Gary Rubinstein offers his favorite posts, his Top Ten.
Every one of them is a jewel, reflecting Gary’s inside understanding of TFA and corporate reform, and his frank acknowledgement of their failures.
He left out many wonderful posts, including his careful exposes of the failure of the Tennessee (Non)Achievement School District, which consumed $100 million of Race to the Top funding and still failed.
John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, reviews an important new book.
Lawrence Baines’ Privatization of America’s Public Institutions: The Story of the American Sellout combines analyses of assaults on four public sectors, the military, corrections departments, public schools, and higher education, to reveal the immense scale of privatization and its dangers. Dr. Baines, the Associate Dean of Education at the University of Oklahoma, shows that “Privatization is no longer an occasional strategy to help improve efficiency of a particular public service.” It “has become an automatic response to any perceived governmental inefficiency.” Baines carefully documents the ways that “Privatization is changing the nature of America’s public institutions and consequently, the character of the country.”
The first chapter, “Privatizing the Military: Profiting from the Carnage of War,” foreshadows a frightening pattern that explains why I, for one, was slow to see the full nature of the threat. It starts in 2007 with the killing of 17 persons in Baghdad by mercenaries employed by Erik Prince’s Blackwater. The people I know were horrified by that and other behavior of contract fighters when Dick Chaney, formerly of Halliburton, was Vice President. I had no idea, however, that by 2015, private contractors in the Mideast would outnumber soldiers by a 3 to 1 margin.
By that time, 44% of Department of Defense discretionary spending went to private contractors. As one military analyst said, contractors had become “the fifth branch of the military.” Baines explains how the inability to hold contractors accountable leads to an unknowable number of killings, meaning that we can’t evaluate the human and moral costs of military privatization any more than we can calculate the true financial costs.
Baines reports that we have reached the point where ROTC officer training is contracted out. Since the program acculturates cadets who will become the leaders of our democracy’s armed forces, an analyst says, this form of privatization may produce “‘longer-term effects on the overarching values that motivate military service.’”
This reader thought he had a more thorough understanding of the topic in the next chapter, “Privatizing Corrections: Making Money from Misery,” which documents the costs in money, lives, and our values of privatized prisons. I had read about numerous individual scandals, such as Montana Two Rivers Detention Center which was funded with a $27 million bond issue in 2007, but I had not seen the bigger picture described by Baines. Two Rivers remained vacant for 9 of 10 years but the private corporation which ran it still made money. Similarly, Mississippi had to pay off the debt of about $121 million for a closed prison, but its operators, Geo Group made over $2 billion. And with the scandal-ridden Pennsylvania institution, where the program was dubbed “kids for cash,” private operators walked away with profits for a million-dollar condominium and a $1.5 million yacht.
It’s bad enough that private operators charge more for detentions that were more brutal towards adult inmates, but since crime has declined, they’ve moved into even more disgusting systems for making big bucks, such as juvenile detentions. More than half of incarcerated juveniles are locked up for nonviolent crimes; 21% committed no crime. They are locked up due to “technical violations,” and “status offenses.” So, an institution profits from detaining a 13-year-old who didn’t show for a hearing about a fight he didn’t witness and a 15-year-old girl who ridiculed an assistant principal on social media.” The median time for a juvenile for status offense is 128 days.
Then the story grows more horrific. As states like Oklahoma over-incarcerate on the cheap, fees and fines become an essential funding source. I knew how cruel the situation is in Oklahoma, where we are #1 in the world in incarceration rates, but I had no idea that 48 states have gone down that path. And since fees and fines are a doomed method of funding the overgrown incarceration complex, monitored release of inmates is growing. That creates another market for privatizers, electronic bracelets to oversee parolees. And, surprise!, the lucrative, private market for monitoring those devices is “subject to virtually no judicial oversight.”
And the story became even more unconscionable as private prisons moved into another growing market, immigrant detentions. Since 2003, 176 immigrant deaths have gone largely unreported by for-profit institutions. And private prisons have enabled Trump’s attacks on immigrant families.
Moreover, the dangers and costs of privatized prisons, like those of privatized schools, have grown worse during the Trump administration. And that leads to Baines’ concise indictment of the privatization of public schools through charter schools and vouchers. Readers of this blog are well-versed in the ways that privatization has undermined public education, so I will merely touch a few of Baines’ insights in Chapter Three, “Privatizing K – 12 Public Education: How the Profit Motive Is Changing Schools,” as well as recommend a full reading of his evidence.
The use of privatization as a tool for corporate school reform has denigrated teacher quality and fostered dumbed-down education. It uses technology to reduce number of teachers needed in the culture of data-driven competition it created. It has gotten to the point where 5,000 emergency certificates were issued in Oklahoma in 2017 and 2018. Next door, Texas adjudicated 222 cases of teacher misconduct in 2016, with most involving sex acts with minors. The backlogged caseload is over 1,100.
And privatization has increased inequality and segregation. Baines offers a corrective to the spin of charter advocates who deny they have promoted segregation, “Most minority students who attend privatized schools have few white classmates; most white students who attend privatized schools have few minority classmates.”
The next topic that Baines analyzes, higher education, is intertwined with the legacy of privatization by charters and vouchers, as well as the budget-cutting that has devastated k – 12 education in Oklahoma and many other states.
Early in the chapter, “Privatizing Public Education: Selling Off the Alma Mater,” Baines lists the ten states that have cut higher education by 26% to 54% from 2008 to 2017. Oklahoma is 6th, with cuts of 34%. In 1996, higher education privatization was basically limited to five support services. By 2017, there were 17 categories of privatized services, culminating with academic programs. Moreover, in 2016, 1/3rd of universities outsourced their online programs.
Public school teachers have more than enough experience with the testing toxicity pushed by the Pearson corporation and Eli Broad. Less well known is their intrusions into universities. Privatizers have even moved into micro-credentialing, making money off of credentials for skills like “Checking for understanding using whiteboards.” Moreover, when these online providers are both a private company and a LLC (Limited Liability Company), they aren’t obligated to reveal their instructors’ qualifications.
To take just a couple of Baines’ examples, the Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University gets 32% of the gross revenue in partnership with Bisk, “a corporation specializing in curricular design, online education, and student support,” which gets 68% of the gross revenue from the Business Analytics master’s program. Baines notes that most students probably don’t know that they will not be taught by M.S.U. faculty, as opposed to Bisk employees who may not have a degree in the subject they are teaching.
A similar lack of transparency is illustrated by Arkansas State University’s Academic Partnership program where students aren’t told that they may not have instructors from their university, and that A.S.U. program’s website is virtually identical to its counterpart at U. of Texas, Arlington, which has 18 tenure-track faculty and a 1000-1 ratio for tenure track faculty.
Finally, Baines listed the costs to graduates, and students who failed to graduate from our privatized universities. Ironically, these debts are, in large part, a legacy of corporate school reform which claimed to be a “21st century civil rights movement.”
From 2010 to 2016 individuals with at least some college “captured 11.5 million of the 11.6 million jobs available.” Pay for workers without a high school diploma is less than half of that for workers with a college degree, so access to high-quality education should have been an important tool for achieving equity. But even when a student earns college degree, privatization has undermined the prospects for many or most graduates. Pell Grants used to pay 75% of 4-year college costs but now they only pay for about 30%. Consequently, former university students have accumulated $1.5 trillion in debt.
Too often, the value of university degrees has been compromised. Today, 70% of higher education instructors are adjuncts. The university’s mission of service to society has been de-emphasized. College is supposed to be a transformational experience “a rush of unfamiliar people, cultures, knowledge, relationships, and interactions.” But now, the “collegiate experience is becoming commercialized, standardized, and monetized.”
Baines wraps up his account of the human and financial costs of privatizations by illustrating ways that the military, prisons, public schools, and higher education are being undermined by interrelated forces. Just as the military’s belief in service to the U.S. is put at risk, the university’s contributions to the public good are being undermined. Privatized prisons lead to more segregation of inmates by race as a means of self-protection. Similarly, privatized schools increase segregation as they foster a culture of competition that increases inequality. And the tragic tale all comes together in the final chapter about the privatization of universities.
Baines explains that, “Privatization is happening so quickly and on such a colossal scale in higher education that it is difficult to stay current.” To take one example of how it is interconnected with k-12th grade schools, he shows how teacher certification is “being transmogrified into a product traded on the open market, teachers are circumventing universities and teacher preparation completely and moving straight into the classroom.” This has led to unqualified teachers being rushed into many states’ classrooms, pushing down school quality and enabling privatizers to blame the public schools.
Privatization of America’s Public Institutions is so full of memorable characterizations of the tragedies of privatization that it is difficult to select one as a concluding statement. So, I’ll borrow Baines’ quote of the Commissioner of U.S. Bureau of Education, whose words from 1891 would be equally true if applied to today’s armed forces or the penal system. The commissioner said, “let us hope, that the time is not far distant when an untrained teacher will be considered a greater absurdity than an untrained doctor or lawyer.”
The Sackler Family is reputedly worth $14 billion, but who knows if it is more or less. This money derived from the manufacture and marketing of OxyContin, a highly addictive opioid, by Purdue Pharma.
With lawsuits filed in 2,000 jurisdictions, the Sacklers offered $10-12 billion to selle all the lawsuits. Fighting all of them could bankrupt the company and the family.
The Financial Times is reporting that Purdue Pharma, the opioid maker, and members of the billionaire Sackler family that own the company have offered to settle thousands of lawsuits against the company for $10 to $12 billion, according to people briefed on the offer.
According to FT, more than 2,000 states, cities, and counties across America are pursuing the OxyContin maker over the large bills for cleaning up the opioid crisis — and are deciding whether to accept the offer by Friday, the people said.
Rhode Island is presently in litigation with both the company and its subsidiary Rhode Technology in Coventry, RI.
The Sackler family is one of the richest families in America.
A friend advised me that there will be a show tonight at 10 PM on a cable called TruTV.
The show is called “Adam Ruins Everything.”
Tonight Adam will “ruin” one of Corporate Reform’s favorite causes.
There will be a cameo appearance by one of our favorite bloggers.
I am not allowed to share the secret.
Please watch and prepare to enjoy.
The College Board has dropped the controversial idea of giving students a score for their social-economic circumstances.
The College Board is abandoning its plan to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the SAT, after facing criticism from educators and parents.
Instead, it will try to capture a student’s social and economic background in a broad array of data points. The new tactic is called Landscape and doesn’t combine the metrics into a single score.
The original tool, called the “environmental context dashboard,” combined about 15 socio-economic metrics from a student’s high school and neighborhood to create something college admission officers called an “adversity score.”
Considering a student’s race and class in college admissions decisions is a contentious issue. Many colleges, including Harvard University, say a diverse student body is part of the educational mission of a school. A lawsuit accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian-American applicants by holding them to a higher standard is awaiting a judge’s ruling. Lawsuits charging unfair admission practices have also been filed against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California system.
In case the WSJ article is behind a paywall, here is another.
Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San Diego reports that all the online charters connected to the biggest charter fraud in U.S. history will close.
Huntsberry writes:
An online charter school empire whose leaders have been charged with enrolling fake students and misappropriating $80 million in public funds will be forced to close all of its schools across California.
In May, the San Diego district attorney’s office charged 11 people in a corruption scandal of historic proportions. Prosecutors say Sean McManus and Jason Schrock, who operated A3 Education, were the ringleaders of the operation. Several who worked with McManus and Schrock have also been charged with crimes, including the superintendent of the Dehesa School District in San Diego County.
At its peak, A3 operated 19 online schools across the state, including three in San Diego, according to investigators. One closed before the charges were filed. And two more – one in San Diego and another in Los Angeles – were slated to close. But now a court-appointed receiver has decided to shutter all of the remaining schools.
Students’ records at each of the closing schools will be transferred to their school district of residence by Sept. 30, according to a letter obtained by the Marin Independent Journal, which was sent out to districts associated with the A3 schools. Richard Kipperman, the court-appointed receiver, confirmed to Voice of San Diego that all the schools will close.
How the Scam Worked
Prosecutors painted an intricate picture of a complex organization that managed to turn student records into giant sums of cash. A3 Education enrolled many students who took actual classes, but it also enrolled many students who never did any schoolwork, prosecutors say.
Most of the fake students were participants in summer athletic programs, according to the indictment. Enrollment workers would approach a football program, for instance, and offer as little as $25 a head for each player’s records. The enrollment worker would also get a commission on however many students he or she enrolled. The rest of the money – which totaled in the thousands of dollars for each student – went to companies controlled by McManus and Schrock.
In one instance, Luiz Rigney, an enrollment worker, carried several suitcases of student paperwork, worth roughly $5 million, to one of A3’s offices. Rigney had been asked to backdate that paperwork so A3 could get maximum profit, prosecutors say.
In another instance, two workers texted each other back and forth about the large sums of cash flowing through the company: “I had the weirdest dream last night! One was about us growing all Sean’s schools. I was running all the Facebook campaigns and you were running around my office drinking champagne throwing money everywhere yelling I love bonuses,” the texts read, according to court documents.
Marc Mannella opened the first KIPP middle school in Philadelphia in 2003.
He started with 90 students in fifth grade.
KIPP promised that students who stuck with the “no-excuses” regimen would go to college.
Avi Wolfman-Arent of WHYY in Philadelphia tracked down 33 of those students to find out what happened to them.
The former KIPPsters are now about 25.
Of the 90, 25 dropped out in the first year of middle school.
The students entered a world of incentives and punishments, of strict rules administered strictly.
It wasn’t right for everyone.
Of the 90 students who enrolled in KIPP Philly’s first middle school class, about half were boys. By the time 8th grade graduation arrived, enrollment was whittled down to 34 students — and only 11 boys remained….
Almost none of the KIPP alumni we interviewed did four years at one high school followed by four years at one college. All of them seemed to flounder or grow restless or get sidetracked somewhere along the journey up that mountain.
KIPP propelled them to high school — usually a Catholic school or a private school or a magnet school — but they didn’t stick there. KIPP’s lessons didn’t always follow them out the door…
Here’s what the numbers say.
Six years after high school graduation, 35 percent of the original KIPP Philly class had an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. At the seven-year mark, that number was 44 percent.
What does that mean?
In Philadelphia, about a quarter of students who graduate high school earn a college degree by the six-year mark. That overall Philly number would be lower if you tracked students back to eighth grade, like KIPP does.
There’s a prominent nationwide study that tracked students starting in 10th grade.
It found that eight years after high school graduation, about 14 percent of students from the lowest income quartile had a degree.
KIPP Philly students almost all came from poor neighborhoods, and the results suggest that they earned degrees at much higher rates — rates that are about the same as middle-income students.
“And that feels like we did something that was real,” said Mannella, the school’s founder.
There are serious caveats, though.
KIPP’s number doesn’t count all the kids who left over those four years. Some of those kids did graduate college. Some didn’t. It’s quite possible that the 34 who made it through KIPP were more likely to have long-term academic success for a whole host of reasons, no matter what school they attended.
Frankly this project is incomplete, too.
We talked with 24 of the 34 alum from the original class — as well as nine students who attended KIPP Philadelphia but didn’t finish. The ten graduates who chose not to talk may have very different experiences than the 24 who did
The author wonders what is the best way to evaluate KIPP. Graduation rates? College entry? College persistence? Employment?
KIPP is now the largest charter chain in the nation.
One thing we learn from this piece is that its strict discipline code helps some students, turns off others.
Its methods are not a panacea. Most kids who enter do not persist. For some, it is a lifesaver.
Perhaps the same might be said of the public schools that were closed to make way for KIPP and the public schools that accepted the KIPP dropouts and pushouts.
Justin Parmenter here tells the story of the “white flight academy” that decided to turn itself into a charter, thus relieving the parents of the burden of paying tuition. Now the taxpayers of North Carolina get to fund this school with a long history of fighting desegregation.
Hobgood Academy was founded in 1969 and opened in 1970 as a private academy for white parents who didn’t want their children to attend desegregated (by court order) schools in North Carolina. Tuition was low ($5,000) but onerous for the parents. They realized not long ago that they could become a charter school and the state would pay all their costs.
The Hobgood parent site confirms that the primary reason behind the school’s desire to become a public charter was not to increase diversity and expand opportunity for children of poverty at all. Rather, it was to allow children who already went to the 87% White school to continue to attend it, instead of going to Halifax County Schools, where only 4% of students are White. According to 2010 census data, Halifax County’s residents are 40% White and 53% Black.
North Carolina’s Director of Charter Schools opened Hobgood’s opening ceremony as a charter school and praised it for…its “diversity.”
Do you laugh or cry when confronted with such hypocrisy?
Great news from Tennessee!
The Speaker of the House, Glenn Canada, who rammed through a voucher bill, was replaced by Cameron Sexton, an anti-voucher Republican.
Marta W. Aldrich of Chalkbeat reports:
The House overwhelmingly elected Rep. Cameron Sexton on Friday as its speaker to replace Glen Casada, who stepped down earlier this month. While both men are party loyalists, Sexton voted against the voucher bill that Casada strong-armed through the chamber before a series of scandals rocked him out of his leadership job….
Sexton has strong ties to public education. He attended schools in Knox County before graduating in 1989 from Oak Ridge High School in neighboring Anderson County, where he had access to foreign languages, advanced placement courses, and early college credits before heading to the University of Tennessee. His mother was a kindergarten teacher for more than 30 years, and his grandfather was a principal. He and his wife, Lacey, have chosen public schools for their own children.
That family history, he said, was likely a factor behind his consistent votes against voucher bills, but he cites philosophical reasons, too.
“We should do everything we can to improve all public schools in the state of Tennessee so they can be successful,” he said. “I would rather go that route than the voucher route.”
Pastors for Tennessee Children have been working alongside parents and teachers to protect public schools and separation of church and state. Hallelujah.
If only.
Today from the American Prospect
AUGUST 26, 2019
Kuttner on TAP
I Have a Dream. My dream is that some senior member of the Trump administration makes a public declaration that Donald Trump is clinically insane. Everybody knows this, but his appointees keep behaving as if the mad king has clothes.
The Republican primary challenge to Trump by former Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh softens the ground. Walsh, in a surprisingly candid op-ed piece, said this:
Fiscal matters are only part of it. At the most basic level, Mr. Trump is unfit for office. His lies are so numerous—from his absurd claim that tariffs are “paid for mostly by China, by the way, not by us,” to his prevarication about his crowd sizes, he can’t be trusted.
Beyond his sheer demagoguery, it is Trump’s lunacy that is most hazardous to our country. He lives in a fantasy world. He seems to be getting crazier by the week.
Suppose a competent and principled conservative, say chief trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer, asked to appear before a congressional committee, and testified firsthand to Trump’s mental instability. Suppose he was joined by a senior national security official.
This conspiracy of silence needs to be broken. Whether Trump is removed from office via impeachment or the 25th Amendment is a tactical detail. January 2021 is too long to wait.
As Joe Walsh said yesterday on ABC News, saying that the 25th Amendment needed to be looked at:
We’ve never had a situation like this, you can’t believe a word he says. Again, I don’t care about your politics, that should concern you. He’s nuts, he’s erratic, he’s cruel, he stokes bigotry, incompetent.… The only thing he cares about is Trump.
This revelation is hardly a well-kept secret. Maybe Walsh will inspire other ashamed Republicans, and set off a stampede. ~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Diane Ravitch's blog 