Archives for the month of: September, 2019
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Michael Kohlhaas Reveals More Secret L.A. Charter Emails: How a Grant of $325,000 from the Waltons Evaporated

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2019 //
20

Michael Kohlhaas is combing through the treasure trove of leaked emails about the inner world of the Los Angeles charter industry.

He recently posted about the short and strange debut of Ganas Academy.

It got a grant of $325,000 from the Walton Family Foundation. The founder proceeded to pay herself $13,000 a month, spent $63,000 on consultants, and another $15,000 on lawyers, and so on, and soon the money was all gone. But the school wasn’t ready to open, even though the founder was paying a recruiter a bonus of $850 to sign up students.

Kohlhaas writes:

I just got a small set of records from everybody’s favorite star-crossed charter school horror show, that is to say GANAS Academy. The set is woefully incomplete, and it’s pretty clear that Sakshi Jain is lying to her lawyer about it yet again, but nevertheless there is some essential material in there, and you can browse through the whole pile of it over here on Archive.Org.

And by far the most important material in here is GANAS Academy’s general ledger in MS Excel format1 along with monthly bank statements through June 2019. The ledger shows every credit and every debit from the inception of the school in August 2018 with very detailed descriptions. The story kicks off with a $325K grant from the Walton Family Foundation, deposited in the California Credit Union on August 11, 2018 as shown on that month’s bank statement and it’s all downhill from there.

In September 2018 she began paying herself $13K per month, as shown in that month’s statement and this continued at least through June 2019, which is the last monthly statement I have.2 But like I said, the real action is found in that ledger. It’s there that we learn that the $325K Jain has been burning through came from the Waltons. That she spent about $63K on recruiting students, which no doubt includes the $850 per kid bounty she paid her recruiter. And last but never least $15K to charter school contract killer law firm Young, Minney, and Corr.3

So that, friends, is the charter school innovation laboratory model. Get a ton of free money from an appalling gang of zillionaires and proceed to burn through it at an astonishing rate. A quarter of a million dollars between August 2018 and June 2019.4 And at the end, you don’t even have a damn school. Although I will say that given the horrific nature of these schools, the world is clearly better off having her spend all that money and not start a school than otherwise.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Walton Foundation

How Unions Transformed America, But Were Then Demonized by Big Corporations

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2019 //
33

Caleb Crain has written a wonderful essay-book review in the current issue of The New Yorker about the state of unions today, referring to several recent books about unions. Where once they were part of the fabric of American society, they have increasingly been marginalized since the Reagan era, as big bosses, automation, and a hostile political climate combined to reduce their membership dramatically.

Do you have rights at work? Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought you did. In 1936, while trying to haul America’s economy out of the bog that the free market had driven it into, Roosevelt argued that workers needed to have a say, declaring it unjust that

a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives. For too many of us throughout the land, life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

For Roosevelt, a system in which bosses could unilaterally decide “the hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor” amounted to “dictatorship.” He hoped that the New Deal would bring workers and managers together in a new form of workplace governance.

New Dealers drew on an idea known as industrial democracy, developed, in the late nineteenth century, by English socialist thinkers who saw workplace rights as analogous to civil rights such as due process and the freedoms of speech and assembly. Senator Robert Wagner, who wrote the National Labor Relations Act of 1935—also known as the Wagner Act—made the point explicitly: “Democracy in industry means fair participation by those who work in the decisions vitally affecting their lives and livelihood.” In their efforts to civilize the workplace, however, Roosevelt and his allies didn’t set up a new institution for workers to speak through. They relied on an existing one: the union.

Whenever the rate of unionization in America has risen in the past hundred years, the top one per cent’s portion of the national income has tended to shrink. After Roosevelt signed the Wagner Act and other pro-union legislation, a generation of workers shared deeply in the nation’s prosperity. Real wages doubled in the two decades following the Second World War, and, by 1959, Vice-President Richard Nixon was able to boast to Nikita Khrushchev that “the United States comes closest to the ideal of prosperity for all in a classless society.”

America’s unions and workers haven’t been faring quite as well lately. Where labor is concerned, recent decades strongly resemble the run-up to the Great Depression. Both periods were marked by extreme concentrations of personal wealth and corporate power. In both, the value created by workers decoupled from the pay they received: during the nineteen-twenties, productivity grew forty-three per cent while wages stagnated; between 1973 and 2016, productivity grew six times faster than compensation. And unions were in decline: between 1920 and 1930, the proportion of union members in the labor force dropped from 12.2 per cent to 7.5 per cent, and, between 1954 and 2018, it fell from thirty-five per cent to 10.5 per cent. In “Beaten Down, Worked Up” (Knopf), a compact, pointed new account of unions in America, Steven Greenhouse, a longtime labor reporter for the Times, writes that “the share of national income going to business profits has climbed to its highest level since World War II, while workers’ share of income (employee compensation, including benefits) has slid to its lowest level since the 1940s.”

“Beaten Down” updates Greenhouse’s book “The Big Squeeze” (2008), in which he portrayed a “broad decline in the status and treatment of American workers,” with such details as fingers chopped off in a yogurt-container factory, stockers locked inside a Sam’s Club overnight, and a Walmart cashier who “menstruated on herself,” as a colleague put it, after being denied bathroom breaks. (The colleague was disciplined for buying the woman sanitary napkins and a washcloth on company time.) “Beaten Down” adds new outrages to the list, including the shuttering of the Web sites Gothamist and DNAinfo by their owner after staff writers unionized, but Greenhouse’s emphasis this time is on remedy rather than indictment. A General Motors employee recalls the union legacy she inherited from her great-grandfather, who participated in a strike at the company in 1936 and 1937 that helped launch the golden age of American labor. “Nobody realizes that all that we have is because of what was done before,” she says. The book is a kind of primer for the woman’s peers, explaining how “the eight-hour workday, employer-backed health coverage, paid vacations, paid sick days, safe workplaces” arose—and what the prospects are for keeping them.

One of the earliest heroes in Greenhouse’s book is a Ukrainian immigrant named Clara Lemlich, a dressmaker and a union organizer, who, in 1909, hopped onstage during a rally at Cooper Union to call, in Yiddish, for a strike against New York’s garment industry. Carried out mostly by women, the strike became known as the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand. At the time, there was little to stop bosses from dialling clocks back to steal time, or from charging employees for the water they drank, but the women won holidays, raises, a shorter workweek, and, at many factories, the recognition of their union, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Among the holdouts was the Triangle Waist Company, which had a factory near Washington Square. In 1911, a bin of cotton scraps there caught fire, and a hundred and forty-six workers died, most of them women and almost half of them teen-agers, trapped because an exit door had been locked to prevent pilfering and unauthorized breaks.

One witness to the disaster was Frances Perkins, the head of the New York Consumers League, whose job involved lobbying against fire hazards, child labor, and overlong hours. “People who had their clothes afire would jump,” she later recalled. Outrage about the fire inspired a reform movement, and Perkins pushed New York legislators to institute a new fire code. By the time Roosevelt was elected governor of New York, in 1928, Perkins was chairing a board that oversaw industrial safety in the state. After the stock market crashed, in 1929, she urged Roosevelt to set up a public-works program, unemployment insurance, and a workers’-compensation program—and he did. When he rose to the White House, a few years later, Roosevelt invited her to be Secretary of Labor; Perkins was the first woman ever named to a Cabinet position. Before accepting, she warned him that she expected the same programs for the whole nation, plus a federal minimum wage, a shorter workday, and pensions….

Emily Guendelsberger gives a sense of just how far we are from that dream in “On the Clock” (Little, Brown), a jaunty but dispiriting memoir of her work at three low-rung jobs: at a call center, a McDonald’s, and an Amazon warehouse. At the call center, she finds that her fellow-workers, caught between unpredictable customers and eavesdropping managers, suffer panic attacks so often that the local paramedic asks “Okay, who is it this time?” when he gets out of the ambulance. Chronic stress also predominates during Guendelsberger’s stint at McDonald’s. There are always too many customers waiting in line, and she constantly fears that their impatience may at any moment tip over into rage. Eventually, she realizes that the staffing shortfall has been carefully calibrated: “Understaffing is the new staffing.” The resulting stress, Guendelsberger warns, thwarts “logic, patience, paying attention, resisting temptation, long-term thinking, remembering things, empathy”—in short, all the faculties necessary for responsible citizenship.

At Amazon, a handheld scanner tells Guendelsberger what to do at every moment and tracks her even into the rest room. A training video warns of the work’s physical demands—“This is going to hurt”—and she’s disconcerted that painkillers are dispensed for free. But soon, she writes, “I pop Advil like candy all day.” Her shifts last eleven and a half hours, and she gets home too drained to even think of writing or reading. One day, slumped in front of “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” she finds herself “laughing almost involuntarily” at the realization that “Scrooge literally has a better time-off policy than Amazon.”

Crain gives hopeful examples of working uniting to claim rights in the workplace, one example being the educators’ “red for ed” movement, another being the well-targeted demand for a base pay of $15 an hour.

See if you can read the article online. It is worth your time.

Categories Unions

The Past and Future of Labor Unions: An Interview with Stephen Greenhouse

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2019 //
7

Stephen Greenhouse was the labor reporter for the New York Times for 19 years.

In this interview with the California-based Capital & Main, Greenhouse reviews the history of the labor movement, the role it played in building a middle class, and its decline. He goes on to describe strong portents of a revival of power for working people.

No Seat at the Table: Steven Greenhouse on Labor’s Silenced Voice

Greenhouse has written a new book about the labor movement and why it matters. The book is titled Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and Future of American Labor.

He said,

One of the reasons I wrote this book is that there’s a phenomenon that far too few Americans understand. Worker power in the United States, not just union power, but worker power overall, has fallen to its lowest level, certainly since World War II and probably since the Great Depression.

That has hurt tens of millions of Americans because it’s a big contributor to wage stagnation. Consumers don’t have enough money to spend. That’s depressed the economy a bit.

Another unfortunate result of this declining worker power is income inequality. One study I looked at showed that income inequality has increased faster in America since 1995 than in any of three dozen industrial nations. One reason for that is that unions and worker power in the U.S. have grown so weak.

A third bad result of the decline of worker power is that corporations have undue domination of our nation’s politics and policymaking.

Categories Education Reform, Equity, Unions

Ohio: State Takeover Law Targets Districts That Enroll Poor Children of Color

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2019 //
13

Bill Phillis writes that Ohio’s State Takeover law punishes districts that serve children of color who are poor. The Republicans who run the state do not believe in local control, except in their own districts. Beware! They may come for your district next!

School districts that the state has seized and others it plans to takeover have two things in common: extremely high percentage of disadvantaged students and very low median income

Beware of the state’s motivation for plans to rescue poverty kids. The current statewide, near universal voucher programs were initiated by the “noble” effort of the state to rescue children from the poverty-stricken Cleveland school district. (The State Attorney General argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that vouchers were an escape route for Cleveland children.) Charter schools were initiated as another means to rescue children from urban districts. The state’s “beneficent” effort is now an $11 billion boondoggle that is rife with fraud and failure.

HB 70 is a “virtuous” strategy of the state to rescue children from the boards of education of poverty-stricken school districts. The table formulated by Mandy Jablonski, Lorain County Parents Supporting our Children and Teachers, displays the percentage of disadvantaged students and the median income.

If the state gets entrenched in these poverty districts, the takeover plan will move towards districts that are less-poverty-stricken.

Beware.

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://www.ohiocoalition.org
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Categories Education Reform

Ed Johnson For Atlanta School Board, Part 2

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2019 //
11

Ed Johnson responds to the Atlanta Association of Educators and explains why he is running for the school board.

I am posting two of his responses because I don’t think you will find any school board candidate in the nation who has responded as thoughtfully as Ed Johnson.


Ed Johnson
Candidate, Atlanta Board of Education District 2

1. What is your concern and goals for the students of District 2?

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote:

“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. … We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

Because I am practiced in and hold great respect for the profound, seemingly uncommon wisdom the word “interrelatedness” implies and carries, my concern and goals are for ALL children, which obviously includes the children of District 2, as well as the children’s teachers.

Specifically, my overarching goals are to influence and collaborate with school board members in learning to carry out the following two touchstone responsibilities the 2002 revised Atlanta Independent School System (AISS) Charter requires of them and of the superintendent, respectively:

“Adopting district-wide policies that support [providing] an environment for [continual] quality improvement and progress for all decision makers in the district, as well as for students.”

“After adoption of policies by the Board, [the superintendent is responsible for] providing a supportive environment for [continual] quality improvement and progress for all decision makers in the district, as well as for students.”

The inclusion of these responsibilities of the school board and the superintendent, respectively, in the 2002 revised AISS Charter are a direct result of my intervening with the school board’s Charter Review Commission to protest what otherwise would have been included in the charter, namely:

“Adopting district‐wide policies that provide incentives for progress and consequences for failure for all decision‐makers in the district, as well as for students. These policies must meet or exceed the state policies that provide incentives for progress and consequences for failure.”

Because this blatantly stipulates practicing behaviorism, which has roots in slavery, and because it is totally contrary to, and inherently destructive of, Dr. King’s legacy teaching of “interrelatedness,” my protest before the Charter Review Commission Chairman was:

“Hell, no! You are not going to do this to the children!”

Thus my concern simply is that school board members and superintendents we have had over the past nearly 30 years have been either ignorantly or intentionally practicing behaviorism on especially children labeled “Black” and their teachers. The detrimental consequences have compounded over time, with behaviorism having been made a normal “best practice” in educating children labeled “Black,” especially in “no excuses” charter schools such as KIPP and in public schools outsourced to charter school operators—what the school board and superintendent call “partner schools.”

It is way, way past time to elect someone whose maturity and 30 years of learning and experience can help the school board learn to do differently, to do better, to start a never-ending journey of continual quality improvement per the 2002 revised AISS Charter and do it anchored in a public-serving purpose of the Atlanta Public Schools system rather than a mostly “partner”-serving purpose. Elected or not, my goal is to help make it so.

2. What is your knowledge of the community school model, and where do you see it as a part of District 2?

I understand the community school model is that of a school engaged in partnerships with community resources operating to benefit the school and including objectives such a dropout prevention, health screenings and care, adult literacy, and potentially much more. I have observed from afar the popular national demonstration of the community school model, that being McDowell County, West Virginia. And I am familiar with Georgia Senate Bill 30, entitled, Sustainable Community School Operational Grants.

I am supportive of the community school model in District 2 public schools, and in public schools in general, to the extent partnerships contribute directly to improving the schools’ internal capabilities to continually improve so as to eventually not need the partnerships and not compromise any school’s educational purpose. A District 2 public school implementing the community school model will make no difference for teaching and learning by teachers and children if the school has not the internal capabilities to improve in the face internal challenges that would be effectively outsourced through partnerships. Moreover, I am aware some privatizers of public schools have co-opted the community school model to serve their selfish profit-making interests. Accordingly, vigilance is warranted, lest public schools adopt the community school model only to change and acquiesce to external private purposes and agenda just to attain the “carrot” resources and grants put in front of them.

3. Given the data around the charter model, what is your stance on charter schools and funding for those programs?

First, let’s understand, charter schools are not public schools. Charter schools serve private interests first and foremost, inherently. Public schools serve public interests first and foremost, inherently. Charter schools are rivalrous and excludable, as by lottery. Public schools are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Charter schools appeal to and feed on parents’ selfishness. Public schools rely on “All for one and one for all.” Thus the oft stated expression “public charter school” is a contradiction in terms; there is no such thing.

I am keenly aware of qualitative and quantitative data around the charter schools “no excuses” model, such as KIPP, for which data say charter schools do no better than, and very often do worse than, public schools. I just this week drafted a PowerPoint presentation using State of Georgia Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) school-level Letter Grades for all APS schools available since 2014. KIPP charter schools operating in District 2 represent nothing remarkable compared to the public schools. The GOSA school-level Letter Grades, quantified, make this plainly clear. Thus my unequivocal position is charter schools are a total and absolute waste, academically, fiscally, and operationally. Our Atlanta public schools can be improved, but not in the presence of charter schools. Charter schools function as a drain on our public schools, much like a sink drain. And much like water that disappears down the sink drain, our public schools will disappear down the charter schools drain, unless we plug the drain.

4. What is your stance for the Excellence School model? Do you feel that each school should have an equitable amount of special needs services?

I am keenly aware of and unequivocally opposed to the so-called Excellent Schools model. The model is the currently serving school board chairman and superintendent’s deceptive marketing to implement The City Fund’s free market ideological Portfolio of Schools “idea.” The “idea” is to treat and manage APS schools like a portfolio of stocks—namely, in order to continually maximize the total value of the stock portfolio, periodically rank the stocks by performance, and then sell off the lowest performing five percent or so and buy better performing stocks.

It is an “idea” that has absolutely no basis in pedagogy nor in research nor in actually intending to improve schools. Purveyors of the Portfolio of Schools “idea” expressly target large urban, heavily Black populated cities, such as Atlanta. The “idea” is given different catchy names in different cities. If implemented within APS, the “idea” must necessarily operate cyclically to identify the five percent or so so-called lower-performing public schools and close them so as to move funding to open new charter schools to benefit privatizers and investors, primarily. Many District 2 public schools will stand to be among those the Excellent Schools model would target, GOSA letter grades data suggest.

More about this matter at these references:

Atlanta: A Public Protest Against the “Portfolio Model”

Ed Johnson: Time to Grade the Leadership of the Atlanta Public Schools: Zero

As to the second question, “Do you feel that each school should have an equitable amount of special needs services?,” I believe each school should have the adaptive capability to provide special needs services as might be required of it and to be capable to adsorb demand for such services, within limits. Each public school having such adaptive capability can only be a consequence of the school continually improving in quality. So school improvement is essential, not merely school change.

5.What is your knowledge-base of the charter school programs? Are you familiar with the latest evaluation of the charter school contracts?

APS charter schools represent nothing remarkable compared to APS public schools. Virtually all available measures of school performance are clear about this.

I am aware the school board and superintendent will this coming school year turn a newly constructed facility over to KIPP to operate. It represents yet another instance of them effectively using APS as a pass-thru entity of public funds to private interests. Their behavior is unethical and immoral and reprehensible.

6. Are you aware of the proposed consolidation and closings, and what is your opinion?

To the extent one considers the so-called Excellent Schools model a proposal, consolidating and closing our public schools will be a requirement of that proposal, necessarily. Not at all an opinion but rather a fact, consolidating and closing the public’s public schools signals failure on the part of the school board to abide by the 2002 revised AISS Charter stipulating adopting policies to provide for improving the quality of our public schools. Subsequently, the superintendent fails to provide a supportive environment for improving the quality of our public schools.

An example is the school board and superintendent’s closing Adamsville Primary and consolidating it with L. P. Miles Elementary. Their action was absolutely unnecessary. Later, it was found out they took that action so as to give the Adamsville Primary building and attendant resources to the private Kindezi Charter Schools, although Kindezi Charter Schools did not request the building, the AJC reported.

7. Do you feel administrative autonomy is the best fit for school management?

I am keenly aware so-called administrative autonomy and, in general, the notion of “flexibility for accountability,” packaged profane selling points the school board and superintendent employed to get the public to acquiesce to their changing APS into a Charter System, rather than exercise the courage to commit to improving the district starting with where it was at the time, although as a derisively named “Status Quo” district.

In reality, no one has “autonomy.” Schoolhouse administrators must exist and function interrelatedly (see Dr. King quoted, above) with all others, especially the school’s teachers. Imposing so-called administrative autonomy does not rationally substitute for a school needing the capability to improve. Administrative autonomy merely allows the superintendent to escape the responsibilities the AISS Charter stipulates for her role, so as to then be able to stand back and hold schoolhouse administrators accountable for failures she spawns. Same for the school board. With her holding schoolhouse administrators accountable for results having not contributed at all to improving any APS public schools over the past five years, the superintendent’s recent hiring of yet more “school turnaround principals” exemplifies the absurdity of “doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

8. Do you feel that abolishment of jobs is best practices for ALL students?

Absolutely not. Moreover, it is not a “best practice” for ANY students. Again, the 2002 revised AISS Charter stipulates responsibilities for the superintendent’s role. Not one superintendent responsibility stipulates or even implies abolishing jobs is a best practice. Abolishing jobs as a best practice can only rationally be taken as evidence of the superintendent leading as a “trained” behaviorist more so than as a learned educationist—that is, a professional educator. This way of thinking and leading borrows from General Electric’s Chairman and CEO, Jack Welch. It is much the same as The City Fund’s free market Portfolio of Schools “idea” the school board and superintendent market as their Excellent Schools model. Beverly Hall, with involvement by General Electric’s John Rice, then in Atlanta, did this and we all know the outcome was a massively systemic cheating crisis.

As an “I told you so” footnote, here, my first run for a seat on the school board in 2005 was an effort to prevent the crisis, which was plainly predictable to anyone who had the wisdom and experience to see it coming. The cheating crisis exposed the foolishness and stupidity of “running APS like a business.” Yet, sadly, today, the school board and Superintendent Carstarphen run APS more like a business than even some businesses run business like a business—meaning, to run business in more regressive ways than in progressive ways, especially as related to the education of children labeled “Black.”

9. What policies or actions are questionable that Atlanta BOE has gotten wrong or failed to do in the last four years, such as teachers’ raises, teacher retention, inadequate bus service, overcrowded classes, inexperienced administrators, etc.?

I will here address two critical matters and reference a third. There are more.

Without question, the most damning action the school board took with the hiring of the currently serving superintendent nearly five years ago was to change APS into a Charter System by terms of a performance contract they and the superintendent executed with the state. That “bold action,” as the school board and superintendent proclaimed it, aligned with the superintendent’s “school turnaround” training by Harvard University and resulted in requiring every Atlanta public school be treated as if it were a charter school because the performance contract incorporates, by reference, The Charter Schools Act of 1992. This fact is not commonly known and understood.

Consequently, GO Teams in all Atlanta public schools. GO Teams are meant to be the functional equivalent of autonomous charter school governing boards. Unlike PTAs that are inherently democratic in function, GO Teams are inherently autocratic and authoritarian in function. GO Teams are the means by which the school board fractured their being held accountable for “control and management” of APS systemically per the AISS Charter, so as to then push the fragments of accountability down upon individual public schools and call the fragments of accountability, GO Teams. GO Teams lend credibility to, and provide a ready-made excuse for, maintaining schools segregated by so-called race and other social factors.

From the standpoint of policy, the school board got horribly wrong their new Policy BBBB, Ethics. Because racialist ideology was the central theme of their very first draft of the policy, I heavily involved myself in influencing the final outcome that considers human differences, not just so-called race. To their credit, at the urging of at least three school board members, the final ethics policy reflects my influence, verbatim. For example, although the school board’s Policy Review Committee Chairwoman, Cynthia Briscoe Brown, resisted even defining “ethics” in the policy, the approved ethics policy states:

“The Atlanta Board of Education recognizes equity means the quality or ideal of being just and fair, regardless of economic, social, cultural, and human differences among and between persons.”

These are my words, exactly. Nonetheless, ironically, in the majority “Black” school district that is APS, the school board’s new Policy BBBB, Ethics, institutionalizes regressive racialist ideology, although science shows so-called race is, in reality, just an illusion. Ironically still, the new ethics policy provides for loading school board and superintendent leadership failures to improve APS and to close “opportunity gaps” and such onto so-called race, ethnicity, and other external factors. Arguably, the non-democratic, anti-learning attitude is, “We, the school board, are the reverent authority. So if failure happens, it cannot possibly be our fault. It’s our job to make the hard decisions and hold other people accountable.” This attitude and attendant matters render the school board’s new Policy BBBB, Ethics, unethical.

On the matter of teacher pay and specifically the $3,000 pay increase for teachers, read my position at this reference:

https://mailchi.mp/7db0732bd7f1/aps-leaders-cut-short-amount-of-raise-promised-teachers-blame-city?e=%5BUNIQID%5D

10. Do you feel that the current superintendent should be offered a new contract for 2021?

No, I do not. The superintendent demonstrates being a diehard practitioner of the “school turnaround work” she has boldly and publicly proclaimed Harvard University “trained” her to do. However, neither APS nor any of its public schools have ever needed “school turnaround work.” Rather, the district and its public schools have always needed, and always will need, improvement. But to improve requires learning and being able to unlearn in the face of new knowledge. Persons “trained” for a job will generally seek to apply their training to a problem—that is, make the problem fit their current training—rather than open up to study and learn from the problem and what the problem may be trying to teach.

The superintendent has continually shown having a predilection for deceitfully deflecting, avoiding, hiding, and otherwise refusing to reveal facts that would reflect unfavorably on her personal aspirations. Take, for example, that the superintendent, as well as the school board, refuses to tell the public the fact of what “graduate rate” means. She, and they, refuse to call it by its official name, which is Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR). If the public understood what ACGR means, the public would then understand “graduation rate” is an inflated lie. Understanding ACGR, the public might then enquire: “Well, what about Unadjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (UCGR)?” And if the public were to do that, then the public might discover ACGR for Atlanta public high schools appears to have gotten better but only because UCGR got worse. And that happens simply because most high school student loses occur in the earlier high school grades—9th and 10th—thus leaving fewer students in the later high school grades—11th and 12th—that turn out to be the basis (i.e., the denominator) for calculating “graduation rate.”

Improvement cannot occur based on deceit and lies.

11. Do you feel it is a conflict of interest that the chair of the APS Board is an attorney for the law firm that also services the charter school (for-profit) industry?

Yes, I do feel it is a conflict of interest. While it may be legal, it is not ethical. Moreover, the school board chairman and the many other attorneys and lawyers involved with APS seem to have debased the district to the point where law subsumes ethics. For example, it is perfectly lawful that the superintendent refuses to make public counts of students who started ninth grade for the first time at the start of any given school year, so as to prevent the public from determining unadulterated, non-politicized graduation rates. But is the superintendent’s behavior ethical? Ironically, I have learned not one bona fide ethicists serves or serves on the school board’s Ethics Commission; however, three attorneys and lawyers do.

12. Do you support a forensic audit investigation of the Atlanta Public Schools’ Charter School Systems by the GA Department of Education?

Actually, on 30 January 2019, I appealed to both the Georgia Senate’s Youth and Education Committee Officers and Members and the House of Representatives’ Education Committee Officers and Members to conduct a forensic financial audit of the school board and superintendent’s fiscal process and spending, especially spending in the category “Instruction.”

I wrote, in part:

“However, the APSL’s Excellent Schools project is not an excellent plan, as it aims to merely implement the ideological ‘portfolio of schools model’ that serves closing and privatizing public schools, especially public schools serving mostly children labeled ‘black.’

“The collective indication that the financial efficiency of the APSL fiscal process is out of control is only strengthened by the case that GADOE used three-year averages, so as to ‘smooth out variation in the data.’ In other words, although GADOE calculated averages, so as to ‘smooth out variation in the data,’ variation in the three-year averages attributable to the APSL fiscal process nonetheless remained great enough, and strong enough to still show up as detectable non-random variation, or variation due to something special going on.

“Thus the collective indication of the APSL fiscal process being out of control strongly suggests a forensic financial audit of that process is necessary in order to truly answer the essential question of why, at root-level.

“Moreover, any such audit might also take account of academic outcomes due to the quality of Atlanta Public Schools Leadership.”

Once on the school board representing District 2, I will see to it that a forensic financial audit happens.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Competition, Courage

Ed Johnson for School Board in Atlanta on September 17!

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2019 //
6

Atlanta is holding a special election on September 17 to fill the vacant seat in District 2.

This election is crucial, because the current board majority, dominated by TFA alums, is committed to the so-called Portfolio Model, which means an abdication of the board’s responsibility and a proliferation of private charters.

Ed Johnson, a dedicated and well-informed citizen of Atlanta, should be elected. I have known Ed Johnson for years as a person with deep understanding of education and of systems. He believes in steady and thoughtful improvement, not radical disruption that upends the lives of children and communities.

This election could tip the balance on the board.

To understand why Ed Johnson is perfect for this job, read his responses to the questionnaire of the Georgia Charter Schools Association.


Ed Johnson
Candidate, Atlanta Board of Education District 2

Questionnaire by Georgia Charter Schools Association (GCSA)

1. Briefly share your qualifications for the office of District 2 School Board Member.

My qualifications are exactly those the Atlanta Independent Schools System (AISS) Charter requires, namely:

I am at least 18 years of age
I am a resident of the city and I have been a resident of the Atlanta Board of Education (“Board”) District 2 for at least one year immediately preceding the date of filing a notice of candidacy to seek office
I am a qualified elector of the city
I am not an employee of the State Department of Education nor a member of the State Board of Education

Moreover,

I do not currently hold an elective public office
I am not an employee of the Atlanta Board of Education or any other local board of education
I do not serve on the governing body of any private K-12 educational institution, however grade level-wise constituted

Perhaps this question actually meant to ask, “What personal qualities are you prepared to bring to the Board as the District 2 representative?” Assuming so:

I hold a keen, uncompromised position for the public’s Atlanta public schools system to remain a wholly public good committed to continually improving in quality as a public good essential to advancing democratic practices of civil society ever and ever closer to democratic ideals. Kindly see my bio brief at this link: https://tinyurl.com/y57uymu6

2. What is your vision for Atlanta Public Schools and how would you implement it?

Visions alone are insufficient. Visions, as well as missions, must be anchored in, aligned to, and function in harmony with an invariant Purpose.

Although my vision matters less than any visions District 2 communities and Atlanta civil society, at large, may hold for the public’s Atlanta Independent Schools System, which is commonly known as Atlanta Public Schools (APS), my personal vision is for APS to become the wholly unfractured public good it is chartered to be, so it can become Where Authentic Public Education Meets Purpose in service to sustaining and advancing democratic practices ever closer to democratic ideals that benefit all of Atlanta civil society and beyond. For this to happen, having a commonly agreed-to invariant Purpose is essential. Unfortunately, APS has not a commonly agreed-to invariant Purpose. Today, on account of the poor quality of top leadership of APS—Board and superintendent—the “purpose” of APS is whatever any one or more of some 300-plus private actors APS leadership calls “partners” selfishly want the “purpose” of APS to be, at any given moment, in service to themselves.

I, as an individual Board member, will not have the authority to implement my personal vision or anything else. However, as a Board member, I will seek to influence the Board to catalyze, via policy, the start of a very, very, very long overdue journey of never ending continual quality improvement anchored in Where Authentic Public Education Meets Purpose, as stated above.

3. Please describe your position on charter public schools.

Kindly know I am not a purveyor of any of the miscalled terms “charter public schools,” “public charter schools,” and “traditional public schools.” Without question, such terms are meant to manipulate. Thus I speak only the authentic and truthful terms “public schools” and “charter schools.”

That said, charter schools may be rightfully likened to vampire bats that feed on their victims’ blood but instead feed on the public’s public schools’ various resources, including but not limited to fiscal, physical, academic, and social resources. The thinking that such feeding then means charter schools are public schools is just plain ludicrous. And just as Count Dracula feeds on his victims’ blood after having promised eternal life in an instant, charter schools feed on parents’ hopes with promises of giving their children instant “access” to instant “high quality education,” in instant “high quality charter school seats,” in instant “high quality charter schools.” In Atlanta, such parents targeted by charter schools tend to be those of children labeled “Black.”

Data—for example, results from Georgia Milestones standardized test assessments since the inception of the tests in 2015—are clear that charter schools are not, in general, the inherently “high quality schools” they claim to be. And even if they were, nonetheless, all the wasted fiscal, academic, and social costs associated with having two parallel school systems is morally and ethically reprehensible. Such wasted costs should be going to improving public schools in the manner of the never ending journey of continual quality improvement I mention in my response to question 2, above.

So, my position? Charter schools are an abomination upon civil society. Moreover, our local, state, and federal lawmakers should not be in the business of legitimating selfishness. It’s not much of a stretch to see the connections to selfish acts of shooting up schools, for example, facilitated by easy access to military-style guns. Selfishness learned in one context invariably manifests in any number of other contexts, sometimes “by any means necessary.”

4. What do you think are the three greatest issues or problems facing Atlanta Public Schools? How could charter public schools help address these issues?

There is but one overarching greatest issue and that issue subsumes all other issues: Influence the Board to catalyze “Adopting district-wide policies that support an environment for the quality improvement and progress for all decision makers in the district, as well as for students.”

Charter schools are anathema to realizing this overarching issue, which actually is a role the Atlanta Independent Schools System Charter requires the Board to fulfill, and it never has.

5. What are the specific issues facing District 2? What should be done to address these issues?

The specific, overarching issue facing District 2 is the presence of a concentration of charter schools. Six of 14 schools are charter schools. That’s 43 percent charter schools. Data suggest the outsized presence of so many charter schools in District 2 feed greedily on resources that, morally and ethically, should be going to the eight District 2 public schools.

To address this issue, the Board members be must called to account, both severally and individually, for failing to honor their sworn Oath of Office that begins: “I will be governed by the public good ….” Charter schools are not public goods, so are anathema to Board members’ fulfilling their Oath of Office, and they don’t.

6. Do you support the expansion and approval of more high quality charter schools in the Atlanta Public Schools district?

No. Besides, various data sources are clear: Neither APS nor District 2 has any “high quality charter schools” compared to public schools. The term is a blatantly intentional miscalling meant to manipulate the unsuspecting.

7. Do you believe charter public schools should receive funding and resources equal to that of traditional public schools?

Again, I am not a purveyor of the intentionally misleading terms “charter public schools” and “traditional public schools.” There are public schools and there are charter schools.

Originally, to get themselves established, charter schools sold the public on the idea that they can do more with less, inherently, as if charter schools are automatically and instantly “high quality schools.” Now that the truth is known and the lie exposed, by their own admission, charter schools pressing for funding equality or equity with public schools should be taken as evidence that charter schools are a totally cost-equable, hence totally duplicative, hence totally wasteful schooling structure, inherently, and so should be allowed to die in the open daylight, just as Count Dracula dies when exposed to open daylight, or gets staked in the heart. Once staked in the heart, the stake must never be removed, lest he or it comes back to life.

8. What are your thoughts on the strategic plan APS is currently working on? In your opinion, what should be addressed?

The development of that strategic plan is an essential step the Board and superintendent, Meria Carstarphen, are taking in their process that aims to implement The City Fund’s free-market portfolio of schools “idea.” The “idea” is just that, and it has absolutely no basis in pedagogy nor in actually intending to improve schools, only change them.

The process simply begs disrupting and destroying APS as the public good it is supposed to be by continually closing and replacing public schools with ever more charter schools. The Board and Carstarphen cloak what they do by intentionally miscalling it “Excellent Schools Project.” The several other urban public school districts The City Funds has targeted for privatization do likewise; that is, apply an agreeable though erroneous name that cloaks the privatization agenda.

The Board voted their “Creating a System of Excellent Schools” process into existence by the 5­-3 vote they took during their March meeting, last school year. Sadly, at least one Board member voted not fully understanding the vote, but understandably so, because the Board Chairman, Jason Esteves, had snookered the Board member into voting in favor of the vote, I learned. Indeed, the vote was an extraordinarily slick execution that Esteves pulled off. It can help to have a graphical rendering of the process the Board voted into existence in order to see the full effect of the vote, at a relatively high level. See such a graphical rendering on the next page (or below), and note the thick black-lines trace through the process involving initial development of the strategic plan.

For more about my position and understanding of the so-called Excellent Schools Project, kindly see these of mine:

https://mailchi.mp/d25f43df98e4/icf-international-atlanta-school-board-prepares-a-fresh-assault-on-public-education
https://mailchi.mp/285384c108ec/how-are-the-apsl-planning-to-destroy-public-education-in-atlanta-with-excellent-schools
https:

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Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America

ALEC Controls State Government in Arizona

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2019 //
11

Read this article by E.J. Montini in the Arizona Republic to learn how the Koch-funded ALEC controls Governor Doug Ducey and the state legislature in Arizona. ALEC was behind the voucher legislation that was overturned by voters earlier this year.

He writes:

About 30 of Arizona’s Republican state lawmakers, along with Gov. Doug Ducey, attended the annual convention of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Austin, Texas, this month.

For the politicians, membership in ALEC is like joining one of those meal kit delivery services, only in this case lawmakers are presented with ready-made, easy to introduce legislation guaranteed to satisfy the special interests who came up with the political recipes, and to give regular citizens indigestion.

Earlier this year an investigation by USA Today, the Arizona Republic, and the Center for Public Integrity found that from 2010 to 2018, bills based on ALEC legislation were introduced nearly 2,900 times across all 50 states.

Arizona ranked second among states for the highest number of ALEC bills introduced and passed during those years, with more than 200 bills introduced and 57 enacted. Only Mississippi had more.

‘Chefs’ are lobbyists and executives

ALEC is the HelloFresh of politics, except what they cook up isn’t good for you. Instead the group produces ready-to-introduce legislation for politicians more interested in serving special interests and promoting their own careers than in serving their constituency

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Vouchers

Cincinnati: TFA Alum Trying for a Seat on the School Board After Almost Being Kicked Out of Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2019 //
8

In this fall’s school board elections in Cincinnati, one of the candidates will be a TFA alum who is trying again after almost being kicked out of the Democratic Party three years ago.

Ben Lindy is the director of Teach for America in Cincinnati. He attended elite suburban schools, then graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School. After he taught in rural North Carolina, he tried to start his  political career by running for state representative in Ohio. He was nearly censured and booted from the Democratic Party at that time when union officials discovered that he had written a law journal article that was anti-union and that was cited in a Supreme Court case to hurt the cause of collective bargaining. In that paper, he argued that collective bargaining agreements raise the performance of high-achieving students and lower the performance of “poorly achieving students.” On the face of it, this claim is absurd, first, because there are many different variables that affect student performance, especially in the state he studied, New Mexico, which has one of the highest child poverty rates in the nation. Consider also that the highest performing states in the nation–Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey–have strong teachers’ unions, while the lowest performing states in the nation (mainly in the South) do not.

The 2016 effort to oust him from the Democratic Party failed by 26-21. When he was questioned about this stance on organized labor, he claimed to be pro-union but claimed that he hadn’t give much though to union issues.

Lindy showed a lack of knowledge about some labor issues. When asked his stance on prevailing wage, he said: “This is an issue I’d like to know more about.”

“I’m not hearing how you’ve evolved,” said Pat Bruns, a committee member who sits on the state board of education.

Lindy is a prodigious fund-raiser, which is enough to recommend him to some party leaders.

But party leaders should check where Lindy’s campaign cash is coming from. If it is coming from “Democrats for Education Reform,” bear in mind that these are hedge fund managers who are anti-union and anti-public schools, who favor TFA and merit pay. If it is coming from “Leadership for Educational Equity,” that is TFA’s political arm, which is anti-union and pro-charter school.

Be informed before you vote.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Cincinnati, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Ohio, Teach for America, Unions

Answering Jeanne Allen’s Question About Whether “the Union” Paid for My Home

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2019 //
28

Last May 10, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform sent a tweet my way. Allen is a big advocate for every kind of school choice, except for public schools. Before she started her current gig, she worked for the far-right Heritage Foundation. For years, her organization has been a big cheerleader for charters and has opposed any effort by states to regulate them or hold them accountable.

This was the tweet.

In case you are not on Twitter, she wrote:

And she never mentions the millions in her bank account that pay for her Brooklyn brownstone. Didn’t come from writing books or academia. Perhaps the union?

I responded that I paid for my home myself.

But there is more to the story. I bought the Brooklyn brownstone in 1988, at a time when I was allied with conservative groups. In other words, I was on Jeanne Allen’s side. Checker Finn and I had formed the Educational Excellence Network, to advocate for standards, testing, accountability, and a liberal arts-focused curriculum. Charters did not exist. In 1991, I went to work for the George H.W. Bush Administration.

Jeanne, why would “the union” have purchased a home for me in 1988, given the fact that I was widely seen as a conservative and was on your side?

In another tweet, Jeanne asserted that she visited my home, but I couldn’t remember that she did. I hosted a few gatherings for conservatives, so it is possible she was there. It was thirty-one years ago, so I hope she will forgive me for not remembering her being there.

It was indeed a beautiful home. I sold it six years ago and now live in a beautiful apartment. I paid for that too.

Behind her insinuation that the union paid for my home is the assumption that everyone is motivated solely by money. Everyone is for sale. She projects her own views. The opposition to charters and vouchers is not motivated by money but by a commitment to the common good. Jeanne sees only self-interest and personal pursuit of gain. She has no idea what the common good is. Like her idol, Betsy DeVos, she scoffs at the very idea of society and commitment to ideals larger than self-interest and pecuniary gain.

This is what the Corporate Disrupters can’t understand. Dedication motivates people more surely than money. There are rewards in this life that are greater than money. Neither she nor DeVos nor the Waltons understand that.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Personal, Privatization
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