Group items tagged

The first thing I noticed was the chummy exchanges between the public officials in change of the New York City public school system and the top dogs of the charter leadership-the Wall Street hedge fund managers, the leader of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the leader of the New York City Charter Center, and various others. It comes clear that there is a strong and concerted effort to hand over as much public space as possible to the charters.

If there is a clear sign of the growing influence of a new breed of national education advocacy organizations, it surely lies in their entry into state-level politics. That involvement has advanced the groups' similar policy priorities on such issues as overhauling teacher evaluation and expanding charter schools. The story of SB 191's passage in Colorado is among the most striking examples, but in just five years, groups such as DFER, Stand for Children, and the more recently launched StudentsFirst have helped shape legislative proposals in statehouse after statehouse. Although the list is not comprehensive and the details vary by state, their efforts include these examples

In August 2008, many teachers in America and this one in particular were thrilled about Barak Obama's nomination. Linda Darling-Hammond was a leading spokesperson articulating the Obama campaigns' education positions. Darling-Hammond had pushed for professional education standards for teachers and had presented data showing the importance of teacher training. Yet, by November Alexander Russo of the Huffington Post was reporting "The possibility of Darling-Hammond being named Secretary has emerged as an especially worrisome possibility among a small but vocal group of younger, reform-minded advocates who supported Obama because he seemed reform-minded on education issues like charter schools, performance pay, and accountability. These reformists seem to perceive Darling-Hammond as a touchy-feely anti-accountability figure who will destroy any chances that Obama will follow through on any of these initiatives." In December, Obama tapped Chicago's Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. Because Duncan had no real education experience it was considered highly likely that Darling-Hammond would be the Deputy Secretary of Education. On February 19, 2009 the New Republic reported, "Darling-Hammond was a key education adviser during the election and chaired Obama's transition education policy team. She has been berated heavily by the education reform community, which views her as favoring the status quo in Democratic education policy for her criticisms of alternative teacher certification programs like Teach for America and her ties with teachers' unions." They reported that she was going home to California to work on other priorities and would not be a part of the new administration.

Dissent Magazine uncovers a conference that DFER executive director Joe Williams spoke at in 2010. At that conference, Williams actually advocated for charter schools to spend money on advocacy organizations and lobbying through their "per pupil dollars" - meaning the very same funds that are supposed to be used to educate students. Williams justified this by saying that charters are an attempt to run a school "as a business" and that businesses of course allocate their funding "right off the bat" to "lobbying, advocacy work"

DFER report.

Now, in the midst of the latest controversy, it has become clear that ALEC has also played a major role in writing the so-called "parent trigger" laws designed to allow charter management organizations to engage in hostile takeovers of public schools. Interestingly, the web page on the ALEC site which contained the model "parent trigger" law has been taken down, out of the fear, one would presume, that increased public attention on ALEC and its role in promoting reactionary, anti-public education legislation could become a tad bit embarrassing. But the good folks at ALEC Exposed, a virtual clearinghouse on all matters ALEC sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy, have a library of all the draft ALEC education legislation, and there one finds the missing ALEC model "parent trigger" legislation.

As the DFER veneer for right-wing "parent trigger" laws wears off, and more and more people see the privatization agenda for what it is, charlatans like Gloria Romero and Ben Austin have been scrambling to hide or minimize their ties to right wing extremists. The good news is that it isn't working, and that aside from shills like Andi Rotherham and Alex Russo even mainstream media journalists are starting to see through what the distinguished Professor Diane Ravitch refers to as the "Parent Tricker." Josh Eidelson's "Parent trigger": The latest tactic for fighting teachers' unions is a good example.

On Alexander Russo's This Week in Education blog, I read a really interesting e-mail written by Whitney Tilson who is a founder or president or something or other of DFER. You should read it and then read the comments. The two main points he makes can be encapsulated in the following quotes

Education journalist Joy Removits recently wrote this article on the education "reform" lobby. The article was not particularly remarkable, but I did discern a bit of pivoting on the part of some of the organizations, such as Students First, Stand for Children, and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) Removits wrote about. In particular, they talked about being "single-issue" advocates and financially backing politicians only based on their advocacy of issues the reform lobby pushes.

For those who follow education, however, Einhorn now joins the ranks of fellow hedge funders who have been implicated both in questionably ethical business decisions and in the New York City charter school sector. Up to this point, the most famous case of this was probably that of Raj Rajaratnam, who was just sentenced to 11 years in prison for his own insider trading. Rajaratnam was a long-time supporter of Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone, and Canada himself testified at the trial on his behalf. In Einhorn's case, his involvement in the city's corporate school reform lobby goes back at least to 2006, when, as Steven Brill's recent book points out, his gift of $250,000 in cash to Democrats for Education Reform (where he still serves on the Board of Advisors and is a major donor) was instrumental in getting that organization off the ground. Einhorn was also an early financial supporter of Eva Moskowitz's Success Charter Network - which, as Brill also notes, emerged after Einhorn's DFER allies recruited her to found the chain.

The future of the fight over public schools has a fresh, highly visible face, and it's called StudentsFirstNY. But the new school-reform supergroup, founded by former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and ex-D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee, is in fact not that new at all. It builds directly one of the biggest lobbying forces in New York State, called Education Reform Now. In the last two years, Education Reform Now and the associated Education Reform Now Advocacy have spent more than $10 million to influence state law on hiring and firing of teachers, as a counterforce to the state's two major teachers' unions. Those funds helped force a change in teacher evaluations that unions had opposed, and also backed Mayor Bloomberg's push for layoffs based on teacher performance in place of the current system, in which the most recently hired teachers must be the first to be let go. The $10 million is as much money as StudentsFirstNY director Micah Lasher - until now, Mayor Bloomberg's chief Albany lobbyist - says the new group will spend to influence the next mayoral election.

A new generation of education advocacy groups has emerged to play a formidable political role in states and communities across the country. Those groups are shaping policy through aggressive lobbying and campaign activity-an evolution in advocacy that is primed to continue in the 2012 elections and beyond. Bearing names meant to signal their intentions-Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform, StudentsFirst-they are pushing for such policies as rigorous teacher evaluations based in part on evidence of student learning, increased access to high-quality charter schools, and higher academic standards for schools and students. Sometimes viewed as a counterweight to teachers' unions, they are also supporting political candidates who champion those ideas. Though the record of their electoral success is mixed, such groups' overall influence appears to be growing, and it has already helped alter the landscape of education policy, particularly at the state level.

According to its web site, "Parents Taking Action (PTA) is a coalition of New York City parents who believe every child should have access to a great public school. We are standing up for our children, holding the Department of Education accountable and ensuring children are put ahead of special interests." A grass roots organization of public school parents? Think again: "PTA is a project of Education Reform Now, a non-profit organization that envisions an America in which every child, regardless of class or race, has the social and economic opportunities afforded by an excellent public education."

The UFT on April 3 filed suit in New York State Supreme Court to force the Department of Education to hand over copies of official emails, including exchanges about school closings and charter schools, that the union has been requesting since May 2010. The union cited a statement by Mayor Bloomberg that "to say that the parents shouldn't get what information is available is just an outrage," in arguing that the city's nearly two-year delay in providing the emails represents a "constructive denial" of the requests under the state's Freedom of Information law.

Over a year ago, the UFT submitted a Freedom of Information request for emails between Joel Klein and other top DoE brass, on the one hand, and the leaders of the New York City Charter School Center, the New York Charter School Association, Democrats for Education Reform and other leading supporters of corporate education reform. As it does with FOIL requests that do not suit their purposes, the DoE stonewalled the request. (Take note of the contrast with the DoE's eagerness to release the Teacher Data Reports.) Last month, the UFT went to court, arguing that the DoE's continual delays amounted to constructive denial of the FOIL law. Facing the inevitable, last Friday the DoE began to release the emails, sending several hundred to the UFT and the news media. Another 15,000 emails are still to come, so keep your eyes peeled on this one. Here are some of the highlights of the emails just released.

"There's one area where Bezos has been hyper-active, but largely unknown to the general public: education reform. A look at the Bezos Family Foundation, which was founded by Jackie and Mike Bezos but is financed primarily by Jeff Bezos, reveals a fairly aggressive effort in recent years to press forward with a fairly neoliberal education agenda"

In remarks last week to the right-wing Manhattan Institute, Gov. Walker finally allowed us to peek behind the curtain to discover what he was REALLY trying to accomplish by using the nuclear option on the Wisconsin Education Association Council. By curbing collective bargaining for public school teachers, Walker told the crowd, public schools in the land of Fighting Bob LaFollette were able to drastically reduce their costs so that they could...get ready for this one...hire a boatload of more teachers in order to significantly reduce class sizes!