Archives for category: Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

A Mom in DougCo, Colorado, Asks for Help

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2017 //
18

This letter is an excellent description of the damage that so-called reformers do to good school districts. In this case, it is Douglas County, Colorado. I urge Amy to join the Network for Public Education, which will connect her to others in Colorado who understand the facade of reform that brings a wrecking crew into the district. Carol Burris will reach out to her.

Can you help?

Amy writes:

I’m a mom of two daughters in Highlands Ranch, CO (an affluent south suburb of Denver, which is heavily Republican). My school district (DCSD-Douglas CO School District) has been under siege since our local 2009 elections, when a majority of “Reform” candidates were elected from within our 7 district “boundaries”, and more in 2013. I admit, I voted for most of them, and I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand what the “Reform” movement was, or how it could dismantle an entire thriving and successful district so quickly.

Over the last 4 to 5 years, as I’ve watched the teacher’s union be dissolved, charter schools (from outside CO) invade and fail, and vouchers drain public money away from neighborhood schools. I’ve watched on-site school teachers/administrators who I have great respect and admiration for, either leave (for neighboring districts… they’re actually called “refugees” within the school systems), retire early, become fearful of speaking up, and sink into a slump of morale. I’ve never been a political person, and I’ve traditionally leaned conservative, but the last 4 years, I’ve become active with other parents in our district to stand up against this “reform” DCSD board agenda that has depleted and destabilized our local school system. We’ve gone from once being the top performing district in the state (attracting top educators/teachers), to having the highest teacher turnover in the state, and massive budget shortfalls.

The board’s pet project, creating the new C.I.T.E. teacher evaluation program, is a dismal failure, and has cost us as taxpayers millions. Our district’s legal fees over the last 8 years are staggering, not to mention millions in fines from the CO BOE, for non-compliant decisions of our Reform board directors. Bottom line… our district needs help.

This November’s election will give citizens the opportunity to replace several of the Reform board members, and despite our county being heavily Republican, I feel parent and teacher grass root groups have a chance. But my concern is that SO many residents in our county simply don’t understand the complexity, and direct links between these board members, and harm in our schools. I’ve been a (moderate) registered republican most of my life, but in this area, I’ve become pretty darn “liberal”, based on watching the impacts on my daughter’s schools, and researching “why”.

We are a county/district packed with “families”. Many Denver citizens have/had moved to our suburbs specifically to get into our school district. I BELIEVE, despite resident’s political identification, that this is an issue that can be persuasively won (taken back) in our county. However, during our last few election cycles, lobbyists, money, and out-of-state players seem to flood into our little district. I’ve come to realize Douglas County, CO, is somehow very important to much bigger players. A group called LPR (Leadership Program of the Rockies…

http://www.leadershipprogram.org ) has been a major influence on our district, and I’ve come to feel as though our local citizens are being manipulated by this group. More directly, by its members and graduates (the 4 remaining “reform” board members are all affiliated with LPR.) They and have even appointed/hired other LPR members to positions within the district… (I.e. the F-Time attorney recently hired to work in our school administration). Is it even normal for a previously highly successful school district to have a FT “in-house” attorney as a school district employee?

I’m really just one small person, and there are certainly others also advocating in my district who are much more knowledgeable about everything that has occurred over the last 10 years. I’m reaching out to you, because of what I’ve read about you, your passions, and your impressive educational and professional background. Do you have any insight or advice for how our grassroots citizens (who understand the need to stand up and “do something”) should proceed between now and the crutial elections this November? Specifically…

* what are the best and most effective ways to get our local community “aware” of these issues? (as many people just find the topic boring, and/or assume no matter who is elected, the “district” is bigger than any one board member)
* assuming we get local voters better educated, what practices result in getting them to ACT (I.e. voting; and potentially across their GOP “party” identifications, if only on this ONE local issue)?
* How do we find, solicit, and promote the best potential “anti-reform” school board candidates for this November’s local election? The “Reform” candidates in previous elections have come across as VERY intelligent, highly educated, and very “successful” people with high level jobs… even I incorrectly “assumed” (in prior elections) that these professional smart people (I.e. an attorney, a rocket scientist etc) would make logical good decisions for our kids and schools. Because they had very professional “day jobs”, and kids in our schools, I guess I assumed lobbyists or outside influences wouldn’t have much effect on them. Now I know each received sizable campaign donations from places like the local GOP party, and LPR sources.
* how can we most effectively raise money for our future candidates, to be able to compete against heavily funded “reform” candidates?
* Is it possible to keep these special interest and even “national” entities out of “our” small local elections?
Thank you for the important work you do. And if I don’t hear back from you, know you have inspired “little people” like me about the crutial importance of public education, and why we can’t treat it as a for-profit commodity.

Most Sincerely,

Amy Smith

Highlands Ranch, CO

Citizen and mom in the Douglas CO School District
YouCanReachAmySmith@gmail.com

PS: these are websites involved local parents and teachers have formed over the last few years…
Involved Douglas County teachers and Citizens…
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dc4publicedu/
SPEAK for DCSD…
https://www.facebook.com/SPEAK-for-DCSD-113649758761679/
Douglas County Parents…
https://www.facebook.com/DouglasCountyParents/

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

Julian Vasquez Heilig: The Sordid Truth About Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2017 //
15

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a scholar of education who is devoted to the advancement of equity. His pathbreaking work aims to strip away rhetoric and fake claims and to show which policies help or harm children of color. His blog, “Cloaking Inequity,” is always provocative.

In this post, he explains why vouchers were created: for profit and for segregation.

He is right. Vouchers and school choice intensify and facilitate segregation–by race, class, religion, and socioeconomic status.

In the Deep South, vouchers and school choice were the rallying cries of hardline segregationists (for more detail, read Mercedes Schneider’s fine new book, “School Choice.”

I was recently on an NPR show (Warren Olney’s “On Point), with a panel that included Emma Brown of the Washington Post, Randi Weingarten, and Matt Frendewey, a spokesman for Betsy DeVos’ American Federation for Children. Randi said that vouchers were originated in the South by segregationist politicians. The DeVos guy became furious and said that Randi was making it up., it wasn’t true, just union propaganda.

 

When I finally got my turn, I said that my field is the history of American education. I pointed out that the history of voucher advocacy was indisputable: it began with white segregationists trying to block desegregation.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: How DeVos Strengthened Progressive Forces in Education

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2017 //
37

Jeff Bryant pulls together persuasive evidence that Betsy DeVos energized a movement that was previously scattered and disconnected. People who had no idea that the privatization of public schools is a genuine threat became informed. Groups began forming at the grassroots level to defend their community’s public schools. Supposedly “progressive” Democrats supported privatization by charters because they were hoodwinked by fake reformers promising fake miracles. For those of us fighting privatization, DeVos clarified what is at stake: the survival of democratically-controlled, community-based public schools, responsible for all children.

Even Senators like Michael Bennett and Corey Booker voted against DeVos, even though they fundamentally agree with her view of school reform by school choice.

Make no mistake: School choice was born in racism and it promotes racism.

Jeff Bryant writes:

“Betsy DeVos may have won her contest in the Senate to become the new U.S. Secretary of Education, but her opposition wasn’t the only thing that went down to defeat that day.

“For decades, federal education policies have been governed by a “Washington Consensus” that public schools are effectively broken, especially in low-income communities of color, and the only way to fix them is to apply a dose of tough love and a business philosophy of competition from charter schools and performance measurements based on standardized tests.

“Since the 1990s, this consensus among Democrats and Republicans has enforced all kinds of unproven “reform” mandates on schools, and by 2012, as veteran education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post noted that year, the two parties were “happily copying each other” on education.

“Democrats have in recent years sounded – and acted – a lot like Republicans in advancing corporate education reform, which seeks to operate public schools as if they were businesses, not civic institutions,” writes Valerie Strauss, the veteran education journalist who blogs for the Washington Post. “By embracing many of the tenets of corporate reform — including the notion of ‘school choice’ and the targeting of teachers and their unions as being blind to the needs of children – they helped make DeVos’s education views, once seen as extreme, seem less so.”

“But with the election of President Donald Trump and the ascension of DeVos to secretary, that consensus appears dead.

“She would start her job with no credibility,” Education Week quotes Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington. “A vote for Betsy DeVos is a vote for a secretary of education who is likely to succeed only in further dividing us on education issues.”

“The DeVos vote reflected the tribal, dysfunctional, polarized nature of our politics,” writes Woodrow Wilson Center senior scholar Linda Killian in USA Today. “It is a harbinger of things to come.”

“But what looks like the death of a political consensus on education could be the beginning of something else: an opportunity for progressives to press a new education agenda. Here’s what should they do.”

He proceeds to write about next steps. Read them.

Here is one you can take right now. Join the Network for Public Education. DeVos caused a huge spike in our membership. She has made parents and educators and graduates of public schools aware that they must stand together and fight the DeVos-Trump agenda of charters, vouchers, cybercharters, for-profit schools, homeschooling. Just remember when she speaks soothing words about public schools, she wants to take funding away from them to share with all those private choices.

When Eli Broad talks about charters, he is endorsing the DeVos agenda. When Democrats for Education Reform, Families for Excellent Schools, Stand for Children, Bill Gates, and other billionaires sing the praises of charter schools, they are singing from the DeVos privatization hymnal.

When Anthony Cody and I started the Network

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

Barbara Miner: If You Care about Public Schools and Democracy, Beware of DeVos’ Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2017 //
27

Barbara Miner is a veteran journalist based in Milwaukee, where she writes often about the stat’s disastrous voucher plan. In 2013, she published a book called “Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City.”

In this article in the Los Angeles Times, Miner warns that the public must keep watch on DeVos because her goal is to legitimize vouchers for religious schools across the nation.

She warns:

“DeVos, now confirmed as secretary of Education, is not just another inexperienced member of the president’s Cabinet. She is an ideologue with a singular educational passion — replacing our system of democratically controlled public schools with a universal voucher program that privileges private and religious ones.

“If you care about our public schools and our democracy, you should be worried.”

Miner describes how Milwaukee and Wisconsin were taken in by bait and switch.

“Milwaukee’s program began in 1990, when the state Legislature passed a bill allowing 300 students in seven nonsectarian private schools to receive taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers. It was billed as a small, low-cost experiment to help poor black children, and had a five-year sunset clause.

“That was the bait. The first “switch” came a few weeks later, when the Republican governor eliminated the sunset clause. Ever since, vouchers have been a divisive yet permanent fixture in Wisconsin.

“Conservatives have consistently expanded the program, especially when Republicans controlled the state government. (Vouchers have never been put to a public vote in Wisconsin.) Today, some 33,000 students in 212 schools receive publicly funded vouchers, not just in Milwaukee but throughout Wisconsin. If it were its own school district, the voucher program would be the state’s second largest. The overwhelming majority of the schools are religious.

“Voucher schools are private schools that have applied for a state-funded program that pays tuition for some or all of its student body. Even if every single student at a school receives a publicly funded voucher, as is the case in 22 of Milwaukee’s schools, that school is still defined as private.

“Because they are defined as “private,” voucher schools operate by separate rules, with minimal public oversight or transparency. They can sidestep basic constitutional protections such as freedom of speech. They do not have to provide the same level of second-language or special-education services. They can suspend or expel students without legal due process. They can ignore the state’s requirements for open meetings and records. They can disregard state law prohibiting discrimination against students on grounds of sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, or marital or parental status.”

Since 1990, the people of Wisconsin have paid more than $2 billion for vouchers, mostly to religious institutions. This has been an expensive experiment.

“Privatizing an essential public function and forcing the public to pay for it, even while removing it from meaningful public oversight, weakens our democracy.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Funding, Milwaukee, Privatization, Vouchers, Wisconsin

The Dirty Tricks of California’s Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
5

The Los Angeles Times endorsed two strong supporters of charter schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District board, both favored by the California Charter School Association. The rationale was simplistic: new voices are needed.This is bizarre. It doesn’t matter whether a voice is old or new. What matters most is what the voice is saying. Will a new board try to turn Los Angeles into New Orleans? Will it be Eli Broad’s puppet? His voice is the oldest of all. It would be truly refreshing if the LA Times told him to keep his hands off the public schools since all of his experiments have failed (e.g., Michigan’s Education Achievement District). Why don’t they tell him to stick to art and medical research and stop meddling in the schools?

However, the Times published an article by columnist Steve Lopez that offers a clear-eyed analysis of the CCSA’s dirty tricks. The CCSA and its billionaire buddies have decided that it is time to take out Steve Zimmer, chair of the LAUSD school board. They are raising millions of dollars to push him out, even though he has not been hostile to charters. But the billionaires don’t want a fair-minded board president who has classroom experience (Zimmer came into education through Teach for America but remained a teacher for 17 years). The last time they tried to beat him, they outspent him 5-1, but he prevailed. His winning issue apparently was the $1 million from former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, which gave the appearance that a New Yorker was trying to buy control of the LA schools. So this time the $1 million came from former LA Mayor Richard Riordan.

So here’s the dirty trick. CCSA created a phony group called LA Students for Change to demand Zimmer’s ouster. Once again, like Families for Excellent Schools in New York City, which is composed of billionaire families who will never see the inside of a public school, the charter industry finds it necessary to deceive voters. Worse, CCSA printed up flyers for their student-props, blaming Zimmer for John Deasy’s $1 Billion iPad fiasco.

How comical is that? The embarrassing iPad scandal caused Deasy to resign, with a cloud over his head. Deasy now works for Eli Broad. Broad is the city’s charter kingpin and a major financier of CCSA. and now CCSA’s student group is pinning Deasy’s mess on Zimmer.

I salute the Los Angeles Times for recognizing that it’s time for Monica Garcia, the board’s most fervent charter advocate, to go. The Times endorses Lisa Alva, a classroom teacher who would be a valuable addition to the board. She and Carl Petersen are running against Garcia, and here’s hoping that they pull enough votes to force her into a run-off and defeat her.

Los Angeles should have a great public school in every neighborhood. That won’t happen as long as charters continue to drain away the students they want and drain away resources, leaving LAUSD with the students most expensive to educate and less money to meet their needs.

The district needs that vision, not just new voices and faces for the sake of novelty.

Categories Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Yohuru Williams: We Will Continue to Build Our Resistance and Save Our Schools

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2017 //
1

Yohuru Williams is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.

“Friends and allies let’s be clear: We anticipated this outcome but much good has come from our organizing efforts. If you wrote or called an elected official, joined an organization like the BATS or The Network for Public Education, stood with teacher activists like the Caucus of WE or MORE, supported our phenomenal teacher unions like the CTU, rallied parents and students to fight against this nomination or symbolically wore black, at least you took action.

“Now is not a time for mourning and retreat. It is time to ratchet up the resistance. If you did none of those things it’s not too late, the fight to save public education has just begun anew and this is day one. The Network for Public Education and the BadassTeachersA will be engaged as will activists across the country. Remember this moment and let it inspire you as it has us to continue this fight. Our children and public schools deserve the best of our efforts even in the shadow of this small setback. Victory goes not to the swift but the dedicated. Make a pledge by joining an organization or participating in an action today to continue this fight. We will win because we are on the side of justice and equity. #DumpDevos #savepubliceducation

Categories Betsy DeVos, Privatization, Resistance

Leonie Haimsom: After the Confirmation, What’s Next?

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2017 //
21

Leonie a Haimson, leader of Class Size Matter and board member of the Network for Public Education, reviews the drama of the last week and looks ahead.

“So it happened as predicted; Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote for Betsy Devos this afternoon.
Though disappointing it was in its way historic: the only time in US history that a Cabinet secretary needed the vote of the Vice President to be approved.

“The last few weeks have been historic in another way: Never have parents, teachers and concerned citizens been so outraged and activated over an education official or issue. Never have so many called, rallied, protested, faxed and written letters to their Senators, in an “avalanche” that nearly flattened Capitol Hill, overwhelming and shocking Senators of both parties….

“We need to sustain the activism and involvement we exercised in this battle and keep speaking out loudly and firmly to let education policymakers at the federal, state and local levels know that we will not stand idly by while our public schools are defunded, dismantled and privatized.

“One issue little noticed by the media: it was widely recognized how avid Betsy DeVos has been to allow for-profit charters and vouchers to draw funds from the public schools. What was little noticed is her devotion to online learning and questionable ed tech solutions. These will just as surely divert resources from the proven strategies that provide students with the support and human feedback they need. It was reported that the one financial company she refused to divest from is Neurocore that runs “brain performance centers” via biofeedback to treat autism and attention deficit disorder with no evidence of efficacy.

“In 2015, while speaking at SXSW Edu, that annual Kumbaya gathering of the technology tribe, DeVos sounded exactly like Bill Gates:

It’s a battle of Industrial Age versus the Digital Age. It’s the Model T versus the Tesla. It’s old factory model versus the new Internet model. It’s the Luddites versus the future. We must open up the education industry — and let’s not kid ourselves that it isn’t an industry — we must open it up to entrepreneurs and innovators.

This is how families without means will get access to a world-class education. This is how a student who’s not learning in their current model can find an individualized learning environment that will meet their needs.
We are the beneficiaries of start-ups, ventures, and innovation in every other area of life, but we don’t have that in education because it’s a closed system, a closed industry, a closed market. It’s a monopoly, a dead end. And the best and brightest innovators and risk-takers steer way clear of it. As long as education remains a closed system, we will never see the education equivalents of Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Wikipedia or Uber. We won’t see any real innovation that benefits more than a handful of students.”

“Surely, we will need all your activism in the battles to come – whether it be against the expansion of charters, the use of tuition tax credits or vouchers, or wasteful ed tech scams — all of which would divert precious resources from our public schools. Now that we’ve woken up our elected officials to the fact that parents and teachers and citizens fiercely love their public schools, and will do nearly anything to preserve, protect and support them, we must continue to speak out.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, For-Profit, Online Learning, Privatization, Technology

Today the Fight to Save Our Public Schools Begins

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2017 //
39

The Network for Public Education will watch what Betsy DeVos does and report it to you immediately.

We will keep you informed about what the privatizers are doing in your state and community.

We will help you connect with other people in your state who are mobilizing to stop privatization.

The fight to save public education will happen in communities and districts, at the grassroots level.

We ask you to join us, become active, send us action alerts about meetings, protests and demonstrations in your district or town or city so we can help you get the news out.

Here is information you can use:

Get everyone you can to join NPE. Sign them up

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/become-a-member/

Tell others on Facebook to join. We will be mobilizing in the months ahead.

Create a local group in support of public schools. Use Facebook or create a website. Then join our Grassroots Network.

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/grassroots-education-network-3/

Read our emails. We will be regularly launching campaigns at the national and state level.

Make a donation. If we are to fight this we will need funds. http://networkforpubliceducation.org/about-npe/donate/

Together, we will build a movement so powerful that we can beat Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and all others who aim to privatize our public schools. Together we can keep the for-profit privateers and frauds out of our schools.

