Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Who Is Rahm’s Constituency?

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2015 //
9

Anthony Moser writes a guest column for EduShyster, asking and answering some questions about Mayor Rahm’s campaign: Who is funding it? Who benefits most from the mayor’s determination to make (or keep) Chicago “a world-class city”?

Moser looks at the city’s TIF (Tax Incentive Fund):

“This, presumably, is the justification for Rahm’s obsessive focus on downtown. Nearly half of the money collected in TIF districts has gone to the central business district. In case you are unfamiliar, TIFs are a means of diverting property taxes from their normal destinations, like schools and parks, and instead earmarking the funds for *development.* As originally enshrined in Illinois law, they were tools for improving blighted districts. Of course the Loop does not fit most definitions of *blight,* but the complicated rules of TIFs allow money to be shunted around between adjoining districts, so that money collected in Englewood can fund development downtown. Wealth does not flow from the prosperous center to the impoverished fringes, but instead the growth of downtown is financed by the parts of our city most in need….”

“Our mayor came into power after living in the city for less than a year with a campaign funded by powerful, wealthy people across the country. He has rewarded them with city contracts and privatization schemes even as he fired ordinary working folks like teachers and janitors by the thousands. He sues to curb pension benefits, while turning over those same pension funds to his friends and donors. He stands before the national media, taking no questions, to celebrate investment by and for the richest among us (and, given his ties to New York, Washington and LA, not among us). The campaign contributions Mayor Emanuel accepts in a week are more than many of the city’s residents could earn in a lifetime.”

For the links to sources, read the article.

Categories Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Emanuel, Rahm

Texas: How to Buy Education Policy

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2015 //
18

Here is a pathetic contrast that says a whole lot about the politics of education, not only in Texas but across the nation. The latest ethics report in Texas shows that “Texans for Education Reform,” a spinoff of Democrats for Education Reform, has hired 15 lobbyists to work the legislature this session. Most will be paid between $50,000-100,000, some less, some more. One will be paid between $150,000-200,000. This group would not call itself “Democrats for Education Reform” in Texas, because the Democratic Party is out of favor; the constituency this group appeals to would not want to be affiliated with any organization that called itself “Democrats.” The name may be helpful in fooling people in liberal states, but it would be a stigma in Texas.

 

Here is the contrast: the main anti-testing group is led by parents. It is called Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (known to fans as Moms Against Drunk Testing). TAMSA has hired one lobbyist, who will be paid less than $10,000.

 

The lesson: People who are super-rich are pouring big money into politics to kill off public education and replace it with high-stakes testing, charters and vouchers. They don’t care that there is now substantial evidence that most charters do not have higher test scores than similar public schools. They don’t care that voucher schools don’t outperform public schools. What drives them? They say it’s all about the kids but it seems more likely that they just don’t like public education and want to starve it of resources.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Texas, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Blame Your Legislators for Destroying Your Schools, Not the Local Board

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2015 //
10

Peter Greene lives in Pennsylvania, where the previous governor, Tom Corbett, and the Republican-controlled Legislature did their best to encourage corporate reform and to destroy public education. Corbett welcomed for-profit cyber-charters and every other kind of charter, and he slashed the budget for public education. The result can be seen starkly in Philadelphia, where many public schools have been replaced by charters, and the remaining public schools are stripped of programs, resources, and services.

 

Here he explains that it is not just urban districts like Philadelphia and York that are being cut down by “reformers,” but not-very-wealthy rural districts like the one he teaches in. People blame their local school boards, but even the most fiscally responsible local boards are falling victim to decisions made by the legislature.

 

He writes:

 

The closing of schools is rampant in my part of PA, and we aren’t alone. We’re a region of not-very-wealthy rural districts, but not-very-wealthy urban districts like Philly and York have also cut schools like a machete in a bamboo forest.

 

It is not a matter of declining student population, and it is not a matter of districts falling on tough times. It’s a widespread financial crisis, and it’s manufactured.

 

How to manufacture a statewide financial crisis.

 

Cut state funding. This puts the making-up-the-difference pressure on local taxpayers.

 

Take a ton of money away from public schools and give it to charters.

 

Create a huge pension funding crisis. This is its own kind of challenge, but the quick explanation is this– pre-2008, invest in really awesome stuff, and when that all tanks and districts suddenly have huge payments to make up, tell the districts they can just wait till later and hope for magic financial fairies to fix it. It is now later, there are no fairies, and a small district with an $18 million budget is looking at pension payments that go up $500K every year.

 

Oh, and pass a law that says districts can’t raise taxes more than a smidge in any given year….

 

The end result?

 

School districts are looking down the barrel of million-plus-dollar deficits. The two deficits for which I have now been a power point audience can both be entirely explained by the formula:

 

Charter Payments + Pension Payments + Other Tiny Obscure Cuts = District Deficit

 

In other words, a district that had a fiscally responsible year last year, that didn’t do anything crazy or odd or unusual and just left everything alone when planning for this year– that district is still facing huge deficits in their current budgeting cycle, unrelated to any choices that they made in managing their own local district.

 

Funny, last time I looked, it was states that have the primary responsibility in their constitutions for maintaining a “thorough and efficiency” (or some variation thereof) system of public education. But the legislators are passing mandates that shift the burden to local districts and sitting by while public schools are closed.

 

Is this part of a plan to privatize public education? What do you think?

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Funding, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Peter Greene on Cuomo’s Destruction of the Teaching Profession and the Democrats Who Helped Him

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2015 //
20

The ever perceptive Peter Greene watched the Cuomo Teacher-Demolition Derby from afar and found it a disgraceful spectacle. 

He couldn’t decide which was worse: Cuomo’s lust to crush the teachers, who stood by watching him coming with an axe in hand, or the Assembly Democrats, who wailed that they voted for Cuomo’s plan with a heavy heart but did it anyway. As someone tweeted earlier today, “Probably they had a heavy heart because they had no spine.”

Greene writes, for starters:

This has truly been the most bizarre thing I have ever seen. An unpopular proposal that guts teaching as a profession and kicks public education in the teeth, sails through the NY legislature.

Yes, “sails through.” There’s nothing else to call a budget that is approved 92-54.

NY Democrats tried to make it look like less of a total victory-in-a-walk for public education opponent Andrew Cuomo by making sad pouty faces and issuing various meaningless mouth noises while going ahead and voting for the damn thing. “Ohh, woes and sadderations,” they cried as they took turns walking to the podium to give Cuomo exactly the tools he wanted for helping to put an end to teaching as a profession in New York state.

I am not sure what Democrats hoped to accomplish by taking to the podium and twitter to say how deeply, tragically burdened they were. I mean, I guess you’d like to know that people who club baby seals feel a little bit bad about it, but it really doesn’t make a lot of difference to the baby seal, who is in fact still dead.

Maybe the lesson here is that the craziest person in the room controls the conversation. The person who’s willing to ram the car right into the sheer rock face gets to navigate the trip, and Cuomo has displayed repeatedly that he really doesn’t care what has to be smashed up. If the world isn’t going to go on his way, it doesn’t need to go on for anybody.

But if teachers needed reason #2,416 to understand that Democrats simply aren’t friends to public education, there it was, biting its quivering lip and sniffling, “I feel really bad about this” as it tied up education and fired it out of a cannon so that it could land directly under a bus that had been dropped off the Empire State Building.

Hell, even Campbell Brown must be a little gobsmacked, as Cuomo’s budgetary bludgeoning of tenure and job security rules has made her lawsuit unnecessary. The Big Standardized Tests results will continue their reign of teacher evaluation, dropping random and baseless scores onto the heads of New York educators like the feces of so many flying pigs. And all new teachers need to do to get their (soon-to-be-meaningless) tenure is get the random VAM dice to throw up snake-eyes four times in a row. Meanwhile, school districts can go out back to the magic money trees to find the financing for hiring the “outside evaluators” who will provide the cherry on top of the VAM sauce.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, VAM (value-added modeling)

Superintendent William Cala: “We Can No Longer Remain Silent”

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2015 //
54

Watch Superintendent William Cala, as he eviscerates the so-called reform movement, including charter schools, the private money that shapes the politics of education, the reformers’ indifference to poverty, their refusal to acknowledge the root causes of low test scores, and the mandate that we all have to raise our voices and take action to stop the takeover of our schools. Education “reform,” he says, is not about educating children, it is about money and power.

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

Long Island School Board Member: A Time to Speak Out

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2015 //
3

Ali Gordon, a school board member in the Comsewogue school district on Long Island, Néw York, believes that it is time to stand up and speak out. For her dedication and courage, I name her to the blog’s honor roll.

 

She writes:

 

This is my fourth year serving as an elected trustee of the Comsewogue School District Board of Education. Trustees are elected by their community. The position is voluntary- there is no pay. There are no hidden perks, no allowances. It is time-consuming, with multiple meetings and events monthly, dozens of documents to review in preparation for the meetings, as well as correspondence between trustees and administration and of course with the community. In order to fulfill these responsibilities, I miss out on time at home with my husband and four children.

 

It is stressful- particularly as we work to develop an annual budget. No matter what decisions we make as a board, there will always be someone disappointed. But I love every minute of it because I love my community- and I take very seriously the responsibility entrusted to me by the community.

 

I’ve been talking about the issues facing public education for a long time, but it’s not enough to talk. I am suggesting practical solutions could be implemented now.

 

At this point, I want to make clear that the opinions I express here are mine alone- I do not speak for the Comsewogue School District, or the rest of the Board of Education. I can’t stay quiet for fear of retribution from NYSED anymore. I have been warned that a Trustee who speaks out could be removed by the State Education Commissioner. But this is too important: our schools, our children, OUR FUTURE depends on those of us who were elected to represent the best interests of our communities doing exactly that.

 

This is a particularly difficult time for public education, especially in New York. Governor Cuomo and the Board of Regents are pushing ahead with education policy in which the ends do not justify the means. There has been tremendous criticism of Governor Cuomo, and his recent decision to withhold state aid runs and extort the Legislature to pass his education reforms. Our legislators are stuck between agreeing to terrible reforms, and getting more funding for their local schools, or refusing the Governor, which would lead to a late budget and a potential loss of millions of dollars for those schools.

 

The reforms Cuomo is pushing on public schools are disingenuous, dangerous, and wrong. He is working out of the privatization handbook- attempting to dismantle unions, turn the public against educators, and make us believe our schools are absolutely awful. He uses inflammatory statistics to support his claims. In the process, our students are the ones suffering. The obsession with standardized testing has taken on a life of its’ own. It seems the federal and state government cannot think of any other way to move forward in education.

 

But they are not the ones who were elected to determine what happens within your school district. Governor Cuomo was not on the ballot last May when you voted for your local district budget and elected your Board of Education Trustees. Each of Cuomo’s education policies reflect a desire to remove local control from schools. The reason for local control is simple- those who have familiarity with a community are better situated to determine its’ strengths and weaknesses, and to know what works.

 

The needs of an urban school in a high poverty area will differ from that of a rural school upstate. Even on Long Island, schools not far from one another have very different needs. Governor Cuomo and the Board of Regents are searching for a one size fits all answer to a million different issues. They will never work for every community. In the meantime an entire generation of students are being sacrificed for testing data.

 

Case in point, Gov. Cuomo is now insisting on an investigation into the evaluation procedures (APPR) of Long Island districts, because he thinks the system is skewed to favor teachers. He is demanding NYSED look into these evaluations, because he cannot believe so many teachers were rated effective, or highly effective. Those APPR plans were negotiated (as per labor law) and submitted for approval to NYSED. So the very entity which approved the plans is now asked to investigate them. Here is the point Cuomo cannot fathom: teachers on Long Island were rated highly effective or effective in large numbers because they are effective.

 

If Long Island was a state, we would rank #1 in the nation for high school graduation rates, with 90.8% of our students receiving their diploma. In addition, Long Island would rank #1 in Intel Semifinalists and #2 in the nation in Siemens Semifinalists, behind California. Cuomo prefers to ignore these statistics because they do not fit his narrative.

 

So what is the answer? It’s not enough to complain. Name calling isn’t helping. We must propose an alternative vision for our public schools. There are several things than can and should happen now in order to stop the destruction of public schools with misguided education policy.

 

First, Governor Cuomo must separate his education reforms from his Executive Budget Proposal. If he believes strongly enough in these reforms he should be willing to let them stand alone as legislation and allow a healthy debate in the process. The Legislature would then be tasked with evaluating these reforms based on their merit, through committee hearings, and public input. Our democracy has three branches of government in order to prevent one person from having too much power. Cuomo should not be allowed to circumvent the separation of powers established in our Constitution.

 

The Legislature should ensure that new appointees to the Board of Regents have knowledge of, and experience in public education. There are four Regents whose terms are expiring, and interviews are being held now, with Legislators expected to vote in early March. The Board of Regents establishes education policies for the state, and it is imperative that they understand public education in order to fulfill these responsibilities.

 

Parents must educate themselves as to what is happening in their schools. They should ask questions, attend Board of Education meetings, local education forums, and contact their representatives. Every parent must make an educated decision regarding state testing in grades 3-8. This will be the 3rd year my children have refused to take the state exams. I believe this is the strongest weapon parents have in the fight to save public education. As the number of test refusals grows, the reforms dependent upon those numbers will falter. We will starve the testing machine.

 

School districts must respect a parent’s right to refuse testing on behalf of their child, and Boards of Education must adopt a policy to outline what accommodations will be made for students who are not taking the tests. A sit and stare policy is cruel and unacceptable.

 

Every one of us has a vested interest in public education. It’s not just cliche to say that these students are our future- it is reality. We must work together in order to move forward and find solutions to elevate public education without destroying things that are already working. I can’t sit by quietly anymore and hope that someone else will make it happen. I have a sworn duty to represent the interests of my community, and that includes speaking out against policies and people who endanger the well- being of our students and faculty.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Funding, Honor Roll, New York, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

Salon: How the Rich Blame the Poor for Being Poor

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2015 //
22

Paul Rosenberg, writing at Salon, is outraged that many super-wealthy people–and their apologists at the NY Times–blame poverty on the lifestyles of the poor.

He writes:

“There they go again. Conservatives are back again with their “war on poverty,” which is to say, their war on poor people and any liberals, or sympathizers, who try to help them.

“Unlike Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, which despite 50 years of demonization and policy reversals has cut U.S. poverty by 40 percent (see No. 3 here), the conservative version has little hope of doing anything about poverty. But that’s not the point. Neither is attacking poor people and liberals, for that matter. The point is defending the obscenely rich, and the massive upward redistribution of wealth America has seen going on since the 1970s. At the same time the broad-based increase in affluence of the early post-World War II era has been decisively shut off.

“IRS data compiled by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saenz and their colleagues at the top incomes database shows how stark America’s shift from a broad-based prosperity model has been. From 1947 to 1973, the average incomes of the bottom 90 percent increased 99.2 percent, compared to 88.9 percent for the top 10 percent, and a mere 7.4 percent for the top 0.1 percent. But from 1973 to 2008, the average incomes of the bottom 90 percent fell 6.1 percent, while the average incomes of the top 10 percent continued rising by another 70.8 percent, and average incomes of the top 0.1 percent skyrocketed an astronomical 706.4 percent.

“With the bottom 90 percent losing ground, on average, and the top 0.1 percent gobbling those losses up like candy, it makes perfect sense to try to distract attention by finger-pointing at the poor—as well as those who might be inclined to help them. Whether it actually makes sense or not is irrelevant. All it has to be believable—for those with a powerful-enough motive to believe.

“A case in point is the recent David Brooks Op-Ed blaming poor folks for their poverty, which Salon’s Elias Isquith wrote about here recently, along with a disturbingly similar poor-bashing piece by neoliberal Nicholas Kristof. Given his high-profile perch at the so-called liberal New York Times, Brooks drew some rather pointed data-informed responses, including ones by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig at the New Republic (“Poor People Don’t Need Better Social Norms. They Need Better Social Policies. What David Brooks doesn’t understand about poverty,” Connor Williams at Talking Points Memo, who argued that “David Brooks Is Mistaking Poverty’s Symptoms For Its Causes,” and Noah Smith who responded with a short blog post, providing the links to make his point that “Americans are better behaved than ever.”

All the references are linked to their sources in the article.

How does this connect to education? The leading funders if the charter school movement are billionaires and multi-millionaires who are beneficiaries of income inequality. Their spokesmen, like Governor Cuomo say that money is not the answer to the problems of education. He refuses to pay the schools the billions of dollars the state owes after losing the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit. He imposed a tax cap so districts can’t raise taxes to cover rising costs unless it is approved by 60% of voters in the district–59% won’t do.

His answer to the needs if districts: open charter schools. That satisfies his patrons, but drains the budgets of public schools even more.

Skeptics suspect that the 1% prefer charter schools as a means of avoiding discussion of taxing the 1% to reduce inequality. When hedge fund managers show as much interest in fully funding the public schools as they do in privatizing them, the skepticism will disappear.

As long as they continue to treat privately managed charters as society’s best (and cheapest) way to fight poverty, they will appear to be paraphrasing the old line misattributed to Marie Antoinette: “Let them Eat Charters.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Poverty

Leonie Haimson: Is the Battle Over School Reform Between Unions and Rich Liberals, or Between the 1% and Everyone Else?

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2015 //
11

Leonie Haimson is fed up with the line that the mainstream media has taken about education controversies. Reporters usually think that every protest is organized by the unions, defending their self-interest, and they are warring with high-minded reformers. She says this is balderdash! (Sorry, Leonie, my word, not yours.)   If parents hold a protest against high-stakes testing and against test-based teacher evaluations (which causes more time to be devoted to testing), most reporters will say the union made them do it, the union doesn’t want to be held accountable.   Well, guess what? The unions are not leading the Opt Out movement. Many teachers support it, because they know how pointless the new tests are, but the great majority of people leading the movement are parents. They don’t want their children to be pressured by fear of the Big Standardized Test, they don’t want them to be ranked and labeled, they don’t want them to hate school because of the endless test prep.   Leonie was especially irked by a recent story in the New York Times about the two forces trying to win Hillary Clinton’s allegiance: on one hand, the teachers’ unions; on the other, the Wall Street tycoons who might finance her campaign. One has the votes, the other has the money. In the middle of the story, the reporter Maggie Haberman inexplicably refers to the hedge fund managers’ group Democrats for Education Reform as “left of center.” These are the Wall Street billionaires and mere multimillionaires who are pushing the privatization and high-stakes testing agenda; they dearly love charter schools and look on public schools with disdain as places that one must escape from. What you would expect from people who mainly went to Exeter, Deerfield Academy, Groton, and other tony private schools. Left of center? Hardly. Corporate style reformers? Yes.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Unions

MUST READ: Revelations of a Disillusioned Reformer

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2015 //
47

WOW.

This is a remarkable and candid story of Jorge Cabrera, who joined the reform movement as a believer. He wanted to help the children of Bridgeport, where he grew up. He wanted better schools. He was a community organizer for Excel Schools.

And then he learned the truth.

“As I began my work in the “education reform movement” in Bridgeport, I noticed a plethora of ivy league educated “consultants” and “transformational leaders” that littered the often loose coalition of funders, new organizations and executive directors. From the beginning, it was clear that many of these new “leaders” that were emerging were well credentialed. They had graduated from prestigious universities and, it was presumed (though not by me), that alone qualified them to lead. Many were very young (recent graduates), energetic, unmarried with no children and little life experience. They often exhibited a cultish commitment to “the movement.” Their zeal for “education reform” and “saving the children” often resulted in a bizarre abdication of critical thinking that made a mockery of their high priced “education.” For instance, in many meetings I attended, many of these acolytes extolled the virtues of charter schools as the only solution to closing the achievement gap in Bridgeport but never once did anyone bother to discuss the ample research (i.e. “Teaching with Poverty in Mind” ) available regarding the negative impact of poverty on academic achievement or that Bridgeport had several public magnet schools that outperformed (as measured by standardized test scores) many charter schools. These magnet schools had long track records (20 plus years) of success and I assumed we should advocate for what we know, firmly, works. Despite this evidence, there was never any serious discussion regarding expanding magnet school options or advocating for high quality, universal preschool programs (research shows the achievement gap begins at this level). The entire approach to “education reform” lacked any serious understanding of the many variables (i.e., social-emotional issues, poverty, funding, English language learners) that clearly effect a child’s ability to learn. Anytime a more dynamic and multifaceted approach to closing the achievement gap was raised it was quickly dismissed as “making excuses.” The atmosphere vacillated between a callous indifference to the real challenges Bridgeport children faced and arrogant dismissiveness. Permeated throughout these various organizations that formed a loose network of power was a culture that prized blind dedication to the “mission” and socially affirmed and promoted those who obeyed and exhibited “urgency” in “reforming” the “failing schools.” The people in “the movement” made it clear that it was up to the “best and brightest” of minds to “transform” the “system” as “outside influencers.” By “best and brightest” they almost exclusively meant people who would do their bidding without question and certainly not anyone that would exhibit any degree of independent or critical thought. On more than one occasion, when the argument was made that the solutions to the multilayered challenge of public education needed to come from the people and required an authentic, engaging process with the Bridgeport community the response was often glib at best. I recall in one strategic planning meeting when I advocated for authentic engagement and patience to allow parents the time to become informed on the various issues and was told to, “just use language to convince” the parents and impress upon them a sense of “urgency.” Another person told me, “It’s all about how you say it…..”

“I began to sense that someone or something I was not fully aware of was calling the shots behind the scenes and many of these young ivy leaguers were the mercenaries on the front lines tasked with implementing the agenda. This whole enterprise was quickly becoming astroturfing and I was in the middle of it. Worse, I was starting to feel like I was hired to put lipstick on a pig and it was beginning to burn me on the inside. Nevertheless, through it all, I never gave up hope and tried to create spaces for honest, authentic and fact based discussions inside “the movement” with limited success.”

The reformers decided that Bridgeport needed mayoral control, so the mayor could open more charters faster. In the run-up to the election, high-priced media consultants arrived to take charge.

“Immediately, the focus was on marketing and sloganeering. Worse, we were trying to build the plane while it was in the air! The whole thing was rushed and disorganized. We were told to make sure we communicated to the public that voting in favor of the city charter change was good for parents, students and would lead to better academic outcomes. The insinuation was that anyone who was against the charter revision changes was anti-child or anti-education. When parents or community leaders asked questions that required more substantive, fact based responses we were coached to respond to everything in soundbites and with shallow arguments that lacked any grounding in reality. It was the worse kind of insult to the community’s intelligence and pandered to the worse aspects of human nature and—it almost worked.”

” My nearly three years in the “movement” in Bridgeport revealed to me the incredible lengths that private, often unseen and unaccountable power will go to in order to create and capitalize on a crisis. In Bridgeport, that crisis in our public education system was created by powerful forces at the local and state level who systematically starved the school system by withholding necessary school funding (Shock #1) which then created a crisis that set the stage for a takeover (Shock #2) of the Bridgeport board of education on the eve of the fourth of July in 2011. Essentially, these forces were engaged in a form of social engineering under the guise of “urgency” and “reform.” To be clear, in this “movement” there are people who have good intentions and sincerly want to improve the conditions of Bridgeport’s public schools but they do not sit at the tables of power when strategic decisions are made and their voices are often silenced. Their talents, skills and knowledge are often used to serve a larger, opaque agenda that is dictated by a radical ideology of deregulation and privatization. Shot throughout most, if not all, of the education reform “movement” you will find the radical ideology of economist Milton Friedman. Looking back, there were moments when this mindset (disaster capitalism) was revealed to me in meetings. On one occassion, a very influential operator in the “education reform” community was discussing the “amazing opportunity” that revealed itself after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans desimated the population and led to the “charterization” of the public school system. He expounded that sometimes you have to, “…burn the village to save it…” and that what we (the “reform community”) are essentially involved in is, “creative destruction.” Worse, he argued that we needed a “clean slate” in order for real “change” to happen in the school system in Bridgeport. But this was my home. This was the city I grew up in and where most of my family lived and worked. You want to burn down their city!? You want to destroy it so you can be creative!? For whom? It was all surreal. I was done.”

It’s an incredible story that confirms your darkest suspicions.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Denver: if All Else Fails, Silence Critics

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2015 //
8

Jeannie Kaplan was an elected member of the Denver school board for two terms. She is a steadfast critic of the “reforms” in Denver in recent years. She says they have failed. but reformers never think twice or admit failure. At each school board election, “reformers” spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to win a seat. The current board is tilted 6-1 for “reform.” She expects that this faction will take total control in Noovember, leaving no one to ask questions about their failed agenda.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Denver, Testing
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