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Weaponized Philanthropy: A Report on the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2017 //
16

What do you know about the Lynne and Harry Bradley Foundation? Likely, not much. While Gates, Broad, and Walton go public with their eagerness to privatize public schools, Bradley has the same goals but stays under the media radar.

The Center for Media and Democracy now reveals what everyone needs to know about the Bradley Foundation.

It has more assets than the Koch family foundations. It was the driving force behind the voucher movement in Wisconsin. It funds anti-union organizations. For a 501(c)3 charity, the Bradley Foundation is deeply involved in partisan activities.

The report says (the links are on the site):

“Documents examined by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) expose a national effort funded by the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation to assess and expand right-wing “infrastructure” to influence policies and politicians in statehouses nationwide.

“The documents were made public in October 2016 on two Twitter accounts that cyber security analysts have linked to one of the Russian hackers alleged to have breached the Democratic National Committee. The Bradley Foundation confirmed in a statement that the hack had taken place and was reported to the FBI. More information about how the Bradley files became public is available here.

“The documents open a window to the behind-the-scenes workings of one of America’s largest right-wing foundations. With $835 million in assets as of June 2016, the Bradley Foundation is as large as the three Koch family foundations combined, yet receives much less attention as a significant funder of the right.

“CMD has examined thousands of these documents, including Bradley board documents between 2013-2016. The documents indicate that Bradley has a new stream of funding to build this “conservative infrastructure” and is using a metric to assess the strength and depth of that infrastructure in individual states — including “receptive” politicians, right-wing “think tanks,” symbiotic “grassroots” groups, friendly media, litigation centers, and opposition research — to guide Bradley’s strategic funding initiatives.

“Bradley ranks states into four “tiers” of investment opportunities and prioritizes funding the top tier states. A re-creation of Bradley’s master chart listing all U.S. states and scoring their infrastructure needs can be found here and below.

“The documents also reveal that Bradley is bankrolling groups across the nation that are working to defund and dismantle unions. The political nature of this attack is underscored by Bradley grantees who boast in major newspapers and in Bradley-funded publications like the Daily Signal that the evisceration of public and private sector unions in states like Wisconsin and Michigan was successful in turning blue states red in the last presidential election cycle…”

“The documents reveal that a key Bradley partner in this effort is the discredited Berman and Co. public relations firm and the many front groups it has spawned. Berman and Co. is run by Richard Berman, an aggressive propagator of industry spin and disinformation, profiled by “60 Minutes” as a “hired gun” for corporate America. Berman is best known for propping up propagandistic websites and launching public relations and social media campaigns to smear non-profit environmental, worker rights, consumer, and animal welfare organizations. The Center for Media and Democracy has specifically been targeted by Berman over the years.

“Representing clients in the restaurant industry, Berman has long campaigned against any rise in the minimum wage or tipped minimum wage, which has stood at $2.13 for 30 years. He has battled efforts at the state and federal level that make joining a union easier, has attacked organized workers and their leaders, and has been a primary opponent of labor-backed campaigns to raise the minimum wage.

“The documents reveal that Bradley is funding a new Berman project called the “Interstate Policy Alliance” to target its strategic infrastructure investments, as a “discrete channel” for cookie-cutter reports for member groups to publish to “maximize credibility,” and to train Bradley-funded groups in “crisis communication” and opposition research. Bradley cites the case of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which was “caught flatfooted,” the documents say, after the Center for Media and Democracy published ALEC’s secret library of “model bills” — voted on behind closed doors with corporate lobbyists — and launched ALECexposed.org in 2011.

“The documents show that Bradley has funded ALEC to aid with “proactive reputation management,” and the “larger plan” includes “aggressive opposition research.” Bradley wants Berman to develop an “off-the-shelf public-relations strategy” for “conservative outfits caught in the media crosshairs.” The key to success, the documents say, is “well sourced opposition research already prepared and ready to deploy” against opponents (Center for Consumer Freedom, Grant Proposal Record, 8/21/12).

“Berman engages in aggressive PR campaigns attacking teachers unions, a significant opponent of Bradley’s long-term agenda to advance taxpayer vouchers for private and religious schools, while other Bradley-funded institutions are funded to “defund teachers unions and achieve real education reform” (Barder Fund, 8/18/15). Bradley is so anxious to silence the organized voice of public school teachers it has pumped $1.77 million into a substitute, the Association of American Educators Foundation. “The NEA and AFT have already been substantially weakened by Wisconsin Act 10. AAE thinks it is well-positioned to help further weaken the unions and their political goals,” say the documents (AAEF, Grant Proposal Record, 8/19/2014).

“While I have not yet seen all of the documents, this appears to be more evidence that a few powerful private foundations are weaponizing philanthropy for their own private political purposes. The government gives charitable foundations tax breaks in exchange for furthering the public good. Instead, it sounds as if the Bradley Foundation has been furthering the good of its own political agenda. It really begs some serious legal questions,” said author Jane Mayer.”

Berman has run anti-teachers union campaigns in New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere. His “Union Facts” website regularly attacks unions.

Why does this highly partisan Foundation qualify for tax-exempt status?

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

California State Board Votes to Close Two Charter Schools!

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2017 //
76

At a time when Los Angeles is about to choose between a candidate who favors unlimited charter expansion (Nick Melvoin) and an incumbent who wants some accountability for charters, the state board just denied renewal to two L.A. charter schools.

“California’s State Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to shutter two Los Angeles charter schools run by a nonprofit that is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education and the inspector general for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Some parents and teachers at the schools cried through their testimony at an emotional hearing, which ended with the board declining to renew the charter petitions for the Celerity Dyad Charter School in South Los Angeles and the Celerity Troika Charter School in Eagle Rock. Explaining their vote, board members said they had lost confidence in the Celerity Educational Group, the organization that manages the schools, and expressed growing concerns about its governance structure and finances, as well as the potential for conflicts of interest.

“This seems to be a very troubling failure on the part of the adults who manage these organizations, rather than on the adults in the classrooms,” said board member Ilene Straus.

“The board’s vote comes at a time when charter school advocates are determined to increase the number of such schools in L.A., and it highlights the growing difficulty of regulating them. The state’s teachers union, which has fought against the growth in charter schools, has argued that all control over which charter schools are approved or rejected should rest with local school districts, rather than county or state boards.”

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

Los Angeles: The Scurrilous Smear Campaign Against Steve Zimmer

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2017 //
14

The run-off campaign in District 4 in Los Angeles for School Board has turned into a national issue. The race between Steve Zimmer, president of the Los Angeles school board, and his challenger, Nick Melvoin, has become an epic struggle between supporters of public schools and supporters of privatization.

Zimmer entered teaching through Teach for America but, unlike the typical TFA, he stayed in the classroom in Los Angeles for 17 years.

Blogger “Red Queen in L.A.,” a parent of children in LAUSD, says this is a dirty and disgraceful campaign, and almost all the dirt has come from Nick Melvoin’s camp. Melvoin is running a campaign based on lies, propaganda, and smears. He is smearing not only Zimmer, but public education. He doesn’t deserve to be elected.

Steve Zimmer understands the gravity of his responsibility as president of the school board. He is a man of honesty, candor, and dignity. Melvoin is a puppet of out-of-town billionaires.

She writes:


Negative Ads Undermine Democracy

Mostly, the fourth board district school board race has been one of incessant negativity and lies. Why do we permit this uncivilized behavior? I can tell you in walking my neighborhood I am met with deep weariness, wariness and hostility. This is the legacy of democracy abused. This race has been nothing if not about Big Lies and electoral abuse, and that’s a lesson being bought – and paid for – dearly.

Independent Committee expenditures (IECs, the new normal for “PAC”s) in favor of both candidates have been about the same, averaging $1.8 million dollars at the moment. Each. You read that right. Think of the children. (Think of the printers.)

What is not similar is IC expenditures in opposition to their candidate. Melvoin’s IC devotes half an order of magnitude more in slandering Zimmer than his IC spends to oppose Melvoin.

Thus quite apart from the overall total spent which is obscene, a dramatic distinction between candidates is evident from what’s being spent to smear the other guy. Zimmer’s adherents spent less than one-quarter, 25%, of that average toward denigrating their opposition ($441K). Melvoin’s buddies sunk 140% of that average spent in support of their candidate ($2.4 million) on negative ads.

In fact, the amount Zimmer’s IEC devoted to negative campaigning is so comparatively trivial, the negligible difference between both campaign’s positive expenditures, which is just 6% – this sum ($114K) is 25% of what Zimmer’s camp spent in negativity altogether. His challenger spent 5.5x as much as the incumbent in stuffing our mailboxes with scurrilous lies.

So the current overall total of IECs is $6.4 million, and the electorate has responded with a resounding: “Beat It”.
The blowback to our electoral democracy is fierce. When I try to speak with my own neighbors with whom I have worked side-by-side for over twenty years improving their neighborhood, my neighborhood, everyone’s lives, their doors stay shut and they make clear they are fortressed against hearing anything “political”.

What they have absorbed are buzz words: “bad”, “failing”, “violent”, “drop-out”, “waste”, “fraud”, “scandal” – and on and on and on.

What they have forgotten is that their littlest neighbors, my children, are part of that system being smeared. And I volunteer within that system improving it just like I work to improve our neighborhoods….

That is what is Trumpian about the might of the California Charter Schools Association’s money and their power in this battle for the school board. Intimidation, slander and ultimately electoral paralysis. They strive to overwhelm us with false equivalence such that even the stark consequence of ideological differences so riven as represented by these candidates, is obscured.

Please do not let all this money win your single democratic voice. You must turn out to the polls in order to use it. This is the one and only way to assert Resistance.

VOTE FOR STEVE ZIMMER ON MAY 16:

KEEP OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM PUBLIC

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

Center for Popular Democracy: Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2017 //
8

Is it reasonable to give taxpayer dollars to entities that are deregulated and unsupervised? That are unaccountable and non transparent? What do you think will happen when government funds are turned over to organizations that are basically on their own and who make campaign contributions to legislator who prevent accountability for their donors?

The Center for Popular Democracy explains what you expect under these circumstances: waste, fraud, and abuse.

Here is the executive summary:

“In 2014, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) issued a report demonstrating that charter schools in 15 states—about one third of the states with charter schools—had reported over $100 million
in fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement since 1994. In 2015 and 2016, we released additional reports documenting millions of dollars in new alleged and con rmed cases of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools.

This report offers further evidence that the money we know has been misused is just the tip of the iceberg. With the new alleged and con rmed cases reported here, the nancial impact of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in charter schools has reached over $223 million since our rst report.

“Public funding for charter schools (including local, state, and federal expenditures) has reached over $40 billion annually. Yet despite this tremendous ongoing investment of public dollars in charter schools, all levels of government have failed to implement systems to proactively monitor charter schools for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. While charter schools are subject to signi cant reporting requirements by various public agencies (including federal monitors, chartering entities, county superintendents, and state controllers and auditors), very few of these agencies regularly monitor for fraud.

“The rapid expansion of the charter sector in recent years is a particularly important factor in the fraud epidemic. Local and state entities charged with oversight of charter schools are quickly becoming overwhelmed, yet the federal government continues to pour taxpayer dollars into this expansion project. Over the past 20 years, the federal Department of Education has channeled over $3 billion into states to increase the quantity of charter schools without requiring strong oversight systems. As a result, millions in federal dollars have been lost to fraud, waste, and mismanagement. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed in December 2015, required the federal Department of Education to increase the pace of spending signi cantly over the next 10 years, essentially doubling the total federal investment in charter schools in half the time. In 2017, President Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, have proposed to increase federal funding for charter schools from $333 million in 2017 to $501 million in 2018. This increase comes after a 2016 report from the US Department of Education’s Of ce of Inspector General which found “significant risk” in the US Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) charter school grant program.

“DeVos should be particularly familiar with the dangers of fraud and abuse in charter schools. As a staunch advocate for charter schools in Michigan, DeVos has spent millions in campaign donations supporting state candidates who favored “school choice” and opposing increased oversight and regulation. The result of Michigan’s experiment in charters has been a system of failing schools run by for-pro t companies, and millions of dollars lost in fraud and waste.

“With the perpetuation of inadequate oversight mechanisms and the new in ux of federal funding, the amount of federal, state, and local dollars at risk of being lost to fraud, waste, and abuse in the charter sector is only going to grow.

“The number of instances of serious fraud uncovered by whistleblowers, reporters, and investigations suggests that the fraud problem extends well beyond the confirmed cases we know about. Based on the widely accepted estimate of the percentage of revenue the typical charter organization loses to fraud, the deficiencies in charter oversight throughout the country suggest that federal, state, and local governments stand to lose more than $2.1 billion in 2017, up from $1.8 billion in 2016.8 The vast majority of fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because federal and state governments, as well as local charter authorizers, lack the oversight systems necessary to detect the fraud.

“Setting up systems of oversight that can detect and deter charter school fraud is critical. The money saved by these oversight systems will almost certainly offset the cost of implementation. We recommend the following reforms:

“■ Mandate audits specifically designed to detect and prevent fraud, and increase the transparency and accountability of charter school operators and managers

“■ Design clear planning-based public investment programs to ensure that any expansion of charter school investment also ensures equity, transparency, and accountability

“■ Increase transparency and accountability to ensure that charter schools provide the information necessary for state agencies to detect and prevent fraud

“State and federal lawmakers should act now in establishing systems to prevent fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. ESSA unfortunately does very little reduce these vulnerabilities in the Charter Schools Program. Without state and local lawmakers passing policies to increase oversight, taxpayers stand to lose millions of additional dollars to charter school fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.”

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

An Urgent Message to the Citizens of North Carolina

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2017 //
6

Public education is in jeopardy in North Carolina.

Please take action now!

The North Carolina Senate introduced SB 603, a bill creating a new voucher program that would give $9,000 a year to students with disabilities going to non-public schools.

Send an email to tell your house member to vote NO for SB 603.

SB 603 is a bill that:

Expands opportunities for fraud

Costs more to administer than traditional voucher programs

Takes funding from our public schools, with particularly negative impacts for public school programs for students with disabilities

Drains the state budget

Lacks accountability

If passed, parents of eligible students get a debit card loaded with approximately $9,000 per year that they can spend on private school costs, tutoring, technology and even account fees!

In addition, SB 603 would allow parents to double- or triple-dip into North Carolina’s already existing voucher programs. Parents could also receive $4,200 from the Opportunity Scholarship program (for students meeting certain income requirements), an additional $8,000 via the Disabilities Grant Program and $9,000 from this program the new proposed program.

Like the Arizona ESA program on which it is modeled, it is ripe for fraud. Arizona’s program has resulted in parents buying televisions, groceries, cell phones and family planning services. Vendors have also been caught overcharging parents. Monitoring of purchases would rely on self-reporting.

Under the proposed bill, even if an audit uncovers fraud, there is no requirement that the parent be forced to repay the taxpayers.

Worst of all, when a parent misuses these debit cards, their children go undereducated.

This is, in our opinion, just one more attempt to defund and attack public education. And it is shameful.

Send this email today to your representative telling them to oppose SB 603.

We make it easy. Just click here.

Then pick up the phone and call on Monday. You can find their number here.

Then post this link on your Facebook page and share it will all of your friends and family in North Carolina.

https://npeaction.org/2017/05/12/north-carolina-alert-stop-super-voucher/

Thanks for all you do!

Carol Burris

Executive Director

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization, Vouchers

L.A. Times Endorses Trump-DeVos Ticket for School Board

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
39

I was curious to see whether the L.A. Times editorial board would stand up for public education or would join the chorus of privatization and greed.

Would the editorial board be offended that billionaires are swamping the district with millions to promote the privatization candidates?

Would they recall all the stories about charter scandals and corruption that the newspaper has reported? Would they forget about the Celerity charter chain, whose CEO used the school credit cards for resorts, fancy hotels, lavish meals, couture clothing, and chaffer-driven limousines?

Could they possibly endorse the candidates benefitting from the money poured in by the likes of the Walton family and other out-of-town Republicans and rightwing corporate Democrats?

They could and they did.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that they endorsed the candidates who are best equipped to promote the Trump-DeVos privatization agenda. And I won’t attribute it to the fact that the newspaper accepts $800,000 a year from Eli Broad for its education coverage, the elderly billionaire who has a fetish about stamping out public education. The editorial board has the chutzpah to refer to puppets of the charter industry as “independent thinkers.” If those two fit the L.A. Times’ definition of an “independent thinker,” they must be reading from a script provided by the billionaires who pull their strings.

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

Los Angeles: Outside Money Continues to Pour in to Buy Control of LA School Board for Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
4

If you live in Los Angeles in one of the districts where there is a run-off, please vote for Steve Zimmer or Imelda Padilla.

Don’t let the billionaires buy control of the public schools. They don’t want to improve them. They want to turn them over to the unregulated, scandal-ridden charter industry.

Don’t be fooled: charters and choice and privatization are the Trump-DeVos agenda!

Howard Blume reports in the Los Angeles Times on the flood of outside money that is flowing into the high-profile run-offs for two crucial seats on the Los Angeles school board. The charter billionaires are dumping millions into the campaign to defeat Steve Zimmer, president of the school board, and into the race between Imelda Padilla and charter supporter Kelly Fitzpatrick Nonez.

The election is May 16. It will determine whether the charter industry can buy control of the nation’s second largest school district.

The owner of Netflix, billionaire Reed Hastings, has gifted $5 million to the California Charter School Association. Hastings memorably told a meeting of CCSA that he looks forward to the day when there are no more elected school boards in the nation. Democracy is a problem for corporate reformers. It is so much easier to just buy up the competition, instead of giving ordinary people a vote that is equal in power to the vote of a billionaire.

Two members of the billionaire Walton family from Arkansas have given to the charter candidates. They are part of America’s wealthiest family, whose riches were gained by paying low wages to their non-union employees.

Teachers unions have supported Zimmer and Padilla, but the unions’ money comes from their hard-working members, not from a family fortune or billionaires with no limits on what they spend.

Outside spending for Melvoin has surpassed $4.25 million; for Zimmer, $2.16 million.

Both charter-backed candidates have raised more money for their own campaigns than their opponents have.

Charters are privately operated public schools that are exempt from some rules that govern traditional campuses. Most are nonunion.

CCSA Advocates can use donations for any political purpose, but the L.A. school board race — the most expensive in the nation — has been its primary project.

Besides having money, Hastings is a desirable donor for the charter side in left-leaning California. He’s been a regular and reliable contributor to Democratic causes and candidates. That’s a valuable attribute given the state’s anti-Trump political climate — because the Trump administration has made increasing the number of charter schools a central goal.

Like Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Hastings is an ardent, longtime advocate for charters and a major donor to charter causes. (California Gov. Jerry Brown also strongly supports charters, though not as a big-money contributor.)

The teachers union casts donors such as Hastings in the role of outside billionaire trying to buy a local election. Hastings has insisted he simply wants to support meaningful steps to improve public education.

The “outsider” tag also applies to some other donors; some are notably associated with conservative or anti-union politics, or both.

Major CCSA Advocates donors since last September include:

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan: $1 million. (Riordan gave another million to a second, allied campaign to defeat Zimmer.)
Conservative GAP co-founder Doris Fisher: $1.05 million
Walmart heir Jim Walton: $500,000
Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs (whose late husband, Apple founder Steve Jobs, was assertively anti-union): $250,000
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: $200,000
Walmart heir Alice Walton: $200,000…

United Teachers Los Angeles ended 2016 with about $366,000 in a political action committee established to support its candidates, according to public filings.The union also had $286,000 in a fund for “issues” messages. That latter fund has been tapped to put out flyers with messages such as, “Thank Steve Zimmer for student recovery day.”

Issues advertising cannot refer to an election or an election date. Nor can it urge voters to vote a certain way. But there’s a clear political benefit for the union-backed candidates.

UTLA also collects an average of $9.50 a month from the 22% of its 32,000 members who have agreed to contribute, totaling about $67,000 a month from January onward, said union political director Oraiu Amoni. This money is split about 60-40 between candidate and issues messages.

And last week, union members voted to borrow $500,000 from their strike fund for such messages. Past debts to the strike fund will not be paid off until 2020, according to Amoni.

UTLA also is spending a smaller but undisclosed amount as part of a “We Are Public Schools” media campaign, which includes billboards with positive messages about public schools. Some feature pictures of Zimmer or Padilla.

Besides the American Federation of Teachers, other unions have kicked in for those candidates — notably the National Education Assn. with $700,000 and the California Teachers Assn. with $250,000.

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

Sue M. Legg: Charters Bomb in Florida

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
9

The Florida Department of Education, firmly in the hands of the Jeb Bush team, tried to spin the “success” of the charter industry, but Sue M. Legg of the League of Women Voters in Florida says, “Not so fast.”

In this post, she explains that charter schools enroll a lower percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, of English language learners, and of students with disabilities.

She asks:

Is the formula for successful charters to weed out students whom they cannot help? Should traditional public schools do the same? Where does this road lead?

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

Andrea Gabor: Why Are the Few Veteran Teachers of New Orleans Demoralized?

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
9

Andrea Gabor reviews research produced by the Education Research Alliance of New Orleans about veteran teachers, those who taught before Hurricane Katrina and returned.

“ERA’s analysis provides an important before-and-after-the-storm glimpse of the city’s schools from a unique perspective—the small group of pre-Katrina teachers who returned to teaching following the storm, and who have remained in the classroom for over a decade. As New Orleans looks forward, the views of these returning pre-Katrina teachers are key; they are the survivors.

“In the wake of the mass firings following the storm, the teachers who returned to New Orleans and were still teaching at the time of the study, in the 2013/2014 school year, almost surely represent the city’s most experienced educators—and those with the closest community ties. While teachers with greater than 20 years of experience made up nearly 40 percent of the teaching force before the storm, that number has dropped to about 15 percent, according to another ERA study. Conversely, the number of inexperienced teacher with less than 5 years experienced now make up the majority of teachers, up from about 30 percent before the storm….

“Indeed, important characteristics of New Orleans reforms, including a high-rate of school closings and at-risk students cycling through multiple schools, are more likely to adversely impact high school students who, unlike their younger peers, are more likely to resist no-excuses culture of the non-selective New Orleans charters, and eventually to drop out. New Orleans also has done a terrible job of keeping track of kids who “fall between the cracks.”

“Education reformers like to say that “teachers are the single most important” school variable in a child’s education. As with so much else in the ed-reform debates, this is misleading. For surely, school stability and culture, which is controlled by school leaders—in the best cases, by cadres of teacher leaders—is as important as the role of individual teachers. School culture also helps determine just how much influence teachers have over curriculum, discipline and other policies. In my research, both quality education and teacher job satisfaction are highly correlated with schools that include teachers in such key decisions.

“In New Orleans, with a teacher cadre plagued by high turnover and sparse classroom experience, veteran teachers should be treasured. That so many say they have less job satisfaction than during the pre-Katrina years, suggests that they are not, which is surely a failing with implications far beyond just teacher morale.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Teachers

Sue M. Legg: Florida’s Budget Bill is a Train Wreck for Public Schools, a Boon for Charter Operators

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2017 //
5

Here we go with the Great Money Heist in Florida.

HB7069 passed both houses of the legislature and will go to Governor Rick Scott for his signature.

In two posts, Sue M. Legg of the League of Women Voters analyzes the devastating impact of this budget bill for public schools. She hopes that Governor Scott will veto the bill. As she explains, money is being shifted to charter organizations and taken away from traditional public schools. Ten percent of the students in the state are enrolled in charter schools, but the needs of the ninety percent are ignored. The bill reduces base student funding, so that it is lower than it was a decade ago.

She writes:

The provisions to require local districts to share capital outlay with charter schools is untenable. It will cost districts already struggling with aging facilities, millions of dollars. The Schools of Hope proposal allocates $140 million for charter school takeovers of low performing public schools.

Creating charter systems that control groups of charters surely must stress the Florida constitutional requirement for a ‘uniform system of high quality schools’. These systems become their own local education agencies. This is a legal term that is now allocated to elected school boards. The systems would be able to receive funding directly with no oversight from districts.

The shift in the allocation of Title I funds for low income students also is adversely affected by the bill. Low performing schools would get the bulk of the money which then would go with Schools of Hope. The implications are far reaching if money is spread too thinly to support extra reading, tutoring and other services many children need.

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