Archives for category: Charter Schools
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Denver Teachers End Strike; Oakland Teachers Likely to Strike Next

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2019 //
9

 

Denver teachers ended their strike and settled with the district for a substantial pay raise, CNN reports:

“Denver educators have been promised pay raises as part of a tentative deal they reached with their school district after three days on strike.

“Under the tentative agreement between Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, educators would see between 7% and 11% increases to their base salaries and a 20-step salary schedule, the union said in a statement Thursday.
“Teachers went on strike to demand higher, stable salaries, because the district uses unpredictable bonuses to compensate for low base pay.
“They also hoped higher salaries would keep more educators from leaving the city, where the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years, one teacher told CNN.
The agreement would also put an end to “exorbitant five-figure bonuses” for senior administrators, the union’s statement said.
“This agreement is a win, plain and simple: for our students, for our educators, and for our communities,” union President Henry Roman said.”

Meanwhile, Oakland teachers authorized a strike and will do so if necessary.

This historic wave of teacher militancy seems to have a multiplier effect.

Teachers in most states are underpaid and finally have the public support they need as media coverage accurately portrays the national underinvestment in education over the past decade amp longer.

Back to Oakland.

Poor Oakland has been a Petri dish for Reform. State takeovers. Near bankruptcy. A series of Broadie Superintendents who opened multiple charters, stripping the district of resources.

No wonder teachers are talking Strike.

As teachers in Oakland prepare for a possible strike, the district office is trying to hire substitutes (scabs) to replace the teachers, offering double what subs usually earn. The Oakland teachers will have none of it.

https://eastbaymajority.com/oakland-unified-school-district-treats-scabs-better-than-teachers/?fbclid=IwAR1jZyKck5lrmS18PMFrfyfJX8HbqEGlDyVRjC4Uz4SC6njV6clETbg0jUY

Oakland teachers, you have the support of your allies across the nation!

Save public education in Oakland!

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Denver, Oakland, Privatization, Teachers

Bruce Baker and Mark Weber: The Big Lies About Charter Schools in Newark

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2019 //
13

 

Nowthat Cory Booker is running for the Democratic nomination for president, expect to hear a Big Liesabout the transformation of the Newark’s hoops when Booker was Mayor.

This study by Bruce Baker and Mark Weber of Rutgers University is a useful antidote.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization

California: Charter School Threatens to Drive District into Bankruptcy

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2019 //
7

 

A school district in Santa Barbara County may go bankrupt because of the charter chain absorbing revenues from its schools.

https://ksby.com/news/local-news/2019/02/11/syvuhsd-says-charter-school-funding-could-bankrupt-the-district?fbclid=IwAR0V9u7V4jluBv5yN7vbzFuOc905hAhxnS0hJHorW-7tuia6DctW-nbgN20

“One Santa Barbara County school district says keeping a local charter school open could cause them to go bankrupt.

“California’s Department of Education recently decided the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District has to help fund Olive Grove Charter School, a public school with six different locations.

“Olive Grove Charter Schools have been in Santa Barbara County since 2000, originally chartered by the Los Olivos School District. In 2014, Los Olivos decided it no longer wanted to oversee the schools.

“The only district willing to speak with us was New Cuyama so we did get authorized with the state board and New Cuyama paid us in-lieu funds at that point,” explained Laura Mudge, Executive Director of Olive Grover Charter School.

“Then the laws changed, and they were back at the drawing board.

“So the California Department of Education was hoping everyone would be able to get to an agreement, especially since Olive Grove had been authorized and in the county since 2000. It didn’t go that way, so we went back to the districts, back to the county and back to the state and then got authorized,” Mudge said.

“Now, the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District is stuck footing the bill – one that’s so high, they say it could lead to bankruptcy.

“We received notification from the Department of Education in December that we’re going to owe $696,000 to help fund Olive Grove Charter. That was just based off the beginning of the year attendance. If you listen to projections coming from the executive director of Olive Grove, that number will be closer to $1-1.2 million come the end of this school year,” said Scott Corey, superintendent of the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District.”

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

Wesley Null and Diane Ravitch: The Heart of a School is Its Teachers: Treat Them with Love and Respect

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2019 //
19

Wesley Null, vice provost for undergraduate education at Baylor University, and I wrote this piece for the Dallas Morning News.

Texas legislators are revising the state’s school finance laws. We wanted to put before the public the importance of paying teachers well.

Some legislators are enthusiastic about what they call “outcomes-based funding,” which would send more money to affluent districts and less money to needy districts. This would be a huge mistake for obvious reasons. It’s reverse Robin Hood.

Long ago, Texas had visionaries in the legislature who understood that the future of the state relied on having a strong public education system. Current legislators think they can use charters as a substitute for adequate funding.

In 1948, those visionaries proposed a dramatic increase in state funding and equalization. Gilmer and Aiken persuaded their colleagues to raise the state share of funding to 75-80% of costs. This year, the state share will fall to 39%, shifting the burden of financing schools to localities, which favors the richest districts.

We wrote:

The heart of any school is the teacher. The only way to ensure that every Texas child receives a quality education is to place a well-educated, well-prepared teacher in every classroom. That truth will never change.

The attractiveness of teaching, however, continues to decline. The results are tragic. Labor Department statistics reveal that public educators are leaving the profession at the highest rate in 20 years. Low pay and disrespect are key factors in this alarming decline.

The Texas Legislature this session will have the job of remedying the state’s public school finance system. As historians of education, we think some background is helpful.

The last time Texas overhauled public school finance was immediately following World War II. The need for change was great. Many young Texans had been denied the opportunity to serve during the war because of their poor level of education. Such news was embarrassing to Texas leadership. 

Compulsory attendance laws existed, but they had many loopholes. Only 65 percent of school-aged children attended school. Only 40 percent of adults had a high school education. Many school buildings were dilapidated and dangerous. 

School finance was based on a census count of how many school-aged kids lived in a county regardless of whether those students attended school. Consequently, funds were commonly distributed but no education took place. Pay for teachers was embarrassingly low, leading to difficulties with recruitment and retention.

Fortunately, Texas had leaders who were driven by foresight and determination. Named in honor of legislators Claud Gilmer and A.M. Aikin, the Gilmer-Aikin Laws modernized Texas education. They revolutionized school finance, substantially increased pay for teachers, rebuilt dilapidated buildings, and redesigned teacher education and certification.

Please read it all!

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Texas

Jan Resseger: The Challenge of Removing Arne Duncan’s Bad Policies from State Laws

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2019 //
17

 

Jan Resseger explains the power of conventional wisdom, which persists even when its effects are harmful and its premises disproven.

She sees Race to the Top as the quintessential bad idea locked in place in almost every state.

How to restore good sense and expunge bad policies?

She shows how her own state of Ohio has been severely damaged by Duncan’s policies.

The Difficulty of Cleaning Arne Duncan’s Awful Policies Out of the Laws of 50 States

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

California: Public Advocates Asks Whether GoV. Newsom Will Deliver On Equity, Funding, and Accountability

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2019 //
7

 

 

Statement by John Affeldt on Governor Newsom’s State of the State Education Priorities

 

On the occasion of Governor Gavin Newsom’s first State of the State address, Public Advocates is issuing the following statement commenting on the Governor’s remarks on public education. Quotes from the statement are to be attributed to John Affeldt, Public Advocates Managing Attorney for Education.

On funding for California’s public schools:

We are thrilled to have a governor finally willing to have the long overdue conversation about sufficient funding for our public schools. The Local Control Funding Formula has made school funding much more equitable but did not address funding adequacy. Despite being the world’s fifth largest economy, California drags along the bottom of states in per pupil expenditures and has fewer adults per student ratios than all but two other states. From Los Angeles to Oakland to Sacramento, our schools are having to choose unfairly between paying teachers living wages, or delivering core services like reasonable class sizes, nurses, counselors and librarians or paying extra attention to students with the greatest needs. These are necessities our public schools must provide to close persistent opportunity and achievement gaps, and which can be met by using the resources our wealthy state possesses. We have offered thoughts for reaching funding adequacy over the years, most recently in an October EdSource op-ed, and we look forward to being part of the urgent conversation on how to fully and fairly fund our schools.

 

On the appointment of Linda Darling-Hammond to the State Board of Education:

Governor Newsom could not have made a better appointment to the State Board of Education than Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond. Dr. Darling-Hammond is the foremost authority on equity and teacher quality in our public schools in the country. More than a brilliant academic she also has shown herself an astute policymaker and public administrator in her time advising the Obama Campaign, Governor Brown and serving as Chair of the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing for the past six years. We look forward to working with Dr. Darling-Hammond on the State Board and to seeing her influence that body to make even greater strides to improve the educational system for all California students.

 

On plans to increase accountability and transparency in public education, including charter schools:

We also applaud Governor Newsom’s proposal to increase accountability and transparency in public education. For starters, we need a much clearer picture of how $6 billion in supplemental and concentration dollars for high-need students are being spent by districts and schools. Murkiness in charter spending is even worse. In August 2018, Public Advocates published the first study of how well charter schools are performing in terms of being transparent and accountable for public dollars in their required Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP). We found a shocking lack of public accountability for hundreds of millions of dollars reviewed in the sample. A third of charters failed to even present an LCAP at all. Of those that did, only $15.8 million out of $48.6 million dollars supposed to be dedicated to low-income, English learner and foster students were identified as having been expended and none of those dollars were actually properly justified as having been lawfully spent to serve high need students. We look forward to working with the Administration to further strengthen charter school accountability.

 

###

 

Public Advocates Inc. is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice. www.publicadvocates.org 

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Equity, Funding

Los Angeles: Will LAUSD Close Down Failing Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2019 //
8

Carl J. Petersen wonders if the LAUSD school board will hold failing charter schools accountable?

Predictably, it turns out that the charterization of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) did not provide the miracle that was promised. The District has the highest number of charter schools in the country, with approximately 18% of its students in these publicly funded private schools. In the just-released list of 110 underperforming schools in the LAUSD, 20%were independent charter schools. Are we diverting $591.7 million from our public schools to get basically the same results?….

The list of underperforming charters includes schools run by large, influential charter chains like PUC, Kipp, Green Dot, and Camino Nuevo (whose chief of operations, Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, is running in the District 5 special election). This will make any attempt to hold these schools accountable extremely difficult. Will the Board put “Kids First” and face this opposition head on?

 

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

Camden, NJ: No Miracle There!

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2019 //
9

 

A few months ago, the New York Times published a very credulous article about the “successful” state takeover of Camden, New Jersey. This was surprising because the superintendent who took charge had never run a school or a district before.  Age 32, he had worked for Joel Klein.

Jersey Jazzman was doubtful. There has never been a successful state takeover.

So he waited until  the state audit was completed. And his doubts were confirmed.

Here is JJ’s post about Camden:

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-failure-of-state-control-in-camden.html

The so-called Renaissance schools in Camden were supposed to take all neighborhood kids. They don’t.

He writes:

“Before we dive into this, let’s step back and recall some history:
“Way back in 2012 — back when Chris Christie was making teacher bashing fashionable — a couple of low-level bureaucrats in the NJ Department of Education came up with a plan for Camden’s Schools. The idea was to take power away from the local school board — which didn’t have much power anyway as it had been subject to the direction of a state fiscal monitor since 2006 — and shift control to the Christie administration and the State Board of Education. This would allow charter schools to flourish while CCPS schools were shuttered.
“It’s worth noting that the guys who came up with the plan were paid by California billionaire Eli Broad, who was the patron of then-Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf. The next year, Christie went all-in on Camden and had the state take overt the district. The excuse was that Camden was such a failure, the state really had no choice.
“Christie proceeded to go out and get a very young fellow to be his new superintendent. Paymon Rouhanifard had, at best, six years of total experiencein education, but apparently that’s all he needed to take on arguably the toughest school leadership job in the state.
Rouhanifard left CCPS last year; when the Auditor discusses the state of Camden’s schools, he’s discussing Rouhanifard’s legacy. I’ve already gone over the issues with the Renaissance schools’ enrollments; let’s look at what else the Auditor found in Camden.”
What else did the audit find?
Experienced administrators fired and replaced by incompetent managers. Lost or misspent millions. Lack of financial controls.
Jersey Jazzman concludes:
“The idea that state control is the only solution for “failing” urban schools is built on a nasty bedrock of racism. But on top of that: State control of schools clearly doesn’t work.
“I know credulous reporters love to eat up pre-digested talking points about soaring graduation rates and skyrocketing test scores to justify these state interventions. But when you look at these metrics properly, it turns out the grad rates are simply part of overall trends (more here), and the small bumps in test scores are best understood as artifacts from changing the tests, not as real improvements in teaching and learning.
“Camden deserves better. It needs experienced, competent leadership that can properly manage the district’s finances. It needs adequate and equitable funding. It needs a system of school governance that allows all local stakeholders to have a say in how the system is operated — just like almost every other district in the state.
“State control has failed in Camden. It’s time to admit it and move on to something better.”

This is the Times’ article:

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Privatization

Steven Singer: Rahm Emanuel Did Not Apologize for the Damage He Did as a Reformer

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
6

Steven Singer nails Rahm Emanuel’s false apology. Rahm claims he is no longer a Reformer yet continues to think he has to get tough on somebody to produce the test scores he wants. When I visited the Washington Post recently, I heard Rahm discuss his great education successes in Chicago, in conversation with the woman he appointed as superintendent of schools (talk about softball exchanges!). Not a word was said about his historic and vicious decision to close 50 public schools in one  day, all of them located in communities of color. The gossip was that he was trying out for the next Secretary of Education role. His name will live in education history and it will remind us of his terrible actions as a privatizer, a hater of public schools, and a man who holds teachers in contempt.

 

 

Rahm Emanuel’s recent op-ed in The Atlantic may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.

 

The title “I Used to Preach the Gospel of Education Reform. Then I Became the Mayor” seems to imply Emanuel has finally seen the light.

 

The outgoing Chicago Mayor USED TO subscribe to the radical right view that public schools should be privatized, student success should be defined almost entirely by standardized testing, teachers should be stripped of union protections and autonomy and poor black and brown people have no right to elect their own school directors.

 

But far from divorcing any of this Reagan-Bush-Trump-Clinton-Obama crap, he renews his vows to it.

 

This isn’t an apologia. It’s rebranding.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization, Testing

Valerie Strauss: The Pushback Against Charters Is Getting Stronger

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2019 //
22

 

Valerie Strauss notes on her blog “The Answer Sheet” that charters are losing their luster. With the ascent of Choice Champion Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, Democrats are losing interest in charters. 

Almost 90% are non-union, and Democrats are not as keen about charters as they were when Obama was president. DeVos has made clear that her goal is privatization, and charter schools advance her goal. Today, Democrats running for office are backing away from charters.

The number of charters is not growing as it once did.

Most embarrassing are the escalating charter scandals. The public has begun to realize the absurdity of giving out public money without oversight or accountability.

There is most definitely a backlash. The NAACP call for a moratorium was part of the backlash. So was the referendum in Massachusetts in 2016, where voters overwhelmingly rejected an effort to lift the cap on charters.

Part of the backlash stems from the realization that more money for charters means less money for public schools. Another part is the public revulsion against the billionaires behind the charter movement, whether its DeVos or Bill Gates or the Waltons or the Koch brothers.

No matter what lies are spread, most Americans don’t want to abandon their community public schools to entrepreneurs and corporations.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »