Archives for the month of: December, 2013
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Breaking News: Pearson Foundation Fined Millions for Violating Laws

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
45

New York state’s attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman won an agreement from the Pearson Foundation to pay $7.7 million in fines for using its charitable activities to advance its corporation’s profit-making arm.

According to the story by Javier Hernandez in the New York Times,

“An inquiry by Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, found that the foundation had helped develop products for its corporate parent, including course materials and software. The investigation also showed that the foundation had helped woo clients to Pearson’s business side by paying their way to education conferences that were attended by its employees.

“Under the terms of the agreement to be announced on Friday, the money, aside from $200,000 in legal expenses, will be directed to 100Kin10, a national effort led by a foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, to train more teachers in high-demand areas, including science, technology, engineering and math.

“The fact is that Pearson is a for-profit corporation, and they are prohibited by law from using charitable funds to promote and develop for-profit products,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. “I’m pleased that this settlement will direct millions of dollars back to where they belong.”

“Officials at Pearson and the foundation defended their work.

“We have always acted with the best intentions and complied with the law,” they said, in a joint statement. “However, we recognize there were times when the governance of the foundation and its relationship with Pearson could have been clearer and more transparent.”

“The case shed a light on the competitive world of educational testing and technology, which Pearson has come to dominate. As federal and state leaders work to overhaul struggling schools by raising academic standards, educational companies are rushing to secure lucrative contracts in testing, textbooks and software.

“The inquiry by the attorney general focused on Pearson’s attempts to develop a suite of products around the Common Core, a new and more rigorous set of academic standards that has been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia.

“Around 2010, Pearson began financing an effort through its foundation to develop courses based on the Common Core. The attorney general’s report said Pearson had hoped to use its charity to win endorsements and donations from a “prominent foundation.” That group appears to be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Pearson Inc. executives believed that branding their courses by association with the prominent foundation would enhance Pearson’s reputation with policy makers and the education community,” a release accompanying the attorney general’s report said.

“Indeed, in April 2011, the Pearson Foundation and the Gates Foundation announced they would work together to create 24 new online reading and math courses aligned with the Common Core.

“Pearson executives believed the courses could later be sold commercially, the report said, and predicted potential profits of tens of millions of dollars. After Mr. Schneiderman’s office began its investigation, the Pearson Foundation sold the courses to Pearson for $15.1 million.

“The attorney general’s office also examined a series of education conferences sponsored by the Pearson Foundation, which paid for school officials to meet their foreign counterparts in places like Helsinki and Singapore…..”

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Pearson

Last Night in Red Hook…UPDATE

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
8

Last night I led a discussion of my book at P.S. 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

The community is right on the water facing Néw York harbor and the Statue of Liberty. It is cut off from the mainsream of Brooklyn by a major highway, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It has working docks, Ikea, and a gourmet supermarket called Fairway. It also has a large number of public housing projects and great ethnic diversity. Last year, Red Hook was inundated by Hurricane Sandy, and many homes and businesses were flooded.

P.S. 15 is a gem of an elementary school that suffered a terrible tragedy some years ago. Its principal, Patrick Daly, was going to find a missing student when he got caught in gang crossfire in the projects and was killed. The school is now known as the Patrick Daly School.

The school had another problem. The NYC Department of Education had placed a charter into it a few years ago, which took away 10 classrooms. The charter founder, a billionaire, eventually built his own building and moved out a year ago.

When I arrived, I was escorted to the school library by two young students. They wore large red sashes which said in glitter “Ambassador.” They pointed out their classrooms with pride. They showed me a wall with a bulletin board called the “Wall of Hope,” where children pinned their hopeful thoughts, what they thought about when things were bad and they needed hope. They told me how much they love their teachers. I wanted to hug them.

About 80-100 parents, teachers, and community members were there. Good exchanges.

I was intoduced by Carmen Farina, a former Deputy Chancellor of the school system, a Red Hook resident, and currently a candidate for Chancellor of the system. We talked about testing; charters; building support for the school in the community; parent engagement; the Common Core; and what a wonderful school P.S. 15 is.

As it happened, there was a meeting right after ours where the local community board was deciding whether to approve a BASIS charter school. BASIS is an Arizona charter chain noted for its rigorous curriculum and high attrition. I learned today that the community board rejected BASIS.

P.S. 15 will continue building community support, spreading the word that it is a great neighborhood school with terrific teachers.

The Patrick Daly school survives. If you saw these kids, you would hug them too.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, New York City

Washington State Court Ruling: Figure It Out Yourself

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
5

Charter opponents in Washington celebrated a court ruling that charter schools are not “common schools” and may not be funded as such.

Charter advocates celebrated that the judge upheld the rest of the initiative.

So the law may be implemented without public funding.

Or something.

Appeal on the way.

Categories Charter Schools, Washington State

Breaking News: Court Declares Washington State Charter Law Unconstitutional

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
44

Last fall, there was a hard-fought election in Washington State over charter schools. Voters had turned them down three times but this time was different: Bill Gates, the Walton family, and a passel of super-rich people gathered $10 million or so to support the charter idea and their initiative passed by a small margin.

However, today a judge ruled the law unconstitutional because the state constitution says public funds are solely for “common schools” and charters–under private management, are not common schools.

“In a ruling issued today (pdf), King County Superior Court Judge Jean Rietschel has tossed out the heart of Washington State’s charter schools law on the grounds that it violates the constitutional provision that state education revenues be “exclusively applied to the support of the common schools.”

“But, Judge Rietschel concludes: “A charter school cannot be defined as a common school because it is not under the control of the voters of the school district. The statute places control under a private non-profit organization, a local charter board and/or the Charter Commission.”

“In other words, charter schools may not be funded with state dollars dedicated to funding our state’s common schools.”

The term “common schools” was used in the nineteenth century to refer to public schools supported by all and open to all, under democratic control.

The court might usefully have looked at rulings in federal courts and the NLRB where charters have fended off lawsuits by disgruntled employees or by employees hoping to form a union by asserting that they are not public schools and are not subject to the same state laws. Or the courts might have looked at the amicus brief filed by the California Charter School Association in support of charter school founders convicted of misappropriation of public funds, earlier this fall. The charter founders were not guilty, said CCSA, because they were operating a private corporation with a government contract, not subject to the same laws as public schools.

You can be sure the decision today in Washington State will be appealed.

Categories Charter Schools, Washington State

Some Questions About NYC’s Proposed School Without Walls

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
11

In a parting shot, the New York City Department of Education announced the launch of a “school without walls,” in collaboration with Microsoft. There would be no physical brick-and-mortar school. Microsoft would arrange internships for students.

Questions:

Who will teach the students such subjects as biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry, and calculus?

Will they learn history or read literature?

Will the students be used to run errands and get coffee?

Will they be unpaid workers?

Will they be office-boys/girls?

What will they learn in high-tech offices and who will teach them?

Will they get in the way of the people who have deadlines?

Will they take tests?

Will their internships prepare them for college or careers?

In the 1930s, there were similar proposals based on what was understood to be the Soviet model of “socially useful labor,” the idea being to send teens into farms and factories instead of classrooms.

Whose children will attend this “school”?

Categories New York City

NYC School Officials Plan a School Without Walls

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
18

As the clock ticks on, and the days of the Bloomberg administration dwindle, it is still creating new schools.

The latest innovation is called the School Without Walls. Kids will spend their high school years without a high school!

Lisa Fleisher reports in the Wall Street Journal:

“Microsoft will partner with New York City to create what schools officials describe as a high school without walls – perhaps the city’s most extreme departure yet from traditional high school. Lisa Fleisher reports on digits. Photo: Getty Images.

“New York City is planning to open a new high school next year—but it won’t have a gym, library, science lab or even a math classroom.

“The city wants to open a so-called school without walls, one where students would take courses that combine online and classroom learning, while giving them more time for internships.

“Microsoft Corp. will help coordinate internships and industry mentors for students, who could receive certificates showing they have mastered Microsoft Office programs. The company also will train teachers who need a digital reboot and help place students in internships in areas such as computer science or coding.”

A new idea?

No. The city had a School Without Walls decades ago. But since the Bloomberg administration wiped out all institutional memory, it was completely forgotten. And every thing old is new again.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael

Reader: How Cyber-Charters Crush Small School Districts

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
4

This reader reports fro Pennsylvania, which has 16 cyber-charters, all drawing money from local school districts.

“We kind of know what happens. In PA, we have limited brick-and-mortar charters, but we’ve been dealing with cyber-charters for a few years now.

“It is a crushing formula for reimbursement– the state gives the charter the per-capita cost for each student. That generally translates into about 10K per student taken from the home district and redirected to the cyber school (the cost is greater for special needs students).

“In my mainly-rural district two years ago, the total cost of cyber-students to the district was about $800,000. And then the district closed two elementary schools with the stated intent of saving— about $800,000.

“How charters will affect school districts will depend a great deal on the funding formula imposed by the state. In Pennsylvania, cyber-schools are choking smaller school districts.”

Categories On-Line Education

TFA Expands Its Reach to mid-Career Professionals, Veterans

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
42

If Teach for America has its way, our nation’s schools will soon be filled with temporary teachers at the bottom of the salary scale, most of whom will leave after two-three years. Goodbye, expensive experienced teachers! If TFA teachers are as great as they say, why doesn’t TFA require a five-year commitment?

Politico reports today:

“TFA REACHES OUT TO DREAMERS: Teach for America has already expanded its recruitment beyond seniors at elite colleges to mid-career professionals and veterans. Today, it’s announcing plans to actively recruit DREAMers – undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and are eligible to obtain social security cards through President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Morning Education has learned.”

Categories Teach for America TFA

EduShyster: No More Conflict of Interest Rules!

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
10

EduShyster retains the capacity for astonishment and surprise.

In this post, she identifies some seemingly blatant conflicts of interest on the part of big players in the education reform world.

Yet no one cares. Ethics? What’s that?

She calls it “carerruption.”

I don’t feel like getting a lawyer’s letter today threatening to sue me for defamation, so I will ask you to read EduShyster yourself.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles

Charter Founder in Ohio Makes Large Political Contributions, Gets Rich

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
14

The blogger Plunderbund here documents the conditions in which certain major charter operators in Ohio become financially very successful.

In this instance, he tells the story of William Lager, founder of ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), who has generously donated $1.3 million to the Ohio Republican Party in the last decade.

His generosity has been amply repaid with generous state funding for his businesses.

Plunderbund writes:

“This weekend we posted about Ohio’s largest charter school, ECOT, being recommended to receive a “bonus” check of $2.9 million that would be quickly rerouted into ECOT owner William Lager’s other private businesses. This is not the first raise that ECOT has received this year. Through the Kasich budget passed this summer, ECOT received the largest increase in state funding for any charter school in Ohio at $4.8 million. This far surpassed the second largest increase of $1.35 million given to Ohio Virtual Academy.

“It’s good to buy friends in high places…

“Since 2004, Lager, the ECOT CEO, has been donating to Ohio political campaigns with staggering regularity and in staggering numbers for someone whose main livelihood is providing a “public” education to Ohio children…”

He supplies the facts and figures.

Let’s put it this way: Mr. Lager’s generosity has been repaid many times over by his benefactors, using tax dollars that were supposed to go to educate Ohio’s students.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio
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