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Iowa Mandates “Science of Reading”

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2024 //
31

The “Science of Reading” is the panacea of the moment. Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill requiring the use of SofR in the state’s classrooms.

ADEL, Iowa (Gray Television Iowa Capitol Bureau) – Governor Kim Reynolds signed a new law Tuesday meant to boost literacy rates for Iowa children. It requires schools teach a specific reading method, called the Science of Reading, and develop individual plans for students not at grade level.

Last year, more than 30% of Iowa’s third and 11th graders weren’t reading at their grade level. Travis Wilkins with the Adel DeSoto Minburn Community School District said, “As an educator and in this profession, I think it’s important we recognize and name the fact that we are not meeting our mission.”

But ADM Schools found success. Three years ago it had one in four students not meeting reading standards. Then, it implemented a literacy strategy called the science of reading. “Our third grade through 11th grade scores now show 90% of our students are proficient in reading and writing,” Wilkins said.

Now, the Science of Reading is the law in Iowa. Tuesday Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill mandating schools implement the strategy and must provide personalized instruction for students who fall behind. “And for those who continue to struggle, the bill also ensures parents are informed of their right to request that their child be retained to repeat a grade level if that’s necessary,” Reynolds said.

Categories Education Industry, Freedom to Read, Iowa, Literacy

Nick Covington: What the “Science of Reading” Overlooks

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2024 //
32

Nick Covington taught social studies for a decade. He recently decided to delve into the mystique of “the science of reading.” He concluded that we have been “sold a story.”

He begins:

Literacy doesn’t come in a box, we’ll never find our kids at the bottom of a curriculum package, and there can be no broad support for systemic change that excludes input from and support for teachers implementing these programs in classrooms with students. 

(Two hands pull apart a book)

Exactly one year after the final episode of the podcast series that launched a thousand hot takes and opened the latest front of the post-pandemic Reading Wars, I finally dug into Emily Hanford’s Sold A Story from American Public Media. Six episodes later, I’m left with the ironic feeling that the podcast, and the narrative it tells, missed the point. My goal with this piece is to capture the questions and criticisms that I have not just about the narrative of Sold A Story but of the broader movement toward “The Science of Reading,” and bring in other evidence and perspectives that inform my own. I hope to make the case that “The Science of Reading” is not a useful label to describe the multiple goals of literacy; that investment in teacher professionalization is inoculation against being Sold A Story; and that the unproductive and divisive Reading Wars actually make it more difficult for us to think about how to cultivate literate kids. The podcast, and the Reading Wars it launched, disseminate an incomplete and oversimplified picture of a complex process that plasters over the gaps with feverish insistence.

Sold a Story is a podcast that investigates the ongoing Reading Wars between phonics, whole language, balanced literacy, and “The Science of Reading.” Throughout the series, listeners hear from teachers who felt betrayed by what school leaders, education celebrities, and publishers told them was the right way to teach, only to later learn they had been teaching in ways deemed ineffective. The story, as I heard it, was that teachers did their jobs to the best of their personal ability in exactly the ways incentivized by the system itself.  In a disempowered profession, the approaches criticized in the series offered teachers a sense of aspirational community, opportunities for training and professional development, and the prestige of working with Ivy League researchers. Further, they came with material assets – massive classroom libraries and flexible seating options for students, for example – that did transform classroom spaces. 

Without the critical toolkit and systemic support to evaluate claims of effectiveness, and lacking collective power to challenge the dictates of million dollar curriculum packages, teachers taught how they were instructed to teach using the resources they were required to use. And given the scarcity of educational resources at the disposal of most individual teachers, it’s easy to see why they embraced such a visible investment in reading instruction. Instead of seeing teachers in their relation to systemic forces – in their diminished roles as curriculum custodians – Hanford instead frames teachers who participated in these methods as having willingly bought into a cult of personality, singing songs and marching under the banners of Calkins and Clay; however, Hanford also comes up short in offering ways this story could have gone differently or will go differently in the future.

‍A key objective of Sold A Story is to communicate to listeners that “The Science of Reading” is the only valid, evidence-based way to teach kids to read and borders on calling other approaches a form of educational malpractice, inducing a unique pedagogical injury. In the wake of Sold A Story, “The Science of Reading” itself has been co-opted as a marketing and branding label. States and cities have passed laws requiring “The Science of Reading,” sending school leaders scrambling to purchase new programs and train teachers to comply with the new prescription. 

In May 2023, the mayor of New York City announced “a tectonic shift” in reading instruction for NYC schools. The change required school leaders to choose from one of three pre-approved curriculum packages provided by three different publishing companies. First-year training for the new curriculum was estimated to cost $35 million, but “city officials declined to provide an estimate of the effort’s overall price tag, including the cost of purchasing materials.” NYC Schools also disbanded their in-house literacy coaching program over the summer to contract instead with outside companies to provide coaching. It’s hard not to conclude that the same publishing ecosystem that sold school leaders and policy-makers on the previous evidence-based reading curriculum – and that Hanford condemns in the podcast – is happy to meet their current needs in the marketplace. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. 

Now, months into the new school year and just weeks before Winter Break, how is the hurried rollout of the new reading curriculum going for NYC schools and teachers? One Brooklyn teacher told Chalkbeat they still hadn’t received the necessary training to use the new materials, “The general sentiment at my school is we’re being asked to start something without really knowing what it should look like, I feel like I’m improvising — and not based on the science of reading.” A third-grade teacher said phonics had not been the norm for her class, and that she hasn’t “received much training on how to deliver the highly regimented lessons.”  Other teachers echo the sentiment of feeling rushed, hurried, and unprepared. One 30+ year veteran classroom teacher mentioned that she has “turned to Facebook groups when she has questions.” The chaotic back-and-forth was also recognized by many veteran teachers responding to the Chalkbeat piece on social media. One education and literacy coach commented, “I sometimes wonder how many curriculum variations I’ve seen in the last 3 decades – ’Here teachers [drops off boxed curriculum],  now teach this way’ –  hasn’t changed student outcomes across systems.” 

Open the post to read Covington’s review of the research on phonics-based programs. No miracle. No impressive rise in test scores.

Most of my professional career has been devoted to debunking “miracles“ in education. Whole language was not a miracle cure. Neither is phonics.

Why not take the sensible route? Make sure that teachers know a variety of methods when they enter the profession. Let them do what they think is best for their students. Not following the fad of the day, but using their professional knowledge.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Literacy, Research

Bad News for Bill Gates: Two Yachts Up for Sale

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2024 //
39

Really, you must remember that billionaires have feelings too. So how’s about some sympathy for Bill Gates? Yahoo News reports that he’s slipping down the list of the world’s biggest billionaires, and two of his yachts may be up for sale.

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and a renowned philanthropist, has been slipping down the ranks of the world’s billionaires.

Despite boasting a net worth of nearly $128 billion, Gates is at No. 9 on the Forbes Billionaire Index, a significant drop from his previous position at No. 7 a month ago. This marks his lowest ranking since 1990 when he ranked 16th.

Gates has been recognized not only for his immense wealth but also for his environmental advocacy, which makes his ownership of superyachts somewhat controversial. In 2021, he paid about $25 million for his first superyacht — the Wayfinder, a 224-foot catamaran built by Astilleros Armon. The yacht is designed as a shadow vessel, typically accompanying a larger mothership, which until recently, was not disclosed to the public.

The mothership, referred to as Project 821, is under construction at Feadship. It will be one of the largest and most luxurious yachts the shipyard has built. Slated for delivery in 2024, Project 821 stretches 390 feet with an internal volume exceeding 7,000 gross tonnage (GT).

Details about the yacht have been kept under wraps, but recent leaks reveal that it is on the market for 600 million euros ($642 million). The price tag is significantly higher than previous builds by Feadship, possibly because its unfinished state offers potential buyers a chance to customize the yacht.

Alongside Project 821, the Wayfinder is also listed for sale and was spotted on the charter market earlier this year, suggesting a shift in Gates’s approach to his assets.

The reasons behind the sales are not stated, leading to speculation about his motivations. Some suggest the maintenance and operational costs of the extravagant vessels are impractical, while others speculate that Gates is intensifying his commitment to environmental causes. His past statements have highlighted his awareness of his large carbon footprint, primarily from private flights, and his ongoing efforts to mitigate his environmental impact.

“Although I don’t care where I rank on the list of the world’s richest people, I do know that as I succeed in giving, I will drop down and eventually off the list altogether,” Gates wrote in a 2022 Gates Notes blog post reinforcing his commitment to philanthropy.

