Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Oakland: Charter Supporters Wonder Why No One Loves Them Anymore—and Blame the Unions

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2019 //
17

At the annual conference of the NewSchools Venture Fund, which raises millions to launch charter schools, there was a sour and tremulous mood, according to Matt Barnum in Chalkbeat. 

A group from the Oakland Education Association picketed outside the meeting, and the conveyors focused in on “the unions” as their big problem. It was especially galling to them that some of their own charters had been the target of strikes. The report did not indicate that anyone thought seriously about the teacher turnover for which charters have become noted. Nor about the gap between the sky-high salaries for charter administrators and lowly teachers.

Nor did there seem to be any self-awareness about the near-daily scandals in the charter industry. Did they discuss the public revulsion to for-profit charters or for-profit EMOs and CMOs? Apparently not.

They were aware that the teachers’ strikes during the past year specifically targeted charter schools, but they didn’t know why. Must be those damn unions. They really didn’t get that they were not only left out of Red4Ed, but seen as the enemy of teachers in states that had weak unions.

The level of self-scrutiny, as reported here, seemed defensive and shallow.

The event offered a look at how charter leaders from across the country are coming to grips with new limits on their growth and political clout. And there are signs that their anxiety is warranted, with charters losing support particularly in blue states and cities and among Democrats.

NewSchools attendees were reminded of the opposition when dozens of protestors, organized by the Oakland Education Association, gathered outside the conference hotel downtown. One of their chants: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, charter schools have got to go.”

“They are a leech onto the public system,” said Harley Litzelman, an Oakland teacher who protested at the event.

But charter backers also used the event to explain how they’re planning to confront what they see as the danger posed by teachers unions, internal and external.

The charter industry will never understand what went wrong until they stop looking for enemies and examine their own ranks and their own behavior.

Several years ago, I was invited to speak at Rice University in Houston by KIPP and TFA. At that time, I warned them that if the charter industry did not clean out its Augean stables and get rid of the grifters, entrepreneurs, dilettantes, and crooks, they would all be tarnished. They didn’t listen. They still lack the capacity to look inside to learn why things are going so badly.

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

Jeannie Kaplan: “Education Reform” Was a Hoax from the Start

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2019 //
38

 

Jeannie Kaplan was twice elected to the school board in Denver. She has long been active in civil rights and education issues. She has been a persistent and vocal critic of school closings, choice, and boasting about paltry gains in test scores. She was ignored by the “Reformers” like Michael Bennett and Tom Boasberg. As “Reform” money poured into Denver elections, the grassroots candidates she favored were defeated time and again, and Denver’s school board became unanimous for disruption.

When she recently read a blunt admission by her fellow Coloradan Van Schoales that “reform as we know it, is over,” she was astonished, outraged, and not amused.

Here is her response.

She summarized it in the title of her post: “OMG, ICYMI, SMDH.”

For a translation, open the link.

She begins:

Soooooo…it appears   “The education reform movement as we have known it is over.”  This from none other than “education reformer” extraordinaire, Van Schoales,  writing in the May 6, 2019 Education Week: Education Reform as We Know It Is Over.  What Have We Learned? Along his way to becoming the president of Colorado’s own reform-oriented “oversight” committee, A+ Colorado , Van has worked at Denver’s Piton Foundation and Education Reform Now (ERN), the advocacy arm of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).  He has also been integrally involved with starting and supporting local charter schools and drafting statewide education reform-oriented legislation. When Denver media has needed a quote to support “education reform” outcomes, whom have they called?  Not Ghost Busters!  No, their go-to guy has been Van Schoales. So his partial about face in his recent post in Education Week is quite surprising.  In his words:

 “There are three primary reasons that education reforms failed to live up to our expectations: too few teacher-led reforms, a lack of real community support from those most impacted, and a lack of focus on policy change for public schools across the board, not just the lowest of low-performing schools.” 

Gee.  Who knew?

If I weren’t so darn mad, I’d be shedding tears of laughter.  If we hadn’t fought and fought and fought against “education reform” for the last 15 years, foretelling the recent conclusions of ed reformers,” the whole education reform movement could be viewed as a bad joke.  If we the taxpayers hadn’t spent hundreds of millions of dollars and if we the people hadn’t lost at least a generation of students and teachers to the chaos and churn and complete lack of common sense of “education reform,” we could all be lifting a glass of whatever to toasting “we told you so.”  If only the past 15 years could have been a bad dream, and we could all be like Dorothy and wake up in our safe places, wiping out the nightmare. But alas, that is not the case. And even with these mea culpas coming from unexpected places, most reformers are still unwilling to fully accept the disasters they have wrought upon community after community, most of which just happen to be populated primarily by people of color.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Hoax, Teacher Evaluations

Great News! Jackie Goldberg Sweeps LAUSD Special Election!

