Scandalous Tennessee for-profit school has LA ties

A for-profit online school in Tennessee had the lowest results of any similar school in the state and should have been shut down. But because of a well-financed lobbying and public relations campaign, the school will continue to drain resources from public education in the state.

Why is this important to us in Louisiana? Because the Tennessee Virtual Academy’s parent company, K12 Inc., also runs the Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy and virtual learning programs in a few parishes.

According to this report in The Nashville Tennessean, “students in the Tennessee Virtual Academy made less progress as a group in reading, math, science and social studies than students enrolled in all 1,300 other elementary and middle schools who took the same tests. The school fell far short of state expectations for the second year in a row.”

Louisiana used to have a successful and popular state-run program called the Louisiana Virtual School. It has been eliminated by the current administration, to be replaced by providers like K12 Inc.

The Tennessee Virtual Academy was declared “unacceptable” by state education officials nearly a year ago. When lawmakers attempted to rein in the school, K12 Inc. launched a campaign to save its funding.

To fight the legislation, K12 Inc. brought in both a high-powered Nashville lobbying firm and another one founded by the chief advisor to the governor of the state.

As a result of the intense campaign, The Tennessean reported, “the school stands to collect about $5 million in state funds this school year. Last year, the school took in an estimated $15 million.”

K12 Inc. has been at the center of other scandals as well. In Florida, according to this National Public Radio report, the Department of Education investigated K12 “over allegations the company uses uncertified teachers and asked employees to help cover up the practice...K12 officials told certified teachers to sign class rosters that included students they hadn’t taught, according to documents that are part of the investigation.”

In the extremely lucrative world of for-profit education companies, K12 is not the only shady player.  In Pennsylvania, the head of the state’s largest online schools is “alleged to have stolen nearly $1 million in public money and improperly diverted a total of $8 million to avoid federal income taxes,” according to this Education Week report.

No one doubts the potential benefits of virtual learning. But the way that states like Louisiana, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Florida and others have opened their treasuries to for-profit providers provides a tempting target for profiteers.

The Louisiana Virtual School was accomplishing its mission competently and scandal-free. Why would elected officials choose to replace it with a model that has ushered in vultures to pick the bones of public education?

WWL-TV op-ed: Jindal plan shows disdain for teachers

Check out this op-ed by LFT President Steve Monaghan on the WWL-TV Web site!

When cultural historian Jacques Barzun wrote "Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition," he could have been describing the education “reform” movement pushed by Gov. Bobby Jindal and his allies in Louisiana. Jindal’s approach to education is typified by an apparent disdain for those who have made the profession their life’s calling.

The governor’s attitude about teachers emerged in a speech before the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry a year ago, in which he first outlined the radical overhaul that would become the hallmark of his education agenda. Jindal inaccurately and unfairly asserted to those influential business leaders that teachers “are given lifetime job protection…and short of selling drugs in the workplace or beating up” their students, teachers couldn’t be fired.

“Not only is this not a factual statement,”I said at the time, “but evoking images of those specific behaviors in reference to educators is unjust and insulting.”

The governor has often been quoted as saying that, prior to his overhaul, Louisiana teachers retained their jobs simply because they “keep breathing.” As proof, he and his supporters said that only a small percentage of teachers had been found incompetent and fired.

That ignored the fact that about half of all teachers leave the profession within five years of entering it. What other profession suffers such an exodus? One would naturally expect a higher level of competency among those who survived past their fifth anniversary.

As part of this assault on public school teachers, Act 1 (2012), a hodge-podge of policies that all but abolished teachers’ due process rights and tied their professional futures to an unproven new evaluation system, was steam rolled through the legislative process.

Simultaneously and in the same manner, Governor Jindal pushed Act 2 (2012), through the legislature. This bill comprises the most overreaching efforts at privatizing public education ever conceived in the United States.

Act 2 was so big, so bloated with various unrelated schemes, and was rushed through the system with so little scrutiny, that few paid much attention to its details.

The act is best known for funneling public education dollars to private and religious schools. Some of those have been shown to be woefully inadequate in curricula, facilities and, ironically, teacher quality.

But Act 2 encompasses much more than vouchers, and provides public funding for all manner of private and quasi-public education alternatives, without appropriate safeguards to assure the instructional quality of the programs.

Under these so called reforms, public tax dollars flow to largely unregulated voucher schools and other so-called “course providers.” (Those can be any individual, business or institution that has an idea for providing an academic course and receives approval from the governor’s education department.)

Act 2 is replete with examples of disdain for teachers as well as for public education in general. For example, the act deletes any requirement that teachers in charter schools be certified, but grants automatic certification to anyone who is approved as a “course provider.”

If non-traditional schools are to be part of the reform mix, then there should be ways to compare their achievement with that of public schools. The governor and his allies steadfastly refuse to consider measurements on privatized education that allow the public to accurately assess the academic results in those schools.

That coincides with a second hallmark of the Jindal agenda: a blind faith that private is better than public, and that profit is a guarantee of quality.

Across the United States, some $500 billion a year is spent on public education. In Louisiana, our Minimum Foundation Program budget is $3.41 billion. The privatizers want a big piece of that, and have donated millions to politicians who support this agenda. They have been rewarded with an astoundingly lax system of accountability.

The purpose of any real reform should be to guarantee all that children have equal access to high quality, well resourced public schools regardless of geography or economic circumstances. The reforms should be based on research which demonstrates the efficacy of the program or policy. No such research was presented to support these reforms as they were pushed into law.

So there you have it. An apparent lack of respect if not outright disdain for the profession of education, in combination with extreme ideological and profit motives have spawned these misbegotten reforms.

Fortunately for parents and the taxpaying public, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers’ constitutional challenges to this agenda have served to heighten public awareness and to encourage greater scrutiny.
Even though appeals are pending, there is a growing awareness that this agenda is not the right direction for education reform to take in Louisiana.

Our message to lawmakers is simple: these laws are terribly broken, and we're depending upon legislators to fix them.

Who is really hindering student achievement?

So Superintendent of Education John White tells Advocate reporter Will Sentell that teacher unions, including the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, are hindering student progress. That’s because we opposed in court – successfully thus far – Governor Jindal’s scheme to siphon public education funds away from public schools and into the pockets of private schools, religious schools and the vampire capitalists who can’t wait to get their fangs into the state’s cash artery.

Never mind that the governor’s plan was patently, obviously unconstitutional, or that it was ramrodded through the legislature with all the subtlety of a Maoist Great Leap Forward, or that most lawmakers didn’t have the slightest idea what they were being directed to approve.

Progress, according to Superintendent White, is being hindered because we are the ones who pointed out the emperor’s lack of clothes.

In truth, the superintendent’s tantrum simply mirrors the frustration of a governor who has been told by a state court that he must play by the rules. And that tends to bridle the governor’s political ambitions, which are propelling his education agenda much more forcefully than a passion to improve student achievement.

The fact is that the governor’s privatization schemes are a much greater threat to student achievement than actions by teacher unions. Paying for students to attend schools that abhor science will not produce the next Einstein. Diverting school funds to online course providers will not create the educated work force that our future demands.

To find a real hindrance to student achievement, look to Governor Jindal’s budget priorities. It was he who slashed over $76 million from after school tutorial programs, classroom technology, reading and math initiatives and stipends for nationally certified teachers. 

It was Gov. Jindal who rejected, on purely political grounds, a $60 million federal grant for pre-kindergarten education.

The difference between these programs and Gov. Jindal’s schemes is that they are all proven to enhance student achievement. Another distinction is that they all have the solid support of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers – the union that Supt. White says is hindering student achievement.

Committee delays debate of OGB sale

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee was slated to discuss Gov. Jindal’s plan to sell an Office of Group Benefits health insurance plan to a private company Thursday, but cancelled the meeting at the last minute.

While spokesmen for the governor’s office said that lawmakers simply needed more time to review the proposed sale of OGB’s preferred provider organization, one lawmaker, Rep. Katrina Jackson of Monroe, said the governor lacked enough votes on the committee to approve the sale.

Response to the governor’s plan has been overwhelmingly negative – more than 4,300 people have signed a Louisiana Federation of Teachers’ petition opposing privatization (Click here if you haven’t already signed the petition!).

