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Connecticut: Wendy Lecker and Robert Cotto on Charter School Myths and Lies

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2016 //
3

Wendy Lecker,  veteran civil rights attorney, interviews Robert Cotto, member of the Hartford, Connecticut, board of education, about charter schools. Hedge fund managers and billionaires in Connecticut have poured large sums into the coffers of charter schools and of Governor Dannell Malloy to ensure his enthusiastic support for charter schools. They like to claim that charter schools are better than public schools. The interview below says they are wrong. They support privatization, not better schools, just like Betsy DeVos. Governor Malloy’s first state commissioner of education was  a charter school founder (who now works for Governor Raimondo in Rhode Island as director of economic development.)

 

The interview  begins like this:

 

Lecker: Do Connecticut charter schools outperform district schools?

 

Cotto: Connecticut charter schools were supposed to raise achievement, innovate, and reduce racial isolation. In terms of achievement, charter schools do not serve similar proportions of students living in poverty, bilingual children, and children with disabilities when compared to the local districts where they are located. Charter schools serve a more advantaged group of Black and Latino students in our cities. Therefore, simple comparisons of test results are like comparing “apples to oranges” and do not really tell us much about academic improvement. The state has never evaluated charter innovation. While some charters may innovate, the majority of charters operate like traditional schools. Most Connecticut charter schools are highly segregated by race (mostly Black students).

 

Lecker: A writer claimed that if Connecticut charters fail to perform, they are shut down, but that you cannot do that to a district school. True?

 

Cotto: The state almost never closes charter schools because of poor academic performance or financial mismanagement. According to State Department of Education reports, only five charter schools closed their doors since 1999. Three closed because of insufficient funds, one charter school was closed for health/safety violations, and one charter school closed because of lack of academic progress.

 

Between 2010-2013, all 17 charter schools in the state were renewed by the state, despite very low overall test results for some, including Stamford Academy and Trailblazers Academy. Additionally, the state did not shut down Jumoke/FUSE Academy charter school despite a massive corruption scandal that invited an FBI investigation.

 

On the other hand, many public schools in Connecticut have closed and been reconstituted for not meeting test score targets. At least a dozen schools in Hartford have been closed and reconstituted in the last decade.

 

Lecker: Can you describe what happened to Milner school in Hartford?

 

Cotto: In 2008, Milner school was “reconstituted” under the No Child Left Behind law for not meeting test score targets. The non-magnet/non-charter school was in one of the most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Hartford’s North End. In 2012, Milner school was selected by the Commissioner of Education for a second “turnaround” under the management of a private charter company, Jumoke/FUSE, which would be paid a management fee of around $350,000 a year. The idea was that this private charter company could do a better job operating a public school. Jumoke/FUSE hired convicted felons and engaged in financial improprieties. Academic performance of students at the school did not improve under Jumoke/FUSE. In 2014, Jumoke/FUSE ceased running Milner school and Hartford Public Schools regained control.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Hoax, Privatization

Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Be Afraid of School Choice

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2016 //
36

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel published an opinion article in the Washington Post saying something about how choice is a good thing when it is a good thing, so don’t get your knickers twisted against school choice just because Trump is for it. At least I think that is what he is saying. Read it and tell me why you think he (or someone wrote) wrote this article to get people to think well of school choice.

 

I think he is saying that when Democrats promote privatization by charter school, that is a good thing, and we must keep doing it even though Betsy DeVos wants to turn every school into a charter school and/or give every student a voucher to attend a religious school.

 

Sorry, but I have a hard time reading anything allegedly penned by Rahm about schools without thinking of the day of infamy when he closed 50 public schools at one fell swoop. He will be remembered for the brutal, disruptive, heedless closing of 50 community public schools. That, and the awful youth violence that continues to plague Chicago, promoted to some extent by the deliberate destruction of communities.

 

At the same time that Rahm and his hand-picked board of the city’s elite were closing public schools, they continued opening charter schools. Chicago is not an example of the success of school reform. To the extent that we use the federal NAEP scores as a measure, Chicago is still one of the lowest performing urban districts in the nation. It has some very good public schools, but it also has many very poorly resourced schools. Rahm will not be remembered as an education reformer.

 

In this article, he boasts again of Urban Prep Academy. This is the all-black, all-male school where 100% of the students who reach 12th grade graduate and go to college. This is a school that Gary Rubinstein researched and discovered its high attrition rate and its low test scores, lower than those of students in Chicago public schools. When I googled Urban Prep to find the links, I noticed that newspapers around the country still report the news of its “100% graduation rate” and “100% college acceptance rate.”

 

Knowing what Rahm has done to the Chicago public schools, I find it hard to understand why he thinks he is in a position to offer advice to the nation about school reform. The reality is that he is comfortable with Trump and DeVos and the privatization movement and has no qualms about continuing to implement it in Chicago.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization

Sheila Resseger on the Expansion of Achievement First Charter Schools in Rhode Island

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2016 //
2

Sheila Resseger is a retired teacher in Rhode Island. She writes in response to an earlier post about the proposed expansion of the Achievement First charter chain in Rhode Island. The state commissioner, Kenneth Wagner, is enthusiastic about the increase in charter enrollment by 2,000, even though it will strip more than $30 million from the Providence public schools, which enrolls far more students. What is the logic of diverting funding to charter schools for 2,000 while underfunding the education of 12,000?

 

She writes:

 

Not only was [Governor Gina] Raimondo’s husband, Andy Moffit, a roommate of Cory Booker’s, but he is a (brief) TFA alum and has been employed by McKinsey for some time. He is the co-author with Sir Michael Barber of Deliverology 101. Now I think that’s enough to know about him.

 

My colleague Wendy Holmes and I wrote a piece about Wagner’s support for the expansion of Achievement First for RI Future. http://www.rifuture.org/achievement-first-education-deform/

 

There have been several fiscal analyses of the impact of an AF expansion on Providence public schools and students, and critiques of the Innovative Policy Lab “report” that Wagner relied on when promoting the expansion. Here are a few:

 

Sam Zurier’s “Report on Fiscal Impacts to Providence Public Schools From Proposed Achievement First Expansion” – http://samzurier.com/public/ upload/11-30-Electronic-Cover- letter-and-Report.pdf

 

“Pro-Achievement First Study is Challenged” from the Providence Journal: http://www. providencejournal.com/news/ 20161208/education-pro- achievement-first-study-is- challenged

 

Mark Santow’s public comments at the December 6 RI Board of Education hearing: http://www.rifuture. org/3-reasons-to-oppose- achievement-first-expansion/

 

Tom Hoffman’s analysis of the Achievement First Fiscal Impact Memo prepared by Brown University’s Rhode Island Innovative Policy Lab – http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2016/ 12/a-closer-look-at-browns- achievement.html

 

There is also a new petition from families of Providence public school students opposing the expansion.

https://www.change.org/p/families-supporting-the-providence-public-schools-and-opposing-achievement-first-expansion?recruiter=1251398&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_page&utm_term=des-lg-share_petition-no_msg

 

I will say that these two particular Achievement First elementary schools do enroll a high number of students from Spanish-speaking homes. I heard many parents speak at a public forum praising the education that their children are getting there, compared to what they experienced in the Providence public schools. However, when the chief measure of high achievement as opposed to failing schools is the fatally flawed PARCC assessment, we need to be very wary. The bottom line is that 12,000 Providence students should not have to suffer severe cuts to their schools and programs so that an extra 2,000 students can go to a well-resourced school. All children in Providence and throughout the country need and are entitled to fully resourced neighborhood public schools. The emphasis on test prep in ELA and math is counter-productive and not the direction that we should be going.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Rhode Island

Has Trump Outsourced the Department of Education to Jeb Bush?

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
22

The U.S. Department of Education, in the Trump regime, is starting to look like a Jeb Bush sweep.

 

Betsy DeVos was on the board of Jeb’s Foundation for Education Excellence, which is noted for its advocacy for vouchers, charter schools, digital learning, and high-stakes testing.

 

Hanna Skandera, State Superintendent in New Mexico, worked for Jeb Bush, was a member and chair of Jeb’s Chiefs for Change, and is a supporter of Common Core (and president of the PARCC consortium).

 

Now Politico reports that Paul Pastorek of Louisiana, also a member of Jeb’s Chiefs for Change, is under consideration for the ED Department’s general counsel. Pastorek was a leader and cheerleader for the complete privatization of the public schools in New Orleans.

 

As superintendent [of Louisiana] from 2007 to 2011, he helped oversee the rebuilding of New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina. He has held a number of education reform leadership positions, serving as co-executive director of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, for example. Pastorek helped found the PARCC consortium and he’s chairman of PARCC Inc.’s board of directors.

 

In other words, Trump has forgotten that he promised to eliminate Common Core (which he can’t do unless the states want to do it.) He said repeatedly that Common Core is a “disaster.” But all of his likely top appointments are Common Core advocates, like Jeb Bush.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Testing, Trump

Rebecca Mead: Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Education

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
24

Rebecca Mead, staff writer at The anew Yorker, outlines the advantages that Betsy DeVos offers:

 

She has no ties to Vladimir Putin; she hasn’t spread fake news; she apparently has no plans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Of these three “advantages,” I feel confident only about the first one. Her persistent lambasting of public schools is fake news. And it remains to be seen whether she will close down the ED Department.

 

Of this we can be confident: she is the first Secretary of Education who is actively hostile to public education. She is an extremist ideologue. She is unfit to manage a large government agency that is responsible not only for aid to poor children in K-12 but for aid to higher education, student debt, aid to special education, education research, and a variety of other programs about which she is inexperienced and uninformed.

 

Mead writes:

 

“DeVos has never taught in a public school, nor administered one, nor sent her children to one. She is a graduate of Holland Christian High School, a private school in her home town of Holland, Michigan, which characterizes its mission thus: “to equip minds and nurture hearts to transform the world for Jesus Christ.”

 

How might DeVos seek to transform the educational landscape of the United States in her position at the head of a department that has a role in overseeing the schooling of more than fifty million American children? As it happens, she does have a long track record in the field. Since the early nineteen-nineties, she and her husband, Dick DeVos, have been very active in supporting the charter-school movement. They worked to pass Michigan’s first charter-school bill, in 1993, which opened the door in their state for public money to be funnelled to quasi-independent educational institutions, sometimes targeted toward specific demographic groups, which operate outside of the strictures that govern more traditional public schools. (Dick DeVos, a keen pilot, founded one of his own: the West Michigan Aviation Academy, located at Gerald Ford International Airport, which serves an overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male population of students.)”

 

DeVos has a long record of promoting choice, that is, seeking alternatives to public schools. She doesn’t like public schools. She believes in choice without accountability. As Mead points out, the dire situation in Detroit reflects her ideology. Detroit has been Her Petrilli dish. It is a colossal failure. Despite what is right before her, she still believes that choice is all that is needed to produce excellence. Except it doesn’t, never has, never will. In DeVos’s mind, ideology trumps all, evidence doesn’t matter. She thinks that public schools are passé, finished, so yesterday.

 

Mead writes:

 

“Missing in the ideological embrace of choice for choice’s sake is any suggestion of the public school as a public good—as a centering locus for a community and as a shared pillar of the commonweal, in which all citizens have an investment. If, in recent years, a principal focus of federal educational policy has been upon academic standards in public education—how to measure success, and what to do with the results—DeVos’s nomination suggests that in a Trump Administration the more fundamental premises that underlie our institutions of public education will be brought into question. In one interview, recently highlighted by Diane Ravitch on her blog, DeVos spoke in favor of “charter schools, online schools, virtual schools, blended learning, any combination thereof—and, frankly, any combination, or any kind of choice that hasn’t yet been thought of.” A preëmptive embrace of choices that haven’t yet been thought of might serve as an apt characterization of Trump’s entire, chaotic cabinet-selection process. But whether it is the approach that will best serve current and prospective American school students is another question entirely.”

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Michigan Charter Founder Sentenced to 41 Months in Prison

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
6

The founder of a small charter chain in Michigan has been sentenced to 41 months in prison. 

 

I have written about Ingersoll here and here.

 

Steven Ingersoll founded the Grand Traverse Academy in Michigan.

 

Blogger Anita Senkowski has followed this scandal from its beginnings. She writes about Ingersoll’s sentencing here.

 

In its December 15, 2016 sentencing memorandum, the government stated:

 

In general, the four purposes of sentencing are retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. In a tax case such as this, the sentencing purposes of retribution and deterrence are especially important. A sentence within the guideline range of 41 to 51 months is necessary to accomplish those purposes.

 

“When looking first at the need for retribution, Ingersoll has committed a serious offense, and his sentence should reflect it. His offense was not a one-time lapse in judgement, or a record-keeping mistake with purely civil tax consequences. His criminal tax-loss amount exceeds a million dollars. And he was convicted of tax evasion and fraud with respect to three years of false income tax returns.

 

Ingersoll has done nothing to repay the money that he owes. To the contrary, he has continued to violate the tax laws to this day by failing to file any personal income tax return since 2012.

 

The profit and loss statement that Ingersoll previously filed with the court shows that from 2012 to 2015, he earned over two million dollars in gross income. The only income tax payment he has made for those tax periods, however, was a $10,000 payment submitted when he applied for an extension to file his 2012 return.

 

Defendant’s repeated and significant criminal conduct warrants a lengthy sentence.”

 

 

Here is a quote from an earlier post linked above:

 

“This is one of the most curious, most convoluted charter scandals I have come across. Of course, it happened in Michigan, where about 80% of charters operate for-profit and where the state exercises minimal oversight of the charter sector.

 

“In 1999, an optometrist named Steven Ingersoll was among the first to see the potential in the charter industry. He developed his own pedagogy called Integrated Visual Learning and opened the first of four charters, Grand Traverse Academy. The board of directors were other optometrists who liked Ingersoll’s ideas. Certainly, optometrists would be drawn to a teaching method based on “visual learning.”

 

“There were chummy relationships among Ingersoll, the management company he hired, and board members:

 

“It was not until lawyers for the school began asking questions that the tangled financial relationship between Ingersoll’s management company and the charter he founded began to unravel, culminating in the most significant federal criminal case in the history of Michigan’s 20-year-old charter school industry. Ingersoll, who started Smart Schools Management, Inc., stands accused of illegally diverting construction loan money for another charter school to his private account, in part to pay back money he had taken from the Grand Traverse charter. His hand-picked members on the school board knew he had advanced himself money from Grand Traverse, but had no problem with the arrangement, school records show.
“Ingersoll will go on trial next month on seven criminal charges of bank fraud and tax evasion. The allegations of financial self-dealing and cozy relations between Ingersoll, his associates and board members could not come at a worse time for the Michigan charter movement. The state’s powerful, mostly for-profit charter school industry has found itself on the defensive since the Detroit Free Press published a devastating series last June chronicling how charters receive nearly $1 billion a year in state taxpayer money with little accountability or transparency on how that money is spent. The series detailed how board members at some charter schools were forced out when they pushed to learn more about finances from management companies, and how state law failed to prevent self-enrichment by those operating some low-performing charter schools.”

 

“One blogger, Anita Senkowski, doggedly followed the case of Steven Ingersoll and posted documents. Her blog is called “Glistening Quivering Underbelly,” where she calls herself Miss Fortune. She described Ingersoll as the poster boy for Michigan’s lack of charter oversight.”

 

Ingersoll was convicted and has been sentenced to 41 months in prison.

 

 

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

Rhode Island: Commissioner Approves Tripling of No-Excuses Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
10

Kenneth Wagner, Commissioner of Education in Rhode Island, has approved a plan to allow the Achievement First “no-excuses” charter chain to more than triple its enrollment over the next decade to more than 3,000 students. (Other stories say that the number of students will grow from the present 720 to 2,000.) The proposal is controversial because the increase in charter enrollment will cut the budget of the public schools in Providence, where most of the students are now in attendance. So, most students will suffer larger classes and fewer programs so that the well-funded AF chain may expand.

 

The city’s internal auditor estimates that the district public schools will lose between $28 and $29 million annually by the time Achievement First reaches full enrollment. The analysis by the Rhode Island Department of Education estimates that the district will lose $35 million, of which $8 million comes from the city in local aid. The rest comes form the state.

 

The per pupil spending follows the child from a traditional public school to a charter school.

 

Critics say if the charter school grows to 3,112 children, it will have a devastating impact on the traditional public schools and effectively create a parallel school system.

 

By state law, Wagner must consider the financial impact of a charter school expansion on the sending school districts, in this case, Providence, Cranston, North Providence and Warwick. But 86 percent of the charter’s students come from Providence, so the impact will be greatest there.

 

Based on the experience of other states, Providence is likely to see its credit rating fall, meaning that the city will have to pay more for its indebtedness. But when a politically powerful group like AF, backed by billionaires, wants to grow, what matters is not the vast majority of students–who will suffer budget cuts–or the city and state’s bond rating, but placating the billionaires.

 

The mayor of Providence, Jorge Elorza, is chair of the board of the Achievement First charter chain in Rhode Island, and he said recently that he won’t move forward with the expansion unless AF’s wealthy backers raise the $28-32 million that the school district will lose as AF expands.

 

A defender of the expansion plan said that the fiscal impact wouldn’t be as bad as the state and city auditors estimate, because once children learn to read at grade level, property taxes will rise. Yes, he really did make that claim.

 

William Fischer, a spokesman for RI-CAN, part of a national, pro-school choice advocacy group, said the R.I. Education Department has a legal obligation to weigh the fiscal impact on the entire community, not just the school district.

 

“We hope the study will look at the impacts to property taxes when students are reading at grade level,” he said. “I thought [the auditor’s report] was a very simple analysis. It didn’t take into account student attrition and the charter’s growth over a decade.”

 

This is called “magical thinking.”

 

Jonathan Pelto has written extensively about the Achievement First charter chain in Connecticut. He has pointed out that AF schools have disproportionately small numbers of students who are in need of special education and who are English language learners. Like other no-excuses charters, they are known for their high attrition rates. They skim, they cherrypick, and they get extra funding as compared to high-needs districts from which they poach students.

 

The Providence Journal editorial board endorsed the proposal to divvy up school funding between charters and public schools, even though 80% of the kids in need of extra attention will still remain in the public schools after AF reaches its goal, and even though the public schools will lose resources, making them less able to help those left behind.

 

Achievement First spokeswoman Amanda Pinto said the school is “thrilled” by Wagner’s recommendation.

“When considering the fiscal impact,” she said, “The most important factor is the economic value of providing thousands more Rhode Island students with a high-quality education that equips them for success in college, career and life.”

 

In other words, the negative fiscal impact on the vast majority of students in the Providence public schools and on the finances of Providence don’t matter, as compared to any test scores gains for the small minority of students that AF accepts and retains. This is just plain selfish thinking. 

 

Can any sensible person say that it is a good idea to open new schools to enroll 3,000 or so students, when 15,000 students are in need of extra help? If AF follows the pattern it established in Connecticut, it will skim off the most promising students, subject them to stern discipline, and then boast of its test scores.

 

If anyone steps back and thinks about this picture, it makes no sense. This is a recipe for a dual school system, both drawing from the same pie, with one free to choose its students, the other accepting all students who show up. Following this path will weaken the public schools that enroll most students, strip them of the resources they need for the students, and send them on a path of steady decline. This is a bad deal, from the point of view of the students, the city, and the state.

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Providence, Rhode Island

Peter Greene: A Rare Occasion When Reformers Admit Defeat

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
8

Peter Greene listened to a podcast produced by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and made a shocking discovery: One of the leading figures of the reform movement–Checker Finn–acknowledged that after 20 years of reform, there was no change!

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Eva Moskowitz’ Success Academy Buys Condo for $67.7 Million

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2016 //
45

Latest real estate news in Manhattan:

 

Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain bought a condo on the far west side of Manhattan for $67.7 million.

 

A few years back, Eva’s billionaire allies successfully lobbied the legislature to secure free rent for her schools and free rein to expand, pushing out other kids and programs, even those serving the severely disabled.

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

Will Philanthropy Change Direction in the Age of Trump?

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2016 //
7

Vu Le directs a nonprofit organization. He wrote a bold article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy advising philanthropists to change direction and pay more attention to small organizations that work directly with those in need and cut back on their demands for paperwork, data, and endless documentation.

The nonprofit world woke up last week to a surreal and terrifying new reality, one that must force us all to operate differently. To see our nation choosing walls, divisiveness, xenophobia, and demagoguery over love, hope, diversity, and community is devastating.

The people nonprofits serve felt the pain immediately. We have kids chanting “Build that wall” in school lunchrooms. We have women wearing hijabs being attacked. (Trump supporters have been assaulted as well.) I personally know Latino parents trying to answer their kids’ questions about when they will get deported. Many of my LGBTQ friends and colleagues are in despair.

We cannot just hope it will all be OK. The new presidency threatens to undo all the progress nonprofits have worked so hard to make: progress on climate change, gender equity, marriage equality, support for the poor and homeless, and the push for diversity and inclusion throughout society. Millions of people may lose their health insurance. Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers may be exiled.

As nonprofits work to oppose all the ways in which a Trump presidency threatens the people we serve, we need money and support — and that must come from a new social contract with foundations. Grant makers must end, once and for all, the destructive funding philosophies and practices that have hampered nonprofits’ ability to achieve success.

To face a future that is terrifying to many of us and the people we serve, foundations must think and fund differently.

One thing that most of us know about philanthropies is that they have almost completely abandoned public education. The big three–Gates, Broad, and Walton–are all in for privatization. They think that the public schools that enroll 94% of the children are hopeless. They don’t like public schools. They don’t like unions. They want public schools to operate like businesses. They want them to hire inexperienced and uncredentialed teachers. They micromanage their grants. They overemphasize test scores as the data that shows whether their grantees are successful. They have wrought immeasurable harm on our democratic public system.

After reading this article, I feel moved to write something for The Chronicle of Philanthropy. I don’t know if they will publish it, but it is worth a try.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers, Walton Foundation
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