In New Orleans, the nation’s first all-charter district, a quarter of students are “chronically absent.”
But help is on the way! A new initiative, funded by the DeVos Foundation and the Grand Rapids public Schools, will educate students and parents about why it is a very bad idea to miss school.
The state board of education in Colorado has decided to turn over schools in three districts to a for-profit management corporation that claims it can turn the schools around, at a cost of millions of dollars. Where there the firm has ever turned any schools around before isin doubt. The political connections of the firm are not.
Read here about the story and a deep dive into the history of MGT Consulting.
In all cases, the state board gave districts the go-ahead to pay millions of school district dollars for MGT Consulting, a for-profit management firm, to virtually take over the schools. The move has elicited hope from some that the company can improve student performance after everything the districts have tried has failed. But the contracts have prompted condemnation from critics who say the firm has a dubious track record and is diverting tax dollars to private profits at a time when every cent should be spent on student needs…
Leaders of the Florida-based MGT say they specialize in allocating public money more effectively while improving teacher effectiveness in the classroom and school culture. Its management process includes sub-contracting areas of school work to other companies, and it boasts completing over 10,000 projects in many states and abroad over several decades.
MGT is more than just a school testing consultant. The limited liability corporation also consults for other government agencies, including conducting impact studies of privatizing public prisons, according to its website. MGT’s current chief executive officer also co-founded a consulting and lobbying firm tapped into a national network of for-profit education institutions, Republican education reformers, the testing industry and charter schools.
That’s part of what draws controversy as public school academia question the motives of a company headed by pro-school voucher officials working to save failing public schools — for profit…
The group began its work in the 1970s but has been led in its current iteration since 2015, when Trey Traviesa first appears as MGT’s title manager in Florida state records.
Traviesa is a longtime Floridian and former Republican state representative for the Tampa Bay area. He became a lobbyist, venture capitalist, banker and charter school co-founder after serving in Florida’s House of Representatives from 2004 to 2008.
While serving in the state House, Traviesa sponsored legislation to expand Florida’s school voucher program. That program created incentives for corporations to pay for mostly low-income students to leave their school districts and attend private schools.
MGT was hired largely on the basis of its claims of success in Gary, Indiana.
Chalkbeat wrote about the situation in Gary, which is inconclusive and certainly not a demonstration of success:
It’s early to say anything definitive. In 2017, MGT won a four-year contract to manage schools in Gary, Indiana. The deal is potentially worth about $11.4 million, if the state funds the contract for all four years and if the company meets performance goals.
Gary’s school district has about 5,000 students enrolled this year, down from about 11,000 ten years ago. The students in Gary overwhelmingly qualify for free or reduced price lunch, a measure of poverty, like in Adams 14, but only a handful of students are learning English as a second language.
In Gary, the state ordered an emergency manager to come in not only for academic problems, but because the enrollment decline and fiscal mismanagement problems landed the district deep in debt. MGT took over the responsibilities of the superintendent and the school board, at the state’s request, and reports directly to state officials.
The work has been controversial. Some lawmakers called for removing the firm when it was discovered that Tony Bennett, who was state superintendent in Indiana from 2008 through 2013, is a partner in the Strategos Group, which acquired MGT in 2015. Lawmakers argued that the policies Bennett rolled out in his time as state superintendent contributed to Gary’s financial problems that led the state to require an external manager.
MGT has not been removed, however, and Bennett doesn’t have an active role in the management of the district. According to news reports citing state officials, since the takeover, the Gary district has decreased its debt, slowed its enrollment decline, and purchased new textbooks. The latest state rating of the district has also improved slightly.
In other words, MGT has been in charge of Gary (which former state chief Tony Bennett tried to destroy) for one year. It has not created a successful turnaround, there or anywhere else.
Was the Colorado State Board of education influenced by Governor Jared Polis, who has a long record as a supporter of school choice, having founded two charters himself?
Tom Ultican has written a scathing critique of TFA as a faux “progressive” political operation whose true goals are to promote privatization and to destroy the teaching profession. TFA supplies the teachers for private charter schools, 90% of which are non-union.
TFA is the darling of the billionaires. Almost every billionaire foundation has dropped millions into TFA’s big tin cup. In addition, TFA collects $40 million a year from the federal government to place inexperienced teachers in the classroom, few of whom will stay longer than two years.
He writes:
Prior to taking over a classroom, TFA teachers receive just five weeks of training. Their training is test centric and employs behaviorist principles. TFA corps members study Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion.
Lemov never studied education nor taught. He became involved with the no-excuses charter movement in mid-1990s. As glowingly depicted by Elizabeth Green in Building A+ Better Teacher, Lemov observed classrooms to develop his teaching ideas.
Most trained professional educators find Lemov’s teaching theory regressive. Jennifer Berkshire published a post by Layla Treuhaft-Ali on her popular blog and podcast “Have You Heard.” Under the title “Teach Like its 1885” Layla wrote,
“As I was reading Teach Like A Champion, I observed something that shocked me. The pedagogical model espoused by Lemov is disturbingly similar to one that was established almost a century ago for the express purpose of maintaining racial hierarchy.”
Treuhaft-Ali added, “Placed in their proper racial context, the Teach Like A Champion techniques can read like a modern-day version of the *Hampton Idea,* where children of color are taught not to challenge authority under the supervision of a wealthy, white elite
TFA is the billionaires’ army, recruited to keep charters staffed with a rapidly rotating cast of “teachers.”
He writes:
It seems like every major foundation gives to TFA. Besides Gates, Walton, Broad, Dell, Hastings, and Arnold, there is Bradley, Hall, Kaufman, DeVos, Skillman, Sackler and the list goes on. According to the TFA 2016 tax form, the grants TFA received that year totaled more than $245 million. US taxpayer give TFA $40 million a year via the US Department of Education.
The Walton (Walmart) family has provided TFA more than $100,000,000. In 2013, their $20,000,000 grant gave $2,000 more per TFA teacher going to charter schools than for public school teachers.
TFA is great for its executives but it is a disaster for the teaching profession, for children assigned to inexperienced and ill-trained TFA recruits, and for public education.
Teach for America is very successful at fund-raising. It has a very impressive board of directors, chaired by Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and one-time Republican nominee for governor of California. Another board member is Tennessee billionaire Bill Haslam, who most recently was governor of that state and a strong proponent of vouchers. And Greg Penner, a member (by marriage) of the anti-union, pro-charter Walton family serves on the board.
ProPublica posted TFA’s 990 forms filed with the IRS, and you can see for yourself how very, very successful TFA is. It has assets of about $360 million. Its CEO is paid $451,807.
TFA is a very successful business.
Jan Resseger describes the after-effects of former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s crash program to cut corporate and income taxes and expect an economic boom. The boom never came, but public services were strained to the breaking point.
Jan quotes liberally from Governing magazine:
Governing Magazine just published an extraordinary profile of Kansas state government—what was left of it after Sam Brownback’s tenure. Last November when a Democrat, Laura Kelly, took office, the new governor found herself assessing the damage from two terms of total austerity. Reporter, Alan Greenblatt describes a state unable to serve the public:
“To students of state politics, the failed Kansas experiment with deep cuts to corporate and income tax rates—which GOP Gov. Sam Brownback promised would lead to an economic flowering, and which instead led to anemic growth and crippling deficits—is well known. What is not as well understood, even within Kansas, is the degree to which years of underfunding and neglect have left many state departments and facilities hollowed out…. All around Kansas government, there are stories about inadequate staffing…. Staff turnover in social services in general and at the state prisons has led to dozens of missing foster children and a series of prison uprisings… During the Brownback administration, from 2011 to 2018, prison staff turnover doubled, to more than 40 percent per year, while the prison population increased by 1,400 inmates, or 15 percent. Guards have been burned out by mandatory over time and by pay scales that have failed to keep pace with increased insurance premiums and copays, let alone inflation. With inadequate and inexperienced staff, the prisons began employing a technique known as ‘collapsing posts,’ meaning some areas were simply left unguarded.”
The consequences for other states that tried to cut their way to prosperity were equally calamitous.
The reason that parents and teachers are giving Nick Melvoin a rating on YELP is in response to his plan to rate teachers, mainly by the test scores of their students.
Jeb Bush invented the template for grading schools from A-F, based mainly on their test scores. It became a convenient way to close public schools and turn them over to charter operators. It is an dumb idea for many reasons, because schools are complex institutions with many staff and many functions. Students are not randomly assigned.
In state after state, school grades reflect the proportion of needy kids enrolled. The lowest scores go to schools with high proportions of students who are poor, don’t speak English, and have special needs. Schools with the greatest challenges are wrongly labeled an stigmatized as “failing schools.”
So now Los Angeles is considering a school grading scheme in which most of the grades will depend on standardized test scores.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-13/lausd-schools-ranked
Even the Los Angeles Times ridiculed this bad idea.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-16/grading-los-angeles-schools
According to documents obtained by Times reporters, the proposed measurement system, which hasn’t come before the board yet, would include a rating for each school on a scale of 1 to 5, based mostly on test scores. In the case of elementary and middle schools, the scores themselves and students’ improvement on them would make up 80% of the ranking. In high schools, it would be 65%, and since the state’s annual standardized test is given in only one grade in high school, it would show nothing about whether any particular cohort of students is improving on the tests as they move from 9th to 12th grade….
But what’s wrong might not be the quality of the teaching or the running of the school. The reality is that students in some neighborhoods face considerably more challenges of poverty, family disruption and the like, and those issues often affect their academic performance and test results.
Charter schools and magnet schools draw their enrollment from parents who go out of their way to find out about different schools and who have the time and ability to sign up their children for possible acceptance. Even if those students are poor and enter school not yet knowing English, they tend to have a leg up on students whose parents are less involved, perhaps because they’re ill or working too many jobs. Neighborhood schools shouldn’t be made to look comparatively bad over factors they can’t control.
Why is Los Angeles copying Jeb Bush’s bad ideas?
Teachers and parents have listed Nick Melvoin on Yelp as a business, and they are rating him. Nick is one of the leading charter advocates on the LAUSD school board. He was elected because of millions from the charter lobby and its billionaire allies.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/nick-melvoin-lausd-board-member-los-angeles
His ratings are terrible. If he were a teacher, he would be fired.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Trump’s large crowd of union workers at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania were given an ultimatum: attend the rally or lose a day of pay.
The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.
“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.
“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.
Workers who did not show lost $700.
The contractor’s talking points, preparing his workers for the event read:
“No yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event. An underlying theme of the event is to promote good will from the unions. Your building trades leaders and jobs stewards have agreed to this.”
The unions went along with it.
The president also called out union leadership, which Shell had requested to be in attendance.
“I’m going to speak to some of your union leaders to say, ‘I hope you’re going to support Trump.’ OK?” he said. “And if they don’t, vote them the hell out of office because they’re not doing their job.”
More than a dozen unions work at the Shell site, the largest construction project in the state.
Do you want to understand why Pennsylvania’s charter school law needs to be reformed?
Let Steven Singer explain.
Singer teaches in Pennsylvania. In this post, he describes the dangers that privatization poses to his school district.
I work in a little suburban school district just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that is slowly being destroyed by privatization.
Steel Valley Schools have a proud history.
We’re located (in part) in Homestead – the home of the historic steel strike of 1892.
But today it isn’t private security agents and industrial business magnates against whom we’re struggling.
It’s charter schools, voucher schools and the pro-corporate policies that enable them to pocket tax dollars meant to educate kids and then blame us for the shortfall.
Our middle school-high school complex is located at the top of a hill. At the bottom of the hill in our most impoverished neighborhood sits one of the Propel network of charter schools.
Our district is so poor we can’t even afford to bus our kids to school. So Propel tempts kids who don’t feel like making the long walk to our door.
Institutions like Propel are publicly funded but privately operated. That means they take our tax dollars but don’t have to be as accountable, transparent or sensible in how they spend them.
And like McDonalds, KFC or Walmart, they take in a lot of money.
Just three years ago, the Propel franchise siphoned away $3.5 million from our district annually. This year, they took $5 million, and next year they’re projected to get away with $6 million. That’s about 16% of our entire $37 million yearly budget.
Do we have a mass exodus of children from Steel Valley to the neighboring charter schools?
No.
Enrollment at Propel has stayed constant at about 260-270 students a year since 2015-16. It’s only the amount of money that we have to pay them that has increased.
The state funding formula is a mess. It gives charter schools almost the same amount per regular education student that my district spends but doesn’t require that all of that money actually be used to educate these children.
If you’re a charter school operator and you want to increase your salary, you can do that. Just make sure to cut student services an equal amount.
Want to buy a piece of property and pay yourself to lease it? Fine. Just take another slice of student funding.
Want to grab a handful of cash and put it in your briefcase, stuff it down your pants, hide it in your shoes? Go right ahead! It’s not like anyone’s actually looking over your shoulder. It’s not like your documents are routinely audited or you have to explain yourself at monthly school board meetings – all of which authentic public schools like mine have to do or else.
Read the rest of the post.
Pennsylvania’s largest charter school is the Chester Community Charter School. It is owned by Philadelphia lawyer Vehan Gureghian, who is a major donor to the Republican Party in the State. He was the biggest contributor to former Republican Governor Tom Corbett. What is surprising about his political donations is how little it takes to win the affection of the party in power. The Chester Community Charter School enrolls most of the elementary students in its district and even draws students from Philadelphia, despite the fact that it is a low-performing school on state tests. As you will see in one of the articles below, CCCS received a charter renewal through 2026, an extension not given to any other charter in the state.
The Keystone State Education Coalition posted this list of his political contributions.
Blogger commentary: In an effort to gain a better understanding of the dynamics in Harrisburg, from time to time over the years we have published “Follow the Money” charts using data from the PA Department of State’s Campaign Finance Reporting website:
https://www.campaignfinanceonline.pa.gov/Pages/CFReportSearch.aspx
We’ll leave it up to our readers to draw their own conclusions regarding how such contributions may or may not influence policymakers as they go about the people’s business in Harrisburg.
The chart below lists over $470,000 in campaign contributions made by Mr. and Mrs. Gureghian for PA state offices from 2013 through 2019.
Highlights include $205,000 to the House Republican Campaign Committee, $37,000 to the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, $30,000 to House Speaker Mike Turzai, $82,000 to Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman’s Build PA PAC, $85,000 to Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati and$16,000 to House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler.
While school district budgets, check registers and salaries are public information, charter school management companies like Gureghian’s CSMI are not required to provide any details on how they spend taxpayers dollars. CSMI runs Chester Community Charter School, the state’s largest brick and mortar charter. CSMI’s founder and CEO is Vahan H. Gureghian of Gladwyne, a lawyer, entrepreneur and major Republican donor –the largest individual contributor to former Gov. Tom Corbett. And though CSMI’s books are not public – the for-profit firm has never disclosed its profits and won’t discuss its management fee – running the school appears to be a lucrative business. State records show that Gureghian’s company collected nearly $17 million in taxpayer funds just in 2014-15, when only 2,900 students were enrolled.”
Over the years, Gureghian has spent well over $1 million on political contributions in Pennsylvania.
“As previously reported by the (Palm Beach) Daily News, the buyers in this week’s sale are Philadelphia attorney and businessman Vahan Gureghian and his attorney wife, Danielle. Two weeks ago, they sold their never-lived-in oceanfront mansion on 2 acres at 1071 N. Ocean Blvd. for more than $40 million. That 35,992-square-foot mansion had been on the market for about four years. ….Vahan Gureghian is involved in a number of businesses, he said, including management and consulting in the charter-school industry through a company he founded, CSMI Education Management. His wife provides legal counsel for his business ventures, he said.”
Exclusive: Palm Beach mansion lost by developer in bankruptcy sells for $30.275M
Palm Beach Daily news By Darrell Hofheinz July 12 Posted at 5:46 PM Updated at 6:32 PM
Mortgage-holder sells former home of Robert V. Matthews to couple who just sold a Palm Beach mansion for more than $40 million. As developer Robert V. Matthews awaits sentencing on felony conspiracy and money-laundering charges in Connecticut, the Palm Beach seaside mansion he completed in 2006 has changed hands for a recorded $30.275 million. The deed recorded today shows the house at 101 Casa Bendita was sold by Singer Island Tower Suite LLC, which took title in April via a bankruptcy judge’s order in Matthews’ Chapter 11 case. The seller is identified in court documents as an “assignee” of a Deutsche Bank affiliate owed $31 million from a mortgage it held on the property. Matthews moved out of the mansion with his wife, Mia, shortly after the bankruptcy court’s March 31 order. Matthews developed the long-troubled, never-finished — and since-sold — Palm House hotel-condominium at 160 Royal Palm Way, which is a focus of his federal criminal case in Connecticut. The six-bedroom, two-story residence on Casa Bendita has 15,849 square feet of living space, inside and out, on nearly an acre. With about 188 feet of beachfront, the property lies about a three-quarters of a mile north of Royal Palm way.
Following data is from the Pennsylvania Department of State Campaign Finance website: http://www.campaignfinance.state.pa.us/ContributionSearch.aspx
Selected State Level Campaign Contributions by Vahan Gureghian 2013 – 2019
| Recipient | Date | Amount |
| TURZAI, MIKE FRIENDS OF | 9/5/2013 | $10,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 3/18/2014 | $75,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 9/16/2014 | $27,500.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 10/31/2014 | $25,000.00 |
| TURZAI, MIKE LEADERSHIP FUND | 10/4/2014 | $10,000.00 |
| SENATE REP CAMPAIGN COM | 4/14/2015 | $25,000.00 |
| SENATE REP CAMPAIGN COM | 3/10/2015 | $12,727.91 |
| SCARNATI, JOSEPH FRIENDS OF | 10/31/2016 | $25,000.00 |
| SCARNATI, JOSEPH FRIENDS OF | 10/31/2016 | $25,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 6/15/2016 | $10,000.00 |
| CORMAN, JAKE FRIENDS OF | 10/26/2016 | $10,000.00 |
| SCARNATI, JOSEPH FRIENDS OF | 11/9/2017 | $10,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 6/22/2017 | $10,000.00 |
| CORMAN, JAKE FRIENDS OF | 10/16/2017 | $2,500.00 |
| FUND FOR A BETTER PENNSYLVANIA | 6/8/2017 | $5,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 8/29/2017 | $2,750.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 11/2/2017 | $3,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 11/2/2017 | $2,000.00 |
| CUTLER, BRYAN FRIENDS OF | 6/15/2018 | $5,000.00 |
| SCARNATI, JOSEPH FRIENDS OF | 10/31/2018 | $25,000.00 |
| TURZAI, MIKE FRIENDS OF | 9/12/2018 | $10,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 6/4/2018 | $25,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 7/25/2018 | $25,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 10/17/2018 | $10,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 4/24/2018 | $5,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 5/1/2018 | $20,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 7/20/2018 | $10,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 9/18/2018 | $10,000.00 |
| HOUSE REP CAMPAIGN COM 2004, INC | 10/26/2018 | $25,000.00 |
| SAYLOR, STAN CITIZENS FOR | 5/29/2018 | $5,000.00 |
| BUILD PA PAC | 3/29/2019 | $2,000.00 |
| CUTLER, BRYAN FRIENDS OF | 4/3/2019 | $1,000.00 |
| CUTLER, BRYAN FRIENDS OF | 5/28/2019 | $10,000.00 |
| $478,477.91 |
Mansion of embattled Palm Beach developer sells for $30M (Photos)
By Brian Bandell – Senior Reporter, South Florida Business Journal Jul 15, 2019, 12:31pm EDT Updated Jul 15, 2019, 12:44pm EDT
Philadelphia businessman Vahan H. Gureghian paid $30.275 million for the Palm Beach mansion that belonged to embattled Palm Beach developer Robert V. Matthews. Singer Island Tower Suite LLC, part of DB Private Wealth Mortgage, sold the nearly 16,000-square-foot home at 101 Casa Bendita to Gureghian. The lender seized the home in April under orders of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Matthew’s personal Chapter 11 filing. DB Private Wealth Mortgage, part of Deutsche Bank, had a $27.4 million loan on the property. The bank provided a $25.67 million mortgage to Gureghian to help him buy the property. Matthews built the oceanfront home on the 0.88-acre site in 2006. The mansion has six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, two half bathrooms and a pool. Gureghian, the founder and CEO of CSMI, which invests in the charter school industry, can immediately occupy the home.
“The decision means staff and parents at the state’s largest bricks-and-mortar charter – already slated to receive more than $55 million in taxpayer funds this school year – won’t have to worry about its fate for nearly a decade, even if its test scores continue to fall far short of state benchmarks. It also guarantees that CSMI LLC, a for-profit education management company that operates the K-8 school with 4,200 students, will receive millions of dollars in revenue for nine more years. Chester Community’s extension comes as school districts across the commonwealth and nation are wrestling with the growth of charter schools, more privatization in education and the impact on traditional public schools. It also renews lingering questions about the intersection of politics, government and schools.
Reprise Dec. 2017: How Chester Community Charter School got a 9-year deal
Inquirer by Martha Woodall, Posted: December 22, 2017
For years, charter school proponents have been trying to change Pennsylvania law so that operating agreement renewals could be extended from five years to 10. They haven’t succeeded in Harrisburg. But that didn’t deter Chester Community Charter School. One year into Chester Community’s latest five-year agreement, Peter R. Barsz, the court-appointed receiver who oversees the financially distressed Chester Upland School District and wields nearly all the powers of a school board, took the unprecedented step of extending the Delaware County school’s term for five more years to 2026. Barsz contends that the move was designed to protect Chester High School: In return, Chester Community, which already enrolls about 70 percent of the primary grade students in the struggling district, agreed not to open a high school.
“The Pennsylvania Department of Education is questioning the Chester Upland School District’s decision to renew its operating agreement with the state’s largest brick-and-mortar charter school through 2026 while the school was just one year into its current five-year term.”
Reprise April 2018: Judge, state question quick renewal for Chester charter school
Inquirer by Maddie Hanna, Posted: April 20, 2018
The Pennsylvania Department of Education is questioning the Chester Upland School District’s decision to renew its operating agreement with the state’s largest brick-and-mortar charter school through 2026 while the school was just one year into its current five-year term. “If charters are going to be renewed right out of the chute, … they’ve already been approved before they’ve even performed,” said James Flandreau, a lawyer for the department, at hearings this week ordered by a Delaware County Court judge. “Certainly, one year is way too early to evaluate any charter’s performance.” Kevin Kent, a lawyer for Chester Community Charter School, said the court-appointed receiver and school district could reevaluate the charter school at any point. “Nothing’s been compromised,” he said. Peter Barsz, the receiver for the financially distressed district, testified on Thursday that he had reviewed audits and school performance records and had support from the district’s school board before approving the renewal request last year that allowed the charter school to operate through 2026.
