Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students."

 public schools and the futures of the 50 million students."

Jake Johnson

Mar 12, 2025

The Trump administration on Tuesday took a major step toward dismantling the U.S. Department of Education by firing roughly half of the agency's workforce, a decision that teachers' unions and other champions of public education said would have devastating consequences for the nation's school system. 

The department, now led by billionaire Linda McMahon, moved swiftly, terminating more than 1,300 federal workers on Tuesday including employees at the agency's student aid and civil rights offices. 

Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, pledged in a statement to "fight these draconian cuts." The union toldNPR minutes after the statement was issued that Smith, an attorney with the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, was laid off. 

The Education Department said the mass staffing cuts would affect "nearly 50%" of the agency's workforce and that those impacted "will be placed on administrative leave beginning Friday, March 21st." 

In a press release, McMahon declared that the workforce cuts reflect the department's "commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers." 

But critics, including a union that represents more than 3 million education workers nationwide, said the firings underscore the Trump administration's commitment to gutting public education in the interest of billionaires pushing tax cuts and school privatization. 

"Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. 

"The real victims will be our most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections." 

"We will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece." 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that "denuding an agency so it cannot function effectively is the most cowardly way of dismantling it." 

"The massive reduction in force at the Education Department is an attack on opportunity that will gut the agency and its ability to support students, throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country," she continued. "This move will directly impact the 90% of students who attend public schools by denying them the resources they need to thrive. That's why Americans squarely oppose eliminating the Education Department. We are urging Congress—and the courts—to step in to ensure all students can maintain access to a high-quality public education." 

The Education Department purge came days after news broke that President Donald Trump was preparing an executive order aimed at completely shuttering the agency—a move that would legally require congressional approval. 

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said late Tuesday that the Education Department firings "are Project 2025 in action, and they have one goal—to make it easier for billionaires and anti-union extremists to give themselves massive tax breaks at the expense of working people." 

"Today's announcement from the Department of Education is just the beginning of what's to come," Saunders warned. "These layoffs threaten the well-being and educational opportunities for millions of children across the country and those seeking higher education. The dedicated public service workers at public schools, colleges, and universities deserve better. Elections may have consequences, but we will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece. We will keep speaking out and finding ways to fight back." 

 

https://www.commondreams.org/news/education-department-layoffs

The MAGA Assault on Public Education

Top Democrat Accuses House GOP of ‘Full-Scale Attempt To Eliminate Public Education’ Jake Johnson June 26, 2024 Common Dreams     Rep. Rosa DeLauro said Republicans' newly proposed funding cuts threaten "the future of an entire generation." , Freepik   The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday accused her Republican colleagues of working to completely decimate U.S. public education by proposing steep cuts to key programs in a newly released funding bill. Republicans on the appropriations panel, chaired by Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), weren't shy about the expansive spending cuts they're pursuing: In a statement, the committee's GOP majority noted that its fiscal year 2025 funding legislation for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and other related agencies would fully eliminate 57 programs, slash 48 more, and reduce spending on K-12 education grants. An appropriations subcommittee is scheduled to mark up the bill on Thursday morning. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said in response to the majority's legislation that "Republicans are in the midst of a full-scale attempt to eliminate public education that makes the American Dream possible," noting that the proposal gashes "support for children in K-12 elementary schools, threatening the future of an entire generation." According to a fact sheet released by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, the proposed GOP funding levels would cut the Department of Education by $11 billion, or 14% below 2024 levels. Specifically, the measure would slash Title I Grants to local educational agencies by roughly $5 billion, reducing assistance for school districts with a large number of students from low-income families.

Local Congressman Kevin Kiley ( R-California) supports this anti education agenda.

See below.

Project 2025. 

 

Last weekend, Kevin Roberts, the president of The Heritage Foundation, which is behind the Project 2025 plan, went on MSNBC to not just defend the policy proposal but to gloat about it and celebrate it.¹

During his interview, he said that the goal of Project 2025 was to "institutionalize Trumpism" as the guiding principles for our government.² Terrifying.

The vast majority of voters do not agree with plans laid out in Project 2025, and when they hear about it, they abandon Trump and the Republicans in droves. The problem is, not enough voters know that it exists. Which is why MoveOn is dedicating our resources to get the truth out to voters.

There are so many awful, bigoted, and authoritarian elements of Project 2025, but let's focus on one that Roberts discussed at length during his interview and that Trump has parroted on the campaign trail: abolishing the Department of Education.³

On MSNBC, Roberts affirmed that Project 2025 calls for firing "more than 50,000" career civil servants and that thousands of those would come from the Education Department when it is shut down.⁴

What he refused to discuss, however, were the actual consequences of eliminating the department. In short, they would be catastrophic.

The DOE has wide-ranging responsibilities overseeing education in our nation, but its three largest areas of work are providing student loans, managing the Title I program, and implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).⁵

So what would happen to these programs if the department suddenly disappeared?

Student Loans
Each year, the federal government provides more than $111 billion in federal student aid to nearly 7 million students.^6,7 If Project 2025 is implemented, funding for these loans will be cut by at least half and could be eliminated altogether.⁸

That means 7 million students who are currently able to access higher education because of federal financial aid will be at risk of losing those opportunities. The impacts will be felt entirely by students from poor, working, and middle-class families and will disproportionately affect students of color.

This would radically reshape the future of our country, which is precisely the goal of Project 2025. 

Title I
Each year, the Title I program provides nearly $18 billion in supplemental funding to schools and school districts in poor and underserved communities across the country.⁹ It is one of the most important pieces of education legislation in U.S. history, and it helps to provide equal access to education for all children in America, no matter where they live or how much money they have.¹⁰

Cutting funding would mean even less money for teachers, mental health staff, and interventions at Title I schools. It would mean even less money to pay essential educators. It would mean leaving tens of millions of students behind.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
IDEA ensures that more than 6.5 million infants, toddlers, children, and young adults with disabilities have free access to special education and other resources from birth to age 21.¹¹ It was originally passed in 1975 and since then has helped to provide both funding and legal protection against discrimination for hundreds of millions of people with disabilities.¹²

Without funding for IDEA, there will be no way to hold schools accountable for not providing adequate services to students, programs that millions of people with disabilities rely on will be cut, and millions of families will be left in the lurch. 

Let's get one thing straight: It is not an accident that so many of Project 2025's policies harm poor and marginalized communities and people of color.

This program is a surgical attack on those communities, with the goal of making America a white Christian nationalist nation that is run by and serves only the wealthy.

Duane, the policies laid out in Project 2025 are so extreme, so cartoonishly villainous, that voters have a difficult time believing it is even real.

But it is very real.

1. "Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: Project 2025 framework will carry on for the next 10 years," Media Matters for America, June 24, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/194204?t=7&akid=395211%2E22927824%2EO_CySw

2. Ibid.

3. "Project 2025: The Trump presidency wish list, explained," BBC, June 11, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/194205?t=9&akid=395211%2E22927824%2EO_CySw

4. "Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts: Project 2025 framework will carry on for the next 10 years," Media Matters for America, June 24, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/194204?t=11&akid=395211%2E22927824%2EO_CySw

  

The Attacks on Teachers Threatens Public Education

 How the Attack on Teachers Threatens the Future of Public Schools By Sarah Jaffe

Illustrator: Adrià Fruitós

Two years ago, Nicole McCormick was so passionate about teaching that she ran for vice president of the West Virginia Education Association. A music teacher for 11 years, McCormick “always had high expectations of what a music teacher should do,” and on top of lesson planning and caring for her family, she put in extra hours after school to make her union stronger, too. 

But now she has left the classroom and is unsure if she will ever return. The increasing workload, the uncertainty and pressure of the pandemic, the combined stress of parenting her own four children, looking after her ill mother, worrying about the health and safety of her students, and the low pay and constant disrespect drove her out. 

“Part of teaching is putting on a show,” McCormick said. “Because we all know that these children are living with trauma. I couldn’t put on a show anymore. Because if I did, if I successfully put on that show during the day, by the time I got home, there was nothing left.”

She is not alone. Many teachers around the country are reaching a breaking point. They have been demonized in the press and blamed for school closures, and the ways COVID-19 has dramatically changed public education have piled heavily on top of attacks and shortages educators and public schools have been enduring for years. No longer able to give their best to their students, many teachers are leaving the field and the impact on the future of public education could be catastrophic.

There are now 567,000 fewer educators in public schools than at the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the ratio of hires to job openings has reached new lows, with 0.57 hires for every open job. A poll released in February by the National Education Association also found that 55 percent of polled educators plan to leave the field earlier than they originally thought because of the pandemic, and 80 percent of union members reported that “unfilled job openings have led to more work obligations for the educators who remain.”

There are now 567,000 fewer educators in public schools than at the beginning of the pandemic.

Moreover, a February report from the Economic Policy Institute noted that nearly every state is seeing “substantial losses” in public education employment, with 16 states having losses of 5 percent or more. And it’s not just teachers either. Support staff, from bus drivers to custodians, have also been leaving as districts scramble to fill positions. In Massachusetts, some 200 members of the National Guard were even called in for a couple months to help drive kids to school.

Extremists Are Using Lies to Undermine America’s Public Schools:

  We Need to Take a Stand

BY RANDI WEINGARTEN AND JONAH EDELMAN

APRIL 29, 2022 2:12 PM EDT

Randi Weingarten is President of the 1.7-million-member American Federation of Teachers and Jonah Edelman is the CEO of Stand for Children

Just as extremists have used the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election to undermine American democracy, far-right advocates of privatizing public education are using Big Lies to undermine public schools. Supporters of public schools must see these ugly attacks for what they are and take a stand against them.

In a recent lecture at ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, culture war orchestrator Christopher Rufo detailed the strategy for replacing public education with a universal voucher system. “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust,” Rufo explained. Earlier in that same lecture, describing how to lay siege to institutions, he noted the necessity to create your own narrative and frame and advised his audience they “have to be ruthless and brutal.”

Rufo and other dark money-funded extremists follow a consistent playbook for attacking public schools.

First, they concoct lies, smears and distortions that stoke fear and anger, such as that eight-year-old white students are being taught to hate themselves because they are responsible for slavery, and that kindergarten teachers are grooming five-year-olds.

Next, these falsehoods are spread on social media and by Fox News and the click-driven, controversy-obsessed mainstream media.

Finally, extremist state politicians champion cookie-cutter bills provided by those same national voucher backers to “solve” the manufactured “outrage,” often under the banner of “parents’ rights.”

Charter Schools and Death by a Thousand Cuts

Death by a Thousand Cuts

BYJOANNE BARKAN

Privatization in education has been slow and halting. But it's already crippling many public schools.

ed. note. And it will be on the California ballot in November in the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction. 

In this marketized system, competition would, theoretically, eliminate low-performing schools because they wouldn’t attract enough customers to stay in business. In the real world, the poor buy necessities at a price they can afford even if the quality is inferior. This is why the free market has always failed to meet the real needs of low-income people; they get what they can pay for.

In a school voucher system, wealthy families can (and will) add as much money as they want to their vouchers to pay for their choice of schools; middle-income families will pull together whatever resources they can for the best schools in their price range. Low-income families without additional resources will “choose” schools charging the value of the voucher. Almost no higher quality schools will be available because they will have no incentive except altruism to offer their products at the minimum price. (For example, the value of a government voucher for high school in Washington, D.C. in 2016–17 was $12,679 while tuition at Washington’s elite private schools exceeded $40,000 a year.) As a last resort, low-income families could choose a “government school.” For free-market ideologues, government schools are always a last resort and available to the poor.

Many Southern states anticipated the 1954 Brown school desegregation decision and prepared policies to evade racial integration. Between 1954 and 1959, eight states adopted what were whites-only versions of Friedman’s voucher system. They used public funds to pay for white students to attend all-white private schools, which were called “freedom of choice schools” or “segregation academies.” States also leased unused public school property to private schools.

Read the entire essay.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/06/us-public-schools-charters-vouchers-privatization

In Defense of Public Education

In just a few weeks, thousands of educators, parents and activists—including many friends and supporters of Rethinking Schools—will gather in Washington, DC for three days of action in defense of public education. Rethinking Schools editor Jesse Hagopian will be a featured speaker, along with Jonathan Kozol, Karen Lewis, Diane Ravitch, Rev. William J. Barber II, and many others. We urge all of you who can to support these events:
A People's March for Public Education and Social Justice on July 8
Save Our Schools Activists Conference on July 9
Coalition Summit and Organizing Session on July 10
In an election year filled with daily examples of how desperately our nation and our planet need stronger movements for democracy and social justice, Rethinking Schools is pleased to support the coalition’s call for:
Full, equitable funding for all public schools
Safe, racially just schools and communities
Community leadership in public school policies
Professional, diverse educators for all students
Child-centered, culturally appropriate curriculum for all
No high-stakes standardized testing
These are themes Rethinking Schools readers will readily recognize as part of every issue we have published for over 30 years. We urge you to support these movement-building efforts and to help Rethinking Schools connect with new layers of activists and advocates from across the country.

In solidarity,
Stan Karp
Rethinking Schools

Top Ten Enemies of Public Education

The Top-10 Most Unwanted List—the Enemies of Public Education

jonpelto / February 5, 2015

.

From author, educator and education blogger Lloyd Lofthouse.  His writing can be found at: http://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/

The Top-10 Most Unwanted List—the Enemies of Public Education

This list reveals the most dangerous enemies of public education and how they earned their spot in infamy. To discover why they landed on this list, click the links included with each name below the brick wall. This list is subject to change at any time.

#1

#BillGates
Spending billions to destroy Public Schools

with testing agenda to rank & fire teachers

Living in Dialogue

#2

The #Waltons

Why are #Walmart Billionaires Bankrolling Phony School Reform

Bill Moyers.com

#3

Who is #EliBroad and why is he trying to destroy public education?

Defend Public Education.net

#4

#KochBrothers
cherry-picks Constitution

Rewriting History

To brainwash children with libertarian ideas

Diane Ravtich.net

Teachers Are Winning in Seattle - And That is Good

Sara Bernard

On one block of the Central District last Thursday: dozens of teachers wearing bright-red Seattle Education Association T-shirts, hoisting “On Strike” and “Fair Contract Now” signs, singing and chanting and playing conga drums as passing cars honked their horns.

On another: an equally passionate gathering of teachers, students, and parents at Summit Sierra—one of Seattle’s first-ever public charter schools—wearing bright-blue “Keep Our Schools Open” T-shirts, toting hand-drawn “Don’t Close My School” .

Which is, more or less, what everyone is saying. From the teachers’ union to the Seattle Public School District, from the Washington State Charter Schools Association to the state Supreme Court: Save. Our. Schools.

It’s been a tumultuous few weeks for public education, to say the very least, and the news is giving us whiplash. Rallies, picket lines, 14-hour bargaining days, and monumental Supreme Court decisions are all making national headlines as some of the most fraught and long-standing debates in public education descend en masse on the state of Washington. The Seattle teachers’ union went on strike over contract issues for the first time in three decades, delaying the start of the new school year by more than a week; the state Supreme Court ruled Washington’s nascent charter-school law unconstitutional, effectively pulling public funding from the nine charters around the state that just opened their doors; and the state legislature is getting penalized $100,000 per day until it passes an education budget in line with the 2012 decision that condemned it for systematically underfunding public schools.

It’s a mess. But for a lot of educators, it’s pivotal. Despite plenty of frustration to go around, today’s mayhem does seem to have reached a fever pitch—and right now, teachers’ unions have the high note.

“I think the union has finally found its stride with the membership in a way it hadn’t previously,” said Laura Lehni, a history teacher at Washington Middle School and member of the SEA’s bargaining team, as passersby on South Jackson Street honked and cheered for the striking teachers last week. “The people you see out here on the lines, you probably wouldn’t have seen in years past. Now we’re seeing that educators have had enough. We’re not going to bend over for the district any more.”

Scott Walker's Real record in Wisconsin

Educate for Democracy: Walker’s Budget Undermines Public Education, with ...: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is expected to do two things in the next few days: Formally announce his candidacy for President and sign W...

When we abandon our public schools, we not only abandon democracy, we abandon our children's future.

Gov. Walker has the most far-reaching budget veto powers of any governor, and can literally change the budget line by line. How he uses that veto pen will foretell his national plans as he enters the Republican presidential primary.

In Wisconsin, where we have four years of experience with Walker, we expect him to continue his policies of abandoning public institutions and undermining the middle class. Hopefully, national observers will see through Walker's rhetoric and analyze the realities of his state budget.

[Bob Peterson is a founder of Rethinking Schools magazine and former president of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association.]

Opting out of testing mania

Network for Public Education

Today, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights led 11 civil rights groups into a national disagreement with students who have exercised their constitutional political free speech rights and chosen to opt-out of high-stakes testing.

The Network for Public Education supports those who choose to opt out, because we believe these tests are now causing harm to students, and to the cause of educational equity. Seattle teacher Jesse Hagopian has written a response to The Leadership Conference of Civil and Human Rights’ statement, which the Network for Public Education shares here. He states, “High-stakes standardized tests, rather than reducing the opportunity gap, have been used to rank, sort, label, and punish students of color.”

We support opting out of high stakes tests because:

• There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, have led to improved educational equity in funding or programs, or have helped close the “achievement gap”.
• These tests, particularly those associated with the Common Core, have become intrusive in our schools, consuming huge amounts of time and resources, and narrowing instruction to focus on test preparation.
• These tests have never been independently validated or shown to be reliable and/or free from racial and ethnic bias.
• Instead the Common Core exams are being used as a political weapon to claim huge numbers of students are failing, to close neighborhood public schools, and fire teachers, all in the effort to disrupt and privatize the public education system.

Vergara v. State of California Decision |

Vergara v. State of California is a meritless lawsuit brought by Students Matter, an organization created by Silicon Valley multimillionaire David Welch and a private public relations firm for the sole purpose of filing this suit. Students Matter is supported by Michelle Rhee and Students First, Parent Revolution Executive Director Ben Austin, Billionaire and school privatizer Eli Broad, former lawmaker Gloria Romero, and other corporate education reformers with an interest in privatizing public education and attacking teachers’ unions. The suit challenges California statutes governing due process in teacher dismissals, using experience as a criteria during school layoffs, and the two-year probationary period for teachers. The suit wrongly alleges those laws are unconstitutional and hurt students. The defendant in the suit is the State of California. CTA and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) intervened in the case to ensure all stakeholders have input in educational policy decisions and to protect the rights of educators. 

Simply put, this lawsuit highlights the wrong problems, proposes the wrong solutions, and follows the wrong process. This is yet another attempt by the usual corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession and push their agenda on California public schools and students. Circumventing the legislative process to strip teachers of their due process rights will not improve student learning, will make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers in our classrooms, and ignores all the research that shows experience is a key factor in effective teaching. This is a blatant effort to legislate from the bench, keeping parents and educators out of education policy decisions.  

Protecting Public Education

C-SPAN StudentCam 2014 Third Prize Winner - Protecting Public Education

Thank you to the student producers for this production. 

When the Pundits Misrepresent Public School Issues

By Jeff Bryant

Government funding for public schools has been cut so dramatically that now most states are funding schools less than before the recession.

Legend has, political disputes are supposed to be resolvable only when parties “meet in the middle” and shake hands on points of agreement that are possible.

But in the much-contested issue of “education reform,” only one of the disputing parties in the debate tends to be implored to seek compromise.

What this looks like in one of the nation’s largest school district, Los Angeles, came to the attention of many recently when a Facebook campaign led by a local teacher provided a cavalcade of photographs showing the deplorable conditions of that city’s public schools. “The images,” reported the Los Angeles Times, include missing ceiling tiles, broken sinks and water fountains, ant invasions, dead roaches and rat droppings.”

Reclaim School Reform from the Corporate Raiders

Reclaim School Reform 

The Nation

One of the greatest challenges facing American education today is a fantasy, spun by billionaire-funded “think tanks” and often repeated uncritically by
politicians and pundits, that our schools are failing, that teachers are shirking their responsibilities and that unions are

the root of the problem. Unfortunately, the peddlers of these distortions have held the microphone for so long that the word “reform” is now associated with the crudest assaults on the very infrastructure of public education.

It’s not that reform isn’t called for. Schools are beset with difficulties, mostly born of the inequalities rampant in the larger society. But, as ought to be obvious, education reform must be in the public interest—on behalf of public schools and the children who attend them—rather than private interests, furthering “the corporate agenda for public schools, which disregards our voices and attempts to impose a system of winners and losers,” to quote the mission statement of a new coalition of teachers and their unions, along with parent, student, religious and community groups. This coalition has set itself the task of nothing less than reclaiming “the promise of public education as our nation’s gateway to democracy and racial and economic justice.”

Backed by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, as well as national groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens and local organizations like the Philadelphia Student Union and the Boston Youth Organizing Project, this coalition effort—beginning with a national day of action on December 9—picks up the themes of the Chicago Teachers Union strike of 2012, which saw educators and parents unite against school closings. It highlights concerns about resources and classroom energy being diverted to standardized testing instead of kids, concerns that have become a focus of the New York State United Teachers. And it embraces the message of Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education, who argues that the right response to much of what ails public education is a comprehensive anti-poverty agenda that addresses racial and economic inequality [1] by providing healthcare, food and nutrition, and preschool programs that enable teachers to teach and students to learn.

Day of Action for Public Education

“Public education is under attack,” comes the warning from Philadelphia in a riveting new video from community and youth organizers in that city.

Their accusations are that education policies are “an attack on poor children” … policy makers “don’t care about the students” … public education “is being defunded” … and “it’s not something specific to Philadelphia.”

Indeed, Philadelphia “is an early warning sign for America,” a former science teacher wrote recently at the progressive news site PolicyMic. Chronically low per-pupil spending – “behind suburban districts” – combined with a “powerful charter school movement” intent on privatizing schools, have eroded Philly schools to the state where basic supplies like paper, pencils, and books seem like luxuries.

It’s a story that mirrors what’s happening across the country.

Americans everywhere are seeing their local schools being ground into pieces between the twin political augers of government austerity and top-down, corporate-backed “reform.”

What Does the PISA Report Tell Us About U.S. Education?

Public Universities Should be Free

Public education should be free. If it isn't free, it isn't public education.

Aaron Bady.  Al Jazeera.

This should not be a controversial assertion. This should be common sense. But Americans have forgotten what the "public" in "public education" actually means (or used to mean). The problem is that the word no longer has anything to refer to: This country's public universities have been radically transformed. The change has happened so slowly and so gradually — bit by bit, cut by cut over half a century — that it can be seen really only in retrospect. But with just a small amount of historical perspective, the change is dramatic: public universities that once charged themselves to open their doors to all who could benefit by attending — that were, by definition, the public property of the entire state — have become something entirely different.

What we still call public universities would be more accurately described as state-controlled private universities — corporate entities that think and behave like businesses. Whereas there once was a public mission to educate the republic's citizens, there is now the goal of satisfying the educational needs of the market, aided by PR departments that brand degrees as commodities and build consumer interest, always with an eye to the bottom line. And while public universities once sought to advance the industry of the state as a whole, with an eye to the common good, shortfalls in public funding have led to universities' treating their research capacity as a source of primary fundraising, developing new technologies and products for the private sector, explicitly to raise the money they need to operate. Conflicts of interest are now commonplace.

In defense of public schools

by Duane Campbell

 There are few institutions more directly connected  to our state and national prosperity and our democracy than public schools.  Now, a few states, primarily in the South, are dismantling public funding in order to create for profit options for private schools. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/education/states-shifting-aid-for-schools-to-the-families.html.

   The truth is that most charter schools  are public, that is they are funded by public funds.  Usually they are managed privately, at times for profit. The teachers in these schools usually lack union protections.

Charters have become popular in communities of poor people because the urban public schools are often failing. Parents want an alternative for their children.  Often in these communities the health system, the police, the nutrition and fire systems and employment opportunities  are usually failing.  

