[Vision2020] Could this now happen in Idaho? Luna's end game: Lunacy

[Ron Force]

Gail Collins, also from the NY Times:


May 11, 2011
Reading, ’Riting and Revenues
By GAIL COLLINS
American education is going to be reformed until it rolls over and begs 
for mercy. Vouchers! Guns on campus! Just the other day, the Florida 
State Legislature took a giant step toward ending the scourge of droopy 
drawers in high school by upping the penalties for underwear-exposing 
pants. 
Today, let’s take a look at the privatization craze and the conviction 
that there is nothing about molding young minds that can’t be improved 
by the profit motive. 
Enrollment in for-profit colleges has ballooned to almost two million, 
propelled by more than $25 billion in federal student loans, many of 
which are apparently never going to be repaid. More than 700 public K-12 schools around the country are now managed by for-profit companies. 
Last week, in Ohio, the State House went for the whole hog and approved 
legislation that would allow for-profit businesses to open up their own 
taxpayer-financed charter schools. 
“It takes the public out of public education,” complained Bill Sims of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools. 
This exciting new plan, which seemed to have been inserted into the 
state budget bill by a magical invisible hand, would also reduce 
oversight. It got a rave review in The Columbus Dispatch from an op-ed 
contributor named Thomas Needles, who cheered legislators for trying to 
end the “drip-drop of wrongheaded regulation” of charter schools. 
Needles is a consultant for White Hat Management, the largest company 
currently managing charter schools in Ohio — and with none too great a 
record, according to the National Education Policy Center, which said 
that only 2 percent of the schools White Hat runs have scored well on 
yearly progress tests. The owner of White Hat is a gynormous donor to 
the state Republican Party. Not that that would make any difference. 
Just saying. 
So that’s the pathbreaking privatization news in Ohio. Now let’s take a 
look at Texas, which has been leading the way in putting for-profit 
companies in charge of certifying teachers. 
“Very interesting and very disturbing,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, a 
professor of education at Stanford who studies teacher certification 
issues. Darling-Hammond says that when the federal government began 
demanding certified teachers in every classroom, Texas was among the 
states that responded by creating alternative certification programs, 
some of which have requirements slightly less rigorous than those for 
the trainers at neighborhood gyms. Most of the new teachers in Texas — 
particularly at schools in poor neighborhoods — come from alternative 
certification programs. 
Then, the Legislature invited for-profit businesses into the game. “Ever since then, the innovation and competition has been phenomenal,” 
claimed Vernon Reaser, the president of Texas Teachers, the largest of 
the state’s alt-cert companies. 
Here is one indicator of how innovative things are getting. Texas is 
currently considering — although not with any great intensity — a bill 
that would require that people who go through these programs spend a 
couple of days practice teaching before they are turned loose in their 
own classrooms. 
The sponsor is Representative Mike Villarreal of San Antonio. Villarreal first came to my attention as the legislator who proposed requiring 
that the course content in public school sex education classes be 
medically accurate. The man is a positive genius for coming up with 
bills to make the Texas education system do something we really had 
assumed it had been doing all along. None of which make it out of 
committee. 
At a public hearing on Villarreal’s bill, Reaser vigorously denounced 
the idea of requiring would-be teachers to actually get classroom 
experience as part of their training: “Practice teachers in front of 
kids that aren’t practice learning!” 
To get an alternative teaching certificate in Texas you need to take 
coursework and have 30 hours of “field-based” experience, 15 of which 
can be spent watching videos. Villarreal says some programs fill up the 
other 15 with things like chaperoning field trips. 
It’s not clear how many people get hired as full-time teachers without 
ever having stood in front of a classroom for a single hour. The $4,195 
Texas Teachers program (its ubiquitous billboards read: “Want to Teach? 
When Can You Start?”) is a little opaque. For instance, Reaser assured 
me in a phone conversation that his students were required to have a 
variety of in-person interactions with their instructors even though the Web site says you can opt for “fully online instruction.” 
“On our Web site, we intentionally don’t say everything,” Reaser 
explained. “It’s basically to get you to call us and ask us.” 
When we all started clamoring for more investment in education, I don’t 
think we envisioned it going into corporate profits. We have seen the 
future, and the good news is that the kids in Florida will be wearing 
belts. 
 

Ron Force
Moscow Idaho USA


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