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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

NEWS: Working Families Party Sweeps Milwaukee School Board Elections!

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2017 //
20

This is one of the very first reactions to the Trump-DeVos (and Scott Walker) agenda to destroy public education.

RESISTANCE! It works, especially at the ballot box.

​
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 4, 2017
CONTACT: Marina Dimitrijevic

STUDENTS, WISCONSIN WORKING FAMILIES PARTY SWEEP MILWAUKEE; STATEWIDE EDUCATION ELECTIONS

Milwaukee board tilts to public education majority opposing corporate operators; profiteering

MILWAUKEE – The Milwaukee Board of School Directors now has a pro-public education majority with tonight’s election of all Wisconsin Working Families Party-endorsed candidates. Tony Baez, who is the new District Six representative on the board, along with incumbents Larry Miller and Annie Woodward, can now begin to eradicate the corporate profiteering that is draining resources from our schools while failing to deliver quality education for our children. Together with other advocates on the board, they have the ability to transform how education is delivered in Milwaukee. Working Families Party also supported Tony Evers in his successful run for a third term as the state’s superintendent of public instruction.

“This election is part of the resistance to the dangerous troika of Donald Trump, Scott Walker, and Betsy DeVos. If Wisconsin Working Families and our partners, including the teacher’s union, had not been involved, corporate interests and privatizers could have succeeded in tipping the balance of the school board, carrying out the Trump agenda and destroying our public schools,” said Marina Dimitrijevic, executive director of Wisconsin Working Families Party. “While the anti-public school forces recruited and funded candidates, they lost because voters want quality public schools for all students. We are building a template and record of taking on corporate operators and winning.”

Wisconsin Working Families Party worked for months to elect a slate of public school champions who will advocate for more resources for our school system, fight off unaccountable voucher expansion, and put forth an aggressive policy agenda that trusts teachers, invests in our student’s success, and adds to the quality of life for working families in Milwaukee.

“The Wisconsin Working Families Party saw that a District Six victory could be key to creating a pro-public school majority on the school board as well as having a dedicated voice for Latino students. They recruited me to run, supporting me throughout the election progress. I’m proud to work with Working Families because we share a vision and a drive to support and deliver a quality education to all of the students in our diverse city,” said Dr. Tony Baez, the newly elected District Six member of the board. “Thanks to Working Families’ campaign support and community organizing, we’ve turned the tide in Milwaukee against privatization and charter schools.”

Beyond assisting the candidates, Wisconsin Working Families Party mobilized volunteers and members using grassroots people power to help our endorsed candidates win. More than 60 people volunteered for several Saturday canvasses, contacting more than 2,000 voters through canvassing or phone calls. The organization also sent mailers to educate voters about the candidates and the issues in the campaign.

“Wisconsin Working Families Party recognized that this election posed a unique opportunity for change on the school board, held onto that vision, and ran until we won,” said Kim Schroeder, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association. “This election is a clear repudiation of the vouchers and corporatization that have drained out schools and failed our students. We have a template of how to organize and win.”

This election marks the second successful Wisconsin Working Families Party campaign to elect a pro-public education majority to school boards. In April, 2016, Wisconsin WFP worked with the Racine Education Association to elect eight of nine candidates to the Racine United School Board after Wisconsin’s legislative Republicans forced through a restructure of Racine’s school district governance.

Costly experiments with vouchers and charter schools have not yielded promised results. A study by the Public Policy Forum found that Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination test scores for voucher students lag behind those of MPS students, particularly for voucher students who attend predominantly voucher-funded schools. And schools with high concentrations of voucher students have lower WKCE test scores than their public school counterparts.

###

The Working Families Party is a grassroots political organization. With chapters in Wisconsin and a dozen other states, as well as a membership that spans the nation, the Working Families Party works to advance public policies that make a difference in the lives of working people, like raising the minimum wage, stopping bad trade deals, taking on Wall Street, tackling climate change, and combating racial injustice. Working Families brings these issues to the ballot box and the halls of government at the federal, state and local levels.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Milwaukee, Resistance, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Michael Petrilli: The Three “Miracles” Trump Needs to Make a Federal School Choice Program

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2017 //
29

Mike Petrilli wrote an enlightening post about the hurdles that the Trump administration faces in trying to enact a $20 billion school choice program. He says that the Trump administration will need three “miracles” to make good on his promise. Mike, of course, is a strong supporter of choice and continues to believe despite 25 years of evidence that choice itself does not produce different results from public schools. Some of that evidence was sponsored by his own organization (the Ohio voucher study that shows kids actually losing ground as a result of shifting to private schools). His discussion of the federal legislative process and the politics of change are worthy of a read.

Miracle number-one is getting a federal tax credit enacted in the first place. This feels much less achievable after the health-care debacle in Congress last week. It was always going to be hard. We know from past Senate votes on private school choice that the numbers simply aren’t there. Virtually every Democrat is a guaranteed “no” (save, perhaps, for Cory Booker); too few Republicans are a sure “yes.” Rural-state Republicans simply don’t have the incentive to buck their education establishments to support a policy that will bring very little bacon back to their own communities.

The conventional wisdom was that the tax credit plan would be attached to a whopping multi-dimensional tax-reform bill, which voucher-squeamish Republicans would vote for because they wanted the other goodies included in the package. (Using the legislative process called reconciliation would make such a bill filibuster-proof, so no Democrats would be needed.)

After last week, however, Republicans of all stripes know that they can sink the President’s agenda by holding out for what they want. He is in a much more precarious political position than most members of Congress are. It will only take a handful of GOP Senators demanding the removal of the tax credit/voucher initiative from the tax bill for the Administration to cave. Though less likely, something of the sort could also happen again in the House.

If somehow Team Trump overcomes those seemingly insurmountable barriers, miracle number-two will be finding the sweet spot between too much federal regulation and too little. There are massive risks on both sides of that equation.

I would have added one more twist to the story he tells here: the question of where the $20 billion that Trump has promised will come from. Will it mean turning all current federal aid programs (Title 1, special education, etc.) into an unrestricted block grant? If so, the opposition from the groups (civil rights organizations, disability organizations) currently protecting the sanctity of these programs will be fierce.

Categories School Choice, Trump

Trump-DeVos Suck Up Watch: PBS Is Showing a Series Attacking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2017 //
42

Laura Chapman wrote the following expose of a new series that will appear on PBS. It must be public television’s effort to curry favor with the Trump administration, as it reflects the extremist agenda of Betsy DeVos, who is intent on creating a free market in publicly-funded schooling. Since Trump’s budget has proposed to eliminate funding for public television, this series may be a demonstration that even PBS will give a showcase to libertarians who want to destroy public institutions.

More than ten years ago, PBS ran a four-part series called SCHOOL, produced by Sarah Patton, Sarah Mondale, and Vera Aronow. It was a history of public education that documented the role of public education in welcoming generations of immigrants and leading the way to a better society. For the past four years the same team has been creating a one-hour documentary exposing the corporate assault on public education. They have struggled to find funding, but they are near completion. The very least that PBS could do to compensate for featuring a one-sided rightwing diatribe against public education would be to show “Backpack Full of Cash,” which portrays the bitter forces of reaction that seek to destroy one of our most treasured democratic institutions, public schools funded by all and open to all.

It is ironic and sad that public television would lend credibility to an attack on public education. Encouraging the forces intent on destroying everything “public” will not save public television.

Chapman writes:

“I just posted about the SCHOOL, INC. television programs on PBS. I did not do enough research. Here is what you really should know about the programs.

“These programs are pure propaganda for so-called free market education. They have been produced courtesy of Free to Choose, a promoter of all things that the late Milton and Rosa Friedman would love.

“The PBS website says that funding for these programs has been provided by the Texas-based Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Foundation. See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Rose-Marie_and_Jack_R._Anderson_Foundation
The Anderson Foundation s one of several ultra conservative funders, but the series is also sell-funded by being part of the Free to Choose Network. That Network is a non-profit set up by the one of the Executive Producers Bob Chitester

“Bob Chitester is chairman, president and CEO of Free To Choose Network, a 501-c-3 public foundation housing Free To Choose Media, an award-winning, global entertainment company which produces and distributes thought-provoking public television programs and series. In 1977, Chitester and economist Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, undertook a film project which became Free To Choose, an award-winning PBS TV series and an international best-selling book based on the series. You can learn more about the connection of this non-profit to the Friedman doctrine of market-based education here and elsewhere on the internet. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Free_to_Choose_Network

“Among the others responsible for the series is Andrew Coulson. Coulson is the Creator, Writer, and Director. His bio, posted on PBS, says Coulson studied mathematics and computer science at McGill University and worked as a Microsoft software engineer. In 1994, he became ” troubled by the fact that teaching and learning were being left behind by the relentless progress in other fields. His book, Market Education: The Unknown History, received endorsements from Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, Harvard political scientist Paul Peterson, and University of Chicago education psychologist Herbert Walberg. His 2009 paper for the peer-reviewed Journal of School Choice was the most comprehensive review of the worldwide scientific literature comparing alternative education systems. In 2011 he conducted a statistical study titled “The Other Lottery: Are Philanthropists Backing the Best Charter Schools?” Coulson has ….testified before the United States House and Senate on the state of American education and co-authored amicus briefs for the United States Supreme Court. He was senior fellow in education policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute, and contributed chapters to books by the Hoover Institution and Canada’s Fraser Institute. Prior to his death in February 2016, Coulson made arrangements to ensure School, Inc. would be completed for broadcast television.”

“There are many reasons why I support my local PBS broadcasters. This programing is not one of them.

“Overall, I think that PBS has done a miserable job of seeking spokespersons for public education, especially parents, students, administrators and politicians. Diane Ravitch has appeared on Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers and a few other programs, but I have seen no real coverage of the issues facing public education right now.

“I wonder if PBS scheduled this series to coincide with the Betsy DeVos/Trump agenda that will pour money into vouchers and set in motion market-based education as if the new norm for American education. I wonder if Milton and Rosa Friedman smiling. Did PBS intend to insult many of their supporters, including me, by scheduling this series now?

“Please be aware that this PBS series is a propaganda machine for market-based education. The programs are not presented in a context that makes that obvious.

“I intend to let my local PBS stations know that this series looks like a well-planned and perfectly timed promo for the DeVos/Trump agenda.

“I will also ask for them to take affirmative steps to support public education and the public schools in their viewing areas.

“PBS seems to be satisfied with educational programming for use by teachers and cartoony programs for children. Sesame Street is hosted after it has made money elsewhere. Unless I am mistaken, Trump’s proposed budget for PBS will bring a 20% cut, not total elimination.

“PBS needs all the support it can get. This is not a way to support the public schools who serve the majority of our students and with uncommon ingenuity and devotion in the midst of budget cuts and unwarranted, unsupported attacks from billionaires, including the funders of these programs.”

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