Guest Post: Pennsylvania is failing Philly's schools – so, close the schools?

Students walk the halls at De Burgos Elementary School. (Emma Lee/WHYY)

by Daun Kauffman
Daun Kauffman is  North Philadelphia public school teacher. This article is posted on his blog  LucidWitness.com


December 28, 2015
 
The Pennsylvania Senate's effort to amend the PA School Code (H.B. 530), is part of the backroom wrangling over our state budget.

Senate amendments to the bill require the state to directly take over or close five individual schools every year. This Senate incursion into education is a textbook example of aggression and obstruction with no advance intelligence, no input, from "frontline ground troops." So politicians with uninformed philosophies push more and more state bureaucracy into sectors where the state is ignorant and, in fact, failing.

It is impossible to continue silently enduring simplistic views of learning and teaching practice (by non-practitioners) and simplistic "solution pills" to "fix" or increase learning, which instead continue generating more and more collateral damage: academic damage, systemic damage, financial damage, social damage, personal damage, and more.

Newsflash: There is no simplistic, quick fix, or someone would have done it long ago! In fact, Pennsylvania took over the School District of Philadelphia 15 years ago already! The state's record of academic decline, and their consistent record of precise underfunding of Philadelphia in particular, is a prime cause of our condition, a contrived disaster.

Ask yourself: After 15 years of state management, is the School District of Philadelphia better off today or worse off?

Now politicians want to go even further? The Senate proposes a required micro-management (or closure) from the state level of the five "worst" schools in Philadelphia.

All for the sake of negotiating a state budget?

I ask, "What secret solution does the state have?"

There are no capital programs, no curriculum programs, no books, no supplies, no teacher incentives or punishments, no longer hours, no charter business plans, and no "common core" or "standardized" testing program nor even school closings that start at the center of the learning process. Instead they all focus on the periphery.

The learners, children, are the center. Children are people. It takes highly trained, highly competent people to work with people — with 30 people, in one room, all day, every day, while facilitating learning. Whether we choose to view the truth, or adopt the pol's simplistic view of people (children and teachers) as 'widgets' will determine success and failure.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Also see:

The Siege of Philadelphia Public Schools is Now a Full-Scale Assault
Defend Public Educaiton - December 13, 2015

Common Sense in Philadelphia

 

This sacrifice of common sense is the certain badge which distinguishes slavery from freedom; for when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

              Thomas Paine

On Tuesday, May 19^th voters in Philadelphia sent a message to billionaire venture philanthropists who were trying to buy the office of mayor of Philadelphia to promote their privatization of public schools agenda. By the day of the primary election for mayor and other offices  they had invested $7 million in advertising for the candidate they thought would carry out their agenda, State Senator Anthony Williams.

Former Councilman Jim Kenney defeated Williams by a 2-to-1 margin winning a plurality in all wards in the city. Kenney ran on a progressive platform, including the ending ‘stop and frisk’ by police, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and establishing universal pre-Kindergarten. Even before he decided to run for mayor, Kenney was praised for championing the erecting of a statue in City Hall for forgotten civil rights pioneer Octavius Catto. Kenney has also been a supporter of immigrant rights.

At the beginning of the campaign, Anthony Williams was considered the frontrunner. As the campaign progressed, despite flooding the airwaves with campaign commercials beyond what any other candidate could do, Williams began to drop in the polls. Williams attempted to give the appearance of distancing himself from what had been his signature role in the Pennsylvania state legislature for ten years, the promotion of charters and vouchers. As it was clear his campaign was in trouble, Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page editor (the Inquirer endorsed Williams) Harold Jackson appealed to Williams to “run on his beliefs”. Williams duplicity only made voters question what he was hiding about his plans for public education.

In the days before the end of the campaign Williams appealed to ethnic solidarity to get votes in the African-American community. This too backfired as Kenney won a plurality of the votes in the 30 predominantly black wards. In the days before the primary, the fractured Democratic Party coalesced around Kenney with endorsements from Mayor Nutter, City Council President Darrell Clark, and some Black clergy switching from supporting Williams to Kenney. 

There was speculation in the press that School Reform Commission member Bill Green will run as an independent in the November election to promote his privatization of education agenda. Green had been outspoken in his support of Williams despite being a member of the School Reform Commission since his appointment by Governor Corbett. He contributed the legal limit of $2900 to his campaign. Green said the election of Kenney “was no coronation” as evidenced by the low voter turnout.

The voter turnout was the lowest in modern Philadelphia history with more registered voters abstaining than those voting. Only 30% of registered voters voted.

Also elected as a Democratic nominee to a City Council-at-Large seat was Helen Gym. Gym is a founder of Parents United for Public Education and has been one of the leaders of those campaigning for defense of Philadelphia’s public schools. On the day of the election, the head of Boys’ Latin charter sent out an email urging people not to vote for Helen Gym because “she hates us.”

A non-binding resolution was passed by voters calling for the abolition of the School Reform Commission, the administrators of the Philadelphia School District since the state takeover in 2001, and a return to local control of Philadelphia schools.

While the election is a victory for democracy over the attempt of wealthy hedge fund managers to buy an election, we can have no illusions that public education in Philadelphia is now safe. Far from it!

The Philadelphia public schools have been under relentless attack by corporate education reformers for many years. The starved schools have been taken off of life support. In the last few years, teachers have been forced to buy basic supplies just to teach their students even as their salaries, including step increases, are frozen.

Most libraries in public schools have been closed. Counselors have been cut so most schools have part time or no counselor. School nursing is now provided part time in most schools. This can now be seen as the beginning of the attempted dismantling of the Philadelphia public schools.

On April 10^th the SRC announced substitute teacher services would be bid out to private contractors.

On May 13^th, the SRC announced that they want to outsource public school nurses to private companies. Listen to this interview with school nurse Eileen Duffey talking about what this will mean for medical services in Philadelphia public schools.

On May 17th, the School District announced a contract had been reached with the union of the lowest paid employees in the District, noontime aides and cafeteria workers. While these low paid workers received a modest wage increase, it came at the cost of the District stopping payments into the union’s health and welfare fund and the lose of seniority protections for layoffs and rehires. Superintendent William Hite, a graduate of the Broad Superintendent's Academy, took the opportunity to lecture the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers to follow this example of “shared sacrifice” to make up for the underfunding of the public schools.

The SRC has announced their first “turnaround of a turnaround”, (a term invented so they didn't have to have community meetings) the turning over of a “failed” independent charter school to charter management company Mastery.

Can Kenney be counted on to fight this onslaught on public education? Jim Kenney is a centrist when it comes to privatization of public schools. In other words he has said different things at different times regarding the expansion of charters depending on the audience and his ratings in the polls.

Early in the campaign he was for expansion of charters as long as the state reimburses their cost. Late in the campaign he ended his commercials with “I support all public schools in Philadelphia”. The qualifier “all” indicates he thinks, despite their classification by the U. S. Census Bureau, that charter schools are public schools. This raises concerns of how much resistance he will make to ALEC legislators in Harrisburg who want to expand charters. The Pennsylvania School Boards Association has recently questioned why the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools is advising its members not to follow Pennsylvania Right-to-Know which traditional public schools must follow by law. 

In the past Kenney has supported vouchers.  One of Kenney’s early backers, Senator Dwight Evans, not only is a strong proponent of charters, but for more than ten years he has been a proponent of vouchers, which are presently in the form of Educational Improvement Tax Credits, a back-door voucher program. The EITC diverts business tax money for public schools to student scholarships for private and religious schools of the business’s choosing. The EITC and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit program pose a grave, and largely unrecognized, danger to public education. In addition, this legislation is a clear violation of separation of church and state.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is promoting similar legislation. Jeb Bush, as Governor of Florida, pioneered this method of getting around the massive opposition to vouchers that existed a decade ago.

On Friday, May 15th, four days before the election, a rally for Helen Gym was held at the School District headquarters. It is apparent that there was not much interest in getting parents and teachers out to the rally since it was held at 10:30 a.m. Joining this photo op of politicians and labor leaders who had endorsed Helen Gym was American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. Reporters were told she had flown in from Los Angeles, after international travel, just to be at the rally.

