Mitchell Robinson of Michigan State University has been debating charter advocates lately. Given the abundant evidence of charter failure in Michigan, they have a lot to defend, but their chief debating point is: Well, what would you do?
Archives for category: Charter Schools
When Leslie Stahl interviewed Betsy DeVos about her home state of Michigan, DeVos changed the subject to Florida.
Michigan’s scores on NAEP have been plummeting for the past decade, since DeVos and her money took charge of education.
The charter sector is not held accountable and it is not transparent.
New York made an accounting error that cost public schools $12 Million, while overpaying charter schools by that amount.
“The $12 million misallocation is about 7.8 percent of the $153 million the state distributed to its Local Educational Agencies in 2017-18 for Title IIA, which supports professional development initiatives such as teacher training, recruitment and retention.
“The state distributed additional funds to 275 charter schools and three school districts, and underallocated funds to 677 school districts and 10 Special Act schools. The majority of those school districts will be repaid the gap from last year, in addition to their correct allocations for the 2018-19 school year.
“But because the underfunding at the larger districts of Buffalo ($382,610), Rochester ($317,452), East Ramapo ($208,311) and Syracuse ($168,317) exceeded amounts of $130,728, their reallocations will be spread out over a two-year period. New York City’s repayment of $7,085,650 will be made up over a four-year period.
“The charter schools and three districts will not be forced to repay the extra money they received last year, Elia said but will will see reductions in their Title IIA funding over the course of up to five years to make up the funds.”
Some charter schools were paid thre-to-four Times the amount actually due. Here is the spreadsheet, showing the correct allocations compared to what was paid to the charters.
Achievement First Crown Heights, for example, was due $60,000, but paid $200,000.
The Harlem Hebrew Language Academy was owed $16,000 but paid $51,000.
The Success Academy (Upper West Side) was owed $31,000, but received $116,000.
A nice reward for the charters. A loss for public schools. Someone should hire an auditor to check previous years’ allocations.
Remember that Arne Duncan said that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans” because it made it possible to wipe out public schools, fire all the teachers, eliminate the union, and replace them all with charter school?
Well, the Secretary of Education Julia Kelleher in Puerto Rico is grateful for the opportunity that Hurricane Maria has given her to do the same to the public schools there.
Forget the deaths of at least 4,000 people. Think of charter schools and vouchers!
Here she is in an interview.
She’s in the middle of closing 264 schools and working with Betsy Devos on vouchers.
Video of her here: https://twitter.com/GoHedgeClippers/status/1024336534965825536
Full text from full video: https://www.facebook.com/David-Begnaud-108679513654/
David Begnaud 24:07
And I’ll preface the question with this. When I first met Miss Keleher, her at the convention center we were sitting off in a cornerdidn’t actually know who she was, until about 10 minutes before I found out and I thought, Oh, well, she’d be a good person to talk to how are the schools to doing and this was in like, the first few days after the storm. And we sat down and you said to me, I’ll never forget “hurricane Maria Maybe the best thing that’s happened to this island” Do you still feel that way
Julia Keleher 24:37
I think the fact that I have $500 million to improve the quality of a kids academic experience and learning environment, I think that I have four times as much money as I would have to be able to fix the physical plant in which they go to school plus, plus the option to access more, I think that’s a tremendous opportunity that no one wanted the storm, but I’m I’m not going to miss spend, pardon the pun, the the opportunity that I have to, to to redirect these things that would have never been available to Puerto Rico, I would have been short $300 million, I wouldn’t be able to do the things that we’re going to be able to do for teachers and for kids.
Jan Resseger reviews the AFT report on “A Decade of Neglect,“ a decade in which states cut funding for public schools and diverted the shrinking pie to charters and vouchers. This state-by-state attack on public schools is the match that ignited the teachers’ strikes and may ignite even more in the future. Teachers will be silent no more. They will vote in massive numbers in November for those who support public schools. Many teachers are running for state legislative offices. Good luck to them!
The new report from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), A Decade of Neglect, is one of the most lucid explanations I’ve read about the deplorable fiscal conditions for public schools across the states. It explains the precipitous drop in school funding caused by the Great Recession, temporarily ameliorated in 2009 by an infusion of funds from the federal stimulus (a financial boost that disappeared after a couple of years), compounded by tax cutting and austerity budgeting across many states, and further compounded by schemes to drain education dollars to privatized charter and voucher programs all out of the same budget.
The report delineates the conditions tangled together over the decade: “While some states are better off than most, in states where spending on education was less in 2016 than it was before the recession, our public schools remain nearly $19 billion short of the annual funding they received in 2008, after adjusting for changes in the consumer price index… The recession ran from December 2007 through June 2009 and prompted a crisis setting off a chain of actions that resulted in significant budget cutting by our state governments. When the recession hit, it devastated state budgets. Job losses, lower wages, the crash in housing prices and the panic in the financial markets all worked to lower state tax revenues, while the demand for government services in the form of unemployment benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and housing and Medicaid assistance drove up expenditures. The Brookings Institution estimated that by the second quarter of 2009, income tax collections were 27 percent below their prior-year levels, and total state taxes were 17 percent lower… The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual report of education indicators recently found that U.S. spending on elementary and high school education declined more than 4 percent from 2010-2014…. Over this same period, education spending on average, rose 5 percent per student across the 35 countries in the OECD.”
Many states also adopted an ideology promising that tax cuts would bring the economy back. Sam Brownback’s Kansas experiment in supply side economics, however, exemplifies the failure to confirm these hopes. In Kansas the economy didn’t improve and state revenues collapsed. Only in the past two years has the legislature there raised taxes—beginning an effort to undo the damage. Overall, according to AFT’s report: “In 2016, 25 states were still providing less funding for K-12 schools than before the recession, after adjusting for inflation… Eighteen of the 25 states that provided less funding for k-12 education reduced their tax effort between 2008 and 2015.” The eight states that cut taxes most deeply were: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Virginia. And, “In 38 states, the average teacher salary in 2018 is lower than it was in 2009 in real terms… According to the Economic Policy Institute, teacher pay fell by $30 per week from 1996-2015, while pay for other college graduates increased by $124. The gap between teachers and other college graduates has continued to widen and deep cuts in school funding leave states unable to invest in their state’s teacher workforce… In 35 states, between 2008 and 2016, the ratio of students to teachers grew.”
Here is an example of the result: “(W)hile some states are doing better than others, no state is really doing well enough. California is a leader on many of the measures used in this report. But there are less than one tenth the number of school librarians as is recommended. Most school districts don’t have a nurse and there are only about a quarter of the recommended number of school counselors.”
Here is the voice of a genuine progressive.
Kelda Roys is running for the Democratic nomination for Governor so she can run against Scott Walker.
The primary is August 14.
She released this letter to teachers.
She really gets it. She speaks to the hearts and minds of all who have suffered the insufferable Walker, who has walked all over teachers, students, and public schools. He has bulldozed the Wisconsin Idea.
Wisconsin needs Kelda Roys.
She writes:
This is a message of hope. A promise to you of what kind of governor I will be, and a heartfelt statement to demonstrate that I hear what you’ve been saying and empathize with what you’ve been experiencing.
Throughout the past eight years, you, your pocketbook, and your profession have been under attack.
You are constantly asked to “do more with less” as a result of the historic budget cuts to your classrooms. Without proper funding, the schools you work in, especially in rural communities, continue to close. You are often forced to “‘teach for the test” as opposed to engaging young minds in the joy of learning and helping develop students’ whole selves. Your class sizes are going up, but your professional autonomy is being ratcheted down.
As a result of Act 10, your collective bargaining rights were eliminated, compensation reduced, and work devalued. Your median salaries have continued to fall: as of the 2015-26 school year, your average pay was more than $10,000 lower than it was before the passage of Act 10. The policies of the Walker administration have done serious harm to Wisconsin’s once-great public education system. A record number of your colleagues have left the profession altogether.
In the numbers-driven, high-stakes testing approach that many school districts are taking, your autonomy is lost. This is bad for you and even worse for students. In the ever-expanding push for “accountability,” teachers are too often punished — never administrators, or politicians who fail to remedy the social and economic injustice that follows students into the classroom. Rather than addressing the teacher retention and pipeline problem by increasing pay and restoring joy to the profession, Walker and the DPI are undermining teacher qualifications by enabling fast-track “alternative” licensing for people without teaching degrees. And the expansion of privatization, from the voucher programs to so-called “independent” charters, steals resources away from our public schools and the kids you serve. It’s no wonder so many teachers feel demoralized and are leaving — your ability to practice the profession you love and teach your students is constantly questioned, challenged, and denied by the very people who should be supporting you.
Despite all this, I am asking you to not to leave.
As a small-business owner, as a mother, and as a proud graduate of Wisconsin’s public schools, I know how critical you are to our state and our future. To attract and retain the best teachers, Wisconsin must become a better state in which to be a teacher — we must invest in public schools and educators.
As governor, I pledge I will do everything in my power to restore the funding our schools deserve, the rights, wages, and benefits you lost, and the autonomy and respect you deserve.
For Immediate Release
August 1, 2018
Contact:
Duc Luu, Communications Manager, Public Advocates, 857-373-9118; dluu@publicadvocates.org
Rigel Spencer Massaro, Senior Staff Attorney, Public Advocates, 707-761-5672, rmassaro@publicadvocates.org
New Report Uncovers Systemic Failure by California Charter Schools
to Meet Local Control Obligations
SAN FRANCISCO—A new report by Public Advocates Inc. uncovers a massive failure on the part of California charter schools to be transparent about how they spend millions of taxpayer dollars to benefit high need students, as required by state law. The report also reveals disturbing trends about the availability of public documents and the ability of parents to exercise their legal rights to participate in charter school spending decisions as promised by California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) law. The report, which is the first systematic analysis of charter school Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs) found critical financial and engagement information missing, unavailable, or incomplete at a shocking number of charter schools.
For example, not a single school analyzed for this report properly documented how it was increasing or improving services for high need students, services for which those charter schools received $48.6 million this past year. Even more concerning, two-thirds of that amount was completely unaccounted for. Statewide, charters receive over $900 million annually to increase or improve services for high need students.
“Charter schools are part of California’s public education system. They receive $3.4 billion in public dollars every year and they need to be held accountable for how they spend those funds, just like every other school,” said Senior Staff Attorney Rigel Spencer Massaro.
Public Advocates looked for LCAPs at 70 schools and systematically examined 43 schools in Oakland, Sacramento, Richmond, Los Angeles, and San Jose which had published LCAPs for the 2017-2018 school year. The report found that:
One-third of all charter schools examined had no LCAP online. These public documents were still missing after email requests to the school, its authorizer, and the County Office of Education
More than two-thirds of the state funds generated by high need students—over $30 million—were unaccounted for; of the $48.6 million these schools received specifically for high need students in 2017-2018, there was only documentation for $15.8 million in planned spending
Only 21% clearly measured how they engaged parents in school decision-making, and only 37% described how community engagement impacted their planning process
91% of charter schools examined serving 15% or more English learners did not post their LCAPs in a language other than English
Of the 12 Charter Management Organizations examined in the report and that manage 123 charter schools in multiple cities, 100% adopt LCAPs at a single meeting in a single location, with minimal public comment
Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, commented, “Public Advocates’ newly released report, Keeping the Promise of LCFF in Charter Schools, raises concerns about transparency and accountability in charter schools. The fact that Public Advocates could not get copies of some charter schools’ LCAPs despite multiple requests is beyond troubling. Parents and local communities cannot ensure that student achievement and needs are addressed if the LCAPs are not easily available. The State Legislature should close a loophole requiring traditional public schools, but not charter schools, to post LCAPs on a school’s website.”
Community engagement and transparency are pillars of California’s groundbreaking Local Control Funding Formula law and every parent has a right to know and participate in how their school is spending money.
Abadesa Rolon, a charter school parent in Richmond commented, “We need our charter schools to complete their LCAPs so parents can understand the goals, actions, progress and funding that support student success. I understand how my school is spending S&C funds, but that’s because I’ve asked a lot of questions. Other parents don’t know, because this information isn’t in our school’s LCAP.”
The report calls for expert oversight and improved support over charter school LCAPs, especially when it comes to transparency for funds designated to improve services for high need students. The report also recommends legislation that would hold charter schools to similar standards of transparency and engagement as public schools.
Click here for a copy of the report
Click here for a list of the charter schools examined for this report
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Chalkbeat reporter Matt Barnum reports the formation of a new group to push additional charters and the “portfolio model” in cities.
The City Fund is funded largely by the rightwing John and Laura Arnold Foundation; Arnold is the former Enron trader who bailed out before the collapse of Enron.
The group was announced Tuesday morning on the blog of Neerav Kingsland, who leads education giving at The Laura and John Arnold Foundation. According to a separate presentation created by the group and viewed by Chalkbeat, the Arnold Foundation and the Hastings Fund have already given the group over $200 million. It’s unclear if the organization has raised additional funds.
Although the group is likely to start in a small number of cities, that presentation also made its ambitions clear: it aspires to eventually be in “every city in America.”
Others involved include Chris Barbic of the Arnold Foundation; Kevin Huffman, the former Tennessee education chief; David Harris, who previously led the Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based group; and Ethan Gray, the president of the nonprofit Education Cities.
Kingsland previously ran New Schools for New Orleans, which kept the money flowing to the Recovery School District in New Orleans, where 40% of the charters are rated D or F and almost completely segregated (black).
Barbic was in charge of the failed Achievement School District in Tennessee, and Kevin Huffman (Michelle Rhee’s ex-husband) was the Commissioner of Education in Tennessee who hired Barbic. Harris is the pseudo-Democrat who is responsible for a swath of destruction in the Indianapolis School District.
What is the “portfolio” model? It is a concept that urges districts to treat their schools like a stock portfolio. Sell the losers, keep the winners.
Has it worked?
Bonafide Reformer Jay P. Greene of the University of Arkansas has written several posts arguing that the portfolio model is a failure and that it is no different from a school district (although it is privately controlled). Read here. and here. The latter post is advice written to the Arnold Foundation about why it should not invest in the portfolio model. Sad. They didn’t listen.
Arne Duncan was very proud of Tennessee, which was one of the first states to win Race to the Top funding. $100 million of its $500 million prize was devoted to creating an all-charter Achievement School District, made up of the state’s lowest scoring schools. The leader of ASD, Chris Barbic (ex-TFA) promised that these schools would be catapulted to the top 20% in the state within five years. Barbic bailed after four years. None of the ASD schools improved.
A series of leaders replaced Barbic.
Now we know: ASD made no progress.
Test scores in the ASD high school are a disaster.
“This year’s batch of scores, which were released early in July, revealed that test scores for state-run schools remain far below the statewide average and dropped in high school. School-level data is not yet available.
“Education Commissioner Candice McQueen called the new state test data for the turnaround district “sobering…”
“The Achievement School District — now made up of 30 schools, mostly in Memphis — was launched to transform the state’s bottom 5 percent of schools by converting them to charter schools.
“In English II, only 4 percent of high schoolers were on or exceeding grade-level, down from 9.8 percent last year. Three years ago, 10.2 percent of students were on grade level.
“In geometry, the drop was smaller, with 0.9 percent of high schoolers on or exceeding grade level, compared to 1.3 percent last year. The percentage of students on grade level has hovered around 1 percent in geometry for the last three years.”
Nevada and North Carolina rushed to create their own ASDs, modeled on Tennessee.
Way to go, Reformers!
I hope the new National Center on Research on School Choice at Tulane studies the ASD, which was modeled on New Orleans’ Recovery School District.
Douglas Harris of the Education Research Alliance at Tulane University responds here to critics of the 2015 study of New Orleans in which he was the lead researcher. Its findings were the same as his 2018 study.
He summarizes and links to the divergent views about the New Orleans’ adoption of market-driven reforms.
The school system before Katrina was corrupt and dysfunctional. After the hurricane in 2005, the state stepped in to turn most schools into privately managed charters.
He writes:
“In a study I conducted with Matthew Larsen, we found that the city’s test scores rose dramatically because of the post-Katrina reforms. Even the most pessimistic estimates suggest that the reforms significantly increased scores (and probably high school graduation rates and college entry) and more than alternative policies and programs would have. These achievement gains also occurred across the board. In this respect, low-income students were not hurt. They benefited academically.
“That being said, some of the rhetoric of reform supporters has gone overboard. There are some real issues and questions, just not the ones that these critics have set their sights on.
“For example, though disadvantaged students benefited, they seem to have benefited less than other groups. Early on, as this entirely new type of system was being put in place, there were real horror stories about how special education students and others were suspended and expelled at high rates. Under pressure from community groups, state and local leaders took several steps to address the problem, yet it remains unclear whether the problems are solved.
“Critics are concerned that schools under the reforms are too focused on test scores. This is a national concern as well, but the intensity of test-based accountability in New Orleans is even stronger and may reduce focus on other important educational goals like creativity and local cultural knowledge. In the coming years, we’ll get a better sense of the real results by looking at college and beyond.
“One potential weakness of a system of autonomous schools like the New Orleans model is that disadvantaged students can more easily fall between the cracks. With neighborhood attendance zones, a specific school is responsible for each student. With school choice, tens of thousands of students are in the hands of one or two district staff people. And there are signs that high school dropouts are being under-reported.
“Finally, whatever lessons we might draw from New Orleans may be exclusive to New Orleans. Our student outcomes had nowhere to go but up. New Orleans also saw a massive influx of federal and philanthropic funding and skilled people from across the country that other cities are unlikely to experience. Other districts should look to New Orleans, but tread carefully.“
If only the professional Reformers heeded Harris’ words of caution. You can be sure they will use his New Orleans study to tout the advantages of privatization.
For example, David Leonhardt did not write two columns in the New York Times to report the findings and cautions that Harris here reports, but to tout the wonders of charters.
Now that Harris has won $10 million from the DeVos’ Department of Education to establish a National Center for Research on School Choice, perhaps he can help shine a light on how School Choice has worked in Detroit and Milwaukee. Perhaps he can persuade the professional Reformers that the neediest kids are the ones least likely to benefit and most likely, as he put it, to “fall between the cracks.” Then, they might drop their false narrative about “saving poor kids from failing schools.” But that may be too much to hope for.
Diane Ravitch's blog 