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Gabrielle Gurney: The High Cost of Charters in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2016 //
10

Gabrielle Gurney, an experienced journalist, has written one of the clearest analyses of the fiscal impact of charters on district public schools that I have ever read. The article appears in The American Prospect.

 

Many people have pointed out that the expansion of charters means budget cuts for district schools. Students in Boston recently took to the streets to protest the loss of teachers and programs caused by diversion of funds to charters.

 

Gurney says ways that charters were supposed to create excellent schools for the state’s poorest students but that hasn’t happened. In some parts of the state, charters serve as semi-private schools for the middle class.

 

The he political class who run the state love the idea of charters, and they don’t seem to give much thought to collateral damage to the district schools where most students are enrolled (charters serve less than 5% of the state’s students).

 

In Brockton, for example, the local comprehensive high school has won national praise for its successful programs. But the state decided to open a charter school in Brockton, over the objections of school leaders. This will mean budget cuts to Brockton High School.

 

Massachusetts’ leaders seem to be bent on disruption of its state schools. In their rush to innovate, they jeopardize their successful public schools, which other states envy.

 

Read the article and let me know if you can explain why the state is determined to force their public schools into a competition for students and resources.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Massachusetts

Michigan: A Spectacular Charter School Scandal

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2016 //
13

This is one of the most curious, most convoluted charter scandals I have come across. Of course, it happened in Michigan, where about 80% of charters  operate for-profit and where the state exercises minimal oversight of the charter sector.

 

In 1999, an optometrist named Steven Ingersoll was among the first to see the potential in the charter industry. He developed his own pedagogy called Integrated Visual Learning and opened the first of four charters, Grand Traverse Academy. The board of directors were other optometrists who liked Ingersoll’s ideas. Certainly, optometrists would be drawn to a teaching method based on “visual learning.”

 

There were chummy relationships among Ingersoll, the management company he hired, and board members:

 

“It was not until lawyers for the school began asking questions that the tangled financial relationship between Ingersoll’s management company and the charter he founded began to unravel, culminating in the most significant federal criminal case in the history of Michigan’s 20-year-old charter school industry. Ingersoll, who started Smart Schools Management, Inc., stands accused of illegally diverting construction loan money for another charter school to his private account, in part to pay back money he had taken from the Grand Traverse charter. His hand-picked members on the school board knew he had advanced himself money from Grand Traverse, but had no problem with the arrangement, school records show.

 
“Ingersoll will go on trial next month on seven criminal charges of bank fraud and tax evasion. The allegations of financial self-dealing and cozy relations between Ingersoll, his associates and board members could not come at a worse time for the Michigan charter movement. The state’s powerful, mostly for-profit charter school industry has found itself on the defensive since the Detroit Free Press published a devastating series last June chronicling how charters receive nearly $1 billion a year in state taxpayer money with little accountability or transparency on how that money is spent. The series detailed how board members at some charter schools were forced out when they pushed to learn more about finances from management companies, and how state law failed to prevent self-enrichment by those operating some low-performing charter schools.”

 

One blogger, Anita Senkowski, doggedly followed the case of Steven Ingersoll and posted documents. Her blog is called “Glistening Quivering Underbelly,” where she calls herself Miss Fortune. She described Ingersoll as the poster boy for Michigan’s lack of charter oversight.

 

Ingersoll was indicted in 2014 and convicted in 2015 for tax evasion and fraud.

 

Senkowski wrote last fall:

 

“Convicted in March [2015] on three counts of tax evasion and conspiracy, Ingersoll owned and formerly managed the Bay City Academy and managed the Grand Traverse Academy until days before his April 10, 2014 indictment.

 

“Between 2007-2012, Ingersoll misappropriated an estimated $3.5 million dollars from the Traverse City charter school — but has never been investigated or charged with embezzlement.

 

“And what about the Grand Traverse Academy’s Board of Directors? After much public posturing, it opted not to pursue any legal remedy to recover the money, and apparently that’s where it stands.”

 

Senkowski alleged that the board knew what Ingersoll was doing and didn’t care.

 

Now she has another bombshell report. Even after Ingersoll’s indictment, he continued to receive monthly payments of $12,500 from Mark Noss, a member of Ingersoll’s original board who started his own charter management company.

 

She writes:

 

 

“An accountant formerly employed by Mark Noss at his Full Spectrum Management, LLC (FSM) sent a stunning whistleblower email to the Grand Traverse Academy Board of Directors on March 15, 2016 at 6:00pm, alleging Noss deceived the Board when he stated during its December 17, 2015 meeting that he “has no business relationship with Dr. Ingersoll at the present time.”

 

“The former FSM accountant disclosed information to Board president Brad Habermehl and Grand Traverse Academy employee, Heidi Sych, that revealed Noss had been making monthly $12,500 payments to Steven Ingersoll for nearly two years.

 

“The incendiary email, sent by former FSM accountant Richard Lowe, and a March 16, 2016 response from Mark Noss, were both provided to the U. S. Attorney’s Office by counsel for Lake Superior State University.

 

“According to a supplemental brief filed late this afternoon by government prosecutors, FSM honcho Mark Noss acknowledged paying Ingersoll $12,500 per month since he took over the role of educational services provider for the Grand Traverse Academy on March 19, 2014, with the first payment issued in April 2014.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Fraud, Michigan

Dora Taylor: Charter Forces in Washington State Threaten to Block Funding for Public schools

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
29

A daily reader of this blog, Chiara, has often made the point that once charters enter the political discussion in a state, there is no more attention to public schools. It is all-charters, all-vouchers, all the time, even though 93% of the children in Ohio (her state) attend traditional public schools. The legislature loses sight of the education of the state’s children and concentrates only on the small percentage in choice schools.

 

In Washington State, the legislature has been consumed with charters, even though they enroll only 1,300 students. The state’s highest court ruled they are not public schools and are not entitled to public funding. So the discussion this past session was devoted to how to fund those schools.

 

At the same time, the state court ordered the legislature to fund the public schools (which enroll 1 million students) equitably and adequately. While wrestling with the charter issue, the legislature did nothing to fund the schools that educate the overwhelming majority of children. It was all-charters, all the time.

 

Seattle parent blogger Dora Taylor says that the charter claque in the legislature plans to hold general funding hostage until they get charter funding.

 

This is shameful. Bill Gates shows where his priorities lie. Winning means more to him than the education of 1 million children.

Categories Charter Schools, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Washington State

California Charter Game: Rejected by District, Rejected by County, Appeal to State and….

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
17

District officials in California have confided in me that it is virtually impossible to stop a charter proposal, no matter how bad it is or how little it is needed. If the district turns down the proposal, the charter advocates appeal to the Los Angeles County School Board, where they are often approved. In the off-chance that both the district and the county turn down their proposal, the advocates appeal to the state, where they are almost certain to win approval.

 

Here is an example.

 

Two parents proposed to open a dual-language immersion school that would teach Spanish, German, Italian, and French. The school would be called the International Studies Language Academy. The Glendale school board voted against the proposal, 5-0. The proponents appealed to the County office, which did an extensive review and turned them down, 5-1.

 

Staff at the Los Angeles County Office of Education weighed the petition as part of the Charter School Review Team, made up of county officials drawn from various departments, including the controller’s office, the curriculum department and the division of accountability.

 

County officials determined the plan “provides an unsound educational program” and that the petitioners “are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the proposed educational program,” according to the report.

 

“We’re disappointed, but know the political climate is tough for charters in the L.A. area right now,” Bonacci said in an email.

 

Similar to Glendale school board members, county officials found several faults with the school’s financial plan and deemed it “unrealistic,” in the report, highlighting how the school underestimated teacher salaries, benefits and the cost for books and materials.

 

In another instance, county officials noted that the school planned to mail bank statements directly to Academica, a Florida-based charter school operator.

 

The school’s lack of internal control in processing checks “can result in fiscal mismanagement,” the report stated.

 

Despite those findings, the petition has won support from the California Charter Schools Assn., whose manager for regional advocacy, Allison Hendrick, urged that the county board approve the appeal.

 

Ah, so the school will be managed by Academica, the political powerhouse in Florida that operates for profit. Due diligence would suggest that the California officials learn more about Academica, whose owners have assembled a vast real estate empire. In Florida, Academica had the help of a state senator who chairs the education appropriations committee. Who will help them in California?

 

Let’s see what happens to this petition, where local officials declared it to be pedagogically and financially unsound.

 

 

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

Pelto: Malloy Aide Hired by DFER

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
5

This is really annoying. I stayed up late last night to write this post. And it disappeared!

 

Jonathan Pelto reported that Adam Goldfarb, former chief of staff to Connecticut’s commissioner of education Stefan Pryor, is going to work for Democrats for Education Reform, the hedge fund managers group that promotes charters.

 

Pryor now works in Rhode Island doing economic development for Governor  Gina Raimondo. Her husband roomed with Cory Booker.

 

What is the link that connects Pryor, Goldfarb, Raimondo, Booker? YALE.

 

Not any experience teaching. YALE.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform, Privatization, Rhode Island

Should the Gulen Network Open a Charter School on a U.S. Military Base?

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
29

Robert Amsterdam, the lawyer hired by the Turkish government, to investigate the activities of Fetullah Gulen, writes here that a Gulen charter school has applied to open on a U.S. military base in Nevada. Why should a foreign entity run the “public school” on the military base? The Department of Defense schools have an excellent reputation. Why outsource to the Gulen charter chain?

 

The Gulen charter chain is affiliated with the cleric Fetullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. More than 140 charter schools across the country are run by Gulenists, under a variety of names. The way to tell a Gulen school is that the board is made up of Turkish men. The staff includes many Turkish teachers.

 

Amsterdam writes:

 

A secretive Islamic movement is trying to infiltrate the U.S. military by establishing and operating publicly-funded charter schools targeted toward children of American service personnel.

 

That charge may sound like a conspiracy theory from the lunatic fringe, but it is real and it is happening right now. The most immediate threat is in Nevada, where Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas (CASLV) is currently negotiating with the United States Air Force to locate a charter school at Nellis Air Force Base, with classes starting this fall. What is not widely known is that CASLV is part of a nationwide organization of charter schools and other businesses headed by Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, a reclusive but influential Imam living under self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania to avoid criminal prosecution in his native Turkey….

 

In Nevada, CASLV is a three-campus school operating under a charter held by tax-exempt Coral Education Corp., headquartered in Reno. Three of Coral’s board members are Turkish, one of whom was formerly the Principal at two other Gülen organization charter schools, the Sonoran Science Academy at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and the Bay Area Technology School in California.

 

Unfortunately, Nellis Air Force Base is not the Gülen organization’s first stab at a U.S. military base. The organization successfully opened a school on Davis-Monthan AFB in 2009, and it tried but failed to gain access to Marine Corps Base Hawaii and Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois. In California, Magnolia Public Schools applied for a charter in Oceanside, where Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton is located, although it temporarily withdrew its application after our law firm pointed out Magnolia’s connection to the Gülen organization earlier this year.

 

The new film, KILLING ED, investigates the Gulen network, its financing, and its methods.

 

Sharon Higgins has been tracking the Gulen schools, and posts here a list of the many different names under which their schools operate.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools

BREAKING: Washington State Teachers Union Sues to Block Charter School Funding

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2016 //
17

The Washington State Education Association and other groups are suing to block the funding of charter schools in Washington State.

 

The battle over charters has gone on for years. There have been four referenda: the first three blocked charters. The fourth, in 2012, won by less than 1% after Bill Gates and fellow billionaires dumped nearly $20 million into the campaign. The funding was challenged in court and the state’s highest court ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they have private governance.

 

The oligarchs lobbied hard, persuaded Democrats to fund the 1,000 children in charters at the same time the legislature took no action on a court order to fund equitably the public schools that enroll the state’s 1 million children.

 

The WEA is going back to court to block the new funding, on grounds that charters are not public schools.

 

The only democratic institution untouched by Gates’ power to date is the courts. Let’s see what happens next.

 

Kudos to WEA for defending public schools.

Categories Charter Schools, Resistance, Unions, Washington State

Law Journal: Charters’ Disciplinary Policies are Exclusionary and Contribute to School-to-Prison Pipeline

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2016 //
14

Three law professors studied the discipline codes at Philadelphia charter schools and concluded that these punitive codes are used to push out students who are “non-compliant or challenging.”

 

The article, which will be published in “The Urban Lawyer,” was written by Susan DeJarnatt,  Temple University – James E. Beasley School of Law; Kerrin C. Wolf, Stockton University; and Mary Kate Kalinich, Temple University – James E. Beasley School of Law.

 

The authors found that: 38% of the Philadelphia charter school codes use the phrase “zero tolerance,” 74% specify offenses for which suspension is mandatory, and 38% of the charter codes mandate expulsion for certain offenses. Approximately three-quarters of charter schools have no-excuses policies in their codes. They learned that a student may be expelled “for repeated failures to recite the school pledge on demand in English by November of the 9th grade year and in Latin by the end of the 10th grade year, for having missing homework, and for failure to upgrade a failed test.” (p. 41) They found that students may be expelled for “failure to disclose on the application that a student is a currently enrolled special education student” (p. 41). One code permits expulsion for “inappropriate facial gestures” (p. 42)

 

You can read the article in full. Here is the abstract.
Exclusionary school discipline can steer students away from educational opportunities and towards the juvenile and criminal justice systems. As many public school systems have turned to exclusionary school discipline practices over the past two decades, they have also increasingly adopted charter schools as alternatives to traditional public schools. This research is examines the student codes of conduct for the charter schools in the School District of Philadelphia to consider the role of their disciplinary practices and the potential effects on charter students.

 

We analyzed every disciplinary code provided to the Philadelphia School District by charter schools within Philadelphia during the 2014-2015 school year. Our goal was to examine the provisions relating to detention, suspension, and expulsion, along with other disciplinary responses, to determine what conduct can result in disciplinary consequences, what responses are available for various types of misbehavior, and whether the code language is clear or ambiguous or even accessible to students or potential students and their parents or caregivers. We conclude that too many of the codes are not well drafted, and too many follow models of punitive discipline that can be used to push out non-compliant or challenging students. Some codes grant almost complete discretion to school administrators to impose punitive discipline for any behavior the administrator deems problematic.

 

We hope that this work will spur future research on implementation of charter school discipline policies to illustrate how charter schools are using their codes. Further, we hope to see the charter sector develop model disciplinary codes that move away from a zero tolerance punitive model towards disciplinary systems based on restorative principles.

 

The question it implicitly poses for the reader is why it makes sense to run two public-funded school systems: one that accepts all students, the other with the power to exclude or expel those it doesn’t want. This question has strong pertinence in Philadelphia where the public school system has been stripped of funding and resources over the past decade, so that the two systems are separate and unequal.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Inequality, Philadelphia, Research

Checker Finn: Why Donald Trump Might Set Back Education “Reform”

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2016 //
21

Checker Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute fears that the election of Donald Trump would be a disaster for education reforms like charters, vouchers, higher standards, harder tests, and test-based evaluations. Republicans might lose control of either or both houses of Congress. They might see governors and legislatures retaken by Democrats.

This is the best argument–maybe the only argument–I have heard for Trump. Can you imaginary the social reactionaries that Cruz might sweep in? We would go backwards a century.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Politics

EduShyster: Why Teachers at a Cleveland Charter School Formed a Union

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2016 //
5

EduShyster interviewed teachers at the University of Cleveland Prep School about why they decided to unionize. Charters have a reputation for expecting teachers to work long hours. Because of working conditions, charters have high teacher turnover.

 

She writes:

 

 

“For Jacqueline Lehane, it was the teacher demerit system at her Cleveland charter school that was the last straw. Teachers who’d been heard talking in the hallway, or whose students had been spotted with an untucked shirt, would be called out via an official email entitled *Quick Hits,* on which teachers, school and network administrators were copied.

 

*It’s just public humiliation,* says Lehane, whose *hits* included having a messy classroom after her first graders completed an art project. To Lehane, this top-down shaming was a symbol of everything that was wrong with the school. *Once I even asked a dean, ‘do people who are higher up than you treat you the way you treat us?’

 

 

“If all you know about unions is that they are protectors of the status quo, responsible for everything that’s wrong with public education, I’m guessing you have no idea how hard it is to actually organize one. By the time Lehane and her colleagues at the University of Cleveland Preparatory School, part of the I CAN network, voted 18-4 to join the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the teachers had spent two years trying to form a union. Administrators responded, first by attempting to intimidate teachers into changing their minds, then firing the teachers who they’d identified as leading the effort. Seven teachers at the school were fired as punishment—such a clear and blatant act of retaliation that the National Labor Relations Board ordered I CAN to reinstate the teachers and give them full back pay….

 

 

‘This can’t be good’

 

 

“Lehane started teaching at UCP in 2015. A week after the school year started, she found herself in front of 32 first graders, with no training. *I think it took me about an hour to figure out that there were some serious problems,* says Lehane. One of the first things she noticed was how high the teacher turnover rate was at the school. Teachers were constantly quitting, replaced by brand new teachers, some of whom weren’t even licensed to teach. Lehane was struck by how different this was from the public schools she’d attended growing up in suburban Cleveland. *My teachers were there for my three sisters and my brother, but no one ever stays at I CAN. I just remember thinking ‘this can’t be good,’* says Lehane.

 

 

“When a group of teachers at the school approached Lehane about coming to a meeting to talk about organizing a union, she was in. At that first gathering, the teachers listed off their concerns and identified problems that they thought needed to be fixed. Like the sky-high turnover among teachers. And the fact there seemed to be no accountability for administrators. Work hours and expectations were outrageous, even though teachers lacked the most basic supports and resources to accomplish what was expected of them. *It was such a relief to hear that everyone was frustrated by the same things, and that we all wanted to fix them,* says Lehane.”

 

About 90% of charter schools are non-union. Some funders underwrite them to get rid of unions. This must be very disturbing to the Walton Family Foundation, the Eli Broad Foundation, and many others who want schools to be free of unions.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching, Unions
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