Archives for the year of: 2015
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Youngstown, Ohio: Charters Perform Worse than Low-Performing Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
5

Stephen Dyer, a policy analyst for Innovation Ohio, wonders why Governor Kasich wants to replace the low-performing public schools of Youngstown, Ohio, with charter schools, since the existing charter schools in that city have worse performance than the public schools of that city, in every subject and in every grade.

 

Wait, there was one exception where charter schools in Youngstown had higher performance than public schools:

 

Youngstown outperforms the average charter school in Mahoning County in 19 out of 20 proficiency assessments that measure English, math, science and social studies. On average, the district did better than local charters by nearly 14 percent. The only category that charters performed better was in 8th grade Math, and that differential was only two-tenths of one percent.

 

Why invest millions of dollars expanding a sector that gets worse results? Why not work with parents and communities to improve the public school system?

 

Innovation Ohio compared the two sectors here:

 

COLUMBUS – A comparison of the new state proficiency test data shows that Youngstown-area charter schools based in Mahoning County perform far worse than the Youngstown City School District, which was designated by the state as academically distressed. The new data, released by the Ohio Department of Education, shows preliminary statewide results for the new PARCC tests.

“These findings should be a wake up call to policymakers that diverting more Youngstown money and more Youngstown students into failing charter schools is not the answer,” said Innovation Ohio Education Policy Fellow Stephen Dyer. “It’s clear that the path to turning around Youngtown schools must be more nuanced than simply creating more privately run charter schools.”

Youngstown outperforms the average charter school in Mahoning County in 19 out of 20 proficiency assessments that measure English, math, science and social studies. On average, the district did better than local charters by nearly 14 percent. The only category that charters performed better was in 8th grade Math, and that differential was only two-tenths of one percent.

In June 2015, the Ohio General Assembly passed a controversial plan to eliminate the publicly elected school board in Youngstown and replace them with an appointed commission and CEO whose powers would include the ability to close schools, change contracts and nearly everything in between.

One concerning outcome of this plan is that Youngstown public education system could be turned over to more publicly funded, privately run charter schools. According to news reports and the state’s grant application, Ohio officials planned on using a substantial portion of the controversial $71 million federal grant it received to increase the number of charter schools in Youngstown. The most logical place to start this expansion would be upscaling the charters already in Mahoning County.

“The comparison of this data lays bare the idea that more privatized schools are the answer in Youngstown,” said Dyer. “If we want to improve educational outcomes in Youngstown, we have to have meaningful community and parent input on common-sense approaches that will serve the children of Youngstown with the best possible educations. Pouring millions into the pockets of the current crop of Mahoning County charters would only serve to reward their performance failures.”

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Hoax, Ohio, Privatization

Indiana Vouchers: A Lose-Lose for Taxpayers, Except the Richest

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
9

Indiana “School Matters” is great for the rich but a bad deal for other Indianans. 
“Indiana’s School Scholarship Tax Credit program is “almost too good to be true,” the head of the state’s Lutheran Scholarship Granting Organization tells the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette.
“That may be true if you’re one of the rich people getting a 50 percent kickback from the state on your contributions to private K-12 schools. Two-thirds of the credits go to Hoosiers who make more than a half million dollars a year, the JG’s Niki Kelly reports.
“And it’s also a good deal for private schools like those represented by the Lutheran group and the other four Scholarship Granting Organizations that dispense the tax credits. No one else gets such generous help from the state to help with their fundraising.
“But it’s arguably not so good for the Indiana taxpayers who are paying more and more money every year to fund private schools, most of them religious. And it’s not a good deal for public schools that struggle as the state sends more money to private schools.
“Betsy Wiley, president and CEO of the Institute for Quality of Education, another of the Scholarship Granting Organizations, suggests that paying for the program is a wash because the state isn’t paying to educate students who might otherwise be in public school.
“But that’s bogus. It’s likely that most of the scholarships are going to students who would never have attended public schools. So their schooling is an added-on cost for the state.
“More significantly, any student who receives a scholarship from a Scholarship Granting Organization for one year becomes eligible for taxpayer-funded vouchers for as long as his or her family remains income-eligible. And the student’s siblings get vouchers too.
“Indiana’s voucher program was supposedly created to let children from poor families escape “failing” public schools. But the idea that families should first give public schools a chance was quickly dropped. As of 2014-15, two-thirds of new voucher recipients entered the program through the scholarship program. Four-fifths of new voucher recipients had never attended a public school.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Indiana

