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Horace Meister: The Myth of Charter School “Success”: Hillary Was Right

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2015 //
44

Horace Meister (a pseudonym) worked as a data analyst for many years in the New York City  Department of Education. He is currently conducting research at a major university. In this post, he addresses some of the common misperceptions about charter schools. I cannot explain why everyone who writes about SA feels the need to be anonymous.

 

 

 

 

The Charter School Myth

 

 

Hilary Clinton recently remarked “there are good charter schools and there are bad charter schools…most charter schools, I don’t want to say every one, but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest to teach kids, or if they do they don’t keep them.” This upended a comfortable consensus that had emerged in the past decade. Politicians, both Democrat and Republican, blindly support charter schools. Facts are ignored or denied.

 

Simultaneously, a number of unflattering stories came out in the press about the Success Academy charter chain in New York City. It turns out that the charter chain suspends large numbers of kindergarten and first grade students.[i] It also turns out that the charter chain tries to force out challenging students.[ii]

 

Success Academy should serve as a lesson, debunking the mythologizing of charter schools that has become so widespread in education reform and political circles. But before examining the myth of Success we must address a deliberate obfuscation often introduced into such analyses by some defenders of charter schools.

 

We assume that the purpose of charter schools is to educate the same students as the public school system. In other words a successful charter school should have great outcomes with students living and growing up in challenging circumstances and environments. A charter school that creams students, that selectively gets rid of large numbers of challenging students, or that otherwise manipulates its outcomes is not fulfilling the purpose of charter schools. Talk of magnet public schools or the all too many zoned public schools that, due to the unfortunate segregation in American neighborhoods and communities, are not diverse, is irrelevant to the policy issue under discussion. The bottom line is that thousands of public schools and tens of thousands of teachers are dedicated to students that American society has put at significant disadvantage. The relevant policy question is—do charter schools show up the public schools doing this critical work?

 

So, what do we know about Success Academy?[iii]

 

Success Academy schools have a student body very different than public schools. The New York City Department of Education’s (NYCDOE) School Quality Report data show that. Success Academy has a very different student population than the NYC public school system.[iv] On average, a Success Academy school has sixty six percent fewer English Language Learners (4.7% vs 13.8%), forty three percent fewer special education students (12.3% vs 21.4%), eighty six percent fewer of the highest need special education students (.9% vs 6.5%), and forty percent fewer students living in temporary housing (8.1% vs. 13.4%) than a public school. These disparities will only grow as Success Academy’s push into gentrifying and middle class neighborhoods continues.[v]

 

 

 

Success Academy has very high and selective attrition rates. SA has high attrition rates particularly among special education students and English Language Learners.[vi] The attrition rate increases as students advance to the grades when they will be taking the state tests.[vii] “This pattern repeats cohort after cohort with growth in early grades, followed by sharp winnowing accumulating over time.”[viii] The selective nature of the attrition is crucial, since that is the distinguishing characteristic between attrition at Success Academy and that at public schools. Such selective attrition is characteristic of the charter sector.[ix]

 

Success Academy suspends students at extremely high rates as a deliberate strategy to get challenging students to leave. “The charter school network suspended its students at more than double the rate of the New York City public schools, eleven percent to five percent” with a much less challenging student population.[x] “In its first two years, Success Academy 1 suspended 8% and 2% of its students respectively. Over the next five years, however, those numbers jumped to 12%, 15%, 22%, 27%, and 23%…By the way, the out of school suspension rate for 2011-2012 at Upper West Success, a school where 29% of students qualify for free lunch and 10% for reduced price lunch? 5%. Apparently suspension rates in the high 20s are a necessity for schools where 78% of the students are in or near poverty.”[xi] Insiders report that “school leaders and network staff members explicitly talked about suspending students or calling parents into frequent meetings as ways to force parents to fall in line or prompt them to withdraw their children.”[xii]

 

Success Academy forces high need special education students to leave. “But The News found a disturbing number of suspension cases where the network’s administrators removed special-education pupils from normal classrooms for weeks and even months, while at the same time pressuring their parents to transfer them to regular public schools.”[xiii]

 

Success Academy employs additional strategies to winnow out challenging students. For example, they mail the annual reenrollment forms to only preferred families.[xiv] By the way, public schools as a general rule don’t even have reenrollment forms. A student on the roster of a public school remains on the roster.

 

Teaching at Success Academy is focused on test prep and practice. It appears that teachers are mandated to focus overwhelmingly on test prep.[xv] To such an extent that students wet their pants out of the induced anxiety.[xvi] This leads to high teacher attrition rates, with over 30% of teachers annually leaving the charter chain entirely.[xvii] Often because the teachers could not abide by the way SA wanted them to treat students.[xviii]

 

Despite these shenanigans the academic outcomes of Success Academy schools are questionable.

 

A Success Academy education does not seem to prepare students for success in high school. Only 21% of SA middle school graduates passed their classes and earned at least 10 credits (44 credits are required to graduate high school in NYC) in their 9th grade courses. Note that since SA is a relatively new charter chain these data only exist for their first school, Harlem Success Academy 1.[xix] And not a single SA student scored well on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT).[xx]

 

Success Academy seems to do a mediocre job of growing their students academically. For the sake of argument we will use test scores on the New York State exams as a measure of success, since Success Academy likes to boast about those scores. The NYCDOE calculates growth targets for every school.[xxi] On the English exams three Success Academy schools exceeded, two schools met, one school approached and one school did not meet expected growth targets.[xxii] On the Math exams only two schools exceeded, four met, and one approached the expected growth targets.

 

Success Academy seems to do a very poor job with their high need students. The data provide a measure for how students in each school’s bottom third do. Only two Success Academy schools exceeded and two schools met English growth targets for these students, while two approached and one did not meet the target. In Math, four schools did not meet the expected growth target while two exceeded and one met the targets.

 

Other analyses have found similarly poor outcomes from Success. An examination of 2012 and 2013 fourth grade scores found that “Success schools dropped by about 40 points while other schools that had such high 2012 scores dropped by about 20 points. But in math, two of the four Success schools had a smaller drop than the other schools and the other two Success schools had about the same drop.”[xxiii] A different analysis of the 2013 data found that “Success Academy scored in the 39th percentile on English exam growth for their overall student population and in the 21st percentile on English exam growth for the students who began with scores in the lowest 1/3 of students.”[xxiv]

 

Overall these are rather sorry outcomes that nonetheless overestimate Success Academy’s performance since even growth measures don’t account for selective attrition and other SA tactics. Still the growth metrics do a better job than pure performance metrics in measuring the true contribution of a school to student learning.

 

What can be learned from Success Academy? There are of course positive take-aways from Success. Additional learning time, such as that mandated by SA, is likely a positive intervention strategy for some students requiring additional academic support. SA offers the equivalent of about fifty additional schools days, thanks to their extended school day.[xxv] That is of course expensive and we know that SA spends thousands of dollars more per student than public schools with similar populations.[xxvi] There is no question that additional funding for schools helps improve outcomes for students growing up in poverty.[xxvii] New York City is now directing additional funds, along with other initiatives such as extended learning time, to their Renewal schools, schools that serve a disproportionately disadvantaged student body. Providing schools with such supports can benefit students at both charter and public schools.

 

Teachers must be given the time and support to grow into the tremendous responsibility that every educator has for student success. As Success Academy first year teachers are assistants in the classroom ideally working with and learning from excellent and experienced teachers. Such an initiative, at a national scale supported by local districts and the federal government in collaboration with schools of education, is definitely worth a look.

 

 

 

[i]http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/kindergarten-young-suspend-student/

 

[ii] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html

 

[iii] An earlier review of claims made by and about Success Academy can be found here https://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/12/researcher-charter-chain-built-on-hyperbole/.

