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Tom Ultican: A Guide to the Privatization Movement in California

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2016 //
3

Tom Ultican, a teacher of high school physics and math, here explains who is behind the privatization movement in California. The vehicle for privatization is the California Charter Schools Association.

He begins:

The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) and the Republican machine destroying public education in California or at least trying to privatize it; are promoting their jaded cause.

Three key players in the assault on California’s public schools are Walmart heiress, Carrie Walton Penner, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings and nativist republican politician, Steve Poizner. In 2001, they started EdVoice an organization that claims California schools are broken and must be reformed. In 2003 Poizner founded the CCSA. Walton Penner and Hastings remain as board members of both EdVoice and CCSA.

Why are billionaires so invested in charter schools?

He writes:

Many super-wealthy education reformers are not fans of democracy. There is a natural and dark human tendency to desire control over others. With their massive wealth, billionaire’s are capable of subverting democracy and enforcing their frequently uninformed opinions.

Ultican then goes on to show what a gravy train this charter industry is for all those who jump on board. He lists the salaries of many of those who loudly proclaim “It is For the Children.” Are they doing good or doing well?

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Eli Broad Releases Plan to Take Over and Privatize Public Education in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2016 //
34

The Eli Broad-funded group “Great Public Schools Now” (sic) has released its plan for the destruction of democratically controlled public education in Los Angeles.

Despite the failure of charter schools to improve the education of low-income students unless they are free to choose the students they want and kick out the ones they don’t want, billionaire Eli Broad wants to put 160,000 children who are now in public schools into privately managed charters. The twist in this plan is that Broad and his allies have promised to take control of public schools, magnet schools, and other schools as well as their own charters. It seems that the billionaires and their minions know how to create successful schools. One wonders if this means that even the public schools will adopt “no excuses” discipline and kick out the kids who refuse to conform. To do this, the corporate reformers have to retain some public schools where they can drop the kids they don’t want.

The goal is to expand access for 160,000 students GPSN has identified as attending failing schools in 10 low-income Los Angeles neighborhoods to successful schools it wants to help replicate or expand.

The neighborhoods are in South LA, East LA and the northeast San Fernando Valley, chosen because they have “chronically underperforming schools and few high-quality school choices for struggling families,” the plan states.

GPSN says it will provide funding and support to high-performing schools no matter what type of school — charter, traditional, pilot, magnet or partnership — so they can be replicated and expanded. It will also support proposed schools with the potential to be high quality.

The widening focus is a shift from an early plan leaked last year that was developed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to expand charter schools in LA.

“This is a different kind of initiative, very different than has been attempted in Los Angeles before,” said Myrna Castrejon, GPSN’s executive director. “I am particularly excited about the opportunity to really work across sectors to really strengthen all of public education.”

GPSN also is revealing today the makeup of its seven-person board, all of whom boast decades of experience in education. In addition to Siart and Flores, who is also a senior fellow at the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, the board members are Gregory McGinity, executive director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation; Maria Casillas, founder of Families in Schools; Virgil Roberts, chairman of the board of Families in Schools; Marc Sternberg, K-12 education program director for the Walton Family Foundation, and Allison Keller, senior vice president and chief financial officer and executive director of the W.M. Keck Foundation.

All of these are corporate reformers with “decades” of privatizing public schools.

Bear in mind that in California, charter schools are not only deregulated, they operate without any supervision. There have been numerous charter scandals involving fraud and misappropriation of funds.

This is a disgrace. Eli Broad was educated in the public schools of Michigan, and he has become–along with the rightwing Walton Family Foundation–the major destroyer of public education in the nation. Naturally, the Walton Family Foundation’s education director Marc Sternberg is on the board of Eli Broad’s latest venture, bringing together the two most powerful and union-hating, public school-hating organizations in the US.

Expect a billionaire-funded drive to take control of the Los Angeles school board in the spring of 2017, to pave the way for the end of democratic public education in Los Angeles.

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

California: Big Money and Slimy Tactics by Charter Advocates Prevail in Legislative Races

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2016 //
13

Awash in contributions from billionaires, the California Charter Schools Association claimed victory in several contested legislative elections.

Its candidate in the 43rd Assembly District, Laura Friedman came in first, bolstered by more than $1 million in campaign gifts by the powerful lobby.

