Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Delaware: Teachers at Charter School of Wilmington Are Joining the Union

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2018 //
21

This is going to make the Waltons very unhappy. They have spent $200 Million a year funding new charters with the expectation that they would never be unionized. They want public schools to be like Walmart’s: low wage and non-union, with lots of part-time workers.

Sorry, Waltons!

The teachers at the Charter School of Wilmington have voted to unionize.

“Charter School of Wilmington teachers made a huge vote. They became the only current charter school in Delaware to join the Delaware State Education Association. As such, they will be a part of the National Education Association as well. This opens the door for other charter schools to unionize in the future. Often, when one domino falls…”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

California: 5 Billionaires Trying to Elect a Charter-Friendly Governor and State Ed. Superintendent

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2018 //
11

Imagine this absurd scenario: Five billionaires are pouring huge sums of money into the races for Governor of California and State Superintendent of Instruction. What is their main goal? More charter schools. More and more.

Crazy but true

You would think the main goal of campaign funding would be the economy, or water, or health care,the environment. No, it is charter schools.

Open the link to see who they are.

And be sure to read the comments. One from Lisa Alva could be a post by itself.

It speaks volume about the ultimate goal of the privatizers.

Lisa Alva writes:

Based on my experience, I believe that the goal of this consortium is on-line learning for most California students, supported by expensive software and more expensive hardware that replaces unionized teachers where possible.

I was on the Board of Directors for Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools; I was in every meeting of this entity and heard their claims and concerns first-hand, I saw their methods in the planning and implementation phases, I heard their rationales and values. I saw and heard that data and results were the focus that kept money and participation among donors at an acceptable level. I did not ever, ever hear or see efforts to gather information from classroom-level staff; aside from image-building listening sessions, teacher experience was largely unimportant in making decisions or plans.

I worked at a PLAS high school from the inception of PLAS as a teacher and a coordinator. I saw that the so-called “graduation rate” of “80%” that Tuck and Tony V. are claiming was completely gamed using on-line “learning” in credit-recovery classes.

Nothing different was taking place in classrooms.

No students were held accountable for anything.

Students freely web-surfed, copied and pasted their way to diplomas despite the supervising teachers’ best efforts to enforce real learning. Teachers eventually revolted, resulting in tighter standards for enrollment in credit recovery classes, which diminished the “amazing results” significantly.

I saw very expensive executives burn through a revolving door of management, first in the pursuit of immediate impact, and then in pursuit of other employment. Two top executives responsible for the dramatic increase in graduation statistics lasted less than a year in the PLAS; they, like many other PLAS people, now work in San Diego or in private education-related enterprise.

The Tuck-Villaraigosa effort has nothing to do with creating whole, self-actualizing citizens who can handle the challenges of a 21st century workplace and lead happy, fulfilled lives. With John Deasy back in California and Eli Broad’s plan for charterizing California schools in full swing, the automization of public education seems to be a foregone conclusion.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Mississippi: What Happens When a State Refuses to Fund Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2018 //
13

Mississippi is usually ranked #49 or 50 or 51 on any measure of poverty or funding for schools. Of course, its students have low scores because standardized tests accurately measure family income.

A state that refuses to fund its schools will have high poverty, a poorly educated citizenry and workforce, and a stagnant economy.

In 2015, educators and parents tried to pass a state referendum to force the Legislature to spend more, but a coalition of very wealthy people from inside and outside the state swamped the voters with propaganda and defeated the referendum. The Koch brothers debated a quarter million dollars (pocket change for them) to ensure that poor black and white children in Mississippi did not get enough funding to offer a decent education.

I recently posted Jeff Bryant’s Report on the pending state takeover of the public schools in Jackson, Mississippi. First, they underfund the schools, then they declare they are failing. And officials who can’t provide a decent education anywhere in the state plan to impose their will on the children of Jackson. You can be sure that their solution is charter schools, not more funding.

A teacher in Jackson wrote this comment after she read Jeff’s article.


Diane, you and I have corresponded several times over the years about the conditions in my school in Jackson. I regret to inform you that the conditions of the physical plant are now beyond words. When I was moved from a classroom with carpet that hadn’t been cleaned in years, a room where I fought respiratory and skin ailments for years, I found my new room infected with black mold. It took a few weeks and a trip to the doctor, but I got that mitigated to the point where I can deal with it.

Then over the Christmas holidays, the city of Jackson suffered a cold snap that destroyed the city water system. Jackson Public Schools had to close for a week due to the water crisis. When we resumed classes, our building’s pipes, I believe had also frozen, leading to a re-occurrence of a sewer line break that has literally rendered the main hall and its classrooms a s—hole. About fifteen years ago, the same situation had occurred when I was also on the main hall. Eventually the district dealt with the situation by going under the building to dig out the contaminated soil and re-plumbing the pipes.

I’ve told everyone who will listen, but the situation only got worse until they finally closed the restroom when the new poop was coming from. Even so, there is always a lingering odor of raw sewage which becomes unbearable after a rain and when the temperature warms up. When I was checking out of my room this week, the stench gagged me, and I swelled up with tears because the whole situation is just so surreal.

The facilities manager was in the building and I told him that I had been trying to decide whose office I needed to visit with a box of poop to put on the desk and ask “How would you like to smell this all day every day?” I told him that it would be his office. He assured me that they will address it this summer.

I also told this story to the principal who related that there is the intent to go back under the building, dig the dirt out again, and once more re-plumb the pipes. If it is effective, then it should hold out long enough to get me through to retirement.

Jackson Public Schools announced this week that they will issue a bond to put money into repairing aging buildings. Our building is one of the oldest in the city, with the distinctions of once having been the only high school in the state for African Americans. We’ll see if our building’s problems will be adequately addressed.

It is absolutely true that the power brokers in this state don’t want to pay for African American children to be educated. When Jackson Public Schools mainly educated the children of the power brokers, the schools were just fine. Now that those children are educated in the private and suburban schools, we see those schools excelling. Meanwhile, the students left in tax-poor JPS are languishing in second-world conditions.

My experience leads me to advocate for a new school funding mechanism that does not put schools at the mercy or benefit of their local tax base. Our country is clearly OK with relegating a third of our children to poverty and its consequences or we would have already done something about it.

(Thank you for letting me rant.)

Lorraine

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Koch Brothers, Mississippi, Poverty, Privatization, Racism

Los Angeles Teachers Rally to Save Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2018 //
10

This is a very effective short video of a UTLA rally for resources and respect. Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of UTLA, warns that we must save public education from the proliferation of privately managed charters—or lose it within the next five years.

Categories California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

An Empire of Death That Made the Sackler Family Billionaires

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2018 //
25

Purdue Pharmaceuticals manufactures Oxycontin. Oxycontin is the most widely used opioid. Opioid abuse has caused at least 200,000 deaths.

The New York Times reports that an internal Justice Department investigation determined that Purdue was warned about the highly addictive nature of its prize product but did not change its marketing and promotion of Oxycontin.

According to Forbes, the Sacklers are now worth $14 Billion. Aside from endowing museums and universities, the Sacklers are major supporters of charter schools. Jonathan Sackler founded ConnCAN in Connecticut and 50CAN to spread the charter school gospel.

Purdue Pharma, the company that planted the seeds of the opioid epidemic through its aggressive marketing of OxyContin, has long claimed it was unaware of the powerful opioid painkiller’s growing abuse until years after it went on the market.

But a copy of a confidential Justice Department report shows that federal prosecutors investigating the company found that Purdue Pharma knew about “significant” abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug’s introduction in 1996 and concealed that information.

Company officials had received reports that the pills were being crushed and snorted; stolen from pharmacies; and that some doctors were being charged with selling prescriptions, according to dozens of previously undisclosed documents that offer a detailed look inside Purdue Pharma. But the drug maker continued “in the face of this knowledge” to market OxyContin as less prone to abuse and addiction than other prescription opioids, prosecutors wrote in 2006.

Based on their findings after a four-year investigation, the prosecutors recommended that three top Purdue Pharma executives be indicted on felony charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, that could have sent the men to prison if convicted.

But top Justice Department officials in the George W. Bush administration did not support the move, said four lawyers who took part in those discussions or were briefed about them. Instead, the government settled the case in 2007.

Prosecutors found that the company’s sales representatives used the words “street value,” “crush,” or “snort” in 117 internal notes recording their visits to doctors or other medical professionals from 1997 through 1999.

The 120-page report also cited emails showing that Purdue Pharma’s owners, members of the wealthy Sackler family, were sent reports about abuse of OxyContin and another company opioid, MS Contin.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

NYC: de Blasio’s New Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza Endorses Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2018 //
36

In 2013, when Bill de Blasio ran for Mayor of New York City for the first time, he was an outspoken supporter of public schools and an equally outspoken critic of charter schools. Taking him at his word, he won over many public school parents and advocates by his willingness to break with the Bloomberg policy of favoring charters over public schools. At the time, he met with me, sought my endorsement, and won it based on his firm commitment to stop privatization. I feel betrayed after reading the story that follows.

His first schools chancellor, Carmen Farina, a high-level veteran of the Bloomberg administration, walked a fine line, trying not to antagonize either side. The public schools enroll over 1.1 million children and the charters enroll 114,000 students. The charters are the darlings of the financial world and Wall Street and the big donors.

The new chancellor, Richard Carranza, visited three charter schools yesterday and embraced them as “public schools,” not “publicly funded private schools,” which is what most people see with their own eyes since they are operated by private boards and make their own rules about admissions and discipline and other matters.

Leonie Haimson, in a note to her listserve, asks these questions:

If they are public schools, why do they refuse to follow state law when it comes to suspension and expulsion policies? Why do they refuse audits from the state comptroller, and refuse performance audits from the city comptroller?

Why do their Charter Management Companies refuse to comply with FOILs or Open Meetings Law?

Why do they have the right to access space at the city’s expense, while more than half a million public school students are crammed into overcrowded buildings with no hope of relief?

The reality is that charter schools are private corporations that use public funding, and use their backing from billionaires to demand special privileges from elected officials, while refusing to follow the same rules or submit to the same oversight as public schools that are governed by public bodies.

There is an emerging body of law which is challenging the notion that charter schools are public schools. See The Legal Status of Charter Schools in State Statutory Law by Preston Green and Bruce Baker. The reality is that charter schools claim to be public schools when that advantages them in terms of funding or PR, and claim that they are private entities when that advantages them in terms of being able to ignore laws pertaining to student discipline, building code regulations, fair labor practices, fiscal and performance transparency, and a host of other issues.

I have some questions: If charters are public schools, why are they allowed to close school and send their students, teachers, and parents to political rallies in Albany and at City Hall? Will Chancellor Carranza authorize all public schools to do the same or will he forbid the charter schools from using their students as political fodder to get more money for the charters? If charters are allowed to control their admissions and discipline policies, should other public schools get the same approval to do so? If deregulation is important for those “public schools,” why aren’t all public schools similarly deregulated? If charters are public schools, shouldn’t they be subject to the same legal requirements as other public schools? Or are they private contractors who are not state actors, as charters have repeatedly said in their defense in federal courts and before the NLRB?

Sharon Otterman of the New York Times wrote:

New York City’s schools chancellor signaled on Wednesday that he wanted to usher in a new era of détente between the Department of Education and the city’s charter school sector, which have often been at odds under the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio over issues like finances and the pressures of sharing public school space.

“Charter Schools are public schools,” Richard Carranza, the chancellor, said in the cafeteria of the Bronx Charter School for Excellence, as he wrapped up a day of visits to three charter schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx, to which he had invited reporters along. Even that simple statement was likely to make waves among charter school opponents, who prefer to describe charters as privately run, publicly funded schools.

“The question about charters versus traditional public schools,” Mr. Carranza added, addressing reporters around a cafeteria table, “is a red herring.”

“I would say that the more dialogue we have around building a portfolio of good choices for all students in the city, and the less we emphasize a dialogue about ‘us versus them,’ the better it is for all the children in New York City,” he said.

Crossing what was once a white-hot line for the de Blasio administration, Mr. Carranza said he would visit a Success Academy charter school “in the next few weeks.” Mayor de Blasio was elected in 2013 vowing to take action against the aggressive expansion of charter networks like Success Academy, which is led by his former political rival, Eva S. Moskowitz, and which now runs 46 of the 227 charter schools in the city.

“Time for Eva Moskowitz to stop having the run of the place,” Mr. de Blasio said while campaigning in 2013. “She has to stop being tolerated, enabled, supported.”

In February 2014, Mr. de Blasio reversed a decision by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to provide space in city public school buildings to three charter schools, all part of the Success network.

In the political fallout, state legislators, with urging from the governor, passed a law requiring the city to pay much of the rent for new charter schools if it denied them free space, effectively curtailing Mr. de Blasio from removing more schools.

Chancellor Carranza “said he was happy to hear all three of the charters he visited hired only certified teachers, but he steered clear of the divisive political issue at play: that most charter schools in New York City are not unionized.”

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization

Marc Tucker: Why Charter Management Organizations Are Not a Model for the Nation

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2018 //
9

Marc Tucker recently wrote a post in which he responded to a question from Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Mike asked why Marc didn’t look at charter management organizations as models of systems that work. (I would have added “that work for some,” since charters are free to choose their students and oublic schools are not.)

Marc answered. (I’m always reluctant to post articles behind a pay wall.)

“I can see why Mike would take that view. As charter systems have grown, they have had to do what any well-run business has to do: figure out how to hire, train and support first-rate staff, produce the best possible results at an acceptable cost, find efficiencies and improve productivity. As these charter school networks grow, they have to face the challenge of growing without compromising quality, creating leadership structures that will preserve the culture the founders created without suffocating the initiative of the people on the ground and so on.

“Freed of many of the political and legal constraints that public school systems face, some of these charter management companies have been rather innovative as they have dealt with these and many other challenges. It would be natural to see them as a test bed for better ways to organize and manage public school systems. Why, Mike wanted to know, was I so uninterested in viewing them that way? A very reasonable question.

“Part of the answer is the strategy I prefer to use to search for better ways to organize and manage school systems at the scale of a state or nation. The approach that makes the most sense to me is to start by ideinitifying the systems that produce superior results and then try to find out if there are common principles that inform the structure of those systems that distinguish them from less successful systems. I know of no top-performing systems at the scale of a state or nation the success of which can be attributed to their charter-like characteristics. There are top-performing systems that feature choice, but choice does not explain their success. What does explain their success is their adherence to principles that they share in common with systems that do not have strong choice-oriented policies. The Netherlands and Flemish Belgium are good examples of such countries. So is Hong Kong…

“Because choice for parents and students among significantly different alternatives is the core principle of the charter idea, the question we should be asking about the charter idea is not whether any one charter school is better than the typical public school serving a comparable student body, but whether charter schools as a group produce better student performance than regular public schools as a group, when serving comparable students. It is, of course, possible to find very good charter schools but it is no less possible to find equally outstanding regular public schools. When we look in the aggregate at all the charters in any given state, and compare them to all the regular public schools in that state serving the same demographic, virtually all studies show no conclusive advantage for the charters.

“But my reading of the data produces a more troubling conclusion. Both in the United States and abroad, choice policies tend to exacerbate racial and socio-economic segregation. The minority, low-income parents who have the time, education, drive and cars to take advantage of the choices offered, do so and those who do not have these things, do not. The result is that the low-performing schools are drained of the students and parents who have the desire and means to take advantage of the options offered, leaving behind those who don’t, leaving in their wake schools that are even more isolated, chaotic and desperate than they were before…

“I have not given up on our public schools, in our inner cities or anywhere else. It is not just the lowest-performing schools that are in trouble. The students in every quartile of performance in the entire country are behind their counterparts in the top-performing countries. I would spend the rest of my career studying charter school management systems if someone could present any evidence that implementation of charter systems at scale would lift the performance of American students to globally competitive levels. But I have yet to see that evidence.”

I agree with most of what Marc says but I don’t accept international test scores, as he does, as the measure of our students or our schools. Our problems as a society are far greater than what test scores measure, and what they do measure is far too narrow to capture the dynamism of our youth.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, International, Privatization, Testing

Peter Greene on the Difference Between Public Schools and Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2018 //
19

Some state laws describe charter schools as “public charter schools.”

ALEC model legislation describes charter schools as “public charter schools.”

But calling them so doesn’t make them so. You can call a horse a camel, but it’s still a horse. You can pass a law calling a horse a camel, but it’s still a horse.

Peter Greene explains here the essential differences between public schools and charter schools.

Charter schools get public money, but that’s the only thing public about them.

If state legislators truly believed that deregulation was necessary for success, they would deregulate public schools. But they don’t. They keep passing more mandates. But only for public schools.

Greene writes:

“The charter sector has been trying to redefine “public” for years. Identifying charters as public schools solves a variety of marketing problems by giving the impression that charters include features that people expect from their public school. “Oh, a public school,” the customers say. “That must mean that the school will be open forever (certainly all of this year), it is staffed with qualified professionals, and is required to meet any special needs that my child might have. Oh, and as a public school, I’m sure it must be accountable to the public as well.”

“Of course, none of these things are true, but the use of the word “public” is a buffer against having the questions even come up. I mean, who even thinks to ask a public school to guarantee that it will stay open all year?

“”Public” when it comes to schools has been taken to mean “operated by the public, paid for by the public, serving the public, and accountable to the public.” Charter fans would like it to mean “paid for by the public” and nothing else. They would like voters and taxpayers not to think of charter schools as private schools that are paid for with public money. They would like voters and taxpayers absolutely not to think of charters as businesses that allow private people and companies to make money by billing the taxpayer. They would definitely not like the voters and taxpayers to think of charters as schools that are “accessible” to all, but which only serve a select few (like a Lexus dealership). They would certainly not like the voters and taxpayers to think of charters as businesses that are accountable only to their owners and operators– and not transparently accountable to the public. The word “public” is a handy fig leaf to cover all of that.”

DeVos wants to water down the definition of “public” even more, to allow private schools, religious schools, and every sort of entrepreneurial venture to get public money. In her view, the real public schools would be dumping grounds for the kids that the charters and voucher schools don’t want.

If we want to retain any sense of the common good, we must resist at every turn. We must protect the common good and our obligations to our fellow citizens.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Deregulation, Hoax, Privatization

Business Elite in Richmond, Virginia, Hires Michelle Rhee Team to Run Its Schools

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2018 //
16

Parents and teachers in Richmond, Virginia, are very concerned about their new superintendent, Jason Kamras, who was a key leader of Michelle Rhee’s team in D.C.

Kamras was the architect of Rhee’s controversial IMPACT program, which evaluated teachers in large part by student test scores. Kamras told Richmond educators that he won’t bring IMPACT with him, but he continues to believe that it was “equitable” and effective. Half of his cabinet in Richmond worked with him in D.C. He is still looking for a “chief talent officer.” (Corporate reformers do not employ assistant superintendents, they use corporate titles.)

The Richmond Times reported:

“Since the 44-year-old was named Richmond’s new schools chief in late November, Richmond School Board members, teachers and education advocates have raised concerns about the system, IMPACT, and its relationship to the “worst series of scandals in at least a decade” to rock Washington’s school system.

“It created a culture of fear,” David Tansey, a high school mathematics teacher in Washington, said of Kamras’ program. “Because it was paired with a top-down culture of getting results quickly, it became abused.”

“How Kamras, the highest-paid superintendent in Richmond’s history, plans to assess Richmond Public Schools teachers remains unclear.

“Eight days after the Richmond School Board announced Kamras’ selection in a celebratory news conference, an investigation revealed that fewer than half of students should have graduated from Washington’s Ballou High, previously touted as a bright spot in an ailing system for moving every senior on to college.

“Six days before he was sworn in at the beginning of February, an independent review found that those issues, which stemmed in part from Kamras’ evaluation system, were endemic to D.C. Public Schools as a whole.

“Kamras was noncommittal on teacher accountability when he discussed his plans for moving Richmond Public Schools forward at a community meeting the next month.”

The article quoted admirers and critics of IMPACT.

The recent graduation rate scandal began in Ballou High School, which falsely claimed a graduation rate of 100%. That revelation led to a systemwide investigation, and the discovery that the D.C. schools’ graduation rate was inflated, stemming from the fear induced by Kamras’ IMPACT system.

Richmond journalist Kristen Reed says that the power elite selected Kamras to impose Rhee-style corporate reform on the Richmond public schools. She portrays Tom Farrell, CEO of Dominion Energy, as the leader of the “Gang of 26,” business leaders who tried to eliminate the elected board and have been eager to disrupt democratic governance of the schools.

She writes:

“Farrell, who has led Dominion Energy for 10 years, has a vested interest in promoting the narrative that Kamras is a community hire. Farrell’s broader work in the power industry draws its profit model from seizing unilateral control of democratic institutions under the auspices of “public process” and “public good.” Dominion power has been widely criticized as exercising disproportionate control over the Virginia General Assembly.

“Despite extraordinary public opposition, Dominion has proven itself uniquely empowered to take Virginian land, to custom-draft its own legislation, and to do so at tremendous cost to members of the public, who have no choice but to remain a captive and disempowered consumer base. The broader public in Virginia has thoroughly articulated their reluctance to trust our energy monopoly to govern in lieu of democratic process. Our last election season communicated this message clearly when 13 candidates who ran on platforms that specifically refused Dominion funding won seats in our General Assembly. As the public pushes back, however, Farrell and his corporate colleagues continue to demand disproportionate power over public institutions.

“Farrell is right to be concerned. He not only chaired the committee that brought Kamras to Richmond, he also plays a leadership role in a particular strain of Virginia’s business elite that holds growing investment in bringing corporate education reform to our city. At stake is his long-standing interest in the Richmond public education system, which he has struggled to fully realize. In 2007, Farrell joined a movement of corporate leaders in the city of Richmond who advocated against an elected school board and in favor of a corporate monopoly on school governance.

“The Gang of 26, as they have become known, issued a now-infamous letter that demanded our democratically elected school board be “abolished.” Widespread public outcry, led by African-American education activists and the Richmond Crusade for Voters, pushed back at the prospect of a plutocratic school governance structure. Defeated, members of the Gang of 26 have continued to look for other avenues to disrupt democratic governance of public schools.”

Stay tuned.

Richmond may be the next battle between the community and corporate elites over the future of public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations, Virginia

Tom Ultican: Why Charter Schools are NOT Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2018 //
6

Over the past 25 years of experience with charter schools, we have learned that they claim to be public when it is time to get the money, but in all other respects, they are private. Their management is private. They are exempt from many of the laws and regulations that govern public schools. They do not report to an elected board, or to a board that is in any sense accountable to the public or transparent. At least 90% are non-union.

Tom Ultican, a retired teacher in San Diego, saw that the director of communications for the California Charter Schools Association, the most powerful lobby in the state, wrote a letter to the San Diego Free Press, saying that they had been unfair to charter schools and that their stories contained many inaccuracies, although he did not identify any.

Ultican took him to task for his failure to document any inaccuracies and wrote:

Unfortunately, charter schools have become profit centers for real estate developers and charter management organizations. Instead of fulfilling their original mission to be education innovators, they have too often become fraud infested enterprises lusting after tax dollars. It did not have to be this way…

Calling charter-schools public-schools is false. It is political spin. That is too nice. It is a lie.

When the city of San Diego contracts with a construction company to repair roads, that company is still a private company. When the state of California approves a contract, known as a charter, with a private company to educate students, the company gets paid with tax dollars. It is still a private company and is not required to comply with open meeting laws, elected school boards, much of the state education code and budget transparency like a public school. They are private businesses.

This lie is very profitable to charter school owners:

Whether they are for-profit or non-profit they are private companies and the distinction between for-profit and non-profit is quite obscure. For example, Mary Bixby, San Diego’s pioneer in the strip mall charter school business, puts children at computers running education software. Very little personal teacher-student interaction takes place but teenagers who don’t like to get up in the morning can go to the strip mall and earn credits toward graduation. In 2015, the non-profit Mary founded paid her a “salary” of $340,810 and her daughter Tiffany Yandell received $135,947.

It is easy to take offense at the truth. But, ignoring the daily lies from the highest levels of our government, honesty is always the best policy. When you tell the truth you don’t need a “communications director” to spin bad stories.

Categories California, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Fraud, Lies, Propaganda
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