Archives for the month of: March, 2017
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When Jennifer Berkshire (AKA EduShyster) Met Lisa Alva, Candidate for LAUSD School Board

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
8

The election for the Los Angeles USD school board is Tuesday. Once again, the charter industry is trying to buy control of the school board. Once again, the charter billionaires are dumping obscene amounts of money into the races in different districts.

In District 2, Charter QueenPin Monica Garcia is facing tough competition from two strong opponents: parent Carl Petersen and teacher Lisa Alva. If Garcia does not get 51% of the vote, there will be a runoff.

The Network for Public Action Fund has endorsed both Petersen and Alva, hoping to force a runoff and ready to back Garcia’s opponent. Garcia has never seen a charter she didn’t love or a public school that she did.

Jennifer Berkshire (the writer formerly known as EduShyster) describes her meeting with Lisa Alva. Alva is interesting because she was deeply embedded in the reform movement and then had an “aha!” moment (much like my own). She realized that “reform” was not about the kids. She was a teacher and she is about the kids. Alva won the endorsement of the Los Angeles Times, which usually sides with charterites.

Berkshire writes:

In the endorsement that Alva scored from the LA Times, she’s described as espousing an “interesting mix of beliefs, including some that align with the school reform movement and others more in line with the positions of the teachers unions.” I’d put it a different way. Alva thinks teachers deserve to have more of a voice, in part to push back against misguided reform policies, like the botched experiment that played out at Roosevelt High School. In 2010, Roosevelt was broken up into seven small schools, each with its own principal and schedule, which created some, um, logistical challenges for a high school with thousands of students. “It was this microcosm of bad policy and bad decision making,” says Alva.

By 2013, five of Roosevelt’s small schools had been re-combined—the only way that the school could remain viable, said Marshall Tuck, then CEO of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which took over the school in 2008. “He basically said ‘I guess we made a mistake,’” recalls Alva. Tuck is long gone; he ran for state superintendent in California as the charter guy in 2014 and lost. He’s currently accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers here. As for Roosevelt High, well, let’s just say that the patient has yet to recover. The money to pay all of those new administrative salaries had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere was classes, services for students and whole programs, like the one that trained students for careers in culinary arts. The small schools model was effective in making Roosevelt smaller; enrollment has plummeted since the Partnership assumed control of the school.

What makes Alva’s emergence as a thorn in the side of Tuck et al is that she was once an #edreform insider herself. She was a member of the Partnership’s Board of Directors, as well as a TeachPlus fellow, and a member of the teaching advisory board for Educators for Excellence, as well as Teachers for a New Unionism. She was, in other words, the reformer’s dream version of what a teacher should be: seeking out leadership opportunities and steadily improving herself in order to [insert aspirational goals here]. But Alva’s romance with the reform movement ended dramatically in 2013 over an incident that she recounted publicly here. In short, she was deeply disturbed by how quickly the alphabet-soup’s assembly of reform organizations in LA pivoted away from their self-proclaimed mission(s) to rally support for embattled superintendent John Deasy. Alva broke up with education reform, a decision she explained in a single, satisfying sentence: “The best place for an educator to protect and promote public education is the teachers union.”

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

ALERT: Save Kentucky’s Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
16

NPE Action urges you to write a letter to state senators in Kentucky. Please read about the harm that this bill will do to the public schools.

The bill now moves to the Kentucky state senate. Many, perhaps most, of the senators represent rural districts, where the public school is the heart of the community. They should oppose this law, as charters will take resources out of their public schools and harm the children of their community. Urban public schools will have larger classes and will have larger proportions of the students rejected by the charters, those whose needs are greatest.

As the bill is now written, it has many terrible features. Charter schools will not be required to have certified teachers. There is no limit on the number of charters that may open. The bill allows for-profit EMOs. There is no mention of how charters will be funded or how much funding they will receive. In other words, the bill will open the door to charter entrepreneurs to open shop in Kentucky and drain public funds to pay their investors.

The children of Kentucky will lose if this bill passes.

Citizens of Kentucky, I urge you to contact your state senator and urge him or her to save Kentucky’s community public schools.

Insist that every school be staffed with certified teachers. Keep out the profiteers.

Support the public schools that accept all children, not the schools that accept only the ones they want. Support the public schools that are legally required to enroll and provide services to children with disabilities. Do not authorize schools that choose their students and kick out the ones with low test scores.

A few years ago, I spoke to the Kentucky School Boards Association, and the walls were festooned with children’s artwork celebrating the public schools in every district.

Don’t betray the children or their public schools.

Stop privatization before it is too late. If this bill passes, the legislature will focus entirely on charter schools; legislative hearings will be packed with cute children wearing matching tee-shirts, pleading for more money for their sponsor. Public schools will be forgotten.

Don’t let it happen!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Kentucky, Privatization, Resistance

Thank You to the Pastors for Texas Children for Defending Public Schools and Religious Freedom

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
8

As the prospects for passage of voucher legislation diminish in Texas, it is time to give thanks to the tireless work of the Pastors for Texas Children. The battle is not over until the legislative session ends, but it is still time to thank those who have worked so hard on behalf of our children, their teachers, and their public schools.

This is an organization with some 2,000 members who represent faith communities across the state. They are led by Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, who understands that separation of church and state is the best protection for religious liberty and that every child in the state should have an excellent public education.

Here is an excerpt from his weekly bulletin:

A Note from Rev. Charles Foster Johnson – Executive Director of PTC

We are conducting introductory conversations with faith leaders all over the country as news of our mission spreads. We have been in productive conference calls this week with Episcopal leaders of Massachusetts and Virginia, as well as church leaders fighting privatization in Indiana. We have had face-to-face meetings with pastors in Kentucky and Mississippi, and are grateful now to have our first state partner affiliate in Pastors for Oklahoma Kids. The movement to mobilize the faith community for public education support and advocacy is going nationwide!

Of course, our main focus is right here in Texas where we still have much work to do in fighting bad policies such as the SB 3 “school choice” voucher bill, the punishing A-F assessment, and the petty SB 13 bill banning payroll deductions… and supporting good policies such as increased funding for our schools, good benefits for our teachers, and full day Pre-K instruction for our youngest children.

To this end, our PTC president Rev. Bobby Broyles is leading us in a statewide initiative to cover our Legislators in prayer. We want to assign each member a pastor as a prayer partner. If you are a pastor, we may be calling you to help with this vital ministry! [Emphasis added by me.]

Upcoming Events

REGISTER NOW! – Prayer Luncheon, Advocacy Training, and Legislative Briefing – 10 am to 2 pm on March 6, 2017 in Austin, Texas: Join Pastors for Texas Children at the historic First United Methodist Church of Austin for a meaningful prayer luncheon for our legislators and for a legislative briefing as we advance through the 85th session of the Texas Legislature. We will be praying for our senators and representatives as they face the difficult task of making policy decisions for Texas. We will learn about the issues related to fair and just education policy for all Texas children. And, we will make legislative visits to our respective policymakers in the Capitol. Click here to find out more and to register.

Texas Education Grantmakers Advocacy Consortium—We are privileged to be a part of the Texas Education Grantmakers Advocacy Consortium under the direction of our good friend, Jennifer Esterline. All of the foundations, funders, and advocates in TEGAC are urging the Legislature to fund high quality full day pre-kindergarten programs that give our children the solid educational foundation they need to succeed. TEGAC’s annual meeting is this Tuesday and Wednesday in Austin.

The Pastors for Texas Children is working with pastors in other states and encouraging them to form similar organizations to support public schools and keep their faith communities free from government mandates and controls.

I must say I love the PTC idea of assigning a pastor as a prayer partner for every member of the legislature!

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas

Good News! Looks Like Vouchers Are Dead This Year in Texas, Again!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
5

Here is some good news: “State Rep. Dan Huberty, a Houston Republican and chairman of the House Public Education Committee, said Tuesday morning that school choice legislation has no path forward in the House during the current legislative session.”

The Texas Senate, under the fat thumb of former radio talk show host Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, is gungho for vouchers. Patrick is also pushing a bathroom bill, modeled on North Carolina’s HB 2, to keep transgender girls or boys out of the bathroom of their choice. He has not suggested who will be in charge of monitoring genitalia in every public bathroom.

The Texas House of Representatives is not as eager to pass voucher legislation as the state senate. . The voucher bills so dear to Dan Patrick may not even get out of committee in the House.

This is what the Texas Tribune says:

State Rep. Dan Huberty, a Houston Republican and chairman of the House Public Education Committee, said Tuesday morning that school choice legislation has no path forward in the House during the current legislative session.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has called Senate Bill 3 one of his top priorities. The bill would create two separate public programs to subsidize private school tuition and homeschooling, including one giving parents debit cards backed by taxpayer money.

“Yes, this is dead to you as an issue?” Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith asked Huberty as a Tribune event Tuesday morning.

“I believe so, yes,” Huberty said.

School choice advocates are having a hissy fit and they want to censure Rep. Huberty.

School choice is an issue that divides Republicans; battle lines are often drawn more along rural-urban lines than party lines. Last session, the House did not take up the leading private school choice bill for a vote. In the past couple of months, Patrick has called on the House to at least take a vote on this session’s Senate Bill 3, which would create two public programs subsidizing families’ private school tuition and homeschooling expenses.

“We want a vote up or down in the Senate and in the House this session on school choice. It’s easy to kill a bill when no one gets to vote on it,” he said at January’s “National School Choice Week” rally.

On a talk radio show Monday, Patrick said the school choice bill would have the 76 votes needed to pass in the House if it made it out of committee.

Smith asked Huberty on Tuesday to weigh in on Patrick’s comments: “Do you believe you can get the 76 in the House on the floor if you let this go out of committee?”

“Your responsibility as chairman is to protect your membership,” Huberty replied.

When Smith asked what Huberty was protecting them from, Huberty said, “We’ve had a vote count over many sessions about where these numbers lie. I look at the committee and I know where the membership is on this particular issue and where we stand. Why don’t we focus on the things that we can do?”

We can thank House Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio) for selecting Rep. Dan Huberty as the new chair of the House Committee on Public Education. The retiring chair, Jimmie Don Aycock (R-Killeen) was a supporter of public schools, and so is Rep. Huberty.

Huberty understands that no one ever got criticized for a bill that never made it out of committee. Rep. Huberty is protecting his fellow legislators from the wrath of the voters by strangling the voucher bills in committee.

Texans are divided about vouchers. A large association of home schoolers called Texans for Homeschool Freedom oppose vouchers, because they fear that government money will be followed by mandates about textbooks and testing, and they will lose the freedom they treasure.

Ross Ramsey, writing for the Texas Tribune, warns that the battle is far from over:

Elected officials who want vouchers have never been able to get them through the Texas Legislature. And if Huberty holds, it’s probably not going to happen in 2017, either.

One of those truisms borne of experience: Nothing is dead in the Texas Legislature while lawmakers are still in session. Resurrection is part of the game.

Vouchers could turn up as an amendment to another education bill, to legislation that rewires funding for public schools, to anything that has a similar enough subject to justify that sort of an attachment.

It would be weird, but Straus could always decide to send the vouchers bill somewhere other than Huberty’s committee for consideration. The members of the House could express an overwhelming change of heart and demand the opportunity to bring vouchers to the floor for a vote — either to pass it along to Gov. Greg Abbott, who has said he would sign such a bill, or to kill it outright to make a statement.

Categories Texas, Vouchers

The Disappointing Results of Vouchers in Louisiana: An Evaluation of the First Two Years

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
13

A team of researchers associated with the University of Arkansas studied the first two years of the Louisiana Scholarship Program. Their report was released in late February. For those hoping to see a validation of the transformative power of vouchers, the results were disappointing, to say the least.

“The Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP) is a statewide private school voucher program available to moderate- to low-income students in low-performing public schools. The LSP is limited to students with family income at or below 250% of the federal poverty line. Children in these families also have to either be entering kindergarten or be attending a public school that was graded C, D, or F for the prior school year. In the program’s rst year, 9,809 students were eligible applicants, with a majority of them located outside of Orleans parish. This group of students, the 2012-13 LSP applicant cohort, is the focus of our evaluation.

“The voucher size is the lesser of the amount the state and local government provides to the local school system in which the student resides or the tuition charged by the participating private school that the student attends. Average tuition at participating private schools ranges from $2,966 to $8,999, with a median of $4,925, compared to average per pupil spending of $8,500 in Louisiana’s public schools.

“To participate in the program, private schools must meet certain criteria related to enrollment; nancial practice; student mobility; and health, safety and welfare of students. Participating schools are prohibited from being selective in their enrollment of voucher students and must administer the state accountability test (LEAP and iLEAP) annually to voucher students in grades 3-8 and 10.

“Nearly 60% of applicants received scholarships for the 2012-13 school year. Of the students who received voucher awards, 86% used their voucher to enroll in a private school in the rst quarter of 2012- 13.

“Roughly 87% of the students in this cohort are black; with 8% white, and 3% Hispanic. Prior to applying for the LSP, students in the 2012-13 cohort performed below the state average in English Language Arts (ELA), math, science, and social studies by around 20 percentile points on the LEAP and iLEAP in 2011-12. Applicants to the program in 2012-13 were concentrated in the earlier grades, with a third entering Kindergarten through 3rd grade.”

As noted in the report, the students who received the voucher were already low-performing. Over two years, their test scores declined significantly. Even though some of the academic losses were reduced in the second year, the students nonetheless lost ground. The academic losses were significant.

Looking for other results, the researchers sought to measure non-cognitive skills like “grit,” self-esteem, “locus of control, and “political tolerance.”

The report says:

“The differences between the two groups are minuscule and not statistically significant. We find little evidence to suggest that, after two years, students receiving an LSP scholarship had noticeably different non-academic skills or political tolerance than students who did not receive a scholarship. Moreover, given the limitations in our measures, we stress that our results are largely inconclusive.”

The researchers conclude that the scholarship program improved integration because the public schools that students left became somewhat less segregated, while the private schools became somewhat less integrated. Thus, “When we combine the largely integrating effects of the program on students’ former public schools with its slightly segregating effects on their new private schools, the overall effect of the LSP is to improve the racial integration of Louisiana Schools.”

The researchers also examined what they believed were the competitive effects of vouchers on nearby public schools:

“We find no effects across both math and ELA overall, but find large positive effects on math and ELA test scores when we restrict the sample to those public schools with a private competitor in close proximity. In sum, our analysis of the competitive impacts of the LSP show that public school performance in Louisiana was either unaffected or modestly improved as a result of the program’s expansion.”

Overall, these are might slim pickings. The students who received a voucher experienced large academic losses, which might or might not rebound in years ahead. There was no change in their noncognitive skills, to the extent these can be measured. Highly segregated public schools became less segregated when black students left for private schools, but this was not the purpose of the program, and it is certainly a roundabout and inefficient way to increase racial integration. As for the supposed benefits to public schools, this seems awfully speculative. And again, the purpose of the program is to “save poor kids trapped in failing schools, not to raise test scores of students in public schools that low-performing students leave.

Bottom line: getting a voucher had negative effects on the test performance of those who received the vouchers.

Please review the bios of the authors:

Patrick Wolf, who has conducted numerous voucher evaluations, is part of the Department of Educational Reform at the University of Arkansas, where he is “Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.” He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard where his mentor was Paul Peterson, the nation’s leading academic proponent of school choice. Jonathan Mills received his Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas in 2015. Anna Egalite received her Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas and postdoctoral work at Paul Peterson’s program at Harvard.

This is a team predisposed to find the bright side. But they are honest scholars and the bright side was hard to find.

Categories Louisiana, Vouchers

Martin Carnoy: Vouchers Will Not Help the Neediest Students

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
55

Martin Carnoy is a professor at Stanford University who has studied education systems around the world.

Carnoy wrote a report for the Economic Policy Institute about the efficacy of vouchers, or their lack thereof. The report is titled “School Vouchers Are Not a Proven Strategy for Improving Student Achievement.” Carnoy reviews the longest-running voucher programs in the U.S. and other countries and finds little evidence that they improve student achievement.

Here is his summary:

“This report seeks to inform that debate by summarizing the evidence base on vouchers. Studies of voucher programs in several U.S. cities, the states of Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and in Chile and India, find limited improvements at best in student achievement and school district performance from even large-scale programs. In the few cases in which test scores increased, other factors, namely increased public accountability, not private school competition, seem to be more likely drivers. And high rates of attrition from private schools among voucher users in several studies raises concerns. The second largest and longest-standing U.S. voucher program, in Milwaukee, offers no solid evidence of student gains in either private or public schools.

“In the only area in which there is evidence of small improvements in voucher schools—in high school graduation and college enrollment rates—there are no data to show whether the gains are the result of schools shedding lower-performing students or engaging in positive practices. Also, high school graduation rates have risen sharply in public schools across the board in the last 10 years, with those increases much larger than the small effect estimated on graduation rates from attending a voucher school.

“The lack of evidence that vouchers significantly improve student achievement (test scores), coupled with the evidence of a modest, at best, impact on educational attainment (graduation rates), suggests that an ideological preference for education markets over equity and public accountability is what is driving the push to expand voucher programs. Ideology is not a compelling enough reason to switch to vouchers, given the risks. These risks include increased school segregation; the loss of a common, secular educational experience; and the possibility that the flow of inexperienced young teachers filling the lower-paying jobs in private schools will dry up once the security and benefits offered to more experienced teachers in public schools disappear.

“The report suggests that giving every parent and student a great “choice” of educational offerings is better accomplished by supporting and strengthening neighborhood public schools with a menu of proven policies, from early childhood education to after-school and summer programs to improved teacher pre-service training to improved student health and nutrition programs. All of these yield much higher returns than the minor, if any, gains that have been estimated for voucher students.”

Carnoy published a shorter version of the report for a popular audience. He wrote an article for the New York Daily News explaining why Trump and DeVos are wrong about school choice, specifically vouchers.

He reviews recent research in plain language. Kids don’t benefit. In some places, they actually lose ground.

As I have often written in this space, if vouchers, charters, and school choice were the solution to the problems of urban education, Milwaukee would be the model district of the nation, as it has had choice since 1990. That’s two full generations of students.

He writes:

If the President and his new secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, were right about choice, Milwaukee would be among the highest-scoring urban school districts in the nation. Milwaukee’s private students would be outscoring those in public schools, and students in public schools would have made large gains because of the intense competition from private and charter schools.

None of that is the case. Research over a four-year period that compared the gains of voucher and public school students in Milwaukee showed that the voucher students did no better. And it’s African Americans, who make up roughly two-thirds of Milwaukee’s student body, who are the main recipients of vouchers and also most likely to attend charter schools.

When we compare the National Assessment of Educational Progress scores — that’s the gold standard of achievement tests — of black students in eighth-grade math and reading in 13 urban U.S. school districts, black students in Milwaukee have lower eighth-grade math scores than students in every city but Detroit — notably, another urban district with a high level of school choice.

In reading, Milwaukee’s black eighth-graders do even more poorly. They score lower than black eighth-graders in all other 12 city school districts.

How many billions will we waste on this failed free-market ideology? As Carnoy points out, investing in proven strategies in public schools with credentialed teachers would have long-term benefits.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Milwaukee, School Choice, Vouchers

Kentucky: We Don’t Want Charter Vultures in Our State!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
1

Gay Adelman of Save Our Schools Kentucky published the following letter to the editor in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

“Kentucky is one of only seven states that has managed to avoid jumping off the charter school cliff, so far. However, our state legislature is poised to pass a charter school bill this month. As a parent volunteer and staunch advocate for public schools, everyone keeps telling me I should “just deal with it.”

“If you knew what I knew about the real challenges our public schools face, some of the 100-plus other solutions we should try before opening our pocketbooks to outside interests, and the corruption and self-dealing going on behind this movement, you would not “just deal with it” either. You would fight until there was not an ounce of fight left, and then you would fight some more.

“Research shows that if Kentucky passes harmful charter school legislation this month, our already struggling schools and our most vulnerable students will suffer. Our democracy will suffer. All of the gains and momentum currently underway in our public schools will fall right off that cliff, as well.

“Charters are funded by our tax dollars meant for our public schools, but they are run by outside corporate interests and authorized by entities outside the purview of our democratically elected school board. By opening the door to charters, our already underfunded public schools will become destitute. They will end up serving the neediest of our population, begging for scraps, and exacerbating the extreme poverty, segregation and discrimination we already have in this city.

“Shameful agendas

“For some, charters are a dog whistle for those looking to resegregate schools, to discriminate against LGBTQ policies, to strip rights and services away from special needs students, and to bring religion into schools. Others see them as a way to isolate their children from students dealing with poverty, trauma and behavior issues.

“Paid pro-charter policymakers have been coming after our volunteers, attempting to convolute or discredit our concerns. Lawmakers, pushing out-of-touch education bills, have blocked their own constituents from commenting on their social media posts. Soccer moms, teachers and students are routinely ignored or bullied by grown men who often don’t even have experience (or kids) in the public school system.

“In actuality, Kentucky public schools are improving. But the oft-hailed idea that charters are a “lifeboat” implies that the system is sinking. Charter advocates would rather jump ship and save a few than plug the hole and save all. The charter lifeboats will only save those students whose parents know how to navigate the system (which are not the kids that charters purport to help) leaving the existing schools more broken than before.

“Charter schools are a slippery slope.

“Look at what’s happened in the 43 states, plus DC, where charter school operators have run amok. Like locusts, they ravage communities, taking their inexpensive-to-educate, high-performing students. Once they’ve locked their jaws onto our succulent recurring, AAA-rated tax dollars, they move on to their next most lucrative, vulnerable target. In a recent interview with Insider Louisville, House Bill 103’s sponsor Phil Moffett said,“The most likely areas that will see charter schools first are Owensboro, Bowling Green, as well as counties near Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville.” They’re not even trying to hide it!

“Charter operators will find other ways to suck funds from our public schools, such as vouchers and online schools and multi-county “academies.” This leaves us, the taxpayers, to make up the funding difference and clean up the mess they leave behind.

“Charters don’t work, not even for “urban kids”

“Despite relentless propaganda and cherry-picked “research” financed by wealthy special interests, charter schools don’t produce better students. There is no statistically significant evidence that shows that charters improve outcomes for minority students. In fact, they have been known to hurt urban public schools, often preying on vulnerable, at-risk, low-advocacy students who are desperate for change. The NAACP, Black Lives Matter, and ACLU have recently spoken out against charter schools.

“Charters magnify the divide between the have’s and the have-not’s because students with involved parents – the ones who jump through hoops so their kid can attend a charter school – often outperform those who don’t, leaving the public schools in those communities worse off than before.

“Just look at Detroit. With the recent confirmation of the wholly unqualified, public education enemy, Betsy DeVos, to U.S. Secretary of Education, opposing charter school legislation in Kentucky has become more critical than ever. It may, in fact, be the only hope we still have and protecting our public schools from the devastation that has happened in districts like Detroit, where her failed policies have run rampant.

“Kentucky has been fortunate to be one of the few states to keep vulture charter operators at bay. Let’s not jump off the cliff just because everyone else did. Call your legislators at 800-372-7181 and tell them to #StopChartersInKY.”

Gay Adelmann is co-founder of a grassroots public education advocacy group called Save Our Schools Kentucky. She can be reached at moderator@saveourschoolsky.org.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Kentucky, Privatization, Resistance

Kentucky: House Passes Charter Bill, with Strong Limits

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2017 //
19

Now that Republicans control the Governorship and the Legislature in Kentucky, they finally got a billauthorizing privately run charters through the lower house of the legislature. Kentucky is one of the few states that does not allow charters, or has been until now. In the world of Republican politics, it is important not to be different. One must run with the crowd, even if they are running off a steep cliff. Republicans look enviously to their neighbor Tennessee, which has wasted millions of dollars on charters and performs well below Kentucky on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Why Kentucky wants to emulate a lower-performing state is anyone’s guess. Call them lemmings.

On Friday, the Kentucky House passed House Bill 520 after four hours of debate. The bill would legalize charter schools in the state of Kentucky.

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run schools.

The bill was introduced in the General Assembly by Representative John Carney, a Republican from Campbellsville. While it does not set a cap on the number of schools, Carney said the state will likely start the program with three to five schools in areas that need them most.

The schools would be approved for five years and the reassessed and renewed for another five years or shut down.

“This should be a bipartisan matter. This is about our kids,” Carney said.

According to Hal Heiner, the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development’s Cabinet Secretary, students do not have proper support systems and that is causing schools to fail.

“We have to add to what we have to meet the needs of children” Hal Heiner, Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet Secretary said.”We need specialization.”

Heiner said a charter school, which had the ability to provide year-round education and three meals a day to students, can help underprivileged students.

Kentucky is one of seven states without charter school laws.

“Every dollar going to charter school is not going to a public school in that district.” Kentucky Education Association President Stephanie Winkler said. “This bill gives local school boards little room to maneuver.”

Even if a school board rejects an application, which the bill says it can’t do if the application is in order, an applicant can appeal to the state’s school board.

During the meeting, Rep. Phill Moffett (R – Jefferson) added a measure to give a mayor permission to accept a charter application as well.

“We’ve got to stop accepting this stuff and we need to work together to make sure we educate these children better,” Rep. Moffett, a longtime supporter of charter schools said.

Louisville pastor Milton Seymour said the bill helps end achievement gaps in low-end neighborhoods.

This is the civil rights movement of the 21st century,” Seymour said. “If we don’t do something for our children, then shame, shame, shame.”

Achievement gaps exist but charter schools are not the answer according to Winkler. Winkler continued her opposition to the bill by saying that all states with charter schools still have gaps.

“If charter schools were the answer to the student achievement gaps in this state, the professionals that trained to teach children would be advocating for them too,” Winkler said in an emotional speech.

While it is unfortunate to see Kentucky join the parade of failed school reforms by permitting privatization of public school funds, the one bright side is that the bill is very disappointing to corporate reformers. Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, which has been touting privatization for many years, wrote up her criticism:

The lower house of the Kentucky legislature passed HB520 this afternoon, a bill which in all but isolated cases strengthens the hands of school districts to limit charter schooling in Kentucky.

Applicants wanting to open a charter school in the state will first have to get permission from the district, which experience shows is rarely given in the absence of a swift and binding appeal to the state board of education or multiple chartering authorizers.

While an amendment offered by Representative Phil Moffett adding the Mayors of Louisville and Lexington as authorizers improved the bill, other changes, including a provision barring charters from contracting with businesses to support and manage their schools, and barring online education, made it much worse.

The Kentucky Education Association president opposed even the dramatically scaled back version of the measure. As has been typical elsewhere, Kentucky school boards and superintendents have been lobbying hard against charter schools, and creating fear among rural legislators that charter schools would drain their school funding.

What? No for-profit management! No disastrous cyber charters! A few points of light in an otherwise dismal decision that will defund public schools in Kentucky and NOT help the kids who need excellent teachers and good public schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Kentucky, Privatization

A Must-See Oscar-Winning Documentary: “The White Helmets”

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
42

Tonight, I watched “The White Helmets,” which won the Oscar for best foreign documentary. It is well worth watching, though I don’t recommend that you watch it while eating a meal. It is heart-rending. It is about a corps of volunteers who save lives in Syria when the bombs are falling. Not much is said about politics. It is about humanity. It is hard to forget that the bombs are falling because the Syrian dictator Assad decided to obliterate his own people rather than compromise and risk losing power. The bombs are falling because Russian airplanes are targeting apartment buildings and hospitals.

President Obama drew a line in the sand a few years ago and said that Assad must go. But then he did nothing. Hillary Clinton wanted a no-fly zone to stop the aerial bombardments of civilian targets, but Obama vetoed that. He thought it might anger the Russians, who were intent on protecting Assad.

The film says that 400,000 Syrians have been killed, as Assad continues to eliminate his population, and the Russians carry out their deadly airstrikes to support their ally. Millions of Syrians have left their homes, but we don’t want them. We won’t help them, and we don’t want them.

The cinematographer for this Academy Award-winning film was barred from entering the country by Trump’s Muslim ban. He did not attend the ceremony when his film won the Oscar.

P.S. I don’t usually watch Netflix because it profits Reed Hastings, who is one of the big funders of charter schools. But I wanted to see this moving film.

Categories International

Oh, How Soon We Forget Our Martyrs!

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
1

Please open and pause for a moment of remembrance–or non-remembrance.

Categories Education Reform
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