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Lisa Haver: It Is Time to Establish Democratic Control of Philadelphia’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2017 //
7

For many years, the public schools of Philadelphia have been drastically underfunded by the state of Pennsylvania. This created a series of fiscal crises, which should have produced equitable funding, but instead gave cause for a state takeover, thus blaming the city for the state’s failures. The state established the appointed School Reform Commission in 2001. The SRC appointed Paul Vallas to run the district, and he launched the nation’s largest experiment (to that date) in privatized schooling, handing over some 40 schools to private, for-profit, and university management. The experiment was an expensive failure, and he left the city with a large deficit, bound for New Orleans to push an even bigger experiment in school privatization.

The SRC has continued the Vallas tradition, closing public schools, opening charter schools, and leaving public schools in desperate straits.

To sum it up, state control has been a disaster for the children of Philadelphia.

Lisa Haver wrote an article in the Philadelphia Daily News outlining the secrecy that surrounds the deliberations of the School Reform Commission. Even the budget is hidden from public view until the SRC has made all its decisions, without considering the voices of parents or teachers.

She asks and answers questions about the role and lack of transparency of the SRC.

She concludes like this:

“Should the SRC schedule a meeting in which it plans to decide on renewals of 23 charter schools with less than a week’s notice?

“The district’s budget shows that it will spend $894 million — about one-third of the budget — on charters next year. Shouldn’t the SRC allow enough time for those paying the tab to read the reports? They may want to ask why schools that have met none of the standards are being recommended for renewal.

“Should the SRC publicly deliberate before voting on significant financial, academic and policy resolutions?

“The SRC approved contracts totaling $149.2 million at its February meeting; it spent $173.1 million in March. Resolutions are voted on in batches of 10 or 15, with little explanation of why.

“How do we reform the School Reform Commission? By abolishing it. Philadelphians have the right, as all other Pennsylvanians do, to decide who will represent them on an elected school board.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

NY Times: The Tech Billionaires Who Are Remaking America’s Schools

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2017 //
37

This is an important article about the Silicon Valley billionaires who want to remake America’s schools, although none has any deep knowledge of children or cognition or the multiple social issues that affect children and families. Being tech entrepreneurs, most of them think there is a technological fix for every problem.

The article focuses on several billionaires and what they aim to achieve.

The writer, Natasha Singer, is careful to add red flags where necessary and seek out evaluations. She also is alert to the possibility that the tech entrepreneurs are building their portfolios and enriching themselves. And she points out that much of what they are doing challenges democracy itself in the absence of public debate and understanding.

She writes:

“In the space of just a few years, technology giants have begun remaking the very nature of schooling on a vast scale, using some of the same techniques that have made their companies linchpins of the American economy. Through their philanthropy, they are influencing the subjects that schools teach, the classroom tools that teachers choose and fundamental approaches to learning….

“The involvement by some of the wealthiest and most influential titans of the 21st century amounts to a singular experiment in education, with millions of students serving as de facto beta testers for their ideas. Some tech leaders believe that applying an engineering mind-set can improve just about any system, and that their business acumen qualifies them to rethink American education…

“Tech companies and their founders have been rolling out programs in America’s public schools with relatively few checks and balances, The New York Times found in interviews with more than 100 company executives, government officials, school administrators, researchers, teachers, parents and students.

“They have the power to change policy, but no corresponding check on that power,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “It does subvert the democratic process.”

Furthermore, there is only limited research into whether the tech giants’ programs have actually improved students’ educational results….

“Mr. Hastings of Netflix and other tech executives rejected the idea that they wielded significant influence in education. The mere fact that classroom internet access has improved, Mr. Hastings said, has had a much greater impact in schools than anything tech philanthropists have done.”

Hastings’ Dreambox software depends on constant data-mining:

“DreamBox Learning tracks a student’s every click, correct answer, hesitation and error — collecting about 50,000 data points per student per hour — and uses those details to adjust the math lessons it shows. And it uses data to help teachers pinpoint which math concepts students may be struggling with.”

This is the same Reed Hastings who just spent $5 million helping charter entrepreneurs gain control of the Los Angeles school board.

“Another difference: Some tech moguls are taking a hands-on role in nearly every step of the education supply chain by financing campaigns to alter policy, building learning apps to advance their aims and subsidizing teacher training. This end-to-end influence represents an “almost monopolistic approach to education reform,” said Larry Cuban, an emeritus professor of education at Stanford University. “That is starkly different to earlier generations of philanthropists.”

“These efforts coincide with a larger Silicon Valley push to sell computers and software to American schools, a lucrative market projected to reach $21 billion by 2020. Already, more than half of the primary- and secondary-school students in the United States use Google services like Gmail in school.”

Singer goes through each of the entrepreneurs’ programs. The only one that impressed me was the program in San Francisco that created a Pricipals’ Innovation Fund, “which awards annual unrestricted grants of $100,000 to the principal at each of the district’s 21 middle and K-8 schools.” The key word here is unrestricted.

Mark Zuckerberg’s dream is to sell his digitized approach to enable children to learn via computer and use teachers as moderators. He calls this “personalized learning,” since the computer algorithm adjusts for each student. Singer’s subtitle for Zuckerberg’s dream is: “Student, Teach Thyself.”

““Our hope over the next decade is to help upgrade a majority of these schools to personalized learning and then start working globally as well,” Mr. Zuckerberg told the audience. “Giving a billion students a personalized education is a great thing to do.”

Please, Natasha Singer, do a follow-up that explains that learning from a machine is depersonalized learning.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Data and Data Mining, Democracy, Education Reform, For-Profit, Online Learning, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology

Peter Greene: There is Nothing Democratic about School Choice

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2017 //
25

Peter Greene has a genius for taking complicated ideas and boiling them down to their essence in language that everyone can understand. This post is a classic example of that genius. Others have written entire books trying to explain what he says concisely here.

In the recent writings about school choice, pro and con, Peter Greene was especially affronted by a statement from Kevin Chavous, who works for Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. He said: It is school choice–directly empowering parents to choose the best educational environment for their child–that is the most democratic of ideas.

Greene responded:

Nope. Nope nope nopity nope. There are arguments to be made for parent choice, but “it’s the essence of democracy” is not one of them.

Democracy, even the sort-of-democracy practiced by the USA, is not about saying, “I want to make this personal choice, and I want everyone else to pay for it.”

Democracy is not saying you want a six-lane highway to run back the lane where only your house sits, so you get the rest of the taxpayers in your state to pay for it.

Democracy is not saying that since I want to have a police force that patrols my own house 24/7, I should have that police coverage and all local taxpayers should foot the bill.

Democracy is not “My fellow taxpayers have to pay for whatever I decide on my own that I want.”

He adds:

Choice fans often like to talk about the money following the child because “that money doesn’t belong to the school system.” And they have a point– it is not the school’s money. It is also not the family’s money. It is the taxpayers’ money, and the taxpayers have given it to support a system that will educate all students in the community through an institution managed by elected representatives of those taxpayers (when was the last time you saw a school board requirement that only parents can be elected).

And so, my fellow Americans, democracy consists of the consent of the governed, not the requirement to pay for whatever each person wants:

The “most democratic of ideas” is not that each individual gets to live in the Land of Do As You Please at public expense. Vouchers may be many things, but they are not remotely democratic.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democracy, School Choice, Vouchers

Illinois: Despite Opposition of Mayor and Governor, Legislature Approves Return of Elected School Board

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2017 //
11

Despite lobbying by Governor Bruce Rauner and Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, both houses of the legislature voted overwhelmingly to replace mayoral control with an elected school board. The two bills differ in important details, and legislative leaders will have to hammer out a compromise. The bills were approved by veto-proof majorities.

This is great news for Chicagoans who have wanted an elected board that would listen to the public.

Categories Chicago, Democracy, Emanuel, Rahm

The Network for Public Education: Our View on Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2017 //
30

NPE Statement on Charter Schools

https://wp.me/p3bR9v-2st

The Network for Public Education believes that public education is the pillar of our democracy. We believe in the common school envisioned by Horace Mann. A common school is a public institution, which nurtures and teaches all who live within its boundaries, regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, sexual preference or learning ability. All may enroll–regardless of when they seek to enter the school or where they were educated before.

We believe that taxpayers bear the responsibility for funding those schools and that funding should be ample and equitable to address the needs of the served community. We also believe that taxpayers have the right to examine how schools use tax dollars to educate children.

Most importantly, we believe that such schools should be accountable to the community they serve, and that community residents have the right and responsibility to elect those who govern the school. Citizens also have the right to insist that schooling be done in a manner that best serves the needs of all children.

By definition, a charter school is not a public school. Charter schools are formed when a private organization contracts with a government authorizer to open and run a school. Charters are managed by private boards, often with no connection to the community they serve. The boards of many leading charter chains are populated by billionaires who often live far away from the schools they govern.

Through lotteries, recruitment and restrictive entrance policies, charters do not serve all children. The public cannot review income and expenditures in detail. Many are for profit entities or non-profits that farm out management to for-profit corporations that operate behind a wall of secrecy. This results in scandal, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer funds. The news is replete with stories of self-dealing, conflicts of interest, and theft occurring in charter schools [1].

We have learned during the 25 years in which charters have been in existence that the overall academic performance of students in charter schools is no better, and often worse, than the performance of students in public schools. And yet charter schools are seen as the remedy when public schools are closed based on unfair letter-based grading schemes.

By means of school closures and failed takeover practices like the Achievement School District, disadvantaged communities lose their public schools to charter schools. Not only do such communities lose the school, but they also lose their voice in school governance.

There is little that is innovative or new that charter schools offer. Because of their “freedom” from regulations, allegedly to promote innovation, scandals involving the finances and governance of charter schools occur on a weekly basis. Charter schools can and have closed at will, leaving families stranded. Profiteers with no educational expertise have seized the opportunity to open charter schools and use those schools for self-enrichment. States with weak charter laws encourage nepotism, profiteering by politicians, and worse.

For all of the reasons above and more, the Network for Public Education regard charter schools as a failed experiment that our organization cannot support. If the strength of charter schools is the freedom to innovate, then that same freedom can be offered to public schools by the district of the state.

At the same time, we recognize that many families have come to depend on charter schools and that many charter school teachers are dedicated professionals who serve their students well. It is also true that some charter schools are successful. We do not, therefore, call for the immediate closure of all charter schools, but rather we advocate for their eventual absorption into the public school system. We look forward to the day when charter schools are governed not by private boards, but by those elected by the community, at the district, city or county level.

Until that time, we support all legislation and regulation that will make charters better learning environments for students and more accountable to the taxpayers who fund them. Such legislation would include the following:

• An immediate moratorium on the creation of new charter schools, including no replication or expansion of existing charter schools

• The transformation of for-profit charters to non-profit charters

• The transformation of for-profit management organizations to non-profit management organizations

• All due process rights for charter students that are afforded public school students, in all matters of discipline

• Required certification of all school teaching and administrative staff

• Complete transparency in all expenditures and income

• Requirements that student bodies reflect the demographics of the served community

• Open meetings of the board of directors, posted at least 2 weeks prior on the charter’s website

• Annual audits available to the public

• Requirements to following bidding laws and regulations

• Requirements that all properties owned by the charter school become the property of the local public school if the charter closes

• Requirements that all charter facilities meet building codes

• Requirements that charters offer free or reduced priced lunch programs for students

• Full compensation from the state for all expenditures incurred when a student leaves the public school to attend a charter

• Authorization, oversight and renewal of charters transferred to the local district in which they are located

• A rejection of all ALEC legislation regarding charter schools that advocates for less transparency, less accountability, and the removal of requirements for teacher certification.

Until charter schools become true public schools, the Network for Public Education will continue to consider them to be private schools that take public funding.

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

Linda Lyons: DeVos is Intent on Reviving State-Sponsored Discrimination

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2017 //
20

Lina Lyons is president-elect of the Arizona School Boards Association.

She writes here about the spurious claim that school choice is the answer to all problems.

She says that the nevitable result of school choice will not be better education, but segregation by race, class, ethnicity, and socioeconomic.

Yet DeVos continues to evade any federal responsibility for promoting desegregation and evades any federal responsibility for discouraging discrimination.

She writes:

“Some parents don’t know best. There. I said it. Let’s face it, some parents aren’t present, some are abusive, and some are drug addicts. Then there are those who are trying their damnedest to provide for their children but their minimum wage jobs (without benefits) just don’t pay enough to make ends meet. Bottom line is, not all parents know how, or care enough to provide, the best they can for their children. Where that is the case, or, when hard working parents need a little help, it is up to all of us in a civil society, to ensure all children are safe and that their basic needs are met. As education reformer John Dewey said over a century ago, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

“Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos evidently doesn’t agree. In recent testimony to Congress, no matter what question she was asked about how far states would be allowed to go in discriminating against certain types of students, she kept deflecting to “states rights” and “parental rights,” failing to say at any point in the testimony that she would ensure states receiving federal dollars would not discriminate. From watching her testimony, if she had been the Secretary of Education with Donald Trump as President back in the early 1960s, the Alabama National Guard would undoubtedly never have been called up to integrate the schools.

“This should surprise no one. After all, the entire school reform agenda is really about promoting survival of the fittest. Those who “have” and already do well, will be set up for even more success while those dealing with the challenges poverty presents, will continue to suffer. As far as Betsy DeVos is concerned, the U.S. Department of Education has no responsibility to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender identity. The hell with Brown vs. Board of Education, she will not step in to ensure states do the right thing for their students. As Jack Covey wrote recently to Diane Ravitch, to Betsy, “choice” is everything and parents should be able to send their children to a black-free, LGBT-free, or Muslim-free school on the taxpayer’s dime if they want to.

“Does that EVEN sound remotely like America to you? How can it be okay for our tax dollars to promote blatant discrimination? This is essentially state-sponsored discrimination. Yes, discrimination has always occurred via self-funded choice. The wealthy have always been able to keep their children away from the rest of us but, it was on their own dime. As it has always been with parents who stretched budgets to live in neighborhoods with the “best” school district as a way to ensure their child had the best chance.”

There were many reasons to oppose Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Add another: she has no intention of using federal dollars to enforce the laws barring discrimination.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bias, Civil Rights, Democracy, Inequity, Racism, School Choice, Segregation

Bill Phillis: Betsy DeVos is Clueless about the Common Good

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2017 //
34

Bill Phillis read Betsy DeVos’s prepared remarks at the Brookings Institution and it occurred to him that she literally doesn’t know what she is talking about. Bill is a retired deputy superintendent of schools for the state of Ohio and he works tirelessly to protect public schools against Governor Kasich and the Ohio legislature’s love of privatization.

Betsy DeVos, speaking at the Brookings Institution, said that we must think about funding individual children, not institutions or buildings in order to serve the greater public good. That logic would suggest that each citizen should be provided a tax voucher to purchase personal security while police departments and other safety forces are being dismantled. Why not abandon the Brookings Institution and provide some kind of voucher to allow Brookings employees to be paid to freelance their services?

DeVos’ answer to every question is “more choice” outside the real public system at taxpayer’s expense. Her view of public common good seems jaded by her anti-public school craze for choice. It appears she does not understand that each state has a constitutional provision requiring public education as an institution. It is through the institution of the public common school that the public common good is nurtured.

People organize states and nations for the common good. Tax funds are collected for public goods and services, e.g. roads, public safety, national security, education, etc. The public funds do not belong to individual citizens as an incentive to select private choices. Public institutions provide for current and future citizens. Individual choices relate to the here and now-not to future long-term benefits to society.

Government must not be the servant of special interests. The very idea of a commonwealth-the people collectively-is antithetical to the use of public funds for private purposes.

Even non-government groups, such as parent-teacher organizations, come together to promote common purposes. Local PTAs or PTOs raise funds for agreed upon projects. They don’t assign the funds to individual members for each to promote a project of their choice.

There are those who believe that a few unelected leaders should determine what constitutes the public good for all other citizens. Possibly, that philosophy is embraced by DeVos.

DeVos and those of her ilk are absolutely wrong that school choice promotes the public common good. It is time for all citizens to become engaged in ensuring public resources are used exclusively for the common good.

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://www.ohiocoalition.org

Categories Betsy DeVos, Democracy, School Choice

Illinois: An Urgent Message from Chicago Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2017 //
6

The Chicago Teachers Union called on public-spirited citizens across the state to urge the State Senate to vote for legislation on behalf of Chicago’s students, teachers, and public schools.

The end of the session in Springfield draws nigh. Please make calls to Springfield today & tomorrow for public education, teachers, (Chicago and the rest of the state too), and for progressive state revenue, 1-217-782-2000:

From the CTU:

“Since 2010, the Chicago Teachers Union has recognized that our path forward—while not easy—is clear. Our school communities must have a different governing structure, progressive revenue for a new funding formula and a stronger voice for educators in order to secure the schools Chicago children deserve.

“We are working to unwind harmful legislative actions that have created a second-tier school district, and resulted in declining revenue and corrupt governance. Over the past month, several CTU-backed bills have passed out committee and need your support to pass out of the House chamber.

“Once again, the bill to decommission the unelected and unaccountable Illinois State Charter School Commission—HB768 (Welch)—passed out of the House with a vote of 61-46. Call the Senate

“The majority of the members—63-54— of the Illinois House of Representatives agree that Chicago Teachers deserve their voice. The House advanced HB1253 (Tabares) to the Senate. The bill will restore the full collective bargaining rights of Chicago educators. In 1995, a Republican-controlled Illinois General Assembly along with a Republican governor enacted legislation that was designed to undermine collective bargaining rights for teachers only in the city of Chicago. This legislation contributed greatly to oversized classrooms; the loss of experienced teachers; the decline of Black and Latino teachers through runaway privatization. Call the Senate

“HB3720 (Harper) is a tax increment finance (TIF) reform bill that will bring true transparency to TIFs and provide funds for special education and trauma services in our schools. The bill passed the House with a veto proof majorityof 75-39. Call the Senate

“SB1719 (Senator Daniel Biss) is a bill that will establish a privilege tax on private equity and hedge funds. These millionaires and billionaires earn about $4.8 billion per year in under-taxed income. SB1719 will allow the state of Illinois to capture the revenue lost through this loophole and provide an estimated $500 million per year.

“From other teacher and grass roots groups:

“A) HB 3393 – Close Rauner’s Tax Loopholes – specifically the Carried Interest Loophole Call both the House and the Senate, Madigan has blocked this by placing it in the Rules Committee – so please call his office as well.

“B) HB 1774 This is for the Elected School Board for Chicago – we must move this bill but Madigan stopped it in the House and put it into the Rules Committee – Call the House and Madigan to get this moving.

“C) HB 3567 Cap the expansion of charters in financially strapped school districts – yahoo! Madigan has blocked this one as well so please call the House and Madigan.”

Virus-free. http://www.avg.com

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Chicago, Democracy, Unions

Peter Dreier: Who Are the Corporate Plutocrats Trying to Defeat Steve Zimmer in Los Angeles?

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2017 //
1

Peter Dreier, professor of political science at Occidental College in Los Angeles, warns that a cabal of billionaires are trying to defeat Steve Zimmer in order to take control of the public schools and privatize them. The vote on May 16 is in the national spotlight.

Can a handful of billionaires buy control of the nation’s second largest school district?

Before naming names, Dreier writes:

Some of America’s most powerful corporate plutocrats want to take over the Los Angeles school system but Steve Zimmer, a former teacher and feisty school board member, is in their way. So they’ve hired Nick Melvoin to get rid of him. No, he’s not a hired assassin like the kind on “The Sopranos.” He’s a lawyer who the billionaires picked to defeat Zimmer.

The so-called “Independent” campaign for Melvoin — funded by big oil, big tobacco, Walmart, Enron, and other out-of-town corporations and billionaires — has included astonishingly ugly, deceptive, and false attack ads against Zimmer.

This morning (Friday) the Los Angeles Times reported that “Outside spending for Melvoin (and against Zimmer) has surpassed $4.65 million.” Why? Because he doesn’t agree with the corporatization of our public schools. Some of their donations have gone directly to Melvoin’s campaign, but much of it has been funneled through a corporate front group called the California Charter School Association.

To try to hoodwink voters, the billionaires invented another front group with the same initials as the well-respected Parent Teacher Association, but they are very different organizations. They called it the “Parent Teacher Alliance.” Pretty clever, huh? But this is not the real PTA, which does not get involved with elections. In fact, the real PTA has demanded that this special interest PAC change their name and called the billionaires’ campaign Zimmer “misleading,” “deceptive practices,” and “false advertising.”

These out-of-town billionaire-funded groups can pay for everything from phone-banks, to mailers, to television ads. Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez described the billionaires’ campaign to defeat Zimmer, which includes sending mails filled with outrageous lies about Zimmer, as “gutter politics.”

As a result, the race for the District 4 seat — which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley — is ground zero in the battle over the corporate take-over of public education. The outcome of next Tuesday’s (May 16) election has national implications in terms of the billionaires’ battle to reconstruct public education in the corporate mold.

The contest between Melvoin and Zimmer is simple. Who should run our schools? Who knows what’s best for students? Out-of-town billionaires or parents, teachers, and community residents?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Los Angeles, Privatization

Brave New World: What Links Trump, Brexit, Robert Mercer, Rupert Murdoch, and Steve Bannon?

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2017 //
28

This is an article in The Guardian that I will not attempt to summarize. What I will Di is urge you to read it. It is about money, power, and a coordinated attack on democracy. It is about data mining psychological warfare financed by a billionaire and used to win elections. It is about the use of technology to subvert democracy and empower a new, far-right elite.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Democracy, Technology
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