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How Andre Agassi and His Partner Are Profiting in the Charter Sector

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2019 //
6

 

Andre Agassi was once a famous tennis star. Several years ago, he decided to open a charter school in Las Vegas, with his name on it. It was going to be a national model for sending poor kids to elite colleges. But it failed and was eventually taken over by charter chain Democracy Prep. During the school’s first decade of operation, it went through six principals and multiple teachers. Former teachers said there was “a chaotic learning environment.”

Then Agassi went into partnership with an equity investor who put up $750 million for a new company that would build and lease charter schools. This is a very profitable venture.

Unfortunately, the charter schools it builds are forced into financial straits by the burden of the rent they must pay to Agassi and Turner.

In Detroit, a school built by their firm is closing, in part because of the crushing debt required to pay the landlords, Agassi and Turner.

A Detroit charter school is shutting down amid financial woes brought on by its lease agreement with an investment fund headed by tennis star Andre Agassi.

The closure of Southwest Detroit Community School, which was announced to teachers at an emergency meeting at the school Tuesday afternoon, caps a six-year existence marred by academic struggles and, more recently, dissatisfaction among parents and the teaching staff over the school’s direction. 

“I feel one part betrayed, but also, I think it was inevitable,” said Mitzy Tripp, who has two children at the K-8 school, including one who will soon graduate from eighth grade. “But I honestly didn’t think that they would do this to the families.”

When Michigan lawmakers lifted the cap on new charter schools in 2011, it sparked a spree of more than a dozen school openings within a few years. Several have since closed, including Delta Preparatory Academy for Social Justice, which shut down abruptly at the beginning of this school year.

It’s the latest upheaval for a city where the school landscape has become severely fractured, forcing schools to compete for teachers, students, and resources without some of the safeguards that bring order to charter school systems in cities like New Orleans and Washington. Efforts to put such controls in place in Michigan have been stopped by well-funded political opposition…

The closure means the families of 347 students, many of them Spanish-speaking, will have to find a new school for their children. School changes have been shown to hurt student learning and behavior at school…

In the end, though, any hope for the school’s future collapsed under the weight of its lease with Turner-Agassi, an investment fund connected to the retired tennis legend that helped open the school as well as 89 others across the country.

The lease was designed like a residential rent-to-buy plan. The school would pay rent for the first few years, then, once it had enough students, it would buy the building outright. Turner-Agassi would make roughly $1 million on the deal, according to the lease agreement.

These arrangements aren’t unheard of in the charter sector. Michigan charter schools get no money from the state for facilities, often forcing them to rent buildings. Traditional schools generally own their buildings, taking advantage of public bonds that aren’t available to charter schools.

When the school failed to amass the more than $8 million it needed to buy the building, it paid a steep price. The rent went up sharply, increasing by 57 percent between 2017 and 2018, per the lease.

The school’s inability to keep up with its lease payments set off alarm bells within the Michigan Treasury Department, which flagged it as a “potential fiscal distress school” and required it to submit regular reports.

The rent, which grew to $769,910 annually this year, was higher than what other schools in the neighborhood pay. The payments suck up 19 percent of what the school brings in from the state to educate children.

Agassi and Turner made a handsome profit.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Tom Ultican: How Betsy DeVos’s Ideology Damaged the Schools of Michigan and Destroyed the Schools of Detroit

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2018 //
43

Tom Ultican posted this research about the damage wrought by the Destroy Public Education movement on Michigan and Detroit last March. I missed it. It is still painfully current.

What is the DeVos agenda? It is an aggressive version of Christian evangelism that opposes public schools.

He writes:

The destroy public education (DPE) movement’s most egregious outcome may be in Detroit and it is being driven by a virulent Christian ideology.

In 2001, Dick and Betsy DeVos answered questions for the Gathering. Dick DeVos opined that church has retreated from its central role in communities and has been replaced by the public school. He said it is our hope “churches will get more and more active and engaged in education.” Betsy noted “half of our giving is towards education.”

Jay Michaelson writing for the Daily Beast described the Gathering:

“The Gathering is a hub of Christian Right organizing, and the people in attendance have led the campaigns to privatize public schools, redefine “religious liberty” (as in the Hobby Lobby case), fight same-sex marriage, fight evolution, and, well, you know the rest.”

“The Gathering is an annual event at which many of the wealthiest conservative to hard-right evangelical philanthropists in America—representatives of the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Green, Maclellan, Ahmanson, Friess, plus top leaders of the National Christian Foundation—meet with evangelical innovators with fresh ideas on how to evangelize the globe. The Gathering promotes “family values” agenda: opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights, for example, and also a global vision that involves the eventual eradication of all competing belief systems that might compete with The Gathering’s hard-right version of Christianity.”

In the Gathering interview, Betsy talks about how she and Dick both come from business oriented families. From their experience, they understand how competition and choice are key drivers to improve any enterprise. She says public education needs choice and competition instead of forcing people into government run schools.

She was also asked how she felt about home schooling? She replied, “we like home schools a lot,” and humorously shared, “not sure our daughters do, they were homeschooled for three years.” Then Dick added how impressed he was with Bill Bennet’s new project, K-12. He said it wasn’t a Christian oriented on-line curriculum but it was a complete education program that could help homeschoolers.

By the 1990’s Dick and Betsy DeVos were successfully influencing Michigan education policies and using private giving to drive their agenda. Christina Rizga wrote about the DeVos’s philanthropy for Mother Jones.

“… [T]here’s the DeVoses’ long support of vouchers for private, religious schools; conservative Christian groups like the Foundation for Traditional Values, which has pushed to soften the separation of church and state; and organizations like Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which has championed the privatization of the education system.”

As the new century opened, the DeVos agenda was being ever more adopted in Lancing. If improving the education of children in Michigan was the goal, then the DeVos education agenda has proved to be a clear failure. On the other hand, if destroying public education to accommodate privatized Christian schools was the goal, they are still on track.

Betsy and Dick DeVos got a referendum on the ballot in Michigan in 2000, aiming to revise the state constitution to allow for vouchers, so students could use public funds to attend religious schools. Their constitutional amendment was overwhelmingly rejected by the voters. So, the DeVoses turned to charter schools as their means to promote choice.

From 2000 to 2015, Michigan’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress fell from 14th in the nation to 43rd.

Ultican describes what happened to Detroit. First, the state wiped out the elected board and established mayoral control. Then the state restored an elected board. Meanwhile the district’s debt kept rising as its enrollment was plummeting. Detroit was flooded with charter schools, most of which operated for profit. The district was left with “stranded costs” as students transferred from public to charter schools.

He writes: The extra-costs associated with privatizing DPS were all born by the public schools.

As charters continued to open and enrollment continued to fall, the state stepped in again:

Not acknowledging their own role in creating the financial crisis in Detroit, the state government again pushed the elected school board aside in 2009. Education policy was theoretically left under the purview of the school board but financial management would be the responsibility of a governor appointed emergency manager. This time it was a Democratic Governor, Jenifer Granholm who selected a graduate of the unaccredited Broad superintendents’ academy class of 2005, Robert Bobb, to be the manager.

Not only did Granholm select a Broad academy graduate, but Eli Broad paid part of his $280,000 salary. Sharon Higgins, who studies the Broad academy, reports that a civil rights group and a coalition of teachers who oppose charter schools questioned “whether Bobb was in conflict of interest for accepting $89,000 of his salary from a foundation that supports private and charter schools.”

Bobb made significant cuts to DPS. He closed many schools and eliminated 25% of the districts employees. He also sold several school buildings. The Detroit News reported in March 2010, “Instead of a $17 million surplus Bobb projected for this fiscal year, spending has increased so much Bobb is projecting a $98 million deficit for the budget year that ends June 30.”

Bobb blamed unforeseeable costs related to declining enrollment. Curt Guyette at the Metro-Times relates that many people blamed spending on high priced consultants and contracts. Guyette provided this example:

“Of particular note was Barbara Byrd-Bennett, hired by Bobb on a nine-month contract to be the district’s chief academic and accountability auditor. She received a salary of nearly $18,000 a month plus an armed personal driver. In addition, Byrd, a former chief executive officer of Cleveland’s public schools system, ‘brought with her at least six consultants who are collectively being paid more than $700,000 for about nine months of work,’ according to a 2009 Detroit Free Press article.”

In 2011, Republican Governor Rich Snyder ushered through two laws that had a negative effect on DPS. The first law, Public Act 4, gave the emergency manager total control and removed all powers from the elected school board. The second law, Public Act 436, created a state school district called the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) which took effect in 2013.

The EAA’s first task was to take over 15 of Detroit’s lowest performing schools. This immediately removed another 11,000 students from DPS and further stressed its finances.

Counting Robert Bobb there were five emergency managers at DPS between 2009 and 2016. Mercedes Schneider reports that “The most recent Detroit Public Schools emergency manager, Darnell Earley, is chiefly responsible for water contamination in Flint, Michigan.”

By 2016, the schools of DPS were in such a disgraceful condition that the New York Times called them “crumbling” and “destitute.” The Times’ article included this quote: ‘“We have rodents out in the middle of the day,’ said Ms. Aaron, a teacher of 18 years. ‘Like they’re coming to class.”’

July 1, 2017 the EAA returned the fifteen schools to DPS and the Michigan legislature finally acted to mitigate the debt crisis created in Holland and Lancing not Detroit. Also on July 1, 2017 Nikolai Vitti the new superintendent of DPS took on the challenge or rehabilitating the public schools of Detroit.

Robert Bobb was handsomely paid. So was John Covington. So was Barbara Byrd-Bennett (who is now in prison, after being found guilty of taking kickbacks while CEO of the Chicago public schools). The leaders made lots of money.

The charters were a disaster. The Educational Achievement Authority was an even bigger disaster, consuming high administrative costs and producing nothing for the children of Detroit.

Ultican identifies one of the villains in this chain of events that harmed the children and the public schools of Detroit: the Skillman Foundation of Detroit. With “the best of intentions,” this local foundation has supported every raid on the city, its children, and its public schools. It continues to support the Destroy Public Education Movement despite its repeated disasters and its failed experiments on children.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Detroit, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Michigan, Privatization

Detroit: One of Every Three Elementary School Children Change Schools Every Year

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2018 //
20

Detroit is emblematic of a city where choice has gone mad, and children bounce from school to school, forming no attachment to friends or teachers.

What kind of cruel adults inflict this disruption and chaos on small children?

Here is an article with typical non-solutions.

A unified enrollment system to make it simpler to switch schools. More data, so schools know more about those they admit.

How about stable and well-resourced community schools with wraparound services, experienced teachers, a social worker, a psychologist, a library, arts programs, more like the LeBron James school in Akron? How about public schools so rich in people and programs that no one wants to switch?

Categories Detroit, Disruption

Detroit: One Class, 31 Students, 128 Schools

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2018 //
24

This is the portrait of “choice” in Detroit.

It is a disaster for children. They constantly change schools.

There are 31 students in class 8B in Bethune Middle School. Collectively, these students have attended 128 schools.

Their parents choose and choose and choose.

Most students have attended four or five different schools by the time they are in eighth grade.

Does anyone believe this instability, disruption, and churn are good for children?

Here is Jan Resseger’s commentary: She says that choice “accelerates student mobility, stresses educators, and undermines education.” As the embedded article shows, the more frequently students change schools by eighth grade, the lower their scores on the state’s annual tests.

Is it helpful to have no long-term, reliable relationships with friends or teachers?

Would Betsy DeVos do this to her children?

What do you think?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Reform, School Choice

Chaos in Detroit Charter School: Leader Fired, Refuses to Go, Board Suspended

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2018 //
15

Just when you think you have heard everything that can go wrong in the charter industry, along comes a story about the Detroit Community Schools, a charter that is in chaos. Not because of its 650 students, but because of the adults who are allegedly upin charge.

Bay Mills Community College, the authorizer for the charter, fired the chief administrative officer, but she refuses to leave.

“Former Detroit City Councilwoman Sharon McPhail was fired Monday as the chief administrative officer of a troubled Detroit charter school, but she’s refusing to leave.

“McPhail was terminated by Bay Mills Community College, the authorizer for Detroit Community Schools.

“She’s not cooperating,” said Tom Shields, the spokesman for the college. “She is saying Bay Mills has no legal grounds” to fire her.

“Consequently, Shields said, “Bay Mills will be seeking a court order to have her removed.”

“McPhail’s firing is among a series of steps the college is taking to address issues caused by McPhail’s failure to maintain the proper school administrative certification by the state.

The college also announced that the school board has been temporarily suspended. And a conservator has been appointed to oversee the school.

“The Free Press in September reported that for the second time in two years, the Michigan Department of Education had fined the school because McPhail lacked proper certification. District leaders in Michigan must have an administrative certification, which requires either a master’s degree or completion of credit hours toward a master’s degree.

”The MDE has fined the school more than $200,000. Officials said at the time of the Free Press report that the department had collected $100,188 from the school, but it still owed $122,387 in fines.”

In addition to administrative turmoil, the school is in academic distress:

“Detroit Community Schools, which opened in 1997, serves about 650 students in grades K-12. Students at the school have struggled academically: Just 7 percent of the school’s elementary and middle school students are proficient in all subjects on the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, compared with 40 percent statewide, according to data on http://www.mischooldata.org. At the high school, 22 percent were proficient in all subjects, compared with 40 percent statewide.”

Just to add a twist of the bizarre:

“In addition to her stint as a city councilwoman, McPhail served as general counsel for former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who is serving a 28-year prison sentence for federal corruption crimes.

“McPhail, who has run for Detroit mayor before, was a frequent foe of Kilpatrick’s until shortly before she was hired as his counsel in 2006. In 2003 — when she was on the council — she accused Kilpatrick of being behind the tampering of the electric back massager on her chair, calling him a thug and bully and saying the tampering was in retaliation for her refusing to back a deal pushed by Kilpatrick’s administration. Though it was reported by multiple news outlets at the time — and investigated by police — she denied ever making the claim during a radio interview in 2008.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization

Detroit: Charter School Abruptly Closes, Stranding Students

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2018 //
15

Only days into the new school year, the Detroit Delta Preparatory Academy for Social Justice announced that it was closing, stunning students and parents. Enrollment was lower than expected, and the school was not financially viable, according to its authorizer, Ferris State University.

The decision left many of the high school’s students in tears.

“Everybody was breaking down,” said Ajah Jenkins, 17, a senior at the school, which had just begun its fifth year of operation.

Ajah called her mother, Kelye King, “crying, hysterical, screaming, saying, ‘My school’s closing. How am I going to graduate,’ ” King recounted.

Saturday is supposed to be the school’s homecoming. It’s unclear whether it’ll still happen, said King, who is upset because she believes the school should have given parents a heads-up that this might happen.

“I’m just disappointed. I entrusted her education to a group of people — they’re making me feel like I failed her, like I didn’t do enough research.”

The other day, we learned that a charter school in Delaware was closing with no prior notice.

That’s the market for you. Stores open and close without warning.

Schools are not supposed to be like that. They are supposed to be a public service that is always there for the students.

Maybe the market for schools is saturated. After all, you can’t expect to open a shoe store on every corner and expect them all to thrive or survive.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Competition, Detroit, Disruption

Detroit: Children with Autism are 22 Times More Likely to Attend a Public School than a Charter School

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2018 //
11

You might want to remember this statistic the next time you hear a Reformer claim that charter schools enroll the same demographic as public schools.

In Detroit, the public schools are 22 times more likely to enroll children with autism than are charter schools.

The charter schools have to protect their test scores, so they don’t want those children.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Hypocrisy, Privatization, Special Education

Federal Court: Students In Detroit Do Not Have the Right to a Quality Education

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2018 //
21

Here is a sickening decision, indicative of Trump-era thinking:

https://m.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2018/07/02/us-court-detroit-students-have-no-right-to-access-to-literacy

“On Friday, dumped out with the least desirable news of the week came word that a lawsuit arguing that Detroit students were being denied an education had been dismissed.

“Perhaps you remember the case. MT presented a cover story about it last year. With the help of a public interest law firm, a handful of Detroit students charged in federal court that educational officials in Michigan — including Gov. Rick Snyder — denied them access to an education of any quality.

“The lawsuit took pains to illustrate how Detroit’s schools — run under a state-appointed emergency manager — were a welter of dysfunction: overcrowded classrooms, lack of textbooks and basic materials, unqualified staff, leaking roofs, broken windows, black mold, contaminated drinking water, rodents, no pens, no paper, no toilet paper, and unsafe temperatures that had classes canceled due to 90-degree heat or classrooms so cold students could see their breath.

“At times, without teachers or instructional materials, students were simply herded into rooms and asked to watch videos. One student claimed to have learned all the words to the film Frozen in high school. The lawsuit even mentions one eighth grade student who “taught” a seventh and eighth grade math class for a month because no teacher could be found.”

Categories Deregulation, Detroit, Michigan

Jan Resseger: A Hopeful Sign that “The Times They Are A-Changing”

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2018 //
3

Jan Resseger reports on a startling development in Michigan. She quotes the new superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools, who just completed his first year on the job. His words are inspiring. He is actually fighting for the kids and the public schools. Dr. Nikolai Vitti was chosen by Detroit’s elected school board in 2017, after years of disastrous state control, led by people who enabled erosion of the public schools and the advance of privatization.

She writes:

Dr. Nikolai Vitti was their choice, and last week at the end of his first year on the job, at a conference sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, he confronted the dogma of Michigan’s power establishment—Rick Snyder, the DeVos family and all the rest.

The Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss reprinted part of Dr. Vitti’s remarks: “People often ask me, ‘What were you most surprised about when you took the job and started to work in the system?’ And I often say I was shocked, horrified at the lack of systems and processes for traditional public education. Traditional public education has always been, and hopefully will always be, the vehicle for social change, for social justice, for equal opportunity in this country. And walking into the system and seeing a lack of systems and processes is a testament to the lack of belief in what children can do.”

Vitti continued: “And there is a racist element to what has happened. Children in Detroit have been treated like second-class citizens. When a system is allowed to be run over a decade by individuals, and it’s not about one individual, but individuals that had no track record of education reform, no local governance structure to address immediate concerns and issues by the community through an elected board… and year after year of low performance, a lack of growth, drop in enrollment, facilities that are not kept up, that would never ever happen in any white suburban district in this country. And that is a testament of race. Because this country would not allow that. We see signs of that in Flint and we saw signs of that in New Orleans after the flood and we have multiple examples of this.”

Resseger quotes a column written by Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press, who served as moderator for the panel discussion at Mackinac Island. Her column was titled “Miracle on Mackinac Island: Business Community Gets Woke to Race.”

She said that the meeting may have been “a watershed moment in Michigan history.” For once, the power structure got a lesson about racism and the treatment of children in Detroit as second-class citizens.

Speaking to the state’s white power structure, Vitti pulled no punches:

His words drew loud and sustained applause. But Vitti also said something that drew tears. When I, as moderator of the forum, asked him to speak to the assembled crowd as an 8-year-old third-grader and tell them what he wants, he looked out and said:

“I want the same thing that your child wants,” he said to loud applause. “I may not have your privilege. I may not have the color of your skin. I may live in a different ZIP code. But I want the exact same thing you want for your son, your daughter, your grandchild, your niece, your nephew. That’s what I want.”

The Michigan legislature keeps piling on mandates, but with no support to reach them, she wrote.

The Michigan Legislature has scared some parents and teachers to distraction with a new law banning schools from promoting third-graders who do not read at grade level. Nine of 10 third-graders in the city schools do not read at grade level. And some parents and teachers feel the law will exacerbate an existing third-grade-to-unemployment pipeline similar to the fourth-grade-to-prison pipeline that already exists.

The shame is this is yet another example of the state attempting to polish its reputation at the expense of our children. Rather than help districts find ways to improve, then raise standards, the Legislature keeps raising standards without any support to make meeting them possible. One would think that legislators are trying to make public schools fail to make it easier to increase the number of charters across Michigan, but nah, that couldn’t be it, right?

Detroit’s Mayor Mike Duggan said that all of Michigan was in trouble, not only Detroit, because of bad leadership at the state level:

“We know the history. We had 10 years of state-appointed emergency managers,” Duggan said. “During that time, we lost half of the enrollment. … They eliminated career technical education, eliminated art, eliminated music … and all that happened was children continued to leave. … But this isn’t just Detroit.”

He cited National Assessment of Educational Progress scores that tell a larger story.

“For white students in the state of Michigan, fourth-grade math and reading level, in 2013 we were 14th in the country,” he said. “Last year — 46th in the country. Now, if you sat down in 2013 and said how can I sabotage Michigan’s future? … I’m not sure you could have accomplished it.”

Duggan said the state chose tax cuts over children, which was a mistake.

Michigan’s leaders (think Betsy DeVos, who has played a major role in state education policy, pushing charters) thought that they could fix the schools by adopting school choice while cutting taxes.

It didn’t work.

Now, let’s see how the power structure responds. Are they able to change course or will they double down on failure?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, Privatization

Michigan: Business Leaders Examine Academic Crisis and Conclude: Do More of the Same

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2018 //
6

 

Michigan has a major problem. Test scores on NAEP and state exams have fallen signicantly over the past decade for every demographic, the state spends $1 Billion on charter schools with no accountability, Detroit is the worst performing city in the nation on NAEP.

The leaders of the state’s business community looked at the crisis and decided that the state needs to stick to its current policies and do more of the same. but with greater intensity.

Clearly, the business elite decided to ignore studies such as this one by Professor David Arsen of Michigan State University, which concluded that state policies promoting competition and choice were causing fiscal stress and instability in traditional districts. Even a small parasite can do terrible damage to a large body.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Detroit, Education Reform, Funding, Michigan
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