Jan Resseger cogently summarizes the reasons that Denver teachers went on strike.
They struck against Corporate Reform.
Archives for category: Privatization
Jan Resseger explains the power of conventional wisdom, which persists even when its effects are harmful and its premises disproven.
She sees Race to the Top as the quintessential bad idea locked in place in almost every state.
How to restore good sense and expunge bad policies?
She shows how her own state of Ohio has been severely damaged by Duncan’s policies.
The Difficulty of Cleaning Arne Duncan’s Awful Policies Out of the Laws of 50 States
Carl J. Petersen wonders if the LAUSD school board will hold failing charter schools accountable?
Predictably, it turns out that the charterization of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) did not provide the miracle that was promised. The District has the highest number of charter schools in the country, with approximately 18% of its students in these publicly funded private schools. In the just-released list of 110 underperforming schools in the LAUSD, 20%were independent charter schools. Are we diverting $591.7 million from our public schools to get basically the same results?….
The list of underperforming charters includes schools run by large, influential charter chains like PUC, Kipp, Green Dot, and Camino Nuevo (whose chief of operations, Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, is running in the District 5 special election). This will make any attempt to hold these schools accountable extremely difficult. Will the Board put “Kids First” and face this opposition head on?
A few months ago, the New York Times published a very credulous article about the “successful” state takeover of Camden, New Jersey. This was surprising because the superintendent who took charge had never run a school or a district before. Age 32, he had worked for Joel Klein.
Jersey Jazzman was doubtful. There has never been a successful state takeover.
So he waited until the state audit was completed. And his doubts were confirmed.
Here is JJ’s post about Camden:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-failure-of-state-control-in-camden.html
The so-called Renaissance schools in Camden were supposed to take all neighborhood kids. They don’t.
He writes:
“Before we dive into this, let’s step back and recall some history:
“Way back in 2012 — back when Chris Christie was making teacher bashing fashionable — a couple of low-level bureaucrats in the NJ Department of Education came up with a plan for Camden’s Schools. The idea was to take power away from the local school board — which didn’t have much power anyway as it had been subject to the direction of a state fiscal monitor since 2006 — and shift control to the Christie administration and the State Board of Education. This would allow charter schools to flourish while CCPS schools were shuttered.
“It’s worth noting that the guys who came up with the plan were paid by California billionaire Eli Broad, who was the patron of then-Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf. The next year, Christie went all-in on Camden and had the state take overt the district. The excuse was that Camden was such a failure, the state really had no choice.
“Christie proceeded to go out and get a very young fellow to be his new superintendent. Paymon Rouhanifard had, at best, six years of total experiencein education, but apparently that’s all he needed to take on arguably the toughest school leadership job in the state.
Rouhanifard left CCPS last year; when the Auditor discusses the state of Camden’s schools, he’s discussing Rouhanifard’s legacy. I’ve already gone over the issues with the Renaissance schools’ enrollments; let’s look at what else the Auditor found in Camden.”
What else did the audit find?
Experienced administrators fired and replaced by incompetent managers. Lost or misspent millions. Lack of financial controls.
Jersey Jazzman concludes:
“The idea that state control is the only solution for “failing” urban schools is built on a nasty bedrock of racism. But on top of that: State control of schools clearly doesn’t work.
“I know credulous reporters love to eat up pre-digested talking points about soaring graduation rates and skyrocketing test scores to justify these state interventions. But when you look at these metrics properly, it turns out the grad rates are simply part of overall trends (more here), and the small bumps in test scores are best understood as artifacts from changing the tests, not as real improvements in teaching and learning.
“Camden deserves better. It needs experienced, competent leadership that can properly manage the district’s finances. It needs adequate and equitable funding. It needs a system of school governance that allows all local stakeholders to have a say in how the system is operated — just like almost every other district in the state.
“State control has failed in Camden. It’s time to admit it and move on to something better.”
This is the Times’ article:
Steven Singer nails Rahm Emanuel’s false apology. Rahm claims he is no longer a Reformer yet continues to think he has to get tough on somebody to produce the test scores he wants. When I visited the Washington Post recently, I heard Rahm discuss his great education successes in Chicago, in conversation with the woman he appointed as superintendent of schools (talk about softball exchanges!). Not a word was said about his historic and vicious decision to close 50 public schools in one day, all of them located in communities of color. The gossip was that he was trying out for the next Secretary of Education role. His name will live in education history and it will remind us of his terrible actions as a privatizer, a hater of public schools, and a man who holds teachers in contempt.
Rahm Emanuel’s recent op-ed in The Atlantic may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.
The title “I Used to Preach the Gospel of Education Reform. Then I Became the Mayor” seems to imply Emanuel has finally seen the light.
The outgoing Chicago Mayor USED TO subscribe to the radical right view that public schools should be privatized, student success should be defined almost entirely by standardized testing, teachers should be stripped of union protections and autonomy and poor black and brown people have no right to elect their own school directors.
But far from divorcing any of this Reagan-Bush-Trump-Clinton-Obama crap, he renews his vows to it.
This isn’t an apologia. It’s rebranding.
Valerie Strauss notes on her blog “The Answer Sheet” that charters are losing their luster. With the ascent of Choice Champion Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, Democrats are losing interest in charters.
Almost 90% are non-union, and Democrats are not as keen about charters as they were when Obama was president. DeVos has made clear that her goal is privatization, and charter schools advance her goal. Today, Democrats running for office are backing away from charters.
The number of charters is not growing as it once did.
Most embarrassing are the escalating charter scandals. The public has begun to realize the absurdity of giving out public money without oversight or accountability.
There is most definitely a backlash. The NAACP call for a moratorium was part of the backlash. So was the referendum in Massachusetts in 2016, where voters overwhelmingly rejected an effort to lift the cap on charters.
Part of the backlash stems from the realization that more money for charters means less money for public schools. Another part is the public revulsion against the billionaires behind the charter movement, whether its DeVos or Bill Gates or the Waltons or the Koch brothers.
No matter what lies are spread, most Americans don’t want to abandon their community public schools to entrepreneurs and corporations.
While the state of Virginia is engulfed in a crisis of leadership, friends of public education are pushing to launch a statewide protest on behalf of public education, reports Rachel Levy.
After years of underfunding, grassroots activists have begun their campaign, hoping to ignite a movement that leads to equitable movement. The leadership crisis makes the battle for #Red4Ed even harder in what issuer to be an uphill battle.
Levy writes:
“The #Red4Ed movement has kicked off in Virginia: On January 28, as many as 5,000 public school teachers, educators, workers, parents, students, and other stakeholders marched on the Virginia state capitol in Richmond to demand fully funded public schools. The march and rally, organized by Virginia Educators United, a “grassroots campaign” of teachers, staff members, parents and community members, was one of the largest to descend on the state capitol in the last century.
“The well-organized event was supported by strategic use of social media and a user-friendly website. The group’s demands include restoring funding for education to pre-2008 recession levels, increasing teacher pay to national averages, paying education support professionals competitive wages, recruitment and retention of highly qualified teachers and more teachers of color, more funding for school infrastructure costs, and ensuring sufficient numbers of support staff like counselors and social workers….
“There is broad, bipartisan support for public education in Virginia, despite terrible funding. This support is not a sign that Virginia as a whole is getting “bluer.” In fact, support for school privatization is stronger in places like Richmond with more socially liberal but gentrifying, market-friendly forces. The problem is also that in more conservative, traditionally Republican-voting areas, while support for the institution of public education is strong, support for the policies that will make public schools more equitable, integrated, and better funded is not. And in more conservative areas, there is an inherent discomfort with advocacy and activism—I know from my own research that most people seem to understand advocacy to mean being supportive and uncritical of decision-makers.
“At the rally on January 28, David Jeck, superintendent of Fauquier County public schools, stated that, “the localities are not at fault here.” But such a statement lets wealthier communities off the hook. Local districts in Virginia have also made cuts to education, and did not restore pre-recession funding. And local districts in Virginia are hindered by restrictive proffer policies that make it difficult to collect revenues from developers or otherwise leverage sufficient taxes on businesses and non-personal property. Better-heeled parents support their local public schools not by advocating for more funding, but by funneling donations and in-kind donations directly to their school via parent groups and local businesses and foundations.
”At the state level, the structure of the General Assembly itself poses obstacles. Virginia has a part-time “citizen” legislature. And even though in 2017 a record number of women, people of color, and progressives were elected to the House of Delegates, the capacity of citizens, such as those connected with Virginia Educators United, to engage in advocacy is limited. Participants must be available at any time, including during weekends, holidays, early mornings, and late nights when the General Assembly is in session (for forty-five days and ninety days, alternatively). This means that most such advocacy efforts are left to professional lobbyists, organizations, and associations.”
