Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
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Gary Rubinstein Explains To Joel Klein What is Wrong with the “Reform” Movement

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2015 //
16

Gary Rubinstein has written a series of letters to leaders of the “reform” movement. Some have replied. Up to this point, he wrote to people he knew during his years at TFA. Now he has started what (hopefully) will be a series written to “reformers I don’t know,” and he writes his first letter to Joel Klein, whose book he is reading. He patiently and civilly explains to Klein why the reform movement is floundering and foundering. He explains why TFA doesn’t make much difference; why merit pay doesn’t work; why ed tech is limited as a classroom tool; and why value-added measurement of teachers by test scores doesn’t work.

 

Since Gary has made a specialty of calling out inflated claims, he ends on this note:

 

 

The one that I really got you on was P-Tech. I wrote about how they only had a school average of about 30% on those tests. You thought this number was skewed by the fact that they require so many of their students to take the test so it is unfair to compare to a school where not so many kids take it. But when I dug deeper into the public data I learned that only 1.8% of the P-Tech students passed Geometry and 1.6% passed Algebra II. Even if every student in the school took those tests, that would be only about 5 kids passing for each test. That is really bad. P-Tech is a test score disaster. I know that you used it in the introduction to your book about how the choice to shut down a school and open another can lead to great improvement. In this case, this particular school hasn’t accomplished much. Yet, you defend this school so vigorously. Why? I think you would have more credibility if you were to admit that P-Tech is a disaster, at least when it comes to math Regents. When you give free passes to people you have relationships with — whether it is P-Tech or AP scores in Louisiana or KIPP schools in New Orleans that have low test scores — aren’t reformers supposed to be all about ‘increased autonomy for increased accountability’? When you selectively hold people and schools that you don’t have a connection to more strict accountability than the ones you do, I don’t respect that.

 

One of your friends and now a co-worker at Amplify is education reform celebrity Geoffrey Canada. I actually am very much in favor of wrap-around services as a way of helping kids overcome some of the out-of-school factors that serve as obstacles to their learning. Unfortunately when you look at the test scores at Harlem Children’s Zone, they are horrible. I know this may make it seem like wrap-around services are underrated, but in this case the poor test results are an example of a very badly run school, despite the wrap-arounds. I know this because a former student of mine who is now a very happy teacher at Success Academy spent her first miserable year of teaching at Harlem Children’s Zone. She said it was a very toxic environment where nobody in charge knew what they were doing. You surely know that Canada ‘fired’ two different cohorts of students since their bad test scores were, I suspect, dragging down his reputation. To throw away two groups of struggling kids is completely at odds with the sorts of things you write in your book about how all kids can thrive if permitted to learn in the right environment.

 

Finally, I’ve noticed many inconsistencies in many of your arguments. When critics say that graduation rate is up to back up their point that schools are not in crisis, you point to the flat long term NAEP scores to refute them. Then when critics say that New York City has not made great improvements during your tenure and use the lack of NAEP gains (that first test that was administered before you got there doesn’t count, you know!) you point to the increased graduation rate. I think you need to pick what metrics you think are valid and stick to them.

 

I hope Klein writes Gary Rubinstein a reply.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Technology, Computers, Testing

John Thompson in Oklahoma City: Parent Revolution, Go Home

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2015 //
2

John Thompson, teacher and historian in Oklahoma, describes the arrival of Parent Revolution operatives in Oklahoma City, come to sell the charter school snake oil. In the five years since PR managed to get legislation in California, only a handful of schools have been converted into charters, so apparently they started beating the bushes in other states.

 

Oklahoma has thus far escaped the promises and lures of chartering its cities to out of state entities.

 

Thompson writes:

 

I wish local charter leaders and philanthropists would disassociate themselves from the Parent Revolution and the agenda of competition-driven reformers. True believers that “the market” will magically solve education’s problems have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in failed experiments in Newark, New Orleans, Memphis and, now, Chicago and Boston. Last week, the secret $2.7 million corporate campaign for mass charterization of Los Angeles was revealed.

 

Those experiments mostly took bad inner city schools and made them worse. The one semi-success (New Orleans) spent incomprehensible sums of money, beyond anything we could conceive in Oklahoma, as it created a mostly all-charter system. It produced some gains through nonstop teach-to-the-test, but they came at the cost of pushing thousands of high-challenge students out of school and into the streets.

 

If we follow the Parent Revolution, we will be back to what we saw during the economic bust of the 1980s. OKCPS did its best, but our overwhelmed system had no chance of reaching the dozens of out-of-school kids who we used to see wandering through each of our high-poverty neighborhoods during the school days.

 

 

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

Jersey Jazzman on York City, Pa., and the Death of Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2015 //
7

Sorry I missed this great post when it came out in November. Jersey Jazzman, one of the nation’s best education bloggers, foretells the handover of the York City public schools to a for-profit charter chain and excoriates the state officials who are permitting this travesty to happen.

 

He digs into the stats on York City to show that it is performing about where you would expect given the socioeconomic disadvantage of its students. York City, he says, needs help, more resources, not a for-profit charter chain to siphon money out of its budget.

 

He writes:

 

Let’s recap:

Tom Corbett abdicated his responsibilities to the children of York and defunded their schools.
He sent in his personal hack to force the district to turn those schools over to a private, for-profit corporation through a shell non-profit.
The hack — as if he were a made man — told the district if they didn’t take his offer, he’d take over.
No one knows how much money the charter company is going to make on this deal.
Trust me, folks, we’re just getting started…

 

Meckley believes this plan is warranted because York’s schools aren’t performing up to snuff. But the truth is that they are exactly where we’d expect them to be, given the demographics of the city.

 

Do you want to see a photo of Jon Hage’s gorgeous yacht? Look here. He is the CEO of Charter Schools USA. The yacht was up for sale recently. He lives well. His business is very profitable with taxpayer dollars.

 

Jersey Jazzman asks:

 

And what kind of performance have the good people of Florida received for all of that money?

 
The chain was considered high-performing until this year. And on Tuesday the Orange School Board voted 7-0 to deny its applications for three new campuses.

 
Because charters are publicly funded per pupil, Charter Schools USA would receive about $27 million a year to run the three schools at capacity if approved.

 
“Their performance in Orange County is abysmally poor,” board Chairman Bill Sublette said of the Renaissance schools. “They’re underperforming the schools in the area that they’re drawing from. How can we look taxpayers in the eye and approve them?”
But Jonathan Hage, president and CEO of Charter Schools USA, said he is proud of all of the company’s schools, including Chickasaw.

 
“We do an excellent job over time, even with the lowest-performing students,” he said. “We knew we wouldn’t be able to turn those scores around in a year.” [emphasis mine]

 
JJ: I guess David Meckley knows better than the entire Orange School Board. Maybe CSUSA’s history in Indiana convinced him:

 
“The four takeover schools in Indianapolis lost huge numbers of students — between 35 and 60 percent at each school — between the start of classes in 2011 and when the takeover operators took over in 2012. Schools are mostly funded on the basis of their enrollment, so the departures came at a steep cost for the private operators.
On top of that, the takeover schools saw their share of a pot of federal funds for low-performing schools that is controlled by the state shrink as more state schools became eligible to claim that money. Tindley lost $212,000, and Charter Schools USA’s three schools lost more than $601,110 because of across-the-board reductions.
Together, the cuts have left takeover operators with much higher costs than they anticipated.
Sherry Hage, CSUSA’s chief academic officer, says the operator is planning to stick with its schools despite the costs. But for some, the price tag is proving too high. Earlier this month, Tindley shocked state education officials by threatening to pull out of Arlington shortly after the start of the school year unless the nonprofit could get $2.4 million in additional aid.”

 
– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/11/york-pa-and-death-of-public-education.html#sthash.wCR7cUKg.dpuf

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Privatization

NY Charter Advocacy Group Opens in Boston

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2015 //
11

A well-funded charter advocacy group, deceptively named “Families for Excellent Schools,” has opened in Boston.

It claims that it supports all excellent schools, whether charter or public, but the record says this group is a cheerleader for charters and against public schools. As the story in the Boston Globe says, FES spent something like $6 million (earlier coverage had numbers like $3.6 million or $4 million but eventually reporters settled on $5-6 million) to stop Mayor Bill de Blasio from reigning in charter expansion. Due to FES’ efforts, Governor Cuomo and the legislature required Néw York City to provide all charters free public space or to pay their private rent.

What kind of families can raise $4-6 million in a matter of days to bash the mayor and promote charters? The family of billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones and the Walton family, just your typical American families.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York

Haimson: When Klein and Sharpton Were Allies

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2015 //
20

Recently the Néw York Post ran an article about Al Sharpton, saying that he received money from corporations in return for not campaigning against them as racist. The story said that the firm of former Chancellor Harold Levy paid Sharpton $500,000 to help a client who was competing to manage a gambling franchise.

Leonie Haimson, CEO of Néw Tork City’s most activist group Class Size Matters, writes that the NY Post left out the key details of that transaction.

She writes:

“Left out of this account is the most interesting part of the story. It’s not just that the money for Sharpton was ostensibly for “equity” and funneled through Education Reform Now, the non-profit arm of Joe William’s pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform. The larger context is that ERN was merely a pass-through, and the money was directed to Sharpton through the Education Equity Project, founded by then-Chancellor Joel Klein, in exchange for Sharpton agreeing to co-chair the group and adopt Klein’s aggressive anti-teacher, pro-charter stance.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry

Teacher Ed: Help, ACLU! Get to the Bottom of Racketeering in Education

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2015 //
26

This is a comment by one of our frequent participants, identified as Teacher Ed:

 

Virtually every component of corporate “reform” imposed across this country is based on disasters that “reformers” have fabricated and tyrannical racketeering. Clearly, this is being done in order to privatize public education and raid tax dollars, while diverting attention away from the real disasters of poverty, a severe decline in the number of jobs with livable wages, a diminishing middle class and the inequitable distribution of wealth.

 

Are we supposed to wait until the perpetrators turn the screws and receive their dues for each part of this scheme before lawsuits can be filed? Is that how it works with the mob, too –payoffs have to be made first by victims before anything can be done about all the threats and dire consequences to result from not kowtowing to demands?

 

Is it possible to file a lawsuit that addresses virtually ALL of the components of the corporate “reform” business plan that is rapidly unravelling the fabric of American education? Maybe the ACLU could manage it, if only someone who cares would help fund it.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Beware the Language of “Reform” That Isn’t About Reform

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2014 //
30

We have all wrestled at one time or another with the deceptive rhetoric of “reformers.” They seem to have a common phrase book, written by PR whizzes, in which they have co-opted terms like “reform,” “great teachers,” “innovation,” “personalized,” and to have created terms like “a child’s zip code should not be his/her destiny,” a sentiment with which no one can disagree. Their solutions, typically, consist of privatizing public schools by handing public dollars over to private corporations to do the work of government, and dismantling the teaching profession by lowering standards for entry to young people without any professional preparation, eliminating due process, eliminating extra pay for additional degrees, and seeking to eliminate extra pay for experience. No reform movement in the past ever had this agenda. Reformers in the past wanted public schools to get better, not to replace them with privately managed schools or schools operated for profit. Reformers in the past wanted teachers to have better preparation, not to take away certification requirements. Reformers were not union-busters.

 

Education writer Steve Hinnefeld, on his blog, writes about the way the so-called reformers have corrupted the English language. I agree with him, and we see it all the time, such as when a pro-charter group calls itself “Save Our Public Schools” and circulates a petition to replace public schools with privately managed charters. However, I disagree with Steve on two of his definitions. I can’t think of a better term than corporate reformers, to demonstrate that their assumptions come from the corporate world, such as their belief in data, data-driven decision-making, standardization, incentives, and sanctions. Other people use terms like “deformers,” but that is more of an insult than a label. If Steve has a better term than “corporate reform,” I want to hear it.

 

I also challenge the claim–perhaps he does as well–that charter schools are public schools. They get public money, but that does not make them public schools. Lockheed gets public money. So does almost every private university. Charters have sued in different states to prevent public audits, on the grounds that they are private corporations, not subject to public audit. They have been taken to court by workers for violating state labor laws; they said they were private corporations, not public schools. When you hear this defense again and again, it is persuasive. I am persuaded.

 

Meanwhile, I welcome any suggestions from Steve or others to create a name for those who are leading the charge for more charters and vouchers and who are eager to strip teachers of due process, collective bargaining, and reduce their benefits.

 

I would also welcome suggestions for the name of “our side.” We do not “defend the status quo.” The status quo is headed by Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family, Jeb Bush, Andrew Cuomo, and ALEC; it consists of high-stakes testing, privatization, and hostility to the teaching profession. We don’t like the status quo. We want better schooling for all children. We want the arts and history and physical education; we want experienced teachers; we want librarians, school nurses, guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists and after-school programs. Are we “the real reformers”? We fight for better education, for better schools, for high standards for entry into teaching, for respect for teachers and parents, and for kindness for children. What should we call ourselves?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Standardized Testing

Susan DuFresne: A Teacher Living on the Edge

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2014 //
31

Susan DuFresne has written a moving post about her precarious life as a teacher in the Age of “Rephorm.” Read it and believe. This profession is worth fighting for. The rephormers write mandates and regulations, use their money to impose their will, but they wouldn’t last five minutes in a classroom. Teachers must reclaim their classrooms, reclaim their profession. They will not destroy it; they will not destroy us. They will lose because what they do hurts children, hurts our society.

 

Susan writes:

 

What will happen to us as teachers, parents, students, and democracy as we continue to struggle in our mandated race to the top of corporate education reform?

 

Home for winter break from my work as a teacher, I find myself too exhausted the first several days to take care of anyone but myself. When we get on a plane they tell us to make sure we put on our oxygen masks first, then take care of our family. Self-care supersedes care of others. You cannot care for others when you yourself cannot breathe.

 

As a teacher, we have little time for self-care. More often than not these days – we are holding our breath – waiting for the next data point we need to collect and record. We are entering the “death zone” – the death zone because we are slowly dying for lack of the fresh air of creativity, joy, and love. The lust for data has consumed the space to breathe, the space to feel safe in a hospitable environment, the space to take care of ourselves – or the millions of voiceless children.

 

As teachers, we are being exploited by the corporate reformers who profit from their failing experiments – and our families are left with nothing but ghosts of who we once were…..

 

It is only December, and yet I feel like a porter carrying the immoral weight of reformy slick packages – a porter who has trekked to the top of Mt. EdReform not given the resources we need to survive. Much like the Sherpa, I feel like I don’t have what I need to make the mandated trek to the top of Mt. EdReform, and what is left of my profession is becoming a data service industry that only benefits the companies getting rich. As the summit nears it doesn’t resemble anyplace suitable for human beings. I have more second thoughts about continuing my profession and feel closer to succumbing to burn-out than ever before.

 

From the movie, Beyond the Edge:

 

Above 26,000 feet is what we call the death zone…the death zone because you are slowly dying.
Just as the mountain above 26,000 feet is uninhabitable – classrooms in public schools across the country have become uninhabitable for human beings – teachers and students alike.

 

The climbers of 1953 spoke of how much effort it takes for each step forward, how confused their oxygen-starved brains became. When struggling to take the oppressive steps of corporate reform, I too feel I need to take 15 breaths to cover just one step of one of their new initiatives. I haven’t caught up with completing the last initiative, when a new one is presented, we’re asked to implement the new initiative in yet another lesson to teach, we’re asked to be observed teaching the new initiative while under scrutiny of more data points to collect, and then it is time to go off to another meeting about what evidence we need to collect for our next data meeting, then have another meeting to plan our next data meeting.

 

With each step further into the world of corporate reform, I become more confused about why I chose this profession and I recognize that a small part of me is dying slowly – as is a small part of each child. Where we once had art, music, creativity, joy, love, learning through play, and autonomy – many of us now have endless testing and data collection, data entry, data analysis, and meetings upon meetings about data.

 

The corporate reformers have sucked the life out of teaching and learning. The real purpose of education is lost in a blizzard of data – numbers entered onto a rubric to become bits of data – trillions of 0’s and 1’s about each child are flying at high speed, tracked and collecting in data banks like so many feet of snow to be mined for corporate profits – icy cold they create systems of punishment as dangerous crevices – an abyss of corporate created failure – a place devoid of all humanity for children and teachers to try to traverse. We can feel the heaviness of fear and oppression — and the sense of impending death — as we deepen our voyage into this uninhabitable space.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Teachers and Teaching

Join the Twitterstorm Right Now!

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2014 //
1

People across America are speaking truth to power, right now on Twitter, where they are tweeting in opposition to charter takeovers in Tennessee.

The BATs’ twitter storm using the hashtags #WeBelieve2015 and #beliefgap calling out Tennessee Achievement School District superintendent Chris Barbic and his privatization agenda has gotten the attention of The Tennessean Newspaper. They’ve posted an active link to the twitter discussion on their website.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/columnists/david-plazas/2014/12/29/charter-schools-predatory-tactics-belief-gap/21004037/

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing, Tennessee

Is “Reform” a “War on Women”?

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2014 //
87

A new group called “Women United 4 Public Education” asks the inevitable question in reality a war on women?

About 75% of those who work in public education are women. The corporate reformers want to reduce the number of teachers, replacing them with computers or with low-wage temps, both men and women, who won’t be around long enough to collect a pension and who are able to work 60-70 hour weeks, thinking of it as idealism rather than taking the job of veteran teachers.

There is no “reform” movement for police, firefighters, lawyers, doctors, or engineers. No legislatures are telling them how to do their work or meddling with their benefits.

Categories Corporate Reformers
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