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2019 //
9

 

Jackie Goldberg won the empty seat on the Los Angeles school board, the one vacated by convicted charter school operator Ref Rodriguez.

She swept to victory with 72.68% of the vote in District 5, despite the fact that her opponent had the support of the charter industry, the mayor, and the LA Times. 

Her election is a rebuff to Eli Broad and the other billionaires who tried to buy the school board.

She is knowledgeable and experienced and will be a great asset to the board.

She was a classroom teacher for nearly 20 years. She was previously elected to the school board, she was a member of the state legislature and chair of the education committee.

What a win for public education and the children!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Sue M. Legg: The Failure of Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan in Florida

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2019 //
66

Sue M. Legg is a scholar at the University of Florida, a leader in Florida’s League of Women Voters, and a new board member of the Network for Public Education. She has written an incisive and devastating critique of Jeb Bush’s education program in Florida, which began twenty years ago. Bush called it his A+ Plan, but by her careful analysis, it rates an F. Advocates of school choice tout Florida’s fourth-grade scores on NAEP, which are artificially inflated by holding back third graders who dontpass the state test. By eighth grade, Florida’s students rank no better than the national average. Note to “Reformers”: a state that ranks “average” is NOT a national model.

Twenty Years Later, Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan Fails Florida’s Students. 

Sue Legg explodes the myth of the Florida miracle in her well documented report:  Twenty Years Later: Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan Fails Florida’s Students. She has compiled the research over twenty years showing the negative impact of privatization in Florida.  The highly touted achievement gains of retained third graders are lost by eighth grade.  Top ranked fourth grade NAEP scores fall to the national average by eighth grade. One half of twelfth graders read below grade level.  The graduation rate is above only 14 states.

The A+ Plan was a great slogan, but its defects resulted in a twenty-year cycle of trial and error to fix the problems.   School grades are unreliable.  A school receiving a ‘B’ grade one year has about a thirty percent chance of retaining the grade the following year. Invalid grades occur so frequently that State Impact reports that Florida made sixteen changes to the school grade formula since 2010.  It was thrown out but the new version is no more stable.  What it means to be a failing school, moreover, is consistently redefined to make more opportunity for charter school takeovers.  

Florida touts improving academic achievement in the private sector that is not supported by research.  The CREDO Study reams Florida’s for-profit charter industry.  According to a Brookings Institution study, low quality private schools are on the rise, and the LeRoy Collins Institute’s 2017 study, Tough Choices, explains that there are twice as many severely segregated Florida schools (90% non-white students) than there were in 1994-5.  The legislature ignores the problem in part because key legislators have personal interest in charter and private schools.  “Florida suits him” said Roger Stone, recently indicted in the Mueller investigation.  The New York Times article: Stone Cold Loser: quoted Stone’s admiration for Florida when he said “…it was a sunny place for shady people”.  A Miami Herald series “Cashing in on Kids” reported a list of questionable land deals and conflicts of interest by for-profit charter school management. The federal government began an investigation in 2014.  Last year a  charter management firm faced criminal charges, and Florida charters have the nation’s highest closure rate.

WalletHub reports that Florida is 47th of 50 states in working conditions for teachers.  As a result, the Florida Education Association projects 10,000 vacancies next fall. Teacher shortages are not only related to money, they are due to a deliberate attack on the profession in order to break teacher unions and impose a political ideology.  As Steve Denning in a Forbes magazine article explains: “The system” grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and schools alike”. The thinking, he says, is embedded in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top policies.   The A+ Plan is an extension of these policies that includes increased testing and rewards and punishments related to results.

Florida’s teachers are not allowed to strike.  Parents may have to.  The legislature recently approved small raises for teachers but expanded the unconstitutional voucher program.  The governor is not concerned; he appointed three new judges to the Florida Supreme Court.  In the May 3rd 2019 Senate session, Senator Tom Lee chastised his fellow Republicans.  He has supported charter schools for years, but said ‘the industry has not been honest with us...first they wanted PECO facility funds, then local millage; now they want a portion of local discretionary referendum funds’.  He called the current supporters ‘ideologues who have drunk the kool-aid‘.

The full report is published on the NPE-Action website.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Gary Rubinstein: The All-New, Rebranded Achievement School District

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2019 //
18

 

Gary Rubinstein has been following the progress—or lack thereof—of Tennessee’s Achievement School District. Funded with $100 million from Race to the Top money, led by a top-drawer charter school operator from YES Prep, it was supposed to take the lowest-performing schools in the state and catapult them into the top performing, in only five years. The secret ingredient for their promised success wasturning them over to charters operators.

Sadly, it didn’t work.

Gary Rubinstein writes here about the latest gambit. Rebrand the failed ASD!

Legerdemain!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Race to the Top, Tennessee

Have You Heard: What Do Parents Think About “No Excuses” Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2019 //
40

 

Jennifer Berkshire and historian Jack Schneider conduct a very interesting discussion with scholars who have written about no-excuses charter schools and public Montessori schools. 

They interview Mira Debs of Yale and Joanne Golann of Vanderbilt about their research.

They wonder, what do parents want? The answers might surprise you.

Incidentally, I communicated to Berkshire and Schneider that the origin of the term “no excuses” for strict schools was not the book by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom with that name, which was published in 2004, but a small book by a writer named Samuel Casey, which was called “No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Poverty, High-Performing Schools.” 

The publication date on the paperback copy is 2000, but I remember going to a dinner at the Heritage Foundation where Mr. Casey presented his findings, and it must have been in the late 1990s. Conservatives were thrilled to learn that the answer to the education of poor black children was not more money, but strict discipline. It fit their preconceptions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, Parents

California: A Time for Action!!!!

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2019 //
6

 

There are three important California assembly bills AB 1505, AB 1506, and AB 1507 designed to help clean up the charter school mess.  1507 will be going up for a vote by the full assembly TODAY, Monday, May 13.  This bill would forbid charters from being placed in school districts that do not want them by other districts as a moneymaking scheme.

NPE has reported on the fiscal malfeasance, online schools and storefront schools that have resulted. Please read here.

Call your assembly member and ask them to vote yes on AB 1507 today, Monday 13.

Call your Assembly member. You can find the phone number here. If you are unsure who represents you, go here to find out.

Here is a script you can use:

” I am asking that (name) vote yes today AB 1507. We need Charter accountability. Charter schools should only allowed to open in the district that authorized them, not anywhere else. One district should not solve their budget shortfalls by allowing charter schools to set up in another district. We need local control and oversight of charters to end corruption and fraud. Will the Asm vote yes?”There are also a number of Democrats in the assembly who have been identified as “on the fence” for today’s vote on AB 1507. We must put maximum pressure on these Assembly Members, so if you or anyone you know lives in these districts please help us push them to vote yes.

— 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

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

If you have a resistant Asm, add the following:

“Charter accountability and ending abuse of public funds is how we get to racial and socioeconomic equity and fully funded public schools. Rare natural disasters that might force charter relocations are a red herring. School boards from other districts should not be allowed to grant charters that will open in our communities”

Thanks for all that you do.

Donations to NPE Action (a 501(c)(4)) are not tax deductible, but they are needed to lobby and educate the public about the issues and candidates we support.
Sent via ActionNetwork.org. To update your email address, change your name or address, or to stop receiving emails from Network for Public Education Action, please click here.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools

Peter Greene, Van Schoales: Education “Reform” Is Dead, but Zombie Ideas Persist

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2019 //
41

Peter Greene, retired teacher (thirty-nine years in the classroom and blogger extraordinaire) and Van Schoales (Colorado reformer) agree: education reform as we know it now is over.

Greene reminds us (as if we need reminding) that not so long ago, charter schools were considered a bipartisan reform; today, with Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos singing the praises of charter schools, there is a widespread recognition that charter schools are a big step on the path to privatization. First charters, then vouchers.

Van Schoales participated in the reform ferment in Colorado, which consumed much money and energy and produced very little. Schoales writes:

The education reform movement as we have known it is over. Top-down federal and state reforms along with big-city reforms have stalled. The political winds for education change have shifted dramatically. Something has ended, and we must learn the lessons of what the movement got right—and wrong.

The era of inspiration, edicts, and coercion from Washington to improve our public schools is in the past. The Every Student Succeeds Act is a paper tiger with no new funds or accountability for results. The U.S. Department of Education under Betsy DeVos has dismantled efforts to push states to improve school systems while tainting all education reform with a far-right agenda for vouchers as it defunds public education. Yet, a growing number of high school graduates are not prepared to work or to continue their education.

The era of the nontraditional “no excuses” urban superintendents is finished. Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and Tom Boasberg have all moved on. There are few comparable replacements. The vision of a radically transformed public education system with virtual schools, new charter models, and online personalization has crashed on the shores of reality.

He continues to have some hope for “portfolio districts” like Indianapolis and San Antonio but it is only a matter of time until he realizes that they too are a mirage, just shifting students from public schools to charters changes nothing.

Peter Greene understands that all the shiny promises have failed to produce the transformation that was supposed to happen. It didn’t.

After twenty years, almost every trick in the education reform tool box has been tried, including charters and choice. When your product has failed, you have more than just a branding problem, and for the nominally lefty-tilted education reformers, the current administration provides none of the protective cover that Obama and Duncan did.

Van Schoales says it is time to listen to those closest to the problems—teachers, principals, students, families, and community leaders—to build a movement that is focused on preparing most or all of our students for the world that they live in, that promotes lasting change. 

Frankly, for reformers, that is a new idea, because they have spent twenty years imposing mayoral control, state control, so as NOT to listen to anyone but themselves.

Peter Greene has another idea, not so very different from that of Van Schoales:

Instead of asking, “How can we convince more left-leaning folks to support the privatization of public education,” maybe progressives could ask, “If charters and choice really aren’t the answer, what are some better ways to improve U.S. public education?” Maybe someone could build a coalition around that.

Unfortunately, the billionaires do not know as much as either Greene or Schoales. They are still dishing out hundreds of millions to professional “reformers” to create groups like the City Fund ($200 million on the day it opened) to continue promoting charter schools in a dozen or so urban districts. The Walton Family Foundation will spend hundreds of millions to prop up failing charter schools. Betsy DeVos will have another $400 million to hand out to well-funded corporate charter chains next year. Charles Koch has announced that he will pick five unlucky cities to target as “low-hanging fruit” for his dreams of voucherizing everything in sight. And legislatures like those in Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee are still diverting money to voucher programs, even though there is no hope that they will provide better education.

Reform as we have known it is dead, but the zombie continues to terrorize our cities, even our suburbs and rural districts.

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

Pennsylvania: ALERT: Phony Voucher Reform Bills in Legislature!

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2019 //
2

Pennsylvania citizens! Watch out! There are phony “charter reform” bills under consideration in the Legislature! Don’t be fooled!

The “reform” bills were written by charter lobbyists.

The State Auditor said that Pennsylvania has the worst charter law in the nation. These bills will solidify the charter frauds in your state.

Speak up!

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

Oregon: While Teachers Strike, Corporate Reformers Kill Bills to Stop Testing Pre-K-2 and to Expand Opt Out

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2019 //
14

 

Corporate Reformers in Oregon joined with their allies in the business community to kill a bill (HB 2318) called “Too Young to Test,.” Modeled on laws in New York and New Jersey, the bill would have prohibited mandatory standardized testing from pre-k through grade two. Most of the testimony favored the bill.

The purpose of HB 2318:

Prohibits State Board of Education from requiring, and school districts from administering, certain assessments to students enrolled or preparing to enroll in prekindergarten through grade two. Makes exception for assessments administered for diagnostic purposes as required under state or federal law.

The Corporate Reformers and the business community killed it. 

No one, the Corporate Reformers insist, is ever too young to test.

They also focused on killing a bill to strengthen Oregon’s opt-out law.Then they killed a bill to strengthen Oregon’s opt out law. (SB 433). Here is their letter of opposition to SB433.

They claim they need the test scores so they can effectively advocate to meet student needs. No one should be allowed to opt out of testing, no matter how young.

Apparently they don’t know that standardized testing is highly correlated with family income and family education. They should read Daniel Koretz’s The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.

Stand for Children was part of the pro-testing lobby. SFC is heavily funded by the Gates Foundation and other pro-testing, pro-privatization foundations. Stand for Children advocates for high-stakes testing, charter schools, and test-based evaluation of teachers. Dana Hepper of “The Children’s Institute” also lobbied against these bills and in support of standardized testing of kindergartners; she previously worked for Stand for Children. In addition to endorsing the joint statements, here is her testimony supporting mandated standardized tests for children of all ages and opposing opt out.

They say they need the scores so they know what children need.

BUT, THE CORPORATE REFORMERS HAVE THE TEST SCORES NOW AND THEY ARE NOT ADVOCATING FOR STUDENT NEEDS.

Teachers in Oregon are on strike to advocate for smaller classes, nurses, mental health counselors, librarians, and social workers.

Where are the corporate reformers?

Fighting for more standardized testing, even for kindergartners! Fighting parents’ right to opt their children out of standardized testing!

Are they joining the teachers to demand more investment in schools? No.

Are they on the picket lines demanding smaller classes? No.

Are they lobbying for increased funding for nurses, social workers, librarians, and mental health counselors? No.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Class size, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Opt Out, Oregon, Standardized Testing
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