Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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EdWeek Takes Note of NBC’s “Education MisinforNation”

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2013 //
4

I have said in the past that I am dismayed that Education Week takes money from the foundations it covers, like Gates and Walton. I have said that I am dismayed at its shameless advocacy for the edtech shlock and profiteering now inundating the schools.

But Education Week has great reporters, who tell it like it is.

In this blog, Mark Walsh reports on the controversy over NBC’s biased selection of participants. Why in the world would NBC invite the CEO of Goldman Sachs as an “education expert?” Why in the world is the list tilted towards governors on the far-far-far right? Why are there so few educators?

How can there be a debate when only one side is represented?

How can a national discussion of American education take place with no discussion of poverty and segregation, budget cuts and privatization? Why no panel on equitable distribution of resources to the neediest children? Why no discussion about the remarkable growth in the for-profit management of public schools?

Thanks, Mark Walsh. You restore my faith in EdWeek.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

The Right-Wing Agenda of MinnCAN

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2013 //
19

Here is a summary of a recent mayoral forum in Minneapolis, sponsored by MinnCAN.

MinnCAN is a spinoff of ConnCAN and 50CAN, organizations that promote school choice and look askance at public education. To be fair, they are quite happy to take public dollars, but to run their schools with rules that are very different from those that govern public schools, which are not allowed to pick their students or exclude those with low scores.

The candidates who came before the group in Minneapolis were singing the same song:

It goes like this: Our public schools are broken, our experienced teachers are no good, what we need is what the far-right think tanks have been advocating for fifty years:

Pressurizing teachers, “school choice,” standardized testing, “accountability”, charter schools, and vouchers.

School choice is the answer! No evidence needed.

Innovative? No, this is the status quo. This is the agenda of the Bush-Obama era.

With enough of this ideology, Minneapolis can destroy its public schools, replace them with privately managed charter schools and vouchers. And in short order, Minneapolis will look like Milwaukee, which has a charter sector, a voucher sector, and a withering public sector. Note that the public schools of Milwaukee has more students with disabilities than the other two sectors. And on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Milwaukee is one of the nation’s lowest performing urban districts.

Is this what is called a Race to the Bottom?

Categories Charter Schools, ConnCAN, Corporate Reformers, Minnesota, Vouchers

Heckuva Job, Reformers!

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2013 //
25

Reformers often say that they love “great” teachers. They
think that if they drive out all the “bad” teachers, then “the best
and brightest” will flock to teach in the schools. They think they
are restructuring the profession to make it attractive to the top
third of those who graduate from the very best universities.
  This comment from a teacher:   I feel
both embarrassed and horrified to be a teacher these days. What
keeps me going is being with the students and knowing I am helping
them. However, as a member of this ‘profession’ I am completely
disheartened and turned off by the politics and the bobble-headed
morons who make decisions that impact all of us. It’s like being on
a plane without a pilot….or a train without a conductor….or a
carriage without a horse…or….well, you get the picture. It’s
bad.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Teachers and Teaching

Indianapolis: Ground Zero for the Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2013 //
12

Rod Ellcessor of the Indiana Education Association raises a question: what kind of “new Democrat” wants to eliminate unions and public schools? He writes:

“Diane, unfortunately, we are besieged by the Mind Trust in Indianapolis. Bill Gates’ money is one of the primary sources for the Mind Trust which allows TFA to be placed in the Schools in Indy. As the Director of the Indianapolis Education Association, we are fighting the war with the right wing agenda and the super majorities in our Legislature. As well, our Tea Party Governor is no better. The goal of the Mind Trust is to collapse our Indianapolis Public Schools. The Director of the Mind Trust is David Harris who headed the Charter Schools for the former Indy Mayor Bart Peterson, a “New Democrat.” We have had horrible results with the TFA teachers. In fact, IPS administration came to us not knowing what to do due to their dismal results and discipline. The TFA’s barely last two years and DO NOT join the Union. Indiana has to be ground zero with all of the Charter schools and unrestricted vouchers. As well, we have had our collective bargaining rights diminished to a point that we just meet and confer. Clearly, if we do not follow the advice of Robert Reich and get involved there will be nothing left of Public Education. Thank you for your national leadership and the latest book, “Reign of Error.” I am recommending it to everyone I know and make contact with.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Indiana, Privatization, Teach for America TFA, Unions

In Which Whitney Tilson and I Find Common Ground

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2013 //
35

You have never seen the name Whitney Tilson on my blog
before now. Tilson is a hedge fund manager who is a major supporter
of KIPP, Teach for America, and Democrats for Education Reform. I
have heard that he has written unpleasant things about me, like
calling me a union shill. I avoid mentioning him as I see no value
in personalizing issues and I try not to become engaged in ad
hominem exchanges.

To my surprise, Tilson reached out to let me
know that he had written
a devastating critique of the online charter corporation
called K12. As a financier, he knows more about the business than I
could ever fathom. He wanted to let me know that we are in accord
that K12 delivers a poor quality of education.

I was glad to see a leader of this movement trying to clean out the Augean stables.
Also, I was gratified by his conciliatory action in writing me.

We have exchanged a few emails. At some point, we may meet. I have
never called him any names. Perhaps he will now stop questioning my
motives and recognize that I write with as much sincerity as he
does. He knows–perhaps he always knew–that I am financially
independent and had no reason to sell myself to the unions or
anyone else.

I support teachers’ unions, because I believe that
teachers need a collective voice, just as other groups
in society do (think: Chamber of Commerce,
AMA, ABA, DFER, Etc) I support unions, although I have never
belonged to one, because they protect the rights of working people
and help poor people enter the middle class. I believe the attacks
on unions—and their diminishing numbers— have contributed to
the growing income inequality in this country and the shrinking
middle class.

It is good to tone down the rhetoric. But I will not
waver in my belief that public education, democratically
controlled, is a pillar of a democratic society.

Nor will I compromise my conviction that those entering the education
profession must be well prepared for the hard work of their chosen
profession.

Nor will I abandon my opposition to the widespread
assumption that test scores are the best and only way–or even an
accurate way–to measure students, teachers, or schools.

Nor will I be persuaded that schools alone can end poverty, no matter what
their scores. Schools are part of the solution, but much more is
needed, meaning social and economic change. We will see where this
goes. I appreciate Tilson’s offer to reason together. I am all for
that. What he wrote about K12 is devastating. Everyone should read
it.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, K12 Inc., On-Line Education

Patrick Welsh: Four Decades of Failed Reforms

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2013 //
16

Patrick Welsh is an experienced teacher who writes often in the Washington Post about the real problems of schools. If only the editorial board of the Post–besotted with the failed strategies of corporate reform–would heed the wisdom of Patrick Welsh!

In this article, he describes the many reforms that have been imposed in teachers in his high school since he started teaching forty years ago. The article refers to “four decades of failed school reforms.”

Now we are in the worst of all reforms, where the “reforms” are devised by non-educators or people who taught for a year or two. Where non-educators or those with minimal experience are made state commissioner of education and use their power to demoralize teachers and destroy the teaching profession.

This era will end. But how many excellent teachers will we lose before the reform industry admits its failure and goes away?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Humor, Teachers and Teaching

Can Schools End Poverty?

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2013 //
44

Matt Bruenig has written in many journals. He also has
a blog, where this post appeared. He analyzes a fairly
straightforward question: Can schools end poverty? The column is a
commentary on the “reformers” who say that we can’t end poverty
until we fix schools, or something to that effect. We have heard
the same statement from Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joel Klein,
Bill Gates, and others. Duncan says that even the President agrees.
Bruenig analyzes these three statements:

  1. Education is a way to end
    poverty.
  2. Education is the best
    way     to end poverty.
  3. Education
    is the only way to end
    poverty.

He starts his short analysis with
this statement: These are all false, but since number
three is the one Rhee and Duncan and the education reformer crowd
pushes, let’s start there. It is flatly not the case that to end
poverty you need to alter education. Americans should know this.
Starting from the 1960s, we
as a society cut outrageously high rates of elderly poverty by
71%. We did that by sending old people checks called
Social Security. We also know from international data that
low-poverty countries get that way through tax and transfer
schemes, not unlike Social Security (I, II).
If you are saying nothing but education will dramatically cut
poverty, when things other than education absolutely will and have,
you are an enemy of the poor. You are contributing to a discursive
world where people ignore the easiest, most proven ways to cut
poverty. If this is true, and I think it is, all the
energy and billions expended on school reforms that are totally
lacking in evidence–like VAM and merit pay and privatization of
public funds–is a handy distraction from meaningful ways to end
poverty.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Poverty, Rhee, Michelle

Corporate Education Reform Is in Big Trouble

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2013 //
31

When the news gets out that the corporate reformers’
narrative and their signature line are false, their crusade to turn schooling
into a marketplace loses its rationale. Here is a review
of “Reign of Error” by columnist/editorial writer Robyn E. Blumner
of the Tampa Bay Times. What if our schools aren’t
failing? What if Jeb Bush and his minions are wrong?

What if the cause of low test scores really is poverty?
Then the reformers’ pursuit of the “bad teacher” is a great distraction from the biggest problems of our day.

What if we require new thinking by those who have
economic, social, and political power? What if blaming teachers
hurts kids?

The tiny sound you just heard was another card dropping
out of the House of Cards. Maybe it was a card holding up the whole phony
structure.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Reign of Error

Do You Need a Laugh Today? Read This.

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2013 //
18

Julian Vasquez Heilig is the most creative blogger I know in terms of his brilliant combination of flashy graphics, research, and informed commentary.

Here he describes the century-long battle between the managerial elites—who believe that schools can be improved by data, management, mandates and standardization, always controlled by them–and the pedagogical crowd–who have fought the managers that the starting point in education is the students, how they learn, what they need, not the management.

It is Taylor vs. Dewey.

The Taylorites run the show for now. They ARE the status quo.

The day of reckoning is coming.

They are losing because everything they have done has failed.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Rhee, Michelle, Students

Gary Rubinstein: Jared Polis’ Charters Show Low Growth

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2013 //
19

Since I am not allied with the corporate reformers, I don’t put much credence in test scores. But the reformers love Big Data and seem to believe that everyone and everything can be measured. They use phrases like “you measure what you treasure” and “you can control only what can be measured.”

I happen to think such thoughts are anti-humanistic and technocratic to an extreme, but then I am not in the mainstream of reform ideology. The sooner we forget Big Data, in my view, the sooner we will understand the human beings we confront.

Jared Polis, who thinks I am “an evil woman,” loves Race to the Top and Colorado’s SB 191, which makes test scores count for 50% of a teacher’s evaluation. He believes in Big Data.

He may need my help.

Gary Rubinstein reviewed Polis’ charter schools and found that they experienced very low growth. In reformer talk, they are bad schools. In other words, Polis might want to read my book and find a different vocabulary, a new way of thinking about what it means to create a good school. If he sticks with the corporate reformer mentality, he is a failure. Bad idea.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers
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