I saw Bill Moyers interview Mark Leibovich last night, and I was riveted to the screen.
I began to understand that the privatization of public education is part of a much larger corruption in our politics.
The power of greed is a mighty force. Once let loose on our schools, it will monetize the children.
Please watch this when you have a free hour.
You will be appalled and informed.
And you will be angry.
I just ordered Mark’s book.
This reader reports on the for-profit charter chain that took control of the students in Muskegon Height, Michigan:
“I have a close friend who works in this very charter school in Muskegon Heights.
“If Mosaica isn’t the worst charter operation in America, it’s in the top ten.
“A few observations from my friend:
“1. They instituted a homeroom period at the start of the day. Students were ASSIGNED to a classroom and were supposed to show up for assistance / tutoring. My friend said that one student showed up. Administration did nothing to address the fact that kids weren’t coming to school.
“2. His building administrator locked the office doors and told teachers that she would only speak to them via e-mail.
“3. In April of last year, he was told that he must purchase paper because the school would no longer provide any.
“4. When MLIVE (The Grand Rapids Press), reported that nearly a third of the teaching staff had quit halfway through the year, the school responded by calling all the teachers in for a meeting. At the meeting, they had the teachers write down areas of improvement / complaints they had about the way Mosaica was running the school. After collecting all of the complaints, they threw them in the garbage. They then berated the remaining teachers and told them to quit because they have “loads of qualified applicants” dying to teach there.
“I could go on and on and on. This despicable company has stolen millions of dollars from Michigan taxpayers. On top of that, they’ve eliminated 50+ middle class jobs (former public school employees) and have created more paycheck to paycheck, barely getting by jobs. My friend makes $31,000 a year. He is better paid than several other staff members because he had previous years of experience.
“I am a FORMER REPUBLICAN. I voted for GW Bush twice. Knowing what NCLB and Republican efforts have done to public schools and to public education (the narrowing of education, total focus on standardized tests, elimination of liberal arts programs, loss of rigor or accountability for students, destruction of the teaching profession), I have left the party and have helped convince many of my friends to leave as well. I’m also a married white male (the backbone of the GOP). Lose guys like me, and you’re screwed.”
Anthony Cody explains
here the sustained assault on the commons, the effort to
privatize institutions that were long considered public.
He considers what happens when prisons
are privatized, creating profits by reducing the quality of service
and care. He shows why the post office is being privatized and who stands to gain.
And he summarizes the ongoing effort to privatize public schools and turn them over to corporate control.
He writes:
“It has
been decided in the halls of power, governmental and corporate,
that the way to improve schools is to unleash the power of the
marketplace. We are undergoing a transformation of huge proportions
in order to allow this to occur. Through the Common Core State
(sic) Standards, we are creating a single national marketplace for
tests, technology and curriculum – all three of which are
increasingly intertwined and removed from the control of teachers
and local communities….
“Meanwhile, our leaders
have unleashed “austerity” on the public sector, schools included.
In Chicago, the bulldozers destroyed a community reading center
treasured by local parents, capping off the closing of more than 50
public schools by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In Philadelphia, the mayor
has been working to abandon public schools in favor of charters,
and the underfunding of the city’s schools has clergy there calling
for a student boycott.”
He concludes:
“Our schools are part of a public
heritage passed down to us. They were built in our communities with
a vision of bringing all children under the same roof to learn
together. Privatization replaces this model of the commons with one
ruled by marketplace “choices.” As we know, some people always wind
up with many more choices than others. Interviews with parents
reveal that their first choice is almost always a high quality
local public school for their children. If we shifted our public
policies away from attempting to discredit and replace these
schools, and towards supporting and strengthening them, we would be
far better off.”
This piece about “disruption” was cross-posted on Huffington Post, meaning that I wrote it this morning, got an invitation from HuffPost to write something, and offered to put this post in both places.
I may do this with future blogs, to help spread the message of hope and good cheer about the growing movement to free our schools from the heavy hands of the corporate reformers.
Feel free to go to Huffington Post and leave a comment on the article there.
This is part of our message, those of us who are trying to change the narrative.
Let’s work together to inform the public that the train has not left the station.
There is nothing inevitable about current misguided policies.
The train has not left the station.
The train is headed right for a cliff.
It is time to change direction.
And it is happening.
Americans like their neighborhood public schools.
They don’t want to see them closed and replaced by a school to which they must apply for admission.
They don’t like standardized testing.
They love their teachers.
They don’t want their teachers rated by the test scores of their students.
Common sense will win.
I promise.
Earlier today, I published Judith Shulevitz’s brilliant essay on “disruption” as a business strategy.
As we know, mega-corporations believe they must continually reinvent themselves in order to have the latest, best thing and beat their competitors, who are about to overtake them in the market.
They believe in disruption as a fundamental rule of the marketplace.
By some sloppy logic or sleight-of-hand, the financial types and corporate leaders who think they should reform the nation’s schools have concluded that the schools should also be subject to “creative disruption” or just plain “disruption.”
And so we have the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, underwritten by billionaire Eli Broad, sending out superintendents who are determined to “disrupt” schools by closing them and handing them over to private management.
Unfortunately, Secretary Arne Duncan agrees that disruption is wonderful, so he applauds the idea of closing schools, opening new schools, inviting the for-profit sector to compete for scarce funds, and any other scheme that might disrupt schools as we know them.
He does this believing that U.S. education is a failed enterprise and needs a mighty shaking-up.
First, he is wrong to believe that U.S. public education is failing. I document that he is wrong in my new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and The Danger to America’s Public Schools, using graphs from the U.S. Department of Education website.
Second, “disruption” is a disaster for children, families, schools, and communities.
Think of little children. They need continuity and stability, not disruption. They need adults who are a reliable presence in their lives. But, following the logic of the corporate reformers, their teachers are fired, their school is closed, everything must be brand new or the kids won’t learn. No matter how many parents and children turn out at school board meetings to plead for the life of their neighborhood schools, the hammer falls and it is closed. This is absurd.
Think of adolescents. When they misbehave, we say they are “disruptive.” Now we are supposed that their disruptive behavior represents higher order thinking.
But no one can learn when one student in a class of thirty is disruptive.
Disruptive policies harm families because after the closing of the neighborhood school, they are expected to shop for a school. They are told they have “choice,” but the one choice denied to them is their neighborhood school. Maybe one of their children is accepted as the School of High Aspirations, but the other didn’t get accepted and is enrolled in the School for Future Leaders on the other side of town. That is not good for families.
Disruption is not good for communities. In most communities, the public school is the anchor of community life. It is where parents meet, talk about common problems, work together, and learn the fundamental processes of democratic action.
Disruption destroys local democracy. It atomizes families and communities, destroying their ability to plan and act together on behalf of their community.
By closing their neighborhood school, disruption severs people from the roots of their community. It fragments community.
It kneecaps democracy.
City after city is now suffering a “disruptive” assault on public education. Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed dozens of schools in Chicago; Mayor Michael Bloomberg closed dozens of schools in New York City; public education in Detroit is dying; Philadelphia public schools are on life support, squeezed by harsh budget cuts and corporate faith in disruption and privatization.
But the disruptive strategy won’t be confined to urban districts. As the tests for the new national Common Core standards are introduced in state after state, disruption and havoc will produce what corporate reformers are hoping for: a loss of faith in public education; a conviction that it is broken beyond repair; and a willingness to try anything, even to allow for-profit vendors to take over the responsibilities of the public sector. That is already happening in many states, where hundreds of milllions of dollars are siphoned away from public schools and handed over to disruptive commercial enterprises. It doesn’t produce better education, but it produces profits.
Maybe that is the point of disruption.
A reader follows Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Twitter feed (I do not; I do not monitor him). She noticed that he often promotes commercial, for-profit vendors. Others have noticed how often he lauds privately-managed charter schools and how seldom he praises public schools, except when their staff has been fired. She writes:
Speaking of monitoring, Duncan’s Twitter feed is absolutely amazing. 90% of his links promote some commercial aspect of education reform. Here’s today’s prominent product placement:
“School models that don’t fit within traditional definitions are largely excluded from receiving E-Rate support. Florida Virtual School, the largest virtual school in the United States serving more than 148,000 students, uses a model built entirely around connected learning resulting in
a broadband tab of $53 million, yet the E-Rate only reimburses $5,237. Schools using blended learning approaches that “flip the classroom,” where students watch lectures online at home and use class time for interactive discussion, also do not receive full E-Rate support.”
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/317329-new-education-models-need-a-new-e-rate#ixzz2cbzyzhXm
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
I don’t even think he has to go thru the revolving door from government work to the private sector, like so many of his staffers have. He’s promoting private sector education schemes while in his government job. It’s just shameless.
Judith Shulevitz has written
a brilliant essay in “The Néw Republic” about the
corporate and political leaders’ infatuation with “disruption.” It
is “the most pernicious cliche of our time.” She identifies its
author, Clayton Christenson, and shows how it explains some
technological change yet is now used in policy circles to undermine
and privatize public functions. Shulevitz observes: “Christensen
and his acolytes make the free-market-fundamentalist assumption
that all public or nonprofit institutions are sclerotic and unable
to cope with change. This leads to an urge to disrupt,
preemptively, from above, rather than deal with disruption when it
starts bubbling up below….they don’t like participatory democracy
much. “The sobering conclusion,” write Christensen and co-authors
in their book about K–12 education, “is that democracy … is an
effective tool of government only in” less contentious communities
than those that surround schools. “Political and school leaders who
seek fundamental school reform need to become much more comfortable
amassing and wielding power because other tools of governance will
yield begrudging cooperation at best.” This observation leads to an
enlightening discussion of the Broad-trained superintendents and
their love of disruption. When they move into districts to impose
transformation and disruption, they sow dissension and turmoil.
None of this is good for children.
Paul Thomas points out that standardized test scores correlate closely with family income. He notes the lack of any evidence that more testing makes students smarter.
The driving force behind the demand for Common Core and more testing is profit.
CIVIL RIGHTS HERO CALLS FOR EMERGENCY
NATIONAL DIALOGUE ON THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION
Just Awarded Harvard’s Highest Education Honor, James Meredith Challenges Parents and Teachers to Demand Answers to 21 Questions and Take Back Control of Public Schools
Upcoming 50Th Anniversary Tie-In: August 18, 2013
On the 50th anniversary of his historic graduation from the University of Mississippi on August 18, 1963, civil rights hero James Meredith says “America’s public schools are being hijacked and destroyed by greed, fraud and lies,” and is calling for an emergency National Dialogue on the Future of American Education.
Meredith is challenging parents, teachers and community leaders and elders to take back control of America’s public schools and to demand answers and evidence from politicians and education officials on 21 questions on the future of American public education. “If politicians and bureaucrats refuse to fully answer these critical questions about our children’s future,” he adds, “then we should withhold our votes and support from them until they do.”
Meredith, the 2013 winner of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education’s Medal for Educational Impact, the school’s highest honor, says “the lives of our children and the future of our nation is at stake.”
“The civil rights issue of our time is to stop unproven co-called education reforms from totally destroying our children’s public education,” says Meredith, “and to get parents, teachers, community leaders and elders, the whole ‘Family of God,’ to take back control of our children’s education from politicians, bureaucrats and for-profits, who have turned our public schools into pawns in a game of money and power.”
He adds, “It is time we as citizens arm ourselves with the best evidence and information and take back control of our schools.”
Meredith urges Americans to join a national discussion on public K-8 education on his website: https://www.facebook.com/jamesmeredithusa
Meredith recently published his critically-hailed memoir, A MISSION FROM GOD: A MEMOIR AND CHALLENGE FOR AMERICA (Simon & Schuster), co-written with award-winning, New York Times bestselling author William Doyle.
The first Common Core test produced a massive decline in test scores across the state. Charter schools fared even worse than public schools, with many dropping by 50 percentage points in their proficiency rates.
This reader read the handwriting on the wall:
“These test scores emphatically highlight the failure of vision that the corporate reformers bring to the table.
What scares me is the tremendous profit motive that drives and informs so much of what is happening in education. It’s as if capitalism, as a system, has its own needs and agendas that operate outside any kind of moral frame- work. Those who stand to gain, like hedge-fund managers, Rupert Murdoch styled billionaires, the industrial complex built up around curriculum and assessment, and the many charter chain operators are all aligned to push data driven, high stakes testing, and privatizing education with very little awareness or concern for the real implications that the free market has on public education.
I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say that they are dismantling a free public education system that is premised on equity, and established along with the founding of our democracy. They are replacing it with, well-connected, chain charters that don’t even address the needs of students and communities whose needs are highest. (These get counseled out, or lack the self efficacy to opt in in the first place.)
These “reformers” under-write politicians, thus gaining undemocratic access and influence. They own media outlets and know how to shape the national conversation. They tell us teachers suck, not poverty. They tell us teacher tenure undermines student achievement, not chronic underfunding of low-income school districts. They tell us that the labor movement and unions are a threat to our economy and to our way of life. When, in-fact, unions helped to establish and stabilize our middle class with the five day work week, the eight hour work day, a living wage, and more. They tell us public schools are failing when, in fact, every assessment, and decades of studies demonstrate that poverty is hurting children, not public schools. They tell us they know how to fix education, though they have been “fixing” it with charters and vouchers for over a decade, while sucking the life out of, low income, public schools with little to show for all their bluster.
They are still waiting for superman.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 