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How the GOP in North Carolina Pulled Off Its Sneak Attack on Medicaid Expansion for 634,000 People

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2019 //
18

Think dirty politics, think North Carolina.

Yesterday, while some Democratic legislators and Governor Roy Cooper attended a 9/11 memorial service, the Republican legislators called a snap vote to override the governor’s veto of the state budget. They had repeatedly assured the Democrats that no votes would be recorded that morning, but they lied. If the full body of representatives had been present, the governor’s veto would have stood.

Cooper vetoed the budget because it did not include Medicaid expansion, which he favors but the Republicans oppose. Thanks to the Republicans, 634,000 citizens in the state will not have health coverage.

This article includes an interview with Democratic representative Chaz Beasley, who explains what was at stake.

He said,

North Carolinians sent us up to Raleigh to have a voice and a say in how we spend $24 billion. And what we’ve seen throughout this process is that many of us were not at the table when whole swaths of the budget were negotiated and settled upon. The governor has made it clear what he would like to see in the budget. One thing he’d like to see is Medicaid expansion in there.

But problems with the budget go beyond the fact that it doesn’t expand Medicaid for 500,000 North Carolinians. We still underpay our teachers. We still have schools that lack the resources to be successful. We still haven’t given a large enough pay increase to our state employees, or a cost of living adjustment to our retirees. Instead, the budget includes things like expanding programs for virtual charter schools that do not have good ratings for how they’re teaching our kids.

Virtual charter schools, we know, are a cash cow for big out-of-state corporations, and they are noted for terrible academic performance, high attrition, and low graduation rates.

The only mildly amusing comment in the article comes from a Republican who said that it was important to take a vote on 9/11 “so that the terrorists didn’t win.” He didn’t explain why it was necessary to take the vote when members of the Democratic party had been assured there would be no vote that morning. When you lie, cheat, and steal to get your way, you undermine democracy. When you betray democracy in your pursuit of power, the terrorists win.

 

Categories Corruption, Democrats, Lies, North Carolina, Republicans, Virtual Charter Schools

Cincinnati: TFA Alum Trying for a Seat on the School Board After Almost Being Kicked Out of Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2019 //
8

In this fall’s school board elections in Cincinnati, one of the candidates will be a TFA alum who is trying again after almost being kicked out of the Democratic Party three years ago.

Ben Lindy is the director of Teach for America in Cincinnati. He attended elite suburban schools, then graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School. After he taught in rural North Carolina, he tried to start his  political career by running for state representative in Ohio. He was nearly censured and booted from the Democratic Party at that time when union officials discovered that he had written a law journal article that was anti-union and that was cited in a Supreme Court case to hurt the cause of collective bargaining. In that paper, he argued that collective bargaining agreements raise the performance of high-achieving students and lower the performance of “poorly achieving students.” On the face of it, this claim is absurd, first, because there are many different variables that affect student performance, especially in the state he studied, New Mexico, which has one of the highest child poverty rates in the nation. Consider also that the highest performing states in the nation–Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey–have strong teachers’ unions, while the lowest performing states in the nation (mainly in the South) do not.

The 2016 effort to oust him from the Democratic Party failed by 26-21. When he was questioned about this stance on organized labor, he claimed to be pro-union but claimed that he hadn’t give much though to union issues.

Lindy showed a lack of knowledge about some labor issues. When asked his stance on prevailing wage, he said: “This is an issue I’d like to know more about.”

“I’m not hearing how you’ve evolved,” said Pat Bruns, a committee member who sits on the state board of education.

Lindy is a prodigious fund-raiser, which is enough to recommend him to some party leaders.

But party leaders should check where Lindy’s campaign cash is coming from. If it is coming from “Democrats for Education Reform,” bear in mind that these are hedge fund managers who are anti-union and anti-public schools, who favor TFA and merit pay. If it is coming from “Leadership for Educational Equity,” that is TFA’s political arm, which is anti-union and pro-charter school.

Be informed before you vote.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Cincinnati, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Ohio, Teach for America, Unions

Please Send $1 to Keep Steve Bullock on the Debate Stage

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2019 //
7

Steve Bullock entered the Democratic primary race late, and he starts at the back of the pack.

He needs to have 130,000 individuals contributions in order to qualify for the next debate.

I am asking you to send Steve Bullock $1 to keep him on the stage and to encourage him to talk about what he has done to improve public schools in Montana.

What he has going for him is two things:

1) he is the only candidate in the stage who won re-election in a red state that went for Trump by 20 points. In other words, he knows how to connect to people as a problem-solver who listens. He proved that he can win in a red state.

2) he has a solid pro-public education record. Montana has only two charter schools and both are under the direct supervision of local school districts. They exist because the district needs them, not because an entrepreneur or a charter chain has decided to open a charter.

Steve Bullock is unabashedly pro-public education and pro-union. NPE Action examined his record and gave him high marks for his commitment to public schools.

I am not asking you to support Steve Bullock. I have not endorsed him or anyone else.

I encourage you to send him $1 so you can be counted as a contributor and help him earn a place in the next big debate.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Reform, Montana, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Peter Greene: Governor Wolf of Pennsylvania Says Charter Schools Are NOT Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2019 //
17

The times they are a’changing.

PeterGreene reports what happened when Governor Tom Wolf really hurt the feelings of the charter lobby. He said that charter schools are NOT public schools. 

“When Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf trotted out his budget last month, he made it a point to note that he was raising money for public schools– and that he had some definite ideas about which schools are public and which schools are not.

“He wants to see more of those basic education dollars to school districts get distributed through the state’s fair funding formula. He also wants to address concerns related to cyber charter schools, which he referred to as “the growing cost of privatization of education in our public schools.”

“And just in case that wasn’t clear enough, a press release from the governor’s office was even more direct:

“Pennsylvania must help school districts struggling with the problem of increasing amounts of school funding siphoned by private cyber and charter schools. Funding reform would increase transparency so all schools that receive state dollars are accountable to the taxpayers.

“This made Ana Meyers sad.”

Awww.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Pennsylvania, Privatization

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
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