Tag Archives: Jeff Bryant

That Way Madness Lies

4 Jul

By Thomas Ultican July 4, 2024

Valerie Strauss introduced America to Karen McKeegan Fraid and her That Way Madness Lies blog in 2013. In the pre-corporate billionaire-owned Washington Post, Strauss wrote the pro-public education Answer Sheet blog. Fraid created the “Reformy to English” dictionary as an aid for understanding the world of billionaire funded school-reform with her motivation being:

“I have done fairly extensive reading into their ideas as well as about their actions, and something struck me last week while I was rereading the Broad Foundation’s School Closure Guide (yes, It really exists): it is like an English-speaker reading Voltaire in the original French.”

The “Reformy to English” dictionary is still presented in three volumes:

  1. http://karenfraid.tumblr.com/post/52189780597/reformy-to-english-dictionary-volume-one
  2. https://karenfraid.tumblr.com/post/52356987097/reformy-to-english-dictionary-volume-two
  3. https://karenfraid.tumblr.com/post/53900029533/reformy-to-english-volume-three

The question is after more than a decade, how are Fraid’s translations doing? For example, her quote about the Broad Foundation lost some of its relevance when Eli Broad died in 2021, two years after he paid $100 million to establish the Broad Center at Yale University.

“Reformy to English” Translations Review

“Market-Based Reform (noun): A school of thought that relies on the financial and social studies illiteracy of the general population in order to convince the public that codifying the market power of campaign donors and tying the invisible hand’s ability to expose shitty and overpriced products and services for what they are (and thus allowing the free market to eliminate those companies and products from the economy through a lack of demand) will somehow avoid the inevitable market failure in the form of corruption, decreased productivity and out of control wealth gaps and a resulting economic collapse.  Market-Based Reform is a euphemism for “Corporate Subsidy Disbursement,” “Economic Power Grab” and “Fear-Based Economic Policy.”

This translation seems spot-on today but not quite as central like in 2013. The charter school movement was the big dog in market-based reform; however, the effort to privatize schools with vouchers recently has taken on a central role in the effort to destroy public education.

In an 2016 article for AlterNet, Jeff Bryant shared about his conversation with Jeffry Henig of Teachers College:

“Henig believes many conservatives view charter schools as a way to ‘soften the ground’ for potentially more private options, though he isn’t entirely sure ‘the Waltons view charters as a Trojan Horse for eventually providing vouchers universally.’”

21st Century Skills (plural noun): These are what students gain when an educator is replaced with an iPad.  How else will kids ever get enough screen time if we don’t provide it in schools?

This definition is still 100% accurate.

 “School Choice (noun): This is when politicians choose to close a public school and instead choose to pay their campaign donors to operate a charter school.  School choice also refers to subsidizing upper-income families and religious institutions with tax dollars, often redirected from “failing schools.”  School choice also refers to the choice made by charter and private schools to discriminate against students with disabilities, students in extreme poverty and high-risk students by choosing policies guaranteed to skim only the students that they choose.  School choice is also used as a tool to stem the tide of white flight, without having to convince white folks to spend time with those unlike themselves.

Fraid’s school choice definition holds up pretty well, with a caveat. In 2013, charter school discrimination was slowed down by state accountability regulations. With the ascendance of vouchers, laws were written to make discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, scholastic strength, etc. acceptable. In fact, voucher school accountability is generally against the law; seen as government interference.

“Outcome-Based Learning (noun): (Synonyms include Proficiency-Based Learning, Standards-Based Reform, Performance-Based Education, and any combination of any of the previous words that include at least one hyphen and no awareness of irony.)  An education philosophy in which the outcome or performance on assessments is the goal in and of itself.  Any learning that does not assist the student immediately in test performance is a waste of time and resources, since Reformers know that they never use anything that they learned in school in their jobs today.”

Outcome-based learning is a renamed attempt to promote the 1970’s “mastery learning” theory, a major flop. Today, competency-based education (CBE) is a digital screen approach for replacing the often derided outcome-based learning. These schemes all posit that drilling and mastering small skills is the best way to teach. It has not worked yet.

CBE is required to get rid of teachers and further develop kids learning at screens.

Fraid’s 2013 definition can be updated with competency-based learning but would still be the same drill-and-skill bad pedagogy.

“High-Stakes Test (noun): An assessment in which the margin of error is often greater than the desired gains; nevertheless, such assessments have the power to close schools, fire teachers, cause children to repeat a grade, defund districts or schools, cause states and municipalities to lose funding, fire administrators, shame communities, stifle economic growth, increase dropout rates, disenfranchise parents and children, increase race-based segregation, increase crime rates, raise taxes, burden local governments, increase poverty, pit neighbors against each other, determine which students can attend well-funded schools or institutes of higher learning.”

Since 2013, parents and educators have come out so strongly against these tests that their destructive power was reduced. The fact that these norm-referenced exams are incapable of identifying learning or good teaching has not caused them to go away. Big testing corporations like Pearson, College Board and ACT make too much money from parents, schools and states to let it go. Testing is still being used as metrics for comparing schools, judging college acceptance and evaluating teachers.

“No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (noun): Landmark piece of bipartisan legislation which basically codified the Lake Wobegon mantra that all children need to be above average, while also starting the push to make percentiles reign supreme.  That would now serve as a phenomenal example in a lesson on irony, except the forced over-reliance on standardized tests in said legislation has resulted in 10 years of skipping extended lessons on literary devices and understanding of statistics in favor of test-prep reading and math exercises that suck all of the joy out of life as we know it.  That fact is also ironic, but the kids will never know that now.”

The reference to Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon is dated but the claim that NCLB was mathematically-challenged is true. In 2001, many scholars and educators were looking to improve student learning and teaching. NCLB put an end to these scholarly efforts and replaced them with test-based accountability. The fundamental problem is standards-based testing only reveals the financial condition of people in a schools’ zip-code. Based on misunderstood data and erroneous testing regimes, many great schools were labeled failures and shuttered.

It was a tragedy that still plagues America.

In 2013, I wrote “The Unwarranted Demise of Mar Vista Middles School.” I had worked there for one year and knew it to be a solid school with an excellent staff. Unfortunately, the student demographics shifted to the point that 76% were from low social-economic families, 75% were Hispanic students and 44% were language learners. There was just no way MVMS could meet the ill-designed testing targets demanded by NCLB.

Karen McKeegan Fraid deserves high praise for her often funny and irreverent but mostly prescient definitions. Eleven years ago, she made fun of the scoundrels who worked to end free taxpayer supported public education, some just being drawn to the scam for the $$$.

But, billionaire financiers are in it to destroy America’s public school system.

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Network for Public Education Goals

10 Nov

By Thomas Ultican 11/10/2023

Network for Public Education (NPE) issued two agendas at the conclusion of the October Washington DC Conference. NPE Director, Carol Burris, announced, “A Resolution in Support of Community-based Public Education, a Pillar of our Democracy” and Julian Vasquez Heilig, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Western Michigan University, put forward “Freedom to Learn,” a kindergarten through university agenda.

Freedom to Learn

Since “A Nation at Risk” in 1983, public education has been under serious attack. In the 21st century, the attacks have become well-financed, deceptive and mean-spirited.

Christopher Rufo became the darling of autocracy with his attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). In 2017, he was working at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington which focuses on intelligent design and opposes Darwinian-based biology. When President Trump decided that DEI training for federal workers was deeply infected with critical race theory, Rufo, now at the rightwing Manhattan Institute, stated on the Tucker Carlson show, “It’s absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal government.”

 He trained his sights on public schools, disingenuously claiming they were teaching critical race theory (CRT). Soon CRT became the name for anything bigots did not like. Billionaire-funded think-tanks, Manhattan Institute, Heritage Foundation and CATO Institute beat homophobia drums and blew bigotry trumpets against DEI.

Hostile state legislatures enacted laws that undermined public schools, community colleges and universities. They instituted curriculum bans, eradicated DEI programs and attacked science, as well as public health programs. Laws were passed allowing terrorist groups, like Mom’s for Liberty, to push mindless, censorship agendas while attacking librarians and teachers, branding them as groomers and child molesters. They also cut public school funding while promoting vouchers and other privatization schemes.

Time magazine ran an opinion piece by American Federation of Teachers President, Randi Weingarten, and Stand for Children’s CEO, Jonah Edelman. They observed:

“In a recent lecture at ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, culture war orchestrator Christopher Rufo detailed the strategy for replacing public education with a universal voucher system. ‘To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust,’ Rufo explained. Earlier in that same lecture, describing how to lay siege to institutions, he noted the necessity to create your own narrative and frame and advised his audience they ‘have to be ruthless and brutal.”’ (Emphasis Added)

Interestingly, the closer to the classroom, the better the image of public schools will be. In the 2022 Gallup survey, 84% of the general public rated their district’s public schools as passing. Parents gave them an 89% passing rates while they rated the entire nation at 73%.

The steady drumbeat of attacks on public education, starting with 1983’s “A Nation at Risk,” has harmed peoples’ view of public education but less than one might imagine. 

Professor Heilig introduced three targets:

  1. Promote “freedom to learn and access to education through working with coalition partners to support bills to increase federal and state funding for all levels of public education and protect the freedom to teach and the freedom to research.”
  2. Fight back “against legislative bans on the teaching of U. S. history, science and psychology, and other educational gag orders, and by defending individual educators who face harassment, discipline or termination as a result of these laws.”
  3. Support “efforts to provide more resources to our public schools, colleges and universities and the students who depend on them every day, resisting efforts to defund our preK-12 and higher education systems.”

Community-based Public Education

Carol Burris stated public education is the pillar of democracy and should be based on the common school design originally envisioned by Horace Mann. Public schools teach all who live within their boundaries, “regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, LGBTQ+ status, or learning ability.”

It is taxpayers who bear the responsibility for funding such schools and have the right to examine how tax dollars are used to educate children. Schools should be accountable to community residents who have the right and responsibility to elect those who govern them.

Extreme Instability of Charter Schools from NPE’s Broken Promises

In 2019, Jeff Bryant and Carol Burris co-authored “Asleep at the Wheel,” about the federal Charter School Program (CSP):

“We estimate that program funding has grown to well over $4 billion. That could bring the total of the potential waste to around $1 billion.”

This claim by NPE was widely criticized as an over-statement. Carol Burris and her small team made a very detailed study of the CSP program producing “Still Asleep at the Wheel.” They discovered the estimates were low and 40% of charter schools receiving CSP grants had closed or did not open.

Charter schools were introduced in the 1990s as an education experiment with the potential to significantly improve American education. Since then, there were no positive changes, including no significant improvement in standardized test scores. On the other hand, they have divided communities, undermined public schools and driven up segregation.

It is legitimate to conclude the charter school experiment has been a three-decade failure but the federal government continues lavishly funding the CSP.

Burris shared a growing concern with efforts to privatize public education, remove governance from school communities and divert power to private boards, religious institutions, and both nonprofit and for profit corporations.

Therefore, NPE calls for a series of reforms to “preserve our public education system and protect the students who attend public schools.”

Recommended reforms include:

  • An immediate moratorium on creating new charter schools, including no replication or expansion of existing charter schools.
  • End CSP that subsidizes and encourages charter expansion.
  • Require certification of all charter school teachers and administrative staff in accordance with public school requirements.
  • All properties and equipment owned by charter schools become the property of the local public school district if the charter closes.
  • Prohibit charter schools from refusing transfer students mid-year if they have available space.
  • Pro rata reimbursement for school districts (or states) when students leave a charter school during the school year.

In 2018, the Center for American Progress, who would never be mistaken as hardcore lefties, wrote about the first five large scale voucher studies ever. They summed up the report stating:

“How bad are school vouchers for students? Far worse than most people imagine.”

Josh Cowen, University of Michigan, has studied vouchers for close to 30 years. At the conference, he stated, “If we were using evidence informed education policy, vouchers would have died 5 years ago.” Cowen also noted test score losses from voucher students are as large as or larger than those experienced in either Katrina or Covid-19. Data since 2013 shows that vouchers have been catastrophic.

Nevertheless, Carol Burris said, “We support a parent’s right to educate their child in a private school; however, we believe that private services should be funded privately and not by the public.”

Vouchers were originally the choice of southern segregationist in the late 1950s after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruling in the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case held that publicly funded vouchers could be used to send children to religious schools. It was a 5-4 decision, authorizing state legislators to force taxpayers to send their dollars to religious schools.

Voucher programs are always instituted by legislative bodies. There has never been an education voucher program voted for by the public.

Carol Burris stated, “We advocate for the phase-out of all voucher programs.”

Until that happens, NPE is calling for several legislative actions including:

  • An immediate moratorium on the creation of new voucher programs or their expansion.
  • Require private schools that receive vouchers cannot discriminate in any form, including based on religion, gender, marital status, disability, achievement and LGBTQ+ status.
  • Mandate financial audits of voucher programs, participating private education providers and third-party voucher-granting organizations.
  • State to collect data on voucher school closures and year-to-year changes in tuition.
  • Require certification of all school teaching and administrative staff in schools that receive vouchers in accordance with public school requirements.
  • Require that voucher students, including micro and homeschool students, participate in the same state testing programs as public and charter students and the results be made publicly available.
  • Voucher school facilities are obligated to meet building codes.
  • Require pro rata voucher funding be returned to local, state, and federal sources if a student returns or transfers to public school.

Wrap-Up

Ever since the Clinton administration, there has been a well-financed attack on public education. Much of this has come from billionaires and the Catholic Church has played a key role in advancing the voucher movement. Ten years-ago NPE was formed by mostly educators to save public schools. During its first decade, NPE fought against the privatization movement through social media by raising awareness and giving teachers a voice.

As it heads into the second decade, NPE is promoting an agenda to undo the recent damage to public schools, calling for the common sense changes listed above.

Let’s do it!

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