ED and Blackwater Share Same Goal

Just as her murderous brother, Erik Prince, has a scheme to privatize the U. S. military, the criminally-ignorant crone, Betsy DeVos, is out to do the same for schooling from pre-K through college:

“I think that there’s been an outsized footprint in the last couple, three decades on the part of the federal government in education,” she said. “And it’s my goal to extract us from a lot of those spaces. I will welcome your thoughts on what we need to be doing less of. And if there are areas to be doing more of, what are those areas?”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article170327837.html#storylink=cpy

Time to end the racist triumvirate of Tuck, Huppenthal, and Horne

It’s a tale of white fragility and fear, really.—Imani Gandy

These two racist State Superintendents finally got what they deserved for shuttering ethnic studies in Arizona. However, right here in California, we have a candidate for State Superintendent that enacted the same policies in Los Angeles—shuttering ethnic studies, closing dual language programs, and killing heritage language programs. That bigot's name is Marshall Tuck. Let's show Tuck that California is not Arizona, and that we shouldn't have to wait for years for a court to rule in on his racist policies. Let's stop Tuck from repeating a Horne or a Huppenthal, by making sure he never holds a position of power in which he can harm school children again.

NEA: "We're not opposed to charter schools."

Jeff Bryant, who remains a primary enabler of the corporate unions, NEA and AFT, recently interviewed NEA VP Becky Pringle at NetRoots.

JB: Does that mean NEA is anti-charter?

BP: We're not opposed to charter schools. We have started charter schools, and we have members in charter schools. But charters need to have specific criteria. They need to be accountable, controlled by democratically elected boards, and have transparency. And –an important condition often overlooked – they need to be part of the system, not separate. They should be part of a system of education that makes sure every student gets what they need to thrive. We have examples of that.

Bryant does not ask about and Pringle does not volunteer info on specific examples.  Why?  Because if they exist, they are so rare as to be meaningless. 

NOT among the criteria that Pringle says "charters need to have" are humane learning environments, non-penal instructional strategies, rich curriculums, professionally certified teachers and principals, librarians, counselors, or desegregated classrooms.  Nor does she define in this interview or elsewhere what "accountability" or "transparency" mean. 

The truth is that NEA only cares about expanding membership and collecting the dues that members pay each year, with the false hope of slowing the bleeding out of public schools and professional teaching.  As long as NEA and AFT remain loyalists to the DNC's Clintonian contingent of paternalistic corporate reformers, every teacher should boycott these core agencies of corporate enabling.

Charter Industry Demands Access to TN Student Data: Parents Say No

Under the misdirection of Commissioner Candice McQueen, the TN state legislature recently passed a sweeping new charter law that is aimed to expand the footprint and to give more public money to the charter industry's corporate welfare reform schools. And money is not the only thing that Dr. McQueen is offering charter corporations like Green Dot and KIPP.

With the passage of the new state law this summer, predatory charter chains may now demand student directory information on each public school child. This information may then be used to decide which children's homes that charter operators  will flood with slick school marketing brochures that conceal the dehumanizing environments of these "no excuses" institutions for cultural sterilization.

Parents, however, can say no to such requests by contacting their public schools and requesting that their children be excluded from these data sweeps by the charter industry:

Shelby County Schools is required to send a notice to parents at the beginning of each school year about how student information is used. Parents have the option to leave their contact information out of the student directory, or other such lists.

Or, you can write a letter requesting that your student’s directory information remain private. Write to either of the addresses below:

Shelby County Schools
Student Records Department
160 S. Hollywood St.
Memphis, TN 38112

Shelby County Schools
Department of Attendance and Discipline
Shelby County Schools
2800 Grays Creek, Arlington, TN 38002

Meanwhile, the leaders of these dehumanizing and exploitative hell schools pay themselves very well, even though these child centers for paternalistic brainwashing are advertised as "non-profit." Oligarchs like Eli Broad amass huge tax savings for donations to these racist outfits, while leaders amass personal fortunes for exploiting the poor:

Ravitch Doubles Down on NAACP Charter Embrace

Last October the NAACP passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on the approval of new charter schools.  The resolution did nothing for the millions of segregated children already suffering in the penal no excuses charters that no NAACP Board member would ever allow for his or her own children, but it was a decision that, nonetheless, freaked out the multi-billion dollar charter industry and the abusive, well-paid overseers who run the charter reform schools.
  
As a result of NAACP call for a moratorium last fall, the billionaires went to work to put pressure on the NAACP to recant.  The NAACP, an organization largely dependent upon the generosity of corporate foundations, the philanthrocapitalists, and their corporate unions, caved to the pressure.  Less than a year after the squeeze began, members of the NAACP Board issued a report that ignores the moratorium by making recommendations for how new charters are to approved. The report provides a clear signal that the moratorium is now irrelevant.  

The NAACP report won the praise of the DNC/AFT/NEA/NPE.  As schoolmarm to the nation's neoliberals, Diane Ravitch went so far as put the NAACP in her blog's Honor Roll.  

On August 8, Ravitch took the opportunity to praise once again the new NAACP position, which mirrors the AFT/NEA/NPE position on charters.  Here are the two NAACP points regarding charters that Ravitch posted on her blog:

4. Mandate a rigorous [charter] authorizing and renewal process. States with the fewest authorizers have the best charters. Only local school districts should be allowed to authorize charters, based on their needs.

      . . . .

5. Eliminate for-profit charter schools and for-profit charter management companies that control nonprofit charters. Not a dollar of federal, state or local money should go to for-profit charters. The report notes that the widespread reports of misconduct of for-profit charters and their for-profit managers is reason enough to forbid them. As for-profits, they have an “inherent conflict of interest,” and may well put the interest of their investors over those of students. 

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Ravitch then asks:  Now, I ask you, what part of these five recommendations suggests that the NAACP is wrong? That it was doing the bidding of teachers’ unions?"  

The second part of your question I will answer with a question: Does anyone believe that it's a coincidence that the NAACP position on charters now mirrors the AFT/NEA/NPE position?  Or is the NAACP seeking refuge inside the DNC education tent?  Can they afford to support a moratorium that the DNC, which still run by the Clintonians, is not supporting?

As to why the NAACP/NEA/AFT/NPE position is wrong:  As I have noted most recently, putting local boards in charge of deciding which charter chain gangs get approval does nothing to staunch the flow of education dollars into the pockets of charter operators. It just makes local boards complicit in the corruption.

And as for the weak call to eliminate for-profit charters, here's what I said about that a couple of weeks ago:

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. . . the majority of charters have always been of the “non-profit” variety, with only 13 percent of the nation’s 7,500 charters run by for-profit companies.  Insisting that all charters become “non-profit” will only guarantee that that state and local education dollars will continue to fill the coffers of the charter industry, which thrives by claiming “non-profit” status for their segregated cultural sterilization schools based on the KIPP Model. 

 
Which, of course, is the final and most egregious "wrong" associated with the NAACP position: it ignores the damage being done to children in the neo-eugenic psychological neutering camps that are the chosen solution to controlling the urban poor.

 

The Private Company Behind the Muncie School Bus Fiasco

by Doug Martin 

As the Muncie, Indiana, privatized school bus fiasco deepens, parents protest at bus stops, kids get lost on buses on the way home, 911 calls are made, buses never show up or are late, school gets cancelled for days because of the chaos, and the Indiana Department of Education steps in to help clean up the mess, the local community needs to know there were many red flags before Muncie school officials signed the $1.4 million contract with Auxilio bus services, a private company now located in Lansing, Michigan.  

Besides the numerous 2012 troubling news reports out of Michigan on how Auxilio handled school service, an 84-page report, which surfaced in late February 2017, a few weeks before the Muncie school board vote, outlines the troubles parents and community members in Monroe County, Indiana, feared Auxilio would bring to their school district.  Although there appears to be a lot more to the story than just Auxilio, the private company’s past troubles, arrogance, and secrecy should be known. 

KID INTO THE BUS WINDOW

In 2012 in Michigan’s Galesburg-Augusta school district, parents, too, protested the Auxilio takeover of bus transportation, after a student videotaped an Auxilio “on-site manager,” Heidi Mullin, “roughly pushing a 7-year-old into a bus window.” 

Since many instances with the 7-year old and other children on the bus had been reported and Auxilio had “assigned a new driver and a new bus aide to no avail,”  Mullin’s job was to ride on the bus “to assess the problems and figure out a strategy for resolution.”

Mullin was fired, after the video made its rounds on Facebook, but questions about her hiring led to even more questions.  After a freedom of information act request, news reporters found that Mullin resigned from a previous job at Portage Public Schools “six months after signing a ‘last-chance agreement’ following a string of written reprimands and unpaid suspensions.”  According to a change-of-status form, Mullin was "not eligible to be rehired by Portage Public Schools." On her Portage job application, too, Mullin claims she was fired from B&B Trucking in Kalamazoo because "they didn't think I had the right attitude to drive (a) truck."

When asked about the hire, at first Auxilio’s CEO Ed Dollin told MLive, a media group with 10 newspaper locations in Michigan, that "We screened her very well”  but later admitted, according to MLive, “that Mullin's background check did not include talking to Mullin's previous supervisor.”  He claimed, too, MLive writes, that “the information obtained from Portage was limited to a form where a Portage human-resources worker mistakenly checked a box indicating that Mullin had no record of professional misconduct.” 

At one point after the Mullin bus incident with the 7-year old, CEO Dollin said that “I think right now we’re a whipping boy.  I think we’re being vilified because we’re coming in to save money and we’re making changes.”

A group of mothers, however, didn’t buy the argument and protested outside the “district’s offices calling for the district to protect its students, telling Fox 17 TV that the privatization of the district’s busing is at fault.” At a school board meeting, too, “Galesburg residents questioned Auxilio's competency, citing numerous problems with Auxilio's drivers and procedures.”

"IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS"

Earlier in 2012, Galesburg-Augusta signed a $356,750 contract with the bus company, although the school district’s supt., Tim Vagts, has admitted that “Auxilio's references did not include any districts served by the firm since its formation in October 2011” and that he didn’t know any of the bus service’s other clients.  Vagts said he recommended the bus company because it was the lowest bidder, one of the same reasons given by Muncie school officials. 

According to MLive, at one point when Auxilio CEO Dollin was asked about the company’s other clients, he said "It's none of your business."  When reporter Julie Mack looked into the Cincinnati address Auxilio had listed on its website, she found that the address was in a redevelopment zone across from an adult bookstore and was “actually the office for the Midwest EB-5 Regional Center, an organization that works with immigrants who want to start businesses in the United States.”  

During the Muncie school board vote in March, Central High School teacher Allen Kidd also called “into question how little information is included on Auxilio's website.”  Auxilio CEO Dollin, in response, said that the company website was under construction and that it has clients in eight Michigan districts and some Ohio private schools.  

Currently, as of August 3, 2017, Auxilio lists its address as Lansing, Michigan, on its website.  On its current and past clients page, Auxilio has written “Stay tuned for a full list of our clients!” and that testimonials are “Coming Soon.”  

WHERE ARE ALL THE BUS DRIVERS GOING?

In Muncie, the narrative explaining some of the school bus chaos is that a good-many bus drivers quit supposedly just before the school year began.  A similar story was told by the Galesburg-Augusta district and Auxilio, too. 
 
According to MLive, there were no drivers for special-ed children enrolled in summer programs.  Dollin and supt. Vagts “blamed the problem on Galesburg bus drivers who had promised to work for Auxilio and then reneged at the last minute.”  But those drivers “say they were laid off by the school district and had yet to receive a job offer as drivers for Auxilio.” 
 
Dollin later claimed that “he thought Galesburg would keep the special-ed drivers on the district payroll for the duration of the summer program and didn't find out otherwise until Aug. 1, before Auxilio had finalized its hires.” 

MONROE’S WARNING 

When Indiana’s Monroe County Community School Corporation hired Auxilio to do a third of its bus routes because it was a low bidder, local parents and workers,  in the introduction to an 84-page report entitled “No to Auxilio, Yes to Our Community,”  stated the school board’s decision to hire Auxilio was “based on an incomplete, and in some important ways misleading, information set.” 

The parents and workers claimed, among other things, that outsourced jobs could drain money from the community, children’s safety could be compromised, and employees who questioned decisions could possibly be fired.  

The “No to Auxilio” report authors also quote from The Independent, a local Michigan newspaper, about problems at the Dundee Community high school where Auxilio does maintenance work and bus transportation.  

When bathroom stalls were missing at the school, an Auxilio employee, worried about school safety, “put in a maintenance work order for the stall doors in the bathroom by the locker room to be replaced…., turned it into his immediate Auxilio supervisor and the work was never done.” 

Not knowing if the maintenance department or school administrators received the request, the Auxilio employee “posted a picture of the stalls with doors missing to social media to draw more community attention to the problem. Auxilio’s response to the post was to fire the employee.” 

There are many other issues Monroe County community members bring up in the “No to Auxilio” report, including the fiasco at Galesburg-Augusta.  

It will be interesting to watch this disaster capitalism fiasco unfold in the upcoming days and weeks. 

Bad Writer? Blame a Teacher, Says Goldstein

As journo-author of numerous pieces in her series, "Educational History for Dummies Who Want to Remain That Way," Dana Goldstein has another gem of a piece in the New York Times, where she regularly brings to light the corporate education perspective on education issues.

This time Goldstein brings her corporate lens to examine the problem of bad writing among school children, and it takes just a few five-sentence paragraphs for Goldstein to get to the root cause of the massive deficiency:

The root of the problem, educators agree, is that teachers have little training in how to teach writing and are often weak or unconfident writers themselves. According to Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a scan of course syllabuses from 2,400 teacher preparation programs turned up little evidence that the teaching of writing was being covered in a widespread or systematic way.

First off, I would ask Ms. Goldstein what Kate Walsh's perspective has to do with the perspective of educators, since Walsh has never been a teacher or studied education (this she has in common with Goldstein, who has a BA in European intellectual history).  In fact, Walsh's corporate-funded business at NCTQ is based on pasting together spurious sponsored research into reports that place all the blame for learning shortcomings on teachers, schools, and teacher education programs.

What Goldstein and Walsh consider as the "root of the problem" is, instead, a symptom of old-growth policies by corporate reformers, the education industry, and conservative politicians, which have attempted to stunt the interpretive and expressive capabilities of children in favor of expanding the storage capacity of children's memory banks.  The Business Roundtable's long-established and continuing test-based strategy of schooling by forced feeding and regurgitation has led to the preparation of generations of workers with strong abilities to be led by the hand (or the nose), to minimally comprehend, and to have the barest understanding of understanding.  With today's new teachers having grown up with writing (and speaking) on the periphery with the rest of the non-tested non-essentials, writing and speaking stand the chance being replaced by what could be, I guess, an emoji-based system of communication.

Unfortunately, Goldstein ignores entirely the history of highly-leveraged attempts by CorpEd to eradicate federally-funded programs and teacher education curriculums that were not aimed directly to increase test scores.  Goldstein does not mention that a number of states, including New York and Tennessee, now judge teacher education programs on how much graduates of those programs can increase test scores of their students. Any concern from Kate Walsh about that?  Nah.

Goldstein also ignores the history of attempts to kill the only federally-funded national program to improve writing and writing instruction of teachers.  The National Writing Project (NWR) was targeted for elimination by W's corrupt henchmen in 2004, just as it was on the chopping block in 2011 under Obama/Duncan.  Nonetheless, the NWP persisted.

Today Goldstein is quick to praise the NWR, which she sees as a important tool toward the kind of "rigorous writing" agenda, which is now being demanded by the Business Roundtable's Common Corers. Until such time that Kate Walsh and her corporate foundation funders can come up with a lucrative scheme to standardize writing instruction in teacher education courses, Goldstein makes it clear that NWR will be an important technology in helping teachers and students, alike, to get in touch with their inner memoranda, as well as tapping into the wellsprings of inspiration for writing annual reports to the stockholders.

Confusion Persists Regarding NEA Charter Policy

There appears to be some real confusion among what may be well-intentioned folks about what the NEA resolution on charter schools actually says about a moratorium.  Here is the only mention of a moratorium in the document:

Unless both the basic safeguards and process detailed above are met, no charter school should be authorized and NEA will support state and local moratoriums on further charter authorizations in the school district.

As anyone can see, the National Education Association is NOT authorizing a moratorium in the event that all its fanciful desires are not met with regards to charter schools: the National Education Association is saying that it will support local and state affiliates that may choose to call for a moratorium.  In other words, NEA plans to do nothing.

Nonetheless, I found this comment at a blog this morning, which claims that there is an NEA moratorium on charters in place:

The NEA resolution only calls for a “moratorium” on charter schools that don’t meet the standards they lay out, rather than a moratorium on all charter authorizations. . . .

This is just plain wrong, and it perpetuates the kind of corrupt dissembling that NEA lawyers used for years and have now exported to the NAACP and other organizations that have opposed charter expansion in the past.

Grit by any other name is torture

Angela Duckworth and her "academic" mentor Martin Seligman helped develop torture models that the CIA uses in places like Iraq. The very same elements of these torture models were taken from Duckworth et al. to establish the horrific "no excuses" policies of corporate charter school chains like KIPP. Both Duckworth and Seligman are monsters, and that the corporate media continues to provide them a platform is a testament to the pervasiveness of neoliberal ideology. Dr. Jim Horn and others have written quite a lot about Duckworth and her ilk at SchoolsMatter.