Stuart Egan, NBCT high school teacher in North Carolina, has connected the dots that link reformers, the Tea Party, and Betsy DeVos.
Archives for category: Education Industry
This letter is an excellent description of the damage that so-called reformers do to good school districts. In this case, it is Douglas County, Colorado. I urge Amy to join the Network for Public Education, which will connect her to others in Colorado who understand the facade of reform that brings a wrecking crew into the district. Carol Burris will reach out to her.
Can you help?
Amy writes:
I’m a mom of two daughters in Highlands Ranch, CO (an affluent south suburb of Denver, which is heavily Republican). My school district (DCSD-Douglas CO School District) has been under siege since our local 2009 elections, when a majority of “Reform” candidates were elected from within our 7 district “boundaries”, and more in 2013. I admit, I voted for most of them, and I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand what the “Reform” movement was, or how it could dismantle an entire thriving and successful district so quickly.
Over the last 4 to 5 years, as I’ve watched the teacher’s union be dissolved, charter schools (from outside CO) invade and fail, and vouchers drain public money away from neighborhood schools. I’ve watched on-site school teachers/administrators who I have great respect and admiration for, either leave (for neighboring districts… they’re actually called “refugees” within the school systems), retire early, become fearful of speaking up, and sink into a slump of morale. I’ve never been a political person, and I’ve traditionally leaned conservative, but the last 4 years, I’ve become active with other parents in our district to stand up against this “reform” DCSD board agenda that has depleted and destabilized our local school system. We’ve gone from once being the top performing district in the state (attracting top educators/teachers), to having the highest teacher turnover in the state, and massive budget shortfalls.
The board’s pet project, creating the new C.I.T.E. teacher evaluation program, is a dismal failure, and has cost us as taxpayers millions. Our district’s legal fees over the last 8 years are staggering, not to mention millions in fines from the CO BOE, for non-compliant decisions of our Reform board directors. Bottom line… our district needs help.
This November’s election will give citizens the opportunity to replace several of the Reform board members, and despite our county being heavily Republican, I feel parent and teacher grass root groups have a chance. But my concern is that SO many residents in our county simply don’t understand the complexity, and direct links between these board members, and harm in our schools. I’ve been a (moderate) registered republican most of my life, but in this area, I’ve become pretty darn “liberal”, based on watching the impacts on my daughter’s schools, and researching “why”.
We are a county/district packed with “families”. Many Denver citizens have/had moved to our suburbs specifically to get into our school district. I BELIEVE, despite resident’s political identification, that this is an issue that can be persuasively won (taken back) in our county. However, during our last few election cycles, lobbyists, money, and out-of-state players seem to flood into our little district. I’ve come to realize Douglas County, CO, is somehow very important to much bigger players. A group called LPR (Leadership Program of the Rockies…
http://www.leadershipprogram.org ) has been a major influence on our district, and I’ve come to feel as though our local citizens are being manipulated by this group. More directly, by its members and graduates (the 4 remaining “reform” board members are all affiliated with LPR.) They and have even appointed/hired other LPR members to positions within the district… (I.e. the F-Time attorney recently hired to work in our school administration). Is it even normal for a previously highly successful school district to have a FT “in-house” attorney as a school district employee?
I’m really just one small person, and there are certainly others also advocating in my district who are much more knowledgeable about everything that has occurred over the last 10 years. I’m reaching out to you, because of what I’ve read about you, your passions, and your impressive educational and professional background. Do you have any insight or advice for how our grassroots citizens (who understand the need to stand up and “do something”) should proceed between now and the crutial elections this November? Specifically…
* what are the best and most effective ways to get our local community “aware” of these issues? (as many people just find the topic boring, and/or assume no matter who is elected, the “district” is bigger than any one board member)
* assuming we get local voters better educated, what practices result in getting them to ACT (I.e. voting; and potentially across their GOP “party” identifications, if only on this ONE local issue)?
* How do we find, solicit, and promote the best potential “anti-reform” school board candidates for this November’s local election? The “Reform” candidates in previous elections have come across as VERY intelligent, highly educated, and very “successful” people with high level jobs… even I incorrectly “assumed” (in prior elections) that these professional smart people (I.e. an attorney, a rocket scientist etc) would make logical good decisions for our kids and schools. Because they had very professional “day jobs”, and kids in our schools, I guess I assumed lobbyists or outside influences wouldn’t have much effect on them. Now I know each received sizable campaign donations from places like the local GOP party, and LPR sources.
* how can we most effectively raise money for our future candidates, to be able to compete against heavily funded “reform” candidates?
* Is it possible to keep these special interest and even “national” entities out of “our” small local elections?
Thank you for the important work you do. And if I don’t hear back from you, know you have inspired “little people” like me about the crutial importance of public education, and why we can’t treat it as a for-profit commodity.
Most Sincerely,
Amy Smith
Highlands Ranch, CO
Citizen and mom in the Douglas CO School District
YouCanReachAmySmith@gmail.com
PS: these are websites involved local parents and teachers have formed over the last few years…
Involved Douglas County teachers and Citizens…
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dc4publicedu/
SPEAK for DCSD…
https://www.facebook.com/SPEAK-for-DCSD-113649758761679/
Douglas County Parents…
https://www.facebook.com/DouglasCountyParents/
Jeff Bryant pulls together persuasive evidence that Betsy DeVos energized a movement that was previously scattered and disconnected. People who had no idea that the privatization of public schools is a genuine threat became informed. Groups began forming at the grassroots level to defend their community’s public schools. Supposedly “progressive” Democrats supported privatization by charters because they were hoodwinked by fake reformers promising fake miracles. For those of us fighting privatization, DeVos clarified what is at stake: the survival of democratically-controlled, community-based public schools, responsible for all children.
Even Senators like Michael Bennett and Corey Booker voted against DeVos, even though they fundamentally agree with her view of school reform by school choice.
Make no mistake: School choice was born in racism and it promotes racism.
Jeff Bryant writes:
“Betsy DeVos may have won her contest in the Senate to become the new U.S. Secretary of Education, but her opposition wasn’t the only thing that went down to defeat that day.
“For decades, federal education policies have been governed by a “Washington Consensus” that public schools are effectively broken, especially in low-income communities of color, and the only way to fix them is to apply a dose of tough love and a business philosophy of competition from charter schools and performance measurements based on standardized tests.
“Since the 1990s, this consensus among Democrats and Republicans has enforced all kinds of unproven “reform” mandates on schools, and by 2012, as veteran education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post noted that year, the two parties were “happily copying each other” on education.
“Democrats have in recent years sounded – and acted – a lot like Republicans in advancing corporate education reform, which seeks to operate public schools as if they were businesses, not civic institutions,” writes Valerie Strauss, the veteran education journalist who blogs for the Washington Post. “By embracing many of the tenets of corporate reform — including the notion of ‘school choice’ and the targeting of teachers and their unions as being blind to the needs of children – they helped make DeVos’s education views, once seen as extreme, seem less so.”
“But with the election of President Donald Trump and the ascension of DeVos to secretary, that consensus appears dead.
“She would start her job with no credibility,” Education Week quotes Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington. “A vote for Betsy DeVos is a vote for a secretary of education who is likely to succeed only in further dividing us on education issues.”
“The DeVos vote reflected the tribal, dysfunctional, polarized nature of our politics,” writes Woodrow Wilson Center senior scholar Linda Killian in USA Today. “It is a harbinger of things to come.”
“But what looks like the death of a political consensus on education could be the beginning of something else: an opportunity for progressives to press a new education agenda. Here’s what should they do.”
He proceeds to write about next steps. Read them.
Here is one you can take right now. Join the Network for Public Education. DeVos caused a huge spike in our membership. She has made parents and educators and graduates of public schools aware that they must stand together and fight the DeVos-Trump agenda of charters, vouchers, cybercharters, for-profit schools, homeschooling. Just remember when she speaks soothing words about public schools, she wants to take funding away from them to share with all those private choices.
When Eli Broad talks about charters, he is endorsing the DeVos agenda. When Democrats for Education Reform, Families for Excellent Schools, Stand for Children, Bill Gates, and other billionaires sing the praises of charter schools, they are singing from the DeVos privatization hymnal.
When Anthony Cody and I started the Network
The Los Angeles Times endorsed two strong supporters of charter schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District board, both favored by the California Charter School Association. The rationale was simplistic: new voices are needed.This is bizarre. It doesn’t matter whether a voice is old or new. What matters most is what the voice is saying. Will a new board try to turn Los Angeles into New Orleans? Will it be Eli Broad’s puppet? His voice is the oldest of all. It would be truly refreshing if the LA Times told him to keep his hands off the public schools since all of his experiments have failed (e.g., Michigan’s Education Achievement District). Why don’t they tell him to stick to art and medical research and stop meddling in the schools?
However, the Times published an article by columnist Steve Lopez that offers a clear-eyed analysis of the CCSA’s dirty tricks. The CCSA and its billionaire buddies have decided that it is time to take out Steve Zimmer, chair of the LAUSD school board. They are raising millions of dollars to push him out, even though he has not been hostile to charters. But the billionaires don’t want a fair-minded board president who has classroom experience (Zimmer came into education through Teach for America but remained a teacher for 17 years). The last time they tried to beat him, they outspent him 5-1, but he prevailed. His winning issue apparently was the $1 million from former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, which gave the appearance that a New Yorker was trying to buy control of the LA schools. So this time the $1 million came from former LA Mayor Richard Riordan.
So here’s the dirty trick. CCSA created a phony group called LA Students for Change to demand Zimmer’s ouster. Once again, like Families for Excellent Schools in New York City, which is composed of billionaire families who will never see the inside of a public school, the charter industry finds it necessary to deceive voters. Worse, CCSA printed up flyers for their student-props, blaming Zimmer for John Deasy’s $1 Billion iPad fiasco.
How comical is that? The embarrassing iPad scandal caused Deasy to resign, with a cloud over his head. Deasy now works for Eli Broad. Broad is the city’s charter kingpin and a major financier of CCSA. and now CCSA’s student group is pinning Deasy’s mess on Zimmer.
I salute the Los Angeles Times for recognizing that it’s time for Monica Garcia, the board’s most fervent charter advocate, to go. The Times endorses Lisa Alva, a classroom teacher who would be a valuable addition to the board. She and Carl Petersen are running against Garcia, and here’s hoping that they pull enough votes to force her into a run-off and defeat her.
Los Angeles should have a great public school in every neighborhood. That won’t happen as long as charters continue to drain away the students they want and drain away resources, leaving LAUSD with the students most expensive to educate and less money to meet their needs.
The district needs that vision, not just new voices and faces for the sake of novelty.
Leonie a Haimson, leader of Class Size Matter and board member of the Network for Public Education, reviews the drama of the last week and looks ahead.
“So it happened as predicted; Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote for Betsy Devos this afternoon.
Though disappointing it was in its way historic: the only time in US history that a Cabinet secretary needed the vote of the Vice President to be approved.
“The last few weeks have been historic in another way: Never have parents, teachers and concerned citizens been so outraged and activated over an education official or issue. Never have so many called, rallied, protested, faxed and written letters to their Senators, in an “avalanche” that nearly flattened Capitol Hill, overwhelming and shocking Senators of both parties….
“We need to sustain the activism and involvement we exercised in this battle and keep speaking out loudly and firmly to let education policymakers at the federal, state and local levels know that we will not stand idly by while our public schools are defunded, dismantled and privatized.
“One issue little noticed by the media: it was widely recognized how avid Betsy DeVos has been to allow for-profit charters and vouchers to draw funds from the public schools. What was little noticed is her devotion to online learning and questionable ed tech solutions. These will just as surely divert resources from the proven strategies that provide students with the support and human feedback they need. It was reported that the one financial company she refused to divest from is Neurocore that runs “brain performance centers” via biofeedback to treat autism and attention deficit disorder with no evidence of efficacy.
“In 2015, while speaking at SXSW Edu, that annual Kumbaya gathering of the technology tribe, DeVos sounded exactly like Bill Gates:
It’s a battle of Industrial Age versus the Digital Age. It’s the Model T versus the Tesla. It’s old factory model versus the new Internet model. It’s the Luddites versus the future. We must open up the education industry — and let’s not kid ourselves that it isn’t an industry — we must open it up to entrepreneurs and innovators.
This is how families without means will get access to a world-class education. This is how a student who’s not learning in their current model can find an individualized learning environment that will meet their needs.
We are the beneficiaries of start-ups, ventures, and innovation in every other area of life, but we don’t have that in education because it’s a closed system, a closed industry, a closed market. It’s a monopoly, a dead end. And the best and brightest innovators and risk-takers steer way clear of it. As long as education remains a closed system, we will never see the education equivalents of Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Wikipedia or Uber. We won’t see any real innovation that benefits more than a handful of students.”
“Surely, we will need all your activism in the battles to come – whether it be against the expansion of charters, the use of tuition tax credits or vouchers, or wasteful ed tech scams — all of which would divert precious resources from our public schools. Now that we’ve woken up our elected officials to the fact that parents and teachers and citizens fiercely love their public schools, and will do nearly anything to preserve, protect and support them, we must continue to speak out.
For Immediate Release: February 7, 2017
Media Contact: Carol Burris 718-577-3276
cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org
The Network for Public Education furious over the approval of Betsy DeVos. Begins campaign to thwart any attempts to privatize schools.
The Network for Public Education (NPE) announced its campaign to oppose any attempts by the newly appointed Secretary of Education to privatize public education. In a letter to its 316,000 members, NPE vowed to continue the fight against the DeVos agenda at both the state and national level.
“Betsy DeVos put a spotlight on the ongoing threat to our democratically governed, community public schools. Public school advocates across the nation spoke out. Our campaign against DeVos generated over 600,000 emails and thousands of phone calls and letters to the Senate. Americans do not want an unregulated, privatized school system paid for by American taxpayers. They do not want public school funds taken from their neighborhood schools for profiteers, charters and vouchers. That is what DeVos represents,” said NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris.
NPE President, Diane Ravitch, believes the De Vos family’s massive political donations were the driving factor behind her Senate approval. “We are disappointed but not surprised that Betsy DeVos was approved, despite the fact that she is completely unqualified for the job by experience or knowledge or any other criteria. As she has acknowledged, she and her family have given millions of dollars to the Republican party, including to members of the senate that just approved her. We weep for the children of America, knowing that this woman will launch an assault on their community public schools, as she did in Michigan. Since her choice theology was implemented in Michigan, that state’s rankings on national tests have plummeted, and Detroit–now flooded with charters–remains the lowest performing urban district on national tests. We will continue to fight her agenda of school privatization as it moves forward.“
The Network for Public Education will expand its Grassroots Network, and will roll out reports, advisories and toolkits to help policymakers and parents better understand the dangers of school privatization. In the months ahead, NPE will lead both state and national campaigns.
“When it comes to fighting for adequately funded, democratically-governed public schools, we make ‘no excuses’.” Our neighborhood schools made our country great. We will not allow them to be destroyed,” Burris said.
About the Network for Public Education
The Network for Public Education (NPE) was founded in 2013 by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. We are an advocacy group whose mission is to protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public schools for both current and future generations of students. NPE has over 300,000 supporting members nationwide. For more information, please visit: networkforpubliceducation.org.
The Detroit Free Press knows Betsy DeVos well. The editorial board published a blistering editorial urging the Senate to reject her nomination for Secretary of Education.
http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/editorials/2017/01/30/devos-nomination-senate-vote/97243810/
Here is an excerpt:
Make no mistake: A vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education is a vote to end public education in this country as we know it.
This isn’t conspiracy theory, or ideologically driven slander. Look at DeVos’ own words and actions, over her long career advocating against traditional public schools; her funding of an ideologically driven pro-charter lobby; her willingness to spend whatever it takes to ensure her policy preferences become law.
DeVos is unqualified in every respect to serve as head of this critical department, and the U.S. Senate must vote Tuesday to reject her nomination.
West Michigan billionaire DeVos hasn’t worked in public education, public administration, or even in mainstream education reform. She’s demonstrated a refusal to value outcomes over ideology. But she’s contributed millions to the Republican Party and Republican candidates, to the pro-school-choice lobby she essentially founded, and to like-minded candidates whose careers she has financed.
All at the expense of public school students, mostly black, mostly in Detroit — children a world away from the Grand Rapids area where the DeVos family makes its home.
But nor has she spent her considerable wealth and influence advocating for better schools outside of Detroit; report after report shows Michigan schools are falling dangerously behind, that serious investment and course correction are required to stop this slow slide to the bottom.
DeVos has called traditional public schools a “dead end,” a government “monopoly.” Husband Dick DeVos said the couple bemoans the role public schools have played at the heart of American communities — replacing, they believe, the church as the central institution of American life. She has advanced or lobbied for programs that draw taxpayer dollars from those schools, always to those schools’ great detriment, to fund unregulated charter schools or to provide public-money vouchers for private education.
There’s nothing inherently destructive about charter schools. Properly managed charters can be a viable alternative for parents with few options. But that’s not the kind of charter school DeVos has championed — and nor can an education secretary’s educational advocacy be so one-sided. In Michigan, charter schools can be run by for-profit operators. Charter schools can siphon public money for decades, taking taxpayer dollars without making good on the promise of better results.
DeVos’ defenders are quick to claim Detroit, where charter schools have proliferated at a record pace, as a victory for her pro-school-choice ideology. They’re wrong. A Michigan State Reform Office plan to close failing schools may be stymied, in Detroit, by a dearth of high-quality educational options citywide. Look no further than a map of Detroit schools ranked by academic outcomes — the same neighborhoods served by failing traditional public schools are also home to failing charters. The problem is not insufficient choice. It’s an obstinate refusal on the part of DeVos and her lobby of ideologically driven reformers to acknowledge that school choice is meaningless if all choices are bad.
Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation notes that the Obame education reforms failed, with a price tag of $7 billion.
Advocates of school choice treat that failure as a rationale for school choice.
But, says Kahlenberg, the research is clear that racial integration produces significant gains, whereas school choice, especially vouchers, has none.
Jim Hall, whom I wrote about in the previous post, has uncovered many charter scams in Arizona. Here is his latest report. Open the link to read his attachments and documentation.
Arizonans for Charter School Accountability
arizcsa1000@gmail.com
602-343-3021
The Consequences of Unregulated Charter Schools:
The Leona Group LLC Reaps Millions in Real Estate Profits While Arizona Taxpayers (and Students) Foot the Bill
Arizonans for Charter School Accountability recently released two reports on charter school classroom spending in 2016 (see links below) finding that 191 Arizona charter schools are efficiently run and spend more money in the classroom than on administration and facilities combined. A majority of charter schools, however, spend less on classroom instruction than on administration and buildings. Imagine Inc. and the Leona Group LLC manage the majority of schools spending more on administration and facilities than in the classroom.
This report focuses on the Leona Group LLC which manages 25 schools in Arizona (and over 60 schools total in five states) to try to understand why Leona Group LLC managed schools spend so little on classroom instruction.
These were the key findings:
In 2007, Bill Coats, the sole owner of the Leona Group LLC, sold 10 schools owned by Leona Group LLC to a non-profit foundation Coats created in 1998, the American Charter Schools Foundation ACSF), for $33,890,485 more than their market value.
Bill Coats maintains the same management control over the schools as he had when Leona Group LLC owned the schools but now has set management fees that are not based on student enrollment.
ACSF schools have declined in enrollment by 25% since their purchase in 2007.
Between 2007 and 2016 overall instruction spending in ACSF schools has declined from $2090/pupil to $1455/pupil while facilities costs increased from $1455/pupil to $2479/pupil.
The real estate windfall Bill Coats received in 2007 by selling schools to his own foundation has caused ACSF to cut classroom spending to among the lowest rates of any school in Arizona – to fund the excessive mortgages.
Jim Hall, founder of Arizonans for Charter School Accountability, stated “ The Leona Group LLC has made tens of millions of dollars selling schools to their own non-profit foundation for double their market value – and still retain complete management control. The schools now spend most of their budgets on mortgages and management. Arizona doesn’t monitor charter school spending so this kind of waste and abuse goes unnoticed.”
Hall continued, “ The Arizona Auditor General needs to monitor charter spending and the Arizona Board for Charter Schools needs to sanction charter schools that divert public funds to corporate profits at the expense of children in the classroom.”
In the debate about the appointment of Betsy DeVos, the failure of her brand of reform in Michigan has not gotten enough attention. Would you hire a plumber whose previous jobs were all failures? Would you trust your car to an auto mechanic who was known to be incompetent? Would you go to a doctor who lost his medical license for malpractice?
DeVos’s allies have been beating the drums about a Detroit miracle, but no one else can see it but them. Despite more than 20 years of charters, the Detroit school district is the lowest performing urban district on NAEP. As the Detroit Free Press has repeatedly written, many of the charters in Detroit are failing schools. DeVos fought off legislative efforts to impose accountability on charters.
Most recently, one of the boosters for privatization in Michigan published an article about the miracle of Muskegon Heights, a predominantly African American school district that was taken over by the state and given an emergency manager. The emergency manager turned the entire small district over to a charter operator. If you believe the DeVos PR, this was great for the children.
But Gary Rubinstein looked at the data and found that this charter flack was presenting “alternate facts.” Muskegon Heights is one of the lowest performing districts in the state of Michigan.
Before the takeover, Muskegon Heights had five schools. Now it has two.
Gary writes:
So one school is in the bottom 2% of all schools and the other is in the bottom 0%. Unless the second school once had a ranking with negative numbers, there is no way that being in the 0% can be an improvement over anything.
So this is yet another example of a lie to support the narrative that charter schools are superior to public schools. If this turnaround was supported by Betsy DeVos and it is any indication of her ability to devise real solutions to complex issues, I’m feeling pretty pessimistic about the direction education will take if and when she is confirmed as Secretary of Education.
