With time running out on his term as Governor, Chris Christie removed the president and vice-president of the state school board.
Critics said he was trying to lock in his control of the board long after his tenure in office. Christie has battled with the teachers union and favors privatization of public education. Although New Jersey is one of the top performing states in the nation, Christie regularly excoriates the state’s educators and public schools.
Scott Sargrad is in charge of K-12 education policy at the Center for American Policy. CAP has been one of the leading advocates for privately managed charters. This article explains in lucid prose why vouchers are a terrible strategy and how they actually harm most children who use them. He could have written the same article about charters, which suck money and top students away from public schools and weaken the very schools we should be helping.
He writes that no matter how many anecdotes you hear about vouchers, the bottom line is they they are a bad bet:
“But if our goal as a country is to provide an excellent education for every child, private school voucher schemes that send taxpayer dollars away from public schools and into private schools are too risky a gamble…
“It’s worth pausing for a moment to examine just how stunning the results of these studies are. In Indiana and the District of Columbia, students receiving vouchers actually moved backward in math, and made no progress in reading. In both Ohio and Louisiana, the students did significantly worse in both reading and math compared to their peers who remained in public schools – with students in Louisiana moving from the 50th percentile to the 34th percentile in math after just one year.
“And despite frequent claims that parents are happier after using a voucher, the evaluation of the District of Columbia program found no impact on parent or student satisfaction or parent involvement. (To be fair, the study found that parents perceived their private schools as safer – although the students did not.)
“It might be tempting to consider allowing for small, limited voucher programs that are carefully targeted to the neediest students and include important civil rights, antidiscrimination and transparency protections. Unfortunately, history shows clearly that this is never the case. Some of the biggest supporters of vouchers – including Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos – are explicitly against these kinds of protections, casting them as over-regulation that limits choice.
“In fact, voucher programs often start small – such as targeting students with disabilities or families with lower incomes. Then proponents slowly but surely expand eligibility to all students and raise or eliminate income caps. Eventually, students using vouchers are those who have never enrolled in a public school, and increased spending on voucher programs leads to budget crunches that could harm public schools.
“Of course, public schools are not perfect – not even close. That’s why instead of directing taxpayer dollars to private school voucher schemes, states and the federal government should be investing public money in improving public schools.”
He goes on to encourage choice within public schools, including charters, but surely he knows that charters are as discriminatory as voucher schools and just as likely to be corrupt because of the typical absence of oversight or accountability. The “effective” charters are those that cherrypick their students, avoid those with disabilities, and push out students who can’t get high scores.
Charter Schools, by definition, are privately managed. They are not public schools. No matter what their allies call them, no matter what they call themselves, they are private schools that are bankrolled by public money.
Sorry, CAP, you can’t reject half of the Betsy DeVos agenda and embrace the other half.
The charter industry does not collaborate with public schools. It seeks to weaken them, not help them.
CAP, either support public schools or school choice. There is no middle ground. One is public, the other is not. Which side are you on?
James Wilson believes that it is harmful to youth to expect all to meet the same rigorous academic standards. Some will excel in career and technical education or other fields.
He writes:
“The imposition of the University of California A-G entrance requirements on all high school students is inappropriate and extremely harmful. The UC system was constructed to be a system of elite universities for the top ten percent highest achieving California high school students. When you add out of state and international students, the proportion of California youth in UC schools is even smaller. The idea of the UC A-G entrance requirements is to prepare elite high school students for the rigorous coursework in the UC schools. These very difficult courses were never meant for all high school students. The requiring of these courses for all high school students is a perversion of the intention of the UC universities.
“Someone got the idea that if you require all high school students to take these extremely difficult courses, all students will raise their intelligence, effort, and overcome all backgrounds to be able to master these courses and enter a UC university. This is so patently absurd that it is hard to believe anyone would take the idea seriously…
“Requiring A-G high school courses flies in the face of science and logic. However, this is much worse than an unjustified policy. This policy puts the seventy percent of students who will never graduate from any college in a terrible situation. They are forced into taking difficult courses in Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Chemistry, and Biology. These courses have little use in society beyond college preparation. The seventy percent who will never go on to graduate from any college are forced to attempt to master these classes, but they cannot. The high schools do everything they can to make this impossible situation work. They water down the curriculum in these courses with no discernable standards and count a “D” grade as passing, but this is just window dressing.”
After years of underfunding public education and diverting money to charters and vouchers, Arizona is coping with an acute teacher shortage.
“On a Saturday in late April, Principal Theresa Nickolich gave her best recruiting pitch to every person who walked in the door.
“Come teach at Clarendon Elementary School in the Osborn School District, she told the candidates at the job fair.
“You’ll be part of a system that will support you. You’ll feel like family in a professional environment built up over years of strong leadership. You will be an anchor of stability for children in need, many of them poor.
“You will have a rewarding career. You will change lives.
“But across from Nickolich stood both her biggest recruiting challenge and an emblem of one of the biggest crises facing public education in Arizona.
“Almost no qualified applicants walked in.
“It was the last job fair of the year in the Osborn district before the quiet summer months. In a school of about two dozen classroom teachers, Nickolich still had five jobs to fill for the fall.
“If Nickolich couldn’t fill her spots with qualified teachers, she would have to turn to teaching interns. Maybe somebody with an emergency teaching credential, maybe somebody who didn’t yet have a teaching certificate. In a dire situation the state could even let her employ a temporary teacher without a college degree.
“The recruiting challenge Nickolich faced that day in April isn’t unique to Osborn, or even to her region. It’s a crisis that school administrators recognize statewide:
“Every spring, thousands of teaching positions open across the state.
“Every spring, fewer qualified people apply to fill them.”
How can “reformers” expect to improve education if they drive people away from teaching?
Of the state’s, 22 percent lacked full qualifications.
“Many in that 22 percent did have a college education and teacher training, but had less than two years in the classroom, a time frame when they don’t qualify for the state’s full credential — a standard certificate.
“Many others lacked even more basic qualifications. Nearly 2,000 had no formal teacher training. Dozens lacked a college degree.
“Parents, educators and advocates argue the proliferation of teachers with less than full credentials harms student performance.”
No kidding.
“Experts frequently place poor teacher pay and low education funding among the primary causes of the shortage. Median pay for Arizona elementary teachers is $40,590 per year, compared with $54,120 nationally. In 2014, Arizona ranked 48th in average per-pupil spending at $7,457, compared with $11,066 nationally.
“For years, state finances reeled from deficits that resulted in cuts to education. Gov. Doug Ducey calls teachers and public schools “winners” in his most recent budget, which allocated $167 million in new money for education and 2 percent teacher raises spread across two years.
“Other factors driving the shortage include stressful working conditions and diminished respect for the profession. The problem has grown as older teachers retire; among the flood of newcomers, many try the profession, then leave shortly after.”
Obviously, Arizona doesn’t care about educating its children. They don’t care about having qualified teachers. They aren’t willing to pay professional salaries. Very sad.
Arizona has placed its bets on choice as a substitute for funding its schools and attracting qualified teachers.
A bad bet.
The Akron Beacon-Joirnal reports on a multi-state charter scandal.
“The founder of an Akron-area charter school company is accused of using thousands of dollars parents paid for student lunches and uniforms and millions more from Ohio and Florida taxpayers to fund home mortgages, plastic surgery, extensive world travel, credit card debt and more.
“Criminal charges filed last week in Florida against Marcus May also allege he improperly used private and public funds earmarked for students’ education to expand his charter school empire in Columbus, Akron, Cleveland and Dayton.
“Florida State Attorney William “Bill” Eddins brought the charges of racketeering and organized fraud against May, the founder of Newpoint Education Partners and Cambridge Education, a Fairlawn company that manages about 20 charter schools in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Akron, Youngstown, Canton and Cleveland.
“In a prepared statement provided to the Beacon Journal on Friday, Cambridge Executive Director John Stack said: “My co-owners and I asked for and today accepted Mr. May’s resignation as managing member of Cambridge. We are now in discussions to remove him completely from ownership in the company because we feel it’s in the best interest of our schools.
“Despite this distraction, my colleagues at Cambridge and I will continue to focus on our core mission and the students we serve as we have always done.”
“Cincinnati businessman Steven Kunkemoeller also was charged in the First Judiciary Circuit, a regional court in Florida. Kunkemoeller is a longtime business partner of May, according to a Beacon Journal/Ohio.com report from December and a multi-state investigation that included help from the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office.
“Kunkemoeller was arrested Wednesday in Florida. May’s attorney has reportedly talked with authorities there. Neither man could be reached for comment.
“The Florida prosecutor alleges that the men fabricated invoices, embellished enrollment, misappropriated public funds and created an elaborate network of limited liability companies in order to bilk the federal and state governments, as well as parents and students.
“In Akron, where Cambridge manages Towpath Trail High School, Middlebury Academy and Colonial Prep Academy, school board members are taking caution but not jumping to conclusions.
“We are keeping a close eye on it and discussing alternatives if they are needed,” said Ron McDaniel, president of Towpath Trail High School. “But we need to be responsible and not make snap decisions. Our schools are running well and run responsibly. We verify things better than the Florida schools did from what I understand.”
“The mark up
“School and business records obtained by the Beacon Journal and detailed by a forensic accountant working on the case show that May and Kunkemoeller marked up the price of services and supplies provided to the charter schools they managed in Ohio and Florida, sometimes more than doubling the cost of school uniforms, desks, computers, chairs and website design.
“Florida investigators questioned the vendors who sold the goods and could find “no apparent business reason” for the mark ups. May and Stack, Cambridge’s executive director, have said that the schools pay more upfront for more flexible financing terms.
“Fabricated invoices
“Items listed on invoices, from iPads to furniture, could not be found when Florida investigators swept schools for evidence of how public dollar were spent…
“Property and bank records reviewed by investigators showed May and his wife, Mary May, purchased a Florida home soon after “rebate” payments began. In 2014, two payments of $175,000 were applied to Kunkemoeller’s mortgage and the May’s home equity line of credit. Investigators traced the money to a laundry list of other non-public expenses, including $381,631 for credit cards, $207,415 for Marcus May and his family, $52,388 for a homeowner’s association fees (including swimming pool services), $4,735 taken as cash, personal loans to other people, a $10,000 jet ski from Barney’s Motorcycle Sales in St. Petersburg, $5,000 to the Fairlawn Country Club, $11,000 for plastic surgery and additional money for trips to Amsterdam, the British Virgin Islands, Brussels, Cancun, China, France, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Japan, Los Cabos, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Italy.”
Florida officials are investigating; Ohio officials don’t seem to care.
The story goes on to detail massive fraud, double-billing, and other misappropriation of public money.
When will the mainstream media report this story? We know that Betsy DeVos won’t care. As long as parents are choosing these schools, why worry about the money?
Norwegian Filmmaker offers two candidates for Jeff Sessions’ doppelganger. In case, you don’t know, a doppelganger is someone who looks just like you.
NF first suggested this match.
But I proposed this one, and NF agreed with me.
What do you think?
A few nights ago, I went to see a Broadway play that was scheduled to close on June 25.
The play is “Indecent,” and it is wonderful. It was written bu a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel. It is about a play written for the Yiddish theater in 1907 by Sholem Asch. The play was risqué. It was a hit all over Europe, and it came to New York City. There (here), it was closed down by the police for indecency, and the actors were put on trial. After their acquittal, they returned to Europe. They put on one last performance in an attic in the ghetto in Lodz, Poland, everyone wearing yellow stars. We know what awaits them.
The audience was wildly enthusiastic. There were encores. It was hard to believe the play was closing.
But it got a reprieve, probably because the theatre was packed these last few nights. It will now run until early August.
See it if you can.
You will love the writing, the acting, the staging, and the Klezmer music.
Time for a laugh!
Jeff Bryant has won one of the annual Project Censored awards for his brilliant article about the malign intrusion of Walmart into public education.
We may differ about which person is “the worst in the World,” but if there were a competition for the “Worst Corporation in the World,” Walmart would definitely be at or near the top. They treat their workers horribly. They fight unions. They fought paying a living wage or even a minimum wage. I have heard that Walmart workers are given advice about how to apply for food stamps and welfare.
But that’s not all. Walmart destroys Main Street. It undercuts all the Mom-and-Pop stores by offering shoddy foreign-made shlock and drives them out of business. Mom and Pop, who once lived in dignity, are lucky if they can get a job as a greeter at Walmart. The small towns of America are being hollowed out by Walmart’s cut-throat competition. If zwalmart doesn’t get the profit it expected, it closes, leaving behind the devastated small towns where the closed shops are for rent.
The Waltons, the richest family in America, have placed their bets and their billions squarely behind charter schools. They would support vouchers too, but charters are easier as their preferred method of cutting down public education, which the Waltons despise. They not only fund new charters and existing charters, they give millions to TFA and to mainstream media outlets with the hope that they can buy good coverage.
If I found a magic lantern and were granted three wishes, one of them would be that all our billionaires lost their billions. That would be the best hope for our democracy.
Emily Talmage describes the fight against the edtech industry in New England. The resolutions passed by the Massachusetts Teachers Association are a landmark in teachers’ efforts to block privatization, data mining, and replacement of teachers by machines. Most of the pressure to capitulate, she says, emanate from the Nellie Mae Foundation.
The odd fact about the drive to promote blended learning is that the evidence base is non-existent.
The successes in Massachusetts show that an awakened public and teaching profession can beat the powerful forces of the edtech industry.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
