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Shawgi Tell: CREDO Study of Pennsylvania Charters Reports Mediocre Results

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2019 //
8

 

Shawgi Telll writes that the latest study of charter schools in Pennsylvania by CREDO, the Stanford-based research group, reports unimpressive results. 

CREDO’s overall conclusion:

The analysis shows that in a year’s time, the typical charter school student in Pennsylvania makes similar progress in reading and weaker growth in math compared to the educational gains that the students would have had in a traditional public school (TPS). Thinking of a 180-day school year as “one year of learning”, an average Pennsylvania charter student experiences weaker annual growth in math equivalent to 30 fewer days of learning. Our online charter school analysis reveals that attending an online charter school leads to substantially negative learning gains in both reading and math, which negatively affect the overall charter impact on student progress.

The report notes phenomenal growth of enrollment in  online charters, where students actually lose ground in both reading and math.

According to the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, charter school enrollment has grown dramatically since the mid-2000s, with noteworthy expansion in both urban and rural areas. In addition, Pennsylvania experienced a 75 percent increase in online charter school enrollment between 2006-2007 and 2010- 2011.2 Currently one quarter of Pennsylvania’s charter school students enroll in online charter schools. These trends motivate the current study.

Tell says:

A June 4, 2019 press release from CREDO states that: “Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found over four years of study that the typical charter school student in Pennsylvania makes similar progress in reading and weaker growth in math compared to their traditional public school peer (TPS).”

The press release does not mention what sort of selective enrollment practices are practiced in Pennsylvania’s charter schools, but it is well-known that charter schools across the nation regularly cherry-pick their students. It is also worth noting that, “Of the state’s 15 cyber charters, 10 are operating with expired charters.”2

The CREDO Pennsylvania finding is extra significant given that it comes from an organization that is unrelentingly pro-charter school and funded heavily by billionaires who have been working for years to impose privately-operated charter schools on the entire country (e.g., Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation).

Go figure. Pennsylvania charter law is notoriously weak. It encourages the growth of low-performing charters. More students are enrolling in inferior online charters, where their learning is likely to be stunted.

What kind of future does the Pennsylvania Legislature envision for the State with its ongoing war against education?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Pennsylvania, Privatization

Detroit: At Graduation Ceremony, Two Top Students Blast Their Charter School

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
21

The graduation ceremony at a charter school in Detroit was disrupted when the two top students in the school used their addresses to criticize the school for “an inferior education and a culture of secrecy.”

The school said the students being used by adults with an agenda, which is an odd and condescending thing to say about your best students.

The pair accused Universal Academy on Detroit’s west side of churning substitute teachers through their classrooms, backing out of promised benefits, firing teachers who advocated for kids and silencing students and parents who speak out.

CEO Nawal Hamadeh ordered the microphone silenced during the second speech but by then, the point had been made, said Tuhfa Kasem, 17, whose speech was cut short.

“She asked for me to be escorted out but the parents had my back,” Kasem said. “The cops came in. The parents were like ‘you’re not going to touch her….’ “

A YouTube video of the scene took the speech to a much larger crowd than the one that was packed into the school gymnasium earlier this month.

“I’m happy that it raised the awareness that it did,” Kasem said.

Kasem’s speech followed a shorter speech by Zainab Altalaqani, a co-salutatorian and friend. The girls accuse the school of using long-term substitute teachers and other means to save money at the expense of the education of the children…

One of the teachers, Phillip Leslie, heard about the girls’ criticisms of his former employer and later posted a video of the graduation ceremony online.

“The school had gotten what we perceived as progressively worse,” he said. “We had raised a number of concerns with the principal. When they lost teachers, they would use paraprofessionals as substitutes.”

Leslie and some of his colleagues were fired, they said, for attending a board meeting at the school to complain.

They filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board and ultimately settled for lost wages and reversal of their firings, so they wouldn’t be hamstrung when they sought work at other schools. 

“They were the best teachers in the school,” said Sara Saleh, 18, who graduated last year and now attends Wayne State. “Most of the staff members that I’ve spoken with had complained about the same things.”

The school caters to a student population that includes many immigrant children, including those from Yemen and Iraq, who need additional help learning English. Saleh said her English teacher last year was a certified math teacher, who learned English as a second language herself and couldn’t help students.

See an interview with one of the students here.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit

What?! Washington State Charters Closing One After Another

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
20

Only Bill Gates knows how many millions he has poured into getting charters authorized and funded by the state in Washington State. There have been four referendums, the last one in 2012, which passed by about one percent, over the opposition of civil rights groups, unions, and PTAs. Gates and friends (Jeff Bezos’ parents, Waltons, and assorted billionaires) outspent the grassroots groups by several multiples, and at last Gates got charters past the voters. Then the Washington State Supreme Court said that charters are not public schools as defined in the state constitution, so Gates’s friends, led by Jonah Edelman and Stand for Children of Oregon, funded an effort to defeat the naughty justices at the next election. Happily, they were re-elected.

But Gates would not give up. He went to the Legislature and persuaded his friends to fund the charters with lottery money. The Governor Jay Inslee dared not stand up to the richest man in the state, and he neither signed nor vetoed the legislation, allowing it to become law.

When civilrights groups sued, because the charter schools were back to the public trough, the Supreme Court decided not to alienate the multibillionaire Gates again, and they decided to let the charters have lottery money.

Voila! Gates had charters and public money to pay for them.

But oh no, they are struggling, despite the fact that Gates handed out millions more to lure charter operators to open schools.

The Charter-friendly Seattle Times reports:

Two charter schools — one in Kent and another in Tacoma — will shut down at the end of this academic year, bringing the total number of closures to four since the publicly funded but privately run schools first opened in Washington state five years ago.

The board of directors for Green Dot Public Schools voted Thursday to shut down the two schools, which they oversee: Excel Public Charter School in Kent and Destiny Middle School in Tacoma. The Washington State Charter Association, in a news release, attributed the closures to dwindling enrollment.

The news comes five months after Soar Academy in Tacoma announced that it would close at the end of this school year. The school cited financial constraints.

“Both of these schools (in Kent and Tacoma) experienced significant struggles tied closely to low student enrollment and related operational challenges,” the charter-schools group said in its release.

The Kent and Tacoma schools received a charter, or contract, from the state to enroll up to 600 students. But enrollment data from Green Dot show the Kent campus reached a peak enrollment of  188 as of October 2018. In Tacoma, Destiny reached a peak enrollment of 281 during the 2017-18 school year but tumbled to 162 students as of October.

Across Washington, a dozen charter schools enroll about 3,300 students — a fraction of the 1.1 million students enrolled in public schools statewide.

Figure it out. What did Gates and spend? How many millions to ensure that 3,300 students could attend charters?

When CREDO evaluated the tiny number of charters, it concluded that on average they were no better or worse than public schools.

The findings of this study show that on average, charter students in Washington State experience annual growth in reading and math that is on par with the educational gains of their matched peers who enroll in the traditional public schools (TPS) the charter school students would otherwise have attended. 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Walton Foundation, Washington State

NBC News: Democrats Turning Against Charters (Link Added)

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
37

NBC News ran a story about how Democratic candidates are turning against charter schools. The reasons, says NBC, is DeVos and unions.

The safe position for Democrats is to say that he or she opposes for-profit charter schools.

Bernie Sanders went further by echoing the national NAACP and Black Lives Matter’s call for a national moratorium on new charters.

In the story, everyone plays their expected part. Mike Petrilli, authorizer of Ohio charters, claims that only his team (the DeVos choice team) really cares about “improving education” by privatizing it and handing it over to entrepreneurs. Shavar Jeffries of the hedge fund managers’ DFER says, “Bernie Sanders apparently thinks he, in Vermont, knows better than low-income African American and Hispanic families in their cities about what’s best for their children,” because Sanders called for a moratorium on new charters. Apparently the hedge fund managers and billionaires who support DFER understand the needs of low-income African American and Hispanic families better than anyone else.

The points that never appear in the news story are, one, that charters have not delivered on their promises. On average, they are no better than public schools and many are far worse. And two, because most charters are deregulated and unsupervised, they have experienced many scandals and embezzlements, like the most recent one, in which charter operators in California were indicted for stealing more than $50 million. The unacknowledged fact is that no community has ever voted to privatize their public schools.

Democrats have had a hard time shedding the legacy of Obama and Duncan.

BetsyDeVos reminds them that school choice is a Republican Policy, not a Democratic one.

Thank you, Betsy DeVos!

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization

Bill Phillis: State Audit Finds Possible Fraud at Dayton Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
2

Bill Phillis, former State Deputy Superintendent, watches over school spending and misspending in Ohio, in hopes that one day there will be equitable and adequate funding of public schools, instead of the current regime of school choice, waste, fraud, and abuse.

 

School Bus
Richard Allen Academy charter school audit cites fraud
The state audit cited illegal payments to board members and the treasurer, nepotism, failure to withdraw students, discrepancy between employee contributions to the pension systems and the amount the charter school paid to the pension systems. In addition, the audit indicates school and management company funds were comingled by which the company benefited at the expense of the charter schools. The charter school seems to benefit adults, not students.
The practice of charter companies benefiting at the expense of the charter school students is commonplace in the charter industry. Hopefully, in future audits, the State Auditor will take on the big boys in the charter industry.
Charter chains typically establish companies that provide consultant services, facilities and other services that charge the charter school outrageous rates. These schemes, of course, enrich the charter functionaries resulting in less educational opportunities for students.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
School Bus
Ohio E & A | 50 S. Young Street, Suite M102, Columbus, OH 43215
Sent by ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net in collaboration with
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Who Advises Elizabeth Warren on Education?

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2019 //
73

Mercedes Schneider delved into the experience of Elizabeth Warren’s senior education advisor. 

He entered teaching through Teach for America. I hear that his linked-in profile has been deleted since this post appeared but you might want to check to see if it has been restored.

I have met Elizabeth Warren twice, once in her Senate Office, about 2015, where we had a 30-minute conversation about education. I was greatly  impressed by her quick intelligence. Earlier this year, I attended a house party in her honor at the home of a mutual friend in Manhattan and again was taken by her ideas about higher education, her passion, and her articulateness.

I was surprised and disappointed therefore to learn that her senior education advisor is TFA. TFA is a favorite of the Waltons, Eli Broad, and other billionaires who support privatization of public education. The Waltons have given many millions to TFA, at one point a single grant of $48 million; Broad assembled $100 million from a group of his allies for TFA. The organization supplies a large part of the workforce for private charter schools. Its leaders in high policy positions, like Michelle Rhee, John White, and Kevin Huffman have typically been pro-testing, anti-teacher, and anti-union.

I hope Warren clears the air by explaining where she stands on K-12 issues, whether she believes all children should have a credentialed teacher, whether she pledges to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program (Betsy DeVos’ $440 Million Slush Fund), whether she supports the NAACP call for a moratorium on new charters, and whether she will actively fight to restore and protect teachers’ right to bargain collectively.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Supporting public schools, Teach for America, Testing

Bernie Is Right About Charters: Ravitch and Burris

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
55

 

The New York Daily News published an opinion piece attacking Bernie Sander’s call for a moratorium on charter schools, echoing the NAACP and Black Lives Matter. The article claimed that Senator Sanders was hurting children of color.

Carol Burris and I published a response in the same publication to the attack, which is included here. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

Yohuru Williams and Carol Burris: Where Do Democratic Candidates Stand on K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
4

 

Yohuru Williams and Carol Burris assess the expressed views of the Democratic candidates—thus far—on K-12 education. 

One hopes that the other candidates will soon state or clarify their views about privatization, testing, funding, and other important issues that the president can change.

They should all be asked at town halls whether they will kill the federal Charter Schools Program slush fund, which is now $440 million a year and is being used by DeVos to expand corporate chains.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Jan Resseger: West Virginia Teachers Keep Fighting Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
3

 

Jan Resseger writes an in-depth account of the ongoing battle by teachers in West Virginia to keep charters and vouchers out of their state. 

They struck twice and they continue to fight.

The Republican majority in the legislature is determined to introduce privatization, despite the poor results in other states.

The Republican leadership have added provisions to the pending legislation to prevent walkouts in the future.

”We learned on Tuesday that a poison pill had been added to the Senate’s omnibus bill—to ban strikes by teachers: “Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Trump says an anti-strike provision was amended into an omnibus education bill….  The amendment also says no county superintendent may close school in anticipation of a strike.  And the amendment says that if a strike causes school to be closed then that school can’t participate in extracurricular activities… Democrats in the Senate argued that the provision was retaliatory for the strikes of the past two years.”

What happens next will be decided by the House and Governor Jim Justice.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance, Teachers, Vouchers, West Virginia

Michigan: The New State Superintendent Brings Hope for Real Change

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
14

Michael Rice, the new State Superintendent in Michigan, is an experienced educator, not an ideologue or a politician.

His plans are sensible. He wants to steer the state back to responsible policies.

He was most recently Superintendent in Kalamazoo, which has one of the best school systems in the state. Itis terrific not because of its demographics or it’s scores but because of the Kalamazoo Promise, which has brought many students back to the public schools and led to systemwide improvements. The Promise, anonymously funded, guarantees that every high school graduate will receive a full scholarship to college. The longer a student is in the system, the more generous the scholarship.

School reform measures, such as Michigan’s third-grade retention law and the state’s A-F rating system; a statewide push to improve literacy and increase early childhood education; the publication of multiple research papers supporting increased funding for Michigan’s K-12 schools and the precarious future of the teaching profession all have been pushed to the education forefront in the state.

And they are all issues Rice says he is ready to work on.

“I feel differently in 2019,” Rice told The Detroit News in his office in Kalamazoo. “Those issues made me feel it was a moment. A generational moment in the state, and I wanted to contribute to that moment….”

While in Kalamazoo, and with the Kalamazoo Promise in place, Rice started full-day pre-kindergarten, more than doubled the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses and boosted high school graduation rates, school officials said…

Rice becomes superintendent at a critical time for Michigan’s 1.5 million students. Michigan ranks in the bottom third of states for fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math and college attainment, and it’s 43rd out of 47 in school funding equity.

According to officials at Education Trust-Midwest, Michigan ranks in the bottom third of all states overall in early literacy and among the bottom states for every major group of students: African American, Latino, white, low-income and higher income students. In eighth-grade math, only about 1 in 10 African American students and 2 in 10 Latino students are proficient.

Rice says more spending on public schools is critical, especially to address the chronic underfunding of English language students, poor students and special needs students.

He says he wants to increase pay, benefits and professional development for teachers. New data from the National Education Association found the average salary for Michigan teachers declined last year, continuing the 12% decline over the last decade when adjusted for inflation. Only Indiana, West Virginia and Wisconsin have had worse declines in teacher pay.

Starting teacher salaries in Michigan rank 32nd in the nation, according to the report. Nationwide, 37% of districts have a starting salary of at least $40,000. In Michigan, only 12% of districts meet that threshold, according to the data.

“It is an existential moment for the profession and the profession of public education in the state of Michigan,” Rice said. “As goes the teaching profession so goes public education in the state.”

Rice opposes the “punitive” retention requirements of the state’s third-grade reading laws and the dual accountability system created when state lawmakers passed the A-F grading system during the lame duck session in December. 

There is hope for Michigan.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, Michigan, Teacher Pay
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