Archives for category: California
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Peter Greene: The Attack on Tenure in Minnesota

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2016 //
4

Peter Greene analyzed the lawsuit filed in Minnesota against teacher tenure, a copycat Vergara lawsuit.

 

The same arguments about lazy teachers, incompetent teachers, harm to minority children, etc. are offered in Minnesota, as they are in New York, and they are as groundless there as the court ruled they are in California today.

 

In California, the lawsuit was filed by “Students Matter,” an organization that consists of Silicon Valley zillionaire David Welch.

 

Greene finds a familiar lineup of groups and funders in Minnesota:

 

The anti-tenure lawsuit is funded by the usual suspects– the Partnership for Education Justice (funded by the Walton family and Eli Broad), and Students for Education Reform (an astroturf group used as a front by Education Reform Now, the lobbying brother of Democrats for Education Reform, an astroturf group of hedge funders which is also heavily funded by Broad and Walton)….

 

Look– there are plenty of legitimate conversations to be had about teacher job protections, hiring and firing practices, etc. But this lawsuit, like Vergara in California and Campbell Brown’s lawsuit in NY, is not an attempt to have that conversation. It’s simply an attempt to break the teachers’ union and destroy teacher job protections so that teaching staff costs can be kept low and teachers themselves can be cowed and bullied into silence and compliance.

 

Put another way, this is not remotely pro-student, and is strictly anti-teacher. It’s thick-sliced unvarnished baloney, and the fact that it is an attack on teachers is bad enough, but in attacking teachers, it also leaves unquestioned the attacks on student facilities, schools and resources, while trying to make conditions inside schools that much worse. It’s cynical, it’s destructive, and it’s just plain mean. Let’s hope this doesn’t drag over another few years to another lousy conclusion.

 

The “Partnership for Education Justice” is Campbell Brown’s organization, which rails against unions and tenure. It filed a lawsuit in New York as well. Brown has long contended that tenure and unions protect sexual predators in the schools, although state laws give grounds to remove sexual predators promptly.

Categories California, Minnesota, New York, Teacher Tenure

BREAKING NEWS: California Appeals Court Unanimously Reverses Vergara Decision!

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2016 //
22

The Vergara decision, intended to eliminate teacher tenure and seniority, was unanimously reversed by the California appeals court.

 

The decision by the high court reverses the 2014 decision by Superior Court Judge Rudolph Treu, which claimed that tenure violated the rights of minority children. The Treu decision relied heavily on testimony by Raj Chetty. The Treu decision was strongly opposed by teachers’ unions.

 

Just days ago, former TV commentator Campbell Brown filed a Vergara-style lawsuit in Minnesota. She and her financial backers had previously filed a similar suit in New York.

 

The attack on teacher tenure was part of the larger corporate reform effort to cripple teachers’ unions and to make it easy to fire teachers without due process.

 

 

Categories California, Teacher Tenure

Los Angeles: An Astonishing Swindle of Public Money

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2016 //
28

This story is incredible, astonishing, unbelievable.

In 2013, the operators of a Los Angeles charter school were convicted of misappropriating $200,000 from school funds. The school is called Ivy Academia. The founders are in jail.

Recently, the school complained that the district had failed to provide adequate quarters, as it was required to do under the Starr’s very charter-friendly law. The matter went to an arbitrator, who awarded Ivy Academica $7.2 million dollars plus legal fees of $625,000.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

“The Los Angeles Unified School District must pay $7.1 million to a San Fernando Valley charter school for failing to provide the school with rent-free classroom space, a violation of state law.

“School districts are required to share classrooms and other facilities with charter schools but, for three years starting in 2007, Ivy Academia Entrepreneurial Charter did not get enough space for its 1,100 students.

“The district’s approval of the charter required arbitration of legal disputes.

“In his written ruling, arbitrator John Zebrowski said that the district’s failure to comply with the law harmed children attending the charter during those years because it forced the school to use some money intended for educational programs to lease a building. Zebrowski said students were further harmed because the building leased by the charter was inferior to what it would have received from L.A. Unified….

“Ivy Academia spent $3 million on rent and other costs from 2007-10, but the arbitrator said L.A. Unified should be on the hook for more money because he believed the property denied to the charter had a higher value. The district must also pay the charter $650,000 in attorneys’ fees.

“Ivy was forced to cobble together multiple private facilities that were inferior and didn’t have things like playing fields, libraries, permanent science labs, and enough special education space,” Paul Minney, an attorney for the charter school, said in a statement.

“L.A. Unified acknowledged that it did not provide Ivy Academia the space it is entitled to under Proposition 39, which requires districts to offer charters facilities that are reasonably equivalent to those provided to students in traditional public schools.

“David Huff, an attorney representing the school district, said L.A. Unified simply didn’t have the space during the years that it did not comply.

“Huff also pointed to a criminal case that in April 2013 found two of Ivy Academia’s leaders guilty of misuse of public funds.

“According to prosecutors in that case, Yevgeny “Eugene” Selivanov negotiated the 10-year lease of a building for $18,390 a month but then charged the school $43,870 a month to sublease the property.

“It is the district’s theory that had we made a compliant offer of space. . . Ivy would have never accepted because it would have ended their $25,000 a month profit,” Huff said.

“But the arbitrator said the district could not prove that the charter would have rejected such an offer.”

So the charter operators were making a cool $25,000 in profit every month by over gargling the district. And the arbitrator rules that money will be subtracted from the district’s overcrowded schools, which have inadequate repairs and few arts teachers, to further enrich this school, even as its founders sit in jail.

An ally in Los Angeles wonders if the district’s case was sabotaged by a Broadie plant on the inside.

Astonishing.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Los Angeles

More than 100 California Researchers Call for Moratorium on Common Core Assessments

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2016 //
24

More than 100 university-based education researchers in California called for a moratorium on Common Core testing. 

 

Among many excellent point, the group’s statement said:

 

The rhetoric surrounding the CCSS is not supported by a compelling body of research. For example, the CCSS is often presented as a way to enhance rigor in public schools. However, state-level standards varied so widely that no definitive statement can be made as to whether the CCSS is more or less rigorous. Proponents have argued that the CCSS ensures that all students receive an equal education, but even the courts recognize that high expectations without adequate resources can further disadvantage the students in most need. Overall, there is not a compelling body of research supporting the notion that a nationwide set of curriculum standards, including those like the CCSS, will either raise the quality of education for all children or close the gap between different groups of children. Therefore attaching high-stakes testing to the CCSS cannot be the solution for improving student learning.

 

Yet California is moving forward with high-stakes tests, tied to these unproven, untested standards.

 

Based on those test scores, any number of high-stakes decisions may follow, including student promotion or graduation, teacher evaluation and compensation, school closure, and possibly the withholding of federal student financial aid for teacher-preparation programs (as proposed in the draft of the federal Teacher Preparation Regulations of Title II of the Higher Education Act, scheduled to be finalized and released around the time of this writing), all of which are decisions using scientifically discredited methods, namely, the use of value-added modeling that purport to attribute gains in test scores to such factors. Perhaps not surprising, in California, public approval for implementation of the CCSS has declined 17% in just one year, with more voters now opposing the CCSS than supporting them….

 

Testing experts have raised significant concerns about all (SBAC, PARCC, Pearson) assessments, including the lack of basic principles of sound science, such as construct validity, research-based cut scores, computer adaptability, inter-rater reliability, and most basic of all, independent verification of validity. Here in California, the SBAC assessments have been carefully examined by independent examiners of the test content who concluded that they lack validity, reliability, and fairness, and should not be administered, much less be considered a basis for high-stakes decision making.18 When asked for documentation of the validity of the CA tests, the CA Department of Education failed to make such documentation public. Even SBAC’s own contractor, Measured Progress, in 2012 gave several warnings, including against administering these tests on computers.

 

Nonetheless, CA has moved forward in full force. In spring 2015, 3.2 million students in California (grades 3-8 and 11) took the new, computerized Math and English Language Arts/Literacy CAASPP tests (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress). The tests were developed by SBAC, and administered and scored by Educational Testing Service. Scores were released to the public in September 2015, and as many predicted, a majority of students failed (that is, were categorized to be below proficient). SBAC itself expected that pass rates would go down, and would be particularly low for certain groups, including English-language learners (who make up over 22% of the enrollment in CA public schools), whom SBAC predicted would see an approximately 90% fail rate….

 

Although proponents argue that the CCSS promotes critical thinking skills and student-centered learning (instead of rote learning), research demonstrates that imposed standards, when linked with high-stakes testing, not only deprofessionalizes teaching and narrows the curriculum, but in so doing, also reduces the quality of education and student learning, engagement, and success. The impact is also on student psychological well-being: Without an understanding that the scores have not been proven to be valid or fair for determining proficiency or college readiness, students and their parents are likely to internalize failing labels with corresponding beliefs about academic potential.

 

All in all, this is an excellent statement. Policymakers in California should read it and take it seriously.

 

 

Categories California, Common Core, Testing

California Charter Game: Rejected by District, Rejected by County, Appeal to State and….

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
17

District officials in California have confided in me that it is virtually impossible to stop a charter proposal, no matter how bad it is or how little it is needed. If the district turns down the proposal, the charter advocates appeal to the Los Angeles County School Board, where they are often approved. In the off-chance that both the district and the county turn down their proposal, the advocates appeal to the state, where they are almost certain to win approval.

 

Here is an example.

 

Two parents proposed to open a dual-language immersion school that would teach Spanish, German, Italian, and French. The school would be called the International Studies Language Academy. The Glendale school board voted against the proposal, 5-0. The proponents appealed to the County office, which did an extensive review and turned them down, 5-1.

 

Staff at the Los Angeles County Office of Education weighed the petition as part of the Charter School Review Team, made up of county officials drawn from various departments, including the controller’s office, the curriculum department and the division of accountability.

 

County officials determined the plan “provides an unsound educational program” and that the petitioners “are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the proposed educational program,” according to the report.

 

“We’re disappointed, but know the political climate is tough for charters in the L.A. area right now,” Bonacci said in an email.

 

Similar to Glendale school board members, county officials found several faults with the school’s financial plan and deemed it “unrealistic,” in the report, highlighting how the school underestimated teacher salaries, benefits and the cost for books and materials.

 

In another instance, county officials noted that the school planned to mail bank statements directly to Academica, a Florida-based charter school operator.

 

The school’s lack of internal control in processing checks “can result in fiscal mismanagement,” the report stated.

 

Despite those findings, the petition has won support from the California Charter Schools Assn., whose manager for regional advocacy, Allison Hendrick, urged that the county board approve the appeal.

 

Ah, so the school will be managed by Academica, the political powerhouse in Florida that operates for profit. Due diligence would suggest that the California officials learn more about Academica, whose owners have assembled a vast real estate empire. In Florida, Academica had the help of a state senator who chairs the education appropriations committee. Who will help them in California?

 

Let’s see what happens to this petition, where local officials declared it to be pedagogically and financially unsound.

 

 

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

California Charter Association Seeks to Gut Powers of L.A. Inspector of Charters

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2016 //
17

The California Charter Association has put its heft and money behind a bill to limit the authority of the Los Angeles Inspector General for charter schools. The CCSA knows that neither the state nor the district have the resources to audit hundreds of charter schools. The bill is intended to remove accountability and transparency from charters, leaving them free to cherry pick students, exclude children with disabilities, inflate their enrollment numbers, and–well–steal public money. Charter school nirvana: No checks, no balances, no monitoring.

 

 

Robert Skeels commented on this article.

 

 

“It is in the public interest that charter schools be subject to a modicum of oversight. One would think that it would be public policy that any organization that takes public money should be subject to public scrutiny. AB 2806 would severely hamper the OIG’s already minimal ability to investigate an industry that essentially runs with no other public oversight or control. The charter industry’s attempts to eliminate this one mechanism for holding them accountable is unconscionable, but not unexpected.

 

 

“The irony of well-heeled charter school executives like Caprice Young decrying the OIG should not go unnoticed. In defense of her beleaguered Magnolia charter chain, Young has written several Op-Eds. In them she discusses a 2015 audit of the schools claiming it was “financially solvent”, but omits that scores of previous audits found the chain insolvent. For instance, the 2014 audit revealed them “operating on a $1.7 million deficit” and that there multiple instances of “missing, misused funds” (SPRC, 2014). This misrepresentation by omission alone impeaches Young’s credibility beyond any reasonable standard. Moreover, it demonstrates why public agencies like the OIG and OIG are so critical. AB 2806 is further evidence of the lucrative charter school industry’s revenue-first agenda, and their ongoing efforts to avoid any oversight is another example of how they harm both their own students, and the students in our public schools.”

 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools

Oakland: District in Turmoil Under Broadie Superintendent

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2016 //
24

A few days ago, John Thompson wrote a post about the Broadie superintendents, referring both to the one in Oklahoma City and to a story in the New York Times about the new gun in town in Oakland, California.

 

Now comes this story from Oakland about the turmoil in the district as the Broadie superintendent goes into disruption mode, threatening to close schools, fire principals, and lay off teachers. Why? Those low test scores.

 

Seventeen principals have received warning letters that they may be removed or reassigned. A number of schools have learned that they may have to move for charter schools to “co-locate” onto their campuses and a large number of new teachers have just learned they will be fired at the end of June.

 

Staff at Place@Prescott in West Oakland are fearful about what will happen to their elementary school if they lose their principal, Enomwoyi Booker, who is one of the principals who received a March 15 warning letter, according to a teacher at the school who spoke on condition of anonymity.

 

The teacher said the principal, who has been at Prescott for over a decade, “is building rapport with the community. She is popular with the staff and the community. We have spent years building a (community) core that comes together and helps out.”

 

“We’re fragile,” a poor school in a poor community, the teacher said. “We are partial to our leadership from the years of being deprived of materials. We (finally) get some money and some inkling of materials, and then they take the leadership away.”

 

“The district administration says one thing, but the next thing you know, they shut you down or throw schools together. We don’t know what’s really going on.”

 

The teacher said she did not want Prescott to have to share its campus with a charter school.

 

“If we have to share it with another school, that will kill it,” she said. “With all the gentrification that is going on (in West Oakland), we feel kind of threatened.”

 

 

Sixty teachers have been warned that they are on the list to be released without right of appeal.

 

Oakland has been under Broadie control for about 13 years. When does the transformation happen? How many children’s lives and adult careers will be ruined by Broad-trained disciples before this “reign of error” ends? When will common sense return in California? Must be wait for Eli Broad to move on to his next hobby or to another dimension?

Categories Broad Foundation, California, Failure

Jack Covey Lambastes the California Charter School Association–and His Comment Disappears

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2016 //
14

Jack Covey is a teacher in Los Angeles and a frequent commenter on this blog. He recently watched a video of the keynote address of Jed Wallace, the CEO and President of the California Charter School Association. And he got very angry. He wrote the following comment following the video. After an hour, it had disappeared.
CCSA President and CEO Jed Wallace gives the Charter Conference Keynote

 

 

 

 

 
CCSA CEO Jed Wakkace started blathering about how his future lawyer teenage daughter and he were bemoaning the lack of “reasonable equality” in charter schools which co-locate on public school campuses.
He was trying to make this some kind of heart-warming charter-school-promoting story… and I went off in the COMMENTS section:
—————————–

(first to COMMENT … see how long this stays before being removed)
————————————

Jed,
Your daughter and you are kvetching about wanting “reasonably equivalent facilities” for your CCSSA charter schools, yet you simultaneously seem to be against “reasonable equality” in other  aspects of education.
To wit, parents whose children have been booted out (err… counseled out) of CCSA charter schools sued these charter school officials —- CCSA members, of course —- because, when giving them the boot, the school officials did not afford those students the same due process rights as those in the traditional public schools. They wanted a judge to compel California charter schools to make charter school students “reasonably equivalent” with public school students when it comes to due process in expulsions.
And what did CCSA’s lawyers do?
They argued in court that charter schools were “private entities” and, as such, had no legal obligation to provide any due process to students, making them the analogous equivalent of the “at will” teachers who teach at charter schools. If the charter school people don’t like you for whatever reason (extra cost, being troublesome in some way, low test scores, Special Ed., immigrant who’s brand new to learning English, homeless, foster care, etc.) .. you’re gone, baby, gone… and there’s nothing that the parent or the child can do about it.
Why don’t you chew on that sad legal and educational reality with your future lawyer daughter that you’re bragging so much about about in your speech?
Jed, if and when you and your daughter question your consciences in the dark hours of the night, and consider this specious charter school policy, will your daughter think or believe that you and the CCSA are the “good guys’, or that your are on “the side of the angels” when you and your CCSA legal team makes such a repellent legal argument?
In response to this, in Sacramento, a law was being considered that would compel charter schools to provide their students the same legal rights to a due process that their counterparts in the traditional public schools enjoy.
What did you and CCSA do?
True to form, you flooded the relevant politicians with lobbyists in an all-hands-on-deck maneuver to kill, or at least block this legislation, and it worked. It’s been temporarily tabled. … so as a result, you can throw as many kids in the metaphorical trash all you like, and not have to answer for it.
Way to go! You guys are all about the kids!
Regarding those students who are dumped by charter schools like so much trash, where do you think they end up? At the traditional public schools that you and the CCSA love to malign so much. I’m teaching three of these charter school dumpees myself right now, including one who, along with a her mother and siblings, lives a nomadic existence going from shelter to shelter… and you know what, Jed?
She shows up to my class every day feeling the little security she has in life, knowing full well that neither I nor my principal are going to kick her to curb when the issues and circumstances of her life manifest themselves — in being late for school, or in her acting out with bad behavior or her low test scores… or whatever.
In other words, when it comes to my moral obligations as an educator, I can sleep at night.
How about you?
How about your fellow charter school CEO’s in that audience?
How about those teachers who work in your charters and who do not fulfill these same moral obligations to students in the manner that my fellow public school teachers and I do?
Indeed, how DO YOU charter honchos sleep at night?
Oh, I know… on a bed full of money (I stole that from Don Draper — “Babylon” — SEASON ONE, MAD MEN).
Regarding this dual standard for due process that charters school officials’ claim for their schools, I recommend this article by Dr. Preston Green (posted on Jennifer “Edushyster” Berkshire’s blog) :
http://edushyster.com/signing-their-rights-away/

—————–

PRESTON GREEN: “Charter advocates claims that charter schools are public schools because they are open to all, do not charge tuition, and do not have special entrance requirements.
“But what about student rights? State and federal courts have issued rulings suggesting that students attending California charter schools do not have the same due process rights as those enjoyed by public-school students.
“In Scott B. v. Board of Trustees of Orange County High School of Arts, a state appellate court found that charter schools were exempt from due process procedures that applied to public-school expulsions. In reaching this conclusion, the court observed that the state education code generally exempted charter schools from rules that applied to traditional public schools, and the expulsion statute was one of those rules.”

Categories California, Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Reform

Thomas Ultican: Time to Abolish Charter Schools!

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2016 //
15

Thomas Ultican is a teacher of physics and mathematics at a high school in California. The students in his school are 50% English language learners and 75% Title I (poor).

 

He writes here that the charter experiment has been a disaster for public schools. California was second in the nation to pass a charter law in 1992, and now 9% of the children are in charter schools. While the charter schools have a rich and powerful lobby, the public schools suffer from underfunding and overcrowding. The charters get to choose their students, and some charters are located in affluent communities, where they serve the children of the rich. This is very far from what charters were supposed to be when they were first proposed in 1988. Ultican writes that it is time to change the law in California and ban charters outright.

 

Ultican writes:

 

Today, twelve percent of all schools in California are charter schools with 9% of all state supported students attending charter schools. In these more than two decades; charter schools have enriched some people – have harmed public schools – have not improved publicly financed education – have increased segregation – have increased the cost of publicly financed education – have paid foreign based entities to operate schools in California – have generated massive fraud.

 

The California charter school experiment should be ended and these undemocratic publicly financed institutions should be carefully transitioned into the public schools system.

 

 

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

Vergara Advocates Use Fake Endorsement by Civil Rights Leader 

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2016 //
8

Students Matter–the billionaire-supported lawsuit to strip California teachers of tenure rights–produced a phony endorsement of their cause by Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers and iconic civil rights leader. When Huerta learned that this anti-union group was twisting her words, she demanded that they remove her name and words from their advertising. 
“Huerta expressed shock when she was told there was a Students Matter press release on its website claiming she had endorsed the lawsuit.
“I never said that,” she said regarding the quote in the release….
“This just goes to show you the extremes that the backers of this case will go to push their agenda,” said Claudia Briggs, a spokesperson for the California Teachers Association (CTA), one of Vergara‘s defendants….
“Huerta joined educators and community members for a news conference…and spoke of her opposition to the lawsuit, which she says is not focused on improving the educational system in the state. The only way to do that, she said, is to provide more support for teachers, adding that they deserve better salaries, fewer students in their classrooms and the support of their principals.
“The founder of the Dolores Huerta Foundation also talked about the importance of teachers having a strong voice for students and described how Students Matter misrepresented details of the case in an attempt to get her support.
“In a CTA/CFT press release, she said: “I strongly believe in providing all children with equal access to a quality public education, and that starts with having educators who have the professional rights to stand up and speak out for the students in their classrooms. Students Matter is attempting to deceive the courts and public opinion in the same way they attempted to deceive me and it’s time to tell the truth.” Huerta’s cease-and-desist letter demanded that RALLY “cease the use of my name and image on your website, studentsmatter.org and all collateral digital platforms and materials.”
“In the letter, she added, “I am extremely disheartened and disappointed in the way you misrepresented the facts in order to get me to align with your organization and in particular the Vergara v. State of California lawsuit. I am now very much aware of your agenda and it is in direct conflict with my beliefs that every child deserves a quality teacher who understands our students’ issues while maintaining their job protections.”
“Having carefully reviewed the facts, I do NOT support the Vergara v. State of California lawsuit,” she wrote. “All my life I have worked to fight discrimination, uphold the rights of workers and improve social and economic conditions for our students and their families. I am not going to stop now by aligning myself with an organization that blatantly misrepresents the facts and pushes an agenda to strip workers of their rights for the financial gain of its backers.”

Categories California, Education Reform
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »