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Valerie Strauss: Betsy DeVos Expresses Her Contempt for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2019 //
30

 

Valerie Strauss is not surprised yet disappointed that Betsy DeVos kicked off her “back to school tour” at a religious school in Milwaukee, flaunting her contempt for the vast majority of students who attend public schools. By doing so, she showed her agenda: privatization of public schools and transfer of public money to religious schools.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/16/where-betsy-devos-started-her-back-to-school-tour-says-it-all-about-her-agenda/

It is ironic that she chose Milwaukee to demonstrate the benefits of school choice. Milwaukee has had choice for three decades: charters, vouchers, and a shrinking public school sector.

All three sectors are faring poorly. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Milwaukee is one of the lowest performing cities in the nation.  Students in religious schools, charters, and public schools are doing poorly.

Competition raised no boats. Milwaukee demonstrates the failure of school choice.

Betsy DeVos either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, Education Reform, Milwaukee, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Cory Booker’s Long and Profitable Friendship with Betsy DeVos, and Why It Ended

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2019 //
27

 

Cory Booker was recently interviewed by the Washington Post, and he was asked about his past support for vouchers and his friendship with Betsy DeVos. 

He insisted that he turned against vouchers in 2006, and he barely remembered any connection to DeVos. When someone asked if he had flown to Michigan in 2000 at the request of Dick and Betsy DeVos to support their voucher referendum, he at first denied it, then when shown a tape, he said he didn’t remember it.

He opposed DeVos’ nomination to be Secretary of Education in 2017.

DeVos’s allies are stunned by what they call his turnabout. They view Booker’s effort to distance himself from her and her agenda as a betrayal. 

Now that it is politically inconvenient, he has distanced himself from the issue and those who helped launch his political career,” said William E. Oberndorf, who was chairman of the American Education Reform Council when DeVos and Booker were on the board. “Cory once told me that his father used to say to him, ‘Never forget the girl who brought you to the dance.’ I can only conclude that Cory not only forgot one of the girls who brought him to the dance, he missed his . . . moment to stand up for an issue he always said he believed in.” 

Booker’s advocacy for vouchers won him the financial support of conservative Republicans who were delighted to see a black Democratic Mayor supporting their cause.

Booker’s political career took off as a parade of wealthy philanthropists, hedge fund managers and others who supported DeVos’s “school choice” viewpoint poured money into his campaigns and pet projects. 

In 2000, with their voucher referendum on the ballot, the DeVos family invited Booker to debate the legislative director of the ACLU. She kept a tape of the debate and shared it with the Post. The voucher proposal went down to a crushing defeat by 3-1.

In September 2000, Booker delivered a blistering pro-voucher speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy group. 

Booker’s 2006 race for mayor of Newark won the support of many conservative Republicans. He proposed tuition tax credits (a form of voucher) and went all-in for charters.

When he ran for the Senate in 2014 in a special election, he was helped by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who held a fundraiser for him.

As recently as May 2016, Booker appeared again before the group that DeVos chaired, the American Federation for Children. After DeVos delivered a speech defending herself against attacks from Democrats, Oberndorf warmly introduced Booker, praising his commitment to school choice.

Booker spoke proudly about the growing number of students in Newark’s charter schools, saying, “This mission of this organization is the mission of our nation. . . . I have been involved with this organization for 10 years and I have seen the sacred honor of those here.” 

As Booker finished his speech, the audience gave him a standing ovation. To DeVos and her allies, it seemed that Booker was still firmly in the fold, according to Oberndorf. 

But a year later, he opposed DeVos’ nomination.

Booker’s vote shattered his career-long alliance with DeVos and stunned her supporters. 

“Cory gained a great deal of political support thanks to his association with Betsy and other supporters,” said Mitchell, the president of the American Education Reform Council when Booker and DeVos were board members. “His abandonment of school choice and of Betsy makes it clear that his professed commitment to the issue and his friendship with her were fueled by political ambition, not principle.” 

Betsy helped to fund his political career. But it was no longer convenient to be her friend.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: School Grades Accurately Measure Poverty, Not School Quality

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2019 //
15

During the Clinton presidential campaign, Bill Clinton’s staff used this phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

In current discussions about education, the phrase should be, “It’s poverty, stupid.”

Jan Resseger demonstrates how precisely Ohio’s school grades measure poverty, not school quality. 

She begins:

On Tuesday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published a stunning analysis, by the newspaper’s data analyst Rich Exner, of the school district grades awarded by the state of Ohio on the state report cards released last week.  The new report cards are based on data from the 2018-2019 school year.  I encourage you to follow the link to look at Exner’s series of bar graphs, which, like this one, present a series of almost perfect downward staircases, with “A” grades for school districts in communities with high median income and “F” grades for the school districts in Ohio’s poorest communities.

The correlation of academic achievement with family income has been demonstrated now for half a century, but policymakers, like those in the Ohio legislature who are debating punitive school district takeovers, prefer to blame public school teachers and administrators instead of using the resources of government to assist struggling families who need better access to healthcare, quality childcare, better jobs, and food assistance.

Yet no matter how many times the pernicious effects of poverty are documented, politicians and policymakers prefer to ignore it and pretend that school choice can take the place of health care, nutrition, sound housing, good jobs, and other basic needs.

Ohio’s school district grades arrived this week. At the same time, and with less fanfare, arrived a series of reports on the level of federal spending on children, reports documenting that, as Education Week‘s Andrew Uifusa explains: “The share of the federal budget that goes toward children, including education spending, dipped to just below 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in 2018—the lowest level in the decade.”….

A new report this month from the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Children and Families in Trouble, examines the persistence of child poverty and the federal government’s failure to address it: “Poverty in the United States continued a sluggish decline in 2018, falling to 11.8 percent, with children and young adults still experiencing the highest rates.  Child poverty (ages 0-18) and young adult poverty (ages 18-24) remained unacceptably high at 16.2 percent and 15 percent respectively with alarmingly large racial and ethnic disparities in poverty.  Young children, under age 5, remain the poorest of all, at 17.7 percent….”  “Racial disparities are persistent, stark, and caused by structural factors… Black and Hispanic children are more likely to be poor (29.5 and 23.7 percent respectively) compared to 8.9 percent of non-Hispanic white children, despite high levels of work among their families.”

Charters and vouchers address none of these issues.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform

Eric Blanc: Why Doesn’t Elizabeth Warren Have a K-12 Plan?

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2019 //
63

 

Eric Blanc asks in Jacobin why Elizabeth Warren does not have a plan for K-12 schooling. She has expressed various positions on education but her overall policy about testing, charter schools, and accountability are murky at best. He questions how different they are from the Bush-Obama strategies.

Blanc recently wrote a comprehensive book about the wave of teachers’ strikes of 2018-19 called Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. During the strikes, he traveled the nation to talk to strike leaders and striking teachers to understand what was at stake.

He writes:

Elizabeth Warren has a commendably progressive platform on most issues. But her past approach to public education has been closer to that of free-market reformers than most people realize.

The Massachusetts senator’s track record on education has received little scrutiny. Not only was Warren until recently a proponent of market-driven education reform and so-called teacher accountability, but her current platform silences, staff appointments, and political equivocations raise questions about her commitment to reversing the billionaire-funded onslaught against public schools…

There are good reasons to doubt that a Warren presidency would reverse the policies of privatization and education reform that have decimated American’s school system since the 1990s. For someone whose campaign motto is “Warren has a plan for that,” it’s noteworthythat she has not yet issued any plan for K-12 schools — in contrast with Bernie Sanders’ ambitious Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education.

Much of what we do know about Warren’s past and present education proposals, as well as the composition of her staff, should be a cause for concern for teachers, students, and parents.

If Warren wants the support of public school teachers and parents, she must issue a plan that clarifies her plans on testing and privatization.

She needs to be crystal clear about whether she would eliminate the federal mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8, a leftover from George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, which has been an expensive dud. The testing has enriched the testing industry but had no effect on student scores.

Warren needs to take a stand on the federal Charter Schools Program, which is Betsy DeVos’ slush fund for corporate charter chain that are already amply funded by billionaires.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Privatization, School Choice

New York Plans to Increase Number of Tests So Students Are Ready for State Tests

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2019 //
41

 

The New York City Council Committee on Education held a hearing to discuss overtesting in the schools, and the Department of Education’s chief academic officer announced a plan to increase testing to be sure students are ready for the state test.

The Department will add four off-the-shelf standardized tests to replace the school-selected interim assessments.

New testing requirements are in the offing for city schools—even as teachers, students and advocates blasted a culture of excessive exams at a City Council hearing Tuesday.

City Education Department officials said schools may soon be required to test students several times a year to see how they’re doing before the high-stakes, state-mandated exams arrive at the end of the year.

The irony wasn’t lost on City Council Member Mark Treyger (D – Brooklyn), who convened the hearing.

“We just had a whole discussion on the impact test have on our schools,” Treyger said, “and we’re saying we’re going to implement another one.”

Mayor Bill DeBlasio controls the Department of Education.

it seems as though most of the school year will focus on standardized tests.

 

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, New York City, Standardized Testing

North Carolina: School Grades Measure Income, Not School Quality

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2019 //
9

Public Schools First in North Carolina posted an analysis of the grades given to schools by the state, based mostly on test scores. Not surprisingly, the school grades measured income, not school quality, since standardized tests measure income.

School Performance Grades

School Performance Grades

Source: N&O analysis of Public Instruction data

School performance grades started in 2013-14 modeled after a program in Florida started by Gov. Jeb Bush. All North Carolina public schools, including charters, have received A-F performance grades since 2013. 

Critics of a single school measurement believe that grades:

  • Do not reflect the learning in our schools
  • Undervalue student growth and other important measures of school quality
  • Could result in more attention to borderline students while underserving the lowest and highest performing students
  • Are often used by privatization advocates to support school choice measures and state takeovers of schools, removing these schools from local control and community input.
  • Will have negative economic impacts on a community (lower home values/sales)
  • Do not come with resources/financial support to improve grades

How did North Carolina’s Schools do This Year? Results show that these grades continue to be closely correlated with a student’s family income level.

  • Schools with greater poverty earned fewer A/A+NG’s and B’s and earned more C’s, D’s, and F’s than schools with less poverty.
  • Of the 21.7 percent of schools receiving a D or F grade, 95 percent were serving high poverty populations
  • In schools with more than 80 percent low income students, 60 percent received a D or F grade. Less than one percent of schools with less than 20% low income student populations received a D or F grade
  • Of schools with high concentrations (41 percent or more) of students who are economically disadvantaged, 71 percent met or exceeded growth, compared with 79 percent of schools serving fewer students in poverty.
  • For the 2018–19 school year, 73.3 percent of all schools met or exceeded growth expectations, a slight increase from the previous year.

Read more in our fact sheet about A-F grades here!

Source: N&O analysis of Public Instruction data

School performance grades started in 2013-14 modeled after a program in Florida started by Gov. Jeb Bush. All North Carolina public schools, including charters, have received A-F performance grades since 2013. 

Critics of a single school measurement believe that grades:

  • Do not reflect the learning in our schools
  • Undervalue student growth and other important measures of school quality
  • Could result in more attention to borderline students while underserving the lowest and highest performing students
  • Are often used by privatization advocates to support school choice measures and state takeovers of schools, removing these schools from local control and community input.
  • Will have negative economic impacts on a community (lower home values/sales)
  • Do not come with resources/financial support to improve grades

How did North Carolina’s Schools do This Year? Results show that these grades continue to be closely correlated with a student’s family income level.

  • Schools with greater poverty earned fewer A/A+NG’s and B’s and earned more C’s, D’s, and F’s than schools with less poverty.
  • Of the 21.7 percent of schools receiving a D or F grade, 95 percent were serving high poverty populations
  • In schools with more than 80 percent low income students, 60 percent received a D or F grade. Less than one percent of schools with less than 20% low income student populations received a D or F grade
  • Of schools with high concentrations (41 percent or more) of students who are economically disadvantaged, 71 percent met or exceeded growth, compared with 79 percent of schools serving fewer students in poverty.
  • For the 2018–19 school year, 73.3 percent of all schools met or exceeded growth expectations, a slight increase from the previous year.

Read more in our fact sheet about A-F grades here!

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Education Reform, North Carolina, Testing

SAT Scores Fall, Achievement Gaps Grow Larger

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2019 //
68

Remember when David Coleman, architect of Common Core and then president of the College Board, claimed that the adoption of the Common Core would increase equity and raise test scores for all, especially those farthest behind? Remember, after he took control of the College Board, when he redesigned the SAT and said the New SAT would promote equity? None of that happened.

More students are taking the SAT (good for the College Board’s bottom line), which tends to depress test scores as non-traditional students sign on. But, contrary to Coleman’s assurances, the gaps between groups are growing, not shrinking.

Politico reports:

STUDENTS’ SAT SCORES DECLINE: More than 2.2 million students in the class of 2019 took the college readiness exam, but the test also showed a decrease in average scores, the College Board reported today. The percentage of students passing benchmarks that can be indicators of whether they will successfully complete college coursework also decreased.

— The number of students who took the test increased by 4 percent compared with last year’s class, though the average score decreased by 9 points. This year’s average score was 1059 compared with 1068 in 2018. A perfect score is 1600.

— The percent of test takers who met or exceeded both the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and Math benchmarks also decreased 2 percentage points, from 47 percent in 2018 to 45 percent. Bianca Quilantan has more.”

Behind these numbers was another story: the increase in gaps between different demographic groups of students.

FairTest reports:

FairTest                          

National Center for Fair & Open Testing
for further information:
Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773
mobile  (239) 699-0468

 

SAT SCORE GAPS BETWEEN DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS GROWS LARGER;
TEST REMAINS A CLEARER MEASURE OF FAMILY BACKGROUND
THAN HIGHER EDUCATION READINESS
1,050+ COLLEGES, UNIVERSITIES NOW DO NOT REQUIRE SAT OR ACT SCORES

SAT score gaps between demographic groups grew even larger for the high school class of 2019, according to an analysis by FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. The nonprofit organization compared new exam results for this year’s graduates with those from 2018.

“Whether broken down by test-takers’ race, parental education or household income, average SAT scores of students from historically disenfranchised groups fell further behind their classmates from more privileged families,” explained Robert Schaeffer, FairTest’s Public Education Director. “That means access to colleges and financial aid will be even more skewed at schools that still rely on test scores to make admissions and tuition award decisions.”

Schaeffer continued, “The SAT remains a more accurate measure of a test-taker’s family background than of an applicant’s capacity to do college level work. No wonder nearly 40% of all four-year colleges and universities in the country are now test-optional. They recognize that standardized exam requirements undermine diversity without improving educational quality”

More than 1,050 accredited, bachelor-degree institutions now will evaluate all or many applicants without regard to test scores. FairTest’s test-optional database includes more than half of all “Top 100” liberal arts colleges. Upwards of 360 schools ranked in the top tiers of their categories by U.S. News & World Report no longer require the SAT or ACT.

– – 3 0 – –

–  See 2019 SAT Scores by gender, ethnicity and parental education below

–  Comprehensive free directory of 1,050+ test-optional and test-flexible colleges and universities:
http://fairtest.org/university/optional

–  List of 360+ schools that de-emphasize ACT/SAT scores ranked in U.S News’ top tiers
http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Schools-in-U.S.News-Top-Tiers.pdf  

–  Chronology of higher education institutions dropping admissions testing requirements
http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Growth-Chronology.pdf

2019 COLLEGE-BOUND SENIORS SCORES ON “REDESIGNED” SAT
with comparisons to 2018 College-Bound Seniors Scores
(2,220,087 Test-Takers in 2019 Graduating Class up 3.9% from Class of 2018)

                                                                                READING/       MATH        TOTAL*
                                                                                WRITING

ALL TEST-TAKERS                                           531 (- 4)        528 (- 3)     1059 (- 9)

Female                                                             534 (  -5)      519 (  -3)    1053 (-  8)
Male                                                                 529 (  -5)      537 (  -5)    1066 (-10)

Amer. Indian or Alaskan Native                   461 (-19)       451  (-18)     912 (-37)
Asian, Asian Amer. or Pacific Islander        586 (-  2)       637  (+  2)   1223 (   0)
Black or African American                            476 (-  7)       457  (-  6)     933 (-13)
Hispanic, Latino or Latin American             495 (-  6)       483  (-  6)     978 (-12)
Two or more races                                         554 (-  4)       540  (-  3)   1095 (-  6)
White                                                               562 (-  4)       553  (-  4)   1114 (-  9)

 2019 COLLEGE-BOUND SENIORS SAT SCORES BY PARENTAL EDUCATION

               READING/        MATH          TOTAL*
                                                                  WRITING

No High School Diploma                                  464 (-  9)       462  (-  9)     926 (-18)
High School Diploma                                        500 (-  7)       490  (-  7)     989 (-16)
Associate Degree                                              519 (-  7)       508  (-  5)   1027 (-12)
Bachelor’s Degree                                            561 (-  5)       560  (-  3)   1121 (-  8)
Graduate Degree                                              596 (-  3)       598  (   0)   1194 (-  3)

2019 COLLEGE-BOUND SENIORS SAT SCORES BY SAT FEE WAIVER STATUS

                                                                                READING/        MATH          TOTAL*
                                                                                WRITING

Used at Any Point                                             499 (-  2)       488 (-  1)      987 (-  3)
Did Not Use                                                       539 (-  6)       537 (-  6)    1076 (-12)

* scores do not add precisely due to College Board rounding

Calculated by FairTest from: College Board, 2019 SAT Suite of Assessments Annual Report: Total Group

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Testing

Ohio: Take Action Now Against Poisonous HB 154

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2019 //
3

 

Parents, grandparents, and educators in Ohio. Contact the governor and legislators and urge them to stop HB 154. Now. State takeover has already failed in Ohio, yet the Senate Education Committee slipped it back into a bill intended to support struggling districts instead of taking away their democracy.

Bill Phillis and Jeanne Melvin of Public Education Partners send this urgent message.

Jeanne Melvin, President of Public Education Partners (PEP), sets the record straight on Substitute HB 154 in a letter to the editor of the Dispatch
The House of Representatives, by an overwhelmingly majority, passed HB 154. As passed by the House, the bill repealed the HB 70 state takeover bill and provided some resources for struggling districts.
The Senate Education Committee has hijacked HB 154 by inserting the Ohio School Transformation Plan into it as a substitute bill. Readers may recall the original HB 70 (131st General Assembly) focused on wraparound services but the Senate Education Committee hijacked that one and amended the state takeover claptrap into it.
To the Editor:
Ohio lawmakers are still working to replace House Bill 70, Ohio’s school takeover law (Dispatch article, Wednesday). Why reinvent the wheel? Earlier in 2019, House Bill 154, a bipartisan policy offering support for lower-performing school districts, was designed to repeal and replace HB 70 and encourage wraparound services for high-poverty schools. HB 154, an evidence-based model created using results from a five-year research study of school turnaround, was passed without amendment in the Ohio House by a vote of 82-12.
Some misguided members of the Senate Education Committee rely on lobbyists who represent for-profit education interests for advice and direction in education policymaking. On Tuesday, the committee adopted Sub HB 154, written by some of the same influence peddlers who helped create HB 70 in the first place, completely changing HB 154 into another school takeover law.
The time has come to listen and heed the considerable input from thousands of parents, educators, school leaders, community members and other school stakeholders who contacted the governor and legislative leaders this summer to request the end of state takeovers of public school districts.
If Sub HB 154 moves forward, it will burden Ohio with a school takeover law that continues to ignore educational expertise, thoughtful research and field-tested results.
Let’s encourage Gov. Mike DeWine to say no to the lobbyists and think tanks that represent education profiteers by demanding the Senate committee reject Sub HB 154 and use the language of the bipartisan HB 154 to repeal and replace Ohio’s failed school takeover agenda.
Jeanne Melvin, Public Education Partners, Columbus
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Privatization

Terri Michal: The Charter Land Grab in Birmingham

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2019 //
13

 

Terri Michal is an elected school board member in Birmingham. Betsy DeVos recently gave $25 million to Alabama from the federal Charter Schools Program, which she uses as her personal slush fund.

Federal Grants and Surplus Property: DeVos’s Solution to Help the Students of Birmingham, AL.

By Terri Michal

In Alabama we have a Legislature that appears to be perfectly fine creating legislation that targets our black and brown high poverty students in Birmingham.

We have education organizations and foundations that work against the very schools they are contracted to support.

We have a State Superintendent that is condoning the targeting of our students.

We have a real estate executive that in 2015 actively worked, unbeknownst to Birmingham City Schools (BCS), to get our charter school law passed while at the same time holding a contract to sell surplus properties for the school system. This information was just recently exposed. They are still under contract with BCS.  

Now, thanks to an old organization, the Alabama Coalition for Public Charter Schools, renamed New Schools for Alabama, we can add Betsy DeVos to that dogpile. Like the cherry on top of a sundae, Betsy DeVos is the final piece needed to serve up Birmingham City Public Schools to the power-hungry politicians and the gluttonous corporations they work for.

So, what was it exactly that DeVos did to make their charter school dreams come true? She awarded New Schools for Alabama a $25 million-dollar grant to open 15 charter schools, a majority of which no doubt will be in Birmingham.

However, New Schools wasn’t the only one that got a gift, I did too.  What was it? The Federal grant application that New Schools filed in an effort to receive that CSP Grant. It brought together, in one document, the entire cast of characters that’sworking to undermine public education in Birmingham, Alabama.

When I began reading it, I didn’t really know what I was looking for.

But the first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that they had no problem saying they were targeting Birmingham, along with 3 other districts. Now, finally, for all of those in this city who refuse to believe we are targets for privatization, it’s right there in the application in black and white. I guess we can now put that ‘conspiracy theory’ to rest.

Second, I noticed the people and organizations that wrote letters in support of New Schools for Alabama and the grant that would be undermining our public schools; Alabama Sen. Del Marsh (R), U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D), State Superintendent Eric Mackey, the Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation, the Daniel Foundation, and A+ Education Partnership, just to mention a few.

Third, and possibly the most disturbing, was the fact that the Executive Director of NSFA, Tyler Barnett, used data gathered from our voucher law, the Alabama Accountability Act, to justify targeting our black and brown students for charter schools.  Here’s what he said:

“Of Alabama’s 76 state-designated failing schools—meaning, the bottom 6% of schools in academic achievement—72 had at least a 90% poverty rate.  And of the 38,420 students in those failing schools, 96% are Black or Hispanic.”

Ninety Six percent are Black or Hispanic!! How in the world can Mr. Barnett, or anyone else for that matter, take this data andthen twist it to blame the schools and/or the students for ‘failing’? Especially knowing the same Sen. Del Marsh that wrote the recommendation letter for this grant was also responsible for bringing us the Accountability Act.  Just as they are targeting our students for charter schools, the Accountability Act targets our black and brown students and labels their schools as failing.

This data is garbage, the only purpose it serves is to strengthen the systemic racism that exists in public education in Alabama. If you are thinking to yourself, ‘it’s the poverty’, it’s not.  Approx. half of our public-school students that live in poverty in Alabama are white.

Finally, the most surprising thing I found was this, in reference to what our charter school law says about acquiring real estate:

“Already, this law has been exercised by a charter applicant in Birmingham City Schools, which sold a historic but underutilized school building in the fall of 2018 so that an emerging charter network could restore the building for school use.”

Wait, what?  I am a board member for BCS, I would like to think that I’d know if we sold a building for charter school use.We did attempt to sell one property last fall, but the sale fell through in February, a month after the NSFA Federal Grant Application was submitted.

If we were to believe that the information in this federal application were true, and why wouldn’t we, the reason I didn’t know the surplus property was going to be a charter school is, more than likely, because of three little words that come after the buyer’s name on our real estate sale agreement, ‘and/or assigns’.What these three words do is allow the person buying the property to assign the sale to a third party.  So, if it says John Smith and/or assigns, then maybe John Smith is buying it, and maybe he’s just making a quick buck for his services and passing the sale on to a third party.  As a BCS school board member, I don’t really KNOW who’s buying our property.

One bit of information I left out; New Schools for Alabama is still legally the Alabama Coalition for Public Charter Schools(ACPS). This coalition’s sole purpose was to get the charter school law passed in Alabama.  Once it did that, the organization went dormant.

Now they have rebranded themselves with a new name, a new board and a new purpose.  Part of their new purpose is to help prospective charter schools buy and/or lease property. (Surprise!!)

In light of this very generous offering from our public-school hating Secretary of Education, I decided it was time to revisit the old board of ACPCS, just to refresh my memory.  

Right away I came across the name of J. Michael Carpenter.  I can tell you, I was more than a little surprised to find out that it was the same J. Michael Carpenter that founded Bloc Global,the real estate company that Birmingham City Schools has had under contract to sell surplus properties since 2011. Could this be how NSFA knew that we sold property to be utilized as a charter school?

So, let me explain this again in very simple terms.  As a Birmingham City Schools Board member I discovered that the real estate company that we have under contract to sell  our surplus property was, in part,  founded by and currently still under the direction of, the very same person that sat on the board of the coalition that is  responsible for helping write our charter school law and lobbying for its passage. Legally that coalition (ACPCS) is the same entity doing business as New Schools for Alabama. NSFA wrote the CSP Grant Application that stated the BCS board sold property in the fall of 2018 to someone for charter school use.

 Is your head spinning? Well so is mine. I knew none of this information until recently. I’m very concerned and upset that as an elected member of the BCS board I had to spend days doing research to uncover all of this myself.  

Yet, I know this is how things work in Betsy’s world.  The world of charter schools is one big land grab full of backroom deals and shell games. Now, with this new information and the $25 million dollar grant it appears the final piece of the charter school puzzle is in place in Birmingham.

Land???  Check.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Betsy DeVos, Birmingham, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Nancy Bailey: Betsy DeVos is a Hypocrite

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2019 //
28

 

Nancy Bailey calls out Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for talking about “education freedom” at the same time that she is doing everything within her power to snuff it out.

Betsy DeVos’s Education Freedom: It’s Anything But

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Hypocrisy, Privatization, Vouchers
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