Archives for category: School Choice
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Peter Greene to Betsy DeVos: Schools Are Not Like Food Trucks

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2017 //
18

Betsy DeVos keeps searching for an analogy that will convert non-believers to her love of school choice.

Choosing a school is like choosing Uber. Or a cellphone. Or anything.

At her Harvard address, she compared schools to making a choice between a restaurant and a food truck. Do you think Billionaire Betsy buys lunch from a food truck? I will donate $300 to the campaign of Mark Weber’s (blogger-teacher Jersey Jazzman) wife, Linda, who is running for Congress in New Jersey, to the first person who can produce a photo of Betsy DeVos buying lunch from a food truck in front of the ED in D.C. Linda is trying to flip a Republican seat to Democratic. She will be a friend and ally to public education.

Peter Greene explains that schools are NOT food trucks.

“Note that DeVos continues to drift further and further away from any interest in accountability for quality– in this analogy we pick the choice that tastes good, and if it happens to be unhealthy or toxic or laced with fried dog meat, none of that matters. Taste is not a bad guide for matters of food, but with schools, what “tastes good” today is not necessarily what will best serve the student, the family, the community and the nation over the coming decades. “Tastes good this moment” and “provides a solid education for a lifetime” are two entirely different metrics

“Like every other commercial enterprise, the food trucks of DC are not geared to handle all customers. There are many reasons that comparing schools to businesses is a huge fail, but this is one of the hugest– there is no business sector in this country built on the idea of serving every single person in the country. Each food truck operates on the idea that some people will eat there and other people won’t, and as long as enough people eat there, the food truck is good. But if there are people who don’t eat at any of the food trucks, some people who don’t eat at all– well, that is not the food truck operators problem.

“And as a customer, you can’t get whatever you want– you can only get what the trucks are serving.

“The modern charter industry is a business model, and just like any other business model, it is built on serving some customers. Making sure that every student in America gets a good education is not the goal, the purpose or even the concern of the charter industry. But it has to be the concern of a public school system.

“Schools are not businesses. Students are not customers. And education is not a side of fries.”

Find another analogy, Betsy.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice

Key Appointment at U.S. Department of Education Goes to Swamp Dweller

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2017 //
25

Politico reports that a key position at the U.S. Department of Education will go to one of the nation’s most outspoken opponents of public schools, Jim Blew. Blew has long experience at the charter-loving, union-hating Walton Family Foundation and served as president of Michelle Rhee’s public school-bashing Students First. The position he is slated to assume is the policymaking arm of the department. It is supposed to be a nonpartisan, expert role, judging the efficacy of Department initiatives. It might as well be abolished because we already know that school choice, charters, vouchers, union-bashing, and inexperienced teachers will be the policies of this administration.

“TRUMP TO NOMINATE JIM BLEW FOR ED SPOT: Jim Blew, director of the education advocacy group Student Success California, is Trump’s pick to become the Education Department’s assistant secretary of the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. POLITICO reported he was the frontrunner in July. The administration announced late Thursday that the president plans to formally nominate him for the role. The announcement touted Blew’s experience as the former president of Students First, a national advocacy organization founded by former D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. It also said that for more than a decade, he was a key adviser to the Walton family, serving as director of K-12 reform investments for the Walton Family Foundation.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, School Choice, U.S. Department of Education, Unions, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Florida: New Study Finds That Schools are Rapidly Resegregating

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2017 //
9

A new study released by the Leroy Collins Institute and conducted by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA finds that Florida’s schools are resegregation at an alarming rate. Here is the study that is cited in the article.

Bear in mind that Florida is the utopia of school choice. Its policies for the past twenty years have been shaped by Jeb Bush, and Betsy DeVos thinks that Florida should be a model for the nation.

“Student enrollment trends in Florida over the past decades show growing racial isolation for Hispanic and black students on some measures, with signs of continuous segregation on others,” the study said.

Some 32 percent of Hispanic students and 35 percent of black students in Florida attend “intensely segregated” schools, defined as have a nonwhite student body of 90 percent or greater, according to the study.

One out of every five schools was intensely segregated in the 2014-2015 academic year, about double the 10.6 percent of the schools that fell into that category in 1994-1995.

The more heavily segregated schools had more poor students. In schools with at least a 50 percent nonwhite school body, low-income students represented 68 percent of the population. Low-income students represented 82.5 percent of the population in the schools with a 90 percent or greater nonwhite student body.

“Florida is the third-largest state in the country and has the most diverse student body in our state’s history, yet one-fifth of our public schools are intensely segregated,” said Carol Weissert, a Florida State University political scientist who leads the Collins Institute. “Similar segregation is evident for low-income students. All Floridians deserve equal access to a quality education, regardless of race or economic standing.”

As the students have become more diverse, the schools have become more segregated:

Since 1980, Hispanic students have increased from 8 percent of Florida students to about 31 percent in 2014, the report showed. White students declined from 68 percent to just under 41 percent, while black students remained about 22 percent during that period.

The study also showed that the number of students defined as low-income has been rising over the last two decades, increasing from 36 percent in 1994-1995 to nearly 59 percent in 2014-2015.

Calling the trend “double segregation,” the report showed typical black students were likely attending schools with 68 percent low-income students, and Hispanic students were in schools with a 65 percent low-income population, “while the typical white student and Asian student are in schools where less than half of the students are poor.”

Florida’s answer to education issues: School choice. Charter schools, tax credits, virtual charter schools.

This is an avoidance of the problem, not a solution.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Florida, School Choice, Segregation

Sixty Years After Little Rock, Racism Prevails–in Little Rock, in Jackson, and Elsewhere

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2017 //
6

This past week marked the 60th anniversary of the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent the 101st Airborne to safeguard the nine black students who entered that school and defied the taunts of the white mob and the defiance of Governor Faubus.

Now, the Little Rock public schools are again segregated due to white flight and are under the control of the state board of education, thanks to the efforts of the Walton family, which pretends to care about children but cares only about union-busting and school choice.

The white power structure in Arkansas has reasserted control of the public schools.

The same story is playing out in Jackson, Mississippi, where white state leaders are taking control of the Jackson public schools. This effort was carried out behind closed doors. It attained a special urgency due to the election of a progressive black mayor in Jackson.

Jeff Bryant tells the story here. It is a story that shames our nation. Or should.

The truth of Little Rock repeats itself over and over in communities throughout the South and across the country.

Jeff Bryant writes:

More recently, I was in Jackson, Mississippi, researching a story about the current effort of the state to take over the local school district there, much in the same way Little Rock schools were taken over. Jackson is similar to Little Rock in that it is a school district populated predominantly by non-white students.

For two days, the Mississippi Department of Education staged a series of meetings that illustrated once again how white elites continue to define education opportunities for black and brown communities.

The racial symbolism of the events was inescapable.

MDE officials, who were predominantly white, presented their case in a room limited in seating and closed to the public over an hour prior to the meeting’s announced start time. Members of the State Accreditation Commission and the State Board of Education, who were predominantly white, decided the fate of Jackson schools in separate closed-door sessions completely sequestered from public view.

Some 100 local citizens, who were predominantly black, were relegated to an auditorium, where they watched events unfold on a live stream video that was often interrupted and garbled during transmission, and then they waited for hours to have decisions announced to them.

Local school officials, who had had a mere seven school days to muster a defense, presented detailed documentation of their recent and ongoing efforts to correct problems in the district, but the thick binders they presented were generally left unread on the meeting room tables as commission and board members convened in closed chambers to cast their votes.

Should the governor agree that Jackson schools are in a state of “extreme emergency,” as the state contends, the district’s school board is dissolved, the superintendent is dismissed, and an appointed conservator, reporting directly to the state Board of Education, is put in place to oversee the schools. In fact, the conservator has already been chosen.

The day the State Accreditation Committee decided to yank the district’s accreditation – a necessary step before proceeding to the Board of Education’s hearing the next day – Jackson’s recently elected progressive mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told those gathered on the sidewalk outside of MDE headquarters that they had just witnessed a “perfunctory exercise” in which “every commissioner who stepped into that room had already reached a decision.”

He declared “the burden of proof” in the state’s case “was not met.” And he called for ‘turn[ing] the page in Mississippi” and departing from the state’s history of denying black communities control of their schools. “We will not stand silently as they rob our children of an education.”

In D.C., we have a president who assails black football players who express their objection to racism; Trump portrays his attack on the athletes as a “defense” of the National Anthem. He would have us believe that he is patriotic and those who exercise free speech are not.

And we have a Secretary of Education who thinks that black colleges were created because black students wanted to exercise “choice.”

Has racism diminished since 1957, when the Little Rock Nine entered Central High School, protected by federal bayonets?

In many ways it has. We elected a black president. We see black actors on television and in the movies.

But in many ways, racism remains as virulent as it was in 1957. The selection by Alabama Republicans of Roy Moore as their Senate candidate reminds us that racism thrives; Trump reminds us daily that racism is alive. The efforts by the Waltons and other white elites to strip black communities of any role in their community public schools–and to offer them school choice instead–reminds us that racism comes in many forms.

Categories Little Rock, Mississippi, Racism, School Choice

Harvard Program on Choice: Protest Expected, Funders Hide Their Names

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2017 //
56

Betsy DeVos is the keynote speaker today at a conference on “The Future of School Choice,” sponsored by Paul Petersen’s Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Kennedy School at Harvard.

Might as well be called “The Glorious and Lucrative Future of School Choice” because there are no critics invited, no supporters of the public schools attended by 85-90% of American students. She will be surrounded by adoring fans, which may help her forget that she is the most unpopular member of the Trump cabinet.

DeVos will be introduced by the dean of the Kennedy School, who is not at all embarrassed to host a conference utterly lacking in balance or fairness. Apparently, he is hoping the students ask questions, since the panelists won’t.

Curiously, the names of the funders–which originally included the foundations of Charles Koch and Bill Gates–have been scrubbed from the program. The only named sponsor is EdChoice.

Click to access future-of-school-choice-agenda.pdf

Hundreds of protestors are anticipated.

https://m.facebook.com/events/131082490873746/

DeVos has devoted her life’s work to privatization of education. Her own state of Michigan has been her plaything, since she has funded so many politicians. Thanks to her intervention, education in Michigan is a hot political mess, and the state’s standing on NAEP has fallen substantially.

She owes her home state an apology.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Arthur Camins: Want Innovation? Try Equitable, Integrated Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2017 //
22

Arthur Camins recently retired after a distinguished career in science, engineering, and the study of innovation.

He has an inspired idea for innovation in education: try equitable, integrated public schools.

He writes:

Secretary of Education Betsy Devos says that students in the US attend schools that are a “mundane malaise that dampens dreams, dims horizons and denies futures.” She accuses public schools of being stuck in the past. She claims to want innovation.

Miriam-Webster defines innovation as follows;

1: the introduction of something new

2: a new idea, method, or device: novelty

DeVos and her allies want to give public funds to parents to send their children to any public, charter or private schools, whether or not they are religious and whether or not they discriminate by race, religion or sexual orientation.

If enacted, her policies would mean returning to a time when schools were more segregated by race, religion, and class. That is not new or novel. In fact, it is stuck in the past. Segregation is not innovative. It is old school.

DeVos believes that individual parents are in the best position to choose a school that is best for their child, rather than democratically elected representatives. That unlimited choice would return us to a time when individual parents’ inclinations and, yes, their prejudices were prioritized over the needs of the communities in which they live and over the needs of the nation.

For several decades after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision in 1954 public schools in the US became more integrated. However, that trend has reversed. Public schools are becoming more segregated, not just by race but by socioeconomic status as well. In other words, it is becoming more likely that student will attend schools with children who are more similar to one another than not. That trend may satisfy the narrow interests and proclivities of some, but it is destructive to the nation.

Segregated schools are destructive to the nation not just because the inherent inequality of separate education shortchanges particular categories of individual students, but because it deprives all students of the benefit of learning to live across differences in our unalterably diverse country. Integrated schools are not only a moral and democratic imperative but an economic one too. Research indicates that diverse groups are more productive and creative and make better decisions. Learning to participate in diverse groups should start in school not on the job….

The idea of mediating racial and socioeconomic school segregation is not new. But, doing something substantive about it would be innovative.

Here are several policies that promote the old, but still vital idea and value of diversity and equity. Isolated boutique enactments are not innovative. Widespread systemic implementation would be.

Stop funding local public schools primarily through property taxes. Since communities have significantly varied tax bases, this is inherently inequitable. Instead, shift school funding to graduated state and personal federal income, capital gains, and corporate taxes.

Incentivize more integrated neighborhoods through changes in lending and zoning practices. It was, in fact, federal policies that help to limit integrated and promote segregated neighborhoods. It is time to reverse that deplorable history.

Since addressing inequity is necessarily a long-term effort, prioritize funding to schools with the greatest percentages of children from low-incomes and traditionally underrepresented groups.

Increase federal funding, so that rather than taking from well endowed, middle-class schools, funding for the rest can be increased.

Increase federal funding for special education, so that meeting the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act does not come at the expense of other children.
Provide nutritional, social, health, and economic support to children and their families, so that all children can engage fully in learning.

Invest in infrastructure and research jobs with decent wages so that adults are employed and provide stability at home.

Promote positive social and emotional learning practices in all schools so that all students are known, valued and respected.

Fund professional learning and formative assessment practices so that teachers continue to learn how to best engage and address the learning needs of all students.

None of these ideas are new. However, as a nation, we have only tinkered at designing solutions. We are a nation of interdependent communities and states. Systemic efforts to address inequity have always been limited not by what is possible, but by the political constraints driven by economic elites. The self-proclaimed realists among the empowered condescendingly claim, “We cannot afford all that.” What they really mean is, “I don’t want to pay for it.”

It’s time to give priority to the needs of the majority of Americans. More integrated, well-funded schools would benefit everyone. That would be innovative.

Categories Equity, Funding, Innovation, School Choice, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Harvard Shames Itself by Staging a Koch-Sponsored Betsy Lovefest–No Dissenting Voices Allowed

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2017 //
64

The Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University has always been pro-school choice, pro-charters, pro-vouchers.

But now the PEPG–headed by the General of the School Choice Movement Paul Petersen–has outdone itself.

It is staging a two-day celebration of Betsy DeVos and the Trump agenda of public school-bashing, funded by the Koch Brothers and other rightwing foundations.

There is nary a critic of this radical rightwing agenda, not as a presenter or a panelist.

The conference is called “The Future of School Choice.”

The Charles Koch Foundation is a major funder, but after it became clear that his name was embarrassing, it was removed from the list of sponsors.

How shameful that Harvard would lend its name to a one-sided effort to cheer on the destruction of public education and would give a platform to a woman with no academic credentials.

As the writer for the New Republic, Graham Vyse, points out, the Harvard Institute of Politics invited Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowski to accept fellowships, so the University apparently has low standards.

Apparently Jeff Sessions is about to give a speech about “free speech” in which he will decry “political correctness” on campus, meaning I assume the refusal to debate issues.

Do you think he will single out Harvard’s PEPG for refusing to hold a debate about the future of school choice and excluding those who recognize the civic importance of public education and the failure of charters and vouchers to live up to their claims?

I’m not holding my breath.

I am adding Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance to this blog’s Wall of Shame for its failure to permit even the most minimal expectations of academic and scholarly fairness, and for turning itself into a propaganda mill for the privatization movement, at the behest of Big Money.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers, Wall of Shame

Anita Senkowski: Is Your State Superintendent of Education a Weasel? Mine Is.

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2017 //
6

This is a repost, because I forgot to put in the link to the article.

Anita Senkowski is a blogger in northern Michigan who strikes fear in the hearts of frauds and phonies. Her last target, a charter entrepreneur who made off with millions, is in prison.

In this post, she declares the State Superintendent of Public Education in Michigan a weasel. She has a photo of a cute little weasel.

Superintendent Brian Whiston said on a public radio show that school Choice hadn’t worked in Michigan.

“During the segment Whiston drew a hard line in the sand on charter schools — one of Michigan Republicans’ favorite education schemes.

“Asked about the performance thus far of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Whiston said it was too early to make a complete call, but he skewered the idea that “school choice” — i.e. charter schools — were the silver bullet to Michigan’s education woes.

“While I do support choice – and I want to be clear on that – it’s probably taken us backwards overall.”

“School choice is important. I support school choice, but Michigan has proven that school choice isn’t the answer,” he said. “If school choice was the answer, Michigan would be the top performing state because we have more choice than just about any other state.”

After the show, he began backtracking, trying to explain that he didn’t mean what he said, looking over his shoulder at the choice-loving governor and legislature.

Weasel.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Michigan, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Nancy Bailey: DeVos’ “Let’s Get Rid of Public Schools” Tour

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2017 //
21

Nancy Bailey valiantly followed Betsy DeVos’s national tour, from a distance.

Her message everywhere was the same: Public schools suck! Private schools are awesome!

In public schools, children sit in desks arranged in rows. In private schools, well, maybe the same but it doesn’t matter.

In public schools, children hate going to school. In private schools, they are enthusiastic and happy.

This woman is an ideologue. She knows nothing and learns nothing. Whatever she proposes is meant to damage public schools and communities.

Education is a learning profession, and she is not open to learning anything!

We will wait her out, fight her at every turn, and return to the task of improving and strengthening public schools for all children, a concept unknown to her.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Is School Choice Good for Kids? A Debate Between an Expert and an Ideologue

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2017 //
16

Samuel Abrams, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, is a hardy soul. He agreed to debate Bob Bowdon, film-maker, pundit, and hater of all things public, in a debate sponsored by the libertarian publication Reason. The debate took place in July but it remains relevant.

Sam taught for many years in the New York City public schools, then wrote his academic thesis on the Edison Project, which grew into a book about for-profit education ventures called Education and the Commercial Mindset, published by Harvard University Press. The book is thoughtful, well-documented, and scholarly.

Bob Bowdon is a film-maker who made a name for himself as someone who despises public schools, teachers, and unions. He is a libertarian, and the crowd was with him from the start. Abrams was brave to go before a pro-choice crowd, and he won some of them over to the idea that there is actually something called the common good.

Bowdon, needless to say, is unfamiliar with the research about vouchers, and is unaware of research from Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana, and D.C. showing that students who take vouchers lose ground as compared to their peers who stay in public schools.

Here is a transcript of the debate.

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers
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