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KIPP’s Dark Secrets, Revealed by Center for Media and Democracy

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2016 //
46

The public-interest group Center for Media and Democracy made a startling discovery:

 

The powerful KIPP charter chain asked the US Department of Education to shield certain crucial data from public view, and the Department agreed to do so. With about 150 schools, KIPP is the nation’s largest charter chain, with the possible exception of the Gulen charter chain.

 

CMD notes that every public school is required to make its data public, but KIPP does not. Since KIPP millions of dollars in federal, state,and local funding, this is an unusual arrangement.

 

 

CMD reports:

 

 

“KIPP touts itself as particularly successful at preparing students to succeed in school and college.
“Yet, it insisted that the U.S. Department of Education keep secret from the public the statistics about the percentage of its eighth graders who completed high school, entered college, and/or who completed a two-year or four-year degree.
“A few years ago, professor Gary Miron and his colleagues Jessica Urschel and Nicholas Saxton, found that “KIPP charter middle schools enroll a significantly higher proportion of African-American students than the local school districts they draw from but 40 percent of the black males they enroll leave between grades 6 and 8,” as reported by Mary Ann Zehr in Ed Week.
“Zehr noted: “‘The dropout rate for African-American males is really shocking,’ said Gary J. Miron, a professor of evaluation, measurement, and research” at Western Michigan University, who conducted the national study.
“Miron’s analysis was attacked by KIPP and its allies, who said KIPP’s success was not due to the attrition of lower performing students who leave the school or move to other districts. One of its defenders was Mathematica Policy Research, whose subsequent study was used to try to rebut Miron’s analysis. (That name will be important momentarily.)
“The Department of Education has been provided with the data about what percentage of KIPP students graduate from high school and go on to college, but it is helping KIPP keep that secret—despite the public tax dollars going to these schools and despite KIPP’s claim to be operating what are public schools.
Real public schools would never be allowed to claim that high school graduation rates or college matriculation rates are “proprietary” or “privileged” or “confidential.”
“Why does the Education Department’s Charter School Program “Office of Innovation and Improvement” defer to KIPP’s demand to keep that information secret from the public?
“Meanwhile, the KIPP Foundation regularly spends nearly a half million dollars a year ($467,594 at last count) on advertising to convince the public how great its public charters are using figures it selects to promote. No public school district in the nation has that kind of money to drop on ads promoting its successes.”

 

But that’s not all that is undisclosed.

 

“Even as KIPP was seeking more than $22 million from the federal government to expand its charter school network, it insisted that the U.S. Department of Education redact from its application a chart about how much money would be spent on personnel, facilities, transportation, and “other uses” under the proposed grant. KIPP also sought to redact the amount of private funding it was projecting.
“The agency’s compliant Office of Innovation and Improvement obliged KIPP.”

 

However, CMD found some of this information on IRS reports. What they discovered were large expenditures on travel, executive salaries, and advertising. Trips included lavish expenditures at Disney World.

 

“Not only did KIPP seek to keep the public in the dark about how it spends tax-exempt funding and how many KIPP students make it to high school graduation or college, it also sought to redact information “KIPP Student Attrition” by region and “by subgroup” and “KIPP Student Performance” on state exams on “Math and Reading.”

 

“The Office of Innovation and Improvement did as KIPP requested.”

 

Why would the Department acquiesce to KIPP’s request to treat this information secret? If charters are public schools, how can their data on costs and attrition be treated as “proprietary”?

 

 

KIPP was a favorite of Arne Duncan. He awarded $50 million of Race to the Top funding to KIPP, and another $50 million to Teach for America. In case you didn’t know, Richard Barth, the executive director of KIPP, is married to Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA.

 

 

 

– See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer#sthash.BVqHlzyg.dpuf

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, KIPP Charter Schools, Teach for America, U.S. Department of Education

Sorry, It is NOT Teacher Appreciation Week

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
43

Yesterday I posted a tribute to teachers by John Ewing, on the assumption that this was Teacher Appreciation Werk. My error. President Obama renamed it Charter Appreciation Week.

 

A comment from reader Chiara:

 

 

 

“The Obama Administration turned Teacher Appreciation Week into Charter Teacher Appreciation Week:

 

“This week, we honor the educators working in public charter schools across our Nation who, each day, give of themselves to provide children a fair shot at the American dream, and we recommit to the basic promise that all our daughters and sons — regardless of background or circumstance — should be able to make of their lives what they will. ” [The President’s Proclamation]

 

“It’s appalling how completely in the tank they are. They really require some kind of intervention in DC, some input from someone who isn’t employed inside the ed reform echo chamber.

 

“I guess “testing season” is over and now that they’ve collected the data from public school students we won’t hear a word about public schools until it’s time to test again.

 

 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/29/presidential-proclamation-national-charter-schools-week-2016

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Teachers

Stuart Egan: How the North Carolina Legislature and Governor Are Destroying Public Schools and the Teaching Profession

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2016 //
10

Stuart Egan is a National Board Certified teacher of high school English in North Carolina. I have published his posts before. I met Stuart at the Network for Public Education annual conference in Raleigh a few weeks ago and invited him to write a post that would sum up the damage that the Tea Party government has done to teachers and schools in the past five years. He agreed to do so. His perspective is especially valuable because he is in the classroom.

 

 

Stuart Egan writes:

 

 

When the GOP won control of both houses in the North Carolina General Assembly in the elections of 2010, it was the first time that the Republicans had that sort of power since 1896. Add to that the election of Pat McCrory as governor in 2012, and the GOP has been able to run through multiple pieces of legislation that have literally changed a once progressive state into one of regression. From the Voter ID law to HB2 to fast tracking fracking to neglecting coal ash pools, the powers that-now-be have furthered an agenda that has simply been exclusionary, discriminatory, and narrow-minded.

 

And nowhere is that more evident than the treatment of public education.

 

Make no mistake. The GOP-led General Assembly has been using a deliberate playbook that other states have seen implemented in various ways. Look at Ohio and New Orleans and their for-profit charter school implementation. Look at New York State and the Opt-Out Movement against standardized testing. Look at Florida and its Jeb Bush school grading system. In fact, look anywhere in the country and you will see a variety of “reform” movements that are not really meant to “reform” public schools, but rather re-form public schools in an image of a profit making enterprise that excludes the very students, teachers, and communities that rely on the public schools to help as the Rev. William Barber would say “create the public.”

 

North Carolina’s situation may be no different than what other states are experiencing, but how our politicians have proceeded in their attempt to dismantle public education is worth exploring.

 

Specifically, the last five year period in North Carolina has been a calculated attempt at undermining public schools with over twenty different actions that have been deliberately crafted and executed along three different fronts: actions against teachers, actions against public schools, and actions to deceive the public.

 

 

Actions Against Teachers

  1. Teacher Pay – A recent WRAL report and documentary highlighted that in NC, teacher pay has dropped 13% in the past 15 years when adjusted for inflation (http://www.wral.com/after-inflation-nc-teacher-pay-has-dropped-13-in-past-15-years/15624302/). That is astounding when one considers that we are supposedly rebounding from the Great Recession. Yes, this 15 year period started with democrats in place, but it has been exacerbated by GOP control. Salary schedules were frozen and then revamped to isolate raises to increments of five+ years. As surrounding states have continued to increase pay for teachers, NC has stagnated into the bottom tier in regards to teacher pay.
  2. Removal of due-process rights – One of the first items that the GOP controlled General Assembly attempted to pass was the removal of due-process right for all teachers. Thanks to NCAE, the courts decided that it would be a breach of contract for veteran teachers who had already obtained career-status. But that did not cover newer teachers who will not have the chance to gain career status and receive due process rights.

 

What gets lost in the conversation with the public is that due-process rights are a protective measure for students and schools. Teachers need to know that they can speak up against harsh conditions or bad policies without repercussions. Teachers who are not protected by due-process will not be as willing to speak out because of fear.

 

  1. Graduate Degree Pay Bumps Removed – Because advanced degree pay is abolished, many potential teachers will never enter the field because that is the only way to receive a sizable salary increase to help raise a family or afford to stay in the profession. It also cripples graduate programs in the state university system because obtaining a graduate degree for new teachers would place not only more debt on teachers, but there is no monetary reward to actually getting it.
  2. The Top 25% to receive bonus – One measure that was eventually taken off the table was that each district was to choose 25% of its teachers to be eligible to receive a bonus if they were willing to give up their career status which is commonly known as tenure. Simply put, it was hush money to keep veteran teachers from speaking out when schools and students needed it. To remove “tenure” is to remove the ability for a teacher to fight wrongful termination. In a Right-To-Work state, due process rights are the only protection against wrongful termination when teachers advocate for schools, like the teacher who is writing this very piece.
  3. Standard 6 – In North Carolina, we have a teacher evaluation system that has an unproven record of accurately measuring a teacher’s effectiveness. The amorphous Standard 6 for many teachers includes a VAM called Assessment of Student Work.

 

I personally teach multiple sections of AP English Language and Composition and am subject to the Assessment of Student Work (ASW). I go through a process in which I submit student samples that must prove whether those students are showing ample growth.

 

In June of 2015, I uploaded my documents in the state’s system and had to wait until November to get results. The less than specific comments from the unknown assessor(s) were contradictory at best. They included:

 

Alignment

Al 1 The evidence does not align to the chosen objective.

Al 4 All of the Timelapse Artifacts in this Evidence Collection align to the chosen objectives.

 

Growth

Gr 1 Student growth is apparent in all Timelapse Artifacts.

Gr 2 Student growth is apparent between two points in time.

Gr 3 Student growth is not apparent between two points in time.

Gr 4 Student growth samples show achievement but not growth.

Gr 9 Evidence is clear/easily accessible

Gr 10 Evidence is not clear/not easily accessible

 

Narrative Context

NC 1 Narrative Context addresses all of the key questions and supports understanding of the evidence.

NC 4 Narrative Context does not address one or more of the key questions.

 

 

And these comments did not correspond to any specific part of my submission. In fact, I am more confused about the process than ever before. It took over five months for someone who may not have one-fifth of my experience in the classroom to communicate this to me. If this is supposed to supply me with the tools to help guide my future teaching, then I would have to say that this would be highly insufficient, maybe even “unbest.”

 

  1. Push for Merit Pay – The bottom line is that merit pay destroys collaboration and promotes competition. That is antithetical to the premise of public education. Not only does it force teachers to work against each other, it fosters an atmosphere of exclusivity and disrespect. What could be more detrimental to our students?

 

Those legislators who push for merit pay do not see effective public schools as collaborative communities, but as buildings full of contractors who are determined to outperform others for the sake of money. And when teachers are forced to focus on the results of test scores, teaching ceases from being a dynamic relationship between student and teacher, but becomes a transaction driven by a carrot on an extended stick.

 

  1. “Average” Raises – In the long session of 2014, the NC General Assembly raised salaries for teachers in certain experience brackets that allowed them to say that an “average” salary for teachers was increased by over 7%. They called it a “historic raise.” However, if you divided the amount of money used in these “historic” raises by the number of teachers who “received” them, it would probably amount to about $270 per teacher.

 

That historic raise was funded in part by eliminating teachers’ longevity pay. Similar to an annual bonus, this is something that all state employees in North Carolina — except, now, for teachers — gain as a reward for continued service. The budget rolled that money into teachers’ salaries and labeled it as a raise. That’s like me stealing money out of your wallet and then presenting it to you as a gift.

 

  1. Health Insurance and Benefits – Simply put, health benefits are requiring more out-of-pocket expenditures, higher deductibles, and fewer benefits. There is also talk of pushing legislation that will take away retirement health benefits for those who enter the profession now.
  1. Attacks on Teacher Advocacy Groups (NCAE) – Seen as a union and therefore must be destroyed, the North Carolina Association of Educators has been incredibly instrumental in bringing unconstitutional legislation to light and carrying out legal battles to help public schools. In the last few years, the automatic deduction of paychecks to pay dues to NCAE was disallowed by the General Assembly, creating a logistical hurdle for people and the NCAE to properly transfer funds for membership
  2. Revolving Door of Standardized Tests – Like other states, we have too many. In my years as a North Carolina teacher (1997-1999, 2005-2015), I have endured the Standard Course of Study, the NC ABC’s, AYP’s, and Common Core. Each initiative has been replaced by a supposedly better curricular path that allegedly makes all previous curriculum standards inferior and obsolete. And with each of these initiatives comes new tests that are graded differently than previous ones and are “converted” into data points to rank student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Such a revolving door makes the ability to measure data historically absolutely ridiculous.

 

Actions Against Schools

 

 

  1. Less Money Spent per Pupil – The argument that Gov. McCrory and the GOP-led General Assembly have made repeatedly is that they are spending more on public education now than ever before. And they are correct. We do spend more total money now than before the recession hit. But that is a simplified and spun claim because North Carolina has had a tremendous population increase and the need to educate more students.

Let me use an analogy. Say in 2008, a school district had 1000 students in its school system and spent 10 million dollars in its budget to educate them. That’s a 10,000 per pupil expenditure. Now in 2015, that same district has 1500 students and the school system is spending 11.5 million to educate them. According to Raleigh’s claims, that district is spending more total dollars now than in 2008 on education, but the per-pupil expenditure has gone down significantly to over 2300 dollars per student or 23percent.

  1. Remove Caps on Class Sizes – There is a suggested formula in allotting teachers to schools based on the number of students per class, but that cap was removed. House Bill 112 allowed the state to remove class size requirements while still allowing monies from the state to be allocated based on the suggested formula.

Some districts have taken to move away from the 6/7 period day to block scheduling. Take my own district for example, the Winston-Salem / Forsyth County Schools. When I started ten years ago, I taught five classes with a cap of 30 students. With the block system in place, I now teach six classes in a school year with no cap. The math is simple: more students per teacher.

  1. Amorphous Terms – North Carolina uses a lot of amorphous terms like “student test scores”, “student achievement”, and “graduation rates,” all of which are among the most nebulous terms in public education today.

 

 

When speaking of “test scores”, we need to agree about which test scores we are referring to and if they have relevance to the actual curriculum. Since the early 2000’s we have endured No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top initiatives that have flooded our public schools with mandatory testing that never really precisely showed how “students achieved.” It almost boggles the mind to see how much instructional time is lost just administering local tests to see how students may perform on state tests that may be declared invalid with new education initiatives. Even as I write, most states are debating on how they may or may not leave behind the Common Core Standards and replace them with their own. Know what that means? Yep. More tests.

 

 

“Graduation rate” might be one of the most constantly redefined terms in public schools. Does it mean how many students graduate in four years? Five years? At least finish a GED program or a diploma in a community college? Actually, it depends on whom you ask and when you ask. But with the NC State Board of Education’s decision to go to a ten-point grading scale in all high schools instead of the seven-point scale used in many districts, the odds of students passing courses dramatically increased because the bar to pass was set lower.

 

 

  1. Jeb Bush School Grading System – This letter grading system used by the state literally shows how poverty in our state affects student achievement. What the state proved with this grading system is that it is ignoring the very students who need the most help — not just in the classroom, but with basic needs such as early childhood programs and health-care accessibility. These performance grades also show that schools with smaller class sizes and more individualized instruction are more successful, a fact that lawmakers willfully ignore when it comes to funding our schools to avoid overcrowding.
  2. Cutting Teacher Assistants – Sen. Tom Apodaca said when this legislation was introduced, “We always believe that having a classroom teacher in a classroom is the most important thing we can do. Reducing class sizes, we feel, will give us better results for the students.” The irony in this statement is glaring. Fewer teacher assistants for early grades especially limit what can be accomplished when teachers are facing more cuts in resources and more students in each classroom.

 

Actions To Deceive The Public

 

 

  1. Opportunity Grants – Opportunity Grant legislation is like the trophy in the case for the GOP establishment in Raleigh. It is a symbol of “their” commitment to school choice for low-income families. But that claim is nothing but a red-herring.

Simply put, it is a voucher system that actually leaves low-income families without many choices because most private schools which have good track records have too-high tuition rates and do not bus students. Furthermore, the number of private schools receiving monies from the Opportunity Grants who identify themselves as religiously affiliated is well over 80 percent according to the NC State Educational Assistance Authority. Those religious schools are not tested the way public schools are and do not have the oversight that public schools have. Furthermore, it allows tax dollars to go to entities that already receive monetary benefits because they are tax free churches.

 

 

  1. Charter Schools – Charter school growth in North Carolina has been aided by the fact that many of the legislators who have created a favorable environment for charter benefit somehow, someway from them. Many charters abuse the lack of oversight and financial cloudiness and simply do not benefit students.

 

Especially in rural areas, uncontrolled charter school growth has been detrimental to local public schools. When small school districts lose numbers of students to charter schools, they also lose the ability to petition for adequate funds in the system that NC uses to finance schools ; the financial impact can be overwhelming. In Haywood County, Central Elementary School was closed because of enrollment loss to a charter school that is now on a list to be recommended for closing.

 

 

  1. Virtual Schools – There are two virtual academies in NC. Both are run by for-profit entities based out of state. While this approach may work for some students who need such avenues, the withdrawal rates of students in privately-run virtual schools in NC are staggering according to the Department of Public Instruction.

 

  1. Achievement School Districts – Teach For America Alumnus Rep. Rob Bryan has crafted a piece of legislation that has been rammed through the General Assembly which will create ASD’s in NC. Most egregious is that it was crafted secretly. Rather than having a public debate about how to best help our “failing” schools with our own proven resources, Rep. Bryan chose to surreptitiously strategize and plan a takeover of schools. ASD’s have not worked in Tennessee. They will not work in North Carolina except for those who make money from them.

 

  1. Reduction of Teacher Candidates in Colleges – At last report, teaching candidate percentages in undergraduate programs in the UNC system has fallen by over 30% in the last five years. This is just an indication of the damage done to secure a future generation of teachers here in North Carolina.

 

  1. Elimination of Teaching Fellows Program – Once regarded as a model to recruit the best and brightest to become teachers and stay in North Carolina was abolished because of “cost”.

 

 

Overall, this has been North Carolina’s playbook. And those in power in Raleigh have used it effectively. However, there are some outcomes that do bode well for public school advocates for now and the future.

 

  • Teachers are beginning to “stay and fight” rather than find other employment.
  • NCAE has been able to win many decisions in the court system.
  • North Carolina is in the middle of a huge election year and teachers as well as public school advocates will surely vote.
  • The national spotlight placed on North Carolina in response to the voter-ID laws and HB2 are only adding pressure to the powers that be to reconsider what they have done.
  • Veteran teachers who still have due-process rights are using them to advocate for schools.

 

I only hope that the game changes so that a playbook for returning our public schools back to the public will be implemented.

 

Stuart Egan, NBCT
West Forsyth High School

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, North Carolina, Privatization, Republicans, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, Testing, Vouchers

EduShyster Interviews a Scholar of No-Excuses Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2016 //
51

EduShyster interviews Joanne Golann, a doctoral student and researcher in sociology at Princeton who spent 15 months in a no-excuses charter school, studying its culture. After participating daily in the life of the school, interviewing students, teachers, and administrators. She notes that the no-excuses charter is a model of strict obedience and conformity that is widespread and focused on test scores. Teachers impose the model because it assures them control. If they let go, chaos might ensue. They can’t take that risk.

 

EduShyster asked Golann to sum up her findings, and she said:

 

“I found that in trying to prepare students for college, the school failed to teach students the skills and behaviors to help them succeed in college. In a tightly regulated environment, students learned to monitor themselves, hold back their opinions, and defer to authority. These are very different skills than the ones middle-class kids learn—to take initiative, be assertive, and negotiate with authority. Colleges expect students to take charge of their learning and to advocate for themselves. One of the students I talk about in the article learned to restrain herself to get through, to hold herself back and not speak her mind. She ended up winning the most-improved student award in 8th grade for her changed behavior…,

 

 

“If we create an educational marketplace where success is measured by student test scores, perhaps it is not altogether surprising that we end up with a rigid school model that produces these test scores. What we don’t get is a model that teaches students how to speak up or even a model that leaves students feeling like they have had a positive school experience. While charter schools were originally seen as a way to innovate, a way for communities to develop schools that might better fit their students and families, what’s come to dominate the charter field are charter management organizations and this no-excuses model. For example, in Boston, one study found that 71% of the urban charter schools subscribe to the no-excuses model. Of the high-achieving urban charters, almost all are no-excuses schools. They’ve expanded rapidly because of the support of foundations and the US Department of Education. Some $500 million in private foundation money has gone into replicating these schools….

 

EduShyster ended the interview by quoting the last line of Golann’s paper:

 

 

“EduShyster: The last line of your paper is really powerful. In fact, I’d like to take this opportunity to read it aloud so that we can all go forth pondering the essential point you make. *If teachers and administrators committed as much effort to learning about students’ families and neighborhoods as they dedicate to raising test scores or managing behavior, they might discover new ways of instruction and management to get kids to and through college, and perhaps more importantly, prepare them to ‘be the change,’ as one Dream Academy leader described.”

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Reform, Research

Boston: Can Parents and Students Save the Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2016 //
6

Our reader Christine Langhoff writes about the current crisis in public education in Boston:

To use the common idiom, Boston is “woke”!

Parents, teachers and allies of public education protested on a frigid January night outside the mayor’s State of the City address. A few days earlier, 350 teachers, parents and students attended an informational town hall during the evening, as the issues of the hidden McKinsey report were publicly aired. There was another rally on February 17, during school vacation week.

Some 3400 students walked out of their classes on March 7 and went to City Hall and the State House to demonstrate after rallying on Boston Common. Some of them testified at the State House against the lifting of the charter cap. This was a student led and organized protest, which the mayor tried to dismiss with the classic “outside agitators” line. On March 17th, a group of parents, following the students’ lead, demonstrated outside City Hall, demanding the release of the report.

There have been a series of public hearings on the city’s budget, all of which are very well attended. A coalition of parents, educators and students are all on the same side of this argument, and though progress has been slow, we are not discouraged. Up next is walk-in day on May 7.

Much of this is organized on social media. In addition to the parents’ group QUEST, BEJA, Boston Education Justice Alliance http://bostonedjustice.org and the student groups YOUNG and BSAC http://www.youthonboard.org as well as Citizens for Public Schools are working together to keep our schools. The Boston Teachers Union has taken a page from our fellow unionists at the Chicago Teachers Union, allying with and supporting all these groups.

The question that has not been answered is why cuts to the budget, decreasing services to our SWD, and diminishment of offerings for students (closing high school libraries!) is necessary. Boston is in the midst of an unprecedented building and real estate boom; tax receipts are up by $95 million this year alone. (Massachusetts weathered the 2008 catastrophe pretty well.) We’re ranked number one (for what it’s worth) in urban school systems. What pretext is there for closing 30-50 schools? None.

But here’s the scenario we’re up against:

No elected school board, appointed by the mayor (since 1993)

The mayor founded a charter school

The superintendent is a Broadie

More parasites from TFA, TNTP, StudentsFirst are being hired at the school department

86% of our students aren’t white; most of them are poor and nearly half have English as a second language.

The governor wants more charters

The state board of ed is appointed by the governor

The state board is a cabal of privatizers from HGSE, the Pioneer Institute, New Schools Venture Fund

The former PARCC chairman is the state Commissioner

Walton is pouring money into the city

DFER sponsored successful candidates in the most recent election

Boston is a signatory to the Gates CRPE contract

The mayor and superintendent want One Enrollment

It’s an uphill battle and we can’t afford to lose.

Categories Boston, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Equity, Funding, Parents, Privatization, Students

Peter Greene on McKinsey Plan to Close Public Schools in Boston

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2016 //
17

Listen up, friends! Your own school district might hire McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group, and you need to know that they have a template for “right-sizing” the district. The template has nothing to do with improving education. It is all about cutting costs.

 

Fortunately for us, Peter Greene has read the 200-page document prepared for the Boston Oublic School district by McKinsey. Here are the highlights:

 

Close 30-40 public schools.

 

Cut back or eliminate special education by putting more (all?) students in inclusion classes.

 

Save on transportation costs by having children walk greater distances to catch a bus.

 

Increase revenues by having more students eat school food.

 

Centralize school lunches so everything is cooked in one place and delivered to schools.

 

Slash central office staff.

 

Outsource as many functions as possible. (This usually causes costs to rise, since private companies that win contracts have to show a profit.)

 

Here’s a thought. How about if a committee of educators get a $1 million contract to study the operations of McKinsey and suggest ways to save money. No more expense accounts.cNo more private offices. Share secretaries. Cut salaries to match teacher salaries. There must be many more ways to economize at McKinsey.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Boston, Boston Consulting Group, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Education Reform

Wall Street Journal: Stop Picking on Charter School Philanthropists!

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2016 //
40

Who knew that the 1% were so sensitive to criticism?

 

This evening the Wall Street Journal published an article called “The Union War on Charter School Philanthropists.” In the eyes of the WSJ, charter schools are a blessing, and we should all be grateful to the wealthy philanthropists who help them multiply. And of course, the WSJ can’t imagine that anyone would oppose a private takeover of public schools except teachers’ unions.

 

The WSJ can’t admit that charters get high test scores by excluding students with disabilities, English language learners, and low-scoring students. Their secret sauce: attrition, exclusion, test-prep, robotic discipline. What the WSJ loves about charters is that more than 90% are non-union.

 

Here is is what the article says:

 

 

OPINION COMMENTARY

 
The Union War on Charter-School Philanthropists

 
The wealthy are giving millions to fix education, but their gifts draw fire from a predictable source.

 

 

By NINA REES

 
May 1, 2016 5:43 p.m.

 
If you heard that a group of philanthropists came together to donate millions of dollars to schools, you would probably consider it good news. Indeed, thousands of underprivileged kids will be helped by the $35 million raised for Success Academy charter schools at a charity gala earlier this month. But teachers unions detect a nefarious purpose.

 

This $35 million donation was “part of a coordinated national effort to decimate public schooling,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote in an April 13 article at the Huffington Post. “Wealthy donors and their political allies,” she warned, are “pushing unaccountable charter growth in urban centers while stripping communities of a voice in their children’s education.”

 

Regardless of the political attacks, politicians and philanthropists must remain committed. Charter schools serve many underprivileged students: 56% are on free or reduced lunch and 65% are minorities, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Because they are run independently of school districts and city bureaucracies, they have the flexibility to be innovative in the choices they offer to parents, providing services like extended-learning schedules and language immersion.

 

Charter schools are also closing achievement gaps. At Success Academy schools in New York, three-quarters of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and nearly all are minorities. In 2015, 68% of students scored proficient in reading and 93% ranked proficient in math. For contrast, only 35% of New York City students overall scored proficient in math. Their reading abilities were even worse.

 

This success translates to broad-based support. About two-thirds of public-school parents favor charter schools, according to a 2015 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll. Support is especially high among low-income parents, according to a March survey commissioned by the organization I lead. Some 88% of parents who earn less than $50,000 a year would like to see more charter schools in their communities.

 

Union leaders haven’t always been adamantly anti-charter. Ms. Weingarten’s former boss and mentor Al Shanker is actually credited with proposing charter schools. Sharing his vision in a 1988 speech, he said, “There is a role in all this for the federal government, state government, the local government, the business community, and foundations.”

 

Today, 25 years after Minnesota passed the first charter-school law, nearly three million students attend about 7,000 charter schools in 43 states and the District of Columbia. Yet over one million students remain on charter waiting lists, meaning that additional schools can’t come soon enough. And because charters nationwide receive, on average, 72 cents for every dollar that district-run schools do, philanthropy is vital to expansion.

 

Philanthropists have always contributed to their alma maters and other civic institutions, but opportunities to support public education have been limited. Donors want their contributions to have measurable results, and few successful businesspeople would voluntarily send money to poorly performing district bureaucracies. Mark Zuckerberglearned this lesson the hard way when much of his $100 million gift to public schools in Newark, N.J., was frittered away.

 

Charter schools have changed the equation for wealthy donors aiming to improve education. In Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad is backing an effort to raise $490 million to create 260 new charter schools for more than 130,000 students.

 

Yet entrenched interests seem more concerned about explaining away the failures of public schools than supporting innovative ways to help students learn. In Louisiana, Gov.John Bel Edwards threatened to severely limit the ability of the state board of education to authorize charter schools rejected by local school boards. This appeal role of the state board is important because it ensures that quality charter schools can open even if local politics prevent approval. Gov. Edwards’s proposal was defeated in the state legislature, but the episode demonstrated how a single official could jeopardize years of progress. New Orleans’s all-charter district has been catching up with the rest of the state and hasraised graduation rates by 10 percentage points over the past decade.

 

In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker is fighting to lift an arbitrary cap that limits the state to 72 charter schools. The Massachusetts Teachers Association is spending millions to keep the caps in place. This despite Boston charter-school students gaining 170 days of extra learning in reading and 233 days in math, compared with regular students, according to a report by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

 

Charter schools put high-quality education within reach of students without regard for family incomes. Policy makers and philanthropists should pay close attention to how these schools are revamping communities and attracting philanthropic investment to some of the neediest neighborhoods. Charters have the potential to revolutionize American education—but they will need support to do so.

 

Ms. Rees is president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Reform

Why Outsource Neighborhood Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2016 //
8

One of the disturbing aspects of the charter industry is the proliferation of corporate charter chains. Like Walmart, the corporate charters are not part of the local community. They do not answer to an elected board. “Ownership” is far away. If the corporation is dissatisfied with results, it will shut down and move elsewhere.

 

This article is not about schools per se, but it speaks to the same issues.

 

 

DAILY SLANT: Let’s support “locally grown” social services

 

By Nancy Wackstein

 

 

There is no trend more significant in today’s food and restaurant culture than “local.” There is a growing consensus that being a “locavore” and eating food grown, raised or produced locally – usually within 100 miles of the point of consumption – is good for local economies, good for health and good for the environment by reducing fuel consumption associated with transportation.

 

I would argue that it’s time to reorient New York City social services delivery back toward a locavore model as well: locally delivered, locally staffed, locally supported when possible – maybe even produced within one mile of the consumer! As with the food supply, there was a time not long ago when residents of a particular neighborhood knew their local social service agency and community center, whether a settlement house, a Y or a storefront information center. People looking for assistance did not have to travel out of their neighborhoods to get the help they needed, or to socialize, learn or simply have fun together. Nor did they want to.

 

Clearly, social services were locally sourced! And here, too, the benefits were obvious: familiarity and comfort, proximity and reduced travel time and continuity, sometimes over
generations.

 

A report released in 2015 by United Neighborhood Houses reinforced the importance of this local approach. The 3,000 settlement house participants who were surveyed reported a greater sense of “belonging” and “embeddedness” through participation at their local agency. In a huge impersonal city like New York, can anything be more important than creating and nourishing a sense of belonging? Through their local organizations, these participants also learned more about their own neighborhoods and how to help improve their communities by working together with neighbors they met there … “building community.”

 

However, as with the food industry, over the last few decades, “progress” and “modernity” overtook the social services sector. Nonprofit agencies were exhorted to model themselves on corporations: the only path to sustainability was through growth, and more growth. And a prevailing ideology emerged: scale automatically equals efficiency.

 

Agencies were urged to consolidate and merge so more people could be served and larger catchment areas covered, sometimes even borough-wide and citywide. Underpinning the growth and consolidation trend was often the belief that there just were just too many nonprofit providers resulting in redundant programming and overlapping areas of service – inefficiencies.

 

Trends in city government funding embraced and supported this ideology. Contracts for services began to privilege larger and larger social service providers in the name of efficiency.

 
Requests for proposals were designed to identify agencies that could serve larger geographic areas containing larger numbers of people. Why contract with 90 different smaller nonprofits when you could contract with five larger ones?

 

Wouldn’t doing so save the the taxpayers money?

 

“Progress” has brought us to 2016 New York, where ever-larger nonprofits dominate the landscape of social services delivery. Such agencies typically are the only ones who can produce the scale that government contracts increasingly require: the number of
individuals served, the geographic areas covered, the outcome data. And larger agencies typically are the only ones who can negotiate successfully with third-party payers like managed care companies for Medicaid funded services, signifying their ability to survive in the new reimbursement environment.

 

Have we created our own agribusiness right here in New York City that will inevitably drive out the family farms? And if so, what has been lost if we have? Will it even matter to consumers?

 

What is lost is that many local organizations with deep ties to their communities have been left out of the picture, denied the opportunity to compete for city and state contracts because they are too small or serve a particular niche population. Many newer organizations focused on a particular neighborhood or population simply can’t compete for contracts when these are conceptualized and structured by government agencies to serve vast citywide populations and areas. I believe this will matter tremendously to consumers because if these organizations fail to thrive, the people in those neighborhoods, and the communities themselves will be depleted.

 

In the food industry, when the niche producers began to disappear, our food became generic, homogenized and even flavorless. (Ever tasted those winter tomatoes?) The “local” movement then developed as a response to over-centralization, outsized scale and sameness.

 

If we don’t want local organizations with unique competencies and strong neighborhood ties to go the way of family farms, I believe it’s time to rethink service delivery. Yes, New
York City is huge, but it also is a city of unique neighborhoods that should and could be enriched by locally based and locally determined services.

 

Let’s not lose the niche, targeted services that respond to local needs. Let’s not lose the programs that grew up in neighborhoods because that’s what the neighbors said they wanted.
Let’s not make residents have to leave their neighborhoods to get help. Let’s invest in the “place-based” services that we know have always worked. By doing so, we will strengthen both individuals and communities.

 

I’ll eat to that!

 

Nancy Wackstein is the director of community engagement and partnerships at Fordham University and the former executive director of United Neighborhood Houses. This article was originally published by New York Nonprofit Media.

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

Howard Blume: Los Angeles Charters Try to Offload Teacher Pensions on District

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2016 //
70

Howard Blume reports that charters in Los Angeles are trying to avoid the cost of paying pensions by advising teachers who near retirement age to go to work for the public school system.

 

His fascinating story begins:

 

 

“A Woodland Hills charter school recently made an unusual offer to its veteran teachers: We’ll give you $30,000 if you return to the Los Angeles Unified School District before you retire.

 

“It wasn’t the teachers that El Camino Real Charter High School wanted to get rid of. It was the cost of their retirement benefits.

 
“The school’s cost-shifting strategy is one of many flashpoints between traditional public schools and the independent charters they compete with for students and money.

 

“In this case, it’s a battle over who should pay for an employee’s health benefits after retirement — the charter school or the larger school district.

 
“Financial challenges are all-but-universal in the education world, and retiree benefits are particularly costly. L.A. Unified’s unfunded liability for employee benefits has escalated to $13.6 billion.

 

“The El Camino plan would add from $2.5 million to $4.2 million to that deficit, based on district estimates. The idea is that teachers would spend their careers in the charter school, but later transfer to LAUSD to qualify for the huge institution’s retirement benefits.

 

“Except the district has decided not to play ball.

 

“Teachers who return to the district, simply to retire, are not entitled to district retirement benefits, general counsel David Holmquist said.

 

“This would be an obligation that in my view would be the charter’s responsibility,” Holmquist said.”

 

Blume points out that this decision raises interesting questions about Eli Broad’s plan to open 260 new charter schools, which will require some rethinking when they can’t dump their pension obligations on the public schools.

 

Guess Eli’s charters will have to stick with Teach for America, whose teachers are usually long gone before qualifying for a pension.

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Los Angeles, Pensions

Rutgers Has an Answer to Harvard: Scholars, Not Politicians, Speak about School Reform

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2016 //
29

I earlier posted about a reformy conference at Harvard Graduate School of Education where corporate reformers have the platform to themselves, to praise the measure-and-punish-and-privatize strategies that have failed for more than a decade.

 

Here is good news if you are in the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania area. Rutgers University is sponsoring a conference on May 20 to take a close look at what is being done in the name of “reform” and what should be done instead. The panels are the polar opposite of the workshops at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

 

Here is a thumbnail sketch:

 

Session 1
There will be two concurrent sessions. Click a paper to see abstracts.
Session 1.1: Choice, Charters and Segregation

The Effect of Charter Schools on Neighborhood and School Segregation: Evidence from New York City (Sarah A. Cordes, Temple University, and Augustina Laurito, NYU)
The Untold Story of the Morris School District and the Quest for Educational Diversity (Paul Tractenberg, Rutgers -Newark Law School)
Evaluation of Charter School Impacts: The Cases of Newark and Trenton (Maia de la Calle, Rutgers University)
Charter School Effectiveness Research: Do We Really Know if “Successful” Charters are, in Fact, Successful (Mark Weber, Rutgers University)
Do No-Excuses Disciplinary Practices Promote Success? (Joanna Golann, Princeton University, and Chris Torres, Montclair State University)
Charting School Discipline (Susan DeJarnatt, Temple University, and Kerrin Wolf, Stockton University)

Session 1.2: Standards and Assessment

Misinformation and Misconceptions about PARCC, College Readiness and Mathematics Education (Eric Milou, Rowan University)
More [Time] is Better or Less is More (Allison Roda, Rutgers University-Newark)
What Happens to Students When Corporate Reform Fails?: Oklahoma City as a Case Study of the Test and Sort School Reform Experiment (John Thompson)
Problems with High Stakes Testing: Exploring the Gap Between Citizen Concerns and Government Recommendations (Sue Altman)
Hacking Away at Pearson & the Corporate Octopus (Alan Singer, Hofstra University)

 
Session 2

Session 2.1: Finance, Private Investment and the State

The Business of Charter Schooling: Understanding the Policies that Charter Operators Use for Financial Benefit (Bruce Baker, Rutgers University, and Gary Miron, Western Michigan University)
The Impact of Charter Schools on Suburban Districts: The Case of Red Bank, NJ (Julia Sass Rubin, Rutgers University)
Planning School Improvement Districts (Ken Steif, University of Pennsylvania)
TFA’s Leadership Model and Neoliberal Education Reform (Leah Z. Owens, Rutgers University – Newark)
Poverty, Student Achievement and Union-Management Collaboration in Public School Reform (Saul A. Rubinstein, Rutgers University)

Session 2.2: Schools and Neighborhoods

Making the Public Choice: How Parents in Philadelphia’s Gentrifying (and Gentrified) Neighborhoods are Choosing Neighborhood Schools (Katharine Nelson, Rutgers University)
Altering the Relationship between Neighborhood and School to Improve Life Chances (Ryan Coughlan, Rutgers-Newark)
A Community Good? Developers, New Schools and Gentrification (Molly Vollman Makris, Guttman Community College/City University of New York, and Elizabeth Brown, William Paterson University)
The School Choice Decision for 70 Families with Diverse Backgrounds in Oakland (Carrie Makarewicz, University of Colorado Denver)
School Choice and Latina/o Students: Misappropriating the Notion of Diversity (Michael Scott, University of Texas at Austin)
“Opt-Out” as Democratic Civic Engagement (Monica Clark, Temple University)

 

Session 3.1: Democracy and Education

A Tale of Two Cities: Education in Global Chicago (Constance A. Mixon, Elmhurst College)
Democracy and National Education Standards (Nicholas Tampio, Fordham University)
The Renaissance will be Technocratic: Contrasting Community Voice with Educational Leaders in Camden, NJ (Stephen Danley, Rutgers University – Camden)
Fighting Against Their Just Prescriptions and Fighting for Our Visions for Educational Justice (Liza Pappas and Zakiyah Ansari, Alliance for Quality Education)
Better for Whom? Community Perspectives on State-Mandated Charters (Keith Benson, Rutgers University – Camden)

Session 3.2: Closing Schools

Using National Data to Understand School Closures (Megan Gallagher, Rolf Pendall, Sierra Latham, and Tanaya Srini, The Urban Institute)
Constructing Students as Targets: Racial Differences in Attitudes Towards Public School Closure (Sally Nuama, Northwestern University)
Injustice and School Closure (Jacob Fay, Harvard University)
Neighborhoods, Schools and Economic Landscapes: Rooting Schools in Place in Philadelphia’s School Closure Debate (Ryan Good, Rutgers University)
A City Reimagined: Baltimore’ s School Closings (Jessica Shiller, Towson University)
Branding Against Closure: Philadelphia Neighborhood Schools and the Management of Risky Futures (Julia McWilliams, University of Pennsylvania)

 

An interesting contrast: The Harvard Graduate School of Education conference is peppered with politicians and media celebrities.

 

The Rutgers conference features scholars who have actually studied the subjects they are writing and speaking about.

 

Isn’t that amazing?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing
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