Archives for the month of: August, 2018
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Steven Singer: DFER and DeVos Think Alike about School Reform

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2018 //
24

Steven Singer hits the nail on the head: there is no difference between DFER and DeVos!

He writes:

“Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) put out a new video about what they think it means to be an education progressive.

“And by the political action committee’s definition, Betsy DeVos may be the most “progressive” education secretary ever.

“She champions “public charter schools.” Just like them!

“She is in favor of evaluating teachers on student test scores. Just like them!

“She is a booster for “holding schools accountable” through the use of standardized tests. Just like them!

“And she loves putting public tax dollars into private hands to run schools “more efficiently” by disbanding school boards, closing public debate and choosing exactly which students get to attend privatized schools. Just like… you get the idea.

“But perhaps the most striking similarity between DeVos and DFER is their methodologies.

“DFER announced it again was going to flood Democratic races with tons of campaign cash to bolster candidates who agreed with them. That’s exactly how DeVos gets things done, too!

“She gives politicians bribes to do her bidding! The only difference is she pays her money mostly to Republicans while DFER pays off Democrats. But if both DeVos and DFER are paying to get would-be lawmakers to enact the same policies, what is the difference!?

“Seriously, what is the difference between Betsy DeVos and Democrats for Education Reform?”

Singer concludes that faux progressive groups like DFER, who are indistinguishable from Republicans, are causing many people to abandon the party.

“Why do some progressives vote third party? Because of groups like DFER.

“Voters think something like – if this charter school advocacy group represents what Democrats are all about, I can’t vote Democrat. I need a new party. Hence the surge of Green and other third party votes that is blamed for hurting Democratic candidates.”

DFER and DeVos! Made for each other!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

California: How a Charter School Will Harm One Small Public School

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2018 //
10

California is a state where charters have gone wild.

Rick Hennessy, the part time superintendent of the small Twain Harte School district responds to parents who want to secede to create their own charter school that their action will damage the education of those left behind.


if the charter school is approved, the district will lose $250,000 in the 2019-20 school year and would have to look at the following budget cuts:

Eliminate one full time teacher

Eliminate all art instruction

Eliminate all music instruction

Eliminate the librarian

Eliminate all class trips

Eliminate school counselor

Eliminate purchases of classroom library books

Eliminate Safe School Ambassador

Eliminate Treehouse Program (addresses social adjustment for grades K-3)

The proposed charter school would also have a segregative impact, he writes.

Furthermore, the charter’s petition does not include providing lunches or transportation for their students. Any charter school petition is supposed to recruit or attract the same socio-economic student group that is enrolled in the regular district. Over 60 percent of Twain Harte students ride the bus as well as receive a free or reduced lunch. It seems that the charter petition is targeting middle class or higher families that can provide transportation up the hill; which would seem to rule out most of our current students.

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

Newsweek: Why Does Betsy DeVos’s $40 Million Yacht Fly a Foreign Flag?

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2018 //
40

Well, that’s easy. This multibillionaire doesn’t like to pay taxes, so she saves money by registering her yacht in the Cayman Islands, like so many other tax-avoiding .001%ers.

She has at nine other yachts, and it is not clear whether all of them are registered in the Cayman Islands. Maybe some are registered in Michigan or Ohio. Hard to keep track of so many yachts. Can you imagine how confusing it would be if you owned 10 cars? Even harder when you are talking yachts, each of which needs servants and crew.

Newsweek writes that offshore havens seem to be a pattern among the rich members of Trump’s cabinet, you know, the ones who say “America First,” but only for the peons:

When someone untied a yacht owned by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s family, the episode was portrayed as an example of anti-Trump harassment. But the yacht’s foreign flag illustrated how an allegedly “America First” administration is full of moguls who have stashed their wealth offshore in ways that help them avoid taxes, regulations, transparency requirements and domestic employment laws.

We already know that Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s family shipping consortium routes its business through the Marshall Islands—a notoriously secretive tax haven. Federal records detail how Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton and Federal Reserve board appointee Randal Quarles held parts of their personal fortunes in investments based in the Cayman Islands, which are not necessarily required to adhere to America’s domestic financial regulations.

Now there’s DeVos, one of the heirs of Amway’s multilevel marketing empire. When the family’s 164-foot yacht was untethered from a Huron, Ohio, dock, it was flying a flag of the Cayman Islands, where the yacht is registered, according to VesselTracker. According to federal records, the yacht is owned by RDV International Marine, which is an affiliate of the company that controls the DeVos family’s fortune…

When buying a vessel or cruising in U.S. waters, American yacht owners like the DeVos family could face state sales or use taxes like those most nonyacht owners face on everything else. However, registering a yacht in a locale like the Caymans—under what has come to be known as a “flag of convenience”—allows those American yacht owners to effectively characterize themselves as foreigners for tax purposes, thereby avoiding the obligation of paying the standard levies…

DeVos’s yacht is reportedly one of 10 in the family’s fleet and is worth $40 million. If the vessel was registered in, say, Grand Rapids, Michigan—the state where RDV is located and that has in the past made an effort to compel yacht owners to pay use taxes—the Seaquest would likely be subject to Michigan’s 6 percent use tax. That would require the DeVos empire to cough up about $2.4 million: public revenues that help finance the kind of police services that the DeVos yacht crew called when the boat was untied. With the Cayman flag fluttering on its deck, the family can avoid the levy even as it cruises the Great Lakes.

Another incentive for yacht owners to register offshore is the potential to avoid stricter inspection and safety standards required for U.S.-registered vessels of a certain size.

“If someone is buying a boat that is above 300 gross tons but below 500 gross tons, getting registered offshore means they can avoid being subject to U.S. Coast Guard inspection and certification requirements as either a ‘seagoing motor vessel’ or a ‘passenger vessel,’” said maritime attorney Mark J. Buhler. “The most commonly used offshore yacht registries have comprehensive large yacht safety codes that were specifically developed for large yachts, whereas the U.S. Coast Guard regulations and inspection requirements applicable to ‘seagoing motor vessels’ or ‘passenger vessels’ were created many years ago principally for vessels engaged in trade, and not really having large yachts in mind. Those requirements do not translate well to yachts, and most yachts are simply not designed or built to those particular standards.”

The DeVos yacht is 492 gross tons, according to MarineTraffic.

If you are a billionaire, there are so many details to weigh you down. Of course, you have a multitude of lawyers, accountants, fixers, go-fers. But who will manage all of them?

Poor, poor billionaires. So many problems.

What do the simple folk do?
(h/t, “Camelot”)

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires

Don’t Cry for Alex Jones, His App Is Trending

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
40

Recently we have had some exchanges on this blog about whether it was right or wrong for big media companies like Facebook and Apple to delete the vile slanderer of murdered children, Alex Jones.

I said that he has no more right to put his content on a private platform than I have a “right” to have my opinions published by a newspaper. When they reject me, I don’t claim censorship. Others disagreed, and thought it was dangerous to ban hate speech, slander, and lies.

Well, for those worried about Alex Jones’s ability to reach his audience, here is good news for you:

“Just days after Google, Facebook and Apple purged videos and podcasts from the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars from their sites, the Infowars app has become one of the hottest in the country.

“On Wednesday, Infowars was the No. 1 overall “trending” app on the Google Play store, a metric that reflects its sudden momentum. Among news apps, Infowars was No. 3 on Apple and No. 5 on Google, above all mainstream news organizations. And the app stood at No. 66 overall on Google, excluding game apps, while on Apple it reached No. 49, above popular apps like LinkedIn, Google Docs and eBay.

“The Infowars app, which includes news articles and the shows of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, had likely been downloaded a few hundred to a few thousand times a day on average after its introduction last month, said Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower, which tracks app data. Now, it is likely getting 30,000 to 40,000 downloads a day, Mr. Nelson estimated based on its ranking.”

I will continue to hope that Mr. Jones loses the many lawsuits filed by those he has defamed and injured, including the families of the children and educators massacred like animals at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2014. Because of his vicious claims that the massacre was a hoax, that no one died, and that the victims were actually child actors, these bereaved families have been subject to death threats. Our Founding Fatheres would have put him in the stocks.

Categories Accountability, Fake News, Fraud, Hoax, Lies

Host A Screening Of Backpack Full Of Cash

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
15

 

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Have you been thinking about hosting a screening of Backpack?

We’re making it easy for you by offering a substantial discount if you book by August 31st!

For this month only, a screening where you don’t charge admission is $550 (plus shipping) or, if you do charge for entry, it’s $400 (plus 50% of the profits that you earn from ticket sales.)

Backpack explores the impact of market-based education reforms (like charter schools, vouchers, and testing) on public schools and the most vulnerable students who rely on them.

This discounted rate is a fantastic opportunity to host a screening at the start of the school year — and to kickstart discussions about education in advance of the all-important November elections!

Click here to request info (or respond to this email) and we’ll get back to you right away.

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Teachers parents, voters, and other attendees all had strong responses to Backpack, saying that the film’s message made them feel motivated and ready to fight for public education.

Thank you to our hosts in Texas this summer, and to everyone who came out to see the film!

Our new version of Backpack will include the same great movie, but now with Spanish subtitles — as well as English subtitles, closed captions, and Scene Selection (so you can jump right to a specific section of the film).

Our guides and marketing materials — such as the Discussion Guideand Screening Handbook — will also be coming out in Spanish.

If you’re interested, go to our website and add a note in “Tell Us More,” requesting the new DVD or BluRay with Spanish subtitles.
Are you ready to host a screening of Backpack Full of Cash and a community discussion?
SIGN UP TO HOST A SCREENING
DONATE NOW
Categories Education Reform

“This Veteran Supported Trump—Until Trump Deported His Wife”

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
52

Alejandro Juarez is the wife of a military veteran. He served four tours of duty in combat. She has two children born in America. She entered the country illegally twenty years ago. She has no criminal record. The Trump administration deported her to Mexico. That’s the result of the Trump zero-tolerance policy. I listened to her on radio on the day she was deported, leaving her family.

This is an administration that seems to enjoy separating families. There are at least 500 children who were separated from their parents at the border and have not been reunited with them. The Trump administration lost them. They had no system for identifying them and tracking their whereabouts. The administration had the nerve to tell the ACLU, which sued to demand reunification, to take charge of reuniting those the Trump administration had separated. Some of the lost children are babies. They can’t say their names. They are lost. Our great nation orphaned them. Shameful.

“Sgt. Temo Juarez was a Trump guy. An Iraq combat veteran who served as a Marine infantryman and then an Army National Guardsman, his friends called him a “super conservative.” With his wife, he brought up their two daughters in Central Florida. He supported Trump in 2016, eager for a change.

“But now, “I am eating my words,” he told the military newspaper Stars and Stripes in an interview published last week.

“On Friday, Juarez and his family became the latest victims of Trump’s zero-tolerance policy on immigration.

“On that day, his wife, Alejandra, left the country under a deportation order. She had come to the United States from Mexico illegally as a teenager two decades ago and had until now being living undisturbed with Temo, a naturalized U.S. citizen, and daughters, both natural-born Americans. This week, Temo will fly to Mexico with his daughters, 9-year-old Estela and 16-year-old Pamela — and leave his younger daughter there, even though English is her first language. He can’t do his construction job and take care of her in Florida by himself.”

Alejandro was not a criminal. She was not a rapist or a murderer. She is the mother of two American children and the wife of a citizen.

There are 11,000 other military veterans whose families are in jeopardy.

When will this reign of madness end?

Categories Accountability, Shame

Oakland: Charges of Fraud Fly at Gulen-Connected Charter School As Principal Resigns and Leaves the Country

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
49

The Bay Area Technology School, a charter school in Oakland, California, was thrown into chaos and confusion when the principal suddenly resigned and left the country amid a financial investigation.

The school is believed to be part of the Gulen charter network associated with the reclusive imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania, because of the unusual number of Turkish board members.

Just before the end of the last school year, the principal of Oakland’s Bay Area Technology School, Hayri Hatipoglu, suddenly resigned. At least four other senior staff and two of the charter school’s five board members also abruptly quit. As a result, the organization was thrown into chaos. And then Hatipoglu disappeared. According to several sources, he left the country with his family for Australia, where he is a citizen.

Afterwards, the Oakland Unified School District, which is responsible for overseeing the BayTech charter school, opened an investigation. BayTech’s three remaining board members also hired an independent party to carry out their own internal review.

While OUSD and BayTech have both attempted to keep the mini-crisis under wraps, the Express has learned that BayTech’s three remaining board members are accusing Hatipoglu of defrauding the school. They allege that Hatipoglu surreptitiously changed his employment contract to provide himself with three years’ worth of severance pay totaling about $450,000, an unusually large sum for a small school with an annual budget of approximately $3 million. His previous contract provided for only six months of severance pay, a standard in the education sector.

“We believe he changed his contract,” said BayTech board member Fatih Dagdelen in a recent interview. “According to his contract, he’d get paid a six-months salary if he resigned, but all of a sudden his contract said he’d get paid two-and-a-half years further.”

Remaining board members suspect fraud.

In an unusual and unsolicited email to the Express sent on June 28, Hatipoglu wrote that the school’s Turkish board members conspired to punish him for his decision to break ties with a Southern California-based nonprofit. The nonprofit, Accord Institute, happens to be controlled by the followers of a powerful Turkish imam who leads a global Islamic political force called the Gülen movement.

Founded in the 1970s by the religious leader Fethullah Gülen, the Gülen movement is an Islamic-inspired social and political force that globalized as its followers immigrated to Europe, Australia, and the United States. The Turkish government considers the Gülen movement a terrorist organization because its members helped organize the 2016 coup attempt against President Recep Erdogan, and Erdogan has ordered thousands of Gülenists jailed. (The U.S. government, however, does not classify the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization.) Fethullah Gülen currently lives in self-exile in Pennsylvania, but he’s considered one of the most powerful men in Turkish politics. His followers also set up and operate one of the largest chains of charter schools in the U.S. BayTech is one of these schools.

Might I suggest that these events are evidence that public schools that are funded by taxpayers should be subject to public supervision and oversight–not by private and unaccountable boards– and should be staffed by certified teachers and other staff? Charter schools in California operate without any accountability or transparency, which is an open invitation to rob taxpayers.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Gulen Charter Schools, Oakland, Privatization

The Best Quote of the Year

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
7

Do you remember that the 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” warned about the terrible condition of America’s public schools, setting off the frenzy of “reform” that has now fermented into high-stakes testing, privatization, profiteering, closing schools, firing teachers and principals, and enriching testing companies?

Here is a description of the composition of the Commission that wrote the report:

The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. … Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education. It should come as no surprise that a commission dominated by administrators found that the problems of U.S. schools were mainly caused by lazy students and unaccountable teachers. Administrative incompetence was not on the agenda. Nor were poverty, inequality, and racial discrimination.

Perhaps the most famous line in the report was this one:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

A reader of this blog who goes by the tag “Ohio Algebra Teacher” offered a new version of that famous line:

If a foreign country had inflicted upon our public education system what Ed Reform plutocrats and their toadying political sycophants have implemented upon it, we would have considered it an act of war.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Salvatore Babones: The Real Reason that Corporate America, the Right, and Democratic Dupes Have Declared War on Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
13

This is a great article, written in 2015. How could I have missed it!

It was written by Salvator Babones, a professor of sociology at the University of Sydney and the Institute for Policy Studies.

He begins:

When did reform become a dirty word? Thirty years of education reform have brought a barren, test-bound curriculum that stigmatizes students, vilifies teachers, and encourages administrators to commit wholesale fraud in order to hit the testing goals that have been set for them. Strangely, reform has gone from being a progressive cause to being a conservative curse. It used to be that good people pursued reform to make the world a better place, usually by bringing public services under transparent, meritocratic, democratically governed public control. Today, reform more often involves firing people and dismantling public services in the pursuit of private gain. Where did it all go so wrong? Who stole our ever-progressing public sector, and in the process stole one of our most effective words for improving it?

At least so far as education reform is concerned, the answer is clear. The current age of education reform can be traced to the landmark 1983 report A Nation at Risk, subtitled “The Imperative for Educational Reform.” Future dictionaries may mark this report as the turning point when the definition of reform changed from cause to a curse. In 1981 Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell appointed an 18-person commission to look into the state of US schools. He charged the commission with addressing “the widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. No students or recent graduates. No everyday parents. No representatives of parents’ organizations. No social workers, school psychologists, or guidance counselors. No representatives of teacher’s unions (God forbid). Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education.

It should come as no surprise that a commission dominated by administrators found that the problems of U.S. schools were mainly caused by lazy students and unaccountable teachers. Administrative incompetence was not on the agenda. Nor were poverty, inequality, and racial discrimination. A Nation at Risk began from the assumption that our public schools were failing. Of course our public schools were failing. Our public schools are always failing. No investigative panel has ever found that our public schools are succeeding. But if public schools have been failing for so long—if they were already failing in 1983 and have been failing ever since—then very few of us alive today could possibly have had a decent education. So who are we to offer solutions for fixing these failing schools? We are ourselves the products of the very failing schools we propose to fix.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, U.S. education

Ohio: Supreme Court Rules Against ECOT and the Virtual Charter School is DEAD!

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
26

It has taken nearly 20 years, and cost Ohio taxpayers $1 billion or more, but the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) died in court this week.

The owner William Lager became a millionaire many times over, supplying goods and services to his corporation.

The “school” had a high attrition rate and the highest dropout rate of any high school in the nation, but it was protected by politicians who received campaign contributions from Lager. The contributions were piffle compared to Lager’s profits.

After embarrassing stories, the ECOT authorizer withdrew its sponsorship. The state, after years of ignoring the horrible performance of ECOT and its huge profits, eventually got around to auditing it and found many phantom students and asked ECOT for an accounting. ECOT insisted that when students turn on their computer, they were learning even if they didn’t participate in activities.

ECOT attorneys argued that the state illegally changed the rules on how to count students in the middle of a school year, and that state law did not require students to participate in class work in order to be counted for funding purposes.

Perhaps foreshadowing the final decision, as attorney Marion Little’s argued before the court in February that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow should get full funding for students even if they do no work, Chief Justice O’Connor interjected, “How is that not absurd?”

After a long battle in court, the Supreme Court voted 4-2 to support the state in its decision to force ECOT to pay back money for students who never received instruction.

Since opening the school in 2000, Lager went from financial distress to a millionaire, with his for-profit companies, IQ Innovations and Altair Learning Management, collecting about $200 million in state funding for work done on behalf of ECOT. At its peak, the school was graduating more than 2,000 students annually, but also had the highest dropout rate in the state.

Lager and his associates also donated $2.5 million to Ohio politicians and political parties, the vast majority to Republicans, with the ECOT scandal boiling into a major issue ahead of the Nov. 6 election featuring the gubernatorial race between DeWine and Democrat Richard Cordray.

Be it noted that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a huge fan of online charter schools and was an investor in K12 Inc., which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Farewell, ECOT. You won’t be missed. Besides, K12 Inc. and other e-schools are rushing in to Ohio to grab your market share.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Scandal, Virtual Charter Schools
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