BASIS is known for its high test scores and its exclusionary practices.
“A Phoenix mother says her 9-year-old son was forced to walk through his class as his teacher and fellow students yelled at, humiliated and berated him during a lesson on school segregation.
“Claudia Rodriguez posted on Facebook that a third-grade teacher at BASIS Phoenix Central singled out her son, who is black, as the class was learning about the civil-rights movement.
“The Head of School had the nerve to tell me that there was some educational value in this incident because it started conversations in the homes of the other kids,” Rodriguez wrote. “I felt the need to speak up so that no other child ever has to feel what my son felt.””
Laura Chapman read the post about the U.S. Department of Education threatening to cut off $340 million in Title 1 funding from Arizona unless all high school students took the same test—either the state test or the SAT or the ACT. She pored through the Every Student Succeeds Act and could find no legal basis for this threat.
Laura Chapman writes:
I have spent several hours looking at ESSA. I could find nothing about specific tests other than those required for the International Baccalaureate or Advanced Placement. Neither the SAT or ACT is mentioned but there are technical requirements for ESSA accountability tests. As Diane notes, the SAT and the ACT are designed for college admission, not as a high school accountability test or a test aligned with state standards, a requirement for ESSA. Use for high school accountability is in violation of ESSA. I do not understand why EdWeek and state officials think SAT or ACT tests are OK. Here are a few relevant sections of ESSA.
ACADEMIC ASSESSMENTS.— (A) IN GENERAL.—Each State plan shall demonstrate that the State educational agency, in consultation with local educational agencies, has implemented a set of high-quality student academic assessments in mathematics, reading or language arts, and science. The State retains the right to implement such assessments in any other subject chosen by the State. (B) REQUIREMENTS.—The assessments under subparagraph (A) shall—be (I) the same academic assessments used to measure the achievement of all public elementary school and secondary school students in the State; and (II) administered to all public elementary school and secondary school students in the State; (ii) be aligned with the challenging State academic standards, and provide coherent and timely information about student attainment of such standards and whether the student is performing at the student’s grade level; (iii) be used for purposes for which such assessments are valid and reliable, consistent with relevant, nationally recognized professional and technical testing standards, objectively measure academic achievement, knowledge, and skills, and be tests that do not evaluate or assess personal or family beliefs and attitudes, or publicly disclose personally identifiable information; (iv) be of adequate technical quality for each purpose required under this Act and consistent with the requirements of this section, the evidence of which shall be made public, including on the website of the State educational agency; (v) (I) in the case of mathematics and reading or language arts, be administered— (aa) in each of grades 3 through 8; and (bb) at least once in grades 9 through 12; (II) in the case of science, be administered not less than one time during—(aa) grades 3 through 5; (bb) grades 6 through 9; and (cc) grades 10 through 12; and (III) in the case of any other subject chosen by the State, be administered at the discretion of the State.” find that and more beginning on page 24 in the ESSA pdf
In addition, Betsy cannot tell states what tests to use. There are multiple prohibitions in ESSA, and this is a variant of long established federal law governing the US Office of Education.
SEC. 2302. 020 U.S.C. 6692 RULES OF CONSTRUCTION. (a) PROHIBITION AGAINST FEDERAL MANDATES, DIRECTION, OR CONTROL.—Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any other officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s— (1) instructional content or materials, curriculum, program of instruction, academic standards, or academic assessments; (2) teacher, principal, or other school leader evaluation system; (3) specific definition of teacher, principal, or other school leader effectiveness; or (4) teacher, principal, or other school leader professional standards, certification, or licensing. p.196
ESSA also has stipulations about informing parents about opt out policies.
There is much else in ESSA. It should be repealed and replaced with a bare minimum document for distributing federal funds to the schools and students most in need. ESSA turns the idea of accountability into an extended effort to micromanage public education and de-professionalize the work of educators. I became an involuntary expert on NCLB. ESSA is a nightmare. It is filled with contradictions, planned loopholes, gotchas. word salads. It gives legitamacy to too many really bad ideas from amateurs and reformers.
Leave aside the fact that the SAT and the ACT are designed for college admission, not as a high school accountability test. Leave aside the fact that all standardized tests are normed on a bell curve to produce “winners” and “losers” and are completely misaligned as high school tests of competency. Leave aside that using these two commercial tests is a multimillion dollar windfall for two private testing corporations.
The federal government should not be holding any state hostage over its decision about how or whether to use certain tests. It should not threaten to withhold funding for the neediest students to force states to do what the U.S. Department of Education or Congress prefers. Congress should use its powers to protect the civil rights of students, not to interfere in how to educate students, a subjectwhereit is woefully and demonstrably ignorant.
This is a stellar example of federal control of education, which was banned by federal law in the early 1970s. Using a standardized test to judge the “success” of every student will predictably rank students by family income with only rare exceptions. The students from low-income families will cluster at the bottom, along with children English-learners and students with disabilities.
This spring, Arizona allowed its districts a choice of offering the ACT, the SAT, or the state’s traditional test, the AzMerit test, at the high school level. ESSA allows states to offer districts the option of using a nationally-recognized college entrance exam in place of the state test, but first they must meet certain technical requirements.
For instance, states must make sure that the national recognized exam (such as the ACT or SAT) measures progress toward the state’s standards at least as well as the original state test. They also must make sure that the results of the nationally-recognized exam can be compared to the state test. And they have to provide appropriate accommodations for English-language learners and students in special education. All of this is supposed to happen before the state ever allows its districts the option of an alternate test…
The department has other, big concerns about Arizona’s testing system. The state passed a law allowing its schools a choice of tests, at both the high school and elementary level. That is not kosher under ESSA, which calls for every student in the same grade to take the same test, in most cases, Brogan wrote.
What’s more, Arizona hasn’t had a single high school test for several years. Instead, students are allowed to take one of three end-of-course math and reading/language arts tests, Brogan’s letter says. The failure to offer students the same test statewide is the reason the state has been put on high-risk status.
The state needs to pick one test for high school students, Brogan says, or it may lose federal Title I funding for disadvantaged students. It’s up to Arizona to decide whether the single test is the AzMerit, the ACT, the SAT, or something else.
Congress needs to abandon its belief that tests improve outcomes and that it can use federal funding to force uniformity of testing. NCLB proved that this theory was wrong.
After almost 20 years of failure, after a decade of flat test scores, isn’t it time for the members of the Congressional education committee to reflect on the bad ideas they have been promoting and figure out that it is time to stop compelling states to adopt harmful practices? Don’t they know they are still inhaling the toxic fumes of a failed NCLB? Or do they still believe that there was a “Texas Miracle”?
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider interview Arizona Republic reporter Craig Harris about the charter school scandals in Arizona, the “wild west” of charters.
Harris was a member of the investigative team that won the prestigious George Polk Award for its coverage of charter schools in their state.
Here is a small excerpt, where they begin to interview Craig Harris:
Craig Harris: It started about a year ago on two fronts. One, there was a relatively prominent charter school, a notorious charter school that abruptly closed on the west side of Phoenix in a town called Goodyear. And the reason that school had gained some notoriety is because a few years earlier, one of the students had gone missing and died. And what happened, now we’re finding out later, is that the school was being fraudulent on its attendance in order to keep it running because people had left the school because of the tragedy. And so the school got shut down. And that piqued our interest.
And then I live on the east side of Phoenix in town called Gilbert, which is kind of like ground zero of where charter schools are. They’re very, very popular out in my neck of the woods. And part of the reason is that a lot of the operators that run the charter schools belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They’re Mormons. And so a lot of them have developed charter schools and they’ve been able to grow because they have pretty good academics, but they also focus on morality and wholesomeness and things like, so that, that gets a lot of parents to enroll their kids at those schools.
Berkshire: Well, we are obviously here to talk about some of the less wholesome aspects of Arizona’s charter school industry over the last year. You’ve written one unbelievable exposé after another about the edupreneurs, as I like to call them, who are getting rich off of running charter schools. I know it’s hard to choose, but I want you to pick your favorite scandal for us and just sort of break down for us the nature of the scam.
Craig Harris: Well, Arizona, depending on how you look at it—if you’re a charter organizer Arizona is considered one of the best states in the country for charter schools because it has some of the fewest and weakest oversight and regulations of any of the 44 states that have charter schools. And so one of the stories I wrote about was a guy named Eddie Farnsworth. And coincidentally Eddie is my state senator. We actually live within two miles of each other. And he ran a series of charter schools called Benjamin Franklin Charter Schools. They built them from the ground up. So what happened is that Mr. Farnsworth, who’s also a legislator who’s been in the office for like two decades, created a nonprofit company with three friends of his, two of whom were lobbyists who got votes from him to favor their clients to buy his schools, and they paid top dollar for those schools.
And he made about $14 million in profit on the sale of his schools, which were privately owned, to a nonprofit company that he set up. And then that nonprofit hired him as a consultant and then also agreed to lease buildings from him and agreed to hire his brother as the chief executive. And so he has gotten extremely rich from this. And then during his time when he was in the legislature, we went back and look and he repeatedly voted on bills that increased funding for charter schools. And at the same time he blocked bills that would have brought more restrictions and oversight on charter schools.
The legislature responded to the series of exposes in the Arizona Republic by promising to pass a law reining in the wrongdoing. But, here’s the catch: the charter lobbyists wrote the “reform” legislation!
Harris said:
The Charter Association, which is a nonprofit business that represents the 500 plus charter schools, their lobbyists wrote most of the bill. And so what happened when the lobbyist for the Charter Association or basically the charter industry wrote most of the bill is the legislation is what critics call window dressing. It doesn’t stop any of the self dealing. It doesn’t stop organizations like another one wrote about, which is an online school called Primavera. Their CEO, he paid himself $10 million over the last year and a half, while having incredibly high dropout rates and very low test scores.
The bill also doesn’t stop self dealing from giving no-bid management contracts that are worth tens of millions of dollars.
“I teach in an AZ public school–title 1 school. The poverty in this school is astonishing. This is my first year teaching in AZ after moving here from another state. I taught almost 20 years in a public school that was also a Title 1 school before moving to AZ. I have a lot of experience teaching in poverty schools. I have never seen anything as dysfunctional and as underfunded as the school I teach in currently. The whole district is in dire straits as it is funneling money away from public schools into charters. The lack of resources in this school is stupefying and confounding. It seems that the people in AZ are automatons and that this “cheating” of public schools is the new-normal. It’s not that people don’t care about education, its just that most people who can leave the poverty schools behind do so without realizing the impact they have. And to be honest, if I had children I don’t know if I would want them to attend one of these public schools. The discipline problems and lack of support for teachers is driving parents and teachers away. Buildings are falling apart. Just today part of the roof caved in at the school library. And then the corruption in the state legislature is driving the drain of resources.”
Now we might wonder where are the think tanks like the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution, which never utter a critical word about charter school corruption and malfeasance. CAP and Brookings are supposedly “liberal” think tanks, but for some reason they are unwilling and unable to say anything about the scams in charter world. My guess is that they are still protecting Obama’s education legacy, unwilling to admit that they are also protecting George W. Bush’s education legacy, which was identical.
Through their investigative work, reporters Craig Harris, Anne Ryman, Alden Woods and Justin Price revealed how Arizona’s school funding system and permissive legal structure allow charter-school operators to make huge profits off public education dollars. The team, led by investigative editor Michael Squires, published the five-part series “The Charter Gamble,” which examined how Arizona committed 25 years ago to the then-untested concept of charter schools and what the program has meant for the state.
The George Polk Awards in Journalism were established in 1949 by Long Island University to commemorate CBS correspondent George Polk, who was murdered while covering the Greek civil war, and are presented annually to honor special achievement in journalism, especially investigative and enterprising reporting that gains attention and achieves results. The Republic’s team was recognized at the 70th annual Polk Awards announcement ceremony for “initially disclosing insider deals, no-bid contracts and political chicanery that provided windfall profits for investors in a number of prominent Arizona charter schools, often at the expense of underfunded public schools.”
Greg Burton, executive editor of The Republic and azcentral.com, said the reporting team “unspooled miles of red tape to reveal what had been hidden during a decades-long push to funnel public money to privately run public charter schools — oftentimes with noble intent. But, where regulators and politicians fail as watchdogs, local reporters are vital. In this case, politicians and businessmen who could have pushed for reform made millions by ignoring warning signs. This is where Republic reporters worked to protect the public’s trust.”
In response to the reporting by the Arizona Republic, the legislature is considering charter reforms but none of those reforms will affect the worst abusers, some of whom are members of the legislature.
US News & World Report and Newsweek ranked BASIS charter schools in Arizona as the best high schools in the nation, without noting their dramatic attrition rates and demographics that heavily favor whites and Asians.
But a new audit shows that BASIS is in deep financial trouble.
“The globally renowned BASIS charter school system is nearly $44 million in the red, according to a recent report from a Phoenix-based watchdog group.
“The international charter chain, whose first campus opened in Tucson in 1998, lost nearly $12 million in net assets last fiscal year alone, according to an analysis from Arizonans for Charter School Accountability. BASIS rejects the report’s findings.
“Jim Hall, the accountability organization’s founder, generated the report based on audit documents available on the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools’ website. The Arizona Daily Star confirmed the deficit claims independently with the charter board audit.
“Despite its multimillion-dollar deficit, BASIS Charter Schools, Inc., did retain about $17.2 million in cash flow by the end of the last fiscal year, according to the audit. Hall argues this was possible because BASIS refinanced many of the loans it has taken out over the years to keep its 22 Arizona campuses up and running.”
The charter chain denies that it’s in financial distress, but about 60% of its expenses are payments to the for-profit corporation that operate the chain and nearly 11% is spent for administration.
Arizona’s charter industry is riddled with fraud and corrruption, meticulously documented by a year-long investigation in the Arizona Republic and by Curtis Cardine of the Grand Canyon Institute.
The Republican-dominated felt that it needed to pass a “Reform” bill, even though it was full of loopholes that would protect charter fraudsters and grifters.
So meaningless was the bill that it won the vote of charter operator Sen. Eddie Farnsworth, who made $13.9 million last year when he converted his for-profit charter chain to a nonprofit. Farnsworth gave a speech about why no reform was necessary.
The bill now goes to the House, where Republicans hold a 31-29 advantage.
Republicans rejected amendments from Democrats “to crack down on conflicts of interest and to provide tighter financial transparency on how charters spend tax dollars.
“Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, pushed the bill. It had overwhelming support from Arizona’s $1 billion charter school industry, whose lobbyist helped co-write the bill.“
Last year, the Arizona Republic wrote an expose of the millions made by Glenn Way, founder of a charter chain in Arizona, primarily by real estate deals and construction of the schools by “related” companies. He previously ran charters in Utah.
Way’s chain in Arizona has a red-white-and-blue patriotic theme.
A charter school operator who made millions of dollars building, selling and leasing properties to the schools he runs moved a step closer Monday toward setting up shop in North Carolina.
The N.C. Charter Schools Advisory Board voted Monday to recommend giving a full interview to Wake Preparatory Academy, a proposed K-12 charter school that wants to open in 2020 in northern Wake County. Wake Prep would be managed by a company whose owner also owns the company that would build and lease back the facility to the charter school.
Wake Prep is proposing to contract with Arizona-based Charter One to manage the school. Charter One manages American Leadership Academy, a network of Arizona charter schools. Former Utah state legislator Glenn Way founded ALA and owns Charter One and Schoolhouse Development.
The Arizona Republic reported last year how Way had made as much as $37 million by setting up no-bid deals in which he built school campuses and then sold the properties at a profit to the ALA charter schools. The newspaper’s five-part investigation into charter schools earned it the prestigious George Polk Award for Education Reporting.
Under Wake Prep’s proposed agreement, the school would contract with Schoolhouse Development to build the facility and lease it back to the school. The lease would start with the school paying $2.2 million the first year, $2.6 million the second year and $3 million in each of the next three years.
Bruce Friend, a CSAB member, said the board needs to get questions answered before recommending that the State Board of Education approve the school. Aside from questions about the lease, concerns were also raised that Wake Prep plans to pay Charter One up to 15 percent of its revenues annually…
Some charter schools are managed by for-profit companies. Last month, the advisory board recommended that the state approve three new charter schools in Wake County that would have contracts with for-profit companies.
This is the second time that Wake Prep has tried to open in North Carolina. The school applied last year to be managed by a different company before withdrawing its application.
Hilda Parler, a former CSAB member and president of Wake Prep’s board, said Monday that there’s high demand for high school charter seats among families in northern Wake.
“The population in the Wake Forest, Rolesville area is growing leaps and bounds,” Parler said. “New construction is everywhere.”
Parler was asked why she didn’t apply to just open a charter high school. She answered that a K-12 charter school would be more “lucrative” and “economically feasible” than only offering high school.
The Arizona Republic recently won a Polk Award for its outstanding coverage of charter corruption.
Craig Harris, a member of the investigative team, writes here about how charters ignore parents’ complaints.
When a student is mistreated, there is no re ourse. The boarddoesnt care. It protects the school,not the student.
Students in charter schools have no rights. The parents of the student in the incident described herewithdrew him from the school.
Harris writes:
“Evan George had finished his classes for the day and was hanging out with friends at American Leadership Academy’s Queen Creek campus, when two staff members approached and accused him of vaping.
“Evan, 16, says he was doing a trick with his mouth thatproduces a plume of moist air that resembles vapor from an electronic cigarette.
“His explanation didn’t convince the charter school’s staffers.
“Evan was ordered to the administration office, where Athletic Director Rich Edwards took him into a room and searched him, looking for a vape pen, which would have been a violation of school policy.
“He told me to take my pants down, and he put his fingers in my underwear,” said Evan, who is a junior. “I felt scared.”
“The search didn’t turn up a vaping device, according to records the school provided to the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools.
“ALA still suspended Evan from school for eight days.
“His parents, Chris and Kimberlie George, said both the Dec. 11 search and the suspension were wrong.
“The athletic director inappropriately touched their son, they said. And the school suspended Evan without proof he’d had been vaping, even though their son’s only prior disciplinary issues were for wearing torn jeans and chewing gum, they said.
“But when the Georges sought an independent review of Evan’s suspension, they found they had nowhere to turn.
“Arizona’s charter schools are primarily run by private companies. They must have a governing board, but school owners get to pick who’s on the board, so many are stocked with relatives, friends and even the charter’s owner. In some instances, boards have just one member — the charter operator.
“American Leadership Academy Queen Creek student says he was strip searched over vape trick
16-year-old Evan George says he was strip searched in December 2018 after performing a trick that made it appear vapor was coming from his mouth.
“Beyond the school, parents can only turn to the state Charter Board. And regulators there, because of limited resources and limited authority, rarely investigate such complaints against schools, an Arizona Republic investigation shows.
“The result is a lack of independent oversight that leaves students and families at some charter schools, in disagreements big and small, with no recourse to challenge school officials’ actions — even if they think those moves inhibit their students’ academic progress or personal safety.
“ALA Queen Creek officials denied the Georges’ request for an appeal hearing before ALA’s Board of Directors, which is composed of friends of ALA founder Glenn Way.
“Evan was never afforded due process,” Chris George said. “He wasn’t able to speak to his accusers, and the dismissal hearing was a farce. There was no interest in what the truth was.”
The Arizona Republic has previously written about Glenn Way, the founder of this charter chain.
On July 11, 2018, the Arizona Republic described how Way has made millions of dollars through hischarter chain.
“When Glenn Way moved to the East Valley at the end of the Great Recession, he might have been looking for a fresh start.
“The charter school operator was deep in debt to the IRS, had sought bankruptcy protection, and recently resigned from the Utah Legislature after his wife filed a protective order against him, public records show.
“Arizona offered other opportunities for someone in his line of work: A more lightly regulated charter school industry that’s well-funded.
“At his American Leadership Academy, which he launched in June 2009, he promised students would find “the best educational experience … in a moral and wholesome environment.”
“Thanks partly to Arizona’s favorable charter school laws and lucrative no-bid contracts with ALA, Way would find new wealth.
“The schools, which have made patriotism central to their brand, including red, white or blue student apparel, have been a hit in the conservative East Valley. American Leadership — which bears the same name as a charter school Way and his wife, Shelina, operated in Spanish Fork, Utah — has over nine yearsgrown to a dozen campuses with 8,354 students in Florence, Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek and San Tan Valley.
“Way’s own development and finance companies bought the land and then built most of the school buildings. Then, they sold or leased them to American Leadership Academy, where Way, until last year, was board chairman.
“An Arizona Republic review of property records shows that during ALA’s nine-year expansion, businesses owned by or tied to Way made about $37 million on real estate deals associated with the schools — funded largely by the Arizona tax dollars allocated to his charter schools.
“Way disputes the profit figure, saying undisclosed capital costs tied to the campuses, such as street improvements, trimmed profits to $18.4 million. He did not provide documents to show a lower profit.
“But building and selling the schools weren’t the only ways he has profited. Another one of Way’s firms is paid at least $6 million a year to operate them under a contract with American Leadership, records show.
“An Arizona charter schools watchdog said regardless of the precise size of the multimillion-dollar profit, it’s clear that Way has profited handsomely — like other charter operators — using Arizona’s loose charter school laws.
“Meanwhile, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools is investigating allegations of financial mismanagement at ALA.
“Way said there has been no wrongdoing.
“Charter schools were not designed for people to make a profit,” said Chuck Essigs, government relations director of the Arizona School Association of Business Officials.
“Way disagrees.
“The (charter school) law is silent on the question of profit, and for good reason. Arizona families will only benefit if more operators of quality charter schools are enticed to expand their offerings in our state,” said Way, who is building a home in Queen Creek valued at nearly $1 million.”
It must be the height of patriotism to get rich from public funding intended for schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 