Archives for category: Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Mike Klonsky: Did Arne Duncan Help Trump Win the Election?

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2016 //
31

Mike Klonsky wonders whether Arne Duncan’s patronizing comments about parents and critics of high-stakes testing helped Donald Trump win the election.

When 20% of the parents in New York opted out of the state testing, he sneered at them and said they were white suburban parents who found out that their child wasn’t so bright after all. This was rank condescension.

When Duncan used Race to the Top billions to bribe states into adopting Common Core, he continued to insist that Common Core was a project of the states. He became the nation’s leading cheerleader for Common Core, and he ridiculed the critics. The critics were vociferous, especially in the Midwest.

Throughout his time in office, Duncan celebrated the successes of charter schools, wherever he could find them, and barely noticed public schools. Last month, before Massachusetts voted on Question 2, Duncan turned up in Boston to argue that expansion of charters was unquestionably a good thing. Despite his ringing endorsement, Question 2 was soundly defeated in almost every district in the state.

I don’t know whether Duncan helped Trump win by making public school parents angry, but he most certainly paved the way for the full-throated privatization that Trump is now pressing. Who would have thought that Arne Duncan and Donald Trump would be on the same team, cheering for more school choice, more charters, more privatization? Trump took it to the next level and threw in vouchers. Once you endorse school choice and launch an assault on the very principle of public education, it is hard to walk it back.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Race to the Top, School Choice, Testing, Trump, Vouchers

Rachel Levy: The Implications of the Election and What We Can Do Now

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2016 //
4

Rachel Levy–blogger, teacher, graduate student, parent in Virginia–offers sound advice about what the election means for education and how concerned education voters can respond to it.

Here is a sampling.

Pay attention to high-quality research (and I would add, pay attention to who pays for the research).

Read writers from different perspectives, including those who don’t share your views.

Support investigative journalism, which is badly needed and in need of supportive readers.

She writes:

“3. …Trump supports the current traditional Republican agenda, that is privatization, school “choice,” and the complete elimination of education as a public good. In my opinion, those are not good policies–they are not good for public education but they also are not good for our society. Public schools are flawed and as an institution have been tools of segregation and oppression but they are our best model for sustaining a pluralistic democracy. Public schools are where kids (hopefully) from all kinds of backgrounds and families come together and navigate the world. Privatization and “choice” will end that. Keep in mind that privatization and school “choice” are part of what we’ve been contending with for a long time, including from the Obama administration, though most centrist Democrats do draw the line at vouchers.

“And education is a matter that is largely left to states and localities. Trump has indicated that he would leave education to the states and localities to a even greater extent than ESSA does. However, at the same time, he has said things such as that he wants to abolish Common Core, which is a state matter. He has no record of governing (he has never held office), has no demonstrated expertise or knowledge of policy, is unpredictable, is, and is especially interested in amassing power. Education does not appear to be much on his radar screen. So some of what happens will depend upon his education-related appointments, but otherwise, who knows how much he will leave education to states and localities and how much he will want to control himself? Who knows what he will do?

Recommendation #3: If you are not already, now is the time to get engaged in your local and state governance. That is the only thing that is left. Learn all about your local and state governing bodies, including your school boards. Learn about the issues and policies. Get informed. Talk with your fellow community members about the issues and policies. Comment publicly on what your local and state governing bodies are doing and what you as a citizen, taxpayer, and constituent want them to do. Cherish those public democratic institutions and work to preserve them and keep them healthy. Work to get people from diverse backgrounds and different groups elected and appointed to such bodies. Serve in those bodies yourself. Contribute and be a participant. I can’t stress this enough.

“I have long said that local and state governance is the most important and this is more true than ever. Neo-liberals have demonstrated disdain for institutions and matters of local and state governance. Obama’s principal Secretary of Education Arne Duncan thought school boards were dysfunctional and a nuisance. Do not follow this example. Set a new one. When you fail to engage with your local and state institutions, you leave a void for others or nobody to fill. Local and state political leaders are obligated to serve their constituents and they need to be held accountable. We have to make them serve the public, ALL members of the public.

“4. Going back to federal education, while I stated that much of what Trump has said about education aligns with current initiatives in education generally, there will be a large, devastating difference from the Obama administration in terms of the focus of the Department of Education. Trump may work to eliminate the Department of Education, he may completely redirect the way federal funds for education are used (Title I, for example, and Pell Grants). Civil rights components and integration initiatives will be gutted. So much of the work that has been done towards establishing even just a fragile understanding of white supremacy and just a small start to countering and dismantling it will likely be lost. This will have devastating effects.

“Recommendation #4: Get involved and be present in your community’s schools, in your children’s schools. Advocate for diverse school staffs and diverse curricula. Tell your local educators that you know that they can’t control what kids learn at home, but that once in school, you expect everyone be treated with respect and dignity and to be kept safe. If you hear something or see something, say something. Right now, there are many kids in schools (including many traditional public schools) who are just trying to survive. Read this –it’s alarming but you must read it. It’s always been this way on some level, especially for Muslim, black, Latino, LGBT, and immigrant students and students with disabilities, but now it’s even worse and female and all other non-Christian students are also in more danger. The country will have a president, unless the electors of electoral college step up to the plate, who is a white nationalist sexual predator and whose behavior would violate the code of conduct in many of our children’s schools and warrant suspension if not expulsion, not to mention arrest and conviction outside of school. Our schools will be charged with enforcing codes of conduct to keep students safe from sexual assault, bullying, harassment, and attacks. Many are being bullied, intimidated, provoked, and in some cases attacked. They need our support and protection.”

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

Mercedes Schneider: Donald Trump’s Vision for Education

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2016 //
16

Mercedes Schneider here assembles the themes and details of President-elect Trump’s plans for education, or at least the federal role in education.

It is a nightmare vision, a dystopian vision. It is a vision of privatization, a concept I have been highlighting and exposing day after day as a source of inequity, fraud, graft, and bad education.

Please someone tell Mr. Trump that no high-performing nation in the world has charters and vouchers and for-profit schools and public tuition for home-schooling. Tell him that the two nations that embraced privatization–Sweden and Chile–now regret it. They saw increased segregation, not better education.

In Trump world, school choice is the answer to every education issue.

Too bad there is no evidence for his vision. Too bad for our public schools. Too bad for our kids. Too bad for our future.

We can’t let this happen. Parents, students, teachers, administrators, local school boards, state school boards: we have to stand together to defend what belongs to us. We must protect the commons.

Public schools under democratic control are part of our heritage as Americans. Conservatives don’t destroy traditional institutions. Conservatives conserve. Anarchists blow up neighborhood schools. Not conservatives. Nihilists destroy what belongs to all of us. Stand and argue. Resist.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Segregation, Trump, Vouchers

Wisconsin: Scott Walker’s Plan to Destroy Public Education Rolls Forward

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2016 //
15

This year, there are 28,000 students enrolled in voucher schools in Milwaukee, and 75,000 in the public schools.

Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislature increased the number of students eligible to receive vouchers, expanding the voucher program to Racine and elsewhere in the state. This year, the voucher program will cost the state $245 million. The Milwaukee program alone will cost the state over $200 million.

Study after study has demonstrated that voucher schools do not outperform public schools, and in many cases, are far inferior to public schools.

The expansion of the voucher program proves nothing other than the failure of vouchers.

Even the 2016 state scores showed negligible differences among students in vouchers schools, charter schools, and public schools, often a percentage point. These results were hailed as a great victory for the choice schools, but the percentages of students passing state tests were low in all three sectors. And, the scores don’t take into account the very large number of students in the Milwaukee students with special needs who are not wanted by the vouchers or the charters. Twenty percent of the children in the Milwaukee Public Schools have disabilities, compared to less than 6% in voucher schools, and about 12% in charters. MPS, of course, has the children with the most severe disabilities. That has an effect on aggregate test scores.

Categories Accountability, Failure, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

John H. Jackson: Why is School Choice the Black Choice?

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2016 //
43

Anthony Cody posted a stunning two-minute video from a discussion at Howard University about school choice. The host Roland Martin is a strong supporter of school choice. But Dr. John H. Jackson, president of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, speaks for two minutes (or less) about the “false narrative” of failing public schools. He is eloquent as he blows away the question, to the cheers of the audience.

Please watch.

Categories Charter Schools, School Choice, Vouchers

Rebecca Mead of The New Yorker: Did the Candidates Forget about K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2016 //
29

Rebecca Mead writes in The New Yorker that the presidential campaign has almost entirely overlooked K-12 education. The subject never came up in the presidential debates (nor did climate change).

She writes:

Unsurprisingly, the candidates differ as much on their approach to education as they do on virtually every other issue, as the Washington Post outlined in a helpful analysis earlier this month. In September, Donald Trump delivered a speech at the Cleveland Arts and Sciences Academy, a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio, in which he offered his vision, though not before delivering an extended peroration about the perfidies of his Democratic opponent—e-mail, Iraq, the Clinton Foundation—unrelated to educational concerns. When he did get around to his own proposals, he spoke of expanding existing school-choice programs, promising that in a Trump Administration twenty billion dollars of federal education funds would be reassigned to provide a block grant enabling the eleven million students living in poverty to attend the private or public school of their parents’ choice. “Competition always does it,” he said. “The weak fall out and the strong get better. It is an amazing thing.” He advocated merit pay for teachers, stated his opposition to Common Core, and spoke in favor of charter schools and against teachers’ unions. “It’s time for our country to start thinking big and correct once again,” he declared, thereby failing to meet the second-grade Common Core standard 2.1.E. (“Use adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified.”)

Clinton has a long-standing commitment to educational issues; as First Lady of Arkansas, in 1983, she headed a committee to improve academic achievement among the state’s public-school students. She has declared the intention of “preparing, supporting, and paying every child’s teacher as if the future of our country is in their hands,” and has given some suggestions as to how that estimable goal would be accomplished. She has said that she will provide funding to increase the teaching of computer science; she has also pledged to fund the rebuilding of school infrastructure, and to address the so-called school-to-prison pipeline, whereby African-American and minority students are disproportionately subject to overly punitive disciplinary policies, often involving law enforcement, within the schools they attend; she would fund interventions in social and emotional learning, to the tune of two billion dollars.

Clinton has left us all guessing about charter schools, but she has a balancing act: She needs money to run her campaign (think DFER), and she needs to satisfy the her strong supporters, the teachers’ unions, whose very existence is put at risk by the growth of the non-union charter industry (more than 90% of charter schools are non-union).

But of this we can be sure: Trump is 100% aligned with the far-right that hates public schools and unions. He loves charter schools and vouchers. He thinks he will “get rid” of the Common Core, but he doesn’t know that the president does not have the power to do so. His surrogate Carl Paladino of Buffalo, New York, said that Trump would not put an educator in charge of the Department of Education. The Trump campaign seems to look at public education as a cancerous growth on American society.

A vote for Trump is a vote to cripple and perhaps abandon public education.

A vote for Clinton is a vote for a candidate who has some good ideas and who knows that Obama’s education policies have been unsuccessful. Many think she will continue the status quo, but count me as one who expects that she will look for ways to improve public schools, not destroy them.

Categories Charter Schools, Clinton, Privatization, Trump, U.S. education, Unions, Vouchers

Charles Foster Johnson: Why Texas Pastors Oppose Vouchers

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2016 //
7

In the annual fight in Texas over school vouchers, one of the strongest, most consistent defenders of public schools is an influential group known as zpastors for Texas Children. They believe in the importance of public education as a democratic right and they strongly support the separation of church and state.

At recent legislative hearings in Austin, their executive director Charles Foster Johnson testified against a voucher bill that was passed in the State Senate. This battle occurs every year. Thus far, a coalition of rural Republicans and urban Democrats has managed to defeat vouchers in the House. Pastor Johnson and his colleagues have been a powerful group in staving off privatization.

[If you want to watch Pastor Johnson’s testimony, which was “from the heart,” and diverged from his written statement, watch here:

[Start the video at the 3:50 mark– that’s 3 HOURS and 50 MINUTES– move the cursor just shy of the left side of the middle. http://tlchouse.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=37&clip_id=12360 ]

Testimony Before House Public Education Committee

By Charles Foster Johnson of Pastors for Texas Children

October 17, 2016

Chairman Aycock, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you and your committee today about what we have witnessed in our fine neighborhood and community public schools throughout our great State. My name is Charles Johnson, pastor of Bread Fellowship, Fort Worth. I am also executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, a statewide organization mobilizing the faith community for public education support and advocacy. We do two things: we minister to children in our local schools and we advocate for just policy for our children with our legislators. We were birthed out of the Baptist General Convention of Texas three years ago and now have over 1900 faith leaders of all denominations in churches all across Texas.

We are in our schools every day and see children from every ethnicity, every socio-economic background, and all walks of life succeeding beautifully on their path to productive citizenship in our society. We see children discovering their God-given talent and giftedness at the hands of dedicated teachers answering the call of God to pursue careers as educators. We witness daily the sheer moral power of public education as a building block of our society. This is why we are compelled to deliver the message to whoever will listen that universal public education is God’s will for all people—not a “choice” accorded to a few through a school choice voucher. I’d like to share several reasons why:

Public education is a moral duty. Education is a gift of God for all people. Just like the first human did in the Bible story so long ago, every person gets to name God’s world. Just as God brought all the creatures to the human to see what he would name them, so classroom teachers in schools all across our land teach our children to name God’s world. It’s the only way we can fulfill the first commandment of God to “be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it.” Education is a core component of the public interest. It is God’s common good for all God’s children—not just for those who are smart and stable and economically secure enough to pay for it with a school choice voucher.

Public education is a democratic duty. The founders of this nation determined at the outset of our Republic that in order to have a democratic society, we must educate all our children—not just a few children from families affluent enough to pay for it. Public education is a cornerstone of our American way of life. It is what has made America great. Our neighborhood and community schools are the places where our American history is taught, where our children learn basic civics, where the Pledge of Allegiance is said every day, where citizens are made. In America, citizenship is for all people—not just those few fortunate enough to be chosen by a school choice voucher.

Public education is a societal duty. It is incorrect for some of our friends to say that the money should follow the child because it is “my money.” With all due respect, it is not “my money” in a just society. We have a responsibility to participate in the well-being of all people. Do I get to have my own private security guard subsidized by the public through a “safety choice voucher?” Do I get to have my private swimming pool underwritten by the people of Texas because I don’t use the public pool? In a just and equal society, do I get a “transportation voucher” because I walk or ride a bicycle? The love of neighbor has founded our social order in these United States. We practice that love of neighbor through our taxation to support investments in that societal infrastructure.

Public education is a constitutional duty. The Constitution of the State of Texas says this in Article 7, Section 1: “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.” The members of this legislative body swore a Bible oath to uphold that provision. There is zero authorization for this body to do anything with private schools.

Public education is a spiritual duty. We believe wholeheartedly in religious liberty as a gift of God from all people. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison did not make it up. It is the principle upon which our nation is founded. So, we affirm that no overt religious instruction or activity should be advanced or established with tax dollars in our public schools. All faith is voluntary. It belongs in the home and the church—not in our public institutions. This government has no authority to advance religion in our public schools. Nor, on the other hand, does this government have any authority to meddle in our private and home schools through a school choice voucher. Any money that is diverted from the public trust to a private entity will be publically accounted for, thus inserting and intruding government into the voluntary associations of religious schools. God does not need Caesar’s money to do the Lord’s work. Never has. Never will.

But, faithful teachers take the love of God with them into our classrooms each and every day, ministering long hours at low pay while serving the poorest children in our midst. They instill moral character. They teach respect across the wide diversity of our population. They show unconditional love to all kids. They do this because they are called before God. This is why the dynamics that govern our capitalistic system do not operate in an educational environment. Market forces such as competition and cost benefit analysis simply do not apply in the formation of a human being. A classroom is a holy place of learning—not a marketplace of financial gain. To make commodities of our kids and markets of our classrooms is to misunderstand—and profane—the spirituality of education.

PO Box 471155 – Fort Worth, Texas 76147
http://www.pastorsfortexaschildren.com

Categories Accountability, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Here Comes the Voucher Fight Again

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2016 //
10

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, former talk show host, really wants vouchers for the millions of students in Texas. Fortunately, he has been defeated year after year by a coalition of rural Tepublicans and urban Democrats.

The battle is on again this year. Patrick and his fellow ideological zealots are headed for a showdown on the issue. There is no evidence that vouchers “work,” and much evidence that they don’t. In a state like Texas, the voucher proposal is strongly opposed by a brave group called Pastors for Texas Children. (Make a donation if you can to help them.)

Supporters of vouchers insist that the schools that receive public funds should be exempt from state tests or any other accountability measures, which might limit their “freedom.”

“A bipartisan group of state representatives hammered private school choice proponents at a heated legislative hearing on Monday, signaling an enduring uphill battle in the Texas House for proposals that would use taxpayer dollars to help parents send their kids to private or parochial schools, or educate them at home.

“Rural Republicans and Democrats in the lower chamber have long blocked such programs — often referred to in sweeping terms as “private school vouchers,” although there are variations. Passing one has emerged as a top priority in the Texas Senate for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who unsuccessfully pushed a private school choice program when he was a Republican state senator from Houston and chairman of the Senate Education Committee.”

Of course, the proposal for vouchers is a pathetic excuse for failing to restore the $5 billion cut to the public schools in 2011.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, Privatization, Resistance, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Mike Klonsky: The Trump Plan to Eliminate Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2016 //
20

Mike Klonsky reports on the Trump plan to get rid of public education, as described by Carl Paladino, a Trump surrogate and far-right extremist who owns charter schools in Buffalo, New York.

http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2016/10/trump-plans-to-do-away-with-public.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mikeklonsky+%28SmallTalk%29

“If there was any doubt, Trump surrogate Carl Paladino made it perfectly clear that if his boss is elected his goal will be nothing less than the elimination of public education and complete liquidation of the nation’s teacher unions.

Paladino ran for governor against Cuomo and lost. He is the Trump of upstate New York.

Home

Klonsky writes:

“Paladino, Trump’s N.Y State co-chairman told a group of urban school superintendents yesterday, that Trump would seek to do away with “corrupted, incompetent” public school systems in America’s cities, replacing them with charter schools and vouchers for private schools.”

Clinton may or may not continue Obama’s disastrous education policies, but she will listen when we push back.

“

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Larry Lee: Public Education is Under Attack in Alabama: Help Us!

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
2

Larry Lee is one of the staunchest supporters of public schools in Alabama. A few years ago, he criss-crossed the state and identified 10 rural schools that were doing everyday miracles for their children and their communities because of the hard work and dedication of teachers, principals, and families, all doing their best for their children.

He sent me the following urgent message:

These are dark days for public education in Alabama. Since the legislature changed hands in 2010, things have gone steadily downhill.

Take a look:

* A bill to have A-F school grades, a practice intended solely to be punitive and a practice that research does not support.

* The Alabama Accountability Act that has now diverted $72 million from the Education Trust Fund for vouchers for private schools. A law that failed utterly in its stated mission to “help; poor students stuck in failing schools by their zip code.

* A bill to establish charter schools which cuts into already under-funded public schools funding.

* A bill known as the RAISE Act that would have forced teachers to be evaluated with the highly controversial Value Added Model.

* A bill intended to set up Education Savings Accounts that would have diverted more funding from the Education Trust Fund.

Instead of seeking input from professional educators, legislators are listening to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Jeb Bush foundations and Alabama special interests. In fact, the Senate majority leader boasted after passing the Accountability Act in 2013 that this bill was purposely hidden from educators because “they would have opposed it.”

Now, to add insult to injury the state board of education, the body that should be the first line of defense for public education, has turned its back on our children by hiring an attorney from Massachusetts to be state school superintendent. They ignored Alabama code and even their advertised required qualifications and put their own ideology and political ambitions ahead of the 740,000 children in Alabama public schools

Because of this, a group of 40 plaintiffs, including former local superintendents, principals, teachers, school board members, parents, local elected officials, a former college president and a former U.S. Congressman have joined together to seek legal action against the state school board.

They have said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and formed the Alabama Public School Defense Fund to wage this battle.

Please join in standing up for our children by going to this site and contributing today.

https://www.gofundme.com/2t2r6mpy

—
Larry Lee
334-787-0410

http://www.larryeducation.com (blog)

Education Is Everyone’s Business

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »