Archives for the month of: August, 2019
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Jan Resseger: For-Profit MGT Did NOT “Turn Around” the Schools of Gary, Indiana

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2019 //
4

Jan Resseger noted that the Colorado state board of education awarded a contract to MGT Consulting based on their “success” in turning around the public schools of Gary, Indiana. She shows in this post that there was no turnaround.

She writes:

Colorado state school board members praised MGT’s record in the so-called turnaround of the only whole school district it has managed—for the past two years—in Gary, Indiana. The fact that MGT Consulting, a for-profit, was praised for work in Gary caught my eye. I have been to Gary, just as I have been to Detroit, whose public schools have shared some problems with Gary’s. Detroit’s school district was assigned a state emergency fiscal manager by former Governor Rick Snyder; in fact Detroit’s school district was assigned an emergency manager named Darnell Earley after he left Flint, where, as municipal emergency fiscal manager, he had permitted the poisoning of the city’s water supply. Fortunately Detroit’s schools have been turned back to the democratically elected local school board, which hired a professional educator, Dr. Nikolai Vitti.

And I have been to the cities in Ohio now in state takeover, and being operated by appointed Academic Distress Commissions. I am thinking of Youngstown, which in four years under an Academic Distress Commission and appointed CEO, has not turned around. I am thinking of Lorain, where outright chaos has ensued under an Academic Distress Commission’s appointed CEO, David Hardy. And I am thinking of East Cleveland, whose schools are just beginning the state takeover process, and ten other Ohio school districts—including Dayton and Toledo—being threatened with state takeover.

All of these Rust Belt cities and their school districts are characterized by economic collapse. They are industrial cities where factories have closed and workers moved away to seek employment elsewhere. When industry collapses, the property tax base—the foundation of the local contribution of school funding—evaporates, and as workers lose jobs or leave, local income tax revenue collapses as well…

In July 2017, the state took over the school district in Gary and turned the schools over to a private, for-profit management company: MGT Consultants. MGT hired Peggy Hinkley, a retired school superintendent to run the schools, but she resigned a little more than a year later. The Post-Tribune‘s Carole Carlson describes Hinkley’s tenure: “Hinkley served 14 months and ruffled the feathers of some elected officials who criticized her decisions, especially the closing of the Wirt-Emerson School of Visual and Performing Arts. When Wirt-Emerson closed in June (2018), it left the district with just one high school, the West Side Leadership Academy. It stoked fears of a continuing exodus of students who would leave for charter schools or other districts… Under Hinckley, Gary reached a deal resolving $8.4 million in back payroll taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS forgave a large portion of the debt, leaving the district with a $320,000 payment. The freeing up of the liens on buildings allowed Hinckley to list 33 vacant schools and properties for sale. By November, the district had accepted five offers, amounting to $480,000. More sales are still being weighed. In all, Hinckley erased about $6 million of the district’s $100,000 million in long-term debts and reduced its monthly deficit from about $1.8 million to $1.3 million… Academically, all seven elementary schools received Fs on state report cards this year.”

Clearly, in Gary, Indiana, MGT Consultants has not miraculously achieved the kind of quick school district turnaround Colorado’s state school board bragged about when it contracted with MGT to take over three school districts.

Read on to learn about the role of ex-Indiana superintendent Tony Bennett and the Corporate Reform-disruption-greed Movement.

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Indiana, Lies, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Can Privatizers Win Elections Without Billionaire Cash?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2019 //
8

Mercedes Schneider reports that the Louisiana PAC created by a small number of out-of-state billionaires to buy control of the State Board is disbanding.

She writes:

In 2015, six out-of-state billionaires from four families contributed a combined $3M to influence the outcome of Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) election.

The PAC was just dissolved.

What will happen in Louisiana without millions from the Waltons, Michael Bloomberg, John Arnold, and Eli Broad?

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Louisiana

Jersey Jazzman: The Death of the Merit Pay Fairy in Newark

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2019 //
16

Jersey Jazzman has posted an obituary for the Merit Pay Fairy. He says it died in Newark, when teachers negotiated a new contract, deep-sixing a Merit Payplan that they endorsed in 2012.

JJ demonstrates with facts and evidence that merit pay failed.

He begins:

The Merit Pay Fairy lives in the dreams of right-wing think tanks and labor economists, who are absolutely convinced that our current teacher pay system — based on seniority and educational attainment — is keeping teachers from achieving their fullest potential. It matters little that even the most generous readings of the research find practically small effects* of switching to pay-for-performance systems, or that merit pay in other professions is quite rare (especially when it is based on the performance of others; teacher merit pay is, in many contexts, based on student, and not teacher, performance).

Merit pay advocates also rarely acknowledge that adult developmental theory suggests that rewards later in life, such as higher pay, fulfill a need for older workers, or that messing with pay distributions has the potential to screw up the pool of potential teacher candidates, or that shifting pay from the bottom of the teacher “quality” distribution to the top — and, really, that’s what merit pay does — still leaves policymakers with the problem of deciding which students get which teachers.

Issues like these, however, are at the core of any merit pay policy. Sure, pay-for-performance sounds great; it comports nicely with key concepts in economic theory. But when it comes time to implement it in an actual, real-world situation, you’ve got to confront a whole host of realities that theory doesn’t address.

Of course, it failed! As I explained in my 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, merit pay has been tried again and again for almost a century, and it has always failed.

I would like to believe that it has died, that—as Dorothy said about the Wicked Witch, it is “really, truly dead”—but I have my doubts.

Every time it has failed, someone rediscovers it and thinks that this time it will work, unlike every other time.

I remember AFT President Albert Shanker saying at a meeting in the early 1990s that merit pay was ridiculous. The way he put it was, “Let me get this straight: if you offer to pay teachers more, students will work harder? That makes no sense.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Merit pay, Newark

An Open Letter Against the New Nationalism—An Appeal to Christians

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2019 //
65

This Open Letter appeared in Commonweal. Open the link to see the signatories.

Each day more signs point to a tremendous shift in American conservatism away from the prior consensus and toward the new nationalism of Donald Trump. This is evident not only in the recent National Conservatism Conference held in July in Washington, D.C., but also in the manifesto signed by a number of Christians who appear eager to embrace nationalism as compatible with Christian faith. Without impugning specific individuals, as fellow Christian intellectuals, theologians, pastors, and educators, we respond to this rapprochement with sadness, but also with a clear and firm No. We are Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant; Republicans, Democrats, and independents. Despite our denominational and political differences, we are united by the conviction that there are certain political solidarities that are anathema to our shared Christian faith.

In the 1930s many serious Christian thinkers in Germany believed they could manage an alliance with emergent illiberal nationalism. Prominent theologians like Paul Althaus and Friedrich Gogarten believed that the National Socialist movement offered a new opportunity to strengthen social order and cohesion around Christian identity. But some Christians immediately resisted, most visibly in the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which rejected the compromises of “German” Christianity and its heinous distortions of the Gospel.

Our situation in 2019 is surely different, but American Christians now face a moment whose deadly violence has brought such analogies to mind. Again we watch as demagogues demonize vulnerable minorities as infesting vermin or invading forces who weaken the nation and must be removed. Again we watch as fellow Christians weigh whether to fuse their faith with nationalist and ethno-nationalist politics in order to strengthen their cultural footing. Again ethnic majorities confuse their political bloc with Christianity itself. In this chaotic time Christian leaders of all stripes must help the church discern the boundaries of legitimate political alliances. This is especially true in the face of a rising racism in America, where non-whites are the targets of abominable acts of violence like the mass shooting in El Paso.

To be clear, nationalism is not the same as patriotism. Nationalism forges political belonging out of religious, ethnic, and racial identities, loyalties intended to precede and supersede law. Patriotism, by contrast, is love of the laws and loyalty to them over leader or party. Such nationalism is not only politically dangerous but reflects profound theological errors that threaten the integrity of Christian faith. It damages the love of neighbor and betrays Christ.

1. We reject the pretensions of nationalism to usurp our highest loyalties. National identity has no bearing on the debts of love we owe other sons and daughters of God. Created in the image and likeness of God, all human beings are our neighbors regardless of citizenship status.

2. We reject nationalism’s tendency to homogenize and narrow the church to a single ethnos. The church cannot be itself unless filled with disciples “from all nations” (panta ta ethné, Matthew 28:19). Cities, states, and nations have borders; the church never does. If the church is not ethnically plural, it is not the church, which requires a diversity of tongues out of obedience to the Lord.

3. We reject the xenophobia and racism of many forms of ethno-nationalism, explicit and implicit, as grave sins against God the Creator. Violence done against the bodies of marginalized people is violence done against the body of Christ. Indifference to the suffering of orphans, refugees, and prisoners is indifference to Jesus Christ and his cross. White supremacist ideology is the work of the anti-Christ.

4. We reject nationalism’s claim that the stranger, refugee, and migrant are enemies of the people. Where nationalism fears the stranger as a threat to political community, the church welcomes the stranger as necessary for full communion with God. Jesus Christ identifies himself with the poor, imprisoned foreigner in need of hospitality. “For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me” (Matthew 25:41-43).

5. We reject the nationalist’s inclination to despair when unable to monopolize power and dominate opponents. When Christians change from majority to minority status in a given country, they should not contort their witness in order to stay in power. The church remains the church even as a political minority, even when unable to influence the government or when facing persecution.

In charity and in hope, we urge our fellow Christians to repudiate the temptations and the falsehoods of nationalism. The politics of xenophobia, even when dressed up in high-minded social critique, can only be pursued in contradiction of the Gospel. A true culture of life welcomes the stranger, embraces the orphan, and binds the wounds of all who are our neighbors—all who lie lifeless on the road, as the pious walk silently past.

Categories Education Reform, Religion

Providence Plans to Defund Its Public Schools to Expand “No Excuses” Charter

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2019 //
13

The evidence is clear that privately managed charters can get higher test scores by culling, exclusion, and attrition. It’s equally clear that charters drain resources from the public schools that enroll most students. Most public officials seem to understand that it costs more to run parallel systems, one public, one private.

But not in Rhode Island, where Governor Gina Raimondo is a big fan of charters (she was a hedge fund manager before running for governor). She is eager to expand Achievement First, a no-excuses charter known for high test scores and harsh discipline.

This article by Linda Borg in the Providence Journal lays out the findings of two independent studies that warned about the negative fiscal impact of charters on public schools (one from Moody’s Investors, the other from the Brookings Institution, which is erroneously described as “left-leaning”).

https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190822/providences-achievement-first-proposal-refuels-charter-debate

Borg should also have Gordon Lafer’s significant study of the fiscal drain of charters on the public schools of three districts in California.

Click to access ITPI_Breaking_Point_May2018FINAL.pdf

Supporters of expanding Achievement First cite a report funded by the Arnold Foundation, a rightwing foundation that zealously supports privatization and opposes public sector pensions. Billionaire John Arnold was an energy trader at Enron.

The recently appointed state commissioner, a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, dismissed the controversy as an “old conversation,” showing her indifference to stripping nearly $30 million from the needy public schools of Providence.

“State Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green, in an interview Wednesday, called this an “old conversation,” adding that the expansion plan was approved by the Rhode Island Council of Elementary and Secondary Education three years ago after a contentious debate between charter proponents and critics.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Stuart Egan Fact-Checks Baker Mitchell: He Prevaricates

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2019 //
13

Stuart Egan read Baker Mitchell’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending charters against critics who say they foster segregation, and he was flabbergasted.

Here is his post.

He includes Baker Mitchell’s Wall Street Journal article, fulminating against the critics.

Then he cites the ProPublica article, Lindsay Wagner’s reporting, and John Merrow’s commentary, all reinforcing that Baker Mitchell has made millions by operating four charter schools.

Then Stuart goes to the official North Carolina report card site to gather information about Baker Mitchell’s charters.

Three are overwhelmingly white; one is overwhelmingly black. In other words, this champion of charters, this man who told the world that charters do not promote segregation, is managing a charter chain that is highly segregated. Furthermore, contrary to what he claimed in his article, his schools do NOT outperform local public schools.

Baker Mitchell prevaricated Bigly.

Someone should tell the Wall Street Journal to do their own fact-checking.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Lies, North Carolina, Privatization, Segregation

A Charter Founder Defends His For-Profit Charters in the Wall Street Journal

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2019 //
10

The Wall Street Journal editorial pages has been promoting school choice—charters and vouchers—for many years. It sees public education as a government monopoly, not a public service. It has published article after article explaining away the failures of school choice and re-interpreting negative evidence.

A few days ago, the paper may have struck a new low when it published a defense of charter schools by Baker Mitchell, the founder of a for-profit chain of charters in North Carolina, a non-educator who rakes in millions of dollars every year by owning four charters.

When he saw the WSJ article by Mitchell, North Carolina Teacher Stuart Egan pointed out that Baker Mitchell was reiterating the talking points created by Rhonda Dillingham, executive director of the North Carolina Association for Public [sic] Charter Schools.

Who is Baker Mitchell? He is a retired electrical engineer and a libertarian in the Koch brothers’ mold. He moved to North Carolina in 1997 and soon became allied with Art Pope, a rightwing libertarian who funded the Tea Party takeover of the state in 2010.

ProPublica featured Baker Mitchell as an example of a businessman who was turning public education dollars into his own private profits.

Here is an excerpt:

The school’s founder, a politically active North Carolina businessman named Baker Mitchell, shares the Kochs’ free-market ideals. His model for success embraces decreased government regulation, increased privatization and, if all goes well, healthy corporate profits.

In that regard, Mitchell, 74, appears to be thriving. Every year, millions of public education dollars flow through Mitchell’s chain of four nonprofit charter schools to for-profit companies he controls.

Over six years, Mitchell’s two companies have taken in close to $20 million in fees and rent — some of the schools’ biggest expenses. That’s from audited financial statements for just two schools. Mitchell has recently opened two more.

The schools buy or lease nearly everything from companies owned by Mitchell. Their desks. Their computers. The training they provide to teachers. Most of the land and buildings. Unlike with traditional school districts, at Mitchell’s charter schools there’s no competitive bidding. No evidence of haggling over rent or contracts.

The schools have all hired the same for-profit management company to run their day-to-day operations. The company, Roger Bacon Academy, is owned by Mitchell. It functions as the schools’ administrative arm, taking the lead in hiring and firing school staff. It handles most of the bookkeeping. The treasurer of the nonprofit that controls the four schools is also the chief financial officer of Mitchell’s management company. The two organizations even share a bank account.

Mitchell’s management company was chosen by the schools’ nonprofit board, which Mitchell was on at the time — an arrangement that is illegal in many other states.

John Merrow wrote that Baker Mitchell could teach Jesse James a few tricks. Merrow reviewed the tax filings of Mitchell’s charter schools and hit pay dirt. Of the $55 million his schools had received by 2014, Merrow wrote, Baker had collected $19 million.

Baker Mitchell’s article charges that there is a “smear campaign” against charters. He begins:

Leland, N.C.

With a new school year ahead, the attacks on charter schools have begun anew. In North Carolina we’re hearing outrageous charges of racism. A public-television commentator claimed recently that “resegregation” was the purpose of charter schools “from the start.”

Meanwhile, parents are voting with their feet. Statewide enrollment in traditional public schools has declined four years in a row. Less than 80% of K-12 students now attend district schools. More than 110,000 are enrolled in charters and 100,000 in private schools. More than 140,000 are being home-schooled…

Charges of racism are intended to divert attention from the failure of traditional public schools to educate minority children….

The Roger Bacon Academy, which I founded in 1999, oversees four charter schools in southeastern North Carolina that are among the top-performing in their communities. All four schools are Title 1 schools, meaning 40% or more of the students come from lower-income households. One of the schools, Frederick Douglass Academy in downtown Wilmington, is a majority-minority school.

We succeed where others fail because we do things differently. Our classical curriculum, direct-instruction methods, additional instructional hours, and focus on orderliness are a proven formula for successful learning…

Charter schools do not seek to replace traditional public schools, but rather to complement them, providing alternatives to the existing system. Our way is better for some students, not all. Let parents decide.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, North Carolina, Privatization, Segregation

KIPP Co-Founder Sues KIPP for Defamation

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2019 //
23

Mike Feinberg, co-founder of KIPP in 1994, was swiftly fired in 2018 after two KIPP graduates accused him of sexual impropriety.

Now Feinberg is suing KIPP.

Valerie Strauss reports:

A founder of the KIPP charter school network who was fired in 2018 after being accused of sexual misconduct is suing the organization, saying the allegations were false and that his career and reputation have been destroyed by the actions of KIPP.

KIPP executives called the lawsuit filed by Mike Feinberg “baseless and frivolous,” and said they “regret” that he is putting his accusers and the “entire KIPP community through further distress.”

Feinberg, who in 1994 co-founded a Texas school that grew into the nation’s largest charter network, filed the lawsuit Thursday and is seeking a jury trial and punitive and other damages. He has consistently denied an allegation that he sexually abused a student in the late 1990s. The allegation Since the Washington Post is triggered two investigations…

Feinberg’s lawsuit says that he was never given “detailed information about the allegations” against him and that if he had, he could have “provided facts that would have disproved them.”

“KIPP’s public statements following Mike’s termination were false and inflammatory,” the lawsuit says. “KIPP knew that such a serious allegation would destroy Mike’s career in education and be personally devastating to him, his family and friends. But KIPP didn’t care. What mattered most to KIPP was that Mike be removed and his career be ruined. In that, KIPP succeeded.”

Since the Washington Post is behind a paywall, here is another account, in a Texas paper, with more detail.

On top of punitive damages, Feinberg is suing for actual damages, including mental anguish, loss of society and loss of earning capacity.

Categories Accountability, KIPP Charter Schools

Parkland Survivors Offer A True Gun Control Plan

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2019 //
40

The survivors of the Parkland (Florida) massacre created an organization called March for Our Lives, which pulled together a massive event on the Mall in DC in a few weeks after the shootings.

At the time, Trump promised swift action, then changed his mind, and nothing changed. Since then there have been other mass murders with assault weapons, and once again Trump promises to act, the NRA tells him to stand down, and Trump caves.

Now the March for Our Lives has presented its gun control:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2019/08/gun_control_and_voting_march_f.html

The plan offers the group’s most detailed outline to date of what laws it thinks needs to happen at that level. Described as “a Green New Deal, but for guns,” by one of the organization’s key leaders, it calls on policymakers to:

Pass a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. (A previous federal ban on these expired in 2004.)

Create a national gun buy-back and disposal program to implement that ban.

Create a national licensing system for guns, including limiting firearm purchases to one a month and prohibiting online sales.

Raising the minimum age of gun possession to 21. (Long guns can be purchased at younger ages in many states.)

Create a federal “red flag” law to disarm individuals who are a danger to themselves or to others.

Establish a new National Director of Gun Violence Prevention in the White House who reports directly to the president.

Use a multiagency approach to declare an emergency around gun violence and invest millions in research to address gun violence. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently proscribed from studying gun violence.)

Improve policing and expand suicide prevention and mental and behavioral health programs.
Hold the national gun industry to account by investigating the National Rifle Association, regulating the gun industry, and making a push to revisit Second Amendment jurisprudence.
Institute automatic voter registration for young people.

The plan comes just weeks after a series of mass shootings, in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, Calif. And 23 people have been killed or injured in school shootings in 2019 so far, according to Education Week’s continually updated tracker of school shootings.

Categories Education Reform

Pennsylvania: Bethlehem Superintendent Speaks Out Against Harm of Privatization

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2019 //
7

Take five minutes and watch as Superintendent Joseph Roy of the Bethlehem Area School District explains how private charters are harming the public schools and the unfairness of the funding formula, which is rigged on behalf of the charters.

This year, private charters will subtract $1.8 billion from the budget of public schools in Pennsylvania.

Governor Tom Wolf has proposed revising the charter law to prevent the defunding of the state’s public schools, which enroll the vast majority of students.

Please take action and show support for Governor Wolf.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Privatization
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