Archives for category: Education Industry
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Anthony Cody: Can We Trust Bill Gates?

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2013 //
62

Anthony Cody read Bill Gates’ article in the Washington Post, in which he said it is time to reduce the emphasis on high-stakes testing.

Anthony wondered if Gates means it.

Anthony writes:

“No one in America has done more to promote the raising of stakes for test scores in education than Bill Gates….You can read his words…, but his actions have spoken so much more loudly, that I cannot even make sense out of what he is attempting to say now. So let’s focus first on what Bill Gates has wrought.”

Anthony documents the destructive programs that Gates has funded (read the list, and it is only the tip of the iceberg), and he concludes:

“This amounts to an attempt to distance the Gates Foundation from the asinine consequences of the policies they have sponsored, while accepting no responsibility for them whatsoever.

“This is a non-starter, as far as I am concerned.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

A Brilliant Analysis of the Failed, Punitive Ideas Called “Reform”

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2013 //
17

Believe it or not, the Chicago Tribune published one of the best articles I have read about the disaster that is called education “reform,” but in fact is education destruction.

I say, believe it or not, because the Tribune has been one of the nation’s loudest cheerleaders for the policies that this column decries.

Robert C. Koehler is a syndicated columnist, not an education specialist, but he sees clearly the damage that the education destruction movement–NCLB and Race to the Top–is doing to students and our society.

His column is titled “The Warping of Public Education.”

He writes:

“…high-stakes testing, in tandem with “zero tolerance,” militarized security and sadistic underfunding, has succeeded in warping public education beyond recognition, especially in low-income, zero-political-clout neighborhoods. And the result is kids in prison, kids on the streets, kids with no future.”

And he concludes:

“The time has come to declare an end to this entire era — of militarized racism, violent solutions to everything, the ever-widening schism between “us” and “them.” Any politician who kowtows to this simplistic agenda, or “bargains” with it, has made himself or herself irrelevant to a sustainable and healthy future, and should be declared thus.

“We have to undo the damage that has turned public education into a crisis. That means dumping the pretend science of high-stakes testing and valuing rather than criminalizing students of color; it also means moving from punishment- to healing-based systems of maintaining order, taking police and armed security guards out of the hallways and learning to value and respect young people more than we value metal detectors and surveillance cameras.

“Before we can do anything else, we have to get our future out of the pipeline.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Poverty, Privatization, Race to the Top

Indiana’s Zombie Schools

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2013 //
9

Back in the early 1990s, when the charter school idea first began to spread, there was a simple way of explaining the concept. The charter schools would be accountable for results. If they didn’t get the results, they would close. Period. The deal was called “accountability in exchange for results.” Advocates said it was impossible to close a public school that didn’t get results, but it would be easy to close a charter school.

This is not the way things are working out.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced the closing of 54 public schools in Chicago. Mayor Bloomberg has closed well over 100 public schools. Parents, students, and teachers have objected loudly, but they are routinely ignored.

As Karen Francisco reports in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, it is not easy to close charter schools. One authorizer realizes they are failing to deliver results and withdraws sponsorship, and the charter schools goes shopping and finds another sponsor. These, she says, are “zombie schools.” They are failing but they will not die. They refuse accountability, but some other sponsor picks them up.

It turns out to be easy to close public schools; the mayors don’t care what poor black and Hispanic parents say. But it is hard to close charter schools because they have powerful political friends and campaign contributors.

 

 

 

 

http://www.jg.net/article/20130402/BLOGS13/130409943

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Indiana

Florida House Passes Corporation Enrichment Bill

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2013 //
2

The education industry won another battle in Florida, defeating solid opposition from every parent organization in the state.

The Florida House of Representatives passed a “parent trigger” bill, allowing unsuspecting parents to turn their public school over to one of the charter corporations that have–shall we say– undue influence in the legislature.

This is a big win for Jeb Bush, Michelle Rhee, and so-called Parent Revolution, funded by the Waltons, the Gates, the Broads. Parents like us. Regular folks.

The only consolation in this sordid affair is that parents are not stupid. The parent trigger was passed in California more than two years ago, and to date, only one school has swallowed the Kool-Aid. Desert Trails Elementary School was targeted by Parent Revolution, which sent in its paid organizers, gathered parent signatures, and after a series of court battles, won the right to hand their school over to a charter operator. But by the time the dust settled, only 53 parents out of a school with more than 600 children voted to choose a charter.

We will await to see the results of that famous victory. Walton, Gates, and Broad pumped millions into this effort to privatize public schools, and so far they have won only Desert Trails.

Wish someone had told them that a charter operator in that town lost his charter only a year earlier because of financial self-dealing.

Categories Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Parent trigger

The Missing Jeb Bush Link

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2013 //
11

Yesterday, I published a post about how critics were raising questions about Jeb Bush’s financial ties to certain corporations.

I linked to an article in the Tampa Tribune. However, the link was dead. The article had disappeared.

A reader found it. Not on the Tampa Tribune website but here, where it has been preserved for readers. A testament to a free society.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit

Newspeak and Education Reform: What Would Orwell Say?

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
7

A reader sent these late-night reflections to me:

“I drifted off to sleep last night, the phrase “No Child Left Behind” kept ringing in my ears. It sounds so noble… No – Child – Left – Behind – surely that is good for our country. Yet, at the same time my eyes were closing, the disturbing aparthied maps that Jersey Jazzman posted were flashing before my eyes.

In the corners of my mind, memories of 1984, by George Orwell churn. Newspeak (the removal of negative terms from language) reappears today. “Newspeak is engineered to remove even the possibility of rebellious thoughts—the words by which such thoughts might be articulated have been eliminated from the language.”
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/section11.rhtml

Samples: Newspeak Reform Dictionary and Guide to Phraseology:

“No Child Left Behind”
Phrase meaning: self-explanatory
Reality: Yes, there are many children left behind. Can we find them in these maps?
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/03/school-closings-new-apartheid.html

“AchieveNJ”
Word meaning: Achieve – attain; realize; accomplish
Reality: “AchieveNJ doesn’t even make the attempt to correct SGPs for poverty!”
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/03/nj-ed-commish-cerf-wrong-on-poverty.html

“Community Engagement”
Word meaning: Oh… forget about the real word meaning… what difference does this section make?
Reality: “DONT allow the opposition to frame the standards or the new tests negatively: In particular, get in front of any opposition that seeks to characterize the new standards and assessments as a “one-size-fits-all” approach…”
http://www.achieve.org/

“Education Reform Toolkit”
Reality: School Closure Guide by the Broad Foundation

“Privacy”
Reality: “States must collect, coordinate, and use K-12 and postsecondary data to track and improve the readiness of graduates to succeed in college and the workplace…follow students through K–12 into postsecondary AND THE WORKFORCE and establish feedback loops to the relevant stakeholders…” (emphasis mine)
http://www.achieve.org/P-20-data-systems

What would George Orwell have to say about this today?”

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Poverty, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Critics Question Ethics of Jeb Bush Foundation

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2013 //
19

Recently, the Foundation for Educational Excellence (FEE), created by Jeb Bush, has come under fire for mixing its programming with the financial interests of its backers while serving as a vehicle for Bush’s 2016 presidential ambitions.

The Tampa Tribune ran a scathing article that pointed out problematic practices:

“Lobbyists are not allowed to finance perks like trips for state officials, but those at the Foundation for Excellence in Education get around that ban by being registered to another foundation run by Jeb Bush.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush’s nonprofit, education reform foundation is taking heat for using donations from for-profit companies to lobby for state education laws that could benefit those companies.
Among the activities of Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education that have come in for criticism: It pays for state officials and legislators to go to conferences where they meet with the company’s donors, including officials of corporations who stand to gain from the policymakers’ decisions.”
The article points out that:
“Normally, it’s illegal for lobbyists or lobbying organizations to provide benefits such as free trips to Florida legislators or top executive branch officials. But the Foundation for Excellence in Education escapes that prohibition because lobbyists on its staff are registered to another, closely related Bush foundation – even though the two share key staff members and even their Tallahassee address.”
Among the corporate sponsors of the FEE, the article says:
  • Pearson, a $9 billion-a-year media conglomerate which has a $250 million, four-year contract to administer the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test. In the last few years, the company has been fined $14 million by the state for delayed test score results and criticized for its grading of writing tests.
  • Amplify, the education division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which sells classroom and curriculum software.
  • Charter Schools USA, a Fort Lauderdale-based for-profit company that manages charter schools under contract.
  • IQity, which sells online learning materials.

The foundation sponsors conferences where the top stars of the corporate reform movement appear to praise the virtues of vouchers, charters, and online learning. For example, last years’ summit in Washington, D.C.”

“….included “strategy sessions” on such topics as “Reaching more students with vouchers and tax-credit scholarships” and banquets with speeches by Bush, Condoleeza Rice and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

“The 2011 conference at the historic Palace Hotel in San Francisco – one of the city’s most luxurious, with rooms starting at $350 per night –featured a speech by Murdoch.
It also included a fundraiser hosted by Bush for Tony Bennett, then running for re-election as Indiana education superintendent and a champion of the kind of conservative education reform advocated by the foundation – more charter schools, tax-paid tuition vouchers, more emphasis on testing, mandatory on-line courses and “virtual schools.”
Please read the article. It raises so many important questions about the push for privatization, the blend of philanthropy and profit-making, and one other important question: Why was Arne Duncan addressing a summit of rightwing cheerleaders for privatization and profit?
Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Pearson, Privatization

Broad Foundation Molding the Syracuse School Board

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2013 //
10

This article shows how the Broad Foundation has shifted gears. It used to train school boards to its way of thinking (it trained the Atlanta school board, for example, to believe that metrics and data matter more than anything les).

Now it send school boards on tours to selected sites.

The Syracuse superintendent, a product of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, leads her school board to meetings around the nation to learn about the Broad style. In this case, they are in New Orleans, the Mecca of privatization. You can be sure that no one will tell them that at least two-thirds of the New Orleans charters are academically unacceptable, even in the reports of their supporters at the Cowen Institute at Tulane.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, New York

Where Does a School Chef Make More Than Teachers?

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2013 //
13

This is not a trick question.

It is a real question.

Jersey Jazzman has the answer right here.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New Jersey

Who Is Funding the Attack on Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2013 //
10

Jersey Jazzman has done some amazing research to uncover the source of the money that is flooding local school board races.

He has found a pattern. The same people are dropping thousands of dollars into key school board races around the country, into districts where they do not live. In Perth Amboy, NJ, school board candidates typically spend about $5,000-8,000, but in the last election one candidate had about ten times that much, almost all from big names in California.

Then he found the same people picking races in other states.

Who is coordinating this campaign?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit
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