Archives for the month of: February, 2020
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For Your Browsing Pleasure: Who Got Walton Money for Education Disruption in 2018?

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2020 //
27

The Walton Family Foundation is the fruit of the Walmart chain. It was created by the Waltons, one of the richest families in the world. The three senior members of the Walton family–Alice Walton, Jim Walton, and Rob Walton–have a collective net worth in excess of $150 billion. There is a younger generation of Waltons whose wealth is not included in that total. The Walton family increases its wealth by $4 million an hour, every hour of every day.

The Walton Foundation has a few causes in which it concentrates its giving. Reforming K-12 education is one of the major areas for giving.

The Walton Foundation is the biggest single private funder of charters schools and vouchers in the United States.

In 2018, it gave $210 million to a long list of grantees to promote its K-12 goals, especially privatization of public schools via charters and vouchers.

In the same year, it increased that giving by another $238.6 million, in a section of its website called “Special Projects,” many of which went to the same K-12 charters and vouchers, or advocacy for charters and vouchers.

I am leaving it to you to review the list of grants. What do you see that is interesting or surprising? Some years I read the entire list. Now I am asking you to do it and report back.

The only other source of funding at this scale is the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program, which gave $440 million in 2018 to launch new charter schools, most of which went to large corporate charter chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy in New York City. The original federal program, created in 1994, was intended to launch start-up charters that needed a financial boost, not to build financial behemoths to replace public schools. Under DeVos, the CSP has become a juggernaut to disrupt communities and states, whether or not they want charters. New Hampshire, for example, got the largest single state grant of $46 million, and its Democratic-controlled legislature has thus far refused to accept the money, which would double the number of charters in the state and knock a huge hole in the financing of public schools.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Los Angeles: Defeat the Charter Combine!

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2020 //
7

Jackie Goldberg, the dynamic progressive on the Los Angeles school board, send this request for help:

 

 

 

 
FROM THE DESK OF JACKIE GOLDBERG
Dear Friends and Family,

First, I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for all you’ve done to support me over so many years.  And I have another personal request for each of you because you are all important in the struggles for full funding for public education and for progressive goals in civil rights, human rights, immigration rights and addressing the global climate crisis.

This request is not for my candidacy.

It is a request for the immediate future of the LAUSD school board.  In the March 2020 primary election, there are two school board candidates for the LAUSD School Board that I am asking you to support.  They are current Board Member Scott Schmerelson and Board District #7 candidate Patricia Castellanos.

Unless BOTH are elected either in the March primary in the November general election, my ability to bring progressive change will be severely restricted.  Right now there is a 4 to 3 pro-public education majority on the school board.  But all four are up for election in 2020 and we don’t have a vote to spare.

Luckily, Board Member Dr. McKenna has no opponent.  I have a fairly weak opponent, but charter proponents have already spent $250,000 in attack ads against me.

So the only chance the conservatives have of retaking the majority is to defeat Mr. Schmerelson, or by electing someone other than Ms. Castellanos in Board District 7.

PLEASE HELP ONE OR BOTH OF THESE EXCELLENT CANDIDATES WIN THEIR ELECTIONS.  HERE IS HOW:

SEND MONEY (up to $1200) to each of these two as follows:
Scott Schmerelson for School Board 2020
Contribute online at www.Scott4lausd.com

Patricia Castellanos for School Board 2020
Contribute online at www.Patriciacastellanos.com

VOLUNTEER TO PHONE OR WALK PRECINCTS as follows:
Scott Schmerelson- Contact Brent Smiley
Email: Campaign@scott4lausd.com
Phone: 818.324.8327

Patricia Castellanos- Contact Albert Ramirez
Email: info@patriciacastellanos.com
Phone: 310.864.3383

I’ll be calling soon to see if you can help me keep a progressive majority on the LAUSD Board of Education.

With warm regards,

Jackie
Jackie Goldberg · 419 N Larchmont Blvd # 37 · Los Angeles, CA 90004-3013 · USA

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Dallas: Charter Operator Sentenced to 7 Years, Then Claims Bonus

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2020 //
12

The charter industry is overrun with scandals because charter laws do not require accountability and transparency. Theft, conflicts of interest, nepotism, and fraud are a feature, not a bug.

A charter operator in Dallas was sentenced to seven years in jail for taking a kickback, but then convinced the board to give her a bonus of $20,000.

Donna Houston-Woods was convicted of defrauding her own Dallas charter school, but she wasn’t done taking its money for her own benefit, a federal prosecutor said Thursday.

She returned to Nova Academy after her October trial and pocketed a $20,000 bonus. Houston-Woods, the school’s longtime CEO, then asked for another $300,000 in severance, but the school board denied it.

Her actions, the prosecutor said, showed zero remorse and a lack of respect for the law.

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Houston-Woods to seven years and three months in prison for accepting $50,000 in kickbacks in exchange for steering a school technology contract to a friend, who then botched the job…

Senior Judge Sidney Fitzwater called it “outrageous” that the Nova board of directors, having been “injured” by Houston-Woods, would pay her a bonus before she resigned. He called it “stunning to me” and said the payment was indicative of the school’s management.

Because Houston-Woods defrauded the federal E-rate program out of about $337,900, Nova is ineligible for any future government money to pay for internet services, Fitzwater said.

The business leadership of Dallas wants more charter schools!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Dallas, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Scandals

Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2020 //
20

A free press makes a difference. Here is proof.

On January 23, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin of the Orlando Sentinel wrote that nearly 160 religious schools receiving vouchers from the state of Florida openly discriminate against students, families, and staff who are gay. Voucher schools drain $1 billion away from public education every year in Florida, and state legislators want to expand vouchers until they are available to every student in the state.

The next day, opinion writer Scott Maxwell of the same newspaper wrote more about public-funded religious  schools rejecting students and families. He wrote:

One school told a mother — a firefighter married to U.S. Air Force veteran — that her children were unfit to be educated there simply because the couple was two women.

The two women served their country and community. But the school — which received $371,000 in state scholarship money last year — told the family to get an education elsewhere.

On January 28, the Orlando Sentinel wrote an editorial criticizing the major corporations that declare their opposition to discrimination yet have poured millions into support of Florida’s discriminatory voucher program. Ouch! Profits or principles? The editorial writer reviewed the list of major corporations that support the voucher programs while declaring their opposition to bias.

The first corporation that announced it would no longer subsidize bigotry was Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank.

Then Wells Fargo dropped out.

Valerie Strauss wrote about the defections here.

Others have pulled out, including Wyndham Hotels, Allegiant Airlines and Rosen Hotels. Most corporations don’t stop and think and realize that every dollar that goes to an unregulated, unaccountable religious school is taken away from the state’s underfunded public schools. 

There may be other defectors. The defections may only be temporary.

Vouchers open the way to a slippery slope.

The Supreme Court may decide, if asked, that a school may ban the child of gay parents if its religious beliefs dictate the child’s exclusion. After all, it previously decided, with its two Trump appointees, that a baker could refuse to sell his cake to a gay couple.

That’s what Betsy DeVos has spent her life advancing: a world in which one’s religious beliefs trump others’ civil rights.

Today the target is gays. Who will it be next time? African-Americans? Jews? Muslims?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Florida, Religion, Vouchers

Book Tour in D.C. and Onwards

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2020 //
22

Last Tuesday I flew from Florida to D.C. I spent Tuesday afternoon speaking to about 200 staff and friends of the AFT at its headquarters on New Jersey Avenue.

Randi Weingarten introduced me and she was gracious and eloquent. We had a conversation and I took questions. I’m convinced that unions are a vital part of our democracy, and the same people who want to eliminate public schools also want to eliminate unions.

On Wednesday morning I stopped by Lamar Alexander’s office and dropped off a book. We had made an appointment but he canceled, due to the impeachment. I had dreamed of being the one who changed his mind, who reminded him of his integrity and decency, but I never got the chance. I’m deeply disappointed in his incoherent position that Trump is guilty as charged but pressuring a foreign ally to dig up dirt on your political opponent (and withholding $400 million) is not impeachable.

Then I dropped a book off at the offices of Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a great champion of public education and labor.

Then a brown bag lunch with staff at the NEA. I told them I hope every teacher reads the book. We had a great exchange.

Wednesday night I spoke at the Politics & Prose bookstore, where the room was packed. Lots of old friends from my time in DC. Delighted to see Valerie Strauss.

Thursday morning I took a train to NYC. On Friday I did a podcast with Mike Pesca of SLATE. I want feeling well, and we had to stop the taping while I coughed.

On Saturday I was able to see my physician and she put me on antibiotics and told me to stay in bed and drink a lot of fluids.

It’s Sunday night. I feel better but still not 100%.

i leave for Seattle early Monday morning. I will be speaking at Town Hall on February 4, with the help of the brilliant Jesse Hagopian.

Then on to San Francisco. I will be at Kepler Bookstore in Menlo Park on Feb 6.

On February 7, if I still have a voice, I will be at Lowell High School, sponsored by United Educators of San Francisco.

I hope I feel better. I’m excited to see old friends and meet new ones who share the mission of fighting for better public schools.

I saw a wonderful quote today by Scott Maxwell, an editorial writer at the s Orlando Sentinel. He wrote (and I paraphrase): “Berate the public schools if you must, but no public school student ever found out in the middle of the year that his school just closed down.” I tweeted it.

 

Categories Education Reform

A Republican Asks: What Does the Republican Party Stand For?

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2020 //
59

Stuart Stevens is a Republican political consultant who is helping the campaign of former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who is running against Trump in Republican primaries that still allow opposition candidates.

In an article in the Washington Post, he writes:

Here’s a question: Does anybody have any idea what the Republican Party stands for in 2020?

One way to find out: As you are out and about marking the new year, it is likely you will come across a Republican to whom you can pose the question, preferably after a drink or two, as that tends to work as truth serum: “Look, I was just wondering: What’s the Republican Party all about these days? What does it, well, stand for?”

I’m betting the answer is going to involve a noun, a verb and either “socialism” or “Democrats.” Republicans now partly define their party simply as an alternative to that other party, as in, “I’m a Republican because I’m not a Democrat.”

In a long-forgotten era — say, four years ago — such a question would have elicited a very different answer. Though there was disagreement over specific issues, most Republicans would have said the party stood for some basic principles: fiscal sanity, free trade, strong on Russia, and that character and personal responsibility count. Today it’s not that the Republican Party has forgotten these issues and values; instead, it actively opposes all of them.

Republicans are now officially the character doesn’t count party, the personal responsibility just proves you have failed to blame the other guy party, the deficit doesn’t matter party, the Russia is our ally party, and the I’m-right-and-you-are-human-scum party. Yes, it’s President Trump’s party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted.

A party without a governing theory, a higher purpose or a clear moral direction is nothing more than a cartel, a syndicate that exists only to advance itself. There is no organized, coherent purpose other than the acquisition and maintenance of power.

 

Categories Accountability, Republicans, Trump

A Podcast at Books and Books in Miami

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2020 //
15

The first stop on my national book tour was Books and Books, a wonderful old-fashioned independent bookstore in Coral Gables in Florida. I talked with Mitchell Kaplan, the owner, who is determined to keep the literary life alive.

This is our discussion.

After the podcast, I met with the leadership of the United Teachers of Dade County. My presentation at the store was moderated by Karla Hernandez-Mats, the leader of the union and a dynamo.

The Republican legislature is hostile to public schools and would like every child to have a voucher to attend a religious school.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Vouchers

Those Christian Textbooks Adopted in Schools That Receive Taxpayer Funding

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2020 //
93

In 2017, the Orlando Sentinel published a powerful three-part series about unregulated and unaccountable voucher schools in Florida, called “Schools Without Rules.” In Florida, voucher schools receive $1 billion each year of taxpayer funding.

In 2018, the Orlando Sentinel published an article about the textbook companies that supply teaching materials to voucher schools and homeschoolers. Their books incorporate religious values into their content.

Prominent among them is the ABeka company in Florida.

Their textbooks reflect a religious approach to science, history, and other subjects.

The Orlando Sentinel wrote:

One of the largest suppliers of materials for private schools and home-school students across the United States is affiliated with a small Christian college in the Florida Panhandle.

Abeka, formerly known as A Beka Book, is named for Beka Horton, who along with her husband, Arlin, founded a small Christian school in 1954 and Pensacola Christian College in 1974…

Today, Abeka Academy Inc. takes in $45.6 million in revenue — $6 million less than its reported expenses of $51 million — according to the nonprofit’s tax documents for the financial year that ended May 2017.

Abeka, along with the Bob Jones University-affiliated BJU Press and Accelerated Christian Education Inc., is among the most popular curricula used by Christian schools that take part in Florida’s $1 billion voucher program, which pays for children from low-income families or those with special needs to attend private schools.

Though the Hortons retired from the college in 2012, Abeka carries on the couple’s legacy of what it calls a “Biblical perspective.”

For example, the company describes its teachings in the subject of history this way: “We present government as ordained by God for the maintenance of law and order, not as a cure-all for humanity’s problems. We present free-enterprise economics without apology and point out the dangers of Communism, socialism, and liberalism to the well-being of people across the globe. In short, Abeka offers a traditional, conservative approach to the study of what man has done with the time God has given him.”

The Orlando Sentinel described the curriculum in Christian schools that are funded by taxpayer dollars:

Some private schools in Florida that rely on public funding teach students that dinosaurs and humans lived together, that God’s intervention prevented Catholics from dominating North America and that slaves who “knew Christ” were better off than free men who did not.

The lessons taught at these schools come from three Christian publishing companies whose textbooks are popular on many of about 2,000 campuses that accept, and often depend on, nearly $1 billion in state scholarships, or vouchers.

At the Orlando Sentinel’s request, educators from Florida colleges and school districts reviewed textbooks and workbooks from these publishers, looking at elementary reading and math, middle school social studies and high school biology materials.

They found numerous instances of distorted history and science lessons that are outside mainstream academics. The books denounce evolution as untrue, for example, and one shows a cartoon of men and dinosaurs together, telling students the Biblical Noah likely brought baby dinosaurs onto his ark. The science books, they added, seem to discourage students from doing experiments or even asking questions.
“Students who have learned science in this kind of environment are not prepared for college experiences,” said Cynthia Bayer, a biology lecturer at the University of Central Florida who reviewed the science books. “They would be intellectually disadvantaged.”

The social studies books downplay the horrors of slavery and the mistreatment of Native Americans, they said. One book, in its brief section on the civil rights movement, said that “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people.”

The books are rife with religious and political opinions on topics such as abortion, gay rights and the Endangered Species Act, which one labels a “radical social agenda.” They disparage religions other than Protestant Christianity and cultures other than those descended from white Europeans. Experts said that was particularly worrisome given that about 60 percent of scholarship students are black or Hispanic.

The newspaper story contains illustrations that appear in the textbooks, showing humans and dinosaurs co-existing.

Page from a high school biology workbook
Page from a high school biology workbook (ACE)
Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers

Peter Greene on Ohio’s Mad Love for Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2020 //
13

Peter Greene believes that Ohio is trying to be like Florida, hoping to expand  vouchers to every student as if every public school in Ohio is rotten. Once the voucher money is approved, the state doesn’t care about the quality of education. Ohio already has a low-performing charter industry, one of the worst in the nation, why not give vouchers to attend religious schools that use the Bible as their science textbook? I wish some entity in Ohio would place a referendum on the ballot and ask voters if they want to defund their public schools in order to expand public funding of vouchers and charters.

He writes:

You will recall that Ohio school districts are facing an explosion in costs as they enter the next phase of the privatization program. Phase One is familiar to most of us–you start out with vouchers and charters just for the poor families who have to “escape failing public schools.” Phase Two is the part where you expand the program so that it covers everybody.

Well, Ohio screwed up its Phase Two. Basically, they expanded the parameters of their privatization so quickly that lots of people noticed. The number of eligible school districts skyrocketed, and that brought attention to a crazy little quirk in their system, as noted by this report from a Cleveland tv station:

We analyzed data from the eight Northeast Ohio school districts that paid more than $1 million in EdChoice vouchers to area private schools during the 2019-2020 school year as part of the program.

Those districts include Akron, Canton, Cleveland Heights-University Heights, Euclid, Garfield Heights, Lorain, Maple Heights, and Parma City Schools.

Out of the 6,319 students who received EdChoice vouchers, we found 4,013, or 63.5%, were never enrolled in the district left footing the bill for their vouchers.

Yep. That means that at the moment this kicks in, the district loses a buttload of money, while its costs are reduced by $0.00. This means that either the local school district cuts programs and services, or it raises taxes to replace the lost revenue, effectively calling on the taxpayers to help fund private school tuition for some students. I wonder how many legislators who helped engineer this are also opposed to plans from Democratic candidates to provide free college tuition at taxpayer expense?

The legislature has been running around frantically trying to– well, not head this off so much as slow it down just enough to reduce the number of angry phone calls their staff has to take. Nobody seems to be saying “This is a mistake” so much as they’e saying “Doing this so fast that people really notice is a mistake.” Someone cranked the heat on the frogs too fast. Meanwhile, this weekend was their last chance to get this fixed before next year’s voucher enrollment opens, and they have decided to punt because everyone is getting cranky.

Is this at least going to help some poor folks? Well, the proposal is to up the cap to 300% of poverty level. That’s $78,600 for a family of four. So there’s that.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Why Does Ohio Award Bonuses to Failing Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2020 //
2

Ohio is extraordinarily generous to religious schools and charter schools. It even awards bonuses to failing charters schools! 

Under current state law, millions of dollars will flow to failing charters. Ohio’s charter industry is drawing money away from real public schools, and most charters perform worse than real public schools. So now the state hopes to attract out-of-state charter chains and farm their taxpayer dollars out to corporations.

The charter-school bonus program was urged by Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration to reward the state’s good charters and encourage quality charter chains elsewhere to expand to Ohio. It earmarked $30 million per fiscal year in Ohio Lottery profits – $60 million overall – for the charter school bonuses.

For Ohio charter schools that qualify, the budget allots a bonus of up to $1,750 for each pupil classified as economically disadvantaged and up to $1,000 per pupil for all others.

The money was supposed to go only to “quality” charters. Unfortunately, language intended to attract strong out-of-state charter chains to open in Ohio — by offering the same bonuses to Ohio schools run by operators with good-performing schools in other states — backfired by allowing operators of dozens of failing and poor Ohio charters to ask for millions under the same provision.

The budget was framed with the advice of the DC-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Who will save the children of Ohio from its failing charter schools?

Categories Education Reform
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