Does your candidate hold left wing or right wing views on education?

“Hillary Clinton, who, for me, is a neoliberal disaster…” — Professor Cornel West

Is your candidate progressive or reactionary on education issues? One measure is to compare their views to those of the notoriously right-wing JBS. Here we look at some critical issues facing students, families, and our public schools.

Clinton cheerleaders claiming she isn't in the corporate charter camp?

“There is not a speck, not a sliced-thin scintilla of evidence to suggest that Clinton will do anything except continue straight down the same road that Bush and Obama took us. And there’s no telling what Trump will do about education, but it’s a safe bet that it will be huge, it will be business oriented, and that it will involve blustery hair-brained ignorance.” — Peter Greene

It's a tough time to be a public education advocate. The fervor over the 2016 election has partisans lashing out with an unprecedented amount of vitriol towards anyone questioning the education policies of mainstream candidates. Worst of the bunch are the supporters of presumed Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Here's an example of the angry denials from one of Clinton's most ardent supporters:

It is also total bullshit that you keep insisting that HRC is pushing charters and ed reform. That is TOTAL BULLSHIT.

Astonishingly, this was written by a teacher member of the Badass Teachers Association (BATs). Never mind that Clinton has deep ties the Walton Family Foundation, ignore her intwinement with Center for American Progress (CAP), her association with the Broads, and all the other obvious red flags indicating that Clinton will double down on Obama's policies. Clinton is on record as completely supporting privately managed charter schools, so-called "school choice," and for that matter, the entire neoliberal corporate education reform platform. Total "BS"? Here's a screen capture right off of Clinton's campaign website, where she lauds ESSA and its support of "high-quality public [sic] charter schools":

Unequivocal. Clinton has never changed her stance on privately managed charter schools, and that's why the National Association of Public [sic] Charter Schools (NAPCS) features the following on their website. A pro-charter pull-quote by Clinton appears alongside similar ones by Bill Gates, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Arne Duncan. Clinton's mild criticisms of some charter schools a few months back were to placate certain constituencies, nothing more.

This is the same former Walmart board member who stood before the National Educators Association (NEA) Convention and had no qualms about boasting about her support for the lucrative charter school sector. The same Goldman Sachs confidant who is the favorite of the far-right Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). In sum, corporatist Jeffries of the arch-reactionary (DFER) is on record saying that Hillary Rodham Clinton is their choice to carry on their projects of privatization pushing and poverty pimping. He also states that it is because she is fully on board with their notions of "school choice" and she fully supports charter schools. Some in the BATs forum have ruthlessly attacked me, assailed my character, and called me a liar for saying as much, but to hear it out of the mouth a the hedge fund group's representative makes it a little bit harder to deny. Hillary Rodham Clinton is DFER's candidate.

The attacks on me, in any forum that I speak truth to power on education issues, are relentless. Here's something that I posted on my facebook page a bit back after an encounter with a particularly rabid Clinton supporter.

So red baiting is still a thing. I was on a teachers' message board talking about Oaxaca, Naomi Klein, neoliberalism, and privatization, and was essentially told by a right-of-center HillBot to shut up and pack my bags for North Korea.

It's like Dr. Khury Petersen-Smith writes in his powerful essay "I won't be shamed into voting for Clinton":

It was another example of a proven fact about liberalism — Democrats and their media cheerleaders save their deepest contempt not for right wingers, but for those who challenge them from the left.

Ain't that the truth! For some further reading on Clinton's education agenda check out this piece by Steven Singer and this one by Douglas Harris.

Lastly I wanted to address the dissembling about public versus private charter schools, since it has been a common form of deception employed by high-profile politicians and the billionaires that pull their strings. Clinton is an attorney, so she doesn't have the option of saying she doesn't know the legal standing of charter schools. I'm including my boilerplate prose on how charter schools are not public, since the more places this appears, the more likely this information will be disseminated:

As a Juris Doctor candidate whose specialty is education law in the era of neoliberalism, allow me to present the legal arguments on how privately managed charter schools are not at all “public.”

Generally charter schools are not public schools. This has been long established by both existing case law and public policy. The Washington State Supreme Court (2015) held that charter schools are not “common schools” because they are governed by appointed rather than elected boards. The 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals (2010) ruled that charter schools are not “public actors.” The California Court of Appeals (2007) ruled that charter schools are not “public agents.” Additionally, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) joined scores of other government agencies in unequivocally determining that charters are, in NLRB’s words, “private entities.”

By definition if a charter school is operated by a for-profit company, or by a 501c3 non-profit corporation (e.g. Harlem Success Academy), then it is not a public school. The United States Census Bureau frames this latter issue best:

“A few “public charter schools” are run by public universities and municipalities. However, most charter schools are run by private nonprofit organizations and are therefore classified as private.” (US Census Bureau. (2011). “Public Education Finances: 2009 (GO9-ASPEF)”. Washington, DC: US Government Printing O ce. Print. vi).

Because these lucrative charter schools are not public, and therefore not subject to even a modicum of public oversight, they are able violate the constitutional rights of their students. The decision in Scott B. v. Board of Trustees of Orange County High School of the Arts saw scholar Rosa K. Hirji, Esq. write for the American Bar Association:

“The structures that allow charter schools to exist are marked by the absence of protections that are traditionally guaranteed by public education, protections that only become apparent and necessary when families and students begin to face a denial of what they were initially promised to be their right.”

The distinguished Professor Preston C. Green III of University of Connecticut has written extensively on this subject. One of his recent papers examines "how charter schools have used their public characteristics to qualify for public funding under state constitutional law, while highlighting their private characteristics to exempt themselves from other laws that apply to public schools." This private-in-every-aspect except for when siphoning funds away from authentic public schools is a defining feature of charter schools.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's Core CAP Charter Cabal

“That’s why, you know, I was a senator and voted for Leave No Child Behind [sic] because I thought every child should matter” — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton's supporters have been less than honest about her education record. Worse still, those same Liberals will ask everyone on the left to vote for her as the ostensible "lesser evil" to GOP troglodyte Donald John Trump in November. There are myriad good reasons to oppose both Clinton and Trump in November, but Liberals will cite Clinton's endorsements by executives of the largest teachers' unions as evidence of her being better on education issues. However, these same unions endorsed President Barack Hussein Obama, who has been the worst education President in history. Rather than an extensive survey of Clinton's abject policy support for neoliberal corporate education reforms including: George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB); the racist and classist Common Core State Standards (CCSS); so-called school choice through privately managed charter schools; punitive, but ineffective school closures; and a host of other wrongheaded policies, it might serve well to look at her relationships with members of the right-of-center think-tank Center for American Progress.

Center for American Progress (CAP)

CAP was allegedly founded for neoliberal Democrats to have a think-tank of their own, akin to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), or the Manhattan Institute. Essentially indistinguishable from that of those and other such organizations, CAP's education advocacy reads like it was crafted by John Birch Society and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Peter Greene lists some of the anti-public education policies CAP advocates, and that list could be easily increased. CAP has been the most vocal apologists for the Obama Administration's disastrous education policies.

Funded by a host of ideologically charged billionaires, CAP's education agenda looks like that of the Center for Education Reform. One teacher belonging to the Badass Teachers Association (BATs) used both a The Nation article and CAP's own website to compile this list that is more comprehensive than the SourceWatch list linked above:

Ford Foundation	$1,000,000+
The Hutchins Family Foundation	$1,000,000+
Sandler Foundation	$1,000,000+
TomKat Charitable Trust	$1,000,000+
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation	$500,000 to $999,999
Joyce Foundation	$500,000 to $999,999
Not On Our Watch	$500,000 to $999,999
Open Square Charitable Gift Fund	$500,000 to $999,999
Embassy of United Arab Emirates	$500,000 to $999,999
Walton Family Foundation	$500,000 to $999,999
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation	$500,000 to $999,999

Like that teacher states, "It's a who's who of corporate reformers."

Comparisons of CAP to the AEI should not be taken lightly, they frequently co-host education events together. The image used above here is from one of their many event pages. Aside from working hand-in-hand with extremist organizations like the AEI, CAP has a well-earned reputation of playing fast and loose with the truth.

Three key CAP figures loom large in the Hillary Clinton universe: John Podesta, Neera Tanden, and David Domenici.

John Podesta

Podesta, founder of CAP, is perhaps one of the most vehement opponents to public education this side of Betsy DeVos and the Brothers Koch. He is Clinton's 2016 campaign chairman. When not palling around with reactionaries Jeb Bush and Chester Finn, Podesta is hatching more ideas like NCLB, RttT, and CCSS. Many sources state that it was Podesta that encouraged Obama to select the doltish, non-educator Arne Duncan over Professor Linda Darling-Hammond for Secretary of Education. Given Obama's subsequent selection of John King to replace Duncan, it would seem Obama didn't need much encouragement choosing a corporatist over an educator. It's hard to imagine a Clinton administration being any better than Obama's on education issues, and given her abject history with the Walton family, and her reliance on Podesta, it could feasibly be worse.

Neera Tanden

Tanden is another longtime CAP fixture. On her first stint with the organization she was Vice President of Academic Affairs, and played a major role in shaping their neoliberal corporate education reform messaging. Another high-profile member of BATs posted the following, saying they preferred it be cited without attribution:

Hillary Clinton names Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress to the Dem[ocratic] Platform Committee. CAP is a funder and promoter of the privatization of our schools, VAM, and Pearson testing. This is what AFT and NEA endorsement has earned us. if you are still supporting HRC nomination, understand she stands with your enemies.

David Domenici

Domenici is a Senior Fellow at CAP, and Clinton's go-to guy on finding ways to leverage disaster capitalism to push trough CAP and Clinton's anti-public education agenda. Clinton and Domenici hatched a racist, neo-colonial plan to inflict a nationwide privately managed charter school school network with a Teach for America style model in Haiti. This plot was exposed in the WikiLeak archive of Clinton's emails. These thoughts on the Haitian fiasco sum up Clinton's views on education for poor children, and children of color:

It's no surprise that the woman who refers to children of color as "super-predators", insisting that "we have to bring them to heel", would search out such a racist education plan to inflict on a Haitian population decimated as much by the Clintons' free-trade deals as by natural disasters. Like the distinguished Professor Michelle Alexander says, Hillary Clinton uses "racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals." While Haiti was spared this horrific, colonial charter school plan hatched by Clinton and her corporate advisors, we can expect more of the same if she somehow comes to power again. We need to organize and prepare to fight against her racist penchant for neoliberal corporate education reform.

With Clinton we'll be getting more of Podesta, Tanden, and Domenici's toxic policy advocacy. Much like we've seen with Obama, CAP's virulent brand of neoliberal corporate education reform will be a centerpiece of a Clinton administration.

Anyone supporting public education should reject both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

There is a candidate running for president — who will be on most November ballots — whose education platform is worthy of support from the left. Indeed, she has consistently articulated the best public education platform of all the candidates. That candidate is Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party.

WikiLeaks reveals: Hillary Clinton plotted corporate charter school colonialism for Haiti

“Worse, Clinton’s “boarding school” socialization and structure idea sounds more like assimilation than education. Shocking and scarily reminiscent of other U.S. ventures in segregating classes of “other” people. Native Americans were also thought to be in need of “education” to work differently in groups and to be in need of structure.”— Daun Kauffman

WikiLeaks released the Hillary Clinton Email Archive mid-March 2016. Many users were searching for terms like hedge fund manager, Goldman Sachs, or, as the example in the WikiLeaks boolean tutorial: "syria libya will show results…" I decided to search for familiar phases of the neoliberal corporate education reform camp. I struck pay-dirt on my first try with "charter schools." Note my excitement on the day of discovery

Imperialist #HillaryClinton schemed to inflict a colonial charter school regime on the people of Haiti https://t.co/G6pT7fAG4C #WhichHillary

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) March 31, 2016

In one thread Clinton and her cabal talk about a colonial project to remake earthquake stricken Haiti's education system using disaster capitalism, much in the way author Naomi Klein describes what happened in New Orleans:

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

Before getting to the content of the email, it's important to contextualize the Clinton's relationship with the island nation. When not facilitating the orchestration of coups in Latin America, bombing the Near East and Africa into the stone age, or providing full-throated support for apartheid states, Clinton is meddling in Haiti. Lots of good pieces on the Clintons and Haiti in publications like Counterpunch and Black Agenda Report, but this excerpt from an essay by Shadowproof's Roqayah Chamseddine is an excellent summary:

In 2010, Hillary Clinton visited Haiti as part of a public relations stunt that allowed her to see firsthand the devastation wrought by the earthquake that killed at least 100,000. This performance was primarily meant to demonstrate solidarity and show the international community that the United States would be there to help in reconstruction efforts. Yet, her visit came less than a year after the U.S. State Department, then led by Clinton, had pressured the government of Haiti into denying laborers a wage increase of $0.62.

Dan Caughlin and Kim Ives of Haïti Liberté reported the U.S. Embassy in Haiti aggressively pressured “factory owners [in Haiti] contracted by Levi’s, Hanes, and Fruit of the Loom to block a paltry minimum wage increase for Haitian assembly zone workers, the lowest paid in the hemisphere.” In statements reminiscent of the Clinton campaign’s recent charges against Sanders, Deputy Chief of Mission David E. Lindwall called the proposed $5 minimum wage for Haitian assembly zone workers one which “did not take economic reality into account” but that was meant to appeal to the “unemployed and underpaid masses.”

Haiti has long been a kind of pet project for the Clintons, and they’ve often spoken of “falling in love with Haiti” during their honeymoon. But the love isn’t mutual by any means, and Haitians across the U.S. have made this increasingly clear by way of protests spotlighting the catastrophe the Clintons have left behind. Dahoud Andre, a radio host who has organized protests in New York, is quoted by the New York Times as saying that “a vote for Hillary Clinton means further corruption, further death and destruction for our people.”

Since the email I'll be discussing is accessible here, and is somewhat long, I will not reproduce it in its entirety. Rather, I'll draw excerpts from sections and discuss them. Secretary Clinton forwarded the email in question to one of her assistants, Lauren Jiloty. It was written by neoliberal corporate education reform cheerleader David Domenici in response to Clinton's wanting suggestions on how to capitalize on the Haitian disaster. Charter school profiteer Domenici has no background in pedagogy, has never worked at a public school, "worked in finance", and is a Senior Fellow for the right-wing think-tank Center for American Progress. His biography reads like those of most of his ilk: "He felt that an understanding of the law coupled with his understanding of the financial world would help frame his sense of how best to generate positive social change." It is with this profound ignorance of education and pedagogy that Domenici crafted the Clinton Colonial Education Corps plan. That former Secretary Clinton relied on a venture capitalist for education policy advice speaks volumes, and foreshadows some very frightening prospects should she capture the Presidency.

---

From: Hillary Clinton
To: Lauren Jiloty
Date: 2010-01-18 19:23
Subject: HOPE YOU ARE WELL, WHERE EVER YOU GET THIS - - BELOW ARE IDEAS RE: EDUCATION CORPS FOR HAITI THAT YOU ASKED FOR

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05772910 Date: 08/31/2015
RELEASE IN PART B6

From: H hrod17@clintonemail.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 7:23 AM
To: 'JilotyLC@state.gov'
Subject: Fw: Hope you are well, where ever you get this-- below are ideas re: education corps for Haiti that you asked for

From: David Domenici
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 7:55 PM
To: 'Mills, Cheryl D'; 'Cheryl Mills'
Subject: Hope you are well, where ever you get this-- below are ideas re: education corps for Haiti that you asked for

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05772910 Date: 08/31/2015
Hey Cheryl,

It's important to establish who was sending what to who.

Here are some quick thoughts on re-building school infrastructure in Port-au-Prince. Feel free to share with whomever you'd like.

I have little idea of the larger context here — how many schools/kids are we looking at, but one thing we've learned in the US in the last 5 years is that good teachers are the #1 lever of change in education. If we got 1,000 really great teachers into Port-au-Prince (w/ even a modicum of support and materials), they'd make a big difference and touch the lives of 30,000-60,000 kids.

Here Domenici perpetuates the most common falsehood from the reformers' talking point list, that good/great teachers are the number one factor affecting students. He's dead wrong, and this misrepresentation of fact needs correction.

It's not that teaching isn't important—quite the contrary, but teaching is a minority factor in group of factors impacting students. Even more so in the abject conditions of post-earthquake Haiti, which was already an impoverished nation due to U.S. economic imperialism. It's doubtful that Domenici or Clinton have actually read about this outside their small insular world of edreform, where policy papers are passed off as research. However, depending on which study we rely on, teachers at most comprise 10 to 20 percent of factors for achievement outcomes. The distinguished Dr. Paul L. Thomas has written on this, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has funded major studies, edreform darling Eric A. Hanushek has documented it, as have many others. Some selected sources:

Di Carlo: But in the big picture, roughly 60 percent of achievement outcomes is explained by student and family background characteristics (most are unobserved, but likely pertain to income/poverty). Observable and unobservable schooling factors explain roughly 20 percent, most of this (10-15 percent) being teacher effects. The rest of the variation (about 20 percent) is unexplained (error). In other words, though precise estimates vary, the preponderance of evidence shows that achievement differences between students are overwhelmingly attributable to factors outside of schools and classrooms (see Hanushek et al. 1998; Rockoff 2003; Goldhaber et al. 1999; Rowan et al. 2002; Nye et al. 2004).

Rothstein: The 2/3 — 1/3 breakdown between family background and school influences  was the core finding of the 1966 federal study, the “Coleman Report.”  But this interpretation of the report overstates its finding about the  influence of schools, because Coleman and his colleagues considered the  influence of a child’s schoolmates (“peer effects”) to be a school  factor, not an out-of-school factor. (Coleman, James S., and Ernest Q.  Campbell, Carol J. Hobson, James McPartland, Alexander M. Mood, Frederic  D. Weinfeld, and Rober L. York, Equality of Educational Opportunity,  Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,  Government Printing Office, 1966.) Yet the only way to affect the  composition of peers in the neighborhood schools he studied would be to  change the composition of neighborhoods, with housing integration  policies, for example. Of the in-school influences, the Coleman Report  identified teacher quality (defined by teacher characteristics such as  their educational attainment and experience) to be most important.

In the context of post-earthquake Haiti, understanding that we cannot rely on teachers alone to make up for the crushing poverty, multiple traumas, and lack of infrastructure, is critical. While we certainly want all children in Haiti to have access to education, the idea that we can ignore the rest of the issues they're facing reeks of colonialism and callousness.

I think this is totally doable, in short-order, in a magnificent way that could set the foundation for a well-educated generation of Haitians who could lead the country out of poverty, to self-sustainability, self-governance and openness.

Never mind that Haitian poverty is a result of U.S. transnational corporations depressing wages (cf Secretary Clinton's intervention in Haiti's attempt to raise minimum wage discussed supra). Pay no attention to the blatantly racist and colonialist notion that but for U.S. intervention, there would never be a "well-educated generation of Haitians". Ignore the fact that every attempt by Haitians to create self-sustainability and self-governance has been thwarted by U.S. interventions. Corporate education reform will correct all these things in "short-order" under the new Clinton Education Corps plan.

There were four goals listed for the Clinton Colonial Education Corps plan. Domenici enumerates them as:

• Goal 1: Human Capital
• Goal 2: Build a robust curriculum and teacher instruction program
• Goal 3: Build high quality, durable schools that entice families, children into education
• Goal 4: Create family, community impetus for all school age children to be in school

Goal 1: Human Capital:

Create Haiti Teacher Corps. Model loosely off of Peace Corps/Teach for America, CityYear Teacher corps (US): Recruit, train, and place 500-1000 teachers from US this spring and summer. We can do this.

* * *

o Language/culture training: TDB — find the best folks out there to train in French/Creole, and Haitian culture, current socio-political situation — 50% of the training program.

o Academic training: We'll work w/ TFA and others and develop 8 week intensive teacher training program for other 50% of program.

Being a business-finance type, Domenici is quite at home writing about how to make other people do work. This is the longest section of his piece, so only small portion will be addressed here. The most frightening thing is that he pushes the Teach for America (TFA) model, which at best is a paternalistic, colonial model. Clinton's advisor then outlines his program for "training" that is eight weeks long. At first blush, this is a vast improvement over TFA's woefully deficient standard five week model. That is until we take into account that they want these recruits "to train in French/Creole, and Haitian culture" simultaneously. While the self-congratulatory reformsters all consider themselves "elite", it's somewhat absurd that eight weeks is all that's allotted for all this content. To contextualize, at its shortest point, clown college was eight weeks. In essence, Clinton's cabal feel that the best Haitian students deserve is people with no more training than clowns.

Haiti-based: Less clear what the teacher-leader pipeline is like...but we can figure out and get whoever we can.

Clinton's advisor Domenici consistently speaks of the Haitian people as somewhat of an afterthought. They are someone you do "for" or "to", but never "with". That this wealthy, white male consistently leaves the agency of Haitians out of the equation is completely in line with the white supremacist lens that both he and Hillary Clinton see the world through.

Much of the rest of this section deals with how cheaply they'd like to see all the labor paid. Interestingly, this is in line with how Clinton's State Department kept Haitian wages low in order to sate corporate capital. Domenici asserts that there's plenty of young charter school types that are willing to make the sacrifices that neither he, nor any of his peers would ever make. The finance capitalist then turns his attentions to the next goal.

I am not a curriculum expert, but I think this is really doable, as well, so long as we get the right team […]

Clinton's fellow corporate reformer is refreshingly honest here. Not only is he not a "curriculum expert", he's not even a novice. When we look at his notions of "Backwards Mapping" and "clusters and in modules that can be swapped in and out", it's clear that Domenici is pushing what Paulo Freire termed "the banking model of pedagogy", that is, that students are vessels into which corporate reformers pour knowlege into. This model works well for maintaining oppression, and would serve to perpetuate the United States' existing historical relationship with Haiti.

Reading this section reminds one of just how profoundly ignorant neoliberal corporate eduction reform types are. This may be the one individual less knowledgeable than Arne Duncan or John King on education issues, which would likely mean a potential Clinton administration would tap him to head the Education Department. If Domenici is one thing, he's buzzword compliant. Every phrase and term for the reformy canon is on display in his missive to the Wall Street funded Presidential candidate who spent many years on Walmart's board of directors.

Consider technology and technology infrastructure as a part of the initial construction plan so it's not add-on later.

Hillary Clinton and Cheryl Mills' education "expert" would be remiss if he wasn't providing profit vectors for Reed Hastings, Bill Gates, and Pearson, PLC. The rest of his section for goal three is quite reminiscent of the Naomi Klein quote supra, where she discusses destroyed infrastructure being ignored in favor of school privatization happening with "speed and precision". Domenici does disaster capitalism with the best of them.

The corporatist's final section suggests wrap-around services, something that those of us in the social justice camp are certainly in favor of. However, Clinton's confidant can't seem to keep his paternalism in check. He asserts that if his plan is followed, that it will "be a catalyst for socio-political change". We discussed above how Haiti's problems are due to U.S. economic imperialism, and seemingly endless interventionism in the country's affairs. To suggest that their problems stem from a lack of education is that special kind of victim blaming that corporate reformers are so adept at. It also smacks of how neoliberal Democrats, as Thomas Frank so succinctly puts it, "see every economic problem as an educational problem".

Domenici is an elitist from the finance capital sector, and had been asked by a Secretary of State whose Wall Street ties are like no other to advise her on educational policy for Haiti. So it's no small wonder that he ends his email with:

Gotta run. See you shortly.

xo,

dd

It's no surprise that the woman who refers to children of color as "super-predators", insisting that "we have to bring them to heel", would search out such a racist education plan to inflict on a Haitian population decimated as much by the Clintons' free-trade deals as by natural disasters. Like the distinguished Professor Michelle Alexander says, Hillary Clinton uses "racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals." While Haiti was spared this horrific, colonial charter school plan hatched by Clinton and her corporate advisors, we can expect more of the same if she somehow comes to power again. We need to organize and prepare to fight against her racist penchant for neoliberal corporate education reform.

---

While not Hillary Clinton specific, Jesse Hagopian has an excellent piece entitled: Shock-Doctrine Schooling in Haiti: Neoliberalism Off the Richter Scale

AFT and NEA's Politics of Appeasement and Capitulation

At a time when parents and teachers and students have begun to make an impact on bringing an end to the education genocide that began in earnest in 2002 with NCLB, the corporate unions and their chief enabler, Diane Ravitch, have decided that their places at (or under) the Corporate Education table have to be protected, testing resistance be damned.

Evidence: AFT has joined the corporate think tank, Center for American Regress, to whole-heartedly embrace the Arne Duncan of state testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school, PLUS "grade-span" testing, which will happen within 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12.  In short, the testing scheme will have expanded if AFT and NEA have their way.

The statement can be found here, but below is a clip with a couple of comments:

We propose that in order to inform instruction, to provide parents and communities information about whether students are working at grade level or are struggling, and to allow teachers to diagnose and help their students, the federal requirement for annual statewide testing in grades 3-8 and once in high school should be maintained. 

. . . . However, we also believe it is critical to relieve the unintended yet detrimental pressure of high-stakes tests by basing federal accountability on a robust system of multiple measures. While these systems should include assessment results, states should only be required to include tests taken once per grade span—once in elementary school, once in middle school, and once in high school—in their school accountability systems. These systems should also include high school graduation rates at the high school level and other academic measures. While academic indicators should be substantial factors, states should also—as some are doing currently— include qualitative criteria such as school-quality reviews, climate and safety measures, success of students on college-preparation curricula, and/or measures of social and emotional learning. 

So look for a push by the Seligman/Duckworth crapologists who are selling the grit and self-control snake oil as "social and emotional learning."  Does it work?  Ask the Army.  Think KIPP grade cards for "performance character" as another data point. (See example below).

All accountability systems should be designed to help all students succeed and to identify and target interventions to schools with large achievement gaps or large numbers of low-performing, disadvantaged groups. The lowest-performing schools and districts should have to implement research-based, robust, and supportive interventions tailored to the needs of each school and community and be held account- able for doing so. 

In effect, then, the privatization by whatever lucrative means can be dreamed up will continue as Broad, Duncan, and Gates have planned--all with the blessing of the "resistance."

Center for American Progress (CAP) caught passing off propaganda as legitimate research, again

"In the US, teachers are paid poorly and treated even worse by having their priceless work reduced to meaningless scores on bad tests"—Joe Bower

The infamous Center for American Progress (CAP or C*AP maybe?) outdid themselves in the mendacity department this week. Not only did they try to pass off one of their usual neoliberal corporate education reform propaganda pieces as legitimate research, but they were caught using a photograph in the policy paper that contradicted their central thesis.

CAP's latest disinformation campaign is centered around attrition rates for new teachers. Chicago Teachers Union's honorable Karen Lewis posted the piece asking the venerable Jersey Jazzman about its veracity. He responded with some excellent analysis, and said "this "report" is light on methodology". He also mentioned offhand that "CAP is not a hacky group". I felt compelled to address the latter:

Robert D. Skeels: Center for American Progress (CAP) regularly does events with the fringe-right American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (e.g. http://www.aei.org/events/forward-progress-global-development-in-the-21st-century/ image used here is from that page). Why not? Their politics, particularly education policies, are nearly identical. In the past I used to always call CAP's press contact whenever they released one of these sensationally titled "studies." I'd ask them "is this a peer reviewed (juried) study or a policy paper?" Every time they'd respond the latter. I don't even waste my time asking them any more. While I have the utmost respect for the eminent Jersey Jazzman above, I would posit that CAP is a hacky group. Moreover, the only "progress" CAP is interested in is that of plutocrat profits.

This isn't the first, nor last time Schools Matter has pointed out both CAPs enormous credibility issues and right-wing leanings. For example in 2009: CAP, Chamber of Commerce, Rick Hess team up to Bash Public Schools.

CAP keeping it real… fake

That same article was circulating BATs, and Professor Mitchell Robinson had some important information to share about the young Teach for [corporate] America missionary depicted in CAP's puff piece as a teacher, in CAP's words, "staying in their job longer", "despite reports to the contrary". Robinson's observations on the above photo:

I knew something didn't smell right about this story…

The "teacher" in this picture, Gabrielle Wooden, is…wait for it…from Teach for America. She taught in Mississippi for 2 years, and is now an account manager for Insight Global in St. Louis.

So, the teacher that the Center for American Progress used to illustrate their "story" on how new teachers are staying in the classroom longer only stayed for two years before leaving the profession.

You can't make this stuff up.

And he certainly didn't make it up. Here's Teach for [corporate] America's Wooden's LinkedIn profile, including the first paragraph of prose from the corporate entity with "revenues over $1 Billion" where our hapless CAP photo model now utilizes her 5.5 weeks of Wendy Kopp approved TFA training.

Insight Global is a premier technology staffing services firm, ranked as one of the fastest growing staffing firms for 9 consecutive years and named the 4th largest IT staffing firm in America. Since our inception in 2001, we have experienced unprecedented growth within our industry. We have expanded from an Atlanta based start-up to one of the most successful IT staffing firms in America, with 39 offices and counting. Insight Global employs over 20,000 people in companies each year and currently boasts revenues over $1 Billion. We plan to continue this growth by expanding to 98 offices nationwide, entering into industries such as Finance/Accounting, Administrative and Healthcare staffing, and continuing to expand internationally.

Robinson also weighed in on CAP:

CAP is about as "progressive" or "Democratic" as Democrats for Education Reform. Not sure what is meant by "hacky", but publishing "research" that has not been peer reviewed or including any of your methodology isn't just non transparent, it's borderline unethical.

In fairness CAP, on very rare occasions, publishes actual studies by legitimate researchers. Jersey Jazzman pointed that out, and the remainder of our exchange is reproduced here.

Jersey Jazzman: I'm not a fan of all of CAP's education work, but some of it is very high-quality: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2012/09/19/38189/the-stealth-inequities-of-school-funding/

Mitchell Robinson: That's a policy analysis--the article linked at the top of the page is a puff piece. Huge difference. CAP needs to police what they publish--it's their reputation.

Robert D. Skeels: I'm actually shocked that they would publish anything by Dr. Baker, but I know his work is of the highest quality and truthfulness. I suppose occasionally publishing legitimate material lets the C*AP reactionaries feel better about their constant stream of neoliberal corporate propaganda.

I am a fan of Professor Bruce Baker, the Jersey Jazzman, and now Professor Mitchell Robinson. Special thanks to Professor Diane Ravitch for leading me to the Joe Bowers quote, and for reproducing Peter Greene's take on the above topic.

On Intellectually and Psychologically Sterilizing the Working Poor in the Name of Education and for the Benefit of Walmart

A clip from a post at HuffPo by Joel Shatzky:

. . . .A number of prominent educators, most notably Diane Ravitch, have warned the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, that the testing mania in the guise of accountability is producing bad schooling and low-quality teaching, but these criticisms seem to fall on deaf ears. At least if Duncan would publicly acknowledge "some reservations" about these tests and that their impact on schooling deserves investigation, there might be hope for positive change in the future direction of American Education.

Unfortunately, the people who will be involved in the drafting of the Common Core Standards for grades K-12 of the National Governor's Association and Council of Chief State School Officers will be, for the most part, not educators but business people who, like those from the Educational Testing Service, will be involved in planning even more testing and "Ed Tech" gimmicks as a substitute for sound educational practices. If you wish to make a comment about the future standards of education, please contact this website. The deadline for comment will be April 2nd.

I fear that this "deafness" to reason is not entirely inadvertent; although, I would like to believe that the President has the noblest of intentions, I think that the dirty little secret that most presidents have been aware of over the last forty years is that our economic system can never again produce sufficient high-quality jobs to fit the educational attainments of those who are properly educated and with them the end of the economic aspirations of future generations in this country.

Wal-mart employees do not need a college education for the work that will be available to them and the economic elite will not have to worry about competing for the good-paying jobs with young learners whose inferior, test-driven education will make it more unlikely, if not impossible, for them to climb "the educational ladder of opportunity" to which they aspire. The rungs of that ladder are rotting from a decaying economic system as schooling is being replaced for an increasing proportion of young learners with training for low-level low-paying jobs.