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Diane Ravitch, a top public education advocate, reports via AlterNet:
This month, the Public Broadcasting System is broadcasting a "documentary" that tells a one-sided story, the story that [Trump's Secretary of Education] Betsy DeVos herself would tell, based on the work of free-market advocate Andrew Coulson. Author of "Market Education", Coulson narrates "School, Inc.", a three-hour program, which airs this month nationwide in three weekly broadcasts on PBS.
Uninformed viewers who see this slickly produced program will learn about the glories of unregulated schooling, for-profit schools, teachers selling their lessons to students on the Internet. They will learn about the "success" of the free market in schooling in Chile, Sweden, and New Orleans. They will hear about the miraculous charter schools across America, and how public school officials selfishly refuse to encourage the transfer of public funds to private institutions. They will see a glowing portrait of South Korea, where students compete to get the highest possible scores on a college entry test that will define the rest of their lives and where families gladly pay for after-school tutoring programs and online lessons to boost test scores. They will hear that the free market is more innovative than public schools.
What they will not see or hear is the other side of the story. They will not hear scholars discuss the high levels of social segregation in Chile, nor will they learn that the students protesting the free-market schools in the streets are not all "Communists", as Coulson suggests. They will not hear from scholars who blame Sweden's choice system for the collapse of its international test scores. They will not see any reference to Finland, which far outperforms any other European nation on international tests yet has neither vouchers nor charter schools. They may not notice the absence of any students in wheelchairs or any other evidence of students with disabilities in the highly regarded KIPP charter schools. They will not learn that the acclaimed American Indian Model Charter Schools in Oakland does not enroll any American Indians, but has a student body that is 60 percent Asian American in a city where that group is 12.8 percent of the student population. Nor will they see any evidence of greater innovation in voucher schools or charter schools than in properly funded public schools.
[...] This program is paid propaganda. It does not search for the truth. It does not present opposing points of view. It is an advertisement for the demolition of public education and for an unregulated free market in education. PBS might have aired a program that debates these issues, but "School Inc." does not.
It is puzzling that PBS would accept millions of dollars for this lavish and one-sided production from a group of foundations with a singular devotion to the privatization of public services. The decision to air this series is even stranger when you stop to consider that these kinds of anti-government political foundations are likely to advocate for the elimination of public funding for PBS. After all, in a free market of television, where there are so many choices available, why should the federal government pay for a television channel?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @12:26AM (8 children)
The charter schools get to cherry-pick their students and those places look more and more like the all-White schools of 1953.
...and, after cherry-picking, less than 20 percent of kids do better, about half do the same, and about a third do worse than in public schools.
Oh, and they get to expel kids on a whim.
Even with the extreme filtering. they still suck at educating.
...because it isn't about educating kids; it's about breaking unions and extracting wealth.
If they wanted to actually do better for the kids, they'd be replicating what is already known to work (better teacher:student ratios for starters).
Additionally, DeVos is a White Supremacist with a fringe Dutch Protestant background who wants to inject her twisted brand of Christianity into schools.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Monday June 19 2017, @02:50AM
To them, that's a feature, not a bug. They don't want non-whites and non-Christians to get any social or infrastructure investment. Hell, there are people in this very comment section who have said as much. It's not even a secret.
This is why I feel Devos is the most dangerous person in the Trump administration. She is pure evil.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @05:31AM (1 child)
You have got to be kidding me.
The teacher:student ratio is not proven, beyond the most broken examples, to be a key thing. To offer my own anecdotal experience, I graduated from a high school with fantastic results (measured nationally), where the typical class was well over 30, with some in the 40s. It had a lot more to do with good teachers, strict discipline, and a strong academic community that valued education.
But sure, what the hell, let's close our eyes, cherry-pick evidence and swallow uncritically the idea that what we need is MOAR TEECHRZ. Immediately we run into several problems. The first is that hiring teachers is tough. The pay sucks, the qualifications required for advancement are a weird combination of silly and demanding, the theoretical hours required are easy, but the functionally expected additional hours range from long to punishing, the career track is micromanaged by union, and the working environment is straitjacketed. The cream of the crop laugh hysterically, then go off to design electronics, do kidney surgery or trade stocks. Or something, anything else. You're then left with a vanishingly small minority of people who are truly devoted educators, and a vast majority of time-servers who had few realistic alternatives. If you want to hire more, you'll have to offer massively higher pay - and then you'll have to pay all the incumbents more so that they don't get butthurt. This on top of the fact that the USA has the most expensive pre-tertiary educational system per capita in the entire world. (OK, if you cherry-pick your numbers and add certain kinds of vocational training and so on you can make Switzerland look more expensive. I'm sure that will make it easier to pay for MOAR TEECHRZ.)
But let's pretend you have all the cash. Money is no object. You can, and will, pay enough to tempt quants off Wall Street to train the next generation's genius mathematicians. No class is over 10 students. What now? Have you filled every kid with a hunger for learning? Excuse me while I laugh so hard I wet myself, because that's not even a trick question. Wait, wait, here's another good one: have you instilled a decent disciplinary regime in the school, or are we still caught between the detention, suspension and expulsion (and arrest! Yay school cops!) anti-educational choices? Hahaha, I know, crazy, right? Never happen. Let's see, have you filled all the parents with zeal for their kids' educations and future? Man, I kill me!
Real talk: There is such a thing as throwing good money after bad, and doubling down on a failing system that already has such rich resources thrown at it makes no sense at all. Betsy de Vos could be wrong, wrong, wrong on every conceivable level and at least she would be trying to get us out of this terrible hole we're in. Your recommendation looks a lot like: "Shit, we're in a hole. Dig, boys, dig for your lives!"
It's worth pointing out that despite all the money poured into our educational system, teachers don't make all that much. This isn't because we have so many teachers, proportionally, but because we have a terribly wasteful administrative system. This has been covered on Soylent before, but it also bears a surprising resemblance to the story we had recently about the US being bad at infrastructure. Death by bureaucracy. Or, at least, bankruptcy by bureaucracy.
What's your solution for that?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 19 2017, @10:58AM
It's more than just bureaucracy, though I agree that's execrable. Broken schools are an excellent way to squeeze more money out of overworked parents. "Our schools are failing! The future is in jeopardy. Won't someone please think of the children!" So the taxpayers acquiesce to another levy to raise billions of dollars to "fix" the broken education system. Strangely, however, the billions are never spent on upgrading the schools or improving education. It gets quietly siphoned away in a thousand ways, or sits in escrow collecting interest that gets quietly siphoned away. If the parents continue to yell loudly enough, a few cents on those dollars get spent to put something new and shiny into a few schools. Where the white kids go. The immigrants and poors get nothing.
And so it goes, for decades. Everyone, Republican and Democrat, is in on it. So, yeah, teacher unions don't help at all, but they're the cladding on a rotten core.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @09:55PM (4 children)
Mostly you got it wrong, but "about breaking unions" and "teacher:student ratios" isn't far off the mark.
The unions decided to make an enemy out of the republican party. Oops. Why the surprise when the party fights back? What did you expect? You thought it would be just fine to have a money pipeline that goes from the taxpayers to the democratic party via union dues? No, a private tax is not OK. No, politicians getting kickbacks is not OK.
People pay taxes, part of that goes to schools, the teachers get paid with a cut going to the union, and the union "donates" exclusively to democrats. The democrats then legislate to give the union advantages. Union members aren't all democrats; some are pissed. In any case, this is corrupt.
Public schools may need to die in order to put an end to this corrupt money pipeline. Teachers helped create this disaster; you reap what you sow. Next time, stay out of politics, or at least don't blatantly favor one side in all things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @02:09AM (3 children)
The unions decided to make an enemy out of the republican party
That took zero effort.
You have it completely backwards.
The GOP has been anti-worker and pro-ownership for over a century.
the union "donates" exclusively to democrats.
Why would you give money to an entity which has voted against you for your entire lifetime?
Why support the party that put through Taft-Hartley and has made no indication they want to change any of it?
Why support the party that has gotten Right-to-Work (For Less) legislation passed in 28 states (and isn't finished with their efforts)?
Are you just plain stupid?
N.B. Giving money to the Donkeys and their Rightward drift since 1972 has been pretty stupid too.
The democrats then legislate to give the union advantages
Pffff. Cite an example of reciprocation in the last 4 decades.
Donkey elites take the money then spit on Working Class people.
The Donkey elites have been Neoliberal for a long time.
If rank-and-file Democrats would get active in their party and replace those folks who only cater to executive-suite people, maybe things would change.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Berniecrats split off and form a Peoples Party before 2020.
There are also lots of folks who just stayed home on Election Day who appear to like the idea.
...and folks who are smart and want worker-friendly politics, -currently- support the Green Party.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @02:22PM (2 children)
Here's a heads-up: there's a huge divide between the unions and the workers that they represent.
Ever noticed how many of the staunch, grizzled workers wiped the sweat from their brows, the grease from their hands and voted for Trump?
Maybe it wasn't so a hundred years ago, but these days it's a growing divide, and more and more workers are abandoning unions at the first opportunity.
So ... yeah. I guess the donkeys get to rejustify their existence to a fragmenting workers' community. The unions do as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @07:20PM (1 child)
...and how's that going for them?
Most people of that ilk were woting -against- Neoliberal Hillary.
A bunch more didn't cast a vote because they thought what both the GOP and the Donkeys had to offer sucked.
Too bad Donkey elites stacked the deck against Bernie.
If that hadn't happened, we'd be talking about President Sanders (who would have gotten those folks' votes).
...and after Bernie got stabbed in the back by "his own", those lazy Rust Belt folks didn't make the effort to discover JILL STEIN, who was still on the ballot in almost every state (and could be written in in the rest), and whose platform had major overlap with Bernie's.
a huge divide between the unions and the workers
Again, lazy people who don't get involved and CAMPAIGN and VOTE for better representation.
A union is a democracy; One worker==One vote.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @01:47PM
... and here we have again, the blaming of the proletariat because the poor, deluded, benighted (oh, and lazy too!) fellows just don't get it.
If only they would trust the guidance of the intelligentsia who are so much smarter and better-informed (and diligent!) than they are, then we'd have good government!
They are just too ignorant, or (dare I say it) stupid (bless their little hearts!) to "discover" a nationally advertised candidate with a widely published set of policies. Or maybe they just could not comprehend how her ostensibly anti-industrial policy was really all for their benefit!
Oh, well. That really highlights the problem: we need a new proletariat. The old one is broken. Until then, they just need to be disenfranchised, so that they stop voting against their own class interests (what rubes).
Seriously, as a blue collar worker myself, your kind of sneering condescension is very hard to interpret as anything but hostile. So find the nearest available powerwasher and stick it into your left ear until the shit pours out of the right. The world will thank you.