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A Test: Who Is Goliath? Who Is David?

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2018 //
34

I recently had an email exchange with Mike Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. I’ve known Mike for many years, since he was a young raspcallion at TBF and I was a founding member of the board of directors.

Mike and I disagree about choice, high-stakes testing, Common Core, and other canonical features of the Reformer agenda. In a post, I referred to my side (the side supporting public schools) as David, and his side (the long list of billionaires) as Goliath. Mike said it was the other way around, because “my side” includes the unions, administrators, elected school boards, and anyone else with direct involvement in schools. Bill Bennett used to call these groups who were devoted to public education “The Blob.”

Of course, I pointed out to Mike that the Waltons now have a net worth of $160 billion or more, then there is a long list of other multibillionaires (Gates, Hastings, the Koch brothers, Bloomberg, Anschutz, DeVos, Arnold, Broad, etc.). I forgot to mention the U.S. Department of Education, which has been funding charters with billions of dollars since 1994.

I probably didn’t convince him.

But I have the clincher.

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving is called #GivingTuesday. The Network for Public Education started the day on Twitter urging friends and allies to go to a website (#Benevity) that offered $10 for every retweet to the charity of your choice. We urged our friends to tweet to provide gifts of $10.

On #GivingTuesday, I didn’t see a single Reformer group putting out requests for $10. Not one. Not TFA. Not Educators4Excellence. Not Stand for Children. Certainly not the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is sitting on tens of millions of dollars and gets huge grants from a long list of foundations.

No, they get gifts of hundreds of thousands and millions from foundations like Walton, Gates, Arnold, Broad, and about 50 other foundations who like to do whatever the big boys and girls do.

Ahem. We proudly claim the title of David to your Goliath. We know how that turned out.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Resistance

New Orleans: The Last Public School Closes, Despite Objections of Parents and Students and Alumni

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2018 //
13

The Orleans Parish School Board closed the last public school in New Orleans, in a meeting room filled with protesting parents, students and alumni of McDonough 35. New Orleans is now the first city in the United States without a public school. The board disregarded the protesters.

Why do parents and students fight for schools that have been labeled “failing” by authorities? To find out, read Eve Ewing’s book “Ghosts in the Schoolyard,” about Rahm Emanuel’s brutal closure of 50 public schools in a single day. There too, parents, students, and teachers were disregarded. They were fighting for values that Reformers don’t understand: tradition, community, history, relations between families and schools, a spirit of connectedness that binds past to present. These are values that Reformers are determined to stamp out.

New Orleans is the Crown Jewel of “Reform,” even though 40 percent of its charter schools have been labeled either D or F by the state, and every one of these schools is segregated. On the much treasured measure of test scores, New Orleans ranks below the state average, in a state that is one of the lowest performing in the nation (and whose ranking on NAEP dropped in 2017). For more than a decade, Louisiana has been controlled by Reformers. Its leader currently is John White. The only jurisdiction in the nation that has worse test scores than Louisiana is Puerto Rico. And New Orleans is below the state average. What a triumph for Reform (not)!

Here is the story of another Reform takeover:

The Orleans Parish School Board has chosen InspireNOLA Charter Schools as the future operator of McDonogh 35 Senior High School, positioning New Orleans to be the nation’s first major city with an all-charter school district.

At the board’s November meeting Thursday, Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. recommended and received approval for InspireNOLA’s application to start a new high school starting in August 2019. It was unclear last month if the operator’s application was designed for McDonogh 35, but on Thursday (Dec. 20) the new school was added to the OneApp school selection system as McDonogh 35 College Preparatory High School.

The school board’s charter agreement with InspireNOLA requires the school to keep its name, school colors and mascot, the Roneagle.

McDonogh 35 was founded in 1917 as the first public high school in Louisiana for black children. Although the former magnet school was once considered a “School of Academic Achievement” by the Louisiana Department of Education, its academic ranking has declined since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The “D”-rated school now teaches 451 students in the St. Bernard area, according to state data.

The Orleans Parish School Board is trying to revive struggling schools such as McDonogh 35 by either closing them or turning their operations over to charters. The school district currently manages McDonogh 35 directly, but the board voted Thursday night to award a “short-term operator” contract to InspireNOLA to teach the school’s remaining 10th, 11th and 12th graders starting in August 2019.

A copy of the new contract wasn’t immediately available Thursday, but the district’s plan is to have InspireNOLA phase out the direct-run school until all current students have either graduated or transferred elsewhere within the next two school years.

The short-term contract, district sources say, essentially creates two schools on the McDonogh 35 campus: one for current students and a new school for freshmen who enroll in August. This implies McDonogh 35 will receive two individual school performance scores from the Louisiana Department of Education when its 2019 freshmen are graded in November 2020…

More than 100 parents, students and advocates weighed in on the district’s actions for more than two hours during the public comment period at Thursday’s meeting. Dozens of attendees had to stand.

A representative from New Schools for New Orleans, an InspireNOLA administrator, and an Edna Karr High sophomore were among the handful of residents who struggled to speak in favor of InspireNOLA as opponents shouted over them. Those who were against chartering every school in the city included state Rep. Joseph Bouie, D-New Orleans, McDonogh 35 alumni and dozens of education advocates from Louisiana and out of state…

Gertrude Ivory, president of McDonogh 35’s alumni group, told the school board its “experiment” with charters is “failing” the city’s families. McDonogh 35 alumna Yvette Alexis said the school’s performance scores have dropped because the district “pulled resources” and “didn’t fill vacancies.” Alexis’s claims came after district employees told board members Tuesday the school is projected to have a $145,000 deficit in fiscal year 2019.

Tomme Denney, a McDonogh 35 senior and student ambassador, asked the school board to continue running his school. He has witnessed “a vast amount of growth” among students in this year alone, he said.

“Stop the decline of the school, which has been used to justify giving the school a private operator,” Denney said.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, New Orleans, Privatization, Resistance

Bill Raden from Los Angeles: Buckle Your Seat Belts, Strike Ahead!

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2018 //
3

Bill Raden, education writer for Capital & Main in California, writes about the looming teachers’ strike in Los Angeles.

Fasten your seatbelts Los Angeles, it’s going to be a bumpy strike. That was the subtext to a tumultuous week that saw over 50,000 L.A. teachers, students and families take to the streets Saturday to support a union faced with budgetary saber-rattling by Los Angeles Unified, and that climaxed on Wednesday with United Teachers Los Angeles president Alex Caputo-Pearl setting a January 10 walkout date — unless Los Angeles Unified negotiators meet key union demands for investments in the district’s highest-poverty students.

Caputo-Pearl’s announcement came a day after L.A. Unified superintendent Austin Beutner erroneously claimed that the union had accepted the district’s six percent pay raise offer, as recommended in Tuesday’s report by state-appointed fact-finders who also urged LAUSD to kick in the modest equivalent of a one to three percent salary increase for new hires to reduce class sizes, and for both sides to work together to lobby Sacramento for more state funding.

Fact-finding panel chairman David A. Weinberg mostly punted on 19 of 21 unresolved equity demands that form the heart of what UTLA has framed as a fight to save L.A.’s “civic institution of public education.” The union won some minor points, like the allowing of teacher input on charter co-locations, and on scrapping a district privilege to unilaterally lift class size caps during fiscal crunches. But by accepting at face value LAUSD’s latest claims of imminent bankruptcy, Weinberg left unanswered a critical question: How could LAUSD annually project catastrophic, three-year deficits and still have its unrestricted cash reserves balloon from $500 million to nearly $2 billion during the same five-year period?

“We have watched underfunding and actions of privatizers undermine our students and our schools for too long. No more,” Caputo-Pearl warned on Wednesday.

Categories Accountability, Class size, Funding, Los Angeles, Resistance, Teachers, Union

A Progress Report from the Network for Public Education

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2018 //
4

Please read this year-end report from the Network for Public Education. You will learn about an important addition to our staff and plans for the future.

2018 was a great year for Public Education, despite the fact that the U.S. Secretary of Education—for the first time in history—is a foe of public schools and a religious zealot.

Teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina heroically stood together and demanded fair funding for their schools and their students. They said “Enough is enough!” They changed the national narrative, restoring to public view the fact that 85-90% of American students attend public schools, not charter or religious schools. Most of our public schools are underfunded, and most of our teachers are underpaid. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 29 states were spending less in 2018 than they spent in 2008. “Choice” is NOT a substitute for funding. Choice takes money away from schools that are already underfunded and diverts it to privately managed schools that are unregulated and unaccountable.

In state after state, teachers and parents led the blue wave that elected new governors, broke Republican supermajorities, and flipped the House of Representatives.

In one of the biggest electoral victories for education of 2018, parents and teachers in Arizona beat the Koch brothers and squashed a vast expansion of vouchers. Another was the ouster of Scott Walker in Wisconsin by Tony Evers; the sour grapes Republican legislature just rushed through legislation to strip powers from the new governor, in a blatant rebuff of the voters’ choice.

In California, Tony Thurmond beat Marshall Tuck for State Superintendent of Instruction, even though the charter billionaires gave Tuck twice as much money as Thurmond, saturating airwaves across the state. Duncan, of course, endorsed Tuck. The charter billionaires placed their money on the wrong horse in the governor’s race, betting on former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who came in third.

Friends, everyone senses it. Despite their vast resources, the privatizers are losing. They know it. Some say “Don’t call me a Reformer.” Others, like Arne Duncan, insist loudly that “Reform is not dead,” a sure sign that he knows it’s dying. All they can do now is lash out, double down, and destroy whatever has escaped their grasp.

It’s not about the kids. It never was. It’s about their egos and/or their bank accounts.

We now know that “Reform” means Privatization, and maybe it’s time to call them what they are: Privatizers.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Joy, Justice, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Resistance

California: Teachers in Los Angeles and Oakland Preparing for Confrontation

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2018 //
9

Bill Raden of Capital & Main reports on potential strike developments in Los Angeles and Oakland.

Two California teachers unions, which are currently deadlocked in separate contract talks with their respective school districts, are on the verge of launching the West Coast’s biggest teacher walkout since 1989. What happens next will decide far more than fair wages for career educators. At stake are broader principles of equity, expressed as contract demands for smaller class sizes and less testing, the addition of sufficient health and social services staff, and an investment in community schooling and fair funding — aimed at restoring public education as a public good for all Californians, rather than as a private interest granted to the lucky few…

Meanwhile, an estimated 90 Oakland Unified teachers skipped classes December 10 in a one-day wildcat sickout to protest some of the state’s lowest teacher pay — against a backdrop of California’s fast-rising living costs. But a more fundamental grievance is with the $60 million that Oakland Unified must cut over the next two years. It has led superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell to adopt a draconian district downsizing plan that could close up to 24 mostly low-income neighborhood public schools and coordinate the remainder of the 87-campus district with the city’s 34 charters on things like enrollment and transportation. The strategy has been likened to a “portfolio model,” the controversial template for privatized district governance that favors charter expansion at the expense of traditional public schools.

It also bears an uncanny resemblance to “Re-Imagine LAUSD,” the prematurely leaked but still mostly secret pet portfolio plan of L.A. Unified supe Austin Beutner — just one of the issues behind the takeover by 50 placard-carrying protesters at the L.A. school board meeting last Tuesday. Students, parents and teachers seized the floor and unfurled a banner of union-aligned demands: an end to random student searches; reductions in class sizes and testing; and the hiring of more health workers, community schools and per-pupil funding. For good measure, they also chanted down attempts by board president Mónica Garcia to restore order, a caterwaul that eventually drove Beutner and his board allies from the room…

If November’s blue wave means the tide has indeed turned against California’s market-driven ed reformers, grassroots activists aren’t resting on any laurels. That’s why they are circulating a petition launched by the Oakland Public Education Network (OPEN), asking Governor-elect Gavin Newsom to abide by four seemingly common sense hiring principles:

*No conflicts of business interests

*Education-related appointments must strictly mirror California’s 90/10 proportion of public-to-charter-school enrollments

*No more Betsy DeVoses guarding the regulatory henhouse (i.e., appoint only seasoned, public school-committed educators to the Advisory Commission on Charter Schools)

*Genuinely partner with the public schools community to uproot what OPEN considers the predatory incentives and equity barriers that it says are the legacy of California’s 25-year-long ed reform wrong turn.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Oakland, Privatization, Resistance, Teachers, Unions

Steven Singer: The Media Effort to Deflate the Teacher Revolt of Spring 2018

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2018 //
15

Steven Singer noticed a curious phenomenon: certain mainstream media outlets “The Atlantic” and “Education Week”) were intent on proving that the Teacher Revolt of Spring 2018 had fizzled out and that the cries of “We Will Remember in November” had fallen flat.

Since I’m writing a book that includes this topic, I noticed the same slant innlocal reporting: where were the teachers who ran for office? Why were so few elected?

What struck me was that teacher candidates ran as underfunded, unknown novices, often taking on experienced politicians. I was impressed that any of them won. The journalists seemed to think that if 2 or 3 won their races, that was a defeat. I didn’t see it that way. It was amazing that any was elected.

Steven lists a number of races where teachers’ votes made the difference. He could have added flipping the New Hampshire Legislature. Electing an educator, Kathy Hoffman, as State Superintendent in deep red Arizona, where she beat a former charter school operator. And the number of states where the anti-public school supermajority was broken (we are unlikely to hear much about vouchers in Texas for the next two years because of the blue wave in that state that broke the grip of righwingers in the legislator. The victory of Pro-public School Tony Thurmond over Charter School ally Marshall Tuck in the race for State Superintendent of Instruction in California, although Tuck’s campaign spent twice as much as Thurmond’s.

I wsxhoping that TIME would choose the Brave Teachers who fought for funding their schools as Person of the Year. But I was gratified to see that Time honored journalists who stood up for truth and facts.

A tough choice.

Thanks to Steven Singer for putting the victory of Brave Teachers in perspective.

Categories Accountability, Resistance, Teacher Pay, Teachers

Los Angeles: Our Public Schools Are Not for Sale!

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2018 //
4

This full-page ad appeared in the Los Angeles Times a few days ago. It was paid for by the United Teachers of Los Angeles.

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Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization, Resistance, Supporting public schools

How the Teacher Revolt Promoted the Blue Wave

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2018 //
8

In the immediate aftermath of the midterm elections, first reports asserted that the teachers’ revolt fizzled at the ballot box. So many teachers ran for the state legislature, they said, and only three or four or five won. But consider, the teachers who entered politics were novices, with no money, no experience, no name recognition. Congratulations to those who dared to enter the political arena! Don’t give up!

The Guardian has a very different take on the role of teachers in the recent election.

Midterms show educators have been swept into office in record numbers

A wave of pro-education energy, spurred by the April walkouts, led to election victories in Oklahoma, Arizona and Wisconsin

The Guardian writes:

A new wave of teachers’ strikes could soon hit US schools, with educators in Chicago and Los Angeles considering walkouts. And after the midterm elections, they will have stronger allies.

Across the country, in Arizona, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, teachers made huge gains in the midterm elections – a movement that grew out of the #RedforEd campaign that saw teachers protesting across the country to reverse years of conservative cuts to public education.

Last April, thousands of teachers across the state of Oklahoma went on strike; making increased funding for education and a seat at the table in education a priority. Now, educators have been swept in record numbers into office in Oklahoma. Earlier this month, 16 educators were elected to the Oklahoma state house; bringing the total number of educators in the state legislature to 25.

The wave of pro-education energy helped Kendra Horn become the first Democrat to be elected from Oklahoma’s fifth congressional district in 44 years and the first female Democratic representative to the House from Oklahoma.

Horn, 42, made education funding a central focus of her campaign and had many teachers going door-to-door on her behalf.

“We saw a greater involvement of teachers than ever before during this political process over the last six months when we moved from the walkout to the elections and teachers found their collective voice and they aren’t going anywhere,” said the Oklahoma Education Association vice-president, Katherine Bishop.

Carri Hicks, a fourth-grade teacher from Deer Valley in the suburbs of Oklahoma City, was one of those striking teachers elected to the state senate on 6 November; flipping a seat previously held by a Republican to the Democratic column.

Hicks said that she saw how the issue of education funding was able to win so many voters for the Democrats.

She said many voters had previously had trouble understanding the link between education cuts and the tax cuts the state gave to corporations and the oil and gas industry. That changed after the teachers’ strike.

“I feel like the walkout really brought those inequities to light and people were much more willing to have that conversation because they understood the magnitude,” said Hicks. “You know, finally, having a united front and coming together shed light on some dark places in our public education system and was powerful.”

In Arizona, where more than 70,000 teachers and their supporters marched on the state capitol in April, teachers made big gains at the ballot box; electing a former college educator, Kyrsten Sinema, as senator, defeating a ballot measure that would have expanded education vouchers in the state and making gains in the state legislature.

Teachers also helped elect 31-year-old school speech therapist Kathy Hoffman as Arizona state school superintendent, the first time in 25 years that a Democrat has held the office in Arizona.

Two years ago, after watching the Betsy DeVos confirmation as secretary of education, Hoffman, a member of the American Federation of Teachers, decided to run for Arizona schools superintendent. Hoffman used her network of teacher activists to defeat better-funded opponents, both Democratic and Republican.

Keep reading!

Categories Education Reform, Resistance, Teachers

Jeff Bryant: Voters Reject the Rightwing Push for School Privatization

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2018 //
13

Jeff Bryant reviews the victories for public education in the last elections.

The big victories were the overwhelming defeat of voucher legislation in Arizona and the Tony Thurmond’s election over the charter lobby’s candidate Marshall Tuck in the Califotnia race for state school superintendent, despite Tuck’s more than 2-1 funding advantage.

And there were many more victories, especially in governors’ races.

In gubernatorial races across the Midwest, Democrats ran and won with strong oppositional messages against school privatization.

In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer won a governor’s seat formerly occupied by Rick Snyder after campaigning to “end the [Betsy] DeVos agenda in Michigan,” close for-profit charter schools in the state, and propose additional oversights for charters.

In Minnesota, Democratic challenger for an open governor’s seat Tim Walz, a former public high school geography teacher and football coach, pledged to block any proposed voucher programs. He won decisively.

In Illinois, Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker defeated incumbent Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, while pledging to end the state’s education tax credit voucher program, which already diverts public tax dollars to pay for private school tuition for 5,600 students….

In what is perhaps the most startling of charter school turnarounds, midterm elections in New York took down a longstanding coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the state Senate who colluded with charter advocate Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo to expand these schools and keep them relatively regulation-free.

As New York City public school art teacher and citizen journalist Jake Jacobs reports for the Progressive, a faction of eight Democratic state senators calling themselves the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) had for years shared power and donors with Senate Republicans to work with Governor Cuomo in maintaining a “favored status” for charter schools in the state.

In September primaries, six grassroots-backed Democratic candidates ousted IDC members, and then, in turn, handily beat their Republican opponents in November. Despite being vastly outspent by the Republicans, the insurgent Democrats pressed their cases to stop charter schools from taking over space in public school buildings and to block attempts to lift the cap on the numbers of charters that can operate in the state. Most supported a moratorium on new charter schools proposed by the NAACP.

Because of victories by these insurgent Democrats, who will insist on more scrutiny of charter schools, Jacobs foresees “a new landscape” in the state legislature “where evidence and research matter more than Albany’s rampant ‘pay-for-play’ arrangements” that have given charters the upper hand.

Similarly, in red states where teacher rebellions have begun to turn the tables on the school privatization industry, public school advocates are seeing a transformed political landscape where resistance is not only possible but winnable.

After midterm elections in Arizona, “we will have the most balanced state legislature since the 1980s,” says Beth Lewis, “with roughly half of the legislators having declared full support for fully funded public schools.”

Categories Arizona, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, New York, Privatization, Resistance

Indianapolis: The Resistance Pushes Back Against Corporate Reformers

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2018 //
8

Indianapolis has been a major target for the privatization movement. A group called The Mind Trust, funded by billionaire foundations, has led the effort to destroy public education, while presenting its motives as benign and admirable.

The corporate reform attack on Indianapolis was described vividly in this post by Jim Scheurich and Gayle Crosby.

Tom Ultican wrote about the destructive role of The Mind Trust in Indianapolis, which claims to be allied with the Democratic Party.

Locals, lacking the resources of the privatizes, have fought to save their public schools.

Here is a report on the recent elections from Dountonia Batts, an active member of the Network for Public Education:

Sending a clear message that the community is fed up with corporate reform, voters in Indianapolis ousted two incumbents on the Indianapolis Public School (IPS) Board, replacing them with opponents of the district’s corporate reform agenda.

First-time candidates Taria Slack and Susan Collins were backed by the IPS Community Coalition (the Indianapolis AROS Chapter) and the local teachers union and ran against incumbents backed by Stand for Children and the Mind Trust, a corporate reform institute. Slack and Collins are vowing to pressure the IPS administration to improve transparency, genuine community collaboration and engagement, and hold the administration accountable.

Indianapolis schools have been under persistent attack by corporate reformers over the past decade, with increasing numbers of charters and public school closings. The district—under the tutelage of the Mind Trust—has also created so-called “Innovation Schools,” which are IPS schools that are handed over to a charter management organization. Innovation Schools have complete autonomy, a school board that is not elected by the public, and receive public funds. Additionally, this structure allows charters under the IPS umbrella to take advantage of district-provided services such as transportation and special education services at no cost. This victory is proof that ordinary citizens can defeat big money. People power trumps money power. IPS Community Coalition is organized, prepared, and ready to reclaim our schools

Sincerely,

Dountonia S. Batts, J.D., M.B.A., N.S.A.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Indianapolis, Privatization, Resistance
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