, including Daniel Loeb, who until recently was chair of the board of Eva’s Success Academy.

Campaign cash is rolling in for the turncoat Democrats, who vote with the Republicans and support charters. Look at this eye-popping graph. The average contribution to former IDC members was $1,093. The average contribution to their challenger was $80.


Meyerson on TAP

Andrew’s Ego, Amok Again. In recent weeks, the three published polls of New York voters have shown that Governor Andrew Cuomo leads his primary challenger, Cynthia Nixon, by at least 30 percentage points, and his may-as-well-be-nameless Republican opponent in the November runoff, once he dispatches Nixon, by a similar margin. In other words, Cuomo doesn’t need to boost his totals by a few thousand votes more through a maneuver that might just cost the Democrats one or more of the state’s closely fought U.S. House or state Senate seats. Why would he do something as cynical as that?

Because he’s Andrew Cuomo, that’s why.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported that Cuomo has agreed to appear not just on the Democrats’ ballot line in November (assuming he beats Nixon in the party’s September primary), but also on the ballot line of something called the Independence Party. New York, you may recall, allows for fusion voting, in which a candidate can appear on the November ballot as the nominee of more than one party, provided, of course, that the party and the candidate agree to that. The candidate’s final vote total tallies his or her votes on every party line where his or her name appears.

Since the American Labor Party first began co-endorsing the Democrats it liked in the mid-1930s, New York’s many and varied third (and fourth) parties have each had a distinct ideology. In the past couple decades, the state has seen the social democratic Working Families Party run lefties on its line, most of whom are also Democratic nominees, while the Conservative Party has done the same with right-wingers, most of whom are also Republican nominees.

What the Independence Party is independent of, by contrast, is a coherent ideology. Its candidates in past elections have included conservative Republicans and such certain-to-win-anyway Democrats as the state’s U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. At least some of the party’s finances have been known to come from politicians who’ve mysteriously ended up as the party’s designated candidates.

Whatever the motivations of Democrats who’ve also been on the Independence line in elections past, November’s upcoming election is unlike any other New York election in recent decades. Half a dozen U.S. House seats and a like number of state Senate seats are up for grabs, which is to say that Democrats’ prospects for taking the House and winning New York’s Senate (where Republicans have clung to a very narrow majority, thanks to gerrymandering and assorted other mischief, for many years) very much depend on the outcome of a number of closely fought New York races. And though the Independence Party has placed Cuomo atop its slate, it has also decided to endorse the Republicans in almost every one of those House and state Senate contests.

In the opinion of New York electionologists, the fact that Cuomo will head the Independence ticket will likely mean that the party’s down-ticket nominees will win anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand votes more than they otherwise would. In most years, this wouldn’t make that much difference. This year, with so much at stake, it could make a world of difference—most importantly, on the question of whether the Democrats will capture the House and at last be able to thwart some of the policies, impulses, and outright crimes (if crimes they be) of President Trump.

And yet, in full knowledge of that possibility, and for no apparent reason save the demands of his vote-getting ego, Cuomo has consented to head the Independence ticket. If Republicans still control the Congress next January, and still are in position to doom progressive initiatives in Albany through their control of the Senate, Cuomo will have some ‘splainin to do. Indeed, he has some ‘splainin to do right now. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, New York, Privatization

California: Charter School Growth Slowing After a Quarter Century of Expansion

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
16

Is the air coming out of the charter school bubble?

Are parents tired of seeing their children attend faux schools in shopping malls or schools that open and close like day lilies?

California has been the Golden State for charter schools until now, but the fever is subsiding.

Maybe it was the impact of the scandals, the waste, fraud and abuse.

After a quarter century of steady expansion, the rate of growth for charter schools in California has slowed to a crawl over the past five years.

During the just completed school year, the number of charter schools grew by a mere 1.6 percent — from 1,254 schools in 2016-17 to 1,275 in 2017-18. That was even lower than last year’s 1.9 percent growth, which set a record for the lowest rate of growth in at least two decades.

These sluggish rates of growth, mirrored by similar slowdowns nationally, present a sharp contrast to the double-digit rates of expansion of charter schools for most years since California approved its charter law in 1992.

Far outpacing every other state, California charter schools now enroll over 630,000 students, or 1 in 10 of the state’s public school students. The slowdown in their growth could increase competition among parents and students to get into the most sought-after charter schools and in general limit the choices that they have beyond traditional public schools. It is also stirring concerns among charter school advocates that the slowdown may represent a permanent feature of the California education landscape, not just a temporary pause.

The slowdown is accelerating at precisely the time President Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos are trying to expand education options for parents and children, which includes more charter schools, as well as tax-payer subsidies for private school tuition.

What is happening in California is being watched closely by national charter school advocates. “California is a place where you see charter schools in a wide variety of urban communities as well as in rural areas,” said Todd Ziebarth, senior vice president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “We don’t see that in every state.” A slowdown in California, he said, will have “a big impact on the national numbers (of charter schools), and given its size and diversity it is the place to look for lessons for why it is happening and how to jumpstart growth in California and across the country.”

Maybe the time for “jumpstarting growth” was a quarter century ago. Maybe that time is gone. Maybe parents are sick and tired of seeing their local public schools taken over by corporate chains.

Maybe the Gold Rush has panned out.

Categories California, Charter Schools

Ohio: A Great New Organization Has Been Launched to Fight Privatization, Theft, and Greed

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
19

I learned from Bill Phillis’s posts about a great new organization that has just been launched in Ohio.

If you live in Ohio, join it.

The organization, called Public Education Partners, was inspired by Jan Resseger’s post: https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/my-public-education-platform/

Every candidate running for public office, whether school board, state legislature, the governorship, or Congress should be asked to take a stand: Do you support this platform?

Preamble to PEP’s Public Education Platform

The Ohio Constitution (Article VI, sections 2 and 3) requires the state to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools and provide for the organization, administration and control of the system. School district boards of education have the constitutional and statutory responsibility to administer the educational program. Boards of education have the fiduciary duty to ensure the educational needs of all resident students are met in an equitable and adequate manner.

The state’s first obligation is to ensure that a thorough and efficient system is established and maintained. The state has no right under the Ohio constitution to fund alternative educational programs that diminish moral and financial support from the common school system. Ohio’s system of school was declared unconstitutional more than two decades ago, yet since that time $11 billion have been drained from the public school system for publicly- funded, privately-operated charter schools. This egregious flaw in state policy must be addressed.

Jan Resseger of Cleveland Heights has aptly defined state and local responsibility for education as follows:

A comprehensive system of public education that serves all children and is democratically governed, publicly funded, universally accessible, and accountable to the public is central to the common good.

The education platform premised on the constitutional responsibility of the state of Ohio as stated in the preamble is:

A comprehensive system of public education that serves all children and is democratically governed, publicly funded, universally accessible, and accountable to the public, is central to the common good.
~Jan Resseger

Ohio Public Education Platform

This education platform is premised on the constitutional responsibility of the state of Ohio:

 Provide adequate and equitable funding to Ohio school districts to guarantee a comparable opportunity to learn for ALL children. This includes a quality early childhood education, qualified teachers, a rich curriculum that will prepare students for college, work and community, and equitable instructional resources. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WLdVez25ZjDzzd2irSUwUggj-GflNQuO/view?usp=sharing

 Respect local control of public schools run by elected school boards. There are different needs for different schools of different sizes, and each local school board knows what its students, families, and community values. http://www.nvasb.org/assets/why_school_boards.pdf

 Reject the school privatization agenda, which includes state takeovers, charter schools, voucher schemes, and high-stakes testing. The school privatization agenda has proven to be ineffective at bringing efficiency and cost savings to our schools. https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Privatizing_Public_Education,_Higher_Ed_Policy,_and_T eachers

