Archives for the month of: January, 2014
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Will a Court Decision in Kansas Hurt Your School?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
9

In an important opinion piece in the New York Times, David Sciarra and Wade Henderson explain how a court decision in Kansas might have national reverberations.

In 2009, Kansas, like many other states, slashed school funding while approving tax breaks that benefited mostly upper-income Kansans. Spending on education dropped far below 2008 levels, leading to larger classes, layoffs of teachers and other staff, and cuts to essential services. At the same time, the legislature enacted higher standards. This is a typical “reform” pattern: higher standards accompanied by funding cuts.

Parents filed a lawsuit against the cuts and won last year. But Governor Samuel Brownback is appealing the decision, and the outcome of the court case could affect similar situations in other states.

Sciarra and Henderson write:

KANSAS, like every state, explicitly guarantees a free public education in its Constitution, affirming America’s founding belief that only an educated citizenry can preserve democracy and safeguard individual liberty and freedom.

And yet in recent years Kansas has become the epicenter of a new battle over the states’ obligation to adequately fund public education. Even though the state Constitution requires that it make “suitable provision” for financing public education, Gov. Sam Brownback and the Republican-led Legislature have made draconian cuts in school spending, leading to a lawsuit that now sits before the state Supreme Court.

The outcome of that decision could resonate nationwide. Forty-five states have had lawsuits challenging the failure of governors and legislators to provide essential resources for a constitutional education. Litigation is pending against 11 states that allegedly provide inadequate and unfair school funding, including New York, Florida, Texas and California.

Many of these lawsuits successfully forced elected officials to increase school funding overall and to deliver more resources to poor students and those with special needs. If the Kansas Supreme Court rules otherwise, students in those states may begin to see the tide of education cuts return.

If the Court sides with the parents, legislators are threatening to amend the state constitution to remove the term “suitable,” so that there are no constraints on their ability to cut the budget for education.

And that is how Kansas plans to reform its schools.

Categories Kansas

Teachers with Training Wheels?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
29

Levi B. Cavener is a special education teacher in Idaho. He recently wrote an article arguing that Teach for America recruits with five weeks of training should not be assigned to special education students. A spokesperson for TFA responded that it was okay because they would be getting the training while they taught.

Levi says that is like teaching with training wheels.

He writes:

It’s not ok for a doctor to tell you that s/he’s qualified to do the surgery because s/he will get training later.  Nobody wants to be the one lying on a table with a doctor who has only recently held a scalpel for the first time.

It’s not ok for a lawyer to represent you because he has great ambition to attend school and pass the BAR exam down the road. Nobody wants to stand in front of a judge with an attorney whose only experience in the courtroom is from watching episodes of Law & Order.

It’s certainly not ok for an individual to be placed at the head of a classroom full of our most vulnerable students because TFA training wheels are attached at the waist. Students and parents have a right to expect a highly qualified professional leading this classroom starting on the very first day of school, and a TFA employee does not fulfill this basic expectation.

 

Categories Idaho, Special Education, Teach for America

Politico.com Slants Its Coverage

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
22

In an article about the retirement of veteran Democratic Congressman George Miller, a favorite of hedge fund managers (DFER) and other supporters of high-stakes testing and privatization, politico.com used language that showed a partisan bent.

It wrote:

“EDUCATION
Miller exit leaves hole in ed leadership
By MAGGIE SEVERNS and LIBBY A. NELSON and STEPHANIE SIMON 1/13/14 4:04 PM

“Rep. George Miller’s departure coincides with that of Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate education committee. Will their replacements be reformers or establishment-oriented Democrats?”

So a Congressman who is supported by Wall Street billionaires and by advocates of privatization is a “reformer,” while those who fight for equity of funding and support for teachers and public schools are “establishment-oriented Democrats”?

Are Duncan and Obama “establishment-oriented Democrats” or are they “reformers” fighting “establishment-oriented Democrats”? If the President of the United States and the Secretary of Education are not “establishment-oriented Democrats,” who is?

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to refer to a combination of the Obama administration, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, the Dell Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, Rupert Murdoch, Art Pope, Democrats for Education Reform, ALEC, and a galaxy of other powerhouses as “the establishment” or “the status quo”?

This is called “framing the narrative.”

Is politico.com supported by Walton, Broad, and Gates, or are they merely innocent dupes of the billionaire-funded status quo?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Obama

Why Philadelphia Can’t Afford to Pay for Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
26

Did you hear about the budget crisis that stripped Philadelphia’s public schools of teachers, nurses, librarians, supplies, and many other things? Did you read that the school district has a budget deficit of $300 million and that Governor Corbett wants teachers to take salary cuts and layoffs to save over $100 million? Did you read about the 12-year-old child who died because she had an asthma attack on a day when the school did not have a nurse?

Surely, the city of Philadelphia must be in dire straits if it can no longer pay for public education?

Think again. Read this eye-popping account of the great financial success of Philadelphia’s corporate sector. Read about the salaries of Philadelphia’s university presidents (in one case, $2.1 million–job well done!). Read about how Philadelphia’s elite is thriving but unwilling to pay for decent schools for the city’s children.

Here is one corporation that is very successful indeed:

Higher education in Philadelphia is doing very well indeed even if the city’s teachers and public schools are not:

2013, however, wasn’t a bad year for all educators in the city – just for those who choose to work with society’s poorest and most vulnerable members. While the School District demands that we public school teachers take a 13% pay-cut, make 13% contributions to our healthcare, and forego all cost-of-living adjustment until 2017, other educational institutions in the city such as the University of Pennsylvania gave their professors and administrators exorbitant raises. PENN’s President, for example, was given a whopping 43% raise in 2013 and now earns nearly $2.1 million… God forbid these educators who sacrifice themselves in order to mold the privileged future Wall Street gluttons of Wharton should not be properly compensated. 

The chairman of Penn’s board of trustees is David Cohen, vice president of Comcast. He is a key player in the negotiations over the future of the Philadelphia school district:

David Cohen, by the way, is also the same person who recommended that Philadelphia public school teachers make the aforementioned 13% concessions in order to help solve the District’s budget issues while he brokered a deal with Harrisburg. I suppose that, unlike PENN, he doesn’t think we have the best public school teachers in Philadelphia — nor should their salary “reflect that reality.” What qualifies Cohen to make recommendations about Philadelphia’s public schools? Well, apart from giving Gutmann a 43% raise and demanding teachers take a 13% paycut, here’s what else he accomplished in 2013:
  1. As Vice President of Comcast, he cashed in an annual salary of $16.2 million (Pulling in that kind of money, I’m sure he’s a public school parent with vested interest.)
  2. He held a $32,400 a plate dinner fundraising event for the Democratic Party at his Mt. Airy mansion. President Obama was in attendance as well, and why wouldn’t he be? Cohen helped raise over $500,000 for Obama’s re-election campaign back in 2012.
  3. He held a Republican fundraising event at that same Mt. Airy home to help kick-off Governor Corbett’s re-election campaign. Who cares about political ideology when you have the money to pay off both sides?

With so much money and power at the top, who is protecting the interests of the children of Philadelphia? Don’t they deserve to be in schools with libraries and librarians, with experienced teachers, with social workers, with guidance counselors to help them prepare college applications, with teachers of the arts and foreign languages, with reasonable class sizes?

Categories Philadelphia

Two Anti-Parent Revolution Parents Accused of Vandalizing Charter School

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
29

Two parents who fought the takeover of their public school and its conversion to a charter school have been charged with vandalizing the school last June. They deny the charges.

The vandalism occurred at the Desert Trails elementary school in Adelanto, California, which was the site of a bitter battle among parents after the state’s “parent trigger” law was invoked. The school is the first school where the 2010 law led to a charter conversion. The parent trigger law and the conversion process in Adelanto was led by a group called Parent Revolution, funded by the Walton Foundation, the Eli Broad Foundation, and the Gates Foundation.

During the battle over the future of the school, parents were divided, lawsuits were filed, and ultimately only 50 parents chose a charter operator for a school of 600 children.

Some lessons:

One, vandalizing a school is wrong, no matter who does it or for what reason. It is criminal. Those who committed this crime must be held accountable.

Two, the parent trigger process is inherently divisive, tearing communities apart, when parents, teachers, and the community should all work together on behalf of the children.

Three, the “parent trigger” is a failed law, created during the Schwarzenegger era to allow charter operators to take over public schools by slick campaigns. Four years after its passage, there is only one school that has been taken over, after a divisive campaign, and there is still no evidence that charter operators can provide better education than properly resourced public schools.

Categories California, Parent trigger

Julian Vasquez Heilig: Time to Look at Evidence About Teach for America

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
17

A new report by Julian Vasquez Heilig and Su Jin Jez reviews the evidence about the effectiveness of Teach for America.

Their study, published by the National Education Policy Center, “challenges the simplistic but widespread belief that TFA is a clear-cut success story. In fact, Heilig and Jez find that the best evidence shows TFA participants as a group are not meaningfully or consistently improving educational outcomes for the children they have taught.”

They find that:

Teach For America and other organizations have produced studies asserting benefits provided by TFA teachers. Those studies, however, have only rarely undergone peer review – the standard benchmark for quality research, Heilig and Jez observe. In contrast, the available peer reviewed research has produced a decidedly mixed picture. For example, the results attributed to TFA teachers varies both by their experience and certification level. The results also fluctuate depending on the types of teachers to whom the TFA teachers are compared; TFA teachers look relatively good when compared to other inexperienced, poorly trained teachers, but the results are more problematic when they are compared to fully prepared and experienced teachers, Heilig and Jez report.

Because of these differences, the question most frequently asked—Are TFA teachers “as good as” teachers who enter the profession through other routes?—is not the question we should be asking, Heilig and Jez contend. Whether one or the other group is better is “a question that cannot be answered unless we first identify which TFA and non-TFA teachers we’re asking about,” they write.

Even more important, “The lack of a statistically and practically significant impact should indicate to policymakers that TFA is likely not providing a meaningful reduction in disparities in educational outcomes, notwithstanding its explosive growth and popularity in the media,” according to Heilig and Jez. Moreover, despite its rapid growth, TFA remains a tiny fraction of the nation’s teaching corps; for every TFA teacher, there are 50,000 other teachers in the U.S., Heilig and Jez note, and the small numbers and small impact of TFA point to a needed “shift in thinking.”

“We should be trying to dramatically improve the quality of teaching,” write Heilig and Jez. “It is time to shift our focus from a program of mixed impact that, even if the benefits actually matched the rhetoric, would not move the needle on America’s educational quality due to the fact that only 0.002% of all teachers in the United States are Teach For America placements.”

In other words, those who seek long-term, systematic improvement of the teacher force in the United States will not find an answer in Teach for America. Their numbers are few, and not many remain in teaching.

Those who want real change must concentrate on improving the working conditions of teachers so that it is an attractive option for college graduates, and must focus on raising standards for entry into the profession as well as strengthening the quality of professional preparation and support for new teachers.

 

 

 

Categories Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching

Columbus, Ohio: 17 More Charters Close

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
9

If schools were like shoe stores, they would open wherever there was a good location and close if they didn’t make a profit.

Public schools, on the other hand, are community institutions, like parks and beaches. They should not be closed if they have low scores; they should get help.

In Columbus, Ohio, charter schools are indeed like shoe stores. This year alone, 17 charter schools in that city closed their doors.

Nine of the 17 schools that closed in 2013 lasted only a few months this past fall. When they closed, more than 250 students had to find new schools. The state spent more than $1.6 million in taxpayer money to keep the nine schools open only from August through October or November.

But while 2013 was unusual, closings are not rare. A Dispatch analysis of state data found that 29 percent of Ohio’s charter schools have shut, dating to 1997 when the publicly funded but often privately run schools became legal in Ohio. Nearly 400 currently are operating, about 75 of them in Columbus.

What a waste of taxpayer money. Why would a school open and close in only a few months?

Looking back, some in the charter-school community and at the Ohio Department of Education question whether some of the new schools ever should have opened. How, they wondered, did this happen?

Many point to the sponsors. Nonprofit groups, universities, school districts and educational service centers can act as charter-school sponsors or authorizers. They’re supposed to be the gatekeepers; they decide which schools can open and whether they should close if they’re not adequately serving students.

“The way it works right now is, if a school has a sponsor and they sign a contract, that school can open,” said John Charlton, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education. “We don’t have any approval or denial power.”

Five of the nine schools that opened and then closed abruptly in the fall were sponsored by the North Central Ohio Educational Service Center, based in Marion and Tiffin. The ESC appears to have lacked a rigorous vetting process.

The ESC, which provides staff members and other types of services to school districts, gave the go-ahead to Andre Tucker to open two Talented Tenth Leadership academies. They opened in August. In October, after the state pointed out serious problems, the ESC forced the schools to close.

It turned out that Tucker had been charged with felony theft and ordered to pay restitution in Florida and had money problems with an earlier charter school.

Gosh, don’t you think someone might have noticed that the guy to whom they were handing over children and public money had a criminal record?

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Gates Threatens to Yank $40 Million from Pittsburgh

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
32

According to Rick Cohen of the Nonprofit Quarterly, the Gates Foundation is threatening to take away $40 million from the Pittsburgh public schools if the district and union don’t agree on a plan to evaluate teachers by test scores, to reward the “best,” and retrain the rest.

Does the Gates Foundation know that eminent researchers warn that VAM is inaccurate? Does it care that VAM has not worked anywhere?

The group in Pittsburgh that is most critical of the union is A+ Schools. Cohen points out that Gates is one of its major funders.

Cohen writes:

“This is probably an extreme example of “high-stakes testing” of teachers. With a significant reliance on student test scores for determining teacher performance, teachers are duly wary of standardized tests, which diminish the socioeconomic factors of student performance, even when the consequences could be teacher dismissals and even school closings. In this case, the high stake facing the teachers’ union is the school district’s loss of a free $40 million.”

(The word “diminish” in the previous paragraph is wrong. It should say “reflect to a large degree.”)

What is so distressing is that the Gates Foundation acts as if it bought public education in Pittsburgh and has the right to call the shots. Guess they never heard of the concept of democratic control of the schools. They are familiar only with plutocratic control.

Who will hold the Gates Foundation accountable for the damage it is wreaking on education?

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Pennsylvania, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, Unions

Outrage in Ohio: Charter Founder Paid Millions Without Any Invoices

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2014 //
10

How gullible are taxpayers in Ohio? How long will they remain willing to pay millions of dollars to a charter founder who is best known for campaign contributions? Why does Ohio’s ignore this outrage?

Plunderbund documents the empire created by William Lager, founder of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) was paid $1 million in the first year his school opened. It is now the largest charter school in Ohio.

Frankly, it is a sickening story.

Not until 2007 did state officials suggest that Lager should provide detailed invoices for the public money he received.

Writes Plunderbund:

“At this point [2007], according to the official audits released by the Ohio Auditor of State, William Lager had received exactly $28,354,426 over a seven-year period without ever submitting one single invoice documenting the services provided by him or his company.

“Readers, Lager’s fleecing of Ohio’s taxpayers in order to build his personal wealth under the guise of providing an alternative educational option for children is nothing new; he has engaged in a systematic process of pocketing millions of dollars since he founded this public charter school back in 2000 — over 13 years ago. William Lager has been drawing an annual salary of over $1,000,000 since his first year as the CEO of the school’s management company.

“And so we’ll ask again, don’t you think Ohio’s and national newspapers be running front page stories if a public school superintendent in the state of Ohio was drawing an annual salary of over $1,000,000? Why is it that William Lager can receive a six-figure, publicly-funded annual salary without a single article questioning this appalling misappropriation of school funding dollars?”

Why do you think that Ohio news media don’t care about this?

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Missouri: Draft Report Calls for Dismantling of Kansas City Public School District

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2014 //
35

Reporter Garrett Haake of KSHB In Kansas City reported that State Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro and the State Board commissioned a report that calls for a radical restructuring of the Kansas City school district.

“It calls for replacing the top-down district structure with a much smaller, near purely administrative entity called a Community Schools Office (CSO). The CSO would retain some functions of the current district, including facilities maintenance, enrollment and transportation coordination, but its primary purpose would be to set accountability standards for schools, which would themselves be free to run largely independently, so long as they hit those standards.

“The school system would shift its focus from operating schools directly to finding the best possible nonprofit operators, empowering them to run schools and holding them accountable for results,” the executive summary said. “Schools that succeed would grow to serve more students. Those that continually fall short would be replaced with better options.”

It adds:

“Kansas City students could choose any public school to attend, and while some would be charter schools, the report makes clear that most would not be – and pre-buts the notion that it is replacing public schools with charters. The report notes that Kansas City has several “high quality operators” of public schools already that fit the bill, including Lincoln Prep and Academie Lafayette.

“The report also identifies what its authors consider another glaring need, and proposes instituting universal pre-kindergarten for children ages 3 and 4 city-wide. The report says this can be done using funds reallocated in the reorganization of the district, without raising taxes.”

“The Missouri State Board of Education will hear a presentation of the draft report, which it paid education reform consultants CEE-Trust $385,000 after a controversial bidding process to produce, Monday afternoon.”

Over a month ago, some legislators demanded Nicastro’s resignation after hundreds of emails revealed that this plan was in the works since last April, funded by two local foundations.

“The e-mails show Nicastro and officials from the Hall Family Foundation and Kauffman Foundation working with Kauffman partner CEE-Trust as far back as April to develop a plan for the future of KCPS, should the district fail to regain accreditation.
Obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the education equality group MORE2 (More Squared), they show a series of meetings, conference calls and even budgetary discussions between Nicastro, foundation backers and CEE-Trust leadership designed to get a process in motion quickly – without going through a typical request for proposal project.

“District officials, including KCPS Superintendent Dr. Stephen Green, said they knew nothing of the discussions. A spokesman for Kansas City Mayor Sly James said he, too, was not informed.

“The Missouri Board of Education rejected the Memorandum of Understanding drawn up by the group over the summer. But with coaching from Nicastro and her aides, CEE-Trust ultimately submitted a bid and won a contract to study options for the long-struggling district for $385,000.

“When the e-mails were first published in the Kansas City Star on Sunday, negative reaction to the back-room dealings came swiftly.

Read more: http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/education/calls-mount-for-nicastro-resignation-after-e-mails-released#ixzz2qJVmop9P

Categories Corporate Reformers, Missouri
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »