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Peter Greene: Why the Free Market Fails in Education

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2016 //
44

Peter Greene read about a charter school in Philadelphia that was closing, leaving its students and teachers in the lurch. At first glance, this might seem surprising, but it is actually a feature of the free market in education, not a bug.

 

 

Charters close because charter schools are businesses, and businesses close when it is not financially viable for them to stay open.

 

The free market will never work for a national education system. Never. Never ever.

 

A business operating in a free market will only stay in business as long as it is economically viable to do so. And it will never be economically viable to provide a service to every single customer in the country.
All business models, either explicitly or implicitly, include decisions about which customers will not be served, which customers will be rejected, because in that model, those customers will be detrimental to the economic viability of the business. McDonald’s could decide to court people who like upscale filet mignons, but the kitchen equipment and training would cost a whole bunch of money that would not bring a corresponding increase in revenue, so they don’t do it.

 

Apparently some 2,500 charters had closed by 2013. Obviously there have been numerous closings since then, although the U.S. Department of Education won’t release data on how may of the charters it funded have closed.

 

This is business. Where is Eastern Airlines, Pan American Airlines, Braniff? Where are the small stores that disappeared when Walmart opened? Google the term “brands that disappeared” and you will find dozens of familiar, once iconic brands that no longer exist. Kodak. Woolworth. Tab. Chiclets. All gone.

 

Public schools are not supposed to open and close in the twinkling of an eye. They are not supposed to compete for survival. They are public services, designed to serve every child in the community who wants to enroll. There is no lottery to enter.

 

Peter Greene writes:

 

The first question of the public education system has to be, “How can we get a great education for every single child in this country?” The first question for a business has to be, “What model can we use that will keep this business economically viable?’ And the answer to that question will never, ever be, “By providing an education to every child in this country.” There will always be students who live in the economic cracks, niche customers that no business wants because there will never be money in them. Some charter fans suggest, either explicitly or implicitly, that educating those students will be the job of public education. But that represents a dramatic and complete re-imagining of the purpose of public education, and to repurpose an entire public sector without a public discussion is irresponsible and undemocratic.

 

In the meantime, charter schools will continue to close when it makes business sense to do so, no matter what sorts of promises they made to the families of their students. Charter schools think like businesses, not like schools, because charter schools are businesses. We cannot be surprised when they act like businesses, and we cannot keep hiding from a discussion about the implications of turning that business mindset on a public good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Politico on Eva’s Cancellation of Pre-K Program

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2016 //
26

Here, in an article that is not behind a paywall, is an account of Eva Moskowitz’s first defeat in her battle with Mayor de Blasio.

Success Academy has officially canceled its pre-kindergarten program for next year, after losing consecutive fights with City Hall and the State Education Department over a contract dispute.

Success CEO Eva Moskowitz and the network’s lawyers have argued that a pre-K contract the state requires all providers to sign is overly restrictive and therefore illegal. State education department commissioner MaryEllen Elia ruled in February that Success needed to sign the contract granting the city oversight over its pre-K program in order to receive public dollars.

Success had been seeking $720,000 from the city in order to run its pre-K program, which is currently in three Success schools. Moskowitz has been clear that the issue is one of one of principle, not cash. POLITICO New York reported last month that the charter network spent $734,000 on a political rally in Albany last year, $14,000 more than it is asking for from the city.

The cancellation was a foregone conclusion after an upstate judge declined to expedite Success’s appeal of the state’s decision in the dispute, forcing Moskowitz to hew to a self-imposed, end of May deadline to cancel the pre-K program.

When Moskowitz called a press conference to announce her decision, no one showed up to cover it other than Politico.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/06/success-academy-officially-cancels-pre-k-programs-after-unsuccessful-fight-102355#ixzz4ARfx63EN
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

Los Angeles Times to Bill Gates: Stop Trying to Run the Nation’s Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2016 //
65

This is a remarkable editorial that appears in the Los Angeles Times, of all places. The headline tells a story we did not expect to read on this newspaper’s editorial page:

Gates Foundation failures show philanthropists shouldn’t be setting America’s public school agenda

Read that again. Slowly.

