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Denver’s Schools are a Dystopian Nightmare

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A group of Democratic politicians aligned with local monied interests decided to “save” Denver’s public schools. The man chosen to turn-around the “failing” school system was Michael Bennet, now the junior senator from Colorado. His history of success working for Philip Anschutz and his complete lack of experience in education somehow made him the choice.

For the two years prior to becoming Superintendent, Bennet served as chief of staff for Denver’s new Democratic mayor, John Hickenlooper. John is now the governor of Colorado replacing Denver’s former district attorney, Bill Ritter also a Democrat. Bill chose not to run for a second term.

This group of liberal Democrats initiated the Destroy Public Education (DPE) movement in Denver.   [Read more…]

The Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) Back-Stabs Public Education

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By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

ACSA endorsed a candidate for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction who actively works to privatize public schools. As a participant in the Destroy Public Education (DPE) movement, he supports initiatives undermining the teaching profession and good pedagogy.

Established in 1971 to advance the cause of public education, the ACSA has joined ranks with groups working to end taxpayer supported universal public education. The endorsement of Marshall Tuck over Tony Thurmond for Superintendent makes this clear.   [Read more…]

The Problem With Online Charter Schools | Video Worth Watching

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Vox’s Liz Sheltens and Mallory Brangan break down the issues for the case of online charter schools.   [Read more…]

Education Cities is the National Organizer for the Destroy Public Education (DPE) Movement

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The Mind Trust’s CEO Doug Harris and Vice President Ethan Gray were ready to take their Indianapolis school privatization methods on the road. In 2010, Harris and Gray founded CEE-Trust which became Education Cities in 2014. They were selling The Mind Trust’s secret sauce to DPE organizations nationwide.

Today the Education Cities website defines the organization:

“An Education City is an aspiration – a vision for the future where all children can access great public schools. The Education Cities network includes 33 city-based organizations in 25 cities across the country working to improve public education.”

The following graphic was snipped from the Education Cities Site. The blood red lettering was added. If your city is on this map, there is an active DPE effort using a form of The Mind Trust playbook and it is well financed. A hyper-text list of these cities and the organizations is provided at the end of this post.   [Read more…]

Two Bad Ideas for Higher Education in the Governor’s Budget Proposal

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It’s the first week of classes in the San Diego Community College District where I teach, and, as has become almost an annual ritual, the new year comes with a number of suspect education reforms from Sacramento.  

Jerry Brown released his budget proposal recently, and unfortunately, there are two big, bad ideas that the Governor would like to be part of his higher education legacy: a new fully online college and performance-based funding.  What unites these initiatives is that they are both driven more by corporate education reform ideology than sound pedagogy or evidence that they will be effective in reaching their stated aim.  

I’ll start with the online college.  Governor Brown, California Community College Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, and other advocates for a new fully online statewide college claim that it is not meant as competition for the programs that already exist in our colleges.  This new college, they argue, is aimed at serving a population not being reached by community colleges at present—working adults, 48% of whom are in Spanish speaking households.       [Read more…]

TNTP Making Big Bucks from the Destroy Public Education (DPE) Movement

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When TNTP comes to town, public school is targeted for education disruption. Clayton Christiansen probably thinks that is a good thing, but rational people who never went to Harvard correctly recognize that children need stability. TNTP tills the soil of privatization by undermining teacher professionalism and preaching a gospel of test-centric pedagogy.

Originally called The New Teachers Project, but like American Telephone and Telegraph becoming AT&T, they fancy TNTP.   [Read more…]

The Mind Trust Attack of Public Education is Led by Democrats

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The Mind Trust is the proto-type urban school privatizing design. Working locally, it uses a combination of national money and local money to control teacher professional development, create political hegemony and accelerate charter school growth. The destroy public education (DPE) movement has identified The Mind Trust as a model for the nation.

A Little History

In 1999, Bart Peterson became the first Democrat to win the Indianapolis mayor’s race since 1967. Peterson campaigned on the promise to bring charter schools to Indianapolis. He claimed, “We are simply in an age where cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all, 1950s style education just doesn’t work for a lot of kids. The evidence is the dropout rate. The evidence is the number of at-risk kids who are failing at school.”

The new mayor joined with Republican state senator Teresa Lubbers to finally achieve her almost decade long effort of passing a charter school law in Indiana. In the new charter school law, Lubbers provided for the mayor of Indianapolis to be a charter school authorizer. Then Democratic governor, Frank O’Bannon, signed the legislation into law.   [Read more…]

Public Schools Best Fulfill Dr. King’s “Purpose of Education”

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By Steven Singer / Common Dreams

What is the purpose of education?

Is it to train the next generation of workers?

Or is it to empower the next generation of citizens?

Is it to give children the skills necessary to meet the needs of business and industry?

Or is it to provide them the tools to self-actualize and become the best people they can be?
  [Read more…]

The Gadfly, a Horror Story About School Choice by Steven Singer

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By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

Author Steven Singer shares a hoary story that has become a national crisis. Unlike a Steven King novel, this book, Gadfly on the Wall, is not a fantasy. It is impossible to overstate the damage being done to America and its children by the greedy, the self-centered and the stupid. They are set on destroying free universal public education in America.

Billionaires be wary, Singer says he is ready to kick your sorry asses.

Many people were disheartened when Donald Trump became president and installed an evangelical who despises public schools as Secretary of Education. Her agenda seems to be ending public education and creating a system of government financed Christian schools. Here, I really love Singer’s attitude. He says:

“We lived through administrations that wanted to destroy us and actually knew how to do it! We can take Tiny Hands, the Bankruptcy King any day! This is a guy who couldn’t make a profit running casinos – a business where the house always wins! You expect us to cower in fear that he’s going to take away our schools. Son, we’ve fought better than you!”

I first met the author of The Gadfly on the Wall at Chicago’s Drake Hotel almost three years ago. Educators, parents and others were arriving for the National Public Education (NPE) conference. The Drake’s lobby waiting area is at the top of a short flight of stairs next to the room where hi-tea has been served since the 19th Century. It was here that I met Karen Wolfe from LA, Larry Profit from Tennessee, Singer from Pennsylvania and many others.   [Read more…]

Destroy Public Education (DPE); It’s a Billionaire Fueled Agenda

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Three researchers from Indiana coined the terminology Destroy Public Education (DPE). They refuse to call it reform which is a positive sounding term that obfuscates the damage being done. America’s public education system is an unmitigated success story, yet, DPE forces say we need to change its governance and monetize it.

We are discussing the education system that put a man on the moon, developed the greatest economy the world has ever seen and wiped out small pox. It is the system that embraces all comers and resists all forms of discrimination. In the 1980’s, it was laying the foundation for the digital revolution when it came under spurious attack.

Not only are great resources being squandered on DPE efforts but the teaching profession is being diminished. Organizations like Relay Graduate School and the New Teachers Project are put forward as having more expertise in teacher education than our great public universities. That would be amusing if wealthy elites were not paying to have these posers taken seriously.   [Read more…]

Librotraficantes: Smuggling Banned Books back into Public Schools and Communities

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“Arizona banned our history. We decided to make more.”

By Anna Daniels

Editor Note: So here’s some good news in 2017–a Federal judge declared Arizona’s ban on Mexican-American ethnic studies unconstitutional. The legal battle took seven years, which goes to show that sustained resistance + access to legal remedies = progressive wins. The following article was published in 2014.

If you can ban one book, why not ban a whole bunch of them? Back in 2012 the Tucson Arizona public school system embraced the more is better approach when it eliminated the Mexican American Studies Program from the K-12 curriculum.

The LA Times reported that “The Tucson school board voted to end the program after Arizona’s education chief had ruled the district in violation of a controversial state law banning classes designed for a particular ethnic group or that “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government.” The Tuscon school district stood to lose $14 million in state education funds, which no doubt squelched a more robust debate on the topic of intellectual freedom and education.

  [Read more…]

California State Board of Education is a Corporate Reform Tool

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For three decades, California’s State Board of Education (SBE) has embraced a neoliberal agenda. It has promoted school privatization; embraced standards-based education; and advocated for the STEM fraud.

The 11 current members of the SBE were all appointed by Governor Jerry Brown.

The board is representative of most of California with members from the central coast, the inland empire, the San Joaquin Valley, the Bay Area, LA County, Orange County and San Diego County.   [Read more…]

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