Archives for the month of: July, 2018
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Philadelphia: Charters Ask School Board to Lower Standards for Them

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2018 //
8

Lisa Haver and Deborah Grill, leaders of the activist group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, wrote a commentary calling out the school board for its deference to charters, which are now asking to be held to lowered standards.

Forget about transparency or accountability if you are in the charter industry. Even the school board asks permission from the charters to regulate them and holds closed-door meetings to negotiate what they are willing to do.

They begin:

Philadelphia charter school operators and advocates have long maintained that if they were freed from the bureaucracy and regulations imposed on public schools, charters would be able to quickly and consistently raise student achievement. The School Reform Commission bought into that argument, approving new charters in almost every year of its 17-year reign.

The SRC also turned over control of more than 20 neighborhood schools to charter operators through its Renaissance initiative, whose provisions include “stringent academic requirements” that would be used “as a basis for a decision to renew, not renew or revoke a Renaissance school at the end of its [five-year] term.”

But when the data show many of those schools failing to achieve anything close to the “dramatic gains” promised, the SRC did not hold those charters accountable.

Recently, charter operators have actually lobbied the District to lower the standards by which their schools are evaluated. A June 11 Philadelphia Public School Notebook/WHYY story, “Philadelphia School District nearing new accountability rules for charters,” revealed that secret negotiations had taken place between District and charter officials about changes in the rating system, which “was developed with substantial input from the charter operators themselves.” This is not the first time charter operators and District officials have met in secret: They conducted closed-door meetings from fall 2016 through spring 2017 to formulate public policy about charters.

Belmont Charter CEO Jennifer Faustman argued that it’s not fair to compare charters who took over poor-performing District schools, saying, “You’re basically being challenged to exceed the District.”

But hasn’t that been the justification for creating and expanding charters — that they would always do better than public schools? Belmont Charter would not sign its 2017 renewal agreement, citing unfairness of conditions, even though Belmont failed to meet standards in all three categories—academic, financial, and organizational.

District officials contend that the new rubric is “fair” to charter operators, but do not explain how it is fair to the students or their parents. Theoretically, a charter school could earn a 45 percent academic grade even with near-zero proficiency rates. That is, a charter could be renewed as long as it showed improved attendance and growth — if not actual academic achievement. Incredibly, the charter coalition finds that expectation too high. They are holding out for a 40 percent passing grade.

Then-SRC Chair Estelle Richman told reporters that the charter “performance framework” has undergone “more than 60 negotiated changes” in the last year and that the “charter agreements incorporate a revised performance framework which provides charter schools with transparent and predictable accountability and ensures charter schools are quality options for students and families.”

Transparency, apparently, should be extended to charter operators but not to the public. If charters are truly public schools, as charter operators contend, then all policy discussions, including changes in the rating system, must be open to the public. Nor did Richman explain why the SRC felt the need to consult those being regulated on how they wished to be regulated.

Last month, in one of its final actions, the SRC approved 10 charter renewals. Four others, including two Mastery charters, were not on the agenda, reportedly because they rejected conditions suggested by the District.

Who is in charge? Why no accountability? Why are standards higher for public schools than for charters? What about all those promises?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Philadelphia

North Carolina: NEPC With More About Analysis of That Amateurish, Cooked Voucher Study

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2018 //
1

I have posted two critiques of the North Carolina voucher study that claimed great gains for students who took vouchers to learn that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.

Here is another, which is probably definitive and all you need to know. It was posted by the National Education Policy Center.


An evaluation of an education program typically gives some information about whether or not a program is working. But a recent evaluation of North Carolina’s school voucher program is so flawed methodologically that it fails to explain whether the state’s Opportunity Scholarships help or harm a student’s education, according to a review by Kris Nordstrom, an education policy consultant on the Education and Law Project at the North Carolina Justice Center, a social justice-focused research and advocacy organization.

Nordstrom’s review is part of a new NEPC feature called Reviews Worth Sharing, which are not commissioned or edited by NEPC but that we believe contribute to our goal of helping policymakers, reporters, and others assess the social science merit of reports and judge their value in guiding policy. The views and conclusions addressed belong entirely to the author.

The evaluation reviewed, An Impact Analysis of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement, is a working paper by North Carolina State researchers Anna J. Egalite, D.T. Stallings, and Stephen R. Porter.

The review finds that methodological flaws in the evaluation make it impossible to accurately compare North Carolina private school students who receive the vouchers with their public school counterparts who do not. It is also possible that the private school students who participated in the analysis were not representative of the average voucher student. That’s because the working paper only examined a small, non-random handful of voucher students (89 individuals, or 1.6 percent of all voucher recipients) who volunteered to be tested for the evaluation. In addition, just over half of the private schools attended by these 89 recipients were Catholic. Yet only 10 percent of all North Carolina voucher schools are Catholic.

The evaluation did use a statistical method called propensity-score matching to create a public school comparison group that was designed to be similar to the pool of private school volunteers. However, Nordstrom identifies five main flaws with this comparison:

The private school students who volunteered to participate in the evaluation were recruited by a pro-voucher advocacy organization, Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. The evaluation does not clarify to what extent, if any, the organization cherry-picked the volunteers or their schools.

The public school students likely came from lower-income families than the voucher recipients. Evaluation authors said that they accounted for this difference by incorporating prior year’s test results into the analysis. But that assumes that income differences did not impact performance in the ensuing school year.

The public school students likely attended schools with higher poverty rates than the private school students would have been attending, absent the vouchers. Again, evaluation authors said that they accounted for this difference by incorporating prior year’s test results into the analysis, but that (again) assumes that the differences did not impact performance in the ensuing school year.

It is possible that the public and private school students had different levels of motivation when taking the test. While voucher recipients might have perceived that their performance could impact their ability to remain in their private schools, the public school students likely viewed the exam as a meaningless exercise.

The test used in the evaluation was not aligned to North Carolina’s Standard Course of Study. If it was aligned more closely with the private schools’ curricula, that could give the voucher recipients an advantage.

North Carolina’s voucher program is scheduled to grow by $10 million per year, to $144.8 million in 2027-28.
Yet as Nordstrom concludes:

North Carolina General Assembly lawmakers are about to conclude yet another legislative session without implementing meaningful evaluation and accountability measures on state voucher programs. Despite the N.C. State report, unfettered expansion of vouchers continues, and policymakers, educators, and parents still don’t know whether the program is working or not.

Categories Fraud, National Education Policy Center, North Carolina, Research, Vouchers

Indiana: The Damage Done to Public Schools by Privatization

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2018 //
11

Darcie Cimarusti writes in Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet about the calculated devastation done to Indiana’s once-great public schools by privatizers, chief among them Mike Pence, former governor Mitch Daniels, David Harris of the Mind Trust, and Stand for Children (which long ago abandoned its credentials as a progressive organization).

Darcie is a school board member in New Jersey, an education blogger, parent, and part-time staff at the Network for Public Education, where her work has been invaluable.

The Indianapolis story is especially sad, because the privatization movement was bipartisan. Democrats joined in the plunder with Republicans. Please bear in mind that David Harris of Mind Trust claims to be a Democrat, even though he has paved the way for privatization and continues to do so, and Bart Peterson was the Democratic mayor of Indianapolis. Both of them might just as well be on the staff of Betsy DeVos.

Here is an excerpt from this excellent post:

In 2001, charter school legislation was passed in Indiana, and thanks to [David] Harris’s lobbying, [Bart] Peterson was made the first mayor in the nation with the authority to authorize charters. Harris was named the state’s charter schools chief, reviewing applications and making recommendations to Mayor Peterson. By 2002, the state’s first three charter schools opened.

While still employed by the city of Indianapolis, Harris came up with a plan to “create a venture capital fund to greenlight new school-reform nonprofits,” and in 2006, the Mind Trust was born. The Indianapolis Star editorial board praised Harris’s plan, writing, “The Mind Trust has done this city a tremendous favor with today’s release of its dramatic plan to overhaul Indianapolis Public Schools.”

With millions of dollars from local foundations, specifically the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation and the Lilly Endowment, the Mind Trust enticed national reform entities to Indianapolis, including Teach For America, the New Teacher Project and Stand for Children.

With the arrival of Oregon-based Stand For Children, Indianapolis school board elections started to take on a decidedly different tenor. Until 2010, a few thousand dollars was all that was needed to win a seat. That all changed when Stand For Children, an education reform 501(c)(4), started pouring tens of thousands of dollars into the 2012 elections. Stand’s tax return that year reported that the election of three Indianapolis school board members was a top accomplishment for the organization.

In 2013, reform-minded Superintendent Lewis Ferebee was appointed, and Stand for Children endorsed and financially supported additional candidates in 2014 and 2016, ensuring a pro-reform board majority to support Ferebee and the Mind Trust’s agenda.

Stand for Children also spent $473,172 lobbying Indiana lawmakers on Public Law 1321, which was passed in 2014. Public Law 1321 was based on a 2013 model policy drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Koch-funded member organization of corporate lobbyists and conservative state legislators who craft “model legislation” on issues important to them and then help shepherd it through legislatures. Public Law 1321 allows Indianapolis and other districts across the state to create Innovation Network Schools — schools that are overseen by the school district but managed by private operators. These include privately operated charter schools that gain instant access to existing public buildings and resources.

IPS opened the first Innovation Network school in 2015. Fast-forward to 2018, and the district website lists 20 Innovation Schools in total. The Mind Trust has “incubated” and helped IPS open many of those Innovation Schools, including Daniels’s Purdue Polytechnic High School, with seven more schools in the pipeline.

While the Mind Trust and Stand for Children would have Indianapolis residents believe these reforms are community-driven, in essence, the influence they wield over IPS and the school board is not dissimilar to what happens when a state takes over a school district. The Mind Trust and its web of connections in the statehouse, the mayor’s office, the Chamber of Commerce and countless other high-level organizations, institutions and foundations, both around the city and nationally, determine much of what happens in IPS.

But the longer the Mind Trust operates in the city, the clearer it becomes that these forces are focused on turning IPS schools over to private operators, and often the operators selected by the Mind Trust fail to demonstrate levels of student success higher than the schools they are tapped to replace.

For example, the Mind Trust recruited Matchbook Learning and named it a 2017 Innovation School Fellow, awarding founder Sajan George $400,000 to develop a turnaround school plan for IPS.

George, a favorite son of the national reform crowd, also received start-up funds from The NewSchools Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation Next Generation Learning Challenges. He was a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the American Federation for Children (AFC), the school choice juggernaut founded by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, when AFC’s conference was held in Indianapolis last year.

Matchbook Learning calls itself a “national nonprofit charter school turnaround management organization,” but in 2017 it operated only two schools — Merit Prep in Newark, New Jersey and Michigan Technical Academy in Detroit, Michigan. Both of Matchbook’s schools were hybrid charters, where students learn in a brick-and-mortar building but receive the majority of their instruction virtually. Both were closed by the end of the 2016-17 school year for lack of growth and poor performance.

Hybrids such as Matchbook have performed no better in the state of Indiana. An Indiana State Board of Education evaluation of performance data from the 2016 and 2017 school years concluded that “students in virtual and hybrid charter schools do not perform as well as those in brick-and-mortar charter schools.” In 2017 there were five hybrid charters in the state, and according to the state’s own grading system, two hybrid schools received D’s, and the other 3 received F’s.

Matchbook Learning, thanks to the support of the Mind Trust, was granted a charter by the Indianapolis Charter School Board, and selected by the IPS board to “restart” Wendell Phillips School 63.

At School 63, 85 percent of students were black or Hispanic, and 76 percent of students qualified for the federal free-lunch program for children from low-income families. The school was identified as “underperforming” after five years of F’s using the same grading system that gave hybrid charter schools such as Matchbook D and F grades as well.

Despite Matchbook’s history of failure in two different states, and the abysmal performance of hybrid charters across Indiana, only one board member voted against Matchbook’s takeover of School 63 — Elizabeth Gore. Gore, elected to the board in 2016, is the only currently seated board member elected without the financial support of Stand for Children.

“I refuse to turn over the school to a company that obviously has problems to an academic program that I feel has no accountability, a record or sustainability for improving children’s academic growth,” Gore said.

The 2018 election looks like it is shaping up to potentially derail the vision of Indianapolis as a national model for the reform movement. With three of seven seats up for election, and Elizabeth Gore demonstrating she’s not afraid to vote against the Stand for Children-beholden board majority, the balance of power on the board could easily shift.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis, Privatization, Stand for Children

America First. America Hated. America Alone.

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2018 //
59

I was impressed by Brett Stephens’ column in the New York Times today. I read this in conjunction with a news article that described the schizophrenia of the Trump administration about Russia. Trump is eager to be Putin’s friend. Trump admires Putin. Trump will do nothing to offend Putin. But the rest of his administration treats Putin and Russia as the greatest threat to American security. Trump treat the Mueller indictment, still, as a “rigged witch hunt,” but Dan Coats, the conservative Director of National Intelligence, and James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, take it seriously.

All of this confirms my sense that Trump is either a loose cannon, a fool, or Putin’s puppet. Whatever it is, it frightens me for the future of the world, the future of democracy, the future of our nation, and the world my grandchildren will live in. I’m sorry to devote so much space to this foul man who somehow became president, despite the fact that he did not win a majority of the vote. I’m worried. Education issues pale in comparison to the future of the world.

This is what Stephens wrote today.

“Some near-forgotten anniversaries are worth commemorating. One hundred years ago — Bastille Day, 1918 — Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest son, Quentin, was killed in aerial combat at the Second Battle of the Marne. Twenty-six years later, Quentin’s oldest brother, Ted, also died in France, after landing at Utah Beach on D-Day.

“Quentin and Ted are buried side-by-side at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer. It’s a moving sight for everyone who still believes in the cause for which they and their brothers in arms fought and died — above all, the idea, possibility and preservation of a free world, anchored and inspired by America but not subservient to it.

“In other words, the things that Donald Trump has spent his presidency trashing under the historically sordid banner of “America First.”

“That trashing reached some sort of climax this week with the president’s excruciating tantrum against Germany at the NATO summit in Brussels, followed by his gratuitous humiliation of British Prime Minister Theresa May via an interview in a Murdoch tabloid. Maybe next he’ll propose that Vladimir Putin rejoin the Group of 7 — except he already did that in Canada more than a month ago, right around the time he launched a trade war with Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

“What does all this achieve?

“No doubt just what Trump intends: the collapse of the liberal international order, both in its animating commitment to open societies as well as its defining international institutions — the G-7, NATO, the European Union, the World Trade Organization. Seen in this light, the president’s wretched behavior isn’t — or isn’t merely — the product of a defective personality. It’s the result of a willful ideology.

“So much should be clear by the president’s negotiating style, guaranteed as it is to elicit “no” for an answer.

“It’s fair to expect that other NATO members should spend more of their gross domestic product on defense; and fair to expect, too, that they should reach the 2 percent benchmark sometime sooner than 2024. It isn’t fair to demand, as Trump does, that they reach the 2 percent mark by January, and then increase it to 4 percent.

“It’s fair to say that the U.S. could use its leverage to negotiate more advantageous trade deals. It isn’t fair to insist on politically untenable trade concessions he knows other countries won’t make — a sunset clause for Nafta, for example — in order to destroy these agreements permanently while blaming the other side.

“It’s fair to say that it will be difficult for Britain to negotiate an independent trade agreement with the U.S. if it maintains E.U. rules on trade in goods. But Trump’s goal isn’t to help steer May through Brexit. It’s to bring her government down and replace her with Boris Johnson, because the former foreign secretary “obviously likes me and says very good things about me.”

“Above all, it’s fair to prod and cajole and quarrel with our core allies — in private. But Trump is out to embarrass them in public, putting them to the choice of becoming enemies or toadies, breaking up or sucking up. That’s no doubt fine with him: America First is America Feared. But it is also America hated, and hated with justification. Where’s the upside in that?

“For Trump, the upside is the substitution of a liberal order with an illiberal one, based on conceits about sovereignty, nationality, religion and ethnicity. These are the same conceits that Vladimir Putin has long made his own, which helps explain Trump’s affinity for his Russian counterpart and his distress that Robert Mueller’s investigation “really hurts our relationship with Russia,” as he remarked Friday.

“It also explains his undisguised contempt for contemporary European democracy and his efforts to replace it with something more Trumpian: xenophobic, protectionist and truculent. This is the Europe of Germany’s Alexander Gauland, France’s Marine Le Pen, Britain’s Nigel Farage, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini. Note that the last three are already in power.

“All this must be gratifying to Trump’s sense of his historical importance. For America, it’s a historical disaster. The United States can only lead a world that’s prepared to follow.

“But follow what? Not the rules of trade that America once set but now claims are rigged against it. Not the democratic ideals that America once embodied but now treats with disdain. Not the example of fighting bullies, after it has now become one.

“This will suit Americans for whom the idea of a free world always seemed like a distant abstraction. It will suit Europeans whose anti-Americanism predates Trump’s arrival by decades. And it will especially suit Putin, who knows that an America that stands for its own interests first also stands, and falls, alone. Surely the dead at Colleville-sur-Mer fought for something greater than that.”

Categories Education Reform

Trump and Putin: A Very Odd Couple

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2018 //
22

The Washington Monthly notes that Trump has done everything that Putin has dreamed of doing in and to Europe and the Western Alliance.

It is true that there will never be a trial of Mueller’s charges against the 12 Russian Military Intelligence officers.

But it does seem strange that we now have–for the first time since World War II–a president determined to derail NATO and the Western Alliance, a president who showers praise on Putin. It is puzzling to our allies, as it is puzzling to many Americans. It is also puzzling to see the Republican party, once the great foe of Russia, heaping scorn on anyone who criticizes Trump and his fondness for Putin. Perhaps Putin has become the great champion of white nationalism, in Russia and elsewhere.

Trump is being met with demonstrations against him wherever he goes. He has spoken out bluntly against the kind of multiculturalism and diversity that we in America used to consider a strength. He seems to be warning Europe that its immigration policies are letting in too many Muslims and too many people of color. Strange words from an American president.

Martin Longman writes:

Donald Trump’s audition seems to be going well. By the time he sits down with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki next week (with no witnesses present) he will have ticked off an impressive list of tasks. Beginning in Brussels, he so disrupted and threatened the NATO alliance that the Pentagon had to go into immediate damage control mode.

Hours after President Donald Trump departed NATO headquarters Thursday, U.S. military leaders embarked on a full-scale “damage control” operation with calls to their counterparts across Europe to reassure them that America will abide by its defense commitments in the region.

The outreach, directed by the Pentagon leadership, came after Trump threatened to reassess those commitments during a gathering with NATO allies in Brussels, according to multiple current and former diplomatic and military officials familiar with the calls.

The overall message from senior military officials in a series of phone calls to members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been that U.S. military bases in their countries will remain open and American troop levels in the region will not be reduced.

But the damage cannot be undone and now no European politician could significantly increase defense spending even if they wanted to without looking like Trump’s poodle. That might suit liberals just fine but it suits Putin even better. The alliance is weakened and vulnerable border states with Russia will feel less protected and more like vassals of their domineering neighbor.

Even before he left for his trip, Trump’s verbal abuse of Europe spurred a response from E.U. President Donald Tusk, who reminded Trump to “Appreciate your allies. After all, you don’t have that many.” But Trump’s first order of business upon arrival was to launch a blistering attack on German chancellor Angela Merkel in an effort to weaken her at a tumultuous point in her government’s effort to tackle immigration policy. Do you think the Germans recognize this rhetoric?

The President warned that immigration was hurting Germany and other parts of Europe “very much,” apparently referring to a wave of refugees who have entered Europe from shattered Syria and other unstable societies in the Middle East and North Africa.

“I think they better watch themselves because you are changing culture, you are changing a lot of things, you are changing security.”

Putin couldn’t have plunged a shiv into Merkel any better than that, but Trump had something even more deadly in mind for Theresa May. The week before the president’s arrival in the United Kingdom saw Prime Minister May’s government falter over its plans to separate from the European Union. As Paul Krugman helpfully explains here, May has been trying to sell a “soft Brexit” that would keep the U.K. within a common customs union with the Continent, but this caused several of her ministers to resign in protest. As a result, there is some doubt if she can retain the confidence of Parliament. Trump made sure to take the side of her “Hard Brexit” critics and give her a solid push.

In an interview with The Sun that was conducted while he was in Brussels but published while he was dining with May, Trump claimed that she had failed to follow his advice on how to properly cleave from the European Union with very unfortunate results. He even said that a soft Brexit would preclude the U.K. from striking a new trade deal with America to help them offset the damage their economy will suffer from European tariffs. Trump could not have delivered a more deadly threat, as the entire premise of the Brexiteers is based on a new trade deal with the United States. Trump was saying that a soft break from the E.U. could never work because he wouldn’t allow it to work.

All of these things advance Putin’s goals. He wants to discourage the West’s defense spending, undermine NATO and force border states back into vassalage. He wants a weakened European Union, and a thorough cleaving of the U.K. from the E.U. accomplishes that more effectively than anything else could. He wants weak and distracted governments in London and Berlin. And he wants America alienated from their traditional allies so that Europe will be less willing to stand in the way of his plans. All that’s really left is for Trump to cut a deal with Russia over Syria that will facilitate their unfettered control over the country.

Categories Education Reform

Jan Resseger: Teachers Are Leading the Fight for Funding in Red States

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2018 //
19

Jan Resseger reports here on the role of teachers in Oklahoma and Arizona in leading the fight against tax-cutting Tea Party ideologues whose cruel zeal is hurting children and denying them a decent education.

She begins by citing an article in “The Nation” about Oklahoma, where taxes had not gone up since 1990 until the teacher protests this spring:

“Covert [the author of the article] introduces us to Scott Helton, a high school English teacher whose school opted to save money with online textbooks instead of buying the printed copies. But the school hasn’t enough computers and its Wi-Fi is inadequate. He has been forced to spend his own money to provide readings for his students. Ten years ago, his classes averaged 20 students; today they are packed with 35, and in once case 40 students, many of whom sit on the floor. We also learn about underpaid workers in other government agencies including Gail DeLashaw, a family-support worker in the Department of Human Services, whose salary is $30,000, 60 percent of the national average for someone like DeLashaw with an advanced degree. Her case load—once 500 or 600—has risen to 1,200 families.”

In Arizona, teachers and parents gathered 270,000 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot to raise taxes for education. Gov. Doug Ducey and his allies, of course, will fight it. Ducey is up for re-election. Democrats will choose his opponent in a primary next month. The leading contender on the Democratic ballot is David Garcia, a strong fighter for funding education. Garcia is a professor of education at Arizona State University. Polls show him tied with Ducey, or even ahead of him.

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Oklahoma

Hawaii: Charter School Will Close Amid Charges of Financial Mismanagement

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2018 //
3

In Hawaii, the state revoked the charter of a school on the Big Island, alleging financial mismanagement and enrollment errors.

Charters open, charters close. The kids are out of luck.

The Hawaii State Public Charter School Commission voted unanimously Monday to revoke the charter of a school on the Big Island after finding 22 contract violations that included allegations of financial mismanagement and enrollment irregularities.

Ka’u Learning Academy is only the second charter school in the state to have its charter revoked. It opened its doors in 2015 in the rural area of Naalehu on Big Island, serving grades 3 to 7. It had a projected 93 students enrolled for the 2018-19 school year….

The revocation of KLA’s charter comes several months after the commission sent the Big Island school a notice of prospect of revocation outlining alleged violations.

Those violations included use of school funds and debit cards for employees’ personal expenses; irregular accounting; failure to comply with collective bargaining agreements; enrollment of students outside designated grade levels that resulted in overpayment of funds to the school; a failure to properly maintain student records; and failure to conduct criminal history background checks.

Additionally, KLA came under investigation by the Hawaii Department of Education for possible testing fraud, including excluding low-performing students from participating in state assessments and using unauthorized personnel to administer those tests. As a result, the school’s 2017 test scores “cannot be considered valid or trustworthy or relied upon and will be invalidated,” the commission outlined in a report.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Hawaii, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider’s Report Card on the Privatization of New Orleans’ Schools: No Miracle

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2018 //
6

Forget the media hype about the transformation of the schools of New Orleans. As Mercedes Schneider writes in this definitive report, the stories are propaganda and, well, lies.

The best scharter schools in the new New Orleans are mainly white. The lowest performing charters are overwhelmingly black. Forty percent of the city’s charters are rated D or F. Most of their students are black.

This is an important read.

Categories Education Reform

Here is the Indictment of 12 Russians Who Belong to Military Intelligence

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
18

Read it for yourself.

It is only 29 pages long.

Categories Education Reform

“If This is a Witch Hunt, There Sure are a Lot of Witches”

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
18

Please remember that these members of the Russian military intelligence service who were indicted are innocent until proven guilty. Since they are unlikely to show up ever in the U.S., there is not likely to be a trial.

Maybe Trump can persuade Putin to send them here to stand trial so they can prove their innocence.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post writes today:

Early Friday afternoon, the Justice Department announced that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had indicted 12 Russian officials in connection with the Kremlin’s effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election, making even clearer what we already knew: The Russian government had a comprehensive program intended to hurt the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and to help Donald Trump get elected.

The fact this has been treated as anything less than a profound national emergency — and that one of our two parties has argued again and again that it’s no big deal — is something that should appall anyone who has even the slightest concern for U.S. national security.

It is notable that these indictments come a day after Republicans mounted a farcical hearing meant to advance the ludicrous notion that the entire Russia investigation is illegitimate because one FBI agent said disparaging things about President Trump in private text messages during the campaign. But here’s part of what Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said during his news conference today:

The indictment charges 12 Russian military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Eleven of the defendants are charged with conspiring to hack into computers, steal documents and release those documents with the intent to interfere with the election. One of those defendants and a 12th Russian military officer are charged with conspiring to infiltrate computers of organizations involved in administering the elections, including state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and companies that supply software used to administer elections.

The indictment contains numerous intriguing details, including the fact that the Russian hacking of the emails of Clinton associates began on the same day that Trump publicly said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing.”

We also learn from the indictments that “On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.” The candidate isn’t identified, but it sure will be interesting to learn who it was.

So the hacking didn’t come, as Trump has suggested multiple times, from China, some other country, or a 400-pound guy sitting on his bed. And throughout, Trump has accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ridiculous denials at face value, as though Putin would never lie to him (“I said, ‘Did you do it?’ And he said, ‘No, I did not. Absolutely not.’ I then asked him a second time in a totally different way. He said absolutely not”).

Trump will be meeting Putin again on Monday — in private, with no staff allowed except translators. Here’s what he said about the topic of Russia’s involvement in our election at his press conference this morning with British Prime Minister Theresa May:

I will absolutely bring that up. I don’t think you’ll have any “Gee, I did it, I did it, you got me.” There won’t be a Perry Mason here, I don’t think, but you never know what happens, right? But I will absolutely, firmly ask the question.

He’ll “firmly ask the question,” and when Putin says that it never happened, Trump will once again accept and repeat that denial, because that’s what he wants everyone to believe.

So for the benefit of those who continue to claim that the Russia investigation is a great big witch hunt with nothing to show for its efforts, let’s remind ourselves of what it has produced to date:

Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is currently in jail awaiting trial on multiple charges relating to his relationships with a Russian oligarch close to Putin and the former leader of Ukraine, widely considered a Putin puppet.

Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates, pled guilty to lying to the FBI and conspiracy to defraud the United States, and is now cooperating with Mueller.

Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials, and is now cooperating with Mueller.

A Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with various Kremlin-connected figures and is now cooperating with Mueller.

Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian associate of Manafort, was indicted on obstruction of justice charges.

Richard Pinedo pled guilty to identity fraud for selling stolen identities to Russians connected to the Mueller probe.

Alex Van Der Zwaan, a Dutch banker and son-in-law of a Russian oligarch, pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his work with Manafort and Gates, and was jailed briefly and then deported.

Thirteen individuals and three companies were indicted for their participation in a Russian scheme to conduct “information warfare” during the 2016 election in order to push voters away from Clinton and toward Trump, as well as undermining trust in the electoral system more generally.

And now, eleven Russian military officials have been indicted for hacking into the email systems of the Democratic National Committee and various people connected to Hillary Clinton, including her campaign chairman, then disseminating the materials in carefully timed releases meant to maximize the political damage to Clinton. One of those 11, plus another Russian official, have also been indicted for hacking into the systems of state election agencies.
And that’s just so far. If the Mueller probe is moving toward a conclusion, it’s hard to believe there won’t be more indictments to come.

We still don’t have a complete answer to how deep the cooperation between Russia and the Trump campaign went, though we have a great deal of evidence already that can support the charge that collusion did indeed occur. But whatever your perspective on that evidence — the meetings between Trump officials and Russians intended to obtain dirt on Clinton, the dozens of contacts with Russians that, for some strange reason, Trump officials were so keen to lie about in order to conceal — one thing that no one can plausibly say is that this is all just a witch hunt, there’s no there there, and that the investigation should simply be shut down.

Anyone who makes that claim should be acknowledged for what they are: Someone whose desire to keep President Trump from political harm exceeds their concern about the national security of the United States. We know that’s true of the president himself. And it also seems to be true of most of his party.

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