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Peter Greene on the DeVos Doctrine: Choice Choice Choice

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2017 //
25

Peter Greene read Betsy DeVos’s speech to the big privatization conference in D.C. and he figured out the DeVos doctrine.

Remember the song from “Oklahoma,” about “the farmers and the ranchers can be friends?” Well, DeVos assured her allies in the privatization movement that voucher-lovers and charter-lovers are on the same team. They both want the money that now goes to public schools!

Greene writes:

“The rise of Betsy DeVos opened up some schisms in the education reformster world, including, notably, voucher fans versus charter fans. Charter fans have been distrustful, even openly resistant to DeVos and whatever agenda she is drifting toward. Charter schools and voucher schools are natural competitors, with vouchers having a distinct edge with the private religious school market. But I think it may be more important that they compete in different ways.

“To grossly oversimplify, the charter model is to attach itself to the public school system, coopting the public system’s financial systems but redirecting public monies to private schools. The voucher model is to keep the public funding from ever entering the public system at all. Charters want to slip the money out of the bank, but vouchers want to grab the armored cars delivering it. Charters flirt with the lottery winner so he’ll buy them a nice dinner, and vouchers mug him before he ever gets to the restaurant. Charters fake their family ties so they can wrangle an invite to Thanksgiving

“So it represents a significant shift that DeVos has delivered a speech loaded with a giant olive branch to charter supporters…

“DeVos holds up Florida as an example of robust choice and its awesome results. Including Pitbull’s school. Florida, land charter scam artists and blatantly racist school policy and slavish devotion to the Big Standardized Test and public schools deliberately gutted in order to make choice look good. Florida is the DeVosian model. It may not do much for actual education, but at least people are free to make money.

“The final chorus of this hymn to privatization is to declare that “education is not a zero-sum game.” But of course as currently conceived, it is exactly that. Among the issues that DeVos doesn’t address is the costliness of running multiple parallel school systems with the same (often inadequate) funds you previously used to run a single system. As long as every taxpayer dollar spent to send a student to a private charter or voucher school is a dollar taken away from the public system, then a zero-sum game is exactly what we have.

“The DeVos Doctrine presented here includes several of her emerging greatest hits, such as the idea that parents choosing a school is a pure exercise of democracy. It is not. There is nothing democratic about requiring the taxpaying public to foot the bill for your personal private choice.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

PBS Explains Why It Ran a Pro-Privatization Series

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2017 //
41

Valerie Strauss contacted PBS to ask why the public TV Network ran a one-sided three-hour documentary that lambastes public schools and celebrates vouchers, charters, and for-profit schools.

PBS gave its response.

It likes to air diverse views (clearly without fact-checking).

It pays no attention to where the money comes from, even it is dark money funneled through Donors Trust, which bundles contributions from the Koch brothers and DeVos foundations.

Since PBS welcomes diverse views, be sure to contact your local public television station and urge them to run my rebuttal, which aired on WNET, the NYC PBS station.

Since PBS likes diverse views, urge them to air “Backpack Full of Cash,” produced by award-winning Stone Lantern Films, who’s four-part series, “School,” was aired on PBS in 2000. “Backpack” demonstrates the vicious corporate assault on public schools and the harm done to children by the privatization movement.

Don’t agonize, organize.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing

Cory Booker Joins Republicans* to Block Import of Cheaper Prescription Drugs from Canada

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2017 //
30

Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation to allow Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada, where they are cheaper even though some are made in America. Senator Cory Booker, the faux-progressive, voted with the Republicans to protect the profits of Big Pharma.

“BERNIE SANDERS INTRODUCED a very simple symbolic amendment Wednesday night, urging the federal government to allow Americans to purchase pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, where they are considerably cheaper. Such unrestricted drug importation is currently prohibited by law.

“The policy has widespread support among Americans: one Kaiser poll taken in 2015 found that 72 percent of Americans are in favor of allowing for importation. President-elect Donald Trump also campaigned on a promise to allow for importation.

“The Senate voted down the amendment 52-46, with two senators not voting. Unusually, the vote was not purely along party lines: 13 Republicans joined Sanders and a majority of Democrats in supporting the amendment, while 13 Democrats and a majority of Republicans opposed it.

“One of those Democrats was New Jersey’s Cory Booker, who is considered a rising star in the party and a possible 2020 presidential contender.”

Although Booker voted against DeVos, he supports vouchers and charters, like DeVos.

(Thanks to Arthur Goldstein for the tip.)

*I made a spelling error in original headline and typed Tepublicans. Maybe that was short-hand for Tea Party Republicans.

Categories For-Profit, Hoax

NY Times: The Tech Billionaires Who Are Remaking America’s Schools

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2017 //
37

This is an important article about the Silicon Valley billionaires who want to remake America’s schools, although none has any deep knowledge of children or cognition or the multiple social issues that affect children and families. Being tech entrepreneurs, most of them think there is a technological fix for every problem.

The article focuses on several billionaires and what they aim to achieve.

The writer, Natasha Singer, is careful to add red flags where necessary and seek out evaluations. She also is alert to the possibility that the tech entrepreneurs are building their portfolios and enriching themselves. And she points out that much of what they are doing challenges democracy itself in the absence of public debate and understanding.

She writes:

“In the space of just a few years, technology giants have begun remaking the very nature of schooling on a vast scale, using some of the same techniques that have made their companies linchpins of the American economy. Through their philanthropy, they are influencing the subjects that schools teach, the classroom tools that teachers choose and fundamental approaches to learning….

“The involvement by some of the wealthiest and most influential titans of the 21st century amounts to a singular experiment in education, with millions of students serving as de facto beta testers for their ideas. Some tech leaders believe that applying an engineering mind-set can improve just about any system, and that their business acumen qualifies them to rethink American education…

“Tech companies and their founders have been rolling out programs in America’s public schools with relatively few checks and balances, The New York Times found in interviews with more than 100 company executives, government officials, school administrators, researchers, teachers, parents and students.

“They have the power to change policy, but no corresponding check on that power,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “It does subvert the democratic process.”

Furthermore, there is only limited research into whether the tech giants’ programs have actually improved students’ educational results….

“Mr. Hastings of Netflix and other tech executives rejected the idea that they wielded significant influence in education. The mere fact that classroom internet access has improved, Mr. Hastings said, has had a much greater impact in schools than anything tech philanthropists have done.”

Hastings’ Dreambox software depends on constant data-mining:

“DreamBox Learning tracks a student’s every click, correct answer, hesitation and error — collecting about 50,000 data points per student per hour — and uses those details to adjust the math lessons it shows. And it uses data to help teachers pinpoint which math concepts students may be struggling with.”

This is the same Reed Hastings who just spent $5 million helping charter entrepreneurs gain control of the Los Angeles school board.

“Another difference: Some tech moguls are taking a hands-on role in nearly every step of the education supply chain by financing campaigns to alter policy, building learning apps to advance their aims and subsidizing teacher training. This end-to-end influence represents an “almost monopolistic approach to education reform,” said Larry Cuban, an emeritus professor of education at Stanford University. “That is starkly different to earlier generations of philanthropists.”

“These efforts coincide with a larger Silicon Valley push to sell computers and software to American schools, a lucrative market projected to reach $21 billion by 2020. Already, more than half of the primary- and secondary-school students in the United States use Google services like Gmail in school.”

Singer goes through each of the entrepreneurs’ programs. The only one that impressed me was the program in San Francisco that created a Pricipals’ Innovation Fund, “which awards annual unrestricted grants of $100,000 to the principal at each of the district’s 21 middle and K-8 schools.” The key word here is unrestricted.

Mark Zuckerberg’s dream is to sell his digitized approach to enable children to learn via computer and use teachers as moderators. He calls this “personalized learning,” since the computer algorithm adjusts for each student. Singer’s subtitle for Zuckerberg’s dream is: “Student, Teach Thyself.”

““Our hope over the next decade is to help upgrade a majority of these schools to personalized learning and then start working globally as well,” Mr. Zuckerberg told the audience. “Giving a billion students a personalized education is a great thing to do.”

Please, Natasha Singer, do a follow-up that explains that learning from a machine is depersonalized learning.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Data and Data Mining, Democracy, Education Reform, For-Profit, Online Learning, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology

Trump Will Privatize Public Infrastructure

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2017 //
41

The organization “In the Public Interest” reports that global equity investors are gearing up for Trump’s infrastructure plan.

Question: if the banks own bridges and tunnels, can they put fees on them and raise fees whenever they want? They don’t invest for sentiment. They expect a return on investment.

“National: The Trump administration is launching its infrastructure plan with a series of high-profile events this week, beginning at the White House today with a call for privatization of the nation’s air traffic control system. On Wednesday, President Trump goes to Cincinnati for an event that “will highlight the locks, dams and other elements of the inland waterways system crucial for moving agricultural products and other goods,” and promote commercial fees. On Thursday, Trump will host mayors and governors at the White House for an infrastructure “listening session.” On Friday Trump will visit the Department of Transportation’s offices “to discuss its efforts to streamline the regulatory approval and permitting process for road and rail projects,” according to former Goldman Sachs president and COO Gary Cohn, Trump’s point man on the initiative.

“Although the outlines of Trump’s plan have yet to be spelled out, at the heart of the proposal is a dramatic cut in federal infrastructure funding, and for shifting the burden onto states, localities and the private sector.

“However, on May 25 the board of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) agreed on a policy resolution reflecting concerns about what the Trump administration has in mind for the framework for this shift. On private financing, AASHTO declared that “while opportunities exist to expand private participation in the provision of infrastructure,” the administration and Congress must “recognize that most transportation projects do not generate a revenue stream and therefore requires federal support in the form of direct funding rather than financing incentives that encourage borrowing or utilizing private capital.” This point goes directly to the issue of whether the administration’s so-called “asset recycling” model is sustainable.

“AASHTO insists that the focus of federal support should continue to be on transportation infrastructure needs, rather than on a turn toward support for energy transmission lines, rural broadband, and other non-transportation needs, as the administration has outlined. AASHTO is also concerned that the new framework might upend current transportation funding and project selection practices and safeguards, and advocates that “the existing federal program structure including highways, transit, and rail be utilized since it would enable investments to flow to every area of the country.”

“AASHTO also called for continued federal support for last year’s FAST Act transportation package (which “has provided near-term funding stability and relief to states”) and that, “at a minimum, the infrastructure package addresses the funding shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund with a long-term and sustainable revenue solution.”

“National: Private equity is gearing up for Trump’s private finance-heavy infrastructure initiative. The Australian funds manager AMP Capital announced on Thursday they’ve hired Brent Tasugi, a former senior vice-president at Oaktree Capital Management, to its New York-based infrastructure equity team. “Tasugi, who will serve as an investment director for AMP, spent nearly three years at Oaktree, joining the firm in August 2014. He was responsible for the origination and execution of North American transportation, logistics and public-private partnerships, working on projects including the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Puerto Rico and Oaktree’s investment in Lonestar Airport Holdings.” [Sub required]. Any expansion of the ‘public-private partnership’ model in U.S. infrastructure in future years would witness the growth of a private speculative market in once fully-public U.S. assets.

Oaktree recently flipped its interest in the privatized Puerto Rican airport, selling its 50% stake to Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board and a Mexican airport operator, Group Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR), which already had a 50% stake in the airport. [Sub required]

“National/International: China’s $810 billion sovereign wealth fund is also gearing up to invest in Trump’s infrastructure initiative. China Investment Corporation has officially launched its representative office in New York “to leverage the city’s strategic position as an international finance centre. The team will be responsible for conducting research on the North American economy, financial markets and policies, as well as strengthening cooperation with the fund’s business partners, CIC said in statement.”

For links, go to the website of ITPI

Categories For-Profit, Privatization

DeVos Hires Top Official at For-Profit University to Help “Right-Size” Department of Education

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2017 //
13

Jennifer Berkshire reports that Secretary Betsy DeVos has turned to a top official from the scandal-plagued for-profit higher education industry to “right-size” the Department of Education.

As the New York Times said when his appointment was announced:

“As chief compliance officer for a corporate owner of for-profit colleges, Robert S. Eitel spent the past 18 months as a top lawyer for a company facing multiple government investigations, including one that ended with a settlement of more than $30 million over deceptive student lending.”

Eitel worked for Bridgepoint Education Inc., which took over a small private college in 2005, called Ashford College. Bridgepoint turned it into a colossus of online higher education. In 2005, Ashford had 300 students. By 2010, it had more than 80,000.

Berkshire interviewed Christopher Crowley of Wayne State, who explained how the business leaders of the new enterprises turned a struggling small college into a profitable success:

Crowley: When Bridgepoint bought Franciscan in 2005, the college was going bankrupt. The total result amount of student loan money that Franciscan was taking in at that point was $3 million. But less than two years later, the school, which was now called Ashford University, was getting $81 million in federal student aid and reporting profits of $3.1 million. By 2010, Ashford University reported $216 million in profit and was receiving $613 million in federal student aid funds. Part of the reason for this was a huge drop in how much less they were spending per student. Franciscan spent about $5,000 per year, per student on instructional costs. Ashford spent just $700. That’s an 86% reduction in spending over five years. That money went to pay for lavish executive compensation as well for marketing and recruitment. By 2010, Bridgepoint was spending $211.6 million on advertising, more than any other publicly traded education company in the United States at the time.”

Ashford’s transformation into a piggy bank for investors is a story of the triumph of opportunistic capitalism fueled by greed. But it is also a story that recounts the collapse of the higher learning. And one of The architects of that transformation will guide Betsy DeVos, who has no managerial experience, as she reorganizes the U.S. Department of Education.

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Higher Education

South Carolina: New Charters Built with EB-5 Visa Boondoggles

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2017 //
11

You may recall reading a story recently about Jared Kushner’s sister soliciting investments in Kushner real estate deals at a meeting in Beijing, where she promised that investors of at least $500,000 would get a green card in exchange. Investing in charter school construction is another way in which the EB-5 visas are up for grabs.

This story from South Carolina demonstrates how foreign investors are buying green cards by investing in charter school construction, and the middlemen are raking in money at exorbitant interest rates.

A handful of S.C. charter schools — finally in new school buildings — are poised to pay out millions in taxpayer dollars to middlemen, developers and foreign investors who want green cards.

The money, paid in the form of high-interest rent payments on the new school facilities, has some critics saying that the state’s taxpayers are getting duped. Money they believe is paying for S.C. students’ education is instead going to this relatively new network of out-of-state players who are charging high interest rates, as well as wealthy Chinese nationals searching for a quicker path into to the country.

And it’s all happening with federal government approval.

“They were taken for a terrific ride and are paying this high interest rate. It’s remarkable,” said David North, a fellow with the conservative Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., “They could end up paying more in interest than the (cost to construct the school).”

Figuring out just who is getting paid what is complicated and is not readily available in one place. Take, for example, Lowcountry Montessori School in Port Royal, a charter school that serves about 400 students in preschool through the 11th grade.

Through a controversial federal program called EB-5, the school received $1.5 million from three foreign investors to build its school building that opened last school year on Broad River Drive.

Critics have long charged that the program allows rich immigrants to buy their way into the country. And in recent years, cases of fraud and concerns about national security have also plagued the program.

The Port Royal school’s financial arrangement was put together by American Charter Development, a Utah-based company, that secured another $4 million for the new building and constructed the school.

The school is now leasing its $5.5 million building from ACD at a whopping 9 percent annual rate of the school’s construction costs. If the school were to make only the minimum payments over the course of the 20-year lease, $5.6 million of its $10.3 million in lease payments would be interest, according to the school’s most recent audit.

Worked into those lease payments is another key player — Utah-based Education Fund of America, a for-profit company which is receiving a 7.3 percent annual fee on the $1.5 million it secured in EB-5 funding for the school.

And then there are the three unnamed foreign entrepreneurs who actually invested the $1.5 million. The school will pay them back as well, likely including a small return on their investment of around 1 percent, say those familiar with the EB-5 program. The repayment is also included in the lease arrangement.

By comparison, the Beaufort County School District is paying just 1.6 percent interest on its construction bonds for its new May River High School that opened last year.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/state/south-carolina/article151566537.html#storylink=cpy

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

Benjamin Herold Reviews Evaluations of “Personalized Learning”

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2017 //
33

Larry Cuban posted this article by Benjamin Herold, who writes for Education Week about technology, on his blog.

https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/personalized-learning-what-does-the-research-say-benjamin-herold/

The term “personalized learning” has been captured by the technology industry to represent computer-based instruction. Some people think it would be justifiable to refer to computer-based instruction as “depersonalized learning” since a computer is a machine and not a person.

The other terms the tech industry has used for marketing purposes are “individualized” and “customized.”

Herold’s review is balanced and appropriately critical, distinguishing between independent research and marketing.

The studies seem to use test scores as the best indicator of success. These scores may gauge of whether sutudents learned what the computer taught them, but says nothing about whether they could pass a test of similar material that the machine didn’t teach them.

And that’s without going into what should be the lasting effects of education: the ability to think independently, to ask questions, to think outside the box, to accomplish tasks for intrinsic purposes, rather than to win a prize.

Many educators think that the goal of computer-based instruction is to develop classrooms without teachers; a paraprofessional could be available to answer questions about the technology. Is that where the tech industry is headed? Consider this recent article in Bloomberg News which hailed the development of ships without sailors. “Doing away with sailors will make the high seas safer and cleaner.”

It sounds like a ghost story: A huge cargo vessel sails up and down the Norwegian coast, silently going about its business, without a captain or crew in sight. But if all goes as planned, it’s actually the future of shipping.

96% of all marine casualties are caused by human error. Solution: get rid of the humans. Problem solved.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Technology

Florida Charter Scandal: Legislators Vote Millions for Charter Schools Where They Earn a Profit

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
14

Fabiola Santiago has a stunning story in the Miami Herald about the deep corruption in the state’s charter industry.

Several key legislators are financially connected to charter schools.

He writes:

Florida’s broad ethics laws are a joke.

If they weren’t, they would protect Floridians from legislators who profit from the charter-school industry in private life and have been actively involved in pushing — and successfully passing — legislation to fund for-profit private schools at the expense of public education.

Some lawmakers earn a paycheck tied to charter schools.

One of them is Rep. Manny Diaz, the Hialeah Republican who collects a six-figure salary as chief operating officer of the charter Doral College and sits on the Education Committee and the K-12 Appropriations Subcommittee.

Some lawmakers have close relatives who are founders of charter schools.

One of them is the powerful House Speaker, Richard Corcoran, the Land O’Lakes Republican whose wife founded a charter school in Pasco County that stands to benefit from legislation. He was in Miami Wednesday preaching the gospel of charter schools as “building beautiful minds.”

Other lawmakers are founders themselves or have ties to foundations or business entities connected to charter schools.

One of them is Rep. Michael Bileca, the Miami Republican who chairs the House Education Committee and is listed as executive director of the foundation that funds True North Classical Academy, attended by the children of another legislator. Bileca is also a school founder.

These three legislators were chief architects in the passage of a $419 million education bill that takes away millions of dollars from public schools to expand the charter-school industry in Florida at taxpayer expense.

They crafted the most important parts of education bill HB 7069 in secret, acting in possible violation of the open government laws the Legislature is perennially seeking to weaken. There was no debate allowed and educators all across the state were left without a voice in the process.

It’s no wonder it all went down in the dark. It’s a clear conflict of interest for members of the Florida Legislature who have a stake in charter schools to vote to fund and expand them. Their votes weaken the competition: public schools.

This issue has nothing to do with being pro or against school choice. It’s about the abuse of power and possible violations of Florida statutes.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article151418277.html#storylink=cpy

When people ask you how you can possibly be against charter schools, think of this story.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

Jennifer Berkshire: The Prophets of Privatization

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2017 //
16

Jennifer Berkshire (the writer formerly known as EduShyster) is one of the best education writers on the national scene.

In this article, she describes the evangelical roots of the present school-choice movement, as personified by Betsy DeVos.

You will meet some very peculiar people who loathe “government schooling” and prefer to home school their children. Some will be familiar to you, like the far-right billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who bankrolled Steve Bannon and Breitbart News. Daughter Rebekah homeschools her children to keep them free from the contamination of both public and private schools.

Berkshire notes that the Mercers funded an odd Oregon politician named Arthur Robinson.

She writes about Robinson:

In Oregon, Robinson is known as a kooky Tea Party-ish chemist who has been stockpiling urine as part of his mission to improve health, happiness, prosperity — and boost student test scores. He’s also a perennial GOP congressional candidate whose long-shot bids have been mostly underwritten by the Mercers.

In Christian homeschooling circles, Arthur Robinson is a household name. The Robinson Self-Teaching Curriculum, developed by Robinson and his six home-schooled children, teaches children to “teach themselves and to acquire superior knowledge as did many of America’s most outstanding citizens in the days before socialism in education.”

Robinson fleshed out his views on education during his 2016 run for Congress, releasing an education platform called “Art’s Education Plan!” He called for a nationwide voucher program, providing every student in the United States with the “freedom and resources to apply to any school in our nation, public or private.”

There was also a bold plan for Congress to shut down the schools of Washington, DC, for three months, long enough to fire the “unionized deadwood” and create a model in which students and parents are customers rather than “vassals of school administrators.”

She describes the ultra-conservative financiers and their faithful political vassals who have turned Florida into a mecca for publicly funded religious education, even though the Florida Constitution explicitly forbids it, and even though the state’s voters turned down a Jeb Bush effort to strip the state Constitution of its anti-voucher language in 2012.

Yes, there are some far-right extremists in the school choice movement. But, notes Berkshire, it was not DeVos that put school choice into the mainstream. It was Democrats who called themselves “reformers.”


DeVos and her allies are aided in the efforts to dismantle public education by Democratic education reformers who’ve spent the past two decades doing essentially the same thing. It is “progressive” reformers, after all, who’ve led the charge to convince parents and taxpayers that there is no meaningful difference between a public school and one that’s privately managed. That parents don’t care who runs their schools as long as they’re good is a standard reform talking point, along with the reminder that “charter schools are public schools….”

School choice has been legitimized, not by DeVos et al, but by the likes of Corey Booker, Rahm Emanuel and other reform-minded Democrats. If saving public education is to be a key plank of the #resistance, Democrats will have to join the fight or be swept aside.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Deregulation, Duncan, Arne, Florida, For-Profit, Home Schooling, Obama, School Choice
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