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Tulsa: Watch Out for the Well-Funded Know-Nothing Reformers (LINK ADDED)

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2018 //
30

 

Betty Casey is an award-winning journalist and blogger in Tulsa.

In this post, she summarizes the multiple failures of the Billionaire reformers, who do not include a single educator in their ranks. The GatesFoundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation are seeking to transform America’s public schools, yet every one of their big ideas has failed. People line up to take their money because they have so much money.

Casey details the numerous failed Superintendents endorsed by the Btoad Superintendents Academy, and she only scratches the surface. Many communities know by now that hiring a Broadie spells trouble and strife.

She gives a valuable overview of the Lies That Reformers Tell to gain control of entire districts. She warns her fellow Tulsans against taking Gates money.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Propaganda, Tulsa, Walton Foundation

Arizona’s Corrupt and Failing Charter Schools: Do Taxpayers Care?

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2018 //
12

E.J. Montini, a regular columnist for the Arizona Republic, wrote an opinion piece wondering whether taxpayer in Arizona care that charter schools are wasting their money, closing without notice, discriminate against kids they don’t want, and are not subject to state laws requiring accountability or transparency, not even required to avoid conflicts of interest.

Lawmakers don’t care.

Not long ago the ACLU of Arizona published a report outlining how a number of Arizona charter school manage to discriminate against students they’d rather not have in their classrooms.

This would include minority students, kids with disabilities, special education students, discipline problems and children who weren’t as advanced as other academically…

The centrist Grand Canyon Institute has produced lengthy reports on the lack of financial accountability for charters.

Remember, these are public schools.

They use your tax money. Lots and lots of it.

They spent your money how?

But they don’t have to share financial information or be monitored by the state Auditor General like regular public schools.

They don’t have to be transparent about how much they pay their administrators, or anyone else.

There is no competitive bid process, so nepotism runs rampant.

And even when the charter board finds out that a school is failing financially, like the Discovery Creemos Academy, it doesn’t have to power to intervene.

It’s a crazy system.

Ripe for abuse at every level.

And that situation exists only because the people currently in control of state government allow it to exist

 Democrats have introduced a series of bills that would, in essence, make charter schools follow the same rules as other public schools.

They’ve gone nowhere.

Charter schools spend more on administrative overhead than public schools. So?

Does anyone care?

Or do Arizona voters like to be ripped off?

 

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

Karen Wolfe: Marshall Tuck, Running for State Superintendent, Funded by Privatization Leaders

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2018 //
29

 

Karen Wolfe, parent activist in California, reports that Marshall Tuck—candidate for state superintendent of schools— is once again the candidate of the privatizers. She learned that he recently returned a gift of $5,000 to an anti-gay crusader.

More troubling is the money he did not return.

She writes:

”Tuck’s donors include Doris Fisher (whose Gap retail company has faced numerous child labor scandals), Eli Broad (a former top investor at AIG whose non-accredited Broad Academy trains privatizing “education leaders”), Alice Walton (the anti-labor heir to the Walmart fortune), Reed Hastings (a Silicon Valley billionaire who has tried for years to take away the right of local voters to elect their own school boards.)

“Tuck’s campaign is also apparently being funded by political action committees, despite its pledge last August that it “has not accepted—and will not accept—contributions from companies or PACs.”

“On January 11, Tuck’s campaign reported receiving $23,725 and $37,430 from a group called Govern for California, chaired by George Penner, husband of Walmart heir Carrie Walton Penner, as well as $5,000 from Fieldstead & Co.”

“Fisher, Walton, Broad, and Hastings are leading financiers of the movement to privatize public schools. Ironically, while California is a blue state, its Silicon Valley billionaires have funded an aggressive and politically powerful movement to destroy public schools and replace them with charter schools.

”The primary election will be held on June 5, with the general election this November.

“Tuck’s opponent, Tony Thurmond, is a social worker, former school board member, and current member of the state assembly. He has been endorsed by Senator Kamala Harris, U.S. Congressional Representatives Barbara Lee, Eric Swalwell, and Karen Bass, and the teachers’ union.

“Tuck, on the other hand, has the same pro-privatizing platform that voters rejected when he ran for the position four years ago. It’s the same education platform of Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and John Kasich, and Vice President Mike Pence: Deregulate public education, outsource school services, make it harder for teachers to gain tenure, and expand the market of “school choice.””

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Puerto Rico: Five Reasons Why Privatization of the Public Schools is a Rotten Idea

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2018 //
12

 

Jeremy Mohler of In the Public Interest explains why privatization of public schools in Puerto Rico is a very bad idea. 

He writes:

“Last week, I travelled to Puerto Rico and found something I hadn’t expected. Sure, folks thought the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA, hadn’t helped enough after Hurricane Maria, but they were resigned, not angry.

”One taxi driver calmly explained to me how he was planning, at 40 years old, to leave the island for Texas in hopes of new opportunities and higher pay. Hopelessness radiated from the Burger Kings, lavish hotels, and graffiti covered walls of San Juan’s tourist oriented service economy.

”Yet, the island’s public school teachers were both angry and optimistic. They held a rally on Friday in Old San Juan to oppose Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s new education reform bill that would allow charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, into an already stressed public education system. They practically ran the Secretary of Education, who has described Maria as “an opportunity to create new, better schools,” off the stage after she tried to soften the blow of the governor’s plan.

”I was there to help them make the argument that charter schools are a bad idea for Puerto Rico. I boiled it down to five reasons.

”The first: despite the rhetoric about “choice” and “local control,” charter schools actually take control from families and communities. Instead of elected school boards, they are managed by private groups with little guidance or regulation.

“This lack of democracy has a number of consequences, but one is particularly poignant when it comes to Puerto Rico. As Hurricane Irma approached Florida last September, residents of all ages huddled in shelters set up in government buildings, schools, and other well-built structures. But only a handful of the state’s 654 charter schools were available because their leaders decided not to open them or the school buildings weren’t required to meet construction guidelines for hurricane protections.

“Can you imagine if Puerto Rico’s public schools, many of which served as shelters and community centers during and after Maria, weren’t available?

“Second, charter schools tend to pull revenues away from public school districts faster than the districts can reduce their costs. This is because many of the expenses associated with educating a student who transfers to a charter school — and takes public funding with them — remain with the district due to fixed costs, such as building utilities.

”In 2016, the Los Angeles Unified School District estimated it had lost over $591 million the prior school year due to declining enrollment, increased oversight costs, and special education costs. In 2012, Philadelphia’s school district found that students that transferred to charter schools cost them $7,000 more per student in the first year.

”As Puerto Rico continues to suffer through a fiscal crisis, why destabilize the public school system even more?

”The third reason is, as the “school choice” rhetoric goes, charter schools do in fact “disrupt” students and teachers. They can close up shop at any time during the school year and often do. Two weeks ago, a school in Sacramento, California, closed halfway through the year by handing students a letter on their way out the door as school ended, leaving dozens of families scrambling to find another school over the weekend.

“As a trauma-induced mental health crisis sweeps the island, the last things students need is more disruption.”

Read on to learn the last two reasons.

Crisis capitalism is circling poor Puerto Rico.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization

John Thompson: Oklahoma City Schools Under Siege by Reformers

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2018 //
6

John Thompson, teacher and historian, writes here about the invasion of the privatizers in Oklahoma City.

 

Every January, the start of National School Choice Week marks the beginning of The Oklahoman editorials in support of charter and private school expansion. Given the $16.5 million grant by Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education to the Walton-funded Oklahoma Public School Resource Center, and the state’s charter school conversion law, which allows the state to override school systems that turn down charter applications, this annual event marks the beginning of an increasingly dangerous school privatization season.
https://schoolchoiceweek.com/states/oklahoma/
http://newsok.com/feds-send-16.5m-to-oklahoma-for-charter-schools/article/5565941
This year’s editorials in favor of school choice expansion indicate an even more worrisome assault on public schools is likely. A former Oklahoma City Public School System (OKCPS) board member wants to break the 46,000 student system into an overwhelmingly black district, a predominantly Hispanic district, and a more affluent no-majority district. The most extreme 2018 proposal was recently made by City Councilman David Greenwell. He wants to convert the OKCPS into a city-sponsored charter district!
http://newsok.com/conversation-underway-about-improving-okc-school-district/article/5584577
The Oklahoman subsequently editorialized that the resignation of the OKCPS superintendent, Aurora Lora, illustrates the “sort of churn” that makes it “nearly impossible” to “move the needle” on school improvement for the 85% low-income district. It didn’t mention that Lora is a graduate of the Broad Residency in Urban Education. Neither does it mention the reasons why educators opposed the micromanaging she was taught by Broad, and how Broad sees the cultivation of churn as a feature, not a flaw, of its corporate governance.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/08/20/Local/Graphics/Broadmemos.pdf?tid=a_mcntx
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/broad-foundationsplan-to-expand-influence-in-school-reform/2012/08/20/c118e134-eb0a-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_blog.html?utm_term=.e00562a71ec5
The editorial called for “truly significant change from the status quo” where “all ideas should at least be considered.” It then buried the lede, “Brent Bushey, head of the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center said his group backs ‘quality options’ for students and that he hopes Greenwell’s comments lead to more talk about more quality options.”
In the disrespected field of education, it isn’t unusual for privatizers, to say that “everything should be on the table.” But, how many Americans would want a Commander in Chief who says he won’t “rule anything in or out” in terms of nuclear confrontations?
Okay, given Donald Trump’s mindset, that’s a touchy metaphor, so let’s use a medical analogy: Would we want a medical system that is free to conduct whatever experiments it wants, or that would institutionalize risky procedures in order to treat certain conditions without a careful study of their unintended consequences? 
The corporate reform Oklahoma Public School Resource Center, and a steady stream of supporters of the so-called “portfolio model” of reform, continue to promote charter expansion. But I’ve yet to hear of a portfolio proponent who would put the inherent dangers of their plan on the table for public discussion. Whether they believe it or not, charter advocates still claim that their schools can serve the “same” kids as neighborhood schools, and that a robust accountability system can somehow prevent the mass exiting of students who make it harder to raise test scores.
I don’t expect true believers in charter portfolios to get into the weeds of school improvement and explain why they could succeed in Oklahoma City with the models that failed in Tennessee, Nevada, and elsewhere, even though our charters would have at least 50% per student less funding than those of other states. Neither do I anticipate an explanation of why Indianapolis’s well-funded “reforms,” that are being marketed for OKC, have produced student performance gains that are the same as the OKCPS “status quo.” But, shouldn’t they acknowledge the downsides of the so-called successes that our business leaders have been hearing promoted in private discussions? Denver is finally admitting that its achievement gap is one of the worst in the nation, and New Orleans and Memphis can’t deny that they are third and first, nationally, in “disconnected youth” or kids out of school, without jobs.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/upshot/a-better-way-to-compare-public-schools.html
https://co.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2015/10/07/report-denver-ranks-last-among-50-cities-on-income-based-achievement-gaps/#.VvHlzhIrK3U
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/04/18/393849058/in-new-orleans-young-lives-adrift
I hope, however, that OKC leaders will ask whether a policy, which is likely to result in thousands of school-aged kids walking the streets during the day, should be “off the table.” I would also hope they would ask why Tulsa’s Deborah Gist, and her team of Broadies, have failed so miserably. Tulsa’s poverty rate is below that of Oklahoma City, and their schools have benefited from huge investments by the Gates Foundation and other national and local edu-philanthropists, but only two urban districts have produced lower test score growth from 3rd to 8th grade. Perhaps we need a conversation about why the test-driven, choice-driven, technocratic model pushed by the Billionaires Boys Club has been such a failure. 
https://www.broadcenter.org/alumni/directory/?fwp_alumni_keyword=tulsa
The cornerstone of accountability-driven, competition-driven corporate reform was once called “earned autonomy.” Now, the basically same concept is pushed with a kinder and gentler spin. The idea is to reward schools that exhibit high test scores with the freedom to offer holistic learning. Regardless of what you call it, the plan is to impose top-down, teach-to-the-test, even scripted instruction, on lower performing schools. The approach is designed to stack the competition between choice and neighborhood schools in favor of charters.
https://www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/Portfolio_components_2.pdf
I want to stress, however, that I support a public conversation. After I wrote a rebuttal to the former OKCPS board member seeking to break up the system, he and I have had a couple of hours of discussions. He doesn’t want more segregation but he’s tired of the micromanaging. We both want more site based management. After all, most educators and stakeholders who I know are tired of the social engineering imposed by Broadies.
http://newsok.com/former-teacher-lets-not-divide-okc-schools/article/5583744
But the conversation must follow the principle of, “First, Do No Harm.” We must not treat our children like lab rats. All win-win policies should be on the table, but we shouldn’t contemplate discredited theories such as earned autonomy, which actually means earned dignity, that may benefit some while severely damaging other students. For instance, do we really want to repeat the all-charter NOLA experiment if it means that 18% of young people will be out of school and out of the workforce? Should advocates be empowered to deny autonomy to schools they are competing with? Should today’s well-funded market-driven activists be empowered to permanently privatize our future children’s public education system? 
OKCPS board spends hours on process to define goals
Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Oklahoma, Privatization

“Yes, Charter Schools Do Take Money Away From Public Schools”

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2018 //
17

 

It is hard to understand why anyone thinks that charter schools have. O fiscal impact on public schools. There is only one pot of money for education, and not many (or any) states are expanding that pot. The Trump administration wants to cut the federal education budget and divert more money to charters and vouchers.

This is a post about a new study by Duke University economist Helen Ladd and John Singleton that nails down the fiscal Harm that charter schools do to public schools.

Here is the summary.

Here is the study.

Here is the abstract:

”A significant criticism of the charter school movement is that funding for charter schools diverts money away from traditional public schools. As shown in prior work by Bifulco and Reback (2014) for two urban districts in New York, the magnitude of such adverse fiscal externalities depends in part on the nature of state and local funding policies. In this paper, we build on their approach to examine the fiscal effects of charter schools on both urban and non-urban school districts in North Carolina. We base our analysis on detailed balance sheet information for a sample of school districts that experienced significant charter entry since the statewide cap on charters was raised in 2011. This detailed budgetary information permits us to estimate a range of fiscal impacts using a variety of different assumptions. We find a large and negative fiscal impact from $500-$700 per pupil in our one urban school district and somewhat smaller, but still significant, fiscal externalities on the non-urban districts in our sample.”

Public schools that are underfunded must cut their budgets so that a small minority of students can attend charter schools. It makes no sense.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Disruption, Funding

North Carolina: NPE Action Endorses Educator Challenging Most Powerful Politician

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2018 //
7

 

Jennifer Mangrum is one courageous woman. She is challenging Phil Berger, the far-right leader of the North Carolina State Senate. Berger has harassed teachers and passed laws to authorize charters, for-profit charters, online charters and vouchers. It is not an overstatement to say that Senator Phil Berger hates public schools and their teachers.

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has endorsed Mangrum. Mangrum has 12 years of experience as a classroom teacher. She is currently a professor of education at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro.

If every public school parent and every graduate of a public school voted for Mangrum, she would oust the worst legislator in the state.

VOTE!!!

VOTE FOR JENNIFER MANGRUM!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, North Carolina, Privatization

Oklahoma City: Councilman Proposes to Privatize Entire City School District

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2018 //
19

This is how you can spot a corporate education reformer: They don’t like democracy. They don’t like elected school boards. They think the private sector knows best.

In Oklahoma City, a member of the City Council has proposed turning the entire school district-the state’s largest–over to the city, which can then convert it to an all-charter district. The heart of the matter is to eliminate the elected school board and turn the reins of the district over to the business leaders and entrepreneurs. The new mayor-elect is intrigued, because the proposal puts him in the driver’s seat. Yet there is zero evidence that mayoral control solves any pressing problems: See, Chicago.

Have they learned nothing from the big flop of the all-charter Achievement School District in Tennessee and Nevada? Have they swallowed the myth of New Orleans?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization

Colorado: Director of Online Charter School Under Investigation

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2018 //
7

The executive director of an online learning charter school has been placed on leave while the school’s attorney conducts an internal investigation. Why he is being investigated was not disclosed.

Richard Mestas, executive director and principal of GOAL Academy High School, the state’s largest alternative-education program, has been placed on paid administrative leave during an internal investigation, says the school’s attorney, Dustin Sparks of Monument.

Sparks said Thursday he is conducting the investigation…

Mestas, a Pueblo native, had been acting as executive director since July 2016 before being named sole finalist for the position in February 2017.

He has been affiliated with GOAL, an acronym for Guided Online Academic Learning, since 2007, when he was principal of Dolores Huerta Preparatory High School, a charter school in Pueblo.

Dolores Huerta and GOAL, which became a separate school in 2008, were two of five charter schools in the Cesar Chavez School Network.

But the for-profit education management group experienced massive internal strife. At one point, Mestas was said to be held against his will in his office and physically threatened by the network’s chief executive officer.

The state education department threatened to close all the schools amid staff upheaval, financial mismanagement and allegations that Cesar Chavez School Network was misusing taxpayer money, based on an independent audit. Instead, the schools were released from the network in 2009 and allowed to operate independently.

The management network dissolved in 2010.

GOAL was authorized under the Colorado Charter School Institute but petitioned Falcon D-49 to come under its wing in 2012.

D-49’s board approved a three-year contract extension with GOAL on Feb. 8, accepting a revised budget of $31.3 million for this school year and requiring the school to remain in good academic standing.

Is the problem academic or financial?

Stay tuned.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Oakland Parent: Leave Our Public Schools Alone!

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2018 //
13

 

The Broad Foundation, elected by no one, has been experimenting on the Oakland, California, public schools for a decade or more. Its goal is to get rid of all democratic governance and privatize all the schools. It has not closed the achievement gap or reached any of its goals.

Oakland public school parent Jane Nylund describes the reform plan in Oakland (whose last Superintendent Antwan Wilson bailed out after adding administrative bloat and became chancellor of the D.C. schools, then resigned in D.C. after trying to transfer his daughter into a coveted school, violating the lottery plan he authored.)

Nylund writes:

“It is with disappointment, but not surprise, to find out that our community is still being used as a mouthpiece via CRPE [Center for Reinventing Public Education] and other reform groups, to come up with a narrative that will make it more palatable to sell school closure to the public. This narrative, which is being communicated to the public via the Blueprint committee, is lockstep with the plans that CRPE and others have put in place to continue the expansion of charter schools in Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area. If there was any doubt as to what the grand plan is, you can read all about it in this report. CRPE makes no effort to hide it, but it’s still a major disappointment to once again find that our community is being used as “engagement” pawns in the charter expansion game.

“From Center for Reinventing Public Education:

https://www.crpe.org/publications/slowdown-bay-area-charter-school-growth-causes-solutions

[It says:] “Ultimately, the growth of charters will be fundamentally constrained as long as districts fail to consolidate or close underenrolled district schools. Serious attention needs to go into developing a strategy that requires or incentivizes these actions and provides political backing to district and board officials who are trying to make these adjustments.” [End quote]

“High level: the Bay Area is saturated with charters, there aren’t any more reasonably priced facilities, so what is a charter operator to do? The added complication in Oakland is its “toxic local politics.” Meaning, this community won’t go down the primrose path willingly, so the district has to sugarcoat it. A lot.

“Step 1-Come up with a survey that isn’t really a survey. It’s a way to steer respondents into answering questions that favor school closure/consolidation

“I read it and was amazed by the complete lack of any sort of objectivity. This “survey” needs to be called out for what it is-a method to “engage” an unsuspecting public for buy-in to justify more disruption in the district to close/consolidate schools. It is not a real survey; it’s full of biased, leading questions-who wouldn’t want safe, supported schools? But then, once the data is collected and put out in the media, the district uses that completely biased information to justify their decisions. “Well, it’s not our fault we closed your school and opened a charter in its place-it’s what you said you wanted on the survey”. If the district’s plan is to disrupt the district even more than they have in the past, then they need to own that decision and stop using the public this way. It’s unconscionable, but it seems that is the usual method.

“Slide 8 is my favorite. Respondents were asked several questions about changing school sizes/consolidation; the questions didn’t get much support. But, just to make sure that the district could turn those non-supporters into supporters, they added a survey choice “Potentially support based on the outcomes of local engagement”. To the respondent, that’s a definite maybe-or-maybe-not response, but the district captures the “potential support” as actual support, combines the two positive numbers together, and lo and behold, now everyone supports school closure/consolidation, even the non-supporters. It’s all good! And these numbers will be repeated over, and over, and over….

“Slide 16 is another good one. It concerns sizes of elementary schools. There is this random quote on the slide that has nothing to do with the data presented on the slide:

“OUSD does not perform better than the identified peers with minority students using 2017 CA School Dashboard data”

“Meaning what? The subliminal message is that OUSD doesn’t do a good job having these smaller elementary schools/classes (shown on the slide), so we don’t need them. Terrible example of overreach and causation which doesn’t exist. Don’t fall for it.

“Step 2-Use a Broad-trained employee to create an enrollment model

“I know, right? This isn’t going to end well.

“Step 3-Use data to generate a list of “peer” districts that will determine some kind of random school size target, with no thought as to whether those sizes are what works for Oakland

“Generate a benchmark? This one is so far out there in terms of random data crunching that I don’t know where to begin. For starters, the peer list did not include West Contra Costa, a local district that is nearly a perfect match to our own. The fact that West Contra Costa didn’t make the list makes me question the criteria was used to generate it. Again, keep you eyes on the target and your seat backs and tray tables in the full and upright position. So someone pulls together a peer list of schools (LA Unified? With 400,000+ students? Not our peer) and comes up with some sort of average school size that OUSD should meet. Why? If logic dictates, then it goes without saying that these peer districts must be full service districts with wraparound services. Remember, that’s what’s being sold to the community. Reach the size of the peer district, and that’s what you will have.

“Wrong. In small type, the author does concur that “The above is based only on peer benchmarking; peers may or may not have quality community schools.”

“Again, go back to the quote at the beginning of the message. Does CRPE say anything about full service community schools? No, of course not. It’s about charter expansion and getting tasty real estate by the Lake. It’s always been about that.

“Turn this entire exercise on its head. Maybe those peer districts want to have full services. Maybe they want smaller class sizes like we have in Oakland. But due to all kinds of constraints, like funding, they can’t have these things. So why would OUSD want to match these peer districts? LA Unified and San Diego Unified are both going broke. Oh, right, so is OUSD.

“Step 4-Use inappropriate districts in your peer list to make it look like Oakland doesn’t perform as well as its “peers”, and therefore it’s okay to have larger class sizes, just like their “peers”

“Don’t use districts like SF Unified as a peer. They might be our neighbor, but their FRPL is around 56%. OUSD is about 74%. Not the same. But adding wealthier districts to the peer list creates the narrative that Oakland doesn’t perform as well as their peers (with the bigger schools/class sizes). Wealth generates higher test scores.

“An analogy would be, “Well, we give all of our Oakland kids breakfast but only half the kids in a wealthier district get breakfast. Our kids don’t seem to be performing better than those other kids, so therefore we should take our kids’ breakfast away.” Seriously.

“Step 5-Come up with a breakeven enrollment model that uses teachers’ salaries as variable costs. Huh?

“I’m not an accountant, but I do have an MBA. I was taught that generally salaries are considered fixed costs, at least in the short run. Teachers don’t get paid by the hour, or by how any widgets they make. They get paid the same whether they teach ten kids or thirty. Variable costs are things like books and food. So what’s up with using a model that treats teachers like books or food?

“Well, turns out there is a model for that very concept. It comes from the Friedman Foundation, another ed reform group which espouses Milton Friedman’s dream of sending kids to private schools through vouchers. In order to justify the cost of using a voucher (and thus taking that money away from public schools), the group has espoused the idea that teachers themselves are, in fact, a short term variable cost of doing business, and not fixed. Like supplies or pizza workers. In other words, Friedman’s model assumes that we have a ready supply of teachers of all sorts, experienced, certified, that we can tap into and hire and lay off at will at any time. It also assumes that all that hiring/firing in no way will cause any kind of disruption and impact to learning. Oh, and it won’t increase class size, either. Maybe in some other parallel universe. So by treating teachers as variable costs, the Friedman group can now advocate for a larger dollar amount of the voucher by claiming that the voucher covers only the variable cost portion of educating the child. Which according to them, includes books, food, and teachers. If they left the teacher portion out of that voucher, it would be a lot smaller.

“If teachers’ salaries were treated as variable costs in the breakeven calculation, I have to question the entire validity of the model. Maybe the answer would be the same, but it’s difficult for me to accept cost assumptions pattered after a reform group that wants to take my tax dollars (and yours) and give it to a student to attend a school that teaches that man and dinosaurs lived together. That’s just not cool with me.

“Step 6-deal with community pushback by dangling a carrot, that really turns out to be a stick
What to do when you need to convince the community that a bad idea is really a good idea? Easy. Use their emotional buy-in to support full-service community schools. And then, gently explain to them that in order to provide these services, we must close schools. That’s exactly what the survey did. Then, as if by magic, millions of dollars will appear that the district will use thoughtfully and responsibly to fund these programs. That is the predetermined outcome that the survey was after, and that’s what they got. Sounds great, right?

“Right, only it’s magical thinking. See CRPE quote at the beginning of this email if you’re not convinced. Closing schools does one thing: allows another charter to move into the building (gotta have more!). The last 19 school closures resulted in 15 charters opening. OUSD enrollment drops (think charter expansion), millions of dollars leave the district, and all those purported savings go up in smoke. No money for programs. Not going to happen. But, CRPE gets what it wants, as do the local charter operators, who by their own admission, desperately want to expand. Because we don’t have enough schools as it is. Or do we? Hey, it’s the free market at its finest. What could possibly go wrong?”

 

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization
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