Archives for the year of: 2015
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Eva’s Charters Refuse to Sign Pre-K Contracts: Public Money with No Public Oversight?

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2015 //
27

Some charter operators claim they are public schools, but refuse to be audited or subject to any public accountability for the public funds they receive. As you might expect, Eva Moskowitz is leading the battle to prevent public oversight as she earlier led the charter battle to prevent public audits.  The legislature passed legislation allowing New York City’s Comptroller to audit NYC charters, and the State Comptroller to audit charters outside of New York City. The legislation blocked State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli from auditing Success Academy, as he had intended. The City Comptroller is now conducting an audit that includes Success Academy charters.

But now Eva is fighting oversight of publicly sponsored pre-K in her charters.

New York City Mayor de Blasio made universal pre-K a major goal of his administration. The city set up nearly 300 new pre-K sites. All but one signed a contract with the city. Guess who that one is.
Eliza Shapiro reports at Politico New York:
“The Success Academy charter school network has refused to sign mandatory contracts granting the city Department of Education oversight over its pre-kindergarten program, deputy mayor Richard Buery said Thursday, signaling the latest showdown between the charter network and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration….

“If Success does not sign the contracts, the city will withhold payment. Success will technically be able to provide its own pre-K programs — just without city funds.

“The charter network, New York City’s largest and most controversial, was approved to offer five pre-K classes in three locations under de Blasio’s universal pre-K program earlier this year. But Success’ legal team has told the city they will not sign the contract, according to city officials, because it would authorize DOE oversight over the privately operated network.

“All the other 277 pre-K providers that have been sent contracts have signed them, according to the administration, including nine charter schools. …The DOE first sent Success its contracts on August 4, according to the letter, and followed up with the network’s legal team on August 27.

“The letter says that the city would be in violation of its city-mandated contracting rules if it did not provide a signed contract for Success, and would violate its state pre-K grant by not inspecting pre-K programs. ”

Oversight, transparency, and accountability are for “the little people,” as billionaire Leina Helmsley once memorably said about paying taxes.

One can’t help but wonder whether the four-year-olds will be suspended as often as the five-year-olds. According to Eva’s philosophy, the sooner litte kids are suspended, the less likely they are to require suspension later. Of course, if they are suspended frequently, they won’t be around later. They will be back in public school. You know, those places that accept all children and that get inspected and audited.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

When Arne Duncan Revised the FERPA Regulations Protecting Student Privacy

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2015 //
6

A reader of a post this morning about a letter from John Kline to Arne Duncan asked for more information about the Department of Education’s change of regulations governing FERPA (the Family and Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974).

In a post two years ago, I described the lawsuit filed by EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center), which sought to block the changes in federal regulations in 2011 that loosened the protections of student privacy.

Here is an explanation of the lawsuit that appeared on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog.

The EPIC lawsuit was dismissed in 2013; the Court held that EPIC did not have standing to sue. Its ruling did not deal with the substantive claims.

Parent groups became concerned about FERPA when the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation funded the “Shared Learning Collaborative,” which was renamed inBloom. The plan was to aggregate personally identifiable student data from state data warehouses, store them in a cloud, and make them available for use by others. Whether those others included vendors, researchers, or commercial enterprises is not sure, but parents vehemently opposed the entire plan. The software was developed by Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation (part of Joel Klein’s Amplify division) and the data would be stored in a “cloud” managed by amazon. Parent groups, fearful that their child’s personal data would be mined, testified against the data-sharing agreements in every state and district that agreed to join inBloom, and the effort collapsed. The last state to withdraw was New York, because Commissioner John King supported inBloom. The legislature compelled the state’s withdrawal. When there were no states or districts willing to share student data, inBloom had no reason to exist.

The organization to fight inBloom was led by Leonie Haimson of New York and Rachel Strickland of Colorado, who formed the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. See here and here and here.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Education Reform, Parent Groups, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Students

Campbell Brown Calls for Elimination of All Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2015 //
127

In a column in the Daily Beast, ex-TV journalist Campbell Brown praised David Cameron of the United Kingdom for his proposal to eliminate all traditional public schools and replace them with private academies. The column was reprinted on her website “The 74.”‘

She writes:

The vision and courage needed to take on the crisis of failing schools has surfaced during our presidential campaign—just not in this country.

Last week, addressing his party for the first time since re-election in May, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron called for an end to the country’s traditional public school system, endorsing instead a nationwide conversion to academies, which are essentially the British equivalent of charter schools—publicly funded, but with greater freedom over what they teach and how they are run.

He also urged current and would-be educators across the U.K.—parents, community groups, social service organizations—to create small new academies known as free schools.

“So my next ambition is this,” Cameron told a nationally televised audience, “five hundred new free schools. Every school an academy…and yes—local authorities running schools a thing of the past.”

She complains that the Presidential candidates in the U.S. have failed to be equally bold in calling for the privatization of all schools.

Americans are being disserved when the campaigns ignore a school system that leaves three-quarters of students unprepared for college in writing, reading, math, and science. The United States soared for most of a century because its schools produced the world’s best labor force, ensuring the dominance of American industry in everything from soap to missiles. In the past few decades, lagging school achievement—especially among our most disadvantaged young people—has led to economic slowdown. By failing to educate these children we threaten our collective livelihood.

Campbell Brown knows nothing about public education. She attended the elite Madeira School. Yet she despises public education and considers herself an expert.

I previously wrote a post with some advice for her, but she ignored it.

She needs to understand that the schools with the highest test scores are the ones that select their students, like the private school her own children attend (which does not administer standardized tests or use the Common Core).

Scores on standardized tests are a reflection of family income and education, as well as the schools’ resources and opportunities.

The lowest test scores are found where there is high poverty and racial segregation.

What she should know, but doesn’t, is that on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the scores of white students, black students, Hispanic students, and Asian students are at their highest point in history.

What she should know, but doesn’t, is that none of the world’s top-performing nations on international tests have privatized their schools. They have instead strived to make them equitable for all children.

What she should know, but doesn’t, is that privatization does not decrease inequality, it increases inequality and segregation.

Note to Campbell Brown: Our public schools are not failing.

Our society is failing to address the root causes of school performance, which are the conditions in which children and families are living, such as their access to good jobs, medical care, food security, and decent housing.

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Reform

Denis Ian: Are We the Dumbest Nation in the World?

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2015 //
36

A reader, Denis Ian, left the following comment, which is a thought that has often occurred to me. If our public schools are as terrible as the reformers say, how did we get to be a great world power? If our kids are as dumb as Arne Duncan says, why does our nation produce so many Nobel Prize winners? Why do reformers sound like they live in a failed state? Why don’t they move to France or Bermuda?

Denis Ian writes:

“If some lonesome alien just floated into this nation … and had only the Common Core pronouncements as a guide … they’d immediately assume that they were now stuck in some bottom-of-the-barrel country populated by a species that was about an inch beyond bacteria on the evolutionary scale.

“This is their tiresome ploy. Failure is all around … and we’re all too, too oblivious to see all of this with our very own eyes … because near-bacteria hasn’t that sort of sophistication. If all of this were true, we’d all be packing our trunks and marching off to blissful lives in Guatemala or Mali or Nepal. I guess we’re too stupid to even move. That must be it, right?

“What’s so stunning to me is the fact that so many of us are still here … and that our miserable, failing nation is the most desired destination on the planet. All of which begs certain questions that are never, ever addressed by the Common Core corps.

“Here’s the real mystery … How has America maintained its premier economic circumstances when we are populated by such uneducated dolts? How is that this nation is ground zero for all sorts of medical innovations … and that people from the Arab world and Asia and Europe zoom here for medical treatment? Oh! And why are our universities the most desired in the world? And can they explain the happy accident why we have the best standard of living the world has ever experienced? Help me out here, will ya?

“How is it that our military is the most technologically advanced? And what explains the fact that we produce enough food-stuffs to feed ourselves … and vast portions of the world? I’m stumped why we’re the first to offer emergency services when disaster strikes around the globe … and folks seem numb to the USA insignia on replacement equipment, food, and supplies. Did I fail to mention the doctors, engineers, and EMT professionals we send as well?

“That’s a lot of very dumb folks doing some miraculous things.

“Now, to our schools. Something’s wrong, alright. Our schools don’t behave according to the Common Core observations. Our public school faculties are some of the most credentialed on the planet.These public schools lay the foundation that has made America the most recognized Nobel prize producing nation of all-time. No country has ever been so inventive as America. None. We lead in medical inventions and innovations … the same for computer technologies … as well as for mechanical innovations of all sorts. Man, those dumb Americans are the luckiest folks the world’s ever seen!

“These failing public schools have produced world-renown playwrights, artists, actors, musicians, vocalists, and authors of all sorts. These dreadful public schools have given rise to admired engineers and architects and urban planners. They’ve yielded ship designers and astronauts … and the vessels they use to speed around space. We accidentally put men on the moon and recently bumped into Pluto. Ooops! Hope that mistake doesn’t happen again! … some folks will be very embarrassed.

“I hate to mention our political maturity, but I have to. I know we’re supposed to be extremely basic thinkers according to those gifted Common Core pushers, but what explains the relative historical, non-violent political experience in America? We don’t lop off the noggins of lousy rulers. We don’t have a coup every other full moon. And we have dozens of nations world-wide that have modeled themselves after our political foundations. We’d better call them with the bad news that we’re not worth emulating. We’re failures.

“Apologies for the over-the-top sarcasm, but lots and lots of very fine people have had their reputations battered by these frauds who premise that American schools are huge disasters. It’s time to get in their faces …

“It’s ironic that even these asinine Common Core critics cannot give credit to the very experience that allowed their fertile minds to crank out such a creative and embellishing litany of lies. What ungrateful failures!”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Letter from John Kline to Arne Duncan Surfaces, Warning About Student Privacy [LINK ADDED!]

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2015 //
17

One of the goals of Race to the Top was to create a national student data base, one collected from every state. Creating such a data base was one of the conditions of eligibility for Race to the Top. One of the companies formed to mine the data was created by the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation and called inBloom. InBloom intended to use software created by Wireless Generation (part of Joel Klein’s Amplify, owned by Rupert Murdoch) to aggregate this personally identifiable information and put it into the “cloud,” that place in cyberspace where all data lives forever. There would have been 400 data points for each student. Parents organized in states and districts to prevent this breach of their children’s privacy, and state after state, district after district, dropped out because the plan was indefensible (New York state, led by John King, was the last to drop out, and then only because the Legislature commanded him to do so).

Now a letter has become public, from John Kline to Arne Duncan, warning Duncan about the dangers of creating a national data base of student information.

There is a federal law called FERPA that is supposed to protect the privacy of individual students, but Duncan changed the regulations to make data mining possible.

Categories Data and Data Mining, Privacy and Privacy Rights

Beaumont, Texas: 13-Year-Old Opts Out, State Officials Freak Out, Online Campaign Ignites

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2015 //
15

Thirteen-year-old Alex Trevino decided to take a stand against the Texas STAR test: she opted out. She might be held back and not promoted with the rest of her class. She and her mother say she is willing to take the consequences.

Alex told 12News, “I feel that we are not learning anything that we can use in life, we’re taught to a test, nothing comes out of it.”

State officials say she is not allowed to refuse the test.

Her parents support her actions. Her mother said she is proud of her. Rebellion against unjust authority is a tradition in Texas. It also is a tradition in the United States. Our nation was born of a Revolution, led by men who pledged their lives to fight for independence.

Alex is not backing down. She has started a Facebook page called STAAR SOS to encourage others to take a stand. To her surprise in the first four hours that the page was up, it gained more than 9,000 followers.

Alex’s Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/STAAR-SOS-373783632791962/timeline/

One determined teen could spark an opt out movement in Texas.

Categories Opt Out, Parents, Students, Texas

Jon Pelto: Governor Malloy’s Approval Ratings Plummet

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2015 //
9

Jonathan Pelto reports the results of the latest Quinnipiac poll of Connecticut voters. Governor Dannell Malloy’s approval rating has dropped to only 32%. Malloy is known to readers of this blog as a chum of the charter industry and the Connecticut hedge fund managers who love them. Not even the embarrassing implosion of the Jumoke charter chain dimmed his ardor for deregulated, privately managed schools.

From the Quinnipiac University Public Opinion Poll;
Connecticut voters disapprove 58 – 32 percent of the job Gov. Dannel Malloy is doing, his lowest approval rating ever and the lowest score for any governor in the nine states surveyed this year by the independent Quinnipiac University Poll. The governor gets 4-1 negative scores for the way he his handling taxes and the state budget.

“Gov. Dannel Malloy’s job approval rating has plummeted to 32 percent, close to the historic 24 percent low hit by disgraced former Gov. John Rowland in January 2004, and Gov. Malloy is not in the middle of a corruption scandal,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, PhD.

“Only 36 percent of voters are satisfied with the way things are going in the state, one of the lowest scores since Quinnipiac University started asking this question in 1997.”

Connecticut is a state with many affluent, well-educated voters. They may remember that Governor Malloy campaigned last year with a promise not to raise taxes or to cut the budget of vital services. 

Pelto writes:

“But after being sworn back into office this past January, Malloy raised taxes, cut vital services and has turned his back on Connecticut’s state employees.

“Even after increasing taxes in the first year of his first term and the first year of his second term, when this present state budget cycle is over on June 30, 2017, Connecticut will be facing a two-year General Fund Budget Deficit of $1.6 Billion … YES, A DEFICIT OF $1.6 BILLION … [A deficit of $927 million in FY 2018 and $831 million in FY 2019.]”

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Funding

Real Estate Investors Jump Into Charter $chool Market, See Large Annual Profits

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2015 //
30

A report in the Wall Street Journal describes the gold-rush atmosphere that attracts real estate investors to charter schools. The risk in the investment is diminished because the schools have a steady stream of government funds. The charters are almost always non-union. The biggest risk is that the people running the schools are unqualified to run a school and the school may fail.

Real-estate investors are showing an increasing interest in charter school development as the demand grows for classroom seats and some state and local governments become more willing to help finance charter-school projects.

Almost all charter schools are operated by nonprofit organizations. But these groups often rent and buy their buildings from private real-estate developers, and that is creating a new niche asset for some investors.

One of the latest entrants to the charter real-estate business is Northstar Commercial Partners, a Denver-based private-equity firm that is raising a $100 million fund. It will focus on converting charter schools out of vacant office, industrial and retail properties that can be purchased for less than half of what they would cost to build, according to Northstar Chief Executive Brian Watson.

Meanwhile, investment manager Bobby Turner, who founded Turner Impact Capital LLC in 2013, is raising his second fund with tennis legend Andre Agassi for building new charter schools, this one with a goal of $400 million.

And established players in the business are seeing volume increases on chart school developments. For example, a venture of HighMark School Development and EPR Properties, a real-estate investment trust, spent more than $118 million in 2014 on acquisition, renovation and construction, compared with $34 million in 2011.

“There’s no shortage of cash,” said Patrick Beausoleil, a HighMark vice president.

The rise in investment activity partly reflects the growth of the charter school movement, which has been overcoming political opposition in many states. During the 2014-2015 school year, 500 new public charter schools opened nationwide, for a total of more than 6,700 enrolling about 2.9 million students, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Some states are beginning to make financing tools available to charter schools that had been limited to traditional public schools. For example, the states of Texas, Colorado and Utah now backstop tax exempt bond issues for some charter schools, reducing their capital costs when acquiring facilities, according to Scott Rolfs, managing director of B.C. Ziegler & Co., a niche investment-banking firm that has underwritten more than $600 million in charter school bonds.

But the growing role of for-profit real-estate developers has added a new dimension to the debate over charters, which are taxpayer funded and independently operated schools that are largely free of union rules. Critics say charter schools are in danger of cutting costly deals with developers who are more concerned with investment return than educating children. The result can lead to failed schools.

One of the biggest investment funds is the one created by Turner Impact Capital and tennis star Andre Agassi. Agassi is a high-school dropout. It seems that to start new charter schools, no education is necessary.

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

Duncan Still Working on His Legacy

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2015 //
16

Reader Chiara sent the following comment about new funding by the U.S. Department of Education for for-profit ventures. Since when did ED become a source of venture capital for start-ups?

“Duncan’s cranking up the private sector subsidy funding on his way out the door:

“On Wednesday the department will announce a pilot program that will allow federal grants and loans to flow to educational-technology companies that team up with colleges and third-party “quality-assurance entities” to offer coding boot camps, MOOCs, short-term certificates, and other credentials.”

“Partnering with accredited schools to deliver tech skills for credit is a dangerous back door to access federal student loans,” wrote Clint Schmidt He called for the department to put “a rigorous standard in place” before federal aid could cover boot-camp tuition.

“The risk is a short-term, money-grabbing mind-set”

Nothing could possibly go wrong there, right? Public money to ed-tech companies. They’re doing this…. because for-profit, online colleges were such a smashing success?

Is there some reason the federal government feels they have to market and fund ed-tech? Is there a shortage of salespeople at these companies or something so we have to provide publicly-paid salespeople for their product?

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Boon-to-Boot-Camps-US/233742″

Here’s another description: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/us-looks-to-let-students-use-federal-aid-for-training-bootcamps/2015/10/14/9a4eba38-72bb-11e5-8d93-0af317ed58c9_story.html?postshare=7671444875772458

U.S. Deputy Secretary Ted Mitchell was formerly CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, which invested in these kinds of business ventures, as well as charter chains. He has no problem with for-profit education; NSVF supported it when he was in charge.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, For-Profit, Technology, Computers

Nevada: Teacher Shortage Near Crisis Point

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2015 //
50

Elaine Wynn, president of the Nevada state board of education, said that the teacher shortage had become a dangerous situation for the schools. The shortages are most pronounced in schools enrolling high proportions of low-scoring and poor children.

Nevada’s two largest school districts this week said they’d hired hundreds of first-time teachers over the summer with the help of recruiters, billboards and even a Clark County superintendent zip-lining through downtown Las Vegas in a superhero cape.

But when it was Nevada Board of Education President Elaine Wynn’s chance to speak about the nearly 1,000 teacher positions statewide that still remain vacant and are being filled with stopgap measures such as long-term subs, she didn’t mince words.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this alarmed in my job as I have been today,” Wynn said at a board meeting Thursday, calling the situation a human resource crisis. “We’re going to all sink. This is horrific.”

Nevada is suffering an acute teacher shortage as its student population rises and its primary supplier of educators — California — deals with a shortage of its own. Colleges there are producing fewer teaching graduates, and Nevada colleges are far from being able to churn out enough homegrown education graduates to meet the state’s needs.

Some blame the shortage on low pay, especially for first-year teachers, and a general lack of respect for the profession.

Educators know that the growing teacher shortage is a direct result of more than a decade of failed reforms, especially those that blame teachers for low test scores. If the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Obama administration keep up their attacks on teaching, who will want to teach in any district?

Board members, as usual for non-educators, are willing to hire anyone anywhere to be teachers in the schools of Nevada.

Board members underscored that the districts can’t stave off the teacher shortage alone.

Kevin Melcher, who’s also a regent for the Nevada System of Higher Education, suggested recruiting the spouses of workers who move to Nevada for jobs with the new Tesla battery factory under construction east of Reno.

“Is there a way we can work with these new industries … to help them recruit for us?” he said.

Wynn, who co-founded the Wynn Resorts casino company with her ex-husband Steve Wynn, said districts could learn from professionals in the casino industry who fill positions and attract throngs of people to nightclubs.

She also called for making the teacher shortage a recurring item on state board agendas.

“We can’t be satisfied to let this continue,” Wynn said. “To take comfort that it’s a national emergency — that’s not the Nevada way.”

Now here is the question: What can schools learn from the casino industry? Put slot machines into the schools? Have gaming tables in the lunch room? Offer free sodas?

Las Vegas (Clark County) has engaged in various theatrical appeals, such as the superintendent “zip-lining” down a major street in the city, wearing a red Superman cape.

Richard Ingersoll, who studies teacher recruitment and retention, says the biggest problem–and the biggest solution– facing Las Vegas and other districts is not finding new teachers, but retaining and supporting the teachers they have now.

“Well-paying jobs with good conditions don’t have to have gimmicks to attract quality people,” says Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania who studies teacher demographics and retention. “You have to put your money where your mouth is, or I guess in this case where your zip line is.” He says districts should focus on retention instead of flashy recruitment techniques. “It’s not that we can’t recruit new teachers; it’s that we lose too many.”

Categories Nevada, Teacher Shortage
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