Archives for category: Privatization
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Why Los Angeles Is Now Ground Zero for Corporate Reform–and Pushback

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2013 //
6

In this post on the New York City parent blog, activist Leonie Haimson explains the hard-fought battle for control of the Los Angeles public schools, and what is at stake.

The reform crowd doesn’t care about class size; the anti-status quo board members do.

The reformers do nothing to slow the pace of privatization.

We will see if the new board majority is able to create true accountability standards for the city with more charters than any other in the nation.

Up until now, the privatizers controlled the board and escaped any oversight, supervision, or accountability.

But they lost control in the last election, and a new majority means fresh thinking and a rejection of the status quo.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization

More than TFA Dissidents Meet Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2013 //
118

A reader comments on an earlier post about a conference tomorrow in Chicago that will discuss TFA and the privatization movement.

She writes:

“Diane, it is not only ex-TFA members. I am also one of the presenters at the conference, representing traditionally trained teachers in New Orleans who now struggle to find employment. We also have parents, students, and community members who have suffered from the corporatization of public education presenting at the conference. We are an inclusive group that has come together to work against the takeover of our schools and communities, because we all must unite in order to defeat the privatization agenda.”

Categories Parents, Privatization, Teach for America TFA

TFA Dissenters Organize Conference for Reform of TFA

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2013 //
19

It was bound to happen.

Teach for America recruits thousands of very smart young men and women and trains them to think like members of TFA, believing that high expectations and high energy will suffice to close the achievement gap.

With so many well-educated TFA corps members, there was bound to be a movement to think differently about TFA’s methods, its claims, and its ambitions.

On July 14, dissident members of Teach for America will gather to debate the role and future of TFA.

As this article in The American Prospect explains,

“Despite the endless outcry, no one has ever staged a coordinated, national effort to overhaul, or put the brakes on, TFA—let alone anyone from within the TFA rank-and-file. On July 14, in a summit at the annual Free Minds/Free People education conference in Chicago, a group of alumni and corps members will be the first to do so.

The summit, billed as “Organizing Resistance Against Teach for America and its Role in Privatization,” is being organized by a committee of scholars, parents, activists, and current corps members. Its mission is to challenge the organization’s centrality in the corporate-backed, market-driven, testing-oriented movement in urban education. 

“The goal is to help attendees identify the resources they have as activists and educators to advocate for real, just reform in their communities,” says co-coordinator Beth Sondel, a 2004 TFA alum who is now a PhD student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin. Though the organizers don’t have pre-set goals, possible outcomes range from a push for school districts not to contract with TFA to counter-recruitment of potential corps members away from the program.”

TFA attracts bright, idealistic young people with the promise that they can be agents of social justice and that their future leadership role in other sectors will change attitudes towards education. But these same bright, idealistic young people have noticed that the leaders trained by Teach for America are key proponents of union-busting and privatization. They have observed TFA alums like John White, the advocate for Bobby Jindal’s extreme reactionary agenda in Louisiana, the goal of which is privatization. They have noted that Kevin Huffman is faithfully serving the far-right governor of Tennessee in his efforts to strip teachers of collective bargaining rights, eliminate tenure, and remove any pay increases for advanced degrees and years of experience. They are no doubt uncomfortable being in league with Michelle Rhee, now raising money for Republican candidates in state races and pro-voucher Democrats.

Where will the internal dissent go? Will it matter? Will TFA listen?

This conference shows how hard it is to create a corps of young people who will obey and conform, when their education has encouraged them to think for themselves.

Categories Privatization, Teach for America TFA

Connecticut’s Privatization Manager Moves On

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2013 //
16

Jonathan Pelto reports that Debra Kurshan, the state’s “Chief Turnaround Officer” is leaving for another position after eight months on the job.

What a close and cozy world these corporate reformers inhabit!

As Pelto writes:

“Commissioner Pryor has announced that Kurshan, who previously served as the head of School Portfolio Development for Mayor Bloomberg’s school privatization efforts and also worked as a consultant to the superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District in New Orleans, is leaving the state to join an unnamed education consulting firm.

“Before her short stints with the Bloomberg Administration and Paul Vallas’ old Louisiana Recovery School District, Kurshan was with the education reform group, Education Pioneers, where she worked at Village Academies Network, a charter school management organization operating two schools in Harlem, New York.”

“In New York City, Kurshan worked on closing public schools to make room for charter schools and co-locating charter schools in public school spaces.”

Have you noticed that “turnaround” is a synonym for privatizing?

These reformers feel no association with public education. They see their mission as helping kids move to privately managed schools.

Do they ever reflect on the end game?

Categories Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Privatization

Is Time Running Out for the Reformers?

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2013 //
16

The public is beginning to awaken to the realities of what is deceptively called “school reform.”

Read David Sirota’s terrific piece on how they are unraveling, here.

First, what is happening in state after state, in direct response to federal policy, is school destruction, not reform.

Second, the end game for the so-called “reformers” is privatization, not reform.

Everything the “reformers” advocate fails to produce better education.

Charters and vouchers are not only privatization, but they promote greater segregation and social stratification.

The endless testing regime has generated a backlash that reaches into every district in the nation.

The recent release of the NAEP Long-Term Trend data for 2008-2012 showed virtually no improvements in test scores for that period of time, just as NCLB and Race to the Top converged.

The “reformers” are the status quo.

It is a status quo that is bad for students, bad for teachers, and bad for the quality of education.

At some point, the public will demand change, and the reformers will be finished.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Minneapolis Public Schools: Will They Survive?

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2013 //
27

It is not news to readers of this blog that public education is under attack in cities across the nation by a politically powerful and heavily funded privatization movement. In some states, this movement has moved into the suburbs as well.

This video pulls away the mask of reform and explains in clear detail the nexus of connections behind the privatization movement in Minneapolis. This district was once the largest in the state. Due to the proliferation of privately managed charters, it is now the third largest in Minnesota.

The video has no production values. It is a simple narration of a complex graphic that displays the web of relationships among powerful foundations, one very powerful family, national organizations, and corporate interests.

All the big players have converged on Minneapolis: 50CAN, DFER, TFA, and many more, abetted by one powerful local family that owned the city’s biggest newspaper, sold it, and now owns the online newspaper Minnpost.

Charters in Minneapolis are more segregated than the public schools and get lower scores.

These inconvenient facts do not slow the advance of the privatization movement. They present themselves as idealists, and some are fooled by the rhetoric about “saving minority children from failing schools” and “closing the achievement gap.” They are flush with cash and federal tax credits, and fueled by ambition, a love of power, media adulation, and–for some–tidy profits.

Left to their own devices, they will restore a dual school system, both publicly funded, one free to kick out students, the other a dumping ground for the kids unwanted by the charters.

Left to their own devices, they will destroy public education in America.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, Minnesota, Privatization

NY Times: The Destruction of North Carolina’s Progressive Legacy

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2013 //
17

The New York Times wrote a searing critique of the slash-and-burn policies of North Carolina’s governor and legislature. What was once one of the south’s most forward-looking states is rapidly being decimated into a hard, mean backwater.

As we have learned over recent months, the legislature has imposed deep budget cuts on public schools, is taking away salary raises from teachers who get advanced degrees, has abolished tenure, and is doing whatever it can to advance privatization and demolish teacher professionalism. Of course, while cutting the budget the legislators found $5 million for TFA, and they are hoping to expand charters.

Oh, and wouldn’t you know that a graduate of TFA, Eric Guckian, is advising the governor on his harsh education policy. Remember, these are the people who bring excellence everywhere.

But that’s not all. Since the far right took control of the state, writes the Times,

“… state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot.

“The cruelest decision by lawmakers went into effect last week: ending federal unemployment benefits for 70,000 residents. Another 100,000 will lose their checks in a few months. Those still receiving benefits will find that they have been cut by a third, to a maximum of $350 weekly from $535, and the length of time they can receive benefits has been slashed from 26 weeks to as few as 12 weeks.

“The state has the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the country, and many Republicans insulted workers by blaming their joblessness on generous benefits. In fact, though, North Carolina is the only state that has lost long-term federal benefits, because it did not want to pay back $2.5 billion it owed to Washington for the program. The State Chamber of Commerce argued that cutting weekly benefits would be better than forcing businesses to pay more in taxes to pay off the debt, and lawmakers blindly went along, dropping out of the federal program.”

NC CAN, part of a national organization devoted to privatization and high-stakes testing, has declared this to be the “year of the teacher.” Apparently NC CAN has a sense of humor since the legislature works overtime to beat up on teachers and remove any benefits it can think of. Let’s see if NC CAN campaigns to raise teachers’ salaries or to protect academic freedom.

Categories Budget Cuts, North Carolina, Privatization

President Obama, Please Read This

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2013 //
33

This teacher in Pennsylvania wonders why President Obama is turning his back on the calamity facing students in Philadelphia.

Please send his comment to the White House. After years of budget cuts and layoffs, isn’t it time for action? The Obama girls attend a wonderful school with small classes, experienced teachers, arts, physical education, science labs, a library: shouldn’t everyone?

The teacher writes:

“I teach in suburban Philadelphia in a district which is managing to survive with cutbacks in programming and hiring under Governor Corbett, but my wife teaches in Philadelphia and is experiencing firsthand the devastating impact of the state and city leaders seriously shortchanging public education. In September she currently expects to return to a school with no assistant principal, no counsellor, no nurse, no aids, no librarian, and fewer teachers.

“While I expect the kind of indifference exhibited by our tea party Governor and legislature to public education, I am struck by the almost total dropping of the ball by our President and the Democrats on the issue of saving our schools, especially on behalf of the constituency which worked and voted for their reelection. Is this because the President and those around him making education policy have been bought off by the same education “reformers” who own Governor Corbett?

“I got my answer when I watched the “cutting edge classrooms” town hall for students which was sponsored by the Obama administration on June 6 after the President announced his plan to put more technology in our nations classrooms. Here is the link: whitehouse.gov/show-and-tell. This was billed as the National Show and Tell on connected classrooms. The host was a spokesperson for something called EdSurge and at approximately the 24 minute spot of the presentation she tells the assembled students that she wants them to believe she has a magic wand which could solve any problem in their schools and she invites responses. It is then that a student from Philadelphia explains that her district has a 300 million dollar deficit, that teachers and counselors are being laid off and that she wishes the magic wand would be used by the Obama administration to fix this crisis caused by, what the student refers to as the “Doomsday budget.”

“Incredibly the total response from the spokesperson is to say: okay, Philadelphia wants more funding for its doomsday “project”. That’s it. That’s all she wrote.

“As you said in your letter to the Education Secretary it is a national disgrace to allow the public schools to die, but as long as leaders are more beholden to the technology companies than the students, technology, not learning is what we will get.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, For-Profit, Obama, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization

“Declaration of Independence” by United Opt Out

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2013 //
24

United Opt Out has consistently spoken against the abuses of testing and high stakes for students and teachers.

Here is a link to their Declaration of Independence and to other important information about them.

And here is their Declaration of Independence from corporate education reform.

 

United Opt Out National http://unitedoptout.com

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IN OPPOSITION, July 4, 2013
The unanimous Declaration of the national United Opt Out,
When in the course of educating a nation, it becomes necessary for its people to restrain the political and private powers which have obfuscated the fundamental mission of a public system of education to, among other points, compensate for the proclivities of the Laws of Nature to separate and exclude swaths of humankind into those that have and those without.

That to secure this broad mission of a public education, Governments are commissioned by its people to serve unequivocally the explicit needs of those to be educated. It is not to relinquish control of the purposes of education to incorporated powers which deign the will of a free People to determine the means and ends of their cultural developments.

Whenever any Government or Agent of the State abrogates the responsibility to defend the general preparations of its future citizens from untoward profit-making, it is the Right of the Educated to alter or to refuse impositions, and to institute a new Education, laying its foundation on principles and powers to most likely effect their Autonomy, Freedom, and Happiness.

Love, indeed, will resolve that a public system of Education long established should not be upended for fickle and makeshift designs, and accordingly all experience has shown, that an aspirational People are disposed to trust, as certain evils are trustworthy, when impossible oaths are expressed as guarantees of accomplishment. That such promises are made by representatives of the Education State, to whom its People have become accustomed, is the most perverse injury of all.

But when a long record of exploitations and failures, in pursuit of objectives that evince a design to reduce the Educated to absolute Quantification, in effect leading to total economic Exploitation, it is their right, it is their obligation, to refuse such Education, and to provide new Custodians for their future achievement. Such has been the persistent sufferance of the Educated, particular to Inhabitants of the most meager of circumstances; and such is now the requisition which prohibits them from amending their rightful System of Education.

The history of the present Secretary of Education, of his maids of State, and sycophants in unelected offices, is a history of recurring ignorance and ineptitude, all having in ultimate purpose the reduction of the Educated to singularly objective values that are inherently valueless. It is with this Ignorance and Ineptitude that the current Government wields an inseparable Autocratic alliance between Incorporated and State interests against the wishes of the People.

To prove this, let United Opt Out submit these Facts to a candid world:

• He has refused to reduce inequality and segregation, the most unwholesome and unnecessary for a public Education.

United Opt Out National http://unitedoptout.com

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  • He has constrained the role of professional Educators and contributed to their egregious humiliation in the face of unreasonable scrutiny from the State.
  • He has ignored significant corrective actions necessary to diminish disparities in opportunities, resources, and human capital in Education as sanctioned by the Fiscal Fairness Act.
  • For refusal to recommend other Laws or Regulations for the Rightful accommodation of large groups of students, principally second language, impoverished, and students of color, unless Schools relinquish the autonomy of Educators and control of their Curriculum, needs inestimable to them and formidable to ideologues only.
  • He condones through inadequate and narrow investigations a professional culture of Lying, Cheating, and Exploitation within School communities.
  • He has endeavored to prevent School populations from selecting refusal of specific Federal impositions that hinder local needs from an erroneous Competition for funds, such that these limited monies could not possibly repair previous and egregious breaches in support, that otherwise bind Schools and Districts to compliance.
  • For taking away our traditional public Schools in favor of Charters, altering our most valuable laws to hasten dissolutions, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Local Boards to enact control of Mayors as opposed to the People expressly.
  • For Accommodating large bodies of untrained Educators among us:
    • For protecting them, by granting certain exceptions, from qualification for any

      Educator position which they hold in the most challenging Schools;

    • For imposing Subsidies on public School systems to sponsor amateurs;
    • For shielding open Educator positions, that should otherwise be available to

      qualified candidates, for provisional Recruits.

  • He has excited insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the

    inhabitants of our cities against each other, setting as rivals the poor against the poor, to become executioners of their own friends and Brethren, to fall themselves by their Hands, to enable the affluent in escaping responsibility.

  • He has affected to render Corporations independent of and superior to the Civil power.
  • He has exacerbated the conditions dissolving elected Boards repeatedly, for opposing with effete vacillation his encroachment on the rights of the people.
  • He has denied sufficient protections to confidential information gathered by private entities in the process of public Education; ignored the apprehensions expressed by the caregivers of the students of our public Schools therein; and perseveres in implementation of diffuse collection methods in defiance of personal Privacy.
  • For conscripting the publicly Educated into labour on behalf of Private entities to refine the instruments of our own Oppression; not for the re-investment of knowledge and resources acquired, but to enrich the remunerative coffers of speculators.
  • He has abdicated Government in the defense of public Education by declaring Accountability greater to Preservation, and waging Wars of Attrition against us.

United Opt Out National http://unitedoptout.com

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In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Secretary of Education whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Profiteer, is unfit to be the warden of a Public lavatory let alone a free system of Public Education.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Private brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their Board members to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of our Allegiance to the public in Education. We have appealed to their assumed senses of innate justice and fairness, and we have summoned them by the ties of our common citizenship to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our cooperation and camaraderie. They too have been deaf to the voices of equality and solidarity. We must, therefore, submit to this necessity, which denounces our Disobedience, and hold them, as we hold us all, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Administrators of the national United Opt Out, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the free people of this Nation for the integrity of our intentions, do, in the Name and our Authority, defiantly publish and declare, That our public systems of Education are, and of Right ought to be, Absolved from any and all Obligations, Oppressions, and Exploitations set forth only by Private and Unelected Associations; that we assert the abilities to Choose and Refuse certain Acts and Things that violate the interminable conscientiousness of professional Educators; and that as Discerning and Intellectual personnel, charged with labors few are wont or capable to do, we have full Power to secure our own professional identities, determine to Whom and under what conditions for which we are Accountable, and succeed with significant voice to govern the Laws of our work.

And for support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Good Sense and a Common Destiny, we mutually pledge each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor. 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

My Message to the Badass Association of Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2013 //
114

I was uneasy with the name , but I got over it.

The reality is that the Badass Association of Teachers fills a need. Teachers have been beaten up in the media, and have seen state after state strip away their academic freedom, their rights, their status in the community.

I was invited to join and to write an address to the BAT. This is it.

And here it is in full (by the way, I am uncomfortable with the name lie many others, but our struggle requires militants and BAT is the point of the spear):

Message of Support from Diane Ravitch to the Badass Teachers Association

Dear Members of the Badass Teachers Association,

I am honored to join your group.

The best hope for the future of our society, of public education, and of the education profession is that people stand up and resist.

Say “no.” Say it loud and say it often.

Teachers must resist, because you care about your students, and you care about your profession. You became a teacher to make a difference in the lives of children, not to take orders and obey the dictates of someone who doesn’t know your students.

Parents must resist, to protect their children from the harm inflicted on them by high-stakes testing.

Administrators must resist, because their job is changing from that of coach to enforcer of rules and regulations. Instead of inspiring, supporting, and leading their staff, they are expected to crack the whip of authority.

School board members must resist, because the federal government is usurping their ability to make decisions that are right for their schools and their communities.

Students must resist because their education and their future are being destroyed by those who would force them to be judged solely by standardized tests.

Everyone who cares about the future of our democracy must resist, because public education is under attack, and public education is a foundation stone of our democracy. We must resist the phony rhetoric of “No Child Left Behind,” which leaves every child behind, and we must resist the phony rhetoric of “Race to the Top,” which makes high-stakes testing the be-all and end-all of schooling. The very notion of a “race to the top” is inconsistent with our democratic idea of equality of educational opportunity.

We live in an era of ignorant policy shaped by politicians who have never taught a day in their lives.

We live in a time when politicians and policymakers think that all children will get higher test scores if they are tested incessantly. They think that students who can’t clear a four-foot bar will jump higher if the bar is raised to six feet.

We live in a time when entrepreneurs are eyeing the schools and their budgets as a source of profit, a chance to monetize the children, an emerging market. Make no mistake: They want to make education more cost-effective by eliminating your profession and eliminating you. Their ideal would be 100 children in front of computers, monitored by classroom aides.

You must resist, because if you do not, we will lose public education in the United States and the teaching profession will become a job, not a profession. What is happening today is not about “reform” or even “improvement,” it is about cutting costs, reducing the status of teachers, and removing from education every last shred of the joy of learning.

It is time to resist.

Badass Teachers, as you resist, be creative. Writing letters to the editor is good but it is not enough. Writing letters to the President is good, but it is not enough.

Be creative. The members of the Providence Student Union have led the way. They staged a zombie march in front of the Rhode Island Department of Education to demonstrate their opposition to the use of a standardized test as a high school graduation requirement. They invited 60 accomplished professionals to take the released items from the test, and most failed. This convincingly demonstrated the absurdity of using the test as a requirement for graduation. When the state commissioner of education who was the main backer of the tests scheduled her annual “state of education” speech, the students scheduled their first “state of the student” speech.

Act together. A single nail gets hammered. When all the nails stick up, the people with the hammers run away. When the teachers of Garfield High School in Seattle boycotted the MAP test, they won: the test was canceled and no one faced retribution.

Be brave. When you stand together and raise your voices, you are powerful.

Thank you for counting me as one of your own.

I salute you.

Diane Ravitch

Categories Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Testing
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