Dear Deborah,

Philadelphia is about to take a fateful step. Thomas Knudsen, the recently retired chief executive officer of the Philadelphia Gas Works and now temporary CEO of the school system, has released a plan that will lead to the dismantling of public education in Philadelphia. The plan, or "blueprint," was written by a business strategy organization called Boston Consulting; it recommends the closing of 40 of the city's 249 schools in the coming year, with additional school closings in the years to come. The goal is to have a school district where the central district is phased out and a large portion of the students are enrolled in privately managed charter schools.

The most comprehensive (and alarming) account of the disestablishment of public education in Philadelphia is Daniel Denvir's article "Who's Killing Philly Public Schools?" As Denvir concludes, "If Knudsen's proposal goes through, the country's eighth-largest school district, in its fifth-largest city, will no longer exist in any meaningful sense. And neither will any remaining pretense that America offers everyone, regardless of race or class, an equal shot."

As Denvir reminds his readers, the public schools have been under state control since 2001, and privatization is not a new idea. For the past decade, the Philadelphia schools have been managed by a five-member School Reform Commission, with three members appointed by the governor and two by the Philadelphia mayor. In 2002, the reform commission hired Paul Vallas, the former superintendent in Chicago, to run the school system. Vallas launched a dramatic experiment in privatization, handing schools over to for-profit organizations, nonprofits, charters, and universities. One of designers of the privatization experiment was Edison Schools, which took over several public schools in Philadelphia, as well as the school system in Chester-Upland (also under state control).

In Philadelphia, the district schools competed with charter schools and other privately managed schools that had a contract with the city. RAND Corp. studied the privatization experiment in Philadelphia and concluded that neither the charters nor the privately contracted schools were getting better results than the district schools. By 2009, it was clear that the privatization experiment had failed. Meanwhile, Paul Vallas left for New Orleans, where he was able to work with a blank slate in a district where public education had been wiped out by a hurricane.

The bottom line, which neither the reform commission nor the mayor nor the governor wants to confront, is that Philadelphia's public schools have never been adequately funded by the state. Pennsylvania relies on property taxes, and poor cities have less money to spend on education than wealthy suburbs. Philadelphia parents and students have protested against privatization, but their protests have fallen on closed ears. Helen Gym, the Philadelphia leader of Parents Across America has been a vocal protest leader.

I happened to be in Philadelphia on the day after Boston Consulting's "Blueprint" was released, and I talked with reporters. They told me that the Philadelphia plan was based on New York City's "achievement networks." I must say I was stumped because I couldn't find anyone in New York City who could say for sure what these so-called achievement networks are or what they do. Everyone had a different idea of what Philadelphia was trying to copy. I asked if the School Reform Commission intended to double its spending on its schools, as New York City had done, and the reporters were taken aback: "Of course not, this is supposed to be a budget-cutting plan." I pointed out to them that New York City's school budget had gone from $12.5 billion in 2002 to about $24 billion today. They didn't know that.

I also noted that New York City's phenomenal state test scores had collapsed in 2010, when the New York state education department acknowledged that the state scores were wildly inflated. And New York City had seen some gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, but not so much as other cities. So why was New York City a model? No one knew.

But this is the puzzle: Philadelphia is a city that ran a bold experiment in privatization that failed. A number of charters in Philadelphia are under investigation for corruption. Philadelphia had five years of the services of the nation's leading turnaround superintendent, Paul Vallas, and it remains in deep trouble. Philadelphia has had state control of its public schools for a full decade. Now the leaders of the city think that public education is the problem.

One of the local journalists explained the problem succinctly. He said, "The kids of Philadelphia are mostly poor and black. The people in the state capitol don't want to take responsibility for those kids. They cost too much."

Mr. Knudsen was asked how his plan would address the deficit, the layoffs, and the lack of adequate resources. He replied, "The things that other networks do in other parts of the country is that these networks attract resources." Ah, that's the answer. With enough privatization, wealthy donors will make contributions. The noble rich can be counted on to take care of the deserving poor.

I can't help being reminded of the origins of urban education in cities like Philadelphia and New York City. The earliest schools for children of the poor were charity schools supported in part by public taxes, but subsidized by the benevolent rich and managed by private boards of trustees. It seems we are now going full circle to recreate the charity schools of the early 19th century.

As we abandon public schools, we abandon any sense of public responsibility for a basic public service. That's worse than a mistake. It's a tragedy. What will be privatized next? Police protection? Fire protection? Clean air? Potable water?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

How best to fight back? That is the question.

The answer: Many ways. And maybe it includes people who aren't left-wingers!

SOS (Save Our Schools) is holding a "People's Convention" Aug. 3-5 at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington D.C. Our plan? To come together around a small list of actionable planks—ones we wish the two political party conventions would adopt. We're not pretending they will, but we are also not claiming they couldn't. Our purpose: To begin to outline what the "other way" might involve if we turned away from No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, our standardized testing obsession and, above all, the gradual privatization of the American public education experiment.

The task is not to include everything we believe in, but focus on the ones that can create the biggest tent consistent with the four principles that SOS settled on last summer. A task that many PTAs, union locals, et al have been working on and will, we hope, come to Washington to present for our collective approval.

It's an exercise that a group of like-minded folks—the North Dakota Study Group—embarked on last winter. Started in 1972 by Vito Perrone, the NDSG has met every year since. Brenda Engel, a retired Lesley College faculty member, was there at the start. She volunteered to put together a draft manifesto representing our priorities. After lots of back and forth, it is now available for public comment:

AN EDUCATION MANIFESTO from the NDSG

Many of our country's enduring dilemmas are the products of inequalities in power and wealth created by social class, race, culture, and sexism. Challenges exist inside and outside the education system. Although the society has made visible historic progress on many fronts, our nation's most pressing educational problem remains the opportunity gap between the children of the haves and those of the have-nots; this gap has grown with the mounting social inequality of the last 40 years. We believe the schools can and should do much more to make progress in many areas. Yet we recognize that improving schools for the families of the have-nots on any large scale will in the end depend on broader steps toward democracy and equality. In any case, we are unlikely to renew our democracy without a fresh commitment to quality public education.

With this understanding we, as members of the North Dakota Study Group, affirm our beliefs about what quality public education could and should be:

1. Children, from 4 to 18 (and those with disabilities, from 4 to 21) deserve a free, comprehensive, quality education with equal access to resources, regardless of their families' national origin or cultural, religious, racial, or economic backgrounds. Education should not be a race with winners and losers, not a competition for scarce resources.

2. Children are active learners, naturally curious about their social and physical environments. In good schools, students are encouraged to imagine, speculate, create, reflect, question.

3. A quality education includes competence in the skills of reading and writing; knowledge and understanding of mathematics, science, history, and social science; knowledge of a foreign language, and broad experience in literature and the arts—as well as development of an appreciation of these areas. In a democracy, education needs to serve civic, cultural, and personal, as well as economic, goals.

4. Physical and social/psychological health and well-being are crucial to students' successful school experience. The responsibility of public education includes ... adjusting the curriculum and instruction for students with special needs and seeing that families are informed about available social services.

5. Educational decisions about curriculum and pedagogy should be school- and community- based, made primarily by teachers/educators and parents (those who know the children best). When politicians and the business establishment—who lack relevant knowledge and experience—take control of schooling, the effectiveness of public education is endangered.

6. Teachers, trained professionals responsible for educating the students in their charge, are primarily accountable to their school administration, parents, and community. Authentic assessment, central to effective teaching, is ongoing, classroom-based, relevant to the curriculum and in the immediate service of student learning.

7. Teaching is a highly skilled, demanding profession; preparation for effective teaching at all levels requires both academic and professional preparation and practical experience. Beyond the requirement for a certified college degree, there is no single best system of teacher education. ... Evaluation of teacher effectiveness should be done by peers and in-school administrators, based on observation and documentation.

8. The school district is a useful interface between schools and the more remote state and federal authorities. ... Local systems are responsible to state authorities for reporting on the academic achievement of students within their districts and for supplying the state with data to do with educational access and equity. ... Although there are good, serious, and worthwhile charter schools, we stand in general against the current corporate-led charter school movement that serves the interests of privatization, includes for-profit EMOs (education management organizations) and excludes teacher unions.

9. The interests of the U.S. Department of Education in the overall level of educational achievement in the United States can be met through sample assessments.

10. Education for democracy means practicing democratic values throughout the school system. The exercise of top-down, unresponsive, and authoritarian educational administration ... contradicts, in actual practice, principles of social justice which we try to instill in our students.

Note from Brenda: This is not a petition. It is a statement of beliefs about education intended to bring people's attention to some of the abuses in our present system; to stimulate thinking, discussion, and action. Please circulate this among your friends and enemies.

How might these principles be "enacted"? What prevents us from "pretending" they are already the law of the land? What are the steps necessary for the long and tough reimagining and reenacting democratic education—an idea with old roots but for which we have very sparse experience to draw from.

This could become both a local and national conversation leading to unexpected alliances. We'll see.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

A few weeks ago, the state legislature in Louisiana passed Gov. Bobby Jindal's education reform bill. Louisiana now goes to the head of the class as the state with the most advanced reform package in the nation. Surely, the Obama administration must be pleased, along with the governors of New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Maine, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Unfortunately, "reform" today has become a synonym for dismantling public education and demoralizing teachers. In that sense, Bobby Jindal and his Teach For America/Broad-trained state Commissioner of Education John White are now the leaders of the reform movement.

The key elements of Louisiana's reform are: a far-reaching voucher program, for which a majority of students in the state are eligible; a dramatic expansion of charter schools, with the establishment of multiple new chartering authorities; a parent trigger, enabling parents in low-performing public schools to turn their schools into private charters; and a removal of teacher tenure.

The Jindal reforms were immediately hailed by a group of conservative state superintendents calling themselves "Chiefs for Change." The group's chairman, Tony Bennett, the state superintendent in Indiana, congratulated Louisiana and predicted that:

"These student-centered reforms will completely transform Louisiana and its students. Students will no longer have to settle for failing schools. Countless families will be able to select the best education option for their unique student's needs. And superintendents and principals will be empowered to hone faculties of talented, dynamic, and effective educators. Armed with these bold reforms, Louisiana will soon lead our country in quality public K-12 education."

Tony Bennett was speaking on behalf of Janet Barresi, the Oklahoma superintendent of public instruction; Stephen Bowen, Maine's commissioner of education; Chris Cerf, New Jersey's commissioner of education; Deborah A. Gist, Rhode Island's commissioner of elementary and secondary education; Kevin Huffman, commissioner of education in Tennessee; Paul Pastorek, a former Louisiana state superintendent and member emeritus of the group; Gerard Robinson, Florida commissioner of education; Hanna Skandera, New Mexico's public education secretary-designate and the vice chair of Chiefs for Change; Eric Smith, a former Florida education commissioner and member emeritus; and John White, Louisiana's superintendent of education. The group seems to be allied with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Elizabeth Walters, who teaches in St. Bernard parish in Louisiana, offered a very different perspective on the Jindal law.

Walters pointed out that Louisiana is ranked 49th in the nation on children's quality of life measures by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. She notes that the legislation provides no new funds for any of its programs. When children leave to go to charters or voucher schools, their departure will diminish the funding of already underfunded schools. And it goes without saying that the legislation does nothing to address the poverty, hunger, and ill health that afflict the lives of so many children in Louisiana. The new law will create many new charter authorizers, each of whom is expected to approve at least five charters. For their trouble, the charter boards will collect a commission of about $100 for each child who enrolls in one of their schools, which translates into a windfall of a quarter-million dollars for boards that manage to attract 2,500 students from public schools. This is money out of the public schools' budget, of course.

As for teachers, the law will make sure that they live perpetually in fear, as they must be rated "highly effective" for five of every six years or face termination. Their salaries will vary from year to year depending on locally determined formulas that factor in test scores, experience, and subject matter.

Until now, 75 percent of the teachers in charter schools had to be certified. Under the Jindal law, charter teachers need no certification. All they need is a college degree, with no training whatsoever.

The law also includes generous funding for online course providers, whose courses must be included in the public schools' catalogues.

All in all, the Jindal legislation is the most far-reaching attempt in the nation to de-fund, dismantle, and obliterate public education. Paul Pastorek, the former Louisiana state superintendent, calls this a "marketplace" approach, which is right. With no new funding, everyone gets to dip into the funds allocated for public schools and carve out a piece for themselves, for vouchers, charters, home-schoolers, and for-profit online providers.

Is there any evidence that any of these changes will improve education? No, none whatsoever. Does the Jindal law follow the lead of any of the high-performing nations? No. But that's what "reform" means today.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

Blue skies overhead, green leaves popping out daily, and yellow, blue, and white blossoms. It eases the pain of seeing the work of so many wonderful people over so many years get torn down—whether it's for money or for a dearly held belief in the marketplace.

The money part is what's driving it along—the "belief system" has been around for a long time, and it's the infusion of billions of dollars into a coordinated public relations campaign on every level imaginable that has given it its current revolutionary power. Yes, it's a radical and revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary?) full-scale campaign to keep the trappings of democracy, but roll back 250 years of reform. On every front.

You and I "happen" to have spent between us almost a century (not quite) with our eyes focused on schools. We have had rather sharp differences over the years about K-12 education. (I ran across some of our much earlier correspondence the other day and ... Wow!) But underneath it there was an unspoken shared conviction about the importance of public education—of a democratic society with all its warts. As we smelled the oncoming counter-revolution in the air we both became very nervous. I stopped worrying as much about defending progressive school allies (and the schools to which I had given so many years) from the onslaught, but grew more concerned about the fundamental underpinning of what public'ness means in a democracy. I attributed some of my differences with the foundation/corporate reforms to simply being one of their ignorance about the pace of change possible in an essentially conservative institution with many constituents. I misunderstood.

They had their eyes on something different. In the name of equality—and our survival as a nation—they decided we had to get rid of our sentimental attachment to public space, public life, and so much more that we "foolishly" associated with our nation's democratic history. Suddenly I, and others working in "the trenches," were an obstacle to reform! We were blocking the 2lst century, aiding America's enemies, etc.

There was indeed a substantial group amongst our founding white fathers who distrusted democracy—deeply. Our opponents' nostalgia goes back in part to those olden days. The ignorant "public" needed to be led by their betters: ALEC et al. But they see a chance—born of their own "mistakes"—and they are leaping on it. Yes: Crisis equals opportunity, and they are using our economic crisis as a way to make quick and hard-to-reverse changes in every domain of our lives. They are preparing us for their own version of internationalism. The crazies on the Right had a point about the New World Order! The ALECs are shedding their blind patriotism and USA-centrism for one that allows them to invest in our rivals as enthusiastically as they invest in their home towns (which they do not seem to have, or have dozens of them spread throughout the world).

Irony: While blasting us over and over about the importance of beating our foreign rivals by teaching 4-year-olds their phonemes they are investing equally in education in China!

So it may not be surprising that you and I found fewer disagreements. And that's good. But talking last week in Newark, N.J., to some of the leaders of the anti-"reform" agenda, it was clear that they were also hungry for alternative visions. They aren't and don't want to be "just" defenders of the past practices of Newark schools, but they see themselves being shut out of the discussion about the future.

It reminded me that they need hope, enthusiasm, and vision. We need to also be addressing education in terms of what "it could be." We often can appear to rest our case on a nostalgia for a simpler world where face-to-face, long-term human relationships were more a part of daily life, even as we know that it can't be done by resurrecting simpler times! And, besides, simplicity wasn't as great as we sometimes remember it. Especially for the .... (See a list of the usual suspects.) We need to exercise our imaginations to prevent the unimaginable horrors of what is being proposed by the coalition of wealth, greed, and chutzpa.

That's why I think you and I should be devoting more energy to considering what our "utopian" solutions might be, as well as the next steps for getting there. What's the direction, the criteria, the underlying precepts that should drive our vision of the future of schooling for educating the next generation? What's needed to maintain a healthy planet, nation, community, and family that treats each and every one with equal respect—democratically. As I've said before, believers in the marketplace see it as the natural solution to all problems; democracy is not a natural solution. We're not born with—or without—the habits of democratic citizens. It's even at times counter-intuitive.

I think you and I read the world of schooling (our concerns about pedagogy and subject matter as vehicles for developing such democratic habits, as well as our concerns over whose interests control translating these into daily realities for our children) with similar biases. Maybe it's not enough to join forces against the immediate danger, but also to begin to imagine a different future.

So, my request? I want your advice, ideas, and critiques of my thoughts on future possibilities, and what we are fighting FOR. The chapter I wrote for In Schools We Trust about "scaling up" and "stacking the odds" was my last effort on this score. I'm rethinking it and would enjoy your thoughts on the matter. How to balance competing, but legitimate, agendas on the part of individual families, communities, and the common good? It may not be immediately relevant, but I think we need to put our current "crisis"—and, for a change, it's a real one—into a larger picture of possibilities unexplored.

Deb

P.S. Preserving the Public in Public Schools, by Phil Boyle and Del Burns, is worth reading. Also, The Seduction of Common Sense, by Kevin Kumashiro, from Teachers College Press.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

Since the 2010 elections, when Republicans took control of many states, there has been an explosion of legislation advancing privatization of public schools and stripping teachers of job protections and collective bargaining rights. Even some Democratic governors, seeing the strong rightward drift of our politics, have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon, seeking to remove any protection for academic freedom from public school teachers.

This outburst of anti-public school, anti-teacher legislation is no accident. It is the work of a shadowy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded in 1973, ALEC is an organization of nearly 2,000 conservative state legislators. Its hallmark is promotion of privatization and corporate interests in every sphere, not only education, but healthcare, the environment, the economy, voting laws, public safety, etc. It drafts model legislation that conservative legislators take back to their states and introduce as their own "reform" ideas. ALEC is the guiding force behind state-level efforts to privatize public education and to turn teachers into at-will employees who may be fired for any reason. The ALEC agenda is today the "reform" agenda for education.

ALEC operated largely in the dark for years, but gained notoriety because of the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. It turns out that ALEC crafted the "Stand Your Ground" legislation that empowered George Zimmerman to kill an unarmed teenager with the defense that he (the shooter) felt threatened. When the bright light of publicity was shone on ALEC, a number of corporate sponsors dropped out, including McDonald's, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Mars, Wendy's, Intuit, Kaplan, and PepsiCo. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said that it would not halt its current grant to ALEC, but pledged not to provide new funding. ALEC has some 300 corporate sponsors, including Walmart, the Koch Brothers, and AT&T, so there's still quite a lot of corporate support for its free-market policies. ALEC claimed that it is the victim of a campaign of intimidation.

Groups like Common Cause and colorofchange.org have been putting ALEC's model legislation online and printing the names of its sponsors. They have also published sharp criticism of ALEC's ideas. This is hardly intimidation. It's the democratic process at work. A website called alecexposed.org has published ALEC's policy agenda. Common Cause posted the agenda for the meeting of ALEC on May 11 in Charlotte, N.C. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has dropped out of ALEC and also withdrawn from the May 11 conference, where it was originally going to be a presenter.

A recent article in the Newark Star-Ledger showed how closely New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's "reform" legislation is modeled on ALEC's work in education. Wherever you see states expanding vouchers, charters, and other forms of privatization, wherever you see states lowering standards for entry into the teaching profession, wherever you see states opening up new opportunities for profit-making entities, wherever you see the expansion of for-profit online charter schools, you are likely to find legislation that echoes the ALEC model.

ALEC has been leading the privatization movement for nearly 40 years, but the only thing new is the attention it is getting, and the fact that many of its ideas are now being enacted. Just last week, the Michigan House of Representatives expanded the number of cyber charters that may operate in the state, even though the academic results for such online schools are dismal.

Who is on the education task force of ALEC? The members of the task force as of July 2011 are here. Several members represent for-profit online companies, including the co-chair from Connections Academy; many members come from for-profit higher education corporations. There is someone from Jeb Bush's foundation, as well as right-wing think tank people. There are charter school representatives, as well as Scantron. And the task force includes a long list of state legislators, from Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Quite a lineup. Common Cause has asked why ALEC is considered a "charity" by the Internal Revenue Service and holds tax-exempt status, when it devotes so much time to lobbying for changes in state laws. Common Cause has filed a "whistleblower" complaint with the IRS about ALEC's status.

The campaign to privatize the schools and to dismantle the teaching profession is in full swing. Where is the leadership to oppose it?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend