EduShyster here breaks the story of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s secret trip to Boston.
It must have been secret because, she reports, not a word appeared in the Boston media.
He used his time in Boston to tout “no excuses” charter schools and a “turnaround” school that demonstrated the great success of his grand theory: Fire everyone and the school miraculously improves. But, as EduShyster points out, he did not visit the schools where the same tactic produced failure, not success.
EduShyster points out that the Boston charters enroll 12% of the city’s children but collect 50% of state aid.
Then he toured Worcester, where he was greeted by anti-Common Core protestors.
In Worcester, the school board has courageously given parents the right to opt their children out of PARCC pilot testing–a move opposed by the state. The school board was not invited to meet Arne or even informed of his stealth visit.
Arne ended his Massachusetts tour with a visit to the Match Graduate School of Education, that unique institution that has no scholars or researchers; its sole purpose is to train teachers for no-excuses charter schools. Arne showed them lots of love, not mentioning the high attrition rate of their graduates.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
found this on PRWeb.com
quote: “Match also guarantees the quality of the teachers it trains to the principals who hire their graduates, as well as guarantees jobs to the teacher residents in the program. Match Teacher Residents in 2012 will pay just $4,000 in tuition, and only after they’re employed. Hiring schools pay Match a finder’s fee of $6,000 for the ability to hire a Match-trained teacher, which keeps the tuition low so that teachers will not incur debt while earning their degree.
Match’s Graduate School of Education was recently featured in the Harvard Business School (HBS) Alumni Bulletin. CEO Stig Leschly is an HBS alum and former HBS lecturer on Entrepreneurship in Education Reform. Leschly is a successful entrepreneur who created Exchange.com, which was acquired by Amazon.com in 1999.”
description of the MATCH program in the Harvard Business Review (entrepreurs in education)
quote: “At Match Education in Boston, CEO Stig Leschly (MBA 1997/JD 1998)—a former HBS lecturer who taught the MBA elective Entrepreneurship in Education Reform—leads an organization that runs charters that use extensive one-on-one tutoring to make learning gains. Match schools with 250 students will typically include 20 teachers and 50 tutors, with students spending five hours a day in classes and two hours in small-group or individual tutoring.
In addition to operating charter schools, Match Education won permission from the state in 2012 to grant master’s degrees in education. During the first year of the two-year program, prospective teachers work as tutors in Match classrooms, providing one-on-one or two-on-one attention. They also attend intensive training sessions on Friday and Saturday, which involve traditional coursework and classroom simulations. In their second year, the fledgling teachers have full-time teaching jobs elsewhere, and are granted their diplomas only if they complete their coursework and deliver classroom results. Master’s candidates pay $4,000 in tuition when they’ve obtained the degree. Employers, meanwhile, pay Match a finder’s fee of $6,000 to get linked to the second-year teachers.
“Having revenue from the employers is a kind of accountability that’s good for us,” says Leschly. “And the program is success-based: The master’s students pay us only after the second year, when they get their degrees.”
Jean, it is an outrage that Match was accredited as a graduate school of education that grants Master’s Degrees. It is an institution that trains charter school teachers to raise test scores. It has no scholars, no researchers, no courses in child development, no philosophy or history or economics or politics of education, no studies of testing, in other words, none of the scholarship and research that are typical of a graduate school. It is akin to a trade school where you learn typing or accounting, and the employer pays a finder’s fee (in that sense, like TFA, where employers pay a finder’s fee). These are fake MAs.
What association granted the accreditation for this pseudo-school, Diane? I think we need to speak with the people responsible for this travesty.
Something tells me that there is a backstory here—and that if we “follow the breadcrumbs” we’ll see some sort of “Privatizer Network” connection, maybe involving back channel dealings with TFA, or the DOE, or the Governor’s office in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or the accreditation agency engaging in very dubious behavior.
Does anyone else have any insights here? This is something we should be emailing some reporters about in Boston, Worcester, or elsewhere and have them look into it.
Something stinks. And it’s not from rotten fish.
Puget Sound Parent,
Read here about Match and Relay “graduate” schools of education, which are pseudo-graduate schools. https://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/26/the-debate-continues-re-match-relay-graduate-schools-of-education/
“EduShyster points out that the Boston charters enroll 12% of the city’s children but collect 50% of state aid.”
Is that accurate? How is that possible???
Most schools are funded by a mix of federal, state, and local tax revenues. Because of this, the statement about the percentage of state aid does not have much meaning because 1) we don’t know how important state aid is to schools in Boston (in my state the relatively wealthy urban districts do not recieve much state aid compared to the poor rural districts, for example) and 2) we don’t know how much of the locally raised revenue goes to charter schools.
I have not been able to easily find up to date figures on the amount spent per student at traditional public schools, district run charters, and privately run charters in Boston. Does anyone have a good source?
I understand how school funding works. I just can’t imagine in any scenario how Boston charter schools collect 50% of state aid.
What if they are only financed through the state, with no local funding at all?
Commonwealth charters in MA are only funded through the state. The state takes an estimate of what the local funding would be and gives charters their share. This amount is then deducted from what local districts would get from the state. According to MA DOE 2014 data, most districts receive approximately 7% from the feds, 54% from local taxes, and 39% from the state. Inner-city TPS probably have a slightly different revenue setup.
Eight years ago, funding was a problem for charters. In fact, TPS probably received a little more than charters back then. in 2006, it was estimated that charters received less than 10% compared to their TPS counterparts (I didn’t count the 7% for teacher retirement since teachers in charters do not contribute to the state system). In Boston, it was 7%. Since 2011, the balance has shifted in large urban areas and TPS in these areas are now receiving less than charters.
The problem with the MA system comes into play when more charters open up in a single area and they eat into the facility funds district schools receive from the state. TPS must use this money to pay for facilities: upkeep, improvements, and bills. This is what is currently happening in Boston.
The state is aware of this problem and has devised a charter reimbursement system that is supposed to reimburse TPS with a portion of their lost tuition funds and 100% of the facility funds. However, the state has not funded their part of the agreement here. This means that TPS in the urban areas are being strangled of their facilities state income.
Thanks for the information. Do you know how Horace Mann charter schools are funded?
HMC are part of a district’s budget. All funds are funneled through the municipality or district of their origin. They are unionized. And teachers must be part of their founding.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/tech_advisory/03_1.html
They are not high performing charters. However, they offer a way out for schools to be still part of a district while not meeting AYP. Teachers are free to experiment. The vast majority work with their district. There have been no incidents of corruption and hardly any skimming. And it is probably the closest thing to what charters should look like, IMHO.
Thanks again. When you say Horace Mann charter schools are not high performing charters, what do you mean?
Most of their population comes from the community or district in which it resides. The make-up of the school resembles what the school would have had if it were not a charter. They work with the district on application practices. They have their equal share of all student populations for their mission and from the district. Some have special programs (such as health pathways/careers; overaged high schoolers and drop outs; or special education). Most perform a little better than their hosting district–some are about equal or a little lower– but they obviously do not do as well as the chain Commonwealths which engage in shady application practices, skimming, and/or test prep.
In most cases, they function like magnets, but they have a little more autonomy in their allotment of money . They come into existence because they have either faced the specter of not meeting AYP or they are offering a choice that the district does not offer (but would like to try).
It seems like Horace Mann charters are a way for the school district to free themselves from state regulations. Is that correct?
Yes and no. I have read that a few came into existence for this reason. I have also read that a few came into existence because teachers and administrators noticed a niche that could be filled.
If you look at the few that exist, you’ll notice that for about half your point would hold true. For the other half, it wouldn’t.
Charters come in all shapes, sizes, and reasons. Some are there to make a positive difference. Some are there to avoid transparency. Some are there to shift blame. And some are there to rob us blind. It is a mistake to think that choice only comes in a flavor pleasing to you.
Shyster, I love the article. It gave me chills to see how much Arne cares for the children of Mass. and is spreading the love to the junky charter schools. I’ll bet his children are first in line to enroll in the next charter that opens that will have 50% staff turnover and virtually no supplies. I read where he said that 4 out of 10 Mass children will need remedial courses when they go to college. The magic spread around at the charters eliminates that problem. YEAH RIGHT!!!!!! They prob. have 9 out of 10 of their grads take remedial classes. These schools can’t keep qualified teachers so can you imagine what the classrooms are like???? What an absolute joke! The race to the bottom of the wine box continues!!!!!