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Pasadena, CA: School Board Votes Against Including Charters in Parcel Tax

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2024 //
4

The board of the Pasadena Unified School District debated whether charter schools should share in the receipts of a new tax. The board voted 4-3 not to include the charters. The three members who voted in favor of including the charters said that the votes of the parents of 2,000 charter students would help meet the 2/3 majority needed to pass the tax. The four who voted “no” held that charters are independent of the district and should not benefit from its taxes. The members opposing the sharing said that the charters could affiliate with the district but they choose not to.

The Pasadena school board considered a resolution to approve an education parcel tax for the ballot in the November 2024 election. The resolution was moved for approval and seconded. The board discussed and voted down an amendment in the ballot language to add charters as beneficiaries of the measure.

Board President Kim Kenne and Members Patrick Cahalan and Tina Fredericks voted to add charter schools as beneficiaries of the parcel tax on the November ballot.

Member Cahalan appreciated the public comments from charter supporters whose families have students in both regular PUSD schools and charter schools. The district’s survey about the November measures showed the potential support for passing this measure and the facilities bond is very close to the ⅔ needed for passage. He wanted the support of the approximately 2000 charter school parents to get it over the threshold. He proposed a board resolution to spell out the sharing of monies…

Those voting against the amendment were Michelle Richardson-Bailey, Patrice Marshall McKenzie, Yarma Velazquez and Jennifer Hall Lee.

Vice President Hall Lee spoke about having charters in the district authorized by other entities, not PUSD, like the L.A. County Board of Education. She spoke of the history of charters. While initially founded to help the public schools, they have become competitors and have become anti-union. She said she is a union-supporter, and she believes there is competition between charters and PUSD schools, like in Altadena. She spoke against the argument that charters are needed to be cutting edge options. PUSD is recognized in state education circles as a cutting edge district of excellence. Later in the meeting she mentioned that members of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) were present earlier. She found that CCSSA is funded by the Walton family, and a director of CCSA is also an employee of Walton Enterprises. The wealth of the Walton family is problematic when the CCSA threatens legal action against the district.

Member Marshall McKenzie introduced herself to the charter supporters in attendance, who had referred to her by a shorter version of her name not used by her. She spoke about her deep roots in the community and in PUSD public schools; her parents attended PUSD schools. She spoke of her university training in state public universities, her full commitment to public education as democratic, a creator of society, a lever of economic mobility, and a center of community. These things are really important to her and are why she ran to be on the board of education. She was not prepared to entertain or accept any amendments tonight, as those are longer conversations.

Member McKenzie said that she was clear on the nature of charters as separate Local Education Agencies (LEAs), which have the ability to raise money from their parents, and which get their own Average Daily Attendance (ADA) money from the State. These funds do not go to PUSD. She pushed back on the charter supporters’ comments about inclusion and building community, saying, “If you are willing to convert your charters to be affiliated charters or dependent charters, let’s have that conversation about how we build community and how we serve all of the students in the area of the Pasadena Unified School District because now we’re all public schools.” She said she has been consistent on this point.

Member McKenzie made the same argument back in 2019 at the joint meeting of the City Council and the PUSD Board, when charters wanted some of the Measure J sales tax monies. At the time she said, “Since charters are their own LEA, that would be like PUSD giving Measure J money to Glendale Unified. We would not do that. So why would we give these dollars away as well?  I just don’t understand the logic in that.  So right or wrong, I’m going to be consistent in my position on that.” She struggles with the situational alliance with PUSD. “When it’s convenient for you, you want to be PUSD kids, you want to be public school kids, and when it’s not convenient for you, you’re very happy to divest… I feel like right now you’re not with us; it’s for your personal benefit and not for the greater good of the community.”

Like Vice-President Hall Lee, she referred to the origin of charter schools as being the center of innovation and providing flexibility for educators in curriculum development and with staffing, but charters have gone far away from those principles in the current charter and school landscape. “We simply just cannot afford to fund two systems out of one pot of money, and what you’re asking us to do is to dilute this one small pot of money even smaller.” She referred to the parcel tax amount being small compared to PUSD’s state funding and budget challenges. Yet she said she was very supportive of the bond and the parcel tax as a voter and a property owner who is happy to make the investment in public education. She reiterated that charters could have the same flexibility in curriculum development and staffing and special programs if they were PUSD-affiliated charters, but if they aren’t willing to have that conversation, she stated that she’s  not willing to go down this road of sharing funding. Member McKenzie ended by saying she can’t support the amendment without a longer dialogue and a building of community with those in charters.

Regarding the argument about losing the votes of many parents with children at both a charter and a PUSD high school, Member Velazquez said, “They have the choice to support our public high schools. I support our PUSD teachers; I support our PUSD staff. I am a proud CFA (California Faculty Association, the faculty union for the CSU system) member. I am a proud educator in the public education system in this beautiful state of California. I am a ‘NO’ on the amendment.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Walton Foundation

Politico: Explosion of Choice in Florida Dooms Many Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2024 //
17

Ron DeSantis has been determined as governor of Florida to privatize the funding of schools, and he has had a compliant legislature to help him achieve his goal of destroying public schools.

Andrew Atterbury of Politico wrote about the fiscal crisis of many public school districts as they lose students to private schools, charter schools, religious schools, and home schools.

Most vouchers are claimed by students already enrolled in private schools—a subsidy for the rich and upper-middle-class—but the public funds are causing serious enrollment declines in some districts. Those districts are now considering closing public schools as tax money flows to unaccountable private schools.

Atterbury writes:

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans have spent years aggressively turning the state into a haven for school choice. They have been wildly successful, with tens of thousands more children enrolling in private or charter schools or homeschooling.

Now as those programs balloon, some of Florida’s largest school districts are facing staggering enrollment declines — and grappling with the possibility of campus closures — as dollars follow the increasing number of parents opting out of traditional public schools.

The emphasis on these programs has been central to DeSantis’ goals of remaking the Florida education system, and they are poised for another year of growth. DeSantis’ school policies are already influencing other GOP-leaning states, many of which have pursued similar voucher programs. But Florida has served as a conservative laboratory for a suite of other policies, ranging from attacking public- and private-sector diversity programs to fighting the Biden administration on immigration.

“We need some big changes throughout the country,” DeSantis said Thursday evening at the Florida Homeschool Convention in Kissimmee. “Florida has shown a blueprint, and we really can be an engine for that as other states work to adopt a lot of the policies that we’ve done.”

Education officials in some of the state’s largest counties are looking to scale back costs by repurposing or outright closing campuses — including in Broward, Duval and Miami-Dade counties. Even as some communities rally to try to save their local public schools, traditional public schools are left with empty seats and budget crunches.

Since 2019-20, when the pandemic upended education, some 53,000 students have left traditional public schools in these counties, a sizable total that is forcing school leaders to consider closing campuses that have been entrenched in local communities for years.

In Broward County, Florida’s second-largest school district, officials have floated plans to close up to 42 campuses over the next few years, moves that would have a ripple effect across Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood.

The district has lost more than 20,000 students over the last five years, a decline that comes as charter schools in particular experienced sizable growth in the area. Enrollment in charters, which are public schools operating under performance contracts freeing them of many state regulations, increased by nearly 27,000 students since 2010, according to Broward school officials.

Broward County Public Schools claims to have more than 49,000 classroom seats sitting empty this year, a number that “closely matches” the 49,833 students attending charter schools in the area, officials noted in an enrollment overview.

These enrollment swings are pressing Broward leaders to combine and condense dozens of schools, efforts that would save the district on major operating costs. So far, some of the ideas are meeting heavy resistance…

Enrollment among charters has increased by more than 68,000 students statewide from 2019-20 to this school year, according to data from the Florida Department of Education. More than a third of that rise happened in Broward, Duval and Miami counties alone.

Private school enrollment across Florida rose by 47,000 students to 445,000 students from 2019-20 to 2022-23, according to the latest data available from the state. Much of that growth is from newly enrolled kindergartners, with only a small fraction of these students having been previously enrolled in public schools, according to Step Up for Students, the preeminent administrator of state-sponsored scholarships in Florida.

A growing number of families also chose to homeschool their children during this span, as this population grew by nearly 50,000 students between 2019-20 and 2022-23, totaling 154,000 students in the latest Florida Department of Education data.

As all of these choice options ascend, enrollment in traditional public schools across the state decreased by 55,000 students from 2019-20 to this year, state data shows. But enrollment isn’t down everywhere. While Duval County has lost thousands of students, enrollment is up by more than 7,700 students at neighboring St. John’s County, the state’s top-ranked school district…

The state’s scholarship program is expected to grow, which could lead to more students leaving traditional public schools. While most new scholarship recipients previously attended private schools already, there is space for 82,000 more statewide — nearly 217,000 total — to attend private school or find a different schooling option on the state’s dime next school year.

Across the state, public schools are facing budget cuts, layoffs. and school closures, all to satisfy Gov. DeSantis’ love of school choice. Over time, billions of public dollars will flow every year to unaccountable private schools that are allowed to discriminate. And the outcomes will be worse, not better, as students flock to low-cost schools whose teachers and principals are uncertified.

It the main win for DeSantis is to subsidize the cost of private schools for parents whose children were already enrolled in private schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Trump Turns to Hard-Right Evangelical Congressman to Advise Him on Education

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2024 //
24

Alexandra Berzon and Michael C. Bender report in The New York Times that Donald Trump now relies on Florida Congressman Byron Donalds for advice on education. Think of Byron Donalds as a 2024 version of Betsy DeVos, except that he’s Black, he’s a Congressman, and he’s not a billionaire. In all other respects, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them. Byron Donalds is viewed as a future governor or even Trump’s running mate.

