Category Archives: Uncategorized

Over $5.5 million has been poured into races for the Los Angeles school board., according to Thomas Hines of the LA Daily News. A large portion has gone into attack ads and flat-out lies in two races that put charter supporters against supporters of public education.

“Teachers union-supported groups have spent $82,630 opposing Galatzan’s bid for re-election. A recent flier gives the two-term incumbent an “F” for failing to support students and protect tax dollars – apparently blaming her for a recession that cut revenues prompting layoffs.

“Charter school groups that support Galatzan, meanwhile, have spent $141,211 attacking her opponent, Scott Schmerelson.

“According to the mailers, the retired LAUSD principal and teacher is actually a lobbyist, responsible for trying to convince legislators they should “increase the already bloated salaries and benefits for administrators, taking money out of the classroom.”

“Schmerelson is not a lobbyist. He’s also backed by the…

Over 100 international organizations signed a statement critical of privatization of education in Kenya and Uganda. They specifically criticized the World Bank for endorsing a for-profit chain of schools called Bridge International Academies. According to the statement released today, “BIA is backed by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidiyar, and multinational publishing company Pearson, among others. It operates in Kenya and Uganda, with plans to invest in Nigeria, India and other countries. It now has close to 120,000 pupils enrolled in more than 400 schools.” The endorsers of the statement believe these countries need free public education with qualified teachers, not for-profit schools with untrained teachers.

The press release, with links, reads as follows:

Over 100 organisations around the world express deep concerns about the World Bank support for privatisation in education

Press release – 14 May 2015
(Nairobi, Kampala, Washington DC, Brussels)

Today, more than one hundred national and…

Peter Greene reports on a study by Chris Tienken at Seton Hall University, who was able to predict test scores by analyzing demographics. As others have pointed out, standardized test scores are a family wealth/education indicator.

Greene writes:

“In “Predictable Results,” one of his most recent posts, he lays out again what his team has managed to do over the past few years. Using US Census data linked to social capital and demographics, Tienken has been able to predict the percentage of students who will score proficient or better on the tests.

“Let me repeat that. Using data that has nothing to do with grades, teaching techniques, pedagogical approaches, teacher training, textbook series, administrative style, curriculum evaluation— in short, data that has nothing to do with what goes on inside the school building– Tienken has been able to predict the proficiency rate for a school.

[Tienken writes]: For example, I…

More than any other person, with the possible exception of President Obama and Secretary Duncan, Bill Gates controls American education. He has promoted charter schools (a passion he shares with ALEC, Obama, and every rightwing governor); VAM; high-stakes testing; Common Core; and whatever promotes free-market fundamentalism. His billions are the tiller that guides the ship.

Anthony Cody reproduces an interview in which Gates shows zero knowledge of how his pet reforms have failed. He shows no recognition of charter scandals or the effect of charters on the public schools who lose their top students and funding. He seems unaware that VAM has failed everywhere.

Cody points out that Gates uses the same talking points he used years ago. He lauds mayoral control and cites NYC and Chicago as successful school systems (he dropped DC from his standard line about the glories of top-down decision making).

What comes clear is that…

Leonie Haimson and Rachel Stickland are warriors for student privacy. Together, they mobilized parents in state after state to oppose inBloom, the massive data-mining project funded by the Gates and Carnegie Corporations for $100 million with software developed by Rupert Murdoch’s education division; thanks to their efforts, inBloom folded.

But the data mining hasn’t stopped. Vendors are eager to get your child’s name, address, grades, records, interests, and hundreds of other personally identifiable bits of data. We thought our children’s data was confidential and protected by federal law, but as Haimson and Stickland explain in this article, this is no longer the case because the U.S. DOE revised regulations in 2008 and 2011 to make data mining possible without parental consent.

Now Congress is revising the privacy law, but it is inadequate to protect children’s privacy. Haimson and Stickland explain what needs to be done to stop the commercial…

Decades of research now reveal that charter and private schools do not produce student achievement superior to existing public schools.

Since politicians and education reformers are fully committed to charter and private schools, we have reason to be optimistic that existing public schools now provide the market pressure necessary for charter and private schools to improve:

• Public school provide community-based education guaranteed to all students in that community, rendering the need to choose or wait for that choice to create the sort of education children deserve unnecessary.
• Public schools by law fully serve English language learners, high-poverty students, minority students, and special needs students—those students under-served and even denied access to charter and private schools.
• Public schools seek and foster experienced and certified teachers.
• Public schools respond to local control and directly to tax-payers those schools serve.
• Public schools are committed for decades to the communities they serve.
• Despite often…

This website, called “KnowYourCharter” is powerful. It dispels the myth that charter schools are superior to public schools. A few are, but most are not. Even in some of the lowest-performing, most impoverished districts in the state, the public schools outperform many charter schools.

You can plug in the name of any school district in the state and see how the public school district compares to individual charter schools. They are compared by such factors as state funding per pupil, overall state performance rating, average teaching experience of teachers, and how much money the charters extract from the public system.

It takes only a moment to click the button. Open the link and you will learn more in a few minutes than by reading tomes about charters.

Some while ago, a reporter contacted me and asked if I would comment on the stellar, incredible, miraculous results achieved by KIPP in Newark. I referred her to Bruce Baker and Jersey Jazxman, who have studied charter schools in Néw Jersey. I sensed that she wanted to write a positive story and nothing I said would cause her to stop and question her presumptions

It turned out that nothing said by BB or JJ would dissuade her from finding a miracle at KIPP.

Read Jersey Jazzman here: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-kipp-propaganda-machine-and-its.html

Read Bruce Baker here: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/the-willful-ignorance-of-the-nj-star-ledger/

Nine corporations get to keep the state income taxes paid by all of their employees. No money for children, the elderly, the disabled, our infrastructure?

Yes. Nine of the largest corporations in Illinois get to keep the state income taxes they collect from their employees. Elected officials approved this.

Illinois claims that it is too broke to pay for:

• mental health clinics
• Medicaid extensions for the poor and disabled
• public schools and career teachers
• special education services
• infrastructure repairs
• contracted earned compensation to retired employees (pensions)
• and more – many more – necessary services.

The state is also cutting the state income tax from 5% to 3.75%. Yes, cut state revenue because the state lacks sufficient revenue as the state declares that the state is broke.

While this self destructive activity is going on, the largest Illinois corporations will continue to keep the state income taxes that their employees…

Like many of you, I spend a great deal of time thinking about education. Once I started blogging, I was always thinking about things to write about and what I wanted to say. After 50-some posts, I still don’t have a system for deciding what I want to write about. Sometimes I think it’s going to be one thing, and then I sit at the keyboard and it turns to something else.

This post was going to be about the Tennessee Achievement School District and their intent to further invade Nashville. How that’s what happens when you get kicked out of one community and you have to go find another to annoy. Then I was going to write about Charter School Week which, coincidentally, is the same week as Teacher Appreciation Week. But there was one thing that just kept sticking in my head, and so this time, I’m going to go local…