Polis downplays many benefits of education, promotes corporate-backed job preparedness
As the 2024-25 chair of the National Governors Association, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, selected K-12 education as the priority of the NGA’s yearlong initiative. Titled “Let’s Get Ready! Educating all Americans for Success,” the project defined its purpose in its call to action: Identify solutions to address the belief that schools are not preparing graduates adequately for the work force today.
The initiative had support from philanthropic foundations and companies that promote technology-related solutions, school choice, data-driven accountability, and other neoliberal market-based reforms in public education. One of the supporters, Stand Together Trust, founded by Charles Koch, provided millions to groups that back charter schools and other “alternatives to public education.”
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Many of the “project team” members were involved with organizations that prioritized “redesigning” the public education system. Polis has been a longtime supporter of expanding charter schools and workforce training as ways to address deficits in student outcomes, and eight of his staff worked on this project. Project team member Jen Walmer was on Polis’ staff in his first administration, and she worked previously as the Colorado director of Democrats for Education reform, which continues to call for Democrats to support school choice and charters.
The project team also included representatives from Watershed Advisors, All4Ed, Savi Advising, and the Urban Institute. Watershed’s CEO, Kunjan Narechania, was the CEO of the all-charter Recovery School District in New Orleans. Several Watershed and All4Ed staff either worked or trained in the Chiefs for Change program, which Jeb Bush founded to promote charter school models. All4Ed promotes online learning in both charter and district schools.
Savi Advising’s founder, Archana Patel, worked for KIPP charter schools and was the senior director at the Broad Academy, a training ground for school leaders to promote charter schools. The Urban Institute published research that downplayed the effects caused by charter schools in exacerbating school segregation. The Institute received $11 million from the Walton Family Foundation and other foundations to identify “measures of students’ skills and competencies in prekindergarten (PK) through 12th grade that drive economic mobility.”
Polis chaired seven “convening” sessions to determine the project’s outcomes. Featured “experts” at the sessions included Eva Moskowitz, founder of Success Academy Charter schools in New York; Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a computer-based learning system; Geoffrey Canada, founder of Harlem Children’s Zonecharter schools; John B. King, founder of the Uncommon schools charter chain; Angela Duckworth, co-founder with Dave Levin (KIPP charter school chain founder) of the now defunct Character Lab; and Steve Levitt, author of Freakonomics and a promoter of personalized AI tutoring.
The final recommendations focused on four areas: academic foundations, workforce preparedness, civic engagement and lifelong well-being. The report offered a myriad of strategies to accomplish these goals: data tracking from early childhood through high school for work readiness, state dashboards, more testing and apprenticeships, increased use of technology, data analytics, performance management, and personalized learning. During the sessions, there were multiple examples of how to use private capital to facilitate desired outcomes.
July 25, Polis presented the final report to the governors, and he invited Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to share her views. McMahon commented that a “return to shop classes” would serve some students better for their future job opportunities. She stated, “We have to rethink how we’re doing education … from beginning to end the goal is to get people into a productive job.”
Charter schools were not directly highlighted in the final recommendations, yet McMahon stressed that the governors should open charter and micro schools, asserting that “states who do open more charter schools … see more and more progress being made in education.” McMahon also reassured Polis that Title V fundingwould be increased by $60 million to $500 million to expand and sustain more charter schools.
Two days after the release of this report, the National Center for Charter School Accountability published the first of a three-part report detailing a nationwide decline in the number of charter schools since 2020. This new report questions the need for expanding charter schools considering their declining enrollment and financial difficulties.
While workforce preparation is an important part of schooling, defining education primarily as a pipeline for economic productivity in the marketplace ignores the broader purposes of education. The Polis report neglects to focus on the essential role educators provide in developing positive relationships with students, and the benefits students gain through an emphasis on critical thinking, creativity, collaborative learning and exposure to the arts, social sciences and the humanities. Focusing primarily on charter schools as the answer to America’s problems in education negates the findings that 70 percent of parents are satisfied with their local public schools, as well as the research that charter schools have not proven to be the answer to America’s education problems.
Will the NGA plans for “success” for America’s students become a reality?
Given the current economic and political climate from the federal government, significant traction on these ideas is uncertain. Chester Finn, the conservative, pro-choice voice with the Fordham Institute, said the report had some “good stuff,” but it also has “no real focus.” Last fall, Kent McGuire, education program director at the Hewlett Foundation, and former charter school educator Matt Wilka, described how “today’s youngest citizens … have been particularly ill-served by neoliberalism,” with its emphasis on “individual choice, standards, and competition.”
Polis and McMahon seem to be promoting their own versions of neoliberal corporate educational solutions to enhance the private sector while ignoring the negative effects and the limitations of past reforms.
