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Walton Family Foundation Planning to Move into Middle-Income Districts in New York City

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2017 //
17

Time for a friendly puff piece from Inside Philanthropy about one of the nation’s most malevolent foundations: The Walton Family Foundation.

Walton has two goals: privatizing education and eliminating teachers’ unions.

It pledged to spend $1 billion to achieve those aims.

It subsidizes many mainstream media, even NPR and Education Week, to make sure that it gets favorable coverage for its nefarious goals.

And now, Inside Philanthropy reports that the Waltons have decided to plunk a couple of million dollars down in New York City and spread the wealth so that some of it goes to traditional antagonists, like Teachers College, Columbia University.

Who funds Inside Philanthropy? I can’t tell from its website. I did notice an earlier article about the Waltons, which claimed that individual members of the Walton family were reaching out to what appear to be liberal organizations, like the Center for American Progress. The writer didn’t even think to ask whether the Walton family members were purchasing the voices and independence of those groups they subsidize.

The Waltons noticed the research about the importance of economic and social integration so they have decided to open seven new charter schools in New York City that will lure in middle-class kids. Thus, in the name of integration, they can both promote privatization of public dollars and do their union-busting at the same time. Why should only poor kids go to charters? Think of the possibilities as Walton millions open charters for middle-class kids too!

Give them points for cleverness.

The Waltons earned their place on this blog’s Wall of Shame, and there is no reason to see anything coming from a family of billionaires that fights unions in their own stores and fights paying a minimum wage and subsidizes the evil American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is devoted to destroying democracy.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Stephen Dyer: Comparing Charter Schools to Public Schools in Ohio

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2017 //
10

Stephen Dyer, former legislator and current Fellow at Innovation Ohio, writes:

As you know, I’ve contended for years that if charters receive money and kids from all over the state, their overall performance should be compared with the overall performance of all Ohio school districts.

However, as an exercise, I decided to look at Ohio’s urban building performance versus that of charters. And despite the fact that Ohio’s urban buildings typically have 24% higher rates of disabled students and nearly 25% higher rates of minority students, Ohio urban buildings perform about the same as charters. And this is despite the fact that the 90 lowest performing charters aren’t included because they’ve been carved out of these comparisons by the Ohio General Assembly. http://bit.ly/2hw3fhB

In the report that is linked, he expands:

Ohio’s urban buildings perform just about the same as Ohio’s charter schools.

Here’s the issue though:

Ohio’s urban buildings typically (my short hand for median) have a 26 percent higher rate of disabled children and a 23 percent higher rate of minority children than charter schools.

A remarkable 94 percent of all major urban buildings have more than 95 percent of their students classified as economically disadvantaged. Meanwhile, 65 percent of charters fit that bill.

Yet despite these greater challenges, Ohio’s major urban buildings typically have nearly identical attendance rates, slightly less chronic absenteeism and just about equal report card performance, looking at percentages of A, B, C, D, and F grades. Charters have slightly higher percentages of As, Bs and Cs, and lower percentages of Ds and Fs, but the difference is statistically insignificant.

So despite the fact charters have fewer demographic barriers to success on our test-based report card and about half of their kids don’t even come from the urban districts, charters are still unable to perform significantly better than their major urban counterparts — the most challenged group of schools in the traditional public school system.

Only about 260 of Ohio’s 370 charters are included in this comparison. It’s clear that the other 90 — mostly dropout recovery schools located in urban districts — are among the worst-performing schools in the entire country. So the percentage of poor charter grades is likely far higher than the comparison I’m currently making.

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

Kentucky: Legislators Push Charter Schools While Undermining Racial Integration

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2017 //
11

Kentucky is a Republican state with both houses in the hands of the Republican party and a Republican governor. The Republicans are doing their best to undermine public schools. They were late in passing charter legislation, and they passed it only recently. Now the legislature is intent on undoing the racial integration of public schools in Jefferson County (Louisville).

Gay Adelmann, co-founder of Save Our Schools Kentucky, attended a recent legislative session and reported back on the discussion, which had nothing to do with improving public schools and everything to do with implementing the privatization agenda of ALEC.

The Republican legislators blame busing for all the ills of public schools. They think that ending busing will bring a new day to Kentucky. Obviously, none of them has ever read any research on the benefits of racial integration to both white and black students.

After listening to them fulminate about “those children,” she offered her own suggestions:


Faulty arguments repeated the theme: “Imagine what you could do if you ended busing.”

No, imagine what we could do if you:

Fully funded our schools.

Ended high-stakes testing.

Placed students’ interests above adults.

Protected our public schools from corporate threats.

Asked us how you can help!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Kentucky, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Eva Moskowitz Will Appear at AEI to Boast of Her Success on October 3 at 3 P.M.

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2017 //
18

The libertarian American Enterprise Institute, funded in part by Betsy DeVos, will host an event on October 2, when Eva Moskowitz will reveal the secrets of success at her Success Academy charter chain in New York City.

Will she talk about how she screens out the kids with disabilities? how she screens out the kids who don’t speak English? how she pushes out the kids who are unwilling to conform or who are likely to get low test scores by suspending them day after day until their parents withdraw them? how she has the highest teacher attrition rate of all charters in New York City? will she boast about her plan to get rid of public schools or use them as dumping grounds for the kids she doesn’t want?

I won’t be there, unfortunately. I plan to #TakeAKnee for Eva.

Lessons from Success: A keynote and conversation with Eva Moskowitz

Tuesday, October 3, 2017 | 3:00–4:15 PM

AEI, Auditorium | 1789 Massachusetts Avenue, NW | Washington, DC 20036

Join AEI as Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy Charter School Network, discusses her new book, “The Education of Eva Moskowitz” (HarperCollins, 2017).

RSVP Watch Live Online

DESCRIPTION
In her new book, “The Education of Eva Moskowitz” (HarperCollins, 2017), Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, offers a memoir about her battles to reform America’s education system.

Join AEI on Tuesday, October 3, as Eva Moskowitz offers a keynote address, followed by a conversation with Frederick M. Hess.

Join the conversation on social media with #EvaatAEI.

PARTICIPANTS
Frederick M. Hess, AEI
Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy Charter Schools

REGISTER
RSVP to attend this event.

To watch live online, click here on October 3 at 3:00 PM ET. Registration is not required.

American Enterprise Institute
1789 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036
P: 202.862.5800 | F: 202.862.7177 | http://www.aei.org

Categories Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

Harvard Shames Itself by Staging a Koch-Sponsored Betsy Lovefest–No Dissenting Voices Allowed

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2017 //
64

The Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University has always been pro-school choice, pro-charters, pro-vouchers.

But now the PEPG–headed by the General of the School Choice Movement Paul Petersen–has outdone itself.

It is staging a two-day celebration of Betsy DeVos and the Trump agenda of public school-bashing, funded by the Koch Brothers and other rightwing foundations.

There is nary a critic of this radical rightwing agenda, not as a presenter or a panelist.

The conference is called “The Future of School Choice.”

The Charles Koch Foundation is a major funder, but after it became clear that his name was embarrassing, it was removed from the list of sponsors.

How shameful that Harvard would lend its name to a one-sided effort to cheer on the destruction of public education and would give a platform to a woman with no academic credentials.

As the writer for the New Republic, Graham Vyse, points out, the Harvard Institute of Politics invited Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowski to accept fellowships, so the University apparently has low standards.

Apparently Jeff Sessions is about to give a speech about “free speech” in which he will decry “political correctness” on campus, meaning I assume the refusal to debate issues.

Do you think he will single out Harvard’s PEPG for refusing to hold a debate about the future of school choice and excluding those who recognize the civic importance of public education and the failure of charters and vouchers to live up to their claims?

I’m not holding my breath.

I am adding Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance to this blog’s Wall of Shame for its failure to permit even the most minimal expectations of academic and scholarly fairness, and for turning itself into a propaganda mill for the privatization movement, at the behest of Big Money.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers, Wall of Shame

Baltimore County: Former Superintendent Dallas Dance is Under Criminal Investigation

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2017 //
32

A group of parents in Baltimore County was very unhappy with their high-flying Superintendent, Dallas Dance. Dance planned a huge investment in technology, and the parents didn’t see the evidence for it. They worried that the schools were investing in a pipe dream…or worse. Dance planned to spend at least $272 million so that every student would have his or her own laptop. Where he saw technological salvation, the parents saw expensive snake oil.

Dance wanted to become a national leader in introducing “personalized” (depersonalized) learning in his schools, and he spent freely for technology to make his dream come true.

Some parents in the county saw what was happening and they criticized it, again and again, in their own blog, as a massive waste of taxpayers’ money and a waste of students’ instructional time.

Dance abruptly resigned last spring, and he is now former superintendent of Baltimore County public schools. He is now under criminal investigation by the Maryland State Prosecutor’s Office.

The parent blog, written in this instance by Joanne C. Simpson, reports on Dance’s problems:

Among issues apparently under review: Dance’s “involvement with SUPES Academy,” which did business with BCPS and for which Dance consulted at the time. “In 2014, school system ethics officials ruled that Dance had violated ethics rules by taking a part time job with SUPES after the company got an $875,000 contract with the school system,” the Sun noted. For other info on SUPES and various linkages to Dance, read also this post.

Dance offered no comment to news of a current state prosecutor investigation, but this very recent video by the resigned superintendent speaks volumes.

Other details: The investigative news story on SUPES, which revealed Dance’s consulting job, was first broken in 2013 by The Chicago Reporter and then followed by the Sun. Dance agreed to drop the outside job.

Former chief of Chicago Public Schools Barbara Byrd-Bennett, once named as a favorite mentor by Dance, was among those embroiled in the SUPES scandal and convicted this year of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks and sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison.

Dance, who promised not to consult again after the ethics finding on SUPES, has been cited for other ethics violations and criticized for various “appearances of conflict of interest,” as well as costly taxpayer-funded travel to numerous edtech conferences and events, among other issues. His limited liability corporation Deliberate Excellence Consulting LLC was listed as Active and “Not In Good Standing” a few months ago, as also reported in this blog—a status which remains.

Many related concerns–including promotional videos Dance did for school system vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard–were first brought up in this op-ed in April 2016.

According to revised financial disclosure forms filed “under penalty of perjury” after the last ethics findings, Dance reported no personal income from his LLC, which according to charter records was formed “to consult and partner with school systems, businesses and organizations around best practices to obtain maximum organizational outcomes.”

Dance unexpectedly announced his resignation in April, partly saying he wanted to spend more time with family. Meanwhile, a few of his post-BCPS consulting positions are no longer listed on those firms’ sites nor on Dance’s LinkedIn profile page, including “Partner, Strategos Group,” and a full-time senior vice president position he announced with MGT Consulting Group when he left the superintendent position on June 30.

Parents who watched carefully were concerned about student privacy, data mining, and balanced use of technology. They worried that Dance had gone overboard. They were right to worry.

More:

“Despite Dance’s departure, STAT [Dance’s program] is still being pursued and expanded under current Interim Superintendent Verletta White, who pressed for a nearly $4 million expansion of just two software contracts, iReady and DreamBox Math, this year (see postscript below), despite questions by school board members about the programs’ high costs and lack of objective evidence of benefits. Via the software programs, elementary school children as young as 6 watch math or English language videos, and do gaming-style lessons, or play video games as “rewards” on the devices during the school day.”

The spending on technology with no evidence of its value goes forward:

“As first reported here in The Baltimore Post: The company e.Republic (which backs the Center for Digital Education) works with over 700 companies – from “Fortune 500s to startups” – to help executives ‘power their public sector sales and marketing success.’ Among those listed: Intel, IBM, Blackboard, Microsoft, Aerohive, Apple, Samsung, Dell and Google.” Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and other companies are familiar entities at BCPS.

“Also, among a litany of mostly no-bid digital curricula contracts recently implemented at the county’s public school district: the reading/English language software program iReady, which had a $1.2 million BCPS contract spending authority expanded in July to $3.2 million for fewer than 5 years, as approved by the Board of Education and requested by interim superintendent White.
—–
iReady by Curriculum Associates:

Click to access 061317%20JMI-618-14%20Modification%20-%20Teaching%20Resource%20for%20English%20Language%20Arts.pdf

—–
https://www.bcps.org/apps/bcpscontracts/contractFiles/012015_JMI-618-14%208%20Mod%20Teach%20Resource%20English%20Language.docx
——
“DreamBox Math, meanwhile, jumped nearly $2 million more to $3.2 million for just three more years.
If contacts don’t link, can copy and paste this lengthy link: http://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/bcps/Board.nsf/files/AMQQTE6AD435/$file/061317%20JNI-778-14%20Modification%20and%20Extension%20-%20Mathematics%20Supplemental%20Resources.pdf
——–
“Such price tags total a whopping more than $6 million for two software programs alone in a cash-strapped school system with many pressing needs.

“In the end, many would agree digital technology has a place as a modern tool of learning. But analyses are required when children’s minds and futures are involved. Consider this objective 2017 National Education Policy Center report on “blended and virtual learning,” and a recent Business Insider story on DreamBox, which also questions the tenets of the “personalized-learning” computer-based approach, and points out just how many data points are collected on children–50,000 per hour per student just by DreamBox. There’s also the widespread industry marketing campaigns and venture capitalist profit-margins behind it all.”

There is a moral to this story: Pay attention to ethics rules. Don’t seek or accept outside money from corporations who want to sell stuff or services to your district. Be satisfied with your salary or look for a different job.

There is another moral: the tech companies view the schools as a market, and they are taking taxpayers’ money because they can.

Every school board, every superintendent has a duty to review these contracts carefully and reject those that are unproven. Don’t take the word of the salesmen.

Categories Accountability, Baltimore, Education Industry, Technology

Peter Greene: Public Schools Should Not Collaborate in Their Own Destruction

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2017 //
18

Peter Greene read a report published by the Center for the Reinention of Public Education at the University of Washington, a leading advocate for charters, choice, and the portfolio model. The report offers advice to district leaders about how public schools can deal with declining enrollments by working with charter schools and putting them on an equal footing as partners, not competitors.

Maybe I am being a Pollyanna, but I see this report as a sign of weakness, a recognition by privatizers that they must develop strategies to get embedded because the tide of public opinion is turning against them. The opinion poll in the conservative journal EdNext recently reported that public support for charters dropped from 51% to 39% in one year. The NAACP statement criticizing charters undermined their claims about being leaders of the civil rights movement. The almost daily reports of charter scandals in many states is undermining their credibility. Betsy DeVos’s enthusiastic embrace hurts their carefully cultivated public image. Watch for more statements aimed at normalizing charters. They are worried.

Peter reviews the CPRE list of problems and remedies and he is not impressed.

So how do we fix all of these things? CRPE has some thoughts.

Districts need to close schools and negotiate contracts that don’t spend so much money. The closing school solution seems to run up against the “don’t take on long-term debts and costs” solution, as schools frequently manage consolidation of schools by taking on construction projects.

They would like to see more partnership, but their example is “if charters find a way to give cheap retirement plans might encourage public systems to adopt similar systems.” So, yeah, charters that want to pay teachers less could, I suppose, try to convince public schools not to outbid them. That’s cooperation, sort of.

And there would need to be city-level strategy sessions. Which should be a hoot as long as nobody ever addresses the underlying zero-sum game that is charter vs. public schools. But that’s not going to happen, since one proposed solution is that districts “publicly identify” their legacy costs in exchange for a charter funding formula that more closely resembles public per-pupil costs:

For example, charter schools might receive less per-pupil funding under such an agreement but would be able to tell the public, with confidence, that charter and district students received the same classroom funding and that charter schools weren’t contributing to a district’s impending insolvency.

Yeah, that doesn’t even make sense. “Getting same classroom funding” doesn’t equal “not sucking public school dry.” So maybe the suggestion here is that charter’s get their funding and public schools admit that they’re insolvent because their buildings and pensions and teacher pay are all just way expensive. In other words, charters agree to get paid public tax dollars, and public schools agree to publicly say it’s their own damn fault they’re having financial problems. Why would public schools want to enter into this deal, exactly? And would the funding formula include all the “philanthropic” contributions to charters?

CRPE also suggests that public schools be given some limited extra funding to be used only as a means of down-sizing. Or if districts can prove they’re shrinking as fast as possible, charters would agree to a voluntary growth slow down. Or some other grand bargain that basically involves charters conducting business as usual while public schools agree to work harder at dying, already.

CRPE also has a list of Things To Discuss and Research Further. Gather more data about how much financial vampirage charters are really committing, and how much is just, you know, other reasons for districts to lose money. More data about “fixed costs” and just generally how teachers are draining money by wanting to be paid. Figure out the greatest number of students the charters could handle, because that’s the ideal, apparently– as many students taken out of public school as possible. More power for superintendents. They don’t say which power, exactly, but context suggests that old favorite– hire, fire and set salaries without stupid rules and unions. Learning from other sectors like energy and healthcare, because they’re just like schools.

Bottom Line

CRPE is correct in one thing– we do have to look at how charters affect the whole local educational eco-system. But their belief in the inevitable supremacy of charters gets in the way of a useful conversation.

The report seems to boil down basically to “Charters and public schools should work together to make employment conditions worse for teachers. Also, they should team up to help charters thrive and to help public schools die more efficiently and without making charters look bad. For The Children.”

Maybe this is supposed to be an innovative approach to the Socratic method, and public schools are just supposed to take a hemlock bath because it would make life easier for charters. But I don’t imagine many takers will line up to take CRPE’s offer. Not even for the children.

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

D.C. Charter Operators Agree to Repay $600,000 for Missing $3 Million

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2017 //
8

This looks like a good deal for the leaders of a charter school who were accused of misappropriating
Ropristing $3 million for their personal use. No jail time. A payback of $600,000 and pocket change. And an agreement not to lead any other charters until 2020. The fines apparently will be paid by insurance companies, not the defendants.

“The former leaders of a public charter school for disabled and at-risk teenagers have agreed to settle a District lawsuit alleging they sought to enrich themselves by diverting millions of dollars in taxpayer money meant for the school into private companies they created.

“Donna Montgomery, David Cranford and Paul Dalton, all former managers at Options Public Charter School, agreed to a collective settlement of $575,000, which will be paid to the school that now operates under new leadership as Kingsman Academy. Jeremy Williams, a former chief financial officer of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, who allegedly aided the scheme, agreed to a settlement of $84,237 in a separate deal signed last week. The defendants agreed that they would not serve in a leadership role of any nonprofit corporation in the District until October 2020.

“This settlement ensures that more than $600,000 in misappropriated funds will now go to Kingsman Academy to serve disabled students in the District of Columbia, and will deter future wrongdoing,” said Robert Marus, a spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General. “As the referees for the District’s nonprofit laws, our office will continue to bring actions against any who would misuse funds meant for public or charitable purposes.”

“A statement issued by attorney S.F. Pierson, who represents Dalton, said all three former managers “continue to contest the District’s claims and continue to maintain their position that they managed Options to the highest standards.” Pierson said the former school leaders are “not personally paying” anything to settle the District’s claims. It’s common that insurance plans cover litigation-related costs for nonprofit directors or corporate officers.”

This is a big win for the accused, but a loss for the disabled students, who didn’t get the services intended for them.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Deregulation, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization

Arise, Patriots, and Save Our Nation’s Children from the Machine

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2017 //
7

Joanne Yatvin is now retired. She has been a teacher, principal, and superintendent, as well as President of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is a literacy specialist.

Allons Enfants de la Patrie

Arise Children of Our Country

During the last quarter of the 20th century powerful American politicians decided that human learning was a fixed process in which all healthy young people could and should acquire a specific body of knowledge, information, and skills over a fixed period of time. With that belief, the low scores of American students on international tests were a hard pill for politicians to swallow.

They concluded that those scores were the fault of our schools and their teachers, also parents who were shirking their responsibility to demand the best from their children. American students of all social backgrounds were growing up lazy, ignorant, and unprepared to be the competent adult workers, leaders, creators, and patriots they were meant to be.

Although there is no research evidence to confirm such beliefs about American students’ laziness or the ineffectiveness of our schools, public education has operated on those assumptions continually through the actions of Congress, the Department of Education, and state legislatures. Those bodies have also used public humiliation and punishment of students, teachers, school principals, unions and—indirectly—parents to prevent any resistance from gaining ground.

Thus far, all efforts to reverse the current concept of education and create a humane and reasonable foundation for our public schools have failed. Recently, we believed that the new federal law, ESSA, would return authority to states and their communities, but that belief was crushed by the Department of Education with its rejection of any state plans aimed to serve students’ needs and interests rather than raise test scores and improve graduation rates.

From my perspective, as the mother of four children who were public school students in far better times, and also as a teacher and school principal back then; there is only one possible solution. We must have a widespread public rebellion against the current system. Parents should refuse to have their children participate in high stakes testing and demand age-appropriate standards for all grades. Communities need to re-shape their public schools to fit the needs of their students; and state officials must fight any moves by the Federal government to punish schools for non-compliance.

We have wasted more than twenty years trying out the beliefs and programs ordered by powerful, but know-nothing politicians. For the sake of our children and our country we must take back public education and allow it to grow through wisdom and humanity.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Industry, Privatization, Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

Gary Rubinstein: “I Taught at Houston’s XQ Super School” (A MUST READ!)

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
26

This is one of Gary Rubinstein’s best posts ever.

He watched Laurene Powell Jobs’ extravaganza about her efforts to redesign the American high school into XQ Super Schools. The one where she bought time on four networks.

The one where celebrities said again and again that high schools have not changed in 100 years; Gary does a good job of shredding that myth. Yes, high schools have changed in the past 100 years, but some things should never change and will be found in high schools all over the world.

He notes that the show has had no effect. It seems to have disappeared as soon as it was on the air.

But it didn’t disappear for him because he realized that he taught at one of the XQ Super Schools, a high school in Houston that allegedly was a failing school that was miraculously transformed.

Gary shows that it was not the nightmare school that the producers claimed it to be, nor has it had the miraculous transformation that the show now boasts about.

It was a good school when he was there, even though there was a gang population in the ninth grade.

What he discovers is that the school now has a charter school on campus, which apparently serves as a dumping ground for the kids who are not going to graduate. The regular school raised its statistics by pushing out the bad kids.

No miracle there!

But the school does have a really nice garden. That’s new. That’s good. Is that what caused the claimed spike in test scores? Not likely.

He writes:

One thing that this program definitely accomplished is product placement. It seems that one feature of innovative high schools is that students use a lot of laptops and it seems like most of those laptops are Apple products. While iPads were once considered to be something that was going to be a big part of education, the thing most schools are actually using are a type of laptop called a Chromebook, which is an inexpensive Google product. Since the kids in these schools are using Apple laptops, maybe one purpose of this show was to help with Apple’s competition with Google for the education market.

One thing we did not see a lot of in this was overt teacher bashing. I suppose this is why Randi Weingarten attended and tweeted about how wonderful a program this is. Now even though there wasn’t overt teacher bashing, there was some less direct bashing like the part where celebrities were asked what they wish they learned in high school. Based on their answers, the only conclusion is that their teachers must not have taught those things to them very well.

This program didn’t really seem to resonate with anybody and most people on both sides of the education reform wars have pretty much forgotten about it already. It was a colossal waste of money and shows that being rich doesn’t mean that you necessarily have the right to dictate education policy.

I think that it is not an accident that there was no mention of evil unions or miracle charter schools or school choice in this program. My sense is that reformers realize that most of the talking points from Waiting For Superman don’t work anymore. The public has wised up. They don’t believe as much that teacher’s unions are the problem or that charter schools are the solution. So this program is an attempt to get a new rationale that the public can believe and get behind whatever reforms the reformers want to try, which of course will be more union busting and charters and vouchers. So the new thing is that schools haven’t evolved much in the past 100 years and that’s a problem. All that matters is that the public believes there is some problem, whatever it is. It doesn’t need to be the unions, but it must be something so the 100 year thing will likely be repeated a lot of over the next decade as the new villain for them to save us from.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Houston, Innovation, Privatization
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