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Picketing with UTLA: A Great and Inspiring Morning

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2019 //
18

I had a very exciting morning with teachers, parents and students who were picketing outside Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles.

Teachers and parents walked in front of the majestic exterior building, on the sidewalk where cars could see them. Several people held up signs saying “Honk if you support teachers,” and there was a cacaphony of honking horns as cars and trucks passed by.

As the minutes passed, the crowd grew to be hundreds of people, and they chanted “Hey, hey, Ho, Ho, Austin Beutner’s got to go!” And many other inspiring lines about supporting teachers and public schools.

The UTLA understands exactly what’s going on. Its President Alex Caputo-Pearl and his members understand that the billionaires bought the school board so they could expand the non-union charter presence. Charters now enroll 20% of the district’s children.

A day earlier, the UTLA held a mass rally in front of the California Charter Schools Association, the billionaire-funded lobbyists intent on destroying public schools in the state while prohibiting any accountability for charter schools and fighting any limits on charter school growth.

The billionaire-bought LAUSD has starved the public schools, which helps the charters.

The picketing stopped for short speeches. Parents, teachers, a celebrity (Rock Star Stevie Van Zandt) spoke. So did students, both of whom are seniors at Hamilton. One young man said, “We get it. They are targeting black and brown communities. They are trying to destroy our schools by denying us the education we need and deserve. They are dividing our district into haves and have-nots.” Another senior asked the audience to imagine what it was like to be in classes with nearly 50 students, where there were not enough chairs or desks. She said she took a chemistry class and sat on the floor all year because there was no other place to sit. She couldn’t get into an AP class because there were not enough chairs or desks.

The national media says the strike is about trachers’ pay but they are wrong. No one mentioned salaries except a parent speaker. The really important issues are class size, lack of money for full-time nurses in every school, lack of money for librarians and counselors, lack of money for the arts.

When I had my few minutes to speak, I pointed out that California is probably the richest state in the nation, but the latest federal data show that it spends less than the national average on its schools. California spends about the same, on a per-pupil basis, as Louisiana and South Carolina.

That’s shocking.

The good news today, aspesker said, was that a poll conducted by Loyola Marymount, reported that the strike has the support of 80% of the public.

Even if the national media misses the point, the people of LA understand that teachers are striking for their children and for future generations. They are fighting billionaires like Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and other billionaires, for the survival of public education.

The whole world is watching.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Students, Union

Trustees of Houston Independent School District Protest State’s Hostile Privatization Plan

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2019 //
3

Two trustees of the Houston Independent School District strenuously object to the state’s plan to disrupt and takeover the district. It is no accident, they say, that such takeovers target predominantly black-and-brown districts. The state’s goal is to resegregate the district, while enriching charter chains that will swoop in to grab public schools.

The article was written by Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones and Elizabeth Santos.


“Last month the Houston Independent School District Board of Trustees made a difficult decision. At risk of losing the elected positions for which we all campaigned passionately, we rejected an ultimatum created by state law: Privatize four historically black and brown schools or face a hostile state takeover of the entire district. We were elected to see to it that our public schools thrive, not facilitate their transfer to charter managers who can make money off our students.

Now the state is in a position to remove us from office because four schools have been on the “improvement required” list for at least five years.

Some of us reasonably felt that turning these four schools — Wheatley High School, Kashmere High School, Henry Middle School and Highland Heights Elementary — into charter schools would prevent even worse sanctions from the state. While that may have been true for this year, there was no guarantee that we would not face the same dilemma next year and each year after that for different campuses until our district became segregated into two different communities — those that have direct electoral control over their school leaders and those that do not. Such a system of haves and have-nots is simply unacceptable.

The charter vultures are circling.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Houston, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization, Resistance, Texas

Peter Greene: Charter Leader Jeanne Allen Says LA Should “Fire All the Teachers”

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2019 //
31

Talk about a hard line! Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform urges LAUSD to fire all the striking teachers!

PeterGreene writes about it here.

Jeanne Allen is a true rightwinger, out there on the edge.

She looks back nostalgically to 1981, when Ronald Reagan broke a strike by the air controllers union by threatening to fire them all if they didn’t return. To work at once.

Her advice to the LAUSD:

In a post-Janus world, teacher unions cannot exist and continue to gain members unless they demonstrate and prove their value. This strike, like others we’re seeing around the country, is a desperate attempt by the union to maintain relevance in a day and age where they can
no longer require teachers to join.

California needs to break the district up into 100 different pieces, have much smaller units, and allow for the freedom, flexibility, access and innovation that’s happening in charters. If it weren’t for charter schools, education in L.A. would be at the level of Mississippi. The UTLA sees charters
as such a threat to the status quo that it is willing want to hurt students kids even more to score a victory against charters.

My advice to the district: Hold strong. Replace them all. If they want a dramatic impact on education, fire the union and begin to repair the schools, just like Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.

Peter Greene says that Jeanne Allen makes no pretense of being benign and caring. She despises public schools and teachers unions. She has no mask. She believes in privatizing schools, period.

Peter takes her seriously and wonders where LA would find another 30,000 or so teachers to replace the current force.

That’s very kind of him but the reality is that California is a blue state, a state where union-busting is absurd. A new poll by the ABC local station found that the trachers’ Strike has overwhelming public support (about 2/3 support it) and in,y 15% oppose the teachers.

Ain’t gonna happen, Jeanne!

Here’s an idea: how about giving teachers in LA the same salary as Jeanne Allen and call it a day. They work harder and have jobs of far more social value than hers.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Unions

What’s at Stake in L.A. Teachers’ Strike: The Survival of Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
36

The New York Times editorial and opinion pages have been a cheering section for charter expansion for years. I have tried and failed to get articles about the dangers of privatization on the op-Ed page. The last time I tried, my article was rejected, then posted online by the Washington Post (whose editorial board also favors charter schools). After that rejection, I swore I would never again submit an article because I knew it would be turned down. Imagine my surprise when I opened the New York Times to find the article below. Miriam Pawel, an independent historian and a contributing opinion writer for the Times, was allowed to explain the real dynamics behind the teachers’ strike: demographic change; high poverty rates; overcrowded classes; underfunding of the schools; and an aggressive charter industry, led by Eli Broad and other billionaires, willing to spend vast sums to privatize more public schools and kick out the unions.

Online, thisis the subtitle of the article: “Can California provide sufficient resources to support an effective public education system? Or will charter schools cripple it?”

What is so remarkable about this article is: 1. The New York Times printed it; 2. Pawel connected the dots among demographic change, underfunding of the schools, bloated class sizes, and the district’s deference to charter expansion; 3. Pawel acknowledged that the rapid growth of charters is the direct result of the intervention of billionaires like Broad, who poured $54 million into two losing statewide races last fall. I couldn’t have said it better.

Miriam Pawel writes:

LOS ANGELES — For decades, public schools were part of California’s lure, key to the promise of opportunity. Forty years ago, with the lightning speed characteristic of the Golden State, all of that changed.

In the fall of 1978, after years of bitter battles to desegregate Los Angeles classrooms, 1,000 buses carried more than 40,000 students to new schools. Within six months, the nation’s second-largest school district lost 30,000 students, a good chunk of its white enrollment. The busing stopped; the divisions deepened.

Those racial fault lines had helped fuel the tax revolt that led to Proposition 13, the sweeping tax-cut measure that passed overwhelmingly in June 1978. The state lost more than a quarter of its total revenue. School districts’ ability to raise funds was crippled; their budgets shrank for the first time since the Depression. State government assumed control of allocating money to schools, which centralized decision-making in Sacramento.

Public education in California has never recovered, nowhere with more devastating impact than in Los Angeles, where a district now mostly low-income and Latino has failed generations of children most in need of help. The decades of frustration and impotence have boiled over in a strike with no clear endgame and huge long-term implications. The underlying question is: Can California ever have great public schools again?

The struggle in Los Angeles, a district so large it educates about 9 percent of all students in the state, will resonate around California. Oakland teachers are on the verge of a strike vote. Sacramento schools are on the verge of bankruptcy. The housing crisis has compounded teacher shortages. Los Angeles, like many districts, is losing students, and therefore dollars, even as it faces ballooning costs for underfunded pensions.

California still ranks low in average per-pupil spending, roughly half the amount spent in New York. California legislators have already filed bills proposing billions of dollars in additional aid, one of many competing pressures that face the new governor, Gavin Newsom, as he begins negotiations on his first state budget.

Unlike other states where teachers struck last year, California is firmly controlled by Democrats, for whom organized labor is a key ally. And the California teachers unions are among the most powerful lobbying force in Sacramento.

On paper, negotiations between the 31,000-member United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District center on traditional issues: salaries that have not kept pace, classes of more than 40 students, counselors and nurses with staggering caseloads. But the most potent and divisive issue is not directly on the bargaining table: the future of charter schools, which now enroll more than 112,000 students, almost one-fifth of all K-through-12 students in the district. They take their state aid with them, siphoning off $600 million a year from the district. The 224 independent charters operate free from many regulations, and all but a few are nonunion.

When California authorized the first charter schools in 1992 as a small experiment, no one envisioned that they would grow into an industry, now educating 10 percent of public school students in the state. To counter demands for greater regulation and transparency, charter advocates have in recent years poured millions into political campaigns. Last year, charter school lobbies spent $54 million on losing candidates for governor and state superintendent of education.

In Los Angeles, they have had more success. After his plan to move half of the Los Angeles district students into charter schools failed to get traction, the billionaire and charter school supporter Eli Broad and a group of allies spent almost $10 million in 2017 to win a majority on the school board. The board rammed through the appointment of a superintendent, Austin Beutner, with no educational background. Mr. Beutner, a former investment banker, is the seventh in 10 years and has proposed dividing the district into 32 “networks,” a so-called portfolio plan designed in part by the consultant who engineered the radical restructuring of Newark schools.

“In my 17 years working with labor unions, I have been called on to help settle countless bargaining disputes in mediation,” wrote Vern Gates, the union-appointed member of the fact-finding panel called in to help mediate the Los Angeles stalemate last month. “I have never seen an employer that was intent on its own demise.”

It’s a vicious cycle: The more overcrowded and burdened the regular schools, the easier for charters to recruit students. The more students the district loses, the less money, and the worse its finances. The more the district gives charters space in traditional schools, the more overcrowded the regular classrooms.

Enrollment in the Los Angeles school district has declined consistently for 15 years, increasing the competition for students. It now educates just under a half-million students. More than 80 percent are poor, about three-quarters are Latino, and about one-quarter are English-language learners. On most state standardized tests, more than one-third fall below standards.

For 20 years, Katie Safford has taught at Ivanhoe Elementary, a school so atypical and so desirable that it drives up real estate prices in the upscale Silver Lake neighborhood. Ivanhoe parents raise almost a half million a year so that their children can have sports, arts, music and supplies. But parents cannot buy smaller classes or a school nurse. Mrs. Safford’s second-grade classroom is a rickety bungalow slated for demolition. When the floor rotted, the district put carpet over the holes. When leaks caused mold on the walls, Mrs. Safford hung student art to cover stains. The clock always reads 4:20.

“I was born to be a teacher,” Mrs. Safford said. “I have no interest in being an activist. None. But this is ridiculous.” For the first time in her life, she marched last month, one of more than 10,000 teachers and supporters in a sea of red.

Monday she walked the picket line outside a school where just eight of the 456 students showed up. Now her second graders ask the questions no one can answer: When will you be back? How will it end?

It is hard to know, when the adults have so thoroughly abdicated their responsibility for so long. Last week, the school board directed the superintendent to draw up a plan examining ways to raise new revenue.

This strike comes at a pivotal moment for California schools, amid recent glimmers of hope. Demographic shifts have realigned those who vote with those who rely on public services like schools. Voters approved state tax increases to support education in 2012, and again in 2016. In the most recent election, 95 of 112 school bond issues passed, a total of over $15 billion. The revised state formula drives more money into districts with more low-income students and English learners. Total state school aid increased by $23 billion over the past five years, and Governor Newsom has proposed another increase.

If Los Angeles teachers can build on those gains, the victory will embolden others to push for more, just as teachers on the rainy picket lines this week draw inspiration from the successful #RedforEd movements around the country. The high stakes have drawn support from so many quarters, from the Rev. James Lawson, the 90-year-old civil rights icon, to a “Tacos for Teachers” campaign to fund food on the picket lines.

If this fight for public education in Los Angeles fails, it will consign the luster of California schools to an ever more distant memory.

Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel), a contributing opinion writer, is an author, journalist and independent historian.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization, Union

Rebecca Klein: The Los Angeles Strike Will Affect the Future of the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
48

Rebecca Klein, education editor at Huffington Post, predicts that the LA teachers strike will play a large role in the future of the Democratic Party.

Oneof the reasons for the strike is the LAUSD’s pro-charter majority, elected by the cash of billionaireswho want to eliminate public schools and unions. These billionaires, like Eli Broad and Reed Hastings, claim to be Democrats.

In Los Angeles, charter schools drain $600 million every year from public schools.

Real Democrats support public schools and unions, not private management of schools.

Real Democrats do not make alliances with the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and DeVos.

Every Democratic candidate for president in 2020 should join the UTLA picket line and show: Which side are you on?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Los Angeles, Privatization, Unions

New Orleans: Major Scandal, Principal with Criminal History Hired, Allegations of Sexual Improprieties

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
11

This story is one for the record books. When Reformers boast about New Orleans, tell them this story. Open the link and read the transcript of the recording of a conversation between the principal and a teacher. It is a weird story, and the bottom line seems to be a lack of oversight by any central authority.

A federal sexual harassment trial begins Monday in New Orleans against former elementary school principal Stanley Roy Green.

The allegations against Green include a shocking audio recording, made by former William J. Fischer social studies teacher Lindsay Garcia, who claims Green is the man in the recording telling her he wants to “snatch up, kidnap, subdue… someone we both know.”

The evidence presented by Garcia in court also raises questions about a lack of oversight for the 42 charter school organizations now operating most of New Orleans’ public schools. One concern is how they hire staff – a concern that already helped inspire a change in Louisiana law last year to prohibit schools of any kind from employing convicted felons.

The evidence in the court record shows that Algiers Charter Schools Association, which operates Fischer, hired Green even after he acknowledged having a criminal record, after his Louisiana teaching certificate had already been revoked for failure to disclose a felony conviction, even though his application stated that he had been asked to resign from a previous job because a coworker had accused him of “physical abuse in the workplace.”

Green presented himself as “Dr. Stanley Green.” He claimed on his application to Algiers Charter to have a PhD. from Maryville University in St. Louis, conferred in May 2015. But he later testified in a deposition, under questioning from Garcia’s attorney, that Maryville never gave him the doctorate because he still owed the university money.

What’s more, WWL-TV found that another charter organization, New Orleans College Prep, hired Green as a principal right after he was fired by Algiers Charter for sexual harassment. New Orleans College Prep’s excuse: Green simply left his experience at Algiers Charter off his resume and acted like he hadn’t been principal at Fischer at all.

“He never indicated he was employed during the gap and was dealing with personal family issues,” said Troave Profice, New Orleans College Prep’s director of communications.

Algiers Charter Schools Association’s interim CEO, Stuart Gay, stood by his organization’s decision to hire Green after performing a full background check.

“In accordance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Algiers Charter does not automatically disqualify candidates due to their criminal record,” Gay said.

It’s unclear if the new state law, Act 634 of 2018, could run afoul of federal law.

Charter schools do not have to comply with state Education Department requirements for teachers and administrators to hold certain certificates. But the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) is in the process of promulgating new policies for issuing other authorizations for charter school educators.

Green had his Louisiana teaching certificate revoked in 2012 by BESE, which said he failed to disclose a 1998 conviction in Jefferson Parish on access device fraud. The conviction, which was for fraudulent credit cards, has since been expunged, but BESE certification rules still required it to be disclosed.

The new state law also prohibits schools from hiring people with convictions, even if they have been expunged.

He was also convicted of possession of an unregistered firearm in New Orleans in 1994, which was later expunged, and arrested in 2008 in Fulton County, Ga., for simple battery against his brother-in-law, according to his deposition testimony last year.

On his 2016 application to Algiers Charter, Green admitted that he had been convicted of crimes, but claimed his brother had used his identity to commit the offenses.

Green told Algiers Charter in his 2016 job application that he was in the process of applying for a new Louisiana educator’s certificate. But BESE records show he had not applied again since being denied in October 2012.

But Green still had active educator’s certificates in Georgia and Missouri. After leaving New Orleans’ Recovery School District in 2011, he became a teacher in St. Louis Public Schools and then principal at St. Louis College Prep, a charter school in Missouri.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New Orleans

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Can We Get Her Involved in the Struggle to Save Public Schools from Plutocrats?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
57

The New York Timeswrote that the first-year memberof Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was tending bar in the Bronx a year ago, is pushing the Democratic Party to the left.

Alexandria (@AOC) is a remarkable figure in our politics today. By sheer force of personality, she has emerged as a dominant voice. She terrifies moderate Democrats and the entire Republican Party. She has proposed a Green New Deal. She has proposed that people who have an annual income of more than $10 million pay a tax of 70% of everything above $10 million (the marginal tax rate was 90% during the Eisenhower years).

She has two million followers on Twitter.

If anyone knows how to reach her, I would love to get her aid in fighting the privatization of public schools. She would be a powerful ally.

This is part of what the Times wrote about her today:

“Not so long ago, left-wing activists were dismissed as fringe or even kooky when they pressed for proposals to tax the super rich at 70 percent, to produce all of America’s power through renewable resources or to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Then along came Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and her social-media megaphone.

“In the two months since her election, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has had the uncanny ability for a first-term member of Congress to push the debate inside the Democratic Party sharply to the left, forcing party leaders and 2020 presidential candidates to grapple with issues that some might otherwise prefer to avoid.

“The potential Democratic field in 2020 is already being quizzed about her (Senator Kamala Harris praised her on “The View”), emulating her digital tactics (Senator Elizabeth Warren held an Instagram chat in her kitchen that looked much like one of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s sessions) and embracing some of her causes.

“Ms. Warren and Senator Cory Booker, among others, have recently endorsed the idea of a “Green New Deal,” a call to reimagine an environment-first economy that would phase out fossil fuels. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez thrust that issue into the national dialogue after she joined a sit-in protest in the office of then-incoming House speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi, in one of her first, rebellious acts in Washington.

“Her rise has stirred a backlash among some Congressional Democrats, who are seeking to constrain her anti-establishment streak and fear her more radical ideas could tar the party as socialist.

“Back home in New York, she has stoked opposition to a deal with Amazon to set up offices in Queens, putting pressure on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, to justify corporate incentives.

“Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born 29-year-old of Puerto Rican descent, is the youngest congresswoman ever, and Washington veterans say they cannot recall a similar congressional debut.

“A bartender from the Bronx has been able to create a litmus test around climate and economic policy for every 2020 Democrat,” said Waleed Shahid, who was one of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s early campaign advisers and is now the communications director for Justice Democrats, a liberal activist group.

“Far beyond policy, she has emerged as a potent symbol for a diversifying Democratic Party: a young woman of color who is giving as good as she gets in a political system that has rarely rewarded people who look like her. Her mastery of social media has allowed her to connect with audiences who might otherwise be alienated from Washington.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance

How Charter Schools Are Like Subprime Mortgages and May Be Heading for a “Bubble”

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2019 //
25

Scholars Preston C. Green III, Bruce D. Baker, Joseph O. Oluwole, and Julie F. Mead published this article comparing charter schools to subprime mortgages in the University of Richmond Law Review. It appeared in 2016, but it grows more apparent by the day that its warning was prescient. The similarities are striking.

The more authorizers in a state, the less attention is paid to quality. The authorizers have a profit motive to multiply charter schools because they collect a percent of the take. The authors discuss the predatory practices used to lure students to charter schools and the inevitable fraud and embezzlement associated with lack of regulation.

My favorite example of the way that Education Management Organizations profit from charter school rentals:

With respect to fiscal stewardship, charter school boards have the responsibility to ensure that their schools spend market value for the renting of facilities.108 For-profit EMOs have sought to enhance their revenues by charging exorbitant fees for these arrangements.109

For example, the Detroit Free Press reported that the National Heritage Academies (―NHA‖) charged each of its fourteen schools more than $1 million in rent per year.110 The Free Press review of the 2012–13 audits of more than fifty other charter schools run by other for-profit EMOs revealed that only seven charter schools spent more than $500,000 in rent. By contrast, all but one of NHA‘s schools spent more than $500,000 in rent.111 The newspaper also reported that NHA collected $380 million in rent, including nearly $42 million in 2013–14, since the company began running charter schools in 1995.112

The authors may or may not know that National Heritage Academies is owned by J.C. Huizenga, a family friend of the DeVos clan, based in Grand Rapids, affiliated with ALEC and other rightwing groups, and a multimillionaire from his other business interests.

The authors describe how a “bubble” happens, how certain populations are targeted, how they clamor to get in to what appears to be a good deal, then stampede out when the bubble bursts. This may be happening now in urban African American communities. The question that is not addressed is how to restore and rebuild a stable public school system that has been destroyed by predatory charters.

This article is worth your time.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Los Angeles: UTLA Sees Big Risks, Big Rewards by Standing Up for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2019 //
14

What is at stake in the looming teachers’ strike in Los Angeles?

This article in Capital & Main provides a good summary.

A teacher walkout would cast the strike as a challenge to the creeping absorption of public schools by charter management organizations.

If Los Angeles’ public school teachers go on strike Monday, they will face off against a school district headed by superintendent Austin Beutner, a multimillionaire investment banker and former L.A. Times publisher with no experience in education policy. Perhaps more important, this strike will play out on an education landscape that has radically changed since 1989, when the United Teachers Los Angeles union last walked out. Foremost has been the national rise of charter schools — which, in California, are tax-supported, nonprofit schools that operate within public school districts, yet with far less oversight and transparency than traditional schools. Only a fraction of charter schools are unionized, a situation preferred by the charters’ most influential supporters, who include some of California’s wealthiest philanthropists.

Read More About the Potential ‘Meta-Strike’

For 21 months negotiations have ground on between UTLA and the second-largest district in the nation. (The Los Angeles Unified School District enrolls 640,000 students.) The more nuts-and-bolts issues on the table include union demands for a 6.5 percent pay raise, a limit to class sizes (that can now hover around 38 pupils per classroom), and a push for more support staff such as nurses and librarians.

Kent Wong, executive director of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Labor Center, notes that UTLA’s demands have moved away from larger raises and toward more funding to alleviate the deep education cuts that have been made over the years.

“It is important to understand the bigger forces at work here,” said Wong, who added that the pro-charter forces have invested millions of dollars to elect a pro-charter majority on the Los Angeles school board to shift resources from public schools to charters.

To be clear, the union is fighting for the survival of public education and against the forces of privatization.

Now is the time for all those involved to decide: Which side are you on? The plutocrats or the working teachers and other educators in public schools?

Which side are YOU on?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Unions

Arizona: 100 Charter Schools in Financial Trouble, at Risk of Closing, Says Report from Watchdog Group

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2019 //
11

Arizona has celebrated its role in the charter gold rush and is often considered “the wild west” of chartering. The laws are lax, the schools are deregulated, and there is little or no oversight.

A new report by the Grand Canyon Institute says that as many as 100 charter schools in the state are at risk of closing.

The Arizona Republic reports:

Following the abrupt closure of at least three Arizona charter schools over the past year, a new report concludes more than 100 of the state’s charters are in danger of closing because of excessive debt and other financial troubles.

It’s a “near certainty” that more than 50 of the state’s 544 charter schools will close in the near future, according to the report by the Grand Canyon Institute, a self-described centrist think tank.

As a whole, Arizona’s 544 charter schools owe more to creditors than they’re worth as businesses contracted with the state to educate kindergarten to 12th-grade students, the report states. “Like any business, an overleveraged charter is financially vulnerable and could fail if it then suffers an income loss,” the report states.

“You will see a bunch of charters folding suddenly,” said Curt Cardine, the study’s main author and a former charter executive for EdKey Inc., a large Arizona charter chain that had a $7.74 million net deficit as of June 30, 2018.

Here is a link to the Grand Canyon report.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Failure
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