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Rachel M. Cohen: Democratic Candidates Wary of Charter School Issue

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2019 //
39

 

Rachel M.Cohen wrote in the American Prospect that the Democratic candidates are distancing themselves from the charter school issue, which only a few years ago was deeply embedded in the Obama administration education policy.

This is progress. In 2016, it was nearly impossible to get any candidate to discuss K-12 education. At last they notice that it is not cool for a Democrat to support charters. Most are trying to play the issue cautiously, being against “for profit” charters, but not acknowledging that large numbers of nonprofits are managed by for profits.

This far, Bernie Sanders is the candidate who has taken the strongest stand against charters, endorsing the NAACP call for a moratorium.

Other candidates are hedging their bets.

Hours after Sanders’s education plan was released, Elizabeth Warren told reporters that she agreed for-profit charters are “a real problem.” She has not yet released her own K-12 plan. While the Massachusetts senator has supported charter schools in the past, in 2016 she came out against a high-profile ballot initiative that would have allowed charters to expand much more quickly in her state. The measure ended up failing, with 62 percent of voters siding against it. 

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg also came out to say he supports Sanders’s proposal to ban for-profit charter schools, though he affirmed a month earlier that charters “have a place” in the education landscape “as “a laboratory for techniques that can be replicated.”

Beto O’Rourke, who opposes a national moratorium on new charters, told the NEA presidential forum that “There is a place for public nonprofit charter schools, but private charter schools and voucher programs—not a single dime in my administration will go to them.” O’Rourke has supported charters in the past, and his wife is a former charter school leader who now sits on the board of a local education reform group that supports expanding charters in El Paso. 

A friend in California forwarded an email showing that charter zealot and billionaire Reed Hastings is hosting a gathering for Mayor Pete, which suggests that he would be a strong charter guy. His background at McKinsey points in the same direction.

The Network for Public Education Action will be following and grading the candidates on the issues that concern us. Feel free to let us know what you learn at town halls.

If you meet one of them, ask them if they will pledge to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, which currently funnels $440 Million each year to charters, mostly the big corporate chains like KIPP, which do not need a federal subsidy.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Privatization

Jake Jacobs: Democratic Candidates Speak Double-talk about Charters

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2019 //
7

 

Jake Jacobs, a teacher in New York and BAT activist, writes in the Progressive about the pathetic evasions of Democratic Candidates when asked directly about their stance on charter schools.

Public school educators and advocates have been working for years for this to become a major campaign issue, but so far, most candidate statements have been conflicted, incomplete, clumsy, and/or vague, while media coverage has been equally as incomplete, inaccurate, and in many cases baldly biased in favor of charters. 

Read the article to see how they bob and weave to avoid taking issue with privatization of public schools.

Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat so far who has come out in support of the NAACP proposal for a moratorium on charters.

The others are trying to walk a fine line between “good” charters and “bad” charters, which ignores the fact that all charters divert money from public schools that enroll nearly 90% of US students.

Cory Booker can’t escape his long history with charters. Beto loves charters. Mayor Pete (ex-McKinsey) likes charters.

Here is the bottom line: REAL DEMOCRATS SUPPORT REAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

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

Mercedes Schneider: The Very Profitable Career of an ex-TFA-er

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2019 //
9

 

Mercedes Schneider writes here about the itinerant but very profitable career of Alison Serapin. A Texan, She went from a short stint in TFA to working as a TFA executive to somehow getting herself on the Nevada State Board of Education, where she was vice-president. She had to resign because of a potential conflict of interest when she decided to apply for a $10 million grant. Fancy that!

Schneider writes:

In April 2016, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published an article about former VP of the Nevada State board of Education, Allison Serafin, who resigned from the board in December 2015 because of a conflict of interest involving her decision to apply for state money to partially fund a charter-promoting nonprofit that Serafin started in 2014, Operation 180. In April 2016, Serafin’s nonprofit, Opportunity 180, won a state contract. From thr LV Review-Journal:

The former vice president of the State Board of Education, who resigned last year citing a potential conflict of interest, won a $10 million contract Tuesday to recruit high-quality charter school operators to Nevada.

When she stepped down from the state board in December, Allison Serafin noted her intent to submit a bid for the state’s new charter harbormaster fund, which matches grants from private philanthropic groups to attract the “best-in-class” national charter management organizations.

The contract authorizes Opportunity 180, an educational nonprofit group that Serafin founded in 2014, to drive two key components of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s education reform agenda: expanding access for low-income families to high-performing charter schools and creating a state-run Achievement School District to take over and turn around chronically underperforming campuses. …

As of Friday, Opportunity 180 already had collected more than $4.1 million in committed or cash donations from the Englestad Family Foundation and three other philanthropic groups, Serafin said.

So, Serafin arguably saw an *opportunity* to tailor her nonprofit toward creating Nevada’s newly-legislated Achievement School District and chose to pursue it.

IMG_1547
Schneider traces the remunerative path of this TFA  entrepreneur.
The good news in this story of “follow the money” is that the Nevada Legislature voted in May 2019 to abolish its failed Achievement School District. So Alison quickly adjusted to find new opportunities in the EdDeform world.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry

Jeff Bryant: Why Won’t the Charter Industry Admit Its Failures and Clean House?

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2019 //
6

Jeff Bryant notes the escalating scandals surrounding the charter industry, creating a stench that can’t be covered up and hidden.

Yet the charter industry refuses to acknowledge its problems and act to correct them and to oust the bad actors from its big tent.

Case in point: when the Network for Public Education released a study of the federal Charter Schools Program which showed that about one-third of all federally-funded charters had never opened or had closed soon after opening, at a cost of taxpayers of $1 billion, the charter industry was at first silent. Then it responded by attacking the report and NPE, claiming that NPE was “union-funded,” which it is not. NPE has indeed received contributions from unions, but the overwhelming bulk of its funding comes as voluntary gifts from individual supporters.

The attack came from paid employees of the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools, whose job seems to be to deny any charter misdeeds and to attack all critics and criticism. They were outraged that NPE would criticize the federal Charter Schools Program, which under Betsy DeVos has directed the bulk of its $440 million a year to support of large corporate chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy. It is now a charter slush fund, controlled by DeVos and her merry band of privatizers.

Bryant, who was a co-author of the NPE report with Carol Burris, writes:

As charter reform in California takes one step forward and two steps back, charter proponents operating at the national level show no signs of being willing to consider the need for more regulatory oversight.

For instance, months after the report Burris and I published about waste in the federal government’s charter school grant program, officials from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a charter school lobbyist and advocacy group, attacked our report in a national media outlet supportive of charter schools.

The critique by Christy Wolfe and Nathan Barrett is a slog through a mostly unsubstantiated defense of a program their organization does not even administer and does not seem to have any greater understanding of than Burris and I’ve demonstrated. But what Wolfe and Barrett have written can serve as a useful example of how charter industry operatives continue to respond disingenuously to criticism of their schools no matter how reasonable and well-founded the criticism is.

Now, why would the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools respond so defensively to any criticism of the federal Charter Schools Program?

Surely it can’t be because the NAPCS received a grant of $2.385 million from that same program in 2018.

The charter slush fund must be protected at all costs, regardless of where the money goes or how it is spent and misspent. Accountability be damned!

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Reform, Fraud

D.C.: Famed Philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein Endorses Charter School Dominance In D.C.

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2019 //
48

 

To understand the charter industry, you must appreciate that it is driven by extremely wealthy people and has no grassroots. It has mastered the arts of marketing and branding, but does not have a plan to improve education other than to draw students and resources away from public education, which belongs to all of us.

People often ask me, “Why do the super-rich cluster to the cause of privatization?” The Answer is not simple because many different motives are at work. Some see giving to charters as a charitable endeavor, and their friends assure them that they are “giving back,” helping poor children escape poverty. Others want to impress their friends in their social strata, their colleagues in the world of high finance. Being a supporter of charter schools is like belonging to the right clubs, going to the right parties, sharing a cause with other very rich people.

Perhaps infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein fits into the last category. Perhaps he fits into all those categories.  He is a man who grew up in modest circumstances in Brooklyn, attended public schools, and owed his start in life to the New York City public schools.

But once he achieved wealth and could call himself a “philanthropist,” he realized that choosing the right causes was important as a way of burnishing his image, showing that he was running with the In Crowd.

So, of course, he announced that he supported charter schools, not the public schools to which he owed a debt for launching him in life.

In 2013, his foundation issued a press release announcing that he looked forward to the dominance of charter schools in Washington, D.C. and predicted that they would succeed because they were unregulated. That, in a sense, was his own secret: he succeeded because he was unregulated, neither his appetites nor his activities were regulated. Supporting charter schools showed that he moved in the circles of the DFER elites, the hedge fund kings. No longer was he the boy from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn; he was a philanthropist encouraging the growth of school privatization, not just as competition but as a replacement for public schools.

Now that he has been indicted yet again, this time in New York, for his crimes against young girls, it is interesting to read his fulsome self-praise for investing in the charter industry.

This press release was issued by the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation:

NEW YORK, Feb. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — For the first time, more students in Washington DCenrolled into charter schools than public schools. Last year, charters had an 11% increase in student enrollment, while public schools had a 1% increase. Mayor Vince Gray noted that the nation’s capital is only a few years away from being evenly split between the two school systems.

The shift was welcomed by financier and well-known education philanthropist, Jeffrey Epstein and his foundation, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. Jeffrey Epstein founded the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University with a $30 million dollar grant in 2003 and has since expanded his support into early development, Head Start and charter school programs across the nation, including Washington DC.

Some of the charter schools that the Jeffrey Epstein has supported include, Harlem Link Charter School, the Maya Angelou Schools in DC and the Bard High School Early College in New York. “Charter Schools have the freedom to self-regulate. It’s a critical component of their success. They also reduce the burden on the public school system,” Jeffrey Epstein asserted.

In fact, last year, the DC Schools Chancellor, Kaya Henderson, decided to close fifteen public schools due to the shift to charters.

Despite this growth, there is concern about the number of charter schools that close every year. According to The Center for Education Reform, 15% of charters close every year. However Jeanne Allen, President of the Center for Education Reform explained that unlike the public school system, this closure rate reflects a healthy level of accountability. Today 41 states have charter school laws and audit requirements. 52% of charter schools are also now authorized by school districts and 48% independently.

“We need to enhance state standards of excellence,” Jeffrey Epstein noted. “But it’s essential that these laws are just that, standards, and not management policies.”

Jeffrey Epstein is a trustee of the Institute for International Education, a former board member of Rockefeller University, the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, New York Academy of Science and sits on the board of the Mind, Brain and Behavior committee at Harvard.

SOURCE www.jeffreyepsteineducation.com

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization

Law Journal: “Are Charter Schools the Second Coming of Enron?”

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2019 //
65

This law journal article about the self-dealing and corruption in the charter sector was written by Professors Preston C. Green III, Bruce D. Baker, and Joseph Oluwole.

Since it was written, there have been so many examples of scandals, conflicts of interest, and outright theft of public dollars that this prediction seems remarkably prescient.

Here is the table of contents:

INTRODUCTION

OVERVIEW OF ENRON

A. ENRON AND DEREGULATION

B. THE LJM SPES

C. ENRON’S COLLAPSE

II: ENRON’S GATEKEEPER PROBLEMS

A. ARTHUR ANDERSEN

B. INDEPENDENT ANALYSTS

C. CREDIT RATING AGENCIES

D. ENRON’S BOARD OF DIRECTORS

E. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC)

III: CHARTER SCHOOLS AND RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS

A. CHARTER SCHOOL DEREGULATION AND PRIVATE INVESTORS

B. EXAMPLES OF ENRON-LIKE RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS

1. IMAGINE SCHOOLS

2. IVY ACADEMIA CHARTER SCHOOL

3. AMERICAN INDIAN MODEL CHARTER SCHOOLS

4. GRAND TRAVERSE ACADEMY

5. PENNSYLVANIA CYBER CHARTER SCHOOL

C. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS, AND THE NEED FOR STRONG GATEKEEPING

IV: CHARTER SCHOOL GATEKEEPERS

A. AUDITORS

B. CHARTER SCHOOL GOVERNING BOARDS

C. CHARTER SCHOOL AUTHORIZERS

D. STATE EDUCATION AGENCIES (SEAS)

E. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

CONCLUSION

Here is the Introduction to the article:

INTRODUCTION

In December 2001, Enron rocked the financial world by declaring bankruptcy due to the effects of an accounting scandal. Earlier in the year, Enron had been the sev- enth largest corporation in the country.1 This energy trading and utilities giant had become a dominant player by aggressively benefitting from the federal deregulation of the energy markets.2 Enron’s collapse erased more than $60 billion in shareholdervalue and caused thousands of employees to lose their jobs and pensions.3

Enron proved not to be an anomaly. Soon after the corporation’s collapse, thefinancial markets were further roiled when WorldCom, Adelphia, and Tyco, among others, declared bankruptcy because of accounting fraud.4 Congress responded to this wave of scandals by passing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which imposed greater accountability on publicly traded companies and their auditors.5

Andrew Fastow, Enron’s CFO, was a pivotal figure in Enron’s collapse. He cre- ated two special purpose entities (SPEs)—LJM1 Cayman LP (LJM1) and LJM2 Co- Investment LP (LJM2)—to serve as a hedge against potential downturns in Enron stock.6 Fastow and his associates served as the managers of these SPEs.7 Because ofFastow’s dual management roles, Enron should have disclosed to its shareholdersthat the partnerships were related-party transactions, defined as deals between enti- ties with special, preexisting relationships,8 which Enron failed to do.9 Although re- lated-party transactions are legal, they can create conflicts of interest that have the potential of harming their shareholders.10 Specifically, these transactions “can createthe impression that an insider is using company assets for personal benefit, and that the company is getting the short end of the stick.”11 Indeed, Fastow did take ad- vantage of this conflict of interest by making millions of dollars from the SPEs and using the illegal proceeds to invest in other interests.12

Enron’s collapse was significant because it exposed the deficiencies of gatekeep- ers that had the responsibility of protecting the integrity of the markets.13 These gate-keepers included Enron’s auditor Arthur Andersen, independent analysts, credit rat- ing agencies, corporate boards, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).14 In the case of the Enron debacle, all of these watchdogs failed to detect thedangers caused by Fastow’s conflict of interest.

Related-party transactions are now posing a threat to the charter school sector. Charter schools are a deregulated departure from traditional public schools because they are exempted from laws governing budgets and financial transparency.15 Similar to Fastow, unscrupulous individuals and corporations are using their control over charter schools and their affiliates to obtain unreasonable management fees for their services and funnel money intended for charter schools into other business ventures.16

In spite of this evidence, the federal government has consistently attempted to increase the number of charter schools without pushing for oversight.17 This policy approach is alarming because it will create more opportunities for illegal related- party transactions.18 Also, this approach runs the risk of harming students in low- income and minority communities—the very children whom charter schools are sup- posed to serve.19 Therefore, charter school gatekeepers must learn from the Enron debacle by becoming more prepared to guard against the dangers posed by related- party transactions.20 These gatekeepers include auditors, governing boards, authoriz- ers, state education agencies (SEAs), and the U.S. Department of Education.

In this Article, we discuss how some charter school officials have engaged in Enron-like related-party transactions to defraud charter schools. We also identify several measures that can be taken to strengthen the ability of charter school gate- keepers to protect against this danger. This Article is divided into four Parts. Part I describes how Fastow used his management of Enron and the SPEs to obtain illegal profits contrary to the interests of the former company. Part II discusses why the gatekeepers in the financial sector failed to stop the related-party transactions be- tween Enron and the LJM entities. Part III provides examples of how individuals in the charter school sector are benefitting from their control over charter schools and their affiliates in a manner similar to Fastow. Part IV analyzes, inter alia, pertinent statutory and regulatory provisions that apply to state and federal gatekeepers. We perform this task to identify the steps that legislators and policymakers can take to increase the gatekeepers’ ability to protect against harmful related-party transactions.

If you want to understand the deep potential for financial corruption at the heart of deregulated private charter schools, you must read this article.

Here is a small excerpt:

Major philanthropic organizations have invested heavily in the charter school sec- tor.112 For example, the Walton Family Foundation, which was established by the founder of the Walmart retail chain, has pledged $1 billion to support charter schools.113 Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix and a long-time supporter of charter schools, has created a $100 million education foundation.114 Hedge funds and other private investors have also become interested in investing in charter schools.115

The attention of philanthropic groups and private investors has dramatically im- pacted the charter school sector. For example, the education management organiza- tions (EMOs) that these groups operate have become the dominant players in the charter school sector.116 EMOs are for-profit or nonprofit entities that provide edu- cational and management services to charter schools.117 EMOs manage between thirty-five to forty percent of all charter schools, accounting for about forty-five per- cent of charter school enrollments.118

Charter schools attract investors because of the potential for new revenue streams.119 For instance, the New Market Tax Credits (NMTC) program provides investors the opportunity to make profits from charter-school real estate transac- tions.120 Enacted as a component of the Community Relief Tax Credit Act of 2000,121the NMTC was designed to encourage investment in low-income communities.122The NMTC accomplishes this goal by providing investors in a community develop- ment entity (CDE) a thirty-nine percent tax credit over a seven-year period.123 A CDE is a corporation or partnership that provides capital for investment in low-income communities.124 An educational organization such as a charter school foundation can use NMTC funding to build a charter school.125

For-profit entities can double their investment in charter-school real estate pro- jects by taking advantage of the NMTC as well as other federal tax credits.126 For- profit entities can also obtain revenue from charter schools through lease payments for the use of the facilities. For instance, the Robert Bacon Academy (RBA), a for- profit EMO operating in North Carolina, received $1.5 million in rent, as well as almost $549,000 for maintenance during the 2013–14 school year—from one char- ter school alone.127

Investors can also obtain profits through the management fees that EMOs charge for their services.128 Management fees can be very generous. In the 2013–14 school year, RBA received a management fee of sixteen percent of its school’sexpense as well as “additional incentive payments based on student achieve-ment.”129 Two charter schools paid RBA nearly “$2.4 million in fees and incentivesout of just $13 million in total revenue.”130

Please send copies of this law review article to the Center for American Progress, the Brookings Institution, the New York Times editorial board, the Washington Post editorial board, your Senators and members of Congress, and to the campaigns of every Democrat running for President.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

Charter Schools and Enrollment Decline in San Antonio

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2019 //
14

 

Texas Public Radio reported on the devastating effect that charter expansion is having on the public schools of San Antonio. The city leaders, in their ignorance, decided not to improve the public schools, but to create a parallel private system to compete with them. Both sectors are funded by the public, but the charters choose their students and some do not offer transportation.

The city’s population is growing but enrollment in its public schools is shrinking.

The main reason for the apparent contradiction is an exponential growth in publicly-funded, privately-run charter schools. Charter school enrollment in the San Antonio metro area has grown by more than 200% since 2009, according to a Texas Public Radio analysis of a decade of enrollment records obtained through public information requests. 

In the past two years alone, charter networks in the San Antonio metro area gained nearly 11,000 students. For traditional school districts, that meant a corresponding loss in funding. State funding is based on attendance.

The big charter networks, like IDEA and Great Hearts, have selective enrollment practices. IDEA has received more than $200 million from Betsy DeVos and the federal Charter Schools Program.

Some local parent groups are fighting back, but they are vastly outspent by the charter networks and undercut by state policy, which favors privatization.

Charter favoritism guarantees that the local public schools, which enroll most children, will be underfunded and will serve a disproportionate number of students with the highest needs.

Some parents have organized to fight back:

Standing in the neighborhood next to Oak Meadow Elementary in the North East school district, Cameron Vickrey said her daughters’ school “experienced a kind of mass exodus” a few years ago to go to Great Hearts. Great Hearts is a charter network that uses a classical curriculum similar to private schools.

“When all of those people left there was a volunteer vacuum,” Vickrey said. “That was when I came to the school, and as a new kindergarten mom I was put on the PTA board… because they pretty much had to create a PTA board from scratch.”

Vickrey’s neighborhood is mostly one-story, ranch-style houses a short walk or drive from the elementary school.

Trimmed yards are sprinkled with white signs that say “Proudly RootEd in NEISD.”

Vickrey and a few other Oak Meadow parents started making the yard signs after hearing other parents say that nobody in the neighborhood goes to the traditional public school.

RootEd yard sign in the Oak Meadow neighborhood of North East ISD.
CREDIT CAMILLE PHILLIPS | TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO

“And we stopped and thought about it, and we were like, ‘That’s not true! Of course people go to that school.’ They just don’t know those neighbors, right, because maybe they’re not in their clique or whatever.”

From there, RootEd grew into a nonprofit with a mission of spreading positive stories about district schools — both by word of mouth and on social media using the hashtag RootEd.

“RootEd just wants to say, ‘Wait, hang on a second. Remember that these schools are here. And there are awesome things happening in them still,’” Vickrey said. “Make that your first stop, the first thing that you look into and if it doesn’t work for you for whatever reason, nobody’s going to fault you for that. You have a right to do that but we just want to make sure that people don’t discount their public schools.”

Vickrey said she also wants parents to consider the “unintended side effects” of choosing charter schools: less money and volunteers for the traditional public school, and a tendency to choose a school where people look like you.

“Our middle school that we’re zoned for here is a Title I (low-income) school, Jackson Middle School,” Vickrey said. “And it’s fabulous, but so many start choosing their school path for elementary school based on trying to avoid Jackson Middle School.”

Jackson Middle School is 80% Hispanic and 72% economically disadvantaged. San Antonio’s Great Hearts schools are less than 20% low-income and almost 50% white.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, San Antonio

Beware! Powerful Koch Network Starts New Group to Fight Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2019 //
14

Charles Koch and his network of wealthy donors have created a new Astroturf organization called “Yes Every Kid” to promote school choice and take public money away from public schools.

Yes, they are targeting “every kid” as a prime prospect for a charter school or a voucher.

Yes, they want to shrink public schools so that they are no longer the “choice” of 90% of American families.

Koch in June announced the Yes Every Kid initiative as the latest addition to his sprawling network of wealthy donors, political groups and tax-exempt advocacy organizations best known for pushing anti-regulation, small-government policies. Its political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has made waves supporting the tea party and fighting former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The Yes Every Kid group is tasked with monitoring statehouses where it can be influential on school choice, said Stacy Hock, a Texas philanthropist who is among hundreds of donors each contributing at least $100,000 annually to the Koch network’s wide-ranging agenda.

Hock and officials with the Koch network said it’s too early to provide specifics about what policies the group is pushing.

“The priority is to go where there is a political appetite to be open to policy change and lean in there,” said Hock, who also leads the Texans for Education Opportunity advocacy group that supports charters and other education alternatives.

She cited Texas, West Virginia, Tennessee and Florida as priority states where school choice proposals have flourished.

It is hard to say that West Virginia is a place where school choice proposals have “flourished” since the legislature approved them just weeks ago for the first time, and they have not yet been implemented. So translate: Koch money has successfully bought enough legislators in rural West Virginia to foist “choice” on local communities, although it has not happened as yet.

In Tennessee, Koch money bought the new governor and the legislature to impose charters and vouchers on districts that don’t want them.

Florida is a wholly owned subsidiary of the DeVos-Jeb-Koch combine.

There is no evidence that students benefit by having school choice, although there is plenty of evidence that vouchers underwrite racism and ignorance and there is plenty of evidence that school choice promotes segregation.

This is what the billionaires actually want: ignorance, racism, and segregation. And it is worth paying for. For them. Not for us, and not for our society.

Peter Greene defined this new group of Astroturfers far better than I. 

He calls it the “Astroturducken,” with one deform idea wrapped around another, all of them guaranteed to destroy public schools, trick parents, and generate jobs for the faithful hangers-on from Reformy world.

Greene writes:

Yes, don’t wait for things to come down from above, says this website that has come down from a billionaire who wants to drive the education bus despite his complete lack of educational expertise. But this astroturfery is insistent. “Real change has to start from the ground up. We’re here as your resource to facilitate conversation.” That might be really moving if the very next sentence weren’t “We’re here to foster a culture of disruptive innovation,” which suggests that these facilitaty listeners already have some answers in mind. Also missing– an acknowledgement of where all that negativity came from. Here is yet another reformy outfit talking about negatives from the past as if they simply fell from space, instead of saying, “Yeah, that was us. Sorry.” And here comes the tell:

We want to hear new ideas, new solutions, and new voices. And it can only happen when we listen to the real stakeholders in education: you.

