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USA TODAY: Should Charter Schools Pay Back the Federal Money They Took Without Need?

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2022 //
7

This is part 3 of the USA Today expose of the charter school grab of federal COVID funding intended to save small businesses. The series was written by investigative journalist Craig Harris. Even the lobbyist for charter schools (National Alliance for Public Charter Schools) pulled in nearly $700,000. Should the money be returned?

He writes:

  • USA TODAY found 1,139 U.S. charter schools had $1 billion in PPP loans forgiven.
  • The investigation found nearly all – 93% – lost no money during the pandemic.
  • Critics want Small Business Administration to get PPP repayments from charter schools.

The Biden administration has promised to go after those who may have abused federal financial assistance during the pandemic, and charter schools could be one of the industries under scrutiny.

The publicly funded but privately operated schools that teach a fraction of U.S. children obtained more than $1 billion in forgiven Paycheck Protection Program loans designed to help struggling small businesses during the pandemic.

A USA TODAY investigation found more than 1,100 U.S. charter schools had those loans forgiven, but 93% of them may not have needed the money because they were in states that continued to fund their operations at the same level as before the pandemic, or at even higher levels in some cases.

The loan program had enough leeway to allow small businesses, including charter schools, to qualify without showing any financial need. Federal regulations only required businesses seeking the loans to say they faced “economic uncertainty” and the money was necessary to support ongoing operations.

A congresswoman and fiscal watchdogs are calling upon the federal Small Business Administration (SBA), which administered the loan forgiveness program, to claw back some of that money.

Charter schools’ PPP loans

USA TODAY examined documents from the Internal Revenue Service, SBA, state Departments of Education and charter schools, and interviewed dozens of people, including education experts and watchdogs to find:

►The range of forgiven loans for 1,139 charter schools in 37 states was $150,746 to $9.8 million.

►Some charter schools used the money to increase savings accounts or, in one case, hand millions of dollars to an investor.

►A small San Diego charter chain that serves low-income children turned down a $3 million PPP loan, saying taking the money was unethical because California cut no funding to public schools.

►One California charter chain obtained $32.7 million in PPP loans by using 12 separate nonprofit companies that are linked to different schools to get the money. All of the loans were sent to the same address in Lancaster. The chain, Learn4Life, denied any wrongdoing.

►KIPP, one of the largest charter chains in the country, saw its bottom line swell by $27 million in fiscal 2020. However, 14 of its affiliate organizations across the country had $28.4 million in PPP loans forgiven. KIPP said its affiliates had additional financial needs.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cheating, Education Industry, Funding

Good News: Vouchers Fail in State Senate

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2022 //
7

Despite the support of Governor Kevin Stitt, a bill authorizing vouchers failed in the Oklahoma State Senate. Most rural Republicans support public schools. Pastors for Oklahoma z children actively opposed vouchers.

The Oklahoman reports:

A polarizing Oklahoma bill that would dedicate $128.5 million in taxpayer dollars for private school costs failed in a late-night vote on the Senate floor Wednesday.

In a 24-22 vote, a majority of senators nixed Senate Bill 1647, called the Oklahoma Empowerment Act, effectively defeating the bill for this legislative session.

One of the most high-profile pieces of legislation this year, the bill stalled after two hours of debate and two more hours of waiting as Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat, the bill’s author, tried to flip a few Republican holdouts in a last-ditch effort to advance the measure…

Had SB 1647 advanced, it would have faced a difficult road in the House, where Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, said last month he wouldn’t give the bill a hearing.

McCall’s stance hasn’t changed, House Majority Floor Leader Jon Echols told News 9 this week.

“Here’s the bottom line: I’m in favor of parents being able to choose,” said Echols, R-Oklahoma City. “I’m in favor of finding a way to have more parental involvement, but no, this bill is a waste of time this year.

“Speaker McCall’s not going to budge on this. It’s not going to be heard in the House…”

McCall said the bill is a non-starter for rural lawmakers, whose districts have far fewer private-school options. Even with the bill no longer drawing money out of the education funding formula — the multi-billion-dollar pot of state funds supporting public schools — it still struggled to attract enough rural Republicans to pass.

Senate Democrats almost unanimously opposed the measure. State schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, a Democratic candidate for governor, celebrated the bill’s failure while claiming it would have “effectively destroyed public schools in Oklahoma.”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Resistance, Vouchers

Pennsylvania Tightens Charter Regulations for First Time in 25 Years; Charters Outraged

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2022 //
8

For the first time in 25 years, Pennsylvania officials imposed new regulations on charter schools. Charter advocates were not happy, nor were the Republicans who control the legislature.

Pennsylvania’s charter schools may be required to follow certain accounting and audit standards, comply with state ethics requirements, and post enrollment policies on their websites under new rules opposed by charter advocates and Republican lawmakers.

The rules, passed by the state’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission on Monday in a 3-2 vote, were proposed by Gov. Tom Wolf as part of a broader effort to overhaul how charters are regulated and funded — a perennially contentious issue in the education world. Charters, which educate 170,000 students across Pennsylvania, including one-third of all Philadelphia public school students, are paid by school districts based on enrollment….

Mastery Schools, Philadelphia’s largest charter network, said in written comments submitted to the commission that the regulations “threaten the very existence of the public charter schools that have been transformative to our children’s lives.”

The same regulations that public schools must follow are somehow a mortal threat to charters.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Equity, Pennsylvania

Florida: The Ignominious Failure of State Commissioner Richard Corcoran

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2022 //
16

Billy Townsend reviews the tenure of Richard Corcoran as Florida’s State Commissioner of Education. His main qualification for the job, aside from his time as chair of the education committee in the state senate, is that he loathes public schools. He once said that he wanted to see every Florida student in a charter or voucher school.

Billy Townsend details his multiple failures. Be sure to open the link and read to the end. Watch the video, where Corcoran wrestles with his son on a brick floor, then throws him into the end of the pool, with the boy’s head barely missing the concrete coping. What an educator.

Townsend writes:

Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s general leadership incompetence defines him far more than his trolling.

The Department of Education’s corrupt, ongoing institutional collapse under his three-ish years of leadership testifies to what he would have done (or will do) to any college or university foolish enough to make him a president.

Any “business” he might start that doesn’t grift public money or collect and/or spend other people’s political donations is going to fail — if he runs it.

But Corcoran did have two great talents in his short, happy public life:

  • Convincing powerful people to breathe some of their power on him.
  • Getting the weird Florida media to confuse trolling and leant power with actual power and leadership and capability.

More of the same, just with more trolling

It’s difficult to evaluate Corcoran’s record as Speaker of the House and Education Commissioner because he had no real governing goals or ideology beyond self-interest and the perception of personal dominance in the moment.

Just mesmerizing the child-like DeSantis into paying him $276K for three years is a massive personal victory for Corcoran. One has to acknowledge that.

But under Corcoran’s “leadership,” Florida continued Jeb Bush’s catastrophic, longstanding failures of student test score growth, if that’s what you care about. He continued to shovel tax money and tax-sheltered corporate money into Florida’s “Endtimes Academy” style voucher schools, ignoring the 60 percent 2-year drop out rate of our signature voucher program. And he continued to worsen Florida’s teacher and education worker capacity shortages by making education work as miserable and poorly paid as possible.

But in all that, Corcoran’s not special. He’s just a mainstream Florida leader who talks a little more trash. All of that education failure is openly tolerated and/or celebrated quietly by the private interests that actually run Florida — your Disneys and Publixes and FPLs.

Anybody else DeSantis would have appointed would have indulged the same neglect and general grifting. It’s the institutional story of the last 25 years. Until that changes, you’ll get the same institutional results.

Perhaps the DoE organization and building itselfwon’t be a rotten, corrupt cesspool with a more competent Jebbie in charge; but the Florida state system as a whole is America’s worst because institutional and governing power wants it to be. Corcoran doesn’t have much to do with that. He just looks to scavenge that reality for himself and his buddies.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Florida

Leonie Haimson: Eric Adams’ New School Board and a Questionable Contract

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
12

Leonie Haimson, CEO of Class Size Matters (and a board member of NPE), watches the budget of the NYS public schools like a hawk. She is constantly amazed that there is no money to reduce class sizes but plenty for other things that are less essential.

She wrote this piece for the blog:

Tomorrow, Wed. March 23 will be the second meeting of the NYC school board under our new mayor, Mayor Eric Adams. Since Mayoral control was instituted in 2002, the board has been composed of a supermajority of Mayoral appointees. At that time, it was renamed the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP)by then-Mayor Bloomberg, though according to state law it is still officially called the NYC Board of Education.

Among the Panel’s duties is to approve Department of Education contracts, with many inflated and wasteful contracts rubberstamped over the last twenty years. Only once in its history has it voted down a contract: last year, when a majority of members voted in the midst of the pandemic not to approve acontract to Pearson for the test given to four-year-old students to be admitted into NYC’s controversial gifted program.

Even though the law requires monthly meetings of the PEP, the Chancellor cancelled the January meeting, and eight new members appointed by the Mayor participated at the February meeting, though their names and contact information are still not posted on the relevant PEP page . Instead, the names that arelisted still include the eight members appointed by de Blasio, who vacated their posts at the end of December. The identitiesof the new appointees can be found in the minutes of the February meeting, though no contact information or biographies.

The ninth member who was slated to be appointed by the Mayor in February was Joe Belluck, an attorney who is also the chair of the SUNY committee that authorizes charter schools. Belluck withdrew his name right before the meeting. This waspresumably due to conflict-of-interest issues, given that charterschools take away valuable public school space through co-locations approved by the Panel, and now cost the DOE budget more than $2.6 billion dollars annually. (Full disclosure: my organization, Class Size Matters, put out a press release against Belluck’s appointment the day before he withdrew.)

The new schools Chancellor David Banks, also appointed by the Mayor, has repeatedly said he wants to save money by cutting waste and the bureaucracy. At tomorrow’s meeting, among the many contracts they will be voting upon tomorrow is one for acompany called 22nd Century Technologies, at $16.5 million per year, renewable for five years at a total of $82.5 million. The contract is listed as “Recruiting and Staffing Services for Temporary Professionals.”

This company, the contract proposal says, will be paid to hire “consultants in a wide range of disciplines across DOE schools, central offices, and/or NYCDOE Borough/Citywide offices” and will be “responsible for identifying, processing upon selection, and managing the consultants it recruits and those referred by the DOE.”

The company will charge “markup fees of 17.35% and 22.50% for DOE-referred and vendor-recruited consultants, respectively.”

There is little detail about what these consultants will actually be doing, except for that they will be “used in a wide variety of areas including special education, curriculum design and development, all of which are needed to ensure the successful execution of several temporary DOE projects or needs. “

The mention of curriculum design may relate to the Mosaic curriculum, which initially being developed by “a team of administrators and teachers … during their off hours”, according to the Daily News, but whose roll-out has been delayed.

Of the $16.5 million being paid to this company, the document says nearly half will go to “supporting work that is legally mandated specialized expertise” and “supporting stimulus projects” – which I assume means federal stimulus funds, without identifying what this expertise or these projects involve. The reason for hiring consultants, the document claims, is that “because consultants are better suited to complete short-term tasks for schools and/or offices, instead of using full-time DOE employees.”

Even if the use of consultants is advisable in this case, there is no reason why the DOE should not hire consultants directly, but instead must pay another company to hire and manage them, with a markup of 22.50% and/or 17.35%, the latter if DOEofficials recruit these consultants themselves. In any case, we can expect that the mayoral appointees will rubberstamp this contract as they have in the past, with few if any questions asked, and no discussion of larger issues.

The DOE has lost millions in fraudulent contracts since Mayoral control was instituted in 2002. Just some of them are recounted in my City Council testimony from 2011. What this testimony doesn’t include is what happened four years later.

In 2015, along with then-Public Advocate Tish James and CM Danny Dromm, we blew the whistle on a proposed $1.1 billion five year contract, renewable at $2 billion, that was supposed to be awarded Custom Computer Specialists, a computer wiring company that had been involved in a kickback scheme just a few years before. The PEP approved this contract anyway, with a vote of 10-1, but as a result of the ensuing scandal, City Hall kicked it back, and the contract was rebid and awarded to several different companies at a far reduced price of $472 million, with savings to the city of between $163 million and $627 million.

Another result of the CCS scandal was that DOE promised from then on to publicly to post all prospective contract requests for authorization at least 30 days in advance, to allow for more scrutiny by Panel members as well as to allow for improved independent oversight. As Juan Gonzalez wrote about this result in the Daily News: “Tweed will even post information on all bids on its website 30 days before the scheduled vote by the panel, and has committed to do the same with other contracts.” Yet the DOE stopped doing this in April 2020 – nearly two years ago.

According to a New York state education law passed in 2005, all school board members must receive at least six hours of training in financial oversight, accountability, and fiduciary responsibilities. There is an exception in the law for NYC, but only if as the chancellor annually certifies to the commissioner in writing that the training they provide “meets or exceeds the requirements of this section.” Yet PEP members have told me privately and been quoted in the media to say that they have received only minimal training in financial oversight – and much less than the six hours that the law requires.

I recently filed a Freedom of Information request to the State Education Department for a copy of the annual certification from the NYC Chancellor, attesting that the training provided PEP members was compliant with the law, for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021. I received a response from NYSED that they had received no such certification. This is one of the reasons in my recent testimony before the State Legislature on Mayoral control, I strongly recommended that the governance law in NYC be amended to require that the City Comptroller’s office take over this important responsibility.

The DOE has gotten in trouble before when hiring companies to manage consultants – in the case of the Ross Lanham scandal, in which Custom Computer Specialists was also involved and millions were fraudulently charged to DOE for a different computer wiring scheme, as detailed in a report from the office of Special Investigator and in the indictment by then- US Attorney Preet Bharara. This scandal apart from the money stolen cost NYC more than $100 million in federal E-rate funds. This may not happen in this case. But if the Chancellor is concerned about cutting down on waste and bureaucracy, this is a strange way to go about doing it.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, New York City

California: ALERT! Charter Insiders Infiltrate Democratic Party Platform Committee!

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
23

Sara Roos, a blogger who writes under the name “Red Queen in LA,” reports on a dangerous development in California. Charter school insiders took charge of writing the California Democratic Party’s education platform and made changes that undercut longstanding Democratic Party opposition to charter schools. Suddenly, charter schools are referred to not as privatization but as “public charter schools,” the preferred language of the charter lobby. The new language dropped the Democratic Party’s insistence that the boards of charter schools must be elected and replaced it with the requirement only that they be authorized by local school boards. A big change, among others that put the Democratic Party platform in the pocket of the charter billionaires.

Roos wrote:

What actually happened with the CA Democratic Party’s (CADEM) platform adopted Sunday (3/6/22) at its convention?

At the eleventh hour, following an eleven-hour meeting finalizing draft proposalsfor updating the 2022 CADEM platform, it came to light that one of its 23 platform “planks”, that of Education, had been tampered with by charter school (CS) industry insiders.

As a consequence, CADEM delegate and California Federation of Teachers legislative advocate, Tristan Brown, urged from the floor that fellow delegates vote “no” on the entirety of the proposed platform changes, since the rules forbade focusing on specifics to excise.

It was argued that the new language altered the hard-won, former mandate that charter school boards must be elected, because democracy demands public, elected accountability. The platform’s new language morphed this fundamental demand, requiring instead that charter schools simply be authorized and monitored by a school board. The language of conditional support was removed altogether.

On the strength of the Union recommendation by the statewide federation of teachers, and the leadership of several key caucus chairs and leaders, the final floor vote passing the platform was far shy of consensus at 57% aye (691 votes), 43% nay (510 votes). [The absolute numbers are extracted from the meeting transcript and are a little different from the poll result percentages shown to delegates via zoom].

From a convention of 3,037 elected delegates + 80 proxies, that translates to passage by just 22% (=691/3117) of total eligible voters at the convention. But the total number of delegates voting for the platform was not presented. If quorum were just reached for the vote with its 1559 members, then a bare minimum of 358, or nearly one-quarter of delegates (23% of the eligible quorum (=358/1559)), abstained from the platform vote altogether. The sum total of those failing to vote for the platform {“nay”+abstain} far outstrips those who did.

As it happens, the reality of the platform language change is far worse than what was hastily presented on the floor. And befitting their shepherding by charter school operators (including the board chair of the charter school lobbying association), these changes do very much advantage charter school operations.

The former language of bullet 23 in the K-12 Education plank conditioned circumstances for the Party’s support of charter schools on five contingencies [emphasis mine]:

  • Support only those charter schools that are managed by public and elected boards, not-for-profit, and transparent in governance; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and, supplement rather than supplant public education programs.

The draft language posted in advance of the convention eliminates rules for conditional support altogether. Instead conditions are replaced by definitions. The term “charter school” is redefined through use of the modifying adjective, “public”. A list of characteristics is simply inserted, absent any conditioning on support. And the long-standing federal exhortation acknowledging and specifying the fungibility of money to ‘supplement not supplant’ (ie, do not rob Peter to pay Paul), is lost:

  • Support public charter schools that are governed by not-for-profit, elected, public boards with transparent governance, have equitable admissions, adopt fair labor practices, respect labor neutrality, and supplement public education programs for students in historically low performing subgroups such as low income, English learners, Black, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, foster children and students with disabilities

The real problem came from a change inserted after the posted draft platform. Support is urged for these entities now defined not by their governance but by the circumstance of their chartering: authorization and monitoring [emphasis mine]:

  • Support public charter schools that are authorized and monitored by public and elected boards, not-for-profit, and transparent in governance; have equitable admissions; adopt fair labor practices and respect labor neutrality; and, supplement public education programs for students in historically low performing subgroups such as low income, English learners, Black or African American, American Indian, and Alaskan Native students, foster children and students with disabilities

The change amounts to saying “I exist therefore I am”. It asserts support of charter schools no matter what, and defines them as “public”, a characteristic denied by the courts. Reversing the stringent conditional acceptance terms delineated formerly, this incarnation accepts charter schools as the choice of the Democratic Party.

Another change instigated by the charter school lobbyist who volunteered their services to the platform committee, softens the field for two competing ballot initiatives to privatize our public schools through the use of vouchers.

Under cover of redundancy, bullet 14 that unequivocally and expressly “opposes voucher systems for schools,” is eliminated. Its declaration is diluted by sending it lower in the long list of bullet points, and combining it with Education Savings Accounts. The real problem comes in conditioning this opposition to their effect. Since charter schools are defined in the platform now as “public”, vouchers would not be found to “take away from public school funding”.

  • Oppose K-12 Education Savings Accounts, school vouchers, or any programs that would take away from public school funding;

This change was not a mere correction of duplication, it substantively prepares the field for a statewide fight about “school choice,” launched and led from the left. The platform now states that because we define charter schools as “public”, vouchers are a system we no longer oppose because they do not take money away from the public-charter entity. Just as this new platform accepts charter schools de facto, we also now fail to oppose voucher systems.

Trickiness gonna be tricky. Voters gotta be vigilant. Special, monied-interests are persistent and focused; the rest of us are harried volunteers.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization

Angie Sullivan: Nevada Is Killing Off Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Las Vegas, Nevada (Clark County). She frequently sends letters to every legislator in the state about the need to fund schools like hers adequately and the dismal failure of charter schools.

She responded to a post that featured an interview with Jennifer Berkshire, who predicted that some states would phase out public schools in the next few years.

Sullivan responded:

There would have been a time I would have said this will never happen. Public Schools are such an American Insitution. They are protected by laws.

Now I know charter schools are built to go around the laws. Our Nevada Constitution states one district one county. But charters claim they are not a district. And when necessary they are not even a school. The beauty of the EMO/CMO makes them slippery too. They are often a combination for-profit/non-profit. What law can apply to all of the above: a non-profit education.business, managed by a for-profit management corporation which can then also take advantage of all public school resources and tax advantages, while also applying for all the small business grants and money.

Nevada never got the immediate overnight conversion Elaine Wynn and her reformers wanted. That was too quick and shocking. The ASD grabbing 30 schools at a time did not work. [Elaine Wynn is chair of the state Board of Education and wife of a major casino owner.]

So neoliberals have settled for a slow and steady 5 or 6 charters a year. Along with adding to charter chains by grade level every year – 100 students here and 100 students there.

Jana Wilcox-Lavin uses the $22 million in grant money to grease wheels and find favor. Rebecca Feiden is one of the most powerful women in the state. She grants charters; She refuses charters. Rebecca gives some chance after chance after chance to start their charter business. Others, she stops dead in their tracks. They both inherited a dysfunctional and failing charter business. The Charter Authority is still mired in failing charters – failing financially, failing academically, and failing to enroll diversity. Charters in Nevada are obvious segregation and white flight. There is limited appetite to serve poor students.

Mayors in Clark County seem to think running a school is easy. The pandemic allowed them to use education money to offer micro-charters. This seems to have whet some appetites to own a district of their own.

