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California: Eli Broad and Betsy DeVos Agree that Charter Schools Trump Local Control

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2017 //
100

On the day before the vote on Betsy DeVos’s nomination, billionaire Eli Broad announced that he opposed her nomination to be Secretary of Education. It was a joke. He knew that his statement was meaningless and that she would be confirmed, but he was pretending to be a Democrat. The reality is that Broad and DeVos are on the same page when it comes to privatization. He is trying to grab control of half the children in Los Angeles for privately-run charter schools, and she approves. No doubt, she wishes California also had vouchers, because in her view, you can never have too much school choice. She and Broad consider local school boards a hindrance to their plans. Results don’t matter either. Nor does segregation. Choice over all.

In response to the unfettered expansion of charters–and to the ongoing financial scandals that crop up in this unregulated sector–several bills were introduced in the legislature to rein in the charters. One of them said that local school districts should make the final decision about whether to authorize new charters. Under current law, if the local school board says no, their decision may be reversed by the county board of education. If the county board of education says no, their decision may be reversed by the state board of education. If the governor is charter-friendly as Jerry Brown is, the state board can be counted on to say yes to almost any charter, no matter how much local opposition there is, and no matter how badly the new charter will damage existing public schools, skimming its students and sucking away resources.

So a bill was written–SB808– to give the local school boards the authority to block new charters that are neither needed nor wanted. The bill was supported by the California Teachers Association. It was opposed by the California Charter School Association, the lobbyists for the billionaires who love privatization.

The bill’s author just pulled it; it will not be introduced to the Senate Education Committee. The bill’s author, Democrat Tony Mendoza, met with charter school supporters last week and had second thoughts.

No doubt, Betsy DeVos is thrilled.

How many millions or billions will Eli Broad and his friends in the CCSA spend before they admit that all they accomplished was to destroy public education?

This will be Eli Broad’s legacy: not his museum; not the buildings where he has carved his name. But his destruction of public education in Los Angeles and across the state of California.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Valerie Strauss: Why Does California Allow Charters to Open Where They are Not Needed?

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2017 //
5

Valerie Strauss read the report prepared by Gordon Lafer for “In the Public Interest” about California’s lavish spending on facilities for charters where they are not needed. She reported here.

She writes:

The report says that “nearly 450 charter schools have opened in places that already had enough classroom space for all students — and this overproduction of schools was made possible by generous public support, including $111 million in rent, lease, or mortgage payments picked up by taxpayers, $135 million in general obligation bonds, and $425 million in private investments subsidized with tax credits or tax exemptions.” These amounts are based on only a portion of the state’s charter schools for which data was available, so the true funding amounts given to charters in communities that don’t need more classrooms “is almost twice as great.”

In California, traditional school systems can’t build new schools if enrollment demands it because of the way the state decides when it will give state bond funds to build a new school. According to the report, it does this by comparing existing classroom space with the student population projected over the next five years. Charter schools don’t have such a requirement.

They don’t need the permission of the local school district to open a charter. If they are turned down, they can appeal to the county school board. If they are turned down again, they appeal to the state board, which rubber-stamps almost every charter application with out regard to need.

The rationale of the charter industry is the same as that of Betsy DeVos: choice is an end in itself. It doesn’t matter if the charters offer better education; it doesn’t matter if they don’t get better test scores. All that matters is choice. DeVos agrees. So does Donald Trump. Choice, choice, choice, whether needed or not, whatever it costs.

Categories Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Bombshell! California Charter Report: Hundreds of Millions of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2017 //
10

The nonpartisan group In the Public Interest has released a major new report on wasteful spending on charter schools in California. It is called Spending Blind: The Failure of Policy Planning in California’s Charter School Facility Funding.

The bottom line is that California spends on charter schools without planning, without supervision, and without accountability. Vast sums of public money have disappeared, as charters close or mismanage funds. Every attempt to impose accountability on the charter industry has been vetoed by Governor Brown. The State Board of Education, which the governor appoints, does not demand accountability. California thinks of itself as a blue state, but when it comes to education funding, it is a Trump/DeVos state.

The key findings:

The report’s key findings include:

Over the past 15 years, California charter schools have received more than $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer subsidized funds to lease, build, or buy school buildings.

Nearly 450 charter schools have opened in places that already had enough classroom space for all students—and this overproduction of schools was made possible by generous public support, including $111 million in rent, lease, or mortgage payments picked up by taxpayers, $135 million in general obligation bonds, and $425 million in private investments subsidized with tax credits or tax exemptions.

For three-quarters of California charter schools, the quality of education on offer—based on state and charter industry standards—is worse than that of a nearby traditional public school that serves a demographically similar population. Taxpayers have provided these schools with an estimated three-quarters of a billion dollars in direct funding and an additional $1.1 billion in taxpayer-subsidized financing.

Even by the charter industry’s standards, the worst charter schools receive generous facility funding. The California Charter Schools Association identified 161 charter schools that ranked in the bottom 10% of schools serving comparable populations last year, but even these schools received more than $200 million in tax dollars and tax-subsidized funding.

At least 30% of charter schools were both opened in places that had no need for additional seats and also failed to provide an education superior to that available in nearby public schools. This number is almost certainly underestimated, but even at this rate, Californians provided these schools combined facilities funding of more than $750 million, at a net cost to taxpayers of nearly $400 million.

Public facilities funding has been disproportionately concentrated among the less than one-third of schools that are owned by Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) that operate chains of between three and 30 schools. An even more disproportionate share of funding has been taken by just four large CMO chains—Aspire, KIPP, Alliance, and Animo/Green Dot.

Since 2009, the 253 schools found by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California to maintain discriminatory enrollment policies have been awarded a collective $75 million under the SB740 program, $120 million in general obligation bonds, and $150 million in conduit bond financing.

CMOs have used public tax dollars to buy private property. The Alliance College-Ready Public Schools network of charter schools, for instance, has benefited from more than $110 million in federal and state taxpayer support for its facilities, which are not owned by the public, but are part of a growing empire of privately owned Los Angeles-area real estate now worth in excess of $200 million.

This squandering of public funds is outrageous. Will the Legislature and the Governor demand accountability?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding, Privatization

California: Legislators Press for Charter School Accountability, Transparency

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2017 //
5

Legislators in California have filed four bills that would hold charter schools to the same standards as public schools.

http://www.utla.net/news/new-legislative-push-charter-school-accountability

Expect powerful resistance from the California Charter School Association, which prefers no regulations at all, no accountability, total freedom to choose their students, to exclude the ones they don’t want, and to use public money with minimal or no public oversight.

The decision to rein in these private ventures rests with Governor Jerry Brown, who has protected the charter industry in the past, even vetoing a bill to prohibit for-profit charter vultures. Of course, as mayor of Oakland, he started two charters.

Categories California, Charter Schools

Ex-Charter School Leader Charged with Fraud, Money Laundering: What Would DeVos Say?

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2017 //
18

Until 2012, the most celebrated figure in the charter school industry was Ben Chavis of the American Indian Model Schools, a group of charter schools in Oakland, California, that got phenomenal test scores and major national publicity. The networks came to gush over the schools, Governor Schwarzenegger praised them, George Will admired them, and David Whitman called them one of the best paternalistic “no excuses” charter schools in the nation in his book Sweating the Small Stuff (2008). (In 2009, Whitman became Arne Duncan’s speechwriter.)

Chavis was controversial for many reasons, including his outspoken contempt for unions, liberals, multiculturalism, and certain minorities. He also dished out harsh punishments. He was a pioneer of the “no excuses” charter movement. I have written many posts about the meteoric rise and precipitous fall of Chavis (see here and here and here, for example).

If you want to know why Chavis was so controversial, read this article in the Los Angeles Times, written in 2009, when he was at the height of his fame.

The story from 2009 begins like this:

Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: “We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multicultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply.”

That, it turns out, is just the beginning of the ways in which American Indian Public Charter and its two sibling schools spit in the eye of mainstream education. These small, no-frills, independent public schools in the hardscrabble flats of Oakland sometimes seem like creations of television’s “Colbert Report.” They mock liberal orthodoxy with such zeal that it can seem like a parody.

School administrators take pride in their record of frequently firing teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded “self-esteem experts, panhandlers, drug dealers and those snapping turtles who refuse to put forth their best effort,” to quote the school’s website.

Students, almost all poor, wear uniforms and are subject to disciplinary procedures redolent of military school. One local school district official was horrified to learn that a girl was forced to clean the boys’ restroom as punishment.

When Chavis took over the schools, the enrollment was mostly American Indian. But over time, the American Indians disappeared and were replaced by Asian students. And the scores went up and up.

In 2012, a state audit reported that $3.8 million had been reallocated from the school accounts to Chavis’s business accounts. Chavis resigned the next year and moved to North Carolina to work as a motivational speaker.

There are new developments:

Ben Chavis, the controversial former director of three Oakland charter schools, collectively known as the American Indian Model Schools, was charged with mail fraud and money laundering in connection with the schools’ applications for federal grant funds, federal authorities announced Thursday.

Chavis was arrested Thursday morning in North Carolina and has been ordered to appear in federal court in Oakland. He is accused of requesting more than $2.5 million of federally funded grants in violation of conflict-of-interest rules.

This is not the first time Chavis has been targeted for financial impropriety. In 2012, an investigation by the state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team found that from 2007 to 2011, Chavis had directed $3.8 million from the school to companies he owned for contracts not approved by the school board. He stepped down from the school in 2013. The investigation’s findings prompted the county superintendent to refer the case to federal authorities.

According to the indictment announced Thursday, Chavis, 59, of Lumberton, N.C., and others devised and put into place a scheme from early 2006 through May 2012 to defraud the California School Finance Authority by requesting federally funded competitive grants for three charter schools in violation of federal conflict-of-interest regulations.

From 2000 to 2012, Chavis served off and on as the director and in various additional capacities for three Oakland charter schools — the American Indian Public Charter School, the American Indian Public High School II and the American Indian Public High School — as well as the schools’ umbrella organization, the American Indian Model Schools, referred to as AIMS.

The indictment, unsealed Thursday, alleges Chavis applied for grants to pay the costs of leasing facilities that he owned or controlled through his companies — American Delivery Systems and Lumbee Properties LLC. He is accused of concealing his interest in the facilities in the grant applications.

The indictment further alleges that the schools obtained more than $1.1 million in federal grants as a result of this fraud and that Chavis used fraud proceeds to promote the fraud scheme at each school.

What would Betsy DeVos say? She doesn’t believe in regulation or oversight of charter schools or voucher schools. Let the free market rule. Chavis no doubt agreed.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Fraud

California Teachers Form Statewide Alliance to Fight for Real School Reform

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2017 //
29

Teachers organizations from across the state of California have formed an alliance to fight for genuine School reform.

CALIFORNIA: 8 Teacher Union Locals Unite Against the Trump/DeVos Agenda, Fight for Public Schools through Collective Bargaining, Community Power

United around common struggles and a shared vision, The California Alliance for Community Schools is a groundbreaking coalition of educator unions from 8 of the largest cities in California, representing more than 50,000 educators. The alliance officially launches tomorrow, Thursday March 23 and includes: Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association, Oakland Education Association, San Bernardino Teachers Association, San Jose Teachers Association, San Diego Education Association, United Educators of San Francisco, United Teachers Los Angeles and United Teachers Richmond.

All 8 unions are uniting around statewide demands, through local bargaining as well as legislation, for more resources in schools, charter school accountability, lower class sizes and other critical improvements. Most of the locals are in contract bargaining or are interested in organizing around these key issues. The alliance plans to expand to include other labor and community partners.

As California faces a statewide teacher shortage, school districts issued more than 1,750 pink slips for educators last week. Trump released his proposed federal budget, which slashes funds for disadvantaged children, afterschool programs, teacher trainings and other vital services. Trump wants to spend $1.4 billion to expand vouchers, including private schools, and would pay for it from deep cuts to public schools. Voters in California have twice rejected voucher plans.

“We are reaching a state of emergency when it comes to our public schools,” said Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman, an Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment member and charter school parent since 1994. “We must support and reinvest in public education. I join educators in the fight for well-resourced, transparent, accountable, and democratically run schools, at the bargaining table and beyond.”

All 8 unions will use the power of bargaining and statewide organizing to fight for:

Lower class sizes

Resources for high-needs schools and students

Shared decision-making at local school sites, critical to student success

Charter school accountability

Safe and supportive school environments

The first significant step is the launch of the bargaining platform and petition, which includes statewide demands and specific contract demands for each local union. The petition reads:

“As educators in large urban school districts across California we face many of the same challenges. We are particularly concerned about disinvestment in schools and communities, especially those with the greatest needs; educational policies that discourage authentic teaching and learning; and the rapid expansion of privately managed and unregulated charter schools at the expense of our neighborhood schools.”

We applaud the work of these unions, who are fighting back the Trump/DeVos agenda and standing together with their students and communities to reinvest in public education.

To find out more, contact each union for more information:

Anaheim: Grant Schuster, CTA State Council Representative on ASTA Executive Board, schusters3@charter.net, (562) 810-4035

Los Angeles: Anna Bakalis, UTLA Communications Director mailto:abakalis@utla.net, (213)305-9654

Oakland: Trish Gorham, OEA President, oaklandeapresident@yahoo.com, (510) 763-4020,

San Diego: Jonathon Mello, mello_j@sdea.net, (619) 200-0010

San Francisco: Mathew Hardy, Communications Director, mhardy@uesf.org, (415) 513-3179

Richmond: Demetrio Gonzalez, UTR President, president@unitedteachersofrichmond.com, (760) 500-7044

San Jose: Jennifer Thomas, SJTA President, jthomas@sanjoseta.org, (408) 694-7393

San Bernardino: Ashley Alcalá, SBTA President, ashleysbta@gmail.com, (909) 881-6755
—

THE CALIFORNIA ALLIANCE FOR COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
We are a coalition of California parents, community, educators, and students united in our commitment to transforming public education in ways that contribute to a more just, equitable, and participatory society.

Together, we are fighting for well-resourced, community-centered, publicly funded and democratically run schools that prepare our students with the intellectual, social, and emotional skills necessary for success in a changing and often turbulent world.

Our Platform for The Schools All Our Students Deserve

1. Low Class Sizes: Quality instruction for all our students depends on limiting the number of students in a class. Lowering class sizes improves teaching and learning conditions leading to growth in student achievement and positive social interactions.

2. Adequate Resources for All Schools with Additional Resources for Our High Needs Schools and Students: All schools and students deserve adequate levels of funding and support, including but not limited to quality early childhood education programs, lower class size, lower Special Education caseloads, additional educators, after-school tutoring, counselors, nurses, certificated librarians, and other resources to address our students’ academic, emotional, and social needs. Schools and students with the highest need should receive additional funding and support. Site based governing bodies consisting of democratically selected staff, parents, students, and community partners should be responsible for deciding how such additional supports are to be used.

3. Shared Decision-Making at Our Local Schools: The needs of a school are best addressed by the members of the school community. Site based governance by democratically selected stakeholder representatives is a critical component for school and student success. Districts and unions should provide joint trainings to fully empower these bodies.

4. Charter Schools Accountable to Our Communities: All schools receiving public money must be held accountable and be locally and publicly controlled. Unfortunately, many privately run, under-regulated charter schools drain needed resources from neighborhood schools, are not fully transparent in their operations, and fail to provide equal access to all students. Common sense standards and adequate oversight are necessary. New charter schools should not be approved without ensuring accountability and transparency and without a comprehensive assessment of the economic and educational impact on existing public schools.

5. Safe and Supportive School Environments: All students at publicly funded schools, regardless of ethnicity, gender, economic status, religion, sexual orientation, and immigration status, have a right to an academically stimulating, emotionally and socially nurturing, and culturally responsive environment that recognizes and addresses the many stresses that affect student performance and behavior. Adequate trainings and supports for restorative justice programs must be provided as an alternative to punitive disciplinary programs.

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, California, Class size, Early Childhood Education, Funding, Real Education, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Unions

California: Why Does CCSA Engage in Deception and Lies?

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2017 //
15

http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/02/17/69091/pta-asks-parent-teacher-alliance-a-charter-school/

We are constantly told that charter schools are a huge hit with parents, but the California Charter School Association apparently feels it must deceive parents.

In the current Los Angeles school board election, the CCSA created a group called the “Parent-Teacher Alliance” to campaign for pro-charter candidates. Sounds suspiciously like the nonpartisan PTA.

Now the National Parent teacher Association is suing the “Parent Teacher Alliance” to demand that they stop using a name so similar to their own.

http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/02/17/69091/pta-asks-parent-teacher-alliance-a-charter-school/

“In the midst of a contentious race for Los Angeles Unified School Board, some voters have gotten knocks at their door from pro-charter school canvassers introducing themselves as “volunteers with the Parent Teacher Alliance.”

“They’re not volunteers for the well-known parent-run school fundraising organization, but for a group funded by the political affiliate of the California Charter Schools Association. The Parent Teacher Alliance has already spent $550,000 on advertising, phone banking and door-knocking in hopes of influencing the L.A. Unified race.

“Leaders of the California Parent Teacher Association – the aforementioned parent-run school fundraising organization – want them to find another name.

“This week, leaders of the National Parent Teacher Association sent a cease-and-desist letter to the charter association’s political arm, CCSA Advocates, saying the use of “Parent Teacher Alliance” in political advertising is muddying the PTA’s non-partisan brand.

“The letter accuses CCSA Advocates of “false advertising and deceptive practices,” according to a written statement from National PTA president Laura Bay.

“It’s the second time the Parent Teacher Association has made such a request.

“In the 2016 statewide primary elections, the Parent Teacher Alliance PAC and other pro-charter groups were huge sources of outside spending in legislative races. After the June vote, leaders of the National Parent Teacher Association sent their first cease-and-desist letter to CCSA, noting the national group holds trademarks on both their name and the “PTA” acronym.”

Why deceive voters?

Categories California, Charter Schools, Lies

The Dirty Tricks of California’s Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
5

The Los Angeles Times endorsed two strong supporters of charter schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District board, both favored by the California Charter School Association. The rationale was simplistic: new voices are needed.This is bizarre. It doesn’t matter whether a voice is old or new. What matters most is what the voice is saying. Will a new board try to turn Los Angeles into New Orleans? Will it be Eli Broad’s puppet? His voice is the oldest of all. It would be truly refreshing if the LA Times told him to keep his hands off the public schools since all of his experiments have failed (e.g., Michigan’s Education Achievement District). Why don’t they tell him to stick to art and medical research and stop meddling in the schools?

However, the Times published an article by columnist Steve Lopez that offers a clear-eyed analysis of the CCSA’s dirty tricks. The CCSA and its billionaire buddies have decided that it is time to take out Steve Zimmer, chair of the LAUSD school board. They are raising millions of dollars to push him out, even though he has not been hostile to charters. But the billionaires don’t want a fair-minded board president who has classroom experience (Zimmer came into education through Teach for America but remained a teacher for 17 years). The last time they tried to beat him, they outspent him 5-1, but he prevailed. His winning issue apparently was the $1 million from former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, which gave the appearance that a New Yorker was trying to buy control of the LA schools. So this time the $1 million came from former LA Mayor Richard Riordan.

So here’s the dirty trick. CCSA created a phony group called LA Students for Change to demand Zimmer’s ouster. Once again, like Families for Excellent Schools in New York City, which is composed of billionaire families who will never see the inside of a public school, the charter industry finds it necessary to deceive voters. Worse, CCSA printed up flyers for their student-props, blaming Zimmer for John Deasy’s $1 Billion iPad fiasco.

How comical is that? The embarrassing iPad scandal caused Deasy to resign, with a cloud over his head. Deasy now works for Eli Broad. Broad is the city’s charter kingpin and a major financier of CCSA. and now CCSA’s student group is pinning Deasy’s mess on Zimmer.

I salute the Los Angeles Times for recognizing that it’s time for Monica Garcia, the board’s most fervent charter advocate, to go. The Times endorses Lisa Alva, a classroom teacher who would be a valuable addition to the board. She and Carl Petersen are running against Garcia, and here’s hoping that they pull enough votes to force her into a run-off and defeat her.

Los Angeles should have a great public school in every neighborhood. That won’t happen as long as charters continue to drain away the students they want and drain away resources, leaving LAUSD with the students most expensive to educate and less money to meet their needs.

The district needs that vision, not just new voices and faces for the sake of novelty.

Categories Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Trainwreck: This Math Curriculum is a Giant Fail!

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2017 //
49

A parent in Mountain View, California, describes the disaster of the district’s digital math curriculum.

He writes:

“I live in Silicon Valley, which operates on the assumption that there’s no problem that technology can’t solve. It suffuses our culture here, and sometimes we pay the price for this technocratic utopianism. Case in point: Right now, I’m sending my kid to a public school in Mountain View, CA–the home of Google–where the administrators have upended the entire sixth grade math program. Last August, they abolished the traditional math program–you know, where students get to sit in a classroom and learn from a trained and qualified math teacher. And instead the administrators asked students to learn math mainly from a computer program called Teach to One. Run by a venture called New Classrooms, Teach to One promises to let each student engage in “personalized learning,” where a computer program gauges each student’s knowledge of math, then continually customizes the math education that students receive. It all sounds like a great concept. Bill Gates has supposedly called it the “Future of Math Education.” But the rub is this: Teach to One doesn’t seem ready for the present. And our kids are paying the price.

“A new article featured in our local paper, The Mountain View Voice, outlines well the problems that students and parents have experienced with the Teach to One program. I would encourage any parent or educator interested in the pitfalls of these “innovative” math programs to give the article a good look.

“If you read the article, here’s what you will learn. The Mountain View school district apparently budgeted $521,000 to implement and operate this new-fangled math program in two local schools (Graham and Crittenden Middle Schools). Had they adequately beta tested the program beforehand, the school district might have discovered that Teach to One teaches math–we have observed–in a disjointed, non-linear and often erratic fashion that leaves many students baffled and disenchanted with math. The program contains errors in the math it teaches. Parents end up having to teach kids math at home and make up for the program’s deficiencies. And all the while, the math teachers get essentially relegated to “managing the [Teach to One] program rather than to providing direct instruction” themselves.

“By October, many parents started to register individual complaints with the school district. By December, 180 parents signed a letter meticulously outlining the many problems they found with the Teach to One program. (You can read that letter here.) When the school later conducted a survey on Teach to One (review it here), 61% of the parents “said they do not believe the program matches the needs of their children,” and test scores show that this crop of sixth graders has mastered math concepts less well than last year’s. (Note: there was a big decrease in the number of kids who say they love math, and conversely a 413% increase in the number of kids who say they hate math.) Given the mediocre evaluation, the parents have asked for one simple thing–the option to let their kids learn math in a traditional setting for the remainder of the year, until it can be demonstrated that Teach to One can deliver better results. (Teach to One would ideally continue as a smaller pilot, where the kinks would get worked out.) So far the school district, headed by Ayindé Rudolph, has continued to champion the Teach to One program in finely-spun bureaucratic letters that effectively disregard parental concerns and actual data points. But the schools have now agreed to let students spend 5o% of their time learning math with Teach to One, and the other 50% learning math from a qualified teacher. Why the impractical half measure? I can only speculate.”

Read the article got links and stuff I did not post.

The district dropped the program, half-a-million dollars wasted.

Categories California, Curriculum, Parents

Los Angeles: Charter School, Raided by FBI, Has Money for Parties, Not for Basic Supplies

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2017 //
31

Last week, federal authorities raided the offices of Celerity charter schools in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times takes a closer look at the Celerity charters in this article.

Teacher Tien Le worked at Celerity Dyad Charter School, where she

taught in a portable classroom on an asphalt lot — not unheard of in this city of tight squeezes and little green space, but her students also had no library, cafeteria or gymnasium. The school didn’t provide most supplies, Le said, so when her sixth-graders needed books, or an extra pencil and paper, she spent her own money to buy them.

Months into her first year at Dyad, Le and her colleagues were invited by the organization that managed the school to a holiday party at a large house on a winding street in Hollywood. She parked in a lot rented for the occasion and took a shuttle to the house with other teachers and staff. Inside, there were two open bars, casino tables for poker and blackjack, and a karaoke room. At evening’s end, a limousine ferried guests back to their cars.

“I remember being really confused that night,” Le said. “When I asked for basic supplies, I couldn’t get those things, yet you have money for this expensive party? I know at big corporations and for-profit places these parties are normal, but for a public school it was not normal.”

Celerity operates seven charter schools in Southern California and four in Louisiana.

The investigation is ongoing. I can’t help but wonder whether Betsy DeVos will call a halt to the investigation when and if she becomes Secretary of Education. True, the FBI is involved, but a phone call to her friend in the White House….

Categories Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Los Angeles, Privatization
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