Archives for the month of: January, 2019
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Reed Hastings Should Watch “Orange Is the New Black”

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2019 //
50

I don’t like Reed Hastings. I don’t like that he hates public schools and wants to turn every one of them over to a private corporation. I would never subscribe to Netflix, because it would put money into his overflowing bank account. He is a billionaire.

However I do not live alone and the other adult member of my family subscribed to Netflix despite my protestations.

Then she started watching shows with language I found very offensive. And then, much against my will, I became addicted to that show, called ”Orange is the New Black.” I warn you that the language and the visuals are XXX rated. No, XXXXXXX rated. I got hooked by the story and the characters. It is a story about women in prison, and there is quite a bit of graphic and prurient stuff. You are warned.

The one redeeming feature, having just finished the sixth season, is that the series demonstrates how repulsive, how corrupt, how disgusting privatization is.

Do you think Reed Hastings noticed that the private prison corporation that took over “Litchfield Prison” cut corners at every chance, cutting education programs, cutting the budget for food, hiring inexperienced and brutal guards (Prison Guards for America), subjecting the inmates to even worse indignities than when the government ran the prison? The private corporation cares only about profits, not the lives of the prisoners. The corporation’s budget-cutting caused a riot (that is exactly what has happened in privatized prisons).

The program is a powerful indictment of privatizing public services. I hope Reed Hastings watches his own hit series and learns about the inevitable human costs of privatization.

He is a smart man. He is a billionaire. But can he learn?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization

Peter Greene: Another Venture Capitalist from TFA Enters MarketWorld

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2019 //
18

I am reading a wonderful book right now by Anand Giridharadas called “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.” He explains a phenomenon that most of us know all too well. The big philanthropists offer gazillions to “save” education, but only if they control how it works. The bright young people coming out of college and graduate school have been indoctrinated into what he calls “MarketWorld.” They want to “change the world,” but they have learned that the best way to change the world is a “win-win.” The haves keep their money and status (and make more money) by “helping” the have-nots. The end result of the win-win market strategy is that the elites pat themselves on the back for their world-changing ideas, make a lot of money, and take control of the lives of the have-nots. Those of us in the education world have seen this scenario play out again and again. Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, Betsy Devos, the Koch brothers, Reed Hastings, etc., all have plans to “save poor kids from failing schools,” which end up harming public schools and placing the “poor kids” at the mercy of the market, where they might or might not get into a desirable charter school, which might or might not last more than a year, and probably has no unions. End result: no change, other than the destruction of public schools and unions.

Peter Greene has an apt example of a new entrant into the MarketWorld space.

It is called Camelback Ventures. Lots of bright young people figuring out how to save the world and make money. A win-win.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Philanthropy, Privatization

Federal Court Blocks Beutner Effort to Stop Special Ed Teachers from Striking

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2019 //
9

From UTLA:

Federal Court throws out LAUSD’s request for strike injunction against special education teachers; desperate legal games continue

Today, less than 24 hours after it was filed, a federal court denied LAUSD’s request to stop special education teachers from joining their colleagues on strike.

“The court’s swift and decisive action shows just how desperate a move this was,” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. “Austin Beutner knew he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on but he went ahead anyway, spreading fear and confusion among the public, our members, special education students and families. The scare tactics must end now.”

On Thursday, LAUSD filed a claim in federal court to prevent UTLA special education teachers from striking. The threatened teachers immediately took to social media to vent their anger at LAUSD’s attempt to prevent them from exercising their right. This sneaky maneuver —especially coming from a district that has repeatedly ignored UTLA’s contract demands for special education class-size caps to relieve the burden of overcrowded special education classrooms – is beyond cynical and counterproductive. (Read the conversations on numerous posts on our Facebook page here.)

In two days, Beutner has used his high-priced lawyers to initiate two frivolous legal actions against UTLA and is now threatening a third. These tactics smack of disdain for the very school district he is meant to serve and protect.

On Wednesday, LAUSD officials went to PERB to seek an injunction based on unsubstantiated claims that UTLA has been preparing for a strike since 2016. Then today, the district threatened another lawsuit claiming UTLA did not give sufficient notice of our intent to strike, despite multiple notifications, including a Jan. 10 strike date announced on Dec. 19.

“Beutner is using his background as a corporate profiteer and downsizer. He has hired well-known privatizers and anti-union lawyers in an attempt to dismantle the school district as well as the solidarity of our union brothers and sisters. But we see right through this, and we will fight it every step of the way,” said Caputo-Pearl. “Rich people don’t like to lose, and having money allows you to shift the playing field. But public education belongs to the people of Los Angeles, not the super rich.”

It’s clear Beutner fears the collective power of educators, parents, students and the community coming together. We must stay united and focused on the goal: a contract that reinvests in our schools and improves our working and learning conditions.

We can expect to see more desperate actions by Beutner as our strike date nears. We are disappointed, but after 20 months of bad faith bargaining and disrespect, it is what we have come to expect from Beutner and LAUSD officials.

Regardless of this, we will sit down with LAUSD officials on Monday and expect them to provide a clear and legitimate proposal for us to consider, and that we can move toward an agreement.

Categories Education Reform

Glenn Sacks: The Case for a Teachers’ Strike in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
10

Glenn Sacks, a social studies teacher in Los Angeles, reports that the neutral fact-finders validated most of UTLA’s criticisms of LAUSD.

He says that the time to strike grows near, unless LAUSD changes its positions on critical issues affecting students and classrooms.

He writes:

In the last step before United Teachers of Los Angeles could legally strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District, the California Public Employment Relations Board heard both parties and issued its recommendations for a settlement. While one wouldn’t know it from LAUSD’s statements, taken as a whole the report largely amounts to a lawyers’ brief in favor of UTLA’s positions.

LAUSD triumphantly announced that the report “is consistent with” its September offer to UTLA. Yet the only major area of factfinder agreement LAUSD cites is its offer of a 6 percent raise over a three-year contract. The district only made this offer after 17 months of negotiations–originally teachers were not offered any raise at all.

By contrast, on issue after issue, Arbitrator David A. Weinberg, the Neutral Chair of the fact-finding panel, came down on the side of UTLA.

One of LAUSD’s most egregious practices is its repeated scrapping of contractually-agreed to class size limits. Section 1.5 of the contract allows the district to set aside these limits during a financial crisis. The district abuses this provision by claiming a dubious crisis to invoke 1.5 on an almost annual basis. This wounds children by ripping away dedicated teachers with whom they’ve built important bonds. It also raises class sizes.

UTLA prioritized eliminating this harmful clause, and Weinberg endorsed this. He added, “I agree with the Union argument that lower class sizes are one of the best predictors of successful teaching and student success.”

LAUSD’s salary offer mandates that teachers do an additional 12 hours of professional development. Weinberg agreed with UTLA that this requirement should be dropped.

While LAUSD often claims its teachers receive generous pay and benefits, Weinberg wrote “I agree with the Union’s argument that the bargaining unit deserves to be higher ranked in comparison to other jurisdictions given the combination of a higher cost of living in the LA metro area, and the difficulty in teaching a population of students with so many needs and challenges.”

Categories Class size, Los Angeles, Union

An Iconic Photo: What Do You Think It Means?

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
18

This is a story about a photograph taken at a small Ku Klux Klan rally in Georgia in 1992.

The photo shows a child in KKK regalia looking at his reflection in a shield held by a police officer, who is African-American. The officer is there to prevent violence. He is protecting the peace and protecting even the members of the KKK.

The photo has been adopted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a pre-eminent CIvil Rights Organization.

Over the years, as you will read, people have debated what the photo says to them.

It reminded me of the song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific.” The title “You’ve Got to Be Taught to Hate.” The little boy dressed up as a Klansman didn’t hate the man holding the shield. But he will be taught to hate by those who dressed him.

Categories Civil Rights, Georgia, Racism

Angie Sullivan: Nevada Needs a Charter Moratorium

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
7

Question of the Day, Week, Year, Decade:

In the face of so many scandals and failures, why do eduvillainthropists continue to throw good money after bad?

Angie Sullivan, a teacher in Clark County, Nevada, poses this question in a recent letter.


Thank you National Public Education Activists for your work which I follow on a regular basis.

Thank you for your work.

I believe our Nevada legislators should notice:

– Nevada Education Leadership in the NVDOE have failed to prove Nevada Charters are a remedy. Yet our current legislation allows charter takeover of CCSD schools.

– Nevada Charters are segregating. In Nevada, charters segregate by race, money, and religion. Each Nevada charter campus has an obvious identity and group it serves.

– Eduphilantrophists financially propping up or expanding Nevada for-profit charters is not good business practice. This is not competition. Nor is it a good return on investment. It is forced. It is also throwing good money after bad.

– Authentic Education Innovation has been replaced by for-profit corporations creating hedgefund or leasing opportunities. 80% of Nevada Charters are for-profit.

– There is significant and severe lack of financial or academic accountability for Nevada Charters. This is very costly to the Nevada Tax Payer as many charters flounder for years in receivership/ bankruptcy. Or national charter chain corporations sue Nevada draining resources rather than educating students.

– Nevada Charter student enrollment practices and student expulsion need to be examined. Authentic reliable and viable research is noticeably non-existent or extremely limited on Nevada Charters. A simple persual of Nevada charter websites which allow racial slur posting and derogatory statements against some students enrolling can be used as evidence to take action.

– CCSD student population is 20% white. Nevada charters reflect nearly the opposite. “Choice” is white flight. IEP and Free-Reduced lunch numbers also show significant under-service in charters.

– CCSD Schools threatened with charter takeover serve communities which are brown. These schools are NOT the lowest performers in the state. There is something racially unfair about charter takeover selection. It is not “choice” if you have to force brown kids into a disfunctional charter district. Folks would go willingly if the charter district was successful in serving communities of color. Frankly some communities are tired of their children being used in education experiments or being used to meet a quota.

Nevada Education Leadership and the Nevada Legislature need to acknowledge that our education money is limited. Nevada Charters are not authentically successful. Public Relations Spin does not make a student graduate. Billions are spent to promote this failed scam. Continuing to spend tax payer money in a segregating and business manipulated manner is harmful to our communities in significantly distructive ways.

In summary, Nevada Charters are not graduating students.

$350 million and growing. 30 years and zero accountability. This mess needs to be cleaned up.

The Nevada Charter Authority needs the ability to close down national charter corporations.

Nevada needs a charter moratorium.

The nation needs a moratorium.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our public schools are worth the effort. Our students need us to speak up. May God hold us in His Hands.

The Teacher,
Angie Sullivan

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Nevada, Philanthropy, Privatization

Texas: Watch Out for Governor Abbott’s Bait and Switch of Billions from Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
8

Chris Tackett of Fort Worth has posted a timely warning about Governor Greg Abbott’s bait and switch, which steals billions from public schools.

He writes:

$30 Billion over 10 years. Do I have your attention? Good, now keep reading.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott put forth a Property Tax Policy on January 16th, 2018, that will get a lot of attention in the new 86th Legislative session. You can read an article about it here, or you can read the full policy proposal here. The element I’m going to focus on is the cap on property tax revenue growth.

Abbott wants to limit the revenue that a city, county or school district can collect from property taxes to an increase of 2.5% year-over-year. This isn’t a cap on what you, the individual, might be assessed or have to pay (which is how Governor Abbott seems to be pitching things on Twitter)…

I’ll dive into the details if you want to keep reading, but here is key element. If the Governor’s 2.5% Tax Revenue cap was in place for the past 10 years, the additional dollars that the state would have had to make up, just to keep our school districts even (cities and counties would have their own costs not included here), would have been approximately $30 Billion. Yeah, that’s right. $30 Billion.
How did I come up with that really big number? You have to look year by year at every district, as the cap applies on a district by district basis. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has data from the Texas Comptroller that details the property value assigned for school funding as well as the M&O rate (maintenance and operations, or what pays for the things inside the school, rather than the building itself)…

Texas on the whole is growing. This is generally a good thing, much better than the alternative that other states are facing. But when Texas grows, supply and demand says that property gets more expensive. This drives up valuations. Many people chose cities and districts based on the services available to themselves and their families, which creates more demand and again drives up valuations. Do we really want to jeopardize our schools and our communities by imposing a state level of control, which will impact the level of services that those who reside in these communities are asking for?
Many in the legislature and our governor talk about “local control”, but they seemingly don’t want to actually give communities and school districts the ability to set their own tax rates and create an environment for continued growth all across our state. This cap will potentially cripple our school districts, as well as our cities and counties. Why would we do that to ourselves?

Why would Governor Abbott and the Legislature want to steal money from the state’s children? That’s bad for them and bad for Texas?

Categories Funding, Texas

Corrupt Cybercharters: Ban Them All!

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
32

Shaina Cavazos of Chalkbeat in Indiana reports on the startling graduation rate of Indiana’s publicly funded virtual charter school: 2%. Two percent.

“About 2 percent of Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy’s 1,009 seniors graduated, putting the school’s graduation rate below just two others — a school that caters to students with significant intellectual and behavioral disabilities and an adult high school that enrolls only a couple dozen students each and graduated no students last year. Across the state, the vast majority of schools graduate at least three-quarters of their senior students.”

Do you remember when charter advocates promised that charters would be more successful, more innovative, and more accountable than public schools? They are not. For-profit Virtual Charter Schools are scams. They are a waste of money. They are a public embarrassment. Why are they allowed to open?

Peter Greene explains here about this Indiana cybercharter, which buys its existence by paying legislators, then collects public money to not educate anyone. This is not unusual. As you will see from the graph he reproduces, lobbying and campaign contributions area part of their business.

For-profit cybercharters, whether K12 Inc. or Connections Academy, should be illegal. They take public money, lobby legislators, get abysmal results, and are never held accountable. ECOT in Ohio was the darling of Republican politicians, who were happy to give its graduation speech, even though ECOT has the lowest graduation rate in the nation.

At the Indiana cybercharter that Greene writes about, only 10% of the money collected is spent on instruction!

These cybercharters are not schools. They are corporate honey pots that wastepublic money and children’s time.

If a state has children who require homebound instruction, the state should provide the online instruction, using certified teachers, with no profits, no lobbyists.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Fraud, Indiana, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

And Then There Were Almost None: New Mexico Abandons PARCC Tests

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
40

The newly elected Governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, signed an executive order withdrawing from PARCC, the Common Core test funded by Arne Duncan in 2010 (PARCC and SBAC together got $360 Million in federal funding.)

“Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday ordered the state’s Public Education Department to immediately take the steps necessary to terminate New Mexico’s use of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers standardized test, commonly known as PARCC.

“Lujan Grisham, in an executive order, called on the department to immediately begin working with key stakeholders to identify and implement a more effective, more appropriate and less intrusive method for assessing school performance that is compliant with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

The development of this alternative approach, intended to deliver a sounder methodology for the rating and assessments of New Mexico schools, will include teachers, administrators, parents, students and recognized professionals and experts in the field of student assessments.”

Some 25 states signed up for PARCC. Very few remain. A judge in New Jersey just ruled it could not be used as a graduation requirement.

PARCC took pride in having the highest standards and failing the most students.

Slowly but surely, Common Core and the testing that went with it, which once claimed alliances with nearly all 50 states and DC, are disappearing.

Sad. Not really.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, New Mexico, Testing

2019: Help Is On the Way: The First Draft of My Book is Finished!

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
48

Since you have been with me every step of the way on this book, and since many of you have shared stories that will appear in the book, I want you to be the first to know that I finished the first draft on December 31, 2018.

I am now getting my peer review committee to review it for errors, redundancy, whatever. Then it goes to the publisher.

I have proved that it is possible to blog every day and write a book of 125,000 words!

A hint: It is a hopeful book, a book that will show that the light at the end of the tunnel is NOT an oncoming train.

There is good news! The Zombie apocalypse will be repelled!

Stay tuned!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Personal, Privatization, Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »