Archives for category: Privatization

Steven Singer writes about what is wrong with Speaker of the House Mike Turzai’s bill to authorize vouchers for the underfunded public schools of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: In a word, everything!

He writes:

The best way to help a struggling public school is to cannibalize it.

 

 

At least that’s what Betsy DeVos thinks – and so does her Pennsylvania puppet Mike Turzai.

 

 

The Republican Speaker of the state House is expected to propose a school voucher bill Monday that will treat Harrisburg Schools as nothing more than carrion fit for plunder by school privatization vultures.

Sure the district is in state receivership after decades of neglect and bad decisions by the elected school board.

But instead of helping the school and its students get back on their feet, Turzai proposes siphoning away as much as $8.5 million in state funding set aside for the school’s aide. Alternatively, that money would go to help offset some of the cost of sending Harrisburg students to private or parochial schools if they so desire.

However in lieu of any safeguards to make sure these children fleeing from the public system receive the same quality of services required by state law, Turzai’s bill goes out of its way to protect the vultures!

Under House Bill 1800, private or parochial schools won’t be held as accountable for how they spend the money they plunder from Harrisburg nor will it force them to enroll all comers like authentic public schools are required to do.

Specifically, non-public schools would be allowed to take public tax dollars but refuse any students they wished – based on gender, race, religion, even special educational needs.

 It’s bad policy and bad politics.

Essentially Turzai is proposing we swoop in and tear the district to pieces – for its own good.

The bill would force state taxpayers to pay for half the cost of the voucher program – essentially making us shell out our hard earned money for two parallel education systems.

It’s unclear where the other half of the money would even come from that the state is supposed to match.

Thinking people know this is nonsense on so many levels. If the public schools have problems, there’s no reason to believe school vouchers hold the answer. After all, the best way to save yourself from drowning is to patch up the boat you’re already on. You shouldn’t jump to a lifeboat willy-nilly with no assurance that your escape craft is more seaworthy than the one you’re already sailing on.

And in fact, there is no evidence that voucher schools are better than authentic public schools.

Singer proceeds to review the evidence against vouchers. It is overwhelming. Vouchers do not help students or schools. They harm them. 

 

Republican Mike Turzai, Speaker of the House in Pennsylvania, is encouraging the state to adopt the Betsy DeVos agenda for diverting public funds to religious and private schools.

Turzai’s agenda is described here by Lawrence Feinberg, a school board member in Haverford Township and director of the Keystone State Education Coalition.

Feinberg writes:

The 2022 race for governor’s race has begun, and Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai wants to make it clear that he shares Betsy DeVos’ vision for privatization of public education.

In a recent Philadelphia Inquirer opinion piece, Turzai, R-Allegheny, touted our state “as a gold standard with respect to funding public school districts”, completely ignoring the fact that Pennsylvania is home to the widest per pupil funding gap between wealth and poor districts in the country.

Under his leadership, the Pennsylvania Legislature has been negligent, willfully and deliberately ignoring the state’s historic gross inequity in the distribution of school funding and locking students in poorer districts into their underfunded and under resourced predicament. A school funding lawsuit is pending, with the trial tentatively set to begin in summer 2020.

In fiscal 2015-16, only 36.8 percent of aggregate education funding came from the state while 57.2 percent came from local sources, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s “Annual Financial Reports.”

The U.S. Census’ “Annual Survey of School System Finances” data from fiscal year 2015 ranks Pennsylvania 47th out of the 50 states in state support for public schools.

Instead of addressing the funding issue, he has consistently and aggressively promoted anything but democratically governed public schools that are accountable to taxpayers. While he supported the Financial Recovery Act of 2012 setting in motion a plan for distressed school districts to get back on track, he is thwarting that effort by ensuring that such districts remain in financial distress.

His signature tax credit program, which diverts public tax dollars to private and religious schools, skirts the Pennsylvania Constitution which explicitly says that “no money raised for the support of the public schools of the Commonwealth shall be appropriated to or used for the support of any sectarian school.”

 

Larry Lee, an education advocate and blogger in Alabama, posted the story of a North Carolina mother who enrolled her sons in charter school, taking a blind leap of faith. She is a diligent mother, so she attended board meetings and followed her sons’ progress closely. But then she inquired about who and what was behind this charter school and she was gobsmacked. Lee was interested in the story because the same sharp operators are behind the controversial Woodland Prep charter school in Alabama.

Lee writes:

Alyson Ford is a mother in the Charlotte, NC area.  It wasn’t long after she enrolled one of her sons in a charter school that she began to feel something was amiss.  Soon she was attending board meetings of the school and digging into financial records.  What she found was disturbing and even led to conversations with the FBI.

What does this have to do with Alabama?  Many of the players Alyson has uncovered are involved with American Charter Development of Springville, Utah.  This company is heavily involved with both LEAD Academy in Montgomery and Woodland Prep in Washington County and has close ties to Soner Tarim.

Here is Alyson’s story:

“I have two boys.  One has only attended charter schools. The other has attended traditional public schools, as well as charter schools.

My son enrolled at Lakeside Charter Academy in November 2017, during their rebranding and name change from Thunderbird Preparatory Academy. He stayed through the 2018-2019 school year (4th grade). My stepson began at Lakeside in January 2018, for 4th grade. We withdrew him at the start of the 2018-2019 school year.

We chose the charter school route for several reasons. The biggest being that one son has a severe peanut allergy. The thought of him  eating lunch in a cafeteria, surrounded by peanut butter sandwiches was terrifying.  Our district schools are much larger than charters as well. We liked the idea of smaller schools for our boys. We like the sense of community offered at many charter schools.

We were aware of the negative press since Thunderbird opened in 2014. I studied the North Carolina Charter School Advisory Board meeting minutesl. The school was frequently in trouble and on the verge of having their charter revoked.

We toured the school and found the interim principal amazing. She was the reason we took the leap of faith. We were cautiously optimistic when enrolling at Lakeside Charter Academy (formerly Thunderbird Prep).

Given the school’s past I vowed to be very involved and attend board meetings. I was especially curious about the EB5 investors involved with the school. Even though I repeatedly asked questions regarding this I never received much clarity. Sadly, the more I attended board meetings the more unanswered questions I had.

So she started looking for the answers to her questions. You may be surprised to see what she learned.

 

Parent activist Lynn Davenport posted this warning about a “public-private partnership” that leaves out the public. Corporate interests are plotting to privatize public schools while hiding behind the facade of the “portfolio model,” a term used to deceive the public of Grand Theft Public Schools.

Davenport writes:

The new oil in Midland is student data. The Midland Collective Impact initiative under Educate Texas was launched in October 2015. I’ve written extensively on what “collective impact” really means and how there’s no “public” in public-private partnerships. Although Educate Texas concluded its work with the initiative in April 2017, Educate Midland continues with the collective impact framework which is one giant data grab. Key Midland funders include the Abell-Hanger Foundation, Scharbauer Foundation and Henry Foundation. Scharbauer Foundation wrote a letter to the TEA endorsing the Transformation Zone grant and Abell-Hanger Foundation piloted an outcome measurement system.

What data did Educate Midland and MISD give to them? Do parents have to consent to the data being collected for use by foundations? As a charter operator governing partner does the Educate Midland board have access to academic and behavior data of children to be used for “educational research.”

The “portofolio model” allows appointed boards to govern public schools with taxpayer funds. Article VII of the Texas Constitution makes provision for public free education. If we replace elected trustees with appointed boards, that is taxation without representation. Once our voice is removed, we will likely never get it back.

To read more about the scandalous effort to privatize the public schools in Midland, read Lynn Davenport’s additional report here. 

 

A friend share this link about a program in which the United Negro College Fund is funded by the far-right Walton Family Foundation to give summer internships to young African Americans to work in organizations that undermine public education, unions, and the teaching profession. The purpose of the program is to build a “robust pipeline of African Americans engaged in education reform in America.”

All of the summer interns will serve with trusted arms of the ultra-conservative movement.

Summer Internship – One of the principal elements of the paid summer internship program that exposes fellows to professional careers at leading K-12 education organizations and schools focused on education reform. Specifically, fellows are deployed as interns to organizations and schools located in such cities as Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago, Indianapolis, Memphis and Nashville. Examples of internship host organizations include Teach for America, New Schools Venture Fund, Paul Public Charter School, BUILD, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Thomas B. Fordham Research Institute and Stand for Children. During their internships, fellows apply what they have learned, acquire new skills, gain an understanding of the professional needs of education reform organizations and make meaningful contributions.

You can be certain that none of these bright young people will be assigned as interns at the NAACP, which called for a moratorium on charter schools in 2016.

Nor will any be detailed to work for Journey for Justice, a grassroots civil rights group that fights for democratically controlled community public schools.

Nor do I expect that any will have a chance to learn about the Walton assault on public education by spending a summer as an intern for the Network for Public Education.

They are not likely to have the chance to offer their services at any of the scores of local and state organizations that are fighting the power of billionaires like the Waltons and could really use their help.

Instead they will be trained up by the faithful servants of the privatizers and the oligarchy.

 

Shawgi Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth College in New York.

He points out that “More than 765 Charter Schools Have Closed in Three Years.”

This is what Disrupters refer to as “high-quality seats.” Here today, gone tomorrow.

Currently, about 3.2 million students are enrolled in roughly 7,000 privately-operated charter schools across the country. This represents less than 7% of all students and 7% of all schools in the country.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 765 charter schools closed between 2014-15 and 2016-2017, leaving thousands of families stressed, abandoned, dislocated,and angry. This figure represents more than one out of ten charter schools in the country by today’s numbers. The real closure figure is likely higher. To be sure, more than 3,000 charter schools have closed in under three decades.

The top three reasons privately-operated charter schools close are financial malfeasance, poor academic performance, and low enrollment.

With regard to academic performance, the Washington Post (November 1, 2019) reminds us that:

When you take all charters and all public schools into consideration, students at charters do worse than those at public schools. According to the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, public school students in fourth, eighth and 12th grades outperform charter school students in math, reading and science.

It is also worth recalling that the vast majority of high-performing nations do not have charter schools.

Today, nearly 60% of charter schools are in urban settings where schools tend to be under-funded, over-tested, constantly-shamed, and attended mostly by poor and low-income minority students. Charter school advocates prefer to target urban schools because this is where they can make the most profit given economies of scale and other factors.

While choice” has worked out well for major owners of capital, what good is “choice” when it cannot deliver stable, reliable, high-quality education free of corruption, segregation, and overpaid administrators? How does funneling billions of dollars annually from public schools to unstable privately-operated charter schools that frequently perform poorly help the economy, education, or society? Do pay-the-rich schemes like charter schools advance the national interest?

There is no justification for the existence of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools. They do not provide a net public benefit. Endless news reports show that charter schools are always mired in scandal and controversy. It is time to stop bashing public education, reject the hype surrounding charter schools, fully fund all public schools, and vest real decision-making power in the hands of the public. The rich must be deprived of their ability to privatize public education with impunity. The content, purpose, and direction of education must not be in the hands of privatizers, neoliberals, and corporate school reformers.

 

Nancy Bailey read a list of organizations who were blaming teachers for not adhering to the “science” of reading and thus blaming teachers for NAEP reading scores.

She got steamed and pointed out that none of these individuals or organizations criticizing teachers are known as teachers themselves.

She got so steamed that she names names in this post. 

These are the organizations, she says, that have the sheer audacity to blame teachers for what they themselves can’t do!

They write the policies that constrain teachers but take no responsibility when their policies fail.

Busybodies! When are they held accountable?

After listing the groups, she concludes:

This conversation should take place, because something is wrong when parents are unhappy with their child’s schooling. It isn’t a debate that will be won by yelling at each other on social media, but by working together at the school level.

It should include a state department of education in each state that investigates problems and isn’t about getting rid of public education. The U.S. Department of Education should also be working to better address the controversy surrounding reading and what’s behind denying students with reading disabilities their IDEA rights.

Universities should review how they teach reading, but they also shouldn’t be forced by these groups to destroy reading practices that have worked for years.

It is, however, difficult to do this at this time. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and the previous education secretaries, never taught, never studied reading in a university setting or worked to remediate student difficulties, and have themselves been about the business of destroying schools and de-professionalizing the teaching profession.

If you think the NAEP scores are poor, look at the groups mentioned here. It has been a rigged game for years!

Campbell Brown was a CNN anchor. Then she became the new face of the Education Disruption movement after the disappearance of Michelle Rhee. Brown advocated for charters and vouchers and she opposed teachers’ unions and teacher tenure. She claimed in various articles in the New York City press that the schools were overrun by teachers who were sexual predators, protected by the union. She created a news site called “The 74” to express her views; it was funded by the usual cast of billionaires (Walton, Bloomberg, Gates, Broad, etc.). She is anti-public school, anti-union, anti-tenure and pro-privatization. When Betsy DeVos was chosen as Secretary of Education, Campbell Brown acknowledged that she was a personal friend and that Betsy funded “The 74,” while Brown served on the board of Betsy’s pro-voucher American Federation for Children.

Those with a longish memory might recall that Brown started the “Partnership for Educational Justice” to file court cases in several states in an effort to destroy teacher tenure–a copycat of the Vergara lawsuit in California, which was eventually tossed out by the state’s highest court. Thus far, all of the PEJ lawsuits have also been thrown out by state judges who said that teacher tenure was unrelated to test scores. (There are probably more tenured teachers in affluent districts than in low-performing, high-poverty districts.)

Then Campbell Brown was chosen by Mark Zuckerberg to be in charge of media relations for Facebook.

Popular Information revealed the multiple roles that Campbell Brown is now playing.

The 74 = has heaped scorn on Elizabeth Warren since she released her K-12 plan, which proposes an end to federal support for new charter schools.

The 74 has (not surprisingly) lavished praise on Betsy DeVos.

Now Brown is in charge of deciding what news gets featured on Facebook.

While Brown served as editor-in-chief of The 74, the site featured at least 11 pieces from Eric Owens, an editor at The Daily Caller. Owens “has a long history of penning racially insensitive, sexist, and transphobic attacks on students and teachers.” 

Owens, for example, wrote in The Daily Caller that white privilege is a “radical and bizarre political theory that white people enjoy a bunch of wonderful privileges while everyone else suffers under the yoke of invisible oppression.” In another Daily Caller column, Owens called college students “delicate, immature wusses who become traumatized, get the vapors and seek professional counseling any time they face adversity.”

Owens is also obsessed with female teachers who sexually assault male students, repeatedly writing exploitative stories about the incidents.

After Brown joined Facebook, The Daily Caller was named an official Facebook fact-checking partner, despite The Daily Caller’s history of inaccurate reporting. 

Brown thinks Breitbart is a “quality” news source

Brown’s role with The 74 raises further questions about the ideological underpinnings of Facebook’s nascent news tab, which has not been rolled out to all users. Brown’s team elected to include Breitbart — an unreliable and noxious right-wing site that was literally caught laundering white nationalist talking points —  among the 200 “quality” sources included in the launch. 

Of course, Mark Zuckerberg hates Elizabeth Warren too, because she has talked about breaking up the big tech monopolies, such as Facebook, and taxing the personal wealth of billionaires.

Political Morning Education reports a big event in D.C. tonight where partisans of the test-and-punish education policies of the past twenty years will gather to rededicate themselves to their failed programs. Will these advocates for accountability accept any accountability for the misguided practices they have foisted on American education? Will they hold themselves accountable for the billions of dollars spent on testing and privatization that should have been spent on reducing class sizes and raising teachers salaries and opening health clinics in schools? Wouldn’t it be something if they invited someone like Jonathan Kozol or Anthony Cody to explain why NCLB and RTTT failed and how to have a better approach to teaching and learning other than carrots and sticks?

 

BUSHES SPOTLIGHT READING, LITERACY AMID GRIM ASSESSMENTS: Events starting tonight at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will bring together members of the Bush family, best-selling authors and entertainers, philanthropists, and education and business leaders to celebrate reading and mark the foundation’s 30th anniversary.

— “I believe that literacy is an essential foundation for democracy,” former first lady Laura Bush said in a statement provided to POLITICO. Bush, one of tonight’s honorary co-chairs, will deliver remarks during a program that will include a special performance by country music singer Tim McGraw and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham, co-authors of “Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music that Made a Nation.”

— The events, including the foundation’s inaugural summit on adult literacy on Wednesday, coincide with grim results on the Nation’s Report Card and an announcement today from the Collaborative for Student Success about an effort with 11 other organizations to address the results.

— Among the organizations are The Education Trust, the National Urban League, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the National Association of Elementary School Principals. They’re calling for, among other things, increasing federal investment in evidence-based, comprehensive literacy efforts at the state and local levels.

— “The persistent gaps in reading achievement for students from low-income backgrounds, students of color, English learners, and students with disabilities on the NAEP require urgent action,” said John B. King Jr., former Education secretary and president and CEO of The Education Trust.

Grassroots Arkansas reports that the teachers of Little Rock will strike this Thursday. It will be a one-day strike. The State Board of Education (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Walton family) stripped the local union of its collective bargaining rights and is trying to destroy and privatize public education in that city. For the billionaire Waltons, Little Rock is the petri dish that is near at hand. They have so many petri dishes, all of which have failed. Why don’t they leave this small but historic district alone? (Answer: Because the Waltons want everything; having $150 billions has made them willful and arrogant.) The state took control of the district in 2015 and has agreed to return limited control, with a powerless board still controlled by the state.

Little Rock educators have announced a strike this Thursday, November 14, to demand that the state stop its re-segregation plan, return democracy through full local control of the LRSD, and recognize the union’s bargaining rights. Our educators and students need all of us to stand up for them before unlicensed subs and private companies complete the destruction and further segregation of our public education system.

There are several ways that you can support students and teachers. If you are a caregiver, please do whatever you can to keep your students home on Thursday, or send them to one of the childcare sites to be announced soon. The money follows the students, and the only power we have is if the students stay home. If they go to school, they will be babysat by unlicensed subs. Other ways you can support include:

  • Donate and share the Bread for Ed campaign to feed kids while the schools are shut down.

  • Tuesday and Wednesday: Pass out flyers at schools during drop-off and pickup times. Go by the AEA building at 1500 W 4th Street or call them at (501)375-4611 to see which schools most need coverage.

  • Tuesday and Wednesday: 4:00-7:00 Sign making at the AEA building. 1500 W 4th St by the Capitol.

  • Thursday: Picketing at schools from 7-9:30. Picket the State Board of Education meeting at 11:00. Sign up here.

Together, we can reclaim democracy and a world-class education for ALL students!

STRIKE DATE SET IN ARKANSAS: The Little Rock Education Association is calling for one locally elected city school board with full decision-making authority following the state’s takeover of the district in January 2015. The union planned the strike for the day of the next state board of education meeting, when the district is on the agenda.

— The state board last month voted to stop recognizing the union as a bargaining agent for its members. The state board also voted to return control of Little Rock schools to a locally elected school board by 2020, but limited its authority.

— “They specifically stated that the school board, once elected, would not be able to reinstate our recognition, nor would they be able to hire or fire a superintendent and that the commissioner of education would still have veto power over any decisions that the state or that the school board makes,” Knapp Gordon said.

— The announcement said the union is working with #OneLRSD to stop Gov. Asa Hutchinson and his appointed state board from “segregating the city’s public schools.” The board last month backed away from a plan to divide the district under separate governing systems amid complaints that it would segregate the district. But Knapp Gordon said “by retaining control over the district, they still get to make those decisions that will lead to the resegregation of our school district.”