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The Resistance Is Winning! Democrats Abandon Charter Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2019 //
56

The biggest battle in the fight against privatization has been to persuade the Democratic Party that it had been hoaxed by Republicans into adopting the Republican agenda. According to this article in The Washington Post, Democratic support for charter schools has evaporated, at least among the candidates.

The title of the article is “Democrats abandon charter schools as ‘reform’ agenda falls from favor.” No one has more egg on their faces than the editorial board of the Washington Post, which loves charter schools and defends them at every turn.

Until 1993, Democrats supported equity and federal funding for public schools, while Republicans supported choice, testing, competition, and accountability.

Then Bill Clinton embraced charter schools, testing, standards, and accountability. Then came NCLB and it was endorsed by Ted Kennedy and the entire Democratic Party.

Then the Obama Race to the Top gave total support to the Bush NCLB approach of charters, testing, and harsh accountability, and Arne Duncan spent seven years parroting the Republican line that the best way to improve schools was to get tough on teachers, make tests harder, and open more charter schools.

According to the Washington Post, the Democratic love affair with charters is over. 

The steady drumbeat of scandals and the vivid advocacy of Betsy DeVos have killed the Democrats’ charter love. 

Suddenly, the Democratic candidates for president  seem to have realized that school choice is a Republican issue. Supporting the public schools that nearly 90% of all students attend is a Democratic issue.

This is awkward for Democrats like Governor Jared Polis of Governor and Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, all fans of charters.

Democrats have long backed charter schools as a politically safe way to give kids at low-performing schools more options. Many supported merit pay for the best teachers and holding schools accountable for test scores.

The presidential contest is proof that’s no longer the case.

If the candidates say anything about charter schools, it’s negative. Education initiatives boosted by the Bush and Obama administrations are nowhere to be found in candidate platforms.

Instead, the Democratic candidates are pitching billions of dollars in new federal spending for schools and higher pay for teachers, with few of the strings attached that marked the Obama-era approach to education.

It adds up to a sea change in Democratic thinking on education, back to a more traditional Democratic approach emphasizing funding for education and support for teachers and local schools. Mostly gone is the assumption that teachers and schools are not doing enough to serve low-performing children and that government must tighten requirements and impose consequences if results do not improve.

As a senator, Joe Biden said private school vouchers might help improve public schools. As vice president, he was atop an administration that made support for charter schools a requirement to access federal grant funding. But when asked about charters — privately run, publicly funded schools — during a recent forum with the American Federation of Teachers, Biden sounded a negative note.

“The bottom line is it siphons off money for our public schools, which are already in enough trouble,” he said….

Bernie Sanders thus far is the only candidate to call for an end to federal funding of charter schools. The safe position for Democrats is to oppose “for-profit” charters, while ignoring the fact that many “nonprofit charters” are operated by for-profit management corporations.

The story continues:

It’s an unsettling development for advocates of the structural changes that have fallen out of favor, and a sharp turn from where many Democrats were just a few years ago. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had pushed a bipartisan drive for accountability, and charter schools were the answer for Democrats who opposed private school vouchers but wanted to offer other options to children — often children of color from low-income families — assigned to low-performing schools. They were important to some civil rights leaders and became a central plank in the drive for school accountability….

The American Federation of Teachers has been hosting candidate forums throughout the country, inviting contenders to spend a day with teachers and then answering questions town hall-style.

At the town hall with Biden last month, AFT President Randi Weingarten was so warm and complimentary that it left some with the impression she was laying the groundwork for an endorsement.

“Vice President Joe Biden was our north star in the last administration,” she said. “We didn’t always get along with the Obama administration positions on education, but we had a go-to guy who always listened to us.” She added: “He’s with us because he is us.”

During the Obama administration, the National Education Association was so angry it called forEducation Secretary Arne Duncan to resign, and the other big teachers union, the AFT, came close…

The shift underway has Democrats who support charter schools and related policies nervous. Democrats for Education Reform is circulating results of a poll that show support for charter schools is higher among African American Democrats than whites. But overall, the poll found just 37 percent of Democratic primary voters have a favorable view of charters.

Some like-minded Democrats are working on something they call the Kids New Deal, hoping to find a candidate to support it. The centerpiece of the proposal is to make children a “protected class” under the law, which would make it easier for them to file lawsuits challenging, for instance, tenure for teachers, on the grounds that it hurts children.

“The goal here is to outflank the teachers unions from the left and not from the right,” said Ben Austin, a longtime education restructuring advocate.

DFER is the hedge fund managers group created to persuade Democrats to act like Republicans and support privatization. It offered big money for candidates who swallowed their line. DFER was condemned by the state Democratic Party in both California and Colorado as a front for Wall Street and corporate interests.

 Ben Austin is one of California’s most aggressive charter school proponents, having run the faux Parent Revolution, whose goal was to convert public schools to charter schools. He spent millions of dollars from Gates, Waltons, and other billionaires, but converted only one or two public schools. If he is behind the “Kids New Deal,”’it is probably another billionaire-funded privatization vehicle.

The great news in this article is that those who have warned Democrats to return to their roots and stop acting like Republicans have won the debate.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Republicans, Scandals, School Choice, Testing

My List of Books for Summer Reading

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2019 //
23

In no particular order.

These are books I enjoyed and learned from.

Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

Rucker Johnson, Children of the Dream: Why Integration Works

Noliwe Rooks, Cutting School:  Privatization,  Segregation, and the End of Public Education
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America 
Gordon Lafer, The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time
Nancy McLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Daniel Koretz, The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better
Yong Zhao, What Works May Hurt—Side Effects in Education
Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle, Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive
Eve Ewing, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side
Sent from my iPad
Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, History, Privatization, Racism, Segregation

Maurice Cunningham: When “Parent Groups” Are Funded by the Walton Billionaires

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2019 //
12

 

In my new book, Slaying Goliath, I focus on heroes of the Resistance. One of them is Professor Maurice Cunningham of the University of Massachusetts. He is a professor of politics and a blogger who believes in “follow the money.” His relentless pursuit of Dark Money in the Massachusetts charter referendum of 2016 (where voters overwhelmingly rejected charter expansion) led to the demise of the billionaire-funded front group called “Families for Excellent Schools.” It so happened that the “families” were billionaires who never set foot in a public school and never will.

In this post, Cunningham describes his fruitless effort to get a media outlet to acknowledge that the “parent group” it featured was Walton-funded.

Back on June 10 Masslive.com ran an editorial titled Meet the Newest Education Union: Parents which turned out not to be about education or unions at all but about the WalMart-heir front Massachusetts Parents United of Arkansas.  Helpful as always I sent an op-ed to Masslive setting the record straight but they paid no attention. Oh well. You can read the op-ed below.

It surprises me how little most media care about writing the basic facts about corporate “education reform” groups like MPU of AK, which would be non-existent without the millions of dollars poured in by the Waltons. The editorial board can take any position on issues they wish but it doesn’t excuse them from not informing their readers about who is funding and thus controlling the privatization fronts. Are they just not curious? I can’t imagine the motto “We don’t ask too many questions” would look good on the masthead. Is “follow the money” an elective in journalism school that got axed due to budget cuts?  Is it not news that state education policy is being hijacked by family of billionaires? Is it still not news that the billionaires are from Arkansas?

If you’re from western Massachusetts, ask Masslive yourself, and feel free to pass along my Letter to Massachusetts Education Reporters which has six reasons why reporters should report on who is behind front groups with tantalizing names like Massachusetts Parents United, Educators for Excellence, and Democrats for Education Reform.

Cunningham says “Dark Money never sleeps.”

Any Group funded by the Waltons or other billionaires is by definition “inauthentic.”

Cunningham hates hypocrisy.

So do I.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Hypocrisy, Massachusetts, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Karen Francisco: Indiana’s School Choice Frauds

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2019 //
2

 

Karen Francisco, editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, is a great defender of democracy, honesty, and public schools. She is a keen observer of the school choice hustle in Indiana, where grifters and entrepreneurs are welcome to rip off the public. Thanks, Former Governor’s Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence, and compliant legislators.

In this editorial, she explains how charter schools and voucher schools evade accountability. One neat gimmick is to change the name of a failing choice School, and the clock gets reset. Presto, Change-O.

She begins:

When Horizon Christian Academy produced some of the lowest standardized test scores in the state in 2015, a spokeswoman for the Institute for Quality Education defended the Fort Wayne school’s poor performance by claiming accountability for Indiana voucher schools is greater than for public schools.

“Traditional public schools as well as public charter schools can receive an F for four consecutive years before the state can intervene,” Erin Sweitzer told The Journal Gazette. “Private voucher schools, however, are required to stop accepting new voucher students after two consecutive years of receiving a D or F.”

What Sweitzer and other voucher proponents don’t acknowledge is the accountability loophole that allows charter and voucher school operators to walk away from a failing school and open shop under a different name – with barely an interruption in the generous flow of state tax dollars. After a D grade in 2015-16, Horizon Christian Academy went on to receive an F for each of the next two academic years. The state prohibited the school from accepting new voucher students last year, but paid $880,000 in vouchers for returning students. That’s on top of the $11.4 million Horizon’s three schools have collected since the taxpayer-funded voucher program began in 2011.

Now, the school’s co-founder has left Horizon and is preparing to open a new faith-based school, Abraham Preparatory Academy.

Tammy G. Henline told The Journal Gazette’s Ashley Sloboda that the school, at Statewood Baptist Church, is planning a “large, public registration soon.” WFFT-TV reported the school will “rely heavily on a virtual curriculum” and is seeking state accreditation, which would make it eligible to receive vouchers.

If the Indiana State Board of Education approves accreditation, it will deliver Exhibit A in the accountability charade supported by voucher proponents.

In the name of parent choice, they ignore policies that allowed the failing Imagine public charter school to reopen as Horizon Christian Academy and for unlicensed educators to earn six-figure salaries overseeing D- and F-rated schools.

Apparently the voters in Indiana don’t care about how taxpayer dollars are wasted.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Indiana, Privatization, Vouchers

Civil Rights Leader Jitu Brown Speaks Out Against Privatization by Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2019 //
6

 

Jitu Brown is leader of the Journey for Justice and a national civil rights leader.

In this interview, he explains why he opposes school closings, charter schools, and vouchers, which have been disproportionately imposed on communities of color.

Don’t believe the claims by corporate reformers that black and brown parents want privately managed charters where they have no voice. They want well-funded public schools with experienced teachers and a full array of programs and services, where their voice matters.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

ProPublica: How Teach for America Became An Arm of the Charter School Movement

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2019 //
20

 

ProPublica reports on its investigation of the funding and mission of Teach for America, in which it discovered that TFA is an arm of the charter movement, which aims to replace public schools with non-union private charter school.

This is an eye-popping article, an exemplar of investigative reporting.

It begins:

When the Walton Family Foundation announced in 2013 that it was donating $20 million to Teach For America to recruit and train nearly 4,000 teachers for low-income schools, its press release did not reveal the unusual terms for the grant.

Documents obtained by ProPublica show that the foundation, a staunch supporter of school choice and Teach For America’s largest private funder, was paying $4,000 for every teacher placed in a traditional public school — and $6,000 for every one placed in a charter school. The two-year grantwas directed at nine cities where charter schools were sprouting up, including New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles.

Here are some things you will see documented in this article.

TFA is one of the richest nonprofits in the nation.

TFA has received huge gifts from the anti-union, anti-public school Walton Family Foundation.

TFA supplies a large supply of teachers for non-union charter schools.

TFA has used its resources to help its alumni attain positions of power, as state and local superintendents and as state and local school board members, where they advocate for charter schools and TFA. In Colorado, a TFA alum Michael Johnston is running for U.S. Senate and has received huge campaign contributions from allies of TFA and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform).

Read the article to understand the nexus of power that ties TFA to the Waltons and the privatization movement.

To understand how deeply connected TFA is to rightwing politics, note that a member of its national board of trustees is former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who promoted the DeVos agenda of charters and vouchers while in office. Haslam is a billionaire.

The two outside members of the board of TFA’s political arm, Leadership for Educational Equity (sic) are billionaires Emma Bloomberg and Arthur Rock.

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

Mercedes Schneider: Bill Gates Has Been Spending Millions to Buy Influence for Years

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2019 //
43

 

Mercedes Schneider was a little surprised that Bill Gates is setting up a lobbying organization. Why should he? He has been shelling out millions to buy Influence with state and federal policy makers for years.

She writes:

Whereas the idea of Gates paying individuals to lobby to alter policy in line with his billionaire preferences, the public should realize that Gates already has an oversized influence on legislators and other elected and appointed officials.

For example, from 2002 to 2018, the Gates Foundation has paid the National Governors Association (NGA) $33.2M for Gates-approved initiatives, mostly affecting K12 education.

Shall we pretend that Gates’ steadily funding an association of state governors to promote Gates goals does not sway these governors? I think not.

From 2002 to 2018, Gates has also paid $122M to the state education superintendent organization, Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on his K12 education preferences.

Both NGA and CCSSO were key organizations in promoting Common Core (see here and here, for example). Common Core is a Gates pet; he has been shelling out his billionaire bucks on it for years, even trying to tie it to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Gates has even paid grants to the US Department of Education: $858M (2013 – 2016). Wrap your mind around that one.

But there’s more.

From 2013 to 2016, Gates paid $1.8M to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The largest grant ($1.2M in 2015) was “to support education of state policymakers.”

In 2009, Gates stood before them and, as National Conference for State Legislatures “co-chair,” he told them what he wanted, as excerpted below from my March 20, 2014 post, which also references my March 17, 2014, post about Gates dining with 80 senators:

On March 13, 2014, Bill Gates had dinner with 80 senators and other elected officials. Given his keynote the following day to members of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), make no mistake that Gates used his time with the senators and other officials to push the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

However, Gates is more than CCSS. Gates is the entire spectrum of reforms, and he is more than willing to use his influence to promote his opinion of educational reform to those supposedly elected By the People.

The following text is an excerpt from Gates’ 2009, speech to the National Council of State Legislatures, which“co-chair” Gates offered as part of his complete speech on so-called education reform.

The entire speech is worth a sobering read.

Mercedes links to the Gates’ speech and quotes it.

Please open the link and read what he said in 2009.

Ten years later we know that every Gates Initiative in education has failed.

Testing, measuring teachers by test scores, closing public schools and replacing them with charters, Common Core, data-driven everything.

Do you think he knows it?

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Testing

Valerie Jablow: D.C. Chancellor Ferebee is Cutting the Budgets of Public Schools While Shifting Funds to New Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2019 //
7

Valerie Jablow, parent activist and blogger in D.C., wrote a scathing indictment of the leadership of the District of Columbia Public Schools.

She is sure that the districts leaders are actively undermining public schools–a policy of benign neglect– and promoting charter expansion.

A few weeks ago, the D.C. Public Charter School Board [sic] approved five new charter schools, despite the large number of empty seats in both public and private charter schools.  Only one of the new charters will locate in Anacostia, the city’s highest poverty district.

Many of the public schools enrolling students with high needs are suffering devastating budget cuts. At the same time, the Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn testified that the city was “over investing” in these same schools. She notes that the Deputy Mayor sends his own child to an expensive private school where it is just fine to “overinvest” in education.

Chancellor Lewis Ferebee was hired away from Indianapolis, where he was actively collaborating with those who supported the privatization of public education. Now he oversees the harsh budget cuts inflicted on D.C.’s public schools, while declaring that more seats are needed for charter schools. Conditions are so bad in many of the district’s public schools that students are literally being pushed out of public schools and forced to seek “choices” other than their neighborhood public schools.

Chancellor Ferebee is a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, which actively promotes vouchers, charter schools, and high-stakes testing.

And here is a voice in the D.C. wilderness, a teacher and Vice Chair of the Ward 7 Education Council, calling for a moratorium on charters in D.C., because they open and close at will and have no allegiance to their community, nor do they fill any need. Venola M. Rolle wrote in a letter to the Washington Post:

Stories regarding sudden closures and substandard performance justify a moratorium on establishing charter schools in this city. I do not know what information could be more damning. It’s time to have an open discussion about how to cease the proliferation of charter schools in the city and, instead, devise approaches to strengthening the schools we already have and that are the anchors of our communities.

With the current leadership of D.C., its mayor, its deputy mayor for education, and its chancellor, that discussion is not likely to happen.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Indianapolis, Privatization

Tom Ultican on the Privatizers’ Efforts to Sabotage Reform of the Charter Law in California

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2019 //
8

 

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics, has become a scholar of the privatization movement.

in this post, he reviews the efforts of the charter lobby to undermine the effort to reform the egregiously defective charter law in California.

At times like this, you need a scorecard to keep track of the multitudinous organizations created by the billionaires who want to replace public schools with charter schools.

Ultican is one of the few people able to sort out the charter menagerie.

The Waltons, Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and assorted billionaires think they can create the illusion of popular support by spinning off more and more AstroTurf groups that have no connection to parents or teachers. Just money. Their ruse is failing. Betsy DeVos must be enjoying the charade.

Congratulations to Superintendent Tony Thurmond for getting a reasonable set of recommendations for charter law reform from a deeply divided task force.

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

Los Angeles Times: What Tony Thurmond’s Charter School Task Force Recommended

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2019 //
17

A few months ago, Governor Gavin Newsom and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond appointed a task force to make recommendations to the State Legislature about the needed reforms of the state charter law. Of the 11 people on the Task Force, several had ties to the charter industry, two work for the California Charter Schools Association, and others are employed by charter schools. I had my doubts. But Superintendent Thurmond read my posts and called me to say, don’t judge me until you see what happens.

When the report was released, it was clear that a majority voted for important reforms of the charter law, while the charter advocates fought against, for example, allowing districts to take into account the fiscal impact of new charters on existing public schools. This was their way of saying, “let us drive public schools into fiscal crisis.” The Task Force did not agree.

Twenty percent of students in LA attend charters. At least 80% of LA charters have vacancies, contrary to phony claims about “long waiting lists.” The UTLA commissioned an audit which concluded that public schools lose $600 million every year to charters.

Howard Blume explained the recommendations of the Task Force report in the Los Angeles Times.

 

Blume writes:

When Los Angeles teachers went on strike in January, a major issue was charter schools: Union leaders talked about halting the growth of these privately operated campuses and exerting more local control over where and how these schools operate.

California took a step in that direction last week with the release of a much-awaited report by a task force set up in the wake of the six-day walkout.

The report supports new restrictions on charters and is expected to shape statewide policy.

One of the most important recommendations was to give a school district more authority when a charter seeks to open within its boundaries. Under current law, a school district must approve the opening of any charter that meets basic requirements.

The idea was to spark competition and give parents high-quality options for their children — and thousands of parents have responded enthusiastically. Charters enroll nearly one in five students in the nation’s second-largest school system.

But one result has been a proliferation of charters in some neighborhoods. Because state funding is based on enrollment, charters as well as district schools have been hard-pressed to attract enough students to remain financially viable, making it difficult to provide a stable academic program.

To address that situation, the task force recommends allowing a school district to forbid the opening of a new charter based on “saturation.” Charter critics say saturation already has become a problem in Boyle Heights and parts of South Los Angeles.

The recommendation on saturation received endorsement from the entire panel, which includes representatives of charter schools.

A smaller bloc, but still a panel majority, would go further. It recommended that school districts be able to deny a proposed charter based on financial harm to the host school district.

The panel did not release details on how individual members voted, but charter groups have vehemently opposed such a restriction. They have argued it could be used to deny any charter petition.

“There are elements that are deeply concerning and require more work ahead,” said Myrna Castrejón, president of the California Charter Schools Assn. “But ultimately, these efforts will play a pivotal role in charting a path forward for California’s students….”

One problem up and down the state has been inconsistent oversight of charters. The panel said California should create one or more entities to develop consistent standards and to train school districts in how to use them.

Some recommendations received majority but not unanimous favor, including limiting when another agency can overrule a local school district’s decision to reject a new charter or close down an existing one.

A majority also wanted to prohibit school districts from authorizing charters located outside district boundaries. Some tiny districts used these faraway charters to generate revenue but provided little to no oversight, as outlined in a Times investigation.

A panel majority also recommended a one-year moratorium on “virtual” charters, which enroll students in an online program. Prosecutors recently indicted 11 people from online charters on criminal charges of conspiracy, personal use of public money without legal authority, grand theft and financial conflict of interest.

 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Los Angeles, Privatization
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