Monthly Archives: January 2017

Gary Rubinstein, critical friend of Teach for America, reviewed the school rankings recently released by Texas and made a startling discovery. Wendy Kopp’s hometown is Dallas. Wendy Kopp is a huge supporter of charter schools, which hire most of her recruits. KIPP was started by two TFA graduates. KIPP is widely considered to be a purveyor of “high-quality seats.”

The KIPP Destiny Elementary School in Dallas was rated F by the state.

But wait, aren’t these supposed to be the schools that are beacons of excellence in a sea of despair?

Rubinstein says sadly,

So this KIPP school is rated in the bottom 250 schools out of 9,000 schools in Texas which is around the bottom 3%. There’s a reformer mantra, “Zip code is not destiny.” I guess in the case of KIPP Destiny, zip code is, in fact, destiny.

Everyone knows U.S. public schools are failing.

Just like everyone knows you should never wake sleepwalkers, bulls hate red and Napoleon was short.

Wrong on all counts. Waking sleepwalkers will cause them no harm – in fact, they’re more likely to harm themselves while sleepwalking. Bulls are colorblind; they’re attracted to movement. And Napoleon was 5’7”, which was above average height for Frenchman during his lifetime.

So why do we believe that American public schools are doing such a terrible job?

Because far right policymakers have convinced us all that it’s true.

It’s not.

Let me repeat that in no uncertain terms – America’s public schools are NOT failing. They are among the best in the world. Really!

Here’s why: the United States educates everyone. Most other countries do not.

We have made a commitment to every single child regardless of what their parents can afford to…

For the past few years, I have been receiving mailers from Washington, DC-based, Alliance for School Choice (AFSC).

Alliance for School Choice is a nonprofit that promotes a particular kind of choice: publicly-funded vouchers to private schools.

The goal of these mailers is to get me to “enroll my child in a private school FOR FREE!”, thereby “put[ting]” my child “on the road to a better education!”

If I do not do so, I could be “letting” my child “get left behind.”

 (Click to enlarge)

According to AFSC’s 2014 tax form (the most recent on file as of this writing), Michigan billionaire and voucher lover, Betsy DeVos, is AFSC chair.

Also noted on the AFSC tax form is that DeVos’ American Federation for Children (AFC) is the lobbying nonprofit associated with AFSC.

In fact, in a 2013 Philanthropy Roundtable interview, DeVos discusses her connection with AFSC and AFC:

The…

For nearly a decade, public schools have been under siege by politicians and pundits. The biggest salve before now was the fraudulent propaganda film “Waiting for Superman,” which gathered together all the lies about teachers, unions, “failing” public schools, and charter-schools-to-the rescue. It launched the full frontal attack, funded by Wall Street, the Waltons, Eli Broad, and Bill Gates. They didn’t want to “reform” public schools that needed help, they wanted to privatize as many public schools as possible, starting in the poorest neighborhoods, where there was the least political power to resist the attack.

Now, Betsy DeVos has brought the plan into the open and stripped it of any pretense of being part of the “civil rights movement.”

As Gail Collins of the New York Times wrote, it is “Trump’s War on Public Schools.” Readers of this blog know that Trump is the full-blown version of reform-that-dare-not-speak-its-name (Privatization).

It…

January 7^th this year, Diane Ravitch posted “STOP: Our Government Wants to Create a National Database about Everyone, Including YOUR Children.” As with many of Diane’s posts, she was amplifying the work of someone else. This time it was a post by Cheri Kiesecker at the “Missouri Education Watchdog.” It provided evidence about the dangerous loss of privacy facing American society – especially students. It highlighted the big money in datamining. I forwarded Diane’s post through Facebook and Twitter. Soon, that post was shared again on Facebook where it drew more than fifty mostly derogatory comments. Not about datamining or profiteering but about Diane Ravitch.

Attacking Public Educations Best Ally

The person who shared from my Facebook page wrote, “I stopped sharing any of Diane Ravitch’s posts but I had to share this one from Gretchen Logue ‘s blog from October 2016.” One comment read, “I stopped…

Betsy DeVos wouldn’t commit to protecting students with special needs.

She wouldn’t commit to keeping guns out of school campuses.

She wouldn’t commit to holding charter and voucher schools to the same standards as traditional public schools.

She didn’t know the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was a federal law.

And she couldn’t explain the difference between proficiency and growth.

That’s your nominee for Secretary of Education, America!

During a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) tonight, DeVos showed herself to be hopelessly out of her depth.

She tried to cover her ignorance by being noncommittal. But it was obvious that she had no idea what she was talking about more than half the time.

And far from being a fair arbiter, Senator Lamar Alexander, the Republican chairperson of the committee, did everything he could to shield her from further embarrassment…

Spurred by the financial clout and political power of the DeVos family, Michigan has embraced choice. A charter advocate wrote earlier to claim that the state has made unparalleled gains, thanks to choice. I knew this was wrong, but was on a car trip and couldn’t look up the NAEP data. In fact, Michigan’s academic performance relative to other states is in free fall.

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the only reliable barometer of test performance, Michigan has gone into a decline over the past dozen years.

Michigan, already sliding toward the bottom nationally for fourth-grade reading performance on a rigorous national exam, is projected to fall to 48th place by 2030 if the state does nothing to improve education.

That finding is included in a report out today from Education Trust-Midwest, a nonpartisan education research and policy organization based in Royal Oak. The organization analyzed more than a…

Excellent video on DeVos focusing on failure of charter schools in Detroit/Michigan, her support of for-profit charters; privatization agenda. Less than 10 minutes long; well produced; interviews with parents, film clips, etc.

Please circulate, especially to people who will call Senators on Health, Education, Labor Committee. DeVos hearing is this Tuesday.

Facebook link:

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47OC7wZbwzM&feature=youtu.be

“Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination.”
-President John F. Kennedy

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Billionaires and far right policymakers are pushing for school choice.

I say they’re pushing for it because voters always turn it down.

Every single referendum held on school choice in the United States has been defeated despite billions of dollars in spending to convince people to vote for it.

But advocates aren’t discouraged that the public isn’t on their side. They have money, and in America that translates to speech.

The Donald Trump administration is dedicated to making our public schools accept this policy whether people want it or not.

But don’t think that’s some huge change in policy. The previous administration championed…