OGB manages the health insurance of some 60,000 current and retired public employees, including teachers and school employees in a number of school systems. It is one of the best-run and scandal-free operations in state government. In fact, it has built up a surplus of some $500 million over the past few years.

The governor claims that privatizing the office would save the state money. But according to reports, the OGB currently spends only about three percent of its income on management costs. The same costs for a private company could be in the 10% to 15% range.

Privatizing the office would probably not save money for the state, but it would eliminate the jobs of 177 public servants, putting even more Louisiana citizens in the unemployment line.

Advocate reporter Michelle Millhollon wrote this story about the meeting cancellation.

In a VAN down by the RIVER

In a classic Saturday Night Live sketch, comic Chris Farley portrayed a failed motivational speaker who now plies his trade from a van down by the river.

Superintendent of Education John White may have found Farley’s equal in a motivational speaker hired by the department to shill for the Course Choice Program.

“Lefty” Lefkowith is paid $145,000 a year to promote the governor’s “course choice” program, as seen in this YouTube video. Thanks to a public records request by blogger Tom Aswell, we know that Lefkowith’s title at the department is “Director of the Office of Portfolio,” although he claims to be Deputy Superintendent.

Since last July, Lefkowith has been, in the words of a Department of Education spokesperson, “effectively implementing a number of large, complex programs and activities aimed at benefiting Louisiana school children.”
In plain English, he was hired to make it easier for corporations and entrepreneurs to raid the public education budget and siphon funds away from our schools. He apparently has no education credentials, but “has worked with private sector companies and government agencies across the nation to harness the talent of professionals in diverse industries and develop creative solutions to improve results.”

In Superintendent White’s world, an academic background, appropriate credentials and experience as an educator are all disqualifying criteria for high-salary positions. Just ask the 27-year old director of teacher evaluation, who does not have a teaching certificate.

The Department of Education’s swank Claiborne Building is definitely not a van, but it is down by the river. That’s good enough for the superintendent.

UPDATE: Tom Aswell, Louisiana’s indispensable investigative journalist, lifted up a rock and found the creepy-crawly essence of “Lefty” Lefkowith in this blog entry. Not just a carnival barker for privatization, it seems that Lefty has an unsavory past “with strong connections to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the infamous Enron Corp.” and schemes to deregulate energy and manipulate water rights in the Sunshine State.

 

When the apple falls far, far from the tree

Former U.S. Congressman and Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer recently dropped his long-shot presidential aspiration to tackle an even more daunting goal: reforming our corrupt campaign finance practices.

Gov. Roemer even appeared before Congress last month to testify about the malign effects of unfettered campaign contributions on our political system. At a hearing entitled “Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of Super PACs,” Roemer complained that “Our institutional corruption places our elections in the hands of the mega contributors.”

Taking his argument just a bit further, the former governor said “The system is not broke … It’s bought.”

The theme of Roemer’s testimony, according to this article by Advocate Washington Bureau Chief Jordan Blum, was “the need to enact campaign finance reform and rein in runaway corporate spending in elections.”

It is a message apparently lost on his politically ambitious son, Chas, and other members of the state board of education who have thrown in with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s radical education agenda.

According to campaign finance reports, Chas Roemer was the beneficiary of $597,142.15 during last fall’s campaign for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The bulk of Chas’ contributions, more than $248,000, came from the Republican Party of Louisiana.

The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, through its network of PACS, put $87,500 into the Roemer campaign.

The ABC Pelican PAC, the political arm of the Associated Builders and Contractors, contributed $20,000 to Chas’ campaign.

Gov. Jindal himself donated $15,000 to Roemer’s campaign.

The Standard Companies of New Orleans, a beverage company subsidiary of DS Waters of America, put up $14,000.

Publishing magnate Rolf McCollister gave Roemer $6,000, on top of invaluable column inches in his newspaper.

From its offices in Virginia, the pro-voucher Louisiana Federation of Children’s PAC sent another $6,000.

Roemer’s closest competitor, former Ascension Parish Superintendent of Schools Superintendent Donald Songy, raised a total of $56,660 for the race (full disclosure: the Louisiana Federation of Teachers contributed less than $6,000 Songy’s campaign).

Given that disparity in resources – nearly $600,000 versus less than $57,000 – Roemer was able to mount a very effective, and very negative, multi-media campaign that overwhelmed Songy.

Roemer was not the only candidate blessed by Jindal and his big business friends. Candidates allied with the governor amassed contributions of more than $2.8 million. Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg got into the act, donating $55,000 to Jindal’s candidates. The closest competitors to the Jindal ticket raised a combined total of less than $348,000.

The money fueled a tsunami of advertising that had never been seen in BESE races, guaranteeing a victory for Gov. Jindal’s forces.

The immediate result of the election was the anointing of John White as superintendent, followed by a BESE kowtow to whatever privatization scheme the governor proposes. Which, as blogger Mike Deshotels writes here, means that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon be siphoned away from public schools into the pockets of “course choice providers” linked to big business.

Buddy Roemer is right. Big money donors and their unlimited contributions are the major corrupting factors in American politics. When will he tell Chas?

The world behind the world behind the scenes

In the realm of legislation, there are at least three layers. The most visible to the public is the one in which votes are taken and laws adopted. Behind the scenes of that world is another in which deals are made and votes traded.

That is the layer most people think of when they hear the quote usually attributed to Otto von Bismarck, “Laws are like sausages – it’s best not to see them being made.” The idea of legislators basing their votes on the currency of favors and promises can make the public queasy. It’s an inelegant and gritty system, but it grinds out laws like sausage and keeps the machinery of government functioning.

But there is at least one other world, deeper in the legislative shadows, that can have a much greater impact than petty cloakroom horse trading. That is the world in which the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, operates.

ALEC, as Matt Reichel reports in this post, is “a conduit between corporate boardrooms and elected officials willing to enact their agenda of austerity and privatization.” ALEC’s agenda is to simultaneously reduce the tax burden on its corporate sponsors and to channel what government funds remain into their corporate coffers.

ALEC creates model legislation that benefits its members, including, Reichel writes, “prison privatization, stripping collective bargaining rights, reducing or eliminating environmental protections, and enacting regressive tax laws.”

Also looming large on ALEC’s agenda is a corruption of the charter school movement to enrich corporate providers.

One example is Act 417 of the 2011 Louisiana legislature, which was written “to provide for enrollment preferences and membership on the governing or management board of a charter school for certain major corporate donors; and to provide for related matters.”

Note that charter school expansion benefitting corporate providers, prison privatization, regressive tax laws and an attack on collective bargaining rights all figure prominently in this year’s legislative session as well.

Maybe – just maybe – ALEC has gone too far in its underground campaign to raid the public treasury and turn our nation in to a corporate plutocracy. Jamie Lorber, a reporter for Roll Call on Washington, DC’s Capitol Hill, writes here that some of ALEC’s sponsors are reconsidering their support.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has withdrawn support for ALEC. Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola and Intuit have also announced that they are pulling back from ALEC.

The reason why should bring a smile to all true believers in small-d democracy. An African-American civil rights group, Color of Change, has campaigned relentlessly for corporations to sever their ties to ALEC.

Color of Change, writes Lorber, went after ALEC because of its model legislation opposing voter ID laws:

“Civil rights activists say the laws disproportionately target minority, student and elderly voters, who tend to vote Democratic, and could bar up to 5 million voters from the polls this fall…Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson said the group is using Internet appeals to pressure companies that have made explicit efforts to build a strong relationship with African-American customers.”

It’s a good sign that people aren’t completely powerless in the face of the corporate juggernaut. If you’d like to join Color of Change’s campaign to separate ALEC from its corporate sponsors, click here.

Ravitch in Lafayette: Education gimmicks don't work

The Louisiana School Boards Association got a good dose of Diane Ravitch at their convention in Lafayette last week. As reported here by Mike Hasten in the Lafayette Advertiser, Ravitch told the gathered school board members that school reform gimmicks like vouchers, charter schools and high-stakes testing "don't work."

Ravitch is a veteran educator, established researcher and former official in both the George W. Bush and Obama education departments. Once a supporter of those education options, she has come to believe that they are unworkable fads or, worse, tricks aimed at privatizing education and funneling public funds into corporate coffers.

She obviously touched a nerve with Louisiana's new State Superintendent of Education, the relatively inexperienced John White.

His response to her comments - "It's an insult to talk about educators and parents as though they were corporate pawns" - misses the point. Nobody's accusing parents and educators of being corporate pawns. It could be said that those who promote vouchers and other forms of privatization are corporate shills, however.

Post-Thanksgiving catch-up

The education world did not stop turning just because teachers and school employees had a few days off for Thanksgiving. Here, briefly, are a few things you might have missed:

BESE election: Following the November 19 general election. Governor Bobby Jindal is in complete command of the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Eduction. Candidates favored by the governor and others who believe in his style of "reform" swept all three BESE runoffs: Kira Orange-Jones won District 2, Chas Roemer took District 6 and Carolyn Hill won District 8.

According to this article by Advocate reporter Will Sentell, that means the governor "could have the support of nine or 10 members after months of 6-5 votes on key school topics."

The governor's only disappointment in the BESE races came in District 3, where St. Martin Parish School Board Human Relations Director Lottie Beebe defeated long-time incumbent Glenny Lee Bouquet in the October 22 primary.

In this article by Gannett's Mike Hasten, Gov. Jindal reports that he is happy with the new, right-leaning BESE. The new members seem to be struggling to maintain their own identity, but will that last when the governor applies pressure?

Expensive charter school: One charter school in Jefferson Parish spends $87,500 per student, according to this article by Times-Picayune reporter Barri Bronston. The school, which was established to serve students who have been expelled from middle schools for various offenses, has seven teachers and eight students.

That news prompted the Monroe News Star editorial writer to question, in very understated fashion, the wisdom of spending that much money on one school: "it's important to note that even charter schools require some close supervision."

"Within our local systems," the editorial notes, " you could ask Ouachita Parish Superintendent Bob Webber or Monroe City Schools Superintendent Kathleen Harris what they could do with $87,500 per student, and we are quite certain either one of them would respond that an investment of that much public money per student would result in a world-class school system."

Teach for America: The growing influence of Teach for America was explored in this article by Times Picayune reporter Andrew Vanacore.

Once seen as a sort of Peace Corps that brought idealistic young college graduates into hard-to-staff schools, Teach for America has become a political as well as educational force to be reckoned with.

Best known is John White, currently the superintendent of the Recovery School District and Gov. Jindal's pick to replace Paul Pastorek as State Superintendent of Education. But newly minted BESE member Kira Orange-Jones is also a TFT alum, along with the new executive director of BESE and Gov. Jindal's new policy advisor.

A little justice for some Filipino teachers: The Caddo Parish School Board has done the right thing and settled with the U.S. Department of Labor, awarding Filipino teachers in the parish some $1,300 each because of their entanglement with a crooked recruiting firm.

It is a small step to correct a much larger injustice. The settlement only applies to a specific charge brought by the U.S. Department of Labor against the Caddo school board. It leaves open U.S. allegations against other school systems, and does not deal with the LFT complaint, filed with the State Workforce Commission, that Filipino teachers were forced to pay fees that should have been paid by school boards under Louisiana law.

Value Added Model: As the state tests a new teacher evaluation scheme called the Value Added Model, questions are popping up about how fair it will be.

Reporter Sue Lincoln filed this story for the Southern Education Desk, in which LFT President Steve Monaghan questions how well the new system will actually measure teacher effectiveness.

The privatization of public education: In an epic article for The Nation, reporter Lee Fang exposed the "quiet but astonishing national transformation" of public education into a cash machine for big business.

Lobbyists, he writes, have "combin(ed) the financial firepower of their corporate clients with the seeming legitimacy of privatization-minded school-reform think tanks and foundations."

Focusing on virtual schools, he writes, "This legislative juggernaut has coincided with a gold rush of investors clamoring to get a piece of the K-12 education market. It’s big business, and getting bigger: One study estimated that revenues from the K-12 online learning industry will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion."

Local Federation chapters grow together: Educators in Caddo and Bossier parishes can expect to see their influence grow with the creation of the new Red River United Federation.

As reported here by Mary Nash-Wood of the Shreveport Times, the new organization combines the power of the Caddo Federation of Teachers and Support Personnel and the Bossier Federation of Teachers and School Employees.

"It will essentially be a super group over the two organizations," said CFT President Jackie Lansdale.

They're catching on...

Gov. Jindal may have just won a re-election landslide, but that does not mean his programs and goals are all popular.

In fact, if this column by the publisher of the Livingston News is any indication, people are starting to catch on to the governor's real agenda for public schools, and they don't like it one bit (free registration is required to see the full article).

Jeff David starts his column in terms as stark as any you're likely to see: "Let's be very clear about it. The primary stated goal of the Bobby Jindal administration during its second four years will be the elimination of the public school systems in the state of Louisiana, including the public school system in Livingston Parish."

These are fighting words in Livingston Parish, a reliably Republican, middle-class community that is very proud of its excellent public school system.

"The Governor of the state of Louisiana," David writes, "the one you voted for three times in droves, is about to drive a knife into your back and twist the handle for good measure."

Like Paul on the road to Damascus, the scales have fallen from Jeff David's eyes. He understands what the governor is up to, and he's appalled.

"Why would Jindal turn his back on the very people who elected him?" asks David. "So that he can run for President, that's why."

And he seems to understand that Jindal's road to the White House will be paved with contributions from very big businesses - ones that expect to profit from the privatization of Louisiana's schools.

In order to carry through with his commitments, however," David writes, "Jindal needs both the Legislature and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to go along with the plan. Both have a shared constitutional say in where state funds for education are spent.

"That is why you have seen funded PACs, many with outside Louisiana money in them, come into the state this year and get involved in legislative races as well as BESE races."

As the people catch on to the governor's agenda, and as newspapers like the Livingston News start reporting what's really happening to our state, Jindal might have tougher sledding in his second term than he did in the first.

Man bites dog story: Forbes article supports teacher unions

Malcolm Forbes named his yacht "Capitalist Tool," so the last place you'd expect to find an article supporting teacher unions and questioning the validity of market-based "education reform" is the Web site that bears his name.

Yet here it is. Writer E.D. Cain opens with this riff on conventional right wing wisdom: "Teachers' unions are often portrayed by their opponents as standing in the way of efforts to reform our schools. Maybe this isn't such a bad thing."

Cain acknowledges that attacks on teacher unions and support for privatized reform come from both the left and right wings of the ideological spectrum. Both sides, he says, have fallen for a neoliberal scheme to disempower teachers and their unions while funneling vast amounts of public money into private coffers.

About reforms, he says "Vouchers have been met not only with public disappointment, but with few if any real benefits. Most charters haven't fared much better. And for-profit schools come packaged with all sorts of other troubling implications for our public - or should I say "public" - education system."

About the horde of non-educator experts who devise schemes like high-stakes testing "which seeks....to boil down education to learning by rote," he writes, "When technocrats and businessmen take over the hard work of designing a system of education is it surprising that the result of a complex labyrinth of testing schemes aimed at only those subjects that can be measured, quantified and pasted into spreadsheets? Is it any winder that professionals who care about education might see this as a threat?"

And about the unions which defend professional educators, he writes, "I support teachers' unions because they are the best chance this country has to improve and strengthen public education for the long haul. No other organization will step in to protect teachers from political blowback and the reform-trend-of-the-moment."

It's a good read, with important ideas, from an unexpected source.

Does privatization save the taxpayers' money?

The biggest justification for selling the jobs of public employees to private corporations is that it will save money for the taxpayers. From school custodians to health insurance professionals, the story is that corporations can somehow hire employees for important public services and still make money for their shareholders.

The obvious ways to accomplish this feat are by reducing the salaries and benefits of the employees, and by shortcutting the public on the services for which the corporations are being paid.

Then there are the inevitable cost increases when time comes to renew the contract.

Even so, many people are willing to go with privatization because they are convinced that it does save money.

Now comes this report in the New York Times about a new study showing "that the government actually pays more when it farms out work."

That's right. As reporter Ron Nixon puts it, "The study found that in 33 of 35 occupations, the government actually paid billions of dollars more to hire contractors than it would have cost government employees to perform comparable services."

The study, produced by the non-partisan Project on Government Oversight, focuses on contracts issued by the U.S. government. Today, though, an article appeared on POGO's Web site saying that states are overpaying for privatization as well.

In the article, Dana Liebelson wrote, "state governments faced with budget pressure are making mistakes similar to the federal government, privatizing and contracting for services on a large scale without determining whether the decisions make fiscal sense."

Exposed: How big business brings bad ideas to the legislature

When protesters greet members of the American Legislative Exchange Council at their annual convention in New Orleans on Wednesday, it will probably be the first time that most Louisianians have heard of the organization.


ALEC probably likes it that way. Despite the non-threatening sound of its name, the group is behind some of the worst public policy initiatives ever introduced in state legislatures.

Vouchers for private and religious schools, attacks on teacher tenure, watering down special education rules and stripping local school boards of authority to charter schools are all ideas promulgated by ALEC.

But its not just education. From privatizing prisons to stripping worker rights, ALEC has a bag full of model legislation that it pushes in state legislatures across the nation.

As it turns out, ALEC is funded by huge corporations that have a vested interest in changing state laws to siphon public money into corporate pockets. To read more about ALEC's nefarious schemes, click here to access the Center for Media and Democracy's "ALEC Exposed" Web site.

The current president of ALEC is Louisiana State Representative Noble Ellington. He, along with a handful of other Louisiana lawmakers, are being treated to the convention by Louisiana taxpayers.

That's right. Our tax dollars are paying for state lawmakers to attend a convention where they will learn how to send more of our tax dollars straight to the corporations that sponsor the convention.

As the Lafayette Advertiser pointed out in this editorial, we are paying for our legislators to be lobbied on behalf of big business: "ALEC represents the expenditure of private money to influence the political and legislative process, and that makes it lobbying. And the state government has no business picking up the tab for it, whether it's lobbying from the left, the right, corporations, unions, up, down, backwards or forwards."

Commenting on the corporate greed that can warp a capitalist system, former Soviet Union Premier Nikita Kruschev once said, “You will sell us the rope that we will hang you with.”

In Louisiana, it appears that citizens are paying for the scissors that will be used to shred the fabric of our society.

Are "vulture philanthropists" taking charge?

The new superintendent of the State Recovery school District, and Gov. Jindal's pick to be the next state superintendent, is 35-year old John White.

We know a bit about White's background, detailed in this EdLog post, including the fact that he is certified by the Broad Superintendents Academy (it's pronounced "Brode").

But most people know very little about the academy, which has churned out superintendents with business backgrounds for 21 of the nation's 75 largest school systems, according to this Education Week article by reporter Christina A. Samuels.

The scrutiny provided by Education Week and in The Broad Report by blogger Sharon Higgins is disturbing. The blog includes this motto: "Make no mistake, What is happening in large urban districts today has been carefully orchestrated by vulture philanthropists."

The EdWeek article has a comment from one expert who says that the Broad Academy is designed to provide "superintendents who are trained how to use their power to hand over their systems to the Business Roundtable."

The academy is part of a worrisome movement that education policy professor James Horn calls "venture philanthropy," and includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Milken Family Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and others

Worrisome, Horn says, because "What venture philanthropy is doing seems to me to be wielding influence not to help public institutions, but to destroy public institutions, or take control of them. This is a dangerous place, where corporations and government get mixed up.”

The academy certifies superintendents after a 10-month fellowship season, during which they spend six extended weekends at seminars, with expenses paid by the academy.

Education writer Diane Ravitch has issues with the academy, saying that graduates "have a preference towards privatization."

Jindal kicks the can down the road

Governor Bobby Jindal told a group of lawmakers on Thursday that he may propose selling off state assets and privatizing some services as a stopgap measure to deal with a looming $1.6 billion budget shortfall next year.

This is the same Gov. Jindal who used to say that it is a bad idea to use one-time funds to pay for recurring costs, but that is exactly what he is proposing. Skeptics say the governor is just kicking the can down the road, using whatever desperate measures he can conjure to keep the state afloat long enough for him to make his next job move.

Of particular concern is the idea of privatizing the PPO portion of the Office of State Group Benefits employee health plan. Many school districts use Office of Group Benefits to provide health insurance to their employees. Selling off employee benefits might raise some fast cash to further the governor's political ambitions, but could put the future health care of teachers and school employees at risk.

Jindal's new scheme was widely covered in the state's news media. Michelle Millhollon's story in The Advocate is here; Mike Hasten covered it for the Gannett chain here, and Jan Moller wrote it up for the Times Picayune here.

This Associated Press story in Gambit says that senators are already expressing concern over the governor's idea to sell state penal institutions: "Gov. Bobby Jindal’s idea to sell state property to offset budget gaps drew complaints Friday from state senators who said it doesn’t make sense to generate short-term cash relief for long-term money woes."

Inconvenient facts mar "Superman"

The education community is abuzz about the new documentary from the makers of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth." Called "Waiting for Superman," the movie has a distinct and disturbing bias against traditional public education and the teachers in our schools.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is painted as the villain in the piece. She was interviewed extensively for the documentary, and has appeared in panel discussions to rebut its conclusions since its release.

As Weingarten says in this article, the film's producers have a deep concern for children, but completely missed the mark by vilifying teachers and promoting charter schools as the answer for public education's woes.

Writes the AFT president, "the film casts two outliers in starring roles - the 'bad' teacher as villain, and charter schools as heroes ready to save the day. The problem, of course, is that these caricatures are more fictional than factual."

By focusing on a few identifiably bad teachers and a few high-achieving boutique charter schools, the film skews reality. That's the problem with an ideological, anecdotal approach to documentary film making.

"It is insulting and counterproductive to suggest, as the film does, that the deplorable behavior of one or two teachers is representative of all public school teachers," writes Weingarten.

The reality, she writes, is that many charter schools "perform worse than or just about as well as regular public schools."

The real answer, says Weingartern is to redouble our efforts to make sure that all schools work for all children.

"This film," she writes, "misses a crucial point: We think about all kids, not only some of them. And reforms that affect small numbers of students, even when they live up to their promise, still leave that promise unfulfilled for others. Every child should have access to a great education - not by chance, not even by choice, but by right."

For another viewpoint about "Waiting for Superman," click here to read a blogger's suspicion that the documentary is a stalking horse for business interests that want to privatize public education.

"Yes, public schools have big problems," writes Susie Madrack. "Selling them off to unregulated private bidders will only make things worse."

Anti-teacher column unfair, unwarranted and untrue

When the Houma Courier published a guest column from the far-right Lexington Institute that accused teacher unions of engaging in "pitched battles" to "keep public schools safe for mediocrity," LFT President Steve Monaghan had to respond.

In his own letter to the newspaper, Monaghan asserted that, "More than anyone else, teachers want their students to succdeed."

The attack by the Lexington Institute was "unfair, unwarranted and, most of all, untrue," Monaghan wrote.

The Lexington Institute is just one of many well-funded think tanks from which issue an endless stream of diatribes against the notion of the public good. Privatization of public services is their goal, and public schools are squarely in their sights.

The original column is here; Monaghan's response is here.

Charter schools as profit centers

Progressive States Network has posted a thought-provoking article about the charter school movement which questions the motives behind some charter school providers. The theme is similar to a previous EdLog post that characterized the modern charter school movement as a substitute for unpopular voucher schemes.

The Progressive States article frames its argument like this:

Even as the right wing has been losing in the polls on promoting school
vouchers, privatization has still been penetrating school systems through
charter programs and support services. However, both teachers and
governments have increasingly spotlighted problems and the failed promises of
many school privatization contractors.

The article mentions Louisiana as a state where public schools are being taken over almost wholesale and converted to charters.

Louisiana law specifically prohibits for-profit education companies from holding charters, but non-profits who apply for charters are free to subcontract their operations to one of those same companies.

It is worth repeating what writer Jonathan Kozol uncovered in his research on charter schools. He found a report by financial analysts who recommended investment in education companies as a new profit center:

“The education industry,” according to these analysts, “represents, in our
opinion, the final frontier of a number of sectors once under public control”
that have either voluntarily opened or, they note in pointed terms, have “been
forced” to open up to private enterprise. Indeed, they write, “the education
industry represents the largest market opportunity” since health-care services
were privatized during the 1970’s.... From the point of view of private profit,
one of these analysts enthusiastically observes, “The K–12 market is the Big
Enchilada.”