A reader just raised an interesting question offline.
He lives in New Jersey, where the state constitution requires that the state provide a “thorough and efficient” public education.
New Jersey officials today are doing their best to dismantle and privatize the state’s public education system.
Are they violating their oath of office?
What does it say in other state constitutions where the privatizers are busy dismantling the public system for fun, power, profit and ideology?
Anthony Cody has a stunning article this week about what is happening in Louisiana.
The expansion of vouchers and charters will facilitate the re-segregation of the schools, he predicts.
Governor Jindal eliminated all funding for public libraries in his new budget.
The TFA Commissioner has put a young and unqualified TFA alum in charge of teacher evaluation.
The freight train of reform (aka privatization) is running full blast in that unfortunate state.
Arne Duncan will be there any day now to congratulate Governor Jindal on the progress made in “reforming” the schools.
And lots of thanks to the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, and Teach for America for turning the clock back to 1950 and calling it “reform.”
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General issued a stinging audit, showing a near absence of oversight of charter school spending in the three states studied: Florida, Arizona, and California. On the same day, the California charter schools association celebrated another big expansion of the charter sector in that state. There are now more than 1,000 charter schools with nearly half a million students in them, and the state department of education lacks the staff to monitor them. Some of the schools never open; some open and close within a year or two. Some pay outrageous executive salaries.
The main focus of the audit was the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation, which awarded over $1 billion to spur the growth of charter schools. It is headed by James Shelton, formerly of Edison Schools, McKinsey, the NewSchools Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation. He is an avid proponent of charter schools.
Expecting Shelton to monitor the growth and oversight of charter schools is like calling out the fox who is guarding the hen house and expecting him to be more vigilant. His job is to increase their number, not to monitor their quality.
Please pay attention, folks. The U.S. Department of Education is doing whatever it can to spur competition in the education sector by funding entrepreneurs, Gulen schools, no-excuses schools, and anyone who wants some federal money to go into business with no regard to quality, longevity or soundness.
Indiana Superintendent Tony Bennett is running for re-election. He has raised more than $1 million from supporters of an anti-public school agenda.
He just received $25,000 from a gubernatorial candidate who wants vouchers for private and religious schools with NO accountability.
Way to go in handing out public dollars with zero accountability for their use.
Just more evidence that the voucher advocates no longer even pretend that vouchers will improve education.
Their goal is to destroy public education.
Wake up, parents and citizens of Indiana.
It is not teachers who are in peril. It is the public sector.
It is the public schools of Indiana, once a source of great civic pride, now slated for demolition by a rightwing wrecking crew.
Yesterday I announced my intention to vote for President Obama, and given the choice confronting us, I will vote for President Obama.
I will vote for him despite his terrible education policy known as Race to the Top.
It is a disaster. It has all the faults of No Child Left Behind, and it is worse.
It is incentivizing the creation of more privately managed charter schools, which are more segregated than the public schools in the same district and which do not even get higher test scores. It is pushing more testing, more school closings, more destabilizing of communities, more labeling of children, more layoffs, more money spent for compliance with federal mandates.
Race to the Top is harmful to children, to teachers, to principals, and to the future of public education in America.
Education Week reporter Alyson Klein wrote an analysis of what lies ahead in a second Obama term, and it is more of the same. What is especially disgusting is that the President continues to believe that Race to the Top is a positive policy; he seems to think that it will improve public education. He has not heard anything that teachers and parents and principals across the nation have been shouting. Stop the high-stakes testing! Stop the evaluation of teachers by test scores! Stop the privatization!
Federal policy is supposed to be devoted to equity, to helping the neediest children, not to a race. What is the point of a “race” in education? Are we racing to get the highest test scores? How does that promote equality of educational opportunity?
What is even more disgusting is that your representatives in Congress are voting the funds to continue the advance of these toxic policies. Raise your voices. Let your Senator and member of Congress know that Race to the Top is racing for the edge of a cliff. Stop. Stop now.
Here is the article linked above:
| What Would a Second Obama Term Look Like on Education?
