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Arizona Charters Hit Jackpot with Federal Paycheck Protection Program

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2020 //
13

The federal CARES Act included the Paycheck Protection Program to help struggling small businesses and nonprofits survive the pandemic. Lobbyists for the charter industry slipped in a provision enabling charter schools to apply for PPP funding, even though they experienced no financial losses. Charter schools got a share of the $13.2 billion allotted to the nation’s early 100,000 public schools. The average public school received about $135,000 to meet the expenses of the pandemic. On the advice of their lobbyists, some 1200 charters also sought and won PPP funding. Thus charters drew funding from two sources; public schools were not eligible for PPP funding. Charters that applied for PPP funding won six times as much federal money as public schools.

The Arizona Republic reported that the Primavera online charter school in Arizona won a sizable “loan” (1% interest, forgivable), at the same time that its owner took a $10 million bonus.

Primavera online charter school, like many businesses this spring, sought help from the federal Paycheck Protection Program to weather the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chandler-based school received a PPP loan of nearly $2.2 million, the largest forgivable loan among the 132 Arizona charter schools that obtained them.

But Primavera’s loan appears to have been more of a bonus than a lifeline. 

The school, which like all Arizona public schools didn’t lose state funding because of the pandemic, ended its fiscal year on June 30 with $8.8 million in the bank — almost double the annual payroll costs for its 85 teachers, records show.

The school also shipped $10 million to its lone shareholder: StrongMind, an affiliated company owned by Primavera’s founder and former CEO Damian Creamer.

The school’s annual audit indicates Creamer controls both Primavera and StrongMind, noting he has “the ability to influence the school’s operations for the benefit of StrongMind.” Primavera paid StrongMind nearly $23 million this past fiscal year for software and curriculum services, records show.

Creamer declined to comment.

An Arizona Republic review of more than 100 charter school financial records, audits and federal Small Business Administration documents found the overwhelming majority of the Arizona charter schools that obtained PPP loans didn’t need the money.

John Todd, a longtime auditor of Arizona charter schools, said there are numerous problems with fully funded charter schools getting PPP loans intended to help struggling businesses.

“The PPP loans are taxpayer dollars intended to help the needy, not the greedy,” Todd said.

A few charters, including Legacy Traditional Schools, repaid several million dollars worth of PPP loans after The Republic reported in August that Legacy and other operators had millions of dollars in the bank when they received loans.

Most charters that got loans didn’t need them

The Republic found that most of the charter schools getting PPP funds padded their cash balances (savings accounts), and a few for-profit charter operations, like Primavera, gave money away to shareholders that matched or exceeded their PPP loan amounts.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of small businesses have permanently closed because of COVID-19.

Further, The Republic found that PPP loans didn’t significantly enhance teacher pay at schools that received them. The 132 Arizona charter school loan recipients, on average, paid their teachers several thousands dollars less than the statewide average.The 132 charter schools receiving PPP loans increased teacher pay by an average of 5% — an amount similar to all 555 charter operations and 263 school districts.

Arizona public schools saw no major job losses or layoffs this year because the state Legislature fully funded schools and gave them additional money to raise teacher pay.

A 2018 Republic investigation found the state’s charter school industry, which gets more than $1 billion annually from the state general fund, has produced several multi-millionaires through self-dealing and lax oversight.

Creamer is among the prominent figures who’ve made millions of dollars operating Arizona charter schools. His online alternative school boasts more than 20,000 full- and part-time students. Primavera paid Creamer $10.1 million in 2017 and 2018. 

A spokesman for StrongMind declined to say how much the company paid Creamer. 

Ian Kidd, superintendent of Pima Prevention Partnership, said financially strong charter schools that took PPP loans open themselves to criticism and scrutiny. 

“I don’t subscribe to making money off of students. It’s not appropriate,” Kidd said.

Kidd said he obtained PPP loans for his three charter schools, but the money was used to cover social and behavioral services for low-income, at-risk kids. His three charters had a combined negative $7,031 in cash balances, even after getting PPP loans.

The SBA, under pressure from news outlets, recently released specific figures for all PPP loan recipients. Previously, it released only the names of the borrowers and loan ranges above $150,000.

The earlier SBA records had indicated about 100 Arizona charter schools had received up to $100 million in PPP loans. The new data shows about 30 more charter schools got loans.

Several watchdog groups, including Accountable.Us, have panned the loan program for enriching companies that didn’t need the money while shutting out many minority- and women-owned businesses.

Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.Us, which compiled a database of all PPP recipients, said there has been widespread fraud and abuse of the program, including celebrities and wealthy companies getting loans. 

“The Trump administration’s faulty design and mismanagement of the Paycheck Protection Program let thousands of mom-and-pop businesses slip through the cracks without adequate aid while charter schools cashed in,” Herrig said…

Arizona Schools Superintendent Kathy Hoffman, who also is a member of the Charter Board, said she was astonished by The Republic’s findings.

“It saddens me those dollars are not going to students,” she said. “It’s very excessive. These dollars should be going where they are needed most, and that’s the students and instructional needs.”

Hoffman, a Democrat, said Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and the GOP-controlled Legislature should consider reducing state funding for full-time virtual charter schools like Primavera, which receives nearly the same per-student funding as brick-and-mortar schools that have more costs.

Ducey, at a news conference Wednesday, declined to answer questions regarding Hoffman’s proposal. He also declined to answer whether charter schools that received the PPP loans should return the money or have their state funding reduced by an amount equal to the loans.

Primavera's founder and former CEO Damian Creamer has been a major political donor to Gov. Doug Ducey, records show.

Ducey said the PPP loans were a federal issue, but added: “I want to make sure all public schools have available funding.”

Creamer has been a major political donor to Ducey, records show. 

Creamer spent at least $137,650 during the past two elections to mostly help conservative Republicans retain control of the Legislature. Among his political giving was $50,000 in December 2019 to the Republican Legislative Victory Fund, state campaign finance records show.

There has been no significant effort by Republicans in the Legislature to change the funding formula for online charter schools. A few of those lawmakers have financial interests in charter schools…

Paying shareholders, boosting reserves

In addition to Primavera, at least three other charter school operators that received PPP loans paid distributions to shareholders. Most of the rest put large sums in savings. 

The Republic found:

• The average Arizona charter school PPP loan was $393,055. Nationally, at least 5.2 million loans for small businesses were approved totaling $525 billion, with the average loan being $100,729, according to the SBA.

• The year-end cash balance for the 132 Arizona charter schools that received $51.8 million in PPP loans in April and May, increased by $62.6 million. Individually, cash balances increased for 87% of the loan recipients.

• Twenty-one charter schools that received PPP loans increased their cash reserves by at least $1 million, with Primavera seeing a $3.3 million increase.

Educational Options Foundation of Peoria, which got a $278,292 loan, saw its cash balance increase by $2 million to $13.7 million. The school has enough money to operate for four years without additional money. The state Charter Board only requires  schools to have one month of cash liquidity. A call to the school was not returned.

• For-profit charters Humanities and Sciences Academy in Tempe and Accelerated Learning Center in Phoenix made shareholder distributions of $388,770 and $230,000 this past fiscal year, respectively. Both amounts exceed the charters’ PPP loans.

The Montessori Schoolhouse of Tucson gave a shareholder distribution of $92,372, equal to about 72% of its PPP loan.

Calls to the three schools were not returned.

Jim Hall, a former public school administrator who runs Arizonans for Charter School Accountability, compiled financial records from charter schools that received PPP loans and said he concluded that they didn’t need the money. 

Hall said those loans should have gone to small businesses that have struggled to make payroll or mortgage payments. He said several of the charter operators engaged in “unmitigated greed.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Funding

Missouri Grants First Charter Outside Two Biggest Districts

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2020 //
3

Up until now, the only districts with charters in Missouri were St. Louis and Kansas City, the state’s two biggest districts. But the state board just granted a charter for a new school in the Normandy district, one of the state’s poorest and lowest performing.

The state board of education approved the charter with six votes in favor, one against, and one abstention.

Normandy lost its state accreditation in 2012, triggering a student transfer law that bled it of funding and students. The state school board bumped the district up to provisional accreditation in 2017. Academics have improved in recent years but the district still struggles. Less than half of third-graders passed state math and reading assessments in 2019. Its high school graduation rate in May was 69%.

Because of the district’s obstacles, state board member Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge, who previously served on Normandy’s governing board, voted against the charter.

“You can’t morally advance options and choice for one group by taking away the rights and choice of another,” she said...

Some elected leaders who represent the towns that make up the Normandy school district oppose this new charter, arguing all available resources should be poured into improving the district’s struggling schools.

Normandy’s school board is also skeptical of the encroaching school. Townsend went before the board Monday to offer partnership opportunities, but board member Ronald Roberts said the school’s track record doesn’t give him confidence for the future.

“It sounds like the community engagement process was disjointed, for lack of a better term, and there were missed opportunities for collaboration,” he said.

Other members called Townsend an outsider because she grew up in Chicago. She’s lived and taught in the St. Louis area for 18 years, including some in Normandy. She met with area parents and held virtual sessions this year to promote the new school.

Normandy educates children from 24 municipalities in near-north St. Louis County. Its enrollment has been dwindling for the past two decades, down to about 3,000 students from nearly 5,900 in 1991.

The Leadership School will start with 125 children in kindergarten through second grade with plans to grow a grade each year until hitting 450 students through eighth grade. The location of the school has not been determined. The Special School District will provide special education services, as it does for all public schools in St. Louis County.

No one suggests that the charter will somehow improve the education available for the 3,000 students in the district. The logic is that providing a charter for 450 students while abandoning the other 2,550 students is a good deal.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Missouri

Carol Burris: How Charter Schools Cashed in on the Paycheck Protection Program

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2020 //
22

Dr. Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that works to strengthen and improve public schools. Nearly 400,000 people in every state support its activities. Burris was a teacher and an award-winning principal in New York State.

This summer, the Network for Public Education reported that charter schools had received between one and two billion dollars in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Small Business Administration loans. In most cases, these low-interest loans will not have to be paid back, resulting in a windfall for recipients. 

PPP amounts were initially reported in ranges and excluded any grantees that received below $150,000. Thanks to reporters’ persistence, however, we now know the exact amount and the smaller grantees who received PPP.

We matched the amounts with our previously identified group of charter schools and charter chain recipients. In total, those charters received an astounding $1,279,455,958. You can find a complete list of the charter schools and what they got here.

In addition to schools, charter support and advocacy organizations got PPP.  You can find that list here. It includes the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, which bragged that it made sure charter schools were included in PPP. NAPCS took $672,800, while the billionaire-funded California Charter Schools Association cashed in at $1,028,200.

We also scanned the new lists of small grants for charter school entries.  Because there were so many entries, we did a simple search on the words “charter school.”  This resulted in the identification (see here) of an additional $7 million going to charter schools. There is no doubt that a full search would uncover at least four times that amount.

How did the charter sector do?  When you add the pieces together, it adds up to nearly $1.3 billion.

Here are some highlights.

The largest amount ($8,377,100.00) given to a charter school went to Granada Hills High School, once a highly-regarded public school in an affluent area outside of Los Angeles that converted to a charter school.  

The second-largest amount went to Antelope Valley High School, which is “powered by” Learn4Life. Learn4Life is a charter school chain that operates by giving at-risk students worksheets they complete and return to Learn4Life centers often located in strip malls and shopping plazas. Learn4Life is now led by Caprice Young, who previously led the California Charter Schools Association and Magnolia charter schools, connected to the Gulen school chain. The entire Learn4Life chain received over $32 million. 

Finally, schools and nonprofits managed by the for-profit Academica chain received over $28.6 million in PPP.  

Charter schools claim to be public schools. They received public school funding via the CARES Act. Unlike the small businesses that shut down during the pandemic, thus losing their revenue stream, charter schools moved to remote learning, and their public tax dollar income stream continued.

It appears a new round of CARES Act funding is imminent. We will be watching to see if charter schools use their “private” status to cash in again. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding

Paul Peterson: “No, Al Shanker Did Not Invent the Charter School”

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2020 //
35

This is a fascinating article written by Paul Peterson of Harvard University about the origin of the charter school idea.

Many people credit the idea to Al Shanker and Ray Budde of the University of Massachusetts, but Peterson sets them straight.

Peterson is the foremost proponent of school choice, charters and vouchers, in the academic world. He has trained many of the other prominent academics who support school choice, such as Jay Greene and Patrick Wolf, both at the University of Arkansas’ Department of Educational Reform (sic).

Peterson writes about the original proposals by Budde and Shanker but then notes that their ideas were fundamentally transformed by Minnesota reformers Ted Kolderie and Joe Nathan. Budde and Shanker wanted the charters to be district-controlled and friendly to unions.

Peterson writes:

Even though it is fashionable enough to credit Shanker for jump-starting the charter movement that even the Wall Street Journal is joining in, there is only a glimmer of truth to that urban legend. In actuality, Shanker did more to block charters than to advance the idea.

When putting together an account of the origins of charter schools for my book, Saving Schools From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning, I had the opportunity to sort out what Shanker did and did not do for charters.  It’s true that Shanker, when first teaching in East Harlem, came to despise administrators who he felt were crushing the spirits of young teachers. So when he first encountered the charter idea advanced by Roy Budde, an unknown professor of education from upstate New York, Shanker, recalling life in East Harlem, gave charters his endorsement: “One of the things that discourages people from bringing about change in schools is the experience of having that effort stopped for no good reason,” he opined. So the Wall Street Journal story is not technically in error.

But charters only took off because others radicalized the charter concept Budde had devised. Reading Shanker’s column, Joe Nathan and Ted Kolderie, at work on educational reform in Minnesota, saw potential in the charter idea. Delighted that the powerful Al Shanker had given it his blessing, they invited him to the Twin Cities to help peddle it to Governor Rudy Perpich and the state’s legislature.

But as they worked on the legislation that was eventually passed in 1991, Nathan and Kolderie fundamentally altered the charter concept.  According to the Budde model, charters were to be authorized by school districts and run by teachers. Central office administrators were to be pushed aside, but charter schools would still operate within collective bargaining arrangements negotiated between districts and unions.

Nathan and Kolderie instead proposed that schools be authorized by statewide agencies that were separate and apart from local district control. That opened charter doors not only to teachers but also to outside entrepreneurs. Competition between charters and districts was to be encouraged.  All of a sudden, charter schools were free of the constraints imposed by collective bargaining contracts districts negotiated with unions.

At this point, Shanker signed off, calling charters a “gimmick,” and teacher unions ever since have done their best to slow the movement down, insisting that charters be authorized only if local districts agree, as well as burdening charters with numerous regulations, including a requirement that they be subject to collective bargaining.  For Shanker and his heirs, the collective bargaining agreement always came first.

Thanks to Kolderie and Nathan, the charter idea was immediately embraced by rightwing foundations who really wanted vouchers, but realized that charters were an easier sell.

Thanks to them, more than 90% of charters today are non-union, are under-regulated, and have virtually no oversight.

Thanks to them, charters have drawn the support of not only right-wingers like Betsy DeVos and Charles Koch as a battering ram to use against public schools, but are a magnet for entrepreneurs, real estate speculators, corporate charter chains, and grifters.

Of course, they are some mom-and-pop or teacher-led charters trying to revive the original idea. But the industry far outweighs their efforts.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Unions

Florida: Leader of Closed Charter School Indicted for Embezzlement

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2020 //
3

The leader of Paramount Charter School in Broward County, now closed, was indicted for theft of federal funds. The school opened in 2015, promising to provide an education that would meet “the highest academic and personal standards.” Didn’t happen, say parents. After compiling a terrible academic record, the school closed in 2017.

Shauta Freeman, who said she sent three children there from 2015 to 2016, said the lights cut off at times, the water wouldn’t run, and so many teachers were fired that students from various grade levels were crowded into one room. “It was a nightmare.”

Now, the former president of the school, Jimika Williams, has been federally indicted on the charge of stealing federal funds from the school and committing wire fraud.…

The indictment accuses Williams of embezzling nearly $389,000 in funds intended to go toward the school’s operating expenses. Instead, the indictment says they were used to buy a new car, pay her rent at a lavish Davie home and other expenses.

According to the indictment, Williams transferred funds from the school’s bank account to a shell account she set up to “deceive” other members of the governing board, auditors, local education authorities and others...

Freeman said the school initially sounded amazing when she first enrolled her children. But shortly after starting school she said her kids reported being left outside for long stretches of time, little to no instruction, days without lunch, and fighting between teachers and students...

According to the indictment, while Paramount struggled to staff classrooms and properly educate students, Williams made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for the school.

Between 2015 and 2017, the indictment says she made almost monthly transfers between the school’s account and a shell account she created for sums ranging from $3,000 to $50,000 at a time.

This kind of behavior can be expected in states where anyone can open a charter school, and where oversight, accountability, and transparency are lax.

Categories Charter Schools, Corruption, Florida, Fraud

Florina Rodov: Why I Stopped Teaching in a Charter School

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2020 //
22

Journalist Florina Rodov taught for several years in a New York City public schools, but she was turned off by the testing craze and the paperwork. Then she heard about these remarkable new schools called “charter schools.” She heard they were academically superior, safe, free of the bureaucracy of public schools, and she applied to work in a charter school in Los Angeles. The principal told her that the school was like a family. It sounded wonderful.

But then her eyes were opened.

I soon realized there was a gulf between charter school hype and reality. Every day brought shocking and disturbing revelations: high attrition rates of students and teachers, dangerous working conditions, widespread suspensions, harassment of teachers, violations against students with disabilities, nepotism, and fraud. By the end of the school year, I vowed never to step foot in a charter school again, and to fight for the protection of public schools like never before.

On August 15, my first day of work, I dashed into the school’s newest home, a crumbling building on the campus of a public middle school in South Los Angeles. Greeting my colleagues, who were coughing due to the dust in the air, I realized most of us were new. It wasn’t just several people who had quit over the summer, but more than half the faculty — 8 out of 15 teachers. Among the highly qualified new hires were a seasoned calculus teacher; an experienced sixth grade humanities teacher; a physics instructor who’d previously taught college; an actor turned biology teacher; and a young and exuberant special education teacher.

When the old-timers trickled in, they told us there’d been attrition among the students, too: 202 of 270 hadn’t returned, and not all their seats had been filled. Because funding was tied to enrollment, the school was struggling financially.

Her first-person tell-all pulls the curtain away from the charter myth. On Twitter, Rodov describes herself as a “fierce advocate for public schools.” Read this article and you will understand why.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Teaching

Oakland School Board Election: Money Can’t Buy Everything

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2020 //
10

Ken Rice was an elected member of the Oakland Unified School District from 1997-2000. That was before the billionaire disrupters decided to take control of Oakland and turn it into their own petri dish for “reform” (i.e., privatization). Rice wrote the following description of the recent school board election, in which grassroots organizations stood together and beat the candidates of the out-of-district/out-of-state billionaires. He is a member of Educators for Democratic Schools (EDS), an Oakland-based organization composed primarily of retired public school teachers, administrators and school board members. When Ken Rice ran for school board, his race cost $12,000. Due to the intrusion of big money, grassroots groups are always outspent and usually overwhelmed. But Rice explains here how Oakland parents and educators fought back and won.

He writes:

Apparently Money Isn’t Always Everything–$300,000 Beats $900,000 In The Oakland School Board Elections!

“In nearly 20 years of privatization push into Oakland, this is the first time since 2003 that Oakland schools will be returned to local control by a school board that values and embraces authentic public education. Remaining hopeful for the future, and look forward to strengthening and improving Oakland’s schools.” ~ Diane Ravitch 

The Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), the petri dish for school privatization for the past two decades, might have an answer.  I ran and was elected to the Oakland school board and served one term (1997-2000).  I raised $12,000.  My opponent raised about the same amount.  In those days the school board elections were neighborhood races funded by local supporters. There was no out of state money or PACs involved. 

That began to change about ten years ago:  huge donations from individuals and foundations began to pour into Oakland school board races.  The money was funneled through the California Charter School Association and GO (Great Oakland Public Schools), a pro-charter organization.  The money also came from Michael Bloomberg, the Walton Foundation, Eli Broad, Laurene Jobs (Steve Jobs’ widow), and several more.  The goal was to elect a pro-charter, Board of Education. Unsurprisingly, the pro-charter organizations were successful.  

The Oakland school board has approved about 65 charter school applications over the last twenty years–many of them in the last 12 years.   Of those charters, about twenty have closed their doors—in some cases during the academic year, causing great dislocation to families who had to find another school for their children mid-year.  OUSD now has 30% of its 50,000 students in charter schools—the highest percentage of students in charters of any school district in California. 

What is surprising is what happened in the 2020 election.  For the first time in memory no incumbents were running for any of the four of the seven school board seats up for election.  Thus, there was a possibility of greatly changing the make-up of the school board, whose majority has opted for policies of charter school approval, school closures and lack of responsiveness to the greater Oakland educational community.  This was an opportunity to flip the board . . . and flip it did!

The charter community recognized this opportunity, and poured almost $900,000 into electing their candidates for the four open seats! Yet when the votes were counted, three of their four candidates lost.

Trying to understand how and why this happened can provide an insight into the educational landscape of not only Oakland, but urban cities nationally.  While it might be early to know for certain why the charter candidates were defeated, we can make some educated guesses.

Strong Local Candidates

Two of the three candidates who won had deep Oakland roots.  Two had been teachers (one in Oakland, one in San Francisco) and the other had worked in Oakland’s after school programs.   Two had been community activists around school issues for years.  

Oakland elections are calculated by ranked choice voting (RCV).  When the RCV was tabulated, Sam Davis, the candidate in District 1 received 62% of the vote.  Sam built a stellar campaign focused around school communities. He held zoom meetings with each school community in his district hosted by a combination of parents and teachers who worked in those schools.  VanCedric Williams, in District 3, got 61%.  VanCedric, a public school teacher for almost twenty years, had strong support from the teacher’s union as well as other unions. Mike Hutchinson in District 5 got 56%.  Mike had run for the Board previously, networked with other education activists nationwide, and had built a reputation of challenging Board policies by going to Board meetings for years and reaching out on social media. 

Backing of the Teacher’s Union

Last year, teachers in Oakland led a successful strike. The union’s ability to drum up enthusiasm with their members was one contributor to that success.  Teachers recognized that if their future demands were to be met, they needed to have a responsive Board.  Specifically, the current Board was considering a plan that would close up to 24 schools in Oakland, mostly in Brown and Black communities.  At the same time, none of the 44 charter schools in Oakland were under threat of closure.  Teachers made the connection between a charter friendly board and school closures of the public schools and were determined to change the direction of the district’s “blueprint”.

Teachers phone banked, texted, walked to drop off literature, and held zoom meetings in support of the three candidates who won.  As Sam Davis noted, many voters tend to rely on their friends and neighbors who know something about the schools.  The friends and neighbors were telling each other to vote for the candidates they trusted.

Backing of Other Groups:  Building a Coalition

The three candidates were endorsed by the Democratic Party.  This wasn’t an accident.  Educational activists pushed the local democratic clubs to endorse candidates who would not be friendly to charters and wouldn’t owe their election to big money.  These clubs, in turn, pushed the local Democratic party.  In California the state Democratic party has taken a critical stance towards charter schools, and this was replicated locally.  Organizers noticed that as people walked to the polls on election day, many of them carried the Democratic Party door hanger with them. Some of these candidates were also endorsed by :

  • The Alameda Central Labor Council
  • SEIU 1021
  • State Assemblyperson Rob Bonta
  • State Superintendent of Schools Tony Thurmond
  • Network for Public Education

Also, other community organizations like Educators for Democratic Schools, Democratic Socialists of America, and Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club helped to call, text, and walk precincts.

The Word is Out

You can fool some of the people all of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, or so Lincoln believed.  Over time, the general public has begun to understand that there is an attempt to buy their votes.  As I dropped off a flier at one home, a parent came to the door and asked, with hostility, “This isn’t the candidate who is getting all that money from Bloomberg, is it?”  Several media sources reported on money from Bloomberg ($500,000 from Bloomberg alone!) and others pouring into Oakland.  

After recovering from the astonishment that anyone would spend that kind of money for a school board election, voters became leery of candidates receiving those huge amounts of money.  In District 1 where I live–and the charter candidate received nearly $300,000!–I found glossy fliers in my mailboxes more times than I could keep track of.

It is profoundly disturbing and a huge threat to our democracy that this big money trend has filtered down to local school board races. The Oakland community fought back against the billionaires’ spending advantage, and when the new board is seated in January, it will have a clear pro-public school majority.  With appealing candidates and strong ground games, Oakland voters have shown that big money can be defeated. While Oakland will never go back to the days when a local neighborhood candidate spent only $12,000 to be elected, this recent victory over out of state billionaire bucks and their agenda sends a clear signal that our community will not be bought.

(Ken Rice is former OUSD board member, a member of Educators for Democratic Schools and currently has a daughter attending an OUSD school.) 

Categories Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Oakland, Privatization, Propaganda, Resistance

Jeff Bryant: What Is Worse Than DeVos?

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2020 //
30

Jeff Bryant writes that while we were all celebrating the pending departure of Betsy DeVos, the usual suspects were buying control of local school board elections. We are all aware of her efforts to direct federal funding to private schools and charter schools. But, he warns, we should pay attention to the “threat to democratically governed schools that preceded DeVos and will continue when she is long gone.”

In midsized metropolitan areas like Indianapolis and Stockton, California, parents, teachers, and public school advocates warn of huge sums of money coming from outside their communities to influence local politics and bankroll school board candidates who support school privatization. In phone conversations, emails, and texts, they point to a national agenda, backed by deep-pocketed organizations and individuals who intend to disrupt local school governance in order to impose forms of schools that operate like private contractors rather than public agencies—an agenda not dissimilar from that of DeVos.

In the 2020 school board election in Indianapolis, local teachers and grassroots groups the Indiana Coalition for Public Education and the IPS Community Coalition backed four candidates against a slate of opponents whom locals accuse of representing outside interests. At stake, according to WFYI, was “an ideological tilt” over whether the district would continue to “collaborate with outside groups and charter organizations” or “return to more traditional methods of improving struggling schools.”

Both sides raise the banner of “improving struggling schools,” but locals say what’s really at stake is whether voters retain democratic control of their public schools or see them turned over to private, unelected boards and their corporate supporters and funders.

Similarly, in Stockton, the clash between opposing slates of candidates in the 2020 school board election included controversies over charter school expansion and the influence of outside money in the district.

The controversy broke into public view in July 2020 when 209 Times reportedthat “[p]aid operatives” connected to Stockton’s outgoing mayor Michael Tubbs and three school board members were engaged in “a coordinated campaign of undue influence from outside of the city whose aim is… charter school expansion” into the district.

In both elections, candidates backed by outside organizations and individuals massively outspent candidates supported by local teachers and public school advocates.

In Indianapolis, WFYI reported that political action committees supporting the candidates aligned with charter school interests had contributed more than $200,000 into the election by October 9, while the “[f]our candidates backed by the IPS Community Coalition… [had by then] raised less than $20,000 in total.”

In Stockton, 209 Politics reported independent expenditure committees supporting candidates favoring charter school expansion outspent their opponents 25 to 1.

While the language used by these outside organizations and their benefactors is different from the rhetoric DeVos wields—substituting a message of rescuing struggling schools for DeVos’s calls for libertarian autonomy—the result is much the same: local citizens see democratic governance of their schools being swept aside as private actors get more control to do what they want.

This effort to squelch local democracy is funded by the usual billionaires:  the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Walton Family Foundation, of Walmart fame; Arnold Ventures, the private foundation of former hedge fund manager and Enron trader John Arnold; and the City Fund, a nationwide organization providing financial support for city-level charter school expansions.

The City Fund is a relatively new organization of experienced charter school promoters that started on day one with $200 million from billionaires John Arnold and Reed Hastings. Its mission: to use the money to undermine democratic control of local school boards and to see that charter-friendly candidates are elected.

The other organization used by the billionaires to funnel money into the Indianapolis school board election was the notorious Stand for Children, which has played the same role in other districts. “Stand” worked closely with the Mind Trust, a local cheerleader for privatization, also funded by billionaires who don’t like local control or democracy.

Bryant reports that another PAC, aligned with Stand for Children, entered the race on behalf of the Alice Walton and Michael Bloomberg, neither of whom lives in Indianapolis or in Indiana.

Bryant relies on the careful research of Thomas Ultican, who has been documenting the billionaires’ determination to take control of urban districts. Their strategy is to promote the “portfolio model” of schools. This is basically a rightwing business agenda that aligns with a corporate model of governance. Outsource management and control. Close low-performing schools, open new schools; repeat.

In the Indianapolis contest, the billionaire-backed candidates outspent the teacher union-backed candidates by a margin of 11-1. All four of the charter-friendly candidates won.

In Stockton, the teacher- and community-backed candidates won.

Please read the article. There is much to learn from it as a cautionary tale.

Here’s the question that lingers: Charter schools are no longer an innovation. The first charter school opened in 1992, almost three decades ago. There is no evidence that charters as such have produced miraculous improvement. Some get high test scores, but typically because they can choose their students and kick out the ones they don’t want. Some are far worse than the public schools they replaced. Some close mid-year, either for financial or academic reasons or low enrollment.

Why are these billionaires so devoted to imposing their ideas on local communities without regard to results? Is it because they disdain democracy?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Disruption, Failure

Tennessee: Why Do Failed Reforms Survive, Only to Fail Again?

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2020 //
19

In 2012, Tennessee created the “Achievement School District” (ASD) and promised that it would catapult the state’s lowest performing schools into high-performing schools. So confident were state leaders that they hired Chris Barbic, who ran a celebrated charter chain in Houston, and he was confident that the state’s weakest schools could be transformed within five years by handing them over to charter operators. Other states were excited by the idea and created their own state takeover districts.

The ASD failed, even though it was funded by $100 million in Race to the Top money. But Tennessee refuses to accept that taking over struggling schools and giving them to charter operators is a bad idea.

The North Carolina Policy Watch reported on Tennessee’s insistence on protecting failure. North Carolina created an “Innovative School District,” modeled on the ASD.

Greg Childress writes:

The state-run school district in Tennessee, the one on which this state’s Innovative School District (ISD) is modeled, has failed.

According to reports out of Tennessee, the Achievement School District (ASD), is working on a plan to return 30 ASD schools in Memphis and Nashville to their local districts by 2022.

State officials in Tennessee contend the district, which was established in 2012 to improve achievement in low-performing schools, “grew too quickly” and that “demand outpaced supply and capacity.”

Still, Tennessee officials aren’t giving up on the ASD. They’re billing the new proposal as a “reset” of the district, which has fallen short of its goals to move low-performing schools from the bottom 5 percent and into the top 25 percent.

Most ASD schools were handed over to charter school operators after being pulled from local districts.

“The Achievement School District remains a necessary intervention in Tennessee’s school framework when other local interventions have proven to be unsuccessful in improving outcomes for students,” officials said in a presentation obtained by Chalkbeat.

“The Commercial Appeal” in Memphis reports that most of the schools remain in the bottom 5 percent and that several have closed due to low enrollment. Teacher retention has also been a major challenge, the paper reports.

Tennessee school officials plan to stand by their Big Idea, even though its failure is clear even to them.

North Carolina’s “Innovative School District” has not fared any better. Although the state wanted the ISD to be a major reform effort, like the ASD, only one school entered the new district. NC had other low-performing schools, but whenever one was told to join the ISD, its leaders ran to their elected officials and got exempted.

To put it mildly, NC’s ISD has “struggled to get off the ground.”

Childress writes:

After only one year, state officials made wholesale leadership changes at ISD. The ISD got a new superintendent, the lone ISD school got a new principal and a new president was hired to lead the private firm that manages the school.

James Ellerbe, the ISD superintendent hired in July, reported this week that there are 69 schools on the state’s 2019 qualifying list, meaning the low-performing schools are at risk of being swept into the ISD.

The ISD will bring only one school into the state-run district next year. The school with the lowest performance score among Title I schools in the bottom 5 percent will be brought into the ISD.

The ISD was approved in 2016 by state lawmakers even though the ASD had showed little signs of success after being in business four years.

Not only is the NC ISD based on a failed model, its one school has both a principal and a superintendent!

All of which leaves unanswered question, why do failed reforms never die?


Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, North Carolina, Race to the Top, Tennessee

Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Scheider: What Betsy DeVos Accomplished

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2020 //
15

Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider have written a valuable new book called A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School. They recently published an opinion article in The New York Times in which they demonstrate the role of Betsy DeVos in the “school reform” movement. They point out that Congress rejected her primary policy goal–sending public funding to private voucher schools–and that the new Biden administration is certain to reverse her assault on civil rights enforcement in education.

Her major accomplishment, they argue, was not one that she aimed for. She managed to disrupt the bipartisan consensus on national education policy, embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations. That consensus consisted of high-stakes testing and charter schools. Because DeVos advocated for charters and vouchers, many Democrats now view them warily and recognize that school choice was always a conservative policy. DeVos was never a huge supporter of high-stakes standardized testing except to the extent that test scores could be used to harm public schools. Her primary interest was defunding public schools and helping religious schools. Thanks to DeVos, the Democratic party may have fallen out of love with school choice.

They write:

More than three decades ago, conventional Republicans and centrist Democrats signed on to an unwritten treaty. Conservatives agreed to mute their push for private school vouchers, their preference for religious schools and their desire to slash spending on public school systems. In return, Democrats effectively gave up the push for school integration and embraced policies that reined in teachers unions.

Together, led by federal policy elites, Republicans and Democrats espoused the logic of markets in the public sphere, expanding school choice through publicly funded charter schools. Competition, both sides agreed, would strengthen schools. And the introduction of charters, this contingent believed, would empower parents as consumers by even further untethering school enrollment from family residence...

Through her attention-attracting assault on the public education system, Betsy DeVos has actually given the next secretary of education an opportunity — to recommit to public education as a public good, and a cornerstone of our democracy.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Vouchers
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