On two occasions, Steven Singer’s posts have been blocked by Facebook. Both posts were about privatization.
He has pondered why this happens.
He has two theories.
Archives for category: Education Industry
Kevin Welner of the National Education Policy Center has written a thoughtful (and optimistic) commentary on the Gates Foundation’s latest big bet on reforming education. The new one will invest $1.7 billion in networks of schools in big cities, in the hopes that they can work together to solve common problems.
Welner, K. (2017). Might the New Gates Education Initiative Close Opportunity Gaps? Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/bmgf.
Welner notes that the previous big initiatives of the Gates Foundation failed, although he believes that Gates was too quick to pull the plug on the small schools initiative in 2008, into which he had poured $2 billion. Gates bet another $2 billion on the Common Core, and that was sunk by backlash from right and left and in any case, has made no notable difference. Gates poured untold millions into his plan for teacher evaluation (MET), but it failed because it relied too much on test scores.
Welner says that Bill Gates and the foundation he owns suffer from certain blind spots: First, he believes in free markets and choice, and he ends up pouring hundreds of millions into charters with little to show for it; second, he believes in data, and that belief has been costly without producing better schools; third, he believes in the transformative power of technology, forgetting that technology is only a tool, whose value is determined by how wisely it is used.
Last, Welner worries that Gates does not pay enough attention to the out of school factors that have a far greater impact on student learning that teachers and schools, including poverty and racism. These are the factors that mediate opportunity to learn. Without addressing those factors, none of the others will make much difference.
Welner is cautiously optimistic that the new initiative might pay more attention to opportunity to learn issues than any of Gates’ other investments.
But he notes with concern that Gates continues to fund charters, data, technology, and testing. He continues to believe that somewhere over the rainbow is a magical key to innovation. He continues to believe in standardization.
It seems to me that Kevin Welner bends over backwards to give Gates the benefit of the doubt. With his well-established track record of failure, it is hard to believe he has learned anything. But let’s keep hoping for the best.
When you read an article like this, you wonder if the Republican party has lost its collective mind. Why do they want public money to be spent on religious schools that do not teach modern science and mathematics and history? Why do they want public money to go to charter operators who are not educators? Why do they want public money to be squandered on fly-by-night operators whose motive is profit? Are they deliberately trying to destroy our future as a nation? Are they ignorant, or is it that they just don’t care?
In the linked article, Rebecca Klein writes about the voucher school in Florida that teaches the dubious doctrines of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.
Huffington Post has been conducting an investigation of the schools that receive vouches or tax credits, and came across Clearwater Academy in Florida, which uses teaching materials and curriculum “dedicated to spreading educational methods developed by Hubbard.”
The school and others with similar goals insist they are not associated with Scientology, but the Huffington investigation suggest that the connection is real.
As Katherine Stewart wrote in her article in The American Prospect, “Proselytizers and Privatizers”, the charter movement created an opening for religious schools to get public money; she contends that supporters of charters were “useful idiots” for religious fundamentalists, who run some of the nation’s largest charter chains.
I hope that Klein and Huffington Post take a close look at the Gulen charter schools. All of them say they are not associated with Imam Fethullah Gulen, but all of them have boards dominated by Turkish men and teaching staffs with many Turkish teachers. Coincidence? According to parent activist Sharon Higgins, who keeps watch on the spread of Gulen charters, there are now 175 of them, making them either the largest or second largest charter chain in the U.S. The state with the most Gulen charters is Texas, which has 62 Gulen charters. Exactly why are taxpayers subsidizing schools run by a Turkish imam?
Bill Phillis is a tireless crusader for public schools in Ohio.
He writes:
“U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ troubling remarks at Jeb Bush’s November 30 National Summit on Education Reform”
“Not a word praising the great American public school system which still educates 90% of America’s children. Not a word about the low performance and corruption in the charter industry.
“The take away of her remarks is students before systems. These are code words for privatizing public school districts.
“The clever little talking point-students before systems-assumes the “system” is inferior and broken. It suggests the “system” harms students and the lack of a system inherently benefits students. In general, choice alternatives to the public “system” are inferior, and often corrupt.
“Suppose the Ohio Department of Highways would farm out part of its funds and operation to individuals and private groups. This would put private citizens before the “system.” Transportation voucher holders could build a road in front of their respective properties. The transportation charter groups could build roads connecting their properties. Although this arrangement would be disastrous, privatizers could use the argument that it puts individuals before the system.
“Privatization of public services diminishes the function and efficacy of “community” at the local, state and national levels. It disrupts the balance between individual benefits and the public good. Billionaires like Betsy DeVos may not understand the need for community building and maintenance.”
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net|
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North Carolina is one of the states where the legislature has been working overtime to pass programs to harm public schools. Charters, vouchers, cybercharters, Teach for America, and regular assaults on the teaching profession.
That context makes it especially surprising and gratifying to see that the editorial board of the News-Observer wrote a strong critique of the GOP Tax Plan because it hurts public education.
This is a fantastic editorial:
There’s no doubt that tax-cut proposals in the House and Senate will increase income inequality today, but provisions in the bills could also weaken the earning power of many in the future by eroding the quality and the diversity of public schools.
One change that as approved by the Senate and also found in the House bill extends a tax benefit for college savings accounts to cover tuition for private elementary and secondary education. The change means that those who can afford to save money for non-public school tuition will be able to see that money grow tax-free.
Extending the tax break won’t mean much for families of modest incomes since they can’t afford to save large amounts for pre-college schooling, but it will have the effect of making high-priced private schools less costly to the wealthy. The Senate version of the change offered by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas even allows those who home school to draw up to $10,000 annually out of the tax-favored accounts to cover loosely defined school expenses. In the end, the change reduces tax revenue to give the wealthy a break on private education costs.
This relatively narrow adjustment will be joined by sweeping proposals in both the House and Senate tax bills that limit federal deductions for state and local taxes. Those changes will make it harder for local and state governments to raise taxes to support public schools. Together, the changes will lighten the tuition bill at private schools while adding to the tax burden that supports public schools.
Of course, higher education is also threatened by provisions in the tax plans that would include levies on endowments and on tuition benefits provided to graduate students and children of college employees. But the plans’ broader threats are to public schools, which are already being undermined by Republican-backed efforts to increase the number of charter schools – publicly funded but privately run – and to expand the use of tax funds for private schools through voucher programs. Now that “school choice” movement has gained support at the federal level with the appointment of Betsy DeVos – a charter and private school advocate – as the U.S. education secretary.
Fueling re-segregation
As Republicans cut away at the financial foundation of public schools they are also accelerating the re-segregation of all schools at the elementary and secondary levels. Adding charters and using tax dollars to subsidize private and sectarian school tuition is leading to a great sorting by race. And that, rather than enhancing education, deprives children of learning through exposure to classmates of different racial groups and economic backgrounds.
In a recent report on charter schools, The Associated Press found the number of charter schools has tripled over the last decade and racial isolation has grown with them. Charters tend to be overwhelmingly white, or overwhelming one minority. The AP reported: “While 4 percent of traditional public schools are 99 percent minority, the figure is 17 percent for charters. In cities, where most charters are located, 25 percent of charters are over 99 percent nonwhite, compared to 10 percent for traditional schools.”
The trend worries even some charter school advocates. Pascual Rodriguez, principal of a Milwaukee charter where nearly all the students are Hispanic, told the AP: “The beauty of our school is we’re 97 percent Latino. The drawback is we’re 97 percent Latino … Well, what happens when they go off into the real world where you may be part of an institution that’s not 97 percent Latino?”
The AP report mirrors what an October News & Observer report found about racial segregation in North Carolina charter schools. The report found that the schools are more segregated and have more affluent students than traditional public schools.
Christine Kushner, a member of the Wake County Board of Education and a former chair of the panel, said that despite efforts to foster diversity in the Wake County school system, the state’s largest, minorities are the majority, largely because of an increase in Hispanic students and more white students enrolling in schools outside of the system. She said Wake schools remain strong, but their reduced diversity both in race and income is a setback.
“It’s troubling to me that we are going backward because I think diverse schools are what’s best for all children and economics and history affirm that,” she said. School choice is fine, she said, but public schools need to have the resources “to be the first choice for all parents.”
Good public schools and strong support through taxes are inseparable. But the tax bills in Congress are adding to the forces that are splitting that bond and jeopardizing public education.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article188972429.html#storylink=cpy
As this article by Matt Barnum in Chalkbeat shows, Kansas City did not want to hand its public schools over to the corporate reform movement, and it kicked out the privatizers a few years ago.
But the privatizers are back, with a new name, and a local native-born leader touting the virtues of the “portfolio model” and a “common enrollment application” for public schools and charter schools. The new approach is funded by the privatization-loving Walton Family Foundation and the Kauffman Foundation. OneApp, the common enrollment system is intended to confuse parents about the differences between public schools and charter schools, and give the appearance that they are the same. They are not. Charter schools choose their students; public schools do not. Charter schools may close without warning; public schools do not. Charter schools are not willing to take the students with the greatest needs; public schools are required to do so.
And so far, many education leaders in Kansas City seem to have fallen for the “portfolio model,” which is a stealth way of importing privatization.
The Kansas City superintendent, Mark Befell, is approaching the new bait warily. But the stars are aligning to put Kansas City into the grasp of the privatizers.
Bedell, the district superintendent, says that SchoolSmart may be too focused on creating new schools and expanding successful ones at the expense of helping existing, low-performing schools.
“I think the only concern that I have is their initial focus has been primarily on schools that are emerging, schools that are high performing,” he said. “You want to really move an urban school system like ours, you have a larger share of your schools that are low performing, we need to put resources in those schools.”
But, Bedell said, “Fortunately, [Sufi] listened to that and [SchoolSmart] provided support for me and some of my schools that have been struggling.”
SchoolSmart KC has also promoted the idea of a common enrollment system for district and charter schools.
“Participation in common, unified enrollment systems must also be required so that all families have equal access to schools,” Sufi said in recent testimony to the Missouri state legislature. “Such a system will also promote equity where our least advantaged families have equal access to quality options.”
Bedell is skeptical of this idea.
“Nope, not interested in it,” he said flatly, saying that he believed some charter schools were selectively enrolling and pushing out certain students, which made it difficult to build a positive relationship between the two sectors.
“One of the things that we’re looking to do is go and visit some of the other cities — Denver, Indianapolis, Camden — where the [district–charter] partnerships are working well,” said Bedell. Incidentally, those are three cities often promoted by advocates of the portfolio model.
Meanwhile, some remain wary of who is funding SchoolSmart. In addition to local philanthropies, SchoolSmart identifies the Walton Foundation as one of its core investors. Sufi said Hall, Kaufman, and Walton had together made a 10-year funding commitment of over $50 million.
“Philanthropy can have its own agenda too — that’s OK, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think everybody just needs to be aware,” said Wolfsie, the Kansas City school board member. “Funders, they have a say what [SchoolSmart KC’s] strategic direction probably will be — otherwise they may not fund.”
If history and experience are guides, charter schools will take the best students, and leave the rest for public schools, which have even fewer resources to educate them.
Both the Walton and Kauffman foundations have been strong supporters of charter schools; Kauffman even founded its own (high-performing) charter school in Kansas City.
Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat here describes the spread of the gospel of the “portfolio model” of schooling.In his article, Barnum shows how Indianapolis has fallen hook, line, and sinker for privatization of its public schools.
I first heard the term used by Paul Hill of the Center for the Reinvention of Public Education at the University of Washington, a leading thinker in the privatization movement.
The basic idea is that school boards should treat their schools as if they were a stock portfolio. Some will be public schools run by the district; others will be privately managed. If a school gets low scores, close it and open a new one. If a school is not performing well, turn it over to private management. Buy and sell schools as you would buy and sell stocks in a portfolio. Disruption? No problem. Chaos? No problem.
That’s the basic idea.
For this to work, you need both supply (a willing number of charter operators, ready to move in) and demand (dissatisfied parents). So it is necessary to create dissatisfaction with the repeated claim that “our schools are failing” and to put public schools and charter schools on an equal footing by having a common enrollment system (the OneApp or some other name that gives the appearance that charters are public schools, even though they choose their students and operate under different rules and laws).
How was Indianapolis snookered into privatizing its public schools en masse? Barnum credits the work of the Mind Trust, a faux-liberal group that worked closely with the faux-liberal Stand for Children, which is a passthrough for the funding of corporations and corporate reformers.
The district is actively turning over schools to charter operators, and it’s rolling out a common enrollment system for district and charter schools that could make it easier for charters to grow. Nearly half of the district’s students now attend charters or district schools with charter-like freedoms.
It’s a remarkable shift that many in Indianapolis credit to — or blame on — the Mind Trust, a well-funded local nonprofit with a clear vision for improving education in Indianapolis.
Since its founding in 2006, the organization has called for dramatic changes to schools; recruited outside advocacy, teacher training, and charter groups; and spent millions to help launch new charter and district schools. The Mind Trust’s vision has also won support from the school board — which was elected with the financial backing of Stand for Children, an advocacy group recruited by the Mind Trust.
Stand for Children is an enemy of public schools and professional teachers. It is the conduit for privatization dollars. It has fielded candidates to run against supporters of public schools, in efforts to replace them with privatizers on school boards. It led efforts in Illinois and Massachusetts to curtail the power of unions and to reduce entry requirements for teachers.
Barnum’s article shows how the efforts of the corporate reformers are spreading even as the performance of charters is faltering, and news of charter scandals, frauds, and embezzlements is growing. The charter movement simply ignores the NAACP’s call for a moratorium on new charters, as well as their underlying demand for greater investment in the schools that enroll children with the greatest needs.
The charter movement is inextricably tied up with the funding of the Koch Brothers, the DeVos family, Eli Broad, and Bill Gates. Advocacy for charter schools is inextricably connected to the far-rightwing ALEC and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Charters are the gateway drug to vouchers.
The proponents of the charter movement, as author Katherine Stewart said in her recent article in The American Prospect, are “the useful idiots” of privatization; they have paved the way for the religious extremists and fundamentalists who control some of the largest charter chains and receive the largest number of vouchers.
The privatization of public education is a dagger aimed at democracy, with the aid and support of the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Mind Trust, Stand for Children, and others who believe neither in public education nor in democratic control of public schools.
Andrea Gabor is the Michael Bloomberg Professor of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York. She is also a deeply knowledgeable scholar of corporate education reform. She debunked the alleged “New Orleans miracle” in the New York Times.
In this post, she expresses her concern about the fawning praise for Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools and explains why Eva’s charter schools are not a model for public education.
She writes:
It is we—that is American citizens—who should be terrified because Success Academy is entirely in-sync with the Trump era. It is unapologetically anti-democratic, anti-union, segregated and relentlessly test-driven. And, it should be noted, the CMO has not yet graduated a single high school student.
At a time when we are facing an existential threat to our democracy—one enabled by a decades-long obsession with standardized tests that narrowed curriculum and helped kill off civics education—the championing of Success Academy by writer as influential as Elizabeth Green, she is the founding editor of ChalkBeat and author of Building a Better Teacher, is worrying indeed.
Let’s be clear. Judging by its roster of 46 schools, there are potentially thousands of families who are happy with the education Success Academy provides, and many more who might have been if they had won the network’s lottery—though parents have complained of the CMO’s harsh, and even abusive, ‘boot-camp-like” culture—see here and here. Indeed, hundreds, if not thousands of children have been pulled out by their families (or forced out) because of the network’s strict demands for behavioral compliance and its single-focused pursuit of high test scores…
But Green fails to address key questions about the kind of education Success kids get—and at what cost. She certainly doesn’t question whether the ever-changing, bubble-in test-scores are the best—or even a good–measure of learning. While she acknowledges giving up on democratic control of schools and districts, she never considers the historic, foundational role of public education in a democracy—and the civic cost of autocratic education systems. Nor does Green consider the successful public-school networks amid what she, rightly, describes as the crushing bureaucracy that has often stifled New York City schools—even though she has published stories about them!
Green also glosses over—and, in some cases, omits entirely—the considerable problems with the Success Academy model, including widespread creaming and credible allegations of abusive behavior toward children. Although Green’s own book points out that the best teachers have years of experience, she says not one word about Success Academy’s high teacher attrition rate. Some Success Academy schools lose over half of their teachers each year; few last more than three years.
Gabor writes that there are excellent models within public education of success, and she refers specifically to the New York Performance Standards Consortium, which has used a progressive model of education with great results.
Gabor despairs of those who think that democracy is the problem, and charter schools are the answer. To give up on democracy is to fall into the snare of the Trump agenda. Let the authoritarian leader solve all problems.
Why anyone believes that a strict authoritarian school is just right for all or most American children is a puzzle. It may be right for some, but it is not a model for public education.
Professor Mark Harmon writes here about the showing of “Backpack Full of Cash” in Knoxville, where the audience learned about the devastating impact of charters draining resources from public schools, as well as charter school scandals.
Someday, when people look back on this era of malignant privatization, “Backpack Full of Cash” will be recognized for its role in informing the public about the assault by rightwingers on public education.
Go to the film’s website and learn how you can arrange a showing in your community.
It is a shame that PBS refuses to show this excellent documentary. If only a few billionaires stepped up and offered to buy time for it. Or even one billionaire.
Jan Resseger read Rebecca Mead’s article about Success Academy charter schools and wondered: Can a no-excuses tightly-disciplined school be considered progressive?
“Mead’s subtitle names a contradiction at the center of Moskowitz’s educational theory: “Inside Eva Moskowitz’s Quest to Combine Rigid Discipline with a Progressive Curriculum.” Even as Moskowitz defends the rigid and punitive discipline for which her schools are famous (In Mead’s piece, Moskowitz is quoted as defending the suspension of young children out of school as an important way of impressing a lesson on children and their parents.), Moskowitz claims John Dewey, the father of progressive education, as a guide to what happens in her schools. Moskowitz describes her curriculum as an example of progressivism—“circle time on the classroom rug; interdisciplinary projects that encompass math, science, social studies, and literacy.” The question that underlies Mead’s analysis is whether it is possible to run a progressive school with no-excuses discipline.
“While on one level Mead entertains Moskowitz’s rhetoric about progressivism, Mead seems puzzled by the circle time on the classroom rug: “In the second-grade classroom in Queens, the gridded rug seemed less like a magic carpet than like a chessboard at the start of a game. Within each square there was a large colored spot the size of a chair cushion. The children sat in rows, facing forward, each within his or her assigned square, with their legs crossed and their hands clasped or folded in their laps. Success students can expect to be called to answer a teacher’s question at any moment, not just when they raise their hand, and must keep their eyes trained on the speaker at all times, a practice known as ‘tracking.’ Staring off into space, or avoiding eye contact is not acceptable.”
“Like students at progressive schools (and all kinds of public schools, actually), students in Success Academies go on field trips. And Mead visits a room where Kindergardeners are taken to play with blocks: “The school has dedicated a special classroom to the activity, and shelves were filled with an enviable supply of blocks. The walls of the room were decorated with pictures of architectural structures that the students might seek to emulate, from the Empire State Building to the Taj Mahal. There was also a list of rules: always walk; carry two small blocks or hug one large block; speak in a whisper.” Unlike free-play at progressive early childhood centers—with dolls, and blocks, and easels and paint, and clay or PlayDoh—block time at the school Mead visits is a specific activity provided by the school in a “block” room to which the entire class of children is led for an assigned period.”
What makes a school “progressive?”
Why is Eva Moskowitz eager to be called “progressive”?
Can “progressive” pedagogy flourish in an atmosphere of authoritarian discipline?
