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How Andre Agassi and His Partner Are Profiting in the Charter Sector

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2019 //
6

 

Andre Agassi was once a famous tennis star. Several years ago, he decided to open a charter school in Las Vegas, with his name on it. It was going to be a national model for sending poor kids to elite colleges. But it failed and was eventually taken over by charter chain Democracy Prep. During the school’s first decade of operation, it went through six principals and multiple teachers. Former teachers said there was “a chaotic learning environment.”

Then Agassi went into partnership with an equity investor who put up $750 million for a new company that would build and lease charter schools. This is a very profitable venture.

Unfortunately, the charter schools it builds are forced into financial straits by the burden of the rent they must pay to Agassi and Turner.

In Detroit, a school built by their firm is closing, in part because of the crushing debt required to pay the landlords, Agassi and Turner.

A Detroit charter school is shutting down amid financial woes brought on by its lease agreement with an investment fund headed by tennis star Andre Agassi.

The closure of Southwest Detroit Community School, which was announced to teachers at an emergency meeting at the school Tuesday afternoon, caps a six-year existence marred by academic struggles and, more recently, dissatisfaction among parents and the teaching staff over the school’s direction. 

“I feel one part betrayed, but also, I think it was inevitable,” said Mitzy Tripp, who has two children at the K-8 school, including one who will soon graduate from eighth grade. “But I honestly didn’t think that they would do this to the families.”

When Michigan lawmakers lifted the cap on new charter schools in 2011, it sparked a spree of more than a dozen school openings within a few years. Several have since closed, including Delta Preparatory Academy for Social Justice, which shut down abruptly at the beginning of this school year.

It’s the latest upheaval for a city where the school landscape has become severely fractured, forcing schools to compete for teachers, students, and resources without some of the safeguards that bring order to charter school systems in cities like New Orleans and Washington. Efforts to put such controls in place in Michigan have been stopped by well-funded political opposition…

The closure means the families of 347 students, many of them Spanish-speaking, will have to find a new school for their children. School changes have been shown to hurt student learning and behavior at school…

In the end, though, any hope for the school’s future collapsed under the weight of its lease with Turner-Agassi, an investment fund connected to the retired tennis legend that helped open the school as well as 89 others across the country.

The lease was designed like a residential rent-to-buy plan. The school would pay rent for the first few years, then, once it had enough students, it would buy the building outright. Turner-Agassi would make roughly $1 million on the deal, according to the lease agreement.

These arrangements aren’t unheard of in the charter sector. Michigan charter schools get no money from the state for facilities, often forcing them to rent buildings. Traditional schools generally own their buildings, taking advantage of public bonds that aren’t available to charter schools.

When the school failed to amass the more than $8 million it needed to buy the building, it paid a steep price. The rent went up sharply, increasing by 57 percent between 2017 and 2018, per the lease.

The school’s inability to keep up with its lease payments set off alarm bells within the Michigan Treasury Department, which flagged it as a “potential fiscal distress school” and required it to submit regular reports.

The rent, which grew to $769,910 annually this year, was higher than what other schools in the neighborhood pay. The payments suck up 19 percent of what the school brings in from the state to educate children.

Agassi and Turner made a handsome profit.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization
By dianeravitch | Link
May 9, 2019 //
13

 

Peter Greene has a rapier sharp wit, which he wields so deftly that the object of his attention has been beheaded without knowing what happened. If you want to see him at his best, read this mystery: Who is murdering Charter Schools? 

Teachers?

Unions?

Lobbyists?

If you live in the real world, the people fighting privatization are heroic defenders of the commonweal, protecting the public interest against the Waltons, the Koch brothers, DeVos, and other private interests.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Scandals, South Carolina, Teachers, Unions, West Virginia

Oregon: Tens of Thousands of Teachers Walk Out, Closing 600 Schools, to Protest Working Conditions

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2019 //
3

 

Thousands of teachers in Oregon joined the Red4Ed Movement, walking out to protest overcrowded classes and a lack of support staff, including school nurses and mental health counselors. 

Nearly 45% of all reported classes in Oregon have 26 students or more,” said John Larson, a high school English teacher and president of the Oregon Education Association.
Some classes have 56 or more students, he said.
So instead of going to class, many teachers were taking unpaid days off work to flood at least six protest sites across the state.
The mass exodus of teachers has already forced 25 school districts to close 600 schools Wednesday, Larson said.
The biggest district to close, Portland Public Schools, has more than 46,000 students.
“This is historic,” Larson told a sea of red-shirted teachers, parents and students at a riverfront rally in downtown Portland. “This is what we came here for today — is to make sure that we fund our schools.”
It’s not just funding for smaller class sizes. Union members also want:
— More school counselors. Oregon has half the school counselors that national experts suggest. And the shortage of mental health counselors is a big concern across the country — especially after all the recent school shootings.
— More school librarians. Currently, there are only 158 school librarians in Oregon — less than one librarian per district.
— More school nurses. There’s only one nurse for every 5,481 students. That’s four times less than national recommendations, the OEA said.
— A restoration of art, music and physical education programs that have been cut by budget constraints.
— More funding for school supplies. The OEA said 94% of teachers spend their own money on classroom supplies “to make up the difference between what their students need and what districts can provide.”
— The passage of state House Bill 3427, dubbed the “Student Success Act.” The bill would increase funding for K-12 education by 18%.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Class size, Funding, Oregon, Resistance, Teachers

Valerie Strauss Reviews Betsy DeVos’ Performance at Education Writers Association Meeting

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
11

Betsy DeVos says there is no such thing as “public money.”

This was one of the things she told the nation’s education writers.

Valerie Strauss reports on her appearance here. 

What comes through in her answers is that she lives in an alternate reality.

She denies facts she doesn’t like.

She nimbly avoids answering difficult questions.

She lives in a rarefied billionaire bubble.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires

Valerie Strauss: The Tide Is Turning Against Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
6

 

Valerie Strauss reviews the education budget of the House Appropriations Committee and notes that budget proposal increases the programs that Trump and DeVos while endorsing an unprecedented cut for the Charter Schools Program. As she notes in  the title of the article, the committee concluded that the Education Department was not “a responsible steward” of the charter fund.

Surely, they must have noticed the daily scandals associated with this unaccountable sector.

“Many public school systems are complaining about losing significant funding to charters. Teacher strikes that began in 2018 and have continued this year throughout the country — including in Republican-led states — have helped change the debate about public education funding.”

Strauss writes:

A 2018 report by the Education Department’s inspector general slammed the agency’s oversight of the federal Charter Schools Program and made recommendations for improvement that the House legislation says DeVos’s team has ignored. The agency was accused of the same thing in a2016 inspector general report.

“The committee is deeply concerned that the department does not intend to be a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars when it comes to [Charter Schools Program] funding,” the legislation says.

The committee has included language that would direct the Education Department to implement the recommendations from the 2018 inspector general’s report within six months of the bill’s enactment and brief legislators on its plan within a month.

The legislation also says lawmakers are “concerned” about a recent report issued by the advocacy group the Network for Public Education, which says that as much as $1 billion in federal money was wasted on charter schools that never opened or that closed because of mismanagement and other issues from 2009 to 2016.

Jeanne Allen, leader of the pro-school choice, anti-public school group Center for Education Reform, asks “Who is killing Charter Schools?” and the answer is clear: the Department of Education’s Inspector General, Congressional appropriators, the daily scandals caused by unaccountable charters, the dedicated work of scores of state and local parent organizations, and the Network for Public Education, which is devoted to fighting privatization and profiteering.

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

Alabama: Rules Are for Public Schools, Not for Charters

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
3

 

Alabama journalist Kyle Whitmire puzzles over how state officials created charters, setrules for openingthem, then broke all their own rules to clear the way for a charter school that no one wants. 

Read this story and you will understand why the public is turning against charter schools.

Not hard to figure out. Might be something about an old-fashioned word called “democracy.”

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: DeVos Receives Alexander Hamilton Award But Has No Idea Who He Was

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
16

 

The rightwing Manhattan Institute recently honored a Betsy DeVos with its Alexander Hamilton Award.

Mercedes Schneider brilliantly explains that Betsy DeVos knows nothing about Alexander Hamilton or his convictions. Indeed, her anti-government views are the opposite of Hamilton’s, but she doesn’t know that.

Schneider writes:

According to MI, its Alexander Hamilton Award is named such “because, like the Manhattan Institute, he was a fervent proponent of commerce and civic life. ” However, Hamilton was clearly pro-centralized government, which makes the award an MI misnomer since MI uses it to honor the likes of DeVos, whose ideology is much more in line with the Antifederalists of Hamilton’s day.

The contradiction did not go unnoticed; on May 03, 2019, Think Progress published an article entitled, “Betsy DeVos Appears to Have No Idea Who Alexander Hamilton Was” From the article:

…The entire purpose of the agency Education Secretary DeVos leads is to use the resources of the federal government to foster better public education. Let’s also set aside the fact that the overwhelming majority of American primary and secondary school students — 90 percent — are educated by government-run schools. If DeVos plans to fight for “freedom from government,” she is in the worst possible job.

Yet DeVos doesn’t just appear to be rejecting the core mission of her agency and the foundational premise of the American education system. She also seems to have no idea who Alexander Hamilton is or what he sought to accomplish as the architect of much of America’s economic system. The early history of the United States was, to a large extent, a battle between a Jeffersonian model built on agriculture, small government, and slavery; and a Hamiltonian model built on capitalism, economic expansion, and a robust centralized government.

Hamilton’s core insight was that healthy markets and a robust manufacturing sector do not emerge from the ether so long as centralized authorities do not interfere. Rather, the vibrant economy that Hamilton helped build depends on a strong central government authority.

Below are excerpts from DeVos’ speech for the MI event, which she characteristically uses as a slant for her own pro-choice, anti-union agenda:

The Federalist Papers, to which Hamilton contributed a great deal, cautioned against a tyranny of factions. These groups of agitators jealously protect and advance their own self-interests to the detriment of just about everyone else.

Sound familiar? Education unions, the association of this, the organization of that… those are today’s factions. One of their own, the late Al Shanker, said this: “I don’t see a voice for students in the bargaining process. I think it’s one of the facts of life… the consumer, basically, is left out.”

That union boss admitted then what’s still true today: factions keep student voices out. But it’s way past time to let them in!

Note that the Federalist Papers were meant to assuage public fears about a centralized, federal government, but DeVos tries to shape a reference to them in order to discredit teachers’ unions.

DeVos is single-minded. She believes that her mission in life is to destroy public schools, weaken the federal government, and crush teachers’ unions. Why is this woman in charge of the U.S. Department of Education, which she despises?

This is one of Mercedes Schneider’s best pieces.

She concludes, with irony:

At the opening of her MI speech, DeVos comments, “I must admit I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve such an honor.”

Indeed.

So many layers to that sandwich.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Democracy, History

Economic Policy Institute: Teacher “Wage Penalty” Reaches a Record High

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
10

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! If you believe that teachers are important and that they change lives, become an advocate for higher pay for teachers.

The Economic Policy Institute is one of the very few think tanks in D.C. (maybe the only think tank) that is not funded by billionaires. It focuses on economic issues affecting working people and issues of economic justice.

In this post, Sylvia Allegretto and Lawrence Mishel document the wage gap between teachers and their peers with similar education.

Teachers are not paid equitably. They have good reason to strike for higher wages. In most states, teachers are unlikely to get higher wages unless they strike.

Providing teachers with a decent middle-class living commensurate with other professionals with similar education is not simply a matter of fairness. Effective teachers are the most important school-based determinant of student educational performance.1 To promote children’s success in school, schools must retain credentialed teachers and ensure that teaching remains an attractive career option for college-bound students. Pay is an important component of retention and recruitment.

The deepening teacher wage and compensation penalty over the recovery parallels a growing shortage of teachers. Every state headed into the 2017–2018 school year facing a teacher shortage (Strauss 2017). New research by García and Weiss (2019) indicates the persistence and magnitude of the teacher shortage nationwide:

The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought. When indicators of teacher quality (certification, relevant training, experience, etc.) are taken into account, the shortage is even more acute than currently estimated, with high-poverty schools suffering the most from the shortage of credentialed teachers. (1)

García and Weiss explain why the teacher shortage matters:

A shortage of teachers harms students, teachers, and the public education system as a whole. Lack of sufficient, qualified teachers and staff instability threaten students’ ability to learn and reduce teachers’ effectiveness, and high teacher turnover consumes economic resources that could be better deployed elsewhere. The teacher shortage makes it more difficult to build a solid reputation for teaching and to professionalize it, which further contributes to perpetuating the shortage. In addition, the fact that the shortage is distributed so unevenly among students of different socioeconomic backgrounds challenges the U.S. education system’s goal of providing a sound education equitably to all children…

Teacher wage and compensation penalties grew over the recovery since 2010

  • The public school teacher weekly wage penalty grew from 13.5 percent to 21.4 percent between 2010 and 2018.
  • Teacher benefits improved relative to benefits for other professionals from 2010 to 2018, boosting the teacher benefits advantage from 4.8 percent to 8.4 percent. Despite this improvement, the total compensation (wage and benefit) penalty for public school teachers grew from 8.7 percent in 2010 to 13.1 percent in 2018.

The wage penalty is a result of state policy, not the recession of 2008. Legislators cut taxes and revenues.

Teacher weekly wage penalties vary across the states

  • We report teacher weekly wage penalties for each state for the period 2014–2018. State wage penalties are based on regression-adjusted analyses using a sample of college graduates in each state. Teacher penalties range from 0.2 percent to 32.6 percent.
  • Four of the seven states with the largest teacher wage penalties—Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Colorado—were, unsurprisingly, ground zero for the 2018 teacher protests, helping to draw national attention to the erosion of teacher pay. In these states, teachers earned at least 26 percent less than comparable college graduates.
  • In 21 states and D.C., the teacher wage penalties are greater than 20 percent.
Categories Accountability, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching

Larry Lee: What Happened in Alabama When Regular People Stood Up for Their Community Schools

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
17

 

Larry Lee, Alabama journalist and blogger, tells what happened in Washington County, Alabama, when people got fed up with being pushed around and decided to protect their public schools. 

People are chartering buses to attend the state education board on Thursday to express their opposition to the charter.

Alabama has a Republican supermajority in the Legislature, and that supermajority does whatever it wants. Whichever party has a supermajority, it’s not good for democracy, because people feel helpless.

What has happened to public education since 2010?

A-F school report cards that are basically worthless–except to those who want to bash public schools.  The Alabama Accountability Act which continues to divert millions from the Education Trust Fund.  The charter school law that, as we see in Washington County, makes a mockery of transparency and truthfulness.

None of these have been in the best interest of public schools.  Yet, try to get someone to take a stand and push back and nine times out of ten all you get is a shrug.  Are another superintendent saying, “Well, you know my board wants me to keep a low profile.”

This was until Washington County and a small group of dedicated educators and parents agreed that they were going to stand firm for what they believe is right for their school system and its students.

Thank God they have.

Because in so doing, they have shown us all that David can go into battle with Goliath.  They have set an example.  One that says only a handful of tenacious folks can get the attention of a great big bunch of folks.  Even The Washington Post.

You do it by keeping on keeping on.  By not giving up.  By doing your due diligence and hours and hours of homework.  They refused to knuckle under when the state charter school commission refused to be forthright and share info that belongs to the public.  They have had the backbone and courage to challenge people they know are being disingenuous and trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

They have shown us that you can fight city hall.  That just because someone is housed at the state department of education and have fancy titles doesn’t mean they can run over local school systems.

Yes, a handful of good people in Washington County have shown all of Alabama what is possible when you are convicted.

And all of Alabama owes them a standing ovation for doing so.

Now let’s see whether the state school board listens.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Resistance

Setback for Federal Charter Schools Program! DeVos Request for $500 Million Trimmed to $400 Million!

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
17

 

This is good news!

The House Appropriations Committee issued its budget report. Betsy DeVos requested an increase for the federal Charter Schools Program, from $440 million a year to $500 million. But the education appropriations subcommittee cut the appropriation to $400 million. This is a program that is riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, as the Department of Education’s own Inspector General pointed out in the past, and as the Network for Public Education pointed out in its recent report called “Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride.”

Thank you to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), chairperson of the education appropriations subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. She is a deeply knowledgeable member of Congress who is committed to equity and works tirelessly to meet the needs of the American people for well-funded public schools

The NPE report found that one-third of the charter school funded by the federal government either never opened or closed soon after opening, costing taxpayers close to $1 billion in wasted funds.

Here is the report of the House Appropriations Committee. It increased the funding of well-respected programs that DeVos and Trump wanted to slash or kill, while cutting back on the Charter Schools Program (start reading at page 182).

Just in the last year, Secretary DeVos gave $116 million to a single charter chain, IDEA, which intends to flood the small El Paso district with charters; and she gave a grant of $86 million to KIPP. This concentration of funds in the hands of corporate charter chains was certainly not the intent of the program, which was meant to spur start-ups and innovation, not to enlarge established charter chains. KIPP, in particular, is amply funded by the Walton Family Foundation and a dozen other major foundations. It is hard to understand why this wealthy and powerful charter chain needs federal aid.

Charles Barone, the policy director of DFER (the hedge fund managers’ organization that pretends to be Democrats), expressed disappointment!

The Democratic state parties in California and Colorado have denounced DFER as a corporate front that should drop the word “Democrat” from its title.

Real Democrats support public schools, democratically governed and open to all, not corporate charter chains or private management.

By the way, the NPE report had no external funding. It was produced by the research of our brilliant staff and written by Carol Burris and Jeff Bryant.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Privatization, Resistance
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