Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Los Angeles: Will the LAUSD Board Keep Its Promise?

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
11

 

Tomorrow we find out if the majority of the LAUSD board answers to the public or to Eli Broad and his fellow billionaires. As part of the strike settlement, the board agreed to vote on a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools. They will vote but will the majority vote for or against it? Tomorrow we learn which votes were purchased by Eli and friends.

The following press release came from Los Angeles Alliance for a Nrw Economy, which fights for a fair economy, for working people and for the environment.

 

MEDIA ADVISORY for TUESDAY, January 29 at 12 PM

 

Contact: Haley Potiker – 714-457-2852 – hpotiker@laane.org

 

Parents Bear Witness to School Board Vote on Charter Moratorium

LAUSD parents who were leaders in teachers strike support show up to make sure district keeps its promise on charter industry moratorium

 

WHO: Parent leaders in teachers’ strike support effort

 

WHEN: TUESDAY, January 29, 2018 at 12 PM

 

WHERE: LAUSD Headquarters, 333 S. Beaudry

WHAT: Parent activists will be available for comment at LAUSD board meeting

 

LOS ANGELES — The tentative agreement between UTLA and LAUSD includes a commitment by the Board of Education to vote on a resolution calling on the state of California to impose a moratorium on charter growth in LAUSD. Parents who have been organizing together with UTLA to combat privatization will attend the meeting to hold the board accountable to their promise.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles

John and Laura Arnold Foundation Moving into Political Advocacy Role

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
35

 

 

i always watch my words when I mention John Arnold. In 2014, I referred to him as a billionaire who used to work for Enron, the hot energy company that went bankrupt, leaving its many employees without a dime since they invested in the company’s worthless stock. I got an email from John’s PR person telling me that he would sue me if I didn’t retract my words implying that he benefitted while others suffered. At that moment, I was in the hospital having my broken knee replaced and I had no fight in me, nor any desire to be sued by a billionaire. I apologized.

Here is a headline from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. 

John and Laura Arnold Join Other Billionaires in Move Away From Traditional Philanthropy

I don’t have a subscription. It’s behind a paywall.

The story:

”The Laura and John Arnold Foundation is changing its structure so its billionaire founders can rely more heavily on political advocacy as they work toward goals such as reducing the cost of health care and overhauling the criminal-justice system.”

Another passion of John Arnold is pensions. He thinks they are a danger to our society. He once tried to fund a PBS special on the “pension crisis,” but it was canceled after investigative reporter David Sirota challenged the funding deal.

He is also passionate about hating public schools and loving charter schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Pensions, Privatization

Longview, Texas: New Charter Schools Will Get More Funding than Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
5

The Longview (Texas) News-Journal doesn’t understand why Longview needs charter schools. A chain of 7 is opening.

But the answer, the newspaper says, is money.

The charters will get more money than the public schools. After all, they need more money for field trips, for international field trips. What?

The charter industry is making its move in Texas.

Will Beto stand up for public schools even though his wife operates a charter?

If he doesn’t, he can write off the votes of teachers and public school parents.

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

St. Louis: Charter School Under Investigation for Inflated Enrollments, Missing Money

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
11

St. Louis College Prep charter school is under investigation for fraud.

St. Louis College Prep has lost tens of thousands of dollars in state funding amidst an investigation into whether the charter school’s founder over-reported attendance records.

The Missouri State Auditor’s office accepted a request Jan. 11 from Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven to review St. Louis College Prep’s finances. Charter schools are public schools that receive state and federal funding but operate independently from traditional school districts.

The charter school’s sponsor, University of Missouri-St. Louis, in October “identified possible issues with attendance data and remedial enrollment numbers that would have resulted in overpayments to the school in previous years,” Bill Mendelsohn, the executive director of UMSL’s charter school office, said in a statement.

Mendelsohn brought the findings to the school’s board of directors. When questioned about the potential irregularities, the school’s founder and executive director, Mike Malone, resigned Nov. 1. The board alerted the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education — or DESE — the following day.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization, St. Louis

Tom Ultican: Watch Out, Texas! The Reformers Want to Steal Your Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
2

 

 

Tom Ultican has awarning for thegreat state of Texas: Protect your public schools and your children!

The Corporate Reformers are coming to Texas to privatize public schools.

Tom has the story here.

The privatizers are landing on Texas because they have failed everywhere else.

They tried to grab Massachusetts in 2016, and got their rear ends kicked out in a referendum they lost overwhelmingly.

They thought they owned New York because of the millions they gave Cuomo, but when the Republicans lost control of the State Senate, the billionaires came up empty.

They got kicked out of Maine and Nevada.

They spent $60 million in California and lost both statewide races.

So why not flood Texas with charter schools?

Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Dan Patrick are Choice supporters but had to forget about vouchers.

No wonder the charter industry, the entrepreneurs and grifters think that Texas is fertile territory for snake oil.

 

 

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

Peter Greene: Why Charter Schools Have a Hard Time Cracking the Rural Market

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
52

Peter Greene noticed that Reformers have turned ttheir attention to rural communities, where they have a hard time getting established.

Imagine a guy or woman from New York or Chicago or New Orleans arriving in a small town or a rural community and telling the locals what they need to “save” their children from the local schools.

Greene explains why their pitch usually falls on deaf ears and why they don’t welcome corporate chains.

He gives four reasons why the charter operators get the cold shoulder.

Here are two of them:

“My children went to school in a tiny village where the two central institutions were the elementary school and the volunteer fire department. In rural and small town areas, grown adults still identify themselves by what high school they graduated from. Sporting events, school concerts, art displays–these are attended by all sorts of people who are not actual parents of the participants. Launching a charter school in this setting is about as welcome as having a guy move into the house next door and inviting your children to call him “Dad.”

“Rural Schools Run On Tight Budgets

“One does not remove a few hundred thousand dollars from a rural school budget without really feeling it. Most rural districts are lean operations already, without fifteen jobs like Assistant Vice-Superintendent in charge of Paper that can be easily absorbed. Transportation may be a huge chunk of the budget, and there really isn’t any way to tighten that particular belt. The minute a charter starts “redirecting” tax dollars away from a rural district, that district will feel the hurt.”

But he does have one example where a charter works. Let him tell you.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Rural Schools

Oklahoma: Tulsa Charter School, Mired in Chaos and Scandal, Will Close in June

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2019 //
5

The Langston Hughes Academy for Art and Technology, a Tulsa charter school, will close by the end of June.

The school has been caught up in a series of scandals. Grade tampering. Sexual misconduct. Declining enrollments. Chaos. Mismanagement. A deputy reported: “a general lack of structure and order at the school, unfilled teacher vacancies and even faculty meetings held during the day left students unsupervised to the point that there were physical assaults, drug usage, medications kept in the school’s main office being dispensed and consumed without adult supervision, and students freely leaving campus.”

The school wants more time, but is not likely to get it.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/new-issues-keep-popping-up-langston-hughes-academy-ordered-to/article_fe7f1cea-da34-52fb-9b96-c41f9c200a93.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share via @tulsaworld

 

The recommendation to yank the school’s state accreditation came after state accreditation officers reportedly raised new questions about the truthfulness of the school’s student counts, its compliance with federal laws that dictate how special education students must be served and corroboration of some of the Tulsa deputy’s claims about the school not completing required criminal background checks on employees.

“If we do not see the kind of improvement and corrective action plans that have not been met after being agreed to, we as a state are going to have to answer to the Office of Inspector General and U.S. Department of Education for what we allowed to happen,” Hofmeister said. “This is not about intention. It is about capacity and what this charter school board stood before us and told us they would do — and did not do.”

School leaders, their attorney, and even state Sen. Kevin Matthews, who represents the part of Tulsa where Langston Hughes Academy is located, pleaded for more time.

Libby Adjei, who was hired as Langston Hughes’ new superintendent in early September, told the board that she had secured assistance and training for the school’s employees from wherever she could find it, including the charter’s authorizer, Langston University, and the state Department of Education.

And Langston Hughes Board President Carmen Pettie questioned why the sheriff’s office had not shared the school resource officer’s concerns with school leaders — or even made arrests based on some of the described activities.

But state board members said the documented issues were too numerous and too serious.

“What is distressing is the students have spoken with their feet,” said board member Bill Price, pointing to declining enrollment figures at the school, which has added one grade each year since it opened in 2015-16 for only freshmen. “And I know so much of the blame is deserved by the previous administration and they managed to hide it very effectively and I know it seems unfair now that this has been brought to light and it is so difficult to turn around. But I just basically don’t have confidence that the whole team is going to be able to run a school effectively.”

Board member Lee Baxter said, “Every board meeting has given Langston Hughes exactly what they wanted — more time. More time, more time, more time.”

Reports of turmoil at the four-year-old school began in April, when Rodney Clark, the founder and then-superintendent and three other staff members were suspended by the school’s governing board amid allegations of grade tampering.

The school made headlines again in October when a bus driver and football coach at the academy was charged in Tulsa County District Court with second-degree rape and making a lewd or indecent proposal to students at the school.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Scandals

Eric Blanc: Five Big Lessons from the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2019 //
14

Eric Blanc has covered the wave of teachers’ strikes that started in March 2018. He has been on the ground at everystrike, talking to the rank and file to get their perspectives as working teachers.

In this article, he describes the big lessons of the strike on Los Angeles.

He begins:

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this victory in the country’s second-largest school district. Against considerable odds, Los Angeles teachers have dealt a major blow against the forces of privatization in the city and nationwide. By taking on Democratic politicians in a deep-blue state, LA’s strike will certainly deepen the polarization within the Democratic Party over education reform and austerity. And by demonstrating the power of striking, LA educators have inspired educators nationwide to follow suit.

With new walkouts now looming in Denver, Oakland, Virginia, and beyond, it makes sense to reflect on the reasons why LA’s school workers came out on top—and what their struggle can teach people across the United States. Here are the five main takeaways.

Strikes Work: For decades, workers and the labor movement have been on the losing side of a one-sided class war. A major reason for this is that unions have largely abandoned the weapon of work stoppages, their most powerful point of leverage against employers. Rallies, marches, and civil disobedience are good, but they’re not enough.

Like the red state rebellions of 2018, the depth of the victory in Los Angeles underscores why the future of organized labor depends on reviving the strike. LA also shows that the most powerful strikes, particularly in the public sector, fight not only for the demands of union members, but on behalf of the broader community as well—an approach the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) calls “bargaining for the common good.”

The Status Quo Is Discredited: LA’s educator revolt is a particularly sharp expression of a nationwide rejection of decades of neoliberalism. Unlike many labor actions, this was not primarily a fight around wages—rather it was a political struggle against the billionaires and their proxies in government.

Like the electoral insurgencies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, the upsurge of Los Angeles rank-and-file teachers, and the overwhelming support they received from the parents of their students, shows that working people are looking for an alternative to business as usual. Work actions like LA’s will be an essential part of any movement capable of defeating Trump and the far right.

That’s only lesson number one and two.

Keep reading to learn the other lessons.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Resistance, Teacher Education, Teachers, Unions

Denver Teachers Vote to Strike!

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2019 //
12

The Teacher Revolt continues!

Fred Klonsky reports here that 93% of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association voted to strike.

Denver has been the epicenter of merit pay since 2005. It has confused and demoralized teachers.

The city school board is completely dominated and bought by reformers, who hold every seat, thanks to out-of-state money. The board has jumped on the portfolio model, closing public schools and opening charter schools. Typically the charters and other alternatives are non-union. Betsy DeVos has praised the Denver model, and hopes it will one day add vouchers.

Read Tom Ultican’s appraisal of the failure of Denver’s portfolio district.

Be it noted that Colorado just elected a Democratic Governor Jared Polis, who started two charter schools, and strongly supports school choice, not public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Merit pay, Portfolio District, Privatization, Teachers, Testing, Unions

Randi Weingarten on Abrupt Closure of Cesar Chavez Charter Schools in D.C.

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2019 //
10

Charter schools come and go. The money keeps flowing from villainthropists and the U.S. Congress, yet charter schools keep folding, just like businesses. Remember Eastern Airlines? Braniff? Pan Am? Stores, brands, they come and go, like charter schools. This failing charter chain had the nerve to name itself for Cesar Chavez, a fiery labor leader who would never have put his name on institutions that defy everything he stood for: the spirit of equity, respect for workers, the belief in unions. He certainly would not have lent his name to an enterprise supported by Red State governors, the anti-union Waltons, the DeVos family, and the Koch brothers.

Time to get woke!

AFT’s Weingarten on Closure of Chavez Schools in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy announced it was closing its middle schools and consolidating its two high schools on one campus. Chavez educators found out their schools were closing via calls from the media:

“Cesar Chavez would be appalled that management at the school that proudly bears his name has treated children, their parents and their educators with such utter contempt. These are children, and their education is not a business to be run on a profit margin. The first priority should always be children and families—but Chavez management, by these actions, has put them dead last.

“Parents were not informed. Teachers were not consulted. The community was not engaged. Many found out via inquiries from reporters—the administration didn’t even have the honor or decency to convey the news directly.

“A perennial problem with under-regulated charter schools is the lack of transparency, accountability and stability. Public schools could never operate in this cavalier and specious manner. Today, Chavez management showed just how damaging that absence of accountability can be.

“Tonight, the educator leaders at Chavez and the AFT have launched an investigation into the administration’s actions and are considering legal action to examine exactly how this breach of good faith—and good governance—occurred.”

The AFT represents 7,500 members at 237 charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia. Since summer 2017, educators at 12 charter schools have joined the union.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization
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