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

Leonie Haimson: The Myth of Accountability Under Mayoral Control

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2024 //
7

Leonie Haimson is a tireless advocate for better public schools and reduced class sizes. She leads a small but powerful organization called Class Size Matters. I am a member of her board (unpaid, of course, as she is).

CSM is powerful because Leonie is tireless. She attends meetings of the City Council, the Panel on Education Policy (I.e., the Board of Education); she testifies at City Council hearings and goes to Albany to testify when the education committees meet. She finds lawyers to work pro bono and files lawsuit to seek more funding for the schools. She works with parent groups to support or oppose the latest decision by the mayor. She meets with elected representatives. She writes op-Ed’s for the local press. She almost single-handedly collapsed Bill Gates’ inBloom, which hoped to collect personally identifiable information about every student in every state. She scrutizes the budget of the NYC public schools, even more intensely than those who are paid to do it. She once blocked a bad deal that saved the city $600 million, by exposing the sordid record of the contractor.

The elected officials in Albany are now considering whether to renew mayoral control of the public schools. Michael Bloomberg persuaded the Legislature to give him control soon after he was elected in 2001. He promised all sorts of miraculous improvements. He would be accountable, he said.

Leonie testified recently at a hearing on mayoral control and explained that mayoral control did not increase accountability. In fact, it decreased accountability. No one listened to parents. One of Bloomberg’s chancellors (his second, who lasted only 90 days) mocked parents who expressed their grievances at a public hearing.

The mayor hired a lawyer with no experience in education to be the schools’ chancellor. He did not trust educators and surrounded himself with people from the corporate sector.

The mayor had a majority of appointments on the city’s “Panel on Education Policy,” a toothless replacement for its Board of Education. When the members of the Panel threatened to reverse one of his decisions, he fired the disobedient appointees on the spot and replaced them with others who served his wishes.

The mayor could do whatever he wanted, regardless of the views of teachers, parents, students, communities. Beloved public schools that served the neediest of students were closed and replaced with small schools that did not accept the neediest of students. He opened scores of charter schools that were free to reject or exclude students they did not want, then crowed about their test scores. (Now a private citizen, Bloomberg continues to give hundreds of millions to charter schools; no big deal for him, as his assets exceed $60 billion).

Leonie stands on a solid foundation of knowledge, experience, and persistence. Sometimes I think she wins battles because the electeds don’t want her to pester them anymore.

She is the undisputed champion of reduced class sizes.

More power to her!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Corporate Reform, Courage, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, History, Klein, Joel, New York City

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s State Chief Clings to Failed Reforms

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2024 //
8

John Thompson, a historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, reviews the stalemate in education in the Sooner State. The cause: a state superintendent who will not abandon failed reforms.

He writes:

As School Superintendent Ryan Walters ramps up his attacks on public education, resisting his false, rightwing agenda has become Oklahoma educators’ top priority. While we need to unite and put the school reform wars of the last two decades behind us, the lessons of corporate reforms must be remembered. As Walters puts the doomed-to-fail, test-to-punish No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB) “accountability” mandates on steroids, I’ve tried to be as diplomatic as possible in reminding educators how and why data-driven, competition-driven “reforms” did so much damage. Reading the Tulsa World editorial, “Current Public Accountability Systems Always Leaving Kids Behind” by Bixby Superintendent Rob Miller, brought me back to a time when I was one of many educators trying to reason with corporate school reformers. Then I read Peter Greene’s “VAM: Why Is This Zombie Policy Still Around?, and I was reminded of the history of so many Oklahoma administrators failing to push back against the Billionaires Boys Club.

My favorite memories of Rob Miller was when he pulled no punches in telling legislators the hard truths about NCLB. Miller is still candid about it, illustrating education’s “gap between those who make policy and those who suffer the consequences.” Research made it clear that “standardized tests are unreliable indicators of school quality,” and “nothing more than an elaborate sorting and labeling system.” Non-educators dismissed the experience of teachers, concluding they were “just falling back on excuses about student poverty, adverse childhood experiences, teacher shortages and unstable families.”

Miller recounts the loss of “recess, music and arts, field trips, class discussions and reading books for pleasure when we need to get these kids proficient at bubbling correct answers on multiple-choice tests.” He then writes:

Who cares if a 10-year-old learns to hate school because he’s been retained in third grade and his days are now filled with worksheets, practice tests and repetitive drill-and-kill curriculum in place of projects, puzzles and hands-on activities which nurture his natural curiosity and develop thinking skills? Suck it up, kid!

In my experience, the overwhelming majority of education leaders knew that test-driven accountability would inevitably lead to “tedious, time-wasting, high-pressure, spirit-killing, highly scripted instructional programs.” But few would go on the record about the harm done by focusing on test scores, as opposed to improving learning. And few of them were as eloquent as Miller when standing up for students.

Then, I read Peter Greene’s summary of what I believe was the worst of the worst corporate reform mandate, Value Added Models (VAMS). When the Billionaires Boys Club” saw the way that NCLB wasn’t working, they blamed Baby Boomers for accepting “Excuses!” and targeted individual educators, using invalid and unreliable algorithms to punish and replace veteran teachers with 23-year-olds they could train. I will always love President Obama, but his Race to the Top was even more destructive than NCLB. Virtually every educator and student above 2ndgrade were held accountable for increased “outputs.”

Greene first explained the inherent flaws in VAMS, doing an intensive analysis of the model’s flaws for teacher evaluation, and surveys documenting teachers rejecting them. He also wrote:

We used to talk about this a lot. A. Lot. But VAM … has departed the general education discussion even though it has not departed the actual world of education. Administrators still brag about, or bemoan, their VAM scores. VAM scores still affect teacher evaluation. And VAM scores are still bunk.

And that leads to what may be the most disturbing aspect of Greene’s piece for states like Oklahoma. He reviewed a range of studies around 2014 and 2015 that made the overwhelming case for abandoning the use of VAMs for accountability purposes. Since Ryan Walters has said he’s been consulting with the architects of the Houston IDS regarding a plan for taking over the Tulsa Public Schools, the most relevant and frightening research Greene cites for Oklahoma document the destructive role that VAMs played in Houston.

Reading Superintendent Miller’s and Greene’s work makes me, once again, rethink my efforts to persuade administrators and politicians to reject test-driven accountability. I worry that education leaders will revert back to the “culture of compliance,” and obey Walters’ demands. I keep remembering the time when one of the nation’s top experts, John Q. Easton of the Chicago Consortium on School Research, came to Oklahoma City and explained why it is impossible to improve schools without first building trusting relationships, and warning about untrustworthy accountability metrics. Afterwards, in the parking lot where administrators were more likely to feel free to speak their minds, the OKCPS’s top researchers agreed, but warned that the new types of tests resulting from NCLB (with Criterion Based Tests replacing Norm Referenced Tests) would completely corrupt our data.

Then, we had an agreement with MAPS for Kids volunteers that the OKCPS would be clear in telling teachers that their job was teaching to state standards, not standardized tests. When NCLB was implemented, however, I was in the meeting where top administrators recalled years of ridiculous mandates and then jolted us all by saying the district had no choice but to expand high-stakes testing. I was the only one who pushed back. A smart, sincere, veteran administrator replied, “John, I always say you don’t make a hog bigger by weighing it. But this is politics. We have no choice.”

On the state level, I joined an informal committee with superintendents trying to draft NCLB policies that would be less destructive. I was tasked with studying the Ohio standards. Because it was then a swing state, Ohio was granted the most freedom to get around the most destructive accountability mandates. The thought was that NCLB’s worst aspects would not survive the 2004 elections, so we sought to kick the ball down the field until evidence-based policies returned!?!?

So, I kept trying to be diplomatic, bridging differences with both – corporate reformers who would not reconsider their ideology-driven mandates and educators who felt they had to comply with those mandates. On one hand, unity is more important when our democracy – not just public education – faces existential threats. On the other hand, discussing these historic facts could be a unifying force. After all, so many of today’s teachers and parents have experienced the damage done by test-driven, competition-driven schooling. I suspect that many of them would appreciate a discussion of the history of those failures.

The 21st century is full of hard truths about the way that the holistic instruction students need for a better future was undermined. And then came Covid, and then came the Moms for Liberty. Reading Rob Miller and Peter Greene, and the science they present, is convincing me that I also must learn from failures to openly oppose corporate school reforms, in addition to fighting back against fanatics like Ryan Walters.

By the way, Walters just announced his plan to create a “one-stop shop” for teacher training, development and financial services. He unexpectedly ended the state’s relationship with:

The three organizations, which have wide membership throughout the state are the Oklahoma State School Boards Association (OSSBA), the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration (CCOSA) and the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center (OPSRC). In a news release, Walters said without providing examples that the three organizations “work in tandem with national extremist groups that seek to undermine parents, force failed policies into the schools, and work against a quality education in Oklahoma.”

The Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration responded, “Last year, over 5,400 educators attended CCOSA’s professional development events to serve those members, focusing on topics such as school finance, special education law and teacher evaluations.” The OPSRC did not reply, but apparently, Walters broke ties with them because they hired a former district superintendent, April Grace, who was his Republican opponent for state superintendent. Before education leaders try to cooperate with Walters in order to avoid his full fury, they should remember that the OPSRC is funded by the Walton Family Foundation and other philanthropies that support corporate school reforms! That’s one more reminder that revenge, not school improvement, is his focus.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Oklahoma, Race to the Top, Teachers, VAM (value-added modeling)

Thom Hartmann: Why Rightwingers Oppose Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 18, 2024 //
23

Thom Hartmann continues to amaze me, with his steady production of powerful articles. This one is especially important for the readers of this blog, whose primary purpose is to strengthen and protect our public schools.

Thom Hartmann writes:

In 1776, British economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, a book that laid out the principles that modern economies have operated under for centuries (with the exception of the Reagan Revolution years of 1981-2021). In addition to arguing for a strong domestic manufacturing base and high taxes on the wealthy, Smith pointed out that one of the things that most directly constitutes the wealth of a nation is its educated workforce and well-informed populace (as a result of that education).

From Thomas Jefferson creating the first tuition-free American college (the University of Virginia), to Horace Mann’s advocacy of public schools in the late 19th century, right up until 1954, this was an uncontroversial position. It’s why every developed country on Earth has a vibrant public school system and — with the exception of the US since Reagan ended free college in California — most developed countries offer free or near-free college to their citizens.

But in 1954, the US Supreme Court upset the education apple cart by declaring in their Brown v Board case that “separate but equal” schools, segregated by race, were anything but “equal.” That decision fueled two movements that live on to this day.

The first was the rightwing anti-communist movement spearheaded by the John Birch Society, which was heavily funded back then by Fred Koch, the father of Charles and David Koch. They put up billboards across the country demanding that Americans rise up and “Impeach Earl Warren,” who was then the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, for requiring “communist” racial integration of our schools.

The second was the private, all-white “academy” movement that has morphed over the years into charter schools and the “school choice” movement of today. It received a major boost when the white supremacist co-founder of neoliberalism, Milton Friedman, published a widely-read and influential article in 1955explicitly calling for what he called “education vouchers” to fund all-white private schools to “solve the national crisis” the Court had created.

In 1958 when the Virginia Supreme Court went along with the US Supreme Court’s Brown v Board decision and ordered that state’s schools desegregated, the governor shut downevery public school in the state. Prince Edward County’s schools were still closed in 1964, when they were finally ordered to open by the courts.

Hundreds of “segregation academies” opened across the South; in Mississippi, for example, 41,000 white students left public schools to attend these academies in just the one year of 1969. Parents had to pay the tuition themselves, but they were willing to do so to avoid their children having to interact with Black, Hispanic, or Asian kids.

The turning point for the Republican Party was 1964, when President Johnson and a Democratic Congress passed and signed into law the Civil Rights Act. Shortly thereafter, one Southern Democratic politician after another changed party affiliation to the GOP so they could continue to argue against “forced integration” of public schools.

The Republican war on public schools burst into the open with the Reagan Revolution, when Education Secretary Bill Bennett oversaw a 30 percent cut in federal aid to public schools following Reagan’s promise to abolish the Department altogether. Every Republican running for president since has made a similar promise or claimed the need to end the Education Department.

Bill Bennett wasn’t shy about explaining why it was necessary to gut public schools, after the Supreme Court had ordered they must be racially integrated. Bennett wanted to privatize public education — as did Trump’s former Education Secretary, billionaire Betsy DeVos — and is probably most famous for his statement that gives us a clue as to why this idea of ending public education is so persistent in the GOP:

“If you wanted to reduce crime,” Bennett said on the radio, “you could, if that were your sole purpose; you could abort every Black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”

LISTEN NOW · 0:17

Could it be that it’s all about keeping white children away from Bennett’s Black babies? Is simple racism what’s animating the GOP’s antipathy toward public education?

One clue is that the idea of ending public education in America goes back even farther than Bennett or Reagan to a single moment and a single court decision. 

When I was born, in 1951, Republicans loved public schools. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower led the charge to build gleaming new public schools all across the United States: I attended one, as did perhaps a majority of my generation.

But then came the Supreme Court, with their Brown v Board decision.

In 1957, President Eisenhower ordered the Little Rock, Arkansas, public schools desegregated. The “Little Rock Nine” — nine Black children trying to desegregate Little Rock Central High School — became nationally famous when Governor Orval Faubus prevented them from entering the school that fall, provoking Eisenhower to call up federal troops to escort the children to class.

Faubus called a referendum — an election — and the good citizens of Little Rock voted 19,470 to 7,561 to shut down their entire school system rather than comply with Eisenhower’s order. That, in turn, led back to the Supreme Court, which, in the fall of 1958, ruled unanimously in Cooper v Aaron that the Brown v Board desegregation order was, in fact, now the law of the land for public education.

In response, whites-only private schools and “academies” began springing up across the nation, many run by all-white churches. (Jerry Falwell tried, in 1966, to open an all-white school; in 1980 he became Reagan’s main advisor on merging the white supremacist faction of evangelical Christians — also triggered by Brown v Board — into the GOP.)

Thus, in 1958 the governor of Virginia closed all the public schools in racially mixed Warren County, Norfolk, and Charlottesville; Prince Edward County’s public schools remained closed for a full five years.

While that’s the foundational history of what has become the GOP’s war on public education, for most of the past 40 years Republicans have merely claimed vague libertarian principles when they try to explain what they ironically call “school choice.”

It wasn’t until Donald Trump gave them permission — and showed them how politically potent it could be — to unleash their inner racists that the GOP went public with overt white supremacy as a core value for the party.

While Critical Race Theory (CRT) was a little-known 1993 analysis of structural racism pioneered by Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell taught only in law school, rightwing influencer Christopher Rufo popularized the term with an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox “News” show.

From there, it echoed around the GOP for a few months before catching fire across rightwing hate radio, podcasts, and Fox. Pretty soon white supremacist militia members were showing up at school board meetings threatening members that “we know where you live.”

Republicans anxious to stoke the fears of their white racist base began inveighing against teaching CRT in public schools — even though such a thing had never happened — and passing laws so loosely worded as to bar any meaningful teaching or classroom discussion of America’s racial history.

All-white private schools funded with taxpayer dollars have become the darlings of Republicans. In most cases these schools don’t need to flout the law by declaring their segregated status: Black, Asian, and Hispanic parents most often simply aren’t interested in enrolling their children in schools that proudly proclaim they will not allow a drop of “CRT,” true American history, or real science education in their classrooms.

The issue of privatizing public schools came up in Arizona in 2018 with a statewide ballot initiative that would extend free school vouchers to every student in the state: it was defeated by voters by a 2:1 ratio. Writing for The Arizona Republic, columnist Laurie Roberts was unambiguous in her description of the state’s voters’ horror at the ballot initiative:

“Actually, they didn’t just reject it. They stoned the thing, then they tossed it into the street and ran over it. Then they backed up and ran over it again.”

Republicans in the heavily gerrymandered state, though, didn’t much care about the will of the voters. Appealing exclusively to their white racist “Christian” base, they pushed what was essentially that same proposal through the GOP-controlled state legislature and it was signed into law last year by Republican then-Governor Doug Doocey.

In giving every student in the state the ability to opt out of public education with a taxpayer-funded voucher, Doocey established a new benchmark in the war against racially integrated public schools that was matched this year by Florida, Arkansas, Iowa, and Utah.

Legislation to gut public schools and replace them with vouchers for private schools have failed in six states so far (Georgia, Texas, Idaho, Virginia, Kentucky, and South Dakota), but Republicans are not letting go. This year voucher bills were introduced in at least 24 states.

The fact that most of the nation’s public school teachers are union members has given Republicans another good reason, in their minds, to do everything possible to destroy public schools. As Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimedlast year, in the minds of Republicans the American Federation of Teachers’ President Randi Weingarten is “the most dangerous person in the world.”

Republicans also love the fact that voucher programs mostly subsidize upper-income families, while educationally ghettoizing the children of low-income parents. Vouchers almost never cover all the costs of attending a private school, so they primarily serve as a government handout to the mostly upper-middle-class white families who already wanted to send their kids to today’s version of the segregation academies.

Once the public schools are largely dead, Republicans will begin lobbying to “reduce spending” by cutting the amount allocated for the vouchers, locking the emerging two-tier status of publicly funded education into place.

For the moment, though, private schools are a booming industry as a result of the GOP’s embrace of Friedman’s vouchers. In Florida, for example, they have virtually no rules or standards for the over-one-billion-dollars the state shovels into its private schools: while public schools must disclose their graduation rates, how they spend their money, and let anybody examine their curriculum, private academies have no such rules in many Republican-controlled states, even though they’re receiving public monies.

Many private schools across the country operate with untrained and uncertified “teachers,” have no clear standards for graduation, and refuse to teach “controversial” subjects like evolution, climate science, and the racial history of America.

Which brings us to organized religion, the other recipient of big bucks because of the school voucher movement. Schools affiliated with churches are now raking in billions every month across the US, and Republicans — who continue to push for unconstitutional things like mandatory public school prayer — pander daily to fundamentalists who don’t want their kids exposed to science or history.

Six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized this practice of shoveling taxpayer funds to churches and religious schools in their notorious Carson v Makin decision last year. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in her dissent:

[In just five short years this Court has] “shift[ed] from a rule that permits States to decline to fund religious organizations to one that requires States in many circumstances to subsidize religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.” This decison “continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.”

Which is exactly what the GOP wants. As SenDem recently wrote for Daily Kos:

“Laura Ingraham claimed that ‘a lot of people are saying it’s time to defund government education or at least defund it by giving vouchers to parents.’ Fox’s Greg Gutfeld similarly declared that private school vouchers are needed because public schools are ‘a destructive system’ and described teachers as ‘KKK with summers off.’

“Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has called public schools ‘a cesspool of Marxist indoctrination.’ Donald Trump declared, ‘public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs.’ And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called them taxpayer-funded indoctrination centers that need to end, which is a bit ironic since she is the poster child for the necessity of funding public education.”

Sweden has been flirting with libertarianism for a few decades and was the first developed country to offer American-style school vouchers to all kids so they could attend private, for-profit public schools. Just a month ago, their government proclaimed the experiment a disaster and is trying to figure out how to shut down the private schools and re-establish a public education system.

Public schools were the great social and economic leveler for the last century of American history; Republicans want to end that and instead advantage wealthy children over their lower-income peers, particularly those whose skin is darker than Trump’s spray tan.

Public schools (and free college) made it possible for America to produce an explosion of invention and innovation throughout the mid-20th century; now other countries are surpassing us, as the dumbing-down of our kids has become institutionalized in Red state after Red state.

And public schools gave many students their first experience of interacting with people who look different from them and grew up under different circumstances, awakening many young people to the discrimination and unfairness inherent in how America has historically treated minorities.

All of which explains why Republicans so badly want to put an end to public education in America.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Resistance, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools

North Carolina: Segregation and Privatization Increase: What Would Dr. King Say?

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2024 //
8

Public Schools First NC is a parent-led organization that has consistently fought the North Carolina General Assembly, which has done everything possible to harm public schools and public school teachers since the Tea Party took control in 2010. The Republican majority introduced charters and vouchers. It has consistently underfunded public schools and ignored a court decision requiring equitable funding (the Leandro decision). Once, long ago, the public schools of North Carolina were considered the most progressive in the South. No more.

Public Schools First NC released this statement:

The United States has changed dramatically in the nearly 56 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. If he were still alive today to celebrate his 95th birthday, what would he have to say about where we are as a nation?

The answer to what MLK, Jr. would say is best left to the creative minds of MLK, Jr. historians, his friends, and family. But what we can do is document what MLK, Jr. would see if he were still alive.

He would see that although tremendous gains were made after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was signed into law and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968) that school integration plans must meaningfully reduce segregation, schools are now more segregated by race than they were in 1968.

According to a 2020 report from from the UCLA Civil Rights Project, in 1968, 77% of Black students across the nation attended majority non-white schools. That number dropped to 62% (55% in the South) by 1976 under the influence of desegregation efforts but rose again to 81% by 2018, the latest year available.

He would see that the gains in school integration were hard-fought, eventually beaten back by racism and northern Whites calling for the “freedom to choose” their schools when challenged with the reality of school desegregation.

In North Carolina, he would see how the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education (1971) motivated the district to launch an ambitious desegregation plan that made it a national leader in school integration and closing achievement gaps.

He would also see how the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 2001 to prohibit consideration of race in school assignments led to Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools steadily resegregating. A 2022 report by the NC Justice Center named Charlotte-Mecklenburg the most segregated district in the state.

He would see the growing school choice movement and the declining investment in public schooling across the United States. The irony of cutting funds to schools and then citing failing schools as a reason to pay for other options would not be lost on MLK, Jr.

In North Carolina, he would see that segregation academies could become state-funded charter schools. He would see the emergence of vouchers pulling even more dollars away from public schools despite lack of evidence of their benefit to students.

He would see the stubborn resistance to funding public schools exemplified by the Leandro case. Brought by five poor, rural school districts and parents (Cumberland, Halifax, Hoke, Robeson, and Vance) in 1994, the nearly thirty years of subsequent legislation have revealed statewide failures in education funding. Cumberland County, with a school district still fighting for adequate funding, is now distinguished by having more private school voucher recipientsthan any other county in the state.

He would see resistance so entrenched that legislative leaders refused to follow a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling to fund the schools. They appealed the ruling and now the Leandro case is back before the North Carolina Supreme Court on February 22, 2024. (Learn more here.)

Would Martin Luther King Jr. be there to hear oral arguments? Will you? How can we all honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy?

Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
LinkedIn

What Would Martin Luther King, Jr. Say?

The United States has changed dramatically in the nearly 56 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. If he were still alive today to celebrate his 95th birthday, what would he have to say about where we are as a nation? 

The answer to what MLK, Jr. would say is best left to the creative minds of MLK, Jr. historians, his friends, and family. But what we can do is document what MLK, Jr. would see if he were still alive.

He would see that although tremendous gains were made after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was signed into law and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968) that school integration plans must meaningfully reduce segregation, schools are now more segregated by race than they were in 1968. 

According to a 2020 report from from the UCLA Civil Rights Project, in 1968, 77% of Black students across the nation attended majority non-white schools. That number dropped to 62% (55% in the South) by 1976 under the influence of desegregation efforts but rose again to 81% by 2018, the latest year available.

He would see that the gains in school integration were hard-fought, eventually beaten back by racism and northern Whites calling for the “freedom to choose” their schools when challenged with the reality of school desegregation. 

In North Carolina, he would see how the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education (1971) motivated the district to launch an ambitious desegregation plan that made it a national leader in school integration and closing achievement gaps.

He would also see how the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 2001 to prohibit consideration of race in school assignments led to Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools steadily resegregating. A 2022 report by the NC Justice Center named Charlotte-Mecklenburg the most segregated district in the state.

He would see the growing school choice movement and the declining investment in public schooling across the United States. The irony of cutting funds to schools and then citing failing schools as a reason to pay for other options would not be lost on MLK, Jr.

In North Carolina, he would see that segregation academies could become state-funded charter schools. He would see the emergence of vouchers pulling even more dollars away from public schools despite lack of evidence of their benefit to students.

He would see the stubborn resistance to funding public schools exemplified by the Leandro case. Brought by five poor, rural school districts and parents (Cumberland, Halifax, Hoke, Robeson, and Vance) in 1994, the nearly thirty years of subsequent legislation have revealed statewide failures in education funding. Cumberland County, with a school district still fighting for adequate funding, is now distinguished by having more private school voucher recipientsthan any other county in the state.

He would see resistance so entrenched that legislative leaders refused to follow a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling to fund the schools. They appealed the ruling and now the Leandro case is back before the North Carolina Supreme Court on February 22, 2024. (Learn more here.)

Would Martin Luther King Jr. be there to hear oral arguments? Will you? How can we all honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry

The Hoax of Ohio’s So-Called “Community Schools”

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2024 //
5

Denis Smith worked for the Ohio Department of Education, where he oversaw the burgeoning charter industry. When I was in Ohio a few years back, another former state official told me that charter lobbyists wrote the state’s charter school law. In their effort to make it palatable to give public money to private entities to run schools, the lobbyists decided to call them “community schools.”

As Denis Smith points out in this article, Ohio is the only state that calls charter schools by that name. In fact, “community schools” have their own definition. They are public schools that offer a wide range of social and even medical services. There are federal programs for charter schools and for community schools: they are not the same. Some charter schools in Ohio operate “for profit.” No community school does.

Smith writes:

More than a quarter-century ago, in a move that undermined the status of the state’s public schools, Ohio Republicans approved legislation that authorized the use of public funds to operate schools run by private management companies. These entities that use public funds to establish and maintain a parallel system of education are called charter schools.

Except in one state, where the legal title for these schools may be an issue that is bound to confuse both policy makers and the public over time.

Indeed, in this nation 44 of the states refer by law to these public-private hybrids as charter schools. Sadly, the Ohio Revised Code calls them something else, community schools. That poor choice of language terminology, an awkward construction from the very beginning of Ohio school privatization, may now pose a problem and continuing confusion as the result of legislation in the U.S. Senate that will expand the existing federal community school program.

That’s right, the federal full-service community school program.

On Nov. 29, Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown introduced the Full-Service Community School Expansion Act of 2023 in the U.S. Senate. The legislation seeks to increase the number of school districts and schools in the federally-funded community school program, which shares the same title with the hybrid schools in Ohio but otherwise has no resemblance.  

What policy experts define as a full-service community school was codified in 1991, when Florida legislation defined such an educational program as “the integration of educational, medical, and social and or human services that meets the needs of youth and their families on school grounds or in easily accessible locations.” Indeed, the basic idea of a community school and the terminology for it predated the Ohio legislation that renamed charters as community schools. More on that later.

The initial legislation that established the FSCS program defined the “four pillars of a community school” as having integrated support for students from health and social service agencies, an expanded instructional day for added learning opportunities, community engagement, and collaboration by the school leadership with community service providers.

The federal definition of a community school is instructive, where the school day is extended to enhance learning, and where community organizations provide dental, vision, nutrition, and other key services to help children thrive and be successful in their school experience. If it has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. But it also takes a community to educate a child through public participation in providing the care and support for those who are the future.

This idea of a community school, now defined in federal law, complements the historical image of the little red schoolhouse, which has served as the center of the community since the early days of the republic. In fact, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 required that a portion of the land in new territories be set aside to support the establishment and funding of public schools. It is also fitting to know that Ohio was the first state to be formed from the Northwest Territory in 1803.

With this historical background and the federal legislation that defines a community school, let’s compare the federal concept of a community school with what is called a “community school” in Ohio.

In 1997, the legislature established in the Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3314- Community Schools, a strange entity that is a hybrid of public funds received by private management companies to educate students. But the problem with these “community schools” is that they are neither of the community nor public in their structure.

As an example, the very idea of a national charter school chain operating multiple schools, whose headquarters may be elsewhere, where its board members sit on the governing bodies of several schools and may not be residents of the communities where the schools are located, is antithetical to the concept of a community school.

So we are back to a contradiction in terms that needs to be addressed. Of all the 45 states that have chosen to operate publicly funded but privately operated schools, Ohio has chosen to use the term “community school” in law when these schools are anything but.

And the reason? You shouldn’t be surprised to know that in this state of gerrymandering and supermajorities, it’s all about politics. Here’s why.

About 15 years ago, a former Republican legislator told a colleague who worked with me in the Ohio Department of Education’s Community (Charter) School Office that there was a concern the initial legislation would not have passed in 1997 if the word charter was used. Community was a “word that sells,” it was thought back then. To this day, it appears that Ohio is the only state which uses such unique language to describe these schools, where community replaces the term charter and sponsor replaces another key term, that of authorizer.

In light of the confusion that will only grow as real community schools continue to develop, public schools with extended-learning formats and support programs provided by collaborating community organizations governed by elected and not appointed community members, it’s time for the legislature to do the right thing and amend Chapter 3314 of the Ohio Revised Code. To put it bluntly, and in light of prevailing federal definitions as found in the Full-Service Community School Program, Ohio community schools are not and cannot be identified as community schools.

Conclusion: Ohio politicians, watch your language. Real community schools, particularly the full-service variety and not charters masquerading as such, are the real thing. Thank you, Senator Brown, for your precise use of language in sponsoring this valuable program and advocacy for community schools. After all, it takes a community to govern, oversee, and support a school, a real community school, that belongs to all of us, and not a national chain or profit-centered business enterprise.

Categories Charter Schools, Community Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ohio

South Carolina: Moms for Liberty Will Open Their Own Charter School in Affluent Neighborhood

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2024 //
107

Steve Bailey, an opinion writer for the Charleston Post and Courier, wrote recently about the new charter school that will open in an affluent neighborhood in Charleston. It will use the Hillsdale College curriculum. The Moms predict it will be the highest performing school in the area. With the freedom to choose its students and to oust the ones who are problematic, it’s sure to get high gest scores.

He writes:

The leaders of Moms for Liberty, who have made a fine mess of the Charleston County School District, have a new project: starting a “classical” — read conservative — kindergarten through 12th grade charter school, preferably in Mount Pleasant. And the Moms’ kids will be at the front of the line for seats in their new school.

Ashley River Classical Academy has partnered with Hillsdale College, a tiny Michigan school that has become the go-to provider for conservatives like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis looking to overhaul curriculums to counter “leftist academies.” The Christian college has helped open 23 charter schools in 14 states — and many more are on the way. Ashley River would be its first in South Carolina.

Hillsdale, with about 1,570 students, has expanded its influence by providing and helping implement a free, off-the-shelf product for conservatives. Its 1776 Curriculum focuses on Western civilization and American exceptionalism, phonics, Latin, classic literature and traditional teaching methods, not “shiny and new” technology and instruction. It emphasizes “moral character and civic virtue,” Ashley River said in its charter school application.

“ARA is poised to become one of the highest achieving schools in South Carolina,” it predicts.

The school started accepting pre-enrollment applications this month and is scheduled to begin kindergarten through fifth grade classes in August. The six-member board of directors includes Tara Wood, the chair of the Charleston Moms for Liberty chapter; Janine Nagrodsky, the treasurer; and Nicole McCarthy, who heads the Moms’ education committee. The all-white board has hired an African American principal, Alexandria Spry, who previously ran a Hillsdale school in Jacksonville, Fla.

The student body “will be diverse in every way,” the charter application promises. “We want all kids to come to the school,” says Spry.

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, are often promoted as offering parents an alternative to low-performing schools in urban areas. That hardly describes this school’s preferred home: affluent Mount Pleasant, where the town’s explosive growth has been fueled in part by some of the best public schools in the region. The $104 million Lucy Beckham High School opened there three years ago.

But that is where the founders would like to open Ashley River Classical Academy. Coincidentally or not, Mount Pleasant is also ground zero of the Charleston chapter of Moms for Liberty. Half the school’s board lives there. Their kids, and those of school employees, will get preference in admissions, according to the school website.

“The school is not a political project,” Spry tells me. “We are just trying to provide the best education we can.”

Finding a site has been a struggle. Ashley River Classical is looking for a 10-acre campus to build a 50,000-square-foot school that eventually could accommodate 690 students, kindergarten through 12th grade. The school originally looked at five sites in Mount Pleasant, none of which panned out. It’s now looking at a temporary site in North Charleston, near Daniel Island, with plans to eventually build in Mount Pleasant, according to the school’s website.

A location is expected to be announced this month, Spry said. But both she and Tom Drummond, the board chairman, declined to comment further on a site.

Ashley River is one of more than two dozen South Carolina charters sponsored by Erskine College, a small Christian school in Due West. Nashville-based American Classical Education Foundation has committed to help finance the school’s start-up costs.

It was just a year ago that Moms-backed candidates won a majority on the Charleston County School Board, kicking off a chaotic year that included the hiring and departure of a superintendent in a matter of months. Now the Moms and their like-minded supporters will have a chance to implement their own ideas in their own school for their own kids. Tuition-free, thanks to taxpayers.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Segregation, South Carolina

Chicago Leaders Want to Move Away from Choice and Revive Neighborhood Schools

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2023 //
18

Chalkbeat reports that the Chicago school board wants to de-emphasize school choice and reinvigorate neighborhood schools. Chicago has been through a quarter-century of school choice, and leaders believe it’s time for a change.

