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Peter Greene: The End Game of the Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2017 //
46

Jennifer Berkshire pointed Peter Greene to a paper published by the libertarian Heartland Institute in 2002, nearly 18 years ago. It lays out the goals of the privatization movement very clearly. The main goal was nothing less than the elimination of public schools in America, replaced by a free-market system. The paper was written by Joseph Bast, the president of the Heartland Institute.

Whenever you hear someone refer to public schools as “government schools,” you can be sure you are in the presence of a free-market zealot.

“Bast expresses a childlike faith in the magic of the marketplace. “Privatization is so effective it typically costs a private firm half as much as the government to produce a product or service of similar (often superior) quality.” It’s a cute notion, for which he offers zero evidence. What was clear even in 2002, but what Bast never acknowledges, is that privatization allows private operators to hoover up a big pile of tax dollars that would otherwise have gone to the public sector. But Bast belonged to the Cult of Competition, believing that competing schools would reward schools that please parents, stimulate parent involvement, be more efficient, and penalize failure. None of these things are related to the goal of providing a high quality education for every single child in America, but then, that’s not his goal.

“Bast had some clever (if not reality-based) ideas about how vouchers would satisfy many reformy constituencies. For instance, by setting voucher amounts below current per-students spending levels, vouchers would lessen the taxpayer cost. Because, I guess, the private schools would accept the low voucher amount. Because when I tell the dealer that I can’t afford a Porsche, he just says, “Well, then, I’ll just lower the price to what you would like to pay.” Because that’s how free market competition works…

“His big vision?

Pilot voucher programs for the urban poor will lead the way to statewide universal voucher plans. Soon, most government schools will be converted into private schools or simply close their doors. Eventually, middle- and upper-income families will not longer expect or need tax-financed assistance to pay for the education of their children, leading to further steps toward complete privatization. Vouchers could remain to help the truly needy.

“Use the poor to get vouchers started. Shut down public education entirely. Let the wealthy go back to their exclusive top-tier schools, and set up some cheap ones for everyone else. Boom. No public education, and no forcing taxpayers to pay a bunch of money to educate Those People’s children…

“If you take nothing else from this piece, remember this– for many of the most ardent voucher supporters, school vouchers are not a destination, but just a stop-gap, something that will have to do until they can finally move on their real goal– the complete dismantling of public education in this country, replaced with a loose system of unaccountable, unregulated private schools. That fully privatized system, not a voucher system, is the goal. Keep your eye on the ball.”

Heartland Institute is supported by the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, and all the usual rightwing foundations.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Privatization

The U.S. Has the Highest Rate of Child Poverty in the Developed World

By dianeravitch
December 25, 2017 //
41

On Christmas Day, it is traditional to remember those who are less fortunate and to resolve to make the world better for them, not just to offer charity.

It is important to recognize the growing inequality in America and the return of extreme poverty and to understand why this is happening.

This article by Premilla Nadasen of Barnard College helps us understand what has happened to our great country.

The New Deal enacted programs that reduced poverty and enabled many to rise into the middle class.

But something changed. Many things changed. Over several decades, the social safety net built to strengthen our nation and spread hope and opportunity has been shredded by the rich and powerful.

“Since the 1970s, the safety net has been diminished considerably. Labor regulations protecting workers have been rolled back, and funding for education and public programs has declined. The poor have been the hardest hit. With welfare reform in 1996, poor single parents with children now have a lifetime limit of five years of assistance and mandatory work requirements. Some states require fingerprinting or drug testing of applicants, which effectively criminalizes them without cause. The obstacles to getting on welfare are formidable, the benefits meager. The number of families on welfare declined from 4.6 million in 1996 to 1.1 million this year. The decline of the welfare rolls has not meant a decline in poverty, however.

“Instead, the shredding of the safety net led to a rise in poverty. Forty million Americans live in poverty, nearly half in deep poverty — which U.N. investigators defined as people reporting income less than one-half of the poverty threshold. The United States has the highest child poverty rates — 25 percent — in the developed world. Then there are the extremely poor who live on less than $2 per day per person and don’t have access to basic human services such as sanitation, shelter, education and health care. These are people who cannot find work, who have used up their five-year lifetime limit on assistance, who do not qualify for any other programs or who may live in remote areas. They are disconnected from both the safety net and the job market.

“In addition to the reduction of public assistance and social services, the rise in extreme poverty can also be attributed to growing inequality. To quote the U.N. report: “The American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion, as the U.S. … now has the lowest rate of social mobility of any of the rich countries.” In 1981, the top 1 percent of adults earned on average 27 times more than the bottom 50 percent of adults. Today the top 1 percent earn 81 times more than the bottom 50 percent.

“Declining wages at the lower end of the economic ladder make it harder for people to save for times of crisis or to get back on their feet. A full-time, year-round minimum wage worker, often employed in a dead-end job, falls below the poverty threshold for a family of three and often has to rely on food stamps.”

Do we want America to be the Land of Illusion, no longer the Land of Opportunity? Are we prepared to do something about it?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Poverty

When John Oliver Made a Gift of $16 Million to 9,000 People By Forgiving Their Medical Debts

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2017 //
7

John Oliver broadcast this show in mid-2016. It remains one of the most amazing, most generous gestures I have ever seen.

Oliver, as you may know, mixes up great information and in-depth reporting with funny graphics and unexpected jokes. He keeps viewers entertained as he educates them.

In this segment, he explains debt collection agencies, how they buy debt of all kinds for pennies on the dollar, try to collect, and if they don’t succeed, sell it to another debt collector. The hapless consumer can expect to be harassed with increasingly unscrupulous and aggressive tactics.

Oliver’s team goes to debt collection industry meetings, where the industry leaders talk about consumers as dumb clucks. He films an Arkansas legislator pushing a bill to reduce consumer rights and misrepresents its purpose. It passes easily.

Finally, he does something utterly remarkable.

He creates and incorporates a new debt collection agency Of his own. His company buys $16 million of unpaid medical bills for only $15,000. The bills are owed by 9,000 people. And, then, as chairman of the board, he forgives all the debt.

This is one of the most brilliant and generous stunts ever. Nine thousand families were cleared of medical debt by John Oliver’s gesture.

How about it, Bill Gates? Eli Broad? The Walton family? Sheldon Adelson? John Arnold? Doris Fischer? Reed Hastings? Arthur Rock? Bruce Rauner? Penny Pritzker? The DeVos family? Laurene Powell Jobs?

One generous act of compassion and kindness. If John Oliver can do it, why not you?

Categories Billionaires

Tom Ultican: The Billionaires’ Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2017 //
26

Tom Ultican lays out in gruesome detail the billionaires’ plan to destroy public education.

The documentation is solid. The billionaires are jointly funding every anti-public school organization they can find, and they create them when they don’t exist.

Gruesome, yes. But it is a fact that their spending has not accomplished much, other than to ruin the lives of children, teachers, families, and communities. Nowhere has it produced better education. They sow chaos and disruption, then move on to the next big idea.

He begins like this:

“Three researchers from Indiana coined the terminology Destroy Public Education (DPE). They refuse to call it reform which is a positive sounding term that obfuscates the damage being done. America’s public education system is an unmitigated success story, yet, DPE forces say we need to change its governance and monetize it.

“We are discussing the education system that put a man on the moon, developed the greatest economy the world has ever seen and wiped out small pox. It is the system that embraces all comers and resists all forms of discrimination. In the 1980’s, it was laying the foundation for the digital revolution when it came under spurious attack.

“Not only are great resources being squandered on DPE efforts but the teaching profession is being diminished. Organizations like Relay Graduate School and the New Teachers Project are put forward as having more expertise in teacher education than our great public universities. That would be amusing if wealthy elites were not paying to have these posers taken seriously.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud

Call Your Senator to Demand He or She Vote No on the Tax Scam!

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2017 //
11

Have you called Senators Collins, Rubio, McCain, Flake, Murkowski, Sasse, Corker, Lee, Paul, and Johnson — plus any others you can think of — about the tax scam? Just dial 202-224-3121. And then, if one or both your senators is Republican, go a step further. Google over to their website and find the phone number for their local office — and call that one, too. Not sure what to say? Heck: just read them the highlights of this column by economic blogger Andrew Tobias at andrewtobias.com:

“It would be fine to have a well-thought-through corporate tax reform that were revenue-neutral . . . and that did not encourage companies to move jobs overseas as the current Republican plan, being rushed into law, likely will.

“And it would be economically dumb but at least morally defensible to give the working poor and middle class a tax cut. They are struggling to get by! They’ve been cut out of the tremendous gains in wealth the country has made these past 30-odd years. It’s almost all gone to the top few percent, especially to the tippy top. (As you know, the net worth of just three individuals now exceeds the combined net worth of the entire bottom half of the country.)

“But what possible reason can there be to lower the top individual tax bracket from 39.6% to 37%? How would that help the working poor or middle class? How would it help fund revitalization of our crumbling infrastructure? How would it help reduce the deficit that Republicans care so deeply about when they’re not in power — but then explode when they are?

“What possible reason can there be to cut the estate tax (which they like to call the “death” tax but is effectively an inheritance tax on lucky multi-millionheirs and billionheirs)? How would that help the working poor or middle class or fund revitalization of our crumbling infrastructure or reduce the deficit?

“What possible reason can there be to cut the top tax rate on highly-earning professionals and business folk from 39.6% to 30% or so, as they “pass through” their income from LLC’s and S-corps? It’s no fun being taxed 39.6% on that portion of your income above $450,000 when you’re making $600,000 or $1 million or $3 million a year — but do we really need to go deeper into debt to cut those taxes? Shouldn’t we revitalize our infrastructure instead?

“Why has the “carried interest” loophole for hedge-funders survived yet again? It’s just an illogical giveaway to people, some of them immensely wealthy, who simply don’t need it.

“Why throw out “the individual mandate,” which is projected to raise the cost of health insurance for millions of Americans — and cause 13 million to lose coverage altogether? Republicans consider it a great way to save money, because when people lose their Affordable Care Act insurance, the government won’t have to provide the subsidies that make it affordable.

“With inequality threatening our economy and our society like never before (well, maybe like 1929), why would we do this to ourselves? Could it be because the Koch brothers and the Mercers and the Devos family and Wilbur Ross and Carl Icahn and the Trump family really want to?

“Call every Republican senator you can think of, especially these, and ask their staff these questions. Or if you call in the middle of the night, leave those questions on their voice mail. The Senate switchboard is 202-224-3121. Collins, Murkowski, Flake, Sasse, Corker, Rubio, Paul, Johnson, McCain . . . And then, if one or both your senators is Republican, go a step further. Google over to their website and find the phone number for their local office — and call that one, too.

“Seriously: we’re not going to get another shot at this.”

Categories Billionaires, Economy

John Thompson: The Sorry Record of the “Portfolio Model” of Closing Public Schools and Replacing Them with Charters

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2017 //
2

John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma. He writes often about education policy. In this post, he recounts the recurring failure of “the portfolio model,” a reformer favorite.


Matt Barnum’s three-part series on the national corporate reform campaign to expand the “portfolio” corporate school reform model provides a balanced appraisal of the movement which is very different than the alt-facts presented by reformers seeking privatization and union-busting.

Barnum’s first post starts with Indiana’s Mind Trust which “has called for dramatic changes to schools; recruited outside advocacy, teacher training, and charter groups; and spent millions to help launch new charter and district schools.” He then warns, “A Mind Trust–style organization may be coming to a city near you.” Barnum further describes “their idealized vision,” known as the “portfolio model,” with an enrollment system which helps families choose schools, and where the local district’s role shrinks to holding schools accountable, often (mostly?) by closing ones that supposedly don’t measure up.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/12/06/a-portfolio-of-schools-how-a-nationwide-effort-to-disrupt-urban-school-districts-is-gaining-traction/

The Mind Trust and other portfolio advocates have assembled teams of “quarterbacks” to contribute money to initiate the portfolio approach and recruit the same privatization team players – Teach for America, Relay Graduate School of Education, TNTP, and Stand For Children.

Barnum writes that it is unclear how much money has been invested in promoting portfolios. He notes that 1/3rd of the $77 million raised by the Mind Trust since 2006 came from national groups, but it is clear that “prominent philanthropies, including some that have also spent millions in recent years funding charter schools nationwide, are investing heavily.” In particular, he cites the Walton, Arnold, and Broad foundations. He points out the role of David Osborne’s book tour, funded by Walton, Arnold, and Broad, where Osborne “recently compared teachers unions’ opposition to charter school expansion in Massachusetts to George Wallace’s promotion of mandated school segregation.”

The thing that jumps out to me with Barnum’s first two posts is that the record of these political campaigns is mixed. And organizing an attack on unions and school boards is much, much easier than actually improving schools. This ambiguity is an even more important theme of his third piece, as well as the sources he footnotes. National reformers may believe that they can come into localities that they know nothing about and push through their privatization schemes. They may have tons of money to gamble on risky social engineering experiments, but they have little or no evidence that the tumult that they instigate would benefit students, and remain oblivious to the damage down by failed experiments.
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/12/08/advocates-of-the-portfolio-model-for-improving-schools-say-it-works-are-they-right/

Barnum cites conservative reformers and research from a range of scholars to puncture the public relations spin of big-bucks portfolio advocates. Even the cornerstone of the experiment, a common enrollment system, has prompted pushback by conservatives who note the way that it would promote more teach-to-the-test malpractice and by patrons who were confused by the systems. Even one of the most highly praised centralized enrollment system, in Denver, did not increase access of special education students to charters or have a statistically significant effect on the number of low-income students in charters.

Advice to the Arnold Foundation

Denver Study Shows Simplifying Enrollment Drove More Disadvantaged Students to Sign Up for Charter Schools

Something similar applies to school closures which is the silver bullet being promised by portfolio advocates. Those who trust the increase in test scores in New Orleans attribute much of the gains to closing schools that were low-performing. As Barnum acknowledges, that only works when there are better schools available, and I would say that it would take more than a portfolio of silver bullets to create them in our most challenging districts. Barnum also links to his compilation of research which showed gains for students in closed schools in only 1/4th of the studies. He showed no examples of closures where displaced students benefitted but the outcomes in receiving schools didn’t decline.

Research Shows Students Can Benefit When a School Closes — but Only If There Are Better Ones to Attend

And the question of costs versus benefits brings us to New Orleans, which is typically cited as the proof of the concept of portfolios. It is the only serious gripe that I have with Barnum’s wording. While he acknowledged that test score growth is a flawed metric, Barnum doesn’t mention why it is so much more problematic in evaluating NOLA and other experiments that focus unflinchingly on bubble-in accountability. Test score growth might or might not mean more learning, and as I hope any teacher would understand, it often means the learning of destructive habits. Personally, I can’t see any scenario where test score growth in a place that stressed such growth as much as the NOLA portfolio can stand by itself as evidence of meaningful learning that beneficial to students.

Regardless, Barnum cites a “national analysis [which] also found that New Orleans students made large academic gains between 2009 and 2015.” I wish he’d been more precise in noting that NOLA only had three years when the growth rate exceeded that of the old failing system. However, Barnum notes that the gains occurred when New Orleans was most generously funded, and was free to suspend or push out large numbers of students. He mentions the lack of clear evidence that gains can be sustained without those tactics, and that “more recent test scores in the city have suggested that schools are backsliding somewhat.” Corporate reformer Peter Cook called the decline “The Great NOLA Train Wreck.”
https://peterccook.com/2017/11/08/great-nola-train-wreck/

Barnum also notes “another concern: expansion of charters in New Orleans coincided with a decline in the number of schools offering prekindergarten.” And regarding NOLA, Newark, and elsewhere, he addresses the conflicts between outside reformers and communities.

Portfolio advocates should also explain the disappointing results of Memphis and Newark. Barnum writes, “A Vanderbilt analysis found that a state takeover effort known as the Achievement School District failed to raise test scores, even as it was dubbed a “national exemplar” in implementing the portfolio model.” I wish he’d also reported that Memphis became #1 as New Orleans became #3 in “disconnected youth,” or students out of school without a job.
http://www.speno2014.com/oydataguide/

Barnum notes a recent, revisionist (and I would say flawed) study which indicates the $200 million Zuckerberg reform investment in Newark was a “mixed success.” In a longer analysis he writes:

Journalist Dale Russakoff wrote a largely critical account of changes that focused on how a large share of the Zuckerberg money went to high-paid consultants. Since, media reports have largely suggested that the approach failed and that the money was wasted.

Given the thorough research by Russakoff, and the work of other excellent journalists, it’s hard for me to take seriously the special pleading by reformers who deny that Newark was a failure. It’s especially hard to fathom how social scientists would get away with spinning the conclusion that Newark portfolio might have worked because it might lead to future gains, but without offering evidence that the happy ending might occur, and “eventually alter system-wide productivity for future cohorts.”

Click to access newark_ed_reform_nber_w23922_suggested_changes.pdf

Finally, Barnum writes, “There is little or no rigorous research comparing gains in Denver, Indianapolis, and Washington D.C. to similar districts that have gone in a different direction.”

Denver was identified as having the largest achievement gap in the nation, indicating that like D.C. the gains may be due to economic growth and/or gentrification. And a recent scandal shows that D.C. still hasn’t shown the ability to curtail the cheating that portfolios would invariably encourage. And as far as Indianapolis, recent research can help estimate the gains that occurred when the Mind Trust and other corporate reformers invested in the city. Median income in Indianapolis is $10,000 or 1/3rd greater than that of the resource-starved Oklahoma City schools and 3rd grade scores are much higher. During the next five years, however, student performance grows at the same rate in both cities, 4.4 years.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2015/10/07/report-denver-ranks-last-among-50-cities-on-income-based-achievement-gaps/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2016/09/21/dps-students-of-color-not-making-as-much-progress-on-state-tests-as-white-peers/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2017/10/04/indianapolis-public-schools-sees-little-a-f-change-but-innovation-schools-got-top-grades/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/ballou-high-principal-reassigned-following-report-questioning-school-standards/2017/12/04/54bbcdfe-d947-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html?utm_term=.ce1c2339b34d

Now that the claims of gains for portfolios have been largely debunked in Newark, D.C., Tennessee, and Indianapolis, and the extreme exaggerations regarding Denver and New Orleans cut down to size, what are the prospects for the new portfolio public relations campaign? We educators have seen this dog and pony show repeatedly. We need to keep reminding political leaders of the Billionaires Boys Club’s sorry record in education policy.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Jake Jacobs: Leaked Campaign Policy Book Shows that Wealthy Donors Pushed Clinton to Support Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2017 //
145

Jake Jacobs, writing in Alternet, reports on a Clinton campaign briefing book on education that shows the powerful influence of wealthy charter advocates.

A rare peek into the evolution of Hillary Clinton’s education platform is afforded through an overlooked Wikileaks-published document. Entitled “Policy Book— FINAL,” the PDF file was attached to a 2014 email sent to John Podesta, Clinton’s future campaign chair. The education portion of the document runs 66 pages, mostly concentrated on K-12 policy, and captures specific input from billionaire donors looking to overhaul and privatize public education.

Today, Donald Trump seeks a rapid expansion of charter schools and private school vouchers, while his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, touts “school choice” and market competition for public school at every stop. But in private, Hillary Clinton’s donors, dubbed “experts,” also sought rapid charter expansion and market-based options to replace public schools.

One of the most connected “thought leaders” discussed is Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and the head of the Emerson Collective, a prominent education reform advocacy group. Powell Jobs who has been close with the Clintons since the late ’90s, also sat with Betsy DeVos on the board of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. She set up billionaire “roundtables” with Clinton’s campaign advisors through 2015 while donating millions to Priorities USA, Clinton’s main PAC.

Powell Jobs and Bruce Reed of the Broad Foundation also set their sights on remaking the teaching profession and teacher education. The briefing book, written in 2014, shows Reed boasting about the great accomplishments of the New Orleans charter district, “accomplishments” that have since been exposed as a fraud.

Jacobs writes:

Tying campaign donations to a singular issue like expanding charter schools might in days past been seen as a prohibited quid-pro-quo. But in this cycle, Podesta, O’Leary and Tanden all busily raised campaign money from the same billionaire education reformers with whom they were also talking policy specifics.

But they did more than talk. On June 20, 2015, O’Leary sent Podesta an email revealing the campaign adopted two of Powell Jobs’ suggestions, including “infusing best ideas from charter schools into our traditional public schools.” When Clinton announced this policy in a speech to teachers, however, it was the one line that drew boos.

Clinton needed big money to run. But she also solicited and got the support of the two big teachers’ unions, the NEA and the AFT. Torn between her super-wealthy donors and the leaders of the unions, Clinton eventually fell silent on education issues, to avoid alienating either side.

A personal footnote: Carol Burris and I met twice with Hillary’s top education policy advisor, Ann O’Leary. We tried to persuade her that Hillary should not support charter schools, but we sensed it was futile. She did eventually assure us that Hillary would take a strong stand against for-profit charters, a small victory.

It is no surprise that the faux Democrats in DFER, the Broad Foundation, and Powell Jobs were pushing her to endorse privatization. Perhaps it was a small victory that Clinton realized this was a non-starter with the millions of teachers whose support she needed.

I am certainly not surprised that the big donors wanted to buy her support for privatization. I am not surprised that she wanted their money. We could have fought that out after the election. Even if she followed in Obama’s footsteps on education, she would not have sold out civil rights, the environment, our national parks, our foreign policy, the Supreme Court, and every other function of the federal government.

Having read the briefing book, as much as I disagree with the reformers, I would still pick Clinton over Trump, with enthusiasm. And fight the battles later, without fearing to lose the essential values of our society and our democracy, as well as world peace, which now hang in the balance.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Hillary Clinton

Chester-Upland, Pennsylvania: Exhibit A for Pennsylvania’s Broken Charter Law

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2017 //
7

This article was published a year ago. It remains timely. It tells the story of the charter schools (one in particular) that bankrupted one of Pennsylvania’s poorest school districts.

While the public schools have been bankrupted and taken over by a receiver, the owner of the biggest charter became very rich selling goods and services to his charter corporation. He is active in Republican politics. He was on Governor Tom Corbett’s transition team for education. Governor Wolf has approached him with care. His charter has fattened on special education payments, which were $40,000 per student, even for those with the mildest speech disabilities, leaving the most disabled students to the bankrupt public schools.

Governor Wolf was able to negotiate a lowering of the special education payment to $27,000.

To put some noteworthy flaws of Pennsylvania’s charter law in stark relief, one need look no further than the Chester-Upland School District, a desperately poor enclave in generally well-off Delaware County.

As the state’s most distressed district, it is so unable to meet its students’ needs that it is under the control of a receiver.

Nearly half of the students in Chester Upland attend charter schools, and 46 percent of its budget goes to charter payments. Most charter students there are enrolled in the Chester Community Charter School (CCCS). The K-8 school has 2,900 students, nearly as many as the 3,300 K-12 students in the district. The state’s largest brick-and-mortar charter by far, CCCS was founded and is operated for profit by a company owned by businessman Vahan Gureghian, a major supporter of former Gov. Tom Corbett and other Republican candidates and causes.

CCCS and its management company, Charter School Management Inc., have built a reputation for taking maximum advantage of the financial opportunities built into the charter school law, while strenuously resisting any public scrutiny about where that money goes.

Until court-sanctioned action that lowered payments this year, the state’s special-education funding formula required Chester-Upland to send its charters more than $40,000 for every special education student. How much of that actually went to student services is not known, in part because the charter law does not require CCCS or any other charter to make that information public.

What is known, however, is that CCCS spends a healthy chunk of its budget on fees paid to Gureghian’s management company. Gureghian won’t open his books, but about 10 years ago, the school spent an estimated 40 percent of its revenue on management, as opposed to the state average for charters of about 16 percent.

What is also known is that the Chester Upland district’s payments to CCCS for special education have a profound effect on the district’s budget. “Unfair and excessive special education payments are bankrupting the District,” wrote Chester Upland officials in their recent recovery plan. Last summer, Gov. Wolf asked a judge to intervene and bring special education payments more in line with special education expenses.

A hallmark of the CCCS approach is that the school identifies large numbers of students as needing special education, usually in relatively low-cost categories.

For instance, in the 2014-15 school year, more than 27 percent of the special education students were classified as having a “speech and language impairment,” the least expensive classification of disability, which generally requires speech therapy once or twice a week. That is close to twice the state rate of 15.4 percent and more than 11 times the Chester Upland district rate of 2.4 percent for that category.

When the state tried to adjust the formula for special education reimbursements to reflect the level of student needs, charter lobbyists descended to fight it. And nothing changed.

By the way, the owner of the Chester Community Charter School has his mansion in Palm Beach for sale. He dropped the price last May by $5 million. You can pick it up for a mere $64.9 million. Quite the steal, never lived in.

For some reason, the Chester Community Charter School has a high rate of “safety incidents” and suspensions, more than any other school in Delaware County.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Pennsylvania, Special Education

Laura Chapman: Koch Brothers Want Researchers for Hispanic Propaganda Campaign

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2017 //
8

Laura Chapman has done her usual fastidious research and discovered that the Koch Brothers are offering pocket change to anyone who will offer help for their propaganda campaign to persuade Hispanic parents that privatization of school funding is good for them.

She writes:

“The Libre Institute “research” program will pay $10,000 to academics and fellows who will offer the Institute papers that offer an “analysis and proposed policy initiatives rooted in values such as economic freedom and well-being, fiscal discipline, limited government, market entrepreneurship, and personal accountability.”

“To the extent possible, each analysis should examine federal and state-level policies related to each topic and the respective impact to Hispanics in those states. Particular states to be highlighted are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Virginia. “

“The academics who are enlisted to do research on education for the Libre Institute are asked to “review School Choice regulations and their impact on closing the achievement gap between Hispanics and other demographics.”

“Other topics for the research initiative are:

“Health Care – explore the current Medicaid system and its ability to provide adequate health care services to Hispanics in the U.S.; alternatively, or in coordination with, an analysis of the regulations and taxes under the

“Affordable Care Act and its impact on U.S. Hispanics’ ability to access care, choice and overall economic impact;

“Regulation – examine impact of regulations on Hispanic small business owners and entrepreneurs’ ability to enter markets and succeed;

“Poverty – evaluate the success of current government policies and their ability to move Hispanics out of poverty;

“Immigration – study the economic goals behind Hispanic immigration to the U.S. and determine whether immigrant populations are achieving those goals and whether current policies are an impediment to success;

“Labor / Employment – investigate the current employment situation of Hispanics in the U.S., explore any changes in employment throughout the economic recovery as compared to other demographics, and analyze polices which may further exaggerate any differences.”

“Now here are a few of the strings attached to becoming a shill for the Libre Institute.

“Each paper will be peer reviewed by at least 2 scholars in the community prior to publication. ” (“In the community” scholars are not identified but it is obvious they must meet ideological criteria).

“Once released, each paper will be the subject of a roll-out campaign highlighting the topic of the analysis, and may include additional efforts including op-ed publications, local-level town halls and legislative briefings. It is envisioned that the author of the piece will participate in a select few of these efforts. ”

“Authors will be expected to provide a non-exclusive, but otherwise unlimited license to The LIBRE Institute so that it can publicize and otherwise use the material as part of its public education activities. Authors will be encouraged to submit their pieces for publication in other journals after the paper has been published and released by The LIBRE Institute.”

Research Initiative: The LIBRE Institute Perspective Series

“The Libre Institute is not really interested in research. It wants propaganda points annotated with some references.”

Categories Arizona, Billionaires, Koch Brothers

Arizona: Save Our Schools Prepares to Battle Koch Brothers, DeVos Group, CATO, et al

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2017 //
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The far-right haters of public schools are descending on Arizona to push vouchers, and parents are rolling up their sleeves to stop them.

Mary Bottari of the Center for Media and Democracy describes the unequal fight ahead. The billionaires have bought a narrow majority of the legislature. But more than 90% of the children in the state attend public schools. And their parents are ready to fight for their schools.

She writes:

“A full year in advance of a historic showdown on school vouchers in Arizona, the Kochs are already ladling on the cash. Through their Latino front group, Libre Institute, they have launched a six figure ad campaign targeting Arizona moms on one of the Kochs’ favorite topics, school vouchers.

“The TV ads feature a variety of Latino and Anglo “moms” singing the praises of school choice; the mailings feature cookie cutter “happy families” still featuring the “Istock” watermark. The campaign is an early attempt to sway voters who will decide whether or not to expand vouchers statewide in November 2018 when Proposition 305 appears on the ballot.

“The ads encourage people to go to the website, Arizonaschoolfacts.com emblazoned with the motto “Stand with Arizona’s Children.” The website fails to mention that it is sponsored by David and Charles Koch, two of the richest men in the world, who believe that transforming the public school system into for-profit money making operations is the “choice” Arizona moms should be making.

“In the interest of transparency, shouldn’t the outreach begin with “Hola! Somos los hermanos Koch”?

The fact is that the Kochs and their allies are doing their best to block the referendum scheduled for next spring. They are afraid the voters will reject vouchers. They are right to be afraid. An alert public will kick them out of Arizona. They can buy the legislature, but they can’t buy the public.

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Koch Brothers
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