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West Virginia: Legislators Advancing Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2021 //
2

West Virginia was the first site of the Red for Ed teachers’ movement. The teachers of the state captured national attention for their statewide strike. Their strike included a number of issues, not only salaries and health care, but also charter schools. Teachers correctly saw them as a means of diverting funding from public schools. They wanted well-resourced public schools. But given the GOP dominance of the legislature, the charter supporters demanded charter legislation, and the best the teachers could was to limit their number.

Now, in the middle of the pandemic, the GOP is coming back with both charter and voucher legislation. The bills are advancing rapidly and teachers can’t mass their numbers in the Capitol due to restrictions on access.

CHARLESTON — Bills on schedule to pass the state House of Delegates this week would allow faster charter school expansion, promote online charter schools and give parents public money for non-public schooling.

It’s just the second week of the legislative session.

Fresh off their first statewide strike a year earlier, public school workers in 2019 shut down classrooms again to oppose an omnibus education bill that, among many other things, would’ve legalized charter schools and vouchers to provide public money for private- and home-schooling.

The effort staved off vouchers and limited charter schools to no more than three until July 1, 2023. County boards of education also were generally given veto power over charters.

This time, facing a Republican governor paired with Republican supermajorities in both legislative chambers, state public school worker unions are taking a more cautious approach.

“Maybe fight is not the best word, but to support our stand,” said Fred Albert, president of the state branch of the American Federation of Teachers, “and we’ve said this a million times: Elections have consequences. And we’ve always been about trying to elect friends of public education and people who support public education … [W]e know it’s going to be an uphill battle…”

Time to stop the bills appeared to be running out three days into the session. Perhaps it ran out in November.

By just Day Two of the session, House Republicans had already advanced charter school and voucher bills from the House Education Committee, which has been the graveyard of previous union-opposed legislation. The House Finance Committee passed the vouchers bill Saturday.

If the full House passes the bills, they head to the Senate, where there has historically been even more support for such legislation. A simple majority can override a gubernatorial veto...

Other factors could be affecting workers’ ability to combat the legislation. Many have borne personal tolls from the pandemic.

“People are dying,” White said. He said he confirmed Thursday five of his union members had died.

“I think people are feeling overwhelmed with the pandemic,” Albert said. “There’s a lot of fear out there for their own health and safety and for their children and classrooms.”

Teachers and others also have waged wearying battles over mandated returns to classrooms.

“I think people are exhausted from the fights over school reopening,” said Jay O’Neal, a teacher at West Side Middle who helped galvanize the 2018 and 2019 strikes.

A perfect time to sabotage public schools and their teachers, when everyone is 3xhausted.


Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, West Virginia

Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske: States Need an Equity-Oriented Accountability System for Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2021 //
3

Distinguished economist Helen Ladd and her husband, journalist Edward Fiske, studied the accountability system for charter schools in Massachusetts. They specifically addressed equity issues of access, fairness, and availability of a high-quality education, not test scores. They found considerable variation among charter schools, as one would expect. They also found that some charter schools had unusually high attrition rates and unusually high suspension rates. These should concern policy makers, whose goal is to offer better opportunities for disadvantaged students. Their aim in writing the paper is to alert policymakers to the value of an equity-oriented accountability system that goes beyond test scores.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Equity, Massachusetts

Rhode Island Senate Democrats Pass Three-Year Moratorium on New Charters

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2021 //
2

The Rhode Island State Senate overwhelmingly passed a three-year moratorium on the opening of new charter schools. The vote was 30-6, with only one Democrat in opposition. Under the leadership of Governor Gina Raimondo, who is about to become President Biden’s Commerce Secretary, the state has welcomed charter operators (Raimondo was a hedge fund executive before she became Governor).

This delay offers state officials time to stabilize public schools in Providence and elsewhere, where charters have flocked and removed students and funding.

Linda Borg of the Providence Journal reports:

Sen. Ryan Pearson has seen Cumberland, one of his districts, lose a significant number of traditional public school students to charter schools. 

He argued that the latest charter expansion would have a devastating financial impact on the sending districts, as much as $92 million in lost tuition. The funding or per pupil expenditure “follows” the student from his or her original district to the charter school.

“Two weeks ago,” Ryan said, “I asked Providence for a plan” to explain how the district would make up for an estimated $80-plus million in lost tuition. “Fourteen days later, that plan has not arrived.”

School choice, he and others said, costs money. 

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Rhode Island

My Interview with Karen Lewis at Annual NPE Conference in 2015

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2021 //
0

I think you will enjoy watching this spirited discussion between me and Karen Lewis at the annual NPE conference in Chicago in 2015. I spoke more than she did because I wanted to make it as easy as possible for her. She had already suffered her devastating brain tumor and was undergoing treatment, but as you will see, she has lost none of her sharp wit and edginess.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Reform, Students, Teachers, Unions

In the Public Interest: The Latest Charter School Scandals

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2021 //
2

In the Public Interest is a nonpartisan organization that protects the public interest and has a special focus on the dangers of privatization.

Here is its latest report on charter schools:

Welcome to Cashing in on Kids, an email newsletter for people fed up with the privatization of America’s public schools—produced by In the Public Interest.

Not a subscriber? Sign up. And make sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Democratic charter school advocates are starting to help elect Republicans. Author and host of the Have You Heard podcast Jennifer Berkshire pointed out a noteworthy trend in the ever-shifting partisan dynamics of public school privatization. “Well-heeled Democratic charter advocates [are] spending big to elect Republicans.” This includes cofounder of Netflix Reed Hastings, a longtime charter school backer. Twitter

This pairs well with journalist Rebecca Klein’s breakdown of how state governments are carrying former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s torch as they consider school voucher programs. HuffPost

Now the rest of the news…

“Enabling theft and fraud” in Los Angeles. Carl Peterson documents how the Los Angeles Unifed School District continues to take away building space from public school students to give to charter schools, with past due bills totaling $1.9 million. Patch

Charter school founder gets a year in prison. The founder of a defunct charter school in St. Louis, Missouri, has been sentenced to 366 days in prison and ordered to repay nearly $2.4 million in state funding obtained by falsifying student attendance. St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Charter schools invaded our neighborhoods without public input.” A group of parents, teachers, and educators in East Los Angeles detail how their neighborhoods have become saturated with charter schools to the detriment of public schools. Age of Awareness

And here’s this week’s opportunity to connect…

The Coalition for Community Schools and Institute for Educational Leadership is hosting a coalition town hall on racial equity in the “community school” model. Join February 23, 2021 2:00 – 3:00 PM ET. Coalition for Community Schools

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Hoax, Privatization, Scandals

Sarah Karp: Karen Lewis, A Fearless Warrior for Children and Teachers

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2021 //
9

By now, you have read many tributes to Karen Lewis. She was an icon who fought the powerful. Teachers and parents trusted her because they knew she would never sell them out.

This is a beautiful tribute to Karen by Sarah Karp, one of Chicago’s most experienced education journalists. It captures Karen’s brashness, her fearlessness, her passion.

Some of her colorful quotes:

Lewis’ message resonated because she was willing to stand up for teachers at a time when teachers were under attack and somewhat downtrodden. She unapologetically labeled people as villains and enemies if she thought they disrespected public school teachers and public education.

Chief among them was former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Early on in her tenure as union president, she emerged from a meeting with Emanuel and revealed he had sworn at her. This came after she called the longer school day he was pushing a “babysitting” initiative.

“He jumped out of his chair and said, F-you Lewis,” she recalled. “And I jumped out of my chair and said, who the F do you think you are talking to? I don’t work for you.”

She called Rahm “the murder mayor.”

“Look at the murder rate in this city. He’s murdering schools. He’s murdering jobs. He’s murdering housing. I don’t know what else to call him. He’s the murder mayor,” she said during the school closing fight.

And she once told a group of community and business leaders that then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, who for years held up the passage of a state budget until his agenda was approved, was a new “ISIS recruit … because the things he’s doing look like acts of terror on poor and working-class people,” she said.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Education Reform, Resistance, Students, Teachers, Unions

Why Does the Thomas B. Fordham Institute Control Education Policy in Ohio?

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2021 //
7

Writing in ohiocapital.com, Jeanne Melvin and Denis Smith denounced the central role that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute plays in directing education policy in Ohio. TBF is the think tank of the Ohio Republican Party; that party has controlled the state in recent years. It is curious that TBF directs education policy in Ohio since TBF is based in Washington, D.C.

Melvin is a parent activist, and Smith worked for the Ohio Department of Education.

In Ohio, TBF has been a strong advocate for high-stakes testing and school privatization. It has pushed charter schools and other conservative reforms in Ohio.

As the article says, TBF is an advocacy organization, not a think tank. Its policy positions are aligned with other conservative organizations, still promoting the failed reforms of the past two decades, unable to imagine schools that are not subject to high-stakes testing, unable to imagine schools that are not governed by carrots-and-sticks. TBF is also a charter school authorizer and collects a percentage of the state revenue for every student who enrolls in one of their charter schools. Many of their charter schools have failed. Most charter schools in Ohio are rated low-performing by the state.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Ohio, School Choice, Standardized Testing

Historian Warns Iowa: Fix Public Schools, Don’t Destroy Them

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2021 //
16

Randall Balmer is one of Iowa’s most accomplished sons. After growing up in Iowa and attending its public schools, he went on to success as a historian, author, and professor, now at Dartmouth College. In addition to writing award-winning books about religion, he wrote a biography of President Jimmy Carter and won an Emmy for a three-part PBS series on the Evangelical church.

He wrote a compelling editorial warning Iowans against the Republicans’ plans to introduce a sweeping choice plan, which will divert students and funding from community public schools. He called school choice a “mirage.”

He began with plain truths:

As a graduate of Iowa public schools, I was saddened to read about the governor’s “school choice” proposal. Public education is one of our nation’s best ideas, and the persistent attempts on the part of politicians to undermine it with the misleading rhetoric of “choice” represents a real threat to the future of democracy.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Hoax, Iowa, School Choice, Vouchers

Biden Administration Adds “Reformers” to Key Roles in Department of Education

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2021 //
50

Here we go again. Before either Secretary-designate Miguel Cardona or Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten have been confirmed by the Senate, key jobs in the Department of Education are being filled by staff from the Gates Foundation and DFER, both of which are champions of bad ideas and antagonists of public schools. From my experience in the U.S. Department of Education, it is customary to allow the Secretary and Deputy Secretary to choose their assistant secretaries, and the assistant secretaries choose their deputies. These appointments seem to have been made by the White House. Please note that the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development shapes policy for the Department. The administration previously announced a fervent supporter of high-stakes testing—Ian Rosenblum of Education Trust in New York—as the acting Assistant Secretary for that office.

Andrew Ujifusa reports in Education Week:

The latest round of political appointees to the U.S. Department of Education include a veteran of Capitol Hill and Beltway education groups, the former leader of Democrats for Education Reform’s District of Columbia affiliate, and two former Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation staffers.

The Biden administration appointments, announced Feb. 3, fill spots in key offices, although nominees forthe top jobs in the office for civil rights and office of planning, evaluation, and policy development. (We gave folks a heads up about two of the most recent appointments hereand here before they were officially announced.) However, a few such jobs are being filled on an acting basis.

It’s difficult to discern just one trend or policy direction based on Biden’s Education Department appointments so far; those who’ve worked for and supported teachers’ unions in the past, for example, will be working alongside union skeptics and those who’ve drawn labor’s ire in the past. The administration announced its first set of department appointees last month, and it included two former National Education Association staffers.…

Here are a few notable names from the latest round of appointments:

Jessica Cardichon, deputy assistant secretary, office of planning, evaluation, and policy development. Cardichon is an education policy veteran in Washington. She comes to the Education Department from the Learning Policy Institute, a K-12 policy and research group founded and led by Linda Darling-Hammond, who led Biden’s transition team for the department. Cardichon was the group’s federal policy director. While at LPI, Cardichon contributed to reports about COVID-19 relief, how to “reimagine schooling,” and student access to certified teachers.  [I worked during the election on a committee on assessment chaired by Cardichon on behalf of Biden. I urged the committee to recommend a suspension of the federally mandated testing in spring 2021 and to propose the elimination of that part of the law. When my proposals were ignored, I resigned from the committee.]

She’s also worked as education counsel to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the Senate education committee; the Alliance for Excellent Education, a research and advocacy group, and at Teachers College, Columbia University. A long-time ally of teachers’ unions and a critic of standardized testing, Sanders has taken on a big role in the Senate during the creation of a new COVID-19 relief package. 

Ramin Taheri, chief of staff, office for civil rights. Taheri comes to the department after serving as the District of Columbia chapter director of Democrats for Education Reform, a group that promotes charter schools, K-12 education funding, test-based teacher and school accountability, and other policies. The group divides opinion in the left-leaning K-12 policy space. Some have championed the group for focusing on issues they say will better served students of color and disadvantaged learners, while other claim DFER undermines teachers’ unions and traditional public schools. News that DFER was backing certain big-city superintendents to be Biden’s education secretary provoked pushback from union supporters and others skeptical of DFER. (Cardona was not on DFER’s list of preferred choices.) Taheri has also worked at Chiefs for Change, a group of district superintendents that provokes similar, if not identical, political sentiments. 

Last year, DFER’s D.C. chapter under Taheri provoked controversy by singling out a candidate for the District of Columbia Council for wanting to cut police funding. Asked about the negative advertising, Taheri told the Washington City paper that the group wanted to inform voters about issues beyond education, and that the candidate’s position on police budgets was “deeply unpopular” with voters. (The candidate, Janeese Lewis George, who accused DFER of fearmongering, ultimately won her election.) The question of whether police should be in schools, and educators’ attitudes toward school resource officers, gained prominence after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of police last year. The City Paper’s story about DFER’s mailers focused on George was published three days after Floyd’s death. Taheri later said that the group’s mailers were a mistake. 

Nick Lee, deputy assistant secretary, office of planning, evaluation, and policy development; Sara Garcia, special assistant, office of planning, evaluation, and policy development. Both Lee and Garcia come to the department from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where Lee was a senior program officer and Garcia was a program officer. 

Although Lee previously managed $10 million in annual education grants covering both K-12 and higher education, according to his LinkedIn profile, he’s now listed himself as an assistant secretary for higher education at the department as of this month. Garcia also has a background in higher education, and used to work on the Senate education committee for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who is now chairwoman of the committee.

The Gates Foundation has had a long, complex, and controversial involvement in education policy. For many years, it focused its considerable grant-making power on teacher effectiveness, teacher-performance systems, and support for the Common Core State Standards; by 2015, the foundation estimated it had put $900 million in grants toward teacher policy and programs. Previously, it had focused on supporting small high schools. These efforts became more politically controversial over time. 

Supporters have applauded its focus on educators and improving instruction, while critics say its outsized influence has had a detrimental effect on policymakers. A 2018 study of one of its biggest teacher-effectiveness efforts in three districts showed no gains for students. 

In recent years, the foundation has shifted its focus to support higher education access for students of color and disadvantaged students. (Note: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides general operating support to Education Week, which retains sole editorial control over its content.) 

The full list of appointments announced Feb. 3 is here.

https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-education-announces-more-biden-harris-appointees

Categories Biden, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Disruption, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Standardized Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Pennsylvania: What HappenedWhen Governor Wolf Asked for Accountability from Charters

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2021 //
15

Peter Greene describes the shocked reaction of charter operators when Governor Tom Wolf proposed that they be regularly audited and that their payments should be aligned with 5heir services. Pennsylvania has a funding formula that is heavily tilted to favor the charter industry. Their lobbyists want to keep it that way.

In his 2020 budget speech, Wolf tried to soothe the industry and thread the needle, saying that Pennsylvania students should get a great education “whether in a traditional public school or a charter school” an noting that “Pennsylvania has a history of school choice, which I support.” But he also said that some charter schools are “little more than fronts for private management companies, and the only innovations they’re coming up with involve finding new ways to take money out of the pockets of property taxpayers.”

The 2021 budget has several features to tighten up Pennsylvania’s exceptionally loose charter industry. 

Pennsylvania’s 14 cyber charters will be audited. “Wait,” you say. “the cyber charters aren’t audited?” The answer is “barely;” six of the charters have never been audited at all, and the largest cyber charter in the state, Commonwealth Charter Academy, was last audited in 2012. 

The proposal also targets cyber charter funding, one of the deeply nonsensical features of the Pennsylvania charter landscape. Cybers get 100% of the same payment as a brick and mortar charter school–even though they have no bricks, no mortar, and none of the other expenses of an actual school building. Consequently, cyber schools in PA are making money hand over fist, and taxpayer dollars go to things like advertising ($1,000 per student recruited at one charter) and, no kidding, a cool robot dog. The governor proposes to set a statewide cyber tuition rate that is still mighty generous. The state’s in-house online education program costs about $5,400 per student per year, and the governor proposes a set $9,500 tuition rate.

The proposal also looks to fix the charter reimbursement rate for special ed. Currently, a charter gets the same high payment rate for all special ed students, whether they need a full-time aid and extensive specialized supports, or they just need a few adaptations in a regular classroom. That has made students with special needs into cash cows in PA. This is extra nuts because PAS actually has a tiered system for rating special needs–it just isn’t used when paying charters. The governor’s proposal is that charters should be paid an amount in line with the actual costs of educating the students.

The governor also proposes more oversight and accountability for the Education Improvement Tax Credit and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit, Pennsylvania’s two tax credit scholarship (aka voucher) programs.

Wolf also plans to address Pennsylvania’s funding inequities, among the very worst in the nation, with a nearly $2 billion increase in school spending. So charters get less, and public schools get more (including getting to keep more of the public tax dollars they used to have to hand over to charters).

None of this is a hit with the school choice crowd. It’s a little nuts, really, because the governor’s proposal boils down to “Pay the charters what it actually costs to educate the students instead of paying them what it costs to educate the students PLUS a big fat taxpayer-funded bonus.” It’s an exceptionally not-very-radical proposal.

But the pushback is already coming, because GOP leaders in the House and Senate are already prepped and ready to join the national push for more choiciness. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Funding, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools
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