Archives for category: Accountability
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Michigan: State Attorney General Will Take a Position Opposite to the Governor in Detroit Literacy Lawsuit

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2019 //
4

Now, this gets interesting.

Two days ago, I posted about the battle in Michigan over who is responsible for the deplorable conditions in the public schools of Detroit. Critics claimed that Governor Whitmer was abandoning her campaign promises.

The new Democratic Governor Whitmer disappointed some supporters by asserting that the state was not responsible for the miseducation of the children of Detroit, although Detroit has been under state control for nearly 20 years.

The State Attorney General disagrees. 

Mackinac Island — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said she will file in opposition to the governor’s position in a lawsuit alleging that the state deprived Detroit students of their right to literacy due to deplorable conditions at the facilities and dwindling numbers of teachers and textbooks.

At the Mackinac Policy Conference Wednesday, Nessel told The Detroit News that while her office has a duty to represent the governor she also is an independently elected official with an obligation to represent the people of the state of Michigan.

She intends to file parens patriae, or on behalf of the residents of Michigan, “to do what I think is best for them personally.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday argued in a response to the lawsuit filed by the attorney general’s office that because Detroit schools have been returned to local control the state should not be subject to the lawsuit..

“Sometimes I’m not always going to be in lock step with the arguments that are set forth by our clients, our client agencies or the executives,” Nessel said. “When that happens sometimes I have to go my own way and make the arguments that I feel are just and that I feel are appropriate and that’s what’s happened in this case.”

At least one state board of education member named as a defendant in the lawsuit also has said she will not be taking or supporting the state’s position made Friday in a brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals that sought a dismissal of the 2016 lawsuit.

Compensation is needed to make amends for the state’s control of the district for almost 20 years, Michigan Board of Education Vice President Pamela Pugh said.

“Anything short of Governor Whitmer and state education officials completely separating from former Attorney General Bill Schuette’s arguments, and taking responsibility for our children of color being granted the equal right to critical learning conditions that are afforded to students in other school districts is simply unacceptable,” Pugh said.

Categories Accountability, Detroit, Michigan

National Education Policy Center Reviews Claims about Fiscal Impact of Charters and Finds Them Shallow and Misleading

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2019 //
12

Bruce Baker of Rutgers University reviewed three policy briefs produced by the pro-charter, pro-choice Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington and found them to be “generally superficial and misleading.” The apparent intent of these briefs was to influence the policy debate in California, in which Governor Newsom and the Legislature are considering whether to take into account the fiscal impact of charters on public schools. Baker’s review was sponsored by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado.

 

Reviewed by:

Bruce D. Baker University of Colorado Boulder

May 2019

Executive Summary

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), based at the University of Washington, Bothell, recently released a series of three policy briefs on the financial impact of charter schools on nearby school districts in California. The briefs arrive at a time when a Task Force convened by California Gov. Gavin Newsom is deliberating on these exact matters. CRPE’s founder, Paul Hill, was a key source of testimony to the task force, serving as an expert viewed as “sympathetic to charter schools.”

The three briefs make note of the task force in their introduction and are seemingly intended to inform these ongoing debates over charter school financing and expansion in the state of California. The briefs are as follows.

  • The first brief, Charter Schools and District Enrollment Loss, posits that charter school enrollment growth is not a significant factor in large district enrollment decline in California.
  • The second brief, Do Charter Schools Cause Fiscal Distress in School Districts?, argues that charter school expansion is not a significant contributor to fiscal distress (fiscal stress and/or fiscal impact) in California school districts.
  • The final brief, Do the Costs of California Charter Schools Outweigh the Benefits?, contends that there are “tangible benefits” and “few quantifiable costs” to charter schooling in California, though it does concede that a more thorough cost-benefit analysis is warranted.

 

The first brief acknowledges that over the long run, California charter school expansion has resulted in some district enrollment decline. But the brief contends that this decline has been modest and in recent years is no longer occurring. Further, the report asserts that whether charter schools expand or not, many districts will face continuing enrollment decline and “the financial challenges it brings” (p. 10).

The second brief lays out a set of figures showing charter school enrollment shares and comparing this to county-assigned classifications of district fiscal distress. It concludes boldly that (a) there is no relationship between charter enrollment share and host district fiscal distress; (b) instead, fiscal distress is most often caused by financial mismanagement; and (c) fiscal distress is too important to get wrong.

The third brief first asserts that there are benefits to, but few if any tangible costs associated with, charter schooling in California. Those benefits are illustrated by reports of differences in test score gains for children in some urban California charter schools versus matched peers in host districts. The brief also cites a handful of studies to support its contention that charter expansion also benefits, or at least does not harm, children in host district schools. Finally, it notes other potential benefits for children enrolled in charter schools, for which quantifiable values are more difficult to assign, including: “The option to choose” (p. 4).

On the potential-costs side of charter expansion, the third brief provides a short list, including, (a) lacking/losing economies of scale, (b) transfers/fiscal impact, (c) capital costs, (d) educating high-cost students, and (e) social cohesion and societal concerns. The authors then dismiss these five concerns, offering the conclusion that there are “few quantifiable costs to charter schooling” in California (p. 6). Yet they provide little analysis or reference to any valid, rigorous analysis by any other researchers.

Robin Lake, Ashley Jochim, Paul Hill, and Sivan Tuchman wrote these briefs and qualify their work with identical wording: “Given the time constraints for informing the commis- sion’s and legislator’s questions, we were limited to data available from earlier studies and from federal, state, and local databases, as cited in the three briefs” (p. 2 of each brief).

These limitations did impair the usefulness of the briefs, but other problems are also evi- dent. The first brief is misleading in its assertion that charter enrollment growth is not to blame for district enrollment decline. It is, and has been for some time, whether in districts with declining, stable or growing overall student enrollments. The brief also attempts to minimize the import of the considerable role played by charters in districts’ enrollment loss, offering up the non sequitur that enrollment loss can arise from other sources as well. The second brief relies on overly simplistic comparisons of charter enrollments and county-assigned “fiscal distress” classifications to conclude that there is no association between charter enrollments and fiscal distress. The contention here is that there can’t be an illness if the patient isn’t dead. In order to rely on this problematic approach, the brief erroneously dismisses a significant, more rigorous, detailed, peer-reviewed and published body of research that illustrates the fiscal impact of charter schools on host districts, and how those fiscal impacts may lead to fiscal stress. The third brief, which presents itself as an analysis of costs and benefits, merely touts the benefits of charter schooling as tangible while being entirely dismissive of numerous known and often measurable costs. Taken together, the briefs are useful only in pointing to some important issues that policymakers should consider; their analyses of those issues are, however, generally superficial and misleading.

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Pennsylvania: Charter Lobby Pushes to Remove All Quality Controls and Allow Unlimited Expansion

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2019 //
12

Two officials of the Philadelphia school system wrote an opinion piece warning that proposals for “charter reform” are actually a blank check for unlimited charter expansion with no regulation at all.

Dr. William R. Hite is superintendent of the Philadelphia public schools. Joyce Wilkerson is president of the Philadelphia school board.

They point out that the State Auditor said that Pennsylvania’s charter law is the worst in the nation.

Current proposals to benefit charter schools would make it even worse.

They write:

Legislation pending in the General Assembly pushes the charter law in the wrong direction. House Bills 356 and 357 create more risk for students, local districts, and taxpayers. We vehemently oppose these bills.

The legislation would allow all charter schools, even the poorest performers, to expand without the authorizing district’s knowledge or approval. These unpredictable expenses would not only create short-term fiscal challenges for the district but make it impossible to reasonably utilize multiyear budgeting — the very approach to budgeting that has allowed the district to make the strategic, sustainable investments that are resulting in improved academic performance across our schools. These bills undermine the fiscal-stability promise of local control.

Newly proposed charter legislation also frees charters from oversight that is necessary to ensure they are meeting academic standards. They make it harder to close underperforming charters and allow unfettered expansion of charters — even those with failing performance — without regard for their ability to successfully operate. The proposed standard charter application form lacks information on an applicant’s’ experience, finances, past performance, and operational ability, all of which are necessary to meaningfully assess whether the applicant can sustain a school that meets the needs of the very students it aspires to serve.

The original vision for charter schools was teacher-driven laboratories of innovation that would develop promising practices to inform and advance all public schools. Charters have not lived up to that promise. In fact, charter schools are only 6 percent of public schools in Pennsylvania but are 25 percent of the lowest-performing schools under new state standards. Is this the future we want for the commonwealth’s public education system? Is this the future our students and families deserve?

As usually, the charter lobbyists are advocating for no accountability, no supervision, and more money.

Disgraceful.

 

 

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

Who Benefits from Unlimited Expansion of Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2019 //
10

Whenever there is a battle over the expansion of charter schools, we read in the papers that “charter parents” prevailed and the teachers’ union lost.

Why don’t the stories say “charter lobbyists prevail,” and public schools and their students lost?

Why do reporters always assume that only the unions oppose charter expansion.

Why are “charter parents” seeking more charter schools?

Don’t their children already attend a charter school?

Here is the conundrum.

Who benefits when legislators allow unlimited expansion of new charter schools?

Not the parents. Their children are already in a charter school.

How many charter schools does one child need?

This unrestricted expansion is solely for the benefit of the charter operators and their lobbyists.

As we have seen again and again, charter operators use the children and the parents as pawns to expand their empire of privately managed schools and enrich themselves.

Unlimited expansion of new charters does not benefit any charter school parent.

It sucks money away from existing public schools, the schools that 90% of the nation’s are enrolled in.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

California: Charter Reform Fails, Charter Lobbyists Celebrate Victory for Privatization and Non-Regulation

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2019 //
40

The California Legislature failed to take action on bills to impose a moratorium on new charter schools, and charter lobbyists were exultant.

Despite the ongoing scandals in the charter industry, the Legislature was unable to act.

Only this week, eleven charter leaders were indicted for misappropriating millions of dollars that ended up in their personal bank accounts.

Only last week, the founder of a charter chain was sentenced to thirty months in prison for theft of millions of dollars.

The California Charter School Association, funded by billionaires such as Reed Hastings and Eli Broad, want predators to go unsupervised and unregulated. They want no limits on charter growth, public schools be damned.

If it is not there already, I place the CCSA on this blog’s Wall of Shame.

Let’s see what happens to AB 1505, which enables districts to have some say over whether charters can open in their space, which would curb the rapacious appetite of sleazy operators who are able to get a charter in Rural District Z and open the school in an urban district that doesn’t want them.

Ten percent of the students in California are enrolled in privately managed charter schools; 90% are enrolled in public schools. Why undermine and deprive the 90% for the (possible) benefit of the 10%? Only one group benefits from the legislators’ inaction: the charter industry. This is insane. And corrupt.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Wall of Shame

California Teacher: Charters Are Wreaking Havoc on Communities of Color

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2019 //
16

Erika Jones is an experienced teacher in California. In this post, she responds forcefully to the claim by charter advocates that privately managed charter schools “save” children of color.

They don’t.

I urge all charter advocacy groups and individuals to read her eloquent article and consider her words carefully.

She begins:

As a public-school educator who is African-American, I am keenly aware of what it means to be a student of color within the public school system and the role institutional racism has played.

We have faced decades of funding and resource inequities, which have left our current public schools in marginalized communities unable to fully serve their students. Historically, acknowledging these inequities can lead to strategies to combat institutional racism in our schools and across the country.

The last 20 years of exploding charter school growth in communities of color also make it clear that many proposed solutions can have serious negative consequences for the overwhelming majority of public school students. The time is now for our elected leaders in Sacramento to pass laws to support students by curtailing the worst parts of this broken, decades-long experiment.

Often within the conversation of supporting communities of color, school choice and specifically charter schools frequently are presented as the answer. When looking at institutional racism within public education, instead of being the panacea for children of color, more often than not the charter school industry actually leads to worsening conditions for a majority of students of color. This is because many school districts in California, whose students are overwhelmingly students of color, are in crisis mode: seeing upwards of a 200 percent growth in charter schools, lacking facilities and averaging hundreds of millions of dollars in fiscal impact directly attributed to this growth.

Yet the achievement gap for students of color has continued to widen. We see a select group of children of color leaving the traditional public school setting to attend charter schools, while the majority of children of color remain in the traditional setting.

I taught both 3rd grade and kindergarten in South Los Angeles at Angeles Mesa Elementary and during the years I was there multiple new charter schools popped up surrounding my school. I saw firsthand how our families of color were lured away by the promise of free tablets for their kids, nicer uniforms and so-called college readiness. I hugged parents as they brought their children back to my school, feeling devastated that their child had been kicked out of one of the charters or their children found themselves in schools with higher class sizes and less student support. Some of my families had even been misled to believe that the new charter school was their new home school.

The original intent of charter schools was to be educator-driven incubators of change where innovations that lead to student success could be shared with all schools within the public school system. Here we are 20 years later and instead of sharing methods, many traditional public schools in communities of color find themselves competing for resources, having disproportionate numbers of students with high needs and having larger populations of English learners. All this while for the most part charters are performing about the same as traditional public schools.

Erika Jones answers all the questions with facts and evidence. Please read the rest of her article.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, Privatization

Pennsylvania: Finance Experts Warn that Charter Costs May Bankrupt 500 School Districts

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2019 //
12

Finance experts in Pennsylvania warned that the costs of charter schools and cyber charters threaten to bankrupt as many as 500 school districts. 

Finance experts with the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO) said lawmakers must change the way charter costs are assessed to local school districts or accept that some school districts are not going to be able to continue to bear the cost of paying hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of dollars in charter school tuition.

The call for change comes as the General Assembly weighs a variety of bills aimed at altering the way the state regulates and finances charter and cyber charter schools that now enroll about 140,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

Hannah Barrick, of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officers, said charter school costs, which are borne almost entirely by local school districts, totaled $1.8 billion last year and accounted for 37 cents of every new dollar raised in local property taxes.

In some school districts, the costs are even higher.

Enrollment in Pennsylvania’s charter schools grew dramatically over the last decade, increasing from about 78,000 students in 2009-10 to 140,000 this year.

Along with that growth, school districts have seen the bill for charter school tuition grow by double digits five out of the past eight years.

Charter schools, promoted as a free option for public school students whose families wish to look outside their districts, are funded by the students’ local school districts. Tuition is calculated using a complex formula that requires each district to pay charter school fees based on the local district’s cost per student per year. Across the state, those figures ranged from $7,600 to $18,500 per mainstream student to $15,100 to $48,000 per special education student.

Pennsylvania has about 1.7 million students. Supplying choices for 140,000 students (8%) in schools that are of mixed quality threatens to bankrupt the state’s school finance system.

Has it occurred to the lawmakers in Pennsylvania that running a dual school system, both publicly funded, is an insane idea?

 

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

NYC: Class Size Champion Strikes Again, in Court

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2019 //
6

 

Leonie Haimson is a force of nature. She and her! Student Privacy allies beat Bill Gates’ $100 Million inBloom data-collection project. She and her parent allies forced the NYC Department of Education to back down and keep open high-performing low-enrollment PS 25 in Brooklyn. Now she and her allies are going back to court to fight State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia over the matter of class size in NYC. 

Give up, MaryEllen!

Haimson sends out the alert: Game on!

On Thursday May 23, 2019 the Education Law Center filed an appeal on behalf of nine NYC parents, Class Size Matters and the Alliance for Quality Education, urging the Appellate court to order the Department of Education to reduce class size in all grades as the Contracts for Excellence law requires. Our original lawsuit, Agostini vs. Elia, was filed in April 2018 when the State Education Commissioner refused to take action and enforce the law.   

In December 2018, Acting Supreme Court Judge Henry Zwack ruled against us in a brief decision that engaged with neither the law nor the facts of the case, and merely claimed that this was a matter for the Commissioner to decide.  She in turn had argued that any class size obligations on the part of the DOE had expired years ago. Our appeal demonstrates how that view is false — and if the Legislature wanted to eliminate DOE’s legal obligation to lower class size, they would have changed the law.  Oral arguments in the case will likely occur late this summer.

The press release from ELC is here and below. — Leonie Haimson 

LAWSUIT TO ENFORCE MANDATE TO REDUCE CLASS SIZE IN NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS MOVES FORWARD
The plaintiffs in a legal action to enforce a mandate to reduce class size in New York City public schools filed their brief on May 23 in an Albany appellate court. The lawsuit began in June 2017 as an administrative petition demanding that the State Commissioner of Education, MaryEllen Elia, order the NYC Schools Chancellor, the New York City Department of Education, and the New York City Board of Education to comply with the law. When the Commissioner dismissed the petition, the plaintiffs brought the case to court.
The plaintiffs in the case are nine New York City public school parents, as well as Class Size Matters and the Alliance for Quality Education, two prominent New York public school advocacy organizations. Education Law Center Senior Attorney Wendy Lecker is representing the plaintiffs.
Under a state law known as the Contract for Excellence, or “C4E,” the NYC Chancellor and the Department and Board of Education are required to develop a five-year plan to reduce class size to target averages in three grade spans: K-3, 4-8, and 9-12. After the law was enacted in 2007, New York City developed a plan which was approved by the Commissioner in 2007.
The City never fulfilled the 2007 plan within five years, or by 2012. Nor has the City implemented the 2007 plan or any other plan that complies with the C4E law. As a result, class sizes now are as large or even larger than they were in 2007. Between 2007-2016, for example, the number of students in classes of 30 or more in grades 1-3 increased by 4,000% to over 40,000.
In dismissing the Petition in 2017, the Commissioner ruled that since the 2007 plan “concluded” in 2012, or five years after it was approved, the petition was moot even though the City never implemented the plan. The plaintiffs challenged the Commissioner’s decision in State Supreme Court, which “deferred” to the Commissioner’s interpretation of the term “within five years” in the C4E law.
The plaintiffs have now appealed to the Appellate Division. They argue that the Commissioner misinterpreted the C4E law. The five-year endpoint in the law was the deadline the Legislature imposed to accomplish class size reduction. It was not the date at which the City’s legal obligation would magically disappear. Moreover, the lower court wrongly deferred to the Commissioner’s interpretation of the C4E law.
“The NYC Department of Education has violated the Contract for Excellence Law for over a decade because of its refusal to reduce class size,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “As a result, more than 336,000 students were crammed into classes of thirty or more this fall. Our thanks to the Education Law Center for representing Class Size Matters and nine NYC parent plaintiffs in this important appeal. If the Appellate Court decides on the basis of the law and the facts, it will require that NYC students finally receive their right to a sound basic education with the smaller classes they need and deserve.”
“Class size is an important factor in determining whether students have the opportunity to succeed in school. Ensuring that every student has a chance to succeed is our moral duty. Following the law shouldn’t be a choice. We hope the court ensures that the students of New York receive their constitutionally granted right to ‘a sound basic education,'” said Marina Marcou-O’Malley, Operations and Policy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education.
Oral argument in the appeal will likely take place in the late summer.
Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24
Categories Accountability, Class size, Education Reform, New York City

Gary Rubinstein: U.S. News Changes Ranking Formula for High Schools—Charters Tank

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2019 //
63

 

Gary Rubinstein reports that U.S. News & World Report altered the way it measures “the best high schools,” and charters suffered. Many got top rankings in the past despite their high attrition rates and demographics towards whites and Asians. The new formula is harder to game.

Gary knows that the annual exercise in ranking the best high schools is inherently fraudulent. What matters most can’t be measured, and what is considered “best” usually means having students from affluent families. What is “best” for some students is not necessarily best for others. The best high school may be the ones where students feel welcomed, inspired, learn to love learning, and are encouraged to do their best and care for others.

What do you think “the best high school” is?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Graduation rates, Testing

Los Angeles: Turn Out and Vote for Measure EE on Tuesday, June 4!

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2019 //
2

Thousands of public school teachers in Los Angeles went on strike in February, demanding basic services for their students: smaller class sizes (many classes have more than 40 students), classes in the arts and music, a librarian and nurse and other support staff in every school. The strike won broad public support. The teachers won an agreement from the school board.

Now comes the hard part: Paying for the agreement.

On Tuesday June 4, voters in Los Angeles will go to the polls and vote on Measure EE.

It is a parcel tax that would raise $500 million additional dollars every year for the public schools for the next twelve years.

Please show up and vote for Measure EE.

The money is desperately needed to provide the students of Los Angeles the schools they need and deserve. Why should they attend schools that are deteriorating, where the library is open only on occasion or not at all, where a nurse is available once a week, a guidance counselor has hundreds of students, and a school psychologist is available never?

Please show up and vote for Measure EE.

California is one of the richest states in the nation, with a roaring and dynamic economy.

But California spends less on education than most other states. Shockingly, it is on par with Kansas, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

Los Angeles spends far less than other big cities on its students.

Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez met with Superintendent Austin Beutner and UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl at an elementary school in the school library, which is closed two or three days a week.

He wrote:

“The two most powerful people in Los Angeles public education are like a tag team now, practically completing each other’s sentences.”

California, he wrote, “ranks at the top in wealth and near the bottom in funding per pupil.”

What would EE cost the taxpayer? The owner of a 1,500 square foot home would  pay an additional $240, twice as much for a house twice as large. About 82% of the revenue would come from commercial, industrial and apartment building owners, while senior homeowners (over 65) and disabled homeowners are exempted from the tax.

Who is fighting EE? The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, which opposes taxes and apparently opts for an undereducated workforce; the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is also opposed, that being the organization responsible for Proposition 13, which undermined school funding in 1978 by setting strict limits on property taxes. The Chamber prefers a regressive flat tax, one that is the same for the owner of a small house and the owner of a skyscraper.

Beutner and Caputo-Pearl pointed to business leaders who understand that the future success of Los Angeles depends on the success today of the students in the city’s public schools and who support EE.

Measure EE includes strict accountability requirements, meaning an independent financial audit to assure that every dollar goes to the schools for the intended purposes of reducing class size and providing needed services, such as nurses, counselors, and librarians.

Measure EE needs a two-thirds majority to pass, and that’s a high bar, but other cities in California have met it. Beutner listed them: Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Torrance.

The people of Los Angeles cheered the teachers when they struck and marched in the rain. They honked their horns and gave them thumbs-up because they were doing what was best for their students.

Now comes the voters’ turn.

Will they too stand up for the children who are the future of Los Angeles?

Will they agree that every school should have a working library, a school nurse, a psychologist, and reasonable class sizes?

Will they agree that all children deserve equality of educational opportunity?

Tuesday June 4 will be a decisive day for the children of Los Angeles.

They are OUR children.

If you live in Los Angeles, please vote and urge your friends, family, and neighbors to vote.

Vote as if your future depends upon it.

It does.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, California, Democracy, Funding, Los Angeles
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »