Governor Andrew Cuomo famously declared himself to be the students’ lobbyist.
Yet he frequently advocates policies that are not in the best interest of students.
If he truly wants to advocate for students, he should spend a day with Arthur Goldstein in his high school classroom in Queens. Arthur could help Governor Cuomo. He could help him understand what students really need. And that would make Governor Cuomo a better advocate for students, as he hopes to be.
January 18, 2013 5:35pm | By Ted Cox, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
(DNAinfo/Ted Cox)
CHICAGO — Education-reform groups, including the president of a Pilsen Local School Council, have filed a formal complaint with the state against the UNO Charter Schools Network.
Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, and Rosemary Sierra, president of the Pilsen Academy LSC, filed the complaint in Chicago Thursday asking Illinois Executive Inspector General Ricardo Meza to probe UNO’s school finances.
The complaint charges that the United Neighborhood Organization, a Hispanic community group since the 1980s, has overleveraged its charter schools and is using more than $70 million in state-approved tax-exempt bonds in part to pay off private loans rather than fund education.
“I wondered what they were doing with all that money,” Woestehoff said Friday. “We found that they’re very overextended in their debt.”
The complaint cited $17.3 million in bonds for UNO and the Noble Charter Schools arranged through the Illinois Finance Authority in 2006. The IFA approved another $15.8 million in bonds for UNO in 2007 and an additional $35.9 million in 2011, which Woestehoff suggested went in part to pay interest on a reported $65 million loan UNO arranged with the help of Ald. Edward Burke (14th) in the darkest days of the financial collapse in 2008.
According to official nonprofit filings by UNO Charter Schools in 2011, it posted $69.6 million in overall assets and $71.2 million in liabilities for a net debt of $1.7 million. It claimed $61.9 million in mortgages and notes owed to third parties, with $2.9 million in interest paid for the year.
UNO has 13 charters in the Chicago Public Schools, and 12 received funding increases in the 2013 budget for a total outlay of $55.6 million. That’s tied directly to school attendance, but Woestehoff suggested that’s part of the problem, that UNO uses students as “collateral” in its loans.
A Standard & Poor’s report in September 2011 gave the school bonds a BBB- rating, warning of “considerable growth risk with two schools opening.” It made clear that UNO’s ability to repay was based on school population.
“That money they’re getting that’s supposed to be for children is being used to pay their debt,” Woestehoff charged. “That doesn’t seem like a healthy situation.”
Asked to comment, UNO spokesman Ray Quintanilla invited media to visit the construction site of a new UNO high school on the South Side on Tuesday. “We will be happy to expand on other concrete measures UNO has taken to address student overcrowding at that time,” he added by text.
Ald. Daniel Solis (25th) is an UNO co-founder, and the agency has abundant political ties.
As a nonprofit agency, UNO is not allowed to play a role in political campaigns, but Chief Executive Officer Juan Rangel has skirted that by saying he makes endorsements as a private citizen, not as an UNO representative. He was co-chairman of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s campaign in 2011, and he backed Burke’s brother, Dan, in his state representative campaign against Rudy Lozano, Jr., with Rangel citing Lozano’s opposition to charter schools.
According to 2011 non-profit filings, Rangel has a salary of $207,000, and UNO’s chief operating officer, senior vice president, vice president and director of operations all make more than $100,000 each. They’re cited as officers with the UNO Charter Schools as well, which also pays two school directors over $100,000. The filing for UNO that year also posted $125,000 paid to the Edelman public relations firm for consulting.
UNO received $98 million from the state in 2009, the largest taxpayer subsidy to a single charter network. “There are no other charter networks getting anywhere near that money,” Woestehoff said.
According to Woestehoff, UNO was up for another $35 million state grant during the recent lame-duck session of the General Assembly, but it didn’t go through, although it’s pending. She said her complaint was filed in part to draw attention to UNO and encourage legislators to reconsider their support.
Cole Kain, chief of staff in the Office of Executive Inspector General, said he was forbidden to comment on any complaint filings or ongoing investigations.
“We have watched them grow into a political powerhouse,” Woestehoff said of UNO. “We looked at how they started and got into the charter school business, and when I say business, I mean business.”
Last fall, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education tried to play a statistical trick to boost the proportion of charter schools that made Adequate Yearly Progress. He wanted to treat each one as a school district. The U.S. Department of Education said that he could not judge charter schools by laxer rules than district schools.
Now the results are in, and the proportion of charters making AYP dropped from 49% to 28%.
Not a single cyber charter met AYP.
And it is clear why secretary Tomalis wanted to change rpthe reporting rules for charters.
Jersey Jazzman explains a simple concept: When private organizations give money to public agencies, it should be fully disclosed. A couple of legislators actually offered legislation to assure proper oversight, but it was vetoed by Governor Chris Christie, exercising a line-item veto.
In this post, JJ shows how private money is being used to privatize public schools in district after district, without public knowledge or consent.
This stinks.
Not long ago, I published a post by Carol Jago, a former president of the National Council of Teachers of English, about how to teach the Common Core in English.
The discussion that followed her post was disturbing. Several teachers said that in their school or district there was a strong mandate to cut back on the teaching of literature. This is absurd, and nothing in the Common Core says there should be less literature. Indeed, if you look at reading across all subject areas, the amount of time devoted to teaching literature in the English class should be untouched.
But even more disturbing were several comments by a teacher in Arkansas named Jamie Highfill. Jamie is in her 11th year of teaching in the schools of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Her students have achieved outstanding results. According to her profile on the district home page, her students consistently outperform district and state averages, and 77% scored advanced in 2011-2012.
In 2011, she was selected as Arkansas’ Outstanding Middle Level English Language Arts Teacher by the Arkansas Council of Teachers of ELA.
Read her resume. The plaudits and commendations go on and on. She is also a veteran of the U.S. Navy in the Gulf War of 1991, where she won many medals for her achievements. She is a leader.
But here is the kicker, which I learned from the comments: This remarkably accomplished teacher has been placed on an “improvement plan.”
How is this possible?
Offline, I emailed Jamie and asked her why she was put in the doghouse. She replied:
We live in mean times. We live with laws and policies that are meant to break the spirit of students and teachers.
We must not comply with injustice. When a teacher like Jamie Highfill is told that she needs to be on an “improvement plan,” you know that her school, her district, her state is on the wrong track.
Anthony Cody reflects on a year in which the voices of parents and teachers are at last being heard.
The foundations and the U.S. Department of Education and ALEC were having a field day, pushing untried and noxious policies without debate, until 2012.
Then things got interesting.
Reform hero Tony Bennett was upset by a National Board Certified Teacher in Indiana.
Cody spoke truth to power in his dialogue with the Gates Foundation.
Friends, we are finding our voice.
The public is beginning to understand.
Be strong.
Bad ideas eventually collapse, especially when they have no record of success and a long history of failure and demoralization.
Persist.
In education, as we learn regularly, when a claim seems to good to be true, it is usually too good to be true. (See test scores, Noyes school, District of Columbia.)
Recently, Leslie Jacobs–a founder of the charter takeover in New Orleans–claimed that students in New Orleans had registered graduation rates higher than the state or the nation.
A Louisiana blogger who calls himself Crazy Crawfish found this claim hard to believe. As it happens, this blogger used to work in data analysis at the Louisiana Department of Education.
He tells a cautionary tale. Before you believe the latest miracle story, read this.
Today, a brave and brilliant teacher in Louisiana joins the honor roll as a champion of public education.
Mercedes Schneider is a teacher in St. Tammany Parish. She has a Ph.D. In statistics and research methods.
When she learned about the latest claim of a miracle in New Orleans, she determined to check the facts. At a time when so many teachers are frightened and intimidated, she was fearless. At a time when teachers in Louisiana are losing tenure and any job protections, she proceeded to publish her findings.
Dr. Schneider read that Leslie Jacobs, one of the original promoters of the charter movement in New Orleans, issued a press release claiming that the graduation rate in New Orleans now leads not only the state but the nation. The achievement gap has closed, she crowed.
Here is Dr. Schneider’s analysis.
The new leadership of the Texas legislature has a plan. State Senator Dan Patrick, the new chair of the Senate Education Committee, wants vouchers, more charters, and a fast track for closing down public schools. He and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst want to shorten the time that schools have to improve or close–from five years to only two. That should clear the way for lots of vouchers and charters!
Allen Weeks, who heads the Save Texas Schools coalition in the state, wrote an article about the privatization agenda.
He wrote:
“How many schools would close under their two-year axe? Based on 2010-11 ratings, 40 Texas schools — including six charters — would shut down immediately. Dallas would lose seven campuses overnight, including five high schools. Fort Worth would lose two high schools and a middle school. Lights would go out in rural schools like Albany Junior-Senior High School and Hearne High School, triggering long expensive commutes for students to neighboring districts. Another 490 schools, already with one year of academically unacceptable ratings, would likely panic. A second miss by as little as a single student, and that’s it. No school in your community, no football team, no jobs connected to the school — and no guarantee kids will better off academically. Once scores from the new widely-panned STAAR/EOC tests are factored in, the number of “failing” schools may easily skyrocket into the thousands.”
Folks, these gentlemen are not conservative. They are radicals. Why would any sane Texan want to destroy the public schools when there is a boatload of evidence that charters and vouchers don’t do any better?
Allen Weeks is organizing a big rally to support public education in Austin on February 23. I will be there.
Ball State University announced that it was not renewing seven charters.
Among the seven were three Imagine charters, one in Indianapolis and two in Fort Wayne.
Imagine is one of the nation’s biggest for-profit charter operators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 