By Steven Miller and Jack Gerson
The Educator Roundtable
posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 at 16:24:25 PM CST
http://www.educatorroundtable.net/showDiary.do;jsessionid=
60F52E10A8E7E2B558E5253302E847C0?diaryId=657
[Note: The Report discusses how privatizers have moved
to take control of public education in the past year.
It is 17 pages long and includes many voices on several
important topics. A basic bibliography accompanies the
text. Below is the Summary. Please email Steven Miller,
nanodog2@hotmail.com for the whole report.]
The Summary
It's more than a year since we wrote "Exterminating
Public Education"
(www.ncte.org/about/issues/slate/126874.htm) in
response to the "Tough Choices or Tough Times" report
of the National Commission on Skills in the Workplace
(www.skillscommission.com).
That report, funded in large part by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and signed by a bipartisan
collection of prominent politicians, businesspeople,
and urban school superintendents, called for a series
of measures including: (a) replacing public schools
with what the report called "contract schools", which
would be charter schools writ large; (b) eliminating
nearly all the powers of local school boards - their
role would be to write and sign the authorizing
agreements for the "contract schools; (c) eliminating
teacher pensions and slashing health benefits; and (d)
forcing all 10th graders to take a high school exit
examination based on 12th grade skills, and terminating
the education of those who failed (i.e., throwing
millions of students out into the streets as they turn16).
These measures, taken together, would effectively
cripple public control of public education. They would
dangerously weaken the power of teacher unions, thus
facilitating still further attacks on the public sector.
They would leave education policy in the hands
of a network of entrepreneurial think tanks, corporate
entrepreneurs, and armies of lobbyists whose priorities
are profiting from the already huge education market
while cutting back on public funding for schools and
students.
Indeed, their measures would mean privatization of
education, effectively terminating the right to a
public education, as we have known it. Many of the most
powerful forces in the country want the US, the first
country to guarantee public education, to be the first
country to end it.
For the last fifty years, public education was one of
only two public mandates guaranteed by the government
that was accessible to every person, regardless of
income. Social Security is the other. Now both systems
are threatened with privatization schemes. The
government today openly defines its mission as
protecting the rights of corporations above everything.
Thus public education is a rare public space that is
under attack.
The same scenario is being implemented with most of the
services that governments used to provide for free or
at little cost: electricity, national parks, health
care and water. In every case, the methodology is the
same: underfund public services, create an uproar and
declare a crisis, claim that privatization can do the
job better, deregulate or break public control, divert
public money to corporations and then raise prices.
In the past year, it's become evident that the
corporate surge against public schools is only part of
a much broader assault against the public sector,
against unions, and indeed against the public's rights
and public control of public institutions.
This has been evident for some time now in New Orleans,
where Hurricane Katrina's devastation is used as an
excuse for permanently privatizing the infrastructure
of a major American city: razing public housing and
turning land over to developers; replacing the city's
public school system with a combination of charter
schools and state-run schools; letting the notorious
Blackwater private army loose on the civilian
population; and, in the end, forcing tens of thousands
of families out of the city permanently. The citizens
of New Orleans have had their civil rights forcibly
expropriated.
Just as the shock of the hurricane was the excuse for
the shock therapy applied to New Orleans, so the
economic downturn triggered by the subprime mortgage
crisis is now the excuse for a national assault on the
public sector and the public's rights.
In California, where we live, Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger has convened an emergency session of the
legislature, demanding that the state's $14.5 billion
"budget deficit" be closed by slashing vital services
including housing, health care, and education. He has
proposed lopping $4.8 billion off next year's K-14
education budget. That the deficit exists largely as a
result of the Governors corporate friendly tax policies
is not considered part of the debate.
In public education, the corporate surge has grown both
qualitatively and quantitatively. Where two years ago
the corporate education change agents were mainly
operating in a relatively small number of large urban
areas, they have now surfaced everywhere. The
corporatization of public education is the leading edge
of privatization. This has the effect of silencing the
public voice on every aspect of the situation.
Across the US, public schools are not yet privatized,
though private services are increasingly benefiting
from this market. However, increasing corporate control
of programs - a different mix in every locale - is
having a chilling influence on the very things that
people (though not corporations) want from teachers:
the ability to relate to and teach each child, a
nurturing approach that nudges every child to move
ahead, human assessments that put people before
performance on standardized tests.
Perhaps the single most dramatic development of the
corporate approach was the launching of the $60 million
Strong American Schools / Ed in '08 initiative, funded
by billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad. This is a
naked effort to purchase the nation's education policy,
no matter who is elected President, by buying their way
into every electoral forum.
Ed in '08 has a three-point program: merit pay (basing
teachers' compensation on students' scores on high
stakes test); national education standards (enforcing
conformity and rote learning); and longer school day
and school year (still more time for rote learning,
less time for kids to be kids). The chairman of Ed in
`08/Strong American Schools program is Roy Romer:
former governor of Colorado; former chair of the
Democratic National Committee; most recently
superintendent of schools in Los Angeles (he was
persuaded to take that job by Eli Broad). Its executive
director is Mark Lampkin, a Republican lobbyist and
former deputy campaign manager for George Bush.
Other steering committee members include Eli Broad,
Louis Gerstner (former CEO of IBM); Allan Golston (head
of the Gates Foundation's U.S. programs); and John
Engler (president of the National Association of
Manufacturers and former Governor of Michigan [where he
gutted the state's welfare program]). A truly stunning
array of corporate wealth and bipartisan political
power in the service of privatization.
Where two years ago charter schools were still viewed
as experiments affecting a relatively small number of
students, in 2007 the corporate privatizers - led by
Broad and Gates - grossly expanded their funding to the
point where they now loom as a major presence.
In March, the Gates Foundation announced a $100 million
donation to KIPP charter schools, which would enable
them to expand their Houston operation to 42 schools
(from eight) - effectively, KIPP will be a full-fledged
alternative school system in Houston. Also in the past
year, Eli Broad and Gates have given in the
neighborhood of $50 million to KIPP and Green Dot
charter schools in Los Angeles, with the aim of
doubling the percentage of LA students enrolled in
charter schools. Oakland, another Broad/Gates targets,
now has more than 30 charter schools out of 92. And, as
we shall see below, the same trend holds across the
country.
NCLB in 2008 is still a major issue. It continues to
have a corrosive effect on public schools. It is
designed an unfunded mandate, which means that schools
must meet ever rigid standards every year, though no
more money is appropriated to support this effort. This
means that schools must take ever-more money out of the
class room to meet federal requirements when schools
with low test scores are in "Program Improvement". Once
schools are in PI for 5 years they can be forced into
privatization.
NCLB is a driving force that decimates the "publicness"
in public schools. In California, more than 2000
schools are now in "Program-Improvement". This means
that they have to meet certain specific, and mostly
impossible standards, or they must divert increasingly
greater amounts of money out of the classroom and into
private programs.
For example, schools in 3rd year PI must take money out
of programs that helped schools with a high proportion
of low achieving schools and make it available to
private tutors. (East Bay Express. February 13-19,
2007. "Career Opportunities"
(http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/career_opportunities/Content?oid=643742)
The struggles of the Civil Rights Era made people
realize that quality education was a right that
everyone deserves. Education today, whether public or
private, is a social policy. We make choices about how
far it is extended, what the purpose is, what quality
is offered, and to whom. Now that wealth is polarizing
in this country, corporate forces are determined to
create a social system that benefits the "Haves" while
excluding the "Have-Nots".
Privatizing public schools inevitable leads to massive
increase in social inequality. Private corporations
have never been required to recognize civil rights,
because, by definition, these are public rights. If the
corporate privatizers succeed in taking over our
schools, there will be neither quality education nor
civil rights.
The system of public education in the United States is
deeply flawed. While suburban schools are among the
best in the world, public education in cities has been
deliberately underfunded and is in a shambles. The
solution is not to fight backwards to maintain the old
system. Rather it is to fight forward to a new system
that will truly guarantee quality education as a civil
right for everyone.
Central to this is to challenge the idea that
everything in human society should be run by
corporations, that only corporations and their
political hacks have the right or the power to discuss
what public policy should be. As Naomi Klein stated so
well in The Shock Doctrine, privatization "will remain
entrenched until the corporate supremacist ideology
that underpins it is identified, isolated and
challenged". (p 14)
The real direction is to increase the role and power of
the public in every way, not eliminate it. If we can
spend $2.5 billion a week for war in Iraq, we can
certainly build quality schools. It's not a matter of
money. The issue is who will benefit and who will
control. Should schools be organized to benefit the
super-rich, or should they be organized to benefit
everyone?
Contents
The sections below examine only some of the major
privatizing in public education in the last year.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" examines how corporate-
dictated educational policies seriously eroded the
quality of education in Oakland, Ca and New Orleans.
* "Creating and Education Market (The Plan)" looks at
corporate objectives for education,
* "Philanthropreneurs (The Agents)" the people who are
implementing their attack.
* "Further Inroads into Public Education (The
Campaigns)" discuss other specific situations.
* "Public Education and Health Care" treats the many
parallels in how corporations control these essential
human rights in America today.
[Steven Miller and Jack Gerson, are executive board
members of the Oakland (CA) Education Association]
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Submit via email: moderator@portside.org
Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
Account assistance: portside.org/contact
Search the archives: portside.org/archive
The Educator Roundtable
posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 at 16:24:25 PM CST
http://www.educatorroundtable.net/showDiary.do;jsessionid=
60F52E10A8E7E2B558E5253302E847C0?diaryId=657
[Note: The Report discusses how privatizers have moved
to take control of public education in the past year.
It is 17 pages long and includes many voices on several
important topics. A basic bibliography accompanies the
text. Below is the Summary. Please email Steven Miller,
nanodog2@hotmail.com for the whole report.]
The Summary
It's more than a year since we wrote "Exterminating
Public Education"
(www.ncte.org/about/issues/slate/126874.htm) in
response to the "Tough Choices or Tough Times" report
of the National Commission on Skills in the Workplace
(www.skillscommission.com).
That report, funded in large part by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and signed by a bipartisan
collection of prominent politicians, businesspeople,
and urban school superintendents, called for a series
of measures including: (a) replacing public schools
with what the report called "contract schools", which
would be charter schools writ large; (b) eliminating
nearly all the powers of local school boards - their
role would be to write and sign the authorizing
agreements for the "contract schools; (c) eliminating
teacher pensions and slashing health benefits; and (d)
forcing all 10th graders to take a high school exit
examination based on 12th grade skills, and terminating
the education of those who failed (i.e., throwing
millions of students out into the streets as they turn16).
These measures, taken together, would effectively
cripple public control of public education. They would
dangerously weaken the power of teacher unions, thus
facilitating still further attacks on the public sector.
They would leave education policy in the hands
of a network of entrepreneurial think tanks, corporate
entrepreneurs, and armies of lobbyists whose priorities
are profiting from the already huge education market
while cutting back on public funding for schools and
students.
Indeed, their measures would mean privatization of
education, effectively terminating the right to a
public education, as we have known it. Many of the most
powerful forces in the country want the US, the first
country to guarantee public education, to be the first
country to end it.
For the last fifty years, public education was one of
only two public mandates guaranteed by the government
that was accessible to every person, regardless of
income. Social Security is the other. Now both systems
are threatened with privatization schemes. The
government today openly defines its mission as
protecting the rights of corporations above everything.
Thus public education is a rare public space that is
under attack.
The same scenario is being implemented with most of the
services that governments used to provide for free or
at little cost: electricity, national parks, health
care and water. In every case, the methodology is the
same: underfund public services, create an uproar and
declare a crisis, claim that privatization can do the
job better, deregulate or break public control, divert
public money to corporations and then raise prices.
In the past year, it's become evident that the
corporate surge against public schools is only part of
a much broader assault against the public sector,
against unions, and indeed against the public's rights
and public control of public institutions.
This has been evident for some time now in New Orleans,
where Hurricane Katrina's devastation is used as an
excuse for permanently privatizing the infrastructure
of a major American city: razing public housing and
turning land over to developers; replacing the city's
public school system with a combination of charter
schools and state-run schools; letting the notorious
Blackwater private army loose on the civilian
population; and, in the end, forcing tens of thousands
of families out of the city permanently. The citizens
of New Orleans have had their civil rights forcibly
expropriated.
Just as the shock of the hurricane was the excuse for
the shock therapy applied to New Orleans, so the
economic downturn triggered by the subprime mortgage
crisis is now the excuse for a national assault on the
public sector and the public's rights.
In California, where we live, Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger has convened an emergency session of the
legislature, demanding that the state's $14.5 billion
"budget deficit" be closed by slashing vital services
including housing, health care, and education. He has
proposed lopping $4.8 billion off next year's K-14
education budget. That the deficit exists largely as a
result of the Governors corporate friendly tax policies
is not considered part of the debate.
In public education, the corporate surge has grown both
qualitatively and quantitatively. Where two years ago
the corporate education change agents were mainly
operating in a relatively small number of large urban
areas, they have now surfaced everywhere. The
corporatization of public education is the leading edge
of privatization. This has the effect of silencing the
public voice on every aspect of the situation.
Across the US, public schools are not yet privatized,
though private services are increasingly benefiting
from this market. However, increasing corporate control
of programs - a different mix in every locale - is
having a chilling influence on the very things that
people (though not corporations) want from teachers:
the ability to relate to and teach each child, a
nurturing approach that nudges every child to move
ahead, human assessments that put people before
performance on standardized tests.
Perhaps the single most dramatic development of the
corporate approach was the launching of the $60 million
Strong American Schools / Ed in '08 initiative, funded
by billionaires Bill Gates and Eli Broad. This is a
naked effort to purchase the nation's education policy,
no matter who is elected President, by buying their way
into every electoral forum.
Ed in '08 has a three-point program: merit pay (basing
teachers' compensation on students' scores on high
stakes test); national education standards (enforcing
conformity and rote learning); and longer school day
and school year (still more time for rote learning,
less time for kids to be kids). The chairman of Ed in
`08/Strong American Schools program is Roy Romer:
former governor of Colorado; former chair of the
Democratic National Committee; most recently
superintendent of schools in Los Angeles (he was
persuaded to take that job by Eli Broad). Its executive
director is Mark Lampkin, a Republican lobbyist and
former deputy campaign manager for George Bush.
Other steering committee members include Eli Broad,
Louis Gerstner (former CEO of IBM); Allan Golston (head
of the Gates Foundation's U.S. programs); and John
Engler (president of the National Association of
Manufacturers and former Governor of Michigan [where he
gutted the state's welfare program]). A truly stunning
array of corporate wealth and bipartisan political
power in the service of privatization.
Where two years ago charter schools were still viewed
as experiments affecting a relatively small number of
students, in 2007 the corporate privatizers - led by
Broad and Gates - grossly expanded their funding to the
point where they now loom as a major presence.
In March, the Gates Foundation announced a $100 million
donation to KIPP charter schools, which would enable
them to expand their Houston operation to 42 schools
(from eight) - effectively, KIPP will be a full-fledged
alternative school system in Houston. Also in the past
year, Eli Broad and Gates have given in the
neighborhood of $50 million to KIPP and Green Dot
charter schools in Los Angeles, with the aim of
doubling the percentage of LA students enrolled in
charter schools. Oakland, another Broad/Gates targets,
now has more than 30 charter schools out of 92. And, as
we shall see below, the same trend holds across the
country.
NCLB in 2008 is still a major issue. It continues to
have a corrosive effect on public schools. It is
designed an unfunded mandate, which means that schools
must meet ever rigid standards every year, though no
more money is appropriated to support this effort. This
means that schools must take ever-more money out of the
class room to meet federal requirements when schools
with low test scores are in "Program Improvement". Once
schools are in PI for 5 years they can be forced into
privatization.
NCLB is a driving force that decimates the "publicness"
in public schools. In California, more than 2000
schools are now in "Program-Improvement". This means
that they have to meet certain specific, and mostly
impossible standards, or they must divert increasingly
greater amounts of money out of the classroom and into
private programs.
For example, schools in 3rd year PI must take money out
of programs that helped schools with a high proportion
of low achieving schools and make it available to
private tutors. (East Bay Express. February 13-19,
2007. "Career Opportunities"
(http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/career_opportunities/Content?oid=643742)
The struggles of the Civil Rights Era made people
realize that quality education was a right that
everyone deserves. Education today, whether public or
private, is a social policy. We make choices about how
far it is extended, what the purpose is, what quality
is offered, and to whom. Now that wealth is polarizing
in this country, corporate forces are determined to
create a social system that benefits the "Haves" while
excluding the "Have-Nots".
Privatizing public schools inevitable leads to massive
increase in social inequality. Private corporations
have never been required to recognize civil rights,
because, by definition, these are public rights. If the
corporate privatizers succeed in taking over our
schools, there will be neither quality education nor
civil rights.
The system of public education in the United States is
deeply flawed. While suburban schools are among the
best in the world, public education in cities has been
deliberately underfunded and is in a shambles. The
solution is not to fight backwards to maintain the old
system. Rather it is to fight forward to a new system
that will truly guarantee quality education as a civil
right for everyone.
Central to this is to challenge the idea that
everything in human society should be run by
corporations, that only corporations and their
political hacks have the right or the power to discuss
what public policy should be. As Naomi Klein stated so
well in The Shock Doctrine, privatization "will remain
entrenched until the corporate supremacist ideology
that underpins it is identified, isolated and
challenged". (p 14)
The real direction is to increase the role and power of
the public in every way, not eliminate it. If we can
spend $2.5 billion a week for war in Iraq, we can
certainly build quality schools. It's not a matter of
money. The issue is who will benefit and who will
control. Should schools be organized to benefit the
super-rich, or should they be organized to benefit
everyone?
Contents
The sections below examine only some of the major
privatizing in public education in the last year.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" examines how corporate-
dictated educational policies seriously eroded the
quality of education in Oakland, Ca and New Orleans.
* "Creating and Education Market (The Plan)" looks at
corporate objectives for education,
* "Philanthropreneurs (The Agents)" the people who are
implementing their attack.
* "Further Inroads into Public Education (The
Campaigns)" discuss other specific situations.
* "Public Education and Health Care" treats the many
parallels in how corporations control these essential
human rights in America today.
[Steven Miller and Jack Gerson, are executive board
members of the Oakland (CA) Education Association]
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
Submit via email: moderator@portside.org
Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
Account assistance: portside.org/contact
Search the archives: portside.org/archive
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
THE WAR AGAINST PUBLIC SCHOOLS: CORPORATIONS DESIGNING CURRICULA TO HELP
RECRUIT WORKERS
ANNE MARIE CHAKER, WALL STREET JOURNAL - In a recent class at Abraham
Clark High School in Roselle, N.J., business teacher Barbara Govahn
distributed glossy classroom materials that invited students to think
about what they want to be when they grow up. Eighteen career paths were
profiled, including a writer, a magician, a town mayor -- and five
employees from accounting giant Deloitte LLP. . .
The curriculum, provided free to the public school by a nonprofit arm of
Deloitte, aims to persuade students to join the company's ranks. One
18-year-old senior in Ms. Govahn's class, Hipolito Rivera, says the
company-sponsored lesson drove home how professionals in all fields need
accountants. "They make it sound pretty good," he says.
Deloitte and other corporations are reaching out to classrooms --
drafting curricula while also conveying the benefits of working for the
sponsor companies. Hoping to create a pipeline of workers far into the
future, these corporations furnish free lesson plans and may also
underwrite classroom materials, computers or training seminars for
teachers.
The programs represent a new dimension of the business world's influence
in public schools. Companies such as McDonald's Corp. and Yum Brands
Inc.'s Pizza Hut have long attempted to use school promotions to turn
students into customers. The latest initiatives would turn them into
employees.
Companies that employ engineers, fearful of a coming labor shortage, are
at the movement's forefront. Lockheed Martin Corp. began funding
engineering courses two years ago at schools near its aircraft testing
and development site in Palmdale, Calif., saying it hopes to replenish
its local work force. Starting in 2004, British engine-maker Rolls-Royce
PLC has helped fund high-school courses in topics such as engine
propulsion. Intel Corp. supports curricula in school districts where
engineering concepts are taught as early as the elementary level.
Schools, for their part, have embraced corporate support as state
education funding has remained flat for a decade and declining housing
values now threaten to eat into property-tax revenues. Teachers,
meanwhile, often welcome the lesson plans, classroom equipment and the
corporate-sponsored professional development sessions.
But however well-intentioned, such corporate input may blur the line
between pure academics and a commercial agenda, critics say. "When you
have a corporation or any special interest offering an incentive, you
are distorting the educational purpose of the schools," says Alex
Molnar, an education-policy professor at Arizona State University who
directs the school's Commercialism in Education Research Unit.
The hiring priorities of a company or industry, Mr. Molnar says, can
change quickly. On the other hand, he says, schools should provide a
broad and consistent foundation of knowledge and skills. Deciding what
to teach is "first and foremost, a series of choices," he says.
Historically, those choices have been made by school officials and
professional educators, based on the interests of their community's
children, not on the shifting needs of industry.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120476410964115117.html
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