 Do away with the state takeovers of school districts imposed in House Bill 70. State takeovers of school districts (HB 70), followed by the appointment of CEOs with power to override the decisions of elected school boards and nullify union contracts, is undemocratic, unaccountable, and without checks and balances. http://www.reclaimourschools.org/sites/default/files/state-takeover-factsheet-3.pdf

 Promote a moratorium on the authorization of new charter schools while gradually removing existing charters, which take funding and other valuable resources from public school districts. Charter schools remove funds and other resources from public school districts and need to be phased out. For-profit charter schools should be eliminated – tax dollars should never be transferred into private profits. https://knowyourcharter.com/

 Eliminate vouchers and tuition tax credit programs. Voucher schemes take desperately needed dollars out of education budgets and undermine the protection of religious liberty as defined by the First Amendment. https://educationvotes.nea.org/2017/02/08/5-names- politicians-use-sell-private-school-voucher-schemes-parents/

 Encourage wraparound community learning centers that bring social and health services into Ohio school buildings. These wraparound services ensure that the public schools are the center of the neighborhood, and they include health, dental, and mental health clinics, after school programs, and parent support programs. Cincinnati Public Schools has a very successful program: https://www.cps-k12.org/community/clc

 End the test-and-punish philosophy, and replace it with an ideology of school investment and improvement. The tests have narrowed the curriculum to the tested subjects. If national standardized testing is to continue, testing should be limited to the federal minimum guidelines, and there should be no state standardized tests beyond those mandated by ESSA. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2017/01/06/how-testing-practices-have-to-change-in-u-s-public- schools/?utm_term=.45d28f77dcb0

 Remove high stakes mandates from schools, and abolish the practice of punishing schools, teachers, families, and students for arbitrary test scores. Do away with mandatory retention attached to the 3rd Grade Reading Guarantee and high school end-of-course state tests. If parents choose to opt their children out of testing, no one should be penalized. http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Dangerous-Consequences-of-high-stakes- tests.pdf

 Restore respect for well-trained, certified teachers, and return educator evaluation systems to locally elected school boards. Dismiss Teach for America, which is funded by the Eli Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/went-wrong-teach-america/

Eliminate the practice of judging teachers by their students’ scores – research has proven it unreliable. http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/TeacherEvaluationFactSheetRevisionJanuary201 6.pdf

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling), Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

DFER Will Spend Millions to Support Pro-Charter, Pro-High-Stakes Testing Candidates

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
25

If you like high-stakes testing and charter schools, you will love “Democrats for Education Reform.”

DFER, as it is known, was condemned by resolution by the Democratic party conferences in Colorado and California for using the word “Democrat” to promote a corporate agenda that is hostile to public schools. DFER is also hostile to public school teachers and unions, but loves TFA and merit pay. All the usual Corporate Reform failures. Real Democrats, like the parties in Colorado and California think that DFERs are Republicans pretending to be Democrats.

Democrats for Education Reform is a group funded by Wall Street hedge fund managers who despise public schools. They never support candidates who are opposed to privatization or those who are fully committed to public schools. They only support candidates who want to siphon money away from public schools to support charter schools. They support candidates who love high-stakes testing. They never look at evidence that shows the damage that charters do to public schools or the evidence that shows the total failure of high-stakes testing to make any difference other than demoralizing students and teachers. They don’t care that a decade of their policies driven by the U.S. Department of Education has led to stagnation of NAEP scores.

In New York State, hedge funders supporting charter schools are pouring millions of dollars into races for the State Senate, both to support the charter school industry and to make sure that Republicans retain control of the State Senate, thus fending off higher taxes and protecting charter schools. Another DFERite dumping big money into New York State campaigns is Paul Tudor Jones, who gave $150,000 to something called “Parents Vote,” which seems to be controlled by StudentsFirst (hard to tell the Astroturf organizations apart). The treasurer of “Parents Vote” is the attorney for StudentsFirst. Jones may be a parent, but he lives in Connecticut, not New York, and you can bet your bottom dollar that he does not send his own children to public schools or charter schools. This outpouring of money is meant to keep the State Senate firmly under GOP management, to make sure that charters continue to operate without oversight and do their own thing.

You may or may not remember that Paul Tudor Jones is one of the nine billionaires who determined that it was up to them to remake the public schools of New York, although no one elected them to do so.

Just five years ago, Forbes ran a big article about Paul Tudor Jones and his plan to “save American education.” While busy saving American education, Jones also served on the board of Harvey Weinstein’s company and fought to save Harvey’s battered reputation.

Please note that the following story misidentifies DFER and treats them as a legitimate “reform” group when DFER acts only in the interest of Corporate Reform, high-stakes testing and privatization. The story also errs in not acknowledging that many DFER members are not Democrats.

From Politico:


FIRST LOOK: EDUCATION REFORM GROUP BETS BIG ON GOVERNOR’S RACES: Democrats for Education Reform plans to spend $4 million on campaign contributions and advertising this election cycle, boosting Democratic candidates who want to support public schools but are open to reform-minded ways of improving them.

— The organization — which advocates for a host of school reform policies nationwide like strong test-based accountability and high-quality public charter schools — through its political action committee is prioritizing gubernatorial races in Colorado, Connecticut and New York, in addition to the California state superintendent’s race and some state legislative races. DFER exclusively detailed its spending and campaign plans with Morning Education in an interview late last month. Asked the source of the $4 million, a spokeswoman the figure comes from their “supporters” and “contributors.”

— In Colorado’s battle for governor, DFER is backing Rep. Jared Polis, a House education committee Democrat who’s running against state Treasurer Walker Stapleton, a Republican.

— The race to replace term-limited Gov. John Hickenlooper has proven divisive for Colorado Democrats — the state teachers union backed another Democrat, Cary Kennedy, during the primary. Allies of Kennedy sought to tie Polis to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her support for private school vouchers. Polis founded two charter schools, but hasn’t shown support for vouchers or federally funded private schools in Congress. When Kennedy lost to Polis, the state teachers union released a statement that didn’t even mention Polis’ name.

— In Connecticut, DFER is supporting Ned Lamont, the Democratic hopeful looking to replace Gov. Dannel Malloy, who’s not seeking reelection. And the organization is pushing for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reelection in New York.

— In California, DFER wants to lift Marshall Tuck to victory as state schools superintendent. Tuck is an education reform advocate who has run both charter schools and district schools in Los Angeles. In 2014, he narrowly lost a bid for state schools chief to Tom Torlakson, the current superintendent, who had the support of teachers unions. Tuck will face another Democrat, state Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, in the general election this fall.

— DFER in addition is launching a social media campaignon what it means to be an “education progressive.” The group defines that term as fighting to spend more money on public education while embracing “new ideas” to bring about faster improvement. Some of those ideas, like stronger test-based accountability measures, have faced staunch opposition from progressive groups like teachers unions. But DFER is pushing new polling results that President Shavar Jeffries says illustrate strong support. More on that polling here.

— Jeffries, who recently sat down with Morning Education, stressed that more than half of Democratic primary voters, African American voters and Hispanic voters don’t think public schools are changing or improving fast enough. The poll also found broad support for public school choice — a divisive issue for the Democratic Party — and more equitable funding for public schools, particularly disadvantaged ones. The results stem from two nationwide phone polls of more than 1,000 voters each between May and July of this year. The poll was conducted by consulting firms Benenson Strategy Group and 270 Strategies.

Would it be asking too much to hope that Caitlin Emma and the crack reporters on the Politico team might consider interviewing a critic of billionaire “Reformers.” Maybe a teacher? Say, someone like Steven Singer or Peter Greene or Mark Weber, or other well-informed critics of the intrusion of billionaire know-nothings into education policymaking? Maybe Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education?

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, New York, Privatization, School Choice, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Unions
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