Archives for category: For-Profit
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Murdoch’s Bold Move into Education Market

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2012 //
24

Make no mistake. The privatization movement is in full cry.

There are big profits to be made in the education industry.

Rupert Murdoch’s corporation just split into two divisions, with one focused on education and publishing, headed by Joel Klein.

Says the story: Mr. Klein said being a part of the spunoff publishing company (which would include the troubled British tabloid The Sun) could help ease concerns among educators.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want any data about my grandchildren in Murdoch’s data base.

According to the story linked above, Rupert Murdoch tweeted: “Only way to restore American dream and have real meritocracy is fix terrible public K-12 education.”

And of course, Murdoch and Klein know how to fix it.

Trust them.

I wish someone would tell them that NAEP scores are at their highest point in history, in reading and in math, for grades four and eight, for whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

But they wouldn’t listen.

They have a business to run.

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

Florida’s Grading System Has a Purpose

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
0

Florida has perfected a useless system of grading schools.Matthew DiCarlo of the Shanker Institute analyzed the school grades from Florida and found that they reflect poverty and income levels, not school quality. If the school enrolls large numbers of poor kids, it stands a high chance of getting a D or an F from the state. If it enrolls middle-class or affluent kids, they get good grades. Nice way to grade schools!

Coach Bob Sikes points out that the charter corporations now colonizing the state of Florida need the school grades so that they can pick up more business. Given the nature of the grading system, there will always be ripe plums that fall their way, along with public dollars. Jeb Bush has promised to revive the failed Parent Trigger law, as that is yet another tool to generate business for the charter chains.

The most important purpose of the grading system, however, is to inculcate the consumer mentality in legislators, parents, civic leaders, and the public. If you don’t like your school’s grade, go shopping for another!

With public disgust running high against the testing regime, Coach Sikes wonders, will the state legislature be ready to fight the parents of Florida again to push for Jeb Bush’s privatization agenda?

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Poverty, Privatization

Public Education Is Not a Business

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
29

I have posted a number of comments on the subject of whether, when and how schools are like businesses. This reader says that public education is not a business.

Of course, it is important to understand that the purpose of the accountability measures and the choice policies is to get us all in the habit of thinking we are shoppers, consumers of education services that compete for our children and our dollars.

Parents are supposed to take the school letter grades and go shopping. They are supposed to teach the teacher evaluations and ask for a different teacher. This is supposed to reform schools and make kids smarter somehow. But the real purpose is to get us to view our public services and public goods with a consumer mentality. You can begin to see how nutty this is. Can we shop for a different police department? Can we shop to change our public parks and beaches? No, but we can turn over their management to private vendors. You see, when you start thinking like a consumer, then you forget the distinction between a public service and a business venture.

If they get enough of us to think like this, then we will acquiesce as they privatize everything so we can shop for everything. Or have the illusion of shopping, the illusion of consumer choice. Kind of like when you go to the grocery story and see fifty different cereals and then discover they were all made by the same company.

The problem with this comment is that it is incorrect about the definition of a business. In the second line of the first paragraph, the commenter states:“Schools are a business — they have employees, labor costs, capital costs, and budgets.”Having employees, labor costs, capital costs, and budgets is not the definition of a business. A well-to-do household could have all those things, and nobody would claim it’s a business. Many charities have those things, and they are not businesses. And of course, governments have those things, and they are not businesses.

The real definition of a business can be found in the last line of the first paragraph, although the commenter just casts it aside:

“The critical difference between schools and what we commonly think of as a business — Verizon or Citibank — is that the ultimate purpose of the schools is to provide the service (educate the children) while, for the conventional service business such as Verizon or Citibank, the provision of the service is simply a means to the ultimate purpose of making a profit for the business’ owners.”

Yes, businesses’ ultimate purpose is to make a profit for the business owners. That’s what makes a business a business. It’s the one integral, universal trait of all businesses. That is the definition of a business: It makes a profit for the business owners. That’s it.

Public Education does not meet the one actual requirement of what a business is.

To say it has a few things in common so it must be the same is just wrong. And to work from that premise leads to more poor logic, misguided decisions, and poor outcomes.

Public Eduction is not a business.
Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

How the Attack on Public Education Is Like the Tobacco Industry

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
4

A reader read this post about FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), a strategy intended to undermine and discredit the competition. And Bingo! The light went on. It was the same pattern on the rug.

OMG! FUD jogged my memory about a book I read 2 yrs ago by Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”. Edu-reformers are using some of the same strategies that were used by the tobacco and oil industries to advance their business agendas and preclude government regulation on their products. Oreskes is an historian of science at U Cal, San Diego. She and Conway tell an amazing story that begins in the 1980′s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOnXL8ob_js
From a review: “Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, has skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.”Her book chronicles how the tobacco industry and the oil industry ran effective PR campaigns to mislead the public on decades of science showing the effects of tobacco smoke on health and the effects of carbon emissions on climate. Both industries set up think tanks, hired established scientists whose credentials were stellar in their fields but whose expertise were not in health and climate. These “experts” conducted research to challenge decades of established facts. Their product was doubt. The purpose was to generate mistrust in established scientific findings. The outcome was to cloud the public’s knowledge, influence the media, and effect government policies that were moving to restrict tobacco and energy industries business practices. Their explicit strategy was “teach the controversy”. The sad reality is that doubt mongering works.

American public education is in a dark corner today. Our unquestioning media plays up the attacks on established education science and teachers. Recall Jonathan Alter & David Brooks’ articles denouncing Diane’s positions on NCLB & RttT. Think Tanks and private philanthropies have made it their business to disseminate junk science written by non-educators that, by design, bypass peer review (e.g. Gates Foundation, Center for American Progress, The Heritage Foundation, AEI, NEIT, et al.) to advance increasing class sizes, high stakes testing, merit pay, ending salary bumps for advanced degrees, charter schools, online education, vouchers, turn-arounds, ending collective bargaining, etc. Claims antithetical to actual scientific findings for efficacy. Bruce Baker (and many others) who regularly debunks the reformy arguments is virtually ignored in the national media.

Oreskes makes a provocative statement about scientists who make claims outside of their expertise: ‘The very features that lead to expertise in a particular domain leads to ignorance in many others.’ Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Michael Milken, Joel Klien, Michael Bloomberg, Eli Broad, anyone?

A critical difference in the current edu-refomry campaign, missing from the previous campaign, is our government’s complicity with the privatizers. The private financial industry and philanthropists are using the full force of the government to advance their agendas. Capturing public money is their business model, schools are simply their vehicle. This is a story of betrayal by our elected officials. They are failing in their mission to serve the public. Indeed, our children’s future is in the hands of those who care the least about other people’s children.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Privatization

Which CEO Made $5 Million Stealing Your Kid’s Lunch Money?

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2012 //
8

At last, someone who knows and cares about public education has made a Youtube video that tells the story of ALEC and the privatization movement, linking them to the outpouring of legislation against teachers and public education. Share this with your friends and neighbors. The narrator is Julie Mead, the dean of education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Karran Harper Royal is a founding member of Parents Across America. Gary Miron of Western Michigan University wrote the National Education Policy Center’s report on K12.

The video is called “Which CEO Made $5 Million Stealing Your Kid’s Lunch Money.” Help it go viral.

Categories ALEC, Education Reform, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Parent trigger, Privatization

Kudos to Jennie Shanker! Debate Ended.

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2012 //
8

If you have been following these posts for the past few days, you will recall that New Jersey Acting Commissioner Chris Cerf claimed that legendary union leader Al Shanker would be on his side, supporting more of the (non-union) charters that Cerf wants to open all over New Jersey.

I wrote a post pointing out that Al Shanker was an original proponent of charters but turned against them in 1993 when he realized that they would become the leading edge of privatization.

I then got a tongue-lashing by someone from New Jersey for daring to say that Al Shanker would not be on board with Chris Cerf and his boss Governor Chris Christie in their campaign to turn more public schools over to entrepreneurs.

And then, blogger Mother Crusader discovered that Al Shanker’s widow, Edie Shanker, had already spoken up and reminded the world that Al would not have supported the “reform” movement.

But best of all, I just read in Jersey Jazzman’s piece that Al’s daughter Jennie Shanker posted the following comment on the article challenging my views:

# Do not speak for Albert Shanker. — Jennie Shanker 2012-07-20 11:26

It was a pleasure and joy to read 2/3rds of your article, at which point your perspective takes its own course.
As his daughter, I treasure the testimony of individuals who knew my father and his work. Lately, it has been, frankly, dreadful to find his name associated with school “reform” that undermines public education. Without exception, these articles offer a few short quotes in evidence, always inappropriately pulled out of the context of his true mission and life’s work.
I can tell you, absolutely and unequivocally, if my father was with us today he would be fighting side by side with Diane Ravitch to preserve and improve public education. The Washington Post re-published an excellent post from Ravitch’s blog this week which very clearly articulats the differences between his vision of charter reform and the for-profit version championed by Chris Cerf and others in New Jersey.
Would he have told that NJ parent to send their child to public schools? Absolutely. As mentioned in the Post article, NJ public schools are among the highest performing in the nation.
Your appreciation for my father’s work and vision was lovely to read. But your stance on this issue is diametrically opposed to his values and intent, and you are dead wrong to shame Diane Ravitch for her position. Indeed, if you consider your thinking to be in line with my father’s, I recommend that you champion her work, as my family does. If anyone can speak for my father in this day and age, the person who should be most trusted is Dr. Ravitch.
It’s unfortunate that many people who read your article will not see this comment. I would like to respectfully request that you reconsider further publicizing your characterizatio n of my father’s position on this topic. From what is in evidence in this article, despite your love for the man, you are in no position to speak for him. -Jennie Shanker
Categories Cerf, Chris, Charter Schools, Education Reform, For-Profit, New Jersey, Privatization

Bingo! Pattern-on-the-Rug Time

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2012 //
23

One of the brilliant readers of this blog sent in a comment that made me understand what has been happening to American public education for the past 15-20 years.

It is the conscious, purposeful application of a marketing strategy called FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

Wikipedia says that FUD is used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics, and propaganda. I sensed that this was happening but I didn’t realize that it was a tried and true strategy that has a name and a documented history.

It’s a strategy in which one competitor undermines the other by spreading FUD. Read the Wikipedia entry to learn who the FUDmaster is.

In this country, the enemies of public education use FUD to advance their primary goal of privatization. They say our public schools are “obsolete” and “broken.” They say it over and over again. They use that line to promote privatization and for-profit education. They want to cut costs by getting rid of experienced teachers and replacing them with online instruction, so they belittle the value of experience and push laws to get rid of tenure and seniority. As they succeed in their use of FUD, what is broken is the spirits of teachers.

They say again and again that our schools are failing when they are not. They have wept about international test scores since “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, even as our economy took off. They use FUD to blame the schools for the market failures they cause. They use FUD to blame the schools for poverty.

High-stakes testing is their tool of choice to close schools and fire teachers.

If you want to see the quintessential application of FUD to public education, read the report of the task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice, which says that our public schools are a threat to national security and that their salvation is to help kids escape them via charters and vouchers. For an antidote, read my review of that report.

Or you could watch the quintessential documentary of FUD, see “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” and then read my review.

The reader who opened my eyes to this marketing strategy, designed to harm public education and to allow its destroyers to call themselves “reformers” signs her stuff as “chemtchr.” Now we know.

Your reader is describing a market-capture strategy refined in the hardware/software market wars of the last century. It is based on sowing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about competing products. I capitalized each word. because the acronym is for the strategy, FUD, is enshrined now in the history of the dawn of the computer age.Google it, and read how IBM piioneered it, and then how the FUDmaster himself out-fudded them.It’s been unleashed now on public education. The children of a whole free nation, and the very people charged with their daily defense, are deliberately assaulted by fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Our state-imposed subservience to the data industry monopolists eats into every day of their childhood, as the FUDmaster tries to impose his defective new operating system on their minds and hearts.
Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Klein, Joel, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

Why the Demand for Virtual Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
22

We know from studies and reports that online charter schools provide inferior education.

We know that they have lower graduation rates and lower test scores than brick-and-mortar schools.

We know that they have high attrition rates, as students enroll and leave within a year or two.

We know that children enrolled in virtual charter schools do not have the opportunity to interact on a regular basis with other children of their age or have face-to-face interaction with live teachers. We know that they will not develop the social skills that come from such interchange.

We know why they are a growing business: They make millions for their sponsors.

So why do parents continue to enroll their children in institutions with such a bad track record?

Here is the answer: The demand for virtual schools is a sure indicator of the dumbing down of the American public and the triumph of American capitalism at its greediest.

Categories For-Profit, On-Line Education, Parents, Privatization

Not Such Good News from Florida

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
9

I said in a post this morning that there was “a glimmer of hope” in Florida because the state board had upheld Miami-Dade’s decision to turn down three virtual charter schools.

But Florida parent leader Rita Solnet wrote to correct me. She attended the state board meeting, and she says the state board offered no glimmer of hope, as I thought, because the Puppetmaster was behind the curtain, pulling the strings. The state board overturned the decision of the Palm Beach County school board to reject four charter applications. It is startling to realize–as Solnet mentions below–that the city of Miami already has 122 charter schools!

Thanks to Rita Solnet for reminding us that nothing will change until there is new leadership in the state of Florida, leadership that is willing to stop the rampant privatization of the state’s public schools.

At that same meeting, the State Board of Ed over-turned Palm Beach County’s decision to deny applications for four (4) charters.

One must understand that Jeb Bush owns Miami. He runs the FL BOE. He controls the Ed Commissioner. The education staff are hand-picked loyalists of Jeb. If Jeb wanted the Miami-Dade charter approved, they would have been approved.

Did I mention that Miami-Dade already has 122 charter schools?  122!

I attended this meeting. I’m an optimist at heart. I missed the glimmer of hope.

Instead I heard impending doom.  A lengthy discussion on blended learning which is the Jeb Bush method of introducing more reliance on virtual charters. (ease them into it)

I heard scripted questions come flowing from board members with a purpose during a masterfully well-orchestrated Agenda..

I heard the Digital Learning speaker, Deirdre Flynn, discuss 270 students and 6 teachers in blended learning classes. (Oh, did I mention Flynn is Deputy Director for Jeb’s Foundation? No, the Board didn’t mention that either.)

I heard FL BOE member Chartrand request “a McKinsey study to see if we are doing this blended learning thing right.”  (Former McKinsey education leader, Michael Barber, is the Pearson Education Adviser.)

I heard BOE member Chartrand ask to inject language into a new vision/mission statement which specified “highly effective teachers” only.

Later I spoke at length with FL Commissioner Robinson.

No, not yesterday. I saw no glimmer of hope at the FL BOE meeting. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but yesterday was not a hopeful day. Yesterday reinforced how much work we have ahead of us.  Yesterday reinforced that we need a new regime at the top.

 
Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Michigan Plan to Defund Public Education

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
15

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has his own plan to hack away at the foundations of universal, free public education.

He is vying to be one of the national leaders of the education reform movement.

Like Bobby Jindal, his Southern counterpart in the far-right of the Republican Party, Snyder would love to offer vouchers but the Michigan state constitution doesn’t permit it (neither does the Louisiana state constitution, but who cares when you are a reformer?). Leaving constitutional niceties aside, Snyder wants to promote, encourage, expand, and fund with taxpayer dollars anything that is not a public school.

Governor Snyder wants to reshape the state’s school finance system so that public money “follows the child,” instead of just automatically going to public schools. This is part of the rightwing agenda to defund public education, cloaked in alluring terminology. The governor has created a panel to figure out how to make this happen.

He won’t come right out and say (reformers never do) that public education is bad, instead he will parrot Michelle Rhee’s absurd claim that public education is rigged to support “adult interests,” not the needs of children. I think what that means is that people who work in public schools get paid for doing so, which shows how selfish they are.

Far better, in the eyes of this education reformer in Michigan, to allow public money to go to for-profit corporations who put children first or anywhere else where there are no unions.

This is one of the peculiar views of the reformers in Michigan. It released a memo saying “the existing School Aid Act of 1979 generates $14 billion for public education, but the group believes that the existing law “serves the interest of legislators and representatives of the educational interests who control the education system, it is generally inaccessible to the general public.”

See the reasoning: That $14 billion now spent on public schools for all is controlled by “the educational interests” who “control the system” and it is not really for “the general public.” Get that: the money spent for public education is not for the public.

So if you follow the logic here, what is needed is more school choice, with money not targeted to any particular district or any particular school. No student would be assigned anywhere, and any choice the student or family made would be accompanied by state funding. Needless to say, that includes online learning and charters. Be it noted that Michigan has a very large for-profit charter sector; somewhere between 70-80% of its many charters operate for profit.

The governor wants funding to be allocated to “proficiency-based funding instead of “seat time” requirements,” which means that testing will be the sole criterion of education value. This again is a green light for the online corporations, because students can pass the state tests on computers and won’t need to go to a brick-and-mortar school at all.

And of course, we can’t have “reform” without “innovation.” In this case, the governor wants “A system that embraces innovative learning tools and reflects changing from a static approach to education delivery to one responsive to individual learning styles.” There we go again: code words meaning that we don’t want public money to pay for the current status quo system of public education, which is “static,” but to pay for online delivery system where the computer can adjust to “individual learning styles.” Apparently that is something that individual teachers, mere human beings, can’t possibly do. Only computers can do that.

And most certainly the governor wants to allow “nonpublic and homeschooled students maximum access to public education resources within the constraints of the state constitution.”

There you have it, folks, Governor Rick Snyder’s plan to reform public education by funding everything other than public education.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Michigan, On-Line Education, Privatization
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