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The Corporate Plan to Prepare Our Children for a Life of Servitude

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2018 //
35

 

In this insightful and harrowing article, we can see clearly the contours of a devilish plan, hatched in the corridors of ALEC and other corporate-controlled entities. The centerpiece of the plan is the destruction and privatization of public education, which all of us own and paid for with our taxes.

Read it and get involved. Join the Networkfor Public Education. Join your local advocacy group. Never despair. Don’t stop fighting.

It begins like this:

It was the strike heard ‘round the country.

West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app. Their governor, billionaire coal baron Jim Justice, pledged to allow them no more than an annual 1% raise—effectively a pay cut considering inflation—in a state where teacher salaries ranked 48th lowest out of 50 states. In February 2018, they finally revolted: In a tense, nine-day work stoppage, they managed to wrest a 5% pay increase from the state. Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have now revolted in similar protests.

It’s the latest battle in a contest between two countervailing forces: one bent on reengineering America for the benefit of the wealthy, the other struggling to preserve dignity and security for ordinary people.

If the story turns out the way the Jim Justices desire, the children of a first-world country will henceforth be groomed for a third-world life.

Gordon Lafer, Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon, and Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, help illuminate why this is happening, who is behind it, and what’s at stake as the educational system that once united Americans and prepared them for a life of social and economic mobility is wiped out of existence.

The Plan: Lower People’s Expectations

When Lafer began to study the tsunami of corporate-backed legislation that swept the country in early 2011 in the wake of Citizens United—the 2010 Supreme Court decision that gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited sums to influence the political system—he wasn’t yet clear what was happening. In state after state, a pattern was emerging of highly coordinated campaigns to smash unions, shrink taxes for the wealthy, and cut public services. Headlines blamed globalization and technology for the squeeze on the majority of the population, but Lafer began to see something far more deliberate working behind the scenes: a hidden force that was well-funded, laser-focused, and astonishingly effective.

Lafer pored over the activities of business lobbying groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – funded by giant corporations including Walmart, Amazon.com, and Bank of America—that produces “model legislation” in areas its conservative members use to promote privatization. He studied the Koch network, a constellation of groups affiliated with billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. (Koch Industries is the country’s second-largest private company with business including crude oil supply and refining and chemical production). Again and again, he found that corporate-backed lobbyists were able to subvert the clear preferences of the public and their elected representatives in both parties. Of all the areas these lobbyists were able to influence, the policy campaign that netted the most laws passed, featured the most big players, and boasted the most effective organizations was public education. For these U.S. corporations, undermining the public school system was the Holy Grail.


After five years of research and the publication of The One Percent Solution, Lafer concluded that by lobbying to make changes like increasing class sizes, pushing for online instruction, lowering accreditation requirements for teachers, replacing public schools with privately-run charters, getting rid of publicly elected school boards and a host of other tactics, Big Business was aiming to dismantle public education.

The grand plan was even more ambitious. These titans of business wished to completely change the way Americans and their children viewed their life potential. Transforming education was the key.

 

 

 

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Koch Brothers

The Teachers’ Strikes Are Just the Beginning

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2018 //
31

 

The spring of 2018 may well be remembered as the beginning of a mass movement by working people against the domination of corporations and the 1%.

The leadership in red states and the federal government have tilted the tax system to favor the very wealthy, while demanding sacrifices from the powerless majority.

The teachers in West Virginia were first to say “Enough!”

But they are far from last.

The ALEC-inspired Republican legislatures killed collective bargaining, and the Supreme Court in expected to hobble labor unions with the Janus decision.

But that’s not going to stop working people from organizing and demanding a fair share of the bounty that they produced.

For all of Facebook’s sins and transgressions, it has nonetheless created a way for voiceless people to organize and act. Teachers and others created collectives on Facebook and used them to mobilize for mass actions.

The teachers’ strikes were organized by grassroots efforts that began on Facebook. Powerless teachers discovered that by acting in concert, they became powerful. They have used their numbers to demand fair pay and benefits and have stood up courageously to legislatures known to be in the pockets of the oil and gas industries and other malefactors of vast wealth.

Piece by piece, day by day, as they lead us, we will recover our democracy. We will rebuild the institutions now under assault by Trumpism and its variants. The names of the leaders are not well-known. They won’t be on the covers of magazines or interviewed by late night TV hosts. They are ordinary citizens who have stepped forward to demand justice, equity, and fairness and to revive our democracy.

 

Categories Courage, Democracy, Equity, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Resistance, Teachers, West Virginia

Needed: A Trustbuster to Break Up Four Mega-Corporations

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
43

 

Four corporate behemoths dominate our economy, writes Ross Barkan. It is time to break them up and foster healthy competition. Progressives met that challenge over a century ago. Have the Big Four become too big to fail and too powerful to regulate?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/19/democrats-break-up-techs-big-four-apple-google-facebook-apple

”Four corporations dominate American life. They have the wealth of nations. They have generated unfathomable revenue, created a number of jobs, and decimated many more. Their control of the economy is total.

“They are Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. Unless we do something, their power will remain limitless.

“Any Democrat running for president who claims to be a progressive should put trust-busting at the top of their agenda. Socialist or capitalist, big government or small, the priority should be the same: to ensure the people who consume goods and create goods are not exploited.

“All four corporate behemoths are too large. These monopolies fuel staggering inequality and stifle the kind of economic growth that used to be more evenly distributed. Profits are immense and gains for actual workers are small – these corporations do not generate employment, let alone unionized employment, on the scale of earlier revolutionary giants.”

Will any candidate step up to the challenge? Will candidates from both parties court the 1% for campaign contributions in exchange for protecting them from taxation and regulation?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Democrats, Economy, Education Reform

Ed Berger: Arizona Government and Dark Money

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2018 //
3

Ed Berger, retired teacher, lives in Arizona and fights for the return of honest government.

He writes:

Arizona Government Does Not Match The Decency And Will Of Its People

We live in Arizona. We are decent, law abiding, citizens. So why is Arizona considered one of the most corrupt states in America? Why is Arizona often the example of how Democracy can be subverted? Why is our state out of sync with its population? What is wrong? Arizona government does not match the values of our citizens.
What can we do to make our elected representatives reflect the decency and will of the people? We must vote to remove those who corrupt the democratic process and their elected positions by accepting Dark Money.

Let’s examine a recent Senate/House vote. House Bill 2153 was passed into law over the objections of community leaders and citizens of all political parties and went into effect April 2, 2018. It prohibits any local government requirement to identify contributors to local political campaigns. Seventeen Senate members and thirty-three House members approved this measure and Governor Ducey signed it into law. This runs counter to initiatives by many communities acting in the public interest to expose Dark Money and its’ use to buy and place representatives and government leaders. They want to stop the covert, negative and destructive methods of oligarchs that bypass the citizen’s right to elect representatives they have vetted and chosen.

This is a current example of how the will of the people was ignored. To clean AZ government, we can study how representatives voted on key issues like this one, share their deeds, and get the bad ones gone. What We The People now have is a list of the seventeen senators and thirty-three house members who sold us out.

Prescott is still reeling from the effect of Dark Money in recent elections. In the race for District #1, few know that DeVos money (Dark Money) went to support a candidate this community rejected. With access to DeVos money and the use of gerrymandering, the citizen’s candidate was undermined and defeated. His opponent won and now owes DeVos bigtime. The recent mayoral election in Prescott is another example of how democracy is subverted by money and power. Those elected to represent us in the legislature are too often there because they owe allegiance to those who want our government to serve them, and not the people.

When one is aware of this fact, we can begin to understand how tens of millions of our taxpayer dollars have not only been mismanaged but have gone into the pockets of privatizers and profiteers. For many years, our legislature has passed and supported laws that do not allow accounting or transparency for how taxpayer public dollars are spent by charter schools. They have also done away with conflict of interest rules that would make it a criminal offence for legislators to use public money and position for personal gain. In addition, they have done away with democratically elected schools boards in favor of private corporate boards to oversee charter schools. Real public schools have elected school boards. But those who control the legislature have eliminated the tools of transparency and accountability that protect our investment in public education from being siphoned off from the needs of children and into the pockets of privateers.

This has been done to our state. Captive and bought members of the legislature have created uncounted millionaires by directing our money to friends, family, and those they support ideologically. This has been done out of pure greed. Ideologically it is done to starve and damage our public schools because they are “government schools” and have not yet been privatized for profit, not for kids. These are our schools, the ones over 80% of AZ citizens want to support and improve.

These are two on the many examples of the subversion of the democratic process. Yavapai County is reported to be a Republican stronghold. Some say people here always voted a straight “R” ticket. That may have been true years ago. Today Yavapai County is not Republican or Democrat or Independent. The citizens of this county have learned that the state government is not GOP, but rather a Koch, Goldwater Institute, APS, ALEC assembly of people who often describe themselves a Libertarians, which roughly translated means, ‘We have the right to rape, rip, and run if it serves us. We have the right to access for our personal gain the taxes citizens pay. We believe in privatizing all public resources, including prisons, schools and government functions.’ If one votes a straight “R” ticket what they are getting is a “Koch” ticket. Times have changed and now the legislature and governor are owned by forces that serve only themselves. Too often our politicians dance with the ones who ‘brung’ them.

So how do we win back the respect of other Americans and our decency as a people?

#1 We identify the legislators and political leaders that are owned by outside forces. We do this by examining their voting records and red tag all who have voted for laws that restrict financial accountability, shield members from conflicts of interest, and favor those who profit from privatizing prisons, schools, and public services.

#2 We share our information, educate our friends and neighbors, and support candidates that, regardless of political party affiliation, represent us and our community.

#3 We vote after vetting the candidates.

 

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Citizenship, Civics, Dark Money, Democracy, Koch Brothers

Journalists at the Denver Post Denounce Hedge Owners in New York City for Deep Budget Cuts

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2018 //
10

 

After the latest round of budget cuts, the editorial staff at the Denver Post took the unusual step of denouncing the newspaper’s owners, a hedge fund in New York City.

The owners are “vulture capitalists,” said the front-page editorial. It was a plea for new ownership.

This is a remarkable story of journalists fighting back about the slow death of a major newspaper, at the risk of their jobs.

Hedge fund managers are cold-blooded about extracting profit. Tradition, loyalty, years of service, significance to the community: none of this matters.

The Washington Post has adopted a new slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness.”

A free press is vital to our democracy, but media consolidation is threatening the number of free voices, of people who don’t read from a script dictated by management.

Open the link if you can, to see the front page. What a remarkable show of integrity:

“The Denver Post is in open revolt against its owner.

Angry and frustrated journalists at the 125-year-old newspaper took the extraordinary step this weekend of publicly blasting its New York-based hedge-fund owner and making the case for its own survival in several articles that went online Friday and are scheduled to run in The Post’s Sunday opinion section.

“News matters,” the main headline reads. “Colo. should demand the newspaper it deserves.”

The bold tactic was born out of a dissatisfaction not uncommon in newsrooms across the country as newspapers grapple with the loss of revenue that has followed the decline of print.

The move at The Post followed a prolonged, slow-burning rebellion at The Los Angeles Times, where journalists agitated against the paper’s owner, the media company Tronc. Newsroom complaints about Tronc’s leadership helped lead to the sale of the newspaper to a billionaire medical entrepreneur, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who had been a major shareholder in Tronc.

For many publications that do not attract a patron-like owner, however, the difficult times are likely to continue, and midsize newspapers have been hit especially hard. Hoping to avoid the slow trudge to irrelevance or bankruptcy, the Denver paper took the stuff of newsroom conversation and made it public in dramatic fashion.
The lead editorial pulled no punches, describing executives at Alden Global Capital, the paper’s hedge-fund owner, as “vulture capitalists.”

“We call for action,” the editorial continued. It went on to make the case that “Denver deserves a newspaper owner who supports its newsroom. If Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell The Post to owners who will.”

The Post, which serves a city of some 700,000 residents, has a weekday circulation of an estimated 170,000 and 8.6 million unique monthly visitors to its website. It has won nine Pulitzer Prizes, including in 2013 for its coverage of the mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. Alden Global Capital took control of the paper in 2010 after acquiring its bankrupt parent company, MediaNews Group, and runs it through a subsidiary, Digital First Media.

Chuck Plunkett, The Post’s editorial page editor, masterminded the package of articles that, in part, rebuked the ownership of the publication where he has worked since 2003. Before posting it, Mr. Plunkett said, he did not warn executives at Digital First Media. The Post’s news and opinion sections are separate fiefs, and he also did not inform the paper’s chief editor, Lee Ann Colacioppo, of his plans.

Shortly after the articles were posted online, Guy Gilmore, the chief operating officer of Digital First Media, called Ms. Colacioppo. He said he wanted to discuss the editorial and the “appropriate response” from the company, Ms. Colacioppo said. The two ultimately decided, she said, that the stories would remain online and that the Sunday print section would proceed as planned. In addition, Mr. Plunkett would stay on as editorial page editor, she said.

Digital First Media did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Readers inside and outside the newsroom met the articles with an outpouring of support…

The package also had a fan in City Hall.

“Denver is so proud of our flagship newspaper for speaking out,” Mayor Michael B. Hancock said in a statement. “The Denver Post said it best — they are necessary to this ‘grand democratic experiment,’ especially at a time when the press and facts are under constant attack by the White House. For a New York hedge fund to treat our paper like any old business and not a critical member of our community is offensive. We urge the owners to rethink their business strategy or get out of the news business. Denver stands with our paper and stands ready to be part of the solution that supports local journalism and saves the 125-year-old Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire.”

Mr. Plunkett said he was aware that he was putting his livelihood at risk by taking on the paper’s owner.
“I had to do it because it was the right thing to do,” he said. “If that means that I lose my job trying to stand up for my readers, then that means I’m not working for the right people anyway.”

Sunday’s print opinion section will hit newsstands and land in driveways one day before more than two dozen employees at The Post say farewell to the newsroom.

Already devastated by staff reductions made since Alden Global Capital took over in 2010, The Post was ordered last month to slash another 30 jobs from a newsroom whose count was already below 100.

“These job losses are painful, and we know meaningful work will not get done because talented journalists have left the organization,” Ms. Colacioppo told the staff after a meeting during which she delivered news of the layoffs. “I’m sure some commenters will cheer what they believe is the eventual demise of the mainstream media, but there is nothing to celebrate when a city has fewer journalists working in it.”

Before she was ordered to carry out the latest reduction in staff — a process that is scheduled to be completed by July — the editor said she believed that things were looking up for The Post.

“Aside from the last three weeks or so, I would have described the last year as a turning point for us,” Ms. Colacioppo said in an interview on Saturday. “Then this came.”

Earlier this year, in another cost-cutting effort, the newspaper left its longtime headquarters in the heart of downtown Denver, steps from the Capitol and City Hall, to an office in Adams County located in the same building as its printing press.

The moves have left the remaining Post staffers demoralized. “Every single staffing reduction has been really difficult,” Jesse Paul, a politics reporter who joined the paper in 2014, said on Saturday. “This last one in particular I described it as cutting off a leg. This was literally like taking off a limb of the newspaper.”

The announcement of the latest layoffs pitted Post employees against an ownership team that seems to have little regard for quality journalism. But as newspapers across the country continue to suffer — and as more of them come under the ownership of public companies like Gannett or investment firms looking to wring profits from a troubled business — The Post has also become a flash point in the newspaper industry’s battle for survival.

Digital First Media is among the biggest newspaper chains in the country, with more than 90 newspapers including The Pioneer Press of St. Paul, Minn.; The Mercury News of San Jose, Calif.; The Orange County Register; and The Boston Herald. The company has aggressively cut resources in its quest for profit, with recent staff reductions at several of its papers, including The Mercury News and The Herald.

 

Categories Democracy, Freedom of the Press

Philadelphia: The New, Unelected School Board

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2018 //
9

 

After 20 years under state control, the citizens of Philadelphia were thrilled that state control was ending. At last, they thought, Philadelphia would have local control.

But the Mayor picks all the board members, and they were chosen behind closed doors, with no transparency.

Is this an improvement? The board members reflect charter school interests, corporate interests, and political ties.

Philadelphia continues to be the only district in the state without an elected board.

The mayor announced his board selections, which pointedly excluded any well-known education activists.

Mayor Kenney picks his starting nine for new Philly school board

Categories Democracy, Philadelphia

Arizona: Koch Brothers Lose in Court, Seek to Quash Referendum Against Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2018 //
7

Parents and teachers in Arizona gathered over 100,000 signatures to force a referendum on the unlimited expansion of vouchers. The Koch brothers and the DeVos family are pushing for vouchers, and they sent in their top legal team to try to stop the referendum. They are terrified of democracy.

They fought the referendum in court and they lost. The parents and teachers won. The referendum was going forward.

Now they have a new trick up their sleeve. The masters of dark money will get the legislature to repeal the original bill and re-enact it, so as to block the referendum. The SOS Arizona team will have to start all over, by gathering signatures for a new referendum and hiring lawyers to defend the referendum.

The Koch brothers and the DeVos family are hereby added to the blog’s Wall of Shame. They hate public schools and they hate democracy.

Please send a contribution to SOS Arizona to help them continue the fight for public schools!

This came in today from SOS Arizona:

Just when we thought we were safe…They’re at it again. Within 2 weeks of the Arizona Supreme Court’s dismissal of the dark-money lawsuit brought against SOSAZ, the Legislature is preparing to repeal Prop 305 entirely or replace it with another ESA expansion bill. 

From the moment we turned in 111,540 signatures last summer, voucher supporters have been scheming to “bait and switch.” Especially since polls have indicated that Prop 305 will likely be defeated if voters have their say. Voters know that vouchers hurt our schools, our kids, and our state.

Bottom line–the state with the WORST funding for schools should be the LAST state to divert public funds to private schools.

How can you help ensure that Prop 305 will get to the ballot so we can defeat the voucher expansion once and for all?

  • Call Governor Ducey’s office at 602-542-4331 and say you oppose any voucher expansion replacement bill;
  • Contact your representatives and senator now to let them know any replacement bill is unacceptable. Hint: here is how they voted on the original voucher expansion bill last year.
  • Sign the SOSAZ Pledge to Vote No on Prop 305, and ask 10 of your friends to do the same;
  • Talk to 10 friends, family, neighbors and colleagues. Our passionate volunteers are our biggest allies. Help us get the word out!

Our work to protect our volunteers’ hard work and signatures does not come cheap. Please help us meet our bills with a one-time or recurring donation today.

Thank you for all you do!

Beth Lewis

Chair, Save Our Schools Arizona PAC

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Democracy, Vouchers, Wall of Shame

The Failure of Mayoral Control in D.C. (and Everywhere Else)

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2018 //
14

 

Peter McPherson writes here about the failure of mayoral control in the District of Columbia. He recites the promises made by its proponents, and the turmoil and scandal and absence of accountability that has followed.

Reformers don’t like democratic control of public schools. They prefer top-down control, by a mayor or a governor or a commission beyond the reach of the voters. The mayor or governor listen to elites, not to those who are most engaged in the schools, especially parents and local communities.

But, writes McPherson, mayoral control does not improve schools. He agrees that the modernization of school buildings has been a success but it was not necessary to eliminate the elected school board to accomplish that goal.

In those 10 years, has a school system controlled by the mayor and administered by the executive’s chosen instrument, the chancellor, been transformed into a gleaming educational edifice of quality and broad academic achievement?

Not really.

The level of turnover and attrition among DCPS teachers has been far higherthan national norms. The same is true of DCPS administrators. DCPS has fewer students than it did 10 years ago. In school year 2006-07, DCPS had 52,645 students and DC charter schools 19,733, with DCPS having almost 73% of students. In the 2017-18 school year, despite growth in the school-age population of the city, DCPS has 47,982 students and DC charters schools 43,340. Alongside the decrease in absolute numbers of students, DCPS’s share of students has declined to a little over half citywide.

Such declines are not evidence of success.

Under mayoral control and like DC’s charter schools, DCPS has judged its progress using statistical measures of student test taking, such as the DC-CAS and PARCC. Sadly, all of DC’s publicly funded schools have shown only modest gains on these tests, while the achievement gap between white and African American students has widened–and while in the wake of a 2012 cheating scandal, it has become clear that many recent DCPS graduates were not, in fact, eligible to graduate.

(There is no independent analysis of what is occurring in DC charter schools regarding meeting standards for graduation.)

In the meantime, DCPS’s pedagogic innovations, like student performance-based teacher evaluations, have been clung to like life preservers in the freezing North Atlantic, with the belief that they alone would save the day..

This governance model allows those running DCPS to act both quickly and unilaterally. In the end, there could be little surprise that former Mayor Adrian Fenty chose Michelle Rhee as chancellor. He installed someone who was indifferent to what a large swath of stakeholders felt, operating like a zealot and atomizing the old order as she went. In her drive to close schools, Rhee was clearly indifferent to the input of affected communities and the negative effects of those closures, which continue to the present day.

Charter schools are booming, because those with money and power get what they want.

This is a governance system with no public oversight or accountability. It has failed.

The same could be said for mayoral control in Cleveland, New York City, and Chicago.

Mayors should have a role because they control the budget. But the people who enroll their children in the schools should have a large role also. The mayor is not uniquely qualified to run the schools or to choose the best person to run the schools.

Democracy may be inefficient, but it is far better as a governance system than one-man or one-woman rule.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Democracy, District of Columbia

Arthur Camins: The Only Way to Get Real Change is to Vote for People Who Value Democracy and the Common Good

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2018 //
39

Arthur Camins reminds us that the best way to reclaim the society we want is to vote for people who care about improving our democracy and the common good.

At present, we are stuck with politicians backed by the NRA, the Koch brothers, and big corporate interests.

The challenge is to vote for the candidate who represents who we want to be, not the candidate with the most money.

The change we want comes down to a single word: VOTE.

Call out what democratic decision-making for the common good looks like: the right to vote; freedom from fear of gun violence; affordable health care; decent food, clothing and shelter, good schools, a decent life in retirement, wages that enable people to pay their bills, a clean safe environment, mediating climate change, fair justice, family planning (include abortion) for EVERYONE.

FOR EVERYONE, no matter what, because that is how we act on our values.

These are uniting issues.

Say it out loud: A Doing good deed for ourselves and others as individuals are not enough.

Say it out loud: We can only achieve what we value for EVERYONE when we restore government an agent of the common good.

We can only achieve what we value for EVERYONE with a united integrated struggle.

Categories Democracy

Why You Should Never Trust Mark Zuckerberg

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2018 //
61

 

Maria Bustillos writes here about “the smallness of Mark Zuckerberg” and why you should not give your personal information to Facebook.

She thinks he is running for President. The current occupant of the White House has demonstrated that anyone can do it and win, regardless of qualifications.

Beware.

We should have learned from Trump not to entrust our democracy to a billionaire with an inflated ego.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy
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