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Peter Greene: Jeb Bush Is Still in the Education Reform Business

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2016 //
8

Peter Greene opened his email and found an invitation to attend the annual convening of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence. Bush may have done poorly in the 2016 campaign but he still wants to remake American education in the image of Florida: charters, vouchers, high-stakes testing for students and teachers.

Greene wonders:

I am interested in seeing what happens next to Jeb!, who now occupies a weird sort of reformster twilight zone. On the one hand, Herr Trump appears to fully embrace Bush’s education policies, or at least the Let a Million Charters Bloom part. But Bush himself–well, it seems unlikely that Jeb is in line for Trumpian Ed Secretary. And that bitter taste resting on Bush’s ivy league palate must be getting only more and more bitter as it becomes obvious that President Trump will be following a lot of the policies that Candidate Trump used to smack Bush over the head. What happens when hated political enemies actually stand for pretty much the same policy ideas? How exactly do you criticize someone for pursuing policies that you totally agree with?

Who will the conventioneers hear from? Open the post.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

ACLU of Michigan Warns About Dangers of DeVos Nomination

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2016 //
49

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan released the following statement on the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education:

 
Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan, issued the following statement on the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education:

 

We strongly urge Congress to scrutinize the record of Betsy DeVos, who has been a staunch proponent of school vouchers, a misguided idea that diverts taxpayer dollars into private and parochial schools and perverts the bedrock American value of separation of church and state. She and her husband served as the primary fundraisers and engine for a Michigan ballot initiative –Kids First! Yes! Coalition that voters soundly rejected in 2000.

 

She has ardently supported the unlimited, unregulated growth of charter schools in Michigan, elevating for-profit schools with no consideration of the severe harm done to traditional public schools. She’s done this despite overwhelming evidence that proves that charters do no better at educating children than traditional public schools and serve only to exacerbate funding problems for cash-strapped public districts. We believe that all children have a right to a quality public education, and we fear that Betsy DeVos’ relentless advocacy of charter schools and vouchers betrays these principles.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

New York Times on DeVos: A Champion for Privatization of Education

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2016 //
21

Kate Zernike of the New York Times has an excellent article explaining Betsy DeVos to the general public. She is not your garden-variety “reformer,” who claims to love both public schools and charter schools. She is a  privatization zealot.

 

For nearly 30 years, as a philanthropist, activist and Republican fund-raiser, she has pushed to give families taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to attend private and parochial schools, pressed to expand publicly funded but privately run charter schools, and tried to strip teacher unions of their influence.

 

A daughter of privilege, she also married into it; her husband, Dick, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan a decade ago, is heir to the Amway fortune. Like many education philanthropists, she argues that children’s ZIP codes should not confine them to failing schools.

 

But Ms. DeVos’s efforts to expand educational opportunity in her home state of Michigan and across the country have focused little on existing public schools, and almost entirely on establishing newer, more entrepreneurial models to compete with traditional schools for students and money. Her donations and advocacy go almost entirely toward groups seeking to move students and money away from what Mr. Trump calls “failing government schools.”

 

Conservative school choice activists hailed her on Wednesday as a fellow disrupter, and as someone who would block what they see as federal intrusion on local schools.

 

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, where Ms. DeVos helped push legislation establishing tax credits for scholarships to private schools, called her an “outstanding pick,” a “passionate change agent to press for a new education vision.”

 

DeVos and her  fellow privatization zealots have a goal: the destruction of public education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Who is the Real Betsy DeVos?

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2016 //
16

Peter Greene has done his homework and he walks us through the career of Betsy DeVos in this illuminating post. Open the piece to read it in full and to see the links to Peter’s research.

 

She is close to Jeb Bush. She and her billionaire family fund ALEC, the far-right group that drafts model legislation to privatize all government functions. She is a supporter of Scott Walker, scourge of unions. She funded the campaign for the emergency manager law, which allows the governor in Michigan to suspend democracy.

 

* While it may seem that DeVos is a charterization fan, what she would really like is vouchers, with the prospect of shuffling public tax dollars to private religious schools, new for-profit charters, and pretty much anything except public schools.

 

* While some choice charter fans call for a robust marketplace balanced with careful oversight to stomp on bad actors, DeVos prefers to let the wisdom of the markets rule and for little or no state or federal oversight be the rule. This has interesting implications for ESSA; the new law includes calls for federal oversight, but if the fed’s attitude is, “Yeah, whatever, do what you want,” the options available to states will become really large and, in some cases, really scary.

 

* In keeping with her Station in Life, DeVos has never held down an actual job. She graduated around 1980 with a business and poli sci degree, and a little less than a decade later she and her husband set up an investment management group for her to run. In the meantime, she became active as a political operative and party leader in Michigan.

 

* It will be no surprise that DeVos has never worked in education, and her children never attended (as near as I can discover) public school.

 

* If you can stomach it, here is Dick DeVos explaining how public education can be starved, broken, and replaced with a money-making business.

 

DeVos’s feelings about Common Core are not clear, really. She’s a friend of Jeb, but she also runs with the hard right “kill it with” fire Common Core haters. No question that more stories will come tumbling out– as they do, pay attention to folks in Michigan who have been getting beaten up by this family for decades.

 

But she would rather privatize public education than help it, she would like to make teachers unions a thing of the past, and she has a deep sense of her own rightness. Chalkbeat also offers the observation that DeVos is used to buying her way into policy victories, and as Secretary she wouldn’t be able to just write a check to get everyone to do her will. Or maybe she could. We don’t really know if that’s not okay in Trumplandia or not.

 

Well, we knew it wouldn’t be pretty. Now we can start to get a sense of just what kind of ugly it’s going to be.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Trump Picks DeVos for Secretary of Education

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2016 //
44

i guess my withdrawal of support for Betsy DeVos came too late. I just received a news flash from CNN that Trump offered her the U.S. Department of Education post, and she took it.

 

Now we will have a “reformer” who does not hide her contempt for the public schools.

 

She loves vouchers.

 

She opposes any any regulation or oversight for charter schools.

 

She wants privatization, perio.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

News Flash! I Withdraw My Support for Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education; I Support Bill Evers!

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2016 //
16

A few days ago, I said that I support Michigan billionaire and hard-right voucher advocate Betsy DeVos, because she would show the world that “reformers” are out to destroy our public schools. No ambiguity there. She would demonstrate the close link between “reform” and the rightwing.

 

But I hereby formally withdraw my support for DeVos’s candidacy. To be sure, it was meant in jest, but many readers failed to see the humor in supporting someone who would totally privatize education.

 

Why am I withdrawing my support? Well, I just learned that DeVos has more flaws than I thought. Not only does she want all children to have vouchers (charters apparently are a fall-back form of privatization for her), she opposes any regulation or oversight for the private schools she supports. When the Michigan legislature made an attempt to create some oversight for charter schools, DeVos spent over $1 million to block the effort, and she won. In Michigan, 80% of the charters operate for-profit, without regulation or oversight, and DeVos is happy with that. The scandals and waste of taxpayers’ dollars don’t concern her. I also object to her because she supports the Common Core. My reasons for opposing the Common Core are different from that of people on the Trump team. I oppose them because they were imposed without a field trial, without any evidence that they were good standards. I oppose them because I oppose standardization in education. I oppose developmentally inappropriate demands on young children. If any teacher loves them, use them, but they are not and never will be national standards, nor will they reduce achievement gaps. If anything, they increase  the gaps and reduce achievement.

 

So, sorry, Betsy, you are not my choice.

 

Who is my choice? Glad you asked that question. I support Williamson (Bill) Evers, whom I have known for nearly 20 years. He is not mean, unlike some of the other candidates. He is at heart a libertarian and won’t shove federal policies down everyone’s throats. He is the only choice Trump might make that would do the least harm.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Michigan, Privatization, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

D.C. Mayor Chooses Antwan Wilson as Chancellor of Schools

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2016 //
14

 

 

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser selected Antwan Wilson as the next chancellor of schools, promising that he would continue the policies of Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. Wilson has been superintendent in Oakland for the past two years. He is a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. He has pledged to tackle the achievement gaps in D.C., which are the largest of any urban district.

 

D.C. adopted mayoral control of the schools in 2007, copying New York City’s example. Michelle Rhee served from 2007 to 2010, when Adrian Fenty, the mayor who appointed her, was defeated, in large part because of Rhee. Her deputy, Kaya Henderson, took her place.

 

About half the children in the District are enrolled in charter schools, which are not under the chancellor’s control. The Walton Family Foundation has made privatizing schools in the nation’s Capitol a priority.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Privatization, Walton Foundation

The Facts About State Takeovers of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2016 //
9

The Alliance to Reclaim Our Public Schools (AROS) has gathered important information about state takeovers, which target disproportionate numbers of black and brown communities.

 

Be sure to check out this fact sheet.

 

When the fact sheet was published earlier this year, AROS identified 116 schools that were operating in state takeover districts in Louisiana, Michigan, and Tennessee. Of 44,000 students affected, 96% are African American or Latino.

 

The first consequence of the takeover is the abolition of elected school boards. Democracy ends, and the board is replaced by an appointed board, often made up of people who have no connection to the community.

 

The results have been disappointing. Nearly half the schools in the New Orleans Recovery School District are rated D or F by the state (other studies put the figure even higher). The charters in the Tennessee Achievement School District lag the performance of public schools. In Michigan’s Educational Achievement Authority, 79% of students either showed no improvement or lost ground on state tests.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Michigan, New Orleans, Privatization, Tennessee, Turnaround Schools

Mike Klonsky: Corporate Reformers Throw in with Trump!

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2016 //
15

The natural alliance between the corporate reformers and the incoming Trump administration has been a theme of many of the posts today, starting with Peter Greene’s post about the “Faux Progressive Polka.”

 

Michael Klonsky calls it as he sees it: the corporate reformers are very comfortable with Trump, because he is singing their song about “school choice” being “the civil rights issue of our time.” Of course, he doesn’t mean it any more than the billionaire hedge funders mean it. School choice is a lot cheaper than raising taxes on the 1% to reduce poverty and to provide medical and social services for poor kids and families.

 

Mike writes:

 

It looks like they’ve dropped their phony rhetoric about charter schools being “the civil rights issue of our time.” Following the Democrat’s devastating loss to Trump, one by one, the corporate reformers and champions of privately-run charters are jumping the Dems’ ship and throwing in behind the racist, anti-immigrant Trump education movement.

 

For some, the move is nothing new. Former D.C. chancellor, Arne Duncan fave, and Waiting for Superman star Michelle Rhee for example, turned to selling her talents to the far right as soon as voters ran her and Mayor Fenty out of town. She went to work advising FL Gov. Rick Scott on school privatization and union-busting matters.

 

Now that she’s stepped down from leadership of her anti-union ed group, Students First, she’s considering leaving her new position with a national fertilizer company if Trump offers her the job as his secretary of education. Her problem is that she’s a proponent of Common Core. Trump isn’t. But either of them can easily accommodate the other’s position since Rhee sees Common Core’s value mainly in its testing provisions, enabling teachers to be evaluated, hired and fired on the basis of student test scores. There should be a basis for unity with Trump there somewhere.

 

And her scandal-ridden past, including her connection with D.C. test-cheating scandal shouldn’t bother the Trump transition team too much considering the rest of his recent scandalized appointees and advisers. Not to mention, Trump’s own $25M pay-off to make the Trump Univ. suit go away.

 

But Trump also has to placate his base. Upon hearing about his possible choice of Rhee, the right-wing group, Parents Against the Common Core, wrote Trump and open letter calling on him to cut federal funding of public schools, dismantle the D.O.E. and appoint someone like former Bush aide Williamson Evers to the top post.

 

BTW, Trump also met with Rhee’s husband KJ, the disgraced mayor of Sacramento. They have some legal problems in common. Something about teenage girls. But let’s not even go there right now. I just ate.

 

Then there’s New York’s own charter-hustler supreme, Eva Moskowitz who is now pulling down nearly a half-million a year for managing the city’s Success Academy Charters. EM met with Trump last week, but reportedly turned down the Ed Sec job. Some NY friends told me she couldn’t afford the pay cut. The Secretary of Education’s salary is a measly $186,600. Others say, she has her eyes on the NY mayor’s office. But she left the meeting on good terms, promising Trump that she would get behind his school reform plan.

 

You really must open Mike’s article to see the many links.

 

He ends his piece by asking, with all the corporate reformers falling in line, can Joel Klein be far behind? As it happens, when I was researching Betsy DeVos, billionaire, school choice advocate, and potential Secretary of Education in the Trump administration, I learned that Betsy and Joel had co-authored an article lauding the value of grading schools on an A-F scale. (see footnote 32 in DeVos’ Wikipedia entry.) Unfortunately, the article is behind a pay wall; the summary says:

 

DeVos and Joel Klein noted in a May 2013 op-ed that residents of Maine “are now given information on school performance using easy-to-understand report cards with the same A, B, C, D and F designations used in student grades.”

 

Giving public schools a single letter grade is a corporate reform favorite, as it is necessary for school choice. Experience demonstrates that the letter grades reflect affluence and poverty, so the schools of poor kids are slated for closing and privatization. But worse, the very idea that a complex institution can be evaluated with a single letter grade is offensive. No, it is not like a child’s report card. If a child brought home a report card with nothing but a single letter grade, parents would be outraged. No child is a single letter grade. No school is a single letter grade.

 

Klonsky nails it.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Trump

A Reader: Where Should the Money Go?

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2016 //
12

After listening to the debate between Duke Professor Helen Ladd and Harvard Professor Marty West about the funding of our schools (“Getting Our Money’s Worth“), a reader sent this comment:

 

I don’t understand why we’re not talking more about the great things our teachers are doing in spite of being under funded. What don’t our schools have? My goddaughter asked for a ream of copy paper for Christmas a couple of years ago! Her whiteboard is actually plastic shower stall wall material that can’t be cleaned. She works in the Boston area.

 

Our schools are giving our students wonderful, whole child educations. They’re winning awards for the wonderful things they do with parents, students and other community members but we rarely talk about it.

 

What do the almighty (all richy) charters have – facilities in good repair with great technology, small classes, resources we can’t even dream about? That’s what I hear is the case for many charters. Where does that money come from? Do they save so much by not paying certified teachers that they can afford all those amenities or do they get tax deductible gifts from afar? How much more money does all their splendor take? Can community public schools get some from the same places? How about just enough for small classes?

 

Proud of public schools
Mary

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Supporting public schools, Teachers and Teaching
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