Crazy Crawfish is after Jindal and White again.
And who can blame him?
These guys are almost beyond parody.
They have another wacky idea about education that will make someone very rich.
The kids–not so much.
Archives for category: On-Line Education
Want to know who is pulling the stings of he corporate reform movement?
Keep your eye on ALEC, short for the American Legislative Exchange Council.
This is a secretive group of about 2,000 state legislators, major corporations and far-right think tanks.
The goal of ALEC is privatization and advancing the interests of corporations.
ALEC drafts model laws and its members introduce them in their state, sometimes verbatim.
ALEC has model was for charter schools, vouchers, online charter schools, for-profit schools, and laws to weaken or eliminate collective bargaining, teacher tenure, and certification. It wants a free market.
Recently, ALEC debated Common Core and came close to passing a resolution opposing the standards as a federal takeover. But Jeb Bush intervened and persuaded his friends to remain neutral.
Some of the corporate sponsors dropped out last year because of ALEC’s sponsorship of the “Stand Your Ground” legislation in Florida, invoked by the man who killed an unarmed black teen.
Here is a list of ALEC’s education task force members.
You may see some of your state legislators on the list.
To learn more about ALEC, read this informative article by Julie Underwood, dean of the school of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
ALEC Exposed is the best website to learn about ALEC’s ambitious plans to privatize and deregulate many spheres of American society while benefitting big corporations.
When I blogged at Education Week, I wrote a post about ALEC. Its policy director wrote to say that President Obama shares many of ALEC’s goals. It is a strange time we live in.
Maine Democrats insist on a more careful review of the evidence about the track record of cyber charters before allowing K12 to open one in their state.
Governor Paul LePage is furious! He wants a K12 cyber charter to draw students and funding away from public schools and he sees no point in reviewing the evidence.
Meanwhile, Maine legislators are aware that K12 has gotten dismal results in other states. And they probably remember the exposé of Jeb Bush’s role in pushing for digital schooling in Maine. They may even have in mind the campaign contributions and lobbying that got the issue on the governor’s agenda.
When legislators start asking for evidence instead of blindly swallowing promises and campaign contributions, the days are numbered for the hucksters.
Keep your eye on this reporter, Colin Woodard, he is one sharp fellow. He may singlehandedly save the state of Maine hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Pennsylvania Secretary of Education rejected eight applications for new cyber charters.
The state already has 16 cyber charters, with 32,000 students, all drawing from the entire state. The 12 cyber charters that have been around long enough to be rated all failed to make adequate yearly progress.
The eight that were rejected hoped to enroll another 10,000 students, wgphich would have cost the state $350 millions over the next five years.
This might be good news, a ray of hope, but cynics think that the rejected schools will reapply and some will be approved.
Cyber charters have terrible records: high attrition rates, low test scores, low graduation rates.
But they invest in lobbying and once they get authorized, they are very profitable.
This is the release of emails in response to FOIL of “In the Public Interest.”
Read to see interchange between Bush foundation and corporate interests.
A reader in Michigan writes:
Hello, Diane,
I have been following your blog since November, and find that it really informs my work as a principal and as the State and Federal Relations Coordinator for MEMSPA (Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association) and NAESP. And I am interested in following what is going on around our country. One principal and teacher at a time, I am spreading the word.
This article was recently published in my school district’s local newspaper. Imagine: a legislature that does not know what the public wants, but just what special interests want.
Survey shows Michigan lawmakers and residents don’t see eye to eye on education reform
To view the contents on http://www.livingstondaily.com, go to:
http://www.livingstondaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201301230500/NEWS01/301230306
Keep fighting the good fight!
Stacey Urbin
Jem Muldoon has decided that it is time to speak and act. It is time to do what is right, not what is expedient. She wrote to tell me she has become an activist for education and will not follow orders that conflict with her knowledge and ethics. Hem is trying to find meaning and purpose at a time when public policy requires educators to do what they know is wrong.
She says, we are the ones we have been waiting for.
So she started a blog.
Here she explains how computer adaptive testing conflicts with genuine learning and is not even good testing. The kids quickly figure out how to game the system and turn it into a test of their ability to outwit the program. And here is no feedback about what they need to know.
The state of Oregon accuses two men of scamming the taxpayers by inflating enrollment figures in their online charter schools.
The schools–at least ten of them–were opened in conjunction with local school boards.
Apparently no one was supervising their claims.
The state wants the pair to repay $17 million plus nearly $3 million in costs and damages.
This is the danger of deregulation. There may be superintendents who would steal if they had the opportunity but they are watched by too many eyes. Maybe they get away with some thousands, but never millions.
I wrote earlier that the governor of Maine was angry about the rejection of four of five charter applications by the state authorizing committee. He said he wished they would just “go away.” Two of those rejected charters were for-profit online corporations that have hired well-connected lobbyists, their usual method of operation. A third was a Gulen charter, here described by Sharon Higgins, who runs a website called “Charter School Scandals” and follows the expansion of the Gulen network.
Sharon writes:
“One of the rejected schools, Queen City Academy Charter School, was a Gulen charter school. It did not take long after Maine established its charter school law for Gulenists to try to open one of their charter schools.
Click to access QueenCityAcademyCharterSchool.pdf
The Gulen movement advanced their US activities into Maine last year. They hosted their first state capitol event for politicians last spring and have already taken at least one group of Maine lawmakers (plus spouses) to Turkey for their standard dog and pony show — a complementary trip that delivers a sustained dose of biased information delivery, concentrated lobbying, and constant ingratiation mixed with sightseeing and periodic visits to Gulenist institutions.
http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=Portal+News&id=368790&v=article2011
http://tinyurl.com/anw59r9
The lead applicant for the QCA charter school was also the outreach coordinator for the organization that sponsored the capitol event and who met with Governor LePage last spring. Other QCA founders have been involved with a Gulen charter school in Massachusetts for the past six years. There are lots and lots of the usual Gulen movement “web of organization” connections.
Very, very heavy marketing on behalf of Turkey and Turkish culture has been taking place all across the US for the past 13 years or so (including at the Gulen charter schools). It is definitely not by happenstance and is not being done by just any group, nor by any random assortment of Turkish people. It is the coordinated work of individuals who are Fethullah Gulen “inspired.”
http://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/gulenist-non-profits.html
Members of the Gulen movement are heavily involved with trying to help advance Fethullah Gulen’s vision of Turkey becoming a powerful global figure once again. One of Lesley Stahl’s interview subjects in her 60 Minutes report — and the only Gulen movement observer/critic in Turkey who wasn’t too afraid to be interviewed — assessed this group as a personality cult.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57433131/u.s-charter-schools-tied-to-powerful-turkish-imam/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Whichever way the Gulen movement should be most accurately classified, at the very least it is a group which is widely acknowledged to be secretive as well as extremely controversial in Turkey. Oh yeah, and it is operating the largest network of charter schools in the United States with taxpayers’ money (over $400M/year at this point). If efforts in Maine and Virginia are eventually successful, two more states will be added to the 26 where Gulen charter schools are operating. Hizmet (how members refer to themselves) constantly talks about the importance of “dialogue” but it will NOT engage in a frank one with the American public. A broader exposure, full recognition, and a solid grasp of this situation, along with a heightened level of discussion and analysis, is needed asap!”
North Carolina is a plum market for the online for-profit charter industry.
Today, the state board of education agreed to allow them to open in the state but set some limits.
Here is a link to a report on the decision by North Carolina Policy Watch:
“Virtual charter schools will face restrictions if they want to open up in North Carolina.
The N.C. State Board of Education voted today to adopt a policy that would require the online-based schools to adhere to a significantly lower funding formula ($3504 per student) than brick-and-mortar charter schools, maintain high graduation rates and low withdrawal rates of students. Schools will also need to keep a ratio of one teacher for every 50 students and keep graduation rates within 10 percent of the state average (80 percent), and can’t have withdrawal rates higher than 15 percent in two out of three years.”
Some legislators were unhappy that the state board of education imposed restrictions on the industry. Online charters get dismal results, but they are heavily favored by Jeb Bush and Bob Wise, and of course, the technology industry. They are also a favorite cause of the far-right organization ALEC, which counts some N.C. legislators among its members.
Two for-profit online corporations have already sent letters of intent to the state board of education: Connections, which is owned by Pearson; and K12, which is owned by the Milken brothers and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Both have hired lobbyists to help them in the legislature, which may eliminate the restrictions imposed by the state board of education.
The bottom line: ALEC and for-profit corporations win, kids in N.C. lose.
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