Archives for category: Education Industry

There Was No “Miracle” in New Orleans

September 2, 2025 //

This is the most important post you will read today or this week, maybe this month, if you care about the future of American public schools. It’s about the importance of honest research; it’s about debunking false narratives. It’s about the media printing inaccurate stories without the necessity of fact-checking. It’s about irresponsible journalism.

The Washington Post published an article loaded with inflated claims by a British journalist, Ian Birrell, about the “miracle” in New Orleans that followed the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Five years later, Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan boldly said that the hurricane was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.” Birrell agrees with him.

In 2018, Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education allocated $10 million to fund the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice at Tulane University (REACH). In 2023, two of the nation’s leading advocates of choice–the Walton Foundation and the City Fund–gave REACH $1 million “to jointly support a three-year research project on the system-level effects of charter schools at the national level. The goal is to learn how charter schools improve student outcomes and better understand the role of policy in fueling these changes.”

After Katrina, the state converted New Orleans into an (almost) all-charter district. All of the district’s teachers were fired, and their union dissolved. Charter chains and TFA poured into the district as did funding by the federal government and major foundations. About one-third of the students never returned after the hurricane.

Linda Darling-Hammond and her Stanford colleagues Frank Adamson and Channa Cook-Harvey studied the charterization of New Orleans in 2015. Unlike most other studies, they looked closely at student experiences as well as data. They concluded that the district was not only highly segregated by race and class, but was “one of the lowest-performing districts in one of the lowest-performing states in the nation,” not a model to be replicated.

Rutgers’ scholar Bruce Baker examined the advocates’ claims in 2019 and concluded that they overlooked or minimized two significant factors: one, demographic changes (a reduction in concentrated poverty), and two, a huge infusion of external funding.

But Birrell is not an education journalist so he seems not to have looked for views that countered the charter enthusiasts.

Gary Rubenstein, former member of TFA and career high school mathematics teacher, did the research that Birrell failed to do. He explained why there was no “miracle” in New Orleans:

It has been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina wiped out the New Orleans schools system causing it to be replaced with all charter schools. And it has been over 15 years since former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, based on what he considered early evidence of the success of those charter schools that Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.” And it has been also about 15 years since educational researchers have been continuously debunking the New Orleans educational miracle.

So I was quite surprised to see that The Washington Post just published an opinion piece with the headline “‘Never seen before’: How Katrina set off an education revolution — Twenty years after the hurricane, taking stock of the miracle in New Orleans Schools.”

Reading this Op Ed was a strange experience for me. Supposedly based on recent research, it basically trotted out all the old bogus claims that I hadn’t heard anyone claim in at least ten years. Since it was The Washington Post, I figured it had to be Jay Matthews who has been known to write puff pieces (and books) about KIPP and Michelle Rhee. But these talking points were so antiquated that it would have been odd even for him to use them. No, this anachronistic Op Ed was not from any of the usual suspects but from a name I had never seen before: Ian Birrell.

Reading up on the biography of Ian Birrell, things made a bit more sense. Ian Birrell is a British journalist who has mainly written about international affairs. I’m sure he is a very competent journalist but this is his first foray into education reporting. So he heard about the New Orleans ‘miracle’ for the first time, got a totally biased ‘research’ report from Doug Harris supporting the miracle and, not knowing that there has been an ongoing battle over education reform in this country where the ‘reformers’ have all kinds of tricks for misrepresenting data to advance their agenda. So, thinking he has discovered something incredible, of course he wants to write something about it. But what he writes is completely naive since he doesn’t know the right questions to explore to get to the truth. It’s kind of like if I decided to become a nature reporter and wrote a thing about Big Foot based on just photoshopped images and unreliable first hand accounts.

The New Orleans Miracle is pretty easy to debunk if you know the right questions to ask.

So the first thing to look at is the Louisiana AP scores. Even though AP tests and the way they are sometimes misused, are not the only thing that matters in looking at a state’s education quality, colleges do look at AP scores so it is a bit of a measure of ‘college readiness.’ From the College Board website, it can be seen that Louisiana has the third worst AP passing rate in the country.

In the Washington Post Op Ed, Birrell describes the interventions after Katrina as follows: “They fired all 7,000 teachers, sidelined unions, invited ambitious experts to run the schools and offered parents almost total freedom over where to send their children.”

If he knew the full history of this he would know that the “ambitious experts to run the schools” included KIPP, the famous charter chain created by two Teach For America alums. So to measure the size of the miracle twenty years later, just check to see how the KIPP Booker T. Washington High School students are doing academically. For this I went to the recent US News & World Report data.

So the gold standard charter network in the miracle city of New Orleans has an 11% Math proficiency, a 21% Reading proficiency, and a 10% Science proficiency.

As far as AP scores at the top charter chain in the miracle city of New Orleans, the exam pass rate is just 2%.

But maybe you think I am cherry picking a KIPP school that was never mentioned in the Op Ed. In it Birrell writes about a specific ambitious expert “Among those watching the horrific Katrina news footage 20 years ago was a former corporate financier with Boeing who was planning to move into education. Ben Kleban told me in a 2010 interview how, soon after the disaster, at age 26, he moved to the city from New York to set up a school, starting in a refurbished building with 120 pupils ages 11 to 15. His venture grew fast, took over a nearby failing school, improved proficiency tests and won a national medal for its successes. “For too long,” he said, “the public school system found excuses rather than being properly accountable to parents.” He explained how he relied on “basic business practices” with a daily flow of data on attendance, discipline and classroom performance.”

So I looked up Ben Kleban to see how his school was doing. It is a little confusing but it seems like the entire charter chain he created was shut down in 2018 except maybe one school which is called Walter L. Cohen High School. For them, there are no AP passing scores reported. For their test scores, they are a little better than KIPP for math and reading but lower on science.

So what evidence did Birrell see that convinced him that the New Orleans miracle was authentic? Doug Harris has some nice graphs that shows test scores in New Orleans scores now compared to test scores in New Orleans 20 years ago. But of course this is not the proper comparison to make. The way a scientific experiment works is that if you want to measure the impact of an effect, you try to take a group and split it in half and apply the impact to half of the subjects and make the rest the ‘control group.’ So in this situation, had they not made all the New Orleans schools into charter schools but instead randomly picked half the schools and made them charters and left the other half under local control, then you could compare the results of the two groups after 20 years and, as long as the groups continued to be randomly distributed, that could be a useful way to make a comparison.

But that is not what happened since unfortunately there is no control group to compare to. It is quite possible that the scores now are lower than they would have been had Katrina never happened and the New Orleans charter experiment had never happened. But even without anything to compare to, the data from that one gold standard KIPP is, in my opinion, pretty good evidence against the miracle. Just like the way you can check the temperature of a Thanksgiving turkey by putting a meat thermometer into one spot of the Turkey, looking at what is supposed to be the best charter school is a good measure of all the schools since the KIPP is surely better than the average school there.

I thought I’d never have to debunk the New Orleans miracle again, but I guess I’m going to have to every five or ten years for each milestone anniversary of “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

My view: Gary Rubenstein is a national treasure. The major editorial boards should check with him before they publish stories about a “miracle” school or “miracle” district.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Louisiana, New Orleans

The GOP Death March, Led by RFK Jr.

By dianeravitch

September 1, 2025 //

Concerned about RFK Jr.’s assault on vaccines, I called my local CVS pharmacist a few days ago to schedule every vaccine for which I was eligible. I got the flu vaccine and the RSV vaccine.

I asked for the COVID-19 vaccine, but was told that the latest version would not be available until mid-October. I’m in the eligible group (over 65), but no vaccine yet. When I got home, I learned that the vaccine is not available in certain states, including New York. I worry that RFK Jr. may decide to cancel the vaccine altogether.

Wajahat Ali writes on his blog, The Left Hook, about RFK Jr.’s threat to public health:

In today’s Democracy-ish, Danielle and I spend the hour discussing the most dangerous horseman of Trump’s Apocalyptic cult: RFK Jr.

Oh, you know, the scion of the Kennedy empire who was a heroin addict, suffered from brain worms, ate exotic animals, and was described as a predator by his own cousin.

That RFK Jr., who promotes reckless and dangerous anti-vaxx conspiracies, eugenics, and has no medical background or training. That’s the wealthy, mediocre, white man that Trump has elevated as the director of America’s Health and Human Services.

I mean, what could go wrong?

Who needs vaccines during COVID or the rise of measles? Who needs Medicaid except 20% of Americans who depend on it for healthcare? Who needs the National Institute of Health or the CDC staffed by competent, qualified professionals who have spent their lives devoted to saving lives?

Not the United States, because we aren’t a bunch of woke, weak pansies who listen to so-called experts, damn it!

Welcome to Trump and MAGA’s pro-death march led, in part, by RFK Jr. and his broligarch friendswho are perfectly fine killing Americans to make a profit and advance their white supremacist agenda.

We bring all the receipts. It’s depressing, but it’s worth hearing to ensure you stay informed, safe, and protected.

Here’s Danielle’s write-up at DAM DIGEST:

In the United States, public health has long depended on institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For decades—through Republican and Democratic administrations alike—these agencies functioned under a shared goal: protecting Americans’ health through science, research, and expertise.

But in recent years, that foundation has begun to crack. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), an outspoken anti-vaccine activist with no medical training, to lead HHS has brought that crisis into sharp focus. His presence in the nation’s top public health office signals a seismic shift—one where politics trumps science, conspiracy theories replace research, and ideology threatens lives.

The Erosion of Trust in Science

During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than one million Americans died, while public health officials faced harassment, death threats, and relentless political attacks. Former CDC Director Anthony Fauci, who spent his career working to save lives, became a target of right-wing media and extremist groups.

Instead of rallying around experts, leaders like Donald Trump and his allies downplayed the severity of the pandemic, promoted misinformation about masks and vaccines, and openly mocked scientists. This politicization of science directly fueled vaccine hesitancy, prolonging the crisis and causing unnecessary deaths.

Now, five years after the peak of the pandemic, the United States faces a resurgence of diseases once thought to be under control—measles, polio, and other preventable illnesses—precisely because vaccination rates have dropped.

RFK Jr.: Conspiracies Over Credentials

RFK Jr.’s position is especially alarming given his history of promoting anti-vaccine propagandaand debunked eugenics myths. He has falsely claimed that autism and other health conditions are caused by vaccines and even suggested that COVID-19 was “targeted to spare Jews and Black people”—a statement widely condemned as antisemitic and racist.

Despite his lack of medical training, Kennedy insists he can “diagnose” children by sight, attributing health challenges to supposed “mitochondrial issues visible in their faces.” Licensed physicians, including those trained at Harvard and Mayo Clinic, have dismissed such claims as pseudoscience.

Yet under the Trump administration, this man now wields control over Medicare, Medicaid, the CDC, NIH, and national vaccine policy—institutions responsible for the health of over 330 million Americans.

The Resignations and Walkouts

The consequences are already unfolding. After Kennedy moved to push out CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez—a Trump appointee who nonetheless refused to abandon science—top scientists and health officials resigned in protest. Dr. Dimitri Daskalakis, a respected infectious disease expert, wrote in his resignation letter that serving under Kennedy was “untenable” because HHS leadership was no longer guided by science.

Soon after, CDC staff staged mass walkouts, warning the public that American lives are being endangered by unqualified leadership. These resignations leave critical gaps at the very moment the nation faces rising COVID variants, climate-driven disease risks, and growing vaccine hesitancy.

Cuts That Will Cost Lives

Beyond personnel, the Trump–Kennedy administration has overseen massive funding cuts:

$500 million slashed from vaccine research
$1 trillion cut to Medicaid, threatening to shutter rural hospitals and nursing homes
Reductions in NIH research funding
Cuts to foreign aid and peacekeeping operations, destabilizing global health security

These moves directly undermine America’s preparedness for the next pandemic. As climate change accelerates, experts warn that new infectious diseases are almost inevitable. Yet instead of strengthening systems, leaders are dismantling them.

The Bigger Picture: A Pro-Death Movement

This moment cannot be seen in isolation. It reflects a broader “pro-death” political movement that prizes ideology over evidence, power over public health, and partisan gain over human life. Whether it was Trump pushing “herd immunity” at the expense of vulnerable Americans, or Kennedy advancing conspiracy theories that endanger children, the pattern is clear: science is under attack.

The result? Americans are less safe, less protected, and less prepared for the crises ahead.

Why This Matters Now

The rise of unqualified, conspiracy-driven figures like RFK Jr. at the helm of America’s most critical health institutions is not just political theater—it is a direct threat to public safety. The decisions made today about vaccines, research funding, and disease response will determine whether millions live or die in the years ahead.

Public trust in science and medicine must be restored. That means demanding qualified leaders, protecting the integrity of institutions like the CDC and NIH, and pushing back against those who seek to weaponize public health for political gain.

Because as history has shown—from pandemics to polio eradication—science saves lives. Conspiracies cost them.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Ignorance, Lies, Medicine, Trump

Texas: Governor Abbott Hands Out Millions to Voucher Schools with No Oversight or Accountability

By dianeravitch

August 19, 2025 //

ProPublica published an eye-popping review of the lack of financial accountability in Texas for private schools. When Abbott’s billion-dollar boondoggle is launched, hundreds and hundreds of religious schools will share in the bounty.

Free cash!! Free cash!! Open the Church of Satan K-12 Academy and watch the dollars roll in. No one cares how many students are enrolled or even if the list of students is a fake. Governor Abbott trusts you!

Governor Abbott knows that most of the vouchers will be claimed by students who are already enrolled in private schools. He doesn’t care. He knows that kids who leave public schools to attend a private school fall behind. He doesn’t care.

He wants the state to pay the tuition of all children, regardless of whether they attend a snake-charming religious school or the most elite private school in Dallas or Houston.

Governor Abbott wants YOU to step right up and claim your Free cash!!

ProPublica wrote this:

For about eight years, a Houston private school has followed a unique pattern when appointing members to its governing board: It has selected only married couples.

Over 200 miles away, two private schools in Dallas have awarded more than $7 million in combined contracts to their board members.

And at least seven private schools across Texas have issued personal loans, often reaching $100,000 or more, to their school leaders under terms that are often hidden from public view.

Such practices would typically violate laws governing public and charter schools. But private schools operate largely outside those rules because they haven’t historically received direct taxpayer dollars. Now, as the state moves to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years on private education, lawmakers have imposed almost none of the accountability measures required of the public school system.

If held to the same standards, 27 private schools identified by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune through tax filings likely would have violated state law. The news organizations found, and three education law experts confirmed, more than 60 business transactions, board appointments and hiring decisions by those schools that would have run afoul of the state rules meant to prevent self-dealing and conflicts of interest if they were public.

“It’s frankly astonishing to me that anyone would propose the massive sort of spending that we’re talking about in these school voucher programs with, at best, minimal accountability,” said Mark Weber, a public school finance lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University who opposes vouchers. “If I were a taxpayer in Texas, I’d be asking, who’s going to be looking out for me?”

Texas has long stood as a holdout in the national push for voucher programs, even as other conservative states embraced them. Gov. Greg Abbott gave school voucher proponents a major win this year, signing into law one of the largest and costliest programs in the country. In doing so, Abbott’s office has argued that the state has “strict financial requirements,” saying that “Texas taxpayers expect their money to be spent efficiently and effectively on their behalf, both in private and traditional public schools.”

The law, however, imposes no restrictions to prevent the kinds of entanglements that the newsrooms found.

The contrast is sharp. Public or charter school officials who violate these rules could be subject to removal from office, fines or even state jail felony charges.

Private schools face none of those consequences.

Supporters of the voucher program argue that oversight of private schools should come not from the state, but from their boards and the marketplace.

“If you transform the private schools into public schools by applying the same rules and regulations and procedural requirements on them, then you take the private out of the private school,” said Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor at the University of Arkansas. Wolf, who supports vouchers, said that if parents are unhappy with the schools, they will hold them accountable by leaving and taking their tuition dollars with them.

Typically, neither parents nor the state’s taxpayers have access to information that shows precisely how private schools spend money. Only those that are organized as nonprofits are required to file public tax forms that offer limited information. Of the state’s more than 1,000 accredited private schools, many are exempt from submitting such filings because they are religious or for-profit institutions, leaving their business conduct opaque. It is unclear if private schools that participate in Texas’ voucher-like program will have to detail publicly how they use taxpayer dollars.

“The public system is not always perfect, but when it’s not perfect, we see it,” said Joy Baskin, associate executive director for policy and legal services at the Texas Association of School Boards, which represents public districts across the state. “That kind of transparency doesn’t exist in private schools.”

The Chinese Baptist Church in Houston, where Trinity Classical School has a campus (Danielle Villasana for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune)

“Just Isn’t Right”

Conflicts of interest in education were on the minds of legislators this spring. At an education committee hearing in March, Texas state Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Republican from Rio Grande City, along the southern border with Mexico, introduced a bill that would bar businesses with close ties to board members from applying for school district contracts. Such deals were previously permitted as long as school leaders publicly disclosed conflicts and abstained from voting.

But Guillen, who did not respond to requests for comment, argued those rules were abused, pointing to recent scandals in two districts that led to state investigationsand, in one case, resulted in federal charges.

He described his bill as a “commonsense” proposal that would ensure “no one in a position of power can exploit the system for financial benefit.” The Legislature passed the bill, which was signed into law by Abbott.

Notably, the measure excluded private schools. In public testimony, no one brought them up, and there was no debate about them even as lawmakers advanced a proposal that would direct state money to them.

The newsrooms found at least six private schools that awarded contracts to companies with ties to their board members.

Cristo Rey Dallas College Prep, a Catholic high school serving primarily low-income students of color, awarded more than $5 million to a construction firm owned by one of its board members for “interior finish” work between 2017 and 2021, tax filings show. The school did not respond to questions about the payments. Raul Estrada, who was on the school board when his firm received the payments, said he recused himself from any votes or decisions related to the contract. He added that the company’s work provided “substantial savings” to the school but did not provide specific figures.

Just 30 miles north, board members at the Shelton School, which specializes in teaching students with learning differences such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments over the last decade. Tax records show one trustee was awarded over $465,000 for landscaping, and another collected more than $1.2 million for “printed education material.” The board members whose firms received the contracts did not respond to requests for comment. Suzanne Stell, the school’s executive director, said the board members who received contracts were not involved in the decisions. Stell also said that the contract for printed material included training for educators.

Our investigation also found dozens of instances of nepotism or relatives serving on boards together at private schools, some of which were started and are led by families.

Trinity Classical School in Houston, for example, has long maintained a family-led chain of governance on its school board exclusive to married couples, appointing a new pair each time one cycled off. The board deviated from that pattern only once, when it selected Neil Anderson, the school’s leader, according to tax filings. None of the current board members responded to interview requests, nor did Anderson or the school.

Such arrangements have been prohibited since 2012 in charter schools, which are restricted from appointing more than one family member to serve as a trustee at the same time. Anderson’s appointment would also not be allowed in traditional public schools, where employees are barred from serving on their school’s governing board.

At the elite Greenhill School in the Dallas area, where tuition can exceed $40,000 a year, the previous leader, Scott Griggs, hired his son to coach the boys’ volleyball team and teach middle school math. While allowed in private schools, state nepotism laws prevent public and charter schools from hiring close relatives of superintendents and trustees, with few exceptions. Griggs told the newsrooms that he’d already announced his retirement when he asked the board in 2017 to approve hiring his son, who did not respond to requests for comment.

The following year, the college prep academy provided a personal loan of nearly $100,000 to its current head of school, Lee Hark, for a down payment on a home. The school did not disclose the terms of the agreement in its tax filings, including whether it charged interest or what would happen should Hark default. Hark declined to comment.

Private schools are generally free to use money as they choose, but a 150-year-old provision of the Texas Constitution bars public schools from lending taxpayer dollars. The state does not require private schools to publicly disclose whether taxpayer money would be used for such arrangements under the voucher program.

In a written statement, a Greenhill spokesperson said the school operates with “sound financial principles” that meet or exceed “all standards of accountability for independent schools.” She said the school charged interest on the loan and it has since been paid off, but did not provide records.

Many of the private schools examined by the news organizations, including Greenhill, said that they are still deciding whether to participate in the voluntary voucher program.

The lack of accountability for private schools has sparked concern from public school parents like Sarah Powell, a mother of two near Dallas. She was among thousands who urged lawmakers to reject voucher legislation earlier this year.

“You’re either part of the system or you’re not,” Powell later told the newsrooms. “You can’t have the resources and not any of the regulations. It just isn’t right.”

*The Greenhill School, where tuition can surpass $40,000 per student, in Addison, just outside of Dallas (Shelby Tauber for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune)*

Repeating History

State funds flowing to public and charter schools are monitored by the Texas Education Agency, which requires annual independent audits and assigns ratings that gauge each school’s fiscal health. Districts that repeatedly underperform risk sanctions, including forced closure.

“Looking back on it today, I think it was necessary,” Bob Schulman, a longtime education attorney, said about many of the reforms.

Even as oversight of charter schools has been strengthened, gaps remain. Earlier this year, a ProPublica and Tribune investigation found that a charter network with 1,000 students was paying its superintendent nearly $900,000 annually, making him among the highest-paid public school leaders in the nation. Yet the school did not disclose the superintendent’s full compensation to the state and later rebuffed calls to lower his salary from lawmakers and the advocacy group representing charters. The school board defended Cavazos’ salary, saying it was merited because of his duties and experience.

The state, however, will not directly regulate private schools under the new voucher program, which will begin next year. Instead, supervision will largely fall to one of 20 private organizations, which schools must pay to obtain and maintain the accreditation required to receive public funds.

A review by the newsrooms of these organizations’ standards found they are generally far less rigorous than the state’s. Most do not require annual financial audits, which some accreditation organizations say can be too costly and time-consuming, and many do not mandate policies to prevent nepotism and conflicts of interest.

If a private school loses accreditation from one group, it can simply apply to another.

That total, however, is likely an undercount even within the sample of schools the newsrooms reviewed. Reporters identified dozens more conflicts listed in tax forms, for example, but the schools provided sparse information about what they were. Because of that, there is no way to determine if the conduct would have violated state laws if it had occurred at a public or charter school. The newsrooms reached out to each school about the missing information, but none answered questions.ġ

Texas lawmakers laid the groundwork for publicly funded schools with limited state oversight when they authorized charter schools in the 1990s as an alternative to traditional public education. At the time, they exempted charter schools from many regulations, betting that greater flexibility would lead to innovation and stronger academic performance.

But over the past three decades, the state has steadily increased restrictions on charter schools in response to concerns about financial mismanagement and academic performance. Charter schools, for example, were initially exempt from the state’s nepotism and conflict-of-interest laws, but lawmakers gradually changed that after reports exposed leaders enriching themselves and their families. The state implemented another round of stricter rules after newspapers uncovered lavish spending on perks such as Spurs tickets and lucrative land deals.

Schulman, who has represented Texas charter schools for decades, said that some leaders abused the limited state oversight for years, making it more concerning that lawmakers launched a voucher program with even fewer regulations.

“I’m very disturbed,” Schulman said. “But I’m hopeful that it will be a quicker turnaround than it was for the charters.”

How We Reported This Story

For this story, reporters reviewed nonprofit tax filings for 90 of the 200 highest-enrollment private schools listed in the Texas Private Schools Accreditation Commission database. Those filings were not available for the other 110 schools, as for-profit schools or those tied to houses of worship are not typically required to make tax documents public. For the schools that filed these records, reporters reviewed available annual reports dating back to at least 2015.

Reporters identified more than 60 instances involving conflicts of interest, nepotism and financial transactions with related parties at 27 schools. Three education lawyers confirmed our findings.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Texas

School Choice Creates a Budget Disaster in Polk County, Florida

By dianeravitch

August 18, 2025 //

Polk County Public Schools expressed relief July 25 after learning that the Trump Administration would release about $20 million in funding that it had withheld for weeks.

The district issued a news release, noting that the previously frozen grants in four categories directly fund staff positions and services supporting migrant students, English-language learners, teacher recruitment and professional development, academic enrichment programs and adult education.

The relief, though, was only partial. When the district eight days earlier took the unusual action of issuing a public statement warning of “significant financial shortfalls,” it cited not only the suspended federal grants but also state policies.

Legislative allocations for vouchers — scholarships to attend private schools or support home schooling — combined with increased funding for charter schools “are diverting another $45.7 million away from Polk County’s traditional public schools,” the district’s news release said.

The statement reflected warnings made for years by advocates for public education that vouchers are eroding the financial stability of school districts.

“The state seemingly underestimated the fiscal impact that vouchers would have,” Polk County Schools Superintendent Fred Heid said in the July 17 news release. “As a result, the budget shortfall has now been passed on to school districts resulting in a loss of $2.5 million for Polk County alone. We now face having to subsidize state priorities using local resources.”

Florida began offering vouchers in the 1990s, initially limiting them to students with disabilities and those in schools deemed as failing. Under former Gov. Jeb Bush, the state expanded the program in 2001 to include students from low-income families.

The number of students receiving vouchers rose as state leaders adjusted the eligibility formula. In 2023, the Legislature adopted a measure introducing universal vouchers, available to students regardless of their financial status.

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All of Polk County’s legislators voted for the measure: Sen. Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula; Sen. Colleen Burton, R-Lakeland; Rep. Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade; Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Lakeland; Rep. Sam Killebrew, R-Winter Haven; and Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Polk City.

Allotment for vouchers swells

The vouchers to attend private schools are known as Florida Empowerment Scholarships. The state also provides money to families through the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the Personalized Education Program, which financially supports home-schooled students.

The money for vouchers comes directly from Florida’s public school funding formula, the Florida Education Finance Program.

Families of students receiving such scholarships have reportedly used the money to purchase large-screen TVs and tickets to theme parks, spending allowed by Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers most scholarships.

The state allotment for vouchers has swelled from $1.6 billion in the 2021-2022 school year to about $4 billion in fiscal year 2024-2025, according to an analysis from the Florida Policy Institute, a nonprofit with a progressive bent.

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In Polk County, 5,023 students claimed vouchers in the 2021-2022 school year, according to the FPI report. Those scholarships amounted to just over $41 million.

The figures rose in 2022-2023 to 6,124 students and nearly $58 million. The following year, the total was 7,854 students and nearly $72 million.

In the 2024-2025 school year, 11,297 students in Polk County received vouchers totaling more than $97 million, FPI reported.

A calculation from the Florida Education Finance Program projects that nearly $143 million of Polk County’s state allotment for education will go to Family Empowerment Scholarships in the 2025-2026 school year, a potential increase of about 47%. The total reflects 16.3% of Polk County’s state funding.

Statewide, the cost of vouchers has risen steadily and is projected to reach nearly $4 billion in the 2025-26 school year.

Florida’s State Education Estimating Conference report from April predicts that public school enrollment will decline by 66,000 students over the next five years, or about 2.5%. Over the same period, voucher use is projected to increase by 240,000.

The state projected that only about 27% of the new Family Empowerment Scholarship recipients would be former public school students.

Subsidizing wealthy families?

Since the state removed financial eligibility rules for the scholarships in 2023, voucher use has soared by 67%, the Orlando Sentinel reported in February. And the majority of scholarships have been claimed by students who were already attending private schools.

By the 2024-25 school year, more than 70% of private school students were receiving state scholarships, the Sentinel reported. The total had been less than a third a decade earlier.

The Sentinel published a list of private schools, with the number of students on state scholarships from the years before and after the law took effect.

Among Polk County schools, Lakeland Christian School saw a jump from 40 to 89, a rise of 122.5%. The increases were 102.7% for All Saints Academy in Winter Haven and 60.3% for St. Paul Lutheran School in Lakeland.

The scholarships available to Polk County students for the 2025-2026 school year are $8,209 for students in kindergarten through third grade; $7,629 for those in grades four through eight; and $7,478 for students in ninth through 12^th grades. Those figures come from Step Up for Students.

There have been news reports of private schools boosting their tuition rates in response to the universal voucher program. Lakeland Christian School’s advertised tuition for high school students has risen from $14,175 in 2022-2023 to $17,975 for the current school year, a jump of 26.8%.

Polk school district prepares to enforce state law banning most student cell phone use

Stephanie Yocum, president of the Polk Education Association, decried the trend of more state educational funding going to private schools.

“In the 2023-24 school year, 70% of Florida’s universal vouchers went to students who already were in private schools,” Yocum said. “Seventy percent of those billions and billions and billions of dollars are going to subsidize already wealthy families, and our state continues to push welfare for the wealthy, while they are siphoning off precious dollars from our students that actually attend a public school, which is still the supermajority of children in this state.”

Critics of vouchers point to Arizona, which instituted universal school vouchers in 2022. That program cost the state $738 million in fiscal year 2024, far more than Arizona had budgeted, according to a report from EdTrust, a left-leaning advocacy group.

Arizona is facing a combined $1.4 billion deficit over fiscal years 2024 and 2025, EdTrust reported. The net cost of the voucher program equals half of the 2024 deficit and two-thirds of the projected 2025 deficit, it said.

Meanwhile, there is a move toward a federal school voucher program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that Congress adopted in early July uses the federal tax code to offer vouchers that students could use for private school tuition or other qualifying education expenses.

The Senate revised the initial House plan, making it not automatic but an opt-in program for each state. The Ledger emailed the Florida Department of Education on Aug. 4 asking whether the state plans to participate. A response had not come by Aug. 6.

The federal program could cost as much as $56 billion, EdTrust reported. Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, called the program “a moral disgrace,” as NPR reported.

Canady: Let parents choose

Proponents of vouchers say that it is essential to let students and parents choose the form of education they want, either through traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools or homeschooling.

Canady, who is in line to become state House Speaker in 2028, defended the increase in scholarship funding.

“In Florida, we fund students — not systems,” Canady said by text message. “Parents have the freedom they deserve to make the decisions that are best for their own children. There are a lot of great school options — public district, public charter, private, and homeschool.”

She added: “In Florida, decisions about which school a child will attend are not made by the government — parents are in control.”

Canady has taught at Lakeland Christian for nearly 20 years and is director of the school’s RISE Institute, which encompasses research, innovation, STEM learning and entrepreneurship. She began her career teaching at a public school.

None of Polk County’s other legislators responded to requests for comment. They are Rep. Jon Albert, R-Frostproof; Rep. Jennifer Kincart Jonsson, R-Lakeland; and Albritton, Burton and Tomkow.

Canady noted that 475 fewer students were counted in Polk County Public Schools for funding purposes in the 2024-2025 than in the previous year.

“That reflects the choices that families have made,” Canady wrote. “During the same time, the Florida Legislature increased teacher pay by more than $100 million dollars and continues to spend more taxpayer money on education than ever before.”

She added: “Education today looks different than it did decades ago, and districts around the state are all adapting to the new choice model. Funding decisions should always be about what is good for students and honor the choices that families make.”

The 475 net loss of students in Polk’s public schools last year is far below the increase of 3,443 in Polk students receiving state scholarships.

Questions of accountability

Yocum said that public school districts face certain recurring costs that continue to rise, no matter the fluctuations in enrollment resulting from the use of vouchers.

“You’ll still have the same — I call them static costs, even though those are going up — for maintenance, for buildings, for air conditioning, for transportation,” Yocum said. “All of those costs still exist. But when you start to siphon off dollars that public schools should be getting to run a large-scale operation of educating children, then we are doing more and more with less and less.”

Yocum also raised the question of accountability. The Florida Department of Education carefully controls public schools, largely dictating the curricula they teach, overseeing the certification of teachers and measuring schools against a litany of requirements codified in state law.

Public schools must accept all students, including those with disabilities that make educating them more difficult and costly.

By contrast, Yocum said, private schools can choose which students to accept or reject. The schools are free from much of the scrutiny that public schools face from the Department of Education.

The alert that Polk County Public Schools issued on July 17 mentioned another factor in its financial challenges.

“PCPS is facing an immediate $2.5 million state funding shortfall due to what state officials have described as dual-enrollment errors that misallocated funding for nearly 25,000 Florida students,” the statement said.

That seemed to refer to a “cross check” that the Florida Department of Education performs twice a year, said Scott Kent of Step Up for Students. The agency compares a list of students on scholarships with those reported as attending public schools.

If a student appears on both lists, the DOE freezes the funding. Step Up for Students then contacts the students’ families and asks for documentation that they were not enrolled in a district school, Kent said.

“This is a manual process that can be time-consuming, as the state and scholarship funding organizations want to ensure accuracy and maintain the integrity of the scholarship programs,” Kent said by email. “The DOE currently is checking the lists before releasing funds to Step Up to pay eligible students.”

In the 2025 legislative session, the Florida Senate passed a bill that would have clarified which funds are dedicated to Family Empowerment Scholarships, a way of addressing problems in tracking students as they move between public and private schools. But the bill died, as the state House failed to advance it.

Yocum said the House rejected transparency.

“They want it to look like they’re funding public schools at the level that they should be funding it, where, in reality, more and more of our dollars are running through our budgets but being diverted to corporate charter, private schools and home schools that have no accountability to our tax dollars,” she said.

Effect of charter schools

The warning from the Polk County school district mentioned funding for charter schools as part of a “diversion” of $45.7 million traditional public schools.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that operate independently. Polk County has 36 charter schools covering all grades. Those include two charter systems: Lake Wales Charter Schools with seven schools, and the Schools of McKeel Academy with three.

Some other charter schools are affiliated with national organizations, including for-profit companies.

Yocum lamented the passing of public funds through the school district to charter schools, though specified that she had no criticism of the McKeel or Lake Wales systems.

“We’re talking about the corporate-run charters that are in it to make money,” she said. “We keep seeing billions and billions of our state dollars diverted to those money-making entities that do not make decisions in the best interest of children. They make decisions in the best interest of their bottom line.”

Canady sponsored a bill in 2023 establishing the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from traditional public schools to charter schools’ capital budgets by 2028. It passed with the support of all Polk County lawmakers, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law.

The Florida Legislature passed a bill in the 2025 session (HB 1105), co-sponsored by Kincart Jonsson, that requires public school districts to share local surtax revenues with charter schools, based on enrollment share.

The bill, which DeSantis signed into law, also makes it easier to convert a public school into a charter school, allowing parents to initiate the change without requiring cooperation from teachers. It also authorizes cities or counties to transform public schools with consecutive D or F grades into “job engine” charter schools.

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Equity, Florida, Funding, School Choice, Vouchers

Peter Greene: A Major For-Profit Chain Implodes

By dianeravitch

August 7, 2025 //

Peter Greene writes in Forbes, where he is a columnist, about the failure of a major for-profit chain, the kind that will enjoy the benefit of voucher programs.

Ray Girn graduated from the University of Toronto in 2004 with a BS in Psychology, then went to work in LePorte Schools, a chain of Montessori schools in Southern California. By 2010 he was CEO of the chain and, in his telling, raised a “nascent family business” into “what became North America’s largest Montessori network.” He also met his wife, Rebecca.

Just three years ago, Higher Ground was calling itself “the future of education.” A promotional video touted “a mission to redesign education from the ground up” with a mixture of “rigor and individualization” across its family of 150 schools. Now most of those schools have been shuttered by foreclosure, and the company has filed a pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan.

In 2016, the Girns launched Higher Ground Education in Austin, Texas. The mission, said Girn, was to “mainstream and modernize Montessori education through extending its principles across infancy and into high schools.” Rebecca was the Chief Programs Officer and General Counsel.

Higher Ground grew both through acquisition and creation. It was the parent group for Guidepost Montessori, a huge network of Montessori schools located across the US and in some overseas locations. The Academy for Thought and Industry, later rebranded Guidepost Academy, that promised “a school dedicated to a union of classical and Montessori approaches to education: a classical liberal arts emphasis on history and great books, and a Montessori emphasis on independence and agency.”

Higher Ground drew the attention of venture capitalists. HGE created their own program for certifying Montessori teachers (MACTE accredited). They acquired a variety of other businesses, including Tinycare, Neighborschools, FreshGrade, and, the remains of AltSchool, the San Francisco-based tech-based microschool start-up that was drawing glowing reviews in 2015, but by 2019 was instead drawing headlines like Fortune’s “How an Education Startup Wasted Almost $200 Million.”

In 2022, Girn announced that he was launching a Montessori think tank called Montessorium. The result was a business that calls itself “Montessori all grown up.” The Montessorium initiative is headed up by two other Austin entrepreneurs. Matt Bateman also came from LePorte (Girn appears to have brought several LePorte folks with him) and was Higher Ground’s Vice President of Pedagogy; currently his LinkedIn profile lists his occupation as Philosopher (self-employed).

The other Montessorium leader in MacKenzie Price, an education entrepreneur who has been trying to expand her network of cyberschools into other states. Her signature business is 2HourLearning, which promises that students can get a full education in just two hours a day with a computerized tutor. Montessorium promises to “combine the full suite of Montessori practices and hands-on materials with a state-of-the-art personalized learning software platform.”

The HGE network of schools was also growing. In 2018 HGE operated 12 schools; by 2022, the number was 101, and by 2024, HGE had 150 schools in its stable. And yet, Higher Ground was in trouble.

The story continues if you open the link to read the article at Forbes, in full.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Innovation

Jennifer Berkshire: How Democrats Miss the Boat on Education Issues

By dianeravitch

August 7, 2025 //

Jennifer Berkshire is a veteran education journalist who understands the importance of public schools. She has a podcast called “Have You Heard?” She is the co-author of two books with historian Jack Schneider:

A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School. And: The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual.

Berkshire wrote the following brilliant article about the failure of the Democratic Party to recognize that most people send their children to public schools and don’t want them to be privatized. Some prominent Democrats support charter schools, which the radical right has used as a stepping stone to vouchers.

She wrote on her Substack blog “The Education Wars”:

And just like that, the Trump Administration has released the billions in funds for public schools it had suddenly, and illegally, frozen earlier this summer. The administration’s trademark combo of chaos and cruelty has been stemmed, at least temporarily. That Trump caved on this is notable in part because his hand was forced by his own party—the first time this has happened in the endless six months since his second term began. Make that the second time. Since I posted this piece, key senators from both parties decisively rejected the administration’s proposals to slash investments in K-12. Which raises an obvious question: of all of the unpopular policies being rolled out by the administration why would school funding be the one that forced a retreat?

“Do they really care more about public schools than about…Medicaid?” is how historian Adam Laats posed the question. In a word, yes. That’s because Medicaid is a program utilized by poor people, a constituency that however vast enjoys neither a forceful lobby nor the patronage of a friendly billionaire. Public education, despite the increasingly aggressive efforts to dismantle it, remains one of our only remaining institutions that serves rich and poor alike. (For an excellent and highly readable history of how this came to be, check out Democracy’s Schools: the Rise of Public Education in America by historian Johann Neem.)

This enduring cross-class alliance behind public schools, by the way, is a big part of why public education has been in the cross hairs of anti-tax zealots for so long. It’s also why school voucher programs keeps accidentally benefiting the most affluent families. Offering them a coupon for private school tuition is a nifty way to drive a stake through, not just this cross-class coalition that consistently supports things like more school funding and higher teacher pay, but the entire project of public education.

A winning issue

As David Pepper pointed out recently, the Trump Administration was forced to back down on school funding because of the bipartisan nature of support for public schools—part of what he calls a “clear and consistent pattern” that we’ve witnessed again and again in recent years.

Whether we’re talking about the overwhelming votes against vouchers in red states in November or the bottom-of-the-barrell poll numbers for the Trump education agenda, public education defies the usual logic of these hyper-partisan times. Which makes it all remarkable that so few Democrats seem to understand the potency of the issue. Whither the Democrats is a question that Pepper, one of our most astute political commentators, has been asking too:

I’m talking about an unflinching embrace of the value of public schools to kids, families and communities, and a blunt calling out of the damage being done to those schools by the reckless privatization schemes of recent years.

It’s not coincidence, I’d argue, that rising stars in the Democratic Party including Kentucky governor Andy Beshear or Texas state representative James Talarico played key roles battling vouchers in their states. And before Tim Walz was muffled by the Harris campaign, we heard him start to articulate a sort of prairie populist case for public education, in which rural schools are the centers of their communities and today’s school privatizers are the equivalent of nineteenth-century robber barrons. The master class on how Democrats should talk about education, though, comes via Talarico’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

Clocking in at two hours and 44 minutes, the conversation shows why Talarico is ascendant. But it was handling of the school voucher issue that truly demonstrated his chops. He deftly explained to Rogan that Texas has essentially been captured by conservative billionaires, and that despite their deep pockets and political sway, the anti-voucher coalition had nearly won anyway.

Ultimately we didn’t win. [It] kind of came down to a photo finish, but it did to me provide a template for what happens if we actually loved our enemies, if we rebuilt these relationships. Like who could we take on if we did it together? Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives. Like, I don’t know, sometimes I sound a little Pollyanna.

Rogan’s response was just as instructive. “It’s not us versus them. It’s the top versus the bottom.”

The dud brigade

Having interviewed countless Republicans who oppose vouchers over the past year, I remain utterly convinced that there is no other issue that both resonates across party lines and exposes the influences of billionaires behind school privatization. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Democrats like Talarico and Beshear remain such a minority in the party. Especially at the national level, candidates and commentators largely view public education with disdain. Indeed, as the endless battles play out over the future of the Democratic Party, we can look forward to a full-court press pressuring blue state governors to opt in to the new federal voucher program. And while the school choice lobby will be leading the charge, influential voices from within the party—like this guy or this guy—will be making the case that vouchers = ‘kids-first policy’ and that Democrats need to get on board or be left behind.

Part of what has been so refreshing about listening to Talarico, Beshear, Walz and other rising stars like Florida’s Maxwell Frost, is that they’re not just opposing school privatization but making a bold case for why we have public schools in the first place. They’re rising to the challenge that David Pepper throws down in which Democrats unflinchingly “embrace the value of public schools to kids, families and communities” and bluntly call out “the damage being done to those schools by the reckless privatization schemes of recent years.”

Now contrast that with the way that so many influential Democrats talk about education—the bloodless rhetoric of ‘achievement,’ ‘data,’ and ‘workforce preparation’ that resonates with almost no one these days. Here’s Colorado governor Jared Polis, for example, rolling out the National Governor’s Association’s Let’s Get Ready Initiative, an impossibly dreary vision of K-12 education that hinges on a “cradle-to-career coordination system that tracks how kids are doing, longitudinally, from pre-K through high school into higher education and the workforce.” If you want a bold case for why we have public schools, you won’t find it here. Deftly combining right-wing talking points (the kids are socialists!) with the same corporate pablum that centrist Democrats have been peddling for years (the skills gap!), this is a vision that is a profound mismatch for our times. I read a sentence like this one—“Competition between schools, districts and states will lead to more students being ready for whatever the future might hold”—and I die a little inside.

Back in 2023, Jacobin magazine and the Center for Working-Class Politics released a study called “Trump’s Kryptonite” about how progressives can win back the working class. Among its many interesting findings was this: the candidate best equipped to appeal to working class voters with a populist message was a middle school teacher. I’ve referenced this study endlessly in my writing and opinonating but it wasn’t until I listened to the Rogan episode with James Talarico that I really reflected on why a middle school teacher might make such an effective candidate. The exchange consists largely of Rogan peppering Talarico with the sorts of endlessly curious queries that a bright seventh grader might fire off. To which Talarico, an actual former middle school teacher, responds patiently and without condescension, largely steering clear of the sorts of policy weeds that are incomprensible to regular people.

In the coming months, we’ll be told endlessly that the future of the Democratic Party belongs to Rahm Emanuel, Cory Booker, Gina Raimondo or Jared Polis—all of whom represent the identical brand of ‘straight talk’ about the nation’s schools that Democrats have been trying—and failing—to sell to voters for decades. That same Jacobin study, by the way, found that the very worst candidates that Democrats can run are corporate executives and lawyers. I’d add one more category to this list: corporate education reformer.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization, Real Education, School Choice

Arizona: School Choice Harms Public Schools

By dianeravitch

August 6, 2025 //

Laura Meckler of the Washington Post visited Arizona to learn about the effects of an expansive program of charter schools and vouchers. Arizona voted overwhelmingly against vouchers in a state referendum in 2018. Vouchers lost by 65-35%. The rightwing legislature and Governor Douglas Ducey, encouraged by billionaire Charles Koch, ignored the views of the electorate and enacted a large voucher program.

Now the state underwrites the tuition of kids who were already in private schools, many of whom come from affluent families. Voucher schools admit the students they want and exclude those they don’t want.

Arizona’s charter sector includes for-profit charters and charters run by entrepreneurs and grifters. It has experienced numerous scandals.

There’s no accountability for voucher schools and minimal accountability for homeschoolers whose parents spend money on sports equipment, ninja warrior training, toys, LEGO sets, and a wide variety of nonacademic stuff.

Eli Hager of ProPublica wrote that the cost of vouchers had blown a huge hole in the state’s budget, making it necessary to reduce spending on highway projects, water infrastructure, and other critical needs.

Vouchers and charters have not produced academic gains. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Arizona is among the lowest-ranking states.

But the biggest consequence of voucher expansion has been the closing of neighborhood public schools. .

Meckler writes:

PHOENIX — The party at John R. Davis Elementary School was in full swing, but at the snow cone station, the school’s librarian was in tears.

In the cafeteria, alumni marveled at old photographs on display and shook their heads. On a wall of the library, visitors posted sticky notes to describe their feelings: “Angry,” read a purple square. “Anxious,” said a pink one. “Annoyed.” “Heart broken.” “Bummed.” And more than any other word: “Sad.”

Ten days later, John R. Davis Elementary School would close — not just for the summer, but for good.

Now, as the new school year begins, the Roosevelt Elementary School District opens with just 13 schools. That’s almost a third fewer than it had last spring, a response to enrollment declines as the state offers unprecedented taxpayer funding for alternatives to public school.

The party gave the community a few hours to celebrate the school’s 43 years — to say goodbye.

“It’s a grieving process for me,” Antionette Nuanez, the librarian, told a pair of Davis graduates who dropped by the party. Everyone at the party, it seemed, was feeling the loss — loss of tradition, of community, of simply having a school in walking distance. Nuanez, in particular, was overcome with the emotion of it all: “It’s like a death,” she said.

Perhaps more than any other state, Arizona has embraced market competition as a central tenet of its K-12 education system, offering parents an extraordinary opportunity to choose and shape their children’s education using tax dollars, and developing a national reputation as the Wild West of schooling.

The state has supported a robust charter school system, tax money for home schooling and expansive private school vouchers, which are available to all families regardless of income. Nearly 89,000 students receive Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, a form of vouchers, state data show; a second voucher program awarded nearly 62,000 tax-supported private school scholarships in 2024, though some students received more than one. More than 232,000 students attend charter schools.

Together, these programs help explain why just 75 percent of Arizona children attended public schools in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. That’s one of the lowest rates in the country.

Supporters of school choice say families are turning to alternatives because public schools are not serving their children well. It’s only right, they argue, that tax dollars follow children to whatever educational setting their families choose.

Critics complain that vouchers eat up state funding, benefit families who can afford private school on their own, disrupt communities and send tax dollars to schools that face little accountability. Unlike public schools, private schools don’t have to administer state tests. They can pick and choose their students, while public schools must educate everyone.

The modern school choice movement began in 1990 with a small voucher program in Milwaukee and has grown into a central plank of the Republican education agenda, with programs now operating in more than half the states. In 2022, Arizona created the first universal program — open to all, not just low-income families. Since then, about a dozen conservative states have adopted universal or near-universal programs. And in July, President Donald Trump signed into law the first federal voucher program, which will require states to opt in, at an estimated cost of $26 billion over the next decade.

Some state programs have now grown so large that spillover effects on public schools are coming into view. In Ohio, the legislature agreed toincrease voucher spending to $1.3 billion by 2027, up from just over $1 billion in 2025, while traditional public schools, which serve far more children, were given a smaller increase — and less than what public education advocates say had been promised under a multiyear agreement to ramp up school spending. In Florida, which has a $4 billion voucher program, public schools districts are seeing enrollment declines, meaning less money from the state and, in many cases, budget cuts.

The ramifications for public education have been particularly clear in Arizona, offering an early picture of K-12 education under the Republican vision of maximum school choice, or what proponents call education freedom. Here, public schools are starting to close.

The challenge: more competition for the same number of students. For the past 15 years, the state’s school-age population has remained steady, though the overall population has grown, said Rick Brammer, principal manager of Applied Economics, a consulting firm that has analyzed enrollment trends, demographic data and the effects of school choice programs in dozens of Arizona school districts.

“You’re taking the same size pie and cutting it into more pieces,” Brammer said. “As we’ve created and funded alternatives, we’ve just emptied out school after school from the districts. In a tight nutshell, that’s the whole story.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Disruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Home Schooling, Privatization, Vouchers

Texas: The Hoax of Charter Schools

By dianeravitch

August 1, 2025 //

This article appeared in The Dallas Weekly.

The Charter Trap: How Texas’s Approval System Fuels Inequity in Public Education

This feature investigates how Texas’s charter school approval system — combined with growing voucher programs — is reshaping public education funding, access, and accountability. Drawing on insights from State Board of Education Member Dr. Tiffany Clark, the piece explores how state policies are accelerating the growth of charter schools while defunding traditional public districts, particularly those serving Black and Latino students. It highlights the unequal standards between public and charter schools, the impact of school closures, and the erosion of community voice in education policy. As public schools work to innovate under pressure, the state continues to shift resources toward less regulated alternatives — raising urgent questions about equity, transparency, and the future of public education in Texas.

In Texas, the promise of school choice has become a defining feature of the state’s education strategy. Charter schools are marketed as innovative alternatives to traditional public schools, especially in districts that serve predominantly Black and Latino students. But the way these charters are approved, and who ultimately benefits, reveals a system riddled with disparities.

Every year, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) reviews applications from prospective charter school operators. Those that make it through the cumbersome process are recommended to the State Board of Education (SBOE), which votes to approve or deny the applications. While this process is meant to support innovation and improve outcomes, the evidence suggests that it is doing the opposite in many communities.

We are approving the same systems that have failed our students over and over again. DR. TIFFANY CLARK, SBOE MEMBER DISTRICT 13

One of the clearest voices highlighting these disparities is State Board of Education member Dr. Tiffany Clark, representing District 13, which includes parts of Dallas and Tarrant counties. Earlier this month, Dr. Clark released a public letter explaining her decision to vote against two new charter proposals in her district. In her letter, she pointed to the approval of charter schools with ties to historically underperforming models, often led by alumni of the same charter incubator programs, such as Building Excellent Schools (BES).

In an interview with Dallas Weekly, Dr. Clark described how charter applicants are not required to have experience as superintendents or demonstrate a successful track record with similar student populations. “You don’t need to be a certified superintendent to apply,” she said. “You just need a compelling idea. There’s no pilot requirement. The model hasn’t had to prove itself in Texas or in similar communities.”

Her concerns are not isolated. They point to broader issues in the state’s charter school authorization process, particularly regarding performance, equity, and accountability. According to the Texas AFT, charter schools in Texas have a 30-34% closure rate. Worse, most of these closures occur within five years of opening. Some have even closed during the school year, leaving parents and students scrambling to find new options.

A Troubling Track Record

Of the 21 charter schools approved between 2016 and 2021, 17 received D or F accountability ratings by 2023. Many of these schools were launched by leaders trained through the same national pipelines, like the Building Excellent Schools (BES) program, that continue to produce new charter applicants in Texas, often with limited changes to their model.

Despite this underperformance, state approval rates remain high. In many cases, new charter proposals are approved without substantial evidence that the academic model works or that the leadership team has the experience to run a successful school.

Financial Fallout for Public Schools

The impact on traditional school districts is severe. Fort Worth ISD, for example, has lost more than $635 million in state funding and over 20% of its student population in the past five years. Dallas ISD has experienced an even greater loss of revenue (approximately $1.7 billion) over the same period. This decline is directly linked to students transferring to charter schools. The result: public school closures, staffing reductions, and diminished services for the students who remain.

Chart from Fiscal Impact of Charter Expansion DALLAS ISD

When a neighborhood school closes, it often creates more barriers for families rather than expanding their choices. Many charter schools do not provide transportation, leaving parents, especially those working multiple jobs, with limited options. The vision of equitable access is undermined when choice is only accessible to families with time, resources, or flexibility.

The situation is further complicated by the state’s growing push for private school vouchers. These programs allow families to use public funds for private tuition, even though private schools are not required to accept all students, provide transportation, or meet the same accountability standards as public schools. For districts already losing enrollment to charters, the addition of vouchers creates yet another drain on funding, with even fewer protections for equity or transparency. It adds another layer to a system in which public schools, especially those in historically under-resourced communities, are expected to serve every child, but are continually shortchanged by state policy.

Two Systems, Two Standards

As Texas accelerates its charter school approvals, public schools, especially in urban districts like Dallas ISD and Fort Worth ISD, are being forced to do more with less. While many of these districts have launched dual-language academies, early college programs, STEM pathways, and arts-focused schools to meet family demand, they continue to face declining enrollment and shrinking budgets as students are siphoned off by charters. This drain leads to real-world consequences: campus closures, longer commutes for families, and a loss of critical resources, particularly for students with disabilities, English learners, and low-income communities.

Charters, by contrast, are not held to the same accountability standards. In fact, more charter schools have their operating licenses revoked than the number approved each year. But until then, they can cap enrollment, lack transportation, and often underserve or under-identify special education students, yet they receive public funding with fewer regulatory obligations. Public schools must serve every student who walks through their doors. Charters do not. And as the state continues to invest in new charters while underfunding existing public systems, it is creating two separate and unequal school systems, one with oversight, obligation, and community accountability, and one without.

Approval Without Accountability

Charter schools in Texas operate with significantly fewer accountability measures than their public counterparts. Their boards are not elected. Their meetings are not required to be public. They can expand without reapplying or justifying need. If a campus underperforms, it can take up to three years before the state considers intervention, and even then, it’s typically the individual campus that’s closed, not the entire charter network.

Moreover, schools labeled as “high-performing entities” in other states are often allowed to skip critical parts of the approval process, such as interviews or community review. But success in Florida or Arizona doesn’t guarantee results in Fort Worth or Dallas. Without a clear performance baseline or pilot requirement, the state risks importing models that are unfit for the local context.

A Call for Systemic Change

Dr. Clark advocates for more rigorous standards in charter school approvals, including requiring pilot programs, stronger oversight of operator qualifications, and elevating community input through impact statements.

She also emphasized the importance of transparency around which charter entities are being approved and why. “We can’t keep approving ideas. We need to approve proven solutions, especially when our most vulnerable students are involved,” she said.

Her perspective underscores the need for the SBOE and TEA to be more deliberate in assessing not only whether a proposed school is innovative, but whether it is likely to succeed where others have failed.

We can’t keep approving ideas. We need to approve proven solutions, especially when our most vulnerable students are involved.

According to Dr. Clark, Texas’s current charter approval system claims to promote equity and access, but its structure too often reinforces the opposite. Without stronger performance standards, leadership requirements, and accountability mechanisms, the state risks continuing to approve underperforming schools at the expense of public education.

Community voices, particularly in Black and Latino neighborhoods, deserve to be at the center of education policy decisions, not on the sidelines. If school choice is to be more than a slogan, it must come with real transparency, proven outcomes, and respect for the public systems already serving our children.

Meanwhile, public schools across Texas are already evolving, expanding STEM tracks, dual-language programs, and career pathways to meet diverse student needs. Yet instead of supporting these systems, the state continues to siphon funding away and invest in charter operators with unproven records. The result is a two-tiered system where innovation is rewarded only when it comes from outside the public sector.

Until that changes, students of color will continue to bear the weight of a policy agenda that undercuts the very schools built to serve them.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Texas

NPE: Charter Schools in Decline: A National Report

By dianeravitch

August 1, 2025 //

The National Center for Charter School Accountability, which is a project of the Network for Public Education, released the first of a three-part series of a national report on the decline of the charter school sector.

Written by NPE Executive Director Carol Burris, the report will be released in three sections. The first one, Decline, documents the startling halt in charter school growth. Once heralded as the salvation of American education, charter schools are no longer growing. Despite the lack of demand for new charters, the Trump administration recently increased the annual appropriation to the federal Charter Schools Program from $440 million every year to $500 million a year.

The report will be released in three parts: Decline, Disillusionment, and Costs. This is the first part.

Burris begins:

In 1992, City Academy — the nation’s first charter school — opened in St. Paul, Minnesota. Created and led by experienced teachers, it was designed as an alternative school for students struggling in traditional settings. With just 53 students, City Academy embodied the original vision for charter schools: small, teacher-run schools within public districts that tested innovative strategies to reach hard-to-teach kids.

When successful, those strategies would inform and strengthen public education as a whole.

That was the idea supported by American Federation of Teachers President Al Shanker in 1988.

But by the early 1990s, Shanker had become disillusioned. As his wife Edith later explained, “Al became increasingly critical of charter schools as they moved further from their original intent.

He warned that without well-crafted legislation and public oversight, business interests would hijack the charter school concept, ‘whose real aim is to smash public schools.’”

His warning proved prophetic. In the decades since, real estate investors, for-profit management companies, and corporate charter chains have taken over what began as teacher-led experiments. Today, more than fifty charter trade associations—some state-based, others national—lobby aggressively to block charter school oversight and resist any legislative reform. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools reported over $26.5 million in income in 2023, with more than $28 million in assets. The California Charter Schools Association reported nearly $13 million in revenue that same year. These organizations are not only advocates but powerful lobbyists, intent on protecting all existing charters and promoting unlimited growth.

During the Obama years, federal initiatives like Race to the Top fueled charter expansion with strong bipartisan support. But that coalition has since un-raveled. While Republican enthusiasm for any alternative to public education— charters, vouchers, homeschools — has surged, Democratic support has eroded, particularly as concerns grow over transparency, equity, and privatization.

Today, the charter sector stands at a reckoning point. Growth has slowed.

For-profit models are expanding. The push to create religious charter schools has fractured the movement from within. Meanwhile, charters are now competing not just with public schools and each other, but with a growing network of voucher-funded private schools and publicly subsidized homeschools.

This report, released in three parts — Decline, Disillusionment, and Costs —examines the trajectory of the charter school movement. It contrasts the promise of its early days with its complex, often troubling reality today.

As the charter experiment enters its fourth decade, the question is no longer what charter schools were meant to be — but whether they can still be reformed in order to serve the public good….

Burris questions why the federal government–which claims to be cutting costs and cutting unnecessary programs–continues to send $500 million every year to a sector that is not growing and does not need the money. DOGE eliminated most employees of the U.S. Department of Wducation but left the federal Charter Schools Program untouched.

The charter school sector stands at a critical juncture. Once heralded as a bold experiment in innovation and opportunity, it is now characterized by stagnation, retrenchment, and rising school closures. Between 2022 and 2025, growth has nearly halted, and closures — often sudden and disruptive— are accelerating. Federal investment, rather than adapting to the sector’s shifting realities, has ballooned to half a billion dollars annually, funding schools that never open, quickly fail, or operate with minimal oversight and accountability.

As the data show, under-enrollment is the primary driver of failure. There is no crisis of unmet demand. Hundreds of charter schools, according to NCES data, can’t fill even a single classroom. The frequently cited “million-student waitlist” has been thoroughly debunked, yet continues to be invoked to justify ever-increasing taxpayer support.

Meanwhile, mega-charters and online schools like Commonwealth Charter Academy siphon vast sums of public dollars while delivering dismal academic outcomes. Others, like Highlands Community Charter School, have defrauded taxpayers and exploited students under the guise of second chances.

With enrollment stagnating and oversight failing, taxpayers should ask: Why are we continuing to fund with federal dollars an expansion that isn’t happening? It is time for Congress and the Department of Education to reassess the Charter Schools Program. Federal dollars should no longer subsidize a shrinking and troubled sector. Instead, they must be redirected toward accountable, transparent, and student-centered public education.

Part II of this report, Disillusionment, to be published this fall, will further explain the reasons behind the sector’s decline.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Network for Public Education, Privatization

Accell Schools–For-Profit and Online–Hires Bill Bennett as Provost of Its New Classical Academies

By dianeravitch

July 31, 2025 //

Accell Schools, a network of for-profit online charter schools, announced that Bill Bennett has been hired to serve as Founding Provost of a new chain of online Classical Academies. Bennett will also serve as provost to two brick-and-mortar charter schools, one in Toledo, Ohio, the other in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

The founder of Accell Schools is Ron Packard, who has played a prominent role in the for-profit, virtual charter school industry for years.

You may recall Ron Packard. I have written about him in the past. His background is in finance and management consulting. He worked for Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. He was never a teacher or principal, which I suppose makes him an ideal education entrepreneur, unbound by tradition, open to innovation, and alert to profit making opportunities.

When he was CEO of K12, Inc., the leader in virtual charter schools, he was paid $5 million a year. K12 dealt with numerous lawsuits and controversies in relation to low test scores, low teacher pay, low graduation rates, and other issues. In 2020, K12 Inc. became Stride, which continues to be a leader in the virtual charter industry.

In 2014, Packard founded Accell as a charter chain. His company bio describes his experience:

Ron previously founded and was CEO of K12 Inc., where he grew the company from an idea to nearly $1B in revenue, making it one of the largest education companies in the world. Under his leadership, revenue compounded at nearly 80%. Prior to K12, he was CEO of Knowledge Schools and Knowledge Learning Corporation, and Vice President at Knowledge Universe, one of the largest early childhood education providers in the U.S.

He has also played a pivotal role in investments across the education sector, including LearnNow, Children’s School USA, LeapFrog, TEC, and Children’s Discovery Center. Earlier in his career, Ron worked in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs and served clients at McKinsey & Company.

Bill Bennett was U.S. Secretary of Education under President Reagan. He championed vouchers and morality during his tenure.

Until he became chair of the board of K12, he was known as a skeptic of computers in the classroom.

He wrote in his book “The Educated Child,”

“There is no good evidence that most uses of computers significantly improve learning.”

— from his 1999 book The Educated Child

Bennett said in a February 2001 Bloomberg interview:

“From what I’ve observed in schools, we’d be better off unplugging the computers and throwing them out.”

He abandoned his skepticism when he joined the K12 company.

His new role as a “founding provost” of online “classical academies,” calls upon his background as a moralist. His wildly popular “The Book of Virtues” made millions of dollars and established Bennett as the nation’s most moral man.

But this was a standing he lost years ago when it was revealed that he had a serious gambling habit.

The New York Times wrote that the “relentless moral crusader” was also a “relentless gambler.” It estimated that in 2003 that he had lost more than $8 million in Las Vegas.

Mary McNamara wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

It is just too delicious — the image of the man who wrote not only “The Book of Virtues” but “The Children’s Book of Virtues” pulling into Las Vegas in his comped limo, bags whisked to his comped high-roller’s suite while he heads into the blaring, bleating belly of the beast to spend hours pumping thousands of dollars into the slots.p. Turns out William J. Bennett, who considers passing judgment on the personal lives of our leaders a moral duty and who all but called for President Clinton’s head on a platter in “The Death of Outrage,” is a high-stakes gambler. The pulpit bully who took down the moral predilections of single parents, working mothers, divorced couples and gays in “The Broken Hearth,” the man who, despite rather formidable personal girth, preaches against those “ruled by appetite,” has, according to Newsweek and the Washington Monthly, dropped as much as 8 million bucks in high-stakes gambling over the last 10 years.

How much fun is that ?

Bennett’s fall from grace was camera perfect, and no doubt he’ll get big points from the judges for the spin of his attempted recovery. Gambling is legal, he quickly pointed out, at least where he did it. And he never put his family in danger. And it wasn’t $8 million, it was “large sums of money.” Furthermore, he always paid taxes on his winnings and, Atlantic City and Las Vegas being the charitable institutions they are, he pretty much “always broke even.”

If that weren’t intoxicating enough for his many detractors, within minutes of serving up this layer cake of denial, Bennett made a public vow that his gambling days are over because “this is not the example I want to set.”

Or as Kenny’ll tell you, you gotta know when to walk away, and know when to run .

Bennett got into hot water in 2005 when he made a comment on his radio show that was widely denounced by both parties:

Speaking on his daily radio show, William Bennett, education secretary under Ronald Reagan and drugs czar under the first George Bush, said: “If you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose; you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”

He went on to qualify his comments, which were made in response to a hypothesis that linked the falling crime rate to a rising abortion rate. Aborting black babies, he continued, would be “an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down”.

So, despite these handicaps, now 20 years past, Bill Bennett is making a comeback. Everyone deserves a chance to rehabilitate themselves. Even Bill Bennett.

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Virtual Charter Schools

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Accell Schools–For-Profit and Online–Hires Bill Bennett as Provost of Its New Classical Academies

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The Erosion of Trust in Science

RFK Jr.: Conspiracies Over Credentials

The Resignations and Walkouts

Cuts That Will Cost Lives

The Bigger Picture: A Pro-Death Movement

Why This Matters Now

“Just Isn’t Right”

Repeating History

How We Reported This Story

Allotment for vouchers swells

Subsidizing wealthy families?

Canady: Let parents choose

Questions of accountability

Effect of charter schools

The Charter Trap: How Texas’s Approval System Fuels Inequity in Public Education

A Troubling Track Record

Financial Fallout for Public Schools

Two Systems, Two Standards

Approval Without Accountability

A Call for Systemic Change

Search All Posts

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Recent posts

Blog Topics

Top posts

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Follow blog via RSS reader

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