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Peter Greene: Arne Duncan Is Now Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2025 //
5

If you have ever wondered why I am crazy about Peter Greene, wonder no more. Just read this post that appeared on his blog. Peter is consistently smart, funny, wise, and insightful. He has a way with words. He is unerring in spotting phonies. He is fearless. Let me say it out loud: I love Peter Greene!

He wrote about the article that exposed Duncan’s true views. Until now, some of us had only inferred who he is. Now we know. Duncan”political advice” to Democrats–adopt Republican policies– is hilarious in light of Tuesday’s election results: across the nation, Democrats won school board races, and every Moms for Liberty candidate lost.

Peter Greene writes:

Mind you, on education, Duncan was always the kind of Democrat largely indistinguishable from a Republican, but with his latest print outburst (in the Washington Post, because of course it was), he further reduces the distance between himself and his successor as Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. 

For this one, he teamed up with Jorge Elorza, head honcho at DFER/Education Reform Now, the hedge fundie group set up to convince Democrats that they should agree with the GOP on education.

It’s yet another example of reformsters popping up to argue that what’s really needed in education is a return to all the failed reform policies of fifteen years ago. I don’t know what has sparked this nostalgia– have they forgotten, or do they just think we have forgotten, or do they still just not understand how badly test-and-punish flopped, how useless the Common Core was, and how school choice has had to abandon claims that choice will make education better in this country.

But here come Duncan and Elorza with variations on the same old baloney.

First up– chicken littling over NAEP scores. They’re dipping! They’re low! And they’ve been dipping ever since 2010s. Whatever shall we do?

Who do Duncan and Elorza think holds the solution? Why, none other than Donald Trump.

Seriously. They are here to pimp for the federal tax credit voucher program, carefully using the language that allows them to pretend that these vouchers aren’t vouchers or tax shelters.

The new federal tax credit scholarship program, passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allows taxpayers to claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations to scholarship-granting organizations, or SGOs. These SGOs can fund a range of services already embraced by blue-state leaders, such as tutoring, transportation, special-education services and learning technology. For both current and incoming governors, it’s a chance to show voters that they’re willing to do what it takes to deliver for students and families, no matter where the ideas originate.

The encourage governors to “unlock these resources” as if these are magic dollars stored in a lockbox somewhere and not dollars that are going to be redirected from the United States treasury to land instead in some private school’s bank account.

Democratic governors are reluctant to get into a program that “could be seen as undermining public schools.” But hey– taking these vouchers “doesn’t take a single dollar from state education budgets” says Duncan, sounding exactly like DeVos when she was pushing the same damned thing. And this line of bullshit:

It simply opens the door to new, private donations, at no cost to taxpayers, that can support students in public and nonpublic settings alike.

“At no cost to taxpayers” is absolute baloney. Every dollar is a tax dollar not paid to the government, so the only possible result must be either reduction in services, reduction in subsidies, or increase in the deficit. I guess believing in Free Federal Money is a Democrat thing.

The “support students in public and nonpublic settings” is carefully crafted baloney language as well. Federal voucher fans keep pushing the public school aspect, but then carefully shading it as money spent on tutors or uniforms or transportation and not actual schools. And they are just guessing that any of that will be acceptable because the rules for these federal vouchers aren’t written yet.

Duncan and Elorza want to claim that this money will, “in essence,” replace the disappearing money from the American Rescue Plan Act. “In essence” is doing Atlas-scale lifting here because, no, it will not. The voucher money will be spent in different ways by different people on different stuff. They are not arguing that this money will help fund public schools– just that it might fund some stuff that is sort of public education adjacent.

But how about some “analysis” from Education Reform Now, which claims that the potential scale is significant.” They claim that “the federal tax credit scholarship program could generate $3.1 billion in California, nearly $986 million in Illinois and nearly $86 million in Rhode Island each year,” drifting ever closer to “flat out lie” territory, because the federal vouchers won’t “generate” a damned cent. Pretending these numbers are real, that’s $3.1 billion in tax dollars that will go to SGOs in the state instead of the federal government. It’s redirected tax revenue, not new money. Will the feds just eat that $3.1 billion shortfall, or cut, say, education funding to California? Next time I get a flat tire, will I generate a new tire from the trunk? I think not.

In classic Duncan, he would like you to know that not following his idea makes you a Bad Person. Saying no to the federal vouchers is a “moral failure.”

Next up: Political advice.

Over the past decade, Democrats have watched our party’s historical advantage on education vanish.

Yeah, Arne, it’s more than a decade, and it has happened because you and folks like you have decided that attacking and denigrating the public education system would be a great idea. You and your ilk launched and supported policies based on the assumption that all problems in school were the sole treatable cause of economic and social inequity in this country, and that those problems were the result of really bad teachers, so a program of tests followed by punishment would make things better in schools (and erase poverty, too).

But now the GOP states are getting higher NAEP scores, so that means… something?

This is Democrats’ chance to regain the educational and moral high ground. To remind the country that Democrats fight to give every child a fair shot and that we’ll do whatever it takes to help kids catch up, especially those left behind for too long.

Yes, Democrats– you can beat the Republicans by supporting Republican policies. And that “we’ll do whatever it takes to help kids catch up” thing? You had a chance to do that, and you totally blew it. Defund, dismantle and privatize public schools was a lousy approach. It’s still a lousy approach.

Opting in to the federal tax credit scholarship program isn’t about abandoning Democratic values — it’s about fulfilling them.

When it comes to public education, it’s not particularly clear what Democratic values even are these days, and my tolerance for party politics is at an all time low. But I am quite sure that the interests of students, families, teachers, and public education are not served by having the GOP offer a shit sandwich and the Democrats countering with, “We will also offer a shit sandwich, but we will say nice things about it and draw a D on it with mayonnaise.”

We have always heard that Arne Duncan is a nice guy, and I have no reason to believe that’s not true. But what would really be nice would be for him to go away and never talk about education ever again. Just go have a nice food truck lunch with Betsy DeVos.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Character, Closing schools, Common Core, DFER, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Race to the Top, Trump

Arkansas: 88% of Students Who Use Vouchers Never Attended Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2025 //
4

Long ago, back in the 1990s, the idea of vouchers was proposed as a brand new idea. Its advocates said that vouchers would “save poor kids trapped in failing public schools.” They presented themselves as champions of poor and needy kids and predicted that vouchers would change the lives of these children for the better. Eminent figures proclaimed that school choice was “the civil rights issue” of our time.

Of course, as many writers have explained, vouchers were not a brand new idea. They were popular among segregationists after the 1954 Brown decision. Several Southern states passed voucher laws in that era that were eventually knocked down by federal courts as a ploy to maintain all-white schools.

Trump’s first Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos –never considered a leader of civil rights–championed vouchers. So does Trump’s current Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

But guess who’s getting vouchers? Not the poor kids. Not the neediest kids. Mostly the kids who were already enrolled in religious and private schools.

The story is the same in every state but accentuated in states where every student can claim a voucher, regardless of family income, as in Florida and Arizona.

Now the numbers are available in Arkansas: 88% of students who use vouchers never attended public schools.

Benjamin Hardy of The Arkansas Times reports:

On Oct. 3, the Arkansas Department of Education released its annual report on school vouchers (or as the state calls them, “Educational Freedom Accounts”). The voucher program, which was created by Gov. Sarah Sanders’ Arkansas LEARNS Act in 2023, gives public money to private school and homeschool families to pay the cost of tuition, fees, supplies and other expenses.

Among the takeaways of the new report: Just one of every eight voucher participants in Year 2 of the program was enrolled in a public school the year before. (Year 2 was the 2024-25 school year; we’re currently in Year 3.)

This matters because Sanders and other school choice supporters often frame vouchers as a lifeline for poor families to escape failing public schools. Opponents of voucher programs say the money tends to mostly go to existing private school and homeschool families. 

Private school families as a whole tend to be higher income. And because the Arkansas program is open to everyone, regardless of how wealthy they are, the voucher program puts money in the pockets of many households that could already afford private school. 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Hoax, Home Schooling, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Josh Cowen Is Running for Congress in Michigan!

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2025 //
7

Josh Cowen has announced his candidacy for Congress in a swing district in Michigan. The seat is currently held by a Republican.

Josh’s main issues will be education and affordability. He told the AP:

In an interview with The Associated Press, Cowen said federal worker layoffs and cuts to research funding and Medicaid inspired him to run for the Lansing-area seat that Barrett flipped in 2024. 

“What it really means in our daily lives is disinvestment from services that we depend on,” said Cowen, an education policy academic who is known for his research and arguments against school vouchers.

Josh’s latest book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, exposed the failure of vouchers to produce academic improvement or to help poor kids. He had spent nearly 20 years as a voucher researcher, working within the studies. He came to realize that most of those students who used vouchers had never attended public schools. Vouchers, he saw, were a subsidy for affluent families.

I sent a contribution to Josh’s campaign. He is the only candidate, to my knowledge, who is running to be an advocate for public schools. We need his voice in Congress. Open this link to send him money for his campaign.

Nick Wu of Politico wrote about his entry into the race:

Democrat Josh Cowen is launching a bid by highlighting education and affordability issues in what is already becoming a crowded primary in a tossup Michigan district.

Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University, singled out the school choice and voucher programs pushed by Michigan Republicans like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as part of what inspired him to run for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District in the central part of the state.

“I’m a teacher, and I have been fighting Betsy DeVos across the country on a specific issue, and that’s privatizing public schools,” Cowen said in an interview. “She’s been trying to disinvest, defund commitments to kids and families all over the place, and that’s actually the same fight as everything that’s going on right now — trying to protect investing in health care through Medicaid and other systems — protect jobs.”

Democratic congressional candidate Josh Cowen sits for a photo.

Josh Cowen is running for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District.  |  Cowen campaign

Several Democrats have already announced bids against Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who flipped the seat last cycle after Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) vacated it to run for Senate. He could be a tough incumbent for Democrats to dislodge and reported raising over $1 million last quarter

Still, Democrats see the narrowly divided seat as a top pickup opportunity next year, with former Ukraine Ambassador Bridget Brink and retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam among the field of candidates running. Cowen brushed off concerns about a contested primary, saying, “They’re going to run their campaigns. I’m going to run mine.”

“I am going to be running really hard on the fact that I am in this community. I’ve been here for 12 years. My kids went to public schools here. My youngest is still there,” he added.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Courage, Democracy, Michigan, Politics

Maurice Cunningham: DFER Moves into MAGA Orbit

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2025 //
2

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the university of Massachusetts and a specialist on dark money in education, exposes the rightward shift of Democrats for Education Reform, as well as its continuing disintegration. DFER spent years cheerleading for charter schools and test-based teacher evaluation, but its pretense has dissolved. Cunningham said it is now closely aligned with rightwing groups.

Cunningham writes:

Democrats for Education Reform, the front operation for billionaire privateering of public education, has gone all-in for right-wing policies. This likely reflects two factors: the collapse of DFER nationally, and an opportunistic pivot to Trump’s MAGA regime.

DFER was established upon the premise, according to its hedge fund co-founder Whitney Tilson, that it would spend lavishly as part of an “inside job” to turn the Democratic Party away from teachers unions and public education and toward charter schools. Its CEO Jorge Elorza has just announced the organization will race even further to the right: DFER will now “Explore innovative funding models such as education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tax credit programs.” (emphasis in original). This is the program of billionaires Linda McMahon, Betsy DeVos–and Donald Trump.

Judging by the number of high-level staff fleeing from DFER, Elorza has been driving the operation into the ground. Jessical Giles, who served for six years as Washington, D.C. executive director recently resigned because DFER’s policies “no longer align with my values and vision.” 

Other DFER leaders have complained of the group’s gallop toward political extremism. In a complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, former Massachusetts executive director Mary Tamer wrote that Elorza retaliated against her for “inquiring about Mr. Elorza’s decision to join a Koch-funded right-wing coalition that seemed contrary to the organization’s best interests and mission.” The right-wing coalition seems to be the No More Lines Coalition, which includes not only Koch aligned organizations but Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Childrenand the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Elorza has been a guest speaker at the Charles Koch Institute. Tamer is seeking damages against  DFER, and the allied Education Reform Now and Education Reform Now Advocacy for gender and age discrimination.

Tamer’s complaint alleges a number of defections by key DFER leaders. Within months of Elorza’s arrival COO Shakira Petit left, and CFO Sheri Adebiyi was fired. Board Chair Marlon Marshall and Charles Ledley, a co-founder, resigned. The complaint further alleges that “Ms. Tamer is one of several women in leadership positions who have been terminated or pushed out by the Defendants.” That list includes Connecticut state director Amy Dowell and Jen Walmer of Colorado, a close adviser on education to Governor Jared Polis and one of DFER’s most effective advocates.

Despite the name, DFER has raised millions over the years from Republican-backing billionaires. The Walton Family Foundation, the non-profit corporation of the notoriously anti-union family that owns WalMart, has sustained DFER. Rupert Murchoch, who regards K-12 education as a $500 billion market gave DFER at least $1 million, apparently in the hopes the operation would help his ed tech company. 

Elorza’s announcement of DFER’s shift leans on the “market-based solutions” language of neo-liberal privateering, but the reality is that neo-liberalism is not where the action is in 2025. Families for Excellent Schools, at one time a privateering powerhouse, collapsed in 2018. In 2011 Stand for Children president Jonah Edelman boasted his organization had nine state affiliates and would grow to twenty states by the end of 2015. In 2025 Stand for Children is hanging on in seven states. 

Since its 2007 founding, DFER has claimedchapters in nineteen different states plus D.C. and a teachers group. By February 2025 only four chapters remained. In January 2023, DFER listed thirteen national staffers. By February 2025, it had only four. As of May 2025, the “States” and “National Staff” links on DFER’s webpage have disappeared. An Elorza biography lives on. 

The action now is with extremist organizations like the Koch and Leonard Leo aligned Parents Defending Education and Heritage Foundation offspring Moms for Liberty. 

Self-described “school choice evangelist” Corey DeAngelis accurately sees that DFER has joined with the far right on education privateering.  DeAngelis was the face of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children  until he was fired after revelations he had starred in gay sex porn films. He is now a “senior fellow” at the American Culture Project, which is tied to the Koch network through the Franklin News Foundation. DeAngelis is cheering DFER’s embrace of the Republican education privateering platform. 

What has DFER really joined here? The end game was spelled out in a 2017 memorandumfrom the secretive Council for National Policy to Trump and DeVos: abandon public education in favor of “free-market private schools, church schools and home schools.” 

That is your “choice.” 

DFER has never been a membership organization—there are few real Democrats involved. To be sure, it has gotten donations from charter favoring Democratic billionaires as well as an array of Republican privateers, plus millions of dollars in untraceable dark money. DFER’s organizational drift and rank political opportunism have now cemented its bond with Trump’s MAGA regime.

Maurice T. Cunningham is a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization(2021).

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Dark Money, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Hoax, Koch Brothers

Josh Cowen: Michigan Doesn’t Want Vouchers, But Trump May Impose Them

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2025 //
2

The DeVos family has poured millions into persuading the people of Michigan to endorse vouchers but they have failed. So far. In a statewide referendum in 2000 sponsored by the DeVoses, voters resoundingly rejected vouchers. Since no voucher referendum has ever passed in any state, the voucher pushers have to find another route that does not include letting voters decide.

Josh Owen thinks they may have found the strategy. He wrote the following editorial for The Detroit Free Press. His article was republished by the Network for Public Education.

New post on Network for Public Education.

Josh Cowen: Another GOP attempt to sneak school vouchers into Michigan — this time, it may work

Noted voucher scholar Josh Cowen wrote an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press warning Michigan that the GOP is trying yet another backdoor approach to getting vouchers into the state. 

Michiganders don’t want school vouchers. But the federal government might force vouchers into Michigan, whether we want them to or not.

In the coming days, Congress will consider whether to include the “Educational Choice for Children Act” (ECCA) among many GOP priorities as part of the budget reconciliation process that will set federal spending for next year and beyond.

That bill, which GOP leaders have introduced in both the Senate and the House, is a school voucher plan mixed with a tax credit that would allow donors to divert all or part of what they owe in federal taxes to other organizations that then distribute those funds for private K-12 tuition and other private educational expenses.

Put another way, this is the federal version of the voucher plans spreading in red states across the country — except this one is nestled inside a tax shelter for mostly wealthy donors. Those donors can give either $5,000 or up to 10% of their adjusted income — whichever is greater — for $10 billion in diverted revenue in the first year alone. Then that spending cap can go up. A similar, Michigan-specific version of this scheme was unsuccessfully backed by Betsy DeVos and allies three years ago.

The new federal bill would top off voucher spending in states that have those systems already, and force vouchers into states that have don’t have or want them — states like Michigan.

Our state constitution bans state funding from going to private K-12 schools. But the new voucher tax credit could circumvent that ban by using federal dollars instead. So much for “giving education back to the states,” as the Trump Administration says it wants to do.

Read the full op-ed here. You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/josh-cowen-another-gop-attempt-to-sneak-school-vouchers-into-michigan-this-time-it-may-work/

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Michigan, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Texas: Public Schools Are Imposing Austerity Measures While State Holds Huge Surplus

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2025 //
14

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is holding hostage the more than five million students in public schools while he demands vouchers for kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools. Abbott has refused to increase funding for the state’s public schools unless the legislature approves vouchers, most of which will subsidize the affluent.

Last year, the legislature refused to approve vouchers. Since then, Abbott engineered the defeat of several anti-voucher Republicans. He’s hoping to win approval in the current session. Vouchers will pass easily in the state senate. We will see what happens in the House, where rural Republicans stood against vouchers in the past, before Abbott’s purge.

Abbott is playing Reverse Robin Hood. He is stealing from the poor to pay for the rich. Billionaires like Jeff Yass, the richest man jnnOennstlvsnia, and Betsy DeVos of Michigan, are funding his intransigence with millions in campaign contributions.

The Texas Monthly reports that school superintendents are increasing class sizes, laying off teachers, eliminating electives, and doing whatever they can to keep their doors open.

The article says:

Two years ago, during the 2023 legislative session, superintendents of Texas schools were optimistic that state lawmakers would boost public-education funding. After all, soaring inflation was straining the already meager finances of districts across the state, and lawmakers had at their disposal a $32.7 billion budget surplus. Spending some of that money on the urgent educational needs of the state’s children might have seemed like an uncontroversial proposal. 

Instead, the unthinkable happened: Legislators left Austin without putting any significant new money into schools or giving teachers a raise. The consequences have been dire.

Texas’s public schools were already among the most poorly resourced in the country: Our per-student funding is about 27 percent less than the national average. The basic allotment—the minimum amount of funding per student that school districts receive from the state—has been stuck at $6,160 since 2019. That would need to be upped by about $1,400 just to keep pace with rising costs. Public education advocates worry that lawmakers will provide only face-saving increases to the basic allotment in 2025 while diverting billions to private schools.

Many school leaders have had to undertake draconian austerity measures. Nearly 80 percent of districts have reported challenges with budget deficits. Given the stakes, 2025 could be a pivotal year for Texas’s public-education system….

Texas Monthly spoke to a group of superintendents to ask about how they were coping. They all spoke about the budget cuts and unfunded mandates (like requiring the hiring of police officers without providing funding). One superintendent, Jennifer Blaine of Spring Branch, said:

JB, Spring Branch: We don’t have anywhere else to cut. We are cut to the bone. I consolidated everything I could, and I cut everything that I could. If we have to cut further, you’re talking about severely impacting academics in the classroom and, quite frankly, safety and security. Five and a half million kids are in Texas public schools, and I don’t understand how our legislators and our governor don’t see this as a crisis. If we don’t educate these kids to the highest levels and prepare them for postsecondary success, we’re going to crumble as a state. I don’t know where the disconnect is. Education is the great equalizer. But nobody is talking about that, and I think it’s a missed opportunity because this is not going to end well. 

The title of the article in the print edition was  “A Legislature That Will Spend at Least as Much Per Pupil as Louisiana.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Corruption, Cruelty, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Trump Signs Executive Order Directing Federal Funds to School Choice, Directly Attacking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2025 //
25

Trump has always expressed contempt for public schools. In his first term, he appointed billionaire religious zealot Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. She has spent many millions over decades to promote charters and vouchers, and she shoveled as much money as she could to charter schools, especially large chains.

His nominee for Secretary of Education, wrestling-entertainment entrepreneur Linda McMahon, will be no less spiteful towards public schools than DeVos. McMahon is chair of the extremist America First Policy Institute, which peddles the lie that public schools “indoctrinate” their students to hate America.

In his 2024 campaign, Trump pushed school choice as one of his major issues.

Yesterday he signed an executive order directing that discretionary federal funds be spent to promote all forms of choice, and he praised states with universal vouchers.

His executive order lambastes the “failure” of the public schools, a refrain we have heard from privatizers for the past 30 years, and he makes false claims about the benefits of private choices.

He says:

When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities.  For this reason, more than a dozen States have enacted universal K-12 scholarship programs, allowing families — rather than the government — to choose the best educational setting for their children.  These States have highlighted the most promising avenue for education reform:  educational choice for families and competition for residentially assigned, government-run public schools.  The growing body of rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance. 

This paragraph is larded with lies. Despite decades of loud complaining about how public schools hurt our economic competitiveness, we have the most vibrant and successful economy in the world. Our public schools, which enroll 85-90% of our nation’s students, contributed to that success.

Next is his patently false claim that universal choice is the best path to educational success. There is no evidence for that claim. In fact, Florida–a leader in universal choice–just experienced a sharp drop in its NAEP scores. Its reading and math scores dropped to their lowest level in more than 20 years.

And most ridiculous is his assertion that “rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance.”

Josh Cowen’s new book The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers thoroughly debunks those claims.

The most rigorous research, which Cowen reviews, shows that poor kids who take vouchers and switch to a private school experience a dramatic decline in their test scores. Many return to public schools.

The most rigorous research shows that most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. The voucher is a subsidy for their religious and private school tuition.

The most rigorous research shows that universal vouchers in every state that has them are used by affluent families. They are welfare for the rich.

The most rigorous research shows that public schools lose funding when new and existing state funding goes to nonpublic schools.

The most rigorous research shows that universal choice busts the budgets of states that fund all students, including private school students.

Trump has sharpened his knife to destroy public education.

Fight back!

Join the Network for Public Education and link up with people in your community, your state, and the nation who believe that public dollars should be spent on public schools.

Sign up for the annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, April 5-6 and meet your allies.

Organize, strategize, resist!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Two of Baton Rouge’s Largest Charters Closing as IDEA Chain Fails and Quits

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
2

IDEA is a major charter chain in Texas that has gone through some ugly financial scandals about spending on luxury items (season box seats at a basketball arena, a foiled plan to lease a private jet, other executive perks). It expanded to Louisiana, thanks to a multi-million grant from the federal Charter Schools Program.

Things did not go well in Baton Rouge, as we learn from this report by Charles Lussier in The Advocate, a New Orleans newspaper.

IDEA Bridge and IDEA Innovation, two of the
largest charter schools in Baton Rouge, are
closing their doors in May, the last schools in
the state operated by Texas-based IDEA
Public Schools.

It’s the end of a 7-year foray into Louisiana by
the IDEA organization, which came in with
great fanfare as a “proven operator” with
schools in Texas that were ranked among the
best in the nation and graduates who
routinely continued onto college.

IDEA Bridge educates about 1,100 students
and IDEA innovation has about 750 students.
They both opened in 2018.

IDEA schools, however, slipped badly
academically during the COVID pandemic and
did not recover enough to lose their negative
ratings. Both IDEA Bridge and IDEA
Innovation have received F letter grades or
low Ds since the state began rating its public
schools again in 2022.

Both currently have Fs.

Parents received a letter Tuesday from the
charter school management organization that
the organization had made the “difficult
decision” to close the two schools when the
current school year ends. They follow the
closure of IDEA’s two other Louisiana schools,
IDEA Dunn in New Orleans in 2022 and IDEA
University in Baton Rouge in May.

“While we are proud of the determination and
grit of our students, the trust and patience of
our families, and the dedication and
commitment of our teachers and staff, we
have not delivered the academic results our
students deserve, and believe that now is the
time to bring in new options and
opportunities for our scholars and their
families,” according to the letter to parents.

School leaders say they are working with the
East Baton Rouge Parish school system and
the influential nonprofit, New Schools for
Baton Rouge, to identify new school
operators this fall for both the Bridge and
Innovation campuses.

In a statement Wednesday, Taylor Gast, a
spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge
Parish school system, said district staff are in
the process of developing alternatives for the
affected families and plans to have options for
the parish School Board to consider next
week.

“Our foremost objective continues to be
guaranteeing that every student in East Baton
Rouge Parish has access to outstanding,
tuition-free educational opportunities,” Gast
said. “We are prepared to assist IDEA families
and address their needs to the greatest
extent possible.”

The decision to close the two schools was
made Monday night at a special meeting of
the board of directors for IDEA Public Schools
Louisiana. Alicia Myers, an IDEA
spokeswoman, said that school performance
scores released in November — both IDEA
schools earned Fs — prompted “deeper
discussions about the future of IDEA
Louisiana,” leading to Monday’s vote.
“We believe this is the best decision for our
students and families,” Myers said.

IDEA Bridge and Innovation were the original
IDEA schools in Louisiana. Both opened in
newly constructed facilities at 1500 N. Airway
Drive and 7800 Innovation Drive, respectively.
Bridge served students in north Baton Rouge
while Innovation served students in south
Baton Rouge.

Enrollment for IDEA schools in Louisiana
peaked in fall 2021 at more than 3,000
students. It has dropped over the past three
years by about 1,100 students, a 37% decline.
Both IDEA Bridge and IDEA Innovation earned
three-year renewals of their charters in early
2023, extending their operations through
summer 2026. School system leaders,
however, warned that getting renewed again
would be difficult unless test scores
substantially improved.

Tuesday’s announcement comes seven
months after IDEA’s other Baton Rouge
school, IDEA University Prep, closed its
doors.

It was the newest school in the IDEA network
in Louisiana. When it opened in 2021, it took
over operations of a low-performing charter
school called University Prep, or UP
Elementary, and expanded into middle school
grades. It grew to more than 600 students,
but then began losing enrollment. Its facility
on Plank Road near the Metro Airport was
purchased in June by another charter school.
Helix Aviation Academy.

IDEA is the largest charter chain in Texas. It was once hailed as an outstanding charter chain. But a year ago, the state put it in conservatorship due to financial problems. IDEA’s leaders have a taste for luxury.

Texas’ largest charter school network has been placed under conservatorship by the Texas Education Agency after a years-long investigation into improper spending within the system of 143 schools.

The arrangement, announced Wednesday, is part of a settlement agreement between IDEA Public Schools and the TEA. IDEA had been under investigation since 2021 following numerous allegations of financial and operational misconduct.

It was revealed that IDEA officials used public dollars to purchase luxury driver services as well as $15 million to lease a private jet, just two weeks after promising TEA it would be “strictly enforcing” new fiscal responsibility policies put in place in response to ongoing investigations, as reported by San Antonio Express-News.

The revelations led the district to conduct an internal investigation, resulting in the firing of JoAnn Gama, former superintendent and co-founder of IDEA. Gama later filed a lawsuit against IDEA claiming wrongful termination. IDEA came to a $475,000 settlement with Gama in January. This followed co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson’s departure in 2020; he was given a $900,000 severance package.

The charter school district serves about 80,000 students in K-12. The schools are independently run but publicly funded with state dollars, having received about $821 million in state funding in 2023-2024 school year.

Among its many luxury expenses, IDEA kept a private pilot on its payroll.

IDEA originally planned to buy a Beechcraft King Air plane, according to the former senior executive. After discussing the plan, however, the board decided to lease a Cessna Citation jet instead.

The board approved an eight-year lease agreement for the Cessna jet in December 2019.

IDEA agreed to pay $57,000 per month for the jet, which didn’t include the cost of fuel or paying the pilot. The board also voted to buy a hangar at the Weslaco airport for about $528,000.

During the board meeting, an executive assured the board that all costs would be covered by private funds.

News that a charter school planned to buy a jet, however, caused an uproar. IDEA abandoned the plan.

The U.S. Department of Education believed that IDEA would be a huge success. In 2016, when John King was Secretary of Education, the Department gave $12 million to IDEA to expand into Louisiana. IDEA opened four charter schools. All four have closed.

IDEA was Betsy DeVos’s favorite charter chain. She awarded it $260 million to expand while she was Secretary.

O, how the mighty are fallen!

.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Louisiana, Privatization

NPE Announces Winners of “Coal in the Stocking Award” for 2024!!

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2024 //
5

The Network for Public Education announces the winners of the non-prestigious “Coal in the Stocking” Award for 2024.

This is an award given to those who have done the most damage to our public schools.

They should feel ashamed and humiliated for gaining this recognition of their odious and undemocratic behavior.

They hurt children and communities. They hurt the future of our great nation.

Open the link to see the names of the winners.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Censorship, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Separation of church and state, Vouchers, Wall of Shame

Peter Greene: Will Trump Achieve His Education Goals?

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2024 //
10

Peter Greene writes about the contradiction at the heart of Trump’s education goals. On the one hand, Trump says he will eliminate the Department of Education and turn federal funding over to the states, to use as they wish. At the same time, he says that he will punish schools if they persist in teaching liberal ideas that Trump dislikes, like diversity, equity and inclusion, or if they are insufficiently patriotic.

How will he punish schools if the federal funding has been relinquished to the states?

Greene writes:

It has been on the conservative To Do list for decades, and the incoming administration keeps insisting that this time it’s really going to happen. But will it? Over the weekend, Trump’s Ten Principles for Education video from Agenda 47 was circulating on line as a new “announcement” or “confirmation” of his education policy, despite the fact that the video was posted in September of 2023.

The list of goals may or may not be current, but it underlines a basic contradiction at the heart of Trump’s education plans. The various goals can be boiled down to two overall objectives:

1) To end all federal involvement and oversight of local schools.

2) To exert tight federal control over local schools

Trump has promised that schools will not teach “political indoctrination,” that they will teach students to “love their country,” that there will be school prayer, that students will “have access to” project-based learning, and that schools will expel students who harm teachers or other students. 

He has also proposed stripping money from colleges and universities that indoctrinate students and using the money to set up a free of charge “world class education” system.

Above all, he has promised that he “will be closing up” the Department of Education. Of course, he said that in 2016 with control of both houses of Congress and it did not happen.

Are there obstacles? The Department of Education distributes over $18 billion to help support schools that educate high-poverty populations, providing benefits like extra staff to supplement reading instruction. The Project 2025 plan is to turn this into a block grant to be given to the states to use as they wish, then zeroed out. Every state in the country would feel that pinch; states that decide to use the money for some other purpose entirely, such as funding school vouchers, will feel the pinch much sooner. The department also handles over $15 billion in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funding, which helps cover the costs of special education; Project 2025 also calls for turning it into an unregulated block grant to states with no strings attached, meaning that parents would have to lobby their state government for special ed funding.

Cuts and repurposing of these funds will be felt immediately in classrooms across the country, particularly those that serve poor students and students with special needs. That kind of readily felt, easily understood impact is likely to fuel pushback in Congress, and it’s Congress that has the actual power to eliminate the department.

Beyond the resistance to changing major funding for states and the challenge of trying to move the trillion-plus-dollar funding system for higher education, the Trump administration would also face the question of how to exert control over school districts without a federal lever to push.

Previous administrations have used Title I funding as leverage to coax compliance from school districts. In 2013, Obama’s education secretary Arne Duncan threatened to withhold Title I funds if a California failed to adopt an “acceptable” standardized testing program. In 2020, Trump himself threatened to cut off funding to schools that did not re-open their buildings. And on the campaign trail this year, Trump vowed that he would defund schools that require vaccines. That will be hard to do if the federal government has given all control of funds to the states.

The Department of Education has limited power, but the temptation to use it seems hard to resist. Nobody wanted the department gone more than Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, who was notably reluctant to use any power of her office. But by 2018, frustrated with Congressional inaction on the Higher Education Act, DeVos announced a plan to impose regulations on her own. In 2020, she imitated Duncan by requiring states to compete for relief money by implementing some of her preferred policies.

Too many folks on the Trump team have ideas about policies they want to enforce on American schools, and without a Department of Education that has control of a major funding stream, they’d have little hope of achieving their goals. Perhaps those who dream of dismantling the department will prevail, but they will still have to get past Congress. No matter how things fall out, some of Team Trump’s goals for education will not be realized.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers
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