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LA Times Outdoes Its Broad Worship

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2016 //
37

The Los Angeles Times has a love affair with the privatization of public schools; it is wild about the idea of outsourcing control of students and funding to private management. Just a few days ago, the LAUSD surprised everyone by voting 7-0 to reject billionaire Eli Broad’s plan to take control of half the students in the district by putting them in charters. It sounded a little fishy because even the board’s charter faction voted against Eli’s power grab.

 

Now we see the game is still on. Eli’s front-group called Great Schools Now is staffing up.

 

Today the Los Angeles Times published an editorial in support of the Broad plan that was breathtaking for its audacity. It echoed the charter lobby’s contention that any resistance to their drive for power was divisive. The editorial proposed that the district’s new superintendent should ask for a place at the charter lobby’s table so she could help shape their plans for a takeover. Say what?

 

What arrogance! What happened to the democratic process? Has Eli already purchased the district? Is Superintendent Michelle King his employee?

 

Here are some good comments by public school activists in LA.

 

Karen Wolfe warns King to stay away and reminds Eli that he is a citizen with one vote only. He should go to board meetings like everyone else with an idea.

 

She writes:

 

“In its ongoing effort to convince the city that a huge public entity should be handed over to a private group of titans, the LA Times now suggests inviting the public official to the table to give the effort some credibility. This is the superintendent, who was appointed by the democratically elected board, to lead the public entity the titans seek to control.

 

“As Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis has said, “You can’t have a seat at the table when you’re on the menu.”

 

Ellen Lubic wrote the following article:
Another Coffin Nail in Public Education…if Eli Broad Can Get Away With It

 

As we continue to see, the highly biased LA Times is under the thrall of Eli Broad and his cohorts to take over public education in Los Angeles and convert it to free market profiteering. Almost daily, the Times runs what is loosely called journalism, lauding charter schools, and defaming public schools, They add a disclosure announcement at the end of these articles admitting they are paid for by Broad and the non profits like United Way where he calls all the shots.
Here is the operant paragraph of Sunday’s editorial from the LA Times, which is paid for by Eli Broad and his claque of pretenders (see their full disclosure which appears repeatedly with most of the education issues on which they report). It is all about the new Broad-concieved 501c3 Great Public Schools Now, a permutation of Eli’s leaked plan to take over all of LAUSD.
“A better move would be to call on Great Public Schools Now to provide a place at the table for the district’s new superintendent, Michelle King, to participate in the planning process. If the new nonprofit organization hopes to overcome resistance in the community, it needs to be more open about its planning and it needs to open the process to public discussion — after all, whether charter schools or not, these are all public schools.”
“The Times receives funding for its digital initiative, Education Matters, from the California Endowment, the Wasserman Foundation and the Baxter Family Foundation. The California Community Foundation and United Way of Greater Los Angeles administer grants from the Broad Foundation to support this effort. Under terms of the grants, The Times retains complete control over editorial content.”
What a pile of manure…the only way these charter schools are public, is that We the People, we the public, we the taxpayers, are forced to pay for them…with NO oversight by the public, the government, or the school system. This is an amazing scam concocted by the Bonfire of the Vanities guys to use public funding for public schools while transferring students to privatized charter schools, all for their own profit. Rupert Murdoch and Eli Broad have openly written about this, and they and their billionaire buddies are gathered in their kingdoms, cackling at their success in fooling the public.
Now we read in their controlled corporate media, the LA Times, that Broad and Company wants the new Superintendent of LAUSD, Michelle King, to sit at their golden table as a participant with his hit squad, to charterize and privatize the rest of LAUSD…or at least for now, up to 50% more charters which take away from public education. Their fantasy seems to be that Michelle King will now work for them and be a subject to Myrna Castrejon…and of course Eli Broad.
It is shocking to see that Broad lawyers and PR firms now use as their mouthpiece, this hard core, non educator, lobbyist for CCSA who spent her time twisting arms in Sacramento who now thinks she is on the same level as the new Superintendent of LAUSD.
As to Myrna Castrejon, a political hit woman who works for charter schools, here is her Times dossier.
“The organization driving a controversial effort to vastly expand charter schools in Los Angeles has selected one of the state’s most visible charter school advocates as its first executive director.
Myrna Castrejon, 50, is leaving her position as a lobbyist and strategist for the California Charter Schools Association to lead Great Public Schools Now, a nonprofit organization established to carry out the charter expansion strategy, which was first developed by billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and his foundation.
In her new position, Castrejon will become the face of an initiative that is stoking tumult among educators and push-back from the Los Angeles Unified School District. An early proposal called for raising $490 million to enroll half of the district’s students in charter schools over the next eight years.
Castrejon, senior vice president of government affairs for the charter association, begins her new role Feb. 22. She said a key priority will be reaching out to leaders of the nation’s second largest school district who, just two days ago, publicly opposed the plan developed by the Broad Foundation.
L.A. Unified Supt. Michelle King on Thursday echoed concerns raised by the school board, saying she does not support any initiatives that propose to “take over” the district by encouraging students to enroll in charters.”
How many of the California legislators are under the influence of Broad and his endless cash? We know for a fact that the former mayor of LA, Anthony Villaraigosa, who is now preparing to run for Governor, is prime among these sellouts to the big money. He is so close to Eli and John Deasy, he can taste them.
Have we lost all control of American society and democracy to Broad his band of oligarchs? How can they form a new 501c3 and think it will be the vehicle to infiltrate the school district and usurp it totally, from Superintendent to BoE to every classroom and every piece of LAUSD real estate?
The arrogance and sheer chutzpah of this power grab is mind boggling.
The real public living in the community better wake up to this irreversible loss of public schools and must take to the streets to preserve what is left. California already has more charter schools than any other state in the Union, and Los Angeles has the most of any city in the nation. Yet university reports show that the preponderance of these charters do no better than public schools in educating students, and a large group does far worse…all the while making big bucks using ill prepared teachers who flee their charges quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Charles Kerchner: Interpreting the LAUSD Vote Against the Broad Takeover

