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Far-Right Hillsdale College Runs a Charter Chain, Which Tennessee Governor Wants to Expand

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2022 //
31

Stephanie Saul is a crack investigative reporter at the New York Times. In this story, she took a close look at Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s request to ultra conservative Hillsdale College to open 50 charter schools in Tennessee.

She begins:

With only 1,500 students on a small-town campus in southern Michigan, Hillsdale College is far from the power corridors of government and top-ranked universities.

But it has outsize influence in the conservative world, with strong ties to the Washington elite. Republican leaders frequently visit, and Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the 2016 commencement address, calling Hillsdale a “shining city on a hill” for its devotion to “liberty as an antecedent of government, not a benefit from government.”

Now the college is making new efforts to reach beyond its campus, this time with an even younger audience. The college is fighting what it calls “progressive” and “leftist academics” by expanding its footprint in the charter school world, pushing the boundaries on the use of taxpayer money for politically tinged education.

Hillsdale has ambitious plans to add to its network of classical public charter schools, which focus on “the centrality of the Western tradition.” And Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee recently invited the college to start 50 schools using public funds, including $32 million set aside for charter facilities. Hillsdale’s network currently includes 24 schools in 13 states.

Mr. Lee, a Republican, sees his new charter school expansion as part of an effort to develop what he called “informed patriotism” in Tennessee students.

“For decades, Hillsdale College has been the standard-bearer in quality curriculum and in the responsibility of preserving American liberty,” Mr. Lee told lawmakers recently. “I believe their efforts are a good fit for Tennessee.”

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, have been more commonly promoted as alternatives to low-performing schools in urban centers. In Tennessee, they have been clustered in the state’s four biggest cities, where like other charters, they have been criticized for siphoning money and students out of more traditional public schools.

Mr. Lee’s plan envisions an expansion into suburban and rural areas where, like many Hillsdale charter schools, they would most likely enroll children who are whiter and more affluent than the average charter school pupil.

In that way, the Hillsdale schools could be something of a publicly funded off-ramp for conservative parents who think their local schools misinterpret history and push a socially progressive agenda on issues from race and diversity to sexuality and gender.

The college has also developed the “1776 Curriculum,” which sets out to portray America as “an exceptionally good country.” During a time when education has become inflamed by divisive cultural debates, Hillsdale has been criticized for its glossy spin on American history as well as its ideological tilt on topics like affirmative action. Educators and historians have also raised questions about other instruction at Hillsdale’s charter schools, citing their negative take on the New Deal and the Great Society and cursory presentation of global warming.

In that way, the Hillsdale schools could be something of a publicly funded off-ramp for conservative parents who think their local schools misinterpret history and push a socially progressive agenda on issues from race and diversity to sexuality and gender.

“I’ve been following charter schools over the last 25 years, and I’ve never seen a governor attempting to use charters in such an overtly political way,” said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “You’ve had governors who’ve encouraged the growth of charters to provide more high-quality options for parents, but it’s highly unusual to see a governor deploy the charter mechanism for admittedly political purposes.”

The article goes on at length to describe the Hillsdale curriculum, which is politically conservative , and the demographics of its charter schools, which are disproportionately white.

She adds:

The students [at Atlanta Classical Academy] are selected through a citywide lottery, but the school’s location in affluent Buckhead may deter some applicants. In a city where 73 percent of public school students are Black and 17 percent white, Atlanta Classical Academy is the mirror image: 17 percent Black and 71 percent white, according to a 2020 state report.

Overall, Hillsdale’s charter school racial demographics are close to that of the Atlanta Classical students. That is a departure from charter schools nationally, which are about 30 percent white.

“They’re catering to white families and affluent families,” said Charisse Gulosino, an associate professor of leadership and policy studies at the University of Memphis, whose research has found that students in suburban charter schools do not outperform their public school counterparts.

Not all of Hillsdale’s charter school collaborations have been successful. Hillsdale recently announced it is ending ties with Tallahassee Classical School in Florida.

The school, approved by the state despite local opposition, set out to serve a diverse student body. But two teachers interviewed by The Times said they suspected that the school was trying to jettison low-performing students, a tactic that charter schools have been accused of as a way to increase test scores.

Try to find the full story. It shows how unregulated charter schools can be turned into white flight academies teaching a Trumpian version of history and science.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, History, Privatization, Propaganda, Race, Tennessee

NPE Releases New Report Ranking the States by Their Support for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2022 //
33

The Network for Public Education has just released a new report that ranks the states by their commitment to their public schools and their refusal to pass laws enabling privatization of public money.

Where does your state rank?

A NEW REPORT EXPOSES THE WEAK PROTECTIONS FOR TAXPAYERS AND WEAK PROTECTIONS FOR CHILDREN IN STATE CHARTER AND VOUCHER LAWS

America’s public schools, students, and families are under a near-constant attack from political special interests looking to privatize and profit at the expense of our children. The Network for Public Education (NPE) has released its findings in its latest report “Public Schooling in America: Measuring Each States Commitment to Democratically Governed Schools.”

Researchers examined laws and regulations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to measure how well policymakers protect public funds from exploitative privatization through low-quality virtual and brick-and-mortar charter schools, environments without fully-vetted staff, and profit-centered systems. Most troubling were findings that expose how state laws allow charter and voucher schools to leave students behind, discriminating against the most vulnerable.

Diving into the world of school privatization led the report’s authors to some dark conclusions about the future of schooling in America. Reflecting on the school privatization movement, the report notes:

“It has achieved the full-throated support of the right-wing, which now controls many state legislatures. Conserving public schools and local control is no longer part of a conservative platform: destroying locally controlled public schools via privatized choice is.”

Some of the findings might surprise readers, as states like California lead the nation in charter school fraud.

“The reality is these voucher programs and charter school expansions being promoted in state capitols across the country are almost custom-designed to incentivize, legalize, and reward fraud, often coupled with minimal repercussions for misspending public funding meant for our students,” said Carol Burris, executive director of NPE.

The report notes that “the first step in stopping the privatization movement is to understand it.” To help the public understand the scope of the issue, NPE graded each state based on their willingness to turn public dollars over to privatized systems as well as the robustness of their protections against discrimination, fraud, student endangerment, corruption, transparency, and accountability.

At the top of the list are the schools where a commitment to conserving public schools and local control remains strong. Those states receiving an “A+” grade include Nebraska and North Dakota, where there are no voucher or charter school laws.

The details of what they found may be alarming to those working to hold states accountable to democratically governed schools. For example:

  • 50% of states with voucher programs don’t require any background checks for voucher school staff in at least one voucher program
  • 33 (73%) states don’t require charter students to be taught by certified teachers, or allow so many exceptions that any existing regulations are rendered meaningless
  • 37 states allow entirely online charter schools that have been shown to be years behind public schools in academic progress
  • 5 states have for-profit organizations running 30% or more of charter schools.

At the same time, the report is a celebration of those states like Nebraska and North Dakota that despite strong lobbying efforts continue to defend their public schools. Commenting on the highest-scoring states, NPE President Diane Ravitch said, “NPE salutes the states that have protected and cherished their public schools while fending off the siren call of privatization. They can and should build strong public schools that are open to the public and owned by the public.”

To view the full list of grades for each state and see how yours stands on protecting students and communities from the exploitation of privatization, view the report in its entirety here.

The Network for Public Education (NPE) was founded in 2013 by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. Its mission is to protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public schools for both current and future generations of students. We share information and research on vital issues that concern the future of public education. For more information, please visit: networkforpubliceducation.org

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Network for Public Education, Privatization, Vouchers

National Education Policy Center: Why Is the Charter Lobby So Upset by Biden’s Reasonable Regulation of New Charters?

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2022 //
12

The National Education Policy Center, headed by scholar Kevin Welner, wonders why the charter lobby has been so intransigent in fighting the reasonable regulations proposed by the Biden administration. The lobbyists have falsely characterized the regulations as an attempt to “destroy” or “eliminate” charter schools, but the regulations would apply only to new charters that seek federal funding. Most charters have been funded by foundations and billionaires, not the federal government. The proposed regulations would improve the new charters.

NEPC writes:

Why is the Charter Lobby So Upset About Biden’s Proposed Regulations?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been observing the conspicuous hand-wringing among prominent charter school advocates. They’re expressing outrage that the Biden Administration is trying to rein in some past abuses and problems within the charter sector. This aggrieved reaction might make sense if the regulations were designed to harm the sector, but the proposals are in fact quite modest and will even help charters thrive in the future.

Understanding the outrage is difficult. This is in part because the Biden Administration already sided with charter advocates by resisting calls to eliminate the federal Charter School Program (CSP) or decrease its funding. I will not here rehash the arguments against charter sector expansion, but those arguments tend to focus on segregation, fraud and waste, self-dealing and private enrichment, harm to local public school districts, exaggerated claims about performance, under-enrollment of students with special needs, and other access and push-out issues.

Notwithstanding these concerns, the Administration’s budget request keeps CSP funding at its historic high of $440 million. This means that the same level of federal taxpayer dollars will continue to promote the expansion of charter schooling, which is already dominant in many metropolitan areas.

But the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations do attempt to address some of these concerns, even while fully funding the program. One key proposal, for example, attempts to fulfill a Biden campaign promise to crack down on CSP funding for charters being operated by for-profit corporations.

The proposed regulations also provide additional points for applications that feature “community school” elements and for those that provide evidence of cooperation or collaborations with the local school district(s).

I

Notwithstanding some false claims to the contrary, these are all priorities—not requirements. We can anticipate that plenty of charter schools without these elements will still get CSP funding.

The above-mentioned attempt to keep CSP money away from for-profit EMOs has raised some hackles among charter school advocates, but the pushback has been relatively muted. Perhaps the advocates are feeling sanguine in trusting the ingenuity of attorneys to find loopholes and work-arounds. One more layer of shell companies or sister corporations or real estate schemes may do the trick. Or perhaps charter advocates know that these for-profits are awful poster children for their cause, so an overt public campaign might be counterproductive.

I

This is nonsense. Yes, the Community Impact statement is required, but even if the statement shows zero benefits of the proposed school to the community, the consequence is merely a loss of potential points in the scoring of the application. The provisions being attacked by the charter advocates are priorities, not requirements. They would change how a given proposal is scored and thus prioritized or ranked among different applications for CSP funding. All other things being equal, a proposal that shows how a charter school will broadly serve—and not harm—a local community will be scored higher than one that cannot make that showing. So our federal tax dollars would be more likely to support the opening of schools that are beneficial to local communities.

Yet the same $440 million would still be disbursed. The same number of new charter schools would presumably still be opened. That’s (one would assume) what the charter lobby most cares about. For the rest of us, there’s good news as well; if the Community Impact process works, the charter schools that do open will be more consistent with the long-time rhetoric of charter school advocates about how charters are a beneficial part of the overall public school system.

So why the objections? What’s the real reason the charter lobby is upset about President Biden’s proposed regulations?

My hunch is that it’s a matter of principle—the principle that they should never give an inch.

For decades, charter schools have occupied a political sweet spot, enjoying the affections of politicians from both major parties. In that position, charter advocates were fully appeased. Compromise was not needed, so it was rebuffed. Like pampered royalty who never learn to listen and empathize, the charter lobby used its political capital to shut down discussions about addressing the sorts of ongoing problems listed earlier.

Over the years, little has changed—except perhaps the effectiveness of these tactics that resist any reform of the status quo for charter policy. For many outside the charter bubble, the sense of entitlement has grown old.

That entitlement was on full display last week. The charter school lobby organized a twitter campaign against the proposed regulations. It choose to use the hashtag #BackOff. If we had a “No Whining” jar, we could have funded next year’s CSP. The advocates’ tweets repeatedly asserted that the “overregulation” would “make it nearly impossible to open new charter schools.” This was accompanied by a newspaper commentary alleging that the proposed regulations were written by “Bureaucratic Gremlins” who had “burrowed” into the federal bureaucracy—rather than just a follow-through on candidate Biden’s campaign promises.

On Fox News, a school choice advocate contended that, through the regulations, the Biden Administration was “waging war on charter schools” in order to protect “unionized government schools.” Meanwhile, two editorial boards that have long pushed for charter school growth—The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post—continued to misrepresent the regulation’s proposed priorities as requirements, labeling the regulations as “charter school sabotage” (the WSJ) and “a sneak attack on charter schools” (the Post).

The charter lobby’s never-give-an-inch strategy has long been successful in forestalling policies that might mitigate existing problems. But assuming the strategy ever was wise, it no longer is. Potential allies have become frustrated enemies. A once diverse coalition has withered away to expose a core group that appears to be the same anti-public-education and privatizing interests that have long pushed school vouchers.

This obstinacy, even when successful in its immediate aims, is counterproductive. The charter lobby is wrong to see thoughtful regulations as existential threats—or even as anything but beneficial. Reasonable public policy concerns about access, stratification and fiscal impact on students in other schools should never have been minimized or dismissed. The charter lobby should have been in the forefront in efforts to rein in fraud and abuse.

The charter sector still includes many schools that we can and should celebrate. The NEPC’s own Schools of Opportunity program has recognized several charter schools that exemplify how high schools can close opportunity gaps. For the charter approach to have a bright future, these are the sort of schools the CSP should prioritize—and the proposed regulations are a step in that direction.

For now, unfortunately, the charter sector as a whole continues to be under-regulated and often harmful. The Biden Administration’s proposals can help change this. They can help charter schools become a beneficial part of public school systems—a role that can be broadly embraced.

I personally decided to submit a “formal” comment. The process is easy—just fill out the quick form and include your comment. The comment window is currently scheduled to close next Monday, April 18th. NEPC Resources on Charter Schools ->

This newsletter is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu

Copyright 2022 National Education Policy Center. All rights reserved.

The National Education Policy Center
School of Education, University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, National Education Policy Center

North Carolina: Republican Chief Judge Removes Democratic Judge from School Funding Case

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2022 //
26

This report comes from the Center for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Leandro case ordered equitable funding for the state’s public schools, but the funding has not been delivered due to the Tea Party Republican control of the legislature (General Assembly). Republicans have chosen to focus on charters and vouchers, not equitable funding.

Seeking to end the long-pending Leandro/Hoke litigation, Superior Court Judge David Lee last June approved a comprehensive, 8-year plan that aims to ensure all students in the state the opportunity for a sound basic education guaranteed by the state constitution. When the legislature failed to approve the initial funding to support the plan, in November, the Judge ordered the state of North Carolina to transfer $1.7 billion from its reserves to fund the first phase of the plan. At the end of November, the North Carolina Court of Appeals overruled Judge Lee’s order, holding that although the lower court was correct in saying that the state must fund the plan, it is not within its power to order money be appropriated.

Late last month, North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby, a registered Republican, suddenly replaced Judge Lee, a registered Democrat, as the presiding trial court judge for the case, without any advance notice. Justice Newby then ordered special Superior Court Judge Michael Robinson, a registered republican, to take over the case. Judge Robinson is required to determine how much of the $1.7 billion that is necessary to fund a comprehensive remedial school improvement plan was included in the current state budget. Judge Robinson must present his findings to the state Supreme Court by April 20.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Elections, Equity, North Carolina, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Vouchers

It’s Not Too Late to Send Your Comments about Regulating Federal Funds for New Charters

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2022 //
11

The U.S. Department of Education has extended the deadline for public comments about proposed regulations for the federal Charter Schools Program. This program started in 1995 with $6 million, when there were very few charter schools. Now there are more than 7,000 charters, many of them operated by for-profit corporations. The new regulations would ban federal funding to for-profit school operators and require new charters to do an impact analysis, showing the need for a new charter. Contrary to the charter industry lobbyists, no existing charter would be affected by these regulations, only new charters that seek federal funding.

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, asks for your support:

The US DOE has extended the comment period on their proposed tough Charter Schools Regulations until April 18.

If you have not done so, take one more easy action to stop for-profit-run charters from getting federal Charter Schools Program funds.

Click HERE and send your comment to the U.S. Department of Education via the National Education Association. The NEA has made it easy to do!

If you have sent that quick message, now personalize a longer, more thoughtful commentand submit it through the Department’s portal. Here is a sample you can cut and paste.

I support the proposed rule that schools run by for-profits should not get grants. Charter schools that are run in part or whole to create profit should not benefit from federal expansion or start-up funds.

The relationship between a for-profit management organization is quite different from the relationship between our district vendors who provide a single service. A public school can sever a bus contract and still have a building, desks, curriculum, and teachers. However, in cases where charter schools have attempted to fire their for-profit operator, they find it impossible to do without destroying the schools in the process. In addition, the spending of the for-profit is hidden from public inspection and is not subject to FOIA requests.

I fully support the proposed regulation that “the community impact analysis must describe how the plan for the proposed charter school take into account the student demographics of the schools from which students are, or would be, drawn to attend the charter school.” The reporting of needs based on enrollment patterns as well as the impact on local desegregation efforts is most welcome.

In the past, one of the most segregated charter chains in the country received CSP grants. Arizona’s BASIS schools, do not provide free or reduced-priced lunch nor transportation. BASIS expects parents to make donations to subsidize teacher salaries. In a state where 52% of all students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, the percentage in BASIS schools is only 1%. While 13% of Arizona’s public school students are students with disabilities, the percentage in BASIS schools is 3%. Latinx and Black students are dramatically underrepresented in the schools in this chain. Eight Arizona BASIS charter schools were recipients of CSP sub-grants between 2010-2017 receiving over $5 million dollars.

The inclusion of an impact statement will help reviewers make the best decisions regarding which schools should get awards. The impact analysis requirements should include a profile of the students with disabilities and English language learners in the community along with an assurance that the applicant will provide the full range of services that meet the needs of all students. Too often, the neediest students are left behind in our districts, while funding leaves the schools along with students who require fewer services.

I fully support priorities one and two. They will help us get back to the original purpose of charter schools—innovative places run by teachers and families in cooperation with our local schools. I do not want my tax dollars to go to create new schools for the benefit of the big EMO and CMO chains.

Submit your comment by cutting and pasting it here.

And then keep sending those tweets by clicking here.

Thanks for all you do.

The Network for Public Education is a 501 (c)(3) organization. You can make a tax deductible donation here.

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Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, For-Profit, U.S. Department of Education

Please Watch Today at 4 p.m. EST!

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2022 //
6

Several years ago, I endowed a lecture series at my alma mater, Wellesley College, focused on education issues. This year’s lecture will be live-streamed on April 12, and the speaker is Helen Ladd, an emeritus professor at Duke University and one of the nation’s leading economists. I hope you will tune in to the livestream. I will introduce Professor Ladd.

The Diane Silvers Ravitch ’60 Lecture

How Charter Schools Disrupt Good Education Policy

Tuesday, April 12, 4 p.m. ET

LIVESTREAMED at www.wellesley.edu/live

Speaker: Helen F. Ladd ’67, Susan B. King Professor Emerita of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University

Ladd will draw on her many years of education research and discuss the four central requirements of good education policy in the U.S., and how charter schools, as currently designed and operated, typically do far more to interfere with, rather than to promote, good education policy in the U.S.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform

Rob Levine: How the Minneapolis Foundation Is Destroying the City’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2022 //
20

Rob Levine is a photographer and public school advocate in Minneapolis. In this post, he describes the role of the Minneapolis Foundation in funding a vast expansion of charter schools, which are overwhelmingly non-union. The Minneapolis Foundation has been a fixture in civic life since 1915, funding good works that benefit the entire city. The foundation currently dispenses $125 million.

Levine writes:

So when and why, exactly, did the Minneapolis Foundation start trying to kill the Minneapolis Public Schools?  

For a dozen years the foundation and its philanthropic allies have focused their money and influence on creating a public school system based on free-market “choice.” The reasons for this are twofold. First, the foundation weakens one of the last unionized sectors in the country, public school teachers; in this case, the same ones who are currently striking for higher wages, smaller class sizes, and increased mental health support. Second, it exposes the billions Minnesota spends annually on public education to private-sector profiteers. 

To achieve those goals, the foundation would first flood the city with continuously opening and closing charter schools. Then they would lead a movement to create and fund a raft of dodgy nonprofits to vilify teachers.

Charter Schools: A Minnesota-born Experiment 

In fact, if not for the Minneapolis Foundation, there would be no such thing as charter schools. According to Zero Chance of Passage, a book on the start of charter schools by former Minnesota State Senator Ember Reichgott Junge, author of the nation’s first charter school law, they were dreamed up at a gathering thrown by the foundation in 1988 at Madden’s Resort in central Minnesota. The posh conference was attended by a “distinguished group of business, education, and civic leaders from around the Twin Cities,” Junge writes. 

Although charters today look little like those envisioned by the original proposals, the ideology of the movement still governs: Public schools have to compete for public dollars. Today, of the 180 operating charter schools in the state, five have unionized faculty.

At the time of their creation, many promises were made about the charter school experiment. At first they were to be lab schools, nontraditional learning centers where new education models are tested. Then, proponents said their presence was supposed to make regular public schools better. Then they turned into, essentially, a full-fledged second public school system. The results of the experiment show that charter schools do not get better results on standardized tests, they increase segregation, they put regular public school districts under permanent financial and enrollment pressure, and they have grown a cadre of schools with no teachers’ unions. 

Oh, and they fail a lot. By 2008, 16 years after the first charter school in the nation opened in St. Paul, charter schools had yet to gain a significant foothold in the state, and many had already closed for various, predictable problems, such as self-dealing, lack of adequate curriculum, various financial improprieties, and even lack of a building. The classroom environment amounted to “total bedlam,” one student said in a 2005 City Pages story. 

In a system predicated as a market, there was no market. In response, the Walton Family Foundation (the Walmart heirs) began funding in 2010, with a lot of help from local foundations, an organization called Charter School Partners, which would funnel the Waltons’ money into charter school startup grants to local entrepreneurs. For charter schools, startup is everything, because, once up and running, the state pretty much pays the bills…

In 2017, one year after [former mayor] Rybak took charge of the Minneapolis Foundation, there were already more than 14,000 students in charter schools in the city, and the district itself enrolled about 35,000 students. If you plan to create 30,000 new charter school seats in a district that enrolls 35,000 students you clearly intend to destroy that district.

Please open the link and read about the allies and money combined to eliminate public schools in Minneapolis.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Minneapolis, Privatization

The Tricks of Neoliberal Rhetoric: An Analysis of Betsy DeVos’s Speeches

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2022 //
43

Kerry McKeon recently received her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy from the University of Texas at San Antonio in December of 2021. Her dissertation focused on neoliberal rhetoric and its use in advancing the privatization of public schools. It is titled Neoliberal Discourse and the U.S. Secretary of Education: Discursive Constructs of the Education Agenda (2017-2020).

She writes, in a summary:

Corporate reform of education has taken hold in the U.S., with neoliberal values regularly propagated and normalized—even among some public-school leaders. I witnessed this transition firsthand, beginning as a U.S. Senate aide, and then over decades as classroom teacher. In recent years, one voice has echoed above the rest, as a consequence of her privilege, power, and opportunity: former Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.Listening to her stump again and again for the privatization of public education while pursuing my doctorate in educational leadership and policy, I became fixated on her language choices. The right words can make or break a given argument, and as a teacher, I know that language is the portal to meaning-making. So, I set out to investigate her linguistic and rhetorical strategies, as she sought to drive her neoliberal agenda forward.

Using a corpus of twenty-eight DeVos speeches over her four years in office, I explored the ways she tried to influencethinking around public education in favor of privatization—and how she aimed to normalize and naturalize certain neoliberal beliefs, while minimizing, discrediting, and ignoring other problems and solutions. Given the strength of her platform as education secretary, her messages were often replicated and amplified, while other vital voices in the education community were muted.

While others have explored the causes and effects of neoliberalism’s incursion into public education, little research explores how strategic linguistic maneuvers can reshape American ideas about public education over time. To understand and unpack her persuasive strategy, I identified and mapped thelinguistic formulas and frameworks she used to influence audiences in favor of neoliberalism. When I dissected her speeches, I found neoliberal ideology layered throughout—in everything from her word choices to the personal stories she shared.

For example, DeVos repeatedly expressed disdain for the federal government’s role in education, and advocated more power to individuals and to the private sector. Even with a D.C. officeaddress, she regularly attacked all things “Washington,” including education-advocacy groups, teachers’ unions, and other experts in education policymaking. She also lambasted the elusively defined “elites,” ranging from Democratic political donors to university scholars. While distancing herself from present-day government structures, she averred a near-mythical allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and founding fathers—arguing that current federal oversight in education violates the founders’ intent for the role of government.

Likewise, DeVos expressed economic values that criticize government spending and regulation, while promoting the private sector, marketplace competition, and the rights of the taxpayer. Her economic values were articulated through keywords that celebrate the free market: innovation, results, metrics, efficiency, prosperity—all while presuming that all free-market participantsare equally capable to prosper. In doing so, she disregarded stark and obvious social inequalities that make the market an unequal space.

DeVos eschewed virtually all discussions of inequity, except when it helped her make arguments for school reform or choice. In fact, she regularly employed keywords such as opportunity, choice, freedom and options, and downplayed language relating to economic, racial, or social injustices. DeVos also decentered and discounted teachers and teacher-led classrooms, advocating instead for increased use of classroom technology, including the much-touted personalized learning (technology-enabled learning that is moving schools to a greater reliance on data, data systems and other technology products).

Over and over, DeVos proposed radical change to public schools by rooting educational values in a marketplace reality. In order to do this, she distanced herself from public schools through “othering.” She described public schools as flawed, failing monopolies, consistently underperforming, and failing to innovate. At the same time, she glorified all manner of non-public schools—charter schools, magnet schools, online schools—regardless of their records, eschewing the results and metrics she so strongly promoted elsewhere. And she often plugged a skills-based curriculum with a jobs focus. DeVos sought to create a market of education choices and so-called freedom by depicting families as customers and education as a product, while paying no mind to how communities or the democratic purposes of education may be compromised by a commoditized education system. Rarely did she speak of the important role teachers play in advancing education, and ignored any equalizing effects of education on child poverty. Indeed, she asserted, without evidence, that school-choice fixes all problems with public schools and even went as far as to say that public schools are un-American when choice isn’t an option.

In my exploration of her speeches, I identified a pattern of strategies—a framework—which I call tiered operations for ideological impact that is rooted in how we think and process information. I found that DeVos’s neoliberal ideological language is evident on three levels in her speeches: the micro, the meso, and the macro.

On the micro-level, I found that her word choices delivered a constellation of concepts to the listener. By repeating a set of neoliberal keywords, the scene is set. DeVos aligns educational values with market values, including the belief that school systems should provide “profit opportunities” for capitalists, and the primary outcome of education is to produce employees with skills employable in the free market. She continues by dividing people and things into divisive categories like good or bad, friends or enemies. Just like a novelist focuses on character development, DeVos instructs her audience on who to love and who to fear. In her narrative, the public school system is a disaster. Her anointed heroes want to dismantle the system, while her anointed villains wish to protect it. DeVos is creative with word-formation, whereby two or more words are combined to create a word cluster. These blends are sometimes charged, seeking to provoke audience anxiety or anger. For example, her phrase “the shrill voices of the education lobby” may trigger the sensation of high pitched voices or scraping chalk on a blackboard). Conversely, the blends are sometimes intended to inspire (so-called, hooray words) and thereby assist in the marketing of her ideas to her audience. In both cases, the word clusters impact the way the brain processes information by blending two concepts into a new, unified concept.

On the meso-level, she uses topics to organize her individual speeches, selecting which topics are included or left out, which topics are foregrounded or backgrounded. Through her argumentation strategy, she asserts that opponents of school choice are attacking core American values such as freedom, patriotism, and human rights. By promoting such a polarized perspective, DeVos flattens the complexity of issues, to offer a simpler version of the world in line with her own perspectives. The process of limiting audience attention to a smaller focus is known as windowing. In the current discursive climate, where individuals are exposed to huge amounts of information every day, windowing is one way to manage information overload and guide an audience to embrace a particular worldview.

On the macro-level, DeVos uses her speeches to align with the cultural climate of the current historical moment. Of particular note are ways DeVos engages in relentless “othering.” She depicts a society divided between patriots who value educational freedom and choice, and a corrupt elite who value public education in the form of community schools. Her biased and misleading claims contribute to a crisis of confidence in education. She promotespublic education as a commodity to be bought and sold in a competitive marketplace, rather than as a collective common good. She elevates choice, while humanitarian discourse is undervalued. In the process, she damages the reputation of public education, contributing to the erosion of America’s commitment to public schools an equalizing institution.

Essentially, her discursive strategies amount to a cognitive suppression of certain humanitarian, social-justice values.Furthermore, DeVos participated in populist, anti-elite, and anti-establishment discourses by positioning the privatization of education as a grassroots effort to overthrow an oppressive system. In addition, she embraces an anti-expert and anti-intellectual worldview, as she attacks education advocates, teachers, local leaders, while elevating the education outsider: the education entrepreneur. These post-truth discourses characteristically appeal to emotion and partisanship over reason and rationality. DeVos may also be furthering anti-democratic work by disparaging others in the democratic process, including public schools and teachers’ unions.

Some might highlight that DeVos’s legislative accomplishments were few. Yet, ideological acceptance almost always comes before policy change. Thus, her impact may reveal itself in time. While she failed to meaningfully impact federal law in favor of neoliberalism, she succeeded in further normalizing ideas that continue to be taken up by Republican-led state legislatures. She succeeded in shifting the federal discussion on education from matters of equity and inclusion, to delivering a manifesto on the importance of flexibility, choice, and opportunity. Increasingly, Americans are more focused on individual educational needs than the needs of the larger community. She also reframed the shortcomings of public schools as an existential threat. By invoking a narrative of crisis and a politics of fear, she commands an increased power of persuasion and betrays the possibility of pursuing more practical, modest, and cooperative modes of change.

Neoliberal political and cultural values that currently inform education policy creation can be identified and decoded, by deconstructing and analyzing the political speech of prominent actors like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. A close look at her speeches revealed various cognitive triggers that attempt to persuade audiences. DeVos’s political speech contributes to a symphony of powerful voices in the education-policy community, whose messages are replicated and amplified, while other vital voices in the education community are muted. Public education advocates would do well to learn more about the rhetorical strategies through which neoliberal ideology is promoted

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Language, School Choice, Vouchers

Please Watch a Leading Economist on Charter Schools and Public Policy

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2022 //
5

Several years ago, I endowed a lecture series at my alma mater, Wellesley College, focused on education issues. This year’s lecture will be live-streamed on April 12, and the speaker is Helen Ladd, an emeritus professor at Duke University and one of the nation’s leading economists. I hope you will mark the event on your calendar and tune in.

The Diane Silvers Ravitch ’60 Lecture

How Charter Schools Disrupt Good Education Policy

Tuesday, April 12, 4 p.m. ET

LIVESTREAMED at www.wellesley.edu/live

Speaker: Helen F. Ladd ’67, Susan B. King Professor Emerita of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University

Ladd will draw on her many years of education research and discuss the four central requirements of good education policy in the U.S., and how charter schools, as currently designed and operated, typically do far more to interfere with, rather than to promote, good education policy in the U.S.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Economics, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, U.S. education

Kentucky: Governor Vetoes Charter Funding Bill

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2022 //
25

Kentucky authorized charter schools in 2017 but never approved a funding mechanism.

The Legislature passed a charter funding bill, and Governor Andy Beshear vetoed it.

Beshear struck down House Bill 9, sponsored by House Majority Whip Chad McCoy, on Thursday. The legislation would provide federal, state and local money for charter schools, which have been legal since 2017 but have lacked a permanent funding mechanism, on proportionate per-pupil bases.

“I’m against charter schools,” Beshear said before signing his HB 9 veto. “They are wrong for our commonwealth. They take taxpayer dollars away from the already underfunded public schools in the commonwealth, and our taxpayer dollars should not be redirected to for-profit entities that run charter schools.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Kentucky
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