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Little Rock: African-American Minister Protests Plan for More School Closures

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2018 //
7

Dr. Anika T. Whitfield is a minister in Little Rock who speaks out against the steady encroachment of privatization. She recently wrote this letter to the State Commissioner of Education Johnny Key and Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore. The district was taken over by the state because six of its 48 schools had low test scores. The State Commissioner Johnny Key is an engineer and a former legislator; among his notable positions: he voted to reduce unemployment compensation benefits, he opposed abortion, he voted to allow handguns on church property and to allow university staff to carry concealed weapons and to forbid the release of information about the holders of concealed weapons permits. He was appointed Commissioner of Education in 2015.

Dr. Whitfield writes:


Mr. Poore and Mr. Key,

There is great community concern about your recent announcement about more plans for school closures within our beloved LRSD.

No genuine, earnest efforts have been made on your behalf to engage the largest and most invested stakeholders in the LRSD: students, parents/guardians, in developing plans together before you have already developed plans and made impactful decisions of your own. And, to add insult to injury, you continue to deny students, parents and guardians the a viable opportunity to provide their wisdom and insight with you, and other LRSD administrators. Their wisdom and insight should be considered invaluable to you as the Little Rock School District Superintendent and appointed LRSD Board member and chair.

Your latest press conference, Mr. Poore, was another indication of your lack of respect for the true value of building healthy community relationships through direct open lines of communications, frequent meaningful experiences, and transparency. Your approaches lack all and most importantly, trust.

Mr. Poore, it is not acceptable that you, someone who has shown a personal lack of commitment to the well being and welfare of our city and county by choosing to not become a registered voter in the over two years with which you have resided in our community, continue to make decisions without making sincere efforts to work with the LRSD community that was unwillfully disenfranchised. Willfully exercising absolute power and authority over persons who have been wrongfully denied their rights to voice their vote is not mark of excellence in leadership, nor a sign of strength. It is an indication of fear and weakness.

Mr. Key, both you and Mr. Poore have continued to deny students, parents, guardians and the greater LRSD community the opportunity to make decisions about our children, our schools, and our community without just cause. We understand that the AR State Legislators empowered the State Board of Education to assume control over public school systems based on criteria that have become lawful. And, we are clear that the State Board of Education, prior to your appointment, decided to take over our entire district (48 schools), rather than voting to assist the six schools that were designated as being in academic distress instead.

We know that Governor Asa Hutchinson has been following the playbook of the charter school funders who have used similar tactics to take over public school systems by appointing persons who like you, Mr. Key, who have no certification nor experience as an educator nor as an academic administrator, to become Commissioner of Education.

What remains unclear is why you both have chosen this fate?

Why are you both willing to evoke violence against the most vulnerable children and families in our city? Why have you chosen to come to the largest city in our state with the largest population of students in a public school system who are African American and work to destroy their hopes, dreams, and aspirations along with their families by going along with a slow, but steady plan to destroy the Little Rock School District.

Where is your moral consciousness? Where is your moral character? Why are you choosing to aid in assassinating the hopes, dreams, and potentials of innocent children and their families?

It is beyond understanding how you could/would endeavor to work so diligently to destroy the LRSD community, one of the cornerstones of the city of Little Rock.

We are not unaware nor are we complacent. Systemic racism and poverty are alive and unwell in America, and right here in the city of Little Rock. We are working on both the cure and the sustainability plan of wellness to prevent the recurrence of these man-made epidemics.

This letter is an appeal to whatever remaining hope of justice lies within you. We ask that you release the LRSD community from bondage and free yourselves from bloodying your hands anymore.

Rev./Dr. Anika T. Whitfield

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Little Rock, Privatization

Arkansas: The Abusive Treatment of a First-Year Music Teacher

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2018 //
89

Sometimes teachers complain that their schools have too many regulations, too many routines.

This music teacher, a professional violinist who signed up to teach in a charter school in Arkansas dedicated to the arts and dear to the heart of Alice Walton, learned about the perils of teaching in a school where everything was deregulated and there were no routines.

Someone thought that a school where decisions are made on the fly and teachers are always on their own was a good ideal maybe this was someone’s idea of innovation.

No, it was not innovative. It was chaotic. It was abusive in the eyes of this teacher. It was disorderly and unpredictable.

Don’t the arts require practice and discipline? Can teachers flourish when there is no respect for them?

Who thought that an atmosphere of chaos and disrespect was a good idea?

The article begins:

“When I started teaching orchestra at Arkansas Arts Academy High School last fall, I didn’t know much about the state of public education in Arkansas. My entire career — 15 years — had been spent as a performing violinist: concertmaster of the Fort Smith Symphony, concertmaster and principal viola with the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, composer/director of Storybook Strings, and a freelancer with touring groups like “Book of Mormon” and Harry Connick, Jr. I also had a long history of teaching private lessons, with a background in the Suzuki method.

“What I did NOT have was an Arkansas teacher’s license, or any previous training to become a public school teacher.

“That’s okay!” the principal assured me. “We’re a charter school. We have waivers from teacher licensure requirements, as long as you have a bachelor’s degree and relevant professional experience!”

“Cool,” I thought. “I know music. I teach music. I can learn everything else on the job.” So I signed up to teach, half-time, trusting in the experience and good faith of my administration and fellow teachers to help me learn the ropes.

“The school didn’t give me a contract until 41 days after I was hired. It was my fourth day of teacher in-service before I found out what my salary would be ($21,187.50) or what employment terms I had signed up for. And those employment terms? They were incredibly vague.

“My contract said “190 half-days,” and “at-will employment.” It also mentioned “a waiver granted by the Arkansas Department of Education” that made Arkansas Arts Academy “exempt from certain laws relating to schools, including specifically many of those relating to employees.” But I trusted the school’s good reputation — I had a friend who taught there, and knew families who sent their kids. Plus, what musician wouldn’t root for the success of an arts academy?

“I should have been more careful. If I had gone to the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) website, I would have learned that the “waiver” in my contract was actually a LOT of waivers, and the ADE grants new ones all the time. Currently, Arkansas Arts Academy High School has 51 waivers in effect, including teachers’ rights to planning periods, duty-free lunches, limitations on before- and after-school duties, and the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act. Arkansas Arts Academy is also exempt from having to provide written personnel policies*** to its employees, which means that there is no handbook telling us how to access our classroom funds, what to bring for fire drills, how to interact with the parent organization, or who to talk to if we need help.

“In the absence of state oversight, and without written personnel policies, things quickly became chaotic.”

Categories Arkansas, Arts Education, Charter Schools, Disruption, Teachers and Teaching

Little Rock: Please Do Not Steal Our Public Schools and Our Democracy!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2018 //
14

Reverend Anika Whitfield wrote an open letter to Arkansas’s State Commisioner of Education, its Governor, and the City Superintendent, complaining about the state takeover of the Little Rock School District. This has long been a goal of the Walton family, the richest, most powerful family in the state and in the nation.

She writes:


Superintendent Poore and Commissioner Key (with a copy to Governor Hutchinson),

How are you able to live with what appears to be placing a hit on the lives of over 17,000 innocent students in the LRSD?

What appears to be your willful cooperation with political and philanthropic interest groups to violate the most vulnerable children in our city by closing their schools; selling (without our permission) their community schools to private charter businesses and to governmental programs that are run by officials who have benefited from a prison industrial system that profits off of incarcerating the lives of many of these same students, is unfathomable.

What does it profit you to watch innocent children suffer at your own hands?

What do you gain by taking away resources from children, families, and educators?

How many families and communities must destroyed before you have seen enough?

Are there any valid examples of affluent neighborhoods and communities that you have imposed your power to take over their children and absolve their patriotic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

What wealthy communities have you tried to force, without the will of the people, to accept a subservient educational business model for educators and students while imposing legalized disenfranchisement of their wealthy parents?

What truthful evidence can you provide that school closures, increasing class sizes, creating job losses by merging schools, and re-segregating communities, has proven to be a successful model in strengthening those same communities?

The plans that were laid out today for the LRSD showed ample evidence that your jobs have been, as has been suspected and predicted since your unorthodox appointments, a political and economic bidding to make wealthy investors like the Walton Family Foundation, Stephen’s, Inc. and others, to gain more wealt by privatizatizing public institutions and disenfranchising persons primarily impacted by poverty and systemic racism.

We have attended your previous school forums in large numbers. We have participated with consistent and persistent voices our opinions and desires to regain locally, elected, representation by our peers.

We have made clear our desires to keep all of our schools open, to raise community economic support for all of the schools and, particularly students, in the LRSD so that all students are attending classes and schools that are excellent.

We have provided plans, options and opportunities to work with you to keep schools open, and to improve the overall moral in schools by creating more community support and developing public accountability.

Yet, despite our active participation in your created system of governance, you have repeatedly denied all of our requests.

What will it will take for you to stop disrespecting and disregarding the voices and presence of our LRSD children, their parents, community?

What is the ransom you require to return our district back into the hands of the LRSD community?

Sincerely,
Rev. Anika T. Whitfield

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Industry, Injustice, Privatization

The Walton-Funded Hijacking of the Little Rock School District

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2018 //
11

It was inevitable that the Waltons would make their move to privatize the public schools of Little Rock, the largest city in Arkansas, which the Waltons consider their fiefdom. The Waltons have used their billions to leverage control of the State Education Department, the Legislature, and the State Education Board.

The Waltons have long coveted control of Little Rock’s public schools. Local citizens resisted, but David doesn’t usually defeat Goliath. For example, as the Arkansas Times reported earlier this year, the Legislature passed a law Legislation “requiring Arkansas school districts to turn over buildings constructed with local property taxes to be turned over to any charter school that wants them, no matter how unproven the charter operator, no matter how damaging the charter might be to existing — and successful — true public schools.”

When six of Little Rock’s 48 public schools were labeled “failing,” that was the pretext for the state to take control of the entire district, ending local control. Read that again. The low test scores of 6 of 48 schools were grounds for the dissolution of democratic control in the entire district. The goal, of course, was to enable the Walton puppets to introduce private charter schools, which are controlled by private boards.

The Waltons and other corporate reformers prey on black and brown communities, whose voices are easily ignored by the predominantly white male-controlled state legislatures that control their fates. State Commissioner Johnny Key was formerly a legislator and lobbyist for the University of Arkansas. He became state commissioner in 2015. The state law, which required that the person in that position have at least a masters’ degree and 10 years experience as a teacher, had to be changed to allow him to serve.

The following is an Open Letter to the State Commissioner and Governor. It was written by Rev. Anika Whitfield, a pastor in Little Rock who believes in democracy and public education.


Commissioner Key and Governor Hutchinson,

It is now more than apparent that you both are participating in the continual hijacking, undermining, and weakening of the LRSD, the largest public school district in our state.

What evidence do I have to support this assertion?

1) Since the hijacking of the LRSD (when 6 out of 48 schools failed to meet the raised student achievement standardized test scores from 25% for proficiency to 49.5% and the former AR Commissioner of Education and State Board of Education voted to take over the entire LRSD), on January 28, 2015, the overall student enrollment and teacher moral has shown a significant and devastating decline.

2) The AR State Board of Education, under your watch, has re-approved charter schools in the city of LR that as an entire school system/district, Covenant Keepers Charter School, for example, that has continued to fail to meet the academic achievement test score requirements that were legislated by the state. Yet, when three (half of the LRSS schools that were labeled distressed) have moved off the distressed list (one that came off as a result of actions of consecutive test score improvements that were evidenced in the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 academic years), you have not shown the LRSD the same mercy and released us back to locally, elected representation by residents of Little Rock.

3) The LRSD students are suffering by the loss of their beloved teachers by the threat from your administration and your apparent support for hiring uncertified teachers, (persons not trained nor licensed to teach our children). This weakening of the quality of the LRSD has also continued to weaken its overall moral. And, unfortunately, these practices are consistent with other waivers (legal passes to avoid compliance with current laws) you have approved in academic administration positions such as hiring non-certified Prinicipals and Superintendents in the LRSD, and creating a law to exempt the AR State Education Commissioner to be a certified academic administrator.

When one doesn’t respect a profession enough to honor it’s process of licensure and certification, one suggests that it is not important. Is this your overall message and rationale for hijacking our beloved LRSD to show us that you don’t value our children? Let me assure you that if that is your aim, you are successfully achieving your goals.

4) The student enrollment of the LRSD has continued to decline under your watch, since 2015 when you both came into office. We have seen a rise in the numbers of charter schools approved under your leadership. We have witnessed the closure of four schools in the LRSD that were not suffering from academic distress, yet, many of the schools these students have been forced to attend are showing instability in staff retention and a decline in student academic achievement.

5) The processes you have approved to “more easily” register students in the LRSD has not only caused more confusion, found more students not currently enrolled, and unintentionally (perhaps) displaced students from their “assigned” schools, but they have exponentially worsened over the past three academic years.

There seems to be a disconnect and disregard between the administration and the parents/guardians of the LRSD. How many parents, guardians and school administrators were polled to determine whether or not there needed to be extensive training before implementing the Gateway registration process this academic year? What were the results of so? How did you address any push back or evidence of disapproval of this all electronic registration process?

In school systems like eStem, Covenant Keepers and other public-private charter schools, student registration processes are less likely to be as challenging since they only currently have one school for all grade levels or one school for elementary, middle, and high school students. It would not be chaotic nor frustrating for those parents to know which building or school their children are assigned. Again, it appears that your interest lies more in making sure charter school districts are appearing to operate with more ease than the LRSD, the district you have continued to hold hostage from parents and guardians in Little Rock.

6) You both have continued to refused, since February 2015, to hold a city wide meeting to dialogue and discuss with concerned parents, guardians, students, and community members of Little Rock, a way forward to return local representation to the residents of Little Rock.

We want our schools back.

As tax paying residents of Little Rock, we demand elected representation from our selected peers.

What is the ransom you require for Little Rock School District parents, guardians, students, and community supporters to pay for you to release our district back to us now?

Rev. Anika T. Whitfield

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Resistance, Walton Foundation

Laura Chapman Reviews the “Next Generation Science Standards”

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2018 //
18

I recently posted an article about a Walton-funded school board in Arkansas that refused to pay for up-to-date science textbooks that aligned with the state’s new science standards.

Laura Chapman says don’t bother.

Here is her review:


The state of Arkansas adopted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Their texts are out of date and so are the science texts in many states.

The NGSS standards are so complex that even major publishers are having a hard time generating new texts. As usual, tried and true lessons from the past are being recycled. As usual, field trials of new content and materials are limited by the high costs for the publisher and the cost of revisions that may be needed.. According to EdWeek, districts are having a hard time finding textbooks and other instructional materials aligned with the 2013 NGSS.

EdReports, which claims to be a Consumer Reports for education, is a Gates-funded project. Reviewers for EdREports follow criteria that call for strict alignments with the CCSS and related standards grade-by-grade, and with no content from a prior grade reviewed and reintroduced in the next grade. I have not seen any modifications in the method and criteria for reviewing high school science texts, but EdReports ratings of secondary science tests are expected this fall. https://www.edreports.org/about/our-approach/index.html

Reviews of textbooks are time-intensive and if you are looking for NGSS compliance, the reviews are really complicated. Achieve has also gotten into the reviewing act, but only for a few units, not textbooks.

Teachers working independently have also found that getting NCSS-aligned resources together is hard. According to EdWeek, secondary teachers of science want to see texts and resources that introduce a “phenomenon,” then forward exploration and understanding, then build coherently to deeper understanding through more lessons. I wonder if these teacher-reviewers are assuming that students have encountered science instruction compliant with NGSS prior to high school.

Before high school—K-8— science texts are supposed to align with 381 CCSS standards. Of these, 182 are in math, 96 in ELA reading, 82 in ELA writing, and 21 in science/technical subjects Literacy. All of those standards are supposed to be linked with the 146 core content standards in SCIENCE for K-8. So the standards writers have conjured 527 that are supposed to be met for science-specific learning before high school. If all those standards harbor redundancies, good luck in ferreting them out.

The architecture for high school standards rests on earlier understandings and achievements in; (a) the practices of science, (b) the core concepts within the earth, life, and physical sciences plus engineering…and (c) “themes” that cut across disciplines. That structure has been called three-dimensional. Of course, neither the CCSS nor NGSS offer a roadmap from standards to curricula to tests…but there is plenty of hoopla about new and rigorous standards.

In my experience, writers of standards are almost always serving up more content and connections of “this to that” than can be shoved into texts and other coherently planned instructional materials. I think most experienced teachers want to move well beyond the all too prevalent view of education as text-bound, sage on the stage delivery of content relevant to tests. That view is likely to make science free of the wonderments of eyes-on and hands-on experiments, whether in labs or field work.

According to EdWeek, five publishers have entered the market for NGSS science texts and resources since 2016. Although I have not looked at the texts, there is one constant in marketing these texts: The top line is “100% compliance with the NGSS.” For bells and whistles the ads for these texts make claims on behalf of “real world problem solving,” “STEM careers,” “multi-modality,” “research tested,” “instructional shifts” and the NGSS “philosophy of three dimensional learning.”

I have been through several rounds of textbook writing along with the development with ancillary materials. I have reviewed publications for state adoptions. All that was before the era of the CCSS and not in science, but the challenges of meeting expectations for any marketable and profitable product are usually underestimated…especially by writers of standards who really do want one-size-fits-all education, and now with every dimension of instruction described in computer code and “aligned ” with texts and tests.

Anyone who has worked on the publishing side knows that profits drive what publishers can and will deliver. In the best of worlds, teacher-made lessons and experiments would be central. Texts, resources from the library/media room or accessed online would be backup. All in-class studies would be enriched by demos and meet-ups with living breathing scientists and projects students initiate based on their curiosity and interest.

The end-game of standards-based education was and is standardized learning…with computer-based delivery of instruction envisioned from the get-go. Current hoopla about personalized education is mostly hot air. Unless you are speaking of artificial intelligence, learning is always personal. It does not need to be “ized.”
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/06/06/educators-scramble-for-texts-to-match-science.html

Categories Arkansas, Science

Arkansas: Walton-Funded School Board Refuses to Buy New Science Textbooks

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2018 //
21

The Walton family, which controls most of Arkansas, invested in the purchase of the Pulaski County School Board. At a recent meeting, the board voted 3-2 NOT to purchase new science textbooks to replace obsolete ones. The majority said the district could not afford the $1 million cost, even if stretched out over three years.

The School Board for the Pulaski County Special School District voted 4-2 Tuesday against the immediate purchase of new science textbooks to replace books that are more than a decade old and do not match the state’s new science standards or the district’s science curriculum.

A committee of district teachers, school administrators and others had recommended earlier this year that the district purchase new science books for kindergarten-through-12th grades.

Jennifer Beasley, science program administrator for the district, returned to the board Tuesday with that recommendation but at a newly discounted cost of slightly more than $1 million, and with an alternative option that would spread the purchase of the new science books over three years.

In the first year of the three-year plan, classroom sets of textbooks and digital subscriptions to those books would be purchased for high schools at a maximum cost of $409,544.

Textbooks for middle schools would then be purchased for the 2019-20 school year and for the elementary schools in the following year.

“The committee’s rationale for allowing the high schools to be first to adopt books was that all of our high schools have a D on the state report card,” Beasley told the board, “and committee members agreed it is important for students and teachers to have resources aligned to the new standards.”

The high schools will be teaching to the new state science standards for the first time in this coming school year. The elementary schools incorporated the new standards in the previous two years, Beasley said, and the elementary teachers feel they are better prepared to continue with the instructional materials and lessons they’ve developed. Additionally, the elementary schools typically earned A’s and B’s on the state report card.

The Walton members should have asked their patrons to help out.

Categories Arkansas, Curriculum, Funding, Science, Walton Foundation

Barclay Key: The Tragedy of Little Rock, Sixty Years After Eisenhower Sent in the 101st Airborne to Protect Nine Black Students

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2017 //
18

In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, accepted nine black students, while white parents jeered and protested. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to safeguard the students and to carry out the order of a federal judge.

That was sixty years ago.

How much has changed? Now Little Rock’s public schools are segregated again. At the behest of the Walton Family (which owns Arkansas), the public schools were taken over by the state. The man in charge is not, never was, an educator. The ostensible reason for the takeover was that six of the city’s 48 schools were “failing.” Since then, three of the 48 schools have been closed. More are on the chopping block, including schools with a long and honorable history.

Barclay Key, a historian at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, writes the sad story of the past sixty years here. (What! The Walton family forgot to buy the history department!)

It appears that the Walton family wants to turn Little Rock into the next New Orleans, the next Memphis. It wants to wipe out public schools and replace them with charters. It wants to silence the voice of local citizens and give them no role in determining the future of their schools.

Key writes:

The two most striking parallels between the past and present are the insistence by white leaders that they know what is best for Black families and students and the recurrent role that local white business leaders play in undermining the public school system and prioritizing their prerogatives for the city…

Sixty years ago Little Rock epitomized desegregation struggles in the South, but the city now follows a path worn by New Orleans, Memphis, and other cities wracked by the proliferation of charter schools. Like they have over the past sixty years, politicians and business leaders presume to know what is best for public schools, and their decisions reflect a preoccupation with the latest trends in business rather than research-based pedagogy. The replacement for the elected board, state education commissioner Johnny Key, was appointed by the new Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson despite having no experience as an educator. Key appointed a superintendent who was generally trusted by the city’s white elites, but that superintendent was promptly replaced when he openly criticized the inefficiency of expanding charter schools in a district that has been gradually losing students for years. With the exception of reconstituting one school, the state made no substantive changes at the distressed schools.

“Reflections of Progress” will serve as the theme for the sixtieth anniversary of the desegregation crisis. Things have certainly changed, but the standard is too low if we measure progress by events that unfolded in 1957. Reflecting on progress since 1967 would be more appropriate and sobering. White men again make all decisions for the school district. They act with the support of the Chamber of Commerce and, today, the Walton charter school lobby controlled by the state’s powerful Walton family. Since the state takeover, many of the same bureaucrats have their six-figure salaries. Many of the same children cannot read. Little Rock periodically commemorates the 1957 controversy, but it constantly relives 1967.

The Walton Family Foundation is engraved on this blog’s Wall of Shame. It doesn’t stand alone, but it has a place of pre-eminence on a wall that lists those who have used their money and power to betray democracy, public schools, and the American dream.

Categories Arkansas, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Segregation, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Join the Fight to Save Public Schools in Arkansas!

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2017 //
2

Save Our Schools Arkansas and Grassroots Arkansas are sponsoring a showing of “Backpack Full of Cash” on Thursday September 7 from 6:30-8:30 pm at Philander Smith College (M.L. Smith Auditorium) in Little Rock. The event is sponsored by the Schott Foundation for Public Education and SOS Arkansas and Grassroots Arkansas.

All who are concerned about the future of public education as a basic human right are encouraged to attend. Join the Fight to stop privatization of what belongs to all of us!

Parents, educators, students, and other concerned citizens are urged to attend.

In response to the lobbying of representatives of the Walton family, the Legislature stripped Little Rock of local control. The pretext was that 6 of its 48 schools were low-performing.

Learn about the struggle to restore our democratic rights and save our public schools.

Categories Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Arkansas: State Board Renews Failing Charter School But Won’t Restore Local Control to Little Rock Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2017 //
9

This is a shocking story, by Max Brantley, one of the leading journalists in Arkansas and an outspoken critic of the Waltons, who use their billions to dominate the state and the University of Arkansas.

Get this: the State Board of Education just renewed a charter school that has failed to meet standards for nine years in a row. But the state board refuses to relinquish its takeover of the Little Rock School District, which lost control because only six of its 48 schools were not meeting standards.

You have to read the whole thing to see the powerful tentacles of the Walton Family at work.

“Faced with a solid recommendation by a panel of state employees to revoke the charter of Covenant Keepers charter school in Southwest Little Rock, the state Board of Education voted again last week to forgive the school’s poor academic and financial record.

“Again, the state Board of Education accepted excuses it won’t tolerate from the Little Rock School District.

“The board took over the Little Rock School District two years ago and won’t let go, though 45 of its 48 schools exceed the performance of Covenant Keepers and the others are easily in its league academically.

“Covenant Keepers, 9 years old this August, has NEVER met proficiency standards. The grade 6-8 school showed about 28 percent of its students meeting the standard in reading and 20 percent in math in the most recent tests. It’s also been in a persistent financial mess.

“The school had a huge negative fund balance, in part because it was in arrears to the state for taking money in excess of its 160-student enrollment. (You wouldn’t think counting to 160 is high-order math.) Proper tax forms weren’t in evidence for employees and contractors. It failed to provide requested documentation for credit card charges, including out-of-state trips. Its director, Valerie Tatum, is paid a whopping $135,000, or better than $800 per student to run a 160-student school. No comparable school leader in Arkansas comes close.

“What’s the rub? Covenant Keepers has powerful friends. The Walton Family Foundation provided cash infusion to fix its red-ink-bathed books. The money was passed through an opaque, unaccountable charter management corporation. Jess Askew, a tall-tower Little Rock lawyer who lawyers for Walton-supported school “choice” initiatives, pled the case for Covenant Keepers. The head of the Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas — a charter school-promoting operation that owes its existence and pay subsidies to the Waltons — testified that Covenant Keepers was, well, doing a bit better and used the Little Rock School District as a whipping boy. She said Covenant Keepers in the most recent year of testing did as well as some nearby Little Rock district schools. Valerie Tatum said she’s getting valuable support from the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, another charter school advocate underwritten by, yes, the Walton Family Foundation.”

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Arkansas: Voucher Bill Fails in Legislature

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2017 //
8

Vouchers, also known as education savings accounts and tax credits, failed in the lower house of the state legislature in Arkansas.

The legislator who sponsored the bill hails from Bentonville, the home of the Walton Family (Walmart) corporation.

Given the accumulation of research showing the failure of vouchers in Milwaukee, Cleveland, D.C., Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio, you have to wonder why Tea Party Republicans are still pushing the same phony claims.

House Bill 1222 by Rep. Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville, received 37 votes in support and 47 votes against in the House. The bill would create a four-year pilot program allowing the establishment of “education savings accounts” that parents could use for certain expenses related to a child’s education, including tuition, fees, textbooks, tutoring services and contracted services with a public school district.

Under the measure, people and companies could donate to nonprofit organizations and, starting in the program’s second year, receive a 65 percent tax credit. The total tax credits provided in the second, third and fourth years of the program could not exceed $3 million per year.

The donations could fund accounts for up to 694 students. Each year, an account would be worth an amount equal to the state’s per-student spending on public education, which for this school year is $6,646.

Families could apply for the accounts regardless of whether they make donations.

Opponents of the bill knew that it was a voucher bill, that the limits were only an opening bid, and that the vouchers would do grievous damage to their community’s public schools.

Legislators who spoke against the bill raised concerns about accountability, fairness, the impact on public schools and implications for the future.

“Right now there is this train going down the track, and while it’s going at a slow pace, it stands to pick up pace and we stand to sooner or later become a voucher community, with those vouchers destroying public schools while the public schools decay and are not being improved,” said Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock.

The camel put its nose under the tent, and the majority of legislators kicked the whole darn critter out of there.

Way to go, Arkansas!

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Funding, Supporting public schools, Vouchers
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