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Jan Resseger: How the Clinton Administration Joined Philanthrocapitalists to Create Corporate Education Reform

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2022 //
48

Jan Resseger has established a reputation for writing well-researched, fearless articles about unjust education policies. In this post, she reviews a new book about the roots of corporate education reform. I have already ordered it.

She writes:

I remember my gratitude when, back in 2010, I sat down to read Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System, which connected the dots across what I had been watching for nearly a decade: the standards movement, annual standardized testing, the operation of No Child Left Behind’s test-and-punish, Mayor Bloomberg’s promotion of charter schools in New York City, and the role of venture philanthropy in all this.

Now over a decade later, many of us have spent the past couple of months worried about pushback from the charter school sector as the the U.S. Department of Education has proposed strengthening sensible regulation of the federal Charter Schools Program. We have been reminded that this program was launched in 1994, and we may have been puzzled that a federal program paying for the startup of privately operated charter schools originated during a Democratic administration.

Lily Geismer, a historian at Claremont McKenna College, has just published a wonderful book which explains how the New Democrats—Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and the Democratic Leadership Council—brought a political and economic philosophy that sought to end welfare with a 1996 bill called the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act” and envisioned privately operated charter schools to expand competition and innovation in the public schools as a way to close school achievement gaps. Geismer’s book is Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality. The book is a great read, and it fills in the public policy landscape of the 1990s, a decade we may never have fully understood.

In the introduction, Geismer explains where she is headed: “Since the New Deal, liberals had advocated for doing well and doing good. However, the form of political economy enacted during the new Deal and, later, the New Frontier and Great Society understood these as distinct goals. The architects of mid-twentieth century liberalism believed that stimulating capital markets was the best path to creating economic growth and security (doing well). The job of the federal government, as they saw it, was to fill in the holes left by capitalism with compensatory programs to help the poor, like cash assistance and Head Start, and to enact laws that ended racial and gender discrimination (doing good). In contrast, the New Democrats sought to merge those functions and thus do well bydoing good. This vision contended that the forces of banking, entrepreneurialism, trade, and technology… could substitute for traditional forms of welfare and aid and better address structural problems of racial and economic segregation. In this vision, government did not recede but served as a bridge connecting the public and private sectors.” (p. 8)

Geismer devotes an entire chapter, “Public Schools Are Our Most Important Business,” to the Clinton administration’s new education policy. She begins by telling us about Vice President Al Gore’s meetings with “leading executives and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley. The so-called Gore-Tech sessions often took place over pizza and beer, and Gore hoped for them to be a chance for the administration to learn from innovators of the New Economy…. One of these meetings focused on the problems of public education and the growing achievement gap between affluent white suburbanites and students of color in the inner city…. The challenge gave venture capitalist John Doerr, who had become Gore’s closest tech advisor, an idea… The tools of venture capital, Doerr thought, might offer a way to build new and better schools based on Silicon Valley’s principles of accountability, choice, and competition… Doerr decided to pool money from several other Silicon valley icons to start the NewSchools Venture Fund. NewSchools sat at the forefront of the concepts of venture philanthropy. Often known by the neologism philanthrocapitalism, venture or strategic philanthropy focused on taking tools from the private sector, especially entrepreneurialism, venture capitalism, and management consulting—the key ingredients in the 1990s tech boom—and applying them to philanthropic work… Doerr and the NewSchools Fund became especially focused on charter schools, which the Clinton administration and the Democratic Leadership Council were similarly encouraging in the 1990s.” (pp. 233-234)

As she explains, the Clinton administration bought the idea that charter schools would be an effective way to end poverty. It encouraged the growth of the charter sector, not realizing that it was creating an industry that would fight accountability, lobby for more federal funding, and ignore frequent scandals and frauds.

It is a cautionary tale that reminds us that the best way to fight poverty is to raise incomes, create jobs, and support labor unions that will defend the rights of working people and advocate for higher wages and benefits.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Disruption, Education Industry, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization

Carson v. Makin: The Supreme Court Decision That Tears Down the Wall of Separation Between Church and State

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2022 //
24

The United States Supreme Court released a 6-3 decision called Carson v. Makin that reverses many decades of precedent. The decision requires the state of Maine to provide public funding to religious schools because the state funds private schools in areas where population is so sparse that public schools are not available.

The two religious schools at issue are Temple Academy in Waterville, Maine, and Bangor Christian Schools. Temple Academy expects its teachers to “integrate biblical principles with their teaching in every subject” and “to spread the word of Christianity.” Bangor Christian Schools seeks to develop “within each student a Christian worldview and Christian philosophy of life.” Both schools deny admission to students based on their gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and religion. Both schools require their teachers to be born-again teachers.

Why should the state of Maine or any other state be required to fund schools that practice discrimination and violate federal civil rights laws? Why should people who do not share the religious ideas of these schools be compelled to underwrite them? Why should a Catholic or a Buddhist or a Jew or a Muslim or an atheist pay taxes for schools that will exclude their own children and will refuse to hire them or their children as teachers?

Although the conservative majority likes to claim its loyalty to an “Originalist” interpretation of the Constitution, this decision cannot be called “Originalist.” The founders were very clear about their commitment to separation of religion and the state. They were keenly aware of the centuries of bloodshed in Europe that religious strife caused. They wrote the First Amendment to the Constitution to protect freedom of religion, but also to prevent any establishment of religion by government. These two phrases have often been in tension, and the Court has typically balanced them so that everyone is free to practice their religion but without government subsidy. There is literally nothing in the Constitution that supports this majority decision. It is hard to imagine a Supreme Court decision that departs more radically from the explicit, unambiguous statements of the Founding Fathers.

Some religious groups have fought for many decades to gain government funding for their schools, which are used to indoctrinate children into the tenets of their religion. It is somewhat ironic that at the very time that so many conservatives are criticizing public schools and teachers for “indoctrinating” their children into liberal views about racism and gender, they would nonetheless enthusiastically endorse the idea of public subsidy for religious organizations that explicitly indoctrinate children into their views.

There is a simple solution to the issue at hand: Maine and other states that fund private schools should stop doing so. They should use public funds only to support public schools. Public schools should be subject to all state and federal laws governing civil rights, health, and safety. Any private or religious schools that accept public funding under this ruling should be required to comply with the same state and federal laws that apply to public schools.

Here is the full decision.

I will separately post the dissents by Justice Breyer and another by Justice Sonia Sotomayer, which of course are included in the full decision.

Categories Disruption, Elections, Extremism, History, Religion, Separation of church and state

Arizona: GOP Plans Massive Voucher Expansion Despite Public Opposition to Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2022 //
9

Talk about cheesy! Talk about hypocrisy! Talk about weasels! Talk about betrayal of the public! Talk about disdain for democracy!

The people of Arizona voted overwhelmingly against vouchers, but the Koch-controlled GOP majority in the legislature is promoting a dramatic expansion of vouchers. Voters be damned!

To buy the support of public school parents, the legislators added a big increase in public school funding, but the new funding is available only if the vouchers are enacted.

Arizona has 1.1 million students, but only 11,775 have used vouchers to leave public schools. Now the Republicans want to fund vouchers for every student in the state. Does it matter that multiple academic studies have found that vouchers do not improve education? Of course not.

Do you think these guys know how repellent they are?

Four years after voters rejected a similar move, Republican lawmakers are pushing ahead with a plan to let any of the 1.1 million students in public schools get vouchers to attend private and parochial schools.

And they are holding a plan to boost aid to public schools hostage until they get what they want.

HB 2853, approved Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee on a 6-4 party-line vote, would remove all restrictions on who can get what are called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Backers say this ensures that parents get to decide what is the best option for their youngsters.

That assertion was disputed by Beth Lewis, executive director of Save Our Schools.

She said that unlike public schools, private schools can pick and choose who they want to accept. Lewis said those schools, many of which are for-profit corporations, accept those who will cost them the least, meaning the highest achievers and students who do not have special needs.

Republicans said they are not ignoring the needs of public schools, voting Wednesday for HB 2854, which would increase state aid to schools by $400 million, above another $250 million additional already planned.

But there’s less there than meets the eye.

