Things Are Not Going So Well for the Privatizers
It is true that they have a lot of money–Gates, Broad, Walton, Dell, Wasserman, Arnold, Helmsley, and about two dozen other foundations. Maybe more. And they have the U.S. Department of Education. But none of their big ideas is working. Study after study shows that charters on average do not produce higher test scores than public schools; many are far worse than even the lowest-performing public schools. New Orleans is just so much hype and spin. The Tennessee “Achievement School District” is far from reaching its ambitious goals; it may never meet them. More hype and spin. Vouchers put kids into religious schools without certified teachers, where they will learn the religious version of history and science. Does anyone think that moving more students into religious schools to study creationism is a winning strategy for the 21st century? The latest study from CREDO shows that online charters are a disaster and kids actually make no progress at all in math in a year of “instruction.”
Then there is the big bet on teacher evaluation by test scores. It has fallen flat everywhere. No one can say with assurance that the test scores weed out bad teachers and identify the best. Mostly, the test scores identify who is in the class. Gates showered hundreds of millions of dollars on a handful of districts to prove his pet theory, but thus far there is no proof. One of the Gates’ favored districts, where he pledged $100 million to try out his pet ideas, Hillsborough County in Florida (Tampa), abandoned the project after realizing that it was draining the district’s reserves with nothing to show for it (Gates eventually put up $80 million, but the evaluation plan cost about $250 million). The American Statistical Association warned against the use of value-added scores to rate individual teachers, as did the American Educational Research Association. VAM is dead man walking.
The Common Core standards were supposed to be the mechanism to standardize all of American education: The standards were supposed to align curriculum, instruction, assessment, teacher education, professional development, technology, and textbooks. Bill Gates boldly proclaimed that common standards were like a common electrical system, but children are not toasters, and teachers are not robots. States are backing out of the testing, and a few have rebranded the Common Core because the “brand” is toxic. However the Common Core shakes out, it will not be the basis for national standards and national tests. It will not create a single marketplace for vendors of products, as its sponsors hoped. Some will use it, some won’t. No one knows what part of this Grand Experiment will survive. The big gamble on stitching U.S. education into a seamless garment that was standardized from sea to sea has already failed. Some states will continue to use the Common Core standards, others will not. Most states have dropped out of the two federally-funded tests, PARCC and Smarter Balanced.
And oh my goodness! Where are all those reformer stars of yesteryear? The debut year of 2010, when they launched with “Waiting for Superman” to a breathless media, seems long, long ago.
Michelle Rhee has stepped away from the national stage, into apparent obscurity, even though her organization continues to fund rightwing anti-public school state-level candidates (and her book bombed).
Wendy Kopp has gone into seclusion, running TFA international, while her heirs continue to manage TFA here. As more and more ex-TFA go public with their critiques, the bloom is off the rose. TFA recruitment has fallen by 25-30%, because all that teacher-bashing unleashed by the reformers hurt TFA as well as every legitimate teacher preparatory institution. Is there anyone who still believes that children need inexperienced teachers who will be gone in a little while?
Joel Klein went to work for Rupert Murdoch, selling technology for schools; his division, called Amplify, accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, because its tablets and chargers melt or break (his book bombed, too). After Amplify had lost over $500 million, Murdoch sold it to the highest bidder (Joel Klein and friends). The bid may have been $1.
Geoffrey Canada, the superman of the privatization movement, retired from the Harlem Children’s Zone and now apparently spends his time lecturing about the glories of privately managed charters, although few have or ever will have the resources of HCZ or two billionaires on the board to make sure that every class is no larger than 15 with two teachers, that every student gets personal tutoring, that every student gets free medical care, and that prizes for performance include trips to Disneyland and even the Galapagos. Other charters–and public schools–can only dream about that kind of financial largesse.
Tony Bennett, the state superintendent in Indiana, once acclaimed by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute as the reformiest of all the reformers, was beaten in 2012 by Glenda Ritz; Bennett then became state chief in Florida, where he quickly resigned when news broke about a grade-Things Are Not Going So Well for the Privatizers | Diane Ravitch's blog:
THE DEFORMERS
In Their Bubble They Refused To Hear Teachers Students and Parents !
