There is still time to register for the big conference that will show you how to make big profits from the tax dollars supposed to be spent on children and teachers.
Hey, those teachers are making out like bandits, with some of them hauling in $40,000 a year, even as much as $75,000 a year, and all they do is teach 35-40 kids at a time.
Why shouldn’t you learn the secrets to extracting millions from the system by clever investing?
To the investor goes the spoils.
Paul Horton, a history teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School, wrote the following open letter to President Obama:
July 12, 2013
Dear Mr. President,
I am very concerned about how you decided to go the way that you did with your Education policies. I was recently told by a close friend of the yours that “Arne’s Team looked at all of the options” and decided to go with its current policies because they would get us where we needed to go more quickly than any other set of alternatives.” I was also told, “that not everybody could be in the room.”
The problem was that you did not listen to experience. The blueprint for Arne’s plan for stimulus investment that morphed into the Race to the Top Mandates featured advisers from the Gates and Broad Foundations, analysts from McKinsey consulting, and a couple of dozen superintendents who were connected, like Mr. Duncan, to the Broad Foundation. Most of those who were invited to advise you were committed supporters of heavy private investment in Education who favored high stakes testing tied to teacher evaluations. Most of these advisers also favored the scaling up of measurable data collection as a way to measure progress or lack of progress in American Education.
If you had listened to the leading experts on standardized testing and the achievement gap, you would have learned that your policies were and are bound to fail. Our former colleague here at the U of C, Professor Coleman, was the first to establish this empirically. You should also learn about Campbell’s Law.
On a more personal level, Mr. President, you consulted many of your contacts in Democrats for Education Reform, an organization funded mostly by Democratic leaning Wall Street investment firms. And you were also very impressed by the ideas and passion of a Denver charter school principal and Democratic activist, Michael Johnston.
Michael Johnston has good potential as a politician, but he is not a qualified adviser to the President on Education matters. His record in Education is manufactured to look good. Over forty percent of his miracle Denver charter school class that graduated 100% dropped out before their senior year. This is an advantage that most charter schools have over public schools. Teach For America, where Johnston cut his teeth, typically has a very narrow and skewed view of American Education. State senator Johnston’s efforts on behalf of immigrants and redistribution of education funding are admirable. But many of us have been fighting this battle for decades. Johnston has had every advantage, and he his heart is certainly in the right place..
Many thousands of us have been fighting this battle for thirty and forty years and we remain relatively poor, isolated from the centers of power where big bucks are easy to acquire. Many of us have devoted our entire lives to helping minority students, yet we are treated very badly by this administration.
Thousands of teachers possess the experience, training, and commitment to advise you on Education matters. But you choose to listen to those who went to places like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford who have two years of classroom experience. Commitment, I submit, is a very important word.
The true measure of one’s commitment to Education is one’s willingness to sacrifice one’s will to power and economic potential to be successful in the classroom. TFA kids who go back to grad school after two years in the classroom and buy into corporate education reform are embracing their will to power. Most of these kids tend to have every advantage to begin with, they get an Ivy League education, and they are ambitious young liberals. Rather than staying in the classroom and truly making a difference by developing their teaching skills over twenty or thirty years, can achieve administrative positions in the charter world that have far more economic potential than teaching positions by buying into the mantra of data-driven corporate reform lingo.
You have left thousands of us behind and allowed inexperience access to take charge. You and your administration have encouraged a “Cultural Revolution” in American education. You promoted your basketball buddy and very close friend of your campaign finance manager to be Secretary of Education. From where I stand, Karen Duncan would have been a much better choice for Education Secretary because she has much more experience working with kids in a school setting than her husband. She knows what makes a great teacher from personal experience as an exemplary teacher. She is also much smarter and much funnier than her husband.
Your policies represent a new elitism. You seem to think that: “if we can get these really smart Ivy League educated former TFA people in senior policy, superintendent, and administrative positions, then we can turn this whole thing around.”
This idea is arrogant beyond belief, the equivalent of the “best and the brightest” idea that drove us into the ground in Vietnam, only you have decided to do it in Education. Robert McNamara was brilliant, he had an analytical razor, but he lacked a moral compass and anything resembling empathy for the lives of those who were dying in a “winnable” war. Mr. Duncan has a great deal of empathy, but he his policies are misguided. Indeed, in my humble opinion, his department’s policies are an inarticulate mess. If he were ever asked the right questions under oath in senator Harkin’s committee, we could very well discover that his use of the authority of his office overstepped the legal parameters of the laws circumscribing federal involvement in the formulation of Education policy. Ms. Weiss and Mr. Sheldon III, two of Secretary Duncan’s advisors who worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation prior to serving under Secretary Duncan, articulated what Mr. Gates wanted on his terms in exchange for tacit support for your campaigns. Several Wall Street investing firms also made it clear to you and to Mr. Emanuel that they were willing to support you if your Education policies encouraged private investment in charter schools.
