Politico reports on the latest news from school choice advocates:
STUDIES OF SCHOOL CHOICE: Two advocacy groups are out with papers today expounding on the benefits of school choice. The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice says in its effort that more than a dozen empirical studies have found that school choice improves student outcomes. And nine out of 10 studies say school choice can improve racial segregation, moving students from more segregated schools into less segregated ones. The report: http://bit.ly/1TiRZzn. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council is introducing three tools – peer reviews, branding and consumer reports – that parents can use to optimize education savings accounts. The paper: http://bit.ly/1TeOVcP.
Don’t expect to learn from either the Friedman Foundation (so-named for libertarian economist Milton Friedman, a voucher advocate) or ALEC (the far-right corporate-funded group that promotes deregulation of every government function) to say anything about Milwaukee. Milwaukee has had vouchers and charters for 25 years. There is no evidence that the children of Milwaukee have benefited by their choices. Despite the failure of choice to improve education, Governor Scott Walker wants to expand school choice and eliminate public schools altogether. The irony is that the students in public schools repeatedly have outperformed the students in choice schools, even though the public schools have a disproportionate share of students with disabilities and others that are not chosen by the choice schools. Chances are that Walker and the legislature will keep some public schools to use as a dumping ground for the students unwanted by the charters and voucher schools.
– On a related note: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation named the finalists for the 2016 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools today: Success Academy in New York and IDEA Public Schools and YES Prep Public Schools in Texas. The $250,000 award will be given to the best-performing charter management organization on June 27 at the National Charter Schools Conference in Nashville, Tenn.
Isn’t that great news? I am rooting for Eva and Success Academy charters. If she wins, she can use the money to buy a four-year supply of beanies or T-shirts for future political rallies. The $250,000 won’t be enough to pay for both. Or she can hire a private investigator to track down the high-level official inside her organization who leaked important documents to the media, including the internal report that alleged cheating, teacher churn, and central staff turnover.
The spending included $71,900 for the beanies and $62,795 for the T-shirts, according to receipts submitted to Success’s board of directors.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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Let me add New Orleans which has been under corporate rule for almost 10 years and the academic results are dismal in addition to the access and equity issues it has resurrected. For more info on the Illusion of School Choice please view a short video from the in production documentary A Perfect Storm here: nolaedequity.org
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This is incredible:
“Des Plaines-based Concept Schools applied for and was awarded a nearly $340,000 federal grant for a new school on the Southwest Side despite being under investigation over allegations the clout-heavy charter-school operator was involved in defrauding a federal grant program, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.
Concept — whose privately run, publicly financed schools include four campuses in Chicago — applied to the U.S. Department of Education for the money five weeks after the FBI and other federal agencies raided Concept locations across the Midwest on June 4, 2014.”
“The Department of Education awarded the money even though the agency’s own inspector general’s office was involved in the investigation.”
It’s Ohio all over again. They did no independent evaluation.
Someone from outside the US Department of Education needs to look at the US Department of Education. The complete ed reform capture of that agency is ridiculous.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/watchdogs-federal-funds-for-clout-school-operator-despite-probe/
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It’s just too bad that the Department of Education paid absolutely no attention to its own Inspector General. I thought that this was one of the functions of Inspectors General.
But guess not, not if the agency totally ignores their findings.
Yes, an outside audit is definitely needed.
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Why was Duncan’s DoEd so generous to Ohio?
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Oh, don’t worry, citizens of Wisconsin. Scott Walker won’t “eliminate pubic schools altogether.” There will still be a few way under-funded, crumbling public schools available for the children who need “too much help” (Special Ed kids, English language learners, children with behavior problems, etc), those kids who are too “expensive” to teach and might cut into the bottom line of the privatized schools.
Profits above all, after all. 😦
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You really have to read the ed reformers who get special access to lawmakers to realize what an echo chamber it is.
This is the Broad Foundation:
Try to find a positive mention of a public school.
These are the people lawmakers listen to. People LIKE THEM. It’s a closed circle. Nothing gets in other than this constant drumbeat for privatization and cheerleading and congratulations.
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Are you sure this was put out by advocacy organizations? They sound exactly like every lawmaker, Republican and Democratic.
How much special access do they get to our lawmakers, I wonder? Seems like a real coincidence they all use the same language and engage in the same “choice” cheerleading.
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I’m old enough to remember when ed reformers made at least a passing reference to “improving public schools”
Public schools have now completely dropped off the agenda, replaced by a lockstep promotion of vouchers.
The sad part is, I can’t decide if public schools will be harmed or helped by being completely ignored by lawmakers. They may actually benefit.
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No, Chiara, public schools will not be helped since they are funding the charter takeover with money intended for the public schools.
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The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation value results. They want all charter schools to know that getting high test scores with the kids who make it to the testing grades is what they will reward financially. And if some (or a lot) of at-risk kids are thrown out with the trash because they are never going to get the kind of test scores the Broads think are admirable, then the Broads WANT charter schools to throw those kids out like the garbage the Broads know those kids are.
At least, that’s my interpretation of why they would nominate Success Academy. Send a message to ALL charter schools to throw out the hard to teach kids and label them as violent hooligans at age 6. Make sure their parents know that those kids are worthless and they didn’t measure up to the kind of kid who is worthy of a Broad-funded Success Academy education.
It’s time for us to embrace the Hunger Games of education. If your child is “good” and easily teachable, to him will go the good (and very well-funded) schools. If your child isn’t up to snuff at age 6, he will be labeled violent and publicly denounced as needing some kind of special residential program for the unteachable 6 year olds.
Unless you are a blonde television personality. Then your hard to teach kid gets that special treatment that the at-risk kids obviously aren’t worthy of getting:
“we’ve been blown away by the exhaustive consideration he gets from the entire staff to reach him, and teach him, where he is. Once they figured out his optimal learning style, they swiftly adapted so he could progress along with his peers. I’ve been especially moved to see how his teachers handle adjustments with minimal disruption to the class, which keeps Primo from feeling like the “bad kid” when he needs some extra support.”
No suspensions for little Primo, I guess.
The Broads know that Primo and kids like him are worthy. And some kids are not. If charter schools are unable to recognize the unworthy kids and get them out of their schools, stat, the Broads are no longer interested in supporting them.
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WOW! These reports and groups – it just wears on you. (Isn’t Success being investigated?) Now, these great reports and efforts have been underway for the past 9- 10 years in earnest. And the only changes I’ve seen and personally witnessed as a teacher have been bad, disruptive, negative and ruinous. Now, I just wish some reporter or some citizen – or even myself would have the opportunity to yell at the top of our lungs: B——–! Proof please. I can only hope and pray that I; or someone else has that opportunity.
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There’s still the potential for choice to be used well. But it’s unlikely to in the climate of 3016. But I not giving up on it .
Sent from my iPhone
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There has always been potential but looking around now those choice schools are not the schools being “scaled up.” Even when schools manage to end up being investigated, they seem to be investigated endlessly with no resolution, and in the meantime, they continue to suck up tax payer money. The USDOE contines to dole out money even when their own department is investigating grant winners.
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Choice without strong oversight and regulation is useless. The bad actors will always drive out the good. The free market doesn’t work when the cost of serving some students is significantly higher than the cost of serving others. The schools that don’t serve those students will flourish and the ones that do will go bankrupt or be closed as “failures”.
I used to think charter schools were a great idea. It never occurred to me that the good actors would be cowed from criticizing the bad ones. Or perhaps not cowed — just desperate enough for the small scraps thrown to them that they will pretend to see no evil.
I know there are a few charter school operators willing to point out when charters aren’t acting in good faith. But their voices are drowned out by the ones who are either in complete denial, or just are willing to keep quiet because the dishonesty of the unethical ones hasn’t turned their way yet. They seem to believe they can enable a dishonest system and it won’t come back to them. But they are simply creating a system without morals that they will eventually have to embrace themselves or get swept away with the rest of the people not willing to play along.
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Crossposted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Latest-News-from-the-P-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Choice_Deregulation_Diane-Ravitch_Education-160518-282.html#comment597630
wit three comments containing like to posts at this site dealing with privatization in Tennessee North Carolina and the privatization /reform agenda
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Long post. The author of the Friedman Foundations for Educational Choice “research,” Dr. Greg Forster ends his report–titled “A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence On School Choice, Fourth Edition–with the following:
.
“Ultimately, the only way to make school reform work on a large scale is to break the government monopoly on schooling. The monopoly is not just one powerful obstacle to reform among many; it is what makes all the many obstacles as powerful as they are. The monopoly ensures that no meaningful accountability for performance can occur, except in rare cases as a result of Herculean efforts. The monopoly empowers a dense cluster of rapacious special interests resisting efforts to improve schools.
….
“Worst of all, the monopoly pushes out educational entrepreneurs who can reinvent schools from the ground up. Only a thriving marketplace that allows entrepreneurs to get the support they need by serving their clients better can produce sustainable innovation.
In any field of human endeavor—whether education, medicine, politics, art, religion, manufacturing, or anything else—entrepreneurs who want to strike out in new directions and do things radically differently need a client base.
….
School choice has the potential to solve this problem by providing enough families (size) with enough dollars (strength) and enough choice (suffrage) to support educational entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, existing school choice programs fall short on all three dimensions. Only universal choice can open the door to the full-fledged revolution in schooling America needs in the new century. “ p. 36
The author is preaching the gospel of the Friedman Foundation, but also a bit more. The author is a devoted believer in “universal choice,” evidently so religious schools can flourish and be tax-subsidized.
I reach this conclusion from Forster’s discussion linking charters school programs to civic virtues and to religious values (pp. 30-31), and to his faculty position at Trinity International University a regionally accredited school operated by the Evangelical Free Church of America, headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois. His main job there seems to be serving as the director of the Oikonomia Network at the Center for Transformational Churches.
The Oikonomia Network includes over 100 “theological educators theological educators and 18 evangelical seminaries” initially funded by the Kern Family Foundation. The network operations include a newsletter, website, network-wide events and “content creation.” The content creation includes “Theology that Works,” a paper written by Greg Forster that explains “how theology as a discipline can be in fruitful dialogue with the world of economic disciplines and activities.” More here. http://oikonomianetwork.org/economic-wisdom-project/
Forster also has a faculty post at Acton University, where his bio says that he “has a Ph.D. with distinction in political philosophy from Yale University. He is the author of six books, most recently Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It.” http://university.acton.org/faculty/dr-greg-forsterhttp://oikonomianetwork.org/about/
Acton University’s website opens with a display of one reason to sign up:
“Faith & Free Market Economics.”
“Acton University is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge and integrate philosophy, theology, business, development – with sound, market based, economics. “
Acton University seems to be a holding company for lecturers who offer on-line courses and also appear in scheduled face-to-face sessions for people who pay fees to participate in four days of lecture-filled conferencing. A full list of “course lectures ” is here. http://university.acton.org/2016courses The lectures are available for purchase at http://shop.acton.org/acton-university-2010-to-2013-lecture-bundle.html
The Win-Win report from political philosopher Greg Forster is written as if it is a comprehensive meta-analysis of credible empirical studies that offer irrefutable conclusions. The report is not that, but the casual reader looking for all of the charter school positives will be drawn to the pretense of scholarship and miss all of the wobbles and switcheroo’s between Forster’s criteria for the inclusion/exclusion of studies and his inferences based on these studies.
The author’s identification of charters with religious values reminded me that Education Next surveys, conducted since 2007, have questions designed to provide marketing insights about the connections between a preference for charters and race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, political alliance, and much else.
Here are the questions in the EdNext 2008 questions under the category of Religion, which mapped responses for people who said they were “born again” offering comparisons with responses from Public School Teachers, African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites. (I found no copyright on any of the Surveys)
24. Do you think the public schools in your community generally promote the values that you think are most important, or do you think that the values emphasized at school often come into conflict with your own?
25. In some public school districts, parents have requested that some time in each day be set aside for silent prayer and reflection. What do you think about this proposal?
26. (Each respondent was randomly assigned to one of the following five questions):
26A. How would you feel about a group of religious students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
26B. How would you feel about a group of Mormon students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
26C. How would you feel about a group of Muslim students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
26D. How would you feel about a group of atheist students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
26E. How would you feel about a group of Evangelical students organizing an after-school club at your local public school?
The 2014 and 2015 surveys had three (and ONLY three) questions about the respondents’ background.
32. Apart from weddings and funerals, how often would you say that you attend religious services?
33. Would you say that you have been born again or have had a born-again experience — that is, a turning point in your life when you committed yourself to Jesus Christ?
34. Are you a member of a union or an employee association similar to a union? http://educationnext.org/files/2014ednextpoll.pdf
The Education Next surveys are produced by Knowledge Networks, which specializes in “market research services, including survey design, information analysis, and data collection to produce syndicated reports and custom market research for a variety of FORTUNE 500 companies. Specializing in consumer research, it offers clients insight in such areas as advertising effectiveness, product development, segmentation, and media planning. Founded by Stanford researchers Douglas Rivers and Norman Nie in 1998, Knowledge Networks was acquired by global market research firm GfK in January 2012. “http://www.google.com/finance?cid=11462635
About a week ago, (May 13, 2016) Peter Cunningham, whose Education Post has a partnership with the 74Million propaganda machine, cited an Education Next poll in a rant about needing to protect students from a bloated educational bureaucracy in Los Angeles.
https://www.the74million.org/article/does-lausd-want-to-protect-children-or-a-bloated-bureaucracy
The Education Next surveys, like Greg Forster’s work parading as research, are designed and hyped to deliver propaganda and with a clear intent to tap veins of race-based and religious and ethnic prejudices. These are enlisted to rant against public schools, teachers, their unions, their salaries, the curriculum, and more. It is no accident that the Forster “study” has 14 reference citations from Education Next, and 50 others recycled from the Friedman Foundation.
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Is Columbia Teachers College Professor, Wohlstetter, on the Broad Prize Review Board?
She co-authored the December, “embargoed” charter school paper with Fordham Institute. The paper was funded by the Waltons and John Arnold. Is Wohlstetter associated with the Consortium of Policy Research in Education, an organization funded by Gates, Pearson, Goldman Sachs? The President of Columbia Teachers, who founded CPRE, was the subject of an article titled, “Students Urge President to Cut Ties with Pearson.
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