-Allen Ruff
Part #3 in a Series.
(For Part #1, see: “
History, Not “Conspiracy”: Kaleem Caire’s Connections”; & Part #2:
The Company One Keeps: Kaleem Caire’s Rightward Connections)
David Cagigal, the chair of Madison
Preparatory Academy’s
board of directors and vice chair of the Madison Urban League, made a
provocative suggestion following the Madison School Board’s December 19th
rejection of the proposal for the charter school. As the large crowd filtered
out of Memorial High’s auditorium that evening, he mentioned a different option
that supporters might take to win approval of the project.
 |
| David Cagigal |
While the Prep’s public champion, Kaleem Caire, floated the idea of opening
a private academy, the usually less vocal Cagigal recommended a different tack.
Speaking to the
Wisconsin State Journal, he suggested that the school’s supporters might urge Wisconsin
legislators to create a statewide charter school authorizing board as a way to
bypass School Board approval and help Madison Prep receive public funds.
Reporting Cagigal’s statement, the WSJ’s Mathew DeFour pointed out
that such a bill had already been introduced earlier in 2011. It was approved
by the Republican-dominated Joint Finance Committee in the spring, but has not
yet been scheduled for a final vote. The WSJ piece noted that charter
schools currently become eligible for public money only after they receive
approval from the school districts in which they are located. The proposed
legislation would do away with that and do much more.
 |
| Kaleem Caire |
Caire had emphatically stated how he was
“one
hundred percent in support of the charter bill” when he spoke before the
Republican-dominated Joint Finance Committee hearing on the bill last
March. His close associate
Cagigal clearly understood the
significance of the pending “school choice” legislation.
Previously, he helped develop electronic learning at Depaul
University.He then went on to become a director of information services involved with e-learning at
DeVry, Inc., the international education-for-profit corporation. The parent firm of a wide range of business and technical colleges and universities, Devry in recent years has moved into making acquisitions in the rapidly expanding field of online secondary education.
Cagigal most recently took a $500-a-day position as interim
director
of technology for the Dubuque Community School District.
The proposed “charter school reform” legislation that Caire has fully endorsed
and Cagigal urged the Prep’s supporters to get behind contains many aspects
that warrant some close examination.
The Proposals for “School Reform”
Still pending, the companion bills (Senate Bill 22/Assembly Bill 51) were
introduced in February and March 2011 by Republican State Assemblyman
Robin
Vos and co-sponsored in the Senate by
Luther
Olsen, a recipient of out-of-state recall campaign contributions from the
chairman of the anti-public school
Children First America. Olsen’s legislative accomplice,
Alberta
Darling, was the supposed author of SB 22. The companion bicameral
proposals would, among other things, entirely remove the charter school
approval process from locally elected school boards.
If enacted, the new legislation would create an appointed state body, the Charter School Authorizing Board (CSAB) that would have the power
to grant charters anywhere in Wisconsin,
even in communities where the local school board has turned down a
proposal.
The Capital Times’ Susan Troller honed in on the impending situation:
In the past, School Board denial of a charter agreement signaled the end of the line for a project. But a new GOP-backed piece of legislation creating a state authorizing board for charters could change that. In fact, it would upend Wisconsin’s long tradition of local control of schools, where authority rests primarily with school board officials elected by local taxpayers….
…[C]ritics say loss of such control, combined with Gov. Scott Walker’s massive budget cuts to schools, plus 18 years of strict revenue limits, would lead to financial ruin for some public school districts. They claim the legislation is unfair because it provides public money from the state’s general aid fund — at $7,775 per student — to start new independent charter schools, but eliminates any oversight role by locally elected school officials. The flow of money for these new charters would reduce the pot of money remaining for the states’ existing schools during already fiscally challenging times.
Observing the public hearings held before the legislatures’
Joint Finance Committee last March,
Ruth Conniff, political
correspondent for the
Progressive Magazine, observed that the measure
was a political maneuver to allow privatization of public education.
Under the initial proposal, later amended primarily because it entirely by-passed the Department of Public Instruction (a body authorized by Wisconsin’s constitution), the CSAB would have consisted of nine members, with three appointed by the governor, three by the senate majority leader, and three by the speaker of the assembly. (Presently, and for a now uncertain period, Scott Walker and the Brothers Fitzgerald.)
As amended, the Authorizing Board would include the state superintendent of public instruction and eight other members – with six appointed by the governor and two by the DPI superintendent. Among other powers, the proposed panel would be given the authority to grant charters for virtual (online) schools.
The new law would eliminate enrollment caps on existing charter schools and
expand the use of vouchers statewide. The changes in the law would provide
wealthy families access to thousands of dollars in state school aid once ostensibly
set aside for students from low income families. It also would weaken teacher
licensing requirements.
State funds that had previously gone to local districts would now leave
brick-and-mortar public schools, referred to as “government schools” by right
wing proponents of the legislation. Funding would pass into the hands of online
charter ventures or private and parochial schools operating from anywhere in
the state.
Under the new law, the CSAB could grant charter school “associations” the
ability to open more than one school, and would allow a charter school’s
governing body to enter into multiple contracts. Representatives of a number of
“non-profit” charter school ventures, certainly interested in the millions in
tax dollars annually allocated for public education, spoke before the Joint
Finance Committee hearing of the “expanded opportunities” promised by the new
legislation.
The Bill’s Origins
The Cap Times’ Troller noted that the proposed legislation had its origins
in a larger “school choice” movement which she described as an unusual coalition
of mainstream Republicans, tea party members and various liberal school
reformers. The movement’s supporters argue that charter schools would provide
dissatisfied families educational options and would force existing public
schools to improve through competition.
That movement for “school choice” has had a base of community support among
those legitimately concerned with city schools challenged by ever decreasing
state funding, public support, and largely racialized “achievement gaps.” That
grass roots concern, while providing popular backing for the movement, has not
led or propelled it, however.
The primary push for the expansion of voucher, charter and virtual schools
in Wisconsin and elsewhere has been part of a well-financed nationally
coordinated offensive – motivated by educational
entrepreneurs
and privatizers, as well as corporate conservatives eager to further
cripple teachers’ and other public sector unions.
Just as eager have been those who seek to shrink funding for public schools,
to reduce them to little more than temporary holding pens for the unchosen
majority not quite ready or old enough for low paying jobs, military service,
or the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
(Various supporters of “school reform” have argued that “school choice”
would help disrupt, if not halt the incarceration of youth of color. They have
ignored the fact that some of the same
foundations
and
think
tanks that promote “independent schools” have also played a key role in
accelerating the
expansion
of the prison population and the for-profit “prison industrial complex”.)
Virtual schools and privatized “choice” academies have also been viewed favorably
by those demanding “tax relief”; those long opposed to property tax levies and
spending for public education. The movement has included the ideologically motivated
arch conservatives who historically have been suspicious of public education,
viewed as the well-spring of subversive democratic demands.
Such for-profit education companies, part of an increasingly competitive
field, stand to benefit directly from brick-&-mortar schools staffed by
underpaid teachers or virtual “classrooms without walls”.
On Wisconsin
Robin Vos, who introduced the charter school reform bill in the State Assembly, happens to be
ALEC "State Chairman" for Wisconsin. Alberta Darling is also
a member of ALEC. She has had some direct dealings, some would even suggest
collusion, with former Wisconsin Republican political operatives
Scott Jensen and Brian Pleva who now work for the
American Federation for Children (AFC). An ALEC-affiliated association, the AFC promotes public school privatization, independent charter schools and the expansion of voucher programs. Its board, in 2011, was chaired by the right-wing billionaire
Betsy DeVos. Early AFC funding came from the
Wal-Mart heir,
John Walton. (For more on the AFC, Walton, and Devos, see: Ruff,
“The Company One Keeps…”)
Other Wisconsin conservative
politicos in addition to the formerly indicted Jensen have gravitated toward
the well-endowed national charter reform associations. In her coverage of the State
Joint Finance Committee’s hearings on SB 22 last March, the
Progressive
Magazine’s
Conniff
pointed out that another Republican top operative,
James Bender,
the former chief of staff for the Assembly majority leader Jeff Fitzgerald, had
left his government post to become president and a chief lobbyist for
School
Choice Wisconsin.
The National
Effort
A broad network of primarily conservative foundations, think
tanks and charter school associations have directly and indirectly financed and
influenced the debates on “school reform” at all levels. They not only have
designed school privatization legislation introduced at a number of state
houses and actively lobbied for it. More significantly perhaps, they have been
largely successful in defining the terms of the public discussion.
Leading figures and activists in the movement actually come together on
occasion to map strategy and tactics and learn from each other. For example, the
anti-union consultant
Richard
Berman, head of an outfit called the “
Center
for Union Facts,” speaking at an October, 2010
Philanthropy
Roundtable conclave on education reform, outlined a clear strategy.
Rather than “intellectualize ourselves into the [education reform] debate…is
there a way that we can get into it at an emotional level?” Berman asked.
“Emotions will stay with people longer than concepts.” He then answered his own
question: “
We
need to hit on fear and anger. Because fear and anger stays with people
longer. And how you get the fear and anger is by reframing the problem.” Running
in places like Washington, DC,
and New Jersey, Berman’s glossy
ads have portrayed teachers unions as schoolyard bullies. One spot seemed to
compare teachers to child abusers.
While Berman could be discounted as a movement extremist, other “school
choice” activists have understood the force of emotional appeals.
Conniff
notes what she describes as a mantra of buzzwords that have popped up over and over again across
the country – the talk of providing schools and communities the “right tools”
they need; the framing of the push for charters and vouchers entirely as an
“issue of social justice”; and a “new civil rights movement,” The use of the
term “flexibility” comes up and there’s a constant refrain regarding
"reforms" that will "empower" parents and students and
improve educational “opportunity”.
Some readily dismiss efforts to illustrate a relationship
between the Madison effort to open
an “autonomous”, largely unaccountable charter school and state and national
initiatives. Direct ties are waved off as little more than attempts to
discredit the movement through “guilt-by-association” and “conspiracy theories”.
Those making such out-of-hand dismissals, however, are either unaware or would
prefer to disregard those common grounds of interest and shared perspectives
that unite a seemingly disparate spectrum of “school choice” advocates.
One part of that shared vantage point has to do with an
ingrained belief in the ability of the free unbridled market to solve all of
society’s ills. There are those who go so far as to argue that “school choice”
would induce improvements in public schools since they would then have to
compete with the chartered and privatized ventures that would in fact further
siphon off dwindling state funds.
Another shared assumption has to do with the negative role
of the state; that it indeed should provide funds for educational “choice,” but
remain limited in its ability to regulate, license and oversee what goes on in
the schools.
There also is a common belief in technical and technological
solutions for what ails the public schools, shared across a broader spectrum.
The accelerating push for virtual online voucher and charter schools with
reduced numbers of in-house teachers and kids increasingly schooled via
computers and proprietary programs owned
by education-for-profit outfits -- that already appears to be the income
generating wave of the future.
Madison’ schools
cannot be viewed in a vacuum, though the promoters of charter solutions and
“choice” primarily frame the issue as a local one. The disparities in
achievement, based on race and class inequities, are national in scope and
cannot be laid at the feet of some local “liberal establishment” or the
failings of this school board or that union or those teachers. (One merely has
to enter
“closing
the achievement gap” in any search engine to gain an immediate sense of the
nationwide concern.)
Whatever it Takes?
Susan Troller’s
Capital
Times piece pointed out that the Madison Prep project could still become an independent
reality if Alberta Darling’s bill eventually passes, and a newly appointed state
board of political appointees approves the proposal. The resulting $7,775 per
pupil state allocation would fall well below the amount which the Urban League
says is needed to operate the school, however. Independent, the Academy could become
eligible for federal funds from a variety of entitlement programs for its
students. Troller also noted there would be plenty of opportunities for raise
funds, including those from well-endowed national organizations that may favor
Madison Prep’s approach.
One of the slogans Kaleem Caire, David Cagigal and the rest
of the Madison Prep’s development team have used throughout the campaign for
their charter school experiment has been “
Whatever
it takes.” Not giving up entirely on the idea of funding through the MMSD
and conceivably looking toward a more favorable future vote on their charter
proposal, they’ve advanced one of their own as a candidate for a seat on the
School Board.
Undeterred and committed, Madison Prep’s promoters also are
seeking patrons and donors, locally and elsewhere. Recently, there’s been talk
of
“venture
philanthropy” alongside ongoing discussions on how to improve the school
district as a whole.
The Prep’s advocates now, too, are looking toward the passage of the “charter school reform” bill, no longer as certain as it was. That will allow them to bypass the need for Madison School Board approval as they draw funds from a district still responsible for the thousands of kids remaining in the city’s schools. “Whatever it takes,” remains the refrain. “Whatever it takes.”
