Let’s Hear it FOR Betsy DeVos! | The Merrow Report

Let’s Hear it FOR Betsy DeVos! | The Merrow Report

Let’s Hear it FOR Betsy DeVos!

Full disclosure: Although I have never met or interviewed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, I am a huge fan.  In fact, the closest I have been to her was at the Education Writers Association’s annual conference in Baltimore recently.  Sitting maybe 75 feet from her, I was dazzled as I watched her hold off some tough questions from education reporters, a notoriously aggressive bunch. That stellar performance gave the lie to those who mock her intelligence.

In Baltimore she proved that she is smart.   Sure, she made a lot of gaffes early in her tenure, but now–after just 27 or 28 months on the job–she doesn’t get flustered.  She has learned to avoid  answering direct questions; instead, she ignores whatever she is asked and pivots back to her talking point: “Students and parents need ‘freedom’ to choose.”  Ask her anything, and she will–with a smile–talk about ‘freedom.’   She couldn’t do that if she weren’t a smart cookie.

Moreover, Secretary DeVos is a gutsy defender of minority positions.  Here’s an example: A less courageous person would fold under pressure and take the popular position that public schools are vital to our future because they enroll about 90% of students.  But, showing a backbone of steel, DeVos swims against the tide.  She is not afraid to criticize public education.  And she hasn’t just shown courage once or twice; no, she’s out there regularly–every day–taking on public education, essentially saying “Damn the consequences!”

I also admire her because she is a great friend of the American teacher, something her critics never acknowledge. In Baltimore, for example, she came out strongly in favor of paying teachers about $250,000 a year!  She cleverly suggested pegging CONTINUE READING: Let’s Hear it FOR Betsy DeVos! | The Merrow Report 

Pittsburgh School Board Candidate Anna Batista Takes Big Money From Special Interests | gadflyonthewallblog

Pittsburgh School Board Candidate Anna Batista Takes Big Money From Special Interests | gadflyonthewallblog

Pittsburgh School Board Candidate Anna Batista Takes Big Money From Special Interests

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”

-George Washington

Anna Batista, a corporate consultant at Highstreet Consulting running for Pittsburgh School Board, is taking thousands of dollars in donations from big money interests.

A quick look at campaign finance reports on Allegheny County’s Website shows Batista took beaucoup bucks from school privatization lobbyists, real estate developers, lawyers, and financial advisors.

Meanwhile, her opponent Pam Harbin, a public school watchdog, is supported almost exclusively by grassroots donations.

Both candidates are running for District 4, which serves parts of Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Shadyside and North Oakland. Since they’ve cross filed and will appear on both the Republican and Democratic primary ballots, the seat should be decided in the May 21 primary.

Batista and Harbin have raised similar amounts for their campaigns. Harbin has $33,412.95 while Batista has $32,414.

Batista has support from at least two troubling industries – school privatizers and corporate crusaders – which are nowhere to be seen in her opponents financials.

Particularly troubling to me are the charter school and voucher advocates.

Someone shouldn’t be running for a public school board with backing from the same vultures demanding public schools be dismantled and their assets and funding siphoned away to private industry. Charter schools cost the Pittsburgh Public district more than $85 million per year in tuition payments. While the district has no plans CONTINUE READING: Pittsburgh School Board Candidate Anna Batista Takes Big Money From Special Interests | gadflyonthewallblog

The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word) | radical eyes for equity

The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word) | radical eyes for equity

The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word)

What do the National Reading Panel (NRP) report (2000), A Nation at Risk (1983), and the seminal “word gap” study by Hart and Risley (1992/1995) have in common?

First, each of these has become a recurring citation in mainstream media when addressing reading (NRP), school accountability (A Nation at Risk), and literacy (“word gap”).

Next, and quite troubling to those of us in education and literacy, all of these have been debunked.

A wide array of scholars have called into question Hart and Risley’s methods, conclusions, and assumptions. Gerald Bracey and Gerald Holtonhave unmasked A Nation at Risk as a false political crisis. And NRP panelist Joanne Yatvin as well as Stephen Krashen have significantly refuted the validity of the NRP report and process.

Recently, the reading wars have been rebooted across mainstream media; concurrent with that has been a rash of new reading legislation in several states.

In both cases, a common phrase is “the science of reading,” a thin veil for renewed emphasis on systematic phonics—in part driven by advocates for children with dyslexia.

News articles across Education Week, NPR, PBS, and other outlets have praised this so-called need for the science of reading while almost uniformly referring to the NRP as the primary research base for that “science.”

One journalist, Emily Hanford, who won an EWA award for her “science of reading” article, discounted my charged the NRP had been debunked with “One member expressing a minority view does not equal ‘debunked.'”

Here, I want to note that I have discovered many people react strongly to the term “debunk,” seemingly because they interpret its meaning CONTINUE READING: The Enduring Influence of the National Reading Panel (and the “D” Word) | radical eyes for equity

JACKIE WINS!!!

JACKIE WINS!!!

The Non-Profit Industrial Complex's Role in Imposing Neoliberalism on Public Education by Robert D. Skeels :: SSRN

The Non-Profit Industrial Complex's Role in Imposing Neoliberalism on Public Education by Robert D. Skeels :: SSRN

The Non-Profit Industrial Complex's Role in Imposing Neoliberalism on Public Education

6 Pages Posted: 14 May 2019

Robert D. Skeels

Peoples College of Law

Date Written: March 5, 2015

Abstract

Essay explores the Non-Profit Industrial Complex’s (NPIC) substantive role in imposing neoliberalism on public education. Using the experiences in Los Angeles specifically, it looks at the connections between foundations and 501(c)3s that share and advance an agenda of deregulation, austerity, and privatization. Additionally, the essay examines to how privately managed charter schools aren't just part of the NPIC, but are the primary weapon in the push for privatization. Lastly, the paper looks at the pushback from communities, and some alternatives to the NPIC with movements like the demands for ethnic studies, that are genuinely grassroots, in contradistinction to the NPIC.

Keywords: Non Profit, Charter Schools, NPIC, neoliberalism

Suggested Citation:

Skeels, Robert D., The Non-Profit Industrial Complex's Role in Imposing Neoliberalism on Public Education (March 5, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3368506

Download This Paper



The Non-Profit Industrial Complex's Role in Imposing Neoliberalism on Public Education by Robert D. Skeels :: SSRN

The PBS NewsHour/Education Week Report About Dyslexia: Biased & Short on Facts

The PBS NewsHour/Education Week Report About Dyslexia: Biased & Short on Facts

The PBS NewsHour/Education Week Report About Dyslexia: Biased & Short on Facts

Schools must provide adequate reading programs and reading remediation for students who need more assistance. But the recent report on dyslexia recommending intensive phonics for all children by the PBS News Hour, through Education Week, is irresponsible, short on facts, and presents biased reporting.

Education Week receives grants from philanthropic groups that favor school privatization. Here are the funders:

• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• The Carnegie Corporation of New York
• The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
• The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust
• The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation
• The Joyce Foundation
• The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
• The NoVo Foundation
• The Noyce Foundation
• The Raikes Foundation
• The Schott Foundation
• The Wallace Foundation
• The Walton Family
• The Chan Zuckerberg

This report took place in Arkansas, heavily influenced by the Waltons, who seek to privatize public education. Arkansas funds Teach for America. The state is anti-teachers and does not support teachers unions.

In the report, parents claim: We absolutely know that this is the best way to teach children to read! This approach works well for all students not just those with CONTINUE READNG: The PBS NewsHour/Education Week Report About Dyslexia: Biased & Short on Facts

CURMUDGUCATION: Success Academy Violates Student Privacy (Again)

CURMUDGUCATION: Success Academy Violates Student Privacy (Again)

Success Academy Violates Student Privacy (Again)

In a way, I can almost sympathize with Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy. Schools can find themselves in a real bind at times. A student can go to the media (social or traditional) and tell a story of how he was repeatedly hauled into the principal's office and disciplined because he was fighting bullies who picked on him for being gay, and the school must hold its tongue, even if it has a folder thick with reports of the student's repeated harassment of students that he suspected of hitting on his girlfriend. A student can claim to be unfairly punished for no reason, even if the school has a folder for that student showing a history of bullying. The schools may be armed with a defense, but they can't use it.

In every story of how a student was treated by a school, the school has its own story. It may be a legitimate story, or that story may reveal that the school behaved just as badly as the student claims. But the public is not going to know, because schools have a mandate, both legal and ethical, to treat student privacy as sacrosanct.

"Don't cross me, you little tattletales!"

This is as it should be. Teachers and staff have access to an enormous amount of student information, and so they have an obligation to keep that information just as private as humanly possible. It is a fundamental ethic of teaching, both because it's the only decent way to behave and because if families and students couldn't trust the school, it would never be able to do its job (and there are plenty of examples of places here families don't trust the school, and the school function suffers because of it).

There are certainly moments in which schools and individual teachers drop this ball. But for the most part, schools take privacy seriously. Here's an example-- I was the football game announcer for twenty years at my school, and in the last of those years, I was instructed to no longer call for a CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Success Academy Violates Student Privacy (Again)

JEFF BRYANT: Why charter school proponents have lost many of the Democrats who once supported them | Salon.com

Why charter school proponents have lost many of the Democrats who once supported them | Salon.com

Why charter school proponents have lost many of the Democrats who once supported them
For years, support for charter schools has been the norm in the Democratic Party. No longer

The politics of charter schools have changed, and bipartisan support for these publicly funded, privately controlled schools has reached a turning point. A sure sign of the change came from Democrats in the House Appropriations Committee who have proposed a deep cut in federal charter school grants that would lower funding to $400 million, $40 million below current levels and $100 million less than what the Trump administration has proposed. Democrats are also calling for better oversight of charter schools that got federal funding and then closed.

This is a startling turn of events, as for years, Democrats have enthusiastically joined Republicans in providing federal grants to create new charter schools and expand existing ones.

In explaining this change in the politics of charter schools, pundits and reporters will likely point to two factors: the unpopularity of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, an ardent charter school proponent, and teachers’ unions that can exert influence in the Democratic Party. But if the tide is truly turning on bipartisan support for charter schools, it is the charter industry itself that is most to blame.

Dems Divide on Charters

For years, support for charter schools has been the norm CONTINUE READING: Why charter school proponents have lost many of the Democrats who once supported them | Salon.com

Black girls are criminalized at alarming rates. Here's how to fix that

Black girls are criminalized at alarming rates. Here's how to fix that

What can be done to stop the criminalization of black girls? Rebuild the system
Black girls are being criminalized at alarming rates. Experts say there are ways to make sure that doesn't happen.

Itivere Enaohwo is a college sophomore, majoring in criminal justice at Texas Southern University, with designs on law school. Her middle and high school days are long in the rear-view window.

But she still remembers the humiliation of being singled out -- time after time -- for dress code violations at a suburban Houston high school.

For wearing an oversized T-shirt and leggings in middle school. For wearing a dress a high school administrator deemed too short -- even though Enaohwo had measured it carefully at home, making sure the hemline met the rule of not being more than three inches above the knee.

For wearing a hat on a rainy day -- even though it was before school hours. As Enaohwo headed to the bathroom to fix her hair, a teacher ordered her to remove the hat, then grabbed her arm and snatched off the head gear.

Every time, Enaohwo noticed that white classmates seemed to get away with similar outfits with no penalty. Every time, she wondered if the disciplinary actions had more to do with her race -- she is black -- and her naturally curvy frame than with actual infractions.

Her concern was not unfounded.

Black girls don’t misbehave more than white girls yet in every state across the country they are more likely to be disciplined in school and often receive harsher penalties for the same infractions, experts and researchers have CONTINUE READING: Black girls are criminalized at alarming rates. Here's how to fix that

NYC Public School Parents: Inordinate delays in US Dept of Education response to FERPA complaints lead to more blatant violations of student privacy by Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy

NYC Public School Parents: Inordinate delays in US Dept of Education response to FERPA complaints lead to more blatant violations of student privacy by Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy
Inordinate delays in US Dept of Education response to FERPA complaints lead to more blatant violations of student privacy by Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy

On May 4, 2019 , the NY Daily News ran an article about the plight of Lisa Vasquez and her autistic daughter Jazmiah who was pushed out of a Success Academy charter school; Success also repeatedly threatened to call the city’s Administration of Child Services on Ms. Vasquez. Her daughter has now been out of school for 18 months. The NYC Department of Education has failed to place her in any setting that provides her the services she needs, and refuses to pay for the private school that an impartial hearing officer has agreed would be appropriate.

The same day, the media outlet Chalkbeat ran a longer story about this family’s predicament. While answering questions from Chalkbeat reporter Alex Zimmerman, Success school officials showed him detailed confidential records from the student’s files, including “including progress reports, contemporaneous notes from multiple educators and psychologists, and a copy of her learning plan.”

This is a clear violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as FERPA. Though Success Academy officials claim they had the right to “rebut false claims without violating FERPA when a parent has chosen to go the press,” there is no such provision in FERPA.

I contacted Ms. Vasquez through her attorney, and offered to help her file a FERPA complaint. She accepted and on May 9, she sent it to the US Department of Education. The complaint is below. We also filed a complaint with the NY State Education Department Chief Privacy Office, as this disclosure also violates NY State Education law 2D, the student privacy law passed in 2014 as a result of the controversy over inBloom.

What’s especially infuriating about these events is that Success Academy and its CEO, Eva Moskowitz, have been using these same illegal tactics for years to retaliate against families who dare criticize the way her schools treat students.

In October 2015, after Fatima Geidi was interviewed on a PBS News Hour show by John about how her son was mistreated by the principals and teachers at Success Academy, Eva Moskowitz sent a letter with details of his records, full of trumped up offenses, to every education reporter in the nation, and posted it on the Success website.

Fatima filed a FERPA complaint on Oct. 30, 2015, more than three years ago, a complaint that she is still waiting for the US Department of Education to respond to, though the Director of the Student Privacy Policy Office Michael Hawes told me the investigation into her complaint was essentially complete months ago. What is worse is that because of the long delay in responding, Moskowitz subsequently wrote a book in 2017 published by Harper Collins, containing many of the same false allegations against Fatima’s son, a book that is still sitting on the shelves and in libraries throughout the nation.

Moreover in at least five Success Academy charter schools, SAC Cobble Hill, SAC Crown Heights, SAC Fort Greene, SAC Harlem 2, and SAC Harlem 5, FERPA violations were noted by the SUNY Charter Institute during 2016 site visits, as noted in their Renewal reports. In each of these Renewal Reports, the same observation is made:

“The Institute and school worked cooperatively to correct minor infractions at the site visit regarding Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”) wherein the intent of the school was laudable but technically a violation…”

I wouldn’t necessary assume that the intent of these school officials was laudable – especially given the SUNY Charter Institute’s tendency to rubber stamp renewals and ignore CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Inordinate delays in US Dept of Education response to FERPA complaints lead to more blatant violations of student privacy by Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy

Ravitch and Burris to West Virginia: Don’t Be Fooled, Say “NO” to Charters and Vouchers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ravitch and Burris to West Virginia: Don’t Be Fooled, Say “NO” to Charters and Vouchers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ravitch and Burris to West Virginia: Don’t Be Fooled, Say “NO” to Charters and Vouchers

When West Virginia teachers went out on strike in 2018, setting off a national wave of teachers’ strikes, one of their core demands was “no charter schools.” Governor Jim Justice promised that he would veto any charter school legislation. The teachers know that charter schools divert money from public schools, which are already underfunded in West Virginia. When charter and voucher legislation was introduced this year, the teachers walked out again. They may yet be double crossed by the legislature. Our allies in West Virginia called on the Network for Public Education to speak up on behalf of public schools.

Carol Burris and I wrote this article, which was published in the state’s leading newspaper, the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

it starts like this:

Stop, West Virginia, before allowing charter schools in your state. We have learned enough about charter waste, fraud and instability over the past 25 years to say, if you love your public schools, don’t be fooled by the empty promises of charter schools.

Every dollar that goes to a charter school or an education savings account voucher will be deducted from your local public schools. The charter movement is promoted by billionaires like the Waltons (Walmart), Betsy DeVos, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings (Netflix), and Bill Gates. The big money behind charters doesn’t know your children or your community.

Ravitch and Burris to West Virginia: Don’t Be Fooled, Say “NO” to Charters and Vouchers | Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio House Budget Fails to Increase Base Funding for 82 Percent of School Districts Now Capped or On Guarantee | janresseger

Ohio House Budget Fails to Increase Base Funding for 82 Percent of School Districts Now Capped or On Guarantee | janresseger

Ohio House Budget Fails to Increase Base Funding for 82 Percent of School Districts Now Capped or On Guarantee

The headline on Jim Siegel’s Columbus Dispatch article on March 19 proclaimed, “DeWine budget sets stage for Ohio House’s sweeping school funding revamp.” For those of us who know the urgent needs of Ohio’s 610 school districts after years of tax cuts under John Kasich and a state legislature for whom tax cutting still remains the dogma, the news raised our hopes for some relief—especially for the state’s poorest school districts.

But the school funding revamp didn’t happen. 

Everything broke down when it became clear that the plan needed revising and there wasn’t really time, despite the good intentions of a bipartisan coalition behind what became known as the Cupp-Patterson Plan. It is not expected that the Ohio Senate will revise school funding or otherwise increase basic support for Ohio’s school districts when the budget process moves to that chamber.

Governor DeWine’s earlier budget proposal included an additional $550 million over the biennium to be distributed to school districts to support wraparound services for children living in poverty. It was supposed to be a sort of place holder to which the new school funding plan would be added. While the governor’s added $550 million investment is a good idea in a state where there is devastating Appalachian rural poverty and where there are more than a dozen school districts where urban poverty is concentrated, DeWine’s $550 million was never intended to serve as the only school funding increase in Ohio’s biennial education budget.

Then in the last week of March came the rollout of the new Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan.  The mere release of the plan was groundbreaking, because the plan identified, measured, and explained an alarming decade-long school finance problem, a problem nobody CONTINUE READING: Ohio House Budget Fails to Increase Base Funding for 82 Percent of School Districts Now Capped or On Guarantee | janresseger

Great Moments in Teaching: When It Had to Be You (Education Realist) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Great Moments in Teaching: When It Had to Be You (Education Realist) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Great Moments in Teaching: When It Had to Be You (Education Realist)

This post comes from the blog Education Realist. While I usually avoid postings from anonymous authors, this full time math teacher who writes under the pseudonym of Education Realist is someone I have come to know and respect as a teacher and person. This post appeared April 30, 2019

Teachers who work with a large population of Asian students occasionally describe a student as “not getting the memo”.  High achieving or just hard working, the bulk of eastern and southern Asians all got the word: school is important.

Taio, who has been in my ELD [English Language Development]class for a year or so, is a tall, plump fifteen year old who spent all of last year on his phone. I’d take it away, and he’d just sit impassively. Miko [a colleague and coordinator of English Language Learners program or ELL] mentioned last year that the kid had said I talked too fast, which amused us both, but when I mentioned to Taio that I’d try to talk more slowly, he was shocked and got out his phone for Google Translate. “I like your class very much,” the text said. Huh.

Taio would do work sheets, and occasionally write a sentence or two. But he hated to talk and would sit, sullenly staring at me, as I gave out sentence starters again and again.

Another conversation with Miko, asking if we needed a parent conference. “His CONTINUE READING: Great Moments in Teaching: When It Had to Be You (Education Realist) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The New, But Not Necessarily Improved, Tennessee ASD | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

The New, But Not Necessarily Improved, Tennessee ASD | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

The New, But Not Necessarily Improved, Tennessee ASD

Of all the failed experiments conducted on families and children by the modern education reformers, perhaps the biggest failure is Tennessee’s Achievement School District (ASD).

Started in 2011 by TFAer and YES Prep Charter chain founder Chris Barbic, hired by then Tennessee commissioner of education, former TFA VP, and ex-husband of Michelle Rhee, herself, Kevin Huffman, the Tennessee ASD was funded by Arne Duncan’s Race To The Top money.

The promise of the ASD was that they would take over schools in the bottom 5% and convert them to charter schools and, within five years, move them from the bottom 5% to the top 25% within five years.

Here was their original mission from their website:

After two years, they were claiming they were on schedule to accomplish this with two of the original six schools.  The ASD quickly grew to about 30 schools.  But after four years it was clear that not only would none of the original ASD schools be in the top 25% after five years, but that they would be lucky if any of them catapulted out of the bottom 5%.  Chris Barbic resigned, got inducted into Chiefs For Change, and got a job as an education advisor to the Arnold Foundation.  A new superintendent came in, she resigned, also got inducted into Chiefs for Change, and finally, less than a year ago, another new superintendent came in.  The ASD, by really any metric, was a hundred million dollar fiasco. CONTINUE READING: The New, But Not Necessarily Improved, Tennessee ASD | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Thurmond Asks Parties to Negotiate to Avoid Strike - Year 2019 (CA Dept of Education)

Thurmond Asks Parties to Negotiate to Avoid Strike - Year 2019 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Calls All Parties to Negotiate to Avoid Strike at Sacramento City Unified

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond is working quickly to avoid a potential teachers’ strike at the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) and to help the district identify ways to reduce expenses in order to avoid state receivership.

Thurmond has called all parties to the table to find a resolution, including the Sacramento City Unified Superintendent, Sacramento County Superintendent, Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA), and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT).

“The timing for the request from SCTA aligns with what I am already working on, which is getting all of the necessary and major players to the same negotiating table,” said Thurmond. “The call has been put out. All of these entities have agreed to be in the same room. We need them to come together to find a resolution so we can avoid another strike and identify ways that they can avoid a state receivership.”

Currently, the SCUSD is in a severe fiscal deficit and is facing the prospect of entering a state receivership, as well as a second one-day strike. The district will be releasing their third-quarter interim budget this Thursday. “We look forward to seeing that update as it will be the most current snapshot of the financial status of the district to help us make informed decisions,” said Thurmond.

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Thurmond Asks Parties to Negotiate to Avoid Strike - Year 2019 (CA Dept of Education)