G is for the Gates Foundation

Image: crooksandliars.com/karoli/gates-foundation-grants-alec-hefty-sum-educ

Bill Gates has appointed himself expert on all things education, and since he has so much money to throw at it, people are listening hard.   They are not only listening, they have crafted a national curriculum (that requires the use of computers for standardized testing, hmm...how could he benefit from that?) and passed laws and regulations related to "improving teacher quality" based on many of his ideas and his foundation's "studies."  (Hey kids--why don't we evaluate teachers using faulty data from standardized testing that's based the old tests we're throwing away and then on the new, yet-to-be-written tests for the untried and unfinished national curriculum?  Great idea, Bill!)

Gates is extremely powerful in the education reform movement, and also extremely dangerous because he does not understand the first thing about education or about how children learn.  He's given huge sums of money to ALEC to help further the corporate reform agenda that is working to dismantle our public schools.  And although he claims to respect teachers, he shows his true feelings about them in an interview he gave about "great teachers" in this statement: "In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time....That hasn't been the case for teaching." 

• Confidential Student And Teacher Data To Be Provided To LLC Run By Gates and Murdoch
• Gates Foundation Grants ALEC a Hefty Sum for "Education Reform"
• The Bill Gates Problem in School Reform
• Gates Foundation Works to Influence Education Laws Through Big Grant to ALEC
• Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates
• The United Gates of America
• Bill Gates' School Crusade
• 'Race to the Top' and the Bill Gates Connection
• Bill Gates and the Corporatization of American 'Public' Schools
• Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation
• Gates Foundation: Education Strategy (Note how much of the language on the Gates Foundation site is mirrored in national education reform mandates under "Race to the Top" and waivers from NCLB requirements.)
• Bill Gates: Selling Bad Advice to the Public Schools

F is for Friedman's Dream

Time Magazine: Dec. 19, 1969

Economist Milton Friedman is the father of the school privatization movement.  He believed in a largely unregulated, unfettered free market for virtually everything and was an early champion of charter schools, choice, and vouchers.  We see evidence of his theories playing out in abundance today in every facet of public policy in the U.S.

For those who think that it's outrageous to believe that there is really an ongoing and deliberate campaign to privatize schools in the U.S., take note that Friedman's ideas are highly respected in libertarian, wealth, and power circles.  He was awarded the Nobel prize for economic science in 1976 and up until his death in 2006, he was sought after as a speaker, professor, and adviser to US government leaders and presidents.  

• Milton Friedman Biography (Hoover Institution at Stanford)
• "Public Schools: Make Them Private" by Milton Friedman
• Excerpt from the Introduction to The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, a book that explores Friedman's ideas about exploiting major crises for corporate and private profit
• Privatizing Education in New Orleans: The Commodification of Education 
• Privatizing Public Schools: Leveling the Playing Field or Political Football?
• ALEC Exposed: Milton Friedman's Little Shop of Horrors

E is for Evaluation

Corporate reformers propagandize the idea that if only we can "fix" the teachers, we can fix all of education.  Equitable funding, class size, student effort or ability, parental involvement, the impact of poverty on achievement--to the corporate reformer, none of these variables carry any import--the only variable that matters is the teacher in the classroom.  Thus, teacher evaluation is a centerpiece of the corporate reformer's plan for improving schools, and a great deal of money and energy is currently being devoted to creating new rubrics and scoring scales for judging teachers' effectiveness, which is ideally judged primarily by students' standardized test scores.  The Obama Administration, which clearly supports the corporate reform agenda, even made tying teacher evaluations to student standardized test scores a mandatory requirement for state eligibility for the Race to the Top grant/bribe.   The evaluation and testing mandate has also been extended to any state that wants to be granted a waiver from the ridiculous NCLB accountability system.

The new teacher evaluations are usually quite complex and are beginning to generate a whole new industry for corporate reformers to tap into.  Race to the Top was designed in such a way that most of the grant/bribe money states and school systems received could not be used for hiring teachers or purchasing books and supplies; instead, billions of dollars are being poured into trainings, consultants, committees, and study groups in order to create and implement the required new evaluations and Common Core curriculum.  Experienced school administrators have even been required to attend trainings run by consultants who have never worked in schools in order to learn how to implement these new evaluation systems.  Educators are being treated like they don't know anything about educating kids, and oftentimes these new evaluations are being created by people who really don't know anything about educating kids.

• Companies, Nonprofits Making Millions Off Teacher Effectiveness Push
• Nearly Half of States Link Teacher Evaluations to Tests
• Standardized Tests and Teacher Accountability: The Research
• Battle Brewing on Capitol Hill over Testing, Teacher Evaluation, and School Accountability
• Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers 
• Principals Protest Role of Testing in Evaluations
• Focus on Standardized Tests May Be Pushing Some Teachers to Cheat
• Getting Teacher Evaluation Right

Update 3/11/12: The NY Times decided to publish teacher rankings based on standardized testing in February of 2012.  This is another trend that is likely take off with test-based evaluations.

• City Teacher Data Reports are Released [NYTimes Attempts to Justify Participation in Witch Hunt]
• Reign of Error: The Publication of Teacher Data Reports in New York City 
• New York City's Flawed Data Fuels the Right's War on Teachers
• More on the Utter Stupidity of NYC's Value-Added Machinations

added 4/5/12: Storm and Fury: Teacher Evaluation Stirs a Ruckus

D is for Democrats for Education Reform

Image found on bigeducationape.blogspot.com

Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is a political action committee and lobbying group that is predominantly supported by hedge fund managers.  It's philosophy and goals are in line with the corporate reform movement's goals of privatization of schools through charters and vouchers, merit pay, the elimination of collective bargaining, deprofessionalizing of teaching, high stakes testing as the major goal of education, etc. Three other major organizations that work similarly to DFER as PACs and lobbying groups for corporate education advocates include Students First, the American Federation for Children, and Stand for Children.

In addition to these groups, the national Democratic Party seems to have embraced all aspects of the corporate reform model.  Our Democratic President Obama chose for his Education Secretary Arne Duncan,  a former basketball player with no experience in public schools.  Duncan never attended, taught, or worked in any public school in his life but he is now creating policy for the nation.  Both he and Obama consult with big business but not teachers or career educators, and their centerpiece program, Race to the Top, is a corporate reformers' dream, replete with tighter regulations on teacher evalution tied to testing and looser regulations on charter schools.  So it will be easier than ever under this Democratic leadership to fire public school teachers and close their schools and move that taxpayer money into for-profit charter schools staffed by cheap, easily-replaced teachers.

• Dump Duncan Cause He's Flunkin': The Petition
• Who are Democrats for Education Reform? And Why Do They Keep Bashing Public Schools and Unions? 
• Democrats for Neoliberal Education Reform
• DFER Watch
• America's Education Reform Lobby Makes Its Presence Known at the Voting Booth
• Obama's Education Policy Sucks (warning, strong profanity here)
• DFER Board of Directors and Board of Advisors 
• Profiteering and Union-Busting Repackaged as School Reform
• "Stand for Children" Stands for Corporations
• Standing for Corporate America
• Simmering Discontent Puts Stand for Children in Hot Water
• Tom Olsen, Another Former Stand for Children Member, Speaks Out
• Rheefirst.com
• Last Stand for Children First (satire)
• Sourcewatch: The American Federation for Children
• Right-Wing Billionaires Invest in Wisconsin's Recall Elections

C is for Corporate Reform, Charter Schools, and Choice

Diane Ravich, former Assistant Secretary of Education under the administration of President George H.W. Bush, explaining corporate education reform on April 10, 2011:  

A Primer on Corporate School Reform -- Excerpt posted below; the link itself contains the rest of the article, an excellent overview of what corporate reform is and what its goals are. 

“Corporate education reform” refers to a specific set of policy proposals currently driving education policy at the state and federal level.  These proposals include:

*increased test-based evaluation of students, teachers, and schools of education
*elimination or weakening of tenure and seniority rights
*an end to pay for experience or advanced degrees
*closing schools deemed low performing and their replacement by publicly funded, but privately run  charters
*replacing governance by local school boards with various forms of mayoral and state takeover or private management
*vouchers and tax credit subsidies for private school tuition
*increases in class size, sometimes tied to the firing of 5-10% of the teaching staff
*implementation of Common Core standards and something called “college and career readiness” as a standard for high school graduation...

• The Corporate Takeover of American Schools 
• The Bait and Switch of School "Reform" 
• Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools
• New Orleans: Beachhead for Corporate Takeover of Public Schools 
• Why School Choice Fails
• Why Advocacy and Market Forces Fail Education Reform 
• Three Kinds of Charter Schools: Largely Segregated, Intensely Segregated, and Apartheid 
• Diane Ravich's Insider View of a Corporate Reform Lie
• Cashing in on Kids 
• 5 Biggest Lies About the Right-Wing Corporate Backed War on Our Schools 
• "Selling Schools Out"

B is for Billionaire Boys Club

Billionaires, millionaires, and big business-types are taking an avid interest in education reform these days.  They are not only taking an interest, they are opening their deep pockets and funding all sorts of projects to remake the education system into something that runs more like a business, meaning competition, bottom lines, and profits.

An especially active and influential group is known as the "Billionaire Boys Club" (coined by Diane Ravich, an education historian and author who is an outspoken opponent of corporate education reform), which is composed of three foundations that are working to reshape public education in radical and damaging ways.

These three foundations are The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (computer magnate Bill Gates), the Broad Foundation (homebuilding and insurance magnate Eli Broad), and the Walton Family Foundation (family of department store magnate Sam Walton of Walmart).

This club is by no means exclusive, however.  Many others are funding corporate education reform efforts and sponsoring legislation through ALEC.  All of the corporate reformers' efforts center around several key common goals and themes: choice and competition in public schools through charters, vouchers, and other privatization schemes; a focus on standardized testing and rote learning as the main objective of K-12 public education; the elimination or weakening of collective bargaining and other protections for teachers; the demonization and devaluation of veteran, career educators; and increased federal control and oversight of publicly funded schools.

• How the Billionaire Boys Club is Running - and Ruining - Education
• Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools 
• Ravitch: Billionaires (and millionaires) for education reform
• The Deep Pockets Behind Education Reform
• Report: Meet the Billionaires Who Are Trying to Privatize Our Schools and Kill Public Education
• The Broad Report, Blogspot.com
• Under the Influence: Big Education Spenders Interactive 
• No Funds Left Behind (As states slash education budgets, private foundations have picked up the slack—and pushed some controversial reforms.)
• The Business Roundtable's PIE: Post-Partisan Corporatism at Its Most Virulent 
• Why are the Rich So Interested in Public School Reform? 
• Billionaire Donors Drive Anti-teacher, Pro-testing Education Reform Agenda

A is for ALEC

Image from Common Cause's ALEC page.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a powerful and secretive group funded by corporations and wealthy individuals that is working feverishly to shape laws and policies in many arenas, including education:

"Founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich and other conservative activists frustrated by recent electoral setbacks, ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics. Inspired by Milton Friedman’s call for conservatives to 'develop alternatives to existing policies [and] keep them alive and available,' ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more. In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by GOP governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alums."  (from "ALEC Exposed" by John Nichols, The Nation, July 12, 2011.)
 
Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan clearly explains an ALEC model bill being proposed in Wisconsin & how it's part of ALEC's plan to eliminate pubic education.


 "The Center for Media and Democracy has obtained copies of more than 800 model bills approved by corporations through ALEC meetings, after one of the thousands of people with access shared them, and a whistleblower provided a copy to the Center. We have analyzed and marked-up those bills and made them available at  ALEC Exposed."    (from "About ALEC Exposed" by Lisa Graves, The Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch, July 13, 2011.)

• A Smart ALEC Threatens Public Education
• ALECWatch: "Letting the Sun Shine on Corporate America's Secret Political Arm
• Who Funds ALEC?

Daily Kos: ALEC Releases FULL Donor and Membership List

• ALEC: The Behind the Scenes Player in the States' Fight Against the Middle Class
• ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection
• ALEC Exposed: Starving Public Schools
• Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding ALEC's Influence on Your State Laws
• Six Degrees of ALEC: Connecting the Dots in the Corporate "Reform" Agenda for Education
• ALEC's official website
• ALEC's 2012 Report Card on the nation's schools, with detailed outlines of plans to privatize and computerize education
• ALEC: On a Mission to Dismantle Public Education

Chart found in a post by Mike E at kasamaproject.org.