Are you prey to a "choice" stealth campaign

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Think public-school teachers are bad and vouchers are good? You may be prey to a well-funded stealth campaign.

In June 1995, the economist Milton Friedman wrote an article for the Washington Post promoting the use of public education funds for private schools as a way to transfer the nation’s public school systems to the private sector. “Vouchers,” he wrote, “are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a market system.” The article was republished by “free market” think tanks, including the Cato Institute and the Hoover Institution, with the title “Public Schools: Make Them Private.”

While Friedman has promoted vouchers for decades, most famously in his masterwork Free to Choose, the story of how public funds are actually being transferred to private, often religious, schools is a study in the ability of a few wealthy families, along with a network of right-wing think tanks, to create one of the most successful “astroturf” campaigns money could buy. Rather than openly championing dismantling the public school system, they promote bringing market incentives and competition into education as a way to fix failing schools, particularly in low-income Black and Latino communities.

Even before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United ruling deregulated campaign finance and unleashed millions in political donations, concentrated wealth has played a role in politics. Now in the limelight for its attacks on unions and the exposure of 800 model bills and documents, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has produced model bills favorable to its corporate and right-wing funders behind closed doors for decades (as In These Times uncovered in 2011)– including school vouchers and tax credit bills.

This concentrated wealth is reaching into America's classrooms state by state, promoting the transfer of public funds to private education through vouchers that allow parents to pay for tuition at private schools with public money. Promoting “school choice” through privately run charter schools doesn’t go far enough for these billionaires. Today, “private school choice” programs, as vouchers are called in the annual report of the Alliance for School Choice, are in place in 13 states and the District of Columbia. In 2011, a year when states across the nation slashed their education budgets, 41 states introduced 145 pieces of private school choice legislation.

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Education News for 09-17-2012

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State Education News

  • Ohio school board member appointed by gov resigns (Associated Press)

    • COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A member of the Ohio Board of Education is resigning for what he describes as "personal reasons."…Read more…

  • Kasich appointee off state board (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Dennis Shelton, an at-large member from Delaware who has advised the Republican governor on education matters, cited “personal reasons” for his departure in an email to the governor’s office following the board’s monthly meeting in Columbus this week.…Read more…

  • State auditors examining attendance records from Cleveland schools (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

    • CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Ohio auditor's office is looking into attendance data at 15 Cleveland district schools as part of a statewide investigation.…Read more…

  • School funding issue in Ohio (Marietta Times)

    • With a new school funding model expected to be unveiled next year, Ohio is one of 35 states a report says are giving less money to public education now than before the recession.…Read more…

  • Consolidating districts may not save schools money (Middletown Journal)

    • In 1915, there were 2,674 school districts in Ohio.
    Several rounds of consolidations, beginning in the 1930s when school buses became…Read more…

Local Education News

  • Financial state of Caldwell schools on public's mind (Cambridge Daily)

    • CALDWELL -- The Ohio Department of Education has placed Caldwell Exempted Village School District in a state of "fiscal caution," Treasurer Jeff Croucher told members of the audience at the school board's meeting on Thursday night.…Read more…

  • Prep school accepting special needs applications (Chillicothe Gazette)

    • CHILLICOTHE -- Wesley Taylor Preparatory School is accepting students who are eligible for a special needs scholarship for the 2012-2013 school year.…Read more…

  • Rosters longer at city's schools (Cincinnati Enquirer)

    • Cincinnati Public Schools has about 3,000 more students enrolled – at least on paper – than it predicted back in the spring.…Read more…

  • Cleveland schools hoping pay cuts will resolve $13 million budget gap (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

    • CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cleveland schools have a $13 million budget hole this year that will have to be closed with cuts in teacher pay or programs, or by voters passing a proposed tax increase in November.…Read more…

  • Architect sues Columbus school board (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The architect on a now-shelved renovation of the historic Indianola Middle School has sued the Columbus school board in federal court for more than $41 million.…Read more…

  • Now this is early intervention (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Some teens had iPod earbuds stuffed in their ears, drowning out the wild cheering. Hoodies up. Others stared straight ahead or at the ground.…Read more…

  • Are charter schools really making the grade? (Dayton Daily News)

    • In the past 15 years, some public charter schools have shined as examples of what they were intended to be — incubators in educational innovation that could be replicated elsewhere.…Read more…

  • Seniors act as school amabassadors (Hamilton Journal-News)

    • Four Faifield High School seniors are gaining real-world experience this school year while sharing news from their school district with the community.…Read more…

  • Technology turns the classroom upside down (Hamilton Journal-News)

    • Paper is optional, on the way to becoming obsolete in Mollie Marot’s biology classroom at Badin High School.…Read more…

  • A closer look at the school data scandal (Mansfield News Journal)

    • Government inspectors have been poring over student attendance records across Ohio, looking for evidence of impropriety that could affect the way communities view the success of their schools.…Read more…

  • Licking County schools feeling pressure of new state reading program (Newark Advocate)

    • NEWARK -- For Licking County third graders struggling with reading, their scores on next year's Ohio Achievement Assessment could mean the difference between moving to fourth grade and being held back when Ohio's Third Grade Guarantee takes full affect.…Read more…

  • Electric buses under study for schools in area (Toledo Blade)

    • FINDLAY — School officials from Hancock County and the surrounding area are taking a look at adding buses to their fleets that will require a plug-in rather than a fill-up.…Read more…

  • Message to Mathews board: You need to address this (Youngstown Vindicator)

    • Representatives of the Ohio Department of Education say they will be quite clear about the severity of the deficit facing the Mathews schools when they address the board of education at its next regular meeting Wednesday.…Read more…

Editorial

  • Memo to students: Change is on the way (again) (Cincinnati Enquirer)

    • To:Ohio and Kentucky Public School Students
    From:The Cincinnati Enquirer Editorial Board
    Subject:The Common Core Standards, Your Education and Your Life…Read more…

  • Under a cloud (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Debate over how much, if any, school-performance data the Ohio Department of Education should release this year is understandable.…Read more…

  • Editorial: Third Grade Guarantee -- Read or flunk (Lima News)

    • While there are few guarantees in life, folks in Ohio can take this one to the bank. Starting next school year, every third-grader must read at a proficient level or they'll be held back.…Read more…

  • Long-distance busing just a few students a waste of resources (Newark Advocate)

    • The legal struggle regarding the Northridge school district's sensible decision to stop busing private school students to schools near Columbus raises a host of questions.…Read more…

Where the polls stand - 50 days to go

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With just 50 days to go until the election, the race for the Presidency appears to have settled into somewhat of a constant, but small lead for the President.

According to Real Clear Politics, the President has a 46 electoral college vote lead, with 110 in toss-up

In Ohio, the President has opened up an average lead of 4.2%

NYT polling analysts at 538 have the President coming down off his convention high and settled into a 305-232 electoral college vote lead

Recent polling in Ohio suggests the President is a 72.1% favorite to win the state

The next major domestic campaign events will be the debates. The Presidential debates take place on October 3rd, October 16th, and October 22nd, with the Vice Presidential debate happening on October 11th.

A narrative path forward for teachers

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One of the best responses to the corporate education reformers we've read in a long time.

In every country in the world, poverty impedes educational success. Our biggest education problem is that more of our kids are in poverty than any other developed nation. When America's public school teachers get kids who are well-fed and healthy and live in stable homes with parents who have good jobs, those kids do better in school than any other children in the world.

 But a group of people who do not teach (or taught for a short while and not very well) have decided to blame teachers - teachers! - for all the problems in our country. They say that "choice" will save our schools, but the "choice" they offer is between underfunded, crumbling public schools and corporatized, autocratic charter schools that they admit they will never serve all children. These schools cherry-pick their students and then falsely claim they have the secret for success. Their inability to educate all students proves that public schools are not the problem - poverty is. 

 Why do these people sell this snake oil? Three reasons:

 1) Many of them are looking to make money - a lot of money - off of education. They want to do to our schools what they did to our military, turning them into a bunch of Haliburton Highs.

 2) They want to finally and completely break the unions. Once the teachers fall, it's all over for the middle class.

 3) They need a scapegoat. Teachers didn't create these problems: the corporate titans of Wall Street did. These plutocrats are now paying a gang of carnival barkers a big bunch of money to blame teachers - teachers! - for the problems they themselves made.

Education News for 09-14-2012

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State Education News

  • Teachers to pay more for pensions (Canton Repository)

    • By 2016, local teachers will have to contribute an additional four percent of their pay toward their pensions with the State Teachers…Read more...

  • BMI record-keeping no longer weighs on schools (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Ohio schools no longer have to gather students’ body-mass-index measurements — just two years after a state law required them to do…Read more...

  • State School Board candidate holds discussion in Lima (Lima News)

    • State School Board candidate and former Ohio State quarterback Stanley Jackson spoke and listened…Read more...

  • Hundreds of northeast Ohio school buses (WEWS)

    • Hundreds of school buses in the top ten largest school districts…Read more...

Local Education News

  • Erlanger after-school program may become model (Cincinnati Enquirer)

    • Principal Bryant Gillis pointed across the Tichenor Middle School cafeteria on Monday to a table of teens enjoying an after-school snack…Read more...

  • Administrators, others to pay toward health care benefits (Newark Advocate)

    • Starting at the end of the month, the Lakewood Local School District no longer will pay 100 percent of the health…Read more...

  • Area schools not playing with safety (Willoughby News Herald)

    • Playground safety is something that local schools take seriously…Read more...

  • School districts add handling of cyberbullying to their policies (Willoughby News Herald)

    • While Mentor Schools has been addressing the issue of cyber-bullying for some time, the district is just now in the process of updating its policy on paper…Read more...

Editorial

  • Saving by design (Akron Beacon Journal)

    • Ohio has seen a building boom in school facilities the past 15 years. Together, the state, school districts and local governments…Read more...

  • Cleveland avoided Chicago's school impasse (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

    • Four days into a politically charged strike that has sent thousands of teachers to the picket lines and 350,000 students…Read more...

  • Student cheating (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The definition of cheating on a test was pretty clear-cut to most people who grew up in the old days…Read more...