Chalkbeat says:

Chicago school leaders want to move away from the district’s system of school choice — in which families apply to a myriad of charter, magnet, test-in, or other district-run programs — according to a resolution the Board of Education will vote on this week.

The move puts in motion Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign promise to reinvigorate Chicago Public Schools’ neighborhood schools. On the campaign trail, Johnson likened the city’s school choice system to a “Hunger Games scenario” that forces competition for resources and ultimately harms schools, particularly those where students are zoned based on their address.

District leaders’ goals include ensuring “fully-resourced neighborhood schools, prioritizing schools and communities most harmed by structural racism, past inequitable policies and disinvestment,” the resolution, which was released Tuesday, said.

The board wants to pursue that policy goal — and several others — as part of the district’s five-year strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, Board President Jianan Shi, and Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland declined to specify changes or say how far they want to move away from the choice system. That’s because they want to collect community feedback on how far the district should go, which would be outlined in a final five-year strategic plan this summer, they said.

The board is expected to vote Thursday on the resolution, which doesn’t create or get rid of any policies; rather, it formalizes and publicizes the district’s goals.

The district wants to “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools,” the resolution says.

This marks the first time the board has formally stated it wants to move away from selective admissions and enrollment policies. It says the school choice system, as it exists today, “reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity” and must be replaced with “anti-racist processes and initiatives that eliminate all forms of racial oppression.”

Some selective enrollment and magnet schools lack the diversity of the city, enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students, while others remain largely segregated by race and class.

Martinez said it is painful to hear of students traveling far distances to attend school, or when parents ask if they should get their 4-year-old child tested for gifted programs. He said he can “scream as loud as I can” about all that he believes neighborhood schools can offer to families versus highly sought-after magnet or selective enrollment schools — but “it’s not going to be enough.”

“We see this as an opportunity to, again, build trust, because I want to keep calling that out — that is a huge challenge for us,” Martinez said.

The board will scrutinize charter schools carefully when they apply for renewal.

A complicating factor in the board’s action is that the board is about to make a major change from a mayoral-appointed board to an elected board.

The board’s policy priorities come less than a year before Chicago will for the first time elect school board members. State law currently says 10 members will be elected and the mayor is to appoint another 11. That shift is one reason the board is focused on getting a lot of community feedback on their vision, so new board members “understand this is the direction that the district is moving in,” Shi said.

Political shifts, such as this transition to an elected school board, could upend what the current board wants to do, said Jack Schneider, an education policy expert and professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Disruption, Education Reform, Elections, Privatization, Race, School Choice

North Carolina: Federal Education Official Involved in Charter School’s Financial Woes

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2023 //
13

Dr. Peggy Carr is Commissioner of the National Center on Education Statistics, a prestigious, major federal agency. NCES preceded the U.S. Department of Education by more than a century, having been created by Congress in 1867 to report on the progress and condition of American education. NCES releases regular reports on education. It also oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federal testing agency.

T. Keung Hui of the Charlotte Observer reported that Dr. Carr is ensnared in a state investigation of a charter school called Children’s Village Academy and its financial affairs. The school’s charter is up for renewal in 2024.

A North Carolina charter school is being accused of misspending thousands of taxpayer dollars, including funds spent on behalf of a high-ranking federal education official who is a leader at the school.

Staff from the state Department of Public Instruction this week presented reports alleging conflict of interest violations involving the spending of state and federal dollars at Children’s Village Academy in Kinston. Many of the questions revolved around money exchanged between the school and its board vice chair Peggy Carr, who is also commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

Specific concerns include Carr getting $155,000 in interest payments on a $188,000 loan she gave the school 15 years ago. Other allegations include the school improperly using taxpayer dollars to reimburse Carr for furniture and utility bills for a home she owns and rents to the school in the summer….

In 2008, Carr gave the school a $188,000 loan that is still being repaid. DPI says there was inadequate documentation of the loan , resulting in misstatement of the school’s finances because it wasn’t listed as being a liability..

McFadden said that Carr has been paid back, with interest, $314,000. But by the time the loan is fully repaid, McFadden said the school will have paid an estimated $155,505 in interest — $109,268 more than it was originally projected to repay.

“DPI is concerned with the legality and validity of the loan payments to date since there is no documentation or evidence that substantiates the CVA Board agreed to or understood the total amount to be paid including interest based on the annual decisions being made,” according to a DPI report.

In addition, DPI has questions about the $894 a month it says Children’s Village is paying to reimburse Carr for small business loans for buildings the school uses…

DPI identified $5,003 in “unallowable costs,” from the summer program, including $4,438 for furnishings that Carr purchased and requested reimbursement for at a house she partially owns in Kinston.

The school leases the home for two months a year for the summer program, DPI says. Items purchased included dining room tables, dining room chairs and decorative items such as a wall mirror, “colorful cows” and pillows. Some of the items were purchased in Maryland, where Carr lives, and shipped to Kinston.

“Per contracts for the property where the furnishings are used, the property is only used for 2 months out of the year,” according to a DPI report. “The furnishings in question are also not a reasonable purchase as they are typically found in a household, they are not furnishings typically found in an academic setting.”

In addition, DPI says the school paid the entire utility bill for the house for two summer months even though part of the property was used by an independent contractor who is related to Carr. That person is the school’s operations manager. A U-Haul business is also in that building.

Even after the summer program ended, DPI says the school paid the utility bills for the home. Altogether, DPI found $3,238 in unallowable utility costs that must be repaid….

DPI outlined a list of other questioned costs, including:

▪ A custodian was paid $17,000 in federal summer program grant month for July through September.

▪ A different custodian/bus driver who is married to the K-5 principal was paid $15,000 in federal grant dollars in July and August. The K-5 principal is also Carr’s sister.

▪ DPI found $8,877 in unallowable costs related to personal expenditures such as a tire replacement for the finance officer’s car, holiday gifts to employees, $500 gift cards to four employees and costs related to a daycare center operating on the campus. McFadden said the daycare owner is related to Carr.

Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article282963048.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Data, Education Industry, NAEP, North Carolina, Research, Scandal, U.S. Department of Education

Tulane Research Center Funded by Charter Advocates Will Study National Impact of Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2023 //
21

When Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education, she gave $10 million to establish a research center on school choice; she chose carefully. Given who she is, she was not likely to give the money to academics likely to throw cold water on her life’s work. She gave the grant to Tulane, smack dab in the middle of the only city that has no public schools. The organization she funded is called the National Center Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH), led by economist Douglas Harris.

REACH has not been a cheerleader for choice but neither has it been notably critical. The all-charter New Orleans district has not offered much to cheer about. Just days ago, the Orleans Parish School Board closed The Living Charter, which has a large proportion of English learners, because of its test scores. It was the ninth charter school closed in New Orleans since 2018.

Two of the nation’s most active funders of charter schools just awarded nearly $1 million to REACH: the Walton Foundation and the City Fund.

Walton is the single largest private funder of charter schools in the nation. The City Fund was created by billionaires Reed Hastings (Netflix) and John Arnold (ex-Enron) specifically to spur the growth of charter schools.

Tulane announced:

The latest research on school choice suggests that the availability of charter schools alongside other options is producing impacts across entire school systems. However, what works in New Orleans may not work in Arizona. How can we better understand variations across contexts in order to design more effective policies at the system-level?

The National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH) at Tulane University received a total of $975,964 in funding from both the Walton Family Foundation ($485,914) and City Fund ($490,050) to jointly support a three-year research project on the system-level effects of charter schools at the national level. The goal is to learn how charter schools improve student outcomes and better understand the role of policy in fueling these changes.

Is it too much to suggest that their sponsorship is akin to cigarette companies funding research on the benefits and risks of nicotine?

Harris implied in his comments on the grant that a district with 100% market share was subject to “diminishing returns.” Does he mean that it’s useful to have some public schools to take the students that the charters don’t want?

According to REACH Director and Tulane School of Liberal Arts Professor of Economics Douglas Harris, “This funding will help us improve the functioning of the charter sector by better understanding the roles played by factors such as access to quality teachers and the design of charter policies, including charter school funding. We will also learn about the various mechanisms throughout which charter schools affect students, including indirect effects on traditional public schools. Finally, places like New Orleans have gone 100% charter, but we see some evidence of ‘diminishing returns’ to charter market share.” He added, “We are thankful to both The Walton Family Foundation and City Fund for their generous support of our work.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Research, School Choice, Walton Foundation

Kentucky: Judge Strikes Down Funding for Charter School Law

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2023 //
10

A judge in Kentucky ruled that the law funding charter schools violated the state constitution, holding that the state cannot send public dollars to privately-operated schools. In effect, he ruled that charter schools are not public schools.

The Lexington Herald Leader reported:

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd issued an order Monday finding that House Bill 9, which set up a funding mechanism for charter schools in the state, violated the Kentucky Constitution.

Charter schools – schools that are publicly funded but operated by independent groups with fewer regulations than most public schools – are technically legal in Kentucky, but HB 9 would have created a mechanism for funding them with public dollars.

Shepherd said that while there is vigorous debate on the merits of charter schools, the bill violated the plain language of the constitution, which includes a requirement for “an efficient system of common schools” and that tax dollars can’t be used to support non-public education.

“The central question in this constitutional analysis is whether the privately owned and operated ‘charter schools,’ which are established by this legislation, should be considered ‘common schools’ or ‘public schools’ within the meaning of Sections 183, 184 and 186 of the Kentucky Constitution? A review of the case law, and the plain language of the Kentucky Constitution itself, yields the inescapable conclusion that ‘charter schools’ are not ‘public schools’ or ‘common schools’ within the meaning of our state’s 1891 Constitution,” Shepherd wrote.

The bill also would have mandated the creation of two pilot charter schools, one in Louisville and another in Northern Kentucky…

HB 9 passed out of the GOP-led legislature, but faced a rocky path as many rural Republicans teamed up with Democrats to oppose the legislation. In several rural Kentucky counties, public schools are the largest employer and non-public schooling options are scant.

The ruling comes as statehouse Republicans are mulling a constitutional amendment, which would need to be passed by the legislature and then approved by Kentucky voters on the ballot, to allow for tax dollars to be used to support non-public education. The Kentucky Supreme Court earlier this year affirmed a Franklin Circuit Court ruling against a “school choice” law setting up a tax credit-funded scholarship system for students to attend private schools.

Shepherd referenced the conclusion of that case in his order against House Bill 9.

“There is no way to uphold the expenditure of tax dollars for charter schools under the provisions of HB 9 without doing violence to this recent ruling of the Kentucky Supreme Court. HB 9 erects an elaborate structure of mandated public authorization for schools with private ownership and control, and little meaningful public oversight… The substance of what this statute does is to establish taxpayer funded private schools that are exempt from the laws and regulations of the system of common schools established by our Ky. Constitution and laws,” Shepherd wrote.

The suit against the law was led by Council for Better Education, a pro-public education group in Kentucky.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Kentucky
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »