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Anita Senkowski: A Big-Time Charter Fraud in Michigan

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2016 //
13

Anita Senkowski is a blogger in Michigan who has been closely following the unraveling of Grand Traverse Academy, a charter chain founded by optometrist Steven Ingersoll. Ingersoll developed a new pedagogy, he said, based on “visual learning,” and he gathered a governing board of other optometrists to lead the charter venture. Unfortunately, no one kept close watch on the financial affairs, and Dr. Ingersoll transferred millions of dollars from the schools’ account to his personal bank account. The members of the board were not troubled by this minor oversight, but federal prosecutors were not so understanding. Ingersoll was indicted and convicted. But the saga continues.

Anita Senkowski wrote to me:

File this one under “I thought I’d seen everything”: Steven Ingersoll’s optometry license may be yanked (revoked) by the Michigan Board of Optometry, and guess who sent letters of recommendation? [Board members] Mark Noss and Brad Habermehl:

http://glisteningquiveringunderbelly.blogspot.com/2016/06/mark-noss-brad-habermehl-write-letters.html

In addition, in late March, federal prosecutors revealed a former Noss accountant blew the whistle as he exited the place and revealed a years-long pattern of cash payments:

http://glisteningquiveringunderbelly.blogspot.com/2016/03/breaking-news-full-spectrum-managments.html

However, using the accountant’s information, federal prosecutors later substantiated two previously undiscovered Ingersoll bank accounts and ID a total of (wait for it!) $627,624.14 was paid to Ingersoll by Noss. Although it’s later claimed that one of the payments was a reimbursement for an early payroll payment made by Ingersoll during the transition from his Smart Schools Management to Noss and Full Spectrum, that’s still a hell of lot of money. And did Ingersoll report the money on his taxes? According to the government, nope!

http://glisteningquiveringunderbelly.blogspot.com/2016/04/full-diaperfilled-with-money-complete.html

At the start of each fiscal year (July 1), beginning in 2007 and continuing for six years until 2013, Grand Traverse Academy (GTA) manager Steven Ingersoll advanced his entire annual Smart Schools Management, Inc. fee from the Traverse City, Michigan charter school’s bank account before it had been earned — and before he was contractually entitled to receive it. Although based on a percentage of the GTA board’s approved preliminary budget figures, Ingersoll’s management fee was adjusted downward after actual budgets were calculated.

However, Ingersoll never really repaid the difference between the amount he’d advanced himself and the actual management fee he received.

How did the receivable grow from $538,864 on June 30, 2007 to $3,551,328 on June 30, 2012 if Ingersoll, as he claimed to the GTA board, booked each year’s fee overpayment as a receivable and paid it off at the beginning of the next fiscal year?

Simple: after Ingersoll had paid the previous year’s receivable balance using Michigan state aid money provided to the Grand Traverse Academy, he transferred that money back from the Academy’s bank account to one of his Smart Schools accounts, and created a new, and even larger, receivable balance. (Ingersoll finally admitted the scheme on December 9, 2015 while testifying during his ongoing sentencing hearing).

Representatives of the GTA board, including its then-president Mark Noss, met with attorneys from the Thrun Law Firm and Steven Ingersoll on May 20, 2013. During the meeting, Ingersoll admitted owing the charter school at least $3.5 million but asked to have the debt classified as a “loan”.

According to the May 30, 2013 Thrun Law Firm legal recommendation to Noss, the issue before the Board “relates to funds withdrawn from the Academy’s general fund by Steven Ingersoll and/or representatives of SSM, which exceed the amount appropriated or authorized by the Board to be paid to SSM for either management fees or the reimbursement of Academy expenses.”

The letter estimated Ingersoll’s debt to the Traverse City charter school at $3,548,319 (based on information provided by Ingersoll’s handpicked CPA, Tony Henning). As Henning had relied solely on “financial reports and representations of Steve Ingersoll” to determine the amount, Thrun repeatedly urged the GTA board to “independently verify the full sum due” instead of merely accepting Henning’s number.

Representing the interests of the GTA and its board, not Steven Ingersoll and Smart Schools Management, Thrun affirmed in its May 30, 2013 letter that “Steven Ingersoll openly admitted, when asked by us during the May 20th meeting, that a conflict exists between his personal interests and the interests of the Academy.”

However, the Academy Board ignored Thrun’s recommendation to verify Ingersoll’s numbers, instead using CPA Henning’s exact $3,548,319 amount in its June 13, 2013 “demand letter” to Steven Ingersoll.

On June 30, 2013, the GTA board and Ingersoll agreed on a “repayment plan”, revealing the details in the Academy’s 2013 financial statement. The agreement allowed Ingersoll to “work off” his balance by foregoing management fee payments over the remaining three fiscal years of his management contract.

GTA board president Mark Noss oversaw an early morning meeting on March 19, 2014 where the board voted unanimously to officially “withdraw from the management contract with Smart Schools Management, Inc.”

Minutes later, the board accepted the resignation of “Mark Noss as the President of the Board.” Although Noss tendered his resignation during this meeting, the resignation was not effective immediately.

GTA records reveal Noss continued to serve in a dual role as a board member until its May 2014 meeting, nearly two months after signing a multi-year, multi-million dollar management contract.

Steven Ingersoll was indicted on April 9, 2014.

Ingersoll was charged with three counts of wire fraud, two counts of tax evasion, one count of conspiracy to defraud the government, and one count of attempted conspiracy. (Four co-defendants, including Ingersoll’s wife Deborah, were also charged on various fraud and conspiracy counts).

An April 24, 2014 superseding indictment further charged Steven Ingersoll with tax evasion regarding his attempt to “disguise the money allegedly received from Grand Traverse Academy” —which was also named by the government as the motive for the bank fraud conspiracy and tax evasion conspiracy.

Steven Ingersoll was convicted of three counts of fraud and tax evasion on March 10, 2015.

Ingersoll’s sentencing hearing began on October 21, 2015 and is scheduled to resume July 11, 2016.

On March 15, 2016, an accountant formerly employed by Mark Noss at Full Spectrum Management reveals to the GTA board and the charter school’s authorizer, Lake Superior State University, Noss had been making $12,500 monthly payments to Ingersoll since April 2014, shortly after Noss assumed control of the GTA.

Using information provided by the whistleblowing accountant, (who resigned shortly after making his revelations public), federal prosecutors were able to substantiate that between April 8, 2014 and March 1, 2016, Steven Ingersoll received a total of $627, 624.14 from Full Spectrum Management, the educational services provider owned by Mark Noss and holder of the management contract for the Grand Traverse Academy or Grand Traverse Academy itself. All of that money went into accounts owned by Steven Ingersoll and his solely owned entities.

An excerpt from the April 29, 2016 document: “In assessing the credibility of Habermehl as a witness and Noss as an affiant in this matter, the court must consider the relationships they have with Ingersoll and how their financial and personal relationships with Ingersoll have influenced the representations that Habermehl and Noss have made to the court.

The evidence discussed above casts doubt on the credibility of Ingersoll, Noss and Habermehl.”

Stuff like this, which seldom are noticed by the mainsteam media, can drive bloggers crazy. Is anyone listening? Does anyone care?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization

California: The Pushback Against Charters and Privatization, in Defense of Public Education

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2016 //
10

California has more than 1,000 charter schools. When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in charge, he filled the state school board with charter advocates, even though students in charters were only 5% of the enrollment. Today, the California Charter School Association is one of the richest, most powerful lobbies in the state. They don’t lobby for all children. They lobby only for charter expansion and continued deregulation.

Because the State Education Department lacks the staff to supervise so many charters, each of which is akin to an independent district, the charters regularly produce stories of graft and corruption. The exposes roll out almost daily of theft of public dollars. The CCSA thinks that is just fine. They oppose any regulation or oversight of these unaccountable schools.

Here is your chance to join with others who are defending public education in California. Learn about the all-day seminar on July 30, 2016, at Richmond High School in Richmond, California.

See the flyer with information about the event here.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization

San Francisco Mime Troupe Skewers Education “Reform”

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2016 //
13

The San Francisco Mime Troupe performs free in parks across northern California all summer. Their current performance satirizes what is called “education reform.”

In “Schooled,” the San Francisco Mime Troupe argues that the purpose of education is to build citizens, to prepare young adults to make informed decisions in their civic life. The company’s free summer show of its 57th season also makes a compelling case that art is foundational to a healthy democracy.

As is tradition, the troupe will stage this show in parks throughout Northern California until Labor Day, so the context of each performance will vary greatly. But as performed in Dolores Park on the Fourth of July, “Schooled” juxtaposed stark extremes.
The Mime Troupe is run as a collective, with “The Communist Manifesto” required reading for all members. All its shows impart that work’s philosophy. “Schooled” is no different. It pillories the flaws in the U.S. education system, especially its dependency on digital technology as a Band-Aid for deeper structural problems — underfunding, the achievement gap — and, in tandem, its overreliance on the corporations that profit from that technology.

In “Schooled,” the evil corporation is Learning Academy of Virtual Achievement, or LAVA, which seeks to “spread” to Eleanor Roosevelt High School. LAVA’s emissary is Fredersen J. Babbit (Lisa Hori-Garcia), a dead ringer for Donald Trump, complete with the hair and mucus-ridden vocal cords. He peddles learning tablets, cleverly rendered by the props department with an iridescent surface, so that as an actor rotates one, its screen shimmers in the sun.

Public schooling is not a Communist idea; it is a democratic idea. It is the way the entire community takes responsibility for the learning of the children of the community.

The bad guys are not just the guys peddling technology and wanting to make a buck. The bad guys are the ones who insist on privatizing what belongs to the public and use their money to buy support.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Humor, Privatization

Jonathan Pelto: Who Are the Billionaires Determined to Privatize Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2016 //
34

Jonathan Pelto wrote an illuminating and informative post about the members of the “Billionaire Boys Club,” or should I say the “Billionaire Boys and Girls Club,” since Alice Walton, Laurene Powell Jobs, Penny Pritzker, and several other women belong.

Pelto writes:

The colossal and disastrous effort to privatize public education in the United States is alive and well thanks to a plethora of billionaires who, although they’d never send their own children to a public school, have decided that individually and collectively, they know what is best for the nation’s students, parents, teachers and public schools.

From New York City to Los Angeles and Washington State to Florida, the “billionaire boys club,” as Diane Ravitch, the country’s leading public education advocate, has dubbed them, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars via campaign contributions, Dark Money expenditures and their personal foundations to “fix” what they claim are the problems plaguing the country’s public schools.

These neo-gilded age philanthropists claim that the solution is for parents, teachers and education advocates to step aside so that the billionaires and their groupies can transform public education by creating privately owned and operated – but taxpayer funded – charter schools.

In addition, they pontificate that students learn best when schools are mandated to use the ill-conceived Common Core standards so classrooms become little more than Common Core testing factories and the teaching profession is opened up to those who haven’t been burdened by lengthy college based education programs designed to provide educators with the comprehensive skill sets necessary to work with and teach the broad range of children who attend the country’s public schools.

The billionaire’s proclaim that the solution to creating successful schools is really rather simple.

They say that public schools run best when they are run like a business…

Cut through their rhetoric and the billionaires want us to believe that by introducing competition and the concept of “profit” they can turnaround any school, no matter the challenges it or its students may face….

Privatization, they argue, will lead to greater efficiencies while opening up the public purse to those who have products that they seek to sell to our children and our public schools.

John Dewey famously wrote that what the best parent wants for his child is what we should want for all children, but the billionaires have flipped that sage advice on its head. They say, “My kids need small classes, experienced teachers, and beautiful schools, but your children don’t.”

Jon Pelto has an exhaustive list of the billionaires who are out to undermine public education.

He identifies them by name, by their net worth, and by their pet causes.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Dana Goldstein: Hillary Changes Direction from Obama on Education Policy

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2016 //
32

Dana Goldstein, veteran education journalist, reports that Hillary Clinton is striking a very different note with teachers and their unions than Obama did.

Obama’s education policies were shaped to cut the power of unions and to reduce teachers’ job protections. His administration was openly hostile to public schools and teachers. In response to the hedge fund managers at Democrats for Education Reform, whose favorite he was, and to the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, the Obama administration invested heavily in privately managed charter schools and forced thousands of public schools to close, based on their test scores. The burden of school closings fell mainly on poor communities of color, which were destabilized by his punitive policies.

Goldstein says that Hillary is taking a very different tack:


Clinton’s speech to the NEA was notable both for what she said and, perhaps even more so, for what she didn’t say. She promised to expand access to child care and pre-K, pay teachers more, forgive their college debt, construct new school buildings, and bring computer science courses into K-12 education. While a brief mention of successful charter schools (most of which are not unionized) was met with scattered boos, for the most part the audience of activist teachers greeted Clinton ecstatically, chanting “Hillary, Hillary!”

Following eight years of federally driven closures and turnarounds of schools with low test scores, which have put union jobs at risk, it was music to the NEA’s ears when the presumptive Democratic nominee promised to end “the education wars” and “stop focusing only on quote, ‘failing schools.’ Let’s focus on all our great schools, too.” And in a big departure from the school-reform rhetoric of President Barack Obama, the only time Clinton referenced “accountability” was to refer not to getting rid of bad teachers, but to giving unions a bigger voice in education policy. “Advise me and hold me accountable,” she said. “Keep advocating for your students and your profession.”

This speech, the first big moment for K-12 education in this general election, signals a potentially meaningful shift in Democratic Party education politics. The Obama era has been, often, a painful one for teachers-union activists. Obama launched his presidential campaign in 2007 as an ally of Democrats for Education Reform, a group of philanthropists (most with ties to the financial sector) who support weakening teachers’ tenure protections, evaluating teachers according to their students’ test scores, and increasing the number of public charter schools.

Obama held many positions with which teachers’ unions agreed, like helping teachers improve through peer mentorship programs and pushing states to embrace the Common Core national curriculum standards. Still, he represented a wing of the Democratic Party that thought unions held too much sway over education policy, and in 2008, the NEA chose not to endorse in the Democratic primary, while the other national teachers’ union, the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed Obama’s primary challenger, Hillary Clinton.*
As president, Obama followed through on his promises to union critics. He created a $4 billion program, Race to the Top, that tied federal education dollars to policies like evaluating teachers according to student test scores and weakening tenure protections, so underperforming teachers could more easily be fired.

Goldstein’s conclusion is premature:

It’s safe to say it is a new day for the Democratic Party on education policy. But here’s hoping that Clinton’s turn toward the unions doesn’t mean she lets go of some of the Obama administration’s more promising recent ideas.

It is too soon to say whether it is a new day for the Democratic policy on education policy. DFER has not gone away, nor have the billionaires who want to crush teachers, unions, and public schools.

And I wonder what the Obama administration’s “more promising recent ideas” are. I haven’t heard them. John King was known in New York for his zealous embrace of Common Core, high-stakes testing, opposition to opt out, and commitment to evaluating teachers by test scores. His brief tenure as Education Secretary does not show any disposition on his part to abandon those policies.

So, as the saying goes, time will tell. We should all give Hillary Clinton a chance to change direction. Heaven knows we can’t continue with the federal government making war on public schools and their teachers. If that’s what she means by ending the education wars, I am all for it.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Privatization, Testing

Peter Greene: There is No Meaningful Difference Between a For-Profit Charter and a Non-Profit Charter

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2016 //
77

Throughout this presidential campaign, we have been treated (or subjected) to statements by both Democratic candidates Clinton and Sanders about charters: They don’t like “private charters” (Sanders) or “for-profit charters” (Clinton).

There are no “private charters.” All charters receive public funding. That’s what makes them so attractive to investors. That secure stream of government funding.

At the very least, we can be glad that Clinton is opposed to the for-profits, which rip off taxpayers and divert public funding to their stockholders and owners. Let’s hope that means she is prepared to cut off federal funding that goes to the scam artists of the charter world. No more 3-card Monte with public dollars.

But is there a difference between “for-profit charters” and “non-profit charters”?

Peter Greene says it is a distinction without a difference.

He writes:


In this scenario, I set up my non-profit school– and then I hire a profitable management company to run the school for me. The examples of this dodge are nearly endless, but let’s consider a classic. There’s the White hat management company that was being dragged into court way back in 2011. This particular type of arrangement was known as a “sweeps contract,’ in which the school turns over close to all of its public tax dollars and the company operates the school with that money– and keeps whatever they don’t spend. The White Hat story is particularly impressive, because the court decided that White Hat got to keep all of the materials and resources that it bought with the public tax dollars.

Or consider North Carolina businessman Baker Mitchell, who set up some non-profit charter schools and promptly had them buy and lease everything– from desks to computers to teacher training to the buildings and the land– from companies belonging to Baker Mitchell. From Marian Wang’s 2014 profile:

To Mitchell, his schools are simply an example of the triumph of the free market. “People here think it’s unholy if you make a profit” from schools, he said in July, while attending a country-club luncheon to celebrate the legacy of free-market sage Milton Friedman.

Real estate grabs

All charter schools– even the non-profits– can get into the real estate business as a tasty sideline for providing a school-like product. Charter producers can find money to fund a building and then– voila– they own a tasty piece of real estate. Remember– thanks to some Clinton-era tax breaks, an investor in a charter school can double the original investment in just seven years!

In fact, there are real estate companies in the charter school business. And this can be a particularly terrible deal for the taxpayers. Bruce Baker lays out here how the public can pay for the same building twice– and end up not owning it. Read the whole thing– it’s absolutely astonishing.

Write a big fat check

If you have the giant cojones for it, you can just write yourself a big fat check with all those public taxpayer dollars. To use one of everyone’s favorite data points– Carmen farina is paid $200,000 to oversee 135,000 employees and 1.1 million students. Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain handles 9,000 students, for which Moskowitz is paid almost half a million dollars. And while Moskowitz gets plenty of attention, she is by no means unique….

And that’s just the profit issue

This is before we talk about every anti-democratic, school-destroying, segregation-spreading, education-failing, community-disrupting, and achievement-gap-increasing aspect of charter schools. As readers of this blog know, while charters can (and once were) a good thing, the modern charter movement has turned them into one of the most destructive forces in education today.

But we’re going to maintain focus

We’re going to stick to one point, and the point is this– to pretend that there is a substantive difference between profit and non-profit charter schools is either willfully ignorant or deliberately misleading. I’ve said it many times– a modern non-profit charter school is just a for-profit school with a good money-laundering plan.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization

Michigan: How to Kill a School District by Reforming It

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2016 //
16

This alarming article describes the destruction of the Highland Park, Michigan, school district.

Once a thriving community, Highland Park suffered as the automobile industry declined. Its schools declined as the community became poorer and blacker.

The Highland Park district is more than 90% black. That makes it just right for a state takeover because it does not have political power. So, get ready for the “civil rights movement of our time” to step in, take charge of the schools, and kill off the district.

Governor Rick Snyder thought he knew how to fix the ills of Highland Park: He appointed an emergency manager to set its financial house in order in 2012. The emergency manager was an accountant. He also had spent some time working for White Hat, the for-profit charter company in Ohio, which has perfected the extraction of funds from public money for private gain.

The first emergency manager was gone in a few months, and a new one was installed.

Instability and churn were the watchwords of the districts that Governor Synder took over.

In all, the Highland Park School District has had five emergency managers at the helm over the 4 1/2 years it has been under state control.

Still, Highland Park’s public school system continued to disintegrate, finally reaching the point today where it barely exists at all.

For anyone seeking a measuring stick to assess the job done by the district’s emergency managers and the for-profit charter school company hired to run Highland Park schools, the most telling statistic may be this:

At the time of the takeover, the district had 969 students. Today, that number, according to the state’s school data web site, is 311 — a drop of nearly 70 percent. Moreover, all of the students attend the district’s last remaining school, which serves both elementary and middle school students.

The state takeover was complicated:

Operating under a paradigm similar to the new system created for Detroit Public Schools, there are two public school districts operating side-by-side in Highland Park.

One is the “old” district, known as the School District of the City of Highland Park.

That district is overseen by an elected school board that has virtually no power and nothing to do with governing the education provided to the city’s children.

The “old” district exists only to pay accumulated debt.

Just how much is owed?

School board members have been asking for that number. But, according to the state of Michigan, no one — including the emergency manager put in place by Snyder to ensure the debt gets paid off — can say exactly what it really is, because legally required financial audits haven’t been filed for the past two years.

A second, “new” district was created in 2012 by Joyce Parker, the second of five EMs appointed by Snyder to control education in Highland Park. This new district, unencumbered by the debt being paid off by the “old” district, was supposed to flourish because all per-pupil state funding was, ostensibly, able to go toward education and not toward satisfying the demands of bondholders.

However, in 2014, Michigan Radio reported that the new district was already facing a deficit of about $600,000, a shortfall attributed in large part to a continued decline in enrollment.

This new district — known as the Highland Park Public School Academy System — is operated by The Leona Group, a private, for-profit charter school management company with a checkered past.

The entire district was handed over to a for-profit charter chain. No more public education. Families are fleeing. Soon there won’t be a district.

Michigan has perfected a formula for destroying an entire school district.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, Privatization

Please Sign This Petition to Hillary Clinton: Meet with Diane!

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2016 //
32

This petition was started by a Florida BAT.

Maybe Hillary will meet with me if enough people sign.

Diane

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

What is “Rigor” and Who Needs It?

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2016 //
51

Part of the standard reform lexicon is the word “rigor.” We are told again and again that standards must be rigorous, tests must be rigorous, teachers must be rigorous. That’s the trouble, we hear, with our schools. They lack rigor.

 

But what is rigor?

 

A reader who calls him/herself Brooklyn Teacher looked up the word “rigor” and supplied the following definition:

 

“ALL early childhood children, Pre-K through grade three, need to play. Here is the full definition of rigor from Merriam-Webster and it’s horrid that we apply this to learning at any age:
a (1) : harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment : severity (2) : the quality of being unyielding or inflexible : strictness (3) : severity of life : austerity

 

 

b : an act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty
2
: a tremor caused by a chill
3
: a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable; especially : extremity of cold
4
: strict precision : exactness
5
a obsolete : rigidity, stiffness
b : rigidness or torpor of organs or tissue that prevents response to stimuli
c : rigor mortis

 

I say, whenever you hear the word “rigor,” think rigor mortis.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Testing

The NPE Action Fund Endorses Rick Roach for State Senate in Florida

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2016 //
6

No state is more in need of advocates for children and public schools in its legislature than Florida.

The Florida legislature at present is in the pockets or the hands (or both) of the privatization lobby. It enacts bill after bill to outsource its schools to private companies, many operating for profit. It pours millions into failing charter schools and failing voucher schools. It authorizes crooked operators and funds charters that never open. It enacts legislation that demoralizes and harms its teachers. Hurting teachers hurts children.

It is time for a change.

That is why the NPE Action Fund proudly endorses Rick Roach, a champion for public schools, who is running for a seat in the Florida State Senate.

If you live in District 13, please help Rick get elected. If you don’t, consider sending him a contribution.

Rick is the school board member in Orange County who took the state standardized test and wrote about it.

“I won’t beat around the bush. The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a ‘D,’ and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

“It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate. I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities….

“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, NPE Action Fund, Privatization, Testing
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