Bernstein writes: "The American Public School system is dying a slow death.
And many leading educators feel it is being poisoned by a drumbeat toward
privatization - marketed as choice - along with a regimen of useless,
costly, and sometimes racist testing programs that cater to a privileged
class. Among the most high profile educators and educational researchers
raising her voice on the issue is Diane Ravitch, a research professor in
education at New York University."
Elementary school. (photo: AP)
So Many Children Left Behind: An Interview With Educational Reformer Diane
Ravitch
By Dennis J. Bernstein, Reader Supported News
23 March 16
An interview with author and noted educational reformer Diane Ravitch
The American Public School system is dying a slow death. And many leading
educators feel it is being poisoned by a drumbeat toward privatization
marketed as choice along with a regimen of useless, costly, and sometimes
racist testing programs that cater to a privileged class. Indeed, the battle
cry for the last two administrations is choice/charter schools and
privatization.
Among the most high profile educators and educational researchers raising
her voice on the issue is Diane Ravitch, a research professor in education
at New York University. Ravitch served as the Assistant Secretary of
Education and as counselor to the Secretary of Education from 1991 to 1993.
She is the author of ten books, including The Death and Life of the Great
American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.
In a recent interview, Secretary Ravitch expressed deep concern regarding
the current presidential campaigns profound lack of attention to the
failing K-12 public school system and the abject failure of the last two
administrations attempts to mitigate the failures through an expanded
program of privatization and a regime of costly and useless testing.
For the past 15 years, the nations public schools have been victims of the
failed federal policies of the Bush and Obama administrations, said
Ravitch. 15 years ago, Congress passed George W. Bushs No Child Left
Behind law, which required that every child in every year from 3rd grade to
8th grade had to be tested. Theres no other country in the world that tests
every child every year. Its just on overload. No Child Left Behind was
supposed to close the achievement gaps, raise the graduation rates, and do
all kinds of wonderful things. But none of the things it was supposed to do
came true. So it was ... it became a toxic brand.
Ravitch and other critics of testing and choice assumed that, since the
policy had failed so measurably under Bush Two, when Obama took the reins of
power he would transform the policy. But according to Ravitch, the Obama
administration put No Child Left Behind on steroids, and did so with the
appointment of Arne Duncan, a charter school cheerleader, as Secretary of
Education. Duncan pressed on with the policies of No Child Left Behind and
expanded them under a new name, Race to the Top. According to Ravitch, it
became a race to the bottom.
When Obama ran for office many people, particularly educators thought he
was going to change this policy, because it obviously failed, said Ravitch.
Schools were being closed around the country based on No Child Left Behind.
Almost all the schools that are closed are schools in poor communities. They
are schools where black and brown children go, especially poor kids. Then
Obama came in, brought in Arne Duncan as the Secretary of Education, and
doubled down on No Child Left Behind. They announced a program called Race
to the Top. And that turned out to be even more reliant on standardized
testing than No Child Left Behind. At some point you have to realize the
testing has driven education out of a classroom. Kids are spending hours and
hours, weeks and months, preparing to take the test, because the tests are
so consequential. Your school might be closed, the teachers might be fired,
and the principal might be fired if the test scores dont go up every year.
So this is where we are. Its been disastrous, and ... none of the
candidates talk about education much. So Republicans want more of the same,
and the Democrats hardly mention it at all.
Dennis Bernstein: Welcome. Thank you for joining, Secretary Ravitch.
Diane Ravitch: Good to be with you.
DB: Alright, lets talk, lets go a little bit deeper with the impact of
this kind of testing regime that has dominated K-12 for the past 15 years.
There are many reverberations, and several of them are quite disturbing.
Ravitch: Well, yeah. And the main thing that it does is to cement social
class and racial differences, because the one thing that testing does very
accurately is that it correlates with family income. The kids who come from
advantaged families, where they travel, they have library cards, they read
to the kids at night, they have all these advantages
these kids do best on
standardized testing. This is not just in the United States, its all over
the world. The haves get the high test scores, the have-nots get the low
test scores. So were taking this measure, and saying youre a good student
or a bad student, you failed, when whats being measured more than anything
else is family income.
