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Wake-Up, New Hampshire! Koch and ALEC Import “Young Americans for Liberty” to Cancel Democracy

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2024 //
3

New Hampshire is under siege by Koch-funded libertarians who want to eliminate public services, government and democracy.

Former State Senator Jeanne Dietsch issues a warning about this invasion. New Hampshire already has a “Free State Movement” that promotes anti-government sentiment and elects representatives to the Legislature to oppose any government services.

Now comes Koch money and ALEC plans to advance the movement of selfish individualism.

Log on to Granite State Matters to watch a 17-minute video about the siege of New Hampshire.

In her newsletter, she reports:

“Wake Up NH” News Update

Teams are powering up! Will we alert enough people in time?

More people are waking up to the millions pouring into New Hampshire to buy our elections. Seats were full at all the “Wake Up” presentations in key swing districts. In its first two weeks, the Wake Up video has had hundreds of views. Over 500 copies of “NH: Battleground in the Fight to Dismantle Democracy” have already been distributed for reading and passing along. Five percent are in Spanish. Even as I am writing this, someone called asking for more books.

Many New Hampshire residents do not even know who the Free Staters are. Or they think they are just gentle, harmless hippies who want to smoke weed and shoot guns. They do not realize that FSP “movers” are urged to run for town office shortly after they arrive. As they move into positions of power in towns, they defund police, libraries and other town services. At the county level, they privatize nursing homes. Residents reliant only on Medicare or Medicaid are forced to leave. At the state level, they use tax funds for vouchers and deny taxpayers the right to audit or quality-control the recipients. All in the name of “Liberty.”

State Representative candidates used to spend less than $1000 on an average campaign even five years ago. Now, in swing districts, Young Americans for Liberty pays students to canvass, telephone and postcard for their priorities and their candidates; 25,825 doors, 118,800 phone calls and 21,755 mailers in 2022. One Democratic candidate reported that he raised $30,000, but his “liberty” opponent was given $70,000 in campaign funds.

Who are the ‘Liberty’ promoters?

The number of Free Staters and Liberty Alliance members in New Hampshire is small. At the annual NH Liberty Forum, fewer than 300 people attended, and some of those were from out-of-state. But the desire to turn New Hampshire into their model “Libertarian Homeland” is intense.

Walking into the Forum felt a little like walking into the Red Sox bleachers with a Yankees cap on. But almost everyone was very polite. The most common complaint was “Why didn’t you put me on your extremist list?” The ones already on the list sported yellow buttons proudly announcing the fact. I explained that they can apply through the signup button. A few have. They seem to believe that announcing they want to end democracy in our state will increase their popularity. The message is reinforced in their social media and clubs.

I found that FSPers love to discuss the reasons they detest majority rule by democracy. They seem unconcerned about the consequences of removing environmental regulations. They did not expect billionaires’ 10,000:1 spending advantage over the median American would be a problem.Turning NH into the ‘Wild West’

When asked to name an example of a Libertarian Utopia, Free Staters often cite the “Wild West.” Before becoming states, these territories had little formal law and even less enforcement. Survival of the fittest, or the best armed, ruled.

What they never mention, however, is settlers’ encroachment upon native people. These original residents were pushed out or moved onto reservations so settlers could have their “liberty.”

In Prospera, a flagship libertarian project in Honduras, poor, native Hondurans are being bought out. Peter Thiel and other VCs have bought a third of the island, now privately governed. A newly elected Honduran government is trying to get rid of them, but the billionaires have taken the nation to World Bank arbitration. 

Libertarians in New Hampshire want to push current residents out…

Everyone can do something to stop libertarians 

[Jeanne recommends actions here.]


We currently have 94 YAL members in the NH legislature. Whether you are housebound, shy or broke, you can still help wake up your friends, neighbors, communities and networks…

Still time for May 14 town meeting & ballot candidate filing

  • Ballot April 9 Towns Deliberative session & candidate filing past
  • Town Meeting May 14 Candidate filing, Mar 27-Apr 5
  • Ballot May 14 Towns Deliberative Mar 30 – Apr 6; Candidate filing Mar 27- Apr 5

May 14 meeting and ballot towns still have a chance to make sure you have trustworthy pro-democracy candidates for every seat. Even openings for Cemetery Trustee and Planning Board are important. Anti-democracy candidates are coached to start in innocuous positions to build name recognition before running for higher office. Preparing for State Elections

Candidates for state office register June 5-14. Now is the time to ensure that your districts have good options for electable pro-democracy candidates. Remind House candidates that if they have a majority, they can vote the first day of session to allow remote attendance at hearings. This can make a huge difference in the burden of serving. How to Identify Anti-democracy Candidates

How can voters identify those trying to thwart democracy? Watch for a candidate who wants to:

  • DEFUND, CLOSE, OR TOTALLY DEREGULATE what they’re elected to run. For instance, a zoning board candidate might point out a harmful zoning law and then conclude that all zoning regulations should be repealed.
  • HARASS OR THREATEN those managing the town, county, or other employees. For instance, they may demand extra reviews, audits, copies, meetings, or forms.
  • PROMOTE anti-intellectual and anti-scientific attitudes and policies, for instance, encouraging the legalization of inappropriate medications.
  • HIDE FROM TAXPAYER SCRUTINY the use or outcomes from taxpayer spending, such as educational vouchers.
  • MAKE ELECTIONS & VOTING MORE DIFFICULT by requiring hand counts, unusual documentation, complicating absentee voting and so on.

If you identify new candidates who meet these crtieria, please let us know so we can add them to the watch list.

*******************

News about Concord
Muzzle-the-people bill goes down in flames! 

A bipartisan majority of the NH House voted 211-129 to “indefinitely postpone” HB 1479. This was an ALEC look-alike bill being pushed across the nation to muzzle any state or local official from testifying. It would have barred any advocate from a membership organization, like NH Municipal Association, from testifying for or against laws that affected towns. It would have barred staff of any nonprofit that took a state grant from testifying on behalf of children, or mentally ill or whomever they represent.
     Sean Themea came to NH last week to speak at the NH Liberty Forum. Themea is COO of the Texas-based, Koch-funded Young 

Americans for Liberty, Texas resident Themea asked the NH audience to support HB 1479. He stated that the bill would keep lobbyists funded by NH DOT from asking to increase gas taxes. NH road maintenance funding has been flat over 12 years. But higher gas taxes eat into petroleum demand and profits.
  The bill’s impacts would have far exceeded petro profits. HB 1479 would have muzzled the voices of NH teachers, town officials, and activists not funded by plutocrats.
    This was not “Liberty” legislation. It was a pay-to-have-your-say bill. And the NH House defeated it, soundly, bipartisanly! The following people voted “Nay”, meaning they supported this look-alike bill put forward by plutocrats to muzzle those who oppose their interests:

Alexander, Joe, Hills. 29
Ammon, Keith, Hills. 42
Ankarberg, Aidan, Straf. 7
Aron, Judy, Sull. 4
Aures, Cyril, Merr. 13
Avellani, Lino, Carr. 4
Aylward, Deborah, Merr. 5
Bailey, Glenn, Straf. 2
Ball, Lorie, Rock. 25
Bean, Harry, Belk. 6
Belcher, Mike, Carr. 4
Berezhny, Lex, Graf. 11
Berry, Ross, Hills. 39
Bickford, David, Straf. 3
Boyd, Stephen, Merr. 10
Brown, Richard, Carr. 3
Burnham, Claudine, Straf. 2
Coker, Matthew, Belk. 2
Comtois, Barbara, Belk. 7
Connor, James, Straf. 19
Corcoran, Travis, Hills. 44
Cordelli, Glenn, Carr. 7
Costable, Michael, Carr. 8
Davis, Arnold, Coos 2
DeSimone, Debra, Rock. 18
Dolan, Tom, Rock. 16
Doucette, Fred, Rock. 25
Drago, Mike, Rock. 4
Dumais, Russell, Belk. 6
Dunn, Ron, Rock. 16
Erf, Keith, Hills. 28
Ford, Oliver, Rock. 3
Gagne, Larry, Hills. 16
Gorski, Ted, Hills. 2
Gould, Linda, Hills. 2
Granger, Michael, Straf. 2
Greeson, Jeffrey, Graf. 6
Griffin, Gerald, Hills. 42
Harrington, Michael, Straf. 18
Harvey-Bolia, Juliet, Belk. 3
Hill, Gregory, Merr. 2
Hoell, J.R., Merr. 27
Janigian, John, Rock. 25
Janvrin, Jason, Rock. 40
Kaczynski, Thomas, Straf. 5
Kelley, Diane, Hills. 32
Kennedy, Stephen, Hills. 13
Kenny, Catherine, Hills. 13
Khan, Aboul, Rock. 30
King, Seth, Coos 4
Kofalt, Jim, Hills. 32
Kuttab, Katelyn, Rock. 17
Ladd, Rick, Graf. 5
Lascelles, Richard, Hills. 14
Layon, Erica, Rock. 13
Leavitt, John, Merr. 10
Lekas, Alicia, Hills. 38
Lekas, Tony, Hills. 38
Lewicke, John, Hills. 36
Love, David, Rock. 13
Lynn, Bob, Rock. 17
Mannion, Dennis, Rock. 25
Mannion, Tom, Hills. 1
Mazur, Lisa, Hills. 44

McConkey, Mark, Carr. 8
McGough, Tim, Hills. 12
McGuire, Carol, Merr. 27
McGuire, Dan, Merr. 14
McLean, Mark, Hills. 15
Moffett, Michael, Merr. 4
Nagel, David, Belk. 6
Newton, Clifford, Straf. 6
Noble, Kristin, Hills. 2
Notter, Jeanine, Hills. 12
Nutting, Zachary, Ches. 11
Osborne, Jason, Rock. 2
Ouellet, Mike, Coos 3
Pauer, Diane, Hills. 36
Pearson, Mark, Rock. 34
Pearson, Stephen, Rock. 13
Perez, Kristine, Rock. 16
Peternel, Katy, Carr. 6
Phillips, Emily, Rock. 7
Phinney, Brandon, Straf. 9
Ploszaj, Tom, Belk. 1
Polozov, Yury, Merr. 10
Popovici-Muller, Daniel, Rock. 17
Porcelli, Susan, Rock. 19
Post, Lisa, Hills. 42
Potenza, Kelley, Straf. 19
Potucek, John, Rock. 13
Pratt, Kevin, Rock. 4
Prudhomme-O’Brien, Katherine, Rock. 13
Qualey, James, Ches. 18
Quaratiello, Arlene, Rock. 18
Reid, Karen, Hills. 27
Rhodes, Jennifer, Ches. 17
Roy, Terry, Rock. 31
Santonastaso, Matthew, Ches. 18
Seaworth, Brian, Merr. 12
See, Alvin, Merr. 26
Seidel, Sheila, Hills. 29
Sellers, John, Graf. 18
Sheehan, Vanessa, Hills. 43
Simon, Matthew, Graf. 1
Sirois, Shane, Hills. 32
Smart, Lisa, Belk. 2
Smith, Jonathan, Carr. 5
Smith, Steven, Sull. 3
Soti, Julius, Rock. 35
Spillane, James, Rock. 2
Spilsbury, Walter, Sull. 3
Stapleton, Walter, Sull. 6
Stone, Jonathan, Sull. 8
Summers, James, Rock. 20
Tenczar, Jeffrey, Hills. 1
Terry, Paul, Belk. 7
Thomas, Douglas, Rock. 16
True, Chris, Rock. 9
Tudor, Paul, Rock. 1
Turcotte, Len, Straf. 4
Ulery, Jordan, Hills. 13
Verville, Kevin, Rock. 2
Vose, Michael, Rock. 5
Wallace, Scott, Rock. 8
Walsh, Thomas, Merr. 10
Wherry, Robert, Hills. 13
Wood, Clayton, Merr. 13
Yokela, Josh, Rock. 32

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Copyright © 2024 Granite State Matters, All rights reserved.

Categories ALEC, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Citizenship, Dark Money, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Koch Brothers, New Hampshire, Privatization

Josh Cowen Warns Pennsylvania: Beware the Voucher Hoax!

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2024 //
4

Josh Cowen of Michigan State University is a veteran voucher scholar. He has been doing voucher research for nearly two decades. For years, he was hopeful about the outcomes for students. He recently realized that the results were appalling. Students who took vouchers and left their public school actually lost ground academically. The real benefits of vouchers went to students who were already enrolled in private schools; their family, which could afford the tuition, won a subsidy from the state. In some states, even wealthy parents won a state subsidy for their children. vouchers do not help poor students; instead, they are harmed.

Josh Cowen has a new book coming out in September: The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.

Cowen wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

If you’ve ever run a small business or talked to a business owner, you might have heard the phrase “under promise, over deliver” as a strategy for customer service.

Unfortunately, when it comes to school voucher plans like those being considered by Pennsylvania lawmakers this spring, what happens is the opposite of a sound investment: a lot of overpromising ahead of woeful under-delivery.

As an expert on school vouchers, I think about the idea of what’s promised in the rhetoric vs. what actually happens when the realcost sets in. To hear voucher lobbyists tell it — usually working for billionaires like Betsy DeVos, or Pennsylvania’s own Jeff Yass — all that’s needed to move American education forward is a fully privatized market of school choice, where parents are customers and education is the product.

As I testified to Pennsylvania lawmakers last fall, however, vouchers are the education equivalent of predatory lending.

One promise that never holds up is the idea that states can afford to create voucher systems that underwrite private tuition for some children, while still keeping public school spending strong.

Other states that have passed or expanded voucher systems have rarely been able to sustain new investments in public schools. Even when those voucher bills also came with initial increases in public education funding. Six out of the last seven states to pass such bills have failed to keep up with just the national average in public school investment.

But for children and families — especially those who have been traditionally underserved by schools at different points in U.S. history — the cost of school vouchers goes beyond the price for taxpayers.

Although most voucher users in other states (about 70%) were, in fact, in private schools first, the academic results for the kids who transfer are disastrous. Statewide vouchers have led to some of the largest academic declines in the history of education research — drops in performance that were on par with how COVID-19 or Hurricane Katrina affected student learning.

Although school vouchers have enjoyed fits and starts of bipartisan support from time to time, today’s push for universal voucher systems across the country is almost entirely the product of conservative politics. All 12 states that created or expanded some form of a voucher system in 2023 voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Of those that passed voucher laws since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, only two (Arizona and New Hampshire) voted for Joe Biden that election year.

In states like Arkansas and Iowa, voucher laws either immediately followed or immediately preceded extreme new restrictions on reproductive care, a weakening of child labor laws, and other conservative policy priorities.

And this isn’t just about electoral politics. The right-wing origins of school vouchers have real day-to-day implications for who gets to use them and who is left out. We know from states like Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin that the latest voucher bills allow schools to discriminate against certain children if schools can claim they do so for religious reasons.

Who pays that particular price? Examples include students with disabilities and children and parents from LGBTQ families, who may be asked to leave or not even admitted at all. And that’s because when it comes to vouchers, it’s not really school choice at all. Families don’t get their choice of schools; instead, schools get their choice of which families to admit.

And the price tag for all of this usually comes in wildly over budget anyway. The big culprit for those cost overruns goes back to who actually gets a voucher. Because most voucher users were in private schools first— paid by the private sector before — voucher costs are actually new expenditures taxpayers have to make. In the worst-case scenario, Arizona, vouchers cost more than 1,000% beyond what their advocates first promised.

Despite claims some supporters make that vouchers are part of an efficient education market, the result is really the opposite of any strategy a successful business would recognize.

To put it plainly: The promises rarely pan out, and eventually, the check comes due.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Hoax, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization, Vouchers

Tennessee: Lights Out for the “Achievement School District”

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2024 //
6

Chalkbeat Tennessee reported on the Legislature’s recognition that the “Achievement School District” is a failure.

The ASD was launched by the Obama-Duncan Race to the Top on the theory that charter schools were a magic solution to low test scores. Duncan awarded $500 million to Tennessee, one of the first RTTT winners; $100 million was allocated to the ASD.

The ASD gathered the lowest-performing public schools in the state and clustered them into a new, all-charter district. Chris Barbic, leader of YES Prep charter schools in Houston, was selected to lead the ASD. He boldly predicted that within five years, the ASD schools would rank among the top 25% in the state. ASD started with six schools and eventually expanded to 33..

Blogger Gary Rubinstein has followed ASD over the years, with growing disillusionment. None of the ASD schools ever broke into the top 25%.

The state has spent more than $1 billion to help the ASD.

Chalkbeat wrote a few weeks ago that the Legislature is ready to throw in the towel:

After a decade of painful takeovers of neighborhood schools, contentious handoffs to charter networks, and mostly abysmal student performance, Tennessee’s Achievement School District appears to be on its way out.

Several of the GOP-controlled legislature’s top Republicans are acknowledging that the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school turnaround model has failed — and should be replaced eventually with a more effective approach.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to push for legislation designed to end the so-called ASD, created under a 2010 state law aimed, in part, at transforming low-performing schools.

“I expect we will move in a different direction,” Sen. Bo Watson, the powerful chairman of his chamber’s finance committee, recently told reporters.

The Hixson Republican called the charter-centric school turnaround model an “innovative” idea that fell flat, at least in Tennessee. It would be foolish, Watson added, to keep spending money on an initiative that isn’t working and already has cost the state more than $1 billion — a sentiment echoed by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

But if the legislature decides to shutter the ASD and Gov. Bill Lee signs off, important questions remain about how Tennessee will support thousands of students in its lowest-performing schools.

There are currently 4,600 students enrolled in ASD schools, 12 in Memphis and one in Nashville.

Initially, the ASD attracted some of the nation’s biggest charter chains.

Evaluations showed that students in ASD schools gained no more in tested subjects than students in schools that received no interventions at all.

Now Tennessee must revise its contract with the federal government to revise its plans to help the lowest performing students.

Chalk up another loss for the “Disruption Doctrine” imposed by Bo Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. One can only imagine the difference that might have been made if the same sums were invested in full-service community schools and reduced class sizes.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Tennessee

Houston: Mike Miles Takes a Break from Firing Principals

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
12

Since the state put Mike Mikes (ex-military, Broadie, briefly Superintendent of Dallas ISD) in charge of the Houston Independent School District, Miles has cemented his reputation as a leader who issues orders and doesn’t listen to critics. It’s his way or Mr get out. Many teachers and principals have left rather than comply with his scripted curriculum and mandates.

But, says the Houston Chronicle editorial board, he actually listened and put on hold his intention to fire dozens of principals, including some from Houston’s best schools. It’s worth pausing to remember that the state took control of the entire district because one high school (disproportionately enrolling students with disabilities, ELLs, and high needs) posted low test scores for several consecutive years. Rather than focus on helping that school, the state placed the entire district under the thumb of an autocrat and know-it-all.

Miles is testing out the proposition that the way to “fix” education is by standardization, mandates, data, rigid worship of test scores, and one-man control.

The editorial says:

Late this week, the state-appointed superintendent of Houston ISD did something many thought impossible: he listened.

It took several protests, community outcry and some three hours of overwhelmingly negative public comment during Thursday’s school board meeting, but Mike Miles seems to have heard the message.

The uproar began with the leaked release of a list of 117 principals the district said weren’t performing well enough yet to secure their spot for next year. Several of the principals at top-rated schools were on the list. Parents and students from those campuses showed up in force. Early Friday morning, with the meeting still plodding along, Miles announced that he and the board of managers changed course and said they wouldn’t make any adverse employment decisions this year based off of these proficiency screenings, which broadly measure student achievement with a variety of test data, quality of instruction gathered during spot observations and professionalism judged by a rubric that includes how well principals reinforce “district culture and philosophy.” But, he made clear, he would still use the more comprehensive principal evaluation system approved last fall to make those decisions at the end of the school year.

Miles told us the next day he’d already gotten some emails from anxious community members “saying thank you” for the decision late last week.

“I’m proud of the board who worked so hard to listen,” Miles added.

We’re glad to see Miles pay attention to optics for once. No matter how good his intentions, his reforms won’t succeed long-term without community buy-in. That said, we’re struggling to see how Miles changed his overarching approach on principal evaluations.

Miles never planned to can those 117 principals — in fact, he expected the overwhelming majority of them would return — based on the proficiency screenings but the handful who were already deemed unsatisfactory don’t seem to suddenly be in a different position as best we can tell. Miles insisted those few failing principals not getting asked back didn’t just fail the proficiency screening and that the decision to let them go was based on other input.

“We were looking at all the data for them,” he told us.

And the principals who were told they need to improve, aren’t really in a different position either.

In practice, then, very little seems to have changed for the campus leaders who will still be judged on some of the same metrics, including spot reviews by the district’s so-called independent review teams. Instead, he said the decision was meant to allay some community confusion and ease some anxiety about principal turnover, something he’d been trying to combat since the leaked list was published by the Chronicle ahead of spring break on March 8.

“People have made it a bigger deal than it is,” Miles insisted when he met with the editorial board Wednesday ahead of the school board meeting. “You keep your job if you’re an effective principal,” he said, adding that he expects the majority, at least 80 percent, of the principals to return next year.

What Miles didn’t seem to grasp until he heard from a whole new set of angry parents — not the “usual suspects” who have protested the state takeover from the outset — was how nonsensical his list appeared.

Some of the schools aren’t just top-ranked in the district but in the country. Carnegie. HSPVA. T.H. Rogers. If people had doubts before about Miles’ priorities and evaluation criteria, the inclusion of these high-achieving campuses heightened them. It’s possible a high-performing school can still have a weak leader, just as it’s possible that a low-performing school can have a great one. But the list begged the question.

“You start to wonder what he is evaluating,” a parent with a student at Carnegie told us outside the State of the District event Thursday. She said the school’s principal, long-time veteran Ramon Moss, is an integral piece of the school’s success. 

“He’ll be the first to tell you that the success of the school is due to the teachers and students and community even though his leadership is a big reason why the community is there,” she said.  

Miles has declined to talk about specific campuses and what landed them on the list. So while this decision might relieve some momentary angst, it doesn’t address the lingering doubts about whether the district’s measures of quality instruction and effectiveness are so narrow they fail to recognize the best educators, a concern that extends well beyond the star campuses.

This principal evaluation chaos is just the latest example of a breakdown of communication and trust.

We don’t disagree with the idea of evaluations or consistent standards across the district. It’s entirely possible that an overall A rating at a campus masks concerning disparities. Or that high-achieving campuses don’t show a ton of growth on standardized tests over the course of a school year.

What concerns us about the entire saga of the principal list is how, whether it’s intentional or not, Miles contributes to fear and uncertainty. He hasn’t effectively communicated his vision to the public or to the people tasked with carrying it out, despite his copious slideshows and sincere efforts to clear up the confusion over principals with follow-up press conferences, statements and even interviews with this board.

Last week, Miles and team showed greater sensitivity to the environment. It’s a good start. But they should make more effort to respond to the substance of the criticisms and not just the volume of them.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston, Principals, Texas

Colorado: Dark Money Mobilizes to Defeat Charter School Accountability

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
8

It has always been a goal of the billionaires who fund privatization to block accountability and democracy. Eli Broad once memorably said that he prefers to invest in districts under mayoral control so he doesn’t have to deal with the public. The public asks questions and wants to know who is making decisions about their children’s education. So much simpler to have one person to handle problems.

The charter school lobby has persistently fought public oversight and accountability. They are more than willing, even eager, to take public money. But they don’t like public officials asking questions about how the money was spent.

The big battle over public oversight is happening right now in Colorado. All the major right wing groups—the Koch machine, ALEC, Philip Anschutz (producer of “Waiting for Superman”) are there, battling against public schools.

On March 7, three Colorado legislators introduced a charter school accountability bill to establish improved guidelines for authorizing and renewing charter schools by local school districts. The bill would strengthen the authority that elected school boards have regarding their governance of charter schools, and it also provides citizens with expanded information about the operations of charter schools in their districts. 

According to its backers and public education advocacy groups, this is the first major legislation to prescribe more charter school accountability since the first Charter Schools Act was passed in 1993. Current state legislation often limits local control over the charter school approval process, funding requirements, and waivers from state legislation. Given that nearly two-thirds of the state’s 64 counties experienced an “absolute decline in the under-18 population over the last decade,” the charter school accountability bill would empower local school boards to address the overall enrollment needs of the district. While charter schools primarily utilize taxpayer dollars for their funding, many charter schools allow private interests to invest in their growth and development, which can create potential conflicts of interest.

Pro-charter school organizations don’t agree with this legislative effort to increase accountability as they believe this bill would “kill” charter schools. Republicans have been especially vocal in their opposition to this bill, even though the bill promotes increased local control over charter schools. The pro-charter organizations hired over 30 lobbyists to oppose the bill. Lobbying can be expensive, but the organizations opposing the bill have connections to several billionaire-funded foundations. 

The largest lobbying team hired to oppose the bill works for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative organization funded by the Koch network, whose goal is  to “destabilize and abolish public education.”American for Prosperity has been active in Colorado for years promoting vouchers and education savings accounts for families to use for any school of their choice. Last January, AFP joined with the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heritage Foundation to form the Education Freedom Alliance, an organization that ALEC initiated to promote parents’ rights to use public money to attend a private, charter, home or public school of their choice. Funded with nearly $80 million primarily from the Koch Industries, the Americans for Prosperity political action group has also supported far-right candidates for decades.

American for Prosperity and Advance Colorado issued a press release on X stating the bill would “mark the beginning of the end of charter schools in Colorado,” and together, the two groups “would work overtime to make sure the bill was soundly defeated.” According to the Colorado Times Recorder, Advance Colorado is a conservative dark money group said to be funded by billionaire Phil Anschutz. Formerly known as Unite Colorado, Advance Colorado has “given over $17 million to support major Republican political groups and efforts in Colorado.” Colorado Dawn, another dark money group headed by State Board of Education member Steve Durham and Colorado state Sen. Paul Lundeen,  gave millions to Ready Colorado, which also has lobbyists opposing this bill.

Besides Americans for Prosperity and Ready Colorado,  these organizations have enlisted their lobbyists to defeat the bill: Colorado Succeeds, the Colorado Children’s Campaign, Transform Education Now, Colorado League of Charter Schools Action, Education Alliance of Colorado, and Education Reform Now Advocacy. Several of these organizations have access to deep pockets of money, and often the donors are not known. 

Colorado Succeeds, the Colorado League of Charter Schools, and Transform Education Now have received over $20 million from the Walton Family Foundation, which has given over $400 million to charter schools for decades. Education Reform Now Advocacy is closely connected to Democrats for Education Reform, “which was started by Wall Street hedge fund managers,” according to Ballotpedia. Colorado Politics stated that “various reports say Education Reform Now has taken in millions from Rupert Murdoch and the Walton Family Foundation.” The Education Reform Now money also benefited the campaign coffers of 14 Democratic legislators, which may create a hurdle for the charter bill’s passage unless these legislators decide the bill’s merits warrant their support. 

The upcoming lobbying effort in Colorado’s legislature is not unique, as similar high-paid lobbying efforts occur wherever there is significant charter school legislation. In Nashville, a local news reporter exposed who 67 pro-charter lobbyists worked for during legislative hearings on several charter bills in 2022. In the video that accompanied his report, Phil Williams highlighted the direct connections that the pro-charter lobbyists have with billionaires. His investigative report documented that “Americans for Prosperity is linked to billionaire Charles Koch,” and they also “received funding from billionaire Bill Gates and the Walton family of Walmart fame.”  

As in Tennessee, the Colorado lobbyists will meet frequently with legislators to convince them this bill is not necessary. The legislators will need to weigh the benefits of the bill with the concerns of those who participate in a massive letter-writing campaign initiated by the lobbying organizations to oppose the legislation. The bill’s backers hope this will be the legislators’ opportunity to update 30-year-old legislation and begin to ensure increased local control and accountability for the millions of taxpayer dollars that fund the charter schools educating 15% of the state’s K-12 student population.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Peter Greene: Do You Really Want AI to Write Your lesson Plans?

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2024 //
92

Peter Greene warns teachers not to fall for the cheap and lazy artificial intelligence (AI) that designs lesson plans. He explains why in this post:

Some Brooklyn schools are piloting an AI assistant that will create lesson plans for them. 

Superintendent Janice Ross explains it this way. “Teachers spend hours creating lesson plans. They should not be doing that anymore.”

The product is YourWai (get it?) courtesy of The Learning Innovation Catalyst (LINC), a company that specializes in “learning for educators that works/inspires/motivates/empowers.” They’re the kind of company that says things like “shift to impactful professional learning focused on targeted outcomes” unironically. Their LinkedIn profile says “Shaping the Future of Learning: LINC supports the development of equitable, student-centered learning by helping educators successfully shift to blended, project-based, and other innovative learning models.” You get the idea.

LINC was co-founded by Tiffany Wycoff, who logged a couple of decades in the private school world before writing a book, launching a speaking career, and co-founding LINC in 2017. Co-founder Jaime Pales used to work for Redbird Advanced Learning as executive director for Puerto Rico and Latin America and before that “developed next-generation learning programs” at some company. 

LINC has offices in Florida and Colombia. 

YourWai promises to do lots of things so that teachers can get “90% of your work done in 10% of the time.” Sure. Ross told her audience that teachers just enter students’ needs and the standards they want to hit and the app will spit out a lesson plan. It’s a “game changer” that will give teachers more time to “think creatively.” 

These stories are going to crop up over and over again, and every story ought to include this quote from Cory Doctorow:

We’re nowhere near the point where an AI can do your job, but we’re well past the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.

Look, if you ask AI to write a lesson plan for instructing students about major themes in Hamlet, the AI is not going to read Hamlet, analyze the themes, consider how best to guide students through those themes, and design an assessment that will faithfully measure those outcomes. What it’s going to do is look at a bunch of Hamlet lesson plans that it found on line (some of which may have been written by humans, some of which may have been cranked out by some amateur writing for online corner-cutting site, and some of which will have been created by other AI) and mush them all together. Oh, and throw in shit that it just made up. 

There are undoubtedly lessons for which AI can be useful–cut and dried stuff like times tables and preposition use. But do not imagine that the AI has any idea at all of what it is doing, nor that it has any particular ability to discern junk from quality in the stuff it sweeps up on line. Certainly the AI has zero knowledge of pedagogy or instructional techniques.

But this “solution” will appeal because it’s way cheaper than, say, hiring enough teachers so that individual courseloads are not so heavy that paperwork and planning take a gazillion hours. 

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Fake, Real Education, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

The Atlantic: Private Equity Eyes Child-Care Industry as Profit Center

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2024 //
7

As the research has built up on the value of early childhood education, more states are directing money towards expanding access. Wherever money flows, the private equity industry turns its gaze and seeks to do what it does best: privatize and profit. In this age, private equity figures out how to maximize profit from services that used to be public.

The Atlantic has a story about private equity’s interest in childcare.

Last June, years of organizing in Vermont paid off when the state’s House and Senate passed landmark legislation—overriding a governor’s earlier veto—that invests $125 million a year into its child-care system. The bill expanded eligibility for state assistance to 575 percent of the federal poverty level, meaning that more than 7,000 new families are expected to receive money for child-care expenses. Funding will also become available to help day-care centers recruit and retain teachers and expand capacity; centers will also receive additional money for providing nonstandard hours of care.

But now advocates are worried that the wrong people stand to benefit from the program’s generosity. Any time there is a windfall of public money, with few strings attached, unintended consequences are nearly certain to follow. Thanks to the new law, more Vermont families will have more to spend on child care, and centers will receive additional money without explicit rules around how to spend it. Both of those facts will make child care an attractive target for private-equity groups looking for an industry with lots of incoming revenue.

Private equity’s interest in child care has been growing in recent years. “While there has been corporate for-profit child care since the 1970s, private equity only got in starting in the early 2000s,” Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow who studies early childhood education at the nonpartisan think tank Capita, told me. Now four of the top five for-profit child-care chains—KinderCare, Learning Care Group, the Goddard School, and Primrose Schools—are controlled by private-equity funds, and private-equity-backed centers represent 10 to 12 percent of the market.

Private investors are intrigued by child care for the same reasons they became interested in nursing homes and other health-care services: intense demand, government money, and relatively low start-up costs. “Their goal is not long-term sustainability; their goal is to try to turn a profit,” Haspel said.

Private equity’s foray into child care could go a number of ways, but its introduction has largely not worked out well for other sectors—and certainly not for many people who rely on those sectors’ services. In his book, Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, Brendan Ballou, who investigated private-equity firms at the Department of Justice, posits that the private-equity business model has three basic problems. First, these firms buy a business with the intention of flipping it for a profit, not long-term sustainability, meaning that they are trying to maximize value in the short term and are less likely to invest in staff or facilities. Second, they tend to load businesses up with debt and extract a lot of fees, such as charging child-care providers for the privilege of being managed by the firm. And perhaps most important, their business structure insulates firms from liability.

In 2009, Annie Salley, a resident of a nursing-home chain purchased by the private-equity group Carlyle, died after an injury she sustained while going to the bathroom. Her family sued Carlyle, but a judge dismissed the case after the firm argued that it didn’t own the chain—instead, it said it advised a series of investment funds, such as Carlyle Partners V MC, L.P., that were the lone shareholders in the chain. Children get hurt in child care; children occasionally go missing from a care facility; every year, some children die in day cares. If private-equity firms can structure their relationship to day-care centers as they have nursing homes, families may have little recourse should they encounter a serious problem.

Though private-equity-backed child-care providers can—and often do—offer good services to families, their business model can also prove ruinous. In other sectors, private-equity groups have been notorious for extracting exorbitant fees from businesses they’ve acquired in leveraged buyouts; when they’ve had a chance to raise wages for workers or pay down their private-equity debts, they’ve regularly opted for the latter. Although Vermont’s bill sought to improve the wages of educators, it does not include a salary floor—which means that money that flows into centers may not necessarily go directly to staff—and without such a safeguard, what is stopping outside firms from taking the first, significant cut?

Miriam Calderón, the chief policy officer at Zero to Three, a nonprofit focused on babies, toddlers, and their families, hopes federal lawmakers consider these concerns as they begin to reimagine the federal footprint in child care. Calderón worked in the Biden administration during its first year and helped conceive the early-childhood-education components of the Build Back Better Act, which would have established a child-care entitlement program for a majority of families. Congress isn’t moving on the issue now, but Calderón and advocates told me it would be foolish to wait until Congress was working again to think about protections around public dollars. Private-equity-backed chains will likely continue to grow as a share of the market, and if they gain too much of it, they would have the power to fight back against policies that ensure that staff are fairly compensated and families aren’t paying even more exorbitant fees than they already are. “The work now is to really think through the right guardrails and the right policies so when we get to a moment, again, we’re ready,” Calderón said.

Open the link to finish the article. Or subscribe to The Atlantic.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit

NYC: Charter School of Dr. Steve Perry and Rapper “Diddy” Mired in Controversy

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2024 //
6

The Capital Prep Charter chain was created by Dr. Steve Perry. Dr. Perry hates teachers’ unions. He boasts that all the students in his charters graduate and go to college. His chain won the Yass Prize as a semi-finalist for its accomplishments. Jeff Yass is a billionaire in Pennsylvania who supports Trump, opposes abortion, and funds charter schools and vouchers. You may recall that Yass gave Texas Governor Greg Abbott $6 million to pass voucher legislation.

Capital Prep in Harlem is a Perry school that had the partnership and financial support of rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs. Things are not going so well for the students.

Students and families affiliated with Capital Prep, co-founded by Diddy, claim the entertainment mogul’s charter school did a disservice to children who attended.

Diddy co-launched the East Harlem school with Dr. Steve Perry in 2016, and in 2018 pledged $1 million for its expansion into the Bronx. However, last November Capital Prep cut ties with him amid his ongoing sexual assault lawsuits. 

Now adding to the mounting controversy around the Bad Boy Records founder, a new report from The Cut reveals many issues with Capital Prep, including the accusation that Diddy had no involvement with the school beyond photo ops, guest appearances, and the school’s grand opening in 2016.

Fourteen sources told The Cut about alleged frequent violence at Capital Prep, along with “unstable” leadership, and frequent teacher resignation. These issues were most apparent at the height of the pandemic during both virtual learning and when students, including those who were unhoused, returned for in-person classes in 2021. According to The Cut, teachers began to not show up for virtual classes, and by the end of 2020, 80 percent of teachers had left Capital Prep altogether.

When students did return to school after quarantine, some were enrolled in courses they had previously taken, or were “sitting in the cafeteria receiving no instruction for hours.” Dysfunction among teachers reflected on the student body, especially upperclassmen who were unable to transfer their credits or enroll in college due to ineligible transcripts.

“Darnell’s transcripts had classes he’d never taken, passing classes that he never took, failing classes that he was never in,” one parent, Shirley Payne, said about inaccuracies found on her son’s transcripts.

“I thought if Diddy is funding and attaching his name to something, it would be run very tightly, that he was going to give our kids what he didn’t have at that age,” parent Shakemia Harris said. Harris’ daughter Madison was enrolled at Capital Prep as an 11-year-old in 2017.

In addition to the many academic issues, violence during the school day was reportedly ongoing. Fights were rampant when the school nearly doubled in size, expanding to include a tenth grade, and again when Capital Prep relocated to 129th and Madison. Not only was the area more violent than its previous East 104th Street address, but Capital Prep began locking out students who were late, ultimately causing families to protest the disorderly conditions. In addition it violence between students, cops were called on students for things like uniform violations.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Hoax, New York City

Bob Shepherd: Gayle Green on How to Make a Human

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2024 //
74

Bob Shepherd, author, editor, assessment developer, story-teller, and teacher, read a book that he loved. He hopes—and I hope—that you will love it too.

He writes:

Like much of Europe between 1939 and 1945, education in the United States, at every level, is now under occupation. The occupation is led by Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation and abetted by countless collaborators like those paid by Gates to create the puerile and failed Common Core (which was not core—that is, central, key, or foundational—and was common only in the sense of being vulgar. The bean counting under the occupation via its demonstrably invalid, pseudoscientific testing regime has made of schooling in the U.S. a diminished thing, with debased and devolved test preppy curricula (teaching materials) and pedagogy (teaching methods).

In the midst of this, Gayle Greene, a renowned Shakespeare scholar and Professor Emerita at Scripps University, has engaged in some delightful bomb throwing for the Resistance. Her weapon? A new book called Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm.

OK. Maybe I’ve pushed the occupation/resistance metaphor to the edge of its usefulness. Let’s try another. If Gates’s test-and-punish movement, ludicrously called “Education Reform,” is a metastasizing cancer on our educational system, and it is, then Professor Greene’s book is a prescription for how to reverse course and then practice prevention to end the stultification of education and keep it from coming back. The book is a full-throated defense of the Liberal Arts and of traditional, humane, in-person, discussion-based education in a time when Liberal Arts schools and programs are being more than decimated, are being damned-near destroyed by bean counters and champions of ed tech. Here’s the beauty and value of this book: contra the “Reformers,” Greene details the extraordinary benefits of the broad, liberal educations that built in the United States people capable of creating the most powerful, vibrant, and diverse economy in history. She makes the case (I know. It’s bizarre that one would have to) for not taking a wrecking ball to what has worked. And best of all, she does so not at some high level of abstraction, but backs up any generalizations with concrete, vivid, fascinating, moving, delightful examples from her classrooms. How do you build a world-class human? Well, you give him or her the benefits of a broad, humane, liberal arts education that confers judgment, wisdom, vision, and generosity. Greene shows us, from her own classes over three decades, exactly how that happens.

And she shows us how, under the “standards”-and-testing occupation, all that is being lost.

Years ago, I knew a fellow who retired after a lucrative, successful career. But a couple months later, he was back at his old job. I asked him why he had decided not simply to enjoy his retirement. He certainly had the money to do so.

“Well, Bob,” he said, “there’s only so much playing solitaire one can do.”

I found this answer depressing. I wondered if it were the case that over the years, the fellow had given so much time to work that when he no longer had that to occupy him, he was bored to tears. Had he not built up the internal resources he needed to keep himself happy and engaged ON HIS OWN? Greene quotes, in her book, Judith Shapiro, former president of Barnard College, saying, “You want the inside of your head to be an interesting place to spend the rest of your life.” The French novelist Honoré de Balzac put it this way: “The cultured man is never bored.” Humane learning leads to engagement with ideas and with the world, to fulfillment, to flourishing over a lifetime, to what the ancient Greeks calledeudaimonia—wellness of spirit. Kinda important, that.

In a time when Gates and his minions, including his impressive collection of political and bureaucratic action figures and bobble-head dolls, are arguing that colleges should become worker factories and do away with programs and requirements not directly related to particular jobs, it turns out that the people happiest in their jobs are ones with well-rounded liberal arts educations, and are the ones who are best at what they do. And it turns out that people taught how to read and think and communicate and be creative and flexible, people who gain a broad base of knowledge of sciences, history, mathematics, arts, literature, and philosophy, are self-directed learners who can figure out what they need to know in a particular situation and acquire that knowledge. Philosophy students turn out to be great lawyers, doctors, politicians, and political operatives. Traditional liberal arts instruction creates intrinsically motivated people.

All this and more about the value of liberal arts education Professor Greene makes abundantly clear, and she does so in prose that is sometimes witty, sometimes hilarious, sometimes annoyed, sometimes incredulous (as in, “I can’t believe I even have to protest this shit”); always engaging, human and humane, compassionate, wise, authentic/real; and often profound. As much memoir as polemic, the book is a delight to read in addition to being important politically and culturally.

Gates and his ilk, little men with big money to throw around, look at the liberal arts and don’t see any immediate application to, say, writing code in Python or figuring out how many pallets per hour a warehouse can move. What could possibly be the value of reading Gilgamesh and Lear? Well, what one encounters in these is the familiar in the unfamiliar. As I have said numerous times elsewhere, all real learning is unlearning. You have to step through the wardrobe or fall down the rabbit hole or pass through the portal in the space/time continuum to a place beyond your interpellations, beyond the collective fantasies that go by the name of common sense. Real learning requires a period of estrangement from the familiar. You return to find the ordinary transmuted and wondrous and replete with possibility. You become a flexible, creative thinker. You see the world anew, as on the first day of creation, as though for the first time. Vietnam Veterans would often say, “You wouldn’t know because you weren’t there, man.” Well, people who haven’t had those experiences via liberal arts educations don’t know this because they haven’t been there, man.

Gayle Greene has spent a lifetime, Maria Sabina-like, guiding young people through such experiences. Her classroom trip reports alone are worth your time and the modest price of this book. At one point, Professor Greene rifs on the meaning of the word bounty. This is a book by a bounteous mind/spirit about the bountifulness of her beloved liberal arts. Go ahead. Buy it. Treat yourself.  

Categories Creativity, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Joy, Literature, Real Education

Why You Must See “The Program” on Netflix

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2024 //
27

One of the top-rated shows on Netflix is The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping.

It’s a three-part docuseries that tells the story of the abuse suffered by young people sent to a facility for troubled teens in upstate New York called the Academy at Ivy Ridge. It was produced by a young woman who spent time there, accompanied by other of the program’s unwilling participants.

The facility, now closed, is part of a national chain of similar ones. The brochure advertises a camp-like atmosphere, but once there, the teens are not allowed to speak to one another or to go outside. They are incarcerated in a brutal prison where they experience brainwashing and physical and mental abuse.

When they try to tell their parents the truth, they are labeled manipulative liars.

The producer was taken from her home at 3 am in handcuffs, with her parents’ permission.

When boys break a rule—of which there are many—they are beaten by staff members.

If some of this sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because it sounds like a “no-excuses” school.

It turns out that Ivy Ridge is staffed by untrained, uncertified locals working for minimum wage. The school is part of a Utah-based organization called the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP). It’s a very profitable business.

As the “troubled teen” industry has grown, it’s become politically powerful and fights efforts at regulation.

This expose is very important. You should see it.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Discipline, Education Industry, Evil, Fake, Fraud
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