Mercedes Schneider really liked reading David Hursh’s new book, The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education.
He identifies the major players in the corporate reform movement: Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Pearson, and many more. He sees the clear linkage between high-stakes testing and privatization.
We can’t let this happen.
Arthur Camins posted this thoughtful critique of the rush to replace democratically controlled public schools with privately managed charters and vouchers for private schools. He expects Republicans to embrace charters and vouchers, given their love of the marketplace. Camins is the director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J.
But he criticizes Democrats for failing to defend the public nature of a public institution.
He writes:
As policy framing rhetoric, the word choice is meant evoke the imagery of democracy and equity. Words are powerful, especially in framing and influencing political debates. Words can conjure positive or negative emotional responses. However, sometimes words clarify and sometimes they obscure underlying values. So it is with choice.
In our culture the “the right to choose” suggests an almost inalienable individual right, making for powerfully resonant political rhetoric. However, behind the easy-to-swallow positive connotation of choice, there is underlying message in its use in the context of education. If stated explicitly, the message might cause a little indigestion: Be out for yourself and don’t worry so much about your neighbors or community.
I do not say this to castigate parents who choose to send their children to charter schools or the teachers who work in them. However, what is moral or sensible for an individual does not make for sound or just education policy for a society. The moral burden falls not on parents, but on those who knowingly advance the wellbeing of the at the expense of the many.
Many centuries ago Rabbi Hillel sagely wrote,
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14.
It is time to reframe the policy dialog from choosing just for me to choosing to ensure better schools for us.
There is reason for hope. While choice is a deeply held American value, so is community responsibility. In fact, reference to individualism and community responsibility in politics has ebbed and flowed in recent American history. The New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960’s- catalyzed by the labor and civil rights movements- represented high points for collective solutions, such as Social Security or Medicare, to complex problems. Alternatively, the election of Ronald Reagan initiated a sustained period of individualism. In periods of relative or growing equity and shared prosperity individualism may foster personal interests and creativity. However, in periods of scarcity a selfish brand of individualism diminishes equity by diverting attention from more systemic solutions that can only be achieved by collective action. Such is the case with charter schools. Only some are superior, and there is no evidence that a market-based, all-charter system will lead to overall improvement. On the contrary, charter school expansion is more likely to lead to market volatility and disruption in children’s lives.
With individualism in ascendancy, few current politicians challenge structural inequality or run for office on an explicit program of equity. Sadly, faith in the prospect of voting as a route to greater equity is at a low point while cynicism about the viability political process grows. As a result, the self-interested perspective of those with relatively more privilege leads to holding fast what they have. In the context of scarce federal and state education resources, that means protecting their community’s property tax resource advantage. It means maintaining various in-school segregative tracking mechanisms that privilege some children over others. Similarly, from the perspective of the disempowered and disadvantaged in urban areas, charter schools and vouchers may represent an individual choice in the apparent absence of viable community alternatives.
Supporters of equity and democracy must depend upon and develop agency and hope for community solutions because when there is only despair, the only rational course of action is individual survival. Ideological supporters of privatization understand this and actively undermine democratic participation and the promise of collective solutions. That is why since the 1980’s they have followed an explicit starve-the-beast strategy to defund public institutions in order to undermine quality, public trust, and confidence. That is why they favor private charter boards over elected school boards.
I have come to believe that the struggle for equity must include a tandem strategy of opposition and advocacy.
Friends of equity need to oppose funding charter schools, not because choice is inherently a bad idea but because the spread of charter schools is morally corrosive and drains money from other local schools. Since funds are always limited, the opportunities for the few come with the sacrifice of others. “They are stealing your child’s future,” might be an appropriate opposition slogan.
Developments outside of education, such as adoption of a $15 per hour minimum wage in several cities, may represent the beginning of a climb out of the valley of individualism. In education, the fledgling opt-out movement in response to the misuse of testing may represent a resurgence of hope in the power of agency through collective action.
Progress requires an opt-in campaign for local public schools based on community rather than individualist values. Advocacy should highlight the fundamental characteristics of effective public schools both in the U.S. and abroad and contrast these with prevalent market-based solutions.
These are the factors that make for the oft-mentioned great schools and teachers in which children flourish. Many already exist. The public needs to hear their stories. Friends of equity and democracy need to relentlessly offer these factors as a viable alternative for better schools.
Change will only happen when a movement demands these factors from the people we elect- from school boards to presidents. What we need is better choices in who we elect to guide education policy. Candidates need to hear from the public: There are better choices than school choice to improve education.
The Florida legislature is debating a Republican proposal that would increase accountability for charters while making it easier to open new ones. The proposal, pushed by conservative Republicans, cleared a subcommittee on choice and innovation in the House. The state has more than 600 charters. It is a haven for flim-flam operators because of low accountability, lack of transparency or oversight. Florida charters are rife with conflicts of interest.
“The proposal…aims to weed out “bad actors” by requiring charter schools to disclose their finances on a monthly basis and to provide quality learning for their students. Any charter school that receives two consecutive “F” grades would be “automatically terminated.”
“The measure also would create the Florida Institute for Charter School Innovation to help charter school operators submit good applications to school districts and to better navigate the approval process.
“New this go-around: The proposal would establish a “High Impact Charter Network” to encourage charter schools to set up in “critical needs areas,” or those where traditional public schools have received school grades of “D” or “F” in four of the past five years. The bill includes a financial incentive to do so by automatically waiving a 5 percent administrative fee — roughly $87,000 for 250 students — that charter schools typically pay school districts.
“Another new provision would allow “high-performing” charter schools an easier way to replicate their model anywhere else in Florida. Instead of submitting their applications to local school districts, school operators could get them vetted by the new state-level institute instead.
“It would create opportunities to allow high-performing charter schools in other parts of the state. We want to make sure we encourage that as much as we can,” said Rep. Bob Cortes, R-Altamonte Springs, who is again heading up the proposal for the 2016 session.
“Charter contracts would still have to be negotiated by local school boards, but Democrats worry diverting applications to the institute might take away districts’ local control.
“Republicans countered that approving a charter school application isn’t a subjective decision — either the applicant’s proposal complies with state standards, or it doesn’t — and they want to start penalizing school districts that reject new charter schools for “arbitrary” reasons, such as simply not wanting more in their districts.
“You can’t just willy-nilly this approval because you think you don’t need anymore schools,” said Rep. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, the committee chairman.
“Under the committee bill, the administrative fee owed to school districts would be waived for any operator whose charter school application is denied by the district but approved on appeal.
“The bill is troubling to me,” Rep. Cynthia Stafford, D-Miami, said. “I believe it takes money away from traditional public schools. … We’re trying to solve a cash-flow problem for charter schools while ignoring traditional schools.”
Journalist Yasha Levine wrote the single most comprehensive article about the “so-called” Parent Trigger and the takeover of the Desert Trails Elementary School in Adelanto, California.
Levine went to Adelanto to interview parents and teachers. He immersed himself in the issue.
The article is timely because a few days ago, the Adelanto school board refused to renew the charter for Desert Trails charter schools. Read Levine’s article for context.
It starts like this:
When NSFWCORP sent me to Victorville this January, I little expected that the neighboring town of Adelanto would become ground zero for a fight between billionaires on one side, and poor, vulnerable minority parents and children on the other.
I first heard about the fight through the local right-wing paper, the Victorville Daily Press, which gleefully announced on its front page that a local school, Desert Trails Elementary, had just made history as the first school in the nation to be privatized under California’s new “parent trigger” law. The paper described the takeover as “promising a fresh start to the failing elementary school,” and claimed it had received widespread support from parents.
The national press gushed in similarly glowing terms. The LA Weekly described the Adelanto privatization as an “historic moment for the education-reform movement picking up steam across the nation.” The New York Times dutifully compared the takeover of Desert Trails to “Won’t Back Down.” An “issues” movie starring Face of Indie Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Won’t Back Down” promotes the parent-trigger law as a panacea for America’s public-education problems, one that “empowers” parents to fight back against self-interested public school teachers and their union.
All in all, everyone agreed that this takeover of Desert Trails Elementary represented a triumphant moment for parents and their children, a victory for the people over rapacious elementary school teachers and their unions.
But something didn’t seem right about this story — it was too pat, too much like a triumph-of-the-spirit Disney tale, too much like Maggie’s movie. So I made some calls and started spending some time in Adelanto, to find out what really went on there.
* *
Motorists entering the City of Adelanto are greeted with a big blue sign that reads: “The City With Unlimited Possibilities.” It’s not clear who came up with this slogan, or when. But, these days, the sign is a cruel joke.
Founded in 1915 by the guy who invented the modern electric iron, Adelanto never amounted to much. Mostly it served as pit stop and junkyard to a nearby George Air Force Base. The base closed more than a decade ago, and home values have collapsed since the last real-estate bubble popped. Entire neighborhoods emptied out, and building companies went belly up, leaving behind half-finished “master planned communities” that still stand there, desiccating in the dry heat. Signs advertise brand-new three-bedroom McTractHomes for zero down and $800 a month.
Today, Adelanto is the end of the line. A poor, desert town, the city serves as a dumping ground for low-income minority families who have been squeezed out of the Greater Los Angeles-Orange County region and pushed out over the San Bernardino Mountains into the bleak expanse of the Mojave Desert, where housing is dirt cheap and jobs almost non-existent.
The numbers tell the story: Of the 32,000 people who call Adelanto home, one out of three are below the poverty line. Per-capita income is just under $12,000 — nearly three times lower than the California average, and about as much as the average person earns in Mexico. There are almost no jobs here, and Starbucks ranks among the city’s top-ten employers.
Nearly two-thirds of the population are Latinos, many of them undocumented. Another one in five are African-American. Then there are the 5 percent of the population that the census bureau classifies as “institutionalized,” which is nothing but a wishy-washy bureaucratic way of saying that 1 out of 20 Adelanto residents is currently rotting in jail — a rate five times higher than the national average. Adelanto does not have its own high school, but dropout rates in the neighboring suburb of Victorville, also hard-hit by the subprime bubble, are among the worst in the state — hovering somewhere around 50%.
If you stand at the city’s welcome sign, you can just make out its three major prison facilities: a giant federal prison complex to the north, a brand-new state prison to the west, and just north of that, California’s largest private immigrant deportation facility. The last was built recently by Geo Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison contractor.
* *
I would spend several weeks talking to the parents of children enrolled in Desert Trails Elementary, meeting with them in local taco joints and strip mall diners and talking about what happened. As I had suspected, their version of events turned out not to match the Disney version in national papers.
The parents told me that a Los Angeles-based group calling itself Parent Revolution organized a local campaign to harass and trick them into signing petitions that they thought were meant for simple school improvements. In fact those petitions turned out to be part of a sophisticated campaign to convert their children’s public school into a privately-run charter — something a majority of parents opposed. At times, locals say, the Parent Revolution volunteers’ tactics were so heavy-handed in gathering signatures that they crossed the line into harassment and intimidation. Many parents were misled about what the petition they signed actually meant. Some told me that the intimidation with some of the undocumented Latino residents included bribery and extortion.
They first noticed something was up in the summer of 2011, when small groups of parents decked out in Parent Revolution T-shirts started appearing around town, going door to door to speak to parents of Desert Trails Elementary kids, spreading the word that they were organizing a “parent union” to try to improve the quality of their children’s education.
At that, local parents who’d been involved in school affairs started to grow suspicious. According to several I spoke to, two of the leading members of this new “parent union” had previously served in the school’s Parent Teacher Association, and had resigned amid accusations of improprieties.
Why would they suddenly start a new parent organization? Spite? Revenge? And what exactly was Parent Revolution?
In a post about Campbell Brown’s quest to find someone to take her seriously, I said that the article appears in The Weekly Standard, and I erroneously said that the magazine is owned by Rupert Murdoch. I was wrong. In 2009, Murdoch sold the magazine to fellow billionaire Philip Anschutz.
Anschutz made his billions in many industries, including railroads, sports teams, oil and gas, and movie theaters. He is a big player in fracking. So far, just your run-of-the-mill billionaire.
His political views are far, far right. He supports the Discovery Institute, which favors “intelligent design,” not evolution. He underwrote anti-gay initiatives in Colorado and California. He was a producer of the anti/union, anti-public education “Waiting for Superman.” He funds anti-environment causes. He funded “Won’t Back Down,” a paean to charters and the Parent Trigger, a box-office flop.
When I make mistakes, I own up to them. For me, that’s the best policy.
John Thompson, historian and teacher, analyzes the specious arguments for market-driven reforms. (Note: Although John says that Susan Dynarsky’s New York Times article is “intellectually honest,” I previously wrote that she pulled the reformer trick of studying only successful charter schools in Boston, leaving out the ones that had no lottery, and ignoring the dreadful charters in her own state, Michigan.)
“The second shoe is falling. Hillary Clinton criticized charters for not taking their fair share of the harder-to-teach students. Predictably, corporate reformers have responded as one with their standard talking points. To get a quick overview of the herd of independent minds who are emptying the arsenal of reform soundbites on Mrs. Clinton, check out Real Clear Education.
“Susan Dynarski’s New York Times commentary is a more intellectually honest, but flawed, effort to change the subject from the issue raised by Mrs. Clinton. Dynarski repeats the same market-driven line, “Not all charters are successful, of course, but we should not expect them to be. … Some of these experiments produce great results. Others don’t. It’s the job of government to distinguish between the successful schools and the failures, and to shut down the failures.”
Dynarski acknowledges part of the problem with the research used to promote charters. Quantitative researchers seek to compare the outcomes of students who attend charters with those who applied for the admissions lottery and who were not chosen. The problem is, “Perhaps only the best charters are popular, and that’s why the lottery studies produce such positive estimates. We can’t use the lottery approach to assess a school that does not have high demand for its seats.”
“To her credit, Dynarski acknowledges the flaws in the methodologies that find big benefits for oversubscribed charters and “smaller but still positive gains” for some charters (as in Boston) that are not oversubscribed. But, then she cites a popular high-poverty, high-performing charter, Boston’s Match High School, that actually undermines the case for competition-driven school reform.
“True believers in choice admit that mistakes will be made and students will be hurt by inevitable errors. But give charters enough time and they should learn how to avoid “selection bias;” high-poverty charters that outperform neighborhood schools can somehow be scaled up. Match was established in 2001, however, and it still only serves 290 students.
“A second defense of market-driven reform is offered by Greg Richmond, of the National Association of Charter Authorizers, in his “Blind Men and the Elephant.” Richmond’s logic has a point, but it also undermines the case for charters as they are now being imposed of urban districts.
“Richmond lists multiple, discrete reasons why different people support charters – they are supposedly like blind men touching different parts of an elephant. If each effort to advance charters is as separate as an elephant’s ear is to its tail, competition-driven reform is not an existential threat to the teaching profession and public schools. The goal of the blind men who finance market-driven reform, however, is to pull these different approaches together to destroy “the status quo,” i.e. the traditional education system, unions, local governance, and the teaching profession as we know it.
“Richmond correctly recalls that teachers unions and Hillary Clinton have long believed that “the purpose of charter schools is to offer programs that supplement the offerings of the traditional system and to transfer lessons learned from charter schools into district-operated schools.” Similarly, if charters had remained simply a way to expand choices to families, they would not have carried so many risks.
“But, “mom and pop” charter start-ups were followed by charter management organizations (CMOs) and that increased the dangers of competition-driven reform by helping enable the mass closures of schools. Then, Richman notes, conservatives sought choice as a way of defeating government regulation. Neoliberals and liberals joined in and teamed with “entrepreneurial liberals, some with roots in Silicon Valley, [who] specifically believe charter schools should replace, not supplement, failing urban school systems with a new differentiated system of public schools that prepares all children for college.”
“Had there been a spontaneous generation of parents seeking better options, coincidently timed with the rise of conservative and liberal social policy experimentation, and they all fortuitously sought to amputate different parts of the education elephant, that still would not have been a mortal threat to public schooling. When high stakes testing became the weapon by with each agenda was advanced, the danger became much more profound.
“The final damage was done when the Gates Foundation and the rest of the Billionaires Boys Club, as well as the Duncan administration, funded and united each type of choice supporter into a single, well-choreographed campaign.
“Richmond praises the mass charterization of schools in Denver, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, Washington D.C. and New York. He tries to make it sound like they were each the product of different evolutionary processes, as separate as the different appendages of an elephant. He makes it seem like diverse reformers are still struggling to see the whole picture, as opposed to being teammates, who were brought together by the Billionaires Boys Club, for a winner-take-all competition. Break the teachers unions in such a critical mass of cities, and thus their states, and who will be left to resist corporate reform and ultimately the privatization of public schools?
“And that brings us back to Dynarski’s defense of charters. Clearly, there is no reason to believe that systems of charters can better serve neighborhoods with intense concentration of children from generational poverty who have endured extreme trauma. Neither she, Richmond, or any other charter advocate provide a reason to think that high-performing charters can be scaled up. Market-driven reformers have primarily focused on job #1, blowing up the systems that exist. Edu-philanthropy and the Duncan administration have given them everything they need to launch and all-out assault on traditional public schools.
“Richmond is right about one point, however. Corporate reformers still haven’t given much thought to how they could scale up school improvement after they defeated unions and local school boards. After all, reformers supposedly are blind individuals, supposedly not a part of a well-organized edu-political campaign. They are still pretending that their job is to do no more than chop off the ear, trunk, leg, tail, or whatever they are touching. They’ve barely had a chance to think about replacing the body part they supposedly stumbled across, much less participate as a member of a surgical team trying to put the elephant back together.”
The fight over the future of the Desert Trails Elementary School was a nasty chapter in the history of public education. A billionaire funded group called Parent Revolution to the poor community to persuade parents to sign a petition to change their school. Some thought they were signing a petition for improvements; others knew the petition would turn the school over to a charter operator. A majority of parents signed the petition, but some tried to withdraw their signatures when they realized that they were agreeing to hand the management of their school over to a private board. A judge ruled that those who had signed the petition were not allowed to change their minds, so the petition succeeded with a minority of parent votes. Eventually only a small minority of the parents at the school selected a charter operator to run the school. The main accomplishment of the Parent Trigger was to bring conflict and divisiveness, not better education, to the community.
As I reported in the last post, the local school board rejected a renewal of the charter. You can expect that this matter will go to court, as the Parent Revolution organization has millions of dollars in its coffers.
Since California suspended state testing in its transition from its old standards to the Common Core, there was not much score data. But the crux of the matter can be found in the board’s discussion of governance. Who really was in charge of the charter?
Read this document, in which the board outlines its reasons for denying a renewal of the Desert Trails charter. The key section begins at the bottom of page 4, which reviews the unusual governance structure of the school.
DTPA’s governance structure raises a variety of concerns. DTPA is governed by Desert Trails, Inc., a nonprofit public benefit corporation. However, Desert Trails, Inc. has a sole statutory member, Ed Brokers Educational Services (“Ed Brokers”), another nonprofit public benefit corporation. Among other broad authority vested in Ed Brokers is the authority to approve a majority of Desert Trails, Inc.’s directors as well as removing any director at any time, thereby effectively giving Ed Brokers absolute control over the corporation and the Charter School. Thus, while technically DTPA is governed by Desert Trails, Inc., it is for all intents and purposes actually governed by Ed Brokers, and the Desert Trails, Inc. Board is under Ed Brokers’ authority.
Neither the Charter nor the bylaws provide any information about this sole statutory member of the Desert Trails, Inc. corporation, and the District is given no involvement or effective oversight authority over Ed Brokers. As a result of this structure, grave concerns arise as to what, if any, real authority the Desert Trails, Inc. Board has over DTPA, and corresponding concerns about the District’s ability effectively to exercise its oversight obligations. This corporate structure and DTPA’s Charter do not effectively ensure public access and accountability by specifically requiring Ed Brokers to comply with the Brown Act, Public Records Act, Political Reform Act, and/or other conflict of interest laws applicable to public agencies, and other similar laws and requirements that dictate transparency and public accountability in the operation of the public school system, including charter schools.
It is a most unusual arrangement, and it gets even more complicated.
Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times reports that a secret PAC assembled $2.3 million and funneled it to the political arm of the California Charter Schools Association, which used it to finance the campaigns of three pro-charter school candidates in the recent school board election. Two of the three won their seats, including Ref Rodriguez, who founded and runs a chain of charter schools. The names of the donors were not revealed until the election was over.
Those contributions — from philanthropist Eli Broad, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and others — were made prior to the May 19 election to California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, a political action committee in Sacramento. That group then forwarded campaign funds to a local affiliated committee.
The Los Angeles-based PAC was required by campaign laws only to identify the state charter group as the source of the funding, not the individual donors.
As a result, the donors remained anonymous in Los Angeles campaign filings. In September, the state charter group filed a required state report listing all its contributors.
While the practice appears to be within the law, state campaign regulators said they are concerned about how the contributions remained unreported for so long.
A spokesman for the Charter Association said it turns to outside backers because it would otherwise be outspent by the teachers union. In fact, the CCSA spent $2.7 million, compared to the union’s $1.6 million. So, follow the logic: funding provided from the salaries of teachers is comparable to funding from billionaires like the Waltons, Broad, and Bloomberg.
It’s sad that billionaires have no way to make their voices heard. So they feel compelled to try to buy the school board because they know more than the teachers who work there.
Among the charter donors not disclosed in L.A. filings was Bloomberg, who gave $350,000 in 2015. Bloomberg already had contributed $250,000 in 2014, an amount that was disclosed prior to the election because the funds arrived before the end of 2014.
Other donors from 2015 who were disclosed after the election included:
• Gap clothing co-founder Doris Fisher ($750,000). The longtime charter supporter also gave $550,000 in 2014.
• Wal-Mart Corp. heirs Carrie W. Penner ($150,000) and Jim Walton ($225,000). The two also gave a combined $620,000 in 2014.
• Grower Barbara Grimm ($500,000), owner of one of California’s largest farming operations, who started a charter school near Bakersfield. Grimm also gave $586,400 in 2014.
• Emerson Collective ($150,000), a corporation under the control of Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, which supports charitable and political causes.
• Investor John H. Scully ($100,000). He and his wife also gave $400,000 in 2014.
• Philanthropist Eli Broad ($50,000). He also gave $305,000 to the state charter PAC in 2014.
The issue of so-called “dark money” has touched Broad and the Fisher family before. In the 2012 election, the Fishers gave $9 million and Broad, $1 million, to groups that concealed the sources of these donations. The money was used to oppose a tax increase to fund education and in support of a ballot measure to limit union participation in political campaigns. The tax increase passed, the anti-union measure failed and the dark money maneuvering led to fines for some of the participants, although not the donors.
As in this year’s elections, the mega-donors have not always carried the day. In the 2013 elections, candidates backed by wealthy donors lost two of three contests, including one in which incumbent Steve Zimmer prevailed. He used the identity of the donors as an effective counterpunch to their resources.
“They’re truly funded by and accountable to the 1%,” Zimmer said of the charter advocacy group.
I seem to get an unusual number of contacts from people who have left teaching at Success Academy; recently I had a long meeting with someone working at the central headquarters of SA. Everyone wants to clear his/her conscience. I tell them to write it down. Not everyone does. This teacher did.
Why I Left Success Academy
I recently resigned from my teaching position at Success Academy after over a year with the large New York City charter school network. My reason for leaving was twofold: the environment was toxic for children, and, in turn, employees.
As I look back, my biggest regret is not trusting my gut and leaving in the first month.
Upon hire, I was placed in an Assistant Teacher role in a classroom at one of the Success Academy (“SA”) elementary school locations. The teacher I was placed with, a woman who I will call Ms. X, was lauded as having a strong command of the SA teaching model. From the first day that our young scholars arrived, her style was rigid and militaristic. I recognize that every teacher has her own style, and that having order in a classroom is of utmost importance, but I quickly began to feel uneasy with her approach to behavior management and instruction. Multiple children would cry daily because their academic performance was not up to her standards. Corrections and time outs were given for the inability to solve problems the “correct” way. The barking at and scolding of these six and seven year-old children was constant.
Ms. X would refer to certain students as “stupid” during teacher meetings. There was one particular child for which she had little patience. After I felt she was physically rough with this child, I confided in another teacher at the school. This teacher conveyed the incident to the Principal. The Principal immediately met with me. Rather than concern, she expressed frustration at the fact that I had talked to another teacher about the incident. The Principal appeared agitated as she stated she would have to investigate this issue. Despite stating she would investigate, she asked me no questions about the incident. Within a few weeks of this incident, I was moved to another classroom within the school. Nothing came of that incident; I am quite sure it was never mentioned again after that day. I note that Ms. X was promoted in 2015.
The classroom I was moved into was led by Mr. Z. This classroom was a joyous one, and I built strong relationships with the children and parents. Despite the fact that the classroom was joy-filled and the children learned, the leadership team frowned upon Mr. Z’s teaching practice. It was clear that Mr. Z loved children and wanted them to succeed, but he did not fit the SA mold; that rigid, behavior management style where children must sit perfectly straight with locked hands every minute. Mr. Z stayed until the end of the school year, and then found employment at another school.
I did not get to stay with that classroom. In February, the Principal told me she had an “opportunity” for me to help out at another SA location, a struggling school in our Network. I was advised by other teachers that when leadership presents you with such an “opportunity,” you do not say no, as you will be viewed as uncooperative; that this was not an option, but a must.
Thus, in mid-February of 2015, I began teaching fourth grade scholars at another SA location. This particular SA location had gained notoriety throughout the Network for its “unruly” children. Nonetheless, I felt optimistic about having my own classroom; I had received little feedback about my teaching at the first SA location, but had led my second classroom on my own plenty of times and, when I did receive feedback, it was positive.
After seven days of teaching fourth grade, the Principal stated she was concerned about management and moved me out of the position. She had never once observed me teach. I was the fourth teacher to fill that position during the school year. I was left bewildered as to what had gone wrong; I had barely been observed by the Dean, who seemed too “busy” to be bothered, and was given little instruction as to what their vision was for the class.
Thereafter, I became a science teacher for scholars in kindergarten and first grade. Some of the children were labeled as what the Network refers to “BBGLs”: Behavior Below Grade Level scholars, meaning their behavior was an issue. Indeed, there were some concerning behavior issues at the school: children pushing over or throwing desks and chairs, biting teachers, and running out of classrooms. I taught science class alone and often found certain scholars unmanageable. When I asked for support from the Dean, she did not answer calls or texts.
The Dean would intermittently and inconsistently suspend children. Sometimes, if a child ran out of a classroom, he or she would be suspended. But other children were consistently suspended. I could not discern any rhyme or reason to the suspensions. One of my kindergarten scholars, “M”, was suspended constantly, almost every other day of school at times. M’s father had passed away earlier in the year, and he clearly was not dealing well with this change. I do not know how M’s single, working mother, who had other children, dealt with her child being out of school every other day.
I built strong relationships with many of my science students, and they performed well on their science assessments. As a whole, however, my time at this second SA school was difficult and confusing. I and many other teachers felt frustrated and unsupported. During the time I was there, I watched as teachers were mysteriously fired or demoted.
At the end of the year, I was advised by head of Human Resources, Andrew Lauck, that I would be teaching at another SA location in the fall. I was not told there was any particular reason for this move, just that I would be teaching at another location. I had met with Mr. Lauck twice in the preceding year to discuss my trajectory, and at our last meeting in February we had discussed me being a lead teacher in my own classroom for the 2015-2016 academic year.
In the first week of June of 2015, I set up a visit to the new SA location at which I would be teaching in the fall. I met and had a brief, albeit bizarre, conversation with the Principal, during which time she discussed the culture of her school as one where behavior management is a non-issue. I felt unwelcome and uncomfortable during my first meeting with her.
In mid-June, this Principal (Principal “Y”) had the Network reach out to me and ask if I would fill a non-teaching (data management) position. I was confused, as teaching experience was a necessity in my career trajectory. I fearfully declined the position, and reached out to Principal Y for clarification on why she wanted me to move into a non-teaching position. After attempting to contact her three times without response, I gave up.
On August 17, 2015, I began teaching an ICT (Integrated Co-Teaching) class with a co-teacher at Principal Y’s school. Essentially, about 40% of my children had individualized education plans, and are educated with peers in a general education classroom setting. From the first day, I knew I had a great group of children, and was enjoying teaching and getting to know each of them with my co-teacher.
On August 25, after seven school days, I was brought to a meeting with the Principal and the Vice Principal. At this time, Principal stated that I had the “lowest performing classroom” in the school, which consists of approximately 600 students. Notably, the children had not taken a single assessment, and I had been observed briefly on two occasions. Their “low performance” was based not on academics, but on their posture and my “scanning and noticing” as to whether their hands were locked, eyes were tracking, and backs were straight at all times. I was told by Principal Y that the bar was set too low in my classroom; that I was an ineffective teacher; and that I had no passion for teaching and should have taken the data management position she recommended in June. I knew better than to ask questions or try to refute their statements, because I would be labeled “difficult” or unwilling to receive feedback. I was, frankly, worried about losing my job. I informed her that I would like to continue teaching, as I knew I could “turn around” my classroom. I left the meeting with no tangible advice or next steps.
Immediately following the meeting, I received an email from Mr. Lauck asking whether I would like to reconsider the data management position. It became clear to me at that time that Principal Y and Mr. Lauck were trying to push me into a non-teaching position because I did not fit the SA mold, one in which children are expected to have locked hands and straight backs all day.
Notably, the first suspension in my class had also occurred on August 25. One of my scholars, a BBGL, was suspended for “violent behavior by balling his fists up and throwing his papers on the floor.” This decision was made by the Dean, and was one with which I did not feel comfortable. This scholar was subsequently suspended again on September 29 for kicking another scholar. I met with the Dean multiple times regarding this scholar; multiple times she stated that “Success Academy is not for everyone.”
Three other suspensions occurred in my class. One of my special education students was suspended twice. On the first occasion, September 23, he was found being disruptive in the bathroom. His disruptive behavior occurred frequently; he was hyperactive and it was nearly impossible for him to sit still during a lesson, let alone lock his hands. As a result, he racked up corrections and became frustrated daily. It was a Catch 22: if I did not give him corrections, I would be deemed ineffective; if I did, the child became frustrated. So, on that particular day, he was brought to the Dean. When he went to the Dean, he allegedly refused to speak to her. On September 23, he was suspended for “Repeatedly refusing to respond when addressed by leadership.”
In the following weeks, Principal Y scolded my grade team for the amount of suspensions that were occurring. Clearly, there was the overarching concern of increasing the school’s suspension data. Like academic data, the suspension data of each school is tracked by the Network, and schools are ranked against one another. Leaders feared being reprimanded about their suspension data.
In October, leadership began to observe in our classrooms daily. No feedback was given during these visits. The grade team felt tense and nervous; it was not made clear to teachers why leadership was present in rooms daily. Principal Y would enter the classroom, scowling, and said very little. When she did speak, she seemed irritated with children and teachers alike. We had daily team meetings during one of our two prep periods about “pressing” the children.
The environment was toxic. Between September and October, teachers quit, were fired, and were hired. Teachers were moved around classrooms as the staff continued to change. Colleagues wondered why leadership was observing in classrooms daily, and whether they were going to be fired. Teachers would hide in the bathroom and cry; leadership found it funny to say “keep the crying to yourself” or “go cry in the bathroom.”
This environment is challenging for both new and veteran teachers at Success Academy. The time constraints of having only one forty-minute prep during a school day that exceeds nine hours, followed by staying late hours after children were dismissed, led to frustrated teachers that worked late nights and weekends. Teachers’ responsibilities are constantly increased. Additionally, teachers felt nervous and tense with constant observations and negative feedback. Teachers were hanging on by a thread, to say the least.
At SA, there is an emphasis on question-based learning and avoiding direct instruction; direct instruction is indeed a huge “no-no” that will get you in big trouble as an SA teacher (drone?). That said, on the day or days before an internal assessment, teachers will clear schedules to make time to prep for what will be tested on the upcoming assessment. That means drilling students on problems and concepts that will be tested on the assessment. Internal assessments are almost every week; so a large portion of at least one day a week is spent drilling on standards that will be on an upcoming assessment. SA teachers do teach/focus on what will be on the exam. As for state test preparation, that is all testing grade students do come February: prepare for the tests. The entire day is spent on practice tests and questions, and reviewing same. The only breaks are for lunch, recess, and reward/incentive time for students who perform well. Students who do not perform well are corralled into groups to be reprimanded and to re-take their assessments. Teachers are required to come in on certain Saturdays for test prep during this “test prep season,” which lasts for months (February through mid-April).
I knew that this organization was taking advantage of teachers. It became difficult for me to put on the show every day; to act like I was 100% behind their system. I never stopped working hard, but my morale plummeted. While I believed in, and still believe in, Success Academy’s mission of giving children an excellent public education, I could not support their drastic behavioral expectations and discipline policies for children, as well as the way they exploit and demoralize teachers.
I believe my low morale was noticed, and in November, I received a new wave of negative feedback around my “body language.” Leadership claimed I had negative body language not while I was teaching, but while I observed others teaching. I knew that I would never be able to fit the SA mold and could no longer fake agreement with their policies; that they wanted me out; and that they would continue to think of ways to break down my morale. So, I left.
I feel sad that I’ve left the kids and their families. I loved my kids and all of their unique personalities. It thrilled me to watch them learn and grow. I had good relationships with many of their parents, and I feel as though I disappointed them and let them down by abandoning them during the school year. But this was a move I had to make. I could no longer take being a cog in the SA machine, perpetuating what I feel is unfair and abusive treatment of children and employees alike.
The for-profit Chester Community Charter School has been a continual source of controversy. The founder, a lawyer, was one of the biggest donors to Republican Governor Tom Corbett and served on his education transition team. He made millions by supplying the goods and services needed by the school. The charter school, which claimed excellent test scores, drew more than half the students in its district, leaving the public schools teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. By state formula, the charter school is paid more for each special education student than the district is paid, further impoverishing the district since the funding comes out of the district’s allotment of state money. In recent years, teachers have had to work without salary until state aid bailed out the district.
Now the school and its staff stand accused of having systematically cheated on tests.
The Notebook in Philadelphia reports:
A former testing coordinator at Chester Community Charter School, the state’s largest bricks-and-mortar charter with more than 3,000 students, has been sanctioned by the state for “systemic violations of the security of the PSSA exams” over the five-year period between 2007 and 2011.
The school was under scrutiny for testing irregularities by the Pennsylvania Department of Education as part of a statewide cheating scandal that broke in 2011.
CCCS is operated for profit by a company owned by Vahan Gureghian, a major Republican donor and power broker who was among the largest individual contributors to former Gov. Tom Corbett’s campaign and a member of his education transition team. During his term, Corbett visited CCCS to tout it as an exemplar of high-quality education for low-income communities.
Now with two campuses, CCCS has drawn more than half the K-8 students who live in the Chester Upland School District.
The state’s disciplinary action against the former coordinator, Patricia A. Sciamanna, was for violating testing rules during years that CCCS was struggling to meet federal student proficiency targets used for critical decisions, including whether a charter should be renewed.
The Pennsylvania Professional Standards and Practices Commission (PSPC) suspended Sciamanna’s instructional and administrative licenses, as well as her eligibility to work in a charter or cyber charter, for two years….
The school’s statement reiterated its longstanding position that PDE has made no determination against the school itself in regards to cheating.
“The PDE closed its review of CCCS in September 2012, with no finding of wrongdoing by the school,” the statement said.
That month, a letter from PDE sent to CCCS, however, cited “overwhelming evidence of testing irregularities” and required the school to adopt strict testing protocols.
CCCS is now one of nine districts or charters in the state on an “open watch list,” meaning that its test administration continues to be closely monitored and supervised by PDE.
Test scores at the school plunged under new security measures and have remained relatively low since.
Although much of the public attention around adult cheating on standardized tests in Pennsylvania has been focused on Philadelphia schools, the statewide investigation launched in 2011 probed suspicious results in 38 districts and 11 charters across Pennsylvania.
One was CCCS.
In July 2011, the Notebook and NewsWorks reported on a state-commissioned analysis showing widespread test score irregularities at dozens of Pennsylvania schools in 2009. In response, the Pennsylvania Department of Education commissioned a further analysis of PSSA results from 2010 to 2011, then launched an investigation into those whose results was most suspicious. CCCS was flagged multiple times for an unusually high number of wrong-to-right erasures on the test booklets.
The investigation went on for more than a year. The September 2012 letter, sent by then-Deputy Education Secretary Carolyn Dumaresq, recounted how PDE initiated the probe “based on the statistical improbability that the students made these erasures themselves.”
But PDE then allowed the school to conduct its own investigation, “which did not yield clear conclusions notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of testing irregularities,” the letter said.
In February of that year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, CCCS attorney Francis J. Catania had written to Dumaresq that the school’s investigation “uncovered absolutely no evidence of testing improprieties or irregularities” – instead establishing that “improvements in PSSA test scoring are the direct result of hard work, innovative educational programming and persistent preparation by the students, teachers, administrators and parents at CCCS, and not some purported nefarious conduct or ‘cheating.'”
Catania suggested the erasures were due to test-taking strategies taught to the students.
Nevertheless, after the school reported the inconclusive results, “PDE returned to complete its investigation,” according to Dumaresq’s letter. PDE then spelled out strict testing protocols that the school said it would follow, including 24-hour security cameras where the tests are stored and in all classrooms in which students take them. In addition, PDE sent outside monitors to supervise all test administrations.
Through its history, CCCS struggled to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the test score and performance targets under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The school made AYP in 2004 but then fell short for four years in a row from 2005 through 2008.
A fifth year of failing to meet targets would have triggered sanctions under NCLB, including a potential change in management.
The scores climbed in 2009, and for three years in a row, through 2011, they were high enough for the school to earn Adequate Yearly Progress status, an indicator that enhanced the school’s credibility in the Chester community. The school’s enrollment saw continued growth.
After the strict test protocols were put in place in 2012, proficiency rates at CCCS plummeted by an average of 30 percentage points in every grade and subject. In letters to parents and the media, the school blamed the drop on budget cuts.
Since then, scores have remained low – similar to scores of some Chester-Upland district schools.
That district has been in dire financial straits for decades, most recently exacerbated by its huge payments to CCCS and two other charters. Due to quirks in the state charter funding formula, the district sends $40,000 for each special education student at a charter, a figure that far outstrips any other in the state and has helped to virtually bankrupt Chester schools.
This fall, when it was unclear whether Chester’s district schools could afford to open their doors, Gov. Wolf sought a rescue plan for the district in which, among other actions, the payments to the charters for special education students would be lowered to $16,000. The charters, including CCCS, agreed to accept a payment of $27,000 per student as part of a compromise plan that was approved by the courts…
The settlement with Sciamanna was the result of a negotiation. The state Department of Education, which brought the complaint in October 2013, had initially sought permanent revocation of her credentials but settled for the two-year suspension.
A review of the state’s website listing disciplinary actions against Pennsylvania educators shows most of those implicated in the cheating scandal in Philadelphia received harsher punishments than did Sciamanna. For example, the five Philadelphia School District teachers identified by the state for disciplinary action in 2014 – Radovan Bratic, Michael Reardon, Phyllis Patselas, Alene Goldstein, and Deborah Edwards Dillard – all had to surrender their teaching certifications.
