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Peter Greene and EduShyster on Campbell Brown’s GOP Debate

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2015 //
37

I can’t think of anyone better qualified to cover Campbell Brown’s GOP debate than the gifted humorists Peter Greene and EduShyster (aka Jennifer Berkshire).

EduShyster posted a post with video of teacher Penny Culliton being turned away, even though she registered and had a ticket. This reminded EduShyster of school choice in general, where the school chooses whom to admit.

Penny is a regular commenter on this blog.thanks, Penny!

Peter Greene watched the event from home. He found much to laugh at. The candidates’ talking points were self-contradictory and incoherent.

Carly Fiorina seems to know nothing about education. They are all for local control except when they are for state takeovers. They all want tough accountability but they oppose the red tape that tough accountability imposes. They are sure that the evil demon is those wicked teachers’ unions.

Here is a sample of a column that would be hilarious if it weren’t so frightening to think that one of these people could become President of the United States:

“I had no intention of watching, but it’s like netflixing a bad comedy series– you just keep sticking around a little bit longer.. But there are several things that jump out.

“God-given”

“That’s the preferred modifier for the talents and abilities of students. This not only lets candidates name-check God, but it also sidesteps any discussion about what effects poverty and environment might have on the talents and abilities that a student brings to school.

“Local control is union control

“Yeah, this is a new but already-beloved talking point. If you let people have local control, those damn unions will just buy the elections, just like they did in…well, somewhere. The problem with this talking point will be coming up with an actual example of a local school board that is run by the bought-and-paid-for tools of the teachers union.

“Cognitive dissonance

“Holy smokes but the candidates disagree with themselves. Kasich thinks local control is awesome, but the state takeover of Cleveland and Youngstown is also awesome. This is a sticking point for all three candidates, who love them some local control and decry the evils of top-down federal over-reachy policy– but you can’t privatize and get charters and choice unless you open up the market by shutting down local voters.

“Also teachers unions are terrible and awful and a barrier to great things in education, but teachers themselves are wonderful and deserve our support and good pay except for the bad ones who should be driven from the classroom. We’re really torn here.

“Expectations are important and magical, so we can get students to do better just by expecting it, but not by supporting those expectations. Just expect.”

So that’s what Republican candidates promise: High expectations! That’s free. What a platform.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Republicans

Scott Walker: ALEC’s Candidate for President

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2015 //
10

If you want to get rid of public education, unions, and the teaching profession, Scott Walker should be your candidate. As this article shows, he dances to ALEC’s tune.

He prides himself for breaking public sector unions in Wisconsin. At one campaign stop, he said that his victory over the unions proved that he could beat terrorism.

He is a wrecking ball for public education. He has expanded charters and vouchers. He is a cheerleader for privatization.

He is ALEC’s boy.

What is ALEC? Read here. It is the organization that works on behalf of deregulation, corporate profits, and privatization. It writes model legislation for states. Inexplicably, the IRS allows it non-political, charitable (c3) status, although it is deeply partisan.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

The Latest Polls for 2016

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2015 //
25

I follow realclearpolitics during campaigns.

They run the latest polls from across the countries. Check in to learn the latest.

Categories Democrats, Republicans

Robert Rendo: The GOP Debate Was a Bad Reality Show

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2015 //
14

Robert Rendo, a National Board Certified Teacher who often comments, posted these remarks:

You know, I’m a public school teacher, and I watched the debates, and they had a veritable tone and texture of something I could not quite put my finger on, but now I finally have.

I finally see that the debates took on the tenor of a hybrid between a reality show and American Idol, where each contestant had a swagger and self promoting, self-absorbed aura, and each judge was snarky and “gotcha” instead of provocative and fact finding. Each judge would lunch a torpedo at the contestant and the contestant would launch a bigger one back to the judge and/or to an opponent. It became a sport of sardonic badminton, with acidic, self aggrandizing and self congratulatory remarks as the shuttlecock.

There were smirks, grins, chuckles, and sarcastic rolling of the eyes. There was pivoting of the head side to side to indicate disapproval and raised eyebrows to show defensiveness.

There were myriad retorts from the Mr. cheap-shot-and-shinily-packaged Moliere himself, Donald Trump, and there were startling confessions about abortion from Scott Walker, who has always put women in a metaphorical state of being buried up to the neck and stoned. This was indicated unabashedly by the ultra-chauvinistic Walker, whose own wife he would seemingly have die in order to give birth to a baby that would put her life at grave risk. Or, heaven forbid, if Walker’s wife were brutally raped and had horrible memories and neurosis from the experience, Walker, according to his own principles, would still make her give birth to the ensuing and permanent reminder.

Walker said at one point before these debates that he is prepared to sign into law a 20-week abortion ban without any exceptions for victims of rape or incest, arguing that women are concerned with those issues “in the initial months” of pregnancy.

I guess he would know since he is a man.

Walker is the picture-perfect poster boy for the mediocrity American culture has raised as its highest level of expression: moronic, simple minded, very well funded, political connected, masterfully deceptive, and vested in state authority.

My point is that these candidates are frightening, incompetent, narcissistic, oligarchical, and just plain off-the-wall-crazy.
Between Rand Paul proudly declaring that the GOP has worked hard for over a decade to oppose a single payer healthcare system and Donald Trump asserting, pre-debate, to Cher that he has no rug atop his head, that “It’s the real thing”, and that he pledges not to discuss her “numerous unsuccessful plastic surgeries”, I could not help but think that this debate was an ultimate symbol for the disconnect between the average American person and the plutocrats who live and work in an Super PAC tower.

There was therefore nothing amusing about the debates, even if they read like a snarky stand up comedy competition.

There are tens of millions of people in this country who are suffering horribly.

People are saddled with higher education debt, never able to buy a home, sick and dying as a result of lack of access to Obamacare in which the compulsory insurance policies do not cover a condition or the premiums have shot up, stuck with their kids in once-excellent public schools that have been starved of legitimate funding and reduced to a skeletal staff, and dumbed down by the paucity of real journalism, that is now controlled by corporate agendas and bought media. People are under the oppression
of bad medicine, adulterated food, long work hours that lead to no promotion and stagnant wages, and the maintenance of instrastructral services that the very rich also depend on but don’t pay for, such as roads, bridges, tunnels, energy, and public transportation.

The GOP debate had almost no dignity and even less truth to it. These debaters are bonafide looney, dangerous, and disconnected, no differently than had been Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who lived isolated and opulent lives in grand palaces and who eventually faced a fate our current politicians might one day face, according to Picketty.

How could I not vote for Sanders?

Categories Republicans

Rightwing Groups Sponsor GOP Debate in New Hampshire

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2015 //
44

This is something new. Two rightwing, pro-voucher advocacy groups are sponsoring a debate on August 19 among Republican hopefuls in Londonderry, Néw Hampshire.

In the past, presidential debates have been sponsored by the League of Women Voters or national television channels. This debate, however, is sponsored by two organizations–Campbell Brown’s “The 74” and Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children–that promote charters and vouchers and oppose teachers unions and tenure.

This would be like holding a debate sponsored by the National Rifle Association, the tobacco industry, or advocates for abortion.

The audience will hear plenty about “our failing schools” but they are not likely to hear that test scores on NAEP are at their highest point ever, as are graduation rates. Or that dropout rates are the lowest ever. Prepare to hear the sponsors rattle on about how terrible our schools are, how lazy and greedy our teacher are, and why we need to privatize our schools. Don’t expect to hear anything about the nation’s high child poverty rate or a blunt admission that poverty is tightly correlated with poor academic performance.

Categories Charter Schools, Republicans, Vouchers

What I Thought of the GOP Debate

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2015 //
87

Not too much was said about education last night, and the candidates already have demonstrated by word and deed that they would like to break up, eliminate, eviscerate, or diminish public education. We already know the records of Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. If you care about public education as a central component of a democratic society, this is not a good field from which to choose a president. The group proved to be bellicose, obsessed with abortion, and playing to the far right extremes of the Republican party.

Some especially offensive moments:

1) when Donald Trump responded to a question about his attitude towards women by belittling the woman who asked the question.

2) when Scott Walker said that he opposes abortion without exception, even in the case of rape, incest, and the risk to the mother’s life. When pressed about the latter, he said that he would always choose the life of the unborn child over the life of the mother. I wished there had been a follow-up about whether he would sacrifice the life of his own wife. There wasn’t.

Here are some other responses to the debate that I liked: Andy Borowitz in his daily New Yorker joke said that Scott Walker proved that he was ready to be an assistant manager at a car rental agency.

Paul Krugman’s reactions resonated with me. The thought of any of these guys becoming President of the United States is alarming.

Categories Republicans

Bob Peterson: What Scott Walker Will Do to Public Education

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2015 //
21

Bob Peterson describes what Scott Walker intends to do to public schools and higher education in Wisconsin. Since he plans to run for the Republican nomination for President, it is important to know his views on education.

He is a zealot for school choice and privatization. He doesn’t like public schools or universities. He thinks that taxpayers should foot the bill for religious education. He believes that the purpose of education is workforce training. He is contemptuous of liberal learning. He is proud of his disdain for free inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge.

Peterson writes:

“Buried within the budget are 135 non-budget policy items — a toxic cocktail of attacks on public education, democracy, environmental protections and labor rights.

“For Wisconsin’s schools, the budget is a blueprint for abandoning public education. In Milwaukee, in addition to insufficient funding, the budget includes a “takeover” plan that increases privatization and decreases democratic control of the city’s public schools.

“The budget was passed by the Republican-controlled Senate a few minutes before midnight Tuesday, with all Democrats and one Republican voting “no.” The Assembly is expected to pass the budget and send it to Walker by the end of the week.

“The attack on the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) is in the context of a frontal assault on public education across the state. The budget cuts $250 million from the University of Wisconsin system, holds overall K-12 funding flat in the first year with modest increases in the second (which, given inflation, means cuts). And while programs promoting privately run charters are expanded, the budget eliminates Chapter 220 — a metropolitan-wide program designed to reduce racial segregation in public schools and improve equal opportunity for students of color.

“The budget is also expanding the statewide voucher program, under which tax dollars are funneled into private, overwhelmingly religious schools. (The program is modeled after Milwaukee’s private school voucher program which began in 1990 and which now includes 112 schools and 25,000 students.)”

In a dismal field of GOP candidates, Walker stands out for his anti-intellectualism and contempt for learning.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Milwaukee, Republicans, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Bob Braun: Chris Christie’s Insensitive, Self-Satisfied Version of the American Dream

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2015 //
17

Bob Braun listened to Chris Christie’s announcement of his candidacy for the GOP nomination, and he was struck by Christie’s peculiar version of the “American Dream.”

While other candidates–past and present–spoke of fleeing religious persecution, tyranny, and privation to find refuge in America, Christie spoke of fleeing a racially-changing Newark for the comfort of an all-white suburb.

Braun writes:

“The Christie family did not escape from English monarchs who insisted on a state religion. Not from revolutions in southern Europe. Not from the potato famine. Not from the czar. Not from pogroms or the Holocaust. Not from grinding poverty. The Christie family escaped from black families moving into the neighborhood–new neighbors whose ancestors were brought to this country as slaves in chains. The Christies did not face the unknown wilderness or the known hostility of earlier settlers. They faced the grass, the open space, the all-white neighborhoods, of Livingston, New Jersey.

“I cannot speak for people of color but I can imagine the pain many must have felt when Christie told the adoring and mostly white crowd at Livingston High School, “I’m here in Livingston because all those years ago, my mother and father became the first of either of their families to leave the city of Newark to come here and make this home for us.”

“Not Jamestown. Or Plymouth. Or Ellis Island. Livingston.”

Categories New Jersey, Newark, Race, Republicans

Arthur Camins Warns Democrats about Dangers of School Choice

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2015 //
21

Arthur Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., has a warning for Democrats that school choice is a bad choice.

He omits Republicans because they have become the party of school choice and privatization.

School choice is an alluring term, but the reality is far different from the rhetoric.

He writes:

“In our culture the “the right to choose” suggests an almost inalienable individual right, making for powerfully resonant political rhetoric. However, behind the easy-to-swallow positive connotation of choice, there is underlying message in its use in the context of education. If stated explicitly, the message might cause a little indigestion: Be out for yourself and don’t worry so much about your neighbors or community…

“However, what is moral or sensible for an individual does not make for sound or just education policy for a society. The moral burden falls not on parents, but on those who knowingly advance the wellbeing of the few at the expense of the many….

“Supporters of equity and democracy must depend upon and develop agency and hope for community solutions because when there is only despair, the only rational course of action is individual survival. Ideological supporters of privatization understand this and actively undermine democratic participation and the promise of collective solutions. That is why since the 1980’s they have followed an explicit starve-the-beast strategy to defund public institutions in order to undermine quality, public trust, and confidence. That is why they favor private charter boards over elected school boards.
I have come to believe that the struggle for equity must include a tandem strategy of opposition and advocacy.
Friends of equity need to oppose funding charter school, not because choice is inherently a bad idea but because the spread of charter schools is morally corrosive and drains money from other local schools. Since funds are always limited, the opportunities for the few come with the sacrifice of others. “They are stealing your child’s future,” might be an appropriate opposition slogan. …

“Progress requires an opt-in campaign for local public schools based on community rather than individualist values. Advocacy should highlight the fundamental characteristics of effective public schools both in the U.S. and abroad and contrast these with prevalent market-based solutions….

“Candidates need to hear from the public: There are better choices than school choice to improve education.”

Categories Charter Schools, Equity, Justice, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Vouchers

Republican Governors Divided on Common Core, Agree to Slash Higher Education Funding

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2015 //
17

Breitbart News reports that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has entranced some conservatives with his success at crushing labor unions, but has tried to distract their attention away from his incoherent position on Common Core and Common Core testing. Some Republicans–like Jeb Bush and Susanna Martinez–are strong supporters of Common Core. Others–like Bobby Jindal–once supported it but now oppose it. But Scott Walker has everyone confused. He is both for the Common Core standards and against them. He is in favor of the federal tests and against them.

 

But on one issue, Republicans appear to be united. Many are eager to cut the funding of higher education to balance the budget, and to avoid raising taxes on the rich. (There may be some Republican governors who are supporting higher education; I invite readers to tell me their names.) Scott Walker (who dropped out of Marquette University) has proposed slashing $300 million from the University of Wisconsin, which is one of the finest higher education systems in the nation (or has been until now). UW campuses are preparing for the worst, with some planning to eliminate entire majors or to reduce faculty by as much as 25%. In Illinois, newly elected Governor Bruce Rauner, a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School) has proposed a $400 million cut in higher education funding. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (a graduate of Brown University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar) wants to cut higher education funding by $200 million in a state that desperately needs more intellectual capital. Doug Ducey, the new Republican Governor of Arizona (a graduate of Arizona State University), proposed (and the Legislature passed) a $99 million cut to the state’s universities, as well as eliminating all state funding from several community colleges.

 

This is a display of free-market fundamentalism at its most extreme. These governors (and there are undoubtedly others) would rather cut the funding of colleges that educate the professionals and brainpower of the state’s future than raise taxes on the wealthiest in their state. Or is this just an example of someone who succeeded and then decides to pull the ladder up so that no one else has the same opportunities unless they are born rich?

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Higher Education, Republicans
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