Remember the biggest charter heist in history? It wasn’t just in California.
Bill Phillis writes:
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Archives for the month of: June, 2019
Steven Singer explains succinctly why charter schools are by definition a waste of money. No one has yet explained why it makes sense to have two publicly funded school systems, one public, the other under private management.
He writes:
You can’t save money buying more of what you already have.
Constructing two fire departments serving the same community will never be as cheap as having one.
Empowering two police departments to patrol the same neighborhoods will never be as economical as one.
Building two roads parallel to each other that go to exactly the same places will never be as cost effective as one.
This isn’t exactly rocket science. In fact, it’s an axiom of efficiency and sound financial planning. It’s more practical and productive to create one robust service instead of two redundant ones.
However, when it comes to education, a lot of so-called fiscal conservatives will try to convince us that we should erect two separate school systems – a public one and a privatized one.
The duplicate may be a voucher system where we use public tax dollars to fund private and parochial schools. It may be charter schools where public money is used to finance systems run by private organizations. Or it may be some combination of the two.
But no matter what they’re suggesting, it’s a duplication of services.
And it’s a huge waste of money.
Read the rest.
ProPublica reports on its investigation of the funding and mission of Teach for America, in which it discovered that TFA is an arm of the charter movement, which aims to replace public schools with non-union private charter school.
This is an eye-popping article, an exemplar of investigative reporting.
It begins:
When the Walton Family Foundation announced in 2013 that it was donating $20 million to Teach For America to recruit and train nearly 4,000 teachers for low-income schools, its press release did not reveal the unusual terms for the grant.
Documents obtained by ProPublica show that the foundation, a staunch supporter of school choice and Teach For America’s largest private funder, was paying $4,000 for every teacher placed in a traditional public school — and $6,000 for every one placed in a charter school. The two-year grantwas directed at nine cities where charter schools were sprouting up, including New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles.
Here are some things you will see documented in this article.
TFA is one of the richest nonprofits in the nation.
TFA has received huge gifts from the anti-union, anti-public school Walton Family Foundation.
TFA supplies a large supply of teachers for non-union charter schools.
TFA has used its resources to help its alumni attain positions of power, as state and local superintendents and as state and local school board members, where they advocate for charter schools and TFA. In Colorado, a TFA alum Michael Johnston is running for U.S. Senate and has received huge campaign contributions from allies of TFA and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform).
Read the article to understand the nexus of power that ties TFA to the Waltons and the privatization movement.
To understand how deeply connected TFA is to rightwing politics, note that a member of its national board of trustees is former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who promoted the DeVos agenda of charters and vouchers while in office. Haslam is a billionaire.
The two outside members of the board of TFA’s political arm, Leadership for Educational Equity (sic) are billionaires Emma Bloomberg and Arthur Rock.
Trump went to Orlando today to launch his re-election campaign. On the same day, the Orlando Sentinel published an editorial announcing the newspaper’s endorsement for 2020: Anyone but Trump.
Donald Trump is in Orlando to announce the kickoff of his re-election campaign.
We’re here to announce our endorsement for president in 2020, or, at least, who we’re not endorsing: Donald Trump.
Some readers will wonder how we could possibly eliminate a candidate so far before an election, and before knowing the identity of his opponent.
Because there’s no point pretending we would ever recommend that readers vote for Trump.
After 2½ years we’ve seen enough.
Enough of the chaos, the division, the schoolyard insults, the self-aggrandizement, the corruption, and especially the lies.
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Middle School Principal Jamaal Bowman has announced that he will challenge incumbent Congressman Elliot Engel.
WASHINGTON — Jamaal Bowman, a middle school principal from the Bronx, announced on Tuesday his plans to challenge Representative Eliot L. Engel, the New York Democrat who leads the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, in the 2020 race.
The contest could serve as a key test of whether liberal insurgent groups can convert a surge of energy on the left into successful challenges of members of the Democratic Party establishment.
Mr. Bowman becomes the second liberal challenger to Mr. Engel this year, but the first New York primary candidate to be endorsed by Justice Democrats, the grass-roots group that helped fuel Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning defeat last year of Joseph Crowley of New York, the No. 4 Democrat in the House at the time.
“I’m inspired by all of the new lifestyles injected into Congress and the new ideas,” said Mr. Bowman, who will run against Mr. Engel, a 16-term incumbent who serves New York’s 16th Congressional District, and Andom Ghebreghiorgis, a teacher who, like Mr. Bowman, has vowed to pursue progressive policies, including “Medicare for all,” the Green New Deal and changes to public education.
The campaign announced:
BRONX MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL JAMAAL BOWMAN ANNOUNCES CAMPAIGN FOR CONGRESS
The Founder of the innovative Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, Bowman has been a leader in the opt-out movement
NEW YORK, NY — Middle school principal, education advocate, and former teacher Jamaal Bowman launched his campaign for Congress in New York’s 16th district today with a spirited launch video discussing his family, professional background, and his case for taking on his opponent: 30-year incumbent Eliot Engel. Bowman is running to better represent the communities of The Bronx and Westchester with a focus on taking on racial and economic injustice.
VIEW BOWMAN’S ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO: https://youtu.be/VnGn4sc_QVQ
“It’s time for a Democrat who will fight for schools and education, not bombs and incarceration,”
reads Bowman’s website.
Bowman was born and raised in New York City by a single mother and spent time in public housing and rent-controlled apartments. He and his wife live in Yonkers with their three kids and are both educators. Bowman founded a public middle school, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action (CASA) in the Baychester neighborhood of The Bronx in 2009 and serves as its first principal.
Bowman has been an educator and advocate for public schools for over 20 years, including participating in community organizing and activism to support fully funding New York’s public schools, the movement to opt-out of standardized testing, and racial justice. Bowman was a school teacher at PS 90 in The Bronx and Martin Luther King High School in Manhattan.
Despite the fact that Bowman’s middle school ranked first in New York City for improved test score average in 2015, Bowman has consistently been one of the most vocal critics in New York City and New York state to support the opt-out movement and speak out against the weaponization of standardized tests in public schools.
Bowman also implemented a restorative justice model at his middle school in order to combat the school-to-prison pipeline. Within six years, the school had cut suspensions by two-thirds. Bowman’s school does not use suspensions for insubordination, which is particularly important because nationally, “willful defiance” is often found as a racially disproportionate cause for suspension.
June 17, 2019
Contact: waleedshahid@justicedemocrats.com
Bowman’s work as an educator was featured in Amsterdam News, one of the oldest African American newspapers in the country in 2016. He was also featured in The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, New York Daily News, NY1, and TedTalks.
MORE ABOUT JAMAAL BOWMAN
Driven by a desire to bring people together and create a better future for the young people in his community, Bowman has fought on behalf of the working families of the Bronx to ensure their children have the best education. He envisions a future where all students have an equal shot at a fulfilling life, career, and future, regardless of where they grow up.
Bowman was born and raised in New York City. He spent his early years with his grandmother in public housing at the East River Houses until he was 8 and later moved into rent-controlled apartments
Bowman didn’t have much growing up but his mother provided him all that he needed: love, a stable family, and a sense of community. Her guidance led him toward becoming a teacher, school principal, and community leader.
After finishing high school in New Jersey, Bowman earned a BA in Sports Management from the University of New Haven in 1999 — and immediately became a public school teacher back home in The Bronx. Bowman went on to earn a Masters Degree in Guidance Counseling from Mercy College and an Ed.D. with a specialization in Community Leadership from Manhattanville College.
Bowman’s crowning achievement was in founding a public middle school, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action (CASA) and serving as its first principal. Located in the Baychester neighborhood of The Bronx, CASA is an innovative public school with a strong emphasis on student voice, holistic education, cultural awareness and love. He has also led efforts to educate elected officials on the impact of toxic stress on health and education outcomes.
Attention Editors of U.S. News & World Report!
Gina Caneva teaches in a high school in Chicago that received a high ranking from U.S. News & World Report, but she is not happy.
She knows the rankings are destructive nonsense. They are a fraud.
I began teaching 15 years ago at Corliss High School in the Roseland community on the Far South Side. Then and now, the school’s student body is nearly entirely African American, and 90% are termed “low income.” Currently, U.S. News and World Report states that Corliss is in between 430-647 in their rankings, CPS gives it a Level 2 rating and the Illinois Report Card designates it as a lowest performing school. Although I don’t have the numbers from 15 years ago, without a doubt these rankings would have been similar as I remember it being a school “on probation.” This meant that it could be closed.
But inside, it was neither a school on probation nor a failing school. Teachers worked together to prepare a rigorous curriculum that engaged students at many different skill levels despite lacking resources. Many students were fully present and active in their coursework. When outsiders stereotyped my students by asking, “Do they listen to you?” and “Do you just pass them through?” I told them story after story about my students reading and analyzing the nearly 600-page “Invisible Man” and writing poetry that rivaled published authors.
But there were some obstacles a rigorous curriculum and student engagement couldn’t overcome. Back in 2004, we only had one working computer lab for over 1,000 students. When we returned from winter break, bullet holes pierced our corridor windows — a glaring reminder of the violence in the neighborhood. Students had very few resources to deal with trauma or social-emotional learning as social work services were slim to none. I remember working with a student who lost her mother and younger siblings to violence over Christmas. She did not need rigorous instruction; we were ill-equipped to supply the emotional support she needed.
My second school, TEAM Englewood Community Academy, was a start-up school that opened because a low-ranked school was closed. Again, teachers and students worked diligently together to achieve district goals. Our students rarely met them, but not for lack of effort or focus. Bodies of research support the impact of poverty and segregation as legitimate factors of limited success on standardized tests. But whatever the factors were, for my students, they proved to be too much as the school would be labeled a failure. Last year, TEAM Englewood closed in much the same fashion as the school it replaced.
Presently, I teach at the 11th best ranked high school in Illinois. Lindblom teachers work diligently and are experts in their fields. We strive to provide a rigorous curriculum as much as teachers I worked with at Corliss and TEAM Englewood did. But there are two major differences at Lindblom. First, our students meet and exceed district, state and national goals. Second, they have to test in to get accepted into our school. As a selective-enrollment school, if a student does not meet the criteria of a certain score on a placement test before ninth grade, they cannot attend Lindblom. Yet our school, with our selective population, is ranked using the same measures against schools that are not selective. Simply put, the process is unfair.
Valerie Strauss posted a fascinating column about the biggest charter scam in history.
She writes:
Late last month, San Diego officials indicted 11 people in what they described as a charter scam that defrauded the state of California of more than $50 million in education funds.
The indictment details a scheme in which an Australian man and his business partner in Southern California opened 19 charter schools throughout the state and then took the public funding the schools received to operate and used it instead for real estate and other ventures.
This post explains the scam that the 235-page indictment spells out in detail. This is long but worth the time to read to get an understanding of how easy it is, because of lax charter sector laws in some states, to defraud the public.
California, which has more charter schools and more charter school students than any other state, now has one of the most lax charter laws in the country, allowing these schools to operate with little if any accountability or transparency to the public.
The story was written by Will Huntsberry, a reporter for the Voice of San Diego. She received permission from the Voice of San Diego to repost it in full. It is an important story.
It begins like this:
Sean McManus and Jason Schrock created an online charter school empire that covered more than half the state of California, according to prosecutors and investigators for an outside charter school organization.
From the port of entry at San Ysidro up to Los Angeles, past the cliffs of Big Sur all the way to Santa Cruz; east through Raisin City, past the giant sequoias of Sierra National Forest, and down into the flat and quiet of Death Valley; south again to the Mexican border; and back to the coast — a person could travel unbroken through 20 counties that made up the lower half of their empire. An outpost of 14 counties encompassing Sonoma and Sacramento sits further north.
From this vast swath of territory, McManus and Schrock absorbed mind-blowing profits. Take just some of their 2016 tax returns (1): Their nonprofit charter management company A3 brought in $14.2 million in revenue. It spent only $3.6 million. Of the money it spent, $855,796 went to McManus and Schrock’s salaries. They appeared to be the only two employees, according to the tax return.
The profits climbed even higher in the months that followed, according to an indictment (2) filed by prosecutors. A3 Education and other companies controlled by McManus and Schrock ultimately brought in more than $80 million, prosecutors say.
Veteran journalist Peg Tyre is in Japan right now, trying to learn more about their efforts to reform schools. She loves feedback from you.
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Mercedes Schneider was a little surprised that Bill Gates is setting up a lobbying organization. Why should he? He has been shelling out millions to buy Influence with state and federal policy makers for years.
She writes:
Whereas the idea of Gates paying individuals to lobby to alter policy in line with his billionaire preferences, the public should realize that Gates already has an oversized influence on legislators and other elected and appointed officials.
For example, from 2002 to 2018, the Gates Foundation has paid the National Governors Association (NGA) $33.2M for Gates-approved initiatives, mostly affecting K12 education.
Shall we pretend that Gates’ steadily funding an association of state governors to promote Gates goals does not sway these governors? I think not.
From 2002 to 2018, Gates has also paid $122M to the state education superintendent organization, Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on his K12 education preferences.
Both NGA and CCSSO were key organizations in promoting Common Core (see here and here, for example). Common Core is a Gates pet; he has been shelling out his billionaire bucks on it for years, even trying to tie it to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Gates has even paid grants to the US Department of Education: $858M (2013 – 2016). Wrap your mind around that one.
But there’s more.
From 2013 to 2016, Gates paid $1.8M to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The largest grant ($1.2M in 2015) was “to support education of state policymakers.”
In 2009, Gates stood before them and, as National Conference for State Legislatures “co-chair,” he told them what he wanted, as excerpted below from my March 20, 2014 post, which also references my March 17, 2014, post about Gates dining with 80 senators:
On March 13, 2014, Bill Gates had dinner with 80 senators and other elected officials. Given his keynote the following day to members of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), make no mistake that Gates used his time with the senators and other officials to push the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
However, Gates is more than CCSS. Gates is the entire spectrum of reforms, and he is more than willing to use his influence to promote his opinion of educational reform to those supposedly elected By the People.
The following text is an excerpt from Gates’ 2009, speech to the National Council of State Legislatures, which“co-chair” Gates offered as part of his complete speech on so-called education reform.
The entire speech is worth a sobering read.
Mercedes links to the Gates’ speech and quotes it.
Please open the link and read what he said in 2009.
Ten years later we know that every Gates Initiative in education has failed.
Testing, measuring teachers by test scores, closing public schools and replacing them with charters, Common Core, data-driven everything.
Do you think he knows it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 