Steve Hinnefeld: Voucher Schools Should Not Be Allowed to Discriminate. And They Should be Regulated.

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
28

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld reports here that a Democratic legislator has proposed a bill that prevents voucher schools from discriminating against students, staff, or families based on their religion, race, sexual orientation, or disability.

Bill Phillis of Ohio has proposed that religious schools that get vouchers should be subject to the same laws and regulations as public schools and should be required to report their finances and take the same state tests as other publicly funded schools.

Will legislators in Ohio and Indiana tolerate any restrictions on voucher schools?

Will they too be required to be accountable in exchange for getting public money?

Or will the public be forced to pay for schools that discriminate and schools that indoctrinate their students into their religious world-view?

 

Categories Accountability, Bias, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Education Reform, Indiana, Ohio, Religion, Vouchers

Vicki Cobb Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
12

Vicki Cobb is an award-winning author of more than 90 children’s books, mostly about science.

In this post, she reviews SLAYING GOLIATH.

The review begins like this:

For the past 25 years there has been a national war between so-called education reformers and public schools.  Education historian and indefatigable blogger on the topic, Diane Ravitch, has been chronicling the attacks, losses and now, finally, victories through her blog, where she posts up to ten times a day, every day, since April of 2012. In her new book Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools, she pulls the disparate threads together and writes a brilliant,  page-turner story of this war against public schools for a period that included my 5 grandchildren.

Who are the bad guys?  Millionaires and billionaires who come from a business background where forces of free-market choices,  competition, and new standards create disruption in the market place allowing the best products to rise to the surface.  Ravitch names names.  We know who they are and they include Bill Gates, Betsy De Vos, and the Walton (Wallmart) families.
Ravitch aptly changes their names from education “Reformers” to education “Disrupters.” Measurement is key to determining educational success in the form of high stakes testing that occurs every school year for grades k-12.  Right out of the starting gate the Disrupters’ premise was wrong-headed and untested. 

The methods of this warfare included slamming public schools as “failing” and demonizing teachers while supporting the creation of brand-new charter schools and vouchers to pay religious schools using  tax payer money and selling the concept that now parents have “choice.”  If you knew what it takes to create and sustain a good school, you would know that non-educators with dough  are not the people who should be starting one no matter how pure their motives. (I served 18 months on the board of a charter school that is now shuttered.) Politicians from presidents, G.W. Bush and Barack Obama, to local school board members jumped onto the shiny new Disrupter bandwagons.  It never occurred to them that America’s children were  Guinea pigs.  Disruption is not healthy for children. Using children to experiment with the profit-motive in education is an insane idea. 

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Wendy Lecker on Eli Broad: The Wannabee Koch Brother

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
4

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who writes frequently for the Stamford (Connecticut) Advocate and is a regular contributor to the Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

Recently she wrote about Yale’s agreement to adopt Eli Broad’s school-wrecking “Broad Institute” in return for a donation of $100 million. The Broad Institute is a vanity project by a billionaire who readily admits he knows nothing about education but enjoys disrupting school districts because he can.

Lecker writes:

Wendy Lecker: Putting a price tag on public schools

When it comes to using one’s fortune to influence American policy, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch stand out.
The Kochs have spent a fortune pushing American politics and policy to the right. Their secretive organization, Americans for Prosperity, is a major player in anti-labor activities, such as Wisconsin’s slashing of union rights, and fighting minimum wage increases nationwide. The Kochs poured money into the American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”) a stealth lobby organization that writes bills that advance Koch industries’ interests specifically and the Koch’s extreme free market ideology in general, and then gets legislators all over the country to introduce them.
They have also donated millions of dollars to establish research centers at universities to push their brand of unregulated capitalism. They impose conditions and performance obligations on the donations, interfere in hiring decisions, and make curriculum and programming decisions. The Kochs often demand pre-approval of any public statements and include anti-transparency provisions in donor agreements. This research is then cited as the scholarly basis for Congressional decisions favoring the Kochs’ interests. The Kochs are proud of their integrated strategy to build a pipeline of influence. The president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation boasted that “(n)o one else has this infrastructure.”
Eli Broad, a billionaire who made his fortune through real estate and insurance, seeks to build a Koch-style infrastructure to push his education reform ideology. Broad recently announced that, with a $100 million donation, he is bringing his Broad Center to Yale’s School of Management (“SOM”).
The Broad Center trains school district leaders and those who seek to influence education policy. The center emphasizes applying business principles to running school districts and de-emphasizes education. In seeking candidates, the Broad Center prioritizes “a strong and direct alignment with specific (Broad Center) reform priorities” — which include school privatization and weakening labor protections. The Center openly aims to reshape American public education according to Broad’s ideology.
Eli Broad is a major player in some of the most aggressive — and controversial- education reform policies in America. Like the Kochs, Broad employs an integrated strategy of influence. For example, he bankrolled the education reform slate in the Los Angeles 2018 school board election. His star beneficiary, charter operator Ref Rodriguez, later resigned from the board and pled guilty to felony election fraud conspiracy. Broad also poured millions into Broad alumnus and charter operator Marshall Tuck’s 2018 unsuccessful campaign for California State Superintendent.
Broad used his money and influence to push the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) to run Detroit’s public schools. He provided significant funding and even summoned Broad alumnus and then Kansas City superintendent, John Covington, to be its first chancellor. Covington had wreaked havoc on Kansas City, firing hundreds of teachers and replacing them with inexperienced Teach for America members, and imposing other disruptive reforms. After his chaotic departure, Kansas City’s school district lost its accreditation. It then abandoned Covington’s reforms to regain its footing.
Covington left the EAA abruptly after charges of questionable spending, and the Broad Center hired him. The EAA was a devastating failure, plagued by financial mismanagement and abysmal academic failures.
A succession of Broad alumni ran Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District, which was also plagued by financial mismanagement and poor student achievement — worse than in schools under local district control.
Broad alumni were forced out of Seattle and Los Angeles amid financial impropriety, and Barbara Byrd Bennett, a Broad executive coach, is in federal prison after pleading guilty to a bribery scandal in which she engaged while head of Chicago Public Schools.
These scandals reflect poorly on Broad’s emphasis on applying business practices to school districts.
Much like the Koch’s foray into higher education, Broad’s move to SOM seems like an effort to profit from Yale’s name and perhaps sanitize the questionable track record of Broad alumni. Since Yale has no school of education — unlike other universities in New Haven — Broad’s interest is not to bolster any knowledge of how children can learn successfully.
In an effort to discern how much of the Koch playbook Broad is employing at Yale, I asked SOM about Broad’s involvement in the governance, curriculum, programming and hiring at SOM’s new center. After first indicating they would run these questions by SOM’s dean, SOM now fails to respond, despite my request for follow-up. Apparently, SOM’s Broad Center is adopting the Koch’s lack of transparency.
It is disturbing that a major university is helping enlarge the Broad pipeline, which has funneled scandal and upheaval across American public schools.
Wendy Lecker is a columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney at the Education Law Center.
Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Education Reform, Failure, Koch Brothers

In the Public Interest: Wall Street Wants in on School Construction: Bad Idea!

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2020 //
15

In the Public Interest is one of those rare organizations that is what it says: it identifies efforts to privatize the public sector and exposes them. To be a healthy society, we need a vibrant private sector and a healthy vibrant public sector.

 

For years, we’ve heard the same false claims behind the push to use public-private partnerships to build new infrastructure, like toll roads and prisons.

Private equity firms and Wall Street banks say public-private partnerships are cheaper, which is flat-out wrong. State and local governments can borrow money using low-cost municipal bonds. Why should we, the public, pay extra to make private investors rich?

They say they’re “free money,” which is false, or that they’ll require “no tax increases,” which is also often dishonest. Public-private partnerships are complex contracts that put taxpayers on the hook often for decades. The money has to come from somewhere, whether new taxes or cuts in spending on education, public safety, or other public services.

Now we’re hearing these same claims about using public-private partnerships to build the centerpiece of many communities nationwide: public schools.

Prince George’s County in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., was the first. Now, Stamford, Connecticut, an affluent suburb of New York City, is thinking about taking the plunge.

Stamford is facing a mold crisis at half of its public schools. Its director of administration wants to use a public-private partnership to build and maintain five new school buildings. He just so happens to be a former Wall Street banker who once worked for a hedge fund that was busted for insider trading. (He himself was never accused of wrongdoing.)

The underlying math, or at least the little that’s been publicly released so far, appears shady. But regardless, a public-private partnership isn’t the answer. Not only will it be more expensive, but it could also hand over public control to private contractors.

Alberta, Canada, signed a public-private partnership to build 18 schools in 2007, only to find out later that costs had tripled from the original estimated budget. The contract also strictly limited access to the new school facilities. Community groups learned after the ink was dry that the schools couldn’t be used for after-hours uses, like child care and sports leagues.

Who knows what will be in Stamford’s deal if they decide to roll the dice? We may not find out until years into the estimated 45-year contract.

Let us know if you hear about your local school district or government considering a public-private partnership. Keep your ear to the ground.

Jeremy Mohler
Communications Director
In the Public Interest

In the Public Interest
1305 Franklin St., Suite 501
Oakland, CA 94612
United States
Categories Privatization

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Says Greta Thunberg Should Study Economics

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2020 //
55

Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin insulted environmental activist Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, saying she should study economics. Although I’m no economist, it seems to me that the cost of intensified earthquakes, hurricanes, rising seas, and the health risks associated with extreme climate events far outweighs the profits of the fossil fuel industry. But then, I’m no economist.

The Washington Post consulted an economist:

Speaking to reporters at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Switzerland, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was asked about calls from climate change activists such as Greta Thunberg for investors to pull their money out of fossil fuel stocks.

Mnuchin jokingly pretended to be unfamiliar with Thunberg, who even while still a teenager has become a leading global proponent of addressing the warming planet. Last year, she was Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

“Is she the chief economist or who is she? I’m confused,” Mnuchin said of Thunberg. He questioned her credentials to offer solutions: “After she goes and studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to us.”

The Washington Post contacted someone who did study economics in college and asked him to explain it to us. Gernot Wagner is an economist who has a joint A.B. in economics and environmental science in public policy from Harvard University, a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University, a master’s in political economy in government from Harvard, and a PhD in political economy and government from Harvard.

According to Wagner, Thunberg doesn’t need to go much further than Economics 101 to make her case.

Speaking specifically about calls to divest, Wagner pointed to a letter released this month by BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink. In it, Fink announced the asset management firm he controls will divest — move investments away — from companies like those that are centered on fossil fuels and contribute to climate change.

The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance,” Fink wrote in the letter, according to the New York Times. 

“It’s precisely this scenario of having fossil fuels go the way of tobacco that makes fossil fuel execs the most nervous,” Wagner told The Post. He noted that Shell Oil Co. predicted the rise of activists focused on climate change — back in 1998.

But, again, the question is economics, not politics.

Wagner, who spent nearly a decade working for the Environmental Defense Fund, explained the economic argument for applying pressure on oil companies.
“It’s Economics 101 that tells us that when there is a difference between private costs and costs to society, that difference ought to be included in one’s decision-making,” Wagner said.

“And when I say ought, of course the private individual won’t; it’s up to somebody in a position of power — let’s say the secretary of Treasury — to want to guide economic policy in the right direction.”

Categories Economics, Economy, Environment

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: A Superintendent Talks Candidly About Charter Schools and Race

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2020 //
19

Bethlehem School Superintendent Joseph Roy spoke candidly about charters and race and expected he had struck a hornets’ nest. 

He said in a public forum, not for the first time, “that some parents send their kids to charters so they won’t have to go to school with “kids coming from poverty or kids with skin that doesn’t look like theirs.”

Roy is among many superintendents, including Allentown’s Thomas Parker, who are calling for state officials to overhaul the charter school system because of the cost to school districts, which pay tuition for students who enroll in charters.

The Bethlehem Area School District expects to spend more than $30 million this year. Allentown spends about twice as much. Statewide, districts sent $1.8 billion to charters in 2018.

I met with Roy to discuss charter school funding, public accountability and other topics that I may write more about later. He also opened up about the controversy.

It started with his comments at the news conference about why students attend charters. He offered several reasons, including bus transportation, longer school days, specific academic programs and uniform requirements. He also mentioned race.

“The honest fact is, not all, but some parents send their kids from urban districts to charters to avoid having their kids be with kids coming from poverty or kids with skin that doesn’t look like theirs,” Roy said.

Five days later, Saucon Valley School Board President Shamim Pakzad, who enrolls one of his sons in a charter school, called for Roy to resign, though he didn’t mention him by name.

“What they said was ugly, divisive and outside of the boundaries of human decency,” Pakzad said at a school board meeting.

Roy also got backlash from the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools. Parents from several charters demanded an apology.

Others defended Roy, including Bethlehem’s school board and Bethlehem NAACP President Esther Lee. He said he received emails of support from district parents.

I asked Roy why he believes some people don’t want to talk about issues involving race.

“No one wants to be called or viewed as a racist,” he said. “That’s one of the worst things you can say. But then that is used as a defense mechanism to shut down any honest conversation about it.”

Charter schools have varying levels of diversity. Some are made up primarily of minority students, while others are overwhelmingly white. Income levels vary, too.

I was reminded of the time I spoke to the Florida School Boards Association a few years ago. I asked its executive director why students left public schools to attend charter schools. He bluntly said, “They don’t want to go to schools with kids who don’t look like them.”

School choice encourages segregation by race, social class, income, and religion. It takes determination and willpower to overcome segregation.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Pennsylvania, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation

Gayle Lakin Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH: Enough Is Enough!

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2020 //
5

Gayle Lakin reviews SLAYING GOLIATH at Norm Scott’s EdNotes Online. Lakin is an art teacher in Maryland. Norm Scott reminds us that he gets credit for coining the term “ed deform,” which he did during the era of Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein in New York City.

Lakin begins:

No words can possibly convey the degree of spin, erroneous data and persistent support of outright fabrications that became “truths” under a relentless “ed reform” mantra; say it enough, spin it enough, publish it enough, work the system enough and it will become “true” enough. But “enough is enough”! Ravitch heroically and successfully wades through this complicated decades-long haze in her book, Slaying Goliath with her trademark attention to detail. She brings clarity as to how “ed reform” (she prefers “ed disrupters”) birthed charter schools with the intention of privatizing our national education system and how and why this “grand scheme” is currently and fortunately starting to burn out!

What might a reader’s first reaction be? There isn’t a rock big enough for “ed disrupters” to crawl under to escape the raw truths exposed in this book. Ravitch names people and companies (and there are many). She thoroughly explains the tactics of those ultra-wealthy hedge-fund managers, philanthropists, CEO’s, big businesses, politicians and the likes playing into and profiting by the “ed disruption” takeover of our national education system via a “Trojan horse” also known as the charter school (which is assuredly not a public school even though it receives public school funding). The current charter school concept is totally foreign to the original idea put forth by Al Shanker who originally intended for a charter school to be a public school within a public school to serve the needs of outlier learners. Ravitch details Shanker’s actual vision. Who would know better as he spoke to her directly about his vision which she describes in her book!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Gene Glass and David Berliner Publish a Joint Essay-Review of SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2020 //
38

The two most distinguished education researchers in the nation are Gene V. Glass and David C. Berliner, both of whom have held the highest positions in their profession and are universally admired for their careful research and long history of defending the highest standards in the research community.

Together they wrote an essay-review of my book SLAYING GOLIATH.

The review can also be accessed here.

They found the book to be fair-minded and unbiased. And they liked it a lot!

They did some genealogical research about me and my family.

They refer to this blog as “the most influential communications medium in the history of public education.”

They describe the book “as the efforts of a historian to find the facts and follow where they lead.”

They write “We sincerely thank Ravitch for her careful documentation of the greed, anti-democratic actions, and just plain stupidity displayed by so many of our nation’s leading political and business leaders who attempted to fix education….

“In the following, we provide a flavor of the book by brief examples from each chapter. We hope that this whets the appetite for a full reading by anyone concerned with the attacks on public education by those whom Ravitch calls the Goliaths. With her slingshot and stone, she joins a noble battle to preserve this uniquely American invention, which Horace Mann called the greatest invention of mankind….”

I think you will enjoy their insights, as when they indict Common Core as Bill Gates’ biggest folly, concluding that his love for standardization causes him to confuse schooling with DOS, the Microsoft operating system. They say that the “philanthro-capitalists” believe that schools should be run like businesses, like their own businesses. “They ignore the fact that the vast majority of businesses fail. They are incredulous when their schools fail.”

Glass and Berliner have written a valuable review (they are not entirely uncritical, as they still call me to account for the sins of my years on the other side).

I hope you will read it in its entirety.

I am immensely gratified to receive this careful and thoughtful review by two of the nation’s most respected scholars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Mercedes Schneider Compares the Money Behind EdPost and NPE

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2020 //
20

Apparently, Ed Deformers—themselves richly endowed with millions and millions from billionaires such as the Waltons, the Gates, Broad, Bloomberg, Koch, etc.—have descended to claiming that the Network for Public Education is funded by “Dark Money” and the big, bad teachers’ unions. Evidently they are troubled to have any dissent to their self-serving narrative that only privatization can “save” America’s children from the terrible public schools and teachers who have educated 90% of all Americans.

Mercedes Schneider performs a compare and contrast here, reviewing the tax filings of billionaire-funded “Education Post” with that of NPE. Of course, a fair comparison would have pitted NPE funding vs. not only “Education Post”, but also billionaire-funded The 74, The Center for Education Reform, Democrats for Education Reform, The City Fund, and the dozens of other front groups that have oodles of money but no members. (NPE has nearly 400,000 followers who pay no dues).

On one side is EdPost:

Started in 2014, Education Post is an ed-reform blog and the brainchild of California billionaire, Eli Broad. Right out of the starting gate, EdPost (actual nonprofit name, Results in Education Foundation) had $5.5M to play with in its first year.

EdPost’s first CEO, Peter Cunningham, was paid $1M for 2 1/2 years of blogging. Moreover, in his position as a founding member of EdPost’s board, Stewart was compensated a total of $422,925 for 40 hrs/wk across 30 months as “outreach and external affairs director.” (To dig into that EdPost history, click here and follow the links.)

Deutsch reviews NPE’s revenues and reports a cumulative total from 2016-2018 of: $659,300.

What a haul!

But oh, those salaries!

In 2016,

Diane Ravitch was president and was not compensated.

Carol Burris was executive director and is the only compensated person listed on the tax form; her total 2016 compensation was $41,108 (40 hrs/wk), most of which was spent working for NPE (33 hrs/wk), and the remainder, for NPE Action (7 hrs/wk).

(Point of fact: Burris actually works at least 60 hours per week.)

But wait! In 2018, Burris’s salary for her full-time job was $55,000 a year. What a scandal!

No one is in NPE for the money.

The most amazing fact about NPE is how much it has accomplished with one full-time staff member and minimal resources. See:

A state-by-state report on support for public schools;

Online learning: What Every Parent Should Know;

Charters and Consequences;

Billionaires hijacking public schools;

The real story in New Orleans;

Student privacy,

School privatization toolkit,

The waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal Charter Schools Program (here and here).

Whoa! That’s a lot of bang for the buck. One full-time employee, two part-time employees (Darcie Cimarusti and Marla Kilfoyle) and all that productivity!

Is ”EdPost,” with all their millions, jealous of NPE?

Or just sore because they have lost the war of ideas, now that their boasts have flopped and Betsy DeVos is the face of their billionaire-funded “movement”?

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization

Randi Weingarten on Oral Arguments in Espinoza V. Montana Case Before Supreme Court Today

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2020 //
17

Espinoza v. Montana could turn out to be the pivotal case in the battle over public funding of religious education. Will the Supreme Court rule narrowly or broadly? Will their decision defund public schools so that religious schools may be funded by the state?

The oral arguments were conducted yesterday. Randi Weingarten, who is a lawyer, released this statement:

For Immediate Release
January 22, 2020

Contact:

AFTSCOTUS@skdknick.com
AFT’s Weingarten Reacts to Oral Arguments in Espinoza v. Montana

Supreme Court Could Unleash Earthquake Threatening Public Education and Religious Liberty
 

WASHINGTON—Following today’s Supreme Court oral arguments in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement:
“Today’s argument revealed a closely divided court that appeared skeptical of the most far-reaching and dangerous theories advanced by the petitioners.
“Thankfully, several justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, questioned the petitioners’ standing and asked hard questions of the right-wing Institute for Justice, which is trying to advance a contradictory and truly radical legal theory that would undermine public financing of public education in 38 states.
“Make no mistake, if a majority of the justices side with the petitioners, the Supreme Court will be responsible for unleashing a virtual earthquake in this country that threatens both religious liberty and public education. It would turn more than two centuries of American history and our understanding of the Constitution and religious liberty on their head, and mandate public taxpayer support for religious schools.   
“We know that in previous cases, Justice Roberts did not embrace this kind of radical rewrite of the Constitution. But the right wing has been stealthy in how it has operated, knowing the court is acutely aware of public opinion.
“This case is being spearheaded by the right-wing IFJ, which has collected tens of millions of dollars from the Waltons, the DeVoses, Charles Koch and other wealthy donors to attack public education. They are bankrolling this effort as a backdoor attempt to get the court to impose Betsy DeVos’ failed agenda of private school vouchers nationwide. It is no coincidence that DeVos was at the court in person today to hear oral arguments.
“As a person of faith, I’m deeply worried about the impact this case could have. Our freedom to practice our religion comes from free exercise clause and the separation of church and state. The framers never intended to require public funding of religious institutions or schools. In fact, that’s exactly what the free exercise clause and the separation of church and state were meant to prevent. And as a teacher and a believer in public education, I am deeply worried about the effects of this case on the financing of our public schools, which are attended by 90 percent of our children.
“Teachers, students, parents, school staff, and all allies who believe in public education understand the stakes. Whatever the court decides, we will continue our fight to oppose this blatant attack on our nation’s very foundations.”

 

Categories Accountability, Religion, Separation of church and state
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