Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools on the State and City’s Floundering Charters

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2019 //
6

Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools

 

June 5, 2019

For immediate release: Statement of APPS Re CREDO study

 

The CREDO study released today presents more evidence that the charter experiment foisted upon the state’s children has been a resounding failure, especially considering the enormous amount of taxpayer dollars that have been spent on charter schools.  

 

For many reasons, comparing charters to district schools is not an apples-to-apples exercise. Charter schools receive outside funding from private donors, including significant amounts every year from the Philadelphia School Partnership.  PSP identifies as a non-profit funder of schools, but they have been strong financial and political advocates for privatization and charter expansion. The bulk of their corporate funding goes to non-district schools. 

 

Charter schools have been cited over the years for unfair practices such as presenting barriers to enrollment, failure to inform students and parents of their due process rights when facing disciplinary action, and expelling students for trivial offenses including being out of uniform and lateness.  Thus, many charters are able to exclude students with special needs, both behavioral and academic.  

Studies done by both Philadelphia City Controller’s Office and the State Attorney General’s Office have documented fraud and questionable spending in some of the city’s largest charter organizations.   Organizations including PCCY and the Education 

Law Center have conducted in-depth studies that show charters do not outperform district schools in most categories. ELC’s recent report shows: 1) the population of economically disadvantaged students is much lower in Philadelphia’s charter schools—70% in the District, 56% in charters; 2) the percentage of English learners is nearly three times higher—11% in District, 4% in charters; 3) few of the special education students in the traditional charters are from the low-incidence disability categories, such as autism and intellectual disability, that are most expensive to serve.

The diversion of public funds to privately managed charters has made it more difficult for public schools to fund essential programs, but public schools still manage to outperform charters in most categories.  Lack of oversight, both on the state and local level, has resulted in a lack of accountability in the charter sector. 

The CREDO study confirms that the claim of charter investors and operators that charter schools are a better choice has never been true.  Harrisburg must reform the PA Charter Law so that the voters in each district can have the means to fully fund and strengthen their public school systems.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization

Capital & Main: Charter Teachers Burn Out Faster Than Public School Teachers

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2019 //
48

 

Larry Buhl writes in Capital & Main that teacher churn is a serious issue in the charter industry, but high turnover rates may be a feature of the charter business model, because it keeps labor costs low.

In Los Angeles, a 2018 study comparing charter- and traditional-school teachers between 2002 and 2009, found that elementary-school charter teachers saw 35 percent higher turnover than their traditional public-school peers. And the gap is even wider at the high school level, with charter-school teachers nearly four times more likely to leave than their peers.

“The conventional wisdom, which our study backs up, is that charters recruit very young teachers,” said study co-author Bruce Fuller, an education and public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Fuller added that teachers are also more likely to be white in charter schools than in traditional district schools, and many received their education background through the nonprofit teacher-recruitment organization Teach for America, rather than at a university or college.

“[CMO management] will say this in small groups but not to reporters — that they want younger teachers because it saves on wages and benefits,” Fuller said. “Our study shows that younger teachers are more likely to leave than older ones. There is no benefit to staying longer. Science-oriented STEM teachers were also more likely to leave in both charter and private schools, possibly because they had more lucrative opportunities in the private sector….”

Growing anecdotal evidence and studies point to several causes, including the startup-like culture of some charters, which leads to “seat of the pants” teaching, as well as inadequate help from administration for charter teacher burnout.

Rachel Schlosser, a fourth-grade teacher at Los Angeles’ Para Los Niños elementary charter school, turned to teaching after working as a grant writer for a nonprofit organization. She had considered going to a district school but was drawn to PLN’s smaller class sizes and student-centered approach. Now, however, she said it’s “student-centered at the expense of teachers.”

She claimed that the school is currently not investing in its teachers: It’s not providing enough professional development or support, nor adequate guidance for handling disciplinary problems, a science curriculum or a long-promised resource library. (Para Los Niños’ administration did not respond to requests for comment.)

“The administration can make or break your experience,” Schlosser added. “If you are not your best self and not feeling supported, the students won’t benefit. Teacher burnout is real.”

Indeed, the “Stay or Go” study showed that the levels of support from administrators for teachers were closely tied to teachers’ decisions to walk away. And teachers aren’t the only ones feeling the urge to move on. A study of New York schools shows that charter-school principals are much more likely to leave than their public-school counterparts.

KIPP has invested in retention strategies, but it still retains fewer teachers than public schools.

Only 11% or so of charter teachers are unionized, so they have no way to bargain for better working conditions.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

Shawgi Tell: CREDO Study of Pennsylvania Charters Reports Mediocre Results

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2019 //
8

 

Shawgi Telll writes that the latest study of charter schools in Pennsylvania by CREDO, the Stanford-based research group, reports unimpressive results. 

CREDO’s overall conclusion:

The analysis shows that in a year’s time, the typical charter school student in Pennsylvania makes similar progress in reading and weaker growth in math compared to the educational gains that the students would have had in a traditional public school (TPS). Thinking of a 180-day school year as “one year of learning”, an average Pennsylvania charter student experiences weaker annual growth in math equivalent to 30 fewer days of learning. Our online charter school analysis reveals that attending an online charter school leads to substantially negative learning gains in both reading and math, which negatively affect the overall charter impact on student progress.

The report notes phenomenal growth of enrollment in  online charters, where students actually lose ground in both reading and math.

According to the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, charter school enrollment has grown dramatically since the mid-2000s, with noteworthy expansion in both urban and rural areas. In addition, Pennsylvania experienced a 75 percent increase in online charter school enrollment between 2006-2007 and 2010- 2011.2 Currently one quarter of Pennsylvania’s charter school students enroll in online charter schools. These trends motivate the current study.

Tell says:

A June 4, 2019 press release from CREDO states that: “Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found over four years of study that the typical charter school student in Pennsylvania makes similar progress in reading and weaker growth in math compared to their traditional public school peer (TPS).”

The press release does not mention what sort of selective enrollment practices are practiced in Pennsylvania’s charter schools, but it is well-known that charter schools across the nation regularly cherry-pick their students. It is also worth noting that, “Of the state’s 15 cyber charters, 10 are operating with expired charters.”2

The CREDO Pennsylvania finding is extra significant given that it comes from an organization that is unrelentingly pro-charter school and funded heavily by billionaires who have been working for years to impose privately-operated charter schools on the entire country (e.g., Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation).

Go figure. Pennsylvania charter law is notoriously weak. It encourages the growth of low-performing charters. More students are enrolling in inferior online charters, where their learning is likely to be stunted.

What kind of future does the Pennsylvania Legislature envision for the State with its ongoing war against education?

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

Detroit: At Graduation Ceremony, Two Top Students Blast Their Charter School

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
21

The graduation ceremony at a charter school in Detroit was disrupted when the two top students in the school used their addresses to criticize the school for “an inferior education and a culture of secrecy.”

The school said the students being used by adults with an agenda, which is an odd and condescending thing to say about your best students.

The pair accused Universal Academy on Detroit’s west side of churning substitute teachers through their classrooms, backing out of promised benefits, firing teachers who advocated for kids and silencing students and parents who speak out.

CEO Nawal Hamadeh ordered the microphone silenced during the second speech but by then, the point had been made, said Tuhfa Kasem, 17, whose speech was cut short.

“She asked for me to be escorted out but the parents had my back,” Kasem said. “The cops came in. The parents were like ‘you’re not going to touch her….’ “

A YouTube video of the scene took the speech to a much larger crowd than the one that was packed into the school gymnasium earlier this month.

“I’m happy that it raised the awareness that it did,” Kasem said.

Kasem’s speech followed a shorter speech by Zainab Altalaqani, a co-salutatorian and friend. The girls accuse the school of using long-term substitute teachers and other means to save money at the expense of the education of the children…

One of the teachers, Phillip Leslie, heard about the girls’ criticisms of his former employer and later posted a video of the graduation ceremony online.

“The school had gotten what we perceived as progressively worse,” he said. “We had raised a number of concerns with the principal. When they lost teachers, they would use paraprofessionals as substitutes.”

Leslie and some of his colleagues were fired, they said, for attending a board meeting at the school to complain.

They filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board and ultimately settled for lost wages and reversal of their firings, so they wouldn’t be hamstrung when they sought work at other schools. 

“They were the best teachers in the school,” said Sara Saleh, 18, who graduated last year and now attends Wayne State. “Most of the staff members that I’ve spoken with had complained about the same things.”

The school caters to a student population that includes many immigrant children, including those from Yemen and Iraq, who need additional help learning English. Saleh said her English teacher last year was a certified math teacher, who learned English as a second language herself and couldn’t help students.

See an interview with one of the students here.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit

What?! Washington State Charters Closing One After Another

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
20

Only Bill Gates knows how many millions he has poured into getting charters authorized and funded by the state in Washington State. There have been four referendums, the last one in 2012, which passed by about one percent, over the opposition of civil rights groups, unions, and PTAs. Gates and friends (Jeff Bezos’ parents, Waltons, and assorted billionaires) outspent the grassroots groups by several multiples, and at last Gates got charters past the voters. Then the Washington State Supreme Court said that charters are not public schools as defined in the state constitution, so Gates’s friends, led by Jonah Edelman and Stand for Children of Oregon, funded an effort to defeat the naughty justices at the next election. Happily, they were re-elected.

But Gates would not give up. He went to the Legislature and persuaded his friends to fund the charters with lottery money. The Governor Jay Inslee dared not stand up to the richest man in the state, and he neither signed nor vetoed the legislation, allowing it to become law.

When civilrights groups sued, because the charter schools were back to the public trough, the Supreme Court decided not to alienate the multibillionaire Gates again, and they decided to let the charters have lottery money.

Voila! Gates had charters and public money to pay for them.

But oh no, they are struggling, despite the fact that Gates handed out millions more to lure charter operators to open schools.

The Charter-friendly Seattle Times reports:

Two charter schools — one in Kent and another in Tacoma — will shut down at the end of this academic year, bringing the total number of closures to four since the publicly funded but privately run schools first opened in Washington state five years ago.

The board of directors for Green Dot Public Schools voted Thursday to shut down the two schools, which they oversee: Excel Public Charter School in Kent and Destiny Middle School in Tacoma. The Washington State Charter Association, in a news release, attributed the closures to dwindling enrollment.

The news comes five months after Soar Academy in Tacoma announced that it would close at the end of this school year. The school cited financial constraints.

“Both of these schools (in Kent and Tacoma) experienced significant struggles tied closely to low student enrollment and related operational challenges,” the charter-schools group said in its release.

The Kent and Tacoma schools received a charter, or contract, from the state to enroll up to 600 students. But enrollment data from Green Dot show the Kent campus reached a peak enrollment of  188 as of October 2018. In Tacoma, Destiny reached a peak enrollment of 281 during the 2017-18 school year but tumbled to 162 students as of October.

Across Washington, a dozen charter schools enroll about 3,300 students — a fraction of the 1.1 million students enrolled in public schools statewide.

Figure it out. What did Gates and spend? How many millions to ensure that 3,300 students could attend charters?

When CREDO evaluated the tiny number of charters, it concluded that on average they were no better or worse than public schools.

The findings of this study show that on average, charter students in Washington State experience annual growth in reading and math that is on par with the educational gains of their matched peers who enroll in the traditional public schools (TPS) the charter school students would otherwise have attended. 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Walton Foundation, Washington State

NBC News: Democrats Turning Against Charters (Link Added)

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
37

NBC News ran a story about how Democratic candidates are turning against charter schools. The reasons, says NBC, is DeVos and unions.

The safe position for Democrats is to say that he or she opposes for-profit charter schools.

Bernie Sanders went further by echoing the national NAACP and Black Lives Matter’s call for a national moratorium on new charters.

In the story, everyone plays their expected part. Mike Petrilli, authorizer of Ohio charters, claims that only his team (the DeVos choice team) really cares about “improving education” by privatizing it and handing it over to entrepreneurs. Shavar Jeffries of the hedge fund managers’ DFER says, “Bernie Sanders apparently thinks he, in Vermont, knows better than low-income African American and Hispanic families in their cities about what’s best for their children,” because Sanders called for a moratorium on new charters. Apparently the hedge fund managers and billionaires who support DFER understand the needs of low-income African American and Hispanic families better than anyone else.

The points that never appear in the news story are, one, that charters have not delivered on their promises. On average, they are no better than public schools and many are far worse. And two, because most charters are deregulated and unsupervised, they have experienced many scandals and embezzlements, like the most recent one, in which charter operators in California were indicted for stealing more than $50 million. The unacknowledged fact is that no community has ever voted to privatize their public schools.

Democrats have had a hard time shedding the legacy of Obama and Duncan.

BetsyDeVos reminds them that school choice is a Republican Policy, not a Democratic one.

Thank you, Betsy DeVos!

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization

Bill Phillis: State Audit Finds Possible Fraud at Dayton Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
2

Bill Phillis, former State Deputy Superintendent, watches over school spending and misspending in Ohio, in hopes that one day there will be equitable and adequate funding of public schools, instead of the current regime of school choice, waste, fraud, and abuse.

 

School Bus
Richard Allen Academy charter school audit cites fraud
The state audit cited illegal payments to board members and the treasurer, nepotism, failure to withdraw students, discrepancy between employee contributions to the pension systems and the amount the charter school paid to the pension systems. In addition, the audit indicates school and management company funds were comingled by which the company benefited at the expense of the charter schools. The charter school seems to benefit adults, not students.
The practice of charter companies benefiting at the expense of the charter school students is commonplace in the charter industry. Hopefully, in future audits, the State Auditor will take on the big boys in the charter industry.
Charter chains typically establish companies that provide consultant services, facilities and other services that charge the charter school outrageous rates. These schemes, of course, enrich the charter functionaries resulting in less educational opportunities for students.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
School Bus
Ohio E & A | 50 S. Young Street, Suite M102, Columbus, OH 43215
Sent by ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net in collaboration with
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Who Advises Elizabeth Warren on Education?

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2019 //
73

Mercedes Schneider delved into the experience of Elizabeth Warren’s senior education advisor. 

He entered teaching through Teach for America. I hear that his linked-in profile has been deleted since this post appeared but you might want to check to see if it has been restored.

I have met Elizabeth Warren twice, once in her Senate Office, about 2015, where we had a 30-minute conversation about education. I was greatly  impressed by her quick intelligence. Earlier this year, I attended a house party in her honor at the home of a mutual friend in Manhattan and again was taken by her ideas about higher education, her passion, and her articulateness.

I was surprised and disappointed therefore to learn that her senior education advisor is TFA. TFA is a favorite of the Waltons, Eli Broad, and other billionaires who support privatization of public education. The Waltons have given many millions to TFA, at one point a single grant of $48 million; Broad assembled $100 million from a group of his allies for TFA. The organization supplies a large part of the workforce for private charter schools. Its leaders in high policy positions, like Michelle Rhee, John White, and Kevin Huffman have typically been pro-testing, anti-teacher, and anti-union.

I hope Warren clears the air by explaining where she stands on K-12 issues, whether she believes all children should have a credentialed teacher, whether she pledges to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program (Betsy DeVos’ $440 Million Slush Fund), whether she supports the NAACP call for a moratorium on new charters, and whether she will actively fight to restore and protect teachers’ right to bargain collectively.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Supporting public schools, Teach for America, Testing

Bernie Is Right About Charters: Ravitch and Burris

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
55

 

The New York Daily News published an opinion piece attacking Bernie Sander’s call for a moratorium on charter schools, echoing the NAACP and Black Lives Matter. The article claimed that Senator Sanders was hurting children of color.

Carol Burris and I published a response in the same publication to the attack, which is included here. 

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

Yohuru Williams and Carol Burris: Where Do Democratic Candidates Stand on K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
4

 

Yohuru Williams and Carol Burris assess the expressed views of the Democratic candidates—thus far—on K-12 education. 

One hopes that the other candidates will soon state or clarify their views about privatization, testing, funding, and other important issues that the president can change.

They should all be asked at town halls whether they will kill the federal Charter Schools Program slush fund, which is now $440 million a year and is being used by DeVos to expand corporate chains.

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