Indiana has a new charter school called Early Career Academy. The great thing about this school is that students can earn an associate’s degree when they graduate high school, and it is all free!
However, there is a catch: Only one college will accept the credits earned for an associate degree from ITT Tech charter school, and that is the sponsor of the charter school, which is a for-profit college called ITT Tech.
Stephanie Wang of the IndyStar writes that “the degree comes with a catch: The credits from that degree likely will not transfer to any major university in the state if the students want to pursue four-year degrees.
“There is, however, one institution guaranteed to accept the credits — the for-profit college sponsoring the charter school.
“And that college — ITT Tech — is being sued by the federal government over claims that ITT provides an inferior education, charges steep tuition, and uses high-pressure sales techniques to lock students into an education most are unable to finish and into loans many are unable to pay off.”
When states allow these kinds of practices, it leaves the ordinary citizen feeling befuddled and outraged. How dare they! Why should taxpayers pay for this?
CORRECTION: the Indy Star contacted me to say that their story contained inaccuracies and omissions. The editor are still discussing corrections. The email included this statement:
“Omissions in the Star story are a matter still under discussion. However, you are blatantly wrong when you say only ITT will accept the credits. That needs to be corrected as soon as possible, especially since you have highlighted the post in your Twitter news feed.
“Additionally, the following paragraph included in your post has already been revised by the Indy Star due to inaccuracies. This needs to be corrected as soon as possible.
“And that college — ITT Tech — is being sued by the federal government over claims that ITT provides an inferior education, charges steep tuition, and uses high-pressure sales techniques to lock students into an education most are unable to finish and into loans many are unable to pay off.””
From Diane:
Readers in Indiana are welcome to take note and comment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hmmmm…..whats that economic/political system called when private sector takes over public sector? Oh yes, FASCISM.
Get the storm trooper boots and brown shirts out ladies and gents, they’re back!
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I think we’re going to see more and more fake “non profits” like this charter school:
“But the financial backing also tightly ties Early Career Academy to ITT. In addition, the charter school is paying ITT to provide curricula, use its instructors and operate out of its campus on Indianapolis’ Northside. While Early Career Academy is governed and authorized through a nonprofit board, its leader told The Star he was selected by ITT.”
I hope people in Indiana become aware of this before it spreads to OH, MI, WI and PA. The federal government has utterly failed at regulating for-profit colleges. I cannot imagine how bad it will get if for-profit colleges move into K-12.
Ed reform initiatives don’t stay in one state. They spread. They’re national. If this isn’t stopped thru public pressure in Indiana we’lll get this garbage exported to the whole upper midwest.
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Too many members of Congress get campaign contributions from these for profit schools, and their lobbyists are hard at work making sure the money train stops at their school. Congress has had a chance to exercise some control over them, but they never do it.http://www.republicreport.org/2014/for-profit-colleges-lobbyists-obama/
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The “regulator” of charter schools in Indiana didn’t even bother to ask if the credits transferred. Finding that out was too much work for her.
Can you imagine? These kids and their parents would have found out when they went to apply the credits at a real college, after investing two years of their time and effort untold amounts of public money.
Aren’t they ashamed to do this to the people who are PAYING them to regulate?
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The Indy Star reported this??? ‘Tis definitely the season of miracles!
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Ah, I see the corrections now. The Indy Star is quite possibly the only paper the corrects its accuracies rather than its inaccuracies (it would take too long and cost too much to do the latter).
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The Northeast Ohio Media group removed an entire video of Kasich slouching, scowling, and dodging tough questions because the governor looked bad. When Plunderbund tried to publish the video, NEO news organization threatened to sue – for reporting news. Are we North Korea, yet?
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I know people who have both attended and worked for ITT Tech. The credits don’t transfer. In addition, students are offered job placement. Most of the jobs are temporary. Moreover, an ITT graduate was working as the IT guy at ITT; he couldn’t even connect the printer. Lower income students are targeted so that the “school” can get the financial money. It’s not a school nor is it a business. It’s a sham.
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I still have a question that I’ve put in comments on this blog many times that nobody has ever answered, or speculated on with/for me. I wish someone would.
Here it is. OK. When we hear about the racial problems in the U.S., (and that conversation may be starting to actually gather momentum to create change), BUT reformers have declared that everyone is trapped in a broken system (public school. . .and its prison pipeline for black males etc). We recognize that we have systems in our country that do not allow for change, and or that need to be examined for latent racism and perpetuating the marginalizing of minorities who are poor. So some offer up charters (which leaves room for corruption at this point), and still others offer up that charters at the expense of public schools hurts minorities more.
(I’m going to ramble a bit to get to my point). In 1991 I saw BOYS IN THE HOOD and I sobbed for an hour at home at the kitchen table and my father asked me why I was sobbing and I said because I think that movie is depicting reality for a lot of people and there isn’t anything I can do about it.
So in 2001 I moved to Kansas City Missouri and when everyone told me to stay away from the KCMO schools, I called right away for an interview. I requested their lowest and “worst” school, and they gave it to me. And we achieved great things in music (I am a music teacher), and then I went there again to work in 2005 (after having gone back to school and being a gifted teacher for a year) and we did great things. . .kids on the radio with our “Black Cowboy” program, etc. But I ended up getting married and moving away and becoming a mother and teaching right back in NC, where I grew up.
OK. . .so on the one hand our society is talking about questioning systems that might be perpetuating racial inequity. I know that in the public schools in KCMO, I saw white teachers and black teachers working very hard alongside one another to help kids within a system that is not meant to be a nunnery, but rather a profession that uplifts both the worker and those served. It has been attacked (public school). Things are a mess with both the choice movement and the standardization and data movements all at play together.
So my question remains: what if there had not been No Child Left Behind? What would have been enabled that we are not seeing right now? Because most folks didn’t like NCLB even at first, what would they have offered instead and how would that encompass some of the “public schools perpetuate racial inequity” mindset?
Right now there are so many issues at play. And we can feel them all. We know the original source of at least the darkest of the storm clouds. . .so, because we created that dark storm cloud with NCLB, what is behind that cloud? What could have been? What should have been? What might have been? Oh how I wish someone would talk about that. . .because I think that’s where the answers are.
In NC right now I see and feel the pressures of testing mandates AND the cutbacks (fewer teaching assistants means music teachers and art teachers and PE teachers are constantly getting called onto other duties like “tutoring” (read: test prep), riding the bus with unruly kids, doing extra duties very early in the morning outside in the cold; having lost many middle class families to the two new charters up the road, we no longer have the same supports from PTO that we had. I feel it. I just wish I knew what it is that I should imagine would be better. But there are so many different forces going on at the same time, that I just honestly don’t. Thinking and questioning seems to be frowned upon in the average public elementary school right now in NC. Follow orders. Test prep. Ignore race. Ignore poverty, except maybe where behavior issues are concerned. So what is the answer, really, and how would it be easier to attain right now if there had never been No Child Left Behind? If we start imagining that. . .maybe it can come into play. A recreation of a new day. I have to be able to picture it to work towards it. But the vision is so muddied with choice talk and what really constitutes “student advancement” and does standardizing help poor people etc.
What would have constituted the blue sky that NCLB covered up ?
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“. . . . . .so, because we created that dark storm cloud with NCLB, what is behind that cloud? What could have been? What should have been? What might have been? Oh how I wish someone would talk about that. . .because I think that’s where the answers are.”
Counterfactuals can make interesting conversation, but rarely hold “answers” to current questions. ” What could have been? What should have been? What might have been?” are interesting questions with many answers, none definitive. Most of the time there are no “true” answers. The constant “search for” “truths”, especially using counterfactuals/hypothetical questions will not yield those “truths” and leads to much frustration.
“What would have constituted the blue sky that NCLB covered up ?”
There are as many answers to that question as there are those willing to consider it. It is a counterfactual/hypothetical in which there is no “true” answer and therefore in one sense it is irrelevant to what is going on today.
We know what constitutes that “blue sky” and it certainly is not the edudeformers’ agenda. The practitioner, i.e., the teachers should be the ones who “lead” any change for their classes. And that would begin the “bluing” of the sky.
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While I don’t profess to have all the answers, I taught for thirty-six years in a successful, diverse school district and worked in a Blue Ribbon school. NCLB was never about reforming education; it was designed to punish, and was statistically impossible at the end to reach “nirvana.” What I know is that more testing and punishment will not improve teaching. Poverty is a formidable opponent! Here are some steps we took to attempt to level the playing field. We had before, after and summer school programs for our lowest students. We had a school community liaison that visited homes and worked with an “Early Start” program. We detracked the high school and ran a summer boot camp to prepare minority students for AP and advanced classes. We were mostly a middle class school district with about 25-30% poverty. The school was well maintained, and the mostly white PTA did a lot to help our poorer students such as funding class trips, renting instruments, even sometimes paying college application fees We could have done more if we had more social services in the building.
As far as education goes, we need to blow up how schools are funded. It is a “have” and “have not” formula using local real estate as the base. It leads to huge disparities in funding. With the charter school movement in urban areas, the problems have gotten worse because the money disappears with the students. The public schools get left with the neediest, most expensive (LD, ELL, Conduct Disorder, speech and language impaired, etc) to educate.
The Common Core offers no hope of improvement, It is more of the test and punish syndrome designed to make public schools fail. With economists, politicians, and economists trying to make teaching and learning a “free market” free for all, the future is looking bleak for America’s school children.
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I’m with you retired teacher. Common sense alone tells us that test to success is ludicrous even if failure to succeed wasn’t punished. How can anyone hope to create a climate conducive to learning that disrespects not only parents and students but the teachers as well?
The hard truth is that we need to fund schools equitably. I don’t know if there is any way to make sure that a school district uses those resources as well as your district was able to do. I don’t think we can do much worse. It can’t be more obvious that top down micromanagement in a punitive climate is never going to lead to the innovative, creative, supportive schools that we need.
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My main point is that poverty children require more resources, not less. Yet the way public education is funded, they wind up with less money and fewer resources, Then, everyone blames the teachers for the lackluster results when it is really institutionalized failure!
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Woulda, coulda, shoulda! We are where we are now.
However, without NCLB, teachers would have focused on the needs of their particular students instead of teaching towards an exam. (And this emphasis has only gotten worse with the CC assessments). We used to work as a team and come up with benchmarks for a given grade. The control was with the classroom teachers (with oversight from the principals). The main target was the education of each individual child.
Now the discussion is about techniques to improve test scores.
Ellen T Klock
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This for-profit college company is in deep financial trouble.
A competent regulator who had some interest in doing the job they’re paid by the public to do would ask whether for-profit colleges are expanding into K-12 charter schools to prop up their failing business model.
That’s an obvious question. It isn’t even being asked. I mean, come on. Why are we paying these people? They do NO due diligence. None.
http://www.jconline.com/story/news/education/2014/08/10/woes-stack-carmel-based-itt-tech/13870817/
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Does the ed reform “movement” support rip off for-profit colleges moving into the K-12 “space”?
It isn’t bad enough they’re stealing from adults, and the regulators we’re paying are too corrupt and captured to stop them? Now they’re going after kids?
No comment on this from the bold leaders of The Movement. Full speed ahead!
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I’m totally using the phrase “The Movement” now. Thank you for introducing it to me.
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They’re really “bold” yet they never, ever criticize a fellow “movement” member.
You know what I’ve noticed? None of this ed reform garbage ends up in Boston or NYC or DC. They dump all the crap in midwest states. We get the fly by night charters, and the crooked for-profits, and the cheap “online learning” in cities like Detroit. They don’t sell this junk where they live and work.
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Chiara, Not sure what you mean by “None of this ed reform garbage ends up in Boston or NYC or DC.” NYC has E Moskowitz earning $400+K while her charter teachers’ opinions on Glass Door were cited by Dr Ravitch a few months ago. NYC also has Andrew Cuomo forcing NYC schools to lease space to charters despite Mayor DeBlasio. DC is still subject to M Rhee’s successor. GF Brandenberg and Mr Teachbad’s blogs cite(d) DC’s challenges.
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This is amusing:
http://www.thirdway.org/report/what-americans-want-from-democrats-on-education
Democrats are absolutely tanking in poling on education. The response from ed reform lobbyists? “We’re not privatizing fast enough!” “Double down!”
There isn’t going to be a Democratic governor left in this country. They run fewer states now that at any time since the 1920’s, and yet they just keep doubling down, kowtowing to these idiot DC lobbyists and think tanks.
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Isn’t that where Ted Morris got all his degrees and all his early career experience before the age of 18?
“Cocky Career Academy”
Cocky Career Academy
Is where I got my break
Where I got my PhD
And where I learned to fake
And lie and cheat and steal
And all before 18
This charter really has appeal
If what you want is green
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SomeDAM Poet:
A celebrated edupreneur beat you to it.
Pitbull, the first three lines of “Juice Box” [and they repeat]:
“Money – ay oh ay oh ay oh wah –
Money – ay oh ay oh ay oh wah –
Money
I want, I need, I like, to get – Money, money, money, money,
I want I need, I like, to get – Money, money, money, I like”
According to the usual unconfirmed sources, this song will be reappearing under the new title “$tudent $ucce$$.”
Why the re-release? “It’s all about the kids.”
😎
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I hate to admit that I live in Indiana
AND
that this kind of shenanigans are par for the course here, more and more.
Too, how many for profit “colleges” do the same kind of thing; overcharge, have no courses worthy of transfer ad nauseum.
AND our government pays for them so often. The GI bill which is very good but pays for these so called courses is causing humongous debts for the people who served our country – as well as others – but after taking these ‘courses’ cannot find employment, their courses were not worthy of the name.
SCAMS: indeed and we as tax payers are on the hook for paying for the “education” and the “students” are on the hook for fabulous amounts of money.
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“Movement” <— what my mom called defecation. We're all getting the joke, right?
I think the fake ed-reform is here to stay and there will be opposition all the way to the end. As someone here once wrote, and I'm paraphrasing, they can't get rid of all the public schools because where else would the send the unwanteds?
Here in Newark, they're building a veritable campus of 3 charter schools, retail, and housing for TFA scabs–Teachers Village. The tax cuts and incentives given to those involved shake me to the very core. Juxtapose that with Barringer H.S. in Newark under the current horror that is One Newark, then read up on the gentrification of Broad/Halsey Streets with the impending 3 charters & a place to house the TFA teachers, all in one, with Whole Foods next door. Barringer can't even get supplies, and literally billions are being spent to build this nightmare of ed reform.
Who is going to send their kids to these 3 charter schools in down town Newark? Executives who work here? Doubtful. if you build it, will they come?
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Another part of the charter movement goes hand in hand with gentrification. As more yuppies more into urban areas, charters are a way for them to get a designer education for their children while screening out the “urban element.” With high priced private school tuition pricing out those in middle management and the strong desire not to subject their children to the blight and violence that often plague city schools, charters are a way for yuppies to get a “gentrifed,” often segregated. education for their children. Obama and Emmanuel are involved in this in Chicago, and we know Eva Moskowitz has big plans for New York.
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I wouldn’t worry too much about this “correction” from the Indy Star. They found the time to send you a list of corrections but haven’t bothered to publish a correction in their paper? Seems odd to me.
The Indy Star has operated as press release for former mayor Bart Peterson’s Mind Trust, his former employee, Justin Ohlemiller, who runs the Indiana chapter of Stand for Children or anyone bashing Glenda Ritz or advocating state takeover of public schools.
I’m assuming the original article came too close to journalism and the editor (the same editor that let this slip through a couple weeks ago: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/indianapolis-newspaper-alters-then-deletes-racist-thanksgiving-cartoon-following-complaints/ ) and is making the author make amends to the business interests in the state.
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I just read the following Guest Column in Dec. 18, 2014 edition of The Times of NW Indiana. Wanted Diane to see this.
GUEST COMMENTARY: “Here’s how we will improve education in Indiana by Gov. Mike Pence”
18 hours ago • Mike Pence
Indiana is on a roll. Unemployment in our state has declined from more than 8 percent when I was elected governor to 5.7 percent today. Since 2009, the drop in our unemployment rate is the fourth largest in the nation. We have added more than 83,000 private sector jobs in the past two years, and our real GDP growth led the Midwest last year.
To keep Indiana on a roll, we need to keep innovating and investing in our future. And investing in high quality education for our children is our top priority.
We’ve made great progress as a state in recent years. High school graduation rates are up, ISTEP scores have increased, and Indiana ranked second in the nation in total growth on NAEP — the nation’s report card.
Four years after its launch, Indiana’s school voucher program is the largest in America. Four out of five voucher students are enrolled in A or B schools, and the percentage of A and B public charter schools is increasing.
Despite our progress, we still have more than 100,000 students in D and F schools, and 170,000 in C schools. Only 3 percent of students in career and technical education earn an industry-recognized credential, and we still have too many kids dropping out of high school.
We must do better. The future prosperity and happiness of Hoosier children demands it.
That is why I propose we set goals to have 100,000 more students in A and B schools and five times the number of high school students receiving industry-recognized credential by 2020.
To accomplish these goals, we need to do three things: fund excellence, promote choices for families, and fix what is broken.
I have proposed a plan of action based on this vision.
First, traditional public schools need more freedom to innovate and pay good teachers more. That’s why I have proposed Freedom to Teach schools. Under my plan, schools can submit plans to the State Board of Education requesting waivers from a wide range of requirements to gain the freedom they need.
Second, because public charter schools have improved choices for families and helped raise the quality of traditional public schools through competition, I have proposed that we establish “fairness in funding” in our public school system. Charter schools operate at a significant per-pupil funding deficit. We need to fix this to see more high-quality charters open their doors in Indiana.
Third, we need to lift the dollar cap on vouchers and increase the amount of the tax credit available to people who provide private scholarships to disadvantaged kids. This will create more choices for more families and raise outcomes for kids.
Fourth, we need to change how we fund career and technical education courses so that more high school students choose to specialize in a course of study leading to high-wage career options, whether they want to get a job or go to college after graduation.
Fifth, for us to fund excellence and increase choices for families, we need to fix what is broken. I have proposed that we get politics out of education in Indiana and begin fixing the overly complicated way we oversee education policy in Indiana. I have chosen to dissolve the Center for Education and Career Innovation as a first step. I have also called on the General Assembly to allow the State Board of Education to elect its own chair, a common practice among state boards in Indiana.
We have the opportunity to take Indiana to an entirely new level. Our state is strong and growing stronger. Now is the time to promote excellence in education that matches the excellence of the people in our state.
Mike Pence is governor of Indiana. The opinions are the writer’s.
Copyright 2014 nwitimes.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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