American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC): ‘Stand Your Ground’ group pushes privatization of public education

That group is the American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, which likes to call itself a “nonpartisan public-private partnership” but is actually a corporate-backed enterprise that writes “model legislation” that its membership of nearly 2,000 conservative legislators use in states to pass laws that promote privatization in every part of American life: education, health care, the environment, the economy, etc.

The Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit investigative group, has done a great deal of research on ALEC’s efforts to push the privatization of public education, attack veteran teachers and their unions. It just released a new analysis of ALEC’s education efforts, which you can read here, saying that “at least 139 bills or state budget provisions reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) education bills have been introduced in 43 states and the District of Columbia in just the first six months of 2013.” (You can see all of the bills here.)

As education historian and activist Diane Ravitch explained in this ALEC primer, the group, which had been quietly working for years, was put in the spotlight because it crafted “Stand Your Ground” laws, which got attention because of the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. An ALEC spokesperson said in an email that in fact ALEC had nothing to do with Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law but rather “adopted a policy based on Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ in August 2005 and then subsequently sunset that policy in March 2012.”

The Gates Foundation last fall awarded ALEC a grant of $376,635 “to educate and engage its membership on more efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he opposes these laws, which allow people who believe they are being threatened to defend themselves with deadly force.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to speak the blunt truth about why these laws are dangerous — and why the National Rifle Association keeps pushing them anyway.

The Washington Post and the New York Times reported last week, the idea came from on high, courtesy of the NRA, which worked closely with a right-wing group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. 

What’s insidious about Stand Your Ground laws is that in every jurisdiction that has them, these statutes tilt the balance of power in any street encounter in favor of the person who has a gun. That’s what happened in the Martin case. The law provides a perverse incentive for everyone to be armed.








Florida's 'Stand Your Ground' law could have saved Trayvon Martin's life
"And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these 'Stand Your Ground' laws, I just ask people to consider -- if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?"

Florida had first Stand Your Ground law, other states followed in 'rapid succession'
 Some of Christie's biggest bills match model legislation from D.C. group called ALEC
Download a full spreadsheet of connections between ALEC models and N.J. bills.
ALEC has quietly made its mark on the political landscape by providing state governments with mock-up bills that academic and political experts say are, for the most part, tailored to fit a conservative agenda. In recent years, states — particularly those with new Republican governors and legislatures — have been flooded with ALEC’s model bills. Nearly 1,000 of them are introduced every year, and roughly one-fifth of those become law, according to ALEC’s own count. ALEC’s bills are especially attractive because they are written so they can virtually be copied and pasted onto legislative proposals across the land.

The School Children First Act, a landmark bill sponsored by Assemblyman Jay Webber, the co-chairman of ALEC’s state chapter and one of six New Jersey legislators who are members of the group, includes the five specific requirements in ALEC’s Great Teachers and Leaders Act.

Meet ALEC’s NJ State Chairman – Senator Oroho

 CHARTS: ALEC's Top Ten Original Corporate Donors

http://www.flickr.com/photos/woe1/9200399565/

 Under pressure from public exposure, some of these corporations have ended their ties to ALEC but the damage has already been done.

Why I Cannot Support the Common Core Standards - Diane Ravitch

The Common Core standards have been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia without any field test. They are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools. We are a nation of guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.

"For the past two years, I have steadfastly insisted that I was neither for nor against the Common Core standards. I was agnostic. I wanted to see how they worked in practice. I wanted to know, based on evidence, whether or not they improve education and whether they reduce or increase the achievement gaps among different racial and ethnic groups."

"Such standards, I believe, should be voluntary, not imposed by the federal government; before implemented widely, they should be thoroughly tested to see how they work in real classrooms; and they should be free of any mandates that tell teachers how to teach because there are many ways to be a good teacher, not just one."

They were developed by an organization called Achieve and the National Governors Association, both of which were generously funded by the Gates Foundation. There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states.

Condi Rice-Joel Klein report: Not the new ‘A Nation at Risk

Council on Foreign Relations

The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education.

Joel Klein, Condi Rice, and the Military-Business-Education Reform Complex

The Joel Klein-Condi Rice ed report: What it will and won’t say
Don’t however, expect to see much, if anything on the fact that 22 percent of American children live in poverty and the consequences of that affect student achievement enormously.


"So I think that has led us to a place and time where we really clearly understand the problem in very much more specific ways. We know which schools work and which don't, which teachers are good and which are not so good, which kids are performing and which aren't. And so, you know, the first thing you have to do before you start to cure a problem is to figure out exactly, you know, what it is."         MARGARET SPELLINGS

Diane Ravitch:

Education historian Diane Ravitch served as Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush. She later advocated No Child Left Behind's strict testing standards and expansion of charter schools. But, Ravitch now says those initiatives have failed, and the real enemy of schools is poverty. Professor Ravitch talks to host Michel Martin.



MARTIN: ...the argument is that, in the absence of a testing regimen, a comprehensive testing regimen, there really isn't any incentive for the schools to demonstrate that kids are learning, especially in areas where the parents aren't strong advocates for themselves for whatever reason, or for their kids for whatever reason. How do you respond to that?


RAVITCH: Well, actually, Michel, that is wrong. I was going to say it's nonsensical. Testing does not close achievement gaps. Testing just shows that there are gaps, but then you have to do something about it. Testing should be used diagnostically. It should not be used the way we're using it today. It's being used to punish teachers, to close schools and to do all sorts of high stake things like merit pay and basing teachers' evaluation on testing, and that's wrong.

Transcript

The Most Segregated Big-City Districts in the Nation

The Most Segregated Big-City 

Thanks to a reader for sending this story from the New York Times. It has a graph showing the most racially segregated big-city school districts in the United State

Diane Ravitch's Blog by Diane Ravitch 



The winner of this disgraceful award: Chicago.

Second place: Dallas

Third place: New York City

Fourth place: Philadelphia

Fifth place: Houston

Sixth place: Los Angeles

The Dissenter | The New Republic

What happened when the education world's most prominent intellectual switched sides.The Dissenter | The New Republic


Now, pundits, scholars, philanthropists, and education leaders are all asking the same question: What happened to Diane Ravitch?

The gray-haired woman walked to the microphone as the crowd chanted, “Diane! Diane!” “This is a historic day. I’m a historian,” she told them. She spoke for only eight minutes, in short, punchy sentences. “Carrots and sticks are for donkeys.” “Education is a right, not a race.” “Our problem is poverty, not our schools.” When she finished, the crowd began chanting again: “Thank you! Thank you!” 

It was, historically speaking, a strange place for Diane Ravitch to be. There was no indication that, until recently, she had championed many of the policies that were denounced at the rally as tools of racism and oppression. That she had spent years in the inner circle of conservative education policy, advocating for school vouchers, firing incompetent teachers, and shutting down failing schools. Ravitch once assured the public, “Vouchers and charters will not destroy public education. This is an incredible and fantastical fear.” Now she says things like, “Vouchers are a con, intended to destroy public education.”

In 2000, Ravitch, seemingly anticipating just such a consensus, argued: “If we found that there is no difference in performance between charter schools, voucher schools, and regular public schools, it would not be a victory for the status quo. Instead, we would have to say that the choice of school belongs to the parent.” Now that the overall research consensus matches this scenario, Ravitch focuses repeatedly on the Stanford study, asserting that it proves charters have failed.

Her genius was in the construction of a public identity of partial affiliation—a university-based historian who never wrote an academic dissertation, a former government official whose career in public service lasted less than two years, an overseer of the national testing program with no particular expertise in testing, and a champion of public school teachers who has never taught in a public school. She enjoys the credibility of the sober analyst while employing all the tools of the polemicist.