It will take widespread support to get the attention of the legislature to the state’s crisis of funding.
Denver teachers are likely to go out on strike, CNN reports, due to absurdly low salaries.
They can’t afford to live in the city where they teach.
A city and state that refuses to pay a decent middle-class wage to its teachers doesn’t care about its children or its future.
Of course, Denver is the city that Corporate Reformers admire because it has adopted the “portfolio model” of charters intermingled with public schools, instead of paying its teachers appropriately.
CNN reports:
For 14 months, teachers in Denver have been negotiating with Denver Public Schools for more pay. On Saturday, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association said talks had broken off and they’ll walk on Monday.
Yes, it’s about money, many have told CNN. But it’s also about the uncertainty of living paycheck to paycheck. It’s about the necessity of taking on a second or third job. It’s about the untenability of carrying on this way much longer.
Katie McOwen has had to make some tough decisions when it comes to money.
At the end of this month, she’s giving up her one-bedroom apartment and will move into a friend’s basement. The move sacrifices some of her independence, but it affords her some wiggle room with her finances.
The sixth-grade math teacher at Place Bridge Academy in Denver said she makes about $50,000 per year. After paying $1,050 in rent, plus student loan payments, bills and other expenses, there’s not much left over. She also nannies during the summers to supplement income.
“I really am living paycheck to paycheck right now,” McOwen said. “If my car broke down or anything, I would be really hurting.”
McOwen is lucky that she doesn’t have to make car payments. She drives a 2000 Honda Accord, which just hit 310,000 miles. It works now, but she worries about the future.
“I know if something really happens, I will be in big, big trouble,” she said.
Why? Because she wouldn’t be able to go to work.
The 35-year-old is originally from West Virginia, the state that launched a teacher strike and inspired similar movements across the United States last year. Her mother and sisters, who also live in Denver, have talked about moving back east, or somewhere near there, to find a more affordable life.
“My option was to either move there or I’ve been contemplating moving into a camper van,” she said with a laugh. “I knew something was going to have to change. It was either to move completely out of Denver or to bunk with my friend.”
In this post, a parent activist in Northern California succinctly described the case against charter schools.
Charter schools take resources away from the public schools, harming public schools and their students. All charter schools do this – whether they’re opportunistic and for-profit or presenting themselves as public, progressive and enlightened.
Charter schools are free to pick and choose and exclude or kick out any student they want. They’re not supposed to, but in real life there’s no enforcement. Many impose demanding application processes, or use mandatory “intake counseling,” or require work hours or financial donations from families – so that only the children of motivated, supportive, compliant families get in. Charter schools publicly deny this, but within many charter schools, the selectivity is well known and viewed as a benefit. Admittedly, families in those schools like that feature – with the more challenging students kept out of the charter – but it’s not fair or honest, and it harms public schools and their students.
Charter schools are often forced into school districts against the districts’ will. School boards’ ability to reject a charter application is limited by law; and if a school board rejects a charter application, the applicant can appeal to the county board of education and the California state board of education. Then the school district winds up with a charter forced upon it, taking resources from the existing public schools. Often this means the district must close a public school.
Anyone can apply to open and operate a charter school, and get public funding for it. The process is designed to work in their favor. They don’t have to have to be educators or show that they’re competent or honest. They may be well-meaning but unqualified and incompetent, or they may be crooks. Imagine allowing this with police stations, fire stations, public bus systems or parks.
Part of a school district’s job is to provide the right number of schools to serve the number of students in the district. When charter schools are forced into the district, that often requires existing public schools to close. Again, that harms the district and its students.
California law (Prop. 39) requires school districts to provide space for charter schools, even if the district didn’t want the charter. Charter schools are often forced into existing public schools (this is called co-location), taking space and amenities away from their students and creating conflict. This is a contentious issue in other states too.
Charter schools can be opened by almost anyone and get little oversight, so they’re ripe for corruption, looting, nepotism, fraud and self-dealing. Corruption happens in public school districts too, but charter schools offer an extra tempting opportunity for crooks, and the history of charters in California and nationwide shows that wrongdoers often grab that opportunity.
Charter schools, backed by billionaire-funded pro-privatization support and PR machinery, have positioned themselves as an enemy to school districts, public schools and teachers, sending their damaging message to politicians and the media. These charter backers pour millions into electing charter-friendly candidates. Tearing down our public school system and our teachers, as the charter sector does endlessly, harms our public schools and their students.
The charter sector tends to sort itself into two kinds of schools. Charter schools serving low-income students of color often impose military-style discipline and rigid rules – hands folded on the desk, eyes tracking the speaker, punishment for tiny dress code violations, a focus on public humiliation. By contrast, some charter schools serving children of privilege are designed to isolate the school from a district so that lower-income kids aren’t assigned to the school. Charter schools overall have been found to increase school segregation.
Charter schools overall serve far fewer children with disabilities and English-language learners than public schools. Even those designed to serve children with disabilities serve far fewer children with the types of disabilities that are most challenging and expensive to work with, such as children with severe autism or who are severely emotionally disturbed.
Despite the many advantages charter schools enjoy, they don’t do any better overall than public schools. The rallying cry for charter schools used to be that the “competition” would improve public schools, but that hasn’t happened. In charter schools’ more than 20 years of existence, they haven’t overall brought better education to impoverished communities.
*Note: This commentary applies to California charter schools and California charter laws. Many of the issues apply to charter schools in most or all other states where they exist.
Angie Sullivan manages to write a regular eloquent letter to every legislator in Nevada.
She teaches young children in a high-poverty school in Las Vegas.
Here is her latest:
I think the Nevada State School Board is moving in the wrong direction and causing a lot of issues in CCSD.
My priority would NOT be reform.
Reform is code for: HATE THE TEACHER.
It does not work and it makes us mad.
Reform is “teacher hate” bought by millionaire and billionaire eduphilantrophists. It is also known as union busting. We do not need another well-funded group that hates the people in the classroom. You have abused us for a couple of decades and nearly ruined your school system. Enough.
Reform has a bad taint across the nation because it is associated with disruption and destruction. Nothing of value replaced the chaos. It is not enough to starve and destroy – you still have 320,000 students. Most districts are abandoning failed reform systems which were expensive and not research based in the first place.
Reform is a disguised attack teacher working conditions and due process. The assumption being teachers caused the issue – when the administration was failing. Wrong target. Hit the right place next time.
Business management is not education leadership.
Leadership creates synergy and productivity. Management makes everyone scared and sad.
Reform means mandates, demands, and crushing job tasks for teachers. Regressively taxing teacher time and money. Driving thousands from their education careers by using excessive burdens.
Leadership should include folks with actual public school experience. Someone who has studied education preferable. This seems logical but we have not had someone like that – for awhile. And it shows.
Reform means leaders with a background in communications are paid well to attack teachers in the media. If you ask reformers for their background – it is not often education. It is usually sales. Or marketing.
Those who are associated with reform – are usually not educators, lead from the top instead of gaining labor buy-in, and misuse the funds.
Reform means expensive computer programs but less staff to care for children. Computer software is not capable of replacing a human being.
We do not need to buy anymore $500 million systems. A corporation should not be allowed to control the district.
Reform means money changes hands in dirtydowntown and numbers are dark to keep it covered.
We do not need more testing. Testing is not instruction. Testing is not learning.
Reform means authentic care and learning are ignored while schools focus all resources on testing. Kids are more than a score.
We do not need to attack Vegas neighborhood schools.
Reform means takeover and turnaround for public schools in minority at-risk Vegas instead of actually addressing the real failing schools (Rural and Charters – both are predominantly white). Brown folks are easier to attack. Enough with the racism.
We do not need or privatize or sell our schools to for-profit corporations.
Reform means $350 million in Nevada Charters creating the worst performing, non-graduating, for-profit corporate, and bankrupt system in the state.
We do not need any more consultants.
Reform means young folks imported from Tennessee, Chicago, Oakland to preach to old grizzled teaching veterans. A nice suit does not mean you know a thing. And they open their mouths and it is confirmed – nothing. I am sure they are paid well.
We do not anymore reformers. They just do not know what they are doing. We tried it their way for a couple of decades and millions of kids suffered.
How about some good old education leadership?
Clean the house of corruption. Void bad deals. Cancel bad contracts. Review leases.
Shut down the charters.
Get the finances in order.
And hire a fully prepared, skilled and dedicated teacher for every classroom – who is then retained by good working conditions. Supplies. Reasonable class size.
Teaching needs to happen. Not junk science bought by someone on a ship while drunk.
It’s not exciting. It works.
The Teacher,
Angie.
PS. Nevada State Board Memers should not be given $10 million contracts. We should make a law that puts folks in jail for that. But would we have a board left?
Diane Ravitch's blog 