Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Watch Out for ALEC Legislation in Your State!

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2016 //
23

“Cashing in On Kids” reports that ALEC education legislation is quietly spreading across the nation. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a secretive far-right organization that is funded by major corporations and whose members are state legislators. Its goal is privatization and deregulation. It writes model laws, then its members introduce them into their state legislature as their own. To learn all about ALEC, go to Alec Exposed.

 

Despite widespread public opposition to the corporate-driven education privatization agenda, at least 172 measures reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bills were introduced in 42 states in 2015, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECexposed.org and PRWatch.org. (A PDF version of this report may be downloaded here.)

 

One of ALEC’s biggest funders is Koch Industries and the Koch brothers’ fortune. The Kochs have had a seat at the table – where the private sector votes as equals with legislators – on ALEC’s education task force via their “grassroots” group Americans for Prosperity and their Freedom Partners group, which was described as the Kochs’ “secret bank.”

 

The Kochs also have a voice on ALEC’s Education Task Force through multiple state-based think tanks of the State Policy Network, ALEC’s sister organization, which is funded by many of the same corporations and foundations and donor entities.

 

ALEC’s Education Task Force is also funded by the billionaire DeVos family, which bankrolls a privatization operation called “American Federation of Children,” and by for-profit corporations like K12 Inc., which was founded by junk-bond king Michael Milliken.

 

ALEC’s education task force has pushed legislation for decades to privatize public schools, weaken teacher’s unions, and lower teaching standards.

 

ALEC’s agenda would transform public education from a public and accountable institution that serves the public into one that serves private, for-profit interests. ALEC model bills divert taxpayer money from public to private schools through a variety of “voucher” and “tuition tax credit” programs. They promote unaccountable charter schools and shift power away from democratically elected local school boards….

 

Although ALEC and other school privatizers today frame “vouchers” – taxpayer-funded tuition for private, and often religious, schools – in terms of “opportunity” for low-income students and giving parents the “choice” to send their children to public or private schools, the group was less judicious in its earlier years.

 

The commentary to ALEC’s original 1984 voucher bill states that its purpose is “to introduce normal market forces” into education, and to “dismantle the control and power of” teachers’ unions by directing money from public institutions to private ones that were less likely to be unionized.

 

Friedman was more explicit when addressing ALEC’s 2006 meeting. He explained that vouchers are really a step towards “abolishing the public school system.”

 

“How do we get from where we are to where we want to be?” Friedman asked the ALEC crowd.

 

“Of course, the ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it. Then parents would have enough money to pay for private schools, but you’re not gonna do that.”

 

Of course, in order to believe in the idea of “opportunity scholarships” to “save poor kids from failing schools,” you have to believe that the big corporations and the billionaires are civil rights crusaders for the poor and needy. My imagination is not big enough to do that.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Vouchers

Washington State: Charter Advocates Push Legislation to Save Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2016 //
19

Politico Education reports that legislation is moving in Washington State to fund the state’s charter schools. A few months ago, the high court of the state ruled that charter schools are NOT public schools, are not accountable to an elected school board, are under private management, and therefore not eligible for public funding. Since then, the charter industry has tried various stratagems to try to get public funding and to reverse the court’s decision by political muscle and money. Since Washington State is home to Bill Gates, and since Bill Gates poured millions into passing a referendum on charters, the pressure to divert public funds to these nonpublic schools have been intense. As usual, charter advocates are fighting for the 1,000 or fewer children in charter schools, but not for the nearly 1 million children in public schools. They never take “no” for an answer when they lose the chance to drain resources from the schools that serve the vast majority of children.

 

 

WASHINGTON STATE CLOSES IN ON CHARTER SAVE: Charter advocates nationwide applauded Washington state House lawmakers on Wednesday night after they passed a measure to keep the state’s charter schools open. The save, which would use lottery money to pay for the schools, comes at the last minute – the legislature is slated to adjourn today. The schools and more than 1,000 students have been in limbo since the state Supreme Court ruled the state’s charter school law unconstitutional late last year. After heated debate the bill passed on a 58-39 vote. “We celebrate the parents who led this charge, and the school and movement leaders who refused to take no for an answer,” said National Alliance for Public Charter Schools President and CEO Nina Rees. “Their amazing efforts on behalf of Washington’s students has led to one of the most remarkable victories in the history of this movement.” The legislation heads back to the state Senate, which has already approved a similar proposal. The Associated Press has more: http://bit.ly/1TNcIjK.

 

Nina Rees, quoted here, formerly was education advisor to Vice President Richard Cheney and then worked for Michael Milken in his education business.

 

 

 

 

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

Apple CEO Tim Cook is a Public High School Graduate: Would He Stand with Us?

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2016 //
36

The Washington Post profiled Tim Cook, CEO of one of the world’s most valuable companies. Cook graduated from the high school in Robertsdale, Alabama, in 1978.

 

It was there, faced with stark racism, that Cook developed his sense of social justice.

 

Cook is gay, and he knew he was different. He is not celebrated in Robertson, as he should be, probably because he is gay. No, because he is gay.

 

Cook’s experiences growing up in Robertsdale – detailed by him in public speeches and recalled by others — are key to understanding how a once-quiet tech executive became one of the world’s most outspoken corporate leaders. Apple has long emphasized the privacy of its products, but today Cook talks about privacy not as an attribute of a device, but as a right — a view colored by his own history.

 

For Cook, it was in this tiny town midway between Mobile, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla., that a book-smart boy developed what he calls his “moral sense.”

 

On the surface easy-going and popular, according to former classmates, Cook seemed too aware of the injustices around him.

 

“I have to believe that growing up in Alabama, during the 1960s and witnessing what he did, especially as someone who is gay, he understood the dangers of remaining silent,” said Kerry Kennedy, a human-rights activist who has met Cook several times and whose father, Robert F. Kennedy, Cook considers one of his heroes.

 

“He’s not afraid to stand up when he sees something wrong,” she added.

 

***

Cook’s chance to stand up came early, when he was in just the sixth or seventh grade.

 

In the early 1970s, he was riding his new 10-speed bicycle at night along a rural road just outside Robertsdale when he spotted a burning cross. He pedaled closer.

 

He saw Klansmen in white hoods and robes. The cross was on the property of a family he knew was black. It was almost more than he could comprehend.

 

Without thinking, he shouted, “Stop!”

 

The group turned toward the boy. One of them raised his hood. Cook recognized the man as a local deacon at one of the dozen churches in town, but not the one attended by Cook’s family.

 

The man warned the boy to keep moving.

 

“This image was permanently imprinted in my brain and it would change my life forever,” Cook recalled in a speech in 2013, an incident that he also has recounted to friends.

 

A few years later, at age 16, Cook won an essay contest sponsored by a rural electric company and, as part of the prize, met Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the segregationist who resisted the federal government’s attempts to integrate the state’s public schools during the ’60s.

 

Cook shook Wallace’s hand that day, but described it as “a betrayal of my own beliefs,” he said in a speech last year. “It felt wrong. Like I was selling a piece of my soul.”

 

On the same trip, Cook met President Jimmy Carter at the White House. To Cook, the difference between the two men was impossible to miss — “one was right and one was wrong.”

 

Knowing Tim Cook’s moral center is strong, I wonder if he would stand with those of us who are trying to stop the privatization of public education, the effort by giant corporations to monetize the schools and turn them into “investments” with a sure “rate of return”?

 

 

 

Categories Alabama, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Gene Glass: Which Students Do Charter Schools Serve?

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2016 //
6

The eminent researcher Gene Glass notes on his blog that the purpose of charter schools, when they were first launched, was to enroll the students with the highest needs. Now, ironically, those are the students likeliest to be avoided by most charter schools.

 

He writes:

 

The great irony is that the charter school movement was launched decades ago as a solution to the “problem” that special needs students were not being adequately served by the traditional public schools. Charter schools would specialize in serving the needs of that neglected population — or so the story went. How ironic, then, that the modern charter school movement creams the top performing, largely white middle class, sector of the public school population and leaves the poor, the needy, and the minorities back in the traditional public schools.

 

He gives citations to prove his point.

 

Glass adds:

 

And now, irony climbs atop irony. Charter schools that have creamed high scoring students from the public schools are labeling high percentages of the students “autistic” to increase their state allotment from under $10,000 per regular student to about $20,000 per “autistic” student. And then they report no expenditures for special programs.

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

How Do You Explain the Corporate Assault on Public Education to Friends Who Know Nothing About It?

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2016 //
66

I received an email from a daily reader of the blog who asked me how she could explain the downside of corporate reform to friends at a dinner party in the suburbs who know nothing at all about the issues. She said that her friends were liberal Democrats, but their own children are grown, and they don’t read the blogs. What could she say that was direct, accurate, and informative?

We exchanged emails and began creating a list of snappy explanatory comments. Our combined list is below. Would you be good enough to send me your suggestions?

Your friend says, “So what do you think of the education reform movement?” Or, “How could anyone be opposed to education reform?”

And you answer, “What you call education “reform” is not reform at all. It is a way of making public schools look bad so they can be turned over to private managers. That’s privatization of one of our fundamental democratic institutions.”

Well, they may look at you and wonder if you have gone off the deep end, so you have to give them examples of what “education reform” actually means.

Like “for profit charter schools that are supported with tax dollars”

Like “excessive testing that makes money for test companies but isn’t good for kids”

Like “giving standardized tests to children in kindergarten and the earliest grades”

Like “turning kindergarten into first or second grade, where children study academics instead of playing”

Like “Race to the Top that pays schools to use the Common Core”

Like “charter schools that are never held accountable because their owners make big contributions to politicians”

Like “charter schools that get high test scores because they exclude kids with disabilities, kids learning English and remove those with low test scores”

Like “corporate charter chains replacing neighborhood public schools”

Like “virtual charters where kids lose 180 days of math for every 100 days of school”

Like “vouchers that go to fundamentalist schools where kids learn creationist science and the evangelical version of history”

Like “teachers are evaluated as ineffective or effective by the test scores of their students, even though research demonstrates that this is a flawed method”

Like “uncertified, inexperienced teachers who are assigned to the kids with the greatest needs”

And for a fanfare: “Our nation has pursued failed market-based policies for 15 years. It is time to do what works, based on evidence and experience.”

The list could be longer. Send me your suggestions. We could put them on a palm card so that anyone is prepared to answer the questions at any time.

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

March Issue of “Monthly Review” Devoted to Testing Resistance

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2016 //
7

The March issue of the “Monthly Review” is devoted to education, to standardized testing, opt out, and resistance.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Opt Out, Resistance, Testing

Video: Ride the Profitship Charter Chain to Success!

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2016 //
5

Here is a very funny video that says in 2 minutes what the public needs to hear as more and more community public schools are run by corporate charter chains. I could explain the same thing with footnotes in a chapter, but skip the chapter and watch the video. It was produced by the Progressive Magazine.

 

This video was made by the same team that created this video. It’s all about the money.

 

 

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

Peter Greene: The Flawed Premises of Reform

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2016 //
22

Peter Greene here takes apart the fundamental ideas behind the reformers’ devotion to accountability and shows why it is not working and will never work.

He analyzes an article in the Washington Post by Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli, former and current CEO of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, to explain the issue. Finn and Petrilli have written a somewhat triumphant analysis of the “success” of reform in the past decade. They are huge fans of Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. They think that Common Core was a great step forward. They admire the federally-funded tests for the Common Core, PARCC and SBAC. They are delighted that states have raised the passing marks on their tests so it is much harder for students to pass them. (Most states reported that a majority of students “failed” the first and even the second administration of the new tests. At this rate, most students will never get a high school diploma.)

They are delighted with the more rigorous standards and tests: We’ve been known for ages as education gadflies, and we still find plenty to fault when it comes to policy and practice in the United States. But let us be clear: Despite what you might hear from opt-outers and other critics, U.S. standards, tests and accountability systems are all dramatically stronger, fairer and more honest than they were a decade ago. You might even call it progress.

Needless to say, Peter Greene, a veteran teacher in Pennsylvania, does not see the situation in the same way. He finds one sentence by Finn and Petrilli that encapsulates the flawed premises of “reform”:

At the core of the good idea was the common-sense insight that if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should set clear expectations for student learning, measure whether our kids are meeting them and hold schools accountable for their outcomes, mainly gauged in terms of academic achievement.

Greene says that Common Core was the result of trying to “make expectations clear.” He writes:

“the way to make expectations clear is to make them specific, and before you know it, you have one-size-fits-all standards, and one-size-fits-all standards suck in the same way that making all US school students wear a one-size-fits-all uniform and eat one-size-fits-all food.

It is like saying that we can fix the divorce problem in this country by setting clear expectations for getting married and holding everyone to those expectations. Fordham sages tried to get around this with their “tight-loose” formulation, but they failed. Meanwhile, the standards themselves are amateur-hour constructions that take a definite side in arguments that experts don’t find at all as neatly settled as the standards assume (e.g. is reading a complex relationship between reader and text, or a set of skills and behaviors– the Core insists on the latter, but actual educators favor the former).

Can we really measure what our children are learning? Greene thinks not.

It really is as simple as that– we do not have a large-scale, standardized instrument that can measure all learning for all students in a standardized, one-size-measures-all manner. Instead of asking, “What’s the best way to measure critical thinking” test manufacturers have asked “What’s something we could do on a standardized mass-administered test that would pass for a critical thinking measure?”

Why not hold schools accountable for outcomes?

Greene writes:

“Outcomes” just means “test scores,” and that, again, is such a truncated, inadequate vision of the mission of US public schools. Ask a taxpayer, “What are you paying schools and teachers to do?” I doubt that you will hear the answer, “Why, just to have students get good test scores. That’s it. That’s what I’m paying them to do.”

And then Peter sums up and explains why “reformers” think that their approach is just “common sense”:

The notion that all of these things– the clear and specific standards being measured by a test leading to “accountability” measures taken against the schools that come up short– are common sense? Well, we have to call them “common sense” because we can’t call them “evidence based” or “scientifically proven” or even “sure seemed to work well over in Location X” because none of those things are true. They haven’t worked anywhere else, and now that we’ve been trying it for over a decade, we can see pretty clearly that they don’t work here, either.

The best we get from reformsters is a circular argument– “this tool is a valid measure and means of improvement, because when I measure the progress of this tool by using this tool, I see success.”

There are other unfounded assumptions underlying the reformster approach that depend on these other bad assumptions. For instance, the whole idea that the power of the free market can be unloosed to improve education rests on the idea that we can measure definitively which are the best schools producing the best students who are taught by the best teachers. But we can no more do that than we can list the hundred best marriages in America, or the hundred best friends.

They remain convinced that we must have one-size-fits-all standards so that we can measure all students against them so that we can compare all students and schools so that we can…. what? We still don’t have a real answer. It’s common sense. It’s something you just have to do, because not doing it clashes with reformsters beliefs about how the world is supposed to work. They literally do not understand how education works, and when they approach the world of education, they feel like OCD sufferers in a museum where all the paintings are hung crooked. They want to “fix” it, and they want to ask the people who work there, “How can you possibly function like this?” They can’t see that the paintings aren’t crooked at all.

The whole reformster approach is based on measuring a cloud with a meter stick, measuring the weather with a decibel meter, measuring love with a spoon.

Reformsters want to drive the school bus by setting a brick on the gas pedal and strapping the steering wheel into place, and every time the bus hits a tree, they say, “Oh, well, we just need a next-generation brick, and to fine-tune where we strap the steering wheel into place.” They will tweak and improve and re-tweak, and they will keep failing because their approach is fundamentally wrong.

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

Mercedes Schneider: Why Jeb Bush’s Presidential Campaign Fizzled

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2016 //
20

Mercedes Schneider is a close Jeb! watcher. She recognized that he was the godfather of many of today’s most damaging corporate reforms. He linked arms with Michelle Rhee to push for vouchers in Florida (but the voters turned him down). He begat the idea that schools should be given a single letter grade, based mainly on standardized test scores. He has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for school choice of all kinds, especially charter schools and for-profit charters. He cheered the Common Core standards more than anyone. He created an alliance between ALEC and his own organization, the so-called Foundation for Educational Excellence.

 

He started his presidential campaign with more money than anyone else. But voters didn’t want another Bush. They wanted a reality TV star.

 

We can hope that the dimming of his presidential prospects also dims the luster of his faux education reforms, which were always about privatization and profit, not students or education.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Idaho: Boise Superintendent Stands Up to the Privatizing Albertson Foundation

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2016 //
13

Dr. Don Coberly, the superintendent of the Boise, Idaho, school district, wrote a blunt letter to the district’s staff telling them not to believe the smears disseminated by the rich and powerful Albertson Foundation. This would be like the superintendent of Los Angeles telling Eli Broad to take his money and go away. Or the superintendent of any district turning down a bribe from the Gates Foundation to open more charters.

 

 

For his courage, I add Don Coberly to the blog’s honor roll.

 

 

The Albertson Foundation has been pushing charters and virtual charters. It doesn’t like public education. It is running an anti-public school campaign called “Don’t Fail Idaho.” It is about time that an educator with guts started a campaign calling out the Albertson Foundation for their anti-public school propaganda. Call it the “Albertson Foundation Fails Democracy” campaign.

 

 

Superintendent Coberly wrote:

 
Dear Boise School District staff member:

 

It’s been a while since we have communicated directly with you in an update. We wanted to take this opportunity to address an important issue.

 

Over the last few weeks you may have heard or seen the latest advertisements from the J.A and Kathryn Albertson Foundation’s “Don’t Fail Idaho” campaign. Perhaps the most controversial claim is that four out of five Idaho students are not prepared for life after high school. There are four facts we want you to understand about this campaign:

 
It promotes an agenda that is designed to undermine public schools.
It is highly inaccurate.
It offers no real solutions to increasing post-secondary readiness.
It is a disservice to the work you do every day for the youth of this district.
Undermining public schools

 

 

Why would someone want to undermine public education in Idaho? The motive is quite clear. At a recent Downtown Rotary Club meeting, the executive director of the Albertson Foundation stated that the goal of the Foundation is to increase charter school seats by 20,000 in the next few years. That will only happen if Idahoans lose faith in their public schools.

 

 

Predicting college success

 

 

Now let’s set the record straight. The data in question have been spun to create the illusion that 80% of Idaho’s high school graduates are not prepared for college. The source of the data is the 2015 SAT test, administered to juniors in Idaho’s high schools last April. The criteria used by the Foundation? A score of 500 on each of the 3 sections of the test, and an overall score of 1550, adopted by the Idaho Board of Education as an indicator of college success.

 

 

The creator of the SAT indicated that achieving this score provides a 66% chance that a freshman will achieve a grade average of B- in the first semester at a four-year college. While this may be one predictor of success in college, it clearly does not reflect other factors that often are more important. High school grades are more predictive than SAT scores. Experience in Dual Credit and Advanced Placement courses are more important. Enrollment and success in Professional Technical coursework, such as Welding or Auto Body, is more important.

 

 

Among members of the Boise District high school graduating class of 2009 who have graduated from college, nearly 40% did not achieve the benchmark when they took the SAT or its competitor, the ACT. According to the Foundation, it must be a miracle they graduated from college.

 

 

Additionally, we know that only 1 in 10 Boise District students entering Boise State University require remediation in math and reading. This is direct evidence that at least 90% of District students are prepared for college – and that’s due to the tremendous work you do with our students.

 
Our commitment to post-secondary readiness

 

The ad is just one more indication that the Foundation is out of touch with where Idaho is going. For the first time in nearly a decade, The Governor, State Board of Education, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Legislature, ISBA, IASA, and the IEA are working together to build up our public education system, funding schools more properly and making teacher salaries more competitive in order to improve the economy and develop a more educated citizenry. The Albertsons Foundation is trying to tear it down.

 

Your efforts are appreciated

 

 

In spite of the disheartening rhetoric that the Albertson Foundation is promoting, we know that the community supports and recognizes the work that all of you do daily to prepare our students. We will continue to oppose any effort to undermine your dedication, our students’ successes and the role public schools play in creating a vibrant, healthy city and state.

 

 

Please feel free to share the information contained herein with parents and community members who might have questions for you about the negative campaign being waged across the state by the Albertson Foundation. We value your service to the community and to our students, and we know that parents and community members do, as well.
Our District’s mission is to “graduate each student prepared for college, career, and citizenship.”

 

Thanks so much for all you do to help us achieve this mission.

 
Sincerely,

 

Dr. Don Coberly

 
Superintendent
Boise School District

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Honor Roll, Idaho, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »