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A new investigation into the charter schools run by Joe Biden's brother Frank, a self-proclaimed "PT Barnum" of charters, raises interesting implications for the Obama Administration's educational policy known as Race to the Top. As many, including the U.S. Department of Education which oversees RTTT, have pointed out, states that embrace charter schools are winning the race. As DOE materials put it, "President Obama has called upon states to encourage the expansion of charter schools. A network of innovative and high-achieving charter schools can be an important part of a state's school reform effort. However, charter schools are facing significant obstacles to expansion in too many states." Is this an entirely disinterested reform effort? Many others have raised concerns about the neoliberalism inherent in RTTT, which shapes the dominance of private business interests over common public goods. For example, in a recent article two researchers from

The following is the second post in a two-part series by Robin Rogers, associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). For more about Robin and her first post, click here . Before I jump into policy experiments, I want to reflect on the enthusiastic response that I received from last week’s Part One of Billionaire Education Policy . If I could summarize the response with one word, it would be relief. A lot of people who work in education, philanthropy, and government are wary of the rise in billionaire policymaking, but are reticent in voicing their concerns. Perhaps this is fear of retaliation -- what Edward Skloot calls the “ Brass-Knuckles philanthropy ”of the Gates Foundation. But I see another, more heartening piece to this puzzle. People in the philanthropic and advocacy communities don’t want to harm the mission of philanthropy. We fear that revealing the pitfalls of billionaire philanthropy might have some u

The following is a guest posting by my colleague and friend Robin Rogers, associate professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). She is the author of “Why Philanthro-policymaking Matters” in The Politics of Philanthrocapitali sm, Society 2011, The Welfare Experiments: Politics and Policy Evaluation (Stanford University Press, 2004) and numerous articles on politics and social policy. Rogers served as a Congressional Fellow on Women and Public Policy during welfare reform, as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at Yale University, was a visiting fellow at Princeton University. She is writing a book on philanthro-policymaking, Billionaire Philanthropy . This is the first of two posts in a mini-series on the Education Optimists. The word “policy” makes us think of politicians and bureaucrats. But what happens when powerful policy-makers aren’t elected or appointed? Today, billionaires are shaping education policy in t

Liam and I were out enjoying an evening of dinner and a movie, when some astonishing news came over Twitter : the Gates Foundation just made a grant to ALEC . Yes, more than $375,000 to the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization my husband has called a self-proclaimed "free market, limited government" non-profit, which is really just a spout of Republican policy ideas . They push an agenda "focused on pet approaches to privatizing education, firing teachers and enabling home schooling that likely have little bearing on student outcomes and that have little basis in research." As a fellow Gates grantee, colored me disconcerted. As a professor in public higher education in Wisconsin, where ALEC has worked to intimidate the scholarship of faculty like Bill Cronon , color me outraged. Tomorrow, watch this blog for what my colleague Robin Rogers of Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York has to say about the educationa

Hot off the presses, recent news that has me scratching my head, or otherwise up in arms... (1) Raising tuition in expensive cities in the midst of an economic crisis. Yep, that's what CUNY thinks is the right thing to do. Hat tip to Tom Hilliard, who pointed me to this incredible inane comment from a CUNY administrator: "What's really driving some of the issues here is the concern about debt and debt upon graduation, and our students as a whole take out little debt, for obvious reasons. The tuition's affordable for those who can pay." Um, yeah. (2) The White House wades into the quagmire of university admissions, promoting creative thinking on how to achieve diversity . In one sense, just in time, since it sure looks like the Supreme Court is going to end the use of race in admissions by June. On the other hand, I wish the Administration would issue some cautions about how criteria like first-generation status and high school attended are hardly clean prox

Another new Education Optimists series-- this one is focused on how to reform our colleges and universities to become more student-friendly. First up, seg fees. Last night as I observed my Twitter feed, I noticed a tweet from a student journalist about a particular aspect of UW System policy on segregated fees. According to System financial rule F50 , in order for an organization to receive seg fees, it must "require that all leadership positions in the organization be held by students enrolled on a fee-paying basis for at least half-time; as used in this policy, "half-time" status means enrollment for a minimum of six credits as an undergraduate student, and enrollment for a minimum of four credits as a graduate student, except that for UW-Colleges students "half-time" status means enrollment for a minimum of three credits." This strikes me as a good example of a well-intentioned policy with unintended consequences. The purpose of the policy may be to e