Archives for category: Corporate Reformers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Ed Johnson for School Board in Atlanta on September 17!

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2019 //
6

Atlanta is holding a special election on September 17 to fill the vacant seat in District 2.

This election is crucial, because the current board majority, dominated by TFA alums, is committed to the so-called Portfolio Model, which means an abdication of the board’s responsibility and a proliferation of private charters.

Ed Johnson, a dedicated and well-informed citizen of Atlanta, should be elected. I have known Ed Johnson for years as a person with deep understanding of education and of systems. He believes in steady and thoughtful improvement, not radical disruption that upends the lives of children and communities.

This election could tip the balance on the board.

To understand why Ed Johnson is perfect for this job, read his responses to the questionnaire of the Georgia Charter Schools Association.


Ed Johnson
Candidate, Atlanta Board of Education District 2

Questionnaire by Georgia Charter Schools Association (GCSA)

1. Briefly share your qualifications for the office of District 2 School Board Member.

My qualifications are exactly those the Atlanta Independent Schools System (AISS) Charter requires, namely:

I am at least 18 years of age
I am a resident of the city and I have been a resident of the Atlanta Board of Education (“Board”) District 2 for at least one year immediately preceding the date of filing a notice of candidacy to seek office
I am a qualified elector of the city
I am not an employee of the State Department of Education nor a member of the State Board of Education

Moreover,

I do not currently hold an elective public office
I am not an employee of the Atlanta Board of Education or any other local board of education
I do not serve on the governing body of any private K-12 educational institution, however grade level-wise constituted

Perhaps this question actually meant to ask, “What personal qualities are you prepared to bring to the Board as the District 2 representative?” Assuming so:

I hold a keen, uncompromised position for the public’s Atlanta public schools system to remain a wholly public good committed to continually improving in quality as a public good essential to advancing democratic practices of civil society ever and ever closer to democratic ideals. Kindly see my bio brief at this link: https://tinyurl.com/y57uymu6

2. What is your vision for Atlanta Public Schools and how would you implement it?

Visions alone are insufficient. Visions, as well as missions, must be anchored in, aligned to, and function in harmony with an invariant Purpose.

Although my vision matters less than any visions District 2 communities and Atlanta civil society, at large, may hold for the public’s Atlanta Independent Schools System, which is commonly known as Atlanta Public Schools (APS), my personal vision is for APS to become the wholly unfractured public good it is chartered to be, so it can become Where Authentic Public Education Meets Purpose in service to sustaining and advancing democratic practices ever closer to democratic ideals that benefit all of Atlanta civil society and beyond. For this to happen, having a commonly agreed-to invariant Purpose is essential. Unfortunately, APS has not a commonly agreed-to invariant Purpose. Today, on account of the poor quality of top leadership of APS—Board and superintendent—the “purpose” of APS is whatever any one or more of some 300-plus private actors APS leadership calls “partners” selfishly want the “purpose” of APS to be, at any given moment, in service to themselves.

I, as an individual Board member, will not have the authority to implement my personal vision or anything else. However, as a Board member, I will seek to influence the Board to catalyze, via policy, the start of a very, very, very long overdue journey of never ending continual quality improvement anchored in Where Authentic Public Education Meets Purpose, as stated above.

3. Please describe your position on charter public schools.

Kindly know I am not a purveyor of any of the miscalled terms “charter public schools,” “public charter schools,” and “traditional public schools.” Without question, such terms are meant to manipulate. Thus I speak only the authentic and truthful terms “public schools” and “charter schools.”

That said, charter schools may be rightfully likened to vampire bats that feed on their victims’ blood but instead feed on the public’s public schools’ various resources, including but not limited to fiscal, physical, academic, and social resources. The thinking that such feeding then means charter schools are public schools is just plain ludicrous. And just as Count Dracula feeds on his victims’ blood after having promised eternal life in an instant, charter schools feed on parents’ hopes with promises of giving their children instant “access” to instant “high quality education,” in instant “high quality charter school seats,” in instant “high quality charter schools.” In Atlanta, such parents targeted by charter schools tend to be those of children labeled “Black.”

Data—for example, results from Georgia Milestones standardized test assessments since the inception of the tests in 2015—are clear that charter schools are not, in general, the inherently “high quality schools” they claim to be. And even if they were, nonetheless, all the wasted fiscal, academic, and social costs associated with having two parallel school systems is morally and ethically reprehensible. Such wasted costs should be going to improving public schools in the manner of the never ending journey of continual quality improvement I mention in my response to question 2, above.

So, my position? Charter schools are an abomination upon civil society. Moreover, our local, state, and federal lawmakers should not be in the business of legitimating selfishness. It’s not much of a stretch to see the connections to selfish acts of shooting up schools, for example, facilitated by easy access to military-style guns. Selfishness learned in one context invariably manifests in any number of other contexts, sometimes “by any means necessary.”

4. What do you think are the three greatest issues or problems facing Atlanta Public Schools? How could charter public schools help address these issues?

There is but one overarching greatest issue and that issue subsumes all other issues: Influence the Board to catalyze “Adopting district-wide policies that support an environment for the quality improvement and progress for all decision makers in the district, as well as for students.”

Charter schools are anathema to realizing this overarching issue, which actually is a role the Atlanta Independent Schools System Charter requires the Board to fulfill, and it never has.

5. What are the specific issues facing District 2? What should be done to address these issues?

The specific, overarching issue facing District 2 is the presence of a concentration of charter schools. Six of 14 schools are charter schools. That’s 43 percent charter schools. Data suggest the outsized presence of so many charter schools in District 2 feed greedily on resources that, morally and ethically, should be going to the eight District 2 public schools.

To address this issue, the Board members be must called to account, both severally and individually, for failing to honor their sworn Oath of Office that begins: “I will be governed by the public good ….” Charter schools are not public goods, so are anathema to Board members’ fulfilling their Oath of Office, and they don’t.

6. Do you support the expansion and approval of more high quality charter schools in the Atlanta Public Schools district?

No. Besides, various data sources are clear: Neither APS nor District 2 has any “high quality charter schools” compared to public schools. The term is a blatantly intentional miscalling meant to manipulate the unsuspecting.

7. Do you believe charter public schools should receive funding and resources equal to that of traditional public schools?

Again, I am not a purveyor of the intentionally misleading terms “charter public schools” and “traditional public schools.” There are public schools and there are charter schools.

Originally, to get themselves established, charter schools sold the public on the idea that they can do more with less, inherently, as if charter schools are automatically and instantly “high quality schools.” Now that the truth is known and the lie exposed, by their own admission, charter schools pressing for funding equality or equity with public schools should be taken as evidence that charter schools are a totally cost-equable, hence totally duplicative, hence totally wasteful schooling structure, inherently, and so should be allowed to die in the open daylight, just as Count Dracula dies when exposed to open daylight, or gets staked in the heart. Once staked in the heart, the stake must never be removed, lest he or it comes back to life.

8. What are your thoughts on the strategic plan APS is currently working on? In your opinion, what should be addressed?

The development of that strategic plan is an essential step the Board and superintendent, Meria Carstarphen, are taking in their process that aims to implement The City Fund’s free-market portfolio of schools “idea.” The “idea” is just that, and it has absolutely no basis in pedagogy nor in actually intending to improve schools, only change them.

The process simply begs disrupting and destroying APS as the public good it is supposed to be by continually closing and replacing public schools with ever more charter schools. The Board and Carstarphen cloak what they do by intentionally miscalling it “Excellent Schools Project.” The several other urban public school districts The City Funds has targeted for privatization do likewise; that is, apply an agreeable though erroneous name that cloaks the privatization agenda.

The Board voted their “Creating a System of Excellent Schools” process into existence by the 5­-3 vote they took during their March meeting, last school year. Sadly, at least one Board member voted not fully understanding the vote, but understandably so, because the Board Chairman, Jason Esteves, had snookered the Board member into voting in favor of the vote, I learned. Indeed, the vote was an extraordinarily slick execution that Esteves pulled off. It can help to have a graphical rendering of the process the Board voted into existence in order to see the full effect of the vote, at a relatively high level. See such a graphical rendering on the next page (or below), and note the thick black-lines trace through the process involving initial development of the strategic plan.

For more about my position and understanding of the so-called Excellent Schools Project, kindly see these of mine:

https://mailchi.mp/d25f43df98e4/icf-international-atlanta-school-board-prepares-a-fresh-assault-on-public-education
https://mailchi.mp/285384c108ec/how-are-the-apsl-planning-to-destroy-public-education-in-atlanta-with-excellent-schools
https:

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America

Little Rock, Arkansas: Dr. Anika Whitfield Pleads for a Return of Democracy

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2019 //
8

Dr. Anika Whitfield is a remarkable woman. She is a podiatrist. She is an ordained Baptist minister. She has volunteered as a tutor in the public schools of Little Rock for many years. She is active in Save Our Schools Arkansas and Grassroots Arkansas. She is a fighter for social justice and equity. She wrote the following letter to Johnny Key, who is Commissioner of Education in the state. Key was trained as an engineer and served in the state legislature for a decade. Anyone who cares about the children and schools of Little Rock should listen to Dr. Whitfield. She is a dynamo.

The state took control of the Little Rock School District because six of its 48 schools were low-performing. Instead of helping the schools, the state simply abolished local control. The Walton family plays a large role in the state due to its dominance of the state’s economy and its many political lackies.

Dr. Whitfield wrote:

Commissioner Key,

For two weeks now, the Arkansas State Board of Education has been hosting public meetings to discuss the future of the LRSD. Since the LRSD was taken over by the state on January 28, 2019, you have been serving, by appointment, as our sole board member. Sadly, you have not been present for any of the four meetings that the state board of education has been hosting in the LRSD community. Why is that?

Over the past close to five years now, serving as the sole board member of the LRSD, you have not elected to host one meeting with the LRSD about the state of our district, the exit plan for our district, nor to gain insight from the stakeholders and the persons most impacted by the many decisions you have made regarding the LRSD. Why is that?

When we have called on you over the past four and a half years as community organizers and leaders on behalf of the LRSD community, you have refused to host public meetings about our concerns, the state of our district, and your plans for our district. Your attorneys or staff at the Arkansas Department of Education has responded to me that you are not required by law to host meetings like an elected school board, and that given your responsibilities to the entire state of Arkansas as education commissioner, it is difficult for you to make a commitment to doing so. Why then, don’t you give the LRSD back to a democratically elected board who can commit to serving the LRSD who can meet with the public regularly and provide a plan for restoration of the LRSD?

Some of the highlights you missed by not being present, in the room of public discussion were as follows:

•We believe Governor Hutchinson should replace Mr. Key (you) as commissioner of education because not only has he failed to serve as an effective board member of the LRSD, he has refused to listen to our majority voices that have echoed for close to five years now that we want democracy restored to the LRSD and to our school board.

•It has been evidenced by Mr. Key’s (your) actions that Governor Hutchinson appointed you to fulfill the pleasures of wealthy business owners in Arkansas (the Waltons, Mr. Hussman, and the Stephens) who appear to have made it a part of their business plan to invest in charter schools that generate city, county, state and national funding for their businesses to operate privately off the backs of primarily African American/Black and Latinx students.

•We, the LRSD community, realize that BEFORE the LRSD was taken over for six out of 48 (now only 44 because you have forced the closure of four of our beloved neighborhood schools), the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) as recommended by the state board of education (SBE) and enforced by state law, had been overseeing the six schools that were performing below proficiency according to results from racially and culturally biased standardized tests. Therefore, the state board of education should not have, in good moral conscious, decided for the ADE to take on the responsibility of 42 other schools in the LRSD until they could prove success in helping the six schools overcome the barriers prohibiting proficiency or above outcomes of the students attending these schools.

•We recognize that the absence of a democratically elected school board allows for the management of an over $350 million dollar budget in the hands of one person, Mr. Key (you), who has not been allocating funds in good faith according to the will and the knowledge of the LRSD community as an elected board is required. We want to know where have the city, county, state, federal, and limited and regulated private dollars been allocated, spent, diverted, or unused by the LRSD board (Mr. Key), the ADE, and the LRSD administration?

You missed the opportunity to learn, hear, and discuss with the more than 120 LRSD community members who attended all four of the public meetings held in four different locations in our city.

And, most importantly, you missed, as our sole board member and state commissioner of education, hearing and responding to our (the majority of the LRSD stakeholders who attended the meetings (at Roberts Elementary and St. Mark Baptist Church) list of demands:

1) Immediate return of entire LRSD.

2) Local, democratic board elections Nov. 2019 or reinstatement of last elected board. (You still have time to announce and prepare for Nov. 2019 elections by law. Failing to do so will only further indicate your willful sabotage of the will of The People, the majority of the LRSD stakeholders. )

3) An MOA that the SBE and ADE will commit to doing the LRSD no more harm.

4) Reopening of our neighborhood public schools they closed.

5) Nullification of the current blueprint.

6) Immediate establishment of a LRSD Student Union and Parent Union.

7) Full accounting of all LRSD financials during state control of LRSD; constructive trust with method for LRSD to recoup funds from the State.

8) Same standards for private schools and charter schools as for public schools.

9) Higher qualifications for board members, both state and local/district; including requirement that some board members be certified educators.

10) Evidence-driven programs and solutions in all LRSD schools; examples include the early childhood development program at Rockefeller Elementary and the school-based health program at Stephens Elementary.

11) Make public input more accessible for parents and others responsible for children by providing child care at public meetings.

We expect a public response from you today.

Rev./Dr. Anika T. Whitfield
Grassroots Arkansas, co-chair

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Little Rock, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Tom Ultican: Beware the Broadies!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
26

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics in California, has written a well-documented critique of the Broad Academy.

He describes its origins and purposes. Its primary purpose is to privatize public education. The Broad Academy, he writes, is the powerful force driving the Destroy Public Education movement. Including the current cohort, 568 people have learned the disruptive and destructive philosophy of billionaire Eli Broad.

Their track record is deplorable:

Broad trained Superintendents have a history of bloated staffs leading to financial problems like John Deasy in Los Angeles (Ipad fiasco) or Antwan Wilson in Oakland. They also are notorious for top down management that alienates teachers and parents. Jean-Claude Brizard was given a 98% no confidence vote in Rochester, New York before Rahm Emanuel brought him to Chicago where the teachers union ran him out of town. Maria Goodloe-Johnson became Seattle’s superintendent in 2007. She was soon seen as a disruptive demon by teachers and parents. There was great glee when a financial mismanagement brought her down.

He warns:

No school district trying to improve and provide high quality education should even consider hiring a candidate with Broad training on their resume. Neither the Residency nor the academy are legitimate institutions working to improve public education. Their primary agenda has always been the privatization and ending democratic control of schools by local communities. That is why the founding billionaire, Eli Broad, is one of America’s most prolific financers of Charter Schools and organizations like Teach For America. He believes in markets and thinks schools should be privately run like businesses.

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

Bombshell in California: E-Mails Reveal Charter Lobby’s Goal of Complete Privatization of All Schools in the State

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
42

Blogger Michael Kohlhaas received a huge trove of leaked emails from the Green Dot Charter School organization in Los Angeles.

He has been releasing them as he reviews them.

No one has disputed their accuracy.

Yesterday, Kohlhaas released one of the most startling of these documents, in which the charter lobby reveals its ultimate goal: by 2030, every student in the state of California will attend a charter school or a “charter-like public school.”

He writes:

It’s not clear at all what they mean by “charter-like public school[s]”. It’s especially unclear given the amount of time they spend ranting about how charter schools are in fact public schools, so presumably charter schools are the most charter-like public schools of all, but whatever. The point is that this is an acknowledgement by the CCSA that they are in fact trying to destroy public education in California by removing ALL students from it or, if that’s not possible, making public schools be so much like their private charters that there might as well be no public education. In any case, please read the whole document. It is a revelation.

And they’re not just trying to destroy all public schools in California by taking away their students and, with them, their funding. They’re also trying to take away all their land. On a local level they have been working with LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin on a proposal to take facilities away from putatively low-performing schools and hand them over to putatively high-performing schools. And before facilities can be confiscated on the basis of performance, a ranking system is necessary. Melvoin’s recent school performance ranking proposal is step one in this playbook.

And the CCSA and its member schools don’t just want control or ownership of the property to help them educate children. Real estate is a key element of the private charter school investment market. The more real estate charter schools control the more money the private investors can make. This is a huge business.

Thank you, Michael Kohlhaas, for performing a public service.

And thank you, also, to the anonymous leaker who provided this frightening insight into the nefarious machinations and goals of the charter school lobby.

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

Breaking News: California Strikes a Deal to Reform Charter Law

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2019 //
9

After months of debate and disagreements, the charter lobby and its critics have reached an agreement to reform the current charter law, the first time it has been reformed in 25 years. Both Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown protected the charter industry. Gavin Newsom took an active role in bringing the two sides together.

According to the LA Times, both sides gave up ground.

The deal, announced Wednesday, gives public school districts more authority to reject petitions for new charter campuses, phases in stricter credentialing requirements for charter school teachers and places a two-year moratorium on new virtual charter schools…

Charter schools in California are publicly funded and independently operated. Originally authorized in 1992 legislation to promote educational innovation, charter schools have evolved from an experiment to a system that enrolls more than 600,000 students across the state. California ties education funding to enrollment, and charters have often been pitted against traditional neighborhood schools in a competition for students…

Under the bill, local school boards would be allowed to reject new charter petitions based on the school’s potential fiscal effects on the district and whether the charter seeks to offers programs that the district already provides, according to the governor’s office.

The deal would require all new charter school teachers to hold the same credentials as traditional public schools next year and phase in requirements for existing teachers over five years, the governor’s office said.

The proposal would also eliminate the state board’s role as a chartering authority, allowing it only to weigh appeals to determine whether a school district abused its discretion in denying the petition….

In a concession described as a bonus for charters by people involved in the deal, the legislation would allow county boards of education to retain their role in reviewing appeals for denied charter petitions. The two-year moratorium on virtual and other non-classroom-based charter schools also falls short of calls by unions for a statewide freeze on all new charters.

Additional provisions of the agreement would require charter schools to meet the same performance standards as traditional public schools, the governor’s office said. The law would build on legislation passed this year to ensure charters reflect the demographics of special education students, English language learners and other groups in the communities in which they are located, according to the governor’s office.

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

Gary Rubinstein’s Favorite Top Ten Posts: Enjoy!

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2019 //
5

Gary Rubinstein offers his favorite posts, his Top Ten.

Every one of them is a jewel, reflecting Gary’s inside understanding of TFA and corporate reform, and his frank acknowledgement of their failures.

He left out many wonderful posts, including his careful exposes of the failure of the Tennessee (Non)Achievement School District, which consumed $100 million of Race to the Top funding and still failed.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America

Jan Resseger: For-Profit MGT Did NOT “Turn Around” the Schools of Gary, Indiana

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2019 //
4

Jan Resseger noted that the Colorado state board of education awarded a contract to MGT Consulting based on their “success” in turning around the public schools of Gary, Indiana. She shows in this post that there was no turnaround.

She writes:

Colorado state school board members praised MGT’s record in the so-called turnaround of the only whole school district it has managed—for the past two years—in Gary, Indiana. The fact that MGT Consulting, a for-profit, was praised for work in Gary caught my eye. I have been to Gary, just as I have been to Detroit, whose public schools have shared some problems with Gary’s. Detroit’s school district was assigned a state emergency fiscal manager by former Governor Rick Snyder; in fact Detroit’s school district was assigned an emergency manager named Darnell Earley after he left Flint, where, as municipal emergency fiscal manager, he had permitted the poisoning of the city’s water supply. Fortunately Detroit’s schools have been turned back to the democratically elected local school board, which hired a professional educator, Dr. Nikolai Vitti.

And I have been to the cities in Ohio now in state takeover, and being operated by appointed Academic Distress Commissions. I am thinking of Youngstown, which in four years under an Academic Distress Commission and appointed CEO, has not turned around. I am thinking of Lorain, where outright chaos has ensued under an Academic Distress Commission’s appointed CEO, David Hardy. And I am thinking of East Cleveland, whose schools are just beginning the state takeover process, and ten other Ohio school districts—including Dayton and Toledo—being threatened with state takeover.

All of these Rust Belt cities and their school districts are characterized by economic collapse. They are industrial cities where factories have closed and workers moved away to seek employment elsewhere. When industry collapses, the property tax base—the foundation of the local contribution of school funding—evaporates, and as workers lose jobs or leave, local income tax revenue collapses as well…

In July 2017, the state took over the school district in Gary and turned the schools over to a private, for-profit management company: MGT Consultants. MGT hired Peggy Hinkley, a retired school superintendent to run the schools, but she resigned a little more than a year later. The Post-Tribune‘s Carole Carlson describes Hinkley’s tenure: “Hinkley served 14 months and ruffled the feathers of some elected officials who criticized her decisions, especially the closing of the Wirt-Emerson School of Visual and Performing Arts. When Wirt-Emerson closed in June (2018), it left the district with just one high school, the West Side Leadership Academy. It stoked fears of a continuing exodus of students who would leave for charter schools or other districts… Under Hinckley, Gary reached a deal resolving $8.4 million in back payroll taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS forgave a large portion of the debt, leaving the district with a $320,000 payment. The freeing up of the liens on buildings allowed Hinckley to list 33 vacant schools and properties for sale. By November, the district had accepted five offers, amounting to $480,000. More sales are still being weighed. In all, Hinckley erased about $6 million of the district’s $100,000 million in long-term debts and reduced its monthly deficit from about $1.8 million to $1.3 million… Academically, all seven elementary schools received Fs on state report cards this year.”

Clearly, in Gary, Indiana, MGT Consultants has not miraculously achieved the kind of quick school district turnaround Colorado’s state school board bragged about when it contracted with MGT to take over three school districts.

Read on to learn about the role of ex-Indiana superintendent Tony Bennett and the Corporate Reform-disruption-greed Movement.

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Indiana, Lies, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Can Privatizers Win Elections Without Billionaire Cash?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2019 //
8

Mercedes Schneider reports that the Louisiana PAC created by a small number of out-of-state billionaires to buy control of the State Board is disbanding.

She writes:

In 2015, six out-of-state billionaires from four families contributed a combined $3M to influence the outcome of Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) election.

The PAC was just dissolved.

What will happen in Louisiana without millions from the Waltons, Michael Bloomberg, John Arnold, and Eli Broad?

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Louisiana

Jersey Jazzman: The Death of the Merit Pay Fairy in Newark

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2019 //
16

Jersey Jazzman has posted an obituary for the Merit Pay Fairy. He says it died in Newark, when teachers negotiated a new contract, deep-sixing a Merit Payplan that they endorsed in 2012.

JJ demonstrates with facts and evidence that merit pay failed.

He begins:

The Merit Pay Fairy lives in the dreams of right-wing think tanks and labor economists, who are absolutely convinced that our current teacher pay system — based on seniority and educational attainment — is keeping teachers from achieving their fullest potential. It matters little that even the most generous readings of the research find practically small effects* of switching to pay-for-performance systems, or that merit pay in other professions is quite rare (especially when it is based on the performance of others; teacher merit pay is, in many contexts, based on student, and not teacher, performance).

Merit pay advocates also rarely acknowledge that adult developmental theory suggests that rewards later in life, such as higher pay, fulfill a need for older workers, or that messing with pay distributions has the potential to screw up the pool of potential teacher candidates, or that shifting pay from the bottom of the teacher “quality” distribution to the top — and, really, that’s what merit pay does — still leaves policymakers with the problem of deciding which students get which teachers.

Issues like these, however, are at the core of any merit pay policy. Sure, pay-for-performance sounds great; it comports nicely with key concepts in economic theory. But when it comes time to implement it in an actual, real-world situation, you’ve got to confront a whole host of realities that theory doesn’t address.

Of course, it failed! As I explained in my 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, merit pay has been tried again and again for almost a century, and it has always failed.

I would like to believe that it has died, that—as Dorothy said about the Wicked Witch, it is “really, truly dead”—but I have my doubts.

Every time it has failed, someone rediscovers it and thinks that this time it will work, unlike every other time.

I remember AFT President Albert Shanker saying at a meeting in the early 1990s that merit pay was ridiculous. The way he put it was, “Let me get this straight: if you offer to pay teachers more, students will work harder? That makes no sense.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Merit pay, Newark

Providence Plans to Defund Its Public Schools to Expand “No Excuses” Charter

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2019 //
13

The evidence is clear that privately managed charters can get higher test scores by culling, exclusion, and attrition. It’s equally clear that charters drain resources from the public schools that enroll most students. Most public officials seem to understand that it costs more to run parallel systems, one public, one private.

But not in Rhode Island, where Governor Gina Raimondo is a big fan of charters (she was a hedge fund manager before running for governor). She is eager to expand Achievement First, a no-excuses charter known for high test scores and harsh discipline.

This article by Linda Borg in the Providence Journal lays out the findings of two independent studies that warned about the negative fiscal impact of charters on public schools (one from Moody’s Investors, the other from the Brookings Institution, which is erroneously described as “left-leaning”).

https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190822/providences-achievement-first-proposal-refuels-charter-debate

Borg should also have Gordon Lafer’s significant study of the fiscal drain of charters on the public schools of three districts in California.

Click to access ITPI_Breaking_Point_May2018FINAL.pdf

Supporters of expanding Achievement First cite a report funded by the Arnold Foundation, a rightwing foundation that zealously supports privatization and opposes public sector pensions. Billionaire John Arnold was an energy trader at Enron.

The recently appointed state commissioner, a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, dismissed the controversy as an “old conversation,” showing her indifference to stripping nearly $30 million from the needy public schools of Providence.

“State Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green, in an interview Wednesday, called this an “old conversation,” adding that the expansion plan was approved by the Rhode Island Council of Elementary and Secondary Education three years ago after a contentious debate between charter proponents and critics.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »