I don't agree with Smellington B. Worthington III views on education. They do however accurately represent the views of the education deform movement. Check out this hilarious and bone chillingly scary education related blog at:
http://smellington.wordpress.com/
Showing posts with label billionaires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label billionaires. Show all posts
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Billionaires Plan for Education Reform: Distract Gain Control
From Labour Notes.org
By Julie Cavanaugh
The public conversation around education “reform” is dominated by a privileged few who seek to change schooling from a public service to a lucrative business.
Millionaires and billionaires, such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, have spent years pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks and political campaigns.
They have captured the media through projects like the movie “Waiting for Superman” and NBC’s “Education Nation.” Their intent is clear: to gain control of public opinion and public policy and open up access to what they refer to as the K-12 “market,” namely, our schools.
Sadly, the Obama administration, led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has the same plan.
Two years ago I faced the billionaires’ agenda head on when my Triple A-rated public school was forced to give up part of our building to a privately run education corporation, commonly called a charter school. The charter was founded by the son of billionaire hedge-funder Julian Robertson.
As I watched our needy students, many of them with special needs, forced into shared classrooms, hallways, and closets, the intent became clear. Undermining public schools is part of a 30-year ideological offensive that says government services are inherently inferior, private industry will produce better results, and public sector unions present an obstacle to good services and rob taxpayers with over-generous salaries and pensions.
The education “reform” agenda cloaks itself in the language of the civil rights movement, but in truth the reforms would make conditions worse, particularly for children of color.
PUBLIC RESOURCE, PRIVATE HANDS
Until now, public officials have been responsible for providing a free and fair public education for all children. If our most important public resource is left in the hands of private interests, children are left without the protections government and unions provide.
One of the dangers is rampant discrimination. Charter schools across the country use selective enrollment to routinely turn away children with special needs and those learning English as a second language. They avoid serving the homeless and those in foster care or receiving reduced-cost or free lunches.
Billionaires’ School Reform: What It Means for Teachers and Students
Privatizers Chase Education’s Billions
How’s Partnership Working for Teachers?
Unions Beat Anti-Teacher Agenda in Illinois
Education Reform, The Union Way
In addition, charter schools largely have prevented their workers from organizing. Their ability to fire employees for any reason prevents educators and staff from advocating for the children.
Of course, real challenges do face our public schools: underfunding, overcrowding, and the social problems that weigh on student learning, especially in low-income communities. How do the “reformers” propose to address these problems?
First, get rid of “bad teachers,” because, after all, “good teachers” can overcome any problem.
To do this, ensure “accountability” with standardized tests as the measure of student and educator performance. Control what educators teach by standardizing curricula in alignment with the tests.
Parents and educators across the country complain that this focus has routinized students’ work and limited meaningful experiences. Often children are subjected to hours of standardized testing.
Next, link teacher job security and pay to test scores, which are used to identify teachers and their schools as failures.
Once a school is considered failing, close it and replace it with a charter that picks and chooses the best students and leaves the rest behind.
The charter school will rely on inexperienced, under-trained teachers through programs such as Teach for America. These overworked and under-supported teachers seldom have union protection. Less than half stay in the profession beyond two years.
The result of high turnover is low wages—saving the charter company money on salaries and pensions. Teaching morphs from a secure, stable job to a high-turnover, low-wage one.
In New York City, for example, half the teaching force leaves before reaching five years in the classroom. Leaving students without experienced educators damages their achievement.
DISTRACT, GAIN CONTROL
The billionaires’ agenda also includes a three-pronged strategy for gaining control of school governance: mayoral control, which has been devastating in both Chicago and New York City; funding school board takeovers, as in San Diego (now reversed); and funding fake parent groups.
“Parent Revolution” in California, for example, is funded by the Broad Foundation. It supposedly includes active parents in Compton, but is really run by a Beverly Hills lawyer with paid organizers.
All the while, teachers and their unions are attacked as the obstacle to all of the above. Non-union charters are promoted as the solution.
Focusing all the attention on teachers conveniently ignores the lack of equitable funding for schools, caused by state and local tax structures that tilt toward the wealthy. The crying need for more money for schools is sidestepped by cutting student services and teachers’ pay.
The need for policies to address poverty and other social factors that contribute to a child’s failure or success in life can be ignored, because the mantra is that educators are solely responsible for a child’s learning.
It’s no coincidence that those fueling and funding school reform are millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations. To believe that their interest lies in helping children would require a suspension of logic and a denial of our history.
Julie Cavanagh is a special education teacher in Brooklyn and is active with the Grassroots Education Movement, a group that educates and mobilizes teachers, parents, and students.
http://labornotes.org/2011/01/billionaires-school-reform-what-it-means-teachers-and-students
By Julie Cavanaugh
The public conversation around education “reform” is dominated by a privileged few who seek to change schooling from a public service to a lucrative business.
Millionaires and billionaires, such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, have spent years pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into think tanks and political campaigns.
They have captured the media through projects like the movie “Waiting for Superman” and NBC’s “Education Nation.” Their intent is clear: to gain control of public opinion and public policy and open up access to what they refer to as the K-12 “market,” namely, our schools.
Sadly, the Obama administration, led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has the same plan.
Two years ago I faced the billionaires’ agenda head on when my Triple A-rated public school was forced to give up part of our building to a privately run education corporation, commonly called a charter school. The charter was founded by the son of billionaire hedge-funder Julian Robertson.
As I watched our needy students, many of them with special needs, forced into shared classrooms, hallways, and closets, the intent became clear. Undermining public schools is part of a 30-year ideological offensive that says government services are inherently inferior, private industry will produce better results, and public sector unions present an obstacle to good services and rob taxpayers with over-generous salaries and pensions.
The education “reform” agenda cloaks itself in the language of the civil rights movement, but in truth the reforms would make conditions worse, particularly for children of color.
PUBLIC RESOURCE, PRIVATE HANDS
Until now, public officials have been responsible for providing a free and fair public education for all children. If our most important public resource is left in the hands of private interests, children are left without the protections government and unions provide.
One of the dangers is rampant discrimination. Charter schools across the country use selective enrollment to routinely turn away children with special needs and those learning English as a second language. They avoid serving the homeless and those in foster care or receiving reduced-cost or free lunches.
Billionaires’ School Reform: What It Means for Teachers and Students
Privatizers Chase Education’s Billions
How’s Partnership Working for Teachers?
Unions Beat Anti-Teacher Agenda in Illinois
Education Reform, The Union Way
In addition, charter schools largely have prevented their workers from organizing. Their ability to fire employees for any reason prevents educators and staff from advocating for the children.
Of course, real challenges do face our public schools: underfunding, overcrowding, and the social problems that weigh on student learning, especially in low-income communities. How do the “reformers” propose to address these problems?
First, get rid of “bad teachers,” because, after all, “good teachers” can overcome any problem.
To do this, ensure “accountability” with standardized tests as the measure of student and educator performance. Control what educators teach by standardizing curricula in alignment with the tests.
Parents and educators across the country complain that this focus has routinized students’ work and limited meaningful experiences. Often children are subjected to hours of standardized testing.
Next, link teacher job security and pay to test scores, which are used to identify teachers and their schools as failures.
Once a school is considered failing, close it and replace it with a charter that picks and chooses the best students and leaves the rest behind.
The charter school will rely on inexperienced, under-trained teachers through programs such as Teach for America. These overworked and under-supported teachers seldom have union protection. Less than half stay in the profession beyond two years.
The result of high turnover is low wages—saving the charter company money on salaries and pensions. Teaching morphs from a secure, stable job to a high-turnover, low-wage one.
In New York City, for example, half the teaching force leaves before reaching five years in the classroom. Leaving students without experienced educators damages their achievement.
DISTRACT, GAIN CONTROL
The billionaires’ agenda also includes a three-pronged strategy for gaining control of school governance: mayoral control, which has been devastating in both Chicago and New York City; funding school board takeovers, as in San Diego (now reversed); and funding fake parent groups.
“Parent Revolution” in California, for example, is funded by the Broad Foundation. It supposedly includes active parents in Compton, but is really run by a Beverly Hills lawyer with paid organizers.
All the while, teachers and their unions are attacked as the obstacle to all of the above. Non-union charters are promoted as the solution.
Focusing all the attention on teachers conveniently ignores the lack of equitable funding for schools, caused by state and local tax structures that tilt toward the wealthy. The crying need for more money for schools is sidestepped by cutting student services and teachers’ pay.
The need for policies to address poverty and other social factors that contribute to a child’s failure or success in life can be ignored, because the mantra is that educators are solely responsible for a child’s learning.
It’s no coincidence that those fueling and funding school reform are millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations. To believe that their interest lies in helping children would require a suspension of logic and a denial of our history.
Julie Cavanagh is a special education teacher in Brooklyn and is active with the Grassroots Education Movement, a group that educates and mobilizes teachers, parents, and students.
http://labornotes.org/2011/01/billionaires-school-reform-what-it-means-teachers-and-students
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The false education narrative continues
From Truth-out.org
by Adam Bessie
Recently, I had the honor of being dubbed a "vapid champion of the status quo" by American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident education scholar Frederick Hess, a widely published, renowned advocate of the free-market public school "reform" movement, one that has reached the mainstream with the popularity "Waiting for Superman." Hess has published numerous books; he's on the head of national organizations and even hobnobbed with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at a recent event for AEI. To my shock, Hess made time to write in his blog about me, a lowly assistant professor of English at a community college with a blog audience of a few hundred.
The conflict was over a cover story in The Oakland Tribune, in which the reporter pointed out the role that teacher pay played in creating budget problems. Hess was cited as a nonpartisan education expert, which I took issue with in my blog - not because he shouldn't have been cited in the article, but because the reporter failed to point out to readers that he is a scholar for a neoconservative think tank, one that is a strong proponent of the pro-corporate education "reform" movement and that states on its official website: "The government's authority to tax and regulate represents a growing encroachment on the private sector." In other words, Hess is paid to advocate for a fiscally conservative, free-market educational ideology, a fact the reporter neglected to mention, and one that readers deserved to know so they could best evaluate his perspective.
In response, Hess lambasted me, framing me as someone who stands in the way of real reform, a stodgy supporter of the "status quo," the establishment standing in the way of reform. Hess reveals a prevalent attitude among free-market education advocates: that if you don't support their reform - if you don't support a capitalist, competitive approach to education replete with extensive testing - you don't support students, or improving education in general.
Hess - and the corporate reformers, such as Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee - present the public with a false choice: that there is, on the one hand, the "status quo," one that doesn't work, and, on the other, their "reform" movement, which is the only pathway out of our morass of mediocrity. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has unquestioningly bought into this limited conception of educational reform.
Corporate Reformatory School
The word "reform" itself is a linguistic trap. At face, it assumes that something is profoundly wrong with our public schools, a commonplace belief in the wake of "Waiting for Superman." Further, it suggests a way to fix this wrongness - discipline. Think of a "reformatory school," a military-style institution where frustrated parents ship their bad children, who are then molded - literally re-formed - into good children through discipline. The public school system, in this case, is like an ill-behaving child, in need of a ruler on the wrist and a 5 o'clock wake-up call to get it disciplined, remolded and reformed so it'll say, "Yes, ma'am" when called on.
But most of all, "reform" is a gracefully ambiguous term - formless, even - one that implies an urgency, a need for discipline, for fixing, but it is a term that doesn't suggest what, exactly, is wrong. The word "reform" is an empty shell, one that could suggest any number of problems, innumerable diagnoses - without identifying a single one. Thus, the listener can insert whatever idea she likes into "reform," whatever she thinks is wrong with the schools, whether it is "bad teachers" or unhealthy school lunches.
Join the movement for truth - support brave, independent reporting today by making a contribution to Truthout.
Who can disagree with reform? Who can be against helping children stuck in a bad school system?
What the corporate reformers have done well is to essentially trademark "reform," branding in the public mind their diagnosis of what's wrong with schools and the harsh, chemotherapeutic remedy.
They own reform.
Rhee Goes Rogue
What's wrong with the school system, according to corporate reformers, is the bad teachers, their unions and "special interests," as Rhee claims practically unchallenged in her Newsweek cover story and across the corporate media, including in "Waiting for Superman," which earned ample air time on Oprah's "Shocking State of Our Schools." The corporate media has adopted this diagnosis, as is best illustrated in Tom Brokaw's segment in "Education Nation," an NBC special applauding the corporate reformers featuring Rhee and Gates (Gates also appeared in "Waiting for Superman"). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was also one of the sponsors of Education Nation, and Gates was a star of his own show. Not surprisingly, Brokaw - a reporter, not a pundit - claims, as fact, that there is a "teacher establishment," which is part of the problem, echoing Rhee and other corporate reformers sponsoring the event.
Given this diagnosis, the corporate reform remedy is obvious: take down the "teacher establishment," a sentiment that sounds surprisingly similar to that of the Tea Party bent on taking down the Washington establishment. Much like Sarah Palin, Rhee frames herself as a rogue agent of change, with the forces of the establishment aligned against her, against "reform." We hear the same David and Goliath sentiment echoed in the mainstream media again, in a Time Magazine editorial by education policy analyst Andrew Rotherham in " 'Waiting for Superman': Education Reform Isn't Easy." He claims that "despite all the attention ["Waiting for Superman"] is bringing to education, there are still more reasons to bet against reform than for it." "Reform," in this case, is the corporate reformers' policies. And again, "reform" is being stopped by the "teachers unions" and other special interests, which have put "a lot of money to keep various reforms at bay." Rotherham writes a blog that is underwritten, in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
In essence, Gates and other corporate reformers have heavily bankrolled a media blitzkrieg to convince the public our schools need "reform," and that the free-market, test-heavy, privatized pathway is the only logical definition of reform. Joanne Barkan, reporting in Dissent Magazine, makes transparent how Gates - and other "venture philanthropists" - have created this successful propaganda campaign through extensive invisible (and visible) funding, Koch-Brothers-style. On the one hand, Gates uses his extensive funding to hire out hidden proxy bloggers - like Rotherham - to spread the "reform" message. And, on the other, the corporate media is wary of casting a critical eye on these positive "reform voices," as they are stuck in the linguistic trap of "reform." Barkan cites Hess, who found in a study of national corporate media that the "press ... handles philanthropies with kid gloves." For every one negative account, Hess found in his ten year study from 1995 to 2005, there were thirteen positive ones - which explains, in part, why the corporate media has highlighted the efforts of "reformers" with applause and why Hess himself got a pass during his interview with The Oakland Tribune.
And again: who can be against "reform?"
Waiting for Alyssa Milano
"In view of the money and power now arrayed on behalf of the ideas and programs I will criticize, I hope it is not too late," are the fateful final words in the introduction of Diane Ravitch's 2010 book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System." Ravitch, however, is not critiquing the "special interests" aligned against reform, but the reform movement itself, of which she was a former elite member. She switched sides after extensively studying the results of No Child Left Behind and is now convinced that these reform efforts are "undermining education."
Ravitch is convinced that by relentlessly testing children and by pitting schools against schools, teachers against teachers, parents against parents and children against children, we are diminishing the quality of learning that happens in schools and undermining the foundations of a democratic society. And while Ravitch has relentlessly promoted this well-supported perspective - such that Hess acknowledged her as the most visible education scholar based on her publications and mentions in media - she still has made little dent in the public mind and in the corporate reform "status quo."
Why?
Besides the considerable money and political clout behind it, the corporate reform movement - much like the Tea Party - has a compelling narrative package: a hero (Rhee), villains (teachers' unions) and poor, innocent victims (children). Like the Tea Party, the reformers have adopted a David and Goliath stance and evoked it again and again. That stance is appealing to a country that currently feels a lot like David beaten senselessly by Goliath. This powerful, human narrative was brought to life on the big screen with "Waiting for Superman," repeated in major media outlets and even tweeted by "Who's the Boss?" star Alyssa Milano to her million-plus followers. The story is so emotionally potent that it feels like fact - it must be true, especially to many that, like Milano, know nothing about real issues in education and are championing a cause they do not understand.
The corporate reformers have reached the hearts of the public, blinding them with a beautifully rendered fiction.
Even though Ravitch is very visible, even though she has powerful data and analysis to support her conclusions, which are widely published and read, she hasn't been successful in capturing the public imagination, as there is no story - no hero or villain - for the American public to easily grasp, to reduce into a simple plot with an obvious moral. There is no heartwarming tale to sell newspapers or to draw viewers to the evening news or sob-filled theatres.
Yet, until Alyssa Milano is tweeting Ravitch, the corporate takeover of our schools will continue, reforming public education - and our children - to behave well in the free-market.
http://www.truth-out.org/lets-not-reform-public-education67006
by Adam Bessie
Recently, I had the honor of being dubbed a "vapid champion of the status quo" by American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident education scholar Frederick Hess, a widely published, renowned advocate of the free-market public school "reform" movement, one that has reached the mainstream with the popularity "Waiting for Superman." Hess has published numerous books; he's on the head of national organizations and even hobnobbed with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at a recent event for AEI. To my shock, Hess made time to write in his blog about me, a lowly assistant professor of English at a community college with a blog audience of a few hundred.
The conflict was over a cover story in The Oakland Tribune, in which the reporter pointed out the role that teacher pay played in creating budget problems. Hess was cited as a nonpartisan education expert, which I took issue with in my blog - not because he shouldn't have been cited in the article, but because the reporter failed to point out to readers that he is a scholar for a neoconservative think tank, one that is a strong proponent of the pro-corporate education "reform" movement and that states on its official website: "The government's authority to tax and regulate represents a growing encroachment on the private sector." In other words, Hess is paid to advocate for a fiscally conservative, free-market educational ideology, a fact the reporter neglected to mention, and one that readers deserved to know so they could best evaluate his perspective.
In response, Hess lambasted me, framing me as someone who stands in the way of real reform, a stodgy supporter of the "status quo," the establishment standing in the way of reform. Hess reveals a prevalent attitude among free-market education advocates: that if you don't support their reform - if you don't support a capitalist, competitive approach to education replete with extensive testing - you don't support students, or improving education in general.
Hess - and the corporate reformers, such as Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee - present the public with a false choice: that there is, on the one hand, the "status quo," one that doesn't work, and, on the other, their "reform" movement, which is the only pathway out of our morass of mediocrity. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has unquestioningly bought into this limited conception of educational reform.
Corporate Reformatory School
The word "reform" itself is a linguistic trap. At face, it assumes that something is profoundly wrong with our public schools, a commonplace belief in the wake of "Waiting for Superman." Further, it suggests a way to fix this wrongness - discipline. Think of a "reformatory school," a military-style institution where frustrated parents ship their bad children, who are then molded - literally re-formed - into good children through discipline. The public school system, in this case, is like an ill-behaving child, in need of a ruler on the wrist and a 5 o'clock wake-up call to get it disciplined, remolded and reformed so it'll say, "Yes, ma'am" when called on.
But most of all, "reform" is a gracefully ambiguous term - formless, even - one that implies an urgency, a need for discipline, for fixing, but it is a term that doesn't suggest what, exactly, is wrong. The word "reform" is an empty shell, one that could suggest any number of problems, innumerable diagnoses - without identifying a single one. Thus, the listener can insert whatever idea she likes into "reform," whatever she thinks is wrong with the schools, whether it is "bad teachers" or unhealthy school lunches.
Join the movement for truth - support brave, independent reporting today by making a contribution to Truthout.
Who can disagree with reform? Who can be against helping children stuck in a bad school system?
What the corporate reformers have done well is to essentially trademark "reform," branding in the public mind their diagnosis of what's wrong with schools and the harsh, chemotherapeutic remedy.
They own reform.
Rhee Goes Rogue
What's wrong with the school system, according to corporate reformers, is the bad teachers, their unions and "special interests," as Rhee claims practically unchallenged in her Newsweek cover story and across the corporate media, including in "Waiting for Superman," which earned ample air time on Oprah's "Shocking State of Our Schools." The corporate media has adopted this diagnosis, as is best illustrated in Tom Brokaw's segment in "Education Nation," an NBC special applauding the corporate reformers featuring Rhee and Gates (Gates also appeared in "Waiting for Superman"). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was also one of the sponsors of Education Nation, and Gates was a star of his own show. Not surprisingly, Brokaw - a reporter, not a pundit - claims, as fact, that there is a "teacher establishment," which is part of the problem, echoing Rhee and other corporate reformers sponsoring the event.
Given this diagnosis, the corporate reform remedy is obvious: take down the "teacher establishment," a sentiment that sounds surprisingly similar to that of the Tea Party bent on taking down the Washington establishment. Much like Sarah Palin, Rhee frames herself as a rogue agent of change, with the forces of the establishment aligned against her, against "reform." We hear the same David and Goliath sentiment echoed in the mainstream media again, in a Time Magazine editorial by education policy analyst Andrew Rotherham in " 'Waiting for Superman': Education Reform Isn't Easy." He claims that "despite all the attention ["Waiting for Superman"] is bringing to education, there are still more reasons to bet against reform than for it." "Reform," in this case, is the corporate reformers' policies. And again, "reform" is being stopped by the "teachers unions" and other special interests, which have put "a lot of money to keep various reforms at bay." Rotherham writes a blog that is underwritten, in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
In essence, Gates and other corporate reformers have heavily bankrolled a media blitzkrieg to convince the public our schools need "reform," and that the free-market, test-heavy, privatized pathway is the only logical definition of reform. Joanne Barkan, reporting in Dissent Magazine, makes transparent how Gates - and other "venture philanthropists" - have created this successful propaganda campaign through extensive invisible (and visible) funding, Koch-Brothers-style. On the one hand, Gates uses his extensive funding to hire out hidden proxy bloggers - like Rotherham - to spread the "reform" message. And, on the other, the corporate media is wary of casting a critical eye on these positive "reform voices," as they are stuck in the linguistic trap of "reform." Barkan cites Hess, who found in a study of national corporate media that the "press ... handles philanthropies with kid gloves." For every one negative account, Hess found in his ten year study from 1995 to 2005, there were thirteen positive ones - which explains, in part, why the corporate media has highlighted the efforts of "reformers" with applause and why Hess himself got a pass during his interview with The Oakland Tribune.
And again: who can be against "reform?"
Waiting for Alyssa Milano
"In view of the money and power now arrayed on behalf of the ideas and programs I will criticize, I hope it is not too late," are the fateful final words in the introduction of Diane Ravitch's 2010 book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System." Ravitch, however, is not critiquing the "special interests" aligned against reform, but the reform movement itself, of which she was a former elite member. She switched sides after extensively studying the results of No Child Left Behind and is now convinced that these reform efforts are "undermining education."
Ravitch is convinced that by relentlessly testing children and by pitting schools against schools, teachers against teachers, parents against parents and children against children, we are diminishing the quality of learning that happens in schools and undermining the foundations of a democratic society. And while Ravitch has relentlessly promoted this well-supported perspective - such that Hess acknowledged her as the most visible education scholar based on her publications and mentions in media - she still has made little dent in the public mind and in the corporate reform "status quo."
Why?
Besides the considerable money and political clout behind it, the corporate reform movement - much like the Tea Party - has a compelling narrative package: a hero (Rhee), villains (teachers' unions) and poor, innocent victims (children). Like the Tea Party, the reformers have adopted a David and Goliath stance and evoked it again and again. That stance is appealing to a country that currently feels a lot like David beaten senselessly by Goliath. This powerful, human narrative was brought to life on the big screen with "Waiting for Superman," repeated in major media outlets and even tweeted by "Who's the Boss?" star Alyssa Milano to her million-plus followers. The story is so emotionally potent that it feels like fact - it must be true, especially to many that, like Milano, know nothing about real issues in education and are championing a cause they do not understand.
The corporate reformers have reached the hearts of the public, blinding them with a beautifully rendered fiction.
Even though Ravitch is very visible, even though she has powerful data and analysis to support her conclusions, which are widely published and read, she hasn't been successful in capturing the public imagination, as there is no story - no hero or villain - for the American public to easily grasp, to reduce into a simple plot with an obvious moral. There is no heartwarming tale to sell newspapers or to draw viewers to the evening news or sob-filled theatres.
Yet, until Alyssa Milano is tweeting Ravitch, the corporate takeover of our schools will continue, reforming public education - and our children - to behave well in the free-market.
http://www.truth-out.org/lets-not-reform-public-education67006
Friday, January 21, 2011
Education Matters calls for Oprah Winfrey Boycott
Perhaps the biggest appeal Oprah Winfrey has for her millions of fans is her every woman demeanor. She comes across as someone you could sit down and have coffee with, there is an innate connection. Unfortunately when it comes to education and what to do next Ms. Winfrey proves how disconnected she is.
Her stance on education reform puts her squarely in the billionaires for education reform, blame the teacher camp. Her solutions like theirs are punitive and seek to dismantle public schools. In effect whenever she talks about education she snubs her nose at the hundreds of thousands of hard working dedicated professionals nationwide and the children they teach too.
I think it is time we snubbed our noses back.
I think it’s time we said Ms. Winfrey when you want to talk about education bring teachers on your show, not billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckenberg, or public school hating film directors like David Guggenheim. Teachers more than them will have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. Even Oprah’s education idol Michelle Rhee only spent three years in a class room, before her running a Teach or America like program landed her the chancellorship of Washington D.C.s schools, of which I will add, her tenure was so polarizing that when the people of the capital voted for a new mayor in reality they were voting against her.
Oprah Winfrey has a powerful soap box which she could use for positive change but instead she has used it to denigrate teachers and public education. As a teacher I say enough and hope all other teachers and people who care about and believe in public schools will say enough as well
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Her stance on education reform puts her squarely in the billionaires for education reform, blame the teacher camp. Her solutions like theirs are punitive and seek to dismantle public schools. In effect whenever she talks about education she snubs her nose at the hundreds of thousands of hard working dedicated professionals nationwide and the children they teach too.
I think it is time we snubbed our noses back.
I think it’s time we said Ms. Winfrey when you want to talk about education bring teachers on your show, not billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckenberg, or public school hating film directors like David Guggenheim. Teachers more than them will have a better idea what works and what doesn’t. Even Oprah’s education idol Michelle Rhee only spent three years in a class room, before her running a Teach or America like program landed her the chancellorship of Washington D.C.s schools, of which I will add, her tenure was so polarizing that when the people of the capital voted for a new mayor in reality they were voting against her.
Oprah Winfrey has a powerful soap box which she could use for positive change but instead she has used it to denigrate teachers and public education. As a teacher I say enough and hope all other teachers and people who care about and believe in public schools will say enough as well
Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher
Monday, January 17, 2011
What Waiting for Superman doesn't show
From the Wahington posts Answer Sheet
By Kevin G. Welner
Over the past couple months, I’ve been asked to participate in a few panel discussions about Waiting for Superman. The film presents a stark, moving portrayal of the denial of educational opportunities in low-income communities of color. But while the movie includes statements such as "we know what’s wrong" and "we know how to fix it," viewers of the movie are hard-pressed to identify those causes and solutions -- other than to boo and hiss at teachers’ unions and to cheer at the heroic charter school educators.
So in the panel discussions we try to make sense of that simplistic black-hat/white-hat story. We argue about whether the movie offers a fair and complete picture (it doesn’t even come close, unfortunately). But we never get to deeper issues about what’s wrong and how to fix it.
I thought about that when leaving a showing of the other prominent documentary currently showing, called Inside Job. It offers an explanation of how the current economic crisis came about, describing the securitization of mortgages; the extraordinary leveraging of assets; the regulatory capture by Wall Street leading to minimal enforcement of federal regulations -- a deregulation intended to spur innovation; and the fraud, greed, hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans and others in the financial services world that they are infallible.
The film also points out the growing and now extreme inequality of wealth distribution in the United States. "The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007 -- up from less than 9 percent in 1976."
Consider those final three items: (1) the advocacy of deregulation in order to free up innovation, (2) hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans that they are infallible, and (3) increased wealth inequality.
If Superman had explored these issues instead of bashing unions and promoting charters, moviegoers might have walked away understanding a great deal about why the families it profiled and so many similar families across America face a bleak educational future.
The movie certainly showed scenes of poverty, but its implications and the structural inequalities underlying that poverty were largely ignored. Devastating urban poverty was just there -- as if that were somehow the natural order of things but if we could only ’fix’ schools it would disappear.
Rick Hanushek is put forth, saying that if we fire the bottom 5 to 10 percent of the lowest-performing teachers every year, our national test scores would soon approach Finland at the top of international rankings in mathematics and science. But no mention is made of the telling fact that Finland had, in 2005, a child poverty rate of 2.8 percent while the United States had a rate of 21.9 percent. That gap has likely gotten even bigger over the intervening five years.
Rather than addressing these poverty issues, Superman serves up innovation through privatization and deregulation. We’re shown charter schools that give hope to these families. But what we’re not told is that the extra resources and opportunities found in these charters are funded in large part with donations from Wall Street hedge fund millionaires and billionaires.
Problems of structural inequality and inter-generational poverty are pushed aside in favor of a ’solution’ grounded in the belief that deregulation will prompt innovation, all the while guided by the infallible judgment of Wall Street tycoons. It’s no wonder that Inside Job better explained the school crisis than did Waiting for Superman.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/why-waiting-for-superman-shoul.html?wprss=answer-sheet
By Kevin G. Welner
Over the past couple months, I’ve been asked to participate in a few panel discussions about Waiting for Superman. The film presents a stark, moving portrayal of the denial of educational opportunities in low-income communities of color. But while the movie includes statements such as "we know what’s wrong" and "we know how to fix it," viewers of the movie are hard-pressed to identify those causes and solutions -- other than to boo and hiss at teachers’ unions and to cheer at the heroic charter school educators.
So in the panel discussions we try to make sense of that simplistic black-hat/white-hat story. We argue about whether the movie offers a fair and complete picture (it doesn’t even come close, unfortunately). But we never get to deeper issues about what’s wrong and how to fix it.
I thought about that when leaving a showing of the other prominent documentary currently showing, called Inside Job. It offers an explanation of how the current economic crisis came about, describing the securitization of mortgages; the extraordinary leveraging of assets; the regulatory capture by Wall Street leading to minimal enforcement of federal regulations -- a deregulation intended to spur innovation; and the fraud, greed, hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans and others in the financial services world that they are infallible.
The film also points out the growing and now extreme inequality of wealth distribution in the United States. "The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007 -- up from less than 9 percent in 1976."
Consider those final three items: (1) the advocacy of deregulation in order to free up innovation, (2) hubris and general belief among hedge fund titans that they are infallible, and (3) increased wealth inequality.
If Superman had explored these issues instead of bashing unions and promoting charters, moviegoers might have walked away understanding a great deal about why the families it profiled and so many similar families across America face a bleak educational future.
The movie certainly showed scenes of poverty, but its implications and the structural inequalities underlying that poverty were largely ignored. Devastating urban poverty was just there -- as if that were somehow the natural order of things but if we could only ’fix’ schools it would disappear.
Rick Hanushek is put forth, saying that if we fire the bottom 5 to 10 percent of the lowest-performing teachers every year, our national test scores would soon approach Finland at the top of international rankings in mathematics and science. But no mention is made of the telling fact that Finland had, in 2005, a child poverty rate of 2.8 percent while the United States had a rate of 21.9 percent. That gap has likely gotten even bigger over the intervening five years.
Rather than addressing these poverty issues, Superman serves up innovation through privatization and deregulation. We’re shown charter schools that give hope to these families. But what we’re not told is that the extra resources and opportunities found in these charters are funded in large part with donations from Wall Street hedge fund millionaires and billionaires.
Problems of structural inequality and inter-generational poverty are pushed aside in favor of a ’solution’ grounded in the belief that deregulation will prompt innovation, all the while guided by the infallible judgment of Wall Street tycoons. It’s no wonder that Inside Job better explained the school crisis than did Waiting for Superman.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/school-turnaroundsreform/why-waiting-for-superman-shoul.html?wprss=answer-sheet
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