You have bought into a corporate model of Education Reform: you seek to create competition among public and private schools, you encourage the “creative destruction” that your University of Chicago Business School buddies and Judge Posner love, and you seem to be gung-ho about selling off the public commons of American Education that were built with the sweat and blood of American farmers and workers. Do your policies work for young people who need stability in their lives? Creative destruction might benefit some kids (I was a military brat), but it probably does not benefit most.
Your Education policies embrace the management tactics of McKinsey Consulting that call for the firing of twenty to twenty-five percent of the teacher workforce every two years. You have said that Education should not “all be about bubble tests,” but your policies measure progress by bubble tests and they narrow the curriculum when they require standardized testing in some subjects, but not in others.
You campaigned on doing something about income inequality, but you and many of the mayors that you support are actively working to destroy what is left of the American middle class. Your Education policies work actively to destroy teacher unions. Many of your mayors and governors are working to bust teacher, hospital, public employee, firemen’s, and police unions.
What has happened to the Democratic Party when a foundational element of your education policy is to frequently vilify hundreds of thousands of effective and excellent teachers who have committed their lives to the classroom? You listen to people who are very smart and they seem to know it all. They are very polished presenters of themselves. Your policies favor this new class of ambitious young people who lack the commitment to kids to make a real difference where it is needed—in the classroom.
The question that all of you need to take a closer look at is how do we get and keep candidates who would be brilliant in any career into the classroom?
How do you increase the size of the quality teaching pool? The answers are there, and they don’t have anything to do with charter schools.
If Mr. Gates were really serious about Education in this country, he could invest in creating a system like Finland’s. The problem is that he is more interested in selling product than investing in four well qualified and well trained teachers in every classroom.
Progress in Education is not about buildings, it is not about technology: It is about human investment, not the expansion of markets.
President Obama, I have great respect for you. I have taught many of the young people who work for you. Ask your chef what a hard ass teacher I was. Please find the time to talk to committed teachers who have given their entire professional careers to improving Education in this country. This would require you to step outside of your comfort zone inside of Democrats for Education Reform and Teach for America circles. It will also require you to look beyond the mess that Ms. Weiss, Mr. Sheldon III, and Bill Gates have helped to create. It will require you to talk to Karen Duncan about teaching and schools rather than to Arne Duncan.
Please encourage senator Durbin and his committee to completely defund No Child Left Behind. Do you prefer to fund Pearson Education or allow thousands of teachers to be laid off? This is what it is coming down to. Will you allow the middle class to be further eroded? Or will you fight for the jobs of teachers? Will you reward Wall Street investors in Education and Bill Gates, or are you willing to fight for neighborhood schools and arts and humanities programs? Will you use Value Added Measures tied to standardized testing to further discredit teachers? Or will you begin to understand how complex real learning is, learning that can not be measured by “bubble tests.” These are your choices, Mr. President. Please look beyond your current Education advisors if you want to explore complex questions and solutions.
I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these and other issues with you.
All best,
Paul Horton
History Instructor
University High School
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools
Diane’s correction:
A reader in Colorado sent the following correction to the above:
“Michael Johnston worked for a public school in CO: MESA Mapleton expeditionary school of the arts. Not a charter. Gary Rubinstein points out that Johnston s claim to fame–100% grads accepted to 4 year college —is a bit disingenuous. 77 10th graders morphed to 44 grads.”
One of the few remaining Edison charter schools went broke, leaving teachers without a pay check. No one knows if the teachers will ever be paid. Most of Edison’s business now is online, not direct management of schools.
Derrick Thomas Academy charter school in Kansas City, which opened in 2002 with great promise, lost its charter and left behind a massive financial mess, with Edison demanding payment by the state, and financial backers crying about their losses.
According to the local story:
“The money that might have covered teacher salaries is tied up in court over a dispute among the school, the company contracted to manage it and the company that issued bonds for the school’s launch.
“The University of Missouri-Kansas City, which had sponsored the charter school at 201 E. Armour Blvd. since it opened in 2001, has no financial responsibility for the school or its debt. The academy announced last fall it would close after UMKC refused to renew its charter, citing poor management and low test scores. The school has since been overseen by an interim board.
“The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has been named in legal action to garnish more than $2.2 million that the management company, EdisonLearning Inc., says it is owed.
“Derrick Thomas Academy, now locked up behind a heavy black gate, also owes a substantial amount of money to the bondholder for the school, Lord Abbett.
“Jim Sansevero, spokesman for Lord Abbett, said the school has defaulted on bond payments and “$10 million is at risk.” The school used its building to secure the bonds.”
Is this disaster likely to dim the enthusiasm of charter advocates? Will they say that 11years was not a fair trial? What do you think?
Blogger Crooks & Liars asks why Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst is a nonprofit.
He writes: “If ever there was an organization that stands out as one that should never have been granted nonprofit status and doesn’t deserve to continue having it, it’s StudentsFirst. One look at their 2011 tax disclosures reveals a fat, political, ideological organization. StudentsFirst not only crosses the line, they stomp on it and erase it for their own benefit.”
Nonprofits are allowed to do some advocacy, but as I understand the tax law (let me be the first to say that only tax lawyers understand the tax law and even they sometimes need help figuring it out), nonprofits are not supposed to lobby directly for legislation. Or, maybe do it just a little bit. Or maybe pretend they are advocating but not lobbying.
The tax laws and tax code make no sense. if you view the universe of nonprofits actively lobbying for vouchers, charters, tax breaks, or seeking appropriations and earmarks for entrepreneurs, it makes no sense that they are classified as nonprofits. Some nonprofits lobby on behalf of for-profit corporations, which make handsome donations to the nonprofits.
In some quarters, what is called “reform” is driven by big money, not what is best for students. Yes, Virginia, there is an education industry, and it is like any other industry: it wants a return on its investments.
A reader who goes by the name “Democracy” reminds us of the much-hyped report by a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, whose co-chairs were Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice. It blamed the public schools for endangering national security and for the nation’s economic problems. I reviewed it here.
This is “Democracy’s” comment:
“Aah, Joel Klein.
Klein was a recent co-author – with Condaleezza Rice – of a Council on Foreign Relations education “report” that consisted mostly of tripe. But what can one reasonably expect from the likes of Klein and Rice?
Joel Klein perpetrates and perpetuates the myth that public education is in “crisis,” and without serious “reform” “the U.S. economy will continue to suffer.”
The “reform” pushed by Klein (and the Council report) is to impose the “business model” on public schools. This is the same “model” that led to big budget deficits, a ballooned national debt and a broken economy. Rather than take responsibility for what they did, the big bankers and hedge funders and politicians who brokered it all point the finger of blame at public schools and teachers.
Klein advocates more testing, merit pay through “value-added” evaluations, more charter schools and vouchers as “innovative” reforms. There is little or no research to support any of them.
Klein blames the current economic quagmire on public education. He writes that we used to “have a successful middle class,” but “that’s changed markedly since 1980.” Klein says “we’re rapidly moving toward two America’s –– a wealthy elite and an increasingly large underclass that lacks the skills to succeed.” His answer to the problem? The market, since “markets impose accountability.” A person would have to be moronic to make – or believe – such a claim.
Klein never makes any mention whatsoever, as he blames schools and teachers, of the supply-side economic policies pushed by conservative presidents, politicians and businessmen that are directly responsible for big budget deficits, millions of job losses, the most severe income stratification in the developed world, and our unsustainable national debt. He calls for “radical reform” of public education (more tests, merit pay, vouchers, etc), but says not one word about reforming the banking, derivatives trading and skewed tax system – coupled with regulatory enforcement –– that are sorely needed.
Condaleezza Rice was George W. Bush’s national security director before 9/11 occurred and during the launching of the war in Iraq, which she favored and supported. Rice helped to sell the American public the big lie of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, warning infamously that “ we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Journalists who covered her reported that she “made public claims that she knew to be false.”
There’s little doubt but that Rice (and her colleagues) ignored repeated warnings about imminent terrorist threats. After 9/11, she said (repeatedly) that no one could have predicted that planes might be used as weapons, despite the fact that there were at least a dozen documented warnings of it.
Initially, until public pressure forced the Bush administration to relent, Rice refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission. When she did, it wasn’t pretty. She wiggles and squirms, and tries to obfuscate and evade answering questions about the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) of August 6, 2001. That PDB was titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” and warned that Bin Ladin was “determined…to conduct terrorist attacks in the US,” that he “prepares years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.” The memo noted “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks,” and it warned that a group of “Bin Ladin’s supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.”
Now just imagine that the physical and human dimensions of the Twin Towers and Pentagon and planes were converted into schools and schoolchildren. Would anyone seriously think that there had not been ample warning of an impending disaster? Would anyone think that any of those involved in ignoring the threat should NOT be held accountable? What Rice said in private testimony to the 9/11 Commission has not been declassified (it should be…there are likely some real “whoppers” in there). What she said in public testimony can be seen below. It isn’t pretty.
The Aug. 6, 2001 PDB is here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/index.htm
Question: Why hasn’t Condaleezza Rice been held accountable for her negligence and malfeasance in office, and for her repeated lies?
Question: Why does anyone believe a single word that comes out of Joel Klein’s mouth?
Responding to another reader, Robert Shepherd challenges the claim that reformers want a free market in schooling:
“We are NOT seeing the emergence of free market alternatives to public schools. We are seeing is crony capitalist alternatives dependent upon federal and state regulation and the public dole that could not possibly survive in truly free markets. It doesn’t matter whether it originates on the right or the left or what rhetoric it uses, tyranny is tyranny. It’s a NewSpeak version of the language of classical liberalism that is being used to defend what is actually happening. It’s incredibly naive to buy into the rhetoric in the face of the realities. Let’s see: Pass a federal law that ensures that almost all public schools will fail. Require states to provide alternatives. Have the Secretary of Education, now a private citizen, found an online virtual school to provide those alternatives, one that depends upon the same taxpayer dollars but siphons off a lot of those into private profits. There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and this has been one of them. The others have much the same general form.
“If that’s what you think of as the creation of free market alternatives, then you have started mainlining the Soma.”
In an earlier post, Karen Francisco (editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette) lamented that failing charters escape accountability by turning into voucher schools or shopping for an authorizer with low standards. When challenged by a reader, Francisco explained what happened in Fort Wayne.
She wrote:
“In fact, the two failed Imagine Inc. charter schools in Fort Wayne are being converted to voucher schools. The local charter board has been dismissed, loans forgiven and Indiana taxpayers will continue to pay Bakke’s company to operate two underperforming schools. In addition, an out-of-state real estate investment trust — EPT Properties — will continue to collect about $1 million a year for the charter school lease. Instead of through the charter board, the tax dollars now will be funneled through low- and middle-income families to a religious organization and, in turn, to the REIT.”
Karen Francisco, editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, writes that she is often asked to explain what a charter school is. She used to say that it was a publicly- funded school that is exempt from many state regulations in exchange for higher accountability.
But now she sees failing charter schools turn into voucher schools or go shopping for an authorizer with low or no standards.
She writes:
“If I’m feeling less charitable, I explain that charter schools are an effort to weaken and destroy teacher unions. Charter operators hire primarily young, inexperienced teachers; work them to death and then decline to renew their contracts when they should be giving them raises.”
But when she read about the bond investors’ conference this week, she realized that the driving force behind charters is not accountability, it’s not just union-busting, it’s profit.
This is a stunning research job by Jersey Jazzman about the money tree that is turning canny businessmen into multimillionaires by investing in charter schools.
They package financing from the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. Department of Education, the Walton Family Foundation, and they spin it into gold–for themselves.
The family charter group he describes controls over $100 million in real estate. They have gotten very, very rich.
Here is his conclusion. Please read the whole post. It is jaw-dropping.
“…while we can debate the relative merits of charter schools, one thing is quite certain: any notion that the charter industry is “all about the kids” needs to be dismissed, because there are adults who are clearly making a lot of money off of charter expansion. And it’s not just people like the Zuluetas: Bruno himself, according to Building Hope’s 2011 tax return, earned $388,709 in compensation and another $56,865 in benefits for a year’s work. In contrast, the average Florida teacher salary is $45,723.”
These are the same people who claim that teachers don’t put children first. What do they put first? It is not the children.
– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/07/make-big-money-building-charter-schools.html#sthash.9D3ptFh6.dpuf
It is not news to readers of this blog that public education is under attack in cities across the nation by a politically powerful and heavily funded privatization movement. In some states, this movement has moved into the suburbs as well.
This video pulls away the mask of reform and explains in clear detail the nexus of connections behind the privatization movement in Minneapolis. This district was once the largest in the state. Due to the proliferation of privately managed charters, it is now the third largest in Minnesota.
The video has no production values. It is a simple narration of a complex graphic that displays the web of relationships among powerful foundations, one very powerful family, national organizations, and corporate interests.
All the big players have converged on Minneapolis: 50CAN, DFER, TFA, and many more, abetted by one powerful local family that owned the city’s biggest newspaper, sold it, and now owns the online newspaper Minnpost.
Charters in Minneapolis are more segregated than the public schools and get lower scores.
These inconvenient facts do not slow the advance of the privatization movement. They present themselves as idealists, and some are fooled by the rhetoric about “saving minority children from failing schools” and “closing the achievement gap.” They are flush with cash and federal tax credits, and fueled by ambition, a love of power, media adulation, and–for some–tidy profits.
Left to their own devices, they will restore a dual school system, both publicly funded, one free to kick out students, the other a dumping ground for the kids unwanted by the charters.
Left to their own devices, they will destroy public education in America.
