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The Tricks of Neoliberal Rhetoric: An Analysis of Betsy DeVos’s Speeches

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2022 //
43

Kerry McKeon recently received her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy from the University of Texas at San Antonio in December of 2021. Her dissertation focused on neoliberal rhetoric and its use in advancing the privatization of public schools. It is titled Neoliberal Discourse and the U.S. Secretary of Education: Discursive Constructs of the Education Agenda (2017-2020).

She writes, in a summary:

Corporate reform of education has taken hold in the U.S., with neoliberal values regularly propagated and normalized—even among some public-school leaders. I witnessed this transition firsthand, beginning as a U.S. Senate aide, and then over decades as classroom teacher. In recent years, one voice has echoed above the rest, as a consequence of her privilege, power, and opportunity: former Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.Listening to her stump again and again for the privatization of public education while pursuing my doctorate in educational leadership and policy, I became fixated on her language choices. The right words can make or break a given argument, and as a teacher, I know that language is the portal to meaning-making. So, I set out to investigate her linguistic and rhetorical strategies, as she sought to drive her neoliberal agenda forward.

Using a corpus of twenty-eight DeVos speeches over her four years in office, I explored the ways she tried to influencethinking around public education in favor of privatization—and how she aimed to normalize and naturalize certain neoliberal beliefs, while minimizing, discrediting, and ignoring other problems and solutions. Given the strength of her platform as education secretary, her messages were often replicated and amplified, while other vital voices in the education community were muted.

While others have explored the causes and effects of neoliberalism’s incursion into public education, little research explores how strategic linguistic maneuvers can reshape American ideas about public education over time. To understand and unpack her persuasive strategy, I identified and mapped thelinguistic formulas and frameworks she used to influence audiences in favor of neoliberalism. When I dissected her speeches, I found neoliberal ideology layered throughout—in everything from her word choices to the personal stories she shared.

For example, DeVos repeatedly expressed disdain for the federal government’s role in education, and advocated more power to individuals and to the private sector. Even with a D.C. officeaddress, she regularly attacked all things “Washington,” including education-advocacy groups, teachers’ unions, and other experts in education policymaking. She also lambasted the elusively defined “elites,” ranging from Democratic political donors to university scholars. While distancing herself from present-day government structures, she averred a near-mythical allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and founding fathers—arguing that current federal oversight in education violates the founders’ intent for the role of government.

Likewise, DeVos expressed economic values that criticize government spending and regulation, while promoting the private sector, marketplace competition, and the rights of the taxpayer. Her economic values were articulated through keywords that celebrate the free market: innovation, results, metrics, efficiency, prosperity—all while presuming that all free-market participantsare equally capable to prosper. In doing so, she disregarded stark and obvious social inequalities that make the market an unequal space.

DeVos eschewed virtually all discussions of inequity, except when it helped her make arguments for school reform or choice. In fact, she regularly employed keywords such as opportunity, choice, freedom and options, and downplayed language relating to economic, racial, or social injustices. DeVos also decentered and discounted teachers and teacher-led classrooms, advocating instead for increased use of classroom technology, including the much-touted personalized learning (technology-enabled learning that is moving schools to a greater reliance on data, data systems and other technology products).

Over and over, DeVos proposed radical change to public schools by rooting educational values in a marketplace reality. In order to do this, she distanced herself from public schools through “othering.” She described public schools as flawed, failing monopolies, consistently underperforming, and failing to innovate. At the same time, she glorified all manner of non-public schools—charter schools, magnet schools, online schools—regardless of their records, eschewing the results and metrics she so strongly promoted elsewhere. And she often plugged a skills-based curriculum with a jobs focus. DeVos sought to create a market of education choices and so-called freedom by depicting families as customers and education as a product, while paying no mind to how communities or the democratic purposes of education may be compromised by a commoditized education system. Rarely did she speak of the important role teachers play in advancing education, and ignored any equalizing effects of education on child poverty. Indeed, she asserted, without evidence, that school-choice fixes all problems with public schools and even went as far as to say that public schools are un-American when choice isn’t an option.

In my exploration of her speeches, I identified a pattern of strategies—a framework—which I call tiered operations for ideological impact that is rooted in how we think and process information. I found that DeVos’s neoliberal ideological language is evident on three levels in her speeches: the micro, the meso, and the macro.

On the micro-level, I found that her word choices delivered a constellation of concepts to the listener. By repeating a set of neoliberal keywords, the scene is set. DeVos aligns educational values with market values, including the belief that school systems should provide “profit opportunities” for capitalists, and the primary outcome of education is to produce employees with skills employable in the free market. She continues by dividing people and things into divisive categories like good or bad, friends or enemies. Just like a novelist focuses on character development, DeVos instructs her audience on who to love and who to fear. In her narrative, the public school system is a disaster. Her anointed heroes want to dismantle the system, while her anointed villains wish to protect it. DeVos is creative with word-formation, whereby two or more words are combined to create a word cluster. These blends are sometimes charged, seeking to provoke audience anxiety or anger. For example, her phrase “the shrill voices of the education lobby” may trigger the sensation of high pitched voices or scraping chalk on a blackboard). Conversely, the blends are sometimes intended to inspire (so-called, hooray words) and thereby assist in the marketing of her ideas to her audience. In both cases, the word clusters impact the way the brain processes information by blending two concepts into a new, unified concept.

On the meso-level, she uses topics to organize her individual speeches, selecting which topics are included or left out, which topics are foregrounded or backgrounded. Through her argumentation strategy, she asserts that opponents of school choice are attacking core American values such as freedom, patriotism, and human rights. By promoting such a polarized perspective, DeVos flattens the complexity of issues, to offer a simpler version of the world in line with her own perspectives. The process of limiting audience attention to a smaller focus is known as windowing. In the current discursive climate, where individuals are exposed to huge amounts of information every day, windowing is one way to manage information overload and guide an audience to embrace a particular worldview.

On the macro-level, DeVos uses her speeches to align with the cultural climate of the current historical moment. Of particular note are ways DeVos engages in relentless “othering.” She depicts a society divided between patriots who value educational freedom and choice, and a corrupt elite who value public education in the form of community schools. Her biased and misleading claims contribute to a crisis of confidence in education. She promotespublic education as a commodity to be bought and sold in a competitive marketplace, rather than as a collective common good. She elevates choice, while humanitarian discourse is undervalued. In the process, she damages the reputation of public education, contributing to the erosion of America’s commitment to public schools an equalizing institution.

Essentially, her discursive strategies amount to a cognitive suppression of certain humanitarian, social-justice values.Furthermore, DeVos participated in populist, anti-elite, and anti-establishment discourses by positioning the privatization of education as a grassroots effort to overthrow an oppressive system. In addition, she embraces an anti-expert and anti-intellectual worldview, as she attacks education advocates, teachers, local leaders, while elevating the education outsider: the education entrepreneur. These post-truth discourses characteristically appeal to emotion and partisanship over reason and rationality. DeVos may also be furthering anti-democratic work by disparaging others in the democratic process, including public schools and teachers’ unions.

Some might highlight that DeVos’s legislative accomplishments were few. Yet, ideological acceptance almost always comes before policy change. Thus, her impact may reveal itself in time. While she failed to meaningfully impact federal law in favor of neoliberalism, she succeeded in further normalizing ideas that continue to be taken up by Republican-led state legislatures. She succeeded in shifting the federal discussion on education from matters of equity and inclusion, to delivering a manifesto on the importance of flexibility, choice, and opportunity. Increasingly, Americans are more focused on individual educational needs than the needs of the larger community. She also reframed the shortcomings of public schools as an existential threat. By invoking a narrative of crisis and a politics of fear, she commands an increased power of persuasion and betrays the possibility of pursuing more practical, modest, and cooperative modes of change.

Neoliberal political and cultural values that currently inform education policy creation can be identified and decoded, by deconstructing and analyzing the political speech of prominent actors like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. A close look at her speeches revealed various cognitive triggers that attempt to persuade audiences. DeVos’s political speech contributes to a symphony of powerful voices in the education-policy community, whose messages are replicated and amplified, while other vital voices in the education community are muted. Public education advocates would do well to learn more about the rhetorical strategies through which neoliberal ideology is promoted

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Language, School Choice, Vouchers

Illinois: Legislature Bans Testing of Young Children

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2022 //
13

A big win for all those opposed to the mandatory testing of very young children.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 11, 2022

Samay Gheewala, 312-380-6324, info@ilfps.org

IL LEGISLATURE PASSES ‘TOO YOUNG TO TEST’ ACT

Bill will safeguard grades PreK-2nd from state testing

Young children will be protected from any current or future plans to expand state standardized testing into prekindergarten through second grade if Governor Pritzker signs a new Too Young To Test law passed by the Illinois General Assembly this session.

The Too Young To Test bill, SB 3986, received broad and bipartisan support from legislators and a coalition of Illinois parents, educators, researchers, and advocacy orgs concerned about the possible encroachment of the state testing system into PreK-2. The Too Young To Test bill prevents the state from requiring or paying for any non-diagnostic standardized testing of children before third grade.

“Too Young To Test seeks to safeguard the early years by ensuring that the Illinois State Board of Education does not spend finite resources or require standardized assessments in K-2 that have been proven to be developmentally inappropriate during such a fluid time of child development.” said State Senator Cristina Pacione-Zayas (D-Chicago), the bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate. “Instead, the state should invest in research-based practices that support whole child development such as play-based learning, social-emotional skill building, and teacher coaching. Especially after the unprecedented disruptions of these last two years, we cannot forget that the same part of the brain that registers stress and trauma is also responsible for memory and learning.”

“Our decisions about state standardized testing should reflect evidence-based research and provide reliable data,” chief House sponsor of SB 3986 State Representative Lindsey LaPointe (D-Chicago) said. “Encouraging schools to focus on unreliable standardized tests for children too young will change the focus of classroom instruction and create further inequity. We need to direct our education resources and energy toward proven strategies that enrich the classroom experience for our youngest learners.”

Assessment experts, teachers, and early childhood researchers all agree that test scores from children below age eight are not statistically reliable or valid measures of what children know and can do and should not be used to assess academic achievement or school performance.

Despite this, the Illinois State Board of Education has been considering a proposal to add optional, state-funded K-2 testing in Illinois to the existing 3-8th grade tests. That proposal has been unpopular with parents and teachers. A petition from grassroots public ed advocacy group Illinois Families for Public Schools calling on ISBE to drop the plan garnered over 1300 signatures from parents and community members in over 150 towns and cities across Illinois.

Too Young To Test wouldn’t restrict the ability of districts, schools, and teachers to use or develop assessments paid for with local funding dollars. It also does not stop the state from creating or funding tests or evaluations used for screening or diagnostic purposes.

Since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, overtesting has become a significant problem in early elementary school because younger students are being prepped for high-stakes tests in later grades. “We are relieved and encouraged by the General Assembly’s action to set clear criteria for what types of assessment the state can develop, fund and require before third grade.” said Cassie Creswell, director of Illinois Families for Public Schools.

“Before age eight, and even after, kids should be learning via play, exploration and inquiry, and the way teachers assess what they’ve learned should reflect that. What parents want for their children is small classes with teachers who use meaningful assessment methods, not more contracts with commercial test vendors,” added Creswell. “Governor Pritzker has said he’s committed to Illinois becoming the best state in the nation for families raising young children, and we think the Too Young To Test bill is an important part of fulfilling that. We hope we can count on him to sign this bill into law as soon as it gets to his desk.”

Too Young to Test was supported by a broad coalition of organizations, including the Chicago Teachers Union, Defending the Early Years, Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois School Counselor Association, Learning Disabilities Association of IL, and the National Association of Social Workers – IL Chapter.

###

About Illinois Families for Public Schools

Illinois Families for Public Schools (IL-FPS) is a grassroots advocacy group that represents the interests of families who want to defend and improve Illinois public schools. Founded in 2016, IL-FPS’ efforts are key to giving public ed parents and families a real voice in Springfield on issues like standardized testing, student data privacy, school funding and more. IL-FPS reaches families and public school supporters in more than 100 IL House districts. More at ilfps.org.

Categories Childhood, Education Industry, Education Reform, Illinois, Standardized Testing

Tom Ultican: What I Saw at the NPE Conferences I Attended

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2022 //
6

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics, lives in California. He has attended every annual conference of the Network for Public Education, except for the first one in Austin, Texas. He met many of the people whose work he admired, and he left fired up to do his part in the struggle to save public schools from the privatizers. Now he has become one of the bloggers that everyone wants to meet! Join us in Philadelphia and share the enthusiasm!

Tom writes:

In 2014, the first Network for Public Education (NPE) Conference was held at Austin, Texas. My first conference was the following year in Chicago. That was the year after the late Karen Lewis and the Chicago teachers union decided enough is enough and stood strong against a host of privatizers and education profiteers. Their powerful teachers’ union victory sent ripples of hope to educators across America. That year, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Mercedes Schneider, Peter Greene, Jennifer Berkshire, Jose Vilson, Jan Resseger and many other pro-public education activists dominated social media.

NPE Chicago was held in the fabulous historic Drake hotel just up the street from Lake Michigan. When walking into the lobby, I was greeted by Anthony Cody the co-founder of NPE. Steve Singer from Pennsylvania and T.C. Weber from Tennessee arrived just after I did. During the conference, it seemed I met all of the leading education activists in America.

Particularly memorable was lunch the following day. I met Annie Tan in the hallway heading to lunch and she said let’s get a seat near the stage. So, I followed her to an upfront table. Turned out our table mates included Adell Cothorne the Noyes Elementary school principal famous for exposing Michelle Rhee’s DC test cheating. Jenifer Berkshire who had unmasked herself as the Edu-Shyster was also at the table. The Curmugducator, Peter Greene, and his wife were there as was well known education blogger and author Jose Vilson.

It strangely turned out that Greene, his wife, Vilson and I were all trombone players. Of course, everyone knows that trombone players are the coolest members of the band.

A highlight of NPE 2015 was the entertaining hour long presentation by Yong Zhao. He is the internationally decorated professor of education who had just published Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon.

Zhao’s presentation focused on the harm caused by standards and testing. He also made fun of the concept of being college ready and the recently broached kindergarten readiness was a new abomination making the rounds. Zhou made the logical observation that it was schools that needed to ready for the children. He also shared that what he wanted for his children was “out of my basement readiness.” Zhao claimed that on a recent trip to Los Angeles that he met Kim Kardashian in an elevator. He observed that she clearly had “out of my basement readiness.”

NPE 2016 in Raleigh, North Carolina

We met in the spring for the 3rd NPE conference. There was some thought about cancelling in the wake of North Carolina passing anti-transgender bathroom legislation. I am glad we didn’t. Many disrespected North Carolina teachers came to our hotel in the large downtown convention center complex to report and be encouraged. It was a great venue and I met more amazing people who taught me a lot.

The Reverend William Barber’s “poor people campaign” was leading the fight against the kind of cruel legislation emanating from the capital building an easy walk up the street. Barber might be America’s most inspirational speaker. His keynote address fired up the conference.

A major highlight for me was meeting Andrea Gabor. She is a former staff writer and editor for both Businessweek and U.S. News ξ World Report and is currently the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College. Gabor is also one America’s leading experts on W. Edward Deming’s management theories which are credited with the rise of Toyota among other successes. She was there leading a workshop based on the research she did in New Orleans which eventually led to her 2018 book “After the Education Wars; How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.”

Gabor was an agnostic concerning charter schools when she went to New Orleans. Her experience there gave her insight into how damaging the privatization agenda had become. A New Orleans parent accompanying Gabor described how during her eighth-grade year she was in a class with 55-students. Their room was not air-conditioned and they were restricted to running the fan 10-minutes each hour to save on electrical costs. With the promise of never before seen large scale spending on schools in black communities, residents did not care about the governance structure. It was the first significant spending on education in their neighborhoods in living memory. Now, they have no public schools left and choice is turning out to mean the schools chose which students they want.

NPE 2017 in Oakland, California

In early fall, we gathered at the Marriot hotel in the Oakland flats. The first evening, smoke from the big Napa fire made being outside uncomfortable. That night, KPFA radio hosted an event at a local high school featuring Diane Ravitch in conversation with Journey for Justice (J4J) leader, Jitu Brown. Two years earlier, Brown led the successful 34-day hunger strike to save Dyett High School from being shuttered by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. J4J, Bats, NEA, Black Lives Matter at School, AFT, Parents Across America and many other organizations had representative both attending and presenting.

When leaving the inspiring session with Jitu and Diane, I ran into San Diego Superintendent of Schools, Cindy Marten. A San Diego teacher carpooling with me had what appeared to be a heated exchange with Marten. However, when Marten was appointed Deputy Secretary of Education by Joe Biden, that same teacher lauded her saying “don’t worry my Superintendent will take care of us.”

We were one of two conventions that weekend at the Marriott. The other was sponsored by the nascent California marijuana industry. When returning to my room in the evenings, the sweet smell of pot wafted down the hallways but as far as I know there were no free samples.

In the main hall, a Seattle kindergarten teacher, Susan DeFresne, put up a series of posters that covered all of one very long wall. Her artwork depicted the history of institutional racism in U.S. schools. Six months later Garn Press published this art in the book The History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools.

In Oakland, I saw a new younger leadership appearing. It is also where I met activists, board members and researchers from Oakland who would become invaluable sources for my articles about the public schools they are fighting desperately to save.

One of our keynote speakers was a recipient of the 2017 MacArthur Genius award, Nicolle Hanna-Jones. Today everyone knows about her because of the 1619 Project.

NPE 2018 in Indianapolis, Indiana

Indianapolis was a trip into Mind Trust madness and home of the second most privatized public education system in America. Diane Ravitch jubilantly opened the conference declaring, “We are the resistance and we are winning!”

Famed Finnish educator, Pasi Sahlberg, was one the first featured speakers. He labeled the business centric education privatization agenda the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) and buttressed Ravitch’s declaration stating,

“You are making progress. The global situation is getting better.”

One of the most visible people at NPE 2018 was founding board member Phyllis Bush. She was dealing with the ravages of cancer and seemed determined not to let it slow her in the least. She had always shown me great consideration so the news of her demise not long after the conference was sad, but in the last years of her life she helped build NPE into a great force for protecting public education.

Last year, I was also saddened to learn that the woman with the walker, Laura Chapman, had died. Her research into the forces attacking Cincinnati’s public schools and the spending nationally to privatize public schools made her a treasure. I really enjoyed our breakfast together in Indianapolis and will miss her.

There were many outstanding small group presentations at NPE 2018. One that I found personally helpful was put on by Darcie Cimarusti, Mercedes Schneider and Andrea Gabor. Darcie did significant research for the NPE report, Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools. In her presentation she demonstrated LittleSis a program she used for her research. It is a free database and orthographic mapping facility. LittleSis is viewed as the antidote to “Big Brother.” Gabor and Schneider shared how they search for non-profit tax forms and explained the differences between an IRS form 990 and form 990 PF, the forms non-profits must file.

Jitu Brown and the Journey for Justice (J4J) came to Indianapolis with a message:

“We are not fooled by the ‘illusion of school choice.’ The policies of the last twenty years, driven more by private interests than by concern for our children’s education, are devastating our neighborhoods and our democratic rights. Only by organizing locally and coming together nationally will we build the power we need to change local, state, and federal policy and win back our public schools.”

J4J introduced their #WeChoose campaign consisting of seven pillars:

  1. A moratorium on school privatization.
  2. The creation of 10,000 community schools.
  3. End zero tolerance policies in public schools now. (Supports restorative justice)
  4. Conduct a national equity assessment.
  5. Stop the attack on black teachers. (In 9 major cities impacted by school privatization there has been a rapid decline in the number of black teachers.)
  6. End state takeovers, appointed school boards and mayoral control.
  7. Eliminate the over-reliance on standardized tests in public schools.

Jitu Brown introduced Sunday morning’s keynote speaker, Jesse Hagopian, as “a freedom fighter who happens to be a teacher.”

In his address, Hagopian listed three demands: (1) End zero tolerance discipline and replace it with restorative justice; (2) Hire more black teachers (he noted there are 26,000 less black teachers since 2010) and (3) Teach ethnic studies including black history.

For me personally, I had the opportunity to cultivate deeper friendships with the many wonderful individuals who I first met at NPE Chicago. That included once again speaking with my personal heroine and friend, Diane Ravitch.

#NPE2022PHILLY

I am excited to see everyone in Philadelphia to ignite a new wave or resistance to billionaire financed efforts aimed at destroying public education.

COVID-19 interrupted our 2020 plan to meet in Philadelphia and again interrupted us twice in 2021. This year we will finally have what promises to be a joyful rejuvenation for the resistance.

I do not think it is too late to be part of it. Go to https://npeaction.org/2022-conference/ and sign up for the conference. It will be the weekend of April 30 – May 1.

As we said in Texas (my home state), y’all come!

Thank you, Tom!

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Resistance

Please Watch a Leading Economist on Charter Schools and Public Policy

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2022 //
5

Several years ago, I endowed a lecture series at my alma mater, Wellesley College, focused on education issues. This year’s lecture will be live-streamed on April 12, and the speaker is Helen Ladd, an emeritus professor at Duke University and one of the nation’s leading economists. I hope you will mark the event on your calendar and tune in.

The Diane Silvers Ravitch ’60 Lecture

How Charter Schools Disrupt Good Education Policy

Tuesday, April 12, 4 p.m. ET

LIVESTREAMED at www.wellesley.edu/live

Speaker: Helen F. Ladd ’67, Susan B. King Professor Emerita of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University

Ladd will draw on her many years of education research and discuss the four central requirements of good education policy in the U.S., and how charter schools, as currently designed and operated, typically do far more to interfere with, rather than to promote, good education policy in the U.S.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Economics, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, U.S. education

Kentucky: Governor Vetoes Charter Funding Bill

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2022 //
25

Kentucky authorized charter schools in 2017 but never approved a funding mechanism.

The Legislature passed a charter funding bill, and Governor Andy Beshear vetoed it.

Beshear struck down House Bill 9, sponsored by House Majority Whip Chad McCoy, on Thursday. The legislation would provide federal, state and local money for charter schools, which have been legal since 2017 but have lacked a permanent funding mechanism, on proportionate per-pupil bases.

“I’m against charter schools,” Beshear said before signing his HB 9 veto. “They are wrong for our commonwealth. They take taxpayer dollars away from the already underfunded public schools in the commonwealth, and our taxpayer dollars should not be redirected to for-profit entities that run charter schools.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Kentucky

NEA: End Federal Funding for Corporate Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2022 //
9

The National Education Association issued an appeal for educators and other concerned citizens: Raise your voice to stop the federal funding of corporate charter schools!

Now is your chance to be heard.

NEA writes:

Email the U.S. Department of Education to advocate for the end of corporate charter schools and support accountability and transparency for all schools taking our tax dollars.

  • All schools that receive public funds should be held to the same excellence, equity, and transparency standards as district-run public schools. The original intent of charter schools was to provide a space for educators to be more flexible and innovative.

Instead, big business boards and billionaires turned it into a money-making machine that benefits only themselves. The growth of these corporate charters has undermined local public schools and communities—taking taxpayer money with no oversight or any overall increase in student learning and growth.

The U.S. Department of Education is taking these very real issues seriously and is proposing an end to the support of corporate charter schools. We applaud this effort, but there will be loud voices paid by the billionaires running these schools to speak out against this positive step.

That’s why we need your voice. You can speak out in support of the Department of Education’s proposal to ban for-profit schools from applying for grants and receiving funds to open charters, and demand that charter schools be held to the same standards as traditional public schools.

You may use the sample message provided, but we encourage you to share your personal stories and examples. Tell the U.S. Department of Education how important it is to you personally that for-profit charter schools be held to the same accountability and transparency rules as public schools.

What is the federal comment period and what can I do to help?

The Department of Education is seeking comments from the public about the proposed standards. When you send your letter through this form, it will be added to the federal register as part of the official request for comments and be made public. Written comments on this final rule should be received on or before April 13, 2022.

You can help by writing a personalized letter detailing stories and examples. The more personal the better!

Open the link to see the sample letter and instructions about contacting the Department of Education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit

Billy Townsend: Ron DeSantis And His Corrupt Friend Are a Gift to Trump

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2022 //
13

Billy Townsend remembers Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s servile devotion to Trump while he was president. Now DeSantis is positioning himself to run for President against the old fool in 2024. But Ron D. has a serious liability: his continued friendship with a corrupt lobbyist for the charter industry.

DeSantis…banished Ralph Arza in 2018 from the sight of his campaign with much public dudgeon, for a pretty good reason: Ralph is a convicted criminal witness tamperer kicked out of the Legislature for making drunken, threatening, racial-slur filled phone calls. Ralph also happens to be director of governmental affairs for the Florida Charter School Alliance (FCSA) and chief political hit man for the Florida charter school industry…

Since DeSantis appointed Richard Corcoran, Ralph has been acting as the de facto second in command at the collapsing DeSantis Florida Department of Education, which has been run by disgraced, outgoing Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran. Corcoran once told me face-to-face he considers Ralph a “friend.”

Ralph is also a crucial figure in the ongoing DoE/Jefferson/MGT consultant bid-rigging scandal. Four of Ralph’s relatives worked for the Academica-owned charter school that Sen. Manny Diaz and Richard Corcoran forced on Jefferson County before it quit. And Ralph was present for no good reason during a potentially corrupt official meeting last fall, first reported by the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald. Full rundown of Ralph’s still not fully explained role in it here.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit

Billy Townsend: Florida Pol Blames Community for Failure of His Employer’s Charter School

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2022 //
2

Billy Townsend is an acerbic critic of Florida charter scandals and the state commissioner Richard Corcoran, whose wife runs a charter school. He never runs out of material.

In this post, he tells the story of a politician, Manny Diaz, who works for a charter chain, blaming a struggling community for the failure of his employer’s charter school, which was launched with much razzle-dazzle.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Lies

“In the Public Interest”: Time to Regulate the Federal Charter School Slush Fund

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2022 //
2

The nonprofit, nonpartisan group “In the Public Interest” explains the need to regulate the $440 million federal Charter Schools Program, which is awash in waste, fraud, and abuse.

Did you know that the federal government spends $440 million every year to help start privately run charter schools?

Did you know that some of that money ends up in the hands of people who never actually open schools or open them and quickly close them? And that some goes to charter schools run by for-profit organizations in communities that do not want them.

Some even goes to charter schools with a history of worsening racial segregation and others that exclude, by policy or practice, students with disabilities and students who are English Language Learners.

That’s why it’s a big deal that Department of Education just proposed new rules to reform its funding program.

And why YOU, as an individual and/or an organization, need to send a comment in support of the department’s proposed changes.

Please open this link and comment or attach a letter (the deadline is April 13).

Make sure you write that you support the proposed changes. Try to personalize it as much as you can. Talk about how charter schools are impacting your school district or how they might if they started opening and taking away public school dollars. (Here’s a post from education historian Diane Ravitch with more on what to write.)

If you’re short on time, just say who you are and that you support the changes.

Here are the most important proposed reforms:

  • A proposed charter school would need to divulge how it will impact the local school district, including finances, demographics, and educational needs.
  • A proposed charter school would need to demonstrate how it would serve the local community.
  • Charter schools operated by for-profit organizations would no longer be eligible for funding.

The charter school industry is fighting the new regulations with all they’ve got. Opinion pieces are echoing across right-wing media.

Let the Department of Education know they are supported. Comment before April 13. It will only take a few minutes.

If you need help writing a comment, don’t hesitate to email us.

Keep in touch,

Jeremy Mohler
Communications Director
In the Public Interest

P.S. We have a new website!!!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, U.S. Department of Education

Carol Burris: What the Proposed Regulations for the Federal Charter Schools Program Really Say

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2022 //
10

Charter school lobbyists have poured out lamentations about the U.S. Department of Education’s proposals to regulate the federal Charter Schools Program, which gives out $440 million to open new charter schools or expand existing charter schools. These lamentations are false, because the regulations have no effect at all on the 7,000+ existing charter schools. They are a good faith effort to clean up a program that has been riddled with waste, fraud and abuse, a program in which nearly 40% of the funding goes to charter schools that either never open or close soon after opening. The CSP under Betsy DeVos was a slush fund for large charter chains, which was far from its original intent in 1994, when it offered a few million to help jump-start mom-and-pop charters or teacher-led charters.

Carol Burris writes here, on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post, about the falsehoods now promulgated by the charter lobby in their desperate effort to protect for-profit charter schools and to avoid the need to analyze the impact of new charters in the community where they intend to locate.

Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes:

For the first time since the federal Charter Schools Program was established in 1994, the U.S. Department of Education is setting forth meaningful regulations for its grant applicants. While these proposed rules are aimed at ensuring greater transparency and control on how nearly a half-billion tax dollars are spent each year, charter supporters oppose them. We’ve also seen objections to reform — many of which I believe are misinformed — in op-eds, including those in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the New York Post (though these don’t all mention the same concerns). What follows is an explanation of the program and why these regulations are needed to protect taxpayers as well as the families who use charter schools.

Let’s begin with an explanation of the CSP. The program began in 2006. It is a competitive program that, among other things, gives awards to states, charter chains (known as CMOs), and sometimes directly to charter school developers to open or expand a charter school. The CSP program does not determine which charter schools can open and which cannot. The majority of charter schools that have opened over the past few decades never received a penny from the CSP. The average grant to a school is $499,818, although charter chains have received hundreds of millions of dollars.

Congress mandates that the Education Department give away a large proportion of the money appropriated to the program each year. The rush to spend the money helps explain why low-rated schools can get grants and unqualified or deceitful applicants whose schools never open can dip into those federal funds for planning. The mandate to spend the money is a problem only Congress can fix. Nevertheless, the proposed regulations would put in some solid rules of the road to better protect the tax dollars that are spent. What follows is an explanation of what the proposed regulations say and do not say.

*The proposed regulations say charter schools that for-profit operators fully or substantially control would not be eligible to get grants. They do not say that charter schools cannot use for-profit vendors.

The federal definition of a public school under the federal laws IDEA (Individuals With Disabilities Education Act] and ESEA (the Every Student Succeeds Act) is that it must be a nonprofit. When the department challenged for-profit charter schools in Arizona over a decade ago, the for-profits created nonprofit facades to allow the for-profit and its related organizations to run the charter school and still receive federal funds, including CSP dollars.

The present provisions in the CSP are not now strong enough to close this loophole; thus, the proposed regulations say:

Each charter school receiving CSP funding must provide an assurance that it has not and will not enter into a contract with a for-profit management organization, including a nonprofit management organization operated by or on behalf of a for-profit entity, under which the management organization exercises full or substantial administrative control over the charter school and, thereby, the CSP project.

Why is this important? Because for-profits have used CSP dollars to enrich their bottom line at the expense of students for years. I offer as examples the recent CSP expansion grant awarded to Torchlight Academy Charter School of North Carolina, which is now being shut down, as well as a grant to Capital Collegiate Preparatory Academy of Ohio, which has been passed from one for-profit operator to another.

The State Comptroller of New York specifically chided a school run by the for-profit National Heritage Academies (NHA) in New York for letting NHA take oversized fees for its services. NHA uses its schools to acquire and sell real estate and operates them with “sweeps contracts,” requiring the school to pass all or nearly all funding and operational control to NHA.

When taxpayer dollars go into the pockets of owners or corporations, fewer dollars go into the classroom for students.

Some argue that public schools do business with private vendors for books or transportation and that is true. However, the relationship between a for-profit management organization (EMO) is quite different from the relationship between a vendor who works with a district or a charter school to provide a discreet service. A school or district can sever a bus contract and still have a building, desks, curriculum, and teachers. This is not the case when a sweeps contract is in place. In cases where charter schools have attempted to fire the for-profit operator, they find it impossible to do without destroying the schools in the process. And public schools are subject to bidding laws to ensure that nepotism does not drive vendor choice. Charter schools are not.

13 ways charter schools shape their enrollment

The Network for Public Education identified more than 440 charter schools operated by a for-profit that received CSP grants totaling approximately $158 million between 2006 and 2017, including CSP grants to schools managed with for-profit sweeps contracts. It is a way to evade the law, and it must stop. It is remarkable that the IRS has not, to date, stepped in.

*The proposed regulations say an applicant must include an analysis of school enrollment in the area from which it would draw students. Regulations do not say that grants only go to charter schools in districts facing over-enrollment.

More than one in four parents who walk their kindergartners into a new charter school will have to find another school for their children by the time they reach the fifth grade. That is how alarming the charter closure rate is. Over one in four closes during the first five years; by year 10, 40% are gone. Between 1999 and 2017, nearly 1 million children were displaced due to the closure of their schools.

One of the primary reasons charters close is under-enrollment — they cannot attract enough students to their school to keep it going. Sometimes that occurs because of school quality. But often, it happens because a new, shiny charter school with great marketing opens nearby and draws students away.

New Orleans, a district where virtually all nonprivate schools are charter schools, is facing a crisis because they allowed the charter sector to grow out of control; they no longer have sufficient enrollment, and the district cannot force schools to merge because they are charter, not district-run, schools.

The proposed regulations do not preclude applicants who want to open a charter school in a district already saturated with public and charter schools from getting a CSP grant. It simply asks them to provide information on enrollment trends — specifically:

include any over-enrollment of existing public schools or other information that demonstrates demand for the charter school, such as evidence of demand for specialized instructional approaches.

In other words, it is asking the applicant to make their case for why the school is needed. That information will be used by reviewers of applications when they evaluate applications and rank them. Sounds like common sense to me.

*The proposed regulations say that applicants must provide assurances that they would not get in the way of district-mandated or voluntary desegregation efforts. They do not say that you cannot open a charter in a non-diverse or economically disadvantaged neighborhood.

Charter schools have been magnets for white flight from integrated schools in some places. Other charter schools attract high-achieving students while discouraging students with special needs from attending. In this letter submitted to the Department of Education last year, 67 public education advocacy and civil rights groups provided documentation that the North Carolina SE CSP sub-grants were awarded to charter schools that actively exacerbated segregation, serving in some cases as white flight academies.

The proposed regulations clarify that an application from “racially and socio-economically segregated or isolated communities would still be eligible for funding.” Nevertheless, it is repeated over and over in editorials that schools in non-diverse neighborhoods would not apply as well as “schools that don’t prioritize racial diversity,” a polite way to refer to white flight charters.

*The regulations do not say charter schools must engage in a cooperative activity with districts. The regulations state that they may receive some bonus points on their application if they do.

According to the op-ed in the Wall St. Journal: “The administration also plans to require applicants to ‘collaborate’ with a traditional public school or school district on an ‘activity’ such as transportation or curriculum.” It doesn’t, actually.

When deciding which schools get a grant, reviewers rate applications using a point system. Every grant cycle, the department puts forth priorities as a way for applicants to get a few bonus points on their applications. The majority of schools get CSP grants without them.

The regulations propose two priorities. One gives points if the school is commonly referred to as a “community school.” The second provides points to schools that work cooperatively with a district on a transportation plan, curriculum, or another project. Neither priority is required to apply for or to receive a grant.

The 72 pages of proposed regulations are tedious reading. Because they apply to three separate programs in the CSP, there is much repetition. But the details matter. Read the new regulations. You can see the Network for Public Education’s statement of support for them here, and submit your own comments before April 13, 2022.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Lies, U.S. Department of Education
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