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Indianapolis Plans to Close Three Public High Schools, with No Community Input

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2017 //
91

There is something very sad about watching a community’s public schools die.

The Indianapolis Public Schools superintendent has recommended the closing of three public high schools due to low enrollments. These are neighborhood schools that were the heart of their communities. Two will be converted to middle schools. The other is in a gentrifying neighborhood and will probably be sold to developers.

Only four public high schools will remain in the entire district if this plan is endorsed by the board. There will be no more neighborhood high schools. Students will be expected to choose their school based on its program, not its proximity to home.

“IPS enrollment has fallen precipitously over the last five decades from a peak of more than 100,000 students to fewer than 30,000 in the last school year. Its high school enrollment is just more than 5,000 students; its seven buildings have capacity for nearly 15,000.”

The Indianapolis Public School District is controlled by two privatizing groups: the Mind Trust, Stand for Children, and the voucher-happy Friedman Foundation. Charter schools in the city are the third largest district in the state. Mind Trust, Stand for Children, and the Friedman Foundation exist to destroy public schools, and they are doing a bang-up job in Indianspolis.

Indianapolis, under the thumb of corporate reformers, has numerous charter high schools. Curiously, their performance is worse than the public high schools whose students they were supposed to “save.”

Do the privatizers learn nothing from their failures? Answer: No. Never.

A community activist wrote this in a personal note:

“No other options were considered by the Task Force appointed by the Superintendent. The Task Force included no parents, no students, no teachers, no principals, and no community members who weren’t real estate developers, charter school financiers, family members of charter school founder/Board chair, etc etc. Most of the IPS central office members on the Task Force have lived in Indiana for 3 years or less, it appears.”

From another community activist:

“This is not the IPS Board’s final decision; this is the superintendent’s recommendation, but it is likely to be what happens.

“Not surprisingly, they completely ignored the community input.

“If you do not like this decision, go to the Board meeting tomorrow night, 6 pm, 120 East Walnut, John Morton Finney Center.”

The resistance to privatization communicates through this Facebook page as We Are IPS:

There is something I don’t understand about the so-called”reformers,” who have run the district for years. They don’t believe in community. They believe in consumerism. They see the relationship between families and schools as a transaction, involving no sense of loyalty, no sentiment.

They fail, fail, fail, and they learn nothing. Their experiments on the children and schools of Indianapolis have been a catastrophe.

What makes them tick?

If IPS dies, this much is sure: It was murdered by “reform.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Reform, Failure, Indianapolis, School Choice

Politico: Betsy DeVos is the Political Lightning Rod for Democrats

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2017 //
35

This is great news for those who have been calling attention to the corporate reform assault on public schools. We couldn’t gain attention when Obama and Duncan were promoting privatization and bashing teachers. But Betsy DeVos stripped away the pretense of “the civil rights issue of our time.” All you have to do is look at the patented billionaire smirk, listen to her prattle about public schools as a “dead end,” and look at the fringe right groups she hangs out with, like ALEC. At last, the Democrats are beginning to get it. The privatization pushers in the Democratic Party will have to explain why they are in step with DeVos’s policy agenda.

Before DeVos, the Network for Public Education had 22,000 members. Now it has more than 350,000 and is growing.

Politico writes:

DEVOS BECOMES DIGITAL LIGHTNING ROD FOR DEMOCRATS: First it was Karl Rove. Then it was the Koch brothers. Now, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has taken over as Senate Democrats’ top online bogeyman. POLITICO’s Maggie Severns reports that anti-DeVos statements, petitions and especially fundraising emails have become a staple of Democratic digital campaigns in 2017. Emails citing DeVos are raising money at a faster clip than others and driving engagement from supporters.

– Some examples: Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly’s Facebook post announcing opposition to DeVos’ nomination as Education secretary was the first sign for some Democratic observers that DeVos had political traction. Donnelly and his fellow Democratic senators up for reelection in 2018 have seized on that energy with a salvo of emails soliciting small-dollar online donations.

– DeVos played foil for Montana Sen. Jon Tester when he solicited donations in May for himself and Rob Quist, the Democrat who was defeated in a special election for Montana’s at-large House seat. DeVos’ family “is spending big to influence tomorrow’s election,” Tester wrote in one email after the DeVoses donated to Greg Gianforte’s campaign.

-“For a lot of people, Betsy DeVos has really come to be a symbol of everything that’s wrong with Trump’s approach to government,” said Stephanie Grasmick, a partner at the Democratic digital consulting firm Rising Tide Interactive. DeVos is a prime example of Rising Tide’s new use of “social listening tools,” adopted for this election cycle, that monitor the web for trends. The technology is used by corporations but has yet to be fully embraced by political campaigns.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Obama, School Choice

Write and Call Your Local PBS Affiliate: Demand Equal Time for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2017 //
10

All over the country, PBS stations are showing anti-public school propaganda in a three-hour series called “School Inc.” This series was paid for by libertarian foundations who want for-profit schools, vouchers, charters, and for-profit teachers, competing for students. The lead funder is the Rose-Mary and Jack Anderson Foundation, which supports radical libertarian causes and acts as a funnel for Donors Trust, which bundles money from the Koch brothers and DeVos family for their favorite causes.

PBS emendation accepting money for the series, which has no opposing views and which was never fact-checked, because it likes to show divergent views.

Really?

Would PBS accept funding to run a three-hour program that was opposed to abortion rights? That argued that homosexuality was a sin? That attempted to prove that climate change was a hoax? That insisted that the Sandy Hook massacre of children and staff never happened? That defended Confederate flags and monuments in public space?

The Network for Public Education encourages you to write an email or call your PBS station. Apparently, some local stations watched the series and decided not to show it. Most, however, are running it without any rebuttal.

Here is my rebuttal, which was seen only in New York City.

Here is my written commentary.

The irony is that these foundations do not believe in public education or public television.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Hoax, Network for Public Education, Propaganda, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

DeVos Taps School Choice Advocate for Crucial Position in ED Department

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2017 //
12

Betsy DeVos has chosen Jim Blew, who is a veteran of the privatization movement, for one of the most important positions in the Department of Education.

From Education Week:

“Jim Blew, the director of Student Success California, a 50CAN affiliate, is a top contender to lead the office of planning, evaluation, and policy analysis at the U.S. Department of Education, multiple sources say.

“Blew declined to comment. The U.S. Department of Education did not confirm the information.

“If ultimately nominated by the White House and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Blew would bring significant policy heft to the U.S. Department of Education, multiple sources say.

“Blew was the national president of StudentsFirst, an education redesign organization started by former District of Columbia schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. He took that gig beginning in late 2014, when Rhee stepped down from the organization, serving until mid-2016, when StudentsFirst merged with 50CAN, a network of state advocacy organizations.

“Before that, Blew spent nearly a decade as the Walton Family Foundation’s Director of K-12 Reform, advising the foundation on how to broaden schooling options for low-income communities. He worked in communications before devoting himself to K-12 policy. More in his bio. (Note: Walton provides support for Education Week coverage of parent-engagement and decisionmaking.)”

Jim Blew has dedicated his career to the destruction of public education. He deserves a place on this Blog’s Wall of Shame.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Jan Resseger: Meet the National Lobbyists Who Have Pushed a Far-Right Wing Agenda into the States

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2017 //
30

Jan Resseger read Gordon Lafer’s new book, “The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time,” and she understood the pattern on the rug.

“Gordon Lafer explains that in the November 2010 election, “Eleven state governments switched from Democratic or divided control to unified Republican control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature. Since these lawmakers took office in early 2011, the United States has seen an unprecedented wave of legislation aimed at lowering labor standards and slashing public services.” (p. 2) “In January 2011, legislatures across the country took office under a unique set of circumstances. In many states, new majorities rode to power on the energy of the Tea Party ‘wave’ election and the corporate-backed RedMap campaign… (T)his was the first class of legislators elected under post-Citizens United campaign finance rules, and the sudden influence of unlimited money in politics was felt across the country. Finally, the 2011 legislative sessions opened in the midst of record budget deficits (from the Great Recession), creating an atmosphere of fiscal crisis that made it politically feasible to undertake more dramatic legislation than might otherwise have been possible… For the corporate lobbies and their legislative allies, the 2010 elections created a strategic opportunity to restructure labor relations, political power, and the size of government.” (p 44)…

“Lafer continues: “Political science traditionally views policy initiatives as emerging from either reasoned evaluation of what has worked to address a given social problem, or a strategic response to public opinion. But the corporate agenda for education reform is neither. Its initiatives are not the product of education scholars and often have little or no evidentiary basis to support them. They are also broadly unpopular… In this sense, education policy… provides an instructive window into the ability of corporate lobbies to move an extremely broad and ambitious agenda that is supported neither by social scientific evidence nor by the popular will.” (p. 130)

“Who are the corporate lobbies crafting and pushing the anti-tax, union-bashing, anti-public education agenda? “Almost all of these initiatives reflect ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) model legislation, and have been championed by the Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, and a wide range of allied corporate lobbies.” (p. 130) “Furthermore, the corporate agenda is carried out through an integrated network that operates on multiple channels at once: funding ALEC to write bills, craft legislative talking points, and provide a meeting place for legislators and lobbyists to build relationships; supporting local think tanks in the ALEC-affiliated State Policy Network to produce white papers, legislative testimony, opinion columns, and media experts; contributing to candidate campaigns and party committees; making independent expenditures on behalf of lawmakers or issues; and deploying field organizers to key legislative districts.” (p. 39)

“A primary strategy is tax cutting: “‘The best way to stimulate the economy,’ insisted a senior fellow at the Koch-funded Cato Institute, is ‘to shrink government… lower marginal tax rates, and streamline regulations.’ The corporate right’s exhortations for an unprecedented policy of cutting taxes and services in the midst of recession was not an evidence-based policy and indeed did not yield the economic growth its proponents forecast… There was no reason to believe that tax cuts were the key to economic recovery. However continuing tax cuts achieved something else; they dramatically—and perhaps permanently—shrank the size of government.” (p. 65)

“How has all this affected public education? “(B)udget cuts were particularly widespread—and particularly devastating—in the country’s school systems. In 2010-11, 70 percent of all U.S. school districts made cuts to essential services. Despite widespread evidence of the academic and economic value of preschool education, twelve states cut pre-K funding that year, including Arizona, which eliminated it completely. Ohio repealed full-day kindergarten and cut its preschool program to the point that it served 75 percent fewer four-year-olds than it had a decade earlier. Pennsylvania also cut back from full-day to half-day kindergarten in many districts—including Philadelphia, which also eliminated 40 percent of its teaching staff…. More than half the nation’s school districts changed their thermostat settings…. Research shows that the availability of trained librarians makes a significant improvement in student reading and writing skills, yet by 2014, one-third of public schools in the country lacked a full-time certified librarian.” (p. 69)

Conspiracy theory? No, a well-planned, carefully executed plan to cut taxes, kill unions, privatize education.

Categories ALEC, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Unions

“The Demolition of American Education,” By Trump and DeVos

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2017 //
19

I wrote an article for the New York Review of Books about the proposed Trump-DeVos budget.

The whole world needs to know what Trump and DeVos want to do to limit access to college and to undermine public education.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Ann Waldman: Vermont’s Voucher Program Pays Tuition at Elite Boarding Schools

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2017 //
10

Voucher advocates like to point to Vermont as the nation’s oldest program. When it was started in 1869, it was intended to pay the tuition of students whose town did not have a public school. It has very little in common with the curren voucher movement, which takes its inspiration from the libertarian economist Milton Friedman, who wrote a seminal essay in 1955 proposing that all students should receive vouchers to attend the school of their choice. The group that was fastest to seize upon his ideas was Southern segregationists, who saw school choice as an effective way to keep their schools racially segregated. It took a dozen years until the federal courts and the U.S. Department of Education compelled Southern schools to desegregate their schools.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s voucher program continued undisturbed.

Today as education writer Anne Waldman of ProPublica explains, the voucher program funds a disproportionately large number of students from affluent families who choose expensive private schools, including out-of-state boarding schools like Exeter and Deerfield Academy.

“Vermont’s voucher program is a microcosm of what could happen across the country if school-choice advocates such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos achieve their vision. By subsidizing part of the cost of private schools in or out of state, it broadens options for some Vermonters while diverting students from public education and disproportionately benefiting wealthier families like the Bowmans.

“Vermont vouchers have been used to send students to ski academies, out-of-state art schools and even foreign boarding schools, such as the Sigtunaskolan School in Sweden, whose alumni include Sweden’s current king and former prime minister. Vermont paid more than $40 million in vouchers to more than 60 private schools last year, including more than $1.3 million to out-of-state schools, according to data received from the state’s education agency through a public-records request.

“Of the almost 2,800 Vermonters who use publicly funded vouchers to go to private schools in state, 22.5 percent qualify for free or reduced price lunch, according to state education data. (The data excludes out-of-state private schools.) By contrast, 38.3 percent of public school students in Vermont have family incomes low enough to qualify them for the lunch discount.”

Voucher advocates in other states will insist that they want vouchers for poor black and Hispanic students or for students with disabilities.

Such claims, however, are the first step towards the goal of making vouchers available for everyone.

Vermont sets no income limit for students who choose to use vouchers. However, the vouchers may not be used in religious schools, because the state Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1999.

Betsy DeVos has said many times that she seeks vouchers for every kind of school, including religious schools. Private and religiousschools set their own admissions requirements, so the schools choose the students. Public schools are required by law to accept all students, regardless of race, religion, family income, sexual orientation, language or disability status.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Inequity, Religion, School Choice, Vermont, Vouchers

Peter Greene: There is Nothing Democratic about School Choice

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2017 //
25

Peter Greene has a genius for taking complicated ideas and boiling them down to their essence in language that everyone can understand. This post is a classic example of that genius. Others have written entire books trying to explain what he says concisely here.

In the recent writings about school choice, pro and con, Peter Greene was especially affronted by a statement from Kevin Chavous, who works for Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. He said: It is school choice–directly empowering parents to choose the best educational environment for their child–that is the most democratic of ideas.

Greene responded:

Nope. Nope nope nopity nope. There are arguments to be made for parent choice, but “it’s the essence of democracy” is not one of them.

Democracy, even the sort-of-democracy practiced by the USA, is not about saying, “I want to make this personal choice, and I want everyone else to pay for it.”

Democracy is not saying you want a six-lane highway to run back the lane where only your house sits, so you get the rest of the taxpayers in your state to pay for it.

Democracy is not saying that since I want to have a police force that patrols my own house 24/7, I should have that police coverage and all local taxpayers should foot the bill.

Democracy is not “My fellow taxpayers have to pay for whatever I decide on my own that I want.”

He adds:

Choice fans often like to talk about the money following the child because “that money doesn’t belong to the school system.” And they have a point– it is not the school’s money. It is also not the family’s money. It is the taxpayers’ money, and the taxpayers have given it to support a system that will educate all students in the community through an institution managed by elected representatives of those taxpayers (when was the last time you saw a school board requirement that only parents can be elected).

And so, my fellow Americans, democracy consists of the consent of the governed, not the requirement to pay for whatever each person wants:

The “most democratic of ideas” is not that each individual gets to live in the Land of Do As You Please at public expense. Vouchers may be many things, but they are not remotely democratic.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democracy, School Choice, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: The True History of School Choice

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2017 //
8

In this post, Mercedes Schneider tries to explain the ludicrous claim that vouchers are more “democratic” that public schools controlled by elected school boards.

The choice advocates contend that letting parents choose their child’s school is the height of democracy. They do not admit that the schools choose their students, and some will slam their doors to students who don’t fit.

Now with Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, the nation has a choice zealot in the bully pulpit, talking about the only subject she knows: choice. School quality doesn’t matter; results don’t matter. The only thing that matters is choice, even if you can’t exercise it.

Mercedes reviews recent events–including the Edelman-Weingarten article opposing vouchers and defending charters–but the meat of her piece goes to the origins of svhool choice as a strategy to evade desegregation.

She places DeVos in the same boat with the notorious Southern governors, senators, and legislators who knew that their chance of defeating the Brown Decision of 1954 was to advocate school choice.

It is important to know history so you won’t be fooled.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, History, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Carol Burris: The Big Lie Behind Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2017 //
15

Carol Burris analyzes Betsy DeVos’ narrative about vouchers in this post.

What she describes goes far beyond the whims of a billionaire zealot. She describes the step-by-step plans of rightwingers who have long planned to undermine the very idea of public education as a civic responsibility.

DeVos said when she spoke at Brookings a few weeks ago that she in “not a numbers person.” She is also “not a facts person.”

First, she slimed those who defend public education from privatizers as “flat earthers.” Very likely, her family foundation has supported “flat earthers,” as they have supported creationism, quack science, and anti-gay organizations.

Then, she went on to attribute the origin of the modern voucher movement to African American Democrat, Polly Williams of Milwaukee. She forgot to mention that Polly Williams came to realize that she had been used by conservative rich people, and she renounced her support for vouchers. Not a small detail.

The great lie of the voucher movement is that it is built on the spurious claim that vouchers will “save” poor black and brown children. Faced with that claim, fraudulent though it is, liberals collapse and go along with the rightwing plan. But it never ends with the neediest children. That is only the beginning.

“And that, of course, was what Williams came to understand. Vouchers for the poor were the gateway; they were never the goal. That same pattern of starting small and going big repeats itself over and over. Educational savings accounts, tax credit scholarships and the like begin with student groups that evoke public sympathy — students with disabilities, low-income kids, the children of parents in the armed forces — but the goal is vouchers for all.

“DeVos and her allies are playing the long game. Each legislative season, the selected groups expand and the caps are raised. It happened in Indiana, where DeVos spoke to the American Federation for Children, and it is happening in other voucher states, as well.

“There is no better example than Arizona. Vouchers, disguised as the Empowerment Scholarship Account program (ESAs), began 2011. The program was designed for special-needs students. Then it expanded — foster-care students, children of military families, students on reservations, or students living in districts with schools rated a “D” or an “F” were eligible, as well.”

Now we know that vouchers don’t “save poor kids from failing schools.” In recent years, evaluations of vouchers in Louisiana, Indiana, and D.C. show that poor kids who use vouchers actually lose ground.

DeVos doesn’t care about evidence or facts or numbers. She is a choice zealot, and she will exploit her role in the government to push her lifelong passion to take public education away from the communities and families who support them. She doesn’t understand why people like their public schools. She never will.

Categories Betsy DeVos, School Choice, Vouchers, Wisconsin
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