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Denver: Reformer Admits That Disruptive Reforms Failed to Help Poor Kids

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2018 //
18

 

Theresa Peña served as president of the Denver school board when reform began more than a decade ago.

She describes the promises and high hopes.

Now she admits that reform failed. 

The kids who lost were the poor black and Hispanic students, she says.

She writes:

Almost 11 years ago, when I served on the Denver Board of Education, the board and then-Superintendent Michael Bennet published a lengthy manifesto detailing how we planned to transform and radically improve public education in Denver.

They published their manifesto. They said:

“Ten years from now, let them say that Denver was the vanguard for reform in public education. Let them say, 10 years from now, that in Denver we saw what others could not, and laid down our adult burdens to lift up our children. Let them say that a spark flew in Denver that ignited a generation of educators, children, parents, and communities, and gave them courage to abandon the status quo for a shimmering future. We can do this in Denver; it is simply a matter of imagination and will.”

In 2007 our board believed we were starting a revolution. We were going to dramatically change outcomes for Denver students. We were going to construct a new educational system that served students first.

We believed that the goals in our strategic plan, known as the Denver Plan, would close the achievement gap and set a new path forward for all graduates of Denver Public Schools.

I am writing today to tell you that we failed. And, as a city and a school district we are still collectively failing our neediest students.

The Denver public school system is now a darling of the rightwing.

Last year, Betsy DeVos visited Denver twice; she praised the city for its charter efforts, but declared that it needed vouchers as well.

The Brookings Institution released its “Education Choice and Competition Index,” which ranked Denver first in the nation. The Index was created by Grover Whitehurst, who was George W. Bush’s choice to lead the Department of Education’s research division.

Charter champion David Osborne showered praise on Denver’s “portfolio” strategy in the rightwing journal Education Next.

Kevin Hesla of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools raved about Denver’s commitment to the privatization agenda, again in the rightwing Education Next.

Denver is where Democrats gave up the fight for public education and invited the fox of privatization into the henhouse. The conservative media and think tanks love Denver.

Peña dissents. She writes:

My conclusion calls into question the conventional wisdom about Denver Public Schools. Over the past decade, under the leadership of Bennet and his successor, Tom Boasberg, DPS has gained a national reputation as a forward-thinking, even visionary school district, which welcomes high-quality charter schools and grants the most deserving of its own schools unprecedented degrees of autonomy from the district bureaucracy. Enrollment has grown and student achievement has improved.

While elements of that sterling national reputation are deserved, and some real gains have occurred, they have been far too slow and inequitable. On perhaps the most critical measure of success, literacy in early elementary schools, low-income and minority students have improved at a much slower rate than their Anglo and higher-income peers. This has caused Denver’s abysmal achievement gaps to grow even wider.

In 2017 64 percent of students who did not qualify for free or reduced lunch were reading and writing at grade level compared to 26 percent of students who qualified for free and reduced lunch, a 38 percent gap. And only one of three low-income third-graders read and write at grade level.

Our aspirations of a decade ago have not been realized. Until and unless Boasberg and the Board of Education take concrete steps to fundamentally change the district to serve its students and schools, real progress will remain elusive. Over time, I have come to doubt whether this is even possible.

The new reform board promised innovation, school autonomy, transparency, accountability, closer monitoring of results, and higher expectations.

She concludes:

We failed on all counts.

Teacher turnover and principal turnover remain large. Achievement gaps are as large as ever, possibly larger.

Denver, the shining model of reform by charters and test-based accountability, is no model at all.

So says one of the reform leaders who was there at the beginning.

Jeannie Kaplan was a school board member also during those heady years. She quickly became disillusioned with the disruptive tactics. She is not sure whether Theresa Peña means what she says or has something else in mind. But she has long believed that the “reforms” failed the neediest kids.

What say you, Senator Michael Bennett? What say you, Superintendent Tom Boasberg?

Why not focus on what works? Reduced class sizes; support and retention of teachers and principals; collaboration; school nurses and clinics. Talk about root causes of low academic performance and focus on changes that address the root causes.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Testing

Tom Ultican: Denver’s Schools Are a Dystopian Nightmare

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2018 //
29

 

Tom Ultican, retired high school teacher of advanced math and physics, has embarked on a project to review the Destroy Public Education (DPE) Movement.

His latest topic is Denver. Privatizers point to Denver as a success story, but Ultican says the schools are a “dystopian nightmare.”

Denver is a classic example of impeccably liberal Democrats collaborating to undermine and privatize public schools.

They began, as they always do, by displaying dire statistics about the “failure”of the schools. Radical action is necessary. Denver leaders began by hiring non-educator Michael Bennett as Superintendent of Schools. Bennett had worked as managing director for the investment fund of billionaire Philip Anschutz, oil and gas magnate, fracking advocate, film producer (e.g., “Waiting for Superman,” “Won’t Back Down,” “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”), and an Evangelical Christian and a funder of anti-gay activism.

“A key DPE playbook move is to leverage out of town money with local money and political muscle to purloin control of public schools. DPS schools were not dysfunctional nor were they failing. In several Denver neighborhoods, the schools were the only functional government entity.”

“Colorado launched annual state testing, which helped Bennett in his need to cry failure. He was a great believer in the “bad teacher” theory. He turned to Michelle Rhee New Teacher Project and Wendy Kopp’s TFA to import new teachers.

“Bennett enthusiastically embraced the portfolio model, treating schools like stocks: keep the winners, close the losers. No surprise: Almost all the loser schools were in poor and minority communities.

“The year that Bennet became superintendent, the heirs of the Walmart fortune opened the Charter School Growth Fund just 20 miles up highway-25 from downtown Denver. Carrie Walton Penner, sits on the board of the fund and Carrie’s husband, Greg Penner, is a director. Annie Walton Proietti, niece of Carrie, works for a KIPP school in Denver. There are other Walton family members living in and frequenting the Denver area.

“Joining the Walmart school privatizers is Bennet’s business mentor Philip Anschutz. He has a billion-dollar foundation located in Denver and owns Walden Publishing. “Walden Publishing company was “behind the anti-teachers’ union movies ‘Won’t Back Down’ and ‘Waiting for ‘Superman.’”

“These wealth powered people along with several peers promote school privatization and portfolio district management ideology.

“There is a widely held fundamental misconception that standardized testing proves something about the quality of a school. There is a belief among people than have never studied the issue that testing can be used to objectively evaluate teacher quality. It cannot! A roulette wheel would be an equally accurate instrument for measuring school and teacher quality.

“Another Non-Educator with No Training

“In 2007, Bennet asked Tom Boasberg, a childhood friend, to join DPS as his chief operating officer. Trained as a lawyer, Boasberg had worked closely as chief of staff to the chairman of Hong Kong’s first political party in the early 1990s, when the colony held its first elections in its 150 years of British rule. Before DPS, Boasberg worked for eight years at Level 3 Communications, where he was Group Vice President for Corporate Development.

“In the spring of 2008, Bennet and Boasberg were ready to tackle the pension crisis seen as sucking money out of classrooms. One month after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Boasberg and Bennet convinced the DPS board to buy a $750,000,000 complicated instrument with variable interest rates. During the melt-down of 2008 Denver’s interest rates zoomed up making this a very bad deal for DPS. (Banking was supposed to be Bennet and Boasberg’s strength.)”

So these two financial geniuses cost the school district some $25 Million on a bad bet with district funds, but no one hel them accountable. They got rid of “bad teachers,” but no one got rid of them.

Instead, Bennett was appointed to fill an empty U.S. Senate seat, and he was succeeded by his friend Tom  Boasberg. Boasberg is a “graduate”of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, which teaches the virtues of top-down management, closing schools, charter schools, and high-stakes testing.

Despite the usual reformer hype and boasting, test scores rose higher before Bennett started than after, yesterday reformers drooled over its “success,” which was in the eye of the beholder.

Ultican goes on to assert, with evidence, that Denver’s strategy has been ineffective and bad for kids. He shows that changing schools destabilizes neighborhoods and hurts kids; that the portfolio model is nonsense; and that inexperienced TFA teachers are not good teachers; and that running multiple school systems is more costly than running a unified system.

No miracle in Denver. Just disruption.

Categories Denver, Disruption, Failure, Rhee, Michelle, Teach for America

Jeannie Kaplan: Denver and the Election That Was Lost Unnecessarily

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2017 //
10

Jeannie Kaplan tells the story of the recent election in Denver and explains what might have been if the friends of public education had stuck together.

Parent and community activists backed a slate of four candidates for the seven-person board.

The union backed only two candidates, including a “reformer.”

Only one pro-public education candidate won.

This was an unnecessary setback.

Categories Denver, Education Reform

Jeff Bryant: Democrats Should Back Off Corporate Education Reform if They Want to Win Elections

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2017 //
13

Jeff Bryant has a warning for Democrats: Beware of corporate education reform.

Leave it to the Republicans.

Don’t promote privatization and charters. Don’t bash teachers. Don’t beat up on unions. You erode your base.

He points to Denver and Virginia. In Denver, a candidate for school board won, even though she was outspent nearly 5-1.

In Virginia, Ralph Northam made clear his opposition to charters.

Listen, Democrats.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Denver, Privatization

The Economist: Dark Money and Local School Board Races

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2017 //
16

The Economist magazine published an article about an alarming phenomenon: the large amounts of money entering local school board races, much of it from mysterious political action committees, often from out-of-District and out-of-State sources.

Races in Denver, Douglas County, and Aurora County in Colorado attracted at least $1.65 Million.

Last spring’s School Board Race in Los Angeles was the most expensive in U.S. history, at $15 Million. Billionaires like Reed Hastings and Eli Broad make clear that they will spend whatever it takes to install true believers in privatization. In most such races, you are likely to encounter the same names, whether it is Hastings, Broad, Bloomberg, or members of the Walton family. You are likely to see other names associated with hedge funds or other parts of the financial industry. They have two goals in common: they love charter schools and they don’t like unions.

The intrusion of this kind of money into school board races is a danger to democracy. School boards are supposed to reflect the wishes of the local communities, not the purposes of out-of-State billionaires in search of willing puppets.

How can a local citizen, a parent or community leader, have any chance of running for school board if their opponent has a kitty of $100,000-300,000 to millions of dollars? I recall visiting a city where I was told that, in the past, a candidate could run by raising $40,000. Those days are over. That’s not good for democracy.

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Democracy, Denver

Report From Denver: Public Education Advocates Win a Seat on School Board: Extraordinary

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2017 //
8

The Denver School Board is supposed to be bought and paid for by Dark Money, so public education advocates rejoiced when they elected one person to the seven-member Board.

Jeannie Kaplan, a former member of the board and now a tireless activist, tells the story here. She says it was EXTRAORDINARY!

“Dr. Carrie Olson, 33 year DPS teacher, soundly defeated incumbent, “reformer,” Mike Johnson., and she did so with $33,747 in her campaign war chest and a completely volunteer “staff.” The dollars and vote totals cited in this post can be found here and here. As of the last campaign finance report Mr. Johnson had raised $101,336 on his own and was the beneficiary of $42,777 from Democrats for Education Reform( DFER) dark money and $6320 Stand for Children dark money. His 11,193 votes cost his campaign $13.44 each; Carrie’s 11,121 votes cost her $2.73 per vote. He spent almost 5 times as much per vote as she. Extraordinary.”

Jeannie’s underfunded (almost unfounded) Group is called ODOS (Our Denver Our Schools). In one race, it supported a dynamic high school graduate named Tay Anderson. The union, however, decided to support a candidate who is from TFA and works for the TFA leadership training program, which grooms TFA Teachers to get involved in political roles. The latter candidate swamped poor Tay, and now TFA has two seats on the Denver board.

As you can see, Denver is a hotbed of political intrigue and big money.

But ODOS is celebrating because it elected one member to the board.

Given the odds, that was quite an accomplishment.

Categories Dark Money, Democrats for Education Reform, Denver, Privatization, School Choice, Stand for Children

BOMBSHELL: Dark Money Targets School Board Races for Takeovers

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2017 //
16

Carol Burris and Darcie Cimarusti of the Network for Public Education spent months assembling a portrait of the Dark Money that is now pouring in to local school board races, not to save schools or improve them, but to privatize them.

Valerie astrauss posted their shocking expose here.

Strauss begins:

“The Denver Post’s editorial board recently published a piece endorsing four candidates running for the Denver school board, all of them in support of reforms that employ some basic principles of for-profit businesses to the running of nonprofit public education. The editorial calls their opponents “anti-reformers” (as if they oppose making things better for students) and says they “enjoy plenty of money and energy.” (That, apparently, includes a 19-year-old “anti-reformer” candidate who just graduated from high school.)

“Here’s what it doesn’t mention: the big out-of-state money behind the editorial board’s chosen candidates. This is a phenomenon that we’ve seen for years now, one in which some of America’s wealthiest citizens back school board candidates — even in states in which they don’t reside — to push their view of how public schools should operate. It has happened in Louisiana, California, Minnesota, Arkansas, Washington, etc.

“This is a detailed post explaining the flow of dark money — funds donated to nonprofit organizations that spend the money to influence elections but do not have to disclose where they got it — by looking at the Denver school board race. There are four open seats on the seven-seat board and a total of 10 candidates.”

Who are these billionaires and millionaires who are spending huge sums to buy acquiescence to privatization, whether in Denver or Massachusetts or elsewhere?

Read on.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Denver, Education Industry, Network for Public Education, Privatization

Dark Money in Education: Stand for Children Edition

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2017 //
10

Maurice Cunningham, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, is an expert on the infusion of Dark Money into education.

He wrote several articles about the millions of dollars that poured into Massachusetts to promote the referendum to increase the number of charter schools in November 2016.

This article is about a Dark Money passthrough called Stand for Children, which began its life as a pro-public school group but turned into a pro-Privatization, anti-union, anti-teacher organization. It highlights the role of Stand for Children in Massachusetts. It does not explore its national activities, where it plays a pernicious part in the attack on public schools, unions, and teachers.

http://blogs.wgbh.org/masspoliticsprofs/2017/10/6/your-dark-money-reader-special-edition-stand-children/

Those who remember the early days of SFC now call it “Stand ON Children.”

It has funneled money to corporate reform candidates in cities from Nashville to Denver. It tried to squelch the Chicago Teachers Union by buying up all the top lobbyists in Illinois. It has funded anti-union, anti-teacher campaigns.

It pretends to be a “civil rights” organization. It is not.

Categories Boston, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nashville, Privatization, Stand for Children, Teachers, Unions

Jeanne Kaplan on David Osborne’s Campaign for Privatization

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2017 //
20

If you are old enough, you may remember that David Osborne was the guru of privatization and competition during the Clinton administration. His message was that public servants are lazy and unaccountable and need to compete with private vendors. That competition will make government workers try harder and deliver better service.

That was more than 20 years ago, and apparently Osborne hasn’t learned anything new. Now he is hawking a book that advocates charterization of schools and districts.

Jeanne Kaplan, who served two terms on the Denver school boards, believes that the much-touted success story of Denver is a hoax. She first encountered Osborne’s inaccurate account of the Denver “miracle” last year, and she took it apart then.

A few days ago, she turned out to hear Osborne speak about his new book on the virtues of privatization, and she heard the same tired song. His visit to Denver was sponsored by the pro-privatization “The 74,” the Public Policy Institute, DFER Colorado, A+ Colorado, Gates, and other reformy groups. The room was half-full of reform types, almost all white.

Osborne pointed to D.C. (which has the largest achievement gaps in the nation), New Orleans (where ACT scores are in the cellar compared to the rest of the state, and charter schools are highly stratified by race and income), and Indianapolis as exemplars of “success.” He also praised Memphis, and when someone pointed out the failure of the Achievement School District (mostly Memphis), he simply denied it, having no facts in hand.

Osborne’s Message: All charters, alll the time.

Don’t let facts or reality or multiple scandals get in the way.

Jeanne said that Osborne had a book signing at Denver’s famous Tattered Cover bookshop that evening. Only about a dozen people showed up. Sad. But not very.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Denver, Education Industry, Privatization

Denver: Jeanne Kaplan on the District’s Pathetic Lies about Academic Performance

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2017 //
14

Jeanne Kaplan served for two terms as an elected board member in Denver.

Since she retired from the board, she has watched with a combination of disgust and rage as the district statisticians spin the data to make it appear that students are making dramatic progress

In the last board election, Dark money poured in to buy all seven seats on the school board for friends of corporate reform. Education Reform Now and Stand for Children brought in large sums to secure control.

This is the way the game is played: make a big deal out of growth and try not to talk about current performance.

She writes:

“If you have an important school board election coming up in less than a month and you want to protect your incumbent candidates and your “reform” agenda, and

“If community meeting after community meeting implores you, the District, NOT to close any more schools but rather put real time and resources into the schools with very high concentrations of students living in poverty and not speaking English as their first language and these schools are located in Board Districts where the seats are being contested, and

“Even if you have been warned repeatedly from both sides of the philosophical education debate that so much emphasis on GROWTH over STATUS is misleading, and

“If all of these decisions are determined by high stakes test scores where proficiencies are terrible (39% in reading and 30% in math) and achievement gaps enormous (the highest in the state and among the highest in the nation),

“WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Answer: Change how you calculate school success and rankings, and then put all your public relations minions to work to tout the importance of growth and to downplay the importance of grade level competency.”

Categories Accountability, Denver, Lies, Testing
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