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Milwaukee: Former School Board President Convicted of Accepting Bribes from Charter Operator

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
7

 

Former Milwaukee School Board President Michael Bonds was convicted of accepting bribes to help a Philadelphia charter school operator. 

As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Bonds, 60, pleaded guilty to two counts in federal court in Philadelphia. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine at his sentencing, tentatively set for September, but which will depend on when he completes his pledged cooperation with an ongoing federal investigation…

Bonds served on the MPS board from 2007 until he abruptly resigned in July 2018, nine months before his term was to end. 

He was charged last month with conspiracy and violations of the Travel Act for taking kickbacks in return for votes beneficial to Universal Cos. between 2014 and 2016. Two unnamed Universal executives were implicated in the scheme but have not been charged.

Veteran Milwaukee journalist Alan Borsuk described the affair as “a scandal with few rivals in the recent history of Milwaukee education.”  He sums up the details.

Universal Academy. Universal came into Milwaukee riding some celebrity appeal — its founder, Kenny Gamble, was a soul music star — and a reputation for running some decent charter schools, some housing projects and other ventures in its home town, Philadelphia.

Universal also initially named a well-regarded Milwaukee educator as its local leader. Ronn Johnson had founded and led the YMCA Young Leaders Academy. But months before Universal opened, Johnson was charged with sexually assaulting several students years earlier. A few months later, he died in a fire at his home in Brown Deer. His death was ruled a suicide.

The president and CEO of Universal in Philadelphia, Rahim Islam, stepped in to oversee the Milwaukee operation and spent a lot of time in the city. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he is one of the main figures in the bribery scheme involving Bonds. 

At one point, Universal schools enrolled 1,000 students.

Perhaps because enrollment didn’t meet expectations and then started to fall, and perhaps because Universal was overextended with the large amount of MPS property it was using, Universal began to slide. Islam became unreachable (he had been glad to talk in early times). Leadership of the schools kept changing. It was clear Universal wasn’t investing in Milwaukee any further.

And things got worse. First two schools closed. Then, the third. It was done abruptly, leaving kids and staff in the lurch.

And now a former Board President is headed to jail. Very sad.

 

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

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 6 on Success Academy, Its Political Campaign to Get Free Space, and Its Teaching Strategy of “Rip and Redo”

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
14

Gary Rubinstein deals in this segment with two controversial sagas in the brief and tumultuous life of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Chain. 

The first came about because Mayor DeBlasio declared that he would rein in Eva Moskowitz when he was elected (under Bloomberg and Klein, she got whatever she wanted). Eva’s billionaire friends promptly put up a kitty of millions to run emotional television ads claiming that her students were about to be tossed out into the street, when the reality was that she was trying to claim extra space and push out children with serious handicaps. Her campaign was skillfully managed, and she ended up with legislation guaranteeing that the city would give her the space she wanted or pay her rent. Governor Cuomo embraced the charter cause,and the mayor suffered a defeat.

Then there was the infamous video, leaked to the New York Times, showing a teacher ripping up the paper of a first grader and sending her as punishment to a corner to calm down (although the teacher seemed to be more agitated than the child). Most people thought the teacher humiliated the child, but the practice seems to be commonplace at SA.

The next segment is the last.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Arthur Camins: Why We Must Push Back Against Corruption to Protect the Common Good

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
15

 

 

Arthur Camins writes here about two different worlds, two different perceptions of reality. 

On one side is money and power, defending privatization, promoting disruption, and ignoring corruption.

On the others are the defenders of the common good, who do not have money and power.

In recent years, people associated with the hedge fund industry, technology titans such as the Gates, Zuckerberg, and Jobs families, and right-wing foundations have all invested financial and political capital to promote charter schools. Their predominant ideological lens– no matter their political party affiliation– is competition and associated risk. That is why the liberal Gates and the conservative Walton families find common cause on charter schools. Long- and short-term triumphs and failures are essential features of their entrepreneurial worldview. Through that lens “start-ups” come and go, IPOs rise and fall, businesses merge, and divisions divested.  Lost jobs and careers are collateral damage–especially when the victims are poor and/or not White. That is their normal. It is the world in which they have triumphed.  They look at the world through the lens of their personal success. The losers in the process are, well–just part of how things get done. They have wealth and power and seek to impose and extend their will and perspective on everything within their reach. The public sector–including schools–is in their way. Increasingly democracy, and with it, government regulation is in their way too. Hence, they favor private over elected school boards. They are a tiny minority, but their perspective has gained bipartisan political and mass-media traction.

Another lens is the common good and its explicit companion, cross-racial unity. It has no wealth and power to extend its reach. However, it has a distinct advantage.  It represents the vast majority of Americans.  The questions you ask frame the answers you get.  Let’s ask, “Do you favor single a democratically-governed, high-quality public education system for every child or two taxpayer-funded systems: One privately-governed and another democratically governed?” I haven’t seen such a poll, nor have I seen any that ask: “Is it fair to drain money from public schools to fund charter schools?” or “Is it acceptable for schools to frequently open and close?” My best guess is that the stability, the common good, and racial unity will win hands down over the disruptive, market competition, and racially-divisive perspectives.

Read on to see where Camins is going as he explores the two perspectives.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Gary Rubenstein: Episode 4 and the Infamous “Got to Go” List

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
11

 

Gary Rubinstein continues with episode 4 of the podcast about Success Academy. This episode attempts to explain away the embarrassing revelation of the “got to go” list, which was reported in the New York Times. You see, getting rid of “bad” children assures the greatest good for the greatest number. Once ejected, where do these children go? The only place that will take them: the public schools that Eva Moskowitz loathes.

Gary writes:

Part four of Startup’s seven part podcast about Success Academy (found here) is centered on the ‘Got To Go’ incident where a principal was found to have created a list of students he wanted to oust from his school.  This episode explores whether or not the ‘Got To Go’ list was an isolated infraction by a rogue principal or if it is something that is part of the culture of the school.

Episode 1 was about the state of public schools in NYC that would make it ripe for a network like Success Academy to emerge.  Episode 2 was the story of Eva Moskowitz and how she rose to power.  Episode 3 was about the emphasis the network puts on standardized tests and questions whether the high test scores come at some greater cost.

Episode 4 — Growth — is the most critical so far.  The ‘Go To Go’ list was a major story in the New York Times and it corroborated what many families said about Success Academy, that they push out students which, as a side benefit for them, raises the test scores of the school.

The narrator, Lisa Chow, though, got some talking points from Success Academy about how to spin this story.

Candido Brown was a new principal, put in charge of a Success Academy elementary school in Fort Greene, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. The school had already gone through two other principals in a year. The place did not represent the Success ideal of quiet classrooms and well behaved kids. It was chaotic, teachers were demoralized, and kids were defiant. Candido had worked at Success for six years but never as a principal before. He was under pressure to turn the school around. But he said drawing up the list was his own idea.

So we are to believe that this was a huge anomaly at Success Academy because that school was in turmoil so he took it on himself to resort to such extreme measures.  But how likely is it that there was actually a Success Academy that was in the chaos that Lisa Chow describes?  Looking at the state data, this school, Success Academy — Fort Greene, had test scores (100% Math, 85% Reading) on par with the other Success Academy schools.  So if they can get such test scores even when the school is in turmoil, perhaps the strict discipline there as described in episode 3 as so critical to their success, is not so important after all.

The next part of the podcast shows the level of control that Success Academy requires at their ideal schools, especially ones that have many inexperienced teachers.

LISA: That silence is the result of Success’ system of behavioral management. For that system to work, teachers need to build strong relationships with their students. Then, on top of that foundation, teachers do three things. Step 1: Set clear expectations… even for the simplest things.

For example, when kids at Success Academy are sitting on the rug, they need to be in what’s called magic five: hands locked, feet crossed, back straight, ears listening and eyes tracking the speaker.

Step 2 is to point out when kids are following those instructions — to narrate good behavior.

TEACHER: Liam is still in magic five. Chastity is silent. Malia’s hand are locked Kalia’s hands are locked, Kalia’s eyes are right on me. Liam is sitting up straight and tall, Sam is sitting up straight and tall. Kalia is tracking Hendrick, Amari is tracking Hendrick

LISA: And, as soon as teachers see a student who’s not following the instructions, they call out the behavior. That’s Step 3: Issue corrections.

TEACHER: Colin is sitting up super tall. Eliany hands in your lap. That’s a correction.

LISA: A correction is basically a warning to the student. The teacher here says it so matter of factly that you barely notice. That’s the point — discipline is woven into the fabric at Success. And if a student gets too many corrections it can land them in trouble — a timeout, a phone call home. For more serious infractions, they’re suspended.

This ‘behavior narration’ is something I had seen on some of the Success Academy training videos (before they took them all down from public site).  It is touted in ‘Teach Like A Champion’ and is also something that Teach For America advises their teachers to do.  Basically, the teacher talks for the almost the entire time the students are working, saying that this student is sitting properly and this other one isn’t.  I find this quite irritating and I would, personally, not be able to concentrate if I was a student and the teacher chattered for the entire time like this.

Open the link and read the rest.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy

Today Is Dedicated to Gary Rubinstein’s Review of Success Academy Podcasts

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
0

 

Teacher Appreciation Week begins today. How better to launch it than by devoting the day to Gary Rubinstein’s review of podcasts about Success Academy?

Gary began his teaching career in TFA, but turned into a sharp critic of TFA and a dedicated career teacher.

Gary Rubinstein came across a trove of podcasts about Success Academy, and he suspected theyheld the key to the “success” of Success Academy in New York City. SA is the quintessential “no excuses” charter chain. It’s rules are strict, even draconian. The chain is driven by a philosophy that black and brown children must be disciplined and surveilled closely. No error must go uncorrected. Every infraction must be swiftly punished.

I debated whether to publish Gary’s posts as they appeared or all at once. I decided on the latter course of action. So today is devoted to podcasts about Success Academy. Though it is based in New York City, its impact is national. The chain presents itself as a model for American education. Nonsense.

Here is Gary’s first report.

Of all the charter school networks in the country, there is none that is more controversial or more secretive than Success Academy.  If ‘success’ is defined as high 3-8 state test scores, then Success Academy has earned its name.  But critics charge that this ‘success’ comes at the expense of other, more important measures of success.

This past November, a seven part podcast was published by a production company called startup.  Soon after it was released, there were some excerpts of some of the most negative parts of the podcast printed on some blogs, but generally it seems to have came and went.

I was very interested in this podcast for a lot of reasons.  I’ve been following Success Academy for years and have been piecing together evidence about all the different wrongdoings that this network engages in.  Over the years I’ve probably written twenty different blog posts with my findings.  I was also interested because last summer I was interviewed by one of the producers of this podcast while they were gathering material.  Besides an hour or two of interviews, I also had several follow-up emails with this producer where he asked me to clarify certain arguments.  I was curious to see how balanced the eventual product would be.

The podcast runs about seven hours and I listened to it a few months ago for the first time.  What I found was a bizarre mix of about six hours of puff piece and one hour of devastating expose.  Throughout the episodes the producers generally gave Success Academy the benefit of the doubt any time they could — until eventually even they couldn’t near the end.  But then at the end it went back to being a puff piece.

Over the next few blog posts, I’m going to write commentary about the different parts — episode 5 is the big one — though I need to work my way up to that one.

Episode 1 is called ‘The Problem’ and can be found here or on iTunes.  It begins with an interview with a parent of a Success Academy student who is recalling her own schooling in New York City in the 1980s where she was bullied and even arrested for getting into a fight at school.  For her son she wanted something different.

It is here that the narrator gives the first hint about her biased point of view.  At 4:28 the narrator says about this mother’s choices.  “Their neighborhood public school was not an option.  It was bad.”  With these three words — “It was bad” — and without elaboration since we all must know what she means, I definitely was concerned that this was not a great start to a seven hour podcast series.  In what way was it “bad”?  Were there bad teachers?  Does it have bad test scores?  Is the safety bad?  We don’t know.  This oversimplified and unfair one word condemnation of the school is unfortunately too typical.  After getting through episode 5 I think most will agree that a three word summary of Success Academy could also be “It was bad.”

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

Gainesville Sun Slams Florida Voucher Plan to Steal Money from Public Schools for Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
4

 

The Gainesville Sun published an editorial denouncing the newRepublican voucher program, which diverts money from public schools to unaccountable private and religious schools.

“Last week, Florida lawmakers voted to raid taxpayer money meant for public education to pay for middle-income families to send their children to private schools.

“They passed the measure despite these largely religious schools lacking the standards and other requirements that the state has piled on public schools. They passed the legislation despite the Florida Supreme Court rejecting a similar measure as unconstitutional in 2006.

“They even included $250,000 in the state budget for an expected legal fight but are surely expecting a positive outcome this time around before a state Supreme Court that had three new conservative members appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“After all, DeSantis has declared that “if the taxpayer is paying for education, it’s public education.″ He appears unconcerned with the consequences of continuing to divert money meant for traditional public schools to private and charter schools, while saddling traditional public schools with mandates that make it harder for educators to do their jobs and students to succeed.

“The newly passed legislation creates 18,000 vouchers at an initial cost of around $130 million, with the numbers rising in subsequent years. Families making up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or $77,250 a year for a family of four, would be eligible for the new vouchers.

“Unlike previous private school “scholarships” provided to lower-income families, the funding for these vouchers would come directly out of the pot of money intended for public schools. Yet the Republican-controlled Legislature rejected amendments proposed by Democrats to increase accountability for these schools to anywhere near the level of their public counterparts…

“Florida has repeatedly ranked near the bottom of the country in teacher pay and per-pupil funding, and the voucher plan in the long term will only make things worse.

“The vouchers will accelerate a two decade-long trend of the state shifting money to private and charter schools at the expense of traditional public schools, creating parallel education systems held to different standards. The trend started under Gov. Jeb Bush, who was in the House chambers last week to celebrate the bill’s passage.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame

Valerie Strauss on the Strange Case of the Charter School That Plans to Open in Rural Alabama

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2019 //
40

 

Valerie Strauss investigated the strange case of the charter school that was approved to open in rural Alabama, over the objections of the local mayor and despite the rejection of its proposal by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. The deed for the building is held by a Utah holding company. The principal is described as “Amy O,” with no last name. The school will be operated by a charter chain based in Sugarland, Texas, whose CEO was co-founder and CEO of the Harmony charter chain. Harmony is widely believed to be a Gulen school, but like all Gulen schools, it claims not to be affiliated with Imam Fethullah Gulen. As a general rule of thumb, schools that have Turkish leaders and a significant number of Turkish teachers working on Hb1 visas are almost certainly Gulen schools.

A charter school in a rural county of 17,000 people in Alabama, built and owned by a Utah holding company, operated by a Turkish CEO from Sugarland, Texas. The locals are scratching their heads. So am I.

This bears watching.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Gulen Charter Schools

Carl Cohn: California Must Reform Its Charter Law

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2019 //
14

 

Carl Cohn is one of the most respected figures in American education. He is a problem solver who has been superintendent in several districts in California. He won many plaudits for his leadership in Long Beach. I met him when he was superintendent in San Diego, which was probably the first urban district to be subjected to a heavy, concentrated dose of what was called “reform,” in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Cohn was called in, to clean up the demoralization left behind by top-down leaders who arrived with a script. In my 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, I devoted a chapter to the colossal failure of “reform” in SD. I interviewed Cohn and was pleasantly surprised by his candor and insight. Talking to him reassured me that my reactions were on target.

In this post, he urges the reform of California’s charter law.

He does not lay out a menu of what is needed, but he points to some genuine problems.

Note that one of the members of Tony Thurmond’s Task Force rejected Cohn’s request for some relief from the law.  That would be Margaret Fortune, Chair of the Board of the California Charter School Association, which lobbies to protect the status quo.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, San Diego

Carol Burris: Florida Charters Are a Swamp of Waste, Fraud, and Profiteering

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2019 //
11

 

Florida is controlled by Swamp creatures who want to divert money from public schools and send it to charter schools and religious schools. Jeb Bush is the puppet master who has demanded strict accountability for public schools, minimal oversight of charter schools, and no accountability at all for religious schools.

In this article, Carol Burris—the executive director of the Network for Public Education—examines the charter school mess. Florida has about three million students. About 300,000 attend charter schools. Some members of the Legislature have direct conflicts of interest but nonetheless vote to shower favors and money on the state’s charters.

Burris reports that nearly half of the state’s charters operate for profit. Entrepreneurs have flocked to Florida to get the easy money.

Burris begins:

Schoolsforsale.com claims to be “the largest school brokers in the United States that you will need to call.” Its owner, Realtor David Mope, is a broker for private schools, online schools and preschools. He will also help you start your own virtual school by providing certified teachers, marketing expertise, and assistance in securing accreditation.

Mope is not a newcomer to the for-profit school world. He was the owner and CEO of Acclaim Academy, a military-style charter chain. Acclaim’s “cadets,” who were predominantly minority students from low-income homes, wore army fatigues and engaged in drills. The schools’ education director, Bill Orris, had previously led a charter school that was shut down after its management company abandoned it.

Warning signs of failure were there from the beginning. The chain aggressively attempted to open new schools in multiple districts before establishing a track record in its two existing schools. Most districts saw red flags, but two did not. In the fall of 2013, two more Acclaim schools were approved, bringing the total schools in the chain to four.

As school grades came in, unsurprisingly, the Acclaim Academy charter schools were rated “F.” In 2015, three closed their doors, leaving families in the lurch in a manner that parents described as chaos. Although Florida’s State Board of Education had allowed the schools to stay open to finish the school year, Mope filed for bankruptcy, sending students out on the street scrambling to enroll in another school with only a few weeks left in the school year. Vendors would never be paid. Parents helped teachers pack up. Nevertheless, Mope pretended the schools were solvent and continued to broker a deal to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment.

How could Acclaim Academy ever open in the first place? Who would give this risky charter chain the seed money to get started? The American taxpayers did. A U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program (CSP) grant for $744,198 helped get the Acclaim Academies off the ground.

Acclaim Academy charter schools were among 502 Florida charter schools that received grants from the Department of Education between 2006 and 2014. All but two came from federal money given to the state for distribution. According to the CSP database, these Florida charter schools were awarded a total of nearly $92 million in federal funds between 2006 and 2014.

At least 184 (36.6 percent) of those schools are now closed, or never opened at all. These defunct charter schools received $34,781,736 in federal “seed” money alone.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization

Michael Mulgrew to New York Legislature: Don’t Raise the Cap on Charters

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2019 //
11

 

Michael Mulgrew, president of the New York City United Federation of Teachers, urges the Legislature not to raise the cap on charters but to enact legislation to make charter schools transparent and accountable.

There is a national pushback against untrammeled growth of charters, and New York State is unlikely to give the charter industry carte blanche since Democrats won control of the State Senate last fall. Until now, the charters were protected by the Governor Cuomo, whose campaign was funded by charter-loving financiers, and by the Republican-controlled State Senate, which was happy to expand the number of charters but not in their own suburban districts.

Mulgrew points out that under existing law, charters have room to add as many as 50,000 students. One charter gives the operator the authority to expand to K-12, or three schools. The city currently has 235 charters, which are actually 377 schools, enrolling 123,000 students. These schools divert $2.1 billion from public schools, but do not accept a proportionate share of the neediest students. Success Academy alone has room to add another 10,000 students without lifting the cap.

He writes:

“Charters should be forced to demonstrate that tax dollars are spent in the classroom rather than on inflated salaries of charter executives and overpriced services of charter management companies. The transparency legislation would make wealthy charters — those with $1 million or more in assets — ineligible to receive co-located space in public building, or to get a public rental subsidy for private classroom space. It would also cap compensation packages for the majority of charter executives at $199,000 a year.

“Real transparency would also reveal why charters had only 9% of the school population but 46% of the suspensions; 10% percent of the homeless students, less than the public school average of 15%; and only 7% of the English language learners population, less than half the public school average.”

 

He concludes:

It is time for state government to freeze their growth, and to put in place measures to ensure that charters take, keep and educate all kinds of students, while they open up their operations to real public scrutiny.

There are two bitter pills in Mulgrew’s proposal:

One is the cap on salaries, which would be anathema to charters, where teacher salaries are artificially low, due to hiring of young teachers and constant turnover as they burn out, and lavish executive compensation, which is sometimes far above that of the School Chancellor, who oversees 1.1 million students.

The other is the idea that rich charters should not get free public space. This will outage the charter industry but please the existing public schools that have been forced to give up computer rooms, resource rooms, rooms for the arts, and other spaces that are not considered classrooms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization
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