Posted: 24 Oct 2012 11:28 AM PDT President Barack Obama has talked a lot on the campaign trail about his education record—but not as much about what he would do in a potential second term. Yesterday, the Obama campaign put out a big, glossy brochure with ideas for next steps, including: • Cutting tuition growth in half over the next ten years; recruiting and preparing at least 100,000 new math and science teachers; None of the ideas outlined in the brochure are brand new—and at least one of them, Race to the Top for districts—is going to happen whether or not Obama wins a second term. But it makes sense for Obama to highlight some of the proposals still on his to-do list, to give voters an idea of where he wants to take education policy. As districts struggling to finalize their applications know, Congress has already provided $400 million for the district competition, and the U.S. Department of Education has already crafted the rules. The dollars are scheduled to go out the door by the end of the year, no matter what happens on election day. Still, if Obama is re-elected, there could be additional rounds of Race to the Top, which could conceivably go to school districts. And granting states waivers from parts of the No Child Left Behind Act isn’t a second-term idea, it’s already well way underway. Waivers for districts in states that didn’t apply are a whole other matter. When it comes to slowing the growth of college tuition, the Obama administration already has a bunch of ideas on the table—in fact there’s even a proposal to create yet another iteration of the administration’s signature Race to the Top franchise, this time to reward states for their efforts on higher education. So far, Congress has yet to bite, in part, I’m guessing, because of the program’s $1 billion price tag. The proposed competition would reward states that maintain their own spending on higher education, improve alignment between K-12 graduation requirements and higher education entrance standards, and seek new ways to curb costs without sacrificing educational quality. Mr. Obama has also floated the idea of tying some federal college aid—specifically campus-based aid programs, such as Perkins loans—to college outcomes, including graduation rates for at-risk populations, such as disadvantaged students, and the ability to keep tuition in check. As for the math and science teacher proposal, anyone paying attention to the campaign has probably heard it—the president mentioned it in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination this summer. So that’s not a new idea either, although, so far, Congress hasn’t acted on the proposal. The community college idea isn’t new either—it was part of a recent budget proposal. But it too, has not made it very far in a Congress bent on curbing costs. More here. What else might be in the hopper for Obama’s second term, if it happens? Comments section is open. – Alyson Klein |
An article in a Nashville paper describes the discussions about vouchers in Tennessee and generally quotes voucher supporters.
Given that the Governor is a conservative Republican, given that the Legislature is Republican, given that the Legislature often passes ALEC legislation without changing a word, and given that the state has a TFA Commissioner of Education, it seems likely that Tennessee will endorse vouchers for low-income students. In time, as we saw in Wisconsin, the income limits will be lifted.
There is only one important fact missing from the discussion of vouchers in this article: Vouchers have no record of improving test scores wherever they have been tried. Not in Milwaukee, not in the District of Columbia, and not in Cleveland.
It is simply choice for the sake of choice, choice for the sake of privatization.
A nice summary of a bad week for John White, who was hired to implement Governor Bobby Jindal’s plan to privatize public education in Louisiana.
The blogger has an apt title for the week, referring to a delightful children’s book: John White and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
Last spring, Jindal pushed through the legislature the nation’s most sweeping voucher plan, hoping to undermine public education.
The legislation encourages charters and enacts a teacher evaluation plan that is tied to test scores and extremely punitive.
If the voucher process is any indication, privatization will move ahead with minimal regulation or quality controls.
Louisiana enacted virtually every piece of ALEC legislation. You might say that the state is the poster child for ALEC.
The state is throwing open the door to for-profit entrepreneurs or anyone who wants a piece of the public schools’ minimum foundation budget
A federal judge will decide whether the state is diverting money that was supposed to support desegregation into the voucher program.
More than half the children in the state are eligible–about 450,000 students–but only 10,000 or so applied.
The schools they will attend are mainly religious, and some lack even the rudiments of a decent education, like a curriculum, classrooms, teachers–the little things like that.
And the Jindal charterization of the state has hardly begun.
White has a herculean task, doing what privatizers like to do: handing public money over to private interests with little if any oversight.
And lots of out-of-state money flowed into Louisiana to make sure that Jindal gained control of the state board so that Jindal got just the guy he wanted to do the dirty work, and all these privatization plans would move forward, along with new contracts for–what else–TFA.
Many people with liberal causes have used change.org to launch petition drives.
In its founding, change.org declared its dedication to progressive values.
Many people were upset when change.org allowed Michelle Rhee to surreptitiously gather signatures on its site. You might sign a petition saying you want great teachers or you think teachers should be paid more, and without your knowledge or consent, you were a member of StudentsFirst. You would never get a notice informing that you had unknowingly “joined.” But you would be counted as a member.
Many were also upset that change.org hosted Stand for Children, which is anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-public education, and pro-corporate.
We thought those lapses were aberrations. But now we find that change.org is opening its doors to anti-union, anti-abortion, pro-corporate advertising. Its progressive veneer has simply disappeared. On October 24, the new policy will take effect. The news was leaked to Jeff Bryant, who wrote about it here.
Of course, that is their right. But beware. Don’t sign any petitions on that site. You never will find out what cause or group has just added your name to its membership rolls.
Just be aware that when they ask you if you support puppies and kittens, you might be signing a petition to give away public lands or to outsource American jobs or to bust a union or to support ALEC.
I have had some good debates with friends and colleagues who support charter schools. I think there is a role for them in meeting needs that public schools cannot meet: charter schools for the autistic, charter schools for dropouts, charter schools are kids who utterly lack motivation. Charters should boast of how many low-performing kids they have recruited, not their test scores. When their tests scores are high, it usually means they are skimming or excluding the very students they should be seeking out. Charters might also be a way to test innovations, but more typically they are boot camps, which is not at all innovative. If they exist to innovate, they should be committed to collaboration with public schools, not competition. But that is not what charter schools today are about. They are about winning. And as this Pennsylvania blogger explains, some are about money.
Charter schools are cash cows feeding at the public trough. Oh, there are a few good ones here and there, to be sure. But if there was ever any doubt that charter schools have become Big Business, take a look at the list of the largest campaign contributors in Pennsylvania. Three of the top ten on a new “Power Players” report are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars into state politics to gain favorable legislation for charter schools and we need to be asking why. [Public Source, Power Players report]
Weighing in at #5 is Van Gureghian, who founded Charter School Management Inc. back in 1999 to run a school in Chester, PA, a struggling former industrial town near Philadelphia. Today Gureghian’s company operates 150 charter schools in nine states, and that first school now has half of the district’s student enrollment and is the state’s largest charter school. Gureghian was Gov. Corbett’s single largest campaign donor and served on his education transition team. This is the same guy who is fighting the state’s Right to Know laws to keep from disclosing his salary – which is public knowledge for other public school administrators – while he recently bought two Florida beachfront lots for $28.9 million. He and his wife, another Charter School Management Inc. employee, plan to build a 20,000 square foot “French-inspired Monte Carlo estate.” [Palm Beach Daily News, 2011-11-18; Also see “Soaking the Public”]
At #8 and #10 on the list are Joel Greenberg and Arthur Dantchik. Public Source, which put together the report, notes that these two “act as one when making political contributions,” and that if we “consider them as a contributing team, you must include Jeff Yass,” who would be #11 on this list. Greenberg, Dantchik, and Yass went to college together and are founding partners of Susquehanna International Group, a financial broker-dealer in Philadelphia.
Greenberg is on the board of American Federation for Children, a national group with mega-billionaire backers supporting state vouchers for private school students. Dantchik is on the board of the Institute for Justice, a law firm that promotes school choice and Yass is on the board of the Cato Institute, a think tank dedicated to limited government and free markets. [Public Source, Power Players report] In 2010, these three men started Students First PAC to channel millions of their dollars, plus those from out of state donors, into races of pro-voucher candidates. (For more on the American Federation for Children and the Students First PAC, see “It’s All About the Money, Money, Money”.)
For those of you keeping track, that makes four of Pennsylvania’s biggest campaign donors so far this year with school privatization at the top of their to-do lists. Why? Lest you think these men are dabbling in education for the sake of students, take a closer look at the Big Business of charter schools. Back in August, CNBC interviewed the CEO of a major investment company who clearly explained why charter schools are such a great moneymaker. David Brain heads Entertainment Properties Trust, which owns movie theaters, destination recreation sites, and charter schools in 34 states.
When the interviewer asked why people should add charter schools to their investment portfolios, he replied:
“Well I think it’s a very stable business, very recession-resistant. It’s a very high-demand product. There’s 400,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools … the industry’s growing about 12-14% a year. So it’s a high-growth, very stable, recession-resistant business. It’s a public payer, the state is the payer … if you do business with states with solid treasuries, then it’s a very solid business.”
The anchor also asked if he could buy one type of real estate asset right now, what would it be, and Brain answered:
“Well, probably the charter school business. We said it’s our highest growth and most appealing sector right now of the portfolio. It’s the most high in demand, it’s the most recession-resistant. And a great opportunity set with 500 schools starting every year. It’s a two and a half billion dollar opportunity set in rough measure annually.” [CNBC, 8-15-12]
Brain also told a nice whopper when the anchor asked him if there was any investment risk due to some public backlash against using taxpayer money to pay for charter schools. He claimed, “Most of the studies have charter schools at even or better than district public education.” Actually, most of the studies have shown the opposite: charter schools consistently rank at even or worse – sometimes much worse – than traditional public schools. For example, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found that students in every single Pennsylvania cyber charter school performed “significantly worse” in reading and math than their peers in conventional public schools. [Stanford/CREDO report summary, 2011] That’s a 100% failure rate. (See “Dueling Rallies” for complete details on charter school performance research.)
With such dismal results, investors really ought to be asking why Gov. Corbett’s administration keeps approving new charter school applications. Cyber charters in particular are charging taxpayers far more per student than it actually costs to educate them – to the tune ofone million dollars per day sucked from our public coffers into the pockets of charter school operators. (See “One Million Per Day”) Pennsylvania already has 16 cyber charter schools – including four approved just this past summer – giving us one of the highest concentrations in the country. Yet the Department of Education just scheduled hearings on eight new cyber charter school applications. [Post-Gazette, 10-22-12]
Gary Miron, an education professor at Western Michigan University who studies charter schools, told the Post-Gazette, “Pennsylvania, as far as I know, has the most lucrative funding for virtual schools. It’s very favorable. It doesn’t surprise me more companies and entities want to come there for virtual schooling.” [Post-Gazette, 10-22-12]
Indeed. This is not about doing what is best for students. Charter schools have become investment opportunities for the wealthy and their portfolio managers, businesses that must be protected with favorable legislation bought by strategic campaign contributions. As these charter school operators feed at the public trough, they strip our public schools of desperately needed resources. It’s time to fight back. Public education is a public good, not a cash cow.
Erich Martel taught in the D.C. public schools for many years and won many awards as a history teacher. He is now retired.
He was astonished to see that Governor Andrew Cuomo had hired De’Shawn Wright as his new Deputy Secretary of Education
Erich sent the following message:
Read this story on the departure of DC Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright in the Washington Post: http://tinyurl.com/9ctpm5f )
I’m a retired DCPS high school teacher. For the past 6 months, I have been working with community groups to try to stop De’Shawn Wright’s dismantling of up to 37 DC public schools (out of 120). He “commissioned” a study by the IFF (Illinois Facilities Fund) to evaluate DCPS and DC Charter schools. It was funded by the Walton Family Foundation. The IFF itself is a major recipient of Walton funds (over $6 million in 2009 & 2011) and is brazenly pro-charter.
The IFF “study” used five years of student proficiency data (2007-2011) ranked by each school’s average percentage of students proficient. Three of the years were under investigation for suspicious rates of wrong to right erasures. The report recommended that 37 DCPS schools be closed, “turned around” or transferred to charter operators.
If you want to get an idea as to what Cuomo, King and Wright have in mind, I suggest you look at these two links:
1) The strategy his staff used to divert community meetings away from the IFF recommendations by claiming that the meetings were not about the IFF, but about their “quality schools wish list.” Next, they divided participants up into isolated, little groups to make wish lists of “quality schools” (flip charts, lots of recommendations, then everybody gets colored stickie dots to vote on their top choices, etc. – pretend community engagement).
I also explain how to oppose this process: http://tinyurl.com/9stw9dt
2) I wrote an open letter to Wright with 19 questions. It lists many of the improper procedures Wright employed.
See open letter and reply: http://tinyurl.com/9zak8jy
It is safe to say that Gov. Cuomo selected him in order to promote charter schools and to expand the influence of the Broad, Walton and other foundations in developing public school policy.
Here are the two links in a twitter-ready tweet (134 characters), ready to send:
Cuomo’sNewDepSecEd-frWashDC:AgentOfFndns&ChSchls-His strategy:http://tinyurl.com/9zak8jy ManipulatesParentshttp://tinyurl.com/9stw9dt
