Peter Greene examines in this post why education journalism is biased towards the reformy narrative.
Why do education writers call pundits in think tanks instead of teachers?
Then he analyzes a guide to sources, and the reason for bias becomes clear.
Why talk to a teacher when Reformer pundits are standing by?
Laura Chapman, retired arts educator and diligent researcher, has created a partial portrait of the privatization movement.
My guess is that the privatization movement consists of a small but significant number of billionaires and several hundred of their lackeys, shills, and front groups. As you will see, it is almost impossible to tell the Republicans from the Democrats.
Laura writes:
I have been building some spreadsheets on who is funding what. There are so many interconnected initiatives that Jeb Bush and friends are part of.
For example. Bush’s projects are connected with another big reform outfit: Partners for Innovation in Education (PIE) an outfit with at least 180 affiliates (in my spreadsheet) all connected to many others and all seeking national, state, and large metro area policies that favor charter school expansion (marketed as innovative), along with Teach for America (mostly on the job training), and active interference with teacher union contracts.
The PIE website still includes a guide for “Rabble Rousers” who were given quidance on how to work on legislated policy changes to favor charters, TFA and privatizers and how to enlist active support from civic and business organizations. It is a guide for lobbying and controlling narratives about education in the press.
The 47-page PIE Rabble Rousers handbook (2010 funded by the Joyce Foundation) includes this statement about the process of changing state policy:
“Most of the groups we spoke with (about shaping state polcies) declined to involve educators on their governing boards; if they did so, those groups do not make up a majority of the governing board. The rationale was clear enough: if the goal is to be a voice for the public’s interest, educator involvement confuses that message. As one group leader explained: “Educators already have the overwhelming voice in our state capital through their various associations. If we brought the interest lobby to our meetings, our discussion would get rutted in the same issues that already complicate the public debate. Our goal is to have a conversation that looks at the issues differently, considering only the students without the adult agendas.” An even blunter explanation was: “We tell our teacher associations that when they invite our leaders to vote on their boards, we will include union representation on ours (p. 32).” http://pie-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/rabble-rousers.pdf
Since that 2010 publication, PIE has shifted its strategy to include carefully selected educators. Most are working in charter schools or they have been willing to be indoctrinated into PIE’s agenda. Indocrination is the correct word.
In Oakland, CA, for example, the bait for PIE’s program has been a two-year “fellowship” with $1000 for the first year, and $2000 for the second year for attendance at two-hour meetings twice monthly plus readings and research. (I could not determine if the “year” was a calendar year nine month school year). In a series of tasks, the Oakland Fellows were given preferred data about their union to think about, along with model language for changes.
There are similar programs in multiple metro areas and states, with teachers working as if hired hands of PIE, token payments or emblems of prestige by virtue of becoming “fellows” or “ambassadors.”
Here is a list of organizations and financial supporters of “teacher voice” in the PIE Network–all recruiting teachers to advocate for policies favoring TFA, charters, and dismantlying unions and more under the banner of “innovation.”
Advance Illinois “Every Student World Ready”; Chalk Board Project; Ed Allies (Minnesota); Educators for High Standards; Go Public Schools (Oakland CA); Hope Street Group (multiple states); National Network of Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY, nominated by governors of states and celebrated by the Council of Chief State School Officers); Rodel Foundation of Delaware; State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE, Tennessee); Stand for Children Louisiana; Teach Strong (National, with one year “ambassadors” who lobby politicians), Educators for Excellence (in Boston, Chicago, Connecticut, Los Angeles , Minnesota, New York); Teach Plus (in California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts); and Texas Aspires.
PIE Board members are powerbrokers. Many are veterans of reformy projects to undermine public education through draconian standard-setting, exemptions for and expansions of charter schools, and killing collective bargaining by teachers.
1. Derrell Bradford, Executive VP of 50CAN, recruits state executive directors, fellows, and YouCAN advocates; known for leadership of legislated tenure reform in New Jersey.
2. Rachael Canter, Executive Dir. and co-founder of Mississippi First. Two years Teach for America; successfully lobbied for Mississippi Charter Schools Act of 2013.
3. Jonah Edelman, co-founder and CEO of Stand for Children Leadership Center and Stand For Children with affiliates in 11 states (Edelman is son of civil rights activist and lawyer Marian Wright Edelman). A political scholar (Ph.D Oxford, Yale) with deep family connections to the Democratic Party. SFC works for privatization with major funding from the Gates and Walton foundations among others. Major promoter of Read-by-Grade-Three policy.
4. Chris Korsmo, CEO of the League of Education Voters, backed by The Broad Foundation and supporters of projects to undermine teacher unions.
5. Scott Laband, President of Colorado Succeeds, coalition of business executives for corporate friendly education, including school policies that subsidize workforce preparation.
6. Patricia Levesque, CEO Foundation for Excellence. Was Jeb Bush’s Chief of Staff for education promoting corporate friendly education, six years as Staff Director for education policy in the Florida.
7. Lillian M. Lowery, Ed.D. V.P. of Ed Trust’s PreK-12 Policy, Research, and Practice, former state superintendent of schools in Maryland and state secretary of education in Delaware.
8. Nina Rees, President and CEO of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, first Deputy Under Secretary for Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.
9. Aimee Rogstad Guidera, former president and CEO of the Gates-funded Data Quality Campaign for enganced surveillance of K-12 school and “teacher of record” performance, with a variant tracking workforce outcomes of pre-K to post-seconfary workforce outcomes.
10. Evan Stone, Co-CEO and Co-Founder in 2010 of Educators for Excellence. Yale University thesis on No Child Left Behind in urban school systems, Master degree in teaching, Pace University.
11. Suzanne Kubach, Executive Dir. PIE Network. Appointed to California State Board of Education, former Chair of Los Angeles Charter School Board. Ph.D. in Education Policy, University of Southern California.
12. Tim Taylor, co-founder and Executive Dir. America Succeeds, founder of Colorado Succeeds, seeking corporate friendly policies.
13. Jamie Woodson, Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE), Former legislative leader for expansion of Tennessee’s public charter schools. J.D., the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
And that is just for starters. What “innovative policies” are being marketed in your state, by whom, and why?
Bob Braun, the veteran investigative reporter who has covered New Jersey politics for many years, describes an astonishing ripoff of taxpayers.
Earlier this summer, the rightwing rag Breitbart posted a very positive article about Marshall Tuck, who is running to become California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Breitbart, long associated with Steve Bannon and white-nationalist policies, identifies Tuck as pro-charter school and anti-union.
The article correctly notes that Tuck received only 5% of the votes at the state Democratic convention.
The overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates to the convention endorsed Tuck’s opponent, Tony Thurmond.
There are many reasons to vote for Tony Thurmond, including his experience as a social worker and his demonstrated concern for students, not corporate interests.
If you want Eli Broad and the other billionaires to control public education and privatize it, then Tuck’s your man.
If you want public schools to remain public and accountable to democratically elected school boards, vote for Tony Thurmond.
Mitchell Robinson, professor at Michigan State University, writes that Democrats must fully support public schools if they want to galvanize their base in November.
“If Democrats want to be successful in November they need to offer voters a true alternative to Republican and neo-liberal thinking on education policy. Sadly, we could add Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to the list above of Democrats who don’t “get it” when it comes to understanding the importance of public education.
“I still run in to far too many Democrats who make distinctions between “for profit” and non profit” charters, as if there’s a meaningful difference…or support candidates who claim this belief. Or point to states with “strong regulations” on charters, like Massachusetts, as some sort of model for other states to follow when it comes to charter school policies. This ignores the fundamental charter problem–the presence of charter schools hurts public schools, period. In an economy that seems not to have enough money to fund 1 set of schools, we are trying to fund both charters and traditional public schools, with reformers clamoring for vouchers that would fund a 3rd group of schools–religious and private non-sectarian schools.
“What we need are Democrats who support real public education, not faux public charter schools that are governed by private management corporations.
“The only thing public about charter schools are the tax dollars that fund them. It’s way beyond time to eliminate all charter schools, and fully fund public education.”
Forget all you have heard about tens of thousands of students on waiting lists for charter schools. That’s a marketing ploy. When people think a product is rare and hard to get, they really want it. When Bernie Madoff said that his fund was closed, people literally begged to get into his fund.
Mercedes Schneider obtained a copy of a guide to marketing charter schools, published by the Colorado League of Charter Schools. It is slick. It tells charter folk which words to use and which to avoid. It advises them to build alliances with their local public schools, the better to poach their children away.
It has the fascination of watching a train wreck in slow motion. That is, it is repulsive. It is consumerism at its worst. Read if you dare.
Let us now praise a fearless street fighter, who beat back and defeated the corporate reformers, billionaires, hedge fund managers, and Dark Money in Massachusetts in 2016. Let us now praise Barbara Madeloni, who as president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, led the fight against the proliferation of charter schools in Massachusetts.
This article is a fitting tribute to her spirit and leadership.
The Reformers bundled millions of dollars and set their sights on Massachusetts as a ripe target. In 2016, the state voted on a referendum (Question 2) that would have allowed the addition of 12 charters schools a year for the indefinite future. It would have wreaked havoc on the budget of every school district in the state.
The “No on 2” forces included teachers, parents, and other citizens who believed in public schools. They were outspent 2-1 (both the AFT and NEA made sizable contributions). Almost every school district committee (elected school board) came out in opposition.
People power beat money power, by 62-38%.
After the election, the Massachusetts campaign finance officials fined the lead Reform organization Families for Excellent Schools nearly half a million dollars and barred them from the state for four years. Soon after, FES collapsed. Another organization soon popped up to take its place as a bundled of Dark Money.
But, let us not forget. We won. Public education won. Parents and teachers won.
Thank you, Barbara Madeloni!
I humbly add your name to the blog’s Honor Roll.
Reverend Anika Whitfield wrote an open letter to Arkansas’s State Commisioner of Education, its Governor, and the City Superintendent, complaining about the state takeover of the Little Rock School District. This has long been a goal of the Walton family, the richest, most powerful family in the state and in the nation.
She writes:
Superintendent Poore and Commissioner Key (with a copy to Governor Hutchinson),
How are you able to live with what appears to be placing a hit on the lives of over 17,000 innocent students in the LRSD?
What appears to be your willful cooperation with political and philanthropic interest groups to violate the most vulnerable children in our city by closing their schools; selling (without our permission) their community schools to private charter businesses and to governmental programs that are run by officials who have benefited from a prison industrial system that profits off of incarcerating the lives of many of these same students, is unfathomable.
What does it profit you to watch innocent children suffer at your own hands?
What do you gain by taking away resources from children, families, and educators?
How many families and communities must destroyed before you have seen enough?
Are there any valid examples of affluent neighborhoods and communities that you have imposed your power to take over their children and absolve their patriotic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
What wealthy communities have you tried to force, without the will of the people, to accept a subservient educational business model for educators and students while imposing legalized disenfranchisement of their wealthy parents?
What truthful evidence can you provide that school closures, increasing class sizes, creating job losses by merging schools, and re-segregating communities, has proven to be a successful model in strengthening those same communities?
The plans that were laid out today for the LRSD showed ample evidence that your jobs have been, as has been suspected and predicted since your unorthodox appointments, a political and economic bidding to make wealthy investors like the Walton Family Foundation, Stephen’s, Inc. and others, to gain more wealt by privatizatizing public institutions and disenfranchising persons primarily impacted by poverty and systemic racism.
We have attended your previous school forums in large numbers. We have participated with consistent and persistent voices our opinions and desires to regain locally, elected, representation by our peers.
We have made clear our desires to keep all of our schools open, to raise community economic support for all of the schools and, particularly students, in the LRSD so that all students are attending classes and schools that are excellent.
We have provided plans, options and opportunities to work with you to keep schools open, and to improve the overall moral in schools by creating more community support and developing public accountability.
Yet, despite our active participation in your created system of governance, you have repeatedly denied all of our requests.
What will it will take for you to stop disrespecting and disregarding the voices and presence of our LRSD children, their parents, community?
What is the ransom you require to return our district back into the hands of the LRSD community?
Sincerely,
Rev. Anika T. Whitfield
Arthur Goldstein, veteran teacher, writes here about the special privileges available to Eva.
Not only did she hire her son to teach AP economics while he is still in college, but last year he taught middle-school math.
Just goes to show: Wealth has its privileges. Or, to paraphrase the great Mel Brooks, “It’s good to be the Queen.”
Eva Moskowitz has made a career of telling the world how UFT teachers suck. We devote our lives to helping the city’s children and that’s an unpardonable crime. Only she has the secret sauce that leads to an amazing 20% of her students graduating over at the Moskowitz Academy. You might say, but Eva, we graduate that many on a very bad year. That doesn’t matter because there are no excuses over in Moskowitz World. I mean no excuses for us.
And we know that she’s right. Otherwise, why would hedge funders be taking suitcases of cash and buying off easy targets like Andrew Cuomo? Why would the last Democratic president have hired Arne Duncan to push charter schools and whatever programs flowed from the ample posterior of Bill Gates? Why would we all be bribed to Race to the Top and be judged via junk science? They must be right because they have all that money. Who cares if research fails to support their ideas, or if the American Statistical Association rates them as nonsense?
Now some people might say that the incredible churn of charter teachers is an issue. How can you have institutional memory when year after year you lose most of your people? How do kids feel coming year after year and seeing the teachers they may well love gone and never coming back? Is that how you do role modeling? None of that is important. Otherwise why would all those people with all that money keep supporting Eva?
Furthermore, Moskowitz Academies have high standards. No excuses. If you screw up, be prepared to suffer. Eva Moskowitz doesn’t pay herself almost a million dollars a year to put up with your nonsense. They hire only the best teachers charter pay and working conditions can provide. The fact that they can’t hold on to the overwhelming majority of them is only a testament to the selfishness of teachers. They aren’t focused on the test scores because they want to have lives. Some of them want to get married and even have children.
But in Moskowitz World, there are no excuses. Make the kids pass the tests. No excuses and no time for that nonsense. Except for Eva, of course, who is in fact married with children. I wasn’t actually aware she had children until I read Chalkbeat, the publication that covers All Things Moskowitz All the Time. It turns out that Eva has hired her 19-year-old son to teach economics.
A lot of people shook their heads in wonder when Eva and her BFFs wanted charters to certify their own teachers. I mean, shouldn’t teachers graduate from college? In Moskowitz World, that seems not to be a prerequisite. This is particularly true if you happen to be Son of Moskowitz. Here’s yet another innovation from Moskowitz World:
Michaud says Culver Moskowitz makes minimum wage, as he did last year as an intern at Success Academy Harlem East, a middle school. Santiago, Venner, and a former student said he taught eighth-grade math classes there last year.
Wow. Teachers making minimum wage. Betsy DeVos is probably rolling over in her coffin this morning wondering why she didn’t think of that. And then there’s that other tidbit–while reformy Chalkbeat is all over Moskowitz Junior teaching economics, this isn’t the first time they’ve set him up as a teacher. Maybe they think teaching math while being totally unqualified doesn’t merit mention, but teaching economics is beyond the pale.
Glenn W. Smith, an opinion writer for the Austin American-Statesman eviscerates the sinister motives behind the A-F grading of schools. This plan was promulgated by Jeb Bush and his team of privatizers. My home state of Texas is the home of NCLB accountability. Nearly 20 years after that law was passed, we are still waiting for “no child [to be] left behind.] Fortunately, we now have a federal law in which Congress promises that “Every Child” will Succeed. More snake oil. Comply or die.
The leadership of the Republican Party in Texas and around the country is hell-bent on ending public education as we know it and replacing it with private corporations that will get rich on our tax dollars while educating fewer of our children.
The dream of a universally educated citizenry will be killed in a premeditated attack on perhaps the most important institution of democracy there is. In fact, its importance to democracy is one reason why the authoritarian-minded want to kill it.
There are other reasons. Many may wonder how the Christian Right can ally itself with Donald Trump, his greed-soaked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and other school privatizers. The equation is simple enough: The rich get richer, and the Right gets public tax dollars for private, fundamentalist schools.
Children in public schools will, over time, receive fewer and fewer resources and fall further and further behind. Then, there will come a moment when the underfunded public education system perishes like a starved prisoner in a forgotten cell.
The state recently released its latest version of school ratings, this one called A-F report cards. The “simplified” ratings are used, it seems, so Texas parents — already victims of underfunded public schools — have a shot at remembering what A and F grades mean.
Such ratings are sold to us on the premise of increased accountability. Instead, they used to destroy confidence in public schools to advance the cause of publicly funded private schools.
Think for a moment of all the time and money spent on questionable standardized testing and the casting of dark bureaucratic spells — I mean development of ratings systems — upon public education. Think of the anguish of educators and students who are sentenced to Dr. Standardized’s Hamster Wheel Test of Accountability.
Now, imagine if you can that all that time and money was spent on educating our public schoolchildren instead of on the purchase of great barrels of ink to paint scarlet F’s on schoolhouse doors. Why, gosh and golly, maybe all our schools would get A’s and B’s…
If we look carefully, we might find that the efforts of the privatizers to embarrass public education sometimes backfire. Let’s put two facts back to back:
• Democratic state Rep. Donna Howard of Austin recently pointed out that charter schools get 100 percent of their funding from the state. Public schools get 33 percent. The rest comes from local property taxes. Local districts’ efforts to overcome the state’s funding failure is the reason your property taxes increase, by the way.
• As a public school advocate and former state school board member, Thomas Ratliff put it in a tweet after the A-F grades for schools were released: “8 percent of charter schools are rated F while only 1.2 percent of public schools [are].” Ouch.
Looky there on the blackboard: Charter schools, treated lavishly by the state, don’t quite pass on that lavish treatment to our children’s education.
Adding a profit motive to public education does not lead to better performance; we pay more for less. That doesn’t make that much difference when we’re talking about our socks costing more and wearing out sooner than they should.
