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How a Leading Rightwing Group Views the Election

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2012 //
0

The Center for Education Reform in Washington, D.C., is one of the nation’s leading advocates for privatization of public education. Its leader, Jeanne Allen, was an education policy analyst at the rightwing think tank, the Heritage Foundation, before she founded CER in 1993:

The Center for Education Reform has long advocated for charters and vouchers. It has nothing to say about improving public schools, only that they should be replaced by private management or vouchers.

CER is closely allied with other conservative groups committed to privatization, like ALEC, the Heartland Institute, Democrats for Education Reform, and Black Alliance for Educational Options. CER claimed credit for helping to write the Heartland Institute’s version of the parent trigger law, which served as a model for ALEC.

If you want to track the advance of privatization, keep your eye on the Center for Education Reform.

This is CER’s take on the 2012 elections (to see the links, go to the CER website):

The Center for Education Reform Analysis:
How Education Reform Fared on Election Day

WASHINGTON, DC – The Center for Education Reform analyzed Tuesday’s results through the prism of education reform. Our EDlection Roundup provides our analysis on races up and down the ballots, including:

The White House: The Center congratulated President Obama and offered thoughts about how he could refocus education issues in his second term.

Governors: Two states, North Carolina and Indiana, will be inaugurating reform-minded Governors. They join the 23 other states who are also led by reformers. Is yours one of them? See our Governor grades.

Senate Races: We take a look at the results of four Senate races where candidates were strong reformers, and where two – Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) – were victorious.

Ballot Initiatives: There were education reform ballot initiatives in Georgia, Idaho, and Washington. We look at the results, which included a decisive victory in Georgia.

Superintendents: We examine the results of Superintendent races, with a special look at the disappointing defeat of Tony Bennett, a stalwart reformer.

###

CER, since 1993, is the leading voice and advocate for lasting, substantive and structural education reform in the U.S. Additional information about the Center and its activities can be found at http://www.edreform.com.

The Center for Education Reform
(tel) 800-521-2118 • 301-986-8088 • (fax) 301-986-1826
cer@edreform.com • http://www.edreform.com

Categories ALEC, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Charter Schools, ConnCAN, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, Indiana, Parent trigger, Privatization, Vouchers

EduShyster Credits Stephanie Rivera for SFER Expose

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2012 //
9

Earlier, I published a post about Students for Education Reform, linking to a post by EduShyster.

SFER is a junior version of Democrats for Education Reform, the group formed by Wall Street hedge fund managers to promote privatization and high-stakes testing.

EduShyster here says that the credit for investigative reporting goes to Stephanie Rivera, a student at Rutgers, who plans to be a teacher and often engages in dialogue with her peers at SFER and TFA. Her website is called Teacher Under Construction.

EduShyster writes:

Actually all of the credit for “digging” goes to Stephanie Rivera, a student at Rutgers. She posts regular updates about SFER on her blog, Teacher Under Construction, and has done an amazing job of reaching out to SFER members and getting them to talk openly about things that don’t seem quite right about a student group.
SFER has been under the radar so far but that’s only because they haven’t done much.

That will soon change though. Students from SFER’s chapter at Whitworth University in Washington state, a private, virtually all white school, lobbied ardently for the state’s new charter law, including going door to door. I suspect that here in Massachusetts, where the charter lobby will file a bill in the coming months to eliminate the cap on charters in our poorest cities, it will be students from Smith and Harvard who provide the ground troops…

I can’t help but admire the evil genius that came up with this concept. Students across the country, who are utterly sincere in their passion and zeal, are being lined up behind the privatizers’ policy agenda. Ask questions and you’re accused of “attacking students.” Yet the students who make up the bulk of SFER’s membership don’t seem to know anything about their national organization’s funders, its positions or of the implications of those positions.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Students

Why Tony Bennett Lost

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2012 //
7

Conservative commentators–and Tony Bennett himself–blame Bennett’s loss on his support for the Common Core standards. They say that Bennett lost the votes of some Republicans who oppose the standards as federal over-reach. It’s hard to over-state how Bennett’s loss shocked and bewildered conservatives. He was their super-star.

Before that hardens into conventional wisdom, please consider the different view of this Hoosier:

Bennett and his policies were incredibly detrimental to the education of Hoosier children. Hatchet men were placed as trustees of universities – not to support strengthened teacher education program, but to demean and demolish programs that are internationally perceived and practiced as excellent. An all out war was waged to de-professionalize teaching, which would result in putting less-qualified teachers in classrooms, raise class size, and force teachers to teach to tests rather than teach for critical and creative thinking. Why? Follow the money folks. . . who stands to gain financially if PUBLIC schools are declared failures and forced to close? Who is financially invested in charter schools? Who stands to gain if children are taught to accept the authority of someone else’s interpretation of facts rather than learn to question, explore, and discover? Who would rather have a population of followers than thinkers?

That’s why Bennett lost – and why Ritz won. Truth does matter, and news media who served the interests of big bucks and insidious political agendas rather than the interests of an honestly informed populace did themselves in . . . Parents and teachers looked for more reliable sources of information, because parents want the best for their children. They want their children to thrive!.

Unfortunately, it looks as if those who promoted Bennett have not given up the idea that with enough money, lies, and time they can wear the public down and hoodwink Hoosiers into accepting lesser standards for teacher preparation, un-inspired didactic instructional approaches, and curricula that value test statistics above the curiosity, imagination, and deep intellect of our children. I’m hopeful that parents’ love of their children and desire of all Hoosiers to see our children truly thrive will continue to resist Bennett’s political backers in the statehouse and allow Ritz to lead us along a path to true academic growth and freedom for our children.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Indiana, Privatization

The Lowdown on $tudents for Educational Reform

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2012 //
17

EduShyster has done the research and digging on Students for Educational Reform that has thus far eluded mainstream journalists.

(This should not be surprising since few journalists have paid much attention to Democrats for Education Reform, the Wall Street hedge fund managers group, which is able to direct millions of dollars to state and local political elections from a small number of very rich donors. Typically DFER is described in news stories as just another Democratic advocacy group interested in education reform rather than as a small group of billionaires who want to promote privatization of public education.)

EduShyster gives us insight into their $uccess, their board, their ties to the financial elites, and the current focus of their activities (demanding tougher teacher evaluations, a curious preoccupation for university students).

She invites readers to offer a slogan for them. One suggestion she offers: “Pawns of billionaires.”

Maybe you can think of others.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, NYC, Students, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Why Is Pennsylvania Welcoming More Cyber Charters?

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2012 //
11

Despite the miserable results that cyber charters get in study after study, the state has authorized more of them than any other state. It has 12 up and running, four more just approved, and more in line to be approved.

I mistakenly reported in an earlier post that only one cyber charter had ever made “adequate yearly progress,” but I was mistaken. NO cyber charter has ever made AYP in Pennsylvania. It was only because the State Education Commissioner dummies down the scoring that one crossed the bar. When held to the same standards as public schools, no cyber charter meets the NCLB requirement for academic progress.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, K12 Inc., On-Line Education, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Virtual Insanity

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2012 //
19

Florida law requires schools to offer online courses to children in every grade, even as young as kindergarten.

There is no evidence or research to support this mandate.

None.

Wonder if this has anything to do with the political power of Jeb Bush, now the nation’s leading enthusiast for online learning? Wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that his Foundation for Excellence in Education is heavily funded by technology corporations?

Remember how he and his lobbyist facilitated the introduction of virtual schooling into Maine? If you forgot, please read the link. It was a heckuva job.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Privatization, Technology, Computers

Indiana GOP Insists that Votes for Ritz Mean Nothing

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2012 //
4

In an article today, Indiana GOP leaders announced their determination to pursue Tony Bennett’s anti-teacher, pro-privatization agenda even though Bennett lost his bid for re-election.

Bennett’s challenger, Glenda Ritz, collected more votes than Mike Pence, the Republican who won the governor’s seat.

She won despite Bennett’s expenditure of  ten times as much as she had for the campaign.

She won despite the support of national rightwing groups promoting Bennett as the exemplar of school “reform.”

But the GOP thinks the voters didn’t really mean it, or made a mistake, or maybe the voters didn’t know what they were doing.

They hope to ignore the mandate at the polls.

Ritz has a Herculean task moving forward with a Republican governor, a Republican legislature, and laws mandating policies intended to destroy public education.

All she has on her side are the votes of 1.3 million Hoosiers.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Indiana, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Vouchers

Tony Bennett Blames Unions, Common Core

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2012 //
7

In an interview with Education Week, defeated Indiana superintendent blamed his loss on the teachers’ union and on his support for the Common Core standards. He said that his challenger Glenda Ritz drew away some of his conservative base by criticizing the Common Core.

Bennett’s loss stunned supporters in the rightwing reform world.

It looks like Florida is in his future. He is a favorite of Jeb Bush, and Bush is a major player in Florida politics.

He fears that Ritz might find creative ways to strangle his beloved voucher program by regulation.

Remember when education politics was dull? No more.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit, Indiana, Privatization, Vouchers

Privatization Leaders Praise President Obama

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2012 //
4

I received the following news release from the National Alliance for Charter Schools.

They of course were crowing about the passage of the ALEC-inspired initiative in Georgia, where the governor will be free to open charter schools everywhere across the state without consulting any local school board.

I knew Nina Rees when I worked in the George H.W. Bush administration. She is smart and personable and very, very conservative in her education views. She subsequently worked for the Milken brothers, who own K12, the for-profit virtual charter corporation.

Then she worked as Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation in the George W. Bush administration.

She was co-chair of the education policy committee for the Romney campaign, whose agenda was a flat-out privatization program for education.

And now she is praising President Obama for his leadership in the charter movement!

 
From: Nina Rees <Nina@publiccharters.org>
Subject: Public Charter Schools Win Big in Election

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Dear charter school supporter,The 2012 election is an important moment in the public charter schools movement.In two states, voters sent a clear message that they want public school options that are unique partnerships between teachers, parents, and students and that respond to the specific needs of their communities.Voters in Georgia rejected the status quo and created conditions that support the growth of high-quality public charter schools that are accountable for student achievement. Now, charter applicants who are rejected by school districts will have access to a fair appeals process.In Washington state, where votes are still being counted, voters are on the verge of making their state the 42nd with a public charter school law. If the results hold up, families and children in Washington will have the chance to attend schools that are as innovative as the companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing that drive the state’s economy forward.In addition, the re-election of President Obama maintains leadership for charter schools at the national level. In his first term, President Obama created an environment where charter schools could thrive through the incentives in Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, Promise Neighborhoods, and other reform programs. Over the past three years, almost half of states have revised their charter school laws to support growth and quality. Over the past four years, enrollment in public charter schools has risen by almost 1 million students. Today, more than 2 million students attend these unique public schools that serve the needs of students and their parents.

With the support of voters in Georgia, Washington and other states, and with the leadership from elected officials in state houses and Washington, D.C., the best days are ahead for the public charter school community.

Regards,

Nina Rees
President & CEO

© Copyright 2006 – 2012, The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
1101 Fifteenth Street, NW, Suite 1010. Washington, DC 20005.
(202) 289-2700
Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Obama, Privatization, Romney, Mitt

Bill Ayers Writes a Letter to the President

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2012 //
11

I won’t go into the baggage associated with Bill Ayers. During the campaign of 2008, his name came up again and again and was hurled as an accusation against candidate Barack Obama.

I recall Sarah Palin saying that Obama was guilty of “palling around with terrorists,” or words to that effect.

I did not approve of or condone what he did in the 1960s.

Bill Ayers is not the same person he was forty years ago. Today, he is a respected education thinker. But then, none of us is the same person we were 40 or 20 or even 10 years ago.

People grow and change. If they are willing, they learn.

Ayers has written a letter to President Obama that expresses the views of many educators today.

He calls on the President to rethink his policies.

He reminds him of the great advantages that the University of Chicago Lab School offered to the Obama children, the Ayers children, the Duncan children, and the Rahm Emanuel children even now.

Isn’t this what we should want for all children?

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Obama, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, Unions, US Education, Vouchers
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