Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Michelle Rhee: The Mask Is Off

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2013 //
99

Michelle Rhee issued her report card for American education and now we know what she stands for: privatization of American public education.

States that endorse charter schools, for-profit schools, the parent trigger, school closings, vouchers and online for-profit charters get high marks from Rhee.

States that bust unions, take away teacher tenure, and use standardized tests to evaluate teachers get high marks from Rhee.

States that support public education and resist efforts to privatize their public schools get low marks, especially if they support teacher professionalism.

Her top two states are led by the nation’s most rightwing governors and legislatures: Louisiana and Florida.

Rhee has at last dropped the pretense of bipartisanship and shown that StudentsFirst is a branch of ALEC.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Parent trigger, Privatization, StudentsFirst, Teacher Tenure, Testing, Unions, Vouchers

Schools for Other People’s Children: UPDATE: LINK ADDED!

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
7

One of our most perceptive essayists Rachel Levy watched John Merrow’s program about Rocketship charters and recoiled with alarm.

She said if she put her children in front of a screen two hours a day, she would be called a bad parent, but the charter does it and it is called innovative.

She was distressed that the school treats test scores as the only goal of school, so stuff like art and music don’t get time. That’s what kids do on their own time, if they choose, after school.

And what is it that parents do, other than chant with their children?

What’s clear to Levy is that Rocketship is a school for “them,” for other people’s children, not for “ours.” It is all about test scores, for the glory of the founder, not about education.

Rocketship may be a Model T, an apt means of mass-producing test scores, but that’s a horrifying metaphor for stamping out standardized children who never ask questions, never day dream, always find the answer demanded by the program.

Rocketship is a school designed by Alphas and staffed by Betas for the children who are Delta, Gamma, and Epsilon. Read your Huxley.

Rachel also notes possible conflicts of interest. See her P.S.

Categories Blended Learning, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, On-Line Education, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers

Washington Post: DC Charters Expel Students at High Rate

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
28

The Washington Post reports what many people suspected: the charters in the District expel many more students than the public schools. The higher expulsion rate allows the charters to get rid of behavior problems and students with low test scores. This makes charters appear more successful than they are. The expelled students, of course, return to the public schools.

“D.C. charter schools expelled 676 students in the past three years, while the city’s traditional public schools expelled 24, according to a Washington Post review of school data. During the 2011-12 school year, when charters enrolled 41 percent of the city’s students, they removed 227 children for discipline violations and had an expulsion rate of 72 per 10,000 students; the District school system removed three and had an expulsion rate of less than 1 per 10,000 students.”

Folks, this is not education reform. This is a dual school system. It’s also a mighty hoax. Public dollars are going to schools that skim the able and kick out the less able. Where is this heading?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization

The Problem with Choice

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2013 //
93

A reader from Oregon explains the destructive consequences of choice. School choice has been a goal of the right for decades and is now embraced by the Obama administration:

“For US education to thrive, charters must go.

“Some Win, Some Lose with Open Enrollment”. The headline in the Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard may seem like an occasion for joy to the winning school districts but, really, it is just terribly sad for all of us. Open enrollment across district lines is the latest and most extreme version of a school choice movement that is on a trajectory to split public education in two – one set of schools for the haves and the other for those left behind.

School choice is probably the most popular of the signature elements of the current school reform movement – and is there any reason why alternative and charter schools shouldn’t be popular? They house some of the best teachers and some of the most innovative programs; they have more opportunities for enrichment because they are exempt from many of the requirements faced by regular schools; and the parents are more involved and more able to donate time and money – the last not because they care more about their kids. Rather it is because the parents need to be able to provide transportation and often are required to agree to levels of involvement not possible for families without a car and a stay-at-home parent.

The result: one set of schools with wealthier, less diverse students and fewer kids with special needs; the other serving children more diverse in ethnicity, income and educational needs (with fewer resources and more requirements). Public education was supposed to be the great equalizer, an inclusive, welcoming place that gives all kids a chance to climb the ladder of success. But current trends create a de facto tracking system based on socioeconomic status.

Of course we’ve always had school choice. Through the 1960s the choice was public or private. Over the last few decades, however, public school districts created alternative and charter schools and encouraged them to draw their students from the surrounding neighborhood schools. In a Darwinian battle the schools would compete for students with the best schools thriving and good riddance to the losers. It is really hard to believe that school “reformers” didn’t foresee the result: the non-charters left with the most needy kids, fewer resources and, inevitably, failure.

The fact that public alternatives and charters have many good teachers and leaders and involved parents is, itself, the strongest argument against public charters and alternatives. Those are the very resources needed by neighborhood schools to make them what they need to be. And it isn’t even a zero-sum game – it’s negative-sum. Services are duplicated and shifting enrollments make long-range planning impossible.

The parents of students who choose schools outside their neighborhoods are not the problem – good parents will always look for the best available school for their children. The teachers and administrators in those schools are not the problem – many of them are among the best. The problem is the system that sends parents school shopping in the first place.

It is a system that takes advantage of the parental instinct to provide our children with the best possible education. You don’t have to be a public school hater to participate; school shopping has become a mark of good parenting for parents of all persuasions. “I can’t send my daughter to the neighborhood school,” said one mom recently. “Those parents aren’t involved.” And, sadly, what used to be a myth is creating a reality as parents like her opt out of their neighborhood schools.

If, as I suggest, we are to end most school choice, it is important to be sure that we are sending our kids to excellent neighborhood schools. To be honest, part of the reason parents have been so willing to drive their kids across town (or now to a different town) is that some neighborhood schools had become rigid, take-it-or-leave-it, hostile-to-change institutions. Parents with concerns or questions were considered pests. Though they can’t be all things to all people, our neighborhood schools need to be what many already are; nimble, responsive, welcoming neighborhood centers providing an outstanding education to all kids.

The successful innovations that charter and alternative schools have devised wouldn’t be wasted. They – including language immersion – can and should be applied in the neighborhood schools. And charters and alternatives that step up to meet the needs of high school students when regular high schools are unable to do so should be allowed to keep working with, rather than competing against, the mainstream schools.

It is a cliché that if you are attacked from both sides of an issue, you are probably correct. But school “reform” seems to call for a corollary: if there is agreement on an issue from both sides of the aisle, it must be wrong. It is truly mind-boggling that free-market educational policies – so obviously counterproductive, ineffective and unsustainable – are supported by both Democrats and Republicans. The deck may be stacked against us but if we are truly committed to equity, diversity and efficiency in our public schools we’ll need keep working to convince officials, parents and educators that it is essential that we stop this suicidal intra- and inter-district competition, phase out school shopping and bring back new and improved versions of the centers of our neighborhoods – our schools.

Jim Watson, Eugene, Oregon

Categories ALEC, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Federal Waiver, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, US Education, Vouchers

EduShyster Explains the “No Excuses” Model

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2013 //
12

EduShyster is upset. She doesn’t understand why our nation’s leaders have embraced the idea that “success=compliance.”

She is concerned that white philanthropists and  white teachers are imposing strict discipline on black and brown children.

This phenomenon is known as “no excuses.”

As she mentions, the origin of “No Excuses” may be traced to a book of that name by Samuel Casey Carter, written in 2000 about 21 “high-performing, high-poverty schools” and released by the far-right Heritage Foundation. The idea behind the book was that we didn’t need to spend any more money to fix schools, we just had to make sure that the schools were tough in their discipline and indulged in no pedagogical nonsense.

Some day, an enterprising researcher or journalist will check to see where those “no excuses” schools are today. One of them, P.S. 161 in Brooklyn, was on the Mayor’s list of schools-he-wants-to-close. Another, the famous Bennett-Kew Elementary in the miracle district of Inglewood, California, was collapsing, along with the district, and on the verge of a state takeover (when last I read about its travails). Why? Because so many charter schools had opened in the Inglewood “miracle district” that the district had to lay off teachers, custodians and other staff, had increased class sizes to 40 or more, and was about to fall into bankruptcy.

Then came the Thernstroms’ book of the same title.

And then came David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff, which lavished praise on “no excuses” schools that practice “the new paternalism.” It was published by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Whitman is (or was) Arne Duncan’s speech writer.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization

A Call for Political Leadership

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2013 //
24

Where are our leaders? Where are the political leaders with the courage and independence to support the commons against the power of Big Money?

This reader read Gary Rubinstein’s brilliant Letters to “Reformers” and wrote this comment:

“Thanks for making this series more widely known– it is so well done and important for people to see. And as noted in the notes on the Tillson piece, their collective silence is deafening. Rarely is that crowd quiet about anything . . .

“What we need is a politician to spend more than five minutes studying and understanding the real issues of real education reform. Too many fall into the Obama/Duncan trap of nostrums that sound good but don’t work. Most people are busy, don’t have kids in public schools, don’t talk to principals or teachers and don’t even realize they are lining up with the ALEC privateers. Isn’t anyone in DC listening at all? Seems not, and meanwhile the damage being done in the states and in the local schools is tangible and real.

“Where is our champion inside the beltway? A senator, a rep, someone running for President next time . . ? Someone to make this, true and meaningful and effective education reform, a major part of their political identity. They’d start with an enviable base.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Hari Sevugan Defends StudentsFirst Agenda

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2013 //
47

I earlier reported the story on Huffington Post that said a number of top staffers had resigned, including Democrats. Hari Sevugan was a key figure in the article. He here explains his continued loyalty to Michelle Rhee’s mission.

I hope he will write again to explain why he thinks that Rhee’s support for for-profit charters, for vouchers, and for the agenda of rightwing governors helps our society’s most vulnerable children.

Diane – I’ve never posted a comment on your blog, but as one of the subjects mentioned in the article you have extrapolated from to make your point in this entry, I felt that I needed to on this occasion. I’m also writing this on my iphone, so please forgive me any wayward autocorrects.

You have often suggested, as you have here, that folks at StudentsFirst and more broadly the education reform community are working to privatize education and diminish teaching and teachers.

You afforded a story regarding my time at StudentsFirst enough validity to use it to criticize the organization. So, I hope you will afford my opinion based on that time the same credibility when I tell you this:

To suggest that folks working at StudentsFirst or in education reform are doing anything but working for the benefit of kids is plain wrong.

Everyone I worked with at StudentsFirst and in the education reform community was and is exclusively interested in improving the lives of children. They are not out to diminish teachers, but rather they recognize the importance of teachers in ensuring children have the best education possible. They are not out to destroy public education, but rather their fealty belongs to the public school students served by that system.

The thing is – I believe the same is true of teachers unions and many advocates, including you, who are opposed to education reform.

While I no longer work at StudentsFirst on a day-to-day basis, I will continue to work with them in other ways, as well as with other reformers, toward their goal of ensuring every child has access to high quality education.

In this post you ask, “What part of [Rhee’s] agenda is bipartisan?” There are many Democrats, including this one, who work toward reform because public schools are not currently serving every child – too often children of color and from poverty – as they should. These children are being denied a fundamental civil right. It is a core Democratic value to ensure that their civil rights are enforced. It is a core Democratic value to ensure poverty or socio-economic status is not a barrier to opportunity. It is a core Democratic value to ensure teachers are respected for the work they do.

There will be disagreements on how to enact those values at a policy level, on both sides and at times within the same side (see Newark teachers deal) but I hope we can abstain from characterizing motivations or values of those we disagree with. (Or in this case mischaracterizing them). I hope we can raise the level of the dialogue in this debate to reflect the importance of the subject matter both sides are trying to serve – our kids.

Hope this finds you otherwise well and doing better things on a Friday night that reading this.

– Hari

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Vouchers

How to Live with an Outrage

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2013 //
87

Chancellor Kaya Henderson is closing 20 public schools in DC, displacing 3,000 children. She has abdicated her responsibilty to improve the schools and is instead following the corporate reform script: close public schools while opening more privately managed charters.

The Washington Post has an article advising parents and students how to accept the destruction of their community school. They should be offering advice on how to resist.

There is plenty of shame to go around as the privatization movement gobbles up more schools, more children, more public funding. In most cities and states, the charters do not get different results when they serve the same children. Why the rush to eliminate public schools that are community hubs?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers

School Board Showdown in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2013 //
10

Steve Zimmer is an alumnus of Teach for America.

He is not your typical TFA-er.

He was elected to the Los Angeles Unified school board in 2009, after seventeen years as a public school teacher.

He will be opposed by Kate Anderson, who has endorsements and major funding from the powerful charter school lobby.

Zimmer, because of his experience as a teacher, has become an outspoken, articulate supporter of students, teachers, and public education.

He has tried to slow down the value-added assessment juggernaut; he wants multiple measures.

The charter folks want to get Zimmer off the board because a few months ago, he offered a resolution calling for a higher level of accountability for charters, better auditing and reporting, more collaboration with public schools, and a moratorium on the opening of new charter schools until the new accountability measures are created.

Los Angeles is a major target for the charter lobby. It now has more than 100,000 children in charters, about 15% of the children in the district, more children than in any other district in the nation.

In light of the rapid growth of charters and their uneven performance, Zimmer said it was time to step back, establish reasonable oversight, and frame a reasonable policy for oversight and future growth.

Superintendent John Deasey said Zimmer’s resolution was “unnecessary.”

Two thousand charter parents turned out to hoot and ridicule Zimmer’s resolution.

And now the charter lobby is poised to knock him out.

Kate Anderson is a lawyer who has worked for Democratic officials. She is a mother of young children who attend public schools. She has pledged to support more charters.

Davis Guggenheim, director of “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” is holding a fund-raiser for Kate Anderson at the Sony Pictures commissary.

Steve Zimmer has the wisdom that comes from his 17 years in the classroom. He has the audacity to post on his website an article that showed that Los Angeles’ public schools outperformed the charter schools.

If the charter lobby manages to defeat him, it will be a very bad omen for the future of public education in Los Angeles.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

The Dichotomy Between Corporate Reform and Real Reform

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2013 //
14

Anthony Cody has written a crisp analysis of the differences between what corporate reformers want and what supporters of public education want.

People like Anthony and me are often told to be accommodating, to be more receptive of the corporate style ideas.

But, as Anthony shows in this article, there are genuine differences.

Public education is facing an existential threat to its existence from people who support privatization.

They do this in a clever way, by talking about civil rights while advocating privatization.

They say it’s “for the children,” but somehow there are adults who seem to benefit more than the kids.

“They can’t wait,” but it’s not their life and career that is sacrificed while they impose risky schemes.

Yes, there is a dichotomy, and we cannot quietly acquiesce.

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