Archives for the month of: July, 2019
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Randi Weingarten: Corruption and Mismanagement in Puerto Rico

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
15

The people of Puerto Rico are in the streets demanding the resignation of Governor Rosselló, following the release of emails revealing his bigotry and contemptuous comments about those who elected him. Former Secretary of a Education Julia Keleher was brought to the Island to privatize public schools, adopting the Trump-DeVos plan of charters and vouchers. She was recently arrested on fraud charges.

Weingarten: Puerto Rico Gov. Rossello’s Tenure of Corruption and Failure Centers on His Mismanagement of Public Schools

Governor and Former Puerto Rico Education Secretary Keleher Created a Perfect Storm of Indifference and Incompetence 

For Release:

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Contact:

Michael Powell
310/567-8643
mpowell@aft.org

WASHINGTON—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement on the mismanagement of Puerto Rico’s public schools by Gov. Ricardo Rossello and former Secretary of Education Julia Keleher:

“Nearly 1 million people took to the streets yesterday to call for Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello to resign. His tenure of corruption and failure includes his mismanagement of the public schools.

“The governor and Puerto Rico’s former secretary of education, Julia Keleher, caused significant and lasting damage to children and prevented their access to a high-quality education. Rossello and Keleher’s arrogance and neglect created a perfect storm of indifference and incompetence.

“For two years, Rossello and Keleher ignored repeated requests from the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico and the AFT to use federal recovery money to fund and restore public education on the island. By ignoring our requests, they clearly showed their collective antipathy toward public education and how little they cared about the children and teachers in Puerto Rico’s public schools.

“Instead, they chose to grossly underfund public schools, leaving children with outdated textbooks, no school nurses and school buildings in disrepair. They shortsightedly closed more than 430 schools, one-third of the island’s public schools, and left families struggling to find alternative schools for their children to attend, often many miles away. They diverted much-needed funding from public schools to start charter schools, despite the growing evidence showing that many charters underperform compared with traditional public schools.

“To add insult to injury, we now find out from a recent U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General audit that Rossello and Keleher, to date, have spent $24.1 million—only 4 percent—of the $589 million in disaster relief funds provided by Congress to help fund and repair schools.

“Both knew full well that Congress stipulated in the recovery funding legislation that the money had to be spent in 24 months. Tragically—with the governor mired in a corruption scandal and Keleher being forced to resign after her arrest by the FBI for engaging in a kickback scheme—this federal recovery money will be largely unspent or spent unwisely.

“The governor and former secretary’s lack of commitment to the children of Puerto Rico is appalling. And their disrespect to the teachers on the island who threw their heart and soul into trying to teach and comfort these kids in the months after the storms is unforgivable. The sad chapter of Rossello and Keleher will forever be a stain on Puerto Rico.

“The next governor must not just repair the damage done to the public schools by the hurricanes, but must eliminate the utter contempt that Rossello and Keleher brought to their handling of public education.”

 

 

# # # #

 

 

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Puerto Rico

Teresa Hanafin on Trump’s Wall and Boris Johnson

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
83

 

Teresa Hanafin writes the daily Fast Forward for the Boston Globe.

Here are two stellar items from today’s bulletin:

So Trump is manipulating his gullible supporters again (I could start an item with those words every day), trying to convince them that replacing decrepit barriers on the southern border — a regular maintenance item that every recent administration has done — is the same as building new, i.e. additional, wall as he promised during his 2016 campaign. Let’s be clear: Trump has replaced about 50 miles of existing barriers and added zero miles of new wall.

He’s also still obsessively continuing his attacks on four congresswomen of color who disagree with his policies. Good God, man, give it a rest. Maybe try governing for a change….

Back to Boris: Johnson is a former London mayor who ginned up the masses to vote in favor of Brexit, and now he wants to pull Great Britain out of the European Union with no guardrails in place to ease the transition. Members of the Cabinet have already started resigning in disagreement with his policies.

Johnson was born in New York and had a privileged upbringing in England that led him to believe he could get away with pretty much anything. He worked as a journalist for a time, but kept getting fired for making things up. He’s had extramarital affairs. His eight years as London mayor were marked by chaos and Johnson’s indifference to governing; he appointed a deputy who did all the work. He’s most interested in cultivating adoring followers, although he doesn’t think much of them: “The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge,” he once wrote. Hmm. Here’s a good profile in The New Yorker.

How did such a character became head of the country? Um, Americans really have no business asking that question.

Trump likes him, but Johnson wasn’t always a fan. When Trump claimed during his campaign that there were roving bands of Muslim radicals that were making parts of London so dangerous that people couldn’t go there, Johnson ridiculed him: “When Donald Trump says that there are parts of London that are ‘no-go’ areas, I think he’s betraying a quite stupifying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States.” But Johnson now has embraced Trump. Sound familiar, Lindsey Graham?

Andy Borowitz posts a daily joke for The New Yorker online. Today, he posted that Queen Elizabeth had decided to move to Canada. Her corgis are already in Toronto.

Categories Accountability

Jan Resseger: Eight Essential Facts About Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
11

 

The Charter Industry has led a sterling marketing campaign to persuade the public that they are public schools, that they are far better than “traditional” public schools, and that they are hotbeds of innovation.

None of this is true. They are privately managed schools. They receive public money but they are not public schools. Other than those that select their students, they do not get higher test scores than real public schools, and many are far worse. The only “innovation” that charters can claim is “no excuses” discipline, which looks like schools of a century ago.

Here are Jan’s facts you should know:

If you value the role of public schools—locally governed, publicly owned and operated—whose mission is to serve the needs and protect the rights of every child, you can be more supportive if you know the facts about charter schools. The public schools across the United States enroll 50 million students, 90 percent.  Charter schools suck money out of state budgets and public school districts while they enroll only 6 percent of American students. We all need to be actively refuting the myths and calling politicians on their errors when they betray their ignorance about the problems posed by the privatization of public education.

Here are eight facts to keep in mind:

  1. While their promoters try to brand them as “public charter schools,” charter schools are a form of school privatization. Charter schools are private contractors whose expenses are paid with tax dollars. Their boards operate privately—very often without transparency.
  2. For-profit charter schools are permitted in only two states—Arizona and Wisconsin. In the 43 other states whose laws permit charter schools, the schools must be nonprofits.
  3. Nonprofit charter schools are increasingly operated—and often highly controlled—by for-profit Charter Management Organizations (CMOs).  Sometimes, in something called a sweeps contract, a nonprofit turns over 90 percent or more of its operating dollars to the for-profit management company it has hired to run the school—meaning that the for-profit essentially runs the school.  But that school is technically a nonprofit. Eighty percent of Michigan’s charter schools are operated by for-profit CMOs.
  4. Charter schools are established in state law in 45 states and the District of Columbia. (West Virginia, the 45th state, just passed charter school enabling legislation in June, 2019.)  There are no federal laws that set up or regulate charter schools.
  5. Across the states, charter school fraud and corruption has run rampant due to weak regulation by state legislatures.
  6. Charter schools and their supporters and lobbyists have used their power to promote charter schools across the state legislatures. Groups like the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), ExcelinEd (Jeb Bush’s group), and the American Federation for Children (Betsy DeVos’s group) have lobbied for charter school expansion, and deregulation. Many state legislatures have passed “model” bills which were written and distributed by ALEC’s Education Committee to members of state legislatures who are also members of ALEC.
  7. No state has passed additional taxes to fund charter schools.  When states create charter schools, children who leave public schools to enroll in charters carry away state dollars and essential funding from the public school districts where the children were previously enrolled (see here and here). Public school districts are unable to compensate fully for the loss the public dollars that used to pay for public school services but have now been redirected to a privatized sector.
  8. Since it was begun in 1994, the federal Charter Schools Program has served as a sort of venture capital fund with grants to states to fuel the startup and expansion of the charter school sector. More than $1 billion has been wasted on charter schools which never opened or eventually shut down.  Proponents of the program, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have claimed this waste of tax dollars is acceptable because the money fueled educational innovation and entrepreneurship—even if there was a high rate of failure.

 

 

Categories Education Reform

John Merrow: The Public Purpose of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
64

 

John Merrow here examines the public purpose of public schools, which has been corrupted by forty years of treating standardized tests as the measure of school success.

He writes:

What exactly is the public purpose of school?  Why do communities invest in the education of all their young, instead of simply leaving the task of education to families?  We know that parents send children to school for a host of reasons, but the larger purpose–the communal goal–is worth considering.

Let me assert my hypothesis: the public education system has been highjacked by people obsessed with measurement,  so much so that children are reduced to their test scores.  For about 40 years most school reform efforts have been directed at symptoms, such as low graduation rates, low test scores, or “the achievement gap.” While these s0-called reforms sound great and may even produce temporary improvements, they inevitably fail because they are not addressing the root cause of our educational problems: an approach to schooling that is mired in the past and cannot fulfill the needs of the twenty-first century…

It’s not clear to me that Secretary of  Education Betsy DeVos believes that schools have a public purpose; her actions suggest that she believes a child’s education is the family’s responsibility–full stop, end of story.

Despite that, it’s my hope that, even in these sharply polarized times, we can agree that the purpose of schools is to help grow American citizens. Consider the four key words: help, grow, American, and citizens.

“Help”: This acknowledges that schools are junior partners in this. They exist to help—not replace—families.

“Grow”: Schooling is a process, sometimes two steps forward, one back. It’s akin to a family business, not a publicly traded stock company that lives and dies by quarterly reports.

“American”: E Pluribus Unum. We are Americans….an observation that bears emphasizing today, as we see Donald Trump playing racial politics with a vengeance.

“Citizens”: Here we need to put flesh on that term and figure out what we want our children to be as adults. Good parents and neighbors? Thoughtful voters? Reliable workers? And what else?

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Testing

Tennessee: How Dark Money, DeVos, and Governor Lee Conspired to Pass a Voucher Bill—and Questions about Crime and Punishment

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
13

 

Andy Spears, publisher of the Tennessee Education Report, explains how voucher forces finally passed a bill in Tennessee.

The FBI is investigating how one vote flipped at the last minute.

But no matter the outcome of these investigations, backers of school privatization can claim public policy victory. It took a new governor, an unscrupulous house speaker, and untold dark money dollars, but after six attempts, Tennessee now has a school voucher plan—one that could shift more than $300 million away from public schools in the state.

The lesson from Tennessee is clear: Advocates for public education face privatization forces with vast resources and patience. The fight is going to be a long one.

Funny thing about these FBI investigations. Years ago, the FBI swooped into Gulen offices in Ohio, carted away many boxes, and nothing more was heard from them.

And then there’s Ben Chavis of the Oakland (CA) American Indian Model Schools, the darling of conservatives, the guy who replaced all the American Indian students with Asians and got the state’s highest scores. He was arrested after a state audit found that he had diverted nearly $4 million to his and his wife’s bank account, much of it federal money. He recently got off with one year of probation, no punishment for his theft, because he had done such good work in education. Vielka MacFarlane, head of the Celerity charter chain in California, admitted embezzling $3.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in jail. She dealt with state authorities, not federal ones. Maybe she was sentenced, and Chavis got off with only probation because his schools had higher test scores?

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Tennessee, Vouchers

Pennsylvania: The State’s Largest Charter School—Low-Performing But Profitable

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2019 //
16

 

Chester Community Charter School is the largest brick-and-mortar charter school in Pennsylvania, with more than 4,000 students. It is a for-profit charter school owned by a wealthy lawyer named Vahan Gureghian, who was the largest individual contributor to former Governor Corbett. It is hard to know how much money CCCS makes, because its books are not open to the public. It must be doing very well, because his 36,000 square-foot oceanfront house in Palm Beach was recently sold for $60 million.

But his profits are less important than the fact that CCCS now enrolls 70% of the primary students in the Chester-Upland school district. And it is not because the charter is an academic success. Its test scores are very low. Only 16.7% were proficient in English language arts, compared to a state average of 63%. Only 7% were proficient in mathematics, compared to a state average of 45%.

By most metrics, this charter school is a failing school, yet it gets preferential treatment. The scores in the charter school are below those of the remaining public schools in the district.

The district, one of the poorest in the state, is in receivership, and the receiver—who exercises total control over the district—decided in 2017 to take the unprecedented step of extending the charter to 2026. No charter in the state has ever had a nine-year extension. The receiver said he did it in exchange for a promise by the charter that it would not open a high school to compete with the Chester High School, but would remain satisfied to enroll 70% of its primary students. Why might the receiver make this unusual decision? Surely it would not be because he was treasurer of Governor Corbett’s campaign.

So, from 2017 to 2026, there is no accountability for this low-performing for-profit charter school. The charter corporation is now recruiting young students from Philadelphia with an aggressive marketing campaign. Currently, more than 1,100 students from Philadelphia ride a school bus that takes from 2-3 hours to reach the school in the morning and another 2-3 hours to return home each day. Most of these students are in kindergarten through third grades. I wonder if their parents know they are riding a bus 5-6 hours a day to attend one of the lowest performing schools in the state?

Philadelphia officials also say that Chester Community has mounted an aggressive marketing campaign and distributed glossy fliers that don’t include information about the charter’s academic performance.

“It is fundamentally a marketing strategy,” Monson said. “The lure is how you sell yourself,…We all have plenty of examples of advertised products that don’t live up.”

Results from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) exams released in September showed that Chester Community had some of the lowest scores among charter schools in the region: 15.6 percent of Chester Community students passed the PSSA reading test in the last school year; 6 percent passed math.  Those scores are similar to those of Khepera Charter School in North Philadelphia, which the School Reform Commission has voted to close in June because of poor academics and financial woes. At Khepera, 15.8 percent of students passed reading; 2 percent passed math.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Bill Phillis: What Do Ohio and California Have in Common?

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2019 //
16
 

 

School Bus
More about the indictments in the $80 million California charter school scam
At least three individuals that were indicted in the California charter scam have connections with the STEAM charters in Ohio. Diane Ravitch called our attention to Mercedes Schneider’s investigation of the California fraud.
It is of interest that one of the counts against those involved is securing funds for students not receiving services. Ohioans are very familiar with that kind of scam. ECOT and other Ohio charters scammed Ohio taxpayers and students in a similar manner for a couple of decades.
If the California-based scammers had carried out their scam in Ohio, would they have been indicted?
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
STAY CONNECTED:
School Bus
Ohio E & A | 50 S. Young Street, Suite M102, Columbus, OH 43215
Sent by ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net in collaboration with
Categories Accountability, California, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

Ed Johnson: Atlanta Schools Need Improvement, Not Change

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2019 //
19

 

Ed Johnson is an adherent of the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming, who wrote and spoke about the superiority of Improvement over disruptive change. Ed lives in Atlanta, where the school board and its superintendent believe that they must shock the system, privatize, impose constant disruption. As he shows in the chart below, their approach (the so-called “portfolio model”) has made matters worse. He announces here that he is running for a seat on the board. Wouldn’t that be wonderful to have a critic of disruption on a board now dominated by Ex-TFA know-it-all’s?

19 July 2019

“Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

I am not a proponent of letter grades for schools.  However, Georgia Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) is, to wit:
“This website provides school reports for all public elementary, middle, and high schools in Georgia. These reports include A-F letter grades based on school performance and other useful information about the school, such as performance on statewide assessments, the make-up of the school’s student body, the graduation rate, and additional academic information.”
So, for those who like to have letter grades for schools, I say: Okay, let’s have them.  Ditto for “heat maps.”
My short presentation, here in PDF and here in PowerPoint Show format (download only), carries the title, Atlanta Board of Education District Schools Cumulative Growth by Quantified GOSA Letter Grades since “School Turnaround.”
The presentation aims to be fairly self-explanatory.  Still, essential points about it are:
  • Baseline year 2014 marks the first year of execution of the Atlanta school board and superintendent’s School Turnaround Strategy.
  • For each year from Baseline year 2014 through year 2018, each schools’ GOSA letter grade A, B, C, D, or F is translated to the numeral 2, 1, 0, -1, or -3, respectively.  A is translated to 2, B to 1, C to 0, D to -1, and F to -3.  This then quantifies the letter grades and, yes, the translation procedure is arbitrary—or might one say, “innovative?”  Alternatively, a compounding procedure might be used instead of this purely additive one.
  • Each school’s quantified letter grades are added such that the running sum is recorded over time, creating a time series.  The first addend, at 2014, is noted and added to the second addend, at 2015, and the sum there noted.  Then the sum at 2015 is added to the third addend, at 2016, and the sum there noted.  Then the sum at 2016 is added to the fourth addend, at 2017, and the sum there noted.  And, finally, the sum at 2017 is added to the fifth addend, at 2018, and the sum there noted.  This then establishes a running record as a time series of the school’s Quantified Letter Grade Cumulative Growth.
The presentation offers plots of Quantified Letter Grade Cumulative Growth, over time.  There is a plot for all schools in the Atlanta Public Schools system as well as a plot of schools for each of the six Atlanta school board districts, with school names listed in a side box.  School names are as known by GOSA, except in one case.

For example, the following plot of Atlanta school board District 1 schools shows, at year 2018, the full range of the schools’ quantified letter grade cumulative growth.  Mary Lin Elementary School marks the positive extreme of the range, at 10 (2, 4, 6, 8 10), while Price Middle School and Thomasville Heights Elementary School both mark the negative extreme of the range, at -15 (-3, -6, -9, -12, -15).  All other school board District 1 schools fall in between these extremes, at year 2018.

Note that the Atlanta school board and superintendent outsourced Thomasville Heights Elementary School to a private operator at the beginning stage of executing their School Turnaround Strategy.  They did so as one of their earliest bold actions aiming to fix the supposedly horribly broken school and keeping the state from taking it over, they claimed.

Interestingly, any one of the plots in the presentation looked at holistically, rather than analytically, offers a basis for predicting the future, if only short term.  An obvious prediction to make is that schools in the mostly northern area of Atlanta serving mostly children labeled “white” will generally continue to stay better or get better, while schools in the mostly southern area of Atlanta serving mostly children labeled “black” will generally continue to stay worse or get worse.  The zero-line in the above plot effectively demarcates north Atlanta-area schools, above the line, and south Atlanta-area schools, below the line.

Why is this bifurcation of public education in Atlanta so persistent?   Why does it keep happening?

Well, consider the Atlanta school board and superintendent’s School Turnaround Strategy is today’s version of the root cause of the matter, as it entails essentially the latest in a long string of school reform quick fixes, change initiatives, bold actions, and solutions meant to instantly fix the broken Atlanta Public Schools system and close so-called achievement gaps, opportunity gaps, access gaps, equity gaps, 30 million words gaps, and all manner of gap.  Such has been the root cause for nearly three decades, starting with the school boards of the permanent superintendents Benjamin Canada, then Beverly Hall, and now Meria Carstarphen.

However, the basic, immutable facts have been, and always will be, change does not mean improvement, bold actions do not substitute for quality leadership, there are no solutions, APS cannot break, and so APS cannot be fixed.

One has only to consider what “solution” means and the kinds of systems to which solutions apply—namely, mechanical systems and mathematical systems, for example, but not, dynamic, idiosyncratic social systems such as public school systems and, yes, children.  Public school systems and children are not the kind of systems where solutions can fix them.  Trying to fix APS is much the same as trying to fix a child, which can only be a most egregious, inhumane, and even evil endeavor.

Atlanta Public Schools can only be improved, continually, never ending.

If one won’t believe me and my having been out in the wilderness for the longest of time yammering and crying about these basic, immutable facts, then perhaps one will believe the billionaire Bill Gates and The 74, which he funds.

According to this recent article by The 74, Mr. Gates seems to have recently cottoned to what some might consider W. Edwards Deming’s “continuous improvement” philosophy.  But, of course, putting $93 million towards his new interest entitles Mr. Gates to claim and declare it as his own Continuous Improvement Model.

However, if one were to examine—better yet, read and study–Dr. Deming’s last seminal works, The New Economics for Business, Government, Education(1993, The MIT Press) and Out of the Crisis (1982, The MIT Press), one will not find the term “continuous improvement.”  One will only find the term “continual improvement.”  The point being, it seems Mr. Gates is dragging public education into yet another experiment without having essential knowledge of what is required.

I am aware some of Mr. Gates’ foundation employees attended a Deming conference a few years ago and so I have always wondered what would come of it.  Maybe we are about to find out.  Hopefully, prayerfully, Mr. Gates will not end up having tarnished or compromised Dr. Deming’s legacy:  “Well, we tried the Continuous Improvement Model but it, too, turned out to be one of our experiments that didn’t work out.  So we will move on to look for the next promising elixir to magically fix all the nation’s failing public schools in poor and minority communities.”

I any case, I hope we can understand Dr. Deming’s continual improvement philosophy posits a way of learning, a way of getting knowledge and wisdom, hence a way of life.  The philosophy does not posit a model that, if scripted and the script implemented and “scaled up,” that then will solve and fix all broken public school systems, or turn them around.

In this sense, the plot above, as in the presentation, shows a failing Atlanta school board and superintendent School Turnaround Strategy poised to keep on failing (prediction, knowledge).

Thus, for me, the time has come to “Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

Accordingly, I decided at the last minute to seek the now open Atlanta Board of Education District 2 Seat in a Special Election to be held 17 September 2019.

I simply could not walk away—meaning, I had already taken the first step to leave Atlanta behind by first greatly downsizing to a small fixer-upper bungalow and working on it a while before moving back to my hometown, having already jettisoned years of accumulated stuff.  When nearly three years ago I made this initial downsizing move, I purchased the bungalow within the same ZIP code, as intended.  However, I discovered soon afterwards that I had also purchased just a few hundred yards inside Atlanta school board District 2.  What can I say?

If any of my yammering and crying in the wilderness over the years about Atlanta Public Schools needing improvement, not change, have ever resonated, then I humbly ask for your non-funds support, endorsement, and vote according to your civil privileges.

You have all the civil privileges of supporting, endorsing, and voting for me if you reside principally in Atlanta Board of Education District 2.  If you reside principally outside of District 2, you still have the civil privileges of supporting and endorsing me to those important to you but you cannot vote for me.

Because mainly, though not exclusively, at least one candidate funded by The City Fund’s local executive director is in the race for the District 2 Seat, and because big money is just itching for a fund-raising fight, I have committed to forgo soliciting and accepting campaign contributions.  The fund raising fight The City Fund and other big money are itching for won‘t be mine to give.

Really, just think what a blow it will be to big money when someone (me!) gets elected with no strings attached to big money’s purse strings or school privatization agenda!  Someone who has never been bought and sold, and won’t be, to put it bluntly!

Let’s do this!  Let’s “Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com
Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

St. Paul: Will a Historic Church Be Razed to Make Room for a Segregated White Charter School?

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2019 //
16

 

Sarah Lahm wrote in The Progressive about a community battle in St. Paul, Minnesota, over the fate of a historic church building. 

The church in question is St. Andrew’s. Built in 1927 in the Romanesque Revival style, the brown brick church boasts an impressive, multicolored terra-cotta tile roof and a handsome bell tower. From the street, it looks alive and well kept, although Mass hasn’t been celebrated there since 2011.

Back then, the shrinking parish was merged with another one nearby while the building sat in limbo for two years. In 2013, the Twin Cities German Immersion School, a growing charter school in search of a permanent home, began leasing the church building and its accompanying school site by taking on $8 million in construction and real-estate debt.

The local community didn’t mind that the charter school moved in. It does object, however, to plans to tear it down. The St. Paul NAACP joined the opposition to the charter’s plan to grow.

But money isn’t the reason the St. Paul NAACP opposed the proposed expansion of the Twin Cities German Immersion School. Instead, it is segregation. The group, in a statement issued on December 19, 2018, cited the national NAACP’s 2016 call for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools and argued that allowing the Twin Cities German Immersion School to grow further would “exacerbate the racial and economic segregation in the St. Paul schools.”

The Twin Cities German Immersion School is almost 90 percent white, the NAACP statement noted, while just 7 percent of its students live in poverty, as defined by federal guidelines. That represents a sharp difference from the student population at Como Park Elementary, a neighborhood school in the St. Paul system that sits just one mile away from the Twin Cities German Immersion School.

At Como Park Elementary, only 10 percent of its nearly 500 students are white and the majority live in poverty.

Opponents of the plan to tear down the church appealed to the City Council to designate the building a historic landmark. The council turned them down, 5-0.

The fight is far from over. On Monday, the group Save Historic St. Andrew’s filed a lawsuit under the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act to prevent demolition. Goldstein said the suit was in anticipation of the council voting against historic designation.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Minnesota, Privatization, Segregation

Domingo Morel: State Takeover is the Wrong Answer for Providence Schools

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2019 //
12

 

Domingo Morel is a scholar of state takeovers. He wrote a book called Takeover:  Race, Education, and American Democracy. He was also a member of the team from Johns Hopkins that studied the problems of the Providence schools. And, what’s more, he is a graduate of the Providence public schools.

In other words, he has solid credentials to speak about the future of the Providence public schools. The schools are already under mayoral control, so discount that magic bullet that reformers usually prefer.

He knows from his study of state takeovers that they do not address root causes of school dysfunction.

Consider this:

As a scholar of state takeovers of school districts, I have seen how communities desperate to improve their schools placed their hopes in state takeovers, only to be disappointed. While the long-term effects of takeovers on student achievement often fail to meet expectations, the effects on community engagement are devastating. In most takeovers, states remove local entities — school boards, administrators, teachers, parents and community organizations — from decision-making about their schools.

Those who have read the Johns Hopkins report are aware that the absence of community engagement is a major issue in the Providence Schools. Demographic differences are a major reason. Students of color represent more than 85% of the student population and English Language Learners represent nearly 30%, while more than 80% of the teachers are white. These differences are not trivial…

To help cultivate community engagement, the state could partner with a collective of community organizations, including Parents Leading for Educational Equity, ProvParents, the Equity Institute, the Latino Policy Institute, CYCLE and the Providence Student Union, which have come together over concerns with the Providence schools.

Finally, state officials should examine their role in contributing to the current conditions in Providence. State funding, particularly to support English Language Learners and facilities, has been inadequate. In addition, the absence of a pipeline for teachers of color is a state failure.

What a surprising set of recommendations: increase the pipeline of teachers of color. Build community engagement. Work with community organizations. Increase state funding.

He might also have added: Reduce class sizes. Provide wraparound services for students and adults. Open health clinics for families in the schools or communities. Improve and increase early childhood education. Beef up arts education and performance spaces in every school.

It takes a village, not a flock of hedge fund managers or a passel of fly-by billionaires hawking charter schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Class size, Creativity, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Providence, Rhode Island
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