If you are a teacher, you are invited to participate in a survey.
Tim Slekar is writing a book about teachers and their working conditions. He would be grateful to teachers who agree to take the attached survey and return it to him. His email is Timslekar@gmail.com
Archives for the month of: March, 2021
Darcie Cimarusti, communications director for the Network for Public Education, reports on the assault on public school funding in Iowa. K12 Inc., the for-profit virtual charter chain, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is noted for high attrition rates, low graduation rates, low test scores, and high profits. Its top executives are each paid millions of dollars.
In multiple states across the country omnibus schools choice bills with sweeping charter and voucher provisions have been introduced. NPE Action has been following these bills here. Just such a bill was introduced in Iowa, SSB 1065 which would modify the state’s existing charter school law, which requires the approval of a local school board, to allow charter applicants to apply directly to the state board for a charter with no local approval required. Lobbying disclosures show that K12 Inc., which recently rebranded as Stride, Inc., has lobbied in favor of the bill.
Should the Iowa legislature send this bill to Governor Kim Reynolds’ desk, no doubt K12’s lobbying efforts will intensify. Currently K12 operates 51 online charter schools in 20 states.
Iowa may be next.
The following essay was written by Michael Podhorzer, Senior Advisor to the president of the AFL-CIO. I totally agree that the key to building a strong middle class is the expansion of unions. The plutocrats have done a great job of demonizing them and destroying the ladder into the middle class that unions offer. Right now, Amazon workers are deciding whether to form a union in Bessemer, Alabama. I hope they win. Jeff Bezos should share the wealth with those who work for him. He should not have nearly $200 billion. Why should Elon Musk and Bill Gates have nearly $200 billion? Couldn’t they be satisfied and live in luxury with only a few hundred millions? In a just world, societies would dedicate their best efforts to reducing inequality and eliminating poverty. Let’s give credit to Joe Biden on this important issue. He has said he is a union guy, and he is pushing legislation to enable workers to join unions.
Podhorzer wrote:
The House of Representatives is expected to pass the PRO Act this week, Amazon workers in Alabama continue to vote to form a union and President Biden’s released a video encouraging working people to join unions.
While the prospect of a national conversation about supporting working people organizing themselves against their exploitation is long overdue, maddeningly, even those who support unions regret the “decline in union membership.” Stating the fact that union members make up a smaller share of the workforce than they once did in the passive voice (decline) erases causality, implicitly confirming the idea working people are now less likely to want to be in a union, or that unions are outdated, or that unions themselves have done a poor job selling themselves. In fact, research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows more than 60 million people would vote to join a union today if given the opportunity and Gallup recently found that union approval stands at 65%, one of the highest marks in a half-century.
A more accurate characterization of the same fact would be, “intense and sustained corporate campaigns to bust unions, make it more difficult to form unions, exclude more sectors of the workforce from access to union membership and depict unions in the worst possible ways, along with an often bi-partisan retreat in federal support for working people, relentless roll backs by Republican Presidents and Republican trifecta states have dramatically reduced the number of working people who even have the option of joining one.”
This is yet another example of progressives repeating their opponents’ framing with the effect of making the intentional and contingent seem natural and inevitable. Similarly, we routinely talk about profits rising, but never about the fact that an increasing share of those rising profits come from preventing working people from sharing in the gains from their increasing productivity. Thus, since the pandemic, all of Amazon’s gains have been captured by Jeff Bezos and the company’s largest shareholders, not the working people risking (and losing) their lives to enable many of us to get through this year without much to disturb our lifestyles.
Meanwhile, progressive opinion leaders and policy wonks wring their hands and heroically search for fresh solutions to the most pressing crises of the day as if there isn’t a substantial body of evidence that increased union membership ameliorates many of them, including income inequality, democratic participation, racism and authoritarianism among other things (below).
Studies show that union workers make about $150 billion more a year than non-union workers in wages alone controlling for industry, occupation education and experience. And union workers are much more likely to have health, pension and leave benefits than non-union workers, and those benefits are much more substantial than those non-union workers who have them at all. To put that in perspective: $150 billion is more than twice the SNAP program, yet costs the taxpayer almost nothing.
All of this will seem improbable at best as long as you imagine that the benefits accrue from unions as the institutions you experience in your professional life. The benefits accrue from allowing working people to organize themselves collectively and democratically to act on their own behalf. It is the practice of acting democratically and collectively to negotiate contracts and set working conditions that produces more tolerant, effective citizens. Union members vote for things that matter in their daily lives from their shop steward to the health benefits in their contracts. They can see how much more powerful they are together, embracing their linked fate than they are on their own. They practice a democracy that has all but disappeared elsewhere in America.
Even if most progressives don’t fully understand how much more powerful working people acting together on their own behalf are than government programs designed to help them, corporations do. That’s why, since the Wagner Act they have relentlessly attacked working people’s ability to combine.
The Taft-Hartley Act is most known for opening the door to “right to work.” By the 1950’s most southern states were “right to work,” crippling the CIO’s multiracial organizing efforts in the region. The creation of an effectively non-union, low wage region of the country quickly had two profound effects. First, by offering a low wage domestic region to relocate to, unionized corporations had greater leverage against their employees demands. Arguably as important, but much less recognized, it put an end to the development of a national working class consciousness.
Even less well recognized are the impacts of the restrictions Taft-Hartley put on joint action. The Taft-Hartley Act also banned jurisdictional strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing. In doing so, the Act made illegal the ways in which working people could join together beyond their own employer on behalf of other working people. In this way again, corporations were able to criminalize the development of class solidarity. That has also radically shaped the incentives of unions as institutions.
MORE THAN THE WEEKEND
While there’s growing acknowledgment of how much the neoliberal market absolutism that triumphed in the late 1970’s is responsible for the present state of affairs, there’s relatively little genuine awareness of what it replaced, or how breaking working people’s ability to act collectively was central to its success.
Although very far from perfect, from the New Deal until the 1970’s was a period in which pluralism was seen as an essential element of healthy democracy. And there was no more important element of pluralistic America than the labor movement. At an elite level, a tripartite pluralism consisting of business, labor and government was seen as crucial for the nation’s prosperity and robust democracy. (For example, John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism; The Concept of Countervailing Power and The New Industrial State.)
Unions demonstrated to ordinary people that community problems could only be solved by coming together; strength in numbers was more than a slogan, it was a democratic habit and the way America often functioned. This was a period of movements that led the way to the progress since eroded and continuously under siege. The advances made on civil rights, women’s rights, environmental protection and limiting foreign military intervention and nuclear proliferation (for a time) reflected sustained collective action that required immense social capital built up from the myriad associations that were common at the time to cohere and a shared experience that government would be responsive.
That social capital and sense of agency is shot, demonstrated by our learned helplessness in the face of Trump’s shredding so much of what those movements delivered. This Brookings’ Tracking Deregulation in the Trump Era provides a staggering inventory of decimation. For example, not only has Trump been dismantling the environmental regulatory system, the EPA has been routinely granting thousands of waivers and just not enforcing the law. And, almost without notice, the longstanding treaties and instruments to control nuclear proliferation have been discarded.
The rest of this Weekend Reading provides a guide to resources that demonstrate the ways in which an empowered workforce changes everything and concludes with key points about the PRO Act.
Inequality
The labor movement plays many positive roles in democratic societies—but the most foundational is making sure that the people who do the work of society share in the wealth they create. This is one of many charts the show the connection between corporate success weakening unions and the increasing share of income going to the top ten percent.
Income inequality is the result of unequal power. It’s that simple.
- Unions, inequality, and faltering middle-class wages provides an excellent overview of much of the literature.
- This paper from Hank Farber, Daniel Herbst, IIlyana Kuziemko, and Suresh Naidu is just-revised and packed with terrific (and comprehensive) analysis of the relationship between unions and inequality. It shows how the strength of unions and collective bargaining in the United States after World War II disproportionately benefited low wage workers and workers of color. It remains the gold standard analysis so far of unions and economic outcomes over the long-run in the 20th century.
- Internationally, this report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) documents the positive effects of unions across the developed world.
- This paper found that, “the decline of organized labor explains a fifth to a third of the growth in inequality” from 1973 to 2007.
Democracy
As I said earlier, it is only recently that the accepted idea of that holding free and fair elections was the only requirement to qualify as a democracy. The degree to which people have collective agency in their daily lives determines the health of the society and the democracy. We don’t even notice the ways in which the law facilitates the affluent acting collectively, most notably through corporations. Or the ways in which the law inhibits everyone else from acting collectively. The following research develops that idea.
- Authoritarianism. This study in Nature showed that “Participatory practices at work change attitudes and behavior toward societal authority and justice.” Specifically, they found that “participatory meetings led workers to be less authoritarian and more critical about societal authority and justice, and to be more willing to participate in political, social, and familial decision-making.” It confirms earlier research here and here that unions fundamentally change members understanding of and expectations for the relations of power between themselves and their employers.
- Resistance to system justification. John Jost’s Theory of System Justification provides a powerful explanation of why oppressed people rarely rebel. Much more to come on this in future Weekend Reading and Open Mic. Relevant here is the theory’s logic, borne out in research that willingness to protest is much less a function of the extent of oppression than beliefs about group efficacy. “Collective action is more likely when people have shared interests, feel relatively deprived, are angry, believe they can make a difference and strongly identify with relevant social groups.”
- Responsive Congressional Representation. This recent paper from Michael Becher and Daniel Stegmueller uses an impressive array of survey data and union membership data to show how the presence of stronger unions within U.S. House districts leads to more policy responsiveness for lower-income Americans (and less responsiveness for higher-income Americans), especially on economic issues.
- Protest. This paper by Greg Lyon and Brian Shaffner documents how unions increase protest activity among non-members through social ties, especially relevant for thinking about how unions have seeded and supported recent protests.
Racism
Although very far from perfect, and especially in its origins often an accomplice to segregation and racism, the union movement has also been an essential partner in dismantling elements of systemic racism. In Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932-1965, Eric Schickler recovers the importance of the partnership between the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the Civil Rights movement. The solid segregationist South initially supported most of the early New Deal’s pro-worker legislation, including the Wagner Act. However, once the CIO began multi-racial organizing efforts in the South, Southern Democrats turned on the labor. Over the next several decades, the Civil Rights movement and the CIO the power of the Southern wing inside the Democratic Party, succeeding in adopting a Civil Rights plank at the 1948 Democratic Convention that triggered Thurmond’s third party candidacy that year which carried Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. Speakers at the March on Washington included A. Philip Randolph and Walter Reuther.
Furthermore, union membership increases racial tolerance. For example, this paper from Paul Frymer and Jake Grumbach uses survey data to show how union membership leads to more tolerant views of racial minorities among white workers, and is an important reminder of the spillover effects of unions on many other attitudes and preferences beyond economic policy.
Politics
Many have written about the role of unions in politics. Tom Edsall makes the point, obvious to Grover Norquist, business and the right wing, but somehow obscure to many Democrats and progressives, that gutting the labor movement would mean that, “the modern Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics.” Republicans wasted little time after their state electoral sweep in 2010 to attack unions, beginning in Wisconsin. The recent book, State Capture, tells this story.
Numerous studies document the connection between union strength Democratic and progressive political impacts. Union members vote more Democratic than their neighbors. Nate Silver (2008) and Harry Enten (2012) write about how consequential that gap was, accounting for about 1.7 points of Obama’s margin in both elections. After controlling for other demographics they found that union membership was one of the most important variables. Thus, it is not surprising that fewer union members = fewer Democrats:
- Right to Work. In this 2018 study, Alexander Hertel Fernandez carefully examined the impact of the passage of Right to Work laws and concluded that Democrats pay an average of a 3.5 point penalty after passage. They attribute that to lower union density, less political activism and collateral impacts on family and neighbors. Data for Progress takes a different approach, and finds the same result. Instead of looking at RTW, they create a time series relating union density to congressional vote for each of the 50 states. As union density in a state declines, so does the Democratic vote share. It’s a very steep curve after 1990. (Includes density-Democratic vote graphs for every state.)
- Fewer Resources for Politics. Both the OpenSecrets and FollowTheMoney websites track union giving. For example, the 2018 election cost $2.1 billion more than 2010, but union spending increased by only $81 million. That was the pattern at the state level as well. That said, unions are still a very significant share of independent spending.
So, while Democratic strategists obsess in their search for the message or counsel a “cultural” conservatism that will get a few more working class votes, they ignore the evidence that increased union membership would provide a much greater and durable increase in Democratic support.
THE PRO ACT
The PRO Act is the most significant worker empowerment legislation since the Great Depression because it will:
- Empower workers to exercise our freedom to organize and bargain.
- Ensure that workers can reach a first contract quickly after a union is recognized.
- End employers’ practice of punishing striking workers by hiring permanent replacements. Speaking up for labor rights is within every worker’s rights—and workers shouldn’t lose our jobs for it.
- Hold corporations accountable by strengthening the National Labor Relations Board and allowing it to penalize employers who retaliate against working people in support of the union or collective bargaining.
- Repeal “right to work” laws—divisive and racist laws created during the Jim Crow era—that lead to lower wages, fewer benefits and more dangerous workplaces.
- Create pathways for workers to form unions, without fear, in newer industries like Big Tech.
Click here for the AFL-CIO’s PRO Act toolkit. Click here for the Economic Policy Institute’s Why unions are good for workers—especially in a crisis like COVID-1912 policies that would boost worker rights, safety, and wages.
Democrat Andy Beshear vetoed school bills passed by the Republican-dominated legislature of Kentucky. Beshear campaigned as a friend of public schools, and he came through for students, parents, teachers, and communities in Kentucky.
Blogger Fred Klonsky has the story from the Louisville Courier Journal by Olivia Krauth:
Calling them a “direct attack” on Kentucky’s public schools, Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed a set of controversial education bills Wednesday.
Chief among the vetoed bills is House Bill 563, which would allow state funding to follow students who attend a public school outside of their home district and create a form of scholarship tax credits that would siphon millions from Kentucky’s general fund.
“Can we expect more from public education? Absolutely,” Beshear said Wednesday. “But the way to do that is not to defund it.”
The measure is “unconstitutional” on multiple fronts, Beshear said, and he expects it to face a legal challenge should his veto be overriden.
The legislation landed on his desk after passing through the House on the slimmest of margins — 48-47 — raising questions if the Republican-led House will get the 51 votes needed to override Beshear’s veto when they reconvene Monday for the final two days of the 2021 legislative session.
Beshear, a Democrat who made public education a cornerstone of his administration, also rejected legislation placing new teachers on “hybrid” pension plans.
In an education-focused press conference, Beshear signed a bill allowing Kentucky students a “do-over” year after the pandemic disrupted classes and milestones for thousands of kids.
VETO OVERRIDE OF SCHOOL CHOICE BILL QUESTIONABLE
A provision to create tax credits to rally donations that would go to private school tuition in Kentucky’s largest areas was the main sticking point in HB 563.
Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, a former educator, said the piece of legislation is “unconstitutional” and “unethical.”
A piece of the bill requiring districts to create open enrollment policies with each other was less controversial, with Beshear acknowledging the struggles some leaders of small, independent school districts face and offering to help find a solution outside of this bill.
“Governor Beshear is wrong to veto House Bill 563,” EdChoice KY President Charles Leis said in a statement. “By doing so, he chose to listen to special interests like the KEA (Kentucky Education Association) over the voice of Kentucky parents who are begging for help.”
Leis, whose group backs school choice measures, asked lawmakers to “put students first” and override Beshear’s veto next week.
Beshear expects the legislation to be challenged in court if his veto is overriden, but clarified that he is not threatening legal action himself.
He believes the bill could be challenged on the grounds of sending public money to private schools, he said Wednesday.
It also could be challenged due to Kentucky’s larger public school funding system, which has increasingly placed the funding burden on local school districts.
Kentucky’s Constitution requires the legislature to run an “efficient system of common schools throughout the state,” which several in public education contend lawmakers are not doing due to underfunding...
Beshear also vetoed legislation that previously sparked “sickouts” and the creation of large teacher activism groups in Kentucky.
House Bill 258 would place new teachers on a “hybrid” pension plan that combines aspects of defined contribution and defined benefit plans, rather than the defined benefit plan teachers have currently.
Beshear said previously the “hybrid” plan could push away prospective teachers when states face a shortage of educators.
The Keystone Center for Charter Change reports on issues involving charter schools in Pennsylvania. The site is managed by Lawrence Feinberg, who is a school board member.
In some states like Texas, charter schools get more funding than public schools. In Pennsylvania, they get less, and Feinberg says this is the way it should be because public schools have more expenses than charter schools.
Do charter schools receive less funding per student than school districts? Yes, and rightfully so.
Keystone Center for Charter Change
The tuition payments received by charter schools, which make up nearly 90% of charter school funding, are based on a school district’s expenses. School districts are subject to numerous mandates requiring the expenditure of monies which charter schools are not. For example, school districts:
- Provide transportation to students, including those attending charter schools and nonpublic schools;
- Provide health services to nonpublic schools;
- Identify students who are gifted and provide them with an appropriate educational program;
- Levy, assess and collect taxes;
- Pay tuition to charter schools; and
- Provide access to career and technical education programs.
School districts also provide a variety of educational and extracurricular programs for students that go well beyond those offered or provided by charter schools. This includes interscholastic athletics, clubs, band, theater, and other activities. Charter schools may also provide these activities, but school districts are required to allow charter school students to participate in school district activities in most instances. These expenses alone accounted for more than 15% of school district spending in 2018-19.
Maurice Cunningham watches the flow of “Dark Money” into the privatization of public funding for schools. A professor of political science, he has recently followed the money trail of the “National Parents Union,” which he points out is neither “national,” nor “parents,” nor a “union.”
NPU markets itself as if it were a “grassroots” group, but it is funded by the Walton Family Foundation and Charles Koch and enjoys the high-priced assistance of Mercury Communications LLP to get its anti-public school, anti-union message into the national media. Mercury currently represents Teach for America and at one time represented Eva Moskowitz (who fired them).
With this expensive marketing, NPU presents itself as an authentic voice of parents.
Cunningham writes:
Here’s an example of the coverage from the New York Times: “National Parents Union, a collection of 200 advocacy organizations across 50 states representing parents from communities of color.” But there is no publicly available evidence that NPU represents parent groups. My research shows that it is mostly comprised of charter school and associated organizations.
Nor am I aware that any of these media outlets has reported on the funding of National Parents Union, which includes not only the Walton Family Foundation and Charles Koch, but a billionaire boys club of astonishing levels of wealth. (The one outlet that consistently reports on the funders is The74.org, which also receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation. So compliments to them.)
These media outlets accept the story offered up by Mercury LLC and the NPU Comms team, that there is a battle between teachers and parents. But as I said, NPU does not represent parents. If journalists need conflict there is a big one going on: teachers unions against the corporate behemoths of the Waltons, Koch, Gates, Dell, Arnold, and on and on. It’s a good story, just not the one NPU and Mercury are peddling.
You get what you pay for; NPU’s marketing is going great.
The charter industry is turning its lobbyists loose in Texas. Despite the large number of charters in the state (more than 800), the lobbyists want more. More. More. $$$. The Legislature is now debating changes in state law to remove obstacles to charter entrepreneurs and corporations that want more locations. Texas doesn’t need more charters: Charters in Texas are regularly outperformed by public schools.
The Houston Chronicle reports:
Companion bills filed in the Texas House and Senate, seeking to do away with hurdles facing charter schools that try to open or expand, have bipartisan support but will move the sharp debate over their rapid growth into the legislative arena.
Supporters of Senate Bill 28, called the Charter School Equity Act, say it would level the playing field for new and existing charter schools across the state by preventing local governments from treating them differently from traditional public schools and by relaxing state controls.Advocates for traditional public school districts say the playing field is tilted in favor of charter schools and the way to level it would require more state oversight and local input, not less.
Among other changes, Senate Bill 28 and its accompanying House Bill 3279 would require open-enrollment charter schools to be considered public school districts for the purposes of “zoning, permitting, (subdivision) plat approvals, fees or other assessments, construction or site development work, code compliance, development” and any other type of local government approval.
This would reduce the “red tape” that charter schools face from local authorities after being approved to operate by state officials, the bills’ sponsors say.
It also would make it impossible for cities to act in ways that were advocated by the superintendents of the two largest school districts in Bexar County in 2018, when they suggested San Antonio could use its zoning authority to geographically restrict charter expansion to prevent financial damage to traditional public schools.
“We think charter schools, and open-enrollment charter schools, are good for the state of Texas. That’s the bottom line here,” said the Senate bill’s sponsor, Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, in a recent online news conference. “We are simply putting charter schools on the equity they should have. No city should treat charter schools differently than how they treat somebody else…”
“Right now communities have almost no say on whether a charter school comes in or not,” said Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators.
Brown, who led Alamo Heights ISD as superintendent for 10 years, said leveling the playing field should include requiring charter schools to seek voter approval for funding their expansion and to elect their boards.“Anytime a charter school is being considered in a local community, that local community should have a large amount of input,” Brown said. “And right now they just don’t have that. So I think there should be much more transparency at the local level.”If anything, the SBOE should have more input, not less, on any expansion that would result in public school districts sharing taxpayer funds to educate students, Brown added.
Woods, the Northside ISD superintendent, said the bills, in their current form, ignore the public process that all public school districts must go through to fund and build a new campus. Planning takes years, and voters decide if they want to fund it, Woods said. School districts then have to work with cities and counties to assess the impact of construction in certain areas and get the project approved.
“We elect school board members, city council members and county judges to make decisions locally because they know the community,” Woods said. “And this (legislation) is just another example, in a long line of examples, where local control seems not to be prioritized in the Texas Legislature.”
Peter Greene reviewed the Network for Public Education’s report on for-profit charter schools in Forbes, where he is a regular columnist.
He writes:
It has become cliche for politicians and policy makers to oppose “for profit” charter schools. It’s also a safe stance, because most people agree they’re a bad idea; for-profit charter schools are not legal in almost all states.
But charter school profiteers have found many loopholes, so that while they may not be able to set up for-profit charters, they can absolutely run charter schools for a profit. That may seem like a distinction without a difference, but the difference is that one is illegal in almost all states, and the other, as outlined in a new report, can be found from coast to coast. The new report, “Chartered for Profit,” from the Network for Public Education examines the size and reach of “the hidden world of charter schools operated for financial gain.” (Full disclosure: I am a member of NPE.)
The most common workaround for operating a charter school for profit is a management corporation. In this arrangement, I set up East Egg Charter School as a non-profit; I then hire East Egg Charter Management Organization to run the school, and that is a for-profit operation (known as an EMO).
An EMO is an educational management operator.
In some cases, the school and EMO are enmeshed with each other, sometimes with family ties. In Arizona, Reginald Barr runs a non-profit EMO that manages four charter schools; he also, with his wife Sandra, runs for-profit Edventure, which collects $125 per student for managing the schools. The schools lease property from a company owned by the Barrs and hire another Barr company to handle payroll. The four charter schools are controlled by a single board; Sandra Barr and her mother hold two of the three seats.
Some of these management operations are large scale; the report finds that just seven corporations manage 555 charter schools across the country. But chartering for profit can work on a small scale as well; of the 138 for-profit management companies NPE studied, 73 ran only one or two schools. In other words, the EMO is created specifically to run one particular school, not as a stand-alone business venture...
No matter the scale, “sweeps” contracts are a common tool. The management company provides virtually all of the school’s services (building, maintenance, curriculum, payroll, etc) and may even contract not for a set fee, but, as one EMO contract states, it receives “as renumeration for its services an amount equal to the total revenue received” by the school “from all revenue sources.”
There are other ways to pull profits from these operations. Many charter schools are part of lucrative real estate deals. One audit in New York found that the Diocese of New York was renting a facility to NHA for $264,000 per year; National Heritage Academy (NHA) sublet that space to its charter school $2.76 million. Jon Hage, CEO of Charter Schools USA, also owns Red Apple Development, whose website displays 66 CSUSA schools that Red Apple developed and, in most cases, owns and leases.
Cyber-charters are particularly profitable, with one recent report suggesting that Californians are overpaying cyber charters by $600 million.
Please open the link and read about the vultures feeding on public school money.
The charter industry has set its sights on Montana. This is an odd decision, since the state has no big cities and is almost 90% white. The African American population is less than 1%. The biggest city is Billings, with about 110,000 residents; the second largest is Missoula, which has about 75,000 residents. Montana ranks above the national averages on NAEP.
Montana has two existing charter schools, but the industry wants to make it easier to grow.
Alex Sakariassan of the Montana Free Press reported:
The Montana Legislature once more took up the issue of school choice during a lengthy hearing on a bill that would open the door to public charter schools in Montana.
Speaking before the House Education Committee Wednesday, Rep. Ed Hill, R-Havre, informed fellow lawmakers that Montana is one of only five states in the nation that has not yet embraced charter schools, which are funded by taxpayers but operate independently of the public school system. Hill said he hopes to change that with House Bill 633. The measure would authorize the establishment of such schools in Montana, grant them autonomy over their finances, their curriculum and their staff, and create a new commission and approval framework to oversee those schools.
“This public charter school bill will provide an option for innovation outside our current traditional public school,” Hill said.
Hill and other speakers noted that legislation similar to HB 633 has been introduced numerous times in the past, specifically during the 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017 sessions. None of those efforts cleared the Legislature.
“Montanans like choice, and we’re told we have choice in everything we do except when it comes to publicly educating our kids. Somehow when it comes to public education, we’re told, ‘No, that square peg is going to fit in that round hole or we’re going to make it.’”
ATTORNEY GENERAL AUSTIN KNUDSEN
Throughout the more than two-hour discussion, supporters framed charter schools as giving Montana parents and students more choices in K-12 education…
Public school supporters opposed the bill.
Opponents countered that HB 633 would stretch education funding in Montana and build a parallel and duplicative school system to the one currently overseen by the Board of Public Education. Amanda Curtis, president of the Montana Federation of Public Employees, said that would equate to “growing government.” The issue was also addressed in a legal review note compiled by the Legislative Services Division, which said HB 633 could raise constitutional questions related to the BPE’s authority over public schools. Curtis also highlighted concerns about how the bill would ensure adequate oversight of newly established charter schools...
Curtis’ opposition was echoed by several other major public education associations, including the Montana School Boards Association and the School Administrators of Montana. BPE Executive Director McCall Flynn testified that charter schools established under HB 633 would be exempt from the licensing and accreditation standards required of public schools. Flynn added that an administrative rule adopted by the board in 2012 already allows for the formation of charter schools, citing the presence of the Bridger Charter Academy in Bozeman.…
“This bill is unnecessary,” Flynn said. “The Board of Public Education already has a process in place to establish public charter schools.”
As the discussion turned to members of the committee, several lawmakers tried to gain a better grasp of the scope of HB 633’s impacts. MTSBA Executive Director Lance Melton fielded numerous questions about the financial implications a charter school system would carry. He noted that, as written, the bill would grant a separate basic entitlement to new charter schools, meaning those schools would draw money directly from Montana’s education budget. Depending on the number and size of such schools that crop up, Melton said, the added funding obligation to the state could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Keila Szpaller wrote in the Daily Montanan about the legislative debate.
Its leading opponent is Rep. Wendy McKamey, a Republican legislator, who insisted that families have plenty of choices already.
Opponents…said the bill is riddled with shortcomings and saddles taxpayers with higher costs.
For example, it could add $321,000 in public cost for each new high school in the state, according to the Montana School Boards Association. At the same time, it would take away a requirement that schools teach students with special needs or pay employees prevailing wages, according to the Montana Federation of Public Employees. And it would remove minimum teacher licensing standards, according to the Montana Board of Public Education.
“It’s my understanding that we wouldn’t want anyone off the street coming into our homes to do plumbing,” said McCall Flynn, executive director of the Board of Public Education. “Nor should we expect someone without any kind of educator preparation to teach our children in our public schools, even if that is a public charter school…”
Several representatives from Montana’s education associations argued against the bill, but they weren’t the only opponents. Kim Mangold, with the Montana Farmers Union, said students who attend rural schools in Montana are a vulnerable population.
Rural schools are critical to the largest farming and ranch organization in the state, Mangold said: “These schools are the lifeblood of rural Montana.”
“This act has the potential to remove resources from public schools, especially rural public schools, that are important to farm and ranching today,” Mangold said.
Lance Melton, with the Montana School Boards Association, explained the potential costs to both state coffers and local property taxpayers given the “technically flawed way” the bill was written. In short, he said it would require an elementary charter school with even just one pupil to receive $53,000, or a high school with just one student to receive $321,000.
If every Class I and II district in the state was converted into a series of public charter schools of 200 students each, the bill would end up costing the state of Montana $350 million — an estimated 25 percent on top of the money already going to fund all K12 public education, he said.
“You’d have a nice little gift-wrapped surprise when you arrived in the next legislative session if and when this was to occur,” Melton said of the extra costs.
A very bad bill for Montana that could blow a hole in the state budget and break up communities while enriching charter operators and corporate charter chains. If Montanans are conservative, they will reject this bill.
Thanks to reader “Montana Teacher” for sending these links.
The Orlando Sentinel has been covering scandal after scandal in the voucher schools of Florida, but the Legislature doesn’t care about their scandals and is planning to take even more money from public schools to fund more private voucher schools. The Sentinel published a story about one troubled voucher school that has received over $5 million from the state since 2015 despite the fact that it hires teachers without college degrees.
Leslie Postal and Annie Martin wrote about Winners Primary School in Orange County, which recently changed its name to Providence Christian Preparatory School:
The job applicant hoped to teach fourth grade at Winners Primary School, a small private school in west Orange County. She didn’t have a college degree and her last job was at a child care center, which fired her.
“Terminated would not rehire,” read the reference check form from the daycare.
Since 2018, the school, dependent on state scholarships for most of its income, has hired at least three other teachers with red flags in their employment backgrounds and at least 10 other instructors who lacked college degrees, an Orlando Sentinel investigation found.
One Winners teacher — whose only academic credential was his high school diploma — was arrested in November, accused of soliciting sexually explicit videos from a boy in his class. Others have criminal backgrounds or histories of being fired for incompetence in other jobs, the records show. Despite that, the Florida Department of Education recently opened and closed an investigation into the school without taking any action.
The school is constantly hiring because many teachers work there only briefly. With about a dozen teachers on staff, Winners had a teacher turnover rate of 83% between 2019 and 2020. The turnover and the questionable teaching credentials raise doubts about the quality of education offered to the school’s 250 students in pre-K through eighth grade.
“The kids should’ve been in public schools,” said Evan McKelvey, who taught math at Winners for six months, leaving in January after getting hired at Bishop Moore Catholic High School. “All of the public schools around here are leagues better than that place.”
Almost all the students attend because Florida’s scholarships, often called school vouchers, cover their tuition. Since 2015, Winners, a for-profit school run by a married couple with a history of financial problems, has received more than $5.1 million in state scholarship money.
The school’s students use the state scholarships — Family Empowerment and Florida Tax Credit — that aim to help children from low-income families attend private schools...
Typically, the nearly 2,000 private schools that take state scholarships do not need to make public information on their operations or their employees. Despite state support, taxpayers have no right to see who is hired or what is taught at these schools.
Because of the teacher’s arrest at Winners, however, the department opened an investigation, telling the principal it was worried the school could be in violation of state scholarship laws because “proper vetting during the hiring process is not occurring,” according to a letter sent to the school Nov. 19.
“When we’re made aware of situations like this, our team thoroughly investigates,” said Eric Hall, senior chancellor at the education department, when asked about Winners at a January meeting of the Florida Senate’s education committee. ”We take these things very seriously. We would make sure that we hold those institutions or those individuals accountable.”
Less than two months later, however, the department closed its investigation without taking any action against the school, despite a file depicting a shoddy employee vetting process and a history of questionable teacher hires. The school faced similar state inquiries in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and was cleared to remain a scholarship school then, too.
That is because the Republican-led Legislature has written the scholarship program laws to give the state only limited power to oversee participating private schools. As the Sentinel reported in its 2017 “Schools Without Rules” series, some of the schools have hired teachers with criminal backgrounds, been evicted, set up in rundown facilities and falsified fire and health reports but still remained in the voucher programs.
This year, the Florida Senate is considering a bill to expand the scholarship programs that already serve more than 181,000 students and cost nearly $1 billion, so that more children could use them and more state money would be spent.
The Legislature also has turned down requests to stiffen the rules that govern participating private schools. In 2018, for example, a proposal to require private schools’ teachers to have bachelor’s degrees — as the state demands of its public school teachers — was rejected. Advocates say the scholarships, some of which go to children with disabilities, give parents options outside public schools, and if parents aren’t happy with the private school they pick, they can move their child to another campus...
The education department investigated the school previously after a complaint from a parent who wrote the state to say the campus was dirty and “children of all ages are running out of the classroom screaming and hitting each other,” as well as after a report from the Florida Department of Children and Families that a teacher had hurt a student and the Sentinel’s report in 2018 that the school had hired a felon as a teacher.
A custodian at the school served time in prison for a firearms violation.
The story goes on with more details about the checkered past and present of a “school without rules” and a legislature that happily hands out millions to anyone who asks for them, all in the name of “school choice.” Even bad choices are fine in Florida.
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