Archives for category: Privatization
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Why the Demand for Virtual Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
22

We know from studies and reports that online charter schools provide inferior education.

We know that they have lower graduation rates and lower test scores than brick-and-mortar schools.

We know that they have high attrition rates, as students enroll and leave within a year or two.

We know that children enrolled in virtual charter schools do not have the opportunity to interact on a regular basis with other children of their age or have face-to-face interaction with live teachers. We know that they will not develop the social skills that come from such interchange.

We know why they are a growing business: They make millions for their sponsors.

So why do parents continue to enroll their children in institutions with such a bad track record?

Here is the answer: The demand for virtual schools is a sure indicator of the dumbing down of the American public and the triumph of American capitalism at its greediest.

Categories For-Profit, On-Line Education, Parents, Privatization

Not Such Good News from Florida

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
9

I said in a post this morning that there was “a glimmer of hope” in Florida because the state board had upheld Miami-Dade’s decision to turn down three virtual charter schools.

But Florida parent leader Rita Solnet wrote to correct me. She attended the state board meeting, and she says the state board offered no glimmer of hope, as I thought, because the Puppetmaster was behind the curtain, pulling the strings. The state board overturned the decision of the Palm Beach County school board to reject four charter applications. It is startling to realize–as Solnet mentions below–that the city of Miami already has 122 charter schools!

Thanks to Rita Solnet for reminding us that nothing will change until there is new leadership in the state of Florida, leadership that is willing to stop the rampant privatization of the state’s public schools.

At that same meeting, the State Board of Ed over-turned Palm Beach County’s decision to deny applications for four (4) charters.

One must understand that Jeb Bush owns Miami. He runs the FL BOE. He controls the Ed Commissioner. The education staff are hand-picked loyalists of Jeb. If Jeb wanted the Miami-Dade charter approved, they would have been approved.

Did I mention that Miami-Dade already has 122 charter schools?  122!

I attended this meeting. I’m an optimist at heart. I missed the glimmer of hope.

Instead I heard impending doom.  A lengthy discussion on blended learning which is the Jeb Bush method of introducing more reliance on virtual charters. (ease them into it)

I heard scripted questions come flowing from board members with a purpose during a masterfully well-orchestrated Agenda..

I heard the Digital Learning speaker, Deirdre Flynn, discuss 270 students and 6 teachers in blended learning classes. (Oh, did I mention Flynn is Deputy Director for Jeb’s Foundation? No, the Board didn’t mention that either.)

I heard FL BOE member Chartrand request “a McKinsey study to see if we are doing this blended learning thing right.”  (Former McKinsey education leader, Michael Barber, is the Pearson Education Adviser.)

I heard BOE member Chartrand ask to inject language into a new vision/mission statement which specified “highly effective teachers” only.

Later I spoke at length with FL Commissioner Robinson.

No, not yesterday. I saw no glimmer of hope at the FL BOE meeting. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but yesterday was not a hopeful day. Yesterday reinforced how much work we have ahead of us.  Yesterday reinforced that we need a new regime at the top.

 
Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Michigan Plan to Defund Public Education

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
15

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has his own plan to hack away at the foundations of universal, free public education.

He is vying to be one of the national leaders of the education reform movement.

Like Bobby Jindal, his Southern counterpart in the far-right of the Republican Party, Snyder would love to offer vouchers but the Michigan state constitution doesn’t permit it (neither does the Louisiana state constitution, but who cares when you are a reformer?). Leaving constitutional niceties aside, Snyder wants to promote, encourage, expand, and fund with taxpayer dollars anything that is not a public school.

Governor Snyder wants to reshape the state’s school finance system so that public money “follows the child,” instead of just automatically going to public schools. This is part of the rightwing agenda to defund public education, cloaked in alluring terminology. The governor has created a panel to figure out how to make this happen.

He won’t come right out and say (reformers never do) that public education is bad, instead he will parrot Michelle Rhee’s absurd claim that public education is rigged to support “adult interests,” not the needs of children. I think what that means is that people who work in public schools get paid for doing so, which shows how selfish they are.

Far better, in the eyes of this education reformer in Michigan, to allow public money to go to for-profit corporations who put children first or anywhere else where there are no unions.

This is one of the peculiar views of the reformers in Michigan. It released a memo saying “the existing School Aid Act of 1979 generates $14 billion for public education, but the group believes that the existing law “serves the interest of legislators and representatives of the educational interests who control the education system, it is generally inaccessible to the general public.”

See the reasoning: That $14 billion now spent on public schools for all is controlled by “the educational interests” who “control the system” and it is not really for “the general public.” Get that: the money spent for public education is not for the public.

So if you follow the logic here, what is needed is more school choice, with money not targeted to any particular district or any particular school. No student would be assigned anywhere, and any choice the student or family made would be accompanied by state funding. Needless to say, that includes online learning and charters. Be it noted that Michigan has a very large for-profit charter sector; somewhere between 70-80% of its many charters operate for profit.

The governor wants funding to be allocated to “proficiency-based funding instead of “seat time” requirements,” which means that testing will be the sole criterion of education value. This again is a green light for the online corporations, because students can pass the state tests on computers and won’t need to go to a brick-and-mortar school at all.

And of course, we can’t have “reform” without “innovation.” In this case, the governor wants “A system that embraces innovative learning tools and reflects changing from a static approach to education delivery to one responsive to individual learning styles.” There we go again: code words meaning that we don’t want public money to pay for the current status quo system of public education, which is “static,” but to pay for online delivery system where the computer can adjust to “individual learning styles.” Apparently that is something that individual teachers, mere human beings, can’t possibly do. Only computers can do that.

And most certainly the governor wants to allow “nonpublic and homeschooled students maximum access to public education resources within the constraints of the state constitution.”

There you have it, folks, Governor Rick Snyder’s plan to reform public education by funding everything other than public education.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, Michigan, On-Line Education, Privatization

Someone Who Could See the Future

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2012 //
14

A reader sent this comment in response to an earlier post. I jumped when I read it because he was absolutely prescient. Consider this: We hear on all sides that the public schools are failing, declining, etc., that test scores are falling, etc., but NONE OF IT IS TRUE. Test scores on NAEP, the only no-stakes national test with forty years of data, are at their highest point in history. And yet, the spin masters keep spinning their tales of failure. It’s time to ask why. I have often imagined the scenario that this reader describes but have been fearful of saying it out loud. Suppose a group of powerful people decided that they wanted to privatize public education. Where would they start? How would they create a “message” to sell something that no one would accept if it was candidly described?

In June , 1992, I wrote the following letter to the editor. Based on today’s posting, I think this letter is as relevant today as it was in 1992.“Try to picture this. A large national corporation, until recently grazing contentedly on federal military contracts, finds its annual earnings reflecting a shocking drop. It is decided that new access to federal dollars must be found, or the corporation may go out of business. Someone suggests a product which could tap into ever increasing federal education dollars. Another suggestion leads to looking into the possibility of crafting that product so that state and local education dollars can also be tapped.”

“The marketing department points out that the product will not sell, unless the buyers, the American public, can be convinced that the current product is substandard. Marketing is assigned the task of creating the need for these new products by convincing the American public that its public education institutions are utter failures. Once that had been accomplished, a program will be undertaken to separate public education dollars from public education institution. Those dollars would become the mainstay of corporation earnings. The product is private education.”
Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization

GERM in India

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2012 //
1

The Global Education Reform Movement (Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg’s apt term) is advancing privatization, competition, choice, testing, accountability, data-driven decision-making tied to test scores. It’s wreaking havoc in this country and in other parts of the world.

Here is a comment from a reader in India:

Come to India and see what’s happening. The governments have abdicated their responsibility of educating the masses, and privatization of education is the current rhetoric. Nobody has a clue as to how public education should be organized, leaving the door wide open for fly-by-night operators. Thr future is bleak, but we Indians have elevated living in denial to a fine art.
Categories International, Privatization, Testing

Does Privatization Help the Poor?

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2012 //
4

I recently posted about the article and editorial in The Economist praising charter schools. The Economist is a booster of free-market capitalism so it is no surprise that it would admire this venture in privatization. What interested me about the articles was that the magazine quite bluntly described these privately-managed schools as privatization. Charter school advocates here try to hide that distinction. They go to lengths to call themselves “public charter schools” and claim to be “public schools” because they get public money. The Economist sees them plainly as privatization with public funds, outsourcing public schools to private management.

One reader is worried about how this trend towards privatization will affect developing countries:

My main worry about the claim made by the Economist is that now this idea is going to the developing countries and influencing the governments policy to privatization of public education. Many international aid agencies are already talking about it. What I fear is with this movement of privatization, children from poorer households or poor community will be even poorer with no education at all! We all think market is great where we can buy and bargain and negotiate. But market and public welfare really do not go hand in hand or does it?
Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Poverty, Privatization

What Is the Boston Consulting Group?

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2012 //
10

There is a new scandal in New York City. It seems the New York City Housing Authority paid $10 million to the Boston Consulting Group to write a report that is not available to the public that paid for it. According to the article in the New York Daily News, the report was commissioned by someone at the Housing Authority who used to work for the Boston Consulting Group.

Now, readers of this blog may recall that the Boston Consulting Group was paid over $1 million in private funds to draft a short little paper recommending the privatization of a large number of public schools in Philadelphia. It was also hired (not sure the price tag) to draft the plan for the Transition Planning Commission that merges the schools of Memphis and Shelby County, moving a large number of children and $212 million into private hands.

Who are these guys? Who elected them to redraft the meaning of public education in urban America?

Their role in reshaping education is becoming more noticeable but I still have no idea where they are coming from.

They usually advise major corporations. Why are they now redesigning urban school districts?

What does Boston Consulting Group know about education? For that matter, what does McKinsey, Alvarez & Marsal, and Bain Capital know about education? Are these corporate strategists imposing corporate practices on a public service that belongs to the local community? Are they turning our schools into mirror images of corporate America?

Will we be stack ranking teachers and children like GE and Microsoft? Will we close low-performing schools and replace them with start-ups? Uh, yes, we are doing it now thanks to NCLB and Race to the Top.

What is their expertise? What is their experience? Do they know everything? Who advises them on education?

I read on the BCG website that Margaret Spellings is a senior advisor. Who else is giving them direction about how to transform public education by giving it to private entrepreneurs?

Categories Boston Consulting Group, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization

Emergency Manager in Muskegon Heights Picks Charter Corporation

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2012 //
8

The emergency manager in Muskegon Heights school district in Michigan has decided to turn the public schools over to for-profit charter operator Mosaica Learning of Atlanta.

Mosaica schools in Michigan do better than the schools of Muskegon Heights, but have low performance in comparison to schools in the rest of the county. Test scores in Muskegon Heights were so low that almost anyone would have better scores.

The emergency manager said, in announcing his decision: “Mosaica will be a strong partner within the Muskegon Heights community. They have a proven business plan, an innovative curriculum that includes online learning and foreign language beginning in kindergarten, and a concrete plan for student safety that includes cameras in every classroom and hallway.”

Not everyone has such a high opinion of Mosaica. See here and here.

It’s hard to understand how a corporate charter chain expects to make a profit in a district whose schools ran a deficit.

Muskegon Heights is a small district, and now Mosaica will have a chance to show what it can do.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Michigan, Privatization

Why Does Governor Christie Have a Grudge Against Teachers?

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2012 //
16

One of the best bloggers in New Jersey, if not the whole northeast, is Jersey Jazzman.

He has gathered statements that Governor Christie has made about teachers that are quite negative. His teachers remember him fondly.

By all accounts, he had an idyllic childhood and experienced great public schooling.

Now he is pushing privatization as hard as he can, promoting privately managed charter schools and cyber charters (despite their dismal results).

What went wrong?

Categories Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization

Where Does Arne Duncan Stand?

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2012 //
33

When John White was appointed to run the Recovery School District in New Orleans, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called him a “visionary school leader.”

Now John White is doing the bidding of a Tea Party governor and leading the most reactionary drive in the nation to dismantle public education; to take money away from the minimum foundation budget for public schools and give it to voucher schools and charter schools; to give public money to small religious schools that don’t teach evolution; to strip teachers of all protection of their academic freedom; to allow anyone to teach, without any credentials, in charter schools; to welcome for-profit vendors of education to take their slice out of the funding for public schools.

I wonder if Arne Duncan still considers him a “visionary leader”?

I wonder what Arne Duncan thinks of the Louisiana legislation. I wonder why he has not spoken out against any part of it. I wonder why he is silent when Tea Party governors like Chris Christie attack the teachers of their state and try to take away whatever rights they may have won over the years. I wonder if he agreed or disagreed with the Chiefs for Change–the rightwing state superintendents–when they saluted Louisiana’s regressive legislation to take money from public schools and hand it over to private sector interests.

I wonder why he never went to Madison, Wisconsin, to speak out for public sector workers there when it mattered. I wonder what he thinks of the emergency manager legislation in Michigan, where state-appointed emergency managers have closed down public education in two districts and handed it off to charter operators. I wonder what he thinks about the Boston Consulting Group’s plan in Memphis to increase the proportion of students in privately managed charters from 4% to 19%. I wonder what he thinks about the Boston Consulting Group’s plan to privatize up to 40% of Philadelphia’s schools. I wonder what he thinks about the rollback of collective bargaining rights in various states or the removal of job protections for teachers. I wonder what he thinks about ALEC’s coordinated plan to destroy public education. I wonder what he thinks of the emerging for-profit industry that is moving into K-12 education.

He has many opportunities to express his views about the escalation of the war against public education and the ongoing attacks on teachers and their unions.

Why is he silent?

Just wondering.

Categories ALEC, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, For-Profit, Jindal, Bobby, K12 Inc., Louisiana, Michigan, Philadelphia, Privatization
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