Archives for the month of: March, 2019
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Jose Luis Vilson: NYC’s Exam for Specialized High Schools Is Racist

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2019 //
88

 

New York City has a peculiar high school admissions system. To gain admission to the city’s five most elite high schools, one must excel on a highly competitive examination called the Secondary High School Admissions Test. Nothing else counts but that one score on one test. I am not aware of any selective institution in the nation that relies on only one score for admission.

Every year, the media reports with shock how few Black and Hispanic students were admitted. This year may have been the worst yet. Only seven Black students were offered a place of 895 admitted to StuyvesantHigh School. Last year, it was 10. Valerie Strauss wrote about the results:  “For 2019, Stuyvesant offered admissions to 587 Asian students, 194 white students, 45 of unknown race or ethnicity, 33 Latino students, 20 multiracial students and nine Native Americans.”

At the meeting of the Jackson Heights Parents for Public Schools on March 16, the discussion of the specialized high schools became heated when a debate erupted between parents who said the exam was exclusionary and racist, and Asian parents who held up posters saying that criticism of the exam is racist. Asian students study hard for the test, do well, and don’t want it to change.

Jose Luis Vilson, who teaches middle school math, has no doubt that the exam is racist.

He writes:

“When news broke this week that only seven black students were accepted into New York City’s Stuyvesant High School, an elite public school that supposedly only takes the most advanced students in the city, I wasn’t surprised. In my 14-year career as a middle school math teacher in Manhattan with majority black or Latinx students, I’ve had thousands of kids who were rejected from magnet public schools like Stuyvesant. It breaks my heart every time.

“Every year, sometime in March, thousands of New York City adolescents receive a letter that tells them which high school selected them. That school day is always a tough one. Some students run up and down the halls, excitedly telling their friends about where they will be spending the next four years. Others, disappointed in their placement, sit solemnly or find a comforting shoulder to lean on.

“I’ve had to console far too many brilliant students who didn’t get chosen for the high school they wanted to go to. They checked off all the proverbial boxes: great attendance, high grades, strong work ethic, and had positive relationships with adults and peers. They studied hard for the Specialized High School Admission Test — an assessment given to eighth or ninth graders for entry into eight of the elite magnet public schools in New York City — for months. Because a student’s score on that test is the only criterion for high school admissions, the stressful three hours spent taking this exam could determine a student’s future.

“As a teacher, I try to assure my students that they will be fine regardless of which school they attend. But I often wonder if we educators are doing a disservice — and perpetuating the lie of meritocracy — by continuing to tell kids that if they work hard and excel then they can get what they want in life.

School segregation in New York City is reaching emergency levels

“Make no mistake: New York City is burning. But unlike the literal and metaphorical burning of the Bronx in the 1970s, the latest fire is happening in our education system as schools continue to segregate at alarming rates. Only 190 of the 4,798 slots, or 3 percent, in the eight major specialized high schools went to black students. This is in a city where a quarter of NYC’s public-school students are black.”

My view:

First, I think it is absurd to base admissions to any academic institution on a single test score. No Ivy League school does that. They ask for grades, essays, teachers’s recommendations, evidence of student interests and passions and service.

Second, when my next grandson applies for high school in New York City, I will actively discourage him from taking the exam or applying to one of the specialized schools. In my view, they are too large and they are academic pressure cookers. I hope he listens to me and applies to a school that has a balanced curriculum and gives him time to explore his interests. I also hope he goes to school with a diverse student body. Oneof thevaluesof public education is exposure to many kinds of people, with many kinds of talents, not just one dimension.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, New York City, Racism, Standardized Testing, Testing

Bombshell Report: Congress Wastes Nearly $1 Billion on Defunct Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2019 //
23

 

The Network for Public Education released a shocking report about waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal charter school program. 

This year, Congress handed out $440 million to charter schools, many of which will never open or quickly close. Trump and DeVos want to increase the annual sum to $500 million.

The Washington Post covered the findings. Valerie Strauss writes:

”The U.S. government has wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools that never opened, or opened and then closed because of mismanagement and other reasons, according to a report from an education advocacy group. The study also says the U.S. Education Department does not adequately monitor how its grant money is spent.

“The report, titled “Asleep at the Wheel” and issued by the nonprofit advocacy group Network for Public Education, says:

  • More than 1,000 grants were given to schools that never opened, or later closed because of mismanagement, poor performance, lack of enrollment or fraud. “Of the schools awarded grants directlyfrom the department between 2009 and 2016, nearly one in four either never opened or shut its doors,” it says.
  • Some grants in the 25-year-old federal Charter School Program (CSP) have been awarded to charters that set barriers to enrollment of certain students. Thirty-four California charter schools that received grants appear on an American Civil Liberties Union list of charters “that discriminate — in some cases illegally — in admissions.”
  • The department’s grant approval process for charters has been sorely lacking, with “no attempt to verify the information presented” by applicants.
  • The Education Department in Republican and Democratic administrations has “largely ignored or not sufficiently addressed” recommendations to improve the program made by its own inspector general.

“Our investigation finds the U.S. Department of Education has not been a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars in its management of the CSP,” it says.”

Carol Burris, executive director of NPE, is briefing key members of Congress today about this wasteful program.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Rhode Island: About the Charter School That Will Offer a Master’s Degree

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2019 //
40

 

How great is a Charter School that is given permission by the state to offer a master’s degree in education?

I decided to check out the Learning Community Charter School in Central Falls, which just got the go-ahead and $500,000 to train teachers and award master’s degrees.

Surely this must be an extraordinary school, or you would expect the Providence Journal to let you know whether it’s up to the task.

Turns out it’s not extraordinary at all. 

Its scores are below the state average.

Way below the state average.

In the state, 26% were proficient in math, but only 15% at this charter.

In the state, 37% were proficient in English, but only 28% at this charter.

Disadvantaged students are falling behind, and achievement gaps are not narrowing.

Scores for low-income students are below state averages.

Question: What makes this charter school exactly the right place to train teachers and award master’s degrees?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Rhode Island, Testing

Philadelphia: It Takes Years and Millions to Close Failing Charter Schools and the Public Pays for Everything

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2019 //
16

 

Lisa Haver, Parent Activist in Philadelphia, writes here about how it takes years and millions of dollars to close failing charter schools. The public must pay the cost of challenging the charter and pay the cost of defending the charter. The charter operator gets a free ride for failing. Only the taxpayers and students lose.

Why is it easy to close a public school but hard to close a charter school? One guess: charter lobbyists wrote the state law.

Lisa Haver writes:

“This is an unbelievable story about what it takes to shut down a failing charter in Pennsylvania.
“Aspira charter operates 5 schools in Philadelphia, 2 of which are Renaissance charters–Olney High School and Stetson Middle school.  The Renaissance program is the one where the district hands over management of struggling district schools to people who are not educators in the belief that they can bring up test scores–which Aspira has not done. The Renaissance program has been a very expensive failure in Philadelphia.
“This Aspira renewal process is now in its 5th year–since 2014.  There have been numerous stories, including many in the Philadelphia Daily News–about misuse of taxpayer funds and other evidence of mismanagement.
“The District finally voted in 2017 not to renew these charters.
“For some reason, it took almost 18 months to begin the hearings.
“The District has to pay its own lawyer and hearing examiner AND for the charter schools’ lawyers.
“APPS members including me have attended the hearings every day for the first two weeks, and it is obvious that the charters’ lawyers are running up their own legal fees by asking the same questions over and over to a succession of witnesses.
“This is going to cost the District well over $150,000.  That is a lowball figure.
“When the district closed 24 schools in 2013, there were NO legal hearings at all.  The state requires a long legal process for revoking a charter that may have been around for 5 or 10 years, but none for neighborhood schools that have been around for decades–like Germantown high, which was closed one year before its 100th anniversary.
“A disgrace.”
From the article:

“One of the city’s charter-school operators has moved money from one account to another without explanation: no loan agreements, no signatures — “a shell game,” in the words of a Philadelphia School District auditor.

“Now the School District is shelling out money to try to pull two charters from Aspira — whose school bills are paid by the district — in a legal fight that could end up costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

“It’s really the district paying for both sides, which is kind of insane,” said Temple University law professor Susan DeJarnatt.

“Welcome to Pennsylvania charter school law,” said Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. “It’s unbelievable.”

Parent advocates have called on school officials for years to investigate these failing charters but were ignored. 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization

Public Schools Week Starts Today! Support Our Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2019 //
17

 

Public Schools Week is March 25-29.

Download the toolkit of the Network for Public Education and do your part to support public schools! 

The forces of privatization are rising up, making promises and failing to keep any of those promises.

Public schools are the bedrock of democracy, doors open to all. Certified teachers in every classroom. Public schools strive for equality of educational opportunity, not privilege for the few.

Get involved. Do yourpart as a citizen.

Whose schools? Our schools!

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, Equity, Supporting public schools

Stephen Dyer: Ohio’s Failing Charter Sector Wants a 22% Funding Increase

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2019 //
10

 

I remember when the charter idea was first launched, in 1988.

Al Shanker thought charters would be schools-within-schools, that they would be started by teachers, that they would be approved by the other teachers in the rest of the school and the local board, that they would be unionized, and that they would collaborate, not compete, with the existing schools. More than three decades later, we know that charters seldom meet any of these conditions. Ninety percent are non-union. They compete, not collaborate. They may be started by almost anyone without regard to prior experience.

Charter advocates on the right insisted they would cost less, be more accountable, and get better results. Typically, none of these conditions are met except when charters cherrypick the students they want and exclude those they don’t want. Typically, state charter associations lobby to block accountability.

In Ohio, most charter schools are graded either D or F by the state. This very low-performing sector costs Ohio taxpayers nearly $1 Billion per year.

Now the charters want a 22% increase in funding.

Stephen Dyer explains here why they should get no increase at all. 

Not only is their academic performance abysmal, but they are already paid more than the schools that educate 90% ofthe state’s students. And they have higher administrative costs.

A bad deal for students and taxpayers.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Ohio, Privatization

Rhode Island Allows Charter School to Award Master’s Degrees

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2019 //
50

The Providence Journal asked me to remove this story because it is copyrighted. I was asked to replace it with a summary.

Summary:

A charter school called The Learning Community is creating a phony graduate school of education, where students will pay $35,000 to get a phony master’s degree. Philanthropists have agreed to underwrite scholarships.

First the charters undermine public schools by competing instead of collaborating. Then they and their billionaire backers open a phony graduate school called Relay where genuine charter teachers, with a few years of experience, award graduate degrees to would-be charter teachers.

Now Rhode Island is giving a charter school the authority to award masters degrees. Every step degrades the profession. Amateurs training amateurs.

Summary: A charter school called The Learning Community is creating a pretend graduate school of education, a move approved by the Council of Post-Secondary Education. The Rhode Island Foundation and United Way gave the charter school $500,00 for five years to establish a make-believe “graduate school of education.”

Teachers who enroll in this ersatz program will take classes at night and during the summer.

The focus is urban classrooms, where students are seldom given access to well-prepared teachers and will get these semi-qualified “teachers” with a make-believe master’s degree. The charter school, which does not have any scholars, researchers, or highly experienced teachers will send their teachers to schools in Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket.

The program will have 8 students its first year.

Eight students! What an exciting graduate school of education! How many faculty? Two?

In five years, maybe it will “train” 40 or 50 new charter teachers.

What a waste of $500,000.

https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190322/ri-charter-school-gets-go-ahead-for-masters-program

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Rhode Island, Teachers

NPE Action Endorses Pam Harbin for Pittsburgh School Board

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2019 //
3

The Network for Public Education Action fund is happy to endorse Pam Harbin for Pittsburgh school board! She is running in District 4.

Pam has a long history of supporting public school students and public schools. She has been working on the ground for twelve years in the fight to improve and save public education in Pittsburgh as a parent, community organizer and a long-time disability rights advocate. She has served on numerous PPS district-wide advisory committees, and has been an unofficial school board watchdog, streaming and/or attending more than 2,000 hours of school board meetings.

Pam is the Co-Founder of the Education Rights Network (ERN), a parent-led organization working for fully resourced, inclusive and quality education for students in Pennsylvania. She is also the immediate past president and a board director for Evolve Coaching, an organization that supports individuals with disabilities and their communities through education, employment, and the arts.

Pam has a clear sense of what it takes to create a system that works for all kids. She told NPE Action that the district needs “smaller class sizes and a smaller ratio of kids to adults in each building with more teachers, counselors, social workers, paraprofessionals, nurses, librarians, and other staff that keeps the building functioning at its best.”

She is also keenly aware of the dangers posed by the privatization movement, and how it can grow in a city like Pittsburgh.

The primary election is on May 21, 2019. Please be sure to get out and vote for Pam Harbin, a powerhouse public education advocate.

 

Categories Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Pittsburgh, Supporting public schools

California: An Alert for Supporters of Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2019 //
5

 

A reader in California asks for help to fix one of the charter reform bill that has a big loophole.

He writes:

“Thank you for all you do for public education. In California right now are 4 assembly Bills – AB-1505 – AB-1508.

“AB-1508 in particular is intended to enable local school districts to consider the financial, program and facilities impacts when approving/denying new charter petitions. This leaves a huge gap for districts to have a say in renewing charters that were imposed on the districts by the California State Board of Education despite denial at the local and county levels.

“Would you be able to alert your readers in California to contact the bill’s authors before it goes to the floor for a vote to add language to AB-1508 to apply to charter renewals as well as new petitions?

“If enough Californians can respond, we may be able to make this proposed law even stronger to bring back local control over the 1323 charter schools in operation in the state.

“AB-1508 sponsors are CA Assembly Members Kalra (author), Bonta, McCarty, O’Donnell, Smith and CA Senators Beall and Skinner.”

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

Billionaire Charter Founder Michael Steinhardt Accused of Sexual Harassment

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2019 //
29

 

 

Billionaire Michael Steinhardt, founder of a charter school chain called “Hebrew Language Academies,” was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. 

A story in the New York Times began:

“Sheila Katz was a young executive at Hillel International, the Jewish college outreach organization, when she was sent to visit the philanthropist Michael H. Steinhardt, a New York billionaire. He had once been a major donor, and her goal was to persuade him to increase his support. But in their first encounter, he asked her repeatedly if she wanted to have sex with him, she said.

“Deborah Mohile Goldberg worked for Birthright Israel, a nonprofit co-founded by Mr. Steinhardt, when he asked her if she and a female colleague would like to join him in a threesome, she said.

“Natalie Goldfein, who was an officer at a small nonprofit that Mr. Steinhardt had helped establish, said he suggested in a meeting that they have babies together.

“Mr. Steinhardt, 78, a retired hedge fund founder, is among an elite cadre of donors who bankroll some of the country’s most prestigious Jewish nonprofits. His foundations have given at least $127 million to charitable causes since 2003, public filings show.

“But for more than two decades, that generosity has come at a price. Six women said in interviews with The New York Times and ProPublica, and one said in a lawsuit, that Mr. Steinhardt asked them to have sex with him, or made sexual requests of them, while they were relying on or seeking his support. He also regularly made comments to women about their bodies and their fertility, according to the seven women and 16 other people who said they were present when Mr. Steinhardt made such comments.

“Institutions in the Jewish world have long known about his behavior, and they have looked the other way,” said Ms. Katz, 35, a vice president at Hillel International. “No one was surprised when I shared that this happened.”

“Mr. Steinhardt declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, he said he regretted that he had made comments in professional settings through the years “that were boorish, disrespectful, and just plain dumb.” Those comments, he said, were always meant humorously.”

Steinhardt insisted he was joking. The women who spoke up did not get the humor.

Is there something about billionaires that makes them believe they are irresistible and invincible?

Steinhardt’s Hebrew language charter schools are part of a growing chain that operates in several cities. Its students are ethnically diverse but classes are taught in English and Hebrew. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education awarded $5 million to the chain, though it was never in need of external funding.

Michael Steinhardt’s daughter Sara Berman is chair of the chain’s board.

Since Hebrew is a spoken language only in Israel, it is not clear what the value of Hebrew is to Black and Hispanic students.

Steinhardt endowed the New York University School of Education, which bears his name, as well as the conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the SteinhardtGallery at the Metropoitan Museum of Art.

Steinhardt made his fortune as a hedge fund manager. He overcame inauspicious origins. According to Wikipedia, Steinhardt’s father Sol was a compulsive gambler and a notorious “fence” for stolen jewelry. He hung out with “underworld crime bosses Meyer Lansky, Vincent Alo (aka “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo), and Albert Anastasia (he was out gambling with Anastasia the night before he was killed). Sol, aka “Red McGee,” was later convicted on charges of buying and selling stolen jewelry and sentenced to five to ten years in prison.”

A gambler and criminal in one generation produces a successful hedge fund manager in the next. Hmmm. Food for thought.

 

 

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