Archives for category: Accountability

Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Adequacy and Equity and a vocal supporter of public schools, writes here about an investigation of vouchers by the Cincinnati Enquirer. The report echoed the findings of academic research: students in public schools get higher test scores than those in voucher schools. Vouchers don’t “save” children. They don’t “save” black children. Ohio officials shifted hundreds of millions of dollars away from public schools to support vouchers. Even with the loss of funding, the public schools were superior to the voucher schools. Why don’t Republican politicians in Ohio care about effectiveness and prudence? Why do they continue to fund failure?

Phillis writes:

Cincinnati Enquirer investigation confirms that vouchers do not enhance academic success

The voucher campaigners will have to change their pitch to entice students to their private school classrooms. Confirming what other studies have revealed, the Enquirer research indicates there is a definite public school advantage. “Yet five of the largest districts—Cincinnati, Toledo, Cleveland, Akron and Canton—fared better academically than their local private school rivals, by margins ranging from slight to decisive, according to the Enquirer analysis”, the report states.

The Enquirer research indicates that the voucher system has been least successful in educating black students.

An excerpt from the report regarding city districts other than the urban shows a definite public school advantage that is widespread:

Other areas
Forty cities were included in this category, and a public school district in all but two of the cities outperformed its surrounding private schools.

Zanesville scored about six points higher on state tests than area private schools but had about $675,000 deducted for EdChoice.

Coshocton City Schools saw $115,000 deducted. The district had a 61% proficiency rate, more than 20 points higher than local private schools.

Portsmouth City Schools earned a proficiency rate of 51.9%, 10 points higher than the private schools in its community. Yet Portsmouth City had about $725,000 deducted since 2018.

Sandusky City Schools outperformed its neighboring private schools by 17 percentage points, achieving a proficiency rate of 49%. The district saw $660,000 deducted since 2018.

Van Wert City Schools and Wilmington City Schools were the only two districts in this category that fared worse on state testing than private schools.

In all, public school districts in this category had $3.75 million deducted for EdChoice in the past three years.

A longstanding perception in the past is that there is a private school advantage. Recent research has debunked that perception. The demographic of private schools is typically different from the public system. When the demographics of public schools and private schools are considered, there is a definite public school advantage.

The Cincinnati Enquirer is behind a paywall. The results are posted in the Akron Beacon Journal, not behind a paywall.

Nancy Bailey writes that the best way to fire Betsy DeVos is to vote for Biden and Harris.

She writes:

If you’re Democrat or Republican, and you care about public education, vote for V.P. Joe Biden to remove Education Secretary Betsy DeVos from the U.S. Department of Education! Four more years of Betsy DeVos means the end of public education.

With a President Biden, public schools have a chance of surviving. With a President Trump, they don’t. It’s as simple as that.

You may be thinking, Democratic leadership has failed public education in the past. Many were disappointed in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top.

Once there’s a President Biden, the country can remind him of this. But the odds of losing our schools with a President Biden is less of a worry now than leaving DeVos in her perch at the U.S. Department of Education.

There are dozens of reasons to check the Biden/Harris ticket. Public schools affect every other issue on the ballot, every issue we face as a nation. Democratic public schools are the backbone of the nation.

She goes on to explain why we all should be worried about the damage Trump and DeVos can do if given four more years to transfer public funds to non-public schools.

Mike Klonsky notes that education was barely mentioned in the convention speeches of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But he points out that the platform contains some strong language in the right direction on charters, vouchers, for-profit businesses, and testing.

On testing, for example, it says:

The evidence from nearly two decades of education reforms that hinge on standardized test scores shows clearly that high-stakes testing has not led to enough improvement in outcomes for students or for schools, and can lead to discrimination against students, particularly students with disabilities, students of color, low-income students, and English language learners. Democrats will work to end the use of such high-stakes tests and encourage states to develop reliable, continuous, evidence-based approaches to student assessment that rely on multiple and holistic measures that better represent student achievement. Those measures will be supported by data collection and analysis disaggregated by race, gender, disability status, and other important variables, to identify disparities in educational equity, access, and outcomes.

We have to keep the party to its promises to avoid a reversion to the failed Bush-Obama era.

Chris Reykdal, state superintendent of public instruction in Washington State, published this excellent letter to the Democratic candidates.

It overflows with wisdom and common sense.

An Open Letter to the Biden-Harris Ticket:

Mr. Vice President and Senator Harris, there is so much at stake with this year’s presidential election, including the very foundation of our country’s democracy – the future of our public education system. Led by Betsy DeVos and fueled by years of education privateers, the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) has been an utter failure in advancing student learning, racial equity, and gender equity over the last four years. Under DeVos, the USDOE has jeopardized the financial future of too many young adults and actively worked against civil rights protections for our most vulnerable students.
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As Washington State’s elected Superintendent of Public Instruction, I have worked with leaders across the state to build bipartisan coalitions to improve student achievement, but this same bipartisanship and student-centric approach have been elusive under the DeVos regime. It will take federal leadership working alongside state education policy leaders to move us past an inefficient and deficit-based system.
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What follows are ten critical steps necessary for a Biden/Harris administration to build the foundation for a truly equitable and outstanding American education system.
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1)
Grant a national waiver of all federally mandated tests required under the Every Student Succeeds Act until Congress has an opportunity to amend the law. This will save billions of dollars and allow us to refocus resources on assessments that illuminate student growth and learning, are delivered locally, and are aligned to requirements that are properly situated at the state or local level, not the federal government. The USDOE should review and approve each state’s education assessment framework, but it is time to put the evaluation of learning back in the classroom with meaningful standards, trained professionals, and culturally responsive instructional practices.
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2)
Deliver legislation to Congress to scale up the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – a far more cost-effective method of actually determining the overall education progress of states with a real opportunity to finally understand performance differences between the states. This assessment is already funded and supported by the USDOE. It is inefficient and costly to have a federally funded assessment of student progress and have 50 states and territories maintaining their own costly assessments. This proposal would save billions from the current system, and with robust sample sizes, can identify critical supports needed to close opportunity gaps for students furthest from educational justice.
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3)
Invest in the teaching profession by diversifying the workforce, including establishing high-quality residencies for teacher candidates and early career teachers, and providing funds for ongoing meaningful educator training. Additionally, building educator capacity should focus on integration of social-emotional learning into instruction, anti-racist and student-centered teaching practices, and authentic family engagement. It is past time to shift away from destructive federal policies that force schools and educators to dwell on student deficits, as defined by federally mandated tests, instead of lifting up the unique contribution of every learner and every educator.
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4)
Immediately deliver a budget request to Congress that triples the federal budget for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) from $13 billion to $40 billion. Congress and the USDOE have never fulfilled their obligation to this essential civil rights policy. One in seven students has a qualifying disability and these students deserve every accommodation necessary to fully engage in inclusive and least restrictive learning environments.
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5)
By Executive Order, immediately suspend any federal dollars used to support school voucher programs. Require the USDOE to undertake a national examination of voucher systems, and require each state that uses vouchers to conduct third-party evaluation, with a USDOE review, that examines the effects of school voucher systems on school segregation, specifically the segregation of students of color and students with disabilities.
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6)
Affirm that all federal funds are eligible to support DACA students and all migrant students. Make clear through executive order and USDOE rule that basic education rights for ALL students is a function of their residency, not their citizenship status. U.S. schools should focus on teaching and learning for ALL students, and the administration should ensure authorities overseeing immigration policy and citizenship status are upholding support of DACA and migrant students’ rights.
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7)
Immediately reverse the USDOE’s recent rule change related to Title IX. This rule, promoted by Betsy DeVos, weakens protections for victims of sexual assault and retraumatizes them with forced cross-examinations by their perpetrators.
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8)
Create a 10-year on-ramp with federal financial support to allow every school district in the United States to develop, implement, and evaluate dual-language programs for each of their students. The U.S. is linguistically diverse – this is an asset that should be celebrated, rather than viewed as a deficit! Every dollar spent on assessments for English language proficiency should be invested in high-quality dual language programs. We are losing a global battle for talent, and our students do not compete effectively in a global labor market because they lack bilingualism. Every student in the U.S. should learn two or more languages – as most of the world does – and this begins most effectively in early learning programs and early elementary school.
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9)
Deliver an initial budget request to Congress of $100 billion to close the digital divide and invest in tribal lands by building out broadband connectivity in rural and remote communities. Make K-12 schools, indigenous communities, and reservation lands the highest priorities for “last mile” infrastructure. Our tribal communities are sovereign nations trapped by our failed national infrastructure. Tribal youth experience one of the largest opportunity gaps in the nation, and broadband can play a massive role in this powerful opportunity for equity.
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10)
Provide every United States high school graduate two years of equivalent tuition to a public community or technical college through an education savings account. Students can use these funds for full associate degrees or industry recognized credentials, or use the funds as a universal baseline of financial assistance as they attend four-year colleges and universities.
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Strengthening America’s education system should be the top priority for a Biden/Harris Administration. It does not mean expanding the control or scope of the USDOE, but rather putting the proper budget and policy levers in place that empower states and local school districts to close opportunity gaps, develop diverse pathways to graduation, and once again recognize the needs of individual students, employers, and the larger economy.

America’s future rests on its commitment to each and every learner in a high-quality accessible public education system that sees race, language, and individual student interests as strengths and assets upon which we develop the greatest and most innovative nation the world has ever known.

Chris Reykdal, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction
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The Republican Party—that is, the Trumps—made heroes of Patricia and Mark McCloskey, who had menaced peaceful marchers on their St. Louis Street with guns.

The McCloskey property abuts a reform synagogue. Its rabbi, Susan Talve, spoke up and said the McCloskeys are litigious bullies.

In 2013, the synagogue placed beehives along the wall to produce honey for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. One morning they found the hives destroyed and all the bees dead. Mark McCloskey had taken an ax or sledgehammer to them.

His issue? The fence between them sat six inches inside the McCloskey’s property line. The hives were his to wreck.

“He could have picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, those beehives are on my property,’ and we would have happily moved them,” said Talve.

She said children at the synagogue wept when they heard the news of the hives. The synagogue maintains raised bed gardens on its property that supply some 2,000 pounds of fresh produce to a local food pantry, as well as pear, fig and apple trees.

“We were going to have our own apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah!” she said.

She said the McCloskeys didn’t contact the temple at all before lashing out.

Instead, McCloskey left a note threatening to sue the synagogue for damages if the shattered hives were not removed at once.

Thomas Ultican, who retired last year as a teacher of advanced math and physics in California, has studied school reform in many districts. He concludes that charter schools, created supposedly to improve education, especially for the neediest children, is a failed experiment.

He reviews the origins of the charter school idea and shows how AFT leader Albert Shanker became disillusioned. The premise of charters, he writes, was based on an illusion. Reagan’s “Nation at Risk” report unleashed a long era of handwringing about public school failure, but as he points out, NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz documented that the conclusions of that report were predetermined.

He writes:

Some powerful evidence points in the opposite direction and indicates that the results from US public schools in the 60s and 70s were actually a great success story.

One measuring stick demonstrating that success is Nobel Prize winners. Since 1949, America has had 383 laureates; the second place country, Great Britain, had 132. In the same period, India had 12 laureates and China 8.

Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis report on education achievement gaps states, “The gaps narrowed sharply in the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, but then progress stalled.”

The digital revolution and the booming biotech industry were both created by students mostly from the supposedly “soft public schools” of the 60s and 70s.

Ultican then reviews the study by the Network for Public Education of charter school instability and closings.

“Broken Promises” looked at cohorts of newly opened charter schools between 1998 and 2017. Ryan Pfleger, Ph.D. led the analysis of charter schools closures utilizing the Department of Education’s Common Core of Data (CCD).

Before 1998, the massive government data base did not uniquely identify charter schools and the last complete data set available for all schools in American was 2017.

Startup charter school cohorts were identified by year and the cohort closure rates were tracked at 3, 5, 10 and 15 years after opening. The overall failure rates discovered were 18% by year-3, 25% by year-5, 40% by year-10 and 50% by year-15.

The NPE team discovered that half of all charter schools in America close their doors within fifteen years.

Many new charters do not survive their first year of operation.

It makes no sense to continue to expand a 30-year “experiment” whose results are so meager.

The Washington Post published an explosive story based on audios supplied by Donald Trump’s sister, Maryanne, a retired federal judge.

Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, “maybe I’ll have to put her at the border” amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on.

“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”

Maryanne Trump Barry: ‘I’m talking too freely’

Lamenting “what they’re doing with kids at the border,” she guessed her brother “hasn’t read my immigration opinions” in court cases. In one case, she berated a judge for failing to treat an asylum applicant respectfully.

“What has he read?” Mary Trump asked her aunt.

“No. He doesn’t read,” Barry responded.

In the weeks since Mary Trump’s tell-all book about her uncle has been released, she’s been questioned about the source of some of the information, such as her allegation that Trump paid a friend to take his SATs to enable him to transfer into the University of Pennsylvania. Nowhere in the book does she say that she recorded conversations with her aunt.

In response to a question from The Washington Post about how she knew the president paid someone to take the SATs, Mary Trump revealed that she had surreptitiously taped 15 hours of face-to-face conversations with Barry in 2018 and 2019. She provided The Post with previously unreleased transcripts and audio excerpts, which include exchanges that are not in her book.

Barry has never spoken publicly about disagreements with the president, and her extraordinarily candid comments in the recordings mark the most critical comments known to have been made about him by one of his siblings. No one else in the family except Mary Trump has publicly rebuked the president.
The transcripts reveal the depths of discord between the president and his sister, illuminating a rift that began when she asked her brother for a favor in the 1980s, which Trump has frequently used to try to take credit for her success.


At one point Barry said to her niece, “It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”
Mary Trump, 55, told The Post recently that her uncle is unfit to be president and she plans to do “everything in my power” to elect Joe Biden. Her father, Fred Trump Jr., died of an alcohol-related illness when she was 16 in 1981. In her book, she says Donald Trump and his father mistreated her father.


The Post sought comment about the tapes from Barry and White House officials on Friday and Saturday and did not receive a response. After this story posted online Saturday night, the White House issued this statement from the president that said in full: “Every day it’s something else, who cares. I miss my brother, and I’ll continue to work hard for the American people. Not everyone agrees, but the results are obvious. Our country will soon be stronger than ever before!”

A federal judge blocked Betsy DeVos’ rule requiring states to split their coronavirus aid with private schools , regardless of need or student poverty levels. For DeVos, the CARES Act was yet another opportunity to divert money from public schools to private schools.

Andrew Ujifusa of Education Week reports:


A federal judge has ruled against U.S. Department of Education in a lawsuit over how much coronavirus aid public schools must set aside for private school students.

Public school groups and officials argued that the interim final rule from the department unfairly deprives their schools and disadvantaged students of crucial funding during the pandemic.

In a preliminary injunction halting enforcement and implementation of the rule while she considers the case pitting Washington state against the Education Department, U.S. District Court Judge Barbara J. Rothstein harshly and repeatedly rejected the department’s arguments. She said that the agency subverted the intent of Congress and hurt students most affected by the pandemic, and that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos did not have the authority to issue the rule in the first place.

The Education Department’s interim final rule, publicized in June and formally issued in July, pushes school districts to reserve money under the CARES Act, the federal coronavirus stimulus plan, for services to all local private school students, irrespective of their backgrounds. That represents a major departure from how education law typically governs that arrangement, in which federal money for what’s known as “equitable services” goes to disadvantaged, at-risk private school students.

But Rothstein attacked DeVos’ rule as “blind to the realities of this extraordinary pandemic and the very purpose of the CARES Act: to provide emergency relief where it is most needed.”

“Forcing the State to divert funds from public schools ignores the extraordinary circumstances facing the State and its most disadvantaged students,” she said.

The injunction in the case, issued Friday in the Western District of Washington, represents a setback for the department and a win for public school advocates. Rothstein does not say that her order extends beyond Washington state to other jurisdictions, but she also does not explicitly limit it to the state. And it could be a bad sign for the department in two other lawsuits about the rule, even if its power to change spending decisions on the ground is unclear.

In a statement Saturday, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the chairman of the House education committee, applauded Rothstein’s ruling and asked DeVos “to abandon its unlawful equitable services rule and finally provide schools the clarity and resources they need…”

DeVos and the department have justified the rule by arguing that the virus has hurt students of all backgrounds, regardless of where they went to school. Public school officials and congressional Democrats have countered that the rule improperly diverts money from disadvantaged students to ultimately benefit private schools, and that it defies the intent of Congress.

Rothstein sided with the second group.

“The nature of this pandemic is that its consequences have fallen most heavily on the nation’s most vulnerable populations, including its neediest students,” she stated. “The funding provided throughout the CARES Act, and in particular to schools, is desperately and urgently needed to provide some measure of relief from the pandemic’s harms, many of which cannot be undone.”

Rothstein pointed to separate CARES funding intended primarily for small businesses that private schools could access.

The judge referred to the Paycheck Protection Program, which supplied millions to many private schools, some of which are richly endowed. Charter schools got funding from both the money set aside for public schools and the PPP, which specifically excluded public schools.

Evie Blad of Education Week writes that a Biden-Harris administration may forge a new path on education issues. They have pledged to increase funding, regulate charters, and back away from standardized testing. They also have pledged to support the right to collective bargaining. This heartens advocates of public education, but frightens the corporate reformers who have controlled education for 20 years.

Twenty years of failed education policy is enough!

Democrats for Education Reform and the Center for American Policy, both committed to high/stakes testing and charters, are worried.

As he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden pledged that, if elected, his education department would be a sharp departure from that of President Donald Trump.

Rather than promoting private school choice, as the Republican incumbent has, Biden pledged to dramatically increase federal aid to schools, including ambitious calls to triple the Title I funding targeted at students from low-income households and to “fully fund” the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

But, as Biden accepts his party’s nomination this week, there also are signs that his potential future administration wouldn’t return lock step to the education policies of President Barack Obama. And some of a Biden administration’s education policy goals could take a back seat to the pressing matter of helping schools navigate the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which may alter their operations and threaten their budgets for years to come.

Though he’s campaigned heavily on his experience as Obama’s vice president, Biden has departed on some key issues from that self-described supporter of education reform. Obama’s education department championed rigorous state education standards, encouraged states to lift their caps on public charter schools to apply for big federal Race to the Top grants, and offered charter school conversions as an improvement strategy for struggling schools.

By contrast, Biden called for a scale-back of standardized testing at a 2019 MSNBC education forum, and he criticized their use in teacher evaluations, a key policy goal of the Obama administration. Under the leadership of Biden’s campaign, Democrats formally introduced a party platform this week that criticizes high-stakes testing and calls for new restrictions on charter schools.

How much Biden’s policy would depart from the last Democratic president’s is up for debate. But the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law Obama signed at the end of his last term, may offer levers to make some policy changes.

“Your job as a vice president is to toe the line of your boss,” said Julian Vasquez Heilig, the dean of the college of education at the University of Kentucky and a board member of the Network for Public Education, a progressive advocacy group. If Biden chooses, “he can be his own person on education.”

Praise and Concern

That suggestion of a new direction has won praise from groups like national teachers’ unions, which called for the resignation of Obama’s long-serving education secretary, Arne Duncan, when Duncan advanced a push for teacher evaluations and other reforms.

National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen García called Biden and his running mate and one-time rival for the nomination, California Sen. Kamala Harris, a “dream team” that “respects educators and will listen to those who know the names of the kids in the classrooms.”

But Biden’s priorities, and the absence of discussions of school improvement during the Democratic primary, have also been met with concern from some education groups.

“If we only talk about the money side of the equation, that’s not enough by itself,” said Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform. “That’s where we need our president to be a leader and hold those institutions accountable.”

The organization, which supports charter schools and data-driven school accountability efforts, has praised Biden’s push for more resources, but it has sounded the alarm about other changes recommended in the party platform.

That platform language reflects some of Biden’s comments during the primaries. In recorded interviews with the NEA, for example, he said a lot of charter schools are “significantly underperforming” and that charter schools “cannot come at the expense of the public school.”

Neither Biden nor Harris included language on charters in their plans as candidates. But the platform language-created with input from a “unity task force” assembled by the campaigns of Biden and Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders-calls for a ban on federal funding for “for-profit charter businesses.”

The language also calls for “conditioning federal funding for new, expanded charter schools or for charter school renewals on a district’s review of whether the charter will systematically underserve the neediest students,” which has alarmed charter advocates who say the publicly funded, independently managed schools already face sufficient accountability.

Charter schools are largely governed through state and local policy. But a presidential administration can help shape public debate on the issue. And a Biden administration could scale back support for charter schools in its discretionary grant priorities and regulations or in its proposed budgets.

Time for fresh thinking! Time to build strong child-centered, community-based schools and throw off the obsession with standardized testing and privatization.

Glen Brown, retired teacher in Illinois, suggests that Trump’s ignorance has had real consequences. In fact, it is dangerous and has contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

Brown has maintained a running roll of actions Trump has taken to avoid controlling the coronavirus, updated to mid-August 2020.

Check with Worldometer for the latest count of cases and deaths. Here are the world data. The U.S. has consistently accounted for about one-quarter of all the world’s infections. Maybe one day, as Trump claims, the disease will magically disappear, but it hasn’t happened yet.