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John Kuhn: Corporate Reformers Try to Take Back Social Media from Supporters of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2016 //
23

John Kuhn is superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt school district in Texas. He first emerged as a national figure in the fight for better education for all children when he spoke at the national Save Our Schools march in 2011 and gave a rousing speech.

 

 

 

 

 

Education reformers have worked tirelessly for years to advance their preferred education policy ideas using a panoply of tactics, with mixed results.
As an example, reformers have steeped future big-city superintendents in #edreformthink through the (*cough-unaccredited-cough*) Broad Academy and then deployed them to try out their ideas in the real-life laboratory of various unlucky school districts. (Update: a refreshingly large number of these superintendents have gone on to transform urban education upend large school systems with no tangible positive results before being run out of town on a rail.)

 
Another effort aimed at advancing pro-reform policy has been the embedding of Teach for America alumni in congressional offices as staffers. Then again, there is the tried-and-true tactic of having a corporation-funded organization coordinate the development and introduction of model ed reform legislation nationwide. Or, if you’re a fan of the straightforward approach, you will appreciate efforts to just expend a ton of money to force the implementation of anointed ideas, ala Gates and Zuckerberg.

 
Back in the early years of the Education Wars (when Diane Ravitch was on Twitter and her blog didn’t exist yet) it became apparent that reformers—despite enjoying the generous fiscal backing of wealthy individuals and organizations and the political backing of influential officeholders from both parties—were losing the public relations battle, particularly on social media. Scrappy teacher-bloggers and Twitter-ers were running them ragged with asymmetrical PR warfare, and they knew it. So began in earnest the development of a Marvel Universe of pro-reform social media personalities and collectives.

 
In this short article, I will highlight a few of these actors—this is a back-of-an-envelope map of one corner of the reform echo chamber, if you will—and I will let you know what they’ve been up to this week. I will also let you know where each of these voices stands on a recent high-profile story, the infamous Success Academy video.

 
THE 74

 
Apparently named for the average IQ of its contributors (just kidding guys; I’m sure you’re all Ivy League), the 74 is the brainchild of Campbell Brown and hosts pro-reform Twitterfolk like Dmitri Mehlhorn and Chris Stewart. The 74 mixes pro-reform op-eds with a dab of more newsy education pieces (like one about a campaign to prevent student suicide, for example), apparently in an attempt to come across as neutral-ish. This is window-dressing, of course, as demonstrated by the fact that the top four articles on the page as of this writing are: Nevada parents hoping vouchers survive a court challenge; Chris Stewart trumpeting a slew of news stories about non-Success-Academy teachers being mean to students; a pretty balanced story on the effect of good teachers on students’ happiness; and a story about Trump University that spends one paragraph rapping the scourge of for-profit college scams before getting to “the real story” by indulging in a ten-paragraph call for the next President to “hold all colleges accountable.”

 
Position on the SA video: “but other schools do it too” and “stop hating”.

 
EDUCATION POST

 
Another slick effort to appear neutral and above the fray by offering a “better conversation” (for discriminating education connoisseurs, one would imagine), Education Post actually peddles orthodox ed reform ideas and is, per Mercedes Schneider, funded by Broad, Walton, and Bloomberg—not exactly the Triumvirate of Educational Neutrality. Contributors include Chris Stewart (again!), Eric Lerum, and Chris Barbic. Top articles today are one about a teacher acknowledging her own biases, one arguing that what TFA haters really hate are charter schools, one telling teachers to stop using lack of parent involvement as an excuse not to teach kids well, and a thoughtful article about the tensions of being in the education politics fight and having to choose where to send your own kids to school.

 
Position on the SA video: the video’s a bummer, but Success Academy is a target because it is so much better and everyone is jealous

 
EDUCATION NEXT and EDEXCELLENCE.NET

 
These are Fordham Institute/Michael Petrilli/Chester Finn vehicles. Instead of pretending to publish objective journalism ala The 74 and Education Post, these sites pretend to publish objective research. The duo are a vehicle for motivated scholarship, of the faux variety. Like the above online journals, they are really just political devices.

 
Top stories today at Education Next are: a story about how family background influences achievement and what schools can do about it, a story about how schools of choice expand opportunity for urban students, an article contending that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor, a paean to the Common Core arguing that it forced states that rejected CCSS to adopt tougher standards, a story on desegregation and a story about academic competitions. This carousel of stories—most of them related to the 50th anniversary of James Coleman’s report “Equality of Educational Opportunity” in an apparent effort to re-cast his report as a validation of reform orthodoxies rather than a call for equity—is followed by a reformer response to film critic David Denby’s New Yorker article calling out reformers for bashing teachers. Then comes an article by Petrilli arguing that NCLB spawned a bunch of smarter school policies. (Thanks, NCLB!) Oh, then there’s a call to end required union contributions.

 
Position on the SA video: conspicuously hard to find. A search of the site reveals the last mention of “Eva Moskowitz” to be in 2014, when the site chirped, “Talk about a ‘Tough Liberal!” and said charters like hers shouldn’t be criticized for lacking diversity. A search for “Success Academy” finally takes us to a 2/15/2016 post that summarizes a Vox.com article by Libby Nelson (with the telling quote “The video is undeniably upsetting. But…”) and then goes on to point to Education Post’s limp defense of poor wittle Success Academy.

 
THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION

 
Alexander Russo’s blog also pretends to be above the fray but really isn’t. However, unlike the others, Russo does directly criticize reformers on a fairly regular basis, probably because he fancies himself a gadfly with an independent streak. In reality, his pro-reform bias is evident to me, and maybe also to the casual reader. Where The 74 and Education Post dab on the makeup of objective reporting, Russo slathers it. He does a good enough job of posting too-numerous-to-count news pieces and fun/thought-provoking pieces that it effectively softens the blow of his bias and almost camouflages his running campaign to provide journalistic cover for the Broads and Waltons of the world. One blogger put it succinctly in saying that Russo “works the refs” for reform. He’s the guy in the bleachers who reliably highlights bad calls that go against his team and often ignores bad calls against the other team, unless they’re so painfully obvious that he feels he has to grudgingly acknowledge them. But at least he tells funny stories between being a total homer.
Top stories today are a video of Obama with Civil Rights leaders, a story on Detroit teachers trying to bring attention to their schools, a collection of news articles on various issues including how school safety issues are tracked and Common Core exam glitches. Where Russo shines as a reform ally is in his careful selection of others’ opinions that he broadcasts. The first quote one comes to today is from The 74, where Matt Barnum tries valiantly to jack the mojo of David Denby (the New Yorker film critic referred to above, who had the audacity to critique public school critics in his article called Stop Humiliating Teachers) by contending that what Denby wants is really the same thing as what the reformers want. (Really, Matt? Read the article again.) Russo earns a few objectivity points for the hilarious note from a CPS parent that says his sick daughter is feeling better and “eager to get back to school in hopes of achieving a high score on…Standardized Tests…given this year to insure that Private Corporations continue to receive huge and profitable contracts…” Russo has a soft spot for snark.

 
Position on the SA video: straddles the fence—SA didn’t respond well to the reporting and NYT didn’t report thoughtfully. Russo shared the video and followed up with SA’s response video and, later, a GIF of the original video.

 
DROPOUT NATION

 
RiShawn is a trench fighter for reform. Where Russo has snark, Biddle has meanness, and he has criticized people he calls “traditionalists” pretty relentlessly. If you think about the unending terrible treatment of poor American children of color, meanness is probably a proper response, though I almost always disagree with Biddle’s prescriptions for fixing the problem. I think it comes down to this: I believe we should force ourselves to fulfill the constitutional promises that we will provide a quality public education for all American children, and Biddle appears to believe that we never will fulfill that promise because we are helplessly racist, so we might as well give up on it and find salvation for poor city kids in school choice. It’s an honest disagreement—I personally think what Biddle and other reformers advocate is akin to the biblical tale of Esau trading his birthright for a bowl of soup. In this case, the birthright is the promise that the US and state governments will by constitutional obligation–prosecutable in court—ensure that all children are adequately educated; the bowl of soup is we can trust that chains of charters started by white-collar guys who want to make money will fill the void and educate everybody better than the government has or will.

 
It wouldn’t do me any good to argue with RiShawn because he’s as convinced that public schools are hopeless for minority children as I am convinced that charter schools are designed from the outset to keep most of those kids out. To use Michael Petrilli’s eternally useful phrase, they are meant to help the “strivers”. Of course, that leaves the non-strivers somewhere. Probably concentrated in whatever remains of the public school system.
Look, I understand “educate all children” is idealistic, and I understand that we are a nation that has never gotten past racial prejudice. I also understand that giving up the hill here—abandoning the notion that “educating all children” is what we SHOULD BE ABOUT and COULD BE ABOUT IF WE HAD THE COURAGE TO DO SO—giving up that fight ensures that we will never come back to the audacious promise of public education as the protector and perfecter of a diverse democracy. We will settle for less. Exponentially less. Bowl of soup instead of birthright less. We will settle for Taco Bell as a schooling model, we will give up courts for choice, and it won’t be any better—it will be the same or worse, but the upside of it—the maximum best it could ever be—won’t even PRETEND to be that it offers a quality education for ALL kids. We will forever abandon the notion that that was even ever possible in the United States of America, and that to me is intolerably depressing. The open arms concept of free and equal education for all will be lost to the archives and we will be stuck with a few lifeboat schools and a bunch of bobbing heads in the water.

 
But today I agree with RiShawn Biddle, because he has broken with Peter Cunningham from Education Post and Campbell Brown from The 74, in that he won’t countenance the notion that Success Academy merits a defense. In fact, his lead articles today are “Success Academy Merits No Defense” and “No Excuses for Moskowitz”. Biddle’s condemnation of Success Academy practices like the one captured in the video have resulted in harsh name-calling and criticism from fellow reformers like Michael Petrilli. And Biddle didn’t come late to the party. He wrote “The Hole Eva Moskowitz Keeps Digging” long before the video emerged, after John Merrow’s piece on disciplinary practices at SA emerged months ago.

 
I’m not naïve enough to think that RiShawn Biddle and I agree on much besides the fact that SA is wrong when it comes to its disciplinary treatment of children. Our views on equitable school funding are probably aligned, and maybe some other tangential issues too. But when it comes to the speculative promise of school choice versus the literal promise of school constitutional guarantees, there is a stark difference in where we two find hope for the nation’s future. Nevertheless, I have to pause and recognize that among all the reformers, Biddle is apparently the only one brave enough to call out what Success Academy and its defenders are doing wrong. How can we expect Success Academy to change its ways when its defenders rush forth with enabling op-eds? Where other reformers are scrambling to defend a model, Biddle is stepping up to defend children. If Eva Moskowitz is Ethan Couch, then Campbell Brown and Peter Cunningham are his mother taking him to Mexico to avoid punishment. I’m glad RiShawn Biddle is clearly saying this isn’t okay.

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

NBC News: Students Fall Behind in Virtual Charters; For-Profits Rip Off Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2016 //
23

NBC News has caught on to one of the biggest hoaxes of the corporate reform movement: the failure of virtual charter schools. About 200,000 students are currently enrolled in virtual charters. The attrition rates are high, but the industry spends taxpayer dollars constantly recruiting to increase their numbers. It is good to see the mainstream media catching on to what critics of virtual charters have known for a few years.

 

Some sharp eyed person in their news department learned about the CREDO study last fall that showed that students enrolled in these stay-at-home schools lose ground academically. In the case of math, they lose a full year of instruction for every year they are enrolled. In reading, they also lose ground, as much as 72 days.

 

The CREDO study says:

 

The first set of analyses examines the academic growth of online charter students compared to the matched VCRs made up of students who attended brick-and-mortar district-run schools. These schools are typically referred to as traditional public schools (TPS). Compared to their VCRs in the TPS, online charter students have much weaker growth overall. Across all tested students in online charters, the typical academic gains for math are -0.25 standard deviations (equivalent to 180 fewer days of learning) and -0.10 (equivalent to 72 fewer days) for reading (see Figure 3). This means that compared to their twin attending TPS, the sizes of the coefficients leave little doubt attending an online charter school leads to lessened academic growth for the average student. (p. 23).

 

As the report from NBC shows, some “reformers” are growing disillusioned with virtual charters, but others keep making excuses and say that the bad guys in the industry are anomalies. This is an excuse we are getting used to.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Online Learning, Privatization

Emily Talmage: The Phony Fables That Rephormers Tell

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2016 //
13

Emily Talmage teaches and blogs in Maine. She explains in this post how she developed the desire to teach, how she thought she would “save” poor kids from their “bad” teachers, how she learned her limitations, and how she learned through experience that the corporate reform narrative is a self-serving lie.

 

She writes:

 

 

 
When I was in college, I heard a riveting story.

 

Actually, you probably heard it too.

 

It went like this: American public schools are failing. Teachers have abysmally low expectations of their students. They are getting paid to spend their time in rubber rooms! This is the civil rights issue of our time.

 

I was indignant. And I needed a job.

 

And so, like so many college students of my generation, I went straight from college into a classroom in the Bronx as a New York City Teaching Fellow.

 

At first, I was elated. I had always wanted to teach elementary school, but it wasn’t really what you did if you went to a fancy and expensive college like I did. But now I had a way.

 

I was, of course, rudely awakened. You probably know this story too: young new teacher discovers she is utterly unprepared to manage a group of unruly students. She cries a lot.

 

I had taken a position teaching children with the “emotional disturbance” label in New York City’s district for students with severe special needs, and could do little more than hang on by my fingernails for the first year. They fought, they swore, and they saw me for what I was: a white girl from Maine who had no clue what she was doing. My experienced colleagues – the ones who were supposed be lazy and incompetent – offered to help, but I was a terrible listener. I was too busy searching for the story I had been told and trying the play the role I had been assigned – even though nothing fit.

 

By the end of my third year, I had grown humbler, but was no less gullible. This time, I fell for the second part of the story above – the part that tells how charter schools are the answer to all these failing public schools. You know, the Waiting for Superman story.

 

And so I left my position for one at a relatively new charter school in Brooklyn that modeled itself after the KIPP and Success Academy “No Excuses” regime.

 

You can read the details here, but the short version is that I was horrified. We snapped at the kids like dogs and obsessed over standardized test scores like they were cancer diagnoses. My previous school had been challenging, but it was full of warmth. There was no warmth at this school. No kindness. Panic filled our classrooms and hearts.

 

I have been fooled twice. Shame on me. But it won’t happen again. I hear, now, the stories reformers tell for what they are. Disrespect, hubris, empty jargon. PR.

 

Read on. Emily’s eyes were opened. And now she won’t be fooled again.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching

George Joseph: The “Got to Go” List Goes International

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2016 //
31

Success Academy’s public relations firm (Mercury LLC) must be working overtime to try to outrun the stories about the charter chain’s tactics. While critics have alleged for years that the chain produces high scores by a combination of suspensions, attrition, and high-pressure test-prep, the mainstream media–led by the New York Times– is now all over the story.

 

George Joseph writes in the Guardian (U.K.) about Eva Moskowitz’s “got to go” list–the kids who need to be suspended and pushed out to protect the brand and the other allegations swirling around the high-test-score boasting charter chain.

 

Joseph writes:

 

A Guardian analysis has found that the school system loses children between the third and fourth grade, the first two years of New York state testing, at a rate four times that of neighboring public schools. Success lost more than 10% of its enrolled student population from grade to grade, compared to the average rate of 2.7% at public schools in the same building or nearby during the same years.

 

The analysis compared Success and traditional public school populations in high poverty neighborhoods and therefore excluded data from one Success Academy site on the Upper West Side where only about 25% of students were classified as “economically disadvantaged”. This school’s relatively well-to-do student population features the only example of a Success Academy class that grew in size from second to fourth grade.

 

According to Jeff Jacobs, a researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, chance alone cannot adequately account for these enrollment drop differences. “Within testing years, the enrollment drop rate observed at Success Academy is greater than the enrollment drop rates at next door public schools 70% of the time. Furthermore, in 61% of these cases, this difference is so large that we can reject the hypothesis that it occurred due to random variation in attrition rates, at the 5% significance level.”

 

Eva believes that the media is piling on, but she has made herself and her charters a media sensation. Once you set yourself up as the sine qua non of “excellence,” a model of the perfection that can be attained by everyone, you also set yourself up as a target for skeptics. The biggest problem for SA is not its critics, who could be easily ignored, but the former teachers and parents and administrators who spill the beans.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

Gene Glass: Is THIS the Best High School in the Nation? No Way

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2016 //
33

Gene V. Glass, one of the nation’s most eminent researchers, has a passion for honesty. And it outrages him that two BASIS charter schools are listed among the “top ten high schools” in the nation by US News & World Report.

 

How does BASIS get those high test scores? They admit many students and winnow them out by imposing academic demands that most students can’t meet. They admit hundreds of students in each grade but end up with only a few dozen graduates. If your idea of “best” is the school with the highest scores, then this is the school for you!

 

Glass publishes a lengthy account from a mother of a student at one of the celebrated BASIS charter schools. Although he is a straight A student at BASIS, she is thinking of switching him back to the public schools. Why?

 

She writes:

 

His classes consist of taking notes and then spitting them out on exams. There is no time in any of his core classes for any meaningful discussions about the subject matter. It’s a race to copy the notes and then study the notes to then take the weekly exams given in all core subjects. Two February’s have passed and not one teacher has made mention of Black History Month. Recently we had our very own Arizona astronaut launch into space; again no mention of this. His Language Arts class consists of weekly packets that are not gone over in class yet the kids are expected to complete them on their own at home and then take the unit exam at the end of the week.

 

What we have found at BASIS is that only the strongest survive. The kids who leave behind all their extra curricular activities and focus solely on their academics. Very smart kids are leaving the school so that they may have a better balance of school and life outside of school. We also have found that the BASIS kids have no idea of current affairs, what’s going on in the world now. They also do little to no community service.

 

Why are we thinking of taking our son out even though he is a top performer? Because life is short and there is more to life than studying 24/7. We want him to be well rounded. To understand about the world he is growing up in and to care enough about it to grow into a person who wants to make it a better place. It was great for him to go there for 5th and 6th grade because his other charter school could’t keep up with his level of advancement from year to year. He needed the advanced math and sciences. Now that he is going into the 7th grade the Chandler School District can accommodate his educational needs. He’ll be able to be in advanced, honors and AP classes. Even better, he will have a choice of what subjects he will take his AP’s in instead of being forced to take AP exams that are mandated by BASIS. If he stays on the path is on he will still graduate with as many AP classes as the students at BASIS but it will be in subjects he is interested in and at a pace that will allow him to also grow into a responsible person who understands that life is more about what you scored on a exam.

 

Gene Glass asks:

 

How long will the State of Arizona continue to pour millions of dollars annually into this “business” known as BASIS charter schools? How many times will US News & World Report blindly publicize this pathetic imitation of a school?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

The Death of a Community Public School in North Carolina–Killed by a Charter and Budget Cuts

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2016 //
29

When I read this story, my eyes filled with tears. The community public school in Waynesville, North Carolina, is closing. Not because it is a failing school, but because of budget cuts by the state legislature, and because of a charter school launched by a very rich man in Oregon. You read that right: in Oregon! The public school lost nearly a million dollars to the new charter, and it couldn’t survive.

 

This is the price of privatization. The death of public schools. It is not an accident. This is what ALEC and StudentsFirst and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) and the Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation and the John and Laura Arnold Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Dell Foundation and the Koch brothers and Michael Bloomberg want.

 

 

At one elementary school in the North Carolina mountains two-thirds of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

 

That would make you think that the school would not fare well on the state’s A-F grading system where poverty seems a reliable predictor of the arbitrary grade—97 percent of schools receiving a D or F have more than 50 percent of their students who are from low-income families.

 

But thanks to the efforts of teachers and parents and the community, the rural school managed a C grade in the latest state report card rankings and did even better as far as the N.C. Arts Council is concerned, earning an A+ for art-based education reform.

 

Clearly something is working at this low-income school, Central Elementary in Waynesville, but not for long.

 

The Haywood County School Board voted Monday night to close the school thanks to state budget cuts and the opening of a local charter school that has siphoned students and almost a million dollars in state funding from the local system.

 

Parents and other supporters of the school will appeal to legislators in Raleigh, but no one thinks they have much of a chance.

 

Most likely Central Elementary will close and the parents of the 250 students who are learning there this year will be reassigned and the community will lose a vital resource, a place where one parent said “…students from the whole socio-economic spectrum learn from the dedicated teachers and from and with one another.”

 

The proponents of the school privatization always claim that it’s all about parental choice and that competition is good.

 

But this is not a failing school that is closing, it’s one where students are doing ok despite the hurdles they face. And it is a school that parents and the community work hard to support.

 

Here is a local article explaining the financial situation of the schools, the budget cuts, and the effect of losing students to a charter, online schooling, and homeschooling. Read the comments. You will be reminded why some people home school; anyone can do it. No education needed. It is a way to preserve your child from the influence of “those children” and to preserve the parents’ religious views.

 

Once the privatizers and profiteers took control of the North Carolina legislature and governorship, schools like Central Elementary became just so much collateral damage. Its fate was decided by the privatization zealots in Raleigh and by a rich man in Oregon.

 

If the people of Haywood County don’t like what is happening, they should elect someone else to represent them.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization

Sue Legg: Florida Republican Proposes to Fix Charter Mess

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2016 //
13

Well, this is a hopeful sign. A Republican the state senate in Florida has proposed to change the charter law so that it focuses on the neediest children, the ones for whom charters were first created. With the house leadership firmly controlled by Rep. Eric Fresen, whose brother-in-law owns one  of the largest and most profitable charter chains in the state, the two houses of the legislature may be on a collision course. Rep. Fresen always takes care of the charter industry.

 

Sue Legg, who has studied Florida charter schools on behalf of the state League of Women Voters, wrote with the following information:

 

 

A recent Senate President, Don Gaetz, proposed a bill this week to curb ‘private enrichment’ facilities schemes by charter school management firms and their real estate arms. He acknowledged that the legislature has gotten away from the original intent for charters schools. His bill would prioritize charters serving impoverished students and/or those with disabilities.

 

Florida has over 650 charter schools, over a third are run by for-profit firms. The legislature, the Governor, the Department of Education and the State Board of Education are all strong charter supporters.

 

This is the first time that a staunch Republican legislator has publically acknowledged the rampant charter exploitation and abuse and taken meaningful steps to curb it. It even addresses public ownership of facilities. The bill is not perfect; it may not pass. However, Senator Gaetz calls for “Charters with a Conscience”. Sometimes you just have to share the good news. 

 

Senator Gaetz is thinking about what is right. He and Rep. Fresen (HB 873) are squaring off over charter school funding for facilities. Both bills would reduce the amount of capital outlay dollars public schools can assess through local property taxes. According to the Miami Herald, Senator Gaetz’s bill would also crack down on ‘private enrichment’ schemes that charter management firms use to build and lease facilities for which they charge exorbitant rates.
Charter board members would have to swear that capital outlay funds would only be used for facilities. Funds would be awarded only to public entities, a 501(c)(3) specifying in its articles of incorporation that all property will return to specified public entities upon dissolution, or is owned by or leased to a person or entity who is not an affiliated party to the charter school.

 

The Senate proposal has some other very good features. It would reconfigure the funding formula to prioritize those charters that offer quality alternative schools for impoverished students or those with disabilities. Certain charters would receive a base capital outlay allocation from state funds, but those that serve at least 75% of children qualifying for free or reduced lunch or 25% of children with ESE, would receive an additional twenty five percent or fifty percent if both criteria are met. The Miami Herald quotes Senator Gaetz who suggested that ‘…we want to weight it for those charters that have a social conscience’.

 

The bill does not take capital outlay money away from traditional public schools for charter schools. It does, however, change the formula for how the money is allocated.

 

There are some ‘gotchas’ in the Senate bill. The legislature still needs to work with districts to create viable policy. Nevertheless, Senator Gaetz appears to recognize that unregulated school choice benefits some companies more than children.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit

DFER Blasts Sanders for Failure to Support Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2016 //
39

Shavar Jeffries ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Newark; he was beaten by Ras Baraka. He is now executive director of the Democrats for Education Reform, the organization founded by hedge fund managers to promote the privatization of public education.

 

Jeffries published an article in the New York Daily News attacking Bernie Sanders for his opposition to charter schools, although he supported them in the past. He makes false claims about the “success” of charter schools, never mentioning that they impose militaristic discipline on black children and that national studies have repeatedly shown that they are no more “successful” than public schools unless they cherrypick their students and kick out the hardest to educate.

 

Jeffries throws a compliment to Hillary for backing off her accurate statement that charter schools don’t enroll the most challenging students.

 

And, biggest insult of all, he implies that Martin Luther King Jr. has something in common with the Wall Street predators that are promoting charter schools. Of course, we know they work in Wall Street because they wake up every morning wondering what they can do to help the poor children of America. And their conclusion: destroy public education. That’ll do it.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, DFER, Education Industry, Privatization

Katie Osgood: The Dangers of TFA Indoctrination

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2016 //
22

Katie Osgood teaches in Chicago. She has a wonderful blog, where she regularly posts common sense based on her experience and wisdom.

 

In this post, she says that Teach for America is not only a poor substitute for genuine teacher professional preparation, but is a dangerous indoctrination machine.

 

Case in point: A recent article by a kindergarten teacher who was very pleased that she had taught her students to love testing. As Ms. Katie read the article, she immediately guessed that the writer  must be TFA, and of course, she was right. (Be sure to read the comments!)

 

Let’s take an example. A few weeks back, there was a truly shocking commentary in our Chicago education magazine Catalyst Chicago that was titled How Bailey Reimer’s kindergartners came to love testing. Most educators who saw this piece were appalled. Look at the comments.

 

I know when I saw this piece, the very first thought I had was…she’s TFA. And lo and behold, she just completed her TFA stint. TFA’s influence on this young woman’s ideas were stark, obvious, undeniable. Now that indoctrination process is reinforced by other neoliberal organizations such as being placed in a charter school and then also being recruited into Teach Plus-a Gates funded faux teacher voice group. But that’s the thing with TFA, it’s often a one-two punch. TFA-in many areas-operates inside a nexus of neoliberal edreform ideology. TFAers are completely isolated from alternative view points even as they are beaten up by a ridiculously arduous summer training filled with unnecessary sleep deprivation and mental health harming stress. Then they are thrown-unprepared-into some of the most challenging workplaces in our country. There is quite literally no time to stop and think about the bigger picture and that is intentional.

 

When all you have ever heard is “testing data is necessary to teach”, then this statement makes sense:
“To get to a point where my students appreciate and understand testing, I had to first appreciate it myself. I love tests that give me relevant, timely information about how my students are doing, from how many letter names they know to how many words per minute they read.”
Suddenly, what “good teaching” is gets warped into the image of neoliberal ideology based on a bunch of “data-driven” drivel. Most teachers, especially veteran educators could never, ever say this line: “Of course, 5-year-olds don’t come to school automatically loving testing. As educators, it’s our job to build that appreciation and understanding.” No! No, it’s not. But we can see how it was TFA, combined with the charter school environment, that made this statement real for this teacher. This mindset is dangerous.

 

I believe there are number of reasons why this indoctrination process is so effective. 1) They use the time-tested method of breaking you down to build you up in the Bootcamp summer training. 2) The recruitment process onward is a series of indoctrination sessions. And perhaps most importantly 3) TFA’s claim of being the “best and brightest” means any other opposing viewpoint is immediately dismissed on the basis of not being TFA magic.

 

Right now stop and do a google search for “how to indoctrinate”. No seriously, do it. What pops up? Article after article describing how to lure folks into a group with promises and lies about the actual purpose of the organization, slowly strip down any autonomy or sense of self through boot camp like conditions, then carefully isolate and fill with desired ideas. This is exactly what TFA does. Exactly, like they copied the “indoctrination” playbook. Colleges of education don’t do this, unions don’t do this, but TFA uses the most blatantly cult-like process they can to get the desired effect.

 

 

Categories Education Industry, Teach for America

Jeff Bryant: The Lesson of the Walk-Ins: Americans Are NOT Giving Up on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2016 //
22

Earlier this week, I posted an interview with Peter Cunningham of Education Post, who said that more and more Americans are abandoning public schools for privately managed charters (which may hire uncertified teachers and generally do not get higher test scores than public schools), for homeschooling (where the quality of their education depends directly on the quality of their parents’ education), and vouchers (where children get public money to attend religious schools where many teachers are uncertified and the curriculum may be based on the Bible).

 

Jeff Bryant sees the walk-ins that occurred yesterday as a response from many thousands of parents and students who support their public schools.

 

He writes:

 

In Boston, the walk-in took place at City Hall where hundreds gathered outside to protest an estimated $50 million budget shortfall for the city’s schools. “At the proposed level, district schools could lose teachers, after-school programs, and elective classes like languages and arts,” according to a local news account. The crowd presented to the mayor a list of demands and a petition with more than 3,500 signatures, then proceeded to march to the State House to present their demands to the governor too.

 

As part of the protest, ninth graders at one school, according to the Boston Globe, wrote a letter to the mayor complaining of the budget cuts and “asking that you come to our school and explain to our students why you are letting this happen.”

 

School budget cuts were a point of contention in Chicago as well, where walk-in protests occurred at hundreds of schools across the city. “We’re united as a community, “Chicago Teachers Union vide president Jesse Sharkey tells a local reporter. “The cuts are unacceptable.”

 

Parents and students joined the teachers at many of the Chicago events, according to another local reporter, and voiced their disapproval of school budget that have swollen class sizes and eliminated course offerings. “Not every school is able to get what they want for their students,” one teacher explains. “I hope they get exactly what they’re asking for,” a parent chimes in.

 

Jeff cites the statement by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, which coordinated the walk-ins:

 

The future of public education in the United States stands at a critical crossroad.

 

Over the past two decades, a web of billionaire advocates, national foundations, policy institutes, and local and federal decision-makers have worked to dismantle public education and promote a top-down, market-based approach to school reform.

 

Under the guise of civil rights advocacy, this approach has targeted low-income, urban African-American, Latino and immigrant communities, while excluding them from the reform process. The reforms have sown distrust and division among parents and teachers, and utterly failed to improve educational outcomes for children. These attacks are racist and must be stopped.

 

The time is ripe for a new education movement that provides students throughout the United States, regardless of their race or income, with equitably resourced neighborhood schools.

 

Today, I stand with the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools to demand and fight for:

 

Full, fair funding for neighborhood-based community schools that provide students with quality in-school supports and wraparound services
Charter accountability and transparency and an end to state takeovers of low-performing schools and districts
Positive discipline policies and an end to zero-tolerance
Full and equitable funding for all public schools
Racial justice and equity in our schools and communities.
There is too much at stake to be silent in this moment. I commit to fighting until we bend the political will in this country so that we create public schools where parents want to send their kids, students are engaged and educators want to work; the schools all our children deserve.

 

Members of the public are invited to sign the AROS statement.

 

Jeff writes:

 

Views can differ on whether there is “a web” of collaborating groups – as AROS contends – directing education policy, and whether or not the intent is to “dismantle” public schools, but it’s very clear the thousands of people involved in this week’s walk-ins feel they have little choice in what’s happening to their schools.

 

They did not choose to chronically under fund their schools and send public money somewhere else. Someone else chose to do that.

 

While some parents may find charter schools and vouchers can provide useful workarounds for them, that doesn’t correct the chronic under funding of the entire system and the unwillingness of political leaders to take that problem on. Participants in this week’s walk-ins see the hard, bitter truth of that. Good for them.

 

Anyone who denies that there is a “web” of collaborating groups has not been paying attention. Start with Gates, Broad, Walton, Dell, Helmsley, the Fisher Family, Teach for America, ALEC, the Koch brothers, Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform, Families for Excellent Schools—or save some time by reviewing the list of those groups that are funded by the Walton Family Foundation. There is a very large part of the web.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization
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