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Stop Honoring Confederate Heroes

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2020 //
93

Today is Juneteenth, a day that marks the end of slavery. Juneteenth is the day in 1865 when black people in Texas finally got the news that slavery had been abolished. There is currently a movement to make Juneteenth a national holiday. Many large corporations already recognize its importance.

Now, as the nation is rocked by demonstrations and protests against racism, is a good time to stop honoring Confederate heroes.

Education Week conducted a survey and identified some 174 schools, all in the south, that honor southern heroes, mainly Robert E. Lee. Let’s face it. The leaders of the insurrection were traitors to the United States. Their “sacred cause” was white supremacy. The war they fought to secede cost more than 600,000 lives.

Alan Singer says it’s past time to remove all the statues and memorials honoring Robert E. Lee, who violated his oath to serve his country and waged war against it.

Growing up in Houston, I attended Albert Sidney Johnston Junior High School, named for a Confederate General, the first of his rank to die in the Civil War. I didn’t know anything about him as a student, although everyone memorized the school marching song that honored his name (he died in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862).The school’s name was changed only four years ago, along with those of other schools in Houston named for heroes of the Confederacy.

Recently, the leaders of the military proposed renaming military bases that bear the names of Confederate generals. Trump flatly rejected the proposal, claiming that it would dishonor the military. Strange words from a man who ridiculed Senator John McCain because he was captured in Vietnam. Why praise generals who lost a disastrous rebellion while demeaning a war hero who refused the opportunity to be freed until the other American captives imprisoned with him were released?

Democrats are demanding the renaming of the military bases named for Confederate generals. House Democrats have vowed to attach their demand to the defense funding bill. Senator Elizabeth Warren is attaching an amendment to the Defense Authorization act requiring the renaming of the bases.

Justice Laurence Silberman, a Reagan appointee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, was outraged by Warren’s amendment. He sent out a blast email to the other judges and their clerks calling her amendment “madness.” A day later, a black clerk responded to Justice Silberman, risking his job, defending Warren’s proposal.

The Intercept reported:

“Hi Judge Silberman,” began the career-risking reply-all email, “I am one of only five black law clerks in this entire circuit. However, the views I express below are solely my own,” they went on. “Since no one in the court’s leadership has responded to your message, I thought I would give it a try.”

[M]y maternal ancestors were enslaved in Mississippi. While the laws of this nation viewed my ancestors as property, I view them as hostages. In a hostage situation, when someone does something that leads to the freeing of the hostages, I am not sure if the hostages would be concerned as to whether the person that saved them, actually intended to save them. In this instance, as people considered to be property, my ancestors would not have been involved in the philosophical and political debates about Lincoln’s true intentions, or his view on racial equality. For them, and myself, race is not an abstract topic to be debated, so in my view anything that was built to represent white racial superiority, or named after someone who fought to maintain white supremacy (or the Southern economy of slavery), see Photo of Liberty Monument attached, should be removed from high trafficked areas of prominence and placed in museums where they can be part of lessons that put them in context.

In your message, you talked about your ancestors, one that fought for the confederacy and one that fought for the Union. This seems to be a true example of a house divided. However, it is very clear what the Confederacy stood for. In 1861, at the Virginia secession convention, Henry L. Benning (for whom Fort Benning is named) in explaining the reasoning for Georgia’s decision to secede from the United States stated, “[it] was a conviction … that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery…[I]t is probable that the white race, being superior in every respect, may push the other back.” Unfortunately, in this scenario, no matter how bravely your uncle fought for the Confederacy, the foundation of his fight was a decision that he agreed more with the ideals of the Confederacy, than he did with those of the Union. And in the end, he chose the losing side of history.

Finally, I will note that the current movement to rename Government owned facilities is in line with your previous opinions on the importance of names and what they represent. In 2005, you publicly advocated for the removal of J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI Building due to the problematic material you came across in your review of his FBI files after his death. You equated it to the Defense Department being named for Aaron Burr. In view of your opinion of J. Edgar Hoover’s history and your advocacy for renaming the FBI building because of the prominence it provides Hoover’s legacy, it is very strange that you would be against renaming our military facilities, since the legacy of the Confederacy represents the same thing. This moment of confronting our nation’s racial history is too big to be disregarded based on familial ties.

The correspondence was provided to The Intercept by a member of the Court staff on the condition the identity of the clerk (who was not the source) and judges who replied be kept confidential.

After the clerk’s response came out, others spoke up, including two black judges.

Slam dunk.

This flurry of activism is a response to the outrage kindled by the murder of George Floyd. It is a response to a newly awakened public opinion. It is a testament to the work of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Rename the schools. Rename the bases. Honor heroes of freedom and democracy. Put the statues of Confederate military leaders in a museum where their words and deeds and legacy can be studied as part of American history. To be discussed but not to be honored as heroes.

Categories Accountability, History, Racism

Leonie Haimson: NYC DOE Finds $6 Million for Pearson

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2020 //
13

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, reports that the NYC Department of Education plans to award $6 million to testing giant Pearson, despite the pandemic and looming budget cuts.

She notes:

Of that six million dollars, $1.7 million is for a one -year extension of Pearson’s controversial assessment to test four-year-old children for their “giftedness” – a standardized exam which many experts say has little reliability or validity, and is highly correlated with race and class.

She reviews the long history of failure associated with Pearson tests.

Evidently, Pearson’s lobbyists are better that its tests.

Categories Accountability, New York City, Pearson, Testing

Staff at Success Academy Complain about Eva Moskowitz’s Insensitivity to Racism

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2020 //
76

A teacher at the acclaimed Success Academy charter chain in New York City publicly complained about Eva Moskowitz’s silence after the murder of George Floyd.

Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat reported:

Four days after the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, a Brooklyn Success Academy teacher emailed her network’s CEO, one of the nation’s most prominent charter school leaders, asking why she hadn’t said anything publicly.

“I am deeply hurt and shocked by your lack of words on the topic that affects so many of your employees, children and families in communities that you serve,” first-year Success Academy Flatbush teacher Fabiola St Hilaire wrote to Eva Moskowitz. “All of your black employees are paying attention to your silence.”

Moskowitz responded about an hour later, thanking St Hilaire for reaching out but also brushing her aside. “I actually opined on this subject early this am. Please take a look,” Moskowitz wrote, referring to a tweet sent the same morning. “I hope you can understand that running remote learning in the middle of a world economic shutdown has kept me focused on [Success Academy’s] immediate needs.”

Upset by the response, St Hilaire posted the email exchange on social media, thrusting New York City’s largest charter network into a wider debate about institutional racism. Some current and former employees were angry that Moskowitz seemed to dismiss the concerns of an educator of color as well as the broader movement to reckon with structural racism in the aftermath of Floyd’s killing.

Eva Moskowitz quickly backtracked when she saw the reaction among her staff to her silence and her brusque dismissal of St Hilaire’s criticism. Moskowitz was interviewed by Donald Trump as a contender for his Secretary of Education. She supported his selection of Betsy DeVos.

The exchange between Moskowitz and a first-year teacher set off a debate about institutional racism in Success Academy and its harsh no-excuses methods. Those draconian disciplinary methods were defended by Robert Pondiscio of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who is white, and by Moskowitz, who is also white. Black children need harsh discipline, they argued.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, Racism

Mercedes Schneider: As New Superintendent Takes Over, TFA Executives Head for the Exits

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2020 //
6

Thanks to the reporting of Mercedes Schneider, we have followed the travails of that state over several years of “reform” leadership: Republican Governor Jindal pushed charters and vouchers. Out-of-State money elected a pro-Jindal Board. That board selected John White as state superintendent. White was TFA and Broadies. He had worked for Joel Klein, then briefly ran the New Orleans Recovery School District. As Jindal’s chief school officer, he enthusiastically promoted charters and vouchers and made outlandish promises about what he would achieve. When Democrat John Bel Edwards was elected, he wanted to dump White, but didn’t have the votes on the board. White resigned earlier this year. The state board appointed Cade Brumley, a veteran Louisiana educator (surprise!).

As Schneider describes here, White’s team of inexperienced but well paid assistants, mostly TFA alums, headed for the exits.

She writes:

Brumley’s leadership hires tend to have both classroom and administrative experience related to a traditional ed career path; they tend to have roots in Louisiana, and they include women and people of color.

Furthermore, even though some of his admin hires represent ed reform, Brumley favors individuals with grounding in traditional teacher/admin training. And, keep in mind that all who accept a position in Brumley’s LDOE must be willing to work under a state superintendent to whom John White’s TFA-heavy, ed-reform leadership is submitting their resignations.

I find all of this very encouraging, indeed.

Categories Accountability, Louisiana, Teach for America

In the Public Interest: Charter Schools in Oakland Are Tapping into Coronavirus Relief Funds

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2020 //
12

The nonprofit, nonpartisan “In the Public Interest” joined forces with Parents United for Public Schools in Oakland to investigate whether charter schools in that city were double-dipping, taking public school money and also taking federal funds intended for small businesses. Their conclusion: Oakland charters have collected close to $19 million that was intended for small businesses.

Their joint report begins:

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense job loss, social isolation, and economic hardship. Despite falling short of what’s truly needed, both the federal government and state governments have provided relief through a number of programs, such as the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which is directed at small businesses in an effort to maintain employment.
Other programs have provided relief to public entities, including public schools. However, some charter schools—which are publicly funded but privately managed—have applied for and received PPP loans despite having no loss in public funding.1 This data brief examines PPP funding within the boundaries of just one public school district in California, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), and finds that Oakland’s charter schools have received a total of at least $18,909,300 in loans from the PPP.

The crisis has made clear that public schools are a critical resource for communities, providing information, technology, and food for children and families, even when school buildings are closed. The need for social distancing and sheltering in place has resulted in crisis education strategies that have left families desperate to return to regular schooling. In order to ensure some continuity of education, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an order maintaining full funding for all public schools, including charter schools, through the end of the school year.2 The order makes clear that the intended use of the continued funding includes paying school employees. This has enabled California public schools to continue to employ all staff with no reduction in state funding, while using additional funds to implement distance learning. In addition, Federal CARES Act funding has been granted to the state of California and will be distributed to all Local Education Agencies (LEAs) that apply and qualify.3 Also, the California State Legislature allocated $100,000,000 to all LEAs (including charter schools) for emergency measures needed to deal with the immediate crisis.4

Separate from state and federal aid for public education, the federal CARES Act established the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in order to allow small businesses (as opposed to public agencies and schools) to maintain employment. As described
by the U.S. Small Business Administration: “The Paycheck Protection Program is a loan designed to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll. SBA will forgive loans if all employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and the money is used for payroll, rent, mortgage interest, or utilities.”5 A subsequent bill extended the covered period to 24 weeks from the date of the loan’s origination, or December 31, 2020, whichever comes earlier.6

The intent of the program is clear: “With the COVID-19 emergency, many small businesses nationwide are experiencing economic hardship as a direct result of the Federal, State, and local public health measures that are being taken to minimize
the public’s exposure to the virus. These measures, some of which are government- mandated, are being implemented nationwide and include the closures of restaurants, bars, and gyms. In addition, based on the advice of public health officials, other measures, such as keeping a safe distance from others or even stay-at-home orders, are being implemented, resulting in a dramatic decrease in economic activity as the public avoids malls, retail stores, and other businesses.”7

Thus far, the PPP has been criticized for a lack of guidance and being difficult to
access for many small businesses.8 For example, Octavio Diaz, owner of the Oakland restaurant Agave Uptown, was forced in April to lay off over 60 percent of staff because the business didn’t have the financial resources to keep a full payroll.9 He’d previously reported applying for a PPP loan but was waiting for a response.10 Beninni, a men’s formalwear store in Hayward, California, was forced to close and lay off employees shortly after the area’s lockdown began.11 After waiting weeks to get an update on its PPP application, the small business finally received a loan through the program only after a reporter reached out to the lending bank for information. A May U.S. Census Bureau survey of 90,000 small businesses found that almost 40 percent had not received PPP assistance.12

While small businesses wither and die, 70% of the charter schools in Oakland have taken money from the PPP intended to help those businesses.

Please open the brief and see how charter schools are double-dipping: first, taking the money intended for public schools, then, taking the federal PPP funding intended for small businesses, even though charter schools have not lost any revenue unlike the tens of thousands of small businesses forced to close because of the pandemic.

What the charter schools have done is not illegal, but it is certainly raises ethical questions. They are taking money from the businesses that are failing and that employ the parents of their students.

As “In the Public Interest” said in a press release,

CONTACT: Jamie Horwitz 202-549-4921, jhdcpr@starpower.net & Jeremy Mohler 301-752-8413, jmohler@inthepublicinterest.org

New Report Reveals that Many of the Nation’s Charter Schools are “Double Dipping,” Taking Millions of Paycheck Protection Dollars Intended for Small Businesses and the Unemployed

Joint study by In the Public Interest and Parents United for Public Schools shows that in Oakland, Calif. alone 30 charter schools received nearly $19 million in federal PPP dollars meant for those in need, despite unchanged state public education funding.

OAKLAND – A new report released yesterday shows that millions of dollars in federal relief funds intended for those in need have been siphoned off by charter schools that have suffered no loss in state education funding while thousands of small businesses remain shuttered and their employees go without work due to the pandemic.

The report focuses on 43 charter schools located in Oakland where 70 percent of the publicly-funded but privately-managed charter schools within the boundaries of the Oakland Unified School District applied for and received federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) awards established by the federal CARES Act. Traditional public schools in Oakland and elsewhere are not eligible for PPP funding. The report, entitled Are Oakland Charter Schools Double Dipping?, was conducted by the Oakland-based Parents United for Public Schools and the nonprofit research and policy center In the Public Interest.

The findings are significant because California’s open meetings laws require board meetings and the minutes of charter schools to be made public.. In most of the country, charter school finances are less transparent, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury has refused to release the names of recipients of PPP awards. The United States has 7,000 charter schools.

“This report shows the need for more oversight and transparency in the charter school sector,” said Clare Crawford, senior policy advisor with In the Public Interest. “It’s not right for charters to act like a business on Monday and a public school on Tuesday. Having it both ways leads to double dipping and unethical raids on the public till. We deserve to have the full picture on how precious public dollars are being spent, especially now, during this time of need,” she said. “Every local public official and reporter should be asking if their charters took PPP money and how much.”

The New York Times cites the Oakland study in a story yesterday, “Charter Schools, Some With Billionaire Benefactors, Tap Coronavirus Relief,” that finds further examples of double dipping by charter schools all across the nation and documents how the charter school industry has sought federal dollars intended for private business’ struggling due to the pandemic.

Some key elements of the Parents United for Public Schools/ In the Public Interest report include:

Oakland charter schools have received a total of at least $18,909,300 in forgivable loans from the PPP.
Thirty charter schools have received PPP loans despite having no loss in public education funding.
Charter schools that received both PPP loans and CARES Act education relief funding received an average of $2,000 more per student than either Oakland Unifed School District public schools or charter schools that did not.
“It’s really concerning that so many charter schools are choosing to take these funds from local small businesses that employ Oakland families. If charter schools receive funds as a ‘public school,’ they should not then be eligible for small business loans intended to help keep families from being laid off,” said Kim Davis, a parent and co-founder of Parents United for Public Schools.

Charter schools are considered public schools under California law, as they are in many other states, yet they are also incorporated as nonprofit organizations. This has allowed them to access both public school funding and aid intended to support maintaining employment at small businesses and nonprofits.

Parents United for Public Schools is an independent, parent-led organization focused on building a strong parent voice on behalf of Oakland’s public schools. In the Public Interest is a nonprofit research and policy center that studies public goods and advocates for building popular support for public institutions that work for all of us.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Funding, Privatization

DeVos Allows Charters to Tap into Federal $$ for Start Ups

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2020 //
13

In 1994, the Clinton administration allocated $6 million to help start charter schools, a brand-new idea that had no track record and looked promising. That money was intended for teacher-led innovative schools or mom-and-pop start ups. The federal Charter Schools Program has since grown into an annual pot of $440 million, which mostly goes to corporate charter chains like IDEA and KIPP, which are rolling in dough.

The CSP is riddled with waste, as about 1/3 of the schools that were funded with federal dollars either close soon after opening or never open at all, as studies of federal data by NPE demonstrate.

Now existing charters are getting permission From the Department of Education to tap into the funds for start ups and use it to pay off coronavirus expenses. This is a direct refutation of the purpose of the law. No such fund exists to help public schools.

By now we know that DeVos uses federal funds as she wishes. She treats the CSP as her private slush fund. She creates conditions on the coronavirus relief funds that Congress never authorized. She is out of control.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Funding, Privatization

Billionaire Reed Hastings Plans Luxury Resort to Train Teachers to Think Like Him

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2020 //
30

VOX reports on billionaire Reed Hastings’ grandiose plans to build a fabulous resort in Colorado for teachers, where they will learn to love charter schools, high-stakes testing, test-based accountability for teachers, and other failed reform strategies.

Hastings has $5 billion and he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, even though California has many people who are homeless and many hotbeds of racism and injustice. So, he decided to keep spending on privatization, no doubt gladdening the heart of Betsy DeVos, and high-stakes testing.

Every one of Hastings’s favorite ideas has failed but he plans to convert teachers to follow his path by immersing them in luxurious surroundings.

If only he would read SLAYING GOLIATH, he would realize that he is wasting his money and undermining an essential democratic institution, the American public school, which nearly 90% of American families choose.

Theodore Schleifer writes in VOX:

Reed Hastings, the billionaire founder of Netflix, is quietly building a mysterious 2,100-acre luxury retreat ranch nestled in the elk-filled foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Recode has learned.

Hastings has been one of the country’s biggest donors to the education reform movement that’s trying to reshape America’s struggling school system. And now public records reveal that Hastings is personally financing a new foundation that will operate this training ground for American public school teachers, a passion project shrouded in secrecy that will expand the billionaire’s political influence.

Hastings is one of many Silicon Valley billionaires who have deployed their fortunes in the education reform movement, which calls for a greater focus on testing, tougher accountability for teachers, and the expansion of alternative schools like charters to close America’s achievement gaps and better train its future workforce. Those tech leaders, though, have had uncertain results, with the very biggest of them — Microsoft founder Bill Gates — having admitted earlier this year that he was “not yet seeing the kind of bottom-line impact we expected.” Opponents, including teachers’ unions, charge that these reformers are blaming educators for factors beyond their control, such as poverty.

The new training center, called the Retreat Land at Lone Rock, seems to be a priority for the Netflix CEO, at least based on Hastings’s level of personal involvement: He and his wife have been visiting the area since at least 2017, when they went so far as to request a face-to-face meeting with a local fire chief at his Colorado firehouse to try and smooth over any looming permitting concerns.

Hastings, whose involvement hasn’t previously been reported, declined to comment on his plans through a spokesperson.

But public records filed with the government of Park County, Colorado, and reviewed by Recode offer a glimpse at the ambitious plans for the center, which local officials expect to open as early as March 2021.

“The proposed Conference and Retreat Facility will be run as a nonprofit institute serving the public education community’s development of teachers and leadership,” a Hastings aide says in one prospectus.

One group that is expected to use the “state-of-the-art” facility is the Pahara Institute, which operates a well-known networking group and training program for activists and teachers aligned with the education-reform movement. Hastings heavily funds and serves on the board of the Pahara Institute, which currently hosts its retreats at different locations around the country rather than at a single place.

It was Pahara that initially contacted local landowners to buy the acreage before Hastings personally stepped in and decided to do it himself, said Dave Crane, a real estate broker who did the deal and gave a tour of the property to Hastings before the firehouse meeting in 2017. Pahara’s founder serves on the board of Hastings’s new foundation as well.

Retreat Land at Lone Rock will effectively function as the grounds for leadership retreats like these for teachers, principals, and nonprofit heads, according to a person close to Hastings. It will be open to both educators at traditional district public schools and those at charter schools, a favorite cause of the Netflix founder, the person said.

The center will nevertheless extend Hastings’s influence in the American education system. Although it remains unknown whether the leaders that are brought to Lone Rock will be the key people to fix America’s schools, Hastings, a private citizen, will now have the ability to choose a few leaders who agree with him and support them with his bank account and his center, giving him an outsized voice in one of America’s most fraught public policy debates.

Overlapping groups of about 30 educators at a time from across the United States are expected to enjoy the 270-room retreat center at once, staying for four days each and playing team sports, using its classrooms, and enjoying its pristine hiking trails — “maybe with pack llamas,” says another document.

Yes, poverty is the essential problem that afflicts the lives of large numbers of children. Ignore it at your peril, Mr. Hastings. Keep pursuing your vanity projects while teachers and students cry out for smaller classes, bemoan the lack of resources, weep for the loss of the arts and play, and plead for social workers, psychologists, librarians and nurses.

Mr. Hastings, you have made a lot of money–billions–but you are a foolish man.

Just think what you might do instead: fund medical centers in schools across California; fund the arts in schools; fund libraries and librarians. There are so many ways you could bring joy to children and their families. Why don’t you do something to spread goodness instead of disruption?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Testing

Texas: IDEA Charter Chain Promises to Curb Its Big Spending

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2020 //
8

The IDEA charter chain has ambitious plans to expand, with the help of more than $200 million from Betsy DeVos’s charter slush fund (also known as the federal Charter Schools Program, which was created to help start-ups, not to expand corporate empires).

The IDEA profile is a business model, not a public school model. It pushes into new markets aggressively and spends lavishly on executive perks, like leasing a private jet, first class travel, self-dealing, and season tickets for sports events. And paying huge salaries to leaders. Betsy DeVos loves the model, but it didn’t play well to the public.

When the news broke about its free-spending ways, public reaction was swift and negative.

The chain, which currently operates 92 charters and is set to expand in Houston and elsewhere, funded by taxpayers with a mission of “disrupting” and replacing public schools, was co-founded by Tom Torkelsen and JoAnn Gama.

The board rewarded them handsomely. In 2018-19: Torkelsen was paid $817,395, CFO Wyatt Truscheit received $507,887, Gama collected $482,930 for Gama, and six others earned at least $250,000. When Torkelsen recently stepped down as CEO, he was promised severance pay of $900,000. Not exactly the kinds of salaries paid in the public sector. IDEA gets high test scores the usual charter way: by recruiting the students it wants and setting standards high enough to push out those it doesn’t want.

The Houston Chronicle wrote:
When the leaders of IDEA Public Schools gathered last December to vote on an eight-year lease for a private jet, the charter network’s then-board chair, David Guerra, thought of the nearly $15-million deal in business terms.

As president and CEO of International Bank of Commerce, Guerra and his team had used six corporate jets to grow the multibillion-dollar company’s business beyond its Laredo-area headquarters. The same premise would hold true for IDEA, he reasoned, as the charter school network based in the Rio Grande Valley rapidly expanded across Texas, Louisiana and Florida.

“We cannot fulfill our commitment to such a large geographic area without having this type of transportation,” the retired banking chief told IDEA’s governing board in December.

IDEA board members unanimously approved the lease, but reversed the decision two weeks later after charter school opponents and some of the network’s supporters denounced the aircraft as an irresponsible extravagance.

The episode triggered a wave of headlines, oversight changes and soul-searching at the state’s largest charter school, which now is grappling with how to maintain its corporate-like culture while abiding by some more-traditional expectations about how public school districts should be run, IDEA leaders said last week…

Beyond the charter jet lease, IDEA has drawn scrutiny in the past several months for multiple financial practices: spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on tickets and luxury boxes at San Antonio’s AT&T Center; making business deals with members of IDEA’s leadership and their relatives; and reaching a separation agreement with co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson that will net him $900,000 following his resignation in May.

IDEA officials do not appear to have violated any laws, and the charter’s leaders have defended each practice at various points.

Still, IDEA’s governing board announced several reforms last month. They include banning private air travel, curbing executive benefits, ending business deals with leaders and family members, and requiring additional spending approvals from the governing board and chief financial officer.

“We don’t want to have execution that’s just like a traditional school district, because we want to have innovation and take some risks and be more aggressive,” IDEA Board Chair Al Lopez said. “But after 20 years of policies and practices helped us get to the point we’re at, we felt like we were at an inflection point.”

The stakes are high not just for IDEA, but the entire charter school movement.

Advocates for traditional public schools have seized on IDEA’s spending as an example of lax oversight of charters, which largely are funded by taxpayers. Texas American Federation of Teachers leaders blasted IDEA officials for the jet lease, accusing them of “flying adults around the state” instead of directly funding classroom programs. State Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, deemed IDEA’s practices “nonsense” that “absolutely underscores the problem…”

“IDEA has operated outside the public eye with little transparency while still receiving taxpayer dollars — and it shows,” said Patti Everitt, an education policy and research consultant who monitors Texas charter school operations. “IDEA can’t have it both ways…”

The charter’s leaders credit IDEA’s success, in part, to a culture that borrows from the business, nonprofit and higher education worlds. The organization employs a regimented, highly centralized model that emphasizes student and employee performance data.

Critics, however, argue the network indirectly screens out children with greater academic and behavioral needs by emphasizing advanced-level courses, inflating the organization’s results. As an example, they note IDEA’s enrollment of students with disabilities totaled 5.4 percent in 2018-19, compared to 9.6 percent in other Texas public schools.

Still, IDEA schools remain in high demand, helping fuel the network’s ambitious approach to expansion. IDEA added more more students in the past five years than any other Texas charter operators, and it plans to hit 100,000 students across the southern United States by 2022-23.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Texas

No, School Choice is NOT “the Civil Rights Issue of Our Time”

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2020 //
15

In his speech about reforming policing, Trump veered off into a bizarre claim that school choice is the “civil rights issue of our time.” See the video here. At a time when hundreds of thousands of people are demonstrating for social and economic justice and against police brutality and racism, it is odd to hear Trump veer off into school choice as the solution for the evils that stain our society.

We have heard this statement before, many times. President Obama said it; Arne Duncan said it; Mitt Romney said it; Betsy DeVos says it often; and Trump said it before in his first State of the Union address to Congress after the 2016 election.

Let me be clear: School choice is NOT the civil rights issue of our time.

Civil rights is the civil rights issue of our time.

By civil rights, I mean the right to vote without intimidation or voter suppression.

I mean the right to equal treatment by the police and the courts and equality before the law without regard to one’s race or economic status.

I mean the right to attend a well-resourced public school that offers an excellent education.

I mean the right to acquire as much education as one desires, without regard to one’s income.

I mean the right to good medical care, so that one’s income doesn’t determine access to health care.

I mean the right to a decent standard of living.

School choice is most certainly not a “civil right,” because it exacerbates all kinds of segregation–by income, by race, by religion, and by social status. School choice undercuts equality of educational opportunity.

Civil rights is the civil rights issue of our time.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, School Choice, Trump

Pawan Dhingra on “Hyper Education” and Its Consequences

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2020 //
9

I recently read Pawan Dhingra’s new book Hyper Education, which explores the competitiveness that some parents feel about their children’s schooling and their fear that their children might be “falling behind.” This pressure, as many here have noted, makes children feel stressed out and deprives them of imaginative and creative activities. I invited Professor Dhingra to write a précis of his book for readers of the blog, and he kindly obliged.

Hyper Education and The Attack on Public Schools

Attacks on the public school take many forms, some of them even outside of the school system. For-profit tutoring centers like Kumon, Mathnasium, etc. have a role to play in educating children. But how big of a role and how much they should be supported by our federal government – that’s a different question. They have become some of the fastest growing companies in the country and show no sign of slowing down, especially under Covid, with significant implications for our public schools.

While one might imagine that it’s mostly children in learning centers who need support catching up to grade level, more and more it is children in higher-income families looking to get ahead. For my new book, Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough, I spent time with many parents, educators, learning center directors, children, and more around the pursuit of education outside of school.

Due to people like Bill Gates, parents are told that their schools are failing their children and cannot be trusted. As parents seek external for-profit learning options in response, it erodes the centrality of the public school. Even if we could get equal funding for our schools and avoid budget cuts, we would find growing educational inequality as some families afford to take advantage of these options.

Teachers see the effects in their classrooms of extracurricular academics. A third-grade teacher sees stressed and anxious children who are, “not talking. Being almost non-verbal. Overreacting to a small problem.” A health educator told me, “The thing that breaks my heart – because I’m an educator, I love to learn – is when I talked to high school students about what do you like about school. [They] respond, ‘Nothing. I hate it.’”

It is not only students who can suffer. Children in the classroom who have been exposed to such different amounts of knowledge complicates the entire teaching effort. Parents start to disrespect how much their kids are getting from school. A second-grade teacher was frustrated with the lack of appreciation. “I think if parents come one day, they would go, ‘Those teachers deserve a medal! How do they do it every day?’ And we do.”

I am not against students pursuing academics outside of school, and in fact I think it can be a wonderful thing for children depending on their interests, other commitments, and family atmosphere. But what we are seeing is a new normal in education that is prone to grow under Covid as parents wonder about their schools’ academic content. We need to understand what is motivating parents to seek extra learning, how the children feel, and hear from teachers. But right now, these voices are talking past one another. Only then can we work towards a school system that values compassion, solidarity, and equity.

Pawan Dhingra is a professor Of American Studies at Amherst College with over 20 years of teaching experience. His most recent book is Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough. He can be reached at pdhingra@amherst.edu. You can learn more at http://www.pawanhdhingra.com and follow him @phdhingra1

Categories Accountability, Competition, Education Reform
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