Work with us. We need your help.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, For-Profit, Fraud, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Network for Public Education Outraged by DeVos’ Okay

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2017 //
22

For Immediate Release: February 7, 2017

Media Contact: Carol Burris 718-577-3276

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org

The Network for Public Education furious over the approval of Betsy DeVos. Begins campaign to thwart any attempts to privatize schools.

The Network for Public Education (NPE) announced its campaign to oppose any attempts by the newly appointed Secretary of Education to privatize public education. In a letter to its 316,000 members, NPE vowed to continue the fight against the DeVos agenda at both the state and national level.

“Betsy DeVos put a spotlight on the ongoing threat to our democratically governed, community public schools. Public school advocates across the nation spoke out. Our campaign against DeVos generated over 600,000 emails and thousands of phone calls and letters to the Senate. Americans do not want an unregulated, privatized school system paid for by American taxpayers. They do not want public school funds taken from their neighborhood schools for profiteers, charters and vouchers. That is what DeVos represents,” said NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris.

NPE President, Diane Ravitch, believes the De Vos family’s massive political donations were the driving factor behind her Senate approval. “We are disappointed but not surprised that Betsy DeVos was approved, despite the fact that she is completely unqualified for the job by experience or knowledge or any other criteria. As she has acknowledged, she and her family have given millions of dollars to the Republican party, including to members of the senate that just approved her. We weep for the children of America, knowing that this woman will launch an assault on their community public schools, as she did in Michigan. Since her choice theology was implemented in Michigan, that state’s rankings on national tests have plummeted, and Detroit–now flooded with charters–remains the lowest performing urban district on national tests. We will continue to fight her agenda of school privatization as it moves forward.“

The Network for Public Education will expand its Grassroots Network, and will roll out reports, advisories and toolkits to help policymakers and parents better understand the dangers of school privatization. In the months ahead, NPE will lead both state and national campaigns.

“When it comes to fighting for adequately funded, democratically-governed public schools, we make ‘no excuses’.” Our neighborhood schools made our country great. We will not allow them to be destroyed,” Burris said.

About the Network for Public Education

The Network for Public Education (NPE) was founded in 2013 by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. We are an advocacy group whose mission is to protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public schools for both current and future generations of students. NPE has over 300,000 supporting members nationwide. For more information, please visit: networkforpubliceducation.org.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Privatization

Steven Singer: Why Are So Many Democrats in Pennsylvania Supporting Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2017 //
32

It is baffling that there is a sector of the Democratic Party that aligns with far-right Republicans on education issues. The Republicans want nothing more than to turn education into a free market, a strategy that has no evidence behind it.

Steven Singer bemoans the fact that a group of Democratic legislators in his state of Pennsylvania are supporting the Republican push against public schools.

He writes:

“Democrats are supposed to be liberals, progressives.

“That means upholding the Constitution and the Separation of Church and State.

“So why are so many Pennsylvania Democrats sponsoring an expansion of the state’s de facto school voucher bill?

“A total of 11 out of 84 sponsors of HB 250 are Democrats. The bill would expand the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs.

“The Commonwealth already diverts $200 million of business taxes to private and parochial schools. That’s money that should be going to support our struggling public school system.

“The new bill would add $50 million to each program for a total of $100 million more flushed down the drain.

“Pennsylvania has a budget deficit. We’ve cut almost $1 billion a year from public schools. We can’t afford to burn an additional $300 million on private and church schools.

“We expect Republicans to support this regressive nonsense. Especially in gerrymandered Pennsylvania, they’ve gone further and further right to please their Tea Party base and avoid being primaried.

“But the few Democrats left in the House and Senate are likewise in districts that would never vote Republican. You’d expect them to get more and more progressive. Instead, even here we see them taking steps to the right!

“Democratic sponsors of the bill are almost exclusively from the state’s urban centers – Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.”

He lists the Democrats who support corporate giveaways.

Don’t vote for them.

Categories Budget Cuts, Democrats, Funding, Hoax, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »