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Did Deval Patrick Sell Out to Profiteers?

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2012 //
17

A reader asks: did Deval Patrick sell out?

I feel ashamed for Deval.  I am one of his many, many progressive supporters, and we’re all baffled by how he got into this situation.  I worked harder for his election than I did even for Obama, and I never doubted his integrity or strength.  

Through all the vicious attacks on him during that first campaign, he stayed steady and clear.  Remember the white-woman-in-dark-parking-lot ad?  I left work every day and went straight to unlock the little campaign office in my own town, as more and more volunteers came forward and signed on.  It got very ugly; there were smear attacks on his family members.  Even in Massachusetts, after Romney and Celluci, he seemed like a long shot.  But Deval brought out the best in my community, and turned it blue again.

On the morning after the election, I came in to my classroom and told my diverse and hopeful students, “The American Dream is For You.”  They cheered.  A couple of them even cried.  Remember, this was before Obama ever ran for president.

Later, after I had chaired a citizens online task force on ethics and lobbying reform, I sat next to him at our summary report meeting so he could answer our recommendations (for the cameras) by saying he’d veto the state budget if the legislators didn’t send him his groundbreaking (we thought at the time) ethics and lobbying reform with it.

After the meeting, I confronted him with his failure to get the state version of the Dream Act implemented (he’d actually tried the executive order route, but had to withdraw it).  I told him about my students, and he really did tear up.  His determination and frustration were real.

State Speaker DiMasi had been indicted for kickbacks on state contracts for the insurance and education data warehouses.  He was convicted, but the investigation went no further.  Edubuisiness had a lock on the state DOE, until Deval stood up to the Boston Globe and appointed a progressive PTA leader (Ruth Kaplan) to the board.

Then, when he ran for re-election, Deval let K12 and other for-profit education companies run a fundraiser for him at the Children’s Museum.  K12 now has a thriving online charter business operating out of Greenfield, and Deval is supporting Mosaica Boston’s forced takover-turnarounds of Boston Public Schools.  A memo leaked from his Secretary of Education once argued they had to bow to an illegal charter school placement, against the will of the community, or the Globe would attack them.  

I swear I don’t understand how he could sell out public education for their measly political  support. Like Obama, he got his chance by being admitted to a luxurious prep academy, so maybe he just can’t untangle his own conflicts about private schools, and it clouds his understanding.  I know he isn’t a coward.  I know he has a fine mind, and I still believe his life is dedicated to the same mission as my own.  I just can’t believe his is a calculated betrayal of the public trust we placed in him, in the face of this dangerous hour for the future of democratic governance.

Categories Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Privatization

Profiteers Circle Schools

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2012 //
9

A reader discovered the agenda for a big conference of equity investors, technology corporations, and supportive foundations.

A high-level official of the U.S. Department of Education will be there too.

Folks, read the agenda.

Public education is up for grabs.

Lots of corporations are licking their chops.

This is scary.

Remember reading about “the Great Barbecue,” in the late nineteenth century?

That’s when greedy men plundered the public treasury. .

Are the public schools now on the spit?

So much money, all guaranteed by the government.

Now we will see how entrepreneurs reform our schools and get rich too.

The reader writes:

 

Yep, there’s money to be made . . .

and Jeb is there to give the April 18th keynote . . .

Check out this agenda for the 2013 Education Summit in Arizona.
http://edinnovation.asu.edu/accommodations/

The April 17th panel at 4:35 p.m. will include Ron Packard (of K12 Inc.) and other profiteers discussing, “A Class of Their Own: From Seed to Scale in a Decade: What Does it take for an Education Company to Reach $$$1Billion?”

Check out the who’s who list of CEOs and their elected friends networking to the online charter school profits. The Trojan horse philanthropists , Gates and Milken, will be there too.http://edinnovation.asu.edu

I wonder what they will discuss in the session . . . .
“The Fall of the Wall: Capital Flows to Education: What sectors and companies are attracting investment?”

Margaret Thatcher may have been a milk snatcher . . but don’t let Jeb fool you, he is poised to take it all . . and give it to his CEO buddies.
Categories Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, K12 Inc., Privatization, Technology, Computers, U.S. Department of Education

What You Need to Know about For-Profit Online Schools

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2012 //
5

This is a stunning article. A real journalistic achievement.

It shows in remarkable detail how certain politicians and investors and entrepreneurs are working together to privatize public education and to generate huge profits for certain companies.

Read this.

Categories ALEC, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, K12 Inc., Luna, Tom, On-Line Education

Funniest Story of the Month

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
8

As I was doing some research about virtual charter schools, I came across an article that caused me to laugh out loud.

It appeared in the Star-Ledger, the main newspaper in New Jersey. It was titled “State Has Virtually No Reason to Not Give Online Charter Schools a Shot.”

It said the state should stop “dithering” and should promptly approve an online charter school. No delay, no moratorium, approve the online school now.

It was published on July 11, 2012, as the state’s Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf and the state board of education were mulling a decision to authorize the megacorporation K12 to open an online charter school in New Jersey.

The reason I laughed out loud was that the article appeared on the same day that the FBI raided the offices of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter. See here too.

And it appeared several months after the New York Times published a withering expose of the terrible academic record of K12.

And it appeared fourteen months after the CREDO study of virtual charters in Pennsylvania, which showed they get awful results.

The invaluable New Jersey blogger Jersey Jazzman showed the fallaciousness of the claim that the state should not wait for more research but should promptly approve a virtual charter school.

Truly, this is one of those laugh out loud moments. They are so few these days that we should enjoy them.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, K12 Inc., New Jersey, On-Line Education

Good News from New Jersey

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
9

Jersey Jazzman reports that New Jersey will not approve the state’s first online for-profit virtual charter school. K12 has been told to come back next year, perhaps on the hope that citizen outrage will have died down by then. Jersey Jazzman, you may recall, memorably referred to New Jersey as “the cesspool of school reform.”

This is a big win. The most important message here is that citizens make a difference when they organize and speak up against politically powerful forces who are trying to grab taxpayer money and call it “reform.”

This is two wins in a row against the K12 giant, first in North Carolina, where the school boards banded together to stop the raid on their own strained budgets, and now in New Jersey, where concerned parents and educators blew the whistle.

It’s important to remind everyone that the reformers are vulnerable. They are vulnerable to public exposure because the fact is that their harmful ideas have no public support once the public understands what they are up to. There is no public support for handing taxpayer dollars over to corporate interests and calling it “reform.”

The public loves its community schools and doesn’t want to see them impoverished by corporate raiders.

So, yes, learn from New Jersey. Learn from the parents of Florida, who stopped the fake “parent trigger” legislation. Learn from the school boards of North Carolina.

You are not alone. Work in coalition with others to understand the theft of public education that is underway. You can make a difference.

Categories Education Reform, K12 Inc., New Jersey, On-Line Education

Where Does Arne Duncan Stand?

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
33

When John White was appointed to run the Recovery School District in New Orleans, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called him a “visionary school leader.”

Now John White is doing the bidding of a Tea Party governor and leading the most reactionary drive in the nation to dismantle public education; to take money away from the minimum foundation budget for public schools and give it to voucher schools and charter schools; to give public money to small religious schools that don’t teach evolution; to strip teachers of all protection of their academic freedom; to allow anyone to teach, without any credentials, in charter schools; to welcome for-profit vendors of education to take their slice out of the funding for public schools.

I wonder if Arne Duncan still considers him a “visionary leader”?

I wonder what Arne Duncan thinks of the Louisiana legislation. I wonder why he has not spoken out against any part of it. I wonder why he is silent when Tea Party governors like Chris Christie attack the teachers of their state and try to take away whatever rights they may have won over the years. I wonder if he agreed or disagreed with the Chiefs for Change–the rightwing state superintendents–when they saluted Louisiana’s regressive legislation to take money from public schools and hand it over to private sector interests.

I wonder why he never went to Madison, Wisconsin, to speak out for public sector workers there when it mattered. I wonder what he thinks of the emergency manager legislation in Michigan, where state-appointed emergency managers have closed down public education in two districts and handed it off to charter operators. I wonder what he thinks about the Boston Consulting Group’s plan in Memphis to increase the proportion of students in privately managed charters from 4% to 19%. I wonder what he thinks about the Boston Consulting Group’s plan to privatize up to 40% of Philadelphia’s schools. I wonder what he thinks about the rollback of collective bargaining rights in various states or the removal of job protections for teachers. I wonder what he thinks about ALEC’s coordinated plan to destroy public education. I wonder what he thinks of the emerging for-profit industry that is moving into K-12 education.

He has many opportunities to express his views about the escalation of the war against public education and the ongoing attacks on teachers and their unions.

Why is he silent?

Just wondering.

Categories ALEC, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, K12 Inc., Louisiana, Michigan, Philadelphia, Privatization

Profits, Not Better Education

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2012 //
3

An article in a publication called “The Financial Investigator” took a close look at K12, the for-profit online “education” corporation whose growth had made it a darling of Wall Street. The article paid particular attention to the “churn rate” at K12 online schools. That is, how many students left in a given year. In the Ohio Virtual Academy of K12, a staggering 51% of students turned over in a single year. That helps to explain why the name of the game for the for-profit online academies is recruitment. So long as the corporations can keep their numbers up, they will collect tuition money from the state, usually double their real costs.

The more the for-profit academies churn, the more they earn. And every dollar they collect comes right out of the public school budget. In Pennsylvania, where nearly half the school districts are in financial distress, the diversion of dollars to for-profit academies is harming the great majority of children who attend regular brick-and-mortar schools. And bear in mind that the online charters–whether they are for-profit or not–get terrible results.

Last week, I had a debate about education entrepreneurs on Twitter with Justin Hamilton, the press secretary for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. I made clear that I was referring to for-profit schemes like online academies. I am very dubious, no, actually, I am opposed to spending taxpayers’ money on for-profit education management organizations or for-profit charter schools. I kept pushing Justin to say that he agreed, or the U.S. Department of Education agreed. He would not. They choose to stand silently by while corporate suits target children as profit opportunities.

It seems to me that the U.S. Secretary of Education should denounce for-profit education. It wastes money; it supplies bad education; it gets terrible results. But as we have seen in relation to for-profit higher education, high-priced lobbyists work Congress and state legislatures to protect their industry. For-profit higher education is a $30 billion industry, and it has the wherewithal to call off the regulators.

As the expose of K12 in the New York Times reminds us, the highest goal of for-profit corporations is profit. Not education. Not the development of young people. Not character. Not the good of society. Profit.

Diane

Categories Education Industry, K12 Inc., On-Line Education, Pennsylvania
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