Tom Ultican has written many posts about the failure of privatizing public education. In this one, he takes the long view and concludes that what we see today is the culmination of fifty years of attempts to turn education into a business.
He starts from two recent books: Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains and Anand Giridharadas’ Winners Take All.
These are good lens through which to understand the rightwing plutocratic attack on the public sector.
Domingo Morel is a scholar of state takeovers. He wrote a book called Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy. He was also a member of the team from Johns Hopkins that studied the problems of the Providence schools. And, what’s more, he is a graduate of the Providence public schools.
In other words, he has solid credentials to speak about the future of the Providence public schools. The schools are already under mayoral control, so discount that magic bullet that reformers usually prefer.
He knows from his study of state takeovers that they do not address root causes of school dysfunction.
Consider this:
As a scholar of state takeovers of school districts, I have seen how communities desperate to improve their schools placed their hopes in state takeovers, only to be disappointed. While the long-term effects of takeovers on student achievement often fail to meet expectations, the effects on community engagement are devastating. In most takeovers, states remove local entities — school boards, administrators, teachers, parents and community organizations — from decision-making about their schools.
Those who have read the Johns Hopkins report are aware that the absence of community engagement is a major issue in the Providence Schools. Demographic differences are a major reason. Students of color represent more than 85% of the student population and English Language Learners represent nearly 30%, while more than 80% of the teachers are white. These differences are not trivial…
To help cultivate community engagement, the state could partner with a collective of community organizations, including Parents Leading for Educational Equity, ProvParents, the Equity Institute, the Latino Policy Institute, CYCLE and the Providence Student Union, which have come together over concerns with the Providence schools.
Finally, state officials should examine their role in contributing to the current conditions in Providence. State funding, particularly to support English Language Learners and facilities, has been inadequate. In addition, the absence of a pipeline for teachers of color is a state failure.
What a surprising set of recommendations: increase the pipeline of teachers of color. Build community engagement. Work with community organizations. Increase state funding.
He might also have added: Reduce class sizes. Provide wraparound services for students and adults. Open health clinics for families in the schools or communities. Improve and increase early childhood education. Beef up arts education and performance spaces in every school.
It takes a village, not a flock of hedge fund managers or a passel of fly-by billionaires hawking charter schools.
One of my friend’s in Mississippi sent this column by Bill Crawford in Meridian.
Crawford says the Governor and Legislature regularly complain about federal mandates, and he agrees with them.
But unlike them, he asks why the Governor and Legislator passed a law for charter schools that takes tax money away local districts without their consent. Isn’t this what they complain about when Washington does it?
He writes:
Let’s take a look at the lawsuit against charter schools now pending in the Mississippi Supreme Court.
The state established charter schools outside the normal public school domain. They do not answer to local elected school boards and have their own state agency, not the Mississippi Department of Education. In setting them up, the state mandated that local schools transfer funds to charter schools, so much per local student attending the charter school. This includes a share of local tax revenue as well as state revenue.
Now, remember that local elected school boards set property tax millage rates based on what the regular public schools need to operate. Maximum millage and annual increases are also limited by state mandates.
Parents of students in Jackson public schools have sued the state for taking their local tax money and giving it to charter schools in the city.
The state contends school money, state and local, should follow the students.
Local school advocates contend, since neither local voters nor local school boards had a say in the establishment or operation of these charter schools, just the state, tax money local school boards authorized should stick with the schools for which the money was intended.
Hmmm.
Jan Resseger reports here on the uncertain status of legislation intended to repeal Ohio’s state takeover law, which was shoved through without deliberation or debate.
She writes:
You will remember that on May 1, 2019, the Ohio House passed HB 154 to repeal Ohio state school takeovers, which have been catastrophic failures in Lorain and Youngstown under HB 70—the law that set up the state seizure of so-called failing school districts. HB70 was fast tracked through the Legislature in 2015 without hearings. Youngstown and Lorain have been operating under state appointed CEOs for four years now; East Cleveland has been undergoing state takeover this year.
Not only did the Ohio House pass HB 154 six weeks ago to undo HB 70, but its members did so in spectacular fashion, by a margin of 83/12. The House was so intent on ridding the state of top-down state takeovers that its members also included the repeal of HB 70 in the House version of the state budget—HB 166.
Yesterday afternoon, the Ohio Senate released an amended, substitute HB166—the Senate’s proposal for the state budget. In the Senate version, there is a detailed 54 page School Transformation Proposal to replace the House’s simple action to undo HB 70. (The Senate’s School Transformation Proposal begins on p. 14 in the linked section of the Senate Budget.)
The three districts Ohio has already seized with HB 70—and 10 others slated to be taken over in the next two years—are all school districts that serve Ohio’s very poorest children. Last evening, as I plodded through the statutory language in the Senate Budget Proposal, I found myself wondering if the people envisioning this laborious, top-down, state takeover plan—a plan that pretends not to be a state takeover—have spent time trying to transform a complex institution like a school in the kind of community where many children arrive in Kindergarten far behind their peers in more affluent communities. And I wondered why the Senate’s plan relies on so many of the failed “turnaround” strategies of No Child Left Behind—the federal law that imposed imposed a rigid plan for raising test scores and that left an increasing number of American schools with “failing” ratings every year until the law was scrapped when it was itself deemed a failure. No Child Left Behind was a test-and-punish law; the Ohio Senate’s School Transformation Proposal is also very much a test-and-punish law—at a time when extensive academic research demonstrates that standardized tests are a flawed yardstick for measuring the quality of a school.
We can only hope the Ohio House will determinedly oppose the Senate’s plan and stop it in the Senate-House Conference Committee.
She goes on to explain how the Senate’s new plan for state takeover is supposed to work.
And she adds:
What is clear from this very brief summary of the Senate’s School Transformation Proposal is that, although the Senate has proposed a state school district takeover plan with more local control over the members of the local School Improvement Commission, and while district and individual school improvement plans would have the input of community stakeholders, this is still a plan that puts all the power in a district School Improvement Director—a czar who can fire the principals and the teachers, charterize the schools, privatize the schools, abrogate collective bargaining agreements, and even shut down schools. And the district’s School Improvement Director’s power grows in later years if the district fails to show progress. In the fourth year of no progress, “A new board of education shall be appointed… However, the Director shall retain complete operational, managerial, and instructional control of the district.”
Make no mistake. This is a Republican plan to end local control of public schools in poor districts.
The Chicago Teachers Union reports on some gains. Most notable is that individual school districts will be able to limit charter school expansion into their districts, a battle now being fought in California. The issue is whether the wishes of charter entrepreneurs should outweigh democratic local control of schools. Illinois says no.
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Thousands of public school teachers in Los Angeles went on strike in February, demanding basic services for their students: smaller class sizes (many classes have more than 40 students), classes in the arts and music, a librarian and nurse and other support staff in every school. The strike won broad public support. The teachers won an agreement from the school board.
Now comes the hard part: Paying for the agreement.
On Tuesday June 4, voters in Los Angeles will go to the polls and vote on Measure EE.
It is a parcel tax that would raise $500 million additional dollars every year for the public schools for the next twelve years.
Please show up and vote for Measure EE.
The money is desperately needed to provide the students of Los Angeles the schools they need and deserve. Why should they attend schools that are deteriorating, where the library is open only on occasion or not at all, where a nurse is available once a week, a guidance counselor has hundreds of students, and a school psychologist is available never?
Please show up and vote for Measure EE.
California is one of the richest states in the nation, with a roaring and dynamic economy.
But California spends less on education than most other states. Shockingly, it is on par with Kansas, Louisiana, and South Carolina.
Los Angeles spends far less than other big cities on its students.
Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez met with Superintendent Austin Beutner and UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl at an elementary school in the school library, which is closed two or three days a week.
He wrote:
“The two most powerful people in Los Angeles public education are like a tag team now, practically completing each other’s sentences.”
California, he wrote, “ranks at the top in wealth and near the bottom in funding per pupil.”
What would EE cost the taxpayer? The owner of a 1,500 square foot home would pay an additional $240, twice as much for a house twice as large. About 82% of the revenue would come from commercial, industrial and apartment building owners, while senior homeowners (over 65) and disabled homeowners are exempted from the tax.
Who is fighting EE? The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, which opposes taxes and apparently opts for an undereducated workforce; the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is also opposed, that being the organization responsible for Proposition 13, which undermined school funding in 1978 by setting strict limits on property taxes. The Chamber prefers a regressive flat tax, one that is the same for the owner of a small house and the owner of a skyscraper.
Beutner and Caputo-Pearl pointed to business leaders who understand that the future success of Los Angeles depends on the success today of the students in the city’s public schools and who support EE.
Measure EE includes strict accountability requirements, meaning an independent financial audit to assure that every dollar goes to the schools for the intended purposes of reducing class size and providing needed services, such as nurses, counselors, and librarians.
Measure EE needs a two-thirds majority to pass, and that’s a high bar, but other cities in California have met it. Beutner listed them: Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Monica, and Torrance.
The people of Los Angeles cheered the teachers when they struck and marched in the rain. They honked their horns and gave them thumbs-up because they were doing what was best for their students.
Now comes the voters’ turn.
Will they too stand up for the children who are the future of Los Angeles?
Will they agree that every school should have a working library, a school nurse, a psychologist, and reasonable class sizes?
Will they agree that all children deserve equality of educational opportunity?
Tuesday June 4 will be a decisive day for the children of Los Angeles.
They are OUR children.
If you live in Los Angeles, please vote and urge your friends, family, and neighbors to vote.
Vote as if your future depends upon it.
It does.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer was elected in Michigan last fall as a progressive Democrat. She promised to reverse the destructive anti-public school policies of her predecessor Republican Rick Snyder.
But Governor Whitmer announced plans to close Benton Harbor High School, over the objections of school board members and students. They say that Governor Whitmer made her decision without listening to their voices. Whatever happened to democracy?
Governor Whitmer, I call upon you to meet with the elected Benton Harbor school board and student representatives.
School board member Patricia Rush wrote this letter:
Hi all –
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board (BHAS)
May 27, 2019
Contact: Steve.Mitchell@bhas.org or Joseph.Taylor@bhas.org
Benton Harbor Area Schools Board and the Community Demand Reconsideration of Governor Whitmer’s Plan to Close Benton Harbor High School
BENTON HARBOR, Mich. – On Tuesday June 4, 2019 at 6pm – the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board will hold the first of several Open Public Meetings at the High School Public Commons to discuss the future of Benton Harbor High School and the entire K-12 school district. Students, families, teachers, and community members are strongly encouraged to participate.
We are urgently requesting that Governor Gretchen Whitmer appear in person at our June 4 Public Meeting – and fulfill 3 of her campaign promises: to support public schools, especially in high-poverty communities, to fight urban poverty, and to hold government accountable. Please see Whitmer’s campaign website: https://www.gretchenwhitmer.com/issues/.
Attached is the Board’s Open Letter to Michigan Governor Whitmer. We respectfully request that all news media PRINT OUR ENTIRE LETTER TO WHITMER – and display on your website.
As has been widely covered in the media over the past few days, Governor Whitmer’s Office, Michigan Treasury, and parts of the Michigan Department of Education have proposed a unilateral plan to close Benton Harbor High School in 2020 with re-distribution of BHAS high school students to a proposed charter school under Lake Michigan College and nine other local school districts.
Parts of the story not reported in the media:
– Governors Office and Michigan Treasury did NOT consult the elected Trustees of the BentonHarbor Board members prior to their unilateral decision. The two BHAS Board members who were briefed in the State Capital Lansing on Friday 5/24/19 were told by the Governors Office staff that this decision to exclude the elected Benton Harbor Board was intentional.
– Likewise, on 5/23/19, the elected state-wide Trustees of the Michigan Department of Education were informed that the Governor’s Office had also excluded them from giving input into the fate of Benton Harbor High School.
– On 5/24/19, the Governors Office informed the two Benton Harbor Board members attending the Lansing meeting that the Governors Office had not held an open public meeting for community input – and did not plan to do so. Instead, the Governors Office met with undisclosed community members that the Governor felt were “representative.”
– The BHAS Board were told that the Governors Draft Plan is a “Yes – or – No Decision with no opportunity for negotiation.” BHAS Board was told it must decide by close of business Friday June 7 to accept the Plan or risk that the State may elect to dissolve the entire Benton Harbor Areas Schools district at any time.
This one-sided decision-making by Michigan State officials is unacceptable. We, the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board are going to hold our State government accountable.
In April 2019, the BHAS Board unanimously voted to support the Fresh Start Resolution petitioning the State of Michigan to reexamine public school accountability and finance systems, calling for a system of improvement strategies developed collaboratively by all stakeholders – to ensure all students and teachers have a voice and receive the opportunities and support they deserve.
The State bears direct responsibility for a significant portion of the BHAS debt. The legacy of this debt should be transparently reviewed and addressed – but the High School cannot be held hostage for the State to agree to debt forgiveness.
The fate of the Benton Harbor High School and the entire School District requires careful planning by all involved parties – especially the opportunity of full community input plus input from both the state and local School Board Trustees who were duly elected by the community to represent them.
//
The BHAS Board OPEN LETTER TO GOVERNOR WHITMER Follows immediately
We respectfully request that all news media PRINT OUR ENTIRE LETTER TO WHITMER and display on your website.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From the Benton Harbor Area Schools Board (BHAS)
May 27, 2019
Contact: Steve.Mitchell@bhas.org or Joseph.Taylor@bhas.org
OPEN LETTER TO MICHIGAN GOVERNOR GRETCHEN WHITMER FROM THE ELECTED SCHOOL BOARD OF BENTON HARBOR AREA SCHOOLS, BENTON HARBOR, MICHIGAN.
Dear Governor Whitmer –
We respectfully and urgently request that you visit Benton Harbor in person to meet in an Open Public Meeting with the community and the elected School Board trustees regarding the future of Benton Harbor High School and the K-12 District as a whole.
The School Board is hosting an Open Public Meeting at the Benton Harbor High School Student Commons on Tuesday June 4 at 6pm. We would love to host you and let you hear the full story.
Hopefully you are aware that representatives from your office, Treasury and the Department of Education are claiming that, on your behalf, a unilateral decision has been made to close Benton Harbor High School in 2020. The Board was told by your representatives that a decision was made by your office to intentionally exclude the elected School Board trustees and exclude open community input from the decision-making process. Honestly, we are completely shocked and dismayed by this action. Our Board has been working in good faith with both Treasury and Education to address issues at BHAS including an outline for a new Strategic Plan, submitted to Treasury, but upon which your departments have taken no action.
We also want to openly confront the many “elephants in the room” that neither your staff nor the news media have addressed:
• The land upon which the Benton Harbor High School sits with its athletic fields and adjacent School Board properties are the LAST MAJOR UNDEVELOPED WATERFRONT PROPERTIES in Berrien County, Michigan. Is this just a coincidence, given that your office just told our Board representatives on 5/24/19 that your plan to close Benton Harbor High School has major (but unnamed) supporters in the nearby business community?
• The Draft Plan from your office is explicitly a transfer of wealth from an overwhelmingly poor and black community (Benton Harbor) to nearby white, more affluent communities. Under your Plan, that transfer of wealth will occur through the loss by Benton Harbor of its school facilities and use of school land, transfer of state funding from Benton Harbor to the adjacent nine school districts where you plan Benton Harbor students to be redistributed, and loss of jobs for local teachers and staff of all levels.
• The contention by representatives of your office that hiring a single staff person to act as a “Cultural Dean” to smooth over “discomfort” that the displaced 700 black students might feel when transported out of their community to predominantly white schools is an appalling insult to our youth and the community. Such insensitivity to the painful history of racial segregation, unsuccessful past desegregation efforts, and continued State-sponsored dis-investment in Benton Harbor calls for a swift and strong response.
We call upon you to meet with us – to hear the students voices and the expertise of our teachers.
We call upon you to fulfill your 2018 campaign promises to support public schools, especially in high-poverty communities, to fight urban poverty, and to hold government accountable.
BHAS needs balanced, constructive leadership from you, your office and all State agencies.
We need complete transparency. We need State and local leaders to stop sensationalizing limited
facts about Benton Harbor in the media and on the Michigan.gov website created by your office to
promote your Plan to close Benton Harbor High School. Our community needs to feel that our
youth are respected, valued and worth meaningful investment so that they may achieve their
tremendous potential. The students, their families, our teachers, and our community deserve that.
Sincerely, Steve Mitchell, Trustee and Board President
Joseph Taylor, Trustee and Board Vice-President
Patricia Rush, Trustee and Board Secretary
Denise Whatley-Seats, Trustee and Board Treasurer
Matthew Bradley, Trustee
Lue Buchana, Trustee
Michelle Crowder, Trustee
//
The elected School Board of Pittsburgh unanimously rejected a charter school called Catalyst Academy because of concern about its proposed disciplinary policy and its ability to meet the needs of students with disabilities. The School Board’s decision was overturned by the state’s Charter Appeals Board, which was appointed by the former Republican Governor. The members of the CAB have ties to the charter industry.
This is NOT how democracy should work.
Why should a highly conflicted board appointed by a former Governor have the authority to override the decision of a democratically elected community school board?
Capital & Main interviewed Jackie Goldberg about her views, her vision, her hopes for the future. My heart sang and my brain hummed as I read her inspiring words.
Reading Jackie’s words was like eating comfort food. I kept saying to myself, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Read the interview and you will see what I mean.
Jackie knows we are in the middle of a war to save public education. She knows that there is big money determined to kill it. She knows that the hope for the future of our democracy depends in having a well-funded public school system that provides genuine opportunity to all children.
And she is prepared to go to the mat, in Los Angeles and in Sacramento, to get the funding that public schools need and to get the financial accountability that charter schools need.
I am reminded of the first time I met Jackie. It was December 6, 2018. I had heard about her for years as an iconic figure but our paths had never crossed.
Over the past several years, the billionaires were buying seats on the LAUSD and things were looking bleak. I kept hearing about this dynamo Jackie Goldberg, the only one who could turn things around. She was the Cy Young pitcher in the bullpen, the one held in reserve until the ninth inning.
Last December, I went to Los Angeles to receive an award from a progressive group called LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy), which fights for fair wages for low-income workers, environmental protection, and a stronger public sector.
Jackie was there. We agreed to talk after the dinner. We sat in a crowded bar and talked for over an hour. I felt like I was talking to my mirror image yet our life experiences were very different. It was a joyous conversation.
When I returned to LA in February, I spoke at a fundraiser for her. Once again I was impressed by her knowledge, her experience, her passion for education and for children and for justice.
You could count me as her biggest fan but given the 72% win she just racked up, I’m guessing that there are many others in Los Angeles who have known her much longer and who love Jackie as much as I do.
It should go without saying that she is a hero of public education.
Cy Young just came in from the bullpen. Things are definitely looking up.
Alabama journalist Kyle Whitmire puzzles over how state officials created charters, setrules for openingthem, then broke all their own rules to clear the way for a charter school that no one wants.
Read this story and you will understand why the public is turning against charter schools.
Not hard to figure out. Might be something about an old-fashioned word called “democracy.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 