Archives for category: Republicans
Newer Entries »

Lamar Alexander, Wherefore Art Thou?

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2014 //
19

I worked for Lamar Alexander when he was Secretary of Education in the first Bush administration. There were so many things I liked about him. He is smart and funny. He plays the piano. He is my kind of conservative: he didn’t think he should shove his ideas down other people’s throats. As Secretary, he knew he had to obey the law and not intrude on the right of states and localities to make decisions. He had a gut sense that other people had good ideas.

I have a copy of Lamar’s Little Plaid Book, where he spells out his principles but I didn’t read it closely. So I didn’t know that Entry # 84 said this: “Read anything Diane Ravitch writes about education.”

Sadly, U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander has forgotten #84. He is pushing vouchers in Tennessee, which will decimate the public schools in communities across the state.

This is not a conservative idea. It is a radical idea that will destabilize communities. Conservatives don’t destroy traditional institutions. They protect them.

Vouchers will be used to send children to little backwoods church schools with uncertified teachers. Instead of modern science, they will learn the science taught in the Bible. They won’t be prepared for college or life today. That’s what happened in Louisiana. Kids are getting a worse education.

Lamar! Don’t forget #84. You are too smart to fall for nonsense. Stand up for better education for all.

Your friend,

Diane

Categories Ravitch, Diane, Republicans

StudentsFirst in NY Raises $1.75 Million to Help Senate Republicans

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2014 //
27

When will the media acknowledge that Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst is a rightwing group, not “liberal” or “Democratic”? When election time comes round, it reliably supports Republicans, who can be counted on to endorse school privatization and to undercut teachers and their unions (if they have one). Occasionally, StudentsFirst finds a Democrat who supports vouchers, but the overwhelming bulk of their money goes to Republicans, as in the current election in New York.

In 2012, while Rhee was still running the organization, 90 of the 105 candidates it endorsed were Republicans. This number included far-right conservatives in the Deep South. In 2013, StudentsFirst selected its “reformer of the year,” who was Tennessee Representative John Ragan, who was notorious for his “don’t say gay” legislation.

Liberal? No. Far-right, anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-public school. Willing to honor a stridently homophobic legislator. Sad.

 

PS: The New York Daily News reported that the $1.75 million was raised in one week from only 5 people. Two were named; they are hedge fund billionaire/millionaires.

Categories New York, Republicans, StudentsFirst

Ladd and Fiske: NC Legislators Quietly Alter Public School Funding

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2014 //
10

Professor Helen Ladd of Duke University, internationally renowned economist of education, and her husband Edward Fiske, former education editor of the New York Times, recently wrote about a sneaky move by the North Carolina legislature to undermine the funding of children in public schools. Not content to fund charters and vouchers, the legislature is directly attacking the basic funding formula for the state public system. The overwhelming majority of children in the state attend public schools. Why do their parents elect these people who short-change public education?

Ladd and Fiske write:

“In a last-minute change that was taken with no hearings and no prior publicity, the Republican-controlled General Assembly has undermined the fundamental building block of school finance in North Carolina.

“Ever since the state took over responsibility from the local districts for funding public schools during the Great Depression, state funding in North Carolina has been based on the number of students served. When a local district’s school rolls increased or decreased, the state would adjust the funding up or down accordingly, using a variety of formulas, all of them driven by the number of students.

“Under legislation enacted last month, the legislature has scrapped this system. From now on, every spring the state will make an initial commitment of state funds to districts for the following year based on the number of students currently enrolled rather than, as in the past, on their projected enrollments. In other words, districts with growing enrollments will no longer be guaranteed an increase in per pupil funds to cover the costs of educating the additional students.

“Any additional funds will have to be negotiated as part of the legislature’s more general budgetary process later in the year.

“Local and state school finance officers describe this change, seemingly quite technical in nature, as the most fundamental, even “drastic,” change in school finance in North Carolina in nearly a century. It constitutes a direct attack on the state’s ability to carry out its constitutional obligation to provide a sound basic education to all children in the state.

“Here’s how the system has worked since 1933. Every February or March the Department of Public Instruction notifies local districts what their per pupil allotments will be for the coming school year. The calculation is based on the prior year’s statewide per pupil funding levels or a range of expenditures, from teachers to textbooks, multiplied by the number of students projected for the district for the following year. Districts then use this figure as they construct their budgets and make plans for hiring teachers and other spending decisions.

“Now that the legislature has struck down this system, districts with growing enrollments will no longer be guaranteed a proportionate increase in funding to cover their additional students.

“The legislature will still have the option, through its budgetary process, to provide additional funding, but it will have no obligation to do so. Funding to cover growing enrollments will have to be negotiated and compete with other state priorities.

“The practical implications of policy change are huge for two reasons. First, it undercuts the basic pupil-based structure for distributing state funds to local districts that has served the state well for many decades. Second, it undermines the ability of district officials to do responsible financial planning. Whereas districts normally hire teachers for the coming year in the spring, they will now have to wait until the legislature gets around to adopting a new budget, which this year was August, before they can make firm commitments.

“Perhaps the most far-reaching aspect of the new policy is that it undermines the state’s constitutionally mandated commitment to provide sound basic education to all young people in North Carolina. While politicians in the past have debated about what constitutes adequate per pupil funding, now, for the first time, they will also be debating whether to appropriate any additional funding simply to cover the costs of additional students. Such funding will now be a matter of political give and take.

“The new policy will clearly have the most obvious effect on districts with growing student populations. Although a majority of North Carolina school districts, especially those in rural areas, are currently experiencing population declines, the overall number of students in the state continues to increase, and six of the eight largest districts are dealing with a growing number of students. Wake County schools are projected to see an increase of more than 8,000 students over the next three years, while Charlotte-Mecklenburg is facing growth of more than 9,000 during the same period. Even districts with declining school populations will be hurt because available state funds will have to be spread among a larger total student population….

“So why would Republican leaders adopt a policy that weakens the state’s ability to provide quality education for all students and makes it more difficult for district officials to engage in responsible planning? Perhaps one answer is that, since the large tax cuts Republicans implemented last year have reduced the revenue available for major state expenditure items such as education, they are now scrambling to find new ways of reducing support for education without seeming to be doing so. A related answer lies in the overall thrust of their education policies.

“Since taking power in 2012 Gov. Pat McCrory and the Republican leaders have enacted a series of efforts aimed at weakening the state’s commitment to public education. They have, among other things, reduced the number of classroom teachers, teacher assistants, assistant principals, guidance counselors and nurses in North Carolina schools They have cut funding for textbooks and other learning materials and eviscerated teacher professional development – all the while giving favored treatment to charters and adopting a voucher program that diverts funds from public schools and puts them in the hands of religious and other private schools immune from public accountability…..

“The sleight of hand continues.”

Helen F. Ladd is professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Edward B. Fiske, formerly Education Editor of The New York Times, edits the Fiske Guide to Colleges.

Read more here:

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, North Carolina, Republicans

Republicans Champion the Charter School Movement

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2014 //
46

Rick Cohen of the Nonprofit Quarterly traces a clear pattern: The Republican party has embraced charter schools as their cause.

Republicans have always favored school choice, assuming that competition makes all schools better.

But they have never been able to persuade any electorate to endorse vouchers for private and religious schools.

So, charters are now the darlings of Republican donors and candidates.

The fact that charters have failed to demonstrate consistently superior academic performance doesn’t bother the Republicans, nor does the number of failed charters, nor are they dissuaded by the charters that have been caught up in financial scandals.

Nor do they care that the expansion of charters drains money from the public schools.

Nor are they troubled that many charters cherrypick their students and exclude students with disabilities and English learners.

Follow the money.

Cohen writes:

In politics, you have to follow the money. The editorial board of the San Antonio Express-News found it almost laughable to imagine that what it counted as more than $800,000 in campaign contributions from “charter school interests” between 2006 and 2013 didn’t play a role in convincing the Texas legislature to lift the state’s cap on charter schools. The Express-News is referring to the findings of a report from Texans for Public Justice that indicated people affiliated with the state’s top six charter school chains doubled their political contributions in recent years, comparing 2006 and 2008 to 2010 and 2012.
The bulk of the charter school contributions were linked to KIPP, particularly in the Houston area, where Doug Foshee, the former CEO of the El Paso Corporation natural gas producer, sits on the KIPP board and is treasurer for the conservative-leaning Texans for Education Reform. The biggest recipients were gubernatorial candidates Bill White, a Democrat, and the eventual winner, Rick Perry, a Republican, in 2010. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo may have scored a $10,000 campaign donation from the state’s largest teachers’ union in the past few months, but charter school advocates have given the governor much more, including $40,000 from Bruce Kovner, a billionaire among the 100 richest people in the U.S. who is a well known financial backer of Brighter Choice Charter Schools in Albany; $25,000 from StudentsFirst NY, the New York State affiliate of Michelle Rhee’s pro-charter political arm; and $14,000 from the pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform. Cuomo says he can’t be bought by campaign contributions, but like the editorial editors at the San Antonio News Express, most people would find the notion that campaign money doesn’t affect political positions as ludicrous.
Republican politicians like Rick Perry might get some money from charter school supporters, but given the large Republican soft money edge across the nation, donations from supporters of KIPP or IDEA are kind of inconsequential. In fact, strong charter school and privatization supporters like Eli and Edith Broad and John and Laura Arnold are major donors to Democratic politicians, although it is possible that those campaign contributions make the Democrats a little more charter-friendly. But around charter schools, campaign financing follows a bipartisan mold. The Arnolds’ foundation, for example, has put substantial funding into promoting charter schools in Houston and Louisiana. (The latter is where conservative Republican governor Bobby Jindal is closely allied with the expansion of charter schools and publicly funded vouchers for students to attend private schools.) Republican supporters of charter schools have also been somewhat bipartisan; the American Federation for Children, funded by Republican donor Betsy DeVos, for example, made more than one-third of its political donations to Democrats. Similarly, Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst Tennessee poured dollars into both to Republican and Democratic campaign coffers trying to win favor for charter schools and school choice.
The fact that President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan support charters allow Republicans to appear bipartisan even as they embrace a strategy that undermines and weakens public schools:
This new charter school strategy by multiple Republican gubernatorial candidates isn’t just serendipitous. It is a conscious strategy—kinder, gentler, and kid-focused— for a Republican Party that generally has not supported the strengthening of public schools. Perhaps charter schools in Texas and elsewhere feel that they are not in a position to deny politicians like Abbott the opportunity to shoot TV ads in their facilities, especially if today’s denied politician turns out to be tomorrow’s governor. It might be a little bit awkward for charter schools, many of them managed by nonprofits like KIPP, to find themselves positioned by Abbott, Walker, and others as avatars for reduced public sector support of public school systems. Maybe some, however, are not all that discomfited by their use as props in Republican campaigns.
In a National School Choice Week editorial, Georgia Governor Deal lauded both private schools and charter schools as the means for parents “to ensure their child is getting an excellent education to compete in today’s world.” He made his position on charter schools clear. “These schools are given greater flexibility in return for strong accountability for student academic success,” Deal wrote. “By observing high-performing charter schools throughout Georgia, it’s clear these institutions promote competition, innovation and creativity while encouraging strong parental involvement.” He offered not a scintilla of analysis about how to make the public schools of Georgia, beyond the 310 charters already operating, also attractive choices for parents.
Deal didn’t acknowledge how the $1.51 million given to the Georgia Charter Schools Association in the past few years by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus’s foundation and the $3.99 million given to the Association by the Walton Family Foundation, much of it devoted to building charter school capacity, boosts the attractiveness of that choice over traditional public schools, whose staff are often scrounging for basic supplies and services. He didn’t mention the past several years of grants to KIPP in Georgia, including at least $21.825 million in foundation grants to the KIPP Metro Atlanta Collaborative ($2.653 million from the Marcus Foundation, $9.456 million from the Community Foundation in Atlanta, and several large seven-figure grants and PRIs from various foundations for the construction of the KIPP Strive primary school), over $2 million for the KIPP West Atlanta Young Scholars Academy, and funds specifically targeted for KIPP Strive Academy and KIPP South Fulton Academy. These and other grants hint at the private capital that Deal’s Democratic opponent Thurbert Baker pointed to in his explanation that charter schools’ complaints about facilities funding, not to mention operations, might be a little unwarranted.
The Foundation Directory Online lists over 960 grants in the past several years in support of specific charter schools or charter school networks in Texas, more than half of them between 2008 and 2011. KIPP Academy pulled in 208 of those grants, eight of them in the seven-figure range, with major support from a couple of community foundations as well as the Houston Endowment, the M.D. Anderson Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and the Brown Foundation—plus over $40,000,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. YES Prep Southeast received 106 foundation grants or loans, including seven larger than $1 million. KIPP Aspire Academy got 40 grants, KIPP Truth Academy 35. The Laura and John Arnold Foundation made only a handful of grants, but one was for over $6 million in 2011 to the YES Prep Public Schools. Traditional public schools, which serve the bulk of students in Texas and elsewhere, can only dream about and salivate at these sources of private contributions.
Why do Republicans detest public schools? That is hard to say. It used to be that Republican businessmen served proudly on local and state school boards. Now they flock to privately managed charters, without any concern for the community public schools that serve their town or city.
Some think it is because charters are overwhelmingly non-union. But Republicans support charters just as enthusiastically in states where unions are prohibited.
Bottom line is that Republicans as well as leading Democrats are unconcerned about creating a dual school system: one sector that can pick its students and kick out the ones it doesn’t want, and the other sector that must take all students.
Some people thought that the Brown decision of 1954 foretold the end of dual publicly-funded school systems in the United States. Not so. Now we will have one sector for the strivers, another for the undesirables rejected by the charters.
Why do Democrats support the school choice movement, which was once seen as a signature policy of the far-right? That’s even more puzzling than why Republicans are ready to abandon our nation’s public schools.
Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Republicans
Newer Entries »