Why Literature Matters

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
16

In response to an earlier post about the decline in teaching fiction since 2011, and to the limits on fiction set in the Common Core standards (not more than 30% of instructional time in high school), a reader named Laura responded in a comment. Why limit fiction? Why does it matter? I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Laura writes:

“The study of literature (i.e. fictional texts) is essential to the development of critical thinking. When a student engages with a piece of literature, the student must step into the shoes of someone else and evaluate the decisions made and the actions taken by that character. When we teach literature, we teach students to hypothesize by making predictions, and we teach students how to synthesize different pieces of information in a way that makes sense. With literature, students learn how to understand and how to make analogies, thereby developing their ability to compare and contrast ideas as well as to evaluate those comparisons and contrasts.  

“Literature provides the opportunity for students to understand human relationships as well as historical events in a way that is more personal and more accessible. I know a student is hooked when the student says, “This character is just like X in my life.” When a student can identify with a character and with a story, then a reader is created, and that reader will go on to read anything else they encounter in the world. Therefore, literature allows students not only to develop their vocabulary and their reading comprehension skills but to develop a consciousness as a member of a larger community of people. It allows students to access different perspectives, and especially on controversial issues, this can sometimes be the only point of access that a student might have.  

“Gates, Walton, Broad, Zuckerberg, et al are not interested in critical thinkers who might question their decisions. They want human drones who have enough tech skills to produce but not enough critical thinking skills to challenge the way things are.  

“Anyone who views literature as an option is misguided. Literature is absolutely and fundamentally essential to an educated populace and to democracy.”

Categories Curriculum, Education Reform

A Guide to Social Impact Bonds

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
2

“In the Public Interest” is an organization dedicated to warning the public about the dangers of privatizing public services.

 

It has written a guidebook to explain to citizens what Social Impact Bonds are, how they work, who they benefit, and why they are dangerous for our society.

 

Shar Habibi, ITPI’s director of research, writes:

 

“Our guide is a must-read for any citizen or decision-maker trying to understand these new financing structures. It will help you ask tough questions to ensure that private dollars don’t create perverse incentives, fail to serve the neediest cases (also known as ‘creaming’), or distort measures of success for our most important social services.

“Ultimately, Pay for Success ignores the deeper cause of many of our growing social problems: underinvestment in the public interest. America desperately needs more investment in all our public services. Prevention-focused public funding of critical public services—like pre-K for all children and help for juveniles who end up in the criminal justice system—is our simplest and least expensive solution.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization

What Are Social Impact Bonds and Why They Are a Very Bad Idea

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
9

Rick Cohen, a journalist for the Nonprofit Quarterly, wrote this article about social impact bonds in 2014. Rick died suddenly a few weeks ago, and it was a great loss. He was a fighter for social justice. When he led the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, he lacerated the Walton Family Foundation for its greedy, self-serving ways in two reports. After he left NCRP, this year’s report on the Waltons treated the far-right foundation with kid gloves, almost praising its lust to eliminate unions and public education.

 

In Rick’s article of 2014, he explains what social impact bonds are and why they are a terrible idea. He would have been outraged to see them embedded in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, now called (absurdly) the Every Child Succeeds Act, which is a different way of saying “no child left behind.”

 

Rick offers eight reasons to worry about social impact bonds (“pay for success”), which were then a new idea.

 

Here is one of them:

 

Is it possible that a potential SIB/PFS downside is that private capital might overly influence the decision-making and priorities of government through the SIB/PFS model? As one advocate testified in a Congressional hearing, a SIB “improves decision-making by bring market discipline to government decisions about which programs to expand, as investors will only put their dollars behind programs with a strong evidence base.” If government overly focuses on programs that will attract private investors, the results might work to the investors’ benefit, but not necessarily to the benefit of appropriately identifying and prioritizing social initiatives that don’t generate private capital interest. Should private investors determine “which programs to expand,” or should public debate and discussion in a democratic process about human needs be the determining factors?

 

Is the investment “for the kids” or “for the investors”? Let the market decide. Rick would not agree.

 

R.I.P. to Rick Cohen. He will be sorely missed.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit

Ohio: Charters Are a “Parasitic Industry”

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
24

William Phillis, a retired Deputy Commissioner of Ohio, leads the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition. He fears for the future of public education because of the capture of the State Legislature by the privatization movement. The greatest danger, he writes, is charters, because they are promoted as reforms when they are a threat to pubic education and an insidious tool for privatization.

 

 

He writes:

 

 
The privatization of the public common school movement can be stopped: but a different approach is necessary

Many, if not most, public common school officials and public education advocates in Ohio have humored state officials since 1999 about the supposed merits of charter schools; and at the same time have given these state officials a pass on not creating a constitutional school funding system.
So what has been the result of this passive approach?
Loss of tangible personal property tax funds/state reimbursement for the loss
*Current public school funding level at about where it was seven years ago and no progress toward a constitutional system
*$1 billion being extracted from school districts this school year for a grossly failing charter industry
*Harmful education mandates being foisted on school districts
*$200 million being extracted this year from school districts for vouchers
*Charters are the epicenter of the privatization movement.

So what is the definitive goal of the privatizers?

Replace the common school, not supplement it

 

Eliminate teachers unions, boards of education and the teaching profession as it currently exists
Charters in Ohio have performed less well for children in neighborhoods with a high concentration of poverty; nevertheless, the market-driven reformers, aided by the Wall Street billionaires, education philanthropists and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are moving forward with their agenda-replace the public common school system with a multi-faceted, privately-operated array of education competitors.

It is now time to recognize and renounce the dishonesty and greed inherent in the Ohio charter industry. The Ohio charter experiment is not fixable because it was created under false pretenses and is not answerable to the people it claims to serve.
Common school officials and public education advocates need to engage every community in a campaign to repeal the laws that created the parasitic charter industry.

 
William Phillis
Ohio E & A

 

ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Ohio

Randi: What ESSA Says About Charters

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
60

The Every Student Succeeds Act was released to the public on November 30, passed both houses of Congress with large majorities within 10 days, and was signed into law today by President Obama. That was fast. The good news is that No Child Left Behind is gone. There is so much we don’t know because there has been so little time to read it, discuss it, and hear different perspectives on how it will work.

 

 

Randi Weingarten here explains the charter portion of the law. Sure, some would prefer that the federal government stop subsidizing privatization. But this is a Republican-controlled Congress, so what did you expect? School choice is their favorite school reform.

 

Randi writes:

 

 

“This is what is in the bill on charters:

 
“The program is reauthorized through FY 2020 and replaced the current charter school grant program with a program awarding grants to states, and through them subgrants to charter school developers, to open new charters and expand and replicate high-quality charter school models. At the same time, ESSA strengthens and updates the charter school program by: · ensuring charter school quality, accountability and transparency including required fiscal audits; · incentivizes stronger charter school authorizing practices; · requires charter schools to improve community outreach and engagement · provides dedicated funding to expand and replicate the highest quality charter schools so that they can reach more students; · focuses on charter school practices recruitment, retention and discipline practices, particularly for underrepresented groups such as homeless and foster students. There is a grant priority for charter management organizations that operate racially integrated schools and prioritize serving a majority of low-income students. There is money for facilities assistance as the bill reserves 12.5 percent of the charter school program funding to be used for facilities assistance. ESSA also requires the Secretary of Education to address the recent findings of the Office of the Inspector General pertaining to operational challenges within the Charter School Program.”

Categories Charter Schools, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

Amanda Koonlaba: Art Helps Students Become Whole

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
7

Amanda Koonlaba teaches kindergarten students in Mississippi. This post is part of the series on art in school that appears on Anthony Cody’s blog “Living in Dialogue.”

 

Koonlaba writes:

 

I believe arts education is the antithesis of the corporate reform and privatization regime. I believe arts education is the best tool that schools have to reach all learners. I believe the arts belong in every school because they are important to our humanity. I believe all students deserve access to high-quality arts instruction. I also believe that the arts should be integrated with the traditional subjects of math, science, reading, etc.

 

You don’t have to take my word for it though. There is more than enough meritable research to back up my arts belief system. In fact, my school partners with the Whole Schools Initiative (WSI), which is a special project of the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC). The MAC has conducted more than one research study that shows the significant role the arts play in closing achievement gaps and creating a school culture that is most conducive to meeting the needs of the whole child.

 

This partnership began three years ago. I was asked by my administrators to write a grant to the Mississippi Arts Commission to fund the start of this partnership and to serve as the coordinator of the program. I was thrilled to do this. I had previously taught at two Model Schools for arts integration (both public schools) as a third and first grade teacher. Now, as the visual art teacher at my current school, I was so proud to be able to bring such an amazing opportunity to my new students.

 

So, the teachers at my school began attending professional development workshops on the arts and how to integrate the arts into instruction. These weren’t the typical, mundane workshops that come to mind when you think about CCSS and data analysis. These were fun workshops where teachers were able to participate in artistic processes and learn how to use those to integrate their instruction. They were engaging and worthwhile. The same as what we want for the instruction of our students.

 

We put a very concentrated effort into using this new partnership to change the image of our school within our community. Over time, our school began getting positive press which had been lacking for many years. The staff led students and the community in painting murals, revamping outdoor spaces, and hosting events to get all stakeholders into our school. This speaks to the cultural change we are experiencing as a result of our efforts.

 

I certainly feel happier at my job than I ever have in eleven years of teaching. Yes, we still have to test and we still have data conversations. It is still stressful, but we are combatting that for ourselves and our students with the arts. On the days a teacher is able to integrate an art project into their instruction, both the teacher and students enjoy being at school….

 

 

Last year, a fourth grader asked me if I realized they had been doing art in their math class. I said, “Of course, I helped your teacher get those materials for you guys.” He was surprised. He said he hadn’t realized you could do art and math at the same time. He went on to say, “I needed that. I only get to come to your class once a week. I need art more than once a week. It helps me forget about all the bad things.” I know that student very well. I have been his visual art teacher for three years, and I know what he is referring to when he mentions “bad things.” I know what his home life is like, and I know he was being so sincere.

 

 

Categories Arts Education, Joy, Real Education

Cuomo Task Force Will Recommend Revision of Standards, Tests, Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
35

The task force appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo to review the Common Core standards, testing, and teacher evaluation will recommend a moratorium on tying teacher evaluation to test scores--as much as four years–and a reboot of the standards and tests.

 

Why Cuomo is making these decisions is unclear because the New York State Constitution gives the governor no role in education. The New York State Board of Regents is the legal authority, not the governor, but this governor decided to take control of education.

 

Meanwhile, we wait to hear from Governor Cuomo to see what in the task force report he agrees with, since he has made himself the Decider.

Categories Common Core, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

John Kass: Subpoena Rahm’s Emails about Delayed Video of Laquan’s Death

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2015 //
6

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune has advice for federal investigators: Subpoena Rahm’s emails if you really want to find out why the video of Laquan McDonald’s death was suppressed for a year.

 

He writes:

 

Order his Department of Justice to subpoena all of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s emails and other electronic messages from personal and public accounts. And subpoena those of his kitchen cabinet, as well.

 

Rahm does the public’s business in the shadows, just like Hillary Clinton.

 

Justice Department lawyers should go back to the day McDonald, a 17-year-old black teenager, was shot to death by a white Chicago cop, and then read Rahm’s email, one by one, texts, too, through all those months Rahm fought Freedom of Information Act requests in order to keep the police dash-cam video under wraps.

 

Sources tell me that federal investigators have asked Chicago police about their own private texts and emails pertaining to the McDonald shooting.

 

So why shouldn’t the DOJ ask the mayor about his emails and texts? He’s not some beat cop working an overnight shift. He’s the mayor.

 

If Obama is not serious about Rahm’s emails, then he should cancel the newly announced DOJ civil rights investigation into the Chicago police and hold a beer summit instead….

 

The root is why that McDonald dash-cam recording was kept under wraps through Rahm’s re-election.

 

Anything less is just a game designed to move the focus away from City Hall, away from Rahm, away from the politicians who helped re-elect him, away from where it belongs.

 

Subpoenas for Rahm’s emails — as well as those of his kitchen cabinet and other insiders — would give the DOJ a clearer picture of why City Hall sat on the McDonald police dash-cam video for months.

 

Remember that the McDonald video remained safely under wraps, and Rahm, with the support of black political leaders, skated to re-election with some 57 percent of the black vote in Chicago.

 

Categories Chicago
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