Less local control of schools as charter schools increase. Long-distance control by CEOs.

[madfloridian]

Decisions will be distantly done by Charter Management Organizations, CMOs. As they are "selling their product" that side of charters does not show, but long-term it will make the local school boards irrelevant as the charter schools take hold.

This tendency is already showing in some charter CMOs. Recently the CEO of Imagine Charter Schools, Dennis Bakke, sent an email advocating that "school boards either should do what we say or resign."

Now, the Post-Dispatch has obtained a memo in which the chief of Virginia-based Imagine Schools lays out a nationwide blueprint for controlling school boards and limiting their authority. In the year-old e-mail, CEO Dennis Bakke tells his employees they should control who stays on the board, select those who will "go along with Imagine," and ask board members to submit undated letters of resignation "that can be acted on by us at any time."

Such philosophies break a primary tenet of the charter school movement — that schools should be independently governed by local leaders — and conflict with both nonprofit law and state charter school statutes.

The other day at DU Tonysam posted an interesting link to a site called The Broad Report.

It is a site following the ways in which the Broad Foundation works. It is one of the 3 major companies pushing charter schools. The other two high profile ones are the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation by the Walmart founders. They give millions to build charter schools, push for more testing, and give incentives for merit pay.

The Broad Foundation likes to infiltrate its targets on multiple levels so it can manipulate a wider field and cause the greatest amount of disruption. Venture edu-philanthropists like Gates and Broad proudly call this invasive and destabilizing strategy The Broad Foundation likes to infiltrate its targets on multiple levels so it can manipulate a wider field and cause the greatest amount of disruption. Venture edu-philanthropists like Gates and Broad proudly call this invasive and destabilizing strategy "investing in a disruptive force."

To these billionaires and their henchmen, causing massive disruption in communities across the nation is not a big deal.

At The Broad Report I discovered the home webpage of the report's author. It is a fascinating blog filled with great research and comments. Note that the only real information on how public education is being turned into something else IS from bloggers. The mainstream media does not cover it at all.

The blogger calls herself The Perimeter Primate

She has a way of putting into words what is being done to our schools.

It is a long page, well worth the read.

This movement really picked up steam during the pro-business Reagan years. Concurrently, the phrase “education crisis” was created so public education could be blamed for the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the rising lack of opportunity in America.

In this phase of the charter movement, it is very important that the promoters make their schools look extra fine. This is done by creaming students and getting a lot of supplementation for programs from the venture philanthropists. In addition, they make sure the superiority of their schools is highly publicized. If you read the outline of the whole plan here, you'll learn that friendly editorial boards are very important to this faction.* You'll also learn that their goal is to gain more and more of the market share so the traditional public school system gets weaker and weaker. Make no mistake – wherever there are no charter caps, the goal will be to convert all public schools to a system of charters.

In the future, communities will not be able to be involved with any aspect of their schools. Say bye-bye to school boards, School Site Councils, teacher unions, school worker unions, and other community-member involved bodies. Say hello to a vestigial form of the school district that only takes care of the unwanteds: special ed and behavior-problem students. Decisions will be made by the CMOs (Charter Management Organizations) . CMOs like Aspire, Envision, Green Dot, KIPP, and Imagine will be the “big box store" equivalent of public schools. This is where America’s urban schools are headed.

She goes on to quote Ken Libby. He found some fascinating quotes from the AEI written "in early 2008 by AEI/Fordham's Andy Smarick, a former Bush II Domestic Policy Council member tasked with K-12 and higher education issues."

From the Vault

From 2008

Here, in short, is one roadmap for chartering's way forward: First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75 percent. Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, nondistrict authorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political environment (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition). For example, in New York a concerted effort could be made to site in Albany or Buffalo a large percentage of the 100 new charters allowed under the raised cap. Other potentially fertile districts include Denver,Detroit,Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.

It has been meant all along that the charter schools become dominant over traditional public schools, schools which will not in the future likely allow local input.

Once it is done there is no going back to the true public education. This is not about real education, it is about having big money and big power to control the agenda.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Well these shouldn't even be called "Charter Schools". They should be called Corporation Schools.

It's crap like this that gives good charter schools a bad name.

Per your OP, they aren't even trying to have an appearance of coming anywhere near the definition of a charter school with local control.

:mad:

[madfloridian]

3. Well, consider the 100 million Gates gave to schools in a FL county

for merit pay for teachers. He will have influence on those teachers for that price It's bound to happen.

"Now the Hillsborough County school system stands on the verge of getting a $100 million boost from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to emulate that model. The district — already a finalist in the foundation's latest, $500 million effort to remake U.S. public education by improving teacher effectiveness — was asked this week to submit a contract to carry out its proposal.

Officials say districts in Memphis, Omaha, and Pittsburgh received similar requests, along with a group of Los Angeles charter schools.

"We really see this as groundbreaking work to be done in education," said superintendent MaryEllen Elia. "And we want to be the ones doing it."

[JDPriestly]

8. Merit pay for teachers will not encourage the best teachers.

Sure, teachers would like more pay. But, I was the daughter of a teacher and have been married to a teacher for many years and, much to my frustration, I have learned that, while they manage money extremely well and appreciate and want it, money just doesn't motivate them. True teachers will work for peanuts for years and years just because they love their students. Will they complain about their low pay? Yes. Will they join a union and fight with other teachers for more pay? Yes. But they are not primarily motivated by money. They are motivated by the joy they find in helping students learn.

Now, mind you, I'm talking about people who love teaching. Even in retirement, my husband is still a teacher, still helping, still sharing what he knows. People come to him with their problems and they know he will help them. For him, it was never about getting more money. As long as he has enough to eat, a roof over his head and people to talk to and help, he is happy.

That is why the charter school and bonuses for "better" teaching won't work. (There are lots of other reasons like the fact that how well students learn does not depend so much on the quality of the teacher but on lots of things like the backgrounds of the students and the subtle chemistry between a particular teacher and a particular student or class.)

No doubt Eli Broad and Bill Gates are motivated by money. No doubt because they made a lot of it, they think they are the best in their fields. (I seriously doubt that they made all that money because they were the "best" at anything other than making money. Lots of other people could build houses or computers just as good as theirs.) Teaching, education are not about making money. Trying to apply what works in the business world to the classroom is like trying to apply what works in fishing to what works in running a race.

The place to start in improving education is studying the personalities of "successful" teachers. Clearly, excellent mastery of the subject matter, love of the students and enthusiasm about teaching plus a sense of autonomy in the classroom are the most important ingredients. Good pay is a help but it isn't the key. A couple of things that make teachers feel good: getting a thank you card from a former student or reading about the success of a student somewhere.

Charter schools and incentive pay are a waste of money. Learning more about how the "best" teachers think and selecting teachers who "think" like the best will improve our schools.

I read this to my husband. He said: Teaching is an art. Do Broad and Gates think they can make an artist better by paying him or her more? Sure, a good artist will try to get as much money as the market will bear, but the artist will not improve his or her art in order to get more money.

[madfloridian]

11. That's been my fear.

That CMOs are taking our taxpayer money for their own benefit. That money could be used in public schools to have special classes like we used to have just a few short years ago. I remember the special ed classes at our school...well-equipped, good number of aides for each teacher. Good classroom setting. But the powers that be were not getting financial game...and most of those have disappeared in our area.

I took classes at a school for the handicapped that provided every need for those who were the most severely handicapped. It was a county school with good funding.

Public school could do what needs to be done. Hire good teachers, pay them well, and let them teach.

[omega minimo]

2. No scruples, no conscience and NO CONCERN FOR AMERICAN STUDENTS. Big Business INSANITY

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-americorps20-2009nov20,0,3510361.story

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Exclusive-Congressional-Report-Rhee-did-damage-control-after-sex-charges-against-fiancee-Kevin-Johnson.html

[madfloridian]

6. I had not heard about that issue.

Heading there to read more of it. Thanks for sharing.

[Selatius]

4. They want to dumb us down and turn schools into glorified job-training regimens.

They want to get rid of the critical thinking aspects that are apart of all well-rounded, fully staffed, functional education systems.

They just want obedient workers--obedient workers who are just smart enough to run the machinery and equipment but stupid enough to accept increasingly lower pay, fewer days off, lower living standards, and shrinking 401ks that are looted before they go to cash them out. As long as Americans continue to play a rigged game, they are destined to lose. They need to escape the system and build an alternative structure that is responsive to the will of the people. It doesn't have to be done through violence and terror; only the unimaginative would resort to destruction when there is still an opportunity, albeit shrinking fast, to build something better.

[madfloridian]

9. And turn them into profit makers.

They want to make money from education and end up setting the agenda.

[Hannah Bell]

5. it "is about having big money and big power to control the agenda."

exactly.

[madfloridian]

7. "Venture Philanthropy" little benefit to traditonal public schools

This is an interesting article about how the rich folks get their education policies into the local communities. Money speaks very loudly.

The Scheming Called "Venture Philanthropy"

Scott explains the billionaires' strategy to push charter schools onto communities by careful maneuvering of their immense foundation-giving. She also describes the not-always-well-intentioned, and/or misguided, history of foundation "giving" which has targeted communities of color in the past.

The outcome of the foundation-giving programs of today requires an important trade-off from the local communities, namely, the relinquishment of interest and power over their own public schools to the public education notions of a few immensely wealthy oligarchs. What does it tell us that the communities where this is occurring necessitated first being placed under authoritarian rule (a.k.a. wealthy oligarch/billionaire-influenced mayoral &/or state control)?

(The backroom deals are being made in every city where pro-charter school forces have gained a foothold. The parent informant of one of my associates explained that the Federal City Council, a group of business leaders who really run Washington D.C., met with Mayor Fenty immediately after he took office. As the D.C native describes it, Fenty emerged from the meeting and immediately announced the mayoral takeover of the D.C. schools; this is the circumstance that brought in Michelle Rhee in June 2007. The D.C. native says Fenty never hinted about this scenario during his campaign.)

Scott’s article explains how the "gifts" of these foundations are going to a broad range of charter advocacy groups, pro-charter research organizations, alternative teacher, principal, and superintendent training programs, charter school development organizations, etc. EdVoice, Center for Education Reform, TFA, NewSchools Venture Fund, NewLeaders for New Schools, KIPP, Green Dot, Democrats for Education Reform, and the EEP are just the teeny tiny tip of the you're-going-to-have-charter-schools-whether-you-want-them-or-not iceberg.

[LWolf]

10. And the privatization effort marches forward.

I've reached the point where I don't have much to say anymore. I'm too angry.

I don't know how to stop it.

I do know that Obama won't be getting a vote, or a word of support, from this educator, at any point in the foreseeable future.

[tonysam]

14. As long as Democratic politicians are pushing the privatization garbage,

nothing, absolutely nothing, will be done to stop this ruinous trend.

Nobody should be going into teaching as a career when their "careers" will likely be for only two or three years unless they are nepotisms.

[annabanana]

12. CMos are the HMOs of education... They are bad for the public.

And when the place kind of depends on an educated electorate, it's a recipe for disaster. If NO ONE is taught critical thinking.. NO ONE will be capable of calling BS on the bullshitters.

[madfloridian]

13. Head of Arne's Race to the Top serves on boards of charter schools...

"Last May, Arne Duncan appointed Joanne Weiss as Director of Race To The Top, the multi-billion dollar competitively earned fund which Duncan and Obama have designated to "encourge and reward States that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform." With states so desperate for money, they are essentially being forced to comply.

Joanne Weiss' most recent employment was as Partner and COO at NewSchools Venture Fund. Her job description states, “she focuses on investment strategy and management assistance to a variety of the firm's portfolio ventures, and oversees the organization's operations. As part of this work, she serves on the boards of Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, Leadership Public Schools, New Leaders for New Schools, Revolution Foods, Rocketship Education and Teachscape.”

NewSchools Venture Fund, Aspire, Green Dot and New Leaders for New Schools have received millions of dollars from Eli Broad. You could say that Broad paid for a significant amount of Weiss’ salary. The 2006 - 990 for NSVF declared that Weiss was compensated $228,000 (page 28). During 2005, the NSVF received a total of $13,111,610 in gifts, grants and contributions (pg. 13). That year, Broad gave $1,860,000, or 14.2% of the total, in contributions."

http://thebroadreport.blogspot.com/

Race to the Top money only goes to states and districts that allow more charter schools.

Surprise! Surprise!

[LWolf]

15. Another non-educator. nt