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Bernie Sanders’ Staff Called Me to Talk About Education Policy

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2019 //
186

 

I got an e-mail recently from Senator Bernie Sanders’s education advisor. She said she reads the blog and wondered if we could talk. I said sure but I was not ready to endorse anyone in the Democratic primaries.

I asked for and got her permission to share that this conversation occurred. As everyone knows who ever gave me confidential information, I never write or speak about what I was told in confidence.

We set a date to speak on the phone since I am in New York and she is in D.C.

She called and conferenced in the campaign’s chief of staff.

Here is what happened.

I told them that I was upset that Democrats talk about pre-K and college costs—important but safe topics—and skip K-12, as though it doesn’t exist. Every poll I get from Democrats asks me which issues matter most but doesn’t mention K-12.

I expressed my hope that Bernie would recognize that charter schools are privately managed (in 2016, he said in a town hall that he supports “public charter schools but not private charter schools). No matter what they call themselves, they are not “public” schools. They are all privately managed. I recounted for them the sources of financial support for charters: Wall Street, hedge fund managers, billionaires, the DeVos family, the Waltons, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, ALEC, and of course, the federal government, which gave $440 million to charters this year, one-third of which will never open or close soon after opening. (See “Asleep At the Wheel: How Athens Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride,” Network for Public Education).

I proposed a way to encourage states to increase funding for teachers’ salaries. I won’t reveal it now. I think it is an amazingly innovative concept that offers money to states without mandates but assures that the end result would be significant investment by states in teacher compensation, across the board, untethered to test scores.

I recommended a repeal of the annual testing in grades 3-8, a leftover of George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind. I pointed out to them that all the Democrats on the Education Committee in the Senate had voted for the Murphy Amendment (sponsored by Senator Chris Murphy of Ct), which would have preserved all the original punishments of NCLB but which was fortunately voted down by Republicans. I suggested that grade span testing is common in other developed countries, I.e., once in elementary school, once in middle school, once in high school.

We had a lively conversation. Our values are closely aligned.

They are in it to win it. I will watch to see if Bernie moves forward with a progressive K-12 plan. No one else has.

My options are open. My priorities are clear.

Let’s draw a line in the sand. We will not support any candidate for the Democratic nomination unless he or she comes out with strong policy proposals that strengthen public schools, protect the civil rights of all students, curb federal overreach into curriculum and assessment and teacher evaluation, and oppose DeVos-style privatization (vouchers, charters, cybercharters, for-profit charters, home schooling, for-profit higher education).

Silence is not a policy.

Democrats support public schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Sanders, School Choice, Teacher Pay, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

NYC: Faced with Charter Pressure, DeBlasio Backs Down

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2019 //
26

When Joel Klein was chancellor of the NYC schools in 2006, he agreed to give the charter industry access to the names and addresses of public school students at the urging of his good friend Eva Moskowitz, who wanted to give the appearance of high demand for her schools. To this day, NYC is the only city that voluntarily turns over the names and addresses of its students to charters, which are the competition. In what other realm does one competitor give his “customer” list to his competitor, who will try to poach them and their funding too? Thanks to Arthur Camins, who made this point earlier in the comments.

After years of complaints by public school parents whose mailboxes were stuffed with charter propaganda and who objected to the breach of their children’s privacy, DeBlasio told several parent leaders that he would stop this practice.

The charter association got word of what was about to happen, and it held a press conference this morning, claiming it was “unfair” to stop the practice of turning over this information to them. Apparently, DeBlasio wimped out to placate the charter industry. Shameful.

Activist Leonie Haimson wrote about this confrontation before the news broke that the mayor had been intimidated by the charter industry.

It is unacceptable that this practice has gone on as long as it has.  It is also unfortunate that neither the Mayor nor the Chancellor have made an announcement and instead the charter schools were informed first before any parents. See the information about a call from charter school supporters below reprinted in Diane’s blog.

As Shino wrote, parents and advocates have long complained about the privacy violations from DOE allowing charters to access this information for recruiting purposes; see Johanna Garcia’s FERPA complaint that she filed in Nov. 2017.

Moreover, there is not another district in the country that makes this information available to charter schools to help them divert students and funds from their public schools. 

In Chicago, after student information was disclosed to Noble charter schools without parent consent, resulting in parents receiving postcards urging them to enroll their children in their schools, this sparked a huge controversy and led to an investigation by the Inspector General.  As a result, the Chicago staffer who released the information to Noble was fired and the district apologized to parents in mailings paid for by Noble.  And this occurred in a city where the Mayor controls the schools and is charter-friendly..

Right now, Nashville school district is defying a state lawrequiring districts to make this information available to charter schools and is in court, appealing a court order.  NY State has no such law of course, and in fact its student privacy law Education 2D bars the use of student data for marketing purposes.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Funding, New York City, Privacy

NYC: Charters Complain That City Will Stop Sharing Names of Students in Public Schools for Their Recruiting

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2019 //
22

 

Charters in New York City are angry that the DeBlasio administration intends to stop sharing the names and addresses of public school students, which the charters need for marketing and recruitment.

The Mayor is responding to complaints by public school parents, who object to the city sharing their children’s personal information with the charters.

Wait! What happened to those long waiting lists?

The charters, which enroll about 10% of the city’s children, will have a news conference today to express their indignation.

 

CHARTER LEADERS AND PARENTS TO DENOUNCE DE BLASIO ADMINISTRATION’S PLAN TO BLOCK CHARTERS FROM SENDING INFORMATION TO FAMILIES ABOUT SCHOOL OPTIONS

 

(NEW YORK) – Tomorrow, April 11, at 11:00 AM, New York City Charter School Center CEO James Merriman will be joined by charter leaders and parents to speak out against a proposed measure to undercut educational transparency and school choice. The Department of Education (DOE) has indicated its intent to reverse a policy that allows charter schools to utilize DOE services, through a third-party vendor called Vanguard, to send mailings to prospective parents in their neighborhoods. The policy change would fundamentally undercut charter schools’ ability to let parents know about all the education options in their neighborhood, making it harder to receive applications.

 

WHAT:            Press conference call with charter school leaders and parents speak out on changes to way charter schools inform families of their school options.

 

WHO:              James Merriman, NYC Charter School Center CEO

Arthur Samuels, Executive Director, MESA Charter School

Mitchell Flax, Founder & Head of School, Valence College Prep

Parents of charter school students

 

WHEN:            Tomorrow, April 11, 2019 at 11:00 a.m.

 

Call- in Number:  Please email Abdul Sada at asada@skdknick.com to receive call-in information.

 

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

Jeff Bryant: What is the U.S. Department of Education Hiding?

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2019 //
5

Jeff Bryant was co-author, with NPE executive director Carol Burris, of the report “Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride.” In this post, he asks why the U.S. Department of Education can’t answer three straightforward questions. 

The DeVos Department of Education stonewalled his questions, giving no answers.

This non-response, he notes, was not unique to DeVos. Arne Duncan’s ED was equally non-responsive when questioned by previous researchers in search of answers in 2015.

Bryant wanted to know whether the Department had made any changes following the report of the Center for Media and Democracy, which had also criticized the non-existent standards used when judging applications for federal funding of charter schools.

So he asked these questions on March 8:

This is to inquire about the current grant application review process used for the Charter Schools Program Grants to State Entities. Specifically, in 2015, the Department published an “Overview of the 2015 CSP SEA Review Process.” My questions:

  1. Can you provide a similar document describing how the grant review process is currently being conducted for the Charter Schools Program Grants to State Entities?
  2. If not, can you briefly comment on how the grant review process used for the Charter Schools Program Grants to State Entities aligns with or varies from the Overview referenced above?
  3. Regarding a “Dear Colleague”letter sent to State Education Agencies in 2015 emphasizing the importance of financial accountability for charter schools receiving federal dollars, was there any follow-up by the Charter School Program to ascertain how many SEAs complied with this request and what was the nature of the new systems and processes put into place by SEAs to provide for greater accountability?

He got a voicemail from a communications officer and returned her call. She chastised him and told him he was creating “havoc” among the staff.

The NPE report that Bryant co-authored appeared at the same time that members of the House Appropriations Committee were grilling Secretary DeVos about her budget proposals, which included steep cuts in many programs but an increase for the scandal-ridden Charter Schools Program.

Bryant recounts what happened at the hearings:

When Representative Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Wisconsin, asked DeVos what was being done to recover the $1 billion in alleged financial mismanagement involving charters, DeVos said she “would look into the matter.”

On the issue of how a federal agency could allow charter operators to rip off American taxpayers with impunity, and generally suffer no adverse consequences for their acts, DeVos acknowledged that waste and fraud in the charter grant program had been around for “some time.”

That much is true.

It was under Arne Duncan’s watch that the federal charter grants program was greatly expanded, states were required to lift caps on the numbers of charter schools in order to receive precious federal dollars, and the administration Duncan served in insulted public school teachers by proclaiming National Charter School Week on dates identical to what had always been observed as Teacher Appreciation Week.

And most of the wanton charter fraud we detailed in our report that ran rampant during the Duncan years is now simply continuing under DeVos, with little to no explanation of why this is allowed to occur.

Isn’t it interesting how the U.S. Department of Education demands accountability from schools and districts and states, but provides no accountability whatever for its own incompetence.

 

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

Houston: Charter School Superintendent and IT Specialist Charged with Embezzlement

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2019 //
3

 

The superintendent of a Houston charter school and a school employee have been charged with embezzling more than $250,000 from the school’s bank account. 

The head of a Houston-area charter school and another school employee have been indicted on federal embezzlement charges, accused of siphoning more than $250,000 from the school for themselves and using some of the money to buy a car and condominium.
A grand jury in the U.S. District Court’s Southern District of Texas handed up charges this week against Houston Gateway Academy Superintendent Richard Garza, including one count of conspiracy, two counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, three counts of wire fraud and two counts of engaging in monetary transactions involving criminally acquired property. Ahmad Bokaiyan, a technology support specialist at the school, was charged with conspiracy and three counts of wire fraud. They are now considered fugitives, according to a federal court records…
According to the indictment, Garza awarded a $280,841.85 no-bid contract in 2014 to a group called Hot Rod Systems to build an IT infrastructure at the new school, even though construction on the school had not yet begun. Hot Rod Systems was owned by Bokaiyan. Prosecutors say the two Houston Gateway Academy employees agreed that Bokaiyan would wire some of that contract money into one of Garza’s personal bank accounts. Within days of receiving the contract money from Garza, Bokaiyan wired the superintendent $164,381.
The indictment alleges Garza used more than $50,000 of those funds to buy a new Nissan Armada sport utility vehicle, more than $86,500 to help purchase a condominium, and nearly $26,000 to help make payments on a house loan in Cypress.
Garza’s school enrolls 2,400 students. He had plans to expand to nearly 10,000. He took over the school when it had low scores.
He began an aggressive plan to improve academics on state-mandated standardized tests, placing countdown clocks to test days in all classrooms and requiring even the youngest students to complete three-ring binders filled with practice tests and worksheets. As a result, their Coral middle school campus shot up the nonprofit Children at Risk’s annual school report card rankings, rising to the ranking’s number three spot. All of its 110 fifth and sixth grade students passed the math portion of the STAAR, an exceedingly rare feat for any school, let alone one that serves predominately low-income students. 
One wonders whether he worked the same magic with the test scores that he did with the finances.
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Houston, Privatization, Texas

Missouri: Why Fund More Charter Failures?

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2019 //
14

 

The editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a powerful editorial in opposition to the expansion of charters into the suburbs. They are currently limited to Missouri’s two biggest cities, St. Louis and Kansas City. The editorial warns that the introduction of charters would threaten the quality and viability of some of the state’s best public school districts. The Republican-sponsored bill to add charters does not include any new funding and allows for renewal of low-performing charter schools.

Besides, charters in the two urban districts have produced meager results. Why have more of what doesn’t work?

The editorial recounts the dismal charter record:

“Some high-profile disasters have resulted from lack of oversight and accountability for charter schools. In 2012, Missouri shut down six Imagine charter schools in St. Louis. Students consistently performed worse on state tests than those attending St. Louis Public Schools while Virginia-based Imagine reaped huge profits from a real estate business.

“About half of the 30-plus charter schools that have opened in St. Louis since 2000 have been shut down for academic or financial failure. That’s hardly a success model worth emulating.

”Nationally, the picture looks even worse. The federal government has wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools that never opened or opened and then closed because of mismanagement or other reasons, according to the Network for Public Education advocacy group.”

Why wreak havoc on successful schools by injecting charters, whose track record in Missouri is poor?

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

Bill Phillis: One-Half of Ohio’s Authorized Charter Schools Either Closed Or Never Opened

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2019 //
17

 

Bill Phillis reports that one–half of Ohio’s authorized charter schools either never opened or closed.

This is not a sound use of limited public funds.

See the database here.

He writes:

 

Of the 600 charters that were authorized by the state to operate, 291 either didn’t open or have closed.

 

The good news is that half of the charters that were authorized are out of business. The bad news is thousands of students were harmed by the disruptions.
The Ohio charter experiment was never treated as an experiment. It moved from a $10 million pilot project to a billion dollar annual industry without any evaluation, scant accountability and no transparency.
In the process students are harmed and taxpayers fleeced.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Julia Keleher: The Destroyer of Public Schools in Puerto Rico

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2019 //
17

 

Julia Keleher will one day have engraved on her tombstone: “She Destroyed the Public Schools in Puerto Rico.” She joins the blog’s Wall of Shame for her shameless assault on public schools, the teachers’  union, and the students of Puerto Rico.

Keleher resigned her position as Puerto Rico’s Secretary of State earlier this week. Her resignation comes after two years of top down education reform. She was hated by the Island’s teachers. She’s closed more than 350 schools in Puerto Rico, worked hand in hand with Betsy DeVos to undercut public schools by bringing vouchers and charters to the island, undermined special education services for students and threatened to turn over 30 schools to fly-by-night companies with no experience who want to cash in on schools.
She is the Betsy DeVos of Puerto Rico, although she was neither born nor raised there. She was born in Philadelphia, where she attended Catholic school. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and graduate degrees from the University of Delaware and the for-profit Strayer University. There is no indication on her Wikipedia bio that she ever taught, though she has done consulting, data-driven management, web-based stuff, project management, and worked for the for-profit Sylvan tutoring services. She is a Republican. She was imported to Puerto Rico to disrupt the public schools on behalf of Wall Street and the power elite.
After she resigned, she was initially given a $250,000 a year job in the treasury department but she was forced to resign that backup position after newspapers in Puerto Rico questioned her ethics.
The Yale Education Leadership conference still invited her to keynote its ed reform conference yesterday that’s supported by the Walton Foundation, Broad, 50CAN (funded by Jonathan Sackler of the opioid industry) and other right-wing organizations. Puerto Rican students from Yale wrote an open letter to Yale and to Julia Keleher which they distributed before she spoke. Imagine that: A conference on education funded only by right-wing foundations! Now there is a balanced discussion!
The letter is below.

To the Yale School of Management Education Leadership Conference:

I am disappointed, yet not surprised, that this year’s Education Leadership Conference has chosen to host Julia Keleher as one of their keynote speakers for leaders in education reform. Keleher’s “reform” of the Puerto Rican public education system does not serve to solve any of its problems but rather to mutilate it in order to benefit all but those Puerto Rican citizens who actually rely on high quality public schools. This celebration of Keleher’s work only displays the way in which members of elite institutions like the Yale School of Management can be so blind to the reality and context of life in Puerto Rico.

 

To Former Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Education Julia Keleher:

 

During your time as the Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Education, you promoted the closing of over 400 public schools. You boasted that schools were mostly back to normal just weeks after Hurricane Maria, despite the fact that many schools still did not have power well into January of 2018.

 

Rather than overseeing plans that would put the public school system onto a path of genuine recovery and growth, you pushed the creation of charter schools. In addition to this quasi-privatization of public schools, you blatantly spoke out about your intentions to meld schools with the private sector. You even boldly stated that students in Culebra should start being trained to be streamlined into the tourism industry, as if tourism should be prioritized as the only viable option for young Puerto Rican students as they grow up.

 

Even now as you step down from your former position, you will receive a salary of $250,000 just to serve as an advisor the education department of Puerto Rico. This is more than 10 times the average salary of a teacher in Puerto Rico, which only further highlights the longstanding disrespect you have exemplified for the public school teachers of PR. You have described unionized teachers engaging in peaceful civil disobedience as “violent” in attempts to invalidate their defense of an uncompromised public school system. Teacher unions have been part of the foundation of Puerto Rican cultural preservation, as they were key activists in the fight against English-only education efforts in the 1900’s and for keeping Puerto Rican history and cultural traditions in curriculum.

 

PR’s community of teachers has already been damaged by recent anti-union legislation, and your proposed charter schools would only further harm it as teachers and locally elected school board members are largely left out of their decision making process. These charter schools which you proudly explain are schools that use government funding yet are run privately (or in other words, not run democratically) further expose the colonial government practices already present in PR, which you uphold.

 

Beyond the political tone-deafness of the “reform” you have implemented in Puerto Rico, your sureness of their success only speaks to how little you understand life in Puerto Rico and the students you are meant to serve. PR residents know how long it can take to travel around the island due to road congestion and a lack of reliable public transportation. Forcing teachers to work 2 hours away from home through your merging of public schools is hugely disrespectful to their time and value. Working parents also cannot just drive their children to far away schools when buses are not available. Furthermore, the higher number of buses that would be required to transport students to school would only worsen the air pollution which causes Puerto Rican children to suffer some of the highest rates of asthma in the world.

 

Charter schools also consistently underserve and exclude students with special education needs, which account for more than 40% of all Puerto Rican students. This must not be ignored in plans for PR’s public school system.

 

The island’s limited funds for public education should be used to repair and update existing school buildings, not spent on unnecessary and detrimental charter schools and temporary trailers. You have relied on the emigration of families after Hurricanes Maria and Irma to justify your closing of schools, but basic logic dictates that closing schools would only worsen the conditions that made them leave in the first place. For many Puerto Ricans, moving to the mainland US was not meant to be a permanent relocation, but your “reform” only makes it harder for families to eventually return to their homes. You are closing pillars of local communities, which in turn weakens the entire island’s social and economic progress.

 

Though perhaps said jokingly, perhaps said in attempts to ameliorate the image of a non-Puerto Rican undermining the island’s public school system, you have referred to Puerto Rico as your “adopted land.” Though being Puerto Rican is not just about where you live and the diaspora is an integral part of the community, a fundamental part of Puerto Rican identity is a deep shared history of struggle and resilience, which you can never be a part of. This is especially true with your commitment to your role remaining outside of the sphere of the island’s politics. While the support of public education should always be bipartisan, no current administrative position in Puerto Rico is apolitical, especially not under the undemocratically appointed fiscal control board of PROMESA.

 

Sincerely,
Adriana Colón-Adorno

 

Yale College Class of 2020

 

Supporters of this Letter:

Dr. Adriana Garriga-López

Department Chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kalamazoo College in Michigan

Agarriga@kzoo.edu

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Puerto Rico

Lisa Haver: How Many Lawyers Does It Take to Close Down a Failing Charter School?

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2019 //
13

Lisa Haver is a public school activist in Philadelphia. Here she writes about the long, drawn-out and very expensive proceedings to close down a failing charter school in that city.

She writes:

When the School District of Philadelphia targeted Germantown High School for closure just one year before its 100th anniversary, there was no legal recourse for students or families. No law required the District to conduct an inquiry or call witnesses in order to hear testimony from those fighting to save the school. While the administration of Superintendent William Hite did hold an informal meeting at the school, the community’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Germantown High, along with 23 other neighborhood schools that had served generations of Philadelphians, was closed by vote of the School Reform Commission in a matter of months.

Closing a charter school is a very different story. The Pennsylvania Charter Law mandates a lengthy legal process, beginning with weeks of hearings at the District level. Thousands of pages of documents are entered into evidence. Should the hearing examiner rule in the District’s favor, the charter school can appeal to the state’s Charter Appeal Board in the hope that the 6-person board of political appointees, most of whom have ties to the charter sector, will overrule the decision of the local board. Should that fail, the school can appeal to Commonwealth Court.

Not only is the process is long and expensive, but the public must pay for both sides of the dispute while the wrangling goes on, year after year.

So how many lawyers does it take to shut down a failing charter school?

The Inquirer story explains that “because charter schools are funded largely by school districts, taxpayers are paying not just for the district to make its case but for the charter to defend itself.

The District also pays for the hearing examiner, the stenographer, and for the assembling and copying of thousands of documents. Aspira Olney’s lawyers are making between $180 and $300 an hour, but lawyers for Aspira Inc. wouldn’t disclose their hourly fees—and they are under no obligation to, even though they are paid, indirectly, with taxpayer funds. The District could be shelling out $10,000 a day in legal and administrative fees. That doesn’t include billing for preparation and other costs. That’s $140,000 for the already scheduled fourteen days; total cost will easily exceed $200,000. How many teachers or librarians could that buy? How many toxic buildings could be made safe?

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

California: The Latest Charter Reform Is Unlikely to Change Much

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2019 //
12

When the California Teachers Association and the California Charter School Association stand side-by-side to applaud a law about charters, you have to wonder who wrote the law and whether it will rein in charter corruption.

The latest reform effort was a law to guarantee charter transparency and accountability. Former Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill twice.

The State Board of Education approved 71% of the charters that appealed to them after being rejected by the local district and county board of education. Almost a third of those it approved have since closed.

Capital & Main says the new law won’t make much difference.

 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law Senate Bill 126, written to hold the state’s charter schools to the same transparency as other public schools. (Charter schools are funded by tax dollars but privately administered.) The bill, among other provisions, clarifies that charter schools are subject to existing state financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest laws. It’s a significant break from Newsom’s charter school-friendly predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, who twice vetoed similar legislation.

Still, the California Charter Schools Association, the well-funded charter lobbying group, praised the bill as a “balanced, fair application” of the state’s transparency laws, while preserving charter schools’ autonomy.

Some 31% of charter schools authorized by the state between Jan. 2002 and May 2018 are no longer open.

The fact that the bill sailed through the legislature without opposition strikes Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at California State University, Sacramento, as “one small, small step for mankind.”

“[Senate Bill 126] is two pages long,” he says. “The governor and Democrats are using it to say they’re doing something. But we are still spending hundreds of millions to build charters next to failing public schools. And many of those charters are not doing anything innovative that public schools are not already doing.”

And, despite protestations of “failing public schools” voiced by charter school supporters, many more charter schools are failing due to lack of oversight that the new law is not set up to fix. Not only would additional laws to provide rules for and financial scrutiny of charter schools protect district schools, they might shore up charter schools as well.

My suggestion to the editors: Please delete the word “other” from the first sentence. Charter schools are publicly financed but they are not public schools. They are private contractors.

New Oversight Law Won’t Prevent Charter School Financial Difficulties

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