Archives for category: Corporate Reform
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Mercedes Schneider: What Happened to New Orleans?

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2016 //
5

You may have read that Louisiana’s famous, controversial, ballyhooed Recovery School District has been dissolved. Eleven years after Hurricane Katrina, the district comprised of charter schools is being returned to the districts from which they were drawn. Most are in New Orleans and will be returned to the Orleans Parish School Board.

 

Can it be true? Are the charter champions really giving up their struggle? John White knows. He is the State Commissioner who regularly boasts about the miracle of the RSD. But he is not telling.

 

Michael Klonsky has his doubts. So does Karran Harper Royal.

 

 

Mercedes Schneider has written two versions.

 

Here is a brief overview.

 

Here is her close analysis of the law. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Louisiana, New Orleans

Our Blog Poet on Corporate Reform (with Apologies to Robert Frost)

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2016 //
6

Thanks to Some DAMpoet:

“The Path Not Taken” (apologies to Robert Frost)

Two paths diverged in a public school,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, help and tool
I looked down one, like a teaching fool
To how it lent to the student growth

Then took the other, as much more fair,
And having for taps the better claim
Because it was psycho and wanted power,
And as for empathy and care,
Had torn the students apart for game,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this for the Fates
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two paths diverged in a school, and for Gates,
I took the one of Norman Bates,
And that has made all the difference.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform

Trying to Educate the Education Reformers, Without Success

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2016 //
52

This article is a slightly revised version of the one I posted yesterday afternoon. I wrote the original on my cell phone (as I wrote most posts) while sitting outside a fisher let on Southold, New York. You can always tell the difference between a post written on the cellphone and one written on the computer. The latter has quotes in italics. The former has quotes inside quote marks, “like this.”

I posted it today on Huffington Post because that is where Peter Cunningham posted his lame defense of Campbell Brown.

Read and leave comments, if you are so inclined.

Categories Corporate Reform

Video: How Charter Schools Hurt Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2016 //
22

Do you have 3 minutes towatch a video?

 

Watch this graphic video and share it with your friends when they ask you what a charter is.

 

It explains in clear visuals how charters operate and how they hurt public schools by draining away the students chosen by the charter and the resources that previously funded the community’s public school.

 

The he video was commissioned by the Network for Public Education. Help it go viral. Share it. Tweet it. Put it on Facebook.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Funding

Ohio: Reformster Chosen As State Superintendent

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2016 //
17

Paola DeMaria, an apologist for Ohio’s floundering, politically powerful, corrupt charter industry, has been named as State Superintendent. He is not an educator and proud of it.

 

The Cleveland Plain Dealer says he is a strong supporter of school choice and Common Core. Does he care about the public schools that enroll more than 90% of Ohio’s children? That’s not clear.

 

Stephen Dyer notes that DeMaria has defended charters when school boards claim that they are draining resources from public schools.

 

“DeMaria also is of the opinion that more money doesn’t improve student performance. This is a classic fallacy employed by many in the free market reform movement. The problem is it compares dollars spent with increases in test scores, claiming that if test scores don’t go up at the same rate as the spending, then clearly spending more doesn’t matter.”

 

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy posted the new superintendent’s background:

 
“Profile of the new Superintendent of Public Instruction

 

“Statement in letter of application:

 

“Second, I love education policy and practice. My love is not rooted in the fact that I’m a professional educator-because I’m not.”
“Academic credentials:
1984 Furman University B.A. Political Science/Economics
1996 The Ohio State University M.P.A. Public Administration

 

 

Question 2 on the application:
Are you eligible for a superintendent license for this position? NO
Work Experience:

 
2010-present Principal Consultant, Education First Consulting, LLC

 
2008-2010 Executive Vice Chancellor, Ohio Department of Higher Education (formerly Ohio Board of Regents)

 
2004-2008 Associate Superintendent for School Options and Finance

 
2000-2004 Chief Policy Advisor/Director of Cabinet Affairs-Office of the Governor

 
1999-2000 Senior Resident Advisor-Barents Group, LLC

 
1998-1999 Director-State of Ohio/Office of Budget and Management

 
1991-1998 Assistant Director-State of Ohio/Office of Budget and Management

 
1988-1991 Senior Fiscal Analyst-State of Ohio/The Ohio Senate

 

 

Bill Phillis writes:

“Departure from tradition:
“Since the position of state superintendency was established in 1913, it has been filled from the ranks of professionals in the field of public education.
“A new era has begun. Steve Dyer, Policy Fellow with Innovation Ohio, made some observations today. The Cleveland Plain Dealer article also provides some interesting insights.”
William Phillis
Ohio E & A

 

 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform

Mercedes Schneider: How Could a Report on Corporate Reform Omit the Billionaire Funders?

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2016 //
62

Mercedes Schneider received a copy of the Media Matters report on the corporate rightwing assault on public education, as did I and many others. She had the same reaction that I did. How can you list the rightwing think tanks, corporate groups, and foundations that are promoting privatization and forget to mention the three biggest funders of rightwing attacks on public education: Gates, Walton, and Broad?

 

There were some other glaring omissions. Stand for Children and Parent Revolution were there, but not Democrats for Education Reform, which funds candidates who support the rightwing agenda.

 

It seemed fishy. Mercedes did some digging and learned that Media Matters is led by journalist David Brock. Brock is active in the Clinton campaign. It must have been a political decision to omit the three biggest funders of privatization and anti-union policies. More than 90% of the nation’s 7,000 or so charter schools are non-union. The expansion of charters is an effective way to break the nation’s largest public unions. The funders know that.

 

After more digging, Mercedes concluded that the omissions were not accidental. I decided to trash the post I had written. But I was glad to see some acknowledgement–even if partial–for the struggle we are engaged in to save public education.

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, DFER, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Unions, Walton Foundation

Ben Stein: Trump’s Ideas Threaten the Stability of the World Economy

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2016 //
29

Ben Stein is a sane conservative and a professional humorist. In this article, he explains why Donald Trump’s economic ideas are a threat to the stability of the global economy. Trump recently said he could save billions by making a deal with the nation’s creditors and not paying back 100 cents on the dollar on bonds–in other words, abandoning the “full faith and credit” that maintains the trustworthiness of the American dollar. Stein explains why this is a terrible idea that shows that one can’t import the finagling of the businessman into world economics. His view: Trump was not a good businessman, and he needs to find some experienced advisors fast and listen to them.

 

 

What has this to do with education? This too is a realm where non-educators have imposed ideas that  come from the business world. Our children are not “products,” test scores are not profits or losses, and education leaders are not CEOs.

Categories Corporate Reform, Trump

Florida: Charter Management Company Indicted for Criminal Fraud

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2016 //
9

A grand jury in Escambia County in Florida indicted Newpoint Education Partners and its vendors for fraud and other crimes. Newpoint Education Partners was created by former employees of Ohio’s controversial for-profit White Hat Management company.

 

“An Escambia County grand jury indicted Newpoint Education Partners and three other companies for grand theft, money laundering and aggravated white collar crime.

 

“Newpoint managed charter schools in Escambia County for 21st Century Academy of Pensacola. Last year, the Escambia County School Board revoked charters for Newpoint Academy and Newpoint High for grade tampering and misuse of public funds. All three Newpoint schools — Newpoint High, Newpoint Academy and Five Flags Academy — closed. The enrollment at the three schools totaled about 350 students.

 

“The grand jury alleges that Newpoint and its vendors fraudulently billed 21st Century Academy hundreds of thousands of dollars for supplies, equipment and services. Newpoint and its vendors allegedly laundered the proceeds of the thefts through multiple bank accounts to conceal the criminal activity.

 

“The source of the alleged laundered proceeds was charter school grant funds appropriated by the state for charter schools to use to procure supplies, equipment and services necessary for startup.

 

“I’ve prosecuted charter schools before, but not this particular type of scheme,” Assistant State Attorney Russell Edgar said. “I’ve prosecuted people involved with charter schools for committing theft of funds and prosecuted people for misusing children to work off campus during school, but this is the first time prosecuting a managing company.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio

Jeannie Kaplan: How “Reform” Ruined District 4 in Denver

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2016 //
18

Jeannie Kaplan served two terms as an elected member of the Denver school board. Denver is a reform hotspot. It has been under the firm control of reformers for the past decade. Kaplan says it has been a disastrous decade that has brought union-free charters, constant testing, but no improvement for the children.since the reformers regularly flood Denver school board elections with cash for their candidates, they will be in control for an even longer time. How many years must reformers be in total control until they can declare that every child has an excellent school without regard to zip code? Mayor Bloomberg had 12 years of unfettered power in NYC (Joel Klein was there for 9 of those years) and the happy day has still not arrived.

 

In this post, Kaplan describes what happened to District 4 in Denver, the epicenter of reform. She sums it up in three words: Disruption, disenfranchisement, and drama.

 

It begins like this:

 

 

“This is a saga about Disruption (school closings and openings, extraordinarily high teacher and principal turnover, destruction of neighborhood schools), Disenfranchisement (two board resignations in four years, two representatives chosen by the Board of Education, not the voters), and Drama (the most recent Board vacancy replacement appears to never have undergone the most basic background check which is mandatory for all Denver Public Schools – DPS – employees and volunteers. The seat became vacant in February 2016 and remains vacant as of May 2.)”

 

Read on: You will encounter your old friend Stand on Children (know to its critics as Stand ON Children).

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Denver, Education Reform, Stand for Children

Mercedes Schneider Does Not Feel Grateful to the 1% for Funding Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2016 //
22

Over the weekend, Nina Rees, CEO of the Natuonal Alliance for Public Charter Schools, expressed her gratitude to the billionaires who fund charter schools and wondered why anyone could question their kindness and generosity.

 

Mercedes Schneider explains to Nina Rees why she feels no gratitude to the billionaires. They are harming public education and hurting millions of children, whose public schools are losing resources and programs and teachers as the billionaires build their charter empire to compete with underfunded public schools.

 

Rees wrote:

 

“If you heard that a group of philanthropists came together to donate millions of dollars to schools, you would probably consider it good news.”

 

Schneider responded:

 

“Anyone who has spent even five minutes on this blog would know that I would not consider the above to be “good news.” I am aware that millions donated “to schools” in this day and age likely means the corporate reform billionaire attempt to convert traditional public education into an under-regulated, market-driven model.”

 

And it gets better from there on.

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform
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