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Max Brantley: The Little Rock School Crisis, and Parents Fight to Stop Walton-Funded Takeover

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2019 //
3

Max Brantley is editor of the Arkansas Times, where he courageously confronts the depredations of the powerful Walton family against the public sector.

In this post, he summarizes the Waltons’ current efforts to take over the Little Rock school district, so they can eliminate public schools and replace them with charters. Any Democrat who thinks that charter schools are “progressive” should visit Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, or any other red state where the billionaires are doing their best to destroy public education.

He begins:

I’ve collected some items today related to the 2019 Little Rock school crisis, in which the Asa Hutchinson administration is attempting to supercharge the agenda of the Billionaire Boys Club, led by the Walton Family Foundation, to end a meaningful Little Rock public school district.

The plan is to continue to build charter schools (lightly regulated private schools operated with public money); to bust the teachers union, and to create a district of haves and have-nots. Under the Hutchinson plan, prosperous neighborhoods would have a semblance, but not complete democratic self-determination in schools. Poor neighborhoods (generally heavily black) would remain under control of a state Board of Education that has failed them miserably in five years as a supervisor.

He cites a post from this blog, describing the federal study of NAEP that concluded that charter schools do NOT outperform public schools.

He notes that even the Walton-funded University of Arkansas Department of Educational Reform acknowledges that test scores are not all that important.

He writes:

You get a district with a high poverty rate and you get lower test scores. Governor Hutchinson wants to punish Little Rock for that, while holding harmless dozens of other schools and districts with similar low scores. Here, they blame the teachers.

He cites Mercedes Schneider’s expose of Oregon-based Stand for Children, which is pouring big money into the Louisiana race for state board of education, and notes that the Waltons are financing their own efforts in Arkansas to undermine the public schools of Little Rock to make it easier to take them over and end public education.

And then he turns to Brett Williamson, a member of the state school board appointed by Governor Asa Hutchinson, who seems to specialize in insulting parents and supporters of public education. Williamson is one of the current crop of Republicans who do not believe in local control, especially for districts enrolling children of color.

Like Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post and Karen Francisco of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Max Brantley is a national treasure who is fearless in confronting the privatization behemoths owned by billionaires.

 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Little Rock, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Rob Schofield: The War on Public Education in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
9

There was a time when Norh Carolina was widely seen as the most progressive stTe in the South. That time ended abruptly when the Tea Party took control of the state in 2010 and began to decimate public services, especially public education. The Tea Party introduced charters and vouchers, killed the state’s successful NC Teaching Fellows Program for career teachers (giving its funding to Teach for America for temps).

Rob Schofield of NC Policy Watch assesses the war on public education and its ties to the Koch ideology of strangling government.

He writes:


There was a time in the United States not that many years ago in which K-12 public education was taken as a given – something as fundamental to the health and wellbeing of society as drinking water and law enforcement and public roads.

It may not have always lived up to this ideal (particularly in places where the great evil of racial discrimination and segregation held sway), but it’s fair to say that the American public school classroom was widely understood to be the glue that brought our broadly middle class society together and moved it into the future, the unifying institution that inculcated the fundamental civic values of democracy, and the place where society combated ignorance and superstition and prepared members of the next generation to build a better world.

Tragically, this began to change in the latter part of the 20th Century. In her powerful 2017 book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Duke University historian Nancy MacLean makes a compelling argument that the advent of racial integration – and, in particular, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education) – helped spur a conservative resistance movement that served to undermine the general consensus about public education.

And when this sad development was combined with two other toxic trends – perhaps most notably the aggressive, corporate-sponsored revival of dog-eat-dog, market fundamentalist economics and the explosive growth in what’s-in-it-for-me? American consumerism – it wasn’t long before prominent leaders of the American Right were referring derisively to “government schools” and treating K-12 education as a commodity in which “winners” and “losers” aggressively bargained and shopped for the best deal.

Now, add to all of this a healthy measure of obliviousness from mostly white male elites that could not and cannot see the amazing advantages they enjoy merely by virtue of their race and gender, and you’ve got a recipe for the situation that confronts North Carolina today – a time in which an entire cohort of children will soon graduate from 12th grade, having experienced nothing but declining public education budgets and a sustained ideologically-driven effort to depopulate public schools.

And while some on the political right continue to insist on paying lip service to the notion that they still support public education, a long litany of ills tells a very different story. Consider the following facts about the education system that students and educators return to this week as they begin the 2019-‘20 school year:

Actual state funding for K-12 education is down 6.7 percent (when one adjusts for enrollment growth and inflation) since the 2008-’09 school year – a time when North Carolina ranked 43rd in the nation in terms of per pupil spending and in spending as a share of Gross State Product.

Most per student funding allotments are actually down more than 6.7%. For instance, the state has 9% fewer “instructional support personnel” (counselors, nurses, librarians, etc.), 8% fewer principals and assistant principals, 36% less funding for teacher assistants, 57% less for textbooks, 56% less for classroom supplies, and 17% less for non-instructional support like custodians and bus drivers.

The state’s mushrooming charter school and voucher programs are contributing to declining public school enrollment, increased racial segregation and a pernicious situation in which children with higher incomes and fewer disabilities are “creamed” away and children with greater challenges disproportionately remain.

Despite recent modest improvements for some, North Carolina teachers still earn far less (5% less) than their college-educated, private sector peers. Only five states fare worse by this measurement.

The state faces a school infrastructure need of at least $8.1 billion.

While most states made use of the post-Great Recession recovery to rebuild their public education investments, North Carolina instead enacted a series of aggressive, multi-billion dollar tax cuts that mostly benefited the top 1% and that lowered the state’s overall funding effort (as a share of Gross State Product) to 48th in the nation. Indeed, it would take billions in additional spending just to match spending levels in South Carolina.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, North Carolina

Michael Kohlhaas: The California Charter School Association’s Secret, Reprehensible Goals

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
11

Last June, blogger Michael Kohlhaas received a huge trove of documents from the Green Dot Charter Chain in response to his request filed under the state’s Public Record Act. He has been reviewing these documents and releasing them.

In this post, he summarizes a Powerpoint presentation (and provides a link to the actual document) in which the California Charter Schools Association lays out its goals.

He headlines the post:

A SECRET POWERPOINT FROM THE CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION REVEALS 2019 LOBBYING PRIORITIES AND STRATEGIES — IN PARTICULAR THEY CONSIDER POSITIONING THEMSELVES AS CHAMPIONS OF EQUITY AND EQUALITY BUT WORRY THAT THEIR SUPPORTERS MIGHT SEE THAT AS “MISSION CREEP” — THEY CONSIDER SUPPORTING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH QUALITY SCHOOLS BUT WORRY THAT SUCH A POSITION MIGHT ALIENATE THE “CHOICE WING” OF THEIR BASE — THEY LIST AMONG THE GREATEST THREATS THE BARE POSSIBILITY THAT CHARTER SCHOOLS MIGHT BE REQUIRED TO EARTHQUAKE PROOF THEIR BUILDINGS TO THE SAME STANDARD AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS — IN SHORT THIS IS A SEETHING STEW OF PRIVILEGE — AND ARROGANCE — AND CLUELESS SELF-EXPOSURE — IN OTHER WORDS MORE OF THE DAMN SAME STUFF!…

If you want to understand this powerful lobbying group, which spends millions of dollars every year to protect the charter industry and to block accountability and transparency, you have to read the post.

He adds:

As you must know by now the California Charter School Association is the premiere wingnut loony tunes mouth-frothing privatization advocacy organization in the state. And we’ve been learning an unprecedentedly awful1 lot about them since June due to a huge set of records2 released by Green Dot Charter Schools in response to a request I made of them under the California Public Records Act.

These records are so rich, so complex, so voluminous, that it’s taking me freaking forever to go through them, sort them, write about them, and I’m therefore laying them on you in increments. And the increment at hand is this powerpoint presentation, created by the CCSA in August 2018 to explain the next year’s goals and fears to their members. I have also exported this as a PDF for ease of use.3There are also JPEGs of the slides at the end of the post if that’s better.

And my goodness, what a revealing heap of steaming and pernicious arrogance we have here. Under recent wins, for instance, we learn that the CCSA “Conditioned Legislature to defeat a half dozen harmful policy and budget proposals in preparation for less reliable Executive branch.” That’s the California Charter School Association right there telling how they “conditioned” the Legislature in preparation for Gavin “Less Reliable than Jerry Brown” Newsom’s ascension to the throne.

And further down the line we learn the assumptions behind CCSA’s policymaking agenda for 2019, probably actually for always, but I don’t (yet) have the evidence. And again, what’s revealed is appalling but not surprising. For instance they pledge that “CCSA will seek compromise on legislation that minimally constrains flexibility but only in exchange for new entitlements.” This item casts the CCSA’s support of SB126, which makes it exceedingly clear that charters are subject to both the CPRA and the Brown Act, in an interesting light.

Perhaps in 2018 they thought that this new law only “minimally constrain[ed] flexibility” and that they were going to get a bunch of goodies in return. But I’m willing to bet they’re rethinking that concession now given that the fruits of a single CPRA request have subjected them to months of pain-writhing exposure, some scathing articles in the Los Angeles Times, and may ultimately end the career of theirmanchild knight in shining hair product, Nick Melvoin.

And their listing of what they see as the greatest threats against them for 2019 is very instructive as well. I’m not up on the details enough to comment on all of these but the ones I do understand are as appalling as the rest of it.

If you thought that the CCSA was discussing how to improve education for all of the state’s children, you would be wrong. Their discussion is about power and protecting the self-interest of their industry.

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

Jan Resseger: Ohio Reduces Oversight of Failing Charter Operators and Gives More Money to Attend Low-Performing Voucher Schools

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2019 //
11

Jan Resseger reports here on Stephen Dyer’s astute analysis of Ohio’s state budget. Dyer is a former legislator who is now an Education Policy Fellow at Innovation Ohio.

This is Dyer’s report. Read it and weep. Ohio’s rightwing Republicans care more about campaign contributors than they care about the state’s students or the quality of education.

In looking at the plums for charters and vouchers, please bear in mind that most charter schools in Ohio are low-performing and score far below public schools, even in urban districts. And remember too that a study of Ohio’s voucher program sponsored by the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute concluded that students who used vouchers actually lost ground academically. So, when you see legislators increasing funding for vouchers and reducing oversight of charters, be aware that Ohio is underwriting and rewarding failure.

Resseger writes:

In the 2020-2021 biennial Ohio budget signed into law in July, lawmakers quietly embedded the radical expansion of school privatization. Rewards for charter schools and tuition voucher expansion are written into the budget in a lots of little ways, however, which means that, during the budget debate, few noticed the overall significance of exploding state support for school privatization. A new report released last week by Innovation Ohio, however, connects the dots among several measures which together will undermine oversight of charter schools and at the same time radically expand tuition vouchers. The report includes an examination of the fiscal implications for local public school districts.

The former chair of the Ohio House Education Subcommittee of Finance and now Innovation Ohio’s education policy fellow, Steve Dyer authored the report, which ought to be essential reading for legislators and a broad range of citizens—from experts to people who have not previously tracked the issue. Dyer writes a basic primer and at the same time an analysis sophisticated enough to teach experts something new.

Dyer begins: “When Governor Mike DeWine signed HB166 into law, he approved a budget that lawmakers had packed full of little-noticed gifts to those who seek to erode support for traditional public schools through a proliferation of charter and private school options funded at taxpayer expense.”  Dyer explains that the new Ohio budget:

  • weakens Ohio’s 2015 charter school oversight law that mandated automatic closure for academic failure after two years;
  • weakens standards for Ohio’s already deplorable sector of “dropout recovery” charter schools;
  • weakens Ohio’s oversight of its many charter school authorizers; and
  • increases the transfer of state and even local taxpayer dollars to private—mostly religious—schools.

Read this summary of the state’s preferential treatment of failing charters and see if you can overcome an impulse to gag:

Although in 2015, the state cracked down on academically failing charter schools by mandating their closure after two years of failing test scores, the new budget awards these schools an extra, third year to stay in business. The new budget gives 52 schools which had been preparing to close another year of life. Dyer adds: “Interestingly, of the 52 charters that were scheduled to be closed under the old standard, 34 are run by for-profit charter school operators, including almost 20 percent of the former White Hat schools now being operated by Ron Packard—the founder of K-12 Inc.—the nation’s largest (and most notorious) online charter school operator. Another big operator set to take a hit was J.C. Huizenga’s 10 Ohio-based National Heritage Academies. Six of those were on the chopping block before the legislature offered a legislative reprieve. Huizenga is an acolyte of Betsy DeVos—the controversial U.S. Secretary of Education—and his political connections have kept his schools afloat for years, despite complaints….”

The new state budget also weakens standards at a set of charter schools described by their promoters as providing opportunity for students who have dropped out of school. While the education of school dropouts is a worthy purpose, in Ohio, the state has been providing millions of dollars of support for schools that clearly fail to accomplish that stated goal: “Some graduate less than two percent of their students in four years and less than 10 percent in eight years. The state’s already lax standards only require that dropout recovery schools graduate eight percent of their students in four years.”  Before they can graduate, students in these schools must pass a state-approved test, but the new budget permits these schools, “to adopt another, easier test, and reduces the passing score.” It is predicted that the change in standards will save some of these schools from mandatory closure.

Ohio’s legislature is either bought and paid for by privatization advocates (very likely) or it is dominated by ideologues who want to reward failure regardless of how many children are miseducated.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Red Queen in L.A.: No, We Do Not Need a Yelp for Schools

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2019 //
12

The charter Industry faction on the Los Angeles School Board wants to introduce a Jeb Bush-style evaluation system to rank and rate schools. It hasn’t worked anywhere else in the nation, so why not introduce it in Los Angeles.

Every other state has demonstrated that the school grading system ranks schools by the income of parents. Schools that enroll the poorest children get the lowest grades. Schools that enroll affluent children get the highest grades.

The purpose of school grades is to set schools up to be privatized.

Sara Roos, who blogs as Red Queen in L.A., writes that the school district does not need a Yelp system. She is right.

She points out that board member Jackie Goldberg wants the school system to help schools that are in need of support, not devise a system to call them “failures.”

The charter advocates are pushing the Jeb Bush Plan because it will help build the charter industry. It will do nothing for children.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Los Angeles, Privatization, Testing

D.C.: The Charter School That Descended into Chaos

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2019 //
11

 

Perry Stein and Valerie Strauss wrote about a D.C. charter school that descended into chaos, with no meaningful oversight to protect its students. 

Top D.C. education officials knew for months about safety issues plaguing a charter school that serves some of the city’s most vulnerable children but did not force changes, public records and interviews with school employees show.

Students at Monument Academy Public Charter School fought during the school day, routinely destroyed school property and simply left campus without permission. Complaints poured into the city agency charged with overseeing the high-profile school, and some staff members reported to their superiors that they felt unsafe. Some child advocates and parents said they thought the school was dangerous, too.

Officials at the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which oversees the city’s charter schools, acknowledged long-standing problems at Monument and said they believe they addressed those issues appropriately…

Still, unlike many charters, there was no dedicated security staff on the Northeast Washington campus of Monument — a weekday boarding school for middle school students, many of whom struggled in traditional schools.

At a public meeting of the charter school board in May, a member revealed that more than 1,800 safety incidents classified by Monument as serious were reported during the 2018-2019 school year. Those incidents included sexual assault, physical altercations, bullying and property destruction…

But the city’s charter school board did not direct the school — or Monument’s governing board — to take measures to ensure student safety.

“It is always appropriate for us to intervene when health and safety concerns emerge but not always in a public meeting setting,” Pearson said. “We were not prescriptive about what exactly they should do because we do not think that is our role.”

The handling of Monument by the charter school board — which prides itself on giving the 120 campuses in its sector autonomy — opens a window onto how the board operates. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run, and although they are subject to local and federal laws, they are not bound by the rules and bureaucracy of publicly funded school districts.

Monument’s governing board voted June 4 to close the school — more than six months after it said it realized that financial and academic issues were probably insurmountable.

Even then, that decision was not final: Monument, which serves about 100 students, reopened Aug. 7, partnering with another charter school operator. The campus remains a boarding school, where students live five nights a week.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: “Stand for Children” Spends Out-of-State Money to Buy Louisiana Elections

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2019 //
4

 

Mercedes Schneider discovered that Oregon-based Stand for Children is pouring money into school board races in Louisiana. Why should an Oregon organization try to choose school board elections in another state? That’s the way the Disruption Movement works. The funding comes from the usual sources, none of which is based in Louisiana.

She writes:

Since 2012, hundreds of thousands of dollars has flowed into Louisiana elections from this Portland, Oregon, ed-reform organization, and when I examined the campaign finance filings for these three PACs, I discovered only two Louisiana contributors to one of the PACs, the Stand for Children LA PAC…

SFC is anti-union, pro-Common Core, pro-school choice—usual corporate-ed-reform fare. As for some of its major money: Since 2010, the Walton Family Foundation has funded SFC (via the SFC Leadership Center) $4.1M, with $400,000 specifically earmarked for Louisiana.

Then, there’s the Gates funding…

It all sounds so locally-driven, so grass-rootsy.

It’s probably best to not mention that SFC in Oregon finances the show.

.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Louisiana, Oregon, Privatization, Stand for Children, Walton Foundation

Carol Burris: Federal Analysis Finds No Difference in Performance Between Charter Schools and Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2019 //
31

 

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, reports on a new federal analysis comparing charter schools and public schools.

She writes:

A recent report on school choice commissioned by the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) documented what we already know–the performance of students who attend charter schools is no better than the academic performance of those who attend true public schools.
 
The report based its findings on 4th and 8th grade NAEP scores. No school, public or charter, can test prep students for success on the NAEP, thus it is considered by many to be the most reliable measure of student achievement.
 
In addition to a simple comparison of results, the researchers who prepared the report used regression analysis to control for the influence of parental education level on student achievement on the NAEP. This is important because it contradicts those who claim that charters do a better job at educating disadvantaged students, and that the equal academic performance between the two sectors is because public schools educate a more privileged population.  Parental education level has been shown repeatedly to have a significant effect on student achievement, even when controlling for SES. 
 
The report also told us that the percentage of students in private schools has dropped to 9% and homeschool enrollment has risen to 3%. Of the remaining 88%, 94% of all students are enrolled in true public schools, while 6% are enrolled in charter schools. 
 
The charter school sector can produce as many biased studies not subject to peer review as they like, but studies from objective sources consistently produce the same results–charters, despite their creaming of students and “freedom” do no better than true public schools. Ironically, this one was commissioned by the US Department of Education led by Betsy DeVos. 
 

—

Carol Burris

Executive Director
Network for Public Education
Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, NAEP, Privatization, School Choice, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Nashville School Board Rejects Rocketship Charter

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2019 //
5

 

The Metro Nashville School Board took the bold, brave step of rejecting a proposed Rocketship charter school.

The Nashville school board denied charter school network Rocketship Education a new school — despite receiving its first recommendation to approve an application in years.

The Metro Nashville Public Schools board bucked the district’s charter school review recommendation for the resubmitted application with seven votes to deny it. Only Gini Pupo-Walker did not vote to deny. Board member Sharon Gentry was not present on Tuesday night.

James Robinson, Rocketship’s Tennessee director, said the charter school network will appeal the decision to the Tennessee State Board of Education, which hears all charter school appeals…

Newly-appointed Board Vice Chair Amy Frogge criticized the school for its computer-based learning model and the way it uses investors to pay for its property.

The model, she said, “creates fertile ground for investors to reap millions.” Frogge also cited news reports, saying the school follows an “extreme militaristic” behavioral model.

“Assuming Rocketship is producing higher test scores, I must ask at what cost,” Frogge says. She said the school is a “drill and kill” instruction model.

Board member Christiane Buggs said her reasons for denying the school were purely financial. 

“We don’t have the funding right now to outsource,” she said.

Amy Frogge is a parent activist and lawyer. She is featured as a leader of the Resistance in my new book Slaying Goliath. It will be published in January.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Nashville, Privatization

Steve Miller: Texas Charter Schools Are Transparent Except When They Are Not

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2019 //
17

Steve Miller writes in the Texas Monitor about the special protections provided by the law for charter schools. They claim to be public, they claim to be accountable, they claim to be transparent, but only when it suits their convenience.

Take the powerful IDEA chain, which has recently received over $200 million from Betsy DeVos’ personal slush fund called the federal “Charter Schools Program,” which currently spends $440 million of our taxpayer dollars to finance rapacious corporate charter chains.

IDEA has a private corporation that is neither accountable nor transparent.

IDEA Public Schools, for example, allows first class air travel for its employees and is looking into the lease of a private jet. But as long as it insists that the perks are being paid for with private funds, the expenditures are free from oversight, discovered only through deep dives into IDEA’s tax returns.
Charter schools and open records are “an enormous can of worms,” said Joe Larsen, a Houston public records lawyer. “It’s neither dog nor wolf — it’s kind of private and kind of public. The courts and the legislature keep grappling with it, as they want charters to have the advantage of a private entity to make more efficient choices.”
But, he said, the effort to allow charters the freedom to innovate also gives them more room to operate on the margins of transparency.
A public records dispute between a Pharr newspaper and IDEA, one of the state’s biggest charter operators, shows the divide.
In 2017, the Advance News Journal in Pharr asked for details of IPS Enterprises, a business created by IDEA. Charter officials refused to provide details and referred the request to the state attorney general’s office for a ruling. 
When that office said IDEA had to provide the records, the nonprofit sued AG Ken Paxton, citing a 2015 state Supreme Court ruling that found a nonprofit need only provide records related to businesses funded with public money.  And, IDEA said, IPS Enterprises is unrelated to the $400 million in public funding it receives.
IDEA won the lawsuit, and today no one knows much about IPS Enterprises, a for-profit entity that state records show is based at the same tax-exempt Weslaco address as IDEA. Records show IPS in 2017 received a $4.7 million contract from the U.S. Department of Education.
The newspaper never even considered suing IDEA for the records.
“We didn’t even get involved after they sued the AG,” said Advance Publishing publisher Gregg Wendorf. “They have way more money than us anyway.”
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Texas
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