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William Phillis: Charters Are a Step Backward in Ohio

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2022 //
15

William Phillis, former deputy state superintendent of education in Ohio, is appalled by the waste and corruption in the charter sector. The state constitution requires a common school system, and charter schools and vouchers violate the state constitution. Ohio has had some of the biggest financial scandals in charter world (think ECOT), yet the Republican legislature continues to demand more funding for charters and vouchers. In this post, he likens charters to the one-room schools that were closed down long ago. He also notes that half of the 600 charters authorized in Ohio have closed.

William Phillis writes:

Charter Schools Conceptually and In Practice Are a Scourge on the Education Landscape In Ohio

Not all charter schools and their management companies are rife with fraud and corruption. Nor are all charters low-performing. Nor do all of them shortchange students to stack-up shameless profits. Nor do all of them practice nepotism in hiring, cherry-picking students, and closing without notice. However, the charter industry, as a whole, is rife with all of the above. Even if the charter industry would be free of all these negatives (and more), the concept and practice of chartering is wrong-headed.

The charter industry is inefficient within its own parameters and causes the whole of provisions for education to be inefficient. Historically the state has allocated between 34 to 45 percent of its General Revenue Fund (GRF) to K-12 education. Currently, about 40% of the state GRF is allocated to K-12 education.

Due to the demands of other state programs and services, the percentage of the state General Revenue Budget allocated to K-12 education will not likely increase substantially in the future.. Tax funds siphoned away from school districts for charters (and vouchers) duplicates facilities and programs which causes inefficient use of tax funds and reduces educational opportunities for students in both districts and charters.

Since 1900, the state forced school districts to consolidate to expand educational opportunities and to use tax dollars more efficiently. In 1900 there were about 3500 school districts. Ten thousand one room school buildings were in operation. Now there are 612 districts and no one room schools in operation. However, the state has issued more than 600 charters to private individuals, 300 or so of which have closed. Most charters serve less students than the school districts that the state forced to close. If smaller is finer, then why doesn’t the state force deconsolidation of school districts?

The smaller charter enrollments typically reduce breadth of programs and opportunities for students. The charters duplicate programs and services which exacerbates the inefficiencies. What are state officials thinking?

Charter schools are largely deregulated. For the sake of students and taxpayers there is no justification for a differential between public schools and charters in the matter of regulations. The original idea of chartering was that some teachers and parents would propose to a board of education that they would create innovative, creative programming and demonstrate better results in exchange for reduced regulations. As an industry, charters have been neither creative nor innovative. Nor has the charter industry outpaced traditional public schools in academic performance; however, reduced regulations have spawned fraud and corruption coupled with little or no accountability and transparency.

Charter schools have no constitutional basis.

The charter school experiment in Ohio has been rife with fraud and corruption and low performance. Billions in tax funding has been stolen and wasted. The experiment is a failure. There is no justification for this experiment to continue.

Learn more about the EdChoice voucher litigation

Learn About Vouchers Hurt Ohio
8 Lies About Private School Vouchers

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OhioEandA

VOUCHERS HURT OHIO

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 |ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://ohiocoalition.org

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, Ohio

New Orleans: The Great Charter Experiment Is a Farce! A Failure! A Mirage!

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2022 //
26

The New Orleans Tribune pulled the mask off the charade of reform in New Orleans. The much-heralded experiment of turning every public school into a charter school is a failure. In the latest state ratings, more than half the schools received a grade of D or F.

The newspaper’s editorial board writes:

It has been said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Well, NOLA Public Schools must be certifiably insane; because here we are — 17 years deep into a so-called education reform movement; and this year’s recently released school performance scores continue to reveal the what we have long known — this reform was and is a farce and a failure.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, laws were rewritten to make the takeover of public schools in Orleans Parish easier. The minimum school performance score needed to escape being considered a failing school was raised from 60 to 87.4 so that more public schools in New Orleans could be taken over by the Recovery School District. Veteran teachers were summarily fired without cause. School buildings and resources were turned over to quasi-private charter management organizations. Our children were and still are bussed all over the city.

Then in 2019, the reformers really dug in, and the Orleans Parish School Board got out of the business of operating schools all together, turning over every campus to a charter operator and an unelected and unaccountable board.

And all of this for what?

If any of this maneuvering would have resulted in success, we would have nothing to say.

But there are 65 charter schools loosely operating under the cavalier control of the Orleans Parish School Board, and based on the 2022 school performance scores released in November by the Louisiana Department of Education, more than half of them are D and F schools. In other words, they are failing or close to it. In fact, if the SPS of 87.4 that was purposefully raised to take over public schools in 2005 were applied right now all but four of the 65 NOLA public schools could be taken over TODAY!

Let’s say it again, another way — if the same standard that was intentionally changed to takeover and destroy public education in Orleans Parish in 2005 were applied to the 65 public charter schools operating under NOLA Public Schools today, a full 61 of those schools would be considered failing by the state RIGHT NOW!

All of the teachers and administrators should be fired without cause; their buildings and resources should be turned over to the RSD; their students and the money that follows them should be scattered to the wind.

Of course, that’s not going to happen. In order to mask the failure of this corporate takeover of public education masquerading as a reform movement, the minimum SPS has been lowered over the last decade and half, indicative of the fact that this so-called reform has never been about improving educational outcomes for our children.

And the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has refused to revisit its accountability policy.

That is because this reform is and has always been about power and control over resources, contracts, assets and the dollars that follow every student. It was never about the students….

So we ask: Where’s the reform . . . the change . . . the miracle results touted as the public school system in Orleans Parish was pillaged and plundered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina?

We know the truth. The miracle was a mirage…It’s time to recall this reform! It is time to return public education in New Orleans to real local control so that another generation of children are not left by the wayside.

The New Orleans Tribune is an African American newspaper, so its views will be ignored by the powers that control the legislature and the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Louisiana, New Orleans

Helen F. Ladd: How Charter Schools Disrupt Sound Educational Policymaking

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2022 //
12

Dr. Helen F. Ladd is one of the most eminent economists of education, possibly the most eminent. She has written important studies that document the importance of poverty in the lives of children and its impact on their educational outcomes. She has written critically about No Child Left Behind. And she has written international studies of school choice with her husband Edward Fiske, a veteran journalist.

I sponsor an annual lecture series on education at Wellesley College, my alma mater, and was delighted when Sunny Ladd, as she is known, accepted my invitation to be the first post-pandemic lecturer. She prepared this paper, which has been published by the National Education Policy Center.

She maintains that charter schools disrupt sound educational policy making.

This an overview of her important paper:

As publicly funded schools of choice operated by private entities, charter schools differ from traditional public schools in that they have more operational autonomy, their teachers are not public employees, and they are operated by nonprofit or for-profit private entities under renewable contracts. The main sense in which they are public is that they are funded by taxpayer dollars. This policy memo describes how charter schools disrupt four core goals of education policy: establishing coherent systems of schools, attending to child poverty and disadvantage, limiting racial segregation and isolation, and ensuring that public funds are spent wisely. The author recommends that policies be designed both to limit the expansion of charters and to reduce the extent to which they disrupt the making of good education policy.

Open the link and read it in full.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, National Education Policy Center, Privatization, Segregation

Mackenzie Scott Gives Millions to TFA, Charter Chains, A Few Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2022 //
22

Mackenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos and richest woman in the world, has released her list of very lucky grant recipients. No one knows who advises her. No one applies for grants. Decisions about her largesse are secret.

Among the lucky recipients are Girl Scouts, Junior Achievement, Urban League chapters, Big Brothers Big Sisters Clubs, and many more.

A dozen public school districts were on her list, including Detroit and Chicago. She gave the Chicago Public Schools $25 million, but the Noble Network of Charter Schools in Chicago got $16 million, and LEARN Charter School Network in Chicago will receive $7 million. The two charter chains will get almost as much as the much larger school district. The Noble Network has 12,700 students. The LEARN charters enroll 4,000 students, pre-K through grade 8. The Chicago Public Schools enroll 320,000 students. So, 16,700 students get almost the same as 320,000 students.

Teach for America, which has hundreds of millions in its bank account, was gifted with $25 million.

Four KIPP charter schools received millions, although KIPP is amply funded.

Need does not seem to be a criterion in her giving.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Funding, Philanthropy, Teach for America

Gary Rubinstein: Cruel and Unusual Punishment of a Student at Success Academy

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2022 //
16

Gary Rubinstein is a high school math teacher and blogger. He has been following Success Academy charter chain, which has been nationally acclaimed for its high test scores. In his latest post, Rubinstein examines the case of a student who thrived at Success Academy until the pandemic, but struggled when the school switched to remote learning. Read the story and answer the question, was she treated fairly by her school?

He begins:

A few months ago I published the first part of this series where parents of current or former Success Academy students can share their stories. As I hoped would happen, another frustrated parent found that post and contacted me with his own disturbing story to tell.

Success Academy is known for its high 3-8 standardized test scores and its extreme rigidity. In a way, the rigidity is part of what causes them to have such high test scores. They demand compliance from their students and from the families of those students. When a student or the family of a student is not conforming to the expectations of the school, that student or family are going to be harassed, humiliated, and punished until they either fall into line or ‘voluntarily’ transfer to another school.

The heartbreaking saga of a girl I will call ‘Carla’ began pleasantly enough eight years ago when she was accepted into Success Academy Springfield Gardens as a kindergartener. From kindergarten through fourth grade, she thrived at the school. Her fourth grade report card grades were mostly the highest or second highest category, except for writing where she was struggling….

In fifth grade, she started having problems academically, though not catastrophically, and then as we all know, the pandemic hit and schools in New York went remote for the next year and a half. For the end part of fifth grade and all of sixth grade, Carla struggled to learn remotely. She had various connection issues and would wait in zoom waiting rooms endlessly. She was really traumatized by the pandemic year and was eager to return to in person classes for her seventh grade year.

But she was still suffering the effects of the 18 months of remote learning. She was having mental health issues and was seeing a therapist about them. At school she was failing several classes. Carla is a very hard working student and someone who really tries her best and her parents work very hard to support her needs and to keep on top of what assignments Carla was missing. Everyone knows that Success Academy has one trick in their playbook which is to make students repeat grades for failing courses. So Carla managed to improve most of her grades but she still failed two subjects, writing and science and was told that she would have to pass those two courses in summer school or she would have to repeat the entire seventh grade.

How Success Academy can make such a threat is incomprehensible to me. For elementary school grades it makes more sense, but in a secondary school setting, why not just retake the courses that you failed? But that wasn’t the threat, it was that she had to pass both courses with a 70 or higher or she would be repeating the entire seventh grade, including all the classes that she had passed.

Please read the rest of the post to learn what happened to Carla? Was it fair? Was it just? What do you think?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Discipline, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy

Los Angeles: Parents Complain About Sharing Their Schools with Charters, Loss of Resouces

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2022 //
21

Parents in South Los Angeles are angry that their schools have been forced to share their space with a charter school. This practice, called co-location, creates tension and rivalry. Robin Urevich of Capital & Main tells the story:

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, some 50 public schools share their campuses with charter schools. It is often a contentious relationship. But now parents and teachers at Baldwin Hills and Trinity elementary schools in South Los Angeles, asserting that such arrangements jeopardize their children’s education, are demanding the Los Angeles Unified School District board end them for the 2022-23 school year. Baldwin Hills Elementary shares its campus with New Los Angeles Charter Elementary School, while Gabriella Charter School 2 is located at Trinity Elementary.

Students at Baldwin Hills take violin lessons on the playground during recess because there is no other space, said Jacquelyn Walker, Baldwin Hills’ community school coordinator. A program that offers fresh produce and clothing to kids and families who need them was forced to move to a nearby school for the same reason, Walker said. Private rooms are sometimes unavailable for counseling kids and families in crisis.


“We lost our computer lab,” said the Rev. AmberMarie Irving, DD, whose son is a second grader at the school. “If that happened at a majority Caucasian school, all hell would break loose,” Irving said.

“We’ve worked tirelessly to find a permanent home that is not on an LAUSD campus,” said Brooke Rios, executive director of New LA Charter School, which has about 198 students on Baldwin’s campus, according to Rios. “We’re aware of the tension,” she said.

Designated a 2020 California Distinguished School, Baldwin Hills is one of just three elementary schools in the district with a majority African American student body that includes a magnet school for gifted students. The school emphasizes science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. It boasts robotics, engineering, yoga and chess classes, and higher than average test scores. But teacher Marie Germaine said the district has undermined the school’s efforts with the space sharing arrangement. “They want us to accept our own suffering and our own demise. We refuse to accept it.”

Germaine, Walker and Irving were among parents and educators from Baldwin and Trinity who demanded the district get charter schools off their campuses when they addressed the school board on Nov. 1, the deadline for charter schools to request space on district campuses for the upcoming school year. Baldwin and Trinity are both among some 34 LAUSD community schools that are designed to be neighborhood hubs, offering services to children and families after traditional school hours. United Teachers Los Angeles treasurer Alex Orozco said that in 2019, the district agreed to avoid co-locating charter schools on such campuses, but hasn’t done so.

Trinity Elementary is at the other end of the achievement spectrum; it is struggling as one of 100 schools that LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has targeted for improvement, said teacher Tanya Flores. However, Flores said it is hard to improve when kids do not have adequate space for learning. A fifth grade class meets in the auditorium and a section of the school library serves as a makeshift second grade classroom, she said.

Parent Yuvicela Ruiz said when her fifth grade son’s special education class was moved to another school because of lack of space at Trinity, “it hurt him academically and emotionally. It showed that my son’s education is not valued by the district,” she said.

*   *   *

Relationships between charters and the traditional schools with which they share space have long been fractious. Sharon Delugach, chief of staff to school board member Jackie Goldberg, said sharing campuses can be “like having a really horrible roommate.” Delugach said few co-locations are successful. “There are places where they’ve managed to have a civil relationship, but there’s rarely a positive one.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Los Angeles

Good News from Ohio!

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2022 //
15

With the help of the teachers’ unions, the people of Ohio elected three new members of the state board of education who support public schools. This is great news because the politicians in the State House and the Legislature have been frantically diverting public funds to charter schools and vouchers, as well as endorsing extremist policies on race and gender. The state constitution explicitly authorizes a system of public schools and forbids public funding of religious schools. Ohio’s charter schools are among the lowest-performing in the nation and are lower performing than the state’s public schools. Half of those authorized by the state have closed.

 

Anti-culture war candidates win three seats on Ohio State Board of Education, with big boost from teachers’ unions

By Laura Hancock, cleveland.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Voters elected three candidates to the Ohio State Board of Education on Tuesday who oppose fights over LGBTQ students in bathrooms and attempts to control how American racism is discussed in social studies classes. The Ohio Federation of Teachers and the Ohio Education Association contributed tens of thousands of dollars to help the campaigns of former state senator Teresa Fedor of Toledo, Tom Jackson of Solon and Katie Hofmann of Cincinnati, who each won their races against more conservative candidates. Candidates the unions did not support, including one who ran unopposed, won races in two districts.

The unions were involved in recruiting the three candidates. Fedor and Hofmann are each former teachers and members of OFT. Jackson, a businessman, is a volunteer coach at Solon High School and serves on the Solon City Schools Strategic Planning Team. Their members volunteered to knock on doors and spread the word about the candidates.

They also gave their candidates a big fundraising boost. In addition to writing checks for each candidate’s campaign — OEA gave $13,700 to each candidate’s campaign and the OFT gave $12,000 to Fedor and Jackson and $13,700 to Hofmann — the unions spent at least $100,000 to get them elected through an independent super PAC called Educators for Ohio. The PAC is normally controlled by OEA, but OFT this year was also involved in it, said Melissa Cropper, president of the OFT.

The super PAC spent money only on the three state school board candidates, said Scott DiMauro, president of the OEA. “The three individuals who won those contested races are all strong advocates of public education, they have strong records on that,” DiMauro said. “I would anticipate they would work closely with other members of the state board who have been pushing back on some of those (culture wars) attacks. How everything is going to play out still remains to be seen, because you still have an extremist faction that is pushing some of those resolutions. Some of those members are still there.”

Fedor defeated Sarah McGervey, a Catholic school teacher who talked about parental rights against perceived liberal bias in education and keeping LGBTQ protections out of Title IX. Jackson defeated incumbent Tim Miller and Cierra Lynch Shehorn, who was ran further to the right of Miller. Hofmann defeated conservative incumbent Jenny Kilgore.

Hoffman, Jackson and Fedor vastly outraised their opponents. Kilgore individually raised $5,800 in 2022. Hofmann raised nearly $44,000. Jackson raised $53,000 this year, compared to Miller’s $7,600 and Lynch Shehorn’s $4,800.

Fedor’s and McGervey’s campaign finance reports are more complicated. McGervey ran for the Ohio House in August. After she lost that race she ran for the state board. Her total fundraising haul was $15,000. Fedor was a sitting senator in 2021, the beginning of the two-year funding cycle, and she raised $95,000 during the two-year period.

Other candidates who won but were not supported by the unions include incumbent member John P. Hagan, a conservative on the board, who beat a challenge from Robert R. Fulton. Neither candidate in that race received the unions’ endorsement. Ohio State Board of Education President Charlotte McGuire won reelection unopposed. Ohio Value Voters, a conservative Christian organization, backed the conservative slate of candidates, including Hagan.

As Ohio students fell academically behind from remote learning during the pandemic and Ohio has been without a permanent state superintendent for more than a year, conservatives on the state school board pressed to take on several controversial issues over the last year.

Last year, conservatives on the board successfully overturned an anti-racism resolution that the board had previously passed in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Two members of the state board who voted to overturn the anti-racism measure were defeated Tuesday night: Miller, of Akron, and Kilgore, of Hamilton County. A third supporter of the resolution, Kirsten Hill – who organized a bus from Lorain County to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 but said she never entered the U.S. Capitol – opted not to seek reelection.

More recently, conservatives on the board have been pushing a resolution that would urge local school districts to defy Title IX protections for LGBTQ students that are being proposed by President Joe Biden’s administration, potentially putting federal money for free and reduced lunch and special education in jeopardy. The resolution remains under consideration. Board members have spent 10 hours taking public testimony and discussing it since September.

Most of the state school board campaigning and fundraising took place in just the past two months, Cropper said.

“Remember, this election cycle, no one knew what the lines were going to be,” she said. Every 10 years, the boundaries for the Ohio State Board of Education shift when Ohio Senate boundaries are redrawn. Gov. Mike DeWine changed state school board boundaries Jan. 31, a move panned by critics as gerrymandering. DeWine didn’t change the school board map, even as state mapmakers shifted the Senate’s boundaries found to violate the Ohio Constitution, and on July 14, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose notified county boards of election to use the Jan. 31 changes DeWine made. Candidates for the state school board, which are nonpartisan, had to file to run for the seats Aug. 10, which left just a few months to campaign.

“It really was a crunch in trying to get quality candidates to run,” Cropper said. “We had incumbents we know that were not pro-public education, who were in my opinion, pushing these culture war issues at the state board level. And it was just critical to us that we could get them out of there. So we definitely were looking for people who understand public education, who have been engaged in conversations about equity, social-emotional learning, the whole child approach, all the things that are really important to us.”

The whole child approach refers to the state board’s 2019-2024 strategic plan that says the state is concerned with the “whole child,” not just academics but stressors children experience at home that can influence learning. In 2019, the Ohio Department of Education unveiled social-emotional learning standards that aim to help children become successful in their interactions with others, to establish positive relationships, manage their emotions, and make healthy, drug-free choices in life.

“My estimation is that people rejected extremists and the extreme issues that they’re bringing to the table and children are caught in the middle,” Fedor said Wednesday. “I believe this is an overall rejection of using our children as political fodder.” Fedor had the most name recognition among the state school board candidates. In addition to her legislative career, she was on the Democratic gubernatorial ticket this spring with former Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley. Fedor said that as she campaigned, she talked about reducing the number of standardized tests kids have to take. She talked about her own time in the classroom, when she worked an additional part-time job at the Toledo Zoo to make money for classroom materials.

She said she learned that people were horrified that Hill led Ohioans to the Jan. 6 rally. “There was a flood of different ideas and thoughts about what’s going on,” she said. “And they did not support the extremists who are bringing the extreme issues forward. The culture wars in the classrooms have to end so we can get to the business of educating our children with quality public education.”

Billionaires have been pouring millions of dollars into state and local school board races for at least the last dozen years. These elections are often flooded with money from out-of-state billionaires who support expansion of charter schools and invalid ways of evaluating teachers.

It’s great to see the unions step up and support state school board members who care about public schools and teachers and care about issues that matter, rather than divisive conflicts that don’t help anyone. The amount of money spent by the unions was small compared to what the billionaires spend, but it made a difference.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Ohio, Unions, Vouchers

Indiana: “Liberal” Reed Hastings Bankrolled GOP Ban on Abortion: Shame!

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2022 //
11

Steve Hinnefeld, Indiana blogger, writes about the political donations of billionaires who claim to be “liberal Democrats.” First and worst is Reed Hastings, who is CEO of Netflix. Hastings claims to be a supporter of women’s reproductive rights, but he has funded Republicans in Indiana who passed one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the nation. Why? Because these same conservative Republicans support charter schools. Hastings has said that he looks forward to the day when there are no more school boards, and every school is a charter. So, his passion for charter schools is stronger than his commitment to women’s reproductive rights. His allies in Indiana also loosened restrictions on guns. Michael Bloomberg, who favors abortion rights and gun control, also bankrolled the same Republicans.

Hinnefeld writes:

Indiana Republicans are spending several million dollars to protect and extend their supermajority status in the state House and Senate in Tuesday’s election. If they succeed, they may want to thank a California billionaire. One who’s usually described as a liberal Democrat.

Reed Hastings is a CEO of Netflix. Politically, he’s known for donating to Democratic politicians, nationally and in California. Netflix supports liberal causes, like abortion rights. But in Indiana, his campaign contributions go almost entirely to Republicans, who trample on his supposed principles.

It’s possible Hastings has given more money to the Indiana House and Senate GOP campaigns than any other individual in the past couple of years. Not directly. The money is funneled through a political action committee called Hoosiers for Great Public Schools. The PAC, headed by former Democratic Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, was founded in 2020 to promote charter schools.

Almost all its direct support for candidates goes to Republicans.

Hastings has given the group $1.4 million, half of it in 2020 and half this year. It also got $200,000 from John Arnold, a Texas billionaire. That’s all the money it has raised.

Hoosiers for Great Public Schools has made campaign contributions totaling $926,000. Some $400,000 went to RISE Indy, a PAC that has supported charter-friendly candidates for the Indianapolis Public Schools board. Another $100,000 went to Hoosiers for Quality Education, which promotes school choice, including vouchers and education savings accounts, and gives exclusively to Republicans.

Of the remaining $426,000 that Hoosiers for Great Public Schools contributed, nearly all went to GOP candidates and groups. It has given $190,000 to the House Republican Campaign Committee, $45,000 to the Senate Majority Campaign Committee, and $75,000 to House Speaker Todd Huston, along with four- and five-figure donations to individual Republicans.

That’s who Reed Hastings is helping elect in Indiana.

A similar story can be told about Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City. He’s known for supporting liberal causes, including gun control and abortion rights. In recent years, Bloomberg has given $550,000 to Stand for Children Indiana, which supports charter schools. All of Stand for Children’s state-level contributions this year have gone to Republicans.

There’s a cynical argument for such behavior: If you have money and you want to influence Indiana politics, you give to Republicans, because they have the power.

Peterson, CEO of Christel House International, which operates charter schools in Indianapolis, told me in 2020 that the purpose of Hoosiers for Great Public Schools was to support charter schools. But Indiana Republicans are no longer in love with charter schools. In 2021, they gave charters a modest funding increase. In 2022, they did nothing. They have moved on to favoring a more radical form of school choice in which state money “follows the child,” including to private and religious schools.

What did Hastings get with his support of the Indiana GOP? For one thing, a new law that says Hoosiers don’t need a permit to carry a handgun in public. For another, a discriminatory anti-trans law that bars transgender students from school sports teams. Republicans also tried to restrict what schools could teach about “divisive topics” – i.e., racism and slavery – but fell short.

Shame on Reed Hastings!

Shame on Michael Bloomberg!

Shame on John Arnold!

Hypocrites!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Hypocrisy, Indiana, Vouchers

GOP Billionaires Poured Millions into Elections, Even Though They Don’t Like TFG

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2022 //
9

The 1% understand very well that the Republican Party is dedicated, first and foremost, to cutting the taxes of the rich. How else to explain the billionaires who don’t like Trump but spent millions on candidates who repeated The Former Guy’s Big Lie?

Of course, they want low taxes. But they have another goal: School choice. Somehow these billionaires became convinced that charters and vouchers are superior to public schools, and they want to make sure that those in public office agree with them, regardless of ample evidence that school choice has proven to be a failure over the past three decades.

Maggie Severns reports at GRID:

Some of the biggest Republican megadonors don’t support former president Donald Trump — but have wound up supporting his candidates.

Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge fund Citadel and currently the third-biggest donor to the 2022 midterms, is a business leader and repeat critic of Trump. Earlier this year, he publicly called on Republicans to abandon the idea that the election was stolen, saying, “It’s really important that we end the rhetoric in America that elections can be rigged.” He maintains the Republican Party should “move on” from Trump in 2024.

When it came time for this year’s midterms, Griffin went big, becoming a top contributor to super PACs helping Republicans win back the House and Senate. But those super PACs are supporting the very politics that Griffin has shunned: He gave $10 million to a PAC that has aired ads for Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, a Peter Thiel acolyte who has falsely claimed Democrats are trying to “import” immigrants to help them win elections; Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania who recently said “lots more information” is needed to determine if Trump won the 2020 election; and Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee in the Nevanda senate race, a former state attorney general who held press conferences and filed lawsuits alleging widespread voter fraud in 2020….

Jeffrey Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania and the fourth-largest donor of the midterms, didn’t give money to Trump’s campaign during the 2020 election, but he has poured $47 million into federal politics this cycle, much of it to the conservative Club for Growth and an affiliated PAC, which have supported candidates who espouse conspiracy theories and challenged the 2020 election results. Yass is also focused on education policy, working to advance charter schools and school choice with his political money. Republican financier Paul Singer, another major super PAC donor who did little support to Trump, has spent $20 million this cycle.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Elections, School Choice, Vouchers

Texas: Public Schools Are on the Ballot

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2022 //
5

Texas Republicans have been longing to pass a voucher bill, but they have been stymied by grassroots opposition and by our friends, Pastors for Texas Children, who believe in separation of church and state.

This year, Governor Greg Abbot and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick are determined to pass voucher legislation, and they have the support of wealthy white Evangelical Christian nationalists.

NBC News reported the story of the big money behind vouchers:

Texas Republicans bankrolled by Christian conservative donors are hoping to ride a wave of parental anger over the teaching of race and sexuality in schools to achieve what has long been an unattainable goal: state funding for private education.

Groups committed to giving parents the option of sending their children to private schools using taxpayer dollars — sometimes known as “school choice” or “vouchers” — have given millions of dollars to Republican candidates in Texas this year, helping to win key races and pushing some establishment lawmakers further to the right on the issue. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott recently pledged to make school choice a priority in the next legislative session if he wins re-election over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke.

As a result, political observers say, public school funding is effectively on the ballot Tuesday.

The push for private school vouchers has been funded in large part by Defend Texas Liberty, a Christian nationalist-aligned political action committee led by a former far-right Republican state lawmaker and bankrolled by a pair of West Texas billionaires. The PAC has spent nearly $10 million this year, largely backing candidates who support public funding for private education and attacking those who oppose it, according to an NBC News analysis of Texas Ethics Commission campaign finance reports and data compiled by the nonprofit OpenSecrets.

Defend Texas Liberty did not respond to messages requesting interviews with PAC leaders.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, said big spending by groups like Defend Texas Liberty and local fights over the way schools address racism, history and LGBTQ identities have “softened the ground” for school privatization — in Texas and nationally.

“These groups have been demonizing what is being taught in public schools, and that’s the fastest way to erode faith that public schools work,” Rottinghaus said. “Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. If people believe that it’s true, then it’s politically potent.”

Defend Texas Liberty gave $3.6 million to former state lawmaker Don Huffines, an Abbott primary challenger who ran a campaign promising to crack down on medical care for transgender children, require the teaching of creationism in public schools and give parents government money to send their children to private schools. (Abbott publicly came out in support of private school vouchers two months after winning the primary with 66.5% of the vote.)

The PAC also spent $168,000 supporting Republican Nate Schatzline, a former pastor running for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives on a campaign to give parents more freedom to decide how and where their children are educated. Schatzline won a competitive GOP primary in a solidly conservative North Texas district in part by painting his Republican opponent as an advocate for teaching “leftist, woke ideologies” in schools.

“It’s time to outlaw the sexualization of our children!” Schatzline wrote on his campaign website. “It’s time to outlaw racist ideologies that seek to divide our children, not unify them. It’s time to teach our children to love America, not hate it!”

Defend Texas Liberty donations accounted for more than a third of Schatzline’s campaign funding. He initially agreed to speak with a reporter for NBC News, but later did not return phone calls or text messages.

And this fall, Defend Texas Liberty spent $100,000 to put up dozens of billboards along Texas highways, including some that showed a photo of O’Rourke next to a baseless allegation about “grooming” children, an anti-LGBTQ attack that’s become popular among conservatives this year.

In a statement, Tori Larned, a spokesperson for O’Rourke’s campaign, said, “Abbott is now calling to defund public education with his voucher program that takes tax dollars out of public school classrooms across the state and sends them away to private schools.”

Abbott has denied that vouchers would harm public education.

“We can fully fund public schools while also giving parents a choice about which school is right for their child,” he said during a May campaign event in San Antonio. “Empowering parents means giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student.”

Defend Texas Liberty is led by former state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a Republican who earned a reputation as the state’s most conservative lawmaker before leaving the legislature in 2021. Nearly 90% of the PAC’s funding this year has come from Tim Dunn and the family of Farris Wilks, a pair of billionaire oil and fracking magnates who have expressed the view that Texas state government should be guided by Biblical valuesand run exclusively by evangelical Christians. Combined, they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars over the past decade funding far-right Texas candidates and a network of nonprofits and advocacy groups that push conservative policy ideas. Stickland, Wilks and Dunn did not respond to interview requests.

Please open the link and read the rest of the story. There are five million children in the public schools of Texas. The schools have been underfunded since 2011, when Republicans cut their budget by more than $5 billion. Where does Governor Abbott get the idea that the state can fund Evangelical schools (and Catholic and Muslim and Jewish and all other private schools) without taking more money away from public schools?

Categories Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Religion, Texas, Vouchers
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