Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé

Rick Perlstein is a brilliant writer who usually writes about national politics. Since he lives in Chicago, he couldn’t help but notice the hostile takeover of the public schools by a small, interconnected corporate elite. He applies his journalistic and scholarly skills to unraveling this sordid story.

He begins with a story about an educator who was recently “reassigned” (fired) by the Mayor’s school board.

Perlstein writes:

“This past September, an award-winning Chicago Public Schools principal named Troy LaRaviere published a post on his blog that began, “Whenever I try to take a break from writing about CPS to focus on other aspects of my professional and personal life, CPS officials do something so profoundly unethical, incompetent and/or corrupt that my conscience calls me to pick up the pen once more.”

“What had Principal LaRaviere going this time? We’ll get there eventually. But first we have to back up…

Reformers are all about ‘outcomes’ and that’s why they love Success Academy charter schools. Year after year Success Academy students outperform the rest of the state on the 3-8 ELA and math tests.

For sure if there was a hospital out there that was claiming to have the ability to cure Cancer or something like that, there would be all kinds of independent investigations and different tests to see if their claims were for real. But when it comes to education, we don’t see this so much.

The oldest Success Academy students are now in 10th grade. They have had two different cohorts of 8th graders take the specialized high school test for admission into one of the 8 specialized New York City high schools. Amazingly, none of those students made it into any of the specialized schools. That is pretty unusual that a group of students does so…

While American elected officials continue to encourage market reforms like competition, charter schools, and vouchers, Swedish officials are now recognizing the damage these reforms have done to their society. Sweden abandoned its public system in the early 1990s and welcomed vouchers and privately managed schools.

“STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – When one of the biggest private education firms in Sweden went bankrupt earlier this year, it left 11,000 students in the lurch and made Stockholm rethink its pioneering market reform of the state schools system.

“School shutdowns and deteriorating results have taken the shine off an education model admired and emulated around the world, in Britain in particular.

“I think we have had too much blind faith in that more private schools would guarantee greater educational quality,” said Tomas Tobé, head of the parliament’s education committee and spokesman on education for the ruling Moderate party.

“In a country with the fastest growing…

It is arguable that the taxes that fund public sector services are being targeted and looted by private sector corporations.

In the corporate war to profit from public funds—the taxes everyone who works is supposed to pay—billionaire oligarchs like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, the Koch brothers and their allies among the wealthiest 1% are taking over teaching our children, profiting off publicly funded private sector prisons, profiting off publicly funded private sector military contractors, and the list goes on.

Most if not all workers pay income taxes, but did you know that many corporations and millionaires don’t.  According to Forbes, “More than 90% of US Businesses Don’t Pay The Corporate Income Tax, and CNBC reported that “20 big profitable US companies paid no taxes.” In fact, according to PoliticFact, the “Middle Class pays higher tax rates than millionaires,” and 7,000 millionaires “gaming the system

The Network for Public Education has now held three national conferences. The first was in Austin, Texas; the second in Chicago; and the 2016 conference just concluded in Raleigh, North Carolina.

About 500 activists, mostly teachers, but also principals, administrators, school board members, parents, and even representatives of the Newark Student Union were there. Most of the best-known education bloggers were there. I haven’t done a count but we had representation from nearly every state, including people who flew in from California, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nebraska.

Every one of these conferences has been exciting. It is exciting to meet the people you know online but have never met face to face. It is exciting to be surrounded with people who share your beliefs and values. It is exciting to know that you are not alone. There was a sense of collegiality and camaraderie that occasionally felt like…

At its third annual conference, held in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Network for Public Education released a major report on the problems of current test-based teacher evaluation systems. The report includes recommendations for innovative reform.

For Immediate Release: April 17, 2016

Media Contact:

Anthony Cody 510-917-9231, Anthony_cody@hotmail.com

Carol Burris 718-577-3276 cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org

National Report Shows New Teacher Evaluation Systems Causing Harm

“Teachers Talk Back: Educators on the Impact of Teacher Evaluation” is a ground-breaking report that brings forth the voices of those on the front lines, teachers and administrators, to reveal the impact that changes to teacher evaluations are having on our schools, teachers and students.

The Network for Public Education Urges Policymakers and the Public to Remove Evaluations Based on Test Scores and Strengthen Teacher Collaboration.

Raleigh, NC — Today, the Network for Public Education, a national nonprofit education advocacy organization, released Teachers Talk Back: Educators on the Impact of…

Prepare yourself, Pittsburgh.

A new Political Action Committee (PAC) has descended on the ‘Burgh to further privatize our public schools and wrest control away from parents who are in favor of school reforms that actually work.

It’s called Campaign for Quality Schools, but make no mistake. The wealthy special interests behind it don’t care about quality schools – they care about quality profits for their investors.

PACs are political committees organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to elect and defeat candidates. Unlike federal PACS which can only give up to $5,000 to a candidate per election, state PACs in Pennsylvania have no spending limits. In that way, they are like federal Super PACs which also have no limits on donation size.

Besides giving an unfair advantage to special interest groups, PACS also have notoriously been used for nefarious ends. For instance, former Republican U.S. Rep. John…

Laura Chapman, retired arts educator, explains the goals of standardized testing:

She writes:

“Here is another reason to opt out.

Test scores are collected and then marketed by greatschools.org. This non-profit is a sophisticated and well-funded system for gathering test scores and other information about students and parents, then selling that information. The website literally sells ads and licenses for access to test scores and other data on schools–public, private, and charter–with expansions planned for pre-school and daycare-centers.

This national data hog is funded by billionaire foundations unfriendly to public schools. The logos of the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations are prominently displayed. A list of 19 other supporters includes the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, and New Schools Venture Fund among others. All of these supporters want to make public schools an artifact from the past.

Parents, if you patronize the tests, you…

Students at the Bronx Lighthouse College Preparatory Academy wrote a letter objecting to a visit by Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and the school canceled his visit.

Cruz, no doubt, hoped to use the charter school as a photo-op for his New York campaign.

The students, however, had other ideas.

They wrote:

A group of students will be leaving during 4th period, as act of civil disobedience in regards to the arrival of Ted Cruz to BLCPA. We have all considered the consequences of our actions and are willing to accept them. We respect you and all the staff at BLCPA as well as the expected guests. But we want you to understand that as passionate students, we have ideas and principles that should be heard and respected. This walk out isn’t a reflection of our discontent with BLCPA but our opportunity to stand up for our community and future…