AI Promoters Set to Become Corporate Education Reform’s Next Golden Goose

Another Bad AI Classroom Guide by Peter Greene

Read on Substack

Jeb Bush and Reed Hastings' New TN Commissioner of Education

Though Gov. Bill Lee knows much more about welding and breeding cows than he does about governance, education, health care, etc., he has a coonhound's keen sense for picking up and following political money trails.  And having been seriously stung during his recent nosing around the "Christian" nationalists' hornet's nest at Hillsdale College, Lee is once again back on the main track to the money tree.  Having found that the MAGA trail ended at the edge of the cliff, it's obvious that Lee hopes to find a new big-dog enclosure to call home once this particular money hunt is concluded.

It's not surprising to see Bill Lee's that new Education Commissioner, Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds, was most recently serving as a VP on the Board of ExcelinEd, a corporate education political sludge tank in Florida where failed corporate education reform misleaders and their retired political tools go to be rehabbed and promoted all over again for a new generation. ExcelinEd luminaries include Mr. McChoakumchild himself, Joel Klein, along with Jeb Bush, Chris Cerf, Eric Cantor, etc.

As you would expect, Ms. Reynolds (or is that Mrs. Reynolds?) is dedicated to corporate welfare charter schools, religious indoctrination schools paid for with public vouchers, testing, grade retention, and other corporate reform tools with proven records of demoralizing, humiliating, and oppressing the poor, brown, and black.

Ms. Reynolds has a bachelor's degree in PoliSci and has recently completed a four-year program at the Pahara Institute, where founder, Kim Smith (of New Schools Venture Fund Fame), and Reed Hastings (Netflix billionaire and education oppressor) prepare a new generation of misleaders schooled in the black arts of exploiting democratic institutions to perpetuate inequality, white privilege, and the unrestrained greed of American capitalism.

So be ready for the same old ed reform clown car, with more stale air pumped into its flat tires, along with new make-up and wardrobe for the same old clowns.  Will Margaret Spellings be the last one to climb out of the back seat and will she have named her own replacement??

Too Big to Map, But I Tried

from Wrench in the Gears
March 18, 2018

I realize this is a very long post and not all that readable. I will try and break it down further in the near future, but for now consider it a work in progress; a way for me to gather a lot of divergent ideas, spheres of influence, and money trails in one place. The graphic above is my attempt to trace what is happening with Out of School Time learning where I live; how it relates to impact investing; how they are building the data infrastructure around it; and how that data will advance social impact investing in Philadelphia, a city of deep poverty. I am including selections from the map in this piece, but the interactive version can be accessed here.

________________________________________________________

I expect pressure for these flexibility measures will ramp up if elected officials manage to pass enabling legislation for Education Savings Accounts. While many education activists have framed ESAs as vouchers, they are actually considerably more dangerous. Instead of a single lump sum tuition payment, ESAs would allow payments to be made to multiple providers. This type of system aligns with the “credit-flex” model, one in which cyber-education providers and Out of School Time programs could offer a range of standards-aligned instructional opportunities. When Betsy DeVos spoke about funding students, not schools or districts in her recent interview for 60 Minutes, THAT is what she had in mind.

_________________________________________________________

It seems clear that Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are moving steadily towards a Pay for Success model of education finance. When I asked about it at the Philly OST meeting, Mr. Tucker seemed to blanch and after recovering from the shock of someone raising this issue said somewhat hesitantly, “Not yet.” The laudable goal of literacy is being used to advance a program of informal, out of school time learning and digital instruction that will deliver impact metrics at the expense of authentic education that is developmentally appropriate and acknowledges the humanity and agency of students and teachers. In putting together this enormous map, I am trying to resolve a situation I feel is akin to the blind men and the elephant. Many people involved in this machine see one small part of it. The part they see, might in fact look like it is a good thing. It is only once you step back and grasp the enormity of it that you can properly assess the situation.

_________________________________________________________

 Click here to read the entire article.

Last Night We Lay Down In The Street To Protest Closed Door Meetings About Public Education in Philadelphia

by Wrench in the Gears
January 30, 2018

Public education activists are living through an interesting moment now in Philadelphia. The School Reform Commission is being disbanded. In the coming months Mayor Jim Kenney will be appointing a school board from nominations put forth by a select panel. The process is murky, and a pattern of closed-door education policy decision-making has been established here, here, and here. Last night, the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce held a ticketed event to discuss the future of business in our schools at Girard College, an important site of struggle in the Civil Rights Movement. You had to be a Chamber of Commerce affiliate to purchase a $35 ticket for the event, which included the following language on the event website.

 

It appears the future of public education in our city is being mapped out by industry, venture capital, and well-connected non-profit and higher education partners.  The people, meanwhile, are left standing outside the gate. Last night, however, the real action WAS outside the gate as a dozen activists carried out an act of civil disobedience to contest policies of exclusion and shine a light on the mayor’s hypocrisy in casting this new school board as a step towards accountable local control. Because what does “local control” actually mean if educational policies are being directed by the hands of elite interests in Greek Temples with no teachers, students, or parents present?

On January 29, 2018 from 5-5:45pm we claimed the space in front of the entrance to the Girard College campus, carrying banners that read “Nothing About Us Without Us,” “Public Schools NOT Private Profit,” “Teachers Before Tech,” and “Our Children Are NOT Data, Human Capital, or Impact Investment Opportunities.”  This blockade compelled attendees to park along a nearby street and walk past the people to the gates where members of the Caucus of Working Educators pressed our demands for transparency in school governance into their hands. Click here for a copy of the handout we gave attendees. The video below provides a 15-minute overview of the action.

Click here to read the rest of the article
and to view two videos about the demonstration.

Education News That the Ravitch Camp Ignores

With an army of AFT and NEA social media trolls and Basecamp bloggers at her disposal, Diane Ravitch never has to go searching for education stories to re-post at her blog, along with Ravitch's characteristically wooden introductions to them.  

The Ravitch machine maintains a daily steady stream of articles critical of charters schools, standardized testing, and corporate education reforms.  If you could discern Ravitch's actual policy positions from the articles she posts, you would think that she is resistant to corporate education reform, rather than functioning as corporate education's chief enabler and corporate union propagandist.

Diane's true colors, however, are easier to discern by the education news that she would rather we not see in the big stories that she does not report.

On December 2, Alternet published an important article by New York parent, Jake Jacobs, that lays bare Hillary Clinton's complicity in advancing the corporate education agenda during the 2016 presidential campaign.  

Ravitch's own support for Clinton is well-documented, and the Alternet article is the kind of news that Diane would rather keep in the dark, for it reminds us once more of the complicity by NPE, AFT, NEA, FairTest, and the other corporate union satellites whose tight orbits around big corporate donors are well-defined and entirely predictable.  Here is a clip:

. . . .Tying campaign donations to a singular issue like expanding charter schools might in days past been seen as a prohibited quid-pro-quo. But in this cycle, Podesta, O’Leary and Tanden all busily raised campaign money from the same billionaire education reformers with whom they were also talking policy specifics.

But they did more than talk. On June 20, 2015, O'Leary sent Podesta an email revealing the campaign adopted two of Powell Jobs' suggestions, including "infusing best ideas from charter schools into our traditional public schools.” When Clinton announced this policy in a speech to teachers, however, it was the one line that drew boos.

“Donors want to hear where she stands” John Petry, a founder of both Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and Success Academy, New York’s largest network of charter schools, told the New York Times.  Petry was explicit, declaring that he and his billionaire associates would instead put money into congressional, state and local races, behind candidates who favored a “more businesslike approach” to education, and tying teacher tenure to standardized test scores.

Clinton’s advisors warned her that wealthy donors like Petry, Whitney Tilson, or Eli Broad could walk if she didn’t support charter schools. Broad would indeed threaten to withhold funding from Clinton when she criticized charter schools for excluding difficult students. John Podesta and Ann O’Leary would publicly correct Clinton, reaffirming her commitment to charters.

The revolving door was also in full swing, with top Clinton and Obama administration officials working for “non-profits” run by Powell Jobs and Tom Steyer. In the end, the influence of the various well-connected “experts” advising Clinton could be felt in an official education platform that endorsed a test-centric approach that was becoming unpopular with parents, students and educators. . . .

Gambling With Our Futures: Big Data, Global Finance and Digital Life: Article and Resources

 

from Wrench in the Gears

November 26, 2017

Through predatory public-private partnerships, global financiers are in the process of digitizing not only our education system, but many other aspects of public service delivery. This 10-minute video provides an overview of “Pay For Success” and social impact bonds, detailing how their operations hinge on intrusive and oppressive collection of data from our classrooms, homes, jails, and clinics.

By defining “success” in narrow terms suited to outcomes-based contracting, powerful investors will control how public services are delivered. Securitization of debt associated with program operations will turn our lives, including those of our children, into fodder for financial speculation. YouTube categorized this video as a comedy; perhaps based on the whimsical nature of the collages. After watching it, however, I’m confident you’ll see it’s truly a horror show. A slide share version of the video can be viewed here and a PDF of the script is available here.

I wish to express my deep appreciation to all who offered support and input on the creation of this piece, especially Dr. Tim Scott whose groundbreaking research is foundational to understanding this topic (read more here, here and here) and Mary Porter for her valuable editorial insights. The artwork was prepared with scissors and construction paper at my kitchen table with the goal of making this critical information accessible to a wider audience. My hope is that it will pique your interest and spur you to explore the linked resources that follow.

Click here for additional resources.

Will "smart" cities lead to surveilled education and social control?

from Wrench in the Gears
July 28, 2017

A growing number of metropolitan areas are being shaped by “Smart” City policies. Bloomberg Philanthropy’s “What Works Cities” aims to bring these programs to mid-size cities as well. Even in communities without explicit “smart” initiatives, “innovation” or “empowerment” zones are being proposed, often around school districts, enabling outside interests to sidestep existing legal and contractual protections under the guise of “autonomy” and “flexibility.” I hope the information I’ve pulled together will reveal how “smart city” and “learning ecosystem” interests often intersect and encourage others to think critically about similar programs in their communities. It is important to consider digital classrooms as nodes of smart cities. Classrooms touch the lives of many, and thus are logical places to begin normalizing the idea that as citizens it is our duty to generate and hand over massive quantities of personal data that will supposedly shape policy for the “public good” and manage our economy.

Smart Cities are defined by their reliance on digital technology across government functions and the use of sensor-transmitted data to regulate provision of public services. The high cost of installing such networks, monitoring data, and maintaining the systems, especially in our current climate of austerity, means municipalities will increasingly look to partner with private companies and outside investors to provide basic public services. I anticipate “smart city” policies will fuel social impact investing. There is a belief that investments in “efficient” technologies will yield future cost savings, and therefore such infrastructure projects could become significant profit centers for venture capital.

Click here to read the entire article.

Breaking News: Diane Ravitch Supports Clinton

With the main news feed in the U. S. having declared Clinton the Democratic winner on the day before primary elections in California, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, and New Jersey, the media had done its part to suppress the vote in the last six states in the primary cycle.

Glenn Greenwald's headline read,

Perfect End to Democratic Primary: Anonymous Superdelegates Declare Winner Through Media

The use of super-delegates (SDs), as they are called, represent the most undemocratic aspect of the Democratic Party.  In fact, six months before the first Dem primary, Clinton had already taken an insurmountable lead in the delegate count, with 440 pledging support for Hillary a half year before the first ballot was cast.  In fact, Clinton could have narrowly lost every state primary and still have won the delegate battle.  

Sanders will continue the fight to the Convention in July, however, hoping to convince enough SDs to vote with the majority of citizens of their states.  Fat chance. 

Each of the corporate education unions, the NEA and AFT, has an SD--Presidents Lily and Randi.  Elites among elites, they have pledged for Clinton, too.

And now that the suspense is over, it has taken Diane Ravitch several seconds to compose herself enough to declare what no one would have ever doubted--that she is, indeed, a Clinton supporter.

How could it be otherwise:

Readers will say that she is too close to the people who are promoting charters, high-stakes testing, and the destructive policies of the Bush-Obama administrations. That is true. I have fought with all my strength against these terrible policies. I will continue to do so, with redoubled effort. I will do my best to get a one-on-one meeting with Hillary Clinton and to convey what we are fighting for: the improvement of public schools, not their privatization or monetization. The strengthening of the teaching profession, not its elimination. We want for all children what we want for our own. 

Think of it--a meeting with Hillary.  Goosebumps here!  Destructive policies, be gone!

Anticipating the joyous news of Clinton's anointing, Ravitch's NPE has sprung into full battle rhetoric.  They have devised a petition, yes, a petition, to ask the Democratic Party, hold on, to include something in the platform! about education.  Excuse me, I am a little beside myself with excitement.   

Surely, now we will see the torches lit and the pitchforks sharpened to once and for all demand the end of segregated schools, charter schools and school vouchers, and the use of racist and classist standardized tests to label the poor and the disabled. 

But no, something has happened.  The words have taken the shape of Hillary's amorphous corporatism, thus allowing anyone to read anything they want into anything she has said or is likely to say.  Truly masterful word-smithing, NPE.  You are to be congratulated in not failing, once again, to disappoint.

And so, to the petition:

 . . . the platform of the Democratic Party should:

• Require that party candidates support public education in every community and commit to ensuring that every public school has the resources it needs for the children it serves.
• Expect candidates to oppose the oversized role of philanthropic organizations and hedge fund managers in promoting school policies.
• Expect candidates to clearly articulate their support and preference for democratically governed public schools that serve all of the children in their communities.

Randi Weingarten: Sleight of Hand Artist - Part 2

This article was originally posted on Schools Matter on April 22nd. Due to formatting problems some may have found it difficult to read. It is therefore being reposted due to its importance.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is one of the oldest and most influential of the pro-business right-wing think tanks. It promotes the advancement of free enterprise capitalism, and has been extremely successful in placing its people in influential governmental positions, particularly in the Bush Administration. AEI has been described as one of the country's main bastions of neoconservatism. – Right Wing Watch / People for the American Way

Part 1 of this article noted that at a conference of the American Enterprise Institute held on February 5^th, 2015, Randi Weingarten was praised by researchers for corporate education reformers for her collaboration in developing a teacher evaluation system based on standardized tests as part of the Gates Foundation’s “teacher quality” agenda. Part 1 concluded by pointing out that Randi Weingarten’s public labor persona differs from what goes on behind the scenes in her collaboration with corporate education reformers.

A clear picture of Ms. Weingarten’s thinking behind her collaboration with AEI can be seen in a one-hour forum held with AEI researchers on June 18, 2014. For an hour she spoke on “Unions in public education: Problem or solution?” Her speech came three months after the AFT quietly announced that it would no longer take money from The Gates Foundation.

At this forum she spoke candidly to an AEI audience whose members want to abolish unions or turn them into company unions that are part of management. Weingarten’s sleight of hand method can be seen in her answer to a question by the AEI moderator Frederick Hess who asks Ms. Weingarten (42:07 minutes into the video):

"Early last month the New York Post reported that your successor at the UFT, Michael Mulgrew, had told a gathering of the UFT leadership, “We’re at war with the reformers. Their ideas will absolutely destroy, forget about public education, they will destroy education in our country.” He said of slow walking efforts on evaluation, “It was a strategy to gum up the works because we knew what their lawyers were trying to do.”  So curious, when these things get out, how does that speak to this the issue of cooperation, or trust or finding common ground?”

Ms. Weingarten’s reply:

"So I think, number one, let me just say that whatever Michael said was said in the middle of a private union meeting. Now, I know the UFT, you have 3000 people in the room, probably NSA is taping every other word, nothing is private, right? But if you have what is set as a union meeting, just like if you had a board meeting that is a confidential board meeting, you would not expect that anybody would actually use whatever was said in that meeting."

If it is not to curry favor with her corporate audience, why would the President of a national teachers union respond in such a way to an AEI audience about a statement from a union official warning that public education is under attack? And to top it off, she says no one would expect that “anyone would actually use what was said in that meeting.” In other words, what union leaders affiliated with Ms. Weingarten say at a union meeting should not really be taken seriously - it is just red meat to appease the huddled rank and file. This reveals her sleight of hand method – disrespect for the interests of teachers and public schools and respect for corporate education reform interests – or is her sleight of hand to say what she thinks the AEI audience will want to hear? It can’t be both!

In an age of constant verbal spin and obfuscation, the only way we can get at the truth of people's intentions is by observing and remembering their actions. In the case of Weingarten, she describes to the AEI audience the actions of the AFT leadership that show her allegiance lies with corporate education reform.

Immediately after the above exchange, Weingarten says the statements must be seen in the context of “the war” that was going on in New York City with relentless attacks on teachers by corporate education reformers. This is immediately followed by praise for the recent UFT contract that included agreeing to a career ladder program and state law waivers by schools, along with other concessions.

The first part of the AEI meeting shows Randi Weingarten speaking prepared remarks explaining the AFT to this conservative audience. She informed the audience of three programs that the AFT is involved with. (6:51) In introducing each one, she had a hand vote from the audience to see who knew about the program, and to scold the members of the audience who were not aware of the program. If this was Ms. Weingarten’s method of teaching during her short time as a teacher, this shaming the students is one of the worst methods of instruction. In this case, she was not so much interested in the audience being informed about the particular program as she was interested in demonstrating how the AFT is collaborating with corporate education reform.

The first program (6:58) Weingarten described was the public-private partnerships the AFT is creating in McDowell County, West Virginia, one of West Virginia’s poorest counties. Weingarten said this corporate/labor model is to be expanded to all counties in West Virginia and Mayor deBlasio wants to bring it to New York to forty schools. Not mentioned at this forum, is the collaboration with Teach for America to build a Teacher Village for low income housing for low-income teachers in McDowell County.

The second program (8:40) Weingarten mentions is “one of the fastest growing online education companies in the United States of America called Share My Lesson” created by the AFT. This has thousands of lessons, including “250,000 lessons created by the AFT” and (not mentioned at the forum) The Gates Foundation Innovation Fund, which “are aligned to the Common Core.” Since 2012, AFT’s Share My Lesson has been a collaboration with the United Kingdom digital education company TES Global.

The third program (10:21) is a partnership under the Clinton Global Initiative with other unions to invest $10 billion of public employee pension funds “in a sound fiduciary way to fix crumbling infrastructure, create jobs, and deliver solid returns.” She claims that this has created 30,000 jobs. No mention of wages, benefits, union rights, etc. Weingarten does not mention what gives her the authority to use the pension funds of her members in this risky way.

In her conversation with the AEI’s Frederick Hess, he asked (47:14) about the proposal at that time by 

The Gates Foundation of a two-year moratorium on the consequences of Common Core assessments. He noted this is what Weingarten had proposed in 2013. He also noted that Weingarten in June, 2010 said Common Core “is essential building blocks for a better educational system”, but in 2012 she said the implementation was far worse than the way Obamacare was implemented. He asked her position on the Common Core. After speaking of what she learned in her six years of teaching Weingarten replied (48:05):

"If you think about all those statements, they’re pretty consistent. I’m a big believer in it and I am for the following reasons. I was a lawyer before I was a teacher so I had the opportunity to learn and practice the Socratic method.  I was also a litigator. That tool actually helped me more than virtually any other tool that I had for teacher prep in teaching my kids Civics and the Bill of Rights. When I look at the original standards in the Common Core: the going for deeper knowledge and for applying facts, and not just knowing things, but trying to come up with problem solving and critical thinking, what it took me back to was my teaching at Clara Barton High School …"

After a long monologue about her teaching, Hess interrupted her and asked why in 2013 was she upset by the implementation of Common Core.  She then went on for ten minutes explaining how the Common Core could be better implemented.

She concluded that (54:08): “In some ways the Business Roundtable, The Gates Foundation, the Learning First Alliance; have all said a year later, “Wait a second, if you really want this to work, you got to do, not only the adjustments, but you have to give people the time to actually learn what we’re saying is an important new strategy for deeper learning for children.”

At the beginning of her remarks (4:40), Randi Weingarten told the AEI audience that she engages with AEI because she believes in vigorous debate. As an example (6:20) she said, “We will have a real share of vigorous debate at the our (AFT) Convention this summer. I have promised that we are going to have an hour debate on the Common Core on the floor of our Convention. In New York… we call debate conversation.” The AFT Convention was held one month after Weingarten’s conversation with AEI.

George Schmidt of Chicago’s Substance News documented the “conversation” that happened at the AFT Convention over Common Core: 

It became apparent that it wasn’t going to be a debate about what’s best for the students, but what UFT -- and more broadly the leadership, which has always been centered in New York -- wanted. These “thugs” were not teachers, delegates noted. As the days of struggle unfolded, more and more delegates noted that they were bullies sent to block any attempt by the CTU to have an honest open debate about issues including Common Core, high stakes testing and special education in the context of "education reform" in 2014. The Educational Issues committee managed to shove through every resolution, including one supporting common core state standards for early childhood -- which is Pre-K – 3rd. The only resolution they did not push forward was anti-testing special education which was sent back to the executive council after a maneuver. It appeared to this reporter that the UFT was more interested in knocking down CTU resolutions than listening to the arguments and applying that information to the students they serve.

Also see The UFT’s Michael Mulgrew gets punchy. But only towards union members in the hall. | Fred Klonsky’s blog – August 7, 2014

Even Weingarten allies were outraged at how the AFT leadership stifled debate on the Common Core. After the Convention, Diane Ravitch commented:

Stephen Sawchuck did a good job reporting the heated debate about the Common Core standards at the AFT convention. The Chicago Teachers Union wanted to dump them. The head of the New York City United Federation of Teachers mocked the critics of the standards. One union official said that the critics represented the Tea Party. That’s pretty insulting to the Chicago Teachers Union and one-third of the AFT delegates, as well as people like Anthony Cody, Carol Burris, and me.

For a full description of the dispute over Common Core at the AFT Convention see Stephen Sawchuck’s column in Education Week AFT Common-Core Resolution Calls for Teacher Implementation.

To paraphrase Randi Weingarten’s questioning of her AEI audience about their knowledge of the collaboration of the AFT leadership with corporate education reform, who in the membership of the AFT and the general public knows about the depth of the collaboration of the AFT leadership with corporate education reform? Why don’t you know this?

Also see:

Randi Weingarten: Sleight of Hand Artist – Part 1
Schools Matter – April 19, 2015

Which Side Are You On?
Defend Public Education – July 14, 2014

Understanding Why the TURN Cancer Has to Be Cut Out of NEA and AFT
Chalkface - July 18, 2014

Ken Derstine: Randi Weingarten: Sleight of Hand Artist - Part 2 - + Commentary - Collaboration Roots Go Back to Shanker
Ed Notes Online - April 23, 2015

Demonizing Teachers, Privatizing Schools: The Big Lies and Big Plans Behind the Atlanta School Cheating Scandal
The Black Agenda Report - April 22, 2015

Randi, Lily, and Their Common Core Fidelity
Mercedes Schneider @ deutch29 - April 27, 2015 

Corinthian Colleges Secretly Funded D.C. Think Tanks, Dark Money Election Efforts
The Intercept - May 4, 2015

"Another gainful employment regulation opponent, the American Enterprise Institute, is listed as a Corinthian creditor. AEI scholars have repeatedly attacked rules, calling them as example of the Obama administration's "crusade against for-profit colleges." Last October Andrew Kelly, AEI's resident scholar on higher education education reform, specifically defended Corinthian and criticized the "Obama administration's bloodlust for such schools." 

Eli Broad funded United Way Greater Los Angeles now also serving CCSA's political arm

"By what logic does United Way engage in an activity that is shunned by all the other charities?" — Professor Ralph E. Shaffer

United Way Greater Los Angeles' (UWGLA) role as a tax deductible lobbying and public relations firm for plutocrats like Eli Broad, Bill Gates, Carrie Walton Penner, and Casey Wasserman is expanding. They are now apparently functioning as adjunct to the deep pocketed California Charter School Association (CCSA). To wit, compare this email from the "non-partisan charity" UWGLA to that of the CCSA trade association's 501c4 wing, CCSA Advocates:

Notice any similarities?

In a discussion with several other social justice activists, we were trying to decide why UWGLA's well paid political consultants didn't have the good sense to at least change the precise order of the candidates that they and their fellow special interest group, the CCSA, feature on their propaganda pieces. UWGLA could argue, unconvincingly, that they put the names in the same order as candidates received votes in the primary election. However, it's far more likely that they used CCSA's billionaire backed candidates' existing information and then tacked on the other candidate information on as a grudging afterthought.

The first clue that UWGLA has absolutely no respect for the candidates outside of the CCSA privatization pushers like Galatzan and Rodriguez? They misspelled the Honorable Bennett Kayser's name as "BENNET KAYSER" in every occurrence of both the image and text of the communication they sent out. This is the seated school board member, and UWGLA has a mind-blowing multi-million dollar budget, but they get everything else correct except the school board member's name? Moreover, notice how all of the head shots are proportional, but they use the old political trick of making one candidate look abnormal by using a disproportional photo crop. A nasty little Fox News style play probably drawn up by CCSA's arch-reactionary political director Carlos Marquez.

We frequently look to UWGLA's plutocrat funding sources and the neoliberal pay-to-advocate paradigm that UWGLA and other members of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) operate under. Nothing is more telling of UWGLA's complete allegiance to the neoliberal corporate education reform agenda than this 2013 photo of privatizer Monica Garcia, the disgraced John Deasy, millionaire Casey Wasserman, billionaire Eli Broad, and UWGLA's Elise Buik. What we typically don't look at is the staff members UWGLA employs to promulgate their donors' agenda.

UWGLA's current Education Program Officer is Elmer G. Roldan. Prior to his UWGLA stint, Roldan worked for the Camino Nuevo Corporate Charter Chain—known for its unelected board of bankers, finance capitalists, and hedge fund managers. Before cashing in on the charter industry, Roldan worked for former Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board member Monica Garcia, who has ties to the shadowy Gülenist cult. He also worked for the anti-public education NPIC Community Coalition. It's a safe bet that Roldan's whole two years of community college prepared him to deal with the broad range of topics on education policy and pedagogy.

Until recently (namely when they were exposed for their role in UWGLA's massive public deception campaign) Roldan worked alongside Ryan Smith and Jason Mandell. Before joining UWGLA, Smith worked for the notorious Green Dot Corporate Charter Chain and the so-called Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS) with Marshall Tuck (whose wife, Mae Tuck, also works at UWGLA). After the UWGLA astroturf incident, Smith went to work for the reactionary EdTrust. Mandell worked with fellow poverty pimp Yolie Flores at the The Gates Foundation funded Communities for Teaching Excellence. Mandell now works for the California Charter Schools Association, although that was sort of his function when his paychecks read UWGLA as well.

The candidate forums run by UWGLA mentioned in the mailer were addressed in Statement on Gates and Broad Foundation funded United Way Greater Los Angeles running LAUSD forums. Candidates opposing the CCSA funded ones had myriad complaints about the heavy handed manner in which the UWGLA treated them durring the forums. LAUSD District 3 candidate Carl J. Petersen submitted the following account. His complaints have been corroborated by other District 3 candidates, who wished to remain anonymous.

The first thing that hit me upon entering the venue was Ms. Galatzan had set up a table in the courtyard with her election paraphernalia, including yard signs. This clearly broke the rules which stated that only one piece of literature could be distributed and this would be at a table that the United Way would set up for all of the participants. Elizabeth Badger and I both immediately complained to the person in charge (I believe that his name was Elmer), who confirmed that Ms. Galatzan had broken the rules and promised that it would be taken care of. When the signs remained up I filed another complaint and was again assured that the signs would be taken down. Once on stage, the moderator announced a rule that each candidate was allowed one sign in the courtyard. The fact that this was a rule change was not conveyed to the audience.

The next inconsistency with the rules occurred during the debate itself. After a round that did not go well for Ms. Galatzan (I believe the subject was iPads), the moderator decided to break format and allowed Ms. Galatzan to go out of turn to defend herself. The moderator felt that this was fair because we had all attacked the incumbent.

To me, the strangest part of the night happened when I went to collect my unused literature. I had provided 200 flyers to be distributed at the appointed table, but the actual turnout was much less. I think the estimated attendance was 100 people. My flyers must have been in great demand because none were left and the volunteers said that they had not seen them. I wish I knew when in the evening they had been removed.

I think that it is telling that the United Way was the only candidate forum that Ms. Galatzan attended during the entire campaign. She skipped the second debate, a meet and greet at the Northridge West Neighborhood Council and a final Q&A at the Encino Neighborhood Council. I would like to know what assurances the United Way provided her that made her feel their event was a safe one for her.

Eli Broad and Carrie Walton Penner will stop at nothing to turn the entire public education system over to the private sector, where corruption and greed rule supreme. UWGLA's ability to remain a tax exempt organization is testament to how much power and influence the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate have.

---

Some of United Way of Greater Los Angeles and United Way Worldwide's other "education" related activities:

• Statement on Gates and Broad Foundation funded United Way Greater Los Angeles running LAUSD forums
• K12NN: United Way's Corporate NPIC Astroturf was thick in front of LAUSD last Tuesday
• United Way' Elise Buik's Myopic One Percent Policies
• Occupy United Way! Group founded and manifesto published
• United Way to market Scholastic's Reading Oasis (NASDAQ-SCHL)

* Emperor Broad is quoted in the New York Times

United Way to market Scholastic's Reading Oasis (NASDAQ-SCHL)

"By what logic does United Way engage in an activity that is shunned by all the other charities?" — Professor Ralph E. Shaffer

If anyone is interested, I can forward them the press release email for this. United Way is essentially marketing Scholastic Corporation products through their "Club Connect Reading Oasis" project (www.unitedwayclubconnect.org). Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL) was noticeably excited by the announcement, and they claim they generate approximately $2 billion in annual revenues. I wonder if United Way Greater Los Angeles' Elise Buik will invite President and CEO of Scholastic, Dick Robinson, to join her at her next "education" round-table with Eli Broad, Casey Wasserman, and the discredited John Deasy?

Left to right: Monica Garcia, the disgraced John Deasy, Casey Wasserman, billionaire Eli Broad, and Elise Buik. Five of the greatest enemies to public education in Los Angeles under the aegis of the United Way Greater Los Angeles.

The above Scholastic deal was struck in conjunction with United Way Worldwide. Not all United Way organizations are active participants in the neoliberal corporate education reform project. On the other hand, some of them serve as a tax deductible public relations and lobbying firms for the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate. The most egregious offender is United Way Greater Los Angeles (UWGLA). Some of UWGLA's other "education" related activities:

• Statement on Gates and Broad Foundation funded United Way Greater Los Angeles running LAUSD forums
• K12NN: United Way's Corporate NPIC Astroturf was thick in front of LAUSD last Tuesday
• United Way' Elise Buik's Myopic One Percent Policies
• Occupy United Way! Group founded and manifesto published

Statement on Gates and Broad Foundation funded United Way Greater Los Angeles running LAUSD forums

"Philanthropy is not progressive and never has been."— Tiffany Lethabo King and Ewuare Osayande

"The United Way of LA is chief enforcer of Eli Broad’s corporate takeover of public Ed agenda. He’s the reason why I created the term “weaponized philanthropy” to describe how lefty-liberal groups in this city are under his sway. There’s NO good reason on earth the ACLU or LGBT Youth groups would support John Deasy except for the fact that they get money from UWGLA and much of that money comes from Broad."—Cynthia Liu, PhD

Left to right: Monica Garcia, the disgraced John Deasy, Casey Wasserman, billionaire Eli Broad, and Elise Buik. Five of the greatest enemies to public education in Los Angeles under the aegis of the United Way Greater Los Angeles.

The Nonprofit Industrial Complex in Los Angeles are using their unlimited resources to sway our schoolboard elections again. Here's a tweet linking to the Occupy United Way page that first pointed out the issue.

Statement on @gatesfoundation & @BroadFoundation funded @LAUnitedWay running #LAUSD forums https://t.co/HmsVewlJzQ pic.twitter.com/rpCUti4bE7

— RDSkeels4Schoolboard (@RDSkeels4LAUSD) January 22, 2015

My slightly edited statement from that page.

With the possible exceptions of Public Counsel and CHIRLA, could the United Way of Greater Los Angeles (UWGLA) have gathered a more vile coalition of revenue hungry corporate charter chains and billionaire foundation funded Nonprofit Industrial Complex (‎NPIC) members? KIPP, Coro, Eli Broad's Dan Chang's GPS:LA, E4E, ICS, and more. It's a rogues gallery of organizations on the dole of the Koch's, Bloomberg's, Broad's, Gates', and Walton Family Foundations. How is it that these organizations with the clear-cut political agendas of their funders are allowed to host forums like this?

Just in case there's any doubt that this entire event has been orchestrated by the UWGLA, here's the text from the registration form. See the email address?

Please fill out this brief form to let us know you will attend a Candidate Forum.

Childcare, translation, refreshments, voter registration and ballot information will be provided free of cost.

For more information and media inquires, contact Sara Mooney at smooney@unitedwayla.org or 213-808-6290

UWGLA runs these events so that they have complete control over what questions get asked, the tone and content of the conversations, the composition of audience, etc. These so-called forums end up being informercials for their favored (read charter school industry connected) candidates, and more importantly, their neoliberal corporate education reform agenda. Remember, UWGLA is the same organization that pays for fake "research" papers from less-than-credible fellow neoliberal NPIC like National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). There is no depth too low for the UWGLA to plumb, evidenced by their now infamous April 2014 astroturf stunt.

United Way Greater Los Angeles is the best public relations firm that Eli Broad has ever hired.

Value-Added Modeling (VAM) is pseudoscience, but profitable pseudosciences persist

"While value-added models are intended estimate teacher effects on student achievement growth, they fail to do so in any accurate or precise way. — Professor Bruce Baker"

Back in early April I penned a piece for K12NN on The American Statistical Association's (ASA) paper on Value Added Methodologies [1]. In it I asserted that the "document provides strong support to those who oppose this wrongheaded use of statistics to make high stakes decisions effecting the lives of students, educators, and our school communities." This week I noticed a trackback to a reprint of the article. What caught my eye was the title, which seemingly was entirely out of keeping with the spirit of the ASA's stance: Advocating for a robust value-added implementation.

I read through the VAM cheerleading piece and was gobsmacked by the deliberate manipulation of the ASA document's tenor and tone. This VAM apologetic read less like a legitimate blog posting and more like a corporate press release. Without doing much more research, I typed the following comments:

This quotation from the ASA document sums up the entire issue best: "The majority of the variation in test scores is attributable to factors outside of the teacher’s control". To, as the author above has, try and frame ASA's position as supportive of VAM phrenology takes mendaciousness to breathtaking heights. Rather than considering students as empty receptacles for "knowledge" deposited by a method that can be "measured," perhaps we can start talking about students as agents in their own pedagogical experiences—something that doesn't exist in the current regime of the profitable testing-industrial-complex.

The author's response displayed the same blatant avoidance of issues as the original piece. In fact, it stated some of the long discredited claims of the VAM camp, including Professor Bruce Baker's favorite trope about how "more sophisticated" VAMs address the issues people have with VAMs.

Thanks for your comment. The ASA statement seems to discuss primary drivers of student test scores, not student growth. It is well known that there is a strong relationship between students’ achievement (or test scores) and their socioeconomic/demographic background. However, there is typically little or no relationship between students’ growth and their socioeconomic/demographic background.

Another way to see this is that the most important factor of “current” test scores is prior tests scores and, once enough prior test scores are included in the model, the socioeconomic/demographic factors become relatively small or even non-significant, despite enormous sample sizes.

That said and to your concern about considering students in the context of their own experiences, more sophisticated value-added/growth models, like EVAAS, can follow the progress of individual students over time, so that each student serves as his or her own control.

Aside from being patently wrong, the whole thing smacked of being boilerplate text written in the bowels of a corporate public relations department. That's when I decided to look into this dubious Jennifer Facciolini was and who she wrote for. I should have done that in the first place.

As of 2012, Statistical Analysis System (SAS) Institute Inc., is one of the largest privately owned software companies in the world with revenue $3.02 billion USD (2013). They are the developers of the wildly inaccurate, but highly profitable Education Value-Added Assessment System, (AKA SAS EVAAS) — a VAM implementation used in many districts. Money chasing SAS is all about big fish government contracts, to wit an excerpt from a recent Businessweek piece:

SAS Institute Inc. won a $6,479,583.96 federal contract from the Defense Information Systems Agency, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, for Statistical Analysis System software licenses and support renewal.

When a huge firm like SAS pulling down big dollar defense contracts makes the education "market" their priority, you can believe that they won't let things like facts and evidence discrediting VAM get in the way of them selling and supporting their EVAAS phrenology kit to any and all districts infected by the neoliberal corporate reform virus.

Hiring several white, well educated former-teachers like Nadja Young and Jennifer Facciolini to shill for your product is a smart public relations investment for the VAM behemoth. Given that they were teachers in the south, the chances are that they are making a great deal more money at SAS by simply selling out their former profession to corporate interests. Whether the boilerplate prose in their gushing blog posts is written by them or not isn't all that important. What's important is the appearance that professional teachers actually might think that phrenology and VAM are legitimate sciences. I can only hope that that the prose in these mindless corporate posts isn't written by these former teachers. Students should never be exposed to such nonsensical drivel. A selection of some of their titles should serve to numb the mind of any sentient being:

• Data-driven education books make great holiday gifts for educators. Yes, really.
• "March madness" of student course enrollment gets assist from value-added assessment
• Beyond value-added: Teachers need diagnostic data to improve their practice
• Student growth measures can be the bridge to new assessments

I'll spare readers further torment. As the preponderance of evidence against VAM pseudoscience like the watershed ASA paper grows, expect profit hungry firms like SAS to keep doubling down on the duplicity and deception. Having an army of former teachers shilling for your defective product is a small expense compared to losing those highly profitable contracts with districts.

---

NOTES

[1] In its various permutations we've seen the "M" in VAM stand for Modeling, Measures, Methodologies, and others. The only honest word for last member of the acronym would be "Mendaciousness," since phrenology by any other name is…