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Jersey Jazzman: How “Creaming” Works in the Charter Schools of Newark

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2019 //
10

 

Jersey Jazzman seems to be in an endless battle with New Jersey’s largest newspaper, The Star-Ledger, or at least with the writer of its editorials. He went to the trouble of getting a doctorate in statistics so he could persuade that editorialist to understand how the charters produce high test scores. It is called creaming, picking the best and excluding the rest. 

This article explains how in works.

Creaming has become a central issue in the whole debate about the effectiveness of charters. A school “creams” when it enrolls students who are more likely to get higher scores on tests due to their personal characteristics and/or their backgrounds. The fact that Newark’s charter schools enroll, as a group, fewer students with special education needs — particularly high-cost needs — and many fewer students who are English language learners is an indication that creaming may be in play.

If you understand how creaming works (as in skimming the cream from the milk bottle when it rises to the top—a phenomenon unknown to people below a certain age), then the charter claims of superiority are unimpressive.

If you don’t understand, and you refuse to try, then you will find the Newark Test Scores to be “incredible,” as the Star-Ledger did. Parse that word: Incredible. Not credible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: How One Corporate Reform Incubated Another Corporate Reform Group

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2019 //
9

 

Mercedes Schneider was curious to learn about the new organization Results for America. And so she went to the source: tax documents. 

The origin story is almost comical, as one useless but well-funded Organization begets another one. The Result for America: big take-home pay for executives. Lots of verbiage.

If RFA is really interested in evidence-based policy, it will speak out against privatization, vouchers, and charters. Nut since it is funded by Gates, it is not likely to challenge his preferences.

The best part. Due to the computer revolution, no trees were killed to print the documents that spew forth from these groups.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers

Ed Johnson: Atlanta Schools Need Improvement, Not Change

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2019 //
19

 

Ed Johnson is an adherent of the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming, who wrote and spoke about the superiority of Improvement over disruptive change. Ed lives in Atlanta, where the school board and its superintendent believe that they must shock the system, privatize, impose constant disruption. As he shows in the chart below, their approach (the so-called “portfolio model”) has made matters worse. He announces here that he is running for a seat on the board. Wouldn’t that be wonderful to have a critic of disruption on a board now dominated by Ex-TFA know-it-all’s?

19 July 2019

“Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

I am not a proponent of letter grades for schools.  However, Georgia Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) is, to wit:
“This website provides school reports for all public elementary, middle, and high schools in Georgia. These reports include A-F letter grades based on school performance and other useful information about the school, such as performance on statewide assessments, the make-up of the school’s student body, the graduation rate, and additional academic information.”
So, for those who like to have letter grades for schools, I say: Okay, let’s have them.  Ditto for “heat maps.”
My short presentation, here in PDF and here in PowerPoint Show format (download only), carries the title, Atlanta Board of Education District Schools Cumulative Growth by Quantified GOSA Letter Grades since “School Turnaround.”
The presentation aims to be fairly self-explanatory.  Still, essential points about it are:
  • Baseline year 2014 marks the first year of execution of the Atlanta school board and superintendent’s School Turnaround Strategy.
  • For each year from Baseline year 2014 through year 2018, each schools’ GOSA letter grade A, B, C, D, or F is translated to the numeral 2, 1, 0, -1, or -3, respectively.  A is translated to 2, B to 1, C to 0, D to -1, and F to -3.  This then quantifies the letter grades and, yes, the translation procedure is arbitrary—or might one say, “innovative?”  Alternatively, a compounding procedure might be used instead of this purely additive one.
  • Each school’s quantified letter grades are added such that the running sum is recorded over time, creating a time series.  The first addend, at 2014, is noted and added to the second addend, at 2015, and the sum there noted.  Then the sum at 2015 is added to the third addend, at 2016, and the sum there noted.  Then the sum at 2016 is added to the fourth addend, at 2017, and the sum there noted.  And, finally, the sum at 2017 is added to the fifth addend, at 2018, and the sum there noted.  This then establishes a running record as a time series of the school’s Quantified Letter Grade Cumulative Growth.
The presentation offers plots of Quantified Letter Grade Cumulative Growth, over time.  There is a plot for all schools in the Atlanta Public Schools system as well as a plot of schools for each of the six Atlanta school board districts, with school names listed in a side box.  School names are as known by GOSA, except in one case.

For example, the following plot of Atlanta school board District 1 schools shows, at year 2018, the full range of the schools’ quantified letter grade cumulative growth.  Mary Lin Elementary School marks the positive extreme of the range, at 10 (2, 4, 6, 8 10), while Price Middle School and Thomasville Heights Elementary School both mark the negative extreme of the range, at -15 (-3, -6, -9, -12, -15).  All other school board District 1 schools fall in between these extremes, at year 2018.

Note that the Atlanta school board and superintendent outsourced Thomasville Heights Elementary School to a private operator at the beginning stage of executing their School Turnaround Strategy.  They did so as one of their earliest bold actions aiming to fix the supposedly horribly broken school and keeping the state from taking it over, they claimed.

Interestingly, any one of the plots in the presentation looked at holistically, rather than analytically, offers a basis for predicting the future, if only short term.  An obvious prediction to make is that schools in the mostly northern area of Atlanta serving mostly children labeled “white” will generally continue to stay better or get better, while schools in the mostly southern area of Atlanta serving mostly children labeled “black” will generally continue to stay worse or get worse.  The zero-line in the above plot effectively demarcates north Atlanta-area schools, above the line, and south Atlanta-area schools, below the line.

Why is this bifurcation of public education in Atlanta so persistent?   Why does it keep happening?

Well, consider the Atlanta school board and superintendent’s School Turnaround Strategy is today’s version of the root cause of the matter, as it entails essentially the latest in a long string of school reform quick fixes, change initiatives, bold actions, and solutions meant to instantly fix the broken Atlanta Public Schools system and close so-called achievement gaps, opportunity gaps, access gaps, equity gaps, 30 million words gaps, and all manner of gap.  Such has been the root cause for nearly three decades, starting with the school boards of the permanent superintendents Benjamin Canada, then Beverly Hall, and now Meria Carstarphen.

However, the basic, immutable facts have been, and always will be, change does not mean improvement, bold actions do not substitute for quality leadership, there are no solutions, APS cannot break, and so APS cannot be fixed.

One has only to consider what “solution” means and the kinds of systems to which solutions apply—namely, mechanical systems and mathematical systems, for example, but not, dynamic, idiosyncratic social systems such as public school systems and, yes, children.  Public school systems and children are not the kind of systems where solutions can fix them.  Trying to fix APS is much the same as trying to fix a child, which can only be a most egregious, inhumane, and even evil endeavor.

Atlanta Public Schools can only be improved, continually, never ending.

If one won’t believe me and my having been out in the wilderness for the longest of time yammering and crying about these basic, immutable facts, then perhaps one will believe the billionaire Bill Gates and The 74, which he funds.

According to this recent article by The 74, Mr. Gates seems to have recently cottoned to what some might consider W. Edwards Deming’s “continuous improvement” philosophy.  But, of course, putting $93 million towards his new interest entitles Mr. Gates to claim and declare it as his own Continuous Improvement Model.

However, if one were to examine—better yet, read and study–Dr. Deming’s last seminal works, The New Economics for Business, Government, Education(1993, The MIT Press) and Out of the Crisis (1982, The MIT Press), one will not find the term “continuous improvement.”  One will only find the term “continual improvement.”  The point being, it seems Mr. Gates is dragging public education into yet another experiment without having essential knowledge of what is required.

I am aware some of Mr. Gates’ foundation employees attended a Deming conference a few years ago and so I have always wondered what would come of it.  Maybe we are about to find out.  Hopefully, prayerfully, Mr. Gates will not end up having tarnished or compromised Dr. Deming’s legacy:  “Well, we tried the Continuous Improvement Model but it, too, turned out to be one of our experiments that didn’t work out.  So we will move on to look for the next promising elixir to magically fix all the nation’s failing public schools in poor and minority communities.”

I any case, I hope we can understand Dr. Deming’s continual improvement philosophy posits a way of learning, a way of getting knowledge and wisdom, hence a way of life.  The philosophy does not posit a model that, if scripted and the script implemented and “scaled up,” that then will solve and fix all broken public school systems, or turn them around.

In this sense, the plot above, as in the presentation, shows a failing Atlanta school board and superintendent School Turnaround Strategy poised to keep on failing (prediction, knowledge).

Thus, for me, the time has come to “Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

Accordingly, I decided at the last minute to seek the now open Atlanta Board of Education District 2 Seat in a Special Election to be held 17 September 2019.

I simply could not walk away—meaning, I had already taken the first step to leave Atlanta behind by first greatly downsizing to a small fixer-upper bungalow and working on it a while before moving back to my hometown, having already jettisoned years of accumulated stuff.  When nearly three years ago I made this initial downsizing move, I purchased the bungalow within the same ZIP code, as intended.  However, I discovered soon afterwards that I had also purchased just a few hundred yards inside Atlanta school board District 2.  What can I say?

If any of my yammering and crying in the wilderness over the years about Atlanta Public Schools needing improvement, not change, have ever resonated, then I humbly ask for your non-funds support, endorsement, and vote according to your civil privileges.

You have all the civil privileges of supporting, endorsing, and voting for me if you reside principally in Atlanta Board of Education District 2.  If you reside principally outside of District 2, you still have the civil privileges of supporting and endorsing me to those important to you but you cannot vote for me.

Because mainly, though not exclusively, at least one candidate funded by The City Fund’s local executive director is in the race for the District 2 Seat, and because big money is just itching for a fund-raising fight, I have committed to forgo soliciting and accepting campaign contributions.  The fund raising fight The City Fund and other big money are itching for won‘t be mine to give.

Really, just think what a blow it will be to big money when someone (me!) gets elected with no strings attached to big money’s purse strings or school privatization agenda!  Someone who has never been bought and sold, and won’t be, to put it bluntly!

Let’s do this!  Let’s “Turn around the turnaround so APS can start improving!”

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com
Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Leaks Reveal How Billionaires Shaped Hillary’s Education Agenda

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2019 //
117

Alternet published an expose of documents from Hillary’s 2016 campaign that reveal the names of the billionaires who shaped her education agenda. The documents were leaked by Wikileaks.

The education portion of the document runs 66 pages, mostly concentrated on K-12 policy, and captures specific input from billionaire donors looking to overhaul and privatize public education.

You will recognize the names: one is Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve.

One of the most connected “thought leaders” discussed is Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and the head of the Emerson Collective, a prominent education reform advocacy group. Powell Jobs who has been close with the Clintons since the late ’90s, also sat with Betsy DeVos on the board of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. She set up billionaire “roundtables” with Clinton’s campaign advisors through 2015 while donating millions to Priorities USA, Clinton’s main PAC.

Another is Bruce Reed, who had been Biden’s chief of staff but was then president of the Broad Foundation. Reed pointed to New Orleans as an amazing success story, where the public schools were replaced by charter schools, the union was crushed, and the teachers were fired and replaced mostly by TFA.

Notes taken by Clinton aide Ann O’Leary were made in interviews with Powell Jobs and Bruce Reed, President of The Broad Foundation (and former chief of staff to Joe Biden). According to the notes, the “experts” were calling for new federal controls, more for-profit companies and more technology in public schools — but first on the menu was a bold remake of the teaching “profession.”

(Ann O’Leary is now Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff in California.)

Imagine: The billionaires and policy wonks had prescriptions for remaking the teaching profession, even though none had ever been a teacher.

But they did more than talk. On June 20, 2015, O’Leary sent Podesta an email revealing the campaign adopted two of Powell Jobs’ suggestions, including “infusing best ideas from charter schools into our traditional public schools.” When Clinton announced this policy in a speech to teachers, however, it was the one line that drew boos.

“Donors want to hear where she stands” John Petry, a founder of both Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and Success Academy, New York’s largest network of charter schools, told the New York Times.  Petry was explicit, declaring that he and his billionaire associates would instead put money into congressional, state and local races, behind candidates who favored a “more businesslike approach” to education, and tying teacher tenure to standardized test scores.

Clinton’s advisors warned her that wealthy donors like Petry, Whitney Tilson, or Eli Broad could walk if she didn’t support charter schools. Broad would indeed threaten to withhold funding from Clinton when she criticized charter schools for excluding difficult students. John Podesta and Ann O’Leary would publicly correct Clinton, reaffirming her commitment to charters.

This is an article you must read in full. You might even want to read the underlying document to understand how fully the Democratic Party sold out to the billionaires who oppose public schools.

 

 

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

Tim Slekar Interviews Carol Burris about Charter Scandals

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2019 //
3

 

Carol Burris is one of the best-informed observers of the charter industry. Tim Slekar interviewed her on his podcast #BustED Pencils.

New #BustEDPencils Episode 85: Charter School Scandal with @Network4pubEd and @carolburris https://bustedpencils.com/episode/episode-85-charter-school-scandal/
 

Feature Interview:

The Network for Public Education’s Executive Director Carol Burris talks about the lack of “accountability” at the Federal Department of Education regarding charter school funding.  After publishing Asleep at the Wheel the charter school industry felt dissed.  So they complained.  So Carol went back to check NPE’s facts and found out the Charter industry might even be more than just Asleep at the Wheel.

This was such an awesome interview so I asked Carol if she might be interested in doing a semi-regular interview to keep  #BustEDPencils listeners informed about the scandalous world of charter schools.!  Guess what she said?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Privatization

Capital & Main: Who Gutted California’s Charter Reform Bill?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2019 //
20

 

Bill Raden of Capital & Main identifies the culprit who stripped charter reform bills of anything that offended the powerful charter lobby: Ann O’Leary, Governor Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff.

O’Leary previously served as senior education Advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and made sure that the candidate stuck to the charter industry script (for-profit bad, nonprofit good). She has a long Association with the Center for AMERICAN Progress, the DC think tank that still adheres to the failed ideas of Race to the Top, including charter advocacy.

And so a bold effort to roll back the legal protections for an unregulated industry that is ridden with scandal and corruption  is blocked by faux progressive Democratic insiders.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Democrats, Disruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

Tom Ultican: Is Reform of the Charter Law in California Still Possible?

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2019 //
5

 

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced math and physics in San Diego, is a dogged investigator. In this post, he traces the ongoing efforts to reform the weak charter law in California.

California has more charter schools than any other state, with more than 1,300. The original law capped the number at 100. Since then, the money of the California Charter Schools Association has blown away the cap as well as all previous efforts to regulate charters. Billionaire Reed Hastings served as chair of the state board and demolished the meager limits that existed.

In this huge state, the law allows a district to authorize a charter in another district hundredsof miles away and collect a commission for every student who enrolls. It allows charter applicants to appeal all the way to the state board and ignore the needs and wishes of the local district. The law assures that charter schools will have little or no oversight, since the state education department does not have the staff to oversee them.

The current law is an invitation to fraud, embezzlement, and corruption. This is not to say that all charters are run by corrupt individuals, but the constant revelation of financial scandals in the charter industry demonstrates the need for revision of the law to protect the public interest. Only a few weeks ago, eleven people in the charter industry were indicted for stealing more than $50 million.

Yet, as Ultican shows, the road to charter reform has been rocky. Governor Jerry Brown, whose leadership was admirable in many other ways, adamantly refused to rein in the charter industry. Governor Newsom is indebted to powerful families in the charter industry, and his chief of staff is a charterista.

Yet Ultican holds out hope that some actual reform might yet survive. Anything, he says, is better than the complete deregulation that has currently allows unscrupulous grifters to feast on the money intended to pay for education.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

Los Angeles: Board Member Shares Secret Information with Charter Lobbyists First

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2019 //
11

Jack Covey, a regular reader and contributor, posted the following comment about the latest revelation from blogger Michael Kohlhaas in Los Angeles. Kohlhaas (which may be a pseudonym) somehow gained access to a treasure trove of emails between the Green Dot charter chain and the California Charter Schools Association, as well as between these entities and public figures like school board members. He has published a small number of these emails, and he continues to drop them like bombs (think emails from Wikileaks). What we are learning from these data dumps (drip, drip, drip) is that certain school board members and public officials were more loyal to the charter industry than to the children and public schools of Los Angeles.

Covey writes:

Blogger and L.A. political gadfly Michael Kohlhaas shares confidential emails detailing how CCSA’s Cassy Horton was only one of two people who where provided with the text of (then-indicted-&-future-felon) LAUSD Board Member Ref Rodriguez’s LAUSD board resolution pertaining to charter school oversight, with Horton being provided that by none other than Ref himself.

http://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp/2019/07/12/in-march-2018-then-lausd-board-member-ref-rodriguez-shared-a-top-secret-confidential-copy-of-a-board-resolution-with-cassy-horton-of-the-california-charter-school-association-before-anyone-oth/#more-27507

Mind you, as detailed in Horton’s email, only two people were provided Ref’s board resolution:

Dr. Richard Vladovic, LAUSD Board Member
AND
Cassie Horton of CCSA (California Charter Schools Association lobbyist)

Not the five other board members

Not the LAUSD Charter Schools Division (CSD)

Not UTLA (Perish the thought!)

At this point, more private emails show that CCSA’s Cassie Horton then EXTENSIVELY RE-WROTE the board resolution so it would be more to CCSA’s / Horton’s liking, with Ref dutifully accepting and not challenging Horton’s extensive rewrite in any way. The rewrite, of course, gutted LAUSD’s ability to exercise oversight or properly regulate charter schools.

In essence, YOU HAVE DOCUMENTED PROOF (emails) showing a totally unelected charter school partisan and lobbyist effectively doing the work of, and exercising the effective power of an actual LAUSD Board Member … because one of those LAUSD Board Members, now-convicted-felon Ref Rodriguez was letting her to do.

Ref was basically Horton’s and the charter school industry’s cowardly (see parenthetical BELOW) ventriloquist mannequin.

(By the way, CCSA backer and Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings was, at the time, paying the full costs of Ref’s multi-million-dollar criminal defense lawyers, who ultimately got him what many consider was a sweet deal for pleading Guilty, but all of that probably didn’t influence Ref’s dealings with Ms. Horton in anyway. <—- SARCASM)

The mind boggles.

After Kohlhaas started tweeting about this, Horton jointed the Twitter thread, and incredibly tweeted that her doing all this was totally legal and proper:

(Hey, nothing wrong with Ref giving Horton a “heads up,” along with a request for Horton’s input? Right?)
https://twitter.com/Cassy_Horton/status/1145389749764419585
And no Kohlhaas blog article would be complete without a snarky cartoon one of the blog’s subjects:

(in this case, former LAUSD Board Member & convicted felon Ref Rodriguez)
http://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ref_rodriguez_ccsa_cartoon.png

Kohlhaas wrote:

KOHLHAAS: “And yeah, it’s true that Ref Rodriguez is long gone, is a convicted felon, and so on. He’s off the table. But none of the other players here are gone. And the system that allowed the CCSA and the baby-sacrificers in the charter industry it serves to insinuate themselves this deeply into what’s meant to be a democratically controlled system, that allowed them to insert their wholly-controlled puppets into power and then to pull their strings so that they dance to the tunes called by their zillionaire masters, that system outlived Ref Rodriguez and will, unless these privatizers are specifically defanged, will outlive all of us.”

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

Oakland Parent Jane Nylund Writes a Letter to Governor Gavin Newsom

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2019 //
10

Dear Governor Newsom:

It is with profound disappointment that I heard that your office was responsible for essentially gutting the main features of these charter reform bills. While I can only speculate on the reasoning for essentially caving to the charter industry (besides Ann O’Leary and the task force espousing all kinds of charter-friendly platitudes), I can say that as a California native, public school graduate (1983), advocate, and 16-year parent/volunteer (two sons in Oakland Unified), and now employee of Oakland Unified, I am well familiar with the education landscape in this state,  particularly the damage being done to schools in Oakland. I’m also familiar with what happens when districts don’t have local control over the schools for which they are responsible. You and I have something in common-we both attended well-resourced public high schools. You went to Redwood High School in Marin, and I attended Miramonte High School in Orinda, located in what is now one of the wealthiest suburbs in the East Bay. Lucky us. 

The irony regarding your potential alliance with privatization groups like CCSA is that, because of your severe dyslexia, you would have been rejected by the same schools that are now being touted as “high quality seats”, aggressively marketed as superior to real public schools because of test scores. According to the bio I read, you were rejected from a private prep school and enrolled in your local public high school instead. So you have first-hand experience with the idea that real public schools enroll all children, not just the easy ones. Charter schools aren’t interested in promoting their schools to children with learning disabilities such as yours, and consciously or unconsciously discourage SPED kids from applying. They don’t test well and they cost too much. Your own private-to-public school trajectory clearly illustrates how private schools select students. The same situation occurs when real public schools are allowed to be privatized into charter schools. These charters schools, because they are privately managed, are now able to choose and keep the students they want, not the other way around. Lotteries do not create equity. They only encourage more motivated families to self-select into the lottery. In many cases, SPED, ELL, and newcomer students need not apply. 
What is a good school anyway? I will bet Redwood High and Miramonte High were both good because of the usual reasons: wealthy families, well-resourced, free transportation (before Prop 13), experienced teachers, lots of enrichment like art and music, language classes, health care, and sports. Prop 13 had just been passed, so the facilities had not fallen into ruin yet. Later, when our sports and bus service were eliminated, my school (and probably yours, too) was able to rally the parents to pony up the cash for all the extras that had abruptly disappeared. Other schools weren’t so lucky.  Did that make them less “good”? No, it made them underfunded and unsupported, and it’s been that way ever since. 
I will speculate that you have no personal experience with any of the long-term damage done to school districts because of charter friendly laws in California, written by the very people who want public schools to go away. (Reed Hastings).  Because of this lack of real world experience in education, you therefore are relying on the advice of education reformers that aren’t as interested in improving outcomes for high-needs children as they are putting money in their pockets and/or heading up the next rung of the political ladder. 
Over the years, I’ve heard all kinds of excuses why charter schools deserve more protection, more appeals, and more expansion. For the uninitiated, there seems to be an underlying assumption that charters are of higher quality (“high quality seats” is a marketing term thrown around a lot for charters schools that JUST opened), that they perform better than the neighborhood schools, and therefore deserve up to three chances for authorization or renewal.

In the past, the charter-friendly state board made it nearly impossible for any local control to happen, which is wrong but also purposeful. Our own traditional district schools are not given the same opportunity to appeal their closures, and they are simply closed for any reason, without any more due process. There is this pervasive idea that maybe a “good” charter will fall through the cracks somehow, and therefore must be given another chance. But, in this case a good district school is not given the same opportunity. So, by this definition, district schools and charter schools, in order to be on equal footing, both would deserve the same appeals process. Otherwise, this charter appeals process automatically games charter expansion by rubber stamping any appeal to the county or the state board. We’ve seen this happen over and over and it needs to end. The CCSA’s agenda is unfettered charter expansion and privatization of our public schools. Do not allow them to use their power and billionaire influence to gut AB1505 and AB1507. Reed Hastings and Eli Broad have dictated their privatization agenda and charter expansion for far too long, and the local community deserves to take back control of its own schools, regardless of which type their students attend.
 I’d like to discuss a few characteristics of the current charter school landscape and debunk a few myths that your advisers, like Ann O’Leary and the charter-friendly task force appear to be selling to either curry favor with the charter industry or to curry political favor with Latino families, many of which have been sold on the promise of “quality” charter schools. 

Myth-a school is “good” because it has high test scores
Reality-test scores don’t measure anything and are essentially used in our district and others to weaponize school closure. There is no agreed upon measure for learning. Test scores correlate with wealth. Therefore, a high-testing school is often labeled “good” because it is well-resourced and well-funded with a rich curriculum and supports. What else is new? Charters can also manipulate test scores by keeping out low-testing populations, and high student attrition that concentrates better test takers at these schools.  They also favor a lot of test prep, which is not authentic learning and is a strategy that would never be tolerated or accepted at the kind of wealthy public schools we attended.
Myth-charters perform better than neighborhood schools based on test scores
Reality-the population of the neighborhood district school is often far different than the charter school. In Oakland, most district schools support far more SPED students, and other high-needs groups like ELL and newcomers.  Often, the poverty levels can be significantly different. Motivated families that are willing to even enter a lottery often attract a student population that test better. The populations between these two groups aren’t the same and therefore one can’t make any sort of statistical inference as to whether one school is better than the other based on test scores. Because population differences usually skew test scores in favor of the charter, these schools often discourage certain students to apply, or encourage certain students to leave. And don’t kid yourself if you think this doesn’t happen. 
Myth-charters do more with less
Reality-charters do less with less. As a privately managed business, they operate on revenues and expenses. Charters keep expenses low by hiring inexperienced TFA teachers and churning them constantly. They generally offer fewer supports, such as afterschool programs, transportation, or meals. They may not provide a rich curriculum that a lot of us had before Prop 13: art, music, sports, clubs, nurses, counselors, etc.  Charters don’t want to pay for these “extras”, but they are essential to a quality education. This business model can’t supply a high-quality product to all, and was never designed for that. Charters are a privately managed business that first and foremost have to offer an acceptable ROI to their investors. These investors are the real customers, not the students.
Myth-there is so much demand for charters, they must be doing something fantastic and amazing
Reality-Oakland has become a target for privatization because of its urban setting, combined with its valuable real estate. If opening charters was all about the kids, then there would be several in surrounding areas like Hayward and San Leandro, with similar student populations. Hayward, with a population of around 25K students, has 4 charters. San Francisco, with a population of 60K has 18 charters. Oakland, with a total student population of 50K has 46 charters. It is simply a business saturation model that has nothing to do with “quality” and everything to do with disruption and school closure. Twenty years ago, many parents in Oakland were thrown a lifeline called a charter school. Fast forward, and the model now isn’t much different than saturating the poor neighborhoods with cheap fast food. I heard an East Oakland resident say, in a public meeting, that charter schools were like having drug dealers on every corner. 
How to create demand? The current strategy is as follows: close your neighborhood elementary schools, which then feed into the middle schools (demand dries up there as well). Then, open a charter right near these same schools. Out of the last 18 school closures in Oakland, 14 were converted to charters. Doesn’t take a genius to see how that will turn out. Ask the students at Roots International how they feel about their neighborhood school closure. But our charter-friendly ($$$) school board fully supports this portfolio model; there are charters right around the corner that former Roots students can attend instead. Instant charter demand creation.
Myth-there are so many students on waitlists that charters must be allowed to expand
Reality-giant wait lists are created when students are allowed to apply to multiple schools. A pool of 100 students can create demand for 500 seats if each one applies to 5 different schools. Each of those schools then puts the student on a waitlist. But the student only attends one school. The rest of the seats on the waitlist are phantoms once the student enrolls. But they remain and are presented as proof of demand, when that proof is only an illusion.
Myth-It’s the charter parents vs. the teachers’ union
Reality-that language is purposeful. It is used by CCSA and its billionaire allies to pit these groups against each other, and it’s working. News flash-it’s the billionaires vs. the rest of us that want and deserve good neighborhood schools that aren’t defined by a piece of paper with test scores on it. Parents and students from all walks of life deserve the same clean, well-resourced schools that you and I attended. Any rhetoric spouted by Reed Hastings (school board hater extraordinaire) and Eli Broad, along with the Koch Brothers and the Waltons about charters being a civil rights issue would make Martin Luther King turn in his grave. There are no civil rights to be had when your school doesn’t support your child’s unique academic needs (like dyslexia), doesn’t provide programs or wraparound services, doesn’t provide food, transportation or a playground, no arts programs, no sports, doesn’t support SPED, sticks your child in front of a computer all day, and test preps them to death. And if your child is suspended or expelled, there is no due process. Nothing you can do about it. Parents are voiceless and that’s what these billionaires want. 
 Our school district loses $57M a year to unfettered charter expansion. It’s time to get back to some no-nonsense approaches to this problem such as real local control, as well as including impact to district finances. Charter schools don’t have the right to expand just because it’s what the Waltons and Reed Hastings want. This failed experiment on our most vulnerable children must end, and your office needs to reevaluate the amendments of AB1505 and AB1507 and ask yourself who really benefits from those amended bills.  It is obvious that these bills were gutted to satisfy your charter friends and allies, which an insult to all hardworking teachers and public school parents who have seen firsthand what kind of devastation this education model has caused over the years.
As these bills wind their way through the legislature, keep in mind how different your life might have been if you had attended a “good” charter school and been rejected (“You have dyslexia, so this school isn’t right for you”). Your entire life, career, and political aspirations might have been completely sabotaged if you had not had that well-resourced, authentic public school to fall back on. And remember what it was that made it a quality school. And remember that it’s a school model that all kids deserve, not just those in Orinda or Marin. Thanks for listening.
Jane Nylund
Oakland, California
Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

D.C.: Famed Philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein Endorses Charter School Dominance In D.C.

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2019 //
48

 

To understand the charter industry, you must appreciate that it is driven by extremely wealthy people and has no grassroots. It has mastered the arts of marketing and branding, but does not have a plan to improve education other than to draw students and resources away from public education, which belongs to all of us.

People often ask me, “Why do the super-rich cluster to the cause of privatization?” The Answer is not simple because many different motives are at work. Some see giving to charters as a charitable endeavor, and their friends assure them that they are “giving back,” helping poor children escape poverty. Others want to impress their friends in their social strata, their colleagues in the world of high finance. Being a supporter of charter schools is like belonging to the right clubs, going to the right parties, sharing a cause with other very rich people.

Perhaps infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein fits into the last category. Perhaps he fits into all those categories.  He is a man who grew up in modest circumstances in Brooklyn, attended public schools, and owed his start in life to the New York City public schools.

But once he achieved wealth and could call himself a “philanthropist,” he realized that choosing the right causes was important as a way of burnishing his image, showing that he was running with the In Crowd.

So, of course, he announced that he supported charter schools, not the public schools to which he owed a debt for launching him in life.

In 2013, his foundation issued a press release announcing that he looked forward to the dominance of charter schools in Washington, D.C. and predicted that they would succeed because they were unregulated. That, in a sense, was his own secret: he succeeded because he was unregulated, neither his appetites nor his activities were regulated. Supporting charter schools showed that he moved in the circles of the DFER elites, the hedge fund kings. No longer was he the boy from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn; he was a philanthropist encouraging the growth of school privatization, not just as competition but as a replacement for public schools.

Now that he has been indicted yet again, this time in New York, for his crimes against young girls, it is interesting to read his fulsome self-praise for investing in the charter industry.

This press release was issued by the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation:

NEW YORK, Feb. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — For the first time, more students in Washington DCenrolled into charter schools than public schools. Last year, charters had an 11% increase in student enrollment, while public schools had a 1% increase. Mayor Vince Gray noted that the nation’s capital is only a few years away from being evenly split between the two school systems.

The shift was welcomed by financier and well-known education philanthropist, Jeffrey Epstein and his foundation, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. Jeffrey Epstein founded the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University with a $30 million dollar grant in 2003 and has since expanded his support into early development, Head Start and charter school programs across the nation, including Washington DC.

Some of the charter schools that the Jeffrey Epstein has supported include, Harlem Link Charter School, the Maya Angelou Schools in DC and the Bard High School Early College in New York. “Charter Schools have the freedom to self-regulate. It’s a critical component of their success. They also reduce the burden on the public school system,” Jeffrey Epstein asserted.

In fact, last year, the DC Schools Chancellor, Kaya Henderson, decided to close fifteen public schools due to the shift to charters.

Despite this growth, there is concern about the number of charter schools that close every year. According to The Center for Education Reform, 15% of charters close every year. However Jeanne Allen, President of the Center for Education Reform explained that unlike the public school system, this closure rate reflects a healthy level of accountability. Today 41 states have charter school laws and audit requirements. 52% of charter schools are also now authorized by school districts and 48% independently.

“We need to enhance state standards of excellence,” Jeffrey Epstein noted. “But it’s essential that these laws are just that, standards, and not management policies.”

Jeffrey Epstein is a trustee of the Institute for International Education, a former board member of Rockefeller University, the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, New York Academy of Science and sits on the board of the Mind, Brain and Behavior committee at Harvard.

SOURCE www.jeffreyepsteineducation.com

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization
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