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A Wake-Up Call for Fred Hiatt, Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Post

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2017 //
107

Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post, wrote an uninformed opinion piece urging Trump to invite cities to become “laboratories of choice,” where every student could go to the school of his or her choice. He says this would be “the right kind of choice.” “Uninformed” is the polite term. I was tempted to say “absurd” or idiotic,” but decided to be polite.

 

He begins his article by reciting the specious claims of the right wingers that everyone exercises choice except the poor. I know these claims because I was part of three rightwing think tanks where they were repeated again and again. Some people choose parochial schools; some choose private schools; others choose safe suburbs and neighborhoods. Only the poor are “stuck” in “failing schools.”

 

The assumption behind these assertions is that choosing schools will improve education. But there is no evidence for this claim.

 

Here is some news for Mr. Hiatt.

 

We already have laboratories of choice. First, there is New Orleans, which has no public schools. The scores are up, but most of the charter schools continue to be low-performing, probably because they have the poor kids who were not accepted in the top-performing charters. The district as a whole is low-performing in relation to the state, which is one of the lowest-performing in the nation.

 

Then there is Milwaukee, which has had vouchers and charters for 25 years. Three sectors compete, and all are low-performing. How is that for a “laboratory of choice,” Mr. Hiatt?

 

Then there is Detroit, in Betsy DeVos’ home state of Michigan. Detroit is the lowest-performing urban district tested by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It is overrun by charters, many of them operating for profit. Now there is another fine example of a failing “laboratory of choice.”

 

Mr. Hiatt, why don’t you take a look at other nations’ school system. The one that most people admire, Finland, has well-resourced schools, highly educated teachers, professional autonomy, a strong professional union, and excellent results. What it does not have is standardized testing, competition, or choice.

 

Please, Fred, read my last two books Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education and Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. Read Samuel Abrams’ Education and the Commercial Mindset. Read Mercedes Schneider’s School Choice. Pay attention. Be informed before you write.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Detroit, Education Industry, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Thomas Ultican on the Education Issues for 2017

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2016 //
9

Thomas Ultican left the private sector to teach high school physics and mathematics.

 

In this post, he surveys the wreckage of education “reform” policies and the damage they have inflicted on schools and teachers, students and communities.

 

Trump, he recognizes, is prepared to double down on failures.

 

The issue for all of us is to identify the strategies that will enable us to survive what lies ahead.

 

He concludes on a hopeful note:

 

With the coming of Trump and Betsy Devos, everything I read leads me to believe that the federal government will continue and accelerate the failed Bush/Obama education policies. However, it will be out in the open because there are no fake progressives in this group to hide behind. Americans of all stripes do not want their public education system parceled out and sold. Most conservative like most liberals believe in public education. They do not want their schools taken over by faceless corporations and distant bureaucracies.

 

A national consensus on the need to protect America’s truly great public education system is probable.

 

Education profiteers will over-reach in 2017 and we will make significant strides toward winning back local control of our schools.

 

Let’s agree that the best way to awaken the public is to call the privatization and profit movement out and name it. Name it. Say that they are stealing what belongs to all of us. They are not “reformers,” they are vandals.

 

That is the fight ahead.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Peter Greene Has an Answer to Doug1943’s Question

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2016 //
47

This morning I posted a question written by Doug1943, rehashing corporate reformer arguments about “allowing children to escape failing public schools.” I invited readers to answer his question(s).

 

Peter Greene put his answer into a post. 

 

This should satisfy Doug (or not), and this is only an introduction to the rest of the post where Doug will find answers:

 

Most public ed advocates that I know and interact with would agree that, particularly in some large urban districts, there are some schools with serious problems. I would never tell you that all public schools are flawless and there are no huge problems. There are, from serious underfunding to long-standing institutional racism to a lack of any sort of vision from leaders. There are absolutely some serious issues, but it does not appear to me that choice-charter-voucher advocates are proposing anything that will actually solve any of the problems.

 

They call to mind lying with a broken leg on the sidewalk, and someone runs up with a chain saw and says, “Hey, I’m going to take off your arms” and I ask what help that will be and are they even a doctor and they reply, “Well, no– but we have to do something!” No, thanks.

 

Do charters generally do a better job? There’s no clear evidence that they do– often they get the same results with the same kids (as far as we can tell, given that we have no good way in place to measure school success– your reservations about standardized tests are on point) and a little too often they do worse. Do charters solve poverty? No. Do charters and choice spur competition that leads to greatness? There’s zero evidence that they do. Do they allow children to “escape” bad schools? Maybe– but here’s the big problem as charters are currently handled: the escape comes at the cost of making a bad school worse by stripping it of resources. And as I frequently point out, the free market can’t handle this problem. The free market survives by picking winners and losers and dropping the losers out– there is not one single business or business sector in this country that serves every single citizen, but serving 100% of US students is exactly the education gig.

 

So in short, yes, there are problems and no, the charter-choice-voucher idea doesn’t solve any of them.

 

So what are my alternative suggestions? Let me first note that the guy who wants to treat my broken leg by chainsawing off my arms is the person carrying the burden of proof. But as someone who is invested in public education, and who has already noticed most of the issues that charter fans holler about in their marketing materials. In the interests of not writing an entire book, let me offer just a quick list of some major steps that, I believe, would help.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Please Answer Doug1943’s Question

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2016 //
431

I am trying to take a break. Reading all the comments, but posting only when I must.

 

Doug1943 asked a long question. He is immersed in the privatization narrative, as you will see. His email ID suggests a connection to a libertarian institute.

 

My short answer to him is: read my last book, “Reign of Error,” which goes into detail about what children and schools need. No school is so bad that it can’t be improved. No high-performing nation in the world has turned its public schools over to the private sector. Test scores are primarily measures of family income. Choice promotes segregation by race, religion, income, and social class.

 

 

Here is Doug’s question:

 

“I think the problem is this: the people opposing allowing people to escape from bad public schools don’t seem to want to acknowledge that there is such a thing as bad public schools. Or, at most, they seem to believe that if we just raised taxes and put more money into these schools, they’d be better. Or, that there is nothing the schools can do, it’s general poverty that is the problem.

 

“Of course, if any or all these views are correct, then you must carry on doing what you’re doing (which seems to me, as an ‘outsider’, is just talking to yourselves, which is the norm for American forums on both Left and Right).

 

“However, I think you ought to give some thought to trying to address the issues that proponents of vouchers, charters, etc. claim are real: that at least some public schools are unreformably bad, and parents who have some ambition for their children should be allowed to escape from them. In other words, should have the same opportunities that the Clinton and Obama children had.

 

“Or, if you agree that some public schools are bad, but not unreformably so, how can they be reformed?

 

“It’s this that — again as an outsider — strikes me as your great weakness: you don’t seem to admit that there is a problem at all. Thus your quotes around “better” in your reply: you seem to dismiss good exam results that some charters get. Now, maybe you’re right about these results– I certainly have huge reservations about multiple-choice standardized tests. But you ought to make the case.

 

“By the way, I personally would prefer there to be a system of state schools that had high standards, and educated all children to the limits of their inherent capabilities, so that the issue of ‘charter schools’ and vouchers wouldn’t even arise.. I assume that such a system would cost substantially more than the current system, but that it would be well worth it. But we don’t seem to be allowed to have that choice.”

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

Sue Legg on the Chaotic School Choice Mess in Florida

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2016 //
4

Earlier today I posted a request by Sue Legg of the Florida League of Women Voters for your ideas about punchy slogans to support public schools.

 

Sue read the comments and sent this response:

 

“Sue Legg: Great comments. We are at a crucial decision point here in Gainesville. Our schools on the westside are over crowded and under enrolled on the east side Charter and tax credit vouchers have drained low income area public schools. This year we have put over $500,000 extra into a ‘turn around’ failing school to help its kids suffering from traumatic backgrounds. Five teachers of 20 have left this school this fall, and it is only one of several such schools. Will we build a new school on the west side and let the failing schools on the eastside dwindle? Will we rezone? If we do, will parents start their own charter schools? Florida is awash in charters–over 650 of them plus the voucher schools.

 

“I know it will take more than slogans to penetrate the fog generated by school choice. Yet, a few ‘choice’ words that convey the risk of social upheaval that privatization brings are needed. Hmmm, social cohesion or social upheaval, what is your choice?”

Categories Charter Schools, Florida, School Choice, Vouchers

Steven Singer: The Essential Selfishness of School Choice

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2016 //
18

Steven Singer writes that at the heart of the school choice is selfishness: me first, and to heck with everybody else.

 

The public schools were created for everyone in the community. They are subject to democratic control. They are free. If you don’t want to go to the public school, you can go to a private or religious school, but your family must pay tuition.

 

The school choice movement wants everyone to choose among public schools, charter schools, and voucher schools. Whenever children leave the public school, the public money follows them. But the public school must still operate its facilities, and it must adapt to the loss of enrollment by laying off teachers, cutting programs, eliminating electives, and reducing the quality of education available to most children. School choice harms the majority of students, so that a few may leave for charters or voucher schools. As school choice grows, the public schools wither.

 

There is nothing so compelling in the research to show that this is a good tradeoff. Vouchers have a shoddy record. Charters are the luck of the draw; some get high scores by demanding strict discipline, some are no better than the local public schools, some are far worse. Why destroy the quality of the community’s public schools to open charters of dubious quality and to send children to religious schools at public expense?

 

Yet this is what Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump plan to do.

 

This is a risky scheme, that puts an essential democratic institution at risk.

 

Singer writes:

 

Though the media would have you believe otherwise, traditional public schools do a much better job of educating children than charter or voucher schools. Some choice schools have better outcomes, but the majority do no better and often much worse than traditional public schools. Moreover, children who continually move from school-to-school regardless of its type almost always suffer academically.

 

So when parents engage in these choice schemes, they often end up hurting their own children. The chances of children benefiting from charter or voucher schools is minimal.

 

It is worth noting that the world’s highest performing nations have strong and equitable public schools, not charters or vouchers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Carol Burris: Charters are in the Forefront of the Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2016 //
11

Carol Burris wrote an article that was published on Valerie Strauss’s blog, in which she explains that charters are the leading edge of the privatization movement. Corporate education reformers are scrambling to make a distinction between charters and vouchers, but the reality is that charters clear a path for vouchers. Once you sell the public on the idea of school choice, it is increasingly difficult to say that parents may choose a corporate charter chain but can’t choose a religious school. Once you erode the principle of public education as a public good, open to all, responsible for all who enroll, you turn citizens into consumers. Whether they choose a charter or a voucher, their choice diverts public money away from public schools. Jeb Bush argued in his 2012 speech at the Republican National Convention that parents should be able to choose their child’s school the same way they choose a carton of milk at the supermarket: whole milk? 2%? 1? Fat-free? Chocolate? Buttermilk? That is actually a ridiculous argument, because a parent doesn’t reach into a case and select a school. Choices are constrained by geography and transportation. A parent may choose the best private school in town, but the school is unlikely to accept voucher students, and the state voucher won’t cover the tuition. A voucher will in fact cover the tuition only for a religious school that is unlikely to have certified teachers or any of the educational riches of the school that costs $50,000 a year.

 

Charters are no better than vouchers. They are part of the same universe of “school choice” that Trump and DeVos are selling. In DeVos’s Michigan, 80% of the charters operate for profit. Detroit is awash in charters, yet Detroit is the lowest-performing urban district on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. State legislation may call them “public,” but there is nothing “public” about charter schools except their funding. They have private boards; many are allowed to hire substantial numbers of uncertified teachers. If their goal is high test scores, they select their students carefully to reach their goal.

 

Burris writes:

 

During the past 60 years, public education has been the frog in the pot of water, as school privatizers and “education reformers” have slowly turned up the heat. Over 1 million students receive a taxpayer-funded voucher to attend a private school, and close to 3 million attend charters schools. Whether the adjective “public” is in front of the word “charter” or not, charters are at the forefront of school privatization.

 

Opening a charter is akin to opening your own business — but the cost and risk are fully funded by the taxpayers. In most states, taxpayer dollars provide the initial “investment.” This is an odd business model in which the corporation gets income for every customer who walks through the door, regardless of the individual ability to pay. And if the business fails, “owners” are not out a dime, but the customers, who are in this case children, are stranded.

 

It is remarkable that the American public has allowed such risk-free, taxpayer-funded entrepreneurship to occur.

 

If you think that publicly funded, largely unregulated businesses would be ripe for shady deals, oversized compensation and outright fraud, you would be right.

 

In September of 2016, the Inspector General’s Office of the U.S. Education Department issued its final audit report titled a “Nationwide Assessment of Charter and Education Management Organizations.” The report assessed “the current and emerging risk” that is posed by charter management organizations for fraud, waste and abuse.

 

The audited period was less than two years — between late 2011 and the early months of 2013. Thirty-three charters in six states were selected for review. Of the 33, the department found that 22 lacked the necessary internal controls, resulting in a significant risk to Education Department funds. The report also made it clear that the Education Department itself is not doing enough to protect taxpayers from charter management fraud. (The present secretary, John King, led one of the top five charter chains, Uncommon Schools.)

 

Burris cites a small sample of the many charter school frauds and scandals that have emerged in recent years. Misappropriation of funds is not surprising in a sector that receives public funding with little or no supervision or oversight.

 

She writes:

 

What will the future hold under DeVos, who believes that “the more of a ‘marketplace’ we have for education, the more, I think, the better”?
Will we have more charter schools with entanglements with foreign governments? Will we have taxpayer-funded charter schools run by white supremacists? Will vouchers go to schools run by jihadists? Will fraud and abuse escalate? These are serious questions to ponder when the marketplace is the only regulator of school choice.

 

Donald Trump claims our public schools run by locally elected boards of education are “government schools” that fit better with the old Soviet Union. I wonder whether he has thought through his alternative. Freewheeling, government-funded schools, unaccountable to the taxpayers, sound awfully more dangerous to me.

 

 

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

Peter Greene: Betsy DeVos’ Six Inconvenient Truths

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2016 //
28

Peter Greene listened to Betsy DeVos speak about how terrible public schools are, and he goes through each of her inconvenient truths.

 

Two observations:

 

1. She should have described her talk as “inconvenient opinions” since none of what she says is true.

 

2. With all her carping about the public schools, she sounds eerily like Arne a Duncan. He is taller than her.

 

She pines Ned for the days when American students were #1 on international tests but as I explained many times, here and in a chapter in “Reign of Error.” We were never number 1 on the international tests. When they started in 1964, we were last. But in the more than half century since then, we have surpassed all the nations with higher scores by every dimension.

 

On the other hand, there is no evidence whatever for privatizing our schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Peter Greene on the Hoax of School Choice

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2016 //
31

Peter Greene here debates a libertarian proponent of school choice–on his blog, not in person.

 

The debate typically begins with the undocumented assertion that public schools are failing. This is a standby of the  school choice crowd. I demolished that particular claim in my last book, “Reign of Error.” The public schools are actually performing (if you mean test scores and graduation rates) better than ever, and in affluent districts, they are doing a great job.

 

Greene uses the shaky claims for choice as an opportunity to knock them down, one by one. No, educators don’t need to be “incentivized” by competition. No, choice does not “empower” parents. It enables schools to choose the students they want and reject the ones they don’t. It’s most certain result is hypersegregation. By Race, religion, and social class. That’s why “school choice” was the rallying cry of southern segregationists in the 1950s and early 1960s.

 

He doesn’t mention the fact that none of the highest performing nations in the world have adopted school choice.

 

 

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

Carol Burris: Help Us Fight the Nomination of Betsy DeVos!

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2016 //
7

Carol Burris sent an email to all members of the Network for Public Education with a list of ways that you can express your opposition to the nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. She is uniquely unfit for the office, as she has no relevant experience, and she is on record in opposition to public education. Her efforts in Detroit and in Michigan have harmed the children of that city and state. She supports charter schools, whether nonprofit or for-profit, vouchers, online charter schools, and everything else but public schools. If she is confirmed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, she will do whatever she can to turn public funds over to private and religious schools. Please join with us in opposing her nomination.

 

Dear friends of public schools,

 

If you are receiving this email, I know that is who you are–someone who understands the vital role that public education plays in democracy. You understand that a patchwork quilt of for-profit charters, charter chains, online schools, and vouchers schools cannot work in a democracy.
You understand that public schools will be starved and become the “dumping ground” for children no one wants.

 

Which brings us to Betsy DeVos, who has made it clear that only the “free market” matters, not quality. She claims to be on a mission from God. That is extremism we cannot have at the helm of our education system.

 

We will probably not be able to stop her confirmation, but we can make it a big deal.
We can work to ensure that no Democrat votes for her.
We can raise public awareness. We can send a warning shot across the bow.
And who knows, maybe, just maybe, a few Republicans will vote against her as well.

 

During the next few months the Network for Public Education will be involved in a campaign to accomplish the above.

 

Here is a link to our toolkit.

 

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/2016/12/join-us-in-stopping-the-confirmation-of-devos-npe-toolkit/

 

It is designed to use the holiday recess as a time when Senators are bombarded with pressure to vote no on DeVos.

 

It provides sample letters, phone scripts and a letter to the editor.

 

We will be tracking how many engage in these actions so that we have feedback on effectiveness to share with other organizations.

 

Our senate email campaign motivated near 100k to send an email. But that was easy, these actions take more time.
However, they are also far more effective.

 

Take the time to do them yourself and then share the link.
Post the link everywhere.
There will be future NPE Actions. This is our first and we will learn from it.

 

Trump will pass. But if he destroys public education that will undermine our Democracy for generations.

 

Here is that link again 🙂

 

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/2016/12/join-us-in-stopping-the-confirmation-of-devos-npe-toolkit/

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers
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