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Carl Cohn: California Must Reform Its Charter Law

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2019 //
14

 

Carl Cohn is one of the most respected figures in American education. He is a problem solver who has been superintendent in several districts in California. He won many plaudits for his leadership in Long Beach. I met him when he was superintendent in San Diego, which was probably the first urban district to be subjected to a heavy, concentrated dose of what was called “reform,” in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Cohn was called in, to clean up the demoralization left behind by top-down leaders who arrived with a script. In my 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, I devoted a chapter to the colossal failure of “reform” in SD. I interviewed Cohn and was pleasantly surprised by his candor and insight. Talking to him reassured me that my reactions were on target.

In this post, he urges the reform of California’s charter law.

He does not lay out a menu of what is needed, but he points to some genuine problems.

Note that one of the members of Tony Thurmond’s Task Force rejected Cohn’s request for some relief from the law.  That would be Margaret Fortune, Chair of the Board of the California Charter School Association, which lobbies to protect the status quo.

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

Carol Burris: Florida Charters Are a Swamp of Waste, Fraud, and Profiteering

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2019 //
11

 

Florida is controlled by Swamp creatures who want to divert money from public schools and send it to charter schools and religious schools. Jeb Bush is the puppet master who has demanded strict accountability for public schools, minimal oversight of charter schools, and no accountability at all for religious schools.

In this article, Carol Burris—the executive director of the Network for Public Education—examines the charter school mess. Florida has about three million students. About 300,000 attend charter schools. Some members of the Legislature have direct conflicts of interest but nonetheless vote to shower favors and money on the state’s charters.

Burris reports that nearly half of the state’s charters operate for profit. Entrepreneurs have flocked to Florida to get the easy money.

Burris begins:

Schoolsforsale.com claims to be “the largest school brokers in the United States that you will need to call.” Its owner, Realtor David Mope, is a broker for private schools, online schools and preschools. He will also help you start your own virtual school by providing certified teachers, marketing expertise, and assistance in securing accreditation.

Mope is not a newcomer to the for-profit school world. He was the owner and CEO of Acclaim Academy, a military-style charter chain. Acclaim’s “cadets,” who were predominantly minority students from low-income homes, wore army fatigues and engaged in drills. The schools’ education director, Bill Orris, had previously led a charter school that was shut down after its management company abandoned it.

Warning signs of failure were there from the beginning. The chain aggressively attempted to open new schools in multiple districts before establishing a track record in its two existing schools. Most districts saw red flags, but two did not. In the fall of 2013, two more Acclaim schools were approved, bringing the total schools in the chain to four.

As school grades came in, unsurprisingly, the Acclaim Academy charter schools were rated “F.” In 2015, three closed their doors, leaving families in the lurch in a manner that parents described as chaos. Although Florida’s State Board of Education had allowed the schools to stay open to finish the school year, Mope filed for bankruptcy, sending students out on the street scrambling to enroll in another school with only a few weeks left in the school year. Vendors would never be paid. Parents helped teachers pack up. Nevertheless, Mope pretended the schools were solvent and continued to broker a deal to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment.

How could Acclaim Academy ever open in the first place? Who would give this risky charter chain the seed money to get started? The American taxpayers did. A U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program (CSP) grant for $744,198 helped get the Acclaim Academies off the ground.

Acclaim Academy charter schools were among 502 Florida charter schools that received grants from the Department of Education between 2006 and 2014. All but two came from federal money given to the state for distribution. According to the CSP database, these Florida charter schools were awarded a total of nearly $92 million in federal funds between 2006 and 2014.

At least 184 (36.6 percent) of those schools are now closed, or never opened at all. These defunct charter schools received $34,781,736 in federal “seed” money alone.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization

Michael Mulgrew to New York Legislature: Don’t Raise the Cap on Charters

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2019 //
11

 

Michael Mulgrew, president of the New York City United Federation of Teachers, urges the Legislature not to raise the cap on charters but to enact legislation to make charter schools transparent and accountable.

There is a national pushback against untrammeled growth of charters, and New York State is unlikely to give the charter industry carte blanche since Democrats won control of the State Senate last fall. Until now, the charters were protected by the Governor Cuomo, whose campaign was funded by charter-loving financiers, and by the Republican-controlled State Senate, which was happy to expand the number of charters but not in their own suburban districts.

Mulgrew points out that under existing law, charters have room to add as many as 50,000 students. One charter gives the operator the authority to expand to K-12, or three schools. The city currently has 235 charters, which are actually 377 schools, enrolling 123,000 students. These schools divert $2.1 billion from public schools, but do not accept a proportionate share of the neediest students. Success Academy alone has room to add another 10,000 students without lifting the cap.

He writes:

“Charters should be forced to demonstrate that tax dollars are spent in the classroom rather than on inflated salaries of charter executives and overpriced services of charter management companies. The transparency legislation would make wealthy charters — those with $1 million or more in assets — ineligible to receive co-located space in public building, or to get a public rental subsidy for private classroom space. It would also cap compensation packages for the majority of charter executives at $199,000 a year.

“Real transparency would also reveal why charters had only 9% of the school population but 46% of the suspensions; 10% percent of the homeless students, less than the public school average of 15%; and only 7% of the English language learners population, less than half the public school average.”

 

He concludes:

It is time for state government to freeze their growth, and to put in place measures to ensure that charters take, keep and educate all kinds of students, while they open up their operations to real public scrutiny.

There are two bitter pills in Mulgrew’s proposal:

One is the cap on salaries, which would be anathema to charters, where teacher salaries are artificially low, due to hiring of young teachers and constant turnover as they burn out, and lavish executive compensation, which is sometimes far above that of the School Chancellor, who oversees 1.1 million students.

The other is the idea that rich charters should not get free public space. This will outage the charter industry but please the existing public schools that have been forced to give up computer rooms, resource rooms, rooms for the arts, and other spaces that are not considered classrooms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization

Tampa Bay Times: Legislature Imposes Death Sentence on Florida Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2019 //
22

 

The Tampa Bay Times published a powerful editorial about the Legislature’s enactment of yet another voucher program for private and religious schools. Needless to say, the Legislature does nothing for public schools other than to divert funding to nonpublic schools, enact mandates, and harass teachers.

The schools that get vouchers will not be subject to the school letter grades foisted on public schools. They will be free to take the students they want and throwout those they don’t want. They don’t have to follow the state curriculum standards or take state tests. Their teachers don’t have to be certified. They are relieved of  any accountability, while public schools are submerged in it.

The editorial begins:

They approved the death sentence for public education in Florida at 1:20 p.m. Tuesday. Then they cheered and hugged each other. The legislation approved by the Florida House and sent to the governor will steal $130 million in tax money that could be spent improving public schools next year and spend it on tuition vouchers at private schools. Never mind the Florida Constitution. Never mind the 2.8 million students left in under-funded, overwhelmed public schools.

The outcome of this year’s voucher debate in the decades-long dismantlement of traditional public education was never in doubt. It was sealed when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was narrowly elected governor in November and quickly appointed three conservatives to the Florida Supreme Court. The overhaul of the court emboldened the Republican-led Legislature to approve the creation of vouchers that clearly are unconstitutional, confident that an expected legal challenge will be rejected. Elections have consequences, and this is a devastating one.

Don’t be fooled. This legislation is not just about helping children from the state’s poorest families attend private schools. It does more than take care of 13,000 kids who are on a waiting list for the existing voucher program that is paid for with tax credits. It raises the annual income limit for eligibility from $66,950 for a family of four for the current voucher program to $77,250 for the “Family Empowerment Scholarship Program.’’ That income limit will rise in future years, and so will the state’s investment in vouchers. Welcome to a new middle class entitlement.

Florida cannot afford this free market fantasy. The state ranks near the bottom in spending per student and in average pay for teachers. Hillsborough County has hundreds of teacher vacancies, broken air conditioning systems in dozens of schools will take years to repair and voters just approved a half-cent sales tax to help make ends meet. Pinellas County would need $1,200 more per student in state funding just to cover inflation over the last decade. Yet Florida will send $130 million to private schools next year for tuition for 18,000 students.

Legislators who voted for SB 7070 talked about empowering families and school choice. Parents in most communities already have plenty of choices. Nearly 300,000 students attend more than 600 publicly funded charter schools, and more than 225,000 students attend choice or magnet schools in their districts.

State Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran was in the House chamber for the vote. He previously served as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. His wife operates a charter school. He doesn’t like public schools or unions.

Jeb Bush was also present, happy to see another big step towards the vouchers he believes in. Ironically, he is the father of both the school choice movement and Florida’s harsh accountability regime (for public schools). I wonder if any journalist ever asks him why his beloved voucher schools are exempt from all accountability.

Despite the hostility of the elected officials to public schools, I’m not yet ready to call them dead. There are nearly three million students in Florida. Ten percent go to charters (at least half of which are operated by for-profit entrepreneurs), and another five percent choose to go to religious schools, most of which are inferior by any measure to the public schools.

More Than 80% of families choose public schools. When will the public wake up and start voting for elected officials who support the public schools to which they send their children?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

California: Parents Fight to Save Their School from Charter Invasion

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2019 //
7

 

Parents at the Catskill Avenue Elementary School in Carson, a suburb of Los Angeles, are fighting to prevent a charter school from crowding into their fully utilized school. 

State law requires districts to provide free space for charters, even in schools and communities that don’t want them.

“On a sunny afternoon in early April, in the working-class Los Angeles suburb of Carson, well over a hundred students, parents, teachers and community members gathered with a mission: to extol the virtues of Catskill Avenue Elementary School. But it wasn’t entirely a feel-good gathering. They were sounding an alarm that the Catskill campus was slated to share its space with GANAS Academy Charter School in the fall of 2019.

“Days after the rally, teachers and parents, backed by the United Teachers Los Angeles union, petitioned the Carson City Council to keep GANAS out of Catskill. Last Friday the council voted 3-0, with the mayor and one member absent, to support Catskill. The council’s resolution, which is symbolic and non-binding, will be sent to representatives of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), which had approved GANAS’ charter.

“The founder and CEO of GANAS Academy, Sakshi Jain, has until Wednesday, May 1, to decide whether to accept the LAUSD offer to co-locate at Catskill. A LAUSD spokesperson said, in an email, that final offers of co-location sites are legally binding, suggesting the district would not offer GANAS another site if Catskill is rejected.

“Critics say GANAS is an example of the problems of charter schools in California: lack of oversight and transparency, and the tendency for districts and the state to greenlight charter schools whether or not there’s a clear need for them. In effect they say GANAS is a solution in search of a problem. And in search of a community. Before Carson’s Catskill Elementary was chosen, GANAS had plans to locate in nearby Wilmington, and used Wilmington’s demographic data in its petition to LAUSD.

“Phylis Hoffman, who teaches second grade at Harry Bridges Span School in Wilmington, called into question why Jain picked Wilmington for her school.

“The [GANAS] petition didn’t say where in Wilmington the school would be located, and the academic mission statement seemed very boilerplate and vague. And Jain has no California teaching credential. She appears to be a carpetbagger….”

”Elizabeth Untalan, who teaches fifth grade at Catskill, said that every room in the school is being used, including three computer labs, a counseling room, a science lab and a parent center. However, California’s Proposition 39, passed by voters in 2000, requires school districts to offer equitable and adequate unused public space to area charter schools. The key word is “unused,” and if a space is empty for part of the day, it is potentially eligible for a charter school to take it over.”

If the charter decides to move into the school, it will lose its computer labs, its counseling room, its science lab, and its parent center.

Someone, please remind me why stuffing a charter into a public school is a good idea.

 

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

BASIS Private Schools Sold to Chinese Investors, Parents Object

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2019 //
14

 

BASIS is a corporate charter chain with about 20 charters, mostly in Arizona. The chain is known for high test scores, high attrition, and high returns to its owners and operators, Michael and Olga Block. It also owns private schools, and these have run into problems.

BASIS has private schools in the US, Silicon Valley, NYC and Virginia, all of which are owned by the REIT, Entertainment Properties.  https://www.eprkc.com/portfolio/education/private-schools/property-list/
Its DC charter school was owned by Entertainment Properties, but BASIS ran into problems meeting the rent for the second year of operation as it had nearly doubled from the first year when it had been about $1 miilion.  In addition to an OCR complaint re special education, enrollment declined and the DC charter board refused to increase its enrollment cap, which the school said was necessary to meet their rent.  Apparently, the DC school was sold as it is no longer listed on Entertainment Properties portfolio of charter schools.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/parents-voice-concern-over-sale-of-basis-independent-schools-11556583203

Parents Voice Concern Over Sale of Basis Independent Schools

New York City families say they worry about possible curriculum, tuition changes following the purchase by a company backed by China-based investment firm

By

Leslie Brody

More than 190 New York City families at the private Basis Independent Schools sent a letter to its leaders Monday to express concerns about its recent purchase by a company backed by a China-based investment firm.

The letter from parents at the Brooklyn site of Basis questioned whether the sale might prompt the school in Red Hook to change curriculum, lose teachers, boost tuition, increase class size and lose its reputation among top college admissions offices.

Basis has five for-profit schools in the U.S., including sites in California and Virginia. It also has a charter arm run by a nonprofit, which wasn’t part of the purchase.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, New York City, Privatization

New York City: Betsy DeVos Praises Charters, Condemns Spending More on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
20

 

Betsy DeVos was honored by the rightwing Manhattan Institute. In her by now well-rehearsed speech, she ridiculed the idea of spending more money on public schools, and extolled school choice. She singled out Mayor deBlasio’s Renewal program for criticism.

Matt Barnum has a good summary in Chalkbeat of her boilerplate remarks and appropriately notes how she cherrypicked data and ignored recent studies about the poor results of vouchers, one of her favorite causes. He noted that the Manhattan Institute had praised the Mayor’s efforts.

The charter industry in New York City hopes to persuade the State Legislature to raise the charter cap in the city. The state has unused slots but the city does not. They claim there’s a wait list for their charters but at the same time they demand access to the names and addresses of public school students whom they bombard with recruitment letters. If they have a long wait list, why are they recruiting?

He wrote:

Other recent studies have shown that more money for schools benefits students in a number of ways. DeVos also did not mention research, including a recent study in Louisiana, showing that private school voucher programs hurt students’ math test scores.

But she was on firmer empirical ground criticizing de Blasio’s Renewal program and praising New York City’s charter schools, which tend to outperform district schools on state exams. A recent study found that the Renewal turnaround approach didn’t lead to clear improvements in test scores or high school graduation rates, but did seem to boost attendance.

Ironically, the Manhattan Institute analysis has offered the most optimistic view of the Renewal program. DeVos didn’t bring up this study.

Of course, New York City’s charters are free to push out the students they don’t want, which raises test scores.

Having DeVos as their ally won’t be helpful to their cause now that both Houses of the Legislature are controlled by Democrats.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization

Breaking News: California Charter School Will Close Its Doors Tomorrow, Not Waiting for End of School Year

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
11

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, wrote the following note:

The Summit Preparatory Academy Charter School will be shutting down tomorrow. Like so many charter schools, financial mismanagement is the reason for the closure. The school raised funding with a “Go Fund Me” drive, but they are not waiting till the end of the year to shut their doors. 

California teacher, Martha Infante is a Fulbright teacher, and the past-president of the California Council for Social Studies. She emailed me about Summit and this is what she wrote: 

“My last year at L.A. Academy M.S. our school was devastated to lose significant space to a fly by night charter school, Summit Preparatory Charter School. Schools such as these offer free uniforms, laptops, and the promise of a superior education to woo parents away from public schools, knowing these humble parents are seeking the best education possible for their children. Nothing, I mean nothing, is worse to me than lying to immigrant parents who have sacrificed so much to get to this country, to give their children a better life.”

Martha is horrified that the school is closing abruptly. She said,

“Where will those kids go? What will their families do? It is time to fall out of love with the charter school panacea and re-commit to revitalizing the schools we already have. 

If the parents have the wherewithal to re-enroll their children in a local public school, that school will be impacted by the new enrollees without the commensurate number of additional teachers. In other words, class sizes will skyrocket because districts don’t hire teachers in May. The disruption of so many lives is reprehensible and charter companies should be held responsible for this.”

I am horrified too. The charter experiment with its churn, instability and disruption has to end. The children who attend the Summit Preparatory Academy Charter School and the public school children whose classrooms will be packed once the displaced children arrive deserve better than this. 

Summit Preparatory Academy received over a half million dollars from the federal government’s Charter School Program as “seed money.” We will add one more closed charter school to our list of California charter schools that received federal grants that never opened or closed. The total in wasted funding for California alone is now $104 million.  

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Jan Resseger: How the Federal Charter School Program Defunds Public Schools and Cheats Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
6

Jan Resseger has another brilliant article about the charter school strategy of privatization paid for by federal funding. 

Betsy DeVos wants to cut most of the programs in the Department of Education but has asked for an increase of charter school funding, from $440 million to $500 million a year. This year she used that funding to give $82 million to KIPP and $116 million to the IDEA charter chain, which is known for high attrition rates.

She cites an article by Jeff Bryant, a co-author of the NPE study of the federal Charter School Program, which concluded that about one of three charter schools funded by the federal government never opens or closes soon after opening. In some states, the failed charters were even more than 1/3.

In Michigan, 42 percent of the federal dollars granted by CSP were wasted on schools that never opened or subsequently closed. The percentage of failure was similar in Ohio (40 percent), Louisiana (46 percent), California (38 percent), and Florida (36 percent).

Resseger notes that Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat wonders whether the size of the grants to KIPP and IDEA, not mom-and-pop charters to be sure, will fuel the growing backlash to privatization by charters.

Resseger makes clear that charters damage public schools by defunding them.

The effect of charter school expansion is a serious threat to the finances of traditional public school districts. When students leave a public school system to attend a charter school they carry away money from the school district’s budget. There are charter promoters who allege that, because the exiting students no longer require the services public school districts are providing, the fiscal impact is neutral.  However, the political economist, Gordon Lafer counters this argument forcefully in a report published a year ago by In the Public Interest: “To the casual observer, it may not be obvious why charter schools should create any net costs at all for their home districts. To grasp why they do, it is necessary to understand the structural differences between the challenge of operating a single school—or even a local chain of schools—and that of a district-wide system operating tens or hundreds of schools and charged with the legal responsibility to serve all students in the community.  When a new charter school opens, it typically fills its classrooms by drawing students away from existing schools in the district. By California state law, school funding is based on student attendance; when a student moves from a traditional public school to a charter school, her pro-rated share of school funding follows her to the new school. Thus, the expansion of charter schools necessarily entails lost funding for traditional public schools and school districts. If schools and district offices could simply reduce their own expenses in proportion to the lost revenue, there would be no fiscal shortfall. Unfortunately this is not the case.”

Lafer continues, detailing the costs public school districts cannot immediately cut when students leave for charter schools: “If, for instance, a given school loses five percent of its student body—and that loss is spread across multiple grade levels, the school may be unable to lay off even a single teacher… Plus, the costs of maintaining school buildings cannot be reduced…. Unless the enrollment falloff is so steep as to force school closures, the expense of heating and cooling schools, running cafeterias, maintaining digital and wireless technologies, and paving parking lots—all of this is unchanged by modest declines in enrollment. In addition, both individual schools and school districts bear significant administrative responsibilities that cannot be cut in response to falling enrollment. These include planning bus routes and operating transportation systems; developing and auditing budgets; managing teacher training and employee benefits; applying for grants and certifying compliance with federal and state regulations; and the everyday work of principals, librarians and guidance counselors.” “If a school district anywhere in the country—in the absence of charter schools—announced that it wanted to create a second system-within-a-system, with a new set of schools whose number, size, specialization, budget, and geographic locations would not be coordinated with the existing school system, we would regard this as the poster child of government inefficiency and a waste of tax dollars. But this is indeed how the charter school system functions.”

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Peter Greene: Florida is the Worst State in the Nation for Public Schools and Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
18

 

Peter Greene knows there are many states where public schools are under attack: Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Michigan, and more.

But one state stands out as the absolute worst: Florida. 

If you hate public schools, Florida is for you.

If you hate teachers, go to Florida.

To get the full flavor of why Florida is an abomination, open the link and read the post.

It begins:

There are plenty of states in the country that are not very friendly to public education, but Florida under its new governor has established itself as the very worst state for public education. The worst. Its hatred of public school teachers and its absolute determination to dismantle public education so that it can sell off the pieces to privatizers and profiteers puts the sunshine state in the front of the pack.

The Newest Baloney

The latest nail in the coffin is Senate Bill 7070, a bill that adds yet another school choice program to the Florida portfolio of choiceness. That bill was passed today and now needs only Governor DeSantis’s signature, which it will get quickly. The bill offers up vouchers that can be used for private schools, including the religion-based ones, like the ones that teach dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth together and the ones that maintain their right to discriminate against, well, whoever. The vouchers will be one more drain on the public tax dollars intended to fund public education, but then, a key feature of the Florida approach has been to keep underfunding public schools so that charter and private schools can look better by comparison.

Prior efforts to use public funds for religious schools were struck down by the state courts. Governor DeSantis took care of that problem by adding three new justices to the state’s high court.

Read the post to learn about Florida’s trouble finding teachers, about giveaways to charter profiteers (many of whom have relatives in the Legislature), about the legislature’s hatred for elected school board, about the dunces in chargeof state policy, about the state’s inadequate spending…well, you get theidea.

Greene writes:

There’s so much more, but these lowlights give you the idea. Talk to some charteristas on line and get a feel for just how deeply some of these folks hate teachers and teacher unions and public education. But nothing captures the cynicism driving the privatization of Florida education like the moment DeSantis explained “If the taxpayer is paying for education, it’s public education.”

Sure. The best way to steal something is to gaslight your audience and tell them, “What? I didn’t steal it. It’s still right there.” Don’t tell the public you’re ending public education; just redefine public education as a private business with no meaningful transparency, oversight, or democratic local control, and which the public does not own or operate.

There are lots of places in this country where public education is under assault, hampered by privatizers and profiteers, and in the past, I wouldn’t have tried to pick a Worst, but I’m ready now. I have no doubt that there are many good teachers, many good schools still hanging on and doing their best in spite of it all. But I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to raise children in Florida, and I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to get a teaching job there. Openly hostile to public education and systematically trying to break it down and replace it with privatized businesses while degrading and attacking the people who do the actual work, who actually care about education. Florida really is the worst.

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