Archives for category: Vouchers
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Bias in Reporting at Chalkbeat?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2014 //
18

Chalkbeat is a news organization that covers New York City and recently expanded to Memphis. It was previously called Gotham Schools.

Daniel Katz of Seton Hall University recently complained that Chalkbeat is biased in favor of charter schools. He notes that it is funded by the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation, both of which are strong supporters of charter schools.

Katz quotes a letter written by Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters and other community leaders, pointing out Chalkbeat’s unfair coverage of pro-charter and anti-charter activities. Chalkboard failed to send a reporter to cover a citywide rally organized by Community Education Councils.

Chalkboard published the letter of protest in full, with the signatories.

Haimson wrote:

“Rather than sending one of your reporters to cover this event, you only posted a short blurb clearly taken from the press release after the fact. Chalkbeat’s failure to assign a reporter to the event glaringly contrasts with your close and detailed coverage of every move made by the charter operators and their backers. Indeed, you published two different stories on the charter march across the Brooklyn Bridge, three different stories on the Albany rally for charters (though you failed to disclose that Gov. Cuomo was actually behind it) , and on March 29 you ran two stories on reactions to the budget bills, BOTH from the point of view of the charter operators.

“Even more importantly, you have failed to cover any of the substantive issues and reasons behind our anger, including how unprecedented these charter provisions are, how they apply only to NYC, how they will detract from the city’s already underfunded capital plan and cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, while thousands of public school students will continue sit in trailers or in overcrowded classrooms, without art, music, science or therapy and counseling rooms, or on waiting lists for Kindergarten.” (Full disclosure: I am an unpaid member of the board of directors of Class Size Matters, but had no role in writing this letter.)

Chalkbeat responded that they wished they had attended the event in question.

This exchange reveals the serious problem that journalistic outlets face today. Can they survive without outside funding when so much information is available for free on the Internet? Can they be independent when their survival depends on funding from foundations or funders with a strong point of view?

To my knowledge, Gates does not support any organization–journalistic or think tank or advocacy–that is critical of charter schools or high-stakes testing. I would love to be proven wrong. To my knowledge, Walton does not support any organization or think tank or academic program unless it is a strong supporter of charter schools and, in many cases, vouchers. Both foundations are supporters of privatization of public education. There are good reporters at Chalkbeat, but like Katz, I worry about the publication’s capacity to be independent when funded by the billionaire boys’ club.

Categories Charter Schools, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Politico: Rightwing Authors Warn: Watch Out for Teachers, They Are Obstacles to Our Reforms

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2014 //
126

Politico reports this morning:

“WATCH OUT FOR TEACHERS: Harvard professor Paul E. Peterson is out with a new book urging Americans not to be lulled into thinking of teachers as regular folk. On the contrary, he writes in “Teachers versus the Public,” they’re part of a large and powerful special interest group — and their interests often diverge from the public’s. “We tend to think of teachers as sort of like our second cousins or our neighbors and not as another group that has its own interests as an occupation,” Peterson told Morning Education. His book, co-written with Michael Henderson and Martin R. West, is crammed with poll data showing that teachers are far less likely than the public to support reform strategies such as banning tenure or introducing merit pay. They’re also far less likely to back school choice options such as vouchers and charter schools. The group Teach Plus has found that younger teachers are more likely to back reforms than veterans, but Peterson has not seen such a split in years of polling. “Their results are flatly wrong,” he said.

— The book’s findings will be aired at a forum Tuesday featuring former New Jersey Education Commissioner Chris Cerf and the incoming president of the National Education Association, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, among others. The noon event will be aired live on the Hoover Institution’s Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/1tKLNG2”

Imagine that! Teachers are opposed to vouchers! They don’t think they should abandon due process rights!

Please note that the book was written by professors who have not just due process, but LIFETIME tenure. I have no idea what Paul Peterson’s salary is, but I am willing to bet that it is at least TRIPLE the salary of the average teacher. His junior authors undoubtedly also have lifetime tenure and are paid more than teachers while carrying a burdensome nine hours a week of teaching.

Peterson of Harvard is one of the nation’s academic proponents of vouchers.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Vouchers

EduShyster: The Waltons Love Little Children, Not Their Parents

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2014 //
10

After reading in the New York Times about how many gazillions the Walton family has given to create charter schools (and vouchers) so that poor children can escape from failing public schools, EduShyster was deeply moved by their charitable impulses. And then she thought about their parents, the ones who work for Walmart.

She writes:

“Tough love

“I will stop briefly for a moment, reader, to allow you to reach for a fresh hanky (or to freshen your drink), such is the heart-warming nature of this particular tale. Alas, here is where our story takes a detour into darker, less feel-good fare. You see, if the Walheart throbs with love for low-income kids, it beats somewhat less enthusiastically for their low-income parents, especially those who are low-income by virtue of working at Walmart. Take Washington, DC, for example, where nearly every aspect of the city’s choice-infused school system comes stamped with a *W.* One choice that’s not on offer in the District: living wage jobs at big-box stores including Walmart. Or consider Walmart’s response after workers at stores across the country walked off the job to protest crap wages and benefits and a work culture that might best be described as tough love. (Hint: Walmart didn’t hug the workers.)

“The Tell Tale Heart (and a quick Common Core math problem)

“That sound you hear in the background, reader, is an organ—albeit not one of the ventricular variety. I’m talking old school, Vincent Price-style organ music of the kind that plays just before some dark and dirty business is carried out. In other words, this is where we pause to contemplate a heart-wrenching paradox: how is it possible that the great big lovin’ Walheart pounds for the sake of preparing low-income kids for college and career readiness in the future even as Walmart itself presides over a transformation of the workplace into one great big, underpaid, precarious, rights-free hell? Common Core math problem: Drawing on the informational text above, construct a Venn diagram that best demonstrates the overlap between the 1.4 million, mostly low-wage Walmart employees and the 2 million students who are being made college and career ready with the aid of Walmart profits. Don’t forget to provide a written explanation of how you reached your conclusion.”

The Waltons especially love the “no excuses” charters, and EduShyster knows why:

“Known for long days, long years, strict discipline and stripped down, test-prep academics focused almost exclusively on English and math, the schools so beloved by the Waltons specialize in a particular kind of acculturation that might best be described as learning how to work for the man. Students attending these schools receive training in such invaluable 21st century skills as showing up on time, making sure one’s uniform shirt is always tucked in and learning that you can only go to the bathroom when the boss says its OK and go home when s/he unlocks the doors.”

Great training, right? Just the work ethic needed to be a sales associate at Walmart.

Categories Charter Schools, Jobs, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

NY Times: Walton Family Foundation Funds Charter Movement

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2014 //
71

Readers if this blog have long known that the Billionaires Boys Club has pledged its allegiance to the privatization of American public education. Among the Billionaires Boys Club, we include the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foubdation, the Walton Family Foundatioon, and hedge fund managers. They are allied with ALEC and other rightwing “think” tanks, all of which are in live with charters and vouchers.

Motoko Rich wrote in Saturday’s Néw York Times about the dedication of the vastly wealthy Walton Family Foundation. The Waltons do not like public education. They do not like unions. They like charters and vouchers. They spend $160 million every year to spread the gospel of privatization and to destroy the public schools that are the heart of most communities.

With their support, the US is recreating a dual school system: one that chooses its students and the other that accepts all. Further, they have got the media cheering for segregated schools, determined as the Waltons are to establish the success of all-black schools.

They use their vast wealth not to pay their workers a living wage but to destroy their communities, killing off mom and pop stores, and destroying their local public school, replacing it with a corporate chain school.

Altogether a great triumph for the cold and mean face of American capitalism, which cares not at all for family , community, tradition, or humane values.

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

EPI: Corporate Takeover of Milwaukee Public Schools Makes No Sense

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2014 //
17

Poor Milwaukee. It has a thriving voucher sector. It has a thriving charter sector. It has a struggling public sector, overloaded with the children with disabilities and the others that the two private sectors don’t want.

 

Yet neither the voucher schools nor the charter schools get better test scores, and the higher graduation rate of the voucher schools relies on an extraordinary attrition rate (56% of their students leave before 12th grade).

 

On NAEP, Milwaukee is one of the lowest rated districts in the nation, slightly ahead of Detroit.

 

All that choice, and nothing to show for it.

 

So what do the business/civic leaders now propose for Milwaukee: More charter schools!

 

The Economic Policy Institute says what should be obvious: This is a bad idea.

 

Here is a press release on the latest EPI report on Milwaukee:

 
Corporate Takeover of Milwaukee Schools Would Do Nothing to Help Students

Washington, DC | Apr 23, 2014
Wisconsin policymakers and advocates are debating proposals to close low-performing public schools, largely in Milwaukee, and replace them with privately run charter schools. In a new report, Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Economic Policy Institute research associate Gordon Lafer argues that these proposals will enrich private charter schools’ corporate backers while doing little or nothing to help Milwaukee students.

Lafer argues that, because national research shows that charter schools don’t perform better than public schools, there is no reason to replace traditional public schools in Milwaukee with private charters. These proposals will simply divert money from Milwaukee students to corporations and their investors. Especially troubling is the Rocketship chain of schools—promoted by Milwaukee’s business community—which uses a particular blended learning model that allows students to spend a quarter of the day on computers with no certified teacher to monitor their activities and, in the remaining classroom time, relies heavily on test preparation taught by inexperienced educators. This model is not shaped by what’s best for students, but in large part by what will generate profits for investors and fuel the company’s ambitious growth plans.

“To really improve education in Milwaukee, we need to broaden the curriculum to focus on creativity and critical thinking, not just test prep,” said Lafer. “Poor children are no less deserving of a quality education than rich children, and the schools that privileged suburban parents demand for their children should be the yardstick we use to measure the adequacy of education in the city.”

The most ambitious proposals for corporate-backed school reform are skewed against poor cities, while letting corporate-backed charter schools fail for years before facing any consequences. Such legislation would lead to the closing of a growing number of public schools and concentrate the city’s neediest students in a public system without the resources to serve them—possibly bankrupting the public school district.

For more from EPI, see 2007’s Vouchers and Public School Performance: A Case Study of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, by Martin Carnoy, Amita Chudgar, and Frank Adamson.

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ABOUT EPI

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is an independent, nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people in the United States.

Categories Charter Schools, Milwaukee, Privatization, Vouchers

Bob Sikes: The Voucher Hypocrisy of Republicans in Florida

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2014 //
4

Republicans have been pushing vouchers in Florida, despite the fact that voters turned them down in 2012 by a decisive margin.

Republicans have been calling for STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) at the same time that they want children to go to school where creationism is taught as science.

Republicans claim they want more accountability but schools receiving vouchers will not be held to any accountability standards.

Republicans say they want a “great” teacher in every classroom but teachers in voucher schools need not be certified.

Bob Sikes points out the contradictions in this post.

Voters still oppose vouchers by a 55-42 margin, according to recent polls.

Sikes writes that as more privatization zealots assume high rank in the legislature, “The drip, drip, drip of revelations which continue to discredit Florida’s voucher program may be the only thing standing in the way of the republican agenda to crush the state’s public school system.”

That and Florida’s alert parents, who do not want their children or their taxes to underwrite religious schools or charter corporations.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Florida, Parents, Vouchers

Does Data Matter to the Status Quo Defenders?

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2014 //
83

Reader Chiara Duggan says that study after study shows that charters and vouchers demonstrate that data don’t change their minds. She is right. The charters that get high test scores systematically exclude the most challenging students. Some public schools get higher test scores because they serve affluent districts. The differences between charters, vouchers, and public schools tend to be small if they enroll the same students. But the Status a quo pays large numbers of people to argue that the Status Quo–the destruction of an essential institution of a democratic society–is “working” and has positive effects. When the test scores don’t support their argument, they shift the goal post and claim that the private schools–the charters and vouchers–have higher graduation rates. They take care not to mention attrition rates, which are very high. In the case of Milwaukee, the “independent” evaluators from the Walton-funded University of Arkansas quiet.y acknowledged that 56% of those who started in voucher schools left before graduation.

Chiara writes:

Oh, data doesn’t matter to ed reformers. It’s a belief system. Private is better than public. You can’t move someone off a belief with numbers.

How many times have you see a voucher study like this over the years? Once a year for two decades? Yet Democrats and Republicans and paid lobbyists and pundits still promote publicly-funded private schools over public schools. Vouchers have expanded every single year in this country under ed reformers. There isn’t a scintilla of evidence that they’re any better than the public schools they undermine and then replace, but it simply doesn’t matter.

“Students attending private schools receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers in a new statewide program did not score as high overall as public school students on state tests in reading and math, according to data released Tuesday by the Department of Public Instruction.”

It doesn’t matter what public schools do; improve, don’t improve, whatever. They are the designated punching bags for the punditry set. It’s knee-jerk at this point. Heck, a lot of people are PAID to bash them. It’s a smart career move.

I think this may inadvertently benefit public school students. As it becomes more and more clear that privately-run schools don’t outscore public schools in any meaningful way, the goalposts will move, and standardized test scores will no longer be the measure. I think it’s already happening. Ed reformers may actually do something that benefits public schools, and deemphasize the lunatic, obsessive fealty to test scores. They’ll do it it only to defend their own schools, but public schools may benefit collaterally.

Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/local/education/blog/dpi-wisconsin-voucher-schools-show-lower-test-scores-compared-to/article_df494180-cd29-538a-80be-a923cded39aa.html#ixzz2yNzhk7yP

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Research, Vouchers

Chile: Dismantling the Most Pro-Market Education System in the World

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2014 //
39

The following post was written by Mario Waissbluth, President of Educación 2020 Foundation, a Chilean citizen’s movement founded in 2008. Its latest reform proposals (in Spanish) are called “La Reforma Educativa que Chile Necesita”, and were published in April 2013. A book on this subject (in Spanish) is also available. These proposals were mostly adopted by and included in the educational program of the recently elected government of Michelle Bachelet, and are starting to be implemented now.

Valentina Quiroga (32) was one of the student founders of this organization and is now Undersecretary of Education.

Although Educación 2020 remains as a fully independent movement, the positions stated thereon are in many ways similar to those of the current government.

Chile: Dismantling the most pro-market education system in the world

Mario Waissbluth

In August 2013 I wrote in this blog a three piece series, called “Chile: The most pro-market system in the world.” The first described the origins and structure of the system. The second explained its educational and social results, good and bad. The third pointed the way Chile should choose to get out of this mess. If the reader wants to fully understand this situation (the most “Milton Friedmanish” in the world), incomparable with any other country, it is advisable to read those beforehand.
Although some might disagree, from both extremes of the political spectrum, we are happy to inform that the proposals we made are very similar to those being implemented now. However, the political, financial and cultural obstacles will be formidable.

Bachelet was elected by a large margin of voters and has a majority in both the House and the Senate. Nonetheless, positions within the government’s coalition are not fully homogeneous. In addition, there is an impending tax reform that is vital for funding these reforms, costing no less than 2% of gross national product in gradual increments.

Of course, many powerful companies, with strong lobbying capability, are not happy about that. The educational reforms will include dozens of new laws and budgets, covering from preschool to tertiary education.

A warning for American readers. I am fully aware that many of you are criticizing charter schools, profit, teaching to the test, skimming, and the destruction of the teaching profession. I myself have cited Diane Ravitch’s books many times. But you have to be aware that, after 30 years of neoliberal schemes in Chile, charter schools subsidized by government are a majority (55%). One third of them are religious. Two thirds of them are for-profit, and one half of them charge anywhere from US$ 10 to US$ 180 a month on top of the subsidy, therefore skimming quite efficiently.

Teaching to the test, with consequences, has been taken to the greatest extreme imaginable. Policies to destruct public education are too numerous to mention here, and the result is that this system is in acute crisis financially, managerially and emotionally. The teaching profession is in far worse condition than in the US, by any statistical criteria.

In this situation, it is simply not possible to pretend now that charter schools could vanish. Less so if millions of parents have chosen to send their children to highly segregated charters, in a country whose social inequalities are far worse than those in the US, which I know are ugly by themselves.

In short, if the US is navigating towards hell, we are already there and are trying to get out without sinking the ship. It is a very different situation.

The most difficult hurdle in front of us is not legal, political or financial, but cultural. Parents have been led to believe, for decades, that the “best” school is that which is segregated, both academically and socioeconomically. We have a true cultural and educational apartheid. Therefore, the changes will have to be gradual and careful. At the same time, the government is sending strong signals: this is not going to be a minor adjustment but a major change in the overall orientation of the school system; not to make it fully state owned, but simply to resemble the vast majority of OECD countries, probably in a way similar to that of Belgium or The Netherlands. The whole strategy is described in more detail in the above mentioned entries of this blog,

Recently, the Education Minister, Mr. Nicolás Eyzaguirre (with a powerful political and financial experience and profile) has announced the first wave of legislation, to be sent to Congress in May, whose details are now being drafted. They include, amongst other things, the radical ending of academic selection and skimming, the gradual elimination of cost-sharing (to reduce social skimming), the phasing out of 3,500 for-profit schools (to be converted into non-profits), the radical pruning of the standardized testing system, the strengthening and expansion of the public network of schools (so that they can compete in a better way with the charters) and a major reform to the teaching profession, from its training (completely unregulated so far), to improving salaries and working conditions.

This is an evolving situation. I will be most happy (if I can) to answer questions through this blog, and also to inform you about new developments in the future.

Categories International, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

Swedish Experiment in Privatizing Schools Floundering

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2014 //
14

Scholars such as Henry Levin have earlier warned that the Swedish experiment in privatization is promoting greater social segregation and not improving education.

 

Reader Chiara Duggan adds this recent Reuters article, with her comment on the failure of market-based reform. Will anyone tell Arne Duncan or will he continue to follow the guidance of (Sir) Michael Barber of Pearson?

 

Duggan writes:

 

“http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-sweden-schools-insight-idUSBRE9B905620131210

 

“Good piece on Sweden’s experiment with privatizing education:

 

“In a country with the fastest growing economic inequality of any OECD nation, basic aspects of the deregulated school market are now being re-considered, raising questions over private sector involvement in other areas like health.

 

Two-decades into its free-market experiment, about a quarter of once staunchly Socialist Sweden’s secondary school students now attend publically-funded but privately run schools, almost twice the global average.

 

Nearly half of those study at schools fully or partly owned by private equity firms.

 

Ahead of elections next year, politicians of all stripes are questioning the role of such firms, accused of putting profits first with practices like letting students decide when they have learned enough and keeping no record of their grades.

 

The opposition Green Party – like the Moderates long-time supporters of privately run schools but now backing the clamp-down – issued a public apology in a Swedish daily last month headlined “Forgive us, our policy led our schools astray”.

 

“I give the Greens huge credit for that.

 

“Can you IMAGINE a US political party writing “forgive us, our policy led our schools astray”? 🙂

 

“Never, ever happen.

 

“In 20 years when there are no public schools left we’ll get “mistakes were made”- by some unidentified person or group of people. :)”

Categories International, Privatization, Vouchers

Ed Berger Returns to Write to President Obama and the First Lady

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2014 //
45

Our friend Edward Berger returned from a long period of rest, reading, and reflection, and he is back in fine form.

He wrote a letter to President Obama and the First Lady to warn of the damage their education policies are inflicting on the nation’s children, teachers, and schools.

He writes:

“Prior to your administration, with few exceptions, public schools were not created as sources of investment income or profit. Schools were run by democratically elected boards under state supervision. Schools were accountable for financial management and academic achievement. A proven (if not100%s effective) means of teacher accountability and school effectiveness was in place and functioning well in areas where great poverty and futility were not generated by our failed economic system.

“Prior to your administration, the tax dollars Americans pay for public education could not be accessed by profiteers or religious groups and cults. No taxpayer was forced to support a religion, ideology, or partial school with their education tax dollars.

“Sadly, strengthened by your administration, an unproven and false use of testing replaced the tests used by educators to understand student needs and to teach effectively. Data generated by wrong and unproven means is causing great harm to students and teachers throughout America. The only known beneficiaries of this drive for data are the corporations creating the tests, and the egos of billionaires who use their wealth to force their “hunches” on our schools.

“Your administration supports those who can buy access to schools and thus children’s minds. Your administration accepts the whims of billionaires who have no certification, little or no contact with professional educators, no concept of the history of American education and how education is delivered, and most devastating, they have very little concern for our children. Almost all send their children to separate schools that do not follow the rules your administration is instigating.”

And much more.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, Vouchers
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