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Washington Post: Why Betsy DeVos Failed

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2018 //
49

The Washington Post has a new national education writer, Laura Meckler. She published an excellent article yesterday about the big-time failure of Betsy DeVos to accomplish anything in D.C. as Secretary of Education.

Despite Republican control of Congress (for now), her budget proposals have fallen flat. She arrived with Trump’s promise to transfer $20 Billion from other federal programs to create a federal school choice program for charters, vouchers, and online schools. That went nowhere. She has repeatedly proposed a $1 Billion plan for school choice. Congress rejected it.

Her only victory was to get a big increase in charter school funding, now up to $450 Million. This despite the GAO report in 2016 warning of waste, fraud, and abuse in the charter industry.

DeVos has helped to galvanize the opposition to school choice and to energize supporters of public schools, who now recognize that charters and vouchers take money away from public schools, a traditional community institution whose doors are open to all.

She is such a toxic figure, her contempt for public schools is so evident, her arrogance and snobbishness so transparent, that she has alienated even some Republicans. Many rural Republicans treasure their local public schools. As Meckler shows, conservatives are divided over the DeVos effort to create a federal school choice plan. Libertarians fear (rightly) that federal funds will be accompanied by federal regulations.

From our point of view, as supporters of public education, DeVos has been the gift that keeps on giving. She remains deeply uninformed about education policy. Her solution to everything is School Choice. She is a champion of charters, stripping away their thin progressive veneer. She wants to roll back civil rights protections for everyone but accused rapists. She has removed protections for students defrauded by for-profit “colleges,” while stopping federal efforts to regulate the institutions that defraud students.

In short, if you care about public schools and civil rights and the ability of students to get a good education, she is a disaster on all fronts.

The fact that she became a national figure at the very time that Research converged on the negative effects of vouchers was fortuitous. Similarly, the growing national recognition that the charter industry is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse undermines her cause.

Now our goal must be to convince members of Congress, especially Democrats, to stop acting as the biggest funder of charter schools, whose aggressive expansion hurts public schools, you know, the schools that enroll 85% of America’s students.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Laura Chapman: In Search of the Tentacles of the Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2018 //
64

Laura Chapman, retired arts educator and diligent researcher, has created a partial portrait of the privatization movement.

My guess is that the privatization movement consists of a small but significant number of billionaires and several hundred of their lackeys, shills, and front groups. As you will see, it is almost impossible to tell the Republicans from the Democrats.

Laura writes:

I have been building some spreadsheets on who is funding what. There are so many interconnected initiatives that Jeb Bush and friends are part of.

For example. Bush’s projects are connected with another big reform outfit: Partners for Innovation in Education (PIE) an outfit with at least 180 affiliates (in my spreadsheet) all connected to many others and all seeking national, state, and large metro area policies that favor charter school expansion (marketed as innovative), along with Teach for America (mostly on the job training), and active interference with teacher union contracts.

The PIE website still includes a guide for “Rabble Rousers” who were given quidance on how to work on legislated policy changes to favor charters, TFA and privatizers and how to enlist active support from civic and business organizations. It is a guide for lobbying and controlling narratives about education in the press.

The 47-page PIE Rabble Rousers handbook (2010 funded by the Joyce Foundation) includes this statement about the process of changing state policy:

“Most of the groups we spoke with (about shaping state polcies) declined to involve educators on their governing boards; if they did so, those groups do not make up a majority of the governing board. The rationale was clear enough: if the goal is to be a voice for the public’s interest, educator involvement confuses that message. As one group leader explained: “Educators already have the overwhelming voice in our state capital through their various associations. If we brought the interest lobby to our meetings, our discussion would get rutted in the same issues that already complicate the public debate. Our goal is to have a conversation that looks at the issues differently, considering only the students without the adult agendas.” An even blunter explanation was: “We tell our teacher associations that when they invite our leaders to vote on their boards, we will include union representation on ours (p. 32).” http://pie-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/rabble-rousers.pdf

Since that 2010 publication, PIE has shifted its strategy to include carefully selected educators. Most are working in charter schools or they have been willing to be indoctrinated into PIE’s agenda. Indocrination is the correct word.

In Oakland, CA, for example, the bait for PIE’s program has been a two-year “fellowship” with $1000 for the first year, and $2000 for the second year for attendance at two-hour meetings twice monthly plus readings and research. (I could not determine if the “year” was a calendar year nine month school year). In a series of tasks, the Oakland Fellows were given preferred data about their union to think about, along with model language for changes.

There are similar programs in multiple metro areas and states, with teachers working as if hired hands of PIE, token payments or emblems of prestige by virtue of becoming “fellows” or “ambassadors.”

Here is a list of organizations and financial supporters of “teacher voice” in the PIE Network–all recruiting teachers to advocate for policies favoring TFA, charters, and dismantlying unions and more under the banner of “innovation.”

Advance Illinois “Every Student World Ready”; Chalk Board Project; Ed Allies (Minnesota); Educators for High Standards; Go Public Schools (Oakland CA); Hope Street Group (multiple states); National Network of Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY, nominated by governors of states and celebrated by the Council of Chief State School Officers); Rodel Foundation of Delaware; State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE, Tennessee); Stand for Children Louisiana; Teach Strong (National, with one year “ambassadors” who lobby politicians), Educators for Excellence (in Boston, Chicago, Connecticut, Los Angeles , Minnesota, New York); Teach Plus (in California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts); and Texas Aspires.

PIE Board members are powerbrokers. Many are veterans of reformy projects to undermine public education through draconian standard-setting, exemptions for and expansions of charter schools, and killing collective bargaining by teachers.
1. Derrell Bradford, Executive VP of 50CAN, recruits state executive directors, fellows, and YouCAN advocates; known for leadership of legislated tenure reform in New Jersey.
2. Rachael Canter, Executive Dir. and co-founder of Mississippi First. Two years Teach for America; successfully lobbied for Mississippi Charter Schools Act of 2013.
3. Jonah Edelman, co-founder and CEO of Stand for Children Leadership Center and Stand For Children with affiliates in 11 states (Edelman is son of civil rights activist and lawyer Marian Wright Edelman). A political scholar (Ph.D Oxford, Yale) with deep family connections to the Democratic Party. SFC works for privatization with major funding from the Gates and Walton foundations among others. Major promoter of Read-by-Grade-Three policy.
4. Chris Korsmo, CEO of the League of Education Voters, backed by The Broad Foundation and supporters of projects to undermine teacher unions.
5. Scott Laband, President of Colorado Succeeds, coalition of business executives for corporate friendly education, including school policies that subsidize workforce preparation.
6. Patricia Levesque, CEO Foundation for Excellence. Was Jeb Bush’s Chief of Staff for education promoting corporate friendly education, six years as Staff Director for education policy in the Florida.
7. Lillian M. Lowery, Ed.D. V.P. of Ed Trust’s PreK-12 Policy, Research, and Practice, former state superintendent of schools in Maryland and state secretary of education in Delaware.
8. Nina Rees, President and CEO of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, first Deputy Under Secretary for Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.
9. Aimee Rogstad Guidera, former president and CEO of the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign for enganced surveillance of K-12 school and “teacher of record” performance, with a variant tracking workforce outcomes of pre-K to post-seconfary workforce outcomes.
10. Evan Stone, Co-CEO and Co-Founder in 2010 of Educators for Excellence. Yale University thesis on No Child Left Behind in urban school systems, Master degree in teaching, Pace University.
11. Suzanne Kubach, Executive Dir. PIE Network. Appointed to California State Board of Education, former Chair of Los Angeles Charter School Board. Ph.D. in Education Policy, University of Southern California.
12. Tim Taylor, co-founder and Executive Dir. America Succeeds, founder of Colorado Succeeds, seeking corporate friendly policies.
13. Jamie Woodson, Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE), Former legislative leader for expansion of Tennessee’s public charter schools. J.D., the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

And that is just for starters. What “innovative policies” are being marketed in your state, by whom, and why?

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Republicans

Election 2018: Time for Democrats to Support Public Schools if They Want to Win

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2018 //
24

Mitchell Robinson, professor at Michigan State University, writes that Democrats must fully support public schools if they want to galvanize their base in November.

“If Democrats want to be successful in November they need to offer voters a true alternative to Republican and neo-liberal thinking on education policy. Sadly, we could add Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to the list above of Democrats who don’t “get it” when it comes to understanding the importance of public education.

“I still run in to far too many Democrats who make distinctions between “for profit” and non profit” charters, as if there’s a meaningful difference…or support candidates who claim this belief. Or point to states with “strong regulations” on charters, like Massachusetts, as some sort of model for other states to follow when it comes to charter school policies. This ignores the fundamental charter problem–the presence of charter schools hurts public schools, period. In an economy that seems not to have enough money to fund 1 set of schools, we are trying to fund both charters and traditional public schools, with reformers clamoring for vouchers that would fund a 3rd group of schools–religious and private non-sectarian schools.

“What we need are Democrats who support real public education, not faux public charter schools that are governed by private management corporations.

“The only thing public about charter schools are the tax dollars that fund them. It’s way beyond time to eliminate all charter schools, and fully fund public education.”

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

Steven Singer: DFER and DeVos Think Alike about School Reform

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2018 //
24

Steven Singer hits the nail on the head: there is no difference between DFER and DeVos!

He writes:

“Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) put out a new video about what they think it means to be an education progressive.

“And by the political action committee’s definition, Betsy DeVos may be the most “progressive” education secretary ever.

“She champions “public charter schools.” Just like them!

“She is in favor of evaluating teachers on student test scores. Just like them!

“She is a booster for “holding schools accountable” through the use of standardized tests. Just like them!

“And she loves putting public tax dollars into private hands to run schools “more efficiently” by disbanding school boards, closing public debate and choosing exactly which students get to attend privatized schools. Just like… you get the idea.

“But perhaps the most striking similarity between DeVos and DFER is their methodologies.

“DFER announced it again was going to flood Democratic races with tons of campaign cash to bolster candidates who agreed with them. That’s exactly how DeVos gets things done, too!

“She gives politicians bribes to do her bidding! The only difference is she pays her money mostly to Republicans while DFER pays off Democrats. But if both DeVos and DFER are paying to get would-be lawmakers to enact the same policies, what is the difference!?

“Seriously, what is the difference between Betsy DeVos and Democrats for Education Reform?”

Singer concludes that faux progressive groups like DFER, who are indistinguishable from Republicans, are causing many people to abandon the party.

“Why do some progressives vote third party? Because of groups like DFER.

“Voters think something like – if this charter school advocacy group represents what Democrats are all about, I can’t vote Democrat. I need a new party. Hence the surge of Green and other third party votes that is blamed for hurting Democratic candidates.”

DFER and DeVos! Made for each other!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

DFER Attacks Efforts to Help Low-Scoring Schools, Demands More Charters

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2018 //
9

The Democratic Party in Colorado and California have passed resolutions attacking Democrats for Education Reform as a phony, corporate-controlled front organization and demanded that it stop sullying the Democratic Party by using its name.

In New York, where hedge fund money flows freely to DFER, it continues to be a political player, having no popular political base but owning corporate politicians who wants its campaign contributions. It has filled the vacuum left by the collapse of the phony “Families for Excellent Schools,”also funded and owned by billionaires who never set foot in a public school.

Now DFER in New York is speaking out to call for more school closures and more privately owned charter schools.

If only New York’s Democrats had the fortitude of their counterparts in California and Colorado and were brave enough to call out DFER as DINOS, whose only purpose is to destroy public schools in communities of co,or.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Colorado, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Cory Booker and the American Dream

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2018 //
30

I have never met Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. I probably never will. I only know him as a politician who did his best to turn Newark into another New Orleans, without a hurricane. He became the best buddy of the horrible Governor Chris Christie, who together persuaded billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to put up $100 million to open charters in Newark, an effort that was chronicled in Dale Russakoff’s “The Prize.”

He has been honored by any number of rightwing groups, like the conservative Manhattan Institute. It was funny to watch him fulminate Against Betsy DeVos’ nomination, since he shares her agenda, including vouchers.

Here is his description of the deferred American Dream.

In his account of his life, he stresses his ties to Newark but does not mention that he attended one of New Jersey’s fine suburban high schools, which prepared him for entry to Stanford University, then a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, then Yale Law School. He is not a humble Newark guy. He is part of the elite, which need not be hidden. He succeeded, and a great public high school set him on the road to success.

If he plans to run for President in 2020, he has to own his entire history and break his ties with the DeVos ideology.

Categories Democrats, New Jersey, New Orleans, Newark

I Have a Question About Three Democratic Senators

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2018 //
80

Almost every time I get a fundraising appeal from Democrats, I respond with a contribution. Nothing big. Between $25 and $100. I support Beto O’Rourke and Lupe Valdez in Texas. I supported Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania. I sent money to Amy McGrath in Kentucky. I make a monthly small donation to the Indivisibles.

Consequently, I am now on every progressive and Democratic fundraising list. My email is crammed daily with appeals.

I want your advice. I get many emails from Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Joe Manchin in West Virginia. I haven’t heard from Heidi Heiskamp in North Dakota but r pact I will.

All three voted to confirm the execrable Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. I expect they will vote for whoever Trump nominates this fall to win the friendship of his base. Manchin has said he might support Trump in 2020.

Can you persuade me why I should send any money to any of them? Why are they Democrats?

Categories Democrats

Needed: A Trustbuster to Break Up Four Mega-Corporations

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2018 //
43

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jennifer Berkshire: How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2018 //
148

 

Jennifer Berkshire recounts the sad history of the Democratic party’s abandonment of teachers, public schools, and teachers’ unions. 

This article is worthy of your attention. In my view, Democrats won’t start winning seats again until they embrace public schools again and break free of their love affair with charters and other free-market solutions that evicerate their message and turn them into Republican-lite.

How many Democratic governors today are unabashed supporters of public schools? How many Democratic Senators and members of Congress? How many are funded by Democrats for Education Reform (hedge fund managers who love charter schools and high-stakes testing), whose purpose is to buy Democratic support for Republican policies?

The strange part about the story that Berkshire tells  is that the teachers’ unions were a core part of the Democrats’ base. As party leaders turned against their own base, they hurt their party. They turned off teachers and lost seats across the nation. They lost governorships and they lost legislatures. They lost the House and they lost the Senate.

Berkshire says that it started with the Clintons in Arkansas.

“To begin to chronicle the origin of the Democrats’ war on their own—the public school teachers and their unions that provide the troops and the dough in each new campaign cycle to elect the Democrats—is to enter murky territory. The Clintons were early adopters; tough talk against Arkansas’s teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas. As Hillary biographer Carl Bernstein recounts, the Arkansas State Teachers Association became the villain that cemented the couple’s hold on the Governor’s mansion—the center of their Dick Morris-inspired “permanent campaign.” The civil rights language in which the Democratic anti-union brigade cloaks itself today was then nowhere to be heard, however. And little wonder: Civil rights groups fiercely opposed the most controversial feature of the Clintons’ reform agenda—competency tests for teachers—on the grounds that Black teachers, many of whom had attended financially starved Black colleges, would disproportionately bear their brunt.

“Tough talk against Arkansas’ teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas.

“Hillary made the cause her personal crusade in 1983, trotting out anecdote after anecdote about teachers she’d heard about who couldn’t add or read. The reform package passed, cementing Bill’s reputation as a new breed of Democratic governor, one who wasn’t afraid to take on entrenched interests in order to tackle tough problems. “Anytime you’re going to turn an institution upside down, there’s going to be a good guy and a bad guy,” recalls Clinton campaign manager Richard Herget. “The Clintons painted themselves as the good guys. The bad guys were the schoolteachers.”

“By the early 1980s, there was already a word for turning public institutions upside down: neoliberalism. Before it degenerated into a flabby insult, neoliberal referred to a self-identified brand of Democrat, ready to break with the tired of dogmas of the past. “The solutions of the thirties will not solve the problems of the eighties,” wrote Randall Rothenberg in his breathless 1984 paean to this new breed, whom he called simply The Neoliberals. His list of luminaries included the likes of Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Gary Hart and Al Gore (for the record, Gore eschewed the neoliberal label in favor of something he liked to call “neopopulism”). In Rothenberg’s telling, the ascendancy of the neoliberals represented an economic repositioning of the Democratic Party that had begun during the economic crises of the 1970s. The era of big, affirmative government demanding action—desegregate those schools, clean up those polluted rivers, enforce those civil rights and labor laws—was over. It was time for fresh neo-ideas.

”Redistribution and government intervention were out; investment and public-private partnerships were the way to go. Neoliberal man (there are no women included in Rothenberg’s account) was also convinced that he had found the answer to the nation’s economic malaise: education, or as he was apt to put it, investment in human capital. “Education equals growth is a neoliberal equation,” writes Rothenberg.

“But this new cult of education wasn’t grounded in John Dewey’s vision of education-as-democracy, or in the recent civil-rights battles to extend the promise of public education to excluded African-American communities. No, these bold, results-oriented thinkers understood that in order to fuel economic growth, schools had to be retooled and aligned in concert with the needs of employers. The workers of the future would be prepared to compete nimbly in the knowledge-based post-industrial society of the present, For the stragglers still trapped in older, industrial-age models of enterprise and labor, re-training—another staple of the neoliberal vision—would set them on the path to greater prosperity…

”The irony is that the DeVos-Trump vision for fixing our schools is almost as unpopular as the GOP’s plan for health care; if there’s political ground to be gained with Trump supporters, the defense of public education is fertile territory. DeVos’ nomination sparked ferocious grassroots opposition, red and blue, and in a cabinet of rogues, she remains Trump’s most reviled official. Her signature issue—paying for private religious schools with taxpayer funds—has never been popular with voters, even in deep red states.

“The problem is that the Democrats have little to offer that’s markedly different from what DeVos is selling. Teachers unions, regulation, and government schools are the problem, Democrats continue insisting into the void; deregulation, market competition and school choice are the fix. Four decades after the neo-Democrats set their sights on the education bureaucracy, the journey has reached its predictable destination: with a paler version of what the right has been offering all along.

“When the Democrats next attempt to rouse the base of unionized teachers they count on to be their foot soldiers, they are sure to meet with disappointment. In once reliably blue states like Michigan and Wisconsin, the unions have been eviscerated. The right went all in to crush unions—not because they “impede social mobility,” but because they elect Democrats. That wager is now paying off handsomely.”

Unless there is breaking news, no more posts today.

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Duncan, Arne

Why the Colorado Democratic Party Denounced DFER

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2018 //
5

 

Democrats for Education Reform is an organization founded, funded, and led by hedge fund managers who support charter schools and high-stakes testing. They raise money to elect likeminded people across the country and are a key part of the Dark Money world of fundraisers for privatization of public schools.

On Saturday, the Colorado Democratic Party passed a strong resolution opposing privatization of public schools and demanding that DFER stop calling themselves “Democrats.”

Here is the story of the state Democratic convention, as reported in Chalkbest.

Colorado has been fertile ground for corporate reform, and DFER has been a source of funding for candidates for the state board, the Denver board, and other critical races. Senator Michael Bennett, once a superintendent of the Denver public schools, is a DFER favorite. So are two current candidates for governor, Jared Polis (who is so rich he doesn’t need DFER money) and former TFA State Senator Michael Johnston, who drafted the state’s harsh and ineffective teacher evaluation law.

“Vanessa Quintana, a political activist who was the formal sponsor of the minority report, was a student at Denver’s Manual High School when it was closed in 2006, a decision that Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, then Denver’s superintendent, defended at an education panel Friday.

“She said that before she finally graduated from high school, she had been through two school closures and a major school restructuring and dropped out of school twice. Three of her siblings never graduated, and she blames the instability of repeated school changes.

“When DFER claims they empower and uplift the voices of communities, DFER really means they silence the voices of displaced students like myself by uprooting community through school closure,” she told the delegates. “When Manual shut down my freshman year, it told me education reformers didn’t find me worthy of a school.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Colorado, Democrats, Denver, DFER, Education Reform, Privatization
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