Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Michigan: State Senate Steals Money from Public Schools and Gives It to State’s Failing Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2017 //
17

If ever you want evidence that Betsy DeVos bought and paid for the legislature in Michigan, consider the decision just made by the State Senate to take money approved by voters for their public schools and give it to charter schools. More than 80% of the state’s charters operate for profit. They get worse results than the state’s public schools. The state has minimal expectations or accountability for charter schools. Why are they getting more money?

“The Michigan Senate passed a controversial bill Wednesday that will allow charter schools in the state to collect revenues from enhancement millages levied by intermediate school districts.

“Republicans said the bill would treat all students — whether they attend traditional public schools or charter schools — fairly, but Democrats said the legislation was stealing money that voters approved for traditional public schools and shifting those funds to charter schools.

“I introduced this bill because there are 14,000 … students in Kent County that aren’t being treated fairly,” said Sen. David Hildenbrand, R-Lowell. “And there are 56,000 students in Wayne County that aren’t being treated fairly either.”

“But Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-East Lansing, said voters approved the millages with the knowledge that the money would go to traditional public schools in their county.

“This bill takes school funding, which is already stretched to the max in the state, and tries to stretch it even further,” he said. “This is corporate welfare. It’s stealing.”

“Enhancement millages can be used for just about anything by a school district, including lowering class sizes, hiring teachers, upgrading technology or purchasing materials.

“The Wayne County school districts could be hit the hardest if the legislation receives final passage because the county has more than 100 charter schools. The county approved a 10-year enhancement millage in 2016 that is raising $80 million annually that is split among the county’s 33 public school districts.

“Hildenbrand said his intent with the bill is that it won’t affect existing millages, only when a renewal or new millage comes up before voters. But in its analysis of the bill, the Senate Fiscal Agency concluded it would apply to existing millages, too.

“And Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said the language in the bill is so vague that charter schools — some of them for-profit operators from out-of-state — could claim the funding.

“The language matters and it was ambiguous at best and at the very least it’s showing that we’re putting profits before educating all of our students,” Ananich said.”

Why fund failure?

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

The Curious Connection Between Paul Vallas and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, as Told by Dan Mihapolous and Mike Klonsky

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2017 //
5

Conservative Republican Bruce Rauner appointed Democrat Paul Vallas to run financially troubled Chicago State University, at a handsome salary of $200,000 a year.

Dan Mihalopoulos of the Chicago Sun-Times explains that Vallas and Rauner have a long history together.

Vallas is a Rahm Emanuel style Democrat who loves privatization. Vallas is not an educator. He is a numbers cruncher. After a stint as superintendent in Chicago, he was hired to take over fiscally troubled Philadelphia schools. He launched the biggest experiment in Philly ever tried in any city. It failed, but no matter. He went to New Orleans, where he had a free hand to privatize almost every school. He was hired to run the Bridgeport schools but had to leave Connecticut when critics argued that he lacked the credentials to be a superintendent in Connecticut and won in court. At one point, he ran with Governor Pat Quinn as his Lt. Gov., but they lost to Rauner.

Vallas tried to persuade private citizen Rauner to invest in his consulting business, but Rauner didn’t go for it.

“Vallas and Rauner go back years before that election, and Vallas once even offered Rauner a chance to invest in his education consulting company, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

“Nearly seven years ago — when Rauner wasn’t yet a politician, just a wealthy private investor with an interest in public education and a friend in the mayor’s office — Vallas corresponded with and met with him, offering to help create what he described as an “ambitious new school district” in Chicago.

“In three letters to Rauner in 2010 and 2011, Vallas offered to work with Rauner and city officials. Vallas said that school “buildings would be provided to the charters at no cost.”

“Concerning our potential partnership, I would welcome the opportunity to contract with you to assist with your school reform efforts in Chicago,” Vallas wrote to Rauner in February 2011, when Vallas was the top schools official in New Orleans.

“Vallas — who’d head the Chicago Public Schools under Mayor Richard M. Daley from 1995 until 2001 — also asked Rauner to invest in his education consulting company, the Vallas Group, according to copies of the correspondence obtained by the Sun-Times.

“You once told me that if I ever decided to launch a domestic education business, you would be willing to invest,” Vallas told Rauner. “Based on my research and years in the education field, I firmly believe this is a can’t miss.”

Mike Klonsky writes that Paul Vallas was one of the first people to see the entrepreneurial side of school reform.

He writes:

“Paul Vallas was never an educator, but he was a quick study. He learned from the start of his stint as Mayor Daley’s schools CEO in 1995, the power of government contracting and that there was good money to be made in the school reform business. He also came to believe that the future of school reform belonged not to the system’s bureaucrats, but to the outsider corporate reformers, wealthy, powerful, self-interested billionaires and outside consultants who they patronized.

“After Daley gave him the boot from Chicago and through a series of unremarkable stints as district school chiefs in Philly, New Orleans and Bridgeport, Vallas assembled a team of loyalists (mostly former Chicago school bureaucrats) and developed a strategy for injecting himself and his brand into struggling urban school districts, in order to do “the greater good”. The game plan involved using political clout to place his lieutenants into power in selected districts and in return, having them bring in the big-ticket Vallas Group to “reform” district schools from the top-down. It also included a heavy dose of replacing public schools with privately-run charters and weakening or completely eliminating union collective-bargaining agreements.

“It was a plan that included perks and kick-backs to district leaders as in the case of former Vallas partner Gary Solomon, who along with former Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, is now doing heavy prison time on fraud and corruption charges in the Chicago SUPES scandal.

“Byrd-Bennett worked as a consultant and lead teacher for The Supes Academy and worked as a consultant for Synesi Associates, the consulting company founded by Vallas and Solomon. Vallas not only hired Solomon and his companies when he worked in Philadelphia, but brought Solomon with him to New Orleans…

“Actually BBB’s “vision” was Gary Solomon’s vision and Solomon’s vision was Vallas’. Same dreams but different beds. Solomon’s consulting company advertised that it had “the exclusive rights to Paul Vallas’ model of education reform.” In Philadelphia, he marketed the consulting company as using the “Paul Vallas method of school reform.”

“In Chicago, Solomon used his former partner’s strategy of installing BBB as schools CEO and then kicking-back to her after she gave SUPES and $20M contract to do principal training.

“Solomon later said he used Vallas’ name without permission and it was a “mistake.”

“But Vallas had used a similar approach in Rockford, St. Louis, Philly, Rochester, Peoria and other districts and greased the wheels for the Synesi group. Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011.

“Vallas calls his involvement with Solomon in New Orleans a “non-story.” He also says, “New Orleans honored me with the key to the city, while those involved in CPS are about to be locked up.”

“He’s right and this says a lot about our justice system and media’s reluctance to make the connection.”

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

Washington Post Calls on Democratic Candidate for Governor in Virginia to Stick with Failed NCLB “Reforms”

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2017 //
73

The Washington Post editorial board chastised Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam for admitting that the NCLB reforms have failed, and Virginia needs to find a new paradigm for school improvement.

Lt. Governor Northam’s opponent, GOP functionary Ed Gillespie, is running on a Trump kiss-up platform, calling for the protection of Confederate statues and accusing Northam of having ties to a violent gang of Latinos, MS-13.

No doubt Gillespie will endorse the NCLB approach beloved by the Washington Post editorial board.

The Post is dead wrong. A new book by the eminent Harvard testing expert Daniel Koretz says in no uncertain terms that NCLB test-based accountability was a failure that seriously damaged American education. It is titled “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.” The high-stakes testing mandated by NCLB and now the Every Student Succeeds Act, produced, in Professor Koretz’s words, score inflation, cheating, and teaching to the tests. Any “gains” are an illusion, because they represent test prep, not learning. (My review of the book will appear in “The New Republic” in the next few weeks.)

Lt. Gov. Northam is right. The Washington Post is seriously out of step on education. It supported Michelle Rhee’s punitive, test-focused regime and never admitted its error, long after John Merrow revealed the D.C. cheating scandal and long after Rhee slipped quietly into oblivion.

What’s the ideal accountability system? Northam admitted to the editorial board that he doesn’t know. Professor Koretz admitted he doesn’t know either. He throws out some ideas drawn from Finland, the Netherlands, and Singapore. There may be others as well, but frankly no one knows. For sure, the Washington Post editorial board doesn’t know, and the little it knows is wrong.

What doesn’t work is one-size-fits-all standards like Common Core. What doesn’t work is promising rewards or threatening punishment to teachers and principals, tied to test scores. Yet that is what the Washington Post advocates: Test-based accountability has failed, but the Post says, “stick with it.” The Post is wrong.

If you live in Virginia, vote for Northam for Governor, not the guy who has wrapped his arms around Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos and the others in the Trump Clown Car.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

Nonprofit Quarterly: When Does Philanthropy Mask Depravity?

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2017 //
20

The invaluable Nonprofit Quarterly asks whether Harvey Weinstein cynically used philanthropy to cloak his unconscionable actions.

We might ask the same questions of many of the heartless corporations and individuals now poring hundreds of millions into charter schools, simultaneously destroying democratic public schools.

What about the Waltons? They claim they love poor children and children of color, so they spend at least $200 Million every year to dismantle their community schools and replace them with privately managed charters.

They break the unions that assure the parents of these children a living wage. They refuse to pay their own 1 Million plus workers a living wage.

If they really cared about the children, why don’t they care about the conditions in which they live?

This is what NPQ calls depravity.

The story includes this quote:

“Jelani Cobb, a staff writer at the New Yorker, offers us something new to consider about this ugly story. “The great mystery of evil is not that it persists but, rather, that so many of its practitioners wish to do so while being thought of as saints.” As the idiom “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” warns, beware of the champions of progressive causes with whom contact is dangerous. According to countless reports, Weinstein was apparently a wolf in wolf’s clothing.”

How many corporate reformers are impoverishing the people of Puerto Rico by demanding that PR pays 100% on the bonds they scooped up at a deep discount? Their advice to PR: pay us back and close schools and hospitals and all other public services. Maybe they should send in KIPP, Eva, Uncommon, and Achievement First. Oops. You can’t get blood from a stone. They may have to write off their losses on their tax returns.

Call them what they are: predators.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Reform, Fraud

Los Angeles: Time for Ref Rodriguez to Resign from School Board

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2017 //
18

The Los Angeles Times published an article about reactions to LAUSD board member Ref Rodriguez’ Legal problems.

It is time for him to leave the board.

Resign.

Enough.

What a model for children.

If teachers were under indictment for multiple crimes, he or she would have to get out of the classroom. Now.

Please note that the president of the California Charter Schools Association issued a statement expressing his concern but does not call on him to resign. The charters in Los Angeles are asking for new rules to speed up their renewals, Free them to shape their own suspension policies, and protect them from burdensome accountability, so they must hang on to their majority. Prominently featured in the article is Caprice Young, CEO of the Turkish Gulen charter chain called Magnolia. Some of its charters were not renewed, and Magnolia is hoping to reverse that deci$ion. Young was previously president of the California Charter School Association before taking charge of the Imam Fetullah Gulen’s Magnolia Charter chain.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, Gulen Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Privatization

Denisha Jones: When All Else Fails, Save Childhood

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2017 //
24

Denisha Jones, a professor of early childhood education at Trinity Washington University, gave this talk at Sarah Lawrence College this past summer. Please read her talk in her entirety.

An excerpt:

I inspire my teachers—regardless of the label they give themselves—to be advocates or activists for their profession. I don’t want them to spend the next several years in survival mode until they burn out and leave the field altogether. Advocacy and activism serve as nourishment for the soul. They can sustain you even when things look bleak and the future is uncertain.

As I move forward, determined to protect public education as a right, what drives me is the acceptance of our failure. I am ready to declare our efforts, and the efforts of those who came before me, as failures. This may seem harsh, but as we know, failure is essential for success. “Failure is instructive,” John Dewey once said, “The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”

We know that protecting children from the experience of failure is not good for their development. Failure can be a tool for learning how to get it right. Without failure, how do we know that we have even really succeeded? This doesn’t mean that education activists haven’t won some important battles. But they’ve tended to benefit one school or one community, and haven’t reached the national or state levels. Our attempts to stop the spread of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) have failed.

Before we examine our failures more closely, I want to quickly review what I mean by GERM so that we are all on the same page. Pasi Sahlberg notes that the movement emerged in the 1980s and consists of five global features: standardization; focus on core subjects; the search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals; use of corporate management models; and test-based accountability policies. Although none of these elements have been adopted in Finland, where he does most of his research, they have invaded public education in the U.S. and in other countries.

Here, education activists typically refer to GERM as the privatization of public education, driven by neoliberalism, which favors free-market capitalism. Under this scenario, there are no public schools: public services are turned over to the private sector. Healthcare, prisons, even water, are now being put in the hands of corporations, whose sole desire is to make a profit. When profit is the goal, the needs of human beings are discarded, unless they can generate a measurable return on investment.

We can see how GERM has infected U.S. education policy and reforms. The Common Core drives standardization and aligns with a narrow focus on math and literacy. The use of scripted learning programs, behavior training programs, and online learning is evidence of the search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals. While charter schools claim to be nonprofit, most are managed by companies with CEOs and CFOs who apply corporate models to education.

Teach for America and other fast-track teacher preparation programs also use a corporate model, developing education leaders who get their feet wet teaching before moving on to become policymakers or head up charter schools.

Pearson’s PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium are drowning public education in test-based accountability. Systems that punish and reward schools and teachers based on student achievement on standardized tests are the norm today.

While the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) includes language that protects the right of parents to opt out—a movement that has been growing in recent years—it also maintains the requirement that 95 percent of students participate. Test-based accountability is here to stay and rapidly evolving into competency-based and personalized learning, in which assessments occur all day every day as students are glued to computer screens.

We have failed to stop the expansion of choice, which threatens the existence of public schools through the proliferation of charters and vouchers. In the U.S., most school-age children are educated in traditional public schools, but we can expect to see this trend reversed under the administration of Betsy DeVos. We have failed to stop the assault on public education through school closures in communities of color.

And then there’s the inexorable push down of developmentally inappropriate standards onto young children. The Common Core, adopted by most states, imposes expectations on young children that are out of step with their development, not to mention the research. Empirical data confirm that kindergarten is the new first grade, and preschool the new kindergarten.

On top of this, we have failed to stop racist school discipline practices that suspended 42% of black boys from preschool in the 2011-2012 academic year. This failure stems from our inability to address the systemic and institutional racism that is prominent in public education but often masked by teachers with good intentions who lack an understanding of culture, bias, and systems of oppression.

We must acknowledge these failures so we can understand the limits of our collective efforts and decide how we can refocus our energies toward a future that will lead to more successful outcomes. We need to change the narrative. Attacking the push for accountability and tougher standards has proven to be a losing strategy. Our insistence that these measures harm student development and learning has branded us unwilling to be held accountable for ensuring that all students can achieve.The more we resist test-based accountability and inappropriate reforms, the more we are seen by the corporations, policymakers, and privateers as resistant to innovation.

We must make the protection of childhood a nonpartisan issue. We need to revise our message. The assault on public education is not just a conservative attack by Republicans against progressive education. Democrats are also aligned with many aspects of GERM, including choice, privatization, and test-based accountability.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Childhood, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), Privatization, Resistance, School Choice, Testing

Critic Raises Profile of “Backpack Full of Cash” by Attacking Matt Damon for Narrating It

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2017 //
15

The documentary “Backpack Full of Cash” tells the story of the well-funded, duplicitous attack on public education. It was created by a professional team that had trouble raising money since most foundations docilely follow the lead of the Gates Foundation. “Backpack” was intended to be the answer to “Waiting for Superman,” but the filmmakers lacked the kind of lavish funding from billionaires like Bill Gates and industrialist-evangelical Philip Anschutz for production, promotion, and marketing that “Superman” had.

The documentary shows that charters, online charters, and other forms of privatization are causing public schools to be underfunded, closed, stripped of resources, while charters flourish and select their students.

The title of the film was taken from an interview that the filmmakers had with Jeanne Allen, who is a clone of Betsy DeVos. Her “Center for Education Reform” is funded by foundations and financiers who want to privatize public education.

Allen has given the documentary widespread attention because she keeps attacking Damon for narrating it. He is the proud product of public schools, but sends his own children to private schools. He pays their tuition. He doesn’t think the public should pay their tuition. He understands that supporting public schools is a civic duty, not a consumer choice. He can afford a private security force for his family, but he doesn’t expect the public to pay for his private choices.

Allen doesn’t understand the civic duty thing. Like her mentor Betsy DeVos, she wants to abolish public schools or let them languish as one of many choices, even though they are required to take the children that no one else wants. She wants them to survive as a dumping ground, not hold pride of place as a basic democratic institution.

For some reason, she thinks Matt Damon might notice her. Dream on, Jeanne.

What you are doing with great success is giving the pro-public school documentary the fabulous publicity that its filmmakers can’t afford to buy.

See the film for yourself. Organize a community viewing. PBS was paid millions by rightwing foundations to run a libertarian propaganda film earlier this year. But for some reason, PBS can’t find a way to air “Backpack.” No billionaire backers? Too controversial?

Thank you, Jeanne Allen, for calling attention to this important documentary. Keep it up.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Media, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Betsy DeVos and the Acton Institute Celebrate School Privatization and Free-Market Capitalism

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2017 //
16

Thanks to reader and teacher-blogger David Taylor for sharing this post from the far-far-far right Acton Institute.

The Acton Institute will hold its annual dinner on October 18 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The keynote speaker is Betsy DeVos. There will be no protestors. She will be speaking to her tiny little claque of extremist libertarians, who are exulting these days about their great strides in rolling back the New Deal, shredding any safety net for the poor, getting rid of unions, eliminating pensions, and privatizing government programs and services. Betsy is their hero, because she has not only funded the free-market cause (and the Acton Institute) but has jumped into the arena to put her reactionary agenda into the mainstream.

The post includes the names and connections among some of Betsy’s friends.

Like J.C. Huizenga. Time for a personal anecdote. Many years ago, I was invited to lecture at Calvin College, Betsy’s alma mater. Betsy was probably in the audience. That’s when I was on the Dark Side, a period of my life that I have utterly recanted. What I remember best about Calvin was that everyone was so very nice. You know, midwestern nice. Not what I’m used to in New York City, where the default attitude towards strangers is brusque and even rude. At the end of my presentation and the reception, I met J.C. Huizenga, and he told me about his many business investments, which included a major waste disposal company and a morality-based for-profit charter chain, National Heritage Academies. Then he offered me a ride home on his private jet. Interesting combination of businesses. Waste management and charters.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Personal, Privatization

Seattle Educators Ready for DeVos Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2017 //
26

Jesse Hagopian has written a letter to Betsy DeVos, who will be in Seattle tomorrow:

Seattle Teacher: Dear Betsy DeVos, You’re Not Welcome Here

It starts like this:

Dear Betsy DeVos,

My name is Jesse Hagopian and I teach ethnic studies at Seattle’s Garfield High School. I hope you didn’t just stop reading this letter after you heard the subject I am teaching—I urge you to keep reading.

I am writing in regards to the Washington Policy Center’s $350-a-person fundraising dinner you will be addressing on October 13 at the Hyatt Regency in the nearby city of Bellevue. Thousands of my colleagues and I will surround the building to make sure the world knows your message of division is not welcome here.

Given the recent protests of your speeches at Harvard, at historically black Bethune-Cookman University, and many other places, you must be getting used to this by now. But just so there are no surprises, let me tell you what to expect.

There will be bull horns, signs, speeches, and I bet some of the more creative teachers—perhaps the few art teachers your proposed budget hasn’t cut yet—will show up in grizzly bear costumes, referencing the asinine comment you made defending the use of guns in schools to “protect from potential grizzlies.”

There will be students there questioning your qualifications to serve as Secretary of Education, given that they have more experience with the public schools than you. They might point out that you never attended public schools and neither did any of your four children.

There will be black people and civil rights organizations because you refused to say if the federal government would bar funding for private schools that discriminate. These anti-racist activists will protest your claim that Historically Black Colleges and Universities are “pioneers of school choice” as a way to promote privatizing public education—as if the segregation that forced African Americans to start their own colleges was a magnificent choice.

There will be feminists protesting your outrageous dismantling of title IX protections aimed at reducing sexual assault on campuses. Your decision to meet with sexist so-called “men’s rights” groups to decide on your approach to Title IX policy shows just how little regard you have for protecting victims of sexual assault. As Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said recently, “She’s meeting with groups and individuals today who believe that sexual assault is some sort of feminist plot to hurt men.”

There will be transgender people and others in the LGBTQ community protesting your decision, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to pull back public school guidelines allowing transgender students to use bathrooms for the gender they identify with. And while you have stated you don’t support gay conversation therapy, according to the Washington Post, you served from 2001 to 2013 as vice president of the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation (founded by your mother) which donated to anti-LGBTQ groups that do.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Who Funded Campbell Brown’s “The 74”?

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2017 //
18

Mercedes Schneider has developed a specialty as a detective of Follow-the-Money. A forensic accountant of financial transactions in the corporate reform world.

In this post, she tries to figure out who funded Campbell Brown’s “The 74.”

It is harder than you can imagine to untangle this web, woven of money and connections. Behind it all: privatization and union-busting. “O what a tangled web we weave…”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization
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