Rescuing Our Schools from the Corporate Goliaths: Lessons from Indianapolis
The theme of my previous post on the 2018 Network for Public Education conference was: How Was I Wrong? Let Me Count Some Ways. As I explained, the 2014 NPE conference in Austin hit a nice balance in terms of messaging and research that allowed us Davids to defeat the corporate reform Goliath. I was slow in facing hard facts about privatizers and mostly focused on civil ways to confront opponents in the search for truth.
Previously, I overestimated how much of Goliath’s failure was due to the arrogance of power. Today’s Silicon Valley Robber Barons’ hubris can match that of their 19th century counterparts, but their control of data makes them uniquely dangerous. As the latest NPE presentations enlightened me on what is working for us Davids as we successfully resist Goliath, I was mostly struck by the evidence that he only continues to exist for the purposes of privatization, profits, and the monetization of data.
Fortunately, the 2018 NPE conference was extremely positive, so I can move beyond my errors to a post which provides an overview of a) what I learned and b) some ideas on future messaging.
When kicking off the conference, Diane Ravitch recalled the height of Goliath’s political assault, and the 2008 and 2010 Time magazine covers featuring Michelle Rhee’s broomstick and “Rotten Apples,” or teachers who need to be swept from the profession. She said the NPE should create an annual “Rotten Apple” award, and how she would have nominated Arizona legislator Eddie Farnsworth for it. Farnsworth sold his charter schools for up to $30 million to a board which he named.
My Rotten Apple vote would go to the entrepreneurs who sell online learning for pre-k students.
My runner-up would be the mandate which contributed to the West Virginia walkout. Teachers were penalized $500 per year if they didn’t download an app that would count the steps they took each day.
I learned the most from Ravitch’s explanation of how school reform would collapse without the continued infusion of corporate money. She followed up with the question: Why do they keep infusing money into charters?
The answer, it is now clear, is that they are monetizing data. Pearson testing company thinks it knows more about the children they test than their parents do. As Leonie Haimson has shown, Goliath has bought 400 Continue reading: Rescuing Our Schools from the Corporate Goliaths: Lessons from Indianapolis - Living in Dialogue
Big Education Ape: John Thompson: Goliath, King of the Zombies | Diane Ravitch's blog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/11/john-thompson-goliath-king-of-zombies.html