Archives for category: For-Profit
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Who Gets Walton Foundation $$$$$$$$$$$?

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2013 //
9

It is useful every so often to review the list of organizations that are funded by the ultra-rightwing Walton Foundation. This past year, the foundation gave out $158 million for “education reform.” As you will see, almost all of that money went to support charter schools and vouchers and organizations that advocate for privatization.

Of course, this is the foundation’s list of grants, and it does not include the millions of dollars that the members of the Walton family have poured into privatization campaigns and elections in Georgia, Washington State, and elsewhere.

Categories Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Privatization, Stand for Children, StudentsFirst, Teach for America TFA, U.S. education, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Does Effectiveness Matter? Or Profit?

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2013 //
3

A reader in New Mexico shares this information.

If the state commission does a study of effectiveness, the virtual charter schools will never win approval.

Here is the comment:

I thought this might be of interest to you. I live in New Mexico and recently our Public Education Commission denied the charter application for a new charter that will contract with Connections Academy.

Our Secretary of Education Designate Hanna Skandera (she has held the position for nearly 3 years, but has not gained senate approval because she doesn’t actually meet the criteria set forth by the constitution) overruled that. It looks very much like she did that because of her connections with Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education which receives donations from Connections Academy.

Today, I learned that the Commission will appeal her approval and would like to stop any new virtual charters from opening until a study can be made on their effectiveness. State lawmakers are also looking into the legality of using state public education funds to pay for virtual charter schools run by out-of-state private companies.

More information can be found here http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2013/02/01/news/skandera-oks-virtual-school.html
and here:
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/02272013PEC#.US5gzjBNKSp

Categories Charter Schools, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Privatization

Indiana: Here Comes Carpe Diem, Like It or Not

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2013 //
4

Karen Francisco,  one of our nation’s best education writers, cares about the future of public education. Writing for the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, she has closely watched the games that privatizers play.

In this article, she describes a startling decision by a state board to authorize Carpe Diem, an unproven charter school, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

As it happens, Fort Wayne has excellent community public schools. I visited some of them when I was there a year ago.

But Indiana is a red, red state and the legislature and governor are determined to introduce charters and vouchers wherever possible to undermine public schools.

So here is what happened:

That sound you heard Wednesday? That was the sound of the Indiana Charter School Board rubber-stamping a real estate deal to benefit a politically connected Fort Wayne business owner.

How else to explain a 5-1 vote to “replicate” an unproven school that has drawn few students in Indianapolis and met strong resistance from the Fort Wayne community during a public hearing held just 7 business days after local school officials and were notified? The application was approved less than 24 hours after the hearing.

Daryle Doden’s Ambassador Enterprises has been looking to draw a charter school tenant to The Summit, its education center at the former Taylor University campus, for more than a year. Another charter school applicant, Sun Academy, proposed leasing space there in a charter school application last year, but withdrew its bid. (Sun Academy has submitted a letter of intent to offer another application this spring, along with Global Village International Inc., so as many as three new charter schools could be opening in Fort Wayne next fall.)

Doden is the father of Eric Doden, a former GOP candidate for mayor and Gov. Mike Pence’s newly appointed director for statewide economic development. Daryle Doden and his wife contributed $15,500 to Pence’s campaign. Daryle Doden’s company will be paid $1,000 per student up to 550 students, plus “associated property costs”, for providing space for Carpe Diem charter school.

The school hasn’t been successful to date in Indianapolis: It attracted only 87 students and has no test scores yet, but the powers-that-be decided it has to be located in Fort Wayne, despite community opposition. The community understands the score: The property owner is in “the unique position of serving not only as landlord, but also in marketing the school. The more students it draws, the more it collects in rent, given the $1,000 per-head fee.” And every one of those dollars will be subtracted from an existing public school.

And what is Carpe Diem? It relies heavily on online instruction.

As it sucks dollars out of public schools, the loss of those dollars “reduces the ability of the existing schools to offer comprehensive programs – well-stocked libraries, guidance counselors, science labs, drama and music, sports programs and more. Carpe Diem’s computer instruction model includes none of those features. The Indianapolis school has only five teachers for grades 6-10. Its Arizona school at one time had one math teacher for 240 students in grades 6-12.”

This is reform?

There is an expression in Yiddish: What a shonda.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Indiana, Privatization

Pearson: 2012 Was a Terrific Year

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2013 //
11

Coach Bob Sikes has been reading Pearson’s report to investors. 2012 was a really good year.

No mention of Pineapplegate:

” The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), a consortium of 23 states, awarded Pearson and Educational Testing Service (ETS) the contract to develop test items that will be part of the new English and mathematics assessments to be administered from the 2014-2015 school year. The assessments will be based on what students need to be ready for college and careers, and will measure and track their progress along the way.

” We continued to produce strong growth in secure online testing, an important market for the future. We increased online testing volumes by more than 10%, delivering 6.5 million state accountability tests, 4.5 million constructed response items and 21 million spoken tests. We now assess oral proficiency in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Arabic and Chinese. We also launched the Online Assessment Readiness Tool for the PARCC and the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Common Core consortia to help 45 states prepare for the transition to online assessments.

” We won new state contracts in Colorado and Missouri and a new contract with the College Board to deliver ReadiStep, a middle school assessment that measures and tracks college readiness skills. We extended our contract with the College Board to deliver the ACCUPLACER assessment, a computer-adaptive diagnostic, placement and online intervention system that supports 1,300 institutions and 7 million students annually.

” We won five Race To The Top (RTTT) state deals (Kentucky, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina and New York) led by Schoolnet. PowerSchool won three state/province-level contracts (North Carolina, New Brunswick and Northwest Territories). We launched our mobile PowerSchool applications and grew our 3rd party partner ecosystem to over 50 partners. PowerSchool supports more than 12 million students, up more than 20% on 2011 while Schoolnet supports 8.3 million students, up almost 160% on 2011″

Categories Common Core, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Pearson, Race to the Top

Turning Water into Wine: The Florida Faux Miracle

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2013 //
3

Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas is one of our greatest debunkers of educational miracles. And what good timing, because Jeb Bush was in town to tout the Florida miracle, where (he says) test scores went up as costs went down. It’s all a matter of more testing, more accountability, vouchers, charters, and lots of new technology (to replace teachers).

Seems kind of strange to come to Texas to sell the virtues of testing, at a time when Texans have grown sick of testing.

Yes, Florida’s fourth grade students got higher test scores, but the longer they stay in school in Florida, the worse their performance. Sounds amazingly like No Child Left Behind, and we know how that worked.

So please, if Jeb is coming to your state to sell the miracle. Or if someone else is urging your state to copy the Florida model, read Vasquez Heilig first.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit, Testing, Texas

A Teacher Writes New Book about the Corporate Reform Movement

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2013 //
10

One of the readers of this blog, experienced teacher Brian Ford, has written a new book. It seems to encapsulate the major themes of today’s privatization movement.

Respect for Teachers and the Rhetoric Gap:
How Research on Teaching and Schools is
Laying the Ground for New Business Models in Education

(A New Economy Story about the State of the Union)

Author: Brian Ford
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Summary of Book

For the last 30 years we have been in the midst of a paradox. In the discourse on education reform, national attention in the US has focused on how to improve the education system as a means to keep the US from slipping in international economic competition. It the end we may have actually done the opposite – made the US less competitive economically, with a system that has gotten worse at its core, in its philosophical tenets and in its ultimate effect on children and young adults, by placing unwonted pressure on them and in stifling their creativity.

Still, claims that the public schools in the US are failing are rampant. The teacher evaluation system is broken. America is being out-educated. The bottom rank of teachers are beyond redemption. New, effective teachers can eliminate the achievement gap in four years, but they aren’t given the chance because our education system is in the thrall of teachers unions, ignores our children and emphasizes ‘adult interests.’ ‘Respect for Teachers,’ which takes its title from a phrase President Obama used in a State of the Union address, examines these claims, looking first at the rhetoric and the research that supposedly backs it up. It argues that most of this is not only wrong, but endangers both the egalitarian basis of democracy and broad-based forms of learning which promote creative and critical thinking.

But what is the source? Money changes everything and the book suggests, on the one hand, that we are all connected to money. On the other hand, research on education has been systematically misreported, presenting a bleaker picture overall while ignoring the central problem: our schools are failing in areas of concentrated poverty. It does so by looking at how research is presented, the gap between rhetoric and research and how one hand might be washing the other.

Working as if from a common script, private interests present a false picture. Schooling is big business, after all — two trillion dollars world-wide. Joseph Schumpeter once said, “No bourgeoisie ever disliked war profits.” One would assume no bourgeoisie ever disliked the spoils of school reform, either.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Divest Now from Testing Companies!

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2013 //
12

This just in from a reader:

Diane,

I wrote to you about this before, but this time I have the relevant contact info:

http://equalpayforequalwork.blogspot.com/2013/02/tell-teachers-retirement-fund-to-divest.html

As the teachers rebellion against standardized testing grows, it’s time to flex our real muscle: tell the teachers’ retirement system to take our money OUT of standardized testing companies.

The retirement fund just recently set a precedent by divesting from gun companies, but corporate backed education reform is threatening the very existence of public education by buying politicians and policies that benefit Wall Street at the expense of our kids.

We need to make sure they aren’t using our money to kill our jobs and our schools. I’m providing contact information for California, but if you post other states in the comments, I’ll be glad to add that to the post itself in updates.

In California, you can contact CALSTRS, our retirement system at http://www.calstrs.com/contact…

800-228-5453 • 916-414-5040 (Fax)
P. O. Box 15275
Sacramento, CA 95851-0275

Feel free to use or modify this brief message:

As a member of CalSTRS, I ask that since you have divested from companies whose guns kill students and teachers, you also divest from the corporations pushing education “reform” that are killing public education so they can cannibalize the corpse.

Start with those pushing endless repetitive high stakes testing, like Pearson, ETS, and McGraw Hill.
As an educator, I do not want to invest in businesses that corrupt our public education policy for the financial gain of a few.

I look forward to hearing your plan of action on this.

You can also tell your union to demand that CalSTRS divest from corporate education reform companies, starting with testing companies. Just change the first line of the message to add:

As a member of CFT (or CTA) I ask that since CalSTRS has divested from companies whose guns kill students and teachers, I ask that you direct CalSTRS to also divest from the corporations pushing education “reform” that are killing public education so they can cannibalize the corpse.
Start with those pushing endless repetitive high stakes testing, like Pearson, ETS, and McGraw Hill.
As an educator, I do not want to invest in businesses that corrupt our public education policy for the financial gain of a few.

I look forward to hearing your plan of action on this.

In the AFT, you can contact the president of the K-12 council,
Gary Ravani
K-12 Council President
cfteck12@aol.com
Administrative Office
California Federation of Teachers
2550 North Hollywood Way, Suite 400
Burbank, CA 91505
818-843-8226, Fax 818-843-4662If you are in CFT but not a K-12 teacher, contact:
Joshua Pechthalt, President
jpechthalt@cft.org

In the CTA:
President Dean Vogel
E-mail: dvogel@cta.org
P.O. Box 921
1705 Murchison Drive
Burlingame, CA 94011-0921
Phone: (650) 552-5307
FAX: (650) 552-5007

Check back later for a proposal on what we could do WITHOUT testing companies that would also save states a lot of money.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Testing

Duncan Press Secretary Working for Rupert Murdoch

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2013 //
66

Justin Hamilton, who recently stepped down as Arne Duncan’s press secretary, has accepted an executive position at Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify. This division, headed by Joel Klein, sells technology to the schools.

This is funny, because last May I had a Twitter debate with Justin about the role of entrepreneurs in education. I didn’t see much good coming from injecting the profit motive into schooling, and Justin disagreed. He landed in the right place for him.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit

Louisiana Shocker: Ties Between White, Murdoch, Gates

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2013 //
11

In response to litigation, the Louisiana Department of Education released a trove of emails that shows a department obsessed with public relations while flailing about to impose new rules nd programs.

Worst of all is the deal that John White made to share confidential student data (including names and addresses, test scores and grades and other information) to an organization jointly created by the Gates Foundation and Rupert Murdoch’s organization Wireless Generation.

The story says:

“Copies of emails released to LouisianaVoice by the Department of Education (DOE) under threat of litigation reveal an agency over which there is little or no oversight, where escalating costs of expensive programs appear to be of no concern to administrators and a department that appears to be flailing about in search of some direction. The electronic communications also unveil a cozy relationship between DOE, Rupert Murdoch and his company, News Corp., which apparently will be provided personal information on Louisiana public school students for use by a company affiliated with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. News Corp. is the parent company of Fox News Network. In 2011, News Corp. was implicated in a major phone hacking scandal in which private telephone records were compromised.”

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

The Corporate Takeover of Indianapolis Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2013 //
12

A reader sent the following information about the planned destruction of public education in Indianapolis:

Unfortunately the Neighborhoods of Educational Opportunity/Indianapolis Mayor’s Office plan (NEO) presentation which has been made public is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a well documented, more detailed plan that select groups (The Mind Trust, Stand for Children, Teach for America, The New Teacher Project) are meeting about in private and making plans while they await the possible receipt of a Bloomberg grant of $5 mil to get this plan off the ground in Indianapolis.
This plan will not be publicly unveiled in Indianapolis until it is a done deal.

Certain members of the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners were strategically placed there by the powers that be to weaken Indianapolis Public Schools and prime it for takeover.
Also, watch legislation in Indiana. The Mayor’s office is slowly taking powers away from other branches of government. For example, they now have oversight of four former IPS schools taken over under Tony Bennett’s watch.

There is legislation pending that would allow those schools to become “independent” schools at the end of the takeover period.

We now have a parent trigger law.

There is also legislation which would remove the involvement/oversight of the city county council in approving new Charter schools.

Another bill takes a funding source from public schools (proceeds from auctioned properties due to non-payment of taxes) and gives it to Mayor-sponsored charter schools.

Other legislation forces the sale or lease of closed public schools to Charter schools and other private entities.

All of this collusion is no accident. If you happen to believe it is a bunch of coincidental things, non-related, happening all at the same time, then I feel sorry for you.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Indiana, Privatization
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