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NPE Releases New Report about Christian Nationalist Charter Schools, Funded with Taxes

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2023 //
16

The Network for Public Education released a new report today that should concern everyone who cares about public schools and the use of public resources. The report shows that a growing segment of the charter industry is controlled by Christian nationalists, who indoctrinate their students, using taxpayer dollars.

Contact: Carol Burris

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org

(646) 678-4477

NEW REPORT DOCUMENTS HOW FAR-RIGHT CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE FUELING THE CULTURE WARS

Right-wing Republicans involved in the creation and governance of charter schools

American taxpayers across the country are funding the recent explosion of growth in far-right, Christian nationalist charter schools, including those affiliated with Hillsdale College, according to a new report, A Sharp Right Turn: A New Breed of Charter Schools Delivers the Conservative Agenda, released by the Network for Public Education (NPE) today.

NPE identified hundreds of charter schools, predominantly in red states, that use the classical brand or other conservative clues in marketing to attract white Christian families. From featured religious music videos to statements that claim they offer a faith-friendly environment, these charter schools are opening at an accelerated rate, with at least 66 schools in the pipeline to open by 2024. While some of these schools, such as the Roger Bacon Academies, are long-standing, nearly half of the schools we identified opened after the inauguration of Donald Trump–representing a 90% increase.

The report exposes how right-wing Republican politicians, including Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida and failed Colorado gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl, have embroiled themselves in creating and governing these schools, with some benefiting financially. In fact, NPE found that right-wing charters are nearly twice as likely to be run by for-profit management companies than the entire charter sector.

According to NPE Executive Director Carol Burris, who co-authored the report with journalist Karen Francisco, “Sectarian extremists and the radical right are capitalizing on tragically loose controls and oversight in the charter school sector to create schools that seek to turn back the clock on civil rights and education progress. These schools teach their own brand of CRT–Christian Right Theory–capitalizing on and fueling the culture wars. As a taxpayer, I am appalled that my tax dollars are seeding such schools.”

Since 2006, the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter School Programs (CSP) has funneled more than one hundred million dollars to begin or expand right-wing charter schools.

NPE President and education historian Diane Ravitch commented, “Few doubt that the religious right has decided to stake its claim on the next generation of hearts and minds with its unrelenting push for vouchers and book and curricular bans. This report exposes the lesser-known third part of the strategy—the proliferation of right-wing charter schools. It should be a wake-up call to those with progressive ideals who have embraced charter schools. A movement you support is now taking a sharp turn right to destroy the values you cherish.”

To learn more about the rapid growth of right-wing charter schools and their connections with right-wing politicians and the religious right, you can read the full report here.

The Network for Public Education is a national advocacy group whose mission is to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen public schools for current and future generations of students.

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Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Lies, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Religion, Separation of church and state, U.S. Department of Education

“Moms for Liberty” Labeled an Extremist Organization

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2023 //
107

The respected Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated “Moms for Liberty” as an extremist group, along with a number of other astroturf anti-government organizations that popped up during the pandemic to protest masks and vaccines.

In its annual report on hate groups, SPLC named Moms for Liberty and 11 other “parent”groups as extremists who feed on racism, misogyny, homophobia, and bigotry:

Moms for Liberty joins the ranks of groups including the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the United Constitutional Patriots, a self-styled militia that “patrols” the U.S.-Mexico border.

Other astroturf “parent” groups were identified as extremist by SPLC:

The 12 “parent’s rights” groups labeled by the SPLC as extremist groups: Moms for Liberty; Moms for America; Army of Parents; Courage is a Habit; Education First Alliance; Education Veritas; No Left Turn in Education; Parents Against CRT (PACT); Parents Defending Education; Parents Rights in Education; Purple for Parents Indiana and Parents Involved in Education.

Will Carless wrote in USA Today that Moms for Liberty “pitched itself as a potent grassroots movement of outraged parents, many of whom weren’t active in school politics until COVID-19 restrictions forced them to pay attention. It has sprouted local chapters in at least 40 states, claims more than 100,000 members and has the ear of the Republican establishment: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has championed their efforts to restrict teaching about race in schools and universities. Critics in Florida slam the group for turning schools into a political battlefield.”

Both DeSantis and Trump will address the annual conference of this two-year-old organization of hate-mongers.

Moms for Liberty and the other organizations are being designated as “anti-government extremist groups,” based on longstanding criteria, explained SPLC Intelligence Project Director Susan Corke. Corke said the grassroots conservative groups are part of a new front in the battle against inclusivity in schools, though they are drawing from ideas rooted in age-old white supremacy.

“[The movement] is primarily aimed at not wanting to include our hard history, topics of racism, and a very strong push against teaching anything having to do with LGBTQ topics in schools,” Corke said. ”We saw this as a very deliberate strategy to go to the local level…”

Despite the national profile, these organizations spread conspiracy theories and operate on the myth that educators are engaged in “Marxist indoctrination” of the nation’s children by imbuing them with dangerous ideas about equality and sexuality, the SPLC said.

While the movement may be reasonably new, it is founded on the same traditional racist, misogynist and homophobic views that brought people out to protest the desegregation of schools in the 1950s and ’60s, the SPLC argues.

Moms for Liberty does not report the names of its funders.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fake, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Gender, Hoax, Lies, Parent Groups, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Republicans, Shame

Florida: Vouchers for the Rich!

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2023 //
19

Lizette Alvarez, a journalist in Miami, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post, explaining the outrageousness of Florida’s universal voucher program.

What I find outrageous is that this story is not being covered by the Washington Post, the New York Times, or any of the other major media outlets. Nor is it reported as news by any of the network or cable stations.

Why are these stories not in the news every day?

CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS ARE WIPING OUT THE LONG-HONORED TRADITION OF SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!!

CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS IN EVERY RED STATE ARE DESTROYING THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION!!

Well, at least, the Washington Post printed an opinion piece telling of the greatest theft of the public good in our lifetimes:

Florida public schools are having an awful year. Record numbers of teachers have left their jobs, and those who remain face a minefield of ambiguous culture-war dictates about what they can say and how they teach.

And it’s about to get worse for Florida’s beleaguered public schools.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently signed legislation that might radically undermine the state’s education system by making Florida’s already robust school voucher program the largest and most expensive in the country.

Beginning in July, the state will make it possible for every Florida K-12 student to receive a taxpayer-funded voucher or savings account worth $8,648. And for the first time in Florida, the vouchers will be available to children from wealthy families, even those who are home-schooled or who already attend private or religious schools. The money can go to tuition and educational expenses.

At least five other states have passed so-called universal choice programs — Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah and West Virginia — but Florida’s is, by far, the biggest. Other Republican-led states are considering similar bills.

The new policy is a revolutionary (and expensive) expansion. The original state voucher program, which began in 1999, was designed exclusively for a small number of children in F-rated, or failing, public schools and, later, special-needs students. The program grew to more than 177,000 students, from households earning up to $100,000.

About 2,300 private schools in Florida accept vouchers; 69 percent of them are unaccredited, 58 percent are religious and 30 percent are for-profit, according to the Hechinger Report.
In a state infamous as a magnet for schemers and grifters, there’s plenty of reason to worry as millions of dollars in new spending will soon pour into schools that have little accountability. When DeSantis celebrated passage of his vouchers-for-all gambit as a victory for school choice, he was no doubt being cheered on by those with no ideology other than diving into any trough freshly filled with public money.

But, as of July 1, even the child of a private-jet-flying tycoon will be eligible for a voucher. As state Rep. Marie Woodson (D) said, “This bill is an $8,000 gift card to the millionaires and billionaires who are being gifted with a state-sponsored coupon for something they can already afford.” The rich might not need it, but who passes up free money?

Estimates of the cost range from $209 million to $4 billion a year. About 2,300 private schools in Florida accept vouchers; 69 percent of them are unaccredited, 58 percent are religious and 30 percent are for-profit, according to the Hechinger Report….

In a state infamous as a magnet for schemers and grifters, there’s plenty of reason to worry as millions of dollars in new spending will soon pour into schools that have little accountability.

When DeSantis celebrated passage of his vouchers-for-all gambit as a victory for school choice, he was no doubt being cheered on by those with no ideology other than diving into any trough freshly filled with public money.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Fraud, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Vouchers

Fiske and Ladd: North Carolina Is a State at Risk

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2023 //
11

Edward B. Fiske was the education editor of the New York Times and editor of the Fiske Guide to Colleges. Helen F. Ladd is a nationally prominent economist of education and professor emeritus at Duke University. They are married, a power couple of American education. This article appeared on the website of WRAL in North Carolina.

Forty years ago this spring a national commission charged with evaluating the quality of American education issued a blistering report entitled “A Nation at Risk.” It cited a “rising tide of mediocrity” in the country’s schools and declared that the country’s failure to provide high quality education “threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

North Carolina leaders took this warning to heart. They began investing heavily in public education and even became a model for other states in areas such as early childhood education. Significantly, the state was making progress toward fulfilling its obligation under the North Carolina Constitution to provide a sound, basic education for all students.

The situation started to change, however, in 2012 when Republicans came to power and began an assault on public education that continues to this day.

When it comes to public education, North Carolina is now “A State at Risk.”

The Republican assault has taken multiple forms, starting with inadequate funding. North Carolina now ranks 50th in the country in school funding effort and 48th in overall funding. Despite widespread teacher shortages, the Republicans have kept teacher salaries low — $12,000 below the national average – and they have failed to provide adequate funding for the additional support staff that schools need.

In addition, they have permitted significant growth in the number of charter schools. Such schools divert much-needed funds from traditional public schools and make it difficult for local boards of education to operate coherent education systems.

The Republican-controlled Legislature is currently working hard to weaken public education by politicizing the process. Pending legislation would regulate how history and racism are taught, give a commission appointed mainly by lawmakers the job of recommending standards in K-12 subjects, and transfer authority to create new charter schools from the State Board of Education to a board appointed by the General Assembly.

The problem is about to get even worse. The Legislature is now poised to expand the earlier Opportunity Scholarship program, which had provided public funds for low income children to attend private schools, into a much larger universal voucher program that would make all children eligible regardless of family income – at an estimated cost of more than $2 billion over the next 10 years.

Given that private schools are operated by private entities typically with no public oversight and no obligation to serve all children, why in the world would it ever make sense to use taxpayer dollars to support private schools?

A common argument has been that voucher systems raise achievement levels of the children who used them. While some early studies of small scale means-tested voucher programs in places like Milwaukee showed small achievement gains in some cases, recent studies of larger voucher programs in places such as Ohio, Louisiana and Indiana consistently show large declines in average achievement — often because of the low quality of the private schools that accept vouchers.

Supporters also argue that vouchers provide more schooling options for children and that having more choices is a good thing. But in the context of education policy that need not be the case. Americans support public education – and make schooling mandatory – not only for the benefits it generates for individual children but also for collective benefits such as the creation of capable workers and informed citizens. What matters is the quality of education for all the state’s children.

An expanded voucher program would lead to a substantial outflow of funds from traditional public schools to privately operated schools, with the potential for a significant loss in the quality of our public schools, and subsequent vitality in the state’s economy.

A strong public education system – from elementary and secondary schools to the nation’s first public university, the University of North Carolina – has long been pivotal to our state’s cultural, political and economic success. We must stop the current assaults on public education and reaffirm our commitment to one of North Carolina’s great strengths.

Back in 1983 when the education system of the nation was “at risk,” President Ronald Reagan – who had earlier been lukewarm in his support of public education — took the warning seriously and began touring the country to talk about the problem. His successors from both parties then took up the cause and continued to make the case that a strong public education system is essential for a vibrant economy, and importantly, to make the policy changes needed to strengthen it.

Let’s hope that our current Republican leaders in this state can muster the wisdom and courage to follow the example of President Reagan and other leaders from both parties in pushing for strong public education. In the absence of such wisdom, we will indeed continue to be “A State at Risk.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Competition, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, For-Profit, Funding, Higher Education, Hoax, North Carolina, Privatization, Republicans, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

John Thompson: Three Tumultous Years in Dallas under Broadie Mike Miles

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2023 //
5

It’s not often that I have the opportunity to repost something written years ago. John Thompson, teacher and historian, summarized Mike Miles’s disastrous three years in Dallas. At the time I posted John’s analysis, I didn’t know how to embed links. His commentary starts in the second paragraph of the linked post.

Miles is a military veteran. He has no experience as a teacher or principal. Yet somehow he thinks he knows how to reform schools. That conceit is a hallmark of the Broad Academy.

Miles was recently selected by the Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Morath—also not an educator—to be the superintendent of schools in Houston, one of the nation’s largest school districts. The state took control of The Houston Independent School District because one school—Wheatley High School—received failing scores for several years in a row. This past year, its state score rose to a C, but the state didn’t care. These are Republicans who don’t believe in local control or democracy.

Mike Miles arrived in Dallas after a stint as superintendent of a tiny district in Colorado. He’s a know-it-all. He arrived with an attempt at a Broadway show performance in which he was the star (the video was deleted).

He quickly set numerical goals that everyone was expected to meet. He alienated teachers, who left DISD in record numbers. He had no appreciation for words like “trust,” “respect,” “collaboration,” “teamwork.” It was his way or the highway.

It was not surprising that Miles’s first action as superintendent in Houston under the state takeover was to fire every member of the staff at 29 schools and invite them to reapply for their jobs. So what if this creates instability for students? Miles doesn’t care. He also plans to evaluate teachers in part by test scores, a well-discredited method.

He is a razzle-dazzle guy who likes to take bold actions, no matter who he hurts or what chaos he creates for the students and the professionals.

One of Mike Miles’ worst actions in Dallas was the time he called the police to arrest a school board member who was visiting a school in her district. That tells you the kind of guy he is: arrogant, insensitive, tough, mean.

Soon after he arrived in Dallas, his family moved back to Colorado because Mike was such a toxic guy. Hopefully, this time they stayed in Colorado.

Education doesn’t need military leaders. It doesn’t need people who don’t give a hoot for the morale of the teachers.

Miles was booted out of Dallas after three years of failure.

The question now is why Mike Morath, who was on the Dallas school board when Miles wreaked his damage on the district, decided to install him in Houston. Was it to punish Houston? Houston public schools today are performing better than Dallas. Why didn’t Morath take control of Dallas and give Miles another chance to ruin that district?

Broadies have a very bad track record. They were taught to be top-down, decisive, arrogant, indifferent to others. This is not an approach that blends well with students, teachers, teaching and learning.

Great educational leaders have experience in the classroom. They attract dedicated teachers and protect them. They understand that every child is precious to someone, whatever their test scores. They care about education more than test scores. They listen.

Mike Miles is not that guy.

Here are a few other commentaries about Niles while he was in Dallas:

Miles arrives: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/05/20/enter-the-new-dallas-superintendent/

Teachers flee Dallas, and Miles urges other districts not to hire them: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/06/dallas-teachers-flee-superintendent-mike-miles-under-investigation-his-family-moves-back-to-colorado/

Miles calls police to arrest a school board member visiting a school in her district: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/10/13/breaking-news-dallas-superintendent-miles-calls-police-to-remove-school-board-member-from-school/

At the end of his stormy three years, Miles compares his time in Dallas to “Camelot”:https://dianeravitch.net/2015/06/24/mike-miles-compares-his-three-year-tenure-in-dallas-to-camelot-starring-him-as-king-arthur/

PS: I take this state invasion of HISD personally. I graduated from HISD in 1956.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Cruelty, Dallas, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Houston, Teacher Shortage, Teachers

Harold Meyerson: Two Nations, Red and Blue

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2023 //
21

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect writes here about the sharp divergence between red states and blue states. Their elected officials have very different ideas about how to build their state and serve the needs of the public. There is one issue that he overlooked: vouchers. Red states are busy handing out tax dollars to families whose children are already enrolled in private and religious schools and tearing down the wall of separation between church and state.

Which side are you on?

He writes:

Two Prospect pieces on red and blue trifecta states make clear we really are two separate nations.

If there’s anyone who’s still mystified about why congressional Democrats and Republicans can’t come to an agreement on anything so basic as honoring the debts they’ve incurred, may I gently suggest they take a look at what Democrats and Republicans are doing in the particular states they each completely control.

Yesterday, we posted a piece by my colleague Ryan Cooper on how Minnesota, where Democrats now control both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office, has just enacted its own (to be sure, scaled-back) version of Scandinavian social democracy—including paid sick leave for all, paid family leave, a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers, sector-wide collective bargaining in key industries, and the outlawing of “captive audience” meetings, in which management compels employees to attend anti-union rants. A new law also strengthens women’s right to an abortion. Similar laws have been enacted or are under consideration in other Democratic “trifecta” states, though none quite so pro-worker as some of Minnesota’s.

Also yesterday, we posted one of my pieces, this one on everything that Texas’s Republican legislature and governor are enacting to strip power from their large cities, almost all of which are solidly Democratic. One new bill says the state can declare elections to be invalid and compel new ones to be held under state supervision in the state’s largest county, Harris County, which is home to reliably Democratic Houston. And the state Senate has also passed a bill that would strip from cities the ability to pass any regulations on wages, workplace safety, business and financial practices, the environment, and the extent of property rights that exceed the standards set by the state. Which leaves cities with the power to do essentially nothing. No other Republican trifecta states have gone quite as far as Texas, but Tennessee’s legislature did effectively abolish Nashville’s congressional district and expel its assemblymember; Alabama’s legislature revoked Birmingham’s minimum-wage law; and Florida’s governor suspended Tampa’s elected DA because he wouldn’t prosecute women and doctors for violating the state’s new anti-abortion statutes. Beyond their war on cities, Republican trifecta states have long refused to expand Medicaid coverage, have recently also begun to re-legalize child labor and legislate prison terms for librarians whose shelves hold banned books, and in the wake of the Dobbsdecision, criminalized abortions.

Just as cosmic inflation propels the stars away from each other with ever-expanding speed, so Democratic and Republican states are also moving away from each other at an accelerating pace—the Democrats toward a more humane future; the Republicans borne back ceaselessly into a nightmare version of the past. Any dispassionate view of America today has to conclude that the differences between these two Americas are almost as large and intractable as those that split the nation in 1860 and ’61. (The South’s opposition to fairly paid and nondiscriminatory labor was the central issue then and remains a central issue now.)

That said, when confronted with the choice between those two Americas, voters in those red states have frequently backed the blue-state versions of economic rights and personal freedoms, as is clear from their many initiative and referendum votes to raise the minimum wage, expand Medicaid, and preserve the right to an abortion. Likewise, the polling on unions shows their national favorability rating now exceeds 70 percent of the public, including roughly half of self-declared Republicans. Only by their relentless demagoguery on culture-war issues and immigration, their adept gerrymandering, and the disproportionate power that the composition of the Senate vests in barely inhabited states can the Republicans enforce their biases against a rising public tide—but enforce them they do wherever they have the power.

All right, as John Dos Passos wrote in his USA Trilogy, we are two nations—and becoming more so with each passing day.

Postscript: In his Washington Post column…, Perry Bacon noted that while a number of news publications have gone under recently, a few, in his words, “are reimagining political journalism in smart ways.” He cited seven such publications, and his list was headed by—ahem—The American Prospect.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Health, Houston, Unions, Vouchers

Indiana: More Laws to Stifle Freedom of Thought and Democracy

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2023 //
1

A reader who signs in as CarolMalaysia described the latest education-related laws passed in Indiana:

She writes:

These are some of the new Indiana laws that will take effect on Saturday. [Indiana is run by the GOP and they have NO respect for public schools or teachers.] Gary is a poverty area and they cannot vote for their school board members. 87% of Hoosier children attend public schools and they are continuously underfunded.

Book bans — Every public school board and charter school governing body is required to establish a procedure for the parent of any student, or any person residing in the school district, to request the removal of library materials deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors.” School districts must also post a list of the complete holdings of its school libraries on each school’s website and provide a printed copy of the library catalogue to any individual upon request. (HEA 1447)

Charter schools — The proceeds of each new voter-approved school funding referendum in Lake County must be shared with local charter schools in proportion to the number of children living in the school district who attend charter schools. Beginning July 1, 2024, all incremental property tax revenue growth at Lake County school districts must be shared on a proportional basis with local charter schools. (SEA 391, HEA 1001)

Gary schools — A five-member, appointed school board is reestablished for the Gary Community School Corp. to eventually replace the Indiana Distressed Unit Appeals Board as the governing body for the formerly cash-strapped school district. Gary’s mayor and the Gary Common Council appoint one member each, and the three others are chosen by the Indiana secretary of education, including at least one Gary resident, one resident of Gary or Lake County, and a final member from anywhere. (SEA 327)

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Fascism, Indiana, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy

Should America Be Like Florida? NO! Says Miami Herald Editorial Board

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2023 //
20

Ron DeSantis wants to make America just like Florida, where the maximum leader (Ron DeSantis) has a docile legislature that lets him decide what everyone else is allowed to do and punishes those bold enough to ignore his orders.

That’s why he is running for President. He thinks the whole nation needs and wants a maximum leader with a reactionary view of behavior and morality.

Florida is where you are free to do whatever Ron DeSantis tells you to do and free to think what he believes. If you disagree, you are no longer free.

The Miami Herald editorial board says DeSantis has turned Florida into a mean state. No, you don’t want to make America Florida.

Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Legislature, is increasingly hard to recognize. It’s an intolerant and repressive place that bears scant resemblance to the Sunshine State of just a few years ago.

The 2023 legislative session cemented those appalling setbacks. Florida is now a state where government intrusion into the personal lives of Floridians is commonplace. What will it take for citizens to push back on this unprecedented encroachment on their rights? And, more broadly, what if Desantis supporters get what they want, which is to “make America Florida”?

The latest round of laws makes Florida sound more and more dystopian — something voters in the rest of the nation should note if they are considering what a DeSantis presidency could look like. The state has new rules for who can use which bathroom, what pronouns can be used in schools, which books can be taught and when women can get an abortion (almost never.) There are measures to strip union protections from public employees, keep transgender children and their parents from choosing to seek medical treatment, prevent universities from discussing diversity or inclusion and ban talk of gender identity or sexuality in schools all the way through 12th grade.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Guns, Hoax, Librarians, Libraries, Propaganda, Unions, Vouchers

Pro Publica: How NYC’s Success Academy Deals with “Difficult” Children

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2023 //
33

Pro Publica investigated the case of a child at Success Academy who was disruptive and learned that at a charter school, the chain is free to write its own disciplinary rules. The public schools are governed by regulations, but Success Academy is exempt from those regulations.

ProPublica told the story of Ian, whose mother left work repeatedly to find out why Success Academy had called the police about the child. It seems clear that the school was trying to persuade her to withdraw Ian. But she kept showing up. It also seems clear that Ian’s behavior got worse because of the school’s rigid discipline.

In a panic, if she floors it, Marilyn Blanco can drive from her job at the Rikers Island jail complex to her son Ian’s school in Harlem in less than 18 minutes.

Nine times since December, Blanco has made the drive because Ian’s school — Success Academy Harlem 2 — called 911 on her 8-year-old.

Ian has been diagnosed with ADHD. When he gets frustrated, he sometimes has explosive tantrums, throwing things, running out of class and hitting and kicking anyone who comes near him. Blanco contends that, since Ian started first grade last year, Success Academy officials have been trying to push him out of the school because of his disability — an accusation similar to those made by other Success Academy parents in news stories, multiple lawsuits that resulted in settlements and a federal complaint.

When giving him detentions and suspensions didn’t stop Ian’s tantrums, Blanco said, the school started calling 911. If Blanco can’t get to Ian fast enough to intervene, a precinct officer or school safety agent from the New York Police Department will hold him until an ambulance arrives to take him to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation — incidents the NYPD calls “child in crisis” interventions.

The experience has been devastating for Ian, Blanco said. Since the 911 calls started late last year, he’s been scared to leave his house because he thinks someone will take him away. At one ER visit, a doctor wrote in Ian’s medical file that he’d sustained emotional trauma from the calls.

Citywide, staff at the Success Academy Charter School network — which operates 49 schools, most of them serving kids under 10 years old — called 911 to respond to students in emotional distress at least 87 times between July 2016 and December 2022, according to an analysis of NYPD data by THE CITY and ProPublica.

If Success Academy were run by the city Department of Education, it would be subject to rules that explicitly limit the circumstances under which schools may call 911 on students in distress: Under a 2015 regulation, city-run schools may never send kids to hospitals as a punishment for misbehavior, and they may only involve police as a last resort, after taking mandatory steps to de-escalate a crisis first. (As THE CITY and ProPublica reported this month, the rules don’t always get followed, and city schools call 911 to respond to children in crisis thousands of times a year.)

But the regulation doesn’t apply to Success Academy, which is publicly funded but privately run and — like all of the city’s charter school networks — free to set its own discipline policies.

The consequence, according to education advocates and attorneys, is that families have nowhere to turn if school staff are using 911 calls in a way that’s so frightening or traumatic that kids have little choice but to leave.

“Sure, you can file a complaint with the Success Academy board of trustees. But it isn’t going anywhere,” said Nelson Mar, an education attorney at Legal Services NYC who represented parents in a 2013 lawsuit that led to the restrictions on city-run schools.

Success Academy did not respond to questions about the circumstances under which school staff generally call 911 or the criteria they use to determine whether to initiate child-in-crisis incidents.

Regarding Ian, Success Academy spokesperson Ann Powell wrote that school staff called EMS because Ian “has repeatedly engaged in very dangerous behavior including flipping over desks, breaking a window, biting teachers (one of whom was prescribed antibiotics to prevent infection since the bite drew blood), threatening to harm both himself and a school safety agent with scissors, hitting himself in the face, punching a pregnant paraprofessional in the stomach (stating ‘I don’t care’ when the paraprofessional reminded him that ‘there’s a baby in my belly’), punching a police officer and attempting to take his taser, and screaming ‘I wish you would die early.’”

Powell also provided documentation that included contemporaneous accounts of Ian’s behavior written by Success Academy staff, photographs of bite marks and a fractured window, an assessment by a school social worker concluding that Ian was at risk for self-harm, and a medical record from an urgent care facility corroborating the school’s account that a teacher had been prescribed antibiotics.

Blanco said that Success Academy administrators have regularly exaggerated Ian’s behaviors. When he was 6, for example, Ian pulled an assistant principal’s tie during a tantrum, and school staff described it as a choking attempt, according to an account Blanco gave to an evaluator close to the time of the incident. Each time Success Academy has sent Ian to an emergency room, doctors have sent him home, finding that he didn’t pose a safety threat to himself or others, medical records show. (Success Academy did not respond to questions about the assertion that staffers have exaggerated Ian’s behaviors.)

Blanco knows that Ian is struggling. No one is more concerned about his well-being than she is, she said. But villainizing her 8-year-old only makes the situation worse.

“It’s like they want to tarnish him,” Blanco said. “He’s just a child, a child who needs help and support.”

Blanco chose Success Academy because she wanted Ian to have better education that what’s available in his neighborhood public school.

Success Academy, which has avid support from many parents and is led by former New York City Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, promotes itself as an antidote to educational inequality, offering rigorous charter school options to kids who might not have other good choices. On its website, the network advertises its students’ standardized test scores (pass rates for Black and Latino students are “double and even triple” those at city-run schools) and its educational outcomes: 100% of high school graduates are accepted to college, the network says.

Success Academy administrators say that strict and consistent discipline policies are essential to kids’ learning. Students are required to follow a precise dress code and to sit still and quietly, with hands folded in their laps or on their desks. When students break the rules, the school issues a progressive series of consequences, including letters home, detentions and suspensions.

Once students are accepted through the Success Academy lottery, the network is required to serve them until they graduate or turn 21, unless they withdraw or are formally expelled…

In Harlem, Ian started struggling at Success Academy just a few weeks into first grade. He’d never been aggressive before he started school, Blanco said. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he’d attended kindergarten online. When schools went back to in-person instruction, he was a high-energy 6-year-old who couldn’t follow Success Academy’s strict rules requiring him to sit still and stay quiet. By the end of first grade, he’d been suspended nearly 20 times.

The more Ian got in trouble, the worse he felt about himself and the worse his behavior became, Blanco said. He started falling behind because he missed so much class time during his suspensions, according to his education records. At home and at school, he said that teachers disciplined him because he was a “bad kid.”

At first, Blanco worked hard to cooperate with the school, she said. She was worried by the change in Ian’s behavior, and she thought that school staff had his best interests at heart. But then an assistant principal called her into an office and told her that Success Academy wasn’t a “good fit” for Ian, Blanco said to THE CITY and ProPublica, as well as in a written complaint she sent to Success Academy at around that time. (Success Academy’s board of trustees investigated the complaint and did not find evidence of discrimination against Ian, according to a September 2022 letter to Blanco from a board member.)

“That didn’t sit right,” said Blanco, who is an investigator at Rikers Island and is accustomed to gathering paper trails. She asked the assistant principal to put the statement in writing, but he told her she had misunderstood, she said. (Success Academy did not respond to questions about this incident.)

Several times, when the school called Blanco to pick Ian up early, staff told her to take him to a psychiatric emergency room for an evaluation. But the visits didn’t help, Blanco said. “You could be sitting there for six, seven, eight hours,” waiting to talk to a psychologist. Because Ian never presented as an immediate threat to himself or others, hospital staff couldn’t do much but refer him to outpatient care and send him home, according to hospital discharge records.

Eventually, Blanco found an outpatient clinic that would accept her insurance to evaluate Ian for neurological and behavioral disorders. She said she begged school staff to stop disciplining Ian while she worked to get him treatment, but the suspensions were relentless. Once, he missed 15 straight days of school.

At the beginning of Ian’s second grade year, Blanco reached out to Legal Services NYC, where Mar, the education attorney, took her on as a client.

The school twice reported Blanco to child welfare services as a negligent mother. An investigator came to her home to interview her and Ian. She said she was humiliated.

One month after the child welfare visit, things got even worse. Blanco was in Queens, heading to work to pick up some overtime, when the school called to say that Ian had had another tantrum. This time, she was too late to bring Ian home herself. He was in an ambulance, on his way to Harlem Hospital….

Two weeks ago, Success Academy sent Blanco an email informing her that they requested a hearing to have Ian removed from school for up to 45 school days because he “is substantially likely to cause injury to himself and others while in the Success Academy community.”

Ian would be barred from Success Academy immediately, the email said, even though it could take up to 20 days to schedule the hearing, which will be held at the special education division of the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings. If the hearing officer agrees with Success Academy, Ian will miss the rest of the school year..

To Blanco, the hearing seems like just another way for the school to get rid of her son. She thinks about pulling Ian out of Success Academy all the time, she said, but it feels like there’s no good alternative. She doesn’t want to give up on the idea of him getting a better shot than the one she got at a failing neighborhood school.

“I want him to get free of this cycle of disadvantage,” Blanco said. “I want to fight for my son’s rights and let them know that you’re not going to treat my child this way. I’ve made it my mission. You don’t get to pick and choose who you give an education to.”

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Deregulation, Discipline and Suspensions, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Teacher: The Injustice of Charter Co-Locations

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2023 //
9

In several cities, charters get space by moving into a public school building and “co-locating” with the existing public school. The existing public school never likes giving up classrooms, but they are not allowed to say no. The deal is done by the school board or the mayor or some other authority.

The two schools in the same building are typically separate. The students do not have shared activities. The new charter gets spruced-up classrooms and the best of everything. The students in the public school lose space and get no improvements. The two schools are separate and unequal.

Recently, a teacher wrote to describe what happened to her/his school in Harlem after the richly-funded Success Academy co-located into the building:

in 2012 Success Academy was allowed to co-locate in a landmark Harlem building amidst protests from NAACP and several political figures. Over ten years later, the same public school has lost an entire floor of classrooms including a radio broadcasting space, cafeteria space, and auditorium usage. While the traditional public school (that serves every student who enrolls) continues to struggle with attendance, credit matriculation, and graduation rates etc. the charter is allowed to “thrive” by cherry-picking students and choosing to not backfill seats in the younger grades. Charter/public co-locations are separate and unequal treatment of students and are extremely detrimental to our traditional public school community that has originally occupied the building for over 100 years.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Harlem Success Academy, Inequity, New York City
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