Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Tom Ultican: A Layman’s Guide to the Destroy Public Education Movement

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2018 //
20

Tom Ultican, a retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, has been piecing together the story of the Destroy Public Education Movement. This is his most comprehensive overview yet. It names the leaders of the movement and describes their methods, with the goal of undercutting democracy and privatizing public schools.

He creates a typology of the motives behind the movement.

He describes their game plan, which varies from district to district yet aims for the same result: The dismantling of democratic control of public schools.

He concludes:

“The DPE Movement is Real, Well Financed and Determined

“While growing up in America, I had a great belief in democracy instilled in me. Almost all of the education reform initiatives coming from the DPE forces are bunkum, but their hostility to democracy convinces me they prefer a plutocracy or even an oligarchy to democracy. The idea that America’s education system was ever a failure is and always has been an illusion. It is by far the best education system in the world plus it is the foundation of American democracy. If you believe in American ideals, protect our public schools.”

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

BREAKING NEWS! Florida Supreme Court Tosses Out Appeal for Amendment 8!

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2018 //
16

The Florida League of Women Voters won their legal case to knock the deceptive Amendment 8 off the November ballot!


The League of Women Voters case against Amendment 8 wins in the Florida Supreme Court. It will be removed from the November 6th ballot. The vagueness of the amendment language and its misleading title: “School Board Term Limits and Duties; Public Schools” was the basis for the justices’ 3 to 4 ruling. This is significant in many ways.

The decision puts a roadblock in the effort to create an alternative charter school system. This is a basic goal of the school privatization effort. No doubt some legislators will continue to push proposals to remove any local school board control of charter schools. In reality, local public schools have little ability now to oversee these charters, but they must authorize new charters. Removing this power to authorize charters is seen as limiting the expansion of charters.

The amendment included three unrelated proposals. In addition to the proposed removal of local school board authority to authorize charter schools were two additional proposals. The first one was to impose term limits on school board members. The second proposal was to require civics in K12 curriculum. Civics is already required in the Florida curriculum; it just was not in the constitution. All three proposals are now removed from the ballot.

This is just another step in the long journey to reaffirm the importance of our public school system.

Congratulations to the Florida League of Women Voters and to the Southern Poverty Law Center!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Hoax, Privatization

Washington Post: Why Betsy DeVos Failed

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2018 //
49

The Washington Post has a new national education writer, Laura Meckler. She published an excellent article yesterday about the big-time failure of Betsy DeVos to accomplish anything in D.C. as Secretary of Education.

Despite Republican control of Congress (for now), her budget proposals have fallen flat. She arrived with Trump’s promise to transfer $20 Billion from other federal programs to create a federal school choice program for charters, vouchers, and online schools. That went nowhere. She has repeatedly proposed a $1 Billion plan for school choice. Congress rejected it.

Her only victory was to get a big increase in charter school funding, now up to $450 Million. This despite the GAO report in 2016 warning of waste, fraud, and abuse in the charter industry.

DeVos has helped to galvanize the opposition to school choice and to energize supporters of public schools, who now recognize that charters and vouchers take money away from public schools, a traditional community institution whose doors are open to all.

She is such a toxic figure, her contempt for public schools is so evident, her arrogance and snobbishness so transparent, that she has alienated even some Republicans. Many rural Republicans treasure their local public schools. As Meckler shows, conservatives are divided over the DeVos effort to create a federal school choice plan. Libertarians fear (rightly) that federal funds will be accompanied by federal regulations.

From our point of view, as supporters of public education, DeVos has been the gift that keeps on giving. She remains deeply uninformed about education policy. Her solution to everything is School Choice. She is a champion of charters, stripping away their thin progressive veneer. She wants to roll back civil rights protections for everyone but accused rapists. She has removed protections for students defrauded by for-profit “colleges,” while stopping federal efforts to regulate the institutions that defraud students.

In short, if you care about public schools and civil rights and the ability of students to get a good education, she is a disaster on all fronts.

The fact that she became a national figure at the very time that Research converged on the negative effects of vouchers was fortuitous. Similarly, the growing national recognition that the charter industry is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse undermines her cause.

Now our goal must be to convince members of Congress, especially Democrats, to stop acting as the biggest funder of charter schools, whose aggressive expansion hurts public schools, you know, the schools that enroll 85% of America’s students.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Rahm Boasts About His Record as Chicago’s “Education Mayor”

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2018 //
19

Let’s hear it for Rahm Emanuel. He is not running for a third term. He boasts about his education record. He closed 50 public schools in a single day. That was historic! Some locals think that this mass school closing led to violence, gang activity, and many deaths. But then, he was just following in the footsteps of Arne Duncan, who was Chicago’s superintendent of schools under Mayor Daley and started a program called Renaissance 2010. The heart of Renaissance 2010 was closing public schools and replacing them with charter schools. Chicago is still waiting for a “renaissance.”

This is what Politico said about Rahm, the education mayor:

EMANUEL SAYS HE WON’T RUN FOR REELECTION, TOUTS EDUCATION RECORD: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday announced he won’t seek reelection to a third term. The mayor had already been campaigning for a third term, but his unpopularity had drawn an unusually high number of challengers, POLITICO’s Caitlin Oprysko and Shia Kapos report.

— In announcing that he won’t run, Emanuel put his education record front and center. He listed his long-time plan to make full-day preschool available to all 4-year-olds in the city by the fall of 2021, in addition to other education reforms, as his most significant accomplishments.

— “The changes we have made to our school system — universal full day pre-K, universal kindergarten and a longer school day and year will add up to nearly four more years of class time for Chicago’s students,” he said in remarks Tuesday. “In the end of the day what matters most in public life is four more years for our children, not four more years for me.”

— Flashback: Caitlin Emma spoke to Emanuel late last year about the progress and challenges that lie ahead when it comes to Chicago’s school system. More time in the classroom for a “child in poverty is essential,” he said. “I also think empowering the principal is essential. I think starting kids with a full day of kindergarten is essential. And not willing to accept failure as an option.”

Darn! They forgot to mention the historic closing of 50 public schools in a single day. That’s what Rahm will be remembered for.

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

Wendy Lecker: The Movement for Public Education is Underway!

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2018 //
23

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights attorney at the Education Law Center who is a columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

She writes about a powerful new movement:


My 18-year “career” as a public education parent ended in June as my youngest child graduated from high school. I am witness to the profound effect my children’s teachers had on their development as students and human beings — nurturing their passions, providing life lessons, sparking their interest in subjects they had never considered, and challenging their world view.

Events this past year have shown me just how much of an effect teachers have on all of us — not just those they teach.

Those of us who have been fighting for years for strong, adequately funded, integrated public schools and against reforms that are damaging to children, communities and democracy sometimes feel like we are banging our heads against the wall.

For years we presented facts about the harm of bad education policy and the benefits of good education policy. Yet politicians ignored us and continued to push failed policies. They dismissed calls for adequate resources in impoverished schools, branding these claims as “excuses” or “maintaining the status quo.”

The media narrative has also been impervious to facts, blaming impoverished schools for “failing” children when our politicians deprive them of essential resources to serve our neediest children; and accusing public school teachers of incompetence and selfishness when students do not perform well on standardized exams that were never designed to measure school or teacher quality.

This toxic public discourse seemed unending. Until teachers across the country took to the streets last spring. Teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and Kentucky walked out of their classrooms to protest the miserable conditions in which they had to work and their students had to learn.

And the public stood with them all the way. Parents brought their children to state capitols to support their teachers, supplied food, and participated in the protests. A new Phi Delta Kappan poll reveals that 78 percent of public school parents support teacher strikes for higher pay.

Once these protests began, the media focus changed. Cameras showed deplorable conditions in impoverished classrooms, including crumbling textbooks, broken desks and chairs. Newspapers reported on the four-day school weeks in Oklahoma resulting from years of budget cuts, and the severe lack of basic educational staff and services in the states where the teachers struck. They revealed how teachers were forced to hold down second and third jobs to make ends meet.

The concerns of striking teachers extended beyond a living wage for themselves. They fought for well-funded schools, and adequate pay for all public employees. As Georgetown professor Joseph McCartin noted, “What you’re seeing is these unions acting as defenders of the public good.”

And now, voters and politicians are getting the message.

Last week, six Republican Oklahoma house members who voted against tax increases for teacher raises were ousted in primary races. Of the 19 Republicans who voted against teacher pay raises, only four will be on the ballot in November.

In Georgia, democratic gubernatorial primary winner Stacey Abrams openly declares that she doesn’t want to be Georgia’s “education governor” — she wants to be Georgia’s “public education governor.” She advocates increased investment in public schools and opposes privatization schemes that drain resources from them.

On Tuesday, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum won a surprise victory in Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. Gillum credits his public school education for much of his success in life and supports increasing investments in public schools, including raising teachers’ starting salary to $50,000.

Educator David Garcia, the Democratic candidate for governor in Arizona, vowed to “end destructive privatization schemes that drain money out of classrooms, and … to invest in our teachers and classrooms once again.”

Longtime public school supporter Ben Jealous is Maryland’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate. Teachers are running for office across the nation, including a former National Teacher of the Year, Waterbury’s Jahana Hayes, who won the primary for the U.S. House of Representative in Connecticut’s fifth congressional district.

Public education, an issue usually ignored by politicians, is suddenly taking center stage in political campaigns. I attribute this conscious embrace of public education by political candidates to our teachers, who put their careers on the line to call attention to the needs of our most vulnerable students and communities.

So as this school year begins, as a parent I want to thank Stamford’s teachers for helping me raise capable, tolerant, and independent adults. As a citizen, I want to thank America’s teachers for defending a precious democratic institution, our public schools, and in the process, for giving me hope that our democracy may survive after all.

It is our job now as citizens who care about public education to support the candidates who support our public schools and our teachers.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Resistance, Supporting public schools

Breaking News! Rahm Emanuel Will Not Seek Re-Election to Third Term

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2018 //
28

Rahm Emanuel will not run again.

With Chicago enduring daunting levels of gun violence, a $36 billion public worker pension crisis and discontent in some corners of the city’s African-American population with his leadership, polls showed Emanuel faced a difficult, but not insurmountable, path to re-election.

A poll commissioned by one of Emanuel’s campaign backers and published last month showed that the mayor had backing of about 32 percent of voters in the crowded field – and a 19-point lead over his closest competitor, former police superintendent Garry McCarthy, but not enough to face avoid a runoff. The poll was conducted by New York-based Global Strategy Group.

Emanuel, a former congressman who served as chief of staff in the Obama White House and a senior aide in the Clinton White House, last faced voters in 2015, several months before the release of a controversial police shooting video of Laquan McDonald.

The Emanuel administration was forced by court order to make the video public 400 days after the fatal shooting of McDonald and several months after the mayor had won re-election. The mayor’s critics argue that Emanuel, who saw his support erode in the city’s large African-American community following the video’s release, would not have won re-election had it come out earlier.

Emanuel said he did not watch the video, which appears to show that the 17-year-old McDonald was veering away from officers when he was shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke, until it was set to be publicly released.

The officer was charged with first-degree murder on the same day of the video’s release.

Emanuel made his bombshell announcement one day before jury selection was set to begin in Van Dyke’s trial.

Will Chicago finally get a mayor who cares as much about the public schools as Rahm cared about charter schools?

Will the school closings end?

Will the public get to have a role in public education and the choice of the school board?

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Peter Greene: The Education Writers Association and the Bias Problem

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2018 //
34

Peter Greene examines in this post why education journalism is biased towards the reformy narrative.

Why do education writers call pundits in think tanks instead of teachers?

Then he analyzes a guide to sources, and the reason for bias becomes clear.

Why talk to a teacher when Reformer pundits are standing by?

Categories Accountability, Bias, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Philadelphia: The New Teacher Project, TFA, Bain Capital, and the Leeching of $$$ From Urban Schools

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2018 //
8

Greg Windle, a journalist at The Notebook, has drawn together the many strands of the tangled web of Reformer groups in Philadelphia, as seen through the lens of a contract awarded to The New Teacher Project for principal training. TNTP, Michelle Rhee’s creation, was designed to hire new teachers. When did it develop an expertise in training principals? Were there no veteran educators, no one in the Philadelphia School System, capable of training new principals? Or were they recruiting principals who had been a teacher for a year or two?

As Windle gets deeper into the story of a contract dispute about hiring TNTP to train principals, a familiar cast of money-hungry Reform groups washes up on the beach.

“Marjorie Neff, a former School Reform Commission chair who voted against the TNTP contract to recruit and screen teachers, said that in her experience such national education vendors use an approach that is “formulaic” and doesn’t tailor well to the needs of an individual teacher or the “context” of teaching in Philadelphia, where a teacher’s needs are different than in the suburbs. Neff is a former principal at Samuel Powel Elementary and J.R. Masterman who earned a master’s degree in education from Temple University.

“They’re selling a product. From that perspective, their formula is their vested interest,” Neff said. “Their bottom line is profitability, and we need to take that into account. Is it the most effective way to do this, or is it the most profitable? I don’t think those necessarily have to be in conflict, but sometimes they are.”

“In 2017, TNTP reported that its expenses were $20 million higher than revenue. In 2016, its revenue was nearly $21 million higher than expenses, but this was entirely due to the $41 million it brought in from “all other contributions, gifts, grants” (excluding government grants). That pot includes grants from outside philanthropies, such as foundations, but also investments from venture capital firms. In 2015, the nonprofit lost $6.1 million, despite millions in outside funding.

“Shifting funding, but consistent ideology

“Bain Capital’s consulting firm has two members on the board of TNTP. Since 2009, Bain’s consulting arm has partnered with Teach for America to develop “high-impact leaders in education” by placing TFA alumni in “leadership” positions in public education. Together, TFA and Bain designed “a series of programs to inspire, prepare, match and support Teach for America alums on the path to leadership.” Bain aimed to bring leadership development practices from the private sector into public education.

“In 2012, the two organizations got together to “expand the scope of work” of their partnership — the same year that Teach for America founded School Systems Leaders to train TFA alumni to “serve at the highest levels of leadership in public school systems.”

“Matt Glickman, an employee of the Bain consulting firm and board member of TNTP, has also served on the board of the NewSchools Venture Fund. That fund has invested in free-market education reforms since 1998. The Sackler family – whose fortune is based on profits from Purdue Pharma, developer of OxyContin – decided to invest heavily in the fund.”

When will education be returned to educators?

Anyone advocating for edupreneurs should be fired. As Neff said quite well, these national vendors are in it for the money.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Hypocrisy, Philadelphia, Principals, Teach for America

Laura Chapman: In Search of the Tentacles of the Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2018 //
64

Laura Chapman, retired arts educator and diligent researcher, has created a partial portrait of the privatization movement.

My guess is that the privatization movement consists of a small but significant number of billionaires and several hundred of their lackeys, shills, and front groups. As you will see, it is almost impossible to tell the Republicans from the Democrats.

Laura writes:

I have been building some spreadsheets on who is funding what. There are so many interconnected initiatives that Jeb Bush and friends are part of.

For example. Bush’s projects are connected with another big reform outfit: Partners for Innovation in Education (PIE) an outfit with at least 180 affiliates (in my spreadsheet) all connected to many others and all seeking national, state, and large metro area policies that favor charter school expansion (marketed as innovative), along with Teach for America (mostly on the job training), and active interference with teacher union contracts.

The PIE website still includes a guide for “Rabble Rousers” who were given quidance on how to work on legislated policy changes to favor charters, TFA and privatizers and how to enlist active support from civic and business organizations. It is a guide for lobbying and controlling narratives about education in the press.

The 47-page PIE Rabble Rousers handbook (2010 funded by the Joyce Foundation) includes this statement about the process of changing state policy:

“Most of the groups we spoke with (about shaping state polcies) declined to involve educators on their governing boards; if they did so, those groups do not make up a majority of the governing board. The rationale was clear enough: if the goal is to be a voice for the public’s interest, educator involvement confuses that message. As one group leader explained: “Educators already have the overwhelming voice in our state capital through their various associations. If we brought the interest lobby to our meetings, our discussion would get rutted in the same issues that already complicate the public debate. Our goal is to have a conversation that looks at the issues differently, considering only the students without the adult agendas.” An even blunter explanation was: “We tell our teacher associations that when they invite our leaders to vote on their boards, we will include union representation on ours (p. 32).” http://pie-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/rabble-rousers.pdf

Since that 2010 publication, PIE has shifted its strategy to include carefully selected educators. Most are working in charter schools or they have been willing to be indoctrinated into PIE’s agenda. Indocrination is the correct word.

In Oakland, CA, for example, the bait for PIE’s program has been a two-year “fellowship” with $1000 for the first year, and $2000 for the second year for attendance at two-hour meetings twice monthly plus readings and research. (I could not determine if the “year” was a calendar year nine month school year). In a series of tasks, the Oakland Fellows were given preferred data about their union to think about, along with model language for changes.

There are similar programs in multiple metro areas and states, with teachers working as if hired hands of PIE, token payments or emblems of prestige by virtue of becoming “fellows” or “ambassadors.”

Here is a list of organizations and financial supporters of “teacher voice” in the PIE Network–all recruiting teachers to advocate for policies favoring TFA, charters, and dismantlying unions and more under the banner of “innovation.”

Advance Illinois “Every Student World Ready”; Chalk Board Project; Ed Allies (Minnesota); Educators for High Standards; Go Public Schools (Oakland CA); Hope Street Group (multiple states); National Network of Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY, nominated by governors of states and celebrated by the Council of Chief State School Officers); Rodel Foundation of Delaware; State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE, Tennessee); Stand for Children Louisiana; Teach Strong (National, with one year “ambassadors” who lobby politicians), Educators for Excellence (in Boston, Chicago, Connecticut, Los Angeles , Minnesota, New York); Teach Plus (in California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts); and Texas Aspires.

PIE Board members are powerbrokers. Many are veterans of reformy projects to undermine public education through draconian standard-setting, exemptions for and expansions of charter schools, and killing collective bargaining by teachers.
1. Derrell Bradford, Executive VP of 50CAN, recruits state executive directors, fellows, and YouCAN advocates; known for leadership of legislated tenure reform in New Jersey.
2. Rachael Canter, Executive Dir. and co-founder of Mississippi First. Two years Teach for America; successfully lobbied for Mississippi Charter Schools Act of 2013.
3. Jonah Edelman, co-founder and CEO of Stand for Children Leadership Center and Stand For Children with affiliates in 11 states (Edelman is son of civil rights activist and lawyer Marian Wright Edelman). A political scholar (Ph.D Oxford, Yale) with deep family connections to the Democratic Party. SFC works for privatization with major funding from the Gates and Walton foundations among others. Major promoter of Read-by-Grade-Three policy.
4. Chris Korsmo, CEO of the League of Education Voters, backed by The Broad Foundation and supporters of projects to undermine teacher unions.
5. Scott Laband, President of Colorado Succeeds, coalition of business executives for corporate friendly education, including school policies that subsidize workforce preparation.
6. Patricia Levesque, CEO Foundation for Excellence. Was Jeb Bush’s Chief of Staff for education promoting corporate friendly education, six years as Staff Director for education policy in the Florida.
7. Lillian M. Lowery, Ed.D. V.P. of Ed Trust’s PreK-12 Policy, Research, and Practice, former state superintendent of schools in Maryland and state secretary of education in Delaware.
8. Nina Rees, President and CEO of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, first Deputy Under Secretary for Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.
9. Aimee Rogstad Guidera, former president and CEO of the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign for enganced surveillance of K-12 school and “teacher of record” performance, with a variant tracking workforce outcomes of pre-K to post-seconfary workforce outcomes.
10. Evan Stone, Co-CEO and Co-Founder in 2010 of Educators for Excellence. Yale University thesis on No Child Left Behind in urban school systems, Master degree in teaching, Pace University.
11. Suzanne Kubach, Executive Dir. PIE Network. Appointed to California State Board of Education, former Chair of Los Angeles Charter School Board. Ph.D. in Education Policy, University of Southern California.
12. Tim Taylor, co-founder and Executive Dir. America Succeeds, founder of Colorado Succeeds, seeking corporate friendly policies.
13. Jamie Woodson, Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE), Former legislative leader for expansion of Tennessee’s public charter schools. J.D., the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

And that is just for starters. What “innovative policies” are being marketed in your state, by whom, and why?

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Republicans

New Jersey: How Chris Christie Allowed Charter Entrepreneurs to Rip Off Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2018 //
8

Bob Braun, the veteran investigative reporter who has covered New Jersey politics for many years, describes an astonishing ripoff of taxpayers.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization
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