The impact that its had on teaching has been horrendous. I have a blog
thats had almost 26 million pages at this point, and most of my readers are
teachers. And theres not a day that goes by without some teacher saying, I
cant stand it anymore. All I do is administer tests. I give pre-tests, I
give post-tests, I give interim assessments. This is what education has
turned into. And this doesnt help kids. They dont get better because the
stakes are made higher. They dont get smarter, if you raise the bar. I
mean, the Obamas administrations gift to America was the Common Core
Standards and theyve been a disaster everywhere, because the tests
associated with the Common Core Standards were made so hard that kids in
every state, the majority of the kids, have failed. And if you were
teaching, as I know you once did, and most of your kids failed the test,
they would say, Well, what kind of test did you give? You have to give a
test that the kids have some chance of passing. Not that you dumb the test
down, but you have to know if its a test for 4th grade, it has to be for
4th grade level. You dont give a 6th grade test to 4th graders. And thats
in effect what weve been doing all over the country because of Common Core.
DB: Whats the financial cost of testing? And does it take away from, for
instance, all the possibilities for art and music programs? Does the money
go to testing programs?
Ravitch: Well, whats happened is that the test scores matter more than
anything else in American education today, and thats been true for the past
15 years. And so more and more time is devoted to testing, and less time,
fewer resources are available for art or for music, or almost anything. Most
states in this country have been defunding education, dis-investing in
education. I think thats because most of the governors now are very, very
conservative Republicans. And they dont want to invest in education. They
would rather privatize, and have vouchers, and have charters, and let people
be paid to homeschool their children. Things of that kind. They dont want
to invest in public education.
So public education is being hit by a tsunami. The tsunami is, first of all,
this pressure to get higher scores every year, and the budget cuts which
give you fewer resources and larger class size. And the emphasis on testing
also means you lose your art teacher, you lose your music teacher, you lose
your social worker. There are cities like Philadelphia that are virtually
bankrupt. And the answers from the government, state government, has been
Well, lets have more charters. And then the charters start pulling money
away from the public school system, and all over this country we have,
except in the affluent communities, we have public schools going into a tail
spin because of underinvestment and because the charter schools are sucking
away, luring away, the kids who are likeliest to succeed, and pushing out
the kids who have special needs, the kids with disabilities, and the kids
who dont speak English. And that way the public schools are overburdened
with the most expensive children to educate.
DB: Lets just talk a little more about the other side of the destruction of
the public school system, and thats the so-called privatization, the
charter schools. Now it was interesting, and you point this out in your
recent writing, that Bernie Sanders, when he was asked about charter
schools, said, Well, I only like the public charter schools. The point is
that it shows his incredible ignorance, and not that I dont have a great
deal of respect for him, but in that context there really arent any public
charter schools, right? By the very nature of it.
Ravitch: Thats correct, I mean, all charter schools ... the definition of a
charter school is that its funded by the public. So there is no such thing
as a private charter school. So when he says hes in favor of public charter
schools, hes not really ... he hasnt been briefed adequately, which I find
surprising considering he sits on the Senate committee in charge of
education.
But even the schools that operate for-profit, and by the way thats
something brand new in American education
Up until recently we never had
for-profit public schools. This is part of the charter movement, though
there are now for-profit charters that get public money. And a certain
percentage of that money is siphoned off to enrich the owners of the school.
Thats part of the charter movement. Now that is a public charter school.
Thats what they call themselves. In fact, the national organization for
charters is called the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. So the
charter movement says, again and again, that they are public schools.
The problem is that theyre really not public schools, and I always think
that they are private schools getting public money, because first of all
they can choose their students, even if they have a lottery. They can push
out the kids they dont want, and they end up with a very small number of
kids with disabilities, with virtually no kids with severe disabilities, and
also with very small numbers of English language learners.
They have the ability to set their own discipline rules, so they can say,
well if your shift wasnt tucked in, youre suspended. And they have very
high suspension rates, many of them do. Theres this genre of charter
schools called No Excuses, and the No Excuses schools will suspend kids for
a million different reasons. Theyre supposed to sit quietly, hands folded,
walk in the hallway in a straight line, never speak unless spoken to, etc.,
etc. For some reason theres something about our day and age, and our
culture, where particularly white people admire that black children are
being beaten into obedience. Not physically beaten, but emotionally pushed
into this very, very conformist behavior.
But the charter movement contains for-profit, it contains corporate charter
chains and it also, within the charter sector, theres a very large chain,
its either the largest or the second largest that is run by foreign
nationals. These are called the Gulen Schools, and they are associated with
a Turkish dissident political group and they have about 150 charter schools
across the country. So I found it very surprising when Senator Sanders said
he supports public charter schools, because all charter schools claim to be
public but many of them operate for-profit. All of them have a private board
of trustees. Their board meetings are typically not open to the public. Many
of the charter owners, especially these big chains ... in Florida theres a
large chain where theyve assembled a real estate empire of over one hundred
million dollars built on taxpayers money. But the money belongs to the
charter owners, not to the public. So its all very bizarre, and the people
supporting it are, first of all, big philanthropies like The Gates
Foundation, The Broad Foundation, especially The Walton Family Foundation.
DB: The Koch brothers are in on this, right?
Ravitch: The Koch brothers support charters, ALEC [American Legislative
Exchange Council] supports charters, all the right-wing and red-state
governors support charters, and the hedge fund managers all over the country
support charters. So theres a lot of money behind charters. When the mayor
of New York City tried to push back and say he didnt want quite as many
charters as his predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg, had proposed, the hedge fund
managers created a group called Families for Excellent Schools and poured
five or six million dollars into overnight advertising, and beat the mayor
back. In fact, they ended up being major contributors to Governor Cuomos
campaign in New York. And Governor Cuomo became a huge charter supporter
because thats where the money is. If your buddies from Wall Street can put
up a million dollars, there are very few politicians who will say No.
DB: Wow. Its interesting to me because there were always these battles
about who was writing and producing the textbooks, and we know so much of
that stuff comes out of very conservative places like Texas ... So they
control the information flow, but this is one step beyond, in which they
actually control the structure of school. And I would imagine the Kochs,
among others, are quite interested in what the exact curriculum would be,
what the chapter on slavery might look like.
Ravitch: Well, a number of the charters are associated with conservative
Christian groups. Now the other piece of this, which I should mention, is
the voucher movement. Almost half the states are giving vouchers to
religious schools, and most of the religious schools are fundamentalist
schools. Because they are the ones who have low tuition, and then the
vouchers were five or six thousand dollars. Youre not going to get into a
really good school with that amount of money. But you can certainly go to a
fundamentalist school where you will have books that are written
specifically for fundamentalist Christians.
DB: So, the battle is on for the presidency. Theyre not talking about this
most extraordinarily important issue. If youre talking about everyday
people and families and whats at the core of peoples concern, it is the
educational system. So what would you suggest? What would be the important
questions to ask these candidates to draw out what they know and perhaps
direct them in a proper direction?
Ravitch: Well, I would hope that ... There have been so many debates and so
many town halls, and the only time Ive ever heard a question asked about
K-12 education was the other night in the Dayton town hall. The question was
asked of Bernie Sanders, but it wasnt asked of Hillary Clinton. I wished
that the same question had been directed to both of them. But I think what I
would want to ask is: Do you support public education, and do you oppose
privatization through charters and vouchers?
What typically the charter supporters say is: The charters are public
schools. But theyre not public schools, because there are now charter
schools that are for affluent children. There are charter schools that
exclude kids with, as I said before, disabilities or who dont speak
English. And public schools shouldnt do that. Public schools are supposed
to accept everyone, and they dont have a choice in this. But under the
banner of school choice we are being pushed to accept schools that are far
more segregated even than the public schools. Where the public schools are
segregated the charter schools are completely segregated. So I think that if
the journalists were to ask some questions, they would be forced to answer
and they would have to know what a charter school is. And not let them get
away with saying Im against private charter schools. There are no private
charter schools. Theyre all getting public money.
DB: Now, in terms of Bernie Sanders ... its hard to accept that they dont
know that this is a crucial problem. One has the sinking feeling that its
just not important enough or all the candidates have determined that this is
not an issue that they care enough about to raise. I think that it speaks to
this larger issue about how we feel and treat our children. Could you talk
about that?
Ravitch: Uh huh. Well, you know, I think its something to be very much
concerned about that the journalists dont ever think about it. Why arent
they thinking about it? This is one of the most important things that a
society can do, to educate its children. And for every state in the country
its the single biggest expense they have, the cost of education. So, why
would they not ask? The federal government, in the last 15 years, has played
a much larger role than it ever has in our history.
And there was a law passed just last fall called The Every Student Succeeds
Act, which basically moves most of the responsibility back to the states,
but still maintains annual testing and is a boon to the standardized testing
industry, and has funding for more charters. So in a way not much has
changed. And I think that when No Child Left Behind goes to its
well-deserved death and the so-called Every Student Succeeds Act takes over,
no one will notice a difference. I mean, I think that a point worth making
is theres something weird about naming a law No Child Left Behind, because
many children were left behind. And theres also something weird about
naming a law Every Student Succeeds because theres nothing in that act that
is going to make every student succeed. Our policy makers have fallen for
this idea that if you just keep raising standards everybody gets smarter.
But its like saying to athletes, Well, you know, if you cant jump over a
5 foot bar, lets see how well you can do if we raise it to 7 feet. No,
its not going to work. It doesnt work. It doesnt make any sense.
DB: Finally, before we let you go, Diane Ravitch and we do appreciate the
time youre spending with us Bernie Sanders has come out strong against
Rahm Emanuel, in part because of his treatment, his disgraceful treatment of
the teachers in the Chicago area, and his incredible disrespect in closing
schools in minority communities. Hillary Clinton still supports him. Your
thoughts on this?
Ravitch: Well, I think that Rahm Emanuel is one of the worst mayors in the
country. So I was very happy to see Bernie Sanders saying, I dont want
your endorsement. Because first of all, he closed 50 public schools in one
day. And I think he, at some point, is going to be in the record books for
having closed more public schools than anyone else in America. Hes opening
new charter schools at the same time that hes closing public schools. So I
was very happy to see Bernie Sanders say, Ill have nothing to do with
you.
DB: That struggle there is one to watch in terms of the stand that the
teachers took on behalf of their students and the system. There were a
number of courageous teachers there and there are really extraordinary
people, teachers, young teachers, administrators, and parents who are trying
to, at all levels, stand up for public education and an education that
really means something to their children. Again, it really speaks volumes
the way this country ... how the education system and its sort of abuse, if
you will, of children.
Ravitch: Right. Well, I have great respect for the Chicago Teachers Union. I
think that theyve really been a model for the country, in terms of saying
the teachers are trying to do whats best for the kids. And the Chicago
schools have had layoffs of thousands of teachers. Many, many schools
including the 50 that Rahm Emanuel closed at one fell swoop were closed. And
every time a school is closed, a community is shattered. I was today writing
a post for my blog which will be up tomorrow morning, I think like 10
oclock in the morning, that the model right now for education is Walmart.
Walmart comes into a community, wipes out all the local stores, and then if
they decide that they dont have enough business they close, they leave, and
the community is devastated. Theres no more Main Street, all the people ...
theres no more shoe store, toy store, drug store. All of that got absorbed
by Walmart. And the Walmart family collectively, the Walton family, is worth
over $150 billion. And they have a hard time even paying minimum wage to
their workers. But that seems to be the business model thats infiltrating
education, at this point, through the charter movement.
The real goal of the charter movement is to destroy the teachers union.
Because something like 90% of the charters are non-union. This is why the
Walton family, and the Walton family through its foundation, puts up $200
million a year to expand charter schools, because they are the most
effective way of busting unions. They rely on a group like Teach for
America to supply new college graduates who are not union members, and who
will be gone after 2 or 3 years. But thats very, very destabilizing for a
community. Because in most parts of this country the schools are staffed by
people who have made a career of teaching, not young kids come in to burnish
their resumé.
DB: Thank you, Secretary Ravitch, for joining us.
________________________________________
Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on
Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as
a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed:
Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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Elementary school. (photo: AP)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
So Many Children Left Behind: An Interview With Educational Reformer Diane
Ravitch
By Dennis J. Bernstein, Reader Supported News
23 March 16
An interview with author and noted educational reformer Diane Ravitch
he American Public School system is dying a slow death. And many leading
educators feel it is being poisoned by a drumbeat toward privatization
marketed as choice along with a regimen of useless, costly, and sometimes
racist testing programs that cater to a privileged class. Indeed, the battle
cry for the last two administrations is choice/charter schools and
privatization.
Among the most high profile educators and educational researchers raising
her voice on the issue is Diane Ravitch, a research professor in education
at New York University. Ravitch served as the Assistant Secretary of
Education and as counselor to the Secretary of Education from 1991 to 1993.
She is the author of ten books, including The Death and Life of the Great
American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.
In a recent interview, Secretary Ravitch expressed deep concern regarding
the current presidential campaigns profound lack of attention to the
failing K-12 public school system and the abject failure of the last two
administrations attempts to mitigate the failures through an expanded
program of privatization and a regime of costly and useless testing.
For the past 15 years, the nations public schools have been victims of the
failed federal policies of the Bush and Obama administrations, said
Ravitch. 15 years ago, Congress passed George W. Bushs No Child Left
Behind law, which required that every child in every year from 3rd grade to
8th grade had to be tested. Theres no other country in the world that tests
every child every year. Its just on overload. No Child Left Behind was
supposed to close the achievement gaps, raise the graduation rates, and do
all kinds of wonderful things. But none of the things it was supposed to do
came true. So it was ... it became a toxic brand.
Ravitch and other critics of testing and choice assumed that, since the
policy had failed so measurably under Bush Two, when Obama took the reins of
power he would transform the policy. But according to Ravitch, the Obama
administration put No Child Left Behind on steroids, and did so with the
appointment of Arne Duncan, a charter school cheerleader, as Secretary of
Education. Duncan pressed on with the policies of No Child Left Behind and
expanded them under a new name, Race to the Top. According to Ravitch, it
became a race to the bottom.
When Obama ran for office many people, particularly educators thought he
was going to change this policy, because it obviously failed, said Ravitch.
Schools were being closed around the country based on No Child Left Behind.
Almost all the schools that are closed are schools in poor communities. They
are schools where black and brown children go, especially poor kids. Then
Obama came in, brought in Arne Duncan as the Secretary of Education, and
doubled down on No Child Left Behind. They announced a program called Race
to the Top. And that turned out to be even more reliant on standardized
testing than No Child Left Behind. At some point you have to realize the
testing has driven education out of a classroom. Kids are spending hours and
hours, weeks and months, preparing to take the test, because the tests are
so consequential. Your school might be closed, the teachers might be fired,
and the principal might be fired if the test scores dont go up every year.
So this is where we are. Its been disastrous, and ... none of the
candidates talk about education much. So Republicans want more of the same,
and the Democrats hardly mention it at all.
Dennis Bernstein: Welcome. Thank you for joining, Secretary Ravitch.
Diane Ravitch: Good to be with you.
DB: Alright, lets talk, lets go a little bit deeper with the impact of
this kind of testing regime that has dominated K-12 for the past 15 years.
There are many reverberations, and several of them are quite disturbing.
Ravitch: Well, yeah. And the main thing that it does is to cement social
class and racial differences, because the one thing that testing does very
accurately is that it correlates with family income. The kids who come from
advantaged families, where they travel, they have library cards, they read
to the kids at night, they have all these advantages
these kids do best on
standardized testing. This is not just in the United States, its all over
the world. The haves get the high test scores, the have-nots get the low
test scores. So were taking this measure, and saying youre a good student
or a bad student, you failed, when whats being measured more than anything
else is family income.
The impact that its had on teaching has been horrendous. I have a blog
thats had almost 26 million pages at this point, and most of my readers are
teachers. And theres not a day that goes by without some teacher saying, I
cant stand it anymore. All I do is administer tests. I give pre-tests, I
give post-tests, I give interim assessments. This is what education has
turned into. And this doesnt help kids. They dont get better because the
stakes are made higher. They dont get smarter, if you raise the bar. I
mean, the Obamas administrations gift to America was the Common Core
Standards and theyve been a disaster everywhere, because the tests
associated with the Common Core Standards were made so hard that kids in
every state, the majority of the kids, have failed. And if you were
teaching, as I know you once did, and most of your kids failed the test,
they would say, Well, what kind of test did you give? You have to give a
test that the kids have some chance of passing. Not that you dumb the test
down, but you have to know if its a test for 4th grade, it has to be for
4th grade level. You dont give a 6th grade test to 4th graders. And thats
in effect what weve been doing all over the country because of Common Core.
DB: Whats the financial cost of testing? And does it take away from, for
instance, all the possibilities for art and music programs? Does the money
go to testing programs?
Ravitch: Well, whats happened is that the test scores matter more than
anything else in American education today, and thats been true for the past
15 years. And so more and more time is devoted to testing, and less time,
fewer resources are available for art or for music, or almost anything. Most
states in this country have been defunding education, dis-investing in
education. I think thats because most of the governors now are very, very
conservative Republicans. And they dont want to invest in education. They
would rather privatize, and have vouchers, and have charters, and let people
be paid to homeschool their children. Things of that kind. They dont want
to invest in public education.
So public education is being hit by a tsunami. The tsunami is, first of all,
this pressure to get higher scores every year, and the budget cuts which
give you fewer resources and larger class size. And the emphasis on testing
also means you lose your art teacher, you lose your music teacher, you lose
your social worker. There are cities like Philadelphia that are virtually
bankrupt. And the answers from the government, state government, has been
Well, lets have more charters. And then the charters start pulling money
away from the public school system, and all over this country we have,
except in the affluent communities, we have public schools going into a tail
spin because of underinvestment and because the charter schools are sucking
away, luring away, the kids who are likeliest to succeed, and pushing out
the kids who have special needs, the kids with disabilities, and the kids
who dont speak English. And that way the public schools are overburdened
with the most expensive children to educate.
DB: Lets just talk a little more about the other side of the destruction of
the public school system, and thats the so-called privatization, the
charter schools. Now it was interesting, and you point this out in your
recent writing, that Bernie Sanders, when he was asked about charter
schools, said, Well, I only like the public charter schools. The point is
that it shows his incredible ignorance, and not that I dont have a great
deal of respect for him, but in that context there really arent any public
charter schools, right? By the very nature of it.
Ravitch: Thats correct, I mean, all charter schools ... the definition of a
charter school is that its funded by the public. So there is no such thing
as a private charter school. So when he says hes in favor of public charter
schools, hes not really ... he hasnt been briefed adequately, which I find
surprising considering he sits on the Senate committee in charge of
education.
But even the schools that operate for-profit, and by the way thats
something brand new in American education
Up until recently we never had
for-profit public schools. This is part of the charter movement, though
there are now for-profit charters that get public money. And a certain
percentage of that money is siphoned off to enrich the owners of the school.
Thats part of the charter movement. Now that is a public charter school.
Thats what they call themselves. In fact, the national organization for
charters is called the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. So the
charter movement says, again and again, that they are public schools.
The problem is that theyre really not public schools, and I always think
that they are private schools getting public money, because first of all
they can choose their students, even if they have a lottery. They can push
out the kids they dont want, and they end up with a very small number of
kids with disabilities, with virtually no kids with severe disabilities, and
also with very small numbers of English language learners.
They have the ability to set their own discipline rules, so they can say,
well if your shift wasnt tucked in, youre suspended. And they have very
high suspension rates, many of them do. Theres this genre of charter
schools called No Excuses, and the No Excuses schools will suspend kids for
a million different reasons. Theyre supposed to sit quietly, hands folded,
walk in the hallway in a straight line, never speak unless spoken to, etc.,
etc. For some reason theres something about our day and age, and our
culture, where particularly white people admire that black children are
being beaten into obedience. Not physically beaten, but emotionally pushed
into this very, very conformist behavior.
But the charter movement contains for-profit, it contains corporate charter
chains and it also, within the charter sector, theres a very large chain,
its either the largest or the second largest that is run by foreign
nationals. These are called the Gulen Schools, and they are associated with
a Turkish dissident political group and they have about 150 charter schools
across the country. So I found it very surprising when Senator Sanders said
he supports public charter schools, because all charter schools claim to be
public but many of them operate for-profit. All of them have a private board
of trustees. Their board meetings are typically not open to the public. Many
of the charter owners, especially these big chains ... in Florida theres a
large chain where theyve assembled a real estate empire of over one hundred
million dollars built on taxpayers money. But the money belongs to the
charter owners, not to the public. So its all very bizarre, and the people
supporting it are, first of all, big philanthropies like The Gates
Foundation, The Broad Foundation, especially The Walton Family Foundation.
DB: The Koch brothers are in on this, right?
Ravitch: The Koch brothers support charters, ALEC [American Legislative
Exchange Council] supports charters, all the right-wing and red-state
governors support charters, and the hedge fund managers all over the country
support charters. So theres a lot of money behind charters. When the mayor
of New York City tried to push back and say he didnt want quite as many
charters as his predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg, had proposed, the hedge fund
managers created a group called Families for Excellent Schools and poured
five or six million dollars into overnight advertising, and beat the mayor
back. In fact, they ended up being major contributors to Governor Cuomos
campaign in New York. And Governor Cuomo became a huge charter supporter
because thats where the money is. If your buddies from Wall Street can put
up a million dollars, there are very few politicians who will say No.
DB: Wow. Its interesting to me because there were always these battles
about who was writing and producing the textbooks, and we know so much of
that stuff comes out of very conservative places like Texas ... So they
control the information flow, but this is one step beyond, in which they
actually control the structure of school. And I would imagine the Kochs,
among others, are quite interested in what the exact curriculum would be,
what the chapter on slavery might look like.
Ravitch: Well, a number of the charters are associated with conservative
Christian groups. Now the other piece of this, which I should mention, is
the voucher movement. Almost half the states are giving vouchers to
religious schools, and most of the religious schools are fundamentalist
schools. Because they are the ones who have low tuition, and then the
vouchers were five or six thousand dollars. Youre not going to get into a
really good school with that amount of money. But you can certainly go to a
fundamentalist school where you will have books that are written
specifically for fundamentalist Christians.
DB: So, the battle is on for the presidency. Theyre not talking about this
most extraordinarily important issue. If youre talking about everyday
people and families and whats at the core of peoples concern, it is the
educational system. So what would you suggest? What would be the important
questions to ask these candidates to draw out what they know and perhaps
direct them in a proper direction?
Ravitch: Well, I would hope that ... There have been so many debates and so
many town halls, and the only time Ive ever heard a question asked about
K-12 education was the other night in the Dayton town hall. The question was
asked of Bernie Sanders, but it wasnt asked of Hillary Clinton. I wished
that the same question had been directed to both of them. But I think what I
would want to ask is: Do you support public education, and do you oppose
privatization through charters and vouchers?
What typically the charter supporters say is: The charters are public
schools. But theyre not public schools, because there are now charter
schools that are for affluent children. There are charter schools that
exclude kids with, as I said before, disabilities or who dont speak
English. And public schools shouldnt do that. Public schools are supposed
to accept everyone, and they dont have a choice in this. But under the
banner of school choice we are being pushed to accept schools that are far
more segregated even than the public schools. Where the public schools are
segregated the charter schools are completely segregated. So I think that if
the journalists were to ask some questions, they would be forced to answer
and they would have to know what a charter school is. And not let them get
away with saying Im against private charter schools. There are no private
charter schools. Theyre all getting public money.
DB: Now, in terms of Bernie Sanders ... its hard to accept that they dont
know that this is a crucial problem. One has the sinking feeling that its
just not important enough or all the candidates have determined that this is
not an issue that they care enough about to raise. I think that it speaks to
this larger issue about how we feel and treat our children. Could you talk
about that?
Ravitch: Uh huh. Well, you know, I think its something to be very much
concerned about that the journalists dont ever think about it. Why arent
they thinking about it? This is one of the most important things that a
society can do, to educate its children. And for every state in the country
its the single biggest expense they have, the cost of education. So, why
would they not ask? The federal government, in the last 15 years, has played
a much larger role than it ever has in our history.
And there was a law passed just last fall called The Every Student Succeeds
Act, which basically moves most of the responsibility back to the states,
but still maintains annual testing and is a boon to the standardized testing
industry, and has funding for more charters. So in a way not much has
changed. And I think that when No Child Left Behind goes to its
well-deserved death and the so-called Every Student Succeeds Act takes over,
no one will notice a difference. I mean, I think that a point worth making
is theres something weird about naming a law No Child Left Behind, because
many children were left behind. And theres also something weird about
naming a law Every Student Succeeds because theres nothing in that act that
is going to make every student succeed. Our policy makers have fallen for
this idea that if you just keep raising standards everybody gets smarter.
But its like saying to athletes, Well, you know, if you cant jump over a
5 foot bar, lets see how well you can do if we raise it to 7 feet. No,
its not going to work. It doesnt work. It doesnt make any sense.
DB: Finally, before we let you go, Diane Ravitch and we do appreciate the
time youre spending with us Bernie Sanders has come out strong against
Rahm Emanuel, in part because of his treatment, his disgraceful treatment of
the teachers in the Chicago area, and his incredible disrespect in closing
schools in minority communities. Hillary Clinton still supports him. Your
thoughts on this?
Ravitch: Well, I think that Rahm Emanuel is one of the worst mayors in the
country. So I was very happy to see Bernie Sanders saying, I dont want
your endorsement. Because first of all, he closed 50 public schools in one
day. And I think he, at some point, is going to be in the record books for
having closed more public schools than anyone else in America. Hes opening
new charter schools at the same time that hes closing public schools. So I
was very happy to see Bernie Sanders say, Ill have nothing to do with
you.
DB: That struggle there is one to watch in terms of the stand that the
teachers took on behalf of their students and the system. There were a
number of courageous teachers there and there are really extraordinary
people, teachers, young teachers, administrators, and parents who are trying
to, at all levels, stand up for public education and an education that
really means something to their children. Again, it really speaks volumes
the way this country ... how the education system and its sort of abuse, if
you will, of children.
Ravitch: Right. Well, I have great respect for the Chicago Teachers Union. I
think that theyve really been a model for the country, in terms of saying
the teachers are trying to do whats best for the kids. And the Chicago
schools have had layoffs of thousands of teachers. Many, many schools
including the 50 that Rahm Emanuel closed at one fell swoop were closed. And
every time a school is closed, a community is shattered. I was today writing
a post for my blog which will be up tomorrow morning, I think like 10
oclock in the morning, that the model right now for education is Walmart.
Walmart comes into a community, wipes out all the local stores, and then if
they decide that they dont have enough business they close, they leave, and
the community is devastated. Theres no more Main Street, all the people ...
theres no more shoe store, toy store, drug store. All of that got absorbed
by Walmart. And the Walmart family collectively, the Walton family, is worth
over $150 billion. And they have a hard time even paying minimum wage to
their workers. But that seems to be the business model thats infiltrating
education, at this point, through the charter movement.
The real goal of the charter movement is to destroy the teachers union.
Because something like 90% of the charters are non-union. This is why the
Walton family, and the Walton family through its foundation, puts up $200
million a year to expand charter schools, because they are the most
effective way of busting unions. They rely on a group like Teach for
America to supply new college graduates who are not union members, and who
will be gone after 2 or 3 years. But thats very, very destabilizing for a
community. Because in most parts of this country the schools are staffed by
people who have made a career of teaching, not young kids come in to burnish
their resumé.
DB: Thank you, Secretary Ravitch, for joining us.
Dennis J. Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on
Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as
a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed:
Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
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Supported News.
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