Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Hoax: The Chicago “Miracle School” That Isn’t

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2016 //
19

A credulous reporter, Rebeka Lowin, wrote a glowing article about the miraculous charter school in Chicago that sends 100% of its graduates to four-year colleges.

Urban Prep, she writes, “boasts a whopping college acceptance rate of 100%. That’s right: Each graduate has been accepted to a four-year university.”

“Boasts” is the right verb, to be sure.

According to Mike Klonsky, referring (https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&InstName=urban+prep&SchoolType=1&SchoolType=2&SchoolType=3&SchoolType=4&SpecificSchlTypes=all&IncGrade=-1&LoGrade=-1&HiGrade=-1&ID=170993005884) to US Department of Education data, “This class started with 154 freshman. 67 made it to 12th grade.”

The point of stories like this is to imply that every neighborhood could achieve the same success if they did what this school does. But Urban Prep does not have a 100% graduation rate. It is not a neighborhood school. It is not a model.

Urban Prep is noted for its amazing attrition rate. This year, less than half its first-year students made it to graduation. The graduation rate is not 100%.

Klonsky, who lives in Chicago, congratulates those who did make it to graduation, but he adds some caveats.


Once you cut through all the hype, Urban Prep is anything but a miracle. For one thing, only about half of its students even make it to their senior year. This high attrition rate is typical of charter schools and neighborhood schools alike. For another, despite its strong emphasis on test scores, UP’s reading and math scores are among the lowest in the district and usually fall below the CPS average for African-American male students.

Last year the school had its charter renewed even though it failed to meet most of its own accountability targets. Only 17 percent of Urban Prep juniors passed their state exams a year ago, far lower than the district average of 29 percent. On the positive side, that beats the 8.4 percent passing rate in many neighboring high schools. But nevertheless, nothing to write home about.

As I pointed out last year, the school’s entire graduating class has been accepted to four-year universities even though only 12% of them met the college readiness benchmark in reading and only 36% met the benchmark in English on the ACT exam. And while UP’s composite ACT score is a few (3) points higher than nearby high schools, it’s important to remember that Urban Prep ISN’T a neighborhood school. It draws its students from 31 different zip-codes in the city.

As it happened, I first debunked the claim of “miracle schools” in the New York Times five years ago. When NPR lauded this very same miracle school, I wrote another commentary, this time noting the work of Gary Rubinstein and Noel Hammatt.

Note to reporters: Before you believe the press release, please google the name of the school. Be sure to check the attrition rate. If anyone knows Rebeka Lowin, please send her this post.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Hoax

Tom Ultican: A Guide to the Privatization Movement in California

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2016 //
3

Tom Ultican, a teacher of high school physics and math, here explains who is behind the privatization movement in California. The vehicle for privatization is the California Charter Schools Association.

He begins:

The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) and the Republican machine destroying public education in California or at least trying to privatize it; are promoting their jaded cause.

Three key players in the assault on California’s public schools are Walmart heiress, Carrie Walton Penner, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings and nativist republican politician, Steve Poizner. In 2001, they started EdVoice an organization that claims California schools are broken and must be reformed. In 2003 Poizner founded the CCSA. Walton Penner and Hastings remain as board members of both EdVoice and CCSA.

Why are billionaires so invested in charter schools?

He writes:

Many super-wealthy education reformers are not fans of democracy. There is a natural and dark human tendency to desire control over others. With their massive wealth, billionaire’s are capable of subverting democracy and enforcing their frequently uninformed opinions.

Ultican then goes on to show what a gravy train this charter industry is for all those who jump on board. He lists the salaries of many of those who loudly proclaim “It is For the Children.” Are they doing good or doing well?

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

Connecticut: Billionaires Create PAC to Influence Legislature on Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2016 //
15

The billionaire boys club has opened a new branch in Connecticut, where they have a charter-loving governor, Dannell Malloy.

Connecticut experienced a gigantic charter scandal involving the governor’s favorite charter chain Jumoke Academy. It turned out that the leader of Jumoke had padded his resume and had hired people with criminal records, and engaged in other improprieties. But the governor learned nothing and continues to press for deregulated, unsupervised charter schools. (See here and here.) Jumoke had collected $53 million in public funds between 1998-2013, with no oversight. There was a glimmer of hope that this scandal would lead to legislative action to prevent future scandals.

The new billionaire-funded group is called “Connecticut Forward,” which should not be confused with the PAC of the same name that supported Malloy’s re-election bid. Among the billionaires contributing to this new organization are Michael Bloomberg, Paul Tudor Jones, and Ray Dalio. Don’t be surprised to see members of the Sackler family joining the effort to expand charter schools; these are the Connecticut billionaires who love charter schools and made their fortune by selling Oxycontin, the deadly prescription drug that has addicted so many people.

The organization is nonprofit, but it will survey the record of legislators to see which ones support replacing public schools with privately operated charter schools.

Once their survey is complete, pro-charter legislators can expect contributions to come rolling in. The group, please remember, is nonprofit. That means it has an IRS status that does not permit it to engage in political action.

Families for Excellent Schools, which has wrangled Bridgeport administrators over education reform, is behind the election year initiative.

“That struggle has lots of allies and lots of adversaries, and it will continue until every kid in the state has access to the education that they deserve,” said Jeremiah Kittredge, the CEO and co-founder of Families for Excellent Schools. “I actually think the biggest adversary here is the struggle of time.”

Connecticut has 24 charter schools, with five in the state’s largest city, Bridgeport, enrolling 2,350 students. There are three charter schools in Stamford and one in Norwalk.

New York City, on the other hand, added about 180 charter schools during Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor. Bloomberg’s former press secretary, Stu Loeser, runs the public relations and media consulting firm hired by Families for Excellent Schools.

In Bridgeport, FES successfully fought a proposed moratorium on charter schools in 2015. Some skeptics still view the push for public charter schools as a step toward privatization by wealthy outsiders, however.

Imagine that! Skeptics think that the goal of the charter school movement is “privatization by wealthy outsiders.” Where did they get that idea?

For giants of the hedge fund industry such as Jones and Dalio, both Greenwich residents, charter schools have become a favorite cause. Each has contributed to Families for Excellent Schools, which reported $17.6 million in contributions and grants for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015, to the IRS. Kittredge’s compensation was $222,297 for that time period, more than Connecticut’s state education commissioner and New York City’s schools chancellor.

A spokesman for Jones declined to comment. Multiple requests for comment were also left for Dalio, whose Westport hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, is the largest in the world. Bloomberg has not contributed directly to FES, but has been strongly linked to the charter school movement.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Alan Singer: Hedge Fund Billionaire Supports Success Academy and Trump

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2016 //
73

Alan Singer writes here that John Paulson, whose worth is in the neighborhood of $11 billion, is raising funds for the Trump campaign. Paulson gave $8.5 million to Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain last July.

Trump is a strong supporter of charter schools. Singer says he also endorses vouchers. Trump said during one of the debates “I love charter schools.” Of course, he does.

It is clear that very rightwing Republicans and very wealthy individuals love privatization. On this blog, we often hear from charter school supporters about school choice as “the civil rights issue of our time.” They never explain why every single rightwing governor also favors charters. They never explain why they are in the same chorus with Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and the rest of the Republican glitterati.

The great deception of our time is the propaganda campaign waged by billionaires to persuade the public that privatization advances civil rights.

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

Florida: Two More Charters Cut Ties with Newpoint Partners Management Company

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2016 //
3

Last month, a grand jury in Florida indicted employees of Newpoint Education Partners and three other companies for grand theft, money laundering, and other crimes. The company, started by former employees of the White Hat management company in Ohio, lost the charters for several schools that it was running where the alleged crimes occurred.

Now, two more charter schools are cutting their ties with Newport, following an investigation by a local TV news station.

One week after an 8 on Your Side investigation uncovered $235,000 in bogus school loans, two charter schools funded with state tax dollars in Jacksonville have decided to sever ties with a for-profit management company we’ve been investigating for months because of the financial chaos it helped create in Pinellas charter schools.

The Jacksonville charter school loans by Newpoint Education Partners which are cited in a 2015 financial audit do not exist, something that caught even the treasurer of San Jose Preparatory High School and Academy by surprise after 8 on Your Side uncovered and reported it.

Are there any law enforcement officials in Jacksonville, or is it left to the media to investigate criminal activity?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Peter Greene: When Charters Fight Charters, Grab Your Popcorn

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2016 //
10

The charter industry is split by an internal quarrel between the brick-and-mortar charters and the virtual charters.

Report after report has concluded that the virtual charters do not live up to their claims. The latest–from CREDO at Stanford–found that students in virtual charters lost a year of math instruction for every year in the virtual charter, and nearly half a year of reading. What do you call a school where no one learns anything? A failure.

Peter Greene writes here about the charter vs. charter dust-up.

Here is a news story about the battle between the traditional charters that have buildings and their Ponzi cousins.

Since elected officials are unwilling to clean up the mess in the charter industry, will self-regulation work? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Virtual Charter Schools

Mercedes Schneider: A Teacher at Success Academy Who Lasted Only Six Months

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2016 //
13

Ever wonder what it is like to teach at a Success Academy charter school in New York City? I have been contacted by several teachers who quit and told me their stories, but they were never willing to allow their name to be published. They were afraid that their future job prospects would be damaged. Here is a statement by a former SA teacher, Sasha Guiridongo, posted on her own blog and then shared with Mercedes Schneider.

What is unusual, of course, is that Sasha is not afraid to tell her story and give her name.

She didn’t last long at Success Academy. She explains why in her post. SA is known for teacher churn and burn out. That explains why Eva Moskowitz’s supporters in the Legislature were pushing hard to get a special exemption for charter teachers in the law, relieving them of the necessity of being certified to teach for three years. Since so many teachers don’t last three years, this creates a large pool of prospective “teachers,” wannabes without certification.

Sasha complains about the competition among teachers to produce the highest test scores; I had earlier heard from a leaker at SA that the charters post the names of teachers in public and rank them by their students’ scores. This is an inherently humiliating practice. They also post student test scores in public. It must be humiliating for all but those at the top.

Here is an excerpt from Sasha’s post:

I was set to join “the team” for T-School, a brainwashing series of seminars aimed to mold you into a “Success teacher” because it’s somehow different than a regular teacher. Success teachers are notregular teachers, no sir, they are above that. The seminars retaught me how to teach and fed my newfound Success ego while stealing an entire month of my well deserved summer vacation. The outcome? I was thoroughly convinced that it took a “special” kind of teacher to teach at Success and I was part of the chosen few. This mentality is what kept me there as long as I did despite looming depression due to my sudden loss of identity and free time to pursue personal passions.

I had heard horrors about SA prior to accepting the job: the long hours and pressure to perform, but coming from another charter school I had confidence that I could accept and overcome any difficulties; Besides I was coming from teaching in East New York and nothing toughens you up more than working in a school where someone is shot dead at the end of the school block during Parent-Teacher Night. So was I intimidated by SA? No. But once I began teaching as a newly baptized SA teacher I quickly realized the toxic environment SA strived to create and force feed educators who had real passion for teaching. SA had managed to create an educational environment that disregarded the well-being of the teacher. It promoted a cut-throat, monetarily incentivized corporate environment in which you prayed for the demise of your peers for an opportunity to inadvertently glorify yourself. Is this what teaching is about?

My 6 months at Success forced me to evaluate who I was as an educator and revise my motivation, a minute personal gain. Success mostly made me doubt my personal success every day. I became doubtful of the importance of teaching; if we could all be trained to be the same, think the same, and act the same then as educators we were inevitably relaying this same message to our students. Every day I relayed the message that just as all teachers had to think and act and be the same, consistency among classrooms, the same was expected of students. SA didn’t celebrate originality or praise the individual, no, SA thrived on doubt, on the inevitable fear of not doing enough, being there enough, talking enough, thinking enough, preparing enough, or absorbing enough information. The underlying message was that this doubt and fear somehow made you better because it encouraged you to take immediate action as you strived to BE THE BEST at the expense of your mental stability, of course. If I couldn’t survive here, I often thought, I had failed and I was not “one of a kind,” I was weak and had no business teaching.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

New York Legislature Frees Charter Schools of Regulations and Oversight

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2016 //
55

In late night negotiations, rushing to finish the legislative session, the New York Legislature reached a package deal to extend mayoral control by only one year. Part of the package creates a parallel system for charter schools, which can switch authorizers and choose one (either the State University of New York or the Board of Regents) that will give them freedom from any regulations and standards that apply to public schools. In other words, there will be one set of rules for public schools, and no rules for charter schools. This will be the first time in New York state’s history that the Legislature has officially established a publicly-funded dual school system: One sector is subject to democratic control, the other is not. One must accept (or take responsibility for) all students, the other is free to accept and reject whichever students it wants.

A one-year extension, with few or no caveats, had seemed all but cemented when lawmakers went to bed on Thursday evening. But the morning found Mr. Flanagan pushing for the funding transparency requirement, followed by the charter-school provision in the afternoon. It would effectively create a parallel system of charter schools within the city, allowing “high-performing charter schools in good standing” to switch to join the State University of New York umbrella or the Board of Regents of the State Educational Department.

Not since the era preceding the Brown decision of 1954 has a state legislature so brazenly established a two-tier system of K-12 schools.

The leader of the State Senate, John Flanagan, has made no secret of his contempt for Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio helped to raise money for Democrats running for the State Senate; had they won, the State Senate would be controlled by Democrats, not Republicans. Governor Cuomo has stabbed the mayor in the back repeatedly, because he doesn’t like to share the stage with any other prominent Democrat in the state. So, the mayor had a losing hand when he asked for a three-year extension of mayoral control.

When Mike Bloomberg asked for a six-year extension in 2009, the Legislature granted it. The State Senate loved Mayor Bloomberg, because he often contributed to individual Republicans running for re-election (three years later, in 2012, the Mayor gave $1 million to the Republican campaign fund for the state senate). When Mayor Bloomberg asked for a renewal of his unlimited power over the schools in 2009, he boasted of the dramatic increase in test scores that were a direct result of his control. However, a year later, the New York Board of Regents commissioned an independent study, which concluded that the New York State Education Department had lowered the passing mark every year and test scores across the state were inflated. When they were adjusted after this revelation, the dramatic gains disappeared. NAEP scores never confirmed the boasts by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein about “historic gains.”

If anyone remembers what all these political maneuvers over control have to do with educating one million children, please remind me.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, New York, New York City

Success Academy Students Finally Gain Admission to Elite High Schools

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2016 //
91

Six eighth grade students at Eva Moskowitz’s charter chain Success Academy passed the examination for New York City’s elite high schools. This is the first time that any student from Success Academy has passed the rigorous exam in the three years that she had students in this grade.

Moskowitz offered this information in a meeting with the New York Daily News editorial board.

Six students out of 54 Success Academy eighth-graders who took the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test were offered seats in 2016 at one of the elite high schools that rely on the test, like Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech or Bronx Science, Moskowitz said in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily News Editorial Board.

That’s up from zero kids who gained seats in 2014 and 2015.

The performance is below the city average acceptance rate of nearly 19%. However, all of the Success Academy kids who took the test and gained acceptance are black or Hispanic, making her acceptance rate of 11% about twice the citywide average for students of color. Only 4% of black students and 6% of Hispanic students who took the test got offers in 2016.

“It’s a rigorous test, and the kids have to prepare for it,” Moskowitz said. “Truth be told, our kids, most of them did not study for it. They took it cold.”

Students who pass the difficult test often practice for months, and there’s a cottage industry of prep firms that train kids specifically for the exam.

But Moskowitz said the Success Academy kids who got in did so without the drilling.

“I’m very proud of the fact that our kids are flexible thinkers,” Moskowitz said. “They have read a lot and done a lot of mathematics.”

Just under a quarter of Success Academy eighth-graders took the test, roughly the same as the city average for black and Hispanic kids.

Moskowitz says that the kids didn’t take any practice tests, didn’t drill, didn’t need any extra help to get ready.

She makes it sound easy because all of her students are “flexible thinkers” who have done a lot of reading and mathematics.

But if this is so, why did only six of 54 students who took the test pass it? Why not all 54? The 54 are “just under a quarter” of the charter chain’s eighth graders. Why didn’t all 220 or so take the test and pass it? Aren’t they all flexible thinkers who have done a lot of reading and mathematics? Shouldn’t they all be able to sit for the exam without any preparation?

Bear in mind that the 220 who finished eighth grade are about 40% of those who started, reflecting a 60% attrition rate. With their “grit” and the academic prowess learned at SA charters, why were only six students able to pass the exams?

Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby wrote a study in 2009 that was widely hailed by charter advocates, claiming that students in NYC charters nearly closed the “Scarsdale-Harlem” achievement gap. The implication was that attendance in a charter school for eight years would raise the achievement of all charter students, not just six of 220, or even six of 54.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

George Joseph: How Trump’s Pal Carl Icahn Profits from His Charters

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2016 //
10

Presumptive Republican nominee has said that billionaire Carl Icahn is the kind of person he would pick as Secretary of the Treasury.

It seems there is a magnetic attraction between billionaires and charter schools.

Investigative journalist George Joseph took a closer look at Carl Icahn’s investment in charter schools:

Like Trump, Carl Icahn has also named a school after himself—seven charter schools in New York City to be exact (Icahn Charter School 1, Icahn Charter School 2, Icahn Charter School 3, etc.). And as with Trump University, the money trail suggests the organization running these schools may have served to enrich its billionaire founder, Icahn, at the expense of its own students. An AlterNet investigation finds that Carl Icahn appears to have treated his charity like a personal piggy bank, using it to make potentially tens of millions for himself while benefiting from tens of millions in tax deductions.

In 1997, Carl Icahn made a $100 million tax-deductible “contribution” to his public charity, the Foundation for a Greater Opportunity, scoring about a $45 million income tax reduction, according to an estimate by Gregg Polsky, a law professor at UNC. In January 2006, Icahn’s foundation suddenly sold back the stock gift to an Icahn corporation, Modal LLC. The $100 million gift in American Railcar Industries Inc. shares was conspicuously sold three days before the company was to go public, a process that often sparks a short-term hike in share value. The convenient date of the sale strongly suggests Icahn knew his limited liability corporation, rather than his educational charity, would make a killing off the public offering.

Isn’t it wonderful how some people, like Icahn, have figured out how to do good and make money at the same time?

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization
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