Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Jack Schneider: Why Are Americans Turning Against Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2019 //
22

 

Jack Schneider, a historian of education who often collaborates with Jennifer Berkshire, analyzes the fading allure of charter schools. After years of claims that they would “save” public schools and poor children, the public has given up on them. Why? They have not delivered, and the public gets it.

For most of the past thirty years, charters seemed unstoppable, especially because their expansion was backed by billions from people like the Waltons, Gates, and Broad, as well as the federal government. But they have not kept their promises.

Today, however, the grand promises of the charter movement remain unfulfilled, and so the costs of charters are being evaluated in a new light.

After three decades, charters enroll six percent of students. Despite bold predictions by their advocates that this number will grow fivefold, charters are increasingly in disrepute.

First, the promise of innovation was not met. Iron discipline is not exactly innovative.

Second, the promise that charters would be significantly better than public schools did not happen. In large part, that is because the introduction of charters simply creates an opportunity for choice; it does not ensure the quality of schools. Rigorous research, from groups like Mathematica Policy Research and Stanford University, has found that average charter performance is roughly equivalent to that of traditional public schools. A recent study in Ohio, for instance, concluded that some of the state’s charters perform worse than the state’s public schools, some perform better, and roughly half do not significantly differ.

Finally, charters have not produced the systemic improvement promised by their boosters.

Competition did not lift all boats. In fact, competition has weakened the public schools that enroll most students at the same time that charters do not necessarily provide a better alternative.

Schneider does not mention one other important reason for the diminishing reputation of charters: scandals, frauds, embezzlement, and other scams that appear daily in local and state media. A significant number of charters are launched and operated by non-educators and by entrepreneurs, which amplifies the reasons for charter instability and failure.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Competition, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Innovation, Privatization, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Please Send an Email to Congress to Block Betsy DeVos’ Charter Slush Fund!

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2019 //
2

 

Please make sure you send emails to your Senator to ensure they cut off Betsy DeVos’s charter slush fund. Don’t waste another $1 billion on charters that never open or close right after opening. The Network for Public Education makes it easy. Just click here.
Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Little Rock: Please Don’t Destroy Our Public Schools and Our Children

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2019 //
4

Dr. Anika Whitfield, an education activist in LittleRock, Arkansas, wrote an open letter to State Commissioner Johnny Key and the members of the Arkansas State Board of Education. She appeals to their humanity, forgetting for the moment that the state of Arkansas is owned by the Walton Family Foundation:

 

Mr. Key and the Members of the AR State Board of Education,

Students, families, schools, and neighborhoods in the LRSD community are experiencing almost indescribable losses. 
 
We have witnessed significant losses of students to charter and other school districts during your watch, as we have seen many school closures and observed more funding and attention being given to growing charter schools, primarily in and around the LR community.  
 
We have also witnessed an untold account of the number of students who have been transitioned from the LRSD into a prison pipeline. And, to be clear, most of these students are disproportionately African American, Latinx, and students from low income homes and communities. 
 
We know that many of these actions have not occurred haphazardly, unintentionally, nor unnoticed by most, if not all of you.
 
We appeal to your humanity and the spirit in which your position holds, to represent all children and all public schools in our state with equity and without discrimination.  
 
We appeal to you even moreso as your more recent role has been to oversee directly the LRSD since taking over our public school district, January 28, 2019, to provide all of our students with access to meaningful resources and support in order to experience a world class public education.
 
We rightfully hold you accountable for the losses mentioned above.  And, we consider these to be failures as a result of your actions or inactions. 
 
We appeal to you, as you prepare to return the LRSD to the community of LR and to a democratically elected, local, representative board of directors, to provide and allocate the necessary resources to ensure that every Elementary school has a qualified, certified, school counselor that will well serve the students and schools in which they are hired, without demonstrating discrimination and without oppressing the students in which they are agreeing to serve.
 
Looking forward to hearing back from you soon.
 
Sincerely, 
Rev./Dr. Anika T. Whitfield
Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Inequity, Injustice, Little Rock, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Chicago Teachers Union Wins Some Victories in Legislature

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2019 //
6

 

The Chicago Teachers Union reports on some gains. Most notable is that individual school districts will be able to limit charter school expansion into their districts, a battle now being fought in California. The issue is whether the wishes of charter entrepreneurs should outweigh democratic local control of schools. Illinois says no.

 

While some gains have been made, equity agenda in Springfield requires real leadership from Lightfoot

The CTU is calling on Chicago’s new mayor to ‘Keep the Promise’ for education equity by supporting the restoration of our bargaining rights—and an elected, representative school board.

CHICAGO—The Chicago Teachers Union made some powerful gains in this spring’s Springfield legislative session. The union won passage of legislation to reign in and reform the charter industry—including the right of individual school districts to control charter expansion in their districts. Until both houses passed the legislation, the Illinois State Charter School Commission had unilateral power to ignore school districts’ attempts to close down bad operators in their regions. Now, that power is ended.

Legislators also increased the number of days that retired teachers and support staff can serve as substitute teachers by 20 percent without sacrificing their pension benefits. The bill is designed to help alleviate an acute shortage of substitute teachers, and put retired veteran educators back in the classroom. Before the legislation was passed, retirees could be forced to forfeit their entire pension if they substituted for more than 100 days per year, roughly twenty weeks out of a full school year.

And the legislature has sent a bill to the governor’s office that would suspend a teacher test that was widely decried as of dubious value—and a dangerous driver of the state’s acute teacher shortage.

Two other CTU initiatives—a bill to restore the CTU’s right to bargain over critical issues like class size and staff shortages, and a bill to create an elected, representative school board—both stalled in the senate, where Senate President John Cullerton sandbagged that legislation at the request of Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot. The earliest the effort could be taken up again by the state legislature is this October.

“The mayor ran on her support of an elected representative school board and on an agenda of real equity for neighborhood public schools,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey. “Cullerton has, unfortunately, a long track record of carrying the water for the previous mayor on some terrible legislative initiatives. The new mayor should reverse that practice, respect the platform on which voters elected her, and move to get both of these initiatives passed.”

Chicagoans are the only residents in the state denied the right to elect their school board. The bill would have created distinct, walkable districts that ensure that every neighborhood in the city is represented on the school board. The 21-member board is about 40% the size of the City Council, and on par with the number of state representatives who are elected by Chicagoans to serve in Springfield.

For more than a quarter of a century, Chicago’s public school educators have also been denied the right—unlike educators across the state—to bargain over so-called ‘non-economic’ issues like class size and outsourcing. Those restrictions have allowed Chicago’s mayor to push massive privatization of school services—from health services for special needs students to janitorial services. That privatiziation agenda has driven deep deficiencies in health services for special education services and chronic cleanliness and maintenance issues in the public schools, at the same time that class sizes have exploded and the district confronts sweeping shortages of critical frontline staff like school nurses and social workers.

“We’ll continue to work to introduce and fight for passage of this legislation until we get it done,” said Sharkey. “Mayoral control of the board of education has been a dismal failure. It’s time for the mayor to fulfill her promises to Chicagoans, get behind these initiatives and start the hard work of building a school district built on real equity for our students. We elect our mayor, our aldermen, our state legislators—and Chicagoans should have the same right when it comes to our public schools that every other part of the state has the right to exercise.”
Chicago Teachers Union • 1901 W. Carroll Ave. • Chicago, IL 60612 • 312-329-9100
www.ctulocal1.org
for the schools Chicago’s students deserve

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Democracy, Illinois, Unions

Steven Singer: It Is Time for Senator Warren to Make Her Education Views Clear

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2019 //
103

Let me make clear that I have enormous respect for Senator Warren. I met her in her office in 2015, gave her a copy of my book, Reign of Error, and was greatly impressed by her thoughtfulness and intellect. A few months ago, I attended a fundraiser for her at the home of a mutual friend in Manhattan and was again wowed by her fierce intellect and passionate critique of the status quo.

But I want her now to come out strongly against every aspect of the Trump-DeVos education agenda of privatization, including both charters and vouchers. I want her to support the right of teachers to bargain collectively. I want her to endorse the importance of having well-prepared, credentialed teachers in every classroom.

In this post, Steven Singer criticizes Senator Elizabeth Warren for her unclear signals about K-12 education policy.

When she recently spoke in Oakland, she was introduced by a former charter school teacher who was affiliated with an anti-union, pro-charter group (ironically) called GO Public. Oakland had just gone through a teachers’ strike, prompted in part by the rapid proliferation of charters supported by that same deceptively named organization.

Some defenders on Twitter said that Warren didn’t decide who introduced her.

True. But more worrisome is that her senior policy advisor is a TFA alum with two years of teaching experience.

Teachers don’t want a Michelle Rhee or John White as Secretary of Education. They want someone who supports them, not chastises them as “bad” because they teach the most vulnerable students.

In 2016, Senator Warren supported the “No on 2” campaign to block charter expansion, but she did so while praising charters.

She said at that time:

””In a statement sent out by the campaign organized against the question, Warren, a Cambridge Democrat, praised charter schools in general while expressing concern about the proposed charter expansion’s effect on school districts’ bottom lines.”

If she thought well of charters “in general,”  why oppose their expansion?

Please, Senator Warren, make clear that you stand with fully public schools, not privately managed charters funded by the Walton-Gates-Broad combine, and professional teachers.

 

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

Reed Hastings Funds Anti-Abortion Extremists in Missouri in Hopes of Getting Their Votes for Charter School Bill

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2019 //
30

Reed Hastings, the billionaire founder of Netflix, funded anti-abortion Republicans in Missouri as a way to win their votes for charter school  legislation. Hastings likes to portray himself as a “progressive.” What kind of progressive would fund a total ban on all abortions, including abortions related to rape, incest, and the health of the mother?

New York (CNN Business)Netflix has taken a stance against a restrictive abortion bill in Georgia. But its CEO Reed Hastings has been donating to lawmakers who passed one of the country’s most controversial abortion laws.

Over the last 10 months, Hastings donated $143,000 to 73 Republicans who voted for a Missouri abortion ban. And in November, Hastings donated $2,600, the maximum donation amount, to Missouri Governor Mike Parson, who signed a bill on May 24 prohibiting abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy.
A newsletter, Popular Information, first reported the publicly available data through the Missouri Ethics Commission.
The recent trend of donating to Missouri Republicans is unusual for Hastings, who has a pattern of donating to Democrats over the past two decades. He’s donated to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, as well as to larger Democratic committees. Over the past 10 months, Hastings also donated $10,700 to various Missouri Democrats.
A source close to Hastings told CNN Business that Netflix’s CEO donated the money for education purposes.
“All of these personal donations from Reed, on both sides of the aisle, were made in support of a specific piece of legislation aimed at improving the availability and quality of charter schools in Missouri,” said the source. “Reed’s private support of educational causes is well known and these personal donations stem directly from that.”
Missouri legislators were evaluating House Bill 581, sponsored by Representative Rebecca Roeber, a Republican. A very similar bill was also circulating in the Senate. Hastings gave the maximum donation, $2,600, to Roeber two times last year to support her after the primary and general elections. The bill would have increased perks for charter schools, but it ultimately failed.
Hastings’ last contribution to Missouri politicians was in February, according to the Missouri Ethics Commission. The bill was dropped from the calendar by May. Hastings declined to comment for this article.
In addition to Hastings’ support for the charter school bill, Netflix also took up a particular interest in Missouri. The company hired a lobbying firm a few months ago to work in Missouri, noted Dan Auble, senior researcher with the Center for Responsive Politics.
“They are undertaking a concerted campaign here,” he said, “Whatever it is that Hastings and Netflix are trying to get done — or stop — in Missouri it is clear they will have the ear of legislators to make their case.”
It is shocking that Hastings would risk women’s lives for the sake of his pet hobby: the privatization of public schools.
Will he next partner with Betsy DeVos to promote school choice?

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Missouri, Privatization

Jeff Bryant: Democrats Must Choose Between Raising Teacher Pay and Funding Charters

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2019 //
19

 

Jeff Bryant explains here why Democratic candidates will have to make a choice between raising teacher pay and funding  charter schools.

Up until recently, candidates spoke only about pre-K and postsecondary education.

But the time has come to set forth their ideas for K-12.

In Florida, the choice is stark.

Voters pass tax increases dedicated solely to funding their local public schools, but the Legislature wants to compel them to share any tax increases with charter schools, whether they want to or not.

He writes:

A recent law passed by the majority Republican Florida state legislature and signed by newly elected Republican Governor Ron DeSantis will force local school districts to share portions of their locally appropriated tax money with charter schools, even if those funds are raised for the express purpose of increasing teacher salaries in district-operated public schools. (Charter schools in Florida, as in many states, do not receive funds that are raised through bond referendums, mill levies, or other forms of local funding initiatives.)

Florida teachers have openly opposed the new law, and local school districts have taken it to court to have it overthrown. But given this new law, it’s not at all hard to imagine a scenario, even at the national level, where Democrats pushing to increase funds for teacher pay will have to confront an expanding charter school industry—and now voucher programs—that would claim their portion of that money to use as private institutions for whatever purposes they wish.

“The problem with charter schools isn’t that they’re competing with public schools; it’s that they’re supplanting public schools,” says Justin Katz in a phone call. Katz, who is president of the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association, recently helped organize a rally in West Palm Beach where more than 200 teachers and public school advocates showed up to voice their opposition to distributing funds raised by local tax increases to charter schools.

The protest “was very specific, local, and personal,” Katz explains, because voters in the county had approved $200 million in funding for their schools in a measure that specified increases could be used for teacher raises in traditional public schools and not for funding charter schools.

The referendum was overwhelmingly approved by more than 72 percent of voters. But under the proposed new law, a proportional share of 10 percent, or about $20 million a year, would have gone to the county’s 49 charters. Only a final hour amendment in the state’s Senate averted the loss, when the bill was altered to apply to future bond referendums only.

The language of the referendum that was passed was “crystal clear,” Katz says, that money raised by the bond efforts would not go to charter schools. But the loophole being used to argue for charters to get their share is the use of the term “public schools.”

The new law is “an effort to redefine what are public schools,” he says, in order to give charter schools a right to claim a portion of any publicly raised education funds, regardless of the intent for raising the money. He fears that once charters claim that right, private schools in the state’s school voucher programs will claim it too.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, Funding, Privatization

California: Two of Four Charter Reform Bills Remain Alive; Will Charter Lobbyists Block Them?

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2019 //
17

While the charter lobbyists (who call themselves “families”) managed to knock out two bills to harness their unrestricted expansion, two others remain alive, thanks in part to the vigorous efforts of the California NAACP, whose education leader is charter expert Julian Vasquez Heilig. 

The two that remain viable are AB 1505 and 1507, which establish local control and oversight of charters.

● AB 1505 – The bill gives local school districts sole authority to approve new charter schools and to consider how new schools would impact the district’s budget in the approval process. Since new charter schools typically attract students – and their per pupil funding – away from traditional public schools, many expect that this measure would make it much more difficult for new charter schools to be approved. AB 1505 passed May 22 and will now go to the state Senate.

● AB 1507 – This bill closes a loophole in state law that has let some districts boost their budgets by approving charter schools outside their boundaries. AB 1507 would require all charter schools approved by a district to be located within it. It passed on May 13 in the state Assembly and is also now headed to the Senate.

If these two bills pass, charters will be authorized only by the district in which they are located. Rural districts in need of cash will not be able to cannibalize urban districts hundreds of miles away by authorizing a charter that they can’t oversee.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools

What Will Happen to the Public Schools in Rochester, N.Y.? 56% of the Children Are Poor!

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2019 //
70

The Mayor of Rochester, Lovely Warren, has called upon the New York State Education Department and the Board of Regents to take over the city’s public schools, oust the elected board, and appoint a different board of its choosing. She claims that Commissioner MaryEllen Elia has a plan, but apparently this is not the case. To say this is incoherent is an understatement. The state has not expressed a desire to take control of Rochester city schools. Mayor Warren apparently has decided to throw them under the bus, abandon local control, and let the state take responsibility.

THIS MATTERS: 56% of the children in Rochester live in poverty, the third highest rate in the nation! Only Gary, Indiana, and Flint, Michigan, have higher  rates of child poverty.

What is Mayor Lovely Warren doing about it?

Here is another point of view, from journalist Rachel Barnhardt. She explains that the negative and misinformed attitudes of public officials guarantee that the children will not get the support they need to succeed in school.

She writes:

We don’t blame the mayor for poverty, so why do we blame the school board?

The Rochester City School District is the worst in the state. It’s also the district with the highest concentration of children who live in poverty. The research is clear: poverty impacts educational outcomes.

Mayor Lovely Warren says poverty is no excuse. Poor children can learn. Black children can learn. We must do something.

She’s right.

We must solve poverty.

No one has been able to figure out how to solve poverty. We’ve been nibbling around the edges with various programs and initiatives, none of which has been transformative.

In the meantime, we must figure out what to do right now. The crisis is urgent. (It’s been urgent since I attended city schools in the early ‘90s.)

Warren does not offer a clear path and stops short of asking for mayoral control. She has been an ardent advocate of charter schools. The mayor also sees community schools, where extra resources are dedicated to addressing issues related to poverty, trauma and education, as a potential solution.

Community schools, however, show mixed results. School 17 has a chronic absenteeism rate of 40 percent and fewer than 10 percent of children are proficient in reading and math. Charter schools siphon money and students away from the district, and don’t always succeed.

Warren also offered another solution, one parents like her have been implementing for decades: abandon the district.

In her State of the City address, Warren said parents who send their kids to city schools are “sacrificing” children. If you can pull your kids from the district, she counseled a friend, you should do so.

That’s what got us into this mess. We have a segregated school system because of the wholesale disinvestment in our schools. We have children denied opportunities because of where they were born.

What would happen, Barnhardt asks, if all parents returned to the public schools instead of abandoning them? What would happen if everyone acknowledged that we have a common fate and we must stand together?

She bravely concludes:

We will never fix the schools long as we refuse to acknowledge that separate is not equal.

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, New York, Poverty, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

To Understand Teach for America, See Who Funds The Organization

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2019 //
27

Follow the money is a basic principle.

To understand an organization, see who funds it.

Take Teach for America.

It presents itself to the public as a noble charity.

Unfortunately, it promotes the bad idea that anyone with five weeks of training can teach. That has the effect of undermining teaching as a profession.

Does anyone believe that five weeks of training is adequate to become a doctor or lawyer or architect or engineer?

TFA supplies the workforce for a large proportion of charter schools, 90% of which are non-union.

TFA simultaneously undermines the teaching profession and teacher unionism, which assures that teachers have rights and voice in the workplace.

Who would promote these goals? .

Who funds  Teach for America? 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Teach for America, Teaching, Unions
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