Archives for category: Privatization
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A Message to Education Deans: Resist!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
18

More than 200 deans of education at scores of colleges and universities have organized to resist the corporate reformers’ efforts to deprofessionalize teaching and destroy public education. They call themselves Education Deans for Justice and Equity. They work in partnership with the National Education Policy Center. If you are a faculty member, please ask your dean to sign on. If you belong to an education organization, please consider adding its support.

“Dear Education Deans:

“As the start to a new academic year unfolds, so do increasing attacks on public education. Building on the “Declaration of Principles” that was released in January of this year and signed by 235 education deans, many of us feel compelled to continue to speak out collectively, publicly, and forcefully.

“Towards this end, we have prepared a new statement from education deans, “Our Children Deserve Better,” that counters the harmful rhetoric and actions currently coming from Washington with alternatives that are grounded in an ethical foundation, sound research, and a commitment to democratic values. The statement is a project of Education Deans for Justice and Equity, in partnership with the National Education Policy Center.

“Invited to sign are all current and former deans of colleges and schools of education in the United States (or comparable positions such as chairs, directors, and associate deans in institutions where there is no separate dean of education or school of education). We urge signing by August 30, because we are planning for the public release and distribution of the statement in early September.

“Please consider signing, and please consider committing to encouraging at least several other education-dean colleagues to sign so that we reach our goal of hundreds of signatories. The statement and the form for you to sign on is here:
https://goo.gl/forms/JXR2s1LZUcd6DaNh2.

“In solidarity,

“Kevin Kumashiro, on behalf of EDJE and NEPC”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance, Teacher Education, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

This Is What Jeb Bush Believes In: “Total Voucherization”

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
19

Republicans like to say that Florida is their model of good education policy. Betsy DeVos said so. Not her own state, because Michigan voters rejected vouchers three times.

Florida also rejected vouchers in 2012, by a decisive vote of 55-44. They voted down the voucher proposal crafted by Jeb Bush even though it was deceptively called the “Religious Freedom Amendment.” How many people would vote against “religious freedom”? A majority, as it turned out. Had it been called “An Amendment to Permit School Vouchers,” it might have gone down 65-35% or more, as in other states. But privatization of public goods requires stealth and lying.

So Florida engaged in a workaround, led by Jeb Bush, to defy the voters’ wishes.

Because Jeb believes in “total voucherization.” He sees no role for public schools. He spends his waking hours figuring out new ways to privatize public schools and put state money into the pockets of profiteers.

He created a tax credit scheme so corporations and rich individuals could give money to a nonprofit (Step Up for Students) which then gave the money as “scholarships” to students to attend religious schools. Thus, despite the voters’ clear rejection of vouchers, Jeb ensured that Florida has them.

And of course, Florida has one of the most politically connected and corrupt charter industries in the nation. Members of the Legislature have ownership interests in charter schools and regularly vote themselves bigger tax subsidies.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Steven Singer: Closing Schools Doesn’t Raise Test Scores!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
16

Steven Singer wrote a great post about a study by corporate reformers proving that they are wrong. Will they care that one of their favorite tactics is a failure? Of course not.

https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/study-closing-schools-doesnt-increase-test-scores/

Open the link to read it all and to see the links he cites.

He writes:

“You might be tempted to file this under ‘No Shit, Sherlock.’

“But a new study found that closing schools where students achieve low test scores doesn’t end up helping them learn. Moreover, such closures disproportionately affect students of color.

“What’s surprising, however, is who conducted the study – corporate education reform cheerleaders, the Center for Research on EDucation Outcomes (CREDO).

“Like their 2013 study that found little evidence charter schools outperform traditional public schools, this year’s research found little evidence for another key plank in the school privatization platform.

“These are the same folks who have suggested for at least a decade that THE solution to low test scores was to simply close struggling public schools, replace them with charter schools and voilà.

“But now their own research says “no voilà.” Not to the charter part. Not to the school closing part. Not to any single part of their own backward agenda.

“Stanford-based CREDO is funded by the Hoover Institution, the Walton Foundation and testing giant Pearson, among others. They have close ties to the KIPP charter school network and privatization propaganda organizations like the Center for Education Reform.

“If THEY can’t find evidence to support these policies, no one can!

“After funding one of the largest studies of school closures ever conducted, looking at data from 26 states from 2003 to 2013, they could find zero support that closing struggling schools increases student test scores.

“The best they could do was find no evidence that it hurt.

“But this is because they defined student achievement solely by raw standardized scores. No other measure – not student grades, not graduation rates, attendance, support networks, community involvement, not even improvement on those same assessments – nothing else was even considered.

“Perhaps this is due to the plethora of studies showing that school closures negatively impact students in these ways. Closing schools crushes the entire community economically and socially. It affects students well beyond academic achievement.”

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Research

Los Angeles: Rally Today to Protest Eli Broad Takeover of STEM Programs

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2017 //
42

Eli Broad will go down in history–if at all–as a selfish billionaire who used his money to destroy public education wherever and whenever he could. He graduated from public schools in Michigan, but instead of gratitude, he wants to ruin the public schools that helped him succeed. He promotes privatization. He has an Academy for superintendents where they are taught top-down, undemocratic methods; most are failures. He should be ashamed of himself. But billionaires know no shame.

Rally and Protest to support STEM schools, defeat ‘boutique’ school bill AB 1217

LOS ANGELES – Educators, students, parents and graduates of district STEM schools will rally TODAY at 4 PM on the front steps of Helen Bernstein High School, home of a successful STEM program, to protest AB 1217, which is co-sponsored by Assemblymember Raul Bocanegra and State Senator Anthony Portantino. The proposed bill would give away local authority to a boutique, privately-run STEM school in downtown LA.

Assembly Bill 1217 is a secretive, last-minute bill to create a publicly funded but privately operated STEM school, bypassing the local School Board, parents, and educators. If approved, it would take about 800 students from LAUSD but would not operate under the district’s purview. Citing accountability and funding concerns, the California Department of Finance opposes AB 1217 (see attached report). The bill would take away essential per-pupil funding and resources from the 142 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs already run in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The backers of the bill include Billionaire Eli Broad, who for years has bankrolled various “some kids, not all kids” schemes to kill the public education system that serves all students in favor of unregulated, unaccountable charter school operators. Ironically, Broad and his cohorts, like the California Charter Schools Association, just spent millions of dollars to buy the LA School Board election — and now he is driving a heavy-handed attempt to circumvent the same board just a few months later. Read LA Times story.

“This bill is an insult to the STEM programs that are in existence at LAUSD schools,” said Ben Kim, who teaches AP Calculus and AP Statistics at the STEM Academy @Bernstein. “Our STEM schools are doing amazing work, despite operating on shoestring budgets. Why don’t they fund these programs before allowing a billionaire-backed school to open up, without proper oversight and accountability?”

TODAY’s protest follows a recent campus visit from newly elected board member Nick Melvoin, who praised the STEM @ Bernstein. The visit was then followed by a board vote to undercut funding at the same school, which is in his district. On Tuesday, Aug. 22, the LAUSD School Board voted 4-3 against George McKenna’s resolution opposing AB 1217. Divisive politics is what Nick Melvoin claimed to be avoiding as he voted along party lines, upholding the ‘billionaire bloc’ vote to deny local opposition to the state bill.

“The 4-3 school board vote shows that they are still beholden to their donors,” Kim said. “In their visit to our school, they tell us they support us. When it comes down to it, nice gestures mean nothing if they won’t fight for our public schools.”

Read Capital and Main story.

Speakers will include: UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl, Dr. Ruth Montes (STEM graduate), current STEM students and educators, community members and parents who will call on Portantino, Bocanegra and Melvoin to save LAUSD’s STEM programs and kill AB 1217.

PRESS AVAILABILITY (English and Spanish interviews available)

What: Rally against AB 1217
When: Monday, Aug. 28, 4 p.m. To 5 p.m.
Where: STEM Academy @ Helen Bernstein High School
1309 N. Wilton Place
Los Angeles CA 90028

UTLA, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union local, represents more than 35,000 teachers and health & human services professionals who work in the Los Angeles Unified School District and in charter schools.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Education Industry, Injustice, Los Angeles, Privatization, STEM

Emily Talmage: Why Aren’t We Talking About the Racism Called “No Excuses”?

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2017 //
42

Emily Talmage, who teaches in Maine, recalls the time when she applied to teach at a charter school. It was a chilling experience.

She writes:

When I was twenty-five, I interviewed at a charter school in Brooklyn.

Before I sat down to talk to the dean, I observed a kindergarten class that looked nothing like any kindergarten class I had ever seen: just shy of thirty children sitting in rows on a carpet, each with legs crossed and hands folded, all completely and utterly silent.

In my interview, the dean asked me what I noticed about the class.

“They were very well behaved,” I said.

“Yes, they were. But they sure don’t come in like that,” he answered. With icy pride in his voice, he said: “It’s only because of the hard work of our staff that they act like that.”

I took the job – foolishly – and soon found out what this “hard work” meant: scholars, as we called them, were expected to be 100% compliant at all times. Every part of the nine-hour school day was structured to prevent any opportunity for deviance; even recess, ten-minutes long and only indoors, consisted of one game chosen for the week on Monday.

We were overseers, really. Our lessons were scripted according to the needs of the upcoming state test, and so we spent our days “catching” scholars when they misbehaved, marking their misdeeds (talking, laughing, wiggling) on charts, and sending them to the dean when they acted their age too many times in one day.

There weren’t any white children at the school, but there I was – a white teacher, snapping at a room full of black children to get them to respond, in unison, to my demands.

…

Everyone in the nation is talking about our racist history, but do people know what type of racism is happening today, beneath our noses, under the banner of education reform?

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

Some of The Billionaires Behind Charters, Trump, and Success Academy

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
30

It may be hard to believe that billionaires are deeply concerned with the well-being of poor children of color. They fight any tax ibpncreases that might reduce income inequality and improve the quality of life for the families of these children. But they are more than willing to invest in charter schools.

In this article, teacher-writer Jake Jacobs explores the charter-love of the billionaires. Bear in mind that he has only scratched the surface, as there are billionaires in Idaho (the Albertson family), in Texas (Tim Dunn), in North Carolina (Art Pope), in Washington (Bill Gates), in California (Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Doris Fischer, etc.), all of whom would rather pay to expand charters than to pay for a successful public sector.

Jacobs spreads the blame in a bipartisan manner. But behind it all is charters instead of taxes for the rich.

Jacobs writes:

“Trump went further than Hillary, promising a rapid expansion of charter schools – but this meant charter advocates were siding with both presidential candidates. After winning, Trump wasted no time seeking out the notorious charter maven Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the 41 school Success Academy network in New York City.

“Moskowitz had financial ties to the Trump campaign through Wall Street financier John Paulson. An $8.5 million donor to Success Academy who served as economic advisor to the Trump campaign. Billionaire investor Julian Robertson who gave Success a record-shattering $25 million gift is also a donor to a prominent pro-Trump PAC.

“After meeting Trump, Moskowitz pledged support for his plan to expand charters – as well as controversial private school vouchers – but she stopped short of joining Trump’s cabinet. Next, Moskowitz offered praise to Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (whose foundation had previously donated $300,000 to Success Academy). Moskowitz then invited Ivanka Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan to tour Success charter schools in Harlem.

“Most people do not realize that PACs allied with Moskowitz also helped engineer a political coup in Albany. Her two charter school lobbying groups, Families for Excellent Schools and Great Public Schools PAC, an offshoot of Students First NY, spent over $10 million making pro-charter donors the biggest political manipulators in NY state.

“Another group of hedge funders called New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany financed a massive advertising campaign in 2014 to keep the NY State Senate in Republican hands and pro-charter. Success Academy mega-donor Daniel Loeb contributed $1 million to the group.

“Also pushing charter schools is Reclaim NY, a PAC disguised as a “charity” backed by reclusive billionaire Robert Mercer. When it’s founding VP Steve Bannon stepped down to work in Trump’s White House, it illustrated why The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported Mercer has “surrounded” Trump with “his people” by “paying for their seats.”

“MAYORAL CONTROL MATTERS

“As the plan to expand charter schools in NY starts with wealthy donors who in turn fund legislators, an important focus is wresting control from local stakeholders who might oppose charters opening in their neighborhood.

“Just as we see in charter-heavy Chicago, the key to this in NYC was mayoral control. In 2002, the NY legislature upstate first granted then-mayor Michael Bloomberg unilateral control of NYC schools for a term of seven years, dissolving locally-elected school boards. Because Bloomberg was an advocate for privatizing education and had successfully expanded charters, he was granted a six-year renewal in 2009.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Inequality, Privatization

Wisconsin: Can This Man Beat Scott Walker?

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
8

Tony Evers, the State Superintendent of Instruction in Wisconsin, has announced that he will run against Scott Walker for governor. Walker is a puppet of the Koch brothers who achieved national notoriety for breaking the state teachers’ union in 2011 and for advocating for charter schools and vouchers. Despite the poor performance of vouchers in Milwaukee, which adopted them in 1990–Walker expanded them.


Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s state superintendent of public instruction announced on Wednesday, August 23 that he plans to run for governor against Scott Walker. In his speech declaring his candidacy, he promised to invest in children, public schools, and the middle class, and declared that he will heal the political divide exploited by Scott Walker and Donald Trump.

“Make no mistake—Donald Trump is using the same playbook Scott Walker has been using in Wisconsin for years to create divisions and pit people against each other,” Evers said in his announcement speech to about seventy-five people at McKee Farms Kids Crossing Dream Park in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

The setting for his announcement was symbolic of the values Evers’s candidacy represents, he said: a public park where kids of all backgrounds come to play together: “It’s democracy for little kids—I love it.”

“We must be clear: Trump and Walker are not the symptom of our divisions,” Evers added. “They are the cause.”

Evers is optimistic that voters will respond to a better, more community-minded vision if one is presented to them.

He points out that on the same day Wisconsin voted for Trump, majorities in local school districts all over the state (including in Republican areas) voted to raise property taxes on themselves to support their local public schools.

“On the morning of November 9, when you looked at the results of referendum after referendum, they told a completely different story from the election of Donald Trump,” he noted in an interview with The Progressive.

He made a similar point in his speech: “Scott Walker’s policies have forced almost a million people to raise their own taxes in the last three elections. And these are local people—Democrats, independents, and Republicans.”

That’s important because it shows, in Evers’s view, that when it comes to issues where people feel they have a direct stake in their communities—like maintaining their local public schools—voters do not support the Republican slash-and-burn agenda. As Evers puts it, “Local communities get it. Walker doesn’t get it.

Evers himself has won statewide election three times with big majorities, while fighting Walker’s budget cuts and efforts to expand school vouchers, which further drain resources from public schools. In the last election he won 70 percent of the vote and carried 70 of 72 counties.

His candidacy is all about the core issue of defending public education as an engine of democracy and equal opportunity—an issue that has been at the center of Wisconsin politics throughout the Walker era.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

Teacher in the Bronx: Why Were My Students Forced to Read a Pro-Charter Article?

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2017 //
38

Eric Mears, a teacher in a public high school in the South Bronx, complains that his high school seniors were required to read a pro-charter essay in a Houghton Mifflin textbook.

My Public School Students Read Pro-Charter Propaganda

The essay, by Malcolm Gladwell, celebrated the work ethic in East Asian schools and at KIPP, while putting down the students’ neighborhood and school.

Mears wonders why Gladwell chooses East Asian schools as models for success instead of the schools of Finland.

He objects to the blatant pro-charter propaganda in the textbook.

He writes:

“I am a South Bronx public school teacher who is expected to teach my students that they must enroll in charter schools and leave “desultory” public schools, such as ours, if they wish to succeed.

“I, along with scores of other New York high school teachers, teach from a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) Collections textbook whose introductory text is a pro-charter chapter from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. In it, Gladwell advances the stereotype that low-income U.S. students will only succeed if they study as hyper-industrious Japanese and South Korean students do. The text is unsuitable to teach because of its omissions and its failure to answer key counterarguments; even ones that it explicitly raises.”

The story is called “Marita’s Bargain.”
Her bargain is that she gives up her life in exchange for study.

“Gladwell…lauds a typical KIPP student, Marita, for completing so much schoolwork, including six extended days at KIPP and homework requirements, that she has little time to eat, sleep, or talk to her mother – let alone her friends. Thus is “Marita’s bargain.” She made the exceptional and costly choice of sacrificing her social life in favor of working like a “medical resident.””

The ideal of American childhood and schooling used to be “a well-rounded education.” That ideal made is the most successful nation in the world. Why sacrifice the health and well-being of a generation of children in pursuit of higher test scores? The tests themselves predict nothing about the future of a nation and they have so many inherent flaws that they should be used with care, not as a life goal.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Bookshelf: Steve Nelson’s “First Do No Harm: Progressive Education in a Time of Existential Risk”

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2017 //
38

You know how you can pick up a book, start reading, start annotating with underlining and exclamation points, then realize you are marking up almost every word?

That is Steve Nelson’s “First Do No Harm.” It is chicken soup for the educator’s soul.

Nelson recently retired as head of the progressive Calhoun School in New York City. He also just joined the board of the Network for Public Education because he wants to devote his time to the fight for better public schools for all children.

He describes progressive education as ways to engage children in thinking critically, asking questions, and engaging creatively in play and work. He knows it is endangered, even though children thrive when given the opportunity to love learning.

He recognizes the soul-deadening approach of no-excuses charters and suggests that they exhibit unconscious racism. Maybe not always unconscious.

He points out that affluent communities think they have great public schools, without recognizing that their schools are gifted by the privilege of parents and the community. The same is true of elite private schools, whose students are drawn mostly from wealthy families with every financial advantage.

Every effort to standardize education–whether it is NCLB or Common Core– robs children of the chance to think for themselves. Such top-down programs demand conformity, not critical thinking or creativity. Indeed they punish students who think differently.

Nelson goes into great detail about the harm inflicted on children by no-excuses charter schools like KIPP and Democracy Prep.

He stands strongly against vouchers, which typically are used in religious schools, where children are subject to indoctrination.

Nelson understands the link between education and democracy, education for freedom.

I recommend this book to you.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Childhood, Common Core, Creativity, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Ohio: ECOT Finds Another Profitable Gig

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2017 //
7

Peter Greene reports that ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) has found a way to escape its current woes and keep on collecting state money.

Having attracted the ire of the state for inflating enrollment, having lost its court battle to hang on to its profits for producing low-quality education, having been labeled the school with the lowest graduation rate in the nation, what’s an entrepreneur to do?

Go into the business of dropout recovery!

What a clever idea: First you create the dropouts, then you remediate them. Or claim to.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools
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