CHARTERS KILL TRUE CHOICE
By
Charlotte Iserbyt
September 9, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
The
End of Representative Government...
...The Beginning of Global "Governance"
Government of the people, by the people, for the people?! According to Reed Hastings of Netflix you only have 20-30 years of freedom left! Get out to vote now, because you won't have it in the future.
While many conservatives are out in the political world opposing the CRISIS of Common Core, few realize that the pre-digested, pre-determined SOLUTIONS being proposed and implemented by the powers-that-be (what Dr. Dennis Cuddy refers to as the "Power Elite") are out to eliminate grassroots America. Bye-bye grasssroots. Bye-bye elected representatives. Hello controlled "governance."
We already know from the New Orleans experiment that the charter parents are undergoing intensive re-education so that they will "buy into" a new structure of governance, which is top-down control. (read "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of the Village" for details). Now we know a little more of the story. Reed Hastings tells all.
You can read the complete transcript of the Reed Hastings address to the California Charter Schools Association at my blog: Below are some key excerpts.
Netflix
CEO Reed Hastings
Keynote Speaker, CCSA Conference 2014
California Charter Schools Association
Published on Youtube Mar 4, 2014
Watch
Reed Hasting by clicking here.
“Charter schools are very challenging….All of you are warriors every day as leaders of charter schools, teachers of charter schools, advocates of charter schools. It's very hard work; an everyday grind. And, then you get to come to this conference….
“But, it does give me a chance to talk with many of you and with your colleagues around the country in trying to understand more about this puzzle of charter schools; how do we succeed politically, why is it important, why do different constituents fight with us? Why do school districts have such a difficult time? And so I thought I would start by sharing some of those reflections with you. It starts with a love affair. So, I fell in love 14 years ago with Roy Romer. Roy Romer was the former governor of Colorado, a very sophisticated politician. He basically volunteered to become the superintendent of Los Angeles Public School District in June of 2000. There was great excitement about how he was able to galvanize the philanthropic community, the political community, the business community, teachers. He had a real touch for people and for 6 years…. Then what happened was the school board changed enough that he got thrown out!…"
Roy Romer, former governor of Colorado, is a familiar name to those of us who opposed Outcome-Based Education 25 years ago. In his platform of the National Governors Association, he chaired the Education Commission of the States, and worked to further the agenda of education reform. In case the reader isn't up to date on Romer, here is his latest bio, which indicates he is still a major change agent in education reform circles, heavily financed by the Power Elite:
“On June 7, 2000, he became Superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he served for six years....On April 25, 2007, Roy Romer began his service as the chairman and lead spokesman for Strong American Schools, a nonprofit project… funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad foundation….” (Source)
Reed Hastings continued with his remarks, disparaging the election process. He doesn’t like the changeover in leadership each time there is an election, and he doesn’t like board members who keep promises to their constituents:
"Well, it started me thinking – think about how hard it is to win election in LAUSD. It's a big deal (right?) to win election to the school board! Well, are you going to win election and then not try to create change? No! You've got a promise to your constituents…. So, what happens in school districts which have big contested elections…. your large districts have very contested elections.
“So, inevitably, superintendent changes rapidly. So, in the last eight years we've had 3 different ones in LA Unified and that's not unique. That's typical across the country. What happens then is the school district has a very hard time making long-term plans, making long-term changes because the school board is rapidly changing – so the superintendent changes, so the staff changes. That is the essence of why school districts cannot get to sustained excellence.
“School districts are filled with good people trying to do good work; but, the governance of a school district is relatively chaotic, especially in large urban districts where elections are expensive to get to win. Because of that turnover, they basically oscillate instead of improve….
“…So, this political process is very disheartening because it makes it very hard for a school district to do longterm change….
“Well, that all comes down to governance.A charter school is generally non-profit and the board-members pick the new board-members. It's called "self-perpetuating governance." They're not elected by the general public. Because the board-members pick the new board-members, when you join the board of a non-profit you join to help. You're not necessarily going to create change, you didn't have to run an expensive election to get there….
“So, that non-profit self-perpetuating governance is very healthy….So, for-profits are basically self-perpetuating, board-members pick new board-members and then the organizations compete."
What is Reed Hastings really saying here? Well, he is using a classic technique for creating CHANGE via manipulation. He is downgrading our elected representative form of government by citing all of the PROBLEMS with it that he can think to list. Many of us would agree that there are problems. However, he is saying that citizen-elected school boards are not "healthy." He is talking about what a disaster it is when DULY ELECTED LOCAL school boards, representing citizens in each school district, have changeover each election. What?!
Local citizens may not LIKE how any duly elected school board member acts, and so they vote to throw them out of office the next election. This is America's representative form of government. Messy it may be, but it is freedom. This is the EMPOWERMENT of American citizens. WE have a voice. WE have a vote. WE can go to the polling booth and CHOOSE who we want to represent us. WE have TRUE CHOICE!
But in the Reed Hastings universe, notice what he calls "healthy." SELF-PERPETUATING boards!!! Self-anointed, self-appointed, self-elected boards that act like good-old-boys clubs and pass the baton to the next board member WITHOUT any VOTE! He says that a charter school's board of directors gets to choose the next members of the board. This means that you the PARENT and YOU the CITIZEN have absolutely NO CHOICE in the matter! Even if your children are enrolled in the charter school, you have NO CHOICE over who gets appointed to the board.
The implications are staggering. Charter school "choice" is an utter sham!
Read on. Reed Hastings is talking about a top-down military-style control organization. What's so good about the military? "Controlling their training," he says. This is "essentially the charter school way." Wow....
"If you think about it, it's also true in the military branches…. So, this model of the army controlling their training…. And that's essentially the charter school way.
“Think about churches. The cardinals pick the pope, the pope picks the cardinals – another form of self-perpetuating governance….
“So, the fundamental problem with school districts is not their fault. The fundamental problem is they don't get to control their board. And, the importance of the charter school movement is to evolve America from a system where governance is constantly changing….”
Next, Reed Hastings mentions New Orleans. Of course! The New Orleans charter school experiment which we've written about oftenon my blog. (Read my post: “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of the Village.”) No voter representation. No true freedom of "choice." Everyone is part of the charter "hub" system. And John Ayers and his "choice" buddies are busily re-training the parents to accept this new form of "governance." (Read our blog post: "Using Crisis to Control 'Choice'.") Hastings continued.
"We're getting little glimpses of this when we look ahead, when we look at New Orleans which is now about 90% charters. The overall results in New Orleans across the whole city is amazing! They're rapidly rising much faster than anywhere else in Louisiana and soon going to pass the state average which is amazing given the demographics considering the state. So, it's very impressive. And again, that's because they pioneered this form where nearly all the schools are charters, organized into networks of all different sizes, some single schools, some big networks and they all learn from each other. But, the most important thing is that they constantly get better. Every year they're getting better because they have stable governance. They don't have an elected school board. That's the real tough issue here."
What a stark admission! He says that the self-anointed, self-appointed unelected CHARTER school board is better! Better for WHOM? The citizens, who have just lost their voice? The voter who has just lost his true grassroots power? The children who now have an unelected board governing their daily lives – people who are NOT accountable to their parents, not accountable to the local citizens? Not accountable to ANYONE but themselves?!! Really? (Read my blog post: "The 3-Legged Stool of School 'Choice'.") Reed Hastings is openly talking about getting “rid of school boards” below, and he is telling charter school operators that they have their political work cut out for them – to take over – literally. He said:
"Now, if we go to the general public and we say, "Here's an argument of why you should get rid of school boards," of course, no one's going to go for that. School boards have been an iconic part of America for 200 years…. And, the work ahead is really hard because we're at 8% of students in California whereas, in New Orleans they're at 90% [of charter schools]. So, we have a lot of catch up to do….
“So, school districts would like to learn the practices. They… are prisoner to their governance, to the elected school board changing so rapidly.
“So, what we have to do is just to continue to grow and grow….It's going to take 20 or 30 years to get to 90% charter kids. And the answer is, "Yeah, it is. It's going to take 20 to 30 years."
“And, if we succeed over the next 20 or 30 years, that will be one of the fastest rates of change ever seen around the world for a large system. It's hard! (applause)….
“But, we are making great progress. Again, it's not because the people in school districts are bad. Most of them we want to pull into the charter school movement where they can see what a great public school is that doesn't have the chaos inflicted by the rapid turnover of a local school board.”
Like many of the corporate management gurus, Reed Hastings is a futurist. He seems to hold to a utopian view of the future where all children will perform perfectly in a perfectly controlled system. But all of these utopian management types, the father of whom was Peter Drucker, also advocate for a new form of governance. In reality, in its actual workings, this form of governance (which is global in scope) is totalitarian. It is a top-down management control structure, driven by performance-based objectives, with pre-set standards and criteria, along with continuous quality improvement requirements and assessments. Those who do not perform up to par are penalized. Those who conform to the system are rewarded. One can see the beginnings of this onerous system in the No Child Left Behind Act. (Read my blog post: "Peter Drucker's Role in Education Reform.")
Below is where Hastings explains how you lose your right to vote. Note Hastings' convoluted history. He could stand to go back in the classroom himself. In fact, this raises an interesting question. Just WHAT are charter schools teaching students about the American REPRESENTATIVE form of government? Are they even teaching the American Constitution? Somebody needs to start investigating charter school curriculum.
Hastings presents skewed history in order to make his case that the VOTE must GO! He arrogantly introduces "Our idea" – which is the charter school industry's "authority and regulation and accountability" as a newer, better, improved model of governance that should replace democracy. Democracy is old-fashioned and obsolete. He likens charter governance to a "rocketship." He seems to be condescendingly saying, "We elites are all so modern and high tech, we have evolved to the point of having a higher form of governance now, you poor peons.... give up now. or sometime in the next 20-30 years we will take it away from you...." Note how Hastings disparages representative government in his concluding remarks:
"Now, some ideas like this take a long time. They can be frustrating, and unless you put it in perspective, it can seem like it's very daunting. So, let's go back about 400 years ago. At the time in Europe was "divine rights of kings." That was the overall theory; kings had the divine right to rule and that gave them their moral authority. Then along came a number of thinkers like that nutty John Locke, a Scottish minister, talking about the basis; the legitimacy of government was derived from the consent of the governed. That was a radical idea at the time when you had divine right of kings!... And then, in the American Revolution, finally, you have a major nation with democracy!
“So, the thing is done after 200 years of thinking, finally we have democracy! Consent of the governed!... So, 400 years on a very simple idea, the consent of the governed, one person and one vote….
“Our idea is a little more complicated;the chartering authority and regulation and accountability. So really, when I think about the last 20 years, in 1994 there was just a dozen charter schools–10,000 students. The progress that we've made between 1994, 2004 and 2014, it's like a rocketship compared to even basic ideas like democracy taking hold. So, you all should feel incredible about the achievement in this movement. It is hard!...
“We get to work together on this epic mission for the next 20 or 30 years to grow charter school capacity…. And we get to do that in, basically, one lifetime – 20 years past, 30 years to go! Much better than having to wait 400 years!
“So I just want to thank all of you for the incredible work you do. It's a great journey and we're going to do it together, next 10 years, next 20, next 30, because WE ARE RELENTLESS!..."
Had enough of Reed Hastings' vision of the future yet? Bone up on the facts. Read the following blog posts on abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com which will bring you up to speed on the entire problem with charter schools and phony "choice."
•
Charter
Corruption
• Parents
as Customers?
• "WAIVERS
for FAVORS"
• The
Camel's Nose Under the Tent
• "Birds
of a Feather Flock Together"
• Charter
Schools for "Dummies"
• Glenn
Beck's Action Plan
• IF
GLENN BECK IS SUCH A GREAT RESEARCHER, HOW’D HE MISS JOHN AYERS?!?
• Facts
regarding Tax-funded School "Choice" - School
"Choice" For Dummies
• Sen.
Appel's Most Alarming Admission
• The
3Cs of Destruction
• TALKING
OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF THEIR MOUTHS?
• SCHOOL
"CHOICE" IS AMERICA’S TROJAN HORSE
Thanks to 3D Research Group member Chey Simonton, we have the following transcript for abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com readers. Thanks also to The People LLC and Sarah Leslie for their research assistance.
� 2014 Charlotte T. Iserbyt - All Rights Reserved
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Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms. Iserbyt is a former school board director in Camden, Maine and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM) from 1978 to 2000. She has also served in the American Red Cross on Guam and Japan during the Korean War, and in the United States Foreign Service in Belgium and in the Republic of South Africa.
Iserbyt is a speaker and writer, best known for her 1985 booklet Back to Basics Reform or OBE: Skinnerian International Curriculum and her 1989 pamphlet Soviets in the Classroom: America's Latest Education Fad which covered the details of the U.S.-Soviet and Carnegie-Soviet Education Agreements which remain in effect to this day. She is a freelance writer and has had articles published in Human Events, The Washington Times, The Bangor Daily News, and included in the record of Congressional hearings.
Website: www.deliberatedumbingdown.com
Website: www.americandeception.com
E-Mail: dumbdown00@yahoo.com
