Regarding the privatization of K-12 in Baltimore and Maryland:
THIS IS SERIOUS FOLKS-----WE MUST SHAKE THE NEO-LIBERAL BUGS FROM THE RUG AND SO FAR ALL CANDIDATES ARE NEO-LIBERALS. LABOR AND JUSTICE ARE ALLOWING THE SAME POLICIES TO MOVE FORWARD IN MARYLAND!!!!
As I said last week, Mike Miller has announced that he intends to stop state funding for K-12 in Maryland, sending the expense to local governments. Raise your hands if you understand that localities cannot afford to support K-12......EVERYONE. So, we all understand that this is intended to push public schools to corporations for funding. HAVE I NOT BEEN SAYING THAT FOR SEVERAL YEARS? WHY HAVE YOU NOT HEARD THIS FROM YOUR PUBLIC/MARYLAND MEDIA? Oh, yes, they work for the corporations doing this! The good news is that all groups around Maryland with whom I share this are shook into understanding what the real intent in education reform is-----CHINESE-STYLE TRACKING OF CHILDREN BY THE STATE ACCORDING TO PRE-SCHOOL TESTING. YOUR CHILD'S VOCATION WILL BE DETERMINED BY THE STATE WITH THOSE TESTS-----NO PARENT INPUT!!!
Indeed, I received an announcement today from Philadelphia that just such a start is happening and it has already happened in Baltimore. What we need the middle-class to understand is that this is starting in urban areas because all the people who would be justice leaders are captured and silent as they support these neo-liberals doing this. We know for example that the 5 ministers who always back the same crony pols working for the Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins --------ministers at the mega-churches------are the ones allowing this structure to develop in Baltimore and it will be used as a springboard to all Maryland public schools as it will in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO TELL YOU THAT THIS STRUCTURE IS ONLY FOR THE UNDERSERVED-----IT IS FOR ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Remember, the 1% do not see a middle-class as they are stealing all the middle-class wealth they can through outright fraud and constant economic crashes.
THIS PRIVATIZATION POLICY IS FOR ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND IT IS TO MOVE THE CHINESE-STYLE TRACKING PROGRAM FORWARD.
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Below you see parents in Philadelphia experiencing the same thing.....it is happening in all cities. The middle-class knows that moving state funding to localities will force this privatization to all public schools!
The SRC meets next Monday(11/18)for their Strategy,Policy & Priorities Meeting from 6-8p.m. down at 440. The newly changed topic is Expanding Access to High Performing Schools. PSP is working to get an Universal Enrollment plan in place that would use a third party to determine which school your child gets into (charter, parochial, & public would all be included)....this raises so many questions. Universal Enrollment has been rolled out by PSP as phillyschoolapp...all without any input from the public and without disclosing who is really behind this. While the District saying that they will not participate this year, a District form is included on this site. Please join us on Monday in raising questions and demanding answers.
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Now, for those knowing Hopkins as the corporation giving us the NSA, national surveillance, corporate rule, and no public voice-------you know this is not a good thing. City schools have not been in worse shape, achievement is in decline because all of the education policy implemented by Hopkins' school board has nothing to do with quality education-----it is about making education a business as has been done with Maryland higher education. CAN YOU IMAGINE EDUCATION BEING HANDLED BY AN INSTITUTION LIKE HOPKINS? REALLY? It resembles a Chinese re-education camp. This is the structure designed to remove state funding to corporations who then give tests to students in pre-school that tracks them into one of these corporate campuses. The transformation is from a free democratic education to an autocratic K-college vocational tracking for all public school students!!!!
HOPKINS-HENDERSON SCHOOL PARTNERSHIP
A Transformative Model
Imagine an educational model that would fundamentally change the way we educate children. Where students from birth to Grade 8 would receive the most comprehensive educational experience possible.
That dream is on the path to being realized at Henderson-Hopkins - a new K-8 community school and early childhood center serving East Baltimore. Utilizing a holistic, personalized approach to learning based on the most effective research-based practices, this school model is designed to help all students reach the highest level of achievement for success in the 21st century.
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One would think in a heavily democratic city and state, Baltimore and Maryland would not have any of these policies. Actually we have all these policies----you just don't hear about it in the news. Baltimore is being made the platform for expanding just these privatization policies to the rest of the state.
THIS IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE STATE ISSUE-----NEO-LIBERALS ARE PUSHING THE LAWS!!!
RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!
Expanded K-12 privatization on the horizon
Del Stover|January 28th, 2013| National School Board Assoc
School board members can expect continued political activity to promote charter schools, vouchers, school choice options, and to expand the privatization of K-12 education.
That was the message of Roberta Stanley, NSBA’s director of federal affairs, who gave a political update on these issues Monday at the Federal Relations Network (FRN) Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.
The charter school movement currently dominates efforts to redesign the traditional public school system, she told conference attendees. At least 1.8 million children—or 4 percent of the K-12 student population—currently are enrolled in publicly funded charter schools.
“Charters are the big name in the game today,” Stanley said, noting that they enjoy strong political support from some urban mayors, governors, state lawmakers, and such federal officials as Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama.
Helping fuel this policy push is money from several large foundations, as well as private entrepreneurs who see the opportunity to tap into billions of dollars in education funding.
NSBA policy isn’t to oppose charter schools but to insist that their authorization and their accountability be the responsibility of school boards, so that the future of children’s educational opportunities remains under the control of the local community, she said.
Accountability is an issue that’s going to continue to surround the charter school movement in the years ahead, Stanley said. More data is needed on the academic performance of these schools, and state and federal lawmakers will need to address better procedures for closing down poor-performing charters.
Although school voucher advocates still are active, school board members will find that a more fast-growth phenomenon is the “explosion of cyber, virtual, and online schools,” Stanley said.
Enrollment in virtual schools is growing at a rate of about 3 percent annually, yet some studies suggest these schools aren’t successful for all students, she said.
That’s not to say that online schools have no future role in K-12 education, Stanley added.
“I understand one of the best [roles] for cyber schools is credit recovery, working with kids who lag behind or are homebound or sick,” or to expand course offerings in smaller or rural schools, she said.
Where school leaders need to watch carefully is in states where state policymakers are too eager to push all-day online learning or seek to use virtual schools as a cheap alternative to brick-and-mortar schools.
“Students need oversight. Students need to be taught to be civic-minded, to learn teamwork-building skills,” Stanley said. “We don’t get that with a child sitting in his or her bedroom at a computer.”
To strengthen its advocacy efforts on these issues, NSBA works with a coalition of 60 education and civil rights groups to broaden the message that serious issues remain to be addressed regarding school choice, she added. This coalition also seeks to block poor policy decisions that will hurt public education.
“This is as sharp a coalition as I’ve ever worked with,” Stanley said. “And we are right on top of it, so we can try to nip these things in the bud.”
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'Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education'.
Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 Market
Reuters | Posted: 08/02/2012 10:16 am Updated: 08/02/2012 12:18 pm Huffington Post
By Stephanie Simon
NEW YORK, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.
Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.
"You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up," said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a Boston consulting firm. "It could get really, really big."
Indeed, investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education.
The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.
Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into -- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.
Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.
The conference last week at the University Club, billed as a how-to on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies," drew a full house of about 100.
OUTSOURCING BASICS
In the venture capital world, transactions in the K-12 education sector soared to a record $389 million last year, up from $13 million in 2005. That includes major investments from some of the most respected venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, according to GSV Advisors, an investment firm in Chicago that specializes in education.
The goal: an education revolution in which public schools outsource to private vendors such critical tasks as teaching math, educating disabled students, even writing report cards, said Michael Moe, the founder of GSV.
"It's time," Moe said. "Everybody's excited about it."
Not quite everyone.
The push to privatize has alarmed some parents and teachers, as well as union leaders who fear their members will lose their jobs or their autonomy in the classroom.
Many of these protesters have rallied behind education historian Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University, who blogs and tweets a steady stream of alarms about corporate profiteers invading public schools.
Ravitch argues that schools have, in effect, been set up by a bipartisan education reform movement that places an enormous emphasis on standardized test scores, labels poor performers as "failing" schools and relentlessly pushes local districts to transform low-ranked schools by firing the staff and turning the building over to private management.
President Barack Obama and both Democratic and Republican policymakers in the states have embraced those principles. Local school districts from Memphis to Philadelphia to Dallas, meanwhile, have hired private consultants to advise them on improving education; the strategists typically call for a broader role for private companies in public schools.
"This is a new frontier," Ravitch said. "The private equity guys and the hedge fund guys are circling public education."
Some of the products and services offered by private vendors may well be good for kids and schools, Ravitch said. But she has no confidence in their overall quality because "the bottom line is that they're seeking profit first."
Vendors looking for a toehold in public schools often donate generously to local politicians and spend big on marketing, so even companies with dismal academic results can rack up contracts and rake in tax dollars, Ravitch said.
"They're taking education, which ought to be in a different sphere where we're constantly concerned about raising quality, and they're applying a business metric: How do we cut costs?" Ravitch said.
BUDGET PRESSURES
Investors retort that public school districts are compelled to use that metric anyway because of reduced funding from states and the soaring cost of teacher pensions and health benefits. Public schools struggling to balance budgets have fired teachers, slashed course offerings and imposed a long list of fees, charging students to ride the bus, to sing in the chorus, even to take honors English.
The time is ripe, they say, for schools to try something new -- like turning to the private sector for help.
"Education is behind healthcare and other sectors that have utilized outsourcing to become more efficient," private equity investor Larry Shagrin said in the keynote address to the New York conference.
He credited the reform movement with forcing public schools to catch up. "There's more receptivity to change than ever before," said Shagrin, a partner with Brockway Moran & Partners Inc, in Boca Raton, Florida. "That creates opportunity."
Speakers at the conference identified several promising arenas for privatization.
Education entrepreneur John Katzman urged investors to look for companies developing software that can replace teachers for segments of the school day, driving down labor costs.
"How do we use technology so that we require fewer highly qualified teachers?" asked Katzman, who founded the Princeton Review test-prep company and now focuses on online learning.
Such businesses already have been drawing significant interest. Venture capital firms have bet more than $9 million on Schoology, an online learning platform that promises to take over the dreary jobs of writing and grading quizzes, giving students feedback about their progress and generating report cards.
DreamBox Learning has received $18 million from investors to refine and promote software that drills students in math. The software is billed as "adaptive," meaning it analyzes responses to problems and then poses follow-up questions precisely pitched to a student's abilities.
The charter school chain Rocketship, a nonprofit based in San Jose, California, turns kids over to DreamBox for two hours a day. The chain boasts that it pays its teachers more because it needs fewer of them, thanks to such programs. Last year, Rocketship commissioned a study that showed students who used DreamBox heavily for 16 weeks scored on average 2.3 points higher on a standardized math test than their peers.
SPECIAL ED AS A GROWTH MARKET
Another niche spotlighted at the private equity conference: special education.
Mark Claypool, president of Educational Services of America, told the crowd his company has enjoyed three straight years of 15 percent to 20 percent growth as more and more school districts have hired him to run their special-needs programs.
Autism in particular, he said, is a growth market, with school districts seeking better, cheaper ways to serve the growing number of students struggling with that disorder.
ESA, which is based in Nashville, Tennessee, now serves 12,000 students with learning disabilities or behavioral problems in 250 school districts nationwide.
"The knee-jerk reaction [to private providers like ESA] is, 'You're just in this to make money. The profit motive is going to trump quality,' " Claypool said. "That's crazy, because frankly, there are really a whole lot easier ways to make a living." Claypool, a former social worker, said he got into the field out of frustration over what he saw as limited options for children with learning disabilities.
Claypool and others point out that private firms have always made money off public education; they have constructed the schools, provided the buses and processed the burgers served at lunch. Big publishers such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have made hundreds of millions of dollars selling public school districts textbooks and standardized tests.
Critics see the newest rush to private vendors as more worrisome because school districts are outsourcing not just supplies but the very core of education: the daily interaction between student and teacher, the presentation of new material, the quick checks to see which kids have risen to the challenge and which are hopelessly confused.
At the more than 5,500 charter schools nationwide, private management companies -- some of them for-profit -- are in full control of running public schools with public dollars.
"I look around the world and I don't see any country doing this but us," Ravitch said. "Why is that?"
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They are trying to make this sound like a right wing movement to end Common Core but as we all know-------NO ONE WANTS IT!!
For those just starting to see the corporate takeover of public K-12, you must understand that a standard curricula with lessons written by the 1% and distributed to all schools in America is a bad thing. It is not about rigor----it is about capturing all information hitting the American people. IF YOU ARE SILENT AS PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DISMANTLED-----YOU ARE ALLOWING THE NEO-LIBERALS TO MOVE THE COUNTRY FURTHER INTO AUTOCRACY-----PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DEMOCRACY!
New York Parents, Educators REALLY Want State Education Boss John King To Resign
The Huffington Post | By Rebecca Klein Posted: 11/15/2013 5:47 pm EST Huffington Post
It has not been a good week for New York State Education Commissioner John King, as parents and education groups continued to call for his resignation and speak out against the state’s implementation of education reforms known as the Common Core Standards.
A new set of education benchmarks that emphasize critical thinking and deep learning, the Common Core Standards have been adopted by 45 states. New York was one of the first to start implementing the new mandates in the classroom. However, parent and education groups around the state are saying the process was rushed and done with a lack of transparency.
On Tuesday, more than 1,500 parents and educators packed a high school auditorium in East Setauket, Long Island, to express their concerns to the commissioner at a forum on the Common Core. According to Newsday, members of the raucous crowd shouted at King when he tried to speak, cheered parents who complained about the standards and at one point began to shout, "What about the kids? What about the kids?"
A YouTube video showing an educator at the forum chastising the commissioner and state Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch has been viewed more than 43,500 times. In the video, the educator asks for King's resignation and says the stress caused by the standards constitutes “child abuse.”
“I’m very happy, Ms. Tisch, that you are here, because I have 50 letters with me, and I have mailed you 300 others asking for Mr. King’s resignation and firing,” says the educator. “I have no problem being judged by anyone. I was judged as highly effective last year. … Obviously, Mr. King, you’re ineffective. Seventy percent of the children in this state failed your test.”
The scene was reportedly calmer at a local forum on Wednesday evening in Mineola, Long Island, although protestors held signs outside the event calling for King's resignation, reports Newsday.
Still, King said he was listening to parents' concerns.
"We have to continue to look for ways to reduce ... testing," the commissioner said after the event, per Newsday. "After each of these forums, we go back and listen to what we've heard to make thoughtful adjustments."
However, Lisa Rudley, co-founder of a network of parent and education groups, told The Huffington Post that she doubts the Commissioner is taking parental complaints into consideration.
“It’s getting much more heated, and they’re still not listening to us,” Rudley told Huff Post over the phone. “While there’s been a lot of visibility with the forums and hearings, it’s very clear to me they are still not addressing what they need to.”
Rudley's group began calling for King's resignation several weeks ago, after the commissioner cancelled a few planned forums around the state. While several politicians initially joined the group's call, they rolled back their critiques after King rescheduled the events.
In the upcoming weeks, King is slated to attend more forums on the Common Core around the state.
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Look at this administrative class with salaries placing them in the 'do anything they are told' category. That is what is making these positions unaccountable to the public----this is the CEO pay that precedes taking public education private. In Baltimore the school board is controlled by the governor who has appointed nothing but business people knowing nothing about education. The superintendent getting close to $200,000 a year in a system starved for money.
This is how you know public education is being made a business......please work to reverse this by getting rid of neo-liberals by running and voting for labor and justice in all primaries!
Is Philly school district violating Sunshine Act over key hires?
Philly schools superintendent William Hite, Jr. (right) and School Reform Commission chairman Pedro Ramos. The Daily News reviewed a year's worth of personnel resolutions through September and found that no top-ranked officials or their starting salaries were made public or voted on by the SRC.
REGINA MEDINA, Daily News Staff Writer medinar@phillynews.com, 215-854-5985 Posted: Monday, November 18, 2013, 12:16 AM
DAVID M. HARDY began work in September as chief academic support officer for the Philadelphia School District at an annual salary of $160,000.
But the hire wasn't made public.
That wasn't the first time. In the past year, the district frequently has flouted state law by failing to notify the public after hiring high-ranking personnel to lead departments in which decisions are made that affect students, families and staff.
According to the state's Sunshine Act - and the district's own employment policies - a school district's hires and terminations, listed in personnel resolutions, must be voted on in public by a school board - or, in Philadelphia's case, the School Reform Commission - before the new hires are officially employed.
But that's not how it's done in Philadelphia.
"If it doesn't happen that way, there's a Sunshine Act problem," said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association in Harrisburg.
The Daily News reviewed a year's worth of school district personnel resolutions through September and found that no top-ranked officials or their starting salaries were made public or voted on by the SRC.
Besides Hardy, they include:
* Paul Kihn, deputy superintendent, starting at $210,000, September 2012.
* Matthew Stanski, chief financial officer, $175,000, November 2012.
* Sophie Bryan, director, charter-school office, $100,000, November 2012.
* Fran Burns, chief operating officer, $175,000, May 2013.
* Naomi Wyatt, chief human-resources officer, $180,000, July 2013.
In addition, 56 employees hired between April 18 and June 30 were not included in the reviewed personnel resolutions, which only listed two employees hired to work at district headquarters.
Responding to an inquiry by the Daily News, the district will launch "a full review of its personnel-resolutions process," said district spokesman Fernando Gallard.
"A preliminary review found that a computer error may have led to the omission of names of individuals appointed to positions within the school district from the personnel resolutions presented to the SRC for consideration," Gallard said.
