Robert Skeels Beats Charter Industry in Court—Twice | Diane Ravitch's blog

Robert Skeels Beats Charter Industry in Court—Twice | Diane Ravitch's blog

Robert Skeels Beats Charter Industry in Court—Twice

Robert Skeels was a public education advocate in Los Angeles who decided to become a lawyer to fight the powerful corporate charter industry. After receiving his BA in classical civilizations at UCLA, Skeels spent years as an activist, inspired by Paulo Freire, then earned his law degree in 2019. This is the only instance to my knowledge where a charter critic decided that he had to get a law degree to fight the charter industry.

As a part-time associate at a law firm in Los Angeles, he has won two cases against the powerful and well-funded charter industry.

He wrote in Medium:

My first win against a corporate charter school was a year ago as third chair in a suit to overturn a wrongful expulsion of a student of color. The Partnerships to Uplift Communities (“PUC”) charter chain (of convicted felon Ref Rodriguez fame) violated that student’s due process rights. Violated isn’t a strong enough word for what they did. PUC unilaterally changed the charges at the appeals hearing and branded the child as a terrorist in his permanent record. Under the tutelage of the brilliant partners at the law firm I was a part-timer at the time (I am currently transitioning to full time there), plus sage advice from @DrPrestonGreen, we built a strong case.

Skeels’ second victory came just days ago, when he CONTINUE READING: Robert Skeels Beats Charter Industry in Court—Twice | Diane Ravitch's blog

Strategic Advocacy Over Decades Brought Us an Expanded Child Tax Credit: Can the Same Kind of Strategic Organizing Produce School Funding Reform? | janresseger

Strategic Advocacy Over Decades Brought Us an Expanded Child Tax Credit: Can the Same Kind of Strategic Organizing Produce School Funding Reform? | janresseger

Strategic Advocacy Over Decades Brought Us an Expanded Child Tax Credit: Can the Same Kind of Strategic Organizing Produce School Funding Reform?

On Saturday, after the U.S. Senate joined the U.S. House of Representatives to pass President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, I started thinking about how a huge coalition and strong advocates can sustain support for an important reform even through times that feel bleak and hopeless. Now, as a result of persistent and strategic advocacy, suddenly an election of new leaders has on some level adjusted our society’s collective notion of the role of government.

Welfare reform imposed policies that punished parents who were not working by reducing their access to public assistance. In doing so, President Bill Clinton and the Congress that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families entirely neglected the needs of America’s poorest children. But as of this weekend, by expanding the Child Tax Credit, Congress accepted the idea that as a society we bear collective responsibility for the well-being of our children. And while the expanded Child Tax Credit is part of this year’s time-limited pandemic relief, my Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett have promised to try to make the changes permanent.

Back in 2004, I read Jason DeParle’s powerful book, American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare, about how the 1996 welfare reform harmed children. Since then I have filled my clipping file with DeParle’s articles about our collective responsibility for poor children, most recently last summer, when DeParle pushed for expanding the Child Tax Credit in the NY Times and the New York Review of Books.  At the same time, I realized that powerful research and advocacy organizations—including First Focus on Children, the Center for Law and Social Policy, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Urban Institute, and the Brookings Institution—were working to expand the CONTINUE READING: Strategic Advocacy Over Decades Brought Us an Expanded Child Tax Credit: Can the Same Kind of Strategic Organizing Produce School Funding Reform? | janresseger

Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies—and Obama's Too | Common Dreams News

Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies—and Obama's Too | Common Dreams News

Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies—and Obama's Too

"50.8 million children who attend real public schools need a secretary of education who will be their advocate, not an advocate for privatization."

Demanding an end to the failed policies that have dominated the United States for more than two decades, a coalition of public education advocates has put forth what they consider to be the top five guiding principles the incoming Biden administration should adopt if the president-elect wants to fulfill his "promised commitment to our nation's public schools."

"We need a public education champion who rejects efforts to privatize public schools, whether those efforts be via private school vouchers or charter schools."
—Network for Public Education

"50.8 million children who attend real public schools need a secretary of education who will be their advocate, not an advocate for privatization," tweeted Carol Burris, a retired teacher and the executive director of the Network for Public Education (NPE), which led the effort to demand pro-public leadership in Biden's Department of Education. 

In order to build a stronger and more just public education system, NPE penned a letter—which readers may sign—urging the Biden administration to pursue the following objectives:

• Rebuild our nation's public schools, which have been battered by the pandemic, two decades of failed federal policy, and years of financial neglect;
• Reject efforts to privatize public schools, whether those efforts be via vouchers or charter schools;
• End the era of high-stakes standardized testing—in both the immediate future and beyond;
• Promote diversity, desegregation (both among and within schools), and commit to eliminating institutional racism in school policy and practices; and
• Promote educational practices that are child-centered, inquiry-based, intellectually challenging, culturally responsive, and respectful of all students' innate capacities and potential to thrive.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic consequences, state CONTINUE READING: Defenders of US Public Schools Call on Biden to Ditch Trump's Disastrous Education Policies—and Obama's Too | Common Dreams News

Covid-19 Has Eroded My Faith in Public Schools | gadflyonthewallblog

Covid-19 Has Eroded My Faith in Public Schools | gadflyonthewallblog

Covid-19 Has Eroded My Faith in Public Schools

I am a public school advocate.

I teach at a public school.

My daughter goes to a public school.

I have spent most of my professional career fighting for public schools against every form of school privatization imaginable.

But since the beginning of this school year and the incredibly reckless way many public schools have dealt with reopening and keeping students and staff safe, I feel much of that enthusiasm drying up.

It’s not something I’m proud of feeling.

I’m actually kind of embarrassed about it.

But there are so many people I will never be able to look at the same way ever again.

There are so many organizations, unions, school boards, administrators, policy makers who have lost my trust – perhaps forever.

I’m not saying I love charter schools or private schools.

I don’t. CONTINUE READING: Covid-19 Has Eroded My Faith in Public Schools | gadflyonthewallblog

Now the Work Begins. Support NPE. - Network For Public Education

Now the Work Begins. Support NPE. - Network For Public Education

Now the Work Begins. Support NPE.

American voters just gave Betsy DeVos the pink slip. As new leadership enters the U.S. Department of Education, the Network for Public Education will work to ensure a pro-public education agenda going forward. 

We can’t do that alone. We need your help. As giving Tuesday approaches, give to NPE and help us get the work done.

In this piece in The Washington Post Answer Sheet, Diane and I describe the priorities we hope the new Secretary holds.

Now is the time to end high-stake testing and the privatization of our schools. It is time to increase funding to public schools and provide the resources schools need to re-open safely. And it is time to protect and further the civil rights of our students by fully funding IDEA and creating more equitable schools.

You support that work when you support NPE.

DONATE NOW

Now the Work Begins. Support NPE. - Network For Public Education

Be sure to register here for Diane’s next great conversation this Thursday with Kevin Welner, the Executive Director of the National Education Policy Center. Kevin and Diane will talk about the days of DeVos and the better days ahead.

Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch: What public education advocates want to see in Biden’s successor to Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

What public education advocates want to see in Biden’s successor to Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

What public education advocates want to see in Biden’s pick to succeed Betsy DeVos

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is on her way out of office now that Joe Biden has defeated President Trump, and the education world is eager to see who her successor will be. Whoever it is, Biden has said that the new education secretary will be on a mission to undo things the controversial DeVos accomplished — such as making school choice the primary priority of the department — and work to support traditional public school districts.

Follow the latest on Election 2020

Public education advocates are hoping that he picks someone who will bolster public schools and move away from the past two decades of school policies that emphasized charter schools, standardized testing and operating schools through a business model.

They have been fiercely opposed to DeVos and her agenda to expand alternatives to the public education system, which she once called “a dead end.” Trump voters are likely to be as unhappy with Biden’s selection as public school advocates were with DeVos.

This post looks at what these public education advocates want, written by Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris.

Ravitch is the most prominent public education advocate of the past decade, a former U.S. assistant secretary of education in the administration of President George H.W. Bush who turned against the school reform movement after seeing its effects on teaching and learning. She is an education historian, author and co-founder of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy group.

Another prominent public education advocate is Carol Burris, a former award-winning high school principal in New York who is executive director of the Network for Public Education, which opposes the expansion of alternatives to publicly funded and publicly operated schools and districts, including charter schools, which are privately operated but funded with taxpayer dollars.

By Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch

Betsy DeVos just got her pink slip. Throughout her four-year tenure, she did everything she could to undermine public education. Instead, she promoted the idea that schooling should be a competitive free-for-all in which parents shop for schools with tax dollars and then hope it all works out. Now it is time to end that war against public schools as she walks out the door. It is time to chart a course away from the failed reforms that began with George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB), accelerated CONTINUE READING: What public education advocates want to see in Biden’s successor to Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post