Archives for the month of: June, 2019
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Michigan: The New State Superintendent Brings Hope for Real Change

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
14

Michael Rice, the new State Superintendent in Michigan, is an experienced educator, not an ideologue or a politician.

His plans are sensible. He wants to steer the state back to responsible policies.

He was most recently Superintendent in Kalamazoo, which has one of the best school systems in the state. Itis terrific not because of its demographics or it’s scores but because of the Kalamazoo Promise, which has brought many students back to the public schools and led to systemwide improvements. The Promise, anonymously funded, guarantees that every high school graduate will receive a full scholarship to college. The longer a student is in the system, the more generous the scholarship.

School reform measures, such as Michigan’s third-grade retention law and the state’s A-F rating system; a statewide push to improve literacy and increase early childhood education; the publication of multiple research papers supporting increased funding for Michigan’s K-12 schools and the precarious future of the teaching profession all have been pushed to the education forefront in the state.

And they are all issues Rice says he is ready to work on.

“I feel differently in 2019,” Rice told The Detroit News in his office in Kalamazoo. “Those issues made me feel it was a moment. A generational moment in the state, and I wanted to contribute to that moment….”

While in Kalamazoo, and with the Kalamazoo Promise in place, Rice started full-day pre-kindergarten, more than doubled the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses and boosted high school graduation rates, school officials said…

Rice becomes superintendent at a critical time for Michigan’s 1.5 million students. Michigan ranks in the bottom third of states for fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math and college attainment, and it’s 43rd out of 47 in school funding equity.

According to officials at Education Trust-Midwest, Michigan ranks in the bottom third of all states overall in early literacy and among the bottom states for every major group of students: African American, Latino, white, low-income and higher income students. In eighth-grade math, only about 1 in 10 African American students and 2 in 10 Latino students are proficient.

Rice says more spending on public schools is critical, especially to address the chronic underfunding of English language students, poor students and special needs students.

He says he wants to increase pay, benefits and professional development for teachers. New data from the National Education Association found the average salary for Michigan teachers declined last year, continuing the 12% decline over the last decade when adjusted for inflation. Only Indiana, West Virginia and Wisconsin have had worse declines in teacher pay.

Starting teacher salaries in Michigan rank 32nd in the nation, according to the report. Nationwide, 37% of districts have a starting salary of at least $40,000. In Michigan, only 12% of districts meet that threshold, according to the data.

“It is an existential moment for the profession and the profession of public education in the state of Michigan,” Rice said. “As goes the teaching profession so goes public education in the state.”

Rice opposes the “punitive” retention requirements of the state’s third-grade reading laws and the dual accountability system created when state lawmakers passed the A-F grading system during the lame duck session in December. 

There is hope for Michigan.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, Michigan, Teacher Pay

California Teachers Association on Thurmond’s Charter Task Force Report

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
3

 

Friends of public schools are pleased with the recommendations of Superintendent Thurmond Charter School Task Force.

Now it is up to the Legislature to act.

 

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

California: Hot Off the Presses: Charter School Task Force Report

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
10

 

The Charter School Policy Task Force Report was just released. 

The Task Force was charged with making recommendations to reform the state’s 1992 charter law. A large proportion of the 11 members of the Task Force (either 6 or 7) were connected to the charter industry, including two members who work directly for the California Charter School Association, the industry’s lobbying group.

Two issues were paramount:

Recognizing that the lack of funding in general for public schools in California is exacerbated by the competition for resources between traditional public schools and charter schools, Governor Gavin Newsom in early 2019 appointed the CTF and asked SSPI Tony Thurmond to convene the group to analyze two matters:

(1) the fiscal impact that charter schools have on traditional public schools;

and (2) inconsistencies in how charter schools are authorized throughout the state.

Some recommendations were unanimously approved.

Some were approved by a majority.

Some were defeated.

Please read the 10-page report carefully. Let me know what you think.

These are the recommendations that impress me because they would allow districts to have a greater say over whether charters open in their district; they would eliminate the State Board of Education from the charter authorization process; they would prevent small districts from authorizing charters in distant urban districts, for the sake of making money; they would permit consideration of fiscal impact on existing schools before granting a new charter; and they establish a one-year moratorium on new cyber charters.

E) Enact a one-year moratorium on the establishment of new virtual charter schools

• Supported by the majority


There has been growing concern that virtual charter schools are operated without appropriate academic rigor and oversight, providing a sub-par education for their students (for example, see California Virtual Academy – Bureau of State Audits review1). The temporary one-year freeze on new virtual charter schools will give advocates time to study issues related to the establishment of virtual charter schools, such as their operational practices and performance, and to make further recommendations to ensure students are receiving appropriate full-time instruction, supervised by a certified teacher. Virtual charter schools with a history of providing a demonstrated benefit to students will have the ability to continue to operate during the one-year moratorium.


F) Remove the California State Board of Education from hearing appeals of charter petition denials.

• Supported by the majority


The SBE is an authorizer for applicants whose charter petition was denied by a district or county board of education. Some CTF members expressed growing concern that applicants whose charter petitions were denied by a district and/or County Board of Education appeal to the SBE to grant their charter, thus giving a charter school three chances to be approved. Some believe that for local control and accountability to be preserved, charter schools should only be authorized locally. In addition, authorization at the state level is problematic due to geographic limitations. Almost 65% of the current SBE authorized charter schools are located in Los Angeles or San Diego, which makes it difficult for the Sacramento-based staff to provide the appropriate level of oversight at the local level. As CDE is staff to SBE, the oversight responsibilities fall to CDE; there are currently three staff at the state level to serve the 39 SBE authorized charter schools.


G) Limit the authorization of new charter schools to local districts with an appeals process that takes place at the County Board of Education only when there was an error by the district governing board.

• Supported by the majority


Current law allows for any County Board of Education, or the State Board of Education to
authorize charter petitions when a school district governing board has denied their approval. By only allowing school districts and limited appeals to the county offices to authorize, this proposal allows the local community to make a determination on whether the charter school meets the needs of their students. Applicants would be allowed limited appeals of the local district’s denial to the County Board of Education.


H) Prohibit districts from authorizing charter schools located outside district boundaries

. • Supported by the majority


Current law allows a charter school to open one site outside of the authorizing district only if the charter school has attempted to locate within the authorizer’s boundaries, but an appropriate site was unavailable or the location is temporarily needed during a construction or expansion. A 2017 state audit report found that in fiscal year 2016-2017, 165 charter schools used these exceptions to operate at least 495 locations outside of their authorizers’ boundaries2. Further, many of these charter schools had not provided evidence of the need to locate outside of the authorizing district. Prohibiting districts from authorizing charter schools located outside of district boundaries would allow for greater local control and oversight of charter schools. In addition, such a prohibition would limit the potential for the detrimental practice of using oversight fees as a revenue stream, while incurring only limited expenses associated with authorizing the charter school.3


I) Allow authorizers to consider fiscal impact as part of the authorization process

. • Supported by the majority

Presentations from Oakland Unified School Districts, Los Angeles Unified School Districts, and San Diego Unified School District to the CTF demonstrated significant fiscal impact to school districts due to the cost of charter schools located within district boundaries. In addition to the oft- cited loss of ADA funding, other costs may include, but are not limited to: inability to reduce expenses proportionally without direct harm to student programs and services (utilities, staff, daily maintenance, etc.); obligations to keep schools open and facilities available; increased liability and litigation; disproportionality of special education costs; competition for state, local, and other funds; thorough oversight; and marketing in a newly competitive environment. Allowing authorizers to consider fiscal impacts of a charter petition enables them to evaluate the impact on the entirety of their local educational system. As such, the majority of the CTF recommended that authorizers should be allowed to take fiscal impact into consideration when deciding whether to authorize a new charter school.


J) Establish clear guidelines for use by authorizers and by charter applicants for new charter petitions.


• Supported by the majority

Current law requires charter petitions to include a description of 16 elements. Beyond these elements, there are no standards that provide guidance on the level of detail an applicant should include. As such, applicants submit charter petitions of varying quality; some contain little description of the elements while others contain extensive detail. Clear guidelines, such as rubrics or handbooks, for applicants to follow would standardize the quality of new charter schools.

 

 

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

Carol Burris: A Message for Elizabeth Warren

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
78

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a lifelong educator, has a message for Senator Elizabeth Warren:

 

There has been much discussion on this blog and elsewhere regarding Elizabeth Warren’s campaign’s choice of a former charter school teacher to introduce Ms. Warren in Oakland. She was a fellow at GO Oakland, an organization funded by billionaires such as the Walton Family, Arthur Rock and Michael Bloomberg–billionaires who are bound and determined to charterize American public schools. After leaving as a fellow, she continued her relationship by blogging for the organization in 2018, including in her blog links to get readers to sign up for GO emails.
Why does any of this matter? 
It matters because when a presidential campaign asks someone to introduce their candidate. It is a carefully vetted and deliberate choice.  It is naive to think the introducer is picked from the air in any competent campaign, and the Warren campaign is highly competent. 
When Bernie Sanders issued his bold platform calling for a charter moratorium, Elizabeth Warren responded by saying that she too was against for-profit charter schools with no response on Sanders’ call for a moratorium.
Warren said she does not want to fund for -profits. Well, the only funding program she could influence as President, the Charter Schools Program, already does not.
 
No bold, progressive stand there.
 
What progressives need to hear from Elizabeth Warren is the answer to these two simple questions.
1. Do you support the NAACP’s charter moratorium?
2. Do you support funding the federal Charter Schools Program–which funds the expansion of non-profit charter schools?
 
Sanders has made his position clear. When we hear from Warren, it will no longer matter who introduces her..
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

NYC: Rally and Protest to Reduce Class Sizes!

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
5

 

This Tuesday on June 11 at noon at City Hall, Network for Public Education is co-sponsoring a rally with Class Size Matters and many other organizations to urge NYC to allocate specific funding in next year’s budget towards reducing class size; please come if you can and bring your kids; they have the day off from school. 

 

Smaller classes have been linked with more learning and better student outcomes in every way that can be measured – students in smaller classes get better grades and better test scores, have fewer disciplinary problems, and graduate from high school and college at higher rates.  

 

Meanwhile,  NYC public schools have the largest class sizes in the state – and suffer from class sizes 15-30% bigger than students in the rest of the state on average.  More than 330,000 NYC students were in crammed into classes of 30 or more this fall. 

 

Here is a flyer with more information; please post it in your school and share it with others.  And please attend the rally on Tuesday if you can! 

 

Categories Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, New York City

Peter Greene: Why Does Anyone Listen to Jeb Bush’s Failed Ideas?

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
18

 

Peter Greene read an unusually annoying article in the Detroit News that showed just out of touch the authors are.

Michigan is a state that went overboard for school choice, thanks to former Governor John Engler and the billionaire DeVos family.

Michigan has dropped down to the bottom of NAEP, as scores have collapsed for every group.

Jeb Bush arrives to tell Michigan what they need to do is double down on their failed strategies. More choice. More testing. More accountability. More threats. More punishments.

Bush claimed that these strategies worked in Florida but they didn’t.As Greene notes, fourth grade score went up only because the state holds back third graders who don’t pass the third grade reading test. By eighth grade, students in Florida are at the national average.

Who aspires to be average?

Things are so bad in Michigan that average looks good. It is not.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization, School Choice, Testing

Bernie Sanders Vigorously Criticizes Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
27

 

Despite the outrage of the privatization movement, which attacked Bernie Sanders for his position on charters, Sanders doubled down by publishing an article in the San Jose Mercury News reiterating his views. 

Here is an excerpt, where he accurately cites the study by Gordon Lafer on how charters drain money from public schools and the NPE study showing the waste of federal money spent on charters that never opened or closed almost immediately.

My education plan calls for rescinding Donald Trump’s tax breaks and using those resources to triple funding for low-income school districts. We will also institute a national per-pupil funding standard, so that the quality of a child’s education is not contingent on her zip code. Education should be a human right, not a privilege.

In addition, my plan also calls for restrictions on charter school initiatives that siphon resources out of the public education system and resegregating schools.

When parents enroll their children in charter schools, the public funding allocated to those students goes with them. In the Oakland Unified School District, for example, charter schools were costing the district more than $57 million per year. This amount would easily cover the budget shortfall of $56 million over two years that Oakland officials have projected.

Charters are publicly-funded, but they are privately managed — meaning, they are not accountable to taxpayers. As a result, billionaires like Eli Broad, the DeVos family, and the Walton family are able to bankroll destructive charter school experiments to enrich investors and real-estate developers with taxpayer resources.

Between 2002-2017, California charter schools received more than $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer subsidized funds to lease, build, or buy school buildings. In one example, the Alliance Ready Public Schools network of charter schools used public funds to build a $200 million private real estate empire in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a report from the Network for Public Education found 38 percent of California charter schools that received federal funds between 2006 and 2014 “had either never opened or shut their doors by 2019.”

Advocates argue that charters deliver good outcomes — but the overall results are mixed at best.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding

Utah Picks a Trouble-Plagued Testing Company to Operate State Tests for $44 Million

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
39

Utah state education officials knew that Questar had a problem-filled record, but they picked it anyway and gave it a contract for $44 million.

From the Salt Lake City Tribune:

In other states, the year-end tests were marked by glitches and cyberattacks and hourlong delays. One school district threw out its results because the software was so unreliable. In another, all of the students had to start over when the programming shut down and didn’t save their responses.

Sensitive student data was stolen in New York and Mississippi. More than 1,400 students took the wrong test in Tennessee.

But even after those issues arose — and despite clearly knowing about them — Utah signed a $44 million contract with that same testing company last spring to develop the state’s standardized exams, now called RISE. And the rollout hasn’t gone well.

As students here have tried to submit their tests, their computer screens have frozen and some haven’t been able to recover their work.

“This is clearly problematic,” said Darin Nielsen, the state’s assistant superintendent of student learning. “It hasn’t performed like we had hoped or expected. There are frustrations for many people across the state.”

The outages in Utah have delayed more than 18,000 public school students in completing their assessments this April and May. For one day, no one was able to take a science exam. On at least four others, testing was stopped entirely for some school districts.

The state has had to expand the testing window into June. Now, it’s questioning whether the scores it gets back will even be valid enough to use.

Will students be denied their high school diploma based on this invalid test? Will schools be closed or teachers fired?

Stupid is as stupid does.

Why doesn’t Utah trust its teachers to write their own tests? They know what they taught, they know their students. Let them decide.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Testing, Utah

New Bedford, Mass: Parents Block Charter Money Grab,

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
32

 

Parents in New Bedford, Massachusetts, managed to stop an outrageous charter money-grab.

Here is a report from

Local activist Ricardo Rosa writes:

An unprecedented charter school model was introduced in the city of New Bedford, MA. Alma Del Mar charter school sought to expand by 1,188 seats, which would have meant the syphoning of $15 million dollars from the city’s public school system and likely a major hit to city’s budget more broadly. The school’s expansion was legal under the current charter cap. The school sought just about all of the seats undermining the very premise of the charter industry, namely, that competition is a positive value in educational reform. 
 
The state’s commissioner of education, the charter operator, the Mayor and the superintendent crafted a deal behind closed doors and attempted to implement it  very hurriedly to evade public scrutiny. The deal allowed the charter 450 seats, a closed public school and its land at no cost, and the crafting of a new public school zone allowing for a structure that bypasses the lottery system and where students in the zone would be automatically enrolled in the charter school instead of their local public schools as of fall 2019. Families could fill out a change of assignment form so as to stay in they public schools, but there was no guarantee that the superintendent (in consultation with the charter operator) would honor it.
Furthermore, the charter could, in three years time, seek additional seats if they so choose. Worse, the public school system had to agree to pay for a pre-determined enrollment figure regardless of how many of those seats are actually filled. Should the deal not work out, the commissioner structured a “Plan B” (an extortion plan really), which would allow the school to proceed with its lottery and expand to 594 seats. 
The state’s Board of Education applauded the deal as a model that could be implemented in other working class and low income cities in Massachusetts. The model was dangerous in that it could have circumvented the charter cap through a complex “home rule petition” that had to be signed off on my the local school committee, the city council, and then move on to the state legislature for the introduction of a bill.
Massachusetts voters voted, overwhelmingly, in 2016 to not expand the charter cap despite large amounts of corporate money that poured in to support the initiative. This was clearly not a deal that would have affected just the city, but the state. 
The New Bedford Coalition to Save Our Schools (NBCSOS), a grassroots organization of parents and grandparents of New Bedford Public School children, community activists, educators and youths, went to work at every stage of this proposal. The Coalition worked in solidarity with the local teachers union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and Citizens for Public Schools. 
Members spoke to residents in a door to door campaign, hosted forums and film screenings to educate the public, spoke to parents at pick up and drop lines in local public schools, wrote Op-Eds, organized rallies, spoke to local and state officials, and wrote a policy analysis report they circulated with state legislators. The Commissioner of Education was forced to pull the deal. There is some indication that legislators are making an attempt to have a hearing of the full body of the legislature, despite the deal being pulled and multiple news reports citing that the deal is dead.
Rosa provides more information in this article he wrote for Commonwealth magazine.
He explained there:
This is an effort to destabilize labor, capitalize on real estate wheeling and dealing in the city, and continue the pursuit of gentrification as an economic strategy. This property handover and automatic enrollment into the charter school is untested and unproven, contrary to the former state education secretary’s claim that it is “effective education policy and innovation.” This deal, however, really amounts to a form of corporate experimentation on New Bedford children that is immoral….
What is being introduced to families is a complex system and paperwork in the hope that parents and guardians will simply go with the flow. This approach is similar to filling out a mail-in rebate. Some will not fill it out due to various reasons. Others will fill it out incorrectly and will never receive the rebate. Even worse, the decision maker here can arbitrarily decide whether to honor the “rebate.”

This is a very dangerous proposal in the sense that it treats people as consumers rather than as citizens deserving all of the rights, information, and privileges of the common good.  Automatically extracting a student from the public school that she or he is entitled to attend is antithetical to the values of the community.

These “third way” approaches are not unique if we look across the United States. It’s very naïve to think that this is a “better way to do charter schools.” The charter industry has come under fire across this country. In our own state we voted against expansion in 2016.

The Alma del Mar proposal is a politically devious and opportunistic way to skirt citizen resistance to charter expansion and to seek a new approach to doing business so as to survive. The mayor, the majority of the school committee and city council, and some of the state legislators who have stated that this proposal is the “lesser of two evils” need to be reminded that “the lesser of two evils” is still evil. This “pragmatic” lesser of two evils tactic may work for the short term, but it will just embolden establishment politics and undermine future chances for real progressive change.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Privatization, Resistance

Steven Singer Issues a Correction

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2019 //
7

Steven Singer writes:

CORRECTION:


In the first draft of my article, I called Sonya Mehta a “Charter School Lobbyist” in the title. On further examination of the facts, I realize this is unfair. She was a charter school TEACHER. I apologize to Ms. Mehta and truly regret any harm I have done her. I have changed the title to better reflect the facts. However, be advised that the text of the article, itself, has remained almost completely unchanged. Everything in the article is true to the best of my knowledge and backed up with sources that the reader can see by following the links in the text. My concern remains centered on Warren and what exactly her intentions are via education policy.

Categories Education Reform
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