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Jeannie Kaplan, a Hero of Public Education in Denver, Has Died

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2023 //
8

Jeanne Kaplan was a tireless champion of public schools in Denver. She was elected to two terms on the Denver school board. She fought for better, more equitable, fully funded schools. She opposed charter schools because they drained funding from public schools. She was a long-time crusader for civil rights, and she appalled by the takeover of the Denver schools by charter interests, who flew a false flag, pretending to care about equity.

Jeannie learned that she had lung cancer last April. Her medical treatment did not slow the disease. She died yesterday. She was 78.

I met Jeannie in Denver in 2010 as I was traveling the country to promote my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. When I met her, we became fast friends. We were on the same page, and she told me about the damage that charter schools were doing to Denver’s public schools. Candidates for the Denver school board were funded by Dark Money, privatizers, and out-of-state billionaires. It was almost impossible for a parent to raise the money to be competitive with the corporate reform candidates.

Jeannie was a warm and caring person who inspired others to get involved, despite the odds crested by Big Money. She started her own blog called “Kaplan for Kids,” and I reposted some of them here.

I think the best way to honor her memory here is to post what seems to be her last commentary, which overflows with wisdom, candor, experience, and common sense. I humbly add her name to the honor roll of the blog.

Jeannie Kaplan wrote:

CHARTERS, CHOICE, and COMPETITION = CLOSURES, CHAOS, and CHURN Principles of Privatization

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Jeannie Kaplan

Reap what you sow and the chickens come home to roost. The elephant in the room.  Aphorisms appropriate to describe what is happening in public education in Denver. 

After 20 years,  more than 5  superintendents, and 11 different school boards, the results of education reform in Denver have become clear, and they aren’t pretty. After opening 72 charters in the last 20 years, 22 of which have closed, the declining enrollments in neighborhood schools have forced the prospect of school closures.  Who knew opening 26 privately run elementary charter schools in competition with district-run schools would ultimately force the district to make some hard financial decisions?  And who knew that ignoring its own 2007 data showing stagnant population growth would lead to less demand for elementary school seats in the 2020s?  Apparently, not those with the power for the last 20 years.  And, as an ironic aside, many of the same people who were the decision-makers in the past and who were unable to make substantive change then, have now decided they will somehow make these previously unattainable changes from their outside “oversight” committee, EDUCATE Denver. In fact one of the co-chairs, Rosemary Rodriguez, was a DPS board member when on March 16, 2017, a Strengthening Neighborhoods Resolution passed, stating:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a citywide committee be formed to review changing demographics and housing patterns in our city and the effect on our schools and to make recommendations on our policies around boundaries, choice, enrollment and academic programs in order to drive greater socio-economic integration in our schools.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that in the face of the sharp decline in the number of school-aged children in gentrifying neighborhoods, the committee is also charged with how to think about school choice and school consolidation to ensure that our schools are able to offer high-quality, sustainable programs for our kids.

These former school board members and former and current civic leaders have formed a “shadow school board” to evaluate and oversee the current superintendent and school board.  Why?  It appears they don’t like what they are seeing being proposed by the current superintendent. What don’t they like?  It appears they have determined the current superintendent is not committed enough to their reform agenda.  You know – the one that has been in place when they were in power, the one that has produced the biggest gaps in the nation, more segregation, and more resource inequity.

As school closures have risen to the fore this week Chalkbeat disclosed these statistics:

“Over the past 20 years, Denver Public Schools has added a lot of schools. It has added students, too — but at a much slower rate.

  • The number of public schools in Denver grew 55% between the 2001-02 and 2021-22 school years, while the number of students grew just 12%.
  • Denver went from having 132 schools serving about 72,000 students in 2001-02 to 204 schools serving nearly 89,000 students in 2021-22.
  • The number of elementary schools in Denver grew 23% over the past 20 years, while the number of students grew just 4%.”

Through expensive marketing and often false narratives, charter schools have had free reign to prey on susceptible families resulting in DPS losing 7400 elementary school students who would have otherwise most likely attended a neighborhood school. Then add in:

  • a state law that prohibits a district from shutting down low enrollment charters, 
  • a district that has ignored demographic information predicting declining enrollment, 
  • a district that employs “attendance zones” and a secretive CHOICE system to often force place students into heavily marketed, often unwanted CHARTER SCHOOLS, and 
  • a competitive financial model called Student Based Budgeting (SBB – money follows the kid) to fund schools, depending on student needs, the goal of which is to close the achievement and resource gaps.  The 2010 Denver Plan/ Strategic Vision and Action Plan describes SBB this way:  
  • Established student-based budget formulas that increase dollars for middle and high school students, special education, English language learners, gifted and talented programs, and students living in poverty. Resource distribution is now more closely aligned with the costs of serving these students. p. 51
  • Refine Student-Based Budgeting formulas to ensure they are best meeting the needs of all of the district’s students. Continue to evaluate and adjust student-based budgeting formulas to 1) meet student needs, 2) make progress on closing the achievement gap, and 3) grow the number of high school graduates and college-ready students. p. 53

No one should be surprised the DPS superintendent is saying schools must be closed (new word is UNIFIED but it still means CLOSURE), given the quagmire he entered.  What would you expect to happen when 72 new charter schools are opened in a landscape of stagnant or declining population growth? Who should be held responsible for the chaos and churn caused by this over-expansion of new charter schools? 

I know, I know. One isn’t supposed to talk about charters any more. But it is the elephant in the room. Education “reformers” want you to believe charters are an irrevocable fact of life in public education, stare decisis if you will. But as we have recently witnessed, that precedent is non-binding. So let’s use it to the advantage of neighborhood school advocates. Let us not assume charters are inevitable, especially given the chaos and poor academic outcomes charters are producing. Denver isn’t the only place experiencing the madness of so many charters. Just this week lifelong educator Arthur Camins wrote:

It is time for Democrats–voters and the politicians who represent them–to abandon charter schools as a strategy for education improvement or to advance equity. Charter schools, whether for- or non-profit, drain funds from public schools that serve all students, increase segregation, and by design only serve the few.

It is worth repeating that in 20 years, DPS has added 72 charter schools, 22 of which have closed.  As students of public education repeatedly attest to, charters have been particularly harmful to neighborhood schools for they gut these schools of resources. Charters have also been disruptive to communities and have contributed to increasing inequity and segregation in our schools. It is not possible to have an honest conversation without addressing that elephant in the room.  Charter schools along with their partners – choice and competition – have had their chance in Denver and their biggest accomplishment has been to pressure neighborhood schools to close.

Let us not overlook the demographic projections DPS has been aware of since the mid 2000’s. 

“It’s really simple, we’ve seen a slow down in births,” said Elizabeth Garner, demographer for the state. “Starting back in 2007, that was our peak birth year, we’ve seen a slowing in births ever since. So with fewer kiddos, that means lower school enrollment.”

Let us not overlook who was supporting and approving this unchecked expansion.  DPS had strong indicators from as early as 2007 onward the population of the city and the number of school-age children was flattening, and yet the district with the strong support of many of the aforementioned  “oversight committee”, EDUCATE Denver, pushed for this proliferation of new charter schools without giving demographics its proper due.

Loss of students = loss of funding (SBB) = loss of programming and supports = closure

Superintendent Alex Marerro has been charged with improving student outcomes and reducing gaps by implementing his strategic plan.  School unifications are one way he has chosen to start this process.  He inherited a district suffering from years of “feel good” oversight from boards and the nonprofit world determined to paint a rosy picture of reform education success, a district more focused on good public relations stories than actual educational outcomes. Now he has to try to provide solutions to problems that have not been dealt with honestly for years. And yes, “unification” has raised as many questions as it has provided answers such as how transportation and language services will be provided and what will be done with these empty buildings. And there is the elephant in the room – again.  Charter schools. Why are they not included in his recommendations? Again, he has no authority to recommend closing them, even though several are also suffering from declining enrollment.  Given this reality, it will be interesting to see how he chooses to address this issue. In the end, how can the board fairly evaluate him according to measures both they and he just agreed on, if it rejects his operational ideas?

As for what neighborhoods these closures would most heavily affect – What would one expect to happen when new charters are opened in neighborhoods heavily populated by families of color and families struggling economically?  Why is there any surprise that most of the schools on the “unification” list affect these neighborhoods?  How could it be otherwise when these are the sites of uncontrolled, privately run options to public schools.  Sadly, it only makes sense that these are the neighborhoods that would suffer the highest impact of school closures.

Few like to close schools.  It is a heart-wrenching, disruptive, negative process. But given the lack of thoughtful planning and oversight for 20 years, what is the better option? Keeping schools open without the financial ability to provide necessary services and supports, or providing unified schools with the money to provide language support,  art, music, nurses, librarians, psychologists, speech therapists?  

Imagine a great school district that had paid attention to population warnings and  hadn’t opened so many charter schools over the last 20 years. Imagine all those charter school children filling those neighborhood schools.

The chickens have come home to roost.

Jeannie and I in Denver, 2013.
Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Denver, Education Reform, Honor Roll

Paul Thomas: Our Perpetual “Crisis in Education” Is Fueled by Unreliable, Invalid Test Scores

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2023 //
10

Paul Thomas of Furman University is a clear-sighted analyst of education policy. He is fearless when it comes to calling out frauds. This post is a good example.

He writes:

“The administrations in charge,” write Gilles Deleuze in Postscript on the Societies of Control, “never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons” (p. 4).

Deleuze’s generalization about “supposedly necessary reforms” serves as an important entry point into the perpetual education crisis in the US. Since A Nation at Risk, public education has experienced several cycles of crisis that fuel ever-new and ever-different sets of standards and high-stakes testing.

Even more disturbing is that for at least a century, “the administrations in charge” have shouted that US children cannot read—with the current reading crisis also including the gobsmacking additional crisis that teachers of reading do not know how to teach reading.

The gasoline that is routinely tossed on the perpetual fire of education crisis is test scores—state accountability tests, NAEP, SAT, ACT, etc.

While all that test data itself may or may not be valuable information for both how well students are learning and how to better serve those students through reform, ultimately all that testing has almost nothing to do with either of those goals; in fact, test data in the US are primarily fuel for that perpetual state of crisis.

Here is the most recent example—2023 ACT scores:

I have noted that reactions and overreactions to NAEP in recent years follow a similar set of problems found in reactions/overreactions to the SAT for many decades; the lessons from those reactions include:

  • Lesson: Populations being tested impact data drawn from tests.
  • Lesson: Ranking by test data must account for population differences among students tested.
  • Lesson: Conclusions drawn from test data must acknowledge purpose of test being used (see Gerald Bracey).

The social media and traditional media responses to 2023 ACT data expose a few more concerns about media, public, and political misunderstanding of test data as well as how “the administrations in charge” depend on manipulating test data to insure the perpetual education crisis.

Many people have confronted the distorting ways in which the ACT data are being displayed; certainly the mainstream graph from Axios above suggests “crisis”; however, by simply modifying the X/Y axes, that same data appear at least less dramatic and possibly not even significant if the issues I list above are carefully considered….

This crisis-of-the-day about the ACT parallels the central problem with NAEP, a test that seems designed to mislead and not inform since NAEP’s “Proficient” feeds a false narrative that a majority of students are not on grade level as readers.

The ACT crisis graph being pushed by mainstream media is less a marker of declining educational quality in the US and more further proof that “the administrations in charge” want and need testing data to justify “supposedly necessary reforms,” testing as gas for the perpetual education crisis fire.