In early 2021, Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, and his wife, Erika, took the stage at an event hosted by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a group that pushes to inject Christianity into public schools and other institutions and whose leader has described homosexuality as Satan’s work.

The couple was warmly welcomed as allies in the cause. Mrs. Donalds was singled out for opening a charter school in Florida. As a state legislator, Mr. Donalds had created a school voucher program that, in the words of one speaker, let children “get a biblical worldview education….”

Mr. and Mrs. Donalds were early activists in an increasingly influential network seeking to transform traditional public education — in Florida and beyond. Long before the recent battles over book bans and critical race theory, the effort cast public schools as failing laboratories for liberal ideas and pushed to funnel public education funds into charter or private schools.

Mr. Donalds backed legislation that gave outside groups a bigger say in school curriculums, years before Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida set off a national debate by making it easier for groups to remove books from school libraries and limiting teaching about sexuality and gender.

The couple has deep ties to leading forces in those debates, including Moms for Liberty, Hillsdale College and the Florida Citizens Alliance, which has pushed to remove books that it deems inappropriate from schools. Both Mr. and Mrs. Donalds have made remarks disparaging homosexuality.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Mr. Donalds described heterosexual relationships as “the natural order that keeps society progressing.” In a tweet in 2017, Mrs. Donalds wrote, “Homosexuality is a sin just like any other sexual sin, and all of us sinners need forgiveness & mercy for our shortcomings.”

The couple’s work has been both advocacy and income. As Mr. Donalds pushed legislation expanding access to charter schools and voucher programs, Mrs. Donalds began to build a company and a nonprofit that took advantage of that expansion.

“Byron and Erika have been known for years in Florida as warriors in the fight for all children to have a quality education,” said Tina Descovich, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a conservative education group that began in Florida but has emerged as a political power broker. “That reputation is spreading nationally.”As Mr. Trump campaigns, he has embraced the new education politics, suggesting that public schools have been overrun by “pink-haired communists” and promising to close the Department of Education if re-elected. And he has surrounded himself with like-minded supporters, such as the Donaldses….

It was Mrs. Donalds, whom he met in college, who drew him into evangelical Christianity. His full conversion came when he was 22, waiting tables at Cracker Barrel. He felt the call and “gave my life to Christ,” he said….

In 2017, Mr. Donalds was sworn in to the Florida House of Representatives, serving a Naples-area district. That same year, Mrs. Donalds started OptimaEd, a charter school management operation.

The couple’s work often intersected. Mr. Donalds was a co-sponsor for a bill that, among many other things, allowed charter schools to secure additional funding from local tax initiatives. He backed term limits for school board members, a proposal that Mrs. Donalds had long sought as a way to force turnover and potentially open up seats for charter school advocates…

In 2022, Mrs. Donalds was managing several charter schools in Florida. According to contracts, her company was paid a share — around 10 percent — of the schools’ public funding to provide human resources, marketing and other services. That year, the company collected about $4 million in public money and put around $2.6 million back into the schools, public records show, while Mrs. Donalds was paid a salary of about $180,000.

Those figures became a source of tension with the schools. Since then, three charter schools managed by OptimaEd ended their contracts with the company amid complaints that it was putting too little money back into the schools, according to public records and three people involved in the schools who asked for anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Mrs. Donalds did not respond to a request for comment.

She has increasingly focused her business on an online academy and virtual classes that accept vouchers. In 2017, her husband led a successful effort to offer the private school tuition reimbursements to students who said they were bullied. Last year, Florida went much further, expanding its voucher programs to all students, regardless of circumstances or income, and opening a new flow of public money to private schools.

Seeding the ‘parents’ rights’ debate

Advocates described how the couple had helped lay the groundwork for pandemic-era policies that put Florida at the center of the education debate.

In 2015, Mrs. Donalds started a network of conservative school board members with women who went on to lead Moms for Liberty. (Mrs. Donalds is a Moms for Liberty adviser.)

The Donaldses were some of the first members of the Florida Citizens Alliance, according to the group’s founder, Keith Flaugh. The alliance has pushed to remove books from schools that it claims indoctrinate children with liberal ideas, including Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and other classics from African American authors.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Trump

Justice Clarence Thomas Attacks Brown Decision

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2024 //
45

Seventy years ago, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision that overturned state laws that required racially separate schools. That decision, the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, is generally considered the accelerant that launched the Civil Rights movement and led to sweeping changes in American law and society.

A few days ago, Justice Clarence Thomas attacked the Brown decision, echoing views of segregationists who always opposed it. In the early decades after the decision, the Supreme Court took an expansive view of Brown. States and school districts not only had to dismantle laws that required racial segregation, they had to demonstrate to the courts that their actions had actually produced racial integration of students and staff.

Over time, the replacement of liberal judges by conservative judges caused the Court to moderate its stand on segregation. It increasingly abandoned its stringent guidelines and withdrew its orders to districts. Districts that were under supervision by the courts are no longer monitored. School segregation has been on the rise.

At long last, a senior justice on the Court said what conservative critics had long espoused: the Court exceeded its authority by striking down state laws that enforced racial segregation. Appointed by President George H.W. Bush, Clarence Thomas has long been a critic of civil rights laws, despite the fact that he is African-American.

Axios reported:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a strong rebuke of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling on Thursday, suggesting the court overreached its authority in the landmark decision that banned separating schoolchildren by race.

Why it matters: Thomas attacked the Brown decision in a concurrence opinion that allowed South Carolina to keep using a congressional map that critics say discriminated against Black voters.

Driving the news: The court “took a boundless view of equitable remedies” in the Brown ruling, wrote Thomas, who in 1991 replaced Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall — the first Black Supreme Court Justice and the lead lawyer in the Brown case.

  • Those remedies came through “extravagant uses of judicial power” to end racial segregation in the 1950s and 60s, Thomas wrote. 
  • Federal courts have limited power to grant equitable relief, “not the flexible power to invent whatever new remedies may seem useful at the time,” he said, justifying his opinion to keep a predominantly white congressional district in South Carolina.

Zoom out: The U.S. marked the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling last week.

  • The 9-0 decision declared the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional and helped usher in the Civil Rights Movement, though it took two decades to dismantle some school segregation policies.

State of play: An Axios review found American public schools are growing more separate and unequal even though the country is more racially and ethnically diverse than ever.

  • Racial segregation in schools across the country has increased dramatically over the last three decades, according to two new reports and an Axios review of federal data.
  • The resegregation of America’s public schools coincides with the rise of charter schools and school choice options and as civil rights groups have turned away from desegregation battles.
Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Nancy Flanagan: Just Who Is Trashing Public Education?

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2024 //
14

Veteran teacher Nancy Flanagan explores the question of who is trying to destroy our public schools. She nails some of the loudest critics, who have personally benefitted from public schools. She doesn’t explore why they are trying to annihilate the schools that educated them, but that may because we know what the privatization movement has to offer: money. There is a gravy train overloaded with munificent gifts from Betsy DeVos, the Waltons, Charles Koch, Michael Bloomberg, and a boatload of other billionaires. They can endlessly underwrite anti-public school organizations that offer well-paid jobs.

On the pro-public education side, it’s hard to find big spenders or highly compensated jobs. The two big unions have resources, all of which come from the dues of their members. They do not have the funds to support the numerous grassroots groups that are found in every state. Most, if not all of the state and local groups, operate on a shoestring; typically, their employees are volunteers. They do not have six-figure jobs for someone who tweets and writes statements. No one who works for a state “Save Our Schools” group makes big money.

The Network for Public Education is the biggest pro-public education groups; it has 350,000 people who have signed up to support it, but there is no membership fee. NPE has one full-time employee and a few part-timers.

So, Nancy Flanagan asks, just who is trashing public schools?

She writes:

Get ready for a big dump–a deliberately chosen word–of anti-public education blah-blah over the next five months. It’s about all the right wing’s got, for one thing–and it’s one of those issues that everybody has an opinion on, whether they went to public school. have children in public schools, or neither.

Public education is so big and so variable that there’s always something to get exercised over. There’s always one teacher who made your child miserable, one assigned book that raises hackles, one policy that feels flat-out wrongheaded. There’s also someone, somewhere, who admires that teacher, feels that book is a classic and stoutly defends whatever it is—Getting rid of recess? The faux science of phonics? Sex education that promotes abstinence? —that someone else finds ridiculous or reprehensible.

Not to mention—teaching is the largest profession in the country, So many teachers, so many public schools, so much opportunity to find fault.

In other words, public education is the low-hanging fruit of political calculation. Always has been, in fact.

A few years back, when folks were going gaga over Hillbilly Elegy, seeing it as the true story of how one could rise above one’s station (speaking of blahblah)—the main thing that irritated me about ol’ J.D. Vance was his nastiness about public education. Vance has since parlayed a best-seller that appealed to those who think a degree from Yale equates to arriving at the top, into a political career—and putting the screws to affirmative action, in case anyone of color tries to enjoy the same leg-up he did.

J.D. Vance’s education—K-12, the military, Ohio State—was entirely in public institutions until he got into Yale Law School. He doesn’t have anything good to say about public ed, but it was free and available to him, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. When I read Rick Hess’s nauseating interview with Corey DeAngelis in Education Week, I had a flashback to ol’ J.D., intimating that he achieved success entirely on his own, without help from that first grade teacher who taught him how to read and play nice with others.

DeAngelis says:

I went to government schools my entire K–12 education in San Antonio, Texas. However, I attended a magnet high school, which was a great opportunity. Other families should have education options as well, and those options shouldn’t be limited to schools run by the government. Education funding should follow students to the public, private, charter, or home school that best meets their needs. I later researched the effects of school choice initiatives during my Ph.D. in education policy at the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform.

So—just to clarify—Corey DeAngelis went to public schools K-12, for his BA and MA degrees (University of Texas), as well as a stint in a PUBLICLY FUNDED program at the notoriously right-focused University of Arkansas. That’s approximately 22 years, give or take, of public education, the nation-building institution DeAngelis now openly seeks to destroy.

I’m not going to provide quotes from the EdWeek piece, because anyone reading this already knows the hyperbolic, insulting gist—lazy, dumb, unions, low bar, failing, yada yada. He takes particular aim at the unions—although it absolutely wasn’t the unions—shutting down schools during a global pandemic. He paints schools’ turn-on-a-dime efforts to hold classes on Zoom as an opportunity for clueless parents to see, first-hand, evidence of how bad instruction is. He never mentions, of course, the teachers, students and school staff who died from COVID exposure.

Enough of duplicitous public school critics. My point is this:

The people who trash public education—not a particular school, classroom or curricular issue, but the general idea of government-sponsored opportunity to learn how to be a good, productive American citizen—have a very specific, disruptive ax to grind:

I got what I needed. I don’t really care about anybody else.

This goes for your local Militant Moms 4 Whatever on a Mission, out there complaining about books and school playsand songs and health class. It’s not about parents’ “rights.” It’s about control. And never about the other families and kids, who may have very different values and needs.

It’s about taking the ‘public’ out of public education. And it’s 100% politically driven.

OPEN THE LINK TO FINISH READING THE ARTICLE!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Unions, Vouchers

Gary Rubinstein: Time to Investigate Success Academy’s SPRINT Program

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2024 //
28

Gary Rubinstein has been following the evolution of Success Academy in New York City for years. it’s the largest charter chain in the state, with the highest test scores. But Gary has documented its high attrition rates and teacher turnover. Others have written about its penchant for pushing out students it doesn’t want. Success Academy is often held up as a model for the accomplishments of charter schools. But other charter chains are dropping the harsh “no excuses” discipline of SA.

In this post, Gary writes about another SA practice that is problematic.

He writes:

About four months ago I received an unusual DM in my Twitter account. Though over the years several different Success Academy parents have reached out to me, this was from someone who claimed to be either a current employee or a former employee. They used an anonymous name and to this day, I have no idea who this person is. But they reached out to me because they had a story to tell and felt, I guess, that I was the best person to tell it to.

Over the months they have provided various internal Success Academy documents, screen shots from internal Success Academy message boards, and so much information about what is truly going on at Success Academy, that I have no reason to doubt their authenticity.

Much of the information was about chaos that is going on behind the scenes at Success Academy. Like how they are struggling to convince elementary students to remain at Success Academy for middle school and to convince middle school students to remain at Success Academy for high school. I even got to see an internal document with talking points to tell families in order to convince they to stay.

The document had the title “Grade 4 Teacher Selling & Persuading Talking Points” and began with the words: “Framing: Unfortunately, over the years we see that after all the hard work of our elementary school teachers and schools, some of our 4th graders leave us and end up attending failing middle schools. We cannot let this happen. And so for the first time really we want to invest our scholars in the “why” behind SA’s magical middle schools. We want our scholars and parents to make truly informed choices about the next leg of their educational journey.”

I had already known based on enrollment numbers that Success Academy was having trouble getting families to continue to trust them after all the years of shady practices, but my source says that things are very dire, especially in the Brooklyn high school, which nearly had to be shut down for low enrollment.

I got a lot of other good insider information from my source. Their description of the morale of the staffs at several of the schools and the extreme turnover definitely made me feel bad for the teachers there but even worse for the students who have to endure such instability. The picture was worse than I had expected. But still I didn’t get what I considered to be a ‘smoking gun’ — something that the school was doing that was illegal.

A topic that this insider kept returning to was something that, at first, I didn’t have much interest in. It is well known that Success Academy used to not have a very high percent of students requiring special education services. My sense was that Success Academy did not want many students requiring special education services because those students would require attention which could take away resources from their test prep gaming system. But my insider often returned to something that really seemed to bother them, and it is about the way that Success Academy identifies students for special education services. The program is called SPRINT.

The way most schools work, a special education referral is initiated by a parent or sometimes a teacher in consultation with a parent and the school administration which might include guidance counselors and social workers will start the process. As a parent of a student who was diagnosed with various learning issues, I know that this is a very difficult time for a parent when they learn that their child qualifies for special education services.

But the way it works at Success Academy is unlike anything I’ve ever heard of at any school before. And according to the insider, many people who work for SPRINT or who used to work for SPRINT feel that they are working for a corrupt division of a corrupt organization. Whether what the SPRINT team is doing is illegal or just immoral or neither will be up to state investigators to decide if they ever have the desire to check into this, but this is the little that I understand about it.

According to my insider, the SPRINT staff are given quotas of special education referrals that they have to meet each week. It is something like five referrals per week. I don’t have all the details, but this is a big numbers game where referrals are driven by these quotas. If this is true and this team is pressured to find students to refer, this would mean that some students and their families go through the arduous referral process unnecessarily.

I asked the insider why would Success Academy want to inflate their special education numbers. The insider wasn’t sure about the motive. They felt it might have had to do with finances as having more special education students enables them to hire more teachers for ICT classes. But they weren’t certain about the motive, just the fact that special education referrals are done to fulfill quotas and not driven by what parents or teachers are noticing.

I asked the insider what the harm is from over referring for evaluations. Isn’t it better to have too many referrals and some students are denied services than to have too few and have students who would qualify but who never get evaluated? The source admitted that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what the malicious intent is but made it seem like this whole SPRINT quota system was very shady. Like they were gaming the system to get some students to qualify for services even if they really didn’t need them. But even if getting supports for student who might not need, the issue is that Success Academy seems to be doing this from a business point of view and not to truly help struggling students.

I know all this is kind of vague and my insider is going to wonder why I didn’t include more of the specific details of the color coding for the different levels of referrals. But they made it clear that to meet these quotas the staffers on the SPRINT team have to be very aggressive. In order for a team to make five referrals a week, they have to hound the families and if the families are resistant they have to step up the pressure. The insider even says they were encouraged once to call ACS on a family that would not agree to go through the referral process.

For sure there is a lot more detail to be filled in on this story. If you are working for SPRINT right now and are having trouble sleeping at night because of it, feel free to reach out to me, I can help you out.

Here is a post on an internal Success Academy message board from an actual employee:

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Steve Suitts: The New Segregation Looks Like the Old Segregation

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2024 //
3

Steve Suitts wrote an important essay on the continuity between the “school choice” movement of today and its roots in the fight against the Brown decision in the 1950s.

Charter schools and vouchers are not innovative. Their most predictable outcome is not “better education,” but segregated schools.

Suitts’ essay delves into the issue, state by state. I encourage you to open the link and read it in full. I skipped over large and important sections. Read them.

He begins:

Overview

On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education—the US Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in the nation’s public schools—Steve Suitts reveals an emerging, seismic shift in how southern states in the United States are leading the nation in adopting universal private school vouchers. Suitts warns that this new “school choice” movement will reestablish a dual school system not unlike the racially separate, unequal schools which segregationists attempted to preserve in the 1960s using vouchers.

INTRODUCTION

On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in the nation’s public schools, the states of the southern US are pushing to reestablish publicly financed, dual school systems—one primarily for higher-income and white children and the other primarily for lower-income and minority children. This seismic shift in how states fund K–12 education through universal vouchers isn’t confined to the South. But it is centered among the states that once mandated racially separate, unequal schools and where segregationists in the 1960s attempted to use private school vouchers to evade the watershed US Supreme Court decision.

More than thirty-five states have created voucher programs to send public dollars to private schools. At least nineteen, including most in the South, have adopted or are on a path to enact legislation making state-funded “Educational Savings Accounts” (ESAs)—the newest type of voucher approach—available to all or most families who forego public schools. These families can use the funds to send their children to almost any K–12 private school, including home-schooling, or purchase a wide range of educational materials and services, such as tutoring, summer camps, and counseling. 

In recent times, private school vouchers were pitched to the public for the purpose of giving a targeted group of disadvantaged children new educational options, but legislatures are now expanding eligibility and funding for vouchers to include advantaged students. By adopting universal or near universal eligibility for ESAs, states will be obligating tens of billions of tax dollars to finance private schooling while creating a voucher system for use by affluent families with children already attending or planning to attend private school.

States are rushing to enact ESAs while they still have the last of huge federal COVID appropriations to distribute among public schools. This timing allows ESAs’ sponsors—Republican legislative leaders and governors—to entice once-reluctant, rural legislators to support vouchers. It also camouflages the severe fiscal impact this scheme will have on routinely underfunded public schools after the special federal funds run out.

The states adopting ESAs are also structuring this emerging, publicly funded, dual system so that private schools and homeschooling remain free of almost all regulations, academic standards, accountability, and oversight. These sorts of rules and regulations are always imposed by state legislatures on public schools and are understood as essential to protect students and to advance learning. Even as legislatures are adding restrictive laws on how local public schools teach topics involving race, sex, ethnicity, and gender they are providing new state funding for private schools and home-schooling that will enable racist, sexist, and other bigoted teaching.

If state legislatures succeed in establishing and broadening this dual, tax-funded system of schools, the tremors will transform the landscape of US elementary and secondary education for decades to come. Calling for “freedom of choice,” a battle cry first voiced by segregationists who fought to overturn the Brown decision,1 predominantly white Republicans will take states back to a future of separate and unequal education.

