Archives for category: Charter Schools
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When Bill Gates Fails, He Doesn’t Change Course, He Doubles Down

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2018 //
37

Marin Levine writes in NonProfit Quarterly about Bill Gates’ determination to reshape the nation’s schools. He has gone from failure to failure without changing course. The only time he admitted he was wrong was when he gave up his small schools initiative. Small schools are not a bad idea, but they can’t be stamped out in a cookie cutter fashion. Gates never understood that to succeed, they need to have a guiding spirit. Smallness all alone is not Reform.

On to charter schools, the Common Core and teacher evaluation. Failures. None delivered the Revolution he sought.

Now he is “helping” states with their ESSA plans, which means he is telling them what to do.

If only he could find a new idea, a new toy, a new hobby.

Give it up, Bill! You don’t know how to redesign American education. You never will, unless you made it your mission to give every child the same education you and your children had at Lakeside Academy.

Otherwise, he and Melinda are rich dilettantes playing with the lives of other people’s children.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations

Florida: Charter School Opens “Private School” to Dump Low-Scoring Students Before Test

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2018 //
4

A charter school in Florida may be forced to close because it opened a private school on its campus to remove low-scoring students before the state tests.

“Several days before the Florida Standards Assessments began near the end of the school year, 13 third-grade students suddenly transferred from the Palm Harbor Academy charter school to a newly created private school on the same school campus, run by Palm Harbor Academy governing board chairman the Rev. Gillard Glover.

“With one exception, all of those 13 students had one thing in common: They were at least one full grade behind grade level. Many of the children were multiple grades behind grade level. Another five students in other grades, all at least two grades behind grade level, were also transferred out of Palm Harbor and into the private school at around the same time.

“The students’ transfer to a private school meant that they didn’t take the state assessments required of public school students — and, therefore, didn’t drag down the school’s state scores and school grade. A failing school grade would have meant shuttering the school, School Board Attorney Kristin Gavin said, because the school got a D last year.

“The school district has portrayed the moving of the students as an attempt by Palm Harbor to skirt the school grade process, at a cost to the students: Those with disabilities who were moved were not being provided state-mandated support, district officials said, at the newly created private school, the Academy of Excellence.”

https://www.palmcoastobserver.com/article/flagler-schools-prepares-for-possible-shutdown-of-palm-harbor-academy

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cheating, Florida

Louisiana: Charter Leader Enjoys Fine Dining with School Credit Card

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2018 //
14

The head of the board of a charter school in Louisiana treated himself to some good meals using the school’s credit card.

A world away from his Central City school, where 97 percent of students are considered economically disadvantaged, the head of a charter school board racked up $778 over six months at an upscale restaurant on St. Charles Avenue.

The Rev. Charles Southall III bought the meals with a credit card issued to Edgar P. Harney Spirit of Excellence Academy under his name. Monthly statements went not to the school, but to Southall’s church on Carondelet Street.

Southall spent $1,514 at restaurants in New Orleans and Baton Rouge in six months starting in July 2016. That’s $250 a month at establishments such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Cheesecake Bistro by Copeland’s and Le Pavillon hotel — all funded by the school.

Asked about the meals, Southall said, “They were lunches that were related to preparing to get a new school leader in.”

But Eileen Williams had been in charge of Harney since at least 2013 and continued until June 2017. Southall did not respond to follow-up questions.

The small school’s financial practices have drawn scrutiny from the Louisiana Department of Education and the Orleans Parish School Board. Auditors criticized the school’s one-man finance department and said the board should provide more oversight.
Last fall, the state Board of Ethics filed an official complaint against the school’s chief financial officer, Brent Washington Sr. The school paid him $54,500 on the side to do accounting work, which the ethics board contends broke the law.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Louisiana, Privatization, Scandal

Jeff Bryant Assesses the Likelihood that Jackson, Mississippi, Can Overcome Its Racist Past

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2018 //
13

Jeff Bryant of the Educational Opportunity Network visited Jackson, Mississippi, to learn about the state takeover plan for the district. As you would expect, Jackson has a sordid and racist past, one where whites ignored the needs and potential of black students.

After the Brown decision declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional, Mississippi fought the decision. When compelled to comply, it introduced school choice, so that white kids would have tax money to pay for private segregated schools.

Today, Jackson has a progressive black mayor. The schools are 95% black. The state now threatens to take over the Jackson schools on mostly trumped-up violations. Test scores are low,but test scores in the whole state are low.

Governor Phil Bryant, a product of segregated white schools, says he wants to create a private-public partnership in Jackson.

Civic leaders are not sure he can be trusted. They know that the schools are desperately underfunded and that the legislature and the state’s Republican leaders don’t want to pay the cost of adequate funding.

The big actors behind the s eyes are the Walton family, which wants charters and vouchers, along with Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. The black mayors of Jackson and Birmingham know that the purpose of charter schools is to drain money out of public schools that are already underfunded.

The bottom line is that the white Republicans of Mississippi don’t want to pay the cost of educating black children. They never have. The leadership of the state will blabber on about school choice but it’s still the same song and dance. Nothing Jeff reports persuades me that Jackson’s black leadership should trust Governor Bryant, the legislature or their appointees to devote new resources to black children in Jackson. It’s a hoax. Don’t fall for it.

Categories Charter Schools, Hoax, Lies, Mississippi, Racism

D.C.: Charter Consultants Rake in Millions via Cozy Connections

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2018 //
13

Imagine a firm created to teach charter schools how to get better results. Imagine that the head of the firm is buddies with the head of the D.C Charter School Board. Imagine that this firm is raking in millions for its amazing advice and plans. Imagine that some people say the firm is amazing, while others say it is gifted at backscratching and connections.

Then read this article.

What do you think?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization

California: The NAACP Writes a Letter of Protest to Billionaire Bill Bloomfield

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2018 //
11

Bill Bloomfield is a very wealthy charter school supporter in California. He sent out a letter endorsing charter advocate Marshall Tuck for State Superintendent, accompanied by a photograph of Barack Obama, who has not endorsed anyone in the race. Tuck comes from the charter sector.

Tuck is running against Tony Thurmond, a state legislator who strongly supports public schools.

The California State NAACP was outraged by Bloomfield’s letter and told him so. It was especially shocked that he used Obama’s portrait in a mailer opposing an African American candidate. It pointed out that Bloomfield worked in John McCain’s campaign against Obama.

Bloomfield describes himself on his website as a major supporter of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, Parent Revolution (which tries to convert public schools to charter schools), and other reform organizations that attack public schools and promote charters.

It is pathetic how these charter promoters try to hitch themselves to the banner of the civil rights movement.

Read the letter here.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Lies

Julian Vasquez Heilig to The Century Foundation: “97.81% of Charters Schools are NOT ‘Diverse by Design'”

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2018 //
11

Recently The Century Foundation issued a report about charter schools that are “diverse by design.” The report was intended to show that charters are capable of producing integration (more than public schools) because of their “flexibility.”

The report from this liberal think tank was funded by the Walton Family Foundation, a far-right, anti-union entity that spends $200 million every year on charter schools and so has a huge incentive to sell them, especially to liberals, who might otherwise be dubious about the non-union aspect of privatization by charter schools. (More than 90% of charters are non-union and rely on temp teachers from TFA, which is generously funded by the Waltons).

But as Julian Vasquez Heilig points out in this post, TCF found only 125 charters that were “diverse by design” in a charter universe of nearly 6,000 schools. That is about 2% of the charters examined for the report.

What is the point? He thinks that the report calls attention to the charters’ lack of interest in racial integration and unintentionally makes the opposite point from the one it thinks it is making.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Walton Foundation

Jitu Brown: “We Call for a Moratorium on School Privatization Now!”

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2018 //
8

Watch this powerful 2-minute video, in which civil rights leader Jitu Brown tells the dramatic story of the Dyett hunger strike in Chicago, which lasted 34 days and compelled the city to keep Dyett open and invest $16 Million in the new Dyett.

Jitu Brown leads the Journey for Justice, which is leading a national campaign to stop school closings, privatization, and charter schools. They are fighting to create thousands of community schools.

This video was created by videographers Michael Elliot and Kemala Karmen. It was funded by the Network for Public Education.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Courage, Education Industry, Equity, Justice, Privatization

Julian Vasquez Heilig Critiques a Study of Charters’ Productivity and Return on Investment

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2018 //
19

That choking sound you hear is me writing the headline for this post.

Just when you thought the charter advocates could not sink any lower in seeking rationalizations for privatization, they go lower yet again.

Writing for the National Education Policy Center, Julian Vasquez Heilig critiqued a University of Arkansas study that purports to show that charter schools are more productive and profoppduce a higher return on investment than public schools. The study under review is called “Bigger Bang, Fewer Bucks.”

What would you care about when comparing two sectors, one of which is staffed by professional educators, the other staffed mainly by TFA temps? Would you care about test scores? Parent satisfaction? Teacher turnover? Student projects? Graduation rates? College acceptance rates? Would you consider how the creation of a second sector affects the health and vitality of the first sector? Would you Permit the Second sector to cripple the first sector?

How about return on investment?

This is a mode of thinking with which I am not compatible. I’m reminded of reading I did in the 1990s, when I learned about efficiency experts who studied the curriculum. I was writing a book called “Left Back,” published in 2000. These scientific curriculum experts worked out a way to compare the cost and value of different subjects. They concluded that Latin was not worth teaching because the unit cost was too high. They would understand this new Arkansas study.

Heilig writes the abstract of his critique:

“A report released by the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform contends that charter schools produce more achievement per dollar invested, as compared to public schools. This newest report is focused on city-level analyses in eight US cities (Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, New York City, San Antonio, and Washington D.C.) and uses cost effectiveness and Return on Investment (ROI) ratios. It concludes that charter schools deliver a weighted average of an additional 4.34 NAEP reading points and 4.73 NAEP math points per $1000 invested. The report also argues that that charter schools offer an advantage of $1.77 in lifetime earnings for each dollar invested, representing a ROI benefit of 38%. However, there are a variety of methodological choices made by the authors that threaten the validity of the results. For example, the report uses revenues rather than actual expenditures – despite well-established critiques of this approach. The report also fails to account for the non-comparability of the student populations in charter and comparison public schools. Three other problems also undercut the report’s claims. First, even though the think tank’s earlier productivity report included a caveat saying that causal claims would not be appropriate, the new report omits that caution. Second, the report’s lack of specificity plagues the accuracy and validity of its calculations; e.g., using state-level data in city-level analyses and completely excluding race and gender. Finally, the authors again fail to reconcile their report with the extensive literature of contrary findings.“

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, National Education Policy Center, Privatization

William Mathis: Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2018 //
12

William Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center, wrote this post for the Blog.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

A Closer Look at the Changing School Privatization Claims

​
​Flashed on a 1939 version of a jumbotron, the great and mighty Wizard of Oz appears, wreathed in great billows of green smoke, as a reverberating announcement commands Dorothy, the Tin man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion to “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Of course, as we all know, the mighty wizard was all pretense, magnification, and illusion flanked by great balls of fire.

​And so it has been. The privatization wizards have issued countless press releases saying that charter schools In Boston, Florida, Chicago or almost anywhere else are a great success because of standardized test score increases.

For years this omnipresent claim is that turning schools over to outside contractors will result in grand progress as measured by great leaps – in standardized test scores. All we have to do is follow them down the yellow brick road.

Indeed, Chris Lubienski and Jameson Brewer note in a NEPC review, “a whole generation of school reforms has elevated test scores as the predominant metric by which to judge the worth of policies, as well as of schools, teachers, and even in some cases subjection of public schools to choice regimes through federal policies like No Child Left Behind (NCLB).” (1)

Yet, lately, things have not been so rosy in Oz or for the school privatization wizards. Several recent, large scale and well-designed studies have concluded that privatization has not produced the mighty test score gains promised.

Yet, Toto persisted in chewing on the curtain and ERIC, IES and a host of other scholarly and well-respected organizations concluded there really wasn’t much difference in test scores between public and non-public schools. In fact, in places such as Washington, DC, Indiana, and Louisiana, statewide evaluations have shown no advantage and, ominously, some have found actual test score losses as a result of privatization reforms. (2)

​Since their primary argument doesn’t look so good, the reformers now say, “Don’t look behind the curtain! Instead, look over there at attainment.” Attainment is the new goal which is a potpourri of indicators such as graduation rates, higher education attendance, higher education graduation, absenteeism and the like. These are certainly worthy goals which would be embraced by most people. Now, the pro-privatization purposes and measures are being shifting away from testing. In a complete about face, they ask, “Do impacts on Test Scores Even Matter?” (3)

​Lubienski and Brewer address this “Don’t look here, look over there” shift-the-goal phenomenon in a recent NEPC think-tank review of an American Enterprise Institute paper presented at the Association for Education Finance and Policy’s annual spring conference. While the study has not been peer reviewed, it was provided with booming publicity by charter advocates. (4)

​Fordham’s Michael Petrilli, a prominent advocate for test-based reform, shows remarkable agility (perhaps realizing that the test score results were not very impressive), by concluding that “focusing on test scores may lead authorities to favor the wrong school choice programs. It’s a legitimate concern, and one I share…the experience of attending a private school in the nation’s capital could bring benefits that might not show up until years later: exposure to a new peer group that holds higher expectations in terms of college-going and the like; access to a network of families that opens up opportunities; a religious education that provides meaning, perhaps a stronger grounding in both purpose and character, and that leads to personal growth.”

​Buttressing this maudlin appeal to national pride, religion and personal growth, Petrelli shuffles the studies to get a different result and says, “yes, impacts on test scores matter” and urges caution in making too much of research literature that comes to a contrary conclusion.

​Robin Lake joins the shift saying, “We now believe effectiveness must be considered more broadly, as preparing children with the knowledge, skills, and analytical capacities necessary for them to navigate the new realities of an information economy and be able to prepare for rapid changes in workforce demand.” (6) The shift from mechanistic hard test scores has the reformees saying “look over there!’ (7)

​What’s missing is that we’re more in Kansas than in Oz. This is not Dorothy waking from a bad dream proclaiming “there’s no place like home.” It is a bad reality as many children have no home and society provides Dorothy and her classmates with only ersatz opportunities and facile shifts of words, phrases and promises rather than the reality of good schools for all.

Endnotes:

[1] Lubienski, C. & Brewer, T. J. (2018). Review of “Do Impacts on Test Scores Even Matter? Lessons from Long-Run Outcomes in School Choice Research: Attainment Versus Achievement Impacts and Rethinking How to Evaluate School Choice Programs” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center.

[2] Barnum, M. (July 12, 2017). Do School vouchers “work.” As the debate heats up, here’s what research really says. Chalkbeat. Retrieved April 30, 2018 from https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/07/12/do-school-vouchers-work-as-the-debate-heats-up-heres-what-research-really-says/
Dynarski, M. (2016, May 26). On Negative Effects of Vouchers. Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/research/on-negative-effects-of-vouchers/
Turner, C, & Kamenetz. (June 26, 2017) School Vouchers Get 2 New Report Cards. NPR https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/06/26/533192616/school-vouchers-get-a-new-report-card
Spector, C. (February 28,2017). Vouchers do not improve student achievement, Stanford researcher finds. https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/

[3] Hitt, C., McShane, M., & Wolf, P. (2018) Do impacts on test scores even matter? Lessons from long-run outcomes in school choice research: Attainment versus achievement impacts and rethinking how to evaluate school choice programs. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute. http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Do-Impacts-on-Test-Scores-Even-Matter.pdf

[4] Lubienski, C. & Brewer, T. J. (2018). Review of “Do Impacts on Test Scores Even Matter? Lessons from Long-Run Outcomes in School Choice Research: Attainment Versus Achievement Impacts and Rethinking How to Evaluate School Choice Programs” Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center.

[5] Petrilli, M, (April 17, 2018). For the vast majority of school choice studies, short- and long-term impacts point in the same direction. Fordham Institute. https://edexcellence.net/articles/for-the-vast-majority-of-school-choice-studies-short-and-long-term-impacts-point-in-the

[6] Lake, R. (May 1, 2018). How Can We Get Serious About Successful Pathways for Every Student? Center on Reinventing Public Education.

[7] Saultz, A. et al.(April 2018).Charter School Deserts: High-Poverty Neighborhoods with Limited Educational Options. Fordham Institute. Retrieved May 1, 2018 from https://edexcellence.net/publications/charter-school-deserts-report

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