Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Bernie Sanders’ Bold Plan for Education

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2019 //
118

 

Senator Bernie Sanders has produced an excellent plan for education .

Thus far, he is the only candidate to address K-12.

His first principle is crucial:

Every human being has the fundamental right to a good education.

Read the plan.

Sanders’ commitment to funding education is breathtaking. He intends to triple the funding of Title 1 for the neediest children. He proposes a national floor for per-pupil spending. He wants to reduce class sizes. He promises that the federal government will pay 50% of the cost of special education.

He promises to:

Significantly increase teacher pay by working with states to set a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000 tied to cost of living, years of service, and other qualifications; and allowing states to go beyond that floor based on geographic cost of living.

He also pledges to protect and expand collective bargaining rights and tenure.

He does not shy away from the charter industry.

He recommends a flat ban on for-profit charters. He endorses the NAACP resolution that calls for a new moratorium on new charters. He recognizes that charters are funded by billionaires and not in need of federal aid.

He says:

That means halting the use of public funds to underwrite new charter schools.

We do not need two schools systems; we need to invest in our public schools system.

This is a powerful program that addresses the three critical issues of our time.

First, the need for adequate and equitable funding.

Second, the need to restore teacher professionalization.

Third, the need to reject privatization.

What will

the other candidates do? Senator Sanders has challenged them to match his boldness. Will they?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization

Jackie Goldberg: Why I Love This Woman!

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2019 //
11

 

Capital & Main interviewed Jackie Goldberg about her views, her vision, her hopes for the future. My heart sang and my brain hummed as I read her inspiring words.  

Reading Jackie’s words was like eating comfort food. I kept saying to myself, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Read the interview and you will see what I mean.

Jackie knows we are in the middle of a war to save public education. She knows that there is big money determined to kill it. She knows that the hope for the future of our democracy depends in having a well-funded public school system that provides genuine opportunity to all children.

And she is prepared to go to the mat, in Los Angeles and in Sacramento, to get the funding that public schools need and to get the financial accountability that charter schools need.

I am reminded of the first time I met Jackie. It was December 6, 2018. I had heard about her for years as an iconic figure but our paths had never crossed.

Over the past several years, the billionaires were buying seats on the LAUSD and things were looking bleak. I kept hearing about this dynamo Jackie Goldberg, the only one who could turn things around. She was the Cy Young pitcher in the bullpen, the one held in reserve until the ninth inning.

Last December, I went to Los Angeles to receive an award from a progressive group called LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy), which fights for fair wages for low-income workers, environmental protection, and a stronger public sector.

Jackie was there. We agreed to talk after the dinner. We sat in a crowded bar and talked for over an hour. I felt like I was talking to my mirror image yet our life experiences were very different. It was a joyous conversation.

When I returned to LA in February, I spoke at a fundraiser for her. Once again I was impressed by her knowledge, her experience, her passion for education and for children and for justice.

You could count me as her biggest fan but given the 72% win she just racked up, I’m guessing that there are many others in Los Angeles who have known her much longer and who love Jackie as much as I do.

It should go without saying that she is a hero of public education.

Cy Young just came in from the bullpen. Things are definitely looking up.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Honor Roll, Los Angeles, Love

Bernie Sanders Calls for Tough Restrictions on Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2019 //
71

 

CNN says that Senator Bernie Sanders will deliver a major address on education on Saturday. 

He will call for a flat ban on for-profit charters.

He supports the NAACP’s call for a moratorium on new charters.

Most important is this:

The Vermont independent also will call for a moratorium on the funding of all public charter school expansion until a national audit on the schools has been completed. Additionally, Sanders will promise to halt the use of public funds to underwrite all new charter schools if he is elected president.

That would mean elimination of the federal charter slush fund, which has wasted nearly $1 billion on schools that never opened or that closed soon after opening. This program, called the Charter Schools Program, was initiated in 1994 to spur innovation. It is currently funded at $440 million a year. Secretary DeVos used the CSP  to give $89 million to KIPP, which is already amply funded by the Waltons, Gates, and other billionaires and is not a needy recipient. She also has given $225 million to IDEA, part of which will be applied to opening 20 charters in El Paso.

