Archives for category: Privatization
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Nancy Bailey: Who Does the Biden/Sanders Education Unity Panel Unite?

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2020 //
64

Nancy Bailey is well aware of the dangers to public education today, especially the threats of privatization, data mining, and technological takeover. She saw that the campaigns of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders created an education unity group and she wondered who was included and who was not included.

Here is her analysis.

She begins with who was left out:

Many want to say good riddance to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her boss. But educators and parents fighting for public education, and the ninety percent of students who attend public schools, deserve a more inclusive group of people to push back on harmful school reform. The Biden/Sanders Unity Education Task Force leaves much to be desired.

For example, parents of children with disabilities struggle to teach their children during Covid-19. Classes for their children were never fully funded before the disease. Sen. Bernie Sanders promised better in his Thurgood Marshall Plan. Searching with a magnifying glass, I see no representation for students with disabilities on this panel.

Black and brown parent advocates have started a petition to make the education task force more inclusive.

Where are the scholars from the: National Education Policy Center? Network for Public Education? Defending the Early Years? Economic Policy Center? Where are teachers from the Badass Teachers Association, or representation by those who organized and marched in the Red for Ed rallies? What about parents and school board members who fight for children?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Annie Abrams: Privatization Vultures Are Circling Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2020 //
15

Writing in the New Republic, New York City public school teacher Annie Abrams warns about the vultures circling public schools during the pandemic, hoping to make remote learning a feature, not a temporary emergency measure.

She cites the recent comments by Governor Cuomo about the seeming obsolescence of “all these buildings, all these physical classrooms; why, with all the technology you have?” And, of course, his invitation to Bill Gates of all people to “reimagine education” in the state. She might have also cited any number of statements by anti-public school individuals like Betsy DeVos and Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, which supports every kind of school except public schools.

Abrams knows that distance learning cannot replace the person-to-person contact that happens in physical classrooms.

Meaningful education is built on connection, and fostering relationships requires proximity. This is what a classroom does. It’s a space for students to establish relationships while experimenting with being in public. And while we don’t yet know the details of Cuomo’s plan, there’s reason to be suspicious. The Gates Foundation’s top-down approach to education reform, along with Cuomo’s history of supporting charter schools, inconsistency around unions, and exclusion of New York City educators from the project’s council, suggest a deeply undemocratic push to defund and privatize the public school system.

American public schools—“all these buildings, all these physical classrooms”—are cultural spaces as much as they are physical locations. Cuomo’s reimagining threatens to flatten public education into informational transaction, turning teachers into tech support in the process…

It’s clear students, at least, understand much of what our political leaders can’t grasp about public education. My students miss the dynamism and zaniness that define a classroom of adolescents, and they miss momentary escape from their defining roles at home. They know what school is, both what they’re there to do and what I’m there to do with them. When I write college recommendations, I ask students to submit a questionnaire reflecting on our time together. Last year, one said, “Writing became something you encouraged us to do when we felt most confused or frustrated, times when I was most likely to give up on doing something. I began to see writing as a way to convince people about the things that meant a lot to me.” Reading students’ faces, peering over their shoulders, and responding to their frustrations and their breakthroughs is integral to helping them match tools to occasions. This sounds saccharine, but it’s real. Those relationships are harder to cultivate on a screen.

The privatizers are choosing a moment of economic catastrophe to pitch their siren call to make distance learning permanent. It is cheaper, but it is not better. As we have seen from the dismal results of virtual charter schools, online “learning” is horrible.

Abrams argues that remote learning can never replace the learning that occurs in physical classrooms:

The American public school classroom should be an empowering space. A weird, messy, vital place of experimentation and collaboration. Public schools facilitate that opportunity for students, to think both critically and imaginatively and to agree on some kind of common reality. In the best cases, public education helps students situate themselves among broader communities than they may otherwise encounter while building civic trust. It helps them become adults, slowly, clumsily, day by day. There’s no app-based replacement for that.

She knows it. I know it. But do the politicians know it? Their current plans involve slashing the budgets of public schools at a time when the schools need to cut class sizes to protect the health and safety of students and staff.

Think about the massive tax cuts of December 2017 that lowered the taxes of wealthy individuals and big corporations. Think about the corporate handouts tucked into the Coronavirus Relief program. Then ponder why our political leaders are about to cut billions of dollars from our schools and our children.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, Technology

Watch Randi and Me Talk about What Happens Next

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2020 //
16

Randi Weingarten and I talked about what happens next: after the pandemic, how we protect schools and children from “opportunistic” tech entrepreneurs, what does Cuomo have up his sleeve, can we trust Biden to ditch Race to the Top bogus ideas?

Our conversation was recorded and live-streamed by the Network for Public Education. Carol Burris introduced us. The conversation wa facilitated by Darcie Cimarusti and Marla Kilfoyle, the fabulous staff of NPE.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, Vouchers

Education Law Center: States Should Reject DeVos’ Proposal to Fund Elite Private Schools

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2020 //
8

NEW JERSEY MUST REJECT EDUCATION SECRETARY DEVOS’ ADVICE TO GIVE EMERGENCY COVID-19 FUNDS EVEN TO WEALTHY PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Education Law Center is urging New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy to firmly reject a non-binding directive from U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to set aside federal emergency relief funds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act for all private school students, even the most wealthy.

In a May 11 letter to Governor Murphy, ELC explains that Secretary DeVos’ guidance to New Jersey and other states to allocate CARES Act funds to all private school students, without regard for income level, is based on a patent misreading of the express terms of the CARES Act and the federal Title I statute, which governs the distribution of CARES Act funding to local school districts. ELC further explains that Secretary DeVos’ flawed legal interpretation would also significantly diminish the resources available to New Jersey school districts to provide effective and equitable remote learning opportunities while students are sheltering at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“This erroneous guidance lays bare Secretary DeVos’ personal agenda for reducing federal emergency CARES Act funds to public schools and redirecting as much of that funding as possible to private schools,” said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director. “By advising that even the wealthiest students in the most expensive private schools should receive services paid for with CARES Act funds, the guidance would lead New Jersey and other states to divert millions of dollars critically needed by public school students, including access to continuing instruction while their schools are closed.”

Estimates based on 2017 census data show that New Jersey’s high poverty districts will be most impacted by following Secretary DeVos’ directive given the differences between the poverty rates of the district as a whole and those of private school students.

For example, in Jersey City, 12% of the district school-aged population attend private schools, while only 14% of those students are poor. Following DeVos’ directive would mean diverting nearly $1 million more of the CARES Act funds from Jersey City public school students, 30% of whom are poor.

Similarly, in Passaic City, an estimated 16% of students attend private schools, but only 10% of those students are poor. In Passaic public schools, 51% of students are poor. Using Secretary DeVos’ preferred approach would increase the amount of federal CARES Act funds reserved for private school students from $300,000 to $1.4 million.

ELC also underscores that rejecting Secretary DeVos’ directive is compelled by New Jersey’s constitutional obligation to “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools” for all students. As the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed in the landmark Abbott v. Burke rulings, public school students have a fundamental right to an education that prepares them to be informed citizens and productive members of society and that right “must remain prominent, paramount and fully protected.”

Beyond New Jersey, ELC is calling on governors and education officials to decline Secretary DeVos’ legally improper directives and ensure maximum CARES Act funds to enable school districts across the country to bring an end to the digital divide.

Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
Education Law Center
60 Park Place, Suite 300
Newark, NJ 07102
973-624-1815, ext. 24
skrengel@edlawcenter.org

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Laura Chapman: Bad News from Ohio

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2020 //
4

Laura Chapman reports on budget cuts to schools in Ohio, which hurt public schools but protect charters and vouchers.

She writes:

Bad news from Ohio again. Not quite Lord of the Flies (fiction or non-fiction truth)

This week, Governor DeWine is proposing $355 million in K-12 education cuts with $300 million coming out of foundation aid to local school districts from the current state budget that expires in July.

While public education accounts for about 42% of state expenditures, it will absorb about 45.8% of the loss.

He has not asked private schools that take public funds to sacrifice anything. This proposed cut will exacerbate the underfunding of public schools in favor of EdChoice vouchers that raid public school dollars for private schools.

In addition public school funds should not be supporting charter schools that are the pet project of billionaires who think they are entitled to raid public dollars for their preferred undemocratic system of education.

This proposed cut will shift a large portion of public school funding from the state to local districts. I have not looked at all of DeWine’s proposed budget cuts but these sure look like they are designed to hit public schools and favor private schools as well as charters schools that have declared they are eligible for small business loans, these likely to be foregiven.

If you are in Ohio, please open the link below and follow-up with emails to the people who are planning for this cut to be passed well before school starts. Start with this link:

https://mailchi.mp/ac594ace4a33/action-alert-355-million-in-education-cuts-in-ohio?e=ba8653e702

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Denis Smith: Is Andrew Brenner the Dumbest Politician in Ohio?

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2020 //
13

Perhaps you have never heard of State Senator Andrew Brenner. Read Denis Smith’s recent post about Brenner, and you will learn about an elected official who is “radioactive,” “disingenuous,” tone-deaf, and possibly the dumbest elected official in Ohio.

While chairing the education committee, he described public education as “socialist.”

But that’s only a small part of his infamy.

Smith writes:

Yes, the ever-radioactive Andrew Brenner who with his meanness and bountiful bile is capable of producing Strontium-90 by the megaton, set off yet another chain reaction through his defense of his wife Sara Marie Brenner and her comments about state policies intended to deal with the pandemic.

It was only fitting that Brenner, whose use of social media to heap scorn on his opponents and ridicule those not of the lunatic fringe, set off a barrage from critics when he responded to a posting by his wife:

“This actually feels like Hitler’s Germany,” Sara Marie posted on her Facebook page.

“Sen. Brenner responded: “We will never allow that to happen in Ohio.””

Brenner’s targeting of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and state health director Dr. Amy Acton generated this retort from Darrel Rowland of the Columbus Dispatch.

That the comments came on Holocaust Remembrance Day and that Acton is Jewish ensured their enshrinement in the crowded hall of fame for political stupidity.

With Brenner, the half-life of his tone deafness, aka political stupidity, is another measure of his increasing radioactivity among Ohio voters.

Lest we forget about Brenner’s serial bad behavior, let’s examine a few milestones in his less than illustrious history as a member of the Ohio General Assembly.

In 2014, as part of a blog post, Brenner made national headlines when he wrote that “Public education in America is socialism… Privatize everything and the results will speak for themselves.” He must have forgotten about other public functions, including our socialist public safety departments, socialist public libraries, socialist highway department, and the socialist state health department headed by Dr. Acton.

In 2015, Brenner compared Planned Parenthood to Nazis. (There’s something about Andy and Nazis, isn’t there?)

He is a pro-gun zealot, of course.

With a guy like this shaping education policy, you can understand why Ohio is in trouble.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Naomi Klein: Beware the Tech Billionaires and Their “Pandemic Shock Doctrine”

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2020 //
44

Naomi Klein coined the iconic book Shock Doctrine, about the way that the powerful elites use emergencies to expand their power because of the crisis. New Orleans was one of her prime examples of “disaster capitalism,” where the devastation of a giant hurricane created an opportunity to break the teachers union and privatize the public school system.

In this brilliant essay, published in The Intercept, Klein describes the many ways in which the plutocrats of the tech industry are turning the pandemic into a gold mine for themselves and planning a dystopian future for the rest of us.

Please read this provocative and frightening essay, which has numerous links to support her argument.

What she details is not just a threat to our privacy and our institutions but to our democracy and our freedom.

It is no coincidence, she writes, that Governor Andrew Cuomo is enlisting a team of tech billionaires to reimagine the future of the Empire State. They know exactly what they want, and it’s up to us to stop them.

She writes:

It has taken some time to gel, but something resembling a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine is beginning to emerge. Call it the “Screen New Deal.” Far more high-tech than anything we have seen during previous disasters, the future that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent — and highly profitable — no-touch future.

Anuja Sonalker, CEO of Steer Tech, a Maryland-based company selling self-parking technology, recently summed up the new virus-personalized pitch. “There has been a distinct warming up to human-less, contactless technology,” she said. “Humans are biohazards, machines are not.”

It’s a future in which our homes are never again exclusively personal spaces but are also, via high-speed digital connectivity, our schools, our doctor’s offices, our gyms, and, if determined by the state, our jails. Of course, for many of us, those same homes were already turning into our never-off workplaces and our primary entertainment venues before the pandemic, and surveillance incarceration “in the community” was already booming. But in the future under hasty construction, all of these trends are poised for a warp-speed acceleration.

This is a future in which, for the privileged, almost everything is home delivered, either virtually via streaming and cloud technology, or physically via driverless vehicle or drone, then screen “shared” on a mediated platform. It’s a future that employs far fewer teachers, doctors, and drivers. It accepts no cash or credit cards (under guise of virus control) and has skeletal mass transit and far less live art. It’s a future that claims to be run on “artificial intelligence” but is actually held together by tens of millions of anonymous workers tucked away in warehouses, data centers, content moderation mills, electronic sweatshops, lithium mines, industrial farms, meat-processing plants, and prisons, where they are left unprotected from disease and hyperexploition. It’s a future in which our every move, our every word, our every relationship is trackable, traceable, and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations between government and tech giants.

If all of this sounds familiar it’s because, pre-Covid, this precise app-driven, gig-fueled future was being sold to us in the name of convenience, frictionlessness, and personalization. But many of us had concerns. About the security, quality, and inequity of telehealth and online classrooms. About driverless cars mowing down pedestrians and drones smashing packages (and people). About location tracking and cash-free commerce obliterating our privacy and entrenching racial and gender discrimination. About unscrupulous social media platforms poisoning our information ecology and our kids’ mental health. About “smart cities” filled with sensors supplanting local government. About the good jobs these technologies wiped out. About the bad jobs they mass produced.

And most of all, we had concerns about the democracy-threatening wealth and power accumulated by a handful of tech companies that are masters of abdication — eschewing all responsibility for the wreckage left behind in the fields they now dominate, whether media, retail, or transportation.

That was the ancient past known as February. Today, a great many of those well-founded concerns are being swept away by a tidal wave of panic, and this warmed-over dystopia is going through a rush-job rebranding. Now, against a harrowing backdrop of mass death, it is being sold to us on the dubious promise that these technologies are the only possible way to pandemic-proof our lives, the indispensable keys to keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe.

Categories Billionaires, Data and Data Mining, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Online Education, Privacy, Privatization

Nancy Bailey: How Betsy DeVos Fostered Squalid Learning Conditions in Detroit

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2020 //
8

Nancy Bailey just keeps getting better and better as she points her pen and her blog at malfeasance in education.

In this post, she points to the recent landmark decision that recognized that the children of Detroit have a right to literacy, a right not previously acknowledged by any court (or overturned on appeal). The court quite correctly decided that young people cannot exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens if they can’t read.

What is DeVos’s role in the Detroit debacle? She has spent large sums of money to promote the false idea that the way to improve education is to expand school choice. Detroit is her handiwork, and it proves the failure of school choice. What she purchased was widespread inequity and inadequacy.

Open the link to read the full article and see the links to other sources.

Bailey writes:

The Detroit landmark decision that children deserve to learn to read in school is a case that reflects decades of troubled education in Detroit. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and school privatization are not mentioned in this case. But school privatization initiatives have been failing children in the Motor City for years. DeVos is the current face of a long line of those peddling such reforms.

Harmful school reform initiatives go back to Gov. John Engler’s administration. Many school reformers, both Republican and Democrat, have their fingerprints on the crime scene. The DeVos family is from Michigan and has affected Detroit and school reform there for years.

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Detroit students who claim they were denied their rights to a “basic minimum education.” Called the “Right to Read” lawsuit, Gary B. v. Whitmer exposes the decrepit conditions found in schools run by State leaders who failed to support Detroit’s students. The case was originally filed under former Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration.

It’s critical to recognize DeVos’s connection to the Detroit school failures. During this pandemic she is flagrantly redirecting public money to the same privatization agenda. It puts democratic public schools in jeopardy, like schools were put at risk in Detroit. Here’s a petition you can sign now to try and stop her.

School privatization cheerleaders have for years promoted the idea that choice will equalize education by giving parents choices. They’ve pushed for online charter schools and school turnarounds that get tough on teachers and students of color. Choice failed in Detroit.

Reading

Schools had no literacy programs.

The case describes what good reading instruction should consist of in school. Sometimes it appears to be delving into the Reading Wars, emphasizing the loss of explicit phonics.

The trouble is, one can’t get to a debate over how students learn to read, without overcoming the fact that students have untrained teachers and an atrocious learning environment.

It’s troubling to think the case might result in only professional development and a push for unproven programs, even online reading programs, that don’t address the need for creating quality schools, professional teachers, and more individualized attention for the children of Detroit.

School Buildings

Poor school conditions have been a part of Detroit’s schools for years. Students struggle to learn in slum-like conditions, no air-conditioning in the summer, freezing temperatures in the winter. Who can forget these pictures from 2016, the year the case was filed?

Vermin, mold, and contaminated drinking water plague the schools. Bullets, dead vermin, condoms, and sex toys have been found on the playground. Fire safety equipment and fire regulations are missing.

Betsy DeVos’s mantra is that education is about students and not buildings. She has done nothing to improve the condition of schools in Detroit or around the country.

Lacking Resources

Teaching resources were deficient. The case describes classrooms without enough textbooks, and old books that haven’t been updated in years.

The only school library mentioned had no librarian and was locked!

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Detroit, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization

Shawgi Tell: Charter Entrepreneurs Cash in on Public Funding During Pandemic

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2020 //
5

Shawgi Tell, professor at Nazareth College in New York, describes the multiple ways in which corporate charter chains are cashing in during the pandemic.

He begins:

While private businesses like non-profit and for-profit charter schools have been seizing enormous sums of public money for decades,1 they continue to seize hundreds of millions of public dollars during the “COVID Pandemic”—a move that further undermines the nation’s public education system and economy.

The latest example of this massive transfer of public funds to segregated charter schools involves $200 million set aside a few weeks ago for large corporate charter school chains by billionaire Betsy DeVos, U.S. Secretary of Education. This pay-the-rich scheme is taking place in the context of more brutal cuts to public school budgets around the country.

On top of this, in the current crisis, which is worse than the 2008 economic collapse engineered by Wall Street, charter school advocates are also taking virtue-signaling to new heights, casually and repeatedly lauding themselves as saviors and as “tried-and-true online experts,” even though many have ironically(?) turned away from notoriously poor-performing cyber charter schools in this disruptive transition to inefficient digital “communication” at all levels of education. Most people have simply not turned to online charter schools during this crisis. They recognize that online charter schools are subpar and not the way forward. Even well-funded organizations that support charter schools, like the neoliberal Center for Research on Education and Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, bemoan the persistently abysmal performance of cyber charter schools.

The conceited charter school sector believes, however, that this virtue-signaling will suddenly cause people to forget that charter schools are notorious for all sorts of corruption, fraud, and scandal. While the “COVID Pandemic” has overwhelmed many, people have not spontaneously forgotten the poor track record of cyber charter schools or brick-and-mortar charter schools.

The necessity today is for governments at all levels to cease funneling much-needed public funds to private business like charter schools and to direct these funds to public schools that serve 90% of the nation’s students. Public funds belong to public schools and charter schools are not public schools. There is no such thing as a public charter school, especially given the fact that charter schools are now openly claiming to be small private businesses so as to obtain public Small Business Administration money (from the CARES Act) that regular public schools, precisely because they are actually public, do not have access to.

Read on.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

A Brief History of Anti-Government Rhetoric

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2020 //
7

Donald Cohen of the nonpartisan “In the Public Interest” has assembled a brief history of anti-government rhetoric.

He has assembled quotations from the anti-government crowd. It is only 12 pages and a quick, enlightening read.

It is called The Anti-Government Echo Chamber.

Here is the introduction on the ITPI website:

“They play to your fear, government plays to your fear.”

“Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community?”

“Most businesses would tell you that they presently take care of their employees. They don’t need government telling them how to do it.”

“Government is a dangerous thing.”

No, these quotes aren’t from a recent Fox News broadcast about the coronavirus crisis. They’re examples from a decades-long, relentless attack on government by corporations, conservative politicians, and right wing think tanks.

Over the past few months we’ve been collecting anti-government rhetoric from Ronald Reagan to the Cato Institute to the mid-20th-century white supremacist Sen. James Eastland. We’ve dubbed it “The Anti-Government Echo Chamber.”

What stands out is that anti-government rhetoric has gotten clearer and more consistent over time. It’s come from diverse right-wing voices, from white supremacists to the religious right. It’s been weaponized to oppose a wide range of policies and programs, from education to ensuring civil rights. Of course, it’s been selective—focused on the safety net and public services we all rely on but silent about tax cuts, subsidies, and other benefits for corporations.

And it’s been effective—dramatically so. Taxes on corporations and the wealthy have been slashed. Public budgets have been cut. Public goods and services have been privatized, from highways to education. Nearly every state’s tax code is regressive, meaning they collect more taxes from low-income people than high-income people as a share of their income. At the federal level, spending on public health, education, and other nondefense discretionary programs is at a historic low.

Despite what these voices have said, government is the only institution capable of ensuring that things like quality health care, clean water, a good education, well-paid work, and equal voice are available to all. There are just some things that private markets can’t do.

We published “The Anti-Government Echo Chamber” also as a call to action to progressive leaders, thinkers, strategists, organizations, organizers, and activists.

Virtually every policy, program, and issue we focus on relies on using public power to create a fairer, healthier, and safer country and world. Yet, progressives rarely talk about government successes and progress except when under attack. The language we use is often tinged with anti-government attitudes.

Conservatives have long been clear about what they want—less government, a weaker democracy, and more power for corporations, the bigger the better. Progressives have focused on specific issues and campaigns and remained silent on the ideas that unite those issues.

The coronavirus crisis is revealing the dire need for effective, democratic, adequately funded public institutions. We must create our own “Pro-Public Echo Chamber” until our ideas become the new popular conventional wisdom and a governing reality. Are you with us?

The Anti-Government Echo Chamber begins like this:

“The emancipation of belief is the most formidable tasks of reform and the one on which all else depends.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith

“The power of the [corporation] depends on instilling the belief that any public or private action that serves its purposes also serves the purpose of the public at large.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
– President Ronald Reagan

“The folks who run Koch [Industries] are very clear. They would love to have government just get out of the way and allow companies to compete, whether in their particular sectors or other sectors. They are true believers in small government.”
– Congressional candidate Mike Pompeo when asked if he was influenced by Koch Industries, his largest donor.

“Expansive government undermines the moral character that is necessary to civil society.”
– Cato Institute 2017 Handbook for Policymakers

Anti-government sentiment by corporations and conservative intellectuals isn’t new. In 1914, three years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire killed 145 women and girls, real estate interests lobbied against new building safety codes.“The experience of the past proves conclusively that the best government is the least possible government, that the unfettered initiative of the individual is the force that makes a country great,” said Laurence McGuire, chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York.

But since the 1960’s (particularly after Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign), anti-government rhetoric has gotten clearer, more consistent, and has come from diverse right-wing voices, from white supremacists to the religious right. It’s been weaponized to oppose a wide range of policies and programs, from education to ensuring civil rights. The attack on government is often selective—focused on the safety net and public services we all rely upon but silent on tax cuts, subsidies and other benefits for industry.

I think you will want to read it all.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Vouchers
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