Archives for category: Education Reform
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Andrea Gabor: The Slow But Steady Decline of the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2019 //
8

 

Andrea Gabor is one of the most interesting education writers around. She holds the Bloomberg Chair in Business Journalism at Baruch College. Her articles appear on sites read by people in the business world. Yet she has a firm grasp of education issues. Her latest book, After the Education Wars, has the best discussion of New Orleans education issues that I have seen. Her book The Man Who Invented Quality, about W. Edwards Deming, has a brilliant chapter #9) utterly demolishing merit pay. Follow her articles.

Her latest appears on the website of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Gabor tells the story of the reversals of fortune of the charter industry in California. Its billionaire funders spent heavily on losing candidates in the last election and are now playing defense.

The article was written before the indictment of 11 people in the charter industry in California for scamming the state of $80 million. That got lots of press and increases pressure on the Legislature to plug some holes in its charter laws.

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

Red Queen in LA: Deciphering the Charter Chaos and Shape-Shifting

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2019 //
6

 

This is another brilliant post by Sara Roos, known as Red Queen in LA.

She read the report of the leaked emails among charter advocates. She notes their double talk, their rhetorical legerdemain, their organizations that pop up like mushrooms, then morph into new organizations.

Behind this seeming chaos is a steady purpose: to disrupt and destroy public education.

Behind the chaos is the steady flow of millions from the billionaires who despise the commons.

The connect between the chaos and the billionaires are outstretched hands for hire.

She begins:

Charter schools in California band together as an embattled group, agitating for hostile takeover of the Public Commons. They serially convene, dissolve and reform a plethora of working groups to bombard public schools with “messaging” and disinformation.  The groups as well as charters themselves of course, drain resources from schools, necessitating capital (monetary and human) defending what should be protected by the people, for the people.

One of these itinerant ideologues is Ben Austin, founder of the “Parent Trigger”, who in 2014 resigned from his astroturf group to foment a new one, Kids Coalition. A collection of emailsmade public by the municipal-transparency site michaelkolhaas.org uncovered a set of strategies developed among this cabal, reported by Howard Blume at the LATimes hereand here.

The collusion, as one of them explains elsewhere, is “all about the messaging”. And the message revealed in aggregate over 5000+ emails, lays out a very stark code-shift. The catchy phrase, “kids first”, is a logical fallacy. Iterated unceasingly by charter advocates, it simultaneously casts aspersions on a presumed alternative (‘a time or place when kids were not first’) even while kids in schools have always been “first”. But consistent with the ideology of long-standing and now charter-mega-fundersKoch and Walton (among others), that term “kids first” effectively codes for “anti-union”. Because if formerly it were true that kids were not first, it would be the fault of the system that transposed their status, their teacher’s union. ‘If the proper order of kids is not upheld, it must be the fault of their teachers’ is the sly message.

Likewise there is a constant drum-beat against “bureaucracy” and “adult issues” but that too is simply code for “anti-regulation”. Charter schools aren’t really about finding a better way around bureaucracy. It is reviled incessantly, but the rules they denounce are precepts of democratic transparency, safety, efficiency, equity – cumbersome perhaps but the tenets of our republic. Instead the path they forge is of non-accountability: government funding without regulation. And this, even while the maxim “another day another charter school scandal” has been commonplace for decadesnow.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Los Angeles, Privatization

Los Angeles: Did Austin Beutner Clear His Major Policy Speech with the Charter Lobby?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2019 //
15

 

Blogger MIchael Kohnhaas says that Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner precleared a major policy speech with charter lobbyists. He provides documentation. Critics feared that the charter majority was choosing Beutner to do their bidding.

This post suggests they chose well.

The story about the secret plan was reported by the Los Angeles Times here.

The Plan is to win control of the board, the Mayor’s office, Sue the district, fight the teachers’ union.

Ben Austin’s email to charter supporters is quoted. Austin, you may recall, founded the billionaire funded Parent Revolution. He likes to pawn himself off as a “liberal,” who just happens to love charters and win Walton funding. His Patent Revolution spent millions trying to persuade poor parents to sign petitions to turn their public schools over to charter chains. It was a bust. The Revolution never happened. But Ben has now moved on and has created another AstroTurf group called “The Kids’ New Deal.”

Howard Blume writes:

The overriding issue of the email is how to overcome setbacks at the hands of the teachers union. Leaders of the union had vilified charters in the lead-up to the strike, saying that rapid charter growth was undermining traditional public schools by siphoning away motivated students and their families — and the public funding that travels with them. One day during the walkout was devoted to a march on the local headquarters of the California Charter Schools Assn.

Meanwhile, at the state level, charter supporters had spent big on losing candidates in the 2018 race for governor as well as Tuck’s bid for state superintendent. A central concern was that the growth of charters would be halted or even reversed.

[Ben] Austin asserted in his email: “As Machiavelli says, it’s better to be feared than loved. Right now we are neither.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Charles Foster Johnson: This Land Really Does Belong to You and Me

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2019 //
16

 

Charles Foster Johnson, leader of Pastors for Texas Children, reflects on the meaning of citizenship:

 

America is not a geography. Or nationality. Or ethnicity. 
 
America is an idea. A truth. 
 
That idea, that truth, is this: “That all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
 
Jefferson was right, that idea is “self-evident.”
 
So, let your life be the evidence. 
 
Do these things:
 
Vote. Register to vote, vote in every election, and get everyone in your family, at your work, and on your street to do the same. When you don’t, bad people win.
 
Read. Be informed. Take the daily newspaper and read it. All of it. Turn off all cable television news. It is all fake. It is designed to entertain you—not inform you. Do it today. When you don’t, bad people win.
 
Serve. Start with your neighborhood public school. It’s right down the street. Make an appointment with the principal and ask how you can help. Defend your neighborhood public school against its privatization. When you don’t, bad people win.
 
Worship. With your neighbors. With folks who know you, love you. Turn off all television and celebrity preachers. Do not listen to any preacher who does not know your name, your face, who will not hold your hand in prayer when you need it— and call you to do the same. When you don’t, bad people win.
 
This land is your land. This land is my land. This land was made for you and me. 
 
Let’s put the idea of America into action.
 
The truth of America is “self-evident.”
 
The evidence is you.
Categories Citizenship, Education Reform

Teresa Hanafin on Trump’s Parade

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2019 //
37

 

The Boston Globe has a daily feature called Fast Forward written by Teresa Hanafin. I enjoy reading whatever she writes. Here she is in Trump’s parade:

All I wish on this Fourth of July holiday weekend is that Trump doesn’t embarrass us any more than he already has with his co-opting of the DC celebration for partisan political purposes and a grandiose exercise in self-flattery.

Blowing up what has always been a nonpartisan event for ordinary Americans, Trump set up a special VIP viewing section in front of the Lincoln Memorial and distributed tickets to the Republican National Committee, but not the Democratic National Committee. He also gave a bloc of VIP tickets to his campaign organization and to big-money donors, essentially using the celebration as a major fundraiser for his reelection campaign.

As Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post put it, nothing says Fourth of July like preferential treatment for rich toadies.

And then there are the tanks. And the armored vehicles. And the fighter jets. (Tinpot Trump demanded that the service commanders of each branch stand beside him during the flyovers, although CNN is reporting that some commanders, uncomfortable at being used as political props, won’t attend.)

This vainglorious show of US military might, compensation for a deceitful failure to serve, is simply not what we do. Everybody knows we have the biggest hammer in the world. We have never felt the need to brag about it.

Retired four-star Army General Stanley McChrystal suggested that Trump could have honored US values of citizenship and service by recognizing say, Peace Corps volunteers.

“Tanks, planes, they are things,” he said. “They are not the sinew of the nation.”

What is? Democracy. The rule of law. Freedom. Justice. Integrity. Civility. And, in stark contrast to Trump’s display of military muscle, it’s also the Founding Fathers’ grand experiment in civilian self-rule.

And then there’s the price tag. The White House refuses to provide taxpayers with cost estimates. All we know is that the National Park Service, which oversees the National Mall and the monuments, is being forced to transfer $2.5 million to Trump’s kingly Quinceañero, money that’s supposed to be used to maintain and improve national parks across the country. But that’s just a fraction of what the celebration will cost — an event that in previous years cost just $2 million.

Narcissism, divisiveness, reckless spending of public money, no transparency, last-minute chaos … sounds like the entire Trump reign, no?

Me the president instead of We the People. Politics instead of patriotism. Ego instead of egalitarianism. The cult of personality rather than the promise of the collective.

A new poll shows that only 45 percent of US men and women are “extremely proud” to be Americans. (What a shock.) So what to do? Celebrate with your families and friends. Embrace and encourage the good in your communities. And remember the true promise and glory of America.

Categories Education Reform

In Which Fred Klonsky Agrees with Thomas Friedman

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2019 //
15

 

Fred Klonsky proclaims his agreements with NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman. 

“If Democrats can choose a nominee who speaks to our impending challenges, but who doesn’t say irresponsible stuff about immigration or promise free stuff we can’t afford, who defines new ways to work with business and energize job-creators, who treats with dignity the frightened white working-class voters who abandoned them for Trump,“wrote Thomas L. Friedman in this morning’s New York Times.

I think this is good advice.

Well, except for that part about “frightened white working-class voters…”

As for promising free stuff we can’t afford? I’m down with that.

Of course, Friedman is probably talking about national health care and free college tuition.

I’m thinking of corporate giveaways and tax breaks to Amazon.

Billions and billions of tax giveaways to corporations. Outrageous.

Be a good corporate citizen. Pay your taxes.

Be a patriot. Pay your taxes.

 

Categories Citizenship, Education Reform

Trump Celebrates July 4 with Weapons of War on the Mall

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2019 //
21

 

Trump aims to be our very own Il Duce. Having seen (on TV) the great military parades in North Korea, Moscow, and Beijing, where the Maximum Leader commands all attention, Trump wants the same adulation. He has joked about serving a third term because his base won’t let him leave. He has admired the fact that Kim is President for Life.

His delusions of his own magnificence are limitless. Any day now, I expect to see him decked out in a military u inform with epaulets, covered with decorations he awarded to himself. Designed, no doubt, by Ivanka.

Trump has redesigned the annual July 4 event as a celebration of himself.

The Washington Post describes the preparations here.

There is no estimate of the full cost of the parade because the last time he planned a military parade, the cost was estimated to be $92 million. Public outrage was so great that the parade was canceled. This time, no true cost estimates are available until the event is over.

There will be two Abrams tanks, each of which weigh 60-70 tons. Local officials worry that the area around the Lincoln Memorial is not strong enough to carry this weight. They are fearful of serious damage to underground storage areas. Trump also promises “brand-new” Sherman tanks of World War II vintage, which have not been produced for decades. 

Meanwhile, the White House has said VIP tickets will be issued for members of the administration and their family members and friends. HuffPost reported Monday that the tickets are also going to Republican donors and political appointees, and the Republican National Committee confirmed that it had received passes to Trump’s address….

Trump intends to address the nation from the memorial, upending tradition and bringing extensive change to the annual Fourth of July fireworks display.

His “Salute to America,” with music, military demonstrations and flyovers by Air Force One, the Navy’s Blue Angels flight team and other aircraft, is to take place from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m…

Trump said Monday that this Fourth will be “like no other.”

But local officials and critics have complained that he is turning a nonpartisan celebration of the nation’s birthday into a political campaign event.

No president has been part of a Fourth of July celebration on the Mall in recent memory…

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s nonvoting delegate in Congress, said Monday that battle tanks could significantly damage the Mall, not long after the Park Service spent millions of dollars in public money to refurbish the site.

“These tanks, heavy equipment, and weapons of war have no place on the Mall at all, particularly as we celebrate the Fourth of July,” she said in a statement.

And Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) called on Trump to “personally reimburse” taxpayers for any damage done to local roads and bridges during the event.

Categories Education Reform

Linda Lyon: Teachers Are the True Patriots!

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2019 //
13

 

Linda Lyon served honorably for many years in the U.S. Air Force. She retired with her wife to Arizona where she became involved in the local school board. A strong and forceful person, she eventually was elected president of the Arizona School Board Association. She is a strong advocate for well-funded public schools.

Some weeks ago, she read that the Arizona Chamber of Commerce wanted to hold a Teacher Appreciation Night but 100 teachers in Flagstaff wrote an open letter declining to attend because of the Chamber’s persistent attacks on public schools, their finding, and teachers’ pensions.

Lyon concluded:

These teachers, standing up for those most vulnerable among us, are the real patriots. They know there can be no great democratic republic when there is no educated citizenry and that our public schools are the only ones that can address the problems we face at the scale demanded. Over 90% of America’s K–12 population attends public schools and that is where our singular educational focus should be. No. That is where it MUST be. Yes, to provide an engaged citizenry who can think creatively and determine fact from fiction.

True patriots stand up for our Constitution. Teachers do that every day.

Categories Education Reform

Ex-Governor Rick Snyder Will Not Teach at Harvard, as Backlash Grows Against Him

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2019 //
47

 

Michigan Ex-Governor Rick Snyder will not teach at Harvard,The outcry over Snyder’s role in the Flint water crisis made his position at Harvard untenable.

Former Gov. Rick Snyder has pulled out of a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University after the Ivy League school faced immense criticism for the governor’s track record in the Flint water crisis.

Snyder announced midday Wednesday his decision to withdraw from a senior research fellow position at Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government.

“It would have been exciting to share my experiences, both positive and negative,” Snyder wrote on Twitter. “Our current political environment and its lack of civility makes this too disruptive.”

Harvard’s appointment of the former two-term Republican governor and businessman sparked backlash on social media and reportedly caused friction this week on the university’s Cambridge, Mass., campus.

Snyder has shouldered public blame for the Flint water crisis after his emergency managers switched the city’s water source in April 2014 to Flint River water without corrosion control chemicals to prevent toxic lead from leaching into the city’s drinking water supply.

The Snyder administration’s Department of Environmental Quality oversaw Flint’s switch from Detroit’s Lake Huron water to the Flint River water using a water treatment plant in Flint that hadn’t been used full-time since the 1960s.

Douglas Elmendorf, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School, said students would have learned from questioning Snyder over Flint and other issues, but “we and he now believe that having him on campus would not enhance education here in the ways we intended.”

Snyder’s appointment began June 1 and was to include teaching, studying and writing about issues affecting state and local government in the country.

In a statement issued last Friday, the head of the Taubman Center said the university welcomed Snyder’s “significant expertise in management, public policy and promoting civility.”

He could have lectured on his decision to poison the people of Flint to save money. Or he might have taught about the failure of his “Educational Achievement Authority.” Or he might have reviewed how the expansion of charters contributed to the collapse of Michigan’s standing on NAEP.

But to do any of that requires reflection and critical thinking, qualities Snyder never exhibited.

The ethical standards at the Taubman Center may be flexible, however. It was established with funding by businessman A. Alfred Taubman, who was convicted in a criminal price-fixing scheme that involved two prominent auction houses. He served several months in prison. Taubman, like Snyder, was born in Michigan.

Categories Education Reform, Failure

Michigan: Gov. Whitmer Wants to Impose Deformers on Benton Harbor

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2019 //
10

 

Thomas Pedroni of Wayne State University writes that Governor Gretchen Whitmer wants to impose corporate reform organizations on Benton Harbor to “save” the underfunded district. A cruel hoax. She is carrying forward the foul legacy of Republican Governor Rick Snyder.

 

Michigan Gov Whitmer Grants Benton Harbor Schools a Trojan Horse-load of School Privatizers 
 
Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, propelled to the state’s highest office just eight months ago by Black, Latino, and other progressive voters, is coming out to her electorate— not as a progressive, but as a third term retread of former Republican Governor and Flint Poisoner-in-Chief Rick Snyder.
 
Not only has Whitmer continued Snyder’s penchant for strong-arming and dismantling predominately Black school districts (he gutted Inkster, Buena Vista, Muskegon Heights, Highland Park, and Detroit; she’s “offered” to close Benton Harbor’s only high school in exchange for not immediately dissolving the entire district), but she also shares her predecessor’s fascination with the disruptive possibilities of some of our nation’s foremost corporate education reform companies.
 
While the Governor has responded to statewide outrage over her indecent proposal for Benton Harbor High School by grabbing her political life preserver and offering to consider alternative suggestions by the elected board (which returns to power after five years of state supervision on July 1), her rhetorical softening comes with a new “proposal”— Benton Harbor trustees must now agree to onboard a “turnaround expert” to guide their return to autonomy.
 
As the Benton Harbor trustees learned on Wednesday, June 26, just days before their restoration, the Governor has given them a choice— they must work with one of the four whole district “turnaround” companies she has laid on the table: AUSL (Academy for Urban School Leadership), TNTP (the New Teacher Project), TfC (Turnaround for Children), or ERC (Educational Resource Strategies).
 
AUSL, of course, has consistently failed to reach its promised benchmarks in the schools it’s taken over in Chicago and, remarkably, has underperformed non-AUSL Chicago schools despite receiving large resource infusions from the Gates Foundation. A recent Chicago Teachers Union analysis of AUSL teacher firing and replacement in Chicago found that the largest impact of AUSL takeover may be on the racial composition and experience level of the teaching workforce— fired teachers were disproportionately more experienced and of color.
 
TNTP, which traces its founding to the teacher-bashing Michelle Rhee and TFA’s Wendy Kopp, has been described by Peter Greene as the “big boys and girls” version of Teach for America, in that its objective is to transform people with established non-teaching careers into teachers. TNTP believes in using computer-administered multiple choice questions to identify better teachers.
 
The final two organizations, Turnaround for Children and Educational Resource Strategies, similarly partner with and are funded by a who’s who of the corporate education reform world— TfC by the Bezos Family Foundation, the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Kipp DC, and America’s Promise Alliance, among others; and ERS by the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, TNTP, and the New Schools Venture Fund.
 
How Governor Whitmer’s staff came up with this short list of corporate education reform organizations for Benton Harbor Schools is unclear; but one thing is clear— the Governor is passing over the insights and recommendations she might garner from the Benton Harbor community; from educational researchers and teacher educators; from officials and researchers at the Michigan Department of Education; from rank and file teachers and their unions. Instead she is laser-focused on whoever it is from the corporate education reform world who is whispering in her ear.
 
Benton Harbor Area Schools, its children, and the people who elected Whitmer deserve much better than this, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t get it. But this can only happen if Whitmer chooses to disavow the corporate education Koolaid and actually listen to the people she claims to value.
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Michigan, Privatization
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