Archives for category: For-Profit
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Mercedes Schneider: Programs Driven by Ideology and Profits, Not Evidence

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2013 //
17

Mercedes Schneider argues that corporate reform is driven by ideology and greed, not evidence or the pursuit of better education.

She looks at the recent NCTQ report, which had no evidence for its large claims, and at vouchers and course choice in Louisiana. Vouchers have failed, but their champions won’t admit it. Course choice is ll about dollars, nothing more.

Without big money on offer, she writes, corporate reform would disappear: “If there were no six-figure salaries to accompany their ideological push, the likes of John White would be out of the door.”

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Louisiana, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)

InBloom Loses Another Site

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2013 //
35

Politico’ Morning Education Blog reports a setback for inBloom. Notice the come-on: free now, not later:

INBLOOM OFF THE ROSE? — Another state has pulled out of using the Gates Foundation’s $100 million technology service project, inBloom. The withdrawal further shrinks the project after other states pulled out in part because of concern about protecting students’ privacy. Guilford County, N.C. told POLITICO on Wednesday that the state decided to stop using the service, which is designed to hold information about students including names, socioeconomic status, test scores, disabilities, discipline records and more in one place, and ideally, help in customizing students’ education.

Guilford schools’ departure doesn’t put the project in any kind of jeopardy, inBloom said, although Louisiana withdrew in April and other states once affiliated with the project no longer are. That leaves New York, two Illinois districts and one Colorado district as firm participants for now; Massachusetts is on the fence. At first inBloom will be free, but by 2015 states and districts using it will be charged $2 to $5 per student for the service.

Categories For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology, Computers

How Arizona Discriminates Against Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2013 //
5

A comment from a reader in Arizona:

“I live in Arizona, am freshly retired from the US military, and have no children. Even from this vantage point, it doesn’t take much effort to see that Arizona’s under paid, hard working (at multiple jobs), parents are too busy trying to survive to notice that their legislators are feeding their tax dollars to private school corporations, by the buckets! We can write-off on our state taxes more than twice the level of donations to privates chools than public schools. We have until tax day the next year to do it for private schools, and only until Dec 31st of the tax year for public schools. And, we can only designate “extra curricular” activities for public schools, but can give it to the O&M, general educational fund for private schools. This state needs a giant court audit to declare its whole education funding system unconstitutional!”

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Support for public schools

Is Corporate Reform a “House of Cards”?

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2013 //
8

This is a clever, sharp video about corporate reform.

It comes with the endorsement of the notorious BAT teachers.

It is the first of a series explaining the nefarious role of the privatization movement and its pretense to be “for the kids” as it destroys their community public schools.

If this is a sample of the BAT work, we can expect that the house of cards will be toppling soon.

The reformers who impose bad ideas on kids and schools take themselves very seriously. They don’t like to be reminded that all their policies fail, and that their work is a house of cards.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit

North Carolina: Public Education in Peril

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2013 //
22

Dr. June Atkinson, the state superintendent of instruction in North Carolina, said, ““For the first time in my career of more than 30 years in public education, I am truly worried about students in our care.”

Lindsay Wagner summarizes the damage done to public education by the North Carolina legislature:

It cut more than $500 million from the state’s public schools.

It passed a voucher program to allow students to take public money to private and religious schools.

And more:

The 2013-15 biennial budget introduces a raft of spending cuts to public schools that will result in no raises for teachers, larger class sizes, fewer teacher assistants, little support for instructional supplies or professional development, and what could amount to the dismantling of the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program. Teachers can also say goodbye to tenure and supplemental pay for advanced degrees.

Wagner asks, “Is this the beginning of the end for public education in North Carolina?”

The privatization movement is in full swing in North Carolina. What was once the most progressive state in the South is now leading the attack on public education. For the first time since Reconstruction, the governorship and both houses of the Legislature are in the hands of Republicans, and these are not moderate Republicans who want to preserve a strong public education system. These are radical privatizers who want to send public monies to private schools, religious schools, and entrepreneurs.

The governor’s education advisor, Eric Guckian, is a Teach for America alum. TFA won $5.1 million in the new budget.

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Education Industry, For-Profit, North Carolina, Privatization, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

Ohio: Big GOP Donor Must Open Charters’ Financial Records

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2013 //
9

This is breaking news.

The Ohio Supreme Court let stand lower court rulings that require the White Hat charter corporations to open its financial records to the board members of the charters.

White Hat is owned by David Brennan, one of the state’s biggest contributors to GOP campaigns. It is the state’s largest charter chain.

The boards of 10 White Hat charters sued the company to gain access to the finances of their schools. White Hat, a for-profit management company, collects 96% of the revenues but insisted it had no obligation to disclose how it spent the money or anything else about its finances because it is a private corporation. Brennan makes millions of dollars each year.

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

Why Parents Should Oppose inBloom

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2013 //
50

In this post, New York City activist Leonie Haimson explains what inBloom is, how the U.S. Department of Education weakened privacy protections in 2009 and 2011, and why parents should demand the right to withhold their child’s confidential data from inBloom.

The creators of inBloom talk about its benefits in creating customized learning tools, but Haimson warns that the real goal is to turn student data over to for-profit vendors that will target children for marketing their stuff.

An investigative journalist is needed to figure out why Arne Duncan’s Department of Education weakened FERPA, the federal law protecting student privacy, at the same time that Race to the Top offered incentives for states to build data warehouses, and along comes inBloom to open up student data for use by vendors. It is all too neat a package.

Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

The First Review of “Reign of Error”!

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2013 //
83

This is the first review of my new book.

Kirkus sends out early reviews that are read by journalists, librarians, and others in the publishing industry.

This reviewer provides an accurate summary of the book. He or she got the main point and presents it succinctly here.

REIGN OF ERROR
The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools
Author: Diane Ravitch

Review Issue Date: August 1, 2013
Online Publish Date: July 21, 2013
Publisher:Knopf
Pages: 416
Price ( Hardcover ): $27.95
Publication Date: September 18, 2013
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-0-385-35088-4
Category: Nonfiction

“A noted education authority launches a stout defense of the public school system and a sharp attack on the so-called reformers out to wreck them.

“We’ve been misinformed, writes Ravitch (Education/New York Univ.; The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, 2010, etc.), about the state of our public schools. Test scores are higher than ever, the dropout rate is lower, and achievement gaps among races are narrowing. The only “crisis” is the one ginned up by government bureaucrats, major foundations, an odd coalition of elitists and commercial hustlers intent on privatizing education. They’ve made inflated claims about the virtues of vouchers, charter schools, virtual schools, standardized testing (and its efficacy for identifying excellent teachers) and merit pay. With no supporting evidence, they insist poverty has no correlation to low academic achievement, that abolishing tenure and seniority will improve schools, and that overhauling the entire system along business lines is the way to go. Ravitch makes her own proposals for genuine improvement, and if they are as unsurprising as they are expensive—e.g., prenatal care for all expectant mothers, high-quality early education for all, reduced class sizes and a full, balanced curriculum, medical and social services for poor children—they at least leave responsibility for the public school system where it belongs: in the hands of our elected representatives. When it comes to education, notoriously plagued by fads, it’s always difficult to determine truth. Ravitch, however, earns the benefit of the doubt by the supporting facts, figures, and graphs she brings to her argument, a lifetime of scholarship, and experience in and out of government. She’s as dismissive of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind as of Barack Obama’s Race to the Top and as critical of former Secretary of Education William Bennett as of the current Arne Duncan.

“For policymakers, parents and anyone concerned about the dismantling of one of our democracy’s great institutions.

“41 graphs. First printing of 75,000. Author tour to Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C.”

A note from Diane: I will also be in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and other cities.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Vouchers

Inside Story: Why Louisiana Joined inBloom

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2013 //
9

Thanks to tireless bloggers and parents, who FOILed the emails, you can now read about how and why Louisiana State Superintendent John White decided to turn over confidential student data to the Murdoch-Gates collaboration.

Do you want to know what the powerful say to each other? Read this fascinating account of The Art of the Deal.

Categories For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Klein, Joel, Louisiana

Louisiana Educator Speaks Out Against Privatization

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2013 //
6

Mike Deshotels is a retired educator in Louisiana who blogs at http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/.

He sent the following letter to the media:

“To the Editor

As an experienced, retired educator I feel I must speak out about the serious damage being done to public education in Louisiana by Governor Jindal and State Education Superintendent John White.

Many educators are shocked and disappointed about the drastic cuts to higher education, however my greatest concern is for K-12 education, where I was privileged to have a rewarding career as a teacher and education leader. It is like watching a slow motion train wreck to see the thousands of dedicated teachers who are retiring early because of the insane education policies of this administration.

The attempted privatization of public education using vouchers and charter schools is doing serious damage to education. Contrary to what our new non-educator leaders claim, Louisiana has had a basically sound system of public education. Our student performance was steadily improving before Jindal. All we needed to do was authorize our school administrators to restore basic discipline and safety to some of our troubled schools and make sure that our school curricula included both strong college prep and excellent career programs.

Instead Jindal and White policies are now putting our school tax dollars into the hands of profiteers and education charlatans.

Basically all the state takeover schools converted to charters have been absolute disasters both in student performance and in fiscal management. The so called Recovery District remains the second lowest performing school district behind St. Helena.

The recent audits of the voucher schools have been a total sham. The State Superintendent pronounced the voucher schools in compliance with state requirements even though almost none of them kept proper books to demonstrate compliance.

Finally and most damaging, Jindal and White have rammed through a terribly inaccurate and unfair teacher evaluation system that is driving our most dedicated educators out of the profession. Our teachers are being forced to do almost nothing but rehearse students for state tests instead of real teaching.

Teachers were not the problem to begin with. It was the poverty in our state and the lack of positive parental involvement compounded by the arrogant polices of a State Department of Education which is now dominated by amateur educators.

Let’s restore sanity to our education system, stop the teacher bashing, and support our professional educators in doing the effective job they desperately want to do for our children!

Sincerely,
Michael Deshotels, retired educator
Zachary, Louisiana, 225-235-1632
email: mikedeshot@aol.com”

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Vouchers
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