THE UNIVERSAL VOUCHER SYSTEM

By the seventieth anniversary of Brown, five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) have enacted ESA programs that allow all or a vast majority of families with school-age children to send their children to private schools with state funds that equal or closely match the states’ per pupil expenditures for public schools. South Carolina adopted a “pilot” ESA last year, and a bill making its program permanent has already passed one chamber. The lower house of the Louisiana legislature passed a bill for a statewide universal ESA program to start next year, but the state senate is likely to delay adoption for another year to confirm estimated costs. Both states have governors who are likely to push adoption again next year.2

The Tennessee legislature adjourned in April without passing either of two pending universal ESA bills—only because Governor Bill Lee and legislative leaders failed to agree on which voucher bill to enact. They vow to pass legislation next session. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott used campaign funds from a Pennsylvania billionaire in the state’s Republican primary to defeat a handful of legislators who blocked his ESA bill last year. Abbott expects to defeat the two remaining state house members who failed to vote for his legislation—giving him the number he needs to pass his bill, while sending a political message that will keep his supporters in line…3

The historical context is shameful. Five of the southern states that now have universal vouchers also enacted open-ended vouchers in the 1960s—attempting to defeat Brown’s mandate for school desegregation. All but three of the states that have already embraced publicly financed ESAs were the only states authorizing segregated public schools on the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision.9

The fiscal impact of this rush to fund private schooling will be devastating to public schools. In 2018, all fifty states allocated $2.6 billion to finance private school vouchers. In 2021, legislatures increased the total amount to $3.3 billion and more recently to over $6 billion. If the eleven southern states enact the bills currently adopted or pending in their legislatures, their total funding for vouchers will be as much as $6.8 billion in 2025–26 and, according to independent estimates, as much as $20 billion for private schooling in 2030. This sum would equal the total state funds to public schools among six southern states in 2021.10

In 1950, about 400,000 students in the South attended private schools. By 2021-22, the number of private school students was about 1.8 million.

In 2021-22, 38.9% of white students attended public schools, and 63% enrolled in private schools.

AS VOUCHERS SPREAD, BROWN’S PROMISE DIES

During the last seventy years, the nation’s public schools have struggled in meeting the promise of Brown, despite clear proof that racially integrated, well-funded schools improve outcomes for Black children.39 This promise has been especially important to the South, where the states’ first education laws prohibited Black persons from being taught to read or write; where racially segregated schools offered children of color an inferior education across more than a half century. Due to stubborn, racially defined housing patterns, increasing class disparities, adverse, even hostile Supreme Court decisions, a lack of local, interracial community support, and, as recent research confirms, the growth of school choice, public schools continue to face far too many hurdles in providing all children with a good education.40

Mural by Michael Young celebrating the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision, in the Kansas State Capitol, Topeka, Kansa, May 23, 2019. Photograph by Flickr user Joe Shlabotnik. Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The South’s new dual school system renounces and annuls the mandates and hopes of Brown v. Board of Education. As universal vouchers spread, Brown’s promise dies. By their design, vouchers are an abandonment of Brown’s goal of equality of educational opportunity.

Reestablishing a dual school system will damage the prospects of a good education for all who attend public schools—not just low-income and minority children. The southern states were not able to finance two separate school systems during the era of segregation, even though Black students received a pittance of funding. Today that inability remains. The South continues to be far behind the rest of the nation in state and local funding of public schools. The new schemes of universal Education Savings Account vouchers will exacerbate the lack of sufficient funds for all except those higher-income families whose school-age children can attend private schools or home-schools and enjoy the enhancements and enriching experience that vouchers will subsidize.

Parents, grandparents, and others who support public schools and the democratic promise of public education must raise our voices against this reactionary movement and in furtherance of the importance of public schools. Like democracy itself, public schools may be the worst system for delivering all children an equal opportunity for a good education—except for all the others. We must not betray or abandon public education if we are committed to the democratic goal of a more perfect union and a good society for all. 

Categories Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Funding, Racism, Segregation, Separation of church and state

Houston: Congressmember Calls for Federal Investigation of HISD under Miles

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2024 //
12

After Spectrum News reported that millions of dollars had been sent from Texas charter schools founded by Mike Miles to Colorado charter schools in the same chain, parents and students demanded Miles’ resignation as superintendent of Houston Independent School Disttrict. Elected officials have called for an investigation but recognize that neither the State Commissioner (Mike Morath) nor Governor Abbott are likely to criticize Miles, whom they appointed.

HOUSTON — U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia formally requested that the U.S. Department of Education investigate the issues at Houston ISD and the financing of schools in the area, according to a letter obtained by KHOU 11 News.

In the letter dated May 15, the Congresswoman refers to recent news stories that reported Ector ISD near Midland, Texas allegedly sent state funds from Texas to Third Future Schools, a charter school operated in Colorado. She requested that an audit be conducted on Ector ISD.

A Spectrum News Texas report highlighted a pair of million-dollar-plus checks allegedly sent from Third Future Schools in Texas to its campuses in Colorado. The report accused Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Milesof sending Texas tax dollars out of state.

Miles has issued a statement responding to the report, saying the report “either intentionally or through gross incompetence, mischaracterized commonplace financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them.” 

RELATED: HISD Superintendent Mike Miles responds to report he funneled TX taxpayer money to Colorado | TEA commissioner, Third Future Schools also respond

Garcia expressed concerns over the financial stability of HISD following last year’s takeover by the state of Texas. This comes after widespread layoffs were announced leading to protests from those affected and HISD families.

RELATED: More Houston ISD parents protest over principals reportedly being forced out

RELATED: She was principal of the year in 2023. A year later, she said HISD forced her to resign

Texas Education Commissioner Mick Morath has confirmed that the TEA complaints team will look into allegations against Miles. 

The congresswoman also requested the issuance of federal funds by the state from the pandemic that were to be used to supplement public education at HISD be audited.

“It pains me that my home school district has been taken over and is seemingly being intentionally run into the ground and (I) request any additional assistance you can provide to protect our schools and our students,” Garcia said in the letter.

Garcia went on to claim that the state is punishing HISD.

“Houston is a vibrant and diverse community, and our state government is punishing us for that; we need your help,” she said in the letter.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Houston, Texas

Houston: Mike Miles Denies Transfer of Millions to His Colorado Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2024 //
22

Brett Shipp of Spectrum News posted a video asserting that the Texas charter schools in the network founded by Mike Miles sent millions of dollars to Miles’ Colorado charter schools. His report was amply documented.

Miles was imposed as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District after the state took control of HISD, based on the low performance of ONE school, Wheatley High School. Miles was selected by State Superintendent Mike Morath, who served on the Dallas school board when Miles was superintendent for three years and failed to meet any of his lofty goals. Neither Morath nor Miles is an educator. Morath was in the software business, and Miles was in the military before joining Eli Broad’s Superintendent Academy, which emphasized top-down management and disruption.

Ana Hernandez, a Houston legislator, wrote Mike Morath to call for an investigation of Miles. Morath is unlikely to conduct a serious probe since he chose Miles. The State Attorney General Ken Paxton is under indictment for corruption, so he’s not likely to dig deep into Morath’s choice; Morath was picked by Governor Gregg Abbott.

Sam Gonzalez Kelly of The Houston Chronicle reported that Miles denounced Shipp’s charges:

HISD’s appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is vehemently denying reports that his former charter network, Third Future Schools, illegally used money from its Texas campuses to subsidize its schools in Colorado. 

Miles, in a late night email to “friends, partners and board members,” wrote that the story by Spectrum News in Dallas “badly misunderstands, or worse, intentionally misrepresents the financial practices of Third Future Schools.” The story, by reporter Brett Shipp, who covered Miles during his tenure as Dallas ISD superintendent, accuses Third Future Schools of charging fees to its Texas network to subsidize one of its campuses in Colorado, and reported that Third Future Schools Texas had run a deficit due to debts to “other TFS network schools and to TFS corporate.”

The Spectrum report cites recordings of TFS corporate board and investor meetings, as well as the charter network’s financial records. The Houston Chronicle’s review of the documents confirmed that TFS Texas had sent funds to Colorado campuses, which a charter school finance expert said is generally permitted by state law.

“While I have not worked at the Third Future Schools network for more than a year, I find the piece irresponsibly inaccurate, and I cannot let this kind of misinformation go uncorrected,” Miles wrote. 

Miles wrote that Third Future Schools “was always a responsible steward of every public dollar received” and that school finances were approved by local school boards and partner districts. He acknowledged that Texas schools paid “administrative fees” to the central Third Future office, which is headquartered in Colorado, to provide network-wide supports in areas, including finance and human resources, but said that such payments are common practice for charter networks.

“Spectrum News either intentionally or, through gross incompetence, mischaracterized these common place financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them,” Miles wrote. 

Neither Spectrum nor Shipp immediately responded to requests for comment. 

Spectrum’s story immediately prompted outrage among HISD community members and some elected officials, who are demanding the superintendent’s resignation and a federal investigation over the charter network’s use of Texas taxpayer money in Colorado schools. 

The Texas Education Agency said in a statement Tuesday that it was aware of Spectrum’s report and was reviewing the matter.

The “charter school finance expert” consulted by The Houston Chronicle worked for the state charter school association. It is not clear that state law allows charter schools in Texas to send Texas public funds to its offices or other charters in Colorado.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston, Texas

Scandal! Millions of $$ Flow from Texas to Colorado Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2024 //
18

Mike Miles, the Superintendent imposed on the Houston public schools by a state takeover, set up a chain of charter schools in Colorado. His charters are running a big deficit. They are also getting poor academic results. One of them closed.

Miles is still getting paid as a consultant to his charter chain.

Miles opened charter schools in Texas.

Investigative reporter Brett Shipp learned that millions of dollars are being transferred from Miles’s Texas charters to his Colorado charters, to pay down their debt.

When he asked the charter leaders about this transfer, he was told that all the charters are in the same chain, so no problem.

But Texas parents complain that their schools are underfunded. When Shipp interviewed them, they were shocked to hear that their tax dollars were being sent to underwrite the deficit of charters in Colorado.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Colorado, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Houston, Privatization, Texas
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