KIPP's Illegal and Unethical Union Busting Tactics Lead to Filing of Federal Complaint

KIPP, Inc. has received billions of state and federal dollars to fund KIPP's chain gang schools where children undergo behavioral and cultural sterilization.

Now the corporate schooling nightmare in Columbus has taken off the gloves to fight an effort by over 70 percent of its teachers to conduct a vote on whether or not to establish a union.

Another peek behind the neoliberal corporate education reform curtain

“Yes! Of course they [public schools] can, but my charter (school) friends don’t like it when I say that.” — Paul Vallas

The only nice thing about the right wing is that they don't obscure the reasons behind corporate education reform. Devoid of empathy, compassion, or even an inkling of the notion that human need should trump corporate greed, devotees of Randian "thought" are often entirely honest about motives of neoliberalism. Contrasted to leadership in the Democratic Party, who try to hide the premise underpinning neoliberal policies, the right wing is far more transparent on this issue. For example, arch-reactionary (and charter industry profiteer) Andy Smarick gave us an early peek behind the curtain in 2008 when he admitted that the lucrative charter industry deliberately discriminates against Students with Disabilities (SWD) and other special needs children in order to help bankrupt public school districts. The candor of his Wave of the Future piece in the fringe-right Education Next is as refreshing as it is chilling:

"As chartering increases its market share in a city, the district will come under growing financial pressure. The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will still require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lopsided adult-to-student ratio, the district's per-pupil costs will skyrocket." [emphasis mine]

Confronted with incontrovertible evidence that the charter industry discriminates, so-called "liberal" corporate reformers like Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, or Ben Austin never publicly admit this is true, much less admit that it is deliberate and by design. The same goes for their assault of the teaching profession. Corner reformers on their attacks on teachers and one gets treated to an array of platitudes about wanting to "elevate the profession", and so forth. One of their reform darlings, Paul Vallas, is up-front about the war on professional educators, particularly the experienced ones. Here is the text from the slide pictured above:

"I don't want the majority of my teaching staff to work more than 10 years. The cost of sustaining those individuals becomes so enormous. Between retirement and healthcare and things like that, it means that your are constantly increasing class sizes and cutting programs to sustain the cost of a veteran workforce."

Doesn't need any explanation, does it?

Another area where the right-wing is forthcoming about the true purpose of neoliberal corporate education reform is in the rationale behind "school choice." Never mind the racist origins of the phrase school choice, or how it is the key factor behind today's schools being as segregated as the times prior to the nineteen-sixties, corporately subsidized Democrats, like Ben Austin of Students Matter, are on record saying of school choice: "It would force the district to learn how to run great schools by forcing them to compete." There is absolutely no evidence that this is true. The disciples of the radical right-wing economist who first advocated "competition" and "choice" in the education sector are entirely honest about this. I was exposed to Robert Weissberg's essay by someone during the struggle against the former Gates Foundation executive, Yolie Flores's, attack on Los Angeles public schools in the guise of her vile Public School Choice giveaway program to the charter sector. The paper was quite revealing in that like the Smarick piece above, it was candid about the real reasons for school choice — which have nothing to do with improving schools. Here is an excerpt of the abstract:

"Despite ample debates over the efficacy of school choice, theorizing has lagged behind and this hinders progress. Milton Friedman, the choice movement founder, never claimed that choice would improve academics; choice was inherently valuable and parents might demand anything. Choice advocates also exaggerate the remedial power of markets and proliferating academic options seldom brings academic diligence. Given free tutoring opportunities, those lagging behind reject them, and costs will usually be too high for most low achievers. Extensive schooling options already exist, so waging political battles to add more is unnecessary."

School choice has never been about improving education, rather it has always been a specious argument used to advance the privatization of education. I suppose in a way we owe Smarick, Vallas, and Weissberg a thank you for being honest about what really drives the charter school project, and all its attendant education reforms.

The Gates Foundation's Teach Plus once again trying to undermine United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)

"Bill Gates's foundation pays educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies regarding seniority and test scores." "Two other Gates-financed groups, Educators for Excellence and Teach Plus, have helped amplify the voices of newer teachers as an alternative to the official views of the unions. Last summer, members of several such groups had a meeting at the foundation’s offices in Washington." — New York Times

Although it's being debated vigorously in United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), let's leave the discussion about UTLA online voting aside momentarily. Let's even ignore the all too transparent reasons why Teach Plus—a member of the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC)—is pushing for it, and is willing to host dinners and drinks at four different restaurants.* Instead, why don't the online voting petition wielding UTLA members ask their Teach Plus "allies" some important questions. Here are a few of my questions for these supposedly unaligned teachers to ask the Teach Plus cadre as conversation starters:

How do you feel about being associated with an organization that was intimately involved with this tragic incident?

Often the decisions about which teachers will stay and which will go are made by new principals who may be very good, but don't know the old staff. "We had several good teachers asked to leave," said Heather Gorman, a fourth-grade teacher who will be staying at Blackstone Elementary here, where 38 of 50 teachers were removed. "Including my sister who's been a special-ed teacher 22 years."

How do you feel about Teach Plus' founder, Celine Coggins', close ties with the fringe-right The Hoover Institution at Stanford University? Coggins is also on the advisory board of the dubious National Council for Teaching Quality (NCTQ) along with folks like Rick Hess, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Eric Hanushek, and Stefanie Sanford. NCTQ is funded in part by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

How do you feel about receiving the majority of your funding from Bill Gates, a plutocrat who also funds the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), The Discovery Institute (which actively advocates teaching creationism), invests in Monsanto, and for-profit prison companies?

How do you feel about your organization receiving large sums from the right-wing NewSchools Venture Fund, led by reactionary Ted Mitchell, whose role in the wholesale privatization of California schools earned him a spot in billionaire Forbes' Top Education "Disruptors" list?

While we can all agree that this language: "Teach Plus, with its teacher members, is focused on developing innovative policy solutions in the following areas: measuring teacher effectiveness; improving performance evaluation systems" is a euphemism for using widely discredited "value added methodologies," what is Teach Plus' current stance on this issue now that the American Statistical Association has just released a very important document on Value Added Methodologies?

That's probably enough questions to get the party started. I hope the free dinners are worth hearing the answers.

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* These aren't cheap restaurants either. We held our wedding reception at "El Cholo" Koreatown. It's a nice place by my humble, working class standards.

Open letter to David Welch, Eli Broad, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and their Students Matter Astroturf

"And not merely pride of intellect, but dulness of intellect. And most of all, the deceitfulness; yes, the deceitfulness of intellect" — Leo Tolstoy

To David Welch, Eli Broad, Theodore J. Boutrous, Theane Evangelis Kapur, Theodore B. Olson, Enrique A. Monagas, and Joshua S. Lipshutz:

Your Students Matter website explicitly states "When it comes to education quality, numerous studies show that teachers have the greatest impact on student achievement."

Can you please produce even one peer reviewed study from a legitimate source that backs up that assertion?

As a person closely associated with top academicians in the field of education research and policy, I am not aware of any study that makes such a brazen and strident claim.

Indeed, even Eric A. Hanushek, an economist who shares your unfortunate politics and world view, has found that teachers account for no more than 13% of student achievement. A far cry from the declaration on your website, which, in the absence of any factual basis, is mendacious at best.

Since you're billionaires, businessmen, and attorneys it's safe to assume your knowledge on issues of pedagogy and education policy is negligible. With that in mind, I'll do you a favor and clarify your grossly erroneous statement, albeit even the correction is lacking nuance and context. What some initial studies have shown is that teachers are the largest of in-school factors impacting student achievement. I refer you to the aforementioned Hanushek findings to put that into some context.

I understand that neither your law firm, nor the astroturf public relations 501(c)(3) you created to disseminate misinformation, are interested in facts. That said, I felt a moral obligation to let you know that many community members are not fooled by your propaganda.

I taught bilingual catechism, primarily at St. Teresa of Avila Church, for a dozen or so years. One of the things we had to teach young children about was the definition of a lie. This idea was simple enough for 7-9 year olds to comprehend: "when you say something that you know is untrue, it's a lie." Sadly that concept is seemingly too complex for high powered litigators like yourselves to grasp.

Advocating public education and social justice

Robert D. Skeels

Candidate for District 2, Los Angeles Unified School District

Guest Post: Fight Club Fantasies of the Corporate Education Deformers

By John Thompson

Political scientist Patrick McGuinn wrote a sympathetic account of education reform advocacy organizations (ERAOs) that gather in Washington, D.C. The ERAOs, "compare notes and plot strategy in what is (half in jest) referred to as 'fight club.'" I wonder if they would be so enthusiastic about political bloodletting if more of their members had been covered in the blood of actual students.

Viewing schools from 30,000 feet, it is easy for "reformers" to simply blame the teachers unions that they "derisively called the 'blob.'" Glorying in rhetorical violence, accountability hawks seek to destroy the members of the educational "status quo," under the assumption that disruptive innovation will somehow create better alternatives. It is easier to kick down a barn, however, than to build one. And anyone who has labored to turnaround a school that accepts every child who walks through the door knows that it is harder to improve the toughest neighborhood schools than it is to start a charter that can kick out the most challenging kids.

McGuinn is one of many political scientists who are intrigued by the "brass knuckle" school of reform that has been funded by corporate reformers and edu-philanthropists. He identifies two strands of reform, "system refiners," who embrace accountability, and "system disrupters." He then documents how "it is clear that a new club of reform organizations is itching for a fight and that politicians in both parties are increasingly willing to join them in the ring."

What McGuinn does not mention, however, is evidence that this political combat can benefit kids. McGuinn cites another political scientist, E. E. Schattschneider, who observed that "new policies create new politics." He does not mention the large body of social and cognitive science which explains why test-driven policies have largely failed. Neither does he cite the educational research which explains why it is unlikely that such testing will improve schools that serve intense concentrations of trauma and generational poverty.

For non-educators and non-students, a coalition that unites (former?) Democrats like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee with Republicans like Jeb Bush and Mitch Daniels is an object of fascination. In a man-bites-dog twist, the Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), for instance, has taken the lead in attacking teachers unions and firing teachers based on primitive metrics that may or may not say anything about their actual performance. For scholars who do not have any skin in the schooling game, it must be fun to listen to the ERAO's trash talk, and how they want a "Republican counterpart to DFER--mdash;which insiders jokingly refer to as ReeFER."

This social engineering experiment known as "reform" took off in the early 1990s, as "New Democrats" sought replacements for the old New Deal/Fair Deal safety nets. Presumably these bright and good-hearted reformers would have been equally happy to fix welfare or health care for the old fogies in those fields, but they ended up setting education practitioners straight. The era's reform de jour was the "instructional triangle" where "teachers engage with students on subject matter." So, "reformers" leaped to a quick and cheap solution. Teachers were "deputized" as the point of the spear in a battle against poverty.

Nearly a generation of new research, however, has confirmed decades of previous social science which explains why the instructional triangle is inherently incapable of turning around our toughest schools, and why socio-emotional interventions and trusting relationships are needed. We now have even more evidence how and why test-driven accountability leads to gimmicks that encourage educational malpractice, while undermining the trust and the teamwork necessary for overcoming the legacy of poverty. In fact, many or most reformers who teach in charter schools could explain the same thing. Something tells me, though, that few classroom teachers of any type make their soirees.

When I was an academic, I loved to study grand and dramatic concepts like "creative destruction." So, I see the allure of big ideas like "disruptive innovation," and I see why new activists want to show that the scholarly canon is wrong. Political tsunamis are much more thrilling to witness, even if failed cataclysms are not so enjoyable for those on the ground.

My views changed as I came to know and love students. So, I wonder about the total number of hospital visits that have been made by the attendees of ERAO get-togethers, or how many students' funerals they have attended. I wonder how many unconscious kids they have held after students were assaulted at school or succumbed to an untreated chronic condition. Similarly, if "reformers" believe that their primitive bubble-in tests are a valid measure of students' learning, I doubt they have had much experience sharing the joys of teaching and learning. Had ERAO members shared enough deep relationships with students, they would show more respect to poor kids' minds. If they are still willing to use standardized testing to defeat their adult enemies, I question whether they grasp the insults their metrics are imposing on the children who they want to help.

I suspect that most of these "reformers" are oblivious to out-of-school factors that hinder classroom performance because they have little concrete understanding of communities suffering from extreme poverty. They would have to be supermen to expend so much effort defeating their adult enemies and to still be able to produce good for schools. I also find it hard to believe that the ERAOs would revel in the "Fight Club" imagery if they had spent much time in the ring fighting the real fight.

Dr. John Thompson was an award-winning historian, lobbyist, and guerilla-gardener who became an award-winning inner city teacher after crack and gangs hit his neighborhood. He blogs at thisweekineducation.com, and huffingtonpost.com, and is writing a book on 18 years of idealistic politics in the classroom and realistic politics outside.