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Carol Burris: Fleecing the Taxpayers! Write Your Senator Now!

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2023 //
6

Carol Burris writes here about a new legislative proposal, co-sponsored by some Democratic Senators, to shower millions of dollars on organizations that promote or planet new charter schools, including religious charter schools. This is a ripoff of government funds. Write your Senator now to kill this bad proposal..

Burris writes:

Eight senators (Bill Cassidy [R-La.], John Coryn [R-Tx], Cory Booker [D-NJ], Tim Scott [R-SC], Michael Bennet [D-CO], Mike Braun [R-Ind], Maggie Hassan [D-NH], Brian Schatz [D-HI]) introduced a bill last week that was clearly written with the help of the charter lobby. The Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act would allow billionaire-funded nonprofits operating as “state entities” to keep more of a cut when dispersing Charter School Program (CSP) grants. The bill would also allow these “state entities” to award up to $100,000 to would-be charter entrepreneurs, including religious organizations, to pre-plan a charter school before they have even submitted an application to an authorizer.

Send your letter to your senator to oppose the charter lobby’s bill today. Click HERE.

As we documented in our reports, CSP planning grants have led to enormous waste and fraud. NPE found that millions of CSP dollars have gone to school entrepreneurs who never opened a school—confirmed by the Department of Education and the GAO. That is why the 2022 reform regulations we supported put some modest guardrails on how and when planning grants could be spent.

That did not sit well with the charter lobby, led by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which persuaded these eight Senators to make it even easier to get funding to pre-plan a school. 

But it gets worse.  This bill would also increase the funding state entities can keep for themselves when they disperse grants. That cut is already at 10%. This bill would raise it to a whopping 15%. 

Here is an example that shows the impact. The Opportunity Trust is funded by millionaires and billionaires, including the Walton Family Foundation and The City Fund, which itself was funded by billionaires Reed Hastings and John Arnold. It just received a $35,555,557.00 Charter School Program SE grant to open more charter schools in Missouri, even though the St. Louis School Board and the municipal government have made it clear they do not want more charter schools in the city. Charters are only allowed in St. Louis, one unaccredited district, and Kansas City, which their application failed to mention. 

The democratically elected school board of St. Louis just passed a resolution asking the U.S. Department of Education to rescind the grant, stating, among other objections, that the Opportunity Trust lied in its application regarding its working relationship with the district. The one charter school in the unaccredited district that Opportunity Trust opened has been a financial disaster. 

Yet, The Opportunity Trust can currently keep more than $3.5 million for administering grants and “technically assisting” charter grantees. This new bill would allow Opportunity Trust to increase the amount it can keep to more than $5.3 million. 

In addition, the bill would allow the Opportunity Trust to award nearly $1.8 million to would-be charter entrepreneurs to pre-plan schools in a city where they are not needed or wanted. This June, St. Louis Today exposed how three present and former executives of the controversial Kairos Academy, an Opportunity Trust-sponsored school, double-dipped to receive over a half million dollars to “plan” the charter school even while receiving a full salary from their public schools. Two of the three have already left the charter school. 

Shockingly, the Empower Charter School Educators to Lead Act would not only encourage such double-dipping, it would also increase the funding stream.  

At the beginning of the CSP, only state education departments could receive these large grants. However, the charter lobby worked to change the law so that nonprofits like Opportunity Trust could also control who gets the money and keep a share for themselves. 

Half of the 2023 CSP SE awards went to organizations like Opportunity Trust—nonprofits that advocate and lobby for charter schools and are unaccountable to the public. 

Contact your Senators today. Stop the charter school lobby’s new attempts to fleece American taxpayers and undermine public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Religion

Oklahoma: State Attorney General Sues to Block Religious Charter School

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2023 //
13

Gentner Drummond, the Attorney General for Oklahoma, sued to block the authorization of a Catholic charter school. Drummond disagrees with Governor Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters. Even the lobbyists for the charter movement oppose the religious charter school, which is a back door voucher.

Sean Murphy of the AP reported:

Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond on Friday sued to stop a state board from establishing and funding what would be the nation’s first religious public charter school after the board ignored Drummond’s warning that it would violate both the state and U.S. constitutions.

Drummond filed the lawsuit with the Oklahoma Supreme Court against the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board after three of the board’s members this week signed a contract for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

“Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups,” the lawsuit states.

The school board voted 3-2 in June to approve the Catholic Archdiocese’s application to establish the online public charter school, which would be open to students across the state in kindergarten through grade 12. In its application, the Archdiocese said its vision is that the school “participates in the evangelizing mission of the Church and is the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out.”

The approval of a publicly funded religious school is the latest in a series of actions taken by conservative-led states that include efforts to teach the Bible in public schools, and to ban booksand lessons about race, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Oklahoma’s Constitution specifically prohibits the use of public money or property from being used, directly or indirectly, for the use or benefit of any church or system of religion. Nearly 60% of Oklahoma voters rejected a proposal in 2016 to remove that language from the Constitution…

Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who earlier this year signed a bill that would give parents public funds to send their children to private schools, including religious schools, criticized Drummond’s lawsuit as a “political stunt.”

“AG Drummond seems to lack any firm grasp on the constitutional principle of religious freedom and masks his disdain for the Catholics’ pursuit by obsessing over non-existent schools that don’t neatly align with his religious preference,” Stitt said in a statement.

Drummond defeated Stitt’s hand-picked attorney general in last year’s GOP primary and the two Republicans have clashed over Stitt’s hostile position toward many Native American tribes in the state.

The AG’s lawsuit also suggests that the board’s vote could put at risk more than $1 billion in federal education dollars that Oklahoma receives that require the state to comply with federal laws that prohibit a publicly funded religious school.

“Not only is this an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty, but it is an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars,” Drummond said in a statement.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a nonprofit organization that supports the public charter school movement, released a statement Friday in support of Drummond’s challenge.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Resistance

Denver: Dark Money from Billionaires is Driving the School Board Elections

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2023 //
2

Mike DeGuire is a veteran educator in Denver who has been a teacher and a principal in the public schools. He has researched the heavy hand of billionaires in expanding charter schools in Denver. He explains here that the current school board elections have been heavily influenced by billionaires, mostly out-of-state. As usual, they are hiding behind the name of a “parent” group. He predicts that their candidates will have a 10-1 funding advantage over those they run against. The billionaires plan to buy control of the school board.

He writes:

The Denver school board race is off and running, and several key groups have announced their endorsements.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the local teacher organization, endorsed Charmaine Lindsay, Scott Baldermann, and Kwame Spearman. Denver Families Action endorsed Kimberlee Sia, John Youngquist, and Marlene Delarosa.

Who is Denver Families Action? Chalkbeat says it is the “political arm of a relatively new organization,” Denver Families for Public Schools,formed with the backing of several local charter school networks, and they get funding from The City Fund, a pro-charter education reform national organization.

What is City Fund? How much funding did they give to this new group called Denver Families for Public Schools? What Denver Public Schools “families” do they represent?

According to Influence Watch, The City Fund is an “education organization that funds initiatives that promote the growth of charter schools and other school choice organizations. It also funds activist organizations that support increasing charter school access and school choice programs.” Chalkbeat reports that City Fund was started in 2018 by two billionaires, Reed Hastings and John Arnold, who donated over $200 million to “expand charter schools or charter-like alternatives in 40 cities across the country.”

Reed Hastings has called for the elimination of democratically elected school boards, he serves on the national KIPP charter school board, and he built a training center in Bailey, Colorado, to house the Pahara Institute, an education advocacy and networking group that supports the expansion of charter schools. In December, 2020, he spelled out his vision. “Let’s year by year expand the nonprofit school sector … for the low-performing school district public school — let’s have a nonprofit public school take it over.”

The City Fund set up its own political group, a PAC, called Campaign for Great Public Schools (also called City Fund Action), to give money to organizations that promote charter schools and lobby to privatize education. Since its formation, the Campaign for Great Public Schools has given millions to Education Reform Now, which is the political arm of Democrats for Education Reform. DFER is a “New York-based political action committee which focuses on encouraging the Democratic Party to support public education reform and charter schools.”

Campaign for Great Public Schools also gave millions to the American Federation for Children, which is “a conservative 501(c)(4) dark money group that promotes the school privatization agenda via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other avenues. It is the 501(c)(4) arm of the 501(c)(3) non-profit group the Alliance for School Choice. The group was organized and is funded by the billionaire DeVos family.”

The City Fund Action PAC also funds the National Alliance for Charter Schools, 50 CAN, and numerous other organizations that support the expansion of charter schools.

Denver Families for Public Schools received $1.75 million in 2021 from the Campaign for Great Public Schools to promote their three selected candidates in the current Denver school board race. Denver Families for Public Schools functions as a 501(c)(4), which means it can donate unlimited amounts of money in political elections without disclosing its donors. It functions as an “astroturf” group by engaging in the practice of creating the illusion of widespread grassroots support for a candidate, policy, or cause when no such support necessarily exists. It set up a website, Facebook page, hired staff and recruited others to lobby for its cause. It posts videos of parents who say they don’t like the current school board candidates if they are opposed to them. It participates in forums to promote its selected candidates.

When Denver Families Action announced its school board endorsements in August, the leading fundraiser in the at-large seat at that time, Ulcca Hansen, withdrew from the race since she did not gain its endorsement. Hansen stated she could not win without the significant financial resources that come from “soft side spending.”

This money is also referred to as outside spending or “dark money,” because the funders of the outside groups often remain secret. Hansen felt the dark money would outpace campaign spending by a 10 to 1 margin. The $1.75 million that Denver Families for Public Schools received from The City Fund will be a major factor in the DPS school board race.

Denver citizens need to know who is behind the endorsements, who pays money for the ads, the flyers, the canvassing, the messaging on social media, and why they are supporting their candidates for the school board.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Democrats for Education Reform, Denver, Education Reform

Houston: Students in AP Physics Lose Teacher, Now They Are Acting as Teachers

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2023 //
17

The incredible Mike Miles started the year boasting that he had no teaching vacancies. Nonetheless, teachers who dislike Miles’ lockstep “New Education System” are quitting. In one high-perfuming school, students in advanced physics lost their teacher and are now teaching other students.

Sam Gonzalez Kelly wrote in The Houston Chronicle:

Juniors and seniors at Houston ISD’s DeBakey High School for Health Professions walked into their AP Physics classes at the beginning of the school year and asked one question: “Where’s our teacher?”

About 150 students at the top-ranked high school signed up for the advanced science courses, many with the hope of earning college credit, but found themselves without a qualified teacher. Given the complex nature of the material, substitute teachers brought in were unable to do much more than supervise the classroom.

The teens spent the first seven weeks of the year trying to teach themselves sophisticated concepts, including electric circuitry and thermodynamics. In some cases, seniors in AP Physics II were pulled out of classes to teach juniors in AP Physics I. Students were told by administration that their hands were tied — a hiring freeze at Houston ISD had left them unable to fill the vacancy, they were told, which was created when a teacher went on leave to start the year.

“It’s just aggravating,” said senior Zain Kundi. “It’s money on the line, because these classes in college are thousands of dollars and if you get it out of the way now, you can save quite a bit of money. And if our grades start falling, colleges will see that early in the admissions process and be like ‘what the heck…’ Especially now with college applications, we have so much on our plates already.”

Kundi says the AP Physics position was left vacant because the school’s administration tried to saddle a standard physics teacher with the role just before the start of the school year, causing the teacher to use accumulated leave days in protest. The senior made it clear he does not blame the teacher nor HISD for the vacancy, arguing that DeBakey’s administration had a whole summer to find someone for the role. Now, student GPAs, AP scores and college prospects may be affected as a result, he says.

DeBakey Principal Jesus Herrera did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A district spokesman said last week that schools “have been asked to limit outside hiring” until staffing audits are complete in the 85 schools in or aligned with Miles’ New Education System, where enrollment was less than forecast to start the year.

“This will give existing HISD teachers whose positions are eliminated in NES and NES-A campuses the first opportunity to apply for other positions available in non-NES schools. Exceptions can and have been made for specialized instructors like AP teachers,” the district said in a statement.

Miles said Thursday evening that the audit was near completion and that the pause would be lifted quickly.

“We had some excess teachers, and we’re moving some teachers around, and that should be completed soon,” Miles said last week. Teachers who move from an NES or NES-A campus will keep their $10,000 stipends, but in the case of the former, will not retain the higher salaries they received for teaching in an NES school, he said.

Meanwhile, DeBakey students presented a petition with dozens of signatures to administrators at a PTO meeting in late September, demanding answers and a solution to the problem.

“Our current management of these courses is not working to benefit our students or our teachers, and it is time for answers,” the petition reads, noting that having senior students teach advanced physics to juniors is “extra work for the seniors and suboptimal instruction for the juniors…”

The situation is not just affecting DeBakey. Though Miles said he started the year with zero teaching vacancies, uncommon in a district like HISD, teachers and administrators at other schools say that they had to get creative to fulfill responsibilities of teachers who have left the district since the school year started.

One geography teacher at Sharpstown High School said he had to take over U.S. history classes after its teacher left over a month into the school year, and that the school has had to reshuffle classes and teachers to avoid hiring as more and more teachers leave. An administrator at one non-NES elementary school said that they were unable to hire a long-term substitute, as they normally would have in years past, after one teacher resigned a few weeks into the year because they were told by district officials that there was a hiring freeze for any positions beside special education and bilingual teachers…

At DeBakey, the PTO has attempted to address the issue on its own by pooling its money to pay stipends to two college professors and two former AP Physics teachers for virtual lessons and tutoring sessions. But not every school in HISD has the resources for such a response, which Ake acknowledged is a “Band-Aid solution until the school and the district can lift the freeze.”

Categories Corporate Reform, Students, Teachers

Matt Barnum: Mark Zuckerberg and the Failure of “Personalized Learning”

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2023 //
24

For several years, vendors of Education technology have promoted the bizarre idea that learning on a computer is “personalized,” as compared to human interaction with a teacher. Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates believed that technology would make it possible to accelerate learning and raise test scores by standardizing teaching.

Matt Barnum reports in Chalkbeat that Zuckerberg’s efforts failed. He and his wife Priscilla Chan via their CZI Initiative realize that their support of Summit Learning failed. However they are now betting on artificial intelligence.

What’s clear is that they do not trust teachers.

Barnum begins:

Several years ago, Mark Zuckerberg had grand designs for American schools.

The Facebook founder and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, poured well over $100 million into an online platform known as Summit Learning that initially aspired to be in half of the nation’s schools. In 2017, Zuckerberg suggested that technology-based “personalized learning” could vault the average student to the 98th percentile of performance.

Fast forward to this summer: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple’s philanthropic arm, laid off dozens of staff on its education team and announced a shift in strategy. “Our understanding of what’s possible in the world of education — and in our world more generally — has changed,” Sandra Liu Huang, CZI’s head of education, wrote in an August blog post. “And so, at CZI, our education efforts must change too. Navigating these changes is humbling and challenging, but ultimately, necessary.”

It was an acknowledgement that the company’s prior education strategy had fallen short of its hopes. Through a spokesperson, Huang declined an interview request, but noted in her blog post that the company is continuing its work in education, albeit with a different strategy. “This moment demands not just investment but innovation — and that’s why we are building a team of experts and partners to identify opportunities where technology and grantmaking can drive coherence,” she wrote.

CZI’s shift in approach marks something of a coda to an era when various advocates and funders believed that computer-based “personalized learning” could dramatically improve education. Summit, CZI’s pet project, has not spread as far as once hoped, and there’s little evidence that it or similar efforts have led to the large learning gains that Zuckerberg envisioned. This gap between ambitions and results underscores the difficulty of using technology to dramatically improve America’s vast system of decentralized schools.

“People keep hoping that our technologies are the Swiss Army knives or steamrollers that they can do everything,” said Justin Reich, a professor at MIT and author of a book on the limits of technology in education. “Instead, our best technologies are very particularly shaped ratchet heads and the landscape of education is millions of bolts.”

Please open the link and read the rest of this fascinating article. CZI has not given up on technology. Imagine if they had spent those millions on health clinics in schools. Or anything else human-based.

Categories Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Teachers, Technology

Philadelphia: Charter School Execs Are Very Well Paid

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2023 //
8

Charter school executives in Philadelphia are very well compensated indeed, write the leaders of the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, Lisa Haver, Deborah Grill, and Lynda Rubin.

They write:

Three of the six most highly paid administrators identified in String Theory’s most recent tax information are members of the Corosanite family: Chief Executive Officer Angela Corosanite, Chief Information Officer Jason Corosanite, and Director of Facilities Thomas Corosanite. Their total salary and compensation, as listed in the charter management organization’s 2021 IRS 990, comes to almost $900,000. String Theory manages only two schools in the city, but the company has six administrators making over $100,000 in salary and compensation. In addition, each school has its own CEO. Why does a network of only two schools need so many highly-paid administrators?

There are no guidelines for charter compensation, that is, no schedule of salary steps as there is for district principals and administrators. Ad Prima charter, a small charter school with 600 students, has a CEO, a principal and a “site director” on staff, all paid over $100,000.00 in salary and compensation. Community Academy charter has a CEO, deputy CEO, a Chief Academic Officer and deputy CAO. Pan American, an elementary school with 750 students, lists eight administrators. Folk Arts Cultural Treasures (FACTS), on the other hand, has one administrator making over $100,000. Global Leadership Academy is a two-school network. Each school has its own CEO–one making more than the district’s superintendent, the other making slightly less. GLA’s principal made over $11,000 more than a district principal with seven years or more of principal experience.

The question is: What does a charter CEO do? In charter schools with a principal, school leader, several assistant principals and a cultural director, what duties are left for a CEO? One superintendent oversees the 217 public schools in the School District of Philadelphia, at a salary of $335,000. Based on most recent federal tax information, the total salary and compensation paid to the city’s charter CEOs is over $10 million. The individual boards of each charter school, or the board of a charter chain, decides on the salary of the CEO and other administrators. There is no uniform system that takes into account years of experience. Charter schools are publicly funded; all charter administrators are paid with tax dollars.

How can charter schools afford so many highly-paid administrators? A 2016 report by City Controller Alan Butkovitz showed that the district spends more of its per-pupil funding on classroom instruction than charters, who spend a higher percentage on administration.

Please open the link and read the rest of the report, which lists the compensation at every charter school in Philadelphia.

In what way is it efficient to pay so many executives?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Forbes on the 400 Richest People in the World

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2023 //
12

Forbes magazine released its annual list of the 400 richest people in the world, called the Forbes 400. This article includes a link to the 400.

In New York State, Michael Blooomberg is the richest. He is a huge supporter of charter schools, as are many other billionaires.

Lisa Finn of the Patch for the North Fork of Long Island writes:

Overall, the 400 richest billionaires in America are worth $4.5 trillion, tying a record set in 2021. Overall, they are about $500 billion richer than they were a year ago, in large part because of rebounding stock markets and an AI-driven tech boom, Forbes said.

NEW YORK — Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is the wealthiest person in New York, according to The Forbes 400, an annual ranking of America’s super rich released Tuesday.

Billionaires had to have a net worth at least $2.9 billion to be included on the prestigious list, up from $2.7 billion a year ago. Forbes said its net worth calculations use stock prices from Sept. 8.

New York’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg, 81, of Bloomberg LP and the richest person in New York, is worth an estimated $96.3 billion. He is ranked the 10th most wealthy man nationwide.

In April, he was ranked the 7th richest person in the world, according to Forbes.

Inequality may well be at its worst point in our history. A handful of people have as much wealth as the lower 50%. This is unhealthy for our society.

If you want to know more about the consequences of intense inequality, I recommend a book by two British sociologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.

Their thesis is that the more equality a society is, the happier it is.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Economy, Inequity

The Plot to Take Down Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2023 //
9

Recently the Network for Public Education and the Education Law Center sponsored a zoom conversation with Nick Surgey. Nick is an experienced investigative journalist who works with an organization called Documented, which digs into the Dark Money groups undermining Public schools and other democratic institutions. Nick has done the legwork that identified the money and people behind the home schooling movement, as well as the rightwing Alliance for Defending Freedom. He has worked with the Center for Media and Democracy and other pro-democracy organizations.

This is a discussion you should definitely tune into.

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Hoax, Inequity, Koch Brothers

Houston: Teachers and Parents Say that Mike Miles’ System Is Seeping into Their Schools

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2023 //
9

Governor Greg Abbott and his State Commissioner Mike Morath hand-picked Mike Miles as Houston’s superintendent, based on the alleged failure of one school, Wheatley High School. In fact, Wheatley had made significant progress and was no longer a “failing” school, and HISD was a B-rated district.

Nonetheless, the state took control of HISD, ousted the elected board and a well-qualified superintendent. Mike Miles took control with a puppet board, charged with “fixing” 28 schools. The 28 quickly turned into 85 schools, all required to submit to Miles’ authoritarian “New Education System.” He pledged to leave the district’s other 190 schools alone. Miles has never been a teacher or a principal. His tenure as superintendent in Dallas was cut short after multiple controversies.

Now, teachers and parents in HISD are alarmed to see Miles’ NES overflowing into schools that were not mandated to adopt it and did not volunteer to adopt it.

Houston ISD English teacher Karen Calhoun enjoyed short-lived relief this summer when her principal at Askew Elementary School opted not to join the dozens of campuses getting overhauled by the district’s new superintendent, Mike Miles.

Despite the decision, Calhoun has watched in recent weeks as her beloved school seemed to morph into a version of the turnaround initiative, known as the “New Education System,” that she hoped to avoid.

Less than a week before classes began, Askew’s principal told reading and math teachers they had to use the same curriculums as NES schools, Calhoun said. The principal also directed all staff to check that students understood the lesson every four minutes or so using “multiple response strategies” — the same techniques that teachers at NES schools are required to use, Calhoun said.

The orders deflated the spirits of many teachers at Askew, a B-rated campus on Houston’s west side, she said.

“The bulk of our teachers have taught 10-plus years. So that means that everybody in that room pretty much knows what they’re doing,” Calhoun said. “You can do multiple strategies in a lesson, but it’s authentic, it’s not mandated. It’s not like, ‘Every three minutes you have to do something. Every four minutes you have to do something.’”

One month into HISD’s school year, significant curriculum and instructional changes have crept into campuses that were supposed to be exempt from Miles’ overhaul, teachers and families at 15 non-NES schools told the Houston Landing in recent weeks. The new practices appear to contradict comments made earlier this summer by Miles, who said he planned to largely leave most schools to operate as they were while he transformed 85 other campuses under the NES umbrella.

In interviews, the educators and parents said many of the changes they’re seeing include elements initially advertised as only for NES schools. Thirteen of their 15 schools scored A or B ratings under the state’s academic accountability system in 2022.

For teachers, the new requirements include removing classroom decor, writing daily lesson objectives on whiteboards at the front of the classroom and repeatedly incorporating the every-four-minute learning checks into their lessons.

In addition, principals leading nearly two-thirds of non-NES schools are choosing to use new reading and math curriculums, Amplify and Eureka, that are mandated in the overhauled campuses, HISD officials confirmed Thursday. Educators at those schools must use the teaching practices recommended by the curriculum providers, such as a daily quiz, called a Demonstration of Learning.

“It sure does feel like NES,” said Melissa Yarborough, an English teacher at the non-NES Navarro Middle School, who now has to use the new curriculum after her principal chose to adopt it this year. “If you don’t get to that Demonstration of Learning by the time you’re supposed to get to it, then that administrator is going to be telling you your pacing is wrong.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Disruption, Houston

Houston: The Canary in the Coal Mine

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2023 //
14

Nick Covington and Chris McNutt of the Human Restoration Project warn that everyone should pay attention to what is happening in Houston. The state takeover of a B-rated majority black-and-brown district demonstrates how far a rightwing governor will go to crush democracy and dissent.

They write:

Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, is at the center of a controversial state takeover by the Texas Education Agency. After working its way through the legal system for several years, last winter the Texas Supreme Court greenlit the replacement of district superintendent and the locally elected board of trustees by the head of the TEA, appointed directly by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. And last month, school was back in session under the newly appointed superintendent, Mike Miles – former US State Department ambassador, charter school CEO, and scandal-ridden Dallas ISD superintendent – amid dozens of pedagogical and policy changes that left teachers, parents, and students confused, frustrated, and afraid.

In an effort to return “back to basics” and reinforce content knowledge to bolster test scores, the district has fundamentally transformed how educators can operate their classrooms in many schools across the district. Despite receiving an acceptable “B” score on the Texas School Report Card, New superintendent Miles stated in a recent district meeting, “We have a proficiency problem, we in HISD have not been able to close [the reading] gap for over 20 years.”

Among the most troubling changes is a strict “multiple-response strategy” where teachers must adhere to a four-minute timer to pause instruction and assess students for understanding – an intervention with seemingly no pedagogical justification. These strategies are paired with heavily scripted activities that are centered on drill and kill: repeat information over and over to memorize content. There has also been an increase in invasive admin walkthroughs to check for compliance with the scripted methods, which teachers and students have described as a distraction from learning. Teachers are required to keep a webcam on in their classroom at all times and their door must remain open. Defending these changes, Miles stated:

“Every classroom has a webcam and a Zoom link, and it’s on 24/7, if a kid is disruptive, we pull that student out of class. We put them in what we call a team center, and they’re being monitored by a learning coach, and they Zoom right back into the class they get pulled from.”

‍Libraries in many schools have been transformed into disciplinary spaces where students are housed for infractions and receive instruction over Zoom. As a result, classrooms are recorded and broadcast at all times. The Houston Education Association and Houston Community Voices for Public Ed have done incredible work documenting dissenting voices. These policies mirror those found in “no excuses” charter schools that police, monitor, and dehumanize students to raise test scores at any cost.

A veteran Houston ISD teacher, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of administrative backlash, reached out to back up these claims, describing the impact these reforms have had on teachers and students:

‍…I left to teach at a Title 1 Houston ISD campus, so I’m getting the luxury to watch this mess unfold, and I assure you, there’s definitely ‘something rotten in Denmark” with what’s happening to us.

My school is not NES nor NES-aligned, but Miles has carved his path in such a way that we’re being evaluated multiple times a day, being forced to follow this horrible curriculum in a lesson cycle that as far as my research has found–has no pedagogical roots. It’s literally drill and kill. Apparently this is a trend or something. Miles is something else and when you Google him or any of the administrations around him calling the shots, you’ll not see any pedigree of education, but multi-millionaire board members whose backgrounds are in gentrification projects and such.

I’m exhausted by the end of the day. Texas teachers are evaluated all the same, using the T-Tess system–well except us now. Their move to push through that District of Innovation leads me to believe they simply want to weed anyone who was part of the old system out. It absolutely feels like he’s pushing to make us all quit. We were notified that although we’re given 10 sick days for the year, if we’ve taken 4 days leave by November or so, we will be terminated. We had an impromptu faculty meeting and had to sign that we’d gotten notification of this. Plus that we’ll be evaluated different.

Before the takeover, HISD was told to shape up or that’s the end of the line. We scored a “B” as a district in the last ratings and still are being taken over. The Abbot/Morath/Miles steamroller is moving right along.

Being a District of Innovation will be the coup de gras for us, really. He wants to add weeks to the school year, he’s already firing any teachers who simply ask questions, and he’s even gaming the system in many ways to ensure that he’ll have “results.” Special Education? Accommodations? Support structures for at-risk students? All gutted. It’s hard to believe this stuff is legal.

I’m stressed and miserable. It’s hard to believe some of the insane stories about his demands–but I assure you they are true. Teaching with doors open, such a security risk. Stuff like no snack time in elementary if it’s not tied to a Texas standard. I at least teach…But we all were forced to watch an hour or so musical he put on that would rival anything out of North Korea.

At this pace and the way things are going, I just can’t sustain it. I can’t stand seeing such a grift ruin education as it’s doing. We definitely had issues as a district but this can’t be the best solution. I’ll try to make it this year, but I’m beginning to apply elsewhere. My students were often successful at the state test, but it’s a crazy world when I teach…and am afraid to ask to take a class day to show my students the library and have them check out books. It’s nuts.

Of course please don’t use my name or anything that might come back to bite me… As Miles promised in his introduction to us that “he’d find out whose spreading dissent and act” and by most accounts that’s exactly what’s been occurring.

‍Parents and community members have flooded school board meetings with accounts from teachers who are similarly afraid to speak out, for fear of losing their jobs, as teachers who question the changes have been labeled “insubordinate” and had their jobs threatened. Parents have also spoken publicly about how the changes have affected their own children, as one mother recounted to the board before having her mic cut-off:

“For the last week, I’ve had a kid that cries every morning and every evening. Crying not to go to school, and beginning not to go in the morning. She says school’s boring, she’s not learning, and she’d rather be homeschooled at this point…She’s miserable. Her confidence is plummeting, and she’s starting to lose her joy for learning.”

‍At a board meeting on September 14th, a 12-year-old HISD student delivered prepared remarks about the disruptive timers, distracting admin walkthroughs, and palpable teacher stress. The board cut her mic, too:

“Due to the new open door policy, I and many other students have a hard time concentrating due to the many distractions in the hallways. Isn’t it your first priority to have kids in HISD like me learn? Students should be in a place they want to go to inst- (mic is cut off)”

Please open the link and finish reading. Miles apparently wants to turn HISD into a “no-excuses” district.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Houston, State Takeover, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Texas
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