Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Indianapolis: Farewell to Public Education

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2013 //
33

I received a desperate message on Facebook from Tarrey Banks, the founder of The Project School in Indianapolis. TPS is a charter school started with a grant from the Walton Foundation. Greg Ballard, the mayor of Indianapolis, is the authorizer. TPS has low test scores, after four years, and the mayor has decided to close it. Banks and TPS parents are outraged. They went to court, blocked the mayor in a lower court, but then lost when a federal judge upheld the closure. TPS is losing the battle.

To get the big picture of what is happening in Indianapolis, read here. You will encounter a familiar cast of characters, including, of course, Bill Gates and Stand for Children.

What is happening in Indianapolis is terrifying if you believe that public education belongs to the public, not to private corporations. .

Here comes a scary future. First, the “blueprint” for Indianapolis, confidently predicting a future of perfection and excellence, but without any meaningful road map. Just promises. And here come the charters, opening with high hopes and closing when judged by scores.

Open, close. Open, close. Open, close.

Below is Banks’ letter. Read it. Read Mayor Ballard’s Blueprint for Utopia. But if you read nothing else today, read this article about the grand plan to privatize the schools of Indianapolis.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5_NQFzJRhSGZ2ZEaWZFYmhwNU0/edit?usp=sharing

This is the Mind Trust / Mayor Ballard (TFA Deputy Mayor Jason Kloth) take-over blueprint. This will literally be the end of public education in the urban core of Indianapolis.

We need help. It’s all but over. The 10th most populated city in the country is about to be one of the biggest systems of educational apartheid in the nation.

My name is Tarrey Banks and I’m the founding school leader of the Indianapolis Project School. I am a lifelong public school educator who made the decision to start a charter school with a group of passionate educators. We are the only truly progressive public school in our city. We take and teach all kids…we don’t push out, kick out, expel, etc. My daughter is a 7 year old student at our school…I made it for her because I know that all kids deserve what she deserves. We are four years old and this week we were the victim of a conservative political strategic attack. Just 3 weeks our mayor has decided to close our doors. The process was corrupt and the information they used was false and/or inaccurate. We are fighting the good fight, but I firmly believe our school will be shut down by the close of business on Monday. I truly believe this is the death of progressive public education in our city if we do not use this as a catalyst to attack the corporate reform agenda.

I know you are busy…you must be. I intend to use the closing of our school as the beginning of a rebellion. Will you help? How can I get you to Indianapolis to push this force back and make folks wake up and see what is happening? Our city is doomed if I can’t move this conversation in a different direction. We have 100’s of families, students, community members, educators ready to protest…to really blow it up…but I need more…I need a national presence…

Will you? What can I do?

Tarrey Banks

Categories ALEC, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Indiana, On-Line Education, Privatization, Stand for Children, U.S. education

Ken Previti: Brevard County Schools Did Not Have to Close

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2013 //
5

Ken Previti writes this comment about the three public schools closed in Brevard County over the objections of the parents. The best solution: Elect a new school board. Run for school board. Organize and mobilize.

One harsh fact needs to be remembered about school closings, teacher evaluations and school ranking by student test scores. The total amount that “needed” to be cut from the budget by closing three Brevard schools was identical to the amount “needed” to build the new charter school demanded by the appointed Florida State Board of Education.

Brevard County IS the Space Coast, home of brilliant Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral engineers and large military installations and military/industrial corporations.. (I live there.) It is also overwhelmingly republican at-all-costs, and that includes Tea Party candidates.

Tea Party Republican Billionaire Gov. Rick Scott was the CEO of the corporation convicted of the biggest fraud against Medicare in history. When questioned personally he replied that he repeatedly refused to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate him, yet his money paid for TV messages that got him elected.

Past Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of W. and son of H.W., has organizations and investments in huge corporate education reform interests – including testing and test prep materials.
The school closings are a scam.

“Public-private partnerships” is the euphemism meaning “public tax money for private profit.” The school closings and the charter school building (scheduled to be built blocks from where I live) are part of the financial scam of the selling of America – one school at a time.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Support for public schools

Reader Asks: Is This the True Goal of “Reform”?

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2013 //
46

A reader posts the following comment.

Thought you might be interested in Gates latest “Request for Proposal: Literacy Courseware Challenge.” More teacher-less, computerized learning to support his Common Core [National] Standards. “Adaptive digital learning tools” are his robo-teachers, because apparently the standards [read: curriculum, no matter how many people say that the CC are not a curriculum] are teacher-proof. Just create a huge quonset hut, or even better, a stadium, full of computer cubicles, sit the kids down, and, voila! A perfect Gates-ian school. Disgusting.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Pages/rfp-literacy-courseware-challenge.aspx

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, On-Line Education, Privatization

How to Stop Destructive Legislation

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2013 //
8

A reader in Florida gives the answer to this important question: how do we stop the tidal wave of bad legislation?

The problem is with whom we send to represent us in Tallahassee!

There is no longer a Teapublican supermajority to bulldoze terrible legislation through the Florida House and Senate.

The FEA, wuth the help of other Labor and Parent groups blocked bad leguslation last year, and will have to do so again this year.

FEA supported 21 candidates in the last election and elected 18 of them.

There are more teachers in the state legislature than ever before. We must continue to organize teachers and SRP/ESP to vote for EDUCATION friendly candidates and their economic well-being.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Support for public schools

Return of The Zombie Film “Won’t Back Down”

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2013 //
19

The anti-teacher, anti-public school movie “Won’t Back Down” was released into 2,500 movie theaters (owned by its producer Walden Media) and died a quick and ignominious death. Despite massive advance publicity at NBC’s “Education Nation” and a CBS promotion, despite Michelle Rhee hosting screenings at both national political conventions, despite attention on the “Ellen” show, the film had one of the worst opening weekends in recent history. The critics ridiculed it, and within four weeks, the film had disappeared.

It became a dead film, but it lives on as a zombie film. Its producers Philip Anschutz and Rupert Murdoch never expected to make money. They are billionaires, and they didn’t care about the box office receipts. They wanted their propaganda film to persuade people that teachers are lazy, that unions are evil, and that parents must seize control of their school and hand it over to a charter corporation.

Their goal was nothing short of privatization of public education.

So now they have taken their dud and, with the help of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are showing it to legislators in conservative states, hoping to keep their campaign alive with a zombie film that died months ago.

Call it the ALEC road show.

You know who Rupert Murdoch is. He is the man who owns Fox News and many publications and is now embroiled in a scandal in Great Britain, where his reporters hacked into the telephones of scores of people, including a dead teenage girl.

Maybe you don’t know much about Philip Anschutz, who owns Walden Media. He has been a successful movie producer (“Chronicles of Narnia,” among others). His energy company is very involved in the controversial practice of hydrofracking in many parts of he nation, which environmentalists oppose. He contributes generously to libertarian, anti-government think tanks. He supported anti-gay campaigns in Colorado and California.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Parent trigger

Incoherent L.A. Times Editorial Okays Sale of School Board

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2013 //
12

If you can make sense of this editorial in the Los Angeles Times, you are a whole lot smarter than me. It speaks disparagingly of the board president, then endorses her.

It chastises the school board for failing to exercise oversight of the city’s booming charter sector, but then rejects Steve Zimmer, the only school board member who had the courage to propose responsible supervision of the charter sector. The Times is flabbergasted that Zimmer called for a moratorium on new charters until the board developed a policy for determining whether they were meeting their obligations to students and the public. L.A. already has more charters than any other city in the nation, so it would hardly have been a burden to delay adding more until the board figured out how to manage its portfolio.

The Times cares not a whit that Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, and their allies came up with $2.5 million to choose the next board. In their eyes, it’s okay for big money to overwhelm the political process. They worry not at all about the corruption of democracy.

They pay lip service to “reform.” But what do they mean by “reform.” More private entrepreneurs taking public dollars without supervision? More deregulation of the monied interests? More teachers fired because they teach students with disabilities or English language learners? More destabilization?

In 2010, the L.A. Times covered itself with shame when it concocted its own value-added methodology, rated thousands of teachers, and then published their names. The president of Math for America,, John Ewing, described this farce as “mathematical intimidation,” in an article in the journal of the American Mathematical Society.

The paper’s present indifference to the corporate purchase of the local school board multiplies its shame.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Los Angeles

Zimmer Camp Reacts to Bloomberg Gift of $1 Million to His Opponent

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2013 //
12

As readers of this blog know, Steve Zimmer is a former TFA who became a career teacher in the Los Angeles public schools. He has served one term on the L.A. school board.

He had the temerity to suggest that the school districts, which now has hundreds of charters, develop an accountability and oversight plan for the charters.

That made the charter lobby very angry.

They decided he had to be defeated.

So now, in a race where candidates typically spend $50,000 or so, seldom as much as $100,000, the billionaires have raised large sums to kick Steve out.

Eli Broad put up $250,000. The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, tossed in $1,000,000. Other charter allies have ponied up another million.

Once again, as in other school board races over the past two years, the question arises: Can people power defeat big money?

This is the response from the Zimmer camp:

Zimmer for School Board 2013

Yesterday we learned that Former Republican turned Independent New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote a $1 million dollar check to defeat Steve Zimmer. We need your help more than ever to make sure we reach every voter in District 4. This District should not be sold to the highest bidder but it should be won by winning the hearts and minds of voters.

Will you commit to Phone Banking and/or Precinct Walking this weekend?

Instead of money, it requires people willing to donate time and energy. All over the country people have proven billionaires that people can beat money.One example: Governor Jerry Brown defeated Billionaire Meg Whitman, Meg Outspent Brown By Over $140 Million!
Please sign up for a precinct walk and/or a phone bank shift. We have three locations where we are meeting:

Woodland Hills/Valley: Saturday and Sunday at 10am
– 6206 Jumilla Avenue Woodland HIlls 91367

West Hollywood/West LA: Saturday and Sunday at 10am
– 9028 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, 90069

Mar Vista: Sunday at 10am
3300 Mountain Ave, Mar Vista, 90066

I hope to see you in one of the locations. We need you.

Ari Ruiz

P.S. Please be sure to check out our videos on our YouTube page and share them with your friends. 

http://stevezimmer2013.nationbuilder.com/

Zimmer for School Board 2013 · 3700 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 1050-B, Los Angeles, CA 90038, United States
This email was sent to Asobaji@aol.com. To stop receiving emails,click here.

You can also keep up with Zimmer for School Board 2013 onTwitter orFacebook.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

Mercedes Schneider on the Board of NCTQ and Corporate Reform

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2013 //
5

Mercedes Schneider continues her review of the board of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

NCTQ is working with U.S. News to review the quality of the nation’s education schools and colleges.

This is the latest in her series. 

Categories Corporate Reformers, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)

Paul Thomas: Do Not Become a Zombie

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2013 //
8

Paul Thomas, our collective voice of conscience, explains the way that zombies take control. When your leaders are zombies, do not follow them. They will make you a zombie too.

How can you recognize a zombie? They talk about data, not individuals. They always say they put “kids first” or “children first,” but they don’t mean it. That’s meant to persuade you they are not zombies. People who truly put children first don’t boast about it.

Don’t be fooled by zombie rhetoric.

Categories Corporate Reformers

The Corporate Reform Cult of Rhetoric and Riches

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2013 //
6

To understand the tentacles of corporate reform, you must read this post

Here Mercedes Schneider continues her review of the board of the National Council on Teacher Quality. As her research deepens, she uncovers the links among the big-money investors and their plans to privatize education, turn teachers and children into assets, and monetize public education.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), On-Line Education, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching
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