Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

This short essay was originally published on The Daily Censored on August 11, 2011. It would seem that all of the old works on that site are gone. That's unfortunate because I published a lot of work there. I had a teaser here linking to it, a practice I stopped doing precisely because I've learned from harsh experience that websites die and all the content is lost (like my At The Chalkface works). I was able to track down a reprint on Susan Ohanian's site, but her site is having issues as well. Ultimately, I was able to retrieve a copy of the reprint from the Wayback Machine.

I want to reproduce this last sentence from Ohanian's introduction, since she had such insight into why the essay was important:

“The hardline right wing may well love the vacuous phrase “soft bigotry of low expectations,” but let’s remember that education deform democrats love it just as much. It is mostly used to put progressive activists on the defensive.” — Susan Ohanian

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Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

“We address the soft bigotry of low expectations so that we may ignore the hard racism of inequity.” — John Kuhn

Although this footage isn't new and commentators have already discussed it, it deserves reexamination since it illuminates one of the core false tenets of the corporate education reform canon.

Amidst the bizarre assertion that Sesame Street is indoctrinating children in some sort of insidious left wing plot, reactionary Ben Shapiro says that:

"I talked to one of the guys who's at Children's Television Workshop originally and he said the whole purpose of Sesame Street was cater to black and hispanic youths who, quote unquote, did not have reading literature in the house, there kind of this soft bigotry of low expectations that's automatically associated with Sesame Street."

Ahhh — the chimerical "soft bigotry of low expectations." As opposed to the hard bigotry of the pervasive institutional racism underpinning our economic system, which facilitates the division of workers and submerses a majority in abject poverty in order to make a small minority obscenely rich. The very same minority, by the way, that supports privatizing public education via charters and vouchers.

The dubious phrase is beloved by the hardline right. The Birchers at the Heartland Institute [1] use the phrase with reckless abandon. Cato, Manhattan, Hoover, and all the other reactionary right wing think tanks repeat the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" as if it's the mantra necessary to permanently bring back the gilded age they all pine for.

Of course the nonsensical phrase isn't limited to fringe right-wing kooks that also think John Galt and Howard Rourke are historical figures. Many supposed-liberals, or at the very least Democratic Leadership Council party operatives, use the phrase as often, if not more often than their teabagging counterparts.

The vile billionaire hedge fund shyster Whitney Tilson uses the phrase incessantly. Remember too that the ever obtuse Tilson helped form two of the most virulent corporate reform and privatization pushing organizations in existence: Teach for America (TFA) and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). The latter, DFER, uses the phrase in its privatization propaganda. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has used the phrase. TFA's Wendy Kopp has had a lucrative career peddling the phrase. The snarling queen of Erasuregate, Michelle Rhee, cherishes such phrases. Los Angeles' poverty pimping opportunist Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proudly plasters the phrase on twitter.

The unprincipled construction "soft bigotry of low expectations" is typically credited to the Council on Foreign Relations's arch-reactionary Michael Gerson, who was the speechwriter for fraudulent Rod Paige's Texas Education Miracle co-fraud, George W. Bush.

Like all the philosophically threadbare propaganda from the right, the expression is vapid and vacuous, without any real meaning whatsoever, putting it right along with "no excuses," and "working hard and being nice." Professor Noam Chomsky best addresses these types of phrases:

"It doesn't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy?" [2]

The policy in question is to ignore poverty and demand a false accountability from all of poverty's victims. While there are countless works discussing this, a recent pair of essays by my Schools Matter colleague Professor P. L. Thomas, EdD, really get to the heart of this issue: Poverty and Testing in Education: "The Present Scientifico-legal Complex" part 1 and part 2.

Humane Expectations Devoid of any Bigotry

In my many years I've never come across an educator that had anything but "realistic expectations tempered with compassion and empathy" for their students, regardless of where they taught. Moreover, for right wing reactionaries to accuse hard working women and men that have dedicated their lives to educating inner city students of bigotry of any sort smacks of hypocrisy of the highest order. It's laughable on its face.

Of course compassion and empathy are foreign words to the rogues gallery discuss above, none of whom have ever taught in their lives. Well, with the exceptions of Wendy Kopp and Michelle Malkin — I mean, Michele Bachmann, er, — I mean Michelle Rhee (sorry it's so easy to confuse those three). Rhee is so devoid of empathy and compassion that one of the most enduring stories from her short stint as a TFA missionary is when she taped her students mouths shut with masking tape and then walked them to the lunchroom, bleeding lips and all. Kopp is seemingly less of a sociopath than Rhee, but it's clear her passion for fame and fortune outweigh any compassion she might have once had.

Access To Books

The other thing reactionary Shapiro gets entirely wrong before employing the hackneyed "soft bigotry of low expectations" nonsense, was to dismiss the Children's Television Workshop's catering to children that "did not have reading literature in the house." Access to books in the home is a major indicator of academic achievement and impoverished families have very limited access to books. This is a fact, and not something to be dismissed by a sniveling right winger threatening to "take them [Elmo and Big Bird] out back and cap them."

Another one of my Schools Matter colleagues, the distinguished Professor Stephen Krashen, PhD, has researched and written extensively on the subject of access to books. Here are a small sampling of his available short articles linking to longer works on the subject.

• Children of poverty and access to books
• IRA President: Access to books makes a difference
• Heroic First Book Marketplace Can't Do It All Get caught reading month?
• Policy: protect children from poverty before we discuss pedagogy

Given the staunch anti-intellectualism, lack of knowledge about all thing pedagogical, and academic aversion that whiny right wingers like Shapiro are known for, it's no wonder that he didn't get the whole importance of providing additional educational resources for children that "did not have reading literature in the house" like the prescient folks at Children's Television Workshop always have.

"True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity." [3]

Now that we're discussing these things, let's talk about the stark racism and classism stemming from the corporate education reform movement, which is orchestrated by the same plutocrats that aired Shapiro's television program. After all, those are the sort of things that vacuous phrases like "soft bigotry of low expectations" are supposed to distract us from.

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NOTES

[1] Heartland Institute is none other than Parent Revolution's sister organization. Word is that in addition to co-hosting school privatization forums that Ben Austin and Ben Boychuck formulate policy together.

[2] Chomsky, Noam. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Second Edition. New York: Seven Stories Press., 1991. pp. 25-26.

[3] Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc., 2009. p. 45.

Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

Thoughts on Matthew Di Carlo's recent Shanker Blog piece on the 'parent tricker'

Barr's parent organization gave... a grass-roots visual... And his paid staffers hit the right rhetorical notes... while identifying themselves to reporters and officials only as parents. — Howard Blume (Los Angeles Times)

Matthew Di Carlo recently penned a thoughtful and somewhat nuanced piece on the vile so-called "parent trigger" legislation being pushed by the school privatization industry. In When Push Comes To Pull In The Parent Trigger Debate he suggests that support for or against anti-democratic triggers is often dependent on an individual's stance on charter schools to begin with.

Interestingly, he posits that if triggers were associated with authentic reforms like class size reduction as opposed to seizing property for the lucrative charter industry, that there might be less opposition to parent triggers and other shock doctrine style swindles. I for one think that's the point. Triggers were not devised as a way to improve or help public education. They have always been a way of increasing market share for the charter sector, union busting, and have been widely embraced by the fringe-right as a pathway to vouchers and other forms of plunder and poverty pimping.

Had trigger laws been a means for democratically engaging entire communities in the improvement of their schools, I would have become their biggest supporter. Instead, they are simply another way to stuff more money into the pockets of charter executives and their wealthy associates. Here are my comments posted to the Shanker Blog, which still apparently hasn't made it through the moderation process:

I'd agree that some perspective on corporate charter trigger laws is influenced by an individual's views on school privatization and the neoliberal project in general. However, that doesn't mean that the overarching problem with triggers is the fact that they are entirely anti-democratic to put the fate of a public resource into the hands of a minority of the community. More than that, the huge amounts of money and resources expended to sway parents to triggering their school into private hands has been seen repeatedly, with corporate charter advocacy groups like the so-called Parent Revolution with it's multi-million dollar budget from nefarious funders like the Walton Family Foundation.

We can learn much about the origins and motives of groups pushing the corporate charter "parent" trigger by where the majority of its support comes from—fringe right wing groups like The Heartland Institute and The American Legislative Exchange Council.

Parent Revolution can deny their ties to ALEC and other reactionaries all they want, but they can't hide the fact that they have had deep and long-standing partnerships with ALEC members, including fringe right-wing The Heartland Institute. In addition to constant collaboration with Heartland, Parent Revolution hosts forums with them. See the following flyer from one of their events and an article discussing it:

The Heartland Institute and Parent Revolution panel on the Trigger Law

Parent Revolution's mendacious minions to appear with The Heartland Institute reactionaries

For the actual ALEC legislation crafted from Governor Schwartzenegger, Ben Austin, Gloria Romero's original bill, see:

Ben Austin, Gloria Romero and ALEC's Parent Trigger Act

Gloria J. Romero, who along with former Governor Schwartzenegger's staff, and Parent Revolution's Ben Austin, drafted the parent trigger (more aptly, tricker), is also known to work hand and hand with the most extreme forces of reaction on education issues. She works closely with members of the Koret Foundation and The Hoover Institution. Shunned by her own party, she works with teabaggers and other right-wing politicians.

Peas in a pod: Koret Foundation, The Hoover Institution, and Democrats for Education Reform

Senators Romero and Huff to Hold Education Summit

The evidence is damning, and their claims that they don't represent right-wing interests ring hollow. Bear in mind Parent Revolution was originally the Los Angeles Parents Union, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Green Dot Charter School Corporation. Parent Revolution's sole reason for existence is to build market share for the lucrative charter school sector. This is born out both by the comments of their funders, and by the privatization policies of their funders.

See this piece for a statement by Eli Broad on why he funds Parent Revolution:

Eli Broad pays Parent Revolution to champion charters not to empower parents!

See these documents to see the names right-wing plutocrats who fund Parent Revolution and the staggering amounts they contribute. Tops on the list, the privatization reactionaries at the Walton Family Foundation. 

Los Angeles Parents Union DBA LAPU or Parent Revolution 2010 Form 990

To be sure, "school choice" was the clarion call of segregationists. It still is. Why the Racist History of the Charter School Movement Is Never Discussed

Quick look at the "there's no money" in charters deception

I was recently asked on facebook to explain how charters make money. This is important since the charter industry has recently been trying to convince the public that they're nothing more than a charitable exercise. Here's what I wrote back to them:

Here's just a taste, but it should be enough for you to answer such inquires.

Operators like Edison make profit directly, as do most EMOs, from the difference between "services rendered" and ADA money. CMOs don't make profit per se, but they pay their executives exorbitant (confer Petruzzi or Ponce to Deasy versus number of schools and students) salaries and make additional money from special relationships with vendors (look up companies like ExED and charter operator Judy Burton's very special relationship with them). Many charter executives set up these sweet vendor deals and then go on to work for the vendors. Another big money maker is charter financing and financial services by corporations like Charter School Capital, pushed by local CMO executive Ricardo Mireles.

The most lucrative part of the charter industry however, is real estate. How big is the charter-voucher school real estate bubble? Big enough to attract big names like Goldman Sachs, Andre Agassi, Citibank, and Richard Riordan to the lucrative land grab ventures. Big enough that Gloria Romero was rewarded with a cushy six-figure job as CEO at Democrats for Education Reform in California for her servile gift the privately managed charter industry called SB 592, which hands public school property over to privately managed charter corporations. New York based vultures, like Gideon Stein, are making a fortune in brokering charter real estate (and the raising of property values via gentrification of neighborhoods through those charters).

There's also all the lucrative "distance learning," "online charters," and "blended learning" cash cows. Bill Gates and Tom Vander Ark are never far from the picture when those money making scams are at hand. In fact, the vile Vander Ark was very recently on the all white (sans one) Board of Directors from LA's Promise that is now firing all of their hard working educators, so they can hire cheaper ones. Sure that has nothing to do with profits though.

Thoughts on Matthew Di Carlo's recent Shanker Blog piece on the 'parent tricker'

Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) Annual Fundraiser Party December 10, 2011

UCLA Community School ASGE multi-purpose room
3201 W. 8th St. Los Angeles, CA 90005
Saturday, December 10, 2011 from 6:00 — 10:00 PM

FLYER FOR THIS EVENT


C E J MASQUERADE fundraising party!
CEJ parents, students and teachers invite you to our annual end of the year party. Please come celebrate a successful year with us.
Dinner, child care, games, performances, translation and DJ/dancing
Teachers and other professionals - $25 donation
Students, Parents and Community Members - $5 donation
NO MASKS OR COSTUMES REQUIRED

C J E ¡MASCARADA! Fiesta para recaudar fondos
Padres, alumnos y maestros de CJE les invitan a nuestra fiesta anual del fin del año. Por favor vengan a celebrar un año de éxito con nosotros.
Cena, cuidado de niños, juegos, representaciones, traducción y DJ/bailar
maestros - donación $25
alumnos, padres y miembros de la comunidad - donación $5
LAS MASCARAS Y LOS DISFRASES NO ESTAN NECESARIOS

Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) Annual Fundraiser Party December 10, 2011

Make Banks Pay

My dear friend Ernest Savage produced these documenting a local struggle to save a homeowner from foreclosure by their capricious bank. Like the man at the end of the first video says, "you can't foreclose on justice."



[click here if you can't view this video]



[click here if you can't view this video]

Make Banks Pay

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone on Pedagogy and Liberation

"It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them." — Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone speaking at Socialism 2011 on July 01, 2011 — Chicago, Illinois.



[Click if you can't listen to the audio]

Elizabeth Terzakis and Adrienne Johnstone on Pedagogy and Liberation

EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

"This book is a breath of fresh air! The chapters take on central issues in education with a clear vision of what could be. Class, race, language and culture become not just educational 'problems,' but tools with which to rethink the future. A stellar addition to books in our field." — Jean Anyon, author of Marx and Education

"At a time when the capitalist class and their corporate allies in the media have waged an all-out assault on teachers, students, and public education, Education and Capitalismr esponds by speaking truth to power.... Drawing from the lived experiences of the editors and their students, and informed by cutting edge sociopolitical critique, Education and Capitalism clears the path for new understanding of the current assault on public schooling and points towards important directions if we are to save it." — Peter McLaren, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution


EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

EDITED BY JEFF BALE AND SARAH KNOPP

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a conservative, bipartisan consensus dominates about what's wrong with our schools and how to fix them. In each case, those solutions scapegoat teachers, vilify our unions, and promise more private control and market mentality as the answer. In each case, students lose--especially students of color and the children of the working class and the poor.

This book, written by teacher activists, speaks back to that elite consensus. It draws on the ideas and experiences of social justice educators concerned with fighting against racism and for equality, and those of activists oriented on recapturing the radical roots of the labor movement. Informed by a revolutionary vision of pedagogy, schools, and education, it paints a radical critique of education in Corporate America, past and present, and contributes to a vision of alternatives for education and liberation. Inside are essays that trace Marxist theories of education under capitalism; outline the historical educational experiences of emergent bilingual and African American students; recap the history of teachers' unions; analyze the neoliberal attack on public schools under Obama; critically appraise Paolo Freire's legacy; and make the historical link between social revolution and struggles for literacy.

Sarah Knopp is a public high school teacher in Los Angeles and an activist with United Teachers Los Angeles.

Jeff Bale is assistant professor of second language education at Michigan State University. Their work has appeared in Rethinking Schools, International Socialist Review, and CounterPunch.


Available Fall 2011 | Trade paper | $17.00 | 220 pages | ISBN: 9781608461646
Published by Haymarket Books | www.haymarketbooks.org | info@haymarketbooks.org | 773-583-7884
For review or desk copies, contact Sarah Macaraeg, sarah@haymarketbooks.org

EDUCATION AND CAPITALISM: Struggles for Learning and Liberation

Economic Justice L.A. Calls Urgent Action: Tax Big Oil = Fund Education

This seemed worthy of publicizing.

What if we could get the oil companies to give schools kindergarten through universities 3 billion dollars a year? We can, if we get Proposition 1481 on the ballot. Authored by Cypress College Professor Peter Mathews, Prop 1481 is the ballot initiative that would tax oil extraction to fund education. California is the only state that does not tax oil extraction.

We can:

• Make higher education affordable to all
• Improve funding for K-12, reduce class size and prevent layoffs of teachers and staff
• improve quality of education

To help with the signature gathering effort here in Los Angeles, Economic Justice L.A. is asking folks to participate in one of two major mobilizations:

1. Saturday, August 27th 10 am-3pm the L.A. Sports Arena: 13th annual Family Back to School Health Festival Mothers in Action, and the Watts Times are some of the sponsors of this annual gathering where children can receive free hair cuts, immunizations, health screenings and school supplies. Thousands of working class families are expected to attend.
2. Monday August 29th: Back to School at Community Colleges all over L.A. As students return to their community colleges, they will be facing the most recent rounds of fee increases and class reductions: let's help them do something about it by signing the petition and circulating it among their friends. Students (or non students with free time that day) are needed at L.A.C.C., Trade Tech, Pasadena College, Harbor College, Southwest College, West L.A. College and others.

Here's how you can help: contact Economic Justice L.A. at 310-568-9622 and let us know which event you'd like to help out with. Or come to the next meeting of Economic Justice L.A. Sunday August 21 at 3p.m.

2617 S. Hauser Blvd.
Los Angeles 90016
(Between La Brea and Fairfax, 4 doors S. of Adams)

Economic Justice L.A. Calls Urgent Action: Tax Big Oil = Fund Education

Daily Censored: Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

We address the soft bigotry of low expectations so that we may ignore the hard racism of inequity. — John Kuhn


What do Ben Shapiro, Whitney Tilson, The Heartland Institute, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, The Hoover Institution, Wendy Kopp, The Manhattan Institute, and Democrats for Education Reform all have in common? They all shamelessly use the meaningless and hackneyed phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations."

Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations looks at the far right's bizarre assertions that Sesame Street is indoctrinating children in some sort of insidious left wing plot and that Children's Television Workshop's providing additional educational resources for children that "did not have reading literature in the house" is somehow tantamount to bigotry.

In the end, we know that access to books in the home is a major indicator of academic achievement and impoverished families have very limited access to books. That is where we should focus our efforts.

Published 2011-08-11 on The Daily Censored, please read it there and share widely.

Daily Censored: Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

Obama and the Charter School Sugar Daddies

"Hedge funds and bankers have become the Sugar Daddies of charter schools." — Glen Ford

Black Agenda Report's executive editor Glen Ford speaks truth to corporate charter power!



[Click if you can't listen to the audio]

In addition to listening to the radio show, check out the full transcript of Ford's incredible commentary: Obama and the Charter School Sugar Daddies


Excerpt:

When it comes to the public schools, the Obama administration is allied with the most rapacious sectors of Wall Street and far-right foundations. That political reality is most evident in  the administration's campaign to establish a parallel national network of charter schools, with a heavy emphasis on inner cities. Obama and his education chief, Arne Duncan, have spent their first year and a half in office coercing states to expand charters or lose out on more than $4 billion in federal education moneys. Obama's allies on Wall Street invest heavily in charter schools, tapping into the public money stream to build their own vision of corporate education.

Black Agenda Report's coverage of the corporate onslaught against public education has been peerless. Simply searching for the word charter on their site produces a wealth of articles in which they name names and call things what they really are.

Obama and the Charter School Sugar Daddies

John Kuhn at SOS March

[Click here if you can't view this video]

Speaking truth to power.

John Kuhn at SOS March

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman Sneak Peek

[Click here if you can't view the video]

We are trying to organize a public screening of "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" in Echo Parque. The event is to be hosted by local groups. We're most likely going to show the film at the Echo Park Film Center, but haven't chosen a date as of yet. Our intention is to find a date in late August or early September.

"The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" was created in response to the mendacious charter school propaganda film created by Davis Guggenheim with funds from Philip Anschutz and Bill Gates. It counterposes social justice solutions to the corporate reforms proffered by those supporting the charter industry.

As an added bonus, the filmmakers held a lottery when distributing the film for public showings. The prize was a call from Professor Diane Ravitch, which our community won. Our intention is to have Dr. Ravitch on speaker phone or skype following the film.

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman Sneak Peek

A reader speaks out on CNCA Corporation's Shannon Leonard's questionable credentials

I pressed the issue and asked, "so was [Mr. Leonard] a professor of education?" LMU's Director of Communications and Media retorted, "No, he was part time faculty."


The essay Camino Nuevo Corporation: A Little Less Than Honest Again? on EchoParkPatch demonstrated again that the well paid business executives running the corporate charter have little respect for the truth, and even less respect for our community. Catching Camino Nuevo Charter Academy Corporation in yet another lie precipitated much feedback, mostly positive, although several right wing privatization fanatics were angry that ordinary people were paying attention to corporate malfeasance.

However, one reader went further and actually did more research than anyone on Mr. Leonard's highly suspect resume. I feel it's worth reproducing here.

I read your blurb about Shannon Leonard, and did a little cyber-digging and found this:
 
"Shannon Leonard '01 selected for Echo Park's new school" Experienced educator Shannon Leonard has been selected to lead Echo Park's new school, Central Region Elementary School (CRES) #14."
 
it's at William & Mary's alumni page: https://www.wmalumni.com/?alumninews
 
My point is... this means that, as an 2001 B.A. Graduate of William & Mary, he should be, at most, 31-32 years of age (i.e. he turn 32 in calendar year 2011);
 
Now, it's a stretch to believe that he has done all of  the following since graduating from William & Mary in May 2001:
 

• Received 1 Master's Degree from UCLA;
• Received a 2nd Master's degree from Loyola Marymount;
• Earned "his California administrative credential from UCLA’s Principal Leadership Institute" (from the Camino Nuevo website... also someone else posted skepticism about the "UCLA's Principal Leadership Institute")
• Then worked "a distinguished educator with over ten years (!!!) of experience as both a teacher and a leader in urban and international school settings." (from the Camino Nuevo website.)
• Worked as a "Professor in Loyola Marymount's Department of Education"

Wow!!! That's a busy ten years!!!

Busy is an understatement, clearly when CNCA Corporation's public relations people were making his resume up, no one had the presence of mind to do the math and see if it added up. Perhaps the reactionary right wing M.V. person that claims that they will "support [Leonard] in any way possible" can explain how someone can have over ten years experience teaching when they have only been a graduate themselves for ten years. It's astonishing that CNCA can get away with such perfidy.

There's lying, and then there's mendaciousness that's nothing short of duplicitous. CNCA Corporation seems to have created a pervasive culture of the latter. No wonder, since their COO Hoa Truong is a graduate of the vile Broad Residency in Urban Education.

My recent Schools Matter piece Los Angeles privatization pushers take second biggest slice of reactionary Walton pie addresses the smug and sullen MBA Truong's Broadyte influence on CNCA Corporation:

Sure enough, in practice CNCA's principles and actions reflect that of their funders. Remember this tidbit from the Broad Residency FAQ:

[P]rivate sector experience is important because there are business best practices which can improve the way the education organizations are operated.

I'm always wondering which of the three core business practices (lying, cheating, and stealing) Broadytes are referring to. Well in this case it's lying.

Given the magnitude and the scope of all the things CNCA Corporation has been dishonest about to this point, we should all have grave concerns about all of their dealings. Every community deserves better than to have corporate charlatans running their schools, but fighting the groundswell of lucrative charter-voucher organizations out to profit off the public commons will take organizing and struggle on a much greater scale than we've seen so far.

A reader speaks out on CNCA Corporation's Shannon Leonard's questionable credentials

OpineRegress: Matthew Yglesias' reactionary education policy pandering

"In the long run, charter schools are being strategically used to pave the way for vouchers. The voucher advocates, who are very powerful and funded by right-wing foundations and families, recognize that the word voucher has been successfully discredited by enlightened Americans who believe in the public sector. So they've resorted to two strategies. First, they no longer use the word "vouchers." They've adopted the seemingly benign phrase "school choice," but they are still voucher advocates." — Jonathan Kozol



I've been following the exchange between Rachel Levy and Matthew Ygelsias online. Levy's latest post, which sums up their previous exchanges in the first paragraph, is well reasoned and written from the standpoint of someone who understands basic pedagogy. You can also tell that she is growing weary of arguing with someone whose actual knowledge of education is limited to the talking points put forth by the plutocrat funded Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Ygelsias' posts reek both of white privilege and, what Paulo Freire calls, "the false generosity of paternalism." Moreover, Yglesias is a huge proponent of neoliberalism as we will see below.

Yglesias is a marginally left of center political pundit whose supposed "progressive" leanings have allowed him to provide cover for some of the most reactionary education policies we've ever seen. His stalwart defense of erstwhile fringe ideas like "choice and competition," ideas that originate from right wing think tanks like the Hoover Institution and Manhattan Institute, are fair indicators of his thinking as much as Rachel Levy's attributing it to his "superficial knowledge of how education works."

Yglesias unabashedly supports school privatization by way of charters, pseudoscientific measures of teachers' abilities like VAM/AGT, standardized testing and other false methods of "accountability," so-called "merit" pay, school closures and reconstitution, removal of the modicum of teacher protections like seniority and tenure, and a host of other things that have made up the reactionary wish list of organizations like Cato, AEI, Hudson, and others for decades. Frankly Yglesias' stated ideas are no different than those of the most right wing education privatization pundits like Andy Smarick, Robert Holland, Ben Boychuk, and Rick Hess. Where he does differ from them, it's only a matter of minor nuance.

Even Yglesias' notions of what constitute a good school reveal both his privilege and ignorance. Here's a quote of his:

"KIPP schools are "good schools" in that KIPP students perform better than one would predict from the demographics, and we've got the sophisticated studies to back it up."

That so-called sophisticated study was conducted by none other than the Walton Family Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored Mathematica Policy Research, a pay to play think tank whose studies start from a conclusion and then scramble for possible evidence to support those conclusions. Preliminary reports, like the one Mathematica published on KIPP aren't subject to peer review, but that doesn't stop Yglesias from citing it as authoritative. "Preliminary studies" are a favorite of the corporate education reform junta, and Yglesias is no exception.

Fortunately, Professors Gary Miron and Kevin Welner's recent paper on KIPP's attrition fiasco should put to bed any arguments that KIPP's methods get anything right. Scholars like Western Michigan University's Jessica L. Urschel and Nicholas Saxton, and Georgia State University's Brian Lack have also contributed to our understanding of KIPP's many wrongheaded methods and their drastically overstated results. Dr. Jim Horn's frequent writings on KIPP are also a joy, his phrase "cultural sterilization" for how KIPP treats inner city students has become part of my canon of phrases apropos to privatization.

Journalist Caroline Grannan once responded to my sharp criticisms of Yglesias by saying he suffers from a well known condition of being from "The Village." That is beltway bloggers whose politics are right of center, but claiming progressive credentials. She discusses this in a piece entitled In The Village, no one can hear you scream. This quote from her essay describes Yglesias perfectly:

"[T]he term 'Villagers' denotes a kind of small-minded refusal to think outside an 'acceptable' center-right consensus ... [T]he 'Villagers' include, in part, Democratic elected officials and consultants who insist that their party can't succeed unless they ally their party with that center-right consensus..."

A plausible explanation, as is the reality that Yglesias' positions are a natural consequence of decades of neoliberalism. DFER was spawned from the same tradition.

Yglesias' ability to provide cover for neoliberalism, reactionary policies, and right wing ideas is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this whole discussion. At least when we see something from troglodytes like Andy Smarick, we know it will smack of Ayn Rand market fantasies and other sociopath ideologies. Yglesias, on the other hand, has a following of well meaning liberals and even moderately progressive people who are being abjectly misled into supporting education policies that are anathema to the principles of social justice. Yglesias' cover is just as harmful as the recent charter school propaganda feature film by that smug mendacious hipster Davis Guggenheim — whose production was financed by the arch-reactionary Philip Anschutz, and distribution was financed by ideologue Bill Gates.

Here's a local anecdote to show how Yglesias' unqualified views on education are utterly insidious. In Los Angeles there is a well financed group called Parent Revolution, a charter-voucher school advocacy 501C3 funded by the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate. They and their right leaning leader, the pariah Ben Austin, are infamous for the law that allows corporate charters to seize public schools, it's often referred to as the "parent trigger." Parent Revolution is so far to the right, that they frequently host events with extreme right wing groups like The Heartland Institute (I like to say The Heartland Institute is essentially the John Birch Society with a budget). In addition to quoting Andy Smarick and Ann Coulter, Parent Revolution's Ben Austin and Gabe Rose often evoke Yglesias' posts to cloak their nefarious activities. They claim Yglesias while carrying out The Heartland Institute agenda. Like their funder Eli Broad says "We have our cake, and are eating it too."

Real progressives, public education advocates, and social justice activists need call out those trying to provide a progressive veneer to reactionary right wing education policies.

I want to end with a quote by my favorite thinkers on this subject.

"We need to say no to the neoliberal fatalism that we are witnessing at the end of this century, informed by the ethics of the market, an ethics in which a minority makes most profits against the lives of the majority. In other words, those who cannot compete, die. This is a perverse ethics that, in fact, lacks ethics. I insist on saying that I continue to be human...I would then remain the last educator in the world to say no: I do not accept...history as determinism. I embrace history as possibility [where] we can demystify the evil in the perverse fatalism that characterizes the neoliberal discourse in the end of this century." — Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, "Ideology Matters"

OpineRegress: Matthew Yglesias' reactionary education policy pandering

Naomi Klein on Democracy vs. Neoliberalism (or how charter schools and corporate edreform got their foothold)

[Click here if you can't view this video]

Naomi Klein on Democracy vs. Neoliberalism (or how charter schools and corporate edreform got their foothold)

Vik Chaubey: Comments on Avaricious Andre Agassi's Charter Ponzi Scheme

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." — Warren E. Buffett (Plutocrat)

Profit has been and always will be the paramount reason for corporate charter-voucher schools — even for those hiding beyond the guise of 501C3 "non-profit" tax status. The bevy of lucrative ways for charter executives, investors, and board members to enrich themselves further at the trough of public tax money is their raison d'être so to speak. Charter swine can squeal all they want about it being "for the kids," but articles like Former tennis star Andre Agassi teams with L.A. bankers to finance charter school construction remind us that it's all about the profit. The insatiable greed of these charter charlatans exceeds all imagination, and should strike fear into anyone concerned that public education is about to become a legend of a bygone era.

Today social justice educator Jose Lara posted the above Los Angeles Times link on his facebook profile, which drew a lot of commentary. Those by activist Vik Chaubey struck me as so interesting and compelling, that I obtained his permission to reprint them here for a wider audience. — rds

Vik Chaubey: Comments on "Former tennis star Andre Agassi teams with L.A. bankers to finance charter school construction"

Very good post this is stuff I have discussed on facebook a lot charter schools a big business this is taking place all over the country in New York city, Washington D.C. and Chicago. I am familiar with New York city a lot because I went school there as a kid from first grade to 9th grade.

Villaraigosa talks to mayors from NYC and Chicago every week. New kind of urban machines are created big business, non-profits and public unions. Gentrification is the key principle behind charter schools all over the country and gentrification is key to urban policy in US. In the LAUSD District 5 race recently in Los Angeles we saw this play out with Sanchez supported by the Los Angeles Times, Vilaraigosa, money hot shots in LA, public unions, non-profits, latino political operatives, supporters of gentrification and people who push charter schools. They spent 3.3 million on Sanchez he lost the race to Bennett Kayser the candidate that had community support, grass roots support and UTLA support.

I obtained documents on the supporters of Sanchez, yeah billionaires and money makers, public unions and non-profits. Non-profits such as Inner City Struggle who have sold out just want power and charter schools are their game so many people on facebook have no understanding of how dishonest Inner City Struggle is I guess this is Inner City Struggle alliance with billionaires and gentrification? A total fraud. I obtained information on how Sanchez got his money. I mean LAUSD District 5 just think of it represents Maywood, Southeast Los Angeles cities, Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, Northeast Los Angeles to Loz Feliz. We are talking mainly low income areas and some of the poorest areas in Los Angeles like Maywood and Boyle Heights spending 3.3 million to win a LAUSD race? I mean the candidate that won was outspent by at least 3 to 1 but had support of community activists like Carlos Montes [1] and others.

Villaraigosa is the key to everything in this you would not see billionaires, public unions, non-profits and supporters of gentrification together. The good thing is they lost due to a real good grass roots campaign by Kayser and his supporters. But you will never hear about this in Los Angeles media I talk to one of my friends that was part of this campaign I had encouraged him to get involved and challenge this charter school/gentrification alliance. The stuff with Andre Agassi is tip of the iceberg the money machine and gentrification alliance is growing all over the country. I mean in NYC they want to close down 22 low income schools so money makers can build charter schools. These are issues I have been looking at since 2007 when I ran into Inner City Struggle in Boyle Heights when I was organizing in Boyle Heights around anti-gentrification that is when I found about this.

People should pay attention to this simply amazing 3.3 million in a district that is one of the poorest districts for LAUSD? Why is this happening well the article tells you why this is about power and privilege. Villaraigosa has a education machine and they are good at exploiting first generation immigrants who do not have the info what they are all about they use non-profits and public unions to do this. Boyle Heights is ground zero on this stuff this is where you see the education gentrification alliance big time. I mean they just built a charter school in East Los Angeles. Torres High School with basically the same alliance that supported Sanchez meaning money makers, non-profits, public unions, and supporters of gentrification/charter schools. People need to pay attention at what is taking place.

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NOTES
[1] {note from rds} longtime immigrant rights and public education activist Carlos Montes was recently victimized and arrested by the FBI's repressive COINTELPRO. Please visit this article and see how you can help.

Vik Chaubey: Comments on Avaricious Andre Agassi's Charter Ponzi Scheme

Millionaires, Mendaciousness, and Miserable English Scores: the false Locke success story

"The lowest-performing, based on test scores, is the large Green Dot chain." — Los Angeles Times


Green Dot Corporation Cheerleader Alexander Russo handles softball questions from KPCC's Madeleine Brand in a recent radio interview, where Brand is mildly skeptical, but Russo gushes about his favorite privatization pushers and poverty pimps. The real story regarding the hostile takeover of Alain Leroy Locke High School reads much different than Russo's account. If anybody were to subpoena former Locke principal Frank Wells, and force him to answer questions about his participation, and possible payola involving the takeover, there'd be scandal of epic proportions.

Back to the exaggerated reports of the supposed Locke "turnaround." Astute readers will remember how Green Dot Corporation has used an additional $15 million from plutocrat donors to "turn the school around." This is documented in the New York Times' "School Is Turned Around, but Cost Gives Pause." If public schools had access to those kind of additional funds and resources, who knows what progress could be made. At the very least, there wouldn't have been "counseling out" of the most vulnerable students.

Moreover Locke, like every other Green Dot school, sports some of the worst remediation rates in LAUSD. Green Dot's teaching to the test to boost their APIs and graduating students not proficient is exposed, in full, when we look at how Locke's students do on the proficiency exams entering college. For Fall 2010 Locke Senior High Admissions into the California State University system: 88% were NOT proficient in mathematics and an astonishing 98% were NOT proficient in English. So much for Green Dot Public [sic] Schools' Locke miracle: they get millions in extra funding, weed out most of their students with disabilities and students with disciplinary problems, but still only manage to get two percent of their students ready for college level English. What do they have to offer again? I suppose it's making Marco Petruzzi rich to the tune of nearly a quarter million dollars a year, [1] and that's the point of privatized charter schools to begin with, right?

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NOTES
[1] According to their 2009 Form 990, Part VII Sec. Aaa, Marco Petruzzi pulls down a whopping $215,742 in base pay alone.
* Yes the title of this article is a parody on Alexander Russo's new book.

Millionaires, Mendaciousness, and Miserable English Scores: the false Locke success story

Robert D. Skeels on KPFK Pacifica Radio

I was interviewed for this story by Ernesto Arce of KPFK News on the day of the LAUSD District 5 runoff election, Tuesday May 17, 2011. The voices of social justice and public school advocacy are beginning to be heard!

Bennet Kayser vs. Luis Sanchez, LAUSD Board | by Ernesto Arce KPFK News

[click here if you can't listen to this audio]

Robert D. Skeels on KPFK Pacifica Radio

LAUSD's Nury Martinez Slanderously calls an Echo Park Mother a Racist

Ms. Martinez's response to this parent's impassioned speech is so despicable and deplorable, that I will need time to calm down and write an article speaking truth to her corporate power and vicious vindictiveness. To call this mother, who embodies multiculturalism, inclusiveness, and community, a racist goes far beyond the pale. In fact Ms. Martinez should seriously consider stepping down from her position. Unconscionable, but the LAUSD Board Members serving the privatizers and corporate charters have no scruples whatsoever. While the video shows Ms. Martinez tried to backtrack from her initial vicious slanderous attack, it's clear what she said and what her intentions were. Deasy and company want our communities' voices silenced and want us to accept the imposition of privatized schools without any dissent.

I'm a founding member of the Southern California Immigration Coalition, I've stood on the border in Campo California against vile Minutemen, Klansman, Birchers, and other assorted white supremacists. I've dedicated a good portion of my life defending undocumented peoples from racism, xenophobia, and nativism. To hear Ms. Martinez accuse one of our community members, whose dedication to all the people in our diverse community is second to none, of racism breaks my heart and sickens me beyond belief. Look for an article by me on this horrendous incident soon.



[click here if you can't view this video]

LAUSD's Nury Martinez Slanderously calls an Echo Park Mother a Racist

Dr. Stephen Krashen featured on People Make a Difference

People Make a Difference with Danny Brassell 03/14/2011 interviewing the distinguished Dr. Stephen Krashen. A real education expert discusses real solutions for education and places blame for struggling schools squarely were it belongs, on poverty.



[click here if you can't view this video]

Stephen Krashen, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California

Dr. Stephen Krashen featured on People Make a Difference

An Echo Park Mom speaks out on the LAUSD District 5 Race

My dear friends and neighbors, please join me and Jackie Goldberg and vote for Bennett Kayser in TUESDAY's election. Please vote tomorrow for Bennet Kayser to the LA School Board — this is the most important vote of this year.


Neighbors and friends,

As you all know I have been recently very active in our Local schools. Throughout the last 8 months I have been able to meet Bennet Kayser, and he he has so impressed me with his passion for education, his love for our neighborhood and his guts to take on Luis Sanchez and the HUGE political machine that has built and support him. I don't want to get into the negatives about Luis Sanchez, but I personally have been very upset and offended by him. During the Cres#14 debacle and since, L. Sanchez did not return one phone call or email to The Echo Park Mom's and Dad's for Education. He did not attend any community meetings and yet was a part of the group that handed our $69 million dollar new school to a private group who is not serving our community. He also has never been an educator, he has not had one single day as a teacher and has no idea what we and our children need and experience. His political ties and connections to private money is very, very concerning for a person who will be representing our area, our schools and the $ contacts that will be awarded. Luis Sanchez means to reward his friends for the millions paid into his campaign and to use the School Board position to launch his political career.

Bennet on the other hand attended many meetings regarding Cres#14 and offered his help in any way he could. Something not mentioned about him is that he has Parkinson's disease and this will likely be his last service to our community. He is looking to serve us as our School Board rep in the best way a human can and not use us and our schools as a ladder. Most of us have probably met Bennet as he has been a parent and active member of our community. If you haven't had the opportunity to meet him, please take it from me he is a very nice and honest man who is only doing his best to be a civil servant and help the community he lives in and loves.

Please PLEASE Vote for Bennet tomorrow.

Windy O'Malley

Please forward this to everyone in the area. SB 5 area includes Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Highland Park, Atwater, Mount Washington, Eagle Rock, and many more see area 5 in white:
http://www.facebook.com/l/3cf11wj84Oarmu7EGo4U2hfopZg/laschoolboard.org/files/images/maps/2007-08%20Board%20District%205.pdf

Positive facts Facts about Bennett:

Bennett has lived in the same house in the Echo Park/Silver Lake area for the past 34 years. He and his wife Peggy have raised two wonderful children, Nathan and Noah, who attended Ivanhoe Elementary, King Middle School, and graduated from John Marshall High School.
Bennett Kayser served as a LAUSD middle school and science teacher for more than 14 years before retiring. He taught in regular classrooms and in an independent study program with students at risk of dropping out of school.
As a District teacher, Bennett saw more and more waste of resources that could have been used in classrooms, but were instead squandered away.

As a result of cutbacks to classroom funds, Bennett had a budget of $1.95 per student to teach seventh grade science and health - not enough to buy even the most basic of supplies.
Along with prioritizing classroom funding, Bennett wants to be a school board member in order to recreate an environment where teachers can use their creativity and skills to make kids life

An Echo Park Mom speaks out on the LAUSD District 5 Race