Schools Matter

“Green Dot came and made it into more of a jail.” — Chris

My history of opposing the Green Dot Charter School Corporation back when I was an activist is well known. On Schools Matter alone there’s over a dozen pieces I wrote on them.

These days, as an educational rights attorney, I’ve successfully litigated against the corporate charter chain on a few occasions. Today I had a legal research assignment that involved looking up information on them and I came across this academic paper:

Taken Over: The Story of the Locke High School Takeover Through a Qualitative Study of Student Voice

by Loyola Marymount University’s Joshua Michael Beardall.

I only had a few minutes to skim through the paper, but it features some excellent feedback on how the students felt about the hostile take-over of a once public school by the corporate charter chain. Written through a Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) lens, the paper takes a student-centric view of what Green Dot did. It also exposes the intrinsic racism of Green Dot and its carceral, white supremacist campuses. Passage like this confirm what activists have said for years:

“The students also believed that the community and school did not interact and that the school was in opposition to the community surrounding it…”

I recommend people check the paper out.

Reflecting back on the hostile Locke takeover, a couple of things come to mind. First, the takeover was, and still is, a disaster. The Green Dot Corporation had to restructure Locke a number of times as their failed management and policies played out. Second, Green Dot, which boasted it would dramatically improve student scores on racist and classist standardized tests, actually set records for having so many schools at the very bottom — including four Locke HS branches in the bottom 25 SAT scores in 2015.

Ironically, the well-healed, white executives running Green Dot at the time of the take-over boasted that they would “turn the school around” and make it a “great school” in short order. Boastful Marco Petruzzi claimed they’d do it in three years. Braggart Steve Barr said they’d do it in one. Neither prediction by the two non-educators came true. Green Dot has run Locke for more than a decade now. Where’s all the compliant press parroting bromides of how Green Dot “cracked the code”?

Petruzzi was a hedge fund manager prior to running the corporate charter school behemoth Green Dot. His lack of background in pedagogy showed in everything he did. Today he’s a furniture salesman. Truth is, Petruzzi’s always been a furniture salesman. This passage by one of his vendors sums up the real essense of the “education reformer,” Marco Petruzzi:

“…Marco Petruzzi, is an ex-Bain partner who joined Dovetail in 2018 to increase sales and profitability and overhaul their physical and technology infrastructure. Marco appreciates working with analysts that can make short work of thorny Excel problems, as well as going beyond spreadsheets to assist in the technical complexities of an ERP database migration.”

KPCC did a piece on how the Green Dot Charter Corporation did not meet its promises with Locke. This passage is instructive:

“Yet for all these improvements, Green Dot has also found out just how difficult it is to act on its initial promises. Locke High School's graduation rate — at 55.9 percent — is one of the lowest of any comprehensive high school in L.A. Unified, charter or otherwise.”

Caught this during further search: ‘The Myth of Charter Schools’ Marco Petruzzi, reply by Diane Ravitch.

“The same day he revealed Cardona as his education nominee, it was announced Biden rehired Reed as deputy chief of staff, despite pre-emptive protest from progressives…” — Jake Jacobs

The latest executive order by troglodyte Trump tacitly admits that charter schools are *NOT* public schools. We all knew that, but it's nice when the vile privatizers tell on themselves. *

While it is good to see DeVos and Trump on the way out, there's little to hope for with Biden. It's already been announced that right-wing, neoliberal hatchetman Bruce Reed will be Biden's Deputy Chief of Staff, and the choice of seemingly apolitical Miguel Cardona is probably for a reason.

At the end of the day Biden was part of the second worst administration for education. The damage doltish Arne Duncan did prior to Trump is what opened the door for DeVos in the first place.

DeVos = Duncan + Dominionism *

A copy of this letter was sent to each individual member via email

August 1, 2020

Dear Members of the Board of Education:

I am an educational rights attorney and law professor here in Los Angeles. I live within the boundaries of the Los Angeles Unified School District (“LAUSD”) and I am a registered voter.

I am writing you regarding the implementation of AB 1505. I’m asking you to vote YES on said implementation this Tuesday, August 4, 2020.

As you know, Assembly Bill No. 1505 went a long way towards reigning in the more egregious excesses of the charter school industry. Most notably, it discouraged the practice of “forum shopping” in which a charter school corporations found to be out of compliance with the law, and thus denied a petition or renewal, could circumvent the law by seeking authorization with another authorizer. Public policy supports placing more oversight and accountability on these private entities that divert funding from our public schools.

Assembly Bill No. 1505 also implemented a number of other student-centered policies that force the charter school industry to be more accountable, transparent, and responsive to the communities from which they draw their funding. A key issue advanced by AB 1505 was in regards to credentialing. Students in our communities deserve instruction from educators with appropriate education in child development and pedagogy.

A YES vote on the implementation of AB 1505 provides a path for placing pupils over profits.

Sincerely,

-rds

A copy of this letter was sent to each individual member via email

March 11, 2020

Dear Members of the Board of Education:

I am an educational rights attorney and law professor here in Los Angeles. I am writing you regarding the Citizens of the World Charter School Corporation (“CWC Corp.”), an alleged non-profit benefit corporation that operates a number of privately managed charter schools authorized by the Los Angeles Unified School District (“LAUSD”).

CWC Corp. is currently trying to occupy a portion of a public school, Shirley Avenue Elementary School, under the provisions of Proposition 39. I will not discuss the myriad flaws, inequities, and attendant problems associated with Proposition 39 in this communication. I do, however, want to ask you to put off any consideration of allowing CWC Corp. to move forward with its hostile occupation of a public school while they have seemingly repeatedly refused to pay their legally obligated bills to LAUSD.

As you know, charter school corporations utilizing Proposition 39 to force their hostile occupations of public schools are obligated to pay over-allocation fees in certain circumstances. CWC Corp. currently owes LAUSD hundreds of thousands of dollars in over-allocation fees. Before allowing them any further opportunities to continue operating in bad faith, LAUSD should collect all payments past due and obtain written assurances from CWC Corp. that they will pay their obligations in the future.

Children in Los Angeles public schools are starved for resources. Our students go without school librarians, full-time health-care professionals, adequate access to services, etc. Meanwhile, just three years ago, CWC Corp.’s Executive Director Mark Kleger-Heine received a staggering salary of over $231,000.00 USD (see CWC Corp.’s 2017 Form 990 Part VII). This disparity of resources is by design, and underlies the purpose of the charter school industry. Public school students go without, while charter school executives collect fat checks.

As a member of the LAUSD Board of Education, I hope you will turn your attention to resolving this matter not only with CWC Corp., but with all of the charter school corporations that are in arrears in their over-allocation fee payments with LAUSD.

-rds

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This action against The Accelerated Schools (TAS) corporation, on behalf of Michael Kohlhaas dot org, is my second lawsuit against a charter school. My first was against the Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC) corporation as third chair at the amazing education law firm that I clerk part-time at. We won that one back in October on behalf of a student of color that was wrongfully expelled — look for a blogpost on the Law Offices of Hirji & Chau, LLP regarding that major victory soon. I'm so fortunate to have the esteemed Rosa K. Hirji and others at her firm as my mentors.

Back to the TAS suit, which is my first for the Michael Kohlhaas dot org activists. They gave me a choice of several to pick from, but I felt like starting with the corporate charter that wronged Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman was the right thing to do. My motivation to suffer through law school at night while working during the day, and then to pass the bar exam on the first attempt despite having no time off from work and no commercial bar prep class, was the prospect at becoming a threat to these vile, discriminatory charter school corporations that steal from children and our communities. I'm glad that I'm finally able to threaten the one thing charter corporations care about— their revenue streams.

"He says that [Nick] Melvoin as a member of the board was privy to the LAUSD legal strategy in its perennial struggle with the charter lobby. He says that Melvoin shared this strategy with the charter lobby."

I want to apologize to Schools Matter readers for my infrequent contributions. I thought once I graduated from law school and passed the most difficult bar examination in the country on my first attempt, that I'd have more time to write. Instead, in addition to my long-time day job, I now have an internship once a week at an education law firm, and I am teaching on Thursday nights at my law school. In a word — I'm swamped. However, I managed to piece together this twitter thread on Monday, that I thought was worth reposting here.

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Researching for a case and came across a personal injury settlement between a charter school corporation in the Central Valley and multiple student plaintiffs for some $6-million+. The amount is on the low side considering the horrific injuries some of the students suffered.

It was the typical charter school money-making scam. They had a former employee form an unregistered and uninsured transportation company. The charter's Vice Principle provided one of their family's vehicles to that company. They paid themselves $6K a month from public money to operate a vehicle that had several defective seatbelts. Moreover, they consistently exceeded the vehicle's passenger capacity. Students had to share seats and some had to ride on the floor.

Struck by another vehicle traveling at high speed, the charter corporation's vehicle rolled multiple times and ejected several of the unrestrained students. The injuries were as bad as you could imagine them to be.

This was the inevitable result of putting public money into private hands. Because charter school corporations are privately managed with de minimis oversight, transparency, and accountability, they find ways to channel public revenue streams into their pockets, all the while cutting corners on students. Here, that cost cutting had drastic consequences that altered the lives of several students whose injuries were severe.

In this case it was a transportation company that the charter corporation created, but we've seen the same thing with Charter Management Organization real estate holding firms, and charter school side-companies like convicted felon and charter school mogul Refugio 'Ref' Rodriguez's Better 4 You Foods and Better 4 You Fundraising.

The diversion of public funds to private pockets doesn't stop at individual charter school corporations, as evidenced by their trade association—the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). CCSA sells its member charter schools products and services, paid for out of the public purse. One of them, which would later become known as CharterSafe, generated profits so lucrative, that large firms like Travelers and Gallagher & Co. partnered with them. Here's a quote from a CCSA executive:

"…generated 30% profit margins in subsequent years–with 20-30% lead generation and 20-50% close ratios."

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Postscript:

The examples of charter corporation greed and self-dealing keep increasing. It's the inevitable result of putting public money into private hands.

As founders of a charter network, Parker and his wife cast themselves as philanthropists but schools paid them $800,000 in annual rent, contracted services to Parkers’ nonprofits and companies and hired Clark Parker for $575,000 to manage construction #CharterSchoolFail https://t.co/hm6GQo6FYB

— Jeff Bryant (@jeffbcdm) April 16, 2019

Looks like the two good candidates — Jackie Goldberg and Graciela Ortiz — will be in the run-off, and the vile California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) has no candidate to support in Los Angeles Unified School District 5. The CCSA shouldn’t be able to replace their convicted felon Refugio “Ref” Rodriguez with another one of their own ever again.

Glad to see that right-wing privatizers Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, Heather Repenning, and Ana Cubas are likely done. Cubas couldn’t even manage 1,000 votes on Tuesday — I finished with 5,244 votes in 2013 #LAUSD #EdReform

How reactionary is Marshall Tuck on education issues? One measure is to compare his views to those of the notoriously right-wing JBS and GOP stalwarts. Here we look at some critical issues facing students, families, and our public schools.

Sources: ontheissues.org, marshalltuck.com, jbs.org

Remember that Marshall Tuck, like his white supremacist counterparts Tom Horne and John Huppenthal, shuttered Ethnic Studies, killed Dual Language Immersion Programs, and eliminated Heritage Language Programs.

Resources on Marshall Tuck

• Marshall Tuck’s Legacy of Bigotry and Failure
• The Charter School Money-Machine for Antonio Villaraigosa and Marshall Tuck Is Terrible To Behold
• Smoking Gun! Wall Street Banker Marshall Tuck violated student and parent civil rights!
• The Right Wing, Anti-Gay Crusade Behind Marshall Tuck’s Campaign to Take Over California Schools
• Shedding Light on Marshall Tuck’s Shady Money Trail
• California School Privatizers’ Ideal Superintendent Is Tied to Anti-Gay Crusaders
• A Great Divide: The Election Fight for California’s Schools
• Failing the Test: Charter School Powerbrokers
• Banker Marshall Tuck put student lives at risk by terminating Health Education
• Tuck’s Ethnocentrism Contradicts Californian Values
• Marshall Tuck’s racist dog whistle

[list to be continued]

“[W]hen teachers aren’t unionized, they’re exploited — and when teachers suffer, so do kids.” — Florina Rodov

This amazing piece by Florina Rodov on Shondaland is a must read. Taking place at one of the seedy charter corporations here in Los Angeles, the story Rodov tells is all too familiar to all of us that are anti-privatization activists. Much of the mistreatment of faculty and students mirrors the accounts in Professor Horn's Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys Through "No Excuses" Teaching. Hat tip to Leonie Haimson, whose Tweet regarding this essay caught my eye.

An excerpt, but please go and read the whole work:

"But I soon realized there was a gulf between charter school hype and reality. Every day brought shocking and disturbing revelations: high attrition rates of students and teachers, dangerous working conditions, widespread suspensions, harassment of teachers, violations against students with disabilities, nepotism, and fraud. By the end of the school year, I vowed never to step foot in a charter school again, and to fight for the protection of public schools like never before."

This short essay was originally published on The Daily Censored on August 11, 2011. It would seem that all of the old works on that site are gone. That's unfortunate because I published a lot of work there. I had a teaser here linking to it, a practice I stopped doing precisely because I've learned from harsh experience that websites die and all the content is lost (like my At The Chalkface works). I was able to track down a reprint on Susan Ohanian's site, but her site is having issues as well. Ultimately, I was able to retrieve a copy of the reprint from the Wayback Machine.

I want to reproduce this last sentence from Ohanian's introduction, since she had such insight into why the essay was important:

“The hardline right wing may well love the vacuous phrase “soft bigotry of low expectations,” but let’s remember that education deform democrats love it just as much. It is mostly used to put progressive activists on the defensive.” — Susan Ohanian

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Elmo isn't Gramsci for kids and the mythical soft bigotry of low expectations

“We address the soft bigotry of low expectations so that we may ignore the hard racism of inequity.” — John Kuhn

Although this footage isn't new and commentators have already discussed it, it deserves reexamination since it illuminates one of the core false tenets of the corporate education reform canon.

Amidst the bizarre assertion that Sesame Street is indoctrinating children in some sort of insidious left wing plot, reactionary Ben Shapiro says that:

"I talked to one of the guys who's at Children's Television Workshop originally and he said the whole purpose of Sesame Street was cater to black and hispanic youths who, quote unquote, did not have reading literature in the house, there kind of this soft bigotry of low expectations that's automatically associated with Sesame Street."

Ahhh — the chimerical "soft bigotry of low expectations." As opposed to the hard bigotry of the pervasive institutional racism underpinning our economic system, which facilitates the division of workers and submerses a majority in abject poverty in order to make a small minority obscenely rich. The very same minority, by the way, that supports privatizing public education via charters and vouchers.

The dubious phrase is beloved by the hardline right. The Birchers at the Heartland Institute [1] use the phrase with reckless abandon. Cato, Manhattan, Hoover, and all the other reactionary right wing think tanks repeat the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" as if it's the mantra necessary to permanently bring back the gilded age they all pine for.

Of course the nonsensical phrase isn't limited to fringe right-wing kooks that also think John Galt and Howard Rourke are historical figures. Many supposed-liberals, or at the very least Democratic Leadership Council party operatives, use the phrase as often, if not more often than their teabagging counterparts.

The vile billionaire hedge fund shyster Whitney Tilson uses the phrase incessantly. Remember too that the ever obtuse Tilson helped form two of the most virulent corporate reform and privatization pushing organizations in existence: Teach for America (TFA) and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). The latter, DFER, uses the phrase in its privatization propaganda. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has used the phrase. TFA's Wendy Kopp has had a lucrative career peddling the phrase. The snarling queen of Erasuregate, Michelle Rhee, cherishes such phrases. Los Angeles' poverty pimping opportunist Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proudly plasters the phrase on twitter.

The unprincipled construction "soft bigotry of low expectations" is typically credited to the Council on Foreign Relations's arch-reactionary Michael Gerson, who was the speechwriter for fraudulent Rod Paige's Texas Education Miracle co-fraud, George W. Bush.

Like all the philosophically threadbare propaganda from the right, the expression is vapid and vacuous, without any real meaning whatsoever, putting it right along with "no excuses," and "working hard and being nice." Professor Noam Chomsky best addresses these types of phrases:

"It doesn't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy?" [2]

The policy in question is to ignore poverty and demand a false accountability from all of poverty's victims. While there are countless works discussing this, a recent pair of essays by my Schools Matter colleague Professor P. L. Thomas, EdD, really get to the heart of this issue: Poverty and Testing in Education: "The Present Scientifico-legal Complex" part 1 and part 2.

Humane Expectations Devoid of any Bigotry

In my many years I've never come across an educator that had anything but "realistic expectations tempered with compassion and empathy" for their students, regardless of where they taught. Moreover, for right wing reactionaries to accuse hard working women and men that have dedicated their lives to educating inner city students of bigotry of any sort smacks of hypocrisy of the highest order. It's laughable on its face.

Of course compassion and empathy are foreign words to the rogues gallery discuss above, none of whom have ever taught in their lives. Well, with the exceptions of Wendy Kopp and Michelle Malkin — I mean, Michele Bachmann, er, — I mean Michelle Rhee (sorry it's so easy to confuse those three). Rhee is so devoid of empathy and compassion that one of the most enduring stories from her short stint as a TFA missionary is when she taped her students mouths shut with masking tape and then walked them to the lunchroom, bleeding lips and all. Kopp is seemingly less of a sociopath than Rhee, but it's clear her passion for fame and fortune outweigh any compassion she might have once had.

Access To Books

The other thing reactionary Shapiro gets entirely wrong before employing the hackneyed "soft bigotry of low expectations" nonsense, was to dismiss the Children's Television Workshop's catering to children that "did not have reading literature in the house." Access to books in the home is a major indicator of academic achievement and impoverished families have very limited access to books. This is a fact, and not something to be dismissed by a sniveling right winger threatening to "take them [Elmo and Big Bird] out back and cap them."

Another one of my Schools Matter colleagues, the distinguished Professor Stephen Krashen, PhD, has researched and written extensively on the subject of access to books. Here are a small sampling of his available short articles linking to longer works on the subject.

• Children of poverty and access to books
• IRA President: Access to books makes a difference
• Heroic First Book Marketplace Can't Do It All Get caught reading month?
• Policy: protect children from poverty before we discuss pedagogy

Given the staunch anti-intellectualism, lack of knowledge about all thing pedagogical, and academic aversion that whiny right wingers like Shapiro are known for, it's no wonder that he didn't get the whole importance of providing additional educational resources for children that "did not have reading literature in the house" like the prescient folks at Children's Television Workshop always have.

"True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity." [3]

Now that we're discussing these things, let's talk about the stark racism and classism stemming from the corporate education reform movement, which is orchestrated by the same plutocrats that aired Shapiro's television program. After all, those are the sort of things that vacuous phrases like "soft bigotry of low expectations" are supposed to distract us from.

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NOTES

[1] Heartland Institute is none other than Parent Revolution's sister organization. Word is that in addition to co-hosting school privatization forums that Ben Austin and Ben Boychuck formulate policy together.

[2] Chomsky, Noam. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Second Edition. New York: Seven Stories Press., 1991. pp. 25-26.

[3] Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc., 2009. p. 45.

Allen: On board with ALEC

It’s general knowledge that Center for Education Reform (CER), and its CEO Jeanne Allen, are extremely right-wing. Sourcewatch documents their connection with American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Allen: Funded by the fringe

Jeanne Allen’s CER is funded by reactionary extremist billionaires, here’s a a sampling of their fringe-right supporters:

• The Anschutz Foundation
• The Laura and John Arnold Foundation
• The Honorable and Mrs. Frank Baxter
• The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• The Broad Foundation
• The Doris and Donald Fisher Fund
• The L & S Milken Family Foundation
• Mr. Whitney Tilson
• The Walton Family Foundation

Allen: Writing for the Fringe-Right

Jeanne Allen is a frequent contributor for reactionary publications like National Review. Additionally, she expressed enthusiastic support, in writing, for the policies of Donald J. Trump and his arch-reactionary Secretary of Education, religious extremist Betsy DeVos. Moreover, Allen was called out on Crooks and Liars for her full-throated support of DeVos’ segregationist policies.

Allen: Reactionary Republican

Jeanne Allen ran as the GOP candidate in 2010 for Maryland’s District 16 race for House of Delegates. She received funding from right-wing republicans like Jeb Bush, dark-money investors, and charter school profiteers. Jeanne Allen was Executive Director of the extreme-right Heritage Foundation’s “Town Hall.”

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Brief history on how this meme came about. I recently tweeted about Allen in connection to an article I saw another activist post about her.

Right-wing extremist @JeanneAllen worried she comes off as an extremist in #EdReform exposé film https://t.co/2yaEb4ywSf h/t @DianeRavitch

— Robert D. Skeels 🎃 (@rdsathene) October 5, 2017

My tone not comporting, to steal from Professor Dylan Rodriguez, with the norms of "white civil society" caused some consternation with the reactionaries inhabiting #EdReform Twitter. Here are a few of the more notable responses:

Remember, it is always the *other* side that is "extremist." https://t.co/KLvBwGZNrN

— Neal McCluskey (@NealMcCluskey) October 5, 2017

K-12 #SchoolChoice w/money following the student is exactly as "extreme" as college choice with gov't Pell Grants following the student. https://t.co/QHxZzzaQY1

— Bob Bowdon (@BobBowdon) October 5, 2017

Definition of right wing=putting ed opportunity 4 kids ahead of adults? @HowardLFuller @citizenstewart did you know you were right-wing? https://t.co/imBkRAfcuj

— Jeanne Allen (@JeanneAllen) October 5, 2017

I'm a life long Dem. @JeanneAllen is a "right-wing"extremist because she stands up for low income children of color? Now I'm confused...

— Jeff Klaus (@JeffKlaus28) October 6, 2017

It’s a tale of white fragility and fear, really.—Imani Gandy

These two racist State Superintendents finally got what they deserved for shuttering ethnic studies in Arizona. However, right here in California, we have a candidate for State Superintendent that enacted the same policies in Los Angeles—shuttering ethnic studies, closing dual language programs, and killing heritage language programs. That bigot's name is Marshall Tuck. Let's show Tuck that California is not Arizona, and that we shouldn't have to wait for years for a court to rule in on his racist policies. Let's stop Tuck from repeating a Horne or a Huppenthal, by making sure he never holds a position of power in which he can harm school children again.

Remediation costs from charter high school “graduates” getting into college, but not having basic proficiency are astronomical both in terms of economics, and in demoralizing students. Education legal scholars like Robert D. Skeels have called for wealthy charter school executives and their unelected boards of directors to be held personally liable for the damages both to individual students, and to society at large. The costs of putting charter greed before student need are grave. It’s time to end the racist and classist “school choice” project.

Source http://asd.calstate.edu

"Melvoin’s people are not ordinary constituents passing daily through LAUSD’s school house doors. These are an extremely rarefied set of LA’s ruling class, the managers and not the workers of this great city." — Sara Roos

Nick Melvoin is a right-of-center, neoliberal privatizer who is close to David F. Welch and many other anti-public-education billionaires. The list of contributors for his Los Angeles Unified School (LAUSD) Board run contains some of the most virulent reactionaries bent on destroying the public commmons, and making education an easy source of revenue for the various industries they profit from.

David F. Welch is the right-wing, extremist millionaire that started the vile Nonprofit Industrial Complex (#NPIC) "Students Matter" which initiated/funded the Vergara v. California and other anti-public-education lawsuits.

• The Big Money Behind California's Tenure Lawsuit
• David Welch: The Man Behind Vergara v. California

Fortunately, the California Court of Appeals didn't agree with the arch-reactionary trial judge in Vergara, overturned his wrongheaded holdings, and vacated his judgement: Another defeat in court for right-wing privatizer David F. Welch.

Former Teach for America, Melvoin has worked with other organizations like Teach Plus, and testified for Welch in the Vergara action. Testified, in bad faith, against the very public schools that he worked for. Laura Moser writes in Slate:

"Nick Melvoin taught at one of those high-poverty schools in Watts, Los Angeles—until he was laid off, two years in a row, a victim of LIFO. Melvoin, who is now a teacher organizer with Teach Plus and a recently declared candidate for the L.A. Unified school board, testified on behalf of the plaintiffs in Vergara and thinks that overturning the statutes contested in Vergara “would be a game changer. It’s necessary but not sufficient,” he said."

One has to ask if Melvoin was really put out by layoffs, why didn't he go to work at one of the charter corporations he is so concerned about increasing market share for? Instead of questioning a system that doesn't provide enough resources to keep public school teachers employed — hence last in, first out policies, Melvoin disingenuously held himself out as the "poster child" for a policy that he, and other Betsy DeVos acolytes, falsely frame as an issue of teacher longevity versus quality.

Melvoin's almost irrational hatred of public schools is best summed up by his desire to entirely supplant them with privately managed institutions, including charter schools. When news broke of decades of scandal by Celerity Charter Corporation and their corrupt founder, Vielka McFarlane, Melvoin wrote an Op-Ed providing political cover. McFarlane is best known for the incident where she and her administrators claimed Emmett Till deserved to die, in defense of her firing teachers over a social justice lesson plan. McFarlane's reputation for dishonesty and greed even earned her the ire of former LAUSD Superindendent Johh Deasy, an individual generally not known for taking issue with wealthy charter school executives. That Melvoin positioned himself as McFarlane's champion says much.

Melvoin would bring the entire Betsy DeVos agenda to Los Angeles. His penchant for segregation, privatization, and subsidizing the greed of the charter school industry is peerless.

Charters and vouchers have always been intended to break public schools, and wrest education away from the public commons. "School choice," a phrase coined by segregationists, has always been about maintaining and exacerbating segregation by race and class.

Graphic Essay: Betsy DeVos' 'School Choice' Movement Isn't Social Justice. It's a Return to Segregation. by Adam Bessie and Erik Thurman is a powerful piece that makes complex concepts easy to understand. It's a excellent thing to share with non-academics regarding the scourge of school privatization via charters-vouchers. I've included a quote and a teaser from the piece below.

Network for Public Education (NPE) is helping to support California Senate Bill 808. The legislation, while it doesn't go far enough, is an important first step towards reeling in the outrageous excesses of the charter school sector. My letter to my State Senator appears below, as well as the call to action letter from NPE.

Senator de Leon:

I am a third year law student, studying hard so that I can become an attorney and defend families of children with disabilities against discrimination by the lucrative charter school industry. Prior to my studying law, I wrote for numerous publications about the essentially unregulated charter sector, exposing abuses, fraud, misrepresentation, and more importantly, discriminatory conduct towards the most vulnerable students.

Charters discriminate against English language learners, students with disciplinary histories, students with disabilities, and more. Meanwhile, their high-powered executives—many of whom are not even educators—pull down astronomical salaries and use their ability as unregulated 501c3s to award no bid contracts to their friends, relatives, or in the case of a current Los Angeles School Board member, to their own consulting firm. Since members of the taxpaying public don't elect charter school boards, there exists a system that puts public money into private hands with no mechanisms to ensure even a modicum of transparency or oversight.

Furthermore, my alma mater, UCLA, has conducted several studies demonstrating that charter schools exacerbate segregation, and fuel the so-called "school to prison pipeline." A perusal of the studies compiled by UCLA's The Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles would cause any reasonable person to realize that decades of letting the revenue-stream-driven charter school industry "regulate" itself has resulted in an abject situation.

Therefore, I'm asking you to please support SB 808. This bill would give California’s democratically elected, local school boards the final say when it comes to the approval of charter school petitions. The present system takes away community control, forcing districts to navigate reduced budgets and high legal costs for schools over which they have no authority.

Schools that receive public dollars must be responsible to the public. Thank you.

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Dear Robert D,

NPE and NPE Action have long been concerned about charter schools in California. You can read our NPE reports about them here.

Now there is a chance to make a small improvement. On April 26th, SB 808 comes up for a hearing before the Senate Education Committee.

This bill would give California’s democratically elected, local school boards the final say when it comes to the approval of charter school petitions. Under current laws, charter petitioners can appeal to state and county boards of education, thereby taking away community control, forcing districts to navigate reduced budgets and high legal costs for schools over which they have no authority. Meanwhile, charter schools often receive blank checks, in the form of pro-bono legal work, funded by the billionaire-backed lobbying group, The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). We need to level the playing field, so that all schools which receive public funding are responsible and accountable in the same ways.

Here is what we need you to do.

1. Send an email to your Senator. We make it very easy- just click here.

2. Call the members of the Senate Education Committee and ask them to vote YES on SB 808.

• Benjamin Allen, Chair (Santa Monica) 916-651-4026
• Scott Wilk, Vice Chair (Santa Clarita) 916-651-4021
• Cathleen Galgiani (Stockton) 916-651-4005
• Connie M. Leyva (Chino) 916-651-4020
• Tony Mendoza (Artesia) 916-651-4032
• Richard Pan (Sacramento) 916-651-4006
• Andy Vidak (Hanford) 916-651-4014

Let them know that the taxpayers of California deserve local, democratically elected and accountable officials overseeing how their children are educated and tax dollars are spent. Let them know that you are tired of charter school scandals. California's children and taxpayers deserve better.

Thank you for all that you do.

Carol Burris

Executive Director of NPE Action

I can't think of anyone as profoundly ignorant, or as uniquely unqualified to be appointed Secretary of Education as Betsy…

…oh, wait, never-mind.

Let's not forget that neoliberal school privatization is a bipartisan project. Both parties fail education.

A natural progression of neoliberalism

• Rod Paige
• Margaret Spellings
• Arne Duncan
• John King
• Betsy DeVos

Not opposing the neoliberal corporate education reform agenda when Democrats were in charge is what led to the DeVos disaster. Not unlike how the Hillary Rodham Clinton camp's "Elevating Pied Piper Candidates" led to the Trump fiasco.

These events and announcements are worthy of your consideration. Especially the event featuring Schools Matter's very own Dr. Stephen Krashen. I would love to attend all of these, but… law school.

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 Ethnic Studies, Dual and Mulitilingual Education. With the passage of Prop 58 the Multilingual Education Act and AB2016 Ethnic Studies we have a historic opportunity to advance issues and more. Join the UTLA Raza Ed. and Bilingual Education Commitee as we bring scholars, educators and community together for an engaging discussion. Best of all, this event is FREE!

Professors Solórzano and Krashen: Student Empowerment through Culture and Language by Robert D. Skeels on Scribd

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