Archives for the month of: December, 2016
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The Biggest Problem in Early Childhood Education Today Is….

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2016 //
14

In this post, which appeared on Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog, Nancy Carlsson-Paige explains that the biggest problem in early childhood education today is the erosion of time for play.

 

Carlsson-Paige is an emeritus professor at Lesley College, where she taught teachers of early childhood. She explains in this post that the changes in the recent past have damaged children and their classrooms.

 

She said, in a recent speech:

 

For the last 15 years or so, our education system has been dominated by standards and tests, by the gathering of endless amounts of data collected to prove that teachers are doing their job and kids are learning. But these hyper requirements have oppressed teachers and drained the creativity and joy from learning for students. Unfortunately, this misguided approach to education has now reached down to our youngest children.

 

In kindergartens and pre-K classrooms around the country we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in play. There are fewer activity centers in classrooms and much less child choice, as well as less arts and music. At the same time, teacher directed instruction has greatly increased, along with more scripted curriculum and paper and pencil tasks.

 

Play is very important in child development, she says:

 

Children all over the world play. They all know how to play, and no one has to teach them how. Any time we see a human activity that is wired into the brain and accomplished by all children worldwide, we know it is critical to human development.

 

So much is learned through play in the early years that play has been called the engine of development. Children learn concepts through play; they learn to cope and make sense of life experiences; and, they develop critical human capacities such as problem solving, imagination, self regulation and original thinking.

 

She notes that early childhood educators were never at the table when government officials, think tanks, testing companies, and standards writers decided that play didn’t matter. It does matter, and strangely enough, we need to fight to defend the right of children to play.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Early Childhood Education, Play, Testing

Steven Singer: Don’t Be Fooled! Betsy DeVos Loves Common Core!

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2016 //
18

Steven Singer wants you to know the truth: No matter how much she denies it, Betsy DeVos really really loves Common Core!

 

He has the evidence to prove it.

 

She’s a board member of Jeb Bush’s pro-Common Core think tank, Foundation for Excellence in Education, where she hangs out with prominent Democratic education reformers like Bill Gates and Eli Broad. But she says that somehow doesn’t mean she likes it.

 

She founded, funds and serves on the board of the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP), an organization dedicated to the implementation and maintenance of Common Core. But somehow that doesn’t mean she’s for the standards.

 

She’s even spent millions lobbying politicians in her home state of Michigan asking them NOT to repeal Common Core. But somehow that doesn’t mean she’s in favor of it.

 

It must be a hard position to be in.

 

Her entire nomination for Trump’s cabinet is contingent on convincing the public that she hates this thing that he explicitly campaigned against but she favored.

 

Rarely has an education policy been such a political hot potato as Common Core. Typically Republicans hate it and Democrats love it. However, little of this has to with its actual merits – or lack thereof.

 

Common Core is a set of academic standards saying what students should know in each grade. Nonetheless, these standards are deeply unpopular with teachers, students, parents and the general public. Part of this stems from the undemocratic way state legislatures were bribed to enact them by the Obama administration in many cases before they were even done being written and often circumventing the voting process altogether. Other criticisms come from the way the standards were devised almost entirely by standardized test corporations without input from experts in the field like child psychologists and classroom teachers. Finally, the standards get condemnation for what they do to actual classrooms – narrowing the curriculum, promoting excessive test prep, increased paperwork, the purchase of new text and work books and requiring new and more unfair standardized assessments.

 

As a Republican, DeVos must do everything she can to distance herself from this policy.

 

It’s just that her history of advocating for it gets in the way.

 

Every statement that Singer makes is documented in links. And the story is longer than what is quoted here. Open and see his stunning graphics and read the rest of the post.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Common Core, Education Reform

North Carolina: Legislature Strips Powers of Governor

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
21

As threatened, the Republican-dominated Geral Assembly of North Carolina passed legislation to diminish the powers of the incoming Democratic Governor.

 

The outgoing Governor, Pat McCrory, who lost the election to Attorney General Roy Cooper, promptly signed the controversial bills, undermining his successor.

 

The Tea Party Republicans who control the legislature are punishing Cooper for winning. They are a disgrace to a great state. They have betrayed democracy and abandoned any sense of fairness.

 

This is the work of North Carolina zillionaire Art Pope, who spent years defeating moderate Republicans and replacing them with extremists. Jane Mayer wrote about Pope in the New Yorker in 2011. Her article was entitled “State for Sale.”

Categories North Carolina

K12 Inc. Annual Meeting: Shareholders Demand Transparency

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
4

K12 Inc. is the largest provider of online charter schools. This sector is probably the worst part of the charter industry. CREDO reported last year that for every 180 days of online enrollment, a student will lose 180 days in math, and 72 in reading.

 

At its shareholder meeting on December 15, a group of shareholders proposed that the corporation become transparent as to how much it spends on lobbying.

 

As reported on Valerie Strauss’s blog, shareholders wanted to know more:

 

At a meeting scheduled for Thursday, shareholders are going to ask for a vote on whether the company should be required to publicly disclose details about its lobbying efforts in various states. The Arjuna Capital shareholder resolution asks that K12 prepare an annual report showing:

 

Company policy and procedures governing lobbying, both direct and indirect, and grass-roots lobbying communications.
Payments by K12 used for (a) direct or indirect lobbying or (b) grass-roots lobbying communications, in each case including the amount of the payment and the recipient.
K12’s membership in and payments to any tax-exempt organization that writes and endorses model legislation.
Description of the decision-making process and oversight by management and the board for making payments lobbying payments.

 

It is not known whether their efforts to get the company to disclose its lobbying activities were successful.

 

One of the proponents of transparency is Bertis Downs, who owns K12 Inc. stock and is a member of the board of directors of the Network for Public Education. He is a public school parent in Athens, Georgia.

 

Strauss wrote about him:

 

The new shareholder effort is being led by Bertis Downs, a public school advocate in Athens, Ga., who spent his career providing legal counsel and managing the rock group R.E.M., and who bought K12 stock a few years ago. Asked why he is taking this action, Downs said in an email:

 

My motivation in filing for this disclosure of K-12’s lobbying activities stems from my overall curiosity and interest as a parent and a shareholder in knowing more about what lobbying is done, whether through ALEC or directly, that leads to the so-called “education reform” laws being passed all over the country. How much does the company spend and how do they spend it and what results do they get for it? And is any of that good for meaningful teaching and learning in our schools? And is it good for the company and its shareholders?

 

At some point, parents should wake up and stop sending their children to these “schools.”

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

Update on the Tea Party Coup in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
7

As the North Carolina General Assembly passes legislation to limit the powers of the newly-elected Governor of the state, who is a Democrat, protestors gather at the State Capitol, speak out and are arrested.

 

The General Assembly has been controlled by Tea Party extremists since 2010, when they had the chance to redistrict and guarantee themselves a super-majority. The federal court has ruled that the redistricting was unconstitutional and ordered the legislature to redistrict again. Note to fox: Please stay away from the hens.

 

One of the new laws transfers power over the schools from the State Board of Education to the newly elected Republican superintendent of schools. Mark Johnson is a 32-year-old former Teach for America teacher, who taught for two years, then was elected to a local school board. A year after he was elected to the local school board, he announced his candidacy for state superintendent. Based on his scant experience, the Tea Party wants him to take charge of public education in the state. Michael Bloomberg and TFA’s political advocacy group LEE (Leaders for Educational Excellence) funded his campaign. Count this as another victory for TFA’s ambition to take over public education.

Categories Education Industry, North Carolina, Teach for America TFA

Has Trump Outsourced the Department of Education to Jeb Bush?

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
22

The U.S. Department of Education, in the Trump regime, is starting to look like a Jeb Bush sweep.

 

Betsy DeVos was on the board of Jeb’s Foundation for Education Excellence, which is noted for its advocacy for vouchers, charter schools, digital learning, and high-stakes testing.

 

Hanna Skandera, State Superintendent in New Mexico, worked for Jeb Bush, was a member and chair of Jeb’s Chiefs for Change, and is a supporter of Common Core (and president of the PARCC consortium).

 

Now Politico reports that Paul Pastorek of Louisiana, also a member of Jeb’s Chiefs for Change, is under consideration for the ED Department’s general counsel. Pastorek was a leader and cheerleader for the complete privatization of the public schools in New Orleans.

 

As superintendent [of Louisiana] from 2007 to 2011, he helped oversee the rebuilding of New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina. He has held a number of education reform leadership positions, serving as co-executive director of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, for example. Pastorek helped found the PARCC consortium and he’s chairman of PARCC Inc.’s board of directors.

 

In other words, Trump has forgotten that he promised to eliminate Common Core (which he can’t do unless the states want to do it.) He said repeatedly that Common Core is a “disaster.” But all of his likely top appointments are Common Core advocates, like Jeb Bush.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Testing, Trump

Rebecca Mead: Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Education

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
24

Rebecca Mead, staff writer at The anew Yorker, outlines the advantages that Betsy DeVos offers:

 

She has no ties to Vladimir Putin; she hasn’t spread fake news; she apparently has no plans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Of these three “advantages,” I feel confident only about the first one. Her persistent lambasting of public schools is fake news. And it remains to be seen whether she will close down the ED Department.

 

Of this we can be confident: she is the first Secretary of Education who is actively hostile to public education. She is an extremist ideologue. She is unfit to manage a large government agency that is responsible not only for aid to poor children in K-12 but for aid to higher education, student debt, aid to special education, education research, and a variety of other programs about which she is inexperienced and uninformed.

 

Mead writes:

 

“DeVos has never taught in a public school, nor administered one, nor sent her children to one. She is a graduate of Holland Christian High School, a private school in her home town of Holland, Michigan, which characterizes its mission thus: “to equip minds and nurture hearts to transform the world for Jesus Christ.”

 

How might DeVos seek to transform the educational landscape of the United States in her position at the head of a department that has a role in overseeing the schooling of more than fifty million American children? As it happens, she does have a long track record in the field. Since the early nineteen-nineties, she and her husband, Dick DeVos, have been very active in supporting the charter-school movement. They worked to pass Michigan’s first charter-school bill, in 1993, which opened the door in their state for public money to be funnelled to quasi-independent educational institutions, sometimes targeted toward specific demographic groups, which operate outside of the strictures that govern more traditional public schools. (Dick DeVos, a keen pilot, founded one of his own: the West Michigan Aviation Academy, located at Gerald Ford International Airport, which serves an overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male population of students.)”

 

DeVos has a long record of promoting choice, that is, seeking alternatives to public schools. She doesn’t like public schools. She believes in choice without accountability. As Mead points out, the dire situation in Detroit reflects her ideology. Detroit has been Her Petrilli dish. It is a colossal failure. Despite what is right before her, she still believes that choice is all that is needed to produce excellence. Except it doesn’t, never has, never will. In DeVos’s mind, ideology trumps all, evidence doesn’t matter. She thinks that public schools are passé, finished, so yesterday.

 

Mead writes:

 

“Missing in the ideological embrace of choice for choice’s sake is any suggestion of the public school as a public good—as a centering locus for a community and as a shared pillar of the commonweal, in which all citizens have an investment. If, in recent years, a principal focus of federal educational policy has been upon academic standards in public education—how to measure success, and what to do with the results—DeVos’s nomination suggests that in a Trump Administration the more fundamental premises that underlie our institutions of public education will be brought into question. In one interview, recently highlighted by Diane Ravitch on her blog, DeVos spoke in favor of “charter schools, online schools, virtual schools, blended learning, any combination thereof—and, frankly, any combination, or any kind of choice that hasn’t yet been thought of.” A preëmptive embrace of choices that haven’t yet been thought of might serve as an apt characterization of Trump’s entire, chaotic cabinet-selection process. But whether it is the approach that will best serve current and prospective American school students is another question entirely.”

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Michigan Charter Founder Sentenced to 41 Months in Prison

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
6

The founder of a small charter chain in Michigan has been sentenced to 41 months in prison. 

 

I have written about Ingersoll here and here.

 

Steven Ingersoll founded the Grand Traverse Academy in Michigan.

 

Blogger Anita Senkowski has followed this scandal from its beginnings. She writes about Ingersoll’s sentencing here.

 

In its December 15, 2016 sentencing memorandum, the government stated:

 

In general, the four purposes of sentencing are retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. In a tax case such as this, the sentencing purposes of retribution and deterrence are especially important. A sentence within the guideline range of 41 to 51 months is necessary to accomplish those purposes.

 

“When looking first at the need for retribution, Ingersoll has committed a serious offense, and his sentence should reflect it. His offense was not a one-time lapse in judgement, or a record-keeping mistake with purely civil tax consequences. His criminal tax-loss amount exceeds a million dollars. And he was convicted of tax evasion and fraud with respect to three years of false income tax returns.

 

Ingersoll has done nothing to repay the money that he owes. To the contrary, he has continued to violate the tax laws to this day by failing to file any personal income tax return since 2012.

 

The profit and loss statement that Ingersoll previously filed with the court shows that from 2012 to 2015, he earned over two million dollars in gross income. The only income tax payment he has made for those tax periods, however, was a $10,000 payment submitted when he applied for an extension to file his 2012 return.

 

Defendant’s repeated and significant criminal conduct warrants a lengthy sentence.”

 

 

Here is a quote from an earlier post linked above:

 

“This is one of the most curious, most convoluted charter scandals I have come across. Of course, it happened in Michigan, where about 80% of charters operate for-profit and where the state exercises minimal oversight of the charter sector.

 

“In 1999, an optometrist named Steven Ingersoll was among the first to see the potential in the charter industry. He developed his own pedagogy called Integrated Visual Learning and opened the first of four charters, Grand Traverse Academy. The board of directors were other optometrists who liked Ingersoll’s ideas. Certainly, optometrists would be drawn to a teaching method based on “visual learning.”

 

“There were chummy relationships among Ingersoll, the management company he hired, and board members:

 

“It was not until lawyers for the school began asking questions that the tangled financial relationship between Ingersoll’s management company and the charter he founded began to unravel, culminating in the most significant federal criminal case in the history of Michigan’s 20-year-old charter school industry. Ingersoll, who started Smart Schools Management, Inc., stands accused of illegally diverting construction loan money for another charter school to his private account, in part to pay back money he had taken from the Grand Traverse charter. His hand-picked members on the school board knew he had advanced himself money from Grand Traverse, but had no problem with the arrangement, school records show.
“Ingersoll will go on trial next month on seven criminal charges of bank fraud and tax evasion. The allegations of financial self-dealing and cozy relations between Ingersoll, his associates and board members could not come at a worse time for the Michigan charter movement. The state’s powerful, mostly for-profit charter school industry has found itself on the defensive since the Detroit Free Press published a devastating series last June chronicling how charters receive nearly $1 billion a year in state taxpayer money with little accountability or transparency on how that money is spent. The series detailed how board members at some charter schools were forced out when they pushed to learn more about finances from management companies, and how state law failed to prevent self-enrichment by those operating some low-performing charter schools.”

 

“One blogger, Anita Senkowski, doggedly followed the case of Steven Ingersoll and posted documents. Her blog is called “Glistening Quivering Underbelly,” where she calls herself Miss Fortune. She described Ingersoll as the poster boy for Michigan’s lack of charter oversight.”

 

Ingersoll was convicted and has been sentenced to 41 months in prison.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization

Rhode Island: Commissioner Approves Tripling of No-Excuses Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
10

Kenneth Wagner, Commissioner of Education in Rhode Island, has approved a plan to allow the Achievement First “no-excuses” charter chain to more than triple its enrollment over the next decade to more than 3,000 students. (Other stories say that the number of students will grow from the present 720 to 2,000.) The proposal is controversial because the increase in charter enrollment will cut the budget of the public schools in Providence, where most of the students are now in attendance. So, most students will suffer larger classes and fewer programs so that the well-funded AF chain may expand.

 

The city’s internal auditor estimates that the district public schools will lose between $28 and $29 million annually by the time Achievement First reaches full enrollment. The analysis by the Rhode Island Department of Education estimates that the district will lose $35 million, of which $8 million comes from the city in local aid. The rest comes form the state.

 

The per pupil spending follows the child from a traditional public school to a charter school.

 

Critics say if the charter school grows to 3,112 children, it will have a devastating impact on the traditional public schools and effectively create a parallel school system.

 

By state law, Wagner must consider the financial impact of a charter school expansion on the sending school districts, in this case, Providence, Cranston, North Providence and Warwick. But 86 percent of the charter’s students come from Providence, so the impact will be greatest there.

 

Based on the experience of other states, Providence is likely to see its credit rating fall, meaning that the city will have to pay more for its indebtedness. But when a politically powerful group like AF, backed by billionaires, wants to grow, what matters is not the vast majority of students–who will suffer budget cuts–or the city and state’s bond rating, but placating the billionaires.

 

The mayor of Providence, Jorge Elorza, is chair of the board of the Achievement First charter chain in Rhode Island, and he said recently that he won’t move forward with the expansion unless AF’s wealthy backers raise the $28-32 million that the school district will lose as AF expands.

 

A defender of the expansion plan said that the fiscal impact wouldn’t be as bad as the state and city auditors estimate, because once children learn to read at grade level, property taxes will rise. Yes, he really did make that claim.

 

William Fischer, a spokesman for RI-CAN, part of a national, pro-school choice advocacy group, said the R.I. Education Department has a legal obligation to weigh the fiscal impact on the entire community, not just the school district.

 

“We hope the study will look at the impacts to property taxes when students are reading at grade level,” he said. “I thought [the auditor’s report] was a very simple analysis. It didn’t take into account student attrition and the charter’s growth over a decade.”

 

This is called “magical thinking.”

 

Jonathan Pelto has written extensively about the Achievement First charter chain in Connecticut. He has pointed out that AF schools have disproportionately small numbers of students who are in need of special education and who are English language learners. Like other no-excuses charters, they are known for their high attrition rates. They skim, they cherrypick, and they get extra funding as compared to high-needs districts from which they poach students.

 

The Providence Journal editorial board endorsed the proposal to divvy up school funding between charters and public schools, even though 80% of the kids in need of extra attention will still remain in the public schools after AF reaches its goal, and even though the public schools will lose resources, making them less able to help those left behind.

 

Achievement First spokeswoman Amanda Pinto said the school is “thrilled” by Wagner’s recommendation.

“When considering the fiscal impact,” she said, “The most important factor is the economic value of providing thousands more Rhode Island students with a high-quality education that equips them for success in college, career and life.”

 

In other words, the negative fiscal impact on the vast majority of students in the Providence public schools and on the finances of Providence don’t matter, as compared to any test scores gains for the small minority of students that AF accepts and retains. This is just plain selfish thinking. 

 

Can any sensible person say that it is a good idea to open new schools to enroll 3,000 or so students, when 15,000 students are in need of extra help? If AF follows the pattern it established in Connecticut, it will skim off the most promising students, subject them to stern discipline, and then boast of its test scores.

 

If anyone steps back and thinks about this picture, it makes no sense. This is a recipe for a dual school system, both drawing from the same pie, with one free to choose its students, the other accepting all students who show up. Following this path will weaken the public schools that enroll most students, strip them of the resources they need for the students, and send them on a path of steady decline. This is a bad deal, from the point of view of the students, the city, and the state.

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Providence, Rhode Island

Peter Greene: A Rare Occasion When Reformers Admit Defeat

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
8

Peter Greene listened to a podcast produced by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and made a shocking discovery: One of the leading figures of the reform movement–Checker Finn–acknowledged that after 20 years of reform, there was no change!

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing
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