Archives for the month of: March, 2018
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Julian Vasquez Heilig: KIPP and #NotUs in California

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
5

 

Julian Vasquez Heilig calls BS on KIPP in California, where they are pushing a KIPP charter into a community that doesn’t want them.

The local district, already financially drained by charters, rejected them. The county district rejected them. As in, go away. Now they are applying to the state board, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the California Charter School lobby.

”KIPP is now trying to insert more schools into the San Francisco Bay Area. But they are having a problem. They ran into some snags in the local authorizing process. First, the local district said that there are now more charters than neighborhood public schools and they are teetering on financial disaster. Their march towards bankruptcy is occurring even with increased funding from the state the past few years because the loss of students to charters has resulted in massive budget shortfalls. After their 3-2 denial by the district, KIPP then went to the county for their second and final attempt at local authorizing. However, that didn’t go well for KIPP because the county wanted assurances that that KIPP would abide by AB 1090, which is a California financial conflict of interest law. KIPP refused to abide by California financial conflict of interest laws. What!?

“Charters talk on and on about how interested they are in transparency and accountability #NotUs. They tell legislators that they are abiding by the law #NotUs. Then they tell other people that the law doesn’t apply to them (See video below) #NotUs. This sort of malfeasance goes on and on because we allow charters to talk out of two sides of their mouth. We also allow the “good” charters to say, “We are good” and of course there is some “bad.” #NotUs Which ultimately provides cover for the entire sector at the expense of transparency and accountability for children, families and taxpayers.”

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Valerie Strauss Reviews Betsy DeVos on 60 Minutes

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
44

 

Valerie Strauss reviews Betsy DeVos’s cringeworthy  appearance on 60 Minutes. 

She clearly has strong opinions but lacks knowledge, the same vacuousness she demonstrated at her embarrassing confirmation hearings.

Most striking is when Leslie Stahl asks if she ever has visited a low performing school to find out what’s going wrong, and DeVos admits that she has not.

The bottom line is that has no interest in helping struggling schools, just urging flight.

As the saying goes, you wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with her. She would be the first to flee and abandon you.

Categories Betsy DeVos

This Is Your Chance to Speak Out Against Gun Violence!

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
4

 

Get involved!

Support the March 14 action of the Women’s March, which calls for a 17-minute walkout at 10 am..

Support the March 24 “March for Our Lives,” organized by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, which will occur in DC and across the nation.

Support the Day of Action on April 20 in every school and school district sponsored by the Network for Public Education, the NEA, the AFT, the BATS, the AASA, LULAC, the National Superintendents Roundtable, the Center for American Progress, and Gabby Giffords, with many more sponsors. Every school and district is encouraged to choose its own way to speak out against gun violence in schools. Activities include wearing orange armbands, assemblies to discuss the issues, sit-ins, teach-ins, before school, after school, or during school, a March on your legislators’ offices, candlelight vigil, linking arms around the school. Use your creativity. Collaborate.

Support the National Student Walkout on April 20, which calls on high school students to walk out at 10 am and not return.

April 20 was chosen for the last two protests because it is the anniversary of the Columbine massacre.

Anti-gun violence actions should continue until state legislatures and Congress act, or until NRA puppets are thrown out of office by irate voters.

Congress should ban the sale of assault weapons to civilians, as it was did from 1994-2004. Presidents Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter endorsed the ban. These weapons, meant for military use, are the guns of choice for mass murderers.

Enough is enough!

Categories Guns, Guns in Schools, Resistance

Idaho: Voucher Vandals Seek to Subvert State Constitution

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
10

 

Levi Cavener, a teacher in Idaho, describes a money laundering scheme meant to undermine and subvert the plain language of the State Constitution.

The goal, as usual, is vouchers for religious schools, which the State Constitution explicitly prohibits.

Demand a referendum. Find out if the people of Idaho want to amend the Constitution.

No, the privatizers won’t risk that. They fear democracy. They know only a tiny minority want religious school vouchers.

Demand a statewide vote.

Vouchers benefit no one while undercutting the public schools which enroll 90% of children.

Use democracy to protect democracy.

Categories Democracy, Idaho

Indiana: The Failure of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
13

 

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette succinctly explains that vouchers have failed in Indiana. 

Taxpayers will shell out $153 million this year for vouchers.

Almost anyone can get a voucher, but not many students or families want them. According to the latest report, cited in the Journal Gazette editorial, only 3.11% of the students in the state use them. Only 4.25% enroll in charters. An additional 4.44% attend private schools without a voucher. In traditional public schools are 88.2%, and no one in the Indiana legislature gives a thought to the overwhelming number in public schools or the damage that vouchers and charters do to them.

The Fort Wayne public schools will lose $19 million. The schools of Indianapolis public schools will lose $20 million. In what universe does it make sense to take away money, teachers, and programs from the vast majority of students to subsidize religious schools for a tiny minority of students?

According to their advocates, vouchers were supposed to “save poor children from failing schools.”

Not true.

“Fewer than 1 percent of the 35,458 voucher recipients qualified for the program this year because he or she lives in a public school district with an F-rated school. But 245 students used vouchers to attend Horizon Christian Academy on North Wells Street, one of about a dozen voucher schools earning an F in 2017.”

Vouchers were supposed to save taxpayers money.

Not true.

”That might be the case if every voucher student would have otherwise attended public school. But the percentage of voucher students who never attended a public school grew to 56.5 percent this year, and there is no evidence the families wouldn’t have chosen a private school even without a voucher.”

Vouchers were supposed to be for low-income families.

Not true.

“About 20 percent of voucher recipients came from households earning more than $75,000 a year. Four percent of voucher students came from households earning more than $100,000 a year in income. The state’s median household income is $52,314 a year.”

Furthermore, voucher schools are not open to all, unlike public schools.

“Some of the faith-based schools limit admission on the basis of religion, sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The voucher advocates claimed that vouchers would raise academic achievement.

Not true.

“Nearly $13 million in voucher money flowed to schools receiving a D or F on state report cards. The Indiana State Board of Education just last week granted a waiver to Ambassador Christian Academy, a “D” school. The state board agreed a majority of students showed academic growth over the last school year, even though the same board proposed new accountability rules for public schools that will not give credit for academic growth.”

In sum, Indiana is squandering many millions of dollars on an ineffective voucher program that benefits few students.

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Hoax, Indiana

North Carolina: What Kind of Person Challenges the Most Powerful, Most Arrogant Man in the State?

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
4

 

Jennifer Mangrum, that’s who. Jennifer is running against Phil Berger, the president of the State Senate, who has pulled every string and passed every privatizing bill in his determination to destroy public education, the foundation of our democracy.

Jennifer is an experienced teacher and teacher-educator. Insiders say she doesn’t have a chance. But this is a strange election year, and you never know.

Jennifer was endorsed by the Network for Public Education Action Fund because of her support for public schools. If her Message gets to the parents in Berger’s District, he might be out on his ear.

That would be music to the ears of every public school teacher in the state.

 

Categories Courage, North Carolina

Peter Greene: The DeVosian Dilemma

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
25

 

Peter Greene almost feels sorry for Betsy DeVos.

She doesn’t want to tell anyone what to do because she doesn’t believe there should be a federal role in education.

But she wants to tell people what to do because she has a hardcore ideology and despises public schools. How can she not tell them what to do while telling them what to do.

She is no good at the Bully Pulpit thing because she has no experience, no wisdom, and no reservoir of trust to draw on. She is simply a Very Rich Person with strong opinions.

Peter writes:

”There she sits in DC, unable (and unwilling) to use the department to effectively pursue her own policy goals, and unwilling (and unable) to use the department to support public education in this country. The DeVosian dilemma is that everybody loses, and public education in America loses extra hard. Of course, since this comes on the heels of the King Katastrophe, the Duncan Disaster and a string running all the way back to the Paige Pee-down-his-Pants-leg, we may need to take a hard look at the Department of Education. But that’s a conversation for another day. In the meantime, we’ll just have to watch DeVos struggle between the lever and the pulpit, like a fish flopping sadly on the dry beach of a frozen Great Lake.”

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos

Johann Neem: Before Jumping Aboard the Choice Train, Remember Why We Have Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
9

 

Johann Neem is the author of an important book about public education titled Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America.

He recently wrote a post for the Brookings Blog in which he warned that anyone who races to embrace school choice should think hard about why public schools were created and what we lose if we abandon them. He reminds us that public schools are about much more than test scores.

He writes:

“Why do we have public schools? For Americans between the Revolution and the Civil War, the reasons were primarily civic. They wanted, first, to ensure that all Americans had the skills, knowledge, and values to be effective citizens. As North Carolina state Senator Archibald Murphey put in an 1816 report, “a republic is bottomed on the virtue of her citizens.”They wanted, second, to foster solidarity during a time of increasing immigration when, like today, Americans’ divisions often led to violence. As the Fond du Lac, Wis., superintendent of schools put it in 1854: In a society divided by religion, race, party, and wealth, public schools would “harmonize the discordant elements” as students “sympathize with and for the other.”

“Earlier Americans also argued that a democracy should develop every child’s potential. This required a rich curriculum in the arts and sciences. As the Rev. William Ellery Channing put it in the 1830s, every person is entitled to liberal education “because he is a man, not because he is to make shoes, nails, or pins.” Indeed, as one Alabama public school advocate argued, schools would not “weaken the self-reliance of the citizen” nor “destroy his individuality,” but “teach him to feel it.”

“Finally, earlier Americans wanted to equalize access. At the time of American independence, education had remained a family responsibility. How did it become a public good? Here, the past speaks directly to the present. Convincing Americans to pay taxes to support other people’s children was not simple. Pennsylvania Superintendent Francis Shunk noted in 1838 that it was no easy task to persuade someone that “in opposition to the custom of the country and his fixed opinions founded on that custom, he has a deep and abiding concern in the education of all the children around him, and should cheerfully submit to taxation for the purpose of accomplishing this great object…

“Historically, the most successful public programs have benefited a broad constituency. When policies are seen as “welfare,” taxpayers resent their money being spent on others. Public education—like Social Security—succeeded because most Americans benefited.

“The principles above guided public education’s advocates. And public schools were—and remain—among America’s most successful institutions. Our public schools struggle largely in places where poverty makes it difficult for students to learn. Our efforts to reform, then, must build on public schools’ immense historical success.”

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, History, School Choice, Trump

Just Now: Betsy DeVos on 60 Minutes

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2018 //
107

 

I watched Leslie Stahl interview Betsy DeVos tonight on “60 Minutes” and found it hard to watch.

She has the same talking points that she had more than a year ago. She has learned nothing. She makes claims about the success of charters and vouchers that have no basis in fact. She could not deny that Michigan’s academic standing has plummeted in the past ten years though she did not associate that sharp decline with her control of the state’s education policies.

And she never stops smirking. She gives canned responses and she smirks.

Watch. What do you think?

Categories Betsy DeVos

Is Mayor Bill de Blasio Turning into Mayor Bloomberg?

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2018 //
47

 

When Bill de Blasio ran for Mayor the first time, he sought my help. We met and spoke candidly. He told me he would strongly support traditional public schools. He said he would oppose the expansion of private charters into public school space. He promised to stop closing schools because of their test scores. His own children went to public schools. He would protect them and end the destructive tactics of Joel Klein, who coldly and cruelly closed schools over the tearful objections of students, parents, and teachers.

I enthusuastically endorsed him. The campaign issued a press release. De Blasio was elected in 2013, and re-elected in 2017. I wanted him to succeed and to support public schools against the privatizers.

He tried to stand up to the charters, but Eva’s billionaire backers rolled out a multi-million dollar TV campaign and donated huge sums to Governor Cuomo and key legislators. That ended de Blasio’s effort to block charter expansion. The legislature gave them a blank check in New York City, allowed them to expand at will, and even required the city to pay their rent in private facilities if it couldn’t provide suitable public space. Now his majority appointees to the city board rubber stamp charter co-locations and expansions.

Although the Mayor and Chancellor Farina have tried to support struggling schools, they have not hesitated to close them when they don’t show test score gains.

At the last meeting of the city’s Board of Education (which Mayor Bloomberg capriciously named the Panel on Education Policy to indicate its insignificance in the new era of mayoral control but which is still called the Board of Education in statute), the Mayor submitted a list of schools to close. Sadly, like Bloomberg, he has closed many schools. Unlike Bloomberg, he does not boast about it. There’s that.

At the last meeting of the Board, onee of the Mayor’s appointees, T. Elzora Cleveland, dissented and another abstained, denying the majority needed to close two of the schools on the Mayor’s list. Cleveland has resigned, and education activists assume she was forced out to make way for a more pliable board member. 

How is this different from Mayor Bloomberg’s tactics?

During the Bloomberg regime, the Mayor ousted three appointees who objected to his wish to end social promotion. The three members worried that no one had devised a plan to help the kids held back. Bloomberg fired them on the spot, and said, in effect, mayoral control means I am in charge and my appointees do as I wish. At the time, the firings were called “the Monday night massacre.”

I strongly oppose closing public schools, especially those that are historic anchors of their community. Several years back, I was on a panel with John Jackson, president of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. He said he had traveled to many countries to learn how they dealt with struggling schools. In every country, the Minister of Education said, “If a school is struggling, we send in support.” Dr. Jackson asked, “What do you do if you send support, and the school doesn’t improve?” In every case, the Minister said, “We send in more support.”

The bottom line is that accountability lies with the leadership. If a school is in trouble, it is up to the leadership to help, not punish. They control the resources. They decide whether the school will reduce class sizes and have the staff and programs it needs. Accountability begins at the top.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Closing schools, Education Reform, Klein, Joel, New York City
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