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Angie Sullivan: Nevada Needs a Charter Moratorium

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
7

Question of the Day, Week, Year, Decade:

In the face of so many scandals and failures, why do eduvillainthropists continue to throw good money after bad?

Angie Sullivan, a teacher in Clark County, Nevada, poses this question in a recent letter.


Thank you National Public Education Activists for your work which I follow on a regular basis.

Thank you for your work.

I believe our Nevada legislators should notice:

– Nevada Education Leadership in the NVDOE have failed to prove Nevada Charters are a remedy. Yet our current legislation allows charter takeover of CCSD schools.

– Nevada Charters are segregating. In Nevada, charters segregate by race, money, and religion. Each Nevada charter campus has an obvious identity and group it serves.

– Eduphilantrophists financially propping up or expanding Nevada for-profit charters is not good business practice. This is not competition. Nor is it a good return on investment. It is forced. It is also throwing good money after bad.

– Authentic Education Innovation has been replaced by for-profit corporations creating hedgefund or leasing opportunities. 80% of Nevada Charters are for-profit.

– There is significant and severe lack of financial or academic accountability for Nevada Charters. This is very costly to the Nevada Tax Payer as many charters flounder for years in receivership/ bankruptcy. Or national charter chain corporations sue Nevada draining resources rather than educating students.

– Nevada Charter student enrollment practices and student expulsion need to be examined. Authentic reliable and viable research is noticeably non-existent or extremely limited on Nevada Charters. A simple persual of Nevada charter websites which allow racial slur posting and derogatory statements against some students enrolling can be used as evidence to take action.

– CCSD student population is 20% white. Nevada charters reflect nearly the opposite. “Choice” is white flight. IEP and Free-Reduced lunch numbers also show significant under-service in charters.

– CCSD Schools threatened with charter takeover serve communities which are brown. These schools are NOT the lowest performers in the state. There is something racially unfair about charter takeover selection. It is not “choice” if you have to force brown kids into a disfunctional charter district. Folks would go willingly if the charter district was successful in serving communities of color. Frankly some communities are tired of their children being used in education experiments or being used to meet a quota.

Nevada Education Leadership and the Nevada Legislature need to acknowledge that our education money is limited. Nevada Charters are not authentically successful. Public Relations Spin does not make a student graduate. Billions are spent to promote this failed scam. Continuing to spend tax payer money in a segregating and business manipulated manner is harmful to our communities in significantly distructive ways.

In summary, Nevada Charters are not graduating students.

$350 million and growing. 30 years and zero accountability. This mess needs to be cleaned up.

The Nevada Charter Authority needs the ability to close down national charter corporations.

Nevada needs a charter moratorium.

The nation needs a moratorium.

Keep fighting the good fight. Our public schools are worth the effort. Our students need us to speak up. May God hold us in His Hands.

The Teacher,
Angie Sullivan

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Nevada, Philanthropy, Privatization

Corrupt Cybercharters: Ban Them All!

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2019 //
32

Shaina Cavazos of Chalkbeat in Indiana reports on the startling graduation rate of Indiana’s publicly funded virtual charter school: 2%. Two percent.

“About 2 percent of Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy’s 1,009 seniors graduated, putting the school’s graduation rate below just two others — a school that caters to students with significant intellectual and behavioral disabilities and an adult high school that enrolls only a couple dozen students each and graduated no students last year. Across the state, the vast majority of schools graduate at least three-quarters of their senior students.”

Do you remember when charter advocates promised that charters would be more successful, more innovative, and more accountable than public schools? They are not. For-profit Virtual Charter Schools are scams. They are a waste of money. They are a public embarrassment. Why are they allowed to open?

Peter Greene explains here about this Indiana cybercharter, which buys its existence by paying legislators, then collects public money to not educate anyone. This is not unusual. As you will see from the graph he reproduces, lobbying and campaign contributions area part of their business.

For-profit cybercharters, whether K12 Inc. or Connections Academy, should be illegal. They take public money, lobby legislators, get abysmal results, and are never held accountable. ECOT in Ohio was the darling of Republican politicians, who were happy to give its graduation speech, even though ECOT has the lowest graduation rate in the nation.

At the Indiana cybercharter that Greene writes about, only 10% of the money collected is spent on instruction!

These cybercharters are not schools. They are corporate honey pots that wastepublic money and children’s time.

If a state has children who require homebound instruction, the state should provide the online instruction, using certified teachers, with no profits, no lobbyists.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Fraud, Indiana, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

2019: Help Is On the Way: The First Draft of My Book is Finished!

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
48

Since you have been with me every step of the way on this book, and since many of you have shared stories that will appear in the book, I want you to be the first to know that I finished the first draft on December 31, 2018.

I am now getting my peer review committee to review it for errors, redundancy, whatever. Then it goes to the publisher.

I have proved that it is possible to blog every day and write a book of 125,000 words!

A hint: It is a hopeful book, a book that will show that the light at the end of the tunnel is NOT an oncoming train.

There is good news! The Zombie apocalypse will be repelled!

Stay tuned!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Personal, Privatization, Testing

Los Angeles: Charter Billionaires Will Stay Out of Primary for Board Seat

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
16

There is an open seat on the Los Angeles school board, because convicted felon Ref Rodriguez stepped down. He was a darling of the charter billionaires, who spent lavishly to elect him. He founded a charter chain. The leading candidate for his seat is Jackie Goldberg, a dynamic and articulate voice for public schools, where she wasa teacher, then became a board member and a state legislator.

The charter lobby has decided not to endorse in the March primary, but will probably throw their weight and dollars into a runoff to beat Jackie, if there is one.

Jackie Goldberg needs to win a majority of the votes to avoid a runoff. She is uniquely qualified. Even with her vote, the billionaires will have a majority, but only by one vote, not two. And she has a powerful voice, which would change the tenor of the board and keep Austin Beutner on the hot seat.

Recent races for the Los Angeles Board of Education have been the most expensive school board contests in the nation’s history — and charter school supporters spent millions more than anyone else. But a key charter group announced Friday it will sit out a March special election to fill an empty and potentially pivotal seat.

The political arm of the California Charter Schools Assn. is not endorsing any of the 10 candidates for the seat left vacant in July, when Ref Rodriguez resigned after pleading guilty to one felony and three misdemeanors for campaign fundraising violations.

The hopefuls are vying to represent the oddly shaped District 5, which covers some neighborhoods north of downtown L.A. as well as the cities of southeast Los Angeles County. The Board of Education, currently with six members, is split on key issues, including how to interact with privately operated charter schools, which compete with district-operated schools for students.

A spokeswoman for the charter group spoke of the many strong options for the board seat.
“There are a number of highly qualified, inspiring candidates in this race,” said Brittany Chord Parmley of CCSA Advocates. “Given the diversity, strength and depth of the field, we have decided not to endorse. … This election is an opportunity for the entire community to engage in a dialogue about what it will take to provide an outstanding public education to all Los Angeles students.”
Close observers have described this race as especially tricky for the charter group. District 5’s boundaries were carved to elect a Latino. And in the previous election, charter backers had a strong Latino candidate in Rodriguez, the co-founder of a charter-school organization.

One obvious option, charter group executive Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, is not a Latina. Nor is Heather Repenning, a city commissioner backed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, another power player. Nor is Jackie Goldberg, the pick of the teachers union, which has been the second-biggest spender in board races and has called for halting the growth of charter schools.

Backing a Latino in this district has mattered to United Teachers Los Angeles in the past, but after recent elections losses, union leaders think they have a winner in Goldberg, who has alliances within the Latino community. Goldberg previously served on the school board and the L.A. City Council as well as in the state Legislature. A wildcard for UTLA is the effect of a teachers strike planned for Jan. 10, which could work for or against the union’s endorsed candidate.

The ideal candidate in this race would be a Latina, according to some consultants.

Three Latinos in the race would be hard sells for charter supporters: School counselor Graciela Ortiz is active in UTLA. Cynthia Gonzalez works as a principal at a district-run school. Activist Rocio Rivas led protests calling for Rodriguez to resign.

The other Latino candidates are: Salvador “Chamba” Sanchez, a community college instructor; David Valdez, an L.A. County arts commissioner; Nestor Enrique Valencia, a Bell City Council member; and Ana Cubas, a community college instructor and former L.A. City Council aide who ran unsuccessfully for the council in 2013.

For the charter group, no one stood out.

Four of the Latino candidates banded together to urge UTLA and the charter group to endorse one or more Latinos.

“As the ‘Charter School vs. Public School’ debate rages on and political heavyweights attempt to bully their way into installing their own,” Cubas, Sanchez, Valencia and Gonzalez said in a joint statement, “this is a familiar scenario for the Latino candidates in this race. The district has long left its Latino students behind in academic achievement and access to public education.”

Other candidates, including a couple who dropped out of the race, originally endorsed the one-and-a-half-page statement, but disagreements developed among the group.

The charter group’s neutral stance may not carry over to a likely May runoff between the top two primary finishers, regardless of their ethnicity.

“It is naive to think this is a retreat or respite on their part,” said Juan Flecha, president of the union that represents school administrators. His union, which lacks big-money resources, has endorsed both Goldberg and Gonzalez.

Even in the primary, a pro-charter mega-donor could step in to fund a campaign. That could work better for charter supporters because the official charter group has the baggage of past ties to Rodriguez, said one political consultant, who requested anonymity because of connections to more than one candidate.

Another consultant, Mike Trujillo, who has worked mostly against UTLA-backed candidates, agreed: “It only takes some limited paperwork and a check to become a player in the primary.”

But it might make sense, he said, for the charter group to bide its time while teachers union president Alex Caputo-Pearl spends a lot on the teachers strike and on Goldberg in the primary.
“I suspect CCSA is gonna just get out of Alex’s way and let him spend away,” Trujillo said.

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

Nashville: Is It Fair to Make College Acceptance a Requirement for High School Graduation?

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
16

A number of charter chains have bragged that 100% of their students are accepted into four-year colleges and universities. What they don’t acknowledge is that they have set a requirement that students cannot graduate unless they have won acceptance into a four-year college or university.

The issue came up recently in Nashville.

Metro education officials are reminding one of the largest charter schools in Nashville it can’t make college acceptance a high school graduation requirement.

LEAD Public Schools brags all seniors in its first five graduating classes at LEAD Academy had been accepted into a four-year college. Part of that could be due to the fact that college acceptance was a requirement in its original charter application.

The office in Metro Schools that oversees charters is still consulting legal experts on whether mandating college acceptance is illegal.

What happens to the students who don’t get accepted into a four-year college? Do they stay in 12th grade for years, or do they drop out or return to the public schools?

There are other charter chains who set this as a requirement? Why? It enables them to brag about their success.

Are these graduation requirements serving the students or burnishing the reputation of the charter chain?

The same question came up recently when José Espinosa, superintendent of a school district in Texas, complained that a charter chain was misleading the public with its claims of a 100% college acceptance rate. He said this was misleading advertising. He wrote:

While 100 percent of charter seniors get accepted to college as required, the public has a right to know the percentage of charter students who didn’t make it to their senior year.

Ed Fuller, Pennsylvania State University professor, found in one of his studies of a particular charter network that when considering the number of students starting in the ninth grade as a cohort, the percentage of charter cohort students who graduated and went on to college was at best 65 percent.

In other words, 35 percent of ninth-graders at a charter network didn’t make it to their graduation….

A correspondent in Texas informed me that there are four charter chains with higher graduation requirements than the state:

BASIS
Great Hearts
Harmony
YES Prep

Setting rigorous standards and requiring acceptance into a four-year college weeds out the students who struggle and need extra help.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Graduation rates, High School Graduation, Privatization

Jan Resseger: Why the Charter Industry Cannot Be Reformed or Regulated

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2019 //
5

In this fine essay, Jan Resseger reviews Carol Burris’s article on the five reasons why charter schools cannot be effectively reformed or regulated.

The problems are a feature, not a bug.

Charter schools make their own rules about discipline. They are free from public oversight of their budget. Those considered most “successful” choose their own students. Many states ignore conflicts of interest and nepotism.

When public money is handed out without public scrutiny, abuse of that money is inevitable.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Leonie Haimson: Warning! The New York City Department of Education Is Infested with Broadies, TFA!

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2019 //
15

After hearing from a parent in Brooklyn that decisions at the New York City Department of Education were being made by Broadies and TFA, Leonie Haimson did some digging. The parent was right. The same people appointed by Joel Klein more than a decade ago are still closing schools, imposing the portfolio model, and opening charters. De Blasio appointed Carmen Farina to run the DOE. Farina was Deputy Chancellor to Klein and left in a a dispute. But apparently she saw no reason to clean house.

Leonie shows that it is not only Broadies and TFA, but the nefarious Education Pioneers, another billionaire-funded outfit the is running the show in New York City.

Wake up, Bill de Blasio! You inherited the status quo! When if ever will you clean house?

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Portfolio District, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Nancy Bailey: Nineteen Ways to Save Public Schools from Greedy Billionaires in 2019

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2019 //
13

This is a great post by Nancy Bailey, offering 19 ways you can save public schools from the clutches of the billionaires in 2019!

Here are the first six, keep reading to learn about the other thirteen and see her links:

1. Kindergarten NOT The New First Grade

Kindergartners should be treated like the four and five-year-old students that they are and not pushed to be first graders. The activities and instruction for this age group are well established.

Real educators should take charge and ensure that there’s much free play and age appropriate activities.

2. School Systems NOT “Portfolio of Schools”

For years, corporate reformers have unfairly claimed that school systems fail. They want privatization through a portfolio of schools involving charters, private schools and choice. This will end public education.

We need efficient school systems for traditional public schools only, that serve all children.

Taxpayers don’t need to fund unproven portfolio schools they don’t own or control.

3. School Boards NOT Privatization Partners

School boards are critical to keeping public schools public. Elected officials must listen to the voices of those in the community that elect them. The school board is democracy at its finest.

However, school board members have signed on to unproven initiatives by the Gates, Broad, and Walton foundations and others. Newer groups like School Board Partners encourage school boards to carry out a privatization agenda. Outside groups include Stand for Children and The City Fund.

Ask those running for school board about their goals for schools before they are elected. Demand transparency.

4. Teachers NOT Teach for America

Teachers choose teaching as a career. Teach for America is a substandard turnaround teaching pool. Sending young college graduates into the classroom as real teachers makes no sense.

Here are the businesses and individuals that donate to this group. What if they donated to real teachers and smaller classrooms, or other school needs?

Renew the focus on teachers, their credentials, their preparation, and their support. Elevate their professional status to the importance teachers richly deserve.

5. Principals NOT New Leaders

Next to teachers, principals fulfill the critical job of running the school. Their jobs should be to support and evaluate good teaching fairly and compassionately. No one should become a principal unless they have classroom experience and adequate university preparation.

New Leaders was created to weaken the principalship. Individuals from outside education with no classroom experience are placed in school leadership positions. Like Teach for America, New Leaders weakens the structure of public education. They follow the privatization directives of philanthropists who seek school privatization.

Hire principals with long-term experience working with students. Ensure that they have the support and know-how to lead their schools in what matters.

6. Superintendents NOT CEO’s

Many state superintendents have little educational experience, or they have been through Teach for America. Often they are seen as CEOs overseeing a business. But schools are not businesses. Children are not products. Most of these superintendents have little to no experience with the children they are supposed to serve.

Many come from The Broad Academy where they learn how to collect data and transform schools to choice and charters. They are about school privatization.

Ensure that those who lead America’s schools have the right intentions and backgrounds to serve the needs of students.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teach for America, Testing

Fred Klonsky Offers New Year’s Resolutions to New Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker

By dianeravitch
January 1, 2019 //
9

J.B. Pritzker, Democrat billionaire, beat Governor Bruce Rauner, Republican billionaire.

Rauner, who served for four years, is a hard-right Republican.

Will Pritzker find a new path and act like a liberal Democrat or will he be Rauner-lite?

Here are Fred Klonsky’s wishes for J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic controlled Legislature of Illinois:

I am providing a list of new year’s resolutions for the new governor and the old legislative leaders.

An elected representative school board for Chicago.

The voters of Chicago have made their views clear that we want one. Every other school district in the state has the right to elect their school leaders. No hybrids. No ifs. No buts.

Pass a plan for a graduated income tax, leading to a constitutional amendment, and put it on the ballot.

The state’s revenue supply is not enough to pay the state’s bills with a system in which the richest and the poorest working people in the state pay the same income tax rate.

Repeal the 3% cap on pensionable teacher salaries.

Contract bargaining should return to a collective bargaining process between local school boards and teacher representatives.

Get rid of the Charter Commission.

The Charter Commission’s sole job is to overturn the decisions of local communities whether to have a charter school or not. Legislative attempts to restrict its power have failed. Now is the time to just get rid of it.

Repeal the private school tax credit.

As part of the budget deal with Governor Rauner, the Democrats agreed to a dollar for dollar tax credit for private and parochial schools. This was a deal hatched by Mayor Rahm, Rauner and Cardinal Cupich. In 2019 it should be unhatched.

Open the link and read them all!

I wish Governor Cuomo would read Fred Klonsky and follow his sound advice for New York!

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

Tom Ultican: 2019 Will Not be a Good Year for the Destroy Public Education Movement

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2018 //
18

Tom Ultican, on his way to becoming the chronicler of the shape-shifting Destroy Public Education movement, brings us up to date on the personnel changes and name changes of the personnel on the DPE Gravy Train.

There is a money a-plenty, but there is also a sense that things are going terribly wrong.

There is no vision. They want change but they seem to have no game plan other than to collect the money, and make sure the millions are transferred in large bills.

There is a Yiddish expression, which I don’t know how to transliterate (and my Texas Yiddish is pretty awful), and it goes like this: “gournish helfem.” My spell check doesn’t want to write this, but there you are. It means literally, “This won’t help, nothing will help.” Or as the Monty Python skit said, “This is a dead parrot.”

Read Tom’s account to learn about the latest organizations, the newest players, the latest strategy, the flailing and obeisance to the Almighty Dollar.

They will keep changing their names, but it is the same old garbage and it stinks.

Ultican concludes:

This October, Diane Ravitch addressed #NPE2018Indy asserting, “We are the resistance and we are winning!” 2018 certainly was a hopeful year for the friends of public education and professional educators. Charter school growth has stagnated and “choice” has been shown to be a racist attack rather than an expanded right. In Arizona, an ALEC driven voucher scheme was soundly defeated and in California, Tony Thurmond turned back the nearly $50 million dollar effort to make a charter school executive Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The DPE response is a new more opaque and better funded effort narrowly focused on its theory of quality schools through the portfolio model. It is yet another effort to transform education with no input from educators. Without billionaire money tipping the scales of democracy; vouchers and charter schools would disappear because they are bad policy. Educators ache to focus on improving public education but must use their energy fighting for the survival of America’s public education system, the world’s greatest and most successful education institution.

America’s teachers are educators who will continue sharing lessons on how to recognize highly paid political agents and profitable propaganda centers masquerading as “think tanks.” I predict, even with the greater spending and reorganization, 2019 will be an awful year for the DPE forces.

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