Archives for the month of: March, 2018
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California: New Report Documents Systemic Waste and Fraud in Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2018 //
12

 

A new report from the California-based nonpartisan group “In the Public Interest” documents systemic fraud and waste in California’s charter schools

Public funding of California’s charter schools now tops $6 billion annually. ITPH finds that, despite this substantial investment, governments at all levels remain unable to proactively monitor the private groups that operate charter schools for fraud and waste.

In the report, Fraud and waste in California’s charter schools, In the Public Interest reveals that total alleged and confirmed fraud and waste in California’s charter schools has reached over $149 million. Yet this is likely only the tip of the iceberg, as the state lacks the oversight necessary to proactively identify fraud and waste.

The report highlights several instances of fraud and waste, such as:

The entrenched culture of self-dealing at the Bay Area’s Tri-Valley Learning Corporation, whose CEO misappropriated tax-exempt public bonds totaling over $67 million.

The founder of Celerity Education Group who allegedly used public funding for personal expenses, including nearly $1,700 on meals at restaurants in one month in 2013 alone.

The recent spectacle at Partnerships to Uplift Communities, in which cofounder and former director—and current Los Angeles school board member—Ref Rodriguez, allegedly authorized $285,000 in payments to nonprofit organizations he oversaw during his tenure.

Fraud and waste in California’s charter schools also includes an analysis of flaws in existing oversight, recommendations for reform, and an appendix of instances of fraud and abuse from 1997 through 2017.

In the Public Interest is a nonprofit research and policy center committed to promoting the values, vision, and agenda for the common good and democratic control of public goods and services.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization

When the Supreme Court Limited the Spread of Guns, and the NRA Perpetrated a Fraud

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2018 //
28

 

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a series of essays about the Supreme Court and its treatment of important issues like gun control. The Washington Post excerpted one of them here, in 2014.

“Following the massacre of grammar-school children in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, high-powered weapons have been used to kill innocent victims in more senseless public incidents. Those killings, however, are only a fragment of the total harm caused by the misuse of firearms. Each year, more than 30,000 people die in the United States in firearm-related incidents. Many of those deaths involve handguns.

“The adoption of rules that will lessen the number of those incidents should be a matter of primary concern to both federal and state legislators. Legislatures are in a far better position than judges to assess the wisdom of such rules and to evaluate the costs and benefits that rule changes can be expected to produce. It is those legislators, rather than federal judges, who should make the decisions that will determine what kinds of firearms should be available to private citizens, and when and how they may be used. Constitutional provisions that curtail the legislative power to govern in this area unquestionably do more harm than good.

“The first 10 amendments to the Constitution placed limits on the powers of the new federal government. Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of the Second Amendment, which provides that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

“For more than 200 years following the adoption of that amendment, federal judges uniformly understood that the right protected by that text was limited in two ways: First, it applied only to keeping and bearing arms for military purposes, and second, while it limited the power of the federal government, it did not impose any limit whatsoever on the power of states or local governments to regulate the ownership or use of firearms. Thus, in United States v. Miller, decided in 1939, the court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that sort of weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated Militia.”

“When I joined the court in 1975, that holding was generally understood as limiting the scope of the Second Amendment to uses of arms that were related to military activities. During the years when Warren Burger was chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge or justice expressed any doubt about the limited coverage of the amendment, and I cannot recall any judge suggesting that the amendment might place any limit on state authority to do anything.

“Organizations such as the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and mounted a vigorous campaign claiming that federal regulation of the use of firearms severely curtailed Americans’ Second Amendment rights. Five years after his retirement, during a 1991 appearance on “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” Burger himself remarked that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Got that? The conservative Chief Justice Warren Burger, appointed by President Richard Nixon, said that the NRA had perpetrated a fraud on the American people by twisting the words of the Second Amendment to deregulate military weapons and put then in the hands of civilians.

Justice Stevens added:

”In response to the massacre of grammar-school students at Sandy Hook Elementary School, some legislators have advocated stringent controls on the sale of assault weapons and more complete background checks on purchasers of firearms. It is important to note that nothing in either the Heller or the McDonald opinion poses any obstacle to the adoption of such preventive measures.”

 

Categories Fraud, Guns

Puerto Rico: Five Reasons Why Privatization of the Public Schools is a Rotten Idea

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2018 //
12

 

Jeremy Mohler of In the Public Interest explains why privatization of public schools in Puerto Rico is a very bad idea. 

He writes:

“Last week, I travelled to Puerto Rico and found something I hadn’t expected. Sure, folks thought the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, hadn’t helped enough after Hurricane Maria, but they were resigned, not angry.

”One taxi driver calmly explained to me how he was planning, at 40 years old, to leave the island for Texas in hopes of new opportunities and higher pay. Hopelessness radiated from the Burger Kings, lavish hotels, and graffiti covered walls of San Juan’s tourist oriented service economy.

”Yet, the island’s public school teachers were both angry and optimistic. They held a rally on Friday in Old San Juan to oppose Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s new education reform bill that would allow charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, into an already stressed public education system. They practically ran the Secretary of Education, who has described Maria as “an opportunity to create new, better schools,” off the stage after she tried to soften the blow of the governor’s plan.

”I was there to help them make the argument that charter schools are a bad idea for Puerto Rico. I boiled it down to five reasons.

”The first: despite the rhetoric about “choice” and “local control,” charter schools actually take control from families and communities. Instead of elected school boards, they are managed by private groups with little guidance or regulation.

“This lack of democracy has a number of consequences, but one is particularly poignant when it comes to Puerto Rico. As Hurricane Irma approached Florida last September, residents of all ages huddled in shelters set up in government buildings, schools, and other well-built structures. But only a handful of the state’s 654 charter schools were available because their leaders decided not to open them or the school buildings weren’t required to meet construction guidelines for hurricane protections.

“Can you imagine if Puerto Rico’s public schools, many of which served as shelters and community centers during and after Maria, weren’t available?

“Second, charter schools tend to pull revenues away from public school districts faster than the districts can reduce their costs. This is because many of the expenses associated with educating a student who transfers to a charter school — and takes public funding with them — remain with the district due to fixed costs, such as building utilities.

”In 2016, the Los Angeles Unified School District estimated it had lost over $591 million the prior school year due to declining enrollment, increased oversight costs, and special education costs. In 2012, Philadelphia’s school district found that students that transferred to charter schools cost them $7,000 more per student in the first year.

”As Puerto Rico continues to suffer through a fiscal crisis, why destabilize the public school system even more?

”The third reason is, as the “school choice” rhetoric goes, charter schools do in fact “disrupt” students and teachers. They can close up shop at any time during the school year and often do. Two weeks ago, a school in Sacramento, California, closed halfway through the year by handing students a letter on their way out the door as school ended, leaving dozens of families scrambling to find another school over the weekend.

“As a trauma-induced mental health crisis sweeps the island, the last things students need is more disruption.”

Read on to learn the last two reasons.

Crisis capitalism is circling poor Puerto Rico.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization

Stuart Egan: A Who’s Who of Privatization in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2018 //
5

 

Inspired by Mercedes Schneider’s monumental documentation of the “reform”  movement, A Chronicle of Echoes, Stuart Egan determined to compile a definitive guide to the privatization movement in North Carolina. 

You will find many familiar names, some of them clearly rightwing, others pretending to be “Democrats.”

You will find Michelle Rhee, giving advice to the Tea Party legislature (bet you thought she had disappeared).

You will run into DFER, pretending to be Democrats.

You will encounter TFA, the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, ALEC, the Walton Family Foundation, 50CAN, and many other familiar names.

The national “reform” movement has landed in North Carolina and found their perfect partners: the Tea Party.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Arthur Goldstein: I am Willing and Ready to Be NYC Chancellor

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
28

 

Arthur Goldstein, a high school teacher in Queens for many years, is ready to take the Chancellor’s job.  He has an agenda.

“That’s right, I am volunteering to be Chancellor of NYC Schools, and I won’t accept the 385K. I will do it for half that. That’s appropriate because my first action will be to halve the salaries of everyone and anyone who worked under Bloomberg. If they don’t take the hint, they’re fired.

“We will also turn around the rating system. We will design tests for all educational administrators. We are through with all this effective and ineffective stuff, and Danielson, on her own recommendation, will be out of the classroom for good.

“Administrators will be tested to determine whether they are Not Insane. That will be our highest and only rating. If they miss the rating, they will join me in the 50% pay cut. If they don’t like it, they can always leave, and we will all be better off.

“Next, we will settle the UFT Contract. UFT members get a 20% pay raise across the board. Non-UFT members will no longer be covered by the contract, but we will give all of them $15 an hour, because minimum wage is too low, even for those too selfish or shortsighted to join a union.

“Class size in high schools will fall to 25, as per C4E. At other levels, we will follow the C4E mandates. Any administrators with oversized classes will be personally fined $1,000 a week for each student in each oversized class. If DOE grants them exceptions, their fines will be halved. We are reasonable.”

Why not?

Categories New York City

Jan Resseger: What Linda Darling-Hammond Wrote about the Kerner Commission Report Today

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
27

 

Jan Resseger summarizes Linda Darling-Hammond’s reflections on the Kerner Commission Report. 

“Darling-Hammond traces a mass of factors showing that as a society we identified the wrong problem, satisfied ourselves with blaming somebody, and ignored our responsibility collectively to confront primary social injustices that are the real cause of achievement gaps. What we accomplished instead was discrediting public education and undermining support for teachers.

“Darling-Hammond believes our problem is that we have stopped trying to do anything about racial and economic segregation: “In a study of the effects of court-ordered desegregation on students born between 1945 and 1970, economist Rucker Johnson found that graduation rates climbed by 2 percentage points for every year a Black student attended an integrated school… The difference was tied to the fact that schools under court supervision benefit from higher per-pupil spending and smaller student-teacher ratios… During the 1960s and ’70s, many communities took on efforts like these. As a result, there was a noticeable reduction in educational inequality in the decade after the original Kerner report…. (S)ubstantial gains were made in equalizing both educational inputs and outcomes. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 targeted resources to communities with the most need, recognizing that where a child grows up should not determine where he or she ends up… However, the gains from the Great Society programs were pushed back during the Reagan administration, when most targeted federal programs supporting investments in college access and K-12 schools in urban and poor rural areas were reduced or eliminated, and federal aid to schools was cut from 12% to 6% of a shrinking total…By 1991, stark differences had reemerged between segregated urban schools and their suburban counterparts, which generally spent twice as much on education.”

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Education Reform

BREAKING NEWS: Carvalho Turns Down NYC Chancellorship, Will Stay in Miami

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
41

 

Everyone thought it was a done deal, but it wasn’t.

Alberto Carvalho, Miami Superintendent, changed his mind and rejected Bill deBlasio’s offer to become chancellor of the New York City public schools, the biggest school system in the U.S., with 1.1 million students.

We will learn more later about why he changed his mind. Or we may never know. The search continues.

It would be good if the process were open and transparent, with parents and educators involved.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bill de Blasio, New York City

John Thompson: Oklahoma City Schools Under Siege by Reformers

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
6

John Thompson, teacher and historian, writes here about the invasion of the privatizers in Oklahoma City.

 

Every January, the start of National School Choice Week marks the beginning of The Oklahoman editorials in support of charter and private school expansion. Given the $16.5 million grant by Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education to the Walton-funded Oklahoma Public School Resource Center, and the state’s charter school conversion law, which allows the state to override school systems that turn down charter applications, this annual event marks the beginning of an increasingly dangerous school privatization season.
https://schoolchoiceweek.com/states/oklahoma/
http://newsok.com/feds-send-16.5m-to-oklahoma-for-charter-schools/article/5565941
This year’s editorials in favor of school choice expansion indicate an even more worrisome assault on public schools is likely. A former Oklahoma City Public School System (OKCPS) board member wants to break the 46,000 student system into an overwhelmingly black district, a predominantly Hispanic district, and a more affluent no-majority district. The most extreme 2018 proposal was recently made by City Councilman David Greenwell. He wants to convert the OKCPS into a city-sponsored charter district!
http://newsok.com/conversation-underway-about-improving-okc-school-district/article/5584577
The Oklahoman subsequently editorialized that the resignation of the OKCPS superintendent, Aurora Lora, illustrates the “sort of churn” that makes it “nearly impossible” to “move the needle” on school improvement for the 85% low-income district. It didn’t mention that Lora is a graduate of the Broad Residency in Urban Education. Neither does it mention the reasons why educators opposed the micromanaging she was taught by Broad, and how Broad sees the cultivation of churn as a feature, not a flaw, of its corporate governance.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/08/20/Local/Graphics/Broadmemos.pdf?tid=a_mcntx
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/broad-foundationsplan-to-expand-influence-in-school-reform/2012/08/20/c118e134-eb0a-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_blog.html?utm_term=.e00562a71ec5
The editorial called for “truly significant change from the status quo” where “all ideas should at least be considered.” It then buried the lede, “Brent Bushey, head of the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center said his group backs ‘quality options’ for students and that he hopes Greenwell’s comments lead to more talk about more quality options.”
In the disrespected field of education, it isn’t unusual for privatizers, to say that “everything should be on the table.” But, how many Americans would want a Commander in Chief who says he won’t “rule anything in or out” in terms of nuclear confrontations?
Okay, given Donald Trump’s mindset, that’s a touchy metaphor, so let’s use a medical analogy: Would we want a medical system that is free to conduct whatever experiments it wants, or that would institutionalize risky procedures in order to treat certain conditions without a careful study of their unintended consequences? 
The corporate reform Oklahoma Public School Resource Center, and a steady stream of supporters of the so-called “portfolio model” of reform, continue to promote charter expansion. But I’ve yet to hear of a portfolio proponent who would put the inherent dangers of their plan on the table for public discussion. Whether they believe it or not, charter advocates still claim that their schools can serve the “same” kids as neighborhood schools, and that a robust accountability system can somehow prevent the mass exiting of students who make it harder to raise test scores.
I don’t expect true believers in charter portfolios to get into the weeds of school improvement and explain why they could succeed in Oklahoma City with the models that failed in Tennessee, Nevada, and elsewhere, even though our charters would have at least 50% per student less funding than those of other states. Neither do I anticipate an explanation of why Indianapolis’s well-funded “reforms,” that are being marketed for OKC, have produced student performance gains that are the same as the OKCPS “status quo.” But, shouldn’t they acknowledge the downsides of the so-called successes that our business leaders have been hearing promoted in private discussions? Denver is finally admitting that its achievement gap is one of the worst in the nation, and New Orleans and Memphis can’t deny that they are third and first, nationally, in “disconnected youth” or kids out of school, without jobs.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/upshot/a-better-way-to-compare-public-schools.html
https://co.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2015/10/07/report-denver-ranks-last-among-50-cities-on-income-based-achievement-gaps/#.VvHlzhIrK3U
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/04/18/393849058/in-new-orleans-young-lives-adrift
I hope, however, that OKC leaders will ask whether a policy, which is likely to result in thousands of school-aged kids walking the streets during the day, should be “off the table.” I would also hope they would ask why Tulsa’s Deborah Gist, and her team of Broadies, have failed so miserably. Tulsa’s poverty rate is below that of Oklahoma City, and their schools have benefited from huge investments by the Gates Foundation and other national and local edu-philanthropists, but only two urban districts have produced lower test score growth from 3rd to 8th grade. Perhaps we need a conversation about why the test-driven, choice-driven, technocratic model pushed by the Billionaires Boys Club has been such a failure. 
https://www.broadcenter.org/alumni/directory/?fwp_alumni_keyword=tulsa
The cornerstone of accountability-driven, competition-driven corporate reform was once called “earned autonomy.” Now, the basically same concept is pushed with a kinder and gentler spin. The idea is to reward schools that exhibit high test scores with the freedom to offer holistic learning. Regardless of what you call it, the plan is to impose top-down, teach-to-the-test, even scripted instruction, on lower performing schools. The approach is designed to stack the competition between choice and neighborhood schools in favor of charters.
https://www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/Portfolio_components_2.pdf
I want to stress, however, that I support a public conversation. After I wrote a rebuttal to the former OKCPS board member seeking to break up the system, he and I have had a couple of hours of discussions. He doesn’t want more segregation but he’s tired of the micromanaging. We both want more site based management. After all, most educators and stakeholders who I know are tired of the social engineering imposed by Broadies.
http://newsok.com/former-teacher-lets-not-divide-okc-schools/article/5583744
But the conversation must follow the principle of, “First, Do No Harm.” We must not treat our children like lab rats. All win-win policies should be on the table, but we shouldn’t contemplate discredited theories such as earned autonomy, which actually means earned dignity, that may benefit some while severely damaging other students. For instance, do we really want to repeat the all-charter NOLA experiment if it means that 18% of young people will be out of school and out of the workforce? Should advocates be empowered to deny autonomy to schools they are competing with? Should today’s well-funded market-driven activists be empowered to permanently privatize our future children’s public education system? 
OKCPS board spends hours on process to define goals
Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Oklahoma, Privatization

What Science Says About Guns in Schools

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
27

There have been many studies of the effects of introducing more guns into schools. It doesn’t make them safer.

‪Here’s what the science says about bringing more guns into schools: it doesn’t work

https://www.zmescience.com/science/heres-science-says-bringing-guns-schools-doesnt-work/ via @zmescience‬

 

Categories Guns in Schools

The Kerner Commission Report, 50 Years Later: An Agenda for theFuture

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
52

 

On Tuesday, I went to D.C. for a meeting to discuss the state of civil rights in the half-century since the release of the Kerner Commission Report. The nation was rocked by civil disorders and riots in the early 1960: cities like Detroit and Newark experienced devastating clashes between angry black people and police, and many of our cities were in flames. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a commission to analyze the causes of the riots and report back. The commission acted expeditiously and released a devastating indictment of American society, memorably warning that unless we acted to reverse and remedy the root causes, America would be two societies, separate and unequal.

The root causes of the violence, the commission concluded, were racism, poverty, segregation, and police brutality. President Johnson was not pleased with the report and did not endorse its conclusions, but the report was on target.

The sole survivor of the Commission, Senator Fred Harris, and his ally, Alan Curtis, now president of the Milton Eisenhower Foundation (founded by the public-spirited brother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower), organized a fifty-year retrospective devoted to the Kerner Commission Report. I was invited to write a chapter about what has changed in education over the past 50 years. Others wrote about jobs, the economy, mass incarceration and policing, housing, and the other issues raised by the report. You can read the essays in a book just out called “Healing Our Divided Society.” It is an agenda for a better future.

Senator Harris, by the way, ran for president in 1972 and 1976. His campaign slogan was “The issue is privilege.” He didn’t win, obviously, but the issue is still privilege.

The theme of the meeting Tuesday was, we are all in this together. Whatever our race or religion, we must work together for a better society where everyone—everyone—has a decent standard of living, good housing, good medical care, good education, and just treatment.

Harris and Curtis wrote an article in the New York Times summarizing the findings of the 50-year retrospective. It may be behind a pay wall. I hope not. The graphics tell the story. Progress, then backsliding.

The story in education is well documented: a sharp decline in segregation, then the courts release school districts from court orders to desegregate, followed by a reversion to segregated schools. The problem is national, not limited to the south. When court orders end, segregation resumes. States never under court order have intense segregation. Right now, the most segregated schools in the nation are in California, followed by Texas, New York, Maryland, Nevada, and Connecticut. When you consider that only 13% of the population is black, the concentration of black students in majority black schools is shocking.

Over the past fifty years, inequality has deepened:

“The disheartening percentage of Americans living in extreme poverty — that is, living on less than half the poverty threshold — has increased since the 1970s. The overall poverty rate remains about the same today as it was 50 years ago; the total number of poor people has increased from over 25 million to well over 40 million, more than the population of California.

“Meanwhile, the rich have profited at the expense of most working Americans. Today, the top 1 percent receive 52 percent of all new income. Rich people are healthier and live longer. They get a better education, which produces greater gains in income. And their greater economic power translates into greater political power.”

Mass incarceration of poor black and brown people has become a new normal:

”At the time of the Kerner Commission, there were about 200,000 people behind bars. Today, there are about 1.4 million. “Zero tolerance” policing aimed at African-Americans and Latinos has failed, while our sentencing policies (for example, on crack versus powder cocaine) continue to racially discriminate. Mass incarceration has become a kind of housing policy for the poor.”

What have we learned in fifty years? We know what works, and our government doesn’t do it.

“Policies based on ideology instead of evidence. Privatization and funding cuts instead of expanding effective programs.

“We’re living with the human costs of these failed approaches. The Kerner ethos — “Everyone does better when everyone does better” — has been, for many decades, supplanted by its opposite: “You’re on your own.”

“Today more people oppose the immorality of poverty and rising inequality, including middle-class Americans who realize their interests are much closer to Kerner priorities than to those of the very rich.

“We have the experience and knowledge to scale up what works. Now we need the “new will” that the Kerner Commission concluded was equally important.”

The article then contrasts what doesn’t work with what does work.

In education, what doesn’t work: Racial segregation, vouchers, charters, and school choice.

What does work: Racial integration, investments in public school equity, quality teachers, early childhood education, community schools and other proven models

This report updates an epochal one. The Trump administration won’t read it or act on it. If we want a better future, a better society, a real commitment to equality of opportunity and the realization of the American dream for all, this new report is a great starting point.

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Equity, Justice, Poverty, Segregation
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