The personnel resolutions voted on each month by the SRC include hires, their names, positions and start dates. And before the vote, pursuant to the Sunshine Act, the floor should be open for public comment.
"Any time you're hiring folks with taxpayer money, particularly when you're hiring and retaining people to educate and train our children, that needs to be done in the utmost possible sunshine and not in the shadows," said Terry Mutchler, executive director of the state's Office of Open Records.
When the vote takes place after the new employee already has begun to work for the district, said Melewsky, it "undermines the public-access provisions of the Sunshine Act and renders the board's vote basically meaningless."
"The public wasn't given an opportunity to witness and participate before the decision was made," said Melewsky, who said she believes that districts should include salaries in personnel resolutions because it's more transparent.
Melewsky also took issue with SRC guidelines for public comment, which the media lawyer called "quite strict" and "a barrier to access."
Speakers must register by 4:30 p.m. the day before an SRC meeting, a requirement that does not violate the law but is "unreasonable," Melewsky said. Also, speakers might not be able to register because they couldn't see the agenda until after the registration deadline.
"There needs to be some flexibility in the public-comment process," she said.
Gallard said it is the "SRC's preference to post proposed resolutions early enough to give the public some advance notice of resolutions to be considered by the SRC," but sometimes it's "not possible" to post them sooner. "It is always the intention of the SRC to be transparent in the conduct of its business, and [it] does not hold back the publication of proposed resolutions on purpose."
SRC speakers also are required to present seven copies of a prepared speech, according to SRC rules. Melewsky said such a rule is unique in her experience.
Gallard said the requirement enables public comments to "be included in the SRC's records." He said a person who doesn't have the seven copies is still allowed to speak at the meeting.
Parent Rebecca Poyourow, a regular speaker, said the requirement "discourages a lot of people who may feel intimidated from writing it down, or who don't have access to copiers. So people take themselves out of the running."
The Fraudulent 1% Campaign to Stigmatize Public Schools as "Socialist Failures"
PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Right Wing Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast called the public school system a "socialist regime." Michelle Rhee cautions us against commending students for their 'participation' in sports and other activities.
Privatizers believe that any form of working together as a community is anti-American. To them, individual achievement is all that matters. They're now applying their winner-take-all profit motive to our children.
We're Sliding Backwards, Towards "Separate and Unequal"
In 1954, the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education seemed to place our country on the right track. Chief Justice Earl Warren said that education "is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." Thurgood Marshall insisted on "the right of every American to an equal start in life."
But then we got derailed. We've become a nation of inequality, worse than ever before, worse than during the racist "separate but equal" policy of Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA shows that "segregated schools are systematically linked to unequal educational opportunities." The Economic Policy Institute tells us that "African American students are more isolated than they were 40 years ago."
The privatizers clamor for vouchers and charters to improve education, but such methods generally don't serve those who need it most. According to a Center on Education Policy report, private schools serve 12 percent of the nation's elementary and secondary students, but only one percent of disabled students. Forty-three percent of public school students are from minority families, compared to 24% of private school students.
Meanwhile, as teachers continue to get blamed, the Census Bureau tells us that an incredible 38 percent of black children live in poverty.
The Underprivileged Have Been Cheated Out Of Taxes
A Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) report revealed that total K-12 education cuts for fiscal 2012 were about $12.7 billion.
Almost 90 percent of K-12 funding comes from state and local taxes. But in 2011 and 2012, 155 of the largest U.S. corporations paid only about half of their required state taxes. That comes to $14 billion per year in unpaid taxes, more than the K-12 cuts.
Untaxed and Unqualified Foundations Want To "Save Our Schools"
The "starve the beast" mentality allows the privatizers to claim that our "Soviet-style" schools don't work, and that a business approach must be used instead. Philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family, who have little educational experience among them, and who have little accountability to the public, are promoting "education reform" with lots of standardized testing.
But according to the National Research Council, "The tests that are typically used to measure performance in education fall short of providing a complete measure of desired educational outcomes in many ways." Diane Ravitch notes that the test-based Common Core standards were developed by a Gates-funded organization with almost no public input. Desperate states had to adopt the standards to get funding.
Bill Gates may be well-intentioned, but he's a tech guy, and his programming of children into educational objects is disturbing. One of his ideas is to videotape teachers and then analyze their performances. The means of choosing 'analysts' is unclear. Another Gates idea is the Galvanic Skin Response bracelet, which would be attached to a child to measure classroom engagement, and ultimately gauge teacher performance. It all sounds like a drug company's test lab.
As noted by Ravitch and others, philanthropic organizations tend to contribute to "like-minded entities," which are likely to exclude representatives of the neediest community organizations. They are also tax-exempt. And when educational experiments go wrong, they can just leave their mess behind and move on to their next project.
Getting Past Our "Exceptionalism"
If we're willing to look beyond our borders for help, we will see the short-sightedness of our educational "reforms." Finland's schools were considered mediocre 30 years ago, but they've achieved a remarkable turnaround by essentially challenging their teachers before they're entrusted with the welfare of the children. Most Finnish teachers are unionized, and they undergo rigorous masters-level training to ensure proficiency in the teaching profession, which is held in the same high esteem as law and medicine. In keeping with this respect for learning, government funding is applied equally to all schools, classes in the arts are available to all students, and tuition is free.
As a result, Finnish students, who are not subjected to standardized testing, finish at or near the top of international comparisons for reading, math, and science.
It's not just Finland with such impressive results. Research at the National Center on Education and the Economy has confirmed that educational systems in Japan, Shanghai, and Ontario, Canada have prospered with an emphasis on the preparation of teachers for the essential task of instructing their young people.
A Strong Community Leads To Individual Success
George Lakoff summarizes: "The Public provides freedom...Individualism begins after the roads are built, after individualists have had an education, after medical research has cured their diseases..."
Public education is vital to the promise of equal opportunity for all. But it will only succeed if we work together as a community, and stop listening to the voices of profit and inexperience.
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THIS IS SERIOUS FOLKS-----WE MUST SHAKE THE NEO-LIBERAL BUGS FROM THE RUG AND SO FAR ALL CANDIDATES ARE NEO-LIBERALS. LABOR AND JUSTICE ARE ALLOWING THE SAME POLICIES TO MOVE FORWARD IN MARYLAND!!!!
As I said last week, Mike Miller has announced that he intends to stop state funding for K-12 in Maryland, sending the expense to local governments. Raise your hands if you understand that localities cannot afford to support K-12......EVERYONE. So, we all understand that this is intended to push public schools to corporations for funding. HAVE I NOT BEEN SAYING THAT FOR SEVERAL YEARS? WHY HAVE YOU NOT HEARD THIS FROM YOUR PUBLIC/MARYLAND MEDIA? Oh, yes, they work for the corporations doing this! The good news is that all groups around Maryland with whom I share this are shook into understanding what the real intent in education reform is-----CHINESE-STYLE TRACKING OF CHILDREN BY THE STATE ACCORDING TO PRE-SCHOOL TESTING. YOUR CHILD'S VOCATION WILL BE DETERMINED BY THE STATE WITH THOSE TESTS-----NO PARENT INPUT!!!
Indeed, I received an announcement today from Philadelphia that just such a start is happening and it has already happened in Baltimore. What we need the middle-class to understand is that this is starting in urban areas because all the people who would be justice leaders are captured and silent as they support these neo-liberals doing this. We know for example that the 5 ministers who always back the same crony pols working for the Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins --------ministers at the mega-churches------are the ones allowing this structure to develop in Baltimore and it will be used as a springboard to all Maryland public schools as it will in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO TELL YOU THAT THIS STRUCTURE IS ONLY FOR THE UNDERSERVED-----IT IS FOR ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Remember, the 1% do not see a middle-class as they are stealing all the middle-class wealth they can through outright fraud and constant economic crashes.
THIS PRIVATIZATION POLICY IS FOR ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND IT IS TO MOVE THE CHINESE-STYLE TRACKING PROGRAM FORWARD.
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Below you see parents in Philadelphia experiencing the same thing.....it is happening in all cities. The middle-class knows that moving state funding to localities will force this privatization to all public schools!
The SRC meets next Monday(11/18)for their Strategy,Policy & Priorities Meeting from 6-8p.m. down at 440. The newly changed topic is Expanding Access to High Performing Schools. PSP is working to get an Universal Enrollment plan in place that would use a third party to determine which school your child gets into (charter, parochial, & public would all be included)....this raises so many questions. Universal Enrollment has been rolled out by PSP as phillyschoolapp...all without any input from the public and without disclosing who is really behind this. While the District saying that they will not participate this year, a District form is included on this site. Please join us on Monday in raising questions and demanding answers.
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Now, for those knowing Hopkins as the corporation giving us the NSA, national surveillance, corporate rule, and no public voice-------you know this is not a good thing. City schools have not been in worse shape, achievement is in decline because all of the education policy implemented by Hopkins' school board has nothing to do with quality education-----it is about making education a business as has been done with Maryland higher education. CAN YOU IMAGINE EDUCATION BEING HANDLED BY AN INSTITUTION LIKE HOPKINS? REALLY? It resembles a Chinese re-education camp. This is the structure designed to remove state funding to corporations who then give tests to students in pre-school that tracks them into one of these corporate campuses. The transformation is from a free democratic education to an autocratic K-college vocational tracking for all public school students!!!!
HOPKINS-HENDERSON SCHOOL PARTNERSHIP
A Transformative Model
Imagine an educational model that would fundamentally change the way we educate children. Where students from birth to Grade 8 would receive the most comprehensive educational experience possible.
That dream is on the path to being realized at Henderson-Hopkins - a new K-8 community school and early childhood center serving East Baltimore. Utilizing a holistic, personalized approach to learning based on the most effective research-based practices, this school model is designed to help all students reach the highest level of achievement for success in the 21st century.
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One would think in a heavily democratic city and state, Baltimore and Maryland would not have any of these policies. Actually we have all these policies----you just don't hear about it in the news. Baltimore is being made the platform for expanding just these privatization policies to the rest of the state.
THIS IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE STATE ISSUE-----NEO-LIBERALS ARE PUSHING THE LAWS!!!
RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!
Expanded K-12 privatization on the horizon
Del Stover|January 28th, 2013| National School Board Assoc
School board members can expect continued political activity to promote charter schools, vouchers, school choice options, and to expand the privatization of K-12 education.
That was the message of Roberta Stanley, NSBA’s director of federal affairs, who gave a political update on these issues Monday at the Federal Relations Network (FRN) Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.
The charter school movement currently dominates efforts to redesign the traditional public school system, she told conference attendees. At least 1.8 million children—or 4 percent of the K-12 student population—currently are enrolled in publicly funded charter schools.
“Charters are the big name in the game today,” Stanley said, noting that they enjoy strong political support from some urban mayors, governors, state lawmakers, and such federal officials as Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama.
Helping fuel this policy push is money from several large foundations, as well as private entrepreneurs who see the opportunity to tap into billions of dollars in education funding.
NSBA policy isn’t to oppose charter schools but to insist that their authorization and their accountability be the responsibility of school boards, so that the future of children’s educational opportunities remains under the control of the local community, she said.
Accountability is an issue that’s going to continue to surround the charter school movement in the years ahead, Stanley said. More data is needed on the academic performance of these schools, and state and federal lawmakers will need to address better procedures for closing down poor-performing charters.
Although school voucher advocates still are active, school board members will find that a more fast-growth phenomenon is the “explosion of cyber, virtual, and online schools,” Stanley said.
Enrollment in virtual schools is growing at a rate of about 3 percent annually, yet some studies suggest these schools aren’t successful for all students, she said.
That’s not to say that online schools have no future role in K-12 education, Stanley added.
“I understand one of the best [roles] for cyber schools is credit recovery, working with kids who lag behind or are homebound or sick,” or to expand course offerings in smaller or rural schools, she said.
Where school leaders need to watch carefully is in states where state policymakers are too eager to push all-day online learning or seek to use virtual schools as a cheap alternative to brick-and-mortar schools.
“Students need oversight. Students need to be taught to be civic-minded, to learn teamwork-building skills,” Stanley said. “We don’t get that with a child sitting in his or her bedroom at a computer.”
To strengthen its advocacy efforts on these issues, NSBA works with a coalition of 60 education and civil rights groups to broaden the message that serious issues remain to be addressed regarding school choice, she added. This coalition also seeks to block poor policy decisions that will hurt public education.
“This is as sharp a coalition as I’ve ever worked with,” Stanley said. “And we are right on top of it, so we can try to nip these things in the bud.”
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'Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education'.
Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 Market
Reuters | Posted: 08/02/2012 10:16 am Updated: 08/02/2012 12:18 pm Huffington Post
By Stephanie Simon
NEW YORK, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.
Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.
"You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up," said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a Boston consulting firm. "It could get really, really big."
Indeed, investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education.
The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.
Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into -- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.
Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.
The conference last week at the University Club, billed as a how-to on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies," drew a full house of about 100.
OUTSOURCING BASICS
In the venture capital world, transactions in the K-12 education sector soared to a record $389 million last year, up from $13 million in 2005. That includes major investments from some of the most respected venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, according to GSV Advisors, an investment firm in Chicago that specializes in education.
The goal: an education revolution in which public schools outsource to private vendors such critical tasks as teaching math, educating disabled students, even writing report cards, said Michael Moe, the founder of GSV.
"It's time," Moe said. "Everybody's excited about it."
Not quite everyone.
The push to privatize has alarmed some parents and teachers, as well as union leaders who fear their members will lose their jobs or their autonomy in the classroom.
Many of these protesters have rallied behind education historian Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University, who blogs and tweets a steady stream of alarms about corporate profiteers invading public schools.
Ravitch argues that schools have, in effect, been set up by a bipartisan education reform movement that places an enormous emphasis on standardized test scores, labels poor performers as "failing" schools and relentlessly pushes local districts to transform low-ranked schools by firing the staff and turning the building over to private management.
President Barack Obama and both Democratic and Republican policymakers in the states have embraced those principles. Local school districts from Memphis to Philadelphia to Dallas, meanwhile, have hired private consultants to advise them on improving education; the strategists typically call for a broader role for private companies in public schools.
"This is a new frontier," Ravitch said. "The private equity guys and the hedge fund guys are circling public education."
Some of the products and services offered by private vendors may well be good for kids and schools, Ravitch said. But she has no confidence in their overall quality because "the bottom line is that they're seeking profit first."
Vendors looking for a toehold in public schools often donate generously to local politicians and spend big on marketing, so even companies with dismal academic results can rack up contracts and rake in tax dollars, Ravitch said.
"They're taking education, which ought to be in a different sphere where we're constantly concerned about raising quality, and they're applying a business metric: How do we cut costs?" Ravitch said.
BUDGET PRESSURES
Investors retort that public school districts are compelled to use that metric anyway because of reduced funding from states and the soaring cost of teacher pensions and health benefits. Public schools struggling to balance budgets have fired teachers, slashed course offerings and imposed a long list of fees, charging students to ride the bus, to sing in the chorus, even to take honors English.
The time is ripe, they say, for schools to try something new -- like turning to the private sector for help.
"Education is behind healthcare and other sectors that have utilized outsourcing to become more efficient," private equity investor Larry Shagrin said in the keynote address to the New York conference.
He credited the reform movement with forcing public schools to catch up. "There's more receptivity to change than ever before," said Shagrin, a partner with Brockway Moran & Partners Inc, in Boca Raton, Florida. "That creates opportunity."
Speakers at the conference identified several promising arenas for privatization.
Education entrepreneur John Katzman urged investors to look for companies developing software that can replace teachers for segments of the school day, driving down labor costs.
"How do we use technology so that we require fewer highly qualified teachers?" asked Katzman, who founded the Princeton Review test-prep company and now focuses on online learning.
Such businesses already have been drawing significant interest. Venture capital firms have bet more than $9 million on Schoology, an online learning platform that promises to take over the dreary jobs of writing and grading quizzes, giving students feedback about their progress and generating report cards.
DreamBox Learning has received $18 million from investors to refine and promote software that drills students in math. The software is billed as "adaptive," meaning it analyzes responses to problems and then poses follow-up questions precisely pitched to a student's abilities.
The charter school chain Rocketship, a nonprofit based in San Jose, California, turns kids over to DreamBox for two hours a day. The chain boasts that it pays its teachers more because it needs fewer of them, thanks to such programs. Last year, Rocketship commissioned a study that showed students who used DreamBox heavily for 16 weeks scored on average 2.3 points higher on a standardized math test than their peers.
SPECIAL ED AS A GROWTH MARKET
Another niche spotlighted at the private equity conference: special education.
Mark Claypool, president of Educational Services of America, told the crowd his company has enjoyed three straight years of 15 percent to 20 percent growth as more and more school districts have hired him to run their special-needs programs.
Autism in particular, he said, is a growth market, with school districts seeking better, cheaper ways to serve the growing number of students struggling with that disorder.
ESA, which is based in Nashville, Tennessee, now serves 12,000 students with learning disabilities or behavioral problems in 250 school districts nationwide.
"The knee-jerk reaction [to private providers like ESA] is, 'You're just in this to make money. The profit motive is going to trump quality,' " Claypool said. "That's crazy, because frankly, there are really a whole lot easier ways to make a living." Claypool, a former social worker, said he got into the field out of frustration over what he saw as limited options for children with learning disabilities.
Claypool and others point out that private firms have always made money off public education; they have constructed the schools, provided the buses and processed the burgers served at lunch. Big publishers such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have made hundreds of millions of dollars selling public school districts textbooks and standardized tests.
Critics see the newest rush to private vendors as more worrisome because school districts are outsourcing not just supplies but the very core of education: the daily interaction between student and teacher, the presentation of new material, the quick checks to see which kids have risen to the challenge and which are hopelessly confused.
At the more than 5,500 charter schools nationwide, private management companies -- some of them for-profit -- are in full control of running public schools with public dollars.
"I look around the world and I don't see any country doing this but us," Ravitch said. "Why is that?"
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They are trying to make this sound like a right wing movement to end Common Core but as we all know-------NO ONE WANTS IT!!
For those just starting to see the corporate takeover of public K-12, you must understand that a standard curricula with lessons written by the 1% and distributed to all schools in America is a bad thing. It is not about rigor----it is about capturing all information hitting the American people. IF YOU ARE SILENT AS PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DISMANTLED-----YOU ARE ALLOWING THE NEO-LIBERALS TO MOVE THE COUNTRY FURTHER INTO AUTOCRACY-----PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DEMOCRACY!
New York Parents, Educators REALLY Want State Education Boss John King To Resign
The Huffington Post | By Rebecca Klein Posted: 11/15/2013 5:47 pm EST Huffington Post
It has not been a good week for New York State Education Commissioner John King, as parents and education groups continued to call for his resignation and speak out against the state’s implementation of education reforms known as the Common Core Standards.
A new set of education benchmarks that emphasize critical thinking and deep learning, the Common Core Standards have been adopted by 45 states. New York was one of the first to start implementing the new mandates in the classroom. However, parent and education groups around the state are saying the process was rushed and done with a lack of transparency.
On Tuesday, more than 1,500 parents and educators packed a high school auditorium in East Setauket, Long Island, to express their concerns to the commissioner at a forum on the Common Core. According to Newsday, members of the raucous crowd shouted at King when he tried to speak, cheered parents who complained about the standards and at one point began to shout, "What about the kids? What about the kids?"
A YouTube video showing an educator at the forum chastising the commissioner and state Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch has been viewed more than 43,500 times. In the video, the educator asks for King's resignation and says the stress caused by the standards constitutes “child abuse.”
“I’m very happy, Ms. Tisch, that you are here, because I have 50 letters with me, and I have mailed you 300 others asking for Mr. King’s resignation and firing,” says the educator. “I have no problem being judged by anyone. I was judged as highly effective last year. … Obviously, Mr. King, you’re ineffective. Seventy percent of the children in this state failed your test.”
The scene was reportedly calmer at a local forum on Wednesday evening in Mineola, Long Island, although protestors held signs outside the event calling for King's resignation, reports Newsday.
Still, King said he was listening to parents' concerns.
"We have to continue to look for ways to reduce ... testing," the commissioner said after the event, per Newsday. "After each of these forums, we go back and listen to what we've heard to make thoughtful adjustments."
However, Lisa Rudley, co-founder of a network of parent and education groups, told The Huffington Post that she doubts the Commissioner is taking parental complaints into consideration.
“It’s getting much more heated, and they’re still not listening to us,” Rudley told Huff Post over the phone. “While there’s been a lot of visibility with the forums and hearings, it’s very clear to me they are still not addressing what they need to.”
Rudley's group began calling for King's resignation several weeks ago, after the commissioner cancelled a few planned forums around the state. While several politicians initially joined the group's call, they rolled back their critiques after King rescheduled the events.
In the upcoming weeks, King is slated to attend more forums on the Common Core around the state.
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Look at this administrative class with salaries placing them in the 'do anything they are told' category. That is what is making these positions unaccountable to the public----this is the CEO pay that precedes taking public education private. In Baltimore the school board is controlled by the governor who has appointed nothing but business people knowing nothing about education. The superintendent getting close to $200,000 a year in a system starved for money.
This is how you know public education is being made a business......please work to reverse this by getting rid of neo-liberals by running and voting for labor and justice in all primaries!
Is Philly school district violating Sunshine Act over key hires?
Philly schools superintendent William Hite, Jr. (right) and School Reform Commission chairman Pedro Ramos. The Daily News reviewed a year's worth of personnel resolutions through September and found that no top-ranked officials or their starting salaries were made public or voted on by the SRC.
REGINA MEDINA, Daily News Staff Writer medinar@phillynews.com, 215-854-5985 Posted: Monday, November 18, 2013, 12:16 AM
DAVID M. HARDY began work in September as chief academic support officer for the Philadelphia School District at an annual salary of $160,000.
But the hire wasn't made public.
That wasn't the first time. In the past year, the district frequently has flouted state law by failing to notify the public after hiring high-ranking personnel to lead departments in which decisions are made that affect students, families and staff.
According to the state's Sunshine Act - and the district's own employment policies - a school district's hires and terminations, listed in personnel resolutions, must be voted on in public by a school board - or, in Philadelphia's case, the School Reform Commission - before the new hires are officially employed.
But that's not how it's done in Philadelphia.
"If it doesn't happen that way, there's a Sunshine Act problem," said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association in Harrisburg.
The Daily News reviewed a year's worth of school district personnel resolutions through September and found that no top-ranked officials or their starting salaries were made public or voted on by the SRC.
Besides Hardy, they include:
* Paul Kihn, deputy superintendent, starting at $210,000, September 2012.
* Matthew Stanski, chief financial officer, $175,000, November 2012.
* Sophie Bryan, director, charter-school office, $100,000, November 2012.
* Fran Burns, chief operating officer, $175,000, May 2013.
* Naomi Wyatt, chief human-resources officer, $180,000, July 2013.
In addition, 56 employees hired between April 18 and June 30 were not included in the reviewed personnel resolutions, which only listed two employees hired to work at district headquarters.
Responding to an inquiry by the Daily News, the district will launch "a full review of its personnel-resolutions process," said district spokesman Fernando Gallard.
"A preliminary review found that a computer error may have led to the omission of names of individuals appointed to positions within the school district from the personnel resolutions presented to the SRC for consideration," Gallard said.
The personnel resolutions voted on each month by the SRC include hires, their names, positions and start dates. And before the vote, pursuant to the Sunshine Act, the floor should be open for public comment.
"Any time you're hiring folks with taxpayer money, particularly when you're hiring and retaining people to educate and train our children, that needs to be done in the utmost possible sunshine and not in the shadows," said Terry Mutchler, executive director of the state's Office of Open Records.
When the vote takes place after the new employee already has begun to work for the district, said Melewsky, it "undermines the public-access provisions of the Sunshine Act and renders the board's vote basically meaningless."
"The public wasn't given an opportunity to witness and participate before the decision was made," said Melewsky, who said she believes that districts should include salaries in personnel resolutions because it's more transparent.
Melewsky also took issue with SRC guidelines for public comment, which the media lawyer called "quite strict" and "a barrier to access."
Speakers must register by 4:30 p.m. the day before an SRC meeting, a requirement that does not violate the law but is "unreasonable," Melewsky said. Also, speakers might not be able to register because they couldn't see the agenda until after the registration deadline.
"There needs to be some flexibility in the public-comment process," she said.
Gallard said it is the "SRC's preference to post proposed resolutions early enough to give the public some advance notice of resolutions to be considered by the SRC," but sometimes it's "not possible" to post them sooner. "It is always the intention of the SRC to be transparent in the conduct of its business, and [it] does not hold back the publication of proposed resolutions on purpose."
SRC speakers also are required to present seven copies of a prepared speech, according to SRC rules. Melewsky said such a rule is unique in her experience.
Gallard said the requirement enables public comments to "be included in the SRC's records." He said a person who doesn't have the seven copies is still allowed to speak at the meeting.
Parent Rebecca Poyourow, a regular speaker, said the requirement "discourages a lot of people who may feel intimidated from writing it down, or who don't have access to copiers. So people take themselves out of the running."
The Fraudulent 1% Campaign to Stigmatize Public Schools as "Socialist Failures"
PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Right Wing Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast called the public school system a "socialist regime." Michelle Rhee cautions us against commending students for their 'participation' in sports and other activities.
Privatizers believe that any form of working together as a community is anti-American. To them, individual achievement is all that matters. They're now applying their winner-take-all profit motive to our children.
We're Sliding Backwards, Towards "Separate and Unequal"
In 1954, the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education seemed to place our country on the right track. Chief Justice Earl Warren said that education "is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." Thurgood Marshall insisted on "the right of every American to an equal start in life."
But then we got derailed. We've become a nation of inequality, worse than ever before, worse than during the racist "separate but equal" policy of Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA shows that "segregated schools are systematically linked to unequal educational opportunities." The Economic Policy Institute tells us that "African American students are more isolated than they were 40 years ago."
The privatizers clamor for vouchers and charters to improve education, but such methods generally don't serve those who need it most. According to a Center on Education Policy report, private schools serve 12 percent of the nation's elementary and secondary students, but only one percent of disabled students. Forty-three percent of public school students are from minority families, compared to 24% of private school students.
Meanwhile, as teachers continue to get blamed, the Census Bureau tells us that an incredible 38 percent of black children live in poverty.
The Underprivileged Have Been Cheated Out Of Taxes
A Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) report revealed that total K-12 education cuts for fiscal 2012 were about $12.7 billion.
Almost 90 percent of K-12 funding comes from state and local taxes. But in 2011 and 2012, 155 of the largest U.S. corporations paid only about half of their required state taxes. That comes to $14 billion per year in unpaid taxes, more than the K-12 cuts.
Untaxed and Unqualified Foundations Want To "Save Our Schools"
The "starve the beast" mentality allows the privatizers to claim that our "Soviet-style" schools don't work, and that a business approach must be used instead. Philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family, who have little educational experience among them, and who have little accountability to the public, are promoting "education reform" with lots of standardized testing.
But according to the National Research Council, "The tests that are typically used to measure performance in education fall short of providing a complete measure of desired educational outcomes in many ways." Diane Ravitch notes that the test-based Common Core standards were developed by a Gates-funded organization with almost no public input. Desperate states had to adopt the standards to get funding.
Bill Gates may be well-intentioned, but he's a tech guy, and his programming of children into educational objects is disturbing. One of his ideas is to videotape teachers and then analyze their performances. The means of choosing 'analysts' is unclear. Another Gates idea is the Galvanic Skin Response bracelet, which would be attached to a child to measure classroom engagement, and ultimately gauge teacher performance. It all sounds like a drug company's test lab.
As noted by Ravitch and others, philanthropic organizations tend to contribute to "like-minded entities," which are likely to exclude representatives of the neediest community organizations. They are also tax-exempt. And when educational experiments go wrong, they can just leave their mess behind and move on to their next project.
Getting Past Our "Exceptionalism"
If we're willing to look beyond our borders for help, we will see the short-sightedness of our educational "reforms." Finland's schools were considered mediocre 30 years ago, but they've achieved a remarkable turnaround by essentially challenging their teachers before they're entrusted with the welfare of the children. Most Finnish teachers are unionized, and they undergo rigorous masters-level training to ensure proficiency in the teaching profession, which is held in the same high esteem as law and medicine. In keeping with this respect for learning, government funding is applied equally to all schools, classes in the arts are available to all students, and tuition is free.
As a result, Finnish students, who are not subjected to standardized testing, finish at or near the top of international comparisons for reading, math, and science.
It's not just Finland with such impressive results. Research at the National Center on Education and the Economy has confirmed that educational systems in Japan, Shanghai, and Ontario, Canada have prospered with an emphasis on the preparation of teachers for the essential task of instructing their young people.
A Strong Community Leads To Individual Success
George Lakoff summarizes: "The Public provides freedom...Individualism begins after the roads are built, after individualists have had an education, after medical research has cured their diseases..."
Public education is vital to the promise of equal opportunity for all. But it will only succeed if we work together as a community, and stop listening to the voices of profit and inexperience.
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