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Laura Chapman: Reformers with Too Much Money and Time Making Trouble for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2017 //
11

What is laughingly called “Reform” is actually an interrelated group of education policies that have failed repeatedly. Reformers are never discouraged by failure. They ignore evidence. They like to fund any effort that will demoralize teachers and lead to privatization of public schools.

Laura Chapman reviews some of the current crop of reform efforts built on guess, conjecture, and ideology.

She writes:

“The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is trying to dominate policy in Kansas City. It has a parallel in Indianapolis called the Mind Trust.

“The Kauffman Foundation is part of the Education Cities network promoting “new” and “great” schools, but it is not just a member. It is a major contributor to that network, along with the Broad, Walton Family, Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael and Susan Dell foundations. Education Cities is part of a large network of “reform” organizations.

“Empower Schools.org, for example, is an adjunct to Education Cities. Empower Schools says: “We work with policymakers and education system leaders to adopt “Third Way” policies, structures, and strategies that allow for schools of all types, including both traditional district schools and schools led by proven and promising independent leaders. We capture and share the most promising Third Way practices to inform and shape the national conversation on education reform.”

“In other words, Empower Schools is far more than a starter of a “conversations.” The network connects 18 programs/organizations, among these the New Teacher Project, Relay Graduate School of Education, Teach for America, and others intent on de-professionalizing education.

Click to access An-introduction-to-the-Third-Way.pdf

“The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation also funds the “Education Innovation Cluster” initiative, part of a USDE funded Digital Promise program (Obama era) and intended to bring together in one mega network people and groups identified as entrepreneurs, funders, researchers, educators, and other community stakeholders (families, local government, non-profits) to “design, launch, iterate on, and disseminate breakthrough learning practices and tools.”

“Breakthrough learning practices and tools” really refers the expanded use of on-line learning, competency-based awards such as badges and certificates for students and teacher education, learning enabled with mobile devices and so on. USDE appears to have outsourced this program http://nextgenlearning.org/blog/education-innovation-clusters-help-way

“The Kauffman Foundation has also been praised as a reason for Kansas City to be included in The U.S. Education Innovation Index: Prototype and Report, a rating system for cities released in September 2016 by Bellwether Education and the Digital Promise Innovation Clusters.

“This index measures “innovation activities “and conditions of urban schools along 42 indicators in nine categories: Innovation Culture (e.g., mayor control, Gates compact); Need for Academic Improvement ( e.g., scores of schools on state tests), Collaboration and Coordination Mechanisms (e.g., OneApp), Talent Supply and Quality (TFA a plus), Innovation-Supporting Institutions (e.g., the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, the Mind Trust in Indianapolis).
Innovation-Friendly Policies ( e.g., tax incentives) , Innovation Investment (venture capital flowing to education startups), District Deviation (a measure of how public schools budget money across eight categories compared to other similar school districts in the state), and Dynamism (a fancy word referring to the opening and closing of schools, market churn for schools). More detail on the rating system is outlined in Table A2: “Indicator Scoring Method.”

“This “innovation index” project from Bellwether was inspired by a similar effort on an international scale and funded by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) http://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Measuring-Innovation-in-Education-USA.pdf.

“Bellwether’s index was also influenced by another index, published in 2013: Alive in the SwAmp 3. Assessing DigitAl innovAtions in eDucAtion.” That quirky typeface is in the title. The title is also prescient.

“Alive in the Swamp was published with support from Pearson, NewSchools (venture philanthropy), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It features colorful charts to show the potential influence of technology on learning and color-coded rating scheme for digital innovation in education.

“One of the authors of the digital index is Michael Fullan, a distinguished Canadian scholar in education whose ideas have been used to develop a “School Quality Improvement Index for California’s “CORE” distracts. The second author, Katelyn Donnelly, is an economist and director of Pearson’s venture fund for low-cost schools in the developing world. The examples of innovation cited in the report include Rocketship Education, School of One, Kahn Academy, and Learn Zillion, each of these rated for likelihood of producing “transformative outcomes.” These examples certainly tell us about inhabitants and supporters of the swamp-lands in education. See especially, page 13 and Appendix A.”

