Help Back Backpack

Sarah Mondale is a documentary filmmaker and teacher. Ten years ago, she and her partners created the multi-part documentary School: The Story of American Education (you can find the book form at many booksellers). Now she has a new project and it deserves your support.

Backpack Full of Cash is a look at the privatization of education in America, how the drive to make schools into a profitable business is dismantling one of our most basic and foundational institutions.



The film takes us to New Orleans, Philadelphia and Nashville, a pretty perfect selection of cities to give the real sense of the forms the privatization movement takes.

And I particularly love the central question that the film settles on, because I have the same question:

Why dismantle the public school system?  Why not make it work well for every child instead?

The marquee name attached to the film is Matt Damon, who reads the narration. It's a nice gesture and a necessary feature in today's market ("Oh, the narrator is someone I've heard of, so this must be a real movie.")

The production is three days away from the end of its Kickstarter campaign to collect the $31,600 needed to finalize this production. This is a story that needs to be told and a film that needs to be out there for the public to see. I'm asking you, if you're at all a fan of this blog, to head over to Kickstarter and make a contribution, however small. We can't all be filmmakers and we can't all be activists, but we can all kick in a few bucks to help amplify the voices of people who speak out on important issues. This is a story that needs to be told-- help tell it.

I've put the link in several times, but here it is again. If you're worried about public education in a Trumpian world, here's an actual concrete thing you can do to help. If you're concerned about the health of public education, here's a concrete thing you can do to help. If you want to protect the promise of public education, here's a concrete thing you can do to help. Please help.

Jeb's Charterpalooza Coming Soon

Proud to say that today's email includes my media registration invitation to this years convention thrown by Jeb Bush (out-of-work politician) & Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE)-- Transforming Lives Through Education.

I am interested in seeing what happens next to Jeb!, who now occupies a weird sort of reformster twilight zone. On the one hand, Herr Trump appears to fully embrace Bush's education policies, or at least the Let a Million Charters Bloom part. But Bush himself--well, it seems unlikely that Jeb is in line for Trumpian Ed Secretary. And that bitter taste resting on Bush's ivy league palate must be getting only more and more bitter as it becomes obvious that President Trump will be following a lot of the policies that Candidate Trump used to smack Bush over the head. What happens when hated political enemies actually stand for pretty much the same policy ideas? How exactly do you criticize someone for pursuing policies that you totally agree with?

The conference is as always aimed at bringing lawmakers and policymakers [and money makers] together "for in-depth discussions on proven [sic] education policies and innovative [sic] strategies to improve student achievement [aka scores on bad standardized tests]." And it's a cast of all-stars.

Bush himself will be presenting the keynote address because, after all, he's got time on his hands. Also featured will be:

Condoleeza Rice, who ran the store at FEE for Bush while he was out begging for votes. She's going to moderate a panel of former ed secretaries which, honestly, should be worth the price of admission all by itself.

Angela Duckworth, working to show that the Great Goose of Grit has not yet laid its last golden egg. Though this time it's billed as the "power of perseverance." That must be the same power that gives one the endurance to keep milking the same questionable research for consulting and speaking fees.

Todd Rose is from the Harvard Grad School of Education and is the co-founder Center for Individual Opportunity, and scored a book about the end of average. He'll be there, too.

Sal Khan and David Coleman are going to talk about leveling the playing field,  by which I presume they mean leveling the marketing playing field by leveraging free tutoring videos to build brand loyalty and market penetration aka How To Use SAT Products To Push Khan Academy and Vice Versa. Hope the College Board and Khan Academy paid well for this infomercial.

Diane Tavenner is the co-founder of the Summit charter management company, and a spirited acolyte at the altar of "personalized learning." Thank goodness she has no classroom background; otherwise, she might be distracted from her vision of education by actual experience in the field.

The summit is sponsored by some of the finest names in education profiteering, including Pearson, McGraw Hill, the Walton Family, and the College Board

You can get a laid-back, sitting in his big leather retirement chair invite in the video below. As always, FEE is determined to pursue the excellence in profit-making that still waits to be tapped in public ed. And maybe share some stories about that horrible man in the White House. I'll admit-- I'm a little curious to see how the summit goes this year, but not nearly as curious as I am bout the 2017 edition. Stay tuned!

Yes, It's That Bad

We have the first names of the Trump administration, and people are worked up. The choice of Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff is one more sign that folks who wanted Trump to completely turn his back on the establishment and drain the swamp-- well, that is going to be the first of many disappointments for them.

But the choice of Steve Bannon as Chief Strategist is bad news. Exceptionally bad news.

Bannon was the previous head of the white supremacist alt-right website Breitbart. Senator Jeff Merkley released a statement today condemning the choice. Petitions have popped up opposing the choice. Many people have spoken out against this choice for a job previously associated with folks like Karl Rove, John Podesta and David Axelrod.

After the last year of campaigning, it is easy to dismiss all this as hyperbole. Some of you are telling yourselves, "Oh, surely it's not that bad. Folks on the left are just blowing this whole nazi aryan nation thing out of proportion." And it is true that it is now SOP for folks on both sides to cherry pick factoids, polish them, spin them, add a side of fake baloney, and release them in hopes of creating maximum outrage.

That's why I'm going to suggest that, if we want to get a real sense of Bannon, we not search our sources on the left, but our sources on the right. Let's not look at the people that the Left calls nazis-- let's look at the people who call themselves nazis. No tricky "gotcha" hidden cameras; just look at what they have to say. I've done it. And, yes, it's that bad.

Let me warn you right up front-- I am about to publish some vile and hateful stuff. For some of us, it's no shock, because we already know this kind of thing is out there. For some of us it will be a shock because we really, really, really like to believe that in this day and age, people just don't talk like this, think like this any more. And that's why it's all the more important that you see this-- because you have to see that this is real. You have to see this is real so that you can really understand what all those people who aren't gifted with a white penis are freaking out about. Folks are not marching in the street because they're pouty election losers. They're marching in the street because the highest office in the land has been won by a guy who is BFF's with a movement that wants to drive them away, stomp them silent, kill them.

And second, you have to see this because this, despite all our belief that we were done with this shit-- this is what we're going to be fighting for the next however-many years.

I'm going to show you a piece from a website called Infostormer, and this sentence is the last non-ugly thing I'm going to write for a bit. You've been warned.

"Stormer" is a popular suffix in the US racist movements. This particular site is not the very top of the heap, but they are plenty successful. Alexa rates them around 65,000th in the US, with a huge growth in traffic over the past month. Oh, and their subheading is "Destroying Jewish Tyranny."

I am going to link to them so you can confirm I'm not making this up, but it's not for the weak of stomach. Here are some headlines from just the past couple of weeks:

STFU CUCKOLD: Paul Ryan Claims That No Deportation Forces Will Be Formed By President Trump

Retarded Climate Scientists Claim That Donald Trump's Win Will Cause a Planetary Disaster

A Message to the SJW Faggots Shedding Endless Tears Over Trump's Victory

Jew Media Falsely Claiming Trump Is Walking back Promise To Repeal Obamacare

As I write this, the newest story opens with this lede:

Good news here. It looks like we will be seeing a new alliance formed between the United States and Russia to destroy ISIS. Donald Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin about this and the outcome sounds like it was a positive one.

But let's get back to Steve Bannon. We know that liberals are freaking out about him. What about the white supremacists? Infostormer just ran a piece about the two appointments. They're not happy about Priebus, but after explaining that Chief of Staff is really a nothing job anyway, writer "Marcus Cicero" has this to say:

The whole idea of this individual [the Chief of Staff] being a kingmaker or chancellor can only be valid if one is dealing with a weak-willed President, and we can rest assured that the current Leader is nothing of the sort.

The Chief Counselor, on the other hand, usually has the ear of the President from day to day (and often moment to moment), and in the case of Steve Bannon, probably second to second due to a personality that is almost a carbon copy of the President’s.

Look for Bannon to wield great power and sway in this new Government of the People, and let us hope that his stances on the migrant invasion, Moslem filth, and Black subhuman crime rises above the beta compromise attitude of Mr. Priebus.

My guess is that we are seeing the results of a brilliant chess move by Glorious Leader, which will keep mainstream Establishment cucks sated, while the real work and strategy continues behind the scenes through Mr. Bannon, who is far closer to our views than the average Republican you will see on the tubes.

Pure awesomeness.

Bannon is basically Trump, and Trump is our "Glorious Leader." I'm not going to retype the other odious bullshit contained here.

Meanwhile, the Daily Stormer, another neo-nazi site, is running headlines like "Yes, Trump Really Can Make America White Again – With or Without Cucked Congress" and congratulating Trump on "surrounding himself with all the right people."

People are not making this shit up. I have no doubt that there are many folks who voted for Trump who would or do find this sort of rhetoric appalling and disgusting, but they need to understand that these people are huge Trump supporters who see absolutely no reason not to believe that Trump is their guy, ready to establish a government that supports all of their favored goals. And if you have been just sort of letting all of that drift away in the background, America's neo-nazis have not-- and neither have the people who are targeted by these groups. 

This is why "Let's all come together for the sake of the country," doesn't quite cut it this time-- because it's really hard to unite with people who want to see you gone. 

Is it Bannon's fault these people love him? Actually, yes-- he's spent much of his career cultivating them as an audience. Is it Trump's fault these people think he's their Glorious Leader? You could argue that every President in forever has had some sort of lunatic fringe attached to him, I suppose. But even if that's true, it is absolutely Trump's fault that he has not repudiated some of the rhetoric thrown around in his name (I think of John McCain shutting down his own supporters over their fears about Obama) and it is absolutely Trump's fault that he has brought a man who leads and is revered by white supremacists in this country into the White House.

Do I want to see Trump succeed? I surely do, because his failure only brings more disaster to the country. But he will not be a "success" if he allows this festering rot to break forth and poison the air that all Americans breathe. Oddly enough, I think the possibility exists for him to turn back this mess precisely because although he is a man with no apparent convictions to be devoted to. He plays to whatever crowd is shiniest. And that means that Americans need to rise and shine.

Having a man like Bannon is a position of power is not normal, and it's not okay. Allowing nazis and virulent racists to claim they know and sit close to the heart of the President is not normal, and it's not okay. 

Yes, there is a whole complex web here, and it's being untied slowly and painfully in a thousand think pieces. How did Clinton lose, and why, and whose fault is it. Who put Trump in the White House, and what does that mean about us as a nation? Have we been growing some ugly new strain of racism, or is this just the same old stuff with the shielding ripped off? Etc etc etc-- there are a lot of complicated issues to untangle.

But this is not one of them. Should the US government be one that makes nazis really happy, or is that a sign that something is off track-- not a complicated question. Do nazis belong in positions of power in the US government-- that's not a complicated question. Is it okay for people in government position to advocate for the oppression of any group of American citizens-- that's not a complicated question either. Should we stand up, loudly and strongly to these kinds of people when they rise up-- one more of these very simple questions. But they are the questions before us, because, yes, it really is that bad.

OH: One Third Won't Graduate

Back in the summer of 2014, the Ohio legislature approved a New! Improved! plan for measuring student achievement. Two years later, it's not looking so good.

The plan was to expand over and above the old Ohio Graduation Test, which would be replaced with seven other tests.

Four of the new exams will be based on the new multi-state Common Core standards that Ohio is starting to use in all schools. All are in the final stages of development – many just finished having trials across the state or nation this spring – and the scores that students need to pass are not set yet.

Here's how the whole thing shook out per the Department of Education:

And then there was this ominous quote:

While the exact scores that students need on the tests have not been set, [Damon] Asbury, [director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association] said that's a "technical issue" that can be worked out later, now that the structure of requirements is set. 

Technical issue, indeed. Setting cut scores is always THE issue in figuring test scores. 

Ohio was going to depend on the PARCC to fill in a couple of those testing spots, but then the students of Ohio actually took the PARCC, and nobody was happy about how that worked out-- so in 2015 the state of Ohio became yet another state to bail out of PARCC's sinking malformed ship. Since they had already hired American Institutes of Research, a rival test manufacturer, to provide other tests, AIR seemed like a logical step.

Through this year (2017), Ohio students were just following the old game plan (with some new options). But the Class of 2018, in a modified version of the 2014 plan, must get their credits and then either earn the required number of points on the exit exams OR earn an industry-recognized credential OR earn a remediation-free score on the SAT or ACT. Students can earn up to five points per exit exam.

Now Ohio superintendents are warning of a graduation apocalypse. Students are coming up way short on the scores needed on the new standardized tests.

Olmstead Falls Superintendent Jim Lloyd expects the new requirements to cut his graduation rate from 95% to 65%, and that those scary numbers will be the norm across the state. He is leading "a rally at the statehouse Tuesday morning of an estimated 200 superintendents, plus school board members from across Ohio, to call attention to this danger. They also plan to ask the state school board and legislature to seek more input from educators before creating new education laws and requirements."

What?! Input from educators before they create more education laws and requirements?! That's crazy talk.

As with all test-driven reform, what Ohio legislators expect to accomplish is unclear. Do Ohio legislators believe that their schools are universally run by liars, fools, and incompetents, rendering an Ohio diploma meaningless? And if so, is there some sort of data suggesting that one third of Ohio's residents are illiterate and un-employable, thereby providing evidence that the high school diplomas they receive are really a lie? Is someone figuring that by denying more students diplomas and thereby making them harder to employ, that will somehow provide a benefit to the state?

What is the goal here, Ohio? Punish teachers? Punish students? Provide "proof" that all public schools should be closed and replaced with charters?

If the legislature has half a brain, they will back away from this plan. Of course, even if they do, a whole bunch of Ohio students have already been thrown into panic and uncertainty about their own future. Work hard and stay in school kids, and one day, you might graduate, or you might not. Who knows? but work hard anyway.

Adieu, Core Warriors: The Post-Election Realignment

It was going to happen sooner or later.

The folks lined up against the forces of reformsterdom, like the forces of reformsterdom themselves, represented an odd patchwork of alliances, an alignment of a few interests that prompted overlooking a few others.

But now, with Trump's election, alliances on both sides will be ended. Folks are going to have to throw away their old dance cards and grab some new ones.

The Resistance has always included people who either A) think that reform is an assault on the promise of public education or B) think that reform is simply public education revealing its secret ugly face. And throughout twitter and facebook, the folks in group B have been making one simple announcement--

We've won! Common Core is dead! We can all go home and rest now.

I've seen this article posted again, a piece from February of 2015 (lordy, this election really has been dragging on forever)  when then-candidate Ben Carson told CPAC that the best education was the one "closest to home." Homeschooling, he confidently declared on the basis of zero data, gets the best results, followed by private schools. I've read tweets and statuses about how this is it! Victory! Trump will deliver us from the Core. So we've won. Hurray!

First of all, probably not. The feds are now barred by law from meddling in state-level ed policy, so rooting out Common Core, or Common Core 2.0, or Common Core [Your State Name Here] Standards will be a state-level fight. For people who opposed the Core because of the content, that will be a tedious process because as we've already seen, some twisted version of the standards just keeps coming back under a new name. For people who don't care what the Core says-- they just oppose it because it came from DC-- well, woohoo! You win. Your students lose, but you win.

Second of all, if it's okay with you, some of us are going to keep Resisting. Common Core was always only a highly visible symptom of a bigger problem-- the destruction and privatization of American public education. And that issue is still ongoing, has in fact gathered steam, despite its occasional set-backs, because it is fueled by the most powerful force in 21st century politics-- giant heaping piles of money.

So I encourage you Core warriors not to quit. Yes, someone may get Common Core out of your school. But by the next time someone tries to launch an objectionable program in your community's schools, you may find you can do little about it. Board meetings are held privately for the convenience of the people in charge who don't even live in your state, let alone your neighborhood, and are not elected by or answerable to you. The school is now a privately operated business and has no more need to listen to you than the widget plant that used to employ your neighbors. Don't like what's going on in schools? Too bad-- you don't have a say (and if you don't have a child to enroll, you have less than no say). Or your community may just be deemed too poor to even support a decent profitable school, so you get nothing. And even if you do get a school, that poor part of town is now cranking out citizens who are completely unprepared to pull their own weight in the world. You may not think schools for Those People are your problem now, but I guarantee you they will be everybody's problem in ten years.

Third of all, there are other threats to all forms of education that make Common Core look like a bad warm-up act. If you have not been paying attention to Competency Based Education, I suggest you start reading up, because all of the mindlessly numb bad centralized standardization of CCSS is there, but delivered in a soul-crushing, brain-thumping daily dose. Now is not the time to relax vigilance.

Some Core warriors are going to go anyway. They consider the battle over, and they have already taken issue with former allies who aren't excited about the Trumpocracy.

Meanwhile, the reformster cracks were already showing, as highlighted by Robert Pondiscio's piece that launched a thousand other pieces all centered around the question of whether or not an alliance between free-market conservatives and social-justice reformsters could hold.

The answer is probably "no."

That's partly because some folks will be changing their costumes. With a Democratic administration in DC, painting charter schools as "the civil rights issue of our time" (or was that Common Core? or the achievement gap?) made political sense. It was a good label for selling the product. Somehow, I don't think "the civil rights issue of our time" is going to be a big priority in the Trump administration. So people who were busy pretending that they cared about the social justice aspect of ed reform can stop playing that game, and start pretending they care about making America white great again.

Folks who really do care about the social justice aspect of ed reform (yes, I believe they exist) now find themselves in a much more hostile environment, while folks who want to push the privatization of education and the growth of charters (even and perhaps especially for-profit ones) now get to go straight to the front of the lines.

These are going to be strange new times. It will help if you keep your eyes focused on what you want, what you care about. It will be a waste of everyone's time to administer purity tests and deliver rants about betrayal. One of the best way to find your real allies is to walk toward the goals you care about, then look around, and see who's walking with you. Who knows? Some of us who are parting may meet again, and soon.

ICYMI: Special Take a Breather Edition

Man, I just can't. I've been reading election-related stuff all week, and either you have, too, or you have given up. Either way, you don't need any more. So let's just take a break, for a few moments, before we wade back into it again.

Gunhild Carling is a musical prodigy from Sweden.



Genius duet between Astaire and Eleanor Powell, the unfairly forgotten Queen of Tap. Fun to watch Astaire work on equal footing with a female partner. "Begin the Beguine" is one more superior song by Cole Porter.



Sorry-- no video, but the performance is too good to pass up. Another genius love song from Cole Porter, who was, of course, gay. Funny, but his love songs have worked just fine for heterosexual wooing, too.



Bill Robinson was just one of many great American performers whose career was held down by segregation and Jim Crow. Shirley temple movies became one of the main ways that white audiences learned about him. But this scene, and others like it, were cut in the South because audiences didn't want to see Robinson and Temple hold hands.



Rita Moreno is one of the only twelve EGOT winners in the world, and this clip never gets old. It's a simple throwaway bit, and yet she manages to sing and act the crap out of it.



Linda Ronstadt was a pop queen back in the day (still love her Pirates of Penzance work). Her great-grandfather was a German engineer who moved to Mexico and raised a family there. Later in her career, Ronstandt embraced the music of her heritage. Sadly, I learned while sifting through her clips, Ronstadt retired from music because of Parkinson's



Admit it. You used to listen to this all the time. I am not generally a huge guitar fan, but Carlos Santana is the shit, and he makes the thing just sing. In the hands of anyone else, the lick that anchors this tune would be just a strong of notes. And the solo-- it's a treat to hear someone really turn it out like this for a simple Top 40 hit.



Cab Calloway was rock and roll before it was rock and roll, and whenever I want to cheer up, I go back to Nicholas Brother clips.



I'll be back next week with real reading to do. In the meantime, hug a loved one and gather your strength.

Uganda Shuts Down For-Profit Ed Provider

We can get so focused on the USA aspects of reformsterism that we forget how much privatization is being exported. Take, for instance, the export of some of our worst, most developmentally-inappropriate ideas to schools in Ecuador. 

But one of the thriving edu-exports has been the business of selling school-in-a-can t9o nations in Africa.

Bridge Academies are one such edu-business, founded by a now-husband-and-wife team back in 2009. Their goal has been a pre-packaged, computer-housed school program that doesn't need actually trained educators to make it work. Here's how NPR described it earlier this year:

The exact same lesson being taught in this classroom is being taught in every other sixth-grade class at Bridge schools across the country, says Bridge co-founder Shannon May.

"If you were at one of the other 200 locations right now, you'd be seeing the exact same thing," she says. "In some ways, it is kind of the magic of it."

That "magic" of standardized lesson plans changes the role of the teacher. It allows Bridge to hold down costs because it can hire teachers who don't have college degrees.

The whole system is built around tablets linked to a central server. Content delivery specialists log in, read the script, deliver the lesson. The computer knows exactly where everyone is in the lesson. And the whole business model is aimed to find a way that you can get a little bit of money out of people who have practically none, and still turn a nice profit. It has attracted lots of friendly press and the support of big name venture philanthropists like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

They can sling the jargon like the best of them:

The key to Bridge International Academies’ success lies in our vertically-integrated system.   Through it, we have re-engineered the entire lifecycle of basic education, leveraging data, technology, and scale.

It's a model straight out of the, "It's not very good, but it's good enough for those poor, Third World kids" playbook, targeting countries where government education is pretty shaky to begin with.  Except that the government of Uganda has decided that it's not.

As reported by the BBC, Uganda has discovered a variety of problems with Bridge schools. Almost a third of the "teachers," are absent during the week. These same "teachers" are largely unable to pass basic literacy and math tests. Over two thirds of the students do not finish primary education. There are also concerns over sanitation in the school buildings.

The government shut the schools down in July, so Bridge took them to court. And lost. They had been in Uganda for about a year.

Don't feel too bad for them, though. Bridge is still providing its bottom-shelf edu-product in India, Nigeria, Kenya and Liberia. The last is a particularly lucrative opportunity; Bridge was originally positioned to simply take over the nation's school system, though that partnership has morphed a little bit so that there's an intermediary agency and the suggestion that although Bridge is the only "partner" school now, others could theoretically be hired as well.