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The Gulen Charter Schools: An Exhaustive Exposé

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
27

Lawyer Robert Amsterdam was hired by the Republic of Turkey to investigate the Gulen charter school movement in the United States.

The Turkish government is headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is engaged in political struggle with Fethullah Gulen. Gulen is a cleric who lives in seclusion in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. The Turkish government is Islamic, and Gulen is an Islamic cleric. I can’t say that I understand the political issues, but I do know that Erdogan is not a democratic leader, and there are no heroes here. After a recent failed coup attempt, Erdogan blamed Gulen and proceeded to repress civil liberties and jail thousands of suspected Gulenists.

Fethullah Gulen remains safely ensconced in his mountain retreat. He controls one of the biggest charter chains in the United States. It was surpassed in numbers recently by KIPP as the largest corporate charter chain.

American film maker Mark Hall recently produced a film about the Gulen schools. It is called “Killing Ed.” He tried to interview Gulen but was not admitted to the compound. He interviewed former Gulen teachers and they told him about kickbacks and other dubious practices that would not be tolerated in public schools.

The New York Times has reported on the Gulen practice of handing out big contracts to Turkish contractors, without choosing the low bidder. Similar practices triggered a state audit in Georgia. The FBI raided Gulen schools in the Midwest as part of an investigation of white-collar crime.

A couple of years ago, I was interviewed by Mr. Amsterdam. He told me he had uncovered gross violations of law and ethics by the Gulen schools. I told him that what bothers me about the Gulen schools is the idea that American public schools are controlled by foreign nationals. One of the central purposes of the American public school is to teach children their rights and responsibilities as citizens. How can that be outsourced to foreign nationals? As a thought experiment, I asked, how would Americans feel about their public schools being taken over by nationals of Russia? Chile? Cambodia? Are Americans so hapless and incompetent that we can’t manage our own public schools and staff them with American teachers? It is perfectly reasonable to hire foreign teachers, especially to teach their own language, but why should an American “public school” be turned over lock, stock, and barrel to a Turkish organization? It is not as if Turkey is one of the best performing nations in the world. It is not.

Amsterdam listened patiently but said his primary concern was massive corruption.

He has just published a very large book called “Empire of Deceit,” documenting the massive misuse of public funds for Gulen schools, the misuse of the H-1B visa program to import Turkish teachers, the practice of tithing to the Gulen organization, and the way that Gulen schools steer contracts to Turkish contractors. He has documented practices that would never be tolerated in public schools.

You can go to his website and find a list of all the Gulen schools in every state.

You can also download the book for free.

All of this is troublesome, but for me the most troublesome aspect is the idea of outsourcing public schools to foreign nationals, no matter which nation they represent. Public schools belong to the public, and they should not be outsourced or given to private corporations.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Citizenship, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Gulen Charter Schools, Privatization

Donald Cohen: Why Is Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital Investing in Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
35

Donald Cohen, executive director of “In the Public Interest,” an organization that fights privatization of public services, writes about the curious combination of people who poured serious money into the Massachusetts charter school battle last fall.

When the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance forced a pro-charter school political organization to reveal its donors, guess which words jumped off the page? Bain Capital.

Of the more than $15 million Families for Excellent Schools spent pushing last November’s controversial ballot initiative to increase the number of charter schools in Massachusetts, $1.4 million came from Bain investors, including Romney’s fellow cofounder Josh Bekenstein.

The initiative was voted down—parents, teachers, and residents mobilized to protect traditional public schools—but until now we had little proof that a shadowy gang of private investors and billionaires were leading the charge.

Donors included the owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, the billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman, Alice Walton of the Walmart family fame, and even Massachusetts’s current chairman of Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the venture capitalist Paul Sagan.

So why does Bain and a handful of billionaires want more charter schools?

We really don’t know, at least yet. Like everything in finance, the tangled knots and paper trails are seemingly endless.

Maybe they’re just being nice and philanthropic, trying to help, as Romney himself once called them, “inner city kids.” But maybe they’re up to something else.

In our report on California’s charter schools, we dug into the $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars and subsidies spent in the past 15 years to help private groups lease, build, or buy school buildings. Due to a severe lack of regulation, some of this money has ended up in the pockets of investors and executives.

For example, two schools in Stockton, California, are renting space for three and half times the market rate from a company with business ties to the CEO of the charter operator that oversees them.

Los Angeles’s Alliance network of charter schools has received more than $110 million in federal and state taxpayer support for its facilities, which are not owned by the public, but are part of a growing empire of privately owned real estate now worth in excess of $200 million.

The bottom line is, there’s lots of taxpayer money sloshing around in an unregulated market, and few people know where it’s going.

For some well-meaning educators and parents, charter schools are about innovation and alternative learning. But for the investors and billionaires behind the growing charter school industry, they seem to be about something else altogether: private control of taxpayer money.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: Tennessee ASD Schools Get Lowest Possible Growth Scores

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2017 //
22

Gary Rubinstein has been watching the trajectory of the much-ballyhooed Tennessee Achievement School District. It was the pinnacle of reform chutzpah. Give us the lowest scoring schools in the state, said the reformers, and we will turn them into high performing schools in only five years.The basic strategy is to turn public schools over to charter operators.

That’s what they said in 2012. Five years ago. Time’s up.

Gary writes here–with full acknowledgement that “growth scores” are “garbage,” that the ASD is lagging far behind. Why use “garbage” scores? Because that the reformers’ chosen metric. The state has not released the latest scores, but the growth scores are abysmal.

He writes:

“Six years ago, the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) was created with the promise that within 5 years they would ‘catapult’ the schools in the bottom 5% to the top 25%. They would do this by either taking over schools or finding charter schools to take over those schools.

“Things were not looking good for the ASD four years into the experiment and then they got a reprieve in the 5th year when the state test results were nullified because of technical snafus.

“The spring 2017 test scores would settle the question about whether or not the ASD would be a success or a failure. But the test scores were not announced at the usual time, over the summer. Instead they released the high school scores a few weeks ago, which were awful for the ASD with less than 1% meeting the standard in math. A few days after that, the superintendent of the ASD, Malika Anderson, resigned after less than 2 years on the job. She had replaced ASD founder Chris Barbic, who resigned after 4 years.

“Well, the 3-8 Tennessee test scores still haven’t been released, but the other day the state released the ‘growth scores’ for the districts. Tennessee is actually the birthplace of the value added growth model and the version of it that they use is called TVAAS.

“The Achievement School District probably made a mistake in making their name something that would likely be on the top of an alphabetical list of scores. Looking at the chart from Chalkbeat Tennessee, it can be seen very clearly, that The ASD students, on average, did not ‘grow’ at least according to the magical TVAAS formula that they have so much confidence in.

“Looking at the individual school results from the state website, we see that 19 out of 29 schools in the ASD got a 1 on their overall growth for 2017. Among those schools was KIPP Memphis Prep.”

Gary will write again when the scores are released, but the prospects are not good for the schools in the ASD.

Meanwhile the ASD concept has been replicated in other states, modeled on the Tennessee ASD. I am not sure how many others have created their own ASD but North Carolina and Nevada are among them.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Tennessee, Testing

Eva Moskowitz to Chalkbeat: Buzz Off! We Are a Private Corporation, Not Public!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
28

Chalkbeat thought that it would be interesting to gain access to the email correspondence of Success Academy Network to find out how they handled the Dan Loeb crisis. It’s reporter filed a Freedom of Information request. Dan Loeb is the billionaire who is chairman of the SA board who made a racist comment, writing that the leading African American legislator in the State Senate did more damage to black children than the KKK.

The SA Network refused to release any records because they are private, not public. Public records laws don’t apply to them, they said.

Thus, they are public only for getting money, but private when it’s time for accountability and transparency. Accountability and transparency, it turns out, are for the little people.

Chalkbeat writes:

“Success Academy Charter Schools, Inc. (SACS) is a private nonprofit organization that provides services to charter schools, but it is not itself a charter school or a government agency under FOIL,” wrote Success Academy lawyer Robert Dunn in response to an appeal of a Chalkbeat request for Moskowitz’s emails under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, which the network had denied. “Thus, it is not in and of itself subject to FOIL or required to have an appeal process.”

“In addition, Success officials said the emails would not need to be released because they qualify as internal communications that are exempt from the public-records law.

“The city’s most prominent charter school networks — including KIPP and Uncommon — have similar CMO structures, which appears to shield their leaders from at least some FOIL requests. While “the KIPP NYC public charter schools themselves are subject to the New York Freedom of Information Law,” KIPP spokesperson Steve Mancini said in an email, the “CMOs are not.”

“But some government-transparency advocates argue that the law is not so clear cut.

“Because CMOs are so heavily involved in the operation of public schools, it could be argued that the vast majority of their records are kept on behalf of public schools and should be public, said Bob Freeman, executive director of the Committee on Open Government and an expert on public-records laws.

“Even though nonprofits aren’t covered by FOIL, he said, “Everything you do for an entity that is subject to FOIL — everything you prepare, transmit, and receive — falls within the scope of FOIL.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization

Jennifer Berkshire: Education Can’t End Poverty, So Why Do Pundits Keep Saying So?

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
36

Jennifer Berkshire interviews Harvey Kantor, author of a recent book that explains why some people have substituted education as the answer to poverty instead of job-creation or income transfers.

I happen to believe that education is crucial for everyone, and especially for those who live in poverty. But education alone is not enough.

Berkshire cites an article by David Leonhardt of the New York Times, who wrote last May that education was the most powerful force for reducing poverty and raising living standards. Leonhardt dismisses vouchers but admires charters, without acknowledging their penchant for cherrypicking or noting how many charters are failures, even by their own goals.

This claim is a fixture in the corporate reform world. They would like the public to believe that charter schools can raise test scores and thereby solve the problems of poverty. Berkshire might have also cited Wendy Kopp, who has said and written many times that we don’t have to fix poverty first, we have to fix the schools. (Of course, no one ever actually said that “we have to ‘fix’ poverty before we can ‘fix’ the schools, other than Kopp herself.) This is an offer that corporate leaders love, because throwing money at TFA and charter schools is a lot more attractive than raising corporate and individual tax rates. (The marginal tax rate during the Eisenhower administration was 91%. Today it is in the high 30s.)

Berkshire and Kantor discuss this strange belief that education, important as it is, can raise living standards without other major changes in social policy.

She writes:

Unions are weak. Wage growth is non-existent. Plutocrats have all the power. And yet the myth that education is all we need to finally “fix” poverty persists. AlterNet education editor Jennifer Berkshire talks with historian Harvey Kantor about how the US gave up on the idea of responding to poverty directly, instead making public schools the answer to poverty. Hint: it all starts in the 1960’s with the advent of the Great Society programs. Fast forward to the present and our belief that education can reduce poverty and narrow the nation’s yawning inequality chasm is stronger than ever. And yet our education arms race, argues Kantor, is actually making income inequality worse.

Jennifer Berkshire: I read in the New York Times recently that education is the most powerful force for *reducing poverty and lifting middle-class living standards.* It’s a classic example of what you describe in this excellent history as *educationalizing the welfare state.*

Harvey Kantor: Education hasn’t always been seen as the solution to social and economic problems in the US. During the New Deal, you had aggressive interventions in providing for economic security and redistribution; education was seen as peripheral. But by the time you get to the Great Society programs of the 1960’s, education and human capital development had moved to the very center. My colleague Robert Lowe and I started trying to think about how that happened and what the consequences were for the way social policy developed in the US from the 1960’s through No Child Left Behind. How is it that there is so much policy making and ideological talk around education and so little around other kinds of anti-poverty and equalizing policies? We also wanted to try to understand how it was that education came to shoulder so much of the burden for responding to poverty within the context of cutbacks in the welfare state.

JB: You argue that by making education THE fix for poverty, we’ve ended up fueling disappointment with our public schools, a disillusionment that is essentially misplaced. Explain.

HK: One of the consequences of making education so central to social policy has been that we’ve ended up taking the pressure off of the state for the kinds of policies that would be more effective at addressing poverty and economic inequality. Instead we’re asking education to do things it can’t possibly do. The result has been increasing support for the kinds of market-oriented policies that make inequality worse.

If we really want to address issues of inequality and economic insecurity, there are a lot of other policies that we have to pursue besides or at least in addition to education policies, and that part of the debate has been totally lost. Raising the minimum wage, or providing a guaranteed income, which the last time we talked seriously about that was in the late 1960’s, increasing workers’ bargaining power, making tax policies more progressive—things like that are going to be much more effective at addressing inequality and economic security than education policies. That argument is often taken to mean, *schools can’t do anything unless we address poverty first.* But that’s not what we were trying to say.

Categories Charter Schools, Economy, Poverty

What Do Failing Charter Schools Do? They Turn into Voucher Schools!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
25

Annie Waldman, writing for ProPublica, examines the curious fate of failing charter schools.

Public schools that don’t get higher test scores are closed or turned over to charter operators.

But what happens to failing charter schools?

They turn into voucher schools!

“This past June, Florida’s top education agency delivered a failing grade to the Orange Park Performing Arts Academy in suburban Jacksonville for the second year in a row. It designated the charter school for kindergarten through fifth grade as the worst public school in Clay County, and one of the lowest performing in the state.

“Two-thirds of the academy’s students failed the state exams last year, and only a third of them were making any academic progress at all. The school had had four principals in three years, and teacher turnover was high, too.

“My fourth grader was learning stuff that my second grader was learning — it shouldn’t be that way,” said Tanya Bullard, who moved her three daughters from the arts academy this past summer to a traditional public school. “The school has completely failed me and my children.”

“The district terminated the academy’s charter contract. Surprisingly, Orange Park didn’t shut down — and even found a way to stay on the public dime. It reopened last month as a private school charging $5,000 a year, below the $5,886 maximum that low-income students receive to attend the school of their choice under a state voucher program. Academy officials expect all of its students to pay tuition with the publicly backed coupons.

“Reverend Alesia Ford-Burse, an African Methodist Episcopal pastor who founded the academy, told ProPublica that the school deserves a second chance, because families love its dance and art lessons, which they otherwise couldn’t afford. “Kids are saying, ‘F or not, we’re staying,’” she said.

“While it’s widely known that private schools convert to charter status to take advantage of public dollars, more schools are now heading in the opposite direction. As voucher programs across the country proliferate, shuttered charter schools, like the Orange Park Performing Arts Academy, have begun to privatize in order to stay open with state assistance.”

Why convert from charter school to voucher school?

Voucher schools are less likely to have any state supervision or accountability than charter schools. If the accountability bar is low for charters, it is almost invisible for voucher schools.

“As private schools, the ex-charters are less accountable both to the government and the public. It can be nearly impossible to find out how well some of them are performing. About half of the voucher and voucher-like programs in the country require academic assessments of their students, but few states publish the complete test results, or use that data to hold schools accountable.

“While most states have provisions for closing low-quality charter schools, few, if any, have the power to shut down low-performing voucher schools…

“The type of voucher program that rescues failed charter schools like Orange Park in Florida may soon be replicated nationwide. Visiting a religious school in Miami last April, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos praised the state’s approach as a possible model for a federal initiative.

“Typically, voucher programs are directly funded with taxpayer dollars. Florida’s largest program pursues a different strategy. Its “tax-credit scholarships” are backed by donations from corporations. They contribute to nonprofit organizations, which, in turn, distribute the money to the private schools. In exchange, the donors receive generous dollar-for-dollar tax credits from the state. This subsidy indirectly shifts hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the state’s coffers to private schools. More than 100,000 students whose families meet the income eligibility requirements have received the tax-credit coupons this year.

“Of the nearly 2,900 private schools in Florida, over 1,730 participated in the tax-credit voucher program during 2016-17, according to the most recent state Department of Education data. On average, each school received about $300,000 last year.

“While more than two-thirds of these schools are religious, the roundabout funding approach protects the vouchers against legal challenges that they violate the separation of church and state. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by the Florida Education Association, a teacher’s union, challenging the constitutionality of the voucher program.

“In an education budget proposal from May, DeVos detailed her voucher plans, pitching a $250 million plan to study and expand individual state initiatives. She has since suggested that the administration may also create a federal tax-credit voucher scheme through an impending tax overhaul.

“School choice advocates like DeVos have long contended that vouchers improve educational opportunities for low-income families. They reason that competition raises school quality, and that parents, given more options, will select the best school for their children.

“A growing body of research, though, casts doubt on this argument. It shows voucher-backed students may not be performing better than their public school counterparts, and may do worse.”

What has become clear is that the privatization movement is not about providing better education. Choice advocates no longer believe that they are saving “poor kids from failing public schools.” Typically the so-called “failing” public school is superior to the voucher school. It is about choice for the sake of choice. It is about distributing money to religious and for-profit groups, which creates a political base to sustain choice. It is about undermining public education.

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

Los Angeles County Investigates Enrollment of Catholic School Students in Online Academy

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
21

This is a new kind of charter school scandal. A virtual school enrolled students already enrolled in Catholic schools and claimed full state tuition. The virtual school gave the Catholic school cash and laptops. Meanwhile, the parents paid tuition to the Catholic school. In effect, the students attended two schools.

Bizarre new world of profit-taking.

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-lennox-virtual-academy-20170920-story.html

Categories Accountability, Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Leonie Haimson: Why Eva Moskowitz’s Former Lawyer Should Not Be Allowed to Open Her Own Charter School

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
6

Leonie Haimson, hardworking CEO of Class Size Matters and New York City’s foremost parent advocate, has written a letter to the SUNY charter committee explaining why Eva Moskowitz’s former chief attorney for the Success Academy charter chain, should NOT be allowed to start her own charter school.

Open the link to read the citations and the letter written by the parent of a student with special needs whose file was made public by Success Academy in retaliation for her appearance on John Merrow’s program about the abusive practices of Success Academy.

To the SUNY Charter committee and Board:

I urge you to reject the proposed authorization of the Zeta charter school, for many of the reasons cited by the Tory Frye of the D6 Community Education Council,[1] but also because Emily Kim, the proposed founder, was the chief attorney for the Success Academy chain while the network proceeded to repeatedly violate state and federal laws and deprive students of their civil rights.

More specifically:

· In October 2015, Success Academy retaliated against a parent of a special needs child who had spoken on a PBS show about his repeated illegal suspensions by Success, by posting her child’s disciplinary file online and sending the link to reporters nationwide. This action was a flagrant violation of his federal privacy rights according to FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. [2]

· Only after the parent, Fatima Geidi, filed a complaint with the US Department of Education, and several months ensued did Success Academy finally take down his file.[3]

· On January 20, 2016, parents of 13 current and former students of Success Academy filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the US Department of Education, accusing the network of discriminating against students with disabilities by denying them their mandated services, repeatedly suspending them without providing alternative instruction, and in some cases pushing them out. This complaint was joined NYC Public Advocate Letitia James; Councilman Daniel Dromm, the chair of the NYC Council Education Committee; Legal Services NYC; the Legal Aid Society; MFY Legal Services; the Partnership for Children’s Rights; and the New York Legal Assistance Group.[4]

· Subsequently, the federal Office of Civil Rights launched an investigation into Success Academy’s discriminatory practices, the results of which have not yet been released.[5]

· SUNY itself was reported to have launched its own investigation into Success Academy’s push-out policies, and more specifically the infamous “Got to Go” list. [6]

· In April 2016, parents at Success Academy Fort Greene launched a new federal lawsuit, alleging “illegal, discriminatory” campaign against children with special needs , including sending their children to emergency rooms without cause, illegally suspending them, and threatening to call the Administration for Children’s Services if they refused to pick their child up early from school These parents are represented by Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and Advocates for Justice.[7]

· In addition, the application for this new charter school should be rejected since Ms. Kim is planning to co-locate her school in a district public school building, which would prevent the already-overcrowded schools in the district from having sufficient space to reduce class size, as previously agreed upon by the city in its original Contracts for Excellence plan. [8]

· In July 2017, a legal complaint was filed against DOE with the NY State Education Department for failing to comply with the its state-approved Contracts for Excellence class size reduction plan. [9] This complaint was prepared by the Education Law Center on behalf of Class Size Matters, the Public Advocate, the Alliance for Quality Education and nine NYC public school parents.[10]

Until the results of the investigations by the federal Office of Civil Rights and SUNY are released and these complaints and lawsuits are decided, it would be premature and ill-considered to allow Ms. Kim to open her own charter school, given her history of facilitating and defending repeated violations of children’s civil rights.

Below are additional personal observations by Fatima Geidi of Ms. Kim’s behavior, while her child attended Upper West Success Academy.

Yours sincerely,
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

BREAKING NEWS: LAUSD Board President Steps Aside But Remains on Board

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2017 //
15

Ref Rodriguez, amidst criminal charges of money laundering, relinquished the presidency of the Los Angeles Unified School District aboard but is remaining on the board. This enables the pro-charter majority to retain control. Long-time charter supporter Monica Garcia will serve as board president until a new election is held.

“Less than three months into his role as president of the Los Angeles Board of Education, Ref Rodriguez announced Tuesday that he would step down from that post to spare the school district the distraction of a criminal case filed against him last week.

“Rodriguez, 46, said he would retain his seat on the board.

“The development is a stunning turnaround both for Rodriguez and supporters of charter schools, who spent record sums in independent campaigns to elect a board majority that is widely viewed as pro-charter.

“In 2015, Rodriguez broke ground as the first member of the board to have deep ties to the charter school community as the co-founder of a charter organization.”

It would be a huge disappointment to Eli Broad, Richard Riordan, Reed Hastings, and Alice Walton to lose control of the board in which they invested so many millions.

Because Rodriguez intends to remain on the board, the charter-friendly majority should remain intact, but his legal problems have become a cloud over what he and the new majority have called their “kids-first” agenda.

Categories Charter Schools, Los Angeles

Ben Austin Creates a New Organization After Failure of Parent Revolution

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2017 //
14

You remember Ben Austin? He is the guy in Los Angeles who started an organization called Parent Revolution whose purpose was to organize parents to seize control of their public school and turn it over to a charter operator. This process was made possible by a law passed in 2010 called the Parent Trigger, which says that a majority of parents can sign a petition to grab control of their school and fire the principal, the staff, or give the school to a private charter operator.

A bunch of billionaires, including Eli Broad, gave him millions of dollars to pay organizers to train parents to sign petitions. For a few brief shining moments, the Parent Trigger was the New Coke of education. Rightwing billionaire Philip Anschutz funded a movie to sell the Parent Trigger, but it flopped in the blink of an eye.

Seven years and many millions of dollars later, Parent Revolution can claim the capture of one public school for the charter industry. One. And they got a dedicated Hispanic principal fired. That’s it.

So it’s time for Ben Austin to start a new organization with another pile of money, including billionaire Eli Broad. It is called Kids Coalition. Apparently Austin’s new strategy is to sue and sue until every child has a great education.

That will work about as well as the Parent Trigger, but hey, it’s a living, for as long as the money keeps coming in. Eli has so much. What’s another few million?

The most interesting part of the story is the photograph of Austin. I tried to decipher the books behind him. There is Michelle Rhee’s “Radical.” Steve Brill’s paean of praise to DFER (“Class Warfare”), something by David Brooks. The thinking of a reformer. A real radical. A guy who knows how to start organizations with catchy names. A guy who has his hand on the pulse or purse of very wealthy donors.

http://laschoolreport.com/exclusive-ben-austin-launches-kids-coalition-to-give-la-students-a-legal-right-to-a-high-quality-education/

My favorite quote from the story:

“He also noted that when he drops off his daughters and walks them into their classrooms, the classroom looks, smells, and operates the same way his LA Unified classroom did 40 years ago.”

Maybe he could succeed in changing the smell of the classrooms of L.A. Distribute a spray can to every teacher. That will definitely produce a new smell.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Los Angeles, Parent trigger
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