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Jan Resseger: Why Vouchers Are Disastrous Public Policy

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2024 //
6

Jan Resseger can always be counted on to add the voice of reason into heated issues, relying on research and calm discussion.

She writes:

In a thoughtful commentary, the Economic Policy Institute’s Hilary Wething and Josh Bivens deride as bad public policy today’s state-by-state wave of new and expanded private school tuition vouchers:

“Public education is worth preserving—it should be seen as one of the most important achievements in our c0untry’s history and crucial for the social and economic welfare of future generations… In the 21st century, unfortunately, too many policymakers seem determined to squander this legacy by starving public education of money and legitimacy, often in the name of  ‘school choice.’  Their central claim (when they bother to make one with any clarity) is that public provision of goods or services is ineffective by definition and that a dose of private market-like competition will lead to better schooling outcomes for the nation’s children.”

Wething and Bivens explore the basic economic flaws in pro-voucher ideology and argue that “conditions needed for market competition to lead to better outcomes clearly do not exist in the educational realm.”  In the first place, our nation benefits  from educating all children, and the marketplace can’t be counted on to fill that role: “In other markets, if the private sector is doing a poor job at offering attractive options for a good or service, people can just consume other things.” “Second, competition works well when the cost of switching providers is small,” but “switching schools is an extraordinarily costly decision in time, administrative burden, and severed social networks.”  Third, markets work when the choice of product affects only the buyer and seller, but, “Universal schooling generates positive spillovers to society at large, meaning that individuals would be inclined to underinvest in education relative to the full benefits it provides.”

Wething and Bivins describe voucher supporters presuming that diversion of dollars to vouchers will not harm the essential institution of public schools. In fact, however, public schools in most places are underfunded in terms of the actual cost of needed services: “Newer research with better methods confirms that more money for public schools does improve educational outcomes… In short, the evidence indicates that public schooling in the United States simply needs more resources to deliver even better student achievement—not some radical disruption in how it is delivered and by what institutions.”

Not only does more money improve schooling outcomes for children, but recent academic research demonstrates that by investing more public resources in their public schools, states and localities can “improve schooling outcomes for children… (with) the largest beneficial effects on the performance of particularly disadvantaged students.” Wething and Bivins cite peer-reviewed, 2016, research by Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson, and Claudia Persico on the impact of statewide school finance reforms that increased public school spending between 1972 and 2010: “(A) 10% increase in school spending for 12 years led to increases in high school graduation rates, 7% higher wages, and 10% higher family incomes in adulthood for children from districts that saw the spending increase.”

New research also confirms that vouchers are ineffective as an educational investment. Dollars diverted from public schools often flow to private schools with inferior academics: “Several high-quality studies have investigated the impact of recent voucher programs and have found notably worse outcomes for student achievement… In Ohio, under the EdChoice program, students who went to private schools with a voucher performed worse than they would have had they remained in public schools. In Indiana, students that used the Indiana Choice Scholarship voucher program experienced an average achievement loss of 0.15 standard deviations in mathematics.”

The expansion of vouchers inevitably sets up a long term drain on public resources: “Vouchers reduce public school resources, but introduce large new fiscal obligations overall… Where significant voucher programs have been instituted, the resources available to public school children have decreased…  The failure to increase per-pupil (public school) funding leads to the erosion of public education services in all forms: everything from school meals, extracurricular activities, mental health and counseling services, vocational and technical programs and investments in teacher quality and pay. It is worth noting that flat per-pupil educational spending—even in inflation-adjusted terms—is effectively a decline in the quality of education over time.”

Wething and Bivens sum up the evidence: “Vouchers are not a cost-free policy that simply adds on another education option for children—they are instead an intentional attack on universal public education… Vouchers make no coherent economic sense, and the evidence shows that vouchers harm student achievement and expose state budgets to large future obligations that are hard to forecast, even while they divert spending away from public education.”

The new brief from Wething and Bivens describes in concrete economic terms,what the late political theorist Benjamin Barber formulates as a basic principle of good public policy: “Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: it dissolves the bonds that tie us together into free communities and democratic republics… Public choices rest on civic rights and common responsibilities, and presume equal rights for all. Public liberty is what the power of common endeavor establishes, and hence presupposes that we have constituted ourselves as public citizens by opting into the social contract. With privatization, we are seduced back into the state of nature by the lure of private liberty and particular interest; but what we experience in the end is an environment in which the strong dominate the weak… the very dilemma which the original social contract was intended to address.” (Consumed, pp. 143-144)

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Vouchers

Nancy Flanagan: Just Who Is Trashing Public Education?

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2024 //
14

Veteran teacher Nancy Flanagan explores the question of who is trying to destroy our public schools. She nails some of the loudest critics, who have personally benefitted from public schools. She doesn’t explore why they are trying to annihilate the schools that educated them, but that may because we know what the privatization movement has to offer: money. There is a gravy train overloaded with munificent gifts from Betsy DeVos, the Waltons, Charles Koch, Michael Bloomberg, and a boatload of other billionaires. They can endlessly underwrite anti-public school organizations that offer well-paid jobs.

On the pro-public education side, it’s hard to find big spenders or highly compensated jobs. The two big unions have resources, all of which come from the dues of their members. They do not have the funds to support the numerous grassroots groups that are found in every state. Most, if not all of the state and local groups, operate on a shoestring; typically, their employees are volunteers. They do not have six-figure jobs for someone who tweets and writes statements. No one who works for a state “Save Our Schools” group makes big money.

The Network for Public Education is the biggest pro-public education groups; it has 350,000 people who have signed up to support it, but there is no membership fee. NPE has one full-time employee and a few part-timers.

So, Nancy Flanagan asks, just who is trashing public schools?

She writes:

Get ready for a big dump–a deliberately chosen word–of anti-public education blah-blah over the next five months. It’s about all the right wing’s got, for one thing–and it’s one of those issues that everybody has an opinion on, whether they went to public school. have children in public schools, or neither.

Public education is so big and so variable that there’s always something to get exercised over. There’s always one teacher who made your child miserable, one assigned book that raises hackles, one policy that feels flat-out wrongheaded. There’s also someone, somewhere, who admires that teacher, feels that book is a classic and stoutly defends whatever it is—Getting rid of recess? The faux science of phonics? Sex education that promotes abstinence? —that someone else finds ridiculous or reprehensible.

Not to mention—teaching is the largest profession in the country, So many teachers, so many public schools, so much opportunity to find fault.

In other words, public education is the low-hanging fruit of political calculation. Always has been, in fact.

A few years back, when folks were going gaga over Hillbilly Elegy, seeing it as the true story of how one could rise above one’s station (speaking of blahblah)—the main thing that irritated me about ol’ J.D. Vance was his nastiness about public education. Vance has since parlayed a best-seller that appealed to those who think a degree from Yale equates to arriving at the top, into a political career—and putting the screws to affirmative action, in case anyone of color tries to enjoy the same leg-up he did.

J.D. Vance’s education—K-12, the military, Ohio State—was entirely in public institutions until he got into Yale Law School. He doesn’t have anything good to say about public ed, but it was free and available to him, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. When I read Rick Hess’s nauseating interview with Corey DeAngelis in Education Week, I had a flashback to ol’ J.D., intimating that he achieved success entirely on his own, without help from that first grade teacher who taught him how to read and play nice with others.

DeAngelis says:

I went to government schools my entire K–12 education in San Antonio, Texas. However, I attended a magnet high school, which was a great opportunity. Other families should have education options as well, and those options shouldn’t be limited to schools run by the government. Education funding should follow students to the public, private, charter, or home school that best meets their needs. I later researched the effects of school choice initiatives during my Ph.D. in education policy at the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform.

So—just to clarify—Corey DeAngelis went to public schools K-12, for his BA and MA degrees (University of Texas), as well as a stint in a PUBLICLY FUNDED program at the notoriously right-focused University of Arkansas. That’s approximately 22 years, give or take, of public education, the nation-building institution DeAngelis now openly seeks to destroy.

I’m not going to provide quotes from the EdWeek piece, because anyone reading this already knows the hyperbolic, insulting gist—lazy, dumb, unions, low bar, failing, yada yada. He takes particular aim at the unions—although it absolutely wasn’t the unions—shutting down schools during a global pandemic. He paints schools’ turn-on-a-dime efforts to hold classes on Zoom as an opportunity for clueless parents to see, first-hand, evidence of how bad instruction is. He never mentions, of course, the teachers, students and school staff who died from COVID exposure.

Enough of duplicitous public school critics. My point is this:

The people who trash public education—not a particular school, classroom or curricular issue, but the general idea of government-sponsored opportunity to learn how to be a good, productive American citizen—have a very specific, disruptive ax to grind:

I got what I needed. I don’t really care about anybody else.

This goes for your local Militant Moms 4 Whatever on a Mission, out there complaining about books and school playsand songs and health class. It’s not about parents’ “rights.” It’s about control. And never about the other families and kids, who may have very different values and needs.

It’s about taking the ‘public’ out of public education. And it’s 100% politically driven.

OPEN THE LINK TO FINISH READING THE ARTICLE!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Unions, Vouchers

North Carolina: A Billionaire Who Wants to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2024 //
7

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you are familiar with Jeff Yass. He is a billionaire, the richest man in Pennsylvania. He spends money lavishly to privatize public schools. He gave Governor Abbott of Texas $6 million to promote vouchers and to defeat moderate Republicans who opposed vouchers. He also opposes abortion. The “Center for Education Reform” in DC gives out the Yass Prize for the most successful charter schools. Top prize is $1 million (a school in Harlem, NYC, cofounded by Sean “Diddy” Combs was recently a semi-finalist). Now Yass has decided to buy the Republican Party in North. Carolina to advance his goals.

Bob Hall of NC Newsline reports:

Despite strong opposition, the North Carolina Senate voted this month to boost enrollment in privately run K-12 schools by doubling state funding for tuition subsidies called “opportunity scholarships.” More than $200 million is earmarked for kids in high-income families. 

Why would Republican leaders do this now when polls show voters oppose subsidies for the rich? And when public schools clearly need those funds – North Carolina ranks 48th in per-pupil spending. 

It’s not about helping children. It’s about getting the money to win elections.

Truth be told, public education has long been warped by the corrupting influence of big money.  Generations of North Carolinians suffered because employers profited by exploiting poorly educated workers. Politicians gave pro-education speeches but deliberately underfunded schools – worse in Black communities – effectively pushing students out of class into low-paying jobs.

I’m old enough to remember a textile mill CEO – and top political donor – telling state leaders that the UNC system was vital for training the managerial class but investing in a quality K-12 system was unnecessary. The elite and wannabe elite sent their children to private, all-white academies.  

The mills are now largely gone, and there’s broad support to improve our schools and make real the 1997 NC Supreme Court Leandro ruling that our constitution “guarantee[s] every child of this state the opportunity to receive a sound basic education.” 

The answer is campaign money. GOP leaders are telling the billionaires financing a national movementto privatize public education that the General Assembly will take radical steps to prove that, as one senator said, “North Carolina is at the forefront of school choice and education freedom.”

But an elitist, racist bias against robust public institutions, coupled with a political system tilted to wealthy donors, keeps slowing progress and distorting how legislators address the Leandro mandate. 

For example, from 2010 to 2016, Oregon millionaire John Bryan contributed $700,000 to dozens of North Carolina politicians to gain support for his “school reform” agenda. In 2016, his investment paid off with legislative approval for an “innovative” program to convert low-performing public schools into charter schools, which his corporation would manage for a fee. 

The program became a boondoggle, with no academic progress achieved. Bryan said his goal was to “inculcate my belief in the libertarian, free market, early American Founder’s principles” into schools. He died in 2020.

Sadly, a host of Bryan-like millionaires are now handing out big checks to encourage politicians to privatize rather than strengthen public education. At the top of the list is Jeffrey Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire with a passion for subsidized private schools and gambling. 

In October 2022, Yass gave an eye-popping $1 million to a committee controlled by North Carolina Republican legislative leaders – its largest donation ever from an individual. Several months later, the General Assembly legalized sports gambling and expanded the voucher program to subsidize more private schools. 

Yass is dramatically increasing his donations this year – he’s now the nation’s single biggest donor to federal campaigns and committees. He’s teaming up with other millionaires and Super PACs to finance advocacy groups and candidates who demonize diversity, promote censorship and attack schools. 

He just donated $6 million to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his controversial voucher plan, plus $3.5 million to elect pro-plan legislators. Another $2 million went to a Virginia PAC backing GOP state legislators.

North Carolina Republican leaders also want more money from Yass and his ilk – and that inspires more radical steps, like giving vouchers worth millions to wealthy families. 

Long range, these steps create a two-tier system: subsidized, costly private schools with little government oversight, geared to middle- and upper-class kids, and under-resourced public schools for the low income and poor who are disproportionately people of color. This is the opposite of the civic commitment to mutual uplift embedded in the Leandro decision. 

Republicans will likely get their millions in campaign money from Jeff Yass et al, but at a steep price for the people of North Carolina. 

Categories Billionaires, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Rightwing Group Uses Hidden Camera to Humiliate Educators

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2024 //
10

Newsweek reports that a rightwing group called “Accuracy in Media” or AIM has been surreptitiously filming educators as they explain how they evade state laws banning discussions of “critical race theory” and other controversial topics.

Their goal appears to be to smear public schools and educators, which advances the privatization agenda.

One educator talks of how a ban on teaching critical race theory could be skirted. Another boasts of how parents can be “tricked” over what goes in the school syllabus.

Both were recorded on hidden cameras by a conservative group that has been releasing videos periodically on the internet—and noting the fact that the videos have sometimes caused concerned parents to flood school board meetings.

As school battles take a central role at the grassroots of America’s culture wars over race, gender, language, COVID-19 rules and more, the group is going all out to draw attention to what progressives are saying, sometimes prompting accusations of unethical behavior with its recordings made under false pretenses….

“We’ll keep doing it until school officials stop lying. Public school administrators are not entitled to a monopoly on deception,” AIM President Adam Guillette, who joined from Project Veritas three years ago, told Newsweek…

AIM has been focusing largely on schools.

In January, it released a tranche of hidden-camera interviews. In Ohio, for example, there has been a so-far unsuccessful effort to ban the teaching of critical race theory and transgender issues to schoolchildren.

Critical race theory (widely known as CRT) is an academic framework based on the idea that there is systemic racism in U.S. institutions. It has become a hot issue for conservatives, who say it is divisive, while progressives say the controversy was stirred up by the right…

Progressives similarly take issue with conservative efforts to stop the teaching of young children about transgender issues in the name of child protection, saying that by doing so the LGBTQ community is being targeted.

Guillette says that AIM’s cameras recorded school employees suggesting that they’ll teach whatever they like, regardless of what laws are passed.

In one video, Matthew Boaz, the executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion for Upper Arlington Schools says to undercover AIM activists: “You can pass a bill that you can’t teach Critical Race Theory in a classroom, but if you didn’t cover programming, or you didn’t cover extracurricular activities, or anything like that, that message might still get out. Oops! There will be a way.”

Upper Arlington Schools did not respond to Newsweek’s emailed request for comment. An automated message from Boaz’s email said “I have requested leave and will be away from my office and email”.

Guillette wouldn’t say who he and others at AIM pretend to be when speaking to their subjects. “It would be a lot more difficult if they knew our tactics. I can confirm that the camera was not behind the salt shaker,” he said.

That said, a day after the AIM video hit the Internet, an email sent to parents from Upper Arlington Interim Superintendent Kathy Jenney said, in part, “We know the video was recorded with a hidden camera and under false pretenses by a man and woman who claimed to be interested in enrolling a student. The couple guided the conversation to focus on the topic of critical race theory.”

The video dropped in mid January, and at the following school board meeting about 40 people spoke on the matter, about 15 of whom were upset about what they had seen while the rest were there to support Boaz….

Open the link to read the article in full.

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Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Privatization, Racism

Houston: Congressmember Calls for Federal Investigation of HISD under Miles

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2024 //
12

After Spectrum News reported that millions of dollars had been sent from Texas charter schools founded by Mike Miles to Colorado charter schools in the same chain, parents and students demanded Miles’ resignation as superintendent of Houston Independent School Disttrict. Elected officials have called for an investigation but recognize that neither the State Commissioner (Mike Morath) nor Governor Abbott are likely to criticize Miles, whom they appointed.

HOUSTON — U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia formally requested that the U.S. Department of Education investigate the issues at Houston ISD and the financing of schools in the area, according to a letter obtained by KHOU 11 News.

In the letter dated May 15, the Congresswoman refers to recent news stories that reported Ector ISD near Midland, Texas allegedly sent state funds from Texas to Third Future Schools, a charter school operated in Colorado. She requested that an audit be conducted on Ector ISD.

A Spectrum News Texas report highlighted a pair of million-dollar-plus checks allegedly sent from Third Future Schools in Texas to its campuses in Colorado. The report accused Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Milesof sending Texas tax dollars out of state.

Miles has issued a statement responding to the report, saying the report “either intentionally or through gross incompetence, mischaracterized commonplace financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them.” 

RELATED: HISD Superintendent Mike Miles responds to report he funneled TX taxpayer money to Colorado | TEA commissioner, Third Future Schools also respond

Garcia expressed concerns over the financial stability of HISD following last year’s takeover by the state of Texas. This comes after widespread layoffs were announced leading to protests from those affected and HISD families.

RELATED: More Houston ISD parents protest over principals reportedly being forced out

RELATED: She was principal of the year in 2023. A year later, she said HISD forced her to resign

Texas Education Commissioner Mick Morath has confirmed that the TEA complaints team will look into allegations against Miles. 

The congresswoman also requested the issuance of federal funds by the state from the pandemic that were to be used to supplement public education at HISD be audited.

“It pains me that my home school district has been taken over and is seemingly being intentionally run into the ground and (I) request any additional assistance you can provide to protect our schools and our students,” Garcia said in the letter.

Garcia went on to claim that the state is punishing HISD.

“Houston is a vibrant and diverse community, and our state government is punishing us for that; we need your help,” she said in the letter.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Houston, Texas

Houston: Mike Miles Denies Transfer of Millions to His Colorado Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2024 //
22

Brett Shipp of Spectrum News posted a video asserting that the Texas charter schools in the network founded by Mike Miles sent millions of dollars to Miles’ Colorado charter schools. His report was amply documented.

Miles was imposed as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District after the state took control of HISD, based on the low performance of ONE school, Wheatley High School. Miles was selected by State Superintendent Mike Morath, who served on the Dallas school board when Miles was superintendent for three years and failed to meet any of his lofty goals. Neither Morath nor Miles is an educator. Morath was in the software business, and Miles was in the military before joining Eli Broad’s Superintendent Academy, which emphasized top-down management and disruption.

Ana Hernandez, a Houston legislator, wrote Mike Morath to call for an investigation of Miles. Morath is unlikely to conduct a serious probe since he chose Miles. The State Attorney General Ken Paxton is under indictment for corruption, so he’s not likely to dig deep into Morath’s choice; Morath was picked by Governor Gregg Abbott.

Sam Gonzalez Kelly of The Houston Chronicle reported that Miles denounced Shipp’s charges:

HISD’s appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is vehemently denying reports that his former charter network, Third Future Schools, illegally used money from its Texas campuses to subsidize its schools in Colorado. 

Miles, in a late night email to “friends, partners and board members,” wrote that the story by Spectrum News in Dallas “badly misunderstands, or worse, intentionally misrepresents the financial practices of Third Future Schools.” The story, by reporter Brett Shipp, who covered Miles during his tenure as Dallas ISD superintendent, accuses Third Future Schools of charging fees to its Texas network to subsidize one of its campuses in Colorado, and reported that Third Future Schools Texas had run a deficit due to debts to “other TFS network schools and to TFS corporate.”

The Spectrum report cites recordings of TFS corporate board and investor meetings, as well as the charter network’s financial records. The Houston Chronicle’s review of the documents confirmed that TFS Texas had sent funds to Colorado campuses, which a charter school finance expert said is generally permitted by state law.

“While I have not worked at the Third Future Schools network for more than a year, I find the piece irresponsibly inaccurate, and I cannot let this kind of misinformation go uncorrected,” Miles wrote. 

Miles wrote that Third Future Schools “was always a responsible steward of every public dollar received” and that school finances were approved by local school boards and partner districts. He acknowledged that Texas schools paid “administrative fees” to the central Third Future office, which is headquartered in Colorado, to provide network-wide supports in areas, including finance and human resources, but said that such payments are common practice for charter networks.

“Spectrum News either intentionally or, through gross incompetence, mischaracterized these common place financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them,” Miles wrote. 

Neither Spectrum nor Shipp immediately responded to requests for comment. 

Spectrum’s story immediately prompted outrage among HISD community members and some elected officials, who are demanding the superintendent’s resignation and a federal investigation over the charter network’s use of Texas taxpayer money in Colorado schools. 

The Texas Education Agency said in a statement Tuesday that it was aware of Spectrum’s report and was reviewing the matter.

The “charter school finance expert” consulted by The Houston Chronicle worked for the state charter school association. It is not clear that state law allows charter schools in Texas to send Texas public funds to its offices or other charters in Colorado.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston, Texas

Scandal! Millions of $$ Flow from Texas to Colorado Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2024 //
18

Mike Miles, the Superintendent imposed on the Houston public schools by a state takeover, set up a chain of charter schools in Colorado. His charters are running a big deficit. They are also getting poor academic results. One of them closed.

Miles is still getting paid as a consultant to his charter chain.

Miles opened charter schools in Texas.

Investigative reporter Brett Shipp learned that millions of dollars are being transferred from Miles’s Texas charters to his Colorado charters, to pay down their debt.

When he asked the charter leaders about this transfer, he was told that all the charters are in the same chain, so no problem.

But Texas parents complain that their schools are underfunded. When Shipp interviewed them, they were shocked to hear that their tax dollars were being sent to underwrite the deficit of charters in Colorado.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Colorado, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Houston, Privatization, Texas

Houston: Miles Ousts Two 2023 Principals of the Year

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2024 //
16

Mike Miles, the superintendent imposed on the Houston Independent School District, announced major budget cuts and staff layoffs. Among those released: two principals of the year for 2023. Miles was trained by the Broad Superintendents’ Academy to disrupt, and he’s doing it.

Houston ISD alerted dozens of teachers and principals of both performance-based job cuts and budget-forced reductions this week, prompting parents across the state’s largest school system to plan another round of protests as the tumultuous school year under state takeover nears an end. 

Among the dozens of teachers and principals asked to leave: both the HISD Elementary and Middle School Principals of the Year in HISD in 2023. 

Neff Elementary Principal Amanda Wingard confirmed in a Facebook post Thursday that the school district asked her to resign.

“I have loved Neff and the Sharpstown community for the last 35 years,” wrote Wingard, who was honored at a banquet a year ago for her leadership.

Alongside her is 2022-23 Middle School Principal of the Year, Auden Sarabia, who told his staff at Meyerland Performing and Visual Arts this week that he was asked to resign or go before the Board of Managers, a teacher and parents confirmed. Saraba has worked for HISD for 18 years.

Crockett Elementary Principal Alexis Clark is also not returning to her visual and performing arts magnet campus near the Heights.

“I’m heartbroken. We’re all heartbroken. I’ve done my best to protect my kids — they’re young — from what’s happening,” said Liz Silva, PTO fundraising chair and incoming president. “Can’t really avoid the topic anymore with them…” 

The Houston Chronicle is working to confirm other principal departures, and, in some cases it is unclear whether principals are resigning or being forced out. Even before this latest round of cuts, HISD’s principal turnover had been high under Miles.

The school district’s Board of Managers unanimously permitted job cuts Thursday night prior to the 2024-2025 school year. Positions subject to cuts include nurses; librarians; counselors; assistant principals; principals; reading, math and science teachers; and special education coordinators. It’s unclear at this time how many termination notices have been handed out and how many positions total will be cut.

Governor Abbott’s plans to wreck the district and destroy the morale of educators and parents are on track. Remember that the state took over the district because one school was not improving, although it did improve in the year before the takeover.

The takeover is a politically motivated sham.

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Reform, Funding, Houston, State Takeover, Texas

Houston: Mike Miles Announces Layoffs of Educators and Custodians

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2024 //
14

Mike Miles, the state-appointed superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, announced that big layoffs are on the horizon. Miles, a military veteran and a graduate of the Broad Academy, came to Houston to disrupt the district on behalf of Governor Greg Abbott. He’s doing it. He did it previously in Dallas, where his controlling policies drove out record numbers of teachers.

Concurrently, 3,000 members of the Houston Federation of Teachers, which represents slightly more than half of Houston’s 11,465 teachers, overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution of “no confidence” in Miles and called for his ouster. Zeph Capo, president of the Texas AFT, said that Miles “has steadfastly refused to listen to educators, parents and students about what they need, and has likewise refused to accept criticism with anything other than absolute disdain from people he says that he should be serving,”

Megan Menchacha of The Houston Chronicle reported:

An undisclosed number of Houston ISD teachers and principals received notices this week that they will be out of a job, state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said Thursday.

Miles said principals have begun making decisions about which teachers to hire back based on certain data points, such as spot observations, performance on the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System professionalism domain and performance on the Measures of Academic Progress Growth assessment and other student achievement data.

“We are using data maybe for the first time,” Miles said during a media conference. “At this time of year, when principals assess whether or not a teacher will return, they’re looking not just at the anecdotal information, but they’re also looking at data of all sorts to assess. So that’s what principals have been doing. They’ve been looking at data.”

Miles said he did not know the specific number of teachers or principals who would not be keeping their jobs, but the district would have that information in a few weeks. Multiple teachers reported receiving notices this week to attend a Zoom call to discuss their “future employment for the district” Friday, although the exact nature of the call was not made clear.

Miles said although several teachers will not have their contracts renewed, the district was not cutting the number of teacher positions. He said the district has been hiring people to replace the teachers who would not be renewed, and HISD students would still have an effective teacher and approximately the same class size ratios during the upcoming academic year. 

“Last Saturday, at the job fair, we had about 1,500 to 2,000 teachers apply for about 800 positions. Several hundred where offers were made,” Miles said. “I don’t know the exact number, but it’s … maybe 500 positions in the NES schools out of 5,000 that still are vacant, and those will be filled by the end of May.”

Miles said executive directors and division superintendents were also reviewing instructional, achievement and leadership data for principals and making decisions this week “based on several things” about who would be keeping their positions next year. 

Along with nonrenewals of teachers and principals, Miles said Thursday that almost every department, including custodians and maintenance workers, have to cut positions, although he said he didn’t know the exact number of employees who had learned they were being cut in recent weeks.

“The budget and financial situation has been complicated this year, because of the end of our COVID relief aid, or ESSER, dollars,” Miles said. “So as a result of ESSER dollars, the district had placed a lot of money into recurrent expenses, and that meant we have not only to balance the budget, but we have to find a way to pay for the positions that were funded by ESSER.”

EXCLUSIVE EVENT: Join our private Zoom with HISD Superintendent Miles on May 15

The notices come as the district’s Board of Managers are set to consider approving agenda items during their monthly meeting Thursday allowing the district to make a “reduction in force” before the 2024-25 academic year. The notices, if approved, would allow the district to cut several listed positions or employment areas, but would not require them to do so.

The list of positions facing cuts exceeds 20 pages and includes the vast majority of current campus-level jobs in the district, such as nurses; librarians; counselors; assistant principal; principals; reading, math and science teachers; fine arts and other elective instructors; speech therapists; magnet coordinators; and special education coordinators. 

The planned reduction in force comes as Miles estimates that the district will face an estimated $450 million budget gap during the upcoming school year. Miles has said that widespread cuts are necessary to keep the district from hitting a fiscal cliff amid the expiration of federal COVID-19 relief money and declining student enrollment.

‘NO CONFIDENCE:’ Nearly 3,000 Houston Federation of Teachers members rebuke Miles in vote

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Disruption, Houston, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, Texas

Thom Hartmann: The Close Connection Between Monopolies and Labor

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2024 //
2

Thom Hartmann is releasing his new book The Hidden History of Monopolies on his blog, one chapter at a time. This one is fascinating. Big business has always opposed labor unions. They drive up wages, meaning less profits.

Thom explains:

When people consider monopolies, or even highly concentrated markets like airlines or pharmaceuticals, generally the only thing they think of is the ability of companies in concentrated markets to set prices wherever they’d like. But there are fully three primary benefits to monopoly or oligopoly, from the monopolists’ point of view.

In addition to setting prices by restricting competition, monopolies can (and typically do) drive down wages so that they end up with a steady supply of cheap labor, and—both by market (selling) control and labor market (workers) control—they send vastly more money flowing to stockholders and senior management than can companies in truly competitive marketplaces.

At its core, though, virtually every aspect of the movement that embraced monopoly (Bork actually wrote about all the “lost” inventions, innovations, and profits that were caused by a lack of monopoly!) boiled down to cheap labor. 

Joe Lyles, writing as Conceptual Guerilla, put up a brilliant analysis of this more than a decade ago titled “Defeat the Right in Three Minutes,” suggesting that quite literally everything we call “conservative” was really about driving down wages. While racial hatred and misogyny also play big roles these days in the “conservative” movement, there’s still a lot of truth to Lyles’s analysis.50

Cheap-labor conservatives don’t want a national health care system, because they want workers to be dependent on their employers and thus willing to accept lower wages.

Cheap-labor conservatives hate the minimum wage and unions because both support wage floors and, over time, raise wages for working people.

Cheap-labor conservatives want women relatively powerless (particularly over their own reproductive functions) so that, as in the era before the 1970s, they’ll work for far less than today’s $.78 to a man’s dollar.

Cheap-labor conservatives go on and on about, as Lyles notes, “morality, virtue, respect for authority, hard work and other ‘values’” so that when workers can’t climb the ladder, society will blame it on the individuals instead of a system rigged to maintain cheap labor.

Cheap-labor conservatives encourage bigotry, fear, and hatred to prevent working people from seeing their commonality of human and economic interests, regardless of race, gender identity, or the urban/rural divide.

America has a long history with the cheap-labor crowd: slavery was the ultimate expression of this “conservative” value system, and under the 13th Amendment, it continues to be legally practiced in the United States in our for-profit prison systems.

The 13th Amendment didn’t actually end slavery in the United States; it merely turned it over to prisons, be they state-run or for-profit corporations. It reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” As a result, the pressure on Congress and state legislatures from for-profit prison corporations to increase criminal penalties to give them more literal slave labor has exploded.

Cheap-labor conservatives, it turns out, are also huge fans of monopoly and oligopoly, in large part because these systems keep wages low. 

There’s a marketplace for labor, just like for everything else, and when a small number of corporations control a large number of employment venues, they can simply keep wages low through that market power. Check out the pay of fast-food workers or flight attendants or nurses back in the 1960s compared with today; every industry that concentrates or consolidates sees wages go down….

Please open the link to finish reading.

Categories Disruption, Economy, Unions
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