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How a Minnesota Foundation Wasted $45 Million on a Failed Plan to Reform Teacher Education

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
26

Rob Levine, a Resistance-to-Privatization blogger in Minneapolis, reports here on the failure of the Bush Foundation’s bold “teacher effectiveness” initiative, which cost $45 million. All wasted.

The foundation set bold goals. It did not meet any of them.

Levine writes:

Ten years ago the St Paul-based Bush Foundation embarked on what was at the time its most expensive and ambitious project ever: a 10-year, $45 million effort called the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative (TEI). The advent of the TEI coincided with the implementation of a new operating model at the foundation. Beginning in 2009 it would mostly would run its own programs, focusing on three main areas: .

  • “developing courageous leaders and engaging communities in solving problems”
  • “…supporting the self-determination of Native nations”
  • “…increasing the educational achievement of all students”

Bush foundation president Peter Hutchinson told a news conference that the initiative would “increase by 50 percent the number of students in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota who go to college.”

The Teacher Effectiveness Initiative was the foundation’s real-world application of its broad educational philosophy. Peter Hutchinson, the foundation’s president at the time, told a news conference announcing the plan that the initiative would “increase by 50 percent the number of students in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota who go to college.” How was this miraculous achievement to be done? By “[enabling] the redesign of teacher-preparation programs” at a range of higher educational institutions where teachers are educated in the three-state area.

The foundation also said that, through “Consistent, effective teaching” it would “close the achievement gap.” It would achieve these goals by “producing 25,000 new, effective teachers by 2018.”

Not only was the Bush Foundation going to do all these things, but they would prove it with metrics. It contracted with an organization called the Value Added Research Center (VARC) to expand its Value Added Model (VAM) to track test scores of students who were taught by teachers graduated from one of its programs. The foundation, which paid VARC more than $2 million for its work, would use those test scores to rate the teachers ‘produced’ – even giving $1,000 bonuses to the programs for each ‘effective’ teacher.

10 years later: Fewer students in college, ‘achievement gap’ unchanged

By just about any measure the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative was a failure. Some of the top-line goals were missed by wide margins. The promise of 50% more college students in the tri-state area over the 10 years of the project? In reality, in Minnesota alone the number of post-secondary students enrolled actually dropped from almost 450,000 in 2009 to 421,000 in 2017 – a decline of about six percent.

Just one more example of the complete and utter failure of the hoax of “reform,” which was always about privatization and union-busting, not improving schools or helping students.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Senate Republicans Want to Increase Funding for Charters, House Democrats Want to Cut it

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
17

 

The federal Charter Schools Program handed out $440 Million this year. Betsy DeVos uses this money as her personal slush fund to reward corporate charter chains like KIPP ($89 million), IDEA (over $200 million in two years), and Success Academy ($10 million). Originally, it was meant to launch start-up charters, but DeVos has turned it into a free-flowing spigot for some of the nation’s richest charter chains.

Last March, the Network for Public Education published its study of the ineptness of the Charter Schools Program, revealing that at least one-third of the charters it funded had either never opened or had closed soon after opening. About one billion dollars was wasted by this federal program.

Despite the program’s manifest incompetence and failure, Betsy DeVos asked Congressional appropriators to increase its funding to $500 million a year, so she could more efficiently undermine public schools across the nation.

House Democrats responded by cutting the Charter Schools Program to $400 Million ($400 million too much), but $100 million less than DeVos asked for.

Senate Republicans want to increase the funding for the destructive Charter Schools Program to $460 million, giving DeVos a boost of $20 million. The Senate Republicans added a special appropriation of $7.5 million for charter schools in rural districts. Is there a need for charter schools in rural districts that may have only one elementary school and one high school?

The best remedy for the federal Charter Schools Program would be to eliminate it altogether.

Charter schools are amply funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, the Koch foundation’s, hedge fund managers, and a bevy of other billionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Rural Schools, U.S. Department of Education, Walton Foundation

New York Times: “The Disappearing Schools of Puerto Rico”

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2019 //
8

 

The New York Times Magazine published a heart-breaking photo essay about the abandonment of schools in Puerto Rico, first because of its debt crisis, then because of federal privatization policy after hurricanes in 2017.

The Island has been strangled by financiers, then raped by DeVos-style policies, and the public schools were the victims.

The writer was Jonathan M. Katz.

It begins:

During the blazing summer of 2019, Puerto Rico was in tumult. Thousands of the islands’ residents marched shoulder to shoulderthrough cities. They sang, danced and demanded the ouster of the commonwealth’s negligent governor, Ricardo Rosselló — and, with him, the federal control board that holds economic power over the United States’ oldest remaining colony in the Americas.

The crowd’s ire was fueled in part by a sense of absence. Away from the echoing drums, down forgotten streets and across green mountains, the islands are emptying. Decades of abuse, austerity, corruption and now the ravages of climate change have triggered an exodus of people and money. As the summer wet season gives way to the wary hurricane watch of an ever-warmer fall, no evidence of this decline is more powerful than the islands’ hundreds of abandoned schools.

The photographer Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi and I spent weeks touring these monuments to neglect. Books and blackboards rotted in the humidity. Stray dogs made their beds beneath teachers’ desks. Some of the buildings had been left to addicts and thieves. In others, neighbors had refashioned empty classrooms into stables for horses, rabbits and pigs. Even in schools that remain in use, mold creeps, roofs are torn and gymnasiums sag like wet shoe boxes. Landslide-prone slopes loom, unrestrained, behind buildings filled with students….

Carlos Conde Marín School

Location: Carolina

Carlos Conde Marín was closed at the end of the 2016-17 school year despite protests from the community. As with many schools closed during the tenure of the former education secretary of Puerto Rico, Julia Keleher, the shuttering was sudden and swift. School materials were left to the elements, stray animals or anyone passing by. The school is seen here in May 2019, after the building was vandalized and also heavily damaged in Hurricane Maria. Gym buildings (directly above) were hit particularly hard because of their lightweight walls and roofs.

The hurricanes weren’t the beginning of the story, though. The disasters compounded a social and economic calamity that has been brewing for over a century. It arguably began in 1898, when United States forces invaded Puerto Rico, then a colony of Spain, during the Spanish-American War. Before the war, Spain had grudgingly granted Puerto Rico limited home rule, an attempt to forestall an independence movement. But with the advent of American rule, Puerto Rico fell deeper into colonial status. The islands’ people could not elect their own governor until 1947. They still cannot vote for president and have no voting representation in Congress.

Puerto Rico’s economy grew for decades, thanks to a series of tax breaks for companies from the mainland. Washington allowed the territorial government to borrow money by issuing tax-exempt municipal bonds and repay them with the rising revenues. When the last of those tax breaks ended in 2006, the economy stalled, leaving its government overleveraged and with few options. The commonwealth’s leaders began issuing riskier bonds that may have circumvented constitutional protections. Major lenders including UBS, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Santander have since been sued multiple times — some have settled — for underwriting them. In 2015, with $120 billion in bond obligations and unfunded pensions, the governor was forced to declare that Puerto Rico would stop making many debt payments.

Under an agreement signed by President Obama, Puerto Rico gained protection from lawsuits. In exchange, its economy fell under the control of a seven-member Financial Oversight and Management Board with offices in New York and San Juan. Instead of forgiving Puerto Rico’s debt, the board implemented a strict austerity regime, which has grown steadily more draconian.

Ramón Valle Seda Elementary School

Location: Mayagüez

After Ramón Valle Seda Elementary School, near downtown Mayagüez, was closed in 2016, neighbors began using it as a stable and an animal sanctuary. Police and education-department officials have tried repeatedly to kick out the animals. But the parents and children using the building want official permission, saying that will keep it from turning into a drug haven like the closed school across the street. This horse was taking a break from the sun in May 2019. Its name means ‘‘hurricane’’ in Spanish.

Theodore Roosevelt School

Location: Mayagüez

The Theodore Roosevelt School opened in 1900, two years after Puerto Rico was occupied by the United States, as the first U.S.-style high school in the western city Mayagüez. The school was renamed on the occasion of a visit by Roosevelt, who played a leading role in annexing the islands during the 1898 war with Spain. It later became an elementary school. It was ordered closed in 2018 and converted into a depot for books and equipment from other shuttered schools in the area.

Don Ignacio Dicupe González Elementary School

Location: Lares

Nature is reclaiming the classrooms at Ignacio Dicupe González Elementary School in Lares, in the mountains of western Puerto Rico, seen here in April 2019. Lares is known as the cradle of Puerto Rican independence for its role in an 1868 uprising against Spain and still proudly flies the revolutionary flag. But it has lost nearly a quarter of its population in the last decade, one of the highest percentages of any municipality. The school, which closed right before the hurricanes, sits in an almost monastic silence; the only sounds the songs of birds in a red flamboyant tree in the courtyard and the occasional blast of reggaeton from a passing car.

As conditions worsened, the trickle of people leaving for the mainland turned into a flood. Between 2009 and 2017, the population declined 12 percent, from 3.9 million to 3.4 million, according to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. The “Great Depression of Puerto Rico” had begun, José Caraballo-Cueto, an economist and associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico-Cayey, told me. “We have to acknowledge that the stock of human capital is decreasing,” he said.

The appointment of Julia Keleher as the Island’s Secretary of Education was a disaster. She fully agreed with the Trump administration’s determination to implement privatization with charters and vouchers. She was Betsy DeVos Without the billions.

Soon after taking office in 2017, Rosselló brought Julia Keleher, the founder of a small Washington education consultancy, to take over the fragile school system. Keleher, who is from the Philadelphia area, had a reputation as an expert at winning government grants. Indeed, her firm had recently obtained a $231,000 contract with the department she was about to head.

Keleher quickly embarked on a two-pronged mission to overhaul the school system. She pushed for the creation of semi-privatized charter schools and private-school vouchers. At the same time, she shut down hundreds of still-functioning public schools. Defending her actions, she later said: “Somebody had to be the responsible adult in the room.” Keleher, who is white, also likened the fury she received from Puerto Rican parents and the islands’ well-organized teachers’ union to the experience of being a racial minority…

At the end of the 2016-17 school year, Keleher ordered 183 schools shuttered, according to the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, the territory’s teachers’ union and Keleher’s most implacable foe…An estimated 160,000 more Puerto Ricans — another 5 percent of the population — have left since the storm. Keleher took the opportunity to further shrink the school system: Of the roughly 1,100 public schools left in Puerto Rico at the time of the storms, more than 250 simply didn’t open again. Most of those abandoned were elementary or middle schools. Some children who remained have since been forced to travel longer distances to attend classes, sometimes on dangerous mountain roads…

The territorial education department was promised $589 million in federal aid to reopen damaged schools, but as of March had received only 4 percent of the money; the rest expires at the end of April 2020. A United States Department of Education inspector general found that Keleher’s department lacked effective controls to prevent “fraud, waste and abuse.” Backlash from parents and the teachers’ union finally forced Keleher to resign in April. Three months later, she was arrested by the F.B.I. in Washington and charged with conspiring to steer contracts to associates at another consulting firm. She pleaded not guilty; the case is proceeding.

During her time in office, Keleher was paid $250,000 a year, while most Puerto Rican’s were living in dire conditions. She will stand trial for steering contracts to favored firms.

The tragedy documented in the Times’ photo essay is the abandonment and destruction of the Island’s schools at the same time that the chief education official was intent on privatizing the schools in service to austerity.

The parents and teachers cared about the children. The U.S. government and the now-deposed government of Puerto Rico did not.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Puerto Rico, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: How Sharp Operators Fleece School Districts of Millions

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2019 //
13

 

Investigative journalist Jeff Bryant has published a bombshell article about entrepreneurs who operate superintendent searches, then call on their Superintendents to buy professional development, technology, training, and other services. The conflicts of interest and self-dealing are shocking. Districts lose millions of dollars and buy services they don’t need, while the search service continues to pay them.

Most of us are familiar with the case of Barbara Byrd-Bennett, former Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, who is currently serving a jail sentence for taking kickbacks.  But the web of corruption has involved many superintendents and school districts.

Bryant writes:

In July 2013, the education world was rocked when a breaking story by Chicago independent journalist Sarah Karp reported that district CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett had pushed through a no-bid $20 million contract to provide professional development to administrators with a private, for-profit company called SUPES Academy, which she had worked for a year before the deal transpired. Byrd-Bennett was also listed as a senior associate for PROACT Search, a superintendent search firm run by the same individuals who led SUPES.

By 2015, federal investigators looked into the deal and found reason to charge Byrd-Bennett for accepting bribes and kickbacks from the company that ran SUPES and PROACT. A year-and-a-half later, the story made national headlines when Byrd-Bennett was convicted and sentenced to prison for those charges. But anyone who thought this story was an anomaly would be mistaken. Similar conflicts of interest among private superintendent search firms, their associated consulting companies, and their handpicked school leaders have plagued multiple school districts across the country.

In an extensive examination, Our Schools has discovered an intricate web of businesses that reap lucrative school contracts funded by public tax dollars. These businesses are often able to place their handpicked candidates in school leadership positions who then help make the purchasing decision for the same businesses’ other products and services, which often include professional development, strategic planning, computer-based services, or data analytics. The deals are often brokered in secrecy or presented to local school boards in ways that make insider schemes appear legitimate.

As in the Byrd-Bennett scandal, school officials who get caught in this web risk public humiliation, criminal investigation, and potential jail time, while the businesses that perpetuate this hidden arrangement continue to flourish and grow.

The results of these scandals are often disastrous. School policies and personnel are steered toward products that reward private companies rather than toward research-proven methods for supporting student learning and teacher performance. School governance becomes geared to the interests of well-connected individuals rather than the desires of teachers and voters. And when insider schemes become public, whole communities are thrown into chaos, sometimes for years, resulting in wasted education dollars and increased disillusionment with school systems and local governance.

Bryant lays out the evidence of collusion, corruption, and conflicts of interest. He reviews districts in Illinois, Maryland, and elsewhere. The evidence is devastating.

Nashville was victimized by entrepreneurs who manipulated the district and the process.

One of the first school districts to become entangled in the conglomeration of firms Wise and Sundstrom assembled was Nashville, which in 2016 chose Jim Huge and Associates to help with hiring a new superintendent. The following year the board hired Shawn Joseph, whom Huge had recommended.

Shortly after Joseph arrived in Nashville, according to local News Channel 5 investigative reporter Phil Williams, he began pushing the district to give $1.8 million in no-bid contracts to Performance Matters, a Utah-based technology company that sells “software solutions” to school districts.

Williams found Joseph had spoken at the company’s conference and he had touted the company’s software products in promotional materials while he was employed in his previous job in Maryland. Williams also unearthed emails showing Joseph began contract talks with Performance Matters two weeks before he formally took office in Nashville. What also struck Williams as odd was that despite the considerable cost of the contract, district employees were not required to use the software.

In addition to pushing Performance Matters, Williams reported, Joseph gave an “inside track” to Discovery Education, a textbook and digital curriculum provider and another company he and his team had ties to from their work in Maryland. With Joseph’s backing, Discovery Education received an $11.4 million contract to provide a new science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) program even though a smaller company came in with a bid that was a fraction of what Discovery proposed.

By June 2018, Nashville school board member Amy Frogge was questioning Joseph about possible connections these vendors might have to ERDI. A district audit would confirm that ERDI’s affiliated companies—including Performance Matters, Discovery Education, and six other companies—had signed contracts totaling more than $17 million with the district since Joseph had been hired.

Frogge also came to realize that all these enterprises were connected to the firm who had been instrumental in hiring Joseph—Jim Huge and Associates.

“The search that brought Shawn Joseph to Nashville was clearly manipulated,” Frogge told Our Schools in an email, “and the school board was kept in the dark about Joseph’s previous tenure in Maryland and his relationships with vendor companies.”

Frogge said some of the manipulation occurred when the search firm told school board members that disputes among current board members—over charter schools, school finances, and other issues—indicated the district was “‘too dysfunctional’ to hire top-level superintendents and therefore needed to hire a less experienced candidate.”

But previous investigations of school leadership search firms conducted by Our Schools have found companies like these frequently forego background checks of prospective candidates they recommend, promote favored candidates regardless of their experience or track record, and push board members to keep the entire search process, including the final candidates, confidential from public scrutiny.

“Too often, national search firms are also driven by money-making motives and/or connections with those seeking profit,” Frogge contended. That conflict of interest is a concern not only in Nashville but also in other districts where school leaders with deep ties to education vendors and consultants have resulted in huge scandals that traumatized communities and cost taxpayers millions…

Frogge noted school boards have alternatives to using private search firms that promote tainted candidates willing to feed the search firms’ side businesses.

“School board members need to become better informed and more savvy about profit motives and organizations that seek to influence their selection,” she wrote. “School boards can instead opt to hire a local school boards association (for example, the Tennessee School Boards Association) or a local recruiter with a reputation for personal integrity to conduct a search. They can also choose to hire from within.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Fraud, Nashville, Privatization

Rhode Island: Governor Raimondo Wants to Recruit More TFA Teachers

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2019 //
16

 

Faced with low test scores in Providence, Central Falls, and other districts, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo wants more teachers from Teach for America, who have only five weeks of training.

She is a deep-dyed Corporate Reformer who believes in the magic of privatization by charter schools and inexperienced, ill-trained TFA.

This will not end well for the students.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization, Rhode Island, Teach for America

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2019 //
62

 

Every year since 2014, Democrats who fervently support the privatization of public schools have gathered at a conference they pretentiously call “Camp Philos.”

https://campphilos.org/

Check the agenda of meetings present and past.

There you will see the lineup of Democrats who sneer at public schools and look on public school teachers with contempt.

These are the Democrats who support the DeVos agenda of disrupting and privatizing public schools.

They are meeting again this year, and they will slap each other on the back for supporting school closures, charter schools, high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, and hiring inexperienced teachers.

They have the chutzpah to call themselves “stakeholders,” although none of them are teachers, parents of public school students, or have any stake in the public schools that enroll 85-90% of all American students. Exactly what do they have a “stake” in?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Democrats for Education Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hypocrisy, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Denver: Insurgents Hope to Oust Billionaire-Backed School Board Majority

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2019 //
3

The Denver school Board is up for grabs, and a battle looms between progressives supporting public schools and a slate controlled by Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform, and groups controlled by Wall Street and billionaires. The “reformers” support school closures, disruption, charter schools, and high-stakes testing. The powerful, who control the board, say that any challenge to their total power is “divisive.”

Denver Public Schools at a crossroads: 3 new board members will help decide district’s direction

The Denver Public Schools board will welcome three new members next year, but voters will have to decide whether it also has a new direction.

Board president Anne Rowe, who represents District 1, and at-large member Allegra “Happy” Haynes are term-limited, and District 5 representative Lisa Flores opted not to run again. Each of the three open seats seat has attracted three candidates.

A vocal group of teachers and activists are looking to “flip” the board, putting the majority that has favored tactics such as closing poor-performing schools and opening new charters into the minority. Two current members of the nine-person board have been skeptical of the so-called “reform” movement, though votes don’t always break down along ideological lines.

Fundraising numbers suggests that candidates aligned with the current majority on the reform side may not go easily, however.

Wendy Howell, deputy director of the Colorado Working Families Party, said the overriding issue is reducing corporate influence in education. The party hasn’t released its endorsements yet, but Howell is been active in the online Flip the Board community, which is attempting to turn energy from February’s DPS teachers strike into a political force.

Charter schools started with good intentions, but they’ve become a way to privatize public education services without improving students’ results, Howell said. Districts also have had to add extra administrative staff to deal with compliance issues for different types of schools, which diverts money from classrooms, she said.

“We want to get Wall Street out of our school board,” she said.

The flip community supports candidates who want to pause the development of new charter schools and to examine other ways of improving education, Howell said. They also want to see new board members take a critical look at DPS’ finances, she said.

“This experiment (with reform) has gotten out of control,” she said.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association has endorsed candidates who aligned themselves with the Flip the Board movement: Tay Anderson, Scott Baldermann and Brad Laurvick. Students for Education Reform and Stand for Children have backed candidates who gravitate toward the reform side: Alexis Menocal Harrigan, Diana Romero Campbell and Tony Curcio.

Now look at the rhetoric of the privatizers. Only they care about children. They have been in total control for years and accomplished nothing other than disruption of schools, communities, and families. But they will call upon their billionaire funders to keep the disruption gang in power. Questioning their failure is “divisive.”

Krista Spurgin, executive director of Colorado Stand for Children, said the emphasis on flip versus reform candidates is “divisive,” and that the focus should be on working together to improve education. The parent volunteer committee that made the endorsement decisions wasn’t focused on ideology, but on whether candidates had a record of commitment to have students reading by third grade and on-track to graduate high school, she said.

“It’s about them having the experience and the knowledge to make improvements for families,” she said. “They also have the ability to push the district to improve.”

The candidates they endorsed also support school choice, which is valuable to parents, and giving schools autonomy to figure out what will work for their kids, Spurgin said.

Christian Esperias, national director of campaign strategy of Students for Education Reform, said the questions their student leaders considered when making their endorsement decisions weren’t focused on issues like charter schools and school closures, but on how candidates would close the opportunity gap for underserved groups like students of color and low-income kids. They also looked for candidates who support higher pay for teachers, he said.

“I would frame it as putting kids first versus focusing on the bureaucracy and the special interests,” he said.

Krista Spurgin, executive director of Colorado Stand for Children, said the emphasis on flip versus reform candidates is “divisive,” and that the focus should be on working together to improve education. The parent volunteer committee that made the endorsement decisions wasn’t focused on ideology, but on whether candidates had a record of commitment to have students reading by third grade and on-track to graduate high school, she said.

“It’s about them having the experience and the knowledge to make improvements for families,” she said. “They also have the ability to push the district to improve.”

The candidates they endorsed also support school choice, which is valuable to parents, and giving schools autonomy to figure out what will work for their kids, Spurgin said.

Christian Esperias, national director of campaign strategy of Students for Education Reform, said the questions their student leaders considered when making their endorsement decisions weren’t focused on issues like charter schools and school closures, but on how candidates would close the opportunity gap for underserved groups like students of color and low-income kids. They also looked for candidates who support higher pay for teachers, he said.

“I would frame it as putting kids first versus focusing on the bureaucracy and the special interests,” he said.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change Plead for End to Backlash Against School Choice

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2019 //
33

Feeling the backlash in a big way, Jeb Bush’s “Chiefs for Change” issued a call to end the “Toxic Rhetoric” about school choice, especially charters. 

Chiefs for Change are strong proponents of privatization. Here are the current members. Is your superintendent a “Chief for Change” who wants to divert money from public schools to the Betsy DeVos agenda of school choice?

They say:

Recent attempts to halt or severely limit school choice—including legislative debates over caps or moratoriums for charter schools—are misguided at best. Effective mechanisms of school choice—those that ensure quality, accountability, equitable access, and equitable funding—provide opportunities that our students need and deserve. 

Families with financial means in America have always been able to choose the school that is best for their child, by moving to a certain part of town or by sending their children to private schools. But most American families do not have that opportunity. The school in their neighborhood may fall short in meeting their child’s needs in any number of ways—but they’re stuck. 

Our nation’s history of redlining to separate both housing and schooling based on race and income, along with local zoning ordinances that restrict and confine affordable housing, alongside the recent wave of “school district secessions” by higher-income neighborhoods, have compounded the problem. Our nation’s children often live in neighborhoods just a short distance from each other but worlds apart in terms of school quality. This is unacceptable. Every child deserves school options where they will learn and thrive. 

That is why today we are calling on policymakers across the nation to end the destructive debates over public charter schools. Proposed caps and moratoriums allow policymakers to abdicate their responsibility to thoughtfully regulate new and innovative public school options: like banning cars rather than mandating seatbelts. They are a false solution to a solvable problem. 

The backlash against school choice, the demand to halt charter expansion, comes from an outraged public that supports their community public schools.

Only 6% of the students in the U.S. attend charter schools, most of which perform no better than or much worse than public schools. An even smaller number of students use vouchers, even when they are easily available, and the research increasingly converges on the conclusion that students who use vouchers are harmed by attending voucher schools.

The claim that poor kids should get “the same” access to elite private schools as rich kids is absurd. Rich parents pay $40,000-50,000 or more for schools like Lakeside in Seattle or Sidwell Friends in D.C. The typical voucher is worth about $5,000, maybe as much as $7,000, which gets poor kids into religious schools that lack certified teachers, not into Lakeside or Sidwell or their equivalent.

Perhaps Chiefs for Change should advocate for for housing vouchers worth $1 million or more so that poor families can afford to live in the best suburban neighborhoods where “families with financial means” live.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

What this press release really means is that the advocates of privatization know that the public is turning against them.

That’s good news.

The public wants to invest its tax dollars in strong, equitable public schools that meet the needs of all students, not in ineffective charters or vouchers that divert money from community public schools.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Laura Chapman: The New Line on Private Charters as Spelled Out by the D.C. Establishment

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2019 //
14

Laura Chapman, our loyal reader and diligent researcher, writes:

 

If you want to get past the Dintersmith rhetoric, carefully contrived to make an appealing plausible story (with some help from Frameworks Institute.org), you need to look at the website Education 2020 (ED 2020) to see the underling incoherence (hot air) in Dintersmith’s project, and who is supporting it.

About Education 2020: “We (partners) have come together to advocate for a shared vision to advance a comprehensive education agenda that promotes universal inclusion and access to ongoing learning opportunities for everyone living in America. We call on all 2020 Presidential candidates to develop comprehensive education proposals aligned to this shared vision.”

Our coalition members (partners) include: Alliance for Excellent Education, American Federation of Teachers, Autism Society-, Center for American Progress, Children’s Defense Fund, Community Change Action, Institute for Educational Leadership, Learning Policy Institute, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Disability Rights Network, National Education Association, National Public Education Support Fund, National Women’s Law Center, Reach Higher-, Save the Children Action Network, Save the Children-, Teach Plus-, The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Education Task Force, The Education Trust-, The Institute for College Access & Success, The Partnership for the Future of Learning, The United State of Women, UnidosUS-, Young Invincibles-, ZERO TO THREE.

Education 2020 offers a “Briefing Book” for this promotional activity aided by Dintersmith’s article. The briefing Book includes brief “policy pitches” offered by each of the partners, presented in alphabetical order. These policy pitches are brief, and they do not add up to a “comprehensive agenda” or reflect a shared vision. For example, there are pitches from Teach Plus and the Education Trust, both unsupportive of unions along with pitches from both teacher unions, AFT and NEA.

The Briefing Book includes this idea from the Center for American Progress: “High-quality charter schools are a valuable strategy to increase the number of good public school seats for students. But the growth of charter schools should not be an end in itself, and there are legitimate critiques of the sector that must be addressed. The next administration should take a nuanced approach to charters that includes both the expansion of good school options and the coordination across the traditional district and charter sectors to avoid potentially negative impacts.”

The Learning Policy Institute calls for these actions among others: “Monitor, support, and enforce ESSA’s equity provisions. Key indicators of opportunity and outcomes can be used to inform “equity audits” for low-performing schools to support improvement and effective targeting of resources. “ also “Provide federal funding to support state and district efforts to create greater socioeconomic and racial school diversity and fund the Magnet School Assistance Program at a minimum at parity with the Charter School Program, currently funded at $440 million.”

The Briefing Book for this promotional activity also says: Education 2020 is a coalition housed and supported by the National Public Education Support Fund (established 2009, EIN 26-3015634).
Next question: what do we know about the National Public Education Support Fund? Here is what the fund does according to IRS form 990 for 2017.

“The mission of the National Public Education Support Fund (NPESF) is to promote equitable opportunities for all children to receive a high-quality education from birth through college and career. NPESF is a network hub for EDUCATION PHILANTHROPY, policy, advocacy and practice focused on equitable systems change.” What does “system change mean?” Systems change means reforms favored and charted primarily by billionaire-funded non-profit foundations, as if these tax havens are also sources of superior wisdom about education. The National Public Education Support Fund–a network for education philanthropy”–has the following projects in motion.

A. Partnership for the Future of Learning. Previously called the New Models Working Group. This working group dates to 2009. It was launched by Bill Gates to push the Common Core and aligned tests. The working group of participating foundations had quarterly meetings in DC). The current version funds organizations that offer “a forward-looking vision and policy framework for a 21st century public school system” (more and deeper learning, grounded in the core values of equity, democracy, and shared responsibility to ensure all children are prepared for college, career, and citizenship). Progress over the year: launched a STORYTELLING and NARRATIVE CHANGE effort with a microsite and about 50 partner organizations; publication of a community schools playbook and toolkit; and expanded participation to over 100 partners across dozens of education organizations.

B. We sponsor Education Justice Network. With six national education nonprofits advocating for greater education equity and opportunity with “alignment among the partners to amplify their work on policy, research, and advocacy.” Over the past year, members have created a governance structure for the network and its activities (e.g., working groups on community schools, school finance, redesigning districts, narrative shift, and democratizing knowledge).

C. Education Funder Strategy Group. Includes more than 30 leading foundations focused on “education policy and systems change from early childhood to college and career readiness and success.” Four quarterly meetings were held on the topics of FRAMING THE NARRATIVE on public education, resource equity, systems change…8 monthly calls were held on a variety of topics.” “A special dinner was held with leaders from the OECD focused on expanding access to high quality early learning. Working groups continued to self-organize around issues including “racial equity, using research evidence for change, and social-emotional learning.” (This as the current version of the New Models Working Group started by Bill Gates.)

D. Grantmakers for Thriving Youth: We are the fiscal sponsor for foundations/funders who are investing in “non-academic youth outcomes” such as “social and emotional learning and character development.” A majority of the funders “decided to continue this collaboration over the next two years.”

There is more. The 2017 Form 990 form identifies the Alliance for Excellent Education (all4ed.org) as a related organization whose work advances …”the goal of remodeling US public education.”

Indeed. all4ed is supported by many foundations known to support public funding of privately managed schools. These are named: Anonymous, AT&T Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, GE Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Kern Family Foundation, National Public Education Support Fund, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, State Farm, Stuart Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.

If you want a deep dive into the policies favored and promoted by all of these interrelated projects and organizations, look at the “issues” section of the all4ed website. These are the topics for which there are recommendations.
Accountability, Adolescent Literacy, Assessments, Brown vs. Board, Career & Technical Education, College- and Career-Ready Standards, Deeper Learning, Digital Learning and Future Ready Schools, Economic Impacts, Every Student Succeeds Act, High School Reform, International Comparisons, Linked Learning, Personalized Learning, Science of Adolescent Learning, Teachers and School Leaders.

Dintersmith’s article is an example of the relatively new strategy for selling ideas, marketed by Frameworks Institute.org with a focus on inventing stories, and forwarding narratives calculated to distract attention and elicit favorable responses to hidden-from-view power players. Many of the same “philanthropies” who have promoted failed policies for schools in the last two decades are still at it with Dintersmith trying out a refreshed story line.

This is indeed revelatory of the funding behind this “vision.”

My personal view, based on the rigorous research of the Network for Public Education into the federal Charter Schools Program, is that this program should be completely abolished. The NPE report, Asleep at the Wheel:How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride, found that at least one-third of the charter schools funded by CSP had either never opened or closed soon after opening, for a loss of about $1 billion in federal funds. The CSP is currently funded at $440 million. Betsy DeVos asked for $500 million. She is using that money to underwrite the expansion of national charter chains like KIPP and IDEA and to flood states like New Hampshire, Alabama, and Texas. Given the massive funding of charter schools by foundations, no federal funding is needed. Ongoing research by NPE shows that in some states, as many as 40% of charters were failures. Every presidential candidate should be asked if they will eliminate federal funding for new charter schools and direct the funding to Title I or other programs that meet genuine needs, not satisfy billionaires’ egos. 

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

Arthur Camins: Fight for First Principles

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2019 //
19

Arthur Camins insists that voters should stand by their principles in the 2020 elections.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2019/9/6/1883805/-Fight-for-First-Principles

In 2020, let’s elect people who don’t temper and undermine first principles like high-quality universal education and health care, with a soul- and hope-crushing, “But let’s be realistic about what’s achievable.” Don’t start with the workaround. Start with the energizing principles and fight for them.

Since this is an education blog, we will keep track of where candidates stand on “high-quality universal education.”

We will listen to what they say about charters and vouchers and what they don’t say. We will assume that some will attempt to deceive us by denouncing only “for-profit” charters. Only one state allows for-profit charters—Arizona—yet many states have nonprofit charters operated by for-profit EMOs.

What about corporate charter chains that take over what were once public schools? What about Gulen charters, part of a shadowy network that imports Turkish teachers and relies on corporate boards led by Turkish men?

We will also pay close attention to whether candidates express their views about the reign of high-stakes testing imposed by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Every Student Succeeds Act. The billions expended on testing have enriched the corporations that sell them, but harm children and the quality of education.

We will be watching, and NPE Action is maintaining a score card on the candidates.

NPE Action 2020 Presidential Candidates Project

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers
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