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California: Now Is the Time to Reform Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2019 //
9

California has more charter schools and students than any other state, due to its size and its notoriously weak charter law. Add to that a progressive Governor with a blind spot for charters (Jerry Brown opened two when he was mayor of Oakland) and to a gaggle of billionaires in both parties who favor privatization.

in the new report by the Network for Public Education, Asleep At the Wheel, California was home to a large proportion of phantom charters. An amazing 39% of federally funded charters in California either never opened or closed soon after opening.

A new organization has been founded in California to encourage charter school reform, which can happen only by revising the state charter law.

The organization is “Reform Charter Schools.”

What a difference two California strikes make — Reform Charter Schools started in 2016 when the environment for demanding that charter schools function under the same rules as neighborhood public schools was much more hostile. Some brave activists in Orange County were among the first to call out charter corruption. Now the group has rebooted to spread the message that even ordinary well-run charters defund and depopulate public schools by virtue of their business model.
Reform Charter Schools has developed a place for people to read about and learn what the bills say as they go through the committee process, and a petition calling for strong charter accountability here: http://reformcharterschools.org/.
The site has resources for those who want to launch their own school board resolution to call for a moratorium on charters, and is starting to offer the petition in multiple languages. (The simplified Chinese version to sign is here.) Some pro-public ed grassroots groups have already started meeting with their Assembly representatives.
Californians, go to Reform Charter Schools and get the ball rolling.
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Links for all of the above in case they don’t copy over, in the order they appear:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ReformCharterSchools1505.1508/learning_content/
http://reformcharterschools.org/school-board-charter-moratorium-resolution-templates/
http://reformcharterschools.org/simplified-chinese-strong-charter-school-accountability-with-ab-1505-1508/
http://reformcharterschools.org
Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

BREAKING: Los Angeles Times Exposes Charter School Fraud and Profiteering

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
37

 

Anna Phillips of the Los Angeles Times has written a powerful expose of California’s “Wild West” charter industry. This is the first of three articles.

The article is titled:

“How a couple worked charter school regulations to make millions”

The article begins:

“The warning signs appeared soon after Denise Kawamoto accepted a job at Today’s Fresh Start Charter School in South Los Angeles.

“Though she was fresh out of college, she was pretty sure it wasn’t normal for the school to churn so quickly through teachers or to mount surveillance cameras in each classroom. Old computers were lying around, but the campus had no internet access. Pay was low and supplies scarce — she wasn’t given books for her students.

“She struggled to reconcile the school’s conditions with what little she knew about its wealthy founders, Clark and Jeanette Parker of Beverly Hills.

When Kawamoto saw their late-model Mercedes-Benz outside the school, she would think: “Look at your school, then look at what you drive.”

“That didn’t sit well with us teachers,” she said.

“The Parkers have cast themselves as selfless philanthropists, telling the California Board of Education that they have “devoted all of our lives to the education of other people’s children, committed many millions of our own dollars directly to that particular purpose, with no gain directly to us.”

“But the couple have, in fact, made millions from their charter schools. Financial records show the Parkers’ schools have paid more than $800,000 annually to rent buildings the couple own. The charters have contracted out services to the Parkers’ nonprofits and companies and paid Clark Parker generous consulting fees, all with taxpayer money, a Times investigation found.

”Presented with The Times’ findings, the Parkers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“How the Parkers have stayed in business, surviving years of allegations of financial and academic wrongdoing, illustrates glaring flaws in the way California oversees its growing number of charter schools.

“Many of the people responsible for regulating the couple’s schools, including school board members and state elected officials, had accepted thousands of dollars from the Parkers in campaign contributions.

“Like other charter operators who have run into trouble, the Parkers were able to appeal to the state Board of Education when they faced the threat of being shut down; the panel is known for overturning local regulators’ decisions. A Times analysis of the state board’s decisions has found that, over the last five years, it has sided with charters over local school districts or county offices of education in about 70% of appeals.

“California law also enables troubled charter operators to escape sanction or scrutiny by moving to school districts more willing to accept them. The Parkers have used this to their advantage, keeping one step ahead of the regulators.”

The Parkers live in a 7,700 foot mansion in Beverley Hills, valued at more than $15 million.

The city and county have repeatedly tried to close down their charter schools, only to be overridden by the state. Their scores swing wildly from the lowest in the state to among the highest, then down again. The Parkers contributed to the then superintendent’s campaign fund. He recommended renewal. The state board agreed. Soon after the renewal, a teacher at the school wrote county and state officials to complain about malfeasance and neglect at the school, so bad that students were endangered. Children were sometimes served food that was spoiled or undercooked. Supplies were scarce.He was fired.

Mrs. Parker, who receives a salary of $285,000 as superintendent of her charter chain, gave Mr. Parker a contract for $575,000 to manage construction of their new school in Inglewood.

Last year, Governor Jerry Brown reluctantly signed legislation banning for-profit charters (reluctantly, because he had previously vetoed similar legislation), but that has no effect on this charter chain, which is technically not for profit.

Phillips describes the law, how it was written to “unleash creativity” by deregulating charters and by requiring them to get approvals by local, then county, then state officials. California has 330 different authorizers, compared to only 18 in Texas. Oversight is patchy, slipshod, sometimes nonexistent. As the Parkers realized, campaign contributions to school board members can ease the way to approval.

The Parkers are adept at shopping for friendly authorizers. They opened a charter in distressed Compton and generously contributed to the campaign funds of board members, including the board President.

When the school came up for renewal, district staff warned of deficiencies, noting that “Jeanette Parker had not disclosed who was on her organization’s board or whom her charter was doing business with.”

“Please note that the petition is generally vague and inconsistent regarding the details of the programs outlined in the petition,” the report said.

“Still, district officials recommended renewal. They had been assured, Brawley said, “that the deficiencies identified in the petition would be rectified.”

“When the charter’s renewal came up in December, Compton school board members did not discuss the charter’s academic performance. They did not question the Parkers, who sat before them in the audience.

“What they did was a foregone conclusion.

“The board took less than a minute to vote unanimously to renew Today’s Fresh Start until June 2023.”

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, For-Profit

DeVos Wants to Defund Special Olympics, Boost Funding for School Choice

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
27

 

Betsy DeVos was grilled yesterday in Congressional hearings about her budget proposals. She was repeatedly questioned about her desire to increase charter school funding from $440 million to $500 million a year. The Network for Public Education report on the waste, fraud, and abuse in this program was cited.

While increasing the charter budget, DeVos wants to cut $18 million from the Special Olympics, which benefits 272,000 children with disabilities. 

To put it mildly, her priorities are wacky. She wants to cut the budget of a successful and valuable program while heaping money on charters that are likely to never open or quickly close.

DeVos said the philanthropic community already funds the Special Olympics. The same is true of charters. Billionaires and Wall Street heap hundreds of millions on charters. The Waltons alone have spent more than a billion on charters. Why does the Federal government add hundreds of millions more?

To add insult to injury. She is proposing a 12% cut for the Department but a 15% increase in executive salaries.

Then there was this exchange, reported by Politico:

“— Another concern raised by Democrats was the department’s proposal to cut funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which funds aftercare. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) questioned DeVos about why she’s attempting again to cut a program that’s long had bipartisan support and has shown results. She noted that Congress had rebuffed the proposal last year, and instead gave the program a $10 million boost.

“— DeVos responded that the funds flowing out of the program aren’t necessarily getting to the centers that work really well and there aren’t great participation rates. She said the department’s budget focused on things “we really know are yielding results.””

If DeVos cared about results, the Department would cut funding new charters (many of which will never open, will close soon after they opened, will get poor results, or will cherrypick the students likeliest to succeed on tests), and eliminate all proposed funding to vouchers, which consistently get very poor results.

The only good thing about the DeVos heading was that Anthony Cody arrived early, sat directly behind DeVos, and scowled throughout her testimony, prominently featured on CSPAN. He was her Greek chorus.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Funding, School Choice, Special Education, Vouchers

Muncie, Indiana: Voucher School for 6 Students Condemned, Deplorable Conditions

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
14

 

Fire and building inspectors condemned the Delaware Christian Academy after entering the building and finding its six students huddled around a heater for warmth. Betsy DeVos always says that parents always know best, but why did these parents send their children to school in an unsafe building?

”Fire and building inspectors say they found six students at the private Delaware Christian Academy “huddled around a kerosene heater in blankets trying to stay warm” one morning last week.

“Authorities ordered the building — the former Riley Elementary School on North Walnut Street — to be vacated. The children’s teacher took them home.

“Meanwhile, the city building commissioner on Wednesday condemned the structure, finding it unsafe for occupancy.

“The school, whose enrollment has declined to just six students, was using only one classroom in the 28,282-square-feet building.

“The school superintendent acknowledged in an interview Thursday that the building has deficiencies but denied the children were cold — “some kids just like to have blankets” — and said the plan is to reopen.”

A school of six students? Six vouchers do not produce enough revenue for one teacher. Not to mention enough revenue to heat and maintain the building.

Categories Accountability, Indiana, School Choice, Vouchers

Tom Ultican: Atlanta School Board Votes for Privatization

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
8

 

Tom Ultican has been writing about differentcities where the Destroy Public Education Movement has made extraordinary gains. Atlanta has fallen into the clutches of the DPE as a result of Teach for America’s success in electing its alumni to the school board, which hired a superintendent committedto the DPE agenda.

Ultican writes:

“On March 4, the Atlanta Public School (APS) board voted 5 to 3 to begin adopting the “System of Excellent Schools.” That is Atlanta’s euphemistic name for the portfolio district model which systematically ends democratic governance of public schools. The portfolio model was a response to John Chubb’s and Terry Moe’s 1990 book, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, which claimed that poor academic performance was “one of the prices Americans pay for choosing to exercise direct democratic control over their schools.”

“A Rand Corporation researcher named Paul Hill who founded the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) began working out the mechanics of ending democratic control of public education. His solution to ending demon democracy – which is extremely unpopular with many billionaires – was the portfolio model of school governance.

“The portfolio model of school governance directs closing schools that score in the bottom 5% on standardized testing and reopening them as charter schools or Innovation schools. In either case, the local community loses their right to hold elected leaders accountable, because the schools are removed from the school board’s portfolio. It is a plan that guarantees school churn in poor neighborhoods, venerates disruption and dismisses the value of stability and community history.

Atlanta’s Comprador Regime

“Atlanta resident Ed Johnson compared what is happening in APS to a “comprador regime” serving today’s neocolonialists. In the 19th century, a comprador was a native servant doing the bidding of his European masters; the new compradors are doing the bidding of billionaires privatizing public education.

”Chalkbeat reported that Atlanta is one of seven US cities The City Fund has targeted for implementation of the portfolio district governance model. The city fund was founded in 2018 by two billionaires, John Arnold the former Enron executive who did not go to prison and Reed Hastings the founder and CEO of Netflix. Neerav Kingsland, Executive Director of The City Fund, stated, “Along with the Hastings Fund and the Arnold Foundation, we’ve also received funds from the Dell Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Ballmer Group.”

“City Fund has designated RedefinED as their representative in Atlanta. Ed Chang, the Executive Director of RedefinED, is an example of the billionaire created education “reform” leader recruited initially by Teach for America (TFA).

“TFA is the billionaire financed destroy-public-education (DPE) army. TFA teachers are not qualified to be in a classroom. They are new college graduates with no legitimate teacher training nor any academic study of education theory. Originally, TFA was proposed as an emergency corps of teachers for states like West Virginia who were having trouble attracting qualified professional educators. Then billionaires started financing TFA. They pushed through laws defining TFA teachers as “highly qualified” and purchased spurious research claiming TFA teachers were effective. If your child is in a TFA teacher’s classroom, they are being cheated out of a professionally delivered education. However, TFA provides the DPE billionaires a group of young ambitious people who suffer from group think bordering on cult like indoctrination.

“Chang is originally from Chicago where he trained to be a physical therapist. He came south as a TFA seventh grade science teacher. Chang helped found an Atlanta charter school and through that experience received a Building Excellent Schools (BES) fellowship. BES claims to train “high-capacity individuals to take on the demanding and urgent work of leading high-achieving, college preparatory urban charter schools.”

“After his subsequent charter school proposal was rejected, Chang started doing strategy work for the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). This led him to a yearlong Fisher Fellowship training to start and run a KIPP charter school. In 2009, he opened KIPP STRIVE Academy in Atlanta.

“While complicit in stealing neighborhood public schools from Atlanta’s poorest communities, Chang says with a straight face, “Education is the civil rights movement of today.”

“Chang now has more than a decade working in billionaire financed DPE organizations. He started in TFA, had two billionaire supported “fellowships” and now has millions of dollars to use as the Executive Director of RedefinED. It is quite common for TFA alums like Chang to end up on the boards of multiple education “reform” organizations.

“Under Chang’s direction, RedefinED has provided monetary support for both the fake teacher program, TFA, and the fake graduate school, Relay. In addition, they have given funds to the Georgia Charter School Association, Purpose Built Schools, Kindezi School, KIPP and Resurgence Hall.”

Keep reading to learn the scope of the civic disaster in Atlanta, where DPE is rapidly applying its failed ideas and dismantling public education.

The sad part of DPE is that it proclaims lofty goals but eventually has to confront its failures, which are predictable.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Portfolio District, Privatization

Valerie Strauss: Is It Time to Dump the SAT and ACT?

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
31

 

Reflecting on the recentmassive scandal of rigging college acceptances, Valerie Strauss discusses the debate about whether the SAT and ACT are necessary. 

Research indicates that a student’s four year record reveals more about his or her college readiness than either of the two big standardized tests.

Wealthy parents have always had advantages, including the ability to pay tutors to help their children.

Now we see that some parents paid to have someone take the test for their childor change the answers from wrong to right.

Fairtest has long kept count of the number of colleges and universities that have gone “test-optional.” The number now exceeds 1,000. The elite University of Chicago joined the list.

One thing is clear: from NCLB To the SAT, American schools place far too much emphasis on standardized tests.

 

Categories Accountability, Cheating, Higher Education, Standardized Testing

A Student in Kansas Writes about How Standardized Testing Makes Her Feel

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2019 //
34

 

Kevin Bosworth, a teacher at Olathe East High School in Olathe, Kansas, wrote to tell me about a class discussion of grades and tests. A student shared her poem with the class, and Kevin shared it with me. The reformers and disrupters now say they are intrigued with social and emotional learning. Let them read this and see what they have learned.

 

Hello my name is worthless

Name number and date

State your class and hour

Let the rubric pick your fate

 

Your value as a human

Can be measured by percent

All that matters is the value

That the numbers represent

 

We promise that you matter

You’re more than just a grade

But you better score one hundred

Or else you won’t get paid

 

They require our attendance

We’re brain dead taking notes

So we can barf back up the knowledge

That they shove down our throats

 

Each human life is precious

And every childhood has worth

But if you fill in the wrong bubbles

Then you don’t belong on earth

 

They question our depression

They wonder why we’re stressed

When our futures are decided

Doing better on a test

 

They tell me that I’m gifted

That there’s no need to despair

But if you only read the numbers

I’m a living waste of air

 

I might think I have talents

But there’s no worth in art

Because it can’t be measured

By a number on a chart

 

The people say I’m flying

The numbers say I’ll crash

My letter grades ‘ll prove it

I’m worthless human trash

They use standardized procedures

To find the worth of kids

But I don’t fit in boxes

Without spilling out the lids

 

Some kids don’t fit the system

But differences can’t stay

They put us in the garbage

And throw it all away

 

Categories Accountability, Creativity, Kansas, Standardized Testing, Testing

Bombshell Report: Congress Wastes Nearly $1 Billion on Defunct Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2019 //
23

 

The Network for Public Education released a shocking report about waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal charter school program. 

This year, Congress handed out $440 million to charter schools, many of which will never open or quickly close. Trump and DeVos want to increase the annual sum to $500 million.

The Washington Post covered the findings. Valerie Strauss writes:

”The U.S. government has wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools that never opened, or opened and then closed because of mismanagement and other reasons, according to a report from an education advocacy group. The study also says the U.S. Education Department does not adequately monitor how its grant money is spent.

“The report, titled “Asleep at the Wheel” and issued by the nonprofit advocacy group Network for Public Education, says:

  • More than 1,000 grants were given to schools that never opened, or later closed because of mismanagement, poor performance, lack of enrollment or fraud. “Of the schools awarded grants directlyfrom the department between 2009 and 2016, nearly one in four either never opened or shut its doors,” it says.
  • Some grants in the 25-year-old federal Charter School Program (CSP) have been awarded to charters that set barriers to enrollment of certain students. Thirty-four California charter schools that received grants appear on an American Civil Liberties Union list of charters “that discriminate — in some cases illegally — in admissions.”
  • The department’s grant approval process for charters has been sorely lacking, with “no attempt to verify the information presented” by applicants.
  • The Education Department in Republican and Democratic administrations has “largely ignored or not sufficiently addressed” recommendations to improve the program made by its own inspector general.

“Our investigation finds the U.S. Department of Education has not been a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars in its management of the CSP,” it says.”

Carol Burris, executive director of NPE, is briefing key members of Congress today about this wasteful program.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Rhode Island: About the Charter School That Will Offer a Master’s Degree

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2019 //
40

 

How great is a Charter School that is given permission by the state to offer a master’s degree in education?

I decided to check out the Learning Community Charter School in Central Falls, which just got the go-ahead and $500,000 to train teachers and award master’s degrees.

Surely this must be an extraordinary school, or you would expect the Providence Journal to let you know whether it’s up to the task.

Turns out it’s not extraordinary at all. 

Its scores are below the state average.

Way below the state average.

In the state, 26% were proficient in math, but only 15% at this charter.

In the state, 37% were proficient in English, but only 28% at this charter.

Disadvantaged students are falling behind, and achievement gaps are not narrowing.

Scores for low-income students are below state averages.

Question: What makes this charter school exactly the right place to train teachers and award master’s degrees?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Rhode Island, Testing

Philadelphia: It Takes Years and Millions to Close Failing Charter Schools and the Public Pays for Everything

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2019 //
16

 

Lisa Haver, Parent Activist in Philadelphia, writes here about how it takes years and millions of dollars to close failing charter schools. The public must pay the cost of challenging the charter and pay the cost of defending the charter. The charter operator gets a free ride for failing. Only the taxpayers and students lose.

Why is it easy to close a public school but hard to close a charter school? One guess: charter lobbyists wrote the state law.

Lisa Haver writes:

“This is an unbelievable story about what it takes to shut down a failing charter in Pennsylvania.
“Aspira charter operates 5 schools in Philadelphia, 2 of which are Renaissance charters–Olney High School and Stetson Middle school.  The Renaissance program is the one where the district hands over management of struggling district schools to people who are not educators in the belief that they can bring up test scores–which Aspira has not done. The Renaissance program has been a very expensive failure in Philadelphia.
“This Aspira renewal process is now in its 5th year–since 2014.  There have been numerous stories, including many in the Philadelphia Daily News–about misuse of taxpayer funds and other evidence of mismanagement.
“The District finally voted in 2017 not to renew these charters.
“For some reason, it took almost 18 months to begin the hearings.
“The District has to pay its own lawyer and hearing examiner AND for the charter schools’ lawyers.
“APPS members including me have attended the hearings every day for the first two weeks, and it is obvious that the charters’ lawyers are running up their own legal fees by asking the same questions over and over to a succession of witnesses.
“This is going to cost the District well over $150,000.  That is a lowball figure.
“When the district closed 24 schools in 2013, there were NO legal hearings at all.  The state requires a long legal process for revoking a charter that may have been around for 5 or 10 years, but none for neighborhood schools that have been around for decades–like Germantown high, which was closed one year before its 100th anniversary.
“A disgrace.”
From the article:

“One of the city’s charter-school operators has moved money from one account to another without explanation: no loan agreements, no signatures — “a shell game,” in the words of a Philadelphia School District auditor.

“Now the School District is shelling out money to try to pull two charters from Aspira — whose school bills are paid by the district — in a legal fight that could end up costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

“It’s really the district paying for both sides, which is kind of insane,” said Temple University law professor Susan DeJarnatt.

“Welcome to Pennsylvania charter school law,” said Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. “It’s unbelievable.”

Parent advocates have called on school officials for years to investigate these failing charters but were ignored. 

 

 

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