Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Who Is SFER?

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
9

An organization called Students for Education Reform is popping up on various campuses to advocate for corporate reforms.

This article by George Joseph in The Nation explores who they are and who funds them.

It is hard to understand why students would demand more standardized testing and why they would support a movement that attacks teachers and wants teachers to be held accountable for what students do. Shouldn’t students be held accountable for what students do?

All around the nation, brave students are saying “no” to the corporate reform movement that wants to turn them into standardized data points.

But not SFER, which is an offshoot of the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group called DFER. They want to be standardized. They want to be data points. They want more tests. Please, won’t someone test them and publish their scores?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Students

Add Carnegie Corporation to Billionaire Boys Club

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
2

The Carnegie Corporation doesn’t have as much money to throw into the corporate reform movement as the Walton Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Gates Foundation but it is definitely on the same page as the big guys. Here is its report on 2011 spending. The education grants begin on p. 24. And there they are: charter schools, Jeb Bush’s favorite “digital learning,” Common Core, Race to the Top policies, and the usual reformy organizations.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

You Are the Leaders

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
48

Spring is coming.

People are standing up and speaking up.

Teachers at Garfield High in Seattle say “no more.”

Teachers at Ballard High School support their colleagues at Garfield.

The Seattle Education Association supports the Garfield and Ballard teachers.

Randi Weingarten tweeted her support.

Superintendents, one after another, are saying the testing obsession is out of control.

The principals of New York State stand together to demand professional evaluation, not trial by testing.

Parents are defending their children by supporting their teachers and their community schools.

The PTA of Niagara County in New York say hands off our public schools.

Communities are opposing school closings and corporate takeovers.

Students are speaking out because they know what is happening to them is not right.

Journalists are starting to recognize that the “reformers” are not real reformers but privatizers.

It is starting to happen.

We will put education back into the hands of educators and parents and communities.

We will work to make our schools better than ever, not by competition, but by collaboration.

Last year, someone emailed and asked me to create and lead the movement to stop the corporate reformers, and I said I couldn’t do it, that all I can do is write and speak.

That truly is all I can do, but when I started this blog in late April, it turned into a platform for the movement, and leaders are emerging all over the country, and learning about each other. They are communicating.

I am not the leader, I am the facilitator. You are the leaders.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reformers, Parent Groups, Principals, Privatization, Students, Support for public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Unions

EduShyster: The Secret Ingredient in the Secret Sauce (Link Fixed!!)

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
12

Mayor Rahm Emanuel memorably said on video that the Noble Street charters in Chicago have a “secret sauce” that makes them successful. They have high test scores and high graduation rates. They are each named for rich and powerful sponsors.

Count on EduShyster to discover the secret in the secret sauce..

She gets many tips, which enables her to scoop many reporters. The secret of her success is two-fold: one, she has a wicked sense of wit, and two, she protects her anonymity, so she doesn’t have to worry about reprisals. And I should add a third very important part of her success: she documents what she writes, as in this post.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization

A Youth Activist in New Orleans Speaks Out for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2013 //
6

Not everyone in New Orleans is pleased with the loss of public education. Youth groups are speaking out and organizing.

In this article, Jacob Cohen shows how the state board, operating with “God-like” power, closes and opens schools as if they were chain stores, not community institutions in which people’s lives are invested.

The Times-Picayune must have taken some powerful flak for publishing Jacob’s article, because a few days later the paper published an editorial strongly defending the charter schools of New Orleans. How amazing that a young man like Jacob Cohen could so alarm the charter citadel and cause them to wheel out their big guns.

Here is a sample of what Jacob wrote:

“The instability and chaos being wrought on eastern New Orleans doesn’t embarrass the state’s most ideological reformers. A high-ranking RSD official once explained to me that schools are like sandwich shops — the ones that do not serve good sandwiches must be shut down so that others can expand their market share. The state is the invisible hand, facilitating capitalism’s natural process of creative destruction by closing the schools that don’t serve up high-quality sandwiches.

“In eastern New Orleans, we need less ideological fervor from the state and more compassion. Less free market fundamentalism and more pragmatism. Less “benign neglect” and more technical support, particularly when it comes to serving students at struggling schools. Letting these schools hit rock bottom so that they can one day be taken over by fashionable charter organizations has led to the sacrifice of thousands of children’s educations — in hopes that the new programs may be stronger.”

Jacob Cohen is the assistant director of the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association (VAYLA) of New Orleans and the director and co-founder of the Raise Your Hand Campaign, a youth organizing initiative that focuses on education equity within New Orleans public high schools.
A graduate of Pomona College, he is the inaugural recipient of the Napier Initiative Creative Leadership Award, as well as the Davis Projects for Peace Award and the Donald Strauss Award. His senior thesis Privatization, Antidemocratic Governance and the “New Orleans Miracle,” received the Edward Sait prize in American Politics, and examines post-Katrina education reform and youth participatory action research.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Supporting public schools

N.C. State Board Caves to Online Lobbyists, with Restrictions

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2013 //
1

North Carolina is a plum market for the online for-profit charter industry.

Today, the state board of education agreed to allow them to open in the state but set some limits.

Here is a link to a report on the decision by North Carolina Policy Watch:

“Virtual charter schools will face restrictions if they want to open up in North Carolina.
The N.C. State Board of Education voted today to adopt a policy that would require the online-based schools to adhere to a significantly lower funding formula ($3504 per student) than brick-and-mortar charter schools, maintain high graduation rates and low withdrawal rates of students. Schools will also need to keep a ratio of one teacher for every 50 students and keep graduation rates within 10 percent of the state average (80 percent), and can’t have withdrawal rates higher than 15 percent in two out of three years.”
Some legislators were unhappy that the state board of education imposed restrictions on the industry. Online charters get dismal results, but they are heavily favored by Jeb Bush and Bob Wise, and of course, the technology industry. They are also a favorite cause of the far-right organization ALEC, which counts some N.C. legislators among its members.
Two for-profit online corporations have already sent letters of intent to the state board of education: Connections, which is owned by Pearson; and K12, which is owned by the Milken brothers and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Both have hired lobbyists to help them in the legislature, which may eliminate the restrictions imposed by the state board of education.
The bottom line: ALEC and for-profit corporations win, kids in N.C. lose.
Categories Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, North Carolina, On-Line Education, Privatization

Paul Thomas: Et Tu, Liberal Media?

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2013 //
15

Paul Thomas recognizes that the big corporate media have bought into the corporate education spin and hype.

But he was baffled that PBS used most of an hour to recycle Rhee’s self-promotion.

By the way, our one consistent ally on national television is the great Jon Stewart. His mother was a teacher, and he knows how hard she worked. Having The Daily Show on our side is great stuff. Jon is more influential than all the others put together. When I appeared on his show, his booker told me I would never be invited on Stephen Colbert’s show because his booker is Jonathan Alter’s wife. Alter is one of the media cheerleaders for corporate reforms. He appeared in “Waiting for Superman” to say, “We know what works. Accountability works.” I am not sure who that “we” referred to.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Rhee, Michelle, Supporting public schools

The Daily Howler On PBS On Rhee

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2013 //
24

The Daily Howler is a tough marker.

He reports on how the media reports on events.

He was not happy with the PBS show about Rhee.

He thought it was dated and failed to ask important questions.

By the way, if you haven’t seen The Daily Howler reports on how the media fumbled the latest international test scores, you should. See here. And here. And here.

There is a connection. Rhee loves to carry on about how horrible American schools are, how dreadful our teachers are, how far down we are in international tests. But if you read the links above, you will learn that our scores on international tests are not so bad. StudentsFirst will have to rewrite a lot of its documents, maybe even retire that insulting video where SF showed a US athlete in the Olympics who pranced around and stumbled pathetically, a man doing a female-only sport. When I recall that awful commercial (shown on national television), it makes my blood boil. What is it with this woman? Why does she want to humiliate the U.S. in the eyes of the world? Why does she have such contempt for our teachers, our schools, and our students?

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, International, Michelle Rhee, Testing

Paul Thomas: What is the Difference between Service and Self-Serving?

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2013 //
14

Paul Thomas taught high school in rural South Carolina for nearly twenty years. Now he teaches at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

He writes here about what it means to have a life of service, in contrast to a life devoted to self-service in a celebrity culture, a life adorned with press conferences, self-promotion and photo ops.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Michelle Rhee

The Key to Understanding Corporate Reform

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2013 //
3

If you want to understand what is happening in state after state, district after district, read Lee Fang’s article here. I have read it again and again, and every time I read it, I see something I didn’t see before and understand the national picture better than I did before. I have published this before. I may publish it every few months to make sure that everyone sees it. Or has a reminder to read it again.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Privatization
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