Archives for category: Charter Schools
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Win or Lose, Know This About Paul Vallas

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2023 //
37

This article by three scholars—Pauline Lipman, Camika Royal, and Adrienne Dixson—closes the book on Paul Vallas’ record in education. It was published in Truthout.

Vallas’s solution for struggling schools was a corporate-style, top-down accountability system of high-stakes tests, test-prep teaching and punishment for failure — an experiment on Chicago’s Black and Brown children that set the stage for national education policy under George W. Bush. Schools that failed to meet test score targets were put on a warning list, on probation, or reconstituted by Vallas’s central office.

Counter to research consensus, based on their scores on a single test, tens of thousands of students were sent to summer school, held back a grade for as long as three years, prevented from 8th grade graduation, or assigned to remedial transition high schools where a pared-down curriculum of math, English and world studies revolved around intensive test preparation.

It was typical for schools, particularly in Black communities, to spend up to one quarter of the school year drilling for tests in reading and math. Music and art were cancelled and social studies began in May — after testing. Engaging, culturally relevant classes were turned into test prep. In some schools, Test Best and Test Ready booklets were the curriculum for weeks. CPS Office of Accountability staff told me that when Vallas left in 2001, 59 schools — mostly Black — were using mandated Direct Instruction, in which teachers read scripts and students respond with scripted answers. Not surprisingly, under this regime test scores went up. However, a 1999 National Research Council assessment expert “concluded that Chicago’s regular year and summer school curricula were so closely geared to the [standardized test] that it was impossible to distinguish real subject mastery from mastery of skills and knowledge useful for passing this particular test.”

Turning schools into test prep factories — and punishing and publicly shaming “failing” schools, students, teachers and parents in Black communities — took a toll. Some of the most dedicated and revered teachers left the system. For example, in one Black elementary school Lipman worked with, from 1997-2000, 26 of 37 teachers left, to be replaced by a succession of inexperienced teachers and interns. An award-winning teacher at the school explained that they couldn’t live with the ethical crisis of Vallas’s policies; for both teachers and students “it’s like a hammer just knocking them down.” A 2000 University of Chicago study reported nearly one-third of eighth graders retained in 1997 dropped out by fall 1999. In 2000, Parents United for Responsible Education won a civil rights complaint against CPS under Vallas for adverse discriminatory impact of the retention policy on Black and Latinx students. Expulsions, particularly of Black students, also surged, as documented in a 2001 Chicago Reporter article titled “Alternative education: Segregation or solution?”

When test scores flattened in 2001, Vallas left. But the system he set up of ranking and sorting schools based on an inappropriate use of standardized tests, and disregarding the historical disinvestment and racism schools had suffered, laid the foundation for almost 200 school closings and turn-arounds and the education market that followed. These school closings, 90 percent predominantly Black, devastated Black communities in particular. Vallas’s electoral campaign focuses on fighting crime, but the disruptions from the school closings that were a major factor in the destabilization of Black communities can be traced back to Vallas’s reign at CPS.

Please open the link and read the full article.

If Vallas should win, the students and teachers of Chicago will endure the failed policies of the past two decades.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Race, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Vallas, Paul

Chicago: Vote for Brandon Johnson for Mayor

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2023 //
3

Julie Vassilatos, a parent activist and blogger in Chicago, writes here about the case for Brandon Johnson. She and others have written passionately against Paul Vallas, but here she explains why Brandon Johnson is well prepared to serve as Mayor. Because of his knowledge and experience, he not only knows the city’s budgetary issues well, but he is able to address the root causes of crime and the real needs of students.

She writes:

Friends, so many of us have been carrying on about the dangers of Paul Vallas so incessantly, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s running for mayor of Chicago unopposed.

But Vallas does have an opponent—one who is talented, thoughtful, experienced, and a real true Chicagoan raising his family on the west side: Brandon Johnson.

Johnson is getting a lot of heat from Vallas and his supporters right now. No lesser a personage than Darren Bailey, defeated far-right candidate for IL governor and unofficial endorser of Vallas, has announced that if Johnson is elected, it will be a “dark day” for Chicago. Yes. A dark day indeed. Get it?

I’m pretty sure Darren Bailey fans get it.

Then there’s FOP president/disgraced cop John Catanzara, who foresees that 1000 cops will walk off the job if Johnson wins, and there will be blood in the streets.

Vallas himself, who routinely speaks of Johnson in kind of Godzilla terms, has called him and the CTU a destructive force wreaking devastation on the city.

In addition to its coded race language, this election has rather inflated rhetoric.

I’m trying to keep mine toned down, or at least backed up by evidence. While it’s hard to pin “generational” devastation on Johnson or the CTU, it’s actually possible to do this for Vallas. He has set many destructive policies in motion in urban areas globally that have left decades of harm in their wake. Also financial calamity. But I and many others have told you all this over and over again. And this post is not about that guy.

This post is about Brandon Johnson.


Truth to tell, at the outset of the race I was slow to warm up to Johnson the candidate. But then I remembered that he was at the front lines of a struggle I will never forget—the 2013 mass school closures. So many folks did all we could do to try and stop that, well, generationally damaging policy. And those who led the way in that effort? I’d probably follow them into a fire.

But what about Brandon Johnson now? What are his credentials? Haven’t you, like me, read all that stuff about how he has no experience? How he’s never managed a budget? How he seems (unfathomably) to like crime and together with CTU wants our city to be unsafe, because….because….well, because reasons?

Well, maybe we need to look a little deeper than the media/social media blah blah blah.

In a recent mayoral forum Vallas asserted that “Brandon has run nothing.” Since Vallas hasn’t really lived here much I guess he may not know that Johnson has served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners since 2018 and has managed a great deal, including the $8.75B Cook County budget. The Cook County Board has wide ranging responsibilities, and if you’ve always wondered but never known what the Board does, you should take this time to educate yourself, starting at the Cook County Board website. Here’s a basic summary:

The Cook County Board of Commissioners oversees County operations and approves the budget of elected County officials including the Assessor, Board of Review Commissioners, County Clerk, Clerk of the Circuit Court, Recorder of Deeds, Sheriff, States Attorney and Treasurer.

The Commissioners also serve as the Board of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, a special purpose taxing district. The Board also sets policy, levies taxes, passes ordinances, approves all county purchases over $10,000, and adopts the annual budget for the entire county government.

That 2023 Cook County Budget was praised by the Civic Federation:

The Civic Federation supports the Cook County FY2023 Executive Budget Recommendation of $8.75 billion because it reflects strong financial management and puts the County in a good position moving forward post-pandemic. The County’s FY2023 proposed budget includes a strong level of reserves and positive revenue projections, without any increases in taxes or fees.

The budget gap is smaller than it’s been in years, supplemental payments to the pension fund have been made for the eighth year in a row, and the County’s fiscal position is “strong…following robust revenue performance and built-up reserves.” And observe that there are in this budget, no tax increases. (Here I note we can be grateful to Board President Toni Preckwinkle who has shepherded this budget for 13 years. And I note further, she has endorsed Johnson.)

Now let’s review the budgets Vallas has overseen.

In Philadelphia, Vallas managed a $2B budget and left a surprise $73M deficit on his way out the door. In the Louisiana Recovery District his budget was $176M. He got an extra $1.8B to work with from FEMA, and before he was done with the NOLA job he wandered repeatedly over to Haiti, missing weeks at a time of work in New Orleans (that’s beside the point, but I just thought you should know). And in Bridgeport CT, his budget was $232M. Of course he was pushed out of that job before he could really do much financial damage there.

For those of you keeping score, Vallas hasn’t ever drafted, managed, or implemented a budget even close to the size that Brandon Johnson has worked with as a member of the Cook County Board.

Before his County Board days, Johnson was a teacher. He taught middle school social studies at Jenner from 2007 to 2010 (years when most of his students were able to watch, right from school windows, wrecking balls demolishing their homes as the city brought down public housing), and then at Westinghouse for a year. He then became a CTU organizer and the leader of its Black Caucus. In those years he had a front row view on lots of turmoil in the district: school closures and turnarounds via the failed Renaissance 2010 initiative, the loss of Black teachers in the classroom as a result of closures and CPS policy choices, the 2012 teacher strike, the 2013 mass school closures, a churn of district CEOs, some of whom ended up in prison, illegal special education cuts, and rapid charter expansion.

While Johnson was organizing teachers and collaborating with parents in response to district policies that were crushing schools and services (and I do mean that literally, with at least one occasion of bulldozers bringing down a school library on a day when parents were instead expecting a meeting), he lived the experience of the folks who’ve been at the mercy of “education reform” for decades. He saw first hand what disinvestment has done to CPS students—resulting in teacher cuts, special ed cuts, after-school cuts, nursing cuts, and the whittling away of libraries, down to only 90 remaining in a total of 513 schools. He’s seen the violent legacy of closing the community anchor that is a public school. He’s watched, along with all of us, poor choices at the top—everything from grifting, self-dealing, and bribery, to no-bid contracts and cronyism—and how those things bust budgets and destroy trust. He stood with community members on a hunger strike to save a school, then joined in it himself. He’s seen the negative academic and social impacts of excessive testing, privatization, and vouchers. He’s seen these things from the perspective of 25,000 teachers and hundreds of thousands of public school families.

Vallas, meanwhile, has been the man who set those policies. He set them in motion right here in Chicago in 1995, and traveled the country and globe continuing to implement them from then until now.

He may talk a good game about Doing It All For The Children, but the fact of the matter is, Vallas has never had to stick around and watch the long term impacts of his policy decisions on The Children. Those impacts have caused years of student protests in Chile. Have kept special ed kids struggling for spots in schools in New Orleans. Have left Philadelphia in “constant crisis mode.” Led directly to our own CPS budget crisis.

Brandon Johnson has large scale urban management experience with a Board that’s closing budget gaps and overseeing a vast array of county services. He manages a bigger budget right now than Vallas ever has. And Johnson has face-to-face, personal experience with the folks who live and work and raise their children in Chicago. His years as a teacher and with CTU have given him the perspective of individuals and families on a hyper-local basis. His work has encompassed both the broad span of countywide planning and management, and the particular lens on particular people and particular struggles.

Brandon Johnson is obviously qualified for the job.

You can check out how his qualifications and vision work themselves into a platform on his website. It’s practical and passionate and outlines a vision for the city that benefits everyone, even those struggling folks who never seem to catch a break from city leaders.

Johnson understands we cannot solve violence without dealing with its root causes; more policing, surveilling, and arresting alone won’t do the trick. We can’t fix the schools without listening to communities, parents, and educators; we must reject the failed status quo of Vallas’s “education reform.” And we can’t expect our teachers and police to solve poverty and homelessness all on their own.

The choice we have before us, it seems to me, is whether we’re going to listen to the incessant hype about a “fix-it man”—who has never fixed anything. Or dig a little deeper ourselves and see that the mayor we need has been here all along, working to make our city better for his entire career, with poise and passion.

Are we going to listen to voices that allude to “dark days” and blood baths in the streets? Or are we going to listen to a man who has a vision for his city rooted in love and practical experience?

You pick, Chicago.

Categories Accountability, Character, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Community Schools, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Funding, Supporting public schools, Vallas, Paul

Hillsdale College Cuts Ties to Florida Charter School That Fired Principal After Showing of Michelango’s “David”

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2023 //
37

Conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan has a chain of charter schools that use its “classical” curriculum. One of its affiliate schools, the Tallahassee Classical Charter School, made headlines last week when the principal was fired after a teacher showed the statue of Michelangelo’s “David” to an art class.

Apparently Hillsdale was appalled, it severed its connection to the school. Even super-conservative Hillsdale was mortified by the prudery of DeSantisland.

A Michigan college has ended its relationship with the Florida charter school whose principal was pressured to resign after parents complained that her Renaissance art syllabus, which included a picture of Michelangelo’s David, was inappropriate for sixth-graders.

The Tallahassee Classical School, which was licensed to use Hillsdale College’s classical education curriculum, is no longer affiliated with the small, Christian college, Hillsdale spokesperson Emily Stack Davis said in a statement to MLive.com.

“This drama around teaching Michelangelo’s David sculpture, one of the most important works of art in existence, has become a distraction from, and a parody of, the actual aims of classical education,” Davis said. “Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s Davidand other works of art that depict the human form.”

The chair of the board of the school explained that children should see only parts of the statue, depending on their age.

“Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age,” said Bishop.

“We’re going to figure out when that is,” he added. “And you don’t have to show the whole statue! Maybe to kindergartners we only show the head. You can appreciate that. You can show the hands, the arms, the muscles, the beautiful work Michelangelo did in marble, without showing the whole thing.”

Yahoos are gonna yahoo.

