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Tim Jackson: Why Little Rock Parents Cannot Trust Arkansas’ Governor or State Board

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
3

Tim Jackson is a parent with children in the Little Rock School District and an active member of Grassroots Arkansas, which has been fighting for the restoration of democratic control of the LRSD public schools. He is also a film-maker. He attended the state school board meeting that theoretically restored local control.

He wrote this account:

ARKANSAS STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING – 10.09.19

Yesterday’s meeting of the Arkansas State Board of Education was another exercise in futility for the true stakeholders in the Little Rock School District. Don’t believe the headlines that local control of the district has been returned or will be retuned anytime soon to an elected school board. All the State Board did yesterday was trash an ill conceived and inequitable framework for reconstituting the district that it announced last month but could not sustain in the face of political and public opinion headwinds.

Board Chairman Diane Zook made it clear – much to the chagrin of Board members who were trying to appear conciliatory – that nothing changed yesterday. And Zook has no intention for things to change until the District is recreated in the image of the prevailing “business knows best” education model that bedevils American public education. As if American public education needed another self-important, self-entitled, shortsighted, external force bedeviling it.

I sat on the front row at yesterday’s meeting for eight hours until I was invited to leave by the Arkansas State Police who were brought in as a show of force by the board. Chairman Zook – whose personal animus toward the Little Rock School District is both unreasonable and inexhaustible – read twice from a prepared statement that anticipated more public outcry to what she knew was coming later in the meeting. We were told yesterday that 1) Police officers would escort anyone who spoke out of turn from the building. 2) Anyone who was escorted from the building yesterday would be banned from speaking in future meetings. 3) The Chairman would decide what constituted “out of turn.”

One of Ms. Zook’s frequent rebuttals when we cry “taxation without representation” over the State’s heavy-handed and demonstrably underhanded takeover is to remind us that we have a Community Advisory Board. Under the terms of the State takeover the Community Advisory Board of the Little Rock School District has no authority, no public accountability, and members serve solely at the pleasure of the State’s Education Commissioner, Johnny Key – a man so unqualified for the job that the Arkansas Legislature had to reduce the qualifications for the job in order for Governor Asa Hutchinson to appoint him.

An influential member of that Citizens Advisory Board stood in the parking lot of the Arkansas Education Building a month ago and told me that the nine members of the State Board of Education are the Governor’s choice for overseeing public education in Arkansas. This CAB member elaborated that under the Arkansas Constitution those nine appointed people don’t owe the people of Little Rock “a vote, a voice, or an explanation for anything they do.” I was told that if I didn’t like, I should go change the Arkansas Constitution.

So, that’s our representation. That’s what Diane Zook wants us to feel good about.

The State Board never fails to create chaos at the end of its meetings – at least at meetings in which the Little Rock School District is on the agenda. Yesterday was no exception. In a flurry of confusion and a complete flaunting of acceptable procedure the Board voted 9-0 to cease recognition of the Little Rock Educators Association as the sole contract negotiator for teachers and other full time support staff in the Little Rock School District. The LREA has been under attack since the State takeover and FOIA requests bear out that the Board’s plan for the LREA hasalways been death for the union by a thousand cuts. Yesterday the Board twisted the knife.

This action did not kill the union. But it is another serious attack and clear evidence that Zook and Company do not have a plan for the Little Rock School District but they do have a vision for it. It’s a vision that values the haves and patronizes the have-nots while expanding a privatized system of public education that we will pay for as a society for the next 50 years.

Tim Jackson | tjackson@category-one.com 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Lies, Little Rock, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Arkansas: Inside the Shadowy World of the School “Choice” Movement, Part 2

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
2

Cathy Frye continues her revelations about her three years working as communications director for a Walton-funded organization deceptively named the Arkansas Public Schools Resource Center (APSRC). As is by now universally known, the Walton family supports charters and vouchers, not public schools. As is less well known, privatizers create organizations with misleading names to fool the suckers. As she explained in part 1, 85% of the rural public school districts in the state of Arkansas pay good money to belong to an organization that does not serve their interests.

She writes:

APSRC uses Constant Contact to email its members. Recipients are divided into various groupings. Some emails are sent only to open-enrollment charter schools. Others only to traditional districts. And still others to anyone and everyone. 

This is where things get dicey. 

You see, APSRC Executive Director Scott Smith is but one of three Arkansas Walton stepchildren vying for the attention of wealthy absentee parents. 

You’ve got Smith representing APSRC, which purports to represent and serve both traditional public school districts and open-enrollment charters. 

Next up is Gary Newton of Arkansas Learns, who happens to be the nephew of Arkansas State Board of Education Chairman Diane Zook. 

And then we have The Reform Alliance, which currently uses a voucher program to “help” special-education students, foster kids, etc… attend private schools  – many of which are faith-based – and to give up any rights they have under the IDEA Act. (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)

All three organizations lobby state lawmakers on behalf of the Waltons. All three are at all times pursuing often contradictory/opposing passages of legislation. All three are always, always at odds with one another. 

The 2017 General Assembly proved to be a challenge for me. If I wrote about private-school-voucher bills, Smith fretted. I found that interesting. I mean, if APSRC truly represents and supports public schools, you’d think he would be right up front testifying before lawmakers with other membership organizations – the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, for example. Or maybe the Arkansas School Board Association. 

And you would think that I would be able to freely report on such bills, testimony and reactions. 

Nope.  Because – horrors! – I might offend Arkansas Learns and/or The Reform Alliance. In other words, I might have angered the generous benefactor of all three competing nonprofits – the Walton Family Foundation. 

Three “competing” organizations all serving one master: the Waltons.

Then she discovered a curious fact. The Waltons were funneling their money to the APSRC through a university.

It was around that time (2017) when I started to question why Southern Arkansas University had been deemed the public entity that would provide  APSRC with HR services. SAU also kept track of our leave time and managed our benefits and retirement plans. 

I would later learn that the SAU Foundation is the recipient of Walton grant funds intended for APSRC. SAU is charged with disseminating the money and administering HR services for APSRC staff. 

When I started working for APSRC, I was given the same (presumably) packet handed to new university employees. 

So why funnel funding through state university foundations? Remember, from 2008 until 2012, the University of Central Arkansas served as APSRC’s Walton-funding dispensary.

Why so devious? Why so much obfuscation?

My hunch is that the Waltons know that what they are selling would be rejected by the public if it had honest labeling. The Waltons really don’t understand that most people like their public schools and don’t want to go to a privately-run charter where they have no voice or to a religious school, and they don’t want to split up their community into competing factions. They want to cheer for the same basketball team and have a senior class that represents the whole community, not a bunch of little schools that open and close on a whim.

I am looking forward to more insider reports from Cathy Frye.

 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Peter Greene: Beware DFER’s Phony Poll about Democrats and Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
15

 

Hedge fund managers decided in 2005 that the best way to advance the charter school idea was to create a faux organization called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), then to funnel campaign cash to Democratic candidates who promised to support charter schools. This worked for a time. Senator Barack Obama spoke at the inaugural meeting of DFER at a penthouse in Manhattan filled with Wall Street types. When Obama was elected, DFER recommended Arne Duncan to be Secretary of Education, and Obama picked him over the highly qualified Linda Darling-Hammond, who had been his spokesperson during the campaign.

But some Democrats realized that DFER was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Democratic Party of California passed a resolution demanding that DFER drop the D because it was a front for corporate interests. The Democratic party of Colorado also passed a resolution denouncing DFER.

In 2016, DFER supported a referendum in Massachusetts to expand the number of charter schools, in company with the Waltons and big Republican donors. The charter campaign went down to a crashing defeat, after charters were denounced by the state Democratic Party and almost every school district committee in the state. The only demographic that supported the expansion of charters was members of the Republican Party.

Today, the loudest champion of charter schools is Betsy DeVos. The biggest allies of the charter movement are Republican governors and legislatures.

Sensing the change in the air, recognizing that charter schools now belong to ALEC and DeVos, almost every  Democratic candidate for President has steered clear of charter schools. Bernie Sanders endorsed the NAACP call for a moratorium on new charters.

But wait! DFER has commissioned a poll to demonstrate that Democrats actually favor charters!

Peter Greene says the poll is baloney. He explains it here. His advice: Ignore it.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Industry, Fraud, Opinion Polling, Privatization

Arkansas: State Board Votes to Restore Local Control to Little Rock But Read the Fine Print

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
2

 

The Arkansas State Board of Education planned to restore local control to schools in the whitest part of Little Rock, but the community rose up in opposition and demanded the restoration of the entire district, one Little Rock.

Massive crowds gathered to raise their voices in protest and the state board folded.

THE ARKANSAS STATE Board of Education abandoned its previously adopted plan to relinquish only partial control of Little Rock School District after widespread pushback by thousands of teachers, parents, students and community activists who argued it would have catapulted the city into another era of segregated schools.

Instead, the board voted unanimously Thursday to return control of the entire school district to a locally elected school board under a yet-to-be-agreed-upon memorandum of understanding with the state that will include some continued monitoring of the city’s poorest performing schools.

The decision, prompted by a surprise motion to scrap the previous plan, shocked many gathered at a meeting to protest it who were expecting to face stiff opposition by the governor-appointed board.

Cathy Frye, who has been writing about her experiences inside the shadowy world of school choice in Arkansas, says that the battle is won, but the war is not. 

She says the decision was a tactical retreat by the Waltons. They won’t give up. They want the property.

She writes:

The Arkansas State Board of Education, during what appeared to be a meticulously staged meeting, voted Thursday to return the Little Rock School District to local control. 

This about-face occurred because state leaders and board members feared further public shaming and opted instead for an awkward retreat.

Stakeholders celebrated the vote, only to get a clapback from the state board when it next voted to oust the Little Rock Education Association. (As we all know, Governor Asa Hutchinson and his GOP underlings loathe unions.) 

Remember, the Waltons have invested millions in organizations that lobby specifically for the Arkansas school -“choice” movement. Despite today’s vote to reinstate local control, the Walton Family Foundation will persist in its efforts to dismantle LRSD and other districts that might appeal to charter-school leaders and the private-school crowd.

Again, they don’t just want your students and the funding that follows them. They want your facilities. (More on that below.) 

Right now, given public sentiment, the Waltons will let things quiet down. But you can bet that the various nonprofits that they fund already are stepping up their behind-the-scenes efforts to get their projects back on track. 

It is imperative that the various grassroots organizations involved in fending off the Waltons’ school grabs remain intersectional and vigorous in their efforts to protect their districts, teachers, students, and, again, their buildings. You have won a battle. Not the war.

She offers some concrete advice for the Resistance.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Little Rock, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Los Angeles: School Board Committee Rejects Plan to Give Schools a Single Grade

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2019 //
9

The Resistance won a big victory in Los Angeles.

Thanks to newly elected LAUSD board member Jackie Goldberg, a key committee of the school board rejected a plan to assign a single grade to every school. 

The idea of grading schools with a single letter was first hatched by Jeb Bush, in his relentless push to impose test-based accountability on every public school in Florida and to set up those with the worst grades to be privatized.

Several states have adopted the Jeb Bush plan, and in every case, the letter grade was a reliable proxy for students’ family income. The schools where poor students predominated received the lowest grades and were fair game for the charter industry.

Jackie Goldberg has a long history as a teacher, school board member, and state legislator, and she strongly opposed the plan.

Nick Melvoin, who was elected with the help of millions of dollars contributed by Eli Broad and other friends of the charter lobby, proposed the plan.

The Los Angeles Unified school board’s Curriculum and Instruction Committee approved a resolution introduced by board member Jackie Goldberg that calls for the district to suspend implementation of “any use of stars, scores, or any other rating system” for its schools. 

The committee’s action includes a shift in support by Kelly Gonez, who says she now opposes assigning single ratings to schools. Gonez last yearco-sponsored a resolution with board member Nick Melvoin that called for creating a school performance framework that would include a “single, summative rating for each school.”  The board approved that resolution in April 2018. 

Goldberg’s resolution, which is expected to pass when it goes before the full board Nov. 5, would effectively kill the idea to give all schools in the district a single rating, which Melvoin says would allow the district to better identify and help struggling schools…

The three board members on the committee — McKenna, Scott Schmerelson and Gonez — voted unanimously to send Goldberg’s resolution to the full board, where it needs four votes to pass. Board member Richard Vladovic also indicated to EdSource that he supports the new resolution. Goldberg’s expected vote would give the resolution a five-vote majority on the seven-member board…

Goldberg’s resolution says that summative rankings “promote unhealthy competition between schools” and “penalize schools that serve socioeconomically disadvantaged student populations.” 

Jackie Goldberg proves that one person can make a difference. She does so by dint of superior experience, knowledge, and intellect.

The billionaires once owned the LAUSD. They bought it, fair and square.

No longer.

Be on alert for the next school board election. The sharks will gather round again.

 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Resistance

North Carolina: A Sad Bedtime Story about a Failed State Takeover

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2019 //
11

This is a story so nutty that it would be hilarious if there were no children involved. Instead, it is an outrage.

When the fringe rightwingers of the Tea Party won control of the North Carolina legislature in 2010, they promptly passed laws authorizing charters and vouchers and transferring the funding from the state’s successful N.C. Teaching Fellows Program (which prepared career teachers) to the temps in Teach for America.

Then they looked wistfully to Tennessee and realized that what they were missing was a mechanism for state takeover of low-scoring public schools. Tennessee had its very own “Achievement School District,” funded by $100 million of federal Race to the Top money, and North Carolina wanted to do the same thing. The Tennessee ASD  took control of the state’s lowest-performing schools and pledged to catapult them into the top 20% of schools in the state.

By 2016, it was clear that the ASD was a total failure but that did not deter North Carolina lawmakers. Give them credit for a combination of gullibility and ignorance.

To help the state takeover pass, a very wealthy conservative entrepreneur from Oregon named John Bryan funded a campaign for the state takeover legislation. Bryan handed out about $600,000 to Legislative candidates from 2011 to 2016.

The bill passed, and now North Carolina had its very own Innovative School District. The law said the state would take over up to five low-performing schools in its first year, which would be turned into charter schools.

But now the story gets even better! Oregon entrepreneur John Bryan had his very own charter chain, called TeamCFA, which already operated 13 charters in North Carolina.

Why not give the contract for the ISD to TeamCFA?

The only problem was that no public school wanted to be part of the ISD. Each time a school was designated by the state, the parents fought back, contacted their legislator, and avoided the state takeover.

Ultimately, only one school joined the ISD: Southside Ashpole Elementary School in Robeson County. The school was turned into a charter school operated by a new company called Achievement for All Children.

Achievement For All Children is heavily connected to Oregon resident John Bryan, a generous contributor to political campaigns and school-choice causes in North Carolina. He has taken credit for passage of the law creating the Innovative School District.

The board of directors for Achievement for All Children includes former Rep. Rob Bryan, a Republican from Mecklenburg County who introduced the bill creating the new district. John Bryan contributed about $17,000 to Rob Bryan’s campaigns for the state legislature from 2013 to 2016.

Tony Helton is chief executive officer of both Achievement For All Children and TeamCFA, a charter school network founded by John Bryan.

But most of the questions this week focused on the qualifications of AAC, which was formed in February 2017.

An independent third-party evaluation by education consulting firm SchoolWorks said it’s unclear whether AAC “is legally eligible to operate and manage” Southside Ashpole because state law says the company chosen must have a record of results in improving performance for low-performing students or schools.

The company plans to partner with TeamCFA, which has 13 charter schools in North Carolina. But SchoolWorks says TeamCFA’s schools have “a mixed record of student achievement.”

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article208006534.html#storylink=cpy

The new Innovative School District had a new principal and its own Superintendent, quite a lot of leadership for one little school.

The State Board of education just got an evaluation of its takeover school.

Test scores, already low, dropped a bit. The new charter got a grade of F.

The school saw high administrative turnover:

Behind the scenes, the report says rifts developed between the principal and some faculty, which were due in part to the significant leadership changes in the district. In the past two years, the program has seen three superintendents, two principals and two different peoplerunning Achievement For All Children.

And despite the experiment’s negative evaluation, the state is supposed to throw more public schools into the “Innovative School District.”

Under state law, four more schools have to be added to the district for the 2020-21 school year. A list of 12 schools being considered for takeover (none in the Triangle) was released in September.

State board members and State Superintendent Mark Johnson met Wednesday with state lawmakers to ask them to approve a delay in selecting any new schools this year.

Expect public schools chosen to enter the failed ISD to fight back.

This is not funny. This is education malpractice.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, North Carolina, Privatization

Have You Heard? The Koch Plan to Eliminate Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2019 //
5

This is an important, can’t-miss podcast about the malign plans of one of the richest men in the world.

Business reporter Christopher Leonard has written a best-selling new book called Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.It’s an eye-opening account of how the Kochs built the private company that has made them richer than Bill Gates. Leonard spent seven years reporting the book, which gave him plenty of insight into what he describes as the Kochs’ fixation on dismantling public education. In a recent episode of the Have You Heard podcast with Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, Leonard was blunt about what the Kochs are after. “The ultimate goal is to dismantle the public education system entirely and replace it with a privately run education system. ” Leonard says don’t be fooled by the Koch’s sales pitch (like the Koch Network’s latest education venture, Yes Every Kid, headed by the VP of Communications for Koch Industries.) “There are going to be a lot of glossy marketing materials about opportunity, innovation, and efficiency. At its core though the Koch Network seeks to dismantle the public education system because they see it as destructive. So that is what’s the actual aim of this group. And don’t let them tell you anything different.”
You can listen to the entire interview here: https://soundcloud.com/haveyouheardpodcast/kochland
Categories Billionaires, Disruption, Education Industry, Evil, Koch Brothers, Privatization

Leonie Haimson: DeBlasio’s Hypocritical Embrace of Corporate Reform

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2019 //
18

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, is outraged that Mayor DeBlasio is handing schools over to Laurene Powell Jobs and the charter-promoting Robin Hood Foundation.

Powell Jobs has handed out $100 million to jumpstart “innovative” schools. Four of the 10 schools to which she gave $10 million each have already failed. Her closest associate is Arne Duncan, whose Race to the Top was a disaster.

Over the last decade or so, the Robin Hood Foundation has primarily supported charter schools in its education portfolio, as might be predicted considering it was founded by hedge funders and its board is still composed largely of corporate executives and financiers.  According to Wikipedia, its board chair, Larry Robbins, is also the board chair of KIPP NY charter schools, and board chair of the Relay Graduate School, that trains teachers in the charter school “no excuses” regimented style of instruction. Robbins is also a member of the NY Board of Teach for America.

DeBlasio, who claimed to be a charter critic, has invited Robin Hood to open 18 new charter schools. Astonishing!

 

Haimson writes:

Given that these two private funders will help select the winners, or as Robin Hood put it, “will partner with the Department of Education on a rigorous selection process”, that means DOE will be sacrificing control for the design of these public schools to these two organizations for a relative pittance, compared to what it will cost to operate them.

But an even greater concern, as I expressed it to the Daily News, is that every new school will likely take space and funding away from our existing public schools, which are already underfunded and in many cases squeezed for space. Every new school makes overcrowding worse by eating up classroom space with the need to carve out new, replicated administrative and cluster rooms. 

We already have seen how worse inequities have resulted from the expansion of co-located charter schools in our public school buildings, as well as how the Gates-funded small schools initiative led to many of the remaining large high schools becoming even more overcrowded with the high-needs students that the small schools refused to enroll.  Many of these disadvantaged students at the large schools ended up more likely to be discharged, enrolled in low-quality credit recovery programs, or graduating without a Regents diploma  — all of which served the purposes of the organizations running the show as their small schools graduation data appeared better in comparison.  Another piece of evidence that DOE is caught in an infinite feedback loop: the Senior adviserto the XQ Institute is Michele Cahill, who ran the small schools initiative when she was at DOE. 

It feels as though we are seeing a rerun of the Bloomberg-Klein regime.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Fake, Privatization

Rhode Island: Governor Gina Raimondo’s Plan to Demolish Public Education in Providence

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2019 //
6

 

Andrew Stewart recounts the alarming plans that Governor Gina Raimondo has in store for Providence public schools. She is a former venture capitalist who seems to have an instinctive suspicion of the public sector. What she has in mind, he says, is the planned demolition of the public schools.

He writes:

Someday, after the operatic cycle of Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo’s political career has reached its concluding note, it will be a masterpiece of neoliberal assault upon the public sector, the commons, and the fabric of the welfare state in America to behold. It is absolutely essential, in order for the faculty and the students of Providence to fight back and win in this contest, to form a broad-based coalition that is centered on the success of students and dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.

Right now, a multi-year media narrative, assembled by allegedly-liberal local news outlets, is being utilized in order to justify the anti-democratic takeover of public education. (I will offer a further analysis of this narrative in a future report that time and space bars me from providing here.)

Motivation stems a number of reasons, including because the Providence Teachers Union is one of the largest white collar educator unions in the state and its majority composition is white women, meaning success would have a ripple effect for female workers statewide; the PTU benefits and salary package is one of the most robust offerings in the entire state economy and serves as a useful high watermark for all female service and public sector economy workers, especially with paid maternity leave. Whereas suburban teacher unions play a peripheral role in the respective municipal political debates, Providence Teachers Union is a major force in statewide politics. Simultaneously, another front of this attack can be found in the halls of the Community College of Rhode Island, where Raimondo seeks to crush the unionized faculty owing to its large membership, the subject of a future report….

Right now, Providence Public School Department is being taken over by the state and the state’s newly-appointed (by Raimondo) Education Commissioner Angélica M. Infante-Green, an alumnus of the Jeb Bush education privatization project Chiefs for Change, which has seen in the past decade a revolving door installed into various Ed offices in RI. Interim Superintendent Fran Gallo, who has a history in the district, seems to occupy a rubber-stamp position. Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza has recently moved to defund all other charter schools in the city so to move the money into his own personal project, the Achievement First Mayoral Academy, not unlike several other patterns of funding we have seen locally over the years whereupon the independent charters serve the purpose of creating good PR until they are defunded to make room for the big-box corporate players. Achievement First has a national reputation for abominable student abuses and their opaque, unaccountable budgetary processes pertaining to per-pupil expenditures have a distinct and negative impact on special needs and English Language Learner students both inside their charters and outside in the remaining non-privatized schools.

He reminds us that Raimondo’s campaign was funded by the hedge fund industry, which loves charter schools.

Raimondo ascended to her political position by starting out as the first woman elected Treasurer of Rhode Island. With a heavy war chest funded by the hedge fund industry, particularly Paul Tudor Jones, as well as Enron alum John Arnold, she walked into Treasury and saw the writing on the wall.

The Rhode Island Democratic Party was influenced since World War II by the diktats of ethnic Catholicism, with attendant anti-Communism, corruption, and conservatism. Treasury for decades had been run as little more than a bail-out fund for the state and its multiple ridiculous schemes, including failed real estate deals and other pay-offs that clearly violated the responsibility of not just a fiduciary but probably every sane child with a piggy bank.

With this in mind, Raimondo invested the state pension fund (which includes public school teacher contributions) into the hedge funds that in turn finance charter schools (Paul Tudor Jones’s Robin Hood Foundation finances Achievement First) [4], meaning that Providence teachers still to this day see a payroll deduction on their pay stub that finances the literal busting of their own union!

She was aided in this by donor John Arnold, who foisted upon the public, via the Pew Charitable Trust, a phony pension crisis narrative in the media [5] that was picked up by perceived non-partisan outlets like PBS. Raimondo is a pro at manufacturing a crisis to attack organized labor and this recent stab at PTU and Providence public schools bears striking resemblance to the pension heist of 2011.

Privatized education in Providence, he predicts, will be a cash cow for the corporate entities that feed off the misery of inner-city communities and schools.

The untold story, to which Stewart alludes, is not about failing schools, but about racism, structural inequality, white flight, and unexamined white supremacy. Nothing in Governor Raimondo’s plans will address root causes.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Providence, Rhode Island

Mercedes Schneider: Billionaires Jim and Alice Walton Seek to Purchase Louisiana State Board

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
8

 

The Walton Family is collectively worth more than $150 billion, and their hobby is undermining and disrupting public schools across the nation. Since Louisiana has an election for the state board of education in a few days, you will not be surprised to learn that Jim and Alice Walton dropped $200,000 on candidates pledged to support charter schools, vouchers, and Teach for America.

Mercedes Schneider reports in this post that the Waltons waited until close to Election Day so that Louisianans would not have time to learn that out-of-State billionaires were trying to buy the state board elections.

The Waltons are determined to harm the public schools that educated their father Sam Walton and most of them.

The family belongs on the blog’s Wall of Shame for their ceaseless attacks on public schools, unions, experienced teachers, and communities.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Louisiana, Privatization, Teach for America, Vouchers, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation
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