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Texas: IDEA Charter Chain Hires State Auditor to Be Its New CEO

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2022 //
6

The IDEA charter chain in Texas has gone through some strange ups and downs.

Its founder Tom Torkelson quit in 2020 with a golden parachute of $900,000 after a series of financial embarrassments (like trying to lease a private jet for $2 million a year and $400 box seats at the San Antonio Spurs basketball games for executives); the IDEA chief financial officer Wyatt Truscheit left at the same time.

A year later, the IDEA board fired its co-founder JoAnne Gama and another chief financial operator, Irma Munoz, “after a forensic review found “substantial evidence” that top leaders at the state’s largest charter network misused money and staff for personal gain.” Add to this brew that Betsy DeVos handed over $200 million from the federal Charter Schools Program to help IDEA grow faster and replenish its ample resources

Well, with all this turmoil and financial questions, state officials conducted an audit of the flush charter chain.

But lo and behold, three years later, the charter chain hired the state auditor to be its new CEO!

IDEA Public Schools this week named as its lone finalist for superintendent a top Texas Education Agency official who oversaw an office that has been investigating the charter network over allegations former leaders had misused money and staff for personal gain.

The network’s board on Tuesday named Jeff Cottrill, who has served as TEA’s Deputy Commissioner for Governance and Accountability for the last three years, as the finalist, according a statement from IDEA. He is expected to begin serving as superintendent in June following a 21-day waiting period required by the state for superintendent appointments.

“Jeff is an education leader with tremendous gifts, heart and focus,” Collin Sewell, chair of the IDEA Board of Directors, said in the statement. “He is a veteran school administrator with valuable and diverse experience leading, overseeing, and improving school districts and charter schools throughout Texas.”

In response to an inquiry from the Houston Chronicle, the charter network on Thursday issued a statement saying Cottrill had “recused himself from matters involving IDEA at the Texas Education Agency.”

Cozy!

State Board of Education Rep. Georgina Cecilia Pérez, whose district includes 40 counties in West Texas, said the move “just stinks to high heaven.”

She questioned why the agency had not announced Cottrill’s recusal from the probe. Pérez also asked who currently is overseeing the IDEA investigation and whether the same investigators, who technically worked for Cottrill, would continue digging into a charter network that he now will lead.

Georgina Cecilia Perez is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Texas

Tennessee: Supreme Court Reverses Lower Courts and Declares State Voucher Program Constitutional

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2022 //
4

The Tennessee voucher program is very controversial. It passed by only one vote, the vote of a Knoxville legislator who won the promise that there would be no vouchers in his district. The FBI is investigating whether the legislator was promised anything else, and he has been called before a grand jury to testify about what happened. The voucher plan will be offered only in Nashville and Memphis,whose representatives opposed it.

The plan was held to be unconstitutional by two courts but the state’s highest court just ruled that it was constitutional.

Marta W. Aldrich of Chalkbeat Tennessee reports:

The reversal essentially revives Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program, the signature legislation of his first year in office and the source of a fierce legal battle for more than two years.

The program aims to provide taxpayer money to pay toward private education for eligible students in public school districts in Memphis and Nashville. Lee set aside $29 million in the state’s upcoming budget to pay for starting up the program in the event that the high court ruled in his favor.

Tennessee has been a battleground state in the escalating tug-of-war between those who want to use taxpayer money to give parents more education choices and others who say that approach diverts money from already underfunded public schools.

After a decade of legislative defeats, voucher legislation narrowly passed in 2019 under a GOP supermajority.

But a Nashville judge blocked the controversial program from launching in 2020 in a ruling that was unanimously upheld by the state Court of Appeals. The lower courts said the voucher law violated the state constitution’s “home rule” provision because it applied only to districts in the state’s two largest cities without their consent.

A Republican proposal to revise the embattled law to try to address the home rule issue narrowly failed in a House subcommittee in March.

In April, however, the legislature voted to replace Tennessee’s formula for funding K-12 education with a voucher-friendly one. Developed by Lee’s administration, the plan will require calculations that enable funding to easily follow a student to private schools and public charter schools, which the governor is also working to multiply. But Lee has saidhis funding plan is unrelated to vouchers or charters.

The legislature’s pivotal 2019 voucher vote continues to be the source of controversy and questions. A 49-49 tie in the House appeared to kill the bill, until then-Speaker Glen Casada held the vote open for 38 minutes and persuaded Rep. Jason Zachary, a Knoxville Republican, to flip his position in favor of the governor’s plan…

The voucher law designated about $7,300 annually to each eligible student who moves from public to private schools. The program was to start with up to 5,000 students in its first year, potentially reaching 15,000 students by the fifth year.

Attorneys representing Davidson and Shelby counties argued the change would impose a financial burden to their local school systems by diverting millions of dollars to private education.

But the state’s attorneys contended that the home rule argument didn’t apply in this case.

The state Supreme Court ultimately agreed. “The majority concluded that the ESA Act is not applicable to the Plaintiff counties because the Act regulates or governs the conduct of the local education agencies and not the counties,” the court said in a statement. “Thus, the Act does not violate the Home Rule Amendment.”

The high court’s ruling came after an unusually long review. The five-judge panel heard oral arguments last summer before Justice Cornelia Clark died in September. It then opted to rehear the case in February with Court of Appeals Judge Thomas R. Frierson sitting in for Clark’s replacement, Justice Sarah Campbell, who was appointed by Lee in January and recused herself from the voucher case because she previously worked for the state attorney general.

Categories Education Industry, Religion, Tennessee, Vouchers

Tennessee: FBI Investigates Republican in Legislature for Key Voucher Vote

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2022 //
20

The Tennessee voucher bill passed by only one vote. There was a delay in getting that last vote. Charges flew that the vote was swayed by more than reason. The FBI started an investigation, and the legislator was just called to appear before a grand jury.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A Republican lawmaker who cast the decisive vote for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher plan has been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury next week, NewsChannel 5 has learned.

Two independent sources with knowledge of the investigation tell NewsChannel 5 Investigates that Rep. Jason Zachary, R-Knoxville, is among a group of House Republicans who were served with federal grand jury subpoenas this week. That group includes House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville.

Zachary refused to comment as he entered the House session Thursday morning.

NewsChannel 5 Investigates was first to reveal the latest round of subpoenas delivered Tuesday…

The investigation of corruption on Tennessee’s Capitol Hill comes against the backdrop of apparently ongoing interest by the FBI in how then-Speaker Casada managed to pass Lee’s plan to create a school voucher program, known as Educational Savings Accounts, to pay for private school tuition in Davidson and Shelby counties.

In April 2019, a House vote on Lee’s voucher bill failed on a 49-49 tie vote.

Casada held the vote open for some 45 minutes while he sought the decisive 50th vote.

Zachary eventually switched his vote after Lee’s team agreed to exempt Knox County from the legislation. Zachary later denied that he was offered anything improper for his vote.

Still, in May 2019, NewsChannel 5 Investigates revealed that FBI agents had shown an interest in that vote, showing up unannounced at the home of one GOP House member.

That lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said agents wanted to know about campaign contributions offered to support the reelection efforts of those willing to vote for the bill.

In July 2019, Rep. John Mark Windle, D-Livingston, confirmed information obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates that another lawmaker had overheard Casada suggesting that — in exchange for his vote — Windle could be promoted to the rank of general in the Tennessee National Guard.

Windle, an Iraq war veteran who was a colonel in the Guard, refused to switch his vote, saying in a statement that his vote was “not for sale.”

Other lawmakers told NewsChannel 5 Investigates about talk of incentives and even threats.

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

Jan Resseger: Inequality of Educational Opportunity Is America’s Shameful Reality

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2022 //
36

Jan Resseger, now retired, spent her career as an activist for social justice. Her recent essay was reposted by the Network for Public Education. It seemed appropriate to post it on the 68th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Decision of 1954. In trying to assess the meager progress towards the ideals of Brown—specifically, equality of educational opportunity—she lays some of the blame on No Child Left Behind and the corporate school reform movement,

Jan Resseger attended the recent Network for Public Education conference, where she took inspiration from speaker Jitu Brown, director of the Journey for Justice Alliance. Reposted with permission.

She wrote:

A highlight of the Network for Public Education’s recent national conference was the keynote from Jitu Brown, a gifted and dedicated Chicago community organizer and the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance. His remarks made me think about the meaning of the last two decades of corporate school reform and the conditions today in his city and here where I live in greater Cleveland, Ohio. It is a sad story.

Brown reflected on his childhood experience at a West Side Chicago elementary school, a place where he remembers being exposed to a wide range of information and experience including the study of a foreign language. He wondered, “Why did we have good neighborhood schools when I went to school but our kids don’t have them anymore? For children in poor neighborhoods, their education is not better.”

Brown described how No Child Left Behind’s basic drilling and test prep in the two subjects for which NCLB demands testing—math and language arts—eat up up more and more of the school day. We can consult Harvard University expert on testing, Daniel Koretz, for the details about why the testing regime has been particularly hard on children in schools where poverty is concentrated: “Inappropriate test preparation… is more severe in some places than in others. Teachers of high-achieving students have less reason to indulge in bad preparation for high-stakes tests because the majority of their students will score adequately without it—in particular, above the ‘proficient’ cut score that counts for accountability purposes. So one would expect that test preparation would be a more severe problem in schools serving high concentrations of disadvantaged students, and it is.” (The Testing Charade, pp. 116-117)

Of course, a narrowed curriculum is only one factor in today’s inequity. Derek W. Black and Axton Crolley explain: “(A) 2018 report revealed, school districts enrolling ‘the most students of color receive about $1,800 or 13% less per student’ than districts serving the fewest students of color… Most school funding gaps have a simple explanation: Public school budgets rely heavily on local property taxes. Communities with low property values can tax themselves at much higher rates than others but still fail to generate anywhere near the same level of resources as other communities. In fact, in 46 of 50 states, local school funding schemes drive more resources to middle-income students than poor students.”

Again and again in his recent keynote address, Jitu Brown described the consequences of Chicago’s experiment with corporate accountability-based school reform. Chicago is a city still coping with the effect of the closure of 50 neighborhood schools in June of 2013—part of the collateral damage of the Renaissance 2010 charter school expansion—a portfolio school reform program administered by Arne Duncan to open charter schools and close neighborhood schools deemed “failing,” as measured by standardized test scores. On top of the charter expansion, Chicago instituted student-based-budgeting, which has trapped a number of Chicago public schools in a downward spiral as students experiment with charter schools and as enrollment diminishes, both of which spawn staffing and program cuts and put the school on a path toward closure.

As Jitu Brown reflected on his inspiring elementary school experience a long time ago, I thought about a moving recent article by Carolyn Cooper, a long time resident of Cleveland, Ohio’s East Glenville neighborhood: “I received a stellar education in elementary, junior high, and high school from the… Cleveland Public School system… All of the schools I attended were within walking distance, or only a few miles from my home. And at Iowa-Maple Elementary School, a K-6 school at the time, I was able to join the French Club and study abroad for months in both Paris and Lyon, France… Flash forward to this present day… To fight the closure of both Iowa-Maple and Collinwood High School, a few alumni attended a school facilities meeting held in October 2019 at Glenville High School… Despite our best efforts, Collinwood remained open but Iowa-Maple still closed down… Several generations of my family, as well as the families of other people who lived on my street, were alumni there. I felt it should have remained open because it was a 5-Star school, offering a variety of programs including gifted and advanced courses, special education, preschool offerings, and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).”

In his keynote address last week, Jitu Brown explained: “Justice and opportunity depend on the institutions to which children have access.” Brown’s words brought to my mind another part of Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood less than a mile from Iowa-Maple Elementary School. If you drive along Lakeview Road between Superior and St. Clair Avenues, you see a neighborhood with older homes of a size comfortable for families and scattered newer rental housing built about twenty years ago with support from tax credits. You also see many empty lots where houses were abandoned and later demolished in the years following the 2008 foreclosure crisis. Separated by several blocks, you pass two large weedy tracts of land which were once the sites of two different public elementary schools—abandoned by the school district and boarded up for years before they were demolished. You pass by a convenience store surrounded by cracked asphalt and gravel. Finally you pass a dilapidated, abandoned nursing home which for several years housed the Virtual Schoolhouse, a charter school that advertised on the back of Regional Transit Authority buses until it shut down in 2018.

My children went to school in Cleveland Heights, only a couple of miles from Glenville. Cleveland Heights-University Heights is a mixed income, racially integrated, majority African American, inner-ring suburban school district. Our children can walk to neighborhood public schools that are a great source of community pride. Our community is not wealthy, but we have managed to pass our school levies to support our children with strong academics. We recently passed a bond issue to update and repair our old high school, where my children had the opportunity to play in a symphony orchestra, and play sports in addition to the excellent academic program.

Jitu Brown helped organize and lead the 2015 Dyett Hunger Strike, which forced the Chicago Public Schools to reopen a shuttered South Side Chicago high school. Brown does not believe that charter schools and vouchers are the way to increase opportunity for children in places like Chicago’s South and West Sides and Cleveland’s Glenville and Collinwood neighborhoods. He explains: “When you go to a middle-class white community you don’t see charter schools…. You see effective, K-12 systems of education in their neighborhoods. Our children deserve the same.”

In the powerful final essay in the new book, Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, Bill Ayers, a retired professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, agrees with Jitu Brown about what ought to be the promise of public education for every child in America:

“Let’s move forward guided by an unshakable first principle: Public education is a human right and a basic community responsibility… Every child has the right to a free, high-quality education. A decent, generously staffed school facility must be in easy reach for every family… What the most privileged parents have for their public school children right now—small class sizes, fully trained and well compensated teachers, physics and chemistry labs, sports teams, physical education and athletic fields and gymnasiums, after-school and summer programs, generous arts programs that include music, theater, and fine arts—is the baseline for what we want for all children.” (Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, pp. 314-315) (emphasis in the original)

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Inequality, Injustice, Ohio, Race, Segregation

The Greatest Hoax in the History of Education

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2022 //
23

This is a 10-minute TED talk by Dr. Yuli Tamir, academic and former minister of education in Israel.

She explains in a direct and lively manner how the PISA standardized testing regime was foisted on the world, destroying children’s imagination, curiosity, and joy of learning.

The fundamental hoax of PISA is the claim that higher test scores will inexorably produce higher economic growth. As she demonstrates, this assertion is false.

If we want children to benefit more from their schooling, we should bend our efforts to reducing poverty. This would seem to be obvious, but it hasn’t slowed the slavish devotion of governments to raising PISA scores.

This is a brilliant presentation. I urge you to watch it.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Hoax, Joy, Real Education, Standardized Testing

Chris Lubienski: “Making Choice Equitable” Is Unlikely, Maybe Impossible

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2022 //
78

Scholar Christopher Lubienski at Indiana University reviewed a report from the Hoover Institution offering strategies for making choice equitable. His review was published by the National Education Policy Center.

The Hoover Institution (where I was a Fellow until 2009) is very pro-school choice. (It’s also a wonderful repository for materials about war and peace, the Russian Revolution, and international politics). Many educators, regardless of their views, have given their papers to the Hoover archives, including me.

The report reviewed by Lubienski was written by Paul Peterson, who is an enthusiastic proponent of school choice.

The official overview says:

A report from the Hoover Institution seeks to offer evidence-based guidance for policymakers in shaping more equitable outcomes from school choice programs. This review examines the report’s claims, its representation of the research, and its use of research in forming those recommendations. The review finds that although the report is useful as a snapshot of the current status of choice programs in the United States, its use of research is often problematic. Some of the research is misrepresented, many claims are made without citations to evidence, and some of the recommendations bear no connection to the evidence provided in the report. As such, the report is, as intended, a political guidebook for conservative policymakers that fails to offer evidence-based guidance on making choice more equitable.

Another way to describe the interaction between choice and equity: Choice, almost by definition, exacerbates inequities.

Categories Education Industry, Equity, School Choice

Ohio: The State Constitution Requires Funding of Common Schools

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2022 //
16

Bill Phillis, retired state education official, is campaigning relentlessly to block the expansion of the state’s voucher program. He is a staunch opponent of privatization. He frequently writes about the low academic quality of the state’s charter schools, their fiscal irresponsibility, and their drain on the state’s public schools. If you live in Ohio, you should join his organization to support public schools.

He writes:

EdChoice Voucher Scheme Does Not Align with the Intentions of the Delegates of Ohio’s 1850/1851 and 1873/1874 Constitutional Conventions Regarding the Public Common School System—Part 1*

The EdChoice voucher scheme is contrary to the intention of the Delegates’ vision of the state system of common schools. During the 1873/1874 Constitutional Convention, when a delegate proposed to alter the 1851 constitutional provision for education to fund private schools, Delegate Asher Cook stated:

Here the children of a district, and often those of an entire village, are united in one school, where all cause of strife and contention is removed, and their minds, true to the instincts with which they are endued, rich and poor, mingle together, for a loving group of little friends, who, hand in hand, march bravely up the rugged hill of science, making the ascent easy by each other’s aid, and smoothing its rugged surface by glad peals of laughter, which ring out merrily and clear over hill top, across valley and up the mountain side, until their echoes wake up a joyous community to thank God for the common schools.

The Delegates to the 1850/1851 Constitutional Convention were intentional in selecting the word “common”. Delegate Archibold expressed that the meaning of “common” at that time might change and thus, suggested the word “useful” to replace “common”. An 1828 dictionary defines “common” as “belonging equally to more than one or to many indefinitely.” Delegate Humphreville stated his belief that “common” as they intended it to function in the clause would never be misinterpreted, and thus, responded to Delegate Archibold’s concern by stating “[C]ommon schools in the future will be common schools—that is to say they will not be uncommon schools.” The inclusion of the word common was intentional.

During the 1874 debates, a discussion ensued regarding the meaning of “a system of common schools.” The discussion led to the question of whether public school funds should be provided to private religious schools. Delegate Root informed the discussion, saying, “Common schools to be successful must be the union of schools. The 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defines “union” as, [c]oncord; agreement and conjunction of mind, with affections or interest.” Delegate Root asked:

What kind of a common school system would you have but for uniform rules and uniformity of discipline, and by whom are these prescribed? By the legislative power– the highest power in the State. They may relegate the details to certain officers, but it must come from them.

Regarding the same issue, Delegate Miner stated:

I am utterly opposed to a constitutional provision, or to any legislation, having in view the allotment of anypart of the common school fund to any schools except those established, maintained and controlled by, or under the authority of the state. The moment we consent to do so, we deal with a death blow to the system of common schools, upon which, expanded and improved by increasing experience and wisdom, more than upon anything else, it is my profoundest conviction, depends on the perpetuity and efficiency of our American institutions and government.

It is clear that those who established the Constitution language for a system of schools meant that only one system of common schools was to receive public funding for the support thereof.

*Research for this post and much of the content of it is credited to Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Juris Doctor Candidate, Kira Sharp.

Learn more about the EdChoice voucher litigation

Learn About Vouchers Hurt Ohio
8 Lies About Private School Vouchers

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OhioEandA

VOUCHERS HURT OHIO

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 |ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://ohiocoalition.org

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, History, Ohio, Resistance, School Choice, Vouchers

Jeanne Kaplan: The Colorado Privatizers Suffer a Setback in the Legislature

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2022 //
2

Colorado is a blue state where the privatizers have poured in millions of dollars to win school board seats. It’s the rare blue state that has gone all-in for privatization, led by Senator Michael Bennett (who served as Superintendent of Schools in Denver, although he was never an educator). Colorado’s Governor is Jared Polis, who is super-wealthy and founded two charter schools. Betsy DeVos hailed Denver as an exemplar of school choice.

Our friend Jeanne Kaplan served two terms on the elected Denver School Board and is a passionate advocate for public schools and civil rights. She has observed the bipartisan consensus around the DeVos-ALEC agenda with despair.

In this post, she brings good news. The “reformers” (aka privatizers) encountered a setback in the state legislature.

She begins:

At 9:23 p.m. MDT on May 11, 2022 Education Reformers in Colorado suffered their first serious setback in the Colorado legislature. While SB 22-197, the so-called Innovation and Alternative Governance Bill passed both houses of the legislature, the resulting legislation was actually a defeat for reformers/privatizers in Colorado, a first such legislative stumble in many years. At the very least the adopted Bill placed a roadblock in the previously unobstructed march to privatization. At the most it was a sign of the weakening of privatization. We can only hope.

While education reformers/privatizers will try to convince you they got a victory in the fight for the soul of public education, that is not the truth. The Bill that passed and will likely be touted as a great success has little substance. In fact, one could say, “There is no THERE THERE,” for the final version neutered the original intent of the legislation and codified:

  • No third party governance with binding arbitration.
  • Retention of decision-making powers for duly elected school
  • An advisory non decision-making role for the State Board of Education should any disputes reach it.

After much ado SB 22-197 ended up being a nothing burger with very few of the original ingredients in place.

The Bill’s original purpose was to install an alternative, third governance model with binding arbitration for disputes between a school district (read DPS) and an Innovation Zone (read City Fund’s RootEd/Gates Family Foundation funded Denver Innovation Zone Schools.) Reformers took this inequitable, highly divisive idea very seriously. Simply put, they wanted special treatment for 12 (!) Innovation Zone schools. The Bill was sponsored by two Denver Democrats Senators, James Coleman and Chris Hansen, both of whom have been highly subsidized by various local and national reform organizations. In real time this bill was crafted specifically for for 12 out of about 1800 public schools in Colorado. After garnering no sponsorship in the House, Jen Bacon, Denver Democrat and former DPS school board member stepped in to co-sponsor the bill. With her leadership and knowledge of the importance of local control for school boards she was able steer the conference committee into producing a more palatable Bill. It must have been very awkward for Senator Chris Hansen to have to admit to his colleagues, the difference between his original bill and the one they were now voting on was the loss of binding arbitration. There were of course other changes but binding arbitration was the big one, for it would have undermined local school boards’ authority by allowing for the appointment of a “third party” to resolve disputes.

The privatizers are constantly on the hunt for new ways to undermine public schools. in this instance, they were thwarted. That’s good news.

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Denver, Education Industry, Resistance, School Choice

Tom Ultican Reports on the Highlights of the #NPE2022 Conference in Philly

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2022 //
1

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics in California, is now a significant chronicler of the Destroy Public Education movement. He attended the recent national conference of the Network for Public Education in Philadelphia and recapitulates the excitement we shared at being in person after a 2-year hiatus.

After every conference, attendees say, “This was the best one yet.” They enjoy meeting people who are doing the same work to fight privatization of their public schools. By the end of the conference, attendees say they feel energized, hopeful, and happy to know that they are not alone.

I urge you to read Tom’s post. You will get a sense of the embarrassment of riches available to attendees.

I should add that the Nebraska Save Our Schools group shared the Phyllis Bush Award for Grassroots Activism. Nebraska is one of the few states that has managed to protect its public schools and keep out both charters and vouchers, despite being a Red State.

The Pastors for Texas Children, a co-winner of the award, has repeatedly blocked vouchers in the Texas Legislature and has consistently fought for funding for public schools. PTC has opened chapters in other Red states, where they mobilize clergy to support public schools.

A high point for me was interviewing “Little Stevie” Van Zandt, a legendary rock star and actor (“The Sopranos”), who is dedicated to getting the arts into schools, not as an extra, but across the curriculum. we had a wonderful conversation. He has funded lesson plans based on rock and roll, available free at his website TeachRock.

All of the general sessions were taped. I will post them when they become available.

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Community Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Courage, Creativity, Dark Money, Democracy, Detroit, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, For-Profit, Hope, Innovation, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Nevada, Philadelphia, Privatization, Racism, Resistance, Standardized Testing, Supporting public schools, Teachers

Carol Burris: What Jonathan Chait Forgot to Mention in His Latest Defense of the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2022 //
14

Jonathan Chait writes for New York magazine, where his latest article appeared, opposing the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations for the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP). CSP currently spends $440 million annually to underwrite new charter schools. Chait titled his article “Biden Abandons the Obama Legacy on Charter Schools,” but it might as well have been titled “Biden Abandons the Betsy DeVos Legacy on Charter Schools.”

Chait also attacked the Network for Public Education, which had issued two reports (see here and here) documenting the waste, fraud, and abuse in the CSP, based on the Education Department’s own data. NPE found that almost 40% of CSP funding went to charters that either never opened or closed within a few years of opening. In the life of the program, almost $1 billion had been wasted. In addition, NPE pointed out the scandals associated with some high-profile for-profit charter operators, as well as the use of CSP money to open white-flight charters.

This year, for the first time since the CSP was created nearly 30 years ago, the Department proposed to ban the funding of for-profit charter management organizations and of white-flight charters. The regulations also ask applicants for an impact analysis that describes what effect the new charter is likely to have on existing public schools and why the new charter is needed. These sensible reform proposals sent the charter lobbyists into frenzied opposition, claiming falsely that these regulations were meant to destroy all charter schools. This was nonsense because they would have no effect on the thousands of existing charters, only on applicants for new federal funding, that is, charters that do not yet exist.

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, sharply denounced the lies and misrepresentations of the “trade organization” for the charter industry. But, despite her reproach, the charter industry still promotes dishonest diatribes about the Department’s efforts to reform the CSP.

Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education, was incensed when she read Chait’s defense of the charter industry’s effort to protect the for-profit managers who have abused CSP funds and of the operators that have used CSP funding to provide white-flight charters.

She wrote the following response.

In his recent column, “Biden Abandons the Obama Legacy on Charter Schools,” Jonathan Chait is perturbed that the U.S. Department of Education referred Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum to me for comment on an article he was writing about the Department’s proposed regulations for funding new charter schools. He then scolds Barnum for not disclosing that the Network for Public Education has received donations from unions. He calls Barnum’s story “neutral.” Chait’s source for this big scoop? The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Jonathan Chait then parrots the “wild exaggerations and misrepresentations” that Rosa De Lauro called out last week after expressing her support for CSP reforms during the Education Department’s 2023 budget hearing. The Appropriations Chairwoman noted that “this kind of information campaign is a familiar tactic for the trade organization [National Alliance for Public Charter Schools]. It does represent charter schools that are run by risky low-quality for-profit education management organizations.”

You know those “wild exaggerations.” I wrote about them here. Obviously, Chait did not read the mentioned Barnum piece, which was solid reporting, and he certainly did not read the proposed regulations carefully (which Representative DeLauro described in a letter to Secretary Miguel Cardona about the charter industry’s misrepresentations). Or he just chose to twist facts and truth.

Now let’s talk about what Jonathan Chait failed to disclose as he opposed the CSP regulation reforms, using the same misinformation that has appeared in other op-eds.

His wife worked for Center City Charter Schools as a grant writer when that charter chain received two grants from the Charter School Program (CSP), the program whose loose rules he is now defending. Download the 2019 database that you can find here and match the years of dispersion to the resume of Robin Chait. But the undisclosed conflict continues to this day. Since 2018, Robin Chait has worked for West Ed which evaluated the CSP during the Betsy De Vos era. And her employer, West Ed, once got its own $1.74 million grant from CSP.

But back to NPE funding. During some recent years we got modest donations from unions to bring teachers to our conferences. At our very beginning, we received start-up funds from the Chicago Teachers Union through a fiscal sponsor, Voices for Children. That ended in 2015. We will always be grateful to our friend, the late Karen Lewis, for that jump-start. Karen foresaw the growing attacks on public schools and teachers as an ominous trend and wanted to encourage allies to support a bedrock institution of our democracy.

We appreciate any tax-deductible donations we get. You won’t get favors, but you will always get a thank you. Our income comes from individual donations from our large number of supporters—educators, parents, family foundations, and other citizens who have a deep and abiding love for public schools.

This is not the first time Chait has been called out for not disclosing his wife’s connections with charters. But given the topic and her work in organizations connected with the Charter School Program, this is the worst omission yet. Shame on New York Magazine for not making him disclose and for letting him play fast and loose with the truth. And shame on Chait’s hypocritical critique of Barnum even as he hides the family connections with the program he defends.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Scandals, School Choice, Shame, Support for public schools
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