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San Dieguito Union High School District (SDUHSD) Targeted by Destroy Public Education Movement

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Schools in wealthy white communities are no longer immune to the destroy public education (DPE) movement. A review of San Dieguito Union High School District (SDUHSD) in San Diego County makes the point.

SDUHSD serves an area within the 1845 Mexican land grant to Juan Osuna known as Rancho San Dieguito. Osuna’s 1822 adobe home still stands on a knoll in the Rancho Santa Fe section. The school district includes the beach communities of Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas, and Carlsbad. Away from the beach, it covers the communities of Rancho Santa Fe and Camel Valley.   [Read more…]

After the Education Wars: Someone Needs to Save Us from Our Billionaire Saviors

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After failing to prop-up Antonio Villaraigosa’s flagging gubernatorial campaign last June, Michael Bloomberg apparently spent the summer pondering whether it would be wiser for him to personally save the United States rather than waste his time trying to rescue California by proxy.  Last week the New York Times reported that Bloomberg was mulling a run for the Presidency as a Democrat because that represented the most viable path to victory.  As the Times story observed, while Bloomberg has engaged in some good work on guns and the environment, many of his other positions might not be very likely to win over the liberal base of the Democratic Party.  

Interestingly, the New York Times piece listed Bloomberg’s more conservative views on criminal justice reform, #MeToo, and bank regulation, but was strangely silent on education, one of the central fronts where Bloomberg has spent millions of dollars promoting largely terrible ideas and candidates that have done far more harm than good to American public education.     [Read more…]

A Layman’s Guide to the Destroy Public Education Movement

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The destroy public education (DPE) movement is the fruit of a relatively small group of billionaires. The movement is financed by several large non-profit organizations. Nearly all of the money spent is free of taxation. Without this spending, there would be no wide-spread public school privatization.

Last year, researchers from the University of Indiana Purdue University Indianapolis (UIPUI) led by professor Jim Scheurich, who coordinates the urban studies program there, perceived a pattern in the destruction of the public schools. That pattern became the “destroy public education” model. As Ravitch’s “corporate education reform” became more organized and ruthless, the Scheurich team’s DPE model became a better descriptor.   [Read more…]

Torlakson’s California Charter Law ‘Action Team’ Has a Troubling Tilt

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California’s lame-duck Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, has formed an Action Team to review laws governing charter schools. Six of the thirteen Action Team members work for the destroy public education (DPE) movement. Ninety percent of the state’s students attend public schools yet 23% of the Action Team are charter school management executives. Also, 23% of the team are graduates of Eli Broad’s unaccredited school administrators’ academy.

Torlakson is quoted in the announcement,

“In the past few years, we have updated virtually our entire K–12 education system. Now it’s time to look at the key laws governing charter schools, which have not been significantly changed in 26 years, to see how they can be modernized to better meet the needs of all public school students, including those who attend charter schools.”

This statement is malarkey. The original 1992 law capped charters growth at 100 schools statewide with no more than 10 in any one district.   [Read more…]

No One Ever Remembered a Teacher for Raising Standardized Test Scores

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By Steven Singer / Common Dreams

It’s the day before school begins.

I’m out to eat with my family and have just taken a big bite of a juicy beef taco.

That’s when I notice someone standing right next to me at the restaurant.

So I raise my eyes upward, a meat-filled tortilla overfilled with lettuce and beans hanging from my mouth, and I’m greeted with a familiar face.

“Mr. Singer!” the woman says with a nervous smile on her lips.

“Do you remember me?”   [Read more…]

Destroy Public Education, Version 2.0: The City Fund

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Billionaire Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has joined with billionaire former Enron executive, John Arnold, to launch an aggressive destroy public education (DPE) initiative. They claim to have invested $100 million each to start The City Fund. Neerav Kingsland declares he is the Fund’s Managing Partner and says the fund will help cities across America institute proven school reform successes such as increasing “the number of public schools that are governed by non-profit organizations.”

Ending local control of public schools through democratic means is a priority for DPE forces. In 2017, EdSource reported on Hastings campaign against democracy; writing, “His latest salvo against school boards that many regard as a bedrock of American democracy came last week in a speech he made to the annual conference of The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington D.C., attended by about 4,500 enthusiastic charter school advocates, teachers and administrators.”   [Read more…]

Ugly Teachers’ Union Smear from State Policy Network

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Edward Ring of the California Policy Center (CPC) just published a scurrilous attack on public schools, teachers and their unions. This mean spirited and factually challenged screed comes from a State Policy Network (SPN) member organization. The baseless attack is more evidence of a conspiracy to avoid federal tax law by masquerading as a non-profit while carrying out a political agenda.

Ring begins by saying private sector unions might not be so bad if they are controlled and admits unions “played a vital role in securing rights for the American worker.” He then delivers this jingoistic slam, “If they [unions] would bother to embrace the aspirations of their members, instead of the multinational corporations their leaders now apparently collude with, they might even support immigration reform.”

However, according to Ring, public sector unions are an abomination and teachers’ unions are the worst of the worst. He states,

“The teachers unions are guilty of all the problems common to all public sector unions. They, too, have negotiated unsustainable rates of pay and benefits. They, too, elect their own bosses, negotiate inefficient work rules, have an insatiable need for more public funds, and protect incompetent members. But the teachers union is worse than all other public sector unions for one reason that eclipses all others: Their agenda is negatively affecting how we socialize and educate our children, the next generation of Americans.”

  [Read more…]

School Choice is a Bamboozle, a Hornswoggle, a Flimflam

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Two central ideologies behind school-choice are: markets always make superior decisions, and the cost of having local control of schools is poor outcomes. Both ideas are demonstrably untrue, but big money and power politics keep them alive.

In 2017, a national survey showed a dramatic drop in support for charter schools. A related Chalkbeat article said,

The survey, conducted by the school choice-friendly journal Education Next, found that slightly more Americans support charter schools, 39 percent, than oppose them, at 36 percent. But that marks a drop from 51 percent support just last year — one of the biggest changes in public opinion seen in the long-running survey, according to Harvard professor and the magazine’s editor-in-chief Marty West.   [Read more…]

Lived Experiences, Microaggressions, and Good Deeds in the Classroom | Readers Write

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By Vanessa Torres

As a college student, I now have about a decade’s-plus worth of experience with the benevolence of well-intentioned teachers. I say this as a student that grew up in low-income school districts and a high school in San Diego where the majority of students were minorities and the teachers were not.

Overcrowded classrooms and sharing a dilapidated textbook with your classmate was not out of the norm. The school year was initiated with the teacher’s usual disgruntled disclaimer that there would not be enough books to go around for the school year in yet another overcrowded class.

Teaching in and of itself is a tremendous responsibility a person undertakes as their professional career. Few other professions carry the weight that teaching does. A teacher has the ability to mold and inculcate a young person’s mind which ultimately adds to the prosperity of our community.

Some teachers take the seriousness of their profession and the resulting responsibility to heart; it’s not like they are doing it for the money. But I have to wonder about the others: As the incentive of a high paying salary is nonexistent, what is their reason for choosing such a significant profession? Were they looking for life-fulfillment? Or did they choose this profession as a way of escaping their inherent guilt?   [Read more…]

Destroying Public Education With Vouchers and Charters in Wisconsin

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This past school year, Wisconsin taxpayers sent $250,000,000 to religious schools. Catholics received the largest slice, but protestants, evangelicals and Jews got their cuts. Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) reveals that private Islamic schools took in $6,350,000. Of the 212 schools collecting voucher money, 197 were religious schools.

The Wisconsin voucher program was expanded before the 2014-2015 school year. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, “Seventy-five percent of eligible students who applied for taxpayer-funded subsidies to attend private and religious schools this fall in the statewide voucher program already attend private schools ….”

Money taken from the public schools attended by the vast majority of Milwaukee’s students is sent to private religious schools. Public schools must adjust for stranded costs while paying to serve a higher percentage of special education students because private schools won’t take them. Forcing public schools to increase class sizes, reduce offerings such as music and lay off staff.   [Read more…]

The Privatization of Puerto Rico’s Public Schools Has Begun – Betsy DeVos Is On the Job | Video Worth Watching

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The Real News’ Jaisal Noor interviews teacher and union activist Noelanie Fuentes Cardona who tells us about Law 85 and how Puerto Rico’s Democratic governor and Betsy DeVos have teamed up to introduce charter schools and online schools to an island still coping with the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Maria.   [Read more…]

San Joaquin Valley in the ‘Destroy Public Education’ Crosshairs

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Efforts to privatize public schools in the San Joaquin (pronounced: whah-keen) Valley are accelerating. Five disparate yet mutually reinforcing groups are leading this Destroy Public Education (DPE) movement. For school year 2017-2018, taxpayers sent $11.5 billion to educate K-12 students in the valley and a full $1 billion of that money was siphoned off to charter schools. This meant that education funding for 92 percent of students attending public schools has been significantly reduced on a per student basis.

In July 2017, California’s State Superintendent of Education, Tom Torlakson, announced the revised 2017-2018 budget for K-12 education totaled $92.5 billion. Dividing this number by the total of students enrolled statewide provides an average spending per enrolled student ($14,870). The spending numbers reported above were found by multiplying $14,870 by students enrolled.

The five groups motivating privatization of public schools are:

  • People who want taxpayer supported religious schools.
  • Groups who want segregated schools.
  • Entrepreneurs profiting from school management and school real estate deals.
  • The technology industry using wealth and lobbying power to place products into public schools and supporting technology driven charter schools.
  • Ideologs who fervently believe that market-based solutions are always superior.

  [Read more…]

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