When Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education, she gave $10 million to establish a research center on school choice; she chose carefully. Given who she is, she was not likely to give the money to academics likely to throw cold water on her life’s work. She gave the grant to Tulane, smack dab in the middle of the only city that has no public schools. The organization she funded is called the National Center Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH), led by economist Douglas Harris.
REACH has not been a cheerleader for choice but neither has it been notably critical. The all-charter New Orleans district has not offered much to cheer about. Just days ago, the Orleans Parish School Board closed The Living Charter, which has a large proportion of English learners, because of its test scores. It was the ninth charter school closed in New Orleans since 2018.
Two of the nation’s most active funders of charter schools just awarded nearly $1 million to REACH: the Walton Foundation and the City Fund.
Walton is the single largest private funder of charter schools in the nation. The City Fund was created by billionaires Reed Hastings (Netflix) and John Arnold (ex-Enron) specifically to spur the growth of charter schools.
Tulane announced:
The latest research on school choice suggests that the availability of charter schools alongside other options is producing impacts across entire school systems. However, what works in New Orleans may not work in Arizona. How can we better understand variations across contexts in order to design more effective policies at the system-level?
The National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH) at Tulane University received a total of $975,964 in funding from both the Walton Family Foundation ($485,914) and City Fund ($490,050) to jointly support a three-year research project on the system-level effects of charter schools at the national level. The goal is to learn how charter schools improve student outcomes and better understand the role of policy in fueling these changes.
Is it too much to suggest that their sponsorship is akin to cigarette companies funding research on the benefits and risks of nicotine?
Harris implied in his comments on the grant that a district with 100% market share was subject to “diminishing returns.” Does he mean that it’s useful to have some public schools to take the students that the charters don’t want?
According to REACH Director and Tulane School of Liberal Arts Professor of Economics Douglas Harris, “This funding will help us improve the functioning of the charter sector by better understanding the roles played by factors such as access to quality teachers and the design of charter policies, including charter school funding. We will also learn about the various mechanisms throughout which charter schools affect students, including indirect effects on traditional public schools. Finally, places like New Orleans have gone 100% charter, but we see some evidence of ‘diminishing returns’ to charter market share.” He added, “We are thankful to both The Walton Family Foundation and City Fund for their generous support of our work.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Original funding for the Institute from John Arnold of Enron infamy?
Will Josh Cowan be commenting about the post?
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How about a study funded by FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried. It would be the equivalent.
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Yes
Addendum- Arnold wasn’t charged in the Enron case.
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Some Enron executives were charged with accounting fraud. No one was charged with causing the deaths of Californians. Interesting, huh.
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The support of billionaires for privatization is no accident. Many are self-serving and greedy folks that resent having to pay their taxes. Their donations to privatization stem from self-interest. They have no need for the common good so they do not want to pay for it. If they can get privatization to dismantle public education, they will make education an individual responsibility resulting in access to education along class lines. The result will be a permanent underclass, but billionaires will be even wealthier. Their offspring will continue to get the best education money can buy. This is not a vision for a functioning democracy, however.
As far as ESL/ ENL students go, their scores are by definition low when they arrive as newcomers. Imagine yourself being sent to a school in a foreign country and being tested after only one or two years of schooling in that country. Most of us would be ‘failures’ as well under such unrealistic expectations. It takes time and effort for foreign students, particularly poor students, to reach the average score range on a test given in English. Generally, newcomers require at least three years of instruction from a trained bilingual/ESL teacher before they can perform near the average on any standardized test. In New Orleans foreign students whose parents are unfamiliar with American schools will be forced to scramble for another placement for their children as a result of school closure. These students would be better off in a stable public schools where there are teachers that can address their needs. Disruption is not helpful to struggling students.
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Thank you, retired teacher. TRUE.
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What Yvonne said, rt. PLUS–& how many times do we need to repeat this?!–the “standardized” tests are NOT standardized–they are NEITHER valid NOR reliable. They are TRASH & tell us NOTHING!!!
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Billionaire funded research often is advocacy instead of impartial study. Let’s hope this is different, but it is likely to be biased.
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The rare, truthful research projects that are funded by billionaires who have an agenda, have a strange outcome. The billionaires’ mouthpieces get to write the research summary attached to the project. Media picks up the false talking points instead of the research content
Universities receiving research money should prohibit the practice.
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This is sad, really sad. I’m disappointed in Tulane, and feel that, in the long run, it will diminish the stature of the university.
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“Is it too much to suggest that their sponsorship is akin to cigarette companies funding research on the benefits and risks of nicotine?
No, it’s not!
“Does he mean that it’s useful to have some public schools to take the students that the charters don’t want?”
Yes, otherwise they can’t cherry pick the best test takers.
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The study is funded by John Arnold, the “King of Gas”, former Enron executive, and hedge fund founder. If anyone ever cared about the future or about integrity, it wasn’t him. Tulane should be ashamed and will be publicly shamed. You don’t take money from the bad guys if you want to be the good guys. This “research” is bunk before it even begins, no matter what the outcome.
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The Walton family and the Bush family have been close for decades. Sam and George Herbert Walker were pals. Their family names sure have been popping up in the anti-American education news lately. The evil dynasty just won’t go away, no matter how many debacles they cause.
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You can’t make up this sh*t. No public school teacher should ever shop at Walmart…EVER. If Tulane doesn’t come up with the “right” conclusions (but we know that is unlikely), we can always count on glowing reports from the Walton-endowed education chair professor at UofArkansas. Gawd.
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No one should shop at Walmart. Lots of reports of shootings occur there. People who need cheap prices should go to the Dollar stores and Aldi’s
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Aldi’s, Lidl, and Costco are great places to shop. Costco has unionized workers, unlike Walmart’s.
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To be fair, charter advocates have always tried hard to assure people that, like Advanced Placement classes, charters are just “better,” claiming without proof that charters and school vouchers improve student achievement.
The Education Trust, for example, long touted what it called “high flying schools;” charter schools for disadvantaged students that delivered the achievement goods. These “90-90-90 schools,” (90 percent poverty, 90 percent free lunch, scoring at the 90th percentile), cited by conservatives as models for public schools, failed to withstand scrutiny.
Douglas Harris, now at Tulane, concluded in “Ending the Blame Game” that “93 percent of schools identified as high-flyers – using Education Trust criteria – are not high-flyers when consistency is required.” Instead of a one-time achievement score, Harris required some evidence that the achievement persisted over time (two years). It didn’t.
Harris found that “[o]nly 16 percent of high-poverty schools are high-performing, compared with 54 percent of low-poverty schools. This means that low-poverty schools were three times more likely to be high performing than high-poverty schools…34 percent of all schools are high-poverty. Roughly 11.8 million students attend these schools.”
When Harris examined high-poverty schools attended by high concentrations of minority students – students who’ve historically been given short educational shrift – “…[t]he results are even more disparate. In this case, only 10 percent of high-poverty-high-minority schools are high-performing, compared with 57 percent of low-poverty-low-minority schools.”
I have no idea what Harris will find in this latest study. Yes, it’s discomforting that charter advocates are funding the research. But hopefully, Harris will follow the data and not the agenda of the Waltons and John Arnold.
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The only way a high flying poverty school gets high scores is through selection and attrition like the Success Academies in NYC. They take the cream of the crop and whittle them down to the best of the survivors.
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What is/define “high performing.”
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In the comment:
“90 percent poverty, 90 percent free lunch, scoring at the 90th percentile…”
The Education Trust had issued an earlier report (2001) that defined “high-Flying” as “those that are both ‘high-performing’ (above the 67th percentile in average state standardized test scores) and ‘high-poverty’ (more than 50 percent of students are eligible for free or
reduced price lunch).”
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Today is the 11th anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shootings. (Not a mention in either of our two major city papers today. Maybe because the pages are filled w/news of current shootings, or recent events surrounding the 7/4/22 suburban shooter {who is defending himself in order to get an earlier trial date} & the shooter’s father, who was charged for signing the shooter’s F.O.I.D. card when he was a minor, sentenced to 60 days in jail, but released in 30–yesterday–for “good behavior.”}) While Sandy Hook merits a post of its own (especially because little in America has changed since when it comes to the gun issue, the NRA, the gun lobby; in short, see “The Onion.”) I bring this up here, however, because, as you all may or may not recall, the CT Governor announced that, due to the trauma the children suffered, no students of that school (&, probably, students of the schools to which they had been relocated) would be required to take “standardized” tests that Spring.
So–why should students who reside in areas where there are daily or almost daily shootings whereby their family members have been killed, their friends have been killed or they have come within a hair of being killed themselves be required to take tests, no matter what THEIR circumstances are, & be expected to “meet” or “exceed” state standards? How is it that THEIR schools consistently “fail?” Are they not traumatized?
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, so please indulge me.
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