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New York City: Mayor de Blasio’s Capitulation to the Powerful Charter Lobby

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2017 //
51

There used to be a well-known saying: “You can’t fight City Hall.”

Change that to: “You can’t fight the charter lobby.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio ran for mayor with the promise that he would fight the charter lobby. He was a public school parent and had served on a community school board. I believed him. I endorsed him.

Then after he was elected, the billionaires showed him who runs education policy in Albany. Governor Cuomo, the recipient of large sums from the financial industry, became the charter cheerleader, even though charters enrolled only 3% of the children in the state. The Republican-led State Senate gives the charter industry whatever it wants. The charter industry’s best friend is State Senate Republican leader John Flanagan, who loves loves loves charters, but not in his own district on Long Island. Call him Senator NIMBY.

De Blasio wanted charters to pay rent if they could afford it. The legislature required the City to give free space to charters, even though public schools are overcrowded, and to pay their rent if they locate in private space.

In the recent legislative session, the mayor was told that the only way to get a two-year extension of mayoral control was to revive 22 charters that had been closed or abandoned for various reasons.

Now the mayor is seeking a “truce” with the private charter industry that sucks the students it wants from the public schools.

Sad.

Mayoral control is a failed experiment. New York City needs an independent Board of Education, which chooses the Chancellor and to whom the Chancellor reports. The Mayor should make appointments to that board, along with the borough presidents. Candidates should be screened for their qualifications and experience by an independent review board of civic leaders, a process used in the past.

The city needs a board prepared to support and defend the 1.1 million students in public schools, to provide a public forum for grievances, and to listen to their parents and communities.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization

A Nashville School Board Member Warns Kentucky and Mississippi about the Charter Scams

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2017 //
8

Amy Frogge ran for the Metro Nashville School Board in 2012 as a concerned mom who was also a lawyer. She was unaware of the pitched battle about charters and privatization. She had the simple goal of improving public schools, which made her an enemy of the privatizers. She ran again last year and was re-elected. Both times, she faced candidates who outspent her by vast sums with out-of-state reformer cash. She was previously named to the Blog’s Honor Roll for her fortitude in standing up to the vilification by reformers and sticking to her promise to fight for public schools.

In this post, she writes that it is a new day in Nashville. High-profile charter operators arrived with big promises, then crashed and burned. The Nashville community sees them for the frauds they are.

She hopes to alert parents in Kentucky and Mississippi to beware, now that rightwing legislators have opened their state’s to the same scammers.

She writes:

“While my personal views and political positions have not changed at all since my first run for school board, the atmosphere surrounding education policy has changed drastically, both in Nashville and at a national level. Locals have finally become aware of the driving forces behind the school privatization movement, and alliances have shifted. After a newspaper editor was fired last fall, all of the politically-motivated, factually inaccurate “hit pieces” about me in the local paper (accompanied by comically bad photos) ceased. Many of the bad actors have either been fired or fled town- headed off to other less suspecting places that have not yet caught onto the privatization movement.

“At our last board meeting, we discussed LEAD Academy, often touted as a Miracle Charter School. LEAD likes to promote its 100% graduation rate, but as we learned at our last board meeting, this statistic is at the very least misleading, if not entirely untrue. In reality, LEAD high school has a 40% attrition rate, meaning that nearly half of students who start high school at LEAD don’t make it through to graduation. (So much for that 100% graduation rate!) It’s also clear that LEAD does not serve all students. Only one English Learner at LEAD has reached graduation in four graduating classes, and only three students with special needs are on track to graduate this year. Furthermore, student performance is decreasing in all tested areas for grades 3-8 at LEAD. Over a one-year period at LEAD, 13.5% more students scored basic or below in math, 17% more students scored basic or below in English Language Arts, and 42.6% more students scored basic or below in science.

“Ravi Gupta, head of RePublic Schools, left Nashville last year after a number of disturbing events occurred at his “no excuses” schools: First, several parents accused the RePublic of “abuse and neglect” of students, and Teach for America (which supplied most of its teachers) also expressed concerns about RePublic. Then, a parent accused RePublic of copyright violation for photocopying book passages (a common practice in charter schools to save money) containing inappropriate reading materials for middle school students. And most recently, parents filed a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit against RePublic for violation of federal law. Gupta is now trying to recreate himself as a political consultant of sorts with a new group called “The Arena,” standing in opposition to the new President. Ironically, though, Gupta’s own work in schools has been very much aligned with Betsy DeVos’s education agenda.

“Shaka Mitchell, former head of Rocketship, also left his post. Rocketship came into Nashville amidst great fanfare, thanks in large part to former Mayor Karl Dean (and his education liaison Wendy Tucker, mentioned in the attached article). However, only a few years later, Rocketship is now performing in the bottom 3% of schools statewide. Recently, Rocketship was also found in violation of state and federal laws for failing to provide services for students with disabilities and for English learners. Furthermore, Rocketship was censured for requiring homeless students to buy uniforms. Despite all this, the state has expressed its intent to force Nashville to open another Rocketship school this fall. This should tell you ALL you need to know about the charter school movement. (Hint: It’s not “about the children”)…

“The PR wall has begun to crumble, the veil is pulled back, and the truth emerges. Evidence has emerged that charter schools are contributing to the re-segregation of school systems, that they have a negative fiscal impact on school systems, and that they do not improve educational outcomes for students.

“In response, what do these folks do? Do they try to address these problems or worry that perhaps they are increasing inequity within MNPS? No, they work on the “spin.” They go after the reporter who wrote the attached story, demanding a retraction. They manipulate, harass, bully, race-bait, and attack. They tell charter parents that board members “hate charter parents and their kids,” hoping to whip these parents into a frenzy. This is the toxicity we have experienced in Nashville for years.

“Watch out Mississippi and Kentucky. These problems are headed your way. Steel your spine, and buckle your seatbelt. It doesn’t matter how professional or evidence-based you remain; if you don’t toe the line for charter schools, you will be attacked. You will be demeaned, bullied, and belittled. Get ready for the smear campaigns and character assassinations. But pay them no mind. Stay on the right side of history, and keep standing up for the students. Keep standing up for justice and equity. Keep standing up for public education. There’s important work to be done.”

Open the link to read the attached article.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Privatization

Koch Brothers Target Colorado for ESA Vouchers

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2017 //
20

Wherever there is a bipartisan consensus for charter schools, the Koch brothers see the state as ripe for expanding vouchers. Now they are targeting Colorado, where they have developed a strategic plan for the state.

Leading Democrats, such as wealthy Congressman Jared Polis and former State Senator Michael Johnston, have led the charge for charters and schiool choice (both have announced they are running for the Democratic nomination for governor.) Polis has opened two charter schools and fiercely supports them as a member of the House Education Committee. Johnston, former TFA, introduced legislation in 2011 to make student test scores count for 50% of teachers’ evaluation. The law has been an abject failure, although Johnston claimed it would guarantee that Colorado had great teachers, great principals, great schools.

DFER and Stand for Children have been active in Colorado, laying the groundwork for the Koch brothers.

And now they arrive with a plan to defund public schools and call it “opportunity.”

“COLORADO SPRINGS — In a nondescript office building on the north side of this conservative enclave, more than a dozen volunteers spent hours making calls to educate voters about a new initiative that will allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send children to private schools.

“At the same time, just miles down the road, the political network behind the effort gathered hundreds of its wealthiest donors at a posh mountainside resort to raise money to support the campaign to remake the education system.

“The confluence of policy and politics epitomized how the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch flex their organization’s muscle and spread an ideological agenda in states across the nation.

“The value of this network cannot be overstated,” said Stacy Hock, a Koch donor and conservative education advocate in Texas. “The ability to stand on the shoulders of the giant that is this network to make yourself more impactful and strategic changes the game.”

The Koch brothers plot a conservative resistance movement in Colorado Springs strategy session
Koch network to Trump administration: “You are never going to win the war on drugs. Drugs won.”
The phone calls to middle-of-the-road voters and presentation to donors in Colorado last week were part of the Koch network’s six-figure campaign to promote school choice and education savings accounts, or ESAs.

“The effort in Colorado involves the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Libre Initiative, a group focused on Hispanic community outreach. Together the organizations are making calls and sending flyers to voters this summer, two of which promote ESAs as a way to “give families the freedom to select schools, classes and services that fit the unique needs of their kids….

“The Koch network considers Colorado an attractive state for its message because public charter schools are a bipartisan cause. In the 2017 session, lawmakers equalized funding for charter schools with district schools.

“EdChoice, a conservative education advocacy organization aligned with the Kochs, commissioned a survey in 2015 to introduce Colorado to the ESA issue, finding strong support when cast in favorable terms.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Privatization, Vouchers

Laura Chapman Exposes the Billionaires Behind GreatSchools, Inc. and Redlining

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2017 //
21

Laura Chapman posted this comment, which I hope you will read:

Readers should know that GreatSchools.org website supports redlining. This is a non-profit website and organization in name only. Zillow, for example, pays a fee to lease all of the data and the ratings of schools. Specific schools can pay a fee to steer users to their websites.

The following supporters of redlining via the great schools website are not friends of public schools. They want to preserve schools and communities that are segregated by income, race, ethnicity, ownership of major assets (e.g., homes, automobiles), access to public services and amenities (e.g., public parks, libraries).

These supporters of segregation hide their agenda under a lot of rhetoric about saving children from failing schools. Wrong. These are the billionaires who are determined to misrepresent and undermine schools and neighborhoods through the irresponsible use of school “performance data,” especially scores on state standardized tests and more recently spurious surveys about school climate, the physical appearance of the school, and usually anonymous “customer” satisfaction ratings.

Major supporters of this redlining website are (logo displayed): Walton Family Foundation, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Einhorn Family Charitable Trust; The Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust,
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Other supporters: The Charles Hayden Foundation; Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation; Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation; David and Lucile Packard Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; The Joyce Foundation; Excellent Schools Detroit; The Kern Family Foundation; The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation;

Four other supporters of this website that forwards redlining sould be noted

America Achieves now calls itself “a non-profit accelerator” of large-scale system-wide change in public education. Achieve was and is the major promoter of the Common Core, college and career agenda, and associated tests. Achieve is funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Charles Butt, the Heckscher Foundation For Children, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, the Kern Family Foundation, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (among others).
EdChoice is the updated name for the Milton Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. EdChoice wants market-based education, unlimited choice, but subsidized by tax dollars–The DeVos/Trump policy.
Innovate Public Schools is a California-based national organization that uses GreatSchools reports to promote “new” school formation, especially charter schools, through extensive parent “fellowships” and training.
Startup:Education is a grantmaking project of the Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative founded by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. Everything promoted by Start;Up Education and the larger Chan/Zuckerberg initiative is tech-based and mislabeled personalized learning.

There are other commercial supporters of the website. They pay fees for advertising space and market a range of products called “educational.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Segregation, Shame

Why Do National Democrats Forget About the Threat to K-12 Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2017 //
87

Every day I get fund-raising appeals from Democratic and progressive national organizations. They usually include a list of critical issues and ask me which one I care most about. They never include K-12 schooling, which is now being battered and assaulted by DeVos and the Red state governors.

Here is a list I got today from the DCCC (I think that’s the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee). Here is its list:

WHAT ISSUES MATTER THE MOST TO YOU? (CHECK ALL THAT APPLY)
Fully funding climate change research

A health care plan that takes the burden off families

Continued funding for Medicare and Social Security

Student loan forgiveness

Making tuition affordable for all

A $15 minimum wage

Protecting immigrants and immigration reform

Fully funding women’s health centers

Fighting economic inequality

Creating new jobs

Preserving President Obama’s Medicaid expansion

Gun violence prevention

Protecting voting rights

The form had a box for other. I wrote: STOP PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

And made no contribution.

No money until they acknowledge the threat posed by charters and vouchers.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Charles Pierce: “Education Is Not A Damn Marketplace!”

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2017 //
27

There is one super-smart columnist writing in Esquire, and his name is Charles P. Pierce.

He gets it.

Unlike the editorial boards of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, he understands that schools don’t get “better” by competing.

He understands that what is called “reform” these days is a massive failure.

He knows that charter schools, despite the boasting, despite the hundreds of millions squandered on them, don’t get better results than public schools and usually get worse results.

He has been paying attention.

In district after district, public schools are outperforming charter schools.

Will someone tell the Walton Family?

Will someone tell Eli Broad and Reed Hastings?

Will the editorial writers wake up anytime soon?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization

SomeDAM Poet: “The Midnight Blog of Diane Ravitch”

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2017 //
18

Thank you, dear Poet. I blush. And I laughed out loud.

“The Midnight Blog of Diane Ravitch” (apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Hear ye, my teachers, of techy wares
The “teaching” inventions of billionaires
Of testing and Cores
Political whores
And a blogger with passion who really cares

She said to her friends, “If the billionaires roll
By software or hard, from your towns tonight
Hang a lantern aloft from the tall flag-pole
At the public school, as a signal light —
One if by Gates and two if by Broad
And I, on the opposite side of the road,
Ready to blog and spread the alarm
Through every American village and farm
For the parents and kids to march arm in arm

Then she said “good night” and with a blogger’s adieu
Warned to “Be watchful of ‘privatize’ clue’”
Just as the wealthy were meeting with pols
And paying the think-tanks and internet trolls
For “proof” that their methods were “tried and true” —
The Common Core and the testing too —
That only THEY know what to do
A propaganda that was magnified
By billions of dollars, far and wide

Meanwhile, her friends, through blogging and tweet
Wander and watch with eagle eyes
Till they read of the program to “personalize”
The learning, by students with tech, for sure
The smell of a hardware and software cheat
By usual folks, with their usual lies
Peddling wares at the techy store

They hoisted the lanterns up the poles
At the public schools, throughout the land
To the top of the masts, hand over hand
Unbeknownst to the blogger trolls
On the internet sites (paid as planned
By billionaires, who worshipped Rand)
Up the flag-pole, so steep and tall
The highest flagpole of them all
They raised the lanterns above the trees
Where Diane Ravitch saw with ease
And moved to action from the call

A flurry of blogs and a trumpet of tweet
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark
And beneath from her fingers, in passing a spark
Struck out by a blogger both fearless and fleet
That was all! And yet through the gloom and the light
The fate of a Nation was riding that night
And the spark stuck by the blogger in flight
Kindled the Land into flame with it’s heat

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the brutish billionaires tired and fled–
How the parents gave them piece of mind
(And not of the peaceful restful kind)
Chasing the billionaires down the lane
Then crossing the field to emerge again
Under the trees at the edge of the school
To banish forever the billionaire rule

So through the night, she persevered
And so through the night went her cry of alarm
Through every American village and farm
A cry of defiance and not of fear
A voice in the darkness a knock at the door
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For borne on the night wind of the Past
Through all our history to the last
In the hour of darkness and peril and need
The people will waken and listen to hear
Of the ominous danger of billionaire greed
Threat to democracy that we hold dear

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Portland, Oregon: Corporate Reformers Launch Vicious Attack on School Board Member

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2017 //
5

Portland, Oregon, is in big trouble. Despite massive spending by the fake reform Stand on Children–err, Stand for Children–the corporate reformers lost in the school board election. Now, as local activist Deb Mayer reports, they are trying to bully a school board member into resigning.

Why the attacks on a man who won his seat and supports public schools? The board has been unable to pick a new superintendent. So the composition of the board is crucial, and the privatizers need another seat. They want Paul Anthony’s seat so they can win by bullying what they could not win at the polls.

Citizens of Portland must be informed. Stand for Children represents Bill Gates and the rest of the zbillionaire Boys Club that funds SFC. They are not working on behalf of the children and families of Portland.

Don’t be fooled.

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

Lesson from Virginia: Real Democrats Support Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2017 //
50

Rachel Levy, a mother and public school activist in Virginia, explains here the lesson of the recent Democratic campaign for governor: Real Democrats support public schools.

http://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/as-democrats-struggle-to-find-their-footing-in-the-trump-era/

Dr. Ralph Northam, Lt. Governor, was a strong supporter of public schools. He won the support of the Virginia Education Association and public school allies across the state.

Tom Perriello had the support of veterans of the Obama administration, Elizabeth Earren, and Bernie Sanders. He also had ties in the past with DFER.

Northam won handily.

Will the national Democratic Party get the message?

Real Democrats support public schools, teachers, and unions. Real Democrats do not support charter schools, high-stakes testing, VAM, or privatization of public schools by charter.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, DFER, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Jay Mathews: I Goofed on My High School Rankings!

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2017 //
35

Jay Mathews invented a high school ranking program that relies on certain criteria, especially the number of students who take AP and IB tests. The data are self-reported by the schools.

Carol Burris warned Jay that some of his rankings were highly improbable, especially those reported by the IDEA charter chain. She was right. Carol thinks that the temptation to “juke the stats” is too powerful. Jay thinks that there was an honest error.

Jay writes:

“When I started what The Washington Post now calls the America’s Most Challenging High Schools list, I was told not to trust data from schools and school districts. They’re sloppy and sometimes dishonest, people said. It won’t work.

“That was 19 years ago. The doubters were wrong. The educators I deal with have proved to be unfailingly honest. Mistakes are rare. But the biggest so far just happened. The IDEA Public Schools charter network in Texas told me it provided incorrect numbers of Advanced Placement tests at six of its schools for the 2017 list published in May.

“As a result, the five IDEA schools that were in the top 10 have dropped several places on the corrected list. “We messed up,” said IDEA founder and chief executive Tom Torkelson.”

Actually, IDEA has a documented history of overstating its success. Ed Fuller, a professor at Penn State formerly at the University of Texas, debunked the IDEA claim that 100% of its graduates were accepted into four-year colleges.

Ed Fuller wrote on his blog:

“IDEA Charter School markets itself as a college preparatory education organization with goals of enrolling 100% of graduates in four-year universities and have 100% persistence and graduation rates in college.[1] Indeed, in the introduction of the most recent annual report, Dr. Tom Torkelson, CEO of IDEA Public Schools, makes the following statement:

“IDEA puts students on path to succeed in an increasingly competitive global marketplace by providing a rigorous college preparatory education and preparing our low-income, Hispanic and minority students in under-served communities across Texas to apply, matriculate and succeed in a the four year college or university of their choice. To date, 100% of IDEA graduates have been accepted to a four-year college or university and our student (sic) are demonstrating remarkable staying power: 92% are either still in college or have graduated.[2]

“Further, on page six of the report, the claim is made that, “ . . . for the fifth year in a row, 100% of IDEA graduates enrolled in four-year colleges and universities, fulfilling IDEA’s mission of College For All Children.”[3]

“Yet, these claims are demonstrably false, the report fails to cite any data sources or studies that substantiate the claims, and the report fails to report publicly available data on the performance of students in four-year universities. The remainder of this short report substantiates my claims made about statements included in the IDEA annual report and provides data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board about the Performance of IDEA Public School graduates in Texas four-year universities.”

Fuller goes on to show that 100% of IDEA graduates did not enroll in four-year colleges, and many of these students performed very poorly in college.

Given IDEA’s history of boasts and overstatements, why should Jay Mathews accept its self-reported data?

How many other self-reported errors are hidden in those rankings? Carol wonders if Jay is rewarding charters that push kids out who can’t or won’t take the AP courses. She thinks he should create two separate lists: one for charters, which have the power to choose and exclude their students; another for public schools that accept all students. I would suggest a third category: selective public schools. How can anyone fairly compare a comprehensive high school that accepts all who apply, with a selective high school that admits only those who pass an examination? How can anyone fairly compare charter schools with high attrition rates–weeding out low performers– to those public schools that enroll students with disabilities and students who are learning English, as well as children who are homeless.

I don’t see the purpose of ranking selective high schools and non-selective high schools. I’m having trouble understanding the value of the rankings no matter how they are reported.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Testing
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