alec

ALEC's Report Card Receives Failing Marks

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Via the Great Lakes Center

EAST LANSING, Mich. (May 9, 2013) – Ranking states is a popular tool for education advocacy groups, with the goal of advancing a policy agenda based on ideologically driven pre-packaged reforms. These report cards receive considerable media attention, although few reflect research-based evidence on the efficacy of particular polices. The 18th edition of the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform is no different according to an academic review.

Christopher Lubienski, associate professor of education policy and Director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois, and T. Jameson Brewer, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, reviewed ALEC's Report Card for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review was produced by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Lubienski and Brewer find that ALEC draws its grades exclusively not from research organizations, but from like-minded market-orientated advocacy organizations.

"Furthermore, when studies are highlighted in this report, they do not represent the peer-reviewed research on a given issue, are often of extremely poor quality, and generally unsuited for supporting their claim."

In their review, Lubienski and Brewer provide two key areas – alternative teacher certification and school choice – to highlight gaps between ALEC's agenda and empirical evidence. Despite multiple claims that a "growing body of research indicates…" – the report offers absolutely no supporting evidence. Math results, which have a lower pass rate, were used to compare traditionally-certified teachers to alternatively-certified teachers. Meanwhile alternatively-certified teachers were portrayed using their reading results.

"Many of the grades given to states reflect the level to which pro-market policies have been implemented while the grades systematically ignore meaningful measurements of equality and outcomes" according to the review.

Readers of ALEC's Report Card should consider it a statement of policy preferences and not an overview of research on education reforms.

The reviewers conclude, "At best, the report serves as an amalgamation of other like-minded think tanks' assessments of states' adoption of pro-market policies, and thus offers nothing new … it provides little or no usefulness to policymakers."

Find the report by Lubienski and Brewer on the Great Lakes Center website: www.greatlakescenter.org

Exposing ALEC’s agenda

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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been hard at work for decades. Its members are organized, well-funded and connected–too bad they aren’t using their powers to do what’s right for students and schools.

Instead, they use all their resources to push an agenda to open up the public school system to vouchers and privatization, lobbying legislators to restrict everything from voting rights to workers’ rights to help pave the path to their success.

Learn all you can about how ALEC operates, so you’ll be prepared to protect your students and neighborhood schools. A good place to start is by watching the 30-minute documentary The United States of ALEC, featuring Bill Moyers.

Romney education policy aligns with ALEC agenda

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As its inner workings have been revealed over the past few months, one thing is clear about the American Legislative Exchange Council, the radical conservative “bill mill” that gives powerful corporations access to lawmakers: The group makes no apologies for putting the needs of Corporate America, and the wealthy citizens it comprises, before those of middle class America.

The same could be said of presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Earlier this week, Romney finally got around to introducing some details of his education policy —and much of what he said might as well have been churned out at a meeting of ALEC’s education task force.

Here are top priorities they share:

  • Promote a nationwide voucher program. Funneling public funds to private schools and for-profit charters through voucher schemes has been an ALEC priority for decades—and they’ve been successful in states like Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia to name only a few. In his education policy speech, Romney said that if he were president, federal education funds would be linked to students, with parents deciding where their child goes to school, be it a public, charter or private school.
  • Eliminate teacher certification requirements. ALEC’s Alternative Certification Act asserts that any professional can teach K-12 classes with virtually no preparation, and it’s a theme woven into its other education bills. Romney similarly believes there is too much “unnecessary certification” getting in the way of professionals from other fields might want to give the teaching thing a go.
  • Make it more difficult for middle class families to afford higher education. Their tactics may differ, but the result would be the same: More and more, college would become a luxury of the upper class. Romney would repeal the law signed by President Obama that eliminates banks as middle men on federally guaranteed student loans and uses those savings to increase Pell Grants, strengthen community colleges and make it easier for students to repay their federal student loans. (Romney revealed his lack of perspective on college affordability earlier on the campaign trail, suggesting that borrowing money from parents or attending outrageously priced for-profit colleges might be solutions for those who cannot easily afford higher education.)

ALEC has generated model legislation that would give tax breaks to families wealthy enough to have college savings accounts—which many middle class families cannot afford. Other model bills would direct public funds to private universities through higher education vouchers.

  • Upend educator unions. Union busting is high on ALEC’s overall agenda (a favorite topic of conversation at its economic task force meetings), and language attempting to limit educator unions’ ability to negotiate crops up in several K-12 education bills. Romney, meanwhile, says standing up to organized labor and taking so-called “right to work law” national is a day-one priority.

So what’s it like for educators when top decision makers sign off on anti-public education legislation? Just ask a teacher from a state where ALEC-friendly lawmakers and governors have already had their way.

“Wisconsin has been slowly going private for years,” says Milwaukee kindergarten teacher Tiffanie Lawson. “And these for-profit charters are not held to the same standards that we are–we’re talking about teachers who don’t have teaching degrees. We’ve seen so much corruption with money going to the choice and charter schools that should be going to the public schools.” (Read more about ALEC’s shocking degree of influence in Wisconsin in the Center for Media and Democracy’s recently released “Wisconsin: The Hijacking of a State.”)

“We see students who leave our schools to go to these charters come back to us,” said Lawson, “because they realize they’re not getting the education they deserve and that the public schools offer what they need: the support, the services. And we need the resources to keep all of that going for our kids.”

Find out more, and get involved, here.

ALEC and the Invisible Schools with Invisible Success

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From a report titled Invisible Schools, Invisible Success

Virtual schools are popular because they are profitable. Estimates show that “revenues from the K-12 online learning industry will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion.”

More than 200,000 K-12 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools across the country; when expanded to all students enrolled in at least one course, the number explodes to 2,000,000. The more children enrolled in virtual schools, the greater the profit for the companies.
[…]
In December 2004, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) approved the “Virtual Public Schools Act.” That model bill sparked a rush by private companies to embrace virtual schools and virtual learning across the country. Today, there are more than 230 nationwide accredited private virtual schools in the country.
[…]
ALEC is closely tied to the virtual school movement, having pushed its “Virtual PublicSchools Act” on behalf of corporate members of its board since 2005. The law was adopted by ALEC through the work of its Education Task Force,comprised of corporate lobbyists and conservative legislators. According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s website, ALEC Exposed, two of the three co-chairs on ALEC’s Education Task Force work directly for virtual school companies

  • Mickey Revenaugh, Co-founder and Senior VicePresident of State Relations for Connections Academy,a virtual school company; and
  • Lisa Gillis, Director of Government Affairs and SchoolDevelopment for Insight Schools, part of K12 Inc.

K12 is one of the largest virtual school operators in Ohio. The Ohio Virtual Academy, represent about 26% of K12′s annual revenues. We've previously demonstrated that virtual schools in Ohio are manufacturing profits at the expense of education, primarily by packing their virtual classrooms. These packed virtual classrooms have a significant effect on students

–OVA enrolled a total of 18,743 students cumulatively throughout the 2010/2011 school year with 9,593 withdrawing by the end of the year, for an astoundingly high churn rate of 51.1%

"[…]these cyber schools might as well have a turnstile as their logo for the volume of withdrawals they experience.", noted one researcher.

To highlight the emphasis K12 puts on profits above education, comes this leaked email from their CFO in Pennsylvania

An April 23, 2010 e-mail from Kevin Corcoran to a host of his colleagues is likely the sort that, in one form or another, millions of Americans deal with regularly during the work day.

Bluntly noting “We have not made the progress we need to in this area,” Corcoran adds, “More than $1[million] in funding” is in the balance.”

“Anyone who has not fulfilled their obligation in this area should not be surprised….when it’s time to discuss performance evaluations, bonuses and raises.”
[…]
In the e-mail, Corcoran, who is Agora’s financial chief, was miffed because 81 “IEPs,” short for individualized education programs–basically customized teaching plans for Agora’s growing populace of special education students–hadn’t received the necessary signatures; without them, various school districts would not release reimbursement of $15,000 per pupil (or higher) to Agora, and thus K12, to educate a student populace that have had profound troubles meeting educational expectations.

More concerned about bonuses and raises, than the fact that students have outstanding IEP's that are not being addressed. This is part of the educational mess ALEC has and continues to try to create.

4 reasons educators must get in the game and fight ALEC

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We mentioned some of the radical education policies ALEC was seeking to push in up coming legislative sessions, here are 4 reasons educators must get in the game and fight ALEC

  1. ALEC puts the profits of corporations before the welfare of students. Virtual schools and for-profit charters do NOT do all that a neighborhood school can do—so why does its Virtual Public Schools Act insist those corporate ventures should receive the same public funding?
  2. ALEC thinks its corporate members know better than your community how to run your schools. A common theme throughout ALEC education bills is to reduce local control of parents and democratically elected school boards.
  3. ALEC would have you giving more standardized tests. When they say they want to” apply marketplace standards” to education, they mean they want to increase the reliance on standardized testing to judge student and teacher performance.
  4. ALEC thinks corporations deserve “a voice and a vote” (their words) more than U.S. citizens do! Although it has disbanded its highly controversial Public Safety and Elections Task Force, the damage has been done: an estimated 5 million eligible voters will have a more difficult time exercising their right to vote in the 2012 election.

For more on how you can get invovled, you can go here.