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When I Introduced Senator Sanders At UTLA Leadership Conference

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2019 //
10

 

Senator Bernie Sanders addressed the United Teachers of Los Angeles Leadership Conference recently. I was invited to introduce him by video. I recorded a two-minute introduction on my iPhone, while in my home office.

I talked about his Thurgood Marshall plan for education. To date, it is the most far-reaching proposal that any candidate has offered. It should be a template for all Democratic candidates.

Here is Senator Sanders’ speech that day. It is worth watching to see what should be the true Democratic Party agenda for K-12 Education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization, Testing

Joe Biden: Where Does He Stand on Race to the Top?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2019 //
38

I have not endorsed a candidate, and I will vote for anyone nominated by the Democratic party to run against Trump. He is the worst, most ignorant, most unqualified president in our history, and we cannot have four more years of his vile policies.

I am expressing my views about the candidates in the Democratic primaries and will continue to do so.

I am not a one-issue voter but I sincerely hope that Democrats have a candidate who will reverse the ruinous education policies of the past four decades. Our nation has invested in standards, testing, accountability, and choice with nothing to show for it.

Many states today spend less on education than they did eleven years ago, and millions of teachers are not paid or respected as professionals. Many states cut taxes and cut their education budgets yet expanded privatization by charters and vouchers, diverting even more money away from the public schools that most students attend.

At the present moment, the leading candidate is Joe Biden.

Biden is a very likable guy, to be sure, who knows how to connect with regular people.

NPE Action has found nothing problematic in his donors or affiliations, no evidence that the billionaires or DFER are pulling the strings.

He has been in public life for many decades and has made some bad decisions and cast some bad votes in his past. He should come right out and say so.

Joe Biden is very proud that Barack Obama selected him as his Vice-President, and that the Obama-Biden ticket won twice, in 2008 and 2012.

I voted for them both times.

But I loathed Race to the Top, Obama’s education policy. Does Joe Biden?

Race to the Top failed by every measure.

States collectively spent billions of dollars to comply with its directives while failing to invest in students and teachers.

Because of RTTT, we got more privately managed charter schools; more high-stakes testing of students; evaluating teachers by test scores of their students; closing hundreds or even thousands of public schools because their test scores were low (almost all—maybe all—of them in impoverished communities of color); and Common Core standards.

None of these policies has been successful unless you are a believer in disruption for its own sake. The states that adopted Common Core spent billions of dollars on new tests, new textbooks, new computers, new teacher training, new everything. The charter schools open and close with regularity, introducing instability and scandal. Some of the few states that resisted Race to the Top and Common Core (like Nebraska) actually outperformed those that followed Duncan’s agenda.

The national upshot: NAEP scores have been flat from 2007-2017. If we were “racing to the Top,” we didn’t get there.

The very idea of a “race” implies a few winners and a lot of losers. This is the wrong concept to apply to K-12 education, where our goal should be to enable every student to find a path to a successful life.

I want to hear Joe Biden talk about Race to the Top.

I want to know how he feels about spending $440 million this year to fund corporate charter chains.

I know he has said that he opposes for-profit charters, but every candidate says that.

I want to hear him state clearly whether he embraces the Obama education policies or renounces them.

I want to hear what he will do to rebuild America’s public schools and restore their prestige as the gateways to opportunity.

He announced his plan at an AFT event in Houston. He has always been a friend of organized labor.

He is opposed to vouchers. He opposes DeVos and  Trump, like every other Democratic candidate. He wants to invest in pre-K and in low-income schools, all to the good.

But where does he stand on the central tenets of Race to the Top?

is he ready to lead us out of the maze in which federal education policy has been stuck since the Reagan years?

 

 

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

Mercedes Schneider Asks: Who Is Jon Schnur and Why Does It Matter?

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2019 //
6

 

In this post, Mercedes Schneider does her trademark “deep dig” into the career of one Jon Schnur. It turns out that he is the quintessential corporate reform careerist.

If you have ever wondered why some people make tons of money in education without ever teaching, study Schnur’s opportunistic and profitable career.

He did it all while working for Clinton, Gore, and Obama, demonstrating the profitable career one can forge with Big Ideas, all the while helping blur and dissolve partisan lines, helping the Democrats lose their identity as champions of public education.

His first big idea was a program that enabled rank amateurs to become principals, although he had never been one himself. His work aligned with that of his Princeton classmate, Wendy Kopp. Both made money by tearing apart the education profession and opening it to amateurs.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Reform, Principals, Teach for America

Why I Do Not Support Mayor Pete

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2019 //
228

There are many reasons why I would like to support Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He’s young, he is well-educated, he is smart, he has an admirable record of service to his country, he’s brimming with ideas. I find him very attractive on many levels.

But on education, he is a stealth corporate reformer.

I had an inkling of this when I read a review of his autobiography, which described his formative years at McKinsey and his data-driven, technocratic approach to solving problems. But I didn’t reach a judgment.

Then I learned more when a friend sent me an invitation to a fundraiser for Mayor Pete, hosted by Reed Hastings. Hastings is the billionaire founder of Netflix who is a charter school zealot. He served on the California State Board of Education where he used his influence to minimize any regulation of charters. Since then, he has given many millions to charters as well as to the charter lobby, The California Charter Schools Association. He created a fund of $100 million to promote privatization of public schools by charter expansion. Hastings has said he looks forward to the day when all schools are run by corporations, not elected school boards.

I tweeted the invitation and it got a lot of attention. Carol Burris heard from Pete’s National Political Director, Stephen Brokaw. He wanted to correct any misperception we at the Network for Public Education had about where Mayor Pete stands on education. He is against vouchers. He is against for-profit charters. He (or his team) visited Roxbury Prep in Massachusetts and was very impressed with their high test scores. Brokaw cited Roxbury Prep as the kind of nonprofit charter that offered lessons to public schools.

Carol responded that the issue is not whether charters are for-profit or nonprofit because many nonprofits are run by for-profit organizations. Only one state in the nation—Arizona—allows for-profit charters.  In Michigan, for example, for-profit charters are prohibited but 80% of the state’s charters are managed by for-profit companies. She also pointed out that Roxbury Prep has very high suspension rates, the highest in the state, and the state has repeatedly admonished Roxbury Prep.

Carol suggested that he speak to me. Brokaw then invited me to have a conversation with Sonal Shah, who is National Policy Director, and Sally Mayes, who is “helping” the campaign on education. Shah, I learned later, is amazingly accomplished, but I saw to my dismay that part of her commitment to innovation was to “incubate” Teach for India. In the past, I have been contacted by union teachers in India who complained about Teach for India, echoing the complaints often expressed here about TFA. Wendy Kopp created both TFA AND the international “Teach for All,” which includes Teach for India.

We three spoke last week. It was a frustrating conversation because we were at opposite poles. We disagreed about whether charters are effective, whether they are sufficiently regulated, whether they need more oversight. We disagreed about the value of annual testing. I said that no high-performing nation has annual testing for every child in grades 3-8 as we do. They said I was wrong and cited Japan and South Korea. I corrected them and said those nations have periodic testing, not annual testing. I asked whether their candidate wanted to appeal to the 6% who send their children to charters or the 90% who don’t. I did not get an answer.

I subsequently learned from LinkedIn that Sally Mayes is senior director of Teach for America’s Leadership for Educational Equity, where she has worked for six years. Its board consists of two billionaires—Emma Bloomberg and Arthur Rock (who subsidizes TFA interns who work for Members of Congress) and someone from McKinsey.

I had subsequent emails with Sonal Shah, who is an economist at Georgetown University and who previously worked at Google, Goldman Sachs, and directed the Obama administration’s Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the White House. She told me that the campaign has reached out to consult with John King, Jim Shelton, and Randi Weingarten.

John King succeeded Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. King was previously the founder of the no-excuses Roxbury Prep. Then he was Commissioner of Education in New York, where his fierce advocacy for Common Core and testing outraged parents and helped to create the opt-out movement.

James Shelton had a leadership role at the Gates Foundation, worked for Arne Duncan in charge of innovation grants for Race to the Top, then ran the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Mayor Pete may have many things going for him, but his education agenda is not one of them. If he were President, he would continue the failed Bush-Obama agenda.

If he runs against Trump, I will of course support him and vote for him. I will vote for anyone who wins the Democratic nomination.

But not in the primaries.

I am willing to change course if Mayor Pete makes clear that he supports fully public schools that are accountable to an elected school board and that he would eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, created by the Clinton administration in 1994 and funded with $6 million to help jumpstart new charters; that program has grown into a $440 million slush fund for corporate charter chains, which is far from its original purpose. There is a long time from now until the primaries and I will keep an open mind.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Reform

Laura Chapman: Who Are the K-12 Education Experts at the Center for American Progress?

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2019 //
30

The Center for American Progress is considered by the media to be the voice of the Democratic establishment, or at least the Obama-Clinton center of the party. Referred to as CAP, it is resolutely pro-charter school, pro-testing, and anti-voucher (if it were not anti-voucher, its education agenda would be identical to the DeVos agenda).

So who are the experts who speak for the Democratic mainstream?

Our reader Laura Chapman is a dogged and diligent researcher. She studied the CAP website and posted the following review of the members of the CAP staff who write about K-12 education. It is interesting to see overlaps with Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence (which is stridently pro-voucher), the unaccredited Broad Residency (which advocates for closing public schools and replacing them with charters) and other decided not-progressive connections.

She writes here:

In April 2019, CAP had seven “experts” for K-12 education, several more for preschool and postsecondary education. I have looked at the bios of the K-12 experts and read some of their recent articles at the CAP website. Some artiles have appeared in Forbes, US News and World Report, The Hill, Hechinger Report, and The 74 (Walton funded blog). Who are these CAP experts? What do they say?

Neil Campbell, Director of Innovation for K-12 Education Policy. Former Director, Next Generation program for Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education with policy oversight for personalized learning, course access, funding, and student data privacy. Obama’s USDE Chief of staff, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development; former Director of Strategic Initiatives for tech-based learning at Education Elements.com; work at The Boston Consulting Group. Education: Bachelor economics, political science, Case Western Reserve University; MBA, Vanderbilt University; The Broad Residency in Education. Teaching Experience: Not found.

Sample of writing for CAP: Excerpt from “Teacher Strikes, Charter Schools and Unions, February 26, 2019. “It’s unfortunate that questions about charter schools are diverting attention from the core message of these teacher protests: the need to invest in our schools, teachers and students. Instead of focusing on division, it would be powerful for teachers, unions and charter supporters to advocate together for greater investments in public education across the board. Every student deserves a building, supports and supplies needed to succeed, and every teacher — in traditional or charter schools — deserves to be treated and paid like a professional.”

Excerpt from “Policy Ideas to Improve Private School Voucher Programs,” November 19, 2018. “The Center for American Progress believes that public money should fund public schools, whether they are neighborhood schools, magnet or specialty programs in traditional school districts, or public charter schools that are open to all students and accountable to the public.”

Excerpt from “The Progressive Case for Charter Schools, With a Correction,” October 24, 2017.“Despite recent evidence suggesting that many public charter schools are improving outcomes for students—especially for low-income students of color—broad support for charter schools may be waning. According to one recent poll (Education Next, 2017) support for charter schools among self-described Democrats has fallen over the past year. This decrease in progressive support may be due to a skewed representation of charter schools in the media as well as a conflation of charter schools with ineffective private school vouchers—such as those Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration champion. However, to simply devalue all charter schools is unreasonable. The highest-quality charters exemplify progressive values and practices, most notably through their foundational principle of providing low-income students of color with equal educational opportunity and access they may not otherwise have.” (Links are to Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First).

Khalilah M. Harris, Managing Director for K-12 Education Policy. Former host and producer of Real News Network’s Baltimore Bureau; Founder, 2007, Baltimore City Freedom Academy, a charter school closed in 2013; Co-founder Baltimore Coalition of Black Leaders in Education. Active in EduColor movement; Former Deputy Director, Obama’s White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans; Manager, Obama’s Diversity and Inclusion in Government Council. Education: Morgan State University; J.D. University of Maryland School of Law; Ed.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2018 Dissertation: “Chasing Equity: A Study on the Influence of Black Leaders on Federal Education Policy-making.” No CAP publications. Teaching: No K-12 Found.

Laura Jiménez, Director of Standards and Accountability. Former Director, College and Career Readiness and Success at the American Institutes for Research (AIR); former Director, American Youth Policy Center. Manager, National Youth Employment Coalition (a three-year pilot funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Nellie Mae Foundations); UCLA Minority Training Program in Cancer Control Research. Obama’s USDE, former special assistant on Every Student Succeeds Act “flexibility,” college and career readiness, special populations (American Indian/Alaska Native and English language learners). Education: BA English, UCLA; Master’s Social Welfare, University of California; Berkeley. Teaching (?): Peace Corps, Community Education volunteer.

Sample of writing for CAP: “Furthering the College and Career Readiness of the District of Columbia’s Students” for the Council of the District of Columbia on Education Reform.” May 2018. Her written testimony argues for all high school students to take ”four years of English; three years of math, up to Algebra II; three years of social studies, including U.S. and world history; three years of lab science, including biology, chemistry, and physics; and two years of the same foreign language” with an option in every high school of at least three courses in the same career pathway (e.g., hospitality, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). She also endorsed these policies: Monitoring chronic absenteeism at every grade, investing in low cost interventions for absences (e.g., postcards to parents), monitoring at risk students in order to target wraparound supports. Frequent reference citations to Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign and The Education Trust.

Lisette Partelow, Senior Director of K-12 Strategic Initiatives. Prior positions: Senior Policy Analyst CAP, Director of Teacher Policy, CAP; Legislative Associate, Alliance for Excellent Education; Senior Legislative Assistant US House of Representatives; Research Assistant American Institutes for Research (AIR). Education: BA Psychology, Public Policy, Connecticut College; Masters in Public Affairs, Princeton University: Masters in Education, George Mason University. Teaching: Teach for America, first grade, two years, Washington, D.C.

Sample of writing for CAP: In August 2018, Partelow and research assistant Sarah Shapiro wrote about “Curriculum Reform in the Nation’s Largest School Districts.” The authors used the Gates-funded EdReports criteria for judging whether fourth-and eighth-grade math and ELA instructional materials were aligned with the Common Core. They also cite the Louisiana Department of Education’s system of rating instructional materials as exemplary for offering “a snapshot of the current status of the adoption of curriculum reform and instructional materials in the districts.” In fact, the rating criteria for Louisiana are nearly identical to EdReports.

Scott Sargrad, Vice President, K-12 Education Strategic Initiatives. Prior positions: VP for K-12 Policy CAP; Managing Director, Education Policy CAP; Director for Standards and Accountability, CAP. Obama’s USDE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Strategic Initiatives: Senior Policy Advisor, Presidential Management Fellow. Intern, Vietnam Assistance for the Handicapped Hanoi, Vietnam. Education: BA Mathematics, Philosophy, Haverford College; Ed.M. Education and Management, Harvard Graduate School of Education.Teaching: Math and Cross-Country Track Coach, Queen Anne School (private), Upper Marlboro MD; Special education instructional assistant Harriton High School, Rosemont, PA.

Sample of writing for CAP: August 9 2018. “Are High School Diplomas Really a Ticket to College and Work? An Audit of State High School Graduation Requirements”(co-authored with Laura Jimenez) argues for more rigorous standards and courses for high school graduation suitable for “college AND career.” The term “audit” refers to three levels of quality ratings assigned to high school curricula in each state, based on perfect alignment with the specific courses that public colleges in each state seek for admission. No state received the highest rating. The report has other ratings for career and technical education (CTE) and a well-rounded education (e.g., life skills courses, financial literacy, online learning, business and communications, civic engagement). The authors say: “One promising approach to address the alignment and quality concerns is competency-based graduation requirements.” This report recycles ideas from the Education Trust (HS transcript data up to 2013), old data on course availability from the Civil Rights Data Project (2014), among other sources. In Appendix A, there are no active links to 137 of the 238 sources of data. https://c0arw235.caspio.com/dp/b7f930000e16e10a822c47b3baa2

Cynthia G. Brown, Senior Fellow, former Vice President for Education Policy at CAP; former Director “Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future National Task Force on Public Education,” a joint initiative (2004) of CAP and the Institute for America’s Future. Thirty-five years of work in education, many as an independent consultant. Former Director of the Resource Center on Educational Equity, Council of Chief State School Officers. First Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in USDE (1980 appointment, President Carter). Principal deputy, Department of Health, Education and Welfare’s Office for Civil Rights. Other work for Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Children’s Defense Fund. Current: Board of Directors of the American Youth Policy Forum; Perry Street Preparatory Public Charter School, District of Columbia. Education: BA, Oberlin College: MPA Syracuse University. Teaching: None found. No CAP publications listed since 2013.

Catherine Brown. In February 2019, CAP replaced Catherine Brown as Vice President for K-12 Education Policy. Brown was “transitioned to a Senior Fellow role at the Center.” As of April 26, 2019 Catherine Brown did not appear on CAP’s website as a Senior Fellow or on the roster for CAP Action. Her LinkedIn bio affirms her recent move to Senior Fellow at CAP.

Brown joined CAP in 2014 after serving as vice president of policy, Teach for America. She directed Teach for America’s Early Childhood Initiative, and successfully lobbied USDE for a $50 million Investing in Innovation grant for TFA. Brown is a longtime insider on Capitol Hill. She was the senior education policy advisor for George Miller chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor offering recommendations on standards, assessments, and charter schools among other issues. Brown was the “domestic policy advisor” for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and legislative assistant for Senator Clinton on major initiatives (e.g., preschool, college affordability, job training). Brown also served as an organizer for Democrats in Montana and as a research assistant, Mathematica Policy Research. Education: Smith College, Master in public policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Teaching experience: None Found.

Writing for CAP. Catherine Brown was a co-author of the“The Progressive Case for Charter Schools,” October, 2017, which was posted on this blog recently. 

Brown’s July 2018 article in Forbes “Proposing A $10,000 Raise For Teachers” highlights a CAP proposal for a federal tax credit for teachers in high poverty schools. Brown developed that idea, reported in detail at. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2018/07/13/453102/give-teachers-10000-raise/

Brown was recently credited as “consulting” with presidential candidate Kamala Harris on a similar proposal. Harris has proposed matching teacher salaries with federal funds. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/reformers-and-unions-love-harriss-teacher-pay-plan.html#comments

Ulrich Boser, Senior Fellow, Founding director, CAP’s Science of Learning initiative. Founder, The Learning Agency.com. Book: “Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything” (2017); also “The Leap: The Science of Trust and Why It Matters,” (2014). Book publicity in Wired, Slate, Vox, Fast Company, The Atlantic, USA Today. Former advisor, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Articles in U.S. News and World Report, Education Week, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, The Washington Post. Education: BA, Dartmouth College, with honors. Teaching: None Found.

Sample of writing for CAP: “How to Match Students With Schools They Choose,” November 13, 2018. (This reflects an uncritical acceptance of school choice and explains one app enrollment) [Editor’s note:. Boser write a strongly critical article about vouchers, but has never written critically about charters. CAP seems to have a party line that protects the legacy of Race to the Top.] 

“Homework and Higher Standards: How Homework Stacks Up to the Common Core,” February 13, 2019. Study based on 187 examples of homework submitted by parents and an opinion survey from 372 parents about that homework. Key findings: Homework is largely aligned to the Common Core standards but often focused on low-level skills that fail to challenge students (especially in primary grades). CAP recommendations for states, districts, and schools: Focus on homework that requires practice of rigorous grade-level content aligned with the Common Core, and/or provide access to Khan Academy’s online homework aligned to Common Core.

Current CAP Experts in K-12 Education strike me as short of teaching experience in classrooms. Recent articles show they are supporters of charter schools, treat the Gates-funded Common Core as if exemplary and look forward to instructional delivery by computers (mislabeled personalized learning). They are arrogant pushers of specific instructional materials and high school curricula, aided by the Gates-funded EdReports scheme. The Center for American Progress is no friend of public education.

CAP also has a news arm, Think Progress, a newletter supported by CAP’s Action Fund but represented as an “editorially independent project.” I wonder. The IRS 990 says: “The Action Fund makes communications to the general public commending or criticizing particular public policy positions taken by various candidates. … The newsletter is intended to “impact the national debate and transform progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, public education, grassroots organization and advocacy in partnership with American citizens, executive and legislative branch policymakers and progressive leaders throughout the country and the world.” The Newsletter has a new “Members-Only Commenting” feature available only “to our donors” with perks (e.g., shaping the content) for monthly rates at $5. or $15 or $35.

I looked a recent Think Progress Newsletters dealing with charter schools. I found seven. Of these, most are reports on federal budget and policies under Trump/Devos. The strangest had this headline: “Lawsuit claims that same-sex marriage leads to charter schools, and it may be right.” The author, Ian Millhiser, is a lawyer with expertise on Supreme Court cases. I could not find my way through the legal leaps connecting charter schools with same-sex marriage. The legal objective seemed to be that of establishing a federal law supporting educational choice, that to be justified by past Supreme Court rulings bearing on the 14th Amendment. The case was dismissed 02/20/2019. The law firm advancing this dubious cause also filed the Vergara v. California suit that dealt with a child’s right to instruction by “effective teachers.” That was overturned on appeal. https://thinkprogress.org/tag/charter-schools/

GENERATION PROGRESS is the youth activist and youth journalism arm of CAP. https://genprogress.org/our-issues/

WHO FUNDS CAP? Using the CAP website, I constructed a spreadsheet listing CAP donors for the last five years according to several tiers on money. I will report on some of the key donors later on.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Vouchers

Capital & Main: Who Gutted California’s Charter Reform Bill?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2019 //
20

 

Bill Raden of Capital & Main identifies the culprit who stripped charter reform bills of anything that offended the powerful charter lobby: Ann O’Leary, Governor Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff.

O’Leary previously served as senior education Advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and made sure that the candidate stuck to the charter industry script (for-profit bad, nonprofit good). She has a long Association with the Center for AMERICAN Progress, the DC think tank that still adheres to the failed ideas of Race to the Top, including charter advocacy.

And so a bold effort to roll back the legal protections for an unregulated industry that is ridden with scandal and corruption  is blocked by faux progressive Democratic insiders.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Democrats, Disruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

Rachel M. Cohen: Democratic Candidates Wary of Charter School Issue

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2019 //
39

 

Rachel M.Cohen wrote in the American Prospect that the Democratic candidates are distancing themselves from the charter school issue, which only a few years ago was deeply embedded in the Obama administration education policy.

This is progress. In 2016, it was nearly impossible to get any candidate to discuss K-12 education. At last they notice that it is not cool for a Democrat to support charters. Most are trying to play the issue cautiously, being against “for profit” charters, but not acknowledging that large numbers of nonprofits are managed by for profits.

This far, Bernie Sanders is the candidate who has taken the strongest stand against charters, endorsing the NAACP call for a moratorium.

Other candidates are hedging their bets.

Hours after Sanders’s education plan was released, Elizabeth Warren told reporters that she agreed for-profit charters are “a real problem.” She has not yet released her own K-12 plan. While the Massachusetts senator has supported charter schools in the past, in 2016 she came out against a high-profile ballot initiative that would have allowed charters to expand much more quickly in her state. The measure ended up failing, with 62 percent of voters siding against it. 

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg also came out to say he supports Sanders’s proposal to ban for-profit charter schools, though he affirmed a month earlier that charters “have a place” in the education landscape “as “a laboratory for techniques that can be replicated.”

Beto O’Rourke, who opposes a national moratorium on new charters, told the NEA presidential forum that “There is a place for public nonprofit charter schools, but private charter schools and voucher programs—not a single dime in my administration will go to them.” O’Rourke has supported charters in the past, and his wife is a former charter school leader who now sits on the board of a local education reform group that supports expanding charters in El Paso. 

A friend in California forwarded an email showing that charter zealot and billionaire Reed Hastings is hosting a gathering for Mayor Pete, which suggests that he would be a strong charter guy. His background at McKinsey points in the same direction.

The Network for Public Education Action will be following and grading the candidates on the issues that concern us. Feel free to let us know what you learn at town halls.

If you meet one of them, ask them if they will pledge to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, which currently funnels $440 Million each year to charters, mostly the big corporate chains like KIPP, which do not need a federal subsidy.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization

Jake Jacobs: Democratic Candidates Speak Double-talk about Charters

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2019 //
7

 

Jake Jacobs, a teacher in New York and BAT activist, writes in the Progressive about the pathetic evasions of Democratic Candidates when asked directly about their stance on charter schools.

Public school educators and advocates have been working for years for this to become a major campaign issue, but so far, most candidate statements have been conflicted, incomplete, clumsy, and/or vague, while media coverage has been equally as incomplete, inaccurate, and in many cases baldly biased in favor of charters. 

Read the article to see how they bob and weave to avoid taking issue with privatization of public schools.

Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat so far who has come out in support of the NAACP proposal for a moratorium on charters.

The others are trying to walk a fine line between “good” charters and “bad” charters, which ignores the fact that all charters divert money from public schools that enroll nearly 90% of US students.

Cory Booker can’t escape his long history with charters. Beto loves charters. Mayor Pete (ex-McKinsey) likes charters.

Here is the bottom line: REAL DEMOCRATS SUPPORT REAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization

The Resistance Is Winning! Democrats Abandon Charter Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2019 //
56

The biggest battle in the fight against privatization has been to persuade the Democratic Party that it had been hoaxed by Republicans into adopting the Republican agenda. According to this article in The Washington Post, Democratic support for charter schools has evaporated, at least among the candidates.

The title of the article is “Democrats abandon charter schools as ‘reform’ agenda falls from favor.” No one has more egg on their faces than the editorial board of the Washington Post, which loves charter schools and defends them at every turn.

Until 1993, Democrats supported equity and federal funding for public schools, while Republicans supported choice, testing, competition, and accountability.

Then Bill Clinton embraced charter schools, testing, standards, and accountability. Then came NCLB and it was endorsed by Ted Kennedy and the entire Democratic Party.

Then the Obama Race to the Top gave total support to the Bush NCLB approach of charters, testing, and harsh accountability, and Arne Duncan spent seven years parroting the Republican line that the best way to improve schools was to get tough on teachers, make tests harder, and open more charter schools.

According to the Washington Post, the Democratic love affair with charters is over. 

The steady drumbeat of scandals and the vivid advocacy of Betsy DeVos have killed the Democrats’ charter love. 

Suddenly, the Democratic candidates for president  seem to have realized that school choice is a Republican issue. Supporting the public schools that nearly 90% of all students attend is a Democratic issue.

This is awkward for Democrats like Governor Jared Polis of Governor and Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, all fans of charters.

Democrats have long backed charter schools as a politically safe way to give kids at low-performing schools more options. Many supported merit pay for the best teachers and holding schools accountable for test scores.

The presidential contest is proof that’s no longer the case.

If the candidates say anything about charter schools, it’s negative. Education initiatives boosted by the Bush and Obama administrations are nowhere to be found in candidate platforms.

Instead, the Democratic candidates are pitching billions of dollars in new federal spending for schools and higher pay for teachers, with few of the strings attached that marked the Obama-era approach to education.

It adds up to a sea change in Democratic thinking on education, back to a more traditional Democratic approach emphasizing funding for education and support for teachers and local schools. Mostly gone is the assumption that teachers and schools are not doing enough to serve low-performing children and that government must tighten requirements and impose consequences if results do not improve.

As a senator, Joe Biden said private school vouchers might help improve public schools. As vice president, he was atop an administration that made support for charter schools a requirement to access federal grant funding. But when asked about charters — privately run, publicly funded schools — during a recent forum with the American Federation of Teachers, Biden sounded a negative note.

“The bottom line is it siphons off money for our public schools, which are already in enough trouble,” he said….

Bernie Sanders thus far is the only candidate to call for an end to federal funding of charter schools. The safe position for Democrats is to oppose “for-profit” charters, while ignoring the fact that many “nonprofit charters” are operated by for-profit management corporations.

The story continues:

It’s an unsettling development for advocates of the structural changes that have fallen out of favor, and a sharp turn from where many Democrats were just a few years ago. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had pushed a bipartisan drive for accountability, and charter schools were the answer for Democrats who opposed private school vouchers but wanted to offer other options to children — often children of color from low-income families — assigned to low-performing schools. They were important to some civil rights leaders and became a central plank in the drive for school accountability….

The American Federation of Teachers has been hosting candidate forums throughout the country, inviting contenders to spend a day with teachers and then answering questions town hall-style.

At the town hall with Biden last month, AFT President Randi Weingarten was so warm and complimentary that it left some with the impression she was laying the groundwork for an endorsement.

“Vice President Joe Biden was our north star in the last administration,” she said. “We didn’t always get along with the Obama administration positions on education, but we had a go-to guy who always listened to us.” She added: “He’s with us because he is us.”

During the Obama administration, the National Education Association was so angry it called forEducation Secretary Arne Duncan to resign, and the other big teachers union, the AFT, came close…

The shift underway has Democrats who support charter schools and related policies nervous. Democrats for Education Reform is circulating results of a poll that show support for charter schools is higher among African American Democrats than whites. But overall, the poll found just 37 percent of Democratic primary voters have a favorable view of charters.

Some like-minded Democrats are working on something they call the Kids New Deal, hoping to find a candidate to support it. The centerpiece of the proposal is to make children a “protected class” under the law, which would make it easier for them to file lawsuits challenging, for instance, tenure for teachers, on the grounds that it hurts children.

“The goal here is to outflank the teachers unions from the left and not from the right,” said Ben Austin, a longtime education restructuring advocate.

DFER is the hedge fund managers group created to persuade Democrats to act like Republicans and support privatization. It offered big money for candidates who swallowed their line. DFER was condemned by the state Democratic Party in both California and Colorado as a front for Wall Street and corporate interests.

 Ben Austin is one of California’s most aggressive charter school proponents, having run the faux Parent Revolution, whose goal was to convert public schools to charter schools. He spent millions of dollars from Gates, Waltons, and other billionaires, but converted only one or two public schools. If he is behind the “Kids New Deal,”’it is probably another billionaire-funded privatization vehicle.

The great news in this article is that those who have warned Democrats to return to their roots and stop acting like Republicans have won the debate.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Republicans, Scandals, School Choice, Testing

NBC News: Democrats Turning Against Charters (Link Added)

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
37

NBC News ran a story about how Democratic candidates are turning against charter schools. The reasons, says NBC, is DeVos and unions.

The safe position for Democrats is to say that he or she opposes for-profit charter schools.

Bernie Sanders went further by echoing the national NAACP and Black Lives Matter’s call for a national moratorium on new charters.

In the story, everyone plays their expected part. Mike Petrilli, authorizer of Ohio charters, claims that only his team (the DeVos choice team) really cares about “improving education” by privatizing it and handing it over to entrepreneurs. Shavar Jeffries of the hedge fund managers’ DFER says, “Bernie Sanders apparently thinks he, in Vermont, knows better than low-income African American and Hispanic families in their cities about what’s best for their children,” because Sanders called for a moratorium on new charters. Apparently the hedge fund managers and billionaires who support DFER understand the needs of low-income African American and Hispanic families better than anyone else.

The points that never appear in the news story are, one, that charters have not delivered on their promises. On average, they are no better than public schools and many are far worse. And two, because most charters are deregulated and unsupervised, they have experienced many scandals and embezzlements, like the most recent one, in which charter operators in California were indicted for stealing more than $50 million. The unacknowledged fact is that no community has ever voted to privatize their public schools.

Democrats have had a hard time shedding the legacy of Obama and Duncan.

BetsyDeVos reminds them that school choice is a Republican Policy, not a Democratic one.

Thank you, Betsy DeVos!

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization
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