Archives for category: Vouchers
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Who Elected Eli Broad?

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2012 //
11

Eli Broad made billions in the home mortgage business and the insurance business (AIG).

He runs a foundation that specializes in education reform, medical research, and art.

One assumes he does not tell the medical researchers what to do or the artists what to create.

If only he had the same modesty about education.

He thinks he knows what works.

School choice. Test-based accountability. Merit pay. Business-style management.

None of his favorite nostrums are supported by research or evidence.

No matter.

Now he plans to expand to generate even more “disruptive,” “entrepreneurial,” “transformational” leaders of your schools.

He boasts about listening to no one and plunging ahead.

It worked for him in the home mortgage business, though he was long gone when millions of people lost their homes.

It worked for him at AIG, but he made his billions before that giant collapsed.

Now Broad trains school leaders in his unaccredited “academy.”

They learn his principles.

His Broadies are leading districts and states.

Some are educators, some are not.

Some are admired, some are despised.

But the question remains, who elected Eli Broad to reform the nation’s schools?

He is like a spoiled rich kid in a candy shop, taking what he wants, knocking over displays, breaking jars, barking orders.

America’s public schools are not his playground. Or should not be.

How can he be held accountable?

And who will pick up the pieces when his latest fancy blows up like AIG?

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, US Education, Vouchers

Which Democrats Are Hostile to Teachers?

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2012 //
41

As a historian, I can assure you that the roots of the current “reform” movement are on the far right. Vouchers began with Milton Friedman in 1955; charters began in 1988 with liberal origins, but were quickly adopted by the right as a substitute for vouchers because voters always defeated voucher proposals. The attacks on teachers’ unions are out of the rightwing playbook. The demands for test-based accountability did not originate in the Democratic party. The effort to remove all job protections–seniority, tenure, the right to due process–did not originate with liberal thinkers or policymakers, but can be traced to the Reagan administration and even earlier to rightwing Republicans who never wanted any unions or job protections for workers. The embrace of privatization and for-profit schooling is neither liberal nor Democratic.

How this happened is a long story.

No matter who supports this agenda, it is not bipartisan. It originated in the ideology of  the rightwing extreme of the GOP. Its goal is privatization.

This reader notes the long list of Democrats who have adopted the rightwing GOP agenda:

It’s not just right wing states and politicians that want to harass teachers.

Plenty of Dems are in on the fun.

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado is a nominal Democrat who never saw a teacher he didn’t look upon with suspicion or a test company he didn’t want to give a contract to.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is leading the charge in teacher demonization efforts in the Midwest, and I would argue that his anti-union, anti-teacher track record is beginning to rival that of his brethren to the north, Scott Walker and Paul Ryan.

Emanuel is a Democrat in name and once led the DCCC when Dems took back the House of Representatives.

Congressman George Miller, who chairs the House Education Committee, is a Democrat but like Bennet in the Senate, he too never met a teacher he felt could be trusted to teach without “high stakes accountability measures” imposed from afar.

Cory Booker is a Democrat who is currently engaged in the wholesale privatization of the Newark school system.  He’s got buddies in the hedge funds and Wall Street who bankroll him, he’s great friends with Chris Christie and loves Christie’s privatization efforts at the state level and his demonization of teachers and teachers unions in the media.  That won’t stop Booker from running against Christie for governor next year, however, so those of us who live in NJ can expect privatization of the schools no matter who wins – Christie or Booker.

Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg were all nominal Democrats before they embarked upon their teacher demonization/school privatization agendas as well.

And of course the Democratic politician who has had the most impact in the teacher demonization/school privatization effort is Barack Obama – from Race to the Top to Central Falls, Rhode Island to Race to the Top II: The Municipal Version to Race to the Top III: The District Version, few politicians have been as successful at bringing teacher evaluations tied to test scores and changes to tenure laws or promoting a broad expansion of high stakes testing in every grade in every subject, K-12, as Barack Obama.

I wish it were simply right wingers and Republicans out to harass teachers who were the problem.  Unfortunately, because both parties take money from the same corporate masters, politicians in both parties are out to give those masters what they ultimately want when it comes to public education – a privatized system with busted unions, cheap labor costs, and lots and lots of opportunities to cash in on the latest ed buzz craze (these days that being the Common Core Federal Standards, the tests that are going to be aligned to those standards and the test prep materials that are going to be needed to get students prepared for those tests.)

Categories Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, Unions, US Education, Vouchers

A Labor Day Gift: Samuel Gompers on Public Education

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2012 //
1

Thanks to Thomas J. Mertz,  who sent me this item from his regular blog.

This post contains Samuel Gompers’ views on the importance of public education for working people and for democracy.

In Gompers’ time, the rich took care of their children, as they always had, with private tutors, boarding schools, and private academies.

The role of public education was and should be to make possible a good public school for all of the people. Its goal is not to raise test scores but to enable the fullest development of children and young people and to prepare each to participate as citizens in our society in the fullest sense of the word.

Public education made education a right, not a privilege. Be it noted that at every step in the expansion of public education, such as the opening of high schools, there was opposition, typically from industrialists, business leaders, and others who did not see why their tax money should be used to educate other people’s children. They were willing to pay for basic literacy, which future workers needed, but they saw no point in paying for high school and “frills.”

Let’s mark this Labor Day by noting that we are today in the midst of a movement for privatization of public education unlike anything we have ever seen in our history.

In the past, the wealthiest elements of society railed about paying for education and spoke out against expanding opportunity to others, but there has never before been an organized effort to turn public schools over to private hands on the scale that exists today.

Never before did the wealthiest people find allies in rightwing think tanks and at the highest levels of both political parties for policies that would eliminate neighborhood community schools, that would give public school funding to private management, and that permit for-profit entrepreneurs to open publicly-funded schools.

If education were privatized, you can be sure that the wealthy will continue to get the best for their children, and everyone else will be left to rummage through the offerings of private vendors, or to seek a school that will accept their child.

And with the loss of public education will come the death of an institution whose overriding purpose was to prepare the next generation of citizens. And  as we are already seeing in cities around the nation, privatization shatters communities, when the one institution that held them together and reinforced communal ties is handed over to the marketplace.

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Unions, US Education, Vouchers

Maybe Choosing Schools Is Like Choosing Toothpaste?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
13

Deborah Meier writes to comment on Jeb Bush’s claim that choosing schools should be like choosing milk. Could have said cereal. There, two or three corporations own all the different brands.

Re Jeb Bush’s analogy—choosing schools is like choosing milk as you wander down the aisle.  Among the kinds of milk he listed were  milk for people who can’t drink milk.     Well, I suppose there are indeed some schools that are for people who “can’t be educated” (in his mind).

What a startling picture-metaphor.  Creepy?   The schools are, for Jeb,  just another brand on the market with fancy packaging, millions spent in promotion, and success dependent on making a profit.  Worse still is the very mindset that would create such a metaphor.   It could have been worse—I suppose.  He could have chosen toothpaste…or….

Categories Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Vouchers

How Is a School Like Milk?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
29

Jeb Bush spoke to the Republican National Convention on his favorite subject: how to save American education by privatizing it.

Bush said that choosing a school should be like buying milk.

This came from a newspaper report:

    “Everywhere in our lives, we get the chance to choose,” he said in aprepared version of his remarks sent to reporters. “Go down any supermarket aisle – you’ll find an incredible selection of milk. You can get whole milk, 2% milk, low-fat milk or skim milk. Organic milk, and milk with extra Vitamin D. There’s flavored milk- chocolate, strawberry or vanilla – and it doesn’t even taste like milk. They even make milk for people who can’t drink milk.”
    “Shouldn’t parents have that kind of choice in schools?” Bush said.

He agrees with Condoleeza Rice that education is “the civil rights issue of our time.”

But how can this be?

Is shopping for milk a civil right? How are these comparable?

This is not a good analogy.

Isn’t public education a public responsibility? Isn’t it a public good? How can it be compared to something as trivial as shopping for milk?

You can see where he is going with this analogy. An end to public education, a welcome mat for the privatizers, the for-profit schools, the for-profit online corporations.

Anyone is welcome to produce their own brand of milk, funded by taxpayers.

They can buy the high-priced milk, if they can afford it. They can buy the plain milk, or if they are poor, they can buy the rancid milk. It’s their choice.

Needless to say, Bush said nothing about the research showing that charter schools and voucher schools get similar results to public schools; and that the online for-profit schools get decidedly worse results.

But this is not about the kids. It is about letting the free market have its way with the kids.

 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Vouchers

The Ohio Voucher Program Grows

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2012 //
4

One of the model laws circulated and advocated by the rightwing group ALEC is a voucher program for students with special needs.

ALEC, you may know, represents many of our nation’s major corporations. It has about 2,000 conservative state legislators as members and a few hundred corporate sponsors. ALEC crafted the “Stand Your Ground” law that the shooter invoked when he killed Trayvon Martin last spring in Florida. ALEC also crafted model legislation for voter ID laws that are characterized by its critics as voter suppression laws.

In education, ALEC has written draft legislation for vouchers for all, vouchers for special needs, charters, alternative certification, test-based teacher evaluation, and anything else they could think of to transfer public money to private hands and to undermine the teaching profession.

Ohio recently expanded its statewide voucher program, which was written originally for students with autism; now it is for students with disabilities of other kinds. This is part of the ALEC game plan to erode public support for public education. Read the article from Ohio. It says that the private schools are not accepting the students with the greatest need, and that some students who never attended public schools are now getting public subsidy. All combine to reduce public funding to public schools.

The Florida voucher plan for students with disabilities is called the McKay Scholarship program. It was embroiled in controversy when an investigative reporter discovered that the program was unsupervised, that some participating schools had no curriculum, no educational program and were run by unqualified people. Which raises the question of whether the point of the program is to help the children or to dismantle public education.

New York state has a similar program for pre-K special education students. Although it is not called a voucher program, it is almost completely privatized (and it predates ALEC’s agenda). The New York State Comptroller recently released an audit showing the program to be rife with fraud, inflated enrollments, corruption, etc.  It is also the most expensive program for pre-K special education in the nation.

The private sector does not have all the answers. Neither does the public sector. Any program using public money should be carefully, rigorously supervised and regulated, especially when children are involved.

 

Categories ALEC, Education Reform, Florida, New York, Ohio, Special Education, Vouchers

Did He Miss Class That Day?

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2012 //
2

I posted earlier about Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, who said he could not see the difference between public, private and religious schools.

A teacher asks:

I wonder where these politicians are getting their education from. Did they miss class on the days when the Constitution and First Amendment were discussed?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, For-Profit, Philadelphia, Privatization, Vouchers

Brave Maine Superintendent Rebukes Governor

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2012 //
20

Maine Governor Paul LePage has made a name for himself insulting Maine educators and proposing vouchers, charters, and evaluating teachers by student test scores. One superintendent, Paul Perzanoski of Brunswick, decided he had had enough.

In his back to school letter to school staff (not parents or children), he proposed that the governor take the SAT and publish his scores.

This is how the local  press described his letter and the reaction to it.

“The legislators passed new laws on bullying this spring but they failed to include the Blaine House,” Perzanoski wrote. “Remediation is on the governor’s mind and I agree, he needs remediation in civility, public speaking, telling the truth, diplomacy and following the law. I think we should challenge him to take the SAT and then make the results public.”

But that wasn’t all.

“There comes a time when you have to stand up and say enough is enough,” Perzanoski said on Wednesday. “Our educators work harder now than they ever had before, and their reward for it is additional unfunded mandates and then political bashing based on whatever statistics they choose to use and the cliche of the day.”

And this:

“Public school bashing has become the favorite political sport since a statistically flawed document called ‘A Nation at Risk’ was released in 1983,” he wrote. “The main goal of this 29-year attack is not to improve public education but to demean it enough so public dollars pay for private and religious schools.”

When asked by a reporter about his bold statements, Perznoski–a 40-year veteran of public education– said “sometimes you have to take a risk” and speak your mind.

“We don’t have to put up with this,” he said about his message to staff. “We have a voice. We need to use it. We need to stand up as one.”

This man should get a gold star for courage.

Here is his email: pperzanoski@brunswick.k12.me.us.

Let’s thank him for using his voice and speaking truth to power.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Honor Roll, Vouchers

Rick Perry Appoints New Texas Commissioner of Education

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2012 //
19

Governor Rick Perry has appointed Michael Williams to be the new state Commissioner of Education in Texas.

Mr. Williams is a former general counsel to the Republican Party.

Most recently he served on the commission that regulates the oil and gas industry.

He was born in Midland, Texas, the same town as George W. Bush.

Mr. Williams doesn’t believe in climate change.

He believes in vouchers and charters.

He has no education experience. None.

Another education reformer.

This may be an indication of Governor Perry’s intent to push hard for the privatization of public education in Texas.

Or, more likely, an expression of his contempt for public school educators.

Not long ago, the Texas GOP adopted a policy platform in which the party agreed that it is opposed to critical thinking.

Governor Perry no doubt supports that plank with vigor.

I am looking forward to addressing the annual conference of the Texas Association of School Administrators in Austin on September 30. Y’all come.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Texas, Vouchers

Will Bridgeport Elect a Voucher Advocate?

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2012 //
4

Residents of Bridgeport, CT, will soon vote in an election for members of their school board.

For reasons to complicated to get into here, the previous unelected school board was declared illegal by the state’s highest court, which ordered a new election.

If you read Jonathan Pelto’s blog, you will get the full story of how an illegal board was put in charge of the district, hired Paul Vallas to be a superintendent for $229k a year at the same time that he runs a consulting business on the side.

Now as the election approaches, one of the members of the illegal board is running for the elected. Although he is a Democrat, he declares that he favors vouchers, which is a historic Republican plank. He favors vouchers even though the money to fund them will decrease the funding of the public schools he want to oversee.

This election will test the residents of Bridgeport. That is, unless the electoral process is not corrupted by an infusion of big money from the Wall Street hedge fund managers who seem to grow on trees in places like Darien, New Canaan, and Greenwich.

Categories Connecticut, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers
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