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Peter Greene Channels Betsy DeVos Giving a Speech

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2016 //
13

Peter Greene imagines Betsy DeVos’s first speech to the people of her hometown Grand Rapids, Michigan, explaining her belief in replacing public schools with privately managed charters and religious schools.

Here, in Greene’s words, is a portion of Betsy’s sales pitch for “school choice”; open the link to read it all:

You have to understand– when the founding fathers said that all men were created equal, they didn’t mean that all men are actually equal. The Puritans understood that some people are favored by God and therefor blessed with greater prosperity than others. These Chosen are more favored, more suited to take dominion over the rest of creation, more deserving of honor. They’re just better.

Are some people better than others just because they’re rich? No, that would be ridiculous. They’re rich because they’re better. People criticize me because every cent I have either was passed to me either by my parents or my husband, but those people are missing the point. God made me rich because I deserve it.

These signs of God’s favor and an individual’s superiority used to be pretty clearcut, and they used to be the foundation of America. But the founders made one crucial mistake– they let all sorts of people vote, and over time, those people got uppity. There was a time when America was still great, back when everybody knew his or her place, back when black people and poor people handicapped people and non-Christians didn’t try to take things they weren’t entitled to. Back when the homosexuals had the decency to pretend they didn’t exist. But those days are gone– ruined by a bunch of uppity people who won’t just shut up and listen to those of us who know better. Now homosexuals and blacks and women and Muslims can all strut around like they’re perfectly normal and it’s we decent Christians who have to hold our tongue and avoid saying simple things like “Jesus hates you and you’re going to hell.” It’s a topsy turvy world.

And it all starts in school.

We let the children of the better class of people mix with the children of Those People. Teachers don’t seem to know their place, and insist on teaching things they just shouldn’t teach, the kinds of things that students were never taught back when America was great– certainly not in the fine private schools my children and I attended. That is why I absolutely support the Common Core– someone has to tell Those People what they should teach. However, I understand that some of you are not fans of Common Core, and so I totally promise that the federal regulations requiring Common Core will be stricken from the law, along with the regulations requiring students to wear clown shoes and the regulations requiring lunch ladies to be certified Yeti’s. I guarantee you that in just a few months, all of those laws will be gone, and you will be free to have your state government enforce Common Core under some other name.

We will also do our best to crush both teacher unions and all those other unions, too. Unions are unnatural, a terrible attempt to interfere with the natural order of things. People who want to control working conditions and wages should not choose to be the kind of people who work at those jobs. It is their place to simply do their jobs and let those of us who Know Better make the important decisions.

Government has also interfered with the God-given natural order of things by forcing money to flow to people who don’t deserve it. If God wanted Those People to have money, He would have made them rich, and it is not government’s place to interfere with that just process. By getting government to takes its paws off schools, a choice and charter system can allow money to again flow to those who actually deserve it. A choice and charter system also allows children of the better people to get their education without having to deal with the children of Those People. Really, isn’t it better when people associate with their own kind?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Vouchers

Alan Singer: Education Policy from Obama to Trump

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
20

Alan Singer greatly admires President Obama, as do I, except for his disastrous education policies, which laid the groundwork for privatization and deprofessionalization of teaching. Public school educators were scolded again and again by Arne Duncan for their alleged failings and their alleged low standards.

 

Singer here reviews the Obama record and tries to find something positive to say about the “reform” agenda of the past 15 years. Try as he might, he can’t find much to praise.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing

Arthur Camins to Trump: Hands Off Our Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
7

Arthur Camins writes in Huffington Post what should be a rallying cry for parents, educators, and citizens:

 

“Keep the government’s hands off our public schools!”

 

With his selection of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education, Donald Trump has made it clear. He wants to take away your public school. Tell him, “Keep the government’s hands off our public schools!…”

 

Many need improvement, but it is democratically governed public schools that have made America great- not private schools and not charter schools. We all know that we can love what is imperfect. We need to strengthen the marriage between public schools and equity, not a divorce….

 

Democratically controlled schools for all are the norm. Trump and his supporters seek a taxpayer-funded private option to undermine and even replace the existing public school system. Make no mistake. Profit and exclusivity will trump quality and inclusiveness. Privatization means working class children get less and the wealthy keep getting more…

 

In short, in the name of liberty and freedom, the modern conservative movement represents an exaltation of selfishness. …A striking example is the growing campaign to shift federal and state funding from public schools to charter schools and private schools through vouchers. Sadly, the former has been supported by many Democrats, while the latter has been the long-held dream of “competition solves everything” Republicans and those seeking to tear down our historic church-state barriers.

 

For over a century, taxpayer-funded public schools that were governed by locally elected school boards lived side-by-side with privately funded and governed non-sectarian and religiously-affiliated schools. The vast majority of parents chose the former for their children. The prevailing, but often contested, assumption was that parents had a right to send their children to private schools, but at their expense.

 

We are at a crossroads. Integration, diversity, and democracy are under attack as unifying national priorities here in the US and around the world. The ethos of “be out for yourself” is gaining ascendancy over “I am my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper” as inequity and terrorism erode hope and security. In that context, entrepreneurs seek to undermine confidence and exacerbate parent anxiety about the quality and safety of public schools, and exploit a potentially vast education market. Persistent underfunding aids this cynical agenda….

 

We have a lot to do to improve education in the US. Inequity is persistent and too many schools fall far short on citizenship development. However, public opinion surveys consistently show that parents express greater satisfaction with and confidence in their children’s schools and teachers than with the schools they do not experience first hand.

 

Our great challenge ahead for education as with other critical features of community wellbeing is to find the language and solutions to mobilize people across their perceived disparate needs to find common cause.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

The Mystery of the Gulen Turkish “Public” Schools

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
38

Jason McGahan, an investigative reporter for LA Weekly in California, looked into some strange practices in the schools affiliated with the Gulen  movement. Fethullah Gulen is an Islamic cleric who lives in seclusion in Pennsylvania. The Erdogan government in Turkey claims that Gulen was responsible for the recent failed coup. Whether he was or was not involved in the coup is unknown. Gulen’s role in the charter movement is also unclear. He has some undefined connection with 160 or so charter schools, which go under a variety of names. Many or most of their teachers are on work visas from Turkey, and typically most or all of their board members are Turkish. It is odd that foreign nationals would take control of running “public” schools in the United States, since the essential role of public schools is to teach citizenship. The organization frequently sponsors trips to Turkey for state legislators and their staff and for Congressional staff. These “free” trips promote good will.

 

The story that interested McGahan was the movement of cash from the charter schools to the Gulen organization. When “60 Minutes” reported on the Gulen schools a few years ago, one of the people interviewed said that Gulen teachers were expected to remit 40% of their wages to the organization. McGahan reports that the practice seems to be customary.

 

His informant was a Turkish man named Yunus Avcu. He described his monthly trips from Aurora, Colorado, to Santa Ana, California, to bring a briefcase full of cash to “the organization.” Avcu said the cash was the regular deductions from staff members’ salaries.

 

Avcu says these payments weren’t voluntary; he says the organization also obligated him to return about 40 percent of his own salary every month. He says Accord executives made an Excel spreadsheet at the start of the school year with the salary of every Turkish employee at every school in one column and the amount of money each would owe in another. Avcu says executives determined the amount each Turkish teacher had to return to the organization, based on the employee’s seniority, education level, marital status and number of children. “The organization was taking the money from the people,” Avcu says. “If you don’t pay this money, they don’t employ you. If you reject or refuse to pay this, you have to go back to Turkey.”

 

According to Avcu, the cash funded the worldwide organization of Fethullah Gülen, a controversial Turkish preacher living in self-exile in the United States….

 

The inspector general of the Los Angeles Unified School District alleges that a California charter school group, the Magnolia Educational and Research Foundation, is among the more than 160 U.S. charter school groups with ties to Gülen. Magnolia operates charter schools on 10 campuses in California, including eight in L.A. It also happened to be headquartered in the same office space as the Accord Institute [where Avcu delivered the cash each month]….

 

The CEO at Magnolia Public Schools, Caprice Young, denies any formal or financial affiliation with Gülen or the Gülen movement; she does, however, acknowledge that certain current and former directors of the foundation are believers in Gülen’s teachings. “Some of our founding principals had ties to Gülen,” Young tells L.A. Weekly, but she says those founders are no longer part of Magnolia….

 

Since 2011, the FBI has raided charter schools with ties to Gülen in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. A Georgia audit found three schools engaged in bid-rigging to vendors with ties to Gülen. A New York audit found one charter school had leased its building in a way that netted millions of dollars for a New Jersey company with ties to Turkey. In Utah, authorities revoked the charter of a school tied to Gülen after an audit uncovered financial mismanagement. In Illinois, a charter group tied to Gülen is under federal investigation for funneling more than $5 million in federal grant money to insiders and away from the charter schools’ fund intended to extend Internet access to schools with low-income students….

 

Caprice Young is the somewhat unlikely face of the Magnolia Educational and Research Foundation. She assumed the helm as CEO in January 2015, and her hiring was widely interpreted as a move to both reform Magnolia’s management practices and rehabilitate its image. Young is the first American and first woman to serve as CEO at the charter organization, whose four previous CEOs were Turkish men.

 

Magnolia pays Young a salary of $236,000, and it has provided her the full-time services of a public relations specialist from Larson Communications, an L.A. firm that includes crisis management among its specialties. Magnolia pays the firm $12,000 a month.

 

Young is a former president of the LAUSD board; she served for four years before losing her re-election bid in 2003. From there, she went on to found the California Charter Schools Association, building it into a formidable statewide organization in her five years as president. By Young’s account, her specialty since stepping down from CCSA eight years ago has been turning around charter schools from the brink of financial collapse.
Young says she began working at Magnolia as a consultant in late 2014. Her personal connection to Magnolia dates back to 2001, when, as school board president, she voted to approve Magnolia’s first charter school, Magnolia Science Academy 1 in Reseda. She says she has fond memories of the eight Turkish scientists, businessmen and educators who founded the school; the news clipping that commemorates the school’s founding is framed and displayed on the wall of Magnolia’s conference room.

 

The eight charter schools operated by the Magnolia foundation in L.A. — in Van Nuys, Carson, Venice, Palms, Northridge, Bell and Reseda — received a collective $26 million in local, state and federal funds in fiscal year 2014, according to audited financial statements. The schools enroll a collective 2,600 students, the vast majority of them from disadvantaged families, school officials say. Eighty percent of Magnolia students are eligible for the school lunch program, and a similar proportion of them are low-income and students of color. Generally the Magnolia charters outperform their public school peers, but not across the board.

 

The article describes the multiple investigations of the Magnolia charter schools and recent decisions to deny their requests to open more charter schools.

 

There is so much mystery surrounding the Gulen schools that some investigative agency–the FBI?–should look into their origins, their ties (if any) to Fethullah Gulen, and their finances. Why in the world should we outsource public schools?

 

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Citizenship, Education Industry, Gulen Charter Schools, Privatization

John Thompson: We Can’t Let Betsy DeVos Destroy Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
19

John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma.

 

 

As the Daily Oklahoman’s Ben Felder explains, “Education savings accounts (ESAs) and vouchers have not been easy sells, including in the GOP-controlled Oklahoma Legislature.” Until this November, the same argument which defeated vouchers last year would have seemed to be persuasive. Our schools have been clobbered by a 27% decrease in per-student funding and they can’t stand a further reduction. Even a month ago, a grassroots coalition of educators and families appeared ready to send more teachers to the legislature, and to pass SQ 779, which would have raised teachers’ wages.

 

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-school-voucher-advocates-see-a-political-opening/article/5529475

 

Then a well-funded and false advertising campaign helped derail the teacher raise, and Betsy DeVos’ the American Federation for Children, “spent nearly $170,000 in Oklahoma campaigns this year, often in opposition to public school teachers who were also running.” So, Felder now reports, “last month’s election results on both the national and state level have some school choice advocates seeing a political opening.” He cites Republican Sen. Kyle Loveless, “‘There is definitely going to be some movement on education savings accounts this next year in Oklahoma … Last year we were a couple of votes short in the Senate but I think we picked those seats up this year.'”

 

In addition to American Federation of Children’s money, a series of Indiana corporate reformers have repeatedly come to Oklahoma and pushed the DeVos/Trump/Pence agenda. So, it is doubly important that Oklahoma legislators, like their counterparts across the nation, become aware of what former Gov. Mike Pence and the $1.3 million that DeVos and her political action committee poured into Indiana have bought – and at what price.

 

Chalkbeat Indiana’s Nicholas Garcia, in “Six Things to Know about Indiana’s School Voucher Program, A Possible Model for Ed Sec Nominee Betsy DeVos,” explains that “the number of students using vouchers rose from 3,911 in 2011, when the program launched, to 32,686 in 2016.” Originally, vouchers were pushed as a way to help poor students in failing schools, but “a growing portion of Indiana voucher users are from middle-class families, and growth has been greatest among suburban families.” Now, “60 percent of Indiana voucher users are white, and about 31 percent are from middle-income families — not exactly the student population that struggles most in the state’s schools.”

 

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2016/11/30/six-things-to-know-about-indianas-school-voucher-program-a-possible-model-for-betsy-devos/

 

Even more disturbing is the way that vouchers have grown into a greater threat to the financial stability of schools, “In 2011, just 9 percent of voucher users had never before gone to public school, Chalkbeat reports, “That was true for more than half of students using vouchers in 2016. So, Indiana isn’t offering an escape from failing schools but a subsidy for many who would never attend a public school.

 

Moreover, researchers at Notre Dame University conducted a long-term study which found that “students who switched from traditional public schools to Catholic schools actually did worse in math.” They also increase student mobility which undermines student performance.

 

Of course, student performance outcomes aren’t the outcomes that motivate many voucher advocates. DeVos has said that her goal is not to “stay in our own faith territory,” but to “advance God’s Kingdom.” As Politico’s Benjamin Wermund reports, DeVos sees school choice as a path to “greater Kingdom gain.”

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-education-trump-religion-232150

 

Given the importance of religious issues in the voucher fights, an analysis by Mother Jones’s Stephanie Mencimer is timely. She found that, “Pence’s voucher program ballooned into a $135 million annual bonanza almost exclusively benefiting private religious schools–ranging from those teaching the Koran to Christian schools teaching creationism and the Bible as literal truth–at the expense of regular and usually better-performing public schools.”

 

Mencimer looked into the 316 schools receiving vouchers and she could only find four that weren’t religious. However, she found curricula that teaches creationism and Biblical stories and parables as literally true. Mencimer learned:

 

Among the more popular textbooks are some from Bob Jones University that are known for teaching that humans and dinosaurs existed on the Earth at the same time and that dragons were real. BJU textbooks have also promoted a positive view of the KKK, writing in one book, “the Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross to target bootleggers, wife beaters and immoral movies.”

 

Moreover, Mother Jones cites a young Muslim student who attended a voucher school for about eight weeks, “as he bounced around several schools on his way to becoming radicalized. In September, he was indicted for providing material support to terrorists after allegedly trying to join ISIS.”

 

Mother Jones further describes the deplorable student performance of many voucher schools. In 2015, less than 9 percent of the students at a Horizon Christian Academy campus passed the state standardized tests in math and English. And it adds telling details to the Chalkbeat Indiana’s narrative. Mother Jones found:

 

Some of the fastest growth in voucher use has occurred in some of the state’s most affluent suburbs. The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based think tank, recently concluded that because white children’s participation in the voucher program dwarfed the next largest racial group by 44 points, the vouchers were effectively helping to resegregate public schools.

 

It’s bad enough that Trump seeks billions of dollars to fund vouchers. But, especially in poor states and districts, the DeVos/Trump/Pence policy could be worse than anything previously imagined. Not all states and school districts that have been targeted by Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos are as vulnerable as those in Oklahoma, but as a recent NPR report explains, there are plenty of other systems that are already overwhelmed.

 

KOSU’s Emily Wendler and WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook, in “Public School Funding at a Loss, in Oklahoma and Elsewhere,” started a national tour of under-funded and challenged school systems to first answer the question “How Low Can a State Go?” and still educate its kids. Second, it asks what effect DeVos will have on these underfunded systems.

 

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/11/30/oklahoma-schools-four-day-weeks

 

Other states have taken the route pioneered by Kansas, Michigan, and Oklahoma and deliberately starve their governmental services. This new voucher campaign, combined with public and private charters, and virtual schools could push many of those states across a “tipping point,” and creating new lows in public schooling, constitutional democracy, and common decency.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Vouchers

Study: Portrait of a “Teach for All” (TFA International) Teacher

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2016 //
10

This study appears in the Education Policy Analysis Archives. Written by Michelle Gautreaux and Sandra Delgado of the University of British Columbia in Canada, it describes the origins of Teach for All, the international wing of TFA, which destroys the teaching profession and unions wherever it goes.

Here is the abstract:

“This article employs narrative analysis to examine how the media in 12 different countries characterize the Teach for All (TFA) teacher. Examining mass media narratives in these 12 countries illustrates that there are some remarkable commonalities in the narratives and character portraits co-constructed and propagated by the media. At the core of these narratives is the notion of a problem in education. This problem justifies the creation and emergence of a character, commonly constructed in opposition to traditionally certified teachers, who embodies the characteristics and attributes of the contemporary neoliberal subject. This article discusses the implications of this character’s widespread representation; namely, how does the character construction influence the broader public perception about education and how is it contributing to the (re)imagination of the role of the teacher?”

Where did Wendy Kopp get the idea for Teach for All? At a meeting sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative. She suddenly realized she could bring her money-making plan to the rest of the world, appearing to do good while obliterating the teaching profession and unions.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, International, Privatization, Teach for America

Politico: Michigan is a Horrible Model for U.S. Education

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2016 //
19

Caitlin Emma, Benjamin Wermund, and Kimberly Hefling, staff writers at politico.com, took a close look at Michigan and answered the question, what hath Betsy DeVos’s obsession with choice done to the schools of Michigan?

 

Unless you are a choice fanatic like DeVos, the answer is not encouraging.

 

Despite two decades of charter-school growth, the state’s overall academic progress has failed to keep pace with other states: Michigan ranks near the bottom for fourth- and eighth-grade math and fourth-grade reading on a nationally representative test, nicknamed the “Nation’s Report Card.” Notably, the state’s charter schools scored worse on that test than their traditional public-school counterparts, according to an analysis of federal data.

 

Critics say Michigan’s laissez-faire attitude about charter-school regulation has led to marginal and, in some cases, terrible schools in the state’s poorest communities as part of a system dominated by for-profit operators. Charter-school growth has also weakened the finances and enrollment of traditional public-school districts like Detroit’s, at a time when many communities are still recovering from the economic downturn that hit Michigan’s auto industry particularly hard.

 

The results in Michigan are so disappointing that even some supporters of school choice are critical of the state’s policies.

 

“The bottom line should be, ‘Are kids achieving better or worse because of this expansion of choice?’” said Michigan State Board of Education President John Austin, a DeVos critic who also describes himself as a strong charter-school supporter. “It’s destroying learning outcomes … and the DeVoses were a principal agent of that.”

 

The links are in the article, as well as a puzzle. Check out the link to CREDO at Stanford (funded by the Walton Foundation), which issued a report on Michigan charters and praised them extensively. How does the CREDO finding make sense to Michigan’s low standing on the National Assessment of Education Progress? How does it make sense in light of the fact that Detroit is the worst-performing urban district tested by NAEP?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Michigan, NAEP, Privatization, Testing

Ohio: Charter School Advocate Selected to Run Charter School Agency

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2016 //
12

If anyone thought that the frequent scandals in the charter sector in Ohio would bring about a new era of accountability and oversight for charter schools, think again. The Ohio Department of Education has hired a charter school activist to run the state’s charter school office.

 

The Ohio Department of Education has hired charter school advocate RaShaun Holliman, the head of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, to lead its charter school office.

 

He started Monday in the position once held by Joni Hoffman, a longtime employee of the department who was part of last year’s data-rigging controversy involving online schools.

 

Hoffman and Frank Stoy, another key official in the charter school office, are retiring.

 

Whether Holliman will just promote charter schools, as he has in previous jobs, or will force Ohio charters to have better quality is unclear. He did not return a call to the OAPCS office and biographical information provided by the state and by that organization does not show any previous enforcement work.

 

The former principal of the Focus Learning Academy charter school in Columbus worked for the Georgia Charter Schools Association, where he handled communications and outreach, before returning to Ohio in late summer to head OAPCS.

 

But that non-profit organization that was once the leading voice for charter schools in the state has lost members and officially announced this week that it will shut down at the end of the year.

 

The hiring drew a few objections, given the national ridicule of Ohio’s $1 billion charter school industry both from comedians and political commentators, as well as from national charter supporters.

 

“You don’t hire an industry insider to be a tough new sheriff for the industry they were just advocating for,” said former state representative Steve Dyer, a frequent critic of charter schools. “It’s certainly an image problem.”

 

The funniest line in the story is this one:

 

Chad Aldis of the Fordham Institute, an organization that promotes charter schools but also quality standards for them, understood that concern, but was less worried. Hirings of officials from traditional public schools happen all the time, he noted, without raising alarms of favoritism for those schools.

 

So, hiring an experienced superintendent to lead the state’s education department is equivalent to hiring an industry insider to police a scandal-ridden industry. The overwhelming majority of children in Ohio attend public schools, which consistently outperform charter schools. Will the new director of charter schools crack down on the frauds, grifters, thieves, and cheats in the charter sector? Or is this just another example of industry capture of the regulatory agency?

 

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

What Trump Could Learn from Bobby Jindal’s Failed Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2016 //
14

Robert Mann, professor of journalism at Louisiana State University, hopes that Donald Trump will pay attention to the disaster of former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s failed voucher program. Open the article to read the links.

 

“This is where the disappointment of Jindal’s voucher program enters the picture, as policy makers and the media will inevitably examine its dismal performance. At Jindal’s urging, in 2008 lawmakers created the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), enabling some disadvantaged students to leave public schools graded a C or lower and enroll in a participating private school. By 2014, more than 6,000 public school students attended one of 126 private schools.

 

“In 2015, Jindal bragged about his program. “For students attending private schools on public dollars, almost all of whom arrived several years behind, their lives are being turned around,” he wrote in a column on CNN’s website.

 

“If only that were true. In a paper published last year by the National Bureau for Economic Research, three scholars documented “the large negative effects” and the reduced academic achievements of scholarship program students in 2013, the first year after the program’s expansion.

 

“Our results show that LSP vouchers reduce academic achievement,” the researchers concluded, explaining, “attendance at an LSP-eligible private school is estimated to lower math scores” and “reduce reading, science and social studies scores.”

 

“Why? “We find evidence,” the researchers wrote, “that the negative effects of the LSP may be linked to selection of low-quality private schools into the program.”

 

“A comprehensive 2016 study of the program for the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans also concluded “an LSP scholarship user who was performing at roughly the 50th percentile at baseline fell 24 percentile points below their control group counterparts in math after one year. By year 2, they were 13 percentile points below.”

 

“Imagine that. Pluck kids from troubled public schools, put them into substandard private schools and — voila! — you’ve made their academic condition worse.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Louisiana, New Orleans, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Rosann Tung: Let’s Continue the Movement to Protect Public Schools from Privatization

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2016 //
8

Rosann Tung is a parent in the Boston Public Schools and is director of research and policy at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. In this article, she connects the meaning of the successful campaign to block the expansion of charter schools in Massachusetts and the present moment, where public schools across the nation are under threat. The parent-teacher victory over the out-of-state billionaires was a resounding affirmation of public support for public schools. Please open the article to see the links to sources. Tung’s article is a good reminder of the importance of joining with allies in your district, town, city, or state. Every region has an organization that is supporting public education and opposing privatization. For help in finding your allies, contact the Network for Public Education.

 

Tung writes:

 

On November 8, Massachusetts voters decided to keep the charter school cap by voting “no” on Ballot Question 2, with only 16 (mostly wealthy) towns out of 351 voting “yes.” School committees in over 200 districts passed resolutions against Question 2, because communities want local control over their schools and understand that the charter industry forces them to run two parallel school systems, one of which is not fully accountable to the community.

 

The ballot proposal would have allowed up to twelve new Commonwealth charter schools each year indefinitely. In addition, the proposal would have removed limits on the amount of money that districts can be required to pass through to charter schools, enabling situations in which charter school growth could eventually cause the collapse of urban public school districts due to loss of revenue. Raising the charter cap would have bled our districts of resources necessary for early education, engaging course offerings, and professional development, and crippled the system’s ability to improve public, accountable schools for all students.

 

Not all charter schools exacerbate inequities, but lifting the charter cap would have allowed the creation of more charters that do widen the opportunity gap for students historically marginalized by unequal systems – especially schools that are run by for-profit corporations or charter management chains, that lack transparency and accountability in their governance, or that follow practices such as inequitable enrollment, punitive discipline policies, or excessive focus on raising standardized test scores. Choosing to keep the charter school cap was a win for equity in our state’s public school system.

 

Given the election of Donald Trump as our next president, we need to use this win to continue the strong advocacy for equitable and accountable public schools that the No on Question 2 supporters organized. During the fight for Question 2, charter proponents raised over $26 million to support their cause, primarily from “dark money,” out-of-state, and corporate donors. The aims of these donors are aligned with those of our president-elect; Trump promises to further privatize public schools and reduce government’s role in public education. While Trump’s education platform lacks specifics and details, we know that he has promised to divert $20 billion from school districts and perhaps even eliminate the federal Department of Education.

 

Building on the grassroots victory over Massachusetts Question 2, we need to ensure that his administration’s policies do not succeed in: dismantling federal oversight for students’ rights to quality education; further privatizing public education through private and parochial school vouchers and the expansion of charter school chains dominated by large corporate interests; and traumatizing students of color and immigrant students through a culture of intolerance and government-sanctioned racism and xenophobia.

 

Given Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos, a pro-voucher billionaire, as Secretary of Education, the Trump administration will likely allocate Title I dollars to “school choice,” which includes a voucher program for students to attend private and parochial schools and the creation of more charter and magnet schools. This “portability” could reverse what 62 percent of Massachusetts residents just voted for – keeping funds in traditional public schools. Trump’s approach to improving schools through a market-based, competitive approach will reduce the ability of public schools and systems to improve due to funding and resource shortfalls. And it will widen the opportunity gap, since a disproportionate number of Massachusetts’ charter schools have zero tolerance discipline policies and disproportionately low enrollment of English language learners.

 

In the aftermath of Trump’s election, many educators have led emotional classroom discussions to help students process their reactions, which include sadness, fear, rage, and uncertainty. Students who are Muslim, LGBTQ, immigrant, undocumented, Latino, female, and/or of color describe anxiety over their civil rights and their futures in this country. Superintendents in urban districts around the country have tried to reassure students and families with public letters and offers of support and counseling. Now more than ever, under a Trump administration, we must provide civic education that promotes critical consciousness, teaches about structural inequality, and empowers students to voice their concerns, organize, and advocate for humane and equitable policies.

 

In the next four years, with Trump as president and with a Republican Congress, we must continue to demand inclusive, transparent, and accountable public schools that serve each community’s distinct needs and desires, rather than quasi-public, unaccountable charter schools and private schools. We must ensure that our public schools create greater opportunity for all of our students, especially those most marginalized by our inequitable systems.

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Privatization, Supporting public schools
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