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Los Angeles: Pro-Public Education Candidates Lead in School Board Races

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
5

Voters favored candidates endorsed by the United Teachers of Los Angeles for all four contested seats on the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

Two of the UTLA candidates, both incumbents–Jackie Goldberg and George McKenna–won outright with a majority.

Two are leading their races but heading for a run-off.

To read the latest results, go to this website and scroll to the bottom for school board races.

George McKenna (pro-public education) ran unopposed and received 100% of the vote.

Jackie Goldberg (pro-public education) was the target of hate mail sent to voters in her district but she forcefully rebutted them and was leading with 55.62% of the vote.

Scott Schmerelson (pro-public education) was the target of vicious anti-Semitic flyers, was leading with 42.13%, compared to the runner-up with 20.258%. There will be a runoff.

Patricia Castellanos (pro-public education) held 26.21% of the vote, followed by Tanya Ortiz Franklin with 23.83% of the vote. There will be a runoff. There were three other candidates running for the seat in this district.

The final vote will not be released until all the absentee and mail-in ballots have been counted.

The pro-public education slate has a good chance of retaining a 4-3 majority on the board if they win the runoffs, despite the millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of scurrilous flyers distributed by the charter industry. The biggest spender in the election was billionaire Bill Bloomfield, who lives in Manhattan Beach, not Los Angeles, and has frequently donated to Republican candidates.

Here is UTLA’s reaction:

Huge night for UTLA: Goldberg & McKenna win; Schmerelson & Castellanos in first place, advance to runoffs

LOS ANGELES — Facing outsized spending by the charter lobby and billionaire privatizers, UTLA educators and parents scored big wins in the LAUSD School Board races by early Wednesday morning. Jackie Goldberg and George McKenna easily won reelection to their seats, and Scott Schmerelson and Patricia Castellanos placed first and fought off demeaning smear campaigns to advance to the November 2020 runoffs.

UTLA ran the most robust ground game in our history, proving the power of people versus money. While the charter lobby put hate ads in the mail, we put people in the streets, walking and talking to voters. Hundreds of UTLA members worked more than 1,000 neighborhood and precinct walks alongside our parent and community allies, reaching more than 20,000 voters. On average, when we talked to a voter, 8 out of 10 times they committed to supporting our candidates. Our member texting campaign reached an additional 100,000 people who vote by absentee ballot.

“We ran an impressive and positive ground game, fueled by the passion and enthusiasm of teachers and parents who believe in public education,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said. “The charter lobby’s hateful, vitriolic attack ads can’t match the impact of a teacher at the door, talking one-on-one to a voter. Since our strike and through this election, our communities are waking up to the billionaire attacks on our democracy and our public schools.”

Fries Elementary parent Alicia Baltazar spent multiple weekends walking precincts and phone banking for Patricia Castellanos.

“Like with the strike, I felt the support of the community and I had great conversations with voters,” Baltazar said. “But it was really disturbing to watch the charter lobby and a few wealthy individuals spend millions to fight the candidates supported by teachers and parents. Why couldn’t they send that money to our schools instead?”

The California Charter Schools Association and billionaires like Bill Bloomfield funneled more than $6.2 million into the race against UTLA’s endorsed candidates, making it the most expensive primary school board race in US history. That money funded an aggressive mail campaign that hit new lows, including a series of racist, sexist, and ageist ads.

The charter industry came hard in this election because they suffered a series of losses in the aftermath of our strike, including increased public criticism of unregulated charter expansion and notable policy losses, such as our contract win on co-location and AB 1505, the first serious charter regulation in decades.

In the Democratic U.S. Presidential race, Bernie Sanders won the California primary. UTLA was an early supporter of his campaign, and this week Bernie weighed in on our School Board fight, tweeting support to his 10 million followers and endorsing Patricia Castellanos.

Now, the work continues to secure a general election win for Castellanos and Schmerelson in November. We will double down on the positive work from this campaign for the next election and beyond. The school board wins give us momentum in current reopener contract bargaining and propel us onto the next steps of our three-year path: protecting healthcare in bargaining to begin this fall and winning the School Board runoffs and the Schools & Communities First funding measure in November 2020.

“We continue our fight not just to reject the billionaire agenda — the politics of fear, hate and oppression — but to build a massive movement to reinvest in public education for the schools our students deserve, said UTLA President-Elect Cecily Myart-Cruz.”

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UTLA, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union local, is proud to represent more than 35,000 teachers and health & human services professionals in district and charter schools in LAUSD.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Lies, Los Angeles, Privatization

Thomas Ultican on The City Fund and Its Determination to Disrupt and Destroy Public Schools and Democracy

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
8

Thomas Ultican is a retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics who has developed a passionate interest in the inner workings of the Privatization and Disruption Movement (also known as the Destroy Public Education Movement).

This is his account of the new and very well-funded plaything of the Billionaire Boys (and Girls) Club: the City Fund.

It sees itself as part of a movement, but it is not. It is merely a hobby for those who have so much money that they can”t find useful things to do with it, like feed the hungry, fight for a higher minimum wage, create health clinics for children and families, or even restore the arts and libraries in schools that have lost them to budget cuts.

There are a few things you need to know about this “movement.” It is a movement of the elite, the super-rich, the powerful. It has no troops, just well-paid minions. As long as the money keeps flowing, there will be takers, ready to sign on to the job of destroying democratically governed public schools and replacing them with privately managed schools. There is so much money available to them from billionaires like Reed Hastings and John Arnold that they can flood local school board elections with more cash than any of the other candidates and put anti-public school candidates on the board of the district.

The City Fund uses billionaire cash to undermine democracy. It does nothing to alleviate poverty or reduce segregation. Such things are not important to them, other than dreaming that changes in the ownership of schools from public to private will someday, somehow reduce poverty.

Here is the other interesting fact about the staff of the City Fund. Nothing they have done has ever improved education. All of their endeavors have failed. They exist to disrupt and destroy communities and their attachment to their local public schools. As one surveys the disaster of the Tennessee “Achievement School District,” the pathetic results of the New Orleans all-charter district (where nearly half the charters are failing schools), one wonders why the billionaires pay them to sow more chaos. The billionaires sit back and watch the fun from afar.

Ultican has created a sociogram of the main actors. None of them can point to a district that has “closed the achievement gap.” None of them can point to a success story that vaulted an entire district to the peak of excellence. Yet there they are, sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars, primed to impose their will on the people and deprive them of their right to elect their representatives.

How long will the billionaires continue to fund failure?

There is something in the City Fund that is strangely detached from the lives of children and families, something completely indifferent to the importance of communities, something soulless in the work they do to rearrange the lives of other people. It as though they are looking at cities where they never lived from a height of 30,000 feet, deciding the fate of people they never met, people who are not on the payroll of billionaires.

They exist in a luxurious, air-conditioned bubble, remote from the cares of families who worry about feeding their children, paying their rent or mortgage, having a decent job, planning for the future.

They are the outsiders who land in a community to tear it apart, then exit to do the same to another community.

Strange what some people will do for money, a lot of money. Power is intoxicating. So is money.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Portfolio District, Poverty, Privatization

The City Fund, Created by Billionaires to Disrupt Public Schools and Abolish Elected Boards

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
6

A relatively new corporate reform group—the City Fund—acts as a pass-through for billionaires Reed Hastings (Netflix) and John Arnold (ex-Enron). The staff consists of six or seven (or more) veterans of the privatization movement. It opened its operations with $200 million in pledges from its billionaire funders. It has staff but no members. Its mission is to push the “portfolio district” (i.e., more charter schools) in designated cities. In short, the City Fund was designed to advance the goals of its billionaire funders, who have no relationship to the cities whose schools they want to disrupt. Grassroots groups in every city and state can only dream about what they could do if they had even $1 million in the bank.

One of the staff, Chris Barbic, started a charter chain in Houston (YES Prep), then became leader of the disastrous Achievement School District in Tennessee; he promised to lift the state’s lowest performing schools into the ranks of its highest performing in only five years by handing them over to charter operators. The ASD burned through $100 million in Race to the Top and failed to turn any of its takeover schools into a high-performing school. If anything, it proved that turning low-performing schools over to charter operators doesn’t produce change.

Another staffer, Neerav Kingsland, is a law school graduate and a Broadie who was CEO of New Schools for New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans eliminated the teachers’ union and eventually eliminated every public school. The 2019 state report card rated 49% of the schools as D or F schools. The students in the lowest performing schools are almost all black. Hardly a success story.

Matt Barnum writes in Chalkbeat that the City Fund has dispensed over $100 million to help achieve its funders’ goal of detaching schools from elected school boards.

The newest major player in school reform has already issued more than $110 million in grants to support the growth of charter and charter-like schools across the U.S.

The City Fund’s spending, detailed on a new website, means the organization has quickly become one of the country’s largest K-12 education grantmakers. The money has gone to organizations in more than a dozen cities, including Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Denver, Memphis, and Oakland.

The spending is evidence that The City Fund’s brand of school reform continues to attract major financial support — and may foretell more battles over education politics in those cities…

The City Fund’s strategy is to grow the number of schools, including charters, run by nonprofits rather than traditional school boards. Advocates say that shift will help low-income students of color, pointing to academic improvements in virtually all-charter New Orleans as one example. Critics argue that strategy undermines teachers unions, democratically elected school boards, and existing public schools.

Overall, The City Fund says it has raised $225 million, largely from Netflix founder Reed Hastings and Texas philanthropist John Arnold. (Chalkbeat is funded by Arnold Ventures.) The organization has also created a political arm, Public School Allies, which has raised $15 million from Hastings and Arnold to support officials vying for state and local office.

The funders of the City Fund think that democratically elected school boards are the biggest obstacle to school reform. They like charter schools and stake takeovers. The fact that they have zero evidence that their strategies improve education doesn’t stop them, as long as the money keeps flowing. Unless you are impressed by a district, New Orleans, where half the schools are rated D or F.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, New Orleans, Tennessee

John Thompson: How the Billionaire Boys (and Girls) Club Ravaged America’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2020 //
7

John Thompson is a historian and a retired teacher in Oklahoma. This article appeared originally in the Oklahoma Observer.

How the Billionaire Boys Club Ravaged America’s Public Schools

SLAYING GOLIATH The Passionate Resistance To Privatization And The Right to Save America’s Public Schools

Diane Ravitch started writing Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools in 2018 as teachers strikes erupted across the nation. These walkouts began in Red states where conservative legislatures drastically cut funding to under-resourced schools. Even in the places with the lowest salaries, like Oklahoma, educators were motivated by terrible working conditions that meant awful learning environments for students.

It wasn’t just the lack of money, and the resulting damage done by huge class sizes, a lack of textbooks, and neglected buildings, that motivated teachers. They also were resisting the disruption caused by corporate school reform, and the damage it had done to their kids. Teachers were sick of teach-to-the-test malpractice, reward and punish cultures and mandates that produce in-one-ear-out-the-other skin-deep instruction. The joy of teaching and learning was being undermined by the privatization of education. Many or most of these teachers put up with “reform” as long as they could before joining the “Resistance.”

Slaying Goliath is the third transformative book written by Ravitch after changing her mind on education policy. Although her academic histories of education had always been more balanced than progressives acknowledged, Ravitch had worked in the Education Department of President George H. W. Bush, and she had served on the board of the conservative Fordham Foundation. In 1992, she went to a briefing with David Kearns, the former Xerox CEO, where the Sandia Report’s findings were explained. Kearns and other reformers were outraged that scholars challenged the alarmism of “A Nation at Risk,” the infamous Reagan-sponsored indictment of public education. They refused to release the report which explained that American schools weren’t failing.

Ravitch recalls the way that education scholars were vilified for revealing that the so-called “crisis in education” was a “politically inspired hoax,” and a “manufactured crisis.” In a passage which exemplifies Ravitch’s candor, she writes about the late Gerald Bracey, “a prolific and outspoken education researcher” who challenged the conventional wisdom that she was then defending. Ravitch then writes, “I personally apologize to him.”

As the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 started to undermine schooling, Ravitch joined progressive educator Deborah Meier in a dialogue which changed Ravitch and the struggle against data-driven, competition-driven reforms. In 2010, she released the Death and Life of the Great American School System and three years later, she published Reign of Error. Ravitch “renounced” her old views and exposed the “smear campaign” which she presciently described as “privatization.” They funded so-called “transformative” change, designed to drive “bad teachers,” protected by “bad unions,” out of schools.

Ravitch’s talent with words may have been as important as her evidence-based evaluation of the inherent flaws of the technocratic micromanaging known as “reform.” The initial political successes of the reformers where driven by the huge bank accounts funding savage attacks on teachers and school systems. During the height of corporate reform a decade ago, Ravitch’s ability to coin a phrase seemed to be educators’ only means of self-defense. She nailed the issue by identifying “the Billionaires Boys Club” as the sponsors of “corporate reform;” now Ravitch dubs their movement “Goliath.” Her use of the term “privatization” helped us understand that the neoliberal attack, funded by Silicon Valley and Hedge Fund elites, was interrelated with the overall privatization movement which intimidated so many Democrats into retreating from the War on Poverty and other social justice campaigns. (In doing so, she paved the way for excellent work such a OU’s Associate Dean Lawrence Baines’ Privatization of America’s Institutions.)

Now, Ravitch renames both sides of the education wars. The Billionaires tried to claim the word reform, but they never deserved that title. They are “Disrupters.” We who fought them off are the “Resistance.”

Slaying Goliath reviews the failure of NCLB, and how 1990s improvements in student performance as measured by the reliable NAEP assessment slowed and then stopped. Then, Obama era reforms put NCLB’s high stakes testing, cultures of competition, and corruption of test scores and education values on steroids. But most of the book describes the emergence, the struggles and victories of the grassroots Resistance.

During the first decade of the 21st century, the Disrupters won nearly all of their political battles as their micromanaging failed to improve schools. Their testing often turned modern classrooms into sped-up Model T assembly lines, as their behaviorism turned charter schools into weapons for undermining teacher autonomy, due process, and professionalism. During the last decade, Disrupters suffered political and educational defeats as they learned that it is easier to kick down a barn than rebuild it.

However, Ravitch reminds us that the Disrupters are still threatening. She compares today’s danger to that which faced a man who decapitated a rattlesnake but who nearly died after being bitten by the detached head.

Oklahomans should take special interest in the narratives where the snake’s head is still a threat to our schools.

Today, many or most of Goliath’s coalition have become disenchanted with standardized testing, but their Disruption model can’t function without it. Oklahomans should heed the wisdom of reform-minded Paymon Rouhanifard, the former Camden superintendent, who abolished report cards after listening to complaints, and eventually denounced standardized testing.

Rhode Island, where their state superintendent Deborah Gist tried to fire all of the teachers in Central Falls, was an example of students rising up. They staged a “Zombie March, “ and created “Take the Test” for 50 elected officials, architects, scientists, engineers, college professors, reporters, directors of nonprofit organizations, and reporters.” Even with such educated test takers, 60% didn’t score high enough to earn a diploma.

Gist called their protest “deeply irresponsible on the part of the adults” for sending the message that tests don’t matter.

Since philanthropists who still support Gist have also funded “portfolio management,” Oklahomans should read the evidence about that kinder and gentler-sounding recipe for permanent teach-to-the-test and conflict.

Oklahoma philanthropists seem to believe the spin claiming that the New Orleans portfolio model was a success, but even the researchers who support that all-charter district’s prohibitively expensive approach admit that its school quality peaked in 2013.

As Ravitch explains, “A portfolio district is one where the local board (or some entity operating in its stead) acts like a stockbrokerage, holding onto winners (schools with high test scores) and getting rid of losers (schools with low test scores), replacing them with charters.”

As she further explains, these failures are linked to the Disrupters’ infatuation with mass closures of schools. To take one example, Chicago, Ravitch explains how the Chicago Consortium on School Research (CCSR) found “few gains” due to closing schools but “a profound sense of loss: lost schools, lost communities, lost relationships. These were losses that the Disrupters never understood. Test scores were all that mattered to them.” Chicago lost over 200,000 black residents between 2000 and 2016. And the CCSR further explained how they “caused large disruptions without clear benefits for students.”

Whether in Chicago, Tulsa, or Oklahoma City, closures may produce little or no gains, but they will lead to a “period of mourning.” This is one of the many ways reason why Oklahomans should move on from the presumption that disruptive and transformative change made sense. That mindset is another legacy of not seeing “value in bonds among schools, families, and community.”

