This is something new. The state of Arizona is building tiny homes for teachers since teachers in many districts can’t afford to buy or rent a home in the district where they teach.
Some charter-friendly districts have built “teachers’ villages” to house teachers from Teach for America.
But this is the first I have heard of tiny homes. A tiny home is 400 square feet. It includes a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. No living room. A tiny home for teachers who don’t expect much in life.
Gene V. Glass was stunned to discover that a book he wrote with David Berliner, “50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools,” had been removed from the summer reading list for AP English students.
Too controversial.
About a decade ago, I wrote a book about censorship in texts, tests, and assigned books, called “The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.”
Plus ça change, plus ce la meme chose.
Jan Resseger reports here on the role of teachers in Oklahoma and Arizona in leading the fight against tax-cutting Tea Party ideologues whose cruel zeal is hurting children and denying them a decent education.
She begins by citing an article in “The Nation” about Oklahoma, where taxes had not gone up since 1990 until the teacher protests this spring:
“Covert [the author of the article] introduces us to Scott Helton, a high school English teacher whose school opted to save money with online textbooks instead of buying the printed copies. But the school hasn’t enough computers and its Wi-Fi is inadequate. He has been forced to spend his own money to provide readings for his students. Ten years ago, his classes averaged 20 students; today they are packed with 35, and in once case 40 students, many of whom sit on the floor. We also learn about underpaid workers in other government agencies including Gail DeLashaw, a family-support worker in the Department of Human Services, whose salary is $30,000, 60 percent of the national average for someone like DeLashaw with an advanced degree. Her case load—once 500 or 600—has risen to 1,200 families.”
In Arizona, teachers and parents gathered 270,000 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot to raise taxes for education. Gov. Doug Ducey and his allies, of course, will fight it. Ducey is up for re-election. Democrats will choose his opponent in a primary next month. The leading contender on the Democratic ballot is David Garcia, a strong fighter for funding education. Garcia is a professor of education at Arizona State University. Polls show him tied with Ducey, or even ahead of him.
Save Our Schools Arizona is a group founded by public school parents to fight the expansion of vouchers.
Prop 305 is a referendum that will appear on the state ballot in November. It calls for the universal expansion of vouchers so that all students can use public money to attend private and religious schools with taxpayers’ dollars.
Parents are fighting this. They fought the Koch brothers in court to get this referendum on the ballot.
This video explains what the issues are and why you should vote NO to support public schools, the schools that belong to everyone.
Voucher schools are not transparent and not accountable. Every dollar that goes to an ESA is taken away from public schools.
Vote NO!
After a long and bruising battle, voters in Arizona will have their first chance to vote on vouchers in November. Arizona has vouchers now for specific groups of students, but last year the legislature enacted an e passion that would make vouchers available to all. Arizona is beloved by ALEC, the Koch brothers, and the DeVos family due to its choice programs. After passage of voucher expansion, supporters of public schools gathered over 100,000 signatures calling for a referendum. The Koch brothers sent in lawyers to try to block the referendum (Prop 305), but the state courts ruled that it could go forward. Then the Koch operatives pushed the idea that the legislature should repeal and re-enact the voucher expansion law, which would force the opposition to start over. But, in the days after the mass protests of the #RedForEd movement, the legislature was unable to gather enough votes for repeal.
Why are the Koch brothers and Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Childre so frightened of a referendum? Vouchers have lost every time they have been put to a vote.
How do vouchers work in Arizona?
This article, published a year ago, says that oversight of public money is nearly a sham.
“As the program expanded, resources to scrutinize the expenditures — made using state-provided debit cards — never kept pace. The Legislature gave the Department of Education money for the program butwouldn’t authorize spending much of it.
“The warnings of lax oversight and little accountability proved prescient. Money was misspent but the state recovered almost none of it.
“For example, some parents transferred all of their scholarship money into a 529 college-savings account and then left the program — preventing the state from recouping the funds.
“Others pocketed the money and sent their kids to public schools.
“Some purchased books or other materials using their state-issued debit cards and then immediately returned them. The refunded money was put on gift cards, allowing parents to spend it with no scrutiny.
“And despite the Legislature’s vehement opposition to public money paying for abortions, the ESA program became one of the only state programs to allegedly fund the procedure. In 2014, payment to a health clinic led education officials to believe ESA money had been spent on an abortion.
“These illegal expenditures of taxpayer money have sparked little outrage and no widespread calls for changes from either the Governor’s Office or the Legislature.
“State leaders’ apathy is in stark contrast to their condemnation of and crackdown on abuse of social-welfare programs. Arizona has in recent years implemented among the nation’s most restrictive rules for lower-income recipients of cash assistance.
“Chris Kotterman, lobbyist for the Arizona School Boards Association, said that “double standard” reflects the special status Republican state leaders afford school-choice programs.
““Private-school choice is much more favored than cash assistance to the poor,” Kotterman said. “If it’s a welfare program, then strict accountability is necessary … On the school-choice side, there’s an inherent assumption that parents, no matter what, are able to make the best choices and the government should get out of the way.”
Linda Lyon, president of the Arizona Schools Boards Association, knows that the privatizers have had unfettered control of the state for years. On the NPE-Schott state scorecard, Arizona was one of the worst states in terms of its leaders’ policies. Now the parents and educators are fighting back against the Koch brothers’ machine in a referendum this fall. The time to fight for public control of public schools is now.
Mercedes Schneider thinks she has figured out the BASIS financial model by studying its tax returns over the years. She writes that it’s owners, Michael and Olga Block, keep expanding because the chain needs more revenue.
She goes through the BASIS returns year by year. Every time they open a new school, they get more revenue—and more debt.
“That seems to be the secret to its financial sauce: Use the revenue generated from opening new schools to make money while forestalling the crash of snowballing debt.”
She writes:
“What do you call an investment where you have to keep bringing in more investors?
“A fraud.
“Consider the following from Investopedia regarding pyramid schemes:
The process continues until the base of the pyramid is no longer strong enough to support the upper structure, and there are no more recruits.
“The problem is that the scheme cannot go on forever….
“The fraud lies in the fact that it is impossible for the cycle to sustain itself….
“In the case of Basis schools, Michael and Olga Block cannot go on opening new schools ad infinitum.
“If they are dependent upon opening new schools (as they seem to be), they are setting up all Basis schools for financial collapse.
“Basis Schools:
“$274 million in long-term debt as of June 30, 2017, according to its FY 2017 audit.”
The highest ranked charters in the nation, based on graduation rates, test scores, AP courses passed, etc., are the BASIS schools of Arizona.
Two articles tell you what you need to know to understand their “secret sauce.”
Carol Burris reports here on their demographics and attrition rate. Their top-performing schools are overwhelmingly white and Asian, with few Hispanic, African American, or Native American students, and few students with disabilities. They lose most of their students between 7th grade and 12th grade.
Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic details the BASIS business model here. The charters are owned by a private, for-profit company created by the founders Michael and Olga Block. They collect a sizable portion of the schools’ revenues (“According to an agreement between Basis Schools and Basis.ed, the Blocks’ private firm keeps 11.75 percent of all school revenues — state, federal and local tax dollars — for management fees”). They recently bought an $8.4 Million condo in New York City to be closer to private schools they own there. Their company, the article says, received $14 million in management fees last year. The charters pay their teachers less than the average Arizona teachers’ salary, but they are less experienced. Teachers get more money because parents are asked to donate $1,500 per student per year, which is a bargain compared to private schools. Teachers get a bonus of $200 whenever a student gets a 5 on an AP exam. The average BASIS student takes a dozen AP exams and passes nearly all of them.
A reader on the blog added this comment:
Basis, the #1 school in the nation by Newsweek Magazine, 2017, graduated 44 students. 18 whites, the rest mostly Asians. No ELL, No Special Ed. Less than 8% Black/Hispanics. No free or reduced lunch. So, basically we’re saying privileged, upper socio-economic, gifted students.
In my last year of teaching, I had 45 in one room with 30 desks, not enough old texts to teach. Didn’t stay that way all year, but enough to impact teaching & learning.
Basis only teaches the gifted. Look a little deeper.
There you have it. The secret sauce. Accept everyone who applies. Get rid of the students who are unlikely to pass AP exams. Hire young teachers and pay less than underpaid public school teachers. Pay a bonus whenever students get a 5 on an AP exam. Create a culture of testtaking. Drop those who can’t do it. Solicit money from parents to pay teachers more.
Is it a model for public education? No. Public schools must keep all students, not just those most likely to pass tests.
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLE YOU WILL READ TODAY. SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR SCHOOL BOARD, YOUR LOCAL MEDIA, YOUR ELECTEDS. TWEET IT. POST IT ON FACEBOOK.
In the states where teachers have engaged in walkouts and strikes, public education has been systematically starved of funding. Typically, corporate taxes have been cut so that funding for education has also been cut. The corporations benefit while the children and their teachers are put on a starvation diet.
Who are the corporations and individuals behind the efforts to shrink funding for public schools and promote privatization?
It begins like this, then details a state-by-state list of corporations and billionaires backing the cycle of austerity and school privatization.
“The ongoing wave of teacher strikes across the US is changing the conversation about public education in this country. From West Virginia to Arizona, Kentucky to Oklahoma, Colorado to North Carolina, tens of thousands of teachers have taken to the streets and filled state capitals, garnering public support and racking up victories in some of the nation’s most hostile political terrain.
“Even though the teachers who have gone on strike are paid well below the national average, their demands have gone beyond better salary and benefits for themselves. They have also struck for their students’ needs – to improve classroom quality and to increase classroom resources. Teachers are calling for greater investment in children and the country’s public education system as a whole. They are also demanding that corporations, banks, and billionaires pay their fair share to invest in schools.
“The teachers’ strikes also represent a major pushback by public sector workers against the right-wing agenda of austerity and privatization. The austerity and privatization agenda for education goes something like this: impose big tax cuts for corporations and the .01% and then use declining tax revenue as a rationale to cut funding for state-funded services like public schools. Because they are underfunded, public schools cannot provide the quality education kids deserve. Then, the right wing criticizes public schools and teachers, saying there is a crisis in education. Finally, the right wing uses this as an opportunity to make changes to the education system that benefit them – including offering privatization as a solution that solves the crisis of underfunding.
“While this cycle has put students, parents, and teachers in crisis, many corporations, banks, and billionaires are driving and profiting from it. The key forces driving the austerity and privatization agenda are similar across all the states that have seen strikes:
“*Billionaire school privatizers. A small web of billionaires – dominated by the Koch brothers and their donor network, as well as the Waltons – have given millions to state politicians who will push their pro-austerity, pro-school privatization agenda. These billionaires lead a coordinated, nationwide movement to apply business principles to education, including: promoting CEO-like superintendents, who have business experience but little or no education experience; closing “failing” schools, just as companies close unprofitable stores or factories; aggressively cutting costs, such as by recruiting less experienced teachers; instituting a market-based system in which public schools compete with privately managed charter schools, religious schools, for-profit schools, and virtual schools; and making standardized test scores the ultimate measure of student success.”
Keep reading to learn about the interlocking web that includes the Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Waltons, the fossil fuel industry, their think tanks, and much more, all combined to shrink public schools and replace them with charters and vouchers.
By the way, rightwing billionaire Philip Anschutz of Colorado was the producer of the anti-teacher, anti-public education, pro-charter propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.”
E.J. Montini, opinion columnist for the Arizona Republic, explains how Governor Doug Ducey pulled a fast one on the teachers who thought they won a promise from him.
“An analysis by The Arizona Republic – based on the state auditor general’s numbers – indicates that 59 school districts wouldn’t get enough money under the law to give all of their teachers the promised raise.
“In other words, that 20 percent pay hike for all teachers was 100 percent bull.
“Sure, some teachers will get raises, but apparently not all of them and not at the level that was promised.
“In addition, the devastating education spending cuts made for years were not reversed. Support staff salaries were not guaranteed an increase. And there was no moratorium on tax cuts.
“If the RedForEd people want to accomplish their goals they’re going to have to do it on their own.
“With a ballot initiative.
“Perhaps it will be one that has been put forth by coalition of teachers, parents and education advocates led by the Center for Economic Progress.
“The plan, called the Invest in Education Act. would increase taxes for individuals earning more than $250,000 a year and couples earning more than $500,000.
“The wealthy prefer a sales tax
“A group of local CEOs, along with the Chamber of Commerce – people who earn that kind of money – would rather place the tax burden for education on our poorest brothers and sisters by boosting the sales tax.
“They’re prepared to spend a ton of money to fight the income tax proposal.
“(They’d rather do that, apparently, than put the money into public education.)”
They will need to collect 150,000 signatures by July 5 to get the proposition on the ballot. A number of groups and faith communities have offered their help. They say it is a moral issue.
“The protesting educators in the RedForEd movement tried to teach that lesson.
“The governor and Legislature failed the exam.
“They’re going to need a make-up test.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 