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How Michigan Gambled on Charter Schools and the Children Lost

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
9

More than any other state, Michigan placed its bets on charter schools. This article shows what happened. Republican Governor John Engler sold his party on the miracle of school choice. Betsy DeVos jumped on the Choice bandwagon and financed its grip on the legislature. Although the article doesn’t mention it, Betsy and her husband funded a voucher referendum in 2000 that was overwhelmingly defeated.

The author Mark Binelli describes the mess that choice and charters have made of the state’s education system. The state is overrun by unaccountable charters, most of which operate for profit.

The damage has fallen most heavily on black children, especially in Detroit and in the districts where the state installed emergency managers and gave the public schools to for-profit charter operators.

Rich districts still have public schools.

Binelli writes:

“Michigan’s aggressively free-market approach to schools has resulted in one of the most deregulated educational environments in the country, a laboratory in which consumer choice and a shifting landscape of supply and demand (and profit motive, in the case of many charters) were pitched as ways to improve life in the classroom for the state’s 1.5 million public-school students. But a Brookings Institution analysis done this year of national test scores ranked Michigan last among all states when it came to improvements in student proficiency. And a 2016 analysis by the Education Trust-Midwest, a nonpartisan education policy and research organization, found that 70 percent of Michigan charters were in the bottom half of the state’s rankings. Michigan has the most for-profit charter schools in the country and some of the least state oversight. Even staunch charter advocates have blanched at the Michigan model.

“The story of Carver is the story of Michigan’s grand educational experiment writ small. It spans more than two decades, three governors and, now, the United States Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, whose relentless advocacy for unchecked “school choice” in her home state might soon, her critics fear, be going national. But it’s important to understand that what happened to Michigan’s schools isn’t solely, or even primarily, an education story: It’s a business story. Today in Michigan, hundreds of nonprofit public charters have become potential financial assets to outside entities, inevitably complicating their broader social missions. In the case of Carver, interested parties have included a for-profit educational management organization, or E.M.O., in Georgia; an Indian tribe in a remote section of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; and a financial firm in Minnesota. “That’s all it is now — it’s moneymaking,” Darrel Redrick, a charter-school proponent and an administrator at Carver at the time I visited, told me.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Deregulation, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Michigan

Follow the Money: A Handy Guide to Some of the Organizations on the School Choice Gravy Train

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
35

The One Wisconsin Institute compiled a list of the organizations that have been funded by the far-right Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee. It is a remarkable documentation of the largesse that is showered on advocates for privatization of public schools.

You will notice the relationship with Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children, adding more shekels to the school choice honey pot. DeVos’ AFC has pumped millions of dollars into Wisconsin legislative races to assure that its privatization agenda is protected by the legislature. We are reminded again that our Secretary of Education is an extremist who opposes public schools.

Bradley-funded activities work to prevent any accountability or audits for private schools that receive public funds. And they seek every opportunity to siphon money away from public schools to benefit voucher schools.

Among the notable recipients of Bradley funding:

*American Enterprise Institute (where EdWeek blogger Rick Hess is education director) received $4.3 million from their Bradley paymasters.

*Black Alliance for Educational Options (founded by Howard Fuller) got $1,475,000. BAEO sends speakers to black communities to try to persuade them that charters and vouchers are best for black children. You can be sure that BAEO does not tell its audiences that its activities are funded by a rightwing foundation run by reactionary white men.

*Center for Education Reform, run by former Heritage Foundation aide Jeanne Allen, which exists to smear public schools and promote privatization. 620,000.

*Center for Union Facts, led by PR man Rick Berman, whose goal is to defame teachers’ unions: $1,550,000. About 10 years ago, I attended a meeting of the rightwing Philanthropy Roundtable, where Berman gave a pitch for funding, based on his campaign to demonized the New Jersey Educational Association. When I asked him to explain why the top-performing states are unionized, and the lowest are not, he answered: I am a PR man, not an educator.

*Charter Growth Fund: $28 million. Not familiar with this one, but it serves to remind us that charter schools are high priority for the extremists of the right.

*Donors Trust, $3.1 million. An organization assembled by the Koch brothers and Dezvos family to funnel money to pet causes while hiding the donors’ identity. Dark money.

*Foundation for Excellence in Education, $435,000. Jeb Bush’s pastime.

*Heartland Institute, $647,500. Rightwing think tank.

*Heritage Foundation, $623,500. The senior citizen of far-right think tanks.

*Hoover Institution, $1.6 million. Sponsor of Education Next and other school choice initiatives.

*Marquette University, $1.7 million. This may be another subsidy for Howard Fuller and the Black Alliance for Educational Options, since Fuller is based at Marquette.

*National Council on Teacher Quality, $445,000. This organization was founded by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute with the explicit purpose of harassing traditional teacher education programs. Started as a maverick, this rightwing group now grades teacher education institutions for US News & World Report and is quoted by the mainstream media as if it were a credible source.

*Partnership for Educational Justice, $200,000. This is Campbell Brown’s organization, whose goal is to eliminate teachers’ rights and unions.

*Rocketship Education, $375,000. The charter chain that piputs poor kids on computers.

*Thomas B. Fordham Institute, $522,000. One rightwing foundation funding another.

*University of Washington, $500,000. This would be a subsidy for Paul Hill’s Center on Reinventing Public Education, which promotes portfolio districts. You know, like stock portfolios.

That’s a sampling.

Think about this list of handouts the next time some rightwingers complains about unions subsidizing civil rights groups. No equivalency.

The report can be found here.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Hoax, Propaganda, School Choice

Join the Fight to Save Public Schools in Arkansas!

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2017 //
2

Save Our Schools Arkansas and Grassroots Arkansas are sponsoring a showing of “Backpack Full of Cash” on Thursday September 7 from 6:30-8:30 pm at Philander Smith College (M.L. Smith Auditorium) in Little Rock. The event is sponsored by the Schott Foundation for Public Education and SOS Arkansas and Grassroots Arkansas.

All who are concerned about the future of public education as a basic human right are encouraged to attend. Join the Fight to stop privatization of what belongs to all of us!

Parents, educators, students, and other concerned citizens are urged to attend.

In response to the lobbying of representatives of the Walton family, the Legislature stripped Little Rock of local control. The pretext was that 6 of its 48 schools were low-performing.

Learn about the struggle to restore our democratic rights and save our public schools.

Categories Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Peter Greene: The Branded Classroom of Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2017 //
19

Peter Greene read the article in the New York Times about the new trend to introduce brands into the classroom and imagined what the classroom of Tomorrow would look like.

He begins:

“Good morning,children, and welcome to today’s classes in the Mr. Edbrand Fifth Grade Room, brought to you by Exxon here at Apple Elementary School. I’ll remind you that all Samsung devices and Microsoft Surface tablets must be placed in the big box just outside the door. As usual we’ll be recording and webcasting today, and only properly sponsored materials can be shown on camera.

“Oh, Chris– you brought in your signed clearances from home? Excellent– you can finally move your desk out of the cupboard and join your classmates on camera.

“Today we’re going to continue working on this week’s essay, “Why Pepsi Is the Most Refreshing Drink.” Remember, we’re going to be writing them with the new Edutech Markotron 5000s that came in yesterday. No, Ronny– you’re trying to hold your Markotron like a pen or pencil– just flip your wrist so your hand is upside down and backwards– the Markotrons work fine if you just change the way you write. At recess we’ll be trying out the new game from EduGo– did everyone sign their decline-of-liability forms? And while at your work stations, remember not to slouch so that the new DataGrabber Mining Module can track every part of your facial expressions.

“I’ll also remind you that part of your class requirement is to post a picture from class on Instagram or Twitter; remember, you only get credit if you use the hashtag #MrEdbrandTeaches, because every day what…? That’s right– “Every day I’m increasing my digital footprint.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit

Mike Klonsky: How Vouchers Came to Illinois

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2017 //
36

Mike Klonsky explains that Cardinal Cupich did not have to twist any arms to get vouchers.

Governor Bruce Rauner, Spesker Mike Madigan, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel were eager to jump on Betsy DeVos’s privatization bandwagon.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Should Teachers Do Product Promotions in Their Classrooms?

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2017 //
77

I would say the answer is no. Children are a captive audience. It seems unethical to use the classroom to promote brand loyalty. The classroom should be a place to learn and ask questions and develop ones skills, abilities, and interests.

But this story in the New York Times says that big business is moving into schools, using teachers to promote their products. Teachers need the extra money and school supplies. What do you think?

“MAPLETON, N.D. — One of the tech-savviest teachers in the United States teaches third grade here at Mapleton Elementary, a public school with about 100 students in the sparsely populated plains west of Fargo.

“Her name is Kayla Delzer. Her third graders adore her. She teaches them to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up. She remodeled her classroom based on Starbucks. And she uses apps like Seesaw, a student portfolio platform where teachers and parents may view and comment on a child’s schoolwork.

“Ms. Delzer also has a second calling. She is a schoolteacher with her own brand, Top Dog Teaching. Education start-ups like Seesaw give her their premium classroom technology as well as swag like T-shirts or freebies for the teachers who attend her workshops. She agrees to use their products in her classroom and give the companies feedback. And she recommends their wares to thousands of teachers who follow her on social media.

“I will embed it in my brand every day,” Ms. Delzer said of Seesaw. “I get to make it better.”

“Ms. Delzer is a member of a growing tribe of teacher influencers, many of whom promote classroom technology. They attract notice through their blogs, social media accounts and conference talks. And they are cultivated not only by start-ups like Seesaw, but by giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, to influence which tools are used to teach American schoolchildren.

“Their ranks are growing as public schools increasingly adopt all manner of laptops, tablets, math teaching sites, quiz apps and parent-teacher messaging apps. The corporate courtship of these teachers brings with it profound new conflict-of-interest issues for the nation’s public schools.

“Moreover, there is little rigorous research showing whether or not the new technologies significantly improve student outcomes.

“More than two dozen education start-ups have enlisted teachers as brand ambassadors. Some give the teachers inexpensive gifts like free classroom technology or T-shirts. Last year, TenMarks, a math-teaching site owned by Amazon, offered Amazon gift cards to teachers who acted as company advisers, and an additional $80 gift card for writing a post on its blog, according to a TenMarks online forum.

“Teachers said that more established start-ups gave them pricier perks like travel expenses to industry-sponsored conferences attended by thousands of teachers. In exchange, teacher ambassadors often promote company products on social media or in their conference talks — sometimes without explicitly disclosing their relationships with their sponsors.

“Many public schools are facing tight budgets, and administrators, including the principal at Ms. Delzer’s school, said they welcomed potentially valuable free technology and product training. Even so, some education experts warned that company incentives might influence teachers to adopt promoted digital tools over rival products or even traditional approaches, like textbooks.

“Teachers can’t help but be seduced to make greater use of the technology, given these efforts by tech companies,” said Samuel E. Abrams, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

“Public-school teachers who accept perks, meals or anything of value in exchange for using a company’s products in their classrooms could also run afoul of school district ethics policies or state laws regulating government employees.”

There are both ethical and legal concerns.

““Any time you are paying a public employee to promote a product in the public classroom without transparency, then that’s problematic,” said James E. Tierney, a former attorney general of Maine who is a lecturer at Harvard Law School. “Should attorneys general be concerned about this practice? The answer is yes.”

For the record, industries have always tried to place their promotional materials in the classroom to influence the views of children (the oil industry, the tobacco industry, and more). But this seems to be the first time that teachers have been hired to do their sales and marketing for them, while teaching.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Ethics, Teachers and Teaching

Alan Singer: Say NO to Unqualified Teachers in New York’s Classrooms

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2017 //
11

Influential charter operators in New York have been pressing for exemption from certification requirements for their teachers. This is a truly bad idea. Why should children have unqualified teachers?

Alan Singer writes here about the fight against this effort to lower standards for charter teachers, which is not only bad on its face, but would make these “teachers” unemployable in real public schools.

He writes:

“Politically influential charter school operators in the State of New York are on the verge of pushing through an administrative ruling that eliminates the requirement that children attending their schools be taught by certified teachers. This is happening at the same time that support for charter schools across the nation is in steep decline, probably because of Donald Trump’s endorsement of charter schools and private-school vouchers. According to a recent public opinion poll the growing opposition to charter schools is bipartisan. Support among Republicans declined by 13%. Democratic support for charter schools dropped by 11%.

“The Network for Public Education and New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) are organizing parents, teachers, and the public to flood the SUNY Trustees and the SUNY Charter Schools Institute with protests against the certification waiver proposal. Their opposition to the waiver is supported by the Deans of Schools of Education at eighteen colleges in the State University of New York system.

“Comments can be submitted online or mailed to Charter Schools Institute, State University of New York, 41 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 by September 10. You can also sign the NYSUT email letter. More information is available at the United University Professionals website.

“The Charter School teacher “decertification plan” is under review by political appointees on a sub-committee of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York (SUNY). The SUNY Charter Schools Institute is interpreting its authority to ensure the “Governance, structure and operations of SUNY authorized charter schools” as authorization to eliminate teacher certification requirements. It calls the proposal alternative certification, but it allows charters to declare anyone they want to be a teacher. In a series of Huffington Posts I explained why this decertification proposal is a threat to public education and the political forces and financial donors behind the charter school plan. In this post I examine whether the people hired under this waiver are qualified to teach children.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching

Here is a Good Reason to Buy Samuel Abrams’ “Education and the Commercial Mindset”

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2017 //
8

Samuel Abrams is director of the Teachers College, Columbia University, Center on the Study of Privatization of Education. He wrote a wonderful book called “Education and the Commercial Mindset.” Most of the book is focused on the haplessness and failure of the for-profit Edison Project, which became Edison Schools, which became EdisonLearning, and which lost money, a lot of money. Abrams’ book represents deep scholarship into the consistent failures of for-profit education.

I reviewed it in the <em>New York Review of Bookss, along with Mercedes Schneider’s superb “School Choice.”

Barron’s just posted a negative review of the Abrams’ book by a reviewer who has made a career of besmirching public schools, teachers, and unions. He hates them all, so of course, he hates Abrams’ elegant expose of the profit motive in education. The reviewer is a polemicist, not a scholar, so he probably didn’t understand the book.

I don’t subscribe to Barron’s so I can’t post the review. You probably don’t subscribe either. I wish I could quote it but I can’t. I know it is hostile to Abrams’ scholarly work because the title of the review is “Slurring Charter Schools: A skewed defense of our failing public schools, and a hit job on Harvard Business School.”

But I know a great deal about the reviewer, Bob Bowdon.

Bowdon wrote and produced a “documentary” called “The Cartel,” in which he compared the teachers’ union in New Jersey to the Mafia. He is a familiar figure on far-right TV shows, where he bashes teachers and public schools.

Read his Wikipedia entry, where it says:

Bowdon directed The Cartel, a 2009 documentary film about corruption in American public education that was distributed by Warner Brothers.[1] The film views the current state of public schools in the U.S. as a “national disaster for the workforce of the future.” Bowdon notes that the U.S., by many measures, “spends more on education than any country in the world,” and chooses to concentrate principally on his own state, New Jersey, which spends more per student on public education than any other state, but where average standardized-test scores in public schools are very low. In an effort to explain where all the money allocated to public education is going, Bowdon portrays a union-dominated institutional culture in which bureaucracies are overstaffed by highly paid administrators, expenditures on school-construction projects are unsupervised and out of control, corruption and patronage are rampant, incompetent teachers cannot be fired, and excellent teachers cannot be rewarded. As a solution to the problem, Bowdon proposes school choice and charter schools.[3]

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who watched The Cartel twice, has praised it as an influence on his own ideas about school reform.[4][5]

When my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” was published in 2010, I was invited to be interviewed by Judge Napolitano. I learned when I got there that I was going to debate Bob Bowdon. Judge Napolitano was on Bowdon’s side, and he said snidely, “would you allow any child of yours to attend a public school?” I vowed never again to appear on any show on FOX, as my experience left me feeling deeply outraged by their hostility to the views I had formed over 40 years of study. Bowdon knew nothing whatever about education, nothing whatever about teaching. All he knew was that privatization was good, public schools bad.

It is an ugly experience to get into the ring with someone who literally doesn’t know what he is talking about but is sure of his opinions.

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

A New Orleans Parent Warns Houstonians to Beware the Elite “Saviors”

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2017 //
19

Ashana Bigard is a native of New Orleans and a parent. This is her warning to the parents and other citizens of Houston.

She writes:

“My prayers are with you, Texas. My memories are with you too. The day after Katrina hit New Orleans, my family and I made the 17 hour car ride to Houston. The people of Texas welcomed us, opening their homes and helping us out with clothing, even financial assistance. As a native New Orleanian, I wish that I could do the same for you now. But what’s happened in my city and to its schools serves as a cautionary tale to residents of Houston. Reeling from the disaster, our communities were scattered like the four winds. I returned from Houston, many of us did, but the New Orleans we left doesn’t belong to us anymore.

“Rents have quadrupled as gentrification remakes whole neighborhoods, pushing out long-time residents. Nearly half of the children here now live in poverty, and job security is worse, salaries lower. The sense that we’re doing worse than before Katrina is borne out in the data: Black New Orleanians have 18% less wealththan we did in 2005.

“My prayers are with you, Texas. But my warnings are too.

“1. Be wary of elites with big plans. Even as Katrina’s waters were receding, a handful of local elites were making plans for taking over the city’s schools. In the years following the storm, more than $76 billion came to the city of New Orleans. Yet the native population is poorer than we were before Katrina; we have 18% less wealth than we did in 2005. It became obvious early on that the money for New Orleans wasn’t making it into the hands of native New Orleanians. Huge sums of money demand oversight, accountability, and, most importantly, a vision for how exactly investment will help the people who need it most. All parts of your community must be allowed to participate fully in the rebuilding of their own city.

“2. Trauma can’t be “disciplined” out of kids A hurricane is a deeply traumatic experience for children and trauma cannot simply be “disciplined” out of kids. New Orleans is now full of schools with “college prep” in their names, but their strict rules, harsh discipline and fixation on a culture of compliance have more in common with prison than with college. The “new” and “innovative” approach to educating kids that swept through our city after Katrina seems to start from the assumption that what children need to be successful is to be treated like adult criminals. We’ve had multiple incidents of children as young as five being handcuffed in schools, even arrested. Students who can’t afford the uniforms that are now mandatory at virtually every school in New Orleans are suspended, often for long periods of time. As an advocate for children in the schools, I’m regularly reminded that our post-Katrina schools in New Orleans intersect with the criminal justice system starting in the earliest grades, and ensnaring parents too. Louisiana, after all, that incarcerates a higher percentage of its residents than any other state. I wonder why that is?

“3. Don’t let your teachers get swept away Three months after Katrina, 7,500 school employees, including 4,000 teachers, were fired. Many of them had lost their homes to the hurricane. New Orleans lost the core of its Black middle class, and our schools lost adults who were connected to the city and its culture. What happens when all of your teachers are fired? You have a teacher shortage. New Orleans now imports its teachers: recent college grads from programs like Teach for America, who are entrusted with our kids’ development after receiving less training than what we require from workers at a nail salon.

“4. Your culture isn’t a liability to be overcome Beware of people who see your culture as a liability. The culture and soul of our city is music, arts and drama. Yet the people who came to “fix” New Orleans viewed the city and its culture as the source of our problems that they had to help us overcome. That mean schools without art, music or drama, in a city whose culture draws people from all over the world. Think about that. Without arts in the schools where will the next generation of performers come from? The arts are also an important way for kids to deal with trauma in a city that’s seen so much of it. Our kids desperately needed art, music and drama—yours will too.”

But that’s not all she writes. Read it all. Share the wisdom.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization

NYC Shuts Down Key Part of “Leadership Academy,” Legacy of Bloomberg-Klein Era

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2017 //
35

The New York City Department of Education announced that it was closing down the “Aspiring Principals” program, which was the linchpin of the NYC Leadership Academy. The Leadership Academy was launched by Joel Klein as a bold effort to attract business leaders, young teachers, and out-of-town principals who wanted a fast track to be a principal in New York City.

The first chairman of its board was Jack Welch of General Electric, who believed in grading all employees every year and firing the bottom 10%. The first CEO of the Academy was Robert Knowling Jr., a tech executive from Denver whose company had just collapsed. He brought a staff of more than 20 people with him to New York, including his personal coach.

Bloomberg raised $75 million for its first three years of operations. After that, the Department had a “competition” and awarded $50 million to the Leadership Academy, at which time Klein was chairman of the board.

The Leadership Academy was announced with great fanfare, like all Bloomberg initiatives, and school boards came from across the country to learn about it. What a great idea! Training business executives to be principals! It was about as good an idea as Bloomberg’s choice of a publishing executive to become chancellor after Klein stepped down. She lasted only three months.

The results of the Leadership Academy were unimpressive.

The only out-of-town principal who joined the program departed after six months. No business executives finished the program. It served as a pipeline for typically young teachers, who didn’t want to wait to gain the experience to become a school leader. Those who became principals found themselves in charge of a staff of veteran teachers who resented the quickie principals who had little experience and were in their late 20s or early 30s.

The city also cut its ties with TNTP, which Michelle Rhee created before she was D.C. Chancellor.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Principals
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