Regular readers of this blog have often encountered comments by Susan Schwartz. Susan was a celebrated teacher in District 2 in New York City. Now she is retired and has become a very successful photographer. She mentioned recently that her work had been accepted for an exhibit, and another reader asked whether Susan would be willing to share her work here.
I asked her and she responded with this sampling of her superb photographs.
Enjoy.
Shawgi Tell, a professor of education at Nazareth College in upstate New York, has a straightforward answer to the question he raises. His answer: No. Charter schools are not public schools.
He writes:
Charter school advocates have always desperately sought to convince themselves and the public that privately-run nonprofit and for-profit charter schools that operate like businesses are actually public and similar in many ways to public schools.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Charter schools are not public schools.
In reality, privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools differ in many profound ways from public schools that have been educating 90 percent of America’s youth for more than a century.
Below is an abbreviated list of the many ways in which privately-operated nonprofit and for-profit charter schools differ significantly from public schools.
Charter schools are exempt from dozens, even hundreds, of state and local laws, rules, regulations, policies, and agreements that apply to all public schools.
At least 90% of charter schools have no teacher unions—the opposite of public schools.
Some charter school owners-operators openly and publicly insist that charter schools are private entities.
Unlike public schools, charter schools are not governed by a publicly elected school board, but by a self-selecting, corporate-style board of trustees.
Many charter schools are not subject to audits, at least not in the same way as public schools.
Many charter schools do not uphold open-meeting laws; they dodge many such public requirements.
Many charter schools do not provide the same services as public schools, e.g., transportation, nurses, food, sports, education services, etc.
Thousands of charter schools are directly and/or indirectly owned, operated, or managed by private, for-profit entities.
Many, if not most, charter schools regularly use discriminatory student enrollment practices. Students with disabilities and English Language Learners in particular are usually under-represented in charter schools. So are homeless students and other students…
Charter means contract. Charter schools are contract Performance contracts are at the heart of charter schools. Contract is the quintessential market category. Contracts make commerce possible. Contract law is part of private law, not public law. Charter schools are legally classified as nonprofits or for-profits. Unlike public schools, they are not political subdivisions of the state. In some places, like New York State, charter schools are not considered political subdivisions of the state. Unlike public schools, charter schools are not state agencies.
He offers many more reasons to support the conclusion that charter schools are not public schools.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters and co-founder of the national Parent Coalition for Student Privacy (and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education) writes here about the threat to student privacy in New York.
The New York Board of Regents is currently considering whether to approve a radical weakening of the state student privacy law, which would allow the College Board, the ACT and other companies that contract with schools or districts to administer tests to use the personal student information they collect for marketing purposes — even though the original New York law that was passed in 2014 explicitly barred the sale or commercial use of this data.
Starting in 2014, many states, including New York, approved legislation to strengthen the protection of student privacy, because of a growing realization on the part of parents that their children’s personal data was being shared by schools and districts with a wide variety of private companies and organizations without their knowledge or consent. The U.S. Department of Education had weakened the federal student privacy law known as FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) twice over the past decade, rewriting the regulations during the Bush and Obama administrations to allow for nonconsensual disclosures for different purposes.
At that time, few parents knew that federal law had been altered to allow their children’s information from being passed into private hands. Then controversy erupted over the plans of nine states and districts to share personal student data with a comprehensive databank called inBloom, developed with more than $100 million of funding from the Gates Foundation.
InBloom Inc. was designed to collect a wide variety of personal student data and share it with for-profit vendors to accelerate the development and marketing of the education technology industry to facilitate the adoption of online instruction and assessment. As a result of widespread parental activism and concerns, all nine states and districts that had originally intended to participate in the inBloom data-sharing plan pulled out, and 99 new state student privacy laws were passed across the country between 2014 and 2018.
New York was one of the first to pass a new student privacy law. In March 2014, the state legislature approved Education Laws §2-c and §2-d, which among other things, prohibited the state from sharing student data with inBloom or another comprehensive databank, and also regulated the way schools and vendors must secure student data, including imposing a complete ban on the sale of personal student information or its use for marketing purposes….
Yet to the frustration of many parents and privacy advocates, it would be nearly five years before New York State Education Department drafted any regulations to implement its 2014 student privacy law. In October 2018, the Education Department finally released proposed regulations for public comment. In March 2018, the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, along with the statewide coalition New York State Allies for Public Education, submitted recommendations on how to strengthen and clarify those regulations, as did more than 240 parents and privacy advocates.
Yet after the initial period of public comment had ended, instead of strengthening the regulations, the state Education Department gutted them, and now proposed allowing student data to be used for commercial purposes as long as there was parental “consent” — a huge loophole that would create the opportunity for districts, schools and vendors to misuse this data in myriad ways.
Do you think it is okay to sell students’ personal data to marketers and vendors?
Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, who has a remarkable passion for tracking Dark Money.
In this post, he warns that the Walton Family has funded an AstroTurf group called “the National Parents Union,” which hopes to organize parents to demand privately-managed charter schools and to fight teachers’ unions.
Cunningham is very familiar with the Walton tactics of putting up front groups to pursue their goals. Along with other billionaires, DFER, and the now-defunct Families for Excellent Schools, they funded a referendum in Massachusetts in 2016, aimed at lifting the state cap on charter schools. Cunningham’s blogs, posted at public radio station WGBH’s website, exposed the billionaires behind that effort, and the referendum was overwhelmingly defeated.
The new “NPU” is an outgrowth of the Walton efforts in Massachusetts.
Can this one fool parents into demanding privatization of their public schools? Not likely.
Bill Phillis of the Adequacy and Equity Coalition of Ohio fears that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, to which Trump added two religious zealots, is on the verge of eliminating the separation of church and state. This would be a huge victory for Betsy DeVos, ALEC, and the anti-government crusaders of the Right. Some states—such as Ohio, Indiana, and Florida— have already decided to ignore their state constitutions, to fund religious schools with vouchers.
The irony is that vouchers are a lose-lose proposition. The public schools—attended by nearly 90% of all pupils—lose finding, lay off teachers, cut programs. The children take away a voucher worth $5,000-$7,000 and get a worse education than their public school peers.
Bill Phillis writes:
New York State Attorney General Leticia James stated that the Sackler Family was wiring money out of the country to protect their assets from litigation related to the opioid crisis.
In a court filing, the state attorney general’s office says that it has found new account transfers by members of the family that owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of opioids.
By
The New York attorney general’s office said on Friday that it had tracked about $1 billion in wire transfers by the Sackler family, including through Swiss bank accounts, suggesting that the family tried to shield wealth as it faced a raft of litigation over its role in the opioid crisis.
Earlier this week, thousands of municipal governments and nearly two dozen states tentatively reached a settlement with the Sackler family and the company it owns, Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin. It was unclear if the new disclosure would change the thinking of any of the parties that agreed to the settlement.
The attorneys general of a majority of states, including New York and Massachusetts, have already balked at the proposed deal, contending that the Sackler family has siphoned off company profits that should be used to pay for the billions of dollars in damage caused by opioids.
The wire transfers are part of a lawsuit against Purdue and individual Sacklers in New York. Letitia James, now the state’s attorney general, had issued subpoenas last month to 33 financial institutions and investment advisers with ties to the Sacklers in an effort to trace the full measure of the family’s wealth.
Laura Chapman, our loyal reader and diligent researcher, writes:
If you want to get past the Dintersmith rhetoric, carefully contrived to make an appealing plausible story (with some help from Frameworks Institute.org), you need to look at the website Education 2020 (ED 2020) to see the underling incoherence (hot air) in Dintersmith’s project, and who is supporting it.
About Education 2020: “We (partners) have come together to advocate for a shared vision to advance a comprehensive education agenda that promotes universal inclusion and access to ongoing learning opportunities for everyone living in America. We call on all 2020 Presidential candidates to develop comprehensive education proposals aligned to this shared vision.”
Our coalition members (partners) include: Alliance for Excellent Education, American Federation of Teachers, Autism Society-, Center for American Progress, Children’s Defense Fund, Community Change Action, Institute for Educational Leadership, Learning Policy Institute, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Disability Rights Network, National Education Association, National Public Education Support Fund, National Women’s Law Center, Reach Higher-, Save the Children Action Network, Save the Children-, Teach Plus-, The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Education Task Force, The Education Trust-, The Institute for College Access & Success, The Partnership for the Future of Learning, The United State of Women, UnidosUS-, Young Invincibles-, ZERO TO THREE.
Education 2020 offers a “Briefing Book” for this promotional activity aided by Dintersmith’s article. The briefing Book includes brief “policy pitches” offered by each of the partners, presented in alphabetical order. These policy pitches are brief, and they do not add up to a “comprehensive agenda” or reflect a shared vision. For example, there are pitches from Teach Plus and the Education Trust, both unsupportive of unions along with pitches from both teacher unions, AFT and NEA.
The Briefing Book includes this idea from the Center for American Progress: “High-quality charter schools are a valuable strategy to increase the number of good public school seats for students. But the growth of charter schools should not be an end in itself, and there are legitimate critiques of the sector that must be addressed. The next administration should take a nuanced approach to charters that includes both the expansion of good school options and the coordination across the traditional district and charter sectors to avoid potentially negative impacts.”
The Learning Policy Institute calls for these actions among others: “Monitor, support, and enforce ESSA’s equity provisions. Key indicators of opportunity and outcomes can be used to inform “equity audits” for low-performing schools to support improvement and effective targeting of resources. “ also “Provide federal funding to support state and district efforts to create greater socioeconomic and racial school diversity and fund the Magnet School Assistance Program at a minimum at parity with the Charter School Program, currently funded at $440 million.”
The Briefing Book for this promotional activity also says: Education 2020 is a coalition housed and supported by the National Public Education Support Fund (established 2009, EIN 26-3015634).
Next question: what do we know about the National Public Education Support Fund? Here is what the fund does according to IRS form 990 for 2017.
“The mission of the National Public Education Support Fund (NPESF) is to promote equitable opportunities for all children to receive a high-quality education from birth through college and career. NPESF is a network hub for EDUCATION PHILANTHROPY, policy, advocacy and practice focused on equitable systems change.” What does “system change mean?” Systems change means reforms favored and charted primarily by billionaire-funded non-profit foundations, as if these tax havens are also sources of superior wisdom about education. The National Public Education Support Fund–a network for education philanthropy”–has the following projects in motion.
A. Partnership for the Future of Learning. Previously called the New Models Working Group. This working group dates to 2009. It was launched by Bill Gates to push the Common Core and aligned tests. The working group of participating foundations had quarterly meetings in DC). The current version funds organizations that offer “a forward-looking vision and policy framework for a 21st century public school system” (more and deeper learning, grounded in the core values of equity, democracy, and shared responsibility to ensure all children are prepared for college, career, and citizenship). Progress over the year: launched a STORYTELLING and NARRATIVE CHANGE effort with a microsite and about 50 partner organizations; publication of a community schools playbook and toolkit; and expanded participation to over 100 partners across dozens of education organizations.
B. We sponsor Education Justice Network. With six national education nonprofits advocating for greater education equity and opportunity with “alignment among the partners to amplify their work on policy, research, and advocacy.” Over the past year, members have created a governance structure for the network and its activities (e.g., working groups on community schools, school finance, redesigning districts, narrative shift, and democratizing knowledge).
C. Education Funder Strategy Group. Includes more than 30 leading foundations focused on “education policy and systems change from early childhood to college and career readiness and success.” Four quarterly meetings were held on the topics of FRAMING THE NARRATIVE on public education, resource equity, systems change…8 monthly calls were held on a variety of topics.” “A special dinner was held with leaders from the OECD focused on expanding access to high quality early learning. Working groups continued to self-organize around issues including “racial equity, using research evidence for change, and social-emotional learning.” (This as the current version of the New Models Working Group started by Bill Gates.)
D. Grantmakers for Thriving Youth: We are the fiscal sponsor for foundations/funders who are investing in “non-academic youth outcomes” such as “social and emotional learning and character development.” A majority of the funders “decided to continue this collaboration over the next two years.”
There is more. The 2017 Form 990 form identifies the Alliance for Excellent Education (all4ed.org) as a related organization whose work advances …”the goal of remodeling US public education.”
Indeed. all4ed is supported by many foundations known to support public funding of privately managed schools. These are named: Anonymous, AT&T Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, GE Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Kern Family Foundation, National Public Education Support Fund, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, State Farm, Stuart Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
If you want a deep dive into the policies favored and promoted by all of these interrelated projects and organizations, look at the “issues” section of the all4ed website. These are the topics for which there are recommendations.
Accountability, Adolescent Literacy, Assessments, Brown vs. Board, Career & Technical Education, College- and Career-Ready Standards, Deeper Learning, Digital Learning and Future Ready Schools, Economic Impacts, Every Student Succeeds Act, High School Reform, International Comparisons, Linked Learning, Personalized Learning, Science of Adolescent Learning, Teachers and School Leaders.
Dintersmith’s article is an example of the relatively new strategy for selling ideas, marketed by Frameworks Institute.org with a focus on inventing stories, and forwarding narratives calculated to distract attention and elicit favorable responses to hidden-from-view power players. Many of the same “philanthropies” who have promoted failed policies for schools in the last two decades are still at it with Dintersmith trying out a refreshed story line.
This is indeed revelatory of the funding behind this “vision.”
My personal view, based on the rigorous research of the Network for Public Education into the federal Charter Schools Program, is that this program should be completely abolished. The NPE report, Asleep at the Wheel:How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride, found that at least one-third of the charter schools funded by CSP had either never opened or closed soon after opening, for a loss of about $1 billion in federal funds. The CSP is currently funded at $440 million. Betsy DeVos asked for $500 million. She is using that money to underwrite the expansion of national charter chains like KIPP and IDEA and to flood states like New Hampshire, Alabama, and Texas. Given the massive funding of charter schools by foundations, no federal funding is needed. Ongoing research by NPE shows that in some states, as many as 40% of charters were failures. Every presidential candidate should be asked if they will eliminate federal funding for new charter schools and direct the funding to Title I or other programs that meet genuine needs, not satisfy billionaires’ egos.
Education is always ablaze with the latest fad (think “grit,” “think “self-esteem,” think “character education,” think “growth mindset,” think a hundred other hot topics).
Now it is “social and emotional learning.” You might think that SEL is simply built into the classroom experience. But no, there is now a demand from some quarters to teach it as a separate activity or even subject.
Peter Greene has a few choice words on the subject.
With Peter Greene, experience and common sense go a long way.
He begins:
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| I’m here to teach you how to be human. |
This is a fascinating investigation by ProPublica of the life and exaggerations of the webmaster behind the Trump campaign. Brad Parsquale is a Trumpian figure who is running Trump’s re-election campaign and is paid big bucks to market his life story of rags to riches. But it ain’t necessarily so.
Los Altos has a problem. Wealthy residents opened a charter school for their children, drawing money from the public schools to support their charter. The Bullis School is a private school that calls itself a “public” school and is funded by public dollars.
Vladimir Ivanovic wrote the following update on the community’s efforts to compel the Bullis School to act like a public school, not a private academy. Vladimir is a member of the elected Los Altos school board. He is also earning his doctorate in education policy at San Jose State University and has been a member of the Network for Public Education since 2013.
He writes:
This week, the Los Altos School District (LASD) in Santa Clara County’s Silicon Valley formally asked its County Board and Office of Education to take action against the discriminatory enrollment practices at Bullis Charter School (BCS). The charter school began its enrollment marketing for the 2020-21 school year by announcing the reinstatement of a geographic enrollment preference for children who live in one of the most expensive zip codes in the nation, the exact opposite of the stated purpose of charter school law. This is an example of how charter law can be used to exacerbate inequities in education. (BCS was in the news before for its exclusive enrollment practices: “Taxpayers Get Billed for Kids of Millionaires at Charter School.”)
BCS was authorized by the county 15 years ago over the objections of LASD, and so the District must appeal to the charter’s authorizer for changes that will ensure equal access to education for all students at all public schools. The District’s letter to the Santa Clara County Board of Education and its Superintendent cites data from the State of California regarding the charter’s demographics that clearly show it is underserving students with special needs, English Language Learners, and socioeconomically disadvantaged children and asks for the same kind of remedy that California’s Attorney General obtained from the Sausalito Marin School District: a timely and effective desegregation plan.
Here is LASD’s press release: https://www.lasdschools.org/District/News/10840-Press-Release-September-10-2019.html
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