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Texas: Unmasking The Campaign to Privatize Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2023 //
8

Mimi Swartz, a writer for the Texas Monthly, explored the background, the funders, and the consequences of the well-coordinated campaign to privatize public schools—by defaming them and discrediting those who run for local school board seats. She focuses on the travails of one dedicated school board member, Joanna Day in Dripping Springs, Texas, who contended with insults and threats in her life.

The following is a small part of a long article, which I encourage you to read in full:

The motivations for these attacks are myriad and sometimes opaque, but many opponents of public education share a common goal: privatizing public schools, in the same way activists have pushed, with varying results, for privatization of public utilities and the prison system. Proponents of school privatization now speak of public schools as “dropout factories” and insist that “school choice” should be available to all. They profess a deep faith in vouchers, which would allow parents to send their children not just to the public schools of their choice but to religious and other private schools, at taxpayers’ expense.

But if privatizing public education is today cloaked in talk of expanded liberty, entrepreneurial competition, and improved schools for those who need them most, its history tells a different story. In 1956, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, a group of segregationist legislators in Texas, with support from retiring governor Allan Shivers, began concocting work-arounds for parents appalled by the prospect of racial integration of public schools. One idea: state-subsidized tuition at private schools. That never came to pass, but it was Texas’s first flirtation with vouchers.

Privatization proponents have since switched up their rhetoric, pitching vouchers as an opportunity for poor urban families to save their children from underperforming neighborhood schools. That hasn’t worked out either. In various experiments across the nation, funding for vouchers hasn’t come close to covering tuition costs at high-quality private schools, and many kids, deprived of the most basic tools, haven’t been able to meet the standards for admission.

School funding in Texas is based largely on attendance—as the saying goes, the money follows the child. Considerable evidence suggests that vouchers would siphon money from underfunded public schools and subsidize well-to-do parents who can already afford private tuition. Critics frequently cite a program in Milwaukee, where four out of ten private schools created for voucher students from 1991 to 2015 failed.

“I don’t think that vouchers serve any useful purpose at all,” said Scott McClelland, a retired president of H-E-B who now chairs Good Reason Houston, an education nonprofit. Ninety-one percent of Texas students attend public schools. “There isn’t enough capacity in the private school network to make a meaningful difference in their ability to serve economically disadvantaged students in any meaningful numbers, and it will divert funding away from public schools.”

In Texas, an unusual alliance of Democratic and rural Republican leaders has for decades held firm against voucher campaigns. The latter, of course, are all too aware that private schools aren’t available for most in their communities and that public schools employ many of their constituents. But the spread of far-right politics and the disruption of public schools during the pandemic created an opening for activists to sow discontent and, worse, chaos. “If they can make the public afraid of their public school, they will be more likely to support privatizing initiatives. Then that puts us back to where we used to be with segregation of public schools,” says former Granbury school board member Chris Tackett, who, with his wife Mendi, has become an outspoken advocate for public education and a relentless investigator of the attempts to undermine it.

They have their work cut out for them. In the past, just a few right-wing legislators pushed for privatization and were routinely ignored. After all, the state constitution spelled out “the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.” But as times have changed, so has the interpretation of that guarantee.

Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump’s former Education Secretary, set up shop in Dallas with her American Federation for Children to push against “government schools” in favor of “school choice.” Political PACs such as Patriot Mobile Action, an arm of a Christian wireless provider in North Texas, continue pouring millions into school board races and book bans to promote more religious education. Patriot has joined other recently formed PACs with inspirational names such as Defend Texas Liberty and Texans for Excellent Education, all of which supposedly support better public schools but are actually part of the privatization push. But by far the most powerful opponents of public schools in the state are West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and the brothers Farris and Dan Wilks. Their vast political donations have made them the de facto owners of many Republican members of the Texas Legislature through organizations such as the now dissolved Empower Texans and the more recent Defend Texas Liberty, which the trio uses to promote restrictions on reproductive rights, voter access, and same-sex marriage. Almost as influential is the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Dunn is vice board chair.

A November 2021 TPPF fund-raising letter, sent to supporters in advance of the Eighty-eighth Legislature convening, argued that “public education is GROUND ZERO” in the fight for freedom. “The policy team and board of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) believe it is now or never,” it read, signaling that the long-standing and robust alliance against vouchers was unusually vulnerable. “The time is ripe to set Texas children free from enforced indoctrination and Big Government cronyism in our public schools.” The letter went on to herald a $1.2 million “Set the Captives Free” campaign to lobby legislators to save Texas schoolchildren from “Marxist and sexual indoctrination” funded by “far-Left elites for decades.”

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, generously backed by Dunn, the Wilks brothers, and their organizations, has long been a proponent of privatizing public education (and of starving it through reductions in property taxes). He has made vouchers a primary legislative goal of the current session. Mayes Middleton, of Wallisville, a Republican state senator and former chair of the TPPF-aligned Texas House Freedom Caucus, filed a bill to create the “Texas Parental Empowerment Program,” proposing education savings accounts that are essentially a form of vouchers. Representative Matt Shaheen, of Plano, who is a member of the Texas Freedom Caucus, has introduced a measure that would guarantee state tax credits for those who donate to school-assistance programs—such as scholarships for kids wishing to go to private schools.

Governor Greg Abbott, knowing all too well the political headwinds that vouchers have faced, has long been wary of publicly supporting them, so he has undermined public schools in other ways. While campaigning early last year, he promised to amend the Texas constitution with a “parental bill of rights,” even though most, if not all, of those rights already existed. By then, “parental rights” had become a dog whistle to animate opponents of public education. (As the Texas Tribune put it: “Gov. Greg Abbott taps into parent anger to fuel reelection campaign.”)

During the recent intensifying crisis on the border, Abbott publicly floated a challenge to the state’s constitutional obligation to give all Texas children, including undocumented ones, a publicly funded education—a step his Republican predecessor, Rick Perry, had denounced years earlier as heartless. Then last spring, Abbott made headlines with his first full-throated public endorsement of a voucher program.

So here we are, with distrust in public schools advancing as fast as the latest COVID-19 variant. The forces behind the spread of this vitriol are no mystery. Those who would destroy public schools have learned to apply three simple stratagems: destabilize, divide, and, if that doesn’t work, open the floodgates of fear

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Hoax, Lies, Parent Groups, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans, School Choice, Texas, Vouchers

Carol Burris on Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Horrible Education Plan

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2023 //
26

Carol Burris is the executive director for of the Network for Public Education. in this post, which she wrote exclusively for the blog, she reveals the details of Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ plan to defund and destroy the public schools in her state.

Burris writes:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of Baptist minister and former Governor Mike Huckabee, missed learning the 9th commandment that prohibits telling a lie. As press secretary to Donald Trump, her distortions of the truth resulted in the editor of Forbes warning corporations against hiring Sanders and other Trump “propagandists,” writing, “Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie.”

 

Now she is the Governor of Arkansas. On her first day in office and in her response to Biden’s State of the Union, she parroted the old “education is the civil rights issue of our time” line that has been used to justify horrible policies from school closures to charter schools and vouchers. However, the disconnect between what she says and what she does quickly became apparent. On her first day in office, she issued an executive order prohibiting “indoctrination and critical race theory in schools” and another banning the term “Latinx” from being used in state documents. State authorities are investigating AP African American Studies at Little Rock Central High School, where the majority of students are Black.

If we need further proof that this self-proclaimed champion of Civil Rights is more aptly described as a champion of Civil Wrongs, look at her recently leaked ed reform plan.

Here are its features:

 

The Privatization of Public Education:

· Her voucher plan is a universal ESA—the plan now favored by the far-right. These plans have few rules and no family eligibility requirements. They have become Entitlement Spending Accounts–cash going into the pockets of private school families regardless of income. The leaked plan does not say how taxpayers will pay for it. But everyone will be eligible by 2025. It includes Voucher funding for homeschools. The only restrictions will apply to vendors, so those who enroll their children in those recently uncovered Neo-Nazi homeschools can find ways to cash in.

· Increased tax credits for contributions to an existing voucher program.

· Local School Boards can contract with an open-enrollment charter school or private company to run a school campus at risk of state takeover due to low performance—and if they do, they get a financial incentive.

· Establishment of a charter-school construction fund for new charters and expansion.

· Elimination of the cap on charters.

· Charter school applications no longer need to be reviewed and approved by the local school district board of directors.

· All students attending a public school can take courses and earn credit for classes not offered in their school. By the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year, students attending a public school that receives a letter grade of “C”, “D”, or “P” from the Arkansas School and District Accountability System may take their required courses (i.e. math, English, etc.) through the course choice program. Bet your bottom dollar that these courses will be online, with vendors like Stride K12 making a fortune.

Censoring and Controlling Curriculum

· K-3 literacy evaluation will be aligned with the “science of reading.”

· Before grade 5, teachers cannot provide classroom instruction on the following topics: sexually explicit materials, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

· School districts must implement an age-appropriate child sexual prevention program for grades K-12, allowing parents to preview materials and exempt their children from instruction. (I have no idea what a child sexual prevention program even is.)

· The Secretary of Education will review the Department of Education regulations, policies, materials, and communications to ensure they do not indoctrinate students with ideologies that conflict with the principle of equal protection under the law.

· No school employee or student must attend training on prohibited indoctrination or Critical Race Theory.

 

Harmful Policies for Students

· 3rd-grade retention based on deficits in reading proficiency.

· An accountability system for pre-school education that includes student data.

· Literacy testing three times a year for all students in K-3.

· Curriculum tracking in Grade 8.

· Community service requirements, which may, for some students, be challenging to meet.

· Mandated cops on campus.

· Career-ready pathways in partnership with local business and industry leaders” translate workforce training programs to track students into low-paying and middle-wage jobs.

Punitive Policies for Teachers

 

· Elimination of due process in dismissals.

· Base salaries will no longer increase by years of experience or for Master’s degrees.

· Bonuses based on VAM.

There are a few likable initiatives in her plan, such as paid maternity leave for teachers, but if she makes districts fund them even as she drains their funding with charter schools and voucher expansion, a good initiative will be one more financial pressure on already underfunded schools.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ education plan is a hodgepodge of all the awful and ineffective ideas proposed since No Child Left Behind. The fingerprints of JEB! and the Walton family are over the leaked legislation.

Despite its hodgepodge nature, one thing is clear—its ultimate intent is to destroy public education in the state by slamming a fist down on students, public schools, and their teachers while propping up a wild and largely unaccountable privatized system.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Ignorance, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Ohio GOP Wants to Expand Vouchers, Pooh-Poohs Online Nazi-Homeschooling Group

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2023 //
11

Ohio has poured taxpayer dollars into charter schools, even though public schools consistently outperform charter schools. Ohio has poured more than $1 billion into virtual charters, even though the biggest of them (ECOT, or The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) had the lowest graduation rate in the nation and declared bankruptcy rather than pay back $67 million to the state for large numbers of phantom students. But despite its dismal statistics, it collected $1 billion over its 20 years in business. Vouchers were evaluated by a researcher chosen by a pro-choice think tank, and the report said that voucher students were falling behind.

Given this long history of school choice failure, wouldn’t you think the state would step back and evaluate its commitment to failure?

Of course not. The GOP dominated Legislature wants to expand vouchers.

Why does the Ohio GOP invest in failure?

Morgan Trau of News5Cleveland explains:

https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/politics/ohio-politics/as-some-lawmakers-debate-nazi-home-schooling-scandal-others-propose-expansion-to-school-voucher-program?_amp=true

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A bill to expand the school voucher system and provide more money to home-schoolers has been proposed in Ohio as the Department of Education is investigating a Nazi home-schooling scandal. This is not the first Holocaust education issue the state has had in one year.

Ohio’s public schools have been pushing for consistent funding for decades.

William Philis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding, has spent his career fighting against the voucher system.

“We don’t have a constitutional system and they’re exacerbating the unconstitutionality of the system by draining money out of the public school system,” Philis said.

A new bill introduced to the state Senate will continue to leave public schools behind in favor of supporting private schools, he added.

Senate Bill 11 is expected to use taxpayer money to give $5,500 to elementary and middle school students and $7,500 to high schoolers so they can attend any public, community or charted nonpublic school. Ashtabula Republican Sen. Sandra O’Brien introduced the bill because, “Ohio should act now to put parents, not government, in control of their children’s education,” she said in sponsor testimony Tuesday.

Eric Frank, president of School Choice Ohio, believes the legislation allows children to get the best education possible.

“Primarily, what those do is they target scholarships to families that either live in what we typically refer to as under-performing public school areas, not necessarily districts, but buildings within districts and also low-income families,” Frank said.

The bill would expand the current EdChoice Scholarship to give universal eligibility to all students in the state of Ohio.

There are two sections of the current program:

  • EdChoice Expansion, which the state reported had 17,152 students participating in fiscal year 2021, requires income verification. Eighty-five percent of these students were below the 200% poverty rate.
  • Standard EdChoice, which the state reported has 33,129 student in FY 2021, does not require income verification. More than 75% of the students utilizing this program were not low-income qualified.

Of the total 50,281 students, 25,180 are low-income qualified, with 25,101 that are not. This means that half of the students utilizing taxpayer money to go to a private or charter school are not designated as “needing government assistance.”

This is not to say that people who aren’t in that designation don’t struggle to have to pay the full price of the tuition — but it just means it is unknown if they do struggle to pay or not.

“Most people are really happy with their public schools,” Frank added. “But families that aren’t, they should have another option.”

Philis strongly disagreed.

“I’d say that’s pure poppycock,” Philis said. “I don’t get a voucher for a backyard swimming pool because I don’t want to go to the public pool.”

Even if a student takes a voucher, private schools choose who will be admitted, the advocate said.

“What we’re doing in Ohio right now is that we’re funding segregation,” he stated. “We are funding, with taxpayer money, White Flight.”

The Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP), was somewhat attempted to be put into place for fiscal year 2021-22. It was supposed to change how the state delegates funding for school districts.

Starting in the 2021 FY, lawmakers added hundreds of millions of state dollars in both direct funding and tax credits to subsidize families sending their children to private and charter schools. Critics, like Ohio Education Association, said this makes taxpayers pay for these for-profit schools and diverts money away from public education, which desperately needs it.

The bill would also expand the home-school tax credit from $250 to $2,000, which raises concerns.

Ohio’s Nazi Education Problem

The Ohio Dept. of Education is investigating a family in Upper Sandusky after it was revealed that their home-school program was allegedly a Nazi propaganda school, where children were taught how to love Hitler and become a “wonderful Nazi.”

Logan and Katja Lawrence were the alleged creators of the “Dissident Homeschool” group which had 2,500 members on its Telegram channel when they were exposed in a late January article from VICE News.

“We need to ensure that home-schooling is not an opportunity for parents to systemically teach their children hatred,” state Sen. Catherine D. Ingram (D-Cincinnati) said. “Senate Bill 1, which is pending in Education Committee, weakens home-schooling requirements. The legislature must protect our children from instruction fueled by racism and intolerance.”

News 5 asked Sen. President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) if there should be oversight over the home-school program, which he said “absolutely,” but there are specific rules and regulations.

“I hope we’re long past the point in our society where we take the actions of one person or a small group of people and paint the entire group as though somehow they’re participating in that,” Huffman responded.

The Department of Education should be figuring out what is going on, he added.

“I hope, frankly, that people will not try to take some political advantage or policy advantage… basically trying to decide that a couple of sociopaths somewhere in Ohio who are doing strange things that… somehow should affect the policy of the rest of the state is anathema to me,” the GOP leader said (anathema means something that a person hates).

Democrats have already been jumping at making sure a situation like this does not happen again.

There are only two Jewish members in the Ohio House — Democratic Reps. Casey Weinstein of Hudson and Dani Isaacsohn of Cincinnati.

Weinstein consistently tweets about antisemitism, including a recent post advocating for more home-schooling regulations. Republican state Rep. Riordan McClain, who represents the area in which the alleged Nazi-group resides, responded to him.

“Let’s not take freedom away from all for the terrible ideas of a few,” McClain said. “I can tell you as a home-educating parent from Upper, I’ve never heard of these people.”

In a statement to the press, McClain condemned the Nazi-based teachings and “racial hatred.” He, however, acknowledged that “differing opinions exist in a free society and our job as community members is to have robust ongoing debates.”

“Get the public system out of the way, give the parents the money — we’re going to have a school that involves the Ku Klux Klan mentality,” Philis said.

Frank argued back.

“There are 50,000 families in Ohio that are home-schooling their kids,” Frank said. “And my guess is 99.9% of them probably do a good job and they are their kids, and so it’s their right.”

News 5 continues to search to find out if the Lawrence family has received any funding from the state.

This is not the first time Ohio has dealt with a Holocaust-related scandal in the past year.

Back in March of 2022, News 5 aired an exclusive report about comments made by one of the primary sponsors of a bill to ban schools from teaching “divisive topics” — H.B. 327. The report stemmed from an interview exchange between state Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur (R-Ashtabula) and News 5 Statehouse reporter Morgan Trau.

During the interview, Fowler Arthur was asked about the financial aspect of the bill. While attempting to talk about funding, she brought up the Holocaust, saying that students needed to hear the massacre from the perspective of the “German soldiers.”

After the exclusive story went international, the original divisive concepts bill had been renamed the “both sides bill” or the “both sides of the Holocaust bill.”

Former Speaker of the Ohio House Bob Cupp (R-Lima) responded to a question about the lawmaker’s comments on the Holocaust, saying they were “inappropriate remarks, they were uninformed remarks.”

The bill swiftly died, despite Fowler Arthur’s repeated efforts to bring it back to life, a records request by News 5 showed. Also in the records were dozens of angry emails to the lawmaker.

She was previously on the state Board of Education but has never participated in the public education system as a student or a parent. She was home-schooled and did not attend college.

In the new General Assembly, the lawmaker will have more power than she has ever had. News 5 shared in January that Fowler Arthur will be the primary and secondary Education Committee’s vice chair.

“I think that in terms of the committee makeup, is it concerning to me that that individual has been given a leadership position on an education committee? Absolutely,” Minority House Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington) told News 5 in a one-on-one interview.

Luckily, Russo said, the vice chair shouldn’t have a huge role in leading the direction of a committee.

Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Carol Burris: Running a Charter School for Profit Should Be Illegal

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2023 //
6

Carol Burris, executive director of the Betwork for Public Education, writes in The Progressive that it should be illegal to run a charter school for profit, just as it is illegal to run a public school for profit. Since the charter school lobby claims that charter schools are “public schools,” they should insist on banning for-profit charters.

Please open the link. This is an important article.

Burris writes:

From insider deals to real estate flips, the problems with charter schools run by for-profit corporations can’t be ignored. And growth in this sector is accelerating as operators use lax regulations and complicated corporate schemes to harvest public dollars from publicly-funded charter schools.

Those are the findings of a new report, Chartered for Profit II: Pandemic Profiteering, from the Network for Public Education (NPE), the organization I lead. We determined that for-profit corporations operate nearly 17 percent of all charter schools. And because many are online schools with high enrollments, one in five charter school students attended a for-profit run charter during the 2021-2022 school year.

In some states, the percentage of students in for-profit-run schools is staggering. More than 50 percent of all Florida charter school students are in schools run by for-profit companies; in Ohio, the percentage tops 60 percent. In Michigan, a startling 72 percent of all of the state’s charter school students attend a school run by one of forty-five corporations.

And this is not in the best interest of children. Students of charters run for profit graduate at lower rates and have more adverse academic outcomes as the number of charter services managed by for-profit operators increases. That conclusion, by the way, comes from a report published by the pro-charter Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an Ohio charter school sponsor.

Students of charters run for profit graduate at lower rates and have more adverse academic outcomes.

Some of these schools are part of large national chains. Four of the five largest for-profit chains now run their schools with sweeps contracts, meaning that 90 percent or more of the public dollars coming into the school are “swept” into for-profit-controlled bank accounts. The largest, Academica, which runs a private online international school that gives out American high school diplomas, manages 205 charter schools in nine states. Thirteen for-profit chains run twenty or more schools or campuses. Nearly half of all 110 for-profit operators in the United States run only one or two schools. These micro-education management organizations exist solely to shield financial transactions and owner profits from the public.

The charter industry downplays the prevalence of charter schools being run for profit because the mission of for-profit companies is to maximize profits, which puts the focus on financial gain, not students.

Open the link, please.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Education Industry, For-Profit

Jan Resseger: What’s Behind the Sudden Explosion in Voucher Programs?

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2023 //
7

Jan Resseger looks behind the daily news and ties together fast-moving events in the red states. The sudden proliferation of voucher programs is no accident, she writes, nor is it a response to public demands. It is a carefully crafted, well-funded strategy to defund public schools, to smash teachers’ unions, and to implement a rightwing ideology that does not benefit students or improve education.

She writes:

This week in Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds signed an Education Savings Account, universal voucher program into law. And last week in Utah, the same kind of voucher plan took the first step toward adoption when it was passed by Utah’s House of Representatives.

The Des Moines Register reports on Iowa’s new vouchers. The program will “phase in over three years and eventually allow all Iowa families to use up to $7,598 a year in an ‘education savings account’ for private school tuition. If any money is left over after tuition and fees, families could use the funds for specific educational expenses, including textbooks, tutoring, standardized testing fees, online education programs and vocational and life skills training. The $7,598 per private school student is the same amount of funding the state provides to public school students and is expected to rise in future years… The bill allows the Iowa Department of Education to contract with a third party to administer the education savings accounts, but the state has not yet issued a request for proposals from companies seeking to manage the funds.”

It would appear that the Iowa Legislature tried to calm the fears of the public school community by promising that, “Public school districts would also receive an additional $1,205 in funding for students receiving education savings accounts who live within the public school district’s boundaries.” But despite that promise, a drop in overall public school funding is expected: “By the fourth year, the (Legislative Services) agency estimates public school districts will receive $49.8 million in new per-student funds for private school students within the public district’s boundaries. The agency also expects a net decrease of $46 million in public school funding as a result of more students attending private schools.”

It is hard to keep track of all the states that now have school vouchers or are considering voucher programs and to know which states have the latest flavor of vouchers—Education Savings Accounts (ESAs). Most ESA programs, unlike Iowa’s, don’t even require that families use the vouchers at private schools. In most places, ESA’s can be used for educational programs, for educational tools and materials like books and computers, and for homeschooling. In some states families can use the money for so-called micro-schools in which families come together and hire a teacher to work with children in someone’s home.

Why is there so much so much legislative activity about expanding vouchers? Several factors are important to consider, and many of them were the subject of economist Gordon Lafer’s analysis in The One-Percent Solution. Lafer’s book focused on the public policy that flowed from state legislatures after the Tea Party wave election in 2010, but his observations are still on point as we begin 2023. Lafer enumerates all the reasons why far-right ideologues and big corporate moneyed interests seek to undermine and privatize public schools: “At first glance, it may seem odd that corporate lobbies such as the Chamber of Commerce, National Federation for Independent Business, or Americans for Prosperity would care to get involved in an issue as far removed from commercial activity as school reform. In fact, they have each made this a top legislative priority… The campaign to transform public education brings together multiple strands of the agenda… The teachers’ union is the single biggest labor organization in most states—thus for both anti-union ideologues and Republican strategists, undermining teachers’ unions is of central importance. Education is one of the largest components of public budgets, and in many communities the school system is the single largest employer—thus the goals of cutting budgets, enabling new tax cuts for the wealthy, shrinking the government, and lowering wage and benefit standards in the public sector all coalesce around the school system… There are always firms that aim to profit from the privatization of public services, but the sums involved in K-12 education are an order of magnitude larger than any other service, and have generated an intensity of corporate legislative engagement unmatched by any other branch of government. Finally, the notion that one’s kids have a right to a decent education represents the most substantive right to which Americans believe we are entitled, simply by dint of residence… (F)or those interested in lowering citizens’ expectations of what we have a right to demand from government, there is no more central fight than around public education. In all these ways, then, school reform presents something like the perfect crystallization of the corporate legislative agenda.” (The One-Percent Solution, pp 128-129)

It is hard for public school advocates to mobilize nationally against the expansion of vouchers. Voucher battles are fought state by state because public education and the funding of public education is a state-by-state issue. Advocates are likely to focus on public education legislation in their own state and not to pay attention to what’s happening elsewhere. And citizens are not likely to pay much attention to what is happening in the legislature. Once again, Gordon Lafer identifies the problem: “(M)any of the factors that strengthen corporate political influence are magnified in the states. First, far fewer people pay attention to state government, implying wider latitude for well-funded organized interests… Apart from labor unions and a handful of progressive activists, the corporate agenda… encounters little public resistance at the state level because hardly anyone knows about or understands the issues… So, too, corporate lobbies’ financial advantage is magnified in the states. Citizens United marked a sea change in state as well as federal politics.” (The One Percent Solution, pp. 34-36)

Christopher Lubienski, a professor of education policy at Indiana University who has studied the impact of school privatization and the politics around privatizing public schools, recently published a reminder that school privatization is driven by the power of the corporate agenda. Expansion of vouchers has never been an expression of voters’ overall preference: “School choice is continuing to expand across the United states…. But these successes often come in spite of overwhelming voter opposition to school choice programs… According to the pro-voucher organization EdChoice.org, the U.S. has over 75 publicly funded private school choice programs, including vouchers, and education savings accounts, as well as another 45 charter school programs. But all of these programs have been implemented by legislators, not the electorate… In fact, voters have been allowed to weigh in on school choice programs only nine times since 2000, and they almost always reject them, often by overwhelming margins. Only twice did school choice programs pass through the ballot box. In 2012, Georgia voters empowered their legislature with the ability to create charter schools. That same year… Washington voters passed a charter school referendum.”

Who are the far-right advocacy groups and think tanks powerfully promoting Education Savings Account vouchers? They include the usual suspects: the American Legislative Exchange Council and a state- by-state group of think tanks that are ALEC’s partners in the State Policy Network, EdChoice, the Goldwater Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Institute for Justice, which provides two model laws—“Education Savings Account Act: Publicly Funded,” and “Education Savings Account Act: Tax-Credit Funded“—so that state legislators can merely adapt a canned statute to their own state’s particular needs. SourceWatch reports corporate funding streams for these and other far-right think tanks that promote vouchers—funding from the Koch Brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and investments from the Donor’s Capital Fund, a powerful investor of corporate dark money since the 2010, U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United.

In the past two years, the campaign to undermine public schooling and promote the expansion of vouchers has developed a new strategy to convince parents that their children in public schools are being brainwashed by critical race theory and surrounded by discussion of gender and sexual orientation. In a new report published by the Network for Public Education this week, political scientist Maurice Cunningham traces the money behind what may appear to be a spontaneous emergence of parents’ groups—Parents Defending Education, Moms for Liberty, and No Left Turn in Education. Cunningham points to clues that these are not local grassroots groups of parents; their websites, for example, betray a big investment in communications. And while, for example, the founders of Parents Defending Education (PDE) claim to be a bunch of working moms, Cunningham explains: “PDE took in $3,178,272 in contributions and grants in 2021… Donor’s Trust, a dark money donor associated with the Koch network donated $20,250 to PDE in 2021. The Achelis & Bodman Foundation which funds voucher and charter school programs and targets public education, contributed $25,000. Searle Freedom Trust, another right-wing donor with ties to Donors Trust, contributed $250,000 in 2021. We don’t know all the names on the checks, but we do know that those checks had to be pretty large, that the attorneys and consultants sit at the hierarchy of right-wing operatives, and that the board members and staffers are connected to the highest levels of conservative donors including the Koch network.”

The same people who are promoting vouchers are working to scare parents with the huge, culture war campaign driven by identifiable funders and a mass of dark money supporting an education marketplace and undermining parents’ confidence in public schools. But as Christopher Lubienski, the scholar who has studied the effect of the privatization of public education reminds us, expanding vouchers has not improved the outcomes for our children: “(R)ecent research is repeatedly showing that… vouchers are not a good investment. Although publicly funded vouchers may be propping up some private schools that might otherwise go out of business, they are not really helping the people they purport to help. In fact… study after study shows that students using vouchers are falling behind where they would have been if they had remained in public schools. Thus, policymakers might think twice about defying voters on initiatives that actually cause harm to children.”

The political theorist Benjamin Barber warns that school choice does not really provide freedom for families: “We are seduced into thinking that the right to choose from a menu is the essence of liberty, but with respect to relevant outcomes the real power, and hence the real freedom, is in the determination of what is on the menu. The powerful are those who set the agenda, not those who choose from the alternatives it offers. We select menu items privately, but we can assure meaningful menu choices only through public decision-making.” (Consumed, p. 139)

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Hoax, Injustice, Koch Brothers, Propaganda, School Choice, Unions, Vouchers

How to Get Rich Quick: Open a Charter School in Texas!

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2023 //
7

Independent researchers have demonstrated repeatedly that charter schools in Texas do not get better academic outcomes than public schools. The average charter school ranks below the average public school. Yet charter schools continue to proliferate, for two reasons: one, the governor, lieutenant governor and legislature firmly believe that the private sector is better than anything public; two, charter schools are a honey pot for entrepreneurs, who see a chance to get public money with minimal accountability or oversight.

Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer reported in 2016:

We estimate the impact of charter schools on early-life labor market outcomes using administrative data from Texas. We find that, at the mean, charter schools have no impact on test scores and a negative impact on earnings. No Excuses charter schools increase test scores and four-year college enrollment, but have a small and statistically insignificant impact on earnings, while other types of charter schools decrease test scores, four-year college enrollment, and earnings. Moving to school-level estimates, we find that charter schools that decrease test scores also tend to decrease earnings, while charter schools that increase test scores have no discernible impact on earnings.

This article appeared in the San Antonio Express-News. The business community in San Antonio has been very supportive of turning public money over to private-managed charter schools.

Just over two years ago, Universal Academy, a Texas charter school with two campuses in the Dallas area, made a surprising move.

In November 2020, a nonprofit foundation formed to support the school bought a luxury horse ranch and equestrian center from former ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson. The 12-building complex features a show barn “designed with Normandy-style cathedral ceilings,” a 120,000 square foot climate-controlled riding arena and a viewing pavilion with kitchen and bathrooms.

RELATED: IDEA Public Schools signed $15M lease for luxury jet despite being under state investigation

Last summer the Texas Education Agency granted Universal Academy permission to create a new elementary campus on the horse property’s manicured grounds. It will offer students riding lessons, according to a brochure, for $9,500.

Sales prices aren’t public in Texas, but the 100-acre property had been listed for $12 million when Tillerson, who also served as secretary of state under former President Donald Trump, bought it in 2009. Because of the foundation’s nonprofit status and its plans to offer equine therapy, the parcel has been removed from the tax rolls.

School board President Janice Blackmon said Universal hopes to use the facility to start a 4H chapter and Western-style horsemanship training, among other programs that take advantage of its rural location. “We’re trying to broaden the students and connect them to their Texas roots,” she said.

Splashy purchases like the horse arena are receiving increasing public scrutiny as charter schools continue to expand aggressively across Texas. Under state law, charter schools are public schools — just owned and managed privately, unlike traditional school districts.

An analysis by Hearst Newspapers found cases in which charter schools collected valuable real estate at great cost to taxpayers but with a tenuous connection to student learning. In others, administrators own the school facilities and have collected millions from charging rent to the same schools they run.

In Houston, the superintendent and founder of Diversity, Roots and Wings Academy, or DRAW, owns or controls four facilities used by the school, allowing him to bill millions to schools he oversees. DRAW’s most recent financial report shows signed lease agreements to pay Fernando Donatti, the superintendent, and his companies more than $6.5 million through 2031.

In an email, superintendent Donetti at DRAW said the property transactions were ethical, in the best interest of DRAW’s students and properly reported to state regulators. He said his school was “lucky” he was able to purchase the property because of challenges charters can face finding proper facilities.

Also in the Houston area, at ComQuest Academy Charter High School, the superintendent and her husband also own the company to which the school pays rent.

And Accelerated Learning Academy, a charter school based in Houston, is still trying to get a tax exemption on one of the two condominiums it bought just over a decade ago in upscale neighborhoods in Houston and Dallas. The school claims it has used the condos for storage, despite a nearby 9,600 square foot facility.

The battles between school districts and charter networks have become increasingly pitched, as they are locked in a zero-sum battle for public dollars.

Last year in Houston, about 45,000 students transferred from the ISD to charter schools, resulting in a loss to the district of a minimum of $276 million. That figure includes only the basic allotment received by the districts, excluding special education funding or other allotments.

In San Antonio, the two largest school districts are Northside ISD and North East ISD. More than 12,000 Northside students transferred to charter schools in the 2021-2022 school year, as did just under 8,000 from North East ISD. That means Northside lost at least $75 million, while North East lost $50 million, using the same basic allotment figures.

Each side cries foul about the other’s perceived advantages: charters are able to operate with less government and public scrutiny, while school districts benefit from zoning boards and can lean on a local tax base for financing.

Georgina Perez, who served on the State Board of Education from 2017 until this year, noted arrangements such as these would never be permitted at traditional school districts.

“If it can’t be done in (school districts), they probably had a good reason to disallow it,” she said. “So why can it be done with privately managed charter franchises?”

Lawmaker: ‘Sunshine’ is best cure

The largest charter network in Texas was a catalyst for the increased public scrutiny of charter school spending.

IDEA Public Schools faces state investigation for its spending habits, including purchases of luxury boxes at San Antonio Spurs games, lavish travel expenditures for executives, the acquisition of a boutique hotel in Cameron County for more than $1 million, plans to buy a $15 million private jet and other allegations of irresponsible or improper use of funds. The allegations date back to 2015 and led to the departure of top executives — including CEO and founder Tom Torkelson, who received a $900,000 severance payment.

Over the years lawmakers have steadily tightened rules for charter governance. A 2013 bill included provisions to strengthen nepotism rules; a 2021 law outlawed large severance payments. That bill was sponsored by Rep. Terry Canales, a South Texas Democrat whose district has some of the highest rates of charter school enrollment in the state.

“There’s a lot of work to be done for the people of Texas when it comes to charter schools,” Canales said. “Sunshine is the best cure for corruption. And the reality is it seems to be sanctioned corruption in charter schools.”

Considering the increased scrutiny, “It’s a myth that charter schools today are unregulated,” said Joe Hoffer, a San Antonio attorney who works on behalf of many charter schools. “Every session, more and more laws get passed.” If anything, he said, charter schools often have to jump through more regulatory hoops than local schools.

Yet acquiring property remains a gray area.

Charter schools that can’t purchase their own property typically must lease it and pay taxes. A 2021 state law authored by Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, a San Antonio Democrat who operates a charter, made such arrangements tax-free. But the Texas Supreme Court later blocked parts of the law, and it has been applied differently by counties across the state.

It’s unusual for school districts to lease their facilities; typically they are publicly owned or constructed. Local school districts are governed by nonpartisan elected boards, and when the board decides to purchase real estate, it must notify the public of the contract and voters can petition the district to block it. If a project requires bonding or new taxes, it must be put on the ballot.

At charters, by comparison, the governing board is appointed, not elected, so it does not answer to local voters. The main public scrutiny comes later, when the information about the sale must be disclosed in annual required filings with the Texas Education Agency.

The state education agency has the authority to review charter real estate transactions and sometimes does. In Dallas, Golden Rule Charter School is under state investigation for a real estate deal and possible nepotism. The school declined to release details because the investigation is pending.

But such reviews are often cursory, if they happen at all.

When charters report a real estate transaction to the education agency, Hoffer said, they typically just receive a letter back saying it has been recorded, with a clause reminding the schools that state regulators have the authority to return for an audit or demand the deal be re-done.

Critics say it isn’t enough. “The problem that a lot of us have had with charters is that they are considered public schools and they are taxpayer-funded, but they don’t have taxpayer scrutiny,” said state Rep. Donna Howard, an Austin Democrat and former trustee at Eanes ISD. “It’s a real lack of accountability.”

Some deals benefit administrators

According to its website, Horizon Montessori Public School operates four campuses in the Rio Grande Valley, one on Sugar Cane Drive in Weslaco. Until recently, records show, the property and its two commercial buildings were owned by Superintendent Alim Ansari.

Hidalgo County appraisal records show Ansari also apparently lived in a 4,800-square-foot home at the back of the 2.85-acre parcel, a portion of which was granted a homestead limitation on its taxes.

In addition to serving as Ansari’s home, records from the Texas Education Agency show that between 2015 and 2020, the superintendent leased his Weslaco property to Horizon for classroom and office space, collecting $118,000 a year in rent during the period. In 2020, Ansari-the-landlord signed a new five-year contract with his school for the property, for $168,000 annually, according to education agency records.

A home can be seen on the same piece of property as the Horizon Montessori Public School on Sugarcane Drive in Weslaco on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. The home belonged to the superintendent of the public charter school who leased his Weslaco property to Horizon for classroom and office space, collecting $118,000 a year in rent from 2015-2020. State and local records show Ansari sold the campus and residence last June. The buyer was a nonprofit organization called South Texas Educational Technologies, which according to its tax records conducts business as Horizon Montessori. Ansari is its chairman. State and local records show the foundation purchased the property from Ansari for $1.9 million, or more than twice the $840,000 at which Hidalgo County appraised it. Records show the foundation used a private appraiser to value the parcel.James Hord/Contributor

State and local records show Ansari sold the campus and residence last June. The buyer was a nonprofit organization called South Texas Educational Technologies, which conducts business as Horizon Montessori, according to its tax records. Ansari is its chairman.

State and local records show Ansari’s foundation purchased the property from Ansari for $1.9 million — or more than twice the $840,000 at which Hidalgo County appraised it. The foundation used a private appraiser to value the parcel.

Ansari did not respond to multiple phone and email messages. James Hayes, a CPA who sits on Horizon’s board and who also is paid $48,000 a year by the charter for accounting services, declined to comment.

Related-party arrangements are rare among modern charters, said Hoffer, the attorney who represents some of them. In some cases, he said, new schools might be forced to make such deals temporarily because they did not have the creditworthiness to borrow money to purchase facilities.

Pioneer Technology and Arts Academy, which has several campuses in the Dallas area, paid about $5 million in rent in the 2021 fiscal year to two companies, one a nonprofit and one a for-profit. Records show Superintendent Shubham Pandey has stakes in both.

Just under $3.5 million went to the nonprofit controlled by two board members of Pioneer, including Pandey. Another $1,296,418 went to Pandey’s for-profit business, PNC Partners, with more than $3 million total reported in the previous three years.

In an email, Pandey said that Pioneer’s goal all along was to transfer the school buildings from his for-profit ownership to a nonprofit. Three campuses were taken over by the nonprofit in 2019, while three others were transferred last year. Future campuses will be owned by the nonprofit, he said, and he no longer collects rent checks from the school.

But the nonprofit did not exist when Pioneer was given its charter, and its initial application did not mention future plans to transfer assets to a nonprofit.

At ComQuest Academy Charter High School, the Houston-area charter, Superintendent Tanis Stanfield and her husband, Glenn, said they don’t earn a profit from the rent it pays their company, Peachwood Station LLC

Peachwood collected $91,000 in rent in 2021. Documents also say the company provided an additional $117,000-worth of rent for free.

Tanis Stanfield said the couple followed the law and provided the needed space at a steep discount to the school she ran. “State charter funding for facilities was not available for the campus acquisition,” the superintendent wrote in an email.

School-owned condos?

In 2017, the Chronicle reported on Accelerated Learning Academy’s purchase of a 1,119-square-foot condo unit in the 22-story Cosmopolitan, a glassy high rise near Memorial Park, for $427,000. The school then bought a 1,340-square-foot condo in downtown Dallas’s Metropolitan Club the same year, appraisal records show.

The school claimed both of the residential units were needed for storage space. The Dallas Appraisal District accepted that explanation, though the school already had a 9,600-square-foot, nearly empty campus in nearby Lancaster, and granted the condo a full property tax exemption. Records show Accelerated sold the condo in 2021.

The Cosmopolitan condominium building at 1600 Post Oak Blvd where Accelerated Learning Academy purchased a 1,119-square-foot condo unit, claiming they needed the space for storage, photographed Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023, in Houston.

Harris County appraisal officials have been more skeptical about the school’s use of the unit for educational purposes: “Personally, I cannot imagine that the state of Texas would allow the use of state funds to purchase this property,” the agency’s exemptions coordinator wrote in 2013, noting the Cosmopolitan’s deed restrictions prohibited condos from being used for businesses.

Accelerated has continued to seek a tax exemption. The appraisal district’s 2018 field inspection showed some plastic totes scattered throughout the unit.

“Very nice condo with granite and hardwoods,” the inspector noted. The exemption was again denied because the property did “not meet the tests prescribed by the tax code.” Records show Accelerated paid about $9,000 in property taxes on the unit last year.

Another example is the A.W. Brown Leadership Academy, which has two campuses in the Dallas area that serve about 1,000 students. Property records show it owns eight properties, several worth millions that have sat unused — even as taxpayer money has gone to repay the loans used to buy them.

Records show A.W. Brown’s real estate holdings include nearly 50,000 of commercial office space purchased with bonds in 2017. Appraised at more than $4 million, the property has been tax-free since 2018 and is vacant. Taxpayers pay for the bonds. A.W. Brown spokesman Charles Roberts said the school is still deciding how to use it.

The charter also owns a 3,400-square-foot house with an in-ground pool on 6 acres in Duncanville, identified as an office and valued at $630,000, plus 99 acres next to it, valued at more than $4 million by the appraisal district. Those were purchased more than a decade ago from professional basketball player Larry Demetric Johnson, records show.

The school has paid no taxes on either since 2014, according to appraisal records. In the fall of 2022, the school announced its plan to turn the more-than 100 acres of land into a community garden and farm for students “to learn more about agriculture and entrepreneurship,” said Roberts, the school spokesman.

In response to questions from Hearst, Roberts said the charter would be starting “an internal audit of facility purchases.” He declined to comment further.

edward.mckinley@chron.com

eric.dexheimer@chron.com

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Texas

NYC Turns Down Three Success Academy Co-locations

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2023 //
22

At ex-Governor Cuomo’s urging several years ago, the Legislature passed a law requiring the New York City Department of Education to provide free space to charter schools, and if no space was available, to pay their rent in private space. This requirement gave rise to the dreadful practice of “co-location,” in which a new charter school was crammed into an existing public school. The public school typically lost space for class size reduction, performances, special education services, and everything else that was not designated as a classroom. Meanwhile, the charter school got fresh new furniture and the best of everything. There was no collaboration between the schools under the same roof.

A few days ago, charter advocates were stunned when the Department of Education rejected three requests for co-location by the rich and politically powerful Success Academy charter chain. The Wall Street Journal immediately published an editorial blasting Mayor Eric Adams (whose campaign was bankrolled by charter billionaires) and who put charter advocates on the city’s school board. The decision was made by Chancellor David Banks and never reached the pro-charter city board.

For Eva Moskowitz of Success Academy, this was a surprising rejection. She is accustomed to cowing politicians (she has her own PAC) and getting her way.

Charter fans and the pro-charter media blame “the unions,” their usual enemy, but this isn’t correct. Parents and educators in these communities contacted their legislators and won their support. And the legislators and local officials killed the deal.

Congressman Jamaal Bowman stepped up to oppose the co-location in a school that he knew. He wrote a thread on Twitter (@JamaalBowmanNY) that began:

The @NYCSchools proposal to open and co-locate a new @SuccessCharters school in Building X113 is absolutely outrageous. The Panel for Education Policy has to vote against this plan, and I urge my colleagues and neighbors to get loud in opposition. Here’s why: 🧵

As a former educator & principal of a middle school in the same district as X113, I’ve seen up close how the educators there have done a tremendous job serving their students & families. Our community is incredibly grateful for the love they pour into their work every day.

I’ve also seen how charter schools can harm students, educators, and traditional public schools in our communities. We can’t let that happen at X113.

Big charter networks have a history of draining students & funds from traditional public schools, and violating the rights of their students. Last year, Success Academy had to pay out $2.4 million in a federal court settlement for pushing out students with disabilities.

The plan will decrease available space for the existing schools at Building X113 – both district-run public schools – and prevent them from lowering class sizes adequately. Class size matters. We’ve got to demand schools get the resources & physical space to meet student needs.

As many charter school expansions do, this destructive plan will also disproportionately harm students with disabilities. The plan does not include sufficient analysis of what intervention rooms are necessary to provide students with IEPs with the services they need.

Another surprise: the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post got the story right. The story recognized that the pressure to block the co-locations came not from the union but from parents. The Post has been a vocal supporter of charters, and Murdoch himself has contributed to them.

Elected officials helped kill a plan to open three new charter schools in existing public schools or other city-owned buildings — after hearing fierce opposition from local parents.

Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson — who last week spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new DREAM Charter High School in Mott Haven — suggested Tuesday that her hand was forced against the planned Success Academy in Williamsbridge.

“Parents of School District 11 spoke to us loud & clear. The deep rooted history of disinvestment at the Richard R. Green Campus must be recognized. So much progress has been made,” she tweeted.

A City Hall insider also cited “a lot of pushback” from community members opposed to the new charter schools.

“They vote and they hold folks accountable,” the source said.

Schools Chancellor David Banks’ unexpected withdrawal of the proposal came even though Mayor Eric Adams packed the board in charge of the decision with pro-charter allies.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Courage, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, Failure, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Privatization, Resistance

Gary Rubinstein: Trainwreck for America (TFA)

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2023 //
21

Gary Rubinstein started his teaching career as one of the earliest “corps members” of Teach for America. Over time, he became disillusioned with the organization’s grandiose claims and boasts. He is now an award-winning career high school teacher of mathematics in New York City.

He wrote about TFA’s latest woes:

Between 1990 and 2013, Teach For America grew in size and influence from a tiny inconsequential alternative placement provider to a $300 million a year political powerhouse. But the last ten years have been rough on TFA. In 2016 they fired about 15% of their staff. Then their recruitment figures dropped year after year until 2022 when they had their fewest number in nearly 20 years. And now Chalkbeat reports that TFA is set to fire another 25% of their staff in the coming months.

As an alumni of TFA (Houston 1991), I’ve been following the ups and downs of this organization for 32 years. At least to me, it is not a mystery why TFA is crashing and burning.

The first reason is that they have neglected their fundamental task, which is to properly train the new recruits. Every year their training seems to get worse until now they seem to have given up on trying to train the corps members at all. I had a ‘mole’ in TFA a few years back, someone who was once a student at the high school I work at. When I asked them about what they learned about lesson planning, they told me that they were never required to create a lesson plan for the entire institute.

Poorly trained teachers become failing teachers in the Fall and many of them quit and those who don’t quit are certainly not giving TFA good word of mouth. Eventually the pipeline dries up, which is exactly what is happening. Yes, with $300 million, TFA will always be able to recruit some new corps members, but without the positive buzz, they won’t be able to be as selective about who they admit.

Another cause of TFA’s current problems is that about 15 years ago they made a Faustian bargain with the so-called reformers like Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. TFA jumped on the teacher bashing bandwagon, rode that wave for a while getting several alumni into leadership positions in several large districts. But all those leaders failed and got fired and TFA seems to have gone down with the ship.

And with all these issues to overcome, TFA would need a great leader. Unfortunately their CEO who has been in charge for about eight years, Elisa Villanueva-Beard (EVB) has just not been up to the task. To understand why, listen to this four minute interview she did a few weeks ago.

Her response was completely incoherent. It sounded like what you would get if you played Mad Libs and every blank had to be filled with ed reform buzz word.

“We’re living in an outmoded system that really needs to be ‘reimagined.'” Sounds like it comes from Trump’s Secretary Of Education Betsy DeVos in 2017.

‘We know that that [teacher quality] is still the biggest indicator of success for a child’s outcomes’ from Michelle Rhee in 2017

‘Science of reading’ from Obama’s other secretary of education John King. https://www.the74million.org/article/science-of-reading-john-king-close-literacy-gap/

‘High Dosage Tutoring’ This fits well with a new TFA initiative where they are having college students tutor students. What’s ironic about this is that for years the ed reformers insisted that class size did not matter and now TFA is saying that one-on-one tutoring is an efficient use of money.

‘They [kids] need us to have high expectations, have deep love and belief in them’ is a favorite of Joel Klein, a big TFA advocate. Elissa mentions this in every interview I have ever heard with her. How great it would be if low expectations was even one of the top twenty things that causes students to struggle.

And to end with “where we leave no kids behind” from the education visionary George W Bush whose policy did more damage to schools and students than anything else, even Race To The Top, in the past 20 years.

For the CEO of a $300 million a year organization with 33 years of work in education to spew twenty years of empty cliches in four minutes is definitely a bad sign for the future of this stumbling organization.

I actually feel a little bad for them. It would have been so easy to just have a more positive message. Rather than saying that real teachers are so lazy they can’t even muster up some high expectations, TFA could have said something like “Teachers are heroes in this country and we want our corps members to learn from them and aspire to be like them.” TFA could have also encouraged their alumni who wanted to lead schools to do so by climbing the ranks and become assistant principals and then principals of district schools. Instead they bought into the mirage of the charter networks who, in various ways, cheat to get their results.

Is it too late for TFA to make a comeback? If they don’t do some serous soul searching, there is not chance I think.

And certainly some of the 1000 disgruntled employees who are about to get fired can corroborate the misguided policies that have landed TFA in this mess. Contact me if you want to speak out.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Teach for America

Peter Greene: Why State Takeovers Fail

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2023 //
5

Writing in Forbes, Peter Greene explains why state takeovers fail. Greene retired as a teacher after 39 years in the classroom. They fail and fail, but state legislatures won’t stop imposing them on struggling school districts that need help. The usual traits of a “failing” school or school district: high poverty, high numbers of limited-English proficient students, high numbers of students with disabilities. Funny, one seldom, if ever, finds a school or district in an affluent white neighborhood that needs to be run by the state.

Greene writes:

Since policy writers and thinky tanks first started pushing the idea of identifying “failing” schools, the search has been on for a way to fix those schools. A popular choice has been the school takeover model, where the state strips the local school district of authority and then waves some sort of magic wand to make things better.

The Obama administration used School Improvement Grants as a tool, offering federal funds to schools that were “failing,” but those funds came with very strict rules about how they could be used. This is a good example of the Takeover By Puppetry model, in which the local officials are left in place, but they are only allowed to make certain government-approved moves or must only implement consultant-approved steps. The SIG program spent in the neighborhood of $7 billion. USED’s own report found that it “had no significant impacts on math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment.”

That report, to which Greene refers, was released in the last day of the Obama administration’s eight-year term. It gave an F to a major part of the failed “Race to the Top.” $7 billion spent, nothing to show for it.

The more direct takeover approach has also been tried. Tennessee formed the Achievement School District; in this model, the state takes control of “failing schools” and lumps them into a state-run district. The initial promise was that schools from the bottom 5% would be catapulted into the top 25%. After a few years, they were not even close to achieving their, so they rewrote the goal. The head of the ASD moved on to another job. Versions of the ASD have been tried in several states and in cities (e.g. Philadelphia) and in almost all cases, they’ve been rolled back or shut down because they cost a lot of money and achieve few worthwhile results.

Greene lists five reasons that state takeovers fail. Open the link to read them all.

1) The Wrong Measure of Failure

How are we going to decide which schools are in need of taking over? The most common answer is by standardized test scores–which is a lousy answer. This bad definition is important because it biases the process in favor of bad solutions. A school may have a hundred problems, but if all we’re focused on is the test scores, too may real problems will be unaddressed. Worse, many important elements of children’s education will be swept aside to make room for more test prep–the exact opposite of what students in struggling schools need. This is like calling AAA because you’re stranded beside the road with three flat tires, a busted radiator, an empty gas tank, and failing brakes–and AAA sends someone to wax the car.

2) The Wrong Diagnosis

Takeover programs focus on school governance. The thesis of a takeover is that the school board, the administration, and probably the teachers, are the root of all the problems at the school. If we just take them out of the way and replace them with shinier people, then everything will just fall into place. Somehow, all these people who work in the district either don’t know how to raise test scores, or they just don’t care. Resources for the district, issues in the community, systemic lack of support for the school, poverty–none of that is on the table. The belief is that when the old bureaucracy (including unions) is swept away and replaced, preferably by a visionary CEO type who will whip the troops into shape, then everything will run so much better. Often the unspoken premise is, “If we could just run these schools like charter schools…” Here’s what Chris Barbic, who was supposed to be the visionary CEO of the Tennessee ASD, said as he was leaving the job:

Let’s just be real: achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment. I have seen this firsthand at YES Prep and now as the superintendent of the ASD. As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results. I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.

I have always been partial to Greene’s third reason: the mystical belief that someone who works for the State Departmenf of Education knows how to fix everything. This is absurd. You would think even the Legislature knows that Superman or Woman is not in a desk job at DOE.

Categories Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Failure

I Interview Josh Cowen about the Hoax and Failure of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2023 //
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Periodically, the Network for Public Education sponsors a conversation with an important voice in education policy. On January 11, I interviewed Josh Cowen, Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University.

Josh has been an insider in voucher research for almost 20 years. It’s a small club, and he knows the research and the researchers. Josh came to the conclusion that vouchers have been a disaster for the students who leave public schools, supposedly to be “saved” by them.

But he points out that 70-80% of the students who use vouchers were never enrolled in public schools. Many return to the public schools. The political pressure for vouchers comes from politicians and parents seeking a subsidy for students already attending private and religious schools. The claim that they will help “save kids from failing schools” is a hoax to cover up the real purpose of vouchers: to transfer funds to private and religious schools.

The discussion was oversubscribed. Many people who wanted to watch the zoom were turned away. You can watch the recording here. The link is at the bottom of the page.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Lies, Privatization, Research, Vouchers
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