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NYC: Parents Sue to Block Closure of PS 25, a High-Performing Elementary School in Bedford Stuyvesant

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2018 //
21

 

Three parents at PS 25 in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, are suing to stop the closure of one of the city’s highest performing elementary schools. The Department of Education said the school was too small.

“The lawsuit hinges on a state law that gives local education councils the authority to approve any changes to school zones. Since P.S. 25 is the only zoned elementary school for a swath of Bedford-Stuyvesant, the department’s plans would leave some families with no zoned elementary school dedicated to educating them, forcing students to attend other district schools or enter the admissions lottery for charter schools.”

Question: Why didn’t DOE and local superintendent recruit additional students to 25?

Next question: will the building be emptied and handed over to another charter?

Next question: Why are charter operators focused on killing public schools in black communities, leaving them with no choice but a charter?

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization

North Carolina: “Opportunity School District” Fails Before It Begins

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2018 //
8

Here is a good laugh.

North Carolina wanted to copy Tennessee’s Achievement School Sisteict, but the ASD was an abject failure. So the North Carolina ASD became the NC Opportunity School District. It was supposed to take control of low performing schools across the state, but due to popular resistance, it ended up with a well-paid superintendent and only one school.

Here is the report from Public Schools First NC:

“Innovative School District – Public Schools First NC

“Southside Ashpole Elementary School Selected for 2018-19 School Year

“On November 2, 2017, the State Board of Education selected only one school for the Innovative School District for the 2018-19 school year: Southside Ashpole Elementary School, Rowland, NC.

“This school is a part of the Robeson County School System. The local community in Robeson County was very upset about this decision and held many community meetings to show their disagreement with this school takeover. According to state statute, once selected for takeover, Robeson County School Board either could close the school or join the ISD. On January 9, 2018, the Public Schools of Robeson County School Board approved the transfer of Southside Ashpole Elementary in Rowland, NC into the Innovative School District beginning in the 2018-19 school year.

“School Works, a third-party evaluation firm contracted by the ISD, is tasked with evaluating any operator applications submitted and will report to the ISD Superintendent on their findings. The application process for being an operator of an Innovative School District is here. Applicants presented their proposed plans to improve student and school outcomes to the NCISD Superintendent. NCISD received applications from The Romaine Group and Achievement for All Children. Public school advocates note neither entity has a strong, proven performance history. The Romaine Group, a for-profit Michigan based organization manages eight schools in Maryland and one in NC. The NC school, Capitol Encore Academy in Fayetteville, is a K-8 charter that earned a ‘D’ according to 2016-17 school report cards. Achievement for All Children is a new nonprofit, created by supporters of the school choice movement including a wealthy donor who helped support the bill that resulted in the creation of an Innovative School District. Many have questioned applicants’ ties to the controversial bill and pointed out that they stand to benefit financially from being chosen as operators.

“SchoolWorks evaluated the operator applications and found that at the time of assessment, neither entity met the requisites established by the ISD guidelines. According to press release issued on February 1, 2018: “Based on the reports received from SchoolWorks, at this time neither entity met the high expectations imposed by the ISD. The ISD now plans to convene negotiations with both entities to gain additional insight on their respective capabilities and approaches to improving student achievement at Southside Ashpole.” The ISD Superintendent asked for an additional 60 days to decide on an operator. Critics and supporters of the ISD model expressed concern over the small number of applicants. Once the State Board approves the Innovative School operator they will be given a 5-year contract.

“Concerns about NC’s ISD

“Where takeover districts have been implemented, there is no evidence that they offer high-quality educational alternatives to children from low-income families.

“According to Dr. Mercedes Schneider, a New Orleans educator, “Just over 6 percent of high school seniors in the Recovery School District scored high enough in English and Math to qualify for admission into a Louisiana four-year college or university straight out of high school. Five of their 16 high schools produced not a single student who met these requirements.”

”From Chris Barbic, the Texas charter school operator named superintendent of the Tennessee Achievement School District in 2012, “As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results. I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.” Barbic resigned at the end of 2015.

”A Vanderbilt University study of Tennessee’s ASD found “that the vast majority of teachers exited schools once they came under the auspices of the ASD. Therefore, the ASD faced a significant need to hire new teachers in their first year. Among the new hires, nearly a third were novice teachers.”
The following year, Vanderbilt researchers found that the ASD did not had a marginal effect on student test scores, while district-led turnaround efforts had “moderate to large positive effects in Reading and Math.”

”Tulane University Prof. J. Celeste Lay warned the state of Georgia not to model its school takeover after New Orleans: “Like other businesses, schools operating within market models must also turn a profit. The principal at my nearby charter school makes over $300,000 per year, a 246 percent increase from her salary before the school was chartered. For-profit management companies charge schools 15-20 percent of school revenue. Taxpayer dollars go into hefty administrator salaries and corporate profits instead of reducing class sizes, upgrading facilities, or recruiting and maintaining high-quality teachers.”

”An Education Week commentary concluded that “a growing body of independent investigations shows that the preferred strategies of closing and chartering schools in takeover districts open the public treasury to fraud, waste, and abuse. … Whether the arrangement is called a portfolio district, a recovery district, or, most egregious, an ‘opportunity’ or ‘achievement’ district, the goal of these policies is the same: the transfer of local, public funds and decision-making to non-accountable, often remote- or chain-charter operators.”

 

“A Center for Popular Democracy comprehensive review of existing state takeover districts found: “The rapid proliferation of the takeover district as an educational panacea is alarming. There is little clear evidence that takeover districts achieve their stated goals of radically improving performance at failing schools. At the same time, children, particularly students of color and those with special needs, face greater risk of discriminatory discipline and enrollment practices in takeover districts. Furthermore, hastily created districts with opaque governance structures breed fraud and mismanagement.”

”In August 2016, Tennessee’s state auditor found massive problems with the fiscal management of its ASD. The Times Free Press reports that analysts found “seven key areas where ASD did not establish processes over key human resources and payroll functions, including segregating duties; maintaining personnel files; verifying education credentials; documenting time and attendance; completing performance reviews; documenting approvals of bonuses and pay raises; and exiting employees.”

”In 2017, Tennessee’s legislature seriously curtailed the purview of the ASD, taking away the district’s ability to start new schools and restricting its authority to take over struggling schools. The state also cut its leadership team and consolidated management offices. Chalkbeat reports: “Education Commissioner Candice McQueen says the state will no longer default to the Achievement School District when considering how to help Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools. … Tennessee will lean on more local district-led turnaround initiatives.”

”The structure of NC’s ISD, as detailed in the legislation itself, offers no more safeguards than the others discussed. Former NCGA analyst Kris Nordstrom wrote of the aforementioned TN report, “The researchers note, ‘the turnaround space for charters (in an ASD) is indisputably different from their usual circumstances, and as such calls for a very different type of schooling operations.’ The Tennessee program failed despite relying upon private charter operators with ‘a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge and experience.’

”North Carolina’s ASD program is similarly set up for failure. Despite the assurances of the bill sponsors, there are no ‘guardrails’ to ensure success.”

”Low-performing schools in North Carolina are making significant progress, according to a recent study on the existing program designed to improve low-performing schools known as Turning around North Carolina’s Lowest-Achieving Schools (TALAS) found that: “TALAS made significant investments in professional development, comprehensive needs assessments, school improvement planning, and instructional and leadership coaching in low-performing schools. These investments have paid off in improved outcomes for students. The primary threat to this progress is the high level of staff turnover that occurs in these schools and the increased level of spending on professional development that is required for new staff members each year. ASDs would make the turnover problem in low-performing schools even worse.”

”Since the lowest achieving schools have almost exclusively high-poverty student populationsand come from high-poverty districts, these reforms are doomed to fail. Telling cash-strapped districts to reform schools by adding administrative layers (like an innovation zone office) or mandating higher pay for staff (as in the principal turnaround model) with no funding beyond local “discretionary funds” is meaningless. Turning around our lowest achieving schools cannot happen without a significant commitment of resources and time.

”Students at low-performing schools deserve reforms that ensure better academic and social outcomes. Giving the state control of local public schools will introduce more uncertainty and less stability to our most vulnerable elementary schools without guaranteeing their students’ success.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, North Carolina, Privatization

George Miller, Fake Liberal, DFER Favorite

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2018 //
25

 

I posted the 2012 Democrats for Education Reform list of electoral favorites, which included Cong. George Miller of California, then chair of the House Education Committee and an architect of NCLB; Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who fought to keep high-stakes testing and NCLB punishments in the new ESSA and is now a possible candidate for president in 2020. A few years ago, the California Democratic Party passed a resolution denouncing DFER for advancing corporate policies and urged them to drop the D from their name.

Miller was the most powerful Congressional Democrat on education issues, and Nancy Pelosi follliwed his lead. Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott is now chair of the committee, and he too was on the DFER LIST.

A reader who lives in Miller’s district describes what happened:

“Miller was my Congressman. I too had an unpleasant encounter with him at a local hearing where he showed up to personally push to convert one of the high schools in my district to charter. Since then that high school has among other things, experienced huge teacher turnover. Key senior classes have had multiple substitutes with “emergency crediamtials.” They hired an “executive director” whom they pay a quarter million dollars a year,! whose primary job seems to be opening more charters in our county who will hire him as a “consultant” and who hired his wife as an administrator for a salary of $170,000 per year. He also recently put one of the Candidates for Superintendent if the County Office of Education on his payroll as an “Assistant Prinicipal”. The County Office approves charters if they are turned down at the District level.”

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Closing schools, DFER

DFER’s Choices for 2012: Still Relevant

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2018 //
10

The hedge fund managers created an organization called “Democrats for Education Reform” to advocate for charter schools and high-stakes testing, including evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students (VAM).

In the comments section, someone recalled that George Miller was one of the architects of No Child Left Behind, and I remembered having an unpleasant encounter with Miller in 2010, after the release of my 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. I was invited by Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro to a private dinner at her home to talk about the book to the Democratic members of the House Education Committee, and Miller was there. In my talk, I was highly critical of NCLB. Miller was outraged. He defended it vociferously.

Yesterday I remembered that I had received an invitation to a fundraiser in 2012 for George Miller from DFER at a posh restaurant in Manhattan. The cost of each breakfast was $1,250. Miller did  not have an opponent. I did not attend.

Miller has since retired. I was told that Nancy Pelosi relied on him as the leading education expert in Congress

Here is the list of Democrats (pro-charter, pro-high-stakes testing) endorsed by DFER in 2012. You may be surprised to see who is on the list, including Congressman Bobby Scott, who succeeded Miller as the leading Democrat on the House Education Committee, and Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, now a leading voice for gun control, but sponsor of the Murphy Amendment to ESSA, which was intended to preserve the George W. Bush punitive consequences of testing. Although every Democrat on the Senate HELP committee (including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders) supported the Murphy Amendment, it was defeated by the Republican majority on the committee. Had it passed, schools would still be judged by AYP. And, of course, Jared Polis was on the DFER list; he is now running for governor of Colorado. He is a zealous supporter of charter schools.

This year, DFER’s big cause is the governor’s race in California, and their candidate is Antonio Villiraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, who is carrying forward the DeVos agenda of privatization by charters.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization

Journey For Justice and Its Fight Against Destructive Education “Reform”

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2018 //
7

 

The Schott Foundation is one of the few philanthropies that unabashedly supports public education and recognizes its importance in a democracy. Schott has supported the civil rights group, Journey for Justice, whose leader Jitu Brown has a powerful voice. (Jitu is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.)

Schott underwrote the production of a video about the work of J4J. 

“Schott grantee partner Journey for Justice Alliance released a compelling short documentary chronicling the fight against education reform in the age of Trump and DeVos. Beyond the rhetoric coming from DC, for years Journey for Justice has been raising the voices of those most impacted by budget cuts and privatization. Following J4J’s cross-country trip from Detroit to Washington, D.C. to oppose Betsy DeVos’ appointment as Education Secretary in early 2017, this film not only shows the profound hurt that these policy changes cause, but the inspiring organizing done to resist them.

“As J4J National Director Jitu Brown is led away from the Senate hearing room, he says “it’s an act of cowardice to run toward privatization and away from equity. We are as far away from Brown v. Board as we were in 1957.”

“Film Description:

“Many are voicing concerns that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is unqualified, motivated by profit, and advancing a harmful agenda.

“Over a year ago, we organized a group of parents, educators, and students to travel from Detroit to Washington to raise their voices at DeVos’ confirmation hearing. We came to advocate for a public education system based on equity and democracy. We came because we had already lived with the consequences of policies that undermine those values, policies that DeVos had advocated for in Michigan. We came to speak truth to power and we were silenced—shut out.

“Please watch and share this 30 minute documentary made by 180.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Equity, Justice, Privatization

Michigan: Legislators Narrowly Pass Bill to Let Charters Share Millage Votes

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2018 //
4

 

The Michigan House decided to let charters share in the bounty of votes on millage, where citizens vote to fund their public schools. 80% of charters in Michigan operate for profit, so this will boost their bottom line and steal taxpayer dollars intended for the 90% of children in public schools. The decision now goes to the State Senate.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Charter schools could receive the same designation as public schools in a district’s millage ballot under a bill narrowly approved by the Michigan House.

Legislators on Thursday voted 56-53 to pass an amendment to the General Property Tax Act allowing districts to describe charter schools as “public schools” on ballots. The initiative now heads to the Senate and follows a January law signed by Gov. Rick Snyder to let charter schools receive revenue from certain voter-approved property tax hikes….

Democrats counter that voters would be unaware of their tax dollars being funneled to for-profit education corporations.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Eva Moskowitz Says She Has Reinvented the High School

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2018 //
66

 

Mercedes Schneider received an email from Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Success Academy charter chain in New York City, announcing that she has “reinvented” the high school; the graduates of her new high school will be prepared to enroll in selective colleges, succeed in college and graduate from college.

Mercedes reviewed a post from Gary Rubinstein, in which he reported that the attrition rate in Eva’s K-8 schools is about 80%. The only students allowed to enter one of her two new high schools are those who completed the eighth grade at one of her SA charters. She accepts no new students after third grade.

Both of the new high schools are co-located in public schools that didn’t want them.

It is hard to know if Eva’s new high school will do what she promises because it has not yet graduated a single student. There are 17 students in the class of 2018. We won’t know about their success in college until they enter and complete college.

I am reminded of the Common Core, which made all sorts of pie-in-the-sky claims about preparing every single student for success in college or careers, closing achievement gaps, producing dramatically higher test scores, higher graduation rates, less college remediation, etc. all based on wishful thinking, not a scintilla of evidence.

Maybe I was reminded of Common Core because I spent the day re-reading Mercedes excellent history of the Common Core, called “Common Core Dilemma.” It is most definitely written from a teacher’s perspective.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

The Sackler Family Drug Money Disgraces Some of the World’s Great Museums

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2018 //
9

 

The Sackler Family became billionaires by producing and marketing opioids. The family collectively is worth more than $14 Billion.

The Guardian reports that the Sacklers have plastered their name on some of the world’s great museums and universities in hopes of compensating for the damage that their drugs have done to so many thousands of individuals and families.

Jonathan Sackler is also a major sponsor of charter schools. He funded ConnCAN, which became 50CAN, and his daughter Madeline produced a gushing documentary about Eva Moskowitz that helped promote her brand.

The Sackler Family company Purdue Pharmaceuticals is running full-page ads saying that it is leading the way in combatting the opioid crisis (unsaid: which it created and benefits from).

It is past time for product liability lawsuits and efforts to claw back ill-gotten gains.

Perhaps those Grand museums might think twice about the drug-death money that pays for the names they plaster on their facades.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Puerto Rico, Disaster Capitalism, and the #JuliaGoHome Movement

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2018 //
10

 

Perhaps it is no surprise that the privatization vultures descended on Puerto Rico after the devastation of a Hurricane Maria. What is surprising is that the privatization movement has been led by a non-local from Philadelphia.  That city has experimented with privatization of its schools since the Paul Vallas regime (2002-2005), and the results have devastated the public schools.

The Nation reports:

“Six months after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans are understandably frustrated with their government officials. One might expect discontent to center around the head of the power company who oversaw months of blackouts or the governor who awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in private contracts with little or no oversight. But instead it is the secretary of the department of education, Philadelphia-native Julia Keleher, who has become the focus of people’s anger. In the past few weeks, Puerto Ricans have been calling for her resignation, making her the object of a viral hashtag campaign, #JuliaGoHome. On Monday, the school system was paralyzed by a strike as thousands of teachers protested the education-reform bill her office has spearheaded.

