Mercedes Schneider tells a strange tale about PARCC testing, John White, Bobby Jindal, AIR, and Pearson.
Will AIR’s lawsuit against Pearson in the Arizona courts affect Louisiana’s choice of tests?
Archives for the month of: July, 2014
Ever wonder what goes on in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy schools?
Here is an exclusive interview with a young TFA teacher about his experiences.
You will not be surprised to learn that test prep is a major focus of the school year.
Just remember: It’s all about the kids.
Just remember: The children are our future.
In Detroit, where they enroll thousands of children who need a great education, the state-appointed emergency manager has decided to save money by increasing class size to 43. Students will not get individual attention. Students will not get the support they need. Teachers will spend time on crowd control instead of instruction.
Governor Snyder cut corporate taxes.
It’s all about the children.
The following article is by Patricia W. Hall, chair of the League of Women Voters Education team in Hillsborough County, Florida. It was originally published by La Gaceta in Tampa, Florida. The state League of Women Voters recently published a one-year study of charters across Florida.
Charter School Explosion: Follow the Money
Patricia W. Hall
Although charter schools must, by Florida law, be overseen by a non -profit board of directors, there are many ways in which for-profit organizations have begun to highjack the charter school movement. For-profit management companies frequently provide everything from back office operations including payroll, contracting with vendors for food services, textbook, etc., to hiring principals and teachers and curriculum control; so what was sold to parents and children as a local public education innovation now looks more like national charter-chains, the “Waltmartization” of public education. According to education expert Diane Ravitch, “nearly half of all charter school students are enrolled in a charter chain school” in the United States. The top four charter operators in Florida for 2011-2012 were Academica (72), Charter Schools USA (37), Charter School Associates (20), and Imagine Schools (23). These are not the small, locally run experimental schools envisioned by the original legislation.
The real profits, however, are not in the operation of the charter school, but in the real estate development. After receiving a variety of grants, loans and tax credits for building a charter school, the for- profit chain charges ever escalating rents and leases to the school district, paid by tax-payer education dollars. The for-profit then reaps the profits when the building is sold in a few years. Meanwhile the properties with high, non-taxable, values based on claimed “commercial” revenue streams from public tax-payer dollars are leveraged to borrow additional funds to build more school buildings.
Our shining local examples in Hillsborough County are owned by Charter Schools USA. My first glimpse of Winthrop Charter School in Riverview in November of 2011 was during a scheduled visit with then Rep. Rachel Burgin. When told the two story brick building was a charter school, I was mystified. The site on which it was built was purchased from John Sullivan by Ryan Construction Company, Minneapolis, MN. From research done by the League of Women Voters of Florida all school building purchases ultimately owned and managed by for-profit Charter Schools USA are initiated by Ryan Construction. The Winthrop site was sold to Ryan Co. in March, 2011 for $2,206,700. In September, 2011 the completed 50,000 square foot building was sold to Red Apple Development Company, LLC for $9,300,000 titled as are all schools managed by Charter Schools USA. Red Apple Development is the school development arm of Charter Schools USA. We, tax payers of Hillsborough County, have paid $969,000 and $988,380 for the last two years to Charter Schools USA in lease fees!
The big prize purchased by Ryan Co. at the same time, March of 2011, was the 58,000 square foot former Verizon call center on 56th Street in Temple Terrace for $3,750,000. Ryan Co. made no discernible exterior changes except removal of the front door, added a $7,000 canopy and sold the building as Woodmont Charter School to Red Apple Development for $9,700,000! Who would not love a $6 million dollar boost in 6 months? Lease fees for the last two years were $1,009,800 and $1,029,996! Are we outraged yet? Woodmont made headlines in the Tampa Bay Times this spring as an “F” rated (FCAT score) school advertising for new students and a fired teacher reporting that out-of-field teachers and uncertified teachers were on the faculty.
Similar figures exist for the last of the triumvirate for CSUSA, Henderson Hammock Charter School in Citrus Park which opened in 2012. Their lease fees are the largest of the three, $1,170,000 for 2012-3013 and $1,193,400 for 2013-2014!
These three Hillsborough schools opened since 2011 enroll more than 20% (2,799) of all charter students: Winthrop – 1,254; Henderson Hammock-895; and Woodmont-650. The other for-profit management companies in our county are Charter School Associates with 10 schools, the Leona Group with two small schools and Accelerated Learning Solutions with two virtual (online instruction) high schools. These four for-profit management companies, including Charter Schools USA, control the finances for 17 of the 42 charter schools in Hillsborough County.
In Florida, according to the League of Women Voters Statewide Charter School Study, the three largest for-profit management companies (Academica, Charter Schools USA and Imagine) control 27% of all charters. The proposed MacDill Charter School was rejected by Hillsborough County Schools because of questions regarding governance (the people running the school) which will be covered in the next article.
The high per student management fees (around $450 ) plus rent/lease fees (at least 20% of the total school budget) mean that there is less funding available for “instruction,” including teacher salaries, books, etc. In Florida Trend Magazine, Jonathan Hage, CEO of Charter Schools USA, brags his biggest efficiency is in administration. Where Miami-Dade County spends $2,036 per child on administrative costs, he spends $1,425. In Hillsborough that equates to 2,799 children times $1,425 equaling $3,988,575! That is money in his “pockets,” not instructing children who need to be educated.
In addition to direct funding of charter schools, the federal government provides tax breaks to encourage banks and individuals to invest in charter school construction. The Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000 included the New Markets Tax Credit, which provides wealthy investors with a 39% tax credit that more than doubles returns on these charter school construction investments within seven years. Furthermore the head of Entertainment Properties Trust – a large real estate investment firm – David Bain, appeared on CNBC in 2012 telling the audience “how profitable charter school investment has become.”
While you are shaking your head at the implausibility of the aforementioned investment, hold on! The Immigrant Investor Program, also known as EB -5 (Employment Based to the 5 Category) Program permits foreigners who make investments in charter schools to bring their whole family to the U.S. on green cards! Wealthy foreigners can contribute just $1,000,000 toward urban charter school development or $500,000 in a rural area, they are required to create 10 jobs for Americans and the investor gets visas for the whole family!
We discovered that Ryan Construction Company, in collaboration with Red Apple Development and the Florida Development Finance Corporation, secured a mortgage and loan agreement for multiple sites with Regions Bank in Tallahassee for $55,800,000 tax-exempt series (the “Series 2012A Bonds”) and $3,520,000 taxable series (the Series 2012B Bonds ). This transaction was November 1, 2012. Red Apple Development had secured a mortgage from Church Loans and Investments Trust dba CLI Capital in Texas for $9,841,000 for the Woodmont Property in late 2011; they paid off the nearly $10,000,000 mortgage in 16 months (January of 2013) by virtue of the $55,800,000 “windfall”.
From The Tampa Bay Times opinion editorial April 1st, 2014 “Another area where the distinction between public and private is blurred for the benefit of for-profits is the issuing of bonds. Although Florida law prohibits charter schools from issuing bonds, Charter Schools USA has found a way. When naming Jon Hage as Floridian of the Year, Florida Trend in December 2012 contended that Charter School USA is the largest seller of charter school debt in the country. “It will sell $100 million worth of bonds this year (2012-13), Hage says. . . The bonds come with tax-exempt status because they are technically held by the non-profit founding boards that oversee the schools.”
As you can see “following the money” in the for- profit charter sector is very complex and, in some cases, impossible. Audits are incomplete and, because of the blurred line between the non-profit and for-profit entities, requests for information are rebuffed, as these charter chains claim to be “public” when seeking public education dollars and “private when avoiding accountability. As one of our LWV members characterizes their attitude, “Heads we win, tails you lose.”
America’s for-profit education industry is BIG BUSINESS on a global scale. Charter school profiteering is alive and thriving in Florida and many other states. Profit is the end game with profits trumping public good. What happened to “corporate social responsibility” and political ethics??
Paul Bruno, a science teacher in California, assembled a few charts to show that there is no “crisis” in American education.
What we have today was aptly named “a manufactured crisis” by David Berliner and Bruce Biddle, in their book “The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools” in the mid-1990s.
Last year, my book “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools” showed how the phony “crisis” rhetoric is cynically used to undermine public support for public schools and advance privatization through charters, vouchers, and virtual charters.
Chris Lubienski and Sarah Lubienski published “The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools.”
David Berliner and Gene Glass recently published “50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education.”
John Kuhn published “Fear and Learning in America: Bad Data, Good Teachers, and the Attack on Public Education.”
Mercedes Schneider published “A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education.”
So, if you want evidence that the “crisis” in American education is a cynical fiction, that it is used to divert attention from the true social and economic crises of inequality, poverty, and segregation, you have quite a selection of books to read. Arm yourself. Read them.
Conservatives are backing away from Common Core in response to angry parents who see it as a federal takeover of their local schools. Several states have dropped the Common Core assessments or the Common Core standards.
But one conservative is not backing down: Jeb Bush. He has become the flag-bearer for the Common Core. He and Arne Duncan are the most ardent proponents for the embattled national standards.
The Wall Street Journal reports that his gamble is risky in Republican primaries but would be a plus in general elections.
Critics note that the Gates Foundation, which paid to develop the standards, is one of Jeb Bush’s biggest donors, but foundation spokesmen scoff at the suggestion:
“No one doubted that Mr. Bush governed Florida from 1999 to 2007 as a conservative. He cut individual and corporate taxes, signed the “Stand Your Ground” law pushed by gun owners and ended affirmative action in university admissions and state contracting. On education, he spearheaded a law that assigned schools letter grades based on their test scores and required third-graders who couldn’t read to be held back. He also pushed for taxpayer-funded vouchers to let students in failing schools attend private schools, a program that courts struck down.
“As the GOP has shifted to the right, it is tea-party activists who are now among Mr. Bush’s most ardent opponents. In addition to unhappiness with the federal role in education, conservative activists see a corporate connection to the initiative.
“Since 2010, Mr. Bush’s foundation has received $5 million from the Gates Foundation, and it gets donations from companies in the education industry, including Pearson U.K.:Common Core. (News Corp publishes The Wall Street Journal.)
“All Common Core roads lead to K Street,” wrote commentator and activist Michelle Malkin, one of Mr. Bush’s biggest antagonists, referring to the Washington turf of many lobbyists.
“A spokeswoman for the foundation, Jaryn Emhof, rejected criticism over corporate funding. “We have a firewall,” she said. “They don’t get any say over our reform agenda.”
EduShyster explains the back story on the new team that has been assembled to eliminate teacher tenure wherever it still survives.
The lead player in this docudrama is Campbell Brown, a one-time CNN anchor who now works full-time to oust sexual predators from our classrooms. EduShyster says she will be rewarded with more airtime and media FaceTime.
Then there is the ex-Obama communications team, free from their D.C. duties to make war on teachers.
EduShyster reminds us that this will be a PR war, so get ready for the anecdotes about how “bad teachers” ruined someone ‘s life. This, of course, is the civil rights issue of our time, far more important than funding inequity, poverty, or budget cuts.
Best of all, Edushyster prepares us for mass confusion when the PR war begins:
“Is it pronounced *tenYEAR* or *tenYUR*? Why do teachers want to establish a caliphate in upstate New York anyway? Who broke the status quo? And when we fix it, will it still be the status quo? How many anecdotes does it take to make data? What exactly is the Levant? And is there any problem that *grit* can’t solve?”
Phil Cullen writes The Treehorn Express in Australia. He regularly reports on that nation’s slavish copying of the worst American ideas, especially testing and accountability. The Australian national testing program is called NAPLAN.
FELLOW EDUCATORS : Please send this along to people in schools as extensively as you can. Those who already do…..thanks from Treehorn and the other kids.
The Treehorn Express
http://treehornexpress.wordpress.com
Teacher Proofing
USA has a penchant for branding and packaging things as neatly as possible. As far as schooling is concerned, a canny money-hungry educator can extract bits from the regular school curriculum, invent a catchy vogue-word to describe what-ever-it-is that needs attention, then wrap the contents up and peddle it to the gullible. Bingo! Legs 11 ! Holidays at Waikiki. If it cannot be wrapped up, it is branded and sold in bulk…. as ‘Models’….. by sweet-talking peddlers at conferences and seminars;…. and cocktail parties..
This comes as little surprise when it is a fact of life that schooling in America is owned and dominated by well-heeled corporate plutocrats., whose political influence in the other three English-speaking GERM countries is becoming as extensive as it is in the old US of A. The teacher-proofing edubusiness is big time and is exercised in many forms. Its enormity and influence is far, far more extensive than the ordinary Michael Dundee Aussie would believe.
Sage educators in the UK and in NZ don’t usually do this. Despite the heavy hand of neoconservatism that all countries share, they have always tended to treat teaching as a noble profession that actually pupils [aka teaches] children according to each child’s frame of reference. The child is the package. The teacher’s role in the act of teaching and evaluating and moving ahead is total. Unsubstantiated, untested, unprofessional, gimmicky quackery stops at the classroom door of their lively learning centres, where the child is treated as the centre of the universe and its performance is judged by its interest in learning. Diagnosis and evaluation is part of each activity. A school’s reputation is based on the way it treats children. If parents want to know about the best school around, they go to a reliable source…..the shopping centre…get the real deal……certainly not to unreliable, crooked test results, used by the unwitty for comparative purposes..
Of the four English-speaking, politically-controlled education systems – the GERM countries – Australia religiously follows what the USA does; no matter what… blindly as a rule. It’s all high stakes data-laden emotion-free performance-testing stuff which Americans love. Aussie unemotional, couldn’t-care-less, morally corrupt testucators now use it without second thought. Bugger the feelings of kids. Obediently, we followed the ‘Kleinist Model’ holus-bolus, called it NAPLAN, and continue to maintain its demonic philosophies with the sternest controls possible…. Iraq-like.
How many of us teachers have tried and become enthused – for a while – by some such package, only to find that the package takes over the teaching? Precious school time is devoted to completion times and corrections while our own professional judgement and modes of evaluating take a back seat? In ancient times, I was an SRA structured reading and IMP specialist. Mea culpa. I hope such indiscretions are forgivable.
How often have we been seduced by brand names for special movements and innovations; and have crossed swords with colleagues until things settled down and the next craze came along? We have discoursed about…. open and traditional…. phonics and whole-word….new maths and maths…persuasive and traditional…..child-centred and subject centred….composite and multi-aged….charter and mainstream…..education and testucation….child-based and didactic….?
There is a new list on the way from up-above…..data-driven instruction, blended learning, differential learning, closing the achievement and talent gap, student-centric instruction, yap, yap. Makes one ever wonder what ever happened to classroom teaching as a descriptor?
In America it is said: “Schools nationwide continue to adopt student-centric instructional models that use data to empower teachers and engage learners. Data-driven instruction has moved beyond the education-buzzword sphere to educators’ daily lexicon.” So, Kleinism aka Naplanism is now permanently embedded in many of that nation’s schools…..more so in ours. The article continues : “In this ASCD Smartbrief Special Report, we provide a round-up of news about recent trends in data-driven instruction, blended learning and stories about how some schools are preparing the next generation of data scientists.” Getting everybody ready to be rocket scientists! Thinkers and learners?
Read this? ……some schools in Utah have lengthened the school day from six-and-a-half hours to eight to cope with data collection and marking. There is a national lobby for longer school hours. “The National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) is dedicated to expanding learning time to improve student achievement and enable a well-rounded education. Through research, public policy and technical assistance, we support national, state and local initiatives that add significantly more school time for academic and enrichment opportunities to help children meet the demands of the 21st century.” [Using didactic instruction for eight hours per day shouldn’t be very exhausting, compared to three or four hours of serious teaching, should it? Good idea?]
Whatever happened to test-free composite-strategy teaching ? [That’s a new vogue word that I just invented to keep up with the Yanks]
The sorts of initiatives that we have imported [e.g. charter schools] and embedded in the data-laden environment of NAPLAN and its hellfire cobbers are a serious threat to our future. Such restrictions to serious school learning will continue (“The whippings will continue until morale increases” policy. ) in Australia while we continue to adopt the American mind-set. Schools in Australia are not run by teachers any more, but by remote control.
Political control of national testing programs is the most successful method of isolating teachers from effective teaching known to mankind; and that kind of conditioning suits the package-deal spirit of teacher-proofing.
Coercion always induces low level acceptance of a profession as a profession, so the outcome is that better teachers are quitting; neophytes with potential don’t last long; and better-quality applicants don’t want to join the profession because of our leaders’ grossly unprofessional attitude to children and their teachers. Make no mistake. This is a critical issue.
The Deseret News of Salt Lake City makes this point following an America of the future conference: “The level of despondency within the profession is too high for our future to be safe. A fairly dispiriting conversation, to be sure, but the response to the host’s penultimate question left me feeling downright sad at first, and, then, upon reflection, a bit confused. Replying to the query ‘Do you think the quality of teaching will decline in the years to come?’ each panellist explained her sense that the profession and, thus, the state of education were in decline. To paraphrase the veteran teacher of the group, ‘I’ve encountered many great teachers in my years in the profession, but it’s getting harder and harder for these folks to hold on. At the same time, it’s getting more difficult to attract new people into teaching.’ Listening to that assessment about a core element —the core element?— of our public education system, how can you not become despondent?”
With the teacher-proofing of Australian schools based on the American MODEL, how can we not feel even more despondent down under? Let’s bring the child back into the equation, get rid of the rubbish and start TEACHING. {PLEASE NOTE. Those teachers who fly in the face of the coercion and teach without reliance on data…..please hang in there. The kids need you.}
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If you wish to receive The Treehorn Express direct, please contact me.
cphilcullen@bigpond.com
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Phil Cullen {…..kids and their teachers first} 41 Cominan Avenue Banora Point 2486 Australia 07 5524 6443 0407865999 cphilcullen@bigpond.com
http://primaryschooling.net/ http://kelleyandcullen.net/ http://qldpriaryprincipals.wordpress.com
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