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Ohio: Major Newspaper Calls for Charter School Accountability and Transparency

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2017 //
8

One of the most heartening developments in recent years is the awakening of major newspapers in Ohio to the massive scandals surrounding their state’s charter industry. These scandals have come about because of the money nexus that connects charter operators and politicians. Charters in Ohio have a dismal academic record, and also a dismal financial record. This happens because the laws were written by charter lobbyists and protect the operators from full financial disclosure.

The Columbus Dispatch has had enough. In this editorial, it calls for legislation to compel charters to open their books for public inspection. Where public money goes, public accountability must follow.

No function of state government is more important than its constitutional obligation to “secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.” Education is the bedrock of democracy. That is why the Ohio Constitution, since 1851, has obligated the state to provide an education to each of its citizens.

How thoroughly and how efficiently the state fulfills this mandate should concern every Ohioan, every year, every generation.

But Ohioans’ ability to judge the state’s performance is threatened by state lawmakers’ willingness to hide from public view how the charter-school industry spends a sizable portion of taxpayer dollars.

In an era of privatization of much of primary and secondary education, taxpayers should insist that state lawmakers provide complete transparency of the expenditure of public funds for education.

State Rep. David J. Leland, D-Columbus, has introduced legislation to accomplish this goal. In fewer than 100 words, the bill declares “funds that the department of education pays to a community (charter) school or nonpublic school . . . are public funds and shall be subject to the same requirements related to permissible expenditures and audit by the auditor of state as public funds allocated to school districts.

“If a community school uses public funds to pay for services of an entity to manage the daily operations of that school or to provide programmatic oversight and support of that school, those funds maintain their status as public funds upon transfer.”

In recent years, Ohio earned an unwelcome reputation for having the nation’s worst oversight of the charter-school industry. No surprise, then, that Ohio has had some of the nation’s worst-performing charter schools.

The editorial goes on to detail the changes that are needed.

What this represents is a welcome recognition by the major media that charter schools cannot continue to operate as private schools with public money. A recent court decision in Ohio ruled, in accordance with the charter-friendly law, that anything purchased by the charter with public funds belongs to the charter operator, not the public. If the law is rewritten, that giveaway of public money must be ended.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization

Politico Reports on Expansion Plans of School Privatization Group

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2017 //
22

Politico’s Morning Edition posted this description of 50CAN, the pro-privatization organization that was started by hedge fund managers and big pharma in Connecticut:

FIRST IN MORNING EDUCATION: 50CAN’S GROWTH PLAN: The national education reform advocacy group, 50CAN, hopes to hire 1,000 new advocates by the year 2023. That’s a key part of the organization’s new growth plan, the first of its kind since 50CAN launched in 2011. The organization hopes those advocates will lead at least 250 policy campaigns across every single state to push on goals like more charter schools and holding schools and teachers accountable. At least two thirds of those policy pushes “will be at the neighborhood or regional level,” the plan says. 50CAN now cites 64 policy “wins” across 13 states, including a push for an A-F school grading system in Tennessee and a “more equitable public charter school funding in New Jersey.” To ensure future policy victories, 50CAN says that by 2023, its entire network of advocates “will be connected together through a best-in-class technology platform where they can plan campaigns, execute strategies and tactics, track and analyze campaign data in real time and gain key insights into how to increase their odds of success.”

50CAN will be pushing the DeVos-Jeb Bush agenda in every state. Charters and A-F ratings, which set up public schools for takeover to charter chains.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Education Week: Marketing the Charter School Market

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2017 //
12

Education Week is a paradox. On one hand, it has many excellent reporters who check facts and write lucidly without partisanship. On the other, the corporate entity has become a selling platform for technology and charter schools.

I used to blog regularly at EdWeek, in a column called “Bridging Differences,” with Deborah Meier. No one ever changed what I wrote. I know that editorial independence is central to a journal’s integrity.

But since I departed (and even before), Education Week needed advertising from the industry on which it was reporting, and it began to turn into a platform for the industry. EdWeek also receives funding from the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation, each of which has its own agenda.

And so I regularly open my email box to find advertisements from EdWeek for tech products, webinars, seminars, panels, events, etc.

The latest was a solicitation for a webinar about “Mastering the Charter School Market.” Part of the pitch was that charters would capture 20-40% of the “market” by 2035.

Where did they get that figure? I thought about it. Then I discovered the source: The projection was made by Bellwether Partners, a consulting firm founded by reformer Andrew Rotherham, a leader in the charter school movement who represents charter corporations and advocates. This 2015 report (slide 60) says that the charter schools will have 22-38% of the “market” by 2035. That assumes that the numerous scandals associated with deregulation and the resistance of parents and educators to privatization have not slowed the movement long before then.

I am posting this after the event, because this is not an advertisement but rather a post expressing my concern about Edweek’s descent into marketing for the edBiz, whether it is technology or charters.

The registration form can be found here.

Screen Shot 2017-05-16 at 7.14.34 AMScreen Shot 2017-05-16 at 7.14.54 AM

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

Florida: Public School Parents Plead with Gov. Scott to Veto Disastrous Bill, Charter Schools Offer Incentives to Parents Who Write in Support

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
6

Here is a new charter school trick. The Florida legislature, which has an unseemly number of members who are directly connected to the charter industry, passed legislation that will benefit charters and harm public schools. Parents of public school students have been writing Governor Rick Scott and urging him to veto the bill. The public school parents are acting on their own. It would be unethical for their schools to encourage political activity. The two charter schools involved are part of the politically powerful for-profit Academica chain.

Some charter schools are offering parents an incentive to write the governor and urge him to sign the bill. At least two charter schools in Hialeah, Florida, are urging parents and students to contact the governor in support of the bill, which will help them and hurt public schools.

Some school choice advocates in South Florida are going so far as to offer incentives to parents in order to amplify the perception of public support for a controversial K-12 public schools bill that many are urging Gov. Rick Scott to veto.

At least two privately managed charter schools in Hialeah — Mater Academy Lakes High School and City of Hialeah Educational Academy — publicly advertised this week that they would give parents five hours’ credit toward their “encouraged” volunteer hours at the school, so long as they wrote a letter or otherwise urged Gov. Rick Scott to sign HB 7069.

“It is IMPERATIVE that the Governor, and the rest of the State of Florida, see what a POSITIVE DEMAND there is for this education bill,” read an alert on the homepage of Mater Academy Lakes’ website Thursday evening. “This is the strongest legislation supporting the charter school movement since charters were first established in Florida 20 years ago.”

“We need all of our Bear Family to show their support for HB 7069 and encourage your friends, family and children to get involved as well,” the message continued…

The two Hialeah charter schools’ advocacy and other promotional efforts by influential school choice organizations come in the wake of a groundswell of opposition from traditional public school supporters since lawmakers passed HB 7069 on May 8.

The nearly 10,000 phone calls, emails, letters and individual petition signatures received by Gov. Rick Scott were 3-to-1 against the bill, as of information provided Thursday evening. In contrast to the charters, there is no evidence that traditional public school advocates have offered incentives to boost support for their veto campaign.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article151507657.html#storylink=cpy

Public school advocates are pinning their hopes for a veto on a Republican governor who looks to Jeb Bush for guidance. Will he listen to public school parents? We will watch.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Privatization

Laura Chapman on Eric Hanushek

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
15

When Laura Chapman read Some DAMPoet’s poem, “Economists are Like Weathermen,” she responded with an informative comment. I know Eric (Rick) well. We served together for years on the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on Education. I wrote a bit about Rick in “Reign of Error,” and pointed out that his work has long applied econometrics to education. He was featured as an expert voice in “Waiting for ‘Superman'” where he reinforced the film’s message that public education is failing, choice are better, bad teachers cause low scores, and the best way to raise test scores is to fire teachers who can’t raise test scores. He has testified as an expert witness in court cases against increased funding for schools. I quoted at length from one of his articles in which he claimed that firing the bottom 5-7 teachers and replacing them with average teachers would cause a leap in test scores that would make us equal to Finland. The Gross Domestic Product would then soar by $112 trillion, just because of those higher test scores.

Laura writes:

Don’t get me started. The creep of econometric thinking into education has gone beyond reason, and the reason is this: Economists are addicted to scores on tests as indicators of anything that catches their fancy–school quality, teacher quality, instructional quality, cognitive skills, worker skills, state ranking in economic growth, national ranks in productivity, the fate of the nation’s economy.

On March 9, 2017, The Wall Street Journal published an Op Ed by economist Eric A. Hanushek titled “American Teachers Unions Oppose Innovative Schools—in Africa with the subtitle “Bridge Academies show promising results in Kenya and Uganda, but unions see them only as a threat.”

It begins “No longer content to oppose educational innovation at home, the unions representing America’s teachers have gone abroad in search of monsters to slay.

For nearly a decade, Bridge International Academies has run a chain of successful private schools in the slums of Kenya and Uganda. A for-profit company, Bridge has shown that it’s possible to provide high-quality, low-cost primary education to poor children in the developing world….” https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-teachers-unions-oppose-innovative-schoolsin-africa-1489099360

Readers are at least informed that Dr. Hanushek s a consultant for Bridge International Academies. The WSJ is an advertorial for Bridge, well place to attract even more investors to this not so low cost system of education with all questions and answers delivered on computers.

Hanushek has been VAMing teachers since his dissertation, about 1968. He is a frequent contributor of dubious statistics to legal cases that blame teacher unions for students who are “underperforming.” Like Chetty he is a serial publisher of inferences about the fate of the economy based on student test scores.

I do not doubt that he and many economists are well-trained statisticians, but if economists who pontificate about schools could not rely on test scores as the coin of their realm, they would probably be out of the education business business.

Here is a sample of the amazing inferences that can be made when you rely only on formulas to think about schools. Quote:

“Our primary analysis relies on these estimates of skills for students educated in each of the states. Minnesota, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Montana, and Vermont make up the top five states, whereas Hawaii, New Mexico, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi constitute the bottom five states. The top-performing state (Minnesota) surpasses the bottom-performing state (Mississippi) by 0.87 standard deviations.

Various analyses suggest that the average learning gain from one grade to the next is roughly between one-quarter and one-third of a standard deviation in test scores (Hanushek, Peterson, and Woessmann (2013), p. 72).

Thus, the average eighth-grade math achievement difference between the top- and the bottom-performing state amounts to about three grade-level equivalents – highlighting the problem of relying exclusively on school attainment without regard to quality. ”

From Hanushek, Eric A., Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann. 2013. Endangering prosperity: A global view of the American school. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

These three economists are also responsible for the use of standard deviations to assert that this or that intervention or comparison of schools yield a gain of “days of learning,” or months, or years. Those inferential leaps are really absurd.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers, Testing

Good News: Pro-Public School Activist Wins Seat on Portland, Oregon, School Board

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
4

Rita Moore, a pro-public education advocate, won a hotly contested seat on the Portland, Oregon, school board. Her son attended Portland public schools, and she has long been involved in support of public education. She holds a Ph.D. in political science.

She ran against a candidate who was principal of a KIPP school in Houston and worked also for TFA. See here.

In her response to a survey of candidates, she expressed her views about the importance of public education.

What is your stance on the movement to privatize education?

I am fundamentally opposed to efforts to privatize education. Free public education is America’s gift to the world. It has been the foundation of our society, the bedrock of our democracy, and the engine of economic growth, producing the American dream and making the US the capital of innovation.

Privatizing education is not good for students or this city. I am completely opposed to it, as is the vast majority of voters and residents of Portland. Public education is a door that all kids have the right to walk through and which we as a society have the obligation to fully fund.

Congratulations, Rita Moore!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Portland, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Arizona: Governor Ducey’s Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
30

David Safier writes frequently about politics and education in Arizona.

In this post, he shows how Governor Doug Ducey’s education plan is moving step by step to create a three-tier system of schools, thus abandoning the Supreme Court’s mandate to provide equal educational opportunity.

He begins:

Are you outraged at Governor Ducey’s “education budget”? You should be. After Prop. 123 passed, he promised some “next steps” were coming soon, but all we got is an insulting 25-cents-an-hour raise for teachers and a little money sprinkled over a few high-profile programs to make it look like he’s doing something. Watching Ducey quacking and smiling as he dubs himself the “education governor” is infuriating. But push aside your anger over those outrages for a moment. Something far more important happened in the Legislature this year, something which could change the nature of Arizona education irrevocably. It’s the one-two-three punch of vouchers for everyone, results-based funding and lowering of teacher certification requirements. Over time, those changes will lead to an increasingly stratified education system, with more money flowing to education for children of higher income families and less going to everyone else.

If Ducey and the conservative majority in the legislature could speak freely, if they knew the voters couldn’t hear what they were saying, their vision for Arizona’s education would sound something like this.

“We should have a three tiered education system,” they’d say. “The top tier has to be the best schools money can buy to supply us with our future movers, shakers and innovators—our captains of industry and the geniuses who help them create better, more profitable products and services. The next tier should be good, but not overly expensive schools to teach children who will become our educated professionals—our doctors, lawyers, middle managers and such. Give those kids a K-12 education that’s good enough to get them into colleges where they can obtain the career training they need. As for the rest, they really don’t need much of an education to perform the tasks expected of them. Their schools should teach them to read, write and do math at a sixth grade level. That’s more than enough from them to wash our floors, change our oil and ask, ‘Do you want fries with that?'”

We’re closer to a codified version of this three-tiered educational scheme than we’ve ever been, thanks to the work of Ducey and his legislative majority.

At the top of the educational hierarchy are the most expensive private schools. Courtesy of the new vouchers-for-all law, taxpayers will be giving the wealthiest Arizonans $4,500 or more to help them pay for their children’s tuition. Call it financial aid for the rich. Even with vouchers, the rest of us won’t be able to afford those schools—they start at $10,000 a year—so the rich don’t have to worry about the riffraff showing up.

What? You don’t think the public should subsidize tuition at private schools for rich kids? That’s old thinking.

Categories Arizona, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Red Queen in L.A.: What If We Held an Election and Nobody Came?

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
26

Red Queen in L.A. reflects on the debacle in Los Angeles. Turnout for a consequential school board election was abysmal.

She notes that Los Angelenos have participated in rallies in great numbers in recent months, but when it came time to vote, they were missing in action.

In the school board election on Tuesday, only 9.3% of eligible voters bothered to vote.

From a school district that is approximately 75% Hispanic and 80% eligible for free-or-reduced-price-meals, comes an election of national significance, decided by a preponderance of very narrow, special interests including relatively affluent silicon-beach-millenials, attorneys, entertainment executives, and real estate investors from the coastal plain to the palisades of LA’s westside. For it to happen in the face of the last six month’s electoral imbroglio is at once mystifying and maddening. After all we’ve been through, here we are all over again witnessing the triumph of alternative facts, propaganda, Big Lies and even bigger money.

What is the cause of this apathy when so much is at stake?

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

Peter Dreier: How Big Money Hijacked Democracy in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2017 //
18

Peter Dreier, a professor of political science at Occidental College, gives his political analysis of the Los Angeles school board election.

He writes:

[Nick] Melvoin and his billionaire backers dramatically outspent school board president Steve Zimmer’s campaign, making the District 4 race the most expensive in LAUSD history.

Political pundits will spend the next few days and weeks analyzing the Los Angeles school board election, examining exit polls, spilling lots of ink over how different demographic groups — income, race, religious, union membership, gender, party affiliation, and others — voted on Tuesday.

But the real winner in the race was not Nick Melvoin, but Big Money. And the real loser was not Steve Zimmer, but democracy – and LA’s children.

Who backed Melvoin?

Billionaires, many of whom live far from Los Angeles, bought this election for Melvoin. Their money paid for non-stop TV and radio ads, as well as phone calls, mailers and newspaper ads (including a huge wrap-around ad on the front of Sunday’s LA Times). Melvoin’s billionaire backers paid for 44 mailers and at least $1 million on negative TV ads against Zimmer.

The so-called “Independent” campaign for Melvoin was funded by big oil, big tobacco, Enron and Walmart, and other out-of-town corporations and billionaires. They paid for Melvoin’s ugly, deceptive, and false attack ads against Zimmer, a former teacher and current school board president. Melvoin is so devoted to the corporate agenda for our schools that during the campaign he said that the school district needed a “hostile takeover.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who lives in Santa Cruz, donated close to $5 million since last September to the California Charter School Associaton’s political action committee, which poured big bucks into Melvoin’s campaign.

Among the big donors behind Melvoin and the CCSA were members of the Walton family (Alice Walton, Jim Walton, and Carrie Walton Penner) ― heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune from Arkansas, who’ve donated over $2 million to CCSA. Alice Walton (net worth: $36.9 billion), who lives in Texas, was one of the biggest funders behind Melvoin’s campaign. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflicks (net worth: $1.9 billion), who lives in Santa Cruz, donated close to $5 million since last September to the CCSA’s political action committee, including $1 million a week before the election.

Other moguls behind Melvoin and the CCSA include Doris Fisher (net worth: $2.7 billion), co-founder of The Gap, who lives in San Francisco: Texas resident John Arnold (net worth: $2.9 billion), who made a fortune at Enron before the company collapsed, leaving its employees and stockholders in the lurch, then made another fortune as a hedge fund manager; Jeff Yass, who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, and runs the Susquahanna group, a hedge fund; Frank Baxter, former CEO of the global investment bank Jefferies and Company that specialized in “junk” bonds; and Michael Bloomberg (net worth: $48.5 billion), the former New York City mayor and charter champion. Eli Broad (net worth: $7.7 billion), who hatched a plan to put half of all LAUSD students in charter schools by 2023 — an idea that Zimmer fought — donated $400,000 to CCSA last Friday, on top of $50,000 he gave in November. He made his money in real estate and life insurance.

Not surprisingly, most of these billionaires are big backers of conservative Republican candidates and right-wing causes. Several are on the boards of charter school chains.

Citizens United strikes again. Until there are campaign finance limits, big money will win more elections and corrupt our democracy.

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

Peter Greene: The Tawdry Story Behind the Latest Florida Charter Scam

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2017 //
10

I recently posted a story about Eagle Arts Academy Charter School in Palm Beach, Florida, which seemed to be in chaos. There was financial mismanagement, constant turnover, and multiple snafus.

Peter Greene dug deeper and exposed the back story. He calls it “Florida Charter Scam: Part 23,174.”

He writes:

“Gregory James Blount was a 40-ish-year-old former model and events producer who was working his way out of bankruptcy by teaching modeling and acting classes when he decided that getting into the charter school biz seemed like a fine career move. He recruited Liz Knowles, a teacher and private school chief, to run the school and write his “Artademics” curriculum. But Knowles walked away from Blount soon after (final straw– discovering he had created a Artademics company to cash in). Knowles recalled Blount’s argument for her to stay. “Don’t worry, :Liz. You’ll be rich.”

“The Eagle Arts Academy opened up, and Blount was cashing in. What’s repeatedly impressive about these scam schools is that even people with no education experience or even successful business experience can still figure out how to make big money at this game. Blount was no exception.

“The technique is familiar. The non-profit school hires other companies, and that’s where you make your money. Blount set up a business that he called a “foundation,” though it was not registered as one. The foundation sold uniforms to students at hefty prices, and that money went to Blount. Blount’s company also ran a profitable after-school tutoring program on school grounds, rent free. And when Knowles walked away from writing the school’s curriculum, Blount set up a company to do that; the school paid him for that as well– even though the curriculum was both late. A third company charged the school for consulting services as well.

“The Eagles Arts charter did include a clause saying that no board members of the school could profit directly or indirectly. Blount apparently got around that by simply resigning from the board during the periods that he was making money through his companies.

“So, does this story end with Blount disgraced and in handcuffs?”

No, he is opening for a second year in August.

The wonderful world of school choice, brought to you by Jeb Bush and Betsy DeVos.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Hoax, Privatization
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