Whether you call it transformative change or disruption, this mentality was committed to “blind adherence” to the corporate demand for “outputs” that “don’t work for schools for the same reasons they don’t work for families, churches, and other institutions that function primarily on the basis of human interactions, not profits and losses.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

After Super Tuesday

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2020 //
72

How much has changed in only one week!

A week ago, Biden was counted out and had almost run out of money.

Then came South Carolina, and African American voters picked Biden and turned him into a top contender. Endorsements by Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Beto quickly buoyed Biden’s campaign.

Michael Bloomberg, the only open supporter of charter schools, was routed, despite spending more than all the other candidates put together. To everyone’s surprise, voters ignored Bloomberg’s effort to outspend everyone else, to open more offices and hire more staff. The nomination was not for sale. He did win America Samoa. But it’s only a matter of time—hours or days—until he drops out. He is no longer a factor. Now let’s see if he follows through with his pledge to support the Democratic nominee and to spend big money to match the Republican money juggernaut.

Trump doesn’t want to face Biden in November. He made that clear when he twisted the arm of the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden. He appealed publicly to China to find dirt on Biden.

I know that Sanders supports public schools. I hope that Biden doesn’t revive the Obama approach to education. Biden does support unions and recognizes that they built the middle class.

The election is not over. Warren remains but it’s hard to see how she survives after losing her home state. It’s come down to Sanders and Biden. I will gladly support either one.

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Reform, Politics

Will Los Angeles School Board Race Be Most Expensive in History?

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2020 //
0

The usual charter-friendly billionaires are pouring money into the Los Angeles school board race in hopes of breaking its pro-public education majority and restoring control to the pro-charter faction.

The usual suspects are trying to buy the board.

With majority control of Los Angeles Unified’s school board hanging in the balance, it has surprised no one that a flood of outside privatization money has put March 3’s Super Tuesday election on target to smash LAUSD’s 2017 record as the nation’s priciest school board primary ever. At last count, laundromat tycoon Bill Bloomfield and the Reed Hastings- and Jim and Alice Walton-bankrolled Charter Public Schools PAC have poured in nearly $6.4 million to stop L.A. teachers from returning to office three pro-public school progressives — George McKenna (Board District 1), Scott Schmerelson (BD 3) and Jackie Goldberg (BD 5) — and electing an education justice veteran to fill the sole open seat in BD 7, LAUSD parent and Reclaim Our Schools L.A. co-founder Patricia Castellanos.

One measure of the California Charter Schools Association’s desperation in the wake of 2018’s statewide rejection of charter billionaire-backed candidates is the $3.5 million worth of attack mailers with which Bloomfield and CCSA have inundated voters. The most surreally beyond-the-pale missives have targeted Goldberg, who last week issued a point-by-point rebuttal. A close runner-up, however, has been a smear against Schmerelson. Seizing upon some nuisance complaints filed by a member of the charter Astroturf group Speak Up, the mailers caricature some modest stock holdings in Schmerelson’s broker-controlled account — duly disclosed in the board member’s ethics filings — into a frothing vision of Trump-scaled rapaciousness and malfeasance.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Los Angeles

Los Angeles: Charter Industry Pours More Millions into School Board Election

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2020 //
14

Sara Roos writes in the new L.A. Education Examiner that more charter millions are flowing into the school board race. The biggest spender is billionaire Bill Bloomfield, who has thus far spent nearly $4 million to defeat pro-publics school incumbents. He says he is “against special interests,” but fails to recognize or admit that he alone is putting his thumb on the scale to support a pro-charter candidate. The charter industry, backed by a long list of billionaires, is a special interest with far deeper pockets than the union.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Howard University Dean: Charters and “Ed Reform” Are Really About Gentrification

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2020 //
12

This article by Leslie T. Fenwick, dean emeritus at Howard University, was published in Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog in 2013, yet it remains even relevant today. I was in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago and was astonished to see the dramatic gentrification of the city. My son was in New Orleans, having left a week before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and he was astonished by the pace of gentrification. More than 200,000 African Americans have left Chicago since 2000. Is the transformation of America’s urban districts, with high-rise condos that sell for more than $1 million and Starbucks and gourmet shops merely a coincidence?

Dean Fenwick prophesied what she saw and was remarkably prescient:

The truth can be used to tell a lie. The truth is that black parents’ frustration with the quality of public schools is at an all time righteous high. Though black and white parents’ commitment to their child’s schooling is comparable, more black parents report dissatisfaction with the school their child attends. Approximately 90 percent of black and white parents report attending parent teacher association meetings and nearly 80 percent of black and white parents report attending teacher conferences. Despite these similarities, fewer black parents (47 percent) than white parents (64 percent) report being very satisfied with the school their child attends. This dissatisfaction among black parents is so whether these parents are college-educated, high income, or poor.

The lie is that schemes like Teach For America, charter schools backed by venture capitalists, education management organizations (EMOs), and Broad Foundation-prepared superintendents address black parents concerns about the quality of public schools for their children. These schemes are not designed to cure what ails under-performing schools. They are designed to shift tax dollars away from schools serving black and poor students; displace authentic black educational leadership; and erode national commitment to the ideal of public education.

Consider these facts: With a median household income of nearly $75,000, Prince George’s County is the wealthiest majority black county in the United States. Nearly 55 percent of the county’s businesses are black-owned and almost 70 percent of residents own homes, according to the U.S. Census.  One of Prince George’s County’s easternmost borders is a mere six minutes from Washington, D.C., which houses the largest population of college-educated blacks in the nation. In the United States, a general rule of thumb is that communities with higher family incomes and parental levels of education have better public schools. So, why is it that black parents living in the upscale Woodmore or Fairwood estates of Prince George’s County or the tony Garden District homes up 16th Street in Washington D.C. struggle to find quality public schools for their children just like black parents in Syphax Gardens, the southwest D.C. public housing community?

The answer is this: Whether they are solidly middle- or upper-income or poor, neither group of blacks controls the critical economic levers shaping school reform. And, this is because urban school reform is not about schools or reform. It is about land development.

In most urban centers like Washington D.C. and Prince George’s County, black political leadership does not have independent access to the capital that drives land development. These resources are still controlled by white male economic elites. Additionally, black elected local officials by necessity must interact with state and national officials. The overwhelming majority of these officials are white males who often enact policies and create funding streams benefiting their interests and not the local black community’s interests.

The authors of “The Color of School Reform” affirm this assertion in their study of school reform in Baltimore, Detroit and Atlanta. They found:

Many key figures promoting broad efficiency-oriented reform initiatives [for urban schools] were whites who either lived in the suburbs or sent their children to private schools (Henig et al, 2001).

Local control of public schools (through elected school boards) is supposed to empower parents and community residents. This rarely happens in school districts serving black and poor students. Too often people intent on exploiting schools for their own personal gain short circuit the work of deep and lasting school and community uplift. Mayoral control, Teach for America, education management organizations and venture capital-funded charter schools have not garnered much grassroots support or enthusiasm among lower- and middle-income black parents whose children attend urban schools because these parents often view these schemes as uninformed by their community and disconnected from the best interest of their children.

In the most recent cases of Washington D.C. and Chicago, black parents and other community members point to school closings as verification of their distrust of school “reform” efforts. Indeed, mayoral control has been linked to an emerging pattern of closing and disinvesting in schools that serve black poor students and reopening them as charters operated by education management organizations and backed by venture capitalists. While mayoral control proposes to expand educational opportunities for black and poor students, more-often-than-not new schools are placed in upper-income, gentrifying white areas of town, while more schools are closed and fewer new schools are opened in lower-income, black areas thus increasing the level of educational inequity. Black inner-city residents are suspicious of school reform (particularly when it is attached to neighborhood revitalization) which they view as an imposition from external white elites who are exclusively committed to using schools to recalculate urban land values at the expense of black children, parents and communities.

So, what is the answer to improving schools for black children? Elected officials must advocate for equalizing state funding formula so that urban school districts garner more financial resources to hire credentialed and committed teachers and stabilize principal and superintendent leadership. Funding makes a difference. Black students who attend schools where 50 percent of more of the children are on free/reduced lunch are 70 percent more likely to have an uncertified teacher (or one without a college major or minor in the subject area) teaching them four subjects: math, science, social studies and English. How can the nation continue to raise the bar on what we expect students to know and demonstrate on standardized tests and lower the bar on who teaches them?

As the nation’s inner cities are dotted with coffee shop chains, boutique furniture stores, and the skyline changes from public housing to high-rise condominium buildings, listen to the refrain about school reform sung by some intimidated elected officials and submissive superintendents. That refrain is really about exporting the urban poor, reclaiming inner city land, and using schools to recalculate urban land value. This kind of school reform is not about children, it’s about the business elite gaining access to the nearly $600 billion that supports the nation’s public schools. It’s about money.

 

Dean Fenwick gave the Benjamin E. Mays Lecture at Georgia State University in 2018.
She comes on at about the 15:00 minute mark, and she goes into detail about the education “reform” movement and its failure to help black and brown children. She calls it “Looking Behind the Veil of School Reform.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Racism, Teach for America

Rep. Rosa DeLauro to Secretary DeVos: No Privatization!

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2020 //
22

The House Subcommittee on Appropriations for Labor, Health, Human Services and Education opened hearings this morning, with Secretary DeVos as witness to testify about the Trump administration’s budget proposal. She. Wants to combine the funding for 29 programs and send the money to states as a block grant, to be used as they wish, she wants deep cuts in overall spending but a new $5 billion federal voucher program, which she calls “education freedom scholarships.” Charter school advocates were stunned to learn that the federal Charter Schools Program was one of the 29 that would disappear into a block grant.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro opened the hearing with this statement.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 27, 2020

CONTACT:

Will Serio: 202-225-3661

Chairwoman DeLauro Opening Remarks for House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Hearing with Secretary DeVos on the President’s Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Request

(As prepared for delivery)

Good morning, Secretary Devos. Welcome to the Subcommittee. It is our second budget hearing of the year. It is your fourth budget hearing with us. Today, we are examining the President’s Department of Education budget request for fiscal year 2021.

As I was reviewing the budget materials, Madame Secretary, this much was clear to me. You are seeking to privatize public education. But, I believe that is the wrong direction for our students and our country. Instead, we need to be moving towards expanding public policies like early childhood education that we know help students to succeed. We see this in other countries around the globe. They are not shrinking public support; they are expanding it.

I will get more into the consequences of the cuts that you are proposing. But, I want to start by examining your privatization philosophy, the false premise on which it is built, and the research it ignores.

Contrary to your claims, the nation’s public education system, which 90 percent of our children attend, has witnessed significant progress for all groups of students over the last 30 years. Average mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have improved for 4th graders (by 13 percent) and 8th graders (by 7 percent). While overall reading improvements have been more modest, Black 4th graders’ scores improved by 6 percent and 8th graders’ by 3 percent. Hispanic 4th graders’ scores improved by 6 percent and 8th graders’ by 5 percent.

There is more to do to address the disparities in achievement. We know we face significant challenges in assisting the kids that come into our system in education districts where they experience poverty and exposure to violence, often resulting in trauma. But, the solution is not less resources, nor is it more privatization.

In fact, the administration’s own data has shown how privatization has let down students. The Trump administration evaluated the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and found that vouchers had a statistically significant negative impact on the mathematics achievement of impacted students. In other words, more vouchers, lower math achievement. That is not a lone data point, either. Previous multi-sector studies using NAEP data have found that no student achievement scores for children in private schools were higher than those of children in public schools by any statistically significant degree.

So, your push to privatize public education is based on false premise that is not supported by data.

Its consequences would be to undermine the education of students in nearly every state, particularly for vulnerable students in high-need regions, including rural parts of our country.

• You would end career and college readiness for 560,000 low-income, middle school students across 45 states by eliminating the highly competitive grant program known as GEAR UP (-$365 million).

• You would endanger academic tutoring, personal counseling, and other programs for 800,000 students in sixth grade by slashing TRIO programs by $140 million. TRIO serves low-income, first-generation students and students with disabilities, helping them graduate from college.

• You would endanger education access for children experiencing homelessness by eliminating the Education for Homeless Children and Youth program (-$102 million). This funding is desperately needed. In the 2016-2017 school year, more than 1.3 million enrolled children had experienced homelessness at some point in the past 3 years, an increase of 7 percent from 2014-2015.

• You would endanger youth literacy as well as potentially increase class size and undermine efforts to support diverse teachers by eliminating the main program — Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants which we increased for the first time in many years (-$2.1 billion).

• You would potentially put higher education out of the financial grasp of students by flat funding the Pell Grant ($6,345). 40 percent of undergraduate students or 7 million students rely on Pell Grants to afford higher education. But while Pell covered 79 percent of the average costs of tuition, fees, room, and board at a four-year public institution in 1975, it covers only 29 percent today. Our students cannot afford for us to stand pat like this.

• And, finally, your budget would risk exacerbating the financial challenges of under-resourced rural districts by converting rural formula grants into the block grant. These districts already struggle with lower student populations and higher transportation costs and your move to undermine their funding in this way is unacceptable.

With all of this, let me say, it is not going to happen.

I am supportive of the recognition of I-D-E-A State grants ($100 million proposed increase) and career and technical education, ($680 million proposed increase) for CTE State grants. Although I am disappointed that Adult Education State Grants are left with level funding. I plan to ask you that about later.

You have also once again requested an increase for student loan servicing. We included new reforms in the fiscal year 2020 bill to help us conduct more oversight and ensure borrowers are getting the help they need. Many of these ideas stemmed from an oversight hearing that this Subcommittee held last year. To be direct, I will need to see how the Department implements the new requirements as I review your request for next year.

And, with regard to Charter Schools, there is a place for them. They have a role in the education system. However, we have moved in the direction of creating a parallel education system. Concerns remain around issues of accountability and transparency, which to this point they have not been forthcoming. As I have said again and again, I believe Charter Schools ought to be held to the same rigor. And, where they fail, we need to know about it.

To close, Madame Secretary, you are clearly seeking to privatize public education. I hope that I have been clear that we are not going to do that. Because doing so ignores the research indicating the gains we have made, ignores the many areas private education shortchanges students, ignores the very reason the federal government has needed to be involved in education as so powerfully indicated with Brown vs. Board of Education, and ignores the spirit and values of this country. No, instead, we need to be expanding public policies that boost education attainment, not restricting or reducing them.

So, I look forward to our discussion today. Now, let me turn to my colleague, the Ranking Member from Oklahoma Tom Cole. Mr. Cole?

###

delauro.house.gov

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Funding, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

The Controversy Over the Orange County School of the Arts

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2020 //
8

The Orange County School of the Arts is one of the most popular, most sought after, and most elite charter schools in the nation. Now it is locked in a battle with the local board of Educatuon about its admission policies.

Its students are whiter and more affluent than the surrounding community.

The Santa Ana Unified School District had made demands for change.

Last fall, OCSA applied to renew its charter with SAUSD, something state rules require must be done every five years. The district staff responded with a scathing 37-page report that found:

The schools “admission/enrollment policies and practices have encouraged applications from high achieving and well-resourced students and discouraged applications from those in the under-represented protected classifications.”

The numbers of “Hispanic/Latino, English Learners” and low-income students were so small at OCSA, it was impossible to meaningfully compare achievement to other district schools.

In sharp contrast to other middle and high schools in Santa Ana, OCSA reported no students who were homeless.

Mandatory meetings where school representatives set expectations that parents make donations of more than $4,000 a year to cover the costs of teaching the arts.

Since that report came out, KPCC/LAist got access to details Santa Ana Unified investigators did not uncover, including the current “Parent Funding Agreement” distributed at mandatory meetings.

While district officials openly say that OCSA is a high-quality school, they also say its policies exclude local, mostly Latino students while welcoming a wealthier, whiter student body that isn’t reflective of Santa Ana.

For example, while apparently struggling to find qualified local disadvantaged students, OCSA has admitted students from other counties, states and occasionally even other countries…. The board decided not to go as far as denial — instead, board members went with another recommended course: Vote to renew OCSA’s charter on the condition that the school work with the district to correct the alleged violations.

OCSA reacted swiftly, and fiercely. The school’s founder said the pushback from the district is payback over a lawsuit OCSA filed against the district last year over special education funding (that’s a whole other act in this drama — we’ll get to that). He also said there was nothing for OCSA to correct.

So the school stopped trying to work it out with the district, and started looking for another oversight agency.

Now, the issue is in the hands of the Orange County Board of Education, the body charged with taking up appeals of charters denied by their local authorizers. They don’t have long to make a decision — OCSA’s current charter expires on June 30.

Categories Accountability, Arts Education, California, Charter Schools, Education Reform
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