Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Andre Perry: Betsy DeVos’s Support for Charters Makes Democratic Charter Supporters Uncomfortable

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2019 //
14

 

I have said it before and I will say it again. Betsy DeVos is the most effective weapon against corporate reform, because she activates resistance and personifies noblesse oblige.

Former New Orleans charter leader Andre Perry has become a thoughtful critic of charters, and he points out that DeVos has become a major cause of a widespread charter backlash. 

As Perry puts it, Betsy Devos’s support of charter schools “spells disaster for their Democrat backers.” How can charters be, as their billionaire supporters say, “the civil rights issue of our time” when DeVos and every Red State governor supports them?

The fact that she wanted to cut the Special Olympics by $18 million at the same time she proposed to increase charter school funding by $60 million sent a loud message about what matters to her. Choice above all else.

The teacher strikes in many states specifically protested the introduction or expansion of charters because they drain money from public schools. In Los Angeles, striking teachers demanded a moratorium on new charters, and the state is now considering legislation to rein in the voracious industry.

In Milwaukee, a slate backed by the Working Families Party and the teachers’ union swept to victory in a recent election.

The drumbeat of scandal and failure haunts the charter industry, and DeVos’s warm embrace is a flashing danger sign.

Perry notes that charter teachers tend to be less diverse than those in public schools.

The price of “reform,” he writes, is steep:

As a former charter leader in New Orleans myself, I’ve seen black and brown communities have to make trade-offs like losing political control, teaching positions, and funding in the name of educational reform. If people of color don’t realize direct economic, political, and educational benefits, then it’s not real reform. Consequently, we need reforms that empower people, districts, and students on the way to educational progress—and hiring and retaining people of color should be an explicit focus of reform.

Should communities of color be required to lose political control and teaching positions in exchange for charters, which may or may not survive, and may or may not get higher scores than the public schools they replaced?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization

Indianapolis: The Purpose of School Choice is to Destroy Communities, Which Endangers Us All

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2019 //
28

 

Jim Scheurich is a professor at Indiana University and a public education activist. He writes here about how School Choice is intended to destroy community.

 

Folks, the philosophy that charter and innovation schools are built on is that your children’s school should be individualized parental choice.  This means parents individually search across the Indy area as to where to send their children, which often means leaving their neighborhood community.  Each family or individual parent is thus on her, his, or their own and not engaged with their neighborhood community.  Also, each family or individual parent is pitted against or in competition with other similar families and parents for the so-called “better” schools.

This individualistic orientation of charters and innovation schools undermines neighborhood communities and even the possibility of neighborhood communities.   Undermining neighborhood communities, according to sociological research, increases violence, including murder.  Other research shows that building community decreases violence, including murder.

This, therefore, means that charter and innovation schools are likely one of the causes of our high murder rate in Indianapolis as the individualized school choice model is broadly undermining neighborhood communities across our city. 

Of course, building community in low income areas is not easy, but not impossible.  However, many such communities have created positive community spaces.  Given the difficulty of creating such communities, we certainly do not need more policies, like charter and innovation schools, that are threats to community and community building.

If you study the neoliberal political and economic “philosophy” behind the choice school movement, you will find a strong focus on individualism over community.  If you want to understand this movement, which is driving the creation of individualistic “choice” schools, read Democracy in chains by Nancy MacLean, a Duke historian, and then read the award winningDark money by Jane Mayer, which analyzes who the Koch brothers are as they are primary supporters of neoliberalism.  Indeed, overwhelmingly, the financial supporters of neoliberalism, the people behind the curtain, the people funding Stand for Children and the Mind Trust, are conservative to rightwing billionaires.

If you don’t believe me or think I am just some conspiracy nut, I dare you to read Democracy in chainsby the highly respected Duke historian, Nancy MacLean. I dare you.

My point is that charter and innovation schools help destroy community, which according to sociological research can lead to increased violence.

 

Jim Scheurich, Indianapolis Public Schools Community Coalition, a multi-racial, multi-class, citywide group of Indianapolis citizens working to reverse the takeover of our school district by those funded by white, conservative or rightwing, billionaire neoliberals. Also, an activist professor of Urban Education Studies at Indiana University – Indianapolis

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis, Injustice, Innovation, Privatization, Safety, School Choice, Vouchers

Steven Singer Recommends a Fun Book for You

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2019 //
3

I begin by saying I don’t like selling anything except ideas. That’s why this blog accepts no advertisements.

Nonetheless, I recommend this post by Steven Singer, which describes his reaction to the collection of many of my essays in a book called “The Wisdom and Wit of Diane Ravitch.”

Any royalties earned by the book will be donated to the Network for Public Education.

Steven begins:

“Imagine you could talk with Diane Ravitch for 10 to 15 minutes everyday.

“That’s kind of what reading her new book, “The Wisdom and the Witt of Diane Ravitch”, is like.

“You’ve probably heard of Ravitch before.

 

“She’s the kindly grandmother you see on the news who used to think standardized tests and school privatization were the way to go but actually had the courage to pull an about face.

 

“She’s that rare thing in public policy – a person with the honesty to admit when she was wrong — and even lead the resistance to everything she used to believe in!

 

“Now she champions teacher autonomy, fair and equitable school funding and authentic public schools with duly-elected school boards.

 

“Her new book is full of shorter pieces by the education historian from all over the mass media – The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Huffington Post and even her own blog.

“You’ll find an article explaining why she changed her mind about school reform nestled next to a reflection on what it’s like to grow up Jewish in Texas. Here’s a succinct take down of President Obama’s Race to the Top next to an article extolling the virtues of student activism in Providence. Ever wonder what Ravitch would say to her mentor Lamar Alexander about our current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos? It’s in there. Ever wonder what books on education she would recommend? It’s in there.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

San Antonio: Reed Hastings, Billionaire Destroyer of Public Schools, Will Speak at Tech Conference on May 5

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2019 //
5

 

Reed Hastings, the billionaire founder of Netflix, will speak at a tech conference in San Antonio on May 5, where he will be celebrated as a pioneer and innovator.

To those who believe in public schools, Hastings is a nemesis and villain, who has advocated the complete elimination of local school boards and their replacement by corporate management of public schools.

He has donated at least $100 million to creating charter schools.

And as we learned in a recent issue of Capital & Main, a California investigative website, Hastings was responsible for making the state’s charter law a welcome mat for graft and corruption and encouraging districts to poach dollars from other districts.

If you go to the conference, tell him to leave public schools alone and pay more taxes to support public schools. Also, ask him why he has a problem with democracy.

Categories Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization

Peter Greene: Charter Thievery and the Worst Legislature in America

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2019 //
20

 

Peter Greene writes here about the open theft of public funds, transferred from public schools to to charter schools, in Florida. He raises a question that I have often wondered about: When did Republicans become the enemies of local control? The answer in Florida is obvious: when the money is there to pay the legislators to change their views, they change their views. It is not about improving education, since they are reducing the funds available to educate the vast majority of Florida’s children. This is a pay-to-play sellout of public education. When people vote to put thieves in office, they should not be surprised when the thieves rob them and their schools.

He writes:

“Imagine. You live on the 300 block of your city, and your neighborhood is starting to look kind of run down, mostly because the city has redirected a ton of your tax dollars to the neighborhood on the 400 block. You try to fight city hall, but that’s futile, so instead, you get the neighborhood together, and you collect money from amongst yourselves to upgrade sidewalks, clean the streets, refurbish the curbs, and just generally fix the place up. And then the city sends a message– “That money you just collected? You have to give some of it to the neighborhood in the 400 block.”

“Congratulations. You live in Florida.

“Florida’s elected Tallahassee-dwellers have pretty much dropped all pretense; under Governor Desantis, the goal is to completely demolish public education, with no more cover story than to insist that the resulting privatized system is still a “public school system.” I have seen better gaslighting from a fourteen year old saying, “I did not throw that pencil at Chris” even though he watched me watch him do it.

“The Tampa Bay Times offers some background:

“Let’s check the record. For years, Republicans who control the Legislature have attacked teacher unions as the enemy and complained about under-performing public schools while starving them of financial resources. They would not let local school districts keep additional tax revenue created by rising property values. They gave them little or no money for construction and renovation. And last year, they increased base spending per student by a grand total of 47 cents.

We’ll put Swampland Charter right here.

“Florida has been systematically starving its public school system, so some districts took the most logical step available to them– they levied taxes on themselves to raise teacher salaries, replace programs that were cut, and basically use their own local money to reverse the problems caused by state-level neglect. They stepped up to solve the problems the state caused.

“Last week, Florida GOP legislators pooped out a proposal to stop all this locally controlled self-reliant bootstrapping (because, you know, conservatives hate local control, self-reliance, and bootstraps, apparently, now). The bill, proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee led by Rep. Bryan Avila, R-Miami Springs, says those local districts must hand over some of those tax dollars to charter schools or the state will just cut their state funding even more.

“This is just nuts on so many levels. In addition to pissing on the conservative values of local control and self-reliance, this also thumbs its nose at one of the traditional arguments for charter schools– that competition will make public schools up their games. I’d call bullshit on that point, except that’s exactly what happened here– with their ability to compete hamstrung by Tallahassee tightwads, these local districts found a way to be competitive, including competing for teachers in the midst of Florida’s well-deserved and completely predictable teacher shortage.”

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

Peter Greene Explains Why Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Care About How Many Charters Closed

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2019 //
81

 

Peter Greene puts his finger on the reason that Secretary DeVos is unmoved by charter failures. In her ideal free-market model, failure is a feature, not a bug.

in the free market, businesses open and close all the time. Where is Eastern Airlines, Braniff, TWA? Gone.

Stability, in her view, is not desirable. Disruption and churn show that the market is working well.

Thats why she is not at all disturbed to learn that one-third of the charters funded by the U.S. Department of Education either never opened or closed soon after opening. That’s music to her ears. The market is working!

He writes:

“This is one of the area where choicers have a fundamental disagreement with public education advocates. For public schools, stability is a basic foundational value. The school is a community institution, and like all institutions, part of its values comes from its continuity, its connections to tradition, the past. It means something to people to see their children and neighbors all passing through the same halls, having the same teachers, being part of a community collective that stretches across the years. For free market Reformsters, anything that gets in the way of their idea of free market mechanics is bad; there should be winners and losers and the market should judge their worth, ruthlessly culling the weak and undeserving.

“Reformsters know they have a hard sell. That’s why they don’t try to use this as a selling point (“Don’t forget– the school your child chooses could close at any time due to market consitions! Isn’t that awesome!”) That’s why they are adamant about calling charters “public” schools– because it lulls the customers into believing that charters share some of the fundamental characteristics of public schools, like stability and longevity. They (e.g. Governor DeSantis of Florida) also want to hold onto “public” because the change to privately owned and operated market based schools is the end of public education as we know it; it truly is privatization, and almost nobody pushing these policies has the guts to publicly say, “I propose that we end public education and replace it with privately owned and operated businesses, some of which will reserve the right to refuse service to some of you, and all of which may not last long enough to see your child from K through 12.”

“The person who almost has the guts to almost say this is, ironically, Betsy DeVos– the person charged with taking care of the public system that she would like to kill. What a wacky world we live in. So don’t expect her to be moved by all the waste of tax dollars paying for failed or fraudulent charter schools; every time a charter school closes, a free market reformster gets their wings, and Betsy is a-fixin’ to fly.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Testing

Columbia Journalism Review: Why Does Washington Post Editorial Board Oppose Charter School Transparency?

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2019 //
32

 

Alexandra Neason of the Columbia Journalism Review asks an important question: Why did the Washington Post write an editorial opposing charter school transparency? The Post has adopted as its slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” A great slogan in these troubling times, but why should charter schools be exempt from scrutiny?

She writes:

“LAST MONTH, CHARLES ALLEN, a member of the Washington, DC Council, introduced the Public School Transparency Amendment Act of 2019, which would extend the same sunshine laws applied to traditional public schools to publicly funded charter schools. The proposal came on the heels of suggested reforms put forth by the DC Public Charter School Board. In addition to promoting access to records and meetings, it would also force charter schools to include a list of donations greater than $500 in their annual reports and to include at least two teachers on their boards. (At high schools or adult learning centers, a student representative would also have to be included.) This week, the editorial board of The Washington Post argued against the measure.

“We are firm believers in sunshine in public matters, but this legislation—which seems to be taken from the national teachers’ union playbook on how to kneecap charter schools—is not designed to benefit the public or help students,” the editorial board wrote. The piece goes on to tout the charter school board’s reputation for scrupulous oversight, arguing that it already upholds a requirement that charters “disclose financial information, including how they use resources from the government and what they accomplish with those resources.” Enacting the amendment, the editorial argues, would threaten the schools’ independence with unnecessary bureaucracy.

“In endorsing the obscurity of charter school finances, theeditorial board struggles to see how the release of information—such as the names of charter school employees, salaries, and vendor contracts under $100,000, data that DC public schools must make available—is “critical to student learning.” The editorial board adds that it’s “easy to see how it might help unions in their bid to organize at charter schools.”

“The city’s 123 charter schools, attended by nearly 45,000 students, benefit from $800 million in taxpayer funds every year. The quasi-public board that oversees them is subject to open meetings laws and the Freedom of Information Act, but journalists and the public are only granted access to charter school documents in the board’s possession. The board acts as a curator, allowing public access only to information that it deems necessary. This poses obvious problems for parents, who seek information about how their kids’ schools are run, and for journalists, tasked with covering schools that make up a massive chunk of the public education landscape in the nation’s capital. By contrast, California passed a law last monththat would subject its 1,300 charter schools to public records and open meetings laws.”

She points out that charter school advocacy groups, including the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools support transparency laws—like the one proposed in D.C.

Why is the Washington Post shielding the charter sector?

The Post says that requiring charter schools to be as transparent as public schools would be an unnecessary burden. That’s not a convincing argument. Why should public schools be required to bear the same “unnecessary burden.”

Neason concludes:

“For a journalistic entity—opinion section or otherwise—to advocate against a measure that seeks to increase transparency is backwards. The editorial board’s stance echoes the arguments of charter school operators, instead of supporting a measure that would improve access to information about taxpayer-funded entities. While journalists across the country work overtime to uphold the values of disclosure, this editorial—from one of the country’s preeminent newspapers, whose tagline is “Democracy Dies in Darkness”—isn’t just embarrassing, it’s undermining.”

The editorial board’s persistent defense of charter schools and its insistence that they be allowed to operate however they wish, without scrutiny, is strange.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Burris and Ravitch: An Open Letter to Betsy DeVos about the Failure of the Federal Charter Schools Program

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2019 //
8

 

In this post on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog at the Washington Post, Carol Burris and I respond to Betsy DeVos’s putdown of the Network for Public Education’s meticulous documentation of the failure of the federal Charter Schools Program. Our report, “Asleep at the Wheel,” showed that the U.S. Department of Education had handed out hundreds of millions of dollars–close to a billion dollars–between 2006 and 2014, to nearly 1,000 charter schools that never opened or that closed soon after opening. DeVos, as you will see, dismissed the report out of hand, and we assume that she never read it. The report was carefully documented, with references drawn mainly from government sources, including the website of the U.S. Department of Education. And for an added bonus, we show that 42% of all charter schools in DeVos’s home state of Michigan that received federal funding either never opened or closed soon after opening. What will she do to correct the lack of oversight in her own department?

We write:

Here is a link to 109 Michigan charter schools, called “academies,” that were awarded Charter School Program (CSP) grants from 2006-2014 but either never opened or closed. That number represents 42 percent of all recipients. Those highlighted in maroon shut down. Those highlighted in tan are schools that received funds but never opened. You will find ample documentation for your staff to review our work.

As anxious as you are to open new charter schools, if nearly half of them do not make it, we suggest that something is wrong with the selection process.

In total, $20,272,078 was awarded to defunct Michigan charter schools. And yet, in 2018 you awarded the State of Michigan an additional $47,222,222.

Your home state is not alone. Posted here is a similar list from the state of Ohio showing the names of 117 charter schools (40 percent) that received CSP funds between 2006-2014 that also never opened or are now closed. The total of CSP awards to those schools is $35,926,693. Please note that in all of these states, far more charter schools have failed than just those that received federal SEA funds. In the case of Ohio, the list of closed charters (293) is nearly equal to the number of schools that are presently open (310).

Dare I say that the U.S. Department was scammed because of its own negligence?

Read on.

There is more about Louisiana, California, and other states.

We are talking here about our taxpayer dollars. There are needy schools in the U.S. Yet the Department of Education squanders money on failed and failing charter schools. This must stop!

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

New York City: Struggle Over Whether to Lift the Charter Cap

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2019 //
15

The battle has begun about whether to lift the cap on charter schools in New York City.

New York City has 235 charter schools serving 123,000 students (about 10% of those enrolled in public schools) and there are no empty slots for additional charters unless the legislature raises the cap.  Governor Cuomo, flush with hedge fund cash from his last campaign, wants to raise the charter cap.

Now billionaire Merryl Tisch, who previously was Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents and is now on the board of the State University  of New York, proposed that the city be allowed to use some of the 99 open charter slots from the rest of the state. 

Under Tisch’s leadership at the Regents, New York won a Race to the Top grant of $700 million, hired John King as State Commissioner, committed to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students, and adopted the Common Core and PARCC Testing. Tisch set off the Opt Out Movement, and she also hired MaryEllen Elia from Hillsborough County in Florida, which was part of the Gates Foundation’s failed experiment with VAM (value-added measurement) of teachers.

We are told that the waiting list for admission to charters in NYC is very, very long.

So think about this:

If there is a long waiting list, as Merryl Tisch says, why do charters hire a marketing firm to send recruiting letters to children in public schools? Why are they moaning about not having access to the public school names and addresses? Why don’t they just accept kids from the waiting list? Is there a waiting list? Maybe there are actually vacancies, as in Los Angeles, where 80% of the charters have empty seats. Even Eva Moskowitz needs access to public school names for recruitment purposes.

Would someone please audit that alleged waiting list?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization, VAM (value-added modeling)

Betsy DeVos and Payday for the Charter Industry!

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2019 //
11

 

No matter how many scandals and frauds are exposed in the charter industry, the federal money keeps rolling in.

Open this link to see which of your favorite charter chains (the Walmarts of education) won millions from their friend Betsy DeVos.

Eva got $9.8 million from her friend Betsy.

KIPP will secure a total of $86 million over five years for its San Francisco operations.

IDEA in Texas scores $116 million over five years!

Despite the report from the Network for Public Education showing that 1/3 of the grants by the federal Charter Schools Program are awarded to schools that never open or that close soon after opening, the money keeps flowing.

No matter how many reports of charter fraud, waste, and malfeasance, the federal dollars keep flowing.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education
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