Corporate Public Education on steroids is coming to Massachusetts: Citizens for Public Schools

[geefloyd46]

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[edcantor]

1. Sounds like ALEC termites getting into

the business of education.

I'm not sure I get the full measure of this ballot initiative, nor the background, nor the potential outcome of this.

Care to explain a bit more of the background and implications?

[Xedniw]

3. ALEC is heavily involved in the corporate charter movement

Charter Schools Association Is Using Taxpayer Money to Support ALEC's Radical Agenda

Charter Schools Act - ALEC Exposed

National Association of Charter School Authorizers Outed as ALEC Funder

NACSA is the most visible and well-heeled of the corporate charter front groups posing as a professional organization dedicated to quality and oversight of charter schools. What they were, and are, is the corporate cadillac of lobbying and pressure charter privateers laser-focused on removing any barrier at the national, state, or local level to expanding school privatization via charter school.

NACSA also gets millions from cash-starved states, who hand over part of their federal grant money to fund NACSA, where big chunks of the cash have been funneled to ALEC to buy legislation and access.

This is the perfect example of federal dollars going to states, where it is then handed over to ALEC to buy public officials so that ALEC's patrons can lay waste to the public fund. Of course, we should add that the federal dollars at the front end of this chain are targeted by those same plutocratic patrons who are the back end of that same chain.

And there are many more links.

[geefloyd46]

2. I believe they are also in line to go after collective bargaining as well

Stand was one group of many at the table when the new Massachusetts educator evaluation system was hammered out over several months last spring. Unions, principals, state officials, parents—all contributed. But when the new regulations were finally announced, one group walked away—Stand for Children.
Immediately, Stand filed for a ballot initiative and used some of their new corporate money to hire people to collect the signatures. It cost them $3 a signature, but they have plenty more. They are following the master plan revealed in Colorado by their national CEO, Jonah Edelman, a month before it was announced Massachusetts.

The proposed ballot measure attempts to blow up the collaborative work that created the new regulations last spring. It does nothing to improve teaching in our schools.

Instead, the Stand for Children plan eliminates job protections for teachers, pushes them to teach to the standardized test, and makes it dangerous for them to stand up for their students to administrators and bureaucrats.


[link:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/15/1091833/-Corporate-education-reformers-take-aim-at-Massachusetts|