Archives for the month of: June, 2016
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The Fate of Oakland’s Celebrated American Indian Public Charter School, After the Diversion of $3.8 Million to Someone’s Bank Account

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2016 //
21

Once upon a time, the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, California, received national attention for its high test scores. In a book by David Whitman, called Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism (2008), the AIPCS was identified as one of the six best no-excuses schools in the nation. (In 2009, Whitman became Arne Duncan’s speech writer.) Its leader, Ben Chavis, was showered with praise by national education writers, TV pundits, and politicians. Based on its stellar data, reformers ranked it the best school in the nation. See here and here , including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Will, and many more.

Critics charged that Chavis got those astonishingly high scores by pushing out the children who were American Indian and replacing them with children of Asian descent.

Chavis’s style of leadership was brutal. He frequently made remarks demeaning racial and ethnic groups, complained about multiculturalism and unions, and punished children for minor infractions. Read here for a few of his more offensive comments.

He got results! Higher test scores.

But a state audit disclosed that $3.8 million went missing. Apparently much of it went to pay rent to the owner of the buildings, which was Chavis. Chavis resigned. He has since moved to North Carolina, where he is “a coveted speaker” on the free market view of capitalism and education.”

Chavis never received any punishment for the money he paid himself and his wife’s businesses.

Just another story of a great charter school.

Categories California, Charter Schools

Texas: The U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Abortion Restrictions

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2016 //
28

The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-3 to strike down restrictions on abortion in Texas that would have caused most clinics to close. If fully implemented, the state law would have reduced the number of places where abortions could be performed to only 10.

The reactionaries who control the Texas legislature will have to think of something new. If they have any spare time left over after wrangling the abortion issue, they might consider restoring the billions of dollars they cut from public schools in 2011.

Categories Texas

Funding Failure in Oakland: Charter Schools Are Floundering

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2016 //
7

In Oakland, California, a grand jury impaneled to investigate the oversight of charter schools reported that the schools were performing poorly and needed better management and more supervision. Despite results like this, the California State Board of Education, the legislature, and Governor Jerry Brown acquiesce to every demand of the California Charter Schools Association. CCSA has a rich PAC which they use to eliminate candidates who don’t support continued expansion of their private sector. They want more and more charter schools, no matter how pathetic their performance. At what point does evidence matter?


Although charter schools were intended to be an educational antidote to the city’s struggling traditional public schools, many of the city’s charter schools aren’t outperforming their district-run counterparts, and on average, performed worse last year in statewide results, according to an Alameda County grand jury report released this week.

The grand jury, which looked into Oakland Unified School District’s oversight of the city’s 37 charter schools, found that 19 scored below district averages for both charter and traditional schools in mathematics in statewide test results. And 17 charter schools scored below the district average in English. The panel reported that 15 charters scored below the district averages in both categories.

Measured against the state, the results are more troubling: 62 percent, or 23 of the city’s charter schools, scored below state averages in math, and 65 percent, 24 schools, scored below the state averages in English, according to results from the 2015 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, which replaced the API scores of previous years. Many of the schools performed similarly on past API tests, the report stated.

For that reason and a host of others, the panel recommended that Oakland Unified adopt a more rigorous oversight and approval process when authorizing and reauthorizing charter schools in the city. It also urged the district to increase its staffing at the Office of Charter Schools and to increase the number of on-site visits to charter schools and their board meetings to ensure stronger accountability, including fiscal and governance oversight, since they are funded on the taxpayer’s dime.

Here is a link to the Grand Jury report:

Click to access final2015-2016.pdf

Here are highlights:

The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) is comprised of 95 K-12 schools with an enrollment of approximately 48,000 students. Of the public schools within the city of Oakland, thirty-seven (37) are charter schools with a total enrollment of approximately 12,000 students. This represents nearly 25% of the total enrollment of the district.

However, the autonomy and independence granted to charter schools come at a cost. Charters operate without the same scrutiny as their district counterparts by the tax paying public. For example, a charter may change curricula, teaching methods, and budget allocation without approval from the authorizing district superintendent or the elected school board. They are also able to determine their own achievement standards, accountability, and systems of discipline or transfers between schools.

Using the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress Test Results for English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics for 2015, the Grand Jury determined that of the 37 Oakland charter schools that participated, 17 scored below the blended average of all Oakland unified public schools and 24 scored below the statewide average in English. Nineteen scored below OUSD averages and 23 scored below the statewide average in mathematics. Within these results, there were 15 Oakland charter schools that scored below OUSD averages in both categories. Many of these charter schools have been in Oakland for years and scored similarly on the previous API tests that are no longer in use.

The Grand Jury acknowledges that test scores are not the only measure of success, as many other factors such as school culture and non-academic support personnel, must be taken into consideration. Nevertheless, it is a concern that some charters are not achieving expected results and yet may still be re-authorized.

Current legislation requires the authorizer to “monitor fiscal condition” of charters, but beyond an annual financial audit, there is no oversight of charter school’s long term financial planning or budgeting.

This growth in charter schools has altered the original intention of the charter movement from “experimental laboratories” to one that attempts to address the sub-par results in district schools.

Funding for special education services in each region is provided by the state on a per student basis. In 2010, the state allowed charter schools to withdraw from their SELPA district, and join any other such district they chose. Twenty-five of Oakland’s 37 charter schools withdrew from the Oakland SELPA reducing the funds available.

Because a SELPA district is intended to form collaborations and share special needs education resources across many schools, the departure from its SELPA of so many charter schools resulted in fewer funds for OUSD that still must serve the same broad range of special needs students including those with the most severe needs. The Grand Jury heard testimony that individual charter schools have fewer severely disabled students. The Grand Jury views this as creating an inequity for special needs students in Oakland’s district schools.

The OUSD Office of Charter Schools is understaffed and underfunded. Although they are managing to successfully comply with the current laws, it will be increasingly difficult to ensure the future success of the charter school program in the city of Oakland.

The state provides a formula for authorizer staffing levels that would require 13 full time employees to support Oakland’s charter schools. Current staffing was recently raised from five to six people.

There is no reporting or tracking to monitor potential wrongful expulsion or dismissal of “less desirable” students by charter schools.

The Grand Jury heard testimony that some charter schools may counsel a student to leave that school for a variety of reasons including recurrent misbehavior or lack of achievement. Witnesses testified that this procedure would be unknown were it not for “whistleblowers.”
A charter school is governed by a board of directors that is not publicly elected. Members of such a board may have no expertise in education or have any particular qualifications for that role.

There is no requirement that the superintendent of the school district, or any member of the elected school board, attend charter school board meetings. The only oversight is through the current authorization and renewal process that requires some site visits throughout the school year.

There is no plan in place in OUSD to manage the proliferation of charter schools and no policy in place to manage or regulate growth. Such a plan would include facilities management, safety standards, and expected student outcomes.

There is no plan in place in OUSD to manage the proliferation of charter schools and no policy in place to manage or regulate growth. Such a plan would include facilities management, safety standards, and expected student outcomes.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure

John Merrow: The Broad Prize Now Goes Only to Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2016 //
12

Today, the Broad Prize for the nation’s best charter schools will be announced in Nashville at the annual meeting of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The finalists are IDEA Public Schools, Success Academy Charter Schools and YES Prep Public Schools.

John Merrow laments here that the Broad Foundation–and its billionaire leader Eli Broad–has given up on public schools and has decided to drop some money into charter schools. There was no Broad Prize for urban districts either last year or in 2016. This is only right and just, because Eli Broad favors charter schools over public schools.

Eli Broad launched his Broad Prize for Excellence in Urban Education in 2002, when the first award of $1 million went to the Houston Independent School District. Houston must have been an unusually stellar district because it improved so much that it won the Broad Prize again in 2013. The next year, 2014, was the last year that the prize was awarded, and it went not to a big urban district but to Gwinnett County Public Schools in Georgia and to Orange County Public Schools in Florida. Eli Broad, mastermind of American education (a title shared with Bill Gates) decided that urban districts were no longer improving fast enough to satisfy him, and he suspended the Broad Prize for Urban Education. After all, how many times can you give the prize to Houston?

If you go to the Broad Foundation website, linked in John Merrow’s post, you may gag on some of its “beliefs.”

Like the first one: We believe public schools must remain public. Nothing about charter schools is public, except the money they get from government. Otherwise, they are managed by private boards, which do not hold open meetings, with finances that are neither transparent nor accountable, and with disciplinary rules that do not comply with state requirements for public schools. In short, they are not transparent, they are not democratically controlled, they are not accountable, and they are thus NOT public schools.

One would hope to believe that the Broad Foundation actually does believe that teachers deserve to be treated with respect as professionals, but you learn on this website that Broad is a major funder of StudentsMatter, the group promoting lawsuits to strip teachers of their right to tenure and seniority, both of which protect academic freedom.

Merrow writes that it is not surprising that Eli Broad has dropped the award for urban districts:

But that’s not really new news, as the Foundation’s own pie chart reveals. Since 1999, the Foundation has made $589,500,000 in education-related grants, and 24% of the money, $144,000,000, has gone directly to public charter schools. No doubt some of the ‘leadership’ and ‘governance’ dollars have gone to public charter schools, which at best make up 5% of all schools. Over that same time period, 3% of the money, $16,000,000, went to winners of the Urban Education Broad Prize (for college scholarships).

In other words, the Foundation’s pro-charter tilt has been evident for a long time. Now it’s getting steeper and more pronounced.

Mr. Broad hoped that urban districts could improve “if given the right models or if political roadblocks” (such as those he believes are presented by teachers unions) “could be overcome,” said Jeffrey Henig, professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The suspension of the prize for urban education could signal a “highly public step” toward the view that traditional districts “are incapable of reform,” Henig said. Mr. Broad seems to have already taken that step in his home city of Los Angeles, where he is backing an effort to greatly expand the charter sector.

Apparently it’s pretty simple for the folks administering the Broad Prize in Urban Education: Successful School Reform boils down to higher test scores. I see no public sign that anyone at the Foundation is questioning whether living and dying by test scores is sensible pedagogy that benefits students. And no public evidence that they’ve considered what might happen if poor urban students were exposed to a rich curriculum and veteran teachers. If poor kids got what is the birthright of students in wealthy districts!

In the mind of Eli Broad, higher test scores means great schools. Period. He doesn’t believe that public schools are capable of improving because they are hobbled by such things as teachers’ unions, and job protections for teachers.

Are you waiting with bated breath to learn which charter chain wins the Broad Prize? I’m not. He is a dilettante whose money has convinced him that he deserves to privatize the public schools of America. He has forgotten that he was educated in public schools. Like other billionaires, he doesn’t trust democracy. Privatization suits him. Like the rest of us, his days on this earth are limited. He may be remembered for his gifts to the art world, for the museum he built and named for himself, for his contributions to medical research. But in education, his name will be reviled for his contempt for a democratic institution on which tens of millions of children depend.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Will Donald Trump’s Campaign Make Him Rich?

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2016 //
62

The release of campaign financial filings revealed a curious fact about Donald Trump. He may end up enriching himself, his family, and his far-flung enterprises by running for president. The New York Times reported the story with an air of amazement at Trump’s brazen self-dealing. This is no ordinary campaign.


“Donald J. Trump regularly boasts that he is self-funding his presidential bid, but new campaign finance filings show that he is also shifting plenty of money back to himself in the process.


According to documents submitted to the Federal Election Commission, Mr. Trump, whose campaign has just $1.3 million cash on hand, paid at least $1.1 million to his businesses and family members in May for expenses associated with events and travel costs. The total represents nearly a fifth of the $6 million that his campaign spent in the month.

The spending raised eyebrows among campaign finance experts and some of Mr. Trump’s critics who have questioned whether the presumptive Republican nominee, who points to his business acumen as a case for his candidacy, is trying to do what he has suggested he would in 2000 when he mulled making an independent run: “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”

He could end up turning a profit if he repaid himself for the campaign loans,” said Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert with the Campaign Legal Center. “He could get all his money back plus the profit margin for what his campaign has paid himself for goods and services.”

While most candidates list an array of vendors providing goods and services on their filings, Mr. Trump’s is packed with payments to his various clubs and buildings, his fleet of planes and his family. The self-proclaimed billionaire is required by law to account for his spending this way to prevent his companies from making illegal corporate donations to his campaign. In 2015, about $2.7 million was paid to at least seven companies Mr. Trump owns or to people who work for his real estate and branding empire, repaying them for services provided to his campaign.

In May, the biggest-ticket item was Mr. Trump’s use of the Mar-a-Lago Club, his Florida resort, which was paid $423,000. The campaign paid $350,000 to TAG Air for his private airplanes, $125,000 to Trump Restaurants and more than $170,000 to Trump Tower, the Manhattan skyscraper that houses the campaign’s headquarters.

Another article reviewed the same reports:

Timothy P. Carney writes in the “Washington Examiner” that Trump’s campaign is looking more and more like a grand con game designed to enrich Donald Trump.

Carney writes:

Donald Trump is a con man, and if you support him for president, you are his latest mark.

Commentators have been warning voters of this obvious scam for months. Trump’s latest campaign filing makes it clear. The man is unwilling or unable to do what it takes to win a general election, and a huge portion of the money he does raise flows straight into the companies he owns.

Carney learned from Trump’s required campaign disclosures that a surprising amount of the money spent by the campaign has gone to Trump businesses.

Trump’s campaign spent $6.7 million in May — more than it raised. And a lot of that money was spent on, well, Donald Trump.

As the Huffington Post’s Christina Wilkie reported Tuesday morning, Trump’s campaign spent more than $1 million of that money on Trump companies’ products and services last month, “for facilities rental, catering, monthly rents and utilities at more than a half-dozen Trump-owned companies and properties.” The amount “includes nearly $350,000 that the Trump campaign paid a Trump-owned company, TAG Air, for the use of Trump’s private jets and helicopters.”

The Associated Press found that Trump’s campaign has spent $6 million since it began at Trump businesses….

A final detail: Trump’s campaign is $45.7 million in debt (which, you may note, is a lot more than its $1.3 million cash on hand). And all of that debt is owed to … Donald J. Trump.

That means that every penny of the next $45.7 million in donations to the Trump campaign could literally go directly to Trump’s personal bank accounts before this is all over.

Trump has said he’s funding his own campaign. If he were really doing that, he would forgive his campaign’s debt to Trump, thus freeing up future campaign contributions for the actual campaign. But does that seem like something Trump would do?

Well, actually, yes. Big Republican donors have class send their wallets for fear that their gifts would go to repay Trump personally. Yesterday Trump announced that he would not require the campaign to repay the $50 million that he loaned it. This might open some of those pockets.

Categories Trump

Mississippi: Yes for Charters, No for Funding

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2016 //
2

Last year, the people of Mississippi had a chance to increase the funding for their woefully inadequate public schools, and the legislature and governor did everything in their power to reject the proposal, even creating an alternative measure designed to confuse voters. Act 42, which would have compelled equitable funding was voted down. Act 42 failed to win approval. Here is the background.

The legislature’s answer to school improvement: charter schools. These are the schools of choice that segregationists have wanted since the Brown decision.

Some in the legislature want to take the next step and authorize vouchers, to thoroughly undermine public schools.

The first two charters in Jackson are finishing their first year: one is struggling, the other is part of a corporate chain and is off to a good start.

Categories Charter Schools, Equity, Funding, Mississippi, Privatization

EduShyster on the Boston Turnaround Debacle

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2016 //
13

EduShyster provides insight and detail on the story of the Boston turnaround school that didn’t get turned around.

Take a low-performing school in an impoverished neighborhood.

Give it to a company that never ran a school before.

Run through five principals in two years.

What could possibly go wrong?

Will anyone be held accountable? Why not Mitchell Chester, the state commissioner who created this fiasco?

Categories Boston, Education Reform, Failure, Turnaround Schools

Steven Singer: Pennsylvania Legislature Provides Online Courses to Compensate for Budget Cuts

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2016 //
5

Steven Singer writes here on the theme: Online courses for the poor, teachers for the rich kids. (This is familiar to me; I discussed this subject near the end of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, recalling an article by the technology editor of Forbes, who predicted this development more than 30 years ago.)

Singer writes:

Pennsylvania has a long history of under-resourcing its public schools.

State Rep. Jason Ortitay has a solution.

The Republican representing Washington and Allegheny Counties envisions a world where poor kids learn from computers and rich kids learn from flesh-and-blood teachers.
It’s all in his proposed legislation, H.B. 1915, passed by the state House on Monday. It now moves on to the Senate.

The legislation would assign the Department of Education the task of organizing a collection of online courses for use by students in grades 6-12. Some classes might be created by the state and others would be made by third parties with approval for state use. If anyone so desired, the courses could be utilized by anyone in public school, private school, homeschool and beyond. The online learning clearinghouse thus created would be called the “Supplemental Online Course Initiative.”

The purpose of the bill is to help financially stressed districts, not by funding them but by giving them a cheap alternative.

This bill provides an alternative for schools where the local tax base isn’t enough to fund traditional classes presided over by living, breathing teachers.

In the distant past, the state used to made up some of the slack to level the playing field for students born into poverty. However, for the last five years, the legislature has forced the poor to make due with almost $1 billion less in annual state education funds. This has resulted in narrowing the curriculum, the loss of extra-curriculars, increased class size, and plummeting academic achievement.

While the majority of voters are crying out for the legislature to fix this blatant inequality and disregard for students’ civil rights, Ortitay’s proposed bill lets lawmakers off the hook. It allows legislators to provide a low quality alternative for the poor without necessitating any substantial influx of funds.

Where is the curriculum coming from?

Internet-based classwork – like that which would be collected in the clearinghouse – makes up the curriculum at cyber charter schools. Moreover, these online schools have a proven track record of failure and fraud.

A recent nationwide study found that cyber charters provide 180 days less of math instruction than traditional public schools and 72 days less of reading instruction.
In addition, researchers found that 88 percent of cyber charter schools have weaker academic growth than similar brick and mortar schools.

They have an “overwhelming negative impact” on students, according to researchers.

And THAT kind of curriculum is what the state House voted to increase using public money!

Singer reminds readers that Pennsylvania cybercharters have experienced major frauds, and two cybercharter leaders are currently under indictment. Cybercharters have a sorry track record in Pennsylvania and everyone else.

That makes them just right for children who live in financially distressed districts. No one in the legislature cares about educating THEM.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Online Education, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Technology

Joanne Yatvin: Free College for All is Working

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2016 //
14

Joanne Yatvin describes the spread of the concept of free community college for all. This, of course, was one of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign promises, premised on the belief that students should not be denied the opportunity to continue their education because of their inability to pay. The irony is that the the community college idea began after World War II as free colleges for all. Over time, states started shifting the costs to students. While community colleges continue to be lower cost than private colleges and four-year colleges, they are not tuition-free in most states. They should be.

Yatvin is a former teacher, principal, superintendent, and literacy specialist who lives in Oregon.

She writes:

A state run program called the “Tennessee Promise” has just completed its first year of operation with 16,291 students enrolled in tuition-free community colleges or technical schools. Much of the money for the program has been available in federal scholarships for several years, but most students and their families did not know about it, and the government applications were very difficult to fill out. Now, in the Tennessee system all students are informed about the program early in their high school careers and given instructions and assistance in filling out the application form. Students who receive a federal scholarship then get additional funding from local sources and the state itself. Although the price of community college in Tennessee is $4000, students and their families pay nothing.

The initial response to this new program has been amazing. In the coming school year all of the 2,291 students at Nashville’s largest high school will apply for the program. According to a student counselor at that school, the Promise is “just part of the culture now.”

Having passed a law creating a similar program, called the “Oregon Promise,” a second state will begin its program this fall. Already 8,500 Oregon students have applied to state community colleges. In many ways this program echoes that of Tennessee, but there are a few differences.

Both programs keep state costs down by being the last contributor. Only after federal Pell Grants and other financial aid sources have been used does the state step in with its funds. However, Tennessee has backed its program with $360 million from lottery revenues while the Oregon legislature has approved only $10 million for this year with no guarantee of future funding.

To qualify for the grant Tennessee requires students to maintain at least a 2.0 grade-point average in high school and maintain that average in college. In addition, they must attend college full time and devote eight hours to community service before the beginning of each school term. Students are also matched with a volunteer mentor to help them stay on track with college studies. In Oregon the grade-point average for students to enroll and remain in the “Promise” program is higher: 2.5. However, students may choose to attend school only half-time. In addition Oregon’s students get $1000 from the state whether or not they receive a federal grant. Finally, undocumented Oregon students also qualify for the Promise grants.

What excites me about these programs is that ten other states are already interested and are closely following the progress in Tennessee and Oregon. In addition, President Obama has proposed a national program based on the structure developed in Tennessee. But even beyond those possibilities I expect to see a positive change in the actions and attitudes of high school students wherever there is a “Promise” for them. Knowing that financial support is available if they work hard and get decent grades in high school will motivate many students who had no hope of college or technical schools before. I also expect to see a big uptick in attendance, behavior and effort in high school students in the two states already committed to the “Promise” and more of the same in any other states that decide to join them.

Meanwhile, instead of strategizing about how to provide free community college to all, the U.S. Education Department and Congress continue to send billions to phony for-profit colleges that rip off veterans and the unwary. Despite expose after expose, despite the financial collapse of Corinthian Colleges, Congress is content to send these institutions money to provide worthless degrees.

Categories Higher Education

Jack Schneider: The American Education System Is Not Broken

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2016 //
56

Jack Schneider, historian of education at the College of the Holy Cross, writes in The Atlantic that reformers have constructed a false narrative of educational failure. They say again and again that the “system is broken,” that it needs to be torn apart and built from scratch.

Schneider counters their claims one by one and shows that the system is working better today than it ever did, though it certainly needs to be better still.

Everything must be disrupted, say the reformers. Few of them have ever been teachers or even public school students or parents. But they seem certain that destruction is the right course for American public education.

Schneider marshals a good deal of evidence to show why they are wrong, but he never adequately explains how the reformers came to have these settled and wrongheaded beliefs. He suggests that they live in an echo chamber and only listen to one another.

Why the hysterical claims, he asks.

Perhaps some policy elites really believe the fake history—about a dramatic rise and tragic fall. The claim that the high school “was designed for early 20th-century workforce needs,” for instance, has been repeated so frequently that it has a kind of truth status. Never the fact that the American high school was created in 1635 to provide classical training to the sons of ministers and merchants; and never mind the fact that today’s high schools operate quite differently than those of the past. Facts, it seems, aren’t as durable as myth.

Yet there is also another possible explanation worth considering: that policy elites are working to generate political will for their pet projects. Money and influence may go a long way in setting policy agendas. But in a decentralized and relatively democratic system, it still takes significant momentum to initiate any significant change—particularly the kinds of change that certain reformers are after when they suggest starting “from scratch.” To generate that kind of energy—the energy to rip something down and rebuild it—the public needs to be convinced that it has a looming catastrophe on its hands.

This is not to suggest that educational reform is crafted by conspirators working to manufacture crisis. Policy elites are not knowingly falsifying evidence or collectively coming to secret agreement about how to terrify the public. Instead, as research has shown, self-identified school reformers inhabit a small and relatively closed network. As the policy analyst Rick Hess recently put it, “orthodoxy reigns” in reform circles, with shared values and concerns emerging “through partnerships, projects, consulting arrangements, and foundation initiatives.” The ostensible brokenness of public education, it seems, is not merely a talking point; it is also an article of faith.

I have great respect for Jack Schneider’s careful research and thoughtfulness, but here we part company. The reformers are indeed generating a “manufactured crisis” in order to create public hysteria about the quality of American education. There is a conspiracy, but it is not hidden. It is an echo chamber that includes StudentsFirst, Democrats for Education Reform, Stand for Children, the Gates Foundation, the Emerson Collective, the Broad Foundation, ALEC, the NewSchools Venture Fund, Teach for America, and a dozen or two more organizations and outspoken individuals. They know exactly what they are doing. They promote charter schools under private management, the transfer of public schools to private hands, and vouchers.

When pundits and policymakers repeatedly state that 2/3 of American students are below grade level, even after learning that this is not true, they are “knowingly falsifying evidence.” And one only has to peer into deliberations at any of the above named organizations and see the mutual backscratching to recognize that there is a network that agrees that American public education must be destroyed and remade as an all-choice system, largely privatized.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Privatization
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