This is one of the most puzzling questions of our day.
Rachel Levy asks it in all sincerity.
How can the Democratic Party embrace individuals and groups that are working to elect Republicans? Why does it embrace individuals and groups that are actively working against unions, immigrant rights, gays, and public education?
Can anyone explain it? Is the tent so big that Democrats support those who support Republicans?
I don’t get it.
I wrote a post about the Mind Trust the other day, having realized that it is part of the faux reform movement intent on privatizing public education in Indiana.
Quite by coincidence, the great education writer Karen Francisco at the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette wrote a piece about the Mind Trust on exactly the same day.
She points out that their modus operandi–right out of the ALEC playbook–is to bypass democracy and local control so as to impose privatization by fiat.
The entering wedge is the rhetoric: “It’s all about the children.” “Do you believe in great teachers?” “We are here to save black children.” “We came to save the children from failing schools.”
Knowing how these reformers work, the next step is to open charters in affluent suburbs, where there are no failing schools, no children to “save,” but then all children need choice, right?
And their empire grows.
Is there a prize for opening the most charter schools? for replacing the most public schools? Where do these people come from?
Readers of this blog know we have been following the story of Great Hearts Charter School and its effort to locate in an affluent section of Nashville. Here is a good and objective summary in a Nashville newspaper.
State Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman–whose only prior experience in education was working for Teach for America (he taught for two years, went to work for TFA, was never a principal or a superintendent)– wants this particular charter very badly. He has been monitoring the actions of the Metro Nashville school board, and he warned them there would be bad consequences if they did not approve this charter. Huffman made it clear: he wanted this charter approved.
The local board thought that the school would not be diverse, would not reflect the district, and they turned it down. They turned it down three times. The state board ordered them to approve the charter, and the local board said no again.
Maybe the local board was aware of research showing again and again that charters don’t get better results than public schools unless they exclude low-performing students.
Huffman and the Governor were furious that the school board said no. They announced that they would punish the democratically elected Metro Nashville school board by withholding $3.4 million in “administrative” funds. These are funds for student transportation, utilities, and maintenance.
In their vindictiveness, Governor Haslam and Commissioner Huffman are prepared to deny transportation funds for the children of Nashville and shut off the lights and electricity.
All for a charter that expects parents to pony up $1,200 as a “voluntary” contribution to the school. No wonder there are people who think this is a ploy to open a private school with public dollars, located conveniently in an area where upper-income parents want a free public education, inaccessible to children from the other side of Nashville.
Haslam and Huffman are likely to go the ALEC route. The rightwing organization ALEC has model legislation that allows the governor to appoint a commission to authorize charter schools over the objections of local school boards.
A measure of this kind is on the ballot in Georgia this November.
What this demonstrates is that privatization means more to these conservatives than local control. With a governor-appointed commission, they can hand over public dollars to fat cats and cronies.
Nothing conservative about that. A conservative member of the Alabama state board of education writes me offline, and points out that the privatization movement is about greed, not education. It violates every conservative principle.
Remember when local school boards in the South used their powers to defend segregation. Here is one that is using its powers to defend desegregation.
Governor Haslam and Commissioner Huffman can’t tolerate the school board’s defiance. they are ready to wipe out the authority of local school boards to advance the privatization of public education and to hasten the return of a dual school system..
Jersey Jazzman is watching Education Nation so the rest of us don’t have to.
He says that teachers are more outspoken this year than in the past. He thinks they are emboldened by the Chicago strike. They are mad as hell and they won’t sit still while non-educators bash them.
He reports that one fellow got up and made a brash statement about the success of his school.
Let’s begin by saying that real educators don’t brag about test scores.
Be that as it may, Jersey Jazzman checked the sources and discovered that this particular school has a very large attrition rate.
With more fact-checking like this, reformers might be reluctant to make boasts.
We should all do it.
But this time around, I am leaving the job to JJ.
No matter what the calendar says, it’s springtime for charters in Connecticut.
The State Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor was a member of the board of Achievement First, a charter chain in Connecticut. He believes in charters, like his colleague John King, the state commissioner in New York, whose only experience was in the charter sector (Uncommon Schools).
Jonathan Pelto has been writing about the massing of hedge fund money in support of the charter agenda in Connecticut.
Be sure to read Pelto’s link to the excellent article by Stamford parent advocate Wendy Lecker.
One consistent finding in the research is that charters have not been successful in taking over low-performing schools and doing a “turn-around.” KIPP tried it at Cole Elementary School in Denver and gave up. Charters prefer to start from scratch so they can mold students from the beginning.
Let’s keep watch and see what happens in Connecticut.
Fred Klonsky has the inside scoop on who paid for the $1 million ad that has filled the airwaves in Chicago after the teachers’ strike.
He says the money came from Ravenel Boykin Curry IV and his wife Celerie. Fred’s brother Mike Klonsky says that other hedge fund managers joined to pay for the ads.
Curry is a board member of the Wall Street hedge fund manager organization called “Democrats for Education Reform.” DFER, as it is known, loves charter schools. It also believes that it is time to get tough with teachers.
It must make the hedge fund managers so angry to know that teachers in the Chicago public schools make an average of–what?–$70,000? $75,000? One of the Chicago equity investors is quoted by Mike Klonsky as saying that his goal is to separate the teachers from the union. Of course, that leaves teachers voiceless and powerless.
You just can’t get good help these days.
During the strike, there was an outpouring of ads undermining and attacking the union. This blogger wondered who was paying for them. The group is called Education Reform Now. It is the non-profit arm of Democrats for Education Reform. DFER, as it is known, is the political action group of Wall Street hedge fund managers.
So many of them went to Andover, Exeter, Deerfield Academy, and other elite private schools. But for some reason, they want something different for poor and minority children: Not schools like Andover, Exeter, etc., which have small classes and a rich curriculum and beautiful facilities, but boot camps, where children learn to be silent, to walk in straight lines, and to obey without question.
Someday sociologists will figure out how the hedge fund managers became the primary players in “school reform,” and why they want minority children to have a schooling for compliance, not the kind of schooling they had or the kind they want for their own children. And why they hate unions and look down on teachers.
For now, it will remain a puzzle of our time.
A reader sees how the pieces of the reform movement fit together:
I think that all the double-speak is just to divert attention away from the major process of dismantling education that has been taking place across the country, and the smoke and mirrors is to conceal the intention to ultimately declare brick and mortar schools obsolete and teachers expendable and unnecessary. Effectively, the goal is to not have teachers anymore.
One online teacher I work with put it this way recently, “We’re just glorified graders now.” Honestly, for a teacher, there is no glory when your job boils down to just grading. But politicians, corporate reformers and companies like Pearson and K-12 seem to think that education can be reduced to presenting material on a screen and testing, and that they can train virtually anyone to be graders.
Actually, online, you can set it up so that tests are self-administered and automatically generate grades, so currently instructors are grading papers, class discussions, group projects, participation, etc. and I can see how that might one day be considered superfluous to the powers that be.
This week, we will be subjected (or treated) to days of NBC’s celebration of corporate reform, which they call “Education Nation.”
Read this critique of the event.
They will hail the anti-union film of the year, as two years ago they hailed the anti-union propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.”
They will make a token effort to include teachers.
But the bottom line is that Education Nation is staged to persuade the American public that American education is in sorry shape because of bad teachers, that teachers must be judged by the test scores of their students (no matter that the research says it is wrong) and that our nation needs to privatize public education.
Condoleeza Rice will be there, explaining why our public schools are a “very grave threat to our national security.” She will explain why we need to provide more charters and vouchers so kids can escape public education. Please read my critique of the nonsensical report that she will talk about. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/do-our-public-schools-threaten-national-security/?pagination=false
Ms. Katie is one of the best education bloggers out there. She has deep experience working with children in need, she is passionate, and she writes from the heart.
In this post, she explains what the Chicago Teachers Union won for the children of Chicago.
And she makes clear why Rahm Emanuel should stop saying he is doing it “for the children,” for “our children.” He has not earned that right. Who is he doing “it” for? Why does he want to close another 100 public schools and turn them over to private managers? Read on.
