New York State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia kicked billionaire Carl Paladino off the Buffalo school board.
http://buffalonews.com/2017/08/17/state-education-commissioner-removes-paladino-from-school-board/
Paladino has enriched himself by expanding charter schools, then leasing space to them. He has made racist remarks. He is Trump’s biggest supporter in the state.
But that is not why he got bounced. The reason is mundane.
Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy and former deputy commissioner of education in Ohio, laments the commercializations that charter schools have introduced into K-12 schooling, while claiming to be “public schools”:
He writes:
“For sale: A school–The practice of buying and selling charter schools signals the complete disconnect between school and community
“The greatest human-inspired public institution-the common school-was created as a school for all children. The nexus between the community and the common school is powerful in the lives of school children; charter schools are not community-based entities.
“Parents in a school district would be shocked if they opened the morning paper and read the headline: School district for sale. That happens in the charter world.
“Charter school organizations are bought and sold. Ron Packard, former CEO of K12-Inc. (in Ohio, K-12 Inc. operates the Ohio Virtual Academy) left K-12, Inc. and started a company that has purchased several charter schools in Ohio. This practice of buying and selling charter schools demonstrates the complete disconnect between school and community. Charter schools are not public.
“The common school is not a for-profit business enterprise. It is a community institution of the community, by the community and for the kids of the community.”
The ACT scores for Louisiana are in, and Mercedes Schneider reports that the news for the New Orleans charter district is not good.
We continue to hear reformers boast about the New Orleans “miracle,” but the evidence is non-existent. It is just recycling of stale propaganda for privatization. It has been 12 years since Hurricane Katrina wiped out large swaths of the city, along with the public school system. Had there been a dramatic improvement as a result of the switch to private charter schools, there wouldn’t be any controversy about it.
The new ACT scores show how unimpressive the charter district is.
Schneider says that, “In order for a high school graduate to gain unconditional admission to Louisiana State University (LSU), she/he must have an ACT composite score of 22.”
As you will see in her post, there are 13 high schools in the Recovery School District. None reached a score of 19. Only three cracked 18.
Schneider says that Dtate Superintebdent John White masked the low ACT scores by combining the high schools of the RSD with those of the higher-performing Orleans Parish School Board.
Don’t expect to read about this in any of the media that have invested in the miracle narrative.
Education Next is a publication funded by conservative foundations and staffed by conservative editors and writers. It supports charters, vouchers, school choice, high-stakes testing, the commodification of education, and the education industry.
Here are the results of its latest poll:
“The 2017 Education Next annual survey of American public opinion on education shows public support for charter schools has dropped, even as opposition to school vouchers and tax credits for private-school scholarships has declined. Opposition to the Common Core State Standards seems to have finally leveled off. When the “Common Core” name is not mentioned, support for the same standards across states rises among both Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile, support for the federal role in education policy has waned. This year’s poll also finds that President Trump’s policy preferences widen the partisan divide on issues such as charter schools, Common Core, tax credits, and merit pay for teachers.
“Among the key findings:
“Charter school support drops. In a dramatic change of opinion over the past year, support for charter schools has declined by 12 percentage points, from 51% last year to only 39% this year (36% opposed). Support has fallen by 13 percentage points among Republicans and by 11 percentage points among Democrats, to 47% and 34% support respectively, leaving the partisan gap on the issue largely unchanged. Support for charters among blacks has dropped from 46% to 37% and among Hispanics from 44% to 39%.
“Opposition to private school choice declines despite partisan differences. Opposition to universal vouchers, which give all families a wider choice, has declined from 44% to 37%, while support for vouchers targeted to low-income parents has increased by six percentage points (43% in 2017 up from 37% in 2016). However, an analysis of individuals by political party reveals that support for universal vouchers has increased by 13 percentage points among Republicans (to 54%) but fallen by 9 percentage points (to 40%) among Democrats, whereas in 2016, Democrats were more supportive than Republicans of universal vouchers by an 8-percentage point margin. Opposition to tax-credit funded scholarships has declined from 29% to 24%.
“Support for national standards rises while opposition to Common Core levels off. Though support for Common Core plummeted between 2013 and 2016, the downward trend has leveled off, with support standing at 41% (38% opposed) in 2017, virtually the same as in 2016. Support for standards that are the same in all states is, at 61%, 20 percentage points higher when the name is not mentioned (6 percentage points higher than in 2016). While there remains a partisan divide in support for Common Core (32% in favor among Republicans and 49% among Democrats), support rises to 64% and 61%, respectively, when the name is not mentioned, eliminating the partisan gap.
“Support for local control of schools is on the rise. Although a plurality of the public continues to think accountability policy should mostly be a state responsibility, the latest poll numbers show that the public has shifted away from federal towards local control of schools. Only 36% of the public think the federal government should play the largest role in setting standards, down 5 percentage points from 2015; only 13% think it should identify failing schools, also down 5 percentage points; and only 16% think the federal government should be responsible for fixing schools, down 4 percentage points. Democratic support for federal decision-making has dropped by 8, 6, and 7 percentage points, respectively. The share of the public thinking these policies should be a local responsibility has risen by 4, 6, and 7 percentage points, respectively, for the three areas.
“Information about cost and earnings has little impact on college-going preferences–except among Hispanics. The latest poll shows that two-thirds of the public want their child to pursue a 4-year degree, while only 22% prefer a 2-year degree. Among white respondents with a 4-year college degree, 88% want their child to pursue a 4-year degree, compared to 57% of white respondents without a 4-year college degree. Most respondents, when they are informed as to the average costs and earnings associated with 2-year versus 4-year degrees, do not change their preferences. For Hispanics, however, providing both types of information shifts their preference for a 4-year degree to 72%, from 61% when no information is provided. This shift reverses the white-Hispanic gap in preferences for a 4-year degree. These findings emerge from an experiment where a randomly chosen group within the sample receives financial information while another group does not.
“The Trump Effect. On four issues—Common Core, charter schools, tax credits, and merit pay for teachers—the poll examines whether President Trump’s endorsement of a policy has a polarizing effect on public opinion by telling half of the sample the president’s position while not supplying this information to the other. EdNext conducted similar experiments in 2009 and 2010 during President Obama’s first two years in office. In 2009, Obama enjoyed a period of bipartisan support during which he moved public opinion toward his position, though the effect waned in 2010. Trump has not enjoyed such a “honeymoon” period (see figure). When informed of Trump’s position, Republicans move toward it on three of the four issues, including a 15 percentage-point increase in support for charter schools. However, Trump fails to persuade Democrats, who move away from the president’s position on two of the four issues, including a 14 percentage-point decrease in support for merit pay. These offsetting effects leave overall public opinion on these issues largely unchanged.”
One can draw different conclusions from this poll, but I am impressed by the stunning drop in public support for privately managed charter schools. As the public learns more about them, it likes them less. The steady drumbeat of charter scandals is getting through to the public. The scandals in Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, California, and elsewhere may be taking a toll on public estimation of charters. There is a glimmering of understanding that charters are unaccountable and that every dollar for a charter is taken away from public schools. The public is beginning to wonder about the value of funding two systems, one selective, the other open to all. One subject to democratic governance, the other controlled by private, self-selected boards.
Alan Singer roasts Eva Moskowitz and Dan Loeb (billionaire chair of Eva’s charter empire) for pretending to care more about black children than the NAACP.
Eva cares so much that she interviewed for the job of Trump’s Secretary of Education, then praised Betsy DeVos, who hopes to defund the programs that black (and white and Hispanic and Asian) children rely on. She welcomed Paul Ryan and Ivanka Trump to her schools. And of course she eagerly awaits the new Trump funding for charter schools.
Dan Loeb dared to slander a black legislator who doesn’t support charter schools, saying she was worse than a KKKman.
These are folks who don’t care about the common good. They are happy to take care of the few they choose. To heck with the rest.
Arkansas belongs to the Walton family, the richest family in the U.S., which runs the state like its personal plantation. If the Waltons cared about children, they might focus their spending on child health and well-being in Arkansas, but instead they spend $200 million a year spreading charters where they are not wanted. The family claims credit for launching one of every four charters in the nation. And of course they are very generous to Teach for America, which supplies the low-wage, non-union, short term employees needed to star charters.
Max Brantley, former editor of the Arkansas Times, is not afraid of the Waltons. He writes fearlessly about their domination of the state.
Their latest outrage involved the Waltons’ swift and secretive purchase of Little Rock’s Garland School. The sale was not advertised. There were no bids other than the Waltons’. Brantley assumes they mean to use it for charters.
The Waltons recently maneuvered to have the entire Little Rock district taken over by the state, even though only 6 of 48 schools didn’t meet state standards. This was a power grab. It removed the elected board, making it easier for the Waltons to pick over the bones of the district.
For their contempt for public education, their lust for power, and their determination to impose their will on others, I add the Walton family to the Wall of Dhame.
Daniel Loeb, billionaire chair of the board of Success Academy Charter Schools, slandered State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, an African-American woman who is the Democratic leader of the State Senate.
The backstory is that Cuomo has collaborated with a group of breakaway Democrats who side with the Republicans in the State Senate. Although Democrats have the majority in the Senate at 32-31, the so-called Independent Democrats vote with the Republicans, assuring that Republicans continue to control the Senate even though they are in the minority. Charter supporters, like Daniel Loeb, know that the interests of both charters and the financial community are safe with the Republicans. If Democrats had enough votes to control the State Senate, Senator Stewart-Cousins would be majority leader. Cuomo likes having Republicans in control because it allows him to be the broker between the Assembly and the Senate. Cuomo prides himself on his fiscal conservatism, so he is happy to have Republicans running the upper chamber of the legislature. It also guarantees that Cuomo won’t be forced to veto progressive legislation.
In a private meeting with Democratic members of the State Senate, trying for unity, Cuomo noted that most of the Senate members were from New York City, and that the leader of the Independent Democrats, Jeffrey Klein (whose district is mainly in the Bronx, with a sliver in suburban Westchester), had a better understanding of the suburbs than the city representatives. At that point, Senator Stewart-Cousins objected and pointed out that she represents the suburbs of Westchester.
After this story appeared, Daniel Loeb hurled a slur at Senator Stewart-Cousins on Facebook.
The hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb, a prominent supporter of charter schools and a major financial backer of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and congressional Republicans, accused the African-American woman who leads the Democrats in the New York State Senate of having done “more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.”
Mr. Loeb made the reference, apparently to the Ku Klux Klan, in a posting on Facebook in response to an article in The New York Times this week in which the Democratic leader, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, confronted Mr. Cuomo about prejudging her based upon race and gender.
In a private meeting last month, The Times reported, Ms. Stewart-Cousins said to Mr. Cuomo during a debate over who best understands suburban voters: “You look at me, Mr. Governor, but you don’t see me. You see my black skin and a woman, but you don’t realize I am a suburban legislator.”
Mr. Loeb weighed in on behalf of Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, the leader of a group of Democrats that has split from Ms. Stewart-Cousins.
“Thank God for Jeff Klein and those who stand for educational choice and support Charter funding that leads to economic mobility and opportunity for poor knack kids,” Mr. Loeb wrote, with “knack” apparently a typographical error for “black.” “Meanwhile hypocrites like Stewart-Cousins who pay fealty to powerful union thugs and bosses do more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.”
Mr. Klein leads a group of eight Democrats who in 2011 broke away from the main Democratic conference, led by Ms. Stewart-Cousins. Mr. Klein’s group, the Independent Democratic Conference, has in the past sided with the Republicans in the Senate to keep Ms. Stewart-Cousins out of the powerful post of majority leader.
Daniel Loeb is a major player in the charter world because of his chairmanship of Success Academy. He is also a major player in politics because he is a big donor. When Ivanka Trump visited New York City, Loeb escorted her on a tour of one of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools.
Mr. Loeb and his wife have donated more than $170,000 to Mr. Cuomo in recent years, state records show. He has also supported Republicans, with contributions including $500,000 to a super PAC that supported Jeb Bush in 2015, $150,000 to the Republican National Committee that year and $700,000 to a super PAC supporting House Republicans in 2016.
Carol Burris wrote recently that Loeb had given even more money to Cuomo than the Times reported:
Success Academy Chairman Daniel Loeb, founder and chief executive of Third Rock Capital, and his wife, have directly contributed over $133,000 to Cuomo. Since 2015, Loeb has added $300,000 to Moskowitz’s PAC, and another $270,000 to other PACs that support Cuomo. That’s more than $700,000.
Daniel Loeb shows the true colors of the charter industry in New York City. He doesn’t pretend to be a liberal. He has the nerve to call an African-American legislator “worse” than the Ku Klux Klan. What do you call a man like this? Indecent? Shameless? Arrogant?
For many reasons, I place billionaire Daniel S. Loeb on this blog’s Wall of Shame.
Alan Singer pulls together the threads of charter school corruption across several states in this post. The corruption is pay-to-play. Give money to a politician and turn him or her into your advocate. Florida presents a different twist on the story: charter owners and employees and family members are elected legislators who shamelessly vote to enrich themselves. In Ohio, charter owners contribute to legislators who then turn on the money spigot and shower their benefactors with riches. In New York, Governor Cuomo accepts millions from billionaires who love entrepreneurial schools and hate public schools–and Voila!, Cuomo becomes a charter champion.
“In Arizona charter schools routinely receive exemptions from state oversight requirements, despite a history of misusing tax dollars. They also receive over 25% of state education funds, although they only enroll 15% of Arizona’s school age students. The right-wing Republican governor of Arizona was accused by the even further right-wing elected Superintendent of Arizona schools of establishing a “shadow faction of charter school operators” committed to “moving funds from traditional public schools to charter schools.”
“The reasons for the lack of accountability and the disproportionate state funding are examined in a report by Arizonians for Charter School Accountability. Among other things, they found that Benjamin Franklin, a for-profit charter school, is owned by Arizona State Representative Eddie Farnsworth (R). In 2016, the charter school spent $155,106 more on facilities than on classroom instruction. It leases its schools from LBE Investments, a for-profit real estate company also owned by Farnsworth.
“Arizona has a state board that grants charter status to “qualifying applicants” and is supposed to “oversee charter schools.” The President of the board is a political lobbyist who defines her role as promoting school “choice” and “sponsoring charter schools,” not regulating them. The Board Vice-President is founder of a charter high school. Other members include the operator of a charter school, a charter school teacher, a lawyer for charter schools, a building company CEO who also serves on the Board of Directors for the local Teach for America chapter, and the CEO of a charter school network.”
For the links, open the article.
In Atlanta, teachers were sentenced to prison under the RICO statute (racketeering) for cheating on tests and are out on appeal.
When, if ever, will public officials round up the criminals who are engaged in buying influence for the enrichment of charter schools? In too many states, the public officials who should enforce the law are charter operators or receive millions from charter operators. The charter industry starts to look like the Tweed Ring. Will it clean up its own act or is public corruption now woven into its fabric?
Arthur Goldstein gives a close reading of Eliza Shapiro’s article about “why New York City is no longer the national leader of reform” in education.
When he read it, he felt heartened by the thought that “reform” was on the ropes, withering on the vine, falling apart, use whatever metaphor you want. Going, going, gone.
And yet he knows how demoralized the teachers in his building are.
He shows the error of Shapiro’s framing of the teacher tenure issue. “Reform” apparently means the utter elimination of any job rights for teachers. “Reformers” want to be able to fire any teacher at any time, without cause, just because they want to. Reformers agree that teachers should have no rights at all, and they wonder why there is a growing teacher shortage.
He writes:
Reforminess is something Trump is strong on, because he doesn’t believe in protecting the rights of working people. With him, it’s all about profit, hence Betsy DeVos, who’s pretty much decimated public education in Michigan. They can wrap themselves in the flag all they want, and claim to care about the children. Those of us who wake up every morning to serve those children know better.
And then there is Andrew Cuomo, who first ran on a platform of going after unions, who appeared at Moskowitz rallies and frothed at the mouth over the possibility of firing as many teachers as possible. Cuomo could not possibly anticipate that parents would become informed and fight back against the nonsense that is Common Core. He could not anticipate that parents would boycott his tests in droves.
What reformies failed to count on was the opportunism of Andrew Cuomo. As a man with no moral center whatsoever, he is driven by rampant ambition. This year, he watched Donald Trump win the presidency against neoliberal Hillary Clinton. Cuomo decided to position himself as Bernie Sanders Lite and pushed a program to give free college tuition to New Yorkers (albeit with a whole lot of restrictions).
Cuomo is now best buds with UFT, judging from what I hear at Delegate Assemblies. While I don’t personally trust the man as far as I can throw him, I’m happy if that works to help working teachers and other working people. So what is education “reform,” exactly?
As far as I can tell, it’s piling on, How miserable can we make working teachers? How can we arbitrarily and capriciously fire them? How can we give them as few options as possible, and as little voice as possible?
It’s ironic. The MORE [MORE is a progressive caucus within the UFT] motto is, “Our teaching conditions are students’ learning conditions.” I agree with that. Take it a step further, and our teaching conditions are our students’ future working conditions. When we fight for improvement of our working conditions, we are fighting for the future of our students as well.
Two of my former students teach in my school. They are the first of their families to be college educated, and the first of their families to get middle class jobs. I will fight for them, and for my other students to have even more opportunity. Betsy DeVos and the reformies, on the other hand, can fight to maximize profits for fraudulent cyber-charter owners and all the other opportunist sleazebags they represent so well.
Eliza Shapiro writes about New York City for Politico.
She wrote a somewhat wistful article about why New York City was no longer “the nation’s education reform capital.”
For one brief shining moment, she suggests, New York City had the chance to expand its privately managed charter schools and to break the grip of the teachers’ union. It came “this close” to evaluating teachers by test scores. It was near to a point where it might have eliminated tenure and seniority.
All of this is supposedly reform?
Well, as she well knows, this is the agenda of hedge fund managers and others on Wall Street. This is the agenda of the billionaires who never set foot in a public school and whose children will never go to public school.
What stopped the headlong rush to crush public schools and teachers’ unions?
Parents. The New York State Allies for Public Education, a coalition of 50 parent and educator groups (not the union), that organized the mass opt outs from testing.
When twenty percent of the parents in the state with children in grades 3-8 refused to allow their children to take the tests, Governor Cuomo stopped in his tracks. He had been gung-ho to evaluate teachers by student test scores; he boldly claimed to be the state’s charter school champion (even though only 3% of the state’s children were enrolled in charter schools). But when the opt out started, he realized he had a political problem. He hired Jere Hochman, the thoughtful superintendent of the Bedford Central public schools, to advise him, and for the first time, he had an experienced educator calming his passions. He formed a commission and grew silent.
Sheri Lederman, a much-loved teacher in the Great Neck public schools, challenged her evaluation, and the judge agreed with her that it was arbitrary and capricious.
The American Statistical Association said that the test-based evaluations in which Cuomo put so much stock were inappropriate for evaluating individual teachers.
Shapiro seems unaware of most of these developments. Her framework is: charter supporters=good; unions=bad; firing teachers at will without cause=good; tenure=bad.
She insists on seeing the New York City story through the framework of “reformers vs. union.” It would have made more sense to look at the NYC story as “parents (in New York State, not New York City) vs. high-stakes testing. Research vs. Cuomo.
Now that the reform laurels are no longer in New York City, she suggests that readers look to Louisiana and D.C. instead, both of which are among the lowest performing jurisdictions in the nation.
I want to suggest to Eliza Shapiro that she read my last two books: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (rev., 2016); and Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. She should read Mercedes Schneider on John White in Louisiana and John Merrow on the subject of the D.C. “miracle” that wasn’t. (John Merrow and Mary Levy will have an article in the next issue of the Washington Monthly that takes apart the D.C. “miracle.” but in the meanwhile Shapiro can read this post that Merrow wrote: https://themerrowreport.com/2017/08/08/touching-the-elephant/comment-page-1/
If she contacts me, I will send her both books at my expense. If she reads them, she will be a better education writer. Certainly better informed.
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