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Perry Bacon, Jr.: Education “Reform” Is Dying, Now We Can Begin to Improve Education

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2023 //
15

Perry Bacon, Jr. is a relatively new columnist at the Washington Post. He joined the Post a year ago and writes about national and state politics and race. His latest column in the Post startled me and perhaps others, because the Post editorial board has been an enthusiastic supporter of the worst kinds of punitive corporate reform. The Post editorial board frequently defended No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the teacher-bashing by Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. Seldom was a contrary view expressed, except on Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet blog, which was a haven for critics of the failed reforms based on testing, punishment, and privatization.

The article begins:

America’s decades-long, bipartisan “education reform” movement, defined by an obsession with test scores and by viewing education largely as a tool for getting people higher-paying jobs, is finally in decline. What should replace it is an education system that values learning, creativity, integration and citizenship.

Joe Biden is the first president in decades not aggressively pushing an education agenda that casts American schools and students as struggling and in desperate need of fixing. He has not stated that “education is the civil rights issue of our time,” a sentence said by presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. His administration has backed policies, such as an expanded child tax credit, that view giving people more money, not more education, as the main way to reduce poverty.

There is a push from experts and politicians across partisan lines, including from Biden, to get employers to stop requiring college degrees for so many jobs. There is also a growing defense of college students who study English, literature and other subjects that don’t obviously lead to jobs in the way that, say, engineering does.

An education gospel is being dismantled, one that was 40 years in the making. In 1983, the Reagan administration released a report called “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” It warned that America’s status as an economic powerhouse was under threat because its students were doing so much worse than those from other industrialized nations on standardized tests. That report put education reform on the national agenda and explicitly tied it to economic growth.

But this education fixation wasn’t just about the economy. The two parties couldn’t agree on racial policy. Democrats wanted more funding and explicit policies to help Black people and heavily Black areas to make up for past discrimination, and the Republicans largely opposed them.
What Democrats and Republicans could agree on was making education a priority. So Republican politicians, particularly Bush, pumped more money into schools, as Democrats wanted. And Democrats broadly adopted the view that education was the main way for Black people to make up for the effects of racism, thereby shifting responsibility for Black advancement from the government to individual African Americans, as Republicans wanted.

Eventually education, particularly getting a college degree, became viewed as the primary way for economic advancement for not just Black people but people of all races who weren’t born into the middle class.
The result was a bipartisan education fixation for much of the period between 1990 and 2016. It included the expansion of charter and magnet schools as an alternative to traditional public schools; an obsession with improving student test scores; accountability systems that punished schools and teachers if their kids didn’t score well; increased government spending on college loans and grants as part of a movement to make college essentially universal; and a push for Black students in particular not to just get college degrees but ones in “STEM” fields (science, technology, engineering and math) that would help them get higher-paying jobs.

This agenda was racial, economic and education policy all wrapped into one.

The problem is that this education push didn’t work. While the number of Americans who have graduated from high school and college have skyrocketed in the past three decades, wages and wealth haven’t grown nearly as much. Black people in particular haven’t seen economic gains matching these huge increases in education levels.

The remainder of the column nails the point: the education reform movement of the past few decades is a failure. It’s time for fresh thinking, centered on the idea that education is first and foremost about learning, not test scores.

But if the real aim of education policy is no longer really economic and racial policy, what should its goals be? Neither party seems to have a clear answer. Most Democrats defend teachers, a core party constituency, and extol public schools and community colleges, trying to shed the Democrats’ reputation as the party for graduates of Ivy League schools. But they don’t have a broader theory of education policy.


The Republicans are doing something much worse. At the state level, they are largely abandoning public schools and instead aggressively pushing universal voucherlike programs for K-12 education to help as many families as possible to enroll their kids in private and/or religious schools. They are also casting K-12 public school teachers and in particular college professors as propagandists who impose liberal values on students. At the college level, Republicans are trying to force out left-leaning faculty and push campuses to the right.


I certainly prefer the “teachers, professors and public schools are good” perspective (the Democratic one) over “teachers, professors and public schools are bad” (the Republican one). But neither is a real vision for American education.


Here’s one: Our education system should be about learning, not job credentialing. Schools and universities should teach Americans to be critical thinkers, not automatically believing whatever they heard from a friend or favorite news source. They should make sure Americans have enough understanding of economics, history and science to be good citizens, able to discern which candidate in an election has a better plan to, say, deal with a deadly pandemic. They should foster interest and appreciation of music, arts and literature.


They should be places where people meet and learn from others who might not share their race, class, religion or ideology. Our schools and universities should of course also provide people the core skills for jobs that actually require higher education. They should provide a path to becoming a doctor, lawyer, professor or any profession that requires specialized training without going into debt.


What our education system should not be is 16 years of required drudgery to make sure that you can get a job with stable hours and decent benefits — or a punching bag for politicians who have failed to do their jobs in reducing racial and economic inequality.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Joy, Merit pay, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Standardized Testing

Philadelphia: Charter-Loving Billionaire Jeff Yass Funds Attack Ads Against Helen Gym in Mayoral Race

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2023 //
22

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that billionaire Jeff Yass is behind a new super-PAC that is attacking progressive candidate Helen Gym in the closing days of the mayoral campaign.

ProPublica wrote about Jeff Yass and so did I.

Jeff Yass is a major funder of charter schools. Although he attended New York City public schools, he hates public schools and supports privatization. He is a MAGA Republican. He opposes abortion. He is a major funder for MAGA Republicans and grievances. The anti-public school lobby called the Center for Education Reform administers the annual Yass Award to charter schools (public schools need not apply).

I hope the Democrats who vote in Philly know who is behind the anti-Gym ads.

Vote for Helen Gym for Mayor of Philadelphia!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Education Industry, Elections, Philadelphia, Privatization, Trump

Tim Slekar: Drop in History and Civics Scores is “Fake News”

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2023 //
63

Tim Slekar, Director of the Educator Preparation Program at Muskingum University in Ohio comments here on the recent report that NAEP scores in history and civics dropped during the pandemic. The decline should surprise no one since neither subject has mattered for the past two decades. Far more worrisome, he says, is the erosion of democracy. How do you prepare students to participate in a society where voter suppression and gerrymandering are widespread and are approved by the courts? Where members of the Supreme Court see no harm in accepting valuable gifts from billionaires? Where one of the two national political parties insists the last presidential election was stolen without any evidence? Where nominees for the highest Court testify under oath that they believe in stare decisis, then promptly overturn Roe v. Wade? Where killers stalk schools and public places because of the power of the gun lobby? Where honest teaching about political events and history is considered divisive and may be criminalized?

Slekar writes:

“In the 1930s, George Counts dared the schools to “build a new social order” comprised of an active, critical citizenry, challenging industrial society’s inequities through boldly democratic education.  In 2016, a supposedly educated population of United States citizens elected Donald Trump as its next president, ushering in what surely will be a new social order.  For decades preceding that election, social studies educators, researchers, and leaders have rejected powerful and critical social studies learning efforts in favor of superficial standards-setting and accountability talk….My guess is that Counts would not be very happy with Trump’s construct of a new social order, and my point is that standards—particularly in social studies—have been useless as instruments intended to affect how the social order Counts envisioned might be built through public education.”

 

I wrote the above in 2018. 40 years of devotion towards the erosion of the civic mission of history and the social studies had resulted in the election of a narcissistic reality tv show host to the presidency of the United States. There were no headlines about the dismal state of teaching and learning American history and civics in 2018. The most obscene—in-your-face evidence of civic failure was ignored.

And now America is faced with a “crisis” because of an insignificant drop in 8th graders’ test scores in US History and American Civics NAEP tests. Really? This is our national concern? Really?

What about the fact that the 8th graders tested spent significantly less time in History class than 8th graders 10 – years ago?

What about the fact that 8th graders 10 years ago spent significantly less time in History class than 8th graders 20 years ago?

Thank you Race to the Top (Obama) and No Child Left Behind (Bush).

What about the current reality of state legislatures taking the insignificant time devoted to the teaching of History and whitewashing the content that can be taught through the mandated erasure of painful truths that make some “uncomfortable?”

What about legislating penalties on teachers that involve students in that horrible civic responsibility of engaging with their elected officials?

The evidence is clear. We have a crisis of democracy. We have a morality crisis that has been legislated since 1983. The mission of public schools was purposely killed and now we have a society of grievance snowflakes that openly believe intolerance, bullying, and racism are constitutional rights.

Test score drop? Fake news!

Categories Accountability, Civics, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Fake News, History, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Jan Resseger: The Unfair Attack on Randi Weingarten and Unions in the New York Times

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2023 //
37

Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, the same publication that bravely published The 1619 Project, had a cover story about Randi Weingarten. It raised (and implied) the question of whether she is “the most dangerous person in the world.” The cover illustration had several placards, the most prominent saying “Stop Randi Weingarten.” My immediate thought, before reading the story, was that Randi’s life might be in danger, because the illustration and the title made her a target. This is no joke.

Randi has been a friend of mine for many years, and we don’t always agree. I have never persuaded her, and she has never persuaded me. We have had some strong arguments, but she’s still my friend. I believe passionately in the importance of unions, especially in a society with such deep economic inequality as ours. I wrote a letter to the editor about my objections to the article. I hope it gets published.

One important inaccuracy in the article: the author says that “only” 40% of American 8th graders are “proficient” in math, and only 32% are “proficient” in reading. This is a common error among journalists, critics, and pundits who misunderstand the achievement levels of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). “Proficient” on NAEP is not grade level. “Proficient” on NAEP represents A level work, at worst an A-. Would you be upset to learn that “only” 40% of 8th graders are at A level in math and “only” 1/3 scored an A in reading?

Jan Resseger, in one of her most brilliant articles, wrote today:

Why Randi Weingarten Is Not a Symbol of What’s Dangerous in American Politics

I felt myself getting angry as I began skimming Jonathan Mahler’s New York Times Magazine article featuring Randi Weingarten. But as I read more carefully, I realized I had to give Mahler credit for recognizing Weingarten’s strong leadership on behalf of public schools and the school teachers she leads as president of the American Federation of Teachers—even in an article framing public school policy according to the standard Republican attack against the teachers unions:

“By now, Pompeo, Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican Party were busy elevating education to a central plank in its 2024 platform…. But Weingarten was building her own case. Public education was now itself a hyperpartisan issue, and she addressed it in hyperpartisan terms in a fiery speech at the National Press Club. Calling out by name some of the people who had demonized her since the pandemic, including Betsy DeVos, she described the ongoing effort to defund public schools as nothing less than a threat to ‘cornerstones of community, of our democracy, our economy and our nation.’ She pointed to studies that have shown that vouchers don’t improve student achievement, characterizing them as a back door into private and parochial schools that are not subject to the same federal civil rights laws as public institutions and can therefore promote discrimination. ‘Our public schools shouldn’t be pawns for politicians’ ambitions… They shouldn’t be destroyed by ideologues.'”

I have myself been delighted to see Randi Weingarten out there fighting for the educational rights of our children during the pandemic, pushing against the widespread blaming of teachers, and opposing the wave of culture war attacks on teachers and on honest and accurate curricula. She has been a far better defender of public schooling than Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

But there is a bias in Mahler’s piece that kept me extremely uncomfortable. While Mahler gives Weingarten some credit for defending her side of the debate, he presents his analysis primarily from the point of view of of Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump.

We learn about “pandemic learning loss” as measured in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, but we don’t learn that the drop in scores is likely temporary—a one time drop due to Covid disruption. We learn about teachers unions fighting for better protection during Covid—fighting for mask and vaccination mandates. It is implied that teachers unions were partly to blame for school closures, but we read nothing about the struggles of teachers to provide for students’ needs during remote learning, including some pretty difficult periods when many teachers were teaching kids remotely in the same classrooms where they were simultaneously working in-person with groups of kids whose families sent them to school.

Mahler implies that teachers unions are a monolith. He does not tell readers that teachers join their union locals, which operate independently from the national American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—the two large teachers unions.

The culture wars comprise a substantial part of Mahler’s profile. He explains that Tina Descovich in Brevard County, Florida and Tiffany Justice, of Indian River County spontaneously decided to join up and create their own parents’ rights group, Moms for Liberty, but he neglects some important background: Moms for Liberty, Parents Defending Education, and No Left Turn in Education are, in fact, Astroturf fronts for a national culture war campaign being mounted by groups like the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation, with funding from DonorsTrust dark money and Charles Koch. Additionally Mahler reports that the American Federation of Teachers supported Terry McAuliffe against Glenn Youngkin, who ran a culture war campaign against honest teaching about race in American history in the campaign for Governor of Virginia. It should not be a bit surprising that, as a labor union, the American Federation of Teachers can legally endorse and support candidates, and that the AFT endorsed the candidate who stood with the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Professors, and PEN America on the issue of the school curriculum.

Mahler devotes a significant part of his report to what he describes as the “AFT’s left-wing local, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).” He adds that “like-minded left-wing slates have since taken control of AFT locals in several other cities, too, including Los Angeles and Baltimore.” Many supporters of public education would embrace the cause of these big-city teachers without identifying themselves as left-wing. Here is how Mahler describes CTU’s agenda: “They see public schools’ ongoing struggles to educate their students as inseparable from the larger societal and economic issues facing their working-class members and the poor communities whose children dominate their classrooms.” Mahler quotes the Chicago Teachers’ Union’s recent past president, Jesse Sharkey: “We are trying to promote a brand of unionism that goes all out in its fight for educational justice and is brave about taking on conflicts.”

The problem with Mahler’s analysis is that today’s debates about public education policy are far more complex and nuanced than a fight between Randi Weingarten as a symbol of teacher unionism and Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin. Those of us who have followed the history of education policy battles through the past two decades of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are now watching the far right and dark money campaigns driving culture war chaos across the state legislatures as a path to the expansion of school vouchers. Without any direct connection to teacher unions, many of us share the enlightened assessment that has been articulated by the Chicago Teachers Union.

Mahler mistakes the significance of the recent election of Brandon Johnson, who is a former teacher and more recently an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, as Chicago’s new mayor. Mahler sees Johnson’s victory as a symbol of the power of teachers unions: “When Johnson narrowly won, it was a stunning upset…. the teachers’ unions had effectively elected the mayor of America’s third-largest city, who was himself an avowedly progressive union organizer promising to raise taxes on the rich, reform the police and increase funding for the city’s schools…. It was those who had underestimated the political power of the unions who were mistaken.” In reality the meaning of Chicago’s mayoral election was more likely a rejection of nearly a quarter of a century of mayoral governance of Chicago’s public schools, of test-and-punish school accountability, of the explosive growth of charter schools in Chicago, and of Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 closure of 49 elementary schools in Chicago’s Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

In our alarmingly unequal society, where too frequently our children reside far apart in pockets of concentrated poverty or in pockets of wealth, we will not be able to close children’s opportunity gaps merely by improving the public schools alone. In a new book, The Education Myth, Jon Shelton, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, identifies the No Child Left Behind Act as the embodiment of a deeply flawed plan to equalize school achievement: “At root, the very premise of the bill—that punishing schools for the scores of their students would improve the schools’ performance—was simply flawed, particularly when school districts did not have the ability to raise students out of poverty or alleviate the trauma of racism…. NCLB ignored the broader economic structures that might lead a student to succeed or fail in school as well as the relationship between where a student got an education and what job would actually be available to them.” (The Education Myth, p. 173)

I am grateful that, in the cities where their members teach, some teachers union locals are working actively to support efforts to ameliorate child poverty. That is not a left-wing cause; it is instead a goal for us all to embrace. As we publicly debate the needs of our children and our public schools, it is wrong to define the conversation as a mere battle between right-wing Republicans and the teachers unions

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, History, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Propaganda, Race to the Top, Republicans, Teachers, Unions, Vouchers

New York: Governor Hochul Caves to Billionaire Charter Lobby

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2023 //
2

The charter lobby in New York is well funded by billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Paul Tudor Jones as a long list of Wall Street hedge funders. These elites want the state and New York City to open unlimited numbers of charter schools, despite their impact on public schools, attended by nearly 90% of students. New York City has a cap of 275 charters.

But that’s not enough for the billionaires. Governor Kathy Hochul is attentive to their needs because they supply campaign cash.

The legislature rejected her proposal to lift the caps, but she succeeded in inflicting 14 “zombie charters” on NYC. A zombie charter is one that opened but failed.

At a time of budget cuts, this decision will put more stress on the city’s public schools.

The United Federation of Teachers reacted:

Contact: UFT Press Office | press@uft.orgDick Riley | C: 917.880.5728

Alison Gendar | C: 718.490.2964

Melissa Khan | C: 646-901-1501

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Thursday, April 27, 2023

UFT Statement on the State Charter Deal

 

“The Senate and the Assembly did the right thing by rejecting the governor’s plan to lift the New York charter cap. Unfortunately, the governor listened to the demands of a handful of billionaires and revived 14 zombie charters for New York City — even though New York City has nearly 40,000 unused charter seats. Now it’s time for the governor to listen to New York parents who want accountability and transparency from the charter sector and an end to loopholes that benefit corporate charters at the expense of our public schools.”

 

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Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, New York, New York City

Arizona: Teachers at BASIS Charter School in Tucson Vote to Unionize

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2023 //
9

Now here is a surprising turn of events. The billionaire funders of charter schools see them as a way to crush teachers’ unions. More than 90% of charters nationwide are non-union. Teachers in them have no rights and there is high teacher attrition.

But teachers at BASIS in Tucson voted to unionize, the first to do so in Arizona. BASIS is owned by its founders, Michael and Olga Block, and operates for profit. Anyone may apply but all students must pass multiple AP exams to graduate. The BASIS schools do not reflect the demography of the state. They have small numbers of Hispanic Americans and Native Americans, and large proportions of whites and Asian Americans. They are regularly ranked among the “best” high schools by US News.

Tucson charter school becomes first to unionize in Arizona

Channel 12, KPNX IN Tucson reported:

A Tucson charter school recently voted to become the first unionized charter school in the state.

Author: William Pitts

TUCSON, Ariz. — A Tucson charter school has become the first charter school in Arizona to unionize.

BASIS Tucson North teachers voted Wednesday to form a teacher’s union.

The union will be represented by the American Federation of Teachers.

It’s the first time a charter school in Arizona has voted to form a union to negotiate with the owners of the school.

“We are managed by a private company with opaque finances,” teacher and union organizer Trudi Connolly said. “We completely believe that they have the ability to make more money available to the individual schools that they, in theory, manage.”

BASIS is a multistate charter school company that began in Arizona. It’s privately owned and for-profit. Connolly said she believes the company could do better by its teachers.

As for whether other Arizona charter schools could follow their lead, Connolly said she believes others, including other BASIS schools, might organize.

“We feel that if we can do this, others will see that they can too,” Connolly added.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Courage, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers, Unions

NYC Public School Parent: Why Charter Schools Disgust Me

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2023 //
8

A regular commenter, who signs as NYC Public School Parent, is sharply critical of the games charters play. She doesn’t like the way they push kids out as young as 5 or 6 for misbehaving. She doesn’t like their boasting about test scores when the schools with the highest scores are selective, either in their admissions or their attrition or both.

She writes approvingly of schools that seek out those students with the greatest needs, like the one funded by LeBron James in Akron.

Didn’t the LeBron James-funded school in Akron do just that — specifically took the most struggling students? And wasn’t it part of the public school system? THAT is what all charters should be doing.

The so called “successful” and expanding charter chains have almost universally prioritized the needs of their CEOs over the needs of the most vulnerable children. Their approach to teaching students is that they want to teach students as long as those children make the CEO and administrators look good. Period. The students who don’t make them look good are drummed out and what is most disgusting is that they demonize those students if their parents don’t quietly remove them.

Anyone who doesn’t understand exactly WHO it is whose well-being is most important to charters only has to watch John Merrow’s October 2015 PBS interview with Eva Moskowitz – and the growing RED HIVES that appear on her neck which seems to be her “tell” when she feels threatened by having to defend her false narratives.

Her red hives are particularly evident when John Merrow asked her about the high rate of suspensions of Kindergarten and first graders, who are primarily African American:

“I OFTEN have parents say to me ‘my child never PUNCHED the teacher’, I say ‘well, but you weren’t there”.

That happens OFTEN, Eva Moskowitz claims in the video, referring to those youngest elementary school students. OFTEN.

Only an implicitly racist education reporter would not be extremely suspicious that there must be something very wrong with an inexperienced teacher trained in the Success Academy way if parents OFTEN are having Moskowitz telling them their 5 or 6 year olds were PUNCHING their Success Academy teachers.

And that’s how she justified high suspension rates. I would like to ask Eliza Shapiro and Elizabeth Greene whether they believe that is true, and ask them why they don’t feel that lying to demonize vulnerable children is disqualifying, but instead is something that shouldn’t be mentioned when presenting this person as a worthy source of information. Moskowitz OFTEN had to tell parents their young children PUNCHED their teacher, Eva Moskowitz says, and these reporters’ implicit racism did not even lead them to question such an absurdity that they surely would have questioned if a principal said that they OFTEN had affluent white parents of 5 year olds in her office who didn’t realize how violent their own children were.

“A disciplinary code is written to give maximum freedom…” said Eva Moskowitz, before she invoked how OFTEN 5 and 6 year old Success Academy children PUNCHED their teachers.

Complicit journalists who didn’t even question this when they heard Moskowitz invoking her violent students. Why?

Charters aren’t popping up in affluent white suburban neighborhoods because there isn’t a magic formula to turn students into scholars, there is a magic formula to cherry pick the students who perform well and dump the others but blame someone else because charters will never admit they are the ones who have failed the students they were funded to teach. Presumably the complicit journalists would not be so complicit about ignoring the red flags in the “violent children who needed to be suspended” narrative if those very young students were middle class and white.

The implicit racism that infuses every story about “high performing” charters in the NYT and Chalkbeat is that it would be impossible to cherry pick because there are simply too few academically proficient Black or Latinx students in urban areas to cherry pick. A math-challenged education reporter can see a statistic like “only 30% of Black and Latinx students in NYC are proficient on state tests” and not bother to notice that in a large city like NYC that is over 70,000 3-8 grade public school students. So they fawn over a hugely popular, lavishly funded charter with a disproportionately high rate of attrition whose 3-8 grade enrollment is a tiny percentage of 70,000, and they “inform” us in every story that to cherry pick is virtually impossible. And it simply has never been true, as anyone with a better understanding of numbers could have explained to them if they didn’t depend on press releases instead of trying to understand the evaluate the criticism themselves. It’s so much easier just to write a phrase “critics from the teachers’ union” or “critics who hate charters” disagree and then write more fawning paragraphs about the charters’ unprecedented and miraculous results.

If there wasn’t such lousy reporting that legitimized false narratives – if the reporting had been focused on why charters weren’t being held to their promise to teach the most at-risk students instead of the most motivated and academically strong students – I suspect the charter movement might become something I could support. When I found out that they were not interested in doing what they were funded to do, I was shocked. But when I found out they were LYING about what they were doing, and supporting their lie by throwing very young kids under the bus, I was disgusted.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, New York City

A Conversation about the State Takeover of the Houston Independent School District

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2023 //
7

The Network for Public Education sponsored a conversation among me, Daniel Santos, and Domingo Morel.

Daniel Santos is an 8th grade social studies teacher in the Houston schools and vice-president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

Domingo Morel is author of Takeover and the nation’s leading expert on the process by which a state abrogates local control of a school district.

I am a graduate of the Houston public schools.

As background, there are two things you should know:

1. Houston is not a “failing” district. It has a B rating.

2. State law in Texas allows the state to take control of a district if only one of its schools has persistently low scores.

Students, parents, teachers, and elected officials have complained about this abrogation of democracy. Governor Abbott and State Commissioner Mike Morath ignore them.

Watch the discussion here.

Categories Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Houston, Resistance, Texas

North Carolina: Turncoat Teacher Delivers for Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2023 //
14

Rep. Tricia Cotham ran for office as a Democrat and was elected as a Democrat. She had previously been Teacher-of-the-Year and claimed to be a strong advocate for the state’s beleaguered public schools. She switched her party and joined the Republicans, giving them the one vote they needed to have a supermajority in both houses. Republicans can now override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s vetos.

The NC General Assembly has been consistently hostile to public schools and to teachers. They have authorized charter schools, including for-profit schools, and vouchers. Many financial scandals have marked the charter sector.

Yet Rep. Cotham just voted to give the Republican-dominated General Assembly contro of charters. No critics or skeptics allowed!

Former Democratic lawmaker Tricia Cotham sealed her move to the Republican Party this week by co-sponsoring a bill that would remove the State Board of Education from the charter school approval process.

Under House Bill 618, that approval would be handed over to a new Charter School Review Board, whose members must be “charter school advocates in North Carolina.”

The new review board would replace the Charter School Advisory Board.

Most members of the new review board would be chosen by the General Assembly, which is currently led by state Republicans. The review board’s membership would include the State Superintendent of Public Instruction or a designee, four members appointed by the House, four by the Senate and two members appointed by the state board.

Open the link to read more.

Categories Accountability, Character, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, North Carolina, Privatization, Republicans, Scandal

Did Alvarez & Marsal Give Pricey Advice to Your School District? They Are Living in Luxury Now

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2023 //
16

Back a few years, the business restructuring company Alvarez & Marsal became deeply involved in reorganizing school districts, despite their lack of any educational experience. As a reflection of the corporate mindset of the early 2000s, A&M’s corporate experience was thought to be a major asset in rearranging school districts.

The president of A&M, Bill Roberti, who had previously been CEO of the elite menswear company Brooks Brothers was hired to take charge of the St. Louis school district, at $5 million a year.

During his 13 months as superintendent of St. Louis public schools, former Brooks Brothers chief executive William V. Roberti closed 21 schools, lopped $79 million off the school budget, privatized many school services and laid off more than 1,000 employees. He stepped down in June at the end of his contract….

The basic assumption behind the Roberti reforms was that a school district operates in much the same way as a retail business. Both systems rely on “supply chain management,” he said. “Many people talk as if there’s some magic to education. But the job of getting supplies from a warehouse to a building is the same in schools as it is in business as it is in the federal government.”

To slash costs, Roberti outsourced many operations to private contractors. He also cut hundreds of positions, including supervisors, counselors and department coordinators. He is proud of the fact that he did not fire a single teacher — dozens of teachers were permitted to retire without being replaced, which resulted in larger classes in many schools.

He left after 13 months, and the firm was hired in June 2005 (three months before the Hurricane) to take part in the restructuring of New Orleans public schools. Roberti was in charge of finance, purchasing, accounting and human resources for $16.8 million for two years. In light of the added duties after the Hurricane, A&M’s fee for three years was double the original proposal.

Then came a nice gig in New York City, where Joel Klein paid A&M $15.8 million to reorganize the school bus routes and save money. That was a fiasco, launched on the coldest day of the year, many students left stranded.

ProPublica investigated how the super-rich avoid taxes by buying super-yachts and private jets. It’s first example: the very wealthy Alvarez & Marsal.

Over the past two years, ProPublica has documented the many ways that the ultrawealthy avoid taxes. The biggest or most daring maneuvers scale in the billions of dollars, and while the tax deductibility of private jets isn’t the most important feature of U.S. tax law, the fact that billionaires’ luxury rides come with millions in tax savings says a lot about how the system really works.

There are dozens of examples of wealthy Americans taking these sorts of deductions, which are premised on the notion that the planes are used mainly for business, in the massive trove of tax records that have formed the basis for ProPublica’s “Secret IRS Files” series. The ultrawealthy, however, can easily blur business and pleasure. And when they purport to make their planes available for leasing, to fulfill one definition of using the planes for business, they tend to be more adept at generating tax deductions than revenue.

Flying to Ireland to inhale the seaside air as you drive a golf ball into the scenic distance. Crossing the country to reach your enormous yacht, which is ready for your Hudson River pleasure cruise. Hosting a governor’s wife on your very own aircraft. These are only a few of the joys that the richest Americans have experienced in recent years through their private jets. And what made them all the sweeter is that they came with a tax write-off.

Tony Alvarez and Bryan Marsal built a successful consulting firm specializing in restructuring — advising struggling or bankrupt companies on what to sell and whom to lay off. It can be a grim business: Marsal has been known to announce to prone firms that they were now a “community of pain.” But the partners, who are also close friends, own another enterprise, the Hogs Head Golf Club (“Built by Friends, for Friends, for Fun”), on the southwest coast of Ireland. It boasts views of the nearby mountains and bay.

In 2016, before opening their new course, the pair teamed up, via an LLC they named after their golf club, to buy a 2001 Gulfstream IV jet. The next year, President Donald Trump signed his big tax cut into law. It made buying a plane even more attractive: The full price of the plane could be deducted in the first year, a perk called “bonus depreciation.” Before, depreciation was typically only partially front-loaded, with the full balance spread over five years. The law also for the first time made pre-owned planes eligible for this treatment.

As a result, when Alvarez and Marsal sprang for their second plane in 2018, this one a Gulfstream V, the entire cost was deductible. That year, the pair’s two planes netted them a tax deduction of $14 million.

Last August, their Gulfstream V took off from Westchester County Airport in New York state for Ireland. About an hour later, their Gulfstream IV left for the same destination, a small airport in County Kerry near their club. Both planes can comfortably seat over a dozen passengers, but flight records don’t show who was on board. Over the coming month and a half, the two planes crisscrossed the Atlantic several times.

Were these business trips? Possibly, yes. (ProPublica’s records do not indicate whether specific trips were taken as deductions.) If so, operating expenses — including crew, fuel and other costs — from the partners’ trips to oversee the course would be fully deductible. These deductions would come in addition to depreciation.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Reform, New Orleans, New York City, St. Louis
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