Recently ProPublica published a deeply researched investigation of Teach for America’s close ties to the charter industry. As Gary Rubinstein reports in this post, TFA functionaries responded with shock to this clear statement of fact. What is amazing is their defensive reaction to easily documented facts.
Mercedes Schneider wrote a post about Cory Booker’s brother , Cary, who opened two charter schools in Tennessee with an ally. His application had lofty goals. He pledged that 95% of his students would score proficient on state tests. He and his partner were astonished when the state took their promise seriously. Apparently they were just engaging in marketing by making a promise they had no inten
Larry Cuban recounts the short history of AltSchool , which was intended to be a progressive moneymaker but flamed out and has been replaced by another company called Altitude Learning. Another chapter is added to the annals of the for-profit education history. Cuban writes: Begun by wealthy high-tech entrepreneur (and ex-Google executive) Max Ventilla in 2013, AltSchool made a splash with its st
Howard Blume wrote an illuminating and straightforward description of two schools in Los Angeles that share the same space. One is a public school—Curtiss Middle School— the other is a Gulen charter school, part of the Magnolia chain. The charter invaded the public school, and appropriated many of its classrooms and facilities. They have similar students (although about 40% of the charter student
DeBlasio recently boasted at the NEA candidates’ panel about his courageous resistance to the charter industry. It is true that he started his first term in office in 2014 determined to stop the charter zillionaires’ efforts to grab money and the students they wanted from the public schools. When he did not grant Eva Moskowitz all the new charters she wanted, her backers launched a PR blitz again
Bob Shepherd writes here about E.D. Hirsch Jr.’s work, and how it was wrongly appropriated by conservatives in their fight for the canon of “great white men.” I first met Don Hirsch in 1983 at a conference where we both spoke. We became good friends. We even served on the Koret Task Force together at the Hoover Institution, which we both quit, perhaps for different reasons or maybe for the same r
Larry Buhl of Capital and Main writes here about the transient nature of charter schools . In California, as in other states, they open with bold promises but many close with short notice to patents due to under enrollment or financial problems or both. As Buhl writes, parents are left scrambling and students’s lives are disrupted when their charter school closes suddenly. Buhl begins: IN LATE AU
Jan Resseger writes here about Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ efforts to repair the damage done to education in Wisconsin by ex-Governor ScottWalker, who used his time in office to try to destroy education. She writes about Gordon Lafer’s brilliant book The One Percent Solution as context for the siege of the schools and universities by Walker. She begins: In Gordon Lafer’s 2017 book, The One Per
Civil rights lawyer Wendy Lecker writes here about the persistence of racial segregation in Connecticut. She writes: The racial imbalance law applies to all public schools. It was enacted prior to the existence of charter schools but it was amended after the Connecticut charter school law was written. A 1996 revision of the law specifically included charters as a method to reduce racial isolation
Mercedes Schneider knows that Democratic candidates righteously day they oppose “for-profit” charters. Carol Burris explained that there is little or no difference between for-profit charters and nonprofit charters. Schneider demonstrates how nonprofits can reap big profits through “related transactions,” that is, self-dealing.
The charter Industry has one thing going for it. Guess what that is. Not superior academic results. No, its trump card is money. In this society, money is power. Politicians always are in search of money for their next campaign. Big donors always find open doors. Follow the money has become a precept more recognizable in this era than the Ten Commandments. In California, there is a heated battle
Roland Fryer Jr.s Education Innovation lab at Harvard was funded primarily by Eli Broad’s Foundatio n. Fryer received numerous prestigious awards for his work a san economist. He was the “chief equality officer” for the NYC Department of Education under Joel Klein. BREAKING NEWS ALERT Harvard on Wednesday suspended the prominent economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. for two years without pay and shut dow
Governor Gina Raimondo is a bona fide neoliberal who is part of the DFER clique, having been a hedge fund manager herself. She recently selected Angelina Infante-Green as State Commissioner of Education. Infante-Green is a member of Jeb Bush’s cohort of Future Chiefs for Change. Now that she is a State Commissioner, she will qualify to join the big boys and girls as a full-fledged member of Jeb’s
In a major corruption investigation, the FBI arrested former Puerto Rico Secretary of Education Julia Keleher in DC. Keleher was brought to the Island to cut costs, impose charters and vouchers, and break the union. She was paid $250,000 a year while preaching austerity and budget cuts. Puerto Rican educators did not like her, to put it mildly. They referred to her with the hashtag #JuliaGoHome.
Tom Ultican writes here about the biggest charter fraud in history (to this date). This fraud was not one of those one-day wonders that people read about and forget the next day. This one should wake up state legislators and produce genuine reforms of the state’s super-permissive charter law. Ultican writes about the indictment of 11 people for the theft of $50 million. Other writers, however, pe
Reader Greg Brozeit posted the following comment and video. I went to see Hiss Golden Messenger, aka MC Taylor, perform. He played a new song that I think all of you will appreciate. Here is what he said to introduce it: “I was thinking about, what to make a video, how to make a video for this song. And I started thinking about all of the teachers that I’ve had in my life, specifically public sch
G.F. Brandenburg cannot understand the Washington Post editorial writer Jo-Anne Armao. When Michelle Rhee started her job as chancellor of the D.C. schools in 2007, Armao interviewed her and decided that she was the greatest educator ever. Nothing that has happened in the past dozen years has changed her views. To this day, she still writes lovingly, respectfully about the Miracle that was Michel
Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Las Vegas. It is underfunded. The state is willing to fund failing charter schools but not pay for the public schools that most children attend. Angie wants to know why. She recently learned that Soner Tarim wants to open a charter in Nevada. This is the same man who wants to open a charter in rural Washington County in Alabama and set off
Angie Sullivan teaches children in a Title 1 elementary school in Las Vegas. Many of her children are poor and don’t speak English. Her school is underfunded. Angie frequently sends blast emails to every legislator in the state, as well as journalists. She refuses to allow them to ignore her students, while they cater to the whims of billionaire casino owners, like the chair of the state board of
Please watch this six-minute presentation by Noliwe Rooks about her book Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education. The video was produced by Bob Greenberg as part of his Brainwaves project. Rooks is the Director of American Studies and Director of African-American Studies at Cornell University. Her book is a fascinating history that examines the interest of bill
Jeb Bush created an organization called Chiefs for Change, whose original membership consisted of state superintendents who shared Jeb’s ideas: high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, school grades of A-F, and school choice (charters and vouchers). Chiefs for Change has now become a clearinghouse for district superintendents. You can be sure that anyone reco
Carl J. Petersen, parent advocate and blogger in Los Angeles, writes here about the long, hard struggle to wrest control of the Los Angeles Unified School District school board from the hands of the billionaires. Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings and other billionaires have funded the campaigns of charter advocates. The billionaires spent many millions to gain control, only to see one m
Mitchell Robinson of Michigan State explains why “tax credit scholarships” are a zombie idea . They are consistently rejected by voters, they fail to educate students, yet they never die. So even though “Tax Credit Scholarship” is just a sneaky way to “rebrand” private school vouchers–a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Very Betsy DeVosian idea that’s pretty clearly unconstitutional and has
Veteran teacher Arthur Goldstein writes here about New York state’s cruel indifference to educating non-English-speaking students. He writes: President Trump commits outrages against humanity by separating newcomers from their families, leaving them without soap, blankets or toothbrushes. New York State would never do things like that. We’re more enlightened. Instead of depriving young immigrants
Teacher Ariel Sacks notes two clashing trends in teaching literature: teach whole books or excerpts. The recent trend toward short texts seems to have come from the Common Core State Standards and accompanying standardized tests. As Peter Greene explains in a Forbes Magazine article, Common Core Testing and the Fracturing of Literature , “Both the standards and the tests are focused on ‘skills,’
This statement by Benton Harbor Commissioner Ron Singleton was posted on the blog as a comment: I spoke with teacher and different members of our community to put recommendations for the department of education to consider. Here is a copy of the suggestions. We have to wait and see what happens, it’s to my understanding others have sent suggestions also, hopefully we will all Make an impact. Bent
Christine Langhoff, retired teacher and education activist in Massachusetts, describes the power elite in the Bay State. After losing the charter referendum in 2016 by 68-32%, they keep pursuing ways to bypass the voters. Massachusetts has 3 Walton-connected members of the state board of education, appointed by the governor, who was formerly the executive director of The Pioneer Institute. The Pi
Peter Greene writes here about the “moonshot” to transform American education, co-sponsored by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the allegedly liberal Center for AMERICAN Progress. Peter points out that this collaboration demonstrates that both sides of the DC Establishment endorse corporatedceducarion reform (despite its manifest failure for the past 25 years). He compares their c
Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes here about the efforts by most Democratic candidates to avoid confronting the dangers of privatization: When Democratic candidates are questioned about charter schools, many typically reply, “I am against for-profit charter schools.” Everyone cheers. Politicians have created a convenient (and false) dichotomy that says n
Gary Rubinstein tries to decipher the paradoxical test scores At Eva Moskowitz’s controversial Success Academy. For years, the No-Excuses charter chain has posted sky-high test scores, which skeptical observers attribute to the chain’s practices of exclusion and attrition. However, Gary has noted this strange contradiction: SA students get high scores on state tests but low scores on high school
According to a study by the watchdog group In the Public Interest, The public schools of the small West Contra School School District in California lose $27.9 million each year due to charter schools, a loss of nearly $1,000 for each student in the public schools. The majority of students suffer budget cuts so a small proportion can attend charter schools that may be no better and may close mid-y
Bob Shepherd—teacher, author, textbook writer, assessment developer, etc.—posted the following here as a comment while discussing the negative effects ofCommon Core and other efforts to standardize the curriculum: This is what an entire generation (20 years) of standards-and-high-stakes testing has done to the field of the English language arts. Department chairpersons now make comments like, “We
Leonie Haimson has watched the development of CZI’s Summit Learning, a tech-based platform. She is a leader of Student Privacy Matters and the Parents’ Coalition for Student Privacy. Here are recommended readings: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/12/20/why-parents-students-are-protesting-an-online-learning-program-backed-by-mark-zuckerberg-facebook/ https://www.studentprivacymatters.
Eliza Shapiro of the New York Times reports on the efforts of some charter schools in New York City to reform their practices and repair their tarnished image in response to a backlash against them. If you can open the comments, you will see that most readers who comment understand the charter hoax. They know that charters are a rightwing ploy created by billionaires like DeVos and Broad to bust
Andrea Gabor is one of the most interesting education writers around. She holds the Bloomberg Chair in Business Journalism at Baruch College. Her articles appear on sites read by people in the business world. Yet she has a firm grasp of education issues. Her latest book, After the Education Wars , has the best discussion of New Orleans education issues that I have seen. Her book The Man Who Inven
The individual with whom I had this exchange asked me to delete it. I posted it without identifying her so her views and links would get the attention they deserved. She wants it deleted so it is.
