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Andrea Gabor: Why We Should Be “Terrified” of Eva’s Success Charters

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2017 //
22

Andrea Gabor is the Michael Bloomberg Professor of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York. She is also a deeply knowledgeable scholar of corporate education reform. She debunked the alleged “New Orleans miracle” in the New York Times.

In this post, she expresses her concern about the fawning praise for Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools and explains why Eva’s charter schools are not a model for public education.

She writes:

It is we—that is American citizens—who should be terrified because Success Academy is entirely in-sync with the Trump era. It is unapologetically anti-democratic, anti-union, segregated and relentlessly test-driven. And, it should be noted, the CMO has not yet graduated a single high school student.

At a time when we are facing an existential threat to our democracy—one enabled by a decades-long obsession with standardized tests that narrowed curriculum and helped kill off civics education—the championing of Success Academy by writer as influential as Elizabeth Green, she is the founding editor of ChalkBeat and author of Building a Better Teacher, is worrying indeed.

Let’s be clear. Judging by its roster of 46 schools, there are potentially thousands of families who are happy with the education Success Academy provides, and many more who might have been if they had won the network’s lottery—though parents have complained of the CMO’s harsh, and even abusive, ‘boot-camp-like” culture—see here and here. Indeed, hundreds, if not thousands of children have been pulled out by their families (or forced out) because of the network’s strict demands for behavioral compliance and its single-focused pursuit of high test scores…

But Green fails to address key questions about the kind of education Success kids get—and at what cost. She certainly doesn’t question whether the ever-changing, bubble-in test-scores are the best—or even a good–measure of learning. While she acknowledges giving up on democratic control of schools and districts, she never considers the historic, foundational role of public education in a democracy—and the civic cost of autocratic education systems. Nor does Green consider the successful public-school networks amid what she, rightly, describes as the crushing bureaucracy that has often stifled New York City schools—even though she has published stories about them!

Green also glosses over—and, in some cases, omits entirely—the considerable problems with the Success Academy model, including widespread creaming and credible allegations of abusive behavior toward children. Although Green’s own book points out that the best teachers have years of experience, she says not one word about Success Academy’s high teacher attrition rate. Some Success Academy schools lose over half of their teachers each year; few last more than three years.

Gabor writes that there are excellent models within public education of success, and she refers specifically to the New York Performance Standards Consortium, which has used a progressive model of education with great results.

Gabor despairs of those who think that democracy is the problem, and charter schools are the answer. To give up on democracy is to fall into the snare of the Trump agenda. Let the authoritarian leader solve all problems.

Why anyone believes that a strict authoritarian school is just right for all or most American children is a puzzle. It may be right for some, but it is not a model for public education.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization, Testing

Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker on the Pedagogy of Eva Moskowitz

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2017 //
20

Most articles about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools report on her political ambitions, her love of combat with unions and critics, her ability to attract the generous support of billionaires.

Rebecca Mead writes here about the pedagogy of Success Academy charter schools. It is a weird combination of strict discipline and progressive instruction. The question is whether these two divergent approaches can co-exist.

These are schools where student behavior is monitored closely, and the smallest infractions are punished swiftly.

Can Deweyism flourish in a repressive environment?

A Success Academy classroom is a highly controlled, even repressive, place. In some classrooms that I observed, there were even expectations for how pencils should be laid down when not in use: at Springfield Gardens, the pencils had all been placed to the right of the desks, aligned with the edge. The atmosphere can be tense, and sometimes tips over into abuse, as was documented by the Times last year. The newspaper obtained a video that had been recorded secretly by an assistant teacher. It showed a teacher berating a first-grade girl who had made an error on her math worksheet, ripping up the sheet, and sending the child to sit in a “Calm Down” chair. Moskowitz has insisted that the event was an outlier, but the teacher in the video was an experienced educator who had been considered an exemplar of the Success Academy approach. Among some Success teachers, “rip and redo” was a term of art…

At some Success Academy schools, as many as twenty per cent of students are suspended at least once during the academic year. Moskowitz calls suspension “one tool in the toolkit,” and says that most occur during the first weeks of school, when students haven’t yet assimilated the school’s expectations. “I think some people have a fairly idealized view of the kind of language that even young children can use,” she told me. “We have young children who threaten to kill other people. And, yes, they are angelic, and, yes, we love them, but I think when you are outside schooling it is hard to imagine.” According to data from the New York State Education Department, three years ago, when Success Academy Springfield Gardens was starting up and had only kindergartners and first graders, eighteen per cent of the students were suspended at least once. It’s entirely believable that lots of children between the ages of four and seven found it impossible to meet the school’s stringent behavioral expectations. But it’s also fair to wonder whether, if one out of five young children cannot comply with the rules, there might not be something wrong with the rules….

But, even as Success seeks to inculcate its students with its strict behavioral codes, Moskowitz has embraced certain teaching methods that would not seem out of place in a much more permissive environment. Surprisingly, she cites John Dewey as an important influence on her thinking, and she champions hands-on science labs, frequent field trips, and long stretches of time for independent reading. Moskowitz has recruited as a consultant Anna Switzer, the former principal of P.S. 234, a highly regarded public school, in Tribeca. Before Switzer retired from P.S. 234, in 2003, she developed a progressive social-studies curriculum in which students undertake months-long projects on, say, the native populations that originally lived on Manhattan Island. At Success Academy, Switzer has been helping to build similar “modules,” such as an intensive six-week study, in the third grade, of the Brooklyn Bridge. For kindergartners, Success offers a six-week interdisciplinary study of bread. After students read about bread and baking—the importance of bread in different global cultures; the grains that go into making various breads—they take a field trip to a bakery, and bake bread as a classroom activity. Success modules remain heavy on reading and writing, Switzer acknowledges: when the kindergartners study bread, “shared texts” play a more prominent role than they would at a very progressive public school. Still, the curriculum for these projects belies the stereotype of Success as a rigid test-prep factory. “Being a progressive pedagogue is hard,” Moskowitz told me. “Your level of preparation has to be much higher, because you have to be responsive to the kids, and you have to allow the kid to have the eureka moment, while still mastering the material.”
Adding to the difficulty of implementing such ideals is the youth and relative inexperience of Success’s staff. On average, a school loses a quarter of its teachers every year; at some schools, more than half leave. Moskowitz told me that teachers typically stay with Success for just three years. This may be consistent with the job-hopping habits of millennials, but according to veteran educators it generally takes at least three years to become a decent teacher. An unseasoned workforce is not Moskowitz’s ideal, but, given the rapid growth of Success and the network’s projected expansion, it may be a structural inevitability. The system compensates for the inexperience of many of its teachers by having a highly centralized organization. Teachers do not develop their own lesson plans; rather, they teach precisely what the network demands. Like the students in their classrooms, Success’s teachers operate within tightly defined boundaries, with high expectations and frequent assessment….

One of the core tenets of John Dewey’s educational philosophy was the belief that, in school, children learn not only the explicit content of lessons but also an implicit message about the ideal organization of society. A school, he argued, was a civilization in microcosm. “I believe that the school must represent present life—life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, or the neighborhood, or on the playground,” Dewey wrote in “My Pedagogic Creed,” which was published in 1897. The society for which the child was being prepared should not be conceived of as an abstraction from the remote future, Dewey believed. It should be replicated, in simplified form, within the structure and culture of the school itself.

“A school should be a model of what democratic adult culture is about,” Deborah Meier, a veteran progressive educator, and a theorist in the tradition of Dewey, told me. “Most of what we learn in life we learn from the company we keep. What is taught didactically is often forgotten.” A corollary of Dewey’s belief is that, if children are exposed in school to an authoritarian model of society, that is the kind of society in which they may prefer to live.

The question posed by the article, left unanswered, is whether a rigid and even repressive culture can be combined with a progressive approach to pedagogy, and whether these classrooms are the best preparation for life in a democratic society.

What can we learn from the Success Academy model? Its students get the highest test scores in the state.

This year, a Success high school, on Thirty-third Street, will produce the network’s first graduating class: seventeen students. This pioneering class originated with a cohort of seventy-three first graders.

So, seventeen out of an entering cohort of 73 first-graders survived to graduation. What does that mean?

Categories Discipline and Suspensions, Harlem Success Academy, Testing

Laura Chapman on “Educators for Excellence”

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2017 //
26

Laura Chapman writes:

“E4E requires teachers to sign a “pledge” that endorses VAM as a component of their evaluation. I do not understand why anyone would sign a pledge to any organization that billionaires fund. This is a variant of the infamous Gates Compact that called for school districts run by elected officials and with public accountability to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that would allow charter schools, privately run and often by out of state franchises, to use resources they did not pay for, occupy public school buildings, avoid the full costs of a district services such as those providing food and transportation. The charters were supposed to share their “best practices” with the district. The E4E pledge and the Gates compact are duping teachers and leaders of district in the same way…with contract-like arrangements totally out of bounds of professional work ing education.

“Imagine a hospital or medical practice that signed a ledge or a “compact” to prescribe only the drugs/treatments that a billionaire donor wanted, and under conditions where those drugs/treatments were known to be toxic for parents and the medical personnel.

“I am reminded of the pledge that I had to sign to be employed in Florida, mid-century last. The document asked if I had every been a member of the Communist Party or a member of one of the groups labelled “communist sympathizers”–with the list on legal paper, both sides, two pages two columns.

“I think the E4E pledge is intended to function much like a loyalty oath, but now it is one aspect of market-based thinking. It also draws on the actual and implied threats in a non-compete clause in some employment contracts.

“There is probably nothing that E4E can do to legally enforce compliance with the terms of the pledge–a pledge of loyalty to an agenda set by the billionaires. The whole point is to use teachers as marketers for the bad ideas of E4E and make them accomplices in their own demise.

“If you sign the pledge, you confirm that you are easy prey. Do not be duped or used.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hoax, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Yesterday in San Diego….

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2017 //
52

I spoke to the California School Boards Association yesterday, at its annual meeting in San Diego. I love San Diego. It is on the ocean and always beautiful, with a temperate climate. I had dinner the night before I spoke, with Cindy Marten, the superintendent of the San Diego district. As in the past, we had dinner at Miguel’s in Old Town. The one thing I have never been able to find in NYC is good Mexican food. When I first moved to NYC in 1960, after marrying a Native New Yorker, a friend told me that Texans in the city were always looking for Mexican food and always disappointed. In San Diego, I am never disappointed.

I spoke to a very large and friendly audience at the Convention Center. A few thousand people. I didn’t see any empty seats. When the video is released, I will post it. I was preceded by Marshall Tuck, who is running for State Superintendent and sure to have the support of the charter industry. We spoke in the Green Room, and he assured me that he would lead the fight to ban for-profit charters. The charter industry in the state is unregulated and unaccountable.

In my speech, I went through the history of NCLB and Race to the Top, and the damage they have done to students, teachers, and public schools. I then dissected the negative impacts of standardized testing and its utter uselessness as currently implemented. I pointed out that the achievement gap can never be closed with standardized tests because they are designed on a bell curve, and the bell curve never closes.

I then ticked off the many charter scandals in the state, the inevitable result of a total absence of supervision. I listed scam after scam. I reiterated the conclusions and recommendations of the NAACP report on charters.

My theme was the relationship between public schools, citizenship, and democracy.

When I concluded, I received a standing ovation.

Later, I was sitting in the lobby, waiting to meet a friend from Los Angeles and chatting with people who had heard me speak. One woman stepped up and said, “I walked out on your speech. It was too political. There’s no room for politics her.” She turned on her heel and left. I happened to be sitting with another member of the same school board, and I asked him, “What did she find ‘too political?’”

He said, “She’s a Trump supporter. You mentioned Trump in your opening remarks.”

That was true. I started by mentioning that Trump wants to cut federal funds for education by 13%, and he wants to shift $20 Billion to charters and vouchers.” These are factual statements. But the board member objected and walked out.

I can accept that people disagree. What I find hard to understand is an unwillingness to face plain and incontrovertible facts.

Anyway, I’m writing this on the airplane home. The CSBA was incredibly gracious. I met hundreds of people who are passionate about public schools. I’m looking to them to carry on the fight for better schools in their communities and at the ballot box.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Citizenship, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: Raising Test Scores Is Not the Purpose of Teaching or Education

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2017 //
11

Mercedes Schneider discusses a study that was reported in Education Week. The study concluded that teachers from alternative certification programs such as Teach for America get students to produce test scores there are “marginally” better than traditionally trained teachers.

Mercedes thought this was a dumb study, although she didn’t use that word. Producing higher scores, even “marginally” higher scores is not a good measure of teaching. Getting higher scores from students is not, she writes, the same as proving a high-quality, well-rounded education.

“The fact that the JCFS meta-analysis finds that teachers trained via alt cert programs have students with slightly higher test scores than those trained in traditional teacher prep programs does not surprise me.

“What does surprise me is that the JCFS researchers not only fail to question the validity of measuring teacher job performance using student tests; they promote the idea as a means to gather useful data.

“It also surprises me that the JCFS researchers do not question the degree to which student test scores represent authentic learning. They do comment on “student achievement in the U.S.” as “still below average, in comparison to the rest of the world,” but they do not carry that thought further and question how it is that the US continues to be a major world power despite those “still below average” international test scores….

“There is a reason that no national testing company would dare include with its student achievement tests a statement supporting the usage of these tests to gauge teacher effectiveness: Measuring teachers using student tests is not a valid use of such tests, and no testing company wants to be held liable for this invalid practice.

“Certainly the pressure is on traditional teacher training programs to focus on the outcome of teachers-in-training “raising” student test scores and to use those test score outcomes as purported evidence that the teacher-in-training is “effective.” May they never reach the ultimate cheapening of pedagogy and reduce teacher education to nothing more that test-score-raising.

“Are teacher alt cert programs little more that spindly, test-score-raising drive-thrus lacking in lasting pedagogical substance? There’s an issue worthy of research investigation.

“What price will America pay for its shortsighted, shallow love of high test scores? Also worthy of investigation– more so than that of the ever-increasing test score.”

Categories Alternate Route To Certification, Research, Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Jeb Bush’s Privatization Ball: You Are Not Invited

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2017 //
10

Jeb Bush is a seminal person in the privatization movement. He developed high-stakes testing and accountability, A-F school grades, so as to produce a steady supply of failing schools every year, ripe for privatization. He and his friends in the Florida legislature are alert to every opportunity to demean the teaching profession and to shovel public money to private interests.

Today begins the annual conference of His Foundation for Educational Excellence [for none]. Betsy DeVos was a member of the board but stepped down when she became Secretary of Education.

Review the agenda, and you will see who is on the train (it includes Clay Christensen, advocate of disruption, and Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas, independent evaluator of vouchers in Milwaukee and D.C.).

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

The Working Notes for My Speech at Oberlin Conference on the State of American Democracy

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2017 //
19

Some readers have asked for a copy of the speech that was so beautifully illustrated by the graphic posted earlier today.

I didn’t have a speech. I made notes and used them as talking points, on which I elaborated. When some in the audience (composed of progressives) insisted that charter schools were saving lives, I should have pointed out that the single biggest funder of charters is the anti-Union Walton Family Foundation, which is known for low wages and resistance to workers’ rights. About 95% of charters are non-union. The best kind of social justice that could be done by the Waltons is to pay their one million employees $15 an hour and allow them to unionize, in the stores and the charters they fund.

Here are my talking points.

“War on public sector.

“Take any public sector activity and google it with the word “privatization.”
Police, firefighters, prisons,hospitals, libraries, parks, schools—and what we once thought of as public is either privatized or under threat of privatization.

“Powerful movement—some driven by profit, some by libertarian ideology—seeks to shrink the public sector and monetize it.

“My area of specialization is education.

“There is today a full court press to privatize public education.

“How many in this room went to public schools?

“The fundamental purpose of public schools is to develop citizens, to sustain our democracy. To prepare young people to assume the duties of citizenship, to vote wisely, to understand issues, and to sit on juries.

