Category: The Farrell Report

does not factor addressing poverty into any of the necessities for effective public education because she basically believes it does not matter.

She is for guns in schools, vouchers and corporate charter schools, and unbridled school choice with no public oversight. She and other members of the education reform Cartel remain devoted to their belief that the choice options that they have concocted for the parents of low-income children, mostly of color, are best for inner city students.

the most effective tactics have been those where the black middle class has been encouraged and assisted in profiting off poor children of color who are the primary recruitment targets of public school privatization. The voucher-charter bull’s eye, to date, has been placed on urban majority-minority school districts where most of these schools are located.

What is readily apparent is that the U.S. Education Secretary-Designate and the Cartel have employed a comprehensive organizing scheme that has been supported by a bipartisan group of politicians and a diverse array of grassroots and civil rights advocates.

the Cartel has created a vast array of think tanks and advocacy organizations to distribute questionable and deeply flawed research studies to confirm that corporate and virtual charters, vouchers, and non-certified teachers are the best approaches to educating low-income students of color.

roughly 17 percent of charter schools perform better than public schools, 37 percent perform significantly worse, and 46 percent perform about the same as their surrounding public schools. This occurs despite the fact that charter schools have the freedom to counsel out, expel, and remove students without a due process hearing.

DeVos and her husband, Richard, billionaire heirs of the Amway fortune, have funded elected officials at the city, state, and federal levels of government and school choice advocacy groups for more than three decades, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get voucher and charter legislation passed and regulations implemented in all fifty states.

the repercussions for public education are substantial. At no point did Hillary and former President Bill Clinton acknowledge or give these issues the serious consideration they deserved.

Teachers and teacher unions are no longer banking on the fact that nearly all Americans are strong supporters of public education. Many are now recognizing that they are in a war for their own and the institution of public education’s survival.

Teachers, the overwhelming numbers of whom are women and who also make up fifty-three percent of the electorate, will be key in flipping the U.S. Senate from a Republican to a Democratic majority on Tuesday, November 8th.