Kitchen sink has been sunk for quite a while now, as this worm incinuates himself into any converstaion where he can malign unions. He’s irrational and unreasonable- and perhaps has a financial interest that he is not disclosing here.

While I do think there are some things we can agree upon, that nevertheless less points to significant disagreements about implementing them:

– if charter schools are to get their “fair” share of state funding, public schools will not
get the targeted corporate and foundation gravy train available for the most part only
to charters, a privately-generated policy that is not subject to real democratic input.

– you’re preference for “mom-and-pop” charters, is unfortunately irrelevant to the structural,
tectonic forces pushing for consolidation and scaling up. These are not economically
sustainable models unless they employ economies of scale. In the 1970′s, Nixon’s
Secretary of Agriculture famously said to farmers: “Get big or get out.” The same will
inevitably happen with charter schools, as they franchise or become absorbed by EMOs,
or disappear.

– While I personally am fortunate to teach in school where the teachers are respected, I
certainly don’t feel valued when I see powerful forces attack things (professional judgement and autonomy, tenure, seniority, pensions,etc.) that are of serious material and professional
importance to me and my colleagues. And all of which, by the way, provide schools
with the protections and stability that are important for children and communities.

I don’t feel valued when people who’ve never taught a day in their lives presume to
say that teachers and their unions are the problem facing schools and children, and I
don’t feel valued when I often can’t tell where the incompetence ends and the malice
begins with the Chancellor and Mayor.

From your mouth to God’s (all educators) ears!

I say, we may agree on some of these points: I will stay anonymous, but I’ll also tell you that I’m not a KIPPster and I don’t necessarily think the scaling-up model of charter school growth is such a good idea. I favor the mom and pops. (Remember, though, that KIPP was founded by two teachers.) We definitely disagree on the “threat level” of corporate interests funding charter schools and other ed reforms – I’m somewhere between green and yellow and it seems like you’re on red. It’s all part of the big tent for me.

But to boil down my point: we both seem to agree that the best model for education reform includes a heavy emphasis on valuing teachers, supporting strong pedagogy and using dynamic and real curriculum…and kids with special needs and ELLs should be part of the equation!

You say that “other than enacting their ideology,” what would Bloomberg and Broad have to gain? But that’ s precisely my point: their interests are interwoven with their ideology. Now, by interests, I don’t mean that they see this as a mechanical one of their own personal enrichment (although there are people involved in the process who do so). I don’t believe they have any intentions of directly profiting personally from this; on the contrary, their “idealism,” as well as their behavior, is inextricably bound up in their class and managerial predispositions,. They’re doing it for the team, so to speak. In Bloomberg’s case, this is especially so, since he is explicitly seen as integral to finance and real estate capital’s domination of not just the economy but the politics of NYC.

I use the language of class struggle and conflict, but I take no pleasure in doing so. After all, it’s Warren Buffett, unusual among financiers for his candor, who said.”You bet there’s a class war, and my class,, the rich class, is winning it.” (Perhaps not an exact quote, but quite close).

You refer to the teacher cooperative model embodied in the first charter school efforts in Minnesota. These are admirable, and I don’t dispute them. I have stated all along that education reform was initiated by parents and teachers, and has since been hijacked by corporate interests. You say, “Who needs a union if teachers are owners?” But charter schools, at least the ones that are scaling up and are being used as models for nationwide franchising, are not owned by teachers. They are controlled by their Boards of Directors, who may, or may not, have a token teacher in residence, but in reality are made up of an incestuous and interlocking group of people from interested foundations (Gates, Broad, Walton, Fordham, et. al.), corporations and academics who receive funding from same. Again, there’s a reason why they use the language of the inverstment world, and particulary venture capital: they are seeding a variety of programs and waiting to see how they play out and which may become the next Google. Some will succeed, and proceed on to a literal or figurative IPO in the future, and others will be cut off. Call me cynical, but I believe the one’s that “succeed” will be the one’s that hew most closely to the (perceived) needs, managerial and labor-force related, of their funders.

Ceolaf,

Briefly, my view about privatization of the schools is inseparable from my view of the public good. I believe in private property (I just don’t believe in “absolute” unregulated private property rights), and I believe in the right of people to send their children to private or religious schools. What I oppose, and what I think runs contrary to the public good, is the weakening and elimination of public services in the name of private control and, by default, profit, which inevitably means a dimunition of those same services and a loss of public control and oversight.

Socates,

My point about Ob-Gyns is in regard to the rhetoric of corporate ed reform, which posits the “failings” of public schools and their teachers in very narrow terms, and to the exclusion of other factors. My point is that the master discourse in this debate posits education as the only route out of poverty, ignoring things like investment patterns, wages and living standards. As a teacher, I spend my professional life extolling the benefits of education to my high school students, but as an informed citizen I must recognize that other factors intrude.

Take some taxi rides in NYC and get into conversations with the drivers. Ask them their backgrounds and you’ll often be amazed at their levels of education. I’ve been driven by doctors, architects, chemical engineers, etc., none of whom could use their educations in the countries where they earned them. According to the ed deformer ideology, their educations should have magically led to an improved standard of living, but it didn’t work out that way: they’re driving taxis in NYC.

An additonal cruel twist to this process is that the very people who have fabulously enriched themselves by extracting the patrimonial wealth of the country- which is fundamentally what rentier/finance capital has done over the past generation, vis-a-vis outsourcing, leveraged buy-outs, etc. – is also positioning itself to benefit from the fragmenting of public education.

As to the real or perceived benefits of internet anonymity, I recognize it’s a personal choice based a number of factors. I post using my own name because I believe it gives me a certain level of credibility. I also must say – and I don’t include Kitchen Sink in this grouping- that over the years I have read many posts on these sites defending charter schools and corporate ed reform that sound remarkably similar if not robotic, and recycle the same points, and which I believe are being churned out by charter/foundation/DOE PR flacks. People using their own names is a partial remedy for that.

As for Kitchen Sink or others being hypothetically in danger of vindictive retribution from the big, bad UFT, let me reassure him/her: the UFT under Randi Weingarten is a paper tiger and is recognized as such by Bloomberg, Klein and corporate ed players. You’ll notice how they all say that she’s “someone we can work with.” The union may be a convenient punching bag, but in reality is either too weak to contest corporate ed deform, or in many cases – high stakes testing, merit pay, weakening of fundamental union rights such as seniority and tenure, etc. – fundamentally agrees with it. Most of Randi’s time is spent triangulating between her membership- which ranges from apathetic to worried to exremely unhappy with her leadership – and the real power brokers she is so desperately trying to impress with her “realism” and “statesmanship.” Randi is a hardworking and extremely capable tactician; it’s just a shame that her gifts are not primarily used in the defense of her members or the schools they work in, but rather her own political advancement.

So, ed deformers, if it’s the UFT you’re worried about, you may sleep easy.

On anonymity: What I’m sure KitchenSink realizes, as do I (and experience has verified this), is that if s/he reveals her or his name, s/he will be targeted in a very real way not only in the blogosphere but in real life. Right now, KS is an anonymous charter leader with well-reasoned opinions that make the union look bad. If KS becomes a real name, his or her charter school becomes a target. I know this, as I have been attacked mercilessly, begged for my real name, slandered, and so on, all because I choose to remain anonymous (and have the basic minimum technological skill necessary to use a free IP address proxy). The last thing I need is a powerful union breathing down my neck. Michael, surely you understand the benefits of online anonymity in this corporate-controlled autocracy we inhabit.

There are various aspects in the issues here. I think that Michael is particularly concerned with privatizing, which appears to be a part of the charter form, but might not necessarily have to be. His concerns about privatizing would apply in other circumstances, too — even without charter schools.

Ken has not actually come out in favor of privatization, but I think that he might, at the end of the day. I know from side conversations with him that there are constraints placed on public schools — because they are government entities — that he does not like.

On the other hand, there are many proponents of charter schools who have no interested in privatization, and would be aghast at the idea. They believe that charters do not equate to privatization, and that the ills of privatization can be avoided.

Get back to Michael, I’m fairly certain that he is concerned that charters are really privatization in sheep’s clothing, or the camel’s nose under the the tent. I’m don’t know that he’s conspiracy-minded, but rather I think that he is saying that the ultimate goal of many charter proponents is an expansion of privatization of schooling.

It happens that I — and many others — not agree with him, even if we, too, are wary of the charter school movement. I have quite different concerns than he does. For example, I the research has failed to show –over and over again — that decentralization makes a big different for the better. That’s not nothing to do with privatization. I’m concerned about all kinds of segregation — but that’s not just a charter issues and is certainly not privatization. I am concerned about the loss of the public good — and that’s not the kind of economic privatization that Michael is talking about. (i.e. he is concerned about private profit-motives of education management organizations or vendors, whereas I am concerned about the balance of public good and private good for students/families).

It is conceivably possible that his concerns could be dealt with while still allowing for your preferred model of charter schools. I don’t think that you should assume that he is opposed to what you have described.

Do you mean privatizing, or decentralizing?

I’m agreeing to disagree on some points. (No more insulting metaphors, sorry if it got too personal.)

Question about your billionaires: other than the for-profit educational ventures you mentioned (and I can’t say I know what those particular people are doing), what do they hope to gain by realizing the fearful anti-labor future you are painting? That is, other than enacting their ideology (wherein they probably view unions as too powerful in the name of education reform, for kids)? Will Eli Broad and Mike Bloomberg get richer if the UFT gets weaker? Or will they feel that they have imprinted their political ideology on a school system that they see as suffering, inefficient, woefully inadequate?

I’m not advocating one way or another here, I’m looking to understand your position and to characterize the ‘educational privatizing’ complex.

My perspective on ‘privatizing’ education is very different. I was inspired to join the charter school movement by a teacher cooperative charter school in Minnesota, http://edvisionscooperative.org/. The website talks about replacing the traditional union structure with a teachers-as-owners cooperative, a private organization that contracts with the school district to provide services.

Who needs a union if the teachers are owners?

There’s no reason this can’t be done in NYC.

The point here isn’t to bust the union, but to accomplish its ends (teacher advocacy & empowerment) while accomplishing other ends (radical education reform and reaching our most at risk students) and to do so, discarding the baggage that the UFT has shouldered.

Yes, freedom from bureaucracy. It’s very attractive for competent educators. Obviously it would never work for the “teachers” who are merely test prep robots in scripted curriculum charter schools, but neither do I think that such a characterization describes the majority of NYC charters.

A last note about creaming: I haven’t talked to the Ed Visions people in a long time (the ones in Minnesota), but my recollection is that they are truly the vanguard of the charter school movement. And guess how they told me they found their initial student body? They literally went around the community and looked for truants and high school dropouts, and described project based learning to them. They did a sales job for strong, student-centered curriculum on dropouts! And the school has been phenomenally successful. The teachers run the “business,” so obviously the students run the school! Explore their websites or give them a call if you have doubts.

To address your points in order, and then provide some historical context, which perhaps I should have done at the outset:

1. In my first post here I did distinguish, albeit harshly, among people in the debate about charter schools.Perhaps I should have developed it and elaborated upon it further.

I believe that the overwhelming majority of teachers working in charter schools are well-meaning and hard-working folks who are being duped by a massively funded and hyped effort to siphon public monies away from publicly administered schools, and toward schools that are privately managed and that cream students on the front and back ends. This process then reinforces the propaganda about charter schools being superior to public schools, which must educate the students who, for whatever reasons, are unable to navigate the obstacles placed in their way. This is a very easy thing to “miss,” if all you do is focus on the trees in your school rather than the (systemic) forest.

As I said,the majority of folks involved in this process are well-meaning, but naive and ahistorical- I know that’s harsh, but I believe it fits – whose idealism is being manipulated for ultimate ends that might appall them if they were clear about what is going on. However, while the majority are well-meaning, there is a smaller but more significant group of opportunists, who see which way the wind is blowing and want to get on the professional gravy train. And then there are the outright privateers, who see in the privatization of the public schools a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enrich themselves, and extend absolute mangerial control into one of the few workplaces where labor has maintained some control over the work process. If this sounds far-fetched to you, I suggest you read “Labor and Monoply Capital” by Harry Braverman, which lays out the elimination of worker control of the labor process by an ever-encroaching management imperative of efficiency and productivity, as defined by management. Braverman was writing about industrial and office settings; the focus on schools came later, but his narrative fits quite well. Additionally, braverman wrote about the continual de-skilling of the workforce, which we are now seeing with the focus on fungible teachers forced to focus on constant test prep.

The opportunists and the privateers are not always one and the same people, and there is overlap among them. Regarding ultimate ends, however, they are indistinguishable.

2. As for the distinction between governance and instruction, I’m well aware of the difference between the two. I’ve been actively involved in the governance issue for quite a while, and was a member of the UFT’s governance committee, speaking at the union Delegate Assembly in favor of a minority report that called for the elimination of mayoral control of the schools. Needless to say, Randi Weingarten, who supports mayoral control and without whose support mayoral control would have never ocurred, opposed that. Again, I write here as a loyal trade unionist and active and open dissident within the UFT, which in fact does have a complicated and checkered history in educating minority children. That said, the union, for all its many faults, represents better than any other institution the people who actually work in the schools educating children. That cannot be said about the consultants, foundations and Wall Streeters – and yes, KS can mock my supposed paranoia, but I suggest he/she take a look at the private equity and hedge fund types on the Boards of charter schools and ed deform groups, many of whom have simultaneous investments in for-profit, proprietary schools (Jeffrey Leeds of Green Dot NY, New Schools Venture Fund, to name two) who are pushing charters.

My point, which I perhaps did not sufficiently develop, is that the billionaires who are using their so-called philanthropy to buy policy, don’t primarily care about teaching at all, except insofar as it provides them with a pliant and minimally capable workforce. Their real concern is to use the governance issue to neutralize or eliminate the unions and exert the same absolute control of the school workplace as they have everywhere else. The schools then become the model for the postmodern workplace, a place with 100% management control of the work process, stress (see non-stop focus on high-stakes testing) tedium (ditto), remote surveillance (see ARIS), and no rights, protections or benefits (see a constanttly-churned workforce of Peace Corps/missionary/TFA’s who function as a high-status contingent workforce).

With all their shortcomings, public schools remain a vehicle for democratic participation, humanistic instruction and teacher control of the work process – I know some teachers may bridle at my apparent reduction of our craft as a labor process, but rest assured that”s how the Broad’s, Gates’ , Waltons, et. al. see it – and that is the reason for their focus on governance. Once they can control the management of the schools, free of the pesky demands of teachers and parents, they can move on to the next stage of the process: organizing it as they would any of their other subsidiaries.

3. As for pseudonyms, obviously, everyone has the right to publish under whatever name they see fit. However, I just think that by writing under your own name you have a degree of credibility that doesn’t exist otherwise. By writing under my own name, readers can judge for themselves what interests and agendas I might have, separate from those openly stated in a post. This is especially true of people, like KS, who claim that they are fighting for the well-being of students against the big, evil Union. If we knew the actual identity of this person, perhaps it would inform our interpretation of their point of view.

As for historical context, one historical point that is never brought up by corporate ed deformers and their parrots in the press is, where have they been all these years? Where were they in the 1970′s and 1980′s when public school budgets were being cut, when 15,000 NYC teachers were laid off, when an entire generation of NYC public school students were denied music and art instruction? Read Michael Bloomberg’s autobiography, and you will not find a single word about the public schools. Where was Eli Broad when Proposition 13 in California destroyed what had been probabbly the best and most generously funded public school system in the country? These people have only expressed an interest in public education when they wanted to control it and have it serve their narrow purposes.

Again, ed deformers harp on about the achievement gap, narrowly framing the issue so that it can be placed on the backs of teachers. But why limit the rhetoric to education alone? Choose almost any index of social well-being and you will find the US near the bottom among industrialized countries. The US has the among the highest infant and maternal death rates among developed nations: where’s that outrage directed at OB-GYN’s? Where are the demands for “accountability?” The OB’s are left alone- not that I’m suggesting we go after them – because medicine has already been privatized in tbis country, and largely functions under complete corporate management control. That’s the busienss model of education.

The fact is that the arguments about education have been falsely and unfairly framed so as to place the entire responsibilty for children’s progress and well-being on teachers, to the exclusion of other factors. This then becomes the logical pretext for attacks, direct and indirect, against their representatives (their unions) and the entire system of public control of the schools.

Look around you: private communities, private roads and infrastructure, private prisons, private armies, private (charter schools), private government, all funded with public tax monies, but removed from public control. That’s fundamentally what this is all about.

It’s not a conspricacy; it’s a consensus, a consensus among the ruling class, in whichj you can’t say you didn’t know.

I think that you make a few basic mistakes.

First, and most importantly, you don’t account for well-meaning but mistaken people.

For example, I have *huge* disagreements with Ken, but I don’t think his ultimate goal is anything other than children’s well-being, at least as he understands it. I think that those who work in charter schools truly want what is best is for their students. And I think that Obama and Duncan really believe that charter schools are good for kids an the education sector, generally.

They may be wrong, but not all of them are evil or selfish.

Second, you don’t seem to understand why so many outsiders focus on governance rather than instruction. Quite simply, they don’t know a lot about instruction. Like most people, they believe that what they know is not just germane, but actually key to finding good solutions. I would argue that people who work in schools similarly fail to consider governance and policy issues, again because they believe that what they know is key. (Obviously, *I* think that we need to figure how policy and governance can actually improve instruction.)

Third, there’s a long a glorious history of pseudonyms. There’s the the old internet convention, of course. But there’s also a long tradition of political leaders, writer and others. Different people have different reasons for using pseudonyms, and some of them might even be defensible. So, unless you are willing to label everyone on the internet who uses a pseudonym is stooge of some sort — even though who agree with you — let KitchenSink be KitchenSink.

KS must resort to mockery and misrepresntation becasue he/she is unable to refute my points, which are based on publicly reported information. Can you deny:

– that private equity and hedge fund operators, as well as Wall Street investment banks
are deeply involved in the charter school movement, and that their actions in recent
years exceed the widest paranoia of their critics? Why should educators, students,
parents and public officials have any faith whatsoever in their altruism/

– Eli Broad has publicly stated that he couldn’t care less about instruction and curriculum,
and is only concerned about school governance (read control)?

– That charter schools are privately-managed schools capitalized with public money

You can’t? I didn’t think you could: thus your pitiful need to attack me.

How lame: all that high-sounding rhetoric about kids and parents when you are really a stalking horse for the rich and powerful. And you seem to think it takes courage to stand up fore the rich and powerful, while hiding behind the rhetoric of racial justice and parent involvement.

By the way KS, if you’re so proud of the work you do, why not sign your name? I write my name on every post and statement I make, and stand by them. Why not show the courage of your stated convictions? Or might that show us that your indentity is more compromised than you’d like us to believe?

You’re right; I’m on your side when that day comes. That is, as soon as Cohaagen makes plain his threat to ruin people’s lives by excessively mining the Turbidium, I’m switching sides and joining the resistance. I’m absolutely with Quato in that innocent people should not be turned into mutants by the corporate mining complex.

But until I see evidence that alien artifacts are truly being suppressed, it’s all just conspiracy theory to me; I DON’T see anyone being harmed by the charter school movement. I only see children being helped. And I think Quato would agree with me on this one.

I am not denying the good intentions or idealism of the many people and community organizations that have started charter schools. What I have said, and what you refuse to acknowledge, are the deeper motivations and interests that are driving this process, namely, a corporate/foundation/academic complex that is creating a publicly-funded, privately-managed school system that is “scaling up” to eventually stand on its own feet and overwhelm the public system. None of your posts have addressed that reality, which is essentially acknolwedged by the chancellor’s and superintendents of the urban systems that are the beachhead for this effort.

Sure, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, et al., will at first cast their funding seeds widely. After all, in their own words, it is “seed capital” isn’t it? But these folks have cash registers for brains, and don’t give money away unless their own interests are covered, – if you don’t believe that, I suggest you check out Eli Broad’s history as a real estate developer and “philanthropist”in the art world and in LA, his home base – and you are naive to think that the gravitational force of funding, control and profit will not exert itself. Maybe not this year or next, or even in five, but rest assured when these programs have scaled up, they will. When that happens, we will all be in danger of having lost the potential for meaningful engagement and reform within a public system, and your boutique charter schools will be impelled to either get with the program – i.e., labor force training based on overwork, tedium, remote surveillance and authoritarianism – or lose funding.

When that happens, which side will you be on?

I, like you, don’t care about pissing off the UFT. The UFT’s happiness is not anywhere on my list of priorities.

And I, like you, think that the system should work for kids. However, I also know that if the system does not work for adults, then it cannot work for kids. We need to keep teachers long enough for them to get really good, and then keep them while they are really good. We need compensation and working conditions good enough to attract potentially great teachers in the first place. We need to treat teachers — and administrators — with the respect and dignity the need to grow as professionals. That is the path to better instruction; instruction is what matters.

So, you might want to change your rhetoric to “The system should work for kids, not just for adults.”

But you should also realize that we don’t have a shortage of new teachers, and never really have. Rather, we lose them too quickly. It’s not a bucket we cannot fill, but rather a very leaky bucket that we have trouble keeping filled. That tells me that it hasn’t been working for adults, either.

So, please don’t paint me or everyone who values teacher unions as being willing to sell out the kids for the benefit of adults.

Thank you for reading my posts. I am humbled by your attention.

I have to agree with you about NCLB – yes, I mouthed off about it, but the point I was trying to make is that (while I also detest the law), finally someone is standing up and shining a light on the educational disparities between demographic groups.

Go ahead, alarm bells, go on and on about poverty and foster care and all that – it’s part of life and schools have to learn to deal with it. NCLB at least has us having this conversation, which in my experience was swept under the rug in the past and was only germane to a small but loud ‘radical’ sect of the education field.

“Who cares about those kids?” has been replaced by a vigorous debate about what constitutes achievement and what constitutes advantage. That’s the space where we have to be together if our nation is going to move forward.

Your concern for the entire system is a beautiful thing, but it’s too daunting for me. I look around and see too many problems. I’m not interested in squashing the system (I’ve been a part of several powerful collaborations between charter schools and district schools – there is more intentional, symbiotic resource sharing than many think, it just doesn’t make headlines like the battles do), but it takes a stronger person than me to have your view. After teaching in two different schools, I was ready to walk away from education. It was the pull of working with kids and families that led me to the charter sector.

Lots of charter folks don’t see themselves as “education reformers,” just as people who are trying to do the right thing by families.

And frankly, I left the UFT. If working at a charter school pisses off the UFT, then so be it. The system should work first for kids, not for adults.

“At that point whatever diversity of instruction and mission that does exist among charter schools will be homogenized out of existence.”

If you think the Renaissances of the world (and particularly Reniassance, look at how activist they are) would idly sit by while the charter movement is converted to test-prep-factory-land, you’re not up to date on the charter movement. And you’re vastly underestimating the people power of Renaissance, whose ethic goes all the way back to the labor movement, civil rights, women’s suffrage, and beyond. KIPP and Achievement First may get all the press, but there are now more mom-and-pop, community based charter schools in NYC, with words like citizenship and leadership in their missions, than there are test prep machines.

And at charter schools, unlike the DOE schools where I have worked and (generally) visited, the mission isn’t just a paragraph on the wall that’s put up for visitors; it organizes EVERYTHING that is done at the school.

Forgive me if you seem paranoid to me. Charter schools shouldn’t be seen as threatening to district schools. They are an option, an alternative, more akin to the New Vision high schools than private schools. I’ll repeat my mantra: visit some charter schools and you’ll see.