Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced math and physics, has been reporting on the aggressive plans and spectacular failures of the Destroy Public Education Movement.
In this post, he details the explosion of funding to increase privatization of public assets in Texas, most notably carried out by the IDEA charter chain.
He begins:
“First it was KIPP, then it was YES Prep and now IDEA has become the point of the destroy public education (DPE) spear in Texas. KIPP flourished because GAP founders Don and Doris Fisher gave them big money. YES Prep so excited Oprah that she presented them with a million dollar check during a TV interview. Now, John Arnold has given IDEA $10 million to expand into Houston and the El Paso based Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development has pledged another $10 million for IDEA to expand into El Paso.
“The oddest DPE inspired plan of all comes from Austin, Texas. In 2016, the Austin American Statesman reported that the relatively small KLE foundation is committing $16 million to IDEA. Odd because that represents more than half of the foundation’s assets and is 20 times greater than any previous grant. The Statesman article says, “The financial gift … will more than double IDEA Austin’s previous expansion plans by 2022, and the charter school says the donation will help it boost enrollment to 20,000 students, more than 12 times as many as it has now.”
“A recent article in the Santa Fe New Mexican says about the IDEA growth initiative, “Those plans include expanding to 173 pre-K, elementary, middle and high schools from Texas to Louisiana and Florida by 2022 — a goal of serving 100,000 students compared to 35,595 today.”
“YES Prep, KIPP and IDEA have many similarities. All three charter school systems were started by Teach for America (TFA) alums. None of the founders had more than three years experience teaching, nor did they have any education training other than a five week TFA summer course. It is perplexing when industry leaders like Walton, Fisher, Broad and Gates lavish inexperienced and untrained school founders with millions of dollars.”
The IDEA chain won $29 Million from Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top.
Ultican reviews the research about IDEA, which features boasting, high attrition rates, and careful selection of students.
He details the finances of the IDEA chain, which includes a bevy of high-paid executives and a staggering asset value.
He writes:
“At the end of 2016, IDEA’s asset value climbed to $680,172,540 and their year’s income was $332,775,059.”
This is big business. It has mastered the art of gaming the system. It is leading the march to Destroy Public Education in Texas.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Donations are usually one shot and then the donations dry up.
Used like this, they become the same as a government subsidy better known as corporate welfare. The movement to destroy Everything Public is using the public’s money to destroy the public. That includes the public’s social safety net.
This is like that snowball rolling downhill. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger until it hits the bottom of the hill and crushes everything.
As long as the government keeps providing the wealthy with tax avoidance strategies and credits to undermine public education, they will continue to use their cash this way. They can continue to make charitable donations in order to accrue more tax benefits under our current tax law even after the schools are established. Moskowitz in New York sits on a mountain of donations from billionaires eager to lower their taxes.
This blog had a story on the public bond holders suing over the loss of public dollars in public schools that diminished the return on bonds. Maybe it is time for taxpayers to sue over the loss of valuation of their public asset due to charter drain. They should see if they can sue states or the feds for the tax avoidance they are offering the 1% to set up a parallel system that devalues the community based public system. I may not be explaining myself too well here, but I am trying to look at the impact of the economics at play. Nobody is looking out for the working families; our government works for the 1% most of the time. Corporations and billionaires are getting a great deal, and they will never stop expanding unless they have to stop. Why should communities keep accepting being kicked around by the 1%? What I know is that an investment in public schools is an investment in the local community. Sending public money to corporations enriches them while diminishing the community asset.
The public has little representation for where its taxes go, but the 0.1-percent has a lot of elected minions representing them as a return for their massive investments in elections.
It sounds to me like the same situation in the American colonies that rebelled against King George and the British Empire over taxation without representation.
But in this case, who is the King George of America’s wealthiest 0.1-percent: the Walton family, Charles Koch since his twin brother David is retired and fighting pancreatic cancer, Bill Gates, or even Jeff Bezos?
This is the actual ed reform political pitch to the public:
“Now a new study has come out looking at this exact issue in Massachusetts. And the researchers found that between 2011 and 2015, charter school expansion did not negatively impact traditional schools in Massachusetts (and may have had a small positive effect).”
They want us to hire them in government and policy and this is what they offer public school families and supporters- they will not actively harm public schools.
We’re supposed to thank them for this, and also elect them and hire them and pay them.
They offer absolutely nothing of value to public schools, and they think this is a selling point. We should pass their laws, elect their lawmakers, hire them to run school systems and this is the BEST they can offer- no direct harm to public school students.
Am I crazy to think I should instead hire people who actually support and contribute something of value to public schools? I could do that, instead of accepting this lousy offer of “we PROBABLY will not harm your students”, right?
https://relinquishment.org/2018/09/26/does-research-matter/
The opening one-sentence paragraph was a gag point enough, so I didn’t read “Does Research Matter?” past that point.
“A common critique of public charter schools is that they hurt traditional schools.”
The attempted subliminal messaging in this statement is quite obvious.
Instead, how about:
“A common critique of charter schools is that they hurt public schools.”
I bet they are basing that “no direct harm” on test scores. I am wondering about loss of programming and staff as well as the effect on class sizes.
I can’t imagine what kind of an echo chamber you’d have to exist in to think you could offer absolutely nothing of value to 85% of students and families yet still believe you should be running city or state education systems or the US Department of Education.
It’s not even “not offer”. It’s “no inkling that they might have to offer” anything to anyone other than charter and voucher students. Public school families don’t exist in this world.
I guess the assumption is we’re all “trapped” in our “government schools” and because ed reformers believe existing public schools have no value, public school families must also believe that.
25 years ago when people ran for office on public education they said they would support or improve public schools.
Now we get “we’re pretty confident we will not actually harm your existing schools- no guarantees- but we have some studies that indicate our policies will not harm public school students”
This is the sales pitch- the affirmative case they’re making on why they should run US public education.
Ed reforms best offer- “Hire us! We won’t deliberately ruin your kids public school- perhaps inadvertently, but certainly not deliberately”
Did you mean run or ruin?
We know Bill Gates is desperate. His favorite book of all time is “Enlightenment Now”.
The book is optimistic. The author chooses to portray the world today as the best of times because safety has advanced and the time to perform household tasks has been reduced freeing up people to have hobbies —or enter the workforce. (Business Insider).
The book has no damning evidence about how the 400 wealthiest people have more wealth than 64% of the U.S. population combined.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,ha… Haven’t you noticed all those people holding down multiple jobs feeling freed to pursue hobbies? Heck, even those of us lucky enough to manage on one paycheck aren’t dancing in the streets. Does the Business Insider ever write about the average worker?
I agree with your first two sentences, speduktr.
In the articles I’ve read from Business Insider, those that have potential for subjectivity, the writers accurately highlighted the excesses of the wealthy which promoted good journalism. Business Insider’s coverage of Rand’s conclusion about the failure of Gates’ education spending was well done.
May that statistic (about the few owning all the money) be thrown back at him at every turn: he is no heartfelt philanthropist, he is nothing more than a greedy man loving the power that this blind accumulation of wealth brings to him
The underpinning for a Sept. education report from the Center for American Progress (or as I refer to them, Contempt for the American People) was a paper by Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Brown Center. The claim in his paper was repeated in a paper by Chingos, who is all of the following, an Education Next executive editor, a recipient of a large grant from Arnold, and an employee of the Urban Institute which is funded by Gates, Arnold and anti-Social Security, Pete Peterson.
Chester Finn (his unlikely path to prominence is the subject of research that the Deutsch blog referenced this summer) wrote an article for the Fordham Institute which is posted at its site (July 18, 2018). Finn expressed his lament about the exit of Whitehurst from the Brown Center. Finn’s argument in favor of Whitehurst focuses on Finn’s unhappiness with the recent Brookings annual report on American education. My conclusion, Finn’s post writes the conservative argument against an active democracy.
At Brookings, the ratio of male “experts” to those who are female is 3 to 1.
Education is a field dominated by women, but policy is male privilege.
I have the distinction of having been fired by Grover (Russ) Whitehurst from my unpaid position as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution because I was “inactive.” It happened the very day in 2012 when my scathing critique of Mitt Romney’s Education plan appeared in the New York Review of Books. Whitehurst was an advisor to Romney.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/06/05/miseducation-mitt-romney/
Indeed, being fired by Whitehurst is an honor. Brookings’ male privilege is apparent in the ratio 3 to 1. In light of Finn’s article, every Whitehurst paper in the Brookings archive should be reviewed for bias and if the research appears tailored to serve an agenda, it should be removed from the archive.
According to Texas Education Agency data, IDEA’s “magic success formula” involves higher class sizes, lower teacher experience, higher teacher turnover and high number of teachers without degrees – because the ACT scores are marginal and student success in higher education is below average. It reminds me of the Dallas Cowboys – the most valuable sports franchise in the world that has not won a meaningful game in 21 years.
Class Size – Grade 3: 29.1
Avg. Teacher Exp: 2.2 Years
Teacher Turnover Rate: 23.4%
Teachers – No Degrees: 9.8%
Graduates – 2016: 502
At Risk Students: 50.7% (Houston ISD is 67.5%)
Average ACT Score – 2016: 20.3 (Houston ISD was 21.1)
Graduates with less than 2.5 GPA – First Year of College: 53.8
3 Campuses were rated “D” or “F”