Archives for the month of: March, 2022
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Craig Harris: Charter Schools and Federal PPP Money: Part 2

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
5

Craig Harris of USA Today wrote a blockbuster three-part series about the charter schools that grabbed at least $1 billion in federal funds from the COVID Payroll Protection Program, passed in 2020 to help struggling small businesses stay alive and retain their employees. Today the second part was posted. Because charter schools are “technically small businesses,” about 1,000 of them applied for the forgivable loans. None of the charter schools lost revenue or laid off employees but they asked for the money anyway. Even the charter school lobbyist—the National Alliance for Public charter Schools—asked for a $680,000 loan, which was forgiven.

Harris writes in this second part about charters that knew it was wrong to ask for PPP funding when they had no need, and others did. (I can’t find the link: if any reader can, please add.)

He starts:

‘The ethical thing to do’: Why this small San Diego charter school passed on COVID PPP loans

Albert Einstein Academies, a small San Diego charter school chain, turned down a forgivable $3 million Paycheck Protection Program loan.

Story Highlights

  • Learn4Life, a charter chain, got a combined $32.7 million in PPP loans through 12 related firms.
  • California charter schools had six of the eight largest PPP loans in the U.S. among charters.
  • In Arizona, two prominent charter chains also turned down the money, saying they didn’t meet the requirements.

SAN DIEGO – The Albert Einstein Academies, which educate 1,450 students from kindergarten through eighth grade at two inner-city campuses here, could have used a forgivable loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.

Half of the middle school students and close to one-third of the elementary kids come from low-income homes and qualify for free or reduced-price lunches at the charter schools, its superintendent said.

But while the academies were eligible for up to $3 million in forgivable loans based on revenuesthat largely came from taxes, Superintendent David Sciarretta didn’t feel right about taking the money.

He said the loan program, started by Congress in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, was intended to help financially struggling small businesses stay open and avoid laying off employees.

Charters are privately operated schools that are publicly funded.

We could have always used the money. But, growing up, my mom told me: ‘If there’s food on the table and there are other folks who are hungrier than you, then you need to let them eat because they have a greater need than you do.’

Sciarretta said Einstein, whose charter school campuses are minutes from downtown, didn’t suffer financially because California continued its pre-pandemic level of public school funding during the health crisis even if enrollment declined, giving some schools additional money.He said refraining from taking the loans was “the ethical thing to do.”

“We could have always used the money,” said Sciarretta, recently awarded the 2022 Hart Vision Award Winner for California Charter Leader of the Year. “But, growing up, my mom told me: ‘If there’s food on the table and there are other folks who are hungrier than you, then you need to let them eat because they have a greater need than you do.'”

Other schools took PPP loans

That wasn’t the view of at least 268 other California charter operators, who run some of the state’s largest and wealthiest publicly funded charter chains.

Those operators had at least $335 million forgiven, a USA TODAY investigation hasfound, the most of any state with charter schools. That’s about one-third of the $1 billion in loans obtained by more than 1,100 U.S. charter schools, which educate a fraction of the nation’s children and had the loans forgiven — even though most lost no money during the pandemic.

Several of those schools also employed more than 500 workers, the limit to qualify under the program, USA TODAY found.

Kathleen Hermsmeyer, superintendent of Springs Charter Schools in Temecula, said while California didn’t cut funding, it also did not increase it for charter schools like hers that specialize in at-home, remote or hybrid learning.

Those types of charter schools,which aren’t based in classrooms, experienced significant enrollment increases because of the need for distance learning during COVID,

She said her network added 1,000 students during the pandemic and needed its nearly $9.9 million loan —the largest of any charter operator in the country. The Small Business Administration, which is in charge of the PPP program that ended last May, forgave that loan on Dec. 1.

“It was exactly what PPP was designed for — to help us provide a great quality education for our children through the most difficult years ever,” Hermsmeyer said. “We kept our programs and services, and we did not cut salaries.”

The federal government promised to forgive the loans if the money was used to keep workers on the job and to pay for pandemic-related issues.

Researchers have found the SBA has forgiven most of the loans for all industries with little auditing done to see if the money was properly used. Meanwhile, up to three-fourths of the money went into the pockets of business owners, according to a recent study.

Which charter schools near you took federal PPP money?

Search USA TODAY’s database of more than 1,100 charter schools that had Paycheck Protection Program loans totalling more than $1 billion forgiven.

California, which in 1992 became the second state to allow charter schools, had more than 1,300 of the schools and seven all-charter districts at the beginning of this school year, according to the state’s department of education. That’s roughly 11.5% of the entire public school student population in California.

The state had six of the top eight forgiven loans for charter schools in America, all in excess of $5.5 million, records show.

California Congressman Judy Chu has been highly critical of the federal oversight, saying the agency and Treasury Department prioritized speed in getting money to businesses instead of scrutiny over who needed the cash.

Learn4Life gets most PPP loans

The largest block of forgiven loans, a combined $32.7 million, went to the same address in Lancaster, California, for 12 related nonprofit companiesthat are part of Learn4Life, a charter chain whose firms reported to the IRS that they employed a combined 4,567 workers during 2019.

The loans were obtained in April and May 2020, and forgiven throughout last year, federal records show.

The combined employment would be more than nine times the threshold for obtaining a PPP loan.

Learn4Life spokeswoman Ann Abajian said the organization had 1,685 employees among its companies.

She said the discrepancy occurred because the companies had previously counted seasonal and part-time employees in their staff totals and that information was disclosed to the federal government to have the loans forgiven.

Federal tax returns for the 2019-2020 fiscal year from those 12 nonprofits, which were signed by company executives, showed the higher staffing numbers.

For example, Learn4Life’s Antelope Valley Learning Academy Inc. reported employing1,302 staff, while Western Educational Corporation and Vista Real Public Charter employed 527 and 668 people, respectively.

“Each entity — as a separate charter nonprofit, with less than 500 employees and its own independent governing board — applied with accuracy and transparency, met the criteria, and was awarded the loans and later forgiven. Proper documentation with supplemental justification and backup was presented to SBA,” Abajian said.

The chain said it used the loans to purchase and distribute 20,000 laptops and 15,000 hotspots, baby supplies for hundreds of parenting students as well as an online curriculum. In addition, the organization said its technology support desk hired more staff.

Eric Cross (middle) teaches seventh-grade science at Einstein Middle School in San Diego. The school was eligible for a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, but school officials turned it down because the state of California did not cut any funding to public schools.CRAIG HARRIS

Other businesses, such as Shake Shack, also counted separate locations to qualify for a PPP loan. That publicly traded company with more than 7,000 employees and 205 restaurants in the U.S., was one of the first to get a PPP loan. However, Shake Shack returned its $10 million loan following public scrutiny.

In Arizona, prominent, successful chains Basis Charter Schools Inc. and Great Hearts Academies said they didn’t seek the loans even though their individual campuses employed fewer than 500 workers. Basis and Great Heart officials said they read the SBA rules as requiring all employees within an organization to be counted and both were too big.

Meanwhile, other California schools that had jumbo loans forgiven included Granada Hills Charter in Granada Hills ($8.5 million), Antelope Valley Learning Academy in Lancaster ($7.9 million), Summit Public Schools in Redwood City ($6.9 million), Western Educational Corporation in Lancaster ($6.2 million) and Magnolia Educational & Research Foundation in Los Angeles ($5.5 million).

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Scandal, Shame

Leonie Haimson: Eric Adams’ New School Board and a Questionable Contract

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
12

Leonie Haimson, CEO of Class Size Matters (and a board member of NPE), watches the budget of the NYS public schools like a hawk. She is constantly amazed that there is no money to reduce class sizes but plenty for other things that are less essential.

She wrote this piece for the blog:

Tomorrow, Wed. March 23 will be the second meeting of the NYC school board under our new mayor, Mayor Eric Adams. Since Mayoral control was instituted in 2002, the board has been composed of a supermajority of Mayoral appointees. At that time, it was renamed the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP)by then-Mayor Bloomberg, though according to state law it is still officially called the NYC Board of Education.

Among the Panel’s duties is to approve Department of Education contracts, with many inflated and wasteful contracts rubberstamped over the last twenty years. Only once in its history has it voted down a contract: last year, when a majority of members voted in the midst of the pandemic not to approve acontract to Pearson for the test given to four-year-old students to be admitted into NYC’s controversial gifted program.

Even though the law requires monthly meetings of the PEP, the Chancellor cancelled the January meeting, and eight new members appointed by the Mayor participated at the February meeting, though their names and contact information are still not posted on the relevant PEP page . Instead, the names that arelisted still include the eight members appointed by de Blasio, who vacated their posts at the end of December. The identitiesof the new appointees can be found in the minutes of the February meeting, though no contact information or biographies.

The ninth member who was slated to be appointed by the Mayor in February was Joe Belluck, an attorney who is also the chair of the SUNY committee that authorizes charter schools. Belluck withdrew his name right before the meeting. This waspresumably due to conflict-of-interest issues, given that charterschools take away valuable public school space through co-locations approved by the Panel, and now cost the DOE budget more than $2.6 billion dollars annually. (Full disclosure: my organization, Class Size Matters, put out a press release against Belluck’s appointment the day before he withdrew.)

The new schools Chancellor David Banks, also appointed by the Mayor, has repeatedly said he wants to save money by cutting waste and the bureaucracy. At tomorrow’s meeting, among the many contracts they will be voting upon tomorrow is one for acompany called 22nd Century Technologies, at $16.5 million per year, renewable for five years at a total of $82.5 million. The contract is listed as “Recruiting and Staffing Services for Temporary Professionals.”

This company, the contract proposal says, will be paid to hire “consultants in a wide range of disciplines across DOE schools, central offices, and/or NYCDOE Borough/Citywide offices” and will be “responsible for identifying, processing upon selection, and managing the consultants it recruits and those referred by the DOE.”

The company will charge “markup fees of 17.35% and 22.50% for DOE-referred and vendor-recruited consultants, respectively.”

There is little detail about what these consultants will actually be doing, except for that they will be “used in a wide variety of areas including special education, curriculum design and development, all of which are needed to ensure the successful execution of several temporary DOE projects or needs. “

The mention of curriculum design may relate to the Mosaic curriculum, which initially being developed by “a team of administrators and teachers … during their off hours”, according to the Daily News, but whose roll-out has been delayed.

Of the $16.5 million being paid to this company, the document says nearly half will go to “supporting work that is legally mandated specialized expertise” and “supporting stimulus projects” – which I assume means federal stimulus funds, without identifying what this expertise or these projects involve. The reason for hiring consultants, the document claims, is that “because consultants are better suited to complete short-term tasks for schools and/or offices, instead of using full-time DOE employees.”

Even if the use of consultants is advisable in this case, there is no reason why the DOE should not hire consultants directly, but instead must pay another company to hire and manage them, with a markup of 22.50% and/or 17.35%, the latter if DOEofficials recruit these consultants themselves. In any case, we can expect that the mayoral appointees will rubberstamp this contract as they have in the past, with few if any questions asked, and no discussion of larger issues.

The DOE has lost millions in fraudulent contracts since Mayoral control was instituted in 2002. Just some of them are recounted in my City Council testimony from 2011. What this testimony doesn’t include is what happened four years later.

In 2015, along with then-Public Advocate Tish James and CM Danny Dromm, we blew the whistle on a proposed $1.1 billion five year contract, renewable at $2 billion, that was supposed to be awarded Custom Computer Specialists, a computer wiring company that had been involved in a kickback scheme just a few years before. The PEP approved this contract anyway, with a vote of 10-1, but as a result of the ensuing scandal, City Hall kicked it back, and the contract was rebid and awarded to several different companies at a far reduced price of $472 million, with savings to the city of between $163 million and $627 million.

Another result of the CCS scandal was that DOE promised from then on to publicly to post all prospective contract requests for authorization at least 30 days in advance, to allow for more scrutiny by Panel members as well as to allow for improved independent oversight. As Juan Gonzalez wrote about this result in the Daily News: “Tweed will even post information on all bids on its website 30 days before the scheduled vote by the panel, and has committed to do the same with other contracts.” Yet the DOE stopped doing this in April 2020 – nearly two years ago.

According to a New York state education law passed in 2005, all school board members must receive at least six hours of training in financial oversight, accountability, and fiduciary responsibilities. There is an exception in the law for NYC, but only if as the chancellor annually certifies to the commissioner in writing that the training they provide “meets or exceeds the requirements of this section.” Yet PEP members have told me privately and been quoted in the media to say that they have received only minimal training in financial oversight – and much less than the six hours that the law requires.

I recently filed a Freedom of Information request to the State Education Department for a copy of the annual certification from the NYC Chancellor, attesting that the training provided PEP members was compliant with the law, for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021. I received a response from NYSED that they had received no such certification. This is one of the reasons in my recent testimony before the State Legislature on Mayoral control, I strongly recommended that the governance law in NYC be amended to require that the City Comptroller’s office take over this important responsibility.

The DOE has gotten in trouble before when hiring companies to manage consultants – in the case of the Ross Lanham scandal, in which Custom Computer Specialists was also involved and millions were fraudulently charged to DOE for a different computer wiring scheme, as detailed in a report from the office of Special Investigator and in the indictment by then- US Attorney Preet Bharara. This scandal apart from the money stolen cost NYC more than $100 million in federal E-rate funds. This may not happen in this case. But if the Chancellor is concerned about cutting down on waste and bureaucracy, this is a strange way to go about doing it.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, New York City

California: ALERT! Charter Insiders Infiltrate Democratic Party Platform Committee!

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
23

Sara Roos, a blogger who writes under the name “Red Queen in LA,” reports on a dangerous development in California. Charter school insiders took charge of writing the California Democratic Party’s education platform and made changes that undercut longstanding Democratic Party opposition to charter schools. Suddenly, charter schools are referred to not as privatization but as “public charter schools,” the preferred language of the charter lobby. The new language dropped the Democratic Party’s insistence that the boards of charter schools must be elected and replaced it with the requirement only that they be authorized by local school boards. A big change, among others that put the Democratic Party platform in the pocket of the charter billionaires.

Roos wrote:

What actually happened with the CA Democratic Party’s (CADEM) platform adopted Sunday (3/6/22) at its convention?

At the eleventh hour, following an eleven-hour meeting finalizing draft proposalsfor updating the 2022 CADEM platform, it came to light that one of its 23 platform “planks”, that of Education, had been tampered with by charter school (CS) industry insiders.

As a consequence, CADEM delegate and California Federation of Teachers legislative advocate, Tristan Brown, urged from the floor that fellow delegates vote “no” on the entirety of the proposed platform changes, since the rules forbade focusing on specifics to excise.

It was argued that the new language altered the hard-won, former mandate that charter school boards must be elected, because democracy demands public, elected accountability. The platform’s new language morphed this fundamental demand, requiring instead that charter schools simply be authorized and monitored by a school board. The language of conditional support was removed altogether.

On the strength of the Union recommendation by the statewide federation of teachers, and the leadership of several key caucus chairs and leaders, the final floor vote passing the platform was far shy of consensus at 57% aye (691 votes), 43% nay (510 votes). [The absolute numbers are extracted from the meeting transcript and are a little different from the poll result percentages shown to delegates via zoom].

From a convention of 3,037 elected delegates + 80 proxies, that translates to passage by just 22% (=691/3117) of total eligible voters at the convention. But the total number of delegates voting for the platform was not presented. If quorum were just reached for the vote with its 1559 members, then a bare minimum of 358, or nearly one-quarter of delegates (23% of the eligible quorum (=358/1559)), abstained from the platform vote altogether. The sum total of those failing to vote for the platform {“nay”+abstain} far outstrips those who did.

As it happens, the reality of the platform language change is far worse than what was hastily presented on the floor. And befitting their shepherding by charter school operators (including the board chair of the charter school lobbying association), these changes do very much advantage charter school operations.

The former language of bullet 23 in the K-12 Education plank conditioned circumstances for the Party’s support of charter schools on five contingencies [emphasis mine]:

  • Support only those charter schools that are managed by public and elected boards, not-for-profit, and transparent in governance; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and, supplement rather than supplant public education programs.

The draft language posted in advance of the convention eliminates rules for conditional support altogether. Instead conditions are replaced by definitions. The term “charter school” is redefined through use of the modifying adjective, “public”. A list of characteristics is simply inserted, absent any conditioning on support. And the long-standing federal exhortation acknowledging and specifying the fungibility of money to ‘supplement not supplant’ (ie, do not rob Peter to pay Paul), is lost:

  • Support public charter schools that are governed by not-for-profit, elected, public boards with transparent governance, have equitable admissions, adopt fair labor practices, respect labor neutrality, and supplement public education programs for students in historically low performing subgroups such as low income, English learners, Black, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, foster children and students with disabilities

The real problem came from a change inserted after the posted draft platform. Support is urged for these entities now defined not by their governance but by the circumstance of their chartering: authorization and monitoring [emphasis mine]:

  • Support public charter schools that are authorized and monitored by public and elected boards, not-for-profit, and transparent in governance; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and, supplement public education programs for students in historically low performing subgroups such as low income, English learners, Black or African American, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, foster children and students with disabilities

The change amounts to saying “I exist therefore I am”. It asserts support of charter schools no matter what, and defines them as “public”, a characteristic denied by the courts. Reversing the stringent conditional acceptance terms delineated formerly, this incarnation accepts charter schools as the choice of the Democratic Party.

Another change instigated by the charter school lobbyist who volunteered their services to the platform committee, softens the field for two competing ballot initiatives to privatize our public schools through the use of vouchers.

Under cover of redundancy, bullet 14 that unequivocally and expressly “opposes voucher systems for schools,” is eliminated. Its declaration is diluted by sending it lower in the long list of bullet points, and combining it with Education Savings Accounts. The real problem comes in conditioning this opposition to their effect. Since charter schools are defined in the platform now as “public”, vouchers would not be found to “take away from public school funding”.

  • Oppose K-12 Education Savings Accounts, school vouchers, or any programs that would take away from public school funding;

This change was not a mere correction of duplication, it substantively prepares the field for a statewide fight about “school choice,” launched and led from the left. The platform now states that because we define charter schools as “public”, vouchers are a system we no longer oppose because they do not take money away from the public-charter entity. Just as this new platform accepts charter schools de facto, we also now fail to oppose voucher systems.

Trickiness gonna be tricky. Voters gotta be vigilant. Special, monied-interests are persistent and focused; the rest of us are harried volunteers.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization

Angie Sullivan: Nevada Is Killing Off Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Las Vegas, Nevada (Clark County). She frequently sends letters to every legislator in the state about the need to fund schools like hers adequately and the dismal failure of charter schools.

She responded to a post that featured an interview with Jennifer Berkshire, who predicted that some states would phase out public schools in the next few years.

Sullivan responded:

There would have been a time I would have said this will never happen. Public Schools are such an American Insitution. They are protected by laws.

Now I know charter schools are built to go around the laws. Our Nevada Constitution states one district one county. But charters claim they are not a district. And when necessary they are not even a school. The beauty of the EMO/CMO makes them slippery too. They are often a combination for-profit/non-profit. What law can apply to all of the above: a non-profit education.business, managed by a for-profit management corporation which can then also take advantage of all public school resources and tax advantages, while also applying for all the small business grants and money.

Nevada never got the immediate overnight conversion Elaine Wynn and her reformers wanted. That was too quick and shocking. The ASD grabbing 30 schools at a time did not work. [Elaine Wynn is chair of the state Board of Education and wife of a major casino owner.]

So neoliberals have settled for a slow and steady 5 or 6 charters a year. Along with adding to charter chains by grade level every year – 100 students here and 100 students there.

Jana Wilcox-Lavin uses the $22 million in grant money to grease wheels and find favor. Rebecca Feiden is one of the most powerful women in the state. She grants charters; She refuses charters. Rebecca gives some chance after chance after chance to start their charter business. Others, she stops dead in their tracks. They both inherited a dysfunctional and failing charter business. The Charter Authority is still mired in failing charters – failing financially, failing academically, and failing to enroll diversity. Charters in Nevada are obvious segregation and white flight. There is limited appetite to serve poor students.

Mayors in Clark County seem to think running a school is easy. The pandemic allowed them to use education money to offer micro-charters. This seems to have whet some appetites to own a district of their own.

Mayor Goodman of the City of Las Vegas wants a charter. For some unknown reason she paired up with the EMO TNTP (Michelle Rhee’s Group). She signed on the who’s who of education reform. The City of Las Vegas is now in the school business. Interestingly enough Mayor Goodman was successful at running an expensive private school. She does know education. She has zero experience running a school for diverse poor students. She is about to get a wake-up call. Cedric Creer was only voice of reason when this was discussed. He has the failing Agassi, Rainbow, and 100 Academies in his area – he warned the City Council not to go into the school business. Those charters have had few successes and much more failure. Turnover is constant both teachers and students. Mayor Goodman is about to learn that loads of donations and cash from the City of Las Vegas will not be enough if you let Michelle Rhee’s teaching hating group abuse labor. Interestingly enough, Goodman will retire and the City Council will then run this charter school.

Things I did not think were possible.

Are happening.

I thought our straight forward laws would prevent the Mayors from owning a district through their City Councils.. But charters are not in “districts”. Nor are they schools. Nor are they businesses. They become whatever they need to be to skirt the rules the rest of us live by daily. They claim it is “innovation”. Grifters do it everyday. I do not find it new.

I watched Rebecca Feiden define EMO/CMO very differently to the Nevada Legislature the other day – than she has ever defined it is a Charter Authority Meeting. Perhaps she does not even know or want to know. She was certainly snippy like legislators should already know.

I think this year, The Nevada State Public Charter School Authority will become the second largest district (yes, I know they claim they are not one, but they act like one) in Nevada. It is the size of the Reno/Washoe School District almost. And it serves mainly rich white students inside the middle of Clark County. Yes I know it has a hand full of diverse charters – those are not the norm. Yes I know there are charters in other counties. The bulk of the Nevada charters are serving rich white students inside CCSD. Creating a systematic segregation in Clark County. White Flight is obvious.

Charters segregate by religion, race, and money. They are actually tracking special education, language learning, and free and reduce lunch because those categories earn businesses more pupil center funding dollars. This tracking does not help with Mormon charters, all black or all white charters, and charter locations which are obviously limiting access.

Rebecca Feiden is focused on trying to get more free and reduced lunch children into charters. The Charter Authority is sending the charters a letter, inviting them to participate in “Weighted Lotteries” to help correct their diversity issues. All the charters are getting a “Weighted Lottery” and the Charter Authority is claiming this is a tool to diversify. Weighted Lotteries do not help at all. Especially with new charter enrollment which required diversity by law. Weighted Lotteries only go into affect if charters are full. Technically if a charter has even one spot open – the lottery is not triggered.

The irony of all this is not lost on me. CCSD is one of the most diverse districts in the United States. Yet our Nevada Charters which are predominantly EMO’d For-Profit Academica – serve the rich and white. Now Nevada Charters are spending money to attract diversity to their charters – advertising, flyers, walking door-to-door, or so they claim they tried to find a diverse child to enroll. The Tax Payer has to pay these businesses to admit a few IEP, language learners or poor children. For some perspective, my public school is 100% diverse on every and all levels – we do not try at all to add diversity. In fact

Nevada never closes a failing charter. Even charters that cannot fill out the application or meet the requirements just sue until they are finally allowed to do whatever they want. There is not remedy to stop this. $950 million in Nevada Charters and not a single soul can tell you where it is or what it was spent on.

This is why I think Jennifer Berkshire is correct. Eventually, there will be no place called public schools. There will be a selection list and rich people will be able to pay to have a teacher and school. Others will accept cash and their children will not receive anything and that will be fine because it is their “choice”. And most will meet in a charter warehouse somewhere to sit in front of a device with software teaching them. The poor will be used to privatized and receive the lesser quality of the lists.

It will be slow. CCSD has a parasite. At this rate, the Charter Authority will just keep growing and making more messes which use up more education dollars. It takes from some to give to others. And folx are just fine with allowing a corporation take everything from the disadvantaged so their own children can get ahead. The so called “progressives” are leading the charge.

It is wrong and I hope we fight it. I believe in our imperfect public schools. I see nothing the charters offer that is new. I do not see them being a remedy at all. There is some limited liability advantages for businesses – is that good use of tax dollars?

I hope I am wrong.

Logically I am just afraid Jennifer Berkshire is right.

She followed up with another comment:

Sadly CCSD and Nevada “Leadership” are TFA. They are here to stay. Having catapaulted themselves above everyone.

An example is the very powerful Rebecca Feiden who control $950 million in Nevada Education Dollars which go to Nevada Charters.

Another is Jana Wilcox-Lavin in Opportunity 180 which spreads charters and gives “grants” to them.

No one wants to be a teacher – seems there will always be an appetite to make six figures and control everyone and everything for an eduphilantrophist like Elaine Wynn.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Nevada, Privatization

Ohio: The Academic Failure of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
14

Max Londberg of the Cincinnati Enquirer conducted an investigation of the academic results of vouchers in Ohio. His findings were appalling. The legislature doesn’t care about results or evidence or facts. It wants more vouchers, more students to fall behind their peers in public schools. Meanwhile, the public schools lose funding to pay for the vouchers. The story was originally published in August 2020, and I missed it. Scores of school districts in Ohio are suing to block the expansion of vouchers, which will undermine the quality of their schools.

He begins:

Since 2018, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been shifted away from Ohio’s public schools and into private, mainly religious ones in the form of vouchers, all to enhance academic success.

Yet those same private schools mostly failed to meet the academic caliber set by their neighboring public school districts, according to a Cincinnati Enquirer analysis of nearly 2.5 million test scores from schools in more than 150 Ohio cities during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years.

The analysis found that in 88% of the cities in the analysis, a public district achieved better state testing results than those private schools with an address in the same city. A majority of the eight largest urban districts — including Akron and Canton — were among those that outperformed privates.

So Ohio shifts money from successful public schools to underperforming religious and private schools. This is stupid.

Categories Education Industry, Failure, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Propaganda Techniques to Justify Putin’s War on Ukraine

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2022 //
114

Posted on Twitter by @Ve10Ve_Ghost

Categories Propaganda

Newark: Black Students Walk Out of North Star Charter to Protest Mistreatment

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2022 //
24

On Friday, a large continent of Black students walked out of North Star Academy, a high-scoring no-excuses charter school in Newark, New Jersey. The students were protesting the mistreatment of Black students and teachers.

Chalkbeat reports:

Hundreds of students walked out of a Newark charter school and rallied outside City Hall on Friday to call attention to what students said is the frequent mistreatment of Black students and faculty.

Around 9 a.m., students began streaming out of the Lincoln Park High School campus of North Star Academy, which is New Jersey’s largest charter school operator with more than 6,000 students in Newark and Camden. After marching from the Central Ward campus to nearby City Hall, student organizers and a former teacher gave speeches about a culture of anti-Blackness they said pervades the school, while scores of students cheered and waved signs.

“We’re tired and we’ve been fed up,” 12th grader Kwadjo Otoo called out from the steps of the historic building, adding that some Black teachers and students continue to feel disrespected despite efforts by the charter operator’s leadership to address complaintsabout the schools. “Now they’re trying to pretend like something changed, but we know it’s the same school we’ve been going to forever now.”

Several students said multiple Black teachers over the years have left the school, which the students said is because the teachers felt overworked and undervalued. When well-liked Black teachers depart, their absence can leave students feeling isolated, they said.

“It’s very upsetting for us to build bonds with our teachers, to build relationships and connect,” said L. Drummond, a senior at the Lincoln Park campus, “and then see them chased out by the school.”

The school went into lockdown during the protest, and students who left were not allowed back in after they returned from City Hall. Locked out of school, the students began to disperse around 10:30 a.m.; some said they planned to walk home while others set out for a different North Star campus downtown.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Disruption, Education Industry, Newark, Racism, Resistance, Students

Oklahoma: The Long Battle to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2022 //
11

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, writes about the legislators who are offering bills to undermine public schools, control their curriculum, even meddle with the school lunch program. Their goal is clear: the demoralization of teachers and the destruction of public schools.

Thompson writes:

Why are some Republican legislators in Oklahoma trying to “strip” school lunch programs from the State Department of Education and move them to the Agriculture Department?

The Tulsa World reports:

“The House author told us that some in the Legislature feel too much focus was put on making sure kids were fed during the pandemic and not on educating kids,” said Carolyn Thompson, chief of government affairs and deputy chief of staff at the Oklahoma State Department of Education (SDE).

The author of HB 3432, Rep. Dell Kerbs, claims he wants “to take something off of education’s plate and hopefully move more schools away from ‘heat and serve’ meal options.” But education leaders have said that that is “ridiculous,” and “a solution in search of a problem.” In fact:

The legislation would create duplication within the state’s overall bureaucracy, because their department must still obtain child nutrition data for a host of purposes including calculating state aid funding, school accountability and accreditation, and the federal E-Rate Program that provides schools with discounted telecommunications services.

This new bill should be considered in the light of numerous other anti-education bills filed this session. As The Frontier explained, they are often pushed by national conservative organizations, sometimes using “word-for-word language copied from model legislation.”

For instance, SB 1508, “would require school districts to submit to the State Department of Education detailed expenditure reports on diversity, inclusion and social justice training for teachers and administrators.” HB 3432 also brings to mind bills by Sen. Shane Jett that “would outlaw teaching of social-emotional learning in schools;” “require higher education institutions to post their budget for student and teacher diversity curriculum online;” and “ban voluntary surveys in schools from asking questions about sexuality or gender and would ban school libraries and curriculum from including books that deal with sexuality or gender.”

To understand the purpose of these restrictions, they must also be considered in the context of bills filed by Standridge that “would require teaching ‘patriotic education’” about Oklahoma history; or “impose civil penalties of at least $10,000 on school personnel who teach lessons related to critical race theory [and] require the employee to be fired and blacklisted from educational employment for at least five years.”

Similarly, these bills’ common purpose must also be understood within the context of Sen. Nathan Dahm’s attempt to “require social studies classes to teach at least 45 minutes every Nov. 7 on “Victims of Communism Day;” to “require schools to distribute historical Thanksgiving day proclamations, all of which list the importance and role of Christian faith;” to “add reading requirements for high schoolers that contain some theological themes;” and “require the Oklahoma State Department of Education to contract for curriculum for a four-year pilot project for 11th graders on U.S. history that “narrowly tailors the subject areas to align with free high school curriculum courses from Hillsdale College.”

And, of course these mandates must be seen within the context of successful and unsuccessful bills prohibiting school boards from issuing mask mandates; requiring an “opt in” system for teachers union membership, even though that is already the law; and at a “cost over $116 million” providing “state dollars to students to spend on private school tuition and other education expenses instead of attending a public school.”

To fully understand these vituperative assaults on schools, we must also consider the New York Times’ coverage of the Enid, Ok. school board battles, which concluded: From lockdowns to masks to vaccines to school curriculums, the conflicts in America keep growing and morphing, even without Donald Trump, the leader who thrived on encouraging them, in the White House.

But the fights are not simply about masks or schools or vaccines. They are, in many ways, all connected as part of a deeper rupture — one that is now about the most fundamental questions a society can ask itself: What does it mean to be an American? Who is in charge? And whose version of the country will prevail?

The Times also explained that Enid is in a county which “experienced one of the largest increases in racial diversity in the country over the past decade.” Since 1980, it dropped from 94 percent white to about 68 percent.

And this brings us back to the two, somewhat separate but intertwined agendas that drive these education bills. The corporate establishment and the leaders of the Trump wing of the Republican Party see both political threats and opportunities in demographic change. In the short-run, in order to keep their majority, they must use gerrymandering (such as moving one of the most progressive areas in Oklahoma City into the Panhandle’s congressional seat hundreds of miles away) and reverse trends that expanded the opportunities to vote. But these demographic changes give them better chances for winning in 2022 and 2024 by stoking the fears of Oklahomans who see themselves as being replaced by immigrants, other people of color, and new generations of progressives.

All of these education bills, primarily, are fact-free, fear-based campaigns to win elections at any costs. Being a Baby Boomer who saw the damage done to schools by McCarthyism, and how it persisted into my K-12 education and even into my teaching career, I worry about the long-term effects of these scorched earth campaign tactics.

The second, overarching theme is privatization. Whether it is Gov. Stitt’s undermining of public health institutions as we entered the Covid crisis, privatizing Medicaid, or disempowering the Pardon and Parole Board by preventing them from considering evidence of innocence in their deliberations, or wrecking public education, they want to dismantle governmental institutions.

Whether all of the legislators who support these bills understand it or not, the real goal is kicking vulnerable school systems that are exhausted by the Covid crisis while they are down. Then, rightwingers can ramp up their efforts to fund their cronies, while claiming that the Free Market will find replacements for what they call a rotten, socialist system that doesn’t respect their political base.

Finally, as I was about to submit this post, the New Yorker arrived, featuring Jill Lepore’s The Parent Trap. Lepore also describes the efforts of many Republicans as “whipping up a frenzy about parents’ rights” to win the mid-term and, perhaps the presidential elections. But she then goes back a century to the Scopes Trial, which also followed a global pandemic; explains the racist roots of the anti-evolution campaigns; and the Scopes aftermath, with “’purging’” libraries and “’hounding’” teachers.

Now, the campaign includes the “highhandedness, moral crusading, and snobbery” of today’s corporate reformers’ school choice movement. Lepore concludes, “It’s still going on today.” Some activist parents seem to “want to destroy public education.” So, everyone should read how this isn’t just a brutal fight in Oklahoma Red State politics, but “another long game, a hundred years war: the campaign against public education.”

Categories Education Reform, Oklahoma

BBC News: The Wounded. Children of Putin’s War

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2022 //
24

This story appears on Apple News, taken from the BBC News site. Google it on the BBC site and watch the video if you can. I couldn’t. Anyone who blames the Ukrainians for this cruel war is insane. The attack on Ukraine was completely unprovoked. The Russian forces are now engaged in reducing the city of Mariupol to rubble. 90% of its buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of women and children are buried in the rubble of a theater where they were sheltering. Hundreds more are buried under an arts school. And the world watched in horror.

In his hospital bed, little Artem stares into space. He clutches a small yellow toy tractor but says nothing as specialist nurses monitor his condition. The Russian shell that blasted shrapnel into his belly also badly wounded his parents and grandparents as they tried to flee Mariupol. A victim of Putin’s war and he’s not yet three years old.

In the next bed to Artem lies 15-year-old Masha, also from near Mariupol. Her right leg was amputated after it was torn apart by the blast from a Russian shell last Tuesday.

The very worst of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and what the relentless Russian bombardment has done to the people trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol, can be seen at the Regional Children’s Hospital in the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia.

Hundreds of people have been evacuated here. Their physical wounds are obvious and may, to an extent, heal. The psychological trauma will live with them for ever.

Doctors here and the children’s surviving relatives, asked us to tell their stories, among them Dr Yuri Borzenko, head of the Children’s Hospital. He can’t hide his contempt for what Russia has done.

“I hate Russia,” says Dr Borzenko, without a flicker of emotion on his face. “The girl who lost her leg (Masha) was so traumatised she wouldn’t eat or drink for days. She couldn’t mentally handle what had happened. We had to feed her intravenously.”

“Another boy,” says the doctor, “a six-year-old, with shrapnel in his skull described – without any tears or emotion – watching his mother burn to death in their car after it was hit. Two days later he said ‘dad buy me a new mum, I need someone to walk me to school’.”

What is happening in Mariupol is a humanitarian disaster, even – perhaps – a war crime. An estimated 90% of the city’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed. After last week’s destruction of a theatre where more than 1,000 people were sheltering, reports today that an arts school, with 400 people inside, has also been attacked.

Those who’ve been able to escape Mariupol talk of unimaginable horrors. First-hand accounts of bodies lying in the streets, of homes destroyed. Carrying those memories they put as much physical distance as they can between themselves and what they went through….

At Zaporizhzhia’s Children’s Hospital, I came across one grief-stricken, inconsolable father whose family had been completely torn apart.

His daughter Natasha, who was 26, and his 4-year-old granddaughter Dominica, were killed when a Russian shell landed near the shelter where the whole family was seeking refugee from the bombardment of Mariupol.

“I looked at the ground and there lay my little granddaughter with her head completely torn to pieces,” says Vladimir. “She lay there without a single breath and right next to her was my daughter with her legs fractured, open fractures.”

Dominica – whose pictures her grandfather almost caresses on his phone – was killed instantly. Her mother died from her injuries the next day.

As broken as he is, Vladimir is trying to stay strong for his second daughter, Diana. She was also critically wounded in the blast and was about to undergo emergency surgery.

But he could not hide his pain. “God, why would you bring all this upon me? I was not supposed to bury my children, my lovely girls, I failed to protect you.”

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Cruelty, Fascism

USA Today: Charter Schools Collected $1 Billion in COVID Funds They Did Not Need

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2022 //
9

Craig Harris of USA Today wrote a blistering expose of the money grab by charter schools for federal COVID funds. Harris was previously a reporter for the Arizona Republic who often covered charter school scandals in that state where deregulation has enabled grifters to get rich by opening charter schools. This story is a national scandal. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall, so I urge you to run out and buy the Sunday March 20 USA Today.

The story begins:

America’s charter schools received at least a $1 billion windfall during the pandemic, an unneeded cash infusion for most from a federal program intended to bail out struggling small businesses, USA TODAY has found. 

More than 1,000 of the publicly funded but privately operated schools that educate a fraction of U.S. children jumped at the chance to collect forgivable loans up to $10 million after Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program in March 2020.

The hastily launched program was designed to save small businesses during the pandemic by helping them cover employee salaries and other costs.

While more than 90% of all eligible businesses across the country took the roughly $800 billion inloan allocations, charter schools were among the first to get the money — ahead of mom-and-pop shops and minority-owned companies — during the early days of the crisis when the economy was cratering and many business owners scrambled to get a financial lifeline.

And charter schools were uniquely positioned to get the loans — even though they continually received funding from taxes, just like traditional public schools. But unlike those schools, which educate the vast majority of American children, charters qualified for what would eventually become pots of free money because they are considered a business. 

A USA TODAY investigation, based on public records,found 93%of the charter schools may not have needed the money because they were in states that continued to fund them at the same level as before the pandemic, or at even higher levels in some cases. These schools also had access to federal COVID grants. 

Records show some of the private companies that operate the charter schools used the money to pad savings accounts or, in one case, hand millions of dollars to an investor.

USA TODAY’s investigation is based on publicly available documents from 1,139 charter schools, as well as federal and state agencies, including 37 departments of education that oversee local funding for charter schools.

“It makes me furious because there was absolutely no reason for those (charter) schools to get that money and take it from small businesses,” said Carol Corbett Burris, a critic of charter schools and executive director of the Network for Public Education Foundation, an advocacy group in New York City. “They successfully double-dipped….”

Charter school advocates said operators were entitled to the loans, which ranged from $150,746 to $9.8 million,because they are technically private businesses. 

“Funding is always difficult to secure but was even more challenging during the pandemic,”  said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Rees added that charter schools typically receive less public funding than traditional school districts and Congress intended for them to get the money because of “the special nature of these unique public schools.”

Critics have a different view. 

A congresswoman who has monitored the program said that while the schools may have done nothing legally wrong, their decisions to take the money were “terrible.” And one superintendent who leads an inner-city San Diego charter operation said that despite the legality, the behavior was unethical because financially strong charter businesses took money from those truly in need. 

“At the time PPP became available, we had not suffered financially,” said David Sciarretta, superintendent of the Albert Einstein Academies, which has 1,450 students from kindergarten to eighth grade at two San Diego campuses. “I saw PPP as a way to help small businesses, especially those in the service sector…There is a fiscal way to look at it, and there’s a moral and ethical way to look at it.”

While Sciarretta declined to call out specifics schools, USA TODAY found, for example, that at least 14 affiliates of the California-based charter chainKnowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) took a collective $28.4 million in loans and had them forgiven at locations around the U.S.

Its national headquarters in San Francisco, meanwhile, saw its bottom line swell 56% to $75 million during the first year of the pandemic….

The concerns about charter schools have spurred critics to pressure the federal Small Business Administration, which is in charge of forgiving the loans if companies used them to save jobs and cover COVID-related expenses, to claw back the money.

The SBA declined repeated requests for interviews in response to questions about financially solid charter schools having their loans forgiven. 

The agency in a late December email told USA TODAY it was committed to helping businesses reopen and that it had removed hindrances for small businesses to have their loans forgiven.

SBA two months later, following additional questions from USA TODAY, blamed the Trump administration for issues of “fraud, waste and abuse” in the program. Yet, nearly all of the loan forgiveness has happened at SBA during the Biden administration.

California Congresswoman Judy Chu is a member of the House Small Business Committee, and she has sought answers about where the money went and which businesses received loan forgiveness. Shamed by media attention in the early days of the pandemic, the Los Angeles Lakers and the national chain Shake Shack returned their multi-million dollar PPP loans.

Congresswoman Chu said:

It was never the intent of Congress to forgive loans to companies, such as charter schools, that experienced no economic loss.

“It’s terrible,” Chu said about the charter schools. “But nonetheless, it is in the realm of what is permissible.”

Permissible, but not ethical. Charter schools got their ”loans” early on because of their relationships with their banks, but minority-owned businesses waited for months.

The PPP program was a boon to the charter industry, which never lost its state funding, but it was ineffective. Harris quotes a study by the National Bureau of Educational Research which found that the program “the program kept up to three million workers employed an additional year at a cost of up to $258,000 per job retained.”

This is a very powerful, well researched article that raises important questions. if charter schools are “businesses,” how can they call themselves ”public schools?” Public schools were not eligible for PPP funds because they are not businesses. Charter schools qualified for public school funding and for PPP funding. They are both fish and fowl. They did not lose money, like the mom-and -pop stores that had to close their doors. But they eagerly took the money that was supposed to save the jobs of people who lost them and save the businesses on the edge of bankruptcy.

Permissible? Perhaps. Ethical? No.


Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Hypocrisy, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »