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Tag: Education

  • More Than 1,650 Charter Schools Closed in Seven Years

    According to the U.S. Department of Education, 1,654 charter schools closed between 2010-2011 and 2016-2017.  That is an average of 236 charter school closures per year, which is a big bite out of the total number of charter schools in a short period of time. Today there exist roughly 7,300 charter schools, which is less than 7% of all schools in the U.S. Given the endless problems with transparency and open accurate reporting in the charter school sector it is not unreasonable to assume that the number of charter schools that have closed in this time period is actually larger than what the U.S. Department of Education reports.

    Privately-operated charter schools are notorious for over-promising and under-delivering on many commitments and assurances. The chasm between charter school rhetoric and charter schools reality has always been large. The massive onslaught of disinformation about privately-operated charter schools has created a situation where facts like the closure of thousands of charter schools over the years have been drowned out by never-ending happy news about charter schools. The pressure to not engage in a conscious act of finding out what is really transpiring in the unstable charter school sector has left many at a disadvantage that harms everyone. Only systematic research and analysis can arm a person to see and appreciate this persistent gap between charter school words and charter school deeds.

    For decades the public has been told by charter school promoters and their allies that public schools are lousy and incapable of “saving” students, particularly minority students. The public has been repeatedly told that charter schools are a silver bullet that will deliver a bigger bang for the buck and be more accountable than public schools.

    Instead, corruption, fraud, arrests, poor performance, school closures, shady real estate deals, scandalous headlines, and more have increased alongside the surge in charter schools. More segregated charter schools run by unelected individuals has meant more problems for everyone, including charter schools themselves.

    To be sure, charter schools have failed thousands of minority families, distorted the economy, undermined nation-building, and increased many inequalities. No amount of hullabaloo or hype can conceal these realities.

    Privately-operated charter schools have not reduced poverty, inequality, or structural racism. They have not closed the “achievement gap” or stopped the school-to-prison pipeline. They have siphoned money from public schools and intensified segregation, controversy, de-unionization, secrecy, and competition. Cyber charter schools in particular have taken fraud and scandal to levels not seen in even the most irresponsible large corporations.

    If high scores on punitive, time-consuming, expensive, educationally unsound high-stakes standardized tests produced by big for-profit corporations is the measure of a “good education,” then thousands of charters schools have failed to provide a “good education.” More than 3,000 privately-operated charter schools have closed since 1992.

    No doubt, many more charter schools will fail and close in the coming years, leaving even more minority families abandoned and angry. It does not matter much if the reason for closure is financial malfeasance, mismanagement, or poor academic performance, the result is still the same: the public deprived of billions of dollars and thousands of minority families betrayed and left out in the cold. The same worn-out “failure narrative” used by neoliberals and privatizers to justify a private takeover of America’s public schools applies to charter schools themselves.

    Neoliberal school reform has proven time and again to be a major block to progress in education and, by extension, society, the economy, and the nation.

    Charter schools must be prohibited from accessing any public school funds, resources, and buildings. These belong to the 100,000 public schools that serve the nation, economy, society, and public interest. This precious wealth produced by workers must not find its way into the hands of the non-profit and for-profit corporations that run charter schools.

    This article was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2021 at 8:24am and is filed under Charter Schools, Education.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Americans Minds are Artificially Intelligent

    I advocate the thesis which holds that the tendency towards totalitarianism is part of the essence of the machine, and originally proceeded from the realm of technology; that the tendency, inherent to every machine as such, to subjugate the world, to parasitically seize upon the fragments that have not yet been subjugated, to merge with other machines and to operate with them as pieces of a single, total machine: I maintain that this tendency represents the fundamental fact and that political totalitarianism, as horrible as it is, only represents an effect and variant of this fundamental technological fact. While the spokesmen of the technologically advanced world powers have been claiming for decades that they are engaged in resistance against the principle of totalitarianism (in the interest of the “free world”), their claims are fraudulent or, in the best cases, are the effect of a lack of intelligence, for the principle of totalitarianism is a technical principle and, as such, is not fought—nor will it ever be fought—by the “anti-totalitarians” From the times of the dictatorship we know that, from the moment when one considers that it is possible that one is under surveillance, one feels and behaves differently than one did before, that is, in a more conformist way, when not in an absolutely conformist way. The unverifiable possibility of being under surveillance has a decisive capacity for molding: it molds the entire population.

    — Gunther Anders, The Obsolescence of Man, Volume II.

    The acceleration of innovation, made possible by an exponential increase in calculating power, led straight to a hyper-technological Ancien Regime where the positions to be occupied in the hierarchy of jobs, incomes, assets, education, living spaces, etc., depend on birth exactly as they did before the French Revolution. Thus, from the transhumanism of Silicon Valley there emerges not a post-human self but a very familiar figure, the aristocrat, having become cyber and with a head, cut off in 1789, that has grown back. Confidence in technology as a means of creating more liberty, more democracy, and less enslavement is belied once more by the truly deplorable actual results of this reproduction of power relations.

    — Maurizio Lazzarato, Capital Hates Everyone

    Artificial Intelligence: Adults

    It is tempting to think that free-will exists. Unfortunately, it does not, particularly in America (tip of the hat to Baruch Spinoza writing in his Ethics). Taste in music (rap, rock, pop, etc.), fashion and food; political orientation whether left, right or center; what sports team to support, or vehicle to drive, or television series to watch is all supplied by media/corporations to American brains that are as malleable as silly putty.  The mind easily succumbs to the totalitarian machinations of the American domestic/global capitalist network as its marketers, advertisers, and politicians/ideologues pound content into the brain via television news, hand-held computers/telephones, the world wide web, social media, and legacy media. Alberto J. L. Carrillo Canan believes that “the dominant technological forms determine the way we conceive reality, human life and mind.”

    How does one account for a meaningful life in American society? What would be contained in a meaningful life’s ledger? How do you determine if you are free and not programmed? Two days of administered freedom at the end of the workweek? A new car? A two-week vacation at the beach? A mammoth flat screen television? A new iPhone? A new season of a television series on Netflix? A college degree? A mortgage on the house?  A yearly bonus for productivity? The ability to vote for only two candidates for the President of the United States? An opinion you really believe is yours?

    All these “things” are supplied to you and all courtesy of the bio-capitalist, totalitarian machine. No one can escape it. Young or old, the American mind is captive to the totalitarian technological order. Ideas, products, news, and opinions are supplied, recycled/rehashed and delivered. But what about the spontaneous protests and demands of, say, Black Lives Matter (BLM), you ask? Notice how quickly BLM’s agenda was absorbed by the entire totalitarian capitalist enterprise who made easy money available via donations to BLM activists, advertised their cause, and promised to hire more Blacks. BLM is now a fading blip on the American capitalist radar shot down by the capitalist totalitarian system. Indeed, BLM has cashed in. The same story/process is repeated over and over again no matter the issue or the protest or the time.

    Not Your Opinion, Your Meaningless Life

    “It does not matter whether someone who is expressing himself thinks that his expression is his own bona fide expression, or even if he asks himself ‘is this my opinion or not?’, or even if he does not even understand the question; in any case, what is not permitted is that what he expresses should be his own opinion; it must always be a supplied opinion. Even when it seems to be advisable to allow variations, they must be predictable variations on the pre-established theme…Most of those who lead meaningless lives are not even conscious of their misfortune. By way of the life that is imposed upon them they are prevented from perceiving its lack of meaning. That is why they cannot do anything to counteract this lack of meaning, either. Or, more precisely: even what they do to counteract it is something that is done to them, that is, something that is supplied to them,” claims Anders.

    According to Lazaratto, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft (plus consolidated media) are the masters guiding the behaviors of the governed. “By constantly soliciting one’s attention—giving rise to an activity as absurd as compulsively consulting one’s smartphone…they tirelessly fabricate and information designed to affect subjectivities circulating through billions of telephones, televisions, computers, tablets, whose connections envelop the planet in a thicker and thicker net.”

    It is not just the corporations, though. Republicans, Democrats, the US Military, interest groups, and lobbyists (collectively, the neoliberal order) all get their products/messages on the airwaves and into the minds of the American human herd. The “masters” would likely be happier automating/digitizing American citizens/slaves.

    Glutaraldehyde Fixation: Duh, What?

    The digital dissection of the human being, individually and collectively, is proceeding apace. Uploading “the human” is no longer the stuff of science fiction. In a few generations, a parent may say to a child, “Hey, let’s upload great grandpa and see/hear what he has to say.” Why not pull the brain out of a dead body, preserve it in a special solution, and then mine it for memories that can be turned into 0’s and 1’s.

    Macabre, you likely say, but the research is underway and funded. Ah, the beauty of capitalism. Consider the enterprising company Nectome. They are in the business of preserving the brains of the dead in hopes of digitally retrieving long term memories.

    According to MIT Technology Review, “Nectome has received substantial support for its technology, however. It has raised $1 million in funding so far, including the $120,000 that Y Combinator provides to all the companies it accepts. It has also won a $960,000 federal grant from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health for “whole-brain nanoscale preservation and imaging,” the text of which foresees a “commercial opportunity in offering brain preservation” for purposes including drug research.”

    Tracking digital footprints and then converting them into behavioral models able to predict the next set of keystrokes, online and offline habits/geolocations, and spending preferences are well known practices undertaken by companies like Alphabet-Google. For example, today’s software programs learn what words and individual uses to compose letters, articles, emails and once enough verbiage has been collated by the machine, a human writer can cut out the thought process used to seek out an adjective, a noun or verb. Just one more human function taken away from the brain and absorbed by the software in the machine.

    In some not to distant future, the human mind/person will be digitized and exist in a bio-machine.

    Artificial Intelligence: Youngsters

    What kind of adults are being created by the totalitarian technological education system? I used to believe that an innovative education based on critical thinking and systems analysis, beginning from about 4th grade level through high school, might provide a check on the monstrous technology/system that is dominating every facet of life.

    But having experience education as a teacher in both public and private settings, I have stopped believing that youngsters are going to be anything more than unconscious routers, servers, or surveillance sensors for the totalitarian machine. They will be more conformist than their parents or the adults that are nominally in charge of the United States.

    The teachers/system set a pace that is relentless which means there is no time for a pause or a gaze into thoughtfulness/thinking. It is not learning but programming that the students are subjected to.

    I asked an 8th grader recently what he would change about school if he could. “I would not teach boring,” he responded. “All the students I know don’t like school because it is so boring. Teachers need to change. We are not learning anything,” he said in frustration. Add to this the crazy reality that the World Wide Web is barely used by teachers for science, math, politics, history, or geography. It is largely a cut and paste enterprise with teachers selecting documents from the Web, printing them out in paper form, and distributing them to their classes.

    The  public and private schools I have been in (K-12) are a dizzying mish-mash of things and frenetic human activity: wires, electronic white boards; non-ergonomic 19th Century desks and chairs  (plastic and aluminum); Apple iPads; robotic parts; Lego’s; classrooms adorned with cardboard signs with annoying cliches (You’re Special or The Future Starts Here); laptops; boxes of crayons and pencils; decade old paper files in equally old file cabinets; hallway banners proclaiming “Award Winning School, 2020”; half empty classrooms due to the COVID19 Pandemic; virtual students on Microsoft Teams at home who log in and leave the class, never responding to a teacher’s question; layers of management (assistant principals); constant teacher meetings/professional development courses; waves of substitute teachers; and curriculum focused solely on achieving high scores on a State’s Standards of Learning.

    Many of the software programs used for learning, particularly in grades K-8, are equivalent to an arcade game or pinball machine: carnival music accompanies the student through, say, a science lesson. Answer correctly and the sound of a bell or whistle can be heard. Answer a question wrong and later a “power up” function gives you a chance to correct your mistake and add points. There are also competitive learning games that students participate in. Cartoonish software programs like Kahoot, Nearpod, Gizmo, Quizizz, Brain Pop all amp up the level of excitement to create an experience similar to a popular video game.

    I was substituting in an 8th grade science class recently where the subject being taught was weather. I asked the students if the teacher was using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA.GOV) website to help them learn about the subject. They looked at me like I was an alien creature. “What’s that,” one student responded. I explained but to no avail as I had to get to the instructions left by the teacher that I was to follow.

    Red Guards

    I was substitute teaching in a classroom full of 8th graders (12-13 years old, I am 65) not long ago. I was talking about something or other and inadvertently pulled my mask down below my lips for a few moments exposing my face. It was an error in judgment, a mistake for which I had no excuse (I am fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and was 6 feet away from the nearest student). When I was finished speaking to the class, I pulled my mask back up and thought nothing of it.

    Turns out that I was surreptitiously being recorded by a student who turned the video over to an assistant principal. I was nearly released for the mistake but the assistant principal that first received the video argued on my behalf to the principal and I was kept on staff. My punishment was to write a memo for record/file explaining what I had done. The next step was to apologize to the 8th graders in person.

    I thought immediately of Mao’s Red Guards: “The first Red Guards groups were made up of students, ranging from as young as elementary school children up to university students…The Red Guards also publicly humiliated teachers, monks, former landowners or anyone else suspected of being “counter-revolutionary.”

    What happened to, “Hey, Mr. Stanton, you need to put your mask back up.”

    Not long ago, I was in a class with a new substitute teacher, fresh out of college. He politely asked the class of 6th graders what time the class ended. What he got was this from a student, “You are the substitute, you should know.”

    This article was posted on Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 at 5:47am and is filed under Artificial Intelligence (AI), Capitalist totalitarianism, Education, Freedom of Thought, Mind Control, Science/Technology, Students, Totalitarianism.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Public Opposition to Charter Schools Steadily Growing

    Over the years, as more problems with charter schools have been exposed, analyzed, and critiqued, more people have come to see the need for opposing them and for defending public education and the public interest. Criticism and rejection of these privately-operated schools has become more mainstream in recent years and it is safe to say that opposition to charter schools will keep growing so long as neoliberals and privatizers impose more charter schools on society.

    Public school boards and many different education advocacy groups, along with more legislators, former charter school teachers, many public school teachers, countless teacher educators and teacher education students, teacher unions, and myriad rights and justice groups are just some of the forces that are increasingly speaking out and taking action against charter schools. Many others have also heard of charter schools, and even with little or no investigation, they tend to approach charter schools with some skepticism. The days when charter schools were blindly embraced and investigation was deemed unnecessary are gradually fading. More people are doing their homework and learning about the numerous problems these segregated contract schools create.

    Recent Actions

    In April 2021, the Buffalo Public School Board voted to close two Buffalo charter schools that have been failing for years. There is also a legal push to pass a moratorium on charter schools for the next three years in the city. And in the past year even the New York State legislature has also become a little less supportive of charter schools.

    In recent months and years, many more public school boards across the country have also rejected charter school applications or been less hesitant to close failing or corrupt charter schools. For example, the Leon County School Board in Florida recently denied the application of a proposed new charter school. In 2020, the Lee County School Board shut down a charter school in Fort Myers (Florida). In March 2021, the Philadelphia school board unanimously denied five new charter schools. Also in March of this year, the Escondido Union School District (EUSD) board in California unanimously rejected a five-year renewal for Epiphany Prep Charter School. And in January 2021, the Montgomery County Board of Education in Alabama rejected a charter school application. In late 2019, parents and community members called for closing of a Memphis, Tennessee charter school under investigation. Reasons for rejection or closing a charter school usually include poorly-written and poorly-conceived charter school applications, a long record of mismanagement, and/or years of poor academic performance. Such actions are becoming more commonplace from coast to coast. These examples represent a small fraction of public actions against non-profit and for-profit charter schools.

    In Oklahoma, about 200 public school districts have consciously banded together recently to legally challenge the funneling of public school dollars to privately-operated charter schools.

    In New Jersey there is a new court case challenging the expansion of charter schools in that state. And in Pennsylvania, by a margin of 3-1, hundreds of Propel Charter School staff recently voted to form a union to defend their rights because they are routinely violated by their charter school operator. Late last month, 15 members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, and various other officials requesting a significant reduction in funding for the federal Charter School Program (CSP) as well as a commitment to ensuring better oversight of charter schools to minimize chronic waste and fraud.

    Many other examples of opposition to charter schools and their practices could be given.

    It should be noted that charter schools, which are run by unelected individuals and are heavily focused on revenue and profit, have been controversial and mired in scandal, corruption, and controversy for 30 years. Thousands have closed since 1992. And collectively, charter schools have deprived public schools of tens of billions of public dollars, leaving them, the economy, and society worse off. With such a record, and given their very nature, it is no surprise that there are even some divisions and conflicts within the crisis-prone charter school sector itself (e.g., brick-and-mortar charter schools versus cyber charter schools).

    The main issue is that social consciousness about the harms of school privatization is growing and that individuals and organizations are increasingly combining action with analysis to oppose school privatization and defend the public interest.

    More actions against charter schools and in favor of public schools is slowly activating and galvanizing the human factor and the social consciousness needed to change the direction of education and society to benefit the public interest. Over time, more possibilities to unite and collaborate against school privatization will present themselves and enable people to resolve problems in a manner that favors them instead of narrow private interests who strive to deprive the public of enormous sums of public wealth.

    The public does not benefit from the ongoing multiplication of charter schools. These contract schools only create more headaches for public schools and for charter schools themselves.

    This article was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2021 at 12:18pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Education, Public Schools, School Privatization, Teachers/Teachers Unions.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Approaching Poverty Systemically

    Man laying on sidewalk (Image Source: Pexels)

    As we face the stark reality that one in seven Americans are projected to have resources below the poverty level in 2021, the world demands systemic solutions. No problem as widespread as poverty in America and across the world can be blamed entirely on the individuals and families that poverty affects — though some would certainly argue this point.

    Approaching poverty systemically may be the only way we can make progress at any significant rate. From minimum wage to criminal justice reform, systemic changes have the potential to make a real impact on poverty at a national level. Adopted at scale, systemic solutions can help end the global travesty that is poverty.

    But understanding potential fixes requires first assessing the causes of poverty. With a systemic approach, we can broaden the picture and give context to the millions of families struggling with a lack of resources. In turn, working solutions can become much clearer.

    Assessing the Causes of Poverty

    A host of factors contribute to the problem of poverty. From geographical locations where access to jobs and opportunities is scarce to faulty education systems that add to the problem of generation poverty, the causes of inequality on a massive scale are far-ranging and nebulous. While a world without any poverty may be difficult to imagine, addressing the root causes behind the millions without access to resources — even in countries as wealthy as America — can help give us the tools to make systemic changes.

    Here are three of the most prominent causes of widespread poverty:

    Wage Inequality

    Often, the poverty problem goes hand-in-hand with a lack of access to jobs that pay a living wage. Either these are leaving cities in the post-industrial economic shift, or the jobs that remain simply do not pay enough. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that as many as 11.4% of full-time, year-round American workers were not being paid enough to break past poverty thresholds. For CEOs, however, the situation is much different. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%. For typical workers, wages grew only 13.7% in the same period.

    Social Injustice

    The problem of wage inequality is only compounded by the social injustice still commonly experienced by women and minorities in the sectors of the economy they more often occupy. The EPI found that female workers were paid poverty wages at a greater rate than men (13.5% compared to 9.6% of men). Meanwhile, destructive austerity policies like those employed in the UK disproportionately impact women, children, and minorities, pushing vulnerable families into greater levels of poverty. Social injustice keeps certain groups from getting ahead, a problem caused by poor governmental representation, underpayment in sectors of the economy like service, and limited access to other necessary resources like childcare.

    Lack of Resources

    Finally, the limits of resources and their even geographical spread equate to greater levels of poverty. For example, UNESCO has found that if all students in low-income countries were given the education to acquire elementary reading skills, as many as 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. Limited access to education, clean water, food, and healthcare all contribute to poverty around the world. Now, climate change threatens access to food and water in various regions, meaning the problem will only get worse without systemic solutions.

    Applying Systemic Changes

    Applying solutions on a scale large enough to make a real difference requires understanding the causes of poverty and combating them at their source. With that achieved, we can propose informed solutions at a systemic level that may play a role in elevating families out of poverty and establishing greater levels of equality throughout the world. From federal minimum wages to education systems, this is much more possible than you might imagine.

    Addressing Pay Disparities and Social Injustice

    First, we can address the problem of wage inequality. This can start with a minimum wage increase, which has the power to impact the lives of 32 million workers. The Raise the Wage Act of 2021, for example, is projected to make a huge difference in the lives of workers relegated to low-wage work, which are disproportionately people of color. In fact, by lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the 23% of the workforce made up of Black women and Latinas would experience an annual income boost between $3,500 and $3,700 per individual.

    Additionally, we can create legislation that ties CEO pay to that of their workforce. There is no conscionable reason that CEOs should be making hundreds of times more a year than their employees. Shareholders often do not even understand the pay packages they offer CEOs, and higher rates of pay have been associated with poorer market performance. With tax incentives for more equitable pay ratios, we can better combat inequality on a systemic level.

    Building Better Resources

    Then, we can better address the resource discrepancies on a global scale. From education to criminal justice systems, resources are needed to mitigate the damages of poverty and curb the cycles of poverty born by system problems. Social workers are needed to empower and advocate for communities all over the world, educating them about the resources available to them and providing even more. Schools must support their students with programs designed to elevate them based on specific needs, while criminal justice reform must support re-entry.

    All these resources can help a family survive unexpected financial hardships, especially after COVID. In the era of mass global financial instability, giving communities across the world the means to succeed will help eradicate poverty. Through education, opportunity, and equity, we can ensure that talent and ability aren’t lost to the shackles of social injustice that hold too many individuals back. But we must ensure that systemic solutions are built with and for the families they target.

    By advocating for systemic change, you can support a richer, better world. Start now by exploring the needs of your community and supporting legislation that improves pay and resource accessibility.

    Beau Peters is a freelance writer based out of Portland, OR. He has a particular interest in covering workers’ rights, social justice, and workplace issues and solutions. Read other articles by Beau.

    This article was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2021 at 5:42pm and is filed under Criminal Justice System, Economic Inequality, Education, Minimum Wage, Poverty, Unemployment.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Approaching Poverty Systemically

    Man laying on sidewalk (Image Source: Pexels)

    As we face the stark reality that one in seven Americans are projected to have resources below the poverty level in 2021, the world demands systemic solutions. No problem as widespread as poverty in America and across the world can be blamed entirely on the individuals and families that poverty affects — though some would certainly argue this point.

    Approaching poverty systemically may be the only way we can make progress at any significant rate. From minimum wage to criminal justice reform, systemic changes have the potential to make a real impact on poverty at a national level. Adopted at scale, systemic solutions can help end the global travesty that is poverty.

    But understanding potential fixes requires first assessing the causes of poverty. With a systemic approach, we can broaden the picture and give context to the millions of families struggling with a lack of resources. In turn, working solutions can become much clearer.

    Assessing the Causes of Poverty

    A host of factors contribute to the problem of poverty. From geographical locations where access to jobs and opportunities is scarce to faulty education systems that add to the problem of generation poverty, the causes of inequality on a massive scale are far-ranging and nebulous. While a world without any poverty may be difficult to imagine, addressing the root causes behind the millions without access to resources — even in countries as wealthy as America — can help give us the tools to make systemic changes.

    Here are three of the most prominent causes of widespread poverty:

    Wage Inequality

    Often, the poverty problem goes hand-in-hand with a lack of access to jobs that pay a living wage. Either these are leaving cities in the post-industrial economic shift, or the jobs that remain simply do not pay enough. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that as many as 11.4% of full-time, year-round American workers were not being paid enough to break past poverty thresholds. For CEOs, however, the situation is much different. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%. For typical workers, wages grew only 13.7% in the same period.

    Social Injustice

    The problem of wage inequality is only compounded by the social injustice still commonly experienced by women and minorities in the sectors of the economy they more often occupy. The EPI found that female workers were paid poverty wages at a greater rate than men (13.5% compared to 9.6% of men). Meanwhile, destructive austerity policies like those employed in the UK disproportionately impact women, children, and minorities, pushing vulnerable families into greater levels of poverty. Social injustice keeps certain groups from getting ahead, a problem caused by poor governmental representation, underpayment in sectors of the economy like service, and limited access to other necessary resources like childcare.

    Lack of Resources

    Finally, the limits of resources and their even geographical spread equate to greater levels of poverty. For example, UNESCO has found that if all students in low-income countries were given the education to acquire elementary reading skills, as many as 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. Limited access to education, clean water, food, and healthcare all contribute to poverty around the world. Now, climate change threatens access to food and water in various regions, meaning the problem will only get worse without systemic solutions.

    Applying Systemic Changes

    Applying solutions on a scale large enough to make a real difference requires understanding the causes of poverty and combating them at their source. With that achieved, we can propose informed solutions at a systemic level that may play a role in elevating families out of poverty and establishing greater levels of equality throughout the world. From federal minimum wages to education systems, this is much more possible than you might imagine.

    Addressing Pay Disparities and Social Injustice

    First, we can address the problem of wage inequality. This can start with a minimum wage increase, which has the power to impact the lives of 32 million workers. The Raise the Wage Act of 2021, for example, is projected to make a huge difference in the lives of workers relegated to low-wage work, which are disproportionately people of color. In fact, by lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the 23% of the workforce made up of Black women and Latinas would experience an annual income boost between $3,500 and $3,700 per individual.

    Additionally, we can create legislation that ties CEO pay to that of their workforce. There is no conscionable reason that CEOs should be making hundreds of times more a year than their employees. Shareholders often do not even understand the pay packages they offer CEOs, and higher rates of pay have been associated with poorer market performance. With tax incentives for more equitable pay ratios, we can better combat inequality on a systemic level.

    Building Better Resources

    Then, we can better address the resource discrepancies on a global scale. From education to criminal justice systems, resources are needed to mitigate the damages of poverty and curb the cycles of poverty born by system problems. Social workers are needed to empower and advocate for communities all over the world, educating them about the resources available to them and providing even more. Schools must support their students with programs designed to elevate them based on specific needs, while criminal justice reform must support re-entry.

    All these resources can help a family survive unexpected financial hardships, especially after COVID. In the era of mass global financial instability, giving communities across the world the means to succeed will help eradicate poverty. Through education, opportunity, and equity, we can ensure that talent and ability aren’t lost to the shackles of social injustice that hold too many individuals back. But we must ensure that systemic solutions are built with and for the families they target.

    By advocating for systemic change, you can support a richer, better world. Start now by exploring the needs of your community and supporting legislation that improves pay and resource accessibility.

    Beau Peters is a freelance writer based out of Portland, OR. He has a particular interest in covering workers’ rights, social justice, and workplace issues and solutions. Read other articles by Beau.

    This article was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2021 at 5:42pm and is filed under Criminal Justice System, Economic Inequality, Education, Minimum Wage, Poverty, Unemployment.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Approaching Poverty Systemically

    Man laying on sidewalk (Image Source: Pexels)

    As we face the stark reality that one in seven Americans are projected to have resources below the poverty level in 2021, the world demands systemic solutions. No problem as widespread as poverty in America and across the world can be blamed entirely on the individuals and families that poverty affects — though some would certainly argue this point.

    Approaching poverty systemically may be the only way we can make progress at any significant rate. From minimum wage to criminal justice reform, systemic changes have the potential to make a real impact on poverty at a national level. Adopted at scale, systemic solutions can help end the global travesty that is poverty.

    But understanding potential fixes requires first assessing the causes of poverty. With a systemic approach, we can broaden the picture and give context to the millions of families struggling with a lack of resources. In turn, working solutions can become much clearer.

    Assessing the Causes of Poverty

    A host of factors contribute to the problem of poverty. From geographical locations where access to jobs and opportunities is scarce to faulty education systems that add to the problem of generation poverty, the causes of inequality on a massive scale are far-ranging and nebulous. While a world without any poverty may be difficult to imagine, addressing the root causes behind the millions without access to resources — even in countries as wealthy as America — can help give us the tools to make systemic changes.

    Here are three of the most prominent causes of widespread poverty:

    Wage Inequality

    Often, the poverty problem goes hand-in-hand with a lack of access to jobs that pay a living wage. Either these are leaving cities in the post-industrial economic shift, or the jobs that remain simply do not pay enough. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that as many as 11.4% of full-time, year-round American workers were not being paid enough to break past poverty thresholds. For CEOs, however, the situation is much different. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%. For typical workers, wages grew only 13.7% in the same period.

    Social Injustice

    The problem of wage inequality is only compounded by the social injustice still commonly experienced by women and minorities in the sectors of the economy they more often occupy. The EPI found that female workers were paid poverty wages at a greater rate than men (13.5% compared to 9.6% of men). Meanwhile, destructive austerity policies like those employed in the UK disproportionately impact women, children, and minorities, pushing vulnerable families into greater levels of poverty. Social injustice keeps certain groups from getting ahead, a problem caused by poor governmental representation, underpayment in sectors of the economy like service, and limited access to other necessary resources like childcare.

    Lack of Resources

    Finally, the limits of resources and their even geographical spread equate to greater levels of poverty. For example, UNESCO has found that if all students in low-income countries were given the education to acquire elementary reading skills, as many as 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. Limited access to education, clean water, food, and healthcare all contribute to poverty around the world. Now, climate change threatens access to food and water in various regions, meaning the problem will only get worse without systemic solutions.

    Applying Systemic Changes

    Applying solutions on a scale large enough to make a real difference requires understanding the causes of poverty and combating them at their source. With that achieved, we can propose informed solutions at a systemic level that may play a role in elevating families out of poverty and establishing greater levels of equality throughout the world. From federal minimum wages to education systems, this is much more possible than you might imagine.

    Addressing Pay Disparities and Social Injustice

    First, we can address the problem of wage inequality. This can start with a minimum wage increase, which has the power to impact the lives of 32 million workers. The Raise the Wage Act of 2021, for example, is projected to make a huge difference in the lives of workers relegated to low-wage work, which are disproportionately people of color. In fact, by lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the 23% of the workforce made up of Black women and Latinas would experience an annual income boost between $3,500 and $3,700 per individual.

    Additionally, we can create legislation that ties CEO pay to that of their workforce. There is no conscionable reason that CEOs should be making hundreds of times more a year than their employees. Shareholders often do not even understand the pay packages they offer CEOs, and higher rates of pay have been associated with poorer market performance. With tax incentives for more equitable pay ratios, we can better combat inequality on a systemic level.

    Building Better Resources

    Then, we can better address the resource discrepancies on a global scale. From education to criminal justice systems, resources are needed to mitigate the damages of poverty and curb the cycles of poverty born by system problems. Social workers are needed to empower and advocate for communities all over the world, educating them about the resources available to them and providing even more. Schools must support their students with programs designed to elevate them based on specific needs, while criminal justice reform must support re-entry.

    All these resources can help a family survive unexpected financial hardships, especially after COVID. In the era of mass global financial instability, giving communities across the world the means to succeed will help eradicate poverty. Through education, opportunity, and equity, we can ensure that talent and ability aren’t lost to the shackles of social injustice that hold too many individuals back. But we must ensure that systemic solutions are built with and for the families they target.

    By advocating for systemic change, you can support a richer, better world. Start now by exploring the needs of your community and supporting legislation that improves pay and resource accessibility.

    Beau Peters is a freelance writer based out of Portland, OR. He has a particular interest in covering workers’ rights, social justice, and workplace issues and solutions. Read other articles by Beau.

    This article was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2021 at 5:42pm and is filed under Criminal Justice System, Economic Inequality, Education, Minimum Wage, Poverty, Unemployment.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Inflated Charter School Waitlists

    With great frequency, promoters of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools like to claim that charter schools are so great that they have very long lists of students waiting to get into them. They use such claims and “data” to argue that more charter schools are needed and that more public money should be spent on creating and multiplying more privately-operated charter schools.

    However, many reports show that such waitlist numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt because they are usually inaccurate and misleading for various reasons. For example, a recent report from the North Carolina State Board of Education reported that:

    During the 2019-2020 school year, over 117,000 North Carolina students were enrolled in [200] charter schools. As of October 1, 2020, over 126,000 North Carolina students are enrolled in charter schools. Self-reported data from the state’s charter schools indicate that 78% of charter schools had a waitlist totaling nearly 76,000 students statewide. (p. 3)

    But in a footnote attached to this observation, the report notes that this “Figure may include duplicates, as students are often waitlisted at multiple charter schools.” An article from NC Policy Watch states: “76,000 names on waitlists aren’t the same as 76,000 students.” Names that appear on waitlists at multiple schools can result in a large overcount. Thus, for example, when one student is on multiple school’s waitlists, they are counted as being on each school’s waitlist. In other words, one student could be counted two, three, or more times, thereby inflating the final waitlist number. Such data could cause people to “mistakenly think that demand for charter schools is a lot higher than it actually is.”

    A related waitlist overcounting problem is highlighted by Durham (North Carolina) school board member Natalie Beyer:

    Families apply to multiple magnet schools, charter schools and private schools often in multiple counties for individual students. After lottery results, families choose a single school but do not remove their child from waiting lists and as a result those individual school waiting lists often include multiple duplications and are not an accurate reflection of demand for charter schools. (emphasis added)

    The real number of students on charter school waitlists is usually significantly lower than what is officially misreported.  While school privatizers profit from such misleading data, the public does not benefit from misrepresentative data.

    In 2014, the National Education Policy Center produced a policy memo titled: Wait, Wait. Don’t Mislead Me! Nine Reasons to be Skeptical About Charter School Waitlist Numbers.  Researchers showed that student waitlists for charter schools are highly inflated and misleading.

    Similar overcounting problems were reported in a 2016 Massachusetts news article titled Charter School Wait Lists May Not Be What They Seem.

    In March 2021, Texas AFT had this to say about bogus charter school waitlist numbers:

    In the past, the charter industry often claimed there were anywhere between 150,000 to 200,000 students on a “waitlist” they maintained and used this number to argue for even more state dollars for a duplicate education system—one that is more costly than real public schools and lacks any voter accountability. A new law required TEA [Texas Education Agency] to request waitlist information from charters and found only 55,000 on this self-reported “waitlist.” The numbers still seem inflated considering the millions that charter schools spend on television advertising (including Super Bowl and World Series ads), glossy mailers, and even billboards on IH-35 trying to attract students.

    Additional research would likely show that inflated charter school waitlist numbers are more common than initially thought.

    While it is understandable that the private interests that own-operate deregulated charter schools would make misleading data claims to advance their school privatization agenda, the public must not tolerate such distortions and should take action to stop misreporting and the flow of public funds to privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools. Public money belongs to public schools and the destiny and use of this money must be determined by the public without the influence of any private interests. Public money must stay in public hands regardless of whether or not charter schools have waitlists. No pretext should be tolerated for funneling money from the public sphere into the crisis-prone charter school sector. Even if 20 million students were on charter school waitlists, this is not a justification for transferring public money to private interests. Public funds must not fall under the control of narrow competing private interests. This will only distort the economy and exacerbate many other problems. Pay-the-rich schemes harm the general interests of society.

    Charter schools are not public schools; they are privatized, marketized, corporatized education arrangements that serve a fraction of the nation’s youth. Charter schools have no legitimate claim to public funds. They are run by unelected individuals, focus on revenue and profit, cannot levy taxes, are frequently mired in corruption, regularly engage in numerous shady real estate deals, often hire uncertified teachers, and usually intensify segregation. Homeless students, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners are consistently under-represented in charter schools. And unlike public schools, charter schools spend millions of dollars on advertising and marketing their schools to mostly vulnerable minority families. This enormous sum of public money would be better used for classroom teaching and learning. If privately-operated charter schools wish to grow and multiply, they must do so without public funds, assets, and resources.

    This article was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2021 at 2:00am and is filed under Charter Schools, Education.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New York State: 50 Charter Schools Closed in 20 Years

    by Shawgi Tell / April 7th, 2021

    According to New York Charter School Fact Sheet (January 2021) from the New York State Education Department, the number of charter schools issued in New York State since the passage of the state’s charter school law in 1998 is 397. The total number of privately-operated charters permitted statewide under 2015 legislative amendments is 460. It is worth noting that a conversion of an existing public school to a charter school is not counted toward the numerical limits established by Article 56 of Education Law. This amounts to about 10 charter schools.

    A separate but related document from the New York State Education Department, New York State Charter Schools (January 2021), claims that 46 privately-operated charter schools closed or never opened in the state. Fifteen of these charter schools closed since 2010.

    It is not unreasonable to assume that more investigation and more recent data would reveal that more than 46 charter schools have actually closed in the state over the past 20 years. For example, the Buffalo School Board voted in April 2021 to close two failing charter schools in Buffalo.

    Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures From 1999 – 2017 provides a more comprehensive picture of the high failure and closure rate of charter schools nationwide. Equally problematic, persistently poor oversight and weak accountability in the charter school sector have kept many failing charter schools open.

    The frequent failure and closure of privately-operated charter schools is part of the constant instability in the crisis-prone charter school sector that has left thousands of black and brown families out in the cold.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2021 at 11:29pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Education.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter Schools: “Choice” Is Not An Argument

    Advocates of privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools have long ignored serious criticisms of charter schools in a variety of ways. They have always believed, for example, that simply repeating worn-out phrases like “charter schools provide choice” will automatically cause everyone to dismiss the need for any discussion, investigation, and critical thinking about the well-documented negative effects of charter schools on education, society, the economy, and the national interest.

    “Choice,” however, is not an argument for the existence or expansion of privately-operated charter schools.

    When charter school promoters use the language of “choice,” they want people to:

    1. Not recognize that education is an inalienable human right that must be guaranteed in practice by a public authority worthy of the name.
    2. Believe that “free market” ideology is the best and most pro-social way to organize education in a modern society based on mass industrial production.
    3. Ignore how “choice” leads to greater stratification and segregation in charter schools through their geographic location and selective student enrollment and attrition practices.
    4. Disregard the fact that by “choice” charter school promoters really mean education is a commodity, not a social responsibility, and parents and students are consumers, not humans and citizens, who fend for themselves while shopping for a “good” school that hopefully does not close in under 10 years.
    5. Think that there is no need to analyze how and why public schools have been set up to fail by privatizers so as to justify the rise of deregulated charter schools.
    6. Get used to the disinformation that public schools are automatically bad and charter schools are inherently superior.
    7. Ignore the fact that charter schools usually choose parents and students, not the other way around.
    8. Overlook the fact that “choice” does not guarantee excellence, stability, or equity. Several thousand deregulated charter schools run by unelected individuals have closed in recent decades.
    9. Believe that it does not matter who “delivers” education, but what kind of “results” are produced.
    10. Dismiss the fact that “choice” means taking money away from under-funded public schools that educate thousands of students and that public schools in many instances are even compelled to provide some free services to charter schools.

    It is not possible to conceal the fact that deregulated charter schools fail and close regularly, educate far fewer students than public schools, are continually mired in fraud and corruption, are governed by unelected individuals, have high teacher and principal turnover rates, spend a lot of public money on advertising and marketing, dodge public standards for meetings and accountability, and siphon enormous amounts of money from public schools every day. Privately-operated charter schools also have more inexperienced and lower-paid teachers than public schools. In addition, many charter schools offer fewer services and programs than public schools. It is also worth noting that the performance of cyber charter schools is consistently abysmal. This is what “choice” has delivered.

    The 50 problems plaguing privately-operated charter schools will not disappear by endlessly repeating “choice is good” and by treating parents and students as consumers and shoppers instead of humans and citizens with rights that must be guaranteed. Turning major human responsibilities like education into a “free market” commodity is not a modern way of educating people in the 21st century. It will not solve any problems. Over the past 30 years, segregated charter schools have only given rise to more problems, including many problems for themselves.

    Parents and students do not need more problematic “choices” or choice just for the sake of choice. They need locally-controlled, world-class, fully-funded, non-demonized, free schools completely uninfluenced by narrow private interests. A modern nation and economy can’t be built on an education system based on the ideology of “survival of the fittest.”

    To be sure, the rapid multiplication of privately-operated charter schools under President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona will go a long way toward nation-wrecking, undermining public education, harming the public interest, and dehumanizing the natural and social environment. It is no surprise that intense controversy and upheaval have characterized the charter school sector since day one and seem to increase every month.

    Now is the time to step up defense of public schools and the public interest. The public matters more than ever. The privatization of schools and many other public enterprises through neoliberal state restructuring harms the majority, the economy, society, and the national interest. Privatization increases corruption and inefficiency, while lowering quality, increasing costs, and restricting democracy. The public must not permit neoliberals and privatizers to wreck public schools that have been serving 90% of America’s youth for well over a century. Schemes based on the “free market” and a “fend-for-yourself” ethos will certainly benefit a tiny handful of owners of capital, but they won’t solve deep problems that have worsened due to the actions of major owners of capital desperately hanging on to an obsolete economic system.

    This article was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2021 at 9:47pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Corruption, Education, Neoliberalism, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter School Disinformation About Families Being the Most Important “Stakeholders”

    Since day one, advocates of privately-operated charter schools have tried to convince everyone that segregated charter schools “empower parents” and that parents are not only “stakeholders” but the most important “stakeholders” in education. Everything in education is supposedly all about parents first and foremost. Parents are the end-all and be-all. Education apparently serves no one else or 10 other broad functions. Education exists mainly to serve parents. Everyone and everything else is secondary at best. Oddly enough, while the “parent empowerment” theme is central to charter school disinformation it is actually charter schools that choose parents and students, not the other way around.

    Such a narrow notion of parents-first-last-and-always deliberately degrades and debases the historical, cultural, social, political, and economic role, significance, and importance of public education in a modern society based on mass industrial production. The days of petty production, small estates,  small farms, and feudal manors are long gone. Humans today are born to a complex modern society in which all production is highly technical, scientific, advanced, large-scale, and cooperative. Everything is interdependent and impossible without millions of skilled working people. The problem is that this modern mass production system is based on outdated relations of production, that is, it is owned and controlled by competing private owners of capital whose only aim is to maximize profit as fast as possible no matter the damage to the natural and social environment. Such a set-up reinforces old ideas such as consumerism, individualism, competition, and a fend-for-yourself culture. It renders education a commodity and parents become consumers who individually shop for schools the way they shop for a car. If things work out, that’s great, but if they don’t work out, then you are screwed. “Buyer Beware” is the only defense you have against getting ambushed in a “survival-of-the-fittest” society. In such a society, government abdicates its responsibility to people and nothing is guaranteed. Privileges, competition, and opportunities replace rights. Education is never upheld as a right that must be provided a guarantee by government, it is simply a commodity and an opportunity.

    Neoliberal “Stakeholder”

    The core idea behind the neoliberal notion of a “stakeholder” is that there are no social classes. We supposedly live in a “no-class” society. In this way, the 50 problems that exist in class-divided societies magically disappear. All that exists is isolated, abstract, allegedly equal self-interested calculating consumers with an “equal stake” in capitalism. We are to casually ignore massive and constantly-growing inequality and the fact that only the top 1% have a stake in capitalism and that the majority of humanity urgently needs an alternative to this crisis-prone economic system that leaves millions behind every year. The neoliberal idea of a “stakeholder” is a way to apologize for capitalism and to block any thinking that considers a modern alternative to this obsolete system.

    Parents are not stakeholders. Nor are students, teachers, and principals. Women, workers, and senior citizens are not “stakeholders” either. They are human beings and citizens with basic human rights, not consumers, shoppers, or “market citizens” who fend-for-themselves in a chaotic and insecure “dog-eat-dog” world. Parents are members of the polity, just like everyone else, and they necessarily share the same objective interests as students, teachers, principals, and others. Education serves parents, as well as students, teachers, principals, society, the economy, and people who are not parents. The value of education is not based on parenthood. A modern society based on mass industrial production would not be possible without a modern mass public education system that is world-class, fully-funded, and locally-controlled.

    The role of education is to pass on the accumulated knowledge of humanity to the next generation so that society can progress. Everyone has a “stake” in education. The same can be said about healthcare, transportation, postal services, food production, municipal services, and more. Everyone needs these services—parents and non-parents. Education must serve everyone in a modern society, not this or that “stakeholder” or “special interest.”

    Government must take up its social responsibility to provide the rights of individuals and collectives with a guarantee in practice, not leave everyone to fend for themselves in a society that perpetuates insecurity, poverty, debt, unemployment, and inequality. Everyone should reject all attempts by narrow private interests to impose neoliberal ideas and arrangements on people, institutions,  public enterprises, and different spheres of life. Defend the right to an education that serves all individuals, collectives, and society.

    This article was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2021 at 9:26am and is filed under Charter Schools, Disinformation, Education, Neoliberalism.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter Schools’ Obsession With Test Scores Deliberately Misses the Point

    Putting aside the endless problems with punitive high-stakes standardized tests produced by a handful of large for-profit corporations, charter school advocates have never stopped making a fetish out of students’ scores on these political instruments. Charter school promoters obsess endlessly over racist psychometric tests that have been rejected by many for decades. They appear to be immune to all criticism of these widely-rejected tests. No critical examination of these top-down corporate tests is even attempted. It is as if everyone is expected to automatically embrace them and treat them as being useful, flawless, and meaningful.

    What is odd, however, is that thousands of charter schools, which frequently cherry-pick their students, actually perform poorly on such corporate tests, more poorly than many under-funded public schools, and about the same as some under-funded public schools. There is really not much to boast about. The charter school record is not impressive, especially when viewed in its totality. Thirty years after their appearance, segregated charter schools cannot seem to claim victory for much.

    It is no surprise that more than 150 privately-operated non-profit and for-profit charter schools close every year due to academic failure (and financial malfeasance). Literally thousands have failed and closed in three decades, leaving many black and brown families out in the cold.

    Overall, it remains hard to make a compelling argument for the existence of private business like deregulated charter schools. Why have another “system” of schools that undermines public schools and still fails to deliver? What is the reason for such wasteful redundancy, especially when it undermines the public interest? Competition makes losers out of everyone. If it was indisputable and crystal clear to everyone that deregulated charter schools are the silver bullet that advocates keep stubbornly claiming they are, there would be little or no controversy surrounding these contract schools. But every year the controversy around charter schools only intensifies.

    Even if all students in a charter school scored 100 on an unsound corporate test, there is no justification for the existence of privately-operated charter schools. The main criteria for judging whether a school should exist is not whether students pass or fail unsound corporate tests.

    The tests and students’ scores are meaningless at many levels—for both charter schools and public schools. They are methodologically, philosophically, and statistically flawed. Focusing on the tests pressures people to ignore the core issue regarding charter schools, which is whether they are public or not in the proper sense of the word. They are not. Charter schools are privatized marketized schools. Once it is recognized, understood, appreciated, internalized, and not forgotten that charter schools are not public schools, then all other issues become moot or secondary. The “publicness/privateness” of segregated charter schools is the key issue. Thus, for example, because they are private businesses, charter schools were able to seize hundreds of millions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds from the CARES Act. Public schools were not permitted any access to PPP funds because they are not private businesses, they are public entities.

    Once it is grasped that segregated non-profit and for-profit charter schools are not public entities then the issue becomes: why are they receiving any public funds, assets, facilities, resources, or authority? What valid claim do private entities have to such things? Public and private cannot be equated, they mean very different things. The public and private spheres have different aims, agendas, and preoccupations. The dictionary even defines public and private as the opposite of each other. Why confound terms that are antonyms?

    It is helpful to recall that charter schools are contract schools that are segregated, deunionized, run by unelected officials, have high teacher turnover rates, siphon money from public schools, regularly under-perform, dodge many public laws and standards, frequently over-pay administrators, often cherry-pick their students, and are constantly plagued by endless scandal, fraud, and corruption. Charter schools on average also suspend students at a significantly higher rate than public schools. Who supports any of this?

    If charter schools wish to exist, so be it. But like private schools they must not be permitted to have access to any public funds, assets, facilities, resources, or authority. They must fund and support themselves without any reliance on the public sphere. Public funds and resources belong to the public and public schools, not someone else.

    This article was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2021 at 7:52pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Education, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • What is a “Strong” Charter School Law?

    Every year the billionaire-funded National Alliance for Charter Schools (NAPCS) produces a glossy report ranking state charter school laws. This year’s 72-page report is titled: Measuring up to the model, a ranking of state public charter school laws, twelfth annual edition.

    The main goal of the report is to rank state charter school laws in terms of how “strong” or “weak” they are. This is supposed to signal to privatizers and neoliberals which states are most conducive to privatizing public schools and which are the least conducive to privatizing public schools.

    When the report refers to a state’s charter school law as being “strong” what it means is that the door is wide open in that state to unfettered privatization of public schools. In other words, a state with a “strong” charter school law enables and empowers privatizers and neoliberals to create more privately-operated segregated charter schools than a state with a “weak” charter school law. States with “strong” charter school laws, for example, have less charter school accountability and fewer laws, rules, and regulations upholding public standards for non-profit and for-profit charter schools. Being able to dodge teacher unions and being exempt from collective bargaining agreements is also considered a feature of a state with “strong” charter school laws. States with “strong” charter school laws also tend to have more “charter school authorizers,” which means that it is easier to start a charter school in that state because if one authorizer rejects a charter school application, the applicant can always “hop” down the road to another charter school authorizer and see if they will authorize the school’s charter, which they usually do. This reveals the arbitrary and chaotic nature of charter school authorizing. Further, in states with “strong” charter school laws segregated charter schools can operate with a large degree of impunity and not be held accountable for a range of widely-reported unethical practices.

    “For the sixth year in a row,” Indiana, according to this latest NAPCS report, is number one in the nation because it has the “strongest” charter school laws in the country. This is terrible news for public schools and the public interest but great news for privatizers and neoliberals. What makes Indiana particularly attractive to privatizers and neoliberals is that it allows an infinite number of deregulated charter schools, multiple charter school authorizers, and almost no rules or regulations for charter schools to uphold. Indiana has also taken steps to funnel even more public school funds into the hands of the private interests that own-operate segregated charter schools.

    The NAPCS states that Maryland “has the nation’s weakest charter school law, ranking No. 45 (out of 45).” In other words, Maryland is the least attractive state to privatizers and neoliberals because it limits the number of charter school authorizers, upholds some rules and standards, and limits the amount of public funds that can be seized by private owners-operators of segregated charter schools. The report considers Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, and Kansas to be insufficiently friendly to owners of capital as well.

    The issue at stake here is not whether charter school laws are “strong” or “weak” but rather: why are privately-operated charter schools permitted to exist in the first place? A related question is: why are private businesses like charter schools allowed to access public funds, assets, and resources? Charter schools are not public entities in the proper sense of the word. They are not state agencies like public schools. They are not political subdivisions of the state. They differ legally from public schools. They are contract schools that represent the outsourcing of public education to the private sector. Why are they legally permitted to siphon billions of public dollars that belong to public schools?

    Currently, 45 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam have laws enabling the creation of charter schools. At this time, about 3.2 million students are enrolled in roughly 7,200 deregulated non-profit and for-profit charter schools. Privately-operated charter schools are notorious for consistently enrolling far fewer special needs students, homeless students, and English Language learners than public schools. It should also be noted that every 1-2 days a news report documents fraud, corruption, and arrests in the charter school sector.

    This article was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2021 at 10:00pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Discrimination, Education, Public Schools, Students.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Post-Pandemic American Society Must Not Return to its Industrial Capitalist Roots

    Our mace shaped COVID-19 enemy and its mutations merrily popping up around the United States, ironically has opened up new possibilities for inching beyond the grimy confines of industrial capitalism to new modes of work, learning and being that were initially promised by technocrats at the dawn of the Internet/World Wide Web. Indeed, the Pandemic of 2020-21 (Pandemic) revealed that remote education and work was feasible easing; for example, the pollution that filled the air with the exhaust from automobiles, buses, aircraft and idle factories.

    Further, telemedicine was catapulted from mere novelty to reality as the medical community realized that simple follow-up appointments did not require brick and mortar (B&M) office visits. Corporations like Amazon saved billions, according to CNBC, on travel expenses by halting the practice of needlessly sending employees to conferences and trade shows that could just as easily be conducted online. Families were forced to spend time together maybe getting to know one another better.  Businesses that survived during the Pandemic were forced to make hybrid arrangements for employees so they could care for their children while staying physically distanced from the workplace. Americans had time to think in isolation and perhaps, for a moment, they became bored with all the technological gadgets and networks that blur, rather than educate.

    Was it really all that bad? Can’t the nation wean itself off of industrial capitalism? Do we have to go back?

    Yes, no doubt, suffering was real. Millions went unemployed and the destruction wrought by the Pandemic was revealed in the numbers filing for unemployment claims, food assistance, rent/mortgage and student loan forbearance. Homelessness increased. Surplus labor skyrocketed. Indeed, according to the human resources consultancy Adeccogroup.com, the top five jobs set for the post-Pandemic chopping block are in higher education, sales, administration and office support, construction, air travel and the hospitality industry. What now?

    Never Forget

    It was in this that the Pandemic exposed the sheer ruthlessness of American industrial capitalist governance and its homicidal policies. Even as 500,000 Americans died from complications of COVID-19, Americans would watch as the US government—through its elected representatives, simply told the people to go pound sand. Watching the mostly wealthy entrenched ideologues in the US Congress bicker, or vacation, while COVID-19 was causing America to eat itself has to stand as one of the more sickening events in American history. Indeed, stock prices soared at many points during the Pandemic even as a modern day plague ravaged the land.

    No one should ever forget it.

    The Pandemic caused American government to buckle on its knees. It was a horrific structural failure and the wreckage is there for all Americans, and the world, to see. It is there in the COVID-19 KIA body counts, a flimsy healthcare system ravaged by privatization, logistical impasses in transporting vaccines and, in the midst of it all, the US Congress—while in session affirming the electoral vote count for president Joe Biden—was overrun by an ignorant mob. And now those at the apex of industrial capitalism, here in the United States, and those at the bottom of it, want to move back to the standard industrial model that has left a path of death, suffering and waste in its wake. “Build Back Better,” US president Joe Biden says. Back to what?

    Yes, our deadly friend COVID-19 showed that Americans are made of the stuff of ignorance, fear, complaint and irresponsibility. The Pandemic caused Americans not to adapt and put on a brave face, but rather exposed the flimsy myth of America as exceptional. Oh, first responders and frontline medical workers have great courage, of course, and so do many US soldiers that experience combat, but those individuals are small in number in a nation of 335 million people.

    It is strange that the Pandemic pushed the Internet/WWW to be used for what it was initially meant for: research, learning, work, and video/voice communication in a time of isolation. It was a far better use of the medium as opposed to  24 hours news casts, Tik-Tok videos and perpetual head-down positions required by the handhelds; all accompanied, of course, by loud, tractor-pull mutilated language or techno pop. With 100 places to turn for electronic stimulation— and the fear of missing a call, video or text—it’s no wonder attention spans for the young and old have become so irreparably damaged that recalling sentence number one at the end of a four sentence paragraph is a challenge of the highest order.

    Lobotomy Please, Not Reality

    But perhaps there is a ghost in the machine type of logic to it all. The network connected American has come to forget in the evening what was purchased in the morning. It is certainly good for business. History is what happens in the future, not the past. The past needs to be wiped away so the future can appear. The unintended use of the Internet/WWW and communications technologies/gadgets, have caused in-depth, critical thinking to be wiped away in the United States. The Pandemic has shown that Americans do not want to slow down or spend time apart from their handheld which is, of course, connected to the Internet/WWW.

    With the Internet—the cables, links, routers, switches and other machinery upon which content (voice, images, video, text, software) travels the World Wide Web, Americans became easily blinded into thinking that they were living out some novel, fantastical existence in a technologically sophisticated, forward thinking society. It was all cosmetic gloss, a techno-veil, one which we all donned because we really believed that by doing so we were moving in some direction to a sort of new American Nirvana.

    It is tempting to refer to the artsy-tech movie The Matrix and the scene where Morpheus shows Neo that the world he thought he knew has been destroyed. “Welcome to the world of the real,” Morpheus says as Neo looks on and goes into shock, vomiting.

    But the world of 2021 is no special effects movie.

    Americans are eager to get back to the way things were, in their world of the real. To get back on the road to commute to work/school; that is, increase pollution, vehicle accidents. To be relieved of parenting, that is, using schools/teachers as a babysitting service and prisons for prepubescent adolescents and/or maturing teenagers. Why does the United States want to rush back into the B&M model? Consider building construction, or, better still, phrase it as building empty, wasteful spaces. Elementary and high school buildings remain largely empty during a 24/7, 12 month cycle (after hours they remain largely vacant). The sports fields, running tracks and basketball courts that accompany each structure are only partially used. The same can be said for sky-scraping office buildings that, over the same 24/7 hour, 12 month cycles, remain empty. Meanwhile, taxpayer funded sports stadiums are never fully used. It is reminiscent of cathedrals and mosques built at great expense on the backs of the poor that become tourist attractions more than places of worship. Or think about military bases, factories and housing projects abandoned, rotting away. These are the wasteful byproducts of industrial capitalism still existing and perpetually constructed in what is wistfully called “The Information Age.”

    The Human Condition has hardly changed at all.

    Warehouses for the Young

    The Pandemic showed that the Internet—those land, seafloor and space-based communications networks, combined with the content and software of the World Wide Web (WWW), could be effectively used to teach students online, at home, and in virtual classrooms. As it is, America warehouses K-20 students; separating, or rather protecting them, from the messy society adults have created. Students are taught — what exactly? How to master a college entrance exam? To memorize Algebraic equations they will forget in a year?

    The Pandemic of 2020-21, showed just how archaic B&M education is. Let’s face it, isn’t distance learning/work the way the United States was supposed to evolve even minus COVID-19?

    Prognosticators claimed the greatest technological powerhouse on the planet was going to push ahead building pipelines to carry and host vast stores of knowledge content via the Internet and WWW for learning. No more bulky, out of date textbooks. Students, parents, teachers and local-state-federal government officials (in that order) would work together to develop an educational plan based on the student’s primary interests which would likely be demonstrated by 12th grade, perhaps, with second and third interests in the pipeline if the student’s subject matter area changed.

    Course tracks would be customized by downloading, largely free, content from the WWW. The teacher would become more like a tutor and the student would have many of them with perhaps a learning coordinator/advocate constantly tweaking the course menu. Since performance data on students in K-12 in the USA is tracked anyway; for example—including absent/sick days, suspensions and legal problems— career path/trend analyses based on grades and other statistics could be implemented to assist the student in selecting a field of study-employment.

    Chained to the Bicycle Rack

    “It’s nice to know things. I like to know things. You like to know things,” said Professor David Perkins of Harvard University in the 2015 issue of Harvard Ed Magazine. “But there are issues of balance, particularly in the digital age. The information in textbooks is not necessarily what you need or would like to have at your fingertips…Conventional curriculum is chained to the bicycle rack…It sits solidly in the minds of parents: I learned that. Why aren’t my children learning it? The enormous investment in textbooks and the cost of revising them gives familiar elements of the curriculum a longer life span than they might perhaps deserve. Curriculum suffers from something of a crowded garage effect: It generally seems safer and easier to keep the old bicycle around than to throw it out…the life worthiness of the multitudinous facts and ideas in the typical curriculum is spotty, it seems not to have been thought through very carefully.”

    It is often necessary to visit the past for a solution to the present. Consider the following from 1971. It is excerpted from Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era, by Zbigniew Brzeziński.

    The following would be a good start for Americans to set about changing their views of learning, working and being.

    In America higher education is carried on within a relatively self-­contained organizational and even social framework, making for a protracted period of semi­-isolation from problems of social reality. As a result, both organizationally and in terms of content, a divorce between education and social existence has tended to develop…extending education on an intermittent basis throughout the lifetime of the citizen, society would go a long way toward meeting this problem. The duration of the self­-contained and relatively isolated phase of initial education could then be shortened. Taking into account the earlier physical and sexual maturation of young people today, it could be more generally pursued within a work ­study framework, and it should be supplemented by periodic additional training throughout most of one’s active life.

    A good case can be made for ending initial education—more of which could be obtained in the home through electronic devices, somewhere around the age of eighteen. This formal initial period could be followed by two years of service in a socially desirable cause; then by direct involvement in some professional activity and by advanced, systematic training within that area; and finally by regular periods of one and eventually even  two years of broadening, integrative study at the beginning of every decade of one’s life, somewhere up to the age of sixty. For example, medical or legal training could begin after only two years of college, thus both shortening the time needed to complete the training and probably also increasing the number attracted into these professions. Regular and formally required retraining—as well as broadening—could ensue at regular intervals throughout most of one’s professional career.

    By now you are wondering: So what is my solution? I don’t have an adequate response to that question, but I do know that national and transnational cultural education has to be connected to any answer or plan that sets America—and the world, for that matter, on a path to a post-industrial capitalist society. The country isn’t even close to it now. The Pandemic has shown that. It just does not seem likely that returning to the industrial capitalist, B&M norm—or the model of governance as it is run by officials now in power—will move the country any closer to change. The wars go on, weapons are more lethal and will soon be operated by AI programs, racism still exists, ignorance is bliss, corporations are people, pollution continues, wasted spaces are good for business, and education is awash in a mishmash of learning methodologies, software applications and a war between parents, teachers and administrators.

    Perhaps—like the US military as it seeks to stand down to contemplate the problem of extremism in its ranks—American civil society needs to stand down for some period of time to reassess learning, work and being.

    This article was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2021 at 6:35pm and is filed under COVID-19, Education, Industsrial Capitalism, Internet, Lockdown, Opinion, Pandemics, Society, Technology.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter Schools Distort the Modern Socialized Economy

    Every year billions of public dollars and assets flow into the hands of private businesses like charter schools, leaving public schools, the economy, the public interest, and the nation worse off. This is due to the fact that competing owners of capital are using deregulated charter schools to atomize the socialized economy for private gain. As pay-the-rich schemes, privately-operated charter schools drain the large-scale socialized economy of a huge amount of social wealth produced by working people and meant for the public interest.

    When public funds leave the public sector and end up in the hands of deregulated private entities like non-profit and for-profit charter schools, that means narrow private interests are benefitting at the expense of the public. It means less added-value is used by and benefits the public. It means all public wealth is not reinvested fully and directly back into the public sector. Instead, a large portion of social wealth produced by workers is illegitimately claimed by external private claimants whose aim is to maximize profit as fast as possible. This distorts the economy and undermines public schools and the public interest. It is a net loss for society. It is socially irresponsible. Funneling public funds to private interests undermines modern nation-building that relies on a diverse, self-reliant, balanced, and pro-social economy under public control.

    It may be asked: Why don’t public funds stay in public hands? Why aren’t public funds used for public enterprises and for public purposes only? Why do public funds have to go through the private circuit and still leave society with poor results? Why are narrow private interests even permitted to access public funds in the first place? Why do so many social programs and public enterprises have a pay-the-rich component to them? What legitimate claim do owners of capital have to wealth produced by workers?

    Public and private are antonyms and should not be confounded. Public is the opposite of private. They do not mean the same thing. They should not be casually mixed up and used in intellectually lazy ways. It is problematic to mix them up because it denies the distinct properties of each category. There is a world of difference between the common good and exclusive private interests. What is good for major owners of capital is not good for the general interests of society. The aim of maximizing profit as fast as possible clashes head-on with the aim of serving the common good. These aims cannot be harmonized because one negates the other. Pursuing one comes at the expense of the other. There is no middle-ground or “safe mixing” of the two. Blurring the contrast between public and private is self-serving and invariably results in antisocial consequences. This is why so-called “public-private-partnerships” (PPPs), for example, are really pay-the-rich schemes that undermine the public interest instead of advancing it. There is little that is public about PPPs. The public does not need private “partners” to serve the economy and society; private “partners” are a big drain on both.

    Public funds for public schools must not flow into the hands of narrow private interests; this does not solve anything, it just destabilizes education and the economy. Now more than ever public schools need more public funds and greater investments. This is especially true given that at least $600 billion has been cut from public education since the 2008 recession.

    Public schools have been educating 90% of America’s youth for more than 150 years and must be fully funded, not continually starved of funds, over-tested, over-controlled, set up to fail, demonized and discredited, and then handed over to narrow private interests as a source of profit in a continually failing economy. Deliberately and persistently starving public schools of funds, over-testing them, demonizing and punishing them, and then letting neoliberals and privatizers privatize them only serves the rich and garbles the economy. It does not improve schools. It leaves the majority worse off.

    The “starve-them, test-them, demonize-punish-them, and privatize-them” strategy is straight out of the neoliberal playbook and has been used in dozens of cities across America. It is a deliberate setup for failure. Neoliberals and privatizers are now directly responsible for thousands of failing charter schools and for mandating public school failure. Society is now stuck with two failing education arrangements thanks to neoliberals and privatizers. How is this helpful? Instead of solving anything, neoliberals and privatizers have made a mess of everything and humiliated the personality of society. An August 6, 2020 article from the Washington Post titled “New report finds high closure rates for charter schools over time” reported that:

    A comprehensive examination released Thursday of charter school failure rates between 1999 and 2017 found that more than one-quarter of the schools closed after operating for five years, and about half closed after 15 years, displacing a total of more than 867,000 students.

    How is this a good thing? In what sense can this chaos and instability be called a success? Is this what students, teachers, parents, the economy, and society need? Is this what charter school promoters mean by “success”? Over the past 30 years more than 3,000 segregated charter schools have closed, usually for financial malfeasance and/or poor academic performance. This is staggering when considering the fact that there are currently fewer than 7,500 privately-operated charter schools in the country. Charter school promoters are consistently silent on these damning and indicting facts.

    Wealth is produced by workers who must have first claim to it. Wealth is not created by owners of capital. Owners of capital mainly control the wealth produced by workers. Workers do not control the wealth they themselves produce; they are alienated from the fruits of their labor, which means that the social product cannot be used to serve the general interests of society.

    The state must be organized to advance the public interest using the social wealth produced by working people. Instead, the state is increasingly being used to pay the rich using the wealth produced collectively by working people. When the state prioritizes narrow private interests over the public interest in this way the socialized economy, workers, and nation-building suffer. The ability to reproduce the economy on a healthy sustainable basis is undermined. It means socially-produced wealth cannot be used to develop a diverse, self-reliant, and balanced economy that upholds the rights of all and provides a crisis-free life. This puts the future in peril.

    The egocentric rich are only interested in expanding their class power and privilege, not the public interest, the socialized economy, or nation-building. Their objective position in the economy makes them blind to anything other than their private unlimited greed. They see the world only from their narrow business-centric perspective. The antisocial consequences that result from their seizure of social wealth for private gain does not concern them. This wrecking of society and the economy is presented as a “natural” and “normal” feature of a dog-eat-dog world that we are all apparently helpless to overcome.

    Great strides can be made by blocking neoliberals and privatizers and by advancing a pro-social agenda that recognizes the need for new human-centered relations in society and the economy. Pay-the-rich schemes are socially irresponsible and make life worse for everyone except the rich. Enlarging the private fortunes of owners of capital at the expense of the entire society must be opposed in order to open the path of progress to society and strengthen and balance the socialized economy. There are much better ways to organize people, the economy, and society.

    Socially-produced wealth must be plowed back into public schools and public enterprises, not handed over to private interests to do with as they please. If private businesses like segregated charter schools wish to exist and multiply, that is OK, but they must not have access to a single public dime, asset, or resource. Public funds and assets belong to the public and public enterprises. There is nothing public about charter schools.

    Owners of capital must not be permitted to cannibalize the state for their narrow private interests. Education is not a commodity or “market opportunity” for “investors,” it is a public good, a social responsibility, and basic right that must be provided with a guarantee in practice.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021 at 6:34pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Economy/Economics, Education, Neoliberalism, Privatization, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • B’Tselem’s Historic Declaration: Israel’s Open War on Its Own Civil Society

    “A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid,” was the title of a January 12 report by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. No matter how one is to interpret B’Tselem’s findings, the report is earth-shattering. The official Israeli response merely confirmed what B’Tselem has stated in no uncertain terms.

    Those of us who repeatedly claimed that Israel is not democratic, governed by an apartheid regime and systematically discriminates against its ethnic and racial minorities, in favor of the country’s Jewish majority, purportedly have nothing to learn from B’Tselem’s declaration. Thus, it may seem that the report, which highlighted racial discrimination in four major areas – land, citizenship, freedom of movement and political participation – merely restated the obvious. In actuality, it went much further.

    B’Tselem is a credible Israeli human rights organization. However, like other Israeli rights groups, it rarely went far enough in challenging the Israeli state’s basic definition of itself as a democratic state. Yes, on numerous occasions it rightly accused the Israeli government and military of undemocratic practices, rampant human rights violations and so on. But to demolish the very raison d’etre, the basic premise that gives Israel its legitimacy in the eyes of its Jewish citizens, and many more around the world, is a whole different story.

    “B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it),” the Israeli rights group concluded based on the fact that the “bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.”

    Let’s be clear on what this actually means. Israel’s leading human rights organization was not arguing that Israel was turning into an apartheid state or that it was acting contrary to the spirit of democracy or that Israel is an undemocratic apartheid regime only within the geographic confines of the occupied Palestinian territories. None of this. According to B’tselem, which has for decades diligently documented numerous facets of Israeli government practices in the realm of politics, military, land-ownership, water distribution, health, education, and much more, Israel is, now, wholly an apartheid, undemocratic regime.

    B’Tselem’s assessment is most welcomed, not as a belated admission of a self-evident reality but as an important step that could allow both Israelis and Palestinians to establish a common narrative on their relationship, political position and collective action in order to dismantle this Israeli apartheid.

    Relatively, Israeli groups that criticize their own government have historically been allowed much larger margins than Palestinian groups that have done the same thing. However, this is no longer the case.

    Palestinian freedom of speech has always been so limited and the mere criticism of the Israeli occupation has led to extreme measures, including beatings, arrests, and even assassinations. In 2002, a government-funded organization, NGO Monitor, was established precisely to monitor and control Palestinian human rights organizations in the occupied territories, including Addameer, al-Mezan Center, al-Haq, PCHR among others. The Israeli army raid on the Ramallah-based offices of the Palestinian human rights group Addameer in September 2019 was one of many such violent examples.

    However, Israeli government actions of recent years are pointing to an unmistakable paradigm shift where Israeli civil society organizations are increasingly perceived to be the enemy, targeted in myriad ways, including defamation, financial restrictions and severing of access to the Israeli public.

    The latter point was put on full display on January 17, when Israeli Education Minister, Yoav Galant, tweeted that he had instructed his ministry to “prevent the entry of organizations calling Israel ‘an apartheid state’ or demeaning Israeli soldiers, from lecturing at schools”.

    Oddly, Galant demonstrated B’Tselem’s point, where the group challenged Israel’s very claim to democracy and freedom of expression, by curtailing Israeli human rights workers, intellectuals and educators’ own right to express dissent and to challenge the government’s political line. Simply stated, Galant’s decision is a functional definition of totalitarianism at work.

    B’Tselem did not back down. To the contrary, the group expressed its determination “to keep with its mission of documenting reality,” and making its “findings publicly known to the Israeli public, and worldwide”. It went even further as B’Tselem director Hagai El-Ad met with hundreds of Israeli students on January 18 to discuss the inconsistency between military occupation and the respect for human rights. Following the meeting, El-Ad tweeted “The @btselem lecture did take place this morning. The Israeli government will have to contend with us until the apartheid regime ends.”

    The B’Tselem-Galant episode is not an isolated spat, but one out of many such examples, which demonstrate that the Israeli government is turning into a police state against, not only Palestinian Arabs, but its own Jewish citizens.

    Indeed, the decision by the Israeli Ministry of Education is rooted in a previous law that dates back to July 2018, which was dubbed the “Breaking the Silence law”. Breaking the Silence is an Israeli civil society organization of army veterans who became vocal in their criticism of the Israeli occupation, and who have taken it upon themselves to educate the Israeli public on the immorality and illegality of Israel’s military practices in occupied Palestine. To silence the soldiers, former Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett ordered schools to bar these conscientious objectors from gaining access and directly speaking to students.

    The latest government’s decision, taken by Galant, has merely widened the definition, thus expanding the restrictions imposed on Israelis who refuse to toe the government’s line.

    For years, a persisting argument within the Palestine-Israel discourse contended that, while Israel is not a perfect democracy, it is, nonetheless, a ‘democracy for Jews’. Though true democracies must be founded on equality and inclusiveness, the latter maxim gave some credibility to the argument that Israel can still strike the balance between being nominally democratic while remaining exclusively Jewish.

    That shaky argument is now falling apart. Even in the eyes of many Israeli Jews, the Israeli government no longer possesses any democratic ideals. Indeed, as B’Tselem has succinctly worded it, Israel is a regime of Jewish supremacy “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

    This article was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2021 at 5:52pm and is filed under Academic Freedom, Activism, Apartheid, Democracy, Education, Freedom of Expression/Speech, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, Israel/Palestine, Land Theft, Nationalism, Occupation, Racism, Zionism.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter School Accountability Will Remain Weak in 2021

    Segregated charter schools have a high failure rate and are notorious for lacking accountability and oversight. Charter schools are also well-known for being non-transparent even though they are ostensibly “public” schools. This has been the case for nearly 30 years when charter schools first came into being. Over the years, endless reports, articles, and books have documented the chronic lack of accountability in the troubled charter school sector.

    Privately-operated charter schools have always over-promised and under-delivered on accountability. This is closely related to why fraud and corruption remain entrenched in the charter school sector. The worn-out assertion that charter schools will deliver “results” and be accountable in exchange for autonomy and independence has always been a pretext to privatize education and fool the gullible. It has nothing to do with improving schools. The closing of several thousand charter schools over the years shows that charter schools are not a worthwhile “innovative experiment” or a “better alternative” to public schools. So much for “results-based accountability in education.”

    As “free market” schools charter schools operate according to market accountability, which really means no accountability. Market accountability is a way to dodge public oversight and do as you please. The “free market” mainly delivers chaos, anarchy, and instability and allows many “bad actors” to stay in business. Market accountability also means treating parents and students as consumers, not as humans with a right to education that must be provided with a guarantee in practice. None of this is a modern, responsible, human-centered way of doing things.

    The recent appointment of Karega Rausch as the new president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) will not result in any improved accountability for non-profit and for-profit charter schools, no matter how much fanfare surrounds his appointment. The former long-time president of NACSA, Greg Richmond, was well aware of the absence of meaningful accountability in the crisis-prone charter school sector. He made many direct and indirect references to this stubborn problem in different statements, press releases, and reports.

    Karega has been a long-time promoter of deregulated charter schools and has worked in a range of organizations and settings funded by billionaires that advocate school privatization and the elimination of the public interest. Experience, facts, theory, analysis, and logic show that there is no reason to believe that charter school accountability will improve in 2021, with or without Karega. Without a change in the aim, direction, and outlook of education, society, and the economy things will actually go from bad to worse. Rosy words, grand promises, and repeating the word “innovation” 50 times a day will not change this.

    The fact that charter school accountability bills drafted by legislators in many states over the years have usually gone nowhere is a testament to the power of the rich and their representatives to wreck the public sphere and promote school privatization with impunity. The rich are vigorously opposed to anything that hinders profit maximization and use every means at their disposal to restrict public right.

    Moving forward, the rich are more determined than ever to privatize more schools as a way to avert the falling rate of profit under capitalism. This will further reduce transparency and accountability.

    No one should be fooled by lofty phrases that promise all kinds of things that never materialize. Social consciousness must rise to a level that overcomes disinformation and unleashes the human factor to bring about change that favors the people. Old ideas, words, platitudes, practices, and institutions no longer work; they just contribute to going from bad to worse and leaving people frustrated, overwhelmed, and disempowered. Pressuring and begging politicians to serve the public interest is not going to suddenly start working in 2021. The existing political arrangements stand discredited and cannot provide a path forward. How many times has begging politicians and “leaders” left people feeling humiliated, exhausted, and with no meaningful solutions? Why keep doing the same ineffective thing over and over again? Why not learn from this experience and draw the warranted conclusions?

    A new way of thinking and acting is the necessity of the times. This includes relying on and organizing ourselves and speaking up in our own name. It means paying attention to our own organizational, political, and ideological needs instead of relying on others to serve our interests. In this sense, accountability begins at home.

    Workers, students, youth, and women must step up resistance to all aspects of the neoliberal antisocial offensive and strengthen action with analysis. They must establish their own reference points and abandon the reference points imposed on them by the rich and their political and media representatives. The retrogressive vision and agenda of the rich must be replaced by a vision and agenda that advances the public interest.

    More privatization and marketization of education means less accountability.

    This article was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2021 at 1:00am and is filed under Charter Schools, Education, Free Market.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Charter School Promoters Comfortable With Cardona

    President-elect Joe Biden recently nominated Miguel Cardona to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Education. Hardly anyone in education circles has heard of or spoken about Cardona, let alone in an open and serious way. For weeks there was endless speculation and confusion surrounding the “top potential pick” for this position. All kinds of illusions, diversions, and false hopes predictably came to the fore. As in previous elections, emotions ran high while analysis, theory, and experience took a back seat.

    The notion, according to many, that Cardona is a “non-controversial,” “non-party-splitting,” “unifying choice” is meant to intensify opposition to analysis, theory, and experience. The idea that Cardona is a “middle-of-the-road” kind of guy is designed to cover up harsh splits, profoundly different visions of education, and worsening class divisions in society. Objectively, a capital-centered agenda cannot be reconciled with a human-centered agenda; they are based on diametrically-opposed aims and visions.

    Then there is the widely-held notion that public education can only benefit from a person at the helm who has experience in public education. Many insisted that the next U.S. Secretary of Education must have “real public school experience.” This demand is usually made spontaneously and uncritically, as if nothing dreadful or harmful could possibly happen in public schools so long as someone from public education is leading American education. It is a textbook case of mixing up personal will and class will. It also feeds off the “anyone-but-DeVos” frenzy. Is it safe to blindly assume that public education students and teachers will automatically be served well if the Education Department is managed by someone who has public education classroom experience? Is there any guarantee of that? Public education has suffered relentless attacks for generations regardless of who has been in charge of the Education Department. These assaults are the result of historic political-economic dynamics and forces larger than this or that individual. This is why school privatization, high-stakes standardized testing, and other antisocial policies in education will not come to an end just because a person with public education classroom experience leads the Education Department.

    Cardona is Connecticut’s first Latino commissioner of education, and he served in this role very briefly. Cardona himself started as an English Language Learner when he was a student. Over the years Cardona has been a teacher, a principal, and assistant superintendent in the public school system. His children attended public schools as well.

    Many are using words such as “equity,” “diversity,” and “opportunity” to describe Cardona’s vision of education. Many also claim that Cardona is concerned about the 150-year old “achievement gap.”

    Not surprisingly, in addition to being comfortable with neoliberal “accountability” and punitive high-stakes standardized tests produced by big corporations, Cardona also appears to be comfortable with privately-operated charter schools that siphon billions of dollars a year from public schools. Many have noted that he is not opposed to charter schools, which is really another way of saying that he supports charter schools. Not being opposed to charter schools is always music to the ears of charter school promoters. Thus, it is not surprising to hear many leading promoters of privately-operated charter schools express their support for Cardona; they do not seem to be too upset or bothered by Cardona’s nomination. The fact that charter schools reject teachers unions and that Cardona was not the “teachers union pick” favored by many “progressives” and democrats, is just one of the main sources of relief for school privatizers.

    For her part, Nina Rees, president and CEO of the billionaire-backed National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, congratulated Cardona on “his historic nomination for U.S. Secretary of Education.” She went on to say that:

    We call upon him to place students and families first and to be agnostic about PreK-12 instructional delivery and governance models, so long as they are effective and meet the needs of all students. The Secretary must be committed to supporting the entire public-school ecosystem—both district and charter (emphasis added). 

    In plain English this means: Cardona should maintain his support for charter schools and remain committed to never asking any serious questions about the core nature of privately-operated charter schools or look at their poor track record. Cardona should be narrowly focused on “results” and support any “education delivery model” (public or private) that produces “results.” He should not oppose school privatization so long as it delivers good “results.” Deploying more neoliberal education discourse, Rees said:

    We look forward to working with Secretary Cardona and his team to ensure the voices of parents are heard…. Black and Latino parents overwhelmingly support charter schools, and we expect Cardona’s commitment to educational equity will include protecting their ability to access these [charter] schools.

    For its part, the Center for Education Reform, perhaps the most aggressive supporter of charter schools and school privatization in the U.S., had this glowing statement about Cardona:

    President-Elect Joe Biden’s choice of Connecticut Commissioner of Education, Miguel Cardona, is good news for the millions of parents and students whose fates have been so derailed by the Coronavirus this year. Had Biden picked a union leader or equivalent, it would have been akin to an act of war on the progress of the last three decades of pushing power to parents, and on those who have fought to get their kids educated this year, whether back in traditional schools or by their own hand (emphasis added). 

    The remaining 4-5 paragraphs of the CER statement drip with exuberant support for Cardona.

    Long-time charter school supporter Andrew Rotherham also chimed in and had this to say about Cardona:

    He’s a Goldilocks on charter schools — not too hot or cold. He didn’t champion opening new ones, but renewed existing ones while he was commissioner. Charter leaders have nice things to say about him even as he states that his focus is district-run schools (emphasis added). 

    Clearly, promoters of school privatization are not too unhappy with Cardona, and they have no reason to believe that test-obsessed segregated charter schools will stop multiplying and siphoning billions of dollars from public schools under Cardona.

    Focusing on individuals and the personalities and careers of individuals will not open the path of progress to society. The pressure to not investigate and analyze, to avoid and reject theory, will ensure that progress remains a casualty in the U.S. An entirely new conscience, outlook, and agenda is needed to avoid the endless downward spiral education finds itself in. Instead of solving anything, school privatization has only intensified problems.

    This article was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2020 at 5:24pm and is filed under Charter Schools, Education, Public Schools.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.