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Tennessee: Aspire Charter Chain In Trouble, Financially and Academically

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2018 //
7

The Aspire charter chain in Memphis is in trouble and debating its future. This is one of billionaire Reed Hastings’ investments, and it is not faring well.

Facing a roughly $2 million operating deficit and lagging academic progress, a California-based charter organization that runs four schools in Memphis is reconsidering its future in the city — even floating the possibility of pulling out of the area altogether.

At a public meeting on Friday, Aspire’s national board discussed with its Memphis staff four possible scenarios for moving forward. Board chair Jonathan Garfinkel said that changes are anticipated, given the budget deficit and the fact that academic “results have not been what we’ve hoped.”

As a result, Aspire could cease to oversee its four Memphis schools, which serve some 1,600 students in total. This wouldn’t mean the schools would close, but that the governance of the school would change. A task force — composed of board members, Aspire staff in Memphis and consultants — came up with the following four possible paths forward, though Garfinkel said more possibilities could be considered.

Memphis remains an Aspire region with additional supports and a plan to close the financial gap.

Memphis becomes an Aspire “franchise,” keeping the name and core approach and receiving some supports, like curriculum and coaching, but operates as a separate nonprofit with significantly more autonomy.

The four Memphis schools become a standalone charter network with their own central office and fundraising function.

The four schools team up with one or more existing local school district or charter network.

If any changes are made, they wouldn’t go into place until after this school year. Garfinkel emphasized that no decisions have been made, and the task force would use Friday’s conversation to steer its board recommendations, slated for January.

Guess they are not “saving poor kids in failing schools.”

Wonder if Reed Hastings will rethink his grand plan to privatize every public school? I’m guessing not. Being a billionaire means never saying you made a mistake.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Memphis, Privatization, Tennessee

Reed Hastings: Destroyer of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2018 //
21

Reed Hastings, billionaire founder of Netflix, hates public schools. He wants to eliminate school boards and replace them with corporate management. He has spent more than $100 million promoting charter schools.

Reed Hastings: Netflix CEO Goes Nuclear on Public Schools

“Hastings’ lavish spending has raised concerns among critics who worry that the sort of technologies and efficiencies he used to build his Silicon Valley empire and is now applying to education might not work for the nation’s schoolchildren.

These concerns were raised in 2014, when Hastings, at a California Charter Schools Association meeting, asserted that public schools are hobbled by having elected schoolboards.

“Let’s think large-scale,” says Brett Bymaster, a Silicon Valley electrical engineer who broke the story about Hastings’ school board comments on his blog about Rocketship, a charter school chain supported by Hastings. “You have someone who is contributing millions and millions of dollars to local and statewide political races and who was the former president of the state school board — whose stated goal is to end democracy in education. That is deeply disturbing.”

When Hastings served as chair of the California State Board of Education, he opposed bilingual education, leading Democratic legislators to block his reappointment. While on The State Board, he led the charge to remove any limits on the number of charters in the state and to limit regulation or accountability.

“The fact that California Charter Academy, one of the country’s largest charter school operators, collapsed and left 6,000 California students without a school during his board tenure, did little to sway Hastings’ enthusiasm for publicly financed yet privately run schools. Along with helping to fund the Rocketship and Aspire charter programs, he’s served on the boards of the California Charter Schools Association and the KIPP Foundation, the largest network of charter schools in the country. And much of Hastings’ school reform efforts have focused on technological solutions. He helped launch NewSchools Venture Fund, which has invested $250 million in education entrepreneurs and “ed tech” products. He’s also been a major backer of DreamBox Learning, which develops the math software used in Rocketship schools, and the Khan Academy, an online teaching video clearinghouse.

“But so far, the outcomes of many of these ed tech ventures have been mixed. Khan Academy has been criticized for including fundamental math errors in some of its instructional videos. And while DreamBox once championed a Harvard University study that found that use of its math software was associated with test achievement gains in grades three through five, the study itself noted it could not be ruled out that the gains were “due to student motivation or teacher effectiveness, rather than to the availability of the software.” What’s more, the user data collected by programs developed at Khan Academy, DreamBox and other companies are fueling concerns over student privacy.

“More broadly, education experts are worried about the impact of minimally staffed, call center-like computer learning labs on the nation’s students and teachers, especially as this approach becomes more commonplace in the name of cost savings and innovation. (In a 2012 Washington Post article, former Rocketship CEO John Danner noted that “Rocketeers” could eventually spend 50 percent of their school day in front of computers.)”…

“When Netflix became the first major U.S. company to offer unlimited paid family leave for both male and female employees, it was criticized for extending the policy only to its white-collar employees, not blue-collar workers in charge of customer service and DVDs. And while Microsoft has required that many of its contractors and vendors provide their workers with sick days and vacation time and Google has demanded that its shuttle bus contractors pay better wages, so far Netflix has ignored calls for improved working conditions for its contract workers, says Derecka Mehrens, co-founder of Silicon Valley Rising, a campaign to raise pay and create affordable housing for low-wage workers in the tech industry.

“Mehrens sees a similar class bias in Hastings’ approach to public education. “We see profound consequences, both political and economic, when technology industry leaders take action from a position of privilege and isolation from the very communities they desire to help,” she says. “When tech industry leaders like Reed Hastings call for an elimination of school boards or for more privatization of public schools, they block low-income people from using the one instrument that the powerful can’t ignore – their vote.”

“Hastings’ end goal for California appears to be the near-total replacement of traditional public schools with charter schools. In his 2014 speech where he discussed abolishing elected school boards, Hastings pointed to New Orleans – whose school system was largely taken over by the State of Louisiana after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and converted to the country’s first predominantly charter public school system – as a model:

“So what we have to do is to work with school districts to grow steadily, and the work ahead is really hard because we’re at eight percent of students [in charters] in California, whereas in New Orleans they’re at 90 percent, so we have a lot of catchup to do… So what we have to do is continue to grow and grow… It’s going to take 20-30 years to get to 90 percent of charter kids.”

For his contempt for public schools and his determination to remove democratic governance of education, I hereby place Reed Hastings on this blog’s Wall of Shame.

Categories Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Technology, Wall of Shame

Sue Legg: Twenty Years of School Choice in Florida : Part 1

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2018 //
15

Sue Legg was assessment and evaluation contractor for the Fl. DOE for twenty years while on the faculty at the University of Florida. She recently stepped down as Education Director of the Florida League of Women Voters.

This is the first of a series on the effects of school choice, which she wrote at my request.

Florida Twenty Years Later: Undermining Public Schools

Florida has a long track record in school privatization.

Consequently, I recently had the sobering charge to help Louisville citizens understand what lies ahead if their new charter school enabling law is funded. Florida has 655 charters enrolling nearly 300,000 students, the third largest number in the U.S., and it also spends over a billion dollars per year in tax credit scholarships to 2800 private schools. What does Florida have to show for it?

Privatizing schools was sold to the public as a money saving policy. Education, after all, is the second largest Florida state budget item.

Competition from the private sector, it was argued, would increase quality and save money. State assessment scores would grade students, schools and teachers to assure the public that the ever-increasing education standards were met. This competition myth imploded. Education became a battleground over funding, support for teachers, and the impact of parental choice on neighborhoods.

Twenty years later, Florida schools are nearing a fiscal and social crisis. Not only did the legislature cut funding in 2008, it reallocated money to charter and private schools and put a cap on local property tax revenue for public schools.

Student enrollment grew, and the Hispanic population doubled.

A forest of temporary buildings sprouted on playgrounds to add classrooms.

In my district alone, $168 million has been lost in facility funding. Some of our schools have buckets in classrooms to catch the rainfall and use sandbags to block water from entering hallways. Others are so crowded that lunch begins at 9:30 a.m. Many districts are asking for increases in local sales and property taxes to support schools; others already have. Opponents, however, want to prevent communities from increasing taxes.

Building maintenance is only part of the problem facing Florida’s schools. Its per student funding to support instruction is among the lowest in the nation. Its teacher attrition rate is high. The PTA reports that there were 1482 teaching positions still vacant in January 2018. Two thirds of teachers who leave are for reasons other than retirement. One clue is that the NEA ranks Florida 46th in average teacher salary. As a result, Florida now ranks first in the nation (25%) in inexperienced teachers.

Teaching and learning also have changed in many ways. ‘Test Prep’ begins in February for April state assessments. The districts’ versions of choice include magnet schools and student placement based on test scores within and across schools. The increasing lament is that there are ‘schools within schools’ where some students have access to high quality programs and teachers and others do not.

Choice fragments neighborhoods.

Think, for example, of the charter school in south Florida that opened across the street from an excellent public school, thus reducing its enrollment and funding but not its overhead expenses. An ‘A’ school became a ‘C’ school. Schools in south Pinellas County declined and were labeled ‘Failure Factories’ drawing national attention.

What changed? The choice movement adopted a ‘separate but equal’ philosophy undermining the integration reform from the 1970s through the 90s. Charter and private schools siphoned off the higher achieving students. Other parents who could, moved away leaving under enrolled schools with insufficient funds to support needed equity programs for children in poverty.

Florida educators and parents are fighting back. Lawsuits reflect the issues: vouchers, school funding, tax credit scholarships, invalid teacher evaluation system, local district control over school funding and charter authorization, ‘union busting’, merit pay, third grade retention, students with disabilities, state take-over of local schools, teacher certification, and a proposed separate educational system for charters.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida, Funding, School Choice

California: State Superintendent of Public Instruction Race “Too Close to Call”

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2018 //
13

I have been watching the returns in California to see what happened in the race between Tony Thurmond and Marshall Tuck. As of early this morning, Tuck had a small lead. But a notice sent from the Thurmond campaign says it is “too close to call.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Madeline Franklin
209-210-8950

HISTORIC STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION RACE TOO CLOSE TO CALL

With nearly 4 million ballots left to be counted, Assemblymember Tony Thurmond thanked his supporters and the voters of California.

California – Wednesday, November 7, 2018 – Assemblymember Tony Thurmond is thanking his supporters and the voters of California as the State Superintendent of Public Instruction election remains too close to call with an estimated 4 million ballots left to be counted. The race was the most expensive education election in American history, with total spending topping $60 million. Thurmond was outspent two-to-one.

“With millions of ballots left to come in, we are digging in and waiting for every vote to be counted,” said Thurmond. “The kids of California are in it for the long haul and we are too. I’m so proud of the broad coalition we built, and I thank the thousands of educators, students, and public education advocates who communicated directly with voters until the polls closed yesterday.”

Thurmond was supported by Senator Kamala Harris, the California Democratic Party, and California’s teachers.

“I ran for Superintendent of Public Instruction because I want to deliver to all Californians the promise that public education delivered to me – that all students, no matter their background and no matter their obstacles, can succeed with a great public education,” Thurmond vowed.

“We talked to voters across the state, and told them what this election means for each of us: It means giving every kid the opportunity to succeed in the 21st century, not just the ones that show the most potential. It means funding our public schools at the levels they deserve, not pouring money into our jails and prisons. It means providing mental health treatment for kids, not arming them with guns. It means supporting our teachers, not demonizing them. And it means stopping Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos’s anti-education agenda from coming anywhere near California’s public schools.”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, California, Charter Schools, Privatization

Peter Greene: Society Is Failing Our Children and Their Schools

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2018 //
12

Recently, a commenter on this blog wrote that he finally understood why some schools are succeeding and others are failing. He said he realized that children in affluent communities have well-resourced and successful schools, while children in impoverished communities have terrible schools. I tried for the umpteenth time to explain to him that he was reaching the wrong conclusion. The only measure he was using was test scores, which reflect family income. I suggested he consider that the schools in poor communities did not get the same resources as those in affluent communities. The schools he called “failing” very likely have dedicated teachers who are working hard despite large classes and inadequate support. The problem is not the schools, but society’s refusal to pay the cost of making every school a good school.

Peter Greene explains the point in more detail in this post about the Journey for Justice Alliance.

He begins:

“If you’re not regularly exposed to the problem, you might think that finding the ways in which non-white non-wealthy students are shortchanged would require deep and nuanced research. As it turns out, finding the ways in which education fails to serve those students requires no more careful research than finding the nose on the front of your face.

“The Journey For Justice Alliance is based in Chicago, but it’s an alliance of grassroots community, youth, and parent-led organizations in 24 cities across the country. They are working and organizing for community-driven alternatives to the privatization of and dismantling of public school systems. They’re the folks behind the #WeChoose movement (as in “we choose education equity, not the illusion of school choice.” Look at their member groups and you’ll find honest-to-goodness community grass roots organizations, not just one more astroturf group funded by Gates, Walton, et al. Their director, Jitu Brown, is one of the most powerful speakers for education and equity it has ever been my pleasure to hear.

“Last spring they issued a report– “Failing Brown v. Board”– that looks at the gap between the schools that serve primarily wealthy white families and those that serve non-wealthy families of color. Their findings are not encouraging.

“The report says: The fact is, public schools in Black and Latino communities are not “failing.” They have been failed. More accurately, these schools have been sabotaged for years by policy-makers who fail to fully fund them, by ideologues who choose to experiment with them, by “entrepreneurs” who choose to extract public taxpayer dollars from education systems for their own pockets.

“The report also rejects the notion that money doesn’t matter, or that somehow the children and their families are responsible. And they know what successful, fully-resourced schools look like

They offer a culturally relevant, engaging and challenging curriculum, smaller class sizes, more experienced teachers, wrap-around emotional and academic supports, a student-centered school climate and meaningful parent and community engagement. These are the hallmarks of what Journey for Justice calls sustainable community schools.

“J4J performed a fairly simple piece of research– looking at course offerings in various schools across twelve cities. They acknowledge that such a comparison isn’t perfect, that schools may offer courses that are never actually taught, that the course offering list doesn’t tell you about the quality of those courses. But the findings are still pretty stark.”

In every pairing of black and white schools, “majority white schools offered both more academic subjects and more “enrichment” subjects in the arts than majority Black and/or Brown schools. Majority white schools offered more foreign languages, more high-level math options, more AP courses. The range of offerings in arts, music, dance and theater was far greater in majority white schools…

“Charter fans are going to say, “See? That’s why we need to build more charters, so we can get some of those children of color out of there,” but why should those children have to sacrifice the other big benefit that majority white schools enjoy– a school in their own community that they can attend with their neighbors? And why do we need a complicated web of privatized schools to fix the problem. We know how to fix the problem, as witnessed by the fact that politicians and leaders have fixed the problem for each of the affluent majority white schools.

“It’s like you have twenty kids in a cafeteria, and ten sit down with a steak dinner and the other ten get bowls of cold oatmeal, and when someone complains about it, a bunch of folks pop up to propose some complex system by which one of the oatmeal kids will be sent out to a restaurant across town. No! Just get back out in the kitchen and use the same tools and supplies that you demonstrably already have to make steak dinners for the rest of the kids.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Inequality, Injustice, Racism

Los Angeles: UTLA Blasts Beutner Plan to Accelerate Privatization

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2018 //
7

The United Teachers of Los Angeles blasted Superintendent Austin Beutner’s “secret plan” to break up the district into “networks,” which may be part of his long-range plan to downsize and privatize the district. Beutner, a non-educator, comes from the financial sector, where large corporations are routinely broken up and sold off. The point of this strategy becomes clear when you see the “corporate reformers” that Beutner has hired.

The LA Times leaked the plan and revealed the names of the consultants that Beutner is relying on. The two major consulting firms are Kitamba and Ernst & Young. The LA Times describes them:

Kitamba partner and chief executive Rajeev Bajaj, while heading different companies, became a major consultant in 2010 and 2011 for the school-reform effort in Newark, N.J. The companies in which he was involved attracted media attention because of potential conflicts involving business ties to state and local officials.

His partner at Kitamba, Erin McGoldrick Brewster, served as chief of data and accountability for the District of Columbia Public Schools, under hard-charging former Supt. Michelle Rhee. In 2009, McGoldrick Brewster, along with Rhee, came under scrutiny for not pushing harder to investigate credible allegations of cheating at schools that showed huge gains on standardized tests.

The work of Ernst & Young and Kitamba is being paid for by the recently established Fund for Equity and Excellence, which pools philanthropic resources for local education. Donors include the Ballmer Group, the California Community Foundation, the California Endowment, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-lausd-school-networks-20181105-story.html

The UTLA said in a press release:


Austin Beutner’s secret plan to break LAUSD into ‘32 networks’, as leaked to the LA Times, is a reflection of Beutner’s short tenure as superintendent. Just as he continues to hide from public scrutiny, this plan was developed with no transparency and without the authentic involvement of parents and educators.

‘Decentralization’ is a common refrain in so-called portfolio districts — like New Orleans, Newark and Detroit —cities that are riddled with a patchwork of privatization schemes that do not improve student outcomes. They do, however, degrade the teaching profession and create chaos for parents and students trying to navigate the system. In New Orleans, there are no public schools left. In Detroit, a sea of charters has decimated democratically-run public schools.

In a competition-based portfolio model, clusters of schools compete against each other for resources and support, creating a system of haves and have nots and exacerbating segregation and equity issues. Rating systems are installed to justify closing “low-performing” neighborhood schools.

Beutner is working closely with the charter lobby–backed School Board members (the same ones who pushed through Beutner’s secretive hiring) while he is shutting out the voice of other elected board members who represent tens of thousands of voters.

“Austin Beutner should be figuring out how he spends the record-breaking $1.86 billion in reserves on urgent student needs, instead of spending time with high-priced, unaccountable consultants plotting the downsizing of a district that serves all students,” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl.

The people working on this secretive plan for a portfolio district are being paid off the books through a more than $3 million discretionary fund financed by known privatizer Eli Broad and others. They are exercising power at the highest levels in LAUSD, without any accountability or scrutiny by the public. Beutner is surrounding himself with the same architects of the privatization schemes in Detroit, New Orleans and Newark:

ThirdWay Solutions founder Cami Anderson was superintendent in Newark, New Jersey, from 2011 to 2015. Her billionaire-bankrolled “One Newark” universal enrollment scheme led to numerous neighborhood school closures, mass firings, and multiple complaints of civil rights violations. Parent outrage led to her resignation.
Erin McGoldrick Brewster is a partner at “portfolio district” specialists Kitamba. She helped then-Washington, DC, schools chancellor Michelle Rhee stonewall an investigation into higher-than-typical erasure rates on multiple-choice standardized tests during Rhee’s controversial test score-linked merit pay program.

Last week, Rebecca Kockler stepped down as Beutner’s Chief of Staff. She previously oversaw the massive charterization of New Orleans public schools.
Getting rid of central oversight and accountability would allow the unchecked spread of the worst of the charter sector abuses: not serving all students, financial scandals, misuse of public funds, and conflict-of-interest charges.

“There is no evidence that Beutner’s network approach would save any money—in fact, it likely would cost millions of dollars more as each network builds its own bureaucracy with redundant jobs and duplicative services,” Caputo-Pearl said. “Once this plan is enacted and the protections for our students are compromised, it will be open season for the privatization industry.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Newark, Privatization

My Message to the Teachers of Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2018 //
6

The United Teachers of Los Angeles have voted to authorize a strike. The union has been negotiating with Superintendent Austin Beutner, a former investment banker who has no experience in education.

I sent the following message to the teachers of Los Angeles.

I am writing to my friends who teach in the Los Angeles Unified School District to encourage you to stay strong in your demands for smaller classes and the resources your students need.

Your working conditions are your students’ learning conditions.

You should not be expected to pay out $1,000 or more from your salary for school supplies.

I am astonished that one of the cities with the greatest concentration of wealth in the world is unwilling to pay what it costs to educate its children.

John Dewey wrote more than a century ago: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his children, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

The billionaires who have declared war on public education and who are funding the California Charter School Association would not tolerate overcrowded classrooms, obsolete textbooks, and crumbling buildings in the schools their children attend. They should not tolerate such conditions in the public schools of Los Angeles that other people’s children attend, people without their wealth.

They want the best for their children, and they should demand the best for all children, and pay for it.

Please fight against “school choice,” an idea that was first launched by segregationists in the South to block the Brown decision in the late 1950s. It is now the favorite cause of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who wants to replace our nation’s democratically-controlled public schools with a menu of “choices,” none of which are as good as public schools.

In California, as elsewhere, charter advocates oppose accountability and transparency. Furthermore, charters have been characterized by scandals and fraudulent financial practices, a result of their lack of oversight and accountability.

Charter schools should be subject to the same laws, rules, and regulations as public schools if they want to give themselves the name of “public schools.”

Your superintendent Austin Beutner came to the job thanks to a takeover bankrolled by the charter lobby. He has never been an educator, and you will have to help him understand the importance of teacher professionalism, of reducing class sizes, and of public education in a democratic society. He just doesn’t get it.

Public schools are, have been, and will continue to be the foundation stone of our democratic society. If we lose it, we put our democracy at risk.

Fight for your students. Fight for public education. Fight for the teaching profession. Fight for a better future for the children and for our society.

Your friends across the nation are watching and will cheer you on!

Diane Ravitch

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Class size, Los Angeles, Resistance, Teachers, Unions

Fred Klonsky: Charter Teachers in Chicago Are Organizing, So Are Charter Students

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2018 //
20

Fred Klonsky has reported on the vote to organize a union by teachers in one of Chicago’s big corporate charter chains.

He reports here that charter students too are asserting their right to be treated with dignity. The students in the Noble Network, Chicago’s most politically connected corporate charter chain, are pushing back against abusive “no e causes” policies. The schools in this chain are named for the billionaires who fund charters, including billionaire Governor Bruce Rainer and Hyatt Hotels billionaire Penny Pritzker, who was Obama’s Secretary of Commerce. High school students can’t be bullied the way young children can. Even if they have been taught for years to be compliant, they can’t help but ask questions. My partner, who was a high school principal, always says she loves adolescents because they have an innate sense of justice.

The students expressed their demands:


We, the students, parents, families, staff, and community members of the Noble Network of charter schools demand that CEO and Superintendent Michael Milkie and the Noble Board of Directors meet the following three demands all across the Noble Network of Charter Schools.

1) Petition to Abolish the Bathroom Escort Rule

We, the undersigned, hereby demand the abolishment of the bathroom escort rule.

The student body agrees that the bathroom escort rule is unnecessary and comes with many pushbacks. We believe that:
Bathroom escorts fail to show up when requested, leaving students waiting for extended periods of time, from five minutes to not showing up at all. This can lead to infections and other health problems. It is dehumanizing to require students aged 15-18 to have an escort to the bathroom.

Female students are left to bleed through their pants. In numerous instances, female students have been left to soil themselves due to the escort rule. In addition, Noble Schools restrictive policy requires teachers to adhere to a rule instead of listening and responding to students needs. The bathroom escort rule is extremely embarrassing and unnecessary.

2) Petition to reduce homework and reform the conditions under which a lasalle can be received

Lasalles are often issued for small mistakes and it is unfair to make students stay after school and take away from their personal time for minor mistakes.

It is unreasonable to issue Lasalles simply because a student forgot to write their name or have turned in an assignment written in pen rather than in pencil. Thus, Lasalle should only be given if the work itself has not been turned in rather than for other unreasonable circumstances.

The amount of homework given on certain days leaves students with no choice but to stay up all night in order to avoid receiving a lasalle.

Teens need about 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night to function best, and students are barely receiving half of that. Without enough sleep, students are more likely to fall asleep in class and lose focus.

Some students have after-school activities such as jobs, clubs, tutoring, etc. Thus, students are forced to stay up even later due to the burden of homework. Students then have no choice but to turn in work of low quality and end up doing the homework to get it done rather than to actually learn from it, rendering it useless.

After going several nights without receiving enough sleep, many students are showing early symptoms of sleep deprivation. This results in demerits being issued for falling asleep in class, and it is something students simply cannot control.

A Stanford study showed that 56% of students report homework as their number one stressor. This seems like unnecessary stress and does nothing to create an enviroment for knowledge seeking. The purpose of schooling is to foster a lifelong pursuit of learning and knowledge.

3) Petition to have more Freedom of Expression with less restrictions

Noble students lose their self-identity at the doors of Noble charter schools. Freedom of expression is heavily restricted and there is no opportunity for students to express themselves and distinguish themselves from the crowd.
Since “there is no funding for more art classes during school time,” we demand more funding for afterschool programs such as art, music, photography, poetry/writing.

Allow tattoos to be visible

Allow ribbons and pins to be worn

Allow hair to be dyed any color

Give student council/government more power to influence the school and its culture

Congratulations to the high school students who want freedom of expression. Break those chains that bind you!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Discipline, Education Industry, Privatization

California: Is Marshall Tuck a Republican?

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2018 //
8

The race for State Superintendent of Instruction in California is the most expensive in history for a top state education
job. California-based Capital & Main predicts the spending will top $50 million, with Marshall Tuck outspending Tony Thurmond by 2-1.

All the usual billionaires have clustered behind Tuck—the Waltons, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings, etc.

The Republican Party has embraced Tuck. Its gubernatorial candidate John H. Cox endorsed Tuck on Saturday on Twitter.

But that’s not all.

Wealthy Charter Backers Flood California Schools Chief Race With Cash

The billionaires want this job, and they want it bad. Tuck is their man. He is also the Republican party’s man.

Capitol & Main writes:

One problem with having the Walmart Waltons foot a candidate’s bills is the presumptive link to the far-right agenda of Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos. Carrie Walton Penner’s support for DeVos included a board seat on her pet pro-voucher organization, Alliance for School Choice. Tuck’s moneyed backers are also betting big on neoliberal neophyte Buffy Wicks (and against progressive firebrand Jovanka Beckles) to fill Thurmond’s Assembly District 15 seat. If successful, Wicks could help dilute any legislative fixes of charters before they reach the desk of Gavin Newsom, the gubernatorial bête noir of the California Charter School Association.

One advantage to having Walmart-sized buying power is traction. In mid-October, EdVoice’s $8.55 million “thermonuclear” media response to a $3 million pro-Thurmond ad buy had Tuck squeaking ahead in the polls by October 24.

That lead widened in last Wednesday’s University of California, Berkeley IGS Poll, with Tuck polling 48 percent to Thurmond’s 36 (although a self-survey on iSideWith.com has Thurmond at 46 and Tuck at 34). The poll noted that 64 percent of Republicans favored Tuck, compared to 14 percent for Thurmond.

Tuck’s appeal to the right is no accident. Last week, members of California’s congressional delegation called on Tuck to disavow the $233,000 EdVoice has spent to plaster his face on Republican slate mailers around the state. During the primary, Tuck appeared on reelection mailers for key Trump allies Devin Nunes (R-CA 22) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA 23). This time out, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA 13) complained, he’s effectively helping Republicans in districts key to Democratic hopes to flip Congress in Tuesday’s hoped-for blue wave. They include the 25th District, where 31-year-old Katie Hill appears poised to knock out Republican Steve Knight, and the 45th District, where UC Irvine law professor Katie Porter hopes to retire Orange County Trump loyalist Mimi Walters. And on Saturday, Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox tweeted his endorsement of Tuck, alongside that of Republican EdVoice cofounder Steve Poizner for state insurance commissioner.

Tuck is also taking heat for EdVoice attack ads tarring Thurmond with racially tinged falsehoods. On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California objected to its name being used on a Tuck slate mailer that doubled down on debunked claims in an EdVoice TV spot that the Obama White House “reprimanded” Thurmond over mishandling of Title IX claims when he was a school board member. That ad earned Tuck an angry censure by state Democratic Party Women’s Caucus Chair Christine Pelosi and Southern Chair Carolyn Fowler, along with NAACP Hawaii president Alice Huffman, over the ad’s alleged use of racist “dog whistles” and for “being willing to weaponize children’s trauma.”

The record-shattering spending on Tuck ultimately mirrors the threat level that a Sacramento without Jerry Brown represents to EdVoice executive director Bill Lucia. With Gavin Newsom ahead of his Republican opponent, John Cox, by 18 points in Wednesday’s poll, Newsom’s pledges for greater accountability and a moratorium on further expansion in charter-heavy districts are the stuff that keeps California school privatizers turning in their sleep. Of the supe candidates, Tuck alone has flatly rejected a “pause” in favor of limited financial help to those districts for orderly downsizing through school closures and mass teacher layoffs. For the laissez-faire ed-reform faithful, “disruption” is proof that deregulated markets and robust competition are working.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Burris and Ravitch: Yes, It Matters Who Governs Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2018 //
16

During this past two decades of “reform,” there has been a concerted effort to minimize or eliminate democratic control of public schools. Egged on by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, states and districts initiated state takeovers of entire school districts, which typically failed, and mayoral control, which substituted the singular judgment of the mayor for elected school boards. John Chubb and Terry Moe wrote a book in 1990, “Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools,” in which they argued that school choice was a panacea, and that democracy was the most essential obstacle to achieving that nirvana.

In this article, posted at Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet,” Carol Burris and I argue that governance matters, and that democratic governance is a fundamental tenet of public education.

We have learned from the repeated errors of state takeovers and mayoral control, as well as charter school failures and voucher scams, that democratic accountability is essential to public education. The schools belong to the public, and they must not be handed off to grifters, celebrities, religious groups, or corporate charter chains.

Governance matters.

This is our article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/11/04/why-it-matters-who-governs-americas-public-schools/

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers
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