This aligns with his long-standing goal of donating most of his wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

These moves could signify a deeper alignment of Gates’s lifestyle with his public advocacy for sustainability and reduced consumption. Selling the yachts might be seen as Gates setting an example of reducing luxury consumption to lessen his environmental impact, reinforcing his credibility as a climate activist amid growing global concern over climate change.

What a grand role model for other billionaires! I wonder how many yachts he owns. Last I heard, Betsy DeVos owns 10. How I wish she would go into environmental activism.

But don’t feel too bad for Bill. He has a fleet of private jets and Porsches.

Given Bill’s newly modest lifestyle, I hope he devotes all his energy and philanthropy to environmental causes and public health. And recognizes the failure of his forays into education policy.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Samuel Abrams Is Stepping Down at the National Center on the Study of Privatization in Education

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2024 //
4

Educators and policymakers need unbiased analyses of the effects of privatization of education, and that is what the National Center on the Study of Privatizatuon in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University has provided since it was founded by noted economist Henry Levin in 2000. In 2015, Levin stepped down and was succeeded by Samuel Abrams, who wrote a superb study of The Edison Project called Education and the Commercial Mindset. For the best nine years, Abrams has run NCSPE with integrity. Privatization is rapidly spreading around the globe, and the public needs a reliable source to keep watch on it. I hope that TC can find someone as able and thoughtful to succeed him.

Samuel Abrams wrote this letter about his decision and the next chapter in his career:

After nine years as the director of NCPSE, I’m writing to share that I’m stepping down to become the director of the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization (IPSEP).

IPSEP will be anchored at the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Partner institutions will include, to start, the Department of Economics at Stockholm University in Sweden; and the Turku University of Applied Sciences as well as the School of Education at the University of Turku in Finland. To receive IPSEP publications, please sign up here to join the NEPC mailing list (in case you’re not already a subscriber).

The idea for IPSEP derived from my time last year as a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Turku, where I studied the role of public-private partnerships central to apprenticeship programs at vocational secondary schools. Nearly 50 percent of secondary students in Finland attend vocational schools (in comparison to about 5 percent in the U.S.). Such public-private partnerships make such robust participation in vocational education possible and pave the way to impressive job training and placement.

The private sector has nevertheless failed to distinguish itself in other educational domains in Finland. For example, commercial firms are playing a growing role in managing preschools and running teacher professional development. In both cases, significant questions have been raised about quality. In addition, school districts have allowed tech companies to play a growing role in determining curricula, with iPads and tablets replacing books, which may explain to a significant degree the plunge in reading proficiency among Finnish youth. The mean score for reading for the Finns on PISA dropped from 520 in 2018 to 490 in 2022, which amounts to nearly a year of learning, generating alarmist headlines in newspapers across Finland. A country known since the publication of the first PISA results in 2001 as an education mecca for policymakers seeking pedagogical solutions had lost its shine.

The realm of preschools may be most telling. A company called Pilke is now running 227 preschools across Finland, up from 19 in 2013. Pilke, in turn, was acquired in 2020 by a Norwegian preschool operator called Læringsverkstedet. Both Pilke and Læringsverkstedet now operate as subsidiaries of a parent company called Dibber, which counts over 600 preschools in its portfolio across several countries, from Norway, Sweden, and Finland to Latvia, Poland, Germany, South Africa, the UAE, India, and Hong Kong. In the spring of 2023, workers at Pilke went on strike twice to protest low pay and poor working conditions.

Such outsourcing in Finland echoes what’s happening in its Nordic neighbors as well as countries around the world. Across the Gulf of Bothnia, after all, Sweden went much further in introducing vouchers in 1992, allowing parents to send their children to private schools with public funds and permitting commercial firms to run such schools. Three decades later, about 15 percent of students at the primary and lower-secondary level and 30 percent of students at the upper-secondary level employ vouchers to attend private schools, about 75 percent of which are managed by commercial firms. On top of substantial documentation of corner-cutting by such commercial firms in the name of profits, segregation, grade inflation, and poor academic outcomes overall have been attributed to this dramatic transformation of the Swedish system.

With educational privatization clearly now a multifaceted global phenomenon, there is a need for an international multi-institutional version of NCSPE involving scholars abroad to conduct comparative research and disseminate findings. The outsourcing of management of preschools as well as teacher professional development, the prominence of vouchers in countries like Sweden as well as Chile, and the encroachment of ed tech on classrooms represent merely a slice of this story. Educational privatization has taken many other forms around the world: low-fee private schooling has proliferated across Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Pakistan; “free schools” and “academies” in England (functioning much like charter schools in the U.S.) now enroll more than 50 percent of the nation’s primary and secondary students; and “shadow education” in the mold of after-school tutoring to aid students prepping for exams for admission to secondary schools as well as universities dominates the lives and strains the budgets of many families in many countries.

With NCSPE, Henry Levin laid the foundation for how a research center can address such issues in a dispassionate, rigorous way. While a professor at Stanford serving on an advisory board to assess the implementation of school vouchers in Cleveland in the mid-90s, Levin concluded that a glaring absence of reliable information on educational privatization precluded informed debate. To fill that void, Levin set to work on creating a research center that would provide impartial documentation, publish working papers, conduct research, and hold conferences. Lured in 1999 to Teachers College by then-President Arthur Levine to assume an endowed professorship and establish this center on Morningside Heights, Levin launched NCSPE the following year and ran it until 2015, when he asked me to take over.

It has been an honor to serve as the director of NCSPE. Following 18 years as a high school history teacher, I joined NCSPE as a visiting scholar in 2008 to work on a book on educational privatization. That book became Education and the Commercial Mindset (Harvard University Press, 2016), an exploration of the impact of market forces on public education in the U.S. and abroad. The last two chapters concern educational reform in Sweden and Finland, respectively. In doing the research for those two chapters, which involved school visits and interviews in Denmark and Norway as well as Finland and Sweden, I quickly learned the immense value of comparative analysis. To know one’s home, one must leave it.

In running NCSPE, I have had the privilege of collaborating with a range of gifted scholars in editing their working papers and contextualizing them in my announcements to the listserv. I have also had the privilege of getting to know a parade of visiting scholars from numerous countries and of working with a group of talented research associates who wrote book reviews and news commentaries for the NCSPE site. To all, I express my profound gratitude for all they have taught me. Finally, to Henry Levin, I am indebted for his faith in me to run this center and for his example of erudition, diligence, and openness. Levin has indeed been a role model for scholars everywhere and in all fields.

Going forward, I would like to thank Faith Boninger, Alex Molnar, and Kevin Welner, professors of education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and experts on privatization, for their warm welcome to NEPC. In addition, for making this partnership international, I would like to thank Jonas Vlachos, a professor of economics at Stockholm University and an expert on privatization; Vesa Taatila, the rector of the Turku University of Applied Sciences and an expert on public-private partnerships; and Mirjamaija Mikkilä-Erdmann and Anu Warinowski, professors of education at the University of Turku and experts on teacher education. A board of advisors for IPSEP will be posted on the NEPC site in due time.

NCSPE is slated to remain operating at Teachers College. An update about the center’s status should appear on this site before long.

As I have continued to serve as a visiting scholar at the University of Turku, you may reach me with any questions at samuel.abrams@utu.fi.

Samuel E. Abrams
NCSPE Director
May 6, 2024

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Tom Ultican: One Cheer for NCLB…But Not From Me!

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2024 //
39

Tom Ultican has noticed a strange phenomenon on billionaire-funded websites, particularly The 74: Praise for the justly-reviled No Child Left Behind.

Teachers hated it because of its warped emphasis on standardized test scores. Students hated it because they were cheated of a real education, they lost civics, the arts, and recess, and the tests assumed more importance than they deserved.

But Ultican writes, Chad Aldeman of The 74 is nostalgic for the good old days of NCLB.

Neoliberals joined with libertarians to “reform”public education. Their tools were big money and propaganda distributed by media outlets like The 74, support by The Walton family (EIN 13-3441466) and Bill Gates (EIN 56-2618866). This year, regular columnist for The 74, Chad Aldeman, is trying to claim that lifting No Child Left Behind (NCLB) school accountability sanctions is responsible for the public school testing “data decline”.

In a recent article in The 74, Aldeman complained of widening achievement gaps in Indiana, but Ultican can’t find the source of Aldeman’s data.

Ultican notes that NCLB interrupted a long period of academic improvement.

From 1970 to 1992, America’s schools showed slow but steady improvement in education-testing outcomes but since the era of standards, testing and accountability, improvement basically stopped. Education, run by billionaires and politicians instead of educators, failed to improve testing outcomes.

Alderman stated in his latest article that it is not just an Indiana problem but that “49 of 50 states, the District of Columbia and 17 out of 20 of the large cities that participated in NAEP … saw a widening of their achievement gap over the last decade.” He did not share which tests showed widened achievement gaps nor which cohorts were compared. NAEP reports on reading scores for 4th and 8th grade do not show a significant change in scoring gaps between Black and White students and comparisons in other ethnic groups also were steady.

After asking what has caused this (non-existent) achievement gap increase, Alderman posited several possible reasons: Common Core state standards (CCSS), per-pupil spending, technology and social media. He said the timing for CCSS fit but did not explain why states where CCSS was never adopted had the same problem. For per-pupil spending, he claimed that more money was getting to classrooms, which defies education-spending reports, making his claim a little shady. For technology and social media, he said other countries with similar problems, did not see testing declines … a declaration made with no evidence cited.

If this decline were real, wouldn’t the privatization of public education be the most likely culprit? Charter schools came first followed by vouchers and more charter schools. Data clearly shows that vouchers harm student-testing performance. Furthermore both charter schools and voucher schools leech money from public education budgets.

He finally made his real point, “I argue that the weakening of school accountability pressures after the No Child Left Behind Act was passed is responsible for a large portion of the drop.” Those of us, who were in classrooms and witnessed the test-and-punish philosophy damage to public education, disagree. How many great public schools were labeled “failures and closed” because they existed in low income zip codes?…

Ultican concludes:

The 74 was founded in 2015 by former CNN news anchor, Campbell Brown, along with Michael Bloomberg’s education advisor, Romy Drucker. Its original funding came from the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation,  Walton Family Foundation, Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Since then, it has been the vehicle for spreading the billionaire message of privatization and undermining public schools.

Some billionaires see the non-sectarian nature of public education as a threat to their dreams of a Christian theocracy. Others are libertarians that oppose free universal public education, believing everyone should pay one’s own way and not steal people’s private properties using taxation. The Neoliberals are convinced that education should be run like a business and react to market forces.

Responding to the mission of The 74, Chad Aldeman’s series of articles, like those of many of his colleagues, are pure propaganda, shaping data to support his neoliberal ideology instead of honestly reporting facts. Unfortunately this kind of fake “journalism” is flooding email boxes and web pages throughout America every day.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Indiana, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Standardized Testing

Texas: Rightwing Lt. Gov. Wants to Abolish Property Taxes and Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2024 //
11

Chris Tomlinson, a columnist for The Houston Chronicle, writes here about the audacious, mendacious plan of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick to destroy public schools. Patrick was a talk-show host like Rush Limbaugh before he entered politics. In Texas, the Lt. Governor has more power than the Governor, so his actions must be closely scrutinized.

Dan Patrick hates public schools. He wants to abolish them and replace them with vouchers.

Tomlinson explains Dan Patrick’s malevolent plan:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s fantasy of abolishing property taxes would set the state up for financial failure and end public education as we know it by placing a greater burden on low- and medium-income Texans.

The most powerful man in Texas politics wants you to believe he’s looking out for homeowners, but there’s always an unacknowledged goal for significant initiatives like this one. You need only look at who deposited $3 million in Patrick’s campaign account and who gave the record $6 million donation to Gov. Greg Abbott to boost private religious schools.

As lieutenant governor, Patrick appoints the leaders of Senate committees, sets their agendas and decides whether a piece of legislation gets a vote. Patrick also rewards senators who appease him and punishes those who don’t with his fat campaign war chest.

Last week, the lite guv ordered the Senate Finance Committee to “determine the effect on other state programs if general revenue were used to fully replace school property taxes, particularly during economic downturns.”

Rising property taxes are directly correlated to the growing cost of housing in Texas. When home or apartment values go up, so do taxes, and the two combined create a crisis across the country.

Median property taxes in Texas rose 26% between 2019 and 2023, according to data from real estate research firm CoreLogic, and first reported by Axios, an online news agency. In four years, the median payment rose to $4,916 from $3,900 as property values nationwide grew 40%.

Texas has crazy property taxes due to a convoluted system that protects the wealthy and pushes the burden of paying for government services onto low- and middle-income families.

To understand how and why, Texans must remember that we pay for schools through property taxes levied by school districts. The state is forbidden from collecting a property tax, so the Legislature depends primarily on sales taxes and severance taxes levied on oil and gas production.

The Texas Constitution also forbids an income tax, perpetuating the myth Texas is a low-tax state. The wealthy, who spend less of their income on retail purchases and real estate, get off easier than in other states. But the half of Texans who struggle to make ends meet pay a higher proportion of their income in sales and property taxes.

Most states rely on the proverbial three-legged stool of income, property and sales taxes to fairly charge families and businesses based on their ability to pay. Texas relies on only two legs, and Patrick is talking about kicking away one of them.

Patrick’s command comes less than a year after the Legislature took $18 billion from sales taxes and oil and gas severance taxes to pay down school taxes. Most of that money came from high crude oil and natural gas prices and a roaring economy that generated huge sales tax returns. The move marked the first tax reduction paid by most property owners in decades.

Ending property taxes is part of the Republican Party of Texas platform, but it would require collecting $73.5 billion from the remaining leg of the stool, the sales tax.

The state sales rate is 6.25%, while local authorities can collect up to 2% more. The Texas Taxpayers and Research Association in 2018 calculated the sales taxes would need to reach 25% to replace property taxes.

Right-wing fantasists will point at Texas’ colossal budget surplus last year as proof that lawmakers will only need to raise sales taxes a tiny bit. However, anyone who’s lived in Texas for a decade or more knows the fossil fuel business goes through boom-and-bust cycles.

During a bust in 2011, Texas lawmakers slashed school funding by $4 billion. When the money runs out, the Republicans who control every lever of power in Texas do not hesitate to sacrifice public education to avoid raising taxes. Even with last year’s windfall, they refused to give teachers a raise.

This is where school vouchers and property taxes collide. The billionaires backing Abbott and Patrick believe public schools are Marxist, woke indoctrination factories. They want to give parents vouchers to choose Christian nationalist indoctrination factories exempted from state or federal oversight.

The vouchers, though, are insufficient to cover private school tuition, so families must pay the difference. The GOP hopes to create a system in which the state pays a defined amount and normalizes parents’ paying the rest.

Don’t be fooled by promises of lower taxes; this is about killing public schools by underfunding them and shifting more of the burden onto young families and off the wealthy.

This malicious proposal could be politically palatable. There are some five million public school students in Texas. There are more than six million privately owned homes. The population of Texas is majority-minority, like the public school students. The Republican-dominated legislature is overwhelmingly white. Do the math. The people with the power, the people who pay the most property taxes, are white. Do they want to pay property taxes for other people’s children?

Award-winning opinion writer Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his “Tomlinson’s Take” newsletter at houstonhchronicle.com/tomlinsonnewsletter or expressnews.com/tomlinsonnewsletter.

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Ignorance, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Texas, Vouchers

New Orleans: A Failed Experiment

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2024 //
12

The founding myth of the corporate reform movement is the rebirth and transformation of the public schools of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Most of the city’s public schools suffered physical damage because of the horrendous storm. Large numbers of the students and teachers were scattered after the storm. The state of Louisiana moved in aggressively: it lowered the bar at which a school was deemed to be failing. It took control of most of the public schools and turned them over to charter operators. It fired all of the teachers, most of whom were African-American, disbanding the teachers’ union. The charter operators hired large numbers of Teach for America recruits. The media hailed the experiment in privatization as a success story. Numerous states followed the lead of New Orleans, turning over their lowest-performing schools to charter operators. Michigan created the Education Achievement Authority. Tennessee created the Achievement School District. North Carolina and Nevada launched similar but smaller experimental districts. All of them failed.

Now comes a report that the nearly all-charter New Orleans district did not live up to its hype.

Dr. Barbara Ferguson 
Research on Reforms, Inc. 

April 2024

Following Hurricane Katrina, a newly enacted state law identified schools that scored below the state average as failing and subject to take-over. The state then took-over 107 of New Orleans’ 120 public schools and turned them into charter schools. Last year’s scores showed that 56 of New Orleans’ 68 public schools had scores below the state average.*

Thus, after nearly twenty years, over 80% of New Orleans schools are still below the state average. This charter school experiment has been a failure.

Of the five worst performing high schools taken-over, only one now scores above the state average. Two are still below the state average. Another was closed and then reopened as a campus to expand the Willow selective admission charter school. The status of the other, Walter Cohen, is unclear. Recall that the New Orleans College Prep Charter took-over Cohen High School, operating its selective charter school on one floor, while leaving the failing Cohen students on the other floors. Thus, we learned that the take-over of a failing school simply meant taking-over the building, not the failing students in the building.

Of the five highest performing high schools taken-over, they continue to be the highest performing except for one, McDonogh #35, which is now below the state average. These schools, except for McDonogh #35, collectively received over $5 million in Charter School Grant Funds. The five worst performing high schools received nothing in Charter School Grant Funds following the takeover.The Louisiana law, which termed charter schools “an experiment,” also stated that they were to “serve the best interests of at-risk” children and youth.

But the legislative auditor found in 2022 that for the past six years, more than 1 in 5 charter schools failed to meet requirements on enrollment of children from low-income families.

Louisiana’s “state takeover” law required schools below the state average to be taken-over. Thus, half of the schools should have been taken-over because half are below the state average and half are above. Yet, only the New Orleans’ schools below the state average were taken-over. Targeting New Orleans seems to again be popular with our new governor.

Research on Reforms, Inc. consistently reported on the status of the state-takeover through its website and a published book, “Outcomes of the State Takeover of the New Orleans Schools.” This will be the final of its outreach, which ends with hope that our legislature will one day enact laws that provide equity and excellence in education for our New Orleans children and youth.

Barbara Ferguson, Attorney and Co-founder 
Charles Hatfield, Co-founder 
Research on Reforms, Inc.

Comments to 

bferguson@researchonreforms.org

Research On Reforms Website

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Failure, New Orleans, Privatization

Indiana: Jennifer McCormick for Governor!!

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2024 //
0

Indiana has plunged headlong into privatization of its-once-beloved public schools.

Fortunately, there is a knowledgeable candidate for Governor who has promised to stop the destruction of public education.

Jennifer McCormick is a career educator who began as a special education teacher, then became a language arts teacher, a principal and a district superintendent.

She was elected Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2016; she ran as a Republican. She served out her four-year term and switched parties in 2021.

McCormick wrote on Twitter:

Indiana GOP’s school privatization efforts have diverted 1.6B of tax dollars away from public schools, and the majority of communities do not have families and/or private schools participating. As governor, I will champion for Indiana to pause funding school privatization.

At the NPE conference in D.C. in 2023, JenniferMcCormick and me.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Indiana, Privatization, Vouchers

Eva Moskowitz May Expand “Success Academy” to Florida

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2024 //
8

Eva Moskowitz runs the most successful (when measured by test scores) and the most controversial charter chain in New York State. Controversial because her schools are highly regimented, “no excuses” schools where student behavior and dress are tightly monitored. Controversial because her schools have a high attrition rate and a high teacher turnover rate. Outspoken parents complain that their children were “counseled out” or pushed out due to their behavior, their test scores, or their special needs.

Eva expected to expand to 100 schools in New York City but she constantly must fight parents and community schools who oppose her methods. So long as Michael Bloomberg was mayor and Joel was chancellor of the schools, Eva got whatever she wanted. But when they left office a decade ago, Eva had to fight off her critics without the certainty that City Hall. Backed her.

Funding has never been a problem for Success Academy. The chain is a favorite of Wall Street billionaires. Eva is said to have a salary and bonuses that are nearly $1 million. She has purchased properties and leases space to her schools.

Now, Chalkbeat reports, it appears that Eva is pondering open Success Academy schools in Florida, where charter schools are booming.

Alex Zimmerman writes:

Success Academy, New York City’s largest charter operator, is considering an expansion to Florida, a major shift in strategy for the network.

Success founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz said Wednesday she is in search of friendlier terrain for expansion.

New York has been “a rather hostile political environment” for charter schools, Moskowitz testified at a Florida State Board of Education meeting Wednesday morning. She later added: “I want to be in a place that’s high-growth, that’s high-innovation, that is welcoming to parental choice.”

The network’s decision to contemplate expanding beyond New York is a notable shift, as Success has operated schools exclusively within the five boroughs since launching in 2006.

Moskowitz previously outlined aggressive plans to expand to 100 schools locally, roughly double the number that the network currently operates. But Moskowitz and other leaders have faced strong headwinds. Charter schools have fallen out of favor with many Democrats and the sector faces a strict cap on the number of schools that are allowed to operate in the state. The legislature recently allowed 14 new charters to open in New York City, but have not signaled any plans to allow dramatically more than that.

Plus, the city’s charter networks have struggled with declining enrollment in recent years, including Success, though preliminary state figures show the network now enrolls about 21,000 students, erasing pandemic-era enrollment losses. Success is currently looking to open six new schools, according to the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, which oversees Success.

Florida officials, meanwhile, are rolling out the red carpet. The State Board of Education voted Wednesday to designate Success as a “School of Hope” operator, a program designed to attract high-performing charters to the state, offering funding for construction and other startup costs.

Enrollment in Florida’s charter sector has steadily grown in recent years, educating nearly 14% of students, or roughly 400,000 children, state data show. Charters are publicly funded, but privately operated schools.

In her testimony, Moskowitz emphasized that the network’s students are overwhelmingly low-income children of color and their test scores far outpace the city’s district schools — and even affluent suburbs. She also highlighted the network’s track record of preparing students to attend competitive colleges.

“This is exactly what we were envisioning: To have a charter school network to be able to come in and really serve those populations that are in need of this kind of academic rigor, of this performance,” State Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. said at the Wednesday hearing.

But Success has also been dogged by persistent allegations that school officials push out children who are more difficult to serve, including suspending them or dialing 911when students are experiencing behavioral problems or emotional distress. In 2015, the New York Times reported that one of its Brooklyn campuses had created a “Got to Go” list of troublesome students. Success officials said the list was a mistake and have disputedthat they systematically push children out.

It’s not clear how quickly Success might move to open schools in Florida or even if they will ultimately move forward with plans to do so. A Success Academy spokesperson did not elaborate.

Open the link to continue reading.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, Florida, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

Tennessee: Gov. Lee Fumes About Voucher Failure, But Parents and Educators Celebrate

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2024 //
6

Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee made school vouchers his top priority but the issue died in the Legislature despite its Republican supermajority. He will bring the issue back next year. He’s hoping for universal vouchers, where every student in the state is eligible for a voucher but opponents call his plan a subsidy for the wealthy who already are attending private schools.

In eastern Tennessee, and very likely across the entire state, parents and educators heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Dustin Park is a parent of kids who go to school in Maryville. He’s opposed to the universal school voucher plan because he said it excludes students with disabilities.

“The only thing that protects kids with disabilities is that federal law,” Parks said. “A bedrock of our public schools is that they accept everybody.”

The school district he sends his children to supports his stance. 

“We continue to maintain our belief that public funds should not be diverted to private entities, and taxpayers should not be required to subsidize private schools that are not held to the same standards of accountability and inclusivity as public schools,” said Mike Winstead, Director of Maryville City Schools. “If the Education Freedom Scholarship Act passed, it would have been harmful to the very students and vulnerable populations it maintained to assist.”

Dave Gorman is a teacher at Knox County Schools and also said he’s not sure lawmakers will listen to their constituents.

“We also have seen enough dirty dealings,” Gorman said. “We’ll never forget when Jason Zachary was the deciding vote to bring vouchers to a couple of cities in the state a few years ago — when it looked like it was about to die and he changed his vote.”

Knox County Schools provided the following statement about the proposal failing.

“As we have stated before, our attention has and will continue to stay focused on our students and providing them with a high-quality education. We are confident that our families will continue to choose KCS regardless of what happens at the state level.” 

Several school districts across East Tennessee also said they also are pleased a school voucher plan would not pass this session…

Kelly Johnson, Director of Clinton City Schools

“Elected officials are responsible for listening to their constituents, not answering to outside special interest groups. We know Governor Lee plans to bring it back next year. It is my hope that the citizens of TN remain vigilant in celebrating the many successes of public schools.”

The billionaire funded outside special interest groups will be back next year. Parents and educators should vote to replace those who want to undermine public schools.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Tennessee, Vouchers
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