WASHINGTON — Last year, the Obama administration vowed to stop for-profit colleges from luring students with false promises. In an opening volley that shook the $30 billion industry, officials proposed new restrictions [...]]]> From the New York Times, another example of what happens when education goes from being a vocation to being a for-profit industry:

WASHINGTON — Last year, the Obama administration vowed to stop for-profit colleges from luring students with false promises. In an opening volley that shook the $30 billion industry, officials proposed new restrictions to cut off the huge flow of federal aid to unfit programs.

But after a ferocious response that administration officials called one of the most intense they had seen, the Education Department produced a much-weakened final plan that almost certainly will have far less impact as it goes into effect next year.

We have reported previously on for-profit K-12 providers, or Education Management Organizations (EMOs). The businesses, dubbed EMOs by Wall Street analysts, “emerged in the early 1990s in the context of widespread interest in so-called market-based school reform proposals,” according to a report from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Imagine Schools, Inc., Connections Academy, Einstein Academy, and Charter Schools USA are among the largest for-profit primary education EMOs to watch. Named in the Times report, Kaplan University, University of Phoenix, and ATI, a college network based in Dallas, are among the providers pursuing “tens of billions of dollars in federal student aid” for higher education. Ninety percent of their revenues comes from federal aid. The schools mean to defend their “beachhead” in the education industry from what Avy Stein, a partner in the equity fund that owns Education Corporation of America, called “Armageddon for the industry.”

It only took $16 million for the industry to hire A-list help such as Anita Dunn (Obama friend and former White House communications director); Jamie Rubin (major Obama campaign bundler with a stake in ATI); Richard A. Gephardt (former House majority leader); John Breaux (former Louisiana senator); and Tony Podesta (brother to John Podesta, Obama’s transition team leader) to get the administration to “narrow the scope of the original plan.” While describing the lobbying effort as “extreme,” the official in charge of White House rule making, Cass R. Sunstein, claims “the haranguing had zero effect.” But enough to describe as haranguing.

The Times continues:

The industry was on the defensive after a series of federal investigations portrayed it as rife with abuse. They found that recruiters would lure students — often members of minorities, veterans, the homeless and low-income people — with promises of quick degrees and post-graduation jobs but often leave them poorly prepared and burdened with staggering federal loans.

During hearings led by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the schools challenged the motives of witness and hedge-fund trader Steve Eisman who likened their profit margins to those of subprime mortgage lenders. When Eisman admitted holding positions in industry shares, the for-profit schools accused him of hoping to make millions by short-selling their stocks after badmouthing their businesses.

Readers should remember that amidst the fights over federal tax dollars, shareholder dividends and Wall Street profits, the industry has just one mission: education. Appearances notwithstanding.

[h/t Crooks and Liars]

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans)

Answer this question: What is the largest portion of the [...]]]> Last summer, I asked this question:

Why are millionaires and billionaires targeting public education? For the same reason banksters pimped mortgage loans. For the same reason Wall Street wanted to privatize Social Security. For the same reason Willie Horton Sutton robbed banks.

Answer this question: What is the largest portion of the budget in all 50 states?

A couple of new columns chronicle further moves by what former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch calls “The Billionaire Boys Club” to take their cut of public education tax dollars.

The New York Times  has a Sunday piece on billionaires using the “leveraging effect” of philanthropic advocacy to steer public policy. Efforts by the billionaire-funded Gates and the Broad Foundations to promote charter schools resulted in the Obama $4.3 billion “Race to the Top” program which, says the Times , prohibits states from limiting the number of charter schools. According to Ravitch, Obama appointed someone from the NewSchools Venture Fund that promotes charter schools to run “Race to the Top.”

The philanthropists, “some with roots in the loosely libertarian milieu of Silicon Valley or Wall Street,” might have noble intentions, but also have their critics:

“It’s sort of influence-peddling writ large,” said Richard L. Brodsky, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning research organization Demos and a former New York State assemblyman. “The notion that the society is better served by the super-rich exercising their charitable instincts is in the end anti-democratic.”

But not anti-capitalist.

The Sunday Washington Post  looks at the growth of “virtual schools.” Ronald J. Packer, CEO and founder of K12 Inc. of Herndon, VA (just outside Washington), controls the country’s largest provider of public virtual schools. The Post  reports that between 2004 and 2010, “K12 gave about $500,000 in direct contributions to state politicians across the country, with three-quarters going to Republicans, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.” If K12 were a school district, it would rank 30th largest among the nation’s 1,500 districts.

Packard, 48, took a roundabout route to education. A former Goldman Sachs banker, he was working as a consultant with McKinsey and Co. when he got a call from Michael Milken, the financier who pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 1990 and later became a philanthropist partly focused on education.

Packard joined Milken’s education investment holding firm and ran one of his companies, a chain of preschools. About the same time, Packard was trying to find an online math course for his 6-year-old daughter. Frustrated by the dearth of options, he saw a business opportunity.

He founded K12 in 2000 with a $10 million investment from Milken and Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle Corp., maker of software and hardware systems. William J. Bennett, education secretary under President Ronald Reagan, became the company’s chairman, bringing his conservative bona fides and political connections to a company that originally aimed for the home-schooling market. Bennett resigned from K12 in 2005.

K12 Inc. has the right backers. It has the right location. It bought the right friends. And it had revenues of $522 million in the last year, netting the investors $12.8 million in profits and Packard $2.6 million in total compensation. Says Packard, “For many kids, the local school doesn’t work. And now, technology allows us to give that child a choice. It’s about educational liberty.” [Emphasis mine.]

If that cheese-whiz grifterism doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, you haven’t been paying attention.

Aside from investors, how are virtual schools doing for their presumptive clientele, children? How well are they learning in front of a monitor? The Post  reports that there is not yet enough data to be sure, but by standard measures for-profit “virtual schools — often run as charter schools — tend to perform worse” than the traditional public school room.

At the Colorado Virtual Academy, which is managed by K12 and has more than 5,000 students, the on-time graduation rate was 12 percent in 2010, compared with 72 percent statewide.

That same year, K12’s Ohio Virtual Academy — whose enrollment tops 9,000 — had a 30 percent on-time graduation rate, compared with a state average of 78 percent.

Last year, about one-third of K12-managed schools met the achievement goals required under the federal No Child Left Behind law, according to Gary Miron, a Western Michigan University professor who called that performance “poor.”

But not poor enough to get investors to give up on the idea. Not when cracking the education market guarantees investors a steady, recession-proof stream of public tax dollars.

The Nation  reports on efforts to “reform” public education through vouchers, charters and privatization. This “gold rush” in the K-12 online learning industry, according to one study “will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion.”

Investment banker Michael Moe is one of those who has worked to turn public schools into Wall Street’s next “cash cow,” writes The Nation’s  Lee Fang.

A veteran of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, [Moe] now leads an investment group that specializes in raising money for businesses looking to tap into more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money spent annually on primary education. His consortium of wealth management and consulting firms, called Global Silicon Valley Partners, helped K12 Inc. go public and has advised a number of other education companies in finding capital.

To help those companies land lucrative public contracts, Patricia Levesque, former lobbyist, advisor to former Governor Jeb Bush on education reform, told a 2010 education reform retreat of her plans in Florida to sponsor statewide decoy legislation — on promoting religious schools or union busting — aimed at keeping opponents busy while charter school bills fly under the radar.

According to a report in Mother Jones , former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, spoke at the 2010 commencement ceremonies for Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), Ohio’s largest virtual charter school. Bush has teamed up with a Democrat, former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, to launch Digital Learning Now, another “reform” initiative aimed at promoting public funding of for-profit virtual schools. Mother Jones  calls online schools

… part of a larger agenda that closely aligns with the GOP’s national strategy: It siphons money from public institutions into for-profit companies (including those that are supporting Bush’s initiative). And it undercuts public employees, their unions, and the Democratic base. In the guise of a technocratic policy initiative, it delivers a political trifecta — and a big windfall for Bush’s corporate backers.

Like K12, Inc., ECOT’s performance falls far short of the hype. ECOT collects an annual $64 million in state tax dollars:

With more than 10,000 kids, ECOT is bigger than some of Ohio’s 609 school districts. But its test scores rank above those of just 14 other districts. In 2010, barely half of its third-graders scored (PDF) proficient or better on state reading tests, and only 49 percent scored proficient in math, compared with state averages of 80 percent and 82 percent, respectively. ECOT’s graduation rate has never exceeded 40 percent.

ECOT spokesmen argue that this is because it enrolls students already far behind in learning.

The stories continue to multiply. Bipartisan-sounding rhetoric aside, the feeding frenzy and the grifterism (see Schools for Scoundrels ) suggest that children’s education is not exactly the top priority for the school reform movement. The players, the performance and the profits in the reform gold rush suggest education reform is not about education. Not about children. Not about America’s future. There’s a conservative political tie-in, sure: big government. But it is only big government when public money is flowing to the wrong people. This “reform” is about the money, about the right people getting their cut of that steady, recession-proof stream of public tax dollars.

Once our public schools have been thoroughly privatized, once middle men control our middle schools, what happens to America’s schools and its workforce once investment gurus decide the K-12 market is no longer the hottest way for savvy investors to feed at the public trough?

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

People who follow the blog Valerie Strauss runs at the Washington Post, the Answer Sheet, experienced that. Valerie often cross-posts things written elsewhere. Occasionally she posts something [...]]]> Sometimes one encounters something that needs no commentary from me – it is complete in itself. I want to share something like that about teaching and education.

People who follow the blog Valerie Strauss runs at the Washington Post, the Answer Sheet, experienced that. Valerie often cross-posts things written elsewhere. Occasionally she posts something written directly for her. This morning she posted a piece by Linda Darling-Hammond, who is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University and was Founding Director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. Linda — who is a friend — now directs the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.

When I read it I asked for – and received – Linda’s permission to crosspost it here and at some other sites to give it more visibility. Let me offer just a few words of introduction, then let Linda’s words speak without further commentary from me.

Linda Darling-Hammond is one of the most important figures researching and writing about education. I have written about her work before, most notably this review of her book The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future

Linda Darling-Hammond was a close adviser on education to then-Senator Obama during his presidential campaign. Many of my compatriots had hoped she would be named Secretary of Education. But she had published some research which made people associated with Teach for America unhappy, and there was organized pushback against her. I suspect that some from my perspective on educational issues would be far happier to have seen her at the Department rather than Arne Duncan.

So be it. Darling-Hammond remains an important voice on issue of education. The piece you are about to read should speak for itself.

Please read it carefully.

And I thank you in advance for doing so, and ask that you also make sure it gets widely distributed.

Peace.

The first ever International Summit on Teaching, convened last week in New York City, showed perhaps more clearly than ever that the United States has been pursuing an approach to teaching almost diametrically opposed to that pursued by the highest-achieving nations.

In a statement rarely heard these days in the United States, the Finnish Minister of Education launched the first session of last week’s with the words: “We are very proud of our teachers.” Her statement was so appreciative of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and commitment that one of the U.S. participants later confessed that he thought she was the teacher union president, who, it turned out, was sitting beside her agreeing with her account of their jointly-constructed profession.

There were many “firsts” in this remarkable Summit. It was the first time the United States invited other nations to our shores to learn from them about how to improve schools, taking a first step beyond the parochialism that has held us back while others have surged ahead educationally.

It was the first time that government officials and union leaders from 16 nations met together in candid conversations that found substantial consensus about how to create a well-prepared and accountable teaching profession.
And it was, perhaps, the first time that the growing de-professionalization of teaching in America was recognized as out of step with the strategies pursued by the world’s educational leaders.

Evidence presented at the Summit showed that, with dwindling supports, most teachers in the U.S must go into debt in order to prepare for an occupation that pays them, on average, 60% of the salaries earned by other college graduates. Those who work in poor districts will not only earn less than their colleagues in wealthy schools, but they will pay for many of their students’ books and supplies themselve

And with states’ willingness to lower standards rather than raise salaries for the teachers of the poor, a growing number of recruits enter with little prior training, trying to learn on-the-job with the uneven mentoring provided by cash-strapped districts. It is no wonder that a third of U.S. beginners leave within the first five years, and those with the least training leave at more than twice the rate of those who are well-prepared.

Those who stay are likely to work in egg-crate classrooms with few opportunities to collaborate with one another. In many districts, they will have little more than “drive-by” workshops for professional development , and – if they can find good learning opportunities, they will pay for most of it out of their own pockets. Meanwhile, some policymakers argue that we should eliminate requirements for teacher training, stop paying teachers for gaining more education, let anyone enter teaching, and fire those later who fail to raise student test scores. And efforts like those in Wisconsin to eliminate collective bargaining create the prospect that salaries and working conditions will sink even lower, making teaching an unattractive career for anyone with other professional options.

The contrasts to the American attitude toward teachers and teaching could not have been more stark. Officials from countries like Finland and Singapore described how they have built a high-performing teaching profession by enabling all of their teachers to enter high-quality preparation programs, generally at the masters’ degree level, where they receive a salary while they prepare. There they learn research-based teaching strategies and train with experts in model schools attached to their universities. They enter a well-paid profession – in Singapore earning as much as beginning doctors — where they are supported by mentor teachers and have 15 or more hours a week to work and learn together – engaging in shared planning, action research, lesson study, and observations in each other’s classrooms. And they work in schools that are equitably funded and well-resourced with the latest technology and materials.

In Singapore, based on their talents and interests, many teachers are encouraged to pursue career ladders to become master teachers, curriculum specialists, and principals, expanding their opportunities and their earnings with still more training paid for by the government. Teacher union members in these countries talked about how they work closely with their governments to further enrich teachers’ and school leaders’ learning opportunities and to strengthen their skills.

In these Summit discussions, there was no teacher-bashing, no discussion of removing collective bargaining rights, no proposals for reducing preparation for teaching, no discussion of closing schools or firing bad teachers, and no proposals for ranking teachers based on their students’ test scores. The Singaporean Minister explicitly noted that his country’s well-developed teacher evaluation system does not “digitally rank or calibrate teachers,” and focuses instead on how well teachers develop the whole child and contribute to each others’ efforts and to the welfare of the whole school.
Perhaps most stunning was the detailed statement of the Chinese Minister of Education who described how – in the poor states which lag behind the star provinces of Hong Kong and Shanghai – billions of yuen are being spent on a fast-paced plan to improve millions of teachers’ preparation and professional development, salaries, working conditions and living conditions (including building special teachers’ housing) The initial efforts to improve teachers’ knowledge and skills and stem attrition are being rapidly scaled up as their success is proved.

How poignant for Americans to listen to this account while nearly every successful program developed to support teachers’ learning in the United States is proposed for termination by the Administration or the Congress: Among these, the TEACH Grants that subsidize preparation for those who will teach in high-need schools; the Teacher Quality Partnership grants that support innovative pre-service programs in high-need communities; the National Writing Project and the Striving Readers programs that have supported professional development for the teaching of reading and writing all across the country, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which certifies accomplished teachers and provides what teachers have long called some of the most powerful professional development they ever experience in their careers.

These small programs total less than $1 billion dollars annually, the cost of half a week in Afghanistan. They are not nearly enough to constitute a national policy; yet they are among the few supports America now provides to improve the quality of teaching.

Clearly, another first is called for if we are ever to regain our educational standing in the world: A first step toward finally taking teaching seriously in America. Will our leaders be willing to take that step? Or will we devolve into a third class power because we have neglected our most important resource for creating a first-class system of education?

I stand with my unionized sisters and brothers, especially in Wisconsin, but everywhere where teachers and unions are under attack.

I am the lead union representative for more than 100 teachers in my school.

Today, all across the country, teachers are blogging their support for our unionized sisters [...]]]>

I stand with my unionized sisters and brothers, especially in Wisconsin, but everywhere where teachers and unions are under attack.

I am the lead union representative for more than 100 teachers in my school.

Today, all across the country, teachers are blogging their support for our unionized sisters and brothers in Wisconsin, and you can follow some of the results of that at EDUSolidarity

Today I want to tell you why I am proud to be a union member as well as a teacher.

I teach my students one period a day. We have 9, since some students take a zero period at 7:15 in the morning to squeeze in an extra course. Most of my students are sophomores, with at least 6 courses besides mine. I am only one of those responsible for helping them learn.

For me teaching is a collaborative effort. It includes not only those of us formally designated as educators, but all of the support staff as well.

Why are teachers unionized? Why do we insist on seniority being a major part of decision making about who stays and who goes?

Let’s go back. Why are any workers unionized? Because without cooperation, without the support of a union, an individual worker is at a huge disadvantage in negotiating with an employer – that applies to working conditions, to compensation, to benefits. As an individual, one is negotiating from a position of weakness. As part of a larger group, there is more leverage, and thus less capriciousness and even maliciousness in how those in positions of authority can deal with one who lacks the protection of a union.

Nowadays we hear all kinds of statements about how seniority is keeping bad teachers and forcing good teachers out. Baloney. As a union rep I have helped move out bad teachers, teachers who were not good for the students. I ensured it was done fairly, that they had due process. That protects me and all the other teachers.

How do we determine an “effective” teacher anyhow? If we make it all about test scores we will cheat the students of a real education.

That’s not the real issue. That is the rhetorical cover to replace more experienced teachers with noobies, largely over money. That’s right. Over money.

Put all the pieces together.

We have Bill Gates saying that teachers don’t really improve after their 3rd year. He says that additional degrees don’t benefit the students by improving the teaching. Oh, and he wants to stop paying for years of service.

My base pay is twice that of a beginning teacher. Absent protections of seniority, how hard would it be for an administrator pushed financially to find an occasion to find me, and other more experienced teachers, less than effective so that s/he could replace me with two bodies, thereby saving money on the budget.

The workman of any kind is worthy of his hire. Some apparently don’t believe that. They opposed raising the minimum wage, which is still far below what one needs to live. They want to pay less than minimum for teen-aged part-time workers.

If the mentality is only about saving upfront costs, then we may be penny wise and very pound foolish. In engineering, whether a nuclear reactor near Sendai or levees near New Orleans, failure to put enough resources in up front can lead to catastrophic failure.

The unwillingness to pay for the experience and quality of senior teachers leads to a constant turnover of younger, inexperienced teachers who are still trying to learn how to teach. While there may not be a catastrophe of the magnitude of Katrina, the loss of learning opportunities for our students is often irrecoverable.

I want to quote a dear friend, with her permission. Renee Moore is one of the most distinguished educators in the US. She is a former Mississippi State Teacher of the Year. She has sat on the boards of a number of key organizations, including the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She is a superb writer and speaker about education. She recently included the following words in an email a number of us received:

The seniority system was put in place in an attempt to end capricious, retaliatory firings and various shades of nepotism. Given the current status of our evaluation system, if administrators are going to use “keeping the most effective teachers” as justification for who goes and who stays, teachers and parents should unite to demand they be very transparent.

capricious – what did the principal have for lunch, or who from the Central office yelled at him today

retaliatory – Speak up, point out that this latest educational emperor is naked, and one might well be dismissed. Or if not dismissed, experience a retaliatory transfer, as happened to an outspoken teacher in DC who criticized the wrong-doings of one of Michelle Rhee’s hand-picked principals. Even Jay Mathews, in general a supporter of Rhee, criticized her on this.

nepotism – too many people forget when school boards would hire people who were related to them by blood or political affiliation even if they were unqualified. Absent protections, qualified people would be forced out for the nephews and the political contributors.

Due Process – and transparency – things that unions can demand on behalf of their members, that individual teachers cannot.

On Thursday I have been invited to the premier of a film. It is titled “The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System” and the viewing will be introduced by the Ambassador of Finland. 25 Years ago Finland did not do well on international comparisons. Now their schools are acknowledged as among the very best in the world. They take time to train their teachers, insisting on the equivalent of a masters degree. Oh, and their teaching corps is 100% unionized.

The current highest scoring state is Massachusetts. As my friend Diane Ravitch points out, it also has a unionized teaching corps.

Some want to take away collective bargaining rights completely. Others want to limit the rights severely, excluding working conditions and issue of assignments. These steps would deprofessionalize teaching, and then allow opponents to further demean those who teach, and justify further slashing their compensation and benefits.

My periods are 45 minutes each. For some of my students, that 3/4 of an hour is more time than they spend with their parents each day. Do you want that 45 minutes to be with a trained, caring adult, who is not constantly fretting over how to pay basic bills? Do you want the teacher able to concentrate on the task of teaching our young people, or do you want to force her to take a second job in order to make ends meet?

Teaching should be an honorable profession. For all the rhetoric that some offer about great teachers and the importance of teachers, their actions with respect to policy provide those paying attention a very different picture. They claim it is important to hold teachers “accountable” in many cases for things they do not fully control, but scream bloody murder at accountability for the criminal offenses of the financial sector that have helped create the financial crises that are being used as justification for attacking the unions and the benefits and the compensation of public employees, including teachers. They rant about bad teachers having tenure but say nothing about promoting generals who violate international and US law in their treatment of those detained under their custody. They want to examine everything about teachers to try to find an excuse to bash them further, to delegitimize them, but God forbid there be an honest investigation of the wrongdoings and dishonesties that involved us in conflicts abroad that by the time they are done will, according to Nobel winning economist Joe Stiglitz, cost this nation at least 2 TRILLION – maybe even 3 TRILLION – dollars.

We shift wealth to the already wealthy, who then balk at paying for public services, perhaps because they have become so wealthy and powerful they have the ability to purchase whatever they need – including the occasional judges, senators, congressmen and governors. And more. But teachers are greedy because we want to keep the pensions to which we agreed as a form of deferred compensation, for our willingness to be paid less than people with comparable educational background.

I am a teacher. I am by choice. I came to it late, but it is what I should do.

I am willing to make some sacrifices. We do not have children of our own, in part because I could not commit myself to teaching as I do with the attention I give my students, were I to have the responsibilities of a caring parent. I make less than I did when I worked with computers, and my hours are far longer.

Yet now some would want you to believe that my experience is not worth more compensation, that I should not be paid for the additional professional education I obtained AT MY OWN EXPENSE, and would be happy to see me replaced by two brand new teachers, in some cases with only 5 weeks of training and who are not committed to stay beyond two years, a period at the end of which they MIGHT be becoming good teachers.

I have worked in Maryland, which is unionized in its schools, and in Virginia, which as a right to work state BANS collective bargaining by public employees, although Arlington, where I live and for one year taught, sort of gets around that. Which might be why they maintain a strong teaching force, without that much turnover. Which increases my real estate taxes because the good schools are something that draws families, along with our closeness to DC and the superb access to public transportation. My taxes go up because the value of my home goes up. The schools are a large part of that.

What is happening in Wisconsin and other states, if it goes unchecked, will destroy much of value in this country. It will start with schools, already a target. It will affect other public service employees. It will bleed into the private sector as well, depressing wages for everyone, and exacerbating the increasing economic inequity in this nation.

I am a union rep because I understand this, because I can speak – and write – to it.

I am a union rep because my fellow teachers trust me to keep them informed, to make sure their interests are represented fairly, both within the building and within the very large (over 130,000 students) school district.

I stand with my sisters and brothers in Wisconsin, in Indiana, in Florida, in Michigan, in all the places they are under attack.

Today many of us are speaking out. We are writing. We are wearing red.

Today we express our solidarity.

It is not YET too late to take back our country, to save our public institutions, and thereby save the middle class.

Not YET. But time is running out.

Stand with us.

Make a difference.

And remember, if you could read this, thank a teacher.

Solidarity! The only true form of Peace.

PS to read more posts on this theme, please go to EDUSolidarity