“For observers from the 50 states, it might come as a surprise that Puerto Rico’s secretary of education hails from Philadelphia. Indeed, it is the first time a non–Puerto Rican has held the job since the colonial appointees in the period after the US took possession of the island in 1898. But in the four years leading up to her appointment, Keleher’s education consultancy firm, Keleher & Associates, had been awarded almost $1 million in contracts to “design and implement education reform initiatives” in Puerto Rico. The results of those efforts were never described to the public, but when Governor Ricardo Rosselló Nevares tapped Keleher for the position in January 2017, the selection was initially met with some guarded optimism. Some hoped that a non–Puerto Rican would be able to rise above local politics, end corruption, and lead the agency with professionalism and expertise.

“From the beginning, many critics expressed concerns about her sizable salary, which at $250,000 is more than 10 times the average salary of a teacher in Puerto Rico. In an island beset by an unpayable debt and austerity measures, Keleher has managed to secure an income that is more than double that of her predecessors and over three times that of Rosselló, the governor that appointed her. It’s even 25 percent greater than that of Betsy DeVos, the secretary of the US Department of Education, and larger than that of 95 percent of education leaders around the world.

“As secretary, her salary is capped by law, so in order for Keleher to receive this level of compensation, she was given additional contracts that established her as an adviser to her own agency. These contracts were facilitated through the Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF), the agency created in 2016 to manage the island’s fiscal crisis and implement austerity measures. As with other controversial appointments, such as that of the fiscal-board director Natalie Jaresko, the exorbitant salaries are rationalized as necessary to recruit the kind of talent needed to resolve the island’s financial crisis.

“Those who supported Keleher’s confirmation responded to criticisms over her eye-popping salary by insisting that she had the kind of “world-class” skills and credentials that Puerto Rico’s education system sorely needed. She was hailed as a gifted technocrat and an expert in the use of data-driven, evidence-based practices and performance metrics. She was also described as someone who, precisely by virtue of not being from the island, would be immune the kind of partisan politics that corrupted the work of previous secretaries and the performance of the government as a whole. That appears not to be the case, with Puerto Rico’s Civil Rights Commission already investigating her office for ethics violations and political favoritism.

“As it turns out, her policy and practice reforms have also been anything but transparent, and the “data” of her “data-driven” rationale has not been made widely available. One of her very first moves, for example, was to shutter more than 150 schools. But she never explained how she chose the schools that would be closed beyond a vague reference to “loss of students” due to migration.”

Do you think Julia should go home?

#JuliaGoHome

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Puerto Rico, Vouchers

Arizona: Is This the Most Egregious Charter Scandal in a State with No Charter Accountability?

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2018 //
5

 

Arizona was long known as the Wild West of charters, but that was before Ohio, Florida, and Michigan jumped into the game.

This charter scandal was so bad that even the president of the state charter board denounced it. 

“This is probably one of the most egregious, most outrageous things I’ve ever read about a charter school,” Kathy Senseman, President of the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools, said in a special session Tuesday.

“The board was made aware of an investigation by a bankruptcy court and U.S. Department of Justice into potential fraud at the Starshine Academy. Investigators allege founder Trish McCarty used taxpayer money for personal expenses. Recent records show the school nearly $3 million in debt.

“I’ve done absolutely everything that I can do in every single case to do everything right,” McCarty told ABC15 by phone.

“Investigators questioned a cash advance made at a Sante Fe casino, car rentals and Walmart purchases paid for by the school. McCarty said the purchases were legitimate because Starshine had a location there. Still, the state board said many financial records were missing or incomplete.

“According to the most recent overall academic rating in 2014 by the charter school board, Starshine ranked 48.96 on a 100-point scale, classifying it “does not meet standard.” The school fell from a 70 out of the 100-point ranking in 2012.

“McCarty said around half of the school’s 90 students are refugees and Starshine faced dropping enrollment, accounting for the low rating.

“Starshine filed for bankruptcy protection in 2016 after failing to keep up with payments on a $12-million expansion.

“This case “is the poster child of basically what’s wrong with charter schools in Arizona,” said Jim Hall, Founder of Arizonans for Charter School Accountability.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization
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