Rahm and his schools CEO try and sell their discredited reforms in D.C.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is so discredited on his education and policing policies that he's been forced out of a re-election bid. But that didn't stop him and his ever-faithful schools CEO Janice Jackson from putting in an appearance in D.C. on WaPo's Education in America forum recently to spread the good news about all things terrific going on in Chicago's public schools.

Jackson offered a few comments when she could get a word in, but it was obvious that Rahm had her there as window dressing.

Was there any discussion of the regime's continuing disastrous mass school-closings policy mostly in underserved black communities, or the dramatic plunge in CPS enrollment during Rahm's tenure? Glad you asked. No.

District officials report a loss of 10,000 students since the last school year, one of the largest single-year declines in more than a decade. In the last three years, 31,000 students have ghosted CPS classrooms. But the Post's Jonathan Capehart never asked about that.

But he did ask Rahm about his closed-door meeting with Ed Secretary Betsy DeVos. At first, Rahm and Jackson giggled as if trying to distance themselves from the right-wing buffoon who currently occupies the D.O.E. That was followed by a seemingly unending speed rap about all the great ed initiatives flowing out of the 5th floor at City Hall; i.e. longer school days, not allowing "failure," onus on the principal, full-day Pre-K and free community college (if you get B's on your report card)...and the list goes on.

"We explained to her [DeVos\ that this was not about choice, but about quality...", Rahm assured Capehart, as if he actually believed it.

As we later learned, the secret Rahm/DeVos meeting was ALL about "choice," meaning Rahm's willingness to push a school voucher program into Chicago in exchange for federal dollars and a release by Republican Gov. Rauner of the state's school budget.

But Rahm's cover was blown when the Sun-Times got hold of his emails through an FOIA request. It turned out that Cardinal Blase Cupich had emailed the mayor after learning that U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was scheduling meetings with big-city mayors on Trump administration education priorities.

“I am personally interested in the proposal to fund a $20 billion federal education tax credit as part of the federal tax reform. I am convinced that this could be an enormous boost to the Chicago schools and the thousands of parents who use our [Catholic] schools,” Cupich wrote. “I am grateful that you understand the importance of school choice for poor families who see this as a viable way for the family to move out of poverty.”

The "tax credit" for the state's wealthiest turned out to be a voucher program to benefit Catholic and other private schools at the expense of public school students.

In his letter to Rahm, Cupich laid out the rationale that moved Rahm and the Democrats to support the bill. He claimed that by enticing students and families out of CPS, Rahm would save taxpayers $1 billion a year through lower public school enrollment. By extension, one can only imagine how much money taxpayers would save by getting rid of public education entirely. Zero students, zero cost per/student to taxpayers.

Who would have thought that blue state Illinois would become the showpiece for DeVos' "school choice" agenda?

I shouldn't have implied that Capehart never mentioned school closings. He did ask Rahm if the community's negative response to the closings accounted for him not running for a third term. Rahm did his usual. "Do I look like someone who runs from a challenge?... No, I just wanted to spend more time with Amy and the kids." OK.

More to come on this. Stay tuned

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Women's March, New York

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The women’s marches were the beginning, not the end. What happens next will be decided by what we do. Movements do not come to us from heaven, fully formed and organized. They are built by actual people, with all their political questions, weaknesses and strengths. -- Guardian 

Betsy DeVos to AEI 

"Common Core is dead" -- NPRed 

Mulvaney: Shutdown "kind of cool".

Mick Mulvaney, director of OMB

“I found out for the first time last night that the person who technically shuts down the government down is me, which is kind of cool." -- Vox 

Jill Abramson

So prevalent is the use of Trump’s name as a slur that the White House had to issue a formal statement saying the president “condemns violence, bigotry and hatred in all its forms, and finds anyone who might invoke his or any other political figure’s name for such aims to be contemptible”. -- Guardian 

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT)

"Being from Norway is not a skill." -- To Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen 

Broad and loud opposition to DeVos' voucher plans

Trump's Ed Secretary Betsy DeVos is determined to use the Dept. of Education's federal grant program as a weapon against public education. DeVos' stated number-one priority for the program is to “maximize” “educational choice". This means taking billions of dollars away from public school classrooms to promote school vouchers and privately run charters.

States that adopt her program, will be heavily rewarded, while those that don't will be punished. I should note that Obama's former Ed Secs, Arne Duncan and John King also used their $5B grant program to push charters and punish states that wouldn't adopt their failed "Race to the Top" program which included massive school closings and teacher firings. But DeVos' plan is Duncan squared with vouchers and "scholarships" for private schools put at the top of the list.

DeVos' Proposed Supplemental Priorities and Definitions for Discretionary Grant Programs has been met with loud opposition from a coalition of 50 school, community and civil rights organizations. The National Coalition for Public Education which includes both national teachers' unions, AASA: The School Superintendents Association, the National PTA, disability rights groups, the NAACP, and others is dead set against DeVos's priorities.

Their statement reads in part:

The Department should not reward states for adopting voucher programs that do not serve all students, fail to improve academic achievement, undermine public education funding, harm religious freedom and lack critical accountability for taxpayers. Instead, the Department of Education’s first priority should be funding, supporting, and strengthening our public schools, where 90% of our students attend.

It's a strong statement on vouchers, but unfortunately makes no mention of privately-run charter schools, the second leg of the destructive, right-wing Trump/DeVos "choice" initiative. While some groups within the coalition, like the NAACP, have been highly critical of charters, others haven't. So I'm assuming that the anti-voucher statement was the best possible without splitting the group.

In any regard, I doubt that DeVos (if she remains in power) will pay much attention to the statement unless it is backed up with protests in the streets and at schools.

Side note on charters...

Charter school operators who stand to gain from Trump/DeVos initiatives as well as from the biggest private foundations, have put their stamp of approval on DeVos' "choice" priorities. However, they do have one small criticism. They want the word "quality" put in front of "charter schools".

Quality is NACSA code language to signify that only the largest and richest charter school chains get the grants and that small, teacher-run, unionized, or "mom & pops" charters are eliminated.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

UIC Prof. Josh Radinsky 

"We're getting the (CReATE) band back together... Vouchers or vouchers by any other name is just onc way of minimizing choices. They call it 'school choice' but it's actually forced choice and lack of choices." -- Hitting Left

UIC Prof. David Stovall

"We're conflating test taking with learning and if you remove thousands of the poorest students who are are struggling, why wouldn't you have an increase (in CPS test scores)? -- Hitting Left

Gloria Ladson-Billings, new president of the National Academy of Education

 "For kids, it's the 'so what' question, and we typically don't have good answers for them. Our answer typically is, 'You're going to need this next year,' and kids figure out by 4th or 5th grade that we're lying." -- EdWeek  

Judge Roy Moore tells Hannity

I don't remember ever dating any girl without the permission of her mother. -- Real Clear Politics

Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler

“Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.” -- ShareBlue Media 

Report...

 “Our wealthiest 400 now have more wealth combined than the bottom 64% of the US population, an estimated 80m households or 204 million people,” the report says. “That’s more people than the population of Canada and Mexico combined.” -- Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett are wealthier than poorest half of US

Letter: Say no to vouchers

Not only does it allow individuals to take money meant for public funding and put it in their private little piggy bank, but it will ultimately put a greater burden on the rest of us to come up with more money to fund our school system. -- Wayne Fuller, Concord Monitor 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Belafonte, 90, tells Carnegie Music Hall audience in Pittsburgh,  “This will be my last public appearance.” 

Harry Belafonte

“We have achieved a lot in my lifetime. Dr King was not about nothing, Eleanor Roosevelt was not about nothing. I think in the final analysis that we shall overcome, because what we did is … we left a harvest that generations to come [will] reap. That they have not yet plowed. That they have not yet harvested.” -- Guardian

Parent at Success Academy Charter

“It’s like a military-style boot camp,” said one of the parents, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. -- N.Y. Daily News

 Prof. Erin Pahlke, Whitman College

...absent sufficient information for parents, choice-based education systems “penalize schools that enroll low-achievers rather than schools that offer poor instruction” and give school leaders a perverse incentive to focus on “making sure your school’s got the best kids” rather than improving school quality. -- The Atlantic

Barbara Ransby, UIC history professor

The Movement for Black Lives is distinctive because it defers to the local wisdom of its members and affiliates, rather than trying to dictate from above. In fact, the local organizers have insisted upon it. -- New York Times

Jimmy Carter

 Asked if Trump was responsible for souring America’s image in the world, he said “he might be escalating it but I think that precedes Trump. The United States has been the dominant character in the whole world and now we’re not any more. And we’re not going to be." -- Guardian  

John McCain

 “One aspect of the (Vietnam) conflict by the way that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur." -- AZ Central

If you think journalists should never challenge statements of generals, I’ve got a great documentary series for you https://t.co/4QuzXyw0OX

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 20, 2017

Dialectics of school 'choice'

School "choice" groups have never been able to present a unified front. As with any reform movement, divisions are bound to occur and this confederation of corporate reformers and privatization advocates has long been divided around issues of class and race, charters vs. vouchers, unionization, and much more.

But since Trump's election and his appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary, those contradictions have burst into the open, throwing organization leaders into a state of panic as they try and keep their heavily-funded ship afloat. Many educators within the charter school networks are repulsed by Trump and don't want to be openly associated with vouchers or DeVos' attempt to privatize and Christianize the schools. And yet they still want a piece of Trump's $20B "choice" pie and a seat at DeVos' table.

Trump's recent budget request exposed that growing fracture by proposing more than $1 billion in new spending for a variety of school "choice" initiatives while also slashing public education funding by more than $9 billion, trashing dozens of education programs and making steep cuts to important social service programs, like food stamps and Medicaid.

According to an AP Wire story in the Detroit News:

...when a member of this elite group was elevated to education secretary, the appointment opened a philosophical schism that now threatens to shatter the alliance, turn billionaires against each other and possibly lead some school-choice advocates to join with teachers’ unions, their archenemies. 

Closed-door, off-the-record meeting... U.S. News reports:

...dozens of charter school leaders met in Washington, D.C., last week, just blocks from the U.S. Capitol, to discuss a number of pressing issues facing the charter sector – chief among them, how to navigate the politically thorny situation of opposing much of the Trump administration’s agenda despite that agenda including the expansion of charter schools.

The closed-door, off-the-record meeting, confirmed to U.S. News by several sources, comes at a precarious time for the charter sector and the broader school choice movement on the whole.

The current political landscape presents a particular quagmire for charter school advocates: The budget included $168 million boost to expand charter schools and a $1 billion boost to Title I that their schools could benefit from, but was rife with cuts to other programs deemed essential for the majority of students their schools serve. The budget also included $250 million for a private school voucher program, which, paired with increased visibility for private choice programs thanks to DeVos, some charter advocates see as a threat.

Yesterday, Trump brought a number of  school "choice" groups to the White House in an effort to consolidate his base among ed reformers. DeVos and other White House officials reportedly attended.

According to POLITICO: 

The purpose of the meeting is unclear. Aside from President Donald Trump’s budget proposal — which would invest $1.4 billion into public school choice, charter schools and private school vouchers — the Trump administration has yet to unveil a plan to completely fulfill its $20 billion campaign pledge to expand school choice. And the many groups interested in that goal are at odds over just how to get it done. The White House declined to comment about the meeting and the Education Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The purpose seems clear enough to me. Dangling $20B (which comes right out of the public education budget) over the heads of school "choice" groups may be enough to, at least temporarily. quiet dissension in the ranks. That approach certainly worked for the pro-"choice" muscle philanthropies like Gates, Broad, and Walton during the Obama administration. Arne Duncan's DOE also threatened the loss of federal dollars to keep states and school districts in line with his own "choice" agenda, ie. Race To The Top. 

One of the common threads holding "choice" and charter groups together until now, has been a disdain for teacher unions. But now, an energized union organizing drive among charter school teachers seems to be taking hold. The initial promise of charters included more autonomy and empowerment for teachers. But as large networks of charters are increasingly run by corporate-style boards with no teacher representation, charter teachers find themselves feeling more like delivery clerks of a pre-packaged curriculum. Without collective bargaining rights, they find themselves working for lower pay, without job protection, and minimal health care or retirement plans.

Chicago, according to a Tribune report, has become the "epicenter" of charter school unionization. After a weeklong vote inside dozens of local charters, ChiACTS Local 4343 announced late Friday that 84% of its voting members are in favor of unifying with the 28,000-member CTU.

The proposed merger could well be an omen of things to come nationally. What I like most about it, is that teacher unions are recovering their own purpose for being-- to organize the unorganized.

“This vote for unification is a vote for educators with both ChiACTS and the CTU to speak with a stronger collaborative voice for real educational justice for all of our students,” ChiACTS President Chris Baehrend said in a statement. “It is our identity as public educators – not our employers – that defines us, and our overwhelming vote for unity affirms that charter educators are educators first, and servants of the public with a shared commitment to the futures of our students across the city.”

ee

Chris Baehrend and the CTU's Stacy Davis Gates will be our in-studio guests Friday, 11-noon on Hitting Left radio, talking charter school unions, school closings and... Tune into to WLPN, 105.5 FM, streaming live at Lumpen Radio or download the podcast. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

“It is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation.” -- LA Times 

Bernie Sanders

"It wasn't that Donald Trump won the election, it was that the Democratic Party lost the election" -- CNN

Editorial

No one wants a return to Ohio's Wild West days when failing charter schools were propped up by taxpayer dollars. That was a scandal that should never be repeated. -- Cleveland.com

Betsy DeVos

Even if you didn’t use a ridesharing service, I’m sure most of you at least have the app on your phone. Just as the traditional taxi system revolted against ridesharing, so too does the education establishment feel threatened by the rise of school choice. -- WSJ

Missouri League of Women Voters

There is an unfounded belief that charter schools are superior to traditional public schools and therefore provide parents with an advantageous choice. Studies of charter school academic achievement do not demonstrate that they are better than traditional public schools. Parents expect superior outcomes when placing their children in charter schools. Unfortunately, such is often not the case, and all too often charter school outcomes are actually inferior to those of traditional public schools. -- No to charter expansion 

War mongering from former DNC Chair, Donna Brazile

“I’ve never agreed with Dick Cheney in my entire life, but when he said this was an act of war, I have to agree with the former vice president. It was an act of war..If this is the modern warfare that we have to all participate in, we all better get ready for it.” -- The Hill

Trump's empty statements on education

Trump's vapid speech to the Joint Session of Congress last night revealed, among other things, that he is an educational know-nothing. As you might expect, the speech was void of any real vision for the future of public education or school reform. It amounted to little more than a sound-bite ad for market-driven schooling.

But as he read from the teleprompter, a few lines caught my attention.

First, was the often repeated cliche used by former Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan, that education is "the civil rights issue of our time." It was hollow enough when Duncan first claimed it while often, in the same breath, stating his opposition to "forced integration".

But if Duncan's civil rights phrase mongering was tragedy, hearing it again from Trump, an open racist and rabid opponent of civil rights, was farce. Especially, coming as it did, a day after he and Ed Sec. Betsy DeVos held up Historic Black Colleges and Universities as their model of "choice" without once mentioning HBCUs' history as a response to Jim Crow and racial segregation policies which prevented black and other minority students from attending many white-only universities.

In other words, a throw-back to Plessy v. Ferguson kind of choice.

DT presented an image of children growing up in "a nation of miracles", as in, it will take a miracle for many of them to grow up. But as we have learned, there are no miracles in successful schooling. Just the hard work of teachers, parents and communities in a supportive and well-funded system of public education.

Trump's call for "members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African-American and Latino children" was a waste of time and words.

A bill, which allows states to shift millions of federal dollars from public schools into privately-run charters, was already passed a little more than a year ago in the form of ESSA. On top of that, Trump has proposed another $20B for charters.  That coupled with huge federal grants already flowing to state for vouchers, charters and "choice" programs, eliminates the need for any further legislation. So one would think.

What's wrong with this list?

...families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.

Are students really going to be able to choose a home school that's right for them? The inanity of the statement didn't escape Stephen Colbert who said he would pick Trump's home for his kids. "It seems very nice."

Finally, there was this great, telling, non-sequitur:

Every American child should be able to... attend a great school and to have access to a high-paying job.

But to create this future, we must work with — not against — not against — the men and women of law enforcement.

Yes children. If you want a great school, support law and order.

Trump election has reformers reconsidering 'groupthink'.

Credit: Creative Commons/AFGE

"Ed reformers are just waiting for their turn to talk. They only want to talk about themselves. Anything you say, they just want to tell you, 'Charter schools are great.' A parent can tell them, 'I broke my foot.' And a reformer will say, 'You know what's good for that? Charter schools!'" -- Education Post's Chris Stewart 

For most of the past three decades, school reformers have been focused on dismantling traditional, mainly urban public school systems, replacing traditional public schools with a hodgepodge of market-oriented, tech-driven, resegregated and union-free "choice" options -- mainly, privately-run charter schools and school vouchers.

The unintended, or sometimes intended, consequence of these reforms is a steady rollback of the genuine reforms won by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s (the second Reconstruction period in our history). It was those reforms, limited and fleeting as they may have been, which, from 1968-88, generated the greatest educational gains for poor children this nation has ever seen.

But what we're seeing now is an increasingly racially re-segregated, two-tiered system made up of unregulated selective, heavily-resourced, high-performing schools for the few, and a collapsing infrastructure of resource-starved public schools for the many, especially in areas of concentrated urban and rural poverty.

Market-driven reform crosses traditional party lines and is based within a handful of conservative think tanks and policy groups like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Fordham Institute, and underwritten by high-powered philanthropists like billionaires Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg,  the Walton Family, the New Schools Venture Fund, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), and others.

It's actually difficult for me to call them "reformers" since, for the past 16 years, they have captured (or been captured by) the U.S. Dept. of Education bureaucracy, which under a string of ed secretaries (Paige, Spellings, Duncan, and King),has become a bulwark of standardization, privatization and failed top-down initiatives. In other words, the status quo.

But the election of Donald Trump and his appointment of choice supporter Betsy DeVos as the next secretary of education, have ironically thrown the current corporate and choice reformers into a state of panic and confusion. Why? Because even though they and Trump/DeVos share a common view of choice, charters and vouchers (a sticking point for some), throwing in with Trump's confederacy of alt-right white nationalists and educational know-nothings would widen the chasm between themselves and their potential customer base. A no-no for anyone working in the corporate world.

That potential base is mainly the sea of dissatisfied, largely black and Latino public school parents, many of whom have looked to charters and vouchers as potential escape routes from their faltering, underfunded and shuttered neighborhood schools.

The election of Trump has also thrown a monkey wrench into their efforts to organize, co-opt, or at least engage with that base as well as with union teachers, young progressive educators and policy people (ie. Teach for America alums) and school/community activists who are repulsed by Trump and the Republicans.

This hoped-for dialogue with progressives was a task assigned to former Duncan assistant Peter Cunningham and his on-line Eli Broad-funded journal Education Post.

So far, Cunningham's "let's find common ground" approach to the progressives has been little more than a veil. A trap set to draw them in without budging on any important issues. And the real problem is that it hasn't produced the hoped-for results. That's because the reformers are self-critical about style, but so far, not about content.

Sensing this failure, Cunningham has dropped all pretenses and sharpened his attacks on teacher unions, opt-out parents, and polemicising against school integration efforts. He's really sharpened his polemical knife for any and all who want caps on charter school expansion. Since the campaign began, national civil rights groups like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter have actually hardened their stance against charters and vouchers.

So much for "common ground"...

More proof that forced integration didn't work. @mikeklonsky Lamenting segregation is just an excuse to avoid improving schools.

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) August 16, 2016

@leoniehaimson Recruiting a small percentage of POC doesn't change the fact that opt out is largely driven by middle class whites.

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) April 24, 2016

At a recent AEI conference, choice reformers appeared to taking a self-critical approach and re-evaluating their strategies. Among the hottest topics was, what they called, "race-based" reform.

AEI's Rick Hess, who hosted the conference, writes: 

There was a willingness to talk frankly but in measured tones about disagreements. Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute pointed out that, for more than a decade, education reform has been approached as a race-based endeavor and questioned the wisdom and the desirability of this shift...

 There was a recognition that groupthink is a problem for all of us. AEI's Andy Smarick observed, "We all tend to surround ourselves with people who agree with our views. Then we wind up with an echo chamber. 

It's nice to know that some reformers are reconsidering groupthink, at least for now, in the face of Trumpism. Maybe others will follow. As for civil discourse about race and reform...I'm not holding my breath.

But the Trump/DeVos assault on public education should push choice, charter and voucher proponents to reconsider, not only their style, but substance as well.