The editorial recaps the serial failures of the Gates Foundation in education: Small high schools (abandoned); evaluating teachers by test scores (not yet abandoned but clearly a failure, as witnessed by the disasterous, costly experience in Hillsborough County, Florida); Common Core (not abandoned, but facing a massive public rejection).

But it’s not all bad, says the editorial:

It was a remarkable admission for a foundation that had often acted as though it did have all the answers. Today, the Gates Foundation is clearly rethinking its bust-the-walls-down strategy on education — as it should. And so should the politicians and policymakers, from the federal level to the local, who have given the educational wishes of Bill and Melinda Gates and other well-meaning philanthropists and foundations too much sway in recent years over how schools are run.

That’s not to say wealthy reformers have nothing to offer public schools. They’ve funded some outstanding charter schools for low-income students. They’ve helped bring healthcare to schools. They’ve funded arts programs.

This is not the whole story, of course. They have funded a movement to privatize public education, which drains resources and the students the charters want from public schools, leaving them in worse shape for the vast majority of students. And they have insisted on high-stakes testing, thus leading schools to eliminate or curtail their arts programs. As for healthcare in the schools, there should be more of it, but it should not depend on philanthropic largesse. Two children in the Philadelphia public schools died because the school nurses were cut back to only two days a week, and there were no philanthropists filling the gap.

Knowing how destructive the venture philanthropists have been–not only Gates, but also Eli Broad and the Walton Family, and a dozen or two other big philanthropies–one could wish that they would fund healthcare and arts programs, and perhaps experimental schools that demonstrated what public schools with ample resources could accomplish.

Still we must be grateful when the Los Angeles Times writes words like these:

Philanthropists are not generally education experts, and even if they hire scholars and experts, public officials shouldn’t be allowing them to set the policy agenda for the nation’s public schools. The Gates experience teaches once again that educational silver bullets are in short supply and that some educational trends live only a little longer than mayflies.

Allowing Bill Gates or Eli Broad or the Walton Family to set the nation’s education is not only unwise, it is undemocratic. The schools belong to the public, not to the 1%.

Since the editorial mentioned Bill Gates’ devout belief that teachers could be evaluated by the test scores of their students, it is appropriate to recall that the Los Angeles Times was the first newspaper in the nation to publish ratings for teachers based on test scores; it even had hopes of winning a Pulitzer Prize for this ugly intervention by non-educators who thought that teaching could be reduced to a number and splashed in headlines. Let us never forget Rigoberto Ruelas, a fifth-grade teacher who committed suicide shortly after the evaluations were published by the Los Angeles Times, and he was declared by the Times to be among the “least effective” teachers. There followed a heated debate about the methodology used by the Times to rate teachers. That was before the American Statistical Association warned against using test scores to evaluate individual teachers. But the Los Angeles Times was taking Gates’ lead and running with it. It was not worth the life of this good man.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Testing, Walton Foundation

California: State Superintendent Orders Audit of Low-Performing K12 Virtual Charter School

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2016 //
9

Jessica Calefati wrote a blistering series about Michael Milken’s K12 Inc. virtual charter school in California (called California Virtual Academy or CAVA) a few weeks ago. The series caused enough of a stir to persuade State Superintendent Tom Torklakson to order a state audit of CAVA.

Calefati reported that less than half the students at CAVA graduate, and none is qualified to attend a California public university.

The virtual charter industry is noted for high profits and poor performance. Student attrition is high, test scores and graduation rates are low. But profits are excellent, because the “school” receives full state tuition but has none of the expenses of a brick and mortar school. No grounds, no transportation, no custodian, no food services, no library, no support staff, no athletics. And classes that range from 40-more than 100 in number. As Calefati reported in the original series, students may get credit for attendance if they are online only one minute a day. The latest CREDO study found that for every 180 days enrolled in a virtual charter, students lose 180 days of instruction in math and 72 in reading. This is a lose-lose.

It is heartening to see state officials taking action to curb the fraud that runs rampant through its charter industry, unsupervised, unregulated, and unchecked.

Calefati writes:

In a rare move, California’s top education official has enlisted the state’s highest-ranking accountant to conduct a sweeping audit of California Virtual Academies, a profitable but low-performing network of online charter schools that enrolls about 15,000 students across the state.

The audit is the first that Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has asked the state controller’s Office to conduct since he took office in 2011. The request comes two months after this newspaper published an investigative series on K12 Inc., the publicly traded Virginia firm that operates the schools and reaps tens of millions of dollars annually in state funding.

In a statement Thursday, Torlakson said he has a duty to ensure that public money isn’t being squandered and sought the probe into the California Virtual Academies because of “serious questions raised about a number of their practices.” He said the audit would examine the relationship between the schools and the company and the “validity” of attendance, enrollment, dropout and graduation rates reported by the academies to the state.

This isn’t the first time the company has come under fire in recent weeks.

Torlakson’s request follows lawmakers’ calls last month for the state auditor to examine for-profit charter schools operations and Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla’s introduction earlier this month of legislation that would prohibit online charters from hiring for-profit companies like K12 for management or instructional services. The company is also being probed by Attorney General Kamala Harris, who launched an investigation of online charter schools last fall.

If Controller Betty Yee finds evidence of gross financial mismanagement, illegal or improper use of public money, a disregard for sound educational practices or repeated failure to improve student test scores the state Board of Education, may — based on a recommendation from Torlakson — vote to revoke the schools’ charters.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, K12 Inc., Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Rebellion at Amistad High: Students Walk Out

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2016 //
19

Students at the Amistad High School, the crown jewel of the no-excuses Achievement First charter chain, walked out to protest the lack of diversity among the school’s teachers and the arbitrary discipline.

“Administrators overseeing the Achievement First Amistad charter high school promised to “do better” Tuesday after hundreds of black and Latino students walked out in protest to air longstanding complaints about racial insensitivity.

“The students massed on the football field of the Dixwell Avenue charter school after arriving on buses, then marched on the street chanting “What do we want? Diversity! When do we want it? Now! Now!”

“Some 98 percent of the school’s 498 students are black or Latino, according to its website. Most of the teachers are white.

“The school emphasizes that it grooms students to be leaders — and the students took them up on that mission at Tuesday’s orderly protest.

“They charged that a racially insensitive climate had led most of the black teachers to leave and to indiscriminate discipline.

“The protests brought into the open complaints students and parents have had about the racial climate in the school.

“The school has young teachers that can’t handle the classroom,” said Kordell Green, one of the organizers.”

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Connecticut

Jonathan Chait: “Michelle Rhee’s Policies Worked”

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2016 //
31

Politico reported this morning on a continuing debate about the “test/and-punish” policies of Michelle Rhee, whose ideas about testing, school closings, and teacher evaluation were reflected in the iniatives of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top: 

“EDU-PINION: Pundits are once again debating the legacy of Michelle Rhee, the controversial former D.C. public schools chancellor who became a national figure in the education reform movement. Citing recent commentary questioning whether Hillary Clinton should embrace Rhee-style reform to the same extent as Obama did, Jonathan Chait of New York magazine pushes back. “Rhee’s policies have worked,” he writes. “If you believe education policy should be designed to increase learning and economic opportunity for low-income children, then Washington, D.C., is a model that should be emulated.” More: http://nym.ag/1sooTbc”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, District of Columbia, Education Reform

California: Unbridled Charter Expansion Threatens Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2016 //
14

Thomas Ultican, teacher of physics and mathematics in San Diego, California, writes about the disastrous impact of charter schools on public schools. According to a study commissioned by the United Teachers of Los Angeles, the district loses $500 million annually to charters.

 

The charter lobby in the state–led by the California Charter School Association– is wealthy and politically powerful.

 

Ultican points to Prop 39, passed into law in 2000, as the mechanism that allows privately managed, lightly regulated charters to expand into public space and gobble up resources and the students they want.

 

“The MGT study illustrates how charter school law in California is fashioned to favor privately operated charter schools over public schools. If a local community passed a bond measure in the 1980’s to build a new public school, it is the law in California that the members of that local community – who still might be paying for that public school – will have no choice but to allow a private operator move into the facility. In addition, the charter school law requires the local school district to incur many direct and indirect costs to support charter schools.

 

“In California, since its statehood, a super-majority (67%) was required to pass a school bond measure. In 2000, after losing an effort that March to mitigate the super-majority rules and the infamous proposition 13 limitations, supporters brought forward proposition 39 that would reduce school-bond super-majorities to 55% and did not seriously threaten proposition 13 protections enacted in 1978. It passed 53% to 47% in November.

 

“In the official ballot summary for proposition 39 in the November 7, 2000 election the support message was signed by Lavonne Mcbroom, President California State PTA; Jacqueline N. Antee, AARP State President; and Allan Zaremerg, President California Chamber of Commerce. The statement against the proposition was signed by Jon Coupal, Chairman Save Our Homes Committee, Vote No on Proposition 39, a Project of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association; Dean Andal, Chairman Board of Equalization, State of California; and Felicia Elkinson, Past President Council of Sacramento Senior Organizations.

 

“This proposition was a battle royal with every media source and elected official bloviating endlessly about the righteousness of their side. However, like in the official ballot measure statements, there was no discussion of the charter school co-location funding requirement in article six of the proposition.

 

“When proposition 39 is coupled with the undemocratic charter authorizing system in California, citizens lose all democratic control of their local schools. With the three levels of government having the power to authorize charter schools it is almost impossible to turn down a charter request no matter how bad the schools previous history is or how inundated a community might be with certain types of schools…..

 

“Public education run by democratic processes is a major good. The past two decades of school reform have produced nothing but negative results and profits. The more enthusiastically the corporate and billionaire driven reforms have been embraced the worse the results (see Denver, New Orleans and Washington DC). It is time to stop all new charter school authorizations in California. It is time to reject the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards. It is time to embrace professional educators working democratically within local communities to restore public education in America. It is time to protect our great inherited legacy – public education – which is definitely not a privatized market driven education.”

 

 

 

Categories California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Funding

Ohio Editorial: No More Excuses for Failing Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2016 //
7

The mainstream press in Ohio has turned critical of the low-performing, profitable, politically connected charter industry. Just read this blistering editorial in The Columbus Dispatch.

 

 
“If a charter school can’t perform better than a conventional public school, there is no point in having the charter school.

 

 

“After all, Ohio embarked on the charter-school experiment to see if there is a way to improve on the dismal results being achieved in many urban and poor school districts, not simply to replicate their failure. The idea was that if student outcomes improved in charter schools, then the schools would continue. But if charters failed to improve on the performance of conventional schools, they would be closed.

 

 

“Now, years after the experiment began, some schools are persistent failures, but instead of being shut down, they want to change the performance measuring stick so that they can remain in business.

 

 

“Defenders of conventional public schools long have maintained that failure isn’t the fault of the schools, but is the result of the socioeconomic circumstances of their students: Students who come from poverty, broken homes and associated forms of instability, are harder to teach.

 

 

“Now, some charter schools, which were created expressly to find ways to overcome these disadvantages, want to be excused for failure on the same grounds — saying their students are harder to teach. But if they’re doing no better than conventional public schools — and in some cases doing worse — there is no reason for the public to continue to fund them.

 

“But the straightforward experiment went off the rails when some clever operators figured out how to get rich by sponsoring charter schools. And to keep the gravy flowing, they began making major political contributions to the lawmakers who control the gravy.

 

 

“And that is why rumors have been flying around the Statehouse about proposals to weaken accountability standards for charter schools so that they can continue to receive millions of taxpayer dollars even as the students they are supposed to educate continue to fall behind. In many cases, particularly with online charter schools, it appears that many students don’t even participate in learning, but the school’s operators continue to be paid by the state as if these students are receiving an education.

 

 

“Charter-school lobbyists are waving their checkbooks and urging lawmakers to ease attendance-reporting rules and to continue to pay the schools even if students don’t log in to learn. They also want to absolve charter-school sponsors of responsibility for the performance of their schools, even though this is a key part of their role as sponsors. Lobbyists also want schools to be measured not by how much progress a student makes each year, but by whether the school performs more or less like other schools with similar student demographics. In other words, if a poorly performing school is doing no worse than other poorly performing, then it should get a pass. This is called the “similar students” measure.

 

 

“It is less than a year since the legislature passed House Bill 2, hailed as a giant step forward in holding charter schools accountable for their performance. Part of that bill called for the Ohio Department of education to analyze the “similar students” measure, with a report due by Dec. 1. Now some lawmakers are proposing to pass legislation adopting this approach before the education department has even issued its report. So much for sound public policy.

 

 

“Because of such nonsense, it’s important to remember why charters were instituted in the first place. It wasn’t to replicate failure and make excuses. And it wasn’t to make a handful of charter sponsors rich. It was to make students successful.”

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Ohio

California: The Charter Game is Rigged

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2016 //
63

This article provides an inside view of the charter racket in California.

 

If local districts oppose charter schools, it doesn’t matter. No matter what they say or how well the community organizes, the die is cast. State officials will approve the charter application, regardless of its flaws.

 

Rocketship charter chain wanted to move into the Mt. Diablo district. It had a federal grant to expand, and the chain wouldn’t let community opposition stand in its way. The district did not want Rocketship’s computer-based approach. It did not want a corporate chain whose headquarters was sixty miles away. Neither did the county board of education, which rejected Rocketship.

 

“This is the opposite of local control,” said Nellie Meyer, the superintendent of the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, who called the proposal deeply flawed and was followed by MDUSD’s general counsel, Deborah Cooksey, who said Rocketship had collected its petition signatures “under false pretenses,” by telling people—including parents who were non-English speakers—their kids could get kicked out of school if they didn’t sign.

 

“This is going to be something that will divide our community,” said Gloria Rios, who has lived in the Monument Corridor near the northeastern Bay Area city of Concord for 20 years and has three children in the district’s public schools. “Our children will suffer the consequences, and these funds can be used for the schools we already have.”

 

Rejected by the local community and the county board of education, Rocketship went to the State Board of Education.

 

Slam dunk.

 

“The first indication that the proceedings were tilted to Rocketship came when Cindy Chan, who oversees the California Education Department’s charter school program, summarized Rocketship’s petition and, using the same legal terms that the Mt. Diablo and Contra Costa County Boards used to reject Rocketship, concluded the opposite. Rocketship’s prograns were “sound” and they “will implement it,” she said.

 

“Rocketship’s Cheye Calvo, its chief growth and county engagement officer, then led the board through a powerpoint presentation filled with all the buzzwords of the charter school movement. He talked of closing the “achievement gap.” He said that most “Rocketeers” learn more than one year’s worth of studies every school year. He said the school collected 1,100 petition signatures from district residents. He said the computer labs were “personalized learning,” saying they were “no substitute” for instruction. He called their teachers “purposeful, focused.” He said they rely on data to “assess students” and focus on the “whole child.” He acknowledged that Rocketship has high turnover—losing 20 percent of its faculty annually, but said their “teachers are performance-driven professionals who strive to achieve gap-closing” results. Finally, he put up graphs that compared the test scores from Rocketship’s San Jose schools with students in the Mt. Diablo district, saying they can do better than the traditional public schools.

 

“The opponents, led by the Mt. Diablo School District superintendent and local school board president, said Rocketship’s persistence was an affront to local control. They recounted the major flaws in its curriculum, especially its shallow approach to teaching English to students who did not speak it at home or as a first language. The district’s programs, especially in the Monument Corridor, were appropriately bilingual and award-winning, they said, adding their approach was seen by Rocketship as a liability. They said that Rocketship was not invited by parents to come into the community, but was lured by local real estate developers.

 

“But mostly, the critique was aimed at Rocketship’s overreliance on its test-centered curriculum and its lack of attention to the needs of what was working in a low-income, bilingual community, and one where special education also was a challenge.

 

“We are outraged at Rocketship’s lack of information on special education,” said Cheryl Hansen, president of the Mt. Diablo School District Board. “This is not Rocketship’s first school. Rocketship has not been able to answer special education questions at the school board and county board level.” And returning to their English language instruction, Hansen said, “More than 75 percent of their charter schools show declining achievement in the last four years.”

 

Nothing the district said mattered. Diablo will get a Rocketship charter, despite its poor performance elsewhere, despite its rejection by the local community.

 

This process is a rejection of local control and a rejection of democracy. It serves corporate interests, not children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform

Salt Lake Tribune Denounces Charter Profiteering

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2016 //
13

Day by day, we are making inroads into public opinion. Newspapers in Ohio have been speaking out against the frequent violations of public trust by greedy charter operators. Now the Salt Lake Tribune steps up with a bold denunciation of charter school profiteers. It’s about time.

Inviting the private sector to run schools was a colossal error. For the first time in American history, we have schools claiming to be “public”that operate for public. We have charter schools launched by entrepreneurs, not educators. It is wrong. Many members of the public believe that charters are privately funded, not realizing that it is their tax dollars that are paying off investors.

Here is concrete evidence that the tide is turning. It is an editorial in the Salt Lake Coty Tribune called simply “Charter School Profiteers.”

The editorial board says:

“A handful of private companies have banked more than $68 million from Utah taxpayers over the past three years. The money is delivered through no-bid contracts by people who don’t work for government, but the companies are often connected to political officials.

“An extensive examination of charter school spending by Salt Lake Tribune reporter Benjamin Wood shows several companies that exist only to contract with charter schools. While public schools have always contracted for some services, many charters go so far as to contract for their principals and teachers, providing undisclosed profits to the companies while shielding financial information from the public.

“Under state law, the schools must be operated as non-profits, presumably to avoid people profiteering on public education. Charters that contract with for-profit companies for their largest expenses effectively circumvent that requirement. There is no way for Utahns to know how many of their education dollars are ending up as someone’s salary or profits.

“In the meantime, charters are slowly losing one of their most persuasive arguments: that they can educate students for less money than traditional public schools.

“According to a report from the Utah Foundation released last month, Utah charters collect about 10 percent less per student than regular public schools, but they have cost advantages, too. They have fewer non-English speakers and economically-disadvantaged students. Add in the public schools’ requirements to provide busing, to build inefficient rural schools and to provide such things as gang-prevention services, and the cost difference virtually disappears. Looking at test scores, charters track pretty closely to public schools on average.

“In other words, there is no evidence the free-market capitalism allowed in Utah’s charter school system is providing better results for students.

“But it clearly is producing winners. One company that received more than $4 million last year is headed by the sister of the president of the state charter school board. Another company ($1 million from charters last year) is operated by a state legislator, and two others ($4.7 million and $4.5 million last year) are run by relatives of legislators. (Surprise! All three voted in favor of increasing charter school funding by $20 million last session.)

“One of those relatives promised, “We keep it pretty separate.”

“How many charters operate this way? Hard to say, but it’s not all of them. This isn’t an argument for ending charter schools, but it is a system that begs for reform. Otherwise, the worst is yet to come.

“Long before charters, there were non-profit entities providing K-12 education in Utah. They hired their own principals and teachers, and they still do. That is because there are no efficiencies in creating that second entity, but there can be profits.

“And with profits come profit pressures. Some of today’s charters look less like non-profit schools and more like for-profit proprietary colleges. They market on television and employ sales staffs. As charters become more common, competition for charter students increases. Expect to see these for-profit non-profits apply more sales pressure to prospective parents.”

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/3923608-155/editorial-charter-school-profiteers

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, For-Profit, Utah
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