Archives for the month of: September, 2018
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Texas: IDEA Charter Chain Plans to Saturate El Paso Region with 20 New Charters

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2018 //
13

The IDEA charter chain has plans to open 20 new charter schools in a part of Texas that doesn’t need them. We have plenty of evidence that charters do not outperform traditional district schools. Instead, they suck out resources and the students they want, weakening the district schools like a parasite.

David Knight and David deMatthews warn the people of El Paso that “choice” is not all that it is cracked up to be.

You will not be surprised to learn that IDEA is funded by the usual billionaire “philanthropists,” who want to disrupt public education and privatize it.

The IDEA charter chain is known for having a high graduation rate, but also known for the large number of its graduates who flunk out of college.

Knight and deMatthews write:

The development of 20 new schools represents a major shift in how educational resources will be distributed across the region. Currently, together the Canutillo Independent School District and the Clint ISD have only 24 schools and the El Paso ISD, the region’s largest school district, has 91 schools.

Adding 20 schools through the region can create significant inefficiencies. Districts like El Paso ISD and Ysleta ISD are currently losing enrollment as most of the region’s population growth exists on the East and West sides of the city. As enrollments decline, school districts lose money and operating schools becomes more expensive. Consequently, superintendents are often compelled to close under-enrolled schools due to cost, despite public outcry.

At the same time, districts like Clint, Canutillo, and Socorro are experiencing continued growth in student enrollments. These districts invest millions to plan and build new facilities. If new charters open in close proximity to newly built facilities, districts may find their state-of-the-art campuses under-enrolled.

IDEA’s growth can also create an undue burden and disrupt natural proportions of students with disabilities enrolled in traditional public schools if they engage in what has been called “creaming” or “cherry-picking” students. According to 2016-17 publicly available data, all IDEA charter schools in Hidalgo, Texas, enroll only 4.8 percent of students with disabilities, while the state average is 8.8 percent.

Importantly, the Texas statewide average is already the lowest in the nation at 8.8 percent. The Texas Education Agency has been investigated by the U.S. Department of Education, which concluded that many Texas schools and districts engaged in practices that delayed and denied special education to eligible students. IDEA’s 4.8 percent identification rate should be especially concerning to all parents, but especially those of children with disabilities.

Both traditional public and charter schools are eligible to receive philanthropic donations. IDEA has received millions of dollars from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The El Paso based Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development has pledged $10 million.

Yeah, both are “eligible to receive philanthropic donations,” but somehow all those big bucks end up in the pockets of the charter operators, not the public schools. The Dells, the Waltons, and the Gates don’t believe in public education. They believe in the marketplace, disruption, and competition. Not for their children, of course.

The authors think that charter schools are “public schools.” No, they are not. They are privately managed corporate schools. Federal courts have ruled that charter schools are “not state actors.” The NLRB has ruled that charter schools are “not state actors.”

Public schools are state actors. Charter schools are not state actors. They are private contractors.

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

John Thompson: Elizabeth Warren in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2018 //
25

John Thompson, historian and teacher (ret.) in Oklahoma, recently attended a rally where Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke.

He reports:

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren returned home to Oklahoma City and inspired a standing-room only crowd to “Remember in November.” Sen. Warren spoke in the high school cafeteria where she used to serve detention. She’d attended middle school next door and been married at the age of 19 in a church a couple of blocks away. But that’s another story …

Warren and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten shared the stage with teachers who are running for office. Warren said, “Teachers … are staging walkouts, occupying statehouses, making their voices heard and they are winning. And right here in Oklahoma they are winning big.”

The Oklahoma Education Association President Alicia Priest also praised Oklahoma’s Teacher Caucus, the nation’s largest, with 56 of the 157 teachers who are running for office across the country this year. Twelve anti-education legislators have already been defeated.

The reasons for the revolt were apparent in the cafeteria. As the Oklahoman reported, part of the room was blocked off where “a couple of buckets collected water from leaking pipes” and “a few blocks away from the high school, a sign in front of Sequoyah Elementary asked motorists to consider donating paper and pencils.”

https://newsok.com/article/5609281/sen.-warren-returns-to-okc-urges-teachers-to-vote

To see photos of Saturday’s rally, click below:

https://newsok.com/gallery/6039025/aft-teacher-rally

Warren had local family members in attendance and she shared childhood stories about the challenges and the ways schools opened the door to the daughter of a maintenance man. She said that Oklahoma schools can prepare kids for almost anything – even becoming a twitter partner with the President!

Most of her family were great singers in the church choir. Because she lacked that talent, the choir director kept telling her to keep her voice down, “Betsy, just a little softer …”

And still, “She Persisted!”

Warren was inspired by a 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Lee:

She said if I worked very hard, I could become a teacher. And the hook was sunk. She had me: a teacher. Her words changed my life. Now, no one in my family had ever graduated college. (…) But when Ms. Lee said, ‘Yes, Ms. Betsy, you can become a teacher,’ I never saw my life the same way.

Elizabeth Warren asks Oklahoma teachers ‘to fight’

Warren began as a classroom teacher instructing special needs children. She also took over a 5th grade Sunday school class which had driven off a series of teachers, leaving the minister desperate. Warren changed the class culture, where little boys would climb out of the windows, by employing the Socratic Method. When discussing the difference between “obligation” as opposed to “charity,” one boy said they were obliged to not put boogers in their brother’s food. The class agreed with another child who said we have an obligation to see that, “Everyone gets a turn.”

Warren tackled the dualities under-laying every other speech and the audience’s concerns when she said, “Teachers are in the opportunity business.” Our people have often found ways to stand up to “concentrated power,” but “that America is slipping away.”

As the futures of our families are undermined by corporate greed, teachers have increasingly been “ground up and spit out.” But neither is that new. As Randi Weingarten recalled, she had been a Wall Street lawyer before teaching in the New York City schools. Even in the 1990s, Weingarten couldn’t believe how teachers had been treated in such an “infantilized” manner. Since then, educators have been dismissed and disparaged even more, while often dealing with “classrooms with 50 kids, 40 desks, and 30 chairs.”

The same themes were further explained by Rep. Mickey Dollens and state senate candidate Carri Hicks. Dollens was an inner city teacher who was laid off due to budget cuts. Hicks recalled the suffering of her 5-year-old student, shot by a stray bullet while sitting in her living room. Hicks said of the teacher revolt, “what we really demand is respect.” And we demand respect not just for ourselves but for students and their families.

Hicks noted that at a time when Oklahoma should be enjoying widespread prosperity, one of our counties, Stillwell, was just identified as having the lowest life expectancy in the nation, (with two others having life expectancies below 60 years, placing them in the nation’s bottom ten.) Hicks explained, “What most people don’t understand about teaching is we don’t just teach a subject or a classroom, we are the front line of defense for every one of our students in our classrooms.”

https://newsok.com/article/5609079/life-is-short-in-some-oklahoma-communities?earlyAccess=true

My wife said she had never seen anything as inspiring as the rally. She’d never seen anyone speak as powerfully as Elizabeth Warren, or do so in such a genuine, sincere, and warm manner.

I agree. Being a former teacher, I was also struck by the unity demonstrated by educators who had long tried to keep their heads down, shut their doors, and do their own jobs as best as they could. I saw what AFT/OK support staff President David Gray described. Gray said that teachers have fought back against the “testing fixation,” and the “culture of blaming teachers.” We are now resisting Betsy DeVos and the Janus anti-union decision. We have reasons for confidence, but as my good friend Mickey Dollens says, “We’re 45 days away, it is imperative that we continue to push forward and see it through.”

I was also struck by the number of local teacher candidates in the room who I’d never met. I’ve been collecting numerous stories of teacher/candidates, and the rally let me hear plenty more.

Elizabeth Warren began the afternoon by privately offering advice to numerous candidates. She concluded her call for justice with the words:

“This government fails our children, fails our teachers and fails our futures. But mark my words: tick-tock, tick-tock. Come November 6 we are going to make some big changes in this country.”

Categories Education Reform, Oklahoma, Politics, Teachers

Washington Post on Kavanaugh: “What Goes Around Comes Around”

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2018 //
131

In a column by Post opinion writer Helaine Olen, she points out the “staggering hypocrisy” of Brett Kavanaugh.

He has said he doesn’t want to answer questions about his personal life, yet when he worked on the investigation of Bill Clinton, he zealously pursued prurient details about the relationship between Clinton and Lewinsky.

“Kavanaugh was not only a part of special counsel Ken Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky; he was also one of the lead Torquemadas of it — zealous in the pursuit of his goal to the point of cruelty. If Kavanaugh’s nomination survives till Thursday’s scheduled Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, at least one senator should ask him why he thought it was so necessary to ask Clinton such graphic questions about Lewinsky.

“Let me be clear: Kavanaugh not only thought Clinton needed to be questioned about his relations with Lewinsky; he also wanted Clinton to be interrogated in the most detailed and specific way possible. He drew up a memo with a series of 10 sexually explicit questions about Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky. He claimed he wanted to establish Clinton had no defense for his “pattern of behavior.” As a result, “[the] idea of going easy on him at the questioning is thus abhorrent to me,” Kavanaugh wrote in the summer of 1998.

“To say that the questions Kavanaugh came up with for Clinton were prurient doesn’t do justice to the gross invasiveness and detail he sought. These queries are of the sort that are even now uncomfortable to write out and list in a family newspaper, or discuss in mixed company. Sexual proclivities? “If Monica Lewinsky says you inserted a cigar into her vagina while you were in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?” and “If Monica Lewinsky says that you masturbated into a trashcan in your secretary’s office, would she [be] lying?”

“Starr’s team never asked such questions to Clinton in as specific a way as Kavanaugh drew up. Despite that, they remained, as Clinton put it at the time, “questions no American citizen would ever want to answer.” Those American citizens now apparently include Kavanaugh, who would rather not address his sexual past and apparently believes we should all honor that request.

“Please. The allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford and now Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate Ramirez do not, like Lewinsky and Clinton, involve two consenting adults. They are, instead, accusations of serious, nonconsensual sexual misconduct. They raise questions much more legitimate than the questions Kavanaugh would have had Clinton answer. They indicate, to use Kavanaugh’s own words, a possible “pattern of behavior.”

“Republican pols have long operated under a wildly generous the “do as I say, not as I do” standard, even as they castigate Democratic rivals for the tiniest infraction. When it comes to living up to the standards they would impose on others, Republicans escaped that accountability for so long that they appear blindsided when called to explain their actions. That Kavanaugh was pursuing Clinton and Lewinsky to a point of humiliation, while there was potentially much worse behavior in his own past, simply adds to gross hypocrisy on display.”

Categories Education Reform

Will Bunch: Can a Woman Control Her Own Body and Her Own Narrative?

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2018 //
45

This week, we will witness the spectacle of a panel of grumpy old men listen with disdain and disgust to a female professor who will testify about an assault on her body by a potential Supreme Court Justice. The grumpy old men have made their minds up. Their ears and minds are closed. Many of them sat in judgement in the Anita Hill testimony in 1991 and rejected her graphic description of crude, vulgar, completely inappropriate behavior. Despite her credibility, these men confirmed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer explains the importance of this moment.

“The immediate stakes of the drama that has played out over this weekend — whether Dr. Blasey will tell her story alleging a sexual assault by a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee who could bring a conservative jurisprudence for the next generation, and whether that will torpedo his Senate confirmation — are so high that it’s easy to lose sight of the much bigger cultural moment that’s taking place here.

“This is a cultural and psychological battle that’s taking place — about what kind of society America wants to be in the 21st century and beyond. Sure, Republican senators like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — so determined to ram through Kavanaugh before he’s even heard one word of this woman’s story, with their initial demands that Dr. Blasey testify only on their terms, at a date, time and place of their choosing — are executing a short-term and shortsighted political strategy. But more and more people, especially women, are seeing things for what they really are: An ancient patriarchy clinging to what it’s always done in the past: Control the narratives of women.

“Except there’s good reason to believe that this time the creaky old gears of the patriarchy machine are finally breaking down, that Dr. Blasey will tell her story on her terms, on her chosen date, and with millions of women watching her back. Men are terrified…

“The more we learn about Dr. Blasey, the more she comes across as a credible, compelling woman with a story that America needs to hear. We already knew that she told her account of the assault to her therapist and her husband earlier in this decade, that she named Kavanaugh as her attacker and that she told other friends in 2017 before Trump named the judge as his SCOTUS pick. She was willing to take a lie-detector test (not admissible as evidence, but she passed) and she also wants an investigation by the FBI, which is known to criminally charge people who don’t tell them the truth. From an excellent profile in the Washington Post and other news accounts, we’ve since found out that whatever happened in that suburban bedroom 36 years ago, Dr. Blasey was so traumatized that she insisted that her bedroom have a second exit, and that she even considered leaving the United States upon learning that Trump had Kavanaugh on his short list of picks for the High Court.

“It’s the other side, the Kavanaugh side, that has played prevent defense, in a full-blown cover-up mode from Day One. It’s Team Kavanaugh, with the full backing of the Trump White House, that has thwarted an FBI probe that could get to the bottom of the allegations and which had always before this been standard operating procedure, including in the infamous Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas showdown of 1991. That’s in keeping with a process in which a record number of documents have been hidden from the public, with a Republican Senate accelerating everything to 110 mph after slamming the brakes for a whole year on then-President Barack Obama’s failed court pick, Judge Merrick Garland.
What was the real reason for this confirmation process on steroids? Why such an effort to spin Kavanaugh from Day One as “America’s carpool dad” and trusted coach of 15-year-old girls’ basketball players? How could Team Kavanaugh round up 65 female contemporaries from the judge’s younger days to vouch for him in a matter of hours after Dr. Blasey’s allegation dropped?

“What exactly did they think was coming down the pike for a judge who joined both a fraternity and a private club at Yale known for their heavy boozing and skirt-chasing, continued bragging about his wild, partying law school days well into adulthood, and was said by the well-known Yale law professor to prefer female law clerks who had “a certain look,” like a model?…”

Read the rest of this excellent reflection.

Bunch says these old men are trying to shut up Dr. Blasey. They have announced that they don’t care what she says.

Like putting their hands over her mouth.

Categories Accountability

Mira Debs: How Jeff Bezos Should Spend His $2 Billion in Philanthropy

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2018 //
17

Mira Debs, Executive Director of the Yale Education Studies Program, thinks Jeff Bezos should use his riches to help existing, top-quality Montessori programs instead of starting his own schools. He got off to a bad start by saying that “the child is the customer.” Ugh! Children are children, not customers!

She writes:


Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post, surprised the education world when he announced this month that he was donating $2 billion to support homeless families and create a network of free Montessori-inspired preschools.

It’s a compelling demonstration of the power of quality early childhood education that Mr. Bezos may have been inspired by a Montessori program he attended for a year and a half in the 1960s.

At face value, the donation is a much needed investment in early childhood education that could potentially help fill the child-care gap for many low-income families. In his announcement, Mr. Bezos highlighted his desire to find and spread the “good in the world.” But his plan to create new organizations, however worthy, would duplicate the efforts of grass-roots programs in need of a serious cash infusion.

Mr. Bezos should be congratulated for moving beyond the small circle of urban charter schools favored by other philanthropists. Many of these charter schools have been criticized for their rigid discipline. In contrast, Montessori classrooms focus on developing children’s independence and self-control, delivering academic results along the way. Recent research by Angelene Lillard of the University of Virginia and colleagues found that children from lower-income families who won a lottery spot in a public Montessori program were more likely to catch up to their wealthier peers than children who did not get a spot and attended programs elsewhere.

Mr. Bezos could follow in the footsteps of Roslyn Williams, a Montessori educator who founded the Central Harlem Association of Montessori Parents in 1967 to create integrated Montessori preschools in New York. Ms. Williams argued that Montessori education should go from being the “the rich child’s right” to “the poor child’s opportunity.”

Yet Mr. Bezos’s aim of creating his own network to run these preschools puts him in danger of falling into the trap of the “charitable-industrial complex,” following tech colleagues like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates who have poured large sums of money into top-down educational strategies: saving Newark’s schools and improving teaching, gifts that have been shown to have a limited impact.

In this case, it’s not that families from underserved communities don’t want Montessori preschools, it’s that they have been creating them for a long time. Over the last four years, I’ve been doing research on public Montessori schools, and I helped start a public Montessori school in New Haven and a grass-roots network of Montessori educators. I learned that even though Montessori has a reputation for being a private, elite form of schooling, there is a long history of educators who have worked to make Montessori accessible to children from low-income backgrounds.

In Washington, Detroit, Dallas and other cities, there is a growing momentum to expand public Montessori programs. Today, 511 public Montessori programs have approximately 125,000 children ages 3 to 18 around the country, more than half of them students of color.

Instead of creating his own network, Mr. Bezos should consider funding schools that are already doing the work he admires. Consider the 50 public Montessori programs in Puerto Rico created by Ana María García Blanco beginning in 1990, programs that are now at risk of closing because of school reorganization efforts after Hurricane Maria. Public Montessori programs could use a fund to train teachers, buy materials and build buildings. Groups like Embracing Equity, City Garden Montessori and the Indigenous Montessori Institute are working to develop anti-bias, anti-racist curriculums and diversify the pool of Montessori teachers.

Rather than considering the children of these future schools his “customers,” albeit tuition-free customers, Mr. Bezos could orient himself toward viewing the underserved as his collaborators. Families have been organizing to create Montessori and other preschools for their children for a long time. A truly revolutionary philanthropic fund would not create a separate network, but seek out the schools, the community centers, the storefront start-ups and the other dreams in waiting.

Mira Debs (@mira_debs) is the executive director of the Yale Education Studies program, a lecturer in sociology and the author of the forthcoming book, “Diverse Families, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori in an Era of School Choice.”

Categories Billionaires, Early Childhood Education

Arizona: Outgoing State Chief Wants to Adopt Far-Right Christian Standards to Replace State Standards

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2018 //
15

Hillsdale is one of the most conservative colleges in the United States. It is one of the very few in the nation that refuses to accept any federal funding, not even for student aid. Betsy DeVos’s brother Erik Prince went to Hillsdale College.

Diane Douglas, the far-right extremist who is currently state superintendent of schools in Arizona, wants to replace the state’s academic standards with a set of standards developed by Hillsdale College.

Douglas came in third in a five-way Republican primary for state superintendent just weeks ago. The winner of the Republican primary was Frank Riggs, who was a Congressman in California and a major supporter of charter schools. The Democratic nominee is Kathy Hoffman, a teacher in Arizona. She is a speech therapist, age 32, who has worked in Arizona public schools for five years. If Riggs is elected, Arizona can expect more charter schools with no accountability or transparency. If Hoffman is elected, it will be a new day for education in Arizona.

This is Diane Douglas’s last effort to inject her Christian worldview into the curriculum in Arizona:

Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas wants to replace Arizona’s academic standards with a set linked to a conservative college in Michigan with connections to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

Douglas is on her way out of office in January. She lost her bid for re-election in the Republican primary to Frank Riggs.

At Monday’s State Board of Education meeting, Douglas is scheduled to present a draft of standards developed by Hillsdale College’s charter school initiative. Hillsdale is a private, Christian college.

Standards are set by the state Board of Education, typically with input from local parents and educators, and guide what public district and charter school students are expected to learn at each grade level.

“(Douglas) believes they’re more robust than the ones that have been developed locally,” Michael Bradley, Douglas’ chief of staff, said.

Connections to Trump, Devos

The Hillsdale set, referred to as the “Barney Charter School Initiative’s Scope and Sequence,” would replace all Arizona academic standards. No other state appears to adhere to the Hillsdale standards. The Barney Charter School Initiative is a project out of Hillsdale that advances the founding of charter schools.

Hillsdale President Larry Arnn is a supporter of President Donald Trump, according to Politico. In 2013, Arnn drew criticism after, in comments to Michigan lawmakers, he said state officials visited Hillsdale’s campus to determine whether enough “dark ones” were enrolled.

Last year, U.S. Senate Democrats blocked a tax break they said was designed exclusively to benefit Hillsdale.

The DeVos family donates to Hillsdale, where the education secretary’s brother, Erik Prince, is an alumnus. Its student body has been designated the second-most conservative in the country, after the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas.

What are academic standards?

Academic standards are the state goals for what a child should know by the end of each grade level.

The state last changed its K-12 math and reading standards in 2016. It is currently revising its science, history and computer science standards.

The revision process is lengthy. The state board initiated the cumbersome process of revising its science and history standards nearly two years ago, according to Cassie O’Quin, an education department spokeswoman.

The Arizona Department of Education brought together experts, teachers, community members and parents to help develop the standards.

On Monday, the department will present the proposed standards. They are expected to be adopted by the state board in October, according to a state timeline.

Douglas’ move to throw out both the existing and the proposed new standards in lieu of an entirely new — and largely obscure — set of standards has puzzled some.

“I’m not sure why she’s doing this,” Carole Basile, dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, said. “It’s kind of like, why these as the standards and why now?”

The Hillsdale standards include numerous differences from those currently in place. They also provide teachers week-by-week lesson prescriptions.

For instance, one of the first references to slavery in the Hillsdale standards is under a second grade Civil War section in a bullet point that reads, “controversy over slavery.” Slavery is first mentioned in the Arizona history standards draft in the fourth grade section.

There are more references to Christianity in the Hillsdale standards than in Arizona’s draft standards. Judaism and Christianity in the sixth grade Hillsdale plan are framed as “lasting ideas from ancient civilization.” One of the bullet points implies an exploration of “the nature of God and humanity” and under Judaism, “the idea of a ‘covenant’ between God and man…”

Bradley said the superintendent looked at standards across the country before settling on the Hillsdale set. He denied the accusations that the Hillsdale set are a curriculum rather than standards…

The move by Douglas drew criticism from Democratic superintendent candidate Kathy Hoffman, who on Facebook encouraged supporters to attend the meeting and protest Douglas’ presentation.

The standards, if adopted, she wrote, “Would be devastating to our students as they represent minimal learning requirements, do not account for different learning styles and would require a new curriculum. Furthermore, it would undermine the countless hours of work put in by teachers and experts.”

The state is at the tail end of reviewing its science standards.

In May, a draft of those proposed standards was circulated that had removed evolution wording.

The American Institute of Biological Scientists, a D.C.-based non-profit dedicated to the biological research advancement, published a letter Sept. 20 asking the State Board of Education to reject the proposed science standards.

Douglas tapped creationist Joseph Kezele, president of Arizona Origin Science Association, to assist in changing Arizona’s science standards in August, as first reported by the Phoenix New Times. The move ushered in a deluge of national criticism.

The Arizona Science Teachers Association, comprised of 1,200 members, criticized the draft science standards in a letter to the state board dated Sept. 20.

The changes in May include removing the word “evolution” in some areas and describing it as a “theory” in others.

In an email to The Republic in May, Douglas wrote, “Evolution is still a standard that will be taught under the Arizona Science Standards.”

A rally against those changes is planned outside the Arizona Department of Education building near the State Capitol before Monday’s board meeting. The Secular Coalition of Arizona is organizing the rally, along with other education advocates.

“It’s almost like a circus, what’s happening now,” Tory Roberg, director of government affairs for the Secular Coalition, said. “These are our children.”

Branch said the decision of an internal review board to revise references to the origin of species through natural selection seemed especially “deliberate” and “problematic” to scientists.

“The whole idea of how a new species can originate was lost in that revision,” he said. “That wasn’t careless. What (creationists) don’t like is the origin of a new species, because it implies that human beings share a common ancestry with other living things.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, History, Science

Angie Sullivan: We Want Magnets, Not Charters!

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2018 //
17

Angie Sullivan teaches first grade in a Title 1 school in Clark County (Las Vegas) with large numbers of English learners.

She sends her missives to legislators and journalists in Nevada.

ASD is the all-charter district modeled on Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District. A complete and total failure that Nevada copies.

Angie writes:


We want MAGNETS – not disfunctional white flight charters.

Get away ASD.

__________________

ASD Rebecca holds her annual school grab.

She does not know what she is doing. Do not allow her or Jana to take your school.

Parents may have say in future of Clark County’s failing schools

Parents in Vegas can convert their neighborhood public school into a charter? And that has worked where?

Every successful white person Vegas charter – is sitting next to a successful white person public school. All in white neighborhoods full of five star “choices”. Successful Nevada charters are white. They support segregation and white flight.

The place folks need a real choice – charters do not work.

Get ready Vegas Parents to fight for your school. Our community will not be served by white folks in a white charters. Nor they will be served by young white folks imported into Nevada to do the takeover job.

For profit charters and corporate takeover is a scam.

Non-profit ASD is defunct. Futuro stinks. Agassi stinks. Do not go into that crap. ASD is now the worst district in Nevada. It used to be Nevada Charters were the lowest performers but now it is this new piece of garbage with 100% failure.

Where is the ASD data?

Is the ASD built to hide data?

Everyone involved needs to demand accountability for this new disfunction NVDOE is using to grab schools.

_______________________________

We want MAGNETS – not disfunctional white flight charters.

Get away ASD.

_______________________________

Look at the list closely attached to the bottom of this file.

Keep in mind that Vegas has 349 schools. 39 are struggling – they seem to all be in minority impoverished areas of town. Most serve language learners who research has shown need several years to learn academic English. Not difficult to figure out how to fix a money and support problem. Those schools need money and support. Lower class sizes and supplies.

NVDOE and the ASD will try to grab CCSD schools.

They do not know our students.

They do not love our students.

They will not serve our students.

They will grab schools listed because parents will not be informed.

Spread the word – no to ASD charters.

If they want to give a school money to improve – with research based best practice – great.

Turning any Vegas school into a charter is a scam.

If ASD Rebecca wants to come into your school and show a crappy charter video – tell her to hit the road.

We already know how to read a science book to kids or plug students into the computer. That is not teaching or effective.

Privatization is not education.

___________

We want MAGNETS – not disfunctional white flight charters.

Get away ASD.

__________________

Every year I get angry that our community is targeted while the rest of the state flounders. NVDOE – do your job. You have plenty to grab. Go to these white areas and get it done.

Look at Elko. 100% of its schools are in severe failure. What is happening there? Those schools are along the Carlin Trend and heavily susidized by mining proceeds in a primarily white English speaking area. What is going on?

Look at Washoe which has pages on that list. A heavy heavy percentage of those schools are struggling – with more per pupil than Vegas. And again largely English speaking and middle class areas. What is going on?

Rural Nevada is sinking. When a school fails in a small town – it may be the only school in town. Better address those first. Charter “competition” kills the public schools and does not help small towns. It leaves expensive and hard to educate special education students in public schools and allows “choice” to everyone else.

Again the NV Charter schools are sinking. These schools serve white flight families. They are failing. Severely. That data which at least includes more of their 80+ campuses – is bad – extremely bad considering there are 24 charters and a large chunk are the lowest performers – again. Every year. Again.

It is not Vegas that is the high priority problem.

Folks who are brown do not want to be a target.

This has to stop.

Did not work in New Orleans.

Did not work in Tennessee.

Is not working in Nevada.

How many students have to be hurt to stop this ASD madness?

________________

We want MAGNETS – not disfunctional white flight charters.

Get away ASD.

The Teacher,

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Inequity, Injustice, Nevada, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: CONFIRMED! The Complete and Total Failure of the Tennessee Achievement School District at a Cost of $100 Million

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2018 //
21

Gary Rubinstein reports that the latest Tennessee school rankings were just released. Now we know. The Tennessee Achievement School District was a complete and total failure. $100 million down the drain, which came from Race to the Top funding. The same money might have been used to reduce class sizes in these schools. Instead, it was used to induce charter operators to come to Tennessee and work their magic. It failed.

Would someone tell Bill Gates, John Arnold, Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, and the other billionaires who are still spreading the phony claim of charter miracles?

Spread the word to states like Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina, which created their own “achievement school districts” based on the Tennessee model.

Seven years ago, as part of Tennessee’s Race To The Top plan, they launched The Achievement School District (ASD). With a price tag of over $100 million, their mission was to take schools that were in the bottom 5% of schools and, within five years, raise them into the top 25%.

They started with six schools and three years into the experiment, Chris Barbic, the superintendent of the ASD had a ‘mission accomplished’ moment where he declared in an interview that three of those six schools were on track to meet that goal.

But a year later, the gains that led to that prediction had disappeared and it wasn’t looking good for any of those six schools. By the time the five year mark had been reached, in the Fall of 2016, Chris Barbic had already resigned and taken a job with the John Arnold Foundation.

The thing about 2016, though, is that whether or not the ASD schools met the lofty goal could not be determined, officially. Tennessee releases their official ‘priority’ list of the bottom 5% schools every three years. And, conveniently enough, the last one was in 2015. So even though it was clear in 2016 that the original 6 ASD schools would not be in the top 25%, an even more important question — how many of those schools remained in the bottom 5%? — would not be known officially for two more years, in the Fall of 2018.

A few days ago, Tennessee finally released the long-awaited 2018 priority schools list, and for the ASD, the results were decisive and devastating.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Race to the Top, Tennessee

The Business of Charter Schools: Real Estate!!!!

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2018 //
20

Charter operators don’t get rich on tuition, although many have a business model that relies on cost-cutting, low-wage teachers, TFA, and replacing human teachers with technology. Those wonderful computers don’t expect health or pensions. When they break, you can repair them or discard them.

The big bucks are in real estate!

ESJ properties
https://therealdeal.com/miami/2018/08/04/aventura-firm-makes-45m-addition-to-its-portfolio-of-school-properties/

It is traded as EPR properties (Entertainment properties in the graph you show

Investing in Enduring Experiences

And they also own the BASIS schools.
https://insightcenter.eprkc.com/basis-schools/

In Arizona, if the school goes under, they get to keep the property, even though the taxpayers have paid for it.

And look at this
https://insightcenter.eprkc.com/education/

This is what is known as “legal graft.”

It is a theft of public assets.

In plain sight.

The bond industry issued warnings against charter schools, because they endanger the financial ratings of school districts and cities.

Mercedes Schneider: Municipal Analysts Call for Charter Financial Transparency

Municipal Analysts Ask Whether Charter Schools Make the Grade

Moody’s: Charters Pose Serious Risk to Struggling Cities

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

The Business of Charter Schools: A $45 Million Charter Deal

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2018 //
28

Long, long ago, almost everyone went to the neighborhood public school. The school had a principal, who was overseen by the superintendent. The superintendent answered to a local school board. Those were not idyllic times, to be sure, but no one ever imagined that there was profit to be found in the public schools, or that the public schools would one day be part of “the education industry.” All that is changed now. There are still neighborhood public schools, but now there is an industry that relies on entrepreneurs and market forces. You don’t have to be an educator to manage or operate or start a charter school (think tennis star Andre Agassi or football hero Deion Sanders). There are tax breaks for investors in charter schools. Charter school properties are bought and sold, like franchises or just ordinary real estate. They have no organic connection to the local community. The profit for entrepreneurs is to be found in the real estate transactions.

A recent real estate deal brought this change into focus. There is a buyer and a seller; there are investors. There is return on investment. The world has changed. The charter industry has profits and losses. They open and close. It is not about education. It is a business.

school

[more intro]

A $45 million charter deal suggests profits on the horizon

by Tom Chorneau
Graduation mortar board cap on one hundred dollar bills concept
August 09, 2018(Fla.) A private real estate fund, which boasts of pioneering big money investments in charter school properties, announced this week a $45 million deal to buy four schools in three states.

ESJ Capital Partners, based in the Miami area, added the schools to a portfolio that includes a number of more traditional investments, including apartment buildings, medical offices and tourist attractions.

But the firm also owns 28 charter school properties that they say are valued at more than $650 million.

The firm promises to “provide optimum returns for our investors through disciplined procedures, selective investment criteria and structured processes,” according to their website.

Although for-profit investment in charter schools accounts for only a small slice of the movement nationally, there are examples of commercial enterprise within the system.

In some instances, a lender might be able to take advantage of a tax break because of their investment in a school that is located in an economically challenged neighborhood. In other cases, an investor might be interested in the consistent, government-back rent that charters can pay.

There is probably far more invested by a handful  of very wealthy patrons of charters, who view the movement has providing a much needed competition to traditional public schools.

Whether driven by profits or politics, the growing availability of financial support for charters is much needed, supporters say.

In comparison to traditional public schools, charters have much more difficulty borrowing money. The banking community has traditionally viewed charters operators has carrying far more risk of insolvency than traditional public schools.

Charters in most states must also pay for school improvements or new construction out of operating budgets.

A number of big philanthropic organizations have stepped in to improve the fiscal landscape for charter facilities.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has been very active in the Los Angeles area, as has the Gates Foundation in Washington State.

Earlier this year, the Walton Family Foundation—led by the heirs of Walmart founder—announced the creation of two nonprofit entities to help finance the cost of building and maintaining new charter schools. Combined, the investment from the foundation is expected to be close to $300 million.

But there apparently is also money to be made too.

In 2016, ESJ sold five Florida charter schools for $72 million to Charter School Capital, a financial services company specializing in charter schools. The partners did provide the purchase price of the schools.

The partnership’s latest acquisition are schools located in in the Phoenix area, Washington D.C. and Toledo, Ohio.

All of them are operated by Virginia-based, Imagine Schools.

ESJ reportedly has $100 million invested in properties operated by Imagine Schools.

“The Imagine campuses that we just acquired have been open over 13 years and are thriving financially and academically, with consistent high enrollment,” Matthew Fuller, chief investment officer of ESJ, said in a statement.

According to a release from the partnership in announcing the 2016 transaction, ESJ was one of the first investment groups nationally to see the potential in charter schools.

“At the height of the Great Recession, ESJ identified a niche in developing charter schools as an alternative to their traditional commercial investments,” the release said. “The real estate asset management group predicted this asset type would evolve and scale into a mainstream, single tenant investment category, attracting more institutional investors, lenders and bondholders.”

…read more

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization
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