Pulling the trigger on public schools

The Parent Trigger law (Parent Empowerment Act of 2010) is possibly the most anti-democratic piece of education legislation passed in California in the last 100 years. The law, which turns parent against parent in a community, gives a temporary majority, who are willing (often cajoled) to sign a petition, the power to hand their public school over to a private company. That company can then fire the principal and all the teachers as well as abrogate the district's collective bargaining agreement. It doesn't matter if next week, or next year, the majority shifts. The school can be privatized and there's little district parents and taxpayers can do about it.

This week a group of parents at "low performing" Palm Elementary School in Anaheim were able to do just that with the help of former State Sen. Gloria Romero's nonprofit consulting group. the California Center for Parent Empowerment. Romero, a Democrat, has become the darling of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Koch Bros. and receives funding from Walton, Broad and other powerful anti-union, pro-privatization foundations. She was once with the union-busting group Parent Revolution, which originally pushed the trigger law. After breaking with them, she joined up with the former pro-charter, pro-voucher organization DFER. But last year she broke with them to start her own parent trigger group.

While Romero likes to brag about her East L.A. origins and her former community activism, Diane Ravitch has been clear about her move to the right. "She's working for Wall Street hedge fund managers. That's where her interest lies."

GREASY DEASY... The latest on former scandal-ridden L.A. Supt. John Deasy is that he's hooked up with the Broad Foundation and now has joined Parent Trigger founder Ben Austin on the board of Students Matter. They're the anti-teacher, anti-union group, headed up by Silicon Valley billionaire David Welchm that brought us the Vegara anti-teacher-tenure suit.

Another new role 4 former LA schools Supt. John Deasy. He'll be a board member/advisor 4 Students Matter, which pursued Vergara suit.
— Howard Blume (@howardblume) January 15, 2015

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Vergara was the straw that broke the camel's back.The Secretary's response to the Vergara verdict—it was just shameful. And it underscored his lack of understanding." -- CTA Pres. Dean Vogel    

Dennis Van Roekel, outgoing NEA president

"Let's be clear—we as educators are not opposed to tests. Good God, we invented them! But we know that the purpose of testing should be to drive learning, not to label and punish." -- Teacher Beat

New NEA V.P. Becky Pringle

New NEA V.P.-elect Becky Pringle 

"The political landscape has not changed and we expect the threats to our union to continue. The corporate reformers are spinning these complicated webs that we anticipate will continue and pick up." -- EdWeek

Fred Klonsky

 So, for this meeting to choose three women of color to lead the organization and do it without much fanfare. For them to vote in the sharpest of language against the use and misuse of standardized testing. For them to vote – even by a razor thin margin – for Arne Duncan to resign. That makes it a big story. Of course, I wanted more. -- Fred Klonsky Blog

Toni Preckwinkle

Carol Marin

Preckwinkle seemed to have a lot of friends that night. Mayor Emanuel, on the other hand, not so many, judging from people who, unsolicited, walked up to volunteer their views, offering adjectives like “high-handed” and “arrogant.” One word, however, was used more than any other. It was “schools.” -- Sun-Times, What does the applause for Preckwinkle mean?

Duncan's foul support for Vergara. He must go.

Main backers of corporate-style school reform, Duncan, Rhee & Gates. 

Today’s court decision is a mandate to fix these problems. -- Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan's support for the anti-teacher Vergara decision in California, describing it as a "mandate" and an "opportunity" was even too much for teacher/historian John Thompson, who's not a line-in-the-sands guy. But in his latest post on Huffington, he joins the chorus of the those calling on Obama to dump Duncan.

He is supposed to be a cabinet secretary, not the head of a brass-knuckled, anti-teacher interest group. And, yet, Duncan now endorses Vergara. His gratuitous announcement in support of the case is comparable to applauding a dirty foul that hurts a player. In doing so he shows his true colors. Duncan, I believe, has always been an awful Secretary of Education. But, now, he is clearly unfit for that position.

The CTU issued a strong public statement denouncing Judge Treu's decision in the Vergara case.

 Omitted from his decision are the impacts of concentrated poverty, intense segregation, skeletal budgets, and so-called “disruptive innovation” that have been at the heart of urban school districts for decades. Scripted curricula, overuse and misuse of standardized testing, school closures and school turnarounds, and the calculated deprivation of resources are the real reasons low-income students of color face discrimination. So-called reformers like David Welch and Arne Duncan push those policies. In other words, the new “reform” status quo has made worse the problem it purports to fix.

Here's the usual from the "liberal" New York Times: "Teachers deserve reasonable due process rights and job protections. But..." 

David Welch

The most sickening feature of the case is the way it was portrayed as a group of kids suing the state to get rid of bad teachers. Little about the role of billionaire union hater David Welch bankrolling the entire case and propping up a handful of kids for the photo ops.

WING-NUTS AT BREITBART love it. They call it a "conservative’s dream-come-true victory" over the unions and salute Welch and supporters, "a long-time coalition of educational free-market supporters and privatization philanthropists, including the Gates Foundation, Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad and Walmart’s Walton Family Foundation" for the victory.

Welch was unique when he founded Students Matter as a non-profit to fund the multi-million Vergara v. California suit in 2010, according to an investigation by Capital & Main. He “had virtually no background in education policy or any direct financial stake in the multibillion-dollar, for-profit education and standardized testing industries."

With Welch's money, Students Matter was able to hire Theodore B. Olson of Washington, D.C. office of the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher as lead counsel in the Vergara case. Olson was Reagan's Assistant Attorney General and was selected by Time magazine in 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Money talks. Teachers walk.