Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Jersey Jazzman Fact Checks “The Prize”

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2015 //
7

Jersey Jazzman, aka Mark Weber, is an expert on Newark school reform. As a teacher, researcher, and blogger, he has reported and analtzed every twist and turn of the Newark story.

Who better, then, to fact check Dale Russakoff’s new book, “The Prize,” which tells the story of what happened to Mark Zuckerberg’s gift of $100 million to reform the schools of Newark. The gift came in response to a request by them-Mayor Cory Booker and newly-elected Governor Chris Christie.

It is a good read and an important review. I wish Russakoff had interviewed Mark Weber.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, New Jersey, Newark

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post Goes Bonkers

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2015 //
31

Can you believe this?

While everyone else is complaining that Governor Cuomo is crushing teachers with his punitive and research-less teacher evaluation plan, the New York Post complains that Governor Cuomo has capitulated to the teachers’ union by ordering a new review of the Common Core standards and assessments. Imagine that! The governor actually might have cared that 220,000 children opted out; he no doubt realized that 220,000 children might have 400,000 or so parents, and they vote. The New York Post seems unaware that in a democracy, it is usually a good idea to pay attention to mass movements.

The Post feels certain that Cuomo is kowtowing to those horrible teachers’ unions, always the enemy (the teachers’ union has now morphed into George Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein in “1984,” the quintessential enemy of the State).

Read the editorial. The Post will not be satisfied until there are mass firings of teachers.

Here are the closing lines:

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: The unions and the politicians they control will make sure no system ever lets schools shed rotten teachers.

The only hope for kids is to flee these failure factories — to flee to charters or private schools, or out of New York altogether.

Oh, dear, where should families flee to?

Not to Connecticut; it has teachers’ unions.

Not to New Jersey; it has teachers’ unions.

Not to Massachusetts; it has teachers’ unions.

Not to Pennsylvania; it has teachers’ unions.

Flee, families, flee!

Flee to Tennessee! Flee to Mississippi! Flee to North Carolina! Flee to the Deep South! Flee to any state without a teachers’ union.

You won’t get better education but at least you can be sure that the teachers are without any representation.

Oh, and by the way, do the writers and workers at the New York Post belong to a union? Or is it a non-union shop?

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Unions

The Waltons’ War Against Public Schools and How Regular Folks Beat Them in Their Own Backyard

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2015 //
15

Learn how the Waltons–the billionaires who own Walmart–are trying to replace public schools with privately managed charters and vouchers and to eliminate teachers’ unions. Learn how the people of Arkansas said no and defeated them in the state the Waltons think they own.

This article, by Kali Holloway, describes how the billionaires got beaten in their attempt to privatize all of Arkansas’s public schools.

This past January, nearly 60 years after Arkansas’ first desegregation efforts, the state board of education dissolved Little Rock’s democratically elected local school board, the most racially inclusive and representative of its majority-black constituency in nearly a decade. In making the decision, the state overruled widespread public outcry to take control of the largest school district in the state. Two months later, Walton Family Foundation-backed lobbyists launched a brazen legislative push to allow for broader privatization — or put bluntly, “charterization” — of schools across Arkansas. It was a move many believed revealed a carefully orchestrated effort, begun months prior, to undermine the state’s public school system, destroy its teachers unions and turn public funds into private profits.

Anyone with even a passing interest in public education knows how this story normally ends; one need only look to places like Philadelphia, where Walton dollars have helped launch an explosion of charters, or New Orleans and Detroit, where Walton funds have contributed to a system in which a majority of K-12 students now attend charter schools. Though it is not the only big-money contributor to the education reform movement (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a key player, as are countless millionaire hedge funders, investment bankers and other titans of finance), no single entity has poured more money into the push for “school choice” than the Walton Family Foundation. As a recent report from In the Public Interest and the American Federation of Teachers notes, “the foundation has kick-started more than 1,500 schools, approximately one out of four charters in the country. Over the last five years [WFF] has spent between $63 million and $73 million annually to fuel new charter openings.”

Yet despite the power and money of the Waltons, they got their backside kicked by the people of Arkansas when they tried to take over and privatize the state’s schools.

But this March, Arkansas proved the exception to the ubiquity of Walton rule. Following the introduction of House Bill 1733, which would have vastly expanded the potential for privatization of Arkansas’ public school districts, a collection of grassroots groups, urban and rural school advocates, educators, parents, and other passionate individuals committed to public education mobilized. Recognizing they were out-spent, the collective out-organized the Walton lobby, killing the bill before it even passed out of committee.The bill’s defeat was made all the more significant by the fact that it occurred in the Waltons’ own backyard. Like the family business, Walmart, the Walton dynasty’s philanthropic arm is headquartered in Arkansas. The Waltons loom so large in the state, in politics, banking, education, and of course, big-box retailing, one former Arkansas educator and public school parent told me that when HB1733 appeared, she imagined every public interaction would soon involve a Walton-backed entity. “Before long, you’ll be able to drop your kids off at a Walton charter school and then get your groceries at one of those Walmart Neighborhood Markets.”

In an era in which Walton money is, state by state and district by district, changing one of our most vital public institutions into a guaranteed investment scheme for the rich and powerful and popularizing the neoliberal notion that our schools are so irreparably broken they can only be saved by a new competition-based, market-driven education system, the defeat of HB1733 deserves an up-close look. It’s the rare story of a win that, for reasons both practical and symbolic, should get the attention of everyone who values the institution of public education.

In Arkansas, the Walton putsch began with a state takeover of the Little Rock School District, which had six schools (out of 48) in academic distress. This effectively transferred control from a majority black school board to a white state-level agency. Black voters and parents in Little Rock were left without a voice in the education of their children.

Education advocates didn’t like the swift takeover, nor the installation of non-educators in charge of the state and the district. They were:

“most disturbed by the fact that seven months after the takeover, the state still hadn’t offered a game plan for how it would repair Little Rock’s “academically distressed” schools. If the state had no clear strategy for fixing those schools, why had it bothered to take them over in the first place?

“What’s the plan to make these schools better?” Brenda Robinson, president of the Arkansas Education Association, asked when I spoke to her. “Literally, there’s really not a plan, there’s never been a plan. Right now, you’re still hearing community members out there saying, how are you going to get those six schools out of academic distress and keep the rest out? How are we going to do that? There’s not a definite…roadmap to say how we do this.”

The Walton takeover plan started with Little Rock, but its ambitions were much larger, as revealed by the introduction of HB 1733 in the legislature:

Reportedly written by Scott Smith, head of the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, a nonprofit that receives $3 million in grants annually from the Walton Family Foundation, the bill would have granted the state power to take over any district deemed in academic distress in favor of an “Achievement School District.” As Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times wrote, the law would “make all school teachers and administrators fire-at-will employees without due process rights. It would destroy one of the two last remaining teacher union contracts in Arkansas. It allows for the permanent end of democratic control of a school district or those portions of it privatized. It would capture property tax millage voted by taxpayers for specific purposes, including buildings, and give them to private operators. It would allow seizure of buildings for private operators at no cost.”

In short, it looked an awful lot like charter legislation currently being passed around the country, often with the backing of Walton Family Foundation dollars. And that set off alarm bells for those on the side of Arkansas’ public education system.

Education advocates knew that this was a thinly veiled attempt to follow the pattern of New Orleans and the Achievement School District in Tennessee, which takes away all rights and voice from parents and the public.

Rural educators saw a threat in the bill to have the state takeover some or many or all of their schools.

Perhaps equally important in sparking an immediate negative response to the bill among Arkansas public education watchers was its familiarity. During the 2013 legislative session, Walton-backed forces had attempted to pass HB1040, a bill that sought to create a special, autonomous panel to handle all charter-related issues, thereby circumnavigating the state board of education. Though that legislation was defeated, it appeared to Grandon and others to be just the latest in an ongoing series of public school privatization attempts.

“This wasn’t our first dance,” Grandon said of HB1733 when we talked. “We’ve recognized the threat from privatization forces for years. In Arkansas, you can go all the way back to the late ’90s, when there was the Murphy Commission, then the Blue Ribbon Commission. All of those were financed and instigated by the same people who were pushing HB1733, and the purpose was to define public schools as failing and needing not just drastic improvement, but even a whole, ‘Let’s tear them down and rebuild them into something else, because there is no way to fix this monster.’”

Arkansans have become adept at “decoding” privatization attempts, and they decided they were not going to allow the Waltons to take over their public schools. Organizations from across the state agreed to collaborate on a nonpartisan effort to defeat the bill.

What followed was round-the-clock organizing on every possible front. Each group rallied its membership base, creating a groundswell of opposition from across the state that was impossible for House Education Committee Chair Bruce Cozart to ignore. “What you basically had was a collaboration, a combined effort from, you might say, all of the education groups in Arkansas,” Boyce Watkins, advocacy director for Arkansas School Boards Association told me. “And not just them, but the people they touch, which is a significant number of people. Now whenever you have that broad of a base contacting legislators and telling them, we don’t want this, then legislators are put in a position where they listen to that. They’re elected officials.”

 

The coalition of pro-public education groups was so effective that the bill was pulled on March 17, only 11 days after it was introduced.

The Waltons were beaten back, but observers expect them to return with a different strategy.

The education blogger for the Arkansas Times said:

“I also wouldn’t be surprised if that bill comes back written in such a way that it is very limited only to Little Rock, and therefore is more palatable to others within the state that may see Little Rock as a problem needing to be fixed….From my perspective, a lot of that comes from race and class and prejudices that people have that allow them to think about places like New Orleans or inner-city Memphis or Philadelphia or Little Rock as being different. That those are places with pathological problems.”

Neil Sealy said very nearly the same thing when I asked him about looking forward. “I don’t see a New Orleans scenario….But I do see a significant increase in charters. And a busting of the teachers union, a downgrade in certification for teaching, and continued [racial] segregation of the schools to parallel the segregation of the neighborhoods. And my fear is that, we got people to rise up this last session from all over the state, but is that going to happen this time around? I think HB1733 was an extreme bill. And my bet is it’s going to be not as extreme next time. And it could just target Little Rock.”

So, the Waltons will come back with their sure-fire formula for success: Limit the “crisis” to Little Rock, which won’t upset the white folks in rural areas; privatize the schools; get rid of the teachers’ union; lower standards for new teachers; foster more racial segregation.

It is an unlovely, powerless, and mean future that the Waltons have in store for the rest of us, but especially for black people and their children.

Categories Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Los Angeles: The Scandal-Plagued Legacy of John Deasy

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2015 //
31

Zahira Torres and Howard Blume wrote a blockbuster assessment of John Deasy’s tumultuous tenure as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School
District. Being good reporters, they bent over backwards to tell this sordid tale without rendering judgment. But the facts they present are damning. They were largely gathered from Deasy’s travel and expense records, which the reporters obtained by a Freedom of Information request.

1. He had a heavy travel schedule, which took him away from the district for 200 days. His travels interfered with his responsibilities.

“At key moments of tumult in the district, the records show, Deasy was simply not in town….

“The beginning of the end came a year ago, just before the school year started. Deasy was in New York to discuss challenges threatening education reform.

“Back at home, the city’s public schools were in disarray. By the time Deasy returned for the first day of classes, a malfunctioning scheduling system had forced students into gyms and auditoriums to await assignments. Some of them ended up in the wrong courses, putting their path to graduation in jeopardy.

“Two months later, in October, a Superior Court judge ordered state education officials to meet with Deasy to fix the scheduling problems that he said deprived students of their right to an education. But Deasy flew to South Korea the next morning to visit schools and meet government officials. A week later, he resigned, under pressure, as head of the nation’s second-largest school system.”

2. He spent lavishly on travel and meals; foundations with their own agenda subsidized his expenses.

“Deasy, who was paid $350,000 a year as superintendent, took more than 100 trips, spent generously on meals as he lobbied state and national lawmakers and wooed unions, foundations and educational leaders, according to credit card receipts, calendars and emails obtained under the California Public Records Act.

“Deasy spent about $167,000 on airfare, hotels, meals and entertainment during his tenure; half paid by philanthropists and foundations, and the other half by the district. Private foundations often make contributions to school districts, and the LAUSD’s position is that those funds can be used for the superintendent’s expenses.

“Among the philanthropists who subsidized his expenses, according to district records, were entertainment executive Casey Wasserman and Eli Broad, both of whom support education causes through their foundations.

“Deasy attended conferences and held meetings in cities including Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The tab for an evening with teachers union officers at Drago Centro in Los Angeles ran to more than $1,000. During a one-night stay at the Four Seasons hotel in New York, for which he spent $900, he met, among others, Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and president of the Emerson Collective, which awards grants and invests in education initiatives.”

3. Deasy was hired without a national search. “Influential philanthropists” and then-Mayor Villaraigosa selected Deasy. We may safely assume that Eli Broadwas one of those influential philanthropists.

4. Deasy’s pals in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and those “influential philanthropists” poured millions into school board elections to defeat Deasy critics and elect Deasy allies.

“Groups with ties to Silicon Valley and Wall Street have played growing roles in the education reform movement by donating to school board candidates. The Emerson Collective, along with Broad and others, put hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaigns for board members who supported Deasy’s goals.”

5. Despite his large salary, Deasy asked his powerful friends to pay for some of his expenses. Here is one example, that a tuay sounds humiliating to Deasy, who extends a begging bowl to Eli Broad.

“Some board members said they also worried that by requesting and accepting reimbursement for travel from Wasserman, Broad and others who supported his reform efforts, Deasy was creating the perception that he might give a special hearing to those donors.

“In an email, for example, Deasy sought a “scholarship” from Broad to attend a dinner in New York honoring two education leaders who shared his vision for turning around troubled school districts.

“Would Eli support my attendance at an event?” Deasy wrote in October 2011 to Gregory McGinity, a senior official with the Broad Foundation. “I do not have such means to buy the ticket myself…. Do you think he would ‘scholarship’ me?”

“The Broad Foundation reimbursed the district $1,400 for Deasy’s airfare and hotel. A board member of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank hosting the event, covered the superintendent’s $1,500 ticket for the dinner, according to the email.”

6. Deasy’s iPad fiasco was a disaster that is now being investigated by the FBI.

“Deasy’s signature effort to provide iPads to all students failed, and the cost of untangling the troubled student records system has now topped $200 million.”

7. Deasy had to go not only because of the iPad mess and the disaster with the district’s computer programming, but because he testified for the plaintiffs when LAUSD was sued in the Vergara case, instead of testifying for the district he led.

“Board President Steve Zimmer said Deasy’s confrontational approach reached a breaking point for him when the superintendent became a star witness for the plaintiffs in Vergara vs. California.

“That case, now on appeal, was heralded by national school reformers for making it easier to fire teachers and ending the current practice of layoffs based on seniority. It angered teachers who believed that they were under constant attack from the superintendent, who did not consult the board about the litigation.

“Once he chose to do what he did in the way that he did it, I knew I could no longer support his superintendency,” Zimmer said. “There was no reason he had to be on that stand.”

And where does Deasy work now? For Eli Broad, training school district leaders based on his own experience as a leader of the reform movement.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Los Angeles, Technology, Computers

Mike Sacken: Advice for Bored Billionaires

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2015 //
35

On reading that a gaggle of philanthropists is sponsoring education coverage by the Los Angeles Times, many readers assume this implies editorial control. Perhaps not. We will wait and see. The groups involved have a record of attacking public schools and promoting privatization. Eli Broad, one of the group, recently announced his intention to get at least half the city’s children into charters. He is widely known for his tight control over his grants.

One reader, Mike Sacken, had a suggestion:

“I wonder if we could negotiate w/the gang of bored billionaires for them to take over a state – it could be their fiefdom and playground and they do whatever the hell they wanted w/it. Citizens could escape as needed. I have a few states in the south I think we could give them so the rest of America could continue w/this perilous and complex experiment w/semi-democracy.”

Any volunteers prepared to abandon democracy in return for spare change from the Billionaire Boys Club?

Categories Corporate Reformers

Vicki Cobb: Something about Reform Smells Rotten

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2015 //
19

Vicki Cobb, noted author of science books for children, here reviews the powerful video “Education, Inc.”

She writes:

“The American Revolution ultimately came together with the widespread distribution of a pamphlet that spoke truth about power. [Now] is the start of a public awareness campaign to take a close look at the school reform movement through a modern day equivalent of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense — an hour-long documentary called Education, Inc. It is not something that the billionaires behind the so-called reform movement want you to see.

“The brilliant award-winning film-makers, Brian and Cindy Malone, navigate their way through a complex and seemingly diabolical scheme to “reinvent” education where school reform is sold through a sophisticated advertising smoke screen touting “choice” for children. How do they expose what’s really happening? The premise of Education, Inc. is simple: Follow the money.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform

MUST READ: 10 Years of Celebrating Katrina “Success”

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2015 //
24

This brilliant article does not attempt to assess the success or failure of the Néw Orleans school reform. Instead, it reviews the steady drumbeat of media celebration of the disaster as a golden opportunity. Bottom line: Privatization is wonderful, a game-changer, a win-win.

“Torture the data enough, and the “New Orleans miracle” can be teased out if one wants it enough. Despite studies and reporting showing otherwise, for the sake of this piece it doesn’t actually matter if radical post-Katrina New Orleans school reform was a “success,” a failure or somewhere in between. What is important is that so many corporatists think this “miracle” was not just an incidental positive but was, all things considered, worth it. Worth the 1,800 people killed and the 100,000 African-Americans permanently ejected from the city.

“The most popular examination of this pathology is, of course, from Naomi Klein, who coined the idea of the ”shock doctrine” in her 2007 book of the same name. In it, she explores how Katrina and other manmade and non-manmade disasters are exploited to rush through a radical right wing corporate agenda.

“Those who find this a useful model are accused by critics like Malcolm Gladwell of “cynicism”; tragedies happen, they say, and we would be stupid not to exploit them. Here’s a list of those who championed this model, both immediately after the storm and since. One can decide for themselves if this ideology-mongering was exploitation or good-faith public servants simply responding to crisis.”

Then follows a litany of comments by champions of corporate takeover. It starts with David Brooks in the New York Times only days after the hurricane. His ideas were to displace the poor and make the city just right for gentrification.

A week later came a proposal for vouchers, offered by a group sponsored by the Koch brothers.

This is a most valuable collection of prescriptions for and celebrations of privatization.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Andrea Gabor Expands Her Response to Critics of Her Article about New Orleans “Reforms”

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2015 //
9

Andrea Gabor wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times questioning the “New Orleans Miracle,” and she was immediately pummeled and vilified by defenders of charters. She responded to the critics in a piece on this blog. She has now posted a longer response on her own blog, which appears here.

Be sure to read the long and moving statement by Howard Fuller, one of the most prominent African American voices in favor of corporate reforms (charters and vouchers). Here is part of it:


“I do believe things are better for a large number of kids than before Katrina. But I don’t want to be put in the position of saying: pre-Katrina was all bad, post-Katrina is all good. When we set it up that way, we’re negating anything that was positive before Katrina. What that tends to negate is the capacity of black people to do anything of excellence.

“The firing of those teachers is a wound that will never be closed, never be righted. I understand the issue of urgency. But a part of this quite frankly has to do with the fact that I do not believe that black people are respected. I don’t believe that our institutions are respected. And I don’t believe that our capacity to help our own people is respected…

“Its hard for me, because I do support the reforms and think there are some great things that have happened. I do have to ask the same question as Randi (Weingarten)—at what cost?

“Even if you talk to black people who drank the Kool-aide: The issue still is– this was done to us not with us. That feeling is deep. It can’t be ignored. It speaks to any type of long-term sustainability of what’s happening in New Orleans.

“When black people came out of slavery, we came out with a clear understanding of the connection between education and liberation. Two groups of white people descended upon us—the missionaries and the industrialists. They both had their view of what type of education we needed to make our new-born freedom realized. During this period there’s an analogy—I’ve said this to all my friends in Kipp And TFA. During this period two groups of white people descended on us the industrialists and the missionaries. And each one of them have their own view of what kind of education we need.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, New Orleans

Mitchell Robinson: How the Reform Agenda of Churn and Chaos Undermined Detroit Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2015 //
11

Mitchell Robinson, a professor of music at Michigan State University, has figured out how the reform/privatization agenda works.

Robinson writes:

The typical reform agenda goes something like this:

*demoralize the teachers

*defund the unions

*dismantle the schools

*privatize public education

We see evidence of this approach in places like New Orleans with its “Recovery School District,” and Detroit, where Gov. Snyder’s Frankenstein-like “Education Achievement Authority” continues to deprive the students and citizens of local control of their schools. The reformers’ tactics are brutal and unforgiving: create a public perception that the schools are failing, the teachers are lazy, the unions are greedy, and the only solutions are to close schools, expand choice, provide vouchers and valorize charters.

However, one of the more subtle, yet damaging, weapons in the reformers’ playbook is simultaneously less visible to the uninformed eye and more insidious in its ability to accomplish the reformers’ ultimate goal: the destabilization of public education by an intentional, purposeful strategy of near-constant turnover and turmoil in the leadership and teaching force in the schools…..

Detroit is a textbook case of the reform strategy for destroying public education.

An especially egregious example of this sort of intentional destabilization can be seen in the Detroit Public Schools, which has been under state control for most of the previous 15 years (1999-2005, 2009-2016). Under the Snyder administration, Detroit’s schools have suffered from a systematic defunding of facilities and equipment, sub-standard working conditions, safety concerns, drastic curriculum narrowing, and poor teacher morale as a result of the state’s takeover. Recent estimates are that fewer than 30% of Detroit’s children have access to school music classes, and only 40% have an art teacher. In 2014, Renaissance High School, long considered a bastion of high quality arts programming in the city, suffered devastating cuts to its music program, signaling a troubling trend in priorities from Detroit’s educational leaders.

Detroit Public Schools has had four leaders in the past four years.

It’s hard to understand how a school system can make any sort of sustained progress with a veritable revolving door of administrative transition occurring in the central offices–and this is certainly the case in Detroit: “Under emergency managers Robert Bobb, Roy Roberts and Martin, DPS has shed tens of thousands of students, closed dozens of schools and struggled with persistent deficits…Last fall’s (2014) preliminary enrollment was 47,238, less than half of the 96,000 students attending DPS when Bobb was appointed.”

It’s beyond time to declare Gov. Snyder’s approach to education reform in Detroit a resounding failure. The state has had 15 years to “fix” the problems they created through a massive disinvestment of public education in Michigan, and Detroit’s children and teachers have paid the price as a seemingly endless parade of highly paid “experts” have failed to turn the ship around.

State control is not only NOT a panacea; it is a manifest failure.

Robinson says it is past time to turn the public schools back to the people of Detroit. They might make mistakes but they are more trustworthy with their children than Governor Snyder and his appointees.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Peter Greene and EduShyster on Campbell Brown’s GOP Debate

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2015 //
37

I can’t think of anyone better qualified to cover Campbell Brown’s GOP debate than the gifted humorists Peter Greene and EduShyster (aka Jennifer Berkshire).

EduShyster posted a post with video of teacher Penny Culliton being turned away, even though she registered and had a ticket. This reminded EduShyster of school choice in general, where the school chooses whom to admit.

Penny is a regular commenter on this blog.thanks, Penny!

Peter Greene watched the event from home. He found much to laugh at. The candidates’ talking points were self-contradictory and incoherent.

Carly Fiorina seems to know nothing about education. They are all for local control except when they are for state takeovers. They all want tough accountability but they oppose the red tape that tough accountability imposes. They are sure that the evil demon is those wicked teachers’ unions.

Here is a sample of a column that would be hilarious if it weren’t so frightening to think that one of these people could become President of the United States:

“I had no intention of watching, but it’s like netflixing a bad comedy series– you just keep sticking around a little bit longer.. But there are several things that jump out.

“God-given”

“That’s the preferred modifier for the talents and abilities of students. This not only lets candidates name-check God, but it also sidesteps any discussion about what effects poverty and environment might have on the talents and abilities that a student brings to school.

“Local control is union control

“Yeah, this is a new but already-beloved talking point. If you let people have local control, those damn unions will just buy the elections, just like they did in…well, somewhere. The problem with this talking point will be coming up with an actual example of a local school board that is run by the bought-and-paid-for tools of the teachers union.

“Cognitive dissonance

“Holy smokes but the candidates disagree with themselves. Kasich thinks local control is awesome, but the state takeover of Cleveland and Youngstown is also awesome. This is a sticking point for all three candidates, who love them some local control and decry the evils of top-down federal over-reachy policy– but you can’t privatize and get charters and choice unless you open up the market by shutting down local voters.

“Also teachers unions are terrible and awful and a barrier to great things in education, but teachers themselves are wonderful and deserve our support and good pay except for the bad ones who should be driven from the classroom. We’re really torn here.

“Expectations are important and magical, so we can get students to do better just by expecting it, but not by supporting those expectations. Just expect.”

So that’s what Republican candidates promise: High expectations! That’s free. What a platform.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Republicans
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