Smart and adept politicians, usually Republicans, use the failure of poorly funded urban schools as a hammer to batter public education.   

It is not surprising that this rejection of  public education as a route to  prosperity for all comes from the South and states dominated by Republican legislatures.   Arizona, Indiana,  Texas, and Alabama and the other states promoting charters  can go ahead and decline if they so choose, however we need to set up some borders and tariffs, and perhaps trade agreements to prevent their move to “free market” choices from imposing vast new costs on the states which continue to want democracy and prosperity.  Remember, free market ideology is what brought us the economic crisis since 2007.

Public schools have  significantly contributed to U.S.  prosperity for the last 100 years  and they have fostered  our national unity.  It is accurate that some public schools are failing- particularly those serving low income and minority children.  But, there is no evidence that privatizing will improve these schools.

The Fight Against Teachers Unions

by Leo Casey

Michelle Rhee and others, on teacher unions.

How does that compare to the resources and spending of the leading education reform actors? In a matter of days after she publicly announced the formation of StudentsFirst, an explicitly anti-union political lobbying organization, Michelle Rhee had raised pledges of more than $100 million, with a goal of raising $2 billion over five years. Rhee’s donors list includes many high profile corporate leaders and foundations with an anti-union bent, including Murdoch (NewsCorp), Walton Family (Wal-Mart), Fisher (The Gap), Langone (Home Depot), Tepper (Appaloosa), Arnold (Enron), New York City Mayor Bloomberg (Bloomberg Inc.), Fournier (Pennant), Loeb (Third Point), Tudor Jones (Tudor Investment) and Broad (SunAmerica-AIG). [8]

And StudentsFirst is only one of many such organizations. Wealthy individuals and foundations are literally pouring billions of dollars into various anti-union, privatization and corporate “education reform” efforts on a scale that teacher unions could never hope to match. [9]…

As one examines the issues, the struggles over the future of public education and teachers unions in America comes to resemble the classic populist conflict of wealth and money on the one side and masses of ordinary people on the other. One cannot understand the real power and role of teacher unions, nor the balance of political power between unions and their corporate-funded opponents, without coming to grips with this central premise. And, in truth, when attacks on pubic education and teacher unions are cast as a concerted campaign by the rich and powerful against ordinary working teachers, they lose a considerable portion of their potency. [16]

By Leo Casey.  The Shanker Institute.

Read the entire essay. http://shankerblog.org/?p=8177

Are Charter Schools Public? Diane Ravitch

Are charter schools public?

by Diane Ravitch 

I noted in my blog last week that the visionaries of the charter school idea—Raymond Budde of the University of Massachusetts and Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers—never intended that charter schools would compete with public schools.

Budde saw charters as a way to reorganize public school districts and to provide more freedom for teachers. He envisioned teams of teachers asking for a charter for three to five years, during which time they would operate with full autonomy over curriculum and instruction, with no interference from the superintendent or the principal.

Shanker thought that charter schools should be created by teams of teachers who would explore new ways to reach unmotivated students. He envisioned charter schools as self-governing, as schools that encouraged faculty decisionmaking and participatory governance. He imagined schools that taught by coaching rather than lecturing, that strived for creativity and problem-solving rather than mastery of standardized tests or regurgitation of facts. He never thought of charters as non-union schools where teachers would work 70-hour weeks and be subject to dismissal based on the scores of their students.

Today, charter schools are very far from the original visions of Budde and Shanker. Few are run by teams of teachers. Most are managed by for-profit corporations or by nonprofit corporations with private boards of directors. The charter reflects the aims of the corporation, not the aims of its teachers. Most charters are non-union and rely on young teachers who work long hours and leave after a few years, thus keeping costs low. Many have high executive compensation. Charters have a high rate of teacher and principal turnover. Clearly, charters do not "belong" to the professionals who work in them, but to the corporation and its directors, who hold the charter.

Which raises the question of this blog: Are charter schools public schools? They say they are. But what we now see is that they are public when it comes to collecting tax money, but not in most other respects.