Archives for category: Privatization
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A Call to Action! Time for Charter Police and Charter Firefighters?

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2013 //
9

In this article, a Massachusetts blogger points out that it is time to do something about those unionized police and firefighters who have failed to stamp out crime and fires.

It is time to unleash innovation and turnaround the police precincts where crime is highest: close them down and allow the cops to reapply for their jobs.

America could be a perfectly crime-free, safe nation if only we turned public safety over to bankers and lawyers and entrepreneurs.

The initiative–which is known as No Citizen Left Behind–requires the investment of billions of dollars for data collection, data analysis, turnaround specialists, and retraining of the current workforce.

Unfortunately this is so close to the insane reality of federal education policy that it is easy to think that it is real, not satire.

Categories Humor, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Romney, Mitt

Louisiana Scandals: The Course Choice Mystery

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2013 //
10

One of Governor Jindal’s “reforms” is called Course Choice. This is supposed to allow public school students to sign up with private vendors, using public school dollars extracted from their local school. Most of the vendors are online operators.

Course choice and vouchers were the centerpiece of Jindal’s plan to privatize public education, by funding these choices from the state’s Minimum Foundation budget. Unfortunately for the governor and his State Superintendent John White, the state’s highest court said that it was unconstitutional to spend the money dedicated to public schools on vouchers and Course Choice. The court decided by a vote of 6-1, which in the eyes of most people is decisive.

One of the state’s investigative bloggers discovered that some 1,100 students had enrolled— without their knowledge— in an online course offered by a Texas corporation.

How could this happen? Why were Louisiana dollars shipped to a Texas company when the students and their parents didn’t know they had signed up? How did the corporation get their contact information?

Will the legislature provide alternate funding for vouchers and Course Choice?

Will there be a legislative investigation of this curious “choice”?

An interesting detail. The state department of education is in a frenzy trying to identify the leaker of salacious details about their prized programs.

Categories Louisiana, Privatization, Stand for Children, Vouchers

Who Wins This Game?

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2013 //
17

A reader comments:

To the corporate moguls this is a game of chess, their winnings being billions of dollars.

They have been playing this game for many years now.

The big problem is that they never informed anyone what or whom they were playing against. They just kept making their moves while their opponents never realized they were in their game and therefore never had a chance to make a move.

We are now at the point of check.

If we take RTTT then checkmate, they win.

If we take the NCLB waivers, checkmate they win.

The only thing we can do is call this for what it is, outrageous.

We have to protest their game as destructive to our society and detrimental to students’ education. Now, as before, we have no moves.

We must knock over the board in protest!

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top

Ed Berger: How to Defend Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2013 //
5

In this post, Ed Berger explains the collaboration among stakeholders that is needed to defend our community public schools from marauders and vandals. He identifies the vandals.

The vandals all have the same goal: Destroy public schools. They call it “reform,” and anyone who stands up to them is called “a defender of the status quo.” They forget that they are the status quo.

Categories ALEC, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Chicago Schools, 2013: Still Separate, Still Unequal

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2013 //
20

The Chicago Teachers Union issued a report on segregation in the Chicago public schools:

 

New Report Unravels the Sordid History of Racial Segregation in Chicago Public Schools

On anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, “Still Separate, Still Unequal” examines continued acceptance of de facto segregation and injustices in district schools

 

CHICAGO—On was is the 59th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) today released a report on the history of disruptive actions against communities of color by Chicago Public Schools (CPS), exemplified by school closings that intensify the harmful effects of segregated schools and neighborhoods. The study, titled Still Separate, Still Unequal, acknowledges the deep segregation that exists in Chicago, but states that segregation is exacerbated by flawed education reform policies and assaults on communities that have long borne the brunt of its harmful effects.

 

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was one of the most successful victories of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The ruling declared segregation in U.S. public schools unconstitutional, saying it violated the “equal protection under the law” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

 

Now, nearly six decades later, parents of Chicago’s African-American and special education needs students are also seeking court protection against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to shutter 53 elementary schools. On Wednesday they filed two federal lawsuits seeking a halt closures because these actions are discriminatory and will cause undue harm to their children.

 

“The mayor and his CPS administration are barreling through the largest round of school closings ever—actions that will once again disproportionately harm students and communities of color,” said CTU President Karen Lewis. “What they’re proposing will set us back to the time before Brown v. Board of Education. This report shows that we are still living in an era of education apartheid and we must do all we can to resist the destruction of our schools and the harming of our vulnerable population.”

 

Over the past decade, one out of every four intensely segregated African-American schools—schools with a more than 90 percent African-American student population—has been closed, phased out or turned around. Yet segregation has increased and African-American students are now more segregated by race and class than in 1989. At the same time there are far more schools with virtually no Black teachers and no Black students. Schools with fewer than 10 percent African-American students and teachers now make up 28 percent of CPS schools, up from 10 percent in 2001. In CPS, integration has been abandoned as policy and segregation accepted as the norm, rather than as the deliberate and systematic construction that it is. The report addresses, specifically:

 

  • ·         Intense segregation in CPS
  • ·         Segregation across CPS and the city of Chicago
  • ·         What segregation means for CPS students of color
  • ·         The reproduction of segregation and inequity
  • ·         Segregated access to experienced teachers
  • ·         The increasing segregation of black teachers
  • ·         The segregated harm of school closings
  • ·         Integration and equity, not choice and competition

 

“CPS seems committed only to deepening the harms of segregation, rather than moving towards an integrated school system,” said Still Separate, Still Unequal author, Pavlyn Jankov. “Segregation has increased, and the associated policies of disinvestment and destabilization are more acute than ever.”

 

Still Separate, Still Unequal calls for an end to the segregated harm of failed school closings and turnarounds, and a halt to the rapid expansion of private charter operators and other aberrations of “choice” that increase segregation.

 

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Categories Chicago, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Walton Family Foundation Invests in “Advocacy”

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2013 //
5

This blogger follows the money. That is his hobby and his passion. In this post, he tracks Walton funding for “advocacy.”

I put advocacy in scare quotes because foundations are tax-exempt and supposedly non-political. Yet the tax laws apparently allow them to put some of their money to work advocating for what appear to be political goals, in the case of the Waltons, the privatization of public education.

When it comes to funding “advocacy,” the Gates Foundation is right up there with multi-millions.

Say this for the Waltons: they are consistent. They don’t attempt to hide their agenda. They like charters and vouchers. They don’t like anything involving regulation or government.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

North Carolina: Public Schools and Students Endangered by Radical Agenda

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2013 //
36

Legislation is advancing in North Carolina that will harm the state’s underfunded public schools and strike a blow against its beleaguered teachers.

North Carolina is a right-to-work state, so there is no collective bargaining, and teachers have no voice in policy decisions about education.

Among the worst of the new bills is a proposal to fund a voucher/tax credit program, removing $90 million from public schools so that 1% of the state’s 1.5 million students may attend private and/or religious schools.

Another bill would strip away due process rights from teachers, so that teachers would have no right to a hearing if fired, no matter how many years of experience they have.

The new legislation would restrict eligibility for preschool, reducing the number of children who may enroll, and remove class size limits for some elementary grades.

Make no mistake (President Obama’s favorite expression, mine too): this legislation will save money in the short run but will cost the state far more in the long term. The Legislature is planning not only to harm public education, but to harm the children who benefit by being in preschool and in classes of reasonable size.

Former Congressman and State Superintendent Bob Etheridge said: “To the folks now running our state government in Raleigh, education reform is just another code word for cut, slash and burn.”

Governor Pat McCrory, who supports the radical anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda, has just named Eric Guckian as his Senior Education Advisor. Guckian was regional director of New Leaders in North Carolina (which recruits “transformational” leaders) and before that, was executive director of Teach for America in the state. He has been a consultant for the Gates Foundation and worked with KIPP. The following comes from the Governor’s press release:

“I am honored and humbled to serve as a member of Governor McCrory’s team,” said Guckian. “This is a critical time for education in our state, and I’m looking forward to working with committed teachers, leaders and community members to ensure that all of North Carolina’s students, regardless of circumstance, achieve an excellent education that will put them on the pathway to a better life; a life of honor, prosperity and service.”

Guckian joins John White in Louisiana and Kevin Huffman in Tennessee as TFA alumni in state-level positions serving reactionary administrations.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Class size, Corporate Reformers, North Carolina, Privatization, Teach for America TFA, Teacher Tenure, Vouchers

Paul Vallas’ “Nixon-to-China” Moment

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2013 //
38

I posted a few days ago about a panel discussion in New York City where Paul Vallas made this startling statement: “We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate.”

He spoke bluntly of the “testing industrial complex.”

Here Valerie Strauss briefly reviews Vallas’ role in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, where testing and privatization were key elements of his reforms. It is difficult to see any of those districts today as a template for reform of the nation’s schools. Chicago is in dire straits, As is Philadelphia, and the only thing sustaining the myth of New Orleans is a massive disinformation campaign by the funders of privatization.

I know Paul Vallas and there was a time about a decade ago when I thought he was the most promising leader of school reform in the nation. I was impressed by his energy and his quick intellect.

Because he is so smart, I hold out hope that he might be the first of the “reform” A-team to see the light, as I did around 2005.

By his remarks at the forum cited in the links, he recognizes that teacher evaluation by formula is a mess. From his Philadelphia experience he may have learned that privatization is no solution. He inaugurated the nation’s most extensive experiment in privatization a decade ago, and it failed.

Now Vallas has another chance to get it right, this time in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a small district compared to his previous assignments.

Will he lead the way away from the failed status quo? Will he be first to renounce the failed status quo?

Categories Chicago, Corporate Reformers, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Privatization, Vallas, Paul

The Great Accountability Scam

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2013 //
3

Crazy Crawfish here writes a brilliant post about The Great Accountability Scam.

He is writing about Louisiana and the Recovery School District, but what he describes applies with equal force to every “reform” scheme in every state and even to Race to the Top.

What he explains is the destructive and failed theory of action that is the very heart of the corporate reform movement.

It goes like this: use test scores to fire teachers, fire principals, close schools, and shatter communities. Create a swath of destruction that falls hardest on poor children, their families and communities. Cover your tracks by declaring success where none exists.

His prime example in this case is Louisiana’s Recovery School District. It has been recognized in the media as a national model, but it is a failed experiment that has benefited its promoters, not students.

RSD is a prime exemplar of the Great Accountability Scam.

Here are his concluding thoughts (but open and read it all):

“What if all these resources we spent taking over school districts, firing teachers, and displacing children were used instead to improve the schools in which they already reside – dozens of these schools now lay shuttered and vacant statewide while the children are bussed to campuses clear across their communities. This is done to disguise how poorly we’ve served these children while we hope taking their temperature over and over and telling them to “get better” will finally work. What if instead of just testing children and holding them “accountable” we held ourselves accountable as a society and worked to improve their plight? All this testing and test prep is not helping our students catch up, and it may actually be bringing everyone else down as well. In Louisiana to disguise this fact John White has changed the “grading scale” and intends to change it yet again next year and every year we continue to employ him. John White will guarantee the scores go up, for what they’re worth, but our students will eventually tire of teachers just taking their temperatures when they show up for school, and who could blame them?

“Kill the RSD, and hand the schools back over to their communities where they belong. The RSD experiment we’ve forced on our children has failed, and miserably so. Instead of spending all that excess funding on bringing in out of state charters and temporary teachers, train the teachers we have, provide funding for universal pre-kindergarten, afterschool programs, restore music and the arts and provide tutors and recruit mentors from the community for children. There are thousands of people just waiting to help, if the state will back off and return to a support role instead of the tyrant it has become under Paul Pastorek and John White. Teachers are trying, but they can’t tackle this task alone.

“I suppose it comes down to whether you want a solution or simply someone to blame. Bobby Jindal just wants a talking point for his futile presidential aspirations; John White wants to help out-of-state vendors, so they can hook him up for a lifetime of perks and positions once he leaves Louisiana. If you are a citizen of this state, if you care about the students, the children, the teachers, your fellow citizens, our way of life and our future, then you need to kick these guys out and take back our schools. Kill the RSD and rescue our teachers and students before it’s too late.

“It’s about time we held our failing leaders responsible. RSD has been in place for almost 7 years and has mostly all new students, and every year it is vying for worst district in the state with two to three times the resources. In my book that deserves an F- and the creators of it should be held accountable.

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Education Industry, Louisiana, Privatization, Race to the Top

Texas: The Surefire Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2013 //
37

You think it can’t happen here?

You think your state is immune?

Read about the war on public education in Texas and think again.

Some part of this radical agenda is being promoted in almost every state.

Yours too.

This comment was written by Bonnie Lesley of “Texas Kids Can’t Wait”:

“I worry a lot whether public schools will continue to exist in some states. Our organization, Texas Kids Cant Wait, has felt overwhelmed at times this legislative session about the sheer number of privatization bills, all either sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick or by someone close to him. We have been battling a big charter (what is in reality the gateway drug to privatization) expansion bill, a parent-trigger bill, opportunity scholarships, taxpayer savings grants, achievement district, “FamiliesFirstSchools”, home-rule districts, vouchers for kids with disabilities, online course expansion, numerous bills to close public schools and turn them over to private charter companies, and on and on. A friend said it is as if they threw a whole bowl full of spaghetti at the wall, believing something would stick.

Every one of the ALEC bills we have seen introduced in other states has been introduced in Texas this year.

The privatizers have also held hostage the very popular bills such as HB 5 to reduce testing significantly unless their privatization bills advanced, and advance they have. So lots of folks are playing poker with kids’s lives and futures.

What keeps many of us fighting 20 hours a day and digging into our own pockets to fund the work is our understanding that these bills are not the end game. We’ve read the web sites, beginning with Milton Freidman’s epistle on the Cato Institute’s website, that lay out the insidious plan we are seeing played out. We have also read Naomi Klein’s brilliant book, Shock Doctrine.

First, impose ridiculous standards and assessments on every school.

Second, create cut points on the assessments to guarantee high rates of failure. (I was in the room when it was done in the State of Delaware, protesting all the way, but losing).

Third, implement draconian accountability systems designed to close as many schools as possible. Then W took the plan national with NCLB.

Fourth, use the accountability system to undermine the credibility and trust that almost everyone gave to public schools. increase the difficulty of reaching goals annually.

Fifth, de-professionalize educators with alternative certification, merit pay, evaluations tied to test scores, scripted curriculum, attacks on professional organizations, phony research that tries to make the case that credentials and experience don’t matter, etc.

Sixth, start privatization with public funded charters with a promise that they will be laboratories of innovation. Many of us fell for that falsehood. Apply pressure each legislative session to implement more and more of them. Then Arne Duncan did so on steroids.

Seventh, use Madison Avenue messaging to name bills to further trick people into acceptance, if not support, of every conceivable voucher scheme. The big push now as states implement Freidman austerity budgets to create a crisis is to portray vouchers as a cheaper way to “save” schools. The bills that would force local boards to sell off publicly owned facilities for $1 each is also part of the overall scheme not only to destroy our schools, but also to make it fiscally impossible for us to recover them if we ever again elect a sane government. Too, districts had to make cuts in their budgets in precisely the areas that research says matter most: quality teachers, preschool, small classes, interventions for struggling students, and rigorous expectations and curriculum. See our report: http://www.equitycenter.org. Click on book, Money STILL Matters in bottom right corner.

Eighth, totally destroy public education with so-called universal vouchers. They have literally already published the handbook. You can find it numerous places on the web.

Ninth, start eliminating the vouchers and charters, little by little.

And, tenth, totally eliminate the costs of education from local, state, and national budgets, thereby providing another huge transfer of wealth through huge tax cuts to the already-billionaire class.

And then only the wealthy will have schools for their kids.

Aw, you may say. They can’t do that! My response is that yes, they most certainly will unless you and I stop it!”

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Alternate Route To Certification, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Pre-K, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Texas, Vouchers
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