Please open the link to read this excellent analysis in full.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Hoax, Lies, Literacy, NAEP, Standardized Testing

Houston: Teachers of Special Ed and Bilingual Ed Object to Standardized Curriculum

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2023 //
15

In Houston, the backlash against the authoritarianism of state-imposed superintendent Mike Miles continues to grow. Teachers of special education and bilingual education don’t like the standardized curriculum.

If I’m focused on what’s happening in Houston, there are two reasons:

1. I’m a graduate of the Houston Independent School District, and I don’t like to see it under siege by a know-nothing Governor and his puppet state superintendent.

2. This state takeover demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of state takeovers. It was concocted out of whole cloth, on the claim that one school in the entire district was “failing.” Before the takeover, that school—Wheatley High School—received a higher score (based on state tests) and was no longer “failing,” but the state took over the entire district anyway. So Houston is a national example of the vapidness of “education reform,” meaning non-educators like Miles, Governor Abbott, and State Chief Mike Morath telling professional educators how to do their jobs.

Anna Bauman of The Houston Chronicle writes:

A cornerstone of the New Education System introduced by Superintendent Mike Miles is a highly specific and rigorous instructional model.

As many students and teachers know by now, the system includes a standardized curriculum provided by the district, frequent classroom observations and grade level materials. Each day, teachers in core classes provide direct instruction for 45 minutes, give students a timed quiz and then split the children into groups based on their understanding of the lesson, with struggling learners getting more help from their teacher.

Miles says the model is meant to improve academic achievement, especially among student populations whose standardized test scores often lag behind their peers, and has disputed any claims that the system fails to accommodate the diverse needs of students.

In conversations over recent weeks, however, seven teachers at five different schools told me they are struggling to meet the needs of children with disabilities or emergent bilingual studentsbecause the model is too rigid, fast-paced and inflexible to provide accommodations for these learners.

For example, one teacher at an NES-aligned campus told me she cannot realistically give students extra time, a common accommodation for special education students, on the timed Demonstration of Learning. If she lags behind schedule, administrators will enter her classroom and demand: “Why aren’t we where we’re supposed to be?”

A teacher at Las Americas Newcomer School, home to many refugee and immigrant students, said district officials instructed educators to remove alphabet posters from their classrooms and limit the use of dictionaries, which many non-native English speakers rely on during class.

“Many of them, it’s their first year being in school. They don’t know the language. I have a classroom with at times four different languages spoken. And we’re forced to do the same slides and the same work as a regular, general education school,” the teacher said.

Only time will tell whether the new system will boost academic achievement as Miles intends, but for now, teachers are speaking out because they are concerned about doing what is right for their most vulnerable students.

“When I go home at night, I want to know when I put my head down on my pillow that I did the best I could by my kids,” said Brian Tucker, a special education teacher at Sugar Grove Academy.

You can read more in-depth about these issues in separate stories published this week about special education students and English language learners.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, English Language Learners, Extremism, Failure, Houston, Special Education, Stupid, Teachers, Texas

John Oliver Pulls Apart the Myth of McKinsey

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2023 //
22

As The Guardian explains, McKinsey is the most influential management consulting company in the world. Presidents, kings, and corporations hire them to get their expert advice. When I worked for Bush 1 in the early 1990s, youngsters from McKinsey met frequently in the White House to give advice on education policy; by their age, it was apparent that none had ever been a teacher. McKinsey has been hit with numerous scandals, but nothing seems to stick.

The Guardian article includes a link to John Oliver’s brilliant takedown of McKinsey. Don’t miss it.

Oliver demolished charter schools in 2016. If you missed it, watch it now.

If that link doesn’t work, try this one.

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

Nancy Flanagan: How School Choice Erodes Support for the Public Good

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2023 //
9

Nancy Flanagan, retired teacher of music in Michigan, writes here about how “school choice” has damaged the perception of public schools, turning them from a valued public good to just another consumer choice. when she started teaching, public schools were the glue of the community. Now they are forced to compete with multiple private choices, which claim to be better although they are not.

She explains why we could have good public schools in every community, but we have lost the will to pursue that goal. instead we have pursued a series of demonstrably failed ideas, wasting money and lives, while disintegrating the will to improve our public schools.

She writes:

The only contentious thing I ever talk about, at holiday hang-outs or on Facebook (our new town square), is education policy. I will talk to just about anybody—persistently and passionately—about schools, and what it would take to make our public education system not merely workable, but beneficial for all kids in the United States.

This is, by the way, a goal that could largely be accomplished. We have the human capital, the resources and the technical knowledge to transform public education over a generation. What we lack is the public will to do so—for children other than our own, at least.

This represents a sea change in our 20th century national approach to public education, that post-war America where the GI Bill and the Baby Boom made tan, rectangular brick elementary schools spring up like mushrooms in the 1950s. Teachers were in high demand, and state universities were adding a new dormitory every year. Education was going to lift us up, make us (here it comes) the greatest nation on earth.

We don’t think that way anymore.

Somewhere in between our rush to put a man on the moon and the advent of computers in all our classrooms, we lost our “public good” mojo, the generous and very American impulse to stir the melting pot and offer all children, our future citizens, a level playing field, educationally. Lots of edu-thinkers trace this to 1983 and the Nation at Risk report, but I think that the origins of losing that spirit of unity are deeper and broader than that.

Recently, I posted an article from American Prospect on my Facebook page—The Proselytizers and the Privatizers: How religious sectarian school voucher extremists made useful idiots of the charter movement (Katherine Stewart). You can read divergent articles on charter schools (the most obvious and deceptive signal of the loss of our sense of “public good” in education) everywhere, but this was a particularly good piece, honest without being accusatory, damning but cautious:

A wing of the charter movement that is ideologically or religiously opposed to “government schools” was present at the charter movement’s creation, and has grown to comprise a sizable segment of the charter universe. With the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary, it is presently empowered as never before. Public confusion about vouchers and charters continues to create opportunities. A lightly regulated charter school industry could achieve many of the same goals as voucher programs. They could drain funding from traditional public schools, deregulate the education sector, and promote ideological or religious curricula—all without provoking the kind of resistance that vouchers received.

I posted the article because it was true and thoughtful.

I live in Michigan, where charters took root over two decades ago. Like a handful of other states, we now know what happens to public education, including healthy districts, when charter schools damage the perceived desirability of one—thriving, publicly supported—school for all children. It’s happened all over our state, first in the urban and rural districts, struggling to maintain programming and viability, and now in Alpha districts, as their budgets are diminished and their student populations lured to schools that are “safer” (read: whiter).

After I posted the article, the online conversation was revealing. Teachers (and a lot of my Facebook friends are educators) contributed positive commentary. But there was also a fair amount what Stewart calls public confusion.

  • A sense that charter schools are, somehow, de facto, better than public schools—simply by the virtue of the fact that they’re not public, but selective and special.
  • Assertions that public schools (schools I know well, and have worked in) are attended by children who haven’t learned how to behave properly.
  • Blaming teacher unions for doing what unions do: advocating for fairness, serving as backstop for policy that prioritizes the community over individual needs or wants.

None of these things is demonstrably true. The conversation illustrated that many parents and citizens are no longer invested in public education, emotionally or intellectually. School “choice” is seen as parental right, not something that must be personally paid for. There is now agreement with an idea once unthinkable in America: corporations also have a “right” to advertise and sell a for-profit education, using our tax dollars.

Education is a major major public good where we tax the rich in order to provide a public benefit that you get just by right of being a citizen. When they talk about needing to do away with the entitlement mentality, the most problematic entitlement for them is not Medicare or Social Security. It’s education. Education is even more of a problem for them because teachers are trying to encourage kids to think they can do more. And that’s dangerous.

The core of the public confusion around schooling has been carefully cultivated for decades.

It’s worth talking about—the uniquely American principle of a free, high-quality education for every single child—even if the dialogue is heated. We’re in danger of losing the very thing that made us great. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan

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
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