Showing posts with label ALEC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ALEC. Show all posts
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Monday, January 13, 2014
Public School Reform ?
Seth Sandronsky
Take the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. Add its heir, the Race to the Top Fund (RTT-TF), part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. Under NCLB and RTTTF, pupil scores on standardized tests are center stage in public K-12 school reform. Public school principals and teachers with students who fail to measure up to learning standards based on test scores face harsh penalties, ranging from schools closing, with employee layoffs, to openings of charter schools (brick-and-mortar and online).
There is more to this learning and teaching dynamic than meets the eye. For instance, off-stage are for-profit corporations. Their fiduciary responsibility is to private shareholders, not public interests. So what is the interplay between the corporate sector and public K-12 school reform?
Take the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. Add its heir, the Race to the Top Fund (RTT-TF), part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. Under NCLB and RTTTF, pupil scores on standardized tests are center stage in public K-12 school reform. Public school principals and teachers with students who fail to measure up to learning standards based on test scores face harsh penalties, ranging from schools closing, with employee layoffs, to openings of charter schools (brick-and-mortar and online).
There is more to this learning and teaching dynamic than meets the eye. For instance, off-stage are for-profit corporations. Their fiduciary responsibility is to private shareholders, not public interests. So what is the interplay between the corporate sector and public K-12 school reform?
We turn to Kaplan Test Preparation (KTP) schools.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
ALEC on school choice and privatization
See at least the first 30 minutes.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec-a-follow-up/
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec-a-follow-up/
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
What you need to know about ALEC
by Diane Ravitch
Since the 2010 elections, when Republicans took control of many states, there has been an explosion of legislation advancing privatization of public schools and stripping teachers of job protections and collective bargaining rights. Even some Democratic governors, seeing the strong rightward drift of our politics, have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon, seeking to remove any protection for academic freedom from public school teachers.
This outburst of anti-public school, anti-teacher legislation is no accident. It is the work of a shadowy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded in 1973, ALEC is an organization of nearly 2,000 conservative state legislators. Its hallmark is promotion of privatization and corporate interests in every sphere, not only education, but healthcare, the environment, the economy, voting laws, public safety, etc. It drafts model legislation that conservative legislators take back to their states and introduce as their own "reform" ideas. ALEC is the guiding force behind state-level efforts to privatize public education and to turn teachers into at-will employees who may be fired for any reason. The ALEC agenda is today the "reform" agenda for education.
ALEC operated largely in the dark for years, but gained notoriety because of the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. It turns out that ALEC crafted the "Stand Your Ground" legislation that empowered George Zimmerman to kill an unarmed teenager with the defense that he (the shooter) felt threatened. When the bright light of publicity was shone on ALEC, a number of corporate sponsors dropped out, including McDonald's, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Mars, Wendy's, Intuit, Kaplan, and PepsiCo. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said that it would not halt its current grant to ALEC, but pledged not to provide new funding. ALEC has some 300 corporate sponsors, including Walmart, the Koch Brothers, and AT&T, so there's still quite a lot of corporate support for its free-market policies. ALEC claimed that it is the victim of a campaign of intimidation.
Since the 2010 elections, when Republicans took control of many states, there has been an explosion of legislation advancing privatization of public schools and stripping teachers of job protections and collective bargaining rights. Even some Democratic governors, seeing the strong rightward drift of our politics, have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon, seeking to remove any protection for academic freedom from public school teachers.
This outburst of anti-public school, anti-teacher legislation is no accident. It is the work of a shadowy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded in 1973, ALEC is an organization of nearly 2,000 conservative state legislators. Its hallmark is promotion of privatization and corporate interests in every sphere, not only education, but healthcare, the environment, the economy, voting laws, public safety, etc. It drafts model legislation that conservative legislators take back to their states and introduce as their own "reform" ideas. ALEC is the guiding force behind state-level efforts to privatize public education and to turn teachers into at-will employees who may be fired for any reason. The ALEC agenda is today the "reform" agenda for education.
ALEC operated largely in the dark for years, but gained notoriety because of the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. It turns out that ALEC crafted the "Stand Your Ground" legislation that empowered George Zimmerman to kill an unarmed teenager with the defense that he (the shooter) felt threatened. When the bright light of publicity was shone on ALEC, a number of corporate sponsors dropped out, including McDonald's, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Mars, Wendy's, Intuit, Kaplan, and PepsiCo. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said that it would not halt its current grant to ALEC, but pledged not to provide new funding. ALEC has some 300 corporate sponsors, including Walmart, the Koch Brothers, and AT&T, so there's still quite a lot of corporate support for its free-market policies. ALEC claimed that it is the victim of a campaign of intimidation.
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