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2016 //
24

Charles Kerchner, a scholar at the Claremont Graduate School in California, has some interesting reflections on the LAUSD vote against the Eli Broad plan to take over half the students in the district. 
He writes to contradict the reformers’ claims that they are above politics. Quoting a paper by pro-reform Paul Hill of the University of Washington and an associate, Kershnernotes that reformers are just as political as unions and others who push back. Although they don’t like to admit it, reformers are an interest group. (I add: their power derives not from numbers but from money.)
He writes:
“The rhetoric of school reform treats portfolio creators as free of political interests in contrast to rapacious teacher unions and self-protecting school administrators. Because they, and the schools they create, are free from politics, they can innovate and adapt rapidly, outpacing the sluggish pace of incremental reforms within traditional school districts…..
“The foundations, philanthropists, and civic elites that Hill and Jochim call “the reformers” want something. They want dominance over public education. They want to rebrand the word public as something other than the delivery of schooling by a government agency called a school district.
“In order to do this, they need to take away resources controlled by that system: jobs held by teachers, access to school building and property, control over the means of training and hiring.
“Placing school reform in this context invites bare-knuckle politics. And that’s what has resulted.
“It’s not about who has the best idea; it’s about who can gather and sustain the most power. As the authors note at the end of the paper, politics is the strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes time and involves setbacks.
“So, when someone comes to your town with the promise that they can change your failed urban schools, do it quickly, and make an end run around urban politics, don’t believe them.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform

Jersey Jazzman: No, There Was No Charter Miracle in Newark

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2016 //
64

A reader who consistently supports charter schools sent s link to an article on Campbell Brown’s website and flung down the gauntlet: Here is proof that Newark charter schools made impressive gains! I dare you to refute it!

 
I turned to Jersey Jazzman, the expert on New Jersey charter data, and he wrote this devastating critique of Richard Whitmire’s praise for Newark charters.

 
He writes:

Bruce Baker and I looked at Newark’s test scores — both charters and NPS — over the period of “reform” in the city’s schools. We found no evidence that Newark has seen any positive changes that couldn’t be explained by overall, statewide trends (I’ll have a similar analysis of graduation rates out soon).

 

In addition, the data in the post under review was available only to the author, not to the public. Please read Jersey Jazzman’s post for a clear understanding of charters in New Jersey and the politicization of research about them.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization

Tom Cahill: The 5 Famous Billionaires Who Are Dismantling Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2016 //
41

Tom Cahill describes the five famous billionaires who are intent on dismantling public education, especially public education for African American children.

 

He writes that “The charter school movement is particularly insidious, as it’s essentially a form of institutionalized racism veiled in altruism.”

 

They call themselves “reformers,” but in fact they are destroying a vital democratic institution.

 

The process, he says, begins with Common Core standards that disregard all individual or local differences. That is followed by high-stakes testing that fails most students.

 

Finally, schools are labeled as “failing” due to the lopsided evaluation process, and privately-run charters are forced onto inner-city populations, paving the way for the privatization of public education in predominantly black and latino communities. (Actually, the “failing schools” narrative was launched prior to Common Core. Arne Duncan started closing public schools in Chicago when he was Superintendent. NCLB prescribed school-closings as an antidote to low scores. Low test scores, wherever they came from, were used as weapons to replace public schools with charter schools. Common Core just speeded up the demolition strategy.)

 

The five white billionaires he points to are: Mark Zuckerberg; the Walton family; Carl Icahn; Bill Gates; and Rupert Murdoch.

 

The list of billionaires who want to privatize the public schools should include Eli Broad, John Arnold, Michael Dell, the Koch brothers, and Michael Bloomberg. I may have missed a few billionaires, but you get the picture. The free market worked for them; why should schools operate in a free market? Why pay attention to the mounds of research showing that charter schools do not get higher test scores when they enroll the same children? Why care that minority children are enrolled in charter schools with harsh and punitive discipline policies that would not be allowed in public schools? Why care if there is no evidence that charter schools and Teach for America do not “close the achievement gap” and have no discernible impact on reducing poverty?

 

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

Congratulations, Joyce Foreman, DISD Trustee

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2016 //
7

Joyce Foreman, vigilant Trustee of the Dallas Independent School District, stood up and said “no” to yet another charter school in her district. She persuaded the City Council member representing her district to say no. The charter was not approved. Foreman wants better public schools in her district, not a marketplace of schools. For her courage and foresight, she was blasted by the Dallas Morning News, one of the most conservative editorial boards in Texas.

 

You would think that an elected representative of the district would know more about its needs than the editorial board of a corporate-friendly newspaper. Joyce Foreman understands that a great city needs a great public school system, not a marketplace of choices. That may work for shoes and toothpaste, but not for children.

 

Joyce Foreman speaks for the people of her district. Stay fearless, Joyce. Ignore the editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News, who probably went to prep school.

Categories Charter Schools, Dallas, Education Reform, Resistance

More Ohio Districts Bill State for Cost of Charters

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2016 //
12

Ohio school districts have found an innovative way to express their opposition to their loss of funding to pay for charters. Ohio has a large number of failing charters. The district’s are sending the bill to the state.

        

“Boards of education continue to pass resolutions to invoice the state for charter school deductions

 

“A note from Fairborn board member Andy Wilson indicates that the Fairborn Board will vote on a resolution to invoice the state on January 14. The title of the resolution, “Resolution to authorize the Treasurer to invoice the Ohio Department of Education for money paid by Fairborn City School’s Taxpayers that has been sent to charter schools without voter approval”. The words “without voter approval” put emphasis on a very germane point.

 

“The state has enacted laws that rip local funds away from school districts to support a failed $7 billion experiment that harms students and wastes tax money, including dollars from local tax levies.

 

“Districts should not hesitate to invoice the state.”

William Phillis

Ohio E & A 
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Ohio E & A

100 S. 3rd Street

 Columbus OH 43215
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Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform

Mercedes Schneider on That Infamous “Got to Go” List at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2016 //
13

Mercedes Schneider dug into the records of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy in Fort Greene (Brooklyn). This is the school where the principal prepared a “Got to Go” list of the students that would be pushed out one way or another.

 

The school was opened in 2013. Its first principal, Kate Cunningham, had a Teach for America background. She had earned her “master’s degree” at the fake Relay “graduate school of education,” where charter teachers teach other charter teachers and give each other degrees without any reference to scholarship. She ran Success Academy’s special education program, although her resume doesn’t mention any credentials for doing so.

 

She didn’t last long–not even a year.

 

She was succeeded by Candido Brown, who had been with SA since 2009. It was Brown who compiled the “Got to Go” list. As Schneider points out, SA in FG needed to be “turned around” less than two years after it opened. Brown has recently taken a leave of absence.

 

Her post includes the details of a lawsuit filed by parents of some of the children who were pushed out. Their complaint goes into detail about the strict disciplinary policies at Success Academy schools. They are suing the principal, Success Academy Charter Schools, the city Department of Education, and the New York State Education Department.

 

This should be interesting.

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

Peter Greene on the Joys of Teaching Five-Year-Olds to Love Testing

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2016 //
24

Peter Greene writes here about a scary article in Catalyst Chicago by a teacher who explains how she taught her five-year-olds to love testing. It should not surprise you to learn that this teacher is teaching in a charter school and that she hails from Teach for America and Teach Plus.

 

He writes:

 

Well, we can at least thank Bailey Reimer for giving us one more look at how reformsters think, and a chance to confront just how wrong-headed that thinking is.

 

Reimer is the author of “How Bailey Reinmer’s kindergartners came to love testing” (nothing about if they stopped worrying), and the piece in Catalyst Chicago is every bit as bad as you would imagine.

 

Reimer loves the Test, and her love leads her to say some astonishing things. She loves it, and she opens with the astonishing story of how much her students love it too– so much that they are sad when they learn they won’t be taking one tomorrow. “They love the uninterrupted work time and comparing their new score to their old one.” Because, yes, five year olds are famous for their long extension spans and their desire to do seatwork.

 

Reimer correctly points out that ESSA has cemented the Big Standardized Test into schools, and so her school figures why not just get started practicing with kindergartners (because apparently her charter school is run by people who don’t know much about child development). As Reimer tells her story, she throws in this set of non sequitors:

 

“To get to a point where my students appreciate and understand testing, I had to first appreciate it myself. I love tests that give me relevant, timely information about how my students are doing, from how many letter names they know to how many words per minute they read. According to reports by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, children who read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade are four times more likely to graduate from high school.”

 

If you need regular daily testing to tell how your kindergarten students are doing, you do not belong in a kindergarten classroom. And before one cites research, one should be clear on the difference between correlation and causation. However, Reimer might want to check out the research that shows that early “head starts” in learning pretty much disappear within a few years.

 

But that’s not the most astonishing thing she says.

 

“Of course, 5-year-olds don’t come to school automatically loving testing. As educators, it’s our job to build that appreciation and understanding.”

 

No. No no no no no no no no no, no. No, Ms. Reimer, that is most decidedly NOT our job. It is our job to build appreciation and understanding for reading, art, math, running and playing, and learning in general. It is not our job to make them love the test. It is certainly not our job to teach that school is a place we go to take tests and get ready to take tests.

 

Read on. This article by Bailey Reimer is one of the most horrible statements I have ever read. She needs help in learning about the purposes of education.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Testing

Shocker: Los Angeles School Board Votes 7-0 for Resolution Opposing Eli Broad Takeover

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2016 //
24

Will wonders never cease!

 

The LAUSD school board voted 7-0 for a resolution that rebuffs Eli Broad’s plan to take control of half the students in the district and enroll them in privately managed charter schools. After a lively discussion, the board passed a resolution that made clear it would oppose any effort to weaken the LAUSD public schools. This is a startling development, since some of the members were elected with Eli Broad campaign funds.

 

The focus of the discussion was a resolution put forward by Scott Schmerelson, strongly in opposition to a corporate takeover of the public schools. Some of the members openly acknowledged that the expansion of charter schools put the public schools at risk by diminishing their resources and programs. The Los Angeles Times noted with surprise that the board had selected its new superintendent by unanimous vote, and now voted to support the public schools by unanimous vote. The resolution directed Superintendent Michelle King “to analyze how the outside plan, which was developed by the Broad Foundation, will “affect the district’s enrollment, fiscal viability and ability to provide an outstanding public education.”

 

The Times writes:

 

Board member Scott Schmerelson, who authored the resolution, agreed to make changes proposed by other board members to soften some of the language describing charter schools, such as removing the word strangulation from a sentence describing the plan.

 

Schmerelson said he struggled to understand why Eli Broad and others did not work to improve traditional public schools by investing in successful programs.

 

“The point is that we have thrown the glove down to big business and they know they’d better be very careful how they work with LAUSD,” he said. “We’ll accept their help in limited forms, but they will not take over our district.”

 

Sarah Angel, managing director of regional advocacy with the California Charter School Assn., told board members that the resolution was polarizing. But board discussion settled some of her concerns. (I had to laugh when I saw that she called the resolution “polarizing,” because that was the same comment that the CCSA wrote in response to an opinion piece I wrote for the Los Angeles Times in support of public schools. According to CCSA, if you support charter schools, you are “for the children.” But if you support public schools, you are “polarizing.”)

 

Board president Steve Zimmer deserves credit and high praise for uniting the board behind a resolution in support of the public schools. Member Scott Schmerelson deserves credit and high praise for boldly and clearly opposing privatization and for laying out the disastrous consequences if the Broad plan were allowed to move forward.

 

My observer in Los Angeles watched the school board meeting and reported:

 

There was some pontificating, but basically, not one board member would say they were against the resolution. Just before the vote, Steve Zimmer spoke eloquently and signaled what I hope is the dawn of a new day at LAUSD. I want to send you his statement. When it was declared to have passed unanimously, the audience went crazy. In fact, a rhythmic chant of extreme support for Schmerelson and the resolution followed. While the camera was focused on the whole board and not specifically on Schmerelson, you could see his reaction. His body language was unmistakable. It was as if an extreme burden had been lifted from him. There is little doubt that he must have suffered greatly from attacks by the charter industry. In fact, you will hear Zimmer complain bitterly about nasty public comment from charter advocates made during the morning session and apparently before the resolution came up for a vote in the afternoon (I wasn’t watching at that time).

 

I would say that Schmerelson provided the board with a jump start to take the battle against privatizing education to a higher level.

 

When the video is available, I will post it.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Charter Cheerleader Reed Hastings Sets Up $100 Million Fund for More “Reforms”

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2016 //
34

Billionaire Reed Hasting, founder of Netflix, announced that he will create a fund with $100 million for the “reforms” he favors. He is a huge supporter of charter schools. Reed Hastings doesn’t like public schools. The CEO of the new fund will be Neerav Kingsland, who formerly ran New Schools for New Orleans, the charter-promotion agency in that city. In the past, Hastings has expressed his hope that one day almost every school in the nation will be a charter school and that local school boards will disappear. This is the culmination of the reform dream of abolishing local democracy and supplanting it with consumer choice.

 

This is why I canceled my subscription to Netflix.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization
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