 

[iv] The data can be found in the file here http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/06F7DE89-AA46-4509-9A0C-600038728D14/0/2014_2015_EMS_SQR_Results_2015_12_09.xlsx. For explanation of the various metrics see http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/5347DA79-B985-4CBF-B56E-B05C8380C53B/0/201415EducatorGuideEMS11122015.pdf. The Success Academy schools with data include five schools in Harlem, two in the Bronx. Two schools, one in Bedford Stuyvesant and one on the Upper West Side have demographic but no academic performance data as they are too new. All the other twenty three SA schools are so new that they have no Quality Report data at all.

[vi] http://commonal.tumblr.com/post/58209601458/harlem-success-academy-charter-and-attrition

 

[vii] http://insideschools.org/blog/item/1000359-vanishing-students-at-harlem-success#

 

[viii] See the data here http://danielskatz.net/2015/11/25/eva-moskowitz-cannot-help-herself/.

 

[ix] See https://dianeravitch.net/2015/02/09/the-unholy-alliance-charters-the-media-and-research/.

 

[x] http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/student-discipline-race-and-eva-moskowitz%E2%80%99s-success-academy-charter-schools

 

[xi] http://danielskatz.net/2015/11/25/eva-moskowitz-cannot-help-herself/

 

[xii] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html?_r=0

 

[xiii] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/success-academy-fire-parents-fight-disciplinary-policy-article-1.1438753

 

[xiv] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html?_r=0

 

[xv] https://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/04/mole-in-success-academy-speaks/ and https://dianeravitch.net/2015/04/07/my-conversation-with-a-success-academy-charter-teacher/ and http://nymag.com/news/features/65614/index3.html. Interestingly enough there has been a recent attempt by some apologists to claim that Success Academy is a progressive pedagogy paradise. First-hand reports by teachers (i.e. those not describing carefully arranged guided and pre-scheduled tours) provide an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.

 

[xvi] http://www.businessinsider.com/students-wetting-pants-success-academy-charter-schools-2015-4

 

[xvii] http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/teacher-turnover-success-academy-charter-schools with data suggesting even higher attrition rates found here http://citylimits.org/2014/08/20/why-charter-schools-have-high-teacher-turnover/.

 

[xviii] http://www.wnyc.org/story/302768-high-teacher-turnover-at-a-success-network-school/. It has been suggested that “The pedagogy in the Success Academy schools is rote, highly disciplined and punishment, suspensions, are commonplace, perhaps the pedagogical/discipline practices chase away teachers of color.” https://mets2006.wordpress.com/2015/10/20/success-academy-charter-school-staff-diversity-why-is-the-staff-overwhelming-white-tone-deaf-by-choice-a-diverse-workforce-is-essential-in-the-21st-century/. Some telling reviews of Success Academy’s culture can be read on Indeed.com http://www.indeed.com/cmp/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools/reviews and on glassdoor.com https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408.htm. Other first-hand accounts can be read here https://dianeravitch.net/2015/04/27/a-former-success-academy-teacher-steps-forward-to-tell-her-story/ and here https://dianeravitch.net/2015/12/01/former-success-academy-teacher-why-i-resigned/.

 

[xix] See column CW on the following file http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/06F7DE89-AA46-4509-9A0C-600038728D14/0/2014_2015_EMS_SQR_Results_2015_12_09.xlsx under the “student achievement” tab.

 

[xx] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/gonzalez-success-charter-students-fail-top-city-schools-article-1.1833960. It would not be surprising if SA has already begun intense SHSAT prep for this exam for their students in response to this, now widespread, statistic. While unfortunate that tests are driving so much of what happens in schools that may be the best way to open high school opportunities for their students.

 

[xxi]The data can be found in the following file http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/estimated-versus-actual-days-learning-charter-school-studies. See columns P, V, AT, and AZ under the “student achievement” tab. Broadly speaking one third of all schools each exceed, meet or approached their growth targets. The remaining ten percent of schools did not meet their target. See pages 24-25 in the document here for an explanation of these growth targets http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/5347DA79-B985-4CBF-B56E-B05C8380C53B/0/201415EducatorGuideEMS11122015.pdf.

 

[xxiii] http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2013/08/13/how-to-define-success/

 

[xxiv] https://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/12/researcher-charter-chain-built-on-hyperbole/

 

[xxv] Somewhat disappointingly it appears that the better test results claimed by many charter schools often reported as an “estimated days of learning” metric are less than the actual extra days of learning at those charter schools. See http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/estimated-versus-actual-days-learning-charter-school-studies.

 

[xxvi] See Table 2 here http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/ttr-charter-rent_0.pdf

 

[xxvii] See http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ruckerj/Jackson_Johnson_Persico_SFR_LRImpacts.pdf. Of course the additional funds must be spent sensibly.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Testing

Massachusetts: A Stunning Conflict of Interest

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2015 //
26

EduShyster was alerted by a confidential tip to the possibility that Jim Peyser, the State Secretary of  Education, remains a director of an organization that lobbies for more charter schools.

 

She checked public records and learned that Peyser is still listed as a director of “Families for Excellent Schools.” This is an organization of hedge fund managers, millionaires, and billionaires who lobby for privately managed charter schools.

 

“The Secretary of Education, Jim Peyser sets education policy for the state and also votes on said policy. And as a director for the charter school advocacy group Families for Excellent Schools, and its 501 (c) (4) lobbying arm, Peyser is seeking to influence the very state policy that he is then voting upon. In other words, he is lobbying himself.As the Secretary of Education, Jim Peyser sets education policy for the state and also votes on said policy. And as a director for the charter school advocacy group Families for Excellent Schools, and its 501 (c) (4) lobbying arm, Peyser is seeking to influence the very state policy that he is then voting upon. In other words, he is lobbying himself….

 

 

“But wait, there’s more
“If it sounds like our Secretary of Education has his hands full, both lobbying and being lobbied, consider that Father Peyser wears yet another cap these days. He is also the defendant in a class-action lawsuit vs. the state’s charter cap, defending the very cap that he is working feverishly, whilst wearing one of his other caps, to lift. The obvious question: how does he do it all? Followed by: what size hat does Peyser wear? Followed by: doesn’t Massachusetts have some kind, ANY kind of, conflict of interest law? Alas, I’m informed that its nearly as toothless as our public records law.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Massachusetts

Miami Herald: Florida Loses about $70 Million to Closed Charters

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2015 //
12

As Florida has learned, charters open and charters close, and the state is left holding the bill. The AP and Miami Herald reports that the state of Florida lost some $70 million on charters that later closed.

 

One of them was the charter opened by Jeb Bush in Liberty City when he was planning to run for governor. It closed after eight years, having received $1.1 million in state funding.

 

 

 

The story is repeated across the state: Charter schools, which are public schools run by private groups, have received more than $760 million from state taxpayers since 2000 according to an Associated Press analysis of state Department of Education records. Schools can use the money for construction costs, rent payments, buses and even property insurance.

 

More capital money has gone to charter schools in Miami-Dade than any other county: about $179 million.

 

Yet charter schools in 30 districts have wound up closing after receiving as much as $70 million combined in such funding, the AP’s analysis showed. In all, more than $7.5 million went to almost 20 Miami-Dade charter schools that eventually shut their doors.

 

Taxpayers usually can’t recover the capital money invested in those schools because most of it has been spent on rent or leasing costs. The Department of Education reported it has taken back just $133,000 in the last three years from schools that closed.

 

“That’s definitely a concern as a taxpayer,” said Jaime Torrens, chief facilities officer for Miami-Dade schools. “If a school closes, whatever property was built with these public dollars, it doesn’t come back to the public. It remains with the owner of property.”

 

There have been cases where the district recuperated equipment left behind after a charter school closed. When the School for Integrated Academics and Technology abruptly closed its doors last year — after receiving $1.9 in state capital funding — Miami-Dade recovered computers, smart boards and furniture. When that happens, the district usually redistributes the equipment to other charter schools.

 

Charter schools open, charter schools close. And taxpayer money disappears.

 

 

 

 

 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article49565370.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Ohio: Where Theft of Public Money is OK

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2015 //
16

Bill Phillis, former deputy Commissioner of Education in Ihio, runs the Equity and Adequacy Coalition.

Highway robbery is legal in the Ohio charter industry

The charter industry has been largely deregulated from the beginning. The charter promoters and operators have had unrestrained freedom to use public money recklessly and dumb down educational opportunities for children. This industry is not a part of the common school system but it is a bloated parasite extracting valuable resources from the public system.

It is legal or not illegal in Ohio’s charter industry:

For a for-profit charter school company to hold title to real estate, furniture, equipment and other tangible assets that were purchased with public money
For a charter school board to pay a company allied with their for-profit management company $700,000 per year rent to house 150 students
For a charter school of 600 students to pay $185,000 in year for marketing and promotion

For an online charter school operator to siphon off funds set aside to educate students to operate other private companies that personally benefit the charter operator

For a charter operation to help subsidize a worldwide religious movement

For charter school board members to serve without being a citizen of the United States

For non-profit charter sponsors and charter school boards to pay outrageously high salaries and benefits that would not be tolerated in the public common school system

For a person with no training or experience in education to operate a charter school

For the presence of nepotism and contractual relationships that would not be tolerated in the public common school system

For a charter operator to buy legislation via obscene levels of political contributions

For charters to spend unlimited amounts of funds on marketing and promotion

For charter operators to operate in the dark and be shielded from public exposure regarding illegal activities
The list goes on and on…

Children in public school districts are being robbed of educational opportunities by the transfer of more than $7 billion from districts to the failed charter industry over the past 15 years; yet, state officials allow this fraud on the public to go on and on and on.

Under pressure from the public, the 131st General Assembly passed legislation that will rein in some of the abuse now authorized by law. But big money from the charter industry, ineptitude of the Ohio Department of Education and the $71 million federal grant to expand charters will work together to fatten this failed industry.

The only hope is for the public common school community and advocates to band together to demand the end of this debacle that has utterly failed.

William Phillis
Ohio E & A

Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio, Privatization

BREAKING NEWS! Bombshell Report on Dark Money Behind School Privatization in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2015 //
35

Massachusetts Jobs with Justice released a well-documented report on the dark money behind a shadowy group called “Families for Excellent Schools.” FES is leading the campaign for more charter schools in Massachusetts. Of course, FES flies under a fake flag, because the “families” are not representing the families of Boston or the families that need excellent schools. FES is a gross deception. They are representing hedge fund managers and other wealthy individuals. Their idea of “excellent schools” is Exeter, Andover, Deerfield Academy, Groton, Sidwell Friends, and other elite schools that their own children attend. But these are not the excellent schools they want for the children of Massachusetts; they prefer no-excuses schools, where discipline and uniformity produces higher test scores. In the battle between Eva Moskowitz and Mayor de Blasio over the expansion of the charter sector, FES came up with nearly $10 million to beat the mayor. That’s not the kind of money that one gathers in needy communities, but it is the kind of money one collects with a few phone calls to Wall Street movers and shakers.

 

The JwJ report tears the veil away from FES, revealing where the money comes from. Up until now, it had pretended to be just another grassroots group working for “excellent” schools, and not a hedge fund-front group pushing privatization.

 

The report also revealed that one of the directors of FES is James Peyser, the Massachusetts State Superintendent of Education. This was another shocker. Why should the public official responsible for the maintenance and improvement of public schools serve on the board of an organization dedicated to privatizing public schools. Peyser holds the same position as Horace Mann. He should be embarrassed and the people of Massachusetts should be outraged.

 

Just bear in mind that the push for privatization is occurring in the state that is far and away the best performing state school system in the United States. The expansion of the charter sector will undermine public education and divide communities. FES should be ashamed. Why don’t they take their millions and open health clinics for poor children?

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization

The Shadow Chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2015 //
21

Some people think that Kaya Henderson is the Chancellor of the D.C. public schools. Think again. The real chancellor is a very wealthy woman named Katherine Bradley. She is married to a media mogul (The Atlantic), and she is very very interested in the public schools. She is quite certain she knows how to fix them. She works closely with the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Graham family that used to own the Washington Post. She is a power in D.C. politics. All decisions about the future of the schools must be cleared by her. You know by now that she believes in free-markets and privatization.

 

Katherine Bradley is a symbol of the erosion of democracy in our society. She has no obvious qualifications to make decisions about the future of public education. Being rich is not a qualification. I don’t know for sure, but I would wager that she didn’t go to public school, never taught in public school, and has never had a child in public school. So why is she the shadow chancellor? Why do her wishes decide the fate of a public institution?

 

A group called Empower DC sued to block the closure of D.C. public schools. Their request was rejected by a judge, but they were nonetheless able to obtain thousands of emails about the closures. Katherine Bradley pops up often in the correspondence.

 

This is one of the emails that was released:

 

“The bottom line is that overall there was not a huge difference performance change between students in schools which closed and all other students. The small difference there was was actually negative, so it’s probably just better to avoid this angle if it does come up.”
— Greg Garrison, DCPS Deputy Chief, Office of Data and Accountability (former) to Peter Weber, DCPS Chief of Strategy (November 7, 2012 – Bates # 014934)

Categories Charter Schools, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein, TFA Critic, Will Attend the 25th Anniversary of TFA

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2015 //
20

Gary Rubinstein, the most thoughtful of Teach for America’s critical alums, plans to attend the 25th anniversary of Teach for America. Gary’s blog has punctured the illusions of TFA and other corporate reformers again and again. Will he be shunned? Will anyone speak to him?

 

When I read Gary’s post, my first reaction was that the party would be “a conclave of losers,” considering how many of the TFA stars have faded or failed or disappeared into obscurity.  Not to mention the fact that TFA has not–in its 25 years–closed the achievement gap in any district or turned any district into a paragon of excellence. “One day,” the TFA slogan (“one day all children will have an excellent education”) seems as far away as ever.

 

But what a meeting it will be!

 

Gary writes:

 

 

Of the 200 speakers listed so far, there is only one ‘reform critic’ I see, Los Angeles Board President Steve Zimmer. Then there are about 150 people I’ve never heard of, but who are mostly from different ed companies or charter schools, and then there are about 50 A and B list ‘reformers’ and charter leaders. These include Jeremy Beard (YES Prep), Karolyn Belcher (President of TNTP), RiShawn Biddle (Dropout Nation), Tim Daly (Former President of TNTP), Mike Feinberg (KIPP), Heather Harding (former VP of research at TFA, now with Gates), Kevin Huffman (former Tennessee Education commissioner and former husband of Michelle Rhee), Michael Johnston (State senator in Colorado who got a teacher evaluation law passed where 50% of the evaluation is based on value-added), John King (current acting Secretary of Education), Dave Levin (KIPP), Kira Orange Jones (New Orleans Board Member), Paymon Rouhanifard (Camden Schools Superintendent), Alexander Russo (Writer and reform cheerleader), Hannah Skandera (secretary of education for New Mexico), Preston Smith (CEO Rocketship Charter schools), John White (State Superintendent of Louisiana), Joe Williams (DFER and now Walton). Not yet on the speakers page, but listed on some of the panels are Joel Klein (Amplify and former chancellor in NYC), John Deasy (Former head of Los Angeles Schools), Jon Schnur (Architect of Race To The Top), Chris ‘Citizen’ Stewart (blogger who I’ve sparred with on Twitter), and, of course, Michelle Rhee (StudentsFirst and star of Waiting For Superman).

 

Many of the sessions also have a ‘reform’ slant. There’s a session called ‘Becoming an Education Influencer on Twitter’ that I think I’d be an ideal candidate to be on. But instead of me there’s ‘Dropout Nation’s’ RiShawn Biddle and Alexander Russo.

 

There’s one called “Alumni Trailblazers’ Perspectives on the Path to One Day in Our Lifetime.” The panelists are the queen reformer Michelle Rhee, the prince, Louisiana Education Commissioner (for now) John White, and KIPP founders Mike Feinberg, and Dave Levin.

 

Joel Klein is moderating a panel called ‘What Will It Take To Reach One Day?’ and on the panel are Kevin Huffman and Kira Orange Jones.

 

One with an intriguing title is “What should we do when the whole school fails?” It is moderated by the husband of TFA CEO Elisa Villanueva-Beard, Jeremy Beard, who has apparently left his post at Houston Independent School District leading their failed turnaround program ‘Apollo 20’ and is now the head of YES Prep Charter Schools in Houston. On this panel is Chris ‘Citizen’ Stewart, who has been known to accuse me of being a racist from time to time. This panel also has the one and only ‘reform critic’ that I know of, Steve Zimmer, who is the head of the school board in Los Angeles.

 

Michael Johnston is on a bunch of panels. One is called ‘What Works and What Doesn’t in Education Policy” I think he is an expert on the latter as his horrific ‘accountability’ plan in Colorado where 50% of teacher evaluation is based on value-added scores has accomplished absolutely nothing in terms of test score increases. On that panel is ‘Chief For Change’ Hannah Skandera, New Mexico Secretary of Education , and Jon Schnur, ‘architect’ of Race To The Top.

 

Perhaps the craziest session is called ‘Exploring the Role of Joel Klein as Mentor and Role Model: A Case Study.’ The CEO of TFA, Elisa Villanueva-Beard is actually the moderator on this one. Most of the people who Klein mentored are no longer in power, the most recent to be forced out was Cami Anderson in Newark. I’m hoping that John White in Louisiana will be out by then and then there will be a full turnover of the Klein mentees.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teach for America

North Carolina: Important Discussion of Wrecking Ball Crew Trying to Demolish Public Education

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2015 //
4

North Carolina was once the most progressive state in the South. Under the leadership of Governor Jim Hunt, it enacted many progressive programs for education and invested in public education, both K-12 and higher education.

But Tea Party Republicans took control of the legislature in 2010, and a Republican governor was elected in 2012, the first time in a century that Republicans controlled the state. Since taking power, the Republicans have slashed the budget for public education at all levels. They have enacted a law to authorize charter schools, including for-profit charters. They enacted a voucher law. They welcomed for-profit virtual schools. They have set out to shrink government and diminish the public sector. Per-student spending is now near the lowest in the nation, as are teacher salaries. The legislature has gone after teachers’ tenure and benefits. It shut down a five-year career teaching preparation program at the University of North Carolina, called the North Carolina Teaching Fellows, yet allocated almost the same amount of money to pay for Teach for America recruits, who will come and go.

This webinar should address these issues and more.

It should be of special interest to members of the Network for Public Education who intend to participate in our annual conference at Raleigh, NC, on April 16-17. Please visit our website and register. 

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Register For Our Upcoming Webinar

North Carolina Voters and the Value of Public Education,

2015 Survey Highlights

December 15, 2015, 2-3 pm EST

North Carolina Voters and the Value of Public Education, 2015 Survey Highlights

Leslie Winner, Executive Director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, shares the findings from their 2015 statewide survey of voters perceptions of public education.  The results show that North Carolina voters strongly value local public schools, support greater investments in overall funding and want more investment in teachers. The most recent survey shows great concern that state education policy and funding are undermining the public’s desire to ensure that each child is challenged to grow and is prepared for success in college, career and life.  Learn about tools for communicating the value of and advocating for public education!
Register here.
We are also excited to be soft-launching our new Southern Education Network, an online forum and virtual network created for you — advocates, organizers, students, parents, educators — who are working to support public education in the American South.  We’re providing this forum as a means for you to find resources, connect with others, dialogue about issues you’re facing and strategies you’re using, and to get support in the work to achieve education justice. 
The site is free to join, and by signing up as a member, you gain access to an online forum and a member directory, where you can search and connect with others. 
Over the coming months, you’ll see us add resources and additional information to the site.  As you check out the site during this initial launch phase, we’d love to get your feedback so that we can keep improving  the site and making it as user-friendly and efficient as possible.  We look forward to continuing to work with you in new ways.
Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Denver Teacher: When Schools Choose Their Students

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2015 //
12

A teacher from Denver posted this comment:

 

 

“As a teacher for Denver Public Schools, I’m keenly aware of the flip-side of so called school choice… schools choosing their students. School Choice is an outright lie.

 

“Some schools remain segregated by property values, unavailable to the vast majority of DPS students. The district actively deceives parents into believing a lottery system places students when demand exceeds available space. In fact an indeterminable number of schools are allowed to use what DPS calls SchoolChoiceTool or some garbage name for what really amounts to administrators sitting behind closed doors accepting and rejecting students based on grades, behavior records, attendance data, and standardized test scores.
“The result. DPS is more segregated for Latino students today than when the school board was intentionally segregating African-American students in the years past. DPS school choice segregates the already segregated. Income-achievement gaps are greater than in any other “reform” oriented city studied.
“As they expand and lose their ability to cherry pick the boot camp style charters foisted on Denver’s low-income communities are tanking. Principle and teacher turnover is abysmal. School Choice = inequity = buyer beware gimmick schools = chaos”

Categories Charter Schools, Denver, Education Reform, School Choice, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Youngstown, Ohio: Charters Perform Worse than Low-Performing Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
5

Stephen Dyer, a policy analyst for Innovation Ohio, wonders why Governor Kasich wants to replace the low-performing public schools of Youngstown, Ohio, with charter schools, since the existing charter schools in that city have worse performance than the public schools of that city, in every subject and in every grade.

 

Wait, there was one exception where charter schools in Youngstown had higher performance than public schools:

 

Youngstown outperforms the average charter school in Mahoning County in 19 out of 20 proficiency assessments that measure English, math, science and social studies. On average, the district did better than local charters by nearly 14 percent. The only category that charters performed better was in 8th grade Math, and that differential was only two-tenths of one percent.

 

Why invest millions of dollars expanding a sector that gets worse results? Why not work with parents and communities to improve the public school system?

 

Innovation Ohio compared the two sectors here:

 

COLUMBUS – A comparison of the new state proficiency test data shows that Youngstown-area charter schools based in Mahoning County perform far worse than the Youngstown City School District, which was designated by the state as academically distressed. The new data, released by the Ohio Department of Education, shows preliminary statewide results for the new PARCC tests.

“These findings should be a wake up call to policymakers that diverting more Youngstown money and more Youngstown students into failing charter schools is not the answer,” said Innovation Ohio Education Policy Fellow Stephen Dyer. “It’s clear that the path to turning around Youngtown schools must be more nuanced than simply creating more privately run charter schools.”

Youngstown outperforms the average charter school in Mahoning County in 19 out of 20 proficiency assessments that measure English, math, science and social studies. On average, the district did better than local charters by nearly 14 percent. The only category that charters performed better was in 8th grade Math, and that differential was only two-tenths of one percent.

In June 2015, the Ohio General Assembly passed a controversial plan to eliminate the publicly elected school board in Youngstown and replace them with an appointed commission and CEO whose powers would include the ability to close schools, change contracts and nearly everything in between.

One concerning outcome of this plan is that Youngstown public education system could be turned over to more publicly funded, privately run charter schools. According to news reports and the state’s grant application, Ohio officials planned on using a substantial portion of the controversial $71 million federal grant it received to increase the number of charter schools in Youngstown. The most logical place to start this expansion would be upscaling the charters already in Mahoning County.

“The comparison of this data lays bare the idea that more privatized schools are the answer in Youngstown,” said Dyer. “If we want to improve educational outcomes in Youngstown, we have to have meaningful community and parent input on common-sense approaches that will serve the children of Youngstown with the best possible educations. Pouring millions into the pockets of the current crop of Mahoning County charters would only serve to reward their performance failures.”

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Hoax, Ohio, Privatization
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