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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

Hillary Clinton Booed at NEA Convention for Positive Reference to Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2016 //
205

Politico reports that Hillary Clinton was booed when she spoke of cooperation between public schools and “public charter schools.”

I don’t think she has any idea of the depth of antagonism towards charter schools among teachers.

Maybe she doesn’t know that 90% of charters are non-union.

Maybe she doesn’t know that the far-right Walton Family Foundation (which hates unions) funded one of every four charters in the nation and has pledged to spend at least $200 million annually to create more non-union schools.

Maybe she doesn’t know that ALEC (which hates unions and public schools) is a huge supporter of charter schools.

Maybe she doesn’t know that the same “vast rightwing conspiracy” that hates her loves charter schools.

Maybe she doesn’t know that every Republican governor, as well as Donald Trump, is enthusiastic about charter schools.

Maybe she doesn’t know that charter schools have become the favorite ploy of those who want to privatize and monetize public education.

I have been trying to arrange a meeting with her, face to face, but so far have had no success.

I will keep trying.

I would really like to explain to her what is happening, how it threatens the future of public education, and how far it is from the original idea of charter schools.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Unions, Walton Foundation

Chicago: Principals Leaving Due to Budget Cuts, Loss of Authority Under Rahm Emanuel

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2016 //
15

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Chicago is experiencing an exodus of experienced principals.

Forty-two Chicago Public Schools principals resigned this year, the most since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office.

And 23 principals, out of about 515 total, decided to retire, a number somewhat higher than the last several years. The 65 school leaders departing this past school year saw more budget cuts, including unprecedented cuts midyear. Since 2011, the next highest number was 37 resignations in 2014. In 2012, only 13 departed, but 96 retired that year.

Mayor Emanuel has made his contempt for public schools clear, as well as his preference for privately managed, non-union charter schools.

CPS’ chief education officer Janice Jackson acknowledged the financial pressures, saying, “Our principals and teachers are leaving for jobs where their district doesn’t have to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the classroom to fund their pensions.”

Ousted CPS principal Troy LaRaviere, who recently took office as head of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, said the pressure has been building for years.

“It’s the cumulative effects of being consistently under the weight of a district that finds one way after another to undermine the efforts [principals] put forth on behalf of their students,” he said. “Our ability to do our job depends on resources, and they take more of them away every year impairing our ability to do our job more and more.”

Until Thursday, when a temporary state budget was finally approved, principals were bracing themselves for cuts to their school budget of 26 percent on average. That was on top of cuts earlier in the school year to special education and warnings to stockpile cash so CPS could afford $676 million toward teacher pensions. They still don’t have budgets for September — and won’t for at least another week.

In recent years, the district privatized school cleaning, taking away principals’ power to manage janitors in their buildings. CPS shuttered a record 50 neighborhood schools. Budgets were cut sharply the same summer that former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett pushed a $20 million no-bid contract for principal training that participants immediately denounced as shoddy.

Mayor Emanuel is effectively driving the public schools and their personnel into the ground. He is a poor steward of public education. What public responsibility is greater than the education of the city’s children?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Principals, Privatization

Edushyster Interviews Joanne Barkan on the Plutocrat’s Lament

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2016 //
8

Edushyster interviewed Joanne Barkan, one of our most perceptive writers about the farce/hoax called “education reform.”

Barkan has written a series of important articles about the reformers, they of high stature, who want to run the nation’s public schools that they do not patronize. “Got Dough?” is a classic. She quickly understood that the billionaires don’t trust democracy. And that is a theme of her work on education.

In response to one of EduShyster’s questions, Barkan replies:

Some of the wealthiest people in the United States have had an easy go of it. They started with wealth, likely went to private schools, and have no sense of what public education is and why it’s necessary. And, of course, there are also those who started with nothing and made their own fortunes. It seems that by the time they’ve made a lot of money, they’ve lost touch with the role of public education. The vast majority of the super wealthy send their own kids to private schools, which they do for a variety of reasons, including prestige. What’s interesting to me is that there are some states that have written into their constitutions that the primary obligation of state government is public education. When those constitutions were being written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, government was much more limited. We have a situation today where so many states are under tremendous financial pressure, and the first place they go when they have to cut is public education, as if public education were somehow an extra, as opposed to being a fundamental responsibility.

EduShyster: I was smitten by the subtitle of your article: *Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy.* What is it about democracy that plutocrats find so irksome?

Barkan: The plutocrats—people like Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Bloomberg, John Arnold, or Eli Broad—have very set ideas about what they want to do. It doesn’t matter to them, or perhaps they just don’t understand, that their ideas may not be based on sound research or principles. They know what they want, and they come out of professional experiences where they’ve had complete authority. When they get to public education, they expect to be in control and to make things happen as quickly as if they were still running their companies. But as everyone should know, democracy is slow, and it’s messy, and that turns out to be a great nuisance for plutocrats.

The rest of the interview is fascinating and enlightening.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

Tennessee Dad Reports on National Charter School Convention: “We Are at War with Public Schools!”

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2016 //
22

T.C. Weber, a public school dad in Nashville, attended the annual convention of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which was held in his hometown, and describes the tone he heard and the people he met.

The leaders, the ones who gave keynote speeches, were militantly insistent on the expansion of charter schools and militantly determined to portray public schools as failures. They think they are fighting a “civil rights” battle against bastions of injustice (public schools) and that they are akin to the freedom fighters in Iran. No talk of collaboration, of being in common cause with those who work in public schools.

The people he met, the teachers and principals, not so much. Many of those he met were doing good work, not at war with public schools.

The movement, however, is implacable and determined to destroy public schools.

Worst of all, they credit their greatest successes to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

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

Charles Pierce: This is the Debate the Democrats Should Have, But Will They?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2016 //
28

Charles P. Pierce blogs for Esquire, and he is always on target.

In this post, he proposes that the Democrats pay attention to the privatization of public education. Like, hello, who is taking over our public schools and turning them into business opportunities?

His article: “Reminder: Education is Not a Damn Marketplace.”

This is the proposition that he wants Democrats to debate:

Resolved: No matter how noble the original motives, public school “reform” as pursued by private interests in general, and by plutocratic dilettantes in particular, has been an abject failure and an almost limitless vista of low-rent scams and high-tech brigandage.

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

Steven Singer: The Pennsylvania Legislature Wants Taxpayers to Pay for Unlimited Charter Expansion

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2016 //
10

The arrogance of the charter industry is getting to be boundless. They want the authority to expand without limits, with no accountability or transparency.

If the Democrats don’t stand up to this brazen effort to privatize public education, who will?

Steven Singer writes here about the latest raid on the public treasury in Pennsylvania.

Singer writes:

Fund my charter school.

Come on, Pennsylvania.

Let me just swipe tax dollars you set aside to educate your children and put them into my personal bank account as profit.

Please!

I’ll be your best friend. Or at least I’ll be your legislator’s best friend.

Chances are, I already am.

That’s why lawmakers in Harrisburg are once again looking to pass a school code bill (House Bill 530) that would let charter schools expand exponentially almost completely unchecked and without having to do any of that nasty, sticky accountability stuff you demand of your traditional public schools.

Sure there are a few provisions in there to make charters fill out more paperwork, but the benefits for privatization and profitization of your child’s education are huge!

For me, that is. For your child, not so much.

For instance, the proposed legislation would set up a charter school funding advisory commission. This august body would have many duties including the ability to authorize charter schools in your local school district.

No longer would prospective charter operators have to come before your duly-elected board members and plead and beg to set up shop and suck away hard to come by education funding. They could just appear before the commission and sidestep your local democracy completely.

Who will be on this commission? I’m glad you asked.

We’ve got eight legislators. Got to give THEM a voice. But they’re usually pretty cheap. A few bucks in the re-election campaign and we’ll be golden. We’ll also have the state secretary of education and the chairman of the state board. We’ve got to make the thing look legit, right?

But here’s the best part! We’ll have four public education representatives and FIVE representatives of the charter school industry!

Isn’t that great!? There are significantly more traditional public schools throughout the state, but they’ll have less representation on the commission! It’s stacked with charter friendly votes! The forces of privatization have a built-in majority! Ring the dinner bell, Baby! Once this bill gets passed, it’s charter school time all across the Commonwealth!

Once a charter school is authorized, it can expand as much as it wants, without the local district’s permission. It can even enroll students from outside the district and charge the district!

Worse, the bill authorizes “education savings accounts,” a euphemism for vouchers.

Is the Pennsylvania legislature is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ALEC and the privatization movement.

The Network for Public Education is encouraging people who live in Pennsylvania to be informed and get involved. Don’t let them destroy public education that your community paid for. The schools belong to the public–or they should. Don’t let the privatizers take them away.

If you live in Pennsylvania, please, contact your legislators and ask them to oppose this terrible bill. The Network for Public Education has made it very easy. Just click HERE and you can shoot off a letter to your representatives in moments.

Oppose HB 530. Fight for public education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Vouchers
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