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

Peter Greene: Charter Schools and the Elephant in the Room

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2019 //
70

Peter Greene points out in this post that legislatures have a nasty habit of overlooking the central question about charter schools: their funding.

They pretend that they can run two publicly funded school systems without any additional cost.

They pretend that the funding for charters is not subtracted from the funding for public schools.

Public schools are getting hammered by the loss of public tax dollars that have been diverted from public school finances into charter and choice school accounts. Charters, having forgotten the era when they bragged that they could do more with less, complain that they are underfunded compared to public schools.

The problem here, as with several other choice-related issues, is in a false premise of modern school choice movement. That false premise is the assertion that we can fund multiple school districts for the same money we used to use to fund one single public system.

This is transparent baloney. When was the last time any school district said, “We are really strapped for funds. We had better open some new schools right away!” Never. Because everyone understands that operating multiple facilities with multiple staffs and multiple administrations and multiple overhead expenses– all that costs more than putting your operation under one roof.

But the choice pitch has always been some version of, “Your community can have twelve different schools with twelve different flavors of education in twelve different buildings with twelve different staffs– and it won’t cost you a nickel more than what you’re paying now!” This is carnival barker talk, the same kind of huckster pitch as “Why buy that used Kia? I’ll sell you a brand new Mercedes for the same price!”

Adding charters and choice increases educational costs in a community. Sometimes we’ve hid that by bringing in money from outside sources, like PTA bake sales to buy a public school office equipment, or pricey benefit dinners for charters, or increasing state and federal subsidies to help charters stay afloat.

But mostly school choice is the daylight savings time of education– if we just shuffle this money around in new and different ways, somehow there will be more of it.

This trick never works. And we talk all too rarely about why it never will.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Hoax, Privatization

Tom Ultican: Five Decades of Failed “MarketWorld”

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2019 //
10

Tom Ultican has written many posts about the failure of privatizing public education. In this one, he takes the long view and concludes that what we see today is the culmination of fifty years of attempts to turn education into a business. 

He starts from two recent books: Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains and Anand Giridharadas’ Winners Take All.

These are good lens through which to understand the rightwing plutocratic attack on the public sector.

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

Why I Do Not Support Mayor Pete

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2019 //
228

There are many reasons why I would like to support Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He’s young, he is well-educated, he is smart, he has an admirable record of service to his country, he’s brimming with ideas. I find him very attractive on many levels.

But on education, he is a stealth corporate reformer.

I had an inkling of this when I read a review of his autobiography, which described his formative years at McKinsey and his data-driven, technocratic approach to solving problems. But I didn’t reach a judgment.

Then I learned more when a friend sent me an invitation to a fundraiser for Mayor Pete, hosted by Reed Hastings. Hastings is the billionaire founder of Netflix who is a charter school zealot. He served on the California State Board of Education where he used his influence to minimize any regulation of charters. Since then, he has given many millions to charters as well as to the charter lobby, The California Charter Schools Association. He created a fund of $100 million to promote privatization of public schools by charter expansion. Hastings has said he looks forward to the day when all schools are run by corporations, not elected school boards.

I tweeted the invitation and it got a lot of attention. Carol Burris heard from Pete’s National Political Director, Stephen Brokaw. He wanted to correct any misperception we at the Network for Public Education had about where Mayor Pete stands on education. He is against vouchers. He is against for-profit charters. He (or his team) visited Roxbury Prep in Massachusetts and was very impressed with their high test scores. Brokaw cited Roxbury Prep as the kind of nonprofit charter that offered lessons to public schools.

Carol responded that the issue is not whether charters are for-profit or nonprofit because many nonprofits are run by for-profit organizations. Only one state in the nation—Arizona—allows for-profit charters.  In Michigan, for example, for-profit charters are prohibited but 80% of the state’s charters are managed by for-profit companies. She also pointed out that Roxbury Prep has very high suspension rates, the highest in the state, and the state has repeatedly admonished Roxbury Prep.

Carol suggested that he speak to me. Brokaw then invited me to have a conversation with Sonal Shah, who is National Policy Director, and Sally Mayes, who is “helping” the campaign on education. Shah, I learned later, is amazingly accomplished, but I saw to my dismay that part of her commitment to innovation was to “incubate” Teach for India. In the past, I have been contacted by union teachers in India who complained about Teach for India, echoing the complaints often expressed here about TFA. Wendy Kopp created both TFA AND the international “Teach for All,” which includes Teach for India.

We three spoke last week. It was a frustrating conversation because we were at opposite poles. We disagreed about whether charters are effective, whether they are sufficiently regulated, whether they need more oversight. We disagreed about the value of annual testing. I said that no high-performing nation has annual testing for every child in grades 3-8 as we do. They said I was wrong and cited Japan and South Korea. I corrected them and said those nations have periodic testing, not annual testing. I asked whether their candidate wanted to appeal to the 6% who send their children to charters or the 90% who don’t. I did not get an answer.

I subsequently learned from LinkedIn that Sally Mayes is senior director of Teach for America’s Leadership for Educational Equity, where she has worked for six years. Its board consists of two billionaires—Emma Bloomberg and Arthur Rock (who subsidizes TFA interns who work for Members of Congress) and someone from McKinsey.

I had subsequent emails with Sonal Shah, who is an economist at Georgetown University and who previously worked at Google, Goldman Sachs, and directed the Obama administration’s Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the White House. She told me that the campaign has reached out to consult with John King, Jim Shelton, and Randi Weingarten.

John King succeeded Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. King was previously the founder of the no-excuses Roxbury Prep. Then he was Commissioner of Education in New York, where his fierce advocacy for Common Core and testing outraged parents and helped to create the opt-out movement.

James Shelton had a leadership role at the Gates Foundation, worked for Arne Duncan in charge of innovation grants for Race to the Top, then ran the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Mayor Pete may have many things going for him, but his education agenda is not one of them. If he were President, he would continue the failed Bush-Obama agenda.

If he runs against Trump, I will of course support him and vote for him. I will vote for anyone who wins the Democratic nomination.

But not in the primaries.

I am willing to change course if Mayor Pete makes clear that he supports fully public schools that are accountable to an elected school board and that he would eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, created by the Clinton administration in 1994 and funded with $6 million to help jumpstart new charters; that program has grown into a $440 million slush fund for corporate charter chains, which is far from its original purpose. There is a long time from now until the primaries and I will keep an open mind.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Reform

Mercedes Schneider: The Meteoric Rise of a TFA Alum in Charter World

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2019 //
11

 

Mercedes Schneider posted a review of the meteoric rise of a young alumna of TFA. 

West Virginia Public Radio asked this young woman for her opinion of the new charter law in that state. She sharply criticized West Virginia for letting districts act as authorizers, which goes against charter school gospel that the best laws have multiple authorizers that compete to open multiple charter schools.

I read the interview, saw her picture, and I swear I thought she was 14 years old. Maybe 21, since she was a college graduate.

She is now “director for state advocacy and policy with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.”

What was her relevant experience?

She worked for Michelle Rhee in D.C. as a “program manager,” whatever that is.

She was education policy director for Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, then executive director of the Alabama Coalition for Public Charter Schools. (Bentley, a very far-right Republican, resigned in 2017 because of a sex scandal.)

How many “public” charter schools are there in Alabama? Two.

Reformworld offers great career opportunities for ambitious young people. You can achieve very little, then be asked to opine on public radio about important state legislation that was designed to harm public schools.

Schneider writes:

Alabama’s charter school law allows for multiple authorizers, as NSFA notes on its “start a school –> process” page:

Groups applying to open a charter school in a district that has registered as an authorizer must first apply to the district. Should the district deny the application, applicants can appeal to the Alabama Public Charter School Commission (APCSC). The decision of the APCSC is final. Groups applying to open in a district that has not registered as an authorizer must apply directly to the APCSC.

So then, why only two charter schools in four years? Isn’t market-based reform about quantifiable results?

Why would WV pro-school-choice legislators seek advice from someone whose AL charter school policy advocacy resulted in a scant two schools in four years?

Why, indeed.

Schultz has an impressive title: director for state advocacy and policy for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

No reason to check for the substance behind it.

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

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
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »