Archives for category: Corporate Reform
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Indianapolis: As School Board Plans to Close Public Schools, Interlopers Arrive to Open New Charters

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2017 //
19

I wrote a few posts last week (see here and here) about the devastation of public schools in Indianapolis by corporate reformers. Their short term goal is to close public schools and replace them with privately managed charters. In the meanwhile, they are eliminating the neighborhood high school concept and requiring students to choose a high school based on its programs, not its proximity to home. They are preparing young people to be consumers and busting up any sense of community. The long term goal is the death of public education in Indianapolis.

The major movers of corporate reform in Indianapolis are the Mind Trust, which leads the privatization movement, abetted by Stand for Children, which brings in big bucks to buy elections for the corporate reform plan.

Remember, this is Mike Pence’s state, where rightwing extremists run the state.

Now comes another addition to the reform firmament of community disruption.

“A pair of Chicagoans are moving to Indianapolis in the next few weeks, and they are bringing with them a sense of urgency that defines the best of what you can find in many schools and classrooms. It’s an urgency that is critical for so many children who face immense challenges and the risk of lost potential.

“Deeply concerned about children locked in poverty, Jacob Allen and Marie Dandie founded a nonprofit after-school program in Chicago four years ago. They built pilotED around the concepts of civic engagement and a belief in the broader benefits of helping students develop a pride and belief in themselves. They peppered the curriculum with lessons centered on the lives and neighborhoods of the students they served.”

Allen and Dandie say their hallmark is “urgency.” Apparently no teachers or principals in Indianapolis public schools have that sense of urgency that this pair will bring with them to Indianapolis.

Not surprisingly, the two are TFA alums. They were recently recognized by a Forbes on its “30 Under 30” list in education. If they are under 30, how long have they been educators? How long did they stick with the school they started in Chicago?

Disruption is the hallmark of the Mind ztrust. It just got a gift of $7 million from the Lily Endowment to keep on with its plans for more disruption and innovation. Its goal is privatization of public education in Indianapolis. The Mind Trust is an affront to democracy.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Indianapolis, Privatization

Wendy Lecker: How Chicago Targeted Black and Latino Schools and Communities for Destruction

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2017 //
8

This article is an excellent analysis by civil rights lawyer Wendy Lecker of the deliberate destruction of public education in black and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago.

Chicago has purposely sacrificed the needs of black and Latino students while protecting and enhancing the needs of white students. We have to bear in mind what Rahm Emanuel told CTU leader Karen Lewis when he was first elected: about a quarter of these kids are uneducable. Everything else flows from that assumption.

Open the article to read the links. The most astonishing point noted here is that Chicago’s public schools OUTPERFORM its charter schools!

Lecker writes:

“Chicago is this nation’s third largest city, and among its most segregated. Recently, several unrelated reports were released about education policy in Chicago that, together, provide a vivid picture of the divergent views policymakers of have of public education; depending on who is served.
As reported by researchers at Roosevelt University, between 2009-2015, Chicago permanently closed 125 neighborhood schools, ostensibly because of low enrollment or poor performance.

“The standard Chicago used for low enrollment was 30 students to one elementary classroom — an excessively large class size, especially for disadvantaged children.

“The school closures occurred disproportionately in neighborhoods serving African-American, Latino and economically disadvantaged students. Professors Jin Lee and Christopher Lubienski found that Chicago’s school closures had a markedly negative effect on accessibility to educational opportunities for these vulnerable populations. Students had to travel longer distances to new schools; often through more dangerous areas.

“School closures harm entire communities. As Georgia State Law Professor Courtney Anderson found, where neighborhood schools were a hub for community activities, vacant schools become magnets for illegal activity. Moreover, buildings in disuse pose health and environmental dangers to the community. Vacant buildings depress the value of homes and businesses around them, increase insurance premiums and insurance policy cancellations. In addition, the school district must pay for maintenance of vacant buildings.

“Although Chicago claimed to close schools to save money, the savings were minimal — at great cost to the communities affected.

“At the same time Chicago leaders closed 125 neighborhood schools, they opened 41 selective public schools and 108 charter schools; more than they closed. Chicago charter schools underserve English Language Learners and students with disabilities, and have suspension and expulsion rates ten times greater than Chicago’s public schools. Even more astounding, despite the self-selecting and exclusive nature of charters, researcher Myron Orfield found that Chicago’s public schools outperform charters on standardized test passing and growth rates in both reading and math, and high school graduation rates.

“The Roosevelt University researchers found that the expansion of Chicago charter schools devastated the public school budget, contributing to massive cuts of basic educational resources in Chicago’s public schools. Moreover, many of these new charters have remained open despite falling below the “ideal enrollment” standard used to close neighborhood public schools.

“The education policies of Chicago’s leaders force its poor children and children of color to attend under-resourced schools, often at a great distance from their neighborhoods, on a pretext of under-enrollment and poor performance. Officials fail to consider the devastating effects school closures have on educational opportunities or on the health of entire communities.

“Chicago promised to use the proceeds of the sales of vacant schools to improve those neighborhoods. Yet, city leaders instead used those funds for school capital projects. A WBEZ investigation found that Chicago’s new school construction and additions disproportionately benefit schools that serve white, middle class students, even though white students are far less likely to suffer overcrowded schools than Latino students, whose schools do not see the benefit of capital spending.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Fraud, Privatization, Racism

James C. Wilson: The Intellectual Arrogance of So-Called Reformers

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2017 //
55

James C. Wilson reflects here on the intellectual arrogance of people who know nothing about education but decide they should reinvent it. The list of the arrogant would include certain foundations and philanthropists, certain legislators and other elected officials, and a long list of sheltered think tanks.

They all went to school so they think themselves qualified to redesign it. They never performed surgery, so they stay out of the operating room. But they do not hesitate to tell teachers how to teach.

He begins:

“Individuals with expertise in engineering, medicine, and business believe their achievements entitle them to think their area of knowledge extends outside their profession. The recommendations that they make in subjects outside their area of expertise are examples of misplaced intellectual arrogance. Achievement in a particular field takes numerous years of study and many years of direct professional experience in that specific field in order to develop a truly knowledgeable level of understanding. It is arrogant, even for people with great personal achievement, to honestly believe they have a significant understanding of complex issues outside of their field of education and professional experience.

“This intellectual arrogance has never been demonstrated more clearly than in recent pronouncements concerning education in America. Brilliant people in diverse fields outside of education feel perfectly comfortable making judgments and policy recommendations about education that impacts millions of students as well as educational professionals. Their audacity is appalling and their ignorance is inexcusable. Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have announced their goal to prepare 80 percent of American high school students for entrance into universities. Eli Broad, another billionaire, gives money to school districts with the clear expectation that they will implement his business-based plans…Similarly, mayors have their own ideas about how to improve student achievement, notably without any substantive research to support them. George Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy used testing to determine the success of schools, however testing in itself, has not provided solutions to educational achievement. Arne Duncan and President Obama pushed merit pay and charter schools when substantive research does not support either of these policy initiatives. Trump’s DeVos hasn’t a clue about educational research as her feeble efforts have ably demonstrated. The advocacy for these already repudiated initiatives reflects a lack of understanding of the ultimate impact on students and educational professionals.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Fraud

The Corporate Raid on Public Schools in Indianapolis: School Board Election Corrupted by Dark Money

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2017 //
5

At the recent school board meeting of Indianapolis Public Schools, Professor Jim Scheurich of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis got up to speak. The story he tells is similar to what happened in Denver, where Stand for Children, DFER, and other conduits for anonymous donors bought every seat on the elected school board, swamping the opposition with cash they could not match.

This was his testimony:

“My name is Dr. Jim Scheurich.

“I have been a professor of education for 25 years, first at the University of Texas at Austin and then at Texas A&M University and now at IUPUI.

“Throughout those 25 years, I have studied school success in urban districts, even winning a couple of major national awards as a scholar.

“Based on having studied some of the best urban districts in the country, I would have to say that the IPS school board and administration are among the lowest quality I have seen.

“This conclusion is particularly evident in the many negative issues that have arisen in the school closing processes and decisions.

“What I want to address about these negative issues is how we came to have this particular school board that follows an agenda that consistently disregards what the community wants, like closing legacy high schools.

“Up until 2010, an ordinary citizen of Indianapolis could win a school board seat for $3-5,000.
Starting in 2012, Stand for Children and the Mind Trust provided over $50,000 each for their candidates. Over the last 3 elections, Stand for Children and the Mind Trust have provided around $1.5 million to elect all but one school board member, Elizabeth Gore.

“This means that six of the seven board members became board members through the purchase of our local democracy. This means they owe their allegiance to the agenda of Stand for Children and the Mind Trust and NOT to the Indianapolis community.

“It seems to me that the big money election of these six board members is certainly anti-community and anti-democracy.

“But this is not the end of this scary story.

“The $1.5 million spent on the last three elections flowed through Stand for Children that used a tax designation, 501c4, to hide the source of that money and the ways they spend it.

“Why would Stand for Children and the Mind Trust try to hide the sources and spending of all of this money if they are as community oriented as they say they are?

“What they don’t want you to know is that much of this big money is coming from wealthy individuals and organizations from all around the country.

“Because then you might ask why do wealthy folks who may never set foot in Indianapolis want to buy our school board?

“You also might ask why the same wealthy folks from around the country are doing exactly the same agenda in 35 other urban centers.

“Why are wealthy folks from around the country purchasing so many urban school boards? Why are these 35 purchased school boards following the same agenda, like closing legacy high schools and supporting the opening of charter high schools?

“We in Indianapolis do not want to follow some national agenda created by wealthy individuals and organizations from outside Indianapolis.

“Instead we want to follow an agenda that is Indianapolis centered and focuses on the voices and needs of ordinary Indianapolis people of all races and incomes.

“And, thus, what we don’t need is any closing of our legacy high schools.”

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Fraud, Indianapolis, Privatization, Stand for Children

Write and Call Your Local PBS Affiliate: Demand Equal Time for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2017 //
10

All over the country, PBS stations are showing anti-public school propaganda in a three-hour series called “School Inc.” This series was paid for by libertarian foundations who want for-profit schools, vouchers, charters, and for-profit teachers, competing for students. The lead funder is the Rose-Mary and Jack Anderson Foundation, which supports radical libertarian causes and acts as a funnel for Donors Trust, which bundles money from the Koch brothers and DeVos family for their favorite causes.

PBS emendation accepting money for the series, which has no opposing views and which was never fact-checked, because it likes to show divergent views.

Really?

Would PBS accept funding to run a three-hour program that was opposed to abortion rights? That argued that homosexuality was a sin? That attempted to prove that climate change was a hoax? That insisted that the Sandy Hook massacre of children and staff never happened? That defended Confederate flags and monuments in public space?

The Network for Public Education encourages you to write an email or call your PBS station. Apparently, some local stations watched the series and decided not to show it. Most, however, are running it without any rebuttal.

Here is my rebuttal, which was seen only in New York City.

Here is my written commentary.

The irony is that these foundations do not believe in public education or public television.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Hoax, Network for Public Education, Propaganda, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Thank You, Massachusetts Teachers Association, for Standing Up to Profiteers!

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2017 //
60

The Massachusetts Teachers Association rejected the for-profit promotion of Depersonalized Learning! MTA delegates also adopted a resolution calling for full funding of public schools.

Massachusetts is the highest performing state in the nation on NAEP tests, yet the rightwingers on the state board keep trying to shove corporate reform on their successful public schools and teachers.

Thank you, MTA and your valiant leader, Barbara Madeloni.

Madeloni wrote the following to the MTA membership:

“The Annual Meeting of Delegates, which is the highest decision-making body in the MTA, convened on May 19 and 20 to discuss, debate and vote on policy. In this e-mail, I highlight several of the New Business Items that were approved by the delegates. You can read all of those NBIs here in the members’ area of the MTA website. (First-time users will need the number on their MTA membership cards to log in.) The votes of the Annual Meeting delegates reinforce the membership’s commitment to defending public education and building union power to bring about the schools our communities deserve.

“Personalized Learning: The New Threat to Public Education

NBIs #6, #12 and #13 address the threat posed by the state’s promotion of computer-based “personalized learning” strategies, including one through a program called MAPLE/LearnLaunch. This overview is long, but well worth watching. It explains the real dangers of handing over our schools and students to corporate education technology entities.

“Teaching and learning are deeply human activities. We cannot let ed tech companies depersonalize learning or make education a technocratic endeavor. We must assert the centrality of face-to-face relationships – community – and our professional knowledge and autonomy as essential to public education.

“NBI #6 asserts that the MTA opposes DESE’s MAPLE/LearnLaunch partnership and calls for the MTA to create a web page to “share strategies to combat the harmful effects of unvalidated ed tech products on our students, and to defend teachers’ professional judgment and standards against interference by business interests.”

“NBI #12 calls for a web page dedicated to informing members about the threat to public education posed by privatization, including but not limited to personalized learning programs. This connects to our existing page on State Takeovers/Privatization and encompasses the many forms that privatization is taking in preK-12 and higher education. (Important note: The current page includes a link to a form where members in Level 4 and 5 schools are asked to report on their experiences. Please take a few minutes to fill this out if you are in one of those schools.)

“NBI #13 calls for the MTA to update its 2016 report, Threat to Public Education Now Centers on Massachusetts, to include a section on corporate support for personalized learning.

“Hold the Commonwealth Accountable: Fully Fund Our Public Schools

“NBIs #9 and #10 call for the MTA to prepare to file a lawsuit against the governor and Legislature if they fail to address the school funding shortfall identified by the nonpartisan Foundation Budget Review Commission. The commission determined that public schools are underfunded by at least $1 billion a year. NBI #10 says that in the event a lawsuit must be filed, it should seek to end the state’s punitive accountability system until and unless the schools are fully funded. Moved by retiring Springfield Education Association President Tim Collins, these two NBIs represent one way the MTA is responding to the failure of the Commonwealth to abide by its Constitution and “cherish” our public schools.

“On a related note, the City of Brockton recently set aside $100,000 toward funding a similar education lawsuit, and officials in Worcester are also discussing the issue.”

Categories Corporate Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Massachusetts, Technology

Jan Resseger: PBS Documentary “School Inc.” Is Libertarian Propaganda

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2017 //
13

Jan Resseger, the great social justice advocate based in Ohio, reviewed the origins of Andrew Coulson’s “School Inc.” now airing on PBS.

Resseger points out that the film was produced by “Free to Choose Media,” a libertarian group known for its production of Milton Friedman’s 10-part series based on his book of the same name.

“On his blog The Grade, on the website of the Phi Delta Kappan, Alexander Russo printed a very thoughtful review of School Inc. by Amy Shuffleton, Associate Professor of Cultural and Educational Policy Studies at Loyola University Chicago. She writes: “Two major premises, that education is best categorized as an industry and that industry is best subjected to unfettered free market forces, are maintained throughout. The upside of this approach is that those premises give the series a strong through line as it builds its argument across three hour-long, globe-trekking episodes. The downside is that the series never considers countervailing accounts of education and presents only strawman versions of the evidence that challenges his (Andrew Coulson’s) ideals… Supporters of traditional public schooling can find grounds to quarrel with Coulson’s interpretations all the way through.”

Who, besides Andrew Coulson and the Cato Institute, were involved in producing this film? Shuffleton explains: “School Inc was produced by Free to Choose Media. According to a Free to Choose spokesperson, it was created by Coulson, who raised the funding necessary to make it… Free to Choose network shares a name with its first production, the 10-part series by economist Milton Friedman that aired on PBS in 1980. Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976, argued that free market economic principles are the basis of human freedom and wellbeing. Friedman’s neoliberal followers have opposed government regulations in a host of domains, including education.” The foundation now called EdChoice, which promotes the privatization of public education, was formerly named the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice….

If you google for reviews of the three-part School Inc., you will find several besides the column I have referenced here by Amy Shuffleton at The Grade. The other reviews were part of the promotion of the film—from the Cato Institute, Free To Choose Media, the National Review, and the Civitas Institute, a far-right North Carolina “think tank” affiliated with Art Pope.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Privatization

As Four Detroit Charters Fold, Detroit Public Schools Come to the Rescue

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2017 //
15

The turbulence and instability in the charter industry continue.

Four charter schools in Detroit closed their doors. You know, Betsy DeVos’s home state.

Under the leadership of its aggressive new superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, Detroit Public Schools began a campaign to win back students from failing charter schools.

“With a slew of charter schools closing and thousands of Detroit families expecting to be displaced, Detroit’s main district is swooping in to pick up as many new students as it can.

“If that seems cut-throat for a district that narrowly averted the forced closure of 24 of its schools earlier this year and has endured scores of painful school closings, new district superintendent Nikolai Vitti is making no apologies.

“This is what competition looks like,” he said Tuesday. “We’re not going to be passive. We’re not going to be apologetic about celebrating our programs and our schools and our teachers and our principals.”

“Vitti personally visited an enrollment fair Tuesday at the closing Woodward Academy in hopes of drawing parents to the district.

“Lawn signs have popped up at city intersections asking parents: “Is your charter school closing?” with a phone number urging them to call the district.”

Vitti has announced that his priorities are to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes and to reduce testing.

Unless DeVos gets in the way with her failed and destructive policies, Detroit is coming back from the brink of extinction!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Detroit

NEPC Evaluates a Report on How to Remove Democratic Control of Your Public Schools: Thumbs Down!

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2017 //
34

The National Education Policy Center specializes in reviewing think tank reports, few of which are peer-reviewed. Many think tanks are advocacy organizations that use pseudo-scholarship to promote policy goals.

NEPC’s latest review gives a thumbs down to a report that advises on ways to eliminate democratic control of public schools. None of its so-called “reforms” have worked in practice, and the goal itself is unworthy:

BOULDER, CO (June 13, 2017) – A recent report offers a how-to guide for reform advocates interested in removing communities’ democratic control over their schools. The report explains how these reformers can influence states to use the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Title I school improvement funds to support a specific set of reforms: charter schools, state-initiated turnarounds, and appointment of an individual with full authority over districts or schools.

Leveraging ESSA to Support Quality-School Growth was reviewed by Gail L. Sunderman of the University of Maryland.

While the report acknowledges that there is limited research evidence on the effectiveness of these reforms as school improvement strategies, it uses a few exceptional cases to explain how advocates seeking to influence the development of state ESSA plans can nevertheless push them forward.

As Sunderman’s review explains, the report omits research that would shed light on the models, and it fails to take into account the opportunity costs of pursuing one set of policies over another. It also relies on test score outcomes as the sole measure of success, thus ignoring other impacts these strategies may have on students and their local communities or the local school systems where they occur. Finally, and as noted above, support for the effectiveness of these approaches is simply too limited to present them as promising school improvement strategies.

For these reasons, concludes Sunderman, policymakers, educators and state education administrators should be wary of relying on this report to guide them as they develop their state improvement plans and consider potential strategies for assisting low-performing schools and districts.

Find the review by Gail L. Sunderman at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-ESSA-accountability

Find Leveraging ESSA to Support Quality-School Growth, by Nelson Smith and Brandon Wright, published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Education Cities, at:
https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/publication/pdfs/03.30 – Leveraging ESSA To Support Quality-School Growth_0.pdf

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, National Education Policy Center, Privatization

William Mathis: Trump’s Budget is a Model of Doublespeak and Indifference to Children

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2017 //
12

William Mathis describes Trump’s education budget as a demonstration of Doublespeak, meant to mask its indifference to children.

He writes:

“In 1965, the federal government, driven by the obligation to provide equal opportunities to the least fortunate of our citizens, passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was intended to lift the nation by strengthening our poorest children and schools, improving the quality of teaching, opening the doors of higher education, and providing skills to adults. It embraced the ideal voiced by the late President Kennedy that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” And the emphasis was on building the common good. By widely investing in our citizens, we invest in the health of our society and economy.

“Those principles have found no refuge in the work of President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; all that remains of these great purposes are a confusion of empty words made to appear as if the worst were the better. Larded with phrases like “commitment to improving education” and “maintaining support for the nation’s most vulnerable students,” Trump proposes to slash federal education programs by $9.2 billion, or 13.5 percent. This is on top of past unmet needs, since federal obligations to poor and special education children have never been fully met. Starved programs are now set to have their rations reduced or cut entirely.

“With a remarkable lack of compassion, the Special Olympics budget was zeroed. Twenty-two programs are eliminated including community learning centers, arts, pre-school and teacher improvement.

Blind to clear evidence, every dollar invested in high-quality early childhood education returns $8 in positive social outcomes such as reduced unemployment, stable families, less incarceration and the like. Yet the Trump budget treats this wise and productive investment as another area to defund: Head Start and child care are slotted for small reductions, while preschool development grants are entirely eliminated.

“The “civil rights” framing is stunning doubletalk, since a growing body of independent research shows that school choice segregates students by race, handicap and socioeconomic level.

“It doesn’t get any easier for poor and middle-class students as they get older. Loan forgiveness programs for new college graduates working in schools or government would be eliminated. Student loan interest would be increased. In Trump’s plan, 300,000 students would lose their work-study jobs. In all, $143 billion would be removed over 10 years.

“Why make these cuts? The proposal calls for an increase in defense spending of more than $50 billion (a 10 percent increase) plus tax cuts for the wealthy – and that money has to come from somewhere. By these deeds, a capacity for war is valued more than the needs of the citizenry.

“Yet, Trump says “education is the civil rights issue of our time.” This budget raises questions about whether his true objective is to cut civil rights. The proposal’s centerpiece is school choice. The budget seeks to funnel $1.4 billion, in new as well as repurposed funds, into private schools. The “civil rights” framing is stunning doubletalk, since a growing body of independent research shows that school choice segregates students by race, handicap and socioeconomic level.”

Read on.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding
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