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Peter Greene: The Secret Memo That Success Academy Does Not Want You to See

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2016 //
19

Peter Greene writes that the Success Academy charter chain proves definitively that charters are not public schools. 

 

It is a private business funded with public tax dollars.

 

They have previously gone to court to argue that they are not accountable to any elected officials or the state government itself. And now their team of lawyers has sent out a memo to remind staffers that they are not in any way accountable to anybody outside Success Academy walls.

 

Politico got its hands on that memo. It’s the latest in a string of damage control attempts at the charter chain, which has suffered one bad PR moment after another, from a got-to-go list of students to be forced out , to video of teacher cruelty to a child. They’ve drawn the unwelcome attention of veteran journalist John Merrow. Eva Moskowitz, who is paid more to head up her private chain of 11,000 students than Carmen Farina is paid to manage the entire New York City school system, has been ineffective in beating back the problems, and mostly seems alternately confused and outraged that she has to bother. Moskowitz is a woman who always seems one bad lapse of impulse control away from barking, “Do you know who I am!!??” Most recently the chain hired the same PR firm that has tried to paper over the Flint water crisis.

 

The legal memo that Peter Greene refers to says the following, according to Politico, where it was first published:

 

Under the header “top 20 mistakes schools make,” the advisory team writes that one of them is “providing information to lawyers/press/electeds/government reps.”

 

“Leaders must call advisory if these individuals are requesting information or are in their buildings. Lawyers and press/government may appear to be asking simple questions, but there can be broader implications,” the document reads. “Leaders must not provide sensitive information, such as demographic info or projected enrollment, to third parties without consulting with advisory.”

 

Stefan Friedman, a spokesman for Success, told POLITICO that what the memo outlines is important to keep staff on the same page. “With 11,000 scholars and 1,700 staff/faculty, these common sense procedures ensure we have a coordinated way for responding to inquiries from important members of the community,” he said in a statement.

 

The memo also specifically instructs school leaders not to allow parents to become the sources of leaks to journalists or government officials.

 

“Letting parents get away with threats to go to the press/police/elected official” is listed as number eight on the list of twenty mistakes.

 

“If a parent makes this threat, contact advisory. Advisory can help diffuse this situation,” the memo reads. “But we cannot let parents ‘get away’ with these threats. Feel confident in pushing back on these and telling parents that threats are not a productive way to resolve conflict or build the relationship….”

 

Staffers should not, according to the memo, take videos of “scholars in crisis.”

 

Teachers should not “physically restrain” students, except when they are in imminent danger.

 

And employees should not prevent students from using the bathroom, according to the memo.

 

Success’s legal team also instructs staff to keep clear documentation of student suspensions. Suspensions have been particularly publicly contentious for the network, following reports that Success suspends children as young as Kindergarten and that it suspends students at a higher rate than district schools or other charters do.

 

There are many other reasons to recognize that Success Academy charters are not public schools. Public schools are not permitted to close for a few hours or the day to send their students to a political rally. But Success Academy does it whenever its leader wishes. If a principal of a public school closed for the day and put students and parents on a bus to Albany to lobby for funding, she/he would be fired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Harlem Success Academy

John Thompson on the Reign of the Broadie Superintendents

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2016 //
13

John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma City, read Motoko Rich’s report in the New York Times on the travails of Antwan Wilson, the Broad-trained superintendent in Oakland, California, and thought of the negative reputation that these “Broadies” have acquired. What is a Broadie? It is someone, with or without an education background, who attended a series of weekend seminars sponsored by the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy. This “academy” has no accreditation. It focuses on management style, not education. The Broad Foundation picks people to learn its autocratic management style and places them in a district where Broad has influence and might even supplement the leader’s salary. Once placed, you may surround yourself with other Broadies to push decisions on unwilling teachers and principals who know more than you do about the local schools and students. The list of failed Broadies is long, including Mike Miles in Dallas, General Anthony Tata in Wake County, N.C., John Covington in Kansas City and Michigan’s Educational Achievement Authority.

 

Thompson was reminded of the Broadie who took charge of the Oklahoma City public schools and sowed racial antagonism and division when he read Rich’s article about Wilson and his problems.

 

He writes:

 

It would be easier to sympathize with Wilson’s feelings if Broad and the rest of the Billionaires Boys Club’s public relations teams didn’t have such a long and disgusting record of using racial taunts against those (regardless of our race) who disagree with them. More importantly, the Broadie’s pain is dwarfed by that of poor children of color who increasingly find themselves in “apartheid schools” after competition-driven reformers (illogically) try to use resegregation of schools as a method for undoing the damage done by Jim Crow.
As explained in my book, A Teacher’s Tale, I first encountered the Broad mentality in 2007 when Oklahoma City hired a Broad Academy graduate as superintendent. Hoping to get off to a good, collaborative start, I introduced myself to the mentor that the academy assigned to him. She was sitting with several of my old friends and civil rights allies, African-American women with decades of administrative experience that they also would have gladly shared with the rookie superintendent. The Broad Academy mentor wiped the smiles off our faces when her first words to me were, “Why don’t you in Oklahoma City teach our African-American boys to read?”
At first, I thought we could have better luck communicating with the new superintendent. He was a good enough sport to compete in my school’s “Buffalo Chip Throwing Championship.” (Dressed in a fine business suit, the superintendent finished second, behind me, but unlike the champion buffalo feces thrower, he wore a plastic glove.) The superintendent enjoyed talking with my students, but he never seemed comfortable listening to teenagers when they disagreed with his policies. In one such meeting, the superintendent explained that he wanted an aligned and paced curriculum where every class covered the same material at the same time, and where he could supervise classroom instruction by video, throughout the district, from his office. Afterwards, my students were blunt, saying that the superintendent had no idea of what he was rushing into….

 

Across the nation, Broad and other market-driven reformers are stepping up the use of mass school closures to defeat teachers, unions, and parents who oppose them. Even as the Billionaires Boys Club proclaims that their goal is a 21st century civil rights crusade, they impose a brutal policy where the highest-challenge students are crammed into the schools that were already the most segregated, under-resourced and low-performing. In other words, they sabotage the highest-challenge neighborhood schools in order to discredit educators in them who seek win-win school improvement policies.
The Broad Academy and their allies are thus willing to sacrifice the welfare of the most vulnerable children and to inflame racial tensions in order to defeat educators who disagree with them. Whether they do so in Oakland or Oklahoma City – in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Denver, Washington D.C. or New Orleans – they are playing with fire. Whether we are talking about race, poverty, or special education, we must recognize the complexity of these issues and the need for nuanced conversations. As long as corporate reformers continue to vilify educators, complicated and interconnected problems will get worse. If Broad-trained superintendents had the knowledge about education that is necessary to improve schools, they would also understand why inflaming racial tensions is so dangerous.

 

 

 

 

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Oklahoma, Privatization

NYC: Go See an Important Film Tomorrow Night

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2016 //
1

I am posting this notice tonight and again tomorrow.

KILLING ED will be shown in NYC for one week, starting tomorrow

 
Mark Hall’s important new film about corporate reform and the assault on public education will be shown starting Friday in New York City at the Cinema Village, 22 East 12 street, at 7 pm.

 

The show will run for one week.
Mark will be there Friday night, along with Sharon Higgins, an Oakland, California, parent who has written extensively about charter school scandals (she has a website called “charterschoolscandals”), especially the Gulen charter schools. I will be in the audience.

 
Hall is touring the country with his film. Check the schedule to see if he is coming to your city or state. If not, contact him to arrange a showing. @KillingEdFilm

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform

Ohio’s Disgraceful Charter Sector 

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2016 //
6

Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio reports on the latest comparisons between charters and public schools.

“Here are the toplines:

“72.5 percent of all state charter funding went to charters that DO NOT outperform the local school district.

“Nearly 1 in 3 charter schools receive all their state funding from higher performing local school districts. 

“50 percent of the charter dollars that leave the Youngstown Schools go to charters that perform worse on the state report card.  

“80 percent of all money sent to eSchools came from higher performing local school districts. 

“92 percent of Ohio school districts (563 of 609) received less per pupil state funding because of the way Ohio funds its charter schools.  

“Here’s my blog about the report and some more about its methodology: http://bit.ly/1RiretJ

Stephen Dyer

Education Policy Fellow

Innovation Ohio

35 E. Gay St.

Columbus, OH 43215

http://www.innovationohio.org”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding

Ohio: Districts Demand Return of Millions Allotted to “Parasitical” Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2016 //
10

William Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy, has been tracking the movement by school districts to bill the state for money lost to charters. Ohio has many charters rated D or F by the state that divert funding from public schools.  Be sure to read the linked letter.

He writes in his latest post:

“Morgan Local School Board invoices the state for $1,138,235 in local funds deducted for charter schools

 

“School districts continue to invoice the state. The Morgan invoice is for local levy funding only. Superintendent Lori Snyder-Lowe’s thoughtful letter to the state emphasizes the education abuse suffered by charter students residing in the Morgan Local School District. The dismal performance of charters should be of grave concern to all local district officials and educators. Is it not a fiduciary responsibility of local school officials to ensure their students the most efficacious educational opportunity possible?

 

“State officials have the constitutional responsibility to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools. The Ohio system was declared unconstitutional four times by the Ohio Supreme Court. Since those declarations, $7 billion has been deducted from school districts for the parasitical charter industry.”

William Phillis

Ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Ohio

Florida: How Charters Cleaned Up in the Closing Hours of the Legislative Session

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2016 //
12

Paula Dockery, a former Republican legislator in Florida, explains how last-minute legislative maneuvering enables special interests to cram their priorities into overstuffed bills and into law. The writing of a bill in the closing days of the session, she says, is like a train running down the tracks. All kinds of things get added without public discussion.

 

 

The charter industry has been a beneficiary of these tactics.

 

 

Dockery writes:

 

 

“The final bill is a conglomeration of unrelated and contentious education policies. It allows students to transfer to any public school anywhere in the state if there is capacity — a nightmare for school district planning and budgeting. It allows high school athletes who change schools to be immediately eligible to play — which opens up high school athletics to potential recruiting.

 

 

“It financially punishes school districts for overspending on construction while making it easier for charter schools to get access to capital funding. It attempts to weaken the school board membership association that often disagrees with legislative policy changes. It relies on performance measures to determine college and university funding.

 

 

“On a positive note, it creates a funding formula for charter school capital costs that favors charters that serve poor and disabled students.

 

 

“Unfortunately, a key Senate proposal that prevented charter school operators from using public funds to build or improve facilities they own for their private gain was removed from the bill at the House’s insistence. Wasn’t this the reason for the train in the first place?”

 

 

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

Carol Burris: The Coming Collapse of Corporate Reform in New York

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2016 //
27

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, has been active in the resistance to New York’s state’s reliance on high-stakes testing for several years. As a high school principal, she helped to organize other principals across the state in opposition to test-based evaluation of both principals and teachers. About 40 percent of the state’s principals signed the petition opposing the so-called Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) based on test scores.

 

In this article, she describes the recent dramatic turn of events in New York. This state led the way in corporate-style reform. For many years, the Board of Regents–the state’s governing body for education–has strongly supported standards, testing, and accountability as the key to statewide success. Since the passage of charter legislation in 1998, the charter sector has grown, especially in the state’s urban districts. The leader of the Regents, Merryl Tisch, is a member of one of the city’s wealthiest and most philanthropic families. Tisch was a member of the Regents for the past 20 years, and chancellor since 2009. She pushed hard to win a Race to the Top grant of $700 million. She pushed hard for Common Core and rigorous testing. She selected David Steiner of Hunter College as Commissioner of Education, then pushed him aside and selected John King. She said it was all about the kids, particularly the poor kids. She thought that high standards and rigorous tests would be good for them.

 

But then came the parent opt out rebellion, and state officials went into a frenzy trying to figure out how to placate the angry parents. As it happened, Tisch lost her most powerful political ally in the legislature, and suddenly the landscape began to change. There are 17 members of the Board of Regents. Less than a year ago, six of them signed a letter protesting Governor Cuomo’s demand for tougher testing, accountability, and teacher evaluation policies. (A seventh member gave conditional support to the dissidents.) At the time, the dissidents seemed to be fighting a steep uphill battle, with the governor and the board majority opposed to their ideas. A month after the issuance of their letter, the board hired MaryEllen Elia as state commissioner to replace the unpopular John King. Elia was well known as an ardent advocate for high-stakes testing, the Common Core, and test-based accountability.

 

Burris explains in her article the miraculous revolution that occurred in less than a year.

 

Tisch announced that she would not run for reappointment by the Legislature. One of the dissidents, Dr. Betty Rosa, announced that she wanted to succeed Tisch. The possibility of Rosa winning seemed far-fetched. But incredibly, she was elected in a secret ballotmby the Regents on a vote of 15-0, with two abstentions.

 

As Burris writes, Rosa has been critical of the Common Core, high-stakes testing, and test-based evaluation. She was supported by the parents in the opt out movement.

 

The dissidents have taken charge.

 

Burris writes about her personal interactions with Betty Rosa, who is a career educator:

 

Rosa was one of three Regents who voted against the teacher evaluation system known as APPR. In 2011 she met with principals and actively listened to our concerns. As a former administrator, she understood why the practice was bad for kids, and never waivered in her opposition, referring to the inclusion of scores as “poison.”
In 2013, she publicly spoke out against the Common Core, accusing the State Education Department of manipulating data and ignoring successful schools in order to create a myth of massive failure to support their reforms. And last year she led a group of seven Regents (all women and nearly all career educators), in opposition to Cuomo’s revision of teacher evaluations. The seven created a position paper of dissent regarding the Governor’s law that increased the proportion of test scores in teacher evaluations, and six of the seven voted against the New York State Education Department’s revisions.

 

Burris predicts what she expects from Rosa. She calls it a “sea change.” I call it a miracle.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, New York, Privatization, Testing

Jack Covey Lambastes the California Charter School Association–and His Comment Disappears

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2016 //
14

Jack Covey is a teacher in Los Angeles and a frequent commenter on this blog. He recently watched a video of the keynote address of Jed Wallace, the CEO and President of the California Charter School Association. And he got very angry. He wrote the following comment following the video. After an hour, it had disappeared.
CCSA President and CEO Jed Wallace gives the Charter Conference Keynote

 

 

 

 

 
CCSA CEO Jed Wakkace started blathering about how his future lawyer teenage daughter and he were bemoaning the lack of “reasonable equality” in charter schools which co-locate on public school campuses.
He was trying to make this some kind of heart-warming charter-school-promoting story… and I went off in the COMMENTS section:
—————————–

(first to COMMENT … see how long this stays before being removed)
————————————

Jed,
Your daughter and you are kvetching about wanting “reasonably equivalent facilities” for your CCSSA charter schools, yet you simultaneously seem to be against “reasonable equality” in other  aspects of education.
To wit, parents whose children have been booted out (err… counseled out) of CCSA charter schools sued these charter school officials —- CCSA members, of course —- because, when giving them the boot, the school officials did not afford those students the same due process rights as those in the traditional public schools. They wanted a judge to compel California charter schools to make charter school students “reasonably equivalent” with public school students when it comes to due process in expulsions.
And what did CCSA’s lawyers do?
They argued in court that charter schools were “private entities” and, as such, had no legal obligation to provide any due process to students, making them the analogous equivalent of the “at will” teachers who teach at charter schools. If the charter school people don’t like you for whatever reason (extra cost, being troublesome in some way, low test scores, Special Ed., immigrant who’s brand new to learning English, homeless, foster care, etc.) .. you’re gone, baby, gone… and there’s nothing that the parent or the child can do about it.
Why don’t you chew on that sad legal and educational reality with your future lawyer daughter that you’re bragging so much about about in your speech?
Jed, if and when you and your daughter question your consciences in the dark hours of the night, and consider this specious charter school policy, will your daughter think or believe that you and the CCSA are the “good guys’, or that your are on “the side of the angels” when you and your CCSA legal team makes such a repellent legal argument?
In response to this, in Sacramento, a law was being considered that would compel charter schools to provide their students the same legal rights to a due process that their counterparts in the traditional public schools enjoy.
What did you and CCSA do?
True to form, you flooded the relevant politicians with lobbyists in an all-hands-on-deck maneuver to kill, or at least block this legislation, and it worked. It’s been temporarily tabled. … so as a result, you can throw as many kids in the metaphorical trash all you like, and not have to answer for it.
Way to go! You guys are all about the kids!
Regarding those students who are dumped by charter schools like so much trash, where do you think they end up? At the traditional public schools that you and the CCSA love to malign so much. I’m teaching three of these charter school dumpees myself right now, including one who, along with a her mother and siblings, lives a nomadic existence going from shelter to shelter… and you know what, Jed?
She shows up to my class every day feeling the little security she has in life, knowing full well that neither I nor my principal are going to kick her to curb when the issues and circumstances of her life manifest themselves — in being late for school, or in her acting out with bad behavior or her low test scores… or whatever.
In other words, when it comes to my moral obligations as an educator, I can sleep at night.
How about you?
How about your fellow charter school CEO’s in that audience?
How about those teachers who work in your charters and who do not fulfill these same moral obligations to students in the manner that my fellow public school teachers and I do?
Indeed, how DO YOU charter honchos sleep at night?
Oh, I know… on a bed full of money (I stole that from Don Draper — “Babylon” — SEASON ONE, MAD MEN).
Regarding this dual standard for due process that charters school officials’ claim for their schools, I recommend this article by Dr. Preston Green (posted on Jennifer “Edushyster” Berkshire’s blog) :
http://edushyster.com/signing-their-rights-away/

—————–

PRESTON GREEN: “Charter advocates claims that charter schools are public schools because they are open to all, do not charge tuition, and do not have special entrance requirements.
“But what about student rights? State and federal courts have issued rulings suggesting that students attending California charter schools do not have the same due process rights as those enjoyed by public-school students.
“In Scott B. v. Board of Trustees of Orange County High School of Arts, a state appellate court found that charter schools were exempt from due process procedures that applied to public-school expulsions. In reaching this conclusion, the court observed that the state education code generally exempted charter schools from rules that applied to traditional public schools, and the expulsion statute was one of those rules.”

Categories California, Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Reform

The Charter School Hoax in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2016 //
9

Stuart Egan, a National Board Certified Teacher in North Carolina, has dogged the false claims of the corporate reformers (aka, the Tea Party) in his state.

 

Recently, Terry Stoops, the “research director” of the libertarian John Locke Institute, published an article saying “charter schools are here to stay, get used to it.” The John Locke Institute is the creation of Art Pope, a multimillionaire who has used his vast resources to defeat moderate Republicans and to build the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement. Art Pope served as the state’s budget director in Governor McCrory’s cabinet, where he used his ideology to advance privatization of what was once a good state public school system. One of the board members of the John Locke Institute opened his own charter chain and is making millions.

 

Charter schools are new to North Carolina, but they have been pushed hard by the Tea Party majority in the legislature, as they defunded public schools and harassed teachers.

 

Stuart Egan wrote the following open letter to Terry Stoops in response to his article touting charters:

 

 

This open letter is written to Dr. Terry Stoops, the Director of Research and Education Studies at the John Locke Foundation, particularly in reference to his March 3, 2016 perspective in EdNC.org entitled “Charter schools are here to stay, so deal with it.”

 

 

Dr, Stoops,
Again, public education is a focal issue in this election cycle, and like you, I am very vigilant in investigating the claims and plans that each candidate and influential body makes concerning the teaching profession.

 

 

I tend to read education op-eds produced by the John Locke Foundation (and its many associated entities) regarding education with great interest because those writings do spur discussion and thought. I also read those same op-eds with great concern, because I find the reasoning and rationale behind many of the arguments to be weak, politically motivated, and built on platitudes.

 

 

However, I read your March 3, 2016 perspective on EdNC.org (“Charter schools are here to stay, so deal with it”) not with just great interest or concern; I read it with great confusion.

 

 

Considering what happened in Haywood County and the closing of Central Elementary School and the reports of fiscal mismanagement coming out of the Charter School Advisory Board meetings, I would have expected more concrete evidence to buttress your claims about charter schools.

 

 

Throughout your perspective you claim that “there is greater knowledge and acceptance of charter schools among North Carolina families, most of whom welcome educational options.” With all of the numbers and statistics you sprinkle throughout your op-ed, you neglect to really show how that could be true. You simply state it and rest on that.

 

 

If you are speaking of options and choices, there are other possibilities that are utilized far more in NC than charter schools. There are private schools, many of which have received taxpayer funds from the Opportunity Grants (that’s a whole other issue), and homeschooling, which encompasses more students in our state than private and charter schools.

 

 

And then there are our traditional public schools, the very institutions our state constitution stipulates that our GOP-led General Assembly must maintain and protect.

 

 

You claim that charter schools create choice for those families who believe that public schools are not servicing their students well. Ironically, your chairman at the John Locke Foundation, John Hood, recently touted our public schools’ success in his February 15th op-ed on EdNC.org (“North Carolina schools ranked seventh”). If our schools are doing so well under these criteria, then why would so many charters need to be created? Just for choice’s sake?

 

 

This past February, I wrote an op-ed for the Winston-Salem Journal (“Defending Public Education”) concerning school choice and the uncontrolled rise of charter schools in North Carolina. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (who homeschools his children) had just attempted to stop a DPI report on charter schools that did not shed a favorable light on the very entities that you (and Lt. Gov. Forest) claim are doing wonderfully. That op-ed stated,

 

 

“The original idea for charter schools was a noble one. Diane Ravitch in Reign of Error states that these schools were designed to seek “out the lowest-performing students, the dropouts, and the disengaged, then ignite their interest in education” in order “to collaborate and share what they had learned with their colleagues and existing schools” (p.13).

 

 

But those noble intentions have been replaced with profit-minded schemes. Many charters abused the lack of oversight and financial cloudiness and did not benefit students. If you followed the debacle surrounding the DPI charter school report this past month and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s effort to squelch it, you might know that the charter schools in North Carolina overall have not performed as advertised. Furthermore, the withdrawal rates of students in privately-run virtual schools in NC is staggering according to the Department of Public Instruction.”

 

 

There are charter schools that do work well within the scope of providing alternate educational approaches not used in public schools. Perhaps a couple you highlighted in your op-ed fit that description. There is one in my hometown of Winston-Salem, the Arts-Based School, which does exactly what charter schools were originally intended to do. But those tend to be more of the exception than the norm.

 

 

The withdrawal of students from NC virtual schools has also been very much in the news of late. Look at the Pilot Virtual Charter Schools Student Information Update published this month. It seems that more and more families are not choosing that option. Yet, Dr. Stoops, in your op-ed, you praise having virtual schools here in NC because they offer options despite their results.

 

 

You define “charter school deserts” as areas that do not have many students serviced by charter schools. Ironically you use a term, “desert”, that many use to describe socio-economic conditions, the most common being “food desert”.

 

 

A desert itself connotes that something is lacking. You do make a great correlation between lack of choices and deserts because a desert may be indicative of a more pressing problem in the regions you talk about, like a symptom of a deeper problem. I would be more concerned with food deserts or economic deserts or cultural deserts than charter deserts. I would be more concerned with the physical, mental, and emotional health of the students and the economic health of those very regions rather than how many charter schools they have.

 

 

And the GOP-led General Assembly can do something about people’s quality of life because that has an impact on student achievement in any school. Just refer back to Mr. Hood’s aforementioned op-ed. He stated,

 

 

“Whenever test scores come out for schools, districts, or states, officials hasten to explain that there are many factors known to shape the results. They are right to do so. The characteristics of the families within which students grow up — household income, parental education, marital status, etc. — clearly affect student performance. Race and ethnicity exhibit statistical correlations with performance, as well, perhaps reflecting not only those family-background variables but also factors such as neighborhood effects, cultural norms, or discrimination.”

 

 

I actually agree with that. Ironically, Mr. Hood retracts a bit from that statement later in his op-ed.

 

 

If the means to obtain the basic needs for families in these “deserts” were provided, then the health of the local public school district may not even be an issue unless there is just a profit-minded motive behind charter school construction. And even if the construction of charter schools in these rural “deserts” were just to create choice, then why do many charter schools detrimentally affect traditional public schools? That’s not creating a choice; that’s removing choice by monopolizing resources.

 

 

Just refer back to the situation in Haywood County and Central Elementary School. When small school districts lose numbers of students to charter schools, they also lose the ability to petition for adequate funds; the financial impact can be overwhelming. That creates an even bigger desert. Talk about your man-made “climate” change.

 

 

And speaking of financial impact, the Summary of Charter School Financial Noncompliance issued on January 28, 2016 lists over 25 charter schools as not complying with laws and regulations concerning finances. Those finances are tax-payer funded and have been taken away from traditional public schools.

 

You conclude your argument with a glossy and baseless claim that the numbers of charter school proponents vastly outnumber those who defend public schools. You state,

 

 

“Without a doubt, school district officials and public school advocacy groups will continue to grouse about the number of students enrolled in charters and the funding that goes with them. But charter school parents, students, employees, and advocates vastly outnumber them and are beginning to find the voice to champion and defend their schools of choice.”

 

 

If that voice to champion their cause has to be enabled with shadowy deregulation, political intervention, and profit minded groups, then that does not represent the true voice of the people. In fact, the withdrawal rates from some of those charter schools listed in the Summary of Charter School Financial Noncompliance report are quite eye-opening. That itself speaks volumes.

 

 

If advocating for public schools (like our state constitution does) in light of this educational landscape is in your view “grousing,” then will I proudly continue to complain, grumble, quibble, bemoan, protest, and quarrel on behalf of our public schools because they are here to stay.
Deal with that.

 

 

Stuart Egan, NBCT
Public School Teacher and Parent
West High School

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization

Wendy Lecker: Connecticut Leaders Should Be Ashamed

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2016 //
7

 

Wendy Lecker, civil rights attorney, reports that Connecticut, one of the nation’s richest states, neglects the needs of its neediest students. What a disgrace! While shorting the poorest districts, Governor Malloy has poured $100 million into charter schools supported by hedge fund managers.

 

 

 

“Hartford parents, teachers and students came out in full force to last week’s Board of Education meeting to protest devastating school cuts. Owing to budget shortfalls, the district is cutting guidance counselors, intervention specialists, and other critical staff, art, sports, enrichment, SAT prep, textbooks, summer school, tutors and more. Many of Hartford high schools will be left with one counselor for 350-400 students. As one parent said, they are cutting the support Hartford students need; and the subjects that motivate them to come to school.

 
“Hartford schools already suffer severe resource deficiencies. One high school has no library or computer lab. Another has no copier in the library, and no curricular material for certain classes. The culinary academy has no money to buy food for cooking class. The nursing academy cannot offer physics, though physics is a prerequisite for any nursing school. One high school is so overrun with rodents a teacher came in one morning to find five mice in traps she laid the night before. Teachers are forced to find vendors themselves and fill out orders in vain attempts to obtain supplies that never arrive. So they buy them out of their own pockets.

 

“The conditions in which these students have to learn, and these teachers have to teach, is shameful — especially in Connecticut, a state consistently in the top five on the list of wealthiest states in America.

 

 

“Hartford is not the only Connecticut school district suffering. According to a supplement to this year’s “Is School Funding Fair: A National Report Card,” issued by the Education Law Center (my employer) and Rutgers, Connecticut is the only state consistently among the five wealthiest states to have districts on the list of America’s “most financially disadvantaged school districts.” This year, two districts are featured on this list: Bridgeport and Danbury.

 

 

“Since this list has been compiled, starting in 2012, Connecticut districts have been featured every year. Connecticut also has the dishonorable distinction of being the only wealthy state featured on the list of states whose funding system disadvantages the highest share of low income students; as measured by the percent of statewide enrollment concentrated in those most disadvantaged districts.”

 

 

Shame on Governor Malloy.

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reform, Education Reform
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