Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Beware! Powerful Koch Network Starts New Group to Fight Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2019 //
14

Charles Koch and his network of wealthy donors have created a new Astroturf organization called “Yes Every Kid” to promote school choice and take public money away from public schools.

Yes, they are targeting “every kid” as a prime prospect for a charter school or a voucher.

Yes, they want to shrink public schools so that they are no longer the “choice” of 90% of American families.

Koch in June announced the Yes Every Kid initiative as the latest addition to his sprawling network of wealthy donors, political groups and tax-exempt advocacy organizations best known for pushing anti-regulation, small-government policies. Its political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has made waves supporting the tea party and fighting former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The Yes Every Kid group is tasked with monitoring statehouses where it can be influential on school choice, said Stacy Hock, a Texas philanthropist who is among hundreds of donors each contributing at least $100,000 annually to the Koch network’s wide-ranging agenda.

Hock and officials with the Koch network said it’s too early to provide specifics about what policies the group is pushing.

“The priority is to go where there is a political appetite to be open to policy change and lean in there,” said Hock, who also leads the Texans for Education Opportunity advocacy group that supports charters and other education alternatives.

She cited Texas, West Virginia, Tennessee and Florida as priority states where school choice proposals have flourished.

It is hard to say that West Virginia is a place where school choice proposals have “flourished” since the legislature approved them just weeks ago for the first time, and they have not yet been implemented. So translate: Koch money has successfully bought enough legislators in rural West Virginia to foist “choice” on local communities, although it has not happened as yet.

In Tennessee, Koch money bought the new governor and the legislature to impose charters and vouchers on districts that don’t want them.

Florida is a wholly owned subsidiary of the DeVos-Jeb-Koch combine.

There is no evidence that students benefit by having school choice, although there is plenty of evidence that vouchers underwrite racism and ignorance and there is plenty of evidence that school choice promotes segregation.

This is what the billionaires actually want: ignorance, racism, and segregation. And it is worth paying for. For them. Not for us, and not for our society.

Peter Greene defined this new group of Astroturfers far better than I. 

He calls it the “Astroturducken,” with one deform idea wrapped around another, all of them guaranteed to destroy public schools, trick parents, and generate jobs for the faithful hangers-on from Reformy world.

Greene writes:

Yes, don’t wait for things to come down from above, says this website that has come down from a billionaire who wants to drive the education bus despite his complete lack of educational expertise. But this astroturfery is insistent. “Real change has to start from the ground up. We’re here as your resource to facilitate conversation.” That might be really moving if the very next sentence weren’t “We’re here to foster a culture of disruptive innovation,” which suggests that these facilitaty listeners already have some answers in mind. Also missing– an acknowledgement of where all that negativity came from. Here is yet another reformy outfit talking about negatives from the past as if they simply fell from space, instead of saying, “Yeah, that was us. Sorry.” And here comes the tell:

We want to hear new ideas, new solutions, and new voices. And it can only happen when we listen to the real stakeholders in education: you.

But who is this “we” and why should stakeholders feel any need or obligation to talk to “we” in the first place? This is the same old rich fauxlanthropist baloney– we’re not only going to vote ourselves a seat at the table, but we’re also going to go ahead and give ourselves the seat at the head because, yeah, this is our table now. It’s so big and generous of you to agree to listen to us, Sir, but I still haven’t heard a reason that we should be talking to you. This is the overarching narrative of decades of modern ed reform– actual teachers and educators were working long and hard on the problems of education, and a bunch of rich amateurs strolled up and announced, “Good news! We’re going to take over this whole conversation now!” Thirty years later we’re still all waiting to hear why these guys should be running any part of the show beyond reasons like “I’m rich” and “I want to.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Texas: Three Small Districts Oppose Federally-Funded Charter Growth in El Paso

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2019 //
2

Three small districts near El Paso passed resolutions opposing the dramatic expansion of the charter sector, which is driven by federal funds awarded by Betsy DeVos to the IDEA charter chain. 

As charter schools expand in El Paso, fueled by a sizable federal grant, three of the county’s smaller districts are hoping recent resolutions will prevent students from leaving and encourage lawmakers to do more to quell charter growth.

On Wednesday, San Elizario ISD’s board became the latest to approve a resolution opposing charter school expansion in the region. The Clint and Tornillo ISD boards approved nearly identical resolutions in late June.

The resolutions come just months after IDEA Public Schools won an unprecedented $116 million over five years from the federal government to create 38 new schools across three states, 14 of which are slated for El Paso.

Want to stay informed on El Paso education issues?: Click here to subscribe to elpasotimes.com

That growth takes away much needed public funds from districts already grappling with enrollment declines, the Clint, Tornillo and San Elizario superintendents said, and the financial impact is particularly felt by smaller districts.

“We have to be conscientious that if we don’t take initiative to inform our communities, then you have great marketing teams from these charter schools coming in and painting a picture … that gives the appearance that they’re better than public schools,” San Elizario ISD Superintendent Jeannie Meza-Chavez said.

Well, of course, their marketing materials will claim they are better than public schools; they will claim that 100% of their students will go to college, but they won’t tell parents about their high attrition rates, nor will they tell them how long their graduates survive in college.

This is Beto O’Rourke’s district, but the school boards can’t look to him for help. He told the NEA meeting in Houston that he opposes “for-profit charters and vouchers,” but not the kind of non-profit charters that are about to damage the public schools in his own community.

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

Peter Greene: Reformers Try to Rehabilitate Tarnished Reputation of Virtual Charters

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2019 //
11

 

Now here is a nasty job, but someone has to do it (if the price is right.) Even “reformers” agree that virtual charters are a disaster, a sector with horrible results that is populated by entrepreneurs and grifters. 

Peter Greene reviews an effort by “reformers” to salvage the rightly blemished record of this industry of scammers. 

Can it be done? Not really. 

First, he examines the connections of the writers of this report. Gold-plated reformers, for sure. Then he shows that their “insights” are either old hat, commonplace, or silly. 

The report was written by Public Impact, whose staff has few actual educators. 

Like most such groups, Public Impact likes to crank out “reports” that serve as slickly packaged advocacy for one reform thing or another. Two of their folk have just whipped together such a report for Bluum. Sigh. Yes, I know, but it’s important to mark all the wheels within wheels if for no other reason than A) it’s important to grasp just how many people are employed in the modern reformster biz and B) later, when these groups and people turn up again, you want to remember what they’ve been up to before.

What is Bluum? 

So Bluum. This Idaho-based is a “non-profit organization committed to ensuring Idaho’s children reach their fullest potential by cultivating great leaders and innovative schools.” Its 2016 990 form lists that mission, though it includes some more specific work. “Bluum assists the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation determine where to make education investments that will result in the growth of high performing seats in Idaho.” (I will never not find the image of a high-performing seat” not funny.)Then they monitor the results. The Albertsons are Idaho grocery millionaires with an interest in education causes.

Blum’s CEO is Terry Ryan, who previously worked for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Ohio.

Bluum partners with Teach for America, NWEA. National School Choice Week, the PIE Network, and Education Cities, to name a few. And they are the project lead on the consortium that landed a big, juicy federal CSP grant to expand charters (that’s the program that turns out to have wasted at least a billion dollars).

Just so we’re clear– this report did not come from a place of unbiased inquiry. It came from a place of committed marketing.

Of “reform-style” mushrooms, the supply is endless, and the money is infinite. The results are consistently negative. Yet they keep trying.

The Albertson Foundation in Idaho is a rightwing foundation that shares the Betsy DeVos agenda. 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Virtual Charter Schools

Larry Cuban: AltSchool Collapses, Reborn as a “Learning Platform”

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2019 //
13

 

Larry Cuban recounts the short history of AltSchool, which was intended to be a progressive moneymaker but flamed out  and has been replaced by another company called Altitude Learning.

Another chapter is added to the annals of the for-profit education history.

Cuban writes:

Begun by wealthy high-tech entrepreneur (and ex-Google executive) Max Ventilla in 2013, AltSchool made a splash with its string of private “micro-schools” in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area (tuition was $26,000)–see here, here, and here. Ventilla saw AltSchool as a string of lab schools where progressive ideas could be put into practice and the individualized software that staff designed and used in the “micro-schools” could be bought and used in public schools.

AltSchool “micro-schools’ were ungraded, used project-based learning complete with individually designed “playlists,” small classes, and experienced young teachers. Were John and Evelyn Dewey alive, they would have enrolled their six children in AltSchool.

I stopped here to wonder what the socialist John Dewey, the philosopher of democracy and the common good, would have thought about for-profit schools.

Ventilla’s dream collapsed when he realized that he was spending $40 million a year and taking in revenues of $7 million.

So AltSchool is now evolving into Altitude Learning, a “platform” that will be sold to charters, public schools, and other customers.

Ventilla passes the torch:

In a blog post six months earlier, Ventilla signaled readers that AltSchool would be changing.

In 2017 we were fortunate to attract a number of world-class career educators and administrators to our team, to guide everything we do. Moving forward, I am pleased to announce Ben Kornell will become President of AltSchool. Ben joined our team back in 2017 as VP of Growth. He’s dedicated his life to reducing educational inequity; he started as a Teach for America middle school teacher and later went to Stanford Business School to learn how to cultivate educational change broadly. As COO of Envision, he helped lead a network of charter schools and scaled a performance assessment system to public schools across the country. Since joining AltSchool, Ben’s led our company’s transition to partnering with public and private schools nationwide. As we continue to integrate the platform into existing school systems, it is essential to have education leaders like Ben at the helm.

Another entry into the annals of Corporate Reform.

My suggestion to corporate reformers hoping to get rich by investing in the education industry.

Read Jonathan A. Knee, Class Clowns: How the Smartest Investors Lost Billions in Education.  

And Samuel Abrams’ illuminating account of the rise and fall of the Edison Project, in Education and the Commercial Mindset.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Technology

DeBlasio: A Hypocrite on Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2019 //
56

 

DeBlasio recently boasted at the NEA candidates’ panel about his courageous resistance to the charter industry. It is true that he started his first term in office in 2014 determined to stop the charter zillionaires’ efforts to grab money and the students they wanted from the public schools.

When he did not grant Eva Moskowitz all the new charters she wanted, her backers launched a PR blitz against DeBlasio, spending $6 million on emotional appeals on TV.

Eva bused parents and students to Albany, where Governor Cuomo pledged his loyalty to the charter cause. The legislature passed a bill requiring NYC to let the charters expand at will, to give charters any public space they wanted at no cost, and to pay their rent if they couldn’t find suitable public space.

At that point, DeBlasio stopped fighting the charter industry.

Currently, the New York City Department of Education gives the charter industry its lists of students’ names and addresses for recruitment purposes.

Parents have protested this misuse of their children’s private information. This practice of releasing personally identifiable student information is illegal under state law.

Recently Chancellor Carranza pledged to end the practice. But as Leonie Haimson reported, DeBlasio reversed the decision and promised to reach his own decision. He has not made any decision and the charter industry continues to bombard public school parents with recruitment letters.

So much for those mythical long waiting lists!

Speaking of mythical waiting lists, Leonie Haimson also reported on an exciting new development at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain:

More recently, Moskowitz created what is described as a “full service, brand strategy, marketing, and creative division within Success Academy” called the “The Success Academy Creative Agency” according to the LinkedIn profile of its Managing Director, Meredith Levin. 

In an earlier version of her profile, Levin described this internal marketing division of Success as a  “group of over 30 creative directors, designers, copywriters, strategists, e-learning architects & project managers to develop, execute and optimize campaigns to recruit 1,000+ teachers, enroll families, donors, influencers, and cultivate community engagement.

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Hoax, Oakland, Privatization, Propaganda

Jan Resseger: The Long Process of Repairing the Damage to Education in Wisconsin

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2019 //
6

 

Jan Resseger writes here about Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ efforts to repair the damage done to education in Wisconsin by ex-Governor ScottWalker, who used his time in office to try to destroy education.

She writes about Gordon Lafer’s brilliant book The One Percent Solution as context for the siege of the schools and universities by Walker.

She begins:

In Gordon Lafer’s 2017 book, The One Percent Solution, in the first chapter entitled  “Wisconsin and Beyond: Dismantling the Government,” Lafer makes Wisconsin the emblem of what happened in the 2010 election, as corporate lobbies, the Tea Party, and the collapse of state revenue following the Great Recession converged to fuel a Red-state wave that took over state governments:

“Critically, this new territory included a string of states, running across the upper Midwest from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, that had traditionally constituted labor strongholds… Starting in 2011, the country has witnessed an unprecedented wave of legislation aimed at eliminating public employee unions, or, where they remain, strictly limiting their right to bargain.  At the same time, the overall size of government has been significantly reduced in both union and nonunion jurisdictions. The number of public jobs eliminated in 2011 was the highest ever recorded, and budgets for essential public services were dramatically scaled back in dozens of states.  All of this—deunionization, sharp cuts in public employee compensation and the dramatic rollback of public services—was forcefully championed by the corporate lobbies, who made shrinking the public sector a top policy priority in state after state.”  (The One Percent Solution, pp. 44-45)

Wisconsin was Ground Zero for the attack o the public sector unions, public schools, and public higher education.

Resseger describes Governor Evers’s first steps toward putting together what Walker destroyed.

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

BREAKING NEWS: Former Secretary of Education for Puerto Rico Arrested!

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2019 //
13

 

In a major corruption investigation, the FBI arrested former Puerto Rico Secretary of Education Julia Keleher in DC. 

Keleher was brought to the Island to cut costs, impose charters and vouchers, and break the union. She was paid $250,000 a year while preaching austerity and budget cuts.

Puerto Rican educators did not like her, to put it mildly. They referred to her with the hashtag #JuliaGoHome.

Puerto Rican journalist #RimaBrusi tweeted that the new hashtag is #JuliaGoToJail

The charges include wire fraud, money laundering, and theft.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Puerto Rico

Carl J. Petersen: Public School Allies Retake Control of the Los Angeles School Board

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2019 //
16

Carl J. Petersen, parent advocate and blogger in Los Angeles, writes here about the long, hard struggle to wrest control of the Los Angeles Unified School District school board from the hands of the billionaires.

Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings and other billionaires have funded the campaigns of charter advocates. The billionaires spent many  millions to gain control, only to see one member of their slim majority—Ref Rodriguez— indicted for campaign finance violations. Even after his indictment, however, he refused to step down for nearly a year until after the board had chosen businessman Austin Beutner  as superintendent.

But everything changed after the election of Jackie Goldberg, who won Rodriguez’s seat.

Read this great story.

 

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Peter Greene: The Essential Foolishness of the Fordham-CAP “Moonshot”

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2019 //
17

 

Peter Greene writes here about the “moonshot” to transform American education, co-sponsored by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the allegedly liberal Center for AMERICAN Progress. Peter points out that this collaboration demonstrates that both sides of the DC Establishment endorse corporatedceducarion reform (despite its manifest failure for the past 25 years).

He compares their competition to education’s version of the self-driving car.

He writes:

Do you mean something that’s promoted relentlessly but is still far off in the future? Or do you mean a program that faces major obstacles that tech-cheerleaders just sort of gloss over?

Perhaps you meant a tech-based solution that strips all participants of power and agency and gives it instead to a bunch of programmers? Or did you mean a new tech initiative that promises to make a bunch of people rich?

Or do you mean something that can fail with really catastrophic results?

All their goals are stated as measurable results.

And he notes:

These goals are all about changing numbers; they are an open invitation to apply Goodhart’s or Campbell’s Laws, in which focus on a measurement leads to that measurement being rendered useless. This is about coming up with ways to make better numbers. Yes, one way to improve numbers can be (though not always) to improve the underlying reality those numbers are supposed to represent. But those techniques are hard to scale, expensive and not easy to devise. There are always simpler methods.

If you want a piece of this action, the group is open to submissions of 500 words until the end of the month. But remember– this is not about coming up with a self-driving car. It’s about coming up with a marketing package that makes it look like a self-driving car has been perfected. It’s about doing a good job of using modern CGI to fake your presence on the moon without all the hard work, expense and challenge of actually getting a rocket up there.

Categories Accountability, Campbell's Law, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Carol Burris: Don’t Let Democratic Candidates Get Away With: “I’m Against For-Profit Charters”

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2019 //
64

 

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes here about the efforts by most Democratic candidates to avoid confronting the dangers of privatization:

When Democratic candidates are questioned about charter schools, many typically reply, “I am against for-profit charter schools.” Everyone cheers. Politicians have created a convenient (and false) dichotomy that says nonprofit charter schools are good, and for-profit charter schools are bad.

Don’t be fooled. There are now only 2 states that allow for-profit charter schools—Arizona and Wisconsin. California changed  its laws. 

However, 35 states allow for-profit Charter Management Organizations (CMOS) to run their nonprofit charter schools. 

40% of the charter schools in Florida are run by for-profit charter management companies. While the individual charter is a nonprofit, it can turn over everything from hiring, to curriculum, to financial management to a for-profit corporation. In Michigan, 80% of the so-called nonprofit charter schools are run by for-profit companies. 

To understand how this arrangement works, read this blog I wrote for the Answer Sheet on Florida’s charter schools. You will read about the Zulueta brothers who were on the board of an Academica charter school even while their for-profit real estate companies, including one in Panama, were leasing property to the schools. 

Let me shock you a bit more. The National Alliance for (so-called) Public Charter Schools recently gave the controversial profiteer, Fernando Zulueta, an award at its national conference!

You probably know the names and reputations of the other big for-profit CMOs—BASIS, National Heritage, Academica, K12 and more.

The question candidates need to answer then are:

 “Do you support for-profit Charter Management Organizations, and if you do not, what are you going to do about them?”

The most important questions to ask, however (and don’t let them off the hook), are whether they support the NAACP moratorium on new charter schools and “Will you stop the the federal funding of new charter schools?”

There is a reason the charter lobby never complains when a candidate says that he/she is against for-profit charter schools. It means nothing will change.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Hoax, Privatization
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