But who is this “we” and why should stakeholders feel any need or obligation to talk to “we” in the first place? This is the same old rich fauxlanthropist baloney– we’re not only going to vote ourselves a seat at the table, but we’re also going to go ahead and give ourselves the seat at the head because, yeah, this is our table now. It’s so big and generous of you to agree to listen to us, Sir, but I still haven’t heard a reason that we should be talking to you. This is the overarching narrative of decades of modern ed reform– actual teachers and educators were working long and hard on the problems of education, and a bunch of rich amateurs strolled up and announced, “Good news! We’re going to take over this whole conversation now!” Thirty years later we’re still all waiting to hear why these guys should be running any part of the show beyond reasons like “I’m rich” and “I want to.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Texas: Three Small Districts Oppose Federally-Funded Charter Growth in El Paso

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2019 //
2

Three small districts near El Paso passed resolutions opposing the dramatic expansion of the charter sector, which is driven by federal funds awarded by Betsy DeVos to the IDEA charter chain. 

As charter schools expand in El Paso, fueled by a sizable federal grant, three of the county’s smaller districts are hoping recent resolutions will prevent students from leaving and encourage lawmakers to do more to quell charter growth.

On Wednesday, San Elizario ISD’s board became the latest to approve a resolution opposing charter school expansion in the region. The Clint and Tornillo ISD boards approved nearly identical resolutions in late June.

The resolutions come just months after IDEA Public Schools won an unprecedented $116 million over five years from the federal government to create 38 new schools across three states, 14 of which are slated for El Paso.

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That growth takes away much needed public funds from districts already grappling with enrollment declines, the Clint, Tornillo and San Elizario superintendents said, and the financial impact is particularly felt by smaller districts.

“We have to be conscientious that if we don’t take initiative to inform our communities, then you have great marketing teams from these charter schools coming in and painting a picture … that gives the appearance that they’re better than public schools,” San Elizario ISD Superintendent Jeannie Meza-Chavez said.

Well, of course, their marketing materials will claim they are better than public schools; they will claim that 100% of their students will go to college, but they won’t tell parents about their high attrition rates, nor will they tell them how long their graduates survive in college.

This is Beto O’Rourke’s district, but the school boards can’t look to him for help. He told the NEA meeting in Houston that he opposes “for-profit charters and vouchers,” but not the kind of non-profit charters that are about to damage the public schools in his own community.

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

Conservatives Thrilled by NEA Decision to Ignore Candidates’ Views on Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2019 //
105

 

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) expressed its delight over a decision at the recent NEA meeting in Houston not to take into account a presidential candidate’s views on privatized charter schools when making its endorsement. AEI is a conservative, free-enterprise think tank in D.C. that is partially funded by Betsy DeVos and her family foundation, who appreciate AEI’s libertarian stances.

Friends at the NEA meeting tell me that the organization contains a few charter teachers and did not want to offend them. If you were there and have a different view, please comment. There are 7,000 charter schools. A few hundred have organized and joined the NEA or AFT. Ninety percent are non-union, which is what their funders (like the anti-union Waltons) want.

NEA’s decision signals that it is fine if a candidate like Cory Booker or Michael Bennett gives full-throated support to privatization of public schools. That should not be held against him. It matters not if a candidate supports a sector of schools where 90% of teachers are non-union. It matters not if a candidate aligns himself or herself with the anti-union right-wingers like DeVos and the Waltons. It matters not if a candidate supports the federal Charter School Program, which currently spends $440 million a year to grow corporate charter chains.

Meanwhile, the candidates who have bravely resisted the lure of billionaire dollars to defend public schools and the right of teachers to bargain collectively get a snub from the nation’s biggest teachers’ union.

Does this mean that the right-wingers and the media will stop bashing “the teachers’ unions” for battling charter schools?

Don’t count on it.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform
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