The Network for Public Education has created a toolkit to equip you to fight privatization of our public schools. In it, you will find concise summaries of important issues, with links to research, and ways that you can join with your colleagues , friends, and neighbors to block the Trump-DeVos agenda.
For the full report click here.
Alan Singer writes here about the resistance to the DeVos-Trump miseducation agenda, which has no core idea other than to replace public schools with charters and vouchers.
If you see the photograph that accompanies his article, you will recognize the DeVos smirk. It is the smirk of an entitled billionaire who knows what is best for you and everyone else, and who takes instruction from no one.
The article focuses on the Network for Public Education’s “Toolkit,” an assembly of brief answers to thorny questions like, “Are charter schools truly public schools?”
It also contains an interactive state-by-state map that will be updated to show which states support their public schools and which have succumbed to various privatization schemes.
Here is the answer to the question above:
Are charter schools truly public schools? Charter schools are contractors that receive taxpayer money to operate privately controlled schools that do not have the same rules and responsibilities as public schools. Investigations of charter school operations in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and elsewhere have found numerous cases where charters used taxpayer money to procure school buildings, supplies, and equipment that they retained ownership of, even if the school closed. In most states, charter schools are exempt from most state and local laws, rules, regulations, and policies governing public and private schools, including those related to personnel and students. Calling charter schools “public schools” because they receive public tax dollars is like calling defense contractors public companies. There are so many substantive differences between charter schools and traditional public schools that charters can’t be defined as public schools. Our communities deserve a school system that is truly public and democratically governed by the community they serve.
The Toolkit has footnotes for each response.
To defend your public schools, you must be informed and active. The Toolkit is a great resource to help you.
The Network for Public Education has created a toolkit to help you fight back against the DeVostation of our public schools.
Here are the one-pagers you need to answer questions about charters, vouchers, and privatization.
Here is an interactive map that shows where every state has gone with the DeVos agenda.
Here is the information you need to get involved, tell your friends, share with your neighbors, and fight the attacks on public education.
By the way, the NPE membership has climbed to 350,000. We have members in every state, ready to write their legislators and to schedule meetings with them. We are helping our members organize to support their public schools.
Please join us!
The Network for Public Education invites School Board members to join our new group dedicated to fighting privatization of public schools.
https://npeaction.org/2017/03/03/7286/
We will keep you informed about political activity in your state and introduce you to other dedicated School Board members.
Donald Trump’s selection of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education set off a seismic reaction among parents, educators, and other concerned citizens across the nation. Never, in recent memory, has a Cabinet selection inspired so much opposition. The phone lines of Senators were jammed. People who never gave much thought to what happens in Washington suddenly got angry. Snippets of her Senate confirmation hearings appeared again and again on newscasts. It was widely known that she was a billionaire who has spent most of her adult life fighting public education and advocating for privatization via charter schools and vouchers for religious schools.
She is Secretary and has pledged that her hope is to open more charters, funnel more money to cybercharters, encourage more homeschooling, and encourage state programs for vouchers, much like the Florida tax-credit program that has funneled $1 billion to organizations that pay for students to attend mostly religious schools.
There have been many state referenda on vouchers. The public has rejected every one of them, including the one funded by Betsy DeVos in Michigan in 2000 and by Jeb Bush in Florida in 2012.
Citizens must work together to block every federal or state effort to defund public schools.
There are two ways to stop DeVos.
One, join local and state organizations that are fighting privatization. Contact and join the Network for Public Education to get the names of organizations in your state.
Two, opt out of federally mandated tests. That sends a loud and clear message that you will not allow your child to participate in federal efforts to micromanage your school. Whatever you want to know about your state’s test scores can be learned by reviewing its scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. For example, we know that Michigan students have declined significantly on tests of reading and math–especially in fourth grade–since the DeVos family decided to control education policy in their home state.
The state tests are a sham. Students learn nothing from them, since they are not allowed to discuss the questions or answers. They never learn which questions they got wrong. Teachers learn nothing from them. The scores come back too late to inform instruction, and the contents are shrouded in secrecy. The tests are a waste of valuable instructional time and scarce resources. They teach conformity. They do not recognize or reward creativity or wit. They reward testing corporations.
Say no to DeVos by opting out. Send a message to Congress that its mandate for annual testing is wrong. Revolt against it. Teach your children the value of civil disobedience and critical thinking. Defend authentic education. Resist! Opt out.
Thank you, Betsy Deavos, for awakening the parents, teachers, and other concerned citizens about the risk of privatizing our public schools and handing them over to entrepreneurs and religious institutions.
We will fight you. We will stand together against your schemes and malevolent dreams. The public paid for our schools, and you can’t take them away.
The Network for Public Education and NPE Action will lead the fight.
Thanks to DeVos, our membership went from 22,000 to more than 300,00 and it is growing daily.
Help us push back.
RESIST!!!!!
Please take the time to read this letter from Carol Burris, the CEO of the Network for Public Education and the NPE Action Fund.
Carol describes NPE’s plans to continue the struggle for our public schools.
We know what the DeVos agenda is, and we know she will tout the failed remedies of corporate reform.
Make no mistake: corporate reform is the status quo! It has had the unrelenting support of the U.S. Department of Education since 2001. It has the support of a long list of billionaires and foundations. Federal policy from NCLB TO Race to the Top to ESSA is the status quo. It is policy built on the assumption that schools will get better if the state threatens teachers and principals with punishments and rewards. Many schools have been stigmatized and closed based on false assumptions. Many educators have unfairly been terminated based on flawed evaluation methods.
We want to create a strong and powerful grassroots network of defenders of public education. We want to help you connect with allies in your state, your district, your hometown.
We now have more than 300,000 members, ready to join in our crusade. Be strong and join with us. (“Somewhere beyond the barricades, is there a world you’d like to see?” Les Miserables). Is there a different, better kind of school you’d like to see? We can dream it. We can do it. But first we must survive the next four years.
Diane
The Network for Public Education will watch what Betsy DeVos does and report it to you immediately.
We will keep you informed about what the privatizers are doing in your state and community.
We will help you connect with other people in your state who are mobilizing to stop privatization.
The fight to save public education will happen in communities and districts, at the grassroots level.
We ask you to join us, become active, send us action alerts about meetings, protests and demonstrations in your district or town or city so we can help you get the news out.
Here is information you can use:
Get everyone you can to join NPE. Sign them up
http://networkforpubliceducation.org/become-a-member/
Tell others on Facebook to join. We will be mobilizing in the months ahead.
Create a local group in support of public schools. Use Facebook or create a website. Then join our Grassroots Network.
http://networkforpubliceducation.org/grassroots-education-network-3/
Read our emails. We will be regularly launching campaigns at the national and state level.
Make a donation. If we are to fight this we will need funds. http://networkforpubliceducation.org/about-npe/donate/
Together, we will build a movement so powerful that we can beat Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and all others who aim to privatize our public schools. Together we can keep the for-profit privateers and frauds out of our schools.
Work with us. We need your help.
I hope you will make plans to join me and many other advocates of real reform when the Network for Public Education holds its annual meeting in Oakland in 2017. The dates are October 14 and 15, 2017.
Become a member of the resistance!
NPE meetings are always exciting. We have wonderful and inspiring speakers; great panels; and a spirit of camaraderie that you are not likely to find anywhere else. You will meet the parent leaders and bloggers that you have read about. And you will make new friends, while finding out about how to keep public education alive during these next four years–and beyond.
Previous conferences have been held in Austin; Chicago; and Raleigh. It is time for a West Coast gathering.
Save the date. And watch the website of the Network for Public Education for updates.
The Network for Public Educations vows to carry the fight for a qualified Secretary of Education to the Senate floor.
We now have more than 300,000 members, located in every state.
We will fight for a Secretary of Education who will uphold the laws, support the right to an education for all children, and strengthen our public schools.
NPE just released this statement:
Although disappointed by the decision of the HELP committee to send the vote on Betsy DeVos to the Senate floor, The Network for Public Education (NPE) was pleased by the strong opposition to DeVos. All Democrats voted against DeVos. Senators Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska while voting to move her nomination forward, would not commit to voting for her when the vote comes to the full Senate.
“Betsy DeVos put a spotlight on the threat to public education that charters-both online and brick and mortar, and private voucher schools pose to our democratically governed, community public schools. Public school advocates across the nation spoke out. Our campaign against DeVos generated over 600,000 emails and thousands of phone calls and letters to the Senate. Most Americans do not want an unregulated, privatized school system paid for by American taxpayers. That is what DeVos represents,” said NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris.
NPE President, Diane Ravitch, believes the massive political donations by DeVos was the driving factor behind her appointment. “We are disappointed but not surprised that Betsy DeVos was approved by the Senate HELP committee, despite the fact that she is completely unqualified for the job by experience or knowledge or any other criteria. As she has acknowledged, she and her family have given millions of dollars to the Republican party, including to members of the committee that just approved her. We weep for the children of America, knowing that this woman will launch an assault on their community public schools, as she did in Michigan. Since her choice theology was implemented in Michigan, that state’s rankings on national tests have plummeted, and Detroit–now flooded with charters–remains the lowest performing urban district on national tests. We will continue to fight this nomination as it moves forward.“
NPE Executive Board member, Phyllis Bush, lives in Indiana, a state the embraces the DeVos philosophy. “While the members of the HELP committee can talk about the importance of using a business model to reform public schools, the ultimate cost to Indiana is landing on the backs of students. Privatization reform has resulted in larger class sizes, tests that provide little useful information, school letter grades that reward zip codes, the elimination of essential services in public schools, and a critical teacher shortage.”
The Network for Public Education intends to mobilize its over 300,000 supporting members to continue the fight against DeVos’ appointment.
“When it comes to our fight for adequately funded, democratically-governed public schools, we make ‘no excuses’.” Our neighborhood schools made our country great. We will not allow them to be destroyed,” Burris said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 