Categories Art, Arts Education, Censorship, Charter Schools, DeSantis, Florida

Ohio: Private School Choice Is Wrecking Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2023 //
18

Maureen Reedy is a former Ohio Teacher of the Year and Upper Arlington City School District Teacher of the Year, retired after a 30-year career as a public-school teacher. She wrote this article for the Columbus Dispatch.

The “public” must be put back into public education in Ohio.

Instead of pushing current legislation like Senate Bill 11 that could take one billion dollars from public schools to fund private and religious school vouchers, Ohio’s lawmakers need uphold Ohio’s constitutional promise to keep public tax dollars out of private schools.

We Ohioans love our public schools.

Most of us attended neighborhood public schools, which continue to be the schools of choice for our children and grandchildren. Our public schools are community hubs that educate over 90% (1.7 million) of Ohio’s children; students come together from all backgrounds to learn and build understanding and acceptance of others.

Public education in Ohio is a 172-year-old promise, created on the constitutional belief that public schools are the fundamental foundation for the public good; a necessary tool to build an educated democracy and sustainable futures for our children in these challenging times.

Why then, are Ohio lawmakers churning out private school voucher legislation that takes hundreds of millions of public-school tax dollars per year from our neighborhood schools to pay for private and religious school education?

School vouchers violate the Ohio Constitution. That is why over 210 public school districts have filed the “Vouchers Hurt Ohio” lawsuit challenging EdChoice Vouchers for their unconstitutional use of state school funds for private school tuition.

Public dollars should not fund private and religious school tuition.

Ohio’s constitution has some of the strongest language in the country specifying that state funds are for public (common) schools only.

“The General Assembly … will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state,” Article VI, Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution reads.

Just as Ohio’s founders intended, there is not one single word in the Ohio Constitution that allows the use of state dollars for private and religious school tuition.

Ohio’s first attempt at school vouchers began as a temporary pilot in 2006, and is now a refund and rebate school privatization program that reimburses families who never intended to send their children to public schools.

Runaway train must be stopped

Private school vouchers have ballooned out of control, initially taking away $42 million of public-school funding in 2008 and expanding to $350 million in 2022.

Senate Bill 11 has been introduced to make every child in Ohio eligible for a private EdChoice school voucher, which could immediately take a billion dollars out of the finite supply of state school funds for over 90% of Ohio’s children whose families choose public schools.

When we let vouchers siphon funds from our public schools, our kids do not have the resources they need to succeed, and that hurts us all. EdChoice Vouchers for private schools means more school levies and higher property taxes. State funding for private schools is not only unconstitutional, it is unsustainable for Ohio taxpayers.

This brings us full circle to the crucial choice for the future of public education in Ohio. Public schools open their doors to children of all ability levels; welcoming students from diverse religions, cultures and nationalities.

Overall, Ohio’s public schools continue to outperform private voucher schools.

Public schools mirror the rising challenges of society today. Teachers are not just teaching, but also taking care of rising numbers of children in crises with mental and physical health challenges, which prevent them from learning. Instead of divesting in public education, Ohio needs to re-invest in our public schools.

Let’s face it. The only way to stop this runaway school voucher train is through a lawsuit.

Thousands of Ohio citizens have tried to get legislators to put the brakes on EdChoice vouchers and fulfill their oath to the state’s constitution: state school funding is solely for Ohio’s public-school districts.

The majority of Ohio’s legislators continue to steer our children and families in the wrong direction.

Vouchers hurt Ohio. The numbers are growing.

The movement is strong.

Maureen Reedy is a founding member of Public Education Partners, the largest nonprofit, all-volunteer Public Education advocacy group in Ohio.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Extremism, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Illinois Families for Public Schools: Vallas Ties to Betsy DeVos Exposed

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
15

MEDIA STATEMENT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday March 31, 2023

Contact: Cassie Creswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools, 773-916-7794

PAUL VALLAS LIES ABOUT SUPPORT, CONNECTIONS WITH TRUMP SECRETARY OF ED BETSY DEVOS

DEVOS’ SUPER PAC CHAIR ATTENDS VALLAS EVENTS; VALLAS HOSTED EVENT WITH DEVOS IN 2021

CHICAGO — Mayoral candidate Paul Vallas is falsely denying his connections to former President Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and an Illinois Super PAC that DeVos funds.

DeVos funds and controls the Illinois Federation for Children PAC which made a $59,000 independent expenditure in support of Vallas’ campaign last week. On the same day, DeVos’ American Federation for Children Action Fund, a national 527 PAC funded primarily by DeVos and her husband, made a $65,000 contribution to the Illinois Federation for Children PAC.

Yesterday evening at the Sun-Times-WBEZ mayoral debate, Vallas denied having contact with DeVos, stating “I’ve never had any conversations or contact with Betsy DeVos. And our campaign has not received any money from her.” 

The Vallas campaign said on Wednesday evening that “our campaign has not been in contact with this organization [Illinois Federation for Children PAC].”

In reality, Vallas and DeVos served together as hosts at an Urban League of Chicago event on September, 9 2021 in honor of the superintendent of schools of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.

Moreover, the chair of the Illinois Federation for Children PAC Nathan Hoffman has been regularly attending Vallas campaign events in the last month, including Vallas’ February 28th election night party:

Hoffman was a registered contract lobbyist in Springfield for the DeVos-founded and funded 501c4 American Federation for Children until January 2023. 

On June 18, 2022, Vallas appeared on a panel hosted by extremist anti-LGBTQ+ group Awake Illinois with keynote speaker Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at DeVos-founded and funded American Federation for Children.

Paul Vallas’ decades-long history of privatizing multiple school districts in the US and extensive support for transferring public funds to private schools are tightly aligned with DeVos’ ideological opposition to the existence of publicly-run, publicly-funded schools.

###

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Industry, Elections, Illinois, Privatization, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers

Chicago: Charter Lobby Spent $617,000 Against Vallas’ Opponent in Mayor Race

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
4

The Illinois charter lobby has spent heavily in the Chicago mayoral race. In recent weeks, the charter lobby has run a barrage of ads attacking Brandon Johnson, the City Commissioner who is running against Vallas.

WTTW News reported:

A statewide advocacy organization designed to promote charter schools spent $617,000 to oppose Brandon Johnson’s campaign for mayor of Chicago, records filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections show.

The independent expenditure by the INCS Action Independent Committee, funded by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, paid for $258,000 in cable television advertisements on March 16 and $359,000 in digital advertising on March 15, records show. Election Day is April 4, and early voting is underway.

Before the first round of voting took place, the INCS Action Independent Committee spent an additional $63,000 to oppose Johnson’s campaign. In addition to their spending on the mayoral race, the committee has spent at least $107,000 to support City Council candidates in runoff elections, according to records.

Vallas has a well-established record as a passionate advocate of privatization. He supports both charter schools and vouchers.

Vallas wiped out public schools in New Orleans. He launched a massive privatization program in Philadelphia, and he left the district with a deficit.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Vallas, Paul

Steven Singer: I Am a Charter School Abolitionist

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2023 //
32

Steven Singer, a teacher in Pennsylvania, explains here why he thinks charter schools should be abolished. They drain resources from the public schools. They are free to choose the students they want and exclude those they don’t want. They don’t produce better results than public schools. They close at alarming rates. They have been the source of many scandals. Some operate for profit.

Why do we need charter schools, he asks? We don’t.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Supporting public schools

Breaking News! Betsy DeVos’ Super PAC Is Funding Paul Vallas

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2023 //
12

MEDIA RELEASE


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday March 29, 2023


Contact: Cassie Creswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools,773-916-7794


BETSY DEVOS’ SUPER PAC SPENDING THOUSANDS TO ELECT PAUL VALLAS MAYOR OF CHICAGO


VALLAS’ EDUCATION PLATFORM PULLED FROM DEVOS’ PRIVATIZATION PLAYBOOK

CHICAGO – Last week ex-President Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made a $59,000 independent expenditure in support of mayoral candidate Paul Vallas’ campaign from a Super PAC she funds, the Illinois Federation for Children PAC.

The Illinois Federation for Children PAC was established in March 2022 and has received $465,000 in total from DeVos’ American Federation for Children Action Fund, a national 527 PAC. The Illinois Federation PAC’s chair, Nathan Hoffman, was a registered contract lobbyist in Springfield for the American Federation for Children until January this year.

Although DeVos has not endorsed Vallas, Vallas’ education plans for Chicago’s school system are directly aligned with DeVos agenda of school privatization, one she supported as Secretary of Education and promotes through her national network of advocacy organizations and PACs: defunding and dismantling public school systems and redirecting public funds via programs like vouchers for private schools.

In a little-noticed February 2022 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, Vallas laid out a radical plan for privatizing Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In addition to supporting Illinois’ existing Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship voucher program, which already diverts millions to pay for vouchers for more than 4000 Chicago children, Vallas would create a city-funded voucher program and pay for it with funds from the CPS operating budget earmarked for teacher pensions. The pension payments would then instead be covered by surplus Tax Increment Financing dollars.

In that same op-ed, Vallas also proposes allowing religious private schools to become district-funded charter (or “contract”) schools, a policy so extreme that it was recently rejected by the conservative Republican attorney general of Oklahoma as “state-funded religion.”

Vallas also voices his support for “a reconstituted system in which parents get to direct the per-pupil public dollars to the school (or education model) of their choosing.” More recently, Vallas told WBEZ that “money should follow the students” and “we should be running districts of schools, not school districts.” The education platform on Vallas’ website calls for “dismantling the central administration” of CPS. These are exactly the policies that DeVos and American Federation for Children are advocating: funding students not systems and that dollars must follow students.
In June 2022, Vallas appeared on a panel with keynote speaker Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at American Federation for Children. The panel, organized by extremist anti-LGBTQ+ parent group, Awake Illinois. Vallas later denounced Awake Illinois, but did not dissociate himself from DeAngelis or American Federation for Children.

Secretary DeVos’ education agenda was harmful to public schools on a national scale. Chicago voters should know that DeVos supports Vallas’ candidacy and that there is no daylight between DeVos and Vallas’ education policies.


###

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers

NYC: Parents and UFT Fight Charter Co-Location

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2023 //
6

Charter “co-location” has become a flash point for conflict in urban districts. In New York City, charter schools were given the right to take space in public schools, and thanks to former Governor Andrew Cuomo, the city is required to pay the charter’s rent if it hires private space. Charter co-locations take up every available empty space in a school, typically disadvantaging the host school, which becomes overcrowded. The charter rooms are newly refurbished even in public schools that have waited years for upgrades.

Recently the New York City Board of Education (known as the “Panel for Educational Policy”) voted to co-locate two Success Academy charters in public schools in Queens and Brooklyn. The co-location conflicts with a class-size reduction law passed by the State Lefislature. Parents, educators and the United Federation of Teachers have gone to court to block the co-location.

For Immediate Release – Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Parents, educators, UFT launch court action to block co-location of two Success Academy charters with Queens and Brooklyn public schools

Lawsuit claims DOE failed to account for state law class size caps, needs of disabled students and more

Parents, a teacher, and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) today filed a lawsuit in Manhattan State Supreme Court charging that the New York City Department of Education violated state education law and its own regulations when it sought to co-locate two Success Academy charter schools into Queens and Brooklyn public schools without providing an in-depth analysis of how these co-locations would affect the students already in those public schools.

The city’s Panel for Education Policy voted in November and December in favor of the co-locations, but as the lawsuit says, “The DOE has misled parents, the public, and the PEP itself regarding the actual impacts of its proposed co-locations, including both schools’ ability to comply with impending requirements of the new Class Size Law.”

Attorneys for the United Federation of Teachers were joined in the legal action by Advocates for Justice Legal Foundation, along with a teacher and parents of children from the affected schools.

The schools involved include the Waterside School for Leadership in Far Rockaway, Queens, and the Sheepshead Bay Educational Campus that is home to Origins High School, Professional Pathways High School, and New Visions Charter High School for Advanced Math and Science III.

According to the lawsuit, the DOE underestimated the effects of the co-locations by assuming that current class sizes in these schools would continue into the foreseeable future, ignoring the requirements of the new state class size law.

Under that law, all schools will have to cap class sizes in kindergarten through grade three at twenty students; grades four through eight at twenty-three students; and grades nine through twelve at twenty-five students, to be phased in over five years, starting next fall.

According to the lawsuit, many classes in two of the existing schools are already far above those limits and will require additional space to lower class sizes to mandated levels. Yet this need is never mentioned in the legally-required Educational Impact Statements (EIS) for these co-locations, nor is there sufficient space allocated to these schools to be able to reduce class size to mandated levels in the future.

Absent from the EIS is any mention that students at Waterside will lose their science lab, and that all four schools may lose many other dedicated rooms needed to deliver intervention and special education services.

 

Estherll Dorancy, the PTA President of Waterside School for Leadership said, “Parents weren’t even aware of what was going on when these decisions were being made. Our students will lose classrooms needed to lower their class sizes and their science lab, which is critical if they are going to be able to pass their 8th-grade state science exams.”

 

As the lawsuit makes clear, the DOE is legally required to produce in-depth EIS reviews. According to the lawsuit, “the DOE is going through the motions of what the law requires instead of actually complying with it.”

Irina Pistsov, another parent at the Waterside School for Leadership said, “The science lab is a critical resource for students at Waterside and it is already a challenge to provide adequate lab time to meet state standards.”

As the lawsuit maintains, there is nothing in any of the EISs produced for these proposed co-locations, or in the Instructional Footprints upon which they are based, “that ensure or even analyze whether there would be sufficient dedicated spaces for students with disabilities to receive their mandated services after the co-locations occur.”

The parties seek an injunction to prevent the co-locations from occurring until and unless the DOE complies with the requirements of the Education law — “to provide the impacted students, parents, community, and members of the Panel for Educational Policy with adequate specific information about major changes to their school’s space and how these changes will impact the education of the existing and prospective students.”

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Class size, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, New York, New York City

Chicago: Vallas Would Be a Disaster for the Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2023 //
6

Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz wrote the following article for Valerie Strauss’s blog “The Answer Sheet” at the Washington Post. Both residents of Chicago, they are fearful of what Paul Vallas will do to the Chicago Public Schools if he is elected Mayor. They urge Chicagoans to reject his candidacy. The latest poll shows the two candidates tied. Every vote matters.

Valerie Strauss wrote the introduction.

On April 4, Chicago voters will choose a new mayor — and the decision could have a profound effect on the future of the country’s third-largest public school district, which is under mayoral control. The two candidates in the runoff election are Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, Democrats who offer vastly different views of public education.

Vallas is a politician and a former education superintendent in Bridgeport, Conn.; at the Recovery School District of Louisiana (most of the schools were in New Orleans); and in Philadelphia and Chicago. Vallas became known as a “turnaround” specialist, meaning he moved into troubled districts and supposedly turned them around.

However, as education historian Larry Cuban wrote: “Whether, indeed, Vallas turned around Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans is contested. Supporters point to more charter schools, fresh faces in the classroom, new buildings, and slowly rising test scores; critics point to abysmal graduation rates for Black and Latino students, enormous budget deficits, and implementation failures.”

Vallas has also unsuccessfully run for several offices, including mayor of Chicago in 2019 and lieutenant governor of Illinois in 2014.

Johnson was a public school teacher in high-poverty areas where school closures and gun violence affected the communities. He then became an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union and fought to keep neighborhood schools open, expand state funding to district schools and reduce the use of high-stakes standardized tests. He has said he will not cut funding from Chicago public schools if he is elected mayor.In 2018, he was elected commissioner of the 1st District of Cook County, where he led a successful effort to ban housing discriminating against formerly incarcerated people.

The following was written by Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz, who are concerned about the privatization of public education. Creswell is a public school parent in Chicago and director of Illinois Families for Public Schools, a nonprofit advocacy group that lobbies for policies that support public education, which it sees as a public good. Horwitz is a graduate of Chicago public schools, a retired educator and a board member of Illinois Families for Public Schools. Both are writing as individuals and are not speaking for the organization.

By Cassie Creswell and Diane Horwitz


In just a week, the future direction of Chicago Public Schools will be decided by voters in a pivotal mayoral election. The two candidates, Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and teachers union organizer, offer diametrically opposed visions for schools in Chicago, which will remain under mayoral control at least through January 2027.

We see the choice as stark. Will Chicago move in the direction of school privatization, a movement gaining ground in a number of states around the country with the growth of charter schools as well as school funding programs that use public money to fund private and religious education?

Or will there be a commitment to well-resourced neighborhood schools and increased funding that would be used to reduce class size, expand mental health services and bilingual education, and ensure that every school has a nurse and a librarian?
Will there be a recognition that the conditions in which many Chicago public school students live — in impoverished and segregated communities marked by violence and disinvestment — must be tackled as part of a broad education improvement agenda?

Johnson’s education platform emphasizes that families should not have to leave their communities or compete to secure a spot in a school that meets their needs and includes a library, music and art program, and small class sizes. He says that neighborhood schools contribute not only to the well-being of students but also to that of the communities in which they are located.

Saying that Chicago public schools are underfunded, he has called for more resources from the state that would be distributed based on the needs of a school’s student population and not solely on enrollment numbers. He has called for creating sustainable community schools with wraparound supports and his education plan integrates proposals for affordable housing, transportation and safety.

Vallas has criticized the operation of Chicago public schools and says he will make schools safer while creating new programs to bring back students who have left the system. He also said he would work to expand alternatives to public schools for families and would change the way schools are funded to “follow the student.”

Vallas has long supported initiatives that critics say are aimed at privatizing public education. He spelled out his vision for the future of Chicago’s school system in a little-noticed op-ed that he wrote for the Chicago Tribune in February 2022, months before declaring his candidacy — and that is what we focus on here. Here are some of his most revealing statements:

Expanding vouchers

Vallas supports expanding Illinois’ existing “Invest in Kids” voucher program, a tax credit scholarship program that offers a 75 percent income tax credit to individuals and businesses that contribute to organizations that pay for private and religious schools. A full 95 percent of participating schools are religious. More than 4,000 Chicago students were funded in this way in the last school year.

Vallas has also floated the idea of using tax increment financing (TIF) dollars to pay for K-12 school vouchers during the current campaign. TIF is a complex, and often misused, public financing initiative designed to fund development through investments and infrastructure in economically struggling communities.

The details of Vallas’ proposal in the Tribune highlight a fiscal initiative that we think is rash. He proposes applying TIF surplus dollars to cover teachers’ pension costs, and then using money that should be earmarked for pensions for vouchers. Vallas says this will allow these diversions of funds to be “legally accomplished.” One of the key concerning legacies of Vallas’ time as the chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools was years of unpaid pension debt, generated by diverting funds that should have gone to teachers’ pensions into operating costs.

Religious charter schools

In Oklahoma, the Catholic Church recently asked the state to establish a virtual, openly religious charter school. In December 2022, Oklahoma’s outgoing attorney general issued a controversial legal opinion supporting the church’s application, saying that prohibiting religious charter schools violated the First Amendment. It was praised by Oklahoma’s Republican governor and state superintendent.

Ten months earlier, Paul Vallas’ op-ed called for religious contract schools, a type of charter school, to be established in Chicago. He wrote: “Longer term, the city can invite state-recognized parochial and private schools to become ‘contract schools’ in which the district contributes to or covers tuition for students who attend.”

Oklahoma’s new attorney general, a conservative Republican, took office in January and quickly rescinded his predecessor’s opinion, saying it “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion.”

Vallas also gave a nod of support to the 2022 Supreme Court Carson v. Makin decision, in which six ultraconservative justices ruled that the state of Maine could not exempt religious institutions from a school voucher program.

An unusual precedent

Vallas justified his vision for charter school expansion on “a long history of contracting out for private educational services. There is precedent.”

He then wrote:

“The Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education grants the right to equitable educational opportunity. It is a right guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Those in power in Chicago have chosen to interpret this right as a mandate that all public financing of education be allocated exclusively to ‘public’ or government-run schools.”

Let it be noted that after Brown v. Board of Education, many communities in Southern states responded by spending public dollars on private schools using voucher schemes — private academies created for White students whose families refused to send them to public schools with Black children and were given public dollars to fund tuition.

It seems to us that Vallas is twisting the import of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, using it to include the use of public dollars to fund children’s departure from public — or, as he called them, “government- run” — schools. His use of the phrase “government-run schools” mirrors the language used by former president Donald Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who framed public education as a government institution essentially holding students hostage.

Private and religious schools that take public funds are not bound by the same anti-discrimination regulations as public schools, leaving them free to discriminate on the basis of disability, LGBTQ+ status, parenting and pregnancy status, English-language learner status and religion itself.

“Dollars follow students”


Vallas ended his op-ed by saying that he supports the “explicit endorsement of a reconstituted system in which parents get to direct the per-pupil public dollars to the school (or education model) of their choosing.”

This is exactly what DeVos has long advocated: “Fund students, not systems.”

DeVos is a leader in the national movement toward the privatization of our public schools, via vouchers, charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately operated — and other often poorly regulated funding programs. Those include education savings accounts and direct financial support for home schooling. The goal: discrediting and dismantling our public schools districts.
Vallas was clear about his plans, which would work toward that goal in Chicago. It’s up to the voters now.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Failure, Illinois, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »