Remember when voucher advocates claimed they would enable “poor kids to escape failing schools?”
What happens when the voucher School is a failing school?
It gets more public money!
http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/indiana/20171002/principal-welcomes-state-grade
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Because of Cornerstone’s small size, the Indiana Department of Education had to use two years’ worth of data to calculate the school’s graduation rate in 2014 and 2015. It reached only 36 percent.
But Department of Education staff verified that the spring 2016 graduation rate was 92.9 percent. A 2017 rate should be out by the end of the year.”
……….
How does a school go from a graduation rate of 36% to 92.9% in one year?
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Carol,
It’s a miracle!
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Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh! We keep praying for things to improve for all children.
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What’s good for business is good for the children. I mean, education IS a business…right?
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As a former Indiana public school teacher I could vomit. Check out the state ed dept’s list of mostly church-related (including Islamic schools) approved for vouchers.
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The goal of community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit traditional public schools is to educate children so flawed logic says if public schools aren’t successful with all the children, they have failed. These schools aren’t there to make money.
The goals of publicly funded, private sector schools are to make money. Therefore, flawed logic dictates that failing to educate children for the same reasons children don’t learn in traditional public schools is not a failure as long as someone is making money from the failed effort.
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Something very questionable about an F-rated charter school (measured by stdzd test results) that admits about 62% enrollment from publicsch kids who were failing their stdzd tests.
All (per the article) so they can have 1-on-1 attn/ get self-esteem/ move on to community college w/o the “stigma” of pubsch SpEd status… where they most likely would have gotten 1-on-1 attn/ self-esteem/ moved on to community college– & perhaps considerably more, judging from my own kids’ pubsch SpEd pgms, as they had the benefit of highly trained folks in both Sp & GenEd classes, & went on to do well in reg 4-yr colleges!
Oh, well, nothing lost but… a more supportive ed that actually addressed learning issues… & $/head moved out of the pubsch, no doubt leaving less budget for the pubsch SpEd pgm…
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Coincidentally, HuffPo today decided to run a story—I mean ad—on how wonderful charter schools are in Fort Wayne, IN are: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/school-choice-indiana-vouchers_us_59d3ddd5e4b06226e3f413c2?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
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What bothers me about this (besides the obvious) is that the state refuses to put extra money into struggling PUBLIC schools, but is willing to do so with the charter and, now, private and religious schools.
Education reform has been a double standard from the start.
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And NCLB/test-based educational reform has been a venture capital business endeavor from the start. Kids are only relevant in how they can be used in scheme upon scheme to make someone else rich.
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Q
What happens when the voucher School is a failing school?
END Q
Easy. When parents/children are notified, or otherwise become aware that a non-public school is not up to standard, they are free to leave the school, and seek alternate schools, and redeem their voucher at the school of their choice.
When parents/children are notified, or otherwise become aware that a public school is not up to standard, they are stuck. A monopoly does not have to meet the discipline of competition.
Another argument for school choice.
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Charles,
This is so well stated that I cannot improve upon it except to add that the critics of the Choice program must not have read the article. It was about the satisfaction of the parents and the alum that was featured. Thanks for positing this positive story abut school choice Diane!
School choice and competition for students are here to stay.
Well doen Charles!
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JD,
The parents were satisfied but the kids learned less. Is this your hope for the future? Dumbing Down America?
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jdhollowell,
Everyone has a right to their own opinions. Even Charles.
But that doesn’t mean what you or he think is right. You are wrong that school choice is here to stay. It will survive until the GOP loses its edge in the Congress and the Democratic Party kicks out or sidelines the neo-liberals.
Then it will end just like it did in Chili and Sweden. It might even take a bloody Civil War to stop ALEC, the Turmpists, the Tea Party and all the other deplorable fools that makeup Trump’s 35-percent support ratio.
The countries with the best education systems in the world have publicly funded choice, have strong teachers’ unions and support teachers instead of punishing them. Even China doesn’t punish the teachers in alleged failing schools.
Finland offers school choice but with a huge difference. The publicly funded private schools in Finals have to follow all the same rules the public schools do and that’s why less than 25-schools in Finland are publicly funded private schools.
People have a choice in what they eat too, but that doesn’t make people who make the wrong choice healthier from eating too much meat, cheese, dairy, white flour and processed sugar while washing it all down with sugary sodas.
The best way to have successful schools is in a community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public school system where the elected school board comes from the same small community where the schools are located.
That’s why Gallup reports: “Parents of school-aged children are much more satisfied with their own child’s education than Americans are with U.S. K-12 education in general. Seventy-nine percent of parents with children in K-12 say they are completely or somewhat satisfied with their oldest child’s education; 21% say they are dissatisfied.”
79-PERCENT of parents with school-age children are completely or somewhat satisfied with their oldest child’s education.
The only reason so many Americans think that all the other schools outside of their experience are not doing that well is because aren’t the parents of the children at those schools and have been influenced just like you and Charles — you have been dupped by all the propaganda that has been pouring out of the traditional and Alt-Right corporate media for several decades ever since Reagan and his flawed and fraudulent misleading A Nation at Risk Report.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/216611/americans-satisfaction-schools-edges-2016.aspx?g_source=position6&g_medium=related&g_campaign=tiles
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Correction: The top education system in the world do NOT offer publicly funded choice when it comes to K-12 education.
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One (ONE) of the points being left out of this discussion is that of the term, monopoly.
Although the definition of “monopolize” is a broad one, the term “monopoly” is most often used in the world of business. Our anti-trust laws are supposed to protect us from this practice (another point of debate). Again: this is most often used in the field of business. Private business. Profit oriented business.
One essential difference between public schools and private enterprise (especially big business/chain/for profit charter schools) is that the public schools are accountable to a locally elected school board. From smallest town to largest city, this is the case. Regardless of the possibility of fraud, embezzlement, etc, there is still a system of accountability intact to which local citizens may address problems.
This isn’t the case with a profit oriented business. Or non-profit, in many examples. The example of what happened with the Edison school in Gary, IN is a perfect example. Edison refuted responsibility, as did the state. And it’s not an isolated instance.
Education is not a business. It’s a combined community effort that requires citizen involvement and money from town/city/state. It’s imperfect but please don’t PollyAnna the alternative into an altruistic private sector endeavor with superior educators and facilities than the public schools could ever provide.
Another point: What happens to the student(s) whose school closes in February due to poor enrollment but has no schools with open seats available; charter or voucher? Or the only other school available is too expensive for the family to afford?
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I’m an Indiana tax payer and I don’t want my tax dollars funding any type of religious schools. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is Christian, Hindu, Muslim or some new just created version spirituality. Public schools need money. Poverty is not going to lessen by giving a choice.
I wrote a letter to my state Senator Niemeyer and state Representative Slager complaining that pubic schools aren’t being funded enough. I asked them to check what teachers have to say before they decide that Indiana is doing a great job.
Are public schools, especially those in poor neighborhoods, offering free after school tutoring? Are class sizes at 16 our under so that children with learning difficulties, due to a hostile living environment, are able to get individualized attention by the teacher? Are there summer camps for these children so that they can get the experience of experiencing the beauty of nature and discovering a life, for a short time, absent their at home stress? Is there a library in each school in the state with a licensed librarian who has funds to purchase new books each year? Does the school have a sufficient number of social workers to work individually with each child who is suffering from some sort of trauma from stress. [It has been proven that children in poverty areas have changes in their bodies due to the constant daily stress of their lives, making it difficult to learn. It is similar to attempting to live and learn in a war zone.] Is there a registered nurse at every school? Are the children being given free food since many of them get nothing when they return home. This includes food for during the long summer break. Are the kids getting sufficient medical care since this might not be possible in the home? Are enrichment classes being given during the summer? Is there an art teacher and band teacher at each school with the supplies that are needed to teach each of those subjects? Are parenting skills being given to parents who want to learn how to do better? Are all the textbooks up to date so kids learn about what is happening now? Are there a sufficient number of textbooks? Are the tech departments as up-to-date as those in upper class schools? Are the schools in good working condition?
I remember reading a few years back about how a ‘failing’ school in poverty area Gary, IN was taken over by for-profit EdisonLearning. The boiler in the school hadn’t worked properly for years. There was mold in the band room and water fountains had been turned off. Sometimes water was in certain hallways. These kids endured this condition for several years before the state finally fixed the boiler. EdisonLearning said it wasn’t their responsibility and the state said it wasn’t their’s. Meanwhile kids were having to wear their coats inside the classrooms. The condition improved only when one day the kids went outside in the snow to protest. This protest was written up by a local paper and there was an outcry. I also remember talking to one of these teachers. He hadn’t had a pay increase in 8 years.
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@Carol Malaysia
The University of Notre Dame (A private religious university) is located in South Bend, Indiana. Students attend this religious school, with BEOGs, ROTC Scholarships, and all types of taxpayer assistance.
How do you feel about your tax dollars going to Notre Dame?
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I’m concerned about the sad state of public schools in Indiana. I prefer that K-12 be funded properly before any religious schools of any kind receive tax payer money.
Is it really fair that a teacher in a poverty level school hadn’t received a salary increase for 8 years. Is it fair that students in a poverty school had to wear their coats to class because the boiler wasn’t working and do without water faucets functioning? This is what happens when schools are neglected.
I subbed in poverty level schools in sub-center south in Chicago at the very end of the school year. I saw kids in one third grade class whose knees went above the height of their desks. Is it fair for a kid to have to be in a desk for the whole year that doesn’t fit?
There is no justification of any sort for this to exist but it does. Tax money should be fixing these problems.
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Charles, your flawed logic keeps comparing any public funding for colleges to K-12 education and there is no logical comparison.
K-12 education is mandated by law.
A college education is not mandatory. It is voluntary. Any public funding that supports a college education is a separate issue. When I was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marines after fighting in Vietnam, I started out in a community college on the GI Bill. But that wasn’t enough so I worked part-time jobs to help pay my tuition, rent, credit card bills, and eat.
K-12 children are dependent on their parents. Many parents can’t afford to pay private school tuition so the country publicly supports community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools that are, in practice, closely watched by locally elected school boards.
College students might live at home but once they turn 18, they are not legally a dependent any longer.
When I earned my BA five years later, the GI Bill had run out and I was still working part-time jobs in addition to taking out $7,000 in student loans to make it to the finish line.
What do you want – a K-12 system where parents and children go into debt to get an education where the parents have no power over what the schools teach or do to their children because those schools are opaque, for-profit (even most non-profits are for profit when you dig deep enough) run be highly paid CEOs who don’t “care what you think” (quote from David Coleman one of the architects of school choice and high stakes rank and punish tests).
The majority of parents have a lot of power when it comes to publicly funded, public schools.
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I’m sure all of these schools by now have now been repaired and class sizes are now under 16 kids, providing an environment that is great. If there is the larger possibility that the problem still exists, then this is where our tax dollars need to go. Forget about fancy vouchers that leave students behind academically and charter schools that cherry pick. It is the public schools that need help.
I resent my tax dollars going to vouchers, charters or any type of private school. I live in Indiana, a voucher crazy state.
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More than half of U.S. public schools need repairs, survey finds
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/half-u-s-public-schools-need-repairs-modernization-survey-finds/#.Wdn6iB8-Vzk.gmail
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This was published in 2011 but it gives an overview of just how effective EdisonLearning has been in getting money while promoting unethical practices. Politicians let EdisonLearning take over ‘failing schools’ in Indiana. EdisonLearning said it wasn’t responsible for fixing a crumbling school in Gary, IN.
………
Edison Learning has been steeped in allegations of corruption, malpractice and failure. Why is its influence in Britain’s state schools increasing?
Allan Beavis’s picture
by Allan Beavis
Posted: 02 Dec, 2011
Edison Learning, a major American-owned for-profit education business, has been given approved status by the Department for Education. In the US, Edison Learning has been in the business of managing schools in the state system, independent charter schools and online “virtual” charter schools.
Here in Britain, its UK arm has been active since 2007, as highlighted here by Janet Downs.
Tim Nash, director of Edison Learning, said the company already had partnerships with more than 80 schools in the UK – and that it sold support services in the same way that publishers provided text books or technology firms provided computers. He added that if the “opportunity arose” the firm might want to manage schools – but that the boundaries around running state schools for profit had been made clear. In the time, the barrier could be circumnavigated to some extent – according to this BBC report, Nash has said that the firm was interested in setting up its own charitable body.
His comments that the “challenge was about raising achievement and supporting schools, regardless of their status” and “How do we help state education to be as good as it can possibly get? It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a local authority school, academy or free school” mimics the rhetoric coming from Gove and the rest of the government and is calculated to strike a chord with those who uncritically subscribe to the “broken schools” party line.
For those who follow the antics of the “school reform movement” in the United States, there is a website dedicated to allegations of Edison Learning scandals
Here is a short selection of some of these allegations:-
• The company has been accused of historically slanted and selected data it publicly released to make its failing schools appear to be wonderful, innovative learning environments. New York Times
• Edison’s questionable ties to politicians. In 2003, thanks to Jeb Bush, Edison was bailed out when the then-Florida governor bought out its failing stock with teachers’ pension funds, which has apparently left state pensioners to this day with a $182 million investment in a company many believe to be out to destroy public education and unions.
• Edison’s then-president Chris Cerf was named as one of the beneficiaries in the buy out. He now is the chief commissioner of education for New Jersey. New Jersey’s governor Chris Christie worked as lobbyist for a firm which represented Edison Schools in the state, when Cerf was Edison’s general counsel. Both are now implementing a slash-and-burn privatization plan for New Jersey schools, with hedge-fund managers hurrying to get a slice of the cake.
• As recently as 2007, Edison’s new E2 Design Sketch called for forcing child labour on students enrolled in its schools, since it would help the company’s bottom line. It is alleged that Edison proposed that support staff and lunch workers be fired and replaced with unpaid students. Chris Whittle, Edison’s founder, apparently even boasted to Colorado school principals that 600 unpaid students in a school could take the place of 75 salaried workers. It is unclear what became of this plan, but parents groups across the country were rightfully more than outraged.
• Despite protests in 2001 directed at Edison by the Philadelphia National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), parents, and educators, Governor Mark Schweiker awarded Edison twenty schools to run, even though test scores did not come close to living up to what Edison had promised.
• In 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cited Edison for faulty accounting techniques, and school districts across the U.S. quickly severed their ties to the company. Philadelphia had to wait until 2008 to set in place a plan to rid itself of Edison Learning.
• 19 Students were hospitalized in St. Louis after Edison’s security force randomly pepper-sprayed a crowd of students witnessing a fight. Edison has lost contracts for its lack of doing sufficient background checks on employees.
• Complaints were filed against Edison Learning in Missouri with the state board of education last year, when two SEN children were repeatedly suspended from school.
• Edison has left too many schools with enormous deficits, as it did with the Linear Leadership Academy in Louisiana, which was in the red over $300,000 until the Martin Luther King Neighborhood Association broke its contract with Edison.
What began in the 1980s as an enterprise to transform public schools quickly became a troubled business battling falling test scores and dismal stock prices. How did the most ambitious for-profit education company in American history lose respect, money and credibility in such a short time?
And why has Michael Gove given it approved status in Britain?
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