The charter lobby, as usual, ran under false colors, pretending to be “all about the kids” and fighting for high-quality schools.

But Steve Zimmer, president of the Los Angeles Unified School District board, called them out, saying it was all about contracts and money.

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer railed Wednesday against the tactics used by the CCSA Advocates in the hotly contested 43rd Assembly District race and compared its spending in that race, at least $1.2 million, to special interest spending from oil and tobacco industries, which lobby for deregulation.

“This is no longer about choice. This is no longer about kids. It’s certainly not about civil rights,” he said. “It’s about deregulation. It’s about privatization.”

An independent expenditure committee called Parent Teacher Alliance sponsored by CCSA Advocates, the political arm of the CCSA, spent $910,791 on mailers supporting Glendale City Councilwoman Laura Friedman and $304,355 to oppose Glendale City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian, as of Friday, state campaign finance records show.

Friedman won the primary race, earning 31.9 percent of the vote total, capturing 24,372 votes, according to preliminary election results. Kassakhian finished in second place with 24.3 percent, receiving 18,618 votes. The two Democrats topped the eight-candidate ticket to replace outgoing Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Burbank, who could not seek re-election due to term limits. They will likely compete in the Nov. 8 general election. The election results will not be finalized until mail-in and provisional ballots are counted. Voter turnout in the district was about 29 percent.

Zimmer denounced the negative mailers sent by CCSA Advocates that flooded voters’ mailboxes in the district that includes Glendale, Burbank, La Canada Flintridge and parts of Los Angeles.

“It is base thuggery, no more or no less,” Zimmer said.

He called Kassakhian, whom he endorsed, the target of the mailers, an “innocent bystander” and said Kassakhian’s only crime was having a mother who was a public school teacher and support from teachers’ unions.

“I aspire to be half as decent a guy as Ardy Kassakhian is,” Zimmer said. “To take him out the way they did, to use the hate in those mailers, it’s a new standard of low. It has no rules, no boundaries, no ethics, no morals.”

The spending by charter school supporters in this race could be a preview of what will happen in March, when three seats on the LA Unified school board will be contested. Zimmer is up for re-election in what is sure to be a highly contested race. A challenger has already announced in the race. In 2013, Zimmer’s last re-election bid, millions were poured into the three races by outside groups. He captured 52 percent of the votes to defeat his opponent, Kate Anderson, who was backed by CCSA.

Friedman and Kassakhian will have a run-off in November as the top two finishers in the race.

The charter industry continues to descend into a pit of slime in its drive for money and power and its desire to cripple public education.

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

California in the Grip of Charter Fever: This is NOT Democracy in Action

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2016 //
10

Rocketship Charters, which puts kids on computers and cuts costs by hiring Teach for America kids, applied to open a charter school in the Mount Diablo School District in California. The local school board voted no, unanimously. The Rocketship corporation appealed to the Costra County School Board, which also rejected their petition. The corporation then took their appeal to the State Board of Education, which overturned the local board and the county board and granted permission to the charter to open in the Mount Diablo district.

Of course, this means that the public schools in the district will have fewer resources, and will have to lay off teachers and cut programs so that the charter can thrive. The district, which serves most children, will suffer to feed the charter.

Another illustration of California’s willingness to sacrifice public schools and local control for the sake of the charter industry. Once again, the 1% get their way, regardless of the will of the local community and its elected board.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Democracy

California and the End of Local Control

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2016 //
15

Reader D.L. Paulson writes here about the charter industry’s sabotage of local control in education.

 

 

The overruling of local school boards is a terrible problem in California. Now that it’s hitting an upper-income community (actually, the Mt Diablo district is mixed in its demographics), middle class parents will see what poorer urban districts have had to contend with for years.

Stories abound of charter schools not only wanting the equivalent of what real public schools get, but feeling like they deserve even more. Their mode of operation is to achieve through political connections what they can’t obtain by deceptive marketing practices or bullying of local school boards.

At the bottom of this post are links to stories of a charter network called Caliber, which operates in the poor districts of Richmond and Vallejo, CA. It has another questionable educational program, especially for math, which consists of plopping kids in front of a computer for endless repetition and test prep, masquerading, of course, as “personalized learning”. All that Caliber really does is siphon badly needed funds from other schools for a relatively select group of students that it can profit from.

One particularly interesting thing about Caliber is the couple which founded it: Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses. Mr. Beller was famous for the collapse of his hedge fund and an odd story of a secretary embezzling millions of dollars. Both are part of a cabal of rich individuals that have torn apart the public education system in England, with Ms. Moses funding and pushing heavily for charter schools there. They left London a few years ago for unexplained reasons, but possibly because they smelled blood and opportunity in the charter-infested waters of Northern California.

Many people wonder, if charter schools like Caliber are non-profit, and they’re spending the same money as real community-run schools, how can anyone accuse founders of profiteering? The answer: land grabs and self-dealing. Many of the networks that run these schools, like Rocketship, buy their products (software, supplies and more) from the same companies they or their friends invest in. The properties they purchase are securitized by taxpayer dollars, allowing them to leverage an investment in the same manner as a Real-Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Since there is no public oversight over their purchasing, no bid requirements, no review of salaries or per-pupil spending, they can quite literally get away with anything.

The motives of investors like Ron Beller and Jennifer Moses are not philanthropic. That’s why they and so many other hedge-fund managers love the story of failing schools, so they can cover-up what they’re doing by pretending to serve poor minorities and other victims of some mythical failing system. No matter what jargon is used to describe their “personalized” or “no excuses” model, making poor minority students walk in straight lines, silently, and then plopping them in front of a brain-numbing computer program is not giving them the same educational opportunities as kids in, say, Lafayette, CA (right next door to Mt Diablo). It’s greed, pure and simple, as evidenced by Goldman Sachs seminars telling investors exactly how to make money through the privatization of schools. It is destroying public education in this country, and it’s going to worsen our problems of racism, community polarization, and income inequality.

We can only hope that Jerry Brown will “get it” soon. He understood similar issues with redevelopment agencies, and he ended them early in his first term. Perhaps ending the insidious invasion of charter schools will be his second term legacy.

****************

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/contra-costa-times/ci_23866222/county-school-board-overrules-rejection-caliber-charter-school

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/west-county-times/ci_26553653/richmond-district-saddled-cost-house-charter-school

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/general-news/20160511/richmond-proposed-sale-of-school-site-for-charter-campus-draws-fire/3

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/general-news/20160509/new-vallejo-charter-school-seeks-more-student-bathrooms

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/social-affairs/20160218/charter-school-in-vallejo-seeks-better-offer

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

The Attack on Public Education in California

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2016 //
15

Public education in California is under siege by people and organizations who want to privatize the schools, remove them from democratic control, and hand them over to the charter industry.

The attack began when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor. He stacked the state board of education with a majority of charter school advocates (even though only 4% of children were enrolled in charters at the time) and slashed billions of dollars from the budget of the public schools.

The attack continues today, as billionaires add their clout to the charter industry. Eli Broad is the point of the spear, with his unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, which has “trained” would-be superintendents in his management techniques and sent them out to reorganize schools, and whenever possible, close them down. Broad has proposed to open 260 new charters in Los Angeles, which would mean that 50% of the students in the district would be enrolled in charters. Other billionaires, such as Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix) and David Welch (of Vergara notoriety), have joined the fight against public schools and their teachers.

The Golden State is often a bellwether for the nation.

Governor Jerry Brown, a progressive on many other issues, has defended the charter industry and blocked efforts to regulate it. California has had some of the biggest charter scandals in the nation, starting with the collapse of the California Charter Academy in 2004, which went bankrupt and stranded 6,000 students. The state has for-profit charters, including the California Virtual Academy (CAVA), which was recently the subject of an expose by Jessica Calefati in the San Jose Mercury-News. CAVA is run by Michael Milken’s K12 Inc. It is one of the worst performing schools in the state, perhaps the very worst. But no action has been taken to close it.

When the legislature passed a bill to prohibit for-profit charter schools, Governor Brown vetoed it. This, despite the fact that America has never had for-profit “public schools” until the rise of the charter industry. An associate of the governor told me that the governor did not believe that for-profit schools are inherently bad. I disagree. Any for-profit organization has profit as its highest priority, not education or children. Governor Brown also vetoed legislation to prohibit charters in one district from opening branches in other districts. He vetoed legislation to bar conflicts of interest in charter schools. Governor Brown opened two charters in Oakland when he was mayor, so he must be partial to them. Nonetheless, it remains baffling that Governor Brown would allow vested interests and advocates of privatization to ruin the state’s public schools.