First, only half of that additional cash is permanent. And it is weighted so the districts with the most students in financial need would get more.

Beyond that, schools would have to wait until the 2023-24 school year for the one-time $200 million infusion.

And there’s something else.

House Majority Leader Ben Toma, R-Peoria, who crafted both measures, included a “poison pill” of sorts: It says that if the vouchers do not become law, the public schools don’t get any of that $400 million.

That is designed to deter the education community from doing to HB 2853 what they did to a similar voucher expansion measure approved by GOP lawmakers in 2017.

They collected sufficient signatures to put the expansion on the 2018 ballot. And voters overruled the legislation by a margin of close to 2 to 1…

And Lewis told Capitol Media Services that supporters of public education won’t be deterred, vowing to go to the ballot once again if the Republican-controlled legislature approves universal vouchers. She said while that would mean the loss of $400 million — or, really, $200 million of ongoing funds — that is nowhere near the amount that public schools need in Arizona.

She pointed out that voters in 2020 approved Proposition 208 to infuse another nearly $1 billion into public education. That was sidelined after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled the tax could not be levied because it bumped up against a constitutional limit on education spending.

Lewis, the education community and their Democratic allies are not alone in saying schools need more than HB 2854 is offering.

Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, said he is holding out for an amount close to that $1 billion figure. And with only 16 Republicans in the 30-member Senate, the plan cannot get final approval without his vote.

Wednesday’s votes come as school districts won a significant legal victory, with a judge saying they are entitled to pursue claims that the legislature shorted them billions of dollars.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Privatization, Vouchers

Jitu Brown and Randi Weingarten: Charter Schools Should Be Accountable, Like Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2022 //
16

Jitu Brown, civil rights leader and director of Journey for Justice, joins here with Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, to support the Biden administration’s modest proposals to reform the federal Charter Schools Program. The charter lobby has vigorously opposed any reform of the program. Their article appeared in Education Week.

Charter schools have been part of the fabric of public education in the United States for decades. Like a patchwork quilt, there is a great deal of variation among them. Some have a history of improvements to student achievement, while others have been ineffective or even harmful. Some charter operators are fiscally responsible, while others have been deemed incompetent or fraudulent.

As with every public school, and every expenditure of taxpayer funds, reasonable oversight enhances the quality and accountability of charter schools. This is the goal of the Biden administration’s proposed modest changes to the federal Charter Schools Program. But some charter school proponents have responded to the proposed changes with a fierce and well-funded opposition campaign.

The charter lobby is pushing back with big TV ad buys and op-ed campaigns, claiming that the proposed regulations would “halt innovation in its tracks,” “gut the federal Charter Schools Program,” and impose a “needlessly restrictive regulatory scheme.”

In fact, President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2023 budget proposes a $440 million investment in the federal grant program for charter schools. The Biden administration is right to seek more oversight of this program. As with all federal funding, there are rules to ensure proper use of the money. One study from the advocacy group Network for Public Education found that between 2006 and 2014, $45.5 million was handed out to charter schools that never even opened.

The charter lobby is chafing at one provision in particular—the requirement for applicants for Charter Schools Program startup funds to provide a community-impact statement. For the first time, the program requires charter operators to state how their new school would impact the surrounding community. The intent is to ensure that the applicant has engaged with residents in planning for the school, that there is a need for a new charter school in the community, and that the school won’t promote racial segregation…

Every school system in America, when it considers where to build a new school, considers the proposed school’s impact on the surrounding community from which it will draw students. Charter schools should not be islands unto themselves, nor should they thrust themselves onto communities that do not want them there.

Charters that function as centers for innovation and best practices for public schools should be welcome in every community. A charter industry that advocates and benefits from the closing of traditional public schools is not welcome.

Take the example of Detroit, where between 1995 and 2016, 152 charter schools opened, contributing to the closure of 195 traditional public schools in a city that already had a declining student population. This left some neighborhoods with no public schools—traditional or charter…

Responding to parents’ and communities’ needs is what many charter school operators say they are all about. Yet, this responsiveness happens less than it should. In 2017, students at Hirsch Metropolitan High School on the South Side of Chicago held a walkout protesting a proposed charter school that would be sited at their building. Parents of students at the high school complained about a lack of community engagement from the proposed charter operator. The charter school eventually found a new, nearby location and promptly obtained $840,000 in grant money from the U.S. Department of Education.

We are lifelong advocates of high-quality public schools for all students, whether those schools are charters or traditional. Schools that aspire to serve our children and communities should embrace their accountability to the public. Schools are community institutions and should not seek to destabilize other institutions in our communities. One must wonder why those seeking to open charter schools are afraid of or resistant to this reasonable transparency and engagement proposal. The proposed rules would give more students access to high-quality schools, which is what we all—charter boosters and traditional public school champions—really want for America’s children.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Charter Schools, Creativity, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding

Nora De La Cour: How Privatizers Are Using Culture Wars to Advance Their Agenda

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2022 //
7

Nora De La Cour is a high school social worker and former teacher in Massachusetts. She writes frequently about the attacks on public schools. In this brilliant article, which appeared in Jacobin, she shows how the privatizatizers have exploited the culture wars to promote their own agenda. They are not interested in better education or students. Their agenda is to destroy the public square.

In a nutshell: “A billionaire-backed network of free-market fundamentalists is ginning up controversy over “wokeness” in American schools with an ulterior motive: to demolish public education.”

Please open the link to read the article in full.

She begins:

In a Massachusetts school district neighboring the one where I work, four parents, backed by a conservative Christian organization, are suing the school committee and multiple district employees for calling students by their preferred names and pronouns without informing home. Because one of the defendants is a counselor, some of my counselor peers in the area are now on guard, afraid we could become the targets of litigation if we allow students to broach sensitive topics in our presence.

Setting aside the very real harm that kids and educators are exposed to as a result of the Right’s eagerness to linkacknowledgement of gay and trans people to sexual predation, there’s another problem here. It’s incredibly difficult to teach or counsel someone if you can’t call them what they wish to be called. Addressing students by their chosen names is a basic sign of respect that says, “I see you and I’m here to work with you.” If you need to call home to get permission first — potentially outing kids to their parents and inviting distressing blowback — you might miss the chance to form the human connection that undergirds collaborative scholarship.

Pandemic school closures reminded us that the social aspects of schooling are among the most vital for young people’s development and for society at large. Specific facts and figures (the what of school learning) can be easily forgotten and recalled with a few keystrokes. But the ability to establish a base level of trust with heterogeneous others in order to solve shared problems (the how of school learning) is absolutely essential for both a fulfilling personal life and engagement in the public square. It’s critical that educators be allowed to build that trust without fear of reprisal.

The Koch-backed parents’ rightsmovement aims to make that trust impossible. By pitting parents against schools, libertarian billionaires and Republican strategists intend to motivate voters in the short term and fully privatize K-12 education in the long term. As Christopher Rufo, the self-styled architect of the so-called war on critical race theory (CRT), has argued, “To create universal school choice [i.e., privatization], you really need to operate from a premise of universal school distrust.” Those poweringthe campaign against classroom “wokeness” are trying to hinder our ability to establish common ground from which to defend our last remaining public goods.

The illiberalism that dominates the Right can best be understood as the advanced stage of a long billionaire-funded plot to undo democracy in order to relieve capitalists of any constraints the rest of us might wish to place on them. This understanding clarifies why classrooms, the training grounds for democratic participation, are primary targets of radical right activism. If liberals are to have any hope of countering this coordinated attack, they need to remember the collective, public value of education.

Laying Siege to the Common Good

It makes sense to focus on the reactionary nature of all of this: the commitment to American exceptionalism animating the so-called CRT bans, the fresh fixation on classical education rife with chauvinist dog whistles, and the shockingly overt bigotry of the anti-LGBT “grooming” discourse. Ron DeSantis’s Florida, as some have observed, is looking more and more like Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. But while these efforts to reverse cultural change are incredibly alarming, we come up short when we try to understand what’s happening purely in terms of identity-based hatred. Intolerance has always been a feature of American politics. Why does it suddenly seem so viciously well-organized?…

Despite attention-grabbing campaigns to terrify them, a majority of public school parents remain satisfied with their children’s schooling. And massive amounts of outside funding notwithstanding, local parents’ rights candidates have in numerous cases failedto deliver decisive wins for the privatization movement. As in segregated Virginia, US families are not quite prepared to sign away their children’s right to publicly funded, democratically controlled schools. It’s the perfect time, in other words, for those looking to contest the radical right to offer a full-throated defense of public education and all public goods.

But Democrats, by and large, have been unwilling to mount that, scarcely standing up even against the horrific attacks on kids, families, and educators that we are seeing across the United States. And when you look at their record on education, it’s pretty clear why: for the past three decades of education reform, Democrats have ignored the social role that schools play in preparing children for engagement in the public square. Alongside Republicans, they have enabled the privatization of public schools. They have also privatized the ideaof schooling down to the individual level. In the view of the Democratic establishment, the sole remit of schools should be to boost “human capital.” Guided by this view, they have yoked the vision of education ever closer to the needs of employers — a kind of corporate indoctrination eerily similar to the “woke” indoctrination Rufo and his cohort tell tales about.

But Bill Clinton’s assertion that “what you earn depends on what you learn” has proven to be a dangerous oversimplification: Americans are more educated than ever before, and yet economic insecurity is rampant and rising. When public schooling is only justifiable insofar as it increases individual earning power, the case for it is wholly dependent on its utility to capitalist markets. Without acknowledging the higher collective purpose that education serves, we won’t be able to defend public schools ordemocratic governance.

Democracy or Capitalism

“Republican politicians and their strategists,” Nancy MacLean told Jacobin,

have seen . . . culture-war tactics help Jair Bolsonaro get elected in Brazil and Viktor Orbán get reelected in Hungary this spring. And, lo, the CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Committee) is traveling to Hungary . . . to learn from Orbán how to use the tools of democracy to rig the rules to achieve autocracy.

The long plot is reaching maturity.

The Right’s appeals to “the family” resonate in part because our oligarchic political system leaves families in the cold, allowing child poverty to soar even as parents spend long and exhausting hours working outside the home. Any effort to save our commons and restore a sense of public spiritedness must include a material response to the significant challenges that parents face.

We need to work fast to reclaim the places where we give one another the benefit of the doubt and collaborate in spite of our differences. Democrats can still enter the battlefield and expose the Right’s deceitful efforts to turn the public against itself. As MacLean argues, the movement Buchanan authored wants to save capitalism from democracy. We can counter it if we are willing to fight to save democracy — beginning with schools — from capitalism.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, Hoax, Koch Brothers, Parents, Privatization

Helen Ladd: How Charter Schools Disrupt Good Education Policy

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2022 //
0

For several years, I have sponsored an annual lecture series about education policy at Wellesley College, my alma mater. We have had a number of distinguished speakers, including Pasi Sahlberg, Yong Zhao, Andy Hargreaves, and Eve Ewing.

This year, the invited speaker was Dr. Helen Ladd, one of the nation’s most eminent economists of education. Dr. Ladd is the Susan B. King Professor Emerita of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University. She graduated from Wellesley in 1967, earned her M.A. at the London School of Economics and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She has written extensively about school finance, equity, choice, and accountability.

Dr. Ladd discussed how charter schools disrupt good education policy.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, School Choice, Segregation

A Puff Piece in the “New York Times” for a Failed Education Program

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2022 //
35

An economics and business writer at the New York Times named Peter Coy wrote an article titled “This Company Knows How to Increase Test Scores.” The article celebrates a study of a for-profit company called Bridge International Academies (renamed NewGlobe) that operates a large number of schools in Africa. Coy says the study by various American economists finds that the NewGlobe schools produce remarkable test score gains. What he doesn’t say is even more important. Civil society groups from across Africa and elsewhere urged the World Bank to stop investing in for-profit schools. The World Bank announced three months ago that it would no longer invest in the company praised in this article.

Coy begins:

Some of the world’s most successful educational techniques are being applied today in Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda and India, in schools serving poor children that are run or advised by NewGlobe Schools, a company founded by Americans with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. These techniques deserve to be applied more widely, including in wealthy nations such as the United States.

A new study led by a Nobel laureate economist, Michael Kremer of the University of Chicago, found that in Kenya, enrolling in schools run by NewGlobe for two years increased test scores by an amount equal to being in school for an additional 0.89 year for primary school pupils, and to being in school an extra 1.48 years for pre-primary pupils. The poorest children improved the most.

The secret of NewGlobe’s success? Standardization. Every lesson is completely scripted and standardized. The teachers are told what to say and they say it. Most of the teachers are not high school graduates; they are not certified. They are paid less than union teachers. Yet the students get higher test scores! A reformer’s dream!

Coy compares these privately-run schools to the large KIPP chain (which, as I understand it, having visited KIPP schools, is not standardized, and whose results are not always as good as regular public schools) and to New York City’s Success Academy, a chain that has very high test scores but also very high student attrition and very high teacher turnover.

Coy writes:

“The test score effects in this study are among the largest observed in the international education literature, particularly for a program that was already operating at scale, exceeding the 99th percentile of treatment effects of large-scale education interventions,” Kremer and his colleagues found.

NewGlobe clearly has built a better mousetrap, but it has taken a while for the world to beat a path to its door. It has encountered multiple obstacles, including from the U.S. Congress, although it is gradually winning followers.

One reason for the slow uptake in the early going was resistance from teacher unions, including the Kenyan National Union of Teachers. During the period studied, NewGlobe paid teachers only one-third to one-fifth of what Kenyan public school teachers were earning. Many of its initial recruits didn’t have teaching certificates. (NewGlobe says it adapted to the government requirements as they changed over time.)

Here is the study. The title: “Can Education Be Standardized?” The authors believe it can and should be.

Here is the abstract:

We examine the impact of enrolling in schools that employ a highly-standardized approach to education, using random variation from a large nationwide scholarship program. Bridge International Academies not only delivers highly detailed lesson guides to teachers using tablet computers, it also standardizes systems for daily teacher monitoring and feedback, school construction, and financial management. At the time of the study, Bridge operated over 400 private schools serving more than 100,000 pupils. It hired teachers with less formal education and ex- perience than public school teachers, paid them less, and had more working hours per week. Enrolling at Bridge for two years increased test scores by 0.89 additional equivalent years of schooling (EYS) for primary school pupils and by 1.48 EYS for pre-primary pupils. These effects are in the 99th percentile of effects found for at-scale programs studied in a recent survey. Enrolling at Bridge reduced both dispersion in test scores and grade repetition. Test score results do not seem to be driven by rote memorization or by income effects of the scholarship.

Here are a few quotes from the Kremer et al study:

Three-quarters of teachers in public and private schools had acquired more than a secondary school education compared to just under one-quarter of teachers in Bridge schools. Relative to public school teachers, Bridge teachers were younger, less experienced, and more likely to be novice (first-year) teachers. On average, their total compensation amounted to between one fifth and one third of the average public school teachers total compensation and approximately the same as teachers in other private schools serving this population. They worked longer hours, including Saturdays...

Subsequent to the period analyzed in our study, Bridge’s parent company NewGlobe reduced the number of private schools operated by Bridge from 405 to 112, and launched a new model in which it primarily acts as a service provider to governments. Under this model, which now accounts for the bulk of students reached by NewGlobe, teacher qualification, compensation, and working conditions follow standard public sector guidelines; governments similarly set curricular, school infrastructure, and child safety standards, and costs of standardization are covered by the state rather than through fees to parents.

Note that Bridge has changed its main model, the one lauded by the Kremer study and Peter Coy. Why is Coy waxing enthusiastic about a model that has been downsized? Bridge dramatically reduced the number of for-profit private schools (where families had trouble paying $5 or more a month, and students were suspended for non-payment of fees). Instead it now has inserted its standardized model into the public sector, where its costs are paid by the government, not families, and it has to meet standards set by the government. But its costs are far beyond what these governments can afford to pay. Coy missed that detail.

Another study of Bridge schools in Liberia was discouraging for Bridge. The condition of the free public schools in Liberia was dismal, which paved the way for outsourcing of schools to private management. About 25% of students in fifth grade could not read a single word in the public schools. It should not be hard to beat that low bar. The study found:

Outsourcing the management of 23 randomly-selected government primary schools in Liberia to Bridge International Academies led to learning gains of 0.35σ after three years, equivalent to reading roughly 2.2 additional words per minute. Beyond learning gains, Bridge increased dropout by more than half and reduced transition to secondary school (overall, Bridge had a -6.53 percentage point effect on the probability of being enrolled in any school after three years). Bridge had no statistically significant impact on corporal punishment and failed to reduced sexual abuse. Overall, any assessment of outsourcing public schools to Bridge must weigh its modest learning gains against its high operating costs and negative effects on access to education via increased dropout.

Bridge raised test scores, but the dropout rate was high, which probably increased test scores. Bridge was too expensive for the Liberian government: in its first year, it cost $640 per year. By year three, the Bridge cost was down to $161 per pupil. The Liberian government’s goal is $50 per pupil per year. This model does not look like the money-maker that its sponsors envisioned.

I first learned about Bridge International Academies when I read an article in the New York Times Magazine called “Can a Tech Start-Up Successfully Educate Children in the Developing World?” An American couple, Shannon May and her husband Jay Kimmelman, along with a third partner, had the audacious idea that a company that provided $5 a month private schools could dramatically disrupt education in Africa while creating a billion-dollar corporation. What was not to like?

Just as titans in Silicon Valley were remaking communication and commerce, Bridge founders promised to revolutionize primary-school education. ‘‘It’s the Tesla of education companies,’’ says Whitney Tilson, a Bridge investor and hedge-fund manager in New York who helped found Teach for America and is a vocal supporter of charter schools.

The Bridge concept — low-cost private schools for the world’s poorest children — has galvanized many of the Western investors and Silicon Valley moguls who learn about the project. Bill Gates, the Omidyar Network, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the World Bank have all invested in the company; Pearson, the multinational textbook-and-assessment company, has done so through a venture-capital fund.…

The company’s pitch was tailor-made for the new generation of tech-industry philanthropists, who are impatient to solve the world’s problems and who see unleashing the free market as the best way to create enduring social change.

The basic idea of the Bridge Schools was standardization. The lessons were written by charter school teachers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then read out loud by Bridge teachers on an e-reader in their classroom. Every teacher taught the same lesson at the same time in the same way, as instructed.

The new study says the concept works. However, it has run into political obstacles. The Bridge idea is opposed not only by teachers’ unions but by every civil society organization in Africa, which opposed the concept of privatizing African public schools. No matter how poorly resourced they are now, they will be destroyed by privatization. If the private companies can”t make money, how long will they stay?

I shared the new Kremer paper with an eminent economist, who responded, in part:

This approach seems crazy to me. Read section 9 of the paper which describes and explains the dramatic downsizing of the endeavor. That section confirms my initial response that the Bridge approach is ultimately likely to do far more harm than good. Shouldn’t young children have an opportunity to learn through play and personal engagement? Moreover, how does the approach deal with the fact that children develop at different rates and have different talents? And why would anyone who cares about children want to teach in such an environment? This is all very scary and disturbing.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg can’t be pleased to see that the model they funded has been reduced from 405 schools to 112 schools. The pupils it is supposed to serve can’t afford the fees. Nor can the governments in the nations where they are located.

Peter Coy should read more carefully before he touts an experiment that has already failed.

We are told again and again by libertarians that the free market solves all problems.

In Africa, it failed to provide better education at a price that families or governments can afford. Africa desperately needs more money for education, not for profits.

Bridge (NewGlobe) is not a model for American schools or the schools of any other nation.

Standardization is for electrical outlets and machines, not for children, teachers and education.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, International, Privatization, Research

Russia Censors a Musician for Playing Forbidden Music

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2022 //
20

We have seen plenty of movies about life in a dictatorship, but this video shows you the real thing. A well-known Russian pianist, Alexei Lubimov, announced a concert a few months ago. He planned to play a work by a famous Ukrainian composer, Valentin Silvestrov, and another by Schubert.

As he was playing, with great brilliance, the police arrived to stop the concert. The pianist insisted on finishing the piece he was playing. As the two policemen stood there, the audience applauded vigorously. Then the police told him they had reports of a bomb on the premises, and they had to stop the performance until bomb-sniffing dogs arrived. The dogs arrived two hours later.

The concert was stopped.

Categories Art, Disruption, International

Why Isn’t the “Parental Rights” Movement Fighting for the Parents of Transgender Youth?

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2022 //
84

At the Network for Public Education conference in Philadelphia on May 1, I moderated a panel to discuss attacks on public schools and the groups behind those attacks. Peter Greene identified a long list of groups that claim to be protecting “parents rights.” Peter described groups such as “Moms for America,” “Moms for Liberty,” “For Kids and Country,” “Parents Defending Education,” and the “National Parents Union,” which seem to be led by women with close ties to Trumpism and funded by the usual rightwing crowd. They asserted ”parent rights” to oppose teaching about race and sex. They insisted that parents have the right to control their children.

They say they are fighting for parental rights, yet they have said nothing about the legislation in several states that sever the rights of the parents of transgender youth.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a conservative Republican, vetoed a bill in his state that eliminates parental rights to seek medical care for their transgender children. The legislature overrode his veto.

“The Republican Party that I grew up with believed in a restrained government that did not jump in the middle of every issue.”

He said transgender health care of young people should be limited to the patient, parents and physicians. “And we ought to yield to that decision making unless there’s a compelling state reason.”

In an attempt to provide context for the trend by Republicans in passing anti-transgender legislation across the country, Hutchinson said there is an overwhelming sense among party members that “there’s undue influence” on young people to reconsider their gender.

But he said, “This was one step way too far and I couldn’t abide by it.”

The “parent rights” groups are silent. They have nothing to say to states that take away the rights of parents of transgender children.

Medical decisions involving children should be made by parents and doctors, not politicians.

Medical decisions affecting adult women should be made by them and their doctors, not by politicians.

Medical decisions affecting adult men should be made by them and their doctors, not politicians.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Disruption, Parent Groups

Massachusetts Poised to Do the Wrong Thing by Taking Over Boston Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2022 //
15

Reader Christine Langhoff sent a warning that the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is poised to take control of the Boston Public Schools. This would be a mistake. No state takeover has ever led to better education. The state is not wiser than the city. If anything, the state education department is far removed from daily practice, as it is simply another bureaucracy. The current board is dominated by advocates of choice. Apparently they are unaware that the root cause of low test scores is poverty. The best the board could do would be to reduce class sizes and to promote the creation of community schools, which makes the school the hub of valuable services for children and families. Such proven strategies are unfamiliar to choice advocates. They prefer a failed approach.

Christine Langhoff wrote:

It seems that MA DESE is poised to place Boston’s public schools under receivership, perhaps by a vote as soon as May 24. Doing so would fulfill the Waltons’ wet dream which has been frustrated since the defeat of ballot Question 2 in 2016, which would have eliminated the charter cap.

The board is appointed by Governor Charlie Baker, whose donors are, of course, the Waltons and the Kochs. Four members of the board have day jobs tied to the Waltons: Amanda Fernández, Latinos for Education; Martin West, Education Next; Paymon Rouhanifard, Propel America; and Jim Peyser, New Schools Venture Fund and the Pioneer Institute. Baker is a lame duck, which may explain the haste to pull this off.

No state takeover has yet been successful, and once a system enters receivership, there is no exit. BESE has pointed to low MCAS scores to say our schools are failures, but Boston’s scores, invalid as they may be during the covid pandemic, are higher that in the three districts the state runs: Lawrence, Holyoke and Southbridge.

The Boston Teachers Union has an action letter if anyone is so inclined to support public education in the city where it originated:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/our-city-our-schools-boston-public-schools-need-resources-not-receivership/?fbclid=IwAR3FA5vSKSZp5PEGedXad-hHlr58RzLy-yNqmmftQO9zS_UBiuMkxAzatHI
Categories Accountability, Boston, Class size, Closing schools, Community Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Massachusetts, Privatization, School Choice
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