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Gary Rubinstein: Nevada Closes Its Failed “Achievement School District”

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2019 //
30

Gary Rubinstein has followed the failure of the “portfolio model” more closely than anyone in the country. He watched the Tennessee “Achievement School District” as its leaders made bold promises,     then departed for lucrative reformy gigs as the ASD collapsed in failure.

In this post, he describes the failure of Nevada’s copycat ASD. ,which was modeled on Tennessee’s ASD, which was modeled on New Orleans’ low-achieving Recovery School District.

He notes that Michigan’s “Education Achievement Authority” failed and was shuttered.

All of which raises the question, why are Corporate Reformers incapable of learning from experience?

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

New York City Joins Forces with Corporate Reformers

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2019 //
41

 

Mayor Bill DeBlasio joined in partnership with Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ Institute and the hedge-funders’ Robin Hood Foundation to create new schools and transform existing schools. The corporate reformers are not offering much money—only $15 million (crumbs from the billionaires’ table)—but they are getting the Mayor to admit that amateur “reformers” know more than the city’s professional educators. You might say that this deal is a vote of no-confidence in Chancellor Richard Carranza.

Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters, has been consistently critical of the DeBlasio administration for ignoring the importance of Class size reduction. She is also critical of this alliance. On the NYC Parents blog, she wrote:

Robin Hood is spending “up to $5M” to create up to “10 New Imagine schools” – and will be involved in the selection process — which means the DOE is giving up authority over the design of these schools to the assorted #corpreformers there for as little as $500K each. #XQ is funding $10M for “up to 10 HS” either new or redesigned schools.

Thus the DOE must be putting in $17M more – to create or “transform” 35 additional schools, as the application specifies that “20 of the 40 schools selected will be existing schools to redesign, and 20 will be new schools.”

In other words, she says, NYC is “a cheap date.”

De Blasio Administration Announces Community-Centered Public-Private Challenge to Open 20 New Schools and Transform 20 Existing Schools Across 5 Boroughs

October 3, 2019

$32 million public-private partnership with initial support from XQ Institute and Robin Hood will transform learning at 40 schools

NEW YORK—Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza today announced the Imagine Schools NYC Challenge, a public-private partnership to create 20 new schools and transform 20 existing schools across New York City into schools of the future. The XQ Institute will support plans for both new and existing high schools, while Robin Hood will support new schools across all grade levels. Launching with an initial investment of $32 million in public and private funds, Imagine Schools NYC will be a model for community-driven school innovation within the City’s Equity and Excellence for All agenda.

“This is a big endorsement of public education in New York City. With this support, we’re going to help educators, students and communities come together to design new schools and re-design existing ones that will challenge our kids and increase academic rigor. I want to see great schools in every neighborhood,” said Mayor de Blasio.

“We are successful when we do things with communities, not to communities or for communities. We are changing the paradigm with Imagine Schools NYC – coming together with educators, students, families, and community partners to design radically different schools from the ground up, and to redesign existing schools to meet the demands of the future. Additionally, this first-of-its-kind public-private partnership will impact not only the 40 “Imagine” and “Reimagine” Schools, but also inform our work to innovate and advance equity and academic excellence across all 1,800 of New York City’s public schools. We’re ready to go, and we know New Yorkers are ready to answer the call,” said Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza.

“Community-driven design teams will build upon the strengths New York City is known for—best-in-class leaders, teachers, and programs,” said Russlynn Ali, Co-Founder and CEO of XQ. “The City’s deep commitment to community agency gives school teams the tools, permission, and flexibility to think and act boldly so all students get what they need—and ensure those visions are sustained. That is why we are so excited to partner in this effort to harness the power of community to transform City high schools into engines of excellence and equity.”

“We are eager to work with the City and Department of Education to launch new schools with new visionary leaders at the helm who are well-poised to serve the children in our most under-resourced communities, and to expand the sharing of effective practices between charter and district schools,” said Wes Moore, CEO of Robin Hood. “We know how critical this work is to increasing economic mobility in New York City.”

This initiative will produce at least 20 new (“Imagine”) or transformed (“Reimagine”) high schools, with at least one new high school in each of the five boroughs. The remaining 20 schools will be a mix of elementary and middle schools. All 40 Imagine NYC Schools will serve as models for the system. They will be innovative, academically rigorous, community-driven, inclusive, and intentional in their commitment to serve all students. The 20 new schools will not have selective admissions. The City is committed to developing all 40 Imagine NYC schools and funding their implementation and is actively seeking additional funders to join this exciting initiative. Private funds for this initiative will go through the Fund for Public Schools.

Through the Imagine Schools NYC Challenge, educators, students, families, and community partners will be empowered to co-construct unique proposals for schools of the future. Across the City, design teams will come together to develop proposals for new or existing schools with a focus on Equity and Excellence for All.

Imagine Schools NYC will focus on the transformation of the student learning experience. Examples of the kinds of actions school design teams could propose include: authentic, real world learning (internships, apprenticeships, college courses and visits, projects in the community); innovative themes; college, community and industry partnerships; changes to curriculum to align with interesting, high-skill, high-demand sectors; focus on arts, civic engagement, technology or a STEM subject.

“We know our schools are more successful when parents, educators, students and community are at the table, deciding what their school needs to engage, support and enhance education. We need buy-in from the children and adults in the building as well as the community at large,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers.

“We have seen it time and again – whether expanding the largest computer science education program in the country, or providing a record number of students with internships and early work experiences – when the private sector partners with our public education system the big winners are students, families and communities,” said Darren Bloch, Director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships. “This partnership with the Fund for Public Schools, the Department of Education and these prolific education funders, will help advance a powerful new model for designing public schools around educational best practices through a community driven approach. We are deeply appreciative to have the XQ Institute and Robin Hood working with us to achieve this ambitious goal.”

“New Yorkers have been clear: they want academically challenging schools, with real world learning opportunities like internships, high tech training, and serious, fun pathways to college, strong careers, and amazing futures. Students and educators have also been clear: they want schools that are diverse, inclusive, and supportive of all students. Today Chancellor Carranza, listening to educators, students and parents, is issuing a call to action to all of New York City: Let’s develop great schools together,” said Karin Goldmark, Deputy Chancellor for School Planning and Development.

XQ Institute

The Department of Education will partner with XQ Institute, a national leader in transformational high school design, on XQ+NYC, the initiative’s work in grades 9-12.

XQ’s school-design process empowers educators, students, and community members to create high schools where all students realize their full potential—schools that are academically challenging, authentically diverse, and aligned to the skills and knowledge young people need to be successful in an ever-changing world.

Based on research and expert practice, the process helps teams engage thoughtfully and creatively with big priorities for high school design and redesign—like listening to the voices of students, getting a diverse cross-section of the community involved, activating teachers and other educators, and looking beyond the day-to-day constraints that often stifle innovative thinking. These schools will manifest key design principles of excellent, equitable high schools: a strong mission and culture; meaningful, engaged learning; caring, trusting relationships; youth voice and choice; community partnerships; and smart use of time, space, and technology.

Dynamic plans for new high schools as well as transformational models for existing schools will emerge from this effort. XQ Institute has committed $10 million to support the implementation of up to 10 high school plans, with the goal of joining XQ’s national cohort of community-developed schools – models for driving equity, excellence, and innovation.

Robin Hood

Robin Hood, New York City’s largest poverty fighting nonprofit, is partnering with the Department of Education in two ways: First, Robin Hood will commit up to $5 million to support the creation of up to10 new Imagine Schools dedicated to serving the most historically under-resourced students in New York City. Robin Hood will partner with the Department of Education on a rigorous selection process resulting in school designs with the greatest promise of eliminating opportunity gaps for underserved students.

Second, Robin Hood will support both current and new district school leaders in driving transformational change through a $1 million expansion of the DOE’s District-Charter Partnership work centered on proven, effective professional development.

Student and Community Centered Design Process

Starting immediately, and continuing over the next three years, design teams have the opportunity to apply to become Imagine Schools.

Design teams, some of which have already begun forming across the City, will work together to submit initial concept proposals starting in October 2019. Selected teams will advance to additional application rounds in Winter and Spring 2020, with the first round of Imagine and Reimagine school designs announced in May 2020.

The application is available online, and the DOE has a robust outreach strategy to ensure all communities are aware of and apply to participate in this opportunity. So far, through the spring and summer, the DOE has invited principals to attend design day sessions. Department representatives have attended community events and distributed flyers in neighborhoods across the City to raise awareness. The DOE will use its social media, website, parent and family email lists, and parent leadership bodies to encourage teams to participate in the coming weeks.

“It is always a good day when there’s investments made in public schools. Imagine Schools NYC is a community driven initiative addressing many, many needs and is a game changer for students. Educators, students, parents and community stakeholders will be able to develop innovative school models that will provide real-world educational experiences for our students,” said Council Member Mark Treyger, Chair of the Committee on Education. “It’s time to build curricula around the diverse strengths of students and in alignment with 21st century opportunities and needs. I look forward to touring an Imagine School in the near future.”

“This is a bold and forward-thinking initiative where students and communities are called to interact and design their own schools and educational futures. Excellence will emerge when all voices are at the table. As dedicated agents of design learning, design thinking, and implementing, we anticipate the powerful school environments that will come from partnering with designers and creative educators.  Thank you for bringing design practice to its best purpose and position—to this invitation to all New Yorkers to participate in building the platform for creating extraordinary schools.” saidFrances Bronet, President, Pratt Institute.

“Simply stated, re-imagining schools that lift student voice, promote intellectual curiosity, embrace community partnerships, and position students to succeed in the 21st century marketplace, are all key ingredients for success.” said NeQuan C. McLean, President CEC 16.

“We are excited by the limitless possibilities of the Imagine Schools NYC initiative. Highlighting voices of students, families and the community alongside educators to expand our understanding of schools outside of a physical building. This opportunity to envision schools that challenge and radically change what education can be – prioritizing knowledge and embedding schools as the heart of the community. We are all in!” said Sheree Gibson, Co-Chair, Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council (CPAC).

“We believe that Imagine Schools has the power to create meaningful learning experiences that extend beyond the traditional classroom walls whereby students own and direct their own learning,” said Fiorella Cabrejos, principal of Fordham Leadership Academy.

“What our system needs isn’t just new schools—it’s schools that listen to all the voices that are part of the system – the students, parents, teachers, and surrounding communities – and create radical change in response. The Imagine Schools NYC initiative has created a path for this kind of innovation in school design, encouraging opportunities for school design teams to engage with their communities. It’s amazing to see how excited people get to share their ideas about school design. The Imagine Schools NYC initiative is what our city- and our school system overall – needs,” said Meredith Hill, Assistant Principal of Columbia Secondary School.

“The Imagine Schools initiative brought students like me to the table, empowering us to own our education and create a better one for future generations. Student voice is critical to changing the way we learn, and I’m honored to have been a part of this much needed, innovative partnership,” said Makai Bryan, a 12th-grade student in Manhattan.

More information on the process is available at https://www.schools.nyc.gov/about-us/initiatives/imagine-schools-nyc.

pressoffice@cityhall.nyc.gov(212) 788-2958
Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City

Louisiana: Vote for Pro-Public School Candidates on October 12

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2019 //
4

Louisiana will hold elections for its state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on October 12. This year, as in the past, out-of-State billionaires are spending heavily to keep control of the state board to promote privatization policies. During the tenure of State Superintendent John White, a former deputy to Joel Klein in New York, the state’s ranking on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Is near the absolute bottom in both mathematics and reading, in both 4th and 8th grades. New Orleans has gone all-Charter and its score are in the bottom third of the state’s districts while its schools are highly segregated and stratified. This much is clear: Disruption has won control of the state board but done nothing to improve education.

BESE recommendations from veteran educator Michael Deshotels –
 
Dear Friend of Public Education:
 
With just a few days left before the election of a new BESE, you can help restore sanity and independence to our State Board of Education.
 
Out of state donors are making huge contributions to elect candidates that LABI  and John White will totally control. You will surely see their ads in your mailbox and on radio and television. Do not be deceived! These are not friends of public education. They will be committed to John White,  school privatization, obsessive testing, crushing test prep., etc.  But the results of these so called reforms have been terrible using the very measures they (the reformers) think are so important; Our ranking on NAEP is the worst ever! Why would we want to continue failed policies? Just so that LABI never has to admit that they were wrong, that they know noting about education, and that our students are suffering instead of thriving because of their takeover of education?  See this latest post on my blog. http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com
 
Here is my abbreviated voting guide listing independent minded, solid public education advocates. Please do your best to get them elected!
 
District 1: including St. Tammany and Jefferson. I recommend Lee Barrios
 
District 2: including Orleans, St. Charles, St. John, St. James and part of Assumption: I recommend Dr. Ashonta Wyatt
 
District 3: including St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Mary, Iberia, St. Martin, part of Iberville and part of St. Landry: I recommend Janice Perea.
 
District 5: including Northeast LA and down to Rapides and Evangeline Parishes. I recommend Dr. Stephen Chapman
 
District 6: including EBR, Livingston, Ascension, Tangipahoa, and Washington Parishes. I recommend Gregory Spiers
 
District 7: including Southwest LA. I recommend Timmie Melancoin
 
District 8: including part of EBR, East and West Feliciana, St. Helena, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, Avoyelles, part of St. Landry part of St. Martin, and part of Assumption. I recommend Vereta Lee.
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Louisiana, New Orleans, Privatization, Vouchers

Bill Phillis: Beware Privatizers Running for Local School Boards!

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2019 //
16

 

Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, warns that privatizers run for local school boards, as they have in Atlanta and other cities. Teach for America has a special outfit called “Leadership for Educational Equity,” which trains its recruits to go into politics and helps to fund their campaigns.

Bill Phillis writes:

Anti-public school advocates run for seats on boards of education to attempt to completely privatize districts

Privatization of the public common schools takes many forms:
·        Charter schools
·        Vouchers
·        Tuition tax credits
·        Education savings accounts
·        Portfolio districts
·        State takeover that can eventually result in turning the district over to private operators
 
The most ruinous privatization tactic is for privatizers to take control of boards of education
 
Michelle Dillingham, with the Cincinnati Educational Justice Coalition, reports that some “fierce” school choice candidates are running for board of education seats in Cincinnati. The Justice Coalition has published a list of “qualities” that voters should look for when choosing a candidate. Topping the list of “qualities” is “a deep commitment to public education.” Public education is the adhesive that has held the American social order together. The education privatization craze has contributed to the fragmentation of our social order.
Phillis links to an article that explains what is happening in Cincinnati, where a TFA alum is running for the school board.
The article by Michelle DillIngham begins:

This November, voters in the Cincinnati Public School District will elect four members to the seven-member Board of Education. One contender, Ben Lindy, the founder and director of the Southwest Ohio Teach for America, has drawn significant controversy among supporters of public schools.

In his recent guest column, “Be proud of schools’ progress, but don’t settle,” (Aug. 31), Lindy’s repeated his use of the term “equity” and a “quality education for every child” are hard to swallow. The controversy surrounding Lindy comes as no surprise to those who follow the influence of Teachers for America and their agenda on public school districts.

TFA is a multi-million-dollar national organization whose main operation is to place non-education major college grads into temporary two-year teaching assignments in urban classrooms with less than two months of preparation. After their two years, the majority of TFA candidates abandon teaching and move on to other fields.

It is not hard to see why professional educators, who have invested in and achieved significant graduate and undergraduate education training, oppose this business strategy for staffing classrooms.

In the last several years, TFA has extracted over $600,000 in “finder’s fees” from our school district. Yet, a majority of TFA recruits do not stay with Cincinnati Public Schools after their two-year contract ends. TFA operates like a temp agency, paying a $5,000 “bounty” per recruit for a two-year commitment. It would make more sense to spend recruitment monies with higher education partners who can refer actual education majors.

School districts in other states have already figured out TFA is not a good return on their investment. Districts in Texas, South Carolina, California and Pennsylvania have all recently ended their contracts with TFA.

The TFA lobby has successfully diverted millions of taxpayer dollars, meant to educate the children of Ohio, to their company. Lindy was not successful in his run for state representative in 2016, but he was able to extract millions of public education tax dollars from the state legislature for TFA.

In April 2019, his joint testimony before the Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee of the House Finance Committee helped secure another $4 million in the upcoming biennial budget for “support for ongoing development and impact of Teach for America alumni working in Ohio.” I guess he thinks TFA recruits who only spend two years in our urban classrooms now deserve another $4 million for their alumni’s “development.”

TFA is funded by billionaire elites, including the Bill Gates, Eli Broad and Walton Family Foundations. This helps explain Lindy’s confidence that he will be able to raise $250,000 to campaign for a seat whose pay is capped at $5,000 per year. It is well documented that TFA’s most influential alumni are proponents of school district takeovers, high stakes student testing, for-profit charter schools, and anti-union efforts – the most familiar to readers is likely Michelle Rhee (whom Lindy directly worked for), but there are others.

TFA, she writes, is closely tied to the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda.
Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Teach for America

Cory Booker’s Long and Profitable Friendship with Betsy DeVos, and Why It Ended

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2019 //
27

 

Cory Booker was recently interviewed by the Washington Post, and he was asked about his past support for vouchers and his friendship with Betsy DeVos. 

He insisted that he turned against vouchers in 2006, and he barely remembered any connection to DeVos. When someone asked if he had flown to Michigan in 2000 at the request of Dick and Betsy DeVos to support their voucher referendum, he at first denied it, then when shown a tape, he said he didn’t remember it.

He opposed DeVos’ nomination to be Secretary of Education in 2017.

DeVos’s allies are stunned by what they call his turnabout. They view Booker’s effort to distance himself from her and her agenda as a betrayal. 

Now that it is politically inconvenient, he has distanced himself from the issue and those who helped launch his political career,” said William E. Oberndorf, who was chairman of the American Education Reform Council when DeVos and Booker were on the board. “Cory once told me that his father used to say to him, ‘Never forget the girl who brought you to the dance.’ I can only conclude that Cory not only forgot one of the girls who brought him to the dance, he missed his . . . moment to stand up for an issue he always said he believed in.” 

Booker’s advocacy for vouchers won him the financial support of conservative Republicans who were delighted to see a black Democratic Mayor supporting their cause.

Booker’s political career took off as a parade of wealthy philanthropists, hedge fund managers and others who supported DeVos’s “school choice” viewpoint poured money into his campaigns and pet projects. 

In 2000, with their voucher referendum on the ballot, the DeVos family invited Booker to debate the legislative director of the ACLU. She kept a tape of the debate and shared it with the Post. The voucher proposal went down to a crushing defeat by 3-1.

In September 2000, Booker delivered a blistering pro-voucher speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy group. 

Booker’s 2006 race for mayor of Newark won the support of many conservative Republicans. He proposed tuition tax credits (a form of voucher) and went all-in for charters.

When he ran for the Senate in 2014 in a special election, he was helped by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who held a fundraiser for him.

As recently as May 2016, Booker appeared again before the group that DeVos chaired, the American Federation for Children. After DeVos delivered a speech defending herself against attacks from Democrats, Oberndorf warmly introduced Booker, praising his commitment to school choice.

Booker spoke proudly about the growing number of students in Newark’s charter schools, saying, “This mission of this organization is the mission of our nation. . . . I have been involved with this organization for 10 years and I have seen the sacred honor of those here.” 

As Booker finished his speech, the audience gave him a standing ovation. To DeVos and her allies, it seemed that Booker was still firmly in the fold, according to Oberndorf. 

But a year later, he opposed DeVos’ nomination.

Booker’s vote shattered his career-long alliance with DeVos and stunned her supporters. 

“Cory gained a great deal of political support thanks to his association with Betsy and other supporters,” said Mitchell, the president of the American Education Reform Council when Booker and DeVos were board members. “His abandonment of school choice and of Betsy makes it clear that his professed commitment to the issue and his friendship with her were fueled by political ambition, not principle.” 

Betsy helped to fund his political career. But it was no longer convenient to be her friend.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization, Vouchers

Eric Blanc: Why Doesn’t Elizabeth Warren Have a K-12 Plan?

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2019 //
63

 

Eric Blanc asks in Jacobin why Elizabeth Warren does not have a plan for K-12 schooling. She has expressed various positions on education but her overall policy about testing, charter schools, and accountability are murky at best. He questions how different they are from the Bush-Obama strategies.

Blanc recently wrote a comprehensive book about the wave of teachers’ strikes of 2018-19 called Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. During the strikes, he traveled the nation to talk to strike leaders and striking teachers to understand what was at stake.

He writes:

Elizabeth Warren has a commendably progressive platform on most issues. But her past approach to public education has been closer to that of free-market reformers than most people realize.

The Massachusetts senator’s track record on education has received little scrutiny. Not only was Warren until recently a proponent of market-driven education reform and so-called teacher accountability, but her current platform silences, staff appointments, and political equivocations raise questions about her commitment to reversing the billionaire-funded onslaught against public schools…

There are good reasons to doubt that a Warren presidency would reverse the policies of privatization and education reform that have decimated American’s school system since the 1990s. For someone whose campaign motto is “Warren has a plan for that,” it’s noteworthythat she has not yet issued any plan for K-12 schools — in contrast with Bernie Sanders’ ambitious Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education.

Much of what we do know about Warren’s past and present education proposals, as well as the composition of her staff, should be a cause for concern for teachers, students, and parents.

If Warren wants the support of public school teachers and parents, she must issue a plan that clarifies her plans on testing and privatization.

She needs to be crystal clear about whether she would eliminate the federal mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8, a leftover from George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, which has been an expensive dud. The testing has enriched the testing industry but had no effect on student scores.

Warren needs to take a stand on the federal Charter Schools Program, which is Betsy DeVos’ slush fund for corporate charter chain that are already amply funded by billionaires.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Privatization, School Choice

SAT Scores Fall, Achievement Gaps Grow Larger

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2019 //
68

Remember when David Coleman, architect of Common Core and then president of the College Board, claimed that the adoption of the Common Core would increase equity and raise test scores for all, especially those farthest behind? Remember, after he took control of the College Board, when he redesigned the SAT and said the New SAT would promote equity? None of that happened.

More students are taking the SAT (good for the College Board’s bottom line), which tends to depress test scores as non-traditional students sign on. But, contrary to Coleman’s assurances, the gaps between groups are growing, not shrinking.

Politico reports:

STUDENTS’ SAT SCORES DECLINE: More than 2.2 million students in the class of 2019 took the college readiness exam, but the test also showed a decrease in average scores, the College Board reported today. The percentage of students passing benchmarks that can be indicators of whether they will successfully complete college coursework also decreased.

— The number of students who took the test increased by 4 percent compared with last year’s class, though the average score decreased by 9 points. This year’s average score was 1059 compared with 1068 in 2018. A perfect score is 1600.

— The percent of test takers who met or exceeded both the Evidence-Based Reading and Writing and Math benchmarks also decreased 2 percentage points, from 47 percent in 2018 to 45 percent. Bianca Quilantan has more.”

Behind these numbers was another story: the increase in gaps between different demographic groups of students.

FairTest reports:

FairTest                          

National Center for Fair & Open Testing
for further information:
Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773
mobile  (239) 699-0468

 

SAT SCORE GAPS BETWEEN DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS GROWS LARGER;
TEST REMAINS A CLEARER MEASURE OF FAMILY BACKGROUND
THAN HIGHER EDUCATION READINESS
1,050+ COLLEGES, UNIVERSITIES NOW DO NOT REQUIRE SAT OR ACT SCORES

SAT score gaps between demographic groups grew even larger for the high school class of 2019, according to an analysis by FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. The nonprofit organization compared new exam results for this year’s graduates with those from 2018.

“Whether broken down by test-takers’ race, parental education or household income, average SAT scores of students from historically disenfranchised groups fell further behind their classmates from more privileged families,” explained Robert Schaeffer, FairTest’s Public Education Director. “That means access to colleges and financial aid will be even more skewed at schools that still rely on test scores to make admissions and tuition award decisions.”

Schaeffer continued, “The SAT remains a more accurate measure of a test-taker’s family background than of an applicant’s capacity to do college level work. No wonder nearly 40% of all four-year colleges and universities in the country are now test-optional. They recognize that standardized exam requirements undermine diversity without improving educational quality”

More than 1,050 accredited, bachelor-degree institutions now will evaluate all or many applicants without regard to test scores. FairTest’s test-optional database includes more than half of all “Top 100” liberal arts colleges. Upwards of 360 schools ranked in the top tiers of their categories by U.S. News & World Report no longer require the SAT or ACT.

– – 3 0 – –

–  See 2019 SAT Scores by gender, ethnicity and parental education below

–  Comprehensive free directory of 1,050+ test-optional and test-flexible colleges and universities:
http://fairtest.org/university/optional

–  List of 360+ schools that de-emphasize ACT/SAT scores ranked in U.S News’ top tiers
http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Schools-in-U.S.News-Top-Tiers.pdf  

–  Chronology of higher education institutions dropping admissions testing requirements
http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Growth-Chronology.pdf

2019 COLLEGE-BOUND SENIORS SCORES ON “REDESIGNED” SAT
with comparisons to 2018 College-Bound Seniors Scores
(2,220,087 Test-Takers in 2019 Graduating Class up 3.9% from Class of 2018)

                                                                                READING/       MATH        TOTAL*
                                                                                WRITING

ALL TEST-TAKERS                                           531 (- 4)        528 (- 3)     1059 (- 9)

Female                                                             534 (  -5)      519 (  -3)    1053 (-  8)
Male                                                                 529 (  -5)      537 (  -5)    1066 (-10)

Amer. Indian or Alaskan Native                   461 (-19)       451  (-18)     912 (-37)
Asian, Asian Amer. or Pacific Islander        586 (-  2)       637  (+  2)   1223 (   0)
Black or African American                            476 (-  7)       457  (-  6)     933 (-13)
Hispanic, Latino or Latin American             495 (-  6)       483  (-  6)     978 (-12)
Two or more races                                         554 (-  4)       540  (-  3)   1095 (-  6)
White                                                               562 (-  4)       553  (-  4)   1114 (-  9)

 2019 COLLEGE-BOUND SENIORS SAT SCORES BY PARENTAL EDUCATION

               READING/        MATH          TOTAL*
                                                                  WRITING

No High School Diploma                                  464 (-  9)       462  (-  9)     926 (-18)
High School Diploma                                        500 (-  7)       490  (-  7)     989 (-16)
Associate Degree                                              519 (-  7)       508  (-  5)   1027 (-12)
Bachelor’s Degree                                            561 (-  5)       560  (-  3)   1121 (-  8)
Graduate Degree                                              596 (-  3)       598  (   0)   1194 (-  3)

2019 COLLEGE-BOUND SENIORS SAT SCORES BY SAT FEE WAIVER STATUS

                                                                                READING/        MATH          TOTAL*
                                                                                WRITING

Used at Any Point                                             499 (-  2)       488 (-  1)      987 (-  3)
Did Not Use                                                       539 (-  6)       537 (-  6)    1076 (-12)

* scores do not add precisely due to College Board rounding

Calculated by FairTest from: College Board, 2019 SAT Suite of Assessments Annual Report: Total Group

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Testing

The New Republic: The Management Culture at Boeing Caused the Crash of Its Max 737s

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2019 //
61

This article is a reason to subscribe to The New Republic. 

If you have been sick of watching the takeover of American education by entrepreneurs, professional managers, management consultants, and Wall Street, you will see parallels between the managerial culture at Boeing and the management culture that has permeated large sectors of American educators. At Boeing, crucial decisions were made by managers, not engineers; in education, crucial decisions are made by managers from the business world, not educators. The results in both cases are disastrous, but especially so in aviation where people were killed by bad decisions.

In this stunning, gripping, frightening article, Maureen Tkacik explains how Boeing was ruined by financial decision makers, which ultimately led to two crashes of its new 737 MAX jets.

She begins:

Nearly two decades before Boeing’s MCAS system crashed two of the plane-maker’s brand-new 737 MAX jets, Stan Sorscher knew his company’s increasingly toxic mode of operating would create a disaster of some kind. A long and proud “safety culture” was rapidly being replaced, he argued, with “a culture of financial bullshit, a culture of groupthink.”


Sorscher, a physicist who’d worked at Boeing more than two decades and had led negotiations there for the engineers’ union, had become obsessed with management culture. He said he didn’t previously imagine Boeing’s brave new managerial caste creating a problem as dumb and glaringly obvious as MCAS (or the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, as a handful of software wizards had dubbed it). Mostly he worried about shriveling market share driving sales and head count into the ground, the things that keep post-industrial American labor leaders up at night. On some level, though, he saw it all coming; he even demonstrated how the costs of a grounded plane would dwarf the short-term savings achieved from the latest outsourcing binge in one of his reports that no one read back in 2002.* 

Sorscher had spent the early aughts campaigning to preserve the company’s estimable engineering legacy. He had mountains of evidence to support his position, mostly acquired via Boeing’s 1997 acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, a dysfunctional firm with a dilapidated aircraft plant in Long Beach and a CEO who liked to use what he called the “Hollywood model” for dealing with engineers: Hire them for a few months when project deadlines are nigh, fire them when you need to make numbers. In 2000, Boeing’s engineers staged a 40-day strike over the McDonnell deal’s fallout; while they won major material concessions from management, they lost the culture war. They also inherited a notoriously dysfunctional product line from the corner-cutting market gurus at McDonnell.


And while Boeing’s engineers toiled to get McDonnell’s lemon planes into the sky, their own hopes of designing a new plane to compete with Airbus, Boeing’s only global market rival, were shriveling. Under the sway of all the naysayers who had called out the folly of the McDonnell deal, the board had adopted a hard-line “never again” posture toward ambitious new planes. Boeing’s leaders began crying “crocodile tears,” Sorscher claimed, about the development costs of 1995’s 777, even though some industry insiders estimate that it became the most profitable plane of all time. The premise behind this complaining was silly, Sorscher contended in PowerPoint presentations and a Harvard Business School-style case study on the topic. A return to the “problem-solving” culture and managerial structure of yore, he explained over and over again to anyone who would listen, was the only sensible way to generate shareholder value. But when he brought that message on the road, he rarely elicited much more than an eye roll. “I’m not buying it,” was a common response. Occasionally, though, someone in the audience was outright mean, like the Wall Street analyst who cut him off mid-sentence:


“Look, I get it. What you’re telling me is that your business is different. That you’re special. Well, listen: Everybody thinks his business is different, because everybody is the same. Nobody. Is. Different.”

And indeed, that would appear to be the real moral of this story: Airplane manufacturing is no different from mortgage lending or insulin distribution or make-believe blood analyzing software—another cash cow for the one percent, bound inexorably for the slaughterhouse. In the now infamous debacle of the Boeing 737 MAX, the company produced a plane outfitted with a half-assed bit of software programmed to override all pilot input and nosedive when a little vane on the side of the fuselage told it the nose was pitching up. The vane was also not terribly reliable, possibly due to assembly line lapses reported by a whistle-blower, and when the plane processed the bad data it received, it promptly dove into the sea.


Boeing’s defenders blamed the pilots for the crashes. They said that the pilots needed more training. But the engineers knew otherwise.

The article ends like this:

No one who knew anything about anything thought it was a good idea to slash research and development spending, lay off half the engineers, or subcontract whole chunks of a plane without designing it first. It hardly mattered. “It was two camps of managers, the Boeing Boy Scouts and the ‘hunter killer assassins,’” remembered Cynthia Cole, a former Boeing engineer who led the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) during the 787 saga. “How do you merge those two management philosophies? The hunter killer assassins will destroy the Boy Scouts. That’s what happens.” 


That’s what happened on an exponentially more ruinous scale in mortgage lending and pharmaceutical sales and at General Electric, which over the past decade has spent more than $50 billion buying back its own stock even as its staggering insurance business losses threaten to bankrupt the company. (And none of this has diminished GE’s zeal for deindustrialization, which has disemboweled places like Fort Wayne and Erie and Schenectady and put tens of thousands of people out of work, both permanently and on furlough.) It’s what happens to every well-intentioned half-measure to mitigate the catastrophic effects of climate change. 


None of these things had to be ideological wars, said Cole, a lifelong conservative who now chairs the King County Republican Party in Washington state and first joined the union—membership in SPEEA had been voluntary when she joined—because not a few months into her first engineering job she had watched a space shuttle land in a control room full of engineers who had built the shuttle. The shuttle bounced, there was a massive collective intake of air, and one of her colleagues let it slip that the landing gear wasn’t strong enough to withstand certain weather conditions, and that if she wanted to keep her job she’d keep her mouth shut about it; she was laid off a few months later. “I thought to myself, oh my gosh! This happens in the movies.”


She had no idea then how sick she would get of watching the same movie.


But a month later, back in the same room on a biblically hot day, a son of Kenyan farmers restored a bit of moral clarity to proceedings: “As an investment professional, allow me to inform Congress as to how Boeing has viewed this whole crisis.” Noting that the stock had surged from $140 four years earlier to $446 right before the crash that had killed his wife, and his son, four-year-old daughter, nine-month-old daughter, and mother-in-law, Paul Njoroge laid out the sequence of 737 MAX orders, ten-figure stock buybacks, and dividend hikes that had dealt out this horrible fate to his family.


“Could that be the reason Boeing did not feel obliged to ground the MAX even after the second crash of the Boeing 737 MAX?” he asked. “Back to my very essential question, why wasn’t the MAX 8 grounded in November after the first crash in the Java Sea? One hundred and eighty-nine lives were lost, and executives at Boeing cared more about its stock price than preventing such a tragedy from occurring again,” and so had begun “a pattern of behavior blaming innocent pilots.”


“I am empty,” he told the committee. “My life has no meaning.” He had met his wife studying finance at the University of Nairobi. The family had been spread across Bermuda, where Paul worked as an investment manager at Butterfield Bank, and Ontario, where his wife and children were settling down. Paul was expected to join them later. The distance had been hell, and he had never even had a girlfriend before her; his family was literally everything, he explained, and every single one of them was gone. “I have nightmares about how they must have clung to their mother, crying, seeing the fright in their eyes as they sat there helplessly. It is difficult for me to think of anything but the horror they must have felt.”


After his testimony, a dead-eyed Njoroge stood in the hallway for nearly three hours, granting interviews to the dozens of journalists who needed exclusive footage to anchor their packages. He told me he wasn’t surprised that Boeing’s stock hadn’t suffered more since the company had killed his family. He would never buy it himself, of course, but even now it would be hard to justify leaving it out of a client’s portfolio.  

If you read one article today or this week, read this one. It is fascinating, horrifying, and an indictment of the managerial culture that treats all problems as the same–whether it is building an airplane, educating children, or developing new medicines. A management problem, where professionals don’t matter.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Steven Singer: Charter Schools Have Two Dads!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
25

Steven Singer has written recently about the origins of charter schools. He insists that Albert Shanker, president of the AFT, was not their father.

The real fathers of this first big step towards privatization, he writes, were Ted Kolderie and Joe Nathan of Minnesota, who wrote the nation’s first charter school law and opened the door wide for entrepreneurs, grifters, and attacks on unions.

Singer is a flame-thrower in this post, because he has come to see that behind the “progressive” facade of charters lurks Betsy DeVos, the Walton Family, the Koch brothers, ALEC, and a galaxy of public school haters.

He begins:

If bad ideas can be said to have fathers, then charter schools have two.

And I’m not talking about greed and racism.

No, I mean two flesh and blood men who did more than any others to give this terrible idea life – Minnesota ideologues Ted Kolderie, 89, and Joe Nathan, 71.

In my article “Charter Schools Were Never a Good Idea. They Were a Corporate Plot All Along,” I wrote about Kolderie’s role but neglected to mention Nathan’s.

And of the two men, Nathan has actually commented on this blog.

He flamed on your humble narrator when I dared to say that charter schools and voucher schools are virtually identical.

I guess he didn’t like me connecting “liberal” charters with “conservative” vouchers. And in the years since, with Trump’s universally hated Billionaire Education Secretary Betsy Devos assuming the face of both regressive policies, he was right to fear the public relations nightmare for his brainchild, the charter school.

It’s kind of amazing that these two white men tried to convince scores of minorities that giving up self-governance of their children’s schools is in their own best interests, that children of color don’t need the same services white kids routinely get at their neighborhood public schools and that letting appointed bureaucrats decide whether your child actually gets to enroll in their school is somehow school choice!

But now that Nathan and Kolderie’s progeny policy initiative is waning in popularity, the NAACP and Black Lives Matter are calling for moratoriums on new charters and even progressive politicians are calling for legislative oversight, it’s important that people know exactly who is responsible for this monster.

And more than anyone else, that’s Kolderie and Nathan.

Over the last three decades, Nathan has made a career of sabotaging authentic public schools while pushing for school privatization.

He is director of the Center for School Change, a Minneapolis charter school cheerleading organization, that’s received at least $1,317,813 in grants to undermine neighborhood schools and replace them with fly-by-night privatized monstrosities.

He’s written extensively in newspapers around the country and nationwide magazines and Websites like the Huffington Post.

Read it all. Joe Nathan has frequently commented on this blog, defending charters as just a different kind of public school. I disagree vigorously because it is obvious by now that charters have become vehicles for busting unions (more than 90% are non-union), charters are more segregated than public schools (especially in Minnesota, where there are charters specifically for children of different ethnic and racial groups), and they remove democratic control in communities of color. The proliferation of corporate charter chains adds to their reputation as destroyers of democracy.

Bottom line is that Walton money, Koch money, DeVos money is not meant to advance public education but to eliminate it.

There is a reason that the Democratic candidates for president are distancing themselves from the charter idea. They understand that they can’t support the DeVos agenda. Betsy did us all a favor by removing the mask.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Segregation, Unions, Walton Foundation

Texas: The Hoax and Lies Perpetrated by the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
5

William J. Gumbert has posted a series of analyses of charter school performance and demographics in Texas, based on public data compiled by the state. This is a summary of earlier posts. You may recall from an earlier post about Houston that the state commissioner of education is threatening to take control of the Houston Independent School District because of the persistently low rest scores of one school, Wheatley High School. Please check out its demographics in the chart below.

 

By:  William J. Gumbert

 

Ever since the “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” report was released in 1983, corporate education reformers and privately funded, “public policy” organizations have promoted the “privatization of public schools”.  In 1995, the Texas Legislature gave in to the political rhetoric and authorized privately-operated charters (“charters”) to open and independently operate public schools with taxpayer funding.  As a result, taxpayers are funding a “dual education system” that consists of locally governed, community-based school districts and State approved charters.

Charters promised to improve student results by transferring the control of public schools to private organizations that had more autonomy to expend taxpayer funding without community oversight.  However, charters have not fulfilled their promise.  Despite the State funneling over $22.5 billion of taxpayer funding to privately-operated charters over the last 24 years, charters have not to produced better student outcomes than community-based school districts.   Most recently, 86.2% of community-based school districts received an “A” or “B” rating pursuant to the State’s 2019 Academic Accountability Ratings.  In comparison, only 58.6% of charters received an “A” or “B” rating. In addition, almost 1 of every 5 charters received a “D” or “F” rating from the State.

Despite the Perception – Charters Serve a Different Student Population:   Charter advocates have consistently promoted that charters serve a higher percentage of “economically-disadvantaged” and “minority” students from underserved communities.  But charters have also routinely stated that their student populations closely correlate with the school districts they choose to operate within. In this regard, Houston ISD and Dallas ISD collectively have over 75,000 students enrolled in State approved charters and both districts serve student populations that are at least 80% “economically-disadvantaged” and “minority”.   Thus, it is fair to say that both charters and school districts serve a high percentage of “economically-disadvantaged” and “minority” students.  However, the similarities in the types of students served by charters and school districts stop here.

The reality is that charters “underserve” many of the student subgroups that the “No Child Left Behind Act” identified as having potential achievement, opportunity or learning gaps in comparison to their peers.  The Texas Education Agency (“TEA”) tracks the performance of student subgroups in Texas public schools and while “economically-disadvantaged” and “minority” students are identified as subgroups, so are “at risk”, “special education”, “disciplinary” and “mobile” students.

With the needs of each student being unique, it is important to emphasize that a student can be included in more than one subgroup.   For example, a student can be identified solely as “economically-disadvantaged” or a student can be “economically-disadvantaged”, “at risk” and “mobile”.  The more subgroups that are applicable to a student, the more challenging it becomes to ensure that student is successful.   I highlight that “challenging” is not referenced as an excuse for schools to have low student performance, but rather to recognize the additional time, effort, care and resources that are required to help certain students overcome adverse circumstances and obtain a quality education.

A review of the student subgroups reported by TEA shows that privately-operated charters enroll a significantly lower percentage of “at risk”, “disciplinary placement” and “special education’ students than community-based school districts.  TEA data also demonstrates that charters enroll students with significantly lower “student mobility”.   Why?  It is hard to definitively say. But these types of students have proven to be more costly to serve, require the most effort to achieve good “test scores” and are the least likely to continue on the “road to college”.  It may also be that charters do not actively recruit students in these subgroups.  Either way, here are the facts.

 “At Risk” Students:  Students identified as “at risk” of dropping out are performing below academic standards and/or are confronting other challenges.  TEA’s definition of “at risk” includes a student that:

  • Did not perform satisfactorily on a readiness or assessment instrument;
  • Has a grade below 70 in 2 or more subjects in the foundation curriculum for the preceding or current school year;
  • Is of limited English proficiency;
  • Was not advanced from one grade level to the next for one or more school years; and
  • Has been placed in an alternative education program in the preceding or current school year.

As shown below, despite having a large presence in each of the 5 urban school districts listed below, some of the largest charters enroll 19.3% fewer “at risk” students.   In other words, for every 1,000- seat school campus, the school districts serve 193 more students that have been identified as “at risk” of dropping out.   While it may be surprising to some, the listed charters also serve a lower percentage of “at risk” students than the statewide average.

 

Privately-Operated Charter “At Risk”

Students

 School District “At Risk”

Students
IDEA Public Schools 45.9% Houston ISD 71.7%
Harmony School of Excellence – Houston 43.5% Dallas ISD 63.2%
KIPP, Inc. – Houston 46.7% Austin ISD 51.3%
Uplift Education 54.8% San Antonio ISD 73.5%
YES Prep. 50.2% Fort Worth ISD 77.8%
Average – 5 Charters 48.2% Average – 5 School Districts 67.5%
5 Charters: Avg. Per 1,000 Seat Campus 482 Students 5 Districts:  Avg. Per 1,000 Seat Campus 675 Students
                                                                   State Average:   50.8% or 508 Students  

 

Disciplinary Placements:  TEA data shows that 73,713 students have been identified as “Disciplinary Placements” in public schools.  These are students that have previously had behavioral issues or been placed in a District Alternative Education Program (“DAEP”).  By law, privately-operated charters can exclude enrollment to this student subgroup and most charters do. In fact, charter proponents have previously stated that many charters are not prepared and could not afford to serve these students.  As such, the responsibility to deploy the educational services and resources needed to serve “disciplinary” students resides mostly with school districts.  Once again, despite having a large presence in the same 5 school districts, the same charters served only 11 “disciplinary” students and the school districts welcomed 6,532 “disciplinary” students.

Privately-Operated Charter Discipline

Students

 School District Discipline

Students
IDEA Public Schools 0 Houston ISD 1,996
Harmony School of Excellence – Houston 0 Dallas ISD 1,843
KIPP, Inc. – Houston 0 Austin ISD 1,140
Uplift Education 0 San Antonio ISD 879
YES Prep. 11 Fort Worth ISD 674
  Total – 5 Charters 11   Total – 5 School Districts 6,532

 

 Special Education:  Students identified with physical or learning disabilities comprise an average of 9.1% of all students in Texas public schools.  But at the same charters listed below, only 6.2% of students are identified by TEA as “students with disabilities”.   The enrollment gap for “student with disabilities” among certain charters and school districts can be alarming, especially since it is permitted to occur with the State’s blessing.  For example, IDEA Public Schools is rapidly expanding in Austin ISD, but Austin ISD welcomes more than double the percentage of “students with disabilities”.   For every campus with 1,000 students, IDEA only serves 52 students with “special needs” and Austin ISD serves 109 students with “special needs”.  If Austin ISD served the same percentage of “students with disabilities” as IDEA, it would serve an estimated 4,500 fewer students with “special needs”.

Privately-Operated Charter Special Education Students School District Special Education Students
IDEA Public Schools 5.2% Houston ISD 7.1%
Harmony School of Excellence – Houston 6.3% Dallas ISD 8.2%
KIPP, Inc. – Houston 6.3% Austin ISD 10.9%
Uplift Education 7.0% San Antonio ISD 10.3%
YES Prep. 6.1% Fort Worth ISD 8.3%
Average – 5 Charters 6.2% Average – 5 School Districts 9.0%
  State Average: 9.1%  

 

Student Mobility:  TEA defines “student mobility” as the percentage of students that were enrolled at a campus for less than 83% of the school year.  In other words, the “student mobility” rate refers to the volume of students that were not consistently enrolled in a charter/school district throughout a school year.  With an inconsistent learning environment, students that regularly change schools are faced with unique social and educational challenges in comparison to other students.  For example, Education Week has reported that: “various studies have found student mobility – and particularly multiple moves – associated with lower school engagement, poorer grades in reading (particularly in math), and a higher risk of dropping out of high school”.

As summarized below, the “student mobility” rate of the listed school districts is a challenging 20.3%, while the “student mobility” rate of the charters is only 6.3%.   As such, for every 1,000-seat campus, the school districts must meet the unique challenges of educating 203 “mobile” students during a school year.  In comparison, the charter campus has a much more stable population with only 63 “mobile” students.

 

Privately-Operated Charter Student

Mobility Rate

 School District Student

Mobility Rate
IDEA Public Schools 7.0% Houston ISD 19.2%
Harmony School of Excellence – Houston 10.0% Dallas ISD 19.9%
KIPP, Inc. – Houston 4.5% Austin ISD 17.9%
Uplift Education 5.5% San Antonio ISD 23.6%
YES Prep. 4.4% Fort Worth ISD 21.1%
Average – 5 Charters 6.3% Average – 5 School Districts 20.3%
5 Charters:  Avg. Per 1,000 Seat Campus 63 Students 5 Districts:  Avg. Per 1,000 Seat Campus 203 Students
                                                                   State Average: 16.0% or 160 Students  

Comparison of Campuses Located Within 3 Miles of Each Other:  While each student subgroup presents unique challenges, schools that are primarily comprised of students in multiple subgroups have the most challenges to consistently achieve high student performance. In this regard, it is not a coincidence that many school district campuses labeled as “low performing” by the State are comprised of students included in multiple subgroups.

The table below further illustrates the disparities of the student populations enrolled at State approved charters and school districts by comparing the student populations of 7 charter campuses that are located within 3 miles of a school district campus.   In each comparison, the charter campus competing for students with a nearby school district campus served fewer “at risk”, “disciplinary”, “special education” and “mobile” students.  It most cases, the differences were substantial.  On average, for each 1,000-seat campus, the comparisons revealed that the charter campuses served:

  • 325 fewer “at risk” students;
  • 65 fewer “special education” students;
  • 199 fewer “mobile” students; and
  • No charter campus enrolled a student with a “discipline placement”.
Campus “At Risk” Discipline

Placement

 Special Education Student Mobility
Wheatley H.S.     (Houston ISD) 88.1% 36 19.0% 31.2%
YES Prep. – 5th Ward 51.1% None 7.6% 4.4%
Travis H.S.         (Austin ISD) 77.1% 46 14.2% 30.3%
IDEA Allan College Prep. 53.7% None 10.4% 8.6%
Morningside M.S.   (Fort Worth ISD) 88.0% 2 14.1% 25.9%
Uplift Mighty M.S. 67.8% None 10.7% 2.9%
Sharpstown H.S.    (Houston ISD) 90.2% 39 9.7% 30.9%
KIPP Sharpstown College Prep. 52.2% None 5.4% 4.4%
Douglass Elem.      (SAISD) 78.5% 6 9.6% 28.7%
IDEA Carver Academy 17.4% None 5.1% 9.5%
Andress H.S.         (El Paso ISD) 66.3% 51 21.1% 18.0%
Harmony School of Excel. – El Paso 49.4% 0 8.5% 12.1%
Carter H.S.          (Dallas ISD) 70.7% 20 11.8% 24.0%
Uplift Hampton Prep.  H.S. 39.5% None 6.4% 7.6%
Average –  7 School District Campuses 79.8% 26 14.2% 27.0%
Average –  7 Charter Campuses 47.3% None 7.7% 7.1%
Average Charter Difference – Per 1,000 Seat Campus 325 Fewer Students — 65 Fewer Students 199 Fewer Students

 

Conclusion:  The “A Nation at Risk” report started the false narrative that our public schools were failing and the attack on school districts has continued ever since.  These strategic attacks have served to fuel the “privatization of public education agenda” of corporate reformers and society-controlling billionaires that persuaded the Legislature to provide privately-operated charters with the freedom to expand in local communities with taxpayer funding.

The State has provided privately-operated charters with many educational advantages to produce better student outcomes than community-based school districts.  These advantages include less taxpayer oversight; greater instructional, staffing and enrollment flexibility; and the ability to stop serving students by closing campuses.  Privately-operated charters are also permitted to underserve certain student subgroups that have been identified as having potential achievement, opportunity or learning gaps, such as “at risk”, “disciplinary”, “special education” and “mobile” students.

With all the educational advantages afforded to State approved charters, common sense tells us that charters should be outperforming school districts by a wide margin.  But despite these advantages and 24 years of experimentation, the State’s 2019 Academic Accountability Ratings document that privately-operated charters continue to produce lower student outcomes than locally governed school districts!

It is time for the State to apologize to school district teachers, support staffs, administrators and Boards of Trustees across the State and admit that “privatization” was a misguided experiment.   It is time for the Legislature to apologize to taxpayers for increasing the costs of public education by diverting over $22.5 billion of taxpayer funding to privately-operated charters that have failed to consistently improve student outcomes in local communities.  It is time to implement education policies that are based upon the facts, not political charades or charter advertisements.  The future of young Texans is counting on it!

 

DISCLOSURES:  The author is a voluntary advocate for public education and this material solely reflects the opinions of the author.  The author has not been compensated in any manner for the preparation of this material.  The material is based upon information provided by the Texas Education Agency, TXSchools.gov and other publicly available information.  While the author believes these sources to be reliable, the author has not independently verified the information.  All readers are encouraged to complete their own review and make their own independent conclusions.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fake, Hoax, Lies, Privatization
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