Here is a recap of the debate between Julian Vasquez Heilig and Christopher Stewart of the Walton-funded “Education Post.”
The proposition debated was “Charters and Vouchers are the answer.”
Archives for category: Privatization
Reader Chiara. Has written innumerable comments pointing out that the parents and teachers of public schools have been shut out of policy circles. Why? Nearly 90% of the children in the United States attend public schools, not charter schools, religious schools, or independent schools. Why aren’t their ideas and views considered important?
She writes:
“Echo chamber alert:
“http://pahara.org/2017/02/press-release-february-28-2017/
“Aspen Education Fellows. ONE person from a public school. One.
“Ed reform excludes public schools from public education policy. It’s like how the US Department of Education is now the US Department of Private and Charter Schools.
“So how does one respond to this? Develop a new group of people who come out of public schools and just detach from the whole ed reform “movement”? I don’t really accept that the only people consulted on public school policy come out of charter and private schools. I reject that. Is the assumption that they are somehow “better”? Why?
“When we held community meetings on our public schools we didn’t pack the place with people from the private school. Why? Because 99% of our kids go to the public school.”
My mistake: the debate was last night, not tonight.
Julian Vasquez Heilig will debate Christopher Stewart tonight. It will be live-streamed.
The proposition is: “Charters and Vouchers are the Answer.”
I will be rooting for Julian, who knows the research and knows that privatization has never produced better education for the neediest kids.
Julian is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.
ProPublica writes about the abuses that occur in certain for-profit schools designed especially for difficult children. The very concept of a public school that operates for profit is absurd, because every dollar from taxpayers is meant for the children, the teachers, and the schools, not investors. But this article is specifically about a for-profit chain for difficult students.
An alternative school for sixth- through 12th-graders with behavioral or academic problems, Paramount occupied a low-slung, brick and concrete building on a dead-end road in hard-luck Reading, Pennsylvania, a city whose streets are littered with signs advertising bail bondsmen, pay-day lenders, and pawn shops. Camelot Education, the for-profit company that ran Paramount under a contract with the Reading school district, maintained a set of strict protocols: No jewelry, book bags, or using the water fountain or bathroom without permission. Just as it still does at dozens of schools, the company deployed a small platoon of “behavioral specialists” and “team leaders”: typically large men whose job was partly to enforce the rules.
Over six months in 2013 and 2014, about a half-dozen parents, students and community members at Paramount Academy — billed as a “therapeutic” day program — complained of abusive behavior by the school’s staff. One mother heard that staff restrained students by “excessive force” and bruised the arms of a female student, according to email exchanges between Camelot and the district. Another mother, Sharon Pacharis, said she visited the school to complain about manhandling and was told, “That’s just what we do.” Camelot’s own written reports to the district documented one incident in which a teenager was scratched and another in which a bathroom wall was damaged. Both resulted from “holds” — likely a reference to Camelot’s protocol for restraining students during a physical encounter.
Camelot tended to blame the students in its weekly reports to the district, calling them “out of control”; school officials referred several to police. It was, after all, a place partly for students whom the district had deemed too disruptive for a traditional school setting.
But an incident on April 24, 2014, abruptly shifted the focus to Camelot’s staff.
Ismael Seals, a behavioral specialist, walked into a classroom with several loud and boisterous students and commanded them to “shut the fuck up,” decreeing that the next one who talked would get body-slammed through the door, according to a subsequent criminal complaint. Moments later, Seals fulfilled his promise. After 17-year-old Corey Mack asked and received permission from his teacher, Teresa Bivens, to get up to sharpen his pencil, Seals pushed him repeatedly against a door and then shoved him into the hall, where a school surveillance camera recorded most of the rest of the incident. Seals, 6 feet 4 inches tall and 280 pounds, lifted Mack, 5 feet 8 inches tall and about 160 pounds, by his shirt and swung him into the wall headfirst, later pinning him to the ground as other staff members arrived, according to court documents.
Mack later showed a string of bruises and scratches on his back to a program director at a center for children with behavioral and mental health challenges. The program director called a juvenile probation official, who contacted the police.
Reached by telephone last fall, Corey Mack struggled to remember the details of his altercation with Seals, including what he had said just before the behavioral specialist shoved him, and the precise sequence of events. But he was clear on the essential point: “He beat me up,” Mack said.
Is this what taxpayers support? They should not.
DeVos should be challenged. For profit schools should be prohibited, not subsidized by taxpayers.
Mary Gonzalez is a member of the Texas House of Representatives. She is now serving her third term in the House, and she is deeply concerned that the state and the federal government want to destroy public education.
The goal of school choice, she says, is to create a separate and unequal system of schools for the state’s 6 million students.
She writes:
In 2011, the Legislature cut $5.4 billion in public education funding and implemented a testing regime that centered accountability on a dehumanizing, ineffective standardized test.
In short, schools would get a lot less money while facing impossible standards. It was as if schools were intentionally being set up to be labelled as failures. Why do you think campuses are now being labeled A through F?
Creating the perception of failing public schools in the minds of the public was necessary to fuel the “school choice” movement.
Listening to the political rhetoric at the state and national level, this strategy seems to have been effective. Instead of a collective discourse on strengthening and funding our public schools, the conversation centers on supporting charter expansion and vouchers.
The expansion of “school choice” translates into the creation of multiple systems, facilitating a structure of separate and unequal.
Charter school quality, however, is questionable. Research demonstrates that, on average, they don’t outperform traditional public schools.
The real problem with “school choice” is the creation of an unequal, tiered system that allows students to fall through the cracks. These tiers are only created when money and resources are taken away from public schools.
In the long term, this approach is unsustainable for a state serving nearly 6 million students.
The unequal distribution of resources, along with the fact that charter schools do not operate under the same rules as public schools, exacerbates the problem.
Charters claim to be “public”, but are actually run by corporations or nonprofits, rather than locally elected school boards that are accountable to parents and the community.
Charters are not subject to the same regulations as public schools. Those regulations include class size limits, student-teacher ratios, and having school nurses and counselors on site.
Also, charters can control enrollment through admission requirements like geographical location, discipline records, sibling priority, academic ability, and through dismissal and expulsion procedures that differ from those of traditional schools. This allows charters to preferentially select students who are less-expensive to educate.
When we fragment the public school system, we create more opportunity for inequity without making any real gains.
Democracy requires a strong and equitable public school system. Choice will undermine that goal.
Democratic Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado will introduce Neil Gorsuch at his Senate confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gorsuch is from Colorado.
Bennett is one of the most fervent advocates for school privatization in Congress. Before entering the Senate (he was appointed to fill a vacancy, then was elected), he was superintendent of Denver, where he promoted high-stakes testing and charter schools. He is a DFER favorite.
Apparently, he forgot that not a single Republican senator was willing to support Merrick Garland, the highly respected federal judge nominated by Obama for the seat that Gorsuch is likely to take.
Ian Millhiser of Think Progress says of Gorsuch:
Gorsuch’s record suggests that he is to the right of the late conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia, and possibly as far right as the most conservative member of the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas. As a judge, Gorsuch voted to limit women’s access to birth control in the Hobby Lobby case. He tried to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood in Utah. And he is likely to provide the key fifth vote to uphold voter suppression laws that skew the electorate to the right and help keep Democrats like Michael Bennet from winning elections.
Those who have followed the rightwing tilt of Democrats like Bennett are not surprised.
The Network for Public Education invites School Board members to join our new group dedicated to fighting privatization of public schools.
https://npeaction.org/2017/03/03/7286/
We will keep you informed about political activity in your state and introduce you to other dedicated School Board members.
Count on Mercedes Schneider to review Trump’s budget proposal.
It is as bad as you heard.
She says, “At least he doesn’t call himself an ‘education president.'”
True, he is the anti-education president.
He is the first who wants to tear down public education, not improve it.
He does not want to invest in our children or our future.
He is an enemy of the people.
The Network for Public Education is launching a campaign to fight back against the Trump-DeVos budget cuts to public schools and budget gains for privatization.
Open this link, join our action, and send it to your friends!
The privatization steam roller continues to move through the Republican controlled states.
The Missouri House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill to expand the number of charter schools in the state. The bill now moves to the Senate.
After more than five hours of debate Wednesday and more than an hour of debate Thursday, the measure advanced to the Senate on an 83-76 vote.
Charter schools are tuition-free public schools that operate independently from elected school boards. They currently operate in St. Louis and Kansas City only; the plan would allow charter schools in places like Columbia and Springfield.
The sponsor, Rep. Rebecca Roeber, R-Lee’s Summit, touted the legislation as a way to provide students and families with more choices. The changes, she said, will bring competition to schools, triggering improvement and innovation in education.
Public education advocates warned that charter schools have not fulfilled their promises of success and innovation, but Republicans were determined to pass the bill anyway.
