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Angelo Gavrielatos: Why Did Bridge International Harass and Threaten a Canadian Researcher in Uganda?

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2016 //
11

In his post this morning, Whitney Tilson, a member of the board of Bridge International Academies, described the reasons why for-profit education was doing valuable and constructive philanthropic work in African nations. He pointed out that teachers’ unions oppose for-profit schools for what he assumes for selfish motives, to protect their jobs. He said that one of the most vocal critics of Bridge’s activities is Education International, an international organization representing teachers’ unions around the world.

As it happened, I just received a letter from Angelo Gavrielatos, the project director for global response at Education International, and former president of the Australian Education Union.

Gavrielatos writes that Bridge International harassed a Canadian researcher who was studying their operations in Uganda and had him jailed under false charges.

As this incident was unfolding, Gavrielatos wrote me about it and asked me to keep the matter in confidence as he was concerned that the young researcher might be jailed indefinitely. He was trying to get him safely out of Uganda.

He wrote:

Just when it thought its business couldn’t get any worse, for-profit education provider Bridge International Academies has resorted to dangerous tactics to avoid questions of its practices. Last week, Canadian Curtis Riep, a University of Alberta doctoral student and researcher for the global teachers’ federation Education International (EI), found out the length the corporation is willing to go to silence its critics.

After arriving for a pre-arranged interview with school officials on 30 May, Riep was detained by police and later charged with impersonation and criminal trespass. Although he was dismissed after two days of questioning, the experience left him shocked.

“It shows to what extent they will go to muzzle and repress the truth about their operations,” said Riep, in e-mail correspondence. “Every school inspector and ministry official I have spoken with has told me about their unwillingness to cooperate and withhold information. This just happens to be another manifestation of that.”

Now safely back in Canada, Riep was unaware that days earlier Bridge published a ‘wanted ad’ in a national newspaper accusing him of impersonating one of its employees, an allegation proven to be false.

Addressing Bridge co-founder Shannon May in an open letter, EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen said that the company’s “actions have been exposed as not only unwarranted, but also irresponsible. We consider this whole episode and this behaviour totally unacceptable, and unworthy of an organisation which claims to have the interest of young people at heart.” Van Leeuwen has demanded Bridge to apologise to Riep in addition to compensating his legal expenses.

Bridge, operating so-called ‘low-fee,’ for-profit schools in Uganda, Kenya, is financially supported by the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and education conglomerate Pearson Ltd. It is also supported by the World Bank and DfID-UK. Bridge’s business model, which includes fee charging schools run by unqualified teachers delivering a scripted standardised curriculum, has faced heavy criticism. Also attracting significant criticism is the Liberian Government’s announcement to outsource its primary schools to Bridge.

Although it promotes ‘affordable’ education to some of the world’s poorest children, Bridge forces families to pay for inadequate scripted lessons read from tablets. Many children are left to learn in questionable environments, such as classrooms lacking proper materials, including desks and chairs.

Please open the article to read it in full and see the links to sources.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, International, Privatization

California: Big Money and Slimy Tactics by Charter Advocates Prevail in Legislative Races

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2016 //
13

Awash in contributions from billionaires, the California Charter Schools Association claimed victory in several contested legislative elections.

Its candidate in the 43rd Assembly District, Laura Friedman came in first, bolstered by more than $1 million in campaign gifts by the powerful lobby.

The charter lobby, as usual, ran under false colors, pretending to be “all about the kids” and fighting for high-quality schools.

But Steve Zimmer, president of the Los Angeles Unified School District board, called them out, saying it was all about contracts and money.

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer railed Wednesday against the tactics used by the CCSA Advocates in the hotly contested 43rd Assembly District race and compared its spending in that race, at least $1.2 million, to special interest spending from oil and tobacco industries, which lobby for deregulation.

“This is no longer about choice. This is no longer about kids. It’s certainly not about civil rights,” he said. “It’s about deregulation. It’s about privatization.”

An independent expenditure committee called Parent Teacher Alliance sponsored by CCSA Advocates, the political arm of the CCSA, spent $910,791 on mailers supporting Glendale City Councilwoman Laura Friedman and $304,355 to oppose Glendale City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian, as of Friday, state campaign finance records show.

Friedman won the primary race, earning 31.9 percent of the vote total, capturing 24,372 votes, according to preliminary election results. Kassakhian finished in second place with 24.3 percent, receiving 18,618 votes. The two Democrats topped the eight-candidate ticket to replace outgoing Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Burbank, who could not seek re-election due to term limits. They will likely compete in the Nov. 8 general election. The election results will not be finalized until mail-in and provisional ballots are counted. Voter turnout in the district was about 29 percent.

Zimmer denounced the negative mailers sent by CCSA Advocates that flooded voters’ mailboxes in the district that includes Glendale, Burbank, La Canada Flintridge and parts of Los Angeles.

“It is base thuggery, no more or no less,” Zimmer said.

He called Kassakhian, whom he endorsed, the target of the mailers, an “innocent bystander” and said Kassakhian’s only crime was having a mother who was a public school teacher and support from teachers’ unions.

“I aspire to be half as decent a guy as Ardy Kassakhian is,” Zimmer said. “To take him out the way they did, to use the hate in those mailers, it’s a new standard of low. It has no rules, no boundaries, no ethics, no morals.”

The spending by charter school supporters in this race could be a preview of what will happen in March, when three seats on the LA Unified school board will be contested. Zimmer is up for re-election in what is sure to be a highly contested race. A challenger has already announced in the race. In 2013, Zimmer’s last re-election bid, millions were poured into the three races by outside groups. He captured 52 percent of the votes to defeat his opponent, Kate Anderson, who was backed by CCSA.

Friedman and Kassakhian will have a run-off in November as the top two finishers in the race.

The charter industry continues to descend into a pit of slime in its drive for money and power and its desire to cripple public education.

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

Hillary Clinton Will Be the Nominee of the Democratic Party. I Will Support Her. I Hope You Will Too.

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2016 //
321

I wrote before that I would support the nominee of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton won a decisive victory in California last night, and she will be the nominee, opposing the execrable Donald Trump.

I will vote for her.

Readers will say that she is too close to the people who are promoting charters, high-stakes testing, and the destructive policies of the Bush-Obama administrations. That is true. I have fought with all my strength against these terrible policies. I will continue to do so, with redoubled effort. I will do my best to get a one-on-one meeting with Hillary Clinton and to convey what we are fighting for: the improvement of public schools, not their privatization or monetization. The strengthening of the teaching profession, not its elimination. We want for all children what we want for our own.

Which is another way of saying what John Dewey said: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

Hillary Clinton wants the best for her grandchildren: a well-equipped school in a beautiful building; experienced and caring teachers and principals (not amateurs who took a course in leadership); arts classes; daily physical education; the possibility of a life where there is food security, health security, home security, and physical security. That is what we want for our children. That is what we want for everyone’s children. I think she will understand that. Not schools run by for-profit corporations; not schools where children are not allowed to laugh or play; not schools where testing steals time from instruction; not inexperienced teachers who are padding their resumes. That is what I want to tell her. I think she will understand. If she does, she will change the current federal education policies, which are mean-spirited, demoralizing to teachers, and contemptuous of the needs of children.

Now we must turn our energies to fighting together to make clear that we are united, we are strong, and we are not going away. We will stand together, raise our voices, and fight for public education, for our educators, and for the millions of children that they serve. And we will never, never, never give up.

I am grateful to Bernie Sanders for pushing the Clinton campaign to endorse the issues of income inequality and economic fairness. I am glad that he made the privilege of the 1% a national issue. I am glad that he will continue the struggle to really make this country just and fair for all. Bernie has made a historic contribution. He has organized millions of people, enabling them to express their hopes and fears for our nation and our future.

We must work together to harness that energy to save our schools. We must remind the Clinton campaign that every one of the policies promoted by the privatization movement, ALEC, and the whole panoply of right-wingers and misguided Democrats have been a massive failure. They have destroyed communities, especially black and Hispanic communities. They have hurt children, especially children of color. They are destroying public education itself, which is a bedrock of our democracy. We can’t let this happen.

Our task is clear. We must organize as never before. We must push back as never before.

Start by joining the SOS March on July 8 at the Lincoln Memorial.

I will be on a <a href="http://“>webinar tonight at 8 pm to discuss the SOS March and the issues we now face. The timing is perfect to plan for the future.

Please join us at 8 pm EST. We need you. We need your energy and your voice.

“https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8824328855840974852&#8221;

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act, Privatization, Resistance, School Choice, Segregation, Standardized Testing, Supporting public schools, U.S. Department of Education, US Education

California and the End of Local Control

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2016 //
15

Reader D.L. Paulson writes here about the charter industry’s sabotage of local control in education.

 

 

The overruling of local school boards is a terrible problem in California. Now that it’s hitting an upper-income community (actually, the Mt Diablo district is mixed in its demographics), middle class parents will see what poorer urban districts have had to contend with for years.

Stories abound of charter schools not only wanting the equivalent of what real public schools get, but feeling like they deserve even more. Their mode of operation is to achieve through political connections what they can’t obtain by deceptive marketing practices or bullying of local school boards.

At the bottom of this post are links to stories of a charter network called Caliber, which operates in the poor districts of Richmond and Vallejo, CA. It has another questionable educational program, especially for math, which consists of plopping kids in front of a computer for endless repetition and test prep, masquerading, of course, as “personalized learning”. All that Caliber really does is siphon badly needed funds from other schools for a relatively select group of students that it can profit from.

One particularly interesting thing about Caliber is the couple which founded it: Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses. Mr. Beller was famous for the collapse of his hedge fund and an odd story of a secretary embezzling millions of dollars. Both are part of a cabal of rich individuals that have torn apart the public education system in England, with Ms. Moses funding and pushing heavily for charter schools there. They left London a few years ago for unexplained reasons, but possibly because they smelled blood and opportunity in the charter-infested waters of Northern California.

Many people wonder, if charter schools like Caliber are non-profit, and they’re spending the same money as real community-run schools, how can anyone accuse founders of profiteering? The answer: land grabs and self-dealing. Many of the networks that run these schools, like Rocketship, buy their products (software, supplies and more) from the same companies they or their friends invest in. The properties they purchase are securitized by taxpayer dollars, allowing them to leverage an investment in the same manner as a Real-Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Since there is no public oversight over their purchasing, no bid requirements, no review of salaries or per-pupil spending, they can quite literally get away with anything.

The motives of investors like Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses are not philanthropic. That’s why they and so many other hedge-fund managers love the story of failing schools, so they can cover-up what they’re doing by pretending to serve poor minorities and other victims of some mythical failing system. No matter what jargon is used to describe their “personalized” or “no excuses” model, making poor minority students walk in straight lines, silently, and then plopping them in front of a brain-numbing computer program is not giving them the same educational opportunities as kids in, say, Lafayette, CA (right next door to Mt Diablo). It’s greed, pure and simple, as evidenced by Goldman Sachs seminars telling investors exactly how to make money through the privatization of schools. It is destroying public education in this country, and it’s going to worsen our problems of racism, community polarization, and income inequality.

We can only hope that Jerry Brown will “get it” soon. He understood similar issues with redevelopment agencies, and he ended them early in his first term. Perhaps ending the insidious invasion of charter schools will be his second term legacy.

****************

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/contra-costa-times/ci_23866222/county-school-board-overrules-rejection-caliber-charter-school

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/west-county-times/ci_26553653/richmond-district-saddled-cost-house-charter-school

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/general-news/20160511/richmond-proposed-sale-of-school-site-for-charter-campus-draws-fire/3

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/general-news/20160509/new-vallejo-charter-school-seeks-more-student-bathrooms

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/social-affairs/20160218/charter-school-in-vallejo-seeks-better-offer

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

The Attack on Public Education in California

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2016 //
15

Public education in California is under siege by people and organizations who want to privatize the schools, remove them from democratic control, and hand them over to the charter industry.

The attack began when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor. He stacked the state board of education with a majority of charter school advocates (even though only 4% of children were enrolled in charters at the time) and slashed billions of dollars from the budget of the public schools.

The attack continues today, as billionaires add their clout to the charter industry. Eli Broad is the point of the spear, with his unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, which has “trained” would-be superintendents in his management techniques and sent them out to reorganize schools, and whenever possible, close them down. Broad has proposed to open 260 new charters in Los Angeles, which would mean that 50% of the students in the district would be enrolled in charters. Other billionaires, such as Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix) and David Welch (of Vergara notoriety), have joined the fight against public schools and their teachers.

The Golden State is often a bellwether for the nation.

Governor Jerry Brown, a progressive on many other issues, has defended the charter industry and blocked efforts to regulate it. California has had some of the biggest charter scandals in the nation, starting with the collapse of the California Charter Academy in 2004, which went bankrupt and stranded 6,000 students. The state has for-profit charters, including the California Virtual Academy (CAVA), which was recently the subject of an expose by Jessica Calefati in the San Jose Mercury-News. CAVA is run by Michael Milken’s K12 Inc. It is one of the worst performing schools in the state, perhaps the very worst. But no action has been taken to close it.

When the legislature passed a bill to prohibit for-profit charter schools, Governor Brown vetoed it. This, despite the fact that America has never had for-profit “public schools” until the rise of the charter industry. An associate of the governor told me that the governor did not believe that for-profit schools are inherently bad. I disagree. Any for-profit organization has profit as its highest priority, not education or children. Governor Brown also vetoed legislation to prohibit charters in one district from opening branches in other districts. He vetoed legislation to bar conflicts of interest in charter schools. Governor Brown opened two charters in Oakland when he was mayor, so he must be partial to them. Nonetheless, it remains baffling that Governor Brown would allow vested interests and advocates of privatization to ruin the state’s public schools.

Unlike many other states, California has a well-financed and formidable organization fighting to expand the power of privately managed charter schools: the California Charter Schools Association. It is active in advancing legislation to protect and advance privatization and to block any effort to rein in their excesses.

Begin your reading at this site, Capital & Main. It contains a series about California and the future of public education.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Laura Chapman: Beware the Reform Networks

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2016 //
25

Our reader and amazing researcher draws a map of the covert networks that promote school choice, privatization, high-stakes testing, and the rest of the corporate reform agenda.

Chapman writes:

Third Wave is a new marketing package for ideas forged at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), aided by charter friendly Bellwether, field tested in Boston, New Orleans, and coming to other “Education Cities.” Third Wave is a planed tsunami intended to eliminate local school boards. Private foundations—the billionaire donor class—provides the impetus for the Third Wave. Themes in the pitch for donor-controlled education “seats” for kids, and nothing less than “great” schools.

Some remote links to this Third Wave brand can be traced to Alvin Toffler’s book with the same title, also “disruptive” narratives of many kinds in academe, with one example about “educational choice” in Great Britain: The ‘Third Wave’: Education and the Ideology of Parentocracy. Phillip Brown;Source: British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1990), pp. 65-85 Volume Information. (1990). British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(1), 1-2. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1392908

A key feature of the Third Wave brand is getting “cross-sector universal student enrollment” installed as a new norm for thinking about education, with an ever diminishing role for elected school boards in policy making.

Here is a Gates foundation launch in Massachusetts: Grant to Boston Private Industry Council Inc. Date: September 2014, Purpose: to support the design and launch of a cross-sector universal student enrollment system for the city of Boston, Amount: $100,000 Term: 34 months.

That is one small grant. But the big push for Third Wave comes from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). This organization is really a multi-state policy/advocacy group funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, US Department of Education, Walton Family Foundation, and Anonymous. (Yes, USDE is a funder!).

The POLICY PARTNERS for the Center for Reinventing Pubic education are:

1. National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools funded by the Oak Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Newark Charter School Fund, and Charter School Growth Fund.

2. Education Cities (100 of the largest cities, implicated in a rating scheme funded by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and connected to the GreatSchools rating and marketing website), and the

3. Policy Innovation Network (PIE). Let’s look at the connection of PIE to CRPE to Third Wave.

The PIE Network connects 48 “education reform groups” in 31 states and the District of Columbia. In addition to feeding information to these groups, PIE asks the groups to commit to policies formulated by its “policy partners” and work with “advocacy partners” including many national organizations “often active in state capitols, working in collaboration with network members or providing strategic advice and assistance as invited by network members.” Think Superpac.

Here are the MEMBERS of PIE by state: ALABAMA, A+ Education Partnership; ARIZONA, Expect More Arizona, Stand for Children Arizona; CALIFORNIA, The Education Trust- West, EdVoice; COLORADO, Colorado Succeeds, Stand for Children Colorado; CONNECTICUT, ConnCAN, Connecticut Council for Education Reform; DELAWARE, Rodel Foundation of Delaware; DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, DC School Reform Now; FLORIDA, Foundation for Florida’s Future, GEORGIA, Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education; IDAHO, Idaho Business for Education; ILLINOIS, Advance Illinois, Stand for Children Illinois; INDIANA, Stand for Children Indiana; KENTUCKY, Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence; LOUISIANA, Stand for Children Louisiana; MARYLAND, MarylandCAN; MASSACHUSETTS, Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, Stand for Children Massachusetts; MICHIGAN, The Education Trust- Midwest; MINNESOTA, MinnCAN; MISSISSIPPI, Mississippi First; MISSOURI, Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri (CEAM); NEVADA, Nevada Succeeds; NEW JERSEY, JerseyCAN; NEW YORK, NYCAN, StudentsFirstNY; NORTH CAROLINA, BEST-NC, North Carolina Public School Forum; OHIO, KidsOhio!, Thomas B. Fordham Institute of Ohio; OKLAHOMA, Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition, Stand for Children Oklahoma; OREGON, Chalkboard Project, Stand for Children Oregon; PENNSYLVANIA, PennCAN; RHODE ISLAND, RI-CAN; TENNESSEE, State Collaborative on Reforming Education, Stand for Children Tennessee; TEXAS, Educate Texas, Stand for Children Texas, Texas Institute for Education Reform; WASHINGTON, League of Education Voters, Partnership for Learning, Stand for Children Washington. Surce: http://www.pie-network.org/who/network-members.

Then there are the POLICY PARTNERS for PIE—which is connected to CPRE— which is connected to Third Wave— with generous funding by with the mega-billionaire donor class behind the so-called Third Wave.

“Evidence and expertise play an essential role in forging public policy solutions to formidable institutional challenges; therefore, PIE Network partners with six leading national policy organizations that fuel reform on a national level, disseminate critical research, and offer guidance to network members.” These POLICY PARTNERS are: Center for American Progress, Center on Reinventing Public Education, Data Quality Campaign, Education Resource Strategies, National Council on Teacher Quality, and Thomas B. Fordham Institute. All are famous (infamous) for plots and policies and their obligations to the billionaire donor class. All are intent on eliminating elected school boards and pouring tax dollars into the coffers of private and religious schools.

Look again. Here are PIE’s ADVOCACY PARTNERS and what they do—The ”growing number of national reform organizations are also working at the state level to advance part of the network’s policy commitments. These organizations, which we recognize as advocacy partners, are often active in state capitols working in collaboration with network members or providing strategic advise and assistance as invited by network members. The current ADVOCACY PARTNERS include: 50CAN – national office, America Succeeds, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Trust, Educators 4 Excellence, Families for Excellent Schools, Foundation for Excellence in Education, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Parent Revolution, StudentsFirst, Students for Education Reform – national office, Stand for Children – national office. You can learn more at

Click to access csa_ceo_jd-final.pdf

Now there is a bit more detail (if you can stand it) in how Bellwether aids and abets the Third Wave’s efforts to discredit and demolish elected school boards, silece teachers, parents, and citizens.

I live in Cincinnati. Local foundations with projects in education have been part of a STRIVE collaborative with the Cincinnati Public Schools, Some members in this group have become part of a foundation-led “Accelerator” with a recently hired CEO and a target of $48 million for eliminating every good school that is not a “great school.” The Accelerator is a pitch for cross-sector universal student enrollment for the metro area, and with a specific inclusion of Catholic schools.

Charter-friendly Bellwether handled the CEO recruitment. The Bellwether job description begins with the Gates mantra of college and career readiness for every child. It is filled with “business and charter speak”—the need for a talent pipeline to “create a total of 14,500 new high-performing seats in the city.”

Our local “Accelerator” is “committed to a three-part philosophy: 1. To focus on each school’s performance, not its operator; 2. To embrace and support all successful schools whether they’re District, public charter, or Catholic, and 3. To focus on the development and expansion of schools and school models that deliver outstanding results.”

Among other qualifications, the CEO of this Accelerator was to have: “political savvy, and instincts sharp enough to navigate and establish productive relationships across the Cincinnati educational, philanthropic and political landscape;” and the “ability to identify new sources of funding from foundations, corporations, investors, and/or individual donors, and the skills required to secure these resources through relationship-building.”

REPORTING STRUCTURE. This initiative “was founded with significant engagement and support from the local philanthropic community. Members of this community will play a key role on the Board of Directors.” Over the next three years, the Accelerator will build out the Board, including a focus on adding perspectives from one or more national funders and one or more local community leaders. The Board will not likely exceed nine members, will meet at least quarterly, and will focus specifically on providing strategic and financial guidance.“ See more at this ink, and note the long reach of CRPE. http://www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/csa_ceo_jd-final.pdf

The CEO of our Accelerator is Patrick Herrel. He seems to have held three prior jobs: a government and economics teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina; Teach for America manager of recruiters across the Midwest; and Vice President of The Mind Trust in Indianapolis, where he helped launch “autonomous schools,” and “in-district, empowered schools.” I guess he had the needed fast track tsunami stuff. In 2012, Herrel was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “30 under 30” in education.

I am not alone in questioning the Accelerator and presumptions of our local donor class, most of them speaking as if experts in education based on their great wealth accumulated from holding executive positions in corporations. They believe that the end—metrics for high performance” justify whatever means are necessary to get the intended outcomes. Operators of schools do not matter. What citizens and elected officials think is of no great importance. They think they can buy the “seats” for poor students in high performing schools and that will do the job. Sounds all too familiar.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/05/05/business-education-leaders-launch-accelerator-project/26942393/

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

EduShyster: What the “Reform” Movement Doesn’t Know about Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
14

In this post, EduShyster gives a lesson to corporate reformers who want to reorganize the education system that has made Massachusetts first in the nation on every national and international test.

Their view of the Bay State’s schools is warped by their ignorance. They see Massachusetts as a model of “the first way” (i.e., public schools). Then, “reform” was jump-started by the charter schools added in 1993 (all 25 of them for the whole state). And now, they believe, Massachusetts needs to go “the third way.” Apparently the third way is to make Massachusetts look a lot like Denver (which readers of this blog know is no model).

What they don’t know is that the 1993 legislation increased school spending dramatically, by one-third. In its wake came tests for new teachers, uniform standards and assessments for the state, and early childhood education. The goal was to equalize funding among the best and worst funded districts.

But what is this Third Way. Read the article to find out, but expect to see a blurring of the lines between public and private, plus many opportunities for inexperienced teachers and for entrepreneurs.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Massachusetts

John Thompson on the Reformers’ Debate about Black Lives Matter: Reformers Now Attack Reformers with the Same Venom They Used on Teachers

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
16

The previous post referred to a debate among reformers about the role of the Black Lives Matter movement within the current education “reform” (testing and privatization) movement.

John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma, here responds to the debate with trenchant insights.

He writes:

I’ve communicated with enough reformers to know that their coalition is fraying. They’ve pushed an edu-politics of destruction based on the punitive use of test results in order to keep score in their competition-driven movement. Now, it is obvious that value-added teacher evaluations and their one-size-fits-all micromanaging have failed. Many or most, however, are still committed to high-stakes testing in order to speed up their rushed effort to close schools in mass.

Other corporate reformers seem to believe they can use their (admittedly brilliant) high-dollar public relations campaigns to drive the expansion of charters. They’ve finally realized that parents are preoccupied with what’s best for their own children, not education policy. They are marketing to parents who can’t stop the damage that the extreme proliferation of choice does to children left behind in weakened neighborhood schools, but who ignore test scores and seek safe and orderly schools for their own kids.

He asks inconvenient questions about why reformers vilify teachers and want to bust unions.

What I can’t grasp, however, is liberals who assail other liberals because we won’t use the stress of high stakes testing to overcome the stress produced by generational poverty. I still can’t understand civil rights advocates who condemn other civil rights advocates because we oppose school segregation as a means of reversing the legacies of segregation.

Had the technocrats spent more time in the inner city classroom, and in the homes, hospital rooms, the streets and, yes, the funerals of our kids, they’d have known we needed more “disruptive” innovation like we need another gang war. Had they shared the joy of teaching and learning for mastery that builds on the strengths of our kids, they would not have dumped reductionist behaviorism on children. But, because teachers saw things differently, we were condemned as the “status quo,” which accepted “Excuses!,” and renounced “High Expectations!”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing, Unions

Reformers Debate the Black Lives Matter Movement

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
22

If you wonder what reformers are thinking about in private, here is a peek behind the curtain.

Elizabeth Green, founder of Chalkbeat, writes about the debate among reformers about the Black Lives Matter movement.

African American reformers questioned why there are so few people of color in leadership roles in the education reform movement, and whether it can even be called a movement because it is led by people who are white and privileged. Those are questions about power and control, which are important.

Among the questions that were not raised:

Why do reformers think that black children benefit by taking standardized tests that label most of them as failures beginning in grade 3?

Why do reformers express so little concern about class size, budget cuts, funding, and segregation?

Do reformers believe that black children benefit by being in classrooms filled with exploration and joy, rather than test pressure?

Why are reformers eager to open charter schools with no-excuses discipline, where black children are treated like robots and trained to obey?

Do reformers worry that the expansion of charters harms the remaining public schools, which enroll far greater numbers of black children than charters?

Do reformers worry about directing so many inexperienced, first-year teachers to the schools that enroll black children?

Are reformers at all concerned that charter schools are more segregated than the public schools in the same district?

Why do reformers think that giving black children a voucher to enroll in a church school with uncertified teachers will prepare them to thrive in the 21st century?

Why aren’t the leaders of reform fighting for schools that black children attend that look like the schools their own children attend?

Are reformers worried about the disparate impact that “reform” policies have had on black teachers?

Do reformers think twice about union-busting and supplying scabs for non-union schools?

Do reformers understand the role that unions have played in building a middle class?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Race, Testing

The Biggest Charter School Theft in Georgia History

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2016 //
16

Molly Bloom of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes here about the biggest theft in the brief history of charter schools in Georgia. That state is in the process of expanding the number of charters and is considering creating an “Achievement School District,” modeled on the failed ASD in Tennessee, in which low performing schools are turned over to charter operators.

Here is the story of Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School.

A $12,000 charge at a strip club. Thousands of dollars spent at Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead. ATM withdrawals of hundreds of dollars at a time.

The charges to Atlanta’s Latin Academy Charter School should have raised eyebrows. For the top state education officials and corporate executives on the school’s board, they should have set off earsplitting sirens.

Instead, the charges continued for years, siphoning more than $600,000 in taxpayer dollars that should have been spent on students.

Christopher Clemons, the school’s founder, has been charged with fraud and theft in the largest such case in Georgia charter school history.

Clemons left Atlanta after the losses were discovered.

He left a rented townhome strewn with Hermes boxes, lease paperwork for a new BMW, used boarding passes and a Rolex receipt.

He left the school so financially troubled that board members closed it.

He left nearly 200 children with few options.

And he left a cautionary tale for Georgia’s growing charter school movement. Latin Academy, with its all-star board and experienced leader, seemed on track to thrive. But behind that facade of apparent success, the school spent millions of tax dollars with little public scrutiny and operated with a lack of public input foreign to many traditional public schools.

Latin Academy’s academic performance ranked in the top 25 percent of all Atlanta middle schools in an area where neighborhood middle schools are better known for hallway chaos than academics.

Clemons is presently in jail in Colorado, awaiting extradition to Georgia.

In the last decade, the number of students in charter schools has tripled to 91,000, with more growth expected. In addition, the legislature allows entire districts to have “charter-like” freedoms, which means deregulation and freedom from oversight.

Expect more scandals, fraud, corruption, and theft. If men were angels, there would be no reason for oversight or regulations.

Could someone explain why deregulation is supposed to create better education?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Georgia, Privatization
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