Click to access alive_in_the_swamp.pdf

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

In Response to My Article, a Truly Stupid Defense Of Detroit Charters

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2017 //
13

I just saw an article which purported to respond to my article in the Detroit News saying that charters were an abject failure in Detroit.

I wrote:

“The only way to improve education in Detroit and Michigan is to admit error and change course.

“Michiganders should acknowledge that competition has not produced better schools. Detroit needs a strong and unified public school system that has the support of the business and civic community. There should be a good public school in every neighborhood.

“Every school should be staffed with credentialed and well-qualified teachers. Class sizes should be no larger than 20 in elementary schools, no larger than 24 in middle and high schools. Every school should offer a full curriculum, including the arts, civics, history, and foreign languages. Every school should have a library and media center staffed by a qualified librarian. Every school should have fully equipped laboratories for science. Every school should have a nurse and a social worker. Every school should be in tip-top physical condition.

“Students should have a program that includes physical education and sports teams, dance, chorus, robotics, dramatics, videography, and other opportunities for intellectual and social development.

“That is what the best suburban communities want for their children. That’s what will work for the children of Detroit and the rest of Michigan.”

This is the response. https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/no-sports-at-charters-good-teams-cant-undo-a-poor-school

The writer of the response claims that I believe what public schools need is sports teams. Sports teams. What about the arts, a full curriculum, experienced teachers, small classes, a nurse and social worker, well-tended facilities, robotics, dramatics? Nope. Just “sports teams.”

What about “poor kids need what rich kids take for granted.” Nope.

He or she ignored everything I said to focus on what I mentioned in passing.

The writer is defending a failed status quo.

Time for fresh thinking, not the failed charter idea.

Categories Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Reform, Ignorance, Stupid

My Plan to Fix the Much-Abused Schools of Detroit

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2017 //
27

The Detroit News invited me to write a plan to revive education in Detroit.

Detroit has been a Petri dish for reformers for 25 years. Everything they tried has failed.

Here is my proposal.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2017/12/13/charter-schools/108585724/

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization

Mitchell Robinson: The Educational Malpractice of Eva Moskowitz

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2017 //
8

Mitchell Robinson teaches music education at Michigan State University. He read Elizabeth Green’s fawning article about Eva Zmoskowitz and her Success Academy charter chain, and he blew a gasket.

He is equally mad at Green and Moskowitz for reasons you will understand if you read his post.

Basucally, he is furious that two non-educators are touting a model that can never be “scaled up” because it depends on culling students.

He writes:

“I’m still trying to understand what’s so “innovative” about Ms. Moskowitz’s approach to teaching. Is it innovative for your “model teachers” to scream at little kids when they act like…little kids? Is it innovative to expel more students of color than your neighborhood public schools do? Is it innovative to be against “poor kids…get(ting) medical, nutritional and other services at school“? I’m struggling with how anyone, including Ms. Green, could consider Eva Moskowitz’s approach at Success Academy to be innovative–but then, I’ve only been teaching for 37 years, and attended a state university for my undergraduate degree in education.

“I am beyond tired—beyond exhausted, really—of persons who have never taught anyone anything lecturing the rest of us who have about what we are doing wrong, how stupid we are, how lazy we are, and how they know better than we do when it comes to everything about teaching and learning. How about this, Eva and Elizabeth?–instead of pontificating about things you are equally arrogant and ignorant of, why don’t you each go back to school, get an education degree, or two, or three, get certified, do an internship (for free–in fact, pay a bunch of money to do so), or two, or three, then see if you can find a job in a school. Then, teach.I don’t care what you teach; what grade level; what subject. But stick it out for at least a school year. Write your lesson plans. Grade your papers and projects. Go to all of those grade level meetings, and IEP meetings, and school board meetings, and budget negotiation meetings, and union meetings, and curriculum revision meetings, and curriculum re-revision meetings, and teacher evaluation meetings, and “special area” meetings, and state department of education meetings, and professional development in-services, and parent-teacher conferences, and open houses, and attend all those concerts, and football games, and dance recitals, and basketball games, and soccer matches, and lacrosse games, and honor band concerts, and school musicals, and tennis matches, and plays, and debates, and quiz bowl competitions, and marching band shows, and cheerleading competitions, and swim meets.Then do it all 10, or 20, or 30 more times, and let me know how you feel about someone who never did ANY of these things, even for a “few lessons“, telling you how stupid, and lazy you are, and how you’re being a “defender of the status quo” if you’re not really excited to immediately implement their “radical, disruptive” ideas about how to “save public education.”

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

John Thompson: The Sorry Record of the “Portfolio Model” of Closing Public Schools and Replacing Them with Charters

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2017 //
2

John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma. He writes often about education policy. In this post, he recounts the recurring failure of “the portfolio model,” a reformer favorite.


Matt Barnum’s three-part series on the national corporate reform campaign to expand the “portfolio” corporate school reform model provides a balanced appraisal of the movement which is very different than the alt-facts presented by reformers seeking privatization and union-busting.

Barnum’s first post starts with Indiana’s Mind Trust which “has called for dramatic changes to schools; recruited outside advocacy, teacher training, and charter groups; and spent millions to help launch new charter and district schools.” He then warns, “A Mind Trust–style organization may be coming to a city near you.” Barnum further describes “their idealized vision,” known as the “portfolio model,” with an enrollment system which helps families choose schools, and where the local district’s role shrinks to holding schools accountable, often (mostly?) by closing ones that supposedly don’t measure up.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/12/06/a-portfolio-of-schools-how-a-nationwide-effort-to-disrupt-urban-school-districts-is-gaining-traction/

The Mind Trust and other portfolio advocates have assembled teams of “quarterbacks” to contribute money to initiate the portfolio approach and recruit the same privatization team players – Teach for America, Relay Graduate School of Education, TNTP, and Stand For Children.

Barnum writes that it is unclear how much money has been invested in promoting portfolios. He notes that 1/3rd of the $77 million raised by the Mind Trust since 2006 came from national groups, but it is clear that “prominent philanthropies, including some that have also spent millions in recent years funding charter schools nationwide, are investing heavily.” In particular, he cites the Walton, Arnold, and Broad foundations. He points out the role of David Osborne’s book tour, funded by Walton, Arnold, and Broad, where Osborne “recently compared teachers unions’ opposition to charter school expansion in Massachusetts to George Wallace’s promotion of mandated school segregation.”

The thing that jumps out to me with Barnum’s first two posts is that the record of these political campaigns is mixed. And organizing an attack on unions and school boards is much, much easier than actually improving schools. This ambiguity is an even more important theme of his third piece, as well as the sources he footnotes. National reformers may believe that they can come into localities that they know nothing about and push through their privatization schemes. They may have tons of money to gamble on risky social engineering experiments, but they have little or no evidence that the tumult that they instigate would benefit students, and remain oblivious to the damage down by failed experiments.
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/12/08/advocates-of-the-portfolio-model-for-improving-schools-say-it-works-are-they-right/

Barnum cites conservative reformers and research from a range of scholars to puncture the public relations spin of big-bucks portfolio advocates. Even the cornerstone of the experiment, a common enrollment system, has prompted pushback by conservatives who note the way that it would promote more teach-to-the-test malpractice and by patrons who were confused by the systems. Even one of the most highly praised centralized enrollment system, in Denver, did not increase access of special education students to charters or have a statistically significant effect on the number of low-income students in charters.

Advice to the Arnold Foundation

Denver Study Shows Simplifying Enrollment Drove More Disadvantaged Students to Sign Up for Charter Schools

Something similar applies to school closures which is the silver bullet being promised by portfolio advocates. Those who trust the increase in test scores in New Orleans attribute much of the gains to closing schools that were low-performing. As Barnum acknowledges, that only works when there are better schools available, and I would say that it would take more than a portfolio of silver bullets to create them in our most challenging districts. Barnum also links to his compilation of research which showed gains for students in closed schools in only 1/4th of the studies. He showed no examples of closures where displaced students benefitted but the outcomes in receiving schools didn’t decline.

Research Shows Students Can Benefit When a School Closes — but Only If There Are Better Ones to Attend

And the question of costs versus benefits brings us to New Orleans, which is typically cited as the proof of the concept of portfolios. It is the only serious gripe that I have with Barnum’s wording. While he acknowledged that test score growth is a flawed metric, Barnum doesn’t mention why it is so much more problematic in evaluating NOLA and other experiments that focus unflinchingly on bubble-in accountability. Test score growth might or might not mean more learning, and as I hope any teacher would understand, it often means the learning of destructive habits. Personally, I can’t see any scenario where test score growth in a place that stressed such growth as much as the NOLA portfolio can stand by itself as evidence of meaningful learning that beneficial to students.

Regardless, Barnum cites a “national analysis [which] also found that New Orleans students made large academic gains between 2009 and 2015.” I wish he’d been more precise in noting that NOLA only had three years when the growth rate exceeded that of the old failing system. However, Barnum notes that the gains occurred when New Orleans was most generously funded, and was free to suspend or push out large numbers of students. He mentions the lack of clear evidence that gains can be sustained without those tactics, and that “more recent test scores in the city have suggested that schools are backsliding somewhat.” Corporate reformer Peter Cook called the decline “The Great NOLA Train Wreck.”
https://peterccook.com/2017/11/08/great-nola-train-wreck/

Barnum also notes “another concern: expansion of charters in New Orleans coincided with a decline in the number of schools offering prekindergarten.” And regarding NOLA, Newark, and elsewhere, he addresses the conflicts between outside reformers and communities.

Portfolio advocates should also explain the disappointing results of Memphis and Newark. Barnum writes, “A Vanderbilt analysis found that a state takeover effort known as the Achievement School District failed to raise test scores, even as it was dubbed a “national exemplar” in implementing the portfolio model.” I wish he’d also reported that Memphis became #1 as New Orleans became #3 in “disconnected youth,” or students out of school without a job.
http://www.speno2014.com/oydataguide/

Barnum notes a recent, revisionist (and I would say flawed) study which indicates the $200 million Zuckerberg reform investment in Newark was a “mixed success.” In a longer analysis he writes:

Journalist Dale Russakoff wrote a largely critical account of changes that focused on how a large share of the Zuckerberg money went to high-paid consultants. Since, media reports have largely suggested that the approach failed and that the money was wasted.

Given the thorough research by Russakoff, and the work of other excellent journalists, it’s hard for me to take seriously the special pleading by reformers who deny that Newark was a failure. It’s especially hard to fathom how social scientists would get away with spinning the conclusion that Newark portfolio might have worked because it might lead to future gains, but without offering evidence that the happy ending might occur, and “eventually alter system-wide productivity for future cohorts.”

Click to access newark_ed_reform_nber_w23922_suggested_changes.pdf

Finally, Barnum writes, “There is little or no rigorous research comparing gains in Denver, Indianapolis, and Washington D.C. to similar districts that have gone in a different direction.”

Denver was identified as having the largest achievement gap in the nation, indicating that like D.C. the gains may be due to economic growth and/or gentrification. And a recent scandal shows that D.C. still hasn’t shown the ability to curtail the cheating that portfolios would invariably encourage. And as far as Indianapolis, recent research can help estimate the gains that occurred when the Mind Trust and other corporate reformers invested in the city. Median income in Indianapolis is $10,000 or 1/3rd greater than that of the resource-starved Oklahoma City schools and 3rd grade scores are much higher. During the next five years, however, student performance grows at the same rate in both cities, 4.4 years.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2015/10/07/report-denver-ranks-last-among-50-cities-on-income-based-achievement-gaps/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2016/09/21/dps-students-of-color-not-making-as-much-progress-on-state-tests-as-white-peers/
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2017/10/04/indianapolis-public-schools-sees-little-a-f-change-but-innovation-schools-got-top-grades/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/ballou-high-principal-reassigned-following-report-questioning-school-standards/2017/12/04/54bbcdfe-d947-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html?utm_term=.ce1c2339b34d

Now that the claims of gains for portfolios have been largely debunked in Newark, D.C., Tennessee, and Indianapolis, and the extreme exaggerations regarding Denver and New Orleans cut down to size, what are the prospects for the new portfolio public relations campaign? We educators have seen this dog and pony show repeatedly. We need to keep reminding political leaders of the Billionaires Boys Club’s sorry record in education policy.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Watch Out, Boston: Here Comes School Choice, Whether You Want It or Not

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2017 //
14

Christine Langhoff, retired educator, wrote the following information about the corporate reform assault on Boston Public Schools. Voters overwhelmingly rejected expansion of charter school, but the privatization movement is never dissuaded by public opposition. They think democracy is the problem and have no qualms about ignoring the will of the people when it conflicts with their ambition.

Langhoff writes:

Last week, this rather odd Tweet appeared from the Boston Public Schools Twitter account:

The language about “choice” made me remember that NPR featured this article about how “coaches” are helping parents choose schools for their children.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/11/27/551853951/confused-by-your-public-school-choices-hire-a-coach?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2055

Of course, most BPS parents don’t have money for this sort of help. No worries! There’s an edu-business non-profit for that: EdNavigator https://www.ednavigator.com

And they’re coming to Boston! After a successful run in – New Orleans?

So who is behind EdNavigator? The “leadership” page shows a bunch of folks from TNTP and some KIPPsters

https://www.ednavigator.com/who-we-are/leadership

And the Board of Directors is full of a bunch more charteristas, including Chris Stewart, aka @CitizenStewart, as Director of Outreach and External Affairs:

https://www.ednavigator.com/who-we-are/board-of-directors

Their partners page shows many hotels, i.e. low income workers. Remember that the Pritzker hedge fund family of Chicago own Hyatt Hotels :

https://www.ednavigator.com/who-we-are/our-partners

The plan is to offer school choice counseling as a “benefit” to low income workers and by developing this “trust” in their workers, the public school system is supplanted as the knowledgeable entity on education.

“Our Navigators combine expert knowledge of schools with a deep understanding of our communities. Most are accomplished former teachers, school leaders, or counselors, and all have passed a background check, received privacy training and adhere to a strict code of confidentiality.

They’re like pediatricians for your educational health, and they’re always ready to answer questions, troubleshoot problems, and get things done. In a recent survey, 95 percent of EdNavigator members said that their Navigator is “the person I trust most for information and advice about education issues.”

https://www.ednavigator.com/how-we-help

Here in Boston, EdNavigator goes by the name of Boston School Finder
https://www.bostonschoolfinder.org/about

About Boston School Finder
“Boston School Finder is being developed and distributed by a committed and diverse team of Parent Ambassadors supported by local non-profits. These parents and guardians represent nearly all the neighborhoods of Boston, and enroll their children in BPS, charter, Catholic, and private schools.
Funding for Boston School Finder was provided through the Boston Schools Fund and the Barr Foundation, two local non-profit organizations. Web design and development was provided by a team of volunteers who work at Wayfair, a Boston-based e-commerce company specializing in home goods.
Many other organizations, including the City of Boston, Boston Public Schools, the Boston Charter Alliance, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and community organizations from all around the city are providing guidance and input on the site.”

They’ve hired “Parent Ambassadors”
https://www.bostonschoolfinder.org/about/contact

And have detailed information about enrollment for public, private, charter and religious schools
https://www.bostonschoolfinder.org/about/enrollment

Since November 29, some pages for the website have been removed, but here’s some of the information that has gone missing:

2017 Barrr Foundation grants:
Ed Navigator Inc.
To support the EdNavigator expansion to Boston.
• Year Awarded: 2017

• Amount: $500,000

• Term: 24 months

• Program: Education


Boston Schools Fund Inc. To support the development and implementation of the Boston School Finder Family Information Tool.
• Year Awarded: 2017
• Amount: $300,000
Term: 12 months

The Barr Foundation is also a champion of Unified Enrollment, which in turn is part of CRPE’s Gates Compact, all of which will have a detrimental effect on Boston’s public schools.

http://www.bostonschoolsfund.org/boston-compact/

Also in the missing link from November 29, was this list of Board members

PRESIDENT WILLIAM F. AUSTIN
TREASURER WILLIAM F. AUSTIN
CLERK JILL SHAH
DIRECTOR WILLIAM F. AUSTIN
DIRECTOR JILL SHAH
DIRECTOR KATHRYN EVERETT

Austin taught math at Roxbury Prep, which is the charter where John King was a founding teacher before he moved on to New York state and then to replace Arne Duncan. (It is also the school with the persistently highest suspension rate in the state of Massachusetts.) Austin has overseen its four-campus expansion. Shah and her husband own the on-line furniture store Wayfair; her husband is a director of the Federal Reserve Bank.

On Tuesday, Austin confirmed to a member of the Boston Teachers Union that the above is accurate.

So, charteristas and billionaires. Color me skeptical that these organizations are well suited to helping Boston parents choose public schools for their children. It seems, too, that the parents most likely to utilize the bostonschoolfinder.org website are the best educated and most advantaged to begin with.

The Boston City Council held a hearing on Tuesday evening, December 5, which I attended, with the purpose of getting this information on the record. The hearing was on the school assignment process, which has been a colossal boondoggle, featuring algorithms written by MIT students. The current plan was enacted in 2013, and there were supposed to be yearly reports about progress, or lack of and necessary improvements along the way. No reports have been issued over the past four years.

When Councilor Tito Jackson (who supported the “No” position on last year’s charter expansion ballot question) probed for a reason for the lack of reporting, the School Department’s answer was that we’ve had three different standardized state tests, so no judgments can be made about the quality of the schools, information parents need to choose a school. When Jackson asked about Unified Enrollment, the School Department claimed to know nothing about it, that there had been no meetings on the topic. But Mayor Marty Walsh has filed legislation to fast track Unified Enrollment, then later denied he did so after reports became public.

“Currently, students have a list of school options comprising only district schools and can apply also to as many charters as desired. Under unified enrollment, unless school list lengths are expanded, the presence of any charter school on the list necessarily will bump a district school off of it, reducing district school options, states QUEST in its report published on Sept. 18, 2017. Under bill H.2876 filed by Rep. Alice Peisch and co-sponsored by Walsh, Carvalho and Rep. Dan Hunt, charter schools could elect to give enrollment preference to students living near the school.”

http://baystatebanner.com/news/2017/oct/11/quiet-push-unified-enrollment/

(Rep. Alice Peisch, by the way, has been a staunch supporter of charter expansion and was one of their spokespeople during last year’s Question 2.)

On Friday, December 8, the School Department released another plan informed by an MIT algorithm for start times for our schools. Ostensibly, the goal was later start times for high schools, many of which begin now at 7:15. There are no school buses for high schools, which means kids often need to leave home by about 6:00 to arrive at school on public transportation. There has been an uprising among parents since new times were revealed because they have changed start times in 105 of 125 schools (84% of all BPS schools) ostensibly in order to change 21 high school start times.

Under the new plan, many elementary schools are scheduled to begin at 7:15, with afternoon dismissals as early as 1:15. Adding before and after school care to schedules for the littles could mean an 11 hour day away from home. When parents began to push back, asking how they could be expected to juggle work schedules with these new school hours, these pieces of advice were offered:

“My new bell time doesn’t work for me, what can I do?
• For students who are eligible for transportation and where we have capacity on our buses, BPS will provide transportation from off-site, before-school programs to school; and from school to off-site, after-school programs.
• Your school likely has before- or after- school programming. More than 90% of all BPS schools have after-school programing and 90% of BPS schools starting after 9:00 AM have a before-school program. Additionally, we will continue to work with programs and schools to expand available before- and after-school programming across BPS.
• BPS is happy to provide parents, guardians, and students with letters to employers notifying them of a school scheduling change and explaining why this may necessitate a change of working hours. For this, please email starttimes@bostonpublicschools.org.
• We realize that in some cases, the only option for families may be to change schools. For more information on this process, please visit a BPS Welcome Center, its website, bostonpublicschools.org/welcomeservices, or call 617-635-9010. Please also consider attending the BPS School Showcase on Saturday, December 9, at TD Garden; the event begins at 9:00 am and ends at 1:00 pm. For more information, visit bostonpublicschools.org/registrationevents.”

https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/Page/7016

The Boston Globe weighed in, essentially telling parents to suck it up:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2017/12/09/new-school-schedules-are-worth-hassle/tjfhF0WLfE6O1Et90SW7vL/story.html?camp=bg%3Abrief%3Arss%3Afeedly&rss_id=feedly_rss_brief&s_campaign=bostonglobe%3Asocialflow%3Atwitter#comments

Parents have posted a petition which has garnered over 4,700 signatures since Saturday.

https://www.change.org/p/tommy-chang-and-mayor-walsh-stop-immediate-changes-on-school-start-times-in-boston

When I start to add up all this chaos, I come to one conclusion: it’s deliberate.

It makes enrollment in traditional schools more difficult.

It makes school schedules more onerous for parents and kids.

It will destabilize the entire school system.

It will drive families away.

It will make the privatizers gleeful.

It will subvert the voters’ emphatic NO to an expansion of the charter industry.

Right here in the cradle of public education.

Categories Boston, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice

Steven Singer Has Two Theories About Why Facebook Blocks His Posts

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2017 //
8

On two occasions, Steven Singer’s posts have been blocked by Facebook. Both posts were about privatization.

He has pondered why this happens.

He has two theories.

Read here to find out what they are.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Jake Jacobs: Leaked Campaign Policy Book Shows that Wealthy Donors Pushed Clinton to Support Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2017 //
145

Jake Jacobs, writing in Alternet, reports on a Clinton campaign briefing book on education that shows the powerful influence of wealthy charter advocates.

A rare peek into the evolution of Hillary Clinton’s education platform is afforded through an overlooked Wikileaks-published document. Entitled “Policy Book— FINAL,” the PDF file was attached to a 2014 email sent to John Podesta, Clinton’s future campaign chair. The education portion of the document runs 66 pages, mostly concentrated on K-12 policy, and captures specific input from billionaire donors looking to overhaul and privatize public education.

Today, Donald Trump seeks a rapid expansion of charter schools and private school vouchers, while his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, touts “school choice” and market competition for public school at every stop. But in private, Hillary Clinton’s donors, dubbed “experts,” also sought rapid charter expansion and market-based options to replace public schools.

One of the most connected “thought leaders” discussed is Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and the head of the Emerson Collective, a prominent education reform advocacy group. Powell Jobs who has been close with the Clintons since the late ’90s, also sat with Betsy DeVos on the board of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. She set up billionaire “roundtables” with Clinton’s campaign advisors through 2015 while donating millions to Priorities USA, Clinton’s main PAC.

Powell Jobs and Bruce Reed of the Broad Foundation also set their sights on remaking the teaching profession and teacher education. The briefing book, written in 2014, shows Reed boasting about the great accomplishments of the New Orleans charter district, “accomplishments” that have since been exposed as a fraud.

Jacobs writes:

Tying campaign donations to a singular issue like expanding charter schools might in days past been seen as a prohibited quid-pro-quo. But in this cycle, Podesta, O’Leary and Tanden all busily raised campaign money from the same billionaire education reformers with whom they were also talking policy specifics.

But they did more than talk. On June 20, 2015, O’Leary sent Podesta an email revealing the campaign adopted two of Powell Jobs’ suggestions, including “infusing best ideas from charter schools into our traditional public schools.” When Clinton announced this policy in a speech to teachers, however, it was the one line that drew boos.

Clinton needed big money to run. But she also solicited and got the support of the two big teachers’ unions, the NEA and the AFT. Torn between her super-wealthy donors and the leaders of the unions, Clinton eventually fell silent on education issues, to avoid alienating either side.

A personal footnote: Carol Burris and I met twice with Hillary’s top education policy advisor, Ann O’Leary. We tried to persuade her that Hillary should not support charter schools, but we sensed it was futile. She did eventually assure us that Hillary would take a strong stand against for-profit charters, a small victory.

It is no surprise that the faux Democrats in DFER, the Broad Foundation, and Powell Jobs were pushing her to endorse privatization. Perhaps it was a small victory that Clinton realized this was a non-starter with the millions of teachers whose support she needed.

I am certainly not surprised that the big donors wanted to buy her support for privatization. I am not surprised that she wanted their money. We could have fought that out after the election. Even if she followed in Obama’s footsteps on education, she would not have sold out civil rights, the environment, our national parks, our foreign policy, the Supreme Court, and every other function of the federal government.

Having read the briefing book, as much as I disagree with the reformers, I would still pick Clinton over Trump, with enthusiasm. And fight the battles later, without fearing to lose the essential values of our society and our democracy, as well as world peace, which now hang in the balance.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Hillary Clinton

Baker and Weber: The Full Story About Charters in Newark

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2017 //
9

Bruce Baker and Mark Weber have assembled a full report about charters in Newark.

There are successes and failures and much in-between.

Before accepting the assurances of reformers about Newark, read this.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Newark, Privatization, Research

Julian Vasquez Heilig: Charters Are Not the Answer to Segregation and Low Quality Education

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2017 //
6

Julian Vasquez Heilig spoke at the Journey for Justice National Town Hall in D.C. on December 12. He addressed his remarks to the charter supporters who dismissed claims that charters exacerbate segregation. Specifically, he spoke in response to an article in New York magazine by Jonathan Chait, who said that charters don’t cause segregation, they help its victims. Heilig contends that charters exacerbate segregation, as choice always does, and that they draw resources away from the districts that enroll most students.

Heilig has been an active member of the NAACP and chair of its education committee in California.

This is his speech:

Members of the civil rights community have expressed that charters are more segregated, are underperforming, and lack appropriate transparency and accountability to the public.

As a result, in 2016, the Movement for Black Lives, the NAACP and Journey For Justice all called for a charter moratorium.

A national conversation about charters is especially important for the African American community because a report by the NAACP’s Task Force on Quality Education found that one in eight African American students in the United States now attends a charter school.

Even though the popularity of charter schools has plummeted in the public discourse and in many quarters of the civil rights community, the rise in the number of charters has been particularly rapid during the past ten years. Many states have lifted caps on the number of charter schools contained within the original state legislation, owing in part to millions of dollars in financial incentives created by government grant programs and funding that has poured in from foundations funded by billionaires such as Broad, Walton, Gates, Arnold and others

Considering the rapid growth of charter schools, it’s important for the public conversations about school choice to distinguish fact from rhetoric and sloganeering.

Are charters more segregated that neighborhood public schools?

The AP recently reported that about 1 in 7 charters schools are 99% students of color.

In addition to media reports, the predominance of peer reviewed research examining national and local data on the segregation of students in charter schools over the past ten years has demonstrated that school choice is exacerbating existing patterns of segregation.

The research has actually shown this for about two decades. For example, using three national data sets, one research study found that charter schools are “more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.”

Research conducted by Vanderbilt University and Mathematica argued that charters are not “creating greater segregation,” but a careful reading of the data reveals that in the majority of states examined, white and African American students were more likely to choose even more homogenous charter schools.

Why are charters more segregated? The argument is often made by charter proponents that their schools sit in segregated neighborhoods. However, one of the big problems with school choice is that research is demonstrating that “Parents choose to leave more racially integrated district schools to attend more racially segregated charter schools.”

The peer reviewed research has shown that Whites are less likely to attend charters schools with large numbers of Black and Latinos because White families purposefully avoid charter schools that focus on test preparation and “No Excuses” discipline. Recent research has also shown that White families are more likely to attend charters that have parent voice on the board— charters predominately serving Black and Latinos are much less likely to have board members that are parents.

In sum, peer reviewed research has demonstrated that the purposeful choice of African American and white families leads to schools with more homogenous racial compositions than neighborhood public schools and “explains why there are so few racially balanced charter schools.”

So what about the argument that charters perform better? A prominent study found that choice was bad for achievement on average as, “the relatively large negative effects of charter schools on the achievement of African America students is driven by students who transfer into charter schools that are more racially isolated than the schools they have left.”

Even CREDOs most recent study of urban students shows that in 93% of measurements of reading and math in large cities across the United States, charters actually still have a negative impact on Black students. In the cases where charter perform better, the difference is typically minuscule, like the amount of difference between two football teams that are 1-10 and 0-11. In somes cases where charters perform better overall, such as Philadelphia, the overall positive performance of charter can be attributed to White and Asian students success, rather than spectacular academic success for Black and Latino students.

Furthermore, it is very clear that after more than 25 years of trying, charters have failed to dramatically change the inequality status quo in our nation. However, where they are succeeding is setting democratically-accountable districts like Los Angeles on a collision course with bankruptcy.

Our society has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building, financing and funding charters schools at great expense to taxpayers— considering the evidence to this point, the underwhelming results, and in many cases reprehensible, should be considered a national disappointment.

See Julian’s speech here:

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Inequality, Segregation
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