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The Charter School Hoax in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2016 //
9

Stuart Egan, a National Board Certified Teacher in North Carolina, has dogged the false claims of the corporate reformers (aka, the Tea Party) in his state.

 

Recently, Terry Stoops, the “research director” of the libertarian John Locke Institute, published an article saying “charter schools are here to stay, get used to it.” The John Locke Institute is the creation of Art Pope, a multimillionaire who has used his vast resources to defeat moderate Republicans and to build the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement. Art Pope served as the state’s budget director in Governor McCrory’s cabinet, where he used his ideology to advance privatization of what was once a good state public school system. One of the board members of the John Locke Institute opened his own charter chain and is making millions.

 

Charter schools are new to North Carolina, but they have been pushed hard by the Tea Party majority in the legislature, as they defunded public schools and harassed teachers.

 

Stuart Egan wrote the following open letter to Terry Stoops in response to his article touting charters:

 

 

This open letter is written to Dr. Terry Stoops, the Director of Research and Education Studies at the John Locke Foundation, particularly in reference to his March 3, 2016 perspective in EdNC.org entitled “Charter schools are here to stay, so deal with it.”

 

 

Dr, Stoops,
Again, public education is a focal issue in this election cycle, and like you, I am very vigilant in investigating the claims and plans that each candidate and influential body makes concerning the teaching profession.

 

 

I tend to read education op-eds produced by the John Locke Foundation (and its many associated entities) regarding education with great interest because those writings do spur discussion and thought. I also read those same op-eds with great concern, because I find the reasoning and rationale behind many of the arguments to be weak, politically motivated, and built on platitudes.

 

 

However, I read your March 3, 2016 perspective on EdNC.org (“Charter schools are here to stay, so deal with it”) not with just great interest or concern; I read it with great confusion.

 

 

Considering what happened in Haywood County and the closing of Central Elementary School and the reports of fiscal mismanagement coming out of the Charter School Advisory Board meetings, I would have expected more concrete evidence to buttress your claims about charter schools.

 

 

Throughout your perspective you claim that “there is greater knowledge and acceptance of charter schools among North Carolina families, most of whom welcome educational options.” With all of the numbers and statistics you sprinkle throughout your op-ed, you neglect to really show how that could be true. You simply state it and rest on that.

 

 

If you are speaking of options and choices, there are other possibilities that are utilized far more in NC than charter schools. There are private schools, many of which have received taxpayer funds from the Opportunity Grants (that’s a whole other issue), and homeschooling, which encompasses more students in our state than private and charter schools.

 

 

And then there are our traditional public schools, the very institutions our state constitution stipulates that our GOP-led General Assembly must maintain and protect.

 

 

You claim that charter schools create choice for those families who believe that public schools are not servicing their students well. Ironically, your chairman at the John Locke Foundation, John Hood, recently touted our public schools’ success in his February 15th op-ed on EdNC.org (“North Carolina schools ranked seventh”). If our schools are doing so well under these criteria, then why would so many charters need to be created? Just for choice’s sake?

 

 

This past February, I wrote an op-ed for the Winston-Salem Journal (“Defending Public Education”) concerning school choice and the uncontrolled rise of charter schools in North Carolina. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (who homeschools his children) had just attempted to stop a DPI report on charter schools that did not shed a favorable light on the very entities that you (and Lt. Gov. Forest) claim are doing wonderfully. That op-ed stated,

 

 

“The original idea for charter schools was a noble one. Diane Ravitch in Reign of Error states that these schools were designed to seek “out the lowest-performing students, the dropouts, and the disengaged, then ignite their interest in education” in order “to collaborate and share what they had learned with their colleagues and existing schools” (p.13).

 

 

But those noble intentions have been replaced with profit-minded schemes. Many charters abused the lack of oversight and financial cloudiness and did not benefit students. If you followed the debacle surrounding the DPI charter school report this past month and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s effort to squelch it, you might know that the charter schools in North Carolina overall have not performed as advertised. Furthermore, the withdrawal rates of students in privately-run virtual schools in NC is staggering according to the Department of Public Instruction.”

 

 

There are charter schools that do work well within the scope of providing alternate educational approaches not used in public schools. Perhaps a couple you highlighted in your op-ed fit that description. There is one in my hometown of Winston-Salem, the Arts-Based School, which does exactly what charter schools were originally intended to do. But those tend to be more of the exception than the norm.

 

 

The withdrawal of students from NC virtual schools has also been very much in the news of late. Look at the Pilot Virtual Charter Schools Student Information Update published this month. It seems that more and more families are not choosing that option. Yet, Dr. Stoops, in your op-ed, you praise having virtual schools here in NC because they offer options despite their results.

 

 

You define “charter school deserts” as areas that do not have many students serviced by charter schools. Ironically you use a term, “desert”, that many use to describe socio-economic conditions, the most common being “food desert”.

 

 

A desert itself connotes that something is lacking. You do make a great correlation between lack of choices and deserts because a desert may be indicative of a more pressing problem in the regions you talk about, like a symptom of a deeper problem. I would be more concerned with food deserts or economic deserts or cultural deserts than charter deserts. I would be more concerned with the physical, mental, and emotional health of the students and the economic health of those very regions rather than how many charter schools they have.

 

 

And the GOP-led General Assembly can do something about people’s quality of life because that has an impact on student achievement in any school. Just refer back to Mr. Hood’s aforementioned op-ed. He stated,

 

 

“Whenever test scores come out for schools, districts, or states, officials hasten to explain that there are many factors known to shape the results. They are right to do so. The characteristics of the families within which students grow up — household income, parental education, marital status, etc. — clearly affect student performance. Race and ethnicity exhibit statistical correlations with performance, as well, perhaps reflecting not only those family-background variables but also factors such as neighborhood effects, cultural norms, or discrimination.”

 

 

I actually agree with that. Ironically, Mr. Hood retracts a bit from that statement later in his op-ed.

 

 

If the means to obtain the basic needs for families in these “deserts” were provided, then the health of the local public school district may not even be an issue unless there is just a profit-minded motive behind charter school construction. And even if the construction of charter schools in these rural “deserts” were just to create choice, then why do many charter schools detrimentally affect traditional public schools? That’s not creating a choice; that’s removing choice by monopolizing resources.

 

 

Just refer back to the situation in Haywood County and Central Elementary School. When small school districts lose numbers of students to charter schools, they also lose the ability to petition for adequate funds; the financial impact can be overwhelming. That creates an even bigger desert. Talk about your man-made “climate” change.

 

 

And speaking of financial impact, the Summary of Charter School Financial Noncompliance issued on January 28, 2016 lists over 25 charter schools as not complying with laws and regulations concerning finances. Those finances are tax-payer funded and have been taken away from traditional public schools.

 

You conclude your argument with a glossy and baseless claim that the numbers of charter school proponents vastly outnumber those who defend public schools. You state,

 

 

“Without a doubt, school district officials and public school advocacy groups will continue to grouse about the number of students enrolled in charters and the funding that goes with them. But charter school parents, students, employees, and advocates vastly outnumber them and are beginning to find the voice to champion and defend their schools of choice.”

 

 

If that voice to champion their cause has to be enabled with shadowy deregulation, political intervention, and profit minded groups, then that does not represent the true voice of the people. In fact, the withdrawal rates from some of those charter schools listed in the Summary of Charter School Financial Noncompliance report are quite eye-opening. That itself speaks volumes.

 

 

If advocating for public schools (like our state constitution does) in light of this educational landscape is in your view “grousing,” then will I proudly continue to complain, grumble, quibble, bemoan, protest, and quarrel on behalf of our public schools because they are here to stay.
Deal with that.

 

 

Stuart Egan, NBCT
Public School Teacher and Parent
West High School

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization

The 400 Leading Billionaires in the World

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2016 //
24

Bloomberg News posted a list of the 400 top billionaires (those with only a couple of billion don’t make the cut). The collective wealth of these men (and a few women) is nearly $4 trillion.

 

If you scan the list, you will see the big funders of the corporate assault on public education: Bill Gates; the Walton family; Eli Broad. And you will also see the producers of the edu-propaganda film “Waiting for ‘Superman’,” Philip Anschutz and Jeff Skoll.

 

You may recognize some other billionaires who have contributed to the attack on teachers and public education. But the list seems incomplete: missing is Michael Bloomberg. Was it my oversight?

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform

Jeff Bryant: Public Opinion Is Beginning to Shift Against Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2016 //
18

Jeff Bryant writes that charter schools have enjoyed an elevated status as a “sure cure” for low-performing students because most Americans know so little about them.

 

He cites a number of polls showing that the appeal of charter schools wears thin when people realize that they draw resources away from the local public schools. As one person quoted in the article says, charters have a “negative fiscal impact” on local public schools.

 

Furthermore, the local press in many cities–especially in Florida and Ohio–has reported frequently on charter frauds and scandals, on money flowing to politically connected charter operators, on legislators with conflicts of interest, on charters that push out unwanted children and avoid students with disabilities, and on charters whose “CEO” is paid over half a million. As more such articles appear, the public begins to see that the absence of regulation leads to systemic abuse, not just a one-time anomaly.

 

Citing John Merrow, Bryant writes:

 

The simple reality is that as charters expand into new communities, and residents see that their neighborhood school loses a percentage of students in a particular grade level or across grade levels to charters, the school can’t simply proportionally cut fixed costs for things like transportation and physical plant. It also can’t cut the costs of grade-level teaching staff proportionally. That would increase class sizes and leave the remaining students underserved. So instead, the school cuts a support service – a reading specialist, a special education teacher, a librarian, an art or music teacher – to offset the loss of funding. Say goodbye to your kids’ favorite art teacher or your school’s Mandarin program.

 

What Charters Have Become

 

“I have been observing what is called the ‘charter school movement’ from Day One,” Merrow recalls, “a historic meeting at the headwaters of the Mississippi River in 1988 that I moderated. Back then, the dream was that every district would open at least one ‘chartered school,’ where enrollment and employment would be voluntary and where new ideas could be field-tested. Successes and failures would be shared, and the entire education system would benefit.”

 

Merrow now finds those early aspirations for charter schools “naïve,” given what characterizes the charter school industry today.

 

Early charter school promoters may indeed have been naïve, but the American public is increasingly getting wise, and the “charter school brand,” as Merrow phrases it, is likely turning from Teflon to tarnished.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers

Students in Douglas County, Colorado, Protest High Teacher Turnover

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2016 //
6

Students in Douglas County, Colorado, walked out and picketed to express their outrage at the high rates of teacher turnover in their school. Teacher turnover may be caused by the demoralizing policies enacted by the state and the district. Colorado teachers have suffered since 2010 under State Senator Michael Johnston’s legislation to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores. DougCo has had a conservative school board, which destabilized the schools.

 

A boisterous crowd of 100 or so students walked out of Ponderosa High School on Wednesday morning to highlight what they say is an excessive departure rate among teachers at the school and within the Douglas County School District.

 

They waved signs on school property that read “We love teachers” and “Keep DCSD Great,” while chanting “best teachers, best students.”

 

Several passing drivers honked their horns in support.

 

“We don’t find it fair that our teachers are leaving the district, and we want to know why,” said senior Lisa Culverhouse, who was skipping math, English and Spanish to rally with classmates. “We hope the district will realize it’s a problem — students want to be heard….”

 

Courtney Smith, president of the Douglas County Federation, said teacher morale has never been lower. She counts the teacher evaluation system — which she said was mostly about “uploading evidence” rather than true assessment of teaching skills — among the chief problems.

 

Good work, Senator Johnston. When does your promise of “great schools, great principals, great teachers” come to pass? How much longer shall we wait?

 

 

Categories Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers

Watch Out for ALEC Legislation in Your State!

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2016 //
23

“Cashing in On Kids” reports that ALEC education legislation is quietly spreading across the nation. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a secretive far-right organization that is funded by major corporations and whose members are state legislators. Its goal is privatization and deregulation. It writes model laws, then its members introduce them into their state legislature as their own. To learn all about ALEC, go to Alec Exposed.

 

Despite widespread public opposition to the corporate-driven education privatization agenda, at least 172 measures reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bills were introduced in 42 states in 2015, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECexposed.org and PRWatch.org. (A PDF version of this report may be downloaded here.)

 

One of ALEC’s biggest funders is Koch Industries and the Koch brothers’ fortune. The Kochs have had a seat at the table – where the private sector votes as equals with legislators – on ALEC’s education task force via their “grassroots” group Americans for Prosperity and their Freedom Partners group, which was described as the Kochs’ “secret bank.”

 

The Kochs also have a voice on ALEC’s Education Task Force through multiple state-based think tanks of the State Policy Network, ALEC’s sister organization, which is funded by many of the same corporations and foundations and donor entities.

 

ALEC’s Education Task Force is also funded by the billionaire DeVos family, which bankrolls a privatization operation called “American Federation of Children,” and by for-profit corporations like K12 Inc., which was founded by junk-bond king Michael Milliken.

 

ALEC’s education task force has pushed legislation for decades to privatize public schools, weaken teacher’s unions, and lower teaching standards.

 

ALEC’s agenda would transform public education from a public and accountable institution that serves the public into one that serves private, for-profit interests. ALEC model bills divert taxpayer money from public to private schools through a variety of “voucher” and “tuition tax credit” programs. They promote unaccountable charter schools and shift power away from democratically elected local school boards….

 

Although ALEC and other school privatizers today frame “vouchers” – taxpayer-funded tuition for private, and often religious, schools – in terms of “opportunity” for low-income students and giving parents the “choice” to send their children to public or private schools, the group was less judicious in its earlier years.

 

The commentary to ALEC’s original 1984 voucher bill states that its purpose is “to introduce normal market forces” into education, and to “dismantle the control and power of” teachers’ unions by directing money from public institutions to private ones that were less likely to be unionized.

 

Friedman was more explicit when addressing ALEC’s 2006 meeting. He explained that vouchers are really a step towards “abolishing the public school system.”

 

“How do we get from where we are to where we want to be?” Friedman asked the ALEC crowd.

 

“Of course, the ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it. Then parents would have enough money to pay for private schools, but you’re not gonna do that.”

 

Of course, in order to believe in the idea of “opportunity scholarships” to “save poor kids from failing schools,” you have to believe that the big corporations and the billionaires are civil rights crusaders for the poor and needy. My imagination is not big enough to do that.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Vouchers

Washington State: Charter Advocates Push Legislation to Save Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2016 //
19

Politico Education reports that legislation is moving in Washington State to fund the state’s charter schools. A few months ago, the high court of the state ruled that charter schools are NOT public schools, are not accountable to an elected school board, are under private management, and therefore not eligible for public funding. Since then, the charter industry has tried various stratagems to try to get public funding and to reverse the court’s decision by political muscle and money. Since Washington State is home to Bill Gates, and since Bill Gates poured millions into passing a referendum on charters, the pressure to divert public funds to these nonpublic schools have been intense. As usual, charter advocates are fighting for the 1,000 or fewer children in charter schools, but not for the nearly 1 million children in public schools. They never take “no” for an answer when they lose the chance to drain resources from the schools that serve the vast majority of children.

 

 

WASHINGTON STATE CLOSES IN ON CHARTER SAVE: Charter advocates nationwide applauded Washington state House lawmakers on Wednesday night after they passed a measure to keep the state’s charter schools open. The save, which would use lottery money to pay for the schools, comes at the last minute – the legislature is slated to adjourn today. The schools and more than 1,000 students have been in limbo since the state Supreme Court ruled the state’s charter school law unconstitutional late last year. After heated debate the bill passed on a 58-39 vote. “We celebrate the parents who led this charge, and the school and movement leaders who refused to take no for an answer,” said National Alliance for Public Charter Schools President and CEO Nina Rees. “Their amazing efforts on behalf of Washington’s students has led to one of the most remarkable victories in the history of this movement.” The legislation heads back to the state Senate, which has already approved a similar proposal. The Associated Press has more: http://bit.ly/1TNcIjK.

 

Nina Rees, quoted here, formerly was education advisor to Vice President Richard Cheney and then worked for Michael Milken in his education business.

 

 

 

 

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

Apple CEO Tim Cook is a Public High School Graduate: Would He Stand with Us?

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2016 //
36

The Washington Post profiled Tim Cook, CEO of one of the world’s most valuable companies. Cook graduated from the high school in Robertsdale, Alabama, in 1978.

 

It was there, faced with stark racism, that Cook developed his sense of social justice.

 

Cook is gay, and he knew he was different. He is not celebrated in Robertson, as he should be, probably because he is gay. No, because he is gay.

 

Cook’s experiences growing up in Robertsdale – detailed by him in public speeches and recalled by others — are key to understanding how a once-quiet tech executive became one of the world’s most outspoken corporate leaders. Apple has long emphasized the privacy of its products, but today Cook talks about privacy not as an attribute of a device, but as a right — a view colored by his own history.

 

For Cook, it was in this tiny town midway between Mobile, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla., that a book-smart boy developed what he calls his “moral sense.”

 

On the surface easy-going and popular, according to former classmates, Cook seemed too aware of the injustices around him.

 

“I have to believe that growing up in Alabama, during the 1960s and witnessing what he did, especially as someone who is gay, he understood the dangers of remaining silent,” said Kerry Kennedy, a human-rights activist who has met Cook several times and whose father, Robert F. Kennedy, Cook considers one of his heroes.

 

“He’s not afraid to stand up when he sees something wrong,” she added.

 

***

Cook’s chance to stand up came early, when he was in just the sixth or seventh grade.

 

In the early 1970s, he was riding his new 10-speed bicycle at night along a rural road just outside Robertsdale when he spotted a burning cross. He pedaled closer.

 

He saw Klansmen in white hoods and robes. The cross was on the property of a family he knew was black. It was almost more than he could comprehend.

 

Without thinking, he shouted, “Stop!”

 

The group turned toward the boy. One of them raised his hood. Cook recognized the man as a local deacon at one of the dozen churches in town, but not the one attended by Cook’s family.

 

The man warned the boy to keep moving.

 

“This image was permanently imprinted in my brain and it would change my life forever,” Cook recalled in a speech in 2013, an incident that he also has recounted to friends.

 

A few years later, at age 16, Cook won an essay contest sponsored by a rural electric company and, as part of the prize, met Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the segregationist who resisted the federal government’s attempts to integrate the state’s public schools during the ’60s.

 

Cook shook Wallace’s hand that day, but described it as “a betrayal of my own beliefs,” he said in a speech last year. “It felt wrong. Like I was selling a piece of my soul.”

 

On the same trip, Cook met President Jimmy Carter at the White House. To Cook, the difference between the two men was impossible to miss — “one was right and one was wrong.”

 

Knowing Tim Cook’s moral center is strong, I wonder if he would stand with those of us who are trying to stop the privatization of public education, the effort by giant corporations to monetize the schools and turn them into “investments” with a sure “rate of return”?

 

 

 

Categories Alabama, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Gene Glass: Which Students Do Charter Schools Serve?

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2016 //
6

The eminent researcher Gene Glass notes on his blog that the purpose of charter schools, when they were first launched, was to enroll the students with the highest needs. Now, ironically, those are the students likeliest to be avoided by most charter schools.

 

He writes:

 

The great irony is that the charter school movement was launched decades ago as a solution to the “problem” that special needs students were not being adequately served by the traditional public schools. Charter schools would specialize in serving the needs of that neglected population — or so the story went. How ironic, then, that the modern charter school movement creams the top performing, largely white middle class, sector of the public school population and leaves the poor, the needy, and the minorities back in the traditional public schools.

 

He gives citations to prove his point.

 

Glass adds:

 

And now, irony climbs atop irony. Charter schools that have creamed high scoring students from the public schools are labeling high percentages of the students “autistic” to increase their state allotment from under $10,000 per regular student to about $20,000 per “autistic” student. And then they report no expenditures for special programs.

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

How Do You Explain the Corporate Assault on Public Education to Friends Who Know Nothing About It?

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2016 //
66

I received an email from a daily reader of the blog who asked me how she could explain the downside of corporate reform to friends at a dinner party in the suburbs who know nothing at all about the issues. She said that her friends were liberal Democrats, but their own children are grown, and they don’t read the blogs. What could she say that was direct, accurate, and informative?

We exchanged emails and began creating a list of snappy explanatory comments. Our combined list is below. Would you be good enough to send me your suggestions?

Your friend says, “So what do you think of the education reform movement?” Or, “How could anyone be opposed to education reform?”

And you answer, “What you call education “reform” is not reform at all. It is a way of making public schools look bad so they can be turned over to private managers. That’s privatization of one of our fundamental democratic institutions.”

Well, they may look at you and wonder if you have gone off the deep end, so you have to give them examples of what “education reform” actually means.

Like “for profit charter schools that are supported with tax dollars”

Like “excessive testing that makes money for test companies but isn’t good for kids”

Like “giving standardized tests to children in kindergarten and the earliest grades”

Like “turning kindergarten into first or second grade, where children study academics instead of playing”

Like “Race to the Top that pays schools to use the Common Core”

Like “charter schools that are never held accountable because their owners make big contributions to politicians”

Like “charter schools that get high test scores because they exclude kids with disabilities, kids learning English and remove those with low test scores”

Like “corporate charter chains replacing neighborhood public schools”

Like “virtual charters where kids lose 180 days of math for every 100 days of school”

Like “vouchers that go to fundamentalist schools where kids learn creationist science and the evangelical version of history”

Like “teachers are evaluated as ineffective or effective by the test scores of their students, even though research demonstrates that this is a flawed method”

Like “uncertified, inexperienced teachers who are assigned to the kids with the greatest needs”

And for a fanfare: “Our nation has pursued failed market-based policies for 15 years. It is time to do what works, based on evidence and experience.”

The list could be longer. Send me your suggestions. We could put them on a palm card so that anyone is prepared to answer the questions at any time.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

March Issue of “Monthly Review” Devoted to Testing Resistance

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2016 //
7

The March issue of the “Monthly Review” is devoted to education, to standardized testing, opt out, and resistance.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Opt Out, Resistance, Testing
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