Schools Matter: IPS Ferebee Joins Billionaire Eli Broad Academy

Schools Matter: IPS Ferebee Joins Billionaire Eli Broad Academy:

IPS Ferebee Joins Billionaire Eli Broad Academy

A few months ago, unknown to or unreported by the Indianapolis public media, IPS supt. Lewis Ferebeejoined the school reform movement in a major way, landing a fellowship at the Broad Academy founded by California billionaire Eli Broad, a former Obama supporter and close friend of the Clintons who was behind a recent  $490 million plan with other reformers to charterize Los Angeles, hoping to place half of the city’s students in charter schools. 

    

The Broad Academy is notorious for training CEOs to become school superintendents nationwide to dismantle school districts.  

According to a Broad Academy press release on April 12, 2017, Ferebee was chosen as a Broad Academy Fellow because since he has led the district, “IPS is more agile and more capable of responding quickly to each school’s specific needs,” now offering “innovation and autonomous schools additional flexibilities in organizing school-level resources for maximum benefit to students.”

Even though he has worked to eliminate traditional public education across the country, giving to Teach for America, Teach Plus, and hundreds of other reform groups, Eli Broad is best-known in Indiana for donating $50,000 to Tony Bennett’s campaign for state school superintendent in 2012, as I note inHoosier School Heist. 

The Broad Foundation, in 2015, also handed the Tony Bennett and Jeb Bush-founded Chiefs for Change Schools Matter: IPS Ferebee Joins Billionaire Eli Broad Academy:

CURMUDGUCATION: Does Zuck Want To Be The Next Gates with Personalized Learning

CURMUDGUCATION: Does Zuck Want To Be The Next Gates with Personalized Learning:

Does Zuck Want To Be The Next Gates with Personalized Learning

Here's lead from the EdWeek article:

Pediatrician Priscilla Chan and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are gearing up to invest hundreds of millions of dollars a year in a new vision of “whole-child personalized learning,” with the aim of dramatically expanding the scope and scale of efforts to provide every student with a customized education.

The power couple's Big Initiative has announced its intent to "support the development of software that might help teachers better recognize and respond to each student’s academic needs—while also supporting a holistic approach to nurturing children’s social, emotional, and physical development." So, slap the child in front of a screen, but somehow have the child turn out physically and emotionally well-rounded.

To head this up, they've hired former Deputy Sec of Ed James Shelton. Shelton knows the territory-- besides overseeing the Office of Innovation and Improvement (before John King took the job), he was an Ed Guy for the Gates Foundation, worked with New School Venture Fund, spent time with McKinsey, and worked for 2U, an organization that helped for-profit colleges take advantages of the loopholes that he wrote into laws governing such schools back when he was at USED. In other words, he has carved out a long and useful career at the intersection of Big Investor Dollars and education "innovation."

The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative presents new opportunities because A) it has more money than God and B) it's not really a philanthropy so much as a philanthropy-flavored investment business.

CZI will be able to make philanthropic donations, invest in for-profit companies, lobby for favored CURMUDGUCATION: Does Zuck Want To Be The Next Gates with Personalized Learning:

Joan Kramer says "Don't Shelve Librarians" to LAUSD Board of Ed - YouTube

 Joan Kramer says "Don't Shelve Librarians" to LAUSD Board of Ed - YouTube:

Joan Kramer says "Don't Shelve Librarians" to LAUSD Board of Ed

Retired Librarian Joan Kramer speaks in defense of Libraries and Librarians. She talks about visiting the library at San Pedro Elementary where Board Member Monica Ratliff taught 5th grade, "where the entire school was involved in getting children to read". LAUSD Board Meeting (in Los Angeles). February 11, 2014.

 Joan Kramer says "Don't Shelve Librarians" to LAUSD Board of Ed - YouTube:

glen brown: Joan Kramer

glen brown: Joan Kramer:

Joan Kramer

-Former Teacher Librarian/Coordinating Librarian/Coordinating Field Librarian at LA Unified School District;

-Studied Elementary Teaching Credential at University of California, Berkeley;

Studied Library Media at Cal State Long Beach;

-Studied World Literature at UC Berkeley;

-Went to Hollywood High School;

-Lived in Los Angeles, California;

-From Washington, District of Columbia.

Joan Kramer fought for justice and equality. She was a beautiful, compassionate and loving woman. She loved poetry.

Death, be not proud by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

from Meditation 17 by John Donne (1572-1631)

From "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623), XVII:

Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris –

"Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die."

No [wo]man is an island,

entire of itself;

every [wo]man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

[America] is the less,

as well as if a promontory were,

as well as if a manor of thy friend's

or of thine own were:

any [wo]man's death diminishes me

because I am involved in mankind,

and therefore never send to know

for whom the bell tolls.

It tolls for thee…

Joan Kramer (February 26, 1947 - June 28, 2017)

glen brown: Joan Kramer:

Uniting the Struggles for Liberation in New Orleans | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Uniting the Struggles for Liberation in New Orleans | Schott Foundation for Public Education:

Uniting the Struggles for Liberation in New Orleans

BreakOUT!, a Schott partner in New Orleans dedicated to ending criminalization of LGBTQ youth, released the Vice to ICE Toolkit, a resource on organizing across intersections of identities, including race, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, country of origin, and language. The guide was released in English and Spanish last week in partnership with the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice Congress of Day Laborers.

Vice to ICE is the name we use to underscore the struggles for liberation, as well as the intentional building with those whose lives are at the intersections of undocumented status and LGBTQ identity in communities throughout New Orleans.

Now, more than ever, as LGBTQ communities celebrate Pride all over the country against the backdrop of continued mass deportation and incarceration of LGBTQ undocumented youth of color, we need bold strategies for building deep, meaningful relationships across language and across and within all our communities, focused on winning liberation in the South.

The toolkit has been a labor of love. It includes contributions from Southerners on New Ground and the Southeast Immigrant Rights Network, while drawing inspiration from years of organizing in New Orleans. It provides conversation starters that groups can use to break down language barriers, workshop curriculums for political education that can be used with different immigrant or LGBTQ bases, and testimonies from LGBTQ immigrant youth.

The partnership between BreakOUT! and the Congress of Day Laborers began in 2011 as our two membership organizations took note of the rampant profiling within the city. Vice officers were targeting young black transgender women and profiling them as sex workers. The police began raiding hotels where many LGBTQ youth of color lived and charging them with solicitation of crimes against nature.

In addition, law enforcement increasingly profiled Spanish speakers, stopping them on the street and in their cars and began using Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as translators. ICE agents were also increasingly being called on to translate during domestic violence calls, and they began conducting huge sweeps and raids of Latinx people who were clearly being targeted to uncover undocumented status.

BreakOUT! and the Congress of Day Laborers were both quite accustomed to our members sharing stories of New Orleans life in intimate settings. And together, we quickly identified a common language of justice and a shared purpose to fight for liberation. We fought and won on numerous fronts. For example, the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) now has a policy that prohibits profiling on the basis of gender identity, thanks to BreakOUT!’s We Deserve Better campaign. Furthermore, the NOPD is no longer allowed to collaborate with ICE, thanks to the Congress of Day Laborers’ Right to Remain campaign.

Ultimately, it was through these shared struggles and, finally, victories, that we came to recognize that our struggles for LGBTQ liberation, the human right to move freely, and the fight against criminalization are inherently and inextricably linked. It was out of that recognition that the VICE to Ice toolkit was born. As we move now to organize against the city’s proposed$40 million security plan, which we know will serve to lock up and surveil our members’ communities, it is more important than ever to link the fight for sanctuary with the fight for safety for all of our communities. And to truly win these battles, it will take all of us pushing together.

Maria Amaya, a member-leader with the Congress of Day Laborers characterized it best when she said recently, “The victories that we have won are vulnerable. Protecting them depends on our communities’ unity and willingness to keep pushing at the local level. This October, New Orleans will hold primaries for mayor, sheriff, and five out of six city council seats. Our communities’ struggles for liberation share common threads and it’s essential that we unite during moments like these to ensure that our political voice will be heard.”

Download the VICE TO ICE toolkit here, and share its lessons with your community.



Uniting the Struggles for Liberation in New Orleans | Schott Foundation for Public Education:

Introversion in a Time of Loss | radical eyes for equity

Introversion in a Time of Loss | radical eyes for equity:

Introversion in a Time of Loss

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

“The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot

June, not April, has been the cruellest month this year for me—my father’s death coming less than two weeks after my mother suffered a stroke.

While waded through this loss and near-loss, Facebook reminded me we lost our family labs in June a few years ago, only weeks apart.

My father’s funeral presented to me, then, in one hour most of the social and family interactions I have been avoiding for decades. I weathered the repeated “I bet you don’t recognize me” and hand shakes along with hugs that included extended holds.

When my two nephews and I drove away after the ceremony and receiving of friends, I explained that I would not be joining others for lunch; I was eagerly awaiting being alone in my car for the nearly hour-long drive to see my mother still in a rehabilitation center.

This was likely the first time I had confessed to them that I am an introvert, a twin companion to my lifelong adventures in anxiety. Neither confession—”I am an introvert” or “I suffered from anxiety and depression”—ever goes very well.

The response is mostly a well-meaning discounting of my sincere sharing. No one believes me because my masking techniques, my defense mechanisms are incredibly well honed.

Introverts must do the heavy lifting of adjusting to the world—yet even more stress heaped onto this predisposition no one would choose.

The drive alone and stopping to eat alone helped me begin to recharge; introversion, you see, is less about being shy or reclusive (although we can be and often are both) and more about what is emotionally draining and how we regain our energy, our peace and calm.

Then, when I arrived at my mother’s facility, her room was packed with her Introversion in a Time of Loss | radical eyes for equity:

The Jeff Bryant Report – Trump Is Vulnerable On Education. Do Democrats Care?

6/29/2017 – Trump Is Vulnerable On Education. Do Democrats Care?:

The Jeff Bryant Report 

Trump Is Vulnerable On Education. Do Democrats Care?

THIS WEEK: SCOTUS Okays Vouchers? … Vouchers Disappoint … TrumpCare Hurts Kids … CBC Dumps Trump … College Loan Fail

TOP STORY

Trump Is Vulnerable On Education. Do Democrats Care?

By Jeff Bryant

“A string of special election defeats has left Democrats bewildered at how they can continue to lose against a party led by the most unpopular president ever … As Democrats retool their messages about the economy and healthcare to more sharply differentiate their party from the party of Donald Trump, will they cleave from the Republican education platform too? There’s new evidence they should.”
Read more …

NEWS AND VIEWS

Supreme Court Ruling Could Shape Future of School Choice

The New York Times

“A Supreme Court ruling that a church-run preschool must be granted publicly funded tire scraps for its playground seemed … to be narrowly drawn… But school choice advocates across the nation saw the decision as a game changer in the divisive debate over publicly funded vouchers for private religious schools … Voucher opponents, however, considered the narrow scope of the Supreme Court decision to be an indication that the court was not interested in taking on the fundamental church-state divide.”
Read more …

School Voucher Recipients Lose Ground At First, Then Catch Up To Peers, Studies Find

The Washington Post

“Students who received publicly funded vouchers in Indiana and Louisiana appeared to lose significant academic ground in the first two years after switching to private schools but then caught up to their public-school counterparts in subsequent years … The studies do not show that vouchers led to significantly stronger math and reading performance overall … There are no examples of any statewide [voucher] program producing overall positive academic results … Students who returned to public school experienced what the researchers described as ‘modest-to-substantial achievement losses during their time in private schools.’”
Read more …

Hidden Costs of Senate Health Care Bill: Uninsured Kids Do Worse In School, More Likely To Drop Out

The 74

“Senate Republican … Obamacare repeal proposal … preserves the House bill’s sweeping cuts to the entitlement, which furnishes roughly $4 billion annually to school districts … But Medicaid isn’t the only piece of the GOP’s repeal efforts that will touch classrooms … Some 4.4 million kids could lose [healthcare insurance] coverage by 2019 …. A wealth of research suggests that access to early medical care through insurance programs like Medicaid leads to better academic and life outcomes down the line.”
Read more …

Black Caucus Dumps Trump Meeting, Says DeVos Won’t Protect Civil Rights

Education Week

“The Congressional Black Caucus … in a Wednesday letter to the president … points to a number of areas where the Trump administration ignored the group’s input, and says that the president’s proposed budget for fiscal 2018 would ‘devastate’ the communities represented by the CBC … ‘Secretary [of Education Betsy] DeVos has also refused to protect children from being discriminated against … and terminated an Obama administration program focused on improving school diversity and student achievement in the lowest-performing schools across this country’ … The CBC letter criticizes the proposed Trump budget for seeking cuts to TRIO, a department program designed to help disadvantaged students reach and succeed in college, because of the impact of such cuts on historically black colleges and universities.”
Read more …

Consumer Agency Condemns Abuses in Loan Forgiveness Program

The New York Times

“The government’s consumer watchdog is adding its voice to a growing chorus of warnings about problems with a federal program that permits people who take public service jobs to have their student loans forgiven after a decade. Confusing rules, bureaucratic tripwires and outright errors are hindering thousands of people as they try to take advantage of the program … The volume of complaints is especially alarming because the program has not yet reached its first milestone: forgiving debts … Many borrowers who expect to qualify are knocked out by technicalities … Even paying too much can inadvertently disqualify people.”
Read more …

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6/29/2017 – Trump Is Vulnerable On Education. Do Democrats Care?: 

Newly elected L.A. Unified board member Nick Melvoin hires a charter school advocate as his chief of staff - LA Times

Newly elected L.A. Unified board member Nick Melvoin hires a charter school advocate as his chief of staff - LA Times:

Newly elected L.A. Unified board member Nick Melvoin hires a charter school advocate as his chief of staff

Incoming Los Angeles school member Nick Melvoin, who benefited from millions of dollars in campaign support from charter school backers, has hired a senior official with a charter advocacy group as his chief of staff.

Sarah Angel, managing director of the L.A. region for the California Charter Schools Assn., will head Melvoin's office, Melvoin confirmed Wednesday.

Another member of Melvoin's staff will be Allison Holdorff Polhill, who worked briefly for the charter association last year before running unsuccessfully for District 4, the seat won by Melvoin. Holdorff Polhill was a longtime parent leader and board member at Palisades Charter High School. After she lost in the March primary, Holdorff Pohill endorsed Melvoin in his May runoff against two-term incumbent Steve Zimmer.

Melvoin takes office in July, representing the Westside and west San Fernando Valley after the most expensive school board contests in U.S. history. Charter school advocates spent $9.7 million on behalf of Melvoin and Kelly Gonez, who prevailed in District 6, the east Valley.

Both Melvoin and Gonez have stressed that they will be independent thinkers, regardless of their donor base.

L.A. Unified has been plagued by rising costs and dwindling enrollment, with increasing numbers of families opting for charter schools, which are publicly funded but can be privately run. Los Angeles has more charters than any other school district in the country. Their fast proliferation and role in L.A. are major sources of tension among some parents, teachers and board members.

“My goal is to mitigate charter growth by improving district schools,” Melvoin said in a May interview.

There is precedent for board members hiring key staffers associated with influential special interests.

Board member Jon Lauritzen, who served from 2003 to 2007, hired Newly elected L.A. Unified board member Nick Melvoin hires a charter school advocate as his chief of staff - LA Times:

Homeschoolers Don’t Need Federal Help | The American Spectator

Homeschoolers Don’t Need Federal Help | The American Spectator:

Homeschoolers Don’t Need Federal Help

For the first time in the 38-year history of the U.S. Department of Education, the secretary of Education recently hosted a delegation of homeschooling advocates and legal defenders.

The cordial nature of the occasion was no surprise; Secretary Betsy DeVos was a friend of homeschooling during her years as a private-sector advocate for school vouchers and public charter schools. Notably, in a 2013 interview with Philanthropy Magazine, she said, “Homeschooling represents another perfectly valid educational option. We’ve seen more and more people opt for homeschooling, including in urban areas. What you’re seeing are parents who are fed up with their lack of power to do anything about where their kids are assigned to go to school. To the extent that homeschooling puts parents back in charge of their kids’ education, more power to them.”

DeVos’s take on homeschooling contrasts sharply with that of her predecessor in the final year of the Obama administration, John King, who fretted that homeschooled children “aren’t getting the range of options that are good for all kids.” That kind of government-knows-best attitude partially explains so many families are becoming home educators and expanding their options independently via homeschool co-ops and other independent arrangements.

What did the delegation from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) want from a new secretary who is philosophically simpatico? In short, just for her to leave homeschooling alone. No need to extend federal school-choice funding via vouchers or the like, which the Trump administration has been actively calling for.

In an analysis of a bill filed earlier in 2017 by two House Republicans seeking to convert all federal school aid to vouchers and include homeschool students among the school-choice beneficiaries, Will Estrada, a federal relations specialist for HSLDA, pinpointed the peril in enacting legislation purporting to guarantee a “federal right to homeschool.”

That which “could be created by a favorable Congress could be regulated by a future, hostile Congress,” Homeschoolers Don’t Need Federal Help | The American Spectator:

For-profit charter operator lobbies for workplace schools

For-profit charter operator lobbies for workplace schools:

For-profit charter operator lobbies for workplace schools

RALEIGH - As profit-driven charter school management companies seek growth opportunities, one of the country’s largest for-profit firms is lobbying North Carolina legislators to create a new market for a type of school only rarely attempted.

The North Carolina legislation, modeled on a six-year-old Louisiana law, would allow corporations that help build or equip taxpayer-funded charter schools to reserve half the seats in those schools as an employee perk. With existing rules already allowing a charter school’s employees and board members to claim places for their own children, the change could leave only a third of the seats in such schools for the general public.

Charter schools operate independently of other public schools under a contract, or charter, that allows exceptions to most state regulations. Enrollment is free, funded with tax dollars corresponding to the number of students they serve.

The North Carolina proposal comes at a time of increased excitement among charter advocates now that their most prominent lobbyist, Betsy DeVos, is President Donald Trump’s education secretary. DeVos spent nearly two decades advocating for private-school vouchers and working for greatly expanding educational choices outside of traditional public schools.

The only workplace charter now operating in the country is affiliated with a massive retirement community in central Florida. Others have closed or businesses have cut ties since the first one opened for the Ryder truck rental company’s suburban Miami headquarters in 1999. A Baton Rouge, Louisiana, medical center plans to open a workplace charter next year as part of a real estate development.

But a company lobbying for North Carolina to allow workplace charter schools believes they allow the private sector to fund school start-ups where states don’t.

“There is a need and we would be filling the need and there is a demand for it,” Charter Schools USA founder and CEO Jonathan Hage said in an interview. “To me, it seemFor-profit charter operator lobbies for workplace schools:

Koch brothers boost effort to bring education savings accounts, or ESAs, to Colorado

Koch brothers boost effort to bring education savings accounts, or ESAs, to Colorado:

An inside look at how the Koch brothers are flexing their political muscle to spread message of school choice, ESAs
From Colorado Springs, the campaign for educational savings accounts – criticized for diverting money from public schools — is shaped to deploy nationwide

COLORADO SPRINGS — In a nondescript office building on the north side of this conservative enclave, more than a dozen volunteers spent hours making calls to educate voters about a new initiative that will allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send children to private schools.

At the same time, just miles down the road, the political network behind the effort gathered hundreds of its wealthiest donors at a posh mountainside resort to raise money to support the campaign to remake the education system.

The confluence of policy and politics epitomized how the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch flex their organization’s muscle and spread an ideological agenda in states across the nation.

“The value of this network cannot be overstated,” said Stacy Hock, a Koch donor and conservative education advocate in Texas. “The ability to stand on the shoulders of the giant that is this network to make yourself more impactful and strategic changes the game.”

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The phone calls to middle-of-the-road voters and presentation to donors in Colorado last week were part of the Koch network’s six-figure campaign to promote school choice and education savings accounts, or ESAs.

The effort in Colorado involves the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Libre Initiative, a group focused on Hispanic community outreach. Together the organizations are making calls and sending flyers to voters this summer, two of which promote ESAs as a way to “give families the freedom to select schools, classes and services that fit the unique needs of their kids.”

Five states currently offer the accounts as a school-choice option, according to the bipartisan Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures. The program allows parents to use taxpayer dollars for Koch brothers boost effort to bring education savings accounts, or ESAs, to Colorado:

Can More Disinformation and Fresh Illusions Save Charter Schools? | Dissident Voice

Can More Disinformation and Fresh Illusions Save Charter Schools? | Dissident Voice:

Can More Disinformation and Fresh Illusions Save Charter Schools?

These are some of the news headlines that appeared when searching for “charter schools” in GoogleNews in June 2017:

• Stop bashing charter schools. The Tennessean.
• Charter school parents to Legislature: Hands off. The Sacramento Bee.
• Here’s how charter schools ‘could’ succeed: Mac Gordon. The Clarion-Ledger.
• Guest Essay: Charter school overcoming barriers. The Democrat & Chronicle.
• Another success for the schools de Blasio detests. New York Post.

Such haughty headlines appear every day and reveal the intensification of charter school disinformation and desperation. Total irrationality has set in among charter school promoters.

Disinformation is not the same as misinformation, which is usually spontaneous, accidental, harmless, and unintentional. Disinformation is different. Disinformation is a deliberate attempt by the rich and their governments and media to conceal the real context of the problems plaguing society so as to disorient and confuse people about what is really happening. It is designed to obscure people’s objective interests, to pressure them to adopt ideas that are alien to their own interests, and to deprive them of the ability to develop their own outlook and advance their own independent agenda. Disinformation sabotages perception, undermines memory, and promotes anticonsciousness. It violates an individual’s conscience and consciousness, normalizes ignorance, and maximizes confusion and doubt, thereby hindering social consciousness, the human factor, social progress, and human-centered arrangements. In this sense, it is the most violent attack on humanity and progress.

Charter school operators and promoters continually take disinformation to new levels, ceaselessly fostering fresh illusions about them every day. They would like nothing more than to keep people confused about the real nature, role, and significance of charter schools. This is a main way they bluntCan More Disinformation and Fresh Illusions Save Charter Schools? | Dissident Voice: