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My Message to the Teachers of Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2018 //
6

The United Teachers of Los Angeles have voted to authorize a strike. The union has been negotiating with Superintendent Austin Beutner, a former investment banker who has no experience in education.

I sent the following message to the teachers of Los Angeles.

I am writing to my friends who teach in the Los Angeles Unified School District to encourage you to stay strong in your demands for smaller classes and the resources your students need.

Your working conditions are your students’ learning conditions.

You should not be expected to pay out $1,000 or more from your salary for school supplies.

I am astonished that one of the cities with the greatest concentration of wealth in the world is unwilling to pay what it costs to educate its children.

John Dewey wrote more than a century ago: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his children, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

The billionaires who have declared war on public education and who are funding the California Charter School Association would not tolerate overcrowded classrooms, obsolete textbooks, and crumbling buildings in the schools their children attend. They should not tolerate such conditions in the public schools of Los Angeles that other people’s children attend, people without their wealth.

They want the best for their children, and they should demand the best for all children, and pay for it.

Please fight against “school choice,” an idea that was first launched by segregationists in the South to block the Brown decision in the late 1950s. It is now the favorite cause of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who wants to replace our nation’s democratically-controlled public schools with a menu of “choices,” none of which are as good as public schools.

In California, as elsewhere, charter advocates oppose accountability and transparency. Furthermore, charters have been characterized by scandals and fraudulent financial practices, a result of their lack of oversight and accountability.

Charter schools should be subject to the same laws, rules, and regulations as public schools if they want to give themselves the name of “public schools.”

Your superintendent Austin Beutner came to the job thanks to a takeover bankrolled by the charter lobby. He has never been an educator, and you will have to help him understand the importance of teacher professionalism, of reducing class sizes, and of public education in a democratic society. He just doesn’t get it.

Public schools are, have been, and will continue to be the foundation stone of our democratic society. If we lose it, we put our democracy at risk.

Fight for your students. Fight for public education. Fight for the teaching profession. Fight for a better future for the children and for our society.

Your friends across the nation are watching and will cheer you on!

Diane Ravitch

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Class size, Los Angeles, Resistance, Teachers, Unions

Jeff Bryant: Will the Teachers of Arizona Beat the Koch Brothers’ Effort to Pass Vouchers for All?

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2018 //
22

Jeff Bryant describes the brave teachers who decided to fight the Koch brothers’ plan to introduce universal vouchers in Arizona.

The rightwing strategy has been to take a bite, then another bite, than another bite, until every student is eligible for a voucher.

The teachers fought to get a referendum on the ballot on November 6. The Koch brothers sent their legal team to defeat the referendum and keep it off the ballot.

The teachers fought for a referendum called #InvestinED, to create a dedicated funding source for public schools. That referendum was knocked off the ballot for narrow technical reasons.

The schools in Arizona are underfunded. The vast majority of students attend public schools. The Koch brothers believe that no one should pay taxes, especially not billionaires like them.

VOTE NO ON PROP 305 to defeat vouchers.

Categories Arizona, Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Vouchers

The Progressive: Will the “Save Our Schools” Movement Determine the Election Results?

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2018 //
41

Ruth Conniff, editor of “The Progressive,” suggests that the Save Our Schools Movement could be the determining factor in the midterm elections.

She writes:

The “education spring” protests, in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina, won increases in teacher pay and education budgets, launched hundreds of teachers into campaigns for political office, and showed massive support for public schools this year. In Wisconsin and other states, education is a key issue in the 2018 governor’s race. Public opinion has turned against budget cuts, school vouchers, and the whole “test and punish” regime.

“The corporate education reform movement is dying,” Diane Ravitch, the Network’s founder declared. “We are the resistance, and we are winning!”

As the Save Our Schools movement swept the nation this year, blaming “bad teachers” for struggling schools also appears to have gone out of style.

A Time Magazine cover story on teachers who are underpaid, overworked, and have to donate their plasma to pay the bills painted a sympathetic portrait.

“As states tightened the reins on teacher benefits, many also enacted new benchmarks for student achievement, with corresponding standardized tests, curricula changes and evaluations of teacher performance,” Time reported. “The loss of control over their classrooms combined with the direct hit to their pocketbooks was too much for many teachers to bear.”

That’s a very different message from Time’s December 2008 cover featuring Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, standing in a classroom and holding a broom: “her battle against bad teachers has earned her admirers and enemies—and could transform public education,” Time declared.

The idea that bad teachers were ruining schools, and that their pay, benefits, and job security should be reduced or revoked, spread across the country over the last decade. Doing away with teachers’ collective bargaining rights propelled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to political prominence in 2011. In October 2014, Time’s “Rotten Apples,” cover declared “It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Some tech millionaires have found a way to change that.”

But today, demoralized teachers, overtested students, and the lack of improvement from these draconian policies have pushed public opinion in the opposite direction.

Charter schools, it turns out, perform no better than regular public schools. School-voucher schemes that drain money from public education to cover private-school students tuition yield even worse results—and are unpopular with voters. And testing kids a lot has not made them any smarter.

The bold walkouts and strikes of teachers and the determined resistance of parents and students are making a difference.

The public is getting “woke.”

Billionaires have poured many millions into demonizing teachers, attacking their rights, and privatizing public schools, but they have spent not a penny to increase the funding of our nation’s public schools, not even in the most distressed districts. All they have to offer are tests, charter schools, and vouchers.

It’s a hoax, intended to cut taxes, not to help children or to improve education.

We are no longer fooled.

Categories Charter Schools, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Students, Supporting public schools, Teachers

Jan Resseger: The Power of Grassroots Organizing, Part 2

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2018 //
1

Jan Resseger writes here about the grassroots organizers she met at the Network for Public Education conference in Indianapolis. Her first report appeared yesterday.

This is part of her report:

One of the highlights at NPE’s Conference were presentations on excellent community organizing that is finally making a difference. Yesterday’s post and today’s describe two very different and encouraging initiatives.

What if parents, teachers and community united across an entire state to insist that the state fund its schools adequately? Well, advocates in Wisconsin are doing just that. As a bit of context, remember that Wisconsin has the nation’s oldest and one of the largest voucher programs and that the Bradley Foundation, located in Wisconsin, has historically been among the most lavish funders of the school privatization movement that drains tax dollars out of the public education budget.

Today, however, the Wisconsin Public Education Network has been mobilizing citizens and pulling together a mass of local parent and advocacy groups around a unified, pro-public school agenda across Wisconsin. Executive Director Heather DuBois Bourenane explains: “The Wisconsin Education Coalition is the hub for education advocacy in Wisconsin. We are a project of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit. Our work is supported by voluntary contributions of our partners around the state… Our partners don’t always agree on every issue or policy, but our common ground is always rooted in our deep commitment to the success of every student in every school.” The organization’s website displays a map of the Coalition’s partner organizations—at least 39 of them across Wisconsin.

Launched last summer at the Wisconsin Public Education Network’s 4th Annual Summer Summit, the #VotePublic Campaign has invited, “all supporters of public schools to make public education a focus of all elections—local, state and national. Knowing where candidates stand on issues impacting our public schools is essential to electing strong supporters of our students. #VotePublic is also a challenge to hold our elected officials accountable for making votes that benefit our students and public schools once elected.”

The #VotePublic platform demands fixing the school funding formula “to prioritize student needs over property values”; working for funding fairness; restoring funding including the state’s obligation to meet mandated costs for special education; raising standards for licensure of educators and providing hiring incentives; making private and privately-operated schools receiving tax dollars fully accountable; and forcing the state to pledge not to expand the state’s already large private school tuition voucher program.

In Wisconsin, advocates have set out to reframe the political conversation. Besides spreading thousands of yard signs and postcards across Wisconsin announcing the campaign’s theme: “I Love My Public School & I Vote,” the coalition has packed its website with accessible information to educate the state’s supporters of public education. Posted there is toolkit with easily reproduced materials There are also facts and figures and copies of public speeches and legislative testimony from the organization’s leaders.

And there are explanations and graphs including one that is particularly applicable for the Wisconsin gubernatorial election in two weeks. Governor Scott Walker has been trying to brand himself “the education governor” because the legislature raised school funding this year—a budget he signed. But the urgency of the need for more funding this year also reflects on his leadership, “In 2011-12, lawmakers reduced district budget limits by 5.5%, which resulted in an average decrease of $529 per student to districts’ budgets.” Even this year’s budget increase won’t bring the state back up to its educational expenditure level before Walker’s cuts. The 2011 spending reduction was unprecedented, as was another Scott Walker priority—Act 10—the 2011 law to destroy public sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin.

Categories Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Resistance, Wisconsin

Jan Resseger: The Power of Grassroots Mobilization, Part 1

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2018 //
2

Jan Resseger attended the annual conference of the Network for Public Educatuon and was impressed by the panels featuring grassroots organizations.

Here is part of her excellent report:

One of the highlights of the Conference were presentations on excellent community organizing that is finally making a difference. Today’s post and tomorrow’s will describe two very different and encouraging initiatives.

What if city parents were supported in ignoring the glitzy brochures, radio ads, and even incentive gifts encouraging them to escape public schools and experiment with charter schools? What if, instead. parents were encouraged and supported to demand public schools designed to meet the needs of their families and children? I found hope this past weekend in a workshop where the Journey4Justice Alliance (J4J) told the story of mobilizing Black and Brown parents to demand the kind of stable, quality public schools middle class children take for granted: no more experiments with state takeover, privatization, and school closure at the expense of their children. The #WeChoose Campaign is national—connecting and organizing parents across America’s big cities. For years, there has been a sense of confusion and despair as corporate reformers with big money swept in to seize governance and policy in big city school districts. Finally a moment of clarity and empowerment is being created.

At last weekend’s NPE Conference we listened as national organizers from the Journey4Justice Alliance and local leaders of their multi-city partners—Chicago’s Kenwood Oakland Community Organization; New York City’s Alliance for Quality Education and Coalition for Educational Justice; Camden Parents Union and Camden Student Union; Newark’s Parents Unified for Local School Education; Pittsburgh’s Education Rights Network and One Pennsylvania; and the Detroit L.I.F.E. Coalition—explained how their communities are proclaiming #We Choose Public Schools: “We choose educational equity in public schools, not the illusion of school choice.”

The Journey4Justice Alliance (J4J) launched its #WeChoose campaign in February, 2017 with plans in at least 25 cities for press events, policy forums, meetings with elected officials, and direct actions along with a coordinated social media campaign. Jitu Brown, executive director of J4J describes the campaign’s message which organized parents are proclaiming to policymakers: “There is no such thing as ‘school choice’ in Black and Brown communities in this country. We want the choice of a world class neighborhood school within safe walking distance of our homes. We want an end to school closings, turnarounds, phase-outs, and charter expansion. We have an evidence-based solution for America’s struggling, neglected schools.”

At NPE”s Conference, Brown presented a tight, pro-public education #We Choose agenda, developed from the bottom up through a series of over 30 local Town Hall meetings plus two national Town Halls which together reached over 200,000 people in cities across the country:

1. We choose a moratorium on school privatization. “The evidence is clear and aligns with the lived experience of parents, students, and community residents in America’s cities: school privatization has failed in improving the education outcomes for young people.”

2. We choose the creation of 10,000 sustainable Community Schools. “Schools that are successful… are grounded in 5 pillars: relevant rigorous and engaging curriculum; supports for quality teaching and not punitive standardized tests; appropriate wrap-around supports for every child; student-centered school climate; and transformative parent and community engagement…. These are the interventions we recommend for struggling, underserved schools….”

3. We choose the end of zero tolerance discipline policies. “We want an immediate end to zero tolerance policies expressed by out-of-control suspensions and expulsions and the over-policing of our schools. We want resources dedicated to the expansion of full restorative justice initiatives….”

4. We choose a national equity assessment to move toward erasing the effects of poverty. “America does everything but equity. Closes schools. Online charter schools. Zero tolerance policies to push out students. Creates a charter industry. Puts a positive media spin on mediocre corporate education interventions. Anything but equity. Equitable schools are spaces where inspiration happens.”

5. We choose to stop the attack on black teachers whose numbers have declined rapidly. “A study in 9 American cities, Boston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., all noted a decline in the number of black teachers. All of these cities curiously are places where school privatization has taken root.”

6. We choose to end state takeovers, appointed school boards and mayoral control. “We have a crisis in school governance. The overwhelming majority of state takeovers, mayoral control and appointed school boards exists in cities that serve primarily Black and Brown families… We need the elimination of these oppressive structures that ignore the voices of concerned constituents and grease the rails for politically connected charter and contract school operators.”

7. We choose to eliminate the over-reliance on standardized tests in public schools. “Multiple studies have confirmed that standardized tests are an excellent indicator of one’s zip code, not their aptitude.”

Categories Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Resistance

The First Session of NPE: “I Bring Hope!”

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2018 //
3

Here is the video of the first session of the just-concluded annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Indianapolis.

You will hear opening remarks by our executive director Carol Burris. She introduces Phyllis Bush, who gives a witty summary of what has happened to Indiana and how she and her friends built one of the nation’s first activist organizations to oppose destructive “reforms.”

Phyllis introduces me, and I describe my new book, which is about the slow but sure collapse of corporate reform. I bring hope.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Parent Groups, Privatization, Real Education, Research, Resistance

Cheshire, Connecticut: The Town That Beat Mark Zuckerberg

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2018 //
23

This is an amazing story of a town in Connecticut where parents looked at Mark Zuckerberg’s ideas about how to educate their children and said “Hell, no.”

We live in a strange era where a handful of billionaires have taken it upon themselves to transform education. Think Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. They decided, not based on their own experience but based on their inflated egos, that they alone know how to re-engineer the nation’s schools, the schools that enroll 50 million children.

The schools of Cheshire, Connecticut, are fine schools. The parents are happy with their public schools. But the schools’ administration decided to adopt the Summit Learning Program, putting students on Chromebooks for their lessons. Things went south, and eventually parents rebelled. At some point, they realized that “personalized learning” is actually “depersonalized learning.” Worse, they learned that their children’s personal data would no longer be private, and that the learning program was data mining their children.

And Mark Zuckerberg’s Summit Learning Program was kicked out of the schools of Cheshire, Connecticut.

Read the article to learn how it happened.

Last year, several classes in Cheshire, Connecticut’s elementary and middle schools switched to a new classroom model, where lessons were supposed to be tailored to every student. The kids and their parents were caught off-guard that first week of school. “We walked into math class,” recalled Lauren Peronace, now an eighth-grader, “and my math teacher said, ‘Everyone open up your Chromebooks. We’re going to go on a website — Summit.’”

Reactions were mixed. Most everyone in Cheshire, which is between New Haven and Hartford, is there for the public schools, which are among the area’s best. Some parents were skittish about the creep of more technology into the classroom, especially when they found out Facebook engineers had helped build the software and Mark Zuckerberg was spending millions promoting it. Others were at least cautiously optimistic. “My son initially thought it sounded cool,” said one parent, Theresa, who asked to have her last name withheld because of all the drama that followed. “The teachers told him, ‘You’re going to be on your own; you’ll be independent; you’re going to move at your own pace.”

The program had come with money for 130 Chromebooks, so every student could have one — courtesy of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Zuckerberg’s philanthropic LLC, and Summit’s other wealthy backers. But to hear the administrators explain it, the technology would be only one piece. The Summit Learning Program, which originated at a series of West Coast charter schools between 2012 and 2013, is conceived as a comprehensive program of “personalized learning” that promises to put students in charge of their own education. It’s now being used in some 380 districts and charter schools nationwide. Rather than having a teacher stand at the front of the room and talk, it emphasizes group projects, dialogue between students, and one-on-one time with teachers, guaranteeing at least a ten-minute “mentoring” session for each student every week. It also makes use of specialized software for regular lessons and assessments. Cheshire’s teachers had gone to training that summer in Providence, Rhode Island, at an event also funded by Summit.

But the implementation over the next few months collapsed into a suburban disaster, playing out in school-board meetings and, of course, on Facebook. The kids who hated the new program hated it, to the point of having breakdowns, while their parents became convinced Silicon Valley was trying to take over their classrooms. They worried Summit was sharing their kids’ data (it is, with 19 companies at present, including Amazon and Microsoft, according to its website), or, worse, selling it. It isn’t, but given that the guy who’d helped buy them all laptops had created a $500 billion company out of vacuuming up data and creating economic value from it, it seemed reasonable to have suspicions that the learning platform backed by CZI might also be data-hungry. Concern turned into exasperation when bizarre and sometimes inappropriate images appeared on their kids’ screens on third-party websites used as reading assignments: a pot plant, a lubricant ad, and then the coup de grâce, an ancient Roman statue of a man having sex with a goose.

Ultimately the superintendent halted the program, making Cheshire the only one out of hundreds to do so. To the program’s supporters, this makes it a fluke, the only one that never got past the learning curve. To detractors, the Cheshire parents are among the most articulate voices on Summit’s perils, the model of successful resistance.

Categories Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Connecticut, Innovation, Resistance, Technology

Election 2018: This is a House Seat that Democrats Must Flip

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2018 //
9

Tony Delgado is a wonderful candidate who is running in upstate New York against a Republican incumbent.

He is excellent on education issues.

I just sent him a contribution.

I hope you will too.

Our regular reader John Ogozalek went to a town hall and questioned Tony Delgado, and came away convinced that he really understands the issues that matter.

Tony’s opponent is a Trumpista.

Categories Politics, Resistance

Milwaukee: Vote for Bob Peterson for School Board!

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2018 //
2

Milwaukee has been a target for the privatization movement for years. First, the legislature imposed vouchers, without bothering to ask for a vote by the local population. Then it imposed charter schools. Meanwhile, as funds flowed out of the public schools, student performance stagnated in all three sectors. All the miracles of “choice” turned out to be “mirages,” not “miracles.” Today, nearly 30 years after the arrival of choice, the public sector is competing with the other two sectors, and there has been no benefit to students. In fact, Milwaukee is one of the lowest performing districts in the nation on the NAEP tests. No boats were lifted.

In a few weeks, the people of Milwaukee will have the chance to elect a leader of the Resistance to the city school board: Bob Peterson.

Bob taught fifth grade for nearly 30 years in the Milwaukee public schools. He is a past president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.

There is no one running for the school board in Milwaukee who is as well-informed, as principled, and as dedicated as Bob Peterson.

To learn more, please check out his Facebook page, if you are a member of FB.

I enthusiastically endorse his candidacy and urge you to vote for him.

Categories Milwaukee, Resistance

North Carolina: An Educator Challenges the Most Powerful Man in the State

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2018 //
6

Jen Mangrum, career educator, is running against Phil Berger, North Carolina’s Senate President Pro Tem.

As teacher Justin Parmenter explains here, this is truly a battle of David vs. Goliath. Berger is the most powerful politician in the state.

Berger tried and failed to get Jen kicked off the ballot. She persisted.

Justin says if Jen can upset Berger, it would change the political landscape of the entire state.

Jen is a teacher and a professor of education at UNC-Greensboro.

She took up this challenge knowing that the odds were long, but somebody had to challenge the bully.

Jen was endorsed by the Network for Public Education Action Fund. Here is her website.

In the most recent short session, proponents of public education were eagerly waiting for the General Assembly to take up a proposed $1.9 billion school bond for inclusion on the November general election ballot. The bond would have helped address $8.1 billion in statewide capital needs identified by the Department of Public Instruction in 2015-16. It enjoyed bipartisan rank and file support and sponsorship by chairs of education committees in both the House and the Senate. Again, Phil Berger would not allow the legislation to move forward. It’s incredibly frustrating that one individual who doesn’t share the values most of us have can prevent much-needed progress, but Jen reminded me that voters ultimately decide whether he keeps that power or not.

In terms of her own vision for education in North Carolina, Jen supports paying teachers fairly to demonstrate that we value public education in our state. She would like to see masters pay reinstated as well as the full Teaching Fellows Program which was eliminated by the General Assembly in 2011. She would like to see a reduction in the testing volume which is currently not developmentally appropriate and narrows the curriculum, leaving less time and attention to the arts, the sciences, and social studies in the elementary grades. She supports moves toward determining the success of our schools using multiple measures, trusting teachers as professionals and giving them the creative freedom that they need to do their jobs. Jen wants to see North Carolina known nationally for its birth to pre-K, k-12, and higher education continuum and believes that electing pro-education legislators is the key to seeing that transformation come true.

Call your friends and neighbors if you live in Berger’s district. To save public education and restore it, get to work to elect Jen Mangrum.

If every teacher, every teacher’s spouse, and every parent with a child in public school got out to vote, Berger would be heading for retirement.

Jen is in it to win it.

Categories North Carolina, Resistance
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