Archives for the year of: 2015
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New For-Profit Charter Chain Expanding, Buying Two Ohio Charter Chains

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2015 //
14

A new, for-profit charter chain named Pansophic is planning to take over charter chain schools in Ohio. The linked story was published in June, but there have been no follow-ups since then. Either the deal was completed or is pending.

Pansophic is a new company founded by Ron Packard, formerly of McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and the online giant K12. As CEO of K12, Packard was paid $5 million yearly.

The company also expects to acquire charters run by for-profit Mosaica in Ohio. Pansophic will become the biggest for-profit charter chain in Ohio.

“Akron-based White Hat Management reportedly sold off management of 12 elementary charter schools Friday to an out-of-state, for-profit company that could acquire a third charter school company, an attorney for the charter schools’ public boards said.

“The two deals would make Pansophic Learning the largest for-profit operator of Ohio charter schools, which has become a taxpayer-funded $1 billion private industry.”

White Hat has produced poor academic results for 20 years.

Now, Ohio’s for-profit charter schools will be outsourced to a Virginia corporation that also focuses on the bottom line: profit.

Are these for-profit schools really public schools or are they profit centers that hoodwink parents to enroll their children?

This is what Ohio’s charter law says (thanks to reader Bethree):

“Opening paras of Ohio charter school law: “3314.01 (A) (1) A board of education may permit all or part of any of the schools under its control, upon request of a proposing person or group and provided the person or group meets the requirements of this chapter, to become a community school… (B) A community school created under this chapter is a public school, independent of any school district, and is part of the state’s program of education…”

Is a school owned by a for-profit corporation in Virginia still a “community” school? Is it a “public” school?

How much more of this flimflam will the voters and taxpayers of Ohio tolerate? Do they care about the education of their children?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Ohio

Peter Greene Roasts the Billionaire Plan to Privatize L.A. Schools

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2015 //
18

Peter Greene is a master of close reading. In this post, he deconstructs Eli Broad’s audacious plan to take over half the students in Los Angeles and put them in charter schools.

Peter read the 44-page report, which reads like an investors’prospectus. It turns the stomach to see these very rich men destroying a democratic institution.

Here are a few wonderful excerpts:

“But the dream is not just to tap into the huge market of students trapped in failing blah blah blah waiting for their chance for high-quality seats (and, man, I would love to see one of these seats, sit in one of these seats, visit the High Quality Seat Factory and see how these seats are made) blah blah blah.”

And best of all:

“I am absolutely bowled over at the magnitude of this power grab. Imagine if Broad and his friends said, “We’re not happy with the LAPD, so we’re going to hire and train our own police force, answerable to nobody but us, to cover some parts of the city. Also, the taxpayers have to foot the bill.” Or if they decided to get their own army? Or their own mayor?

“Who does this? Who says, “We can’t get enough control over the elected officials in this branch of government, so we will just shove them out of the way and replace them with our own guys, who won’t bug us by answering to Those People.”

“This is not just about educational quality (or lack thereof), or just about how to turn education into a cash cow for a few high rollers– this is about a hamhanded effort to circumvent democracy in a major American city. There’s nothing in this plan about listening to the parents or community- only about what is going to be done to them by men with power and money. This just sucks a lot.”

It was said that Mussolini made the trains run on time. All the Italian people had to do was accept fascism. Are the people of Los Angeles prepared to hand their children over to autocrats and billionaires?

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Los Angeles

Turner-Agassi Starts $1 Billion Fund for New Charters

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2015 //
38

It is alarming to see private capital and equity investors getting into the business of financing charter schools. And making a handsome profit. Of course, they would not invest unless the profit were there.

If you think the privatization of public education represents “positive social change,” this may be the fund for you.

Turner Capital, in partnership with tennis star (and high school dropout) Andre Agassi, predict returns of 12%. In these days of low interest rates, that is a handsome return.

“LOS ANGELES—Turner Impact Capital has launched the Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund II to invest up to $1 billion in charter school development nationwide. The fund plans to build 130 charter schools for best-in-class operators by 2020. This is an evolution in Turner’s social-impact investment model, which simultaneously produces investor returns—as much as 12%—while promoting and motivating positive social change.

“Bobby Turner, CEO of Turner Impact Capital, expects the fund to hit $400 million in commitments by late November 2015. The remaining $600 million of the $1 billion fund will be secured through construction debt. “We’ve already had our first closing with more than $150 million, and we expect to close out the fund by the end of November,” Turner tells GlobeSt.com. “We are also incredibly excited to announce that we have partnered with Merrill Lynch to offer up to $100 million of the fund to clients of their private banking platform. It is exciting for us because it is an opportunity to enable individual investors, not just institutional investors, and high net worth individuals to be a socially impactful investor.”

“In addition to Merrill Lynch, the investors in the fund include the University of Michigan endowment, the Texas Permanent School Fund and Citibank. The fund has a $5 million investment minimum and will focus on developing the facilities in dense and distressed neighborhoods nationwide. The schools will be net-leased to charter school operators. “We build environmentally friendly and learning-friendly educational facilities for best-in-class charter school operators,” says Turner. “In essence, we are a build-to-suit private equity fund with the caveat that we provide a bridge to ownership.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit

Who Got Money from the Walton Family Foundation? You Might Be Surprised

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2015 //
24

The Walton Family Foundation gave away $375 million last year. It gave away $202 million to educational groups.

The foundation’s money is generated by the vast earnings of Walmart. The foundation was established in 1987 by Sam Walton. At least six of the Walton family members are billionaires, maybe more. As they die off, the foundation will grow larger.

The leader of the education part of the Walton Foundation is Marc Sternberg, who worked for Joel Klein in the Néw York City Department of Education. From 2010 to 2013, Sternberg was in charge of school closures and charter co-locations inside public schools.

The foundation is not only very wealthy, it has an ideology. It is rightwing. It is reactionary. It does not like public schools. It favors privatization and deregulation, which is what you might expect of a powerful corporation that hates government telling it what to do (like paying its employees a living wage). It hates unions. It loves charters and vouchers.

You might ask, how can billionaires sleep at night when they know their employees are surviving on meager earnings? I don’t know. Maybe they don’t think about it. Maybe they say, “Tough. That’s life. Life is unfair. Where’s my Bentley?”

I think you will find it enlightening to see where its money went in the 2014 year.

The biggest chunks went to Teach for America and KIPP.

Here are some of the many beneficiaries of the Walton family’s largesse:

AMONG THE DOZENS OF GROUPS THAT RECEIVED $80 MILLION TO “SHAPE PUBLIC POLICY” WERE:

50CAN, INC. ($2.5 MILLION);
ASPEN INSTITUTE, INC. ($250,000);
BELLWETHER EDUCATION PARTNERS ($1.1 MILLION);
BLACK ALLIANCE FOR EDUCATIONAL OPTIONS, INC. ($3.4 MILLION);
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION ($237,000);
CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION ($3.5 MILLION);
EDITORIAL PROJECTS IN EDUCATION, INC (PUBLISHER OF “EDUCATION WEEK”) [$250,000];
EDUCATION REFORM NOW ($2.5 MILLION);
EDUCATION TRUST ($930,000);
EDUCATION WRITERS ASSOCIATION ($250,000);
EDUCATORS FOR EXCELLENCE ($825,000);
FAMILIES FOR EXCELLENT SCHOOLS ($5 MILLION);
FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION ($3 MILLION); Jeb Bush’s organization
FRIEDMAN FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL CHOICE ($624,000);
KIPP FOUNDATION ($300,000);
MIND TRUST ($500,000); Indianapolis
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES ($227,000);
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO ($342,758);
NEW TEACHER PROJECT ($2.5 MILLION);
NEWSCHOOLS VENTURE FUND ($2 MILLION);
PARENT REVOLUTION ($1 MILLION);
STAND FOR CHILDREN ($350,000);
STUDENTSFIRST FOUNDATION AND STUDENTSFIRST INSTITUTE ($4.250 MILLION);
SUCCESS ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOLS ($1.5 MILLION);
TEACH PLUS ($250,000);
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY GROUP ($550,000);
THE NEW YORK TIMES ($150,000);
TEACH FOR AMERICA ($2.43 MILLION);
THE THOMAS B. FORDHAM INSTITUTE ($742,050);
UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND ($105,000); UNITED WAY OF LOS ANGELES ($350,000).

In addition,

KIPP RECEIVED GRANTS TOTALING $9 MILLION, IN ADDITION TO $300,000 FOR “SHAPING PUBLIC POLICY.” TEACH FOR AMERICA RECEIVED $17.5 MILLION, IN ADDITION TO $2.43 MILLION FOR “SHAPING PUBLIC POLICY.”

Categories Charter Schools, KIPP Charter Schools, Teach for America, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Mike Klonsky: Gov. Rauner Wants to Decimate the Public Sector

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2015 //
10

Mike Klonsky shows the face of Bruce Rauner, a billionaire financier who doesn’t like the public sector, especially public schools and unions. He loves charter schools and even has one in Chicago named for him.

Rauner and State Superintendent Tony Smith want to abolish all unfunded mandates. Smith was once part of Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools. But he has gone along with Rauner’s program.

Klonsky writes:

“For Rauner/Smith that’s exactly what the call to abolish mandates means. Rauner wants nothing less than to privatize all public space and eliminate civil rights protections and public employee unions altogether.

“Yes, let’s get rid of unfunded mandates like, Rahm Emanuel’s longer school day, like Common Core and PARCC testing madness. But we need to keep mandates that ensure student safety, special education, ELL, class size ceilings, caps on charters, and school desegregation as well as all other fundamental civil and human rights — including teachers’ right to bargain collectively with elected school boards.

“The response to necessary, but unfunded, mandates, should be to adequately fund them, not abolish them.”

Categories Illinois

Today, 23 Million Hits! Thank You!

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2015 //
77

The blog passed 23 million page views today.

The blog is my virtual living room and all are invited to join the conversation. We talk about how to help children, public schools, and our society. We don’t always agree, and that’s good. We learn from one another.

Rarely, I have to ask a guest to leave. I do so reluctantly. I ask people to leave when they behave rudely, trying to disrupt our conversation. I am very tolerant, but my tolerance has its limits.

My goal is to inform readers about the corporate assault on public education and the raid on public funds. I am opposed to privatization and high-stakes testing. Privatization creates a dual school system and sucks students and resources out of public schools, making it harder or impossible for them to succeed.

I believe that public education is a civic responsibilty, not a profit-making opportunity.

I believe testing has grown out of control. Higher test scores are not and should not be the goal of education.

The goal of education is to develop young people into adults of good character who can think for themselves, make wise choices, and contribute to the betterment of society.

None of the goals that matter most are measured by standardized tests.

I believe our schools can be much better. But first we must free ourselves from the stranglehold of testing and school choice. Our schools will not become better by testing more, by starving public schools to enrich entrepreneurs, or to replace experienced teachers with unprepared newcomers.

The purpose of this blog is to inform you and encourage you to take action.

Eventually we will prevail. Nothing proposed and imposed by the so-called reformers has worked as predicted. They have created chaos, demoralized teachers, and created a teacher shortage. After 15 years of NCLB and Race to the Top, it is abundantly clear that their punitive ideas and policies do not work and will never work. Yet the reformers plow forward, because they have so much money and can’t admit defeat.

They are a ghost army, using paid bloggers and filling demonstrations with parents and students directed to show up.

Do not lose hope or heart. Do not quit. That’s what they hope for.

We will persevere and we will prevail. We are many. They are few.

Categories Education Reform

Florida: How Politicians Are Ruining the Teaching Profession

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2015 //
22

A key Republican leader, who is closely tied to Florida’s booming and profitable charter industry, slipped into the state budget a bill to pay a bonus to teachers with high SAT scores. His bill is known as “Best and Brightest,” assuming that those with the highest SAT scores are or will be the best teachers.

In this post, Florida teacher Melissa Halpern explains the absurdity of this plan. Veteran teachers will get the bonus if they can locate their SAT scores, even if they took the test 20 years ago, but only if they also received a “highly effective” rating based on test scores.

Halpern explains the absurdity:

“Let’s start with the very notion of rewarding a correlation. Incentives work when people have the power to respond to them with effort and action, when they can initiate a cause of success. What if studies found that teaching performance correlated with race, gender, or socioeconomic status (all of which are correlated with SAT scores, by the way)? Would we ever find it acceptable to offer a gender bonus? Of course not. Aside from being discriminatory, such an incentive would be illogical; it offers no room for effort, no goal to work toward.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to discern which correlations are actually causal, but common sense helps. While a teacher’s 20-year-old SAT score is probably not the cause of her success in the classroom, her training, credentials, and years of experience might be; incidentally, these are all proven correlations with teacher performance that Florida has downplayed under its current “merit pay” system, which replaced the old experience-based salary schedule in 2010….

“It seems, then, that the Best and Brightest incentive is not really an incentive at all, and that whatever it is, it certainly wasn’t devised to reward experienced teachers in the first place.

“So who does stand to benefit from this program? Primarily new teachers, especially those who might like to grab a bonus for a short teaching stint, and bail for a career that actually pays. Teach For America corp members, who are only held to a two-year teaching commitment, might just fit the bill.

“Interestingly, teachers coming out of TFA tend to populate the revolving employment doors of charter schools run by for-profit companies—much like the ones with whom Rep. Fresen happens to have close business ties.

“It shouldn’t come as a shock that a Florida legislator might vote for a financially motivated policy in the name of public education—at least it makes their ultimate goal of privatizing education a little more transparent.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Florida, Merit pay, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay

Houston Student Leader Explains Why Students Fight for Equitable Funding

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2015 //
1

More than 600 school districts are suing the state of Texas for equitable funding. Two Houston students filed an amicus brief on behalf if other students. Here, one of them–Zaakir Tameez– explains why they decided to get involved.

Zaakir is now a freshman at the University of Virginia. He attended one of Houston’s best public schools but he realized that many other students did not have the same quality of education. He thought it was wrong.

Categories Equity, Funding, Houston, Resistance, Students

Who Will Hold the Charter Schools Accountable?

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2015 //
14

Patrick Kerkstra writes that he was always skeptical when anyone suggested that charters (at least some of them) were seeking profits. Now, having read about what is happening in Philadelphia, he is not so sure. I remember the early days of the charter movement. My colleague Checker Finn Jr. used to say, again and again, that there was a deal: if the state gives us (charters) autonomy, we will be accountable. The charters have autonomy but they no longer want accountability.

Kerkstra sees three big issues:

  1. Charters are no more efficient about their use of money than district officials. People should get over the belief that private=smarter, better.
  2. Profit-minded businesses are destroying whatever moral authority the education reform movement had.
    I’ve long cringed when ed reform skeptics attacked the motives of charter advocates and others who’d like to see the public school system reinvented (or scrapped). With very rare exceptions, the individuals I’ve interviewed and spoken with in the ed reform movement over the years are True Believers: their fury and impatience with traditional public education is real and righteous. I haven’t always agreed with where they’re coming from, to say the least, but I’ve long dismissed accusations that reformers are in it for the money.

    Now I’m not so sure. There plainly is a large and growing group of interests within the education reform movement that stand to profit as traditional public education shrinks….

    Charters were supposed to be different. Traditional public schools were beholden: to teacher’s unions, to political masters, to a powerful class of consultants and attorneys. Charters were supposed to be the indies. But as the charter movement grows, a big corps of financial interests has grown up around it. Increasingly, charters look just as financially beholden to an array of interests, only it’s harder to tell exactly who and what those interests are.

    This is a really significant problem for ed reform advocates, and I’m not sure that it can be solved. The moral clarity of the early charter movement — nonprofit, about the kids, self-reliant — well, that’s gone. Increasingly, it seems not just fair to question the motives of ed reformers, but necessary.

  3.  The School District’s charter oversight office is still understaffed and under-resourced. And charter operators frequently bristle at the prospect of more accountability. But something’s got to give here. The charter movement can’t keep growing and eating up tax dollars while operating in the relative darkness.
    Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/citified/2015/09/17/charter-school-problems/#f82Suzej5Ge7GLbg.99
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Philadelphia

Seattle Teachers Slam the VAM

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2015 //
18

One of the major victories of the Seattle Education Association was that it reached agreement with the district to eliminate VAM. Henceforth, teachers will not be judged by the test scores of their students. Ding, dong, the fake metric of teacher evaluation is dead! At least in Seattle.

Here is a report on the settlement in the unfriendly, anti-teacher Seattle Times:

Highlights of tentative 3-year contract:
Raises: 3 percent in first year; 2 percent in second; 4.5 percent in third (state cost-of-living raise is additional). More in 2017-18 for some teachers for collaboration, and eight hours of “tech pay” for all school employees.

Discipline: Half day of training on reducing disproportionate discipline for all school employees. Equity committees launched in 30 schools……

Testing: New joint union-district committee to review and recommend testing and testing schedule.

Teacher evaluations: Test scores will no longer play any role.

School day: Will be longer, but not much for students, and teachers will be paid for the additional time.

Specialist caseloads: Sets limits, which union says is a first, for physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists and audiologists.

Test scores no longer will play any role in teacher evaluations, and teachers will have more of a say in how often students are tested.

Categories Seattle, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Unions
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