“Our current obsession with standardized testing has corrupted the purpose of schooling. Clinton, Bush, Obama. We are now locked into a marketization approach to education: Testing, Accountability, competition, Choice. This is market-driven education, with winners and losers.

“The Bush program: NCLB. The same children were left behind.
THE Obama program: Race to the Top. Same as NCLB. Where is the top? Education is not a race.

“Test scores are fundamentally a reflection of family income and education. They are now cynically used by rightwing politicians to declare schools to be failures and set them up for privatization.

“Public education is one of the foundation elements of our democracy.
The movement to privatize public schools is a threat to democracy.

“Education Policy today is decided not by deliberation and debate but by big money.

“The Queen of Dark Money in education is now Secretary of Education.

“Betsy DeVos sees education as a Consumer good, not a civic responsibility
She has Compared choosing a school to choosing an Uber or choosing which food truck to buy lunch from. These are trivial choices, consumer choices. They are not public goods.
She really doesn’t understand the role of the public school in a community, as part of our democracy

“Dark Money, major philanthropies, and Wall Street billionaires have collaborated in attacking democratic control of schools. They have encouraged State takeovers, Charters, Vouchers. Private management. Mayoral control.

“Goals:

“School Choice, which promotes segregation by race and social class
Get rid of unions
Attacks on teaching profession.

“Venture philanthropies back Privatization: Gates, Broad, Walton, Arnold Foundation, Fisher Foundation, the Helmsley Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, the Bloomberg Foundation, Dell Foundation, Jonathan Sackler, many more

“Dark Money funneled to state and local elections— by such groups as: Education Reform Now, Stand for Children, Families for Excellent Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, the Walton family. All have the same goal: Privatization.

“Half the states now have vouchers for private schools, enacted by the legislature, despite the fact that vouchers have always been defeated in state referenda.

“Betsy DeVos paid for a voucher referendum in Michigan in 2000. It was defeated overwhelmingly. So Michigan went for unbridled Choice with charter schools, no district lines. 80% of the charters in Michigan operate for profit, more than any other state. Michigan’s standing on national tests dropped from the middle of the pack, to the bottom, between 2003 and 2013. Detroit is overrun with charters yet it continues to be the lowest scoring district in the nation.

“Milwaukee has public schools, charters, and vouchers, and all three sectors are low performing.

“Demand for vouchers is actually very low: Indiana, only 3% use them, less in Louisiana. Only 6% in charters. Yet every dollar for vouchers and charters is taken away from the schools that educate the great majority of children.

“Katherine Stewart in the current American Prospect: “Proselytizers and Profiteers.” Religious extremists in the voucher movement made “useful idiots of the charter movement.” Community public schools replaced by Corporate charter chains. Some of the biggest charter chains are owned and run by evangelicals and fundamentalists.

“The real Dark Money wants vouchers, religious schools, homeschooling, charters, anything but public schools.

“DeVos, American Federation for Children
Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity (Libre Initiative) (AZ referendum)
ALEC— model legislation for charters, vouchers, ending certification, breaking unions.

“Public schools struggle where there is high poverty.

“Income inequality is the scourge of our society.

“Privatizing public schools won’t solve poverty.

“Hopeful signs:

*Virginia election: pro-public schools, many of the winning candidates are teachers

*Douglas County, CO, rebuff to vouchers

*upcoming referendum in AZ on vouchers, which Koch brothers want to knock off the ballot

*In 20 State referenda, vouchers have lost every single time.

*support for charters dropped from 51% to 39% in the past year, among both Democrats and Republicans, largely in response to scandals, prosecutions, and also NAACP criticism of charters.

“The origin of school choice was in segregated states fighting the Brown decision.

“Betsy DeVos is such a polarizing figure that she reminds us of the importance of public schools.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing, Unions, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Helen F. Ladd: The Failure of NCLB

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2017 //
12

Professor Helen F. Ladd is professor of public policy and economics at Duke University.

In this paper, she analyzes the merits and demerits f No Child Left Behind and concludes that it failed in reaching the ambitious (and unrealistic) goal that all children would be proficient by 2014.

She calls NCLB “a deeply flawed federal policy.”

She writes:

“NCLB relied instead almost exclusively on tough test-based incentives. This approach would only have made sense if the problem of low-performing schools could be attributed primarily to teacher shirking, as some people believed, or to the problem of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” as suggested by President George W. Bush. But in fact low achievement in such schools is far more likely to reflect the limited capacity of such schools to meet the challenges that children from disadvantaged backgrounds bring to the classroom. Because of these challenges, schools serving concentrations of low-income students face greater tasks than those serving middle class students. The NCLB approach of holding schools alone responsible for student test score levels while paying little if any attention to the conditions in which learning takes place is simply not fair either to the schools or the children and was bound to be unsuccessful.”

I hope that Professor Ladd applies her sharp analytical skills to reviewing Race to the Top.

At some point, we can begin to calculate the billions spent for 13 years of punitive test-based accountability.

Categories Accountability, Failure, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Jeff Bryant: Northam Won By Repudiating Not Only DeVos But Obama’s Education Policies

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2017 //
73

Jeff Bryant sees the Virginia election, as do I, as an affirmation of a progressive approach to education.

Education is an important issue to parents everywhere and is the biggest item in state budgets. Taxpayers want to know that their money is well spent.

Northam ran against the DeVos privatization policy. But he also ran against Obama’s policies of charter schools and high-stakes Testing.

He points the way to victory for Democrats in other state races.

Support a strong and much improved public school system that seeks to meet the needs of all children.

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

Jeff Bryant: Democrats Will Continue to Lose if They Continue to Trash Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2017 //
75

Over the past decade, the Democratic party has lost over 1,000 state elections–for governor and legislature. Why? This period of decline coincides with Democrats’ embrace of the Republican philosophy of school choice, closing public schools, bashing teachers, and embracing test-based accountability. If Democrats act like Republicans, why vote for them? If Arne Duncan looks and sounds like Betsy DeVos (with the sole exception of vouchers), why vote Democratic?

Jeff Bryant makes the case here the Democrats are doomed if they can’t support public schools, which are a bedrock democratic institution.

Jeff reviews a “Third Way” document that sounds very much like the Duncan-DeVos agenda for education.

“Here we go again,” was what many left-leaning folks likely felt after seeing a recent announcement about a new effort by wealthy donors to rescue the Democratic Party from its electoral doldrums. Backed by $20 million, the “New Blue” campaign, coming from politically centrist think tank Third Way, promises to lead the party out of the “wilderness” of its minority status to a pathway to “achieving progressive majorities up and down the ballot.”

But Third Way’s offer sounds more like a continuation of the old losing ways. This is especially true on the issue of education where Third Way continues to bang the drum for a failed agenda that voters mostly reject.

The Third Way is Duncan-DeVos all the way:

In its education manifesto “The New Normal in K-12 Education,” Third Way declares that the contentious arguments over important education matters — such as charter schools, standardized testing, and how to recruit and retain teachers – are essentially over and that those who are “fighting in the trenches” just need to get with the program.

The “program,” Third Way advances sounds very much like what’s been in place for the past 15 years, especially during the Obama administration under the leadership of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The title of Third Way’s document is borrowed from Duncan’s own words to describe the need for schools to go along to get along with the “new normal” of Republican fiscal austerity coupled with ever harsher accountability mandates and more competition from charter schools.

Duncan’s calls for higher class sizes and leaner compensation for teachers didn’t sit well with parents then, and Third Way’s support for charter schools, more standardized testing, and cuts for experienced teachers is not popular now.

Support for charter schools has dropped by double digit percentages among Democrats and Republicans, according to a recent poll. Another recent survey found the public is also generally opposed to using voucher money to send students to private schools, an idea pushed by current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that Third Way completely ignores (maybe because it’s too divisive). That survey also found most of voters don’t find test scores to be the best indicators of school quality. Lack of funding continues to be the issue most often cited by voters as the biggest problem schools face. But Third Way says nothing about that either.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing
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