Archives for category: Lies
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Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education Who Pays No Attention to Evidence and Never Learns from Experience

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2018 //
53

Politico reports that Arne Duncan stubbornly clings to his belief that teacher quality can be measured by test scores and lashes out at those who disagrees. This despite the fact that several states have dropped it, several courts have suspended or ended it, and it worked Nowhere. Of course, his boook went to print before the release of the RAND-AIR study of the total failure of the Gates $575 Million program to use Arne’s VAM approach. But, the study is out, and you would think he might backtrack. But no.

Also, before the recent finding that the effect of the LA publication of teacher ratings meant that the richest families scooped up the teachers with the highest scores and the poorest kids got those with the lowest scores. And Arne forgot, but we won’t, Roberto Riguelas, the LA teacher who committed suicide after his rating was published. The LA ratings, by the way, we’re made up at the request of the LA Times and had many flaws.

Duncan accuses Lamar Alexander of “lying” or wanting to cover up poor teacher performance, but Alexander was right. The feds have zero authority to foist half-baked—and in this case, harmful and expensive—ideas on the states.

“HOW ARNE DUNCAN SEES ‘LIES’ IN EDUCATION: Arne Duncan, one of the most outspoken Education secretaries to hold the job, is out with an incendiary new book about the “lies” he says the public is fed about education and student potential.

— Duncan’s 200-plus-page read, “How Schools Work,” published Tuesday, tells how the former secretary attempted to dispel these “lies” and sell education reform while at the helm of both the Chicago Public Schools and the Education Department. The book is peppered with anecdotes spanning decades, some of them very critical of other education players. A few of the highlights are below; more from your host here.

— ‘Bare-knuckle politicking’: That’s how the Chicago native describes multiple interactions with elected officials and his attempts to “insulate” his education reform work from “political attack” and “stay above the political fray.”

— Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) figures in one anecdote. Duncan says that he was left “stunned” when Alexander refused to back the administration’s pursuit of policies that tied teacher evaluations to student test scores and higher standards. “This was the Tea Party talking, pure and simple. It was as if he’d been captured,” he writes of Alexander, also a former Education secretary, and governor of Tennessee. “Senator Alexander’s stance was one of the least principled things I’d ever heard from a politician, and it showed zero political courage.”

— Alexander said in a statement to POLITICO that Duncan came to Washington to “create a national school board” and that he came to reverse that trend. “Arne and I have a difference of principle, not politics. I believe that teacher evaluation is the holy grail of education and, as governor, helped Tennessee become the first state to pay teachers more for teaching well. As U.S. Education Secretary, I challenged every state to create voluntary national education standards and accountability systems. But I told Arne on the first day he walked into my office that Washington, D.C., has no business telling states how to evaluate teachers and what education standards to set,” Alexander said.

— ‘Teacher accountability was the third rail’: That’s how Duncan described the controversy he faced around the issue, not just from Alexander, but also from teachers unions and Democrats. He writes he was “shocked” that, when conceiving the Race to the Top grant program, he found states like California and Wisconsin banned school districts from using student test scores to measure teacher effectiveness.

— “What was the lie at the center of these laws?” Duncan writes. “Was it that good teaching was immeasurable? Or was it that some teachers … preferred to claim that they couldn’t help the kids who most desperately needed their help?”

— The idea that teacher quality is the most important variable remains up for debate — a recent report on a Gates Foundation initiative that attempted to prove as much claimed its effort was largely unsuccessful. But in his book, Duncan remains committed to the idea. “The simple fact is that quality teaching matters more than anything,” he writes.”

Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Lies, Stupid, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Major Media Remove the Conspiracy-Theory Infowars from Their Sites

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
51

YouTube, Facebook, and Apple have agreed to remove the pernicious, fake content produced by Alex Jones of Infowars.

This is good news. Jones has created a brand based on lies, hoaxes, and fear-mongering. His most disgusting conspiracy theory was his claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake, a stage production with child actors, stage managed by the Obama administration to advance the war against guns. Jones is being sued for defamation by parents who lost children at the Sandy Hook massacre. Some have been pursued by stalkers and received death threats.

In its daily news brief, CNN summarized the story:

“Some of the web’s top gatekeepers have unleashed a serious crackdown on content from Infowars and its founder, Alex Jones. Infowars is the site (and Jones the man) that pushes baseless conspiracy theories that often create real-life damage (like the Sandy Hook hoax over which several more families this week sued Jones for defamation). YouTube, Facebook and Apple yesterday removed content from Infowars, claiming it violates their policies, such as YouTube’s barring “hate speech and harassment.” YouTube’s actions probably most damage the brand, which had multiple channels with millions of subscribers and more than a billion views.”

To learn more about Alex Jones, watch John Oliver.

Categories For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Lies, Media

Gary Rubinstein: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Reform Movement and Its Critics, But Didn’t Ask

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2018 //
4

This is a hilarious, must-see video, narrated by Gary Rubinstein, about his life in Teach for America, his disillusionment with Reform, and his collision with Reformers as they set about to remake American education.

I play a minor role in his story, because I too was an apostate, and my turnaround helped him make his own turnaround.

You will see all the stars of Reform, as Gary gives each of them their few seconds of glory and dispatches some of their heroes.

You will also see how he had his own moment of reckoning and developed a passion for calling out lies and propaganda.

It really is delightful and informative.

The moral of the story, he says, is that Tufts University (where he was a student) beats Harvard University (where most of the Reformers were students).

There are lots more morals to the story, and you will see how he skillfully weaves the history of the past 25 or so years together into a slide show.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Lies, Michelle Rhee, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Teach for America

Tom Ultican: Why Charter Schools are NOT Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2018 //
6

Over the past 25 years of experience with charter schools, we have learned that they claim to be public when it is time to get the money, but in all other respects, they are private. Their management is private. They are exempt from many of the laws and regulations that govern public schools. They do not report to an elected board, or to a board that is in any sense accountable to the public or transparent. At least 90% are non-union.

Tom Ultican, a retired teacher in San Diego, saw that the director of communications for the California Charter Schools Association, the most powerful lobby in the state, wrote a letter to the San Diego Free Press, saying that they had been unfair to charter schools and that their stories contained many inaccuracies, although he did not identify any.

Ultican took him to task for his failure to document any inaccuracies and wrote:

Unfortunately, charter schools have become profit centers for real estate developers and charter management organizations. Instead of fulfilling their original mission to be education innovators, they have too often become fraud infested enterprises lusting after tax dollars. It did not have to be this way…

Calling charter-schools public-schools is false. It is political spin. That is too nice. It is a lie.

When the city of San Diego contracts with a construction company to repair roads, that company is still a private company. When the state of California approves a contract, known as a charter, with a private company to educate students, the company gets paid with tax dollars. It is still a private company and is not required to comply with open meeting laws, elected school boards, much of the state education code and budget transparency like a public school. They are private businesses.

This lie is very profitable to charter school owners:

Whether they are for-profit or non-profit they are private companies and the distinction between for-profit and non-profit is quite obscure. For example, Mary Bixby, San Diego’s pioneer in the strip mall charter school business, puts children at computers running education software. Very little personal teacher-student interaction takes place but teenagers who don’t like to get up in the morning can go to the strip mall and earn credits toward graduation. In 2015, the non-profit Mary founded paid her a “salary” of $340,810 and her daughter Tiffany Yandell received $135,947.

It is easy to take offense at the truth. But, ignoring the daily lies from the highest levels of our government, honesty is always the best policy. When you tell the truth you don’t need a “communications director” to spin bad stories.

Categories California, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Fraud, Lies, Propaganda

Charles P. Pierce: Betsy DeVos, Profiting Off Students in an Administration of Grifters

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2018 //
6

Charles P. Pierce, blogger for Esquire, is one of my favorite writers. He has a knack for getting right to the point with pithy phrases and colorful images.

In this post, he calls out a few of the unsavory profiteers in the Trump administration, starting with Ryan Zinke and Scott Pruitt, who have a taste for first-class travel on the taxpayers’ dime.

Then he gets to DeVos, and he skewers her for abandoning the Department of Ecucation’s Obligation to protec college students who are victims of fraud by for-profit “universities” like Trump University.

DeVos’s spokeswoman Elizabeth Hill defends DeVos’ indefensible actions, as usual.

Pierce writes:

Where do they find these embarrassingly bot-like public liars? How does one “provide oversight” beyond doing investigations? As to Ms. Hill’s assurances that the presence of so many former higher-ed scamsters in the department had no influence in the decision, well, we are once again up against the most serious ontological question about this administration: How many foxes do there have to be before the henhouse becomes a foxhouse?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education, Lies

Jeff Bryant Assesses the Likelihood that Jackson, Mississippi, Can Overcome Its Racist Past

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2018 //
13

Jeff Bryant of the Educational Opportunity Network visited Jackson, Mississippi, to learn about the state takeover plan for the district. As you would expect, Jackson has a sordid and racist past, one where whites ignored the needs and potential of black students.

After the Brown decision declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional, Mississippi fought the decision. When compelled to comply, it introduced school choice, so that white kids would have tax money to pay for private segregated schools.

Today, Jackson has a progressive black mayor. The schools are 95% black. The state now threatens to take over the Jackson schools on mostly trumped-up violations. Test scores are low,but test scores in the whole state are low.

Governor Phil Bryant, a product of segregated white schools, says he wants to create a private-public partnership in Jackson.

Civic leaders are not sure he can be trusted. They know that the schools are desperately underfunded and that the legislature and the state’s Republican leaders don’t want to pay the cost of adequate funding.

The big actors behind the s eyes are the Walton family, which wants charters and vouchers, along with Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. The black mayors of Jackson and Birmingham know that the purpose of charter schools is to drain money out of public schools that are already underfunded.

The bottom line is that the white Republicans of Mississippi don’t want to pay the cost of educating black children. They never have. The leadership of the state will blabber on about school choice but it’s still the same song and dance. Nothing Jeff reports persuades me that Jackson’s black leadership should trust Governor Bryant, the legislature or their appointees to devote new resources to black children in Jackson. It’s a hoax. Don’t fall for it.

Categories Charter Schools, Hoax, Lies, Mississippi, Racism

California: The NAACP Writes a Letter of Protest to Billionaire Bill Bloomfield

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2018 //
11

Bill Bloomfield is a very wealthy charter school supporter in California. He sent out a letter endorsing charter advocate Marshall Tuck for State Superintendent, accompanied by a photograph of Barack Obama, who has not endorsed anyone in the race. Tuck comes from the charter sector.

Tuck is running against Tony Thurmond, a state legislator who strongly supports public schools.

The California State NAACP was outraged by Bloomfield’s letter and told him so. It was especially shocked that he used Obama’s portrait in a mailer opposing an African American candidate. It pointed out that Bloomfield worked in John McCain’s campaign against Obama.

Bloomfield describes himself on his website as a major supporter of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, Parent Revolution (which tries to convert public schools to charter schools), and other reform organizations that attack public schools and promote charters.

It is pathetic how these charter promoters try to hitch themselves to the banner of the civil rights movement.

Read the letter here.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Lies

DeVos: State Bans on Funding Religious Schools Should Go to “Ash Heaps of History”

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2018 //
64

Betsy DeVos is opposed to separation of church and state. She thinks that state bans that prohibit the funding of religious schools should be ended. In a speech yesterday in New York City to the Alfred E. Smith Society, which is allied with the Archdiocese of New York, she said that such bans originated in anti-Catholic bigotry and should be eliminated.

DeVos noted that these amendments are still on the books in 37 states. And though she didn’t get into this in her speech, that includes her home state of Michigan. Back in 2000, DeVos helped lead an effort to change the state’s constitution to allow for school vouchers. It failed.

She said that “there’s hope that Blaine amendments won’t be around much longer.” She noted that last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for a state-funded playground restoration program in Columbia, Mo., to exclude a facility on the grounds of a church. (That case is Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Mo. v. Comer . More about it here.) School choice advocates are hoping that ruling will prod state lawmakers to re-examine Blaine amendments.

“These amendments should be assigned to the ash heap of history and this ‘last acceptable prejudice’ should be stamped out once and for all,” DeVos said.

But Maggie Garrett, the legislative director at Americans United for the Separation of Church, a nonprofit organization in Washington, has a different take on the state constituional amendments, which she referred to as “no aid” clauses.

“Like with many things, Betsy Devos has her facts wrong,” Garrett said. “It’s a simplistic and inaccurate view of the history. There were many reasons why people support no-aid causes, many of them were legitimate.” And she noted that states continue to support such amendments. Recenty, for instance, Oklahoma tried to strike its clause through a state referendum, but the effort was resoundingly defeated

And she said that DeVos is “overstating” the impact of the Trinity Lutheran decision, which, in Garrett’s view, applied narrowly to playground resurfacing.

Federal Role in School Choice

DeVos also gave a shout-out to states—including , Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania—that have created so-called “tax credit scholarship programs,” in which individuals and corporations can get a tax break for donating to scholarship granting organizations.

DeVos worked behind the scenes last year to get a similar, federal program included in a tax overhaul bill, but was ultimately unsuccessful, sources say. Still, school choice advocates haven’t given up on the idea.

In her speech, though, DeVos acknowledged that a new, federal school choice program might be tough to enact, and even undesirable.

“A top-down solution emanating from Washington would only grow government … a new federal office to oversee your private schools and your scholarship organizations. An office staffed with more unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats tasked to make decisions families should be free to make for themselves. Just imagine for a moment how that might impact you under an administration hostile to your faith! ” she said. “So, when it comes to education, no solution—not even ones we like—should be dictated by Washington, D.C.”

She also conceded that Congress isn’t too keen on the idea. “In addition, leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress—friend and foe alike—have made it abundantly clear that any bill mandating choice to every state would never reach the president’s desk,” DeVos added.

DeVos is right that the Blaine amendments were created at a time of anti-Catholic bigotry, but they have grown popular over time because most Americans do not want their tax dollars used to support religious schools. Whenever Blaine amendments have been taken to the public in state referenda, they are overwhelmingly defeated. As the nation has grown more diverse in religious practice, Americans have repeatedly rejected efforts to subsidize religious schools.

The best protection of religious liberty, as the Founders understood, is to keep it separate from government. When religious institutions take government money, government regulation will in time follow.

In the nearly two dozen state referenda intended to repeal prohibitions on public funding of religious schools, none has passed. The rejections have been overwhelming. In Michigan, when Dick and Betsy DeVos paid for a repeal effort, the public said no by a margin of 69-31%. Betsy learned nothing from that defeat.

In Florida, Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee campaigned for a “Religious Liberty amendment” to allow public funding of religious schools, and it went down 55-45%. If they had called it a referendum to permit public funding of religious schools, it probably would have gone down by 70-30%.

The only way that voucher supporters get their way is by concealing what they want, calling vouchers by euphemisms. In Florida, the state circumvented the state constitution and the results of referendum by calling their voucher program “Education Savings Accounts” or “Tuition Tax Credits.” Only by lying can they push vouchers. The public said no, and they did it anyway.

The fact is that the American people do not support vouchers–not for Evangelicals, not for Orthodox Jews, not for Muslims, and not for any other religious group.

The issue in New York State is whether the public should pay for Orthodox Jewish schools where children do not learn English, or science, or mathematics, but take instruction in Yiddish.

The public doesn’t want to pay for it.

Let’s see what happens in November in Arizona, where the Koch brothers and the DeVos family are scrambling to persuade the public to pay for vouchers.

In every state, let the issue go to the public. When they did it in Florida, the public said no, and the Bush-DeVos crowd ignored the public. How much longer must be deal with their subterfuge, obstinacy, arrogance, and lies?

Categories Florida, Lies, Michigan, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Sandy Hook Parents Sue Alex Jones for Defamation

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2018 //
8

 

After the Sandy Hook massacre, Alex Jones made his unsavory reputation insisting that the massacre of children and staff in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax, elaborately staged by professional actors.

Two of the parents whose children were killed have sued Alex Jones for defamation.

Mercedes Schneider has the story here.

It’s about time that this malicious propagandist was brought to justice.

Categories Fraud, Hoax, Lies, Propaganda

Peter Greene: Why the Charter Movement is Declining

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2018 //
11

 

The original idea on the Charter Movement was noble: Teachers would create them as part of their school or district; they would seek out the most vulnerable students, the ones who had dropped out or who slept through class. They would use their freedom from the usual rules to find new ways to educate the reluctant students.

That was Albert Shanker’s vision. He sold it to his members in 1988 and kept selling it until 1993, when he announced in his weekly paid column in the New York Times that charters were no different from vouchers. He declared that business was moving into the charter industry and using it to break teachers’ unions and destroy public schools. Too late. The movement went into high gear, and the sector turned into a.m. industry, with corporate chains and for-profits, relying on inexperienced teachers and cutting costs (teacher salaries).

But suddenly, the Charter Movement has stalled. New ones still open, and old ones close, for financial or academic reasons.

Peter Greene here assesses the report from the charter-friendly Center on Reinventing Public Education. Peter has a somewhat different take than the previous post by Steven Singer.

The bottom line is the same. The charter industry literally wants free space by closing public schools. They can’t hold on to teachers, not only because of low wages, but because of poor working conditions. The teachers they attract are not in education as a career but as a stepping stone.

And two other factors hobble the growth of charters. First, most don’t keep their promises; they are not better than public schools. Second, the public reads almost daily about charters that close in mid-year, Charter founders who were convicted of theft, charter leaders using public funds as an ATM.

Peter Greene writes about the report’s “Solutions”:

“CRPE wraps up the report with some proposed solutions to the problems listed above. These are…. well, these are solutions only if you decide that the interests of charter operators are the only interests that need to be served.

“Facility shortage? Make public districts hand over more publicly owned property to charter schools, change zoning laws, and get the legislature to underwrite the funding charters need to grab real estate. And create a commission to “coordinate” the handover of public facilities to private charter operators.

“Bad competition? Create some central planning authority to coordinate the expansion strategies of charters. How that translates into anything other than telling charters where they’re allowed to expand, and how THAT translates into anything other than charter operators saying, “No, I don’t want to” is not clear. CRPE acknowledges that no charters are saying, “Please give us less autonomy.”

“Staff? Do some recruiting. From wherever.

“Limited choices? Increase a diverse supply of operators. Man. Why is it that people whose whole argument is “Free market! Free Market!” do not understand how the free market works. The free market does not give you what you wish for– it gives you what it thinks it can make money giving you. It may be cool to think, “Wow! With 500 cable channels, we could have an arts channel and a stand-up comedy channel and a channel with nothing but music videos,” but the free market does not care what you think would be cool. Well, says CRPE, we could invest heavily in the more diverse models. Who would do that, and why?

“More data? CRPE thinks more data about the charter market is needed. Who would collect that, and why?

“Toxic local politics? Maybe charter operators could negotiate some sort of deal whereby they didn’t completely suck the financial life blood out of public schools (and the schools would hand over real estate just to, you know, be cool).. Maybe they could keep trying to pack local school boards. Maybe they could convince district leaders to “think of their jobs as overseeing a broad portfolio of options with various governance models” except of course some of the items in the portfolio they “oversee” would be completely outside of their control and would be hostile and damaging to the parts of their portfolio that they are actually, legally responsible. Honestly, most of these solutions boil down to “let’s wish real hard that public school people will just like us more because it’s inconvenient for us when they don’t.”

“Bottom line

“I’m happy to see the modern charter tide ebbing. And I’m not sad to see that folks like CRPE and the interviewees don’t really have a handle on why it’s happening. I agree that it doesn’t have to be this way, but it will be this way as long as modern charter boosters fail to acknowledge their major systemic issues, insist on inadequate funding in a zero-sum system, disenfranchise the public, underperform in educating students, and behave as businesses rather than schools. As I said above, time is not on their side, and neither is their inability to grasp the problems they create for public education in this country.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Lies, Privatization
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