Archives for category: Accountability
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ProPublica: Contractor Wins Federal $$ to Build the Wall, Which May Fall into the River

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2020 //
6

ProPublica wrote about a private contractor who wanted to help “build the Wall.” He won a federal contract for $1.7 billion and quickly erected three miles of Trump’s Wall. Problem is that it’s now at risk of falling into the Rio Grande River.

Working in collaboration with the Texas Tribune, ProPublica wrote:

Tommy Fisher billed his new privately funded border wall as the future of deterrence, a quick-to-build steel fortress that spans 3 miles in one of the busiest Border Patrol sectors.

Unlike a generation of wall builders before him, he said he figured out how to build a structure directly on the banks of the Rio Grande, a risky but potentially game-changing step when it came to the nation’s border wall system.

Fisher has leveraged his self-described “Lamborghini” of walls to win more than $1.7 billion worth of federal contracts in Arizona.

But his showcase piece is showing signs of runoff erosion and, if it’s not fixed, could be in danger of falling into the Rio Grande, according to engineers and hydrologists who reviewed photos of the wall for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. It never should have been built so close to the river, they say

Categories Accountability, Failure, For-Profit, Trump

Ken Bernstein: The Practical Problems of Reopening Safely

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2020 //
27

Ken Bernstein has been a teacher for many years. He blogs at the daily Kos as Teacher Ken.

He writes here about the practical problems of reopening, such as social distancing in classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, and on buses.

This is what he writes about classrooms:

CLASSROOMS — It is impossible in most schools to have 6 foot between students. Last year I had up to 30 seniors in a room at a time, with a social distance rarely even 2 feet between them. To get to 6 feet I would have to limit the number of students to around 10-12. To even get to a 3 foot distance in between would probably require a doubling of the number of classrooms, even maximizing use (teachers floating into rooms where a teacher has a period off). Very few buildings have that kind of excess space. And even if you could get to 6 foot distance, how do students maintain that coming in and going out of the room without creating problems in the hallways?

Categories Accountability, Health

Meet Andre Perry, a Superstar in Education!

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2020 //
7

I had two recent contacts with Andre Perry, and I fell in love with him. I’m no threat to his wife because I’m 82 and married.

We met for the first time on this Zoom conversation.

As you will see, he is candid, honest, open, smart, and charming. I don’t always fall for guys just because they have a great smile, but Andre surprised me.

I thought he would be super-serious but he wasn’t.

He talked about his childhood. He talked about his life as a charter leader in New Orleans. He talked about his disaffection with the white reformers and philanthropists who thought that what the schools of New Orleans needed most was to fire black teachers and staff.

The second contact I had with Andre was reading his new book, Know Your Price.

I got to know Andre by reading his book.

More important, I got Andre’s message about seeing the world through a different lens.

We grew up in very different circumstances. I had two parents and a nuclear family. He had a different kind of family, a loving family.

What you will learn from his book is to see the world differently.

That’s a gift.

What you will see is a man who thinks for himself, without regard to orthodoxy.

Watch our conversation. Watch me become charmed by this brilliant young man.

Buy his book and you too will be transformed.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Justice, Network for Public Education, Racism

Pennsylvania: The Death Spiral of York City Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2020 //
7

This is a powerful editorial written by the editorial board of the York Dispatch.

The Republican-controlled legislature has imposed a funding system that is literally forcing the school district to starve in order to survive.

It is an outrage.

This should be a cover story in every national magazine. It isn’t, because it’s all too common.

When we starve our schools, we destroy the education of the children who attend them.

The editorial says:

York City School District is trapped in a death spiral.

It’s stuck under years-long state management that limits how money can be spent. Charter schools are annually sucking more than $25 million from its budget. Miserly state lawmakers foist the responsibility for funding public education on local officials, thereby fostering a system that rewards students in rich communities and punishes those in poor ones. And York City taxpayers are fed up with paying taxes that are up to double what’s paid in richer districts with more valuable property.

It’s no wonder that, under these conditions, York City Superintendent Andrea Berry presented a slash-and-burn budget for the 2020-21 school year containing $6.2 million in cuts. And, sadly, it’s no surprise the district’s school board went even further, last week approving a budget that axed 44 positions, including 32 teachers.

And, even so, York City’s 2020-21 budget still boosted taxes. That’s how bad things really are.

Really, what choice did district officials have?

York City school officials are trapped in a budgetary spiral that’s plagued poor, largely minority communities throughout the U.S. for decades. Under-represented at the statehouse, their calls for funding reform fall flat.

Like anything stuck in a trap, eventually the grisly choice of gnawing off one’s leg is the last, best available option.

Easily available metrics, such as test scores, drive the moneyed classes from the city, exacerbating blight and crashing property values.

The poverty increases the demand for not-for-profits, which, in turn, remove more property from the tax rolls.

And, all the while, Republicans in the state Legislature tout the myth of “school choice,” a particularly insidious bit of libertarian conservative dogma — concocted in response to the integration of Southern schools — that conspires to privatize the American school system and funnel taxpayer dollars to religious institutions.

The results will be devastating for York City’s students and society at large.

Interested in the performing arts? Too bad.

Hoping to grow from an introduction in the humanities? Those options are even more limited now.

Programs such as these are, in a very real sense, the foundation of a well-rounded education, one that prepares students to take their place as active citizens in a representative republic. But, more often than not, society has decided that the liberal arts aren’t for poor kids.

Make no mistake, York City’s plight is one destroying urban districts throughout the country. Just ask Connecticut Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher, who, in 2016, wrote a blistering ruling that attacked the very foundation of the system under which public schools are funded in this country.

His 90-page ruling was an indictment of the disparity between rich districts and poor ones that the U.S. funding model breeds.

“So change must come. The state has to accept that the schools are its blessing and its burden, and if it cannot be wise, it must at least be sensible,” Moukawsher wrote.

And yet, with the inherent systemic flaws well-established, school districts such as York City remain trapped and must eat itself just to survive.

Officials there had little choice this past week.

But the fact that they were left without any other options is neither moral nor just.

Thanks to Peter Greene for sharing this blistering but accurate editorial.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Funding, Inequity, Pennsylvania

The Report of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force: Good But Weak Pablum on Charters

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2020 //
75

The Biden and Sanders campaigns created a “Unity Task Force” to make recommendations on important issues.

Here is their report with recommendations. It is 110 pages.

There is much to like in the report, proposing an agenda to reverse four years of savage attacks by Trump on the environment, on the rule of law, on government itself.

The education portion aPears on pp. 22-27.

It contains welcome pledges of increased funding, more equitable funding, universal early childhood education, a commitment to racial integration of schools, a commitment to making higher education affordable (including tuition-free community colleges), debt relief for college graduates, and other worthy goals and policies.

On the two issues where Democrats found themselves committed to Republican strategies, the panel has a mixed record.

It took a clear stand against the high-stakes standardized testing that is a legacy of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law of 2001-2002:

The evidence from nearly two decades of education reforms that hinge on standardized test scores shows clearly that high-stakes annual 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 evidence-based approaches to student assessment that rely on multiple and holistic measures that better represent student achievement.

That’s a step forward, especially since so many high-profile DemocratIc Senators voted to retain high-stakes testing when NCLB turned into the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. So, we can celebrate the fact that the Unity Task Force is prepared to discard the Bush policy based on the non-existent “Texas Miracle.”

The other issue that has been a huge burden for public schools is the Republican claim that competition improves public schools. This faulty idea has spurred the development of privately managed charter schools and vouchers. Charters have a flimsy record. Those that get high test scores are known for their low enrollments of students with disabilities and English language learners, as well as their harsh discipline policies (no excuses). Many Republicans love charters because they are a stepping stone to vouchers. They wean people away from public schools and encourage parents to think of themselves as consumers, not citizens. Thanks to private management, charters have been plagued by multiple scandals involving waste, fraud abuse, and bloated administrative overhead. The teacher turnover rate at charters is very large in some high-performing charters, as much as 50% every year. The virtual charter industry is a disaster that has been associated with multimillion dollar embezzlement.

The Network for Public Education published two reports documenting the failure of the federal Charter Schools Program, which hands out $440 million every year to open new charters and expand existing ones. I have referred to the CSP as Betsy DeVos’s personal slush fund because she has given huge grants to corporate charter chains like KIPP and IDEA. THE NPE reports (Asleep at the Wheel and Still Asleep at the Wheel) demonstrate that nearly 40% of the charters funded by the CSP either never opened or closed soon after opening. During the campaign, Senator Sanders called for elimination of the federal a Charter Schools Program.

Five facts stand out about charter schools:

1. On average, they don’t get better results than public schools.
2. They drain resources and the students they choose from public schools that take everyone, including the kids the charters don’t want.
3. About 90% of charters are non-union, by design.
4. Charters are amply funded by billionaires like the Walton family, Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, Reed Hastings, and Michael Bloomberg.
5. If charters helped solve the problems of American education, then Detroit would be one of the outstanding districts in the nation, instead it is one of the nation’s lowest performing districts.

Why should the federal government spend $440 million every year on new charters and on expanding corporate charter chains?

Given that background, you can understand why I think the Unity Task Force statement on charters is watery pablum.

Here it is in its entirety:

Charter schools were originally intended to be publicly funded schools with increased flexibility in program design and operations. Democrats believe that education is a public good and should not be saddled with a private profit motive, which is why we will ban for-profit private charter businesses from receiving federal funding. And we recognize the need for more stringent guardrails to ensure charter schools are good stewards of federal education funds. We support measures to increase accountability for charter schools, including by requiring all charter schools to meet the same standards of transparency as traditional public schools, including with regard to civil rights protections, racial equity, admissions practices, disciplinary procedures, and school finances. We will call 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. And Democrats oppose private school vouchers and other policies that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from the public school system.

Nothing is said here that would displease the hedge fund managers and billionaires who support charters. Even Betsy DeVos must be smiling to see the Biden-Sanders task force endorse school choice, which was birthed by southern governors resisting the Brown decision. It’s very sad to see a task force of Democratic leaders giving their blessing to the southern strategy. (Read Steve Suitts’ new book on that sordid history: “Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Legacy.”)

Taking a stand against “for-profit charters” is piffle. Arizona is the only state that allows for-profit charters. Nothing is said in this statement about banning for-profit management corporations, which manage large numbers of “nonprofit” charters all over the country.

And notice that the task force says nothing about terminating the federal Charter Schools Program, as Sanders recommended, guaranteeing that the government will continue to spend $440 million (or more) to open more non-union charters to compete with public schools. Excluding “for-profit charters” from the federal CSP is good news for KIPP, IDEA, and other “nonprofit” corporate charter chains that are bankrupting local public schools. This recommendation was made with full knowledge of the long-run failure of this program.

Of course, I will vote for Joe Biden, despite this weak-kneed capitulation to the Republican-dominated charter lobbyists. But I won’t hide my disappointment.

The failure of the task force to challenge the charter industry and stand up for public schools as the foundation stone of our democracy is troubling and is an embarrassment to the Biden campaign.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization, Special Education, Standardized Testing

Mercedes Schneider: A Parent at Success Academy Tells All

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2020 //
13

A parent of two children at the Success Academy charter chain in New York City reaches out to Mercedes Schneider in Louisiana to spill the beans about the chain’s efforts to kick her children out.

The teachers and administrators made it clear that her children should find another school, but she stubbornly hung on. They weren’t problem children, but the older child was “average,” and the younger one needed extra attention.

That was enough to cause the chain to try to shed them, but their mother ignored all the efforts to push them out.

When the pandemic struck and school went virtual, SA was no more nimble than the public schools. The mother realized that SA is all about grading students, not teaching them.

Categories Accountability, Harlem Success Academy, Special Education, Testing

Ohio: Audit Finds Misspending and Conflict of Interest at Richard Allen Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2020 //
3

Once again, a state audit has uncovered waste and misspent funding at a charter chain, in this case, the Richard Allen Charter Schools in Ohio. Among other findings, the head of the school leased a Maserati with public funds.

A new state audit of the Richard Allen charter schools includes multiple findings of improperly spent money in 2016-17, and allegations of ethics violations and conflicts of interest that have triggered an ongoing special investigation.

The audit comes 15 months after the Dayton Daily News published an investigation into lack of oversight at Richard Allen, which operated four schools in 2016-17 and now has buildings on Salem Avenue in Dayton and Shuler Avenue in Hamilton.

Last year, the state attorney general’s office did not know that Michelle Thomas — whom the state sued, alleging $2.2 million in misspending — was still running the schools.Thomas, who is still the Richard Allen superintendent, on Tuesday called the audit process “a complete farce.”

School leadership “strongly objected” to the state auditor’s findings in their official response.

Auditor of State Keith Faber’s office said Tuesday that it stands by its work.

The documents released Tuesday cover the 2016-17 school year, as multiple years of Richard Allen audits have been delayed.

The audit’s findings include:

• The schools overpaid their former management company (the Institute of Management and Resources, which was also run by Thomas) by $852,618 in 2016-17 — $139,277 for Richard Allen Academy, $613,870 for Richard Allen II, $15,686 for Richard Allen III in Hamilton and $83,785 for Richard Allen Prep.

A finding for recovery seeking repayment of those funds was issued against IMR, which filed for bankruptcy protection more than two years ago, and against former treasurer Brian Adams and eight school board members: Alphonse Allen, Michael Brown, Gerald Cooper, Laquetta Cortner, Wanda Mills, Lonnie Norwood, Rhonda Ragland and Kelli Vaughn.

• The school also overpaid those eight board members by $1,110 to $1,375 each for attending meetings. The state filed findings for recovery against those eight and Adams for a total of $10,725 on that charge.

• Thomas improperly served as the superintendent of Richard Allen schools while serving as director of IMR, the school’s management company.As the Dayton Daily News reported last year, the audit shows IMR leased a 2015 Maserati for Thomas, while claiming that Thomas made the lease payments. But elsewhere in the audit, the state makes clear that IMR “failed to provide a detailed accounting” of the services it provided to the school, bringing into question how its management fees were spent.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Scandals

House Democrats to Trump and DeVos: We Won’t Let You Defund Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2020 //
10

Leading Democrats in the House control the federal government’s appropriations. They have the power of the purse, given to the House of Representatives by the Constitution (do Donald and Betsy know that?). They have a message for Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos: Bo bullying.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 9, 2020

CONTACT
Katelynn Thorpe (DeLauro), 202-225-1599
Bob Schwalbach (Sablan), 202-309-5787

Chairs DeLauro and Sablan Respond to Trump Administration’s Threats to Defund Public Education

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, and Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (CNMI), Chair of the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education and Labor Subcommittee released the following statement on the Trump Administration’s threats to defund public education if schools do not fully reopen:

“The Trump administration attempting to utilize desperately needed relief aid to bully schools into prematurely opening is shameful and reckless. Once again, this administration is prioritizing its political agenda over the health and safety of our nation’s children. Congress has not and will not grant the administration the authority to withhold federal funds from local school districts that are following the advice of health experts to safely reopen. Any forthcoming relief package will require the administration promptly and faithfully deliver this aid to public schools.

“We refuse to allow the president or Secretary DeVos to take advantage of a global pandemic to dismantle public education. Parents, teachers, and health experts want schools to reopen safely, and House Democrats are working to invest the resources needed to do just that.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Funding, Trump

Palm Beach County: This Video Explains Why the Pandemic Is Surging in Red States

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2020 //
74

Want to know why Florida, Texas, and Arizona are the new hot spots for the coronavirus?

Watch this video and you will see and hear why some people refuse to protect themselves and others.

What would Dr.Fauci say?

 

Categories Accountability, Florida, Health, Religion, Science

Kevin Welner on Trump’s Failure to Make It Safe to Open Schools

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2020 //
11

Kevin Welner is the director of the National Education Policy Center and a Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

He writes:

The definition of chutzpah, according to the old joke, is the kid who kills his parents and then asks the judge for mercy because he’s an orphan. President Trump has added a twist on the joke: the kid who kills his parents and then complains that they don’t drive him to school.

When the European Union was hit early and hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, its member countries took the necessary steps to drive down their infection numbers. Through the now commonly understood mitigation steps such as social distancing, masks, and testing plus isolation, once-devastated countries like Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium now regularly report daily deaths in the single digits. In contrast, the death rates in the US have doggedly remained around 500 per day, with infection rates again climbing upward. While EU countries urgently buckled down, our corresponding urgency was to reopen bars, tattoo parlors, and hair salons. And we bizarrely managed to turn mask-refusal into a political statement. That difference between the EU and the US is one reason why they can now take cautious steps to return to normal-ish life while we drunkenly stagger toward an uncertain future.

President Trump can’t be exclusively blamed for all of the US failures, but his policies, public statements, and actions set us apart from countries that responded with greater urgency and wisdom. Now he’s threatening to cut off federal funding to schools if they don’t return to in-person instruction this fall. His framing is overtly political: “In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!” he tweeted on Wednesday morning.
Interestingly, the timing of this tweet corresponded with the publication of a front-page article in Wednesday’s New York Times about how Sweden’s decision to not impose social distancing has been a misadventure, costing thousands of lives and doing little to sustain the economy. The other three countries name-checked in the Trump tweet are similarly instructive. Denmark and Norway responded strongly even before the virus attacked there; the two countries together account for fewer than 900 deaths total, and the current infection rates are negligible. Germany was hit hard around April, with some days recording 300 or more deaths, but its serious response quickly lowered the spread of the disease. The current daily death rate across Germany is in the single digits.

So, yes, these countries and others are now able to open their schools. But they first laid the groundwork. Ideally, we can do so as well. Any political considerations – for or against the election of a given presidential candidate – should be irrelevant. As the President’s tweet correctly pointed out, re-opening schools (in person) is important for children and families. Moreover, infection, disease and transmission risks are lower for the children and youth who would be attending K-12 schools. For this reason, as well as the importance of education, the American Academy of Pediatrics has called for schools to reopen if possible.

This is, quite reasonably, a risk analysis – one that takes into account benefits as well as costs of in-person schooling at this time. Last spring’s experience illustrated the many important roles played by our public schools and the urgent need for in-person schooling. (Although, ironically, both President Trump and Secretary DeVos have questioned the value of education provided in public schools.) Recently in the Answer Sheet, Carol Burris made a compelling case for re-opening, as did Emily Oster in the Atlantic.

Yet no compelling case of societal benefits will suffice if children, parents, teachers and other school staff feel that school attendance is not worth the personal risk. Because of such concerns, substantially more parents are looking at homeschooling for the fall. For-profit online schooling companies (which, along with other software companies, have been marketing aggressively) are also apparently experiencing a boost – notwithstanding extraordinarily poor outcomes. We can expect that many teachers will similarly weigh their personal risks and, particularly in cases of older teachers or those with other risk factors or who are more financially secure, opt against teaching before it is safer to return.

President Trump himself can make in-person reopening more likely and more successful. Most obviously, he can urge all people in the U.S. to wear a mask when in public – and he can set the example by doing so himself. Legislatively, he can work with his allies in Congress to provide the $200 billion in federal stimulus funding needed to cover estimated shortfalls in state and local funding for P-12 education over the next two years. The nation’s public schools are facing major funding cut-backs at a time when the President and the rest of us are asking them to do much more – in terms of addressing greater student needs and in terms of virus mitigation and social distancing.

In short, the chutzpah of the President’s current push for in-person schooling in the fall is that he, more than anyone else, has created the conditions that make such reopening so difficult and risky – and he, more than anyone else, has it in his power to ease that difficulty and that risk.

Categories Accountability, Health, Safety, Trump
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