Archives for the month of: May, 2019
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Valerie Strauss: The Tide Is Turning Against Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
6

 

Valerie Strauss reviews the education budget of the House Appropriations Committee and notes that budget proposal increases the programs that Trump and DeVos while endorsing an unprecedented cut for the Charter Schools Program. As she notes in  the title of the article, the committee concluded that the Education Department was not “a responsible steward” of the charter fund.

Surely, they must have noticed the daily scandals associated with this unaccountable sector.

“Many public school systems are complaining about losing significant funding to charters. Teacher strikes that began in 2018 and have continued this year throughout the country — including in Republican-led states — have helped change the debate about public education funding.”

Strauss writes:

A 2018 report by the Education Department’s inspector general slammed the agency’s oversight of the federal Charter Schools Program and made recommendations for improvement that the House legislation says DeVos’s team has ignored. The agency was accused of the same thing in a2016 inspector general report.

“The committee is deeply concerned that the department does not intend to be a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars when it comes to [Charter Schools Program] funding,” the legislation says.

The committee has included language that would direct the Education Department to implement the recommendations from the 2018 inspector general’s report within six months of the bill’s enactment and brief legislators on its plan within a month.

The legislation also says lawmakers are “concerned” about a recent report issued by the advocacy group the Network for Public Education, which says that as much as $1 billion in federal money was wasted on charter schools that never opened or that closed because of mismanagement and other issues from 2009 to 2016.

Jeanne Allen, leader of the pro-school choice, anti-public school group Center for Education Reform, asks “Who is killing Charter Schools?” and the answer is clear: the Department of Education’s Inspector General, Congressional appropriators, the daily scandals caused by unaccountable charters, the dedicated work of scores of state and local parent organizations, and the Network for Public Education, which is devoted to fighting privatization and profiteering.

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

Tom Ultican: EPIC Online Schools Prove That P.T. Barnum Was Roght

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
3

 

Cybercharters, aka virtual charters, are the big moneymakers with the worst results, yet states are slow to regulate them or prohibit them from opening. They collect full tuition but don’t provide the services that brick-and-mortar schools do. In state after state, they are low-performing yet never held accountable. The only online charter that collapsed was ECOT in Ohio because the owner decided to pull the plug rather than pay the state for inflated enrollments and ghost students.

Tom Ultican writes here about a relatively new virtual charter chain that is raking in big bucks. It is called EPIC. It started in Oklahoma, branched out into California, and hopes to open in Arkansas.

He writes:

Ben Harris and David Chaney, two long time friends from Oklahoma City, founded Epic.

In 1999, One year after Harris was awarded a Master of Public Administration from Syracuse University, he and Chaney founded Advanced Academics Inc.Today Pearson Corporation the large British testing and publishing company owns Advanced Academics which sells credit recovery courses and software for virtual classes.

Both Harris and Chaney went to work for Jeb Bush in 2003 at the Florida Department of Children and Families. Harris was soon made the Deputy Secretary in charge of technology. He worked under Secretary Jerry Regier who had previously run health and human services in Oklahoma. It was here that Harris made a name for himself by privatizing the child welfare system…

In 2009 – just prior to founding Epic – Harris was Chief Financial Officer of Velocity Sports Performance in Irvine, California. The CEO of Velocity Sports Performance when Harris arrived there was Troy Medley, who is now Chairman of the Board for Epic in California.

Epic Found a Way into Orange County, California

Epic is an acronym for excellence, performance, innovation and citizenship. In California the non-profit business name is Next Generation Education. In Oklahoma the non-profit business name is Community Strategies Inc. Neither Epic founder, David Chaney nor Ben Harris, sits on the board of either Next Generation Education in California or Community Strategies Inc. in Oklahoma.

Rather, David Chaney serves as both superintendent of the nonprofit Epic Charter Schools and CEO of Epic Youth Services, a for-profit company that manages the school for a fee. Chaney owns the for-profit corporation, which originally had Harris’s home address listed on the incorporating papers.

Follow this sad story and you will soon realize that EPIC is a business. It sells schooling.

This Byzantine structure hides the fact that Epic is a for profit business cloaked in non-profit suit, thus skirting California’s prohibition against for profit charters. It also means that in their tax forms, the non-profit only reports costs and no salaries. For example, in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017 Community Strategies Inc. the Oklahoma non-profit reported revenues of $41,487,230 and expenditures of $40,105,203. However, the non-profit reported no salaries because the for-profit does payroll. There is no way for taxpayers to see how many public dollars are going into private hands.

Ultican describes how EPIC won a charter in Orange County, California, despite the strong staff recommendation against doing so. The board in Orange County was funded by Billionaire privatizers.

All but one board member who voted to give Epic a charter received large campaign support from billionaires through three independent expenditure committees; California Charter Schools Association Advocates, Orange County Charter Advocates for Great Schools (which is sponsored by CCSAA) and the Lincoln Club of Orange County. David Boyd, Chancellor of The Taft University System, did not receive documented largess from the billionaires but his campaign did have odd financial support. He loaned  his own campaign $72,000, got a $50,000 loan from Taft University and a $25,000 loan from Elizabeth Dorn’s campaign. More than $30,000 in loan debt was later forgiven.

In 2016, the Beverly Hills Billionaire, Howard Ahmanson Jr. (state major donor ID 479163) gave the OC Charter PAC $10,000 and the Local Liberty PAC (State ID 1291528) that Ahmanson finances provided them another $18,171.83.

Howard Ahmanson’s name sake father established the Ahmanson Family Foundation in 1952. Today, that foundation has slightly more than a billion dollars in assets. They give extensively to the arts and LA basin charter schools. In 2016, they gave $500,000 to the billionaire funded pro-school privatization youth group Teach For America. Howard runs the Fieldstad and Company arm of the Ahmanson foundation.

Roberta Ahmanson, Howard’s wife, is a serious Christian thinker and writer. She gave a speech titled “What Fundamentalism Gave Me” at the 2018 commencement for Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Like Betsy DeVos, she is part of The Gathering. Roberta and her husband see Epic as a tool that benefits the Christian home schooling movement.

Is this what education is about? Money. Profits. Connections.

Categories Education Reform, Oklahoma, Virtual Charter Schools

Alabama: Rules Are for Public Schools, Not for Charters

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
3

 

Alabama journalist Kyle Whitmire puzzles over how state officials created charters, setrules for openingthem, then broke all their own rules to clear the way for a charter school that no one wants. 

Read this story and you will understand why the public is turning against charter schools.

Not hard to figure out. Might be something about an old-fashioned word called “democracy.”

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: DeVos Receives Alexander Hamilton Award But Has No Idea Who He Was

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
16

 

The rightwing Manhattan Institute recently honored a Betsy DeVos with its Alexander Hamilton Award.

Mercedes Schneider brilliantly explains that Betsy DeVos knows nothing about Alexander Hamilton or his convictions. Indeed, her anti-government views are the opposite of Hamilton’s, but she doesn’t know that.

Schneider writes:

According to MI, its Alexander Hamilton Award is named such “because, like the Manhattan Institute, he was a fervent proponent of commerce and civic life. ” However, Hamilton was clearly pro-centralized government, which makes the award an MI misnomer since MI uses it to honor the likes of DeVos, whose ideology is much more in line with the Antifederalists of Hamilton’s day.

The contradiction did not go unnoticed; on May 03, 2019, Think Progress published an article entitled, “Betsy DeVos Appears to Have No Idea Who Alexander Hamilton Was” From the article:

…The entire purpose of the agency Education Secretary DeVos leads is to use the resources of the federal government to foster better public education. Let’s also set aside the fact that the overwhelming majority of American primary and secondary school students — 90 percent — are educated by government-run schools. If DeVos plans to fight for “freedom from government,” she is in the worst possible job.

Yet DeVos doesn’t just appear to be rejecting the core mission of her agency and the foundational premise of the American education system. She also seems to have no idea who Alexander Hamilton is or what he sought to accomplish as the architect of much of America’s economic system. The early history of the United States was, to a large extent, a battle between a Jeffersonian model built on agriculture, small government, and slavery; and a Hamiltonian model built on capitalism, economic expansion, and a robust centralized government.

Hamilton’s core insight was that healthy markets and a robust manufacturing sector do not emerge from the ether so long as centralized authorities do not interfere. Rather, the vibrant economy that Hamilton helped build depends on a strong central government authority.

Below are excerpts from DeVos’ speech for the MI event, which she characteristically uses as a slant for her own pro-choice, anti-union agenda:

The Federalist Papers, to which Hamilton contributed a great deal, cautioned against a tyranny of factions. These groups of agitators jealously protect and advance their own self-interests to the detriment of just about everyone else.

Sound familiar? Education unions, the association of this, the organization of that… those are today’s factions. One of their own, the late Al Shanker, said this: “I don’t see a voice for students in the bargaining process. I think it’s one of the facts of life… the consumer, basically, is left out.”

That union boss admitted then what’s still true today: factions keep student voices out. But it’s way past time to let them in!

Note that the Federalist Papers were meant to assuage public fears about a centralized, federal government, but DeVos tries to shape a reference to them in order to discredit teachers’ unions.

DeVos is single-minded. She believes that her mission in life is to destroy public schools, weaken the federal government, and crush teachers’ unions. Why is this woman in charge of the U.S. Department of Education, which she despises?

This is one of Mercedes Schneider’s best pieces.

She concludes, with irony:

At the opening of her MI speech, DeVos comments, “I must admit I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve such an honor.”

Indeed.

So many layers to that sandwich.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Democracy, History

Jeff Bryant: How Progressives are Fighting the Plot to Gut Public Education

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
2

As the reputation and fortunes of the corporate reform movement sag, its allies are redoubling their efforts to spread charters and vouchers, as we have seen in recent attacks on public education in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere.

Jeff Bryant writes here about the successful resistance to privatization in Milwaukee, which has had vouchers and charters for decades, with nothing to show for it but three low-performing sectors.

He writes:

Despite the decades-long effort to privatize Milwaukee’s local school, recent events in that community have revealed how public school advocates can successfully fight back against the forces of privatization.

In Milwaukee’s recent school board election, a slate of five candidates swept into officeunder a banner of turning back years of efforts to privatize the district’s schools. The win for public schools was noteworthy not only because it took place in a long-standing bastion of school choice, but also because the winning candidates were backed by an emerging coalition that adopted a bold, new politics that demands candidates take up a full-throated opposition to school privatization rather than cater to the middle.

Unsurprisingly, the coalition includes the local teachers’ union, who’ve long been skeptical of charters, vouchers, and other privatization ideas, but joining the teachers in their win are progressive activists, including the Wisconsin chapter of the Working Families Party, and local civil rights advocacy groups, including Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and Voces de la Frontera.

Unifying this diverse coalition was an uncompromising political argument about what makes public schools truly public and why that distinction matters.

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Milwaukee, Resistance, School Choice, Vouchers

Peter McPherson: The District of Columbia Needs an Elected School Board

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
2

 

Peter McPherson, a former parent of students in the District of Columbia public schools, describes the failure of Mayor Bowser’s leadership of the city’s schools. He lists her many poor decisions, her authoritarian style, and her refusal to take responsibility for scandals on her watch. She seems determined to keep the Rhee agenda intact. About half the children are enrolled in charter schools, with more on the way. This is an admission of failure on the part of the mayor and her chancellor. For the record, D.C. has the largest achievement gaps of any urban district in the nation.

In Chicago, as he notes, the new mayor Lori Lightfoot, is committed to restoring a locally elected board. In New York City, Mayor Bill DeBlasio is determined to hold onto autocratic rule of the schools.

I was reminded as I read his article about having been invited to meet with the D.C. City Council education committee before it endorsed local control on 2007. I warned them not to do it and told them that the story about the “New York City Miracle” was fantasy. Obviously I was not persuasive.

I think the Mayor should appoint a significant number of board members but the board should choose the leader, not the Mayor.

There is no ideal way to govern schools but the worst way is to vest control solely in the hands of one person.

Categories District of Columbia, New York City

Economic Policy Institute: Teacher “Wage Penalty” Reaches a Record High

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
10

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! If you believe that teachers are important and that they change lives, become an advocate for higher pay for teachers.

The Economic Policy Institute is one of the very few think tanks in D.C. (maybe the only think tank) that is not funded by billionaires. It focuses on economic issues affecting working people and issues of economic justice.

In this post, Sylvia Allegretto and Lawrence Mishel document the wage gap between teachers and their peers with similar education.

Teachers are not paid equitably. They have good reason to strike for higher wages. In most states, teachers are unlikely to get higher wages unless they strike.

Providing teachers with a decent middle-class living commensurate with other professionals with similar education is not simply a matter of fairness. Effective teachers are the most important school-based determinant of student educational performance.1 To promote children’s success in school, schools must retain credentialed teachers and ensure that teaching remains an attractive career option for college-bound students. Pay is an important component of retention and recruitment.

The deepening teacher wage and compensation penalty over the recovery parallels a growing shortage of teachers. Every state headed into the 2017–2018 school year facing a teacher shortage (Strauss 2017). New research by García and Weiss (2019) indicates the persistence and magnitude of the teacher shortage nationwide:

The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought. When indicators of teacher quality (certification, relevant training, experience, etc.) are taken into account, the shortage is even more acute than currently estimated, with high-poverty schools suffering the most from the shortage of credentialed teachers. (1)

García and Weiss explain why the teacher shortage matters:

A shortage of teachers harms students, teachers, and the public education system as a whole. Lack of sufficient, qualified teachers and staff instability threaten students’ ability to learn and reduce teachers’ effectiveness, and high teacher turnover consumes economic resources that could be better deployed elsewhere. The teacher shortage makes it more difficult to build a solid reputation for teaching and to professionalize it, which further contributes to perpetuating the shortage. In addition, the fact that the shortage is distributed so unevenly among students of different socioeconomic backgrounds challenges the U.S. education system’s goal of providing a sound education equitably to all children…

Teacher wage and compensation penalties grew over the recovery since 2010

  • The public school teacher weekly wage penalty grew from 13.5 percent to 21.4 percent between 2010 and 2018.
  • Teacher benefits improved relative to benefits for other professionals from 2010 to 2018, boosting the teacher benefits advantage from 4.8 percent to 8.4 percent. Despite this improvement, the total compensation (wage and benefit) penalty for public school teachers grew from 8.7 percent in 2010 to 13.1 percent in 2018.

The wage penalty is a result of state policy, not the recession of 2008. Legislators cut taxes and revenues.

Teacher weekly wage penalties vary across the states

  • We report teacher weekly wage penalties for each state for the period 2014–2018. State wage penalties are based on regression-adjusted analyses using a sample of college graduates in each state. Teacher penalties range from 0.2 percent to 32.6 percent.
  • Four of the seven states with the largest teacher wage penalties—Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Colorado—were, unsurprisingly, ground zero for the 2018 teacher protests, helping to draw national attention to the erosion of teacher pay. In these states, teachers earned at least 26 percent less than comparable college graduates.
  • In 21 states and D.C., the teacher wage penalties are greater than 20 percent.
Categories Accountability, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching

Ohio: Thanks to Generosity of Our Readers, Student Journalists Will Attend Ravitch-Phillis Dialogue

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
6

 

Do you remember when high school student journalists were not allowed admission to a “Roundtable” between Betsy DeVos and Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin? The young journalists have been invited to cover a discussion in Columbus, Ohio, between me and renowned policy expert Bill Phillis on May 16.

Jeanne Melvin of Ohio’s Public Education Partners wrote today:

GOOD NEWS! Because of the generosilty of Diane’s readers, Dr. Laura Chapman and Dr. Linda Bricker, four student journalists and their teacher will attend the PEP event, MOVING PUBLIC EDUCATION FORWARD, in Columbus on May 16th. 
 
I look forward to meeting these forward-thinking students.
https://pldlamplighter.org/articles/opinion/2019/04/18/no-seat-at-the-roundtable/   
https://pldlamplighter.org/articles/opinion/2019/04/30/still-not-heard/  
Thank you, Laura and Linda!
Categories Freedom of the Press, Ohio

Larry Lee: What Happened in Alabama When Regular People Stood Up for Their Community Schools

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
17

 

Larry Lee, Alabama journalist and blogger, tells what happened in Washington County, Alabama, when people got fed up with being pushed around and decided to protect their public schools. 

People are chartering buses to attend the state education board on Thursday to express their opposition to the charter.

Alabama has a Republican supermajority in the Legislature, and that supermajority does whatever it wants. Whichever party has a supermajority, it’s not good for democracy, because people feel helpless.

What has happened to public education since 2010?

A-F school report cards that are basically worthless–except to those who want to bash public schools.  The Alabama Accountability Act which continues to divert millions from the Education Trust Fund.  The charter school law that, as we see in Washington County, makes a mockery of transparency and truthfulness.

None of these have been in the best interest of public schools.  Yet, try to get someone to take a stand and push back and nine times out of ten all you get is a shrug.  Are another superintendent saying, “Well, you know my board wants me to keep a low profile.”

This was until Washington County and a small group of dedicated educators and parents agreed that they were going to stand firm for what they believe is right for their school system and its students.

Thank God they have.

Because in so doing, they have shown us all that David can go into battle with Goliath.  They have set an example.  One that says only a handful of tenacious folks can get the attention of a great big bunch of folks.  Even The Washington Post.

You do it by keeping on keeping on.  By not giving up.  By doing your due diligence and hours and hours of homework.  They refused to knuckle under when the state charter school commission refused to be forthright and share info that belongs to the public.  They have had the backbone and courage to challenge people they know are being disingenuous and trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

They have shown us that you can fight city hall.  That just because someone is housed at the state department of education and have fancy titles doesn’t mean they can run over local school systems.

Yes, a handful of good people in Washington County have shown all of Alabama what is possible when you are convicted.

And all of Alabama owes them a standing ovation for doing so.

Now let’s see whether the state school board listens.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Resistance

Setback for Federal Charter Schools Program! DeVos Request for $500 Million Trimmed to $400 Million!

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
17

 

This is good news!

The House Appropriations Committee issued its budget report. Betsy DeVos requested an increase for the federal Charter Schools Program, from $440 million a year to $500 million. But the education appropriations subcommittee cut the appropriation to $400 million. This is a program that is riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, as the Department of Education’s own Inspector General pointed out in the past, and as the Network for Public Education pointed out in its recent report called “Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride.”

Thank you to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), chairperson of the education appropriations subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. She is a deeply knowledgeable member of Congress who is committed to equity and works tirelessly to meet the needs of the American people for well-funded public schools

The NPE report found that one-third of the charter school funded by the federal government either never opened or closed soon after opening, costing taxpayers close to $1 billion in wasted funds.

Here is the report of the House Appropriations Committee. It increased the funding of well-respected programs that DeVos and Trump wanted to slash or kill, while cutting back on the Charter Schools Program (start reading at page 182).

Just in the last year, Secretary DeVos gave $116 million to a single charter chain, IDEA, which intends to flood the small El Paso district with charters; and she gave a grant of $86 million to KIPP. This concentration of funds in the hands of corporate charter chains was certainly not the intent of the program, which was meant to spur start-ups and innovation, not to enlarge established charter chains. KIPP, in particular, is amply funded by the Walton Family Foundation and a dozen other major foundations. It is hard to understand why this wealthy and powerful charter chain needs federal aid.

Charles Barone, the policy director of DFER (the hedge fund managers’ organization that pretends to be Democrats), expressed disappointment!

The Democratic state parties in California and Colorado have denounced DFER as a corporate front that should drop the word “Democrat” from its title.

Real Democrats support public schools, democratically governed and open to all, not corporate charter chains or private management.

By the way, the NPE report had no external funding. It was produced by the research of our brilliant staff and written by Carol Burris and Jeff Bryant.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Privatization, Resistance
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