Unlike many other states, California has a well-financed and formidable organization fighting to expand the power of privately managed charter schools: the California Charter Schools Association. It is active in advancing legislation to protect and advance privatization and to block any effort to rein in their excesses.

Begin your reading at this site, Capital & Main. It contains a series about California and the future of public education.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Another Charter Scandal in California: The Moonlighting Principal

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2016 //
15

A few days ago, I wrote a post about California’s burgeoning charter industry and its lack of regulation or oversight. This is called a recipe for scandal, of which there have already been many in the Golden State. You might recall the charter operators who went to jail for misappropriating funds. Or the charter operator who paid a staff member to go to Africa and marry his brother so he could legally enter the U.S. Or the superintendent who set up a private consulting business to help charters grow where they aren’t wanted. Or…the list goes on and on.

Think of the opportunities when taxpayer money is handed out freely and left without oversight.

Now comes another scandal. The El Camino Real Charter High School’s principal moonlighted as a scout for the National Basketball Association, traveled across the country first class to basketball games, and charged his travel expenses to the school.

Fehte used the school card for expenses on two trips to Greensboro, N.C., during the March weekends of the 2014 and 2015 Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Tournaments. In 2014 he charged $972 total at a luxury hotel 10 minutes from the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, the site of the tournament. Fehte, 55, signed a school form that stated one of the hotel charges was for a “Green initiative,” apparently a reference to the school’s environmental conservation efforts.

The Daily News obtained El Camino’s credit card statements and receipts for 2014 and 2015 under the California Public Records Act. The school is run by a nonprofit organization and receives about $32 million in government funds annually, accounting for 94 percent of its revenue. Officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District, which oversees charters in its boundaries, notified El Camino last fall that its administrators had violated the school’s own financial policies. Without naming him, the district criticized Fehte’s use of the card for personal expenses, and said he only reimbursed El Camino a handful of times.

This principal is the second highest paid executive director or principal of a public school in the state. He is paid $221,475.

Keep your seat belts buckled. This is the tip of the iceberg. More scandals ahead.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Reform

California: Charter Lobby Pulls a Dirty Trick and Throws in $1.2 Million for Legislative Race: VOTE KASSAKHIAN TOMORROW!

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2016 //
18

The California Charter School Association is a super-rich, highly political power broker in politics. It wants to control every possible seat in the state legislature so it can pursue its goal of mass privatization of public schools across the Golden State.

Consider this dirty trick: It has created an organization called the “Parent Teacher Alliance,” which endorses candidates. Thus, the candidates can say that they were endorsed by the “PTA,” even though this Parent Teacher Alliance has no affiliation with the Parent Teacher Associations of the state.

The Los Angeles School Report, whose editorial content is directed by Campbell Brown, has a story about a crucial legislative race playing out in a district where the assemblyman vacated his seat. Voters will decide tomorrow. The go-to speaker quoted in the story is Marshall Tuck, who ran and lost as the pro-charter candidate against Tom Torlakson, the state superintendent. Tuck speaks from the “reform” point of view, labeling those whom he doesn’t like as union candidates.

Here is the bottom line on spending: A rift in the Democratic Party over education policy comes into sharp relief one day before California’s primary election as a record $28 million has been spent by outside groups on state races, one-third coming from groups supporting charter schools.

There you have it: with all the issues facing the state, one-third of the $28 million spent by outside groups on state races is coming from charter advocates.

The latest example in Southern California is playing out in an open state Assembly district seat in Glendale, Burbank, La Canada Flintridge and parts of Los Angeles where an independent expenditure committee supporting charter schools has spent more than $1.2 million to back a Democratic candidate, flooding voters’ mailboxes over the past eight weeks with attack ads on a fellow Democrat supported by teachers unions…..In the 43rd Assembly District seat, being vacated by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Burbank, due to term limits, an independent expenditure committee called the Parent Teacher Alliance, sponsored by the California Charter School Association Advocates, has spent $1.2 million as of Friday, state campaign finance records show. Parent Teacher Alliance is not associated with the well-known Parent Teacher Association.

Records show that donors to the CCSA Advocates Independent Expenditure Committee include Michael Bloomberg, Doris Fisher, Jim Walton and Eli Broad.

Glendale City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian has been backed by the California Teachers Association, which is considered among the most powerful lobbyists in Sacramento. Glendale City Councilwoman Laura Friedman has been endorsed by the California Charter School Association Advocates, the political arm of the CCSA. The union and education reformers have clashed over education policies like teacher tenure and the expansion of charter schools.

How touching to see that billionaires like former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Doris Fisher (of the Gap business), Jim Walton (of Walmart), and Eli Broad are deeply engaged in financing the phony “Parent Teacher Alliance.”

Here is the spending:

State campaign finance records also show the California Teachers Association’s Independent Expenditure Committee has spent $47,721 on the race: $35,791 on mailers opposing Friedman and $11,930 supporting Kassakhian.

The CCSA committee has spent $910,791 supporting Friedman and $304,355 opposing Kassakhian as of Friday, records show.

This is the score: $1.2 million assembled by the California Charter Schools Association to beat Kassakhian; $47,721 spent by the California Teachers Association to support Kassakhian. Goliath vs. David.

The fight over charter schools in California is really a fight over the future of public education in the state. Will there be public education 20 years from now, or will community schools be run by entrepreneurs and charter chains whose corporate leaders are based in other states?

If you live in the 43rd Assembly District, please vote for Ardy Kassakhian. DON’T LET THE BILLIONAIRES BUY YOUR PUBLIC SCHOOL.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Hoax, Privatization

California Legislators and Governor Brown: No Accountability for Charters

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2016 //
32

Jessica Calefati of the San Jose Mercury-News wrote a shocking series about the online charter schools of K12 Inc., which have the lowest graduation rate in the state, and which counts students “present” if they log on for only one minute.

Millions of public dollars fund the California Virtual Academies (CAVA), which operates for profit and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, founded by Michael and Lowell Milken, delivers a substandard education. It should be closely supervised or shut down.

Unfortunately, as Calefati discovered, the legislature is moving at a snail’s pace to authorize an audit of CAVA. Nothing seems to be happening. Much clucking of tongues, but no action.

CAVA is the lowest performing school in the state. Why hasn’t it been shut down long ago? If you recall, K12’s online charter in Tennessee was the lowest performing school in the state, and not even the State Commissioner Kevin Huffman was able to get it closed. Why?

Governor Brown likes charters. When he was mayor of Oakland, he opened two charters. The legislature has been unwilling to stand up to the rich and powerful California Charter Schools Association. CCSA should be demanding close scrutiny of CAVA, whose tactics embarrasses all charter schools. Their silence is deafening.

When the legislature dared to pass a bill banning for-profit charters, Governor Brown vetoed it. He also vetoed a bill to require charter schools to ban conflicts of interest.

So California has a greedy, rapacious charter industry, whose growth will continue unchecked until public schools enroll only students the charters don’t want. Fraud, waste, and abuse in the charter industry will grow without oversight. Conflicts of interest and nepotism will proliferate. Charters will continue to be run by entrepreneurs and speculators.

Does anyone think these developments are “reform”? From a distance, they look like graft and corruption.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Half the Juniors in 2 Palo Alto High Schools Opt Out

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2016 //
8

Students at two high schools in Palo Alto, California, opted out of the tests of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, the Common Core test funded by the US Department of Education.

 

“For the second year in a row, both Palo Alto and Gunn high schools failed to meet the government’s required participation rates for new standardized test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment, with about half of the junior classes choosing to opt out.

 

“About 47 percent of Gunn juniors and 61 percent of Paly juniors submitted exemptions, with their parents’ permission, to opt out of two days of testing the week of May 16, according to Janine Penney, the district’s manager of research, evaluation and assessment.

 

“At the elementary level, approximately 1 percent of third through fifth graders opted out, according to Penney, and less than 3 percent of middle schoolers.

 

“California schools are required by federal law to meet a 95 percent participation rate. Schools with federal Title I status, meaning they have high percentages of low-income students, could face losing federal funding if they don’t meet the participation threshold. Paly and Gunn are not Title I schools.”

 

California high school students are smart. Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.

 

 

Categories California, Common Core, Education Reform, Standardized Testing, Students
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