With so much billionaire cash sloshing around California to promote charter schools and to disparage public schools, it can be difficult to know which groups are real and which are Memorex.
Here is one that definitely is not a real parents’ group. It is called Speak Up and it is populated with people who are embedded in the charter sector. It recently chastised L.A. Superintendent Austin Beutner for not moving swiftly enough to clamp ratings on every school, the better to close them with and set them up for privatization. How will parents know how to choose a school if the district doesn’t give it a grade or a rating? They say he is in danger of “breaking a promise” to the parents of Los Angeles, who are longing to have their schools rated.
Schools should be evaluated based on such issues as their class size; the experience of their teachers; the resources invested by the district, such as: does the school have a library with a librarian? Does it have a school nurse? Does it have classes in the arts for all students?
But Speak Up seems to be interested mostly in test scores. Are they going up or down? Most people these days recognize that test scores measure the demographics of the students enrolled, not the quality of the school.
So who is this group?
Its founder and executive director is Katie Braude, a former KIPP executive. Until recently, she was on the Los Angeles County Board of Education, which has the power to overrule the LAUSD Board of Education on charter school decisions.
On Speak Up’s board of directors is Russell Altenburg, who is also connected to KIPP, was a program officer at the Broad Foundation, and a fellow at the NewSchools Venture Fund. And he was part of the “inaugural cohort” at the Pahara Next Gen Network.
Mary Najera was a founder of the Los Angeles Parents Union, now known as the Parent Revolution, which used the Parent Trigger law to try to convert public schools into charter schools. Parent Revolution was funded by Walton, Broad, Gates, Arnold and other billionaires. She is “chief community officer” at the Extera Public Schools charter chain.
Rene Rodman is another member of the board of directors of Speak Up. She is a also on the board of the Palisades Charter High School, where she served as president.
Aida Rodriguez is Vice President of Advocacy and Government Relations at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, a charter school network. She too worked for Parent Revolution.
Speak Up is an organization led by charter school advocates. Twenty percent of the students in Los Angeles are enrolled in charter schools. Eighty percent are not.
Nowhere on Speak Up’s website does it list the names of its funders. One can only guess. Waltons? Broad? Hastings? Gates?
When you see a press release from Speak Up, remember that they are speaking up for Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, the Waltons, Bill Gates, and the charter industry, not for the 80 percent of students in the public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“On its board of directors is Russell Altenburg, who is also connected to KIPP, was a program officer at the Broad Foundation, and a fellow at the NewSchools Venture Fund. And he was part of the “inaugural cohort” at the Pahara Next Gen Network.”
Another lively and robust “debate” in ed reform. Only echo chamber members need apply.
They can spend their entire careers just hopping from ed reform group to government then to ed reform group and back to government again.
I’m just curious- are ed reformers ever going to reconcile their obsession with rankings of public schools with their lobbying work to expand vouchers to private schools, who aren’t ranked at all?
Are private school teachers and students just intrinsically better? We need their heavy hand measuring our schools and kids every 6 weeks but private schools do not? So this is just a blatant and wholly ideological preference for private schools that flies in the face of everything they say about “data” and “transparency”? They never have to explain it? Because it doesn’t make any sense.
Once again their only contribution to existing public schools is 1. testing and 2. ranking.
Why do we pay these people, again? After 20 years and tens of thousands of paid “experts” and think tanks and whole university departments devoted to The Cause one would think they could do better than yet another rehash of NCLB.
What do public school students get out of this? A test?
Rating consumer goods — carbonated sugar-wates, toilet paper, etc. — on arbitrary measures of preferment is part and parcel of commercializing them. It provides endless fodder for advertising campaigns and counter-campaigns to keep Mad Ave in Big Biz Bucks.
on point: it is as lucrative as it is harmful
Ms. Braude was formerly on the LA County Office of Eduction school board, her tenure going from 2011-2017, which overlaps with her founding the faux-parents, Astroturf outfit Speak Up in 2016.
Here’s her LinkedIn page:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-braude-ab906a30
And yes, she was an executive in the KIPP charter school organization for several years:
From the above Linkedin page:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
KIPP LA Schools
DIrector of Advancement
KIPP Academy of Opportunity
DIrector of Advancement
KIPP Academy of Opportunity
Mar 2005 – Jul 2008 — 3 years 5 months
Directed fundraising, public affairs and communications for charter middle school in South Los Angeles, part of a national network of high performing charter schools.
Directed fundraising, public affairs and communications for charter middle school in South Los Angeles, part of a national network of high performing charter schools.
–
KIPP LA Schools
Jul 2008 – Jan 2010 — 1 year 7 months
Directed fundraising and communications for premier charter school managment organization operating elementary and middle charter schools in South and East Los Angeles.
Directed fundraising and communications for premier charter school managment organization operating elementary and middle charter schools in South and East Los Angeles.
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
As the founder and leader of an organization purportedly of LAUSD parents, the question must be asked:
Does Ms. Braude currently, or did she ever have children that attended LAUSD public and/or LAUSD charter schools?
It doesn’t say.
Some of the progressive potus candidates have expressed interest in digging into discussing education issues. Am I wrong to suspect the sort of Russians who many credit helping deliver Trump to the presidency are eyeing public education as a wonderful opportunity to spread misinformation and cause disruption? They have the support of our mainstream media with their attitude of don’t bother us with education……so how much have we heard about real education issues this summer, compared to last spring, when people like Kamala Harris and others were announcing. We hear one, almost unified scream……..if the democrats don’t get in line behind Joe Biden (with his his history of association with “the most popular democrat ever”—the one who could not be bothered with public education and turned it over to Bill Gates and Arne Duncan………then the democrats will re-elect Donald Trump. Somehow…….democrats are going to force the nation to pay attention to the outrageous things charter schools have been doing. Not that they should try and take time away from attention to Trump and his sharpy pens….but get education back into the list of issues worthy of discussing.
Regarding the LA County Office of Education school board,
The new charter school law in California now says that the State BOE no longer can reverse charter rejections and non-renewals.
So far so good.
However, the new law still allows county Boards of Ed to reverse the rejection and non-renewals of charter schools voted on by the LAUSD Board or other local school boards, and thus jam charter schools down the throats of school communities and communities in general who do not want those charter schools.
Thus, the dozens of CA county BOE’s — including LACOE or LA. County’s Office of Education board — still can open up corrupt charter schools, or keep them from being closed.
Parent activist Carl Peterson wrote that this final version of the law is a watered down version of the original law that was first proposed, writing about it here:
View at Medium.com
Carl references a twitter conversation with the unelected (appointed) member of the
LA County Office of Education, and corporate ed. reform puppet Alex Johnson. (NOTE: County Board members are appointed by L.A.’s 5-member County Board of Supervisors)
When Petersen pressed Johnson to defend his vote to reverse LAUSD’s correct rejection of a corrupt charter school’s renewal, Johnson tweeted back and called Petersen “Fool.”
“Read the petition … Fool.”
Ahhh yes. My tax dollars went — and are still going — to pay this clown’s salary.
That’s the caliber of the corporate ed. reform industry’s school board members.
You understand that Johnson had just lost to George MacKenna in an election for an LAUSD Board Seat, in part because he had ZERO experience working in education, while McKenna had decades as a teacher and principal
However, two months later, Johnson was appointed to the LA County board, giving him the power to reverse the charter denials and renewals thet are voted on by the man, McKenna, who had just soundly defeated Johnson.
There you have it:
Unelected corporate ed. reformers “throat-jamming” a charter down a community’s throat, after those same charters were voted down by elected board members of a local school board.
It’s not just in LA. Our own privatizing group in Oakland, GO Public schools, is advocating for the same thing here. From GO’s own newsletter:
“Quality Community Schools: The district aims to have quality schools where every student graduates prepared for college, career, and community success. This year they will primarily focus on student achievement for Latinos, African Americans, the Unhoused, English Language Learners and improving outcomes for students with disabilities. Some strategies include:
defining a single measure for a Quality School to guide important decisions”
AND:
“a shared definition of school quality as the foundation of the work of the Citywide Plan, which will be used to guide fair decisions around charter renewals and long term leases, district school site autonomies, and expanding, merging, or closing schools”
A single measure? Sounds like test scores to me…to rank schools as a means to further efforts to close our schools and hand them over to charters. Oakland school board has been hijacked and directed by the CCSA.
I think my favorite ed reform self-promotion is when they attribute anything that happens at a public school to….charter schools:
“Today, when driving through the region, it’s not hard to spot billboards paid for by local school districts vowing that schools are all about “preparing students for college and careers.” That’s the impact IDEA has had in the Valley since 2000, said Garza. “Now, at all these districts, high school graduation alone is no longer the expectation.”
Public schools are paying for billboards, which is not only (ridiculously) considered a “success” but a success that charter schools can take credit for.
Advertising is not in fact a waste of money that could be going to students- it’s “evidence” that ed reform is working.
https://www.the74million.org/article/idea-understands-that-college-is-the-new-high-school-for-the-texas-charter-network-that-means-making-it-attainable-for-everyone/
The public should really start reading ed reform-owned outlets. These are the people who direct policy in your child’s public school. The bias against public schools within the echo chamber will just blow you away. It explains a lot of government policy over the last 20 years.
In Michigan, every district spends many thousands to advertise their wares because students have “choice” and even public school districts poach from one another. I attended a meeting with 80 district superintendents who told me they budget $100,000 each for advertising. The sums are a staggering waste of money but necessary for them to keep afloat.
I have been looking at the 990 forms for each of the California, and Los Angeles organizations that received emails disclosed by Michael Kohlhaas and to Keith Yanov.
These emails reveal how the charter school industry is out to destroy public education in California. I do not live in California, but the power plays of the California charter industry are not limited to that state. In response to Diane’s question about Speak Up funders. here is some relevant information. There is Speak Up and the Speak Up Foundation.
According to the July 2016-June 2017 990 IRS form for Speak Up, this 501(c)(4) “non profit” had assets of $8,806.00 .Katie Braude is listed as the Secretary /Treasurer, and the only paid employee, with $104,500 (10 hours a week) from a “related organization.”
The same IRS form reported that “Speak Up engaged in an independent expenditure campaign to support Nick Melvoin, a candidate for Los Angeles Unified School District school board in the 2017 election. Nick Melvoin supports education reform and will further the organization’s mission to advocate for excellent, equitable public education.” The amount dedicated to this purpose was $126,781. Another filing (a change in accounting period from JUL 1 2017 to DEC 31 2017) reported a transfer to Speak Up of $250,000 from the Speak Up Foundation to Speak Up. See EIN: 320487626.
Now we can turn to The Speak Up Foundation. The website, lists these major donors for 2018-2019. The Landers Family, Walton Family Foundation, Great Public Schools Now, Joseph Drown Foundation, The Eli And Edythe Broad Foundation, The Karsh Family Foundation, Patricia Neuwirth Charitable Fund and Frank Baxter
The IRS form 990 for the Speak Up Foundation (EIN 81-1844813) for July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017 shows $53,442.00 in assets. Contributors are not listed, but from a related search I know that Great Public Schools Now sent $100,000 to the Speak Up Foundation in that tax year. In the same IRS form, Katie Braude is listed as the Secretary /Treasurer, and the only paid employee, with $104,500 (10 hours a week) from a “related organization.” I conclude that Katie is getting at least $204,000 in compensation from her part time positions on these two interrelated “non-profits” and that the two together are functioning as slush fund for the charter industry in LA and California.
From another of my 990 exercises, I have learned that Great Public Schools Now is another slush fund for the California. The 990 for 2017 shows $12,153,994 distributed to other organizations, including $2,000,000 to Teach for America, $750,000 to the California Charter Schools Association, $653,000 to KIPP Los Angeles Schools, $250,000 to Parent Revolution. It also sent $500,000 to Boston-Based “Building Excellent Schools and to $450,000 to the Chicago-based”Accelerate Institute for support of that “principal training program.” Why on earth are charter schools getting public funds when they are clearly sminning in big pools of money?
Our District created “Choice” by spending millions to completely remodel a space for a Personalized Project Based Learning school.
They spent hundreds of after school hours recruiting students for a 9th grade cohort, training teachers, community outreach and materials, etc. They spent millions of dollars on this school while parents where actively raising money to make sure kids at our continuation school had food to eat.
The PPBL school was promoted as a “lottery based enrollment” opportunity. It opened last month with less than 50 students.
The goal was 100. We don’t know if they accepted everyone who applied. We know they had no requirements to include any percentage of special ed kids.
The PPBL High School employs 4 full time teachers and 1 full time assistant principal. It has a 12/1 student teacher ratio.
Our main high has a 36/1 student/teacher ratio.
“It is called Speak Up and it is populated with people who are embedded in the charter sector. It recently chastised L.A. Superintendent Austin Beutner for not moving swiftly enough to clamp ratings on every school ….”
Change a few things and you’d be talking about destroyers of public education’s Astroturf parent group in Atlanta.
Instead of Speak Up, make it Thrive Atlanta.
Instead of “founder … Katie Braude,” make it founder Aretta Baldon.
And instead of “chastised … Beutner for not moving swiftly enough to clamp ratings on every school,” make it “chastised Carstarphen for not moving swiftly enough to implement ‘Excellent Schools.’”
Speak Up must always be linked to the bigotry that they used to block the temporary appointment of Jackie Goldberg to the LAUSD Board leaving the actual residents of Board District 5 unrepresented for almost a year. https://medium.com/@ChangeTheLAUSD/the-charter-industry-puts-bigotry-front-and-center-40f764397fe8?source=friends_link&sk=bf735bbac4d2947c619ba839342e4a3f
I don’t think schools should be evaluated based on class size, average age of teachers, libraries or school nurses. The should be evaluated based on how well they educate students. Educating students, after all, is the reason for schools to exist.
How do you measure “educating students”? Surely you know that standardized tests don’t do that. Surely you are aware that the results on standardized tests accurately reflect family income and education. Perhaps you have a better way of determining whether schools are succeeding that don’t rely on such tests.
Certainly not test scores, but changes in test scores would be useful. Most useful of all would be how the students that went to this school did later in life. If it is a primary school, did the students who attended this school graduate high school at an unusually high rate? If a high school, do the students lead an unusually good life? There are a number of ways you might define a good life. I would be interested in what folks here might think are markers of a good life.
But surely you have already done the research connecting things like libraries, student nurses, and teacher experience with desirable outcomes in education for students, otherwise why would you think it important that students have these things?
This is simplistic and naive thinking — there is no oh-so-simple way to evaluate the overall quality of education — or to evaluate “an unusually good life.”
All of these “markers” overall exalt the privileged and denigrate the downtrodden — and exalt the teachers who teach the privileged, and denigrate those who teach the downtrodden.
So-called education “reform” masquerades as a search for magical miracles — or at least presents itself that way to the naive — when it’s actually a ploy to undermine public education.
carolinesf,
I certainly agree there there is no oh-so-simple way to evaluate education. Certainly looking at the number of years a teacher has been teaching as a way to gauge quality of education is naive.
We need to look for teachers and schools that help students live unusually good lives given their background. I agree that teachers in Scarsdale and Rye should get little credit for their typically wealthy students graduating from high school, being employed, or not being a parent at 17. But teachers and schools in other, poorer places should get a great deal of credit for helping their students live better lives than would be expected given the student’s circumstances.
How would you measure the outcomes you value?
Of course teachers should get credit for helping students improve their lives if it were that simple. And yes, most of us remember teachers who did have a big influence on us.
But it’s just really NOT that simple, and magical thinking will never be a way to improve education. (So-called “reformers” encourage and play-act at magical thinking, though of course they don’t actually believe their own hooey.) In general, many factors contribute to anyone who rises above his/her circumstances of origin. I just heard a report on the study where low-income families were subsidized to move into much wealthier neighborhoods, with much discussion of the results — that’s just one tiny possible element, for example.
And yes, I recognize that there’s not some formula showing that X number of years’ experience equates to Y amount of better teaching. It doesn’t always work that way. Still, overall, experience is viewed as valuable, and we know the exclusive private schools most “reformers” send their own kids to aren’t hiring bright-eyed Teach for America temp beginners but generally expect a high degree of experience and expertise in their teachers. (OK, there was that fancy-pants NYC private that hired Jeffrey Epstein as a teacher, but hopefully that was an outlier.)
Carolinesf,
How do you know that experience ever results in good teaching unless you can define what is good teaching? My thought is that good teaching is defined by the impact it has on students.
I do think you need to be careful about assuming that what you remember about a teacher is necessarily a good measure of the positive impact of the experience. There is an interesting podcast about this:http://freakonomics.com/podcast/when-helping-hurts/
Freakonomics is creepily neocon, IMHO.
It’s bizarre that so-called “reformers” treat experience in teaching as something contemptible (with disdaining, discrediting and deprofessionalizing teachers as their goal). Obviously, in any field, experience doesn’t directly correlate with superior ability, but in any other field, experience is respected and treated as a contributor to superior ability. Only in teaching do so-called “reformers” exalt bright-eyed temp beginners as superior to experienced veterans. You don’t apply this fake principle to your surgeon or your airline pilot.
People who actually care about improving education and the well-being of children treat education and teachers with respect, not contempt.
Carolinesf,
I am curious about why you feel Freakonomics is creepy. After all, the reason that your physician does not recommend periodic blood letting to balance your humors is that people compared patients who had been given this treatment to those who had not.
I certainly do not treat teaching with contempt. I have devoted my life to teaching. The value of my professional life on this earth is the achievements of my students. If you say that I have made no perceptible difference in my student’s lives, my 30+ years of teaching has been useless.
Tell me of your own teaching. Do you have some measure of your effectiveness as a teacher other than the impact you have on student’s lives? If so, what is that measure? If not, are you confident that you have done good teaching?
I do not think that the most experienced teacher is likely to be the better teacher. With the end of mandatory retirement, I have an increasing number of colleagues who are in their 80s. With rare exceptions, I advise students to take courses with faculty who are a good deal younger. This is especially true for graduate students.
We do apply this principle to airline pilots and aircraft controllers. This is why they are required to retire at 65, and aircraft controllers are required to retire at 56. You should also not have a surgeon over 50. See https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jan/11/surgeons-get-better-worse-age .
Re: How do you measure “educating students”?
Diane,
We need to understand that the measures are specious because they are supposed to be specious. This is part and parcel of converting education to a consumer good and a capital commodity. If the measures captured real values they would be (1) far harder and thus expensive to measure, (2) prohibitive to manipulate by means of mere marketing strategies, (3) impossible to detach from the sources of real value, in large part the labor force that creates the value, namely, teachers.