The Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch reported that the KIPP charter chain received permission from the US Department of Education to hide data that public schools are required to disclose.
Laura Chapman reveals the names of the officials who made this decision (if she is wrong, I trust that someone at ED will inform me).
Chapman writes:
“The people in charge of the charter school grants that aided KIPP in hiding data from the public are Brian Martin, Kathryn Meeley, and Erin Pfeltz
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Ave. SW
Washington, DC 20202
(202) 205-9085
(800) USA-LEARN”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Speaking of charter companies hiding data, here is the latest from Colorado, where the state senate just approved bills giving charters more monies and less oversight. I believe the state house is still considering the two pieces of legislation, and hopefully this new information will make them pause – and vote nay.
https://ceatoday.coloradoea.org/in-the-news/dsst-gives-for-profit-corporation-$20m-$50m
Sadly, I’m afraid that nothing in Colorado can make our legislators pause and vote nay.
Although this is off the topic of KIPP schools in bed with the Dept. of Ed, I wanted to include here the full report from the Center for Popular Democracy on the Denver School of Science and Technology, a public charter. The Center discovered that millions of dollars was funneled from the non-profit DSST to a for-profit corporation run by board members of the DSST, and demonstrates that public charters not only hide their graduation numbers, as KIPP has, but also their money – or rather, OUR money. In the end, it’s all about the money.
Click to access DSST%20Charter%20Report_multipage_reduced%20file%5B1%5D.pdf
I thought there would be some accountability or explanation from the Obama Administration on how Ohio got a huge charter grant based on an application that was filled with fictitious information, but there was none. Nothing happened. No one ever explained why that grant was approved.
The only reason it came out at all was they held a state school board meeting where part of the fictitious information was presented again and a newspaper reporter caught it. Had that single person not been at that single meeting and had he not known enough to know it was false, the Obama Administration would have released tens of millions of dollars based on a pack of lies.
Kudos to the newspaper reporter. Was it Doug Livingston of the Akron Beacon Journal?
I would love someone to expose the Mastery Charter chain. Somehow they only get good press in the Philadelphia area. I wonder how this happens…
Public schools will now get “online learning” shoved on them based on yet another alliance between former members of the Obama Administration and billionaire ed reformers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/05/technology/mark-zuckerberg-hires-education-leader-to-run-philanthropic-effort.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
I’m so hoping schools take a critical look at this and don’t get bamboozled by the hype. They really have a duty to protect students and taxpayers from what amounts to a huge government/private sector marketing campaign.
There is no basis for a huge investment in ed tech. Please, please ignore the hard sell and look at value and for God’s sake don’t replace staff with online courses or your new lower budget will be your new lower baseline. If “blended learning” is a bust you won’t be able to go back to paying staff. They’ll cut the funding. You’ll be stuck with online courses.
As Joni Mitchell put it
“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.They paved paradise and put a PARCCing lot”
Spot on as always, Chiara. In my experience, trying to convince colleagues and especially administrators to not get bamboozled by the bells and whistles of ed tech is, to say the least, an uphill battle. Fortunately, parents and students are usually much more thoughtful, at least in my little corner out here on the left side of the map.
So, the federal government is hiding corporate information regarding publicly funded charter schools from the public. Is the federal government also hiding from the public information regarding the use of public funds to purchase corporate ed tech products? In other words, why did the FBI make all the John Deasy & Apple scandal records disappear? It’s painfully ironic, but what this corrupt White House needs is reform —
Transparency and Accountability!
Secrecy is the preferred track for the feds, especially in enforcement. https://theintercept.com/2016/05/02/fbi-chooses-secrecy-over-locking-up-criminals/
TY – Posted on my FB account.
I interviewed at a KIPP school in Harlem some years ago, but got a whiff of something I didn’t like. I passed on the follow-up interview. Subsequently, when I read one of his books and began following him on Twitter, I noticed Alfie Kohn loses no opportunity to say bad things about this chain. Even though I know it’s the digital equivalent of talking to a wall, I have to ask how this incident jibes with “reform” movement’s overall obsession with “accountability.”
It sounds like KIPP doesn’t want to be accountable for whatever these results–which are very likely bad news for them–divulge….
LeftCoastTeacher
May 5, 2016 at 9:18 am
Spot on as always, Chiara. In my experience, trying to convince colleagues and especially administrators to not get bamboozled by the bells and whistles of ed tech is, to say the least, an uphill battle. Fortunately, parents and students are usually much more thoughtful, at least in my little corner out here on the left side of the map.”
I had the same experience. Our district hired a consultant (sadly- I wouldn’t have paid for that) and he really pushed High Tech High. It was a sales pitch. I was worried that people were falling for it, but I was wrong. There was real skepticism and they ultimately rejected that investment as a priority.
One of my sons works in the field, not ed tech but fintech (payment systems) and he thinks more and more screen time in schools is a horrible idea. He just doesn’t think industry actors should have such a huge role in public schools. He believes they have a conflict, and the conflict is that they’re all pushing product. He thinks it’s naive to allow them to direct public school policy. I agree.
Why does this office in ED even exist? Time to do some digging and doxxing for this office and these folks. After all, they are public servants and I’m guessing soon to be KIPP employees. Too bad their behavior is tolerated by Congress and public. When I was growing up there would have been hearings and investigations – now a wink and a nod. Sad.
I agree and the saddest part is that I expect a Republican administration to be corrupt and try to figure out how best to destroy public education, but the fact that President Obama has done more than any Republican has done to undermine public schools will someday go down in history as one of his greatest failures. I don’t know if President Obama — because neither he nor his kids ever attended public schools — was too uncaring to bother to pay attention beyond accepting the word of his Wall Street banker buddies because he respects how much money they made. Or if he is just showing his true colors the moderate Republican who believes privatization is always better.
I expect Republicans do work very hard to make sure facts are hidden so that they can exploit public good and reward their buddies. But I do NOT expect Democrats to do the same. President Obama and his DOE proved me wrong. He led an extremely corrupt DOE — it is not the corruption that Republicans would ever investigate but it is far more corrupt than anything ever done by employees of the IRS or during Bengazi. And I can’t believe it happened because the Democrats in power wanted that corruption to happen.
The money guys gave Obama’s presidential campaign, 4 times the amount that the workers could cobble together, for him.
I presume that the public can contact our employees at the Dept. Of Ed., to ask about PR Watch’s KIPP report. A form-type answer that addressed the issues, is adequate. Citizens are, at least, owed that?
The job titles listed at the Ed. Dept. site, suggest these people may be among those able to provide an answer or, be able to forward the request to the correct person(s). E-mail addresses kathyn.meeley@ed.gov, stef.hun@ed.gov
Not much on Erin Pfeltz
http://seliger.com/2008/07/09/adventures-in-bureaucracy-and-the-long-tale-of-deciphering-eligibility-a-farce/
https://www.federalpay.org/employees/office-of-innovation-and-improvement/pfeltz-erin-marie
Brian Harper Martin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-harper-martin-942aa914
You can see the KIPP application here, with all of the redacted information approved by USDE toward the end of the document. One of the biggest blackouts is the enrollments by subgroups by grade levels. KIPP is depending on USDE to keep that information from public view
Click to access kippapp.pdf
Curious as to why. If they allow KIPP to do it and show undue favoritism then what to stop others for asking for the same?
Bingo! Kathryn Meeley – Christie Cousin Gets Camden job
http://www.bobbraunsledger.com/christie-cousin-gets-a-camden-job/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-meeley-35a02012
Special Report: Feds Spent $3.3 Billion Fueling Charter Schools but No One Knows What It’s Really Bought
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/04/12799/new-documents-show-how-federal-taxpayer-money-wasted-charter-schools
I’m envisioning orange cones and traffic.
I’m still not clear why my tax dollars pay people to privatize common goods.
Not the first time this office has made news.
Special Report: Feds Spent $3.3 Billion Fueling Charter Schools but No One Knows What It’s Really Bought
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/04/12799/new-documents-show-how-federal-taxpayer-money-wasted-charter-schools
Ed. learned something from David Hansen and Tony Bennett. Redact, don’t scrub.
The Walton-funded ‘Seventy Four” is associated with the Gen Next Foundation. Julian Assange exposes Gen Next in his book chapter titled, “Google is Not What It Seems To Be.” The info. about Gen Next is about 30 paragraphs into the chapter.