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How Do You Explain the Corporate Assault on Public Education to Friends Who Know Nothing About It?

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2016 //
66

I received an email from a daily reader of the blog who asked me how she could explain the downside of corporate reform to friends at a dinner party in the suburbs who know nothing at all about the issues. She said that her friends were liberal Democrats, but their own children are grown, and they don’t read the blogs. What could she say that was direct, accurate, and informative?

We exchanged emails and began creating a list of snappy explanatory comments. Our combined list is below. Would you be good enough to send me your suggestions?

Your friend says, “So what do you think of the education reform movement?” Or, “How could anyone be opposed to education reform?”

And you answer, “What you call education “reform” is not reform at all. It is a way of making public schools look bad so they can be turned over to private managers. That’s privatization of one of our fundamental democratic institutions.”

Well, they may look at you and wonder if you have gone off the deep end, so you have to give them examples of what “education reform” actually means.

Like “for profit charter schools that are supported with tax dollars”

Like “excessive testing that makes money for test companies but isn’t good for kids”

Like “giving standardized tests to children in kindergarten and the earliest grades”

Like “turning kindergarten into first or second grade, where children study academics instead of playing”

Like “Race to the Top that pays schools to use the Common Core”

Like “charter schools that are never held accountable because their owners make big contributions to politicians”

Like “charter schools that get high test scores because they exclude kids with disabilities, kids learning English and remove those with low test scores”

Like “corporate charter chains replacing neighborhood public schools”

Like “virtual charters where kids lose 180 days of math for every 100 days of school”

Like “vouchers that go to fundamentalist schools where kids learn creationist science and the evangelical version of history”

Like “teachers are evaluated as ineffective or effective by the test scores of their students, even though research demonstrates that this is a flawed method”

Like “uncertified, inexperienced teachers who are assigned to the kids with the greatest needs”

And for a fanfare: “Our nation has pursued failed market-based policies for 15 years. It is time to do what works, based on evidence and experience.”

The list could be longer. Send me your suggestions. We could put them on a palm card so that anyone is prepared to answer the questions at any time.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Jeannie Kaplan: The Failure of Reform in Denver

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2016 //
8

Jeannie Kaplan served two terms as an elected member of the Denver school board. As a strong supporter of public schools, she has been critical of the “reforms” in her city. Denver has been controlled by “reformers” for a decade. Recently Jeannie was invited by the Boston Teachers Union to explain what has happened in Denver and to assess the “reforms.”

 

Her remarks appear in full on her blog. Here is an excerpt:

 

 

“Public education in Denver despite what you may have heard or read about in the press is a system in chaos. It is a system run by a cabal. It is a system where politics, pardon the expression, trumps good policy and the truth. But let us be very clear: the top reform goal is to undermine teachers’ unions and the education profession.

 

“I am going to highlight some of what Denverites have witnessed in the past 10 years in public education. I will cover a lot of territory quickly but can’t cover everything. If you want more information, please ask me questions. If any of what I am about to describe sounds familiar to you in Boston or Massachusetts, sound the alarm and organize the troops

 

“Words to worry about:

 

Charters, particularly the strict regimented, “no-excuses” kind

 

Choice

 

High Stakes Testing

 

Enrollment Zones

 

Longer school days

 

Longer school year

 

Innovation Schools

 

At Will Employees

 

Co-locations

 

Eliminating the achievement gap

 

Teacher evaluations based on high stake testing

 

Alternative Licensure

 

“And my all time favorite, human capital. Boston Public Schools already has an office of human capital so my sense is you are on the way to being reformed.

 

“These elements of reform are the building blocks of an overarching national education reform policy based on a common business practice referred to as a portfolio strategy. What are the most common features of portfolio strategies? Keeping winners, dropping losers which in turn produces constant churn and chaos. This strategy in education reform greatly is helped along the way by legislation which ultimately results in the unfettered expansion of charter schools, the use of high stakes testing to evaluate teachers and schools, the demise of neighborhood schools through choice and resource starvation, destroying of teachers’ unions by whatever means necessary, fear and bullying of workers, all of which have resulted in a reduction in actual learning.

 

“A portfolio strategy may be a great business strategy. I can tell you from experience it is an awful educational strategy. Students and teachers and parents and communities are neither commodities to be bought and sold nor should they ever be characterized as winners and losers.

 

“My real message today is this: when you hear any of the above reform words. SOUND THE ALARM: Parents, Teachers, Students, and Communities (PTSC) unite and fight. Organizing, uniting and fighting this “reform” at the outset is the only way to stop this failing model from infiltrating your state and your city. PTSC UNITE AND FIGHT!

 

“Once education reformers get a foothold in your system, they become like dogs with a bone. They don’t ever let go, and they continue to fight to undermine the cornerstone of our democracy, public education, through privatization and corporatization Give them an inch and they take the world. Our only hope is to be brave and work as a coalition. We can’t match their money; we can and must overmatch their commitment.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Denver

Donald Cohen: Charter Schools Are Not Accountable to Anyone

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2016 //
43

Donald Cohen writes a website called “In the Public Interest,” where he reports on privatization of the public sector: hospitals, schools, prisons, etc.

 

In this article, he demonstrates that charter schools are accountable to no one. If a parent is unhappy, she can’t go to a superintendent or to the district officials. Nor can she go to the charter board. The board is not elected and will be happy to see the parent go away. No one is accountable.

 

The recent video scandal at Success Academy, he writes, starkly demonstrates the complete lack of accountability to parents and to the public that pays the bills:

 

“Several weeks ago, the New York Times published a surreptitiously recorded videoof a charter school teacher berating a first grade student and ripping up her work in front of the class for being unable to explain how she solved a math problem. The publicly-funded school, the Success Academy founded by Eva Moskowitz, circled the wagons and launched a public relations blitz.

 

“According to the Times, the girl’s parent tried to raise questions at a meeting organized by the school to get parent support for the teacher in the press. She was concerned that the parents were being asked to help without even being shown the video. “She’s like ‘You’ve had enough to say’ and [Ms. Moskowitz] tried to talk over me,” the mother told the Times. Frustrated, she gave up and walked out of the meeting.

 

“The student’s parent went to the NY Department of Education to file a complaint. She was told that Success was independent from the school district and that she needed to contact the school’s board of trustees. But the board, chaired by hedge fund CEO Dan Loeb, that gets to spend taxpayer dollars aren’t elected by nor accountable to New York voters. They have no obligation to neither listen to her nor take action. They are a group of hedge fund and private equity investors, lawyers, public relationships professionals, philanthropists and one full-time educator.

 

“Here’s a few of the Wall Street investors on the school’s board of trustees who the girl’s mother was told to petition:

 

 

Joel Greenblatt is a Managing Partner at the hedge fund Gotham Capital and former Chairman of the Board of Alliant Techsystems, a NYSE-listed aerospace and defense company.

 
Steven M. Galbraith is a former Chief Investment Officer at Morgan Stanley who now runs Herring Creek Capital, a Connecticut based Hedge Fund.

 
John Petry is the founder and managing principle at the hedge fund, Sessa Capital.

 
Richard S. Pzena is the founder of Pzena Investment Manager, a global investment firm.

 
David Roberts has been for the last 21 years with the investment firm, Angelo, Gordon David, responsible for helping to start and grow a number of the firm’s businesses including opportunistic real estate, private equity, and net lease real estate.

 
John Scully is a founding partner of SPO Partners & Co., a private investment firm and a director at the Plum Creek Timber Company and chairman of Advent Software.

 
Paul Pastorek, the co-executive director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation founded by billionaire Eli Broad, who is leading an effort to turn half of Los Angeles schools into charter schools. Pastorek led the post-Hurricane Katrina effort in New Orleans that converted all elementary and secondary schools into charter schools. Recent research has shown that the New Orleans school system is now a multi-tier system that works for some, but leaves many behind.

 
“They are private citizens who get to spend taxpayer dollars to educate children. They argue that the market will determine success. Unfortunately, they get to define what success looks like — not the public whose taxes fund the school, nor voters who are the ultimate policy makers in a democratic society. The problem is that the market doesn’t need to pay attention to the whims of democracy that demands public accountability, high quality and inclusive education for every child — even the ones that struggle with math problems.

 

“The mother ultimately removed her daughter from the school. It’s the Donald Trump “you’re fired” brand of education. There’s no room for those that can’t take the heat – even if they are a 6-year old first grader struggling with math. That’s not America and it’s certainly not how a democracy should function.”

 

Do you think the mother or any other parent could get a meeting with the board? Who could she turn to? Who would listen?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Reform

Video: Ride the Profitship Charter Chain to Success!

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2016 //
5

Here is a very funny video that says in 2 minutes what the public needs to hear as more and more community public schools are run by corporate charter chains. I could explain the same thing with footnotes in a chapter, but skip the chapter and watch the video. It was produced by the Progressive Magazine.

 

This video was made by the same team that created this video. It’s all about the money.

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Idaho: Hero Superintendents Say No to the Albertson Foundation

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2016 //
9

A few days ago, I added Boise superintendent Don Coberly to the blog’s honor roll because of his forthright opposition to a campaign intended to discredit public education. It turns out that the superintendent and every member of his school board signed on to a joint response to the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation’s efforts to diminish public regard for public education.

 

Superintendent Coberly was not alone.

 

A long list of Idaho superintendents also spoke out and I now add them to this blog’s honor roll. They spoke out against a well-funded campaign to slander the public schools of the state and thereby to persuade the public to support privatization.

 

The Idaho-based Albertson Foundation has run a propaganda campaign called “Don’t Fail Idaho,” attacking the SAT scores of the public schools. The superintendents have issued statements supporting their schools against this campaign of misinformation.

 

Here is a great statement by Superintendent Wendy Johnson of the Kuna School District. It includes graphs that show the plans of the district’s graduates. (Added bonus: She quotes yours truly. Smart woman! Well-read, too!)

 

Here is another statement, signed by 13 superintendents.

 

They wrote:

 

In recent weeks, many of your readers may have seen an advertisement presented by the “Don’t Fail Idaho” campaign which dramatically drops four Idaho students in the middle of the desert and leaves them there with one student left on the bus, forlornly waving to those that were “left behind.” The claim of this advertisement is that four out of five students are not prepared for life after high school.

 

As superintendents of many schools in this area, we feel it is important to defend our districts against a blatant attempt to undermine support for the public school system that serves this area. The “Don’t Fail Idaho” campaign and its parent organization, the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation, have based their claims on SAT data which is a predictor of a student’s performance in the first semester of their first year in a four-year institution. This data is tremendously narrow and does not reflect what is happening in our schools and with our students.

 

Our students leave our high school campuses and embark on multiple career and college paths. Some choose junior colleges. Some choose two-year technology programs. Some attend technical schools and academies. Some start their own businesses or attend management schools. The SAT has no predictive power for these viable avenues. Those that choose a four-year university may be subject to those national statistics, but we teach our students that they can beat those odds every day, and they do.

 

In just the first semester of the 2015-2016 school year, 10 of our high schools had 1,082 students enrolled in dual credit courses through Idaho State University earning 3,577 credits in that time. That is only a portion of what we offer our students. We also offer courses from CSI, CWI, BSU, and U of I, not to mention the AP and professional technical certificate bearing courses. In addition, according to the NAEP (the nation’s report card), Idaho ranks higher than 22 other states in math and reading for 2015.

 

Is there room for improvement in our schools? Certainly. We embrace that challenge and continue in our commitment to improve our schools and the experience that our students gain while attending. While we recognize the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation and its dedication to helping students in Idaho succeed, we ask that the foundation ceases this divisive campaign and support Idaho’s students in a way that does not cut down the very teachers, paraprofessionals and administrators who have dedicated their lives to improving the lives of the students in Idaho. Growth and economic development in Idaho is dependent upon all of us working together. We ask that the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation work with us in our efforts to educate all students.

 

If the “Don’t Fail Idaho” organization continues to drop those students in the desert, rest assured that our districts will pick up those remaining students and place them at the doorstep of their pathway to a successful future.

 

 

Wayne Rush, another Idaho superintendent, released his own statement:

 

 

My first reaction when I saw the ad was to yell at the television. What would bring anyone to produce advertisements declaring that 80 percent of Idaho’s teens are not prepared for life after high school? If you have not seen the ad, it shows a school bus carrying five students, four are left at the side of the road somewhere in Idaho’s desert and one remains on the bus. The announcer says, “4 out of 5 Idaho teens aren’t prepared for life after high school. If we don’t work together to change education we are all going nowhere.” The logo “Don’t Fail Idaho” appears. When you go to their website, you find that the Idaho Business for Education (IBE) and the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation (JKAF) are misusing SAT data and a State Board of Education goal to make this ridiculous claim.

 

It makes me very sad that the J. A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation is undermining Idaho’s public education and the state as whole to promote its agenda. I worked for the JKAF for more than six years and know the love and commitment that Joe and Kathryn Albertson had for Idaho’s youth. They and their family have given so much to our state and I am forever grateful. However, this campaign leaves me perplexed as to why they would twist data to put Idaho, our schools, teachers, and our youth in the worst possible light.

 

The College Board (which produces the SAT) and universities that use these scores have never made the claim that not reaching a benchmark score on the SAT means you are not prepared for life after high school. The College Board states, “The SAT Benchmark score of 1550 is associated with a 65 percent probability of obtaining a first-year GPA of B minus or higher at a four-year college.” A test is one predictor of college success, but not the best. The courses our students take like dual credit and career and technical courses (such as auto, business, and engineering) are much better predictors of success after high school.

 

I am proud of our community, parents, students, teachers, and staff for the efforts each has made in providing a high quality education here in Gem County. Our staff works every day in preschool through high school to prepare our students for a successful future. They are continually improving teaching and learning for the advancement of our students.

 

These SAT scores come from a recent effort by Idaho and the Emmett School District to increase the number of students that are going on to some form of post-secondary education, whether trade school, two-year, or four-year college. The state now requires students to take a college entrance exam, like the SAT to graduate from high school. The state will pay for all juniors to take the SAT assessment and 88 percent of Idaho’s juniors are now taking this exam. Emmett School District has chosen to have the entire junior class take the exam. This is a great step to encourage students to attend postsecondary education and to help us align our curriculum to ensure students are college and career ready.

 

We gain a lot of good information from this assessment. This fall, our teachers dove deeply into the results to discover areas where we need to improve. It also allows our students to see how they perform compared to average scores from students enrolled in colleges and universities they are interested in attending.

 

It does make a difference when school districts and our state make bold moves to improve education. The College Board reported that in Idaho, “In 2013, 1,740 students met the benchmark. In 2015 that number of successful students more than doubled, with 4,250 meeting the benchmark.” We ought to be proud of the progress we are making not running advertisements saying we are failing.

 

To prepare students for life after high school, our teachers provide college-level, dual credit courses for our high school students. Just this fall, our students completed 168 courses earning 504 college credits through the University of Idaho, Boise State University, Northwest Nazarene University, and the College of Idaho. They were successful in courses such as college level math, chemistry, psychology, medical terminology, biology, history, and political science. We have had many students complete over 30 college credits before they graduate from Emmett High School. These students are clearly ready for college.

 

In addition, our students are participating in clubs, drama, music, sports, as well as many other community activities and events that help prepare them for life after high school. Our high school won first place in 3A State Football this fall and our girls just took 3rd place in the state basketball tournament. These students are learning what they can accomplish through grit and team work.

 

Idaho, our teachers and staff, and our students are not failing Idaho. We roll up our sleeves every day and work hard to prepare for a bright future.

 

Ironically, some of these statements were published in the Idaho Education News, which is funded by the Albertson Foundation.

 

Another irony, Joe Albertson, who founded the grocery store chain that is the basis of the family fortune, was a 1925 graduate of Caldwell High School in Caldwell, Idaho. A public school.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Honor Roll, Idaho, Online Learning, Privatization, Testing, Virtual Charter Schools

NYC Comptroller Issues First Charter School Audit: $135,000 Unaccounted For

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2016 //
40

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has released the first of a series of charter school audits. His audit team found that a charter school in the Bronx had not documented $135,000 in expenditures.

 

$6,000 for ice cream. $16,000 for unlimited MetroCards. $7,000 so the principal could travel to Boston, Albany and Las Vegas.
“If you’re going to go to Vegas, you better document it,” said City Comptroller Scott Stringer.
Over a two-year period, officials at the South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures and the Arts spent more than $135,000 without the proper authorization or documentation, according to city auditors.

 

Until now, the city’s charters have audited themselves. Eva Moskowitz led a legal battle to prevent external audits, and she prevailed in court. But the legislature passed a law authorizing the city comptroller to audit the charters since they are publicly funded.

 

The Success Academy charters will be audited. The report is supposed to be released later this year.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding

John Merrow: Who’s Making the Big Bucks in Charter World?

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2016 //
17

John Merrow decided to calculate which school leader was making the most money based on the number of students enrolled.

 

Carmen Farina pulls down about $.20 per child, $.40 if you include her pension.

 

“New York’s most prominent charter school operator is, of course, Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academies. She has received a significant pay raise and now makes $567,000 a year, as Ben Chapman reported in the New York Daily News. Success Academies enrolls 11,000 students, the same number as in Chicago’s Noble Network.

 

“Let’s do the math. 567,000 divided by 11,000 equals 51.35, meaning that Ms. Moskowitz is earning $51.35 per student, nearly two-and-one-half times what Mr. Milkie is paid per student.

 

“If Carmen Fariña were running Success Academies instead of the nation’s largest school district, at her current pay rate of 40 cents per student she’d be earning $4400 a year!

 

“Put another way, Eva Moskowitz is being paid about 128 times more per student than Chancellor Fariña.”

 

But guess what? Eva is not the highest paid charter leader.

 

Who could it be?

 

“Like Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies, this network loses a lot of students, but, unlike Success Academies, the remaining students here perform poorly. Here’s the percentage of students in one school who scored ‘proficient’ in English Language Arts, by grade: 5th-8%; 6th-12%; 7th-11%; and 8th-28%. In another school, 4%, 20%, 17% and 30% .

 

 

“In Math: 5th-6%; 6th-36%; 7th-52%; and 8th-48%. In another school, 27%, 37%, 39% and 34%. (And as the NAEP scores below suggest, those high-ish math scores may be illusory.)

 

 

“Scores on the NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were unimpressive. In 4th grade, 36% scored ‘proficient’ in Reading and 35% in Math. In 8th grade, 33% scored ‘proficient’ in Reading and 31% in Math. In another of her schools the respective numbers are 36%, 35% 33% and 31%.

 

“This same charter network has famously high turnover rates among teachers too. In the most recent report, 38% of teachers departed, meaning that 4 out of every 10 teachers left. In another school, 31% left. One thing that students in high-poverty schools need is continuity, which they apparently do not get in this network.

 

“Oh, by the way, the CEO who makes all that money also has her own car and driver, according to Ben Chapman of the Daily News.

 

“I am referring to Dr. Deborah Kenny, the founder of Harlem Village Academies, a network of just five schools and 1400 students. Somehow, I suspect she’s happy to have Eva Moskowitz taking all the flack in the media about harsh discipline and high turnover rates, because that means her network’s performance is not being scrutinized. It clearly should be.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding

Peter Greene: The Flawed Premises of Reform

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2016 //
22

Peter Greene here takes apart the fundamental ideas behind the reformers’ devotion to accountability and shows why it is not working and will never work.

He analyzes an article in the Washington Post by Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli, former and current CEO of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, to explain the issue. Finn and Petrilli have written a somewhat triumphant analysis of the “success” of reform in the past decade. They are huge fans of Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. They think that Common Core was a great step forward. They admire the federally-funded tests for the Common Core, PARCC and SBAC. They are delighted that states have raised the passing marks on their tests so it is much harder for students to pass them. (Most states reported that a majority of students “failed” the first and even the second administration of the new tests. At this rate, most students will never get a high school diploma.)

They are delighted with the more rigorous standards and tests: We’ve been known for ages as education gadflies, and we still find plenty to fault when it comes to policy and practice in the United States. But let us be clear: Despite what you might hear from opt-outers and other critics, U.S. standards, tests and accountability systems are all dramatically stronger, fairer and more honest than they were a decade ago. You might even call it progress.

Needless to say, Peter Greene, a veteran teacher in Pennsylvania, does not see the situation in the same way. He finds one sentence by Finn and Petrilli that encapsulates the flawed premises of “reform”:

At the core of the good idea was the common-sense insight that if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should set clear expectations for student learning, measure whether our kids are meeting them and hold schools accountable for their outcomes, mainly gauged in terms of academic achievement.

Greene says that Common Core was the result of trying to “make expectations clear.” He writes:

“the way to make expectations clear is to make them specific, and before you know it, you have one-size-fits-all standards, and one-size-fits-all standards suck in the same way that making all US school students wear a one-size-fits-all uniform and eat one-size-fits-all food.

It is like saying that we can fix the divorce problem in this country by setting clear expectations for getting married and holding everyone to those expectations. Fordham sages tried to get around this with their “tight-loose” formulation, but they failed. Meanwhile, the standards themselves are amateur-hour constructions that take a definite side in arguments that experts don’t find at all as neatly settled as the standards assume (e.g. is reading a complex relationship between reader and text, or a set of skills and behaviors– the Core insists on the latter, but actual educators favor the former).

Can we really measure what our children are learning? Greene thinks not.

It really is as simple as that– we do not have a large-scale, standardized instrument that can measure all learning for all students in a standardized, one-size-measures-all manner. Instead of asking, “What’s the best way to measure critical thinking” test manufacturers have asked “What’s something we could do on a standardized mass-administered test that would pass for a critical thinking measure?”

Why not hold schools accountable for outcomes?

Greene writes:

“Outcomes” just means “test scores,” and that, again, is such a truncated, inadequate vision of the mission of US public schools. Ask a taxpayer, “What are you paying schools and teachers to do?” I doubt that you will hear the answer, “Why, just to have students get good test scores. That’s it. That’s what I’m paying them to do.”

And then Peter sums up and explains why “reformers” think that their approach is just “common sense”:

The notion that all of these things– the clear and specific standards being measured by a test leading to “accountability” measures taken against the schools that come up short– are common sense? Well, we have to call them “common sense” because we can’t call them “evidence based” or “scientifically proven” or even “sure seemed to work well over in Location X” because none of those things are true. They haven’t worked anywhere else, and now that we’ve been trying it for over a decade, we can see pretty clearly that they don’t work here, either.

The best we get from reformsters is a circular argument– “this tool is a valid measure and means of improvement, because when I measure the progress of this tool by using this tool, I see success.”

There are other unfounded assumptions underlying the reformster approach that depend on these other bad assumptions. For instance, the whole idea that the power of the free market can be unloosed to improve education rests on the idea that we can measure definitively which are the best schools producing the best students who are taught by the best teachers. But we can no more do that than we can list the hundred best marriages in America, or the hundred best friends.

They remain convinced that we must have one-size-fits-all standards so that we can measure all students against them so that we can compare all students and schools so that we can…. what? We still don’t have a real answer. It’s common sense. It’s something you just have to do, because not doing it clashes with reformsters beliefs about how the world is supposed to work. They literally do not understand how education works, and when they approach the world of education, they feel like OCD sufferers in a museum where all the paintings are hung crooked. They want to “fix” it, and they want to ask the people who work there, “How can you possibly function like this?” They can’t see that the paintings aren’t crooked at all.

The whole reformster approach is based on measuring a cloud with a meter stick, measuring the weather with a decibel meter, measuring love with a spoon.

Reformsters want to drive the school bus by setting a brick on the gas pedal and strapping the steering wheel into place, and every time the bus hits a tree, they say, “Oh, well, we just need a next-generation brick, and to fine-tune where we strap the steering wheel into place.” They will tweak and improve and re-tweak, and they will keep failing because their approach is fundamentally wrong.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: Why Jeb Bush’s Presidential Campaign Fizzled

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2016 //
20

Mercedes Schneider is a close Jeb! watcher. She recognized that he was the godfather of many of today’s most damaging corporate reforms. He linked arms with Michelle Rhee to push for vouchers in Florida (but the voters turned him down). He begat the idea that schools should be given a single letter grade, based mainly on standardized test scores. He has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for school choice of all kinds, especially charter schools and for-profit charters. He cheered the Common Core standards more than anyone. He created an alliance between ALEC and his own organization, the so-called Foundation for Educational Excellence.

 

He started his presidential campaign with more money than anyone else. But voters didn’t want another Bush. They wanted a reality TV star.

 

We can hope that the dimming of his presidential prospects also dims the luster of his faux education reforms, which were always about privatization and profit, not students or education.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Gene Glass: The Shame of Arizona’s Elitist Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2016 //
4

Gene Glass, renowned researcher of education, lives in Arizona, where charter schools are proliferating without accountability or transparency. They are certainly not serving the children with the greatest needs, which was the original purpose of charter schools.

 

In this post, he describes the state’s most “successful” charter schools.

 

To sum it up: “They Recruit, They Skim, They Flunk Out The Weak … They are Arizona’s Top Charter Schools”

 

He cites a blog–Arizonans for Charter School Accountability–which investigated the demographics of the state’s top 20 charter schools. Their enrollments are overwhelmingly white and Asian, unlike the enrollments in any of the state’s public school districts.

 

Their students are 86% white and Asian, only 2% Black and 11% Hispanic. Some have no ELLs. Some have no students receiving free lunch.

 

And they are the best charter schools in a state where the governor and legislature want more.

 

Glass writes:

 

Eleven of these 20 schools are run by corporations: BASIS and Great Hearts.
One truly weeps.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Hoax
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