Archives for category: Budget Cuts
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Lisa Haver: It Is Time to Establish Democratic Control of Philadelphia’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2017 //
7

For many years, the public schools of Philadelphia have been drastically underfunded by the state of Pennsylvania. This created a series of fiscal crises, which should have produced equitable funding, but instead gave cause for a state takeover, thus blaming the city for the state’s failures. The state established the appointed School Reform Commission in 2001. The SRC appointed Paul Vallas to run the district, and he launched the nation’s largest experiment (to that date) in privatized schooling, handing over some 40 schools to private, for-profit, and university management. The experiment was an expensive failure, and he left the city with a large deficit, bound for New Orleans to push an even bigger experiment in school privatization.

The SRC has continued the Vallas tradition, closing public schools, opening charter schools, and leaving public schools in desperate straits.

To sum it up, state control has been a disaster for the children of Philadelphia.

Lisa Haver wrote an article in the Philadelphia Daily News outlining the secrecy that surrounds the deliberations of the School Reform Commission. Even the budget is hidden from public view until the SRC has made all its decisions, without considering the voices of parents or teachers.

She asks and answers questions about the role and lack of transparency of the SRC.

She concludes like this:

“Should the SRC schedule a meeting in which it plans to decide on renewals of 23 charter schools with less than a week’s notice?

“The district’s budget shows that it will spend $894 million — about one-third of the budget — on charters next year. Shouldn’t the SRC allow enough time for those paying the tab to read the reports? They may want to ask why schools that have met none of the standards are being recommended for renewal.

“Should the SRC publicly deliberate before voting on significant financial, academic and policy resolutions?

“The SRC approved contracts totaling $149.2 million at its February meeting; it spent $173.1 million in March. Resolutions are voted on in batches of 10 or 15, with little explanation of why.

“How do we reform the School Reform Commission? By abolishing it. Philadelphians have the right, as all other Pennsylvanians do, to decide who will represent them on an elected school board.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Valerie Strauss Recaps Betsy DeVos’s Testimony about the Budget and Civil Rights

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2017 //
17

I confess. I didn’t watch Betsy DeVos testify. I didn’t want to. No one pays me to blog every day, so I have some discretion in how I use my time. What I did instead, which was very taxing, was to watch preview DVDs on the PBS special “School Inc.,” because I have been invited to tape a response for Channel 13, New York City’s PBS station. It is worse than anything you anticipated in terms of distortion, inaccuracies, slander of public schools, and adulation of the free market. Maybe I should have watched DeVos.

Valerie Strauss did watch DeVos. Here is her report.

She made clear that she would not put any limits on for-profit education companies. She recommended virtual charters to an Alabama senator, although even the charter industry has called out online schools for their poor academic results.

And here is a key quote:

“She was asked repeatedly whether private schools that would be part of the administration’s proposed program to fund and study a new voucher program would be subject to federal discrimination and special education laws, and she repeatedly said, “Schools that receive federal funds must follow federal law.””

As our reader Laura Chapman pointed out in a comment, voucher funds are always defended by the assertion that the public money goes to the family, not the school. Tax credits for vouchers go to corporations who pay for vouchers. Every voucher program operates under the fiction that the public money does not go to the school.

The money is laundered through the family or third parties.

So DeVos is cleverly masking the fact that federal law will not apply to schools that receive federal funds.

It is a three-card Monte game.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Hoax, Privatization, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: Meet the National Lobbyists Who Have Pushed a Far-Right Wing Agenda into the States

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2017 //
30

Jan Resseger read Gordon Lafer’s new book, “The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time,” and she understood the pattern on the rug.

“Gordon Lafer explains that in the November 2010 election, “Eleven state governments switched from Democratic or divided control to unified Republican control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature. Since these lawmakers took office in early 2011, the United States has seen an unprecedented wave of legislation aimed at lowering labor standards and slashing public services.” (p. 2) “In January 2011, legislatures across the country took office under a unique set of circumstances. In many states, new majorities rode to power on the energy of the Tea Party ‘wave’ election and the corporate-backed RedMap campaign… (T)his was the first class of legislators elected under post-Citizens United campaign finance rules, and the sudden influence of unlimited money in politics was felt across the country. Finally, the 2011 legislative sessions opened in the midst of record budget deficits (from the Great Recession), creating an atmosphere of fiscal crisis that made it politically feasible to undertake more dramatic legislation than might otherwise have been possible… For the corporate lobbies and their legislative allies, the 2010 elections created a strategic opportunity to restructure labor relations, political power, and the size of government.” (p 44)…

“Lafer continues: “Political science traditionally views policy initiatives as emerging from either reasoned evaluation of what has worked to address a given social problem, or a strategic response to public opinion. But the corporate agenda for education reform is neither. Its initiatives are not the product of education scholars and often have little or no evidentiary basis to support them. They are also broadly unpopular… In this sense, education policy… provides an instructive window into the ability of corporate lobbies to move an extremely broad and ambitious agenda that is supported neither by social scientific evidence nor by the popular will.” (p. 130)

“Who are the corporate lobbies crafting and pushing the anti-tax, union-bashing, anti-public education agenda? “Almost all of these initiatives reflect ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) model legislation, and have been championed by the Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity, and a wide range of allied corporate lobbies.” (p. 130) “Furthermore, the corporate agenda is carried out through an integrated network that operates on multiple channels at once: funding ALEC to write bills, craft legislative talking points, and provide a meeting place for legislators and lobbyists to build relationships; supporting local think tanks in the ALEC-affiliated State Policy Network to produce white papers, legislative testimony, opinion columns, and media experts; contributing to candidate campaigns and party committees; making independent expenditures on behalf of lawmakers or issues; and deploying field organizers to key legislative districts.” (p. 39)

“A primary strategy is tax cutting: “‘The best way to stimulate the economy,’ insisted a senior fellow at the Koch-funded Cato Institute, is ‘to shrink government… lower marginal tax rates, and streamline regulations.’ The corporate right’s exhortations for an unprecedented policy of cutting taxes and services in the midst of recession was not an evidence-based policy and indeed did not yield the economic growth its proponents forecast… There was no reason to believe that tax cuts were the key to economic recovery. However continuing tax cuts achieved something else; they dramatically—and perhaps permanently—shrank the size of government.” (p. 65)

“How has all this affected public education? “(B)udget cuts were particularly widespread—and particularly devastating—in the country’s school systems. In 2010-11, 70 percent of all U.S. school districts made cuts to essential services. Despite widespread evidence of the academic and economic value of preschool education, twelve states cut pre-K funding that year, including Arizona, which eliminated it completely. Ohio repealed full-day kindergarten and cut its preschool program to the point that it served 75 percent fewer four-year-olds than it had a decade earlier. Pennsylvania also cut back from full-day to half-day kindergarten in many districts—including Philadelphia, which also eliminated 40 percent of its teaching staff…. More than half the nation’s school districts changed their thermostat settings…. Research shows that the availability of trained librarians makes a significant improvement in student reading and writing skills, yet by 2014, one-third of public schools in the country lacked a full-time certified librarian.” (p. 69)

Conspiracy theory? No, a well-planned, carefully executed plan to cut taxes, kill unions, privatize education.

Categories ALEC, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Unions

“The Demolition of American Education,” By Trump and DeVos

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2017 //
19

I wrote an article for the New York Review of Books about the proposed Trump-DeVos budget.

The whole world needs to know what Trump and DeVos want to do to limit access to college and to undermine public education.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

William Mathis: Paradise Lost, Or, Trump’s Budget Cuts to Education

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2017 //
5

William Mathis explores the lies at the heart of Trump’s education budget.

He writes:

Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost?

“But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropp’d manna and could make the worse appear the better reason.”
■ John Milton, Paradise Lost, II.I.112

We had a vision of a more perfect nation where democracy and equality were more than aspirations. We believed we could make this piece of paradise real with the unity of the people and the purposefulness of our governments. But this has been reduced to an endless series of false and hollow incantations whose life-span is as transient as its denial in the next morning’s news cycle.

In 1965, the federal government, driven by the obligation to provide equal opportunities to the least fortunate of our citizens, passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was intended to lift the nation by strengthening our poorest children and schools, improving the quality of teaching, opening the doors of higher education, and providing skills to adults. It embraced the ideal voiced by the late President Kennedy that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” And the emphasis was on building the common good. By widely investing in our citizens, we invest in the health of our society and economy.

Those principles have found no refuge in the work of President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos; all that remains of these great purposes are a confusion of empty words made to appear as if the worst were the better. Larded with phrases like “commitment to improving education” and “maintaining support for the nation’s most vulnerable students,” Trump proposes to slash federal education programs by $9.2 billion dollars, or 13.5%. This is on top of past unmet needs, since federal obligations to poor and special education children have never been fully met. Starved programs are now set to have their rations reduced or cut entirely.

With a remarkable lack of compassion, the Special Olympics budget was zeroed. Twenty-two programs are eliminated including community learning centers, arts, pre-school and teacher improvement.

Blind to clear evidence, every dollar invested in high-quality early childhood education returns eight dollars in positive social outcomes such as reduced unemployment, stable families, less incarceration and the like. Yet the Trump budget treats this wise and productive investment as another area to defund: Head Start and childcare are slotted for small reductions, while preschool development grants are entirely eliminated.

It doesn’t get any easier for poor and middle-class students as they get older. Loan forgiveness programs for new college graduates working in schools or government would be eliminated. Student loan interest would be increased. In Trump’s plan, 300,000 students would lose their work-study jobs. In all, $143 billion would be removed over ten years.

Why make these cuts? The proposal calls for an increase in defense spending of more than $50 billion (a 10% increase) plus tax cuts for the wealthy – and that money has to come from somewhere. By these deeds, a capacity for war is valued more than the needs of the citizenry.

Yet, Trump says “education is the civil rights issue of our time.” This budget raises questions about whether his true objective is to cut civil rights. The proposal’s centerpiece is school choice. The budget seeks to funnel $1.4 billion, in new as well as repurposed funds, into private schools. The “civil rights” framing is stunning doubletalk, since a growing body of independent research shows that school choice segregates students by race, handicap and socioeconomic level.

While there are well-funded partisans who claim that school choice results in better education, an objective look at the data says otherwise. Four recent major studies have examined test-score outcomes for voucher students—in DC, Indiana, Ohio and Louisiana—and all four studies show these students doing worse than if they had stayed in public school. The results for charter schools don’t look good enough to justify the rhetoric. Charter schools and public schools perform about the same in terms of test-score outcomes, with poor schools and exceptional schools being distributed among both sectors. In short, school choice is not a way to increase achievement or equality.

At all levels, the the federal government’s long-standing commitment to tackling inequality is left behind. Instead the budget addresses these concerns by reducing services and by growing a competitive choice system that pits schools and families against each other. In this jarring half-light of contradictions, the worst is claimed to be the better.
The election promises still resonate. Manufacturing was to be restored, the little guy would be taken care of, and the dispossessed would have a champion to restore an imagined great Utopia. Instead, it is a coarsened, contradictory and conflicted selfishness, which lessens the common good. It promises manna but takes from the needy to give to the rich. It is far more dangerous than an education appropriation. Its values threaten our democratic society. Instead of a paradise regained, it is a paradise lost.

William J. Mathis is the Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center and vice-chair of The Vermont State Board of Education. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any group with which he is affiliated.​

Categories Budget Cuts, Fraud, Funding, Justice, Privatization, Supporting public schools, U.S. Department of Education

Oklahoma: Budget Cuts Devastate Schools

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2017 //
8

The Republican legislators in Oklahoma have decided that cutting taxes is more important than education. They are sacrificing their children and the future of the state.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/with-state-budget-in-crisis-many-oklahoma-schools-hold-classes-four-days-a-week/2017/05/27/24f73288-3cb8-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html?utm_term=.9e0a6415f6f8

Emma Brown of the Washington Post reports:

“NEWCASTLE, Okla. — A deepening budget crisis here has forced schools across the Sooner State to make painful decisions. Class sizes have ballooned, art and foreign-language programs have shrunk or disappeared, and with no money for new textbooks, children go without. Perhaps the most significant consequence: Students in scores of districts are now going to school just four days a week.

“The shift not only upends what has long been a fundamental rhythm of life for families and communities. It also runs contrary to the push in many parts of the country to provide more time for learning — and daily reinforcement — as a key way to improve achievement, especially among poor children.

“But funding for classrooms has been shrinking for years in this deep-red state as lawmakers have cut taxes, slicing away hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue in what some Oklahomans consider a cautionary tale about the real-life consequences of the small-government approach favored by Republican majorities in Washington and statehouses nationwide.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Oklahoma

Arthur Camins: Trump’s Education Budget is “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2017 //
14

Arthur Camins, writing at the Huffington Post,analyzes the Trump-DeVos education budget and declares it to be “cruel and unusual punishment,” targeted to harm the nation’s neediest children.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59243736e4b07617ae4cbf7f

He writes:

“President Trump’s budget proposal violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The crime it punishes is not being wealthy, healthy and deserving of tax cuts. Budgets are values statements. Trump’s first full education budget proposal is no exception. Its $9.2 Billion or 13.6% cut in the spending level approved by the already spendthrift conservative Congress also violates the values of most Americans. Bigly. It cuts programs that help most children in order to fund programs to help a few children– and facilitate tax cuts for the wealthy.

“As a citizen, lifelong educator and grandfather, I am appalled. We have schools not just to benefit individual children. Effective, humane, well-funded, equitable schools make for a better society. With its emphasis on privately governed charter schools and vouchers to attend private schools, Trump’s budget says that somehow parents’ individual decisions about education are automatically better than democratic community decisions. Choices by either individuals or groups are neither inherently good nor bad. That is a function of the values that guide them. The foundational value of Trump’s education budget is, “Just look out for yourself.” Most of us, I think, reject that dystopian idea.”

Trump and a DeVos say they want to help every get a better education, but they know schoice will not do that.

“Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and their supporters do not want to spread charter schools to provide more effective education to more children than in neighborhood public schools. We already know that they will not.

“They don’t want charter schools to compete for students with public schools because such competition leads to innovative improvements. They don’t want to replace democratic- with private-governance of schools because it is more efficient, or more responsive to students needs, or results in better decision-making, or is less vulnerable to corruption. We already know that the opposite is the case.

“They do not want to replace taxpayer funded public education that enrolls the vast majority of local children with tax credits for vouchers to attend the private school of their parents’ choosing because it will lead to a more equitable education for all students. We already know that it will not.

“They do not want to shift targeted federal education funds into block grants to states because it will result in better outcomes for all children. We already know that it will not.

“In fact, education policies that rely on market forces and individual choice have always had only three goals: Profit for individual investors, the protection, and enhancement of the privileges of the few, and legalized segregation. Make no mistake. Republicans have no intention of increasing education funds at the local or state levels. That would violate their core values: Keep as much of their wealth as possible. Pay as little in taxes as they can get away with to help other folks. Pander to people who want a religious or segregated education on the public’s dime.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Esquire: “Is There a Point to All This Cruelty?”

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2017 //
11

Charles P. Pierce blogs regularly for Esquire, and he is one of the few mainstream writers who understands the creeping (now galloping) privatization of public education and knows that it is a very bad thing for our society.

You will enjoy reading this post, unless you are Betsy DeVos.

With the proposed budget cuts to the federal budget for education, he writes, DeVos isfinding ways to fulfill her life’s dream of destroying public education and monetizing all those bright shiny faces.

He writes:

Betsy DeVos does not know anything about public education except that she doesn’t believe in it as a concept. Free public education is one of the unquestioned triumphs of the American experiment, but it’s a disposable commodity to a know-nothing fanatic who married into a vast fortune and dedicated a lot of it to wrecking public education. One of the worst things about electing an unqualified dolt to be president is that the dolt’s administration is a paradise for free-range maniacs and their personal crusades. This is a case in point.

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Betsy DeVos Will Testify Today on Capitol Hill, Extolling Charters and Choice

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2017 //
27

Politico Morning Education has an advance copy of DeVos’ testimony.

She will defend the administration’s draconian budget cuts by asserting that choice is the only “reform” that matters.

EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DEVOS TO FACE LAWMAKERS: DeVos is back on Capitol Hill today to testify for the first time since her contentious confirmation hearing. She could take some hostile questions before a House appropriations subcommittee about the administration’s budget proposal, which seeks to cut 13 percent from Education Department programs while also giving $1 billion to school choice efforts that would encourage charter schools, private school vouchers and more freedom for traditional public school students to pick a school in their district they want to attend.

– During her testimony , DeVos is expected to explain that an administration goal is to promote local education funding systems that “expand educational choice in our public school systems,” according to prepared remarks obtained by Morning Education. Other goals include funding state and local efforts that support scholarship programs that allow students to attend private schools and take advantage of other educational options and boosting a federal charter schools program. “Each of these proposals reflects my strong belief that a greater focus on student-centered reforms is the next logical step following the enactment of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which recognized and restored the primary role of states and school districts in operating a public education system that puts students and parents first,” she will say, according to the testimony.

– DeVos is also expected to say that while past presidents have “attempted to find the right set of levers here in Washington” to improve schools, that “unfortunately, I don’t think any of us are happy with the results of these seemingly endless, Washington-led reform efforts.” But she’ll point to the $4 billion the federal government has spent over the years to help start charter schools as an exception, referring to charter schools as “a bottom-up, locally driven education reform strategy based on empowering educators and providing choices to students and families.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, School Choice

Here are the Federal Programs DeVos Wants to Cut or Eliminate

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
12

Valerie Strauss has created a useful guide to the major budget cuts in the U.S. Department of Education programs, in the budget proposed by the Trump administration.

A total of $10.6 billion will be cut from existing programs, with a share of those “savings” invested in school choice.

The rationale is given for each cut:

Here are some details that aren’t in the story. First is a list in the budget documents of proposed discretionary programs targeted for elimination, which the documents say will save $5.9 billion, and following that are the given justifications for each. They were targeted, the documents say, because they “achieved their original purpose, duplicate other programs, are narrowly focused, or are unable to demonstrate effectiveness.”

If failure to “demonstrate effectiveness” is reason for the cuts, then charters and vouchers should be on the list. Neither has demonstrated their superiority to public schools. Many evaluations show they duplicate services, create a dual system, add additional managers, and get the same or worse results as compared to public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Trump, U.S. Department of Education
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