Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, wrote about the letter that Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut sent to Secretary of Education Cardona. Congresswoman DeLauro is chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee:
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, issued a blistering reproach of how “the national trade organization representing for-profit EMO’s is running a well-funded misinformation campaign” to stop the proposed regulations of the U.S. Department of Education to provide more accountability and transparency in the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP).
Although Chairwoman DeLauro does not mention the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) by name, that organization has been leading the campaign telling President Biden and Secretary Cardona to #backoff. “In 2019, the NACPS Hall of Fame winner was Fernando Zulueta, the founder and owner of the largest for-profit chain in the United States, Academica. Zulueta served on their board for years,” according to Carol Burris, the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education. NPE issued a report last year on the for-profit charter industry, entitled “Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain.”
Burris continues, “The campaign of misinformation waged by NACPS at defeating sensible reforms in CSP regulations has been relentless. Wild and untruthful claims made include that the Department does not believe rural charter schools and culturally affirming charter schools should exist, that public school districts would need to approve new charter schools, and that the regulations would override state law. Each of these outrageous false claims are intended to do one thing–frighten parents who send their children to charter schools to oppose the regulations in order to ensure that for-profit run charters and white flight charters can still get CSP funding.”
According to the Chair’s press release, which you can find here, this is not the first time that the same organization has used misinformation in order to protect the for-profit charter industry. The “trade organization” , presumably the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, led a similar campaign of misinformation last summer, according to Chair DeLauro.
“In July 2021, House Democrats passed the fiscal year 2022 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill which included a landmark provision prohibiting federal funding to charter schools run by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs),” wrote Chair DeLauro. “Predictably, the for-profit charter EMOs were not pleased with this legislative development. In response, their national trade organization led a well-funded misinformation campaign incorrectly claiming that the provision would prevent federal funds from going to any charter school that uses a contractor for any discrete service.”
Chair DeLauro goes on in the release to praise the Education Department’s CSP reforms. “I applaud the Department for its efforts to introduce greater accountability and transparency in the CSP program. Further, I urge the Department to disregard bad faith arguments from self-interested organizations that misrepresent these important proposals.”
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools received a CSP grant of nearly 2.4 million dollars in 2018, as did other charter school trade and lobby organizations who are joining the #BackOff campaign.
Ian Mackey, a Democratic state representative whose district includes St. Louis, gave a blistering speech in the Missouri legislature that scorched a Republican colleague who proposed a bill to ban trans athletes from all school sports. Mackey knew the bill would pass easily in the overwhelmingly Republican legislature. And it did. But as a matter of conscience, he spoke out against it.
Mackey’s impassioned speech has been viewed more than 2 million times on social media. He knows that the Republicans are acting not to solve a problem, but to express hatred for a tiny, powerless, frightened minority.
Republicans assume that if they ignite culture wars against gays, blacks, immigrants, and women who seek an abortion, they won’t need to come up with any policies that address actual problems, like an unfair tax system that benefits billionaires, climate change, or helping public schools. They can keep yammering about ”socialism” and ”the radical left” while doing their best to strangle any meaningful policy changes that improve people’s lives, other than their donors.
You might think that, with teacher shortages in many districts, this would be a golden moment for Teach for America. But it is not. Gary Rubinstein, one of the original members of TFA in the early 1990s and now a career teacher in New York City, surveys the current woes of Teach for America in this post. He identifies three reasons for the downturn in TFA’s fortunes.
He begins:
Teach For America has an operating budget of $300 million. Their main responsibility is to recruit and prepare corps members to teach for a minimum of two years in low-income communities. They started in 1990 with 500 corps members. In 1991 they grew to 750 corps members. By 2005 they had 2000 corps members and they peaked in 2012 with 6000. Now, according to Chalkbeat, They are at a 17 year low, back to 2000 recruits.
Teach For America blames their recruitment woes on the pandemic, but I have been following the ups and down of this organization for over 30 years, starting when I was a corps member myself in 1991, and I have a different theory.
There are three reasons why TFA’s popularity is fading, and all three of these reasons stem from an overarching problem — arrogance. In my analysis, those three reasons are: Failure to properly train corps members, ineffective leadership, and a close alliance with a toxic and oversimplified type of education reform based on teacher bashing.
Reason #1 is: Failure to properly train corps members
A state with one of the lowest investments in public education in the country now has a record budget surplus. This, of course, means Tennessee could make great strides in shoring up an education budget that can best be described as severely lacking without raising taxes one dime. In fact, investing in schools with new state money would also have the added benefit of keeping local property taxes low. It’s a policymaker’s dream.
That’s why Gov. Bill Lee has announced his definitive TISA plan – Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement.
Apparently, a key element of that plan was just announced today:
While we’re on the subject, let’s examine the reality of Lee’s TISA school funding plan:
Sure, that really has nothing to do with student achievement or funding schools or anything at all related to education. It does, however, continue a trend of placing just about everything else above public schools when it comes to Lee’s priorities.
First, it does nothing to shore up the shortage of teachers needed to adequately support students now. That is, according to both TACIR and the Comptroller, Tennessee districts hire MORE teachers (11,000 more, to be exact) than the current formula funds. Guess what? TISA does nothing to change that. There is no indication that the weights will mean more teachers hired and supported by state funding.
Next, TISA does nothing to boost overall teacher pay. Sure, TISA “allows” lawmakers to earmark certain funds to give raises to “existing” teachers, but that doesn’t mean they will. Nor does it mean those raises will be significant. This year’s $125 million set aside for teacher compensation will mean what is effectively a 2-3% raise for most teachers. Based on current inflation rates and rising insurance premiums, this essentially amounts to a pay cut.
While the plan doesn’t address the shortage of teachers or teacher compensation or local costs for hiring/retaining teachers, it does raise local property taxes.
Open the link and read how Governor Lee will ingeniously raise property taxes, build a shiny new domed football stadium, and shortchange the school children of Tennessee. All while sitting on a huge surplus.
Watch this short video and learn who is promoting and funding the attacks on “critical race theory.”
Very few of its critics can define CRT. Most seem to think it means teaching about racism today. They prefer to believe that racism ended with slavery. They are wrong.
Numerous states have passed laws banning the teaching of critical race theory, even though they can’t define what it is.
It’s meant to squelch all teaching about racism, past and present.
P.S.: the original post had some grammatical errors. I apologize. I wrote it on my cell phone while traveling in an Amtrak train. Forgive my poor editing.
The National Education Policy Center, headed by scholar Kevin Welner, wonders why the charter lobby has been so intransigent in fighting the reasonable regulations proposed by the Biden administration. The lobbyists have falsely characterized the regulations as an attempt to “destroy” or “eliminate” charter schools, but the regulations would apply only to new charters that seek federal funding. Most charters have been funded by foundations and billionaires, not the federal government. The proposed regulations would improve the new charters.
NEPC writes:
Why is the Charter Lobby So Upset About Biden’s Proposed Regulations?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been observing the conspicuous hand-wringing among prominent charter school advocates. They’re expressing outrage that the Biden Administration is trying to rein in some past abuses and problems within the charter sector. This aggrieved reaction might make sense if the regulations were designed to harm the sector, but the proposals are in fact quite modest and will even help charters thrive in the future.
Notwithstanding these concerns, the Administration’s budget request keeps CSP funding at its historic high of $440 million. This means that the same level of federal taxpayer dollars will continue to promote the expansion of charter schooling, which is already dominant in many metropolitan areas.
But the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations do attempt to address some of these concerns, even while fully funding the program. One key proposal, for example, attempts to fulfill a Biden campaign promise to crack down on CSP funding for charters being operated by for-profit corporations.
The proposed regulations also provide additional points for applications that feature “community school” elements and for those that provide evidence of cooperation or collaborations with the local school district(s).
I
Notwithstanding some false claims to the contrary, these are all priorities—not requirements. We can anticipate that plenty of charter schools without these elements will still get CSP funding.
The above-mentioned attempt to keep CSP money away from for-profit EMOs has raised some hackles among charter school advocates, but the pushback has been relatively muted. Perhaps the advocates are feeling sanguine in trusting the ingenuity of attorneys to find loopholes and work-arounds. One more layer of shell companies or sister corporations or real estate schemes may do the trick. Or perhaps charter advocates know that these for-profits are awful poster children for their cause, so an overt public campaign might be counterproductive.
I
This is nonsense. Yes, the Community Impact statement is required, but even if the statement shows zero benefits of the proposed school to the community, the consequence is merely a loss of potential points in the scoring of the application. The provisions being attacked by the charter advocates are priorities, not requirements. They would change how a given proposal is scored and thus prioritized or ranked among different applications for CSP funding. All other things being equal, a proposal that shows how a charter school will broadly serve—and not harm—a local community will be scored higher than one that cannot make that showing. So our federal tax dollars would be more likely to support the opening of schools that are beneficial to local communities.
Yet the same $440 million would still be disbursed. The same number of new charter schools would presumably still be opened. That’s (one would assume) what the charter lobby most cares about. For the rest of us, there’s good news as well; if the Community Impact process works, the charter schools that do open will be more consistent with the long-time rhetoric of charter school advocates about how charters are a beneficial part of the overall public school system.
So why the objections? What’s the real reason the charter lobby is upset about President Biden’s proposed regulations?
My hunch is that it’s a matter of principle—the principle that they should never give an inch.
For decades, charter schools have occupied a political sweet spot, enjoying the affections of politicians from both major parties. In that position, charter advocates were fully appeased. Compromise was not needed, so it was rebuffed. Like pampered royalty who never learn to listen and empathize, the charter lobby used its political capital to shut down discussions about addressing the sorts of ongoing problems listed earlier.
Over the years, little has changed—except perhaps the effectiveness of these tactics that resist any reform of the status quo for charter policy. For many outside the charter bubble, the sense of entitlement has grown old.
That entitlement was on full display last week. The charter school lobby organized a twitter campaign against the proposed regulations. It choose to use the hashtag #BackOff. If we had a “No Whining” jar, we could have funded next year’s CSP. The advocates’ tweets repeatedly asserted that the “overregulation” would “make it nearly impossible to open new charter schools.” This was accompanied by a newspaper commentary alleging that the proposed regulations were written by “Bureaucratic Gremlins” who had “burrowed” into the federal bureaucracy—rather than just a follow-through on candidate Biden’s campaign promises.
On Fox News, a school choice advocate contended that, through the regulations, the Biden Administration was “waging war on charter schools” in order to protect “unionized government schools.” Meanwhile, two editorial boards that have long pushed for charter school growth—The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post—continued to misrepresent the regulation’s proposed priorities as requirements, labeling the regulations as “charter school sabotage” (the WSJ) and “a sneak attack on charter schools” (the Post).
The charter lobby’s never-give-an-inch strategy has long been successful in forestalling policies that might mitigate existing problems. But assuming the strategy ever was wise, it no longer is. Potential allies have become frustrated enemies. A once diverse coalition has withered away to expose a core group that appears to be the same anti-public-education and privatizing interests that have long pushed school vouchers.
This obstinacy, even when successful in its immediate aims, is counterproductive. The charter lobby is wrong to see thoughtful regulations as existential threats—or even as anything but beneficial. Reasonable public policy concerns about access, stratification and fiscal impact on students in other schools should never have been minimized or dismissed. The charter lobby should have been in the forefront in efforts to rein in fraud and abuse.
The charter sector still includes many schools that we can and should celebrate. The NEPC’s own Schools of Opportunity program has recognized severalcharterschools that exemplify how high schools can close opportunity gaps. For the charter approach to have a bright future, these are the sort of schools the CSP should prioritize—and the proposed regulations are a step in that direction.
For now, unfortunately, the charter sector as a whole continues to be under-regulated and often harmful. The Biden Administration’s proposals can help change this. They can help charter schools become a beneficial part of public school systems—a role that can be broadly embraced.
I personally decided to submit a “formal” comment. The process is easy—just fill out the quick form and include your comment. The comment window is currently scheduled to close next Monday, April 18th. NEPC Resources on Charter Schools ->
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The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a university research center housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, produces and disseminates high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. Visit us at: http://nepc.colorado.edu
Copyright 2022 National Education Policy Center. All rights reserved.
The National Education Policy Center School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309
The U.S. Department of Education has extended the deadline for public comments about proposed regulations for the federal Charter Schools Program. This program started in 1995 with $6 million, when there were very few charter schools. Now there are more than 7,000 charters, many of them operated by for-profit corporations. The new regulations would ban federal funding to for-profit school operators and require new charters to do an impact analysis, showing the need for a new charter. Contrary to the charter industry lobbyists, no existing charter would be affected by these regulations, only new charters that seek federal funding.
Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, asks for your support:
The US DOE has extended the comment period on their proposed tough Charter Schools Regulations until April 18.
If you have not done so, take one more easy action to stop for-profit-run charters from getting federal Charter Schools Program funds.
Click HERE and send your comment to the U.S. Department of Education via the National Education Association. The NEA has made it easy to do!
If you have sent that quick message, now personalize a longer, more thoughtful commentand submit it through the Department’s portal. Here is a sample you can cut and paste.
I support the proposed rule that schools run by for-profits should not get grants. Charter schools that are run in part or whole to create profit should not benefit from federal expansion or start-up funds.
The relationship between a for-profit management organization is quite different from the relationship between our district vendors who provide a single service. A public school can sever a bus contract and still have a building, desks, curriculum, and teachers. However, in cases where charter schools have attempted to fire their for-profit operator, they find it impossible to do without destroying the schools in the process. In addition, the spending of the for-profit is hidden from public inspection and is not subject to FOIA requests.
I fully support the proposed regulation that “the community impact analysis must describe how the plan for the proposed charter school take into account the student demographics of the schools from which students are, or would be, drawn to attend the charter school.” The reporting of needs based on enrollment patterns as well as the impact on local desegregation efforts is most welcome.
In the past, one of the most segregated charter chains in the country received CSP grants. Arizona’s BASIS schools, do not provide free or reduced-priced lunch nor transportation. BASIS expects parents to make donations to subsidize teacher salaries. In a state where 52% of all students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, the percentage in BASIS schools is only 1%. While 13% of Arizona’s public school students are students with disabilities, the percentage in BASIS schools is 3%. Latinx and Black students are dramatically underrepresented in the schools in this chain. Eight Arizona BASIS charter schools were recipients of CSP sub-grants between 2010-2017 receiving over $5 million dollars.
The inclusion of an impact statement will help reviewers make the best decisions regarding which schools should get awards. The impact analysis requirements should include a profile of the students with disabilities and English language learners in the community along with an assurance that the applicant will provide the full range of services that meet the needs of all students. Too often, the neediest students are left behind in our districts, while funding leaves the schools along with students who require fewer services.
I fully support priorities one and two. They will help us get back to the original purpose of charter schools—innovative places run by teachers and families in cooperation with our local schools. I do not want my tax dollars to go to create new schools for the benefit of the big EMO and CMO chains.
Submit your comment by cutting and pasting it here.
And then keep sending those tweets by clicking here.
Thanks for all you do.
The Network for Public Education is a 501 (c)(3) organization. You can make a tax deductible donation here.
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Several years ago, I endowed a lecture series at my alma mater, Wellesley College, focused on education issues. This year’s lecture will be live-streamed on April 12, and the speaker is Helen Ladd, an emeritus professor at Duke University and one of the nation’s leading economists. I hope you will tune in to the livestream. I will introduce Professor Ladd.
Speaker: Helen F. Ladd ’67, Susan B. King Professor Emerita of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University
Ladd will draw on her many years of education research and discuss the four central requirements of good education policy in the U.S., and how charter schools, as currently designed and operated, typically do far more to interfere with, rather than to promote, good education policy in the U.S.
Bill will safeguard grades PreK-2nd from state testing
Young children will be protected from any current or future plans to expand state standardized testing into prekindergarten through second grade if Governor Pritzker signs a new Too Young To Test law passed by the Illinois General Assembly this session.
The Too Young To Test bill, SB 3986, received broad and bipartisan support from legislators and a coalition of Illinois parents, educators, researchers, and advocacy orgs concerned about the possible encroachment of the state testing system into PreK-2. The Too Young To Test bill prevents the state from requiring or paying for any non-diagnostic standardized testing of children before third grade.
“Too Young To Test seeks to safeguard the early years by ensuring that the Illinois State Board of Education does not spend finite resources or require standardized assessments in K-2 that have been proven to be developmentally inappropriate during such a fluid time of child development.” said State Senator Cristina Pacione-Zayas (D-Chicago), the bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate. “Instead, the state should invest in research-based practices that support whole child development such as play-based learning, social-emotional skill building, and teacher coaching. Especially after the unprecedented disruptions of these last two years, we cannot forget that the same part of the brain that registers stress and trauma is also responsible for memory and learning.”
“Our decisions about state standardized testing should reflect evidence-based research and provide reliable data,” chief House sponsor of SB 3986 State Representative Lindsey LaPointe (D-Chicago) said. “Encouraging schools to focus on unreliable standardized tests for children too young will change the focus of classroom instruction and create further inequity. We need to direct our education resources and energy toward proven strategies that enrich the classroom experience for our youngest learners.”
Assessment experts, teachers, and early childhood researchers all agree that test scores from children below age eight are not statistically reliable or valid measures of what children know and can do and should not be used to assess academic achievement or school performance.
Despite this, the Illinois State Board of Education has been considering a proposal to add optional, state-funded K-2 testing in Illinois to the existing 3-8th grade tests. That proposal has been unpopular with parents and teachers. A petition from grassroots public ed advocacy group Illinois Families for Public Schools calling on ISBE to drop the plan garnered over 1300 signatures from parents and community members in over 150 towns and cities across Illinois.
Too Young To Test wouldn’t restrict the ability of districts, schools, and teachers to use or develop assessments paid for with local funding dollars. It also does not stop the state from creating or funding tests or evaluations used for screening or diagnostic purposes.
Since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, overtesting has become a significant problem in early elementary school because younger students are being prepped for high-stakes tests in later grades. “We are relieved and encouraged by the General Assembly’s action to set clear criteria for what types of assessment the state can develop, fund and require before third grade.” said Cassie Creswell, director of Illinois Families for Public Schools.
“Before age eight, and even after, kids should be learning via play, exploration and inquiry, and the way teachers assess what they’ve learned should reflect that. What parents want for their children is small classes with teachers who use meaningful assessment methods, not more contracts with commercial test vendors,” added Creswell. “Governor Pritzker has said he’s committed to Illinois becoming the best state in the nation for families raising young children, and we think the Too Young To Test bill is an important part of fulfilling that. We hope we can count on him to sign this bill into law as soon as it gets to his desk.”
Illinois Families for Public Schools (IL-FPS) is a grassroots advocacy group that represents the interests of families who want to defend and improve Illinois public schools. Founded in 2016, IL-FPS’ efforts are key to giving public ed parents and families a real voice in Springfield on issues like standardized testing, student data privacy, school funding and more. IL-FPS reaches families and public school supporters in more than 100 IL House districts. More at ilfps.org.
Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics, lives in California. He has attended every annual conference of the Network for Public Education, except for the first one in Austin, Texas. He met many of the people whose work he admired, and he left fired up to do his part in the struggle to save public schools from the privatizers. Now he has become one of the bloggers that everyone wants to meet! Join us in Philadelphia and share the enthusiasm!
Tom writes:
In 2014, the first Network for Public Education (NPE) Conference was held at Austin, Texas. My first conference was the following year in Chicago. That was the year after the late Karen Lewis and the Chicago teachers union decided enough is enough and stood strong against a host of privatizers and education profiteers. Their powerful teachers’ union victory sent ripples of hope to educators across America. That year, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Mercedes Schneider, Peter Greene, Jennifer Berkshire, Jose Vilson, Jan Resseger and many other pro-public education activists dominated social media.
NPE Chicago was held in the fabulous historic Drake hotel just up the street from Lake Michigan. When walking into the lobby, I was greeted by Anthony Cody the co-founder of NPE. Steve Singer from Pennsylvania and T.C. Weber from Tennessee arrived just after I did. During the conference, it seemed I met all of the leading education activists in America.
Particularly memorable was lunch the following day. I met Annie Tan in the hallway heading to lunch and she said let’s get a seat near the stage. So, I followed her to an upfront table. Turned out our table mates included Adell Cothorne the Noyes Elementary school principal famous for exposing Michelle Rhee’s DC test cheating. Jenifer Berkshire who had unmasked herself as the Edu-Shyster was also at the table. The Curmugducator, Peter Greene, and his wife were there as was well known education blogger and author Jose Vilson.
It strangely turned out that Greene, his wife, Vilson and I were all trombone players. Of course, everyone knows that trombone players are the coolest members of the band.
A highlight of NPE 2015 was the entertaining hour long presentation by Yong Zhao. He is the internationally decorated professor of education who had just published Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon.
Zhao’s presentation focused on the harm caused by standards and testing. He also made fun of the concept of being college ready and the recently broached kindergarten readiness was a new abomination making the rounds. Zhou made the logical observation that it was schools that needed to ready for the children. He also shared that what he wanted for his children was “out of my basement readiness.” Zhao claimed that on a recent trip to Los Angeles that he met Kim Kardashian in an elevator. He observed that she clearly had “out of my basement readiness.”
NPE 2016 in Raleigh, North Carolina
We met in the spring for the 3rd NPE conference. There was some thought about cancelling in the wake of North Carolina passing anti-transgender bathroom legislation. I am glad we didn’t. Many disrespected North Carolina teachers came to our hotel in the large downtown convention center complex to report and be encouraged. It was a great venue and I met more amazing people who taught me a lot.
The Reverend William Barber’s “poor people campaign” was leading the fight against the kind of cruel legislation emanating from the capital building an easy walk up the street. Barber might be America’s most inspirational speaker. His keynote address fired up the conference.
A major highlight for me was meeting Andrea Gabor. She is a former staff writer and editor for both Businessweek and U.S. News ξ World Report and is currently the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College. Gabor is also one America’s leading experts on W. Edward Deming’s management theories which are credited with the rise of Toyota among other successes. She was there leading a workshop based on the research she did in New Orleans which eventually led to her 2018 book “After the Education Wars; How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.”
Gabor was an agnostic concerning charter schools when she went to New Orleans. Her experience there gave her insight into how damaging the privatization agenda had become. A New Orleans parent accompanying Gabor described how during her eighth-grade year she was in a class with 55-students. Their room was not air-conditioned and they were restricted to running the fan 10-minutes each hour to save on electrical costs. With the promise of never before seen large scale spending on schools in black communities, residents did not care about the governance structure. It was the first significant spending on education in their neighborhoods in living memory. Now, they have no public schools left and choice is turning out to mean the schools chose which students they want.
NPE 2017 in Oakland, California
In early fall, we gathered at the Marriot hotel in the Oakland flats. The first evening, smoke from the big Napa fire made being outside uncomfortable. That night, KPFA radio hosted an event at a local high school featuring Diane Ravitch in conversation with Journey for Justice (J4J) leader, Jitu Brown. Two years earlier, Brown led the successful 34-day hunger strike to save Dyett High School from being shuttered by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. J4J, Bats, NEA, Black Lives Matter at School, AFT, Parents Across America and many other organizations had representative both attending and presenting.
When leaving the inspiring session with Jitu and Diane, I ran into San Diego Superintendent of Schools, Cindy Marten. A San Diego teacher carpooling with me had what appeared to be a heated exchange with Marten. However, when Marten was appointed Deputy Secretary of Education by Joe Biden, that same teacher lauded her saying “don’t worry my Superintendent will take care of us.”
We were one of two conventions that weekend at the Marriott. The other was sponsored by the nascent California marijuana industry. When returning to my room in the evenings, the sweet smell of pot wafted down the hallways but as far as I know there were no free samples.
In the main hall, a Seattle kindergarten teacher, Susan DeFresne, put up a series of posters that covered all of one very long wall. Her artwork depicted the history of institutional racism in U.S. schools. Six months later Garn Press published this art in the book The History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools.
In Oakland, I saw a new younger leadership appearing. It is also where I met activists, board members and researchers from Oakland who would become invaluable sources for my articles about the public schools they are fighting desperately to save.
One of our keynote speakers was a recipient of the 2017 MacArthur Genius award, Nicolle Hanna-Jones. Today everyone knows about her because of the 1619 Project.
NPE 2018 in Indianapolis, Indiana
Indianapolis was a trip into Mind Trust madness and home of the second most privatized public education system in America. Diane Ravitch jubilantly opened the conference declaring, “We are the resistance and we are winning!”
Famed Finnish educator, Pasi Sahlberg, was one the first featured speakers. He labeled the business centric education privatization agenda the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) and buttressed Ravitch’s declaration stating,
“You are making progress. The global situation is getting better.”
One of the most visible people at NPE 2018 was founding board member Phyllis Bush. She was dealing with the ravages of cancer and seemed determined not to let it slow her in the least. She had always shown me great consideration so the news of her demise not long after the conference was sad, but in the last years of her life she helped build NPE into a great force for protecting public education.
Last year, I was also saddened to learn that the woman with the walker, Laura Chapman, had died. Her research into the forces attacking Cincinnati’s public schools and the spending nationally to privatize public schools made her a treasure. I really enjoyed our breakfast together in Indianapolis and will miss her.
There were many outstanding small group presentations at NPE 2018. One that I found personally helpful was put on by Darcie Cimarusti, Mercedes Schneider and Andrea Gabor. Darcie did significant research for the NPE report, Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools. In her presentation she demonstrated LittleSis a program she used for her research. It is a free database and orthographic mapping facility. LittleSis is viewed as the antidote to “Big Brother.” Gabor and Schneider shared how they search for non-profit tax forms and explained the differences between an IRS form 990 and form 990 PF, the forms non-profits must file.
Jitu Brown and the Journey for Justice (J4J) came to Indianapolis with a message:
“We are not fooled by the ‘illusion of school choice.’ The policies of the last twenty years, driven more by private interests than by concern for our children’s education, are devastating our neighborhoods and our democratic rights. Only by organizing locally and coming together nationally will we build the power we need to change local, state, and federal policy and win back our public schools.”
J4J introduced their #WeChoose campaign consisting of seven pillars:
A moratorium on school privatization.
The creation of 10,000 community schools.
End zero tolerance policies in public schools now. (Supports restorative justice)
Conduct a national equity assessment.
Stop the attack on black teachers. (In 9 major cities impacted by school privatization there has been a rapid decline in the number of black teachers.)
End state takeovers, appointed school boards and mayoral control.
Eliminate the over-reliance on standardized tests in public schools.
Jitu Brown introduced Sunday morning’s keynote speaker, Jesse Hagopian, as “a freedom fighter who happens to be a teacher.”
In his address, Hagopian listed three demands: (1) End zero tolerance discipline and replace it with restorative justice; (2) Hire more black teachers (he noted there are 26,000 less black teachers since 2010) and (3) Teach ethnic studies including black history.
For me personally, I had the opportunity to cultivate deeper friendships with the many wonderful individuals who I first met at NPE Chicago. That included once again speaking with my personal heroine and friend, Diane Ravitch.
#NPE2022PHILLY
I am excited to see everyone in Philadelphia to ignite a new wave or resistance to billionaire financed efforts aimed at destroying public education.
COVID-19 interrupted our 2020 plan to meet in Philadelphia and again interrupted us twice in 2021. This year we will finally have what promises to be a joyful rejuvenation for the resistance.
I do not think it is too late to be part of it. Go to https://npeaction.org/2022-conference/ and sign up for the conference. It will be the weekend of April 30 – May 1.
Diane Ravitch's blog 