If Senator Sanders means to eliminate CSP, that’s a very good step forward.

Every other Democratic candidate should be asked what they will do about the federal charter slush fund.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, KIPP Charter Schools, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Howard Blume: After Jackie’s Win in L.A., a New Political Landscape in Education

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2019 //
4

 

Howard Blume writes in the Los Angeles Times about the new political landscape in education after Jackie Goldberg’s landslide election to the LAUSD school board.

Jackie met with Superintendent Austin Beutner, and both pledged to work for the passage of Measure EE, a tax proposal that would raise $500 million in new revenues for the public schools.

More than anything else, Goldberg is stressing the need for better funding — a point of agreement among many combatants in the education wars, including charter supporters.

“We’ve been starving schools,” Goldberg said during an appearance Wednesday at Micheltorena Street Elementary in Silver Lake. “It is a crime that we are not investing in children the way they did when I was a kid….”

Goldberg’s win turned around a losing streak for the teachers union. Until Tuesday’s election, charter school supporters, fueled by wealthy donors, were outspending the unions in L.A. school board contests. And in July 2017, candidates they backed claimed a board majority.

Charters are privately operated, mostly nonunion and compete with district schools for students and the funding that follows them. They enroll close to 1 in 5 district students. It will not be easy to find the way forward on charters, because most rules governing their expansion and oversight are made at the state level.

While the L.A. teachers union has remained a political force, its influence in local board elections was being eclipsed by charters.

With its success Tuesday, the teachers union might be riding something of a national wave, said Julie Marsh, professor at USC’s Rossier School of Education.

“We’re seeing some shifts in the narrative around charter schools,” Marsh said. Charter backers long have pointed to the bipartisan appeal of these schools, but their embrace by President Trump and his polarizing Education secretary, Betsy DeVos, “make it difficult for Democrats to associate with these reforms….”

Goldberg insisted Wednesday — as she has before — that she has no agenda to push Beutner out.

Her presence, however, could circumscribe Beutner’s long-awaited district reorganization. In campaign appearances, Goldberg said she suspected Beutner of secretly crafting a plan that would favor charter school expansion. As evidence, she and others cited the work that consultants for Beutner had done in other districts. She vowed to oppose any such effort.

In recent appearances, Beutner has emphasized that he envisions helping district-run schools operate more efficiently and effectively.

As a candidate, Goldberg had much in common with board member George McKenna, who also had a strong base even without the teachers union. He too allied with the union to win office against a well-funded opponent.

McKenna’s win, in 2014, contributed to the departure of then-Supt. John Deasy because he defeated an opponent who’d strongly supported Deasy.

Goldberg, like McKenna, is no union vassal, although her preferred policies align closely with those of United Teachers Los Angeles. In reality, all seven board members are more nuanced in their beliefs than the stark contrasts represented by their supporters.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Rucker Johnson: The Value of Racial Integration

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2019 //
46

Rucker Johnson, economist and professor of public policy at Berkeley, has written an important new book called Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works. 

It arrives at an opportune moment, as the Disruption Movement (AKA Reformers, Deformers) has decided that school segregation is a very good thing indeed, because charters are more segregated than public schools. A charter operator in Minnesota recently argued in comments here that segregation was just fine so long as it was voluntary. That was to rationalize the fact that Minneapolis has purposely segregated charters for children who are black, white (“German immersion”), Hmong, Hispanic, and Somali. Most recently, a charter supporter said that it was time to abandon the promise of the Brown decision, because it had not been realized.

In short, embrace the status quo, don’t fight it.

It is thus refreshing to read Rucker Johnson, who briefly summarizes his findings in an article at Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet.”

Do not be content with reading the summary. The book is rich with history and anecdote, as well as Johnson’s meticulous research about the long-term and significant benefits of school integration.

He writes:

How did we get here? How has de facto Jim Crow been nurtured back to health?

Policy amnesia. We have forgotten the efficacy of the boldest suite of education policies this country has ever tried: school desegregation, school funding reform and Head Start.

School desegregation and related policies are commonly misperceived as failed social engineering that shuffled children around for many years, with no real benefit. The truth is that significant efforts to integrate schools occurred only for about 15 years, and peaked in 1988. In this period, we witnessed the greatest racial convergence of achievement gaps, educational attainment, earnings and health status.

Using nationally representative longitudinal data spanning more than four decades, I analyze the life outcomes of cohorts tracked from birth to adulthood across several generations, from the children of Brown to Brown’s grandchildren. The slow and uneven pace of desegregation, school funding reforms, and Head Start programs across the country created a natural “policy lab,” that allowed for rigorous, empirical evaluation of integration, school funding and Head Start.

The research findings are clear: African Americans experienced dramatic improvements in educational attainment, earnings and health status — and this improvement that did not come at the expense of whites.

Sixty-five years after the Brown decision, our nation is at an inflection point. Do we intend to pursue the goal of  equal educational opportunity for all or do we want to cling to the discredited policies of our apartheid past?

Do we listen to those with a vision for progress or to those who embrace a failed and corrosive status quo?

Rucker Johnson explains the way forward. Read his book. Send a copy to your members of Congress.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Tom Ultican: Jeb Bush’s Disastrous Florida Education Mess

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2019 //
24

 

You may hear choice zealots boasting about Jeb Bush’s “Florida Model.” As Tom Ultican explains here, they are delusional or  just making stuff up (to put it politely). 

Ultican relies on Sue Legg’s excellent report and digs down to show that the motivation behind Jeb’s so-called A+ plan was profits and religion, not education.

Jeb Bush and his friends have made Florida into a low-performing mess that can’t attract or retain teachers. But it has become a magnet for profiteers, grifters, and fundamentalists.

Ultican writes:

When the A+ Program was adopted in 1999, Florida had consistently scored among the bottom third of US states on standardized testing. The following two data sets indicate no improvement and Florida now scoring in the bottom fourth…

Last year, 21 percent of Florida’s students were enrolled in private and charter schools. The Florida tax credit scholarships (FTCS) went to 1,700 private schools and were awarded to over 100,000 students. Most of those students are in religious schools. Splitting public funding between three systems – public, charter and private – has insured mediocrity in all three systems.

Privatization Politics and Profiteering

To understand Florida’s education reform, it is important to realize that its father, Jeb Bush, is the most doctrinal conservative in the Bush family. He fought for six years to keep feeding tubes inserted into Terri Schiavo, a woman in a persistently vegetative state. Jeb was the Governor who signed the nation’s first “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law. During his first unsuccessful run for governor in 1994, Bush ‘“declared himself a ‘head-banging conservative’; vowed to ‘club this government into submission’; and warned that ‘we are transforming our society to a collectivist policy.”’

This is a deeply researched and eye-popping post.

Read it to arm yourself against rightwing propaganda.

The Florida Model is an abject failure.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Hoax, Privatization, Vouchers

Canada: Conservatives Urge Charters and Privatization to “Fix” Test Scores

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2019 //
16

 

Grant Frost writes here about the plans of the new Conservative premier of Alberta to fix the schools by introducing charters and market competition. Grant attended the last NPE conference in Indianapolis. He makes clear here what has been muddy in the U.S. Privatization of public schools is a conservative goal.

Frost writes:

There is a very famous anecdote about McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc and his take on business. According to legend, after speaking with an MBA class at the University of Texas in 1974, Kroc accepted an invitation to join some of the students for few few beers. During that rather laid-back social event, Kroc asked the MBA students, “What business am I in?” — to which all the students replied, quite obviously: “The hamburger business.” Kroc paused (presumably for dramatic effect) and told them they were wrong. He was not in the hamburger business. He was in the real-estate business.

Every McDonald’s restaurant that I have ever seen sits on a prime piece of real estate in whichever town it’s implanted itself. By some accounts, McDonald’s is the largest owner of real estate in the world — most of it, of course, purchased using the proceeds from the sales of the aforementioned hamburgers. But, in the end, the burgers are just the means to the end.

Now, take that same business model and apply it to local public schools. Once Kenney allows charter school operators to own property, the same premise will come into play.

Charter schools, it should be remembered, are set up to operate outside the public system. They are offered up as alternatives to traditional schools, usually after a fairly long and substantive campaign has been undertaken to convince the general population that traditional schools are failing….

The beauty in this for the edu-preneurs is that once the public buys in, parents will line up around the block to get their kids into the charter school, even in the face of evidence that the public system is actually doing well. After all, parents want what is best for their kids, and using another business strategy called FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) charter school proponents find it relatively easy to exploit parental unease.

And, of course, every single student comes to the door of the new charter school with a backpack full of taxpayer dollars in the form of per-student funding, a percentage of which can now be used by the charter school backers to buy a piece of what is undoubtedly prime real estate.

So, among all the rhetoric coming from Kenney about pipelines, the environment and student GSAs, this is one little nugget that — should it be acted upon — will open up the Canadian education system in ways that we could never have imagined possible a generation ago. Canadian schools will be open for business, with the ground they sit upon being the ultimate prize.

Welcome, Alberta, to the era of McEducation. It probably will not be long before the rest of us follow your lead.

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

NEA State Report Card on Charter School Laws: Not Good!

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2019 //
8

 

The National Education Association released its 2019 report card on the charter industry, and the findings were dismal.

As one would expect, public money+weak regulation+lax oversight=fraud, waste, and abuse.

Of the 44 states that allow charters schools (plus D.C. and Puerto Rico), only five jurisdictions rate “mediocre” or better.

The report, titled “State Charter Laws: NEA Report Card,” concludes found that nearly every state (44 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico currently have charter schools) is failing to require adequate oversight over the charter school sector. Statutes in forty states received “F” grades. Five states that have laws requiring some oversight received “mediocre” ratings, with grades ranging from “D” to “C-“.

Maryland is the only state that received an “adequate” rating – a grade of “B-”.

The report card’s grades were based on four tenets that the NEA set forth in its 2017 report:

  1. Charters must be genuinely public schools in every respect.
  2. Charters must be accountable to the public via open and transparent governance.
  3. Charters must be approved, overseen, and evaluated by local school boards.
  4. Charters must be providers of high quality education for their students.

Almost every state’s charters received a grade of F.

There have recently been comments posted on this blog insisting that Minnesota actually does have “public charter schools,” but the NEA assigns a grade of F to the charters in that state.

Overall, it’s not a pretty picture.

According to the NEA report, a number of states do not require even the most rudimentary, commonsense protections that parents and communities rightly insist upon for all other taxpayer-funded schools.  Furthermore, many states don’t bother to require charter school teachers to meet the same certification requirements as public school teachers. And in too many states, charter school operators are allowed to establish a school, almost no questions asked. Community input is either not solicited or ignored, or both. In addition, they are often given the green light despite the absence of any analysis determining if such a school is even necessary.

The report notes the growing backlash against charters, as the public realizes that they do not cost less, they are not more accountable, and they do not produce better education than the public schools they displace.

The teachers’ strikes of the past year have targeted charters as part of the Trump-DeVos-ALEC plan for privatization of public education, and striking teachers have demanded a moratorium (California) or no charter law at all (West Virginia).

The charter industry desperately needs accountability, the one thing it promised when its advocates began touting the virtues of charters in the late 1980s. That promise has not been kept, and now the charter industry threatens the financial stability of public education.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Cynthia Liu: After Jackie Goldberg’s Win, How to Keep Momentum Going

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2019 //
4

Cynthia Liu, a journalist in California, writes:

With public education champion Jackie Goldberg’s win on the LAUSD school board seat, it’s time for public school advocates to keep the momentum surging! Update on charter accountability bills: 1507 was voted on Monday and passed out of assembly and goes to the California State Senate. YAY & THANK YOU to all who called and voted YES.
 
But two additional bills need to get to the Assembly for a floor vote.
 
Call today (Wednesday) or Thursday (morning) and say,
 
Script: “Hi I am asking the assembly member ________ to vote AB1505 & AB1506 out of the appropriations committee so that they can go to the floor for a full vote. I do not want them to die in committee on Thursday.”
 
These folks are high priority, but everyone should call. Look up your California legislator here: http://www.legislature.ca.gov/legislators_and_districts/legislators/your_legislator.html
 
FYI AB1505: Local school board only to approve charters, and only if they don’t harm existing public schools, don’t repeat public school programs, and state facilities needs. 1506: revisits a cap on charters.
 
Charter accountability IS the path to racial and socioeconomic equity! 
 
— Aguiar Curry AD4 Lake, Napa, Yolo (not W Sacto), parts of Sonoma, Solano
916-319-2004, 530-757-1034
Fax 916-319-2104
 
— Carrillo AD51 East LA, Eagle Rock (**appropriations committee member)
916-319-2051, 213-483-5151
Fax 926-319-2151
 
— Cervantes AD60 Corona, El Cerrito
916-319-2060, 951-371-6860
Fax 916-319-2160
 
— Cooper AD9 Elk Grove, Lodi
916-319-2009, 916-670-7888
Fax 916-319-2109
 
— Daly AD69 Anaheim, Santa Ana
916-319-2069, 714-939-8569
Fax 916-319-2169
 
— Gloria AD78 San Diego
916-319-2078, 619-645-3090
Fax 916-319-2178
 
— Gray AD21 Modesto, Merced
916-319-2021, 209-726-5465
Fax 916-319-2121
 
— Grayson AD14 Vallejo, Pleasant Hill
916-319-2014, 925-521-1511
Fax 916-319-2114
 
— Kamlager Dove AD54 Crenshaw, Culver City, Westwood, Inglewood
916-319-2054, 310-641-5410
Fax 916-319-2154, 310-641-5415
 
— Limon AD37 Santa Barbara, Ventura
916-319-2037, 805-564-1649
Fax 916-319-2137, 805-564-1651
 
— Low AD28 Silicon Valley Cupertino, Saratoga, Los Gatos
916-319-2028, 408-446-2810
Fax 916-319-2128, 408-446-2815
 
— Rubio AD48 Azusa, El Monte, Covina/W Covina
916-319-2048, 626-960-4457
Fax 916-319-2048, 626-960-1310

 

 

 

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

Jeff Bryant: Why Many Democrats and Progressives Are Abandoning Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2019 //
34

 

 

Jeff Bryant explains why many Democrats and progressives are backing away from the charter school idea. It is not just because Trump and DeVos are pushing charters, though surely that is one reason.

Arne Duncanpromoted charters as enthusiastically as DeVos. But something has changed.

Bryant writes:

The politics of charter schools have changed, and bipartisan support for these publicly funded, privately controlled schools has reached a turning point. A sure sign of the change came from Democrats in the House Appropriations Committee who have proposed a deep cut in federal charter school grants that would lower funding to $400 million, $40 million below current levels and $100 million less than what the Trump administration has proposed. Democrats are also calling for better oversight of charter schools that got federal funding and then closed.

This is a startling turn of events, as for years, Democrats have enthusiastically joined Republicans in providing federal grants to create new charter schools and expand existing ones.

In explaining this change in the politics of charter schools, pundits and reporters will likely point to two factors: the unpopularity of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, an ardent charter school proponent, and teachers’ unions that can exert influence in the Democratic Party. But if the tide is truly turning on bipartisan support for charter schools, it is the charter industry itself that is most to blame.

Read on.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Privatization
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