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Colorado Senator Michael Bennett Struggles to Distance Himself from Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2017 //
30

Colorado Senator Michael Bennett was previously superintendent of schools in Denver. There he set off the school choice frenzy and led the parade to open charters. Now he finds himself trying to explain that he is different from Betsy DeVos. He is a Democrat, one of DFER’s champions. She is a Republican, Trump’s pick as Secretary of Education. He sold out public education. She wants to privatize it. She loves vouchers. He doesn’t. She is a choice ideologue. So is he.

See the difference? Look closer. No, closer still. I know it’s hard but keep trying.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Colorado, DFER, Education Reform, School Choice, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider Explains Why Betsy DeVos Never Mentions the School Where Her Mother Briefly Taught

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2017 //
5

Mercedes Schneider has been reading the archives of the local newspaper in Holland, Michigan, where the DeVos family reigns.

She learned about the brief teaching career of her mother in the local public school.

She learned the name of the school.

She has a picture of the school.

She knows the fate of the school. It was closed, after a century as the heart of the community.

Read her post to learn why it was closed.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Closing schools, Michigan, School Choice

Who is the Walton Family Foundation Funding?

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2017 //
42

It is very instructive to scan the long list of organizations that are funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Some will surprise you. Some will not. Here is what we know about this foundation. The Walton Family (beneficiaries of Walmart) is the richest family in America. There are many billionaires in the family. Like Betsy DeVos, they don’t like public education. They don’t like regulation. They love the free market. They don’t like unions. Individual family members have spent millions on political campaigns to support charters and vouchers. The Foundation also supports charters and school choice.

In 2015, the Walton Family Foundation spent $179 million on K-12 education grants. They are in the midst of a pledge to spend $1 billion to open more charters, and they have targeted certain cities for their beneficence (Atlanta, Boston, Camden, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.) Their goal is to undermine public education by creating a competitive marketplace of choices. They and DeVos are on the same page.

I suggest you scan the list to see which organizations have their hand out for funding from one of the nation’s most anti-public school, anti-union, rightwing foundations.

Here are a few of their grantees:

Black Alliance for Education Options (BAEO), run by Howard Fuller to spread the gospel of school choice: $2.78 million

Brookings Institution (no doubt, to buy the annual report that grades cities on school choice): $242,000

California Charter Schools Association: $5 million

Center for American Progress (theoretically a “centrist Democratic” think tank): $500,000

Charter Fund, Inc. (never heard of this one): $14 million

Chiefs for Change (Jeb Bush’s group): $500,000

College Board (to push Common Core?): $225,000

Colorado League of Charter Schools: $1,050,000

Editorial Projects in Education (Education Week): $70,000

Education Reform Now: $4.2 million

Education Trust, Inc. (supposed a “left-leaning advocacy group”): $359,000

Education Writers Association: $175,000

Educators for Excellence (anti-union teachers, usually from TFA): $925,000

Families for Excellent Schools (hedge fund managers who lobby for charter schools in New York City and Massachusetts): $6.4 million

Foundation for Excellence in Education (Jeb Bush’s organization): $3 million

High Tech High Graduate School of Education (this one stumped me; how can a high school run a graduate school of education?): $780,000

KIPP Foundation: $6.9 million

Leadership for Education Equity Foundation (this is TFA’s political organization that trains TFA to run for office): $5 million

Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (this funding preceded the referendum where the citizens of Massachusetts voted “no mas” to new charters): $850,000

National Public Radio: $1.1 million

National Urban League: $300,000

Pahara Institute: $832,000

Parent Revolution: $500,000

Relay Graduate School of Education (that pseudo-grad school with no professors, just charter teachers): $1 million

Schools That Can Milwaukee (Tough luck, the Working Families Party just swept the school board): $1.6 million

StudentsFirst Institute: $2.8 million

Teach for America (to supply scabs): $8 million

The New York Times: $350,000

Thomas B. Fordham Institute: $700,000

Urban Institute (supposedly an independent think tank in D.C.): $350,000

To be fair, in another part of the grants report, called Special Projects, the Walton Family Foundation donated $112,404 to the Bentonville Public Schools and $25,000 to the Bentonville Public Schools Foundation, in the town where the Waltons are located. Compare that to the $179 million for charters and choice, and you get the picture of what matters most.

Categories Billionaires, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Massachusetts, Media, Privatization, School Choice, StudentsFirst, Teach for America, Walton Foundation

Gayle Green: Corporate School Reform and the Cynical Manipulation of the English Language

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2017 //
22

Gayle Green is a professor of English at Scripps College. She is writing a book about the corporate reform in higher education.

In this article, she describes how corporate reformers have taken guidance from Orwell’s “1984” in their deliberate distortion of language to mask reality.

She writes:

“In this post-truth age that’s done away with facts, George Orwell’s 1984 has soared to the top of the charts. But in the world of public education, it’s been 1984 for quite some time. And we didn’t even need the clumsy apparatus of a totalitarian dictatorship to bring it about. All we needed was some slick PR and smiley corporate faces and a media ready to spit back the buzzwords they’d been fed – failing public schools, no excuses, accountability, choice, access for every child, closing the achievement gap – repeating them so often that they passed for truth.”

In the current dystopian world of public education, the new Secretary of Education is the leading enemy of the nation’s public schools.

DeVos should be no surprise. She is the culmination of nearly two decades of creeping privatization.

“But DeVos should come as no surprise: she is the culmination of the way things have long been headed. No Child Left Behind, signed into law in January 2002, brought to us by George W. Bush and the moneyed interests he represented, arrived in clouds of rhetoric about “access” and “civil rights.” It announced itself as “an act to close the achievement gap with accountability, choice, flexibility, so that no child is left behind.” But this was never about reform or access or leveling the playing field: it was about opening up public education as a market, siphoning off tax dollars to charters and for-profit vendors, shifting public funds from a system that had public oversight and control to private interests. Education was a rich, untapped market with billions of federal dollars there for the taking. Schools, panicked at having their survival based on standardized test scores, invested heavily in testing technology. Multinational testing corporations, publishing companies, ed-tech ventures rushed in with their wares: software for administering tests, test preps, pre-tests, post-tests, tests scoring, lesson plans, teaching modules, assessment devices; entire new industries sprang into being….

“It’s been quite a feat, transforming teachers, who were once our friends and allies, to the enemy. A real sleight of hand, getting the public to trust those altruistic billionaires over those greedy, opportunistic teachers. Trust a billionaire to have the public’s interest at heart – that spin worked so well it landed us with Trump. But in the world of 1984, two plus two equals five: “Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by [the Party’s] philosophy.”

Put kids in front of computers, increase screen time, increase class size – and call it personalized. Depersonalized might be a better word – or perhaps personalised, for Pearsons, the multibillion-dollar transnational corporation that’s siphoned off untold billions of federal money. When teachers protested that students from disadvantaged backgrounds tend not to test well, having not had the benefit of tutors and test-prep programs, GWB said they were making “excuses,” showing “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Yet it’s painfully clear that using test scores to determine the survival of schools only further disadvantages the disadvantaged, and, far from leveling the playing field, tilts it even more. “No excuses” became a mantra of corporate reformers, an excuse for shutting down public schools and moving in with charters, an excuse to ignore poverty and blame teachers for conditions that make teaching impossible – conditions assured by inequities that billionaire reformers have themselves brought about.”

Hundreds of schools have been closed. Thousands of teachers drummed out of their profession. Philadelphia’s Rescue Plan devastated the public schools. Arne Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 came and went with more public schools closed, more children sent to privately managed charter schools. “Choice, choice, choice,” the corporate reformers say, but neglect to mention that the schools make the choices, not the families. The one choice that is off the table is the neighborhood school.

“The confounding of language at its most basic level reduces us to a state of civic catatonia: we can’t think about these issues, let alone discuss them or act against them, when they’ve been so obfuscated, when words have been so twisted.”

The deliberate distortion of language has enabled a corporate coup, the selling out of public education to billionaires and entrepreneurs.

This is an article you can send to your friends who want a short summary of one of the biggest scam of our lifetimes.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, School Choice, Testing

Alan Singer: How to Fight the DeVos-Trump Miseducation Agenda

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2017 //
5

Alan Singer writes here about the resistance to the DeVos-Trump miseducation agenda, which has no core idea other than to replace public schools with charters and vouchers.

If you see the photograph that accompanies his article, you will recognize the DeVos smirk. It is the smirk of an entitled billionaire who knows what is best for you and everyone else, and who takes instruction from no one.

The article focuses on the Network for Public Education’s “Toolkit,” an assembly of brief answers to thorny questions like, “Are charter schools truly public schools?”

It also contains an interactive state-by-state map that will be updated to show which states support their public schools and which have succumbed to various privatization schemes.

Here is the answer to the question above:

Are charter schools truly public schools? Charter schools are contractors that receive taxpayer money to operate privately controlled schools that do not have the same rules and responsibilities as public schools. Investigations of charter school operations in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and elsewhere have found numerous cases where charters used taxpayer money to procure school buildings, supplies, and equipment that they retained ownership of, even if the school closed. In most states, charter schools are exempt from most state and local laws, rules, regulations, and policies governing public and private schools, including those related to personnel and students. Calling charter schools “public schools” because they receive public tax dollars is like calling defense contractors public companies. There are so many substantive differences between charter schools and traditional public schools that charters can’t be defined as public schools. Our communities deserve a school system that is truly public and democratically governed by the community they serve.

The Toolkit has footnotes for each response.

To defend your public schools, you must be informed and active. The Toolkit is a great resource to help you.

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

Peter Greene: A Field Guide to Choice Advocates

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2017 //
2

Peter Greene understands that the choice debate gets muddied because there are so many different varieties of advocates for choice, and they don’t all agree.

Reporters ask, what’s behind the demand for school choice? what is the motivation of the billionaires and hedge fund managers? do they really want kids to go to religious schools that teach creationism?

It can indeed by very confusing. I usually say that people have different motivations for wanting to replace community public schools with privately run schools.

Peter has divided up the choice world into several very specific categories. Some overlap. Nonetheless, his guide should help to steer you through these confusing times.

Did he miss anything?

Categories School Choice

Maine: Trump Plan for “School Choice” Would be a Disaster for Rural Schools

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2017 //
11

The Bangor Daily News in Maine reports that Trump’s push for school choice in Maine would be a disaster for rural schools. This article helps to explain why rural legislators are not enthusiastic about school choice. It would destroy the schools they have and leave everyone worse off.

Mt. Abram Regional High School, north of Farmington, is a small school, with only around 150 students. But the teenagers who step off the bus each morning come from dozens of towns, some 50 or 60 miles away. That can mean a long bus ride for some.

Senior Olivia Scott says it has created a tight knit community.

“Here, you get a really strong sense of who you are individually,” she says. “You get to know all of your classmates and all of your peers and all of your teachers, even.”

“Everything happens there, town meetings happen there,” says Susan Pratt, the superintendent of MSAD 58, which contains Mt. Abram. In an area that’s been hard-hit by a loss of jobs and people, she says the schools are much more than a place to hold classes.

“They’re the center of the community,” she says. “It’s really the only gathering place for some of these little towns.”

And that has Pratt worried about a new push for school choice in the president’s budget proposal.

While it’s still unclear what exactly school choice would mean, a common approach is to give families vouchers for a certain amount of money and let them choose where they want their kids to go to school. It has been tried in places such as Wisconsin and Florida, to mixed results.

Pratt says in rural western Maine, where schools are hours away from each other, getting students to another destination would be close to impossible. Experts say that means the law would likely benefit more affluent students who could supply their own transportation.

“There aren’t a lot of options for many of the school systems,” she says. “Your options are limited. And so their choices are limited for folks, just because of the distance, as much as anything else.”

But for many educators, the bigger worry is what happens if students do leave their current public school district. Tina Meserve, the superintendent of RSU 16 in Poland, says she’s concerned it would leave schools without enough students and revenue to provide a quality education.

“You’ve got to have a certain student population to offer AP chemistry, AP physics, AP calculus. Plus your regular algebra and geometry class,” she says. “So again, you run into that problem of needing to have a certain student population to provide a well rounded education for kids.”

Categories Maine, Rural Schools, School Choice

Joshua Starr: The American Public Opposes Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2017 //
17

Joshua Starr, a former school superintendent who is now chief executive officer of Phi Delta Kappa, reports that the American public opposes vouchers. They like the idea of “charters,” but most don’t know what charters are, that they may be run by for-profit or run by national corporations. They like the generic idea but they are not asked what they know about it. Perhaps they have nmagnet schools in mind.

Starr writes:

“Since 1969, PDK International has conducted an annual poll of the public’s attitudes toward the public schools. The methodology is rigorous, the questions are vetted by a politically diverse group of advisers, the data are robust and the results suggest that DeVos hasn’t been listening very carefully.

“Consider school choice, which DeVos has placed at the top of her policy agenda. Our poll reveals that, in general, Americans like the idea of choice in public education. On the specifics, though, DeVos’s positions are out of tune with majority opinion, particularly when it comes to school vouchers. Most respondents tell us that they disapprove of using public funds to support voucher programs. Since 1993, we have asked Americans 20 times whether they support allowing parents to choose a private school at public expense, and every time a majority has said “No.”

“DeVos is equally tone deaf when it comes to charter schooling, which is her other favored means of promoting choice. While charter schools themselves are quite popular — 64% supporting, 25% opposing in 2015, the last time we asked this question — the secretary’s views on charter school governance (specifically her fierce resistance to any kind of public oversight of these schools) are less mainstream. We asked Americans four times in the early 2000s whether they wanted charter schools to be held accountable to the same standards as traditional public schools and the response was overwhelmingly “yes.” The country is more split now, but 48% still say they want the same standards to apply to charters, compared with 46% who don’t.

“The bottom line: While DeVos may claim to be speaking for millions of average Americans (and at her Senate hearing, she lauded herself as “a voice for parents”), the evidence suggests otherwise. If she hears an insistent clamoring for new investments in voucher programs and unregulated charter schools, then she’s listening to the wrong station.

“If not vouchers and unregulated charters, then what do Americans want? In general, the poll results are complicated, suggesting that attitudes toward public education are much more nuanced, even conflicted, than policymakers admit. On some key issues, though, public opinion is quite clear. For example, a clear majority of Americans tell us that they trust teachers, value their work highly, respect their skills and expertise and want teachers to be paid more. Further, our data have shown consistently over many years that a majority of Americans favor spending more money on the public schools, especially on their local schools (which people tend to rate much more highly than the public schools in general). A majority of people even say that they would be willing to pay higher taxes as long as the money goes directly to education.

“Secretary DeVos may have her reasons for wanting to cut back on some federal programs and to ramp up funding for her preferred forms of school choice. But let’s be honest: Those reasons are grounded in ideology, not in practical experience (she has none) or evidence (she cannot cite any). Her enthusiasm for the president’s budget proposal has nothing to do with the will of the American people and it is more than a little disingenuous for her to claim that she has listened to or speaks for millions of moms, dads, teachers and students.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Which Religious Schools Are Allowed to Participate in the Arizona Voucher Program? Not All

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2017 //
47

A reader posted a comment yesterday asking why I had a problem with religious schools receiving public funding. Aren’t there good religious schools. I pointed out that most of the religious schools that are funded by vouchers are not very good schools. The very good religious schools don’t have many seats available. The ones that do have seats available and need the money tend to be a certain type of Christian school that teaches creationism and uses textbooks that do not teach modern science, math, or history.

Then another comment arrived, this one from a man who is writing a book about education in Arizona.

I post this quote from a work in progress for the nice lady who wrote about Diane’s piece and asked whether there are good religious schools. Diane used a quote from me in the blog today.

Here are the Organizations already providing “scholarships” on the “tax credit” dime here in AZ. I am a proud Catholic School Graduate and I have grandchildren in Catholic Schools in New Hampshire.

Those choices were my parents and my children’s RELIGIOUS choice. They wanted their children indoctrinated into the Catholic Faith.

Catholic schools have their history in anti-Catholic sentiments going back to the KNOW NOTHING PARTY and anti-immigrant attitudes in the 1840s. There was a time when it was a “mortal sin” for Catholics to attend public school if a Catholic School was available..

We in AZ live in a state that allows a “Christian Scholarship” fund that doesn’t include any Catholic, or for that matter Mormon schools, that is a RED FLAG.

I ask the following.

How is it that the Senate president of the Arizona State Senate, can simultaneously be the executive director of a $17,064,168 organization, The Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization Inc., while having control over all of the bills that come up for voting in the Senate including those that benefit his organization?

o This while collecting a salary and other compensation of $145,705 per annum in 2014-2015 for directing the ACSTO.
 Source IRS Form 990 FY 2013: http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2014/860/931/2014-860931047-0b056c5d-9.pdf

o Again the question is asked, “Politically would this be considered “permissible” if the organization was dedicated to promoting Catholic Schools and run by the Senate President who happened to be the Bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix?

o Researching the Organization in question one finds a list of the “participating schools”. That list which is provided below is devoid of any Catholic or Mormon Schools. Do they not fit the organization’s definition of Christian Schools? Would having a Muslim or Hindu Tax Credit group be okay with the legislature? How about an ATHEIST School?

 Bethany Christian School
 Christian Academy of Prescott
 Flagstaff Community Christian School
 Joy Christian School
 North Valley Christian Academy
 Northwest Christian School
 Paradise Valley Christian Prep
 Scottsdale Christian Academy
 Trinity Christian School (Prescott)

I am sure these are good programs but I have met some of their leadership and a lot of them ascribe to the philosophy that the world is 6000 years old.

• Catholic Education Arizona is an IRS 501(c) (3) nonprofit charitable organization and has never accepted gifts designated for individuals. Per state law, a school tuition organization cannot award, restrict or reserve scholarships solely on the basis of donor recommendation. A taxpayer may not claim a tax credit if the taxpayer agrees to swap donations with another taxpayer to benefit either taxpayer’s own dependent. This new law changes that.

o The rules for donating to a Catholic Educational Program speak volumes to the previous complaint regarding what is a Christian School. It required separate rules to “allow” the donations to go to Catholic Schools. The restrictions make it impossible for one to donate for their own child’s (or grandchildren’s) tuition.

 This is a taxpayer funded way to provide the scholarships that Catholics used to provide in their donations to the church of their choice.

 The leadership at this charity received compensation of $131,115 in 2013-2014. This was on revenue of $16,269,022.
 Source: IRS FORM 990 See: http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2014/860/937/2014-860937587-0b8e0571-9.pdf

“Freedom to choose” for religious purposes has always been an option in this country. Catholics chose to create Catholic Schools. Jewish parents chose schools based at their Synagogues. There are Hindu Schools and Muslim Schools. These faiths funded this choice with sacrifice and tuitions that were subsidized by their church, synagogue or mosque, not by diverting funds meant to support the public schools to their religion.

• Jewish Tuition Organization is another 501 C specifically to provide Scholarship or Grants to Attend Jewish Primary and Secondary Schools. http://www.jtophoenix.org/take-the-credit/

o The Executive Director at the Jewish Tuition Organization has a salary of $70.000 as of the 2013-2014 Fiscal Year. This is on Revenue of $2,922,316.

o Form 990 FY 2013 JTO: http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2014/860/970/2014-860970081-0b26cdec-9.pdf

Categories Arizona, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

DeVos is Visiting Pitbull’s Charter School Today, Which Was Investigated by Her Own Department Last Year

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2017 //
8

Jennifer Berkshire writes that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is visiting the Florida charter called SLAM started by misogynist rapper Pitbull. It is part of the controversial for-profit charter chain Academica, which was investigated last year by the UlS. Department of Education.

Berkshire interviews Preston Green about The problems of cronyism, conflicts of interest, and corruption that accompany deregulation.

Meanwhile, DeVos will bring the gospel of deregulation and choice without accountability to the converted.

A useful reminder: Join the Network for Public Education to fight DeVos’ efforts to destroy public education.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, School Choice, U.S. Department of Education
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