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Will Virginia Eviscerate Local Control of Schools?

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2016 //
10

The Virginia General Assembly is voting today on an ALEC-inspired bill to give the state board of education the power to go over the local boards of education and place charter schools in communities whether they want them or not. Pseudo-reformers don’t like democracy. They like autocracy. The American Legislative Exchange Council has drafted model legislation for exactly this kind of shift of power from local communities to the state, the better to advance privatization.

 

 

 

Virginian Rachel Levy writes (open her piece for the links):

 

Charter schools may soon be coming to Virginia communities whether those communities want them or not. This is not about whether or not to have charter schools or whether or not charter schools work. This is about power and democracy.

 

In Virginia, what’s known as the “charter school bill,” HB 3 in the Virginia House of Delegates and SB 588 in the Virginia Senate, establishes a resolution (HJ 1 and SJ R6) that will trigger a referendum on a constitutional amendment giving the Virginia State Board of Education the power to go over the heads of local school boards and establish charter schools in local communities. This resolution will be heard in the Virginia House of Delegates TODAY (Monday, February 1st, 2016), so you must contact your Delegate ASAP.

 

This resolution and accompanying legislation is before the General Assembly for the second year in a row. (I wrote about this last year here and before that I wrote about the concept, when it was the Opportunity Educational Institution, here.) Last year, it passed both chambers and, hence, if it passes this year—and as of this writing the House Privileges and Election Committee has sent it on to the House floor on a 10-9 vote—it will go onto the ballot this November. (Or maybe not this November if the Virginia GOP doesn’t think it will pass then, but I digress.)

 

“Work” is not the right way of looking at this, in any case. Like any model, some charter schools are successful and some aren’t. Some charter schools are true institutions of education, created by parents and educators, while some are real estate scams, developed by hucksters and charlatans. But given that all students are not served as they should be in public schools, I agree that conversations about the merits and disadvantages of charter schools are worth having.

 

But it is a conversation worth having among parents, citizens, educators, and educational leaders in the communities where charter schools are potentially to be located. Setting up schools in local communities is not a state matter. While many of its members are knowledgeable and passionate about K-12 education in Virginia and the Virginia State Board of Education may do a good job with the work they are tasked with, this is not their job.

 

Virginia currently has a rigorous, democratic process to establish charter schools, a process with built-in oversight, checks and balances, and accountability. Charter school proposals go before the locally, democratically elected (and in some cases, locally appointed) school boards where the charter schools are to be established. Charter schools in Virginia are overseen by these school boards and the schools are hence accountable to the public like all other public schools. Some local communities in Virginia have decided to set up charter schools. Groups in other communities have tried to set up charter schools but have not made a strong enough case to other members of their communities or to their school boards.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Democracy, Virginia

Mike Klonsky on Rauner’s Plan to Control Chicago and CPS

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2016 //
26

We have learned in recent years that “reform” goes hand-in-hand with the suspension or muzzling of democracy. Mike Klonsky explains what’s behind Governor Bruce Rauner’s plan to take over Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools.

He writes:

“Yesterday, we heard the news that Gov. Bruce Rauner and top Republican leaders are planning to introduce legislation aimed at an emergency financial takeover of the city of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools. Their rationale is the $500 million shortfall within the Chicago Public Schools system which they themselves — with help from sellout Democrats — created.

“We are told that the legislation would also allow for CPS and the city of Chicago to declare bankruptcy – something by law both cannot currently do. To sweeten the pot, Rauner threw in the promise of a elected CPS school board, but only “once the financial situation is remediated”.

“Given the history of corruption, racism, and incompetence behind Rahm Emanuel’s own autocratic rule over the schools, the promise of an elected board may sound attractive, given the widespread support shown for an end to mayoral control by Chicago voters. But it’s merely a ploy.

“The move is also Rauner’s way of heading off a budget compromise and a contract agreement between CPS and the CTU and cutting the heart out of collective bargaining rights for teachers public employee unions, statewide. It’s their alternative to raising taxes on their wealthy and corporate patrons to pay for the operation of a predominantly black and Latino school district.

“It’s the “Katrina model” which Paul Vallas used to bust the teachers union and privatize the entire New Orleans school system, getting Arne Duncan’s stamp of approval in the process. Gov. Snyder used it in Michigan to destroy democracy, including elected city government and the school system in Detroit. Snyder poisoned the people in Flint as a cost-cutting measure, along the way….

“The move brings to mind the Tribune editorial board’s call back in May, for a “Mussolini-type” dictatorship over CPS followed by the Trib’s Kristen McQueary praying for a Katrina-like storm to hit Chicago.”

How can Rauner do this when Democrats have a veto-proof majority in the legislature?

Categories Chicago, Democracy

Yohuru Williams: Dr. King Believed in Unions

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2016 //
25

On the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., many politicians will praise his legacy even as they act in ways that betray his ideals.

Yohuru Williams, a professor of history at Fairfield University in Connecticut, reminds us that Dr. King was a strong advocate of labor unions because he understood that they protect the rights of working people by demanding fair pay and safe working conditions.

I was a small speck in the crowd when Dr. King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963. Most of the chartered buses that brought hundreds of thousands of supporters to hear Dr. King that day were sponsored by labor unions. The theme of the day was “Jobs and Justice.”

Williams writes:

“Teachers, then and now, invoked the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and the words of Martin Luther King to support a deeper investment in America’s public schools including more robust budgets for instruction, greater interventions for English language learners, and fair compensation. Their appeals for politicians to live up to the spirit of the movement fail to move political leaders like Rahm Emmanuel and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder whose positions on high stakes testing, teachers unions, and insistence on school closures represent the most egregious form of historical amnesia concerning the continuing relevance of Dr. King’s message.”

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide a case intended to cripple labor unions, we know that Dr. King’s prophetic warnings will be weighed too. Will working people have a chance to get middle-class jobs, or will they be stripped of any job protections, left to work at the whim of faceless corporations and heartless politicians?

Let it not be forgotten why Dr. King was in Memphis when he was murdered. He was there to advocate for the right of sanitation workers to form a union.

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Equity, Race, Unions

Michigan: The Emergency Managers=Austerity Minus Democracy

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2016 //
16

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interview Curt Guyette of the ACLU about the effects of the Emergency Manager law in Michigan. They note that the Emergency Manager who poisoned the water in Flint is now the Emergency Manager of the crumbling Detroit public schools.

 

 

Guyette, an investigative reporter explains how it works:

 

 

“Well, one of the things about the emergency manager law is that these managers were given extreme unchecked authority. And the thinking was, the reason for doing that is they were given the ability to come in, clean up the problems and get out. And so there was an 18-month time limit put on their terms. Except that this governor is exploiting what amounts to a loophole in that law. So what happens is that these emergency managers serve for 17 months and 29 days, and the day before their term expires, they resign. A new emergency manager is put in place, and the clock starts ticking all over again. And they just shuffle them from one place to another. So Earley goes from Flint to run DPS. And it just perpetuates this control. It can go on, really, forever, if they want it to, denying people of their democratically elected representation, because the school board, which has been fighting emergency management every step of the way, gets completely marginalized. They have zero authority whatsoever. And that goes to the heart of the problem of this law. It eliminates the democratic checks and balances that make a democracy functional.

 

“And the other thing is, what we’re seeing here is really the imposition of austerity. This is what austerity looks like. So you have all the problems in these schools that you just reported on, because they’re treating it like a managerial problem rather than a structural problem. I’ve used before the analogy: It’s like being the captain of the Titanic, and you hit an iceberg. It doesn’t matter who’s at the helm; the ship is going down unless you plug the hole. And they haven’t plugged the holes. They haven’t fixed the structural problems.”

 

 

Categories Democracy, Michigan

Richard Kahlenberg: Defunding Public Unions Hurts Our Democracy

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2016 //
17

This week, the Supreme Court will hear a case called Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association. The plaintiffs represent teachers who not want to pay union dues. They say that the requirement to pay dues violates their free speech rights. Friedrichs is backed by political, financial, and ideological groups who hope to cripple the last bastion of organized labor. If the plaintiffs win, labor’s resources and political clout will be severely reduced. This case will be a milestone in the survival or destruction of public sector unions.

 

In the article linked above, Richard Kahlenberg argues that diminishing the power of public sector unions diminishes our democracy. In our society, money buys political influence and voice. If labor’s voice is stilled, only the rich will have political power. There will be no organized countervailing voice to prevent them from controlling everything.

 

Friedrichs is a teacher who objects to paying dues to the CTA. However, she is not required to pay for political activities, because of an earlier Supreme Court decision called Abood.

 

The current legal framework in which courts weigh cases such as Friedrichs is narrowly constrained, balancing the free speech rights of dissenting union members against the state’s interests in promoting stable labor relations with its public employees.
In the 1977 case of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court reached a sensible compromise that properly balanced these two sets of interests by splitting union dues into two categories: those that support political speech, and those that support bread–and-butter collective bargaining. Because the First Amendment’s free speech clause provides a right to not be compelled by the state to subsidize speech with which one disagrees, dissenting public employees cannot be required by the state to join a union, or to subsidize the union’s political and lobbying efforts to promote certain positions of public concern….

 

According to the counsel for Friedrichs, annual dues to the CTA amount to approximately $1,000 per teacher, of which nonmembers receive a refund of roughly $350 to $400 for expenses unrelated to collective bargaining. In other words, Friedrichs is happy to accept increases in wages and benefits the union negotiates hard to win, but does not want to pay the $600 to $650 per year that other members contribute in order to make those wage gains possible. Will she give back her raises, forgo health care benefits, give up the right to pursue grievances, and agree to teach larger classes that the union negotiated? The amicus brief of the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors put it well: there is no “constitutional right to a free ride.”

 

Kahlenberg notes:

 

All unions—including, and perhaps especially, public sector unions—also contribute to one of the most important foundational interests of the state: democracy. And they do this in many different ways. Unions are critical civic organizations that serve as a check on government power. They are important players in promoting a strong middle class, upon which democracy depends. They serve as schools of democracy for workers. And teacher unions, in particular, help ensure that our educational system is sufficiently funded to teach children to become thoughtful and enlightened citizens in our self-governing democracy….

 

Strong unions helped build the middle class in America after the Great Depression, and continue to have a positive effect on ameliorating extreme inequalities of wealth. By bargaining for fair wages and benefits, unions in the public and private sector help foster broadly shared prosperity. Research finds, for example, that unions compress wage differences between management and labor. According to one study, “controlling for variation in human resource practices, unionized establishments have an average of 23.2 percentage point lower management-to-worker pay ratio relative to non-union workplaces.”

 

Kahlenberg documents that the decline in union membership parallels the decline in the middle class.  Extremes of wealth and poverty are not good for democracy.

 

This is an excellent overview of the potential damage that this Supreme Court decision might do to unions and to democracy. It occurs to me as I read it that the contentious battle over school choice, funded amply by billionaires, is intended to divert attention from crucial economic issues. Billionaires would have us believe that they are advancing the economic opportunities for black and Hispanic children even as they use their political clout to destroy the jobs and economic security of their families, as well as the economic prospects for the “scholars” in their charter schools.

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Economy, Unions

Detroit and the Death of Democracy

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2016 //
13

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/10/31/detroit-schools-plan-shows-lack-faith-democracy/74878932/

 

 

“When did we stop believing in democracy? Not so long ago most Americans would have professed a belief that democracy shielded citizens from the callous excesses of distant power.

 

“Today in Michigan we’ve become mush-mouthed about democracy. On the one hand, we will still send our children to die thousands of miles away in its name. Yet back at home we scuttle it with barely a murmur — as if it were an ornate relic, no longer adequate for facing down the challenges of perennial budget shortfalls in our schools and municipalities since the financial collapse of 2008.
Flint’s water should have woken us up. Did it? If the reality of lead in tainted city water damaging the brains of Flint’s children isn’t enough to bring us back to our belief in citizen oversight of government, then we really have unilaterally surrendered. The citizens of Flint spoke out for months, but stripped of their democratic voice under emergency management, the problem developed unchecked.
Detroit lawmakers say keeping school board top priority

 

“If you’re finally paying attention now, then take note: The same power that poisoned Flint’s children — the power of state displacement of locally elected governance — announced last week that it intends to double down on the damage already visited upon the minds of Detroit’s children through Gov. Snyder’s newly unveiled plan for the city’s schools.

 
“Just as in Flint, the facts are now clear. Detroiters remember that before the succession of state interventions started in 1999 DPS had a $93 million dollar operating surplus, enrollment over 173,000, and academic gains. Six years of emergency management from Lansing since 2009 has widened the performance gap between Detroit’s students and their Michigan counterparts; enrollment has plummeted; and the district’s operating deficit and long term debt have smashed all previous records. Throughout those years, educational and financial professionals and impacted parents warned us, but stripped of an empowered Board to appeal to, the problems grew.”

Categories Democracy, Detroit, Education Reform

Arthur Camins: The Problem with Charters is not Just Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2016 //
1

If your friends or family ask you to explain what is the matter with charter schools, here  is a succinct summary.

Arthur Camins writes:

The problem with publicly-funded charter schools goes far beyond the lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability. Most fundamentally, they are an assault on democracy. Individual choice is no substitute for democratic governance (See:https://goo.gl/lKAIKT). In addition, they drain limited resources from remaining public schools, exacerbate racial and socio-economic isolation, and undermine public investment in socially responsible solutions for all in favor of “saving” a select few.

Categories Charter Schools, Democracy

Chicago Parent: I Don’t Want Choice, I Want a Good Neighborhood School

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2015 //
44

Julie Vassilatos explains why school choice is harmful: to students, families, and communities.

She writes:

I don’t care what anyone tells me about competition among schools making them all better, or how being able to pursue individual preference is paramount to all Americans. I don’t care. The real impact of choice is entirely, 100% negative on our neighborhoods, on our communities, our cities. All of them.

Because “choice” of this kind quietly diminishes the real power of our democratic voice while it upholds the promise of individual consumer preferences above all else.

Even though Chicago is famously a city of neighborhoods, CPS does not pursue a neighborhood-based model for its schools but rather, choice–the constant proliferation of charter school options, even when neighborhoods don’t want this and even when CPS cannot afford this.

In this model the local community is not important, and the voice of the local residents is not important. The neighborhood school is not the social epicenter for kids in one community and it is not the locus of parent effort and investment of time. In some neighborhoods few resident kids attend the local school and in still others the neighborhood school is shuttered and abandoned.

What is important in this model? Marketing. Test scores. Options.

Schools must now “build a brand” in order to attract students. Schools must maintain high test scores at all costs, regardless of what corners have to be cut in the process. And a multiplicity of schools offers us all a dizzying, and therefore–according to this logic–superior, array of options.

But in a choice district, parents and kids rarely have the one option they most want–a strong, well resourced, nearby, neighborhood school. I think there’s a reason for this.

We’re veterans of choice in our family. I can tell you what I see in my neighborhood.

This is what school choice looks like: no schoolmates in your neighborhood for your whole life.

It looks like children traveling several hours a day to get to and from their schools….

With the choice model, what CPS is doing is investing in severing community. CPS has chosen a school model that fractures and breaks down local bonds among families and within neighborhoods.

But consider: severing community bonds intentionally is not something democracies do. Democracies require stable communities with strong institutions that are of, by, and for the community. Democracies are built on strong stable localities.

Severing community bonds intentionally is something totalitarian regimes do. Because it weakens communities, it weakens individuals, it weakens their democratic voice and power.

It looks like very little political and residential investment into the heart of neighborhood communities.

Categories Chicago, Democracy, School Choice

The Reformers’ War on Language and on Democracy

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2015 //
57

Maybe it is just me, but I find myself outraged by the “reformers'” incessant manipulation of language.

“Reform” seldom refers to reform.

“Reform” means privatization.

“Reform” means assaults on the teaching profession.

“Reform” means eliminating teachers’ unions, which fight for better salaries and working conditions.

“Reform” means boasting about test scores by schools that have carefully excluded the students who might get low scores.

“Reform” means using test scores to evaluate teachers even though this practice has negative effects on teacher morale and fails to identify better or worse teachers.

“Reform” means stripping teachers of due process rights or any other job security.

“Reform” means that schools should operate for-profit and that private corporations should be encouraged to profit from school spending.

“Reform” means acceptance of privately managed schools that operate without accountability or transparency.

“Reform” means the incremental destruction of public education.

I am reminded of George Orwell’s lines from his prophetic novel 1984:

“War is peace.

“Freedom is slavery’

“Ignorance is strength.”

The goal of the leadership in the novel was to teach the population “doublethink.” To believe in contradictory ideas.

So we see schools closed, teachers and principals fired, and we are supposed to believe this is “reform.”

The media, with few exceptions, say that what is happening almost everywhere is “reform,” so it must be reform to replace public schools with privately managed charters, and to fire experienced professionals and replace them with newcomers, with untrained and inexperienced teachers and with principals who taught for one or two years.

It must be reform to allow out-of-state billionaires to buy local and state school board elections so they can control the schools of a state they don’t live in.

I confess I am also irritated by the habit of referring to young children as “scholars.” To me, a scholar is someone who has devoted his or her professional life to the advancement of knowledge. If a five-year-old is a “scholar,” what do you call a distinguished university professor who is widely recognized for her research and publications?

Has the public been suckered into believing that the destruction of public education is “reform”?

Does the public willingly accept the idea that hedge fund managers and equity investors are taking control of what is supposed to be a public responsibility?

Will we let them monetize our children and their public schools?

Does the public understand that a small group inside the Beltway wrote the “national standards” behind closed doors, that one billionaire (Bill Gates) paid for them and paid millions to national education organizations to advocate for them, and that the federal government bribed 45 states to endorse them?

How long will the public tolerate tests tied to those standards that are designed to fail 65-70% of the nation’s children?

How much longer will we allow the nation’s children to be labeled and sorted by standardized tests whose outcomes may be predicted by family income?

When will the public realize that test-based accountability does not improve education, does not promote better teaching, and actually reduces the quality of education?

How long can the Emperor parade through the streets before someone tells him he is naked?

How long can a charade persist before the public knows they have been conned?

How long will it take to unmask this great theft of a democratic institution that belongs to the public, not to entrepreneurs, foundations, rightwing ideologues, hedge fund managers, or their compliant politicians?

 

 

 

 

 

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

Mike Klonsky: Mayoral Control is a Disaster in Chicago

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2015 //
22

Mike Klonsky reviews the 20-year history of mayoral control in Chicago and concludes it has been a disaster. His account should serve as a warning to other cities.

Under mayoral control, democracy was lost. The schools became a patronage mill. Chicago launched Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan, both of whom claimed miraculous results that were non-existent.

“Duncan’s funneling of federal dollars to promote this so-called “reform” agenda, required big-city mayors to serve as enforcers, leading Obama’s appointed secretary of education to declare in 2009: “At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed.” Today there are basically three left: Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. In a dozen other cities, mayoral control has been junked or thrown out by the courts.” (Cleveland, D.C., and Boston also have mayoral control.)

Klonsky says it is time to have an elected school board after 20 years of failure.

Categories Chicago, Democracy
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