As regular readers know, our good friend Phyllis Bush is fighting what we used to call “the Big C,” but what she calls “cancer-shmanzer.”
Phyllis had a setback and needed emergency surgery.
She came through with her usual spunk, humor, and fight.
The world may be in desperate trouble but Phyllis inspires us to face our troubles with wit and courage.
The New York Post reported on the really huge payouts that charter CEOs receive in NYC.
Eva Moskowitz received total compensation of $782,175 in 2016. It is surely larger by now.
https://nypost.com/2018/07/14/charter-school-ceos-get-massive-paychecks-thanks-to-private-donors/
“Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the 46-school Success Academy network, received a pay package totaling $782,175 in 2016.
“The nonprofit network paid Moskowitz $195,000 in base compensation and she received another $255,000 in salary plus a $300,000 bonus from the affiliated Success Foundation.
“The foundation was set up in 2012 with a mission to support the Success Academy schools. It has taken in $1 million in donations in the last two years – with the cash coming each year, all from a single undisclosed donor.
“A Success Academy spokeswoman said the foundation’s sole function was “supplementing the compensation of the CEO.”
“The city’s 227 charter schools are privately run, but get public money for each student and also raise private donations. Nearly half belong to nonprofit management organizations like the Success Academy network, which get a mix of government grants, private donations and fees from the schools they oversee.
“Geoffrey Canada, who stepped down as CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in 2014, received a whopping $1 million bonus the following year when he began serving as president of the nonprofit organization which operates two charter schools and a variety of other programs.
“Anne Williams-Isom, who replaced Canada as CEO, received total compensation of $734,299 in 2016, including a base salary of $278,793 and a $212,955 bonus, along with deferred compensation of $234,514, according to the organization’s tax filing.
“A Harlem Children’s Zone spokesman said Canada’s bonus was cash that accumulated in a deferred compensation plan designed to “help retain its most senior staff.” He said the compensation and Williams-Isom’s pay came from private funds.”
NBCT High School Teacher Stuart Egan writes here that public school enrollment in North Carolina has dropped to 81%,just as the Tea Party Republicans hoped. As public schools are starved of resources, growing numbers switch to religious schools, charter schools, virtual charters and Home schools.
Who has made this happen, in addition to the Tea Party?
“Consider the following national entities:
*Teach For America
*Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
*Walton Family Foundation
*Eli Broad Foundation
*KIPP Charter Schools
*Democrats For Educational Reform
*Educational Reform Now
*StudentsFirst
*America Succeeds
*50CAN
*American Legislative Exchange Council
*National Heritage Academies
*Charter School USA
*Team CFA
*American Federation for Children
“They are all at play in North Carolina, totally enabled by the powers-that-be in the NC General Assembly and their supportive organizations.”
Think of it: 81% of the students in the state attend public schools, but they don’t matter!
To make matters worse, all the alternatives are worse than a well-funded public school.
North Carolina’s education is slipping into a deep hole. It is funding failure.
Betsy DeVos can add another notch to her belt unless the citizens rise up to save their schools.
Jeff Bryant has studied Brett Kavanaugh’s writings and has concluded that, if confirmed for the Supreme Court, he will join the other conservative justices in knocking down the last remnants of the long-established tradition of separation of church and states. This will be a great victory for Betsy DeVos and others who have been working overtime to direct public funding to religious schools.
He writes:
“As the son of a public-school teacher and a volunteer tutor of students in Washington, DC, the Kavanaugh narrative may come across as friendly to public schools, but Kavanaugh was raised in elite private schools and has nothing in his record that would indicate a strong support for public education.
“His history of legally undermining the separation of church and state is a fact not in dispute. In his work with the Federalist Society – the rightwing project that has largely engineered today’s high court and compiled the list of potential nominees for Trump – Kavanaugh has led its “School Choice Practice Group” and “Religious Liberties Group.” These groups help the Federalist Society craft its legal arguments on the unconstitutionality of excluding religious options from school choice programs.
“Among the primary targets for these groups is to repeal amendments in 39 state constitutions that prohibit direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation. This argument already has the Supreme Court’s partial consent, given its ruling last year that ordered a New Mexico Supreme Court to reconsider a decision barring religious schools from a state textbook lending program.
“Kavanaugh also has a history of supporting school vouchers that allow parents to use public taxdollars to pay tuition for private, religious schools. In 2000, he represented then Florida Governor Jeb Bush to push through the state’s first school voucher program, which was eventually struck down by the Florida Supreme Court in a 2006 decision.
“But just as Kavanaugh and his conservative colleagues were being stymied in state courts, they were blazing a legal pathway for federal support of school vouchers.
“Religious Is ‘Secular’
“In an appearance on CNN in 2000, Politico reports, Kavanaugh “predicted … that school vouchers would one day be upheld by the Court.””
As public money flows to unaccountable religious schools, which hire uncertified teachers, use textbooks that teach religious propaganda, or don’t teach any English, Republican lawmakers may come to regret the monster they created.
Thomas Jefferson urged his friend many years ago to preach “a crusade against ignorance.” It was Jefferson who first referred to a “wall of separation between church and state,” the better to protect both church and state.
He would be appalled to see that wall disappear.
I have posted many times over the years about the giant fraud called the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow in Ohio, or ECOT. Ohio doesn’t permit for-profit charters, yet ECOT was set up–like many “nonprofit charters”–to produce huge profits for its owner, William Lager, who owned companies with which ECOT contracted. Lager opened ECOT in 2001, and it was closed down in January of 2018 after collecting about $1 billion from the state. It was the largest school in the state. Lager gave generous contributions to politicians, mostly to Republicans, and in exchange, his school was never held accountable or audited. After a major expose in the New York Times showing that ECOT had the lowest graduation rate of any school in the nation and that Lager’s related companies were making large profits by providing goods and services to the school, Ohio officials began to take a closer look at ECOT. The major newspapers in Ohio began to criticize the cushy political deal that enriched Lager and delivered a subpar education to thousands of students.
When the State Auditor Dave Yost (who had received campaign gifts from Lager) conducted an audit, ECOT could not account for students it claimed. ECOT said in court that a student should be counted even if they didn’t get any instruction. The state tried to “claw back” $80 million for only the last two years of ECOT’s operation, ECOT chose to go bankrupt instead. Since 2001, ECOT has collected over $1 billion from the state of Ohio, all of it money that was subtracted from the state’s public schools, but ended up instead in the pockets of Lager and his friends in high political office.
What is striking is how little it cost to buy the Republicans! For a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions, they let this guy take hundreds of millions away from public schools.
Here are some examples of ECOT pay for protection from accountability:
see here.
Andrew Brenner, chair of the House Education Committee (who says public education is “socialism”) was a Lager favorite. He didn’t “take a dime” from ECOT, but he took lots of dimes from Lager.
Kasich has received over $30,000 for his campaigns from Lager, along with key legislative leaders. Kasich gave the ECOT commencement speech in 2011.
The state auditor got Lager cash and spoke three times at ECOT graduation ceremonies. Jeb Bush gave the commencement address to ECOT graduates in 2010.
Here is the most recent list of the candidates who received campaign gifts from Lager.
This is the background of the names on this list:
Looking at the list, here are the backgrounds of the top five individuals in the order that they appear.
1. Cheryl Grossman, former Ohio House Majority Whip
2. William Batchelder, former Ohio House Speaker who later became a lobbyist for Lager and other charters https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/ohios-term-limited-house-speaker-becomes-lobbyist-for-notorious-charter-operator/
3. Matt Huffman, currently Ohio state senator
4. Barbara Sears, former Ohio House Majority Floor Leader
5. Jim Buchy, former Ohio House member
Other noteworthy pols on the list include
Jon Husted, Secretary of State now running for Lieutenant Governor
Cliff Rosenberger, former Ohio House Speaker who went on an all-expense trip paid by the Niagara Foundation, part of the Gulen chain. His home was raided by the FBI just two months ago! https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/fbi-agents-are-rosenberger-house-and-storage-unit/u8X9Apyx9g3rs0u63n3mBL/
Josh Mandel, Ohio Treasurer
Andrew Brenner, Chair, House Education Committee currently running for Ohio Senate
Shannon Jones, former Ohio senator and author of the notorious SB5, which was designed to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. http://action.weareohio.com/page/content/sb5history/
Mike Dewine, currently Ohio Attorney General and candidate for Governor (running with Jon Husted – above)
Mary Taylor, currently Ohio Lieutenant Governor – defeated by DeWine in the Republican primary in May)
Dave Yost, currently Ohio Auditor of State now running for Attorney General. COULDN’T MAKE THIS ONE UP – Yost gave ECOT an Excellence in Bookeeping Award in 2016. He also was an ECOT commencement speaker: https://ohiodems.org/today-ohio-history-dave-yost-gives-ecot-third-award-bookkeeping-2016/
Troy Balderson, currently member of Ohio House and candidate for Congress.
Jan Resseger brings the story up to date in this post.
Here is how the Ohio Supreme Court hearing—five months ago today—concluded, according to the Columbus Dispatch‘s Jim Siegel: “As ECOT attorney Marion Little finished his arguments for why, under the law, the online school should get full funding for students even if they only log in once a month and do no work, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor interjected. ‘How is that not absurd?’”
Now, you would think that by now the Ohio Supreme Court could have arrived at a decision on ECOT’s final appeal to stay in business—a case in which lower courts had found against ECOT at every level. But as citizens of Ohio, we await ECOT’s death without any kind of closure even though we all know that the school has already been shut down—totally. The school’s assets have been sold off in a widely publicized auction and it no longer provides services for students. The Supreme Court decision matters, because ECOT’s officials hope—if the Supreme Court finds for ECOT—the school wouldn’t be required to repay as many tax dollars and because the same officials say they hope to resurrect the school.
In just the past month, as we await the high court’s decision, and the state remains mired in the ECOT scandal: here are some things we’ve been learning.
For the Associated Press, Kantele Franko reports that 2,300 of ECOT’s supposed students are apparently unaccounted for. Nobody knows whether they have dropped out or left the state or perhaps re-enrolled someplace else. Franko explains that a thousand of the students were likely 18 years of age or older, but that 1,300 were school-age youngsters who ought to be considered truant if they are not re-enrolled. Franko quotes Peggy Lehner, chair of the Ohio Senate Education Committee: “I think this just illustrates the whole problem that we’ve had with ECOT… You not only can’t tell how long the students signed on, you can’t even tell for sure if they even exist, so I am not surprised that there are students that they can’t track.” So far, however, the Ohio Legislature hasn’t passed any new laws to better regulate attendance at Ohio’s e-schools.
Thousands of ECOT’s students, at least those who are actual people, have enrolled at another virtual school in the state.
The primary beneficiary of ECOT’s closure and of this new law is Ohio Virtual Academy, a for-profit online school that took in 4,000 ECOT students mid-year. That boosted its enrollment more than 40 percent, along with its income and potential profit. With 12,000 students, the school is now Ohio’s online giant, replacing the mammoth ECOT.” Ohio Virtual Academy is the state’s affiliate of the notorious K12, Inc., a national, for-profit, online-charter empire. The legislation to protect schools serving students abandoned when ECOT closed was added quietly as an amendment to another bill just before the Legislature adjourned for summer break, and was opposed by several prominent Democrats. O’Donnell quotes Toledo Representative Teresa Fedor, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee: “Children move in and out of schools because of choice every day. It’s outrageous that Ohio taxpayers have to foot more profits for e-schools and then give them safe harbor.”
To add to the comedy/tragedy, Ohio’s State Attorney General Mike DeWine has suddenly decided it is time to go after Lager and try to recover millions. DeWine is running for governor. The current Governor, John Kasich, protected ECOT for years, as did DeWine.
What everybody wonders is why DeWine, who has been Ohio Attorney General since 2011, only decided to go after ECOT now in the summer of 2018—as he, Ohio’s 2018 Republican candidate for governor, actively campaigns. DeWine claims to have waited until another case set a precedent for cracking down on such conflicts of interest involving a charter school—this time a smaller charter school in Cincinnati. Now, says Mike DeWine, he can be assured that as the State Attorney General he has standing to crack down on charter school fraud.
Clearly, the ECOT scandal has become hot potato for Republican candidates seeking state office in the November 2018 election. Democrats across the state, reminding the public of William Lager’s huge political investments in Republican campaigns over the years, are also reminding voters that key Republicans including Mike DeWine—currently attorney general and Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial candidate in November, and Dave Yost—currently state auditor and Ohio’s Republican candidate for attorney general in November, have been ignoring for years Lager’s compromised position as the founder and agent of nonprofit ECOT who is also making huge profits by steering business to his own for-profit contractors.
Will Ohio’s voters remember in November that the state Republican party enabled Lager to shift $1 billion from their public schools to ECOT?
David Leonhardt writes for the New York Times. In today’s newspaper, he writes about the miraculous results of the charter takeover of New Orleans. Leonhardt bought every phony claim made by the charter industry because he did not interview any critics. This is not good journalism.
He did not interview Mercedes Schneider, the Louisiana researcher-teacher who has written many times about New Orleans and who debunked the New Orleans Miracle here. In addition to teaching high school students in English, Schneider has a doctorate in statistics and research methodology. If Leonhardt had interviewed her, she would have explained that the average ACT scores for charter schools in New Orleans are low and stagnant.
He did not interview Professor Andrea Gabor, the Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism at Baruch College, who debunked the New Orleans miracle in her brilliant new book “After the Education Wars.” If he didn’t have time to read her book, he could have prepared for his trip to New Orleans by reading her article in “The New York Times” about the myth of the New Orleans “makeover.”
He did not interview Professor Kristen Buras of Georgia State University, who debunked the New Orleans Miracle in her book, Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance. Her latest article, written with veteran New Orleans Educator Raynard Sanders, is here. Its title: “History Rewritten: Masking the Failure of the Recovery School District.”
In a report published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2012 (in which she dissented about charter school “miracles”), Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University called New Orleans “the lowest-performing district in one of the nation’s lowest-performing states.”
He did not interview the many parents who have complained about the fact that 40% of the charter schools are rated D or F, and that these failing charters are more than 90% black.
He did interview the people who have made a career selling the New Orleans Miracle. He fell for every boast they made.
Did anyone tell him that Louisiana is one of the lowest scoring states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“The Nation’s Report Card”), and that its scores declined significantly from 2015-2017? New Orleans is the largest school district in the state. If its results are as amazing as Leonhardt thinks, why did the state drop to 48th in the nation in 8th grade reading and 50th in 8th grade math on NAEP? Maybe he can explain this in another column.
Peter Greene explains why you should protest against Betsy DeVos if you are anywhere near Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday, July 16.
Silence = Consent.
Do not consent.
Speak out and rally begins at 1:00 on Monday, July 16, outside Pfeiffer-Burleigh Elementary School, 235 East 11th Street in Erie PA.
Ellen Lipton is running for Congress on her record. She was endorsed by the Detroit News.
I met Ellen several years ago when I visited Michigan to learn about conditions there. She was the only legislator who showed up. She is deeply invested in fighting for public schools.
One of Ellen Lipton’s opponents criticized her. Here is her response.
I wanted to comment on something my opponent Andy Levin said about me in Friday’s article from the Detroit Free Press:
“I think it’s fine to be in a safe seat in the state Legislature for a few terms or whatever.”
“Or whatever” is a pretty dismissive way to talk about my record fighting for this community. I’m proud of what I accomplished before, during and after my six years as a State Representative, representing many cities within the 9th Congressional District.
I am a biochemist and patent attorney who made partner at age 29 after being diagnosed with MS at 27. I became a health care activist and helped pass a ballot initiative to overturn Michigan’s stem cell research ban.
During my six years in Lansing, I orchestrated the defeat of Betsy DeVos’s destructive privatization agenda. I co-founded the pro-choice Progressive Women’s Caucus, and was the Democratic representative on the commission that developed our criminal justice reform legislation. I received awards recognizing my skills as a legislator and my talent for leadership and coalition building, including the Sander Levin Elected Official of the Year award in 2013.
After I left elected office, I founded and currently serve as the President of the Michigan Promise Zone Association, which helps provide free college tuition and vocational training to graduating high school students all across Michigan.
I’m a mom of two beautiful kids, a wife, and an active member of my community. I’m running for Congress because voters in Macomb and Oakland deserve a champion in Washington with a proven record of winning on behalf of working people—not, as the Detroit News pointed out in their endorsement of our campaign, someone with a scanty record seeking to inherit this seat, rather than earn it.
Our polling shows that when voters in the 9th district find out who I am, what I’ve done, and the progressive vision I have for this community, we win. We’re giving this race everything we’ve got, so please donate “whatever” you can give to help get us across the finish line.
If you’d like to sign up to volunteer or get a yard sign, please head to ellenlipton.com/join-us/.
Here’s the link to give: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/lipton4congress
Thank you,
Ellen
A blogger who identifies as “democracy” posted this comment, with which I agree.
The bottom line is that Trump has lots and lots of Russian “mob” money, in Russia, the mob and the state are one and the same.
Trump has tapped tons of Russian moola, which is one reason he’s refused to release his tax returns, and in all likelihood, why Republicans in Congress refuse to force their release. Those returns would prove definitively the financial ties. But even without them, the ties have been well-established. The Financial Times did a deep look into the building of the Trump Tower in Toronto:
“Legal documents, signed statements and two dozen interviews with people with knowledge of the project and the money that flowed through it reveal that the venture connects the US president with a shadowy post-Soviet world where politics and personal enrichment merge…”
“it has become increasingly clear that many of the oligarchs who made their riches amid the downfall of the Soviet Union have protected their fortunes by advancing the interests of the ruling cliques at home. This wealth has been coursing through western markets, often disguised by shell companies. Trump’s sector, real estate, has long been susceptible to infusions of incognito money. A large proportion of sales of high-end US property takes place through companies whose true owners are hidden. A US Treasury investigation last year found that one in three cash buyers of top-end property was suspicious…”
“Trump has broken with presidential tradition by refusing to divest his holdings in the dozens of companies that comprise the Trump Organization or to release tax returns that might shine more light on what appear to be multitudinous conflicts of interest. In May last year, his decision to fire James Comey as head of the FBI triggered the appointment of Robert Mueller, himself a former FBI chief, as special counsel to investigate links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”
https://www.ft.com/trumptoronto
Look, it’s clear. This is not hard to figure out. There was a very genuine royal screwing of the American Republic in November of 2016. Trump and the Trump campaign engaged in behavior that has to be called what it really is: treason. There’s no way around it. And while Trump and his tops dogs are directly responsible, there’s lots of blame to pass around. Charlie Pierce at Esquire calls it perfectly:
“Goddamn them all.”
“Goddamn the hackers. Goddamn the journalists who laundered the pilfered material. Goddamn any of them who treated Roger Stone as a source, or as a cute prankster, instead of the nasty vandal he’s always been. Goddamn the pundits who chortled over the pilfered material. Goddamn the politicians who profited from the hacking. Goddamn the politicians who minimized the hacking. Goddamn the politicians who still stonewall about the hacking. Goddamn the ‘activists’ who ranted about ‘McCarthyism’ when anybody pointed out that the 2016 presidential election had been poisoned from afar. Goddamn them all as traitors, if not to the American nation, then to everything that ever made that nation worth the bother.”
“They conspired, wittingly or unwittingly. They colluded, wittingly or unwittingly. They are accessories, before and after the fact, to the hijacking of a democratic election. So, yes, goddamn them all.”
And you know what? There are still people out there – hell, there are still commenters on this bog – who pretend to be unaware of just how serious this is, or worse, who purposefully turn a blind eye to it.
It’s going to get worse – and much weirder – before it gets better.
Gee. Maybe we should give some serous thought – when this is mostly over, if it ever really is – to the notion that public education in a democratic republic ought to teach and model the core values and principles on which the republic is based.
Goddamn us if we don’t.
NPR ran an interesting story about robo-grading student essays. It didn’t use the headline that appears here, but there is no better way to describe the insanity or stupidity of asking a machine to judge a student essay. First, it shows disrespect for the student. Second, it diminishes the importance and value of language. Third, the machine can be easily fooled, as Les Perelmann of MIT has demonstrated conclusively with his studies of how easy it is to fool the machine. Basically, the machine can’t evaluate facts. Perelman showed that a student could write an essay declaring that the War of 1812 took place in 1945, and the machine would not recognize it as an error.
To demonstrate, he calls up a practice question for the GRE exam that’s graded with the same algorithms that actual tests are. He then enters three words related to the essay prompt into his Babel Generator, which instantly spits back a 500-word wonder, replete with a plethora of obscure multisyllabic synonyms:
“History by mimic has not, and presumably never will be precipitously but blithely ensconced. Society will always encompass imaginativeness; many of scrutinizations but a few for an amanuensis. The perjured imaginativeness lies in the area of theory of knowledge but also the field of literature. Instead of enthralling the analysis, grounds constitutes both a disparaging quip and a diligent explanation.”
“It makes absolutely no sense,” he says, shaking his head. “There is no meaning. It’s not real writing.”
But Perelman promises that won’t matter to the robo-grader. And sure enough, when he submits it to the GRE automated scoring system, it gets a perfect score: 6 out of 6, which according to the GRE, means it “presents a cogent, well-articulated analysis of the issue and conveys meaning skillfully.”
“It’s so scary that it works,” Perelman sighs. “Machines are very brilliant for certain things and very stupid on other things. This is a case where the machines are very, very stupid.”
Because computers can only count, and cannot actually understand meaning, he says, facts are irrelevant to the algorithm. “So you can write that the War of 1812 began in 1945, and that wouldn’t count against you at all,” he says. “In fact it would count for you because [the computer would consider it to be] good detail.”
Perelman says his Babel Generator also proves how easy it is to game the system. While students are not going to walk into a standardized test with a Babel Generator in their back pocket, he says, they will quickly learn they can fool the algorithm by using lots of big words, complex sentences, and some key phrases—that make some English teachers cringe.
“For example, you will get a higher score just by [writing] “in conclusion,’” he says….
In places like Utah, where tests are graded by machines only, scampish students are giving the algorithm a run for its money.
“Students are geniuses, and they’re able to game the system,” notes Carter, the assessment official from Utah.
One year, she says, a student who wrote a whole page of the letter “b” ended up with a good score. Other students have figured out that they could do well writing one really good paragraph and just copying that four times to make a five-paragraph essay that scores well. Others have pulled one over on the computer by padding their essays with long quotes from the text they’re supposed to analyze, or from the question they’re supposed to answer.
But each time, Carter says, the computer code is tweaked to spot those tricks.
“We think we’re catching most things now,” Carter says, but students are “very creative” and the computer programs are continually being updated to flag different kinds of ruses.
As someone who devotes her life to writing and trying to communicate meaning, I reject the idea of robo-grading as insulting to the craft.
It demands garbage. It deserves to get what it asks for.
Anyone complicit in this betrayal of educational values should be ashamed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 