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NPE Action Fund: We Will Redouble Our Efforts to Fight for Our Public Community Schools!

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2016 //
5

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education Action Fund, reports here on our efforts to support public education in the election of 2016.

We don’t have money to offer candidates, unlike the hedge fund PACS and the billionaires, but we offer our endorsement so that voters know which candidates are the real deal, and which state referenda will strengthen or harm public schools.

Please open the letter for the full report:

The election of 2016 is over, and we must intensify the fight to save our community public schools. Based on campaign rhetoric, there is no doubt that the Trump/Pence administration will accelerate the movement to privatize our public school system under the guise of “choice.” We will continue to update you and ask you join in that fight.

Even in this dark election, however, there were points of lights found in victories for those of us who believe that public schools are, as Diane often says, the pillar of our democracy. NPE Action endorsed 12 candidates—five of whom were elected or re-elected.

Steve Bullock was re-elected as Governor of Montana. Governor Bullock’s strong, support for public education and democratically governed schools are well known throughout Montana. In 2016, The Network for Public Education’s State Report Card ranked Montana 4th in the nation. Under Governor Bullock’s leadership, the state received a rating of “A” for its resistance to privatization and for its resistance to high-stakes testing. Bullock’s re-election is a major blow to corporate reformers who ran a candidate who wanted to bring charters into the state.

Barbara Madsen was re-elected as Supreme Court Judge in the State of Washington. Madsen authored the court’s 6-3 decision that found that charter schools were not entitled to public monies because they were directed by private boards instead of representatives elected by the community. Stand for Children, Bill Gates, Reed Hastings and other proponents of charters contributed to the campaign to defeat Barbara and her Supreme Court colleagues who voted with her on the charter decision. All were re-elected.

There is more good news in Washington State because it looks like Chris Reykdal will be the new Superintendent of Instruction. Chris is adamant about supporting the Washington State Supreme Court decision that denies public funding to charters. He believes in less testing, smaller class sizes, due process rights for teachers, sufficient and equitable school funding and student data privacy. Although all of the votes are not counted, Chris holds a strong lead and is expected to be the winner.

We also are pleased that two other NPE Action endorsed candidates were victorious. Renitta Shannon won a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives, and Robert Garcia was elected to a California School Board in the Etiwanda District.

We also thank our endorsed candidates who were not successful for their hard fought campaigns: Hillary Clinton, Glenda Ritz, Zephyr Teachout, Larry Proffitt, Kwame Smith, Ardy Kassakhian, and Mandy Wright. We will bring the fight forward in 2018, and we ask for their continued support in the battle to save our public schools.

Ballot Initiatives

NPE Action strongly endorsed the defeat of two ballot initiatives that would have furthered the undermining of our community public schools. We are delighted to report that despite a huge influx of corporate reform dollars, both were defeated.

Voters in Massachusetts overwhelmingly defeated Question 2, 62%-38%. Question 2 would have lifted the cap off charter schools (a cap that still has not even been reached) and permitted the addition of 12 charter schools each year. A coalition of parents, teachers and students banded together and defeated its proponents who spent at least $22 million. Big out-of-state givers were billionaires and hedge fund managers.

The question was handily defeated in areas where charters have the greatest presence, busting the “charters are a civil rights” myth. “Ultimately, communities of color spoke loudly about our needs to protect public school funding while also expressing an urgency to deliver a quality education for all our students,” said Michael Curry, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP.

Voters in Georgia said, “keep your hands off our public schools.”

Democrats and Republicans joined to defeat Amendment 1, the governor’s plan to change the state constitution to allow him to take over schools with low-test scores and turn them into charters. Civil Rights icon and former mayor, Andrew Young, baseball legend, Hank Aaron, and Georgia PTA President Lisa-Marie Haywood encouraged voters to defeat this ALEC inspired initiative to undermine the democratic control of local schools. The voters of Georgia agreed.

Californians passed Proposition 55 that extended the 2012 personal income tax on incomes over $250,000 for 12 years in order to fund education and healthcare in the state. It overwhelmingly passed.

MORE THAN EVER, WE NEED YOUR HELP

During the election season, we were often asked why we did not endorse more candidates and ballot initiatives. The answer is a simple one—endorsements cost money. We need to do legal research to make sure we abide by state laws, and it costs modest funds to send emails and create memes.

NPE Action needs your financial support. Without that support, we cannot do the work that must be done when election time comes around. Unlike the charter industry, we do not have billionaire donors giving money to support political endorsements and candidates. We depend on you. Please donate to NPE Action today.

Make your donation here: http://npeaction.org/2016/02/19/donate/

Another way to support NPE Action is to attend our December 11 New York City dinner to honor Diane Ravitch. There are a few tickets left, which you can purchase here: http://npeaction.org/2016/09/13/6997/.

Thank you for all that you do. The 2016 election taught us a valuable lesson… we all need to do more.

Carol Burris

Executive Director

NPE Action

NPE Action is a 501 (c)(4). Therefore donations are not tax deductible.

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Politics, Privatization

Diane Ravitch: The Dangers of Privatization

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2016 //
28

This book review just appeared in the New York Review of Books.

I wrote it before the election but was able to update it immediately after the election, before it went to print.

I review Samuel E. Abrams’ “Education and the Commercial Mindset” and Mercedes K. Schneider’s “School Choice: The End of Public Education?”

Both are worth reading.

I enjoy publishing in TNYRB because it has a large readership that reaches well beyond the educators and engaged parents who read the blog. It is probably our most distinguished literary/political journal, and I am honored to write there.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Politico: Eva Moskowitz in the Running for Education Secretary

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2016 //
49

Politico reports on speculation that Eva Moskowitz is high up on the Trump list as a potential Secretary of Education.

Hedge fund manager John Paulson gave Moskowitz $8.5 million for her charter chain. He was also a major supporter of Trump.

Would she want to leave her charter empire, where she is paid handsomely? As Secretary of Education, she could spread the gospel of privatization far and wide.

While Moskowitz has found herself on the defensive at home, Success is still seen as a national charter model by many influential reform leaders. That’s based in large part on loyal, vocal support for her from the families of her student body, which is overwhelmingly poor, black and Latino — groups among whom opposition to Trump in the election was particularly strong.

(Success staff seemed to be mourning the results last week; the network’s social media staff posted a Langston Hughes poem about equality in America on its Twitter feed the morning after the election.)

Politics aside, Moskowitz might chafe at the constraints of the post, which is viewed among education observers largely as a bureaucratic position without all the power the title would suggest. This would be particularly true if a Trump administration set about relinquishing some federal power back to the states.

And while Trump has pledged to “get rid of” the Common Core, Moskowitz is a strong supporter of the set of standards introduced by President Obama. An enormous part of her schools’ renown is Success students’ high scores on Common Core-aligned exams.

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

Massachusetts: Stripping the Mask from Corporate Reformers

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2016 //
10

Last week’s election was both a victory and a defeat for corporate education reform. On one hand, Donald Trump won with a strong commitment to school choice and privatization, which is the highest goal of corporate reformers. He will very likely appoint a Supreme Court justice (or justices) hostile to unions, another priority of the so-called reformers. Maybe now, they can give up their pretense of being Democrats and hail the new regime in D.C.

On the other hand, voters in two very different states–Massachusetts and Georgia–were asked if they wanted to “improve” their schools by turning them over to the charter industry, and both states answered with a resounding NO.

In Georgia, despite a deceptively worded constitutional amendment, a bipartisan majority voted 60-40 against allowing the governor to create a special district where low-scoring schools could be converted to charters.

In Massachusetts, the corporate financiers bundled $26 million, mostly from out of state donors, to promote Question 2, which would add 12 new charters every year. The advertising campaign tried to sell Question 2 as a civil rights issue. They promised it would not defund public schools. They swore it was only “for the kids.” Question 2 lost overwhelmingly by 68-32%. Two-thirds of the voters did not believe the promises.

Here is the big news: The largest vote against charters in the Massachusetts vote came in communities that already had charters. The voters knew that charters were taking money from their public schools. They didn’t like what charters were doing to their communities.

“Almost all of the fiercest Question 2 opponents were cities and towns whose public schools are losing money to charter schools.

“Easthampton topped all Massachusetts municipalities in the strength of its opposition — 76.2 percent voted ” No,” or 7,324 against 2,290 “Yes” votes — and that city will lose $940,000 to its charter school, Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School, in fiscal 2016.

“It comes right off the top,” Easthampton Mayor Karen Cadieux said Thursday. “If you’re saying it doesn’t cost us anything, then you need to explain why I’m $940,000 short.”

“Hadley and South Hadley also followed the pattern, voting “no” to the tune of 73.7 and 68.9 percent. South Hadley contains Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School and Hadley houses Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School.

“Despite being located in Eastern Massachusetts, where opposition to Question 2 was not as high as in the rest of the state, Somerville also voted strongly against Question 2, with 71.2 percent of voters opposed. The city houses Prospect Hill Academy Charter School.

“Greenfield, where Four Rivers Charter Public School makes its home, voted against Question 2 by 71 percent. In Holyoke, which contains Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School, 66 percent opposed.”

Despite the millions of dollars in Dark Money, despite the big buy on television, despite the civil rights rhetoric, Question 2 was rejected.

The best part of this election, other than the victory of public education, was that opponents of Question 2 were fully informed about the threat that privatization posed to public education in General and to their public schools in particular. Only a handful of affluent districts supported the measure. The rest understood that they were repelling an existential threat to a democratic institution that belongs to their community: their public schools.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Massachusetts, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Rachel Levy: The Implications of the Election and What We Can Do Now

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2016 //
4

Rachel Levy–blogger, teacher, graduate student, parent in Virginia–offers sound advice about what the election means for education and how concerned education voters can respond to it.

Here is a sampling.

Pay attention to high-quality research (and I would add, pay attention to who pays for the research).

Read writers from different perspectives, including those who don’t share your views.

Support investigative journalism, which is badly needed and in need of supportive readers.

She writes:

“3. …Trump supports the current traditional Republican agenda, that is privatization, school “choice,” and the complete elimination of education as a public good. In my opinion, those are not good policies–they are not good for public education but they also are not good for our society. Public schools are flawed and as an institution have been tools of segregation and oppression but they are our best model for sustaining a pluralistic democracy. Public schools are where kids (hopefully) from all kinds of backgrounds and families come together and navigate the world. Privatization and “choice” will end that. Keep in mind that privatization and school “choice” are part of what we’ve been contending with for a long time, including from the Obama administration, though most centrist Democrats do draw the line at vouchers.

“And education is a matter that is largely left to states and localities. Trump has indicated that he would leave education to the states and localities to a even greater extent than ESSA does. However, at the same time, he has said things such as that he wants to abolish Common Core, which is a state matter. He has no record of governing (he has never held office), has no demonstrated expertise or knowledge of policy, is unpredictable, is, and is especially interested in amassing power. Education does not appear to be much on his radar screen. So some of what happens will depend upon his education-related appointments, but otherwise, who knows how much he will leave education to states and localities and how much he will want to control himself? Who knows what he will do?

Recommendation #3: If you are not already, now is the time to get engaged in your local and state governance. That is the only thing that is left. Learn all about your local and state governing bodies, including your school boards. Learn about the issues and policies. Get informed. Talk with your fellow community members about the issues and policies. Comment publicly on what your local and state governing bodies are doing and what you as a citizen, taxpayer, and constituent want them to do. Cherish those public democratic institutions and work to preserve them and keep them healthy. Work to get people from diverse backgrounds and different groups elected and appointed to such bodies. Serve in those bodies yourself. Contribute and be a participant. I can’t stress this enough.

“I have long said that local and state governance is the most important and this is more true than ever. Neo-liberals have demonstrated disdain for institutions and matters of local and state governance. Obama’s principal Secretary of Education Arne Duncan thought school boards were dysfunctional and a nuisance. Do not follow this example. Set a new one. When you fail to engage with your local and state institutions, you leave a void for others or nobody to fill. Local and state political leaders are obligated to serve their constituents and they need to be held accountable. We have to make them serve the public, ALL members of the public.

“4. Going back to federal education, while I stated that much of what Trump has said about education aligns with current initiatives in education generally, there will be a large, devastating difference from the Obama administration in terms of the focus of the Department of Education. Trump may work to eliminate the Department of Education, he may completely redirect the way federal funds for education are used (Title I, for example, and Pell Grants). Civil rights components and integration initiatives will be gutted. So much of the work that has been done towards establishing even just a fragile understanding of white supremacy and just a small start to countering and dismantling it will likely be lost. This will have devastating effects.

“Recommendation #4: Get involved and be present in your community’s schools, in your children’s schools. Advocate for diverse school staffs and diverse curricula. Tell your local educators that you know that they can’t control what kids learn at home, but that once in school, you expect everyone be treated with respect and dignity and to be kept safe. If you hear something or see something, say something. Right now, there are many kids in schools (including many traditional public schools) who are just trying to survive. Read this –it’s alarming but you must read it. It’s always been this way on some level, especially for Muslim, black, Latino, LGBT, and immigrant students and students with disabilities, but now it’s even worse and female and all other non-Christian students are also in more danger. The country will have a president, unless the electors of electoral college step up to the plate, who is a white nationalist sexual predator and whose behavior would violate the code of conduct in many of our children’s schools and warrant suspension if not expulsion, not to mention arrest and conviction outside of school. Our schools will be charged with enforcing codes of conduct to keep students safe from sexual assault, bullying, harassment, and attacks. Many are being bullied, intimidated, provoked, and in some cases attacked. They need our support and protection.”

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

Mercedes Schneider: Donald Trump’s Vision for Education

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2016 //
16

Mercedes Schneider here assembles the themes and details of President-elect Trump’s plans for education, or at least the federal role in education.

It is a nightmare vision, a dystopian vision. It is a vision of privatization, a concept I have been highlighting and exposing day after day as a source of inequity, fraud, graft, and bad education.

Please someone tell Mr. Trump that no high-performing nation in the world has charters and vouchers and for-profit schools and public tuition for home-schooling. Tell him that the two nations that embraced privatization–Sweden and Chile–now regret it. They saw increased segregation, not better education.

In Trump world, school choice is the answer to every education issue.

Too bad there is no evidence for his vision. Too bad for our public schools. Too bad for our kids. Too bad for our future.

We can’t let this happen. Parents, students, teachers, administrators, local school boards, state school boards: we have to stand together to defend what belongs to us. We must protect the commons.

Public schools under democratic control are part of our heritage as Americans. Conservatives don’t destroy traditional institutions. Conservatives conserve. Anarchists blow up neighborhood schools. Not conservatives. Nihilists destroy what belongs to all of us. Stand and argue. Resist.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Segregation, Trump, Vouchers

California Charter Industry Spends BigTime on Elections to Cement Its Power

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2016 //
9

Investigative reporter Bill Raden of Capitol & Main exposes the political machinations of the billionaire-funded charter industry, which wants more kids, more schools, more market share. Enough is never enough.

Expenditures by charter school lobbying groups was near $24 million, pumped into 35 legislative races. The charter industry wants to buy influence to protect its market share.

Raden writes:

California’s “school choice” movement has always benefited from generous subsidies by a narrow spectrum of big-spending entrepreneurs, many of whom are billionaires. Their wealth has helped give the state the highest number of charter schools in the U.S., even as their election largess has left it with the nation’s most expensive school board elections.

Capital & Main’s analysis of the latest campaign-finance records for the five largest charter school IECs reveals that those same personal fortunes are at the center of the charters’ apparent attempt to buy some Sacramento political insurance against a growing resistance among both lawmakers and the public to the industry’s unbridled expansion in the state.
The amount spent by charter IECs represents about $40 for each of California’s 581,100 charter school students, and a 300 percent jump from 2014 charter election spending — about 570 percent over 2012.

Most of the charters’ IE spending (88 percent) was directed by three committees that served as the 501(c)(4) political arms of industry lobbyists California Charter School Association (CCSA) and EdVoice, the charter school advocacy nonprofit founded by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: CCSA’s California Charter Schools Association Advocates IE Committee, and the Parent Teacher Alliance (sponsored by the CCSA’s IEC); and the EdVoice Independent Expenditure Committee. (Neither EdVoice nor CCSA responded to requests to comment for this article.)

The remainder was distributed by the Govern for California Action Committee, a PAC controlled by anti-public-pension gadfly and neoliberal Democrat David Crane; and by Parents and Teachers for Student Success – StudentsFirst, the IEC of the national pro-charter group founded by Michelle Rhee.

“They’re investing heavily in maintaining a deregulated environment,” said United Teachers Los Angeles Secretary Daniel Barnhart before the election. “This really isn’t about kids. In their own words, they say it’s about market share.”
He may be right. Though the teachers union spent nearly $33 million on the election, the bulk of that (around $20 million) went to Proposition 55, the education-funding measure that aimed to benefit all California classrooms — both charter and public school students. The charter IECs spent solely on pro-charter legislative and school board candidates.

The unions spent money to support education, both for public schools and charter schools. The charter industry spent only to protect its future prospects for opening more charters and draining more resources from public schools.

Governor Jerry Brown is the ultimate protector of the charter industry. He vetoed a bill to block the educationally disastrous for-profit online charter industry. And he vetoed other bills to rein in charter abuses.

The industry may have become more aggressive this year because the public is growing wary of its promises, its scandals, and its propaganda. The ACLU issued a blistering report about charters in California, and the NAACP call for a moratorium on charters was a body blow to billionaires who think they are in the forefront of the civil rights movement. They are not.

This greedy, self-absorbed industry has overplayed its hand. The public is catching on. The billionaires will have to spend more to buy more legislative seats to stave off a public uprising against them.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Rachel Klein: Don’t Blame Teachers for the Achievement Gap

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2016 //
24

Rachel Klein, the education editor of Huffington Post, reports on a recent study by Mathematica Policy Research that found that teachers and low-income and in upper-income schools are no different in effectiveness.

This study is very important because a central tenet of the corporate reform movement is that “bad teachers” cause low test scores, and that low-scoring schools are overrun by “bad teachers.” We have heard this claim from the mouths of Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and every other corporate reformer. This is why Race to the Top required every state applying for a share of $4.35 billion in federal funds had to agree to evaluate teachers based in large part on the test scores of their students. Think tanks, states, and the U.S. Department of Education have poured time and energy into the pursuit of the best way to find and fire those “bad teachers.” Another of Arne Duncan’s bad ideas was the “turnaround” model, which involved firing half, or most, or all of the school staff, since in his mind the staff caused low scores.

The study used the “reformers'” favorite methodology–value-added measurement–to look for differences in teacher effectiveness.

Klein writes:

Teachers shouldn’t be held responsible for the big gap in the achievement levels of rich and poor students, new data suggests.

By looking at the effectiveness ratings of teachers who work with students from varying socioeconomic classes, Mathematica Policy Research determined that rich and poor children generally have access to equally impressive educators. The research, which was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, stands in the face of arguments that a more equitable distribution of teachers could substantially move metrics of educational attainment.

Affluent students outperform their low-income peers on meaningful educational benchmarks. They have higher high school graduation rates and higher standardized test scores. Policymakers have said in the past that teachers might influence this gap. Indeed, previous data shows that low-income students tend to have less access to experienced teachers.

“We know from past research that there is a very large gap in achievement between high- and low-income kids, and we also know some teachers are quite a bit more effective than others,” said Eric Isenberg, senior researcher for Mathematica. “So we were interested in exploring whether there’s a link between those two things ― if achievement gaps could be explained by low-income kids having less effective teacher than high income kids.” .

The study looked at effectiveness ratings for English language arts and math teachers in 26 districts over the course of five years. These teachers worked with students in the fourth through eighth grades.

Researchers used a value-added model to measure the effectiveness of a teacher. This statistical model is controversial in the education world ― Isenberg called it an “imperfect measure,” but he said it’s the best available option. This statistical technique is used to isolate how students’ test scores change from year to year, and how much a teacher is contributing to these changes.

Although researchers did not work with a nationally representative sample of school districts, “the study districts were chosen to be geographically diverse, with at least three districts from each of the four U.S. Census regions,” the report says. About 63 percent of the students in the studied districts qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and the districts’ achievement gaps tend to reflect those at the national level.

Overall, researchers only found small differences in the average effectiveness ratings given to teachers working with low-income and affluent students. The average teacher of a low-income student rates around the 50th percentile, while the average teacher of a more wealthy student rates around the 51st percentile.

As Linda Darling-Hammond once wrote: “You can’t fire your way to Finland.”

In Finland, teaching is a highly prestigious profession. Entry into teachers’ colleges is very competitive. Teachers must have five years of education before they can teach. Once they are professionals, they have broad autonomy, and they collaborate with their peers to make school wide decisions. There is no standardized testing until the end of high school. There is an emphasis on the arts, play, technology, and collaborate learning. Children have a recess after every class. Teachers are professionals. They are not judged by test scores because there are no test scores.

The policies of the Bush-Obama era have failed and failed and failed. It is time to think anew.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Ladd and Fiske Assess England’s Radical Experiment in School Autonomy

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2016 //
3

Helen Ladd, Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University, and her husband Edward Fiske, former education editor of the New York Times, have written a comprehensive review of England’s radical experiment in school autonomy. The United Kingdom has been thrashing around in search of a managerial solution to school problems. It introduced a national curriculum for Schools in England, Wales, Northern Ireland in 1988, defining what every student should know in every grade, soon followed by national tests. (Wales soon delinked from the national curriculum.) Dissatisfied by the results, England is now embarking rapidly on radical decentralization of its schools.

What began as a limited program under a Labor government seeking “third way” reforms to encourage wealthy investors to take charge of some secondary schools has mushroomed under a Conservative government into a full-blown effort to devolve governmental responsibility for most of the nation’s state-run schools.

In their study released by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Ladd and Fiske assess the prospects and downsides of this approach.

“While the growth of charter schools from two in Minnesota in 1992 to nearly 7,000 across the country today has been stunning, this transformation of the educational landscape in the United States pales in comparison to what has happened in nearly half the time in England.

“Authorized by legislation in 2000 and officially launched in 2002, academies are England’s answer to charter schools. They are former state schools funded by the central government and granted significant operational autonomy. There are now 5,302 academies. Free schools, introduced in 2010, are academies by another name, created by teachers, charities, parents, or religious groups. There are now 304 free schools. The former Conservative prime minister David Cameron and his education secretary, Michael Gove, pledged in March 2016 to make all of England’s 20,000 government-funded schools into academies or free schools to give parents more choice and school administrators more freedom. Their target date for this complete transformation was 2022. Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, and her education secretary, Justine Greening, have so far stood behind this pledge.

“England’s academies and free schools stand out for not only their rapid growth but also their substantial autonomy. While oversubscribed charter schools in the United States must employ lotteries for admission, academies and free schools have control over whom they admit. The result, according to an analysis summarized by The Guardian, has been significant segregation of students by class as well as academic achievement.

“In “England Confronts the Limits of School Autonomy,” Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske provide a detailed analysis of the evolution of school choice in England and address the obstacles in the way of full implementation of Conservative Party ambitions as well as its likely drawbacks. Ladd, a professor of economics and public policy at Duke University, and Fiske, a former education editor at The New York Times, ground their working paper in interviews conducted last spring in London with 24 government officials, school leaders, and researchers; and in numerous government reports and academic studies. The result is a rich depiction of dramatic change and a cautionary statement about the impact of full school independence on community input and student interests.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Inequality, International, Privatization, Testing

EduShyster: How Citizens Defeated the Charter Movement in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2016 //
31

EduShyster (aka Jennifer Berkshire, a resident of Massachusetts) explains here how a coalition of parents, teachers, students, and civil rights activists defeated Question 2.

Question 2 was a measure on the ballot to expand the number of charter schools in the state by 12 every year, indefinitely. Opponents of the measure said it would drain money from the existing public schools, which enroll 96% of the children in the state. Advocates said it would not. Advocates claimed that they were fighting for opportunity for poor kids to escape failing public schools. Opponents didn’t buy it.

Support for Question 2 came mostly from out-of-state people of great wealth. These people, such as the Waltons and Michael Bloomberg, put up at least $26 million to advocate for more charters. I thought the charter advocates had put up $22 million, but Jonathan Pelto reported yesterday that they had actually spent $26 million. The opposition raised about $12 million, mostly from teachers’ unions and individual small contributions by teachers and parents.

For a billionaire to drop $2 million into a ballot issue in Massachusetts or anywhere else would be akin to one of us sending a dollar to the March of Dimes. They won’t miss it. At some point, however, if they keep losing, they might get bored and find a different hobby.

The election was a battle royal over the future of public education in Massachusetts, and large numbers of people mobilized to save their public schools. Support among black voters was the same as among white voters.

Question 2 was defeated by a vote of 62% to 38%. It was a knock-out punch for the billionaires and the many financiers whose names were hidden from public view because of arcane campaign finance laws that enable “dark money” to be spent without identifying its source.

Berkshire writes:

I could give you a long list of reasons why Question 2 went down in flames. It was a complicated policy question that should never have made it onto the ballot. Yes on 2, despite outspending the ‘no’ camp 2-1 couldn’t find a message that worked, and was never able to counter the single argument that most resonated with voters against charter schools: they take money away from public schools and the kids who attend them. #NoOn2 also tapped into genuinely viral energy. The coalition extended well beyond the teachers unions that funded it, growing to include members of all kinds of unions, as well as social justice and civil rights groups, who fanned out across the state every weekend. By election day, the sprawling network of mostly volunteer canvassers had made contact with more than 1.5 million voters.

Question 2 had not only unprecedented funding, it had the support of the Governor and the state’s Secretary of Education, James Peyser, who is a longtime advocate for charters and a member of the board of Families for Excellent Schools, the same organization that bundled money in New York and elsewhere to push for charters.

Berkshire writes that when people who had no particular interest in charters or public schools began to see who was behind Question 2, she realized that Question 2 was in big trouble:

Do you know why hating on the Yankees is such a popular pastime in Massachusetts? Because they’re regarded as rich, entitled assholes from New York. Which is why the decision to rely so heavily on well, rich, entitled assholes from New York to fund the Yes on 2 campaign puzzles one so. By the final tally before the election, Families for Excellent Schools, reduced to serving as a conduit for the offerings of rich Wall Street-ers, had gifted more than $17 million to the cause. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, kicked in an additional $250,000 on top of the $240,000 he contributed back in August. To average voters, unfamiliar with the reform trope of the billionaire changemaker, the outsized role being played by rich New Yorkers was utterly incomprehensible. It’s not enough to field the richest baseball team money can buy, now they want our schools too?

The Yes on 2 team insisted that the public schools would not lose any money if there were more charters, but school committees called out their lie:

By October it was clear that the Question 2 ship was beginning to list. The original claim, debuted in a massive ad buy during the Olympics, that expanding charter schools would actually increase funding for public education, had failed to resonate with voters, and so it was off to the next argument. It turned out that charter schools didn’t *drain* or *siphon* money away from district schools as team #NoOn2 kept insisting—and here was a press release about a study to prove it. But once again, Question 2’s proponents, including editorial page editors at the Boston Globe, which ran a prominent *no draining, no siphoning* editorial, ran into the buzzsaw of a whole bunch of people all over the state who actually knew stuff.

Those school committees, which just would not stop passing resolutions against the ballot question, could tell you exactly how much money their city or town was spending on charter schools. The Mayor of Northampton, which is about as far from Boston as you can get, pointed out that his town spends more to send kids to the specialized charter schools favored by affluent parents—a subspecies never mentioned during the campaign—than on an entire elementary school. Meanwhile, cities that are already home to the largest number of charters and would be most affected by the passage of Question 2, began tallying how much charters were already costing them. Lowell, for example, has seen a drastic spike in its charter school bill and now spends more than $16 million on a parallel school system, money that’s being diverted away from *extras,* like paving the roads in Mill City. The charter waitlist in Lowell, by the way, is dwarfed by the number of kids waiting to get into district schools.

The privatization movement lost in both Massachusetts and Georgia, where Governor Deal wanted to change the state constitution to allow the state to take over low-performing schools and give them to charter organizations. The lesson is that it is cheaper and easier to make campaign contributions to elect pro-charter candidates to state boards and state legislatures than to take a risk on a popular vote. In the case of Georgia, Governor Deal could not eliminate local control without changing the state constitution. And the voters said no, by a vote of 60-40.

Read the article. The defeat of Question 2 proves that big money can be beaten when citizens are informed, organized, and prepared to defend their public schools against privatization.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Georgia, Massachusetts, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Unions
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