Last month, USA Today 

reported on  the hundreds of thousands of children across New York State who opted out of the state standardized English Language Arts (ELA) tests. Data from the tests is high stakes all around; it's linked to individual students' academic advancement, teacher evaluations, and overall school performance ratings. Proponents of testing usually argue that collecting such data is necessary to measure student achievement and hold educators accountable, but the state director of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), Nicole Brisbane, offered USA Today a surprising explanation for why students really ought to take these tests: "Schools are one of the biggest differentiators of value in the suburbs," Brisbane told USA Today. "How valuable will a house be in Scarsdale when it isn't clear that Scarsdale schools are doing any better than the rest of Westchester or even the state? Opting out of tests only robs parents of that crucial data." 

There's bad news for all those neoliberal and conservatives who think that free markets and competition are the royal road to the shining city on the hill. The free market constantly takes a back seat to "crony capitalism": "an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, or other forms of state interventionism."  

The lesson here is that promoting a legal strategy to achieve one set of ends can open the door for very different uses-an eventuality that this Article explores in a distinctly different setting: that of teacher job protections and education rights litigation. In their eagerness to take on teacher job protections, the plaintiffs in Vergara v. State of California and follow-up litigation in New York may be inviting litigation with very different goals for school policy and reform. Education policy discussions have long been grounded in a broad agreement that high-quality teachers are among the most important resources schools can provide to their students. But the past decade has seen dramatic movement in these discussions, illustrated in part by the rhetorical and policy shift from "highly qualified" to "highly effective."  Particularly relevant here is the fact that the overarching shift toward performance standards has included teacher quality discussions. Also at play has been the simultaneous push for deregulation and, I would argue, de-professionalization of teaching. These forces came together recently in the Vergara litigation in California, which is currently on appeal.  

Public schools are in the midst of a war of attrition over their control - and even the very institution of public education is in danger. There is a sort of pincer assault under way, with billionaires on the far right pushing for complete de-regulation, and others, like the Gates Foundation, pursuing top-down systemic control of every public school in the nation.

On the "anti-government" side, billionaires like the Koch brothers and Walton family want to turn schools into a publicly-funded free market free-for-all, where virtually anybody who wants to can set up a school and teach whatever they want. This philosophy is resulting in voucher money going to schools that use the Bible as a source in teaching about the origins of life on Earth. The American Legislative Exchange Council has developed legislation sometimes called "Opportunity Scholarships" which give parents tax credits that can be applied to private or parochial school tuition. 

 Charter schools misspend millions of Ohio tax dollars as efforts to police them are privatized    by Doug Livingston   on the Beacon Journal site

  No sector - not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals - misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.

A Beacon Journal review of 4,263 audits released last year by State Auditor Dave Yost's office indicates charter schools misspend public money nearly four times more often than any other type of taxpayer-funded agency.

Since 2001, state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival the worst in the nation.

 5 Myths about Standardized Testing and the Opt Out Movement  by Denisha Jones on the emPower site

Most of the arguments made by those who believe in standardized testing are filled with myths about what standardized testing can and should accomplish and misconceptions about the promise of opting out. Those of us who are advocates for a public education system that honors all children and supports families have an obligation to address the myths head on. Here are five popular myths about standardized testing and the opt out movement and the facts you can use to counter them. 

Teen pregnancy is still a problem - school districts just stopped paying attention    by Erin Einhorn on the Hichinger blog site 

Students can stay enrolled even if they can't make it to class every day, and the lower academic costs in a school with fewer teachers can free up funds for badly needed support services, like counseling and transportation.

"What we do is remove the barriers that were preventing these kids from coming to school," King said. "We're getting kids that were lost back into the system."

The students at Pathways say they're determined to succeed - not in spite of their parenting obligations, but because of them.

 The Goal of Reform is Not to Improve Education but to Cut Costs  by Randall Hendee on the Ravitch site

The question frequently arises: Why do so many billionaires support the privatization of public education? Surely, they don't care about making a profit as they are already billionaires. Here is one possible answer, as reader Randal Hendee posted this comment on the blog about the motives of the billionaires who support "reform":

There's a lot of evidence that reducing the cost of public education is one of the main goals of people like Gates, Broad, and the Waltons. They're playing a long game that they hope will result in lower taxes for big property owners and for the wealthy in general. At the same time, they see profit in "reform" because even with relatively lower tax revenues, a new cohort of children enrolls every year. Once the opportunists tap into that public revenue stream (through privately operated charters, educational technology, data mining, real estate deals, and so on), the cash cow will keep on giving. Or so they hope.

  The fate of Joshua Starr in Montgomery County, MD is a good example. Starr was actually trying to bring more equity to the system, he wanted to de-emphasize testing, he opposed merit pay, and he was collaborative, generally. A teacher rep said Starr made sure teachers were "included in the decision-making process for most major decisions." Still, Starr seemed to favor the Common Core, and in an interview with NPR he bragged about the county's "SAT and AP scores." Sigh.

Starr's replacement was to have been Andrew Houlihan of Houston, who later withdrew his name from consideration.

Houlihan's dissertation was on the use of data. He has described himself as "a big data person. I love using data to make decisions." Except, apparently, Houlihan never really understood what the "data" said. He bragged about an Arnold Foundation grant that, he said, was "transforming" the recruitment of teachers. And he bragged about Houston's merit pay program - ASPIRE - that, he said, rewarded "our most effective educators" for "accelerating student progress."

The Arnold Foundation is a right-wing organization founded by a hedge-funder who resists accountability and transparency in derivatives markets but calls for them in education. Its executive director, Denis Cabrese was former chief of staff to DIck Armey, the Texas conservative who now heads up FreedomWorks, the group that helps to pull the Tea Party strings and gets funding from the billionaire arch-conservative Koch brothers.

 The Secret Group That Wants to Take Over Your School  by Sarah Lahm on the AlterNet site 

  Don't look now, but there's something creepy coming toward you, and it wants to take over your public school system. Sure, it's connected-through all-important grants-to many of the big names in today's education reform movement (Gates, Walton, Broad), but most people have probably never heard of it.

This "education reform powerhouse" is the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which goes by the acronym CRPE-or "creepy." How fitting. While there are many individuals and organizations on the front lines of the free-market education reform movement-from Teach for America, to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to the Recovery School District in New Orleans-CRPE has not been publicly outed. Instead, it has steadily carved out an influential role for itself behind the scenes.

Next Time Someone Mocks Teachers For Making Less Money, Show Them This.  Illustrations by Gavin Aung Than, words by Taylor Mali on the Zenpencil site

  The Horace Mann League  on the The Horace Mann league site