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Michael Fiorillo: The Not-So-Secret Agenda of the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
12

Reader Michael Fiorello commented on an article about charter schools. It is no accident that the Walton family (the richest family in America, thanks to Walmart) is spending $200 million annually on charter schools. It is not about children; they could do a lot with $200 million to help children in their home state of Arkansas. They could build health clinics or provide nurses for every school in a poor community. They could pay their parents $15 an hour. But, no, they want charter schools, and they will give $200 million a year for five years (that is $1 billion) to create new charter schools. Why? They hate unions. As Michael notes below, more than 90% of charters are non-union.

He writes:

There are issues of control woven throughout the charter issue, separate from the looting they are prone to.

There is the desire to have iron control of the labor force, explaining why charters are over ninety percent non-union: the desire, as seen virtually everywhere else in the labor markets, to replace full-time employment with temporary/ contingent labor, the desire to pay teachers less, and the desire to have them under the thumb of management, which is much more difficult to maintain in a union, career-oriented environment where institutional memory has value. Thus, it’s no accident that charters have such extreme staff turnover, and often have teachers working from scripted lessons. As has occurred in so many other industries, the de-skilling of the workforce is a management axiom.

There is also a social engineering aspect of charter schools, especially prevalent among the “no excuses” chains (KIPP, Success Academies, Uncommon Schools, et. al.), which are obsessed with herding and controlling children in punitive, Skinner Box- type environments. It’s about training children, not educating them, to be docile and obedient, no matter the oppressiveness of the environment, prepping them for the lack of autonomy they’ll face in the adult workforce, and preventing them from having even an inkling that another world is possible.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Unions

Betsy and Randi Visit a Rural School District in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2017 //
47

Betsy DeVos and Randi Weingarten visited the public schools of rural Van Wert, Ohio. Randi wanted Betsy to see how important federal dollars are to a good public school. Betsy went along and got a promise from Randi to tour a school of choice with her.

Education Week says the “rifts” between them remain. Yeah, a rift the size of the Grand Canyon is not likely to close no matter how many schools they visit together or how often they meet.

Betsy’s spokesperson says she is not anti-public school. She just pours millions into campaigns of state and local candidates who support charters and vouchers, not public schools.

This effort to find common ground between polar opposites strikes me as pointless. It would be like bringing a devout Orthodox Jew to a Roman Catholic Church in hopes of changing his mind, or bringing a devout Roman Catholic to a synagogue and expecting to find common ground. Or hoping that a Bosox fan would be converted by a visit to the Yankees’ dugout. C’mon!

The New York Times’ account has this perceptive comment:

“Van Wert educators said they believed their biggest threat was school choice. An expanded voucher program would be “potentially catastrophic” for the district’s finances, said Mike Ruen, the district’s treasurer.
About 400 students now take advantage of a state open-enrollment policy, which Ms. DeVos endorsed during her visit. It allows students to attend an out-of-district school and take $6,000 in state per-pupil funding with them.
Most of them attend schools in a neighboring suburb. About 20 students are enrolled in an online charter school that has a 39 percent graduation rate. And a local vocational school takes 80 percent of the funding for each student who transfers there.

“Only one private school competes directly with Van Wert public schools: a small Catholic elementary school in town that the public school system provides special education services to, mostly at no charge. A Catholic high school 15 miles away is less of a draw, but could become one if parents receive vouchers. “I don’t think people are against choice,” Mr. Amstutz said. “But when you talk about expansion, taking money away from public schools, it gives people heartburn.”

Betsy DeVos will not change her mind about the importance of giving taxpayer dollars to every family to choose a charter school, a religious school, home schooling, a cyber charter, or whatever other option they want. They can even choose a public school. To the extent she is able, she will divert federal funds away from public schools to the other choices. She won’t resist Trump’s deep budget cuts. This visit will not transform her. It will not make her more attentive to the needs of the children in public schools. No doubt, she feels sorry for them because they are in public schools.

Randi will not stop being a union leader because of visiting a non-union charter or voucher school. She won’t stop believing in the importance or value of public schools. She won’t become a supporter of DeVos’s privatization agenda or Trump’s budget cuts.

Sorry, friends, but I don’t see the point of seeking “common ground.” There is none.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Unions, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Betsy and Randi Visit Rural School in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2017 //
32

Will Betsy DeVos have a better understanding of public schools after visiting one? Or is she measuring it as a potential charter school?

DeVos, Weingarten lay down arms for first-ever joint school visit

https://www.politicopro.com/education/story/2017/04/devos-weingarten-lay-down-arms-for-rare-joint-visit-to-ohio-public-schools-155446

DeVos, Weingarten lay down arms for first-ever joint school visit By Caitlin Emma

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and American Federation of Teachers Presidents Randi Weingarten — longtime combatants in the nation’s school wars — will converge Thursday on a small Ohio school district deep in Trump country where amid forced pleasantries, they’ll seek to score political points.

It’s a schoolyard stare-down of sortsfor the two veterans, who are making a first-ever joint visit to several public schools in Van Wert, a rural community in northwest Ohio that went overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump.

Weingarten extended the invitation to DeVos in February with little expectation the secretary would accept after the teachers unions’ concerted efforts to sink her nomination. DeVos called her bluff, perhaps because she is under pressure to show her commitment to public schools and appearing in a midwestern Republican stronghold plays to her strengths.

The condition was that Weingarten must visit a still unidentified school of “choice” with DeVos. That visit hasn’t been scheduled yet.
“These women are mortal political enemies, bent on destroying the other’s education agenda through deployment of vast financial resources,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center.

“But it’s necessary for Weingarten to find favor with the Education Department,” he said. “And it can only help DeVos if she’s seen as the secretary for all schools and not just charters and private schools.”

In fact, the joint tour allows both women to press points that are critically important to them, said several policy watchers. DeVos can show rural Republicans and Democrats that she supports all schools, not just charter and private schools. Weingarten — who once stood next to a protester costumed as a grizzly bear to mock DeVos remarks about the need for guns in schools — can show she is extending an olive branch to the secretary even as she champions public education.

Thomas Toch, an education policy expert at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and founder of the think tank FutureEd, suggested that few people in the public education sector “are still listening to DeVos and one might argue this is an attempt to address that problem.”

“Until now, she has been reluctant to say anything other than, ‘I’m for good public schools, good charter schools, good private schools.’ She repeats that frame over and over and hasn’t been willing to go beyond that. … She’s going to have to go much farther than she has to date in terms of embracing public education.”

From Weingarten’s perspective, if DeVos makes a strong commitment to public education standing next to the union leader, she might be able to say she helped DeVos soften her stance, Toch said.

Weingarten said in an interview that she hopes the trip will give DeVos a chance to learn what is working in public schools, and not just a photo opportunity. She said she also wants her to understand how Trump’s budget blueprint, which would slash the Education Department’s $68 billion budget by 13.5 percent, would hurt public schools.
“This is an area that voted for Trump, but they love their public schools and they’re really upset about the cuts to education and this polarization about public schooling,” Weingarten said. “They’re wary about [DeVos’] policies and they should be wary about her policies. They’re an attempt to dismantle, defund and destabilize public schools.”

A spokesman for the Education Department declined POLITICO’s request for an interview with DeVos. But in a written statement shared with The Blade in Toledo, DeVos said that “every parent should be able to send their children to a school that meets their unique needs, and for many parents, that is a public school. I support and celebrate all great schools.”

Kaleigh Lemaster, executive director for School Choice Ohio, a statewide choice advocacy group, said she hoped the focus of the trip would be on children, rather than a particular education option.

“We’re happy to see Secretary DeVos and Randi Weingarten visiting great public schools, charter schools and private schools because we believe that every family should be able to choose the best educational environment for their children,” Lemaster said. “This is a great opportunity for them to talk about Ohio’s schools and hopefully find agreement on what should be at the center of all discussions on education policy — the children.”

Van Wert Superintendent Ken Amstutz said he’s eager to have his school district “pull these two people together,” although he noted the Education Department has largely been in the driver’s seat when it comes to planning the visit.

DeVos and Weingarten are expected to spend the day visiting Van Wert’s high school, elementary school and early childhood center, where they’ll hear from administrators, teachers and students. They’ll hear about programs that provide students with social services and food on the weekends when they otherwise might go hungry. And they’re expected to visit with fifth graders and a high school robotics class.

Amstutz said his district has struggled financially, but he’s eager to show how teachers and students are doing innovative things with limited resources — for instance, offering a high school robotics club, which won a regional contest earlier this year.

“A lot of good things are happening in public education. I think the blinders are on and I’d just like to have her open her eyes and take a look at what’s going on,” he said of DeVos. “Maybe Van Wert will be the starting point of where this conversation takes place between Betsy DeVos and proponents of public education.”

As for the people of Van Wert, Republican Party Chairman Thad Lichtensteiger, a farmer, said he believes his neighbors will give DeVos “a fair shake.”

“Van Wert is a really conservative place,” he said. “We’re going to weigh the issues on their own merits, rather than say Trump is evil and paint anybody associated with him with that broad brush.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Ohio, Unions

California Teachers Form Statewide Alliance to Fight for Real School Reform

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2017 //
29

Teachers organizations from across the state of California have formed an alliance to fight for genuine School reform.

CALIFORNIA: 8 Teacher Union Locals Unite Against the Trump/DeVos Agenda, Fight for Public Schools through Collective Bargaining, Community Power

United around common struggles and a shared vision, The California Alliance for Community Schools is a groundbreaking coalition of educator unions from 8 of the largest cities in California, representing more than 50,000 educators. The alliance officially launches tomorrow, Thursday March 23 and includes: Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association, Oakland Education Association, San Bernardino Teachers Association, San Jose Teachers Association, San Diego Education Association, United Educators of San Francisco, United Teachers Los Angeles and United Teachers Richmond.

All 8 unions are uniting around statewide demands, through local bargaining as well as legislation, for more resources in schools, charter school accountability, lower class sizes and other critical improvements. Most of the locals are in contract bargaining or are interested in organizing around these key issues. The alliance plans to expand to include other labor and community partners.

As California faces a statewide teacher shortage, school districts issued more than 1,750 pink slips for educators last week. Trump released his proposed federal budget, which slashes funds for disadvantaged children, afterschool programs, teacher trainings and other vital services. Trump wants to spend $1.4 billion to expand vouchers, including private schools, and would pay for it from deep cuts to public schools. Voters in California have twice rejected voucher plans.

“We are reaching a state of emergency when it comes to our public schools,” said Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman, an Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment member and charter school parent since 1994. “We must support and reinvest in public education. I join educators in the fight for well-resourced, transparent, accountable, and democratically run schools, at the bargaining table and beyond.”

All 8 unions will use the power of bargaining and statewide organizing to fight for:

Lower class sizes

Resources for high-needs schools and students

Shared decision-making at local school sites, critical to student success

Charter school accountability

Safe and supportive school environments

The first significant step is the launch of the bargaining platform and petition, which includes statewide demands and specific contract demands for each local union. The petition reads:

“As educators in large urban school districts across California we face many of the same challenges. We are particularly concerned about disinvestment in schools and communities, especially those with the greatest needs; educational policies that discourage authentic teaching and learning; and the rapid expansion of privately managed and unregulated charter schools at the expense of our neighborhood schools.”

We applaud the work of these unions, who are fighting back the Trump/DeVos agenda and standing together with their students and communities to reinvest in public education.

To find out more, contact each union for more information:

Anaheim: Grant Schuster, CTA State Council Representative on ASTA Executive Board, schusters3@charter.net, (562) 810-4035

Los Angeles: Anna Bakalis, UTLA Communications Director mailto:abakalis@utla.net, (213)305-9654

Oakland: Trish Gorham, OEA President, oaklandeapresident@yahoo.com, (510) 763-4020,

San Diego: Jonathon Mello, mello_j@sdea.net, (619) 200-0010

San Francisco: Mathew Hardy, Communications Director, mhardy@uesf.org, (415) 513-3179

Richmond: Demetrio Gonzalez, UTR President, president@unitedteachersofrichmond.com, (760) 500-7044

San Jose: Jennifer Thomas, SJTA President, jthomas@sanjoseta.org, (408) 694-7393

San Bernardino: Ashley Alcalá, SBTA President, ashleysbta@gmail.com, (909) 881-6755
—

THE CALIFORNIA ALLIANCE FOR COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
We are a coalition of California parents, community, educators, and students united in our commitment to transforming public education in ways that contribute to a more just, equitable, and participatory society.

Together, we are fighting for well-resourced, community-centered, publicly funded and democratically run schools that prepare our students with the intellectual, social, and emotional skills necessary for success in a changing and often turbulent world.

Our Platform for The Schools All Our Students Deserve

1. Low Class Sizes: Quality instruction for all our students depends on limiting the number of students in a class. Lowering class sizes improves teaching and learning conditions leading to growth in student achievement and positive social interactions.

2. Adequate Resources for All Schools with Additional Resources for Our High Needs Schools and Students: All schools and students deserve adequate levels of funding and support, including but not limited to quality early childhood education programs, lower class size, lower Special Education caseloads, additional educators, after-school tutoring, counselors, nurses, certificated librarians, and other resources to address our students’ academic, emotional, and social needs. Schools and students with the highest need should receive additional funding and support. Site based governing bodies consisting of democratically selected staff, parents, students, and community partners should be responsible for deciding how such additional supports are to be used.

3. Shared Decision-Making at Our Local Schools: The needs of a school are best addressed by the members of the school community. Site based governance by democratically selected stakeholder representatives is a critical component for school and student success. Districts and unions should provide joint trainings to fully empower these bodies.

4. Charter Schools Accountable to Our Communities: All schools receiving public money must be held accountable and be locally and publicly controlled. Unfortunately, many privately run, under-regulated charter schools drain needed resources from neighborhood schools, are not fully transparent in their operations, and fail to provide equal access to all students. Common sense standards and adequate oversight are necessary. New charter schools should not be approved without ensuring accountability and transparency and without a comprehensive assessment of the economic and educational impact on existing public schools.

5. Safe and Supportive School Environments: All students at publicly funded schools, regardless of ethnicity, gender, economic status, religion, sexual orientation, and immigration status, have a right to an academically stimulating, emotionally and socially nurturing, and culturally responsive environment that recognizes and addresses the many stresses that affect student performance and behavior. Adequate trainings and supports for restorative justice programs must be provided as an alternative to punitive disciplinary programs.

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, California, Class size, Early Childhood Education, Funding, Real Education, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Unions

Sarah Jaffe: Organizing to Hit Trump’s Corporate Cabinet Where It Hurts

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2017 //
3

Sarah Jaffe interviews labor organizers in a group called the HedgeClippers who are mobilizing against the corporations backing the Trump regime.

One of their campaigns is to organize bank workers. Bank workers in other countries are unionized. Why not in the U.S. as well?

The Hedge Clippers campaign looks at hedge funds and private equity, thus hedge clippers clipping their power. It basically says, “These are the finance capitalists that are driving political and economic inequality.” What we have done is both deep dive reports and exposés, plus lots of direct action to directly confront them. Our little joke is that we have either been incredibly prescient or Trump picked his entire Cabinet by looking at who we have been fighting. Pre-Trump winning, we were saying whether it is Goldman Sachs or Steven Schwarzman from Blackstone, these are the people who are really running the government. Lots of folks are laughing saying we are a conspiracy cult or something. Then, when Trump got elected, he put all of these people directly in charge. It is sort of an irony that Trump’s election was probably the best testimony to the idea that whether it’s Democrats or Republicans, a player is really who is running the show.

We are doing a lot of work on mapping the different Trump worlds. There are the people, like Steven Mnuchin and the Goldman Sachs folks, that are [working] directly in the administration and we map all the benefits that their companies will reap from that. Then, there are the Steve Schwarzmans and the Carl Icahns and this other set of players that run committees for him. So, they can essentially create government policies that will further enrich their companies. Then, there is a third set of people like John Paulson, who made all his money in the housing crisis, who may not be directly working for Trump, but who supported him and is now going to reap the benefits. For example, he is heavily invested in Puerto Rico.

What we have been looking at is, how do you identify the corporate collaborators with Trump, and then look at ways to start putting pressure on them so that they pay a price for the fact that they are in bed with Trump.

Categories Billionaires, Resistance, Trump, Unions

Glen Ford Explains Corey Booker, Howard Fuller, and the Corporate Assault on Public Education

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2017 //
16

Journalist Glen Ford explains and eviscerates the corporate education movement. He shows how black leaders like Corey Booker joined the rightwing effort to destroy the key pillars of progressivism: unions and public education. He shows the important role of Michael Joyce of the Bradley Foundation in figuring out how to use black leaders to achieve far-right goals.

Glen Ford is editor of the Black Agenda Reprt.

This is a brilliant analysis of the co-opting of black politicians by the corporate movement.

Categories Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Unions

Lily Eskelsen Garcia Writes a Letter to Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2017 //
7

Betsy DeVos called Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of the National Education Association. She said, let’s talk. Lily wrote her a letter laying out some conditions before talking or meeting.

Read Lily’s letter here.

http://lilysblackboard.org/2017/02/betsy-devos-called-sent-letter/

Here are her conditions:

“It’s important for educators, parents, and communities to know where you stand on some of the most critical work of the federal Department of Education. We must ask you to give us the substantive answers that we did not hear you give to the senators at your hearing on issues critical to our students:

1. Do you agree that all schools receiving public dollars must be held to the same accountability and transparency standards?

2. Will you agree not to privatize funding for Special Education of Title I?

3. Will you stand with educators and protect our most vulnerable students from discrimination, including LGBT students, immigrant students, students of color, girls and English language learners?

4. Will you focus, as educators are focused, on the civil rights of all children, regardless of their ZIP code, by challenging the inequities so many face in equal access to programs, services and support?”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Privatization, Unions

Peter Greene: Here Comes Another Union-Busting Lawsuit

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2017 //
27

Peter Greene writes about the filing of another lawsuit in California whose purpose is to defund teachers’ unions.

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-new-friedrichs-anti-union-case.html

Last time around, it was the Friedrichs’ case, which lost on appeal, went to the U.S. Supreme Court, and ended in a 4-4 tie because Justice Scalia died.

The Yohn case is a rehash of Freidrichs with new plaintiffs and the expectation that Trump’s justice might decide the Court in favor of Yohn.

Greene writes:

“The argument is unvarnished baloney:

[According to counsel for the plaintiffs:] The Supreme Court has recognized the grave First Amendment problems that arise when a state coerces political speech. In 2014, Justice Alito observed in Harris v. Quinn, that, “Agency-fee provisions unquestionably impose a heavy burden on the First Amendment interests of objecting employees.” As he explained, it is a “bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”

Greene says:

“Cool! May I please have a refund on all the taxes I paid to support pointless wars and the actions of various government agencies with which I disagree?

“The goal here is simple– give the union less money. It’s a popular idea– in fact, some legislators are trying to legislate the same thing in PA right now.

“The goal here is to establish a whole class of free riders– teachers who don’t support their local union, but still benefit from the collective bargaining process (where it still exists) as well as the representation that the union is legally required to provide these folks should they ever get in trouble. It’s like having the government require you to drive your neighbor to work every day, but forbidding you to ever ask him to chip in for gas–oh, and if he needs to be taken way out of the way for an appointment, you have to drive him there, too. Oh– and all the way there, you have to listen to how you’re oppressing him by giving him a ride.”

Plaintiff Yohn wants the benefits of collective bargaining, but doesn’t want to pay the union that negotiates for his benefits. If he wins, there will be many more like him, free-riding.

You can be sure that this suit will be well-funded. Certain elites won’t rest until the union movement is gone, a relic of the past.

Categories Billionaires, Unions

DeVos Family Values: Money, Power, and Rightwing Politics

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2016 //
17

Two years ago, Mother Jones published a lengthy and excellent article about the DeVos family, how they became billionaires, and how they turned Michigan into a “right to work” state.

 

They are “the new Kochs,” determined to crush the left, especially labor unions and public education.

 

“THE DEVOSES sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes—think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures. “There’s not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn’t known the DeVoses,” says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

 

“Nowhere has the family made its presence felt as it has in Michigan, where it has given more than $44 million to the state party, GOP legislative committees, and Republican candidates since 1997. “It’s been a generational commitment,” Anuzis notes. “I can’t start to even think of who would’ve filled the void without the DeVoses there….”

 

Forbes ranks the DeVos family at #60 of the richest 400 families in America. They are noted for their generosity to Christian and conservative causes.

 

In selecting Betsy DeVos for the role of Education Secretary, Trump has chosen someone who looks on public schools with contempt. She will use her influence to harm public education and the teaching profession.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Unions, Vouchers

Betsy DeVos and Campbell Brown: Good Friends

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2016 //
21

The corporate reform movement must be popping the champagne corks with the selection of Betsy DeVos as Trump’s Secretary of Education. Finally, a secretary who advocates for the elimination of public schools without embarrassment and who will fight unions and teacher tenure.

 

As it happens, Betsy DeVos and her husband are funders of Campbell Brown’s website The 74 (along with Walton, Broad, and Bloomberg). And Campbell Brown sits on the board of Betsy DeVos’s  American Federation for Children.

 

Campbell Brown has launched lawsuits to get teacher tenure declared unconstitutional (her suit in Minnesota was thrown out by the judge). She has fought the unions as protectors of “sexual predators.” DeVos doesn’t like public schools. Neither does Campbell Brown. They both like charters and vouchers.

 

What a small world!

Categories Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Media, Teacher Tenure, Unions, Vouchers
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