Weingarten gave her usual stump speech with much fist pumping and effusive praise for Helen Gym as the Superwoman we have been waiting for. As usual, it was much “sound and fury signifying nothing.” There is no way that one Councilwoman, no matter how gifted, can stop the privatization onslaught. While a seat in City Council will give Helen Gym a powerful platform to fight for public schools, it will be within a Democratic Party which places priority on the interests of real estate developers, corporate interests such as Comcast, the Chamber of Commerce , and the banking community, not the common good.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan has not proposed any trade union fight against the attacks. His response to both the privatization of substitute teaching and nursing is that the PFT would be "pursuing every option available to stop the privatization of our public schools." This is hisweak-kneed response to the balkanization of the Philadelphia School District despite his acknowledgement that privatization has been prepared by the Boston Consulting Group for several years. For details see “Who is killing Philly schools?” 5/2/12 and “Who’s Still Killing Philly Schools?” 5/22/2013 by Daniel Denvir in the Philadelphia City Paper.

For all her bluster, Weingarten does not want a mobilization of the Philadelphia labor movement as those seen in 1973 and again in 1981 when teacher strikes were ended after the threat of a general strike by the city labor movement.

Glaringly missing from her bombast was any mention of the Opt Out movement against standardized testing being led by parents across the country. Weingarten is a supporter of the Gates Foundation promotion of annual standardized testing and the Common Core.

Immediately after the rally, Ms. Weingarten rushed off to New York City where she joined Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, officials from the Gates Foundation and other educational technology enthusiasts at the Oppi Learning Festival 2015. The program says “Oppi Festival is a unique learning event which allows all education key stakeholder groups from around the world to come together, share ideas and experiences, tackle challenges and form new partnerships.

Ms. Weingarten was part of the welcoming ceremony where she had a conversation about Global Kids. Missing from the speakers were American K-12 teachers or educators from the academic world of higher education who have decades of experience with American education. NYC teachers were invited to be in the audience to learn how they to could collaborate with corporate education.

Weingarten returned to Philadelphia Tuesday to campaign for Kenney and Gym and to join the victory celebration at Helen Gym’s campaign headquarters.

On May 9^th, Ms. Weingarten appeared on HuffPost Live. Using the standardized testing crisis as a smoke screen, she attempted to rescue the Common Core, heavily funded by the Gates Foundation, from parent and teacher opposition to it.

To bolster her credentials for promoting the Common Core, she made much of her teaching experience as the basis for supporting Common Core. This has been her practice of late: to deflect questions about why she continues to promote Common Core and take attention from her alliance with the Gates Foundation. At an appearance at a forum of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute on June 28, 2014, Ms. Weingarten went on for several minutes about her teaching experience.

Norm Scott of Ed Notes Online, who was in the NYC United Federation of Teachers when Weingarten became its President, said of her credentials recently: 

Randi has distorted the reality of her teaching experience, often by parsing the language to give an impression that she taught for 6 years when in fact she taught full time for only 6 months at Clara Barton HS in Brooklyn. The rest of the time she taught a few classes a day before going off to her other job at the union - a unique arrangement not exactly available to the average teacher. (My guess is that once Shanker came down with life-threatening cancer around 1989 or 90, he and Sandra Feldman, then UFT president, had to decide on succession and Randi, a fairly recent arrival at the UFT, was chosen over people who had worked for the UFT since its inception, leading to some resentment.) Since Randi was a lawyer - she was the UFT counsel - with no teaching credentials, they had to scramble to get her certified and find her a "teaching" part-time gig before she could claim the mantle of UFT president. They found her a "safe" school near her home. Clara Barton, across the street from Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, was a vocational school focused on nurse and health care worker training, a school that attracted a number of girls. Unity Caucus member Leo Casey was the chapter leader and would cover Randi's back when needed. Everyone in the school knew they were getting a "celebrity" staff member who would one day be the president of the union. By never having taught in real conditions like her constituents, Randi never had a sense of what it was really like.

As is the case many times in history, young people who have their whole lives in front of them and want a say in what kind of world they will live in, are unencumbered by past practices and political connections. On May 12th, hundreds of Philadelphia his school students did not report to school and Opted Out at the beginning of the Pennsylvania Keystone standardized tests. (Video of a student walkout.) Some administrators threatened the students with being denied the right to participate in the Prom or walk in their graduation.

A Philadelphia teacher was suspended for four days without pay for informing parents about Opting Out when asked.

Philadelphia high school student Giancarlos Rodriquez on The Rick Smith Show on why students opted out of the PA Keystone test.

A parent from Kensington High School talks on The Rick Smith Show about the suspension of her daughter for a week for Opting Out of PA Keystone Exams.

A Philadelphia teacher shares what it’s like to subject students to hours of standardized testing and what it is doing to his students.

On May 19^th, Election Day, the Caucus of Working Educators in the PFT held workshops at Central High School about various issues in education today. This video has excerpts from the Opt Out session which shows the testing crisis that is deepening in Pennsylvania.

The young people Opting Out are showing what must be done to stop the privatization onslaught. Only such acts of civil disobedience, combined with a mass mobilization against corporate education reform, can change the trajectory of events. Out of this mass mobilization a political movement must be developed which declares independence from the two-party system and develops a program for the needs of the 99%.

Also see:

Thousands of Newark students march against state control of schools
Bob Braun's Ledger - May 23, 2015

Mayor Ras Baraka, citing "chaos, graft, miseducation," demands people take back Newark schools
Bob Braun's Ledger - May 28, 2015

Who got the first meeting with Kenney after the win? S. Jersey political boss Norcross
Philadelphia Inquirer - May 22, 2015

PA: Another Charter Boosting Plan | Curmudgucation - May 21, 2015

How Big Money Lost in Philadelphia's Mayoral Race | The American Prospect - May 20, 2015 

Turning “Collaboration” Into a Bad Word | Defend Public Education

Divide and Conquer: The Philadelphia Story | Defend Public Education - May 4, 2015 

More on questions about Randi Weingarten’s teaching experience:

Public Lives; Hoping to Continue Education as Union Head | New York Times – January 20, 1998

How long did Weingarten teach? | Linking and thinking on education – July 14, 2011

Did AFT's Randi Weingarten last much more than “10 minutes in a classroom?” | Whitney Tilson’s School Reform Blog – July 21, 2011

An Open Exchange with AFT President Randi Weingarten | Mercedes Schneider @ The Chalk Face – November 4, 2013

Also see:
Kathy Hochul: Best Way to Support Public Schools Is By Taking Money From Them, Giving It To Private Schools and Charters | Perdido Street School - May 22, 2015
Randi Weingarten made robocalls for Governor Cuomo's running mate Hochul in the Democratic primary. 

Divide and Conquer: The Philadelphia Story

 Leading Philadelphia mayoral candidates Anthony Williams and James Kenney

Everyone concerned about corporate education reform and the influence of various venture “philanthropists” in their drive to privatize public schools should be following the Democratic primary on May 19^th for the next mayor of Philadelphia. Neoliberal and conservative financiers, in a drive to make Philadelphia public schools like the New Orleans school system, are investing millions of dollars in the mayoral race.

Most prominent is the Susquehanna Investment Group (SIG) that is funding state Senator Anthony Williams. SIG made an initial investment of $250,000 for television ads at the beginning of his campaign. In the final weeks of the campaign, they have boosted their funding to $800,000 per week.

The Susquehanna Investment Group makes no bones that their goal is the privatization of public schools in Philadelphia. For a full description of SIG see #Hedgepapers No. 11 – High Frequency Hucksters

The other major contender in the Philadelphia mayoral election is Democratic City Councilman James Kenney. Kenney has no problem with the expansion of charters as long as the state reimburses for their cost. 

Williams backers, beside the outside financial interests investing millions in Williams campaign, include Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, and union leadership of carpenters, sheet metal workers, laborers, operating engineers, and transit workers.

Kenney has been endorsed by much of the Democratic Party machine in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia local AFL-CIO leadership, including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and a carpenters union, State Representative Dwight Evans and a coalition of African American leaders.

The splintering of Philadelphia’s labor movement is in marked contrast to 1973, when the PFT was on strike for 7 ½ weeks, the top union leadership and dozens of teachers were jailed for contempt of court without bail, but the strike ended with a victory for the teachers as the city labor movement was preparing a general strike in support of the teachers. In 1981, the threat of a general strike by the city labor movement ended a 50-day-strike by the PFT after the District attempted to lay off 3,500 employees and cancel the teachers' contract.

On April 30^th, Philadelphia political activist Helen Gym, who is running on the Democratic ticket for a City Council-at-Large seat, criticized the Susquehanna billionaires for trying to buy Philadelphia’s election. Gym was viciously attacked at an April 30^th rally by Anthony Williams for “duplicity” and a personal attack was made on some of her supporters. 

Williams was joined in the attack by School Reform Commission member Bill Green. Green is a former Democratic City Councilman who was appointed by former Governor Corbett to the School Reform Commission, the administrator of the School District since the state takeover in 2001. Rather than administer the beleaguered School District, he is taking sides with Williams in the mayoral election to promote his privatization agenda and his attack on Philadelphia teachers. See Bill Green’s Education Agenda: Hidden in Plan Sight | Defend Public Education

On May 3^rd, Williams was endorsed by the Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer. They said the deciding factor was Kenney’s union support. Critics of the endorsement pointed out that the Inquirer is owned by Gerry Lenfest who is strongly pro-charter, a supporter of Teach for America,  and corporate education reform as a whole. Reports are that the endorsement caused a lot of dissension on the staff at the Inquirer. Asked if she was concerned, Williams campaign spokeswomen Barbara Grant said in a statement “that Kenney and his allies will learn that both the Inquirer editorial board and voters don't think that Kenney's union supporters "need a seat in the mayor's office."

Both State Senator Williams and State Representative Evans support the Education Improvement Tax Credit Program. This program is a form of voucher that gives businesses a tax credit for providing scholarships for students to attend private or parochial schools in lieu of paying state taxes that would be going to public schools. This method of circumventing the Pennsylvania Constitutional mandate which says government cannot fund sectarian schools was pioneered by Florida Governor Jeb Bush after vouchers were declared unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court. Funding for Florida's Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarships program has risen dramatically since its inceptions.

Both Williams and Evans have been on the board of the Black Alliance for Education Options. It’s founder, former civil rights activist Howard Fuller, has been a promoter of vouchers and charters in low-income communities since  August 24, 2000. Among its funders are the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Institute for the Transformation of Learning, and the Walton Family Foundation.

A detailed history of the right-wing support of BAEO can be found in the July, 2003 report by People for the American Way Foundation, Community Voice or Captive of the Right? The Black Alliance for Educational Options. 

On page 11 of this report it says:  
" Pennsylvania State Representative Dwight Evans, a Democrat, introduced voucher and tuition tax credit legislation repeatedly since joining the legislature in 1980. Evans' 1997 voucher proposal would have provided $5,500 to students to "escape" failing schools and enroll in private schools at taxpayer expense."

The state takeover of the Philadelphia School District in 2001 grew out of a civil rights lawsuit in1998 in which the city of Philadelphia charged that Pennsylvania funding practices discriminated against non-white students. In retaliation, the legislature passed Act 46 that set up a School Reform Commission that eventually took over the School District in 2001. The city withdrew the lawsuit when it was given two of the five seats on the SRC. The architect of the Act 46 was Philadelphia Representative Dwight Evans who was chair of the House Appropriations Committee. On the BAEO website it says:

“In Pennsylvania, the support and leadership of BAEO board members Representative Dwight Evans and Senator Anthony Williams were crucial to the creation, protection, and expansion of the tax credit and charter programs. They were also instrumental in passing the law that led to the state takeover of the School District of Philadelphia, which has led to an increase in quality educational options for poor families.”

On February 5, 2015, Fuller participated on a panel at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute during which he said, "We (BAEO) wouldn't exist without John Walton and this is one of the reasons I love that man." Fuller seems indifferent to the fact that the money given to BAEO by the Walton Foundation comes from the low-wage exploitation of Walmart workers!

Like Williams, Evans has tried to start charters schools while he voted on education legislation as a Philadelphia Representative in Harrisburg. In 2011 he came into conflict with Broad Foundation board member Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene Ackerman over which charter company should take ownership of Martin Luther King High School. The clash led to a chain of events that lead to Ackerman’s resignation as Superintendent.

Early this year a pro-charter, anti-public school political organization descended on Philadelphia. 
Philly School Choice has appeared to counter-protest rallies of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and to organize parents with children in charter schools to speak at SRC meetings in support of charter expansion. It does not reveal its funding sources, but it’s leader, Bob Bowden, is will known in right-wing libertarian, corporate privatization circles.

On August 30, 2014 Bob Bowden interviewed Senator Anthony Williams about his agenda. State Senator Anthony Williams Discusses School Choice with Bob Bowden | Change the Game (video)

Many of the American civil rights leaders of the ‘60’s, like Howard Fuller, have followed in the footsteps of Booker T. Washington, and made their peace with the 1%. They promote a corporate education reform that undermines the civil rights gains of the ‘60’s. National leadership of groups like the National Urban League and NAACP have sold out for a price to the 1% and joined the promotion of the privatization of public schools. The Broad Foundation has trained urban superintendents, many from minority communities, to turn urban school districts over to private interests. (See “Who is Eli Broad and why is he trying to destroy public education?”)

The National Urban League has received $5,286,017 from Gates over the last few years.

Gates Foundation Awarded Grants

Put other organizations, like BAEO, NAACP, AFT, etc., in the search window to see what they have received from the Gates Foundation.

The infusion of corporate and hedge fund money into all levels of government for the purpose of privatizing public education is a grave danger to democratic rights in the United States. Recently twenty-five civil rights groups joined Arne Duncan and endorsed the continuation of standardized testing in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Act (ESEA). This is a direct response to the burgeoning Opt Out movement where parents are saying they do not want their children to be used in the national social experiment being undertaken by corporate education reform.

As part of her collaboration with corporate education reform, Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers has endorsed the call for annual testing in ESEA. On a panel at the recent conference of the Network for Public Education, Weingarten said of standardized testing (47:04 in the video):

We are fighting for a reset to get rid of high stakes. The civil rights community and the President of the United States of America is fighting very hard to have annual tests for one purpose. They have seen in states for years that if they didn’t have them that states would ignore children. They agree with us now that they have been misused, but they fought very hard in the last few months to actually have annual tests as opposed to grade span (in ESEA).

A few days after the NPE conference, Weingarten spoke in support of Common Core at an event sponsored by supporters of Common Core.

It is not necessary to torture children with standardized testing in order to see if a school needs funding. All you need to do is look at the income level of families in a school and you will know what funding is needed to meet the needs of students at that school. In addition to testing company profits, standardized testing is used by corporate education reformers to decide which public schools should be “turned around” to charters to advance a privatization agenda.

Based on the experience of the oppressive conditions in many urban areas, the explosion in Baltimore against police repression to those fighting the oppression is causing many youth to reject the social and political forms that have been holding them down. The fragmentation of the Democratic Party in Philadelphia is a harbinger of great changes coming nationally. Nature abhors a vacuum. A political party with a program that meets the needs of the 99% needs to be built out of the struggles on which the youth have embarked so we do not descend into a social disaster.

Also see:

Opting Out Interfering with the "Civil Right" of Testing?
Mercedes Schneider @ deutsch29 - May 5, 2015

12 Civil Rights Groups Oppose Opting Out. It Could Have Been 28. 
Mercedes Schneider @ deutsch29 - May 6, 2015

Letter: This election, let's not hedge our bets
Philadelphia Daily News - May 6, 2015
Two Philadelphia public school parents on the attempt by "philanthropists" to buy Philadelphia's mayoral election.

Who's the William Wallace of testing: @JessedHagopian or Liz King?
Cloaking Inequality - May 6, 2015
Even the statement from twelve civil rights organizations supporting standardized testing has a Philadelphia connection. 

School Activists, students, dropping in on Williams campaign's wealthy backers
Philadelphia Magazine - May 6, 2015

Sorry, but Tony Williams is not the new Stokley Carmichael
Will Bunch @ Philadelphia Daily News - May 7, 2015

In mayor's race, a monetary milestone
Philadelphia Inquirer - May 8, 2015

Just whose rights do these civil rights groups think they are protecting?
The Answer Sheet @ The Washington Post - May 9, 2015

 

For more on the corporate education reform attack on Philadelphia public schools see

Defend Public Education! blog


 

Philadelphia Hearing on High Stakes Standardized Testing Wednesday

Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools

Tomorrow Philadelphia teachers, parents and students, the community, will be ringing the Liberty Bell
in front of the Education Committee of the Philadelphia City Council at City Hall.

Democracy in action. Education for Democracy. Democracy for education.

Pennsylvania Education Crisis Highlights - November 18th, 2014

Philadelphia Links

Standardized Testing Hearing in Philadelphia

Wednesday, November 19th, 3pm, City Hall Room 400

A public hearing on the impact of standardized testing on teaching and learning will be held before the Education Committee of Philadelphia's City Council on Wednesday, November 19th at 3pm.

The hearing will be held at Philadelphia's City Hall in Room 400 (4th Floor), Broad and Market Street.

Please enter at the NE corner of the building and bring a photo ID for the security check in. A dozen educators, parents, and community stakeholders will share their perspectives on the ways in which high-stakes testing is transforming our children's classrooms.

The public is welcome and encouraged to attend.

See the website of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools for details.

Written transcripts of speaker testimonies.

Real educators can only hope this is ground zero for ending the madness.

Mike Pence's Secret Santas

by Doug Martin

As we enter an election year here in Indiana, it is time for all of us to start peering in on the campaign records of our beloved state politicians and the front groups that are their publically-secret Santas.  So here are a few of Gov. Mike Pence’s, and they are many of the same people and corporations who funded former Indiana and Florida supt. of education Tony Bennett.

ELI LILLY: SWINGING BOTH WAYS

Eli Lilly’s PAC, this October, gave Govt. Mike $10,000. Lilly, in its various shapes and forms, has been a big player in privatizing Indiana public schools and claims to support gays and lesbians fighting against Pence’s quest to hammer a ban on gay marriage into the state constitution.

Former Eli Lilly bigwig, Randall Tobias paid family man Mike Pence $10,000 in May (see page 2 in the PDF).  Best known for his role in George W. Bush’s administration promoting a religious right anti-AIDS  and anti-prostitution public policy while he himself was sleeping with prostitutes, Tobias is a friend of Christel DeHaan who runs the now-graded “F” charter school Tony Bennett rigged an earlier grade for.

ANGIE, AIN’T IT GOOD TO BE ALIVE?

William S. Oesterle—Angie’s List’s co-founder and CEO—has loaded Mike Pence’s campaign chest with $300,000 (see pages 2 and 3) recently.

If you support Indiana public schools, steer clear of Angie’s List and its corporate “word-of-mouth wisdom.” A mega-donor to Tony Bennett, Oesterle is a former partner of the venture capital firm, CID Equity Partners and helped manage Mitch Daniels’ 2004 campaign. In the 1980s, he led the right-wing Hudson Institute, a then Indy-based pseudo-research group closely tied with ALEC and funded by the anti-worker Koch brothers.

THE WHITE KNIGHT

Tony Bennett’s buddy Dean White gifted Mike Pence $250,000 in September of this year.  Now a billionaire, White inherited his father’s mega-billboard business. For fun, White, now in his 80s, dabbles in real estate deals and develops hotels. White earlier gave Mike Pence $100,000 in donations to run for Indiana governor.  White is listed #281 on Forbes’ list of America’s richest.

A BIG AND RICH PAIN IN THE YASS

And Pennsylvania hedge fund manager and national corporate school funder, Jeff Yass, another shady figure in my upcoming book Hoosier School Heist and in my article on Bill Gates in Philadelphia, gave big, big, and big to do his part in privatizing Indiana education, even handing Pence $20,000 in 2012 (see this , and this).  All in all, Yass (who is just one out-of-state hedge fund manager behind the Indiana corporate school movement, by the way), dished out just shy of $1 million recently to destroy Indiana teachers, students, and public schools.

School Choice Indiana’s Fred Klipsch (also a millionaire) gave Mike Pence’s campaign $25,000 in May (page 2 in PDF,) and libertarian national and Indiana charter school operator John Bryan slid Pence $50,000 in June (page 3 in PDF). 

There’s many, many more corporate school people I could expose here who are in bed with Mike Pence, but it is getting late, and I am tired.  Happy New Year.  It's going to be a long and hard one.