Archives for category: Corporate Reform
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Robert Reich: The Elites’ War on Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2015 //
31

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, is one of the few high-level policy thinkers who have noticed the attacks on public education. His concern is mainly with the rip-offs in for-profit institutions of higher education, which impoverish students and saddle them with debt.

But he does know that teachers are being scapegoated.

“Reich: Undoubtedly. Teachers have been scapegoated by those who don’t want to invest more in education. Who don’t want change. Who are personally happy with the status quo but feel that because the public is so unhappy with education, it’s easiest to scapegoat teachers. The fact of the matter is teachers are underpaid relative to other professions. The law of supply and demand in terms of wages is not repealed at the doors of our school houses. We are paying investment bankers and Wall Street traders, the people who are in charge of our financial capital, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — many of them millions of dollars a year, a few a billion dollars or more. Yet we are paying teachers who are in charge of our human capital, arguably more important than our financial capital, a very tiny fraction of what Wall Streeters are paid.”

That’s good but he hasn’t yet figured out that these millionaires and billionaires are financing the privatization of public education, starting in urban districts and deeming themselves civil rights activists. Some for fun. Some for profit. Some because they believe the free market solves all problems.

Categories Corporate Reform

Paul Karrer: Fixing Schools Without Magic

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2015 //
7

Paul Karrer teaches fifth grade in a high-needs school in Castroville, California. He writes for California newspapers, trying to bring a realistic perspective to education debates.

In this article, he calls out “reformers” for believing in magic and silver bullets.

He writes:

“Education reform (education deform) is doing kids, the profession, and the country short-term and long-term harm. Ed Reform Inc. “believes” in short fixes, silver bullets, the power of personal cult persuasion, mantras, and now the twin goddesses of all – technology and data.

“More than half of all children in United States now live in poverty (Washington Post/UNICEF). As someone who has taught in a financially-socially challenged district for many years I can attest to the overwhelming negative influences of poverty. They are both direct and indirect. What is now normal in many communities was not the norm too long ago. The influences are single parent families, multiple families living under one roof, incarcerated family members, under-employment, no employment, no history of employment, poor language skills, the culture of poverty, early birthing, poor neonatal care, high percentages of children with unbelievable disabilities, addictions, and GANGS, globalization, and the death of low-level jobs due to technology.

“These variables cannot be pooh-poohed. Absurd belief in words like GRIT and EVIDENCE and TESTING – currently trending by Ed Reform — simply cannot overcome the long list of negatives. But Ed Reform claims they do….

“I believe a needs formula is required in schools of poverty. We need to save those desperate kids. If a classroom has X amount of special ed kids, X amount of incarcerated relatives, scores X on reading or math, has more than X amount of people residing in one house (or room), more than X amount of kids on Section 8 housing, more than X amount of kids in Title 1 programs — it should trigger an automatic cut in class size. There should be no more than 15 kids in such a class. Free pre-school needs to be mandatory. Wrap-around social services (nurses, shrinks, dentists, COUNSELORS, librarians, parent training, parental language classes) have to kick in. And kids need the classic, realistic school philosophy of teach THE WHOLE STUDENT….

“Ed Reform’s solution is curriculum. Common Core will change it all, they declare. The curriculum is not the problem. But that is where the financial feed trough is these days. And even the biggest promoter of Common Core, Bill Gates himself, said, “It will take 10 – 15 years to see if this is successful.”

“How nice,” I say.

“And in the meantime Ed Reform gets to close public schools (Chicago, Louisiana) defraud the public with for-profit institutions (Corinthian/Heald), pay their owners huge obscene salaries, and they destroy public education with a thousand strokes.

“Funny thing about the Ed Reform group – they espouse so much in favor of big business, profits, monetizing, reducing costs. Except for their very own rock core belief in supply and demand.

“Supply and demand doesn’t pertain to teachers? Teachers apparently are supposed to work for a pittance. But if they are to be the solution, they need to be paid much better so as to attract more candidates to the field. But Ed Reform chokes there.

“Smaller class size is the beginning of a real solution. Put the money where it will do KIDS the most good.

“Oh yes, and have your kids opt out of testing — especially next year when it counts.”

Categories Corporate Reform, Opt Out, Poverty, Special Education, Students

If Elected, Jeb Bush Will Privatize Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2015 //
45

Matthew Pulver, writing at Salon.com, describes Jeb Bush’s dangerous belief in privatization and free markets in education.

It is not so much a belief as an ideology, one that is impervious to evidence. The many studies showing thAt privately managed charters do not get higher test scores than public schools do not register with Jeb. The numbers of charters that open with grand promises and soon lose their doors with big debts does not affect his belief system. He is a zealot for school choice, period.

Not even the failure of the charter school he founded in Liberty City, a poor black neighborhood, dampens his passion for charters and vouchers.

Writes Pulver:

“There’s nothing else as large in all of society. Not the military—nothing—is bigger.”

“That’s how Randy Best, Jeb Bush’s business partner, sees public education, as an untapped market where untold billions are to be made when kids and their families become educational customers. Touting his impressive assault on public education while Florida governor in yesterday’s announcement of his 2016 candidacy, Bush may become the loudest proponent yet of turning public education into a for-profit enterprise.

“Before getting into Bush’s record and financial interests in for-profit education, a full understanding of the dystopian horrors of for-profit, privatized education is necessary. Bush offers it with a handful of Milton Friedman-esque catchwords and focus-grouped slogans, and it may be that the proposals sound innocuous and vaguely innovative until the slightest scrutiny is applied to the ideas — at which point, it’s difficult to imagine much worse than public education turned into a for-profit market. Because the most basic and collectively understood truisms about markets, when applied to children, take on a horrifying character.”

It should be noted that Bush’s partner, Randy Best, was one of the biggest beneficiaries of Reading First, the ill-fated program enacted as part of NCLB but eventually discontinued because of sweetheart deals and conflicts of interest. Best, an entrepreneur, not an educator, created a commercial reading company (Voyager Learning), which he later sold for $360 million. Best admits that he can’t read, that he is acutely dyslexic. But he knows how to make money.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: Is There a New, More Humble TFA or New Hype?

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2015 //
22

Gary Rubinstein, an alumnus of the early days of Teach for America, has become its most thoughtful critic. He is now a veteran high school teacher at Stuyvesant High School, one of Néw York City’s most prestigious (and one of its most selective) high schools. Gary had an epiphany several years ago. He rejected TFA’s boasting and its alliance with corporate-style reform. As a former corps member, Rubinstein feels a responsibility to be honest about TFA’s exaggerations.

 

In his ongoing effort to hold TFA accountable, he recently watched the webcast of TFA’s annual “What’s Next?” Conference. Last year, it was held in Tennessee, and the guest speaker was ex-TFA State Commissioner Kevin Huffman, who championed privatization and made teachers his enemies. This year, the conference was held in St. Louis without a celebrity TFA speaker. Rubinstein considered that a wise step, given the toxicity of some of them.

 

He writes:

 

“Last year we also got to see the good Kopp / bad Kopp dynamic between the two co-CEOs Matt Kramer and Elisa Villanueva-Beard. Kramer was the good Kopp with his remarks entitled “Embracing Change” while Villanueva-Beard played the role of bad Kopp as she delivered a speech entitled, if you can believe it, “We Won’t Back Down.” Aside from constantly using the phrase that will forever be associated with pro-charter school bomb of a movie, Villanueva-Beard exposed herself as a first class reformer complete with cartoonish caricatures about the ‘status quo’ and critics of the modern reform agenda who believe in low expectations for all but rich white kids. If one of the purposes of the ‘What’s Next?’ event was to help critics to see that TFA truly cared about their concerns, that speech certainly did not help with that.

 

“What a difference a year makes. On June 3rd, the 2015 edition of the ‘What’s Next?’ broadcast was filmed, this time in St. Louis. Rather than choose a place that was notable for standardized test score improvements, they chose a place where TFA actually did some good during the Ferguson protests..,..

 

“The next hour was a carefully scripted back and forth between co-CEOs. I’m always intrigued by these two. In 2011, while Wendy Kopp was still sole CEO, Kramer and Villanueva-Beard made about $600,000 between them for their old positions. I can only surmise that now that figure is closer to $800,000. You’ve got to admit is is kind of bizarre that you have co-CEOs of a $300 million a year company and one lives in Houston and the other in Minnesota while the corporate headquarters of TFA are in New York City. What is it they bring to the table that makes this a good use of the TFA money, as abundant as it might be? Well, there is one thing that TFA certainly gets from this arrangement. Whereas before you had a specific leader, someone you could like or not like, someone you could credit or blame. Now they have two people, both very timid public speakers. I don’t think anyone really thinks they are more than mere puppets so they are not really targets of any criticism. Before you could accuse Wendy Kopp of talking out of both sides of her mouth at times. Now there are literally two mouths so one can be expressing one idea and the other can be doing another and they can never be accused of being ‘a hypocrite.’ I doubt that this hedging the bets thing was the reason for this co-CEO arrangement, but it has given TFA this new dynamic which can make them more immune to criticism. Kramer and Villanueva-Beard: Which is the Yin and which is the Yang? Which is your buddy and which is your enemy? Which is Rosencrantz and which is Guildenstern?”

 

Rubinstein learned that TFA’s recruitment is down by about 30% in two years. He also noted a new tone, an effort to show that the leaders had heard critics, especially among alumni, and were listening.

 

He wrote:

 

“Whether this is just a new communications strategy to reverse the declining popularity of TFA in recent years or something they really believe, I don’t know. Even if they are just saying some of these things to make critics a bit less critical, I still think that it helps the cause of all the teachers out there opposed to the kind of education reform championed by people like Kevin Huffman. Though actions do speak louder than words, words are pretty important in their own right.”

 

TFA’s words have done a lot of damage over the years, certainly to experienced teachers and as well to the very idea of teacher professionalism. Rubinstein has some hope that they may be taking a new tack.

Yet when you consider that the leading alums of TFA have led the attacks on teachers–Michelle Rhee, Kevin Huffman, and John White–and when you think about TFA’s relentless efforts to demonstrate that teachers need only five weeks of training to be better than experienced teachers, it is hard to be hopeful about a deep change in TFA.

Humility would surely help. But more important would be a change in mission, going only where they are needed; serving as assistant teachers, not full-fledged teachers; refusing to replace experienced teachers who were laid off to cut costs; refusing to act as the labor force to staff non-union schools; abandoning their hubris.

Categories Corporate Reform, Teach for America

New Orleans: Where There Are No Facts, Just Hype

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2015 //
21

Adam Hubbard Johnson was trying to verify the claims of a miraculous transformation in Néw Orleans, and he went in search of the pre-Katrina data. Reformers said the graduation rate had grown from 54.4% before Katrina to 77% in 2012. That’s huge. But was it accurate?

He corresponded with a reporter. She used those numbers but didn’t know the source. He kept digging. Eventually he realized that the source was not city or state or federal data, but a charter advocacy group.

He writes:

“A thought experiment:

Imagine, for a moment, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had said five years after 9/11:

“I think the best thing that happened to the defense system in New York and Washington was 9/11. That defense system was a disaster, and it took 9/11 to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better’.”

We would rightfully find this crude and opportunistic. But in 2010 when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said

“I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better’.”

the media either shrugged it off or embraced its thesis. The political and moral rot of the New Orleans education system pre-Katrina wasn’t just taken for granted – our political classes saw it as so manifestly depraved and corrupt that it validated the deaths of 1,833 people. Such is the hysteria with which conventional wisdom cements itself.

Like a tale out of an Ayn Rand variation of Genesis, the story of Katrina wasn’t one of nature’s caprice or racism’s legacy, it was instead the fortunate and righteous correction of liberal excess. And though graduation rates are not the only point of comparison used to prop up this perception (I will explore others later), they are the most accessible and finite.”

Why the missing pre-Katrina grad rate?

“The answer to this question illuminates, in a limited but potent way, what a corporate coup looks like up close. When education becomes charity rather than a right, an investment instrument rather than a civic good, the ability to distinguish between substance and marketing becomes by design, overwhelming. Like a refund department with a six hour wait time, the frustration in attempting to navigate this neoliberal maze of “private/public” responsibilities is precisely the point. Even the most basic of acts – hosting a website – turns out to be one of the primary reasons finding data is so difficult. The LDOE has had, inexplicably, five differnt primary domains in the past decade – from doe.louisiana.gov to doe.state.la.us to louisianaschools.net to louisianabelieves.net to its current, full-flown corporate iteration louisianabelieves.com”

He writes about the framing of the reform narrative:

“The story of Katrina and how it justified charter schools can best be summed up by Arthur Miller’s observation that “the structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.”

“So went the Katrina reform school narrative in all its moral clarity. Circa 2005 charter school leaders, largely funded by the Walton, Gates, Koch families and given cover by neoliberal corporatists whose primary purpose appeared to be the act of looking busy, sought a PR coup. Though they were making incremental headway, there was little urgency to their cause. Two weeks after Katrina however, while 96% of corpses still remained unidentified and the Superdome had been reduced to a “toxic biosphere”, the story of how the birds had come home to roost was too good to pass up. Koch-funded and proto-Tea Party outfit FreedomWorks was the first to float this narrative on September 15th, both in the pages of the National Review and on their website, in an op-ed by Chris Kinnan.

[Kinnan wrote:] “There is a second rescue urgently needed in the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and one that is long overdue: saving New Orleans school kids from their broken public-school system. The tragedy of the storm provides America with a golden opportunity”

This idea of a “golden opportunity” to perform a dramatic experiment in New Orleans became conventional wisdom.

Johnson writes:

“All of this is to say nothing of the core fallacy at the heart of the “choice movement”: the presumption of dichotomy. Schools going bad? Poverty’s not the problem, abject racism’s not at fault, underfunding is irrelevant (Louisiana spent $1,636 more in real dollars per pupil in 2012 than it did pre-Katrina). No, it has to be teachers’ unions and local school boards. Get rid of those and let slick PR firms, Ivy League idealists, and hedge fund real estate interest come in and do it right. A third option, or a fourth option or any cost-benefit was never discussed. Within 10 weeks of Katrina, while the state’s largely poor and African American diaspora were scattered throughout the Gulf states simply trying to stay alive – the Louisiana State Legislature called an emergency session, passing ACT 35 which, as even Tulane’s pro-school reform Cowen Institute acknowledged, radically changed the defintion of “failing school” from the flawed but objective criteria of having a state score of less than 60 to include any school that was below the state score median, which, at the time was 86.2. Put another way: the state assured itself that their own Recovery School Board would control, by definition, at least 50% of the state’s schools no matter what.

“Overnight, 102 of the 119 locally control New Orleans schools, all primarily poor, all primarily black, were put under the pro-charter, primarily white state control. Not because they were “failing” – a school cannot “fail” to meet retroactive standards – but rather because they were vulnerable. No study issued. No ballot measure campaigned for. No discussion had.

“The corporate forces were too overwhelming, the liberal class too monied and distracted. The official history of a broken school system that was simply washed to sea, too convenient. And the truth – like the shiny new charter school system that emerged at its expense – was simply torn down and built again from scratch.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Graduation rates, Louisiana, New Orleans

Ohio: Land of Charter School Scandals

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2015 //
15

There is no end of charter school scandals in Ohio. Blogger Plunderbund follows these stories and reports the details. Here is the latest:

“Columbus Dispatch readers were shocked, shocked to learn last week that members of Imagine Columbus Primary School’s charter board, protesting that they had no say in negotiating the terms of an operational contract, resigned “en masse” over a lease imposed by the management company that had the school paying $58,000 per month in rent for space to house 150 students, as well as other issues related to the viability of the school.

“The board’s action, which did get some attention from the usually somnolent “Ohio’s Greatest Home Newspaper,” was so dramatic that the Casablanca Prefect of Police might have exclaimed it was time to “round up the usual suspects.”

“But Captain Renault and the rest of us don’t have to look too far. In this case, the usual suspect is Imagine Schools, a national for-profit charter school chain founded by Dennis Bakke, a well-known Christian evangelical, and his wife, Eileen.

“The Bakkes have found great success with Imagine and its subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. But as is the case with many charter school enterprises, success is one thing, and ethics is quite another.”

But is Imagine a charter chain or a real estate empire? A breathless world awaits the answer.

“Conflict of interest? When the friend of a governor is appointed to a commission to study the feasibility of charter schools and, using his insider knowledge, forms a charter school management company to coincide with the enactment of the legislation, when one of the sponsors of the original charter school legislation works to have it designed so that a political friend and a family member profit from its enactment, and when a private foundation affiliated with a school management company offers free international travel to members of the legislature as a vehicle for influencing favorable charter school legislation, could these be examples of possible conflicts of interest?”

Plunderbund adds:

“Unfortunately, the terms charter school and conflict of interest are becoming synonymous. And redundant. ”

Who owns the charter schools in Ohio? Like many states, Tthe charters are called “public.” But the owners of the for-profit Imagine chain believe they “own” the charters. The boards are a necessary encumbrance. The public has no role, other than to supply money to the corporation.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio

Mississippi Blogger: A Modest Proposal for Education Reform

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2015 //
11

Mississippi teacher-blogger James Comans has indulged in Swiftian satire in this post about “reform.” He informed me that he was inspired by the post “Is It Really ‘All About the Kids.'”

Comans assumes the voice of a reformster. Why not require teachers to live in monasteries? Why pay them? If they are “called” to teach, they should volunteer. If they get minimum wage, they should be shamed into donating their meager salaries to worthy causes,like charter schools.

Will this make teachers better? Who knows? It will surely cut costs. What else matters? That’s how you put Children First and show that Students Matter.

Categories Corporate Reform, Funding, Mississippi, Teachers and Teaching

Kaplan: Denver Sells Out to Corporate Buddies

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2015 //
12

Jeannie Kaplan, a retired member of the Denver school board, can’t stop watching and documenting the follies of corporate reform in her city. Here she tells about the curious alliance between Denver Public Schools and a local health-care provider.

She writes:

“Get this. Over the past four years a Denver-based health care provider settled (without admitting any wrongdoing) three whistle blower lawsuits with the federal government for $961 million. The cases involved defrauding the federal Medicare program ($495 million), double billing the government ($55 million), and engaging in a kick-back scheme for patient referrals. ($411 million). This same company underwrote a Denver Public Schools “pep rally” of sorts in 2012 where, using some of the company’s cultural training techniques, the six core DPS values were determined. Not surprisingly the DPS’ core values look remarkably similar to this company’s core values . And since relocating its headquarters to Denver, the CEO of said company and his wife have contributed $33,000 to four “reform” school board candidates in 2013 (10K to Barbara O’Brien, Mike Johnson, Landri Taylor, 3K to Rosemary Rodriguez) and $61,000 to three “reform” candidates in 2011 ($25K to Happy Haynes and Anne Rowe, 11K to Jennifer Draper Carson). I try not to be overly cynical, which given the state of public education in the United States is often challenging, but when I saw the invitation below, I could no longer contain my cynicism regarding this alliance. It turns out this corporation with core values such as INTEGRITY and ACCOUNTABILITY is COLLABORATING once again with the Denver Public Schools for some FUN, this time to honor those who have a shared value and vision. The company and CEO having such access to Denver Public Schools? DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc. and its CEO Kent Thiry.”

This corporation helped DPS frame its core values. It recently gave a party to celebrate and honor those who share its values.

Kaplan asks:

“How much influence does this corporation actually have within Denver Public Schools? Why is a public institution allowing a private corporation to determine its values? Isn’t this an example of taking privatization within “education reform” too far? Just askin’”

Categories Corporate Reform, Denver, Education Industry

The Inside Story of EduShyster by Herself

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2015 //
8

One of the very best education blogs is EduShyster. When I first read it, I fell in love with her humor, wit, tone, and deep intelligence. My blog is three years old, and so is hers.

For the third birthday of her blog, she decided to describe the origin and life of her blog and how it changed her.

It is one of her very best posts, and I urge you to read it.

As you may or may not know, EduShyster began as an anonymous blogger. There was much speculation about who she (or he) was. Eventually we learned that she is Jennifer Berkshire. When she unmasked herself (and she explains why in this post), the tone of her column changed. But she has always had that great sense of humor.

EduShyster may well have changed the debate about charter schools in Massachusetts. She turns out to be a smart investigative journalist.

I have often thought that one of the reason we (the supporters of public schools) will defeat corporate reform (aside from its repeated flops whenever it is actually implemented) is that we have great humorists like EduShyster and Peter Greene. Once a movement becomes an object of ridicule, it is over. And when our Jonathan Swifts do their work without pay, while theirs are well-paid and amply funded, you know who has real passion, commitment, and staying power.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Humor

Randal Hendee: The Goal of Reform is Not to Improve Education but to Cut Costs

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2015 //
30

The question frequently arises: Why do so many billionaires support the privatization of public education? Surely, they don’t care about making a profit as they are already billionaires. Here is one possible answer, as reader Randal Hendee posted this comment on the blog about the motives of the billionaires who support “reform”:

 

 

There’s a lot of evidence that reducing the cost of public education is one of the main goals of people like Gates, Broad, and the Waltons. They’re playing a long game that they hope will result in lower taxes for big property owners and for the wealthy in general. At the same time, they see profit in “reform” because even with relatively lower tax revenues, a new cohort of children enrolls every year. Once the opportunists tap into that public revenue stream (through privately operated charters, educational technology, data mining, real estate deals, and so on), the cash cow will keep on giving. Or so they hope.

 

The Walton family fortune is based mainly on cost reduction (that and inventory control via technology and breakneck expansion). The Walton billionaires are billionaires because Walmart learned how to squeeze both suppliers and employees. In the process they put thousands of local merchants out of business. The Waltons are trying to undermine American institutions such as public schools and labor unions. To imagine that these efforts have nothing to do with cost reduction doesn’t square with company history. (If you want to know more about how the family stays so rich, google “Walton tax avoidance.”)

 

While Eli Broad is said to favor higher taxes for the rich, cost reduction is a big part of the Broad efforts. Broad wants fewer schools, larger class sizes, more charters. Charter expansion is one of his big goals, and of course many charter teachers work in sweatshop conditions for relatively low pay. Some of this cost saving is diverted to marketing and high administrative salaries. But the long term idea is to spend less on schools, not more. Presumably, free market incentives will spur “higher achievement.”*

 

Here’s what Bill Gates said about education and technology (and cost reduction) at the 2013 Davos Conference:

 

“Well, we’re taking the Internet revolution and we’re applying it in more areas. So, for example, in education the idea that not only are the best lectures online, but you can interact with people, talk to other students, that we ought to be able to deliver education that’s higher quality but dramatically lower cost. There’s a lot of excitement about that.

 

“MOOC means Massively Online Open Courseware and a lot of good pioneers that are learning and making that stuff better and better. The [Gates] Foundation is the biggest funder of that activity ’cause we see so much promise and the increasing price of education just doesn’t work. You know, a lot of our unemployment is because kids aren’t well educated enough. If you’re a college graduate, unemployment is very low. We’ve got to increase access to education, but letting the price go up won’t allow that.”

 

Anytime you hear someone say, “You can’t solve the problem by throwing money at it,” that person wants to reduce the cost of (that is, underfund) public schools, particularly the ones in poor urban neighborhoods and areas of rural poverty. Gates often used to preface his education remarks by stating that we spend way more than we used to but have little to show for it. He never took inflation into account, nor did he mention special education mandates.

 

Sure, the “reformers” want to “transform” public education by destroying it, but cost reduction is built into their overall scheme.

 

 

*Note: Eli Broad publicly supported Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to raise taxes for education, but he simultaneously funded a “dark money” effort to fight the same proposition.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Privatization
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