Mayor Goodman of the City of Las Vegas wants a charter. For some unknown reason she paired up with the EMO TNTP (Michelle Rhee’s Group). She signed on the who’s who of education reform. The City of Las Vegas is now in the school business. Interestingly enough Mayor Goodman was successful at running an expensive private school. She does know education. She has zero experience running a school for diverse poor students. She is about to get a wake-up call. Cedric Creer was only voice of reason when this was discussed. He has the failing Agassi, Rainbow, and 100 Academies in his area – he warned the City Council not to go into the school business. Those charters have had few successes and much more failure. Turnover is constant both teachers and students. Mayor Goodman is about to learn that loads of donations and cash from the City of Las Vegas will not be enough if you let Michelle Rhee’s teaching hating group abuse labor. Interestingly enough, Goodman will retire and the City Council will then run this charter school.

Things I did not think were possible.

Are happening.

I thought our straight forward laws would prevent the Mayors from owning a district through their City Councils.. But charters are not in “districts”. Nor are they schools. Nor are they businesses. They become whatever they need to be to skirt the rules the rest of us live by daily. They claim it is “innovation”. Grifters do it everyday. I do not find it new.

I watched Rebecca Feiden define EMO/CMO very differently to the Nevada Legislature the other day – than she has ever defined it is a Charter Authority Meeting. Perhaps she does not even know or want to know. She was certainly snippy like legislators should already know.

I think this year, The Nevada State Public Charter School Authority will become the second largest district (yes, I know they claim they are not one, but they act like one) in Nevada. It is the size of the Reno/Washoe School District almost. And it serves mainly rich white students inside the middle of Clark County. Yes I know it has a hand full of diverse charters – those are not the norm. Yes I know there are charters in other counties. The bulk of the Nevada charters are serving rich white students inside CCSD. Creating a systematic segregation in Clark County. White Flight is obvious.

Charters segregate by religion, race, and money. They are actually tracking special education, language learning, and free and reduce lunch because those categories earn businesses more pupil center funding dollars. This tracking does not help with Mormon charters, all black or all white charters, and charter locations which are obviously limiting access.

Rebecca Feiden is focused on trying to get more free and reduced lunch children into charters. The Charter Authority is sending the charters a letter, inviting them to participate in “Weighted Lotteries” to help correct their diversity issues. All the charters are getting a “Weighted Lottery” and the Charter Authority is claiming this is a tool to diversify. Weighted Lotteries do not help at all. Especially with new charter enrollment which required diversity by law. Weighted Lotteries only go into affect if charters are full. Technically if a charter has even one spot open – the lottery is not triggered.

The irony of all this is not lost on me. CCSD is one of the most diverse districts in the United States. Yet our Nevada Charters which are predominantly EMO’d For-Profit Academica – serve the rich and white. Now Nevada Charters are spending money to attract diversity to their charters – advertising, flyers, walking door-to-door, or so they claim they tried to find a diverse child to enroll. The Tax Payer has to pay these businesses to admit a few IEP, language learners or poor children. For some perspective, my public school is 100% diverse on every and all levels – we do not try at all to add diversity. In fact

Nevada never closes a failing charter. Even charters that cannot fill out the application or meet the requirements just sue until they are finally allowed to do whatever they want. There is not remedy to stop this. $950 million in Nevada Charters and not a single soul can tell you where it is or what it was spent on.

This is why I think Jennifer Berkshire is correct. Eventually, there will be no place called public schools. There will be a selection list and rich people will be able to pay to have a teacher and school. Others will accept cash and their children will not receive anything and that will be fine because it is their “choice”. And most will meet in a charter warehouse somewhere to sit in front of a device with software teaching them. The poor will be used to privatized and receive the lesser quality of the lists.

It will be slow. CCSD has a parasite. At this rate, the Charter Authority will just keep growing and making more messes which use up more education dollars. It takes from some to give to others. And folx are just fine with allowing a corporation take everything from the disadvantaged so their own children can get ahead. The so called “progressives” are leading the charge.

It is wrong and I hope we fight it. I believe in our imperfect public schools. I see nothing the charters offer that is new. I do not see them being a remedy at all. There is some limited liability advantages for businesses – is that good use of tax dollars?

I hope I am wrong.

Logically I am just afraid Jennifer Berkshire is right.

She followed up with another comment:

Sadly CCSD and Nevada “Leadership” are TFA. They are here to stay. Having catapaulted themselves above everyone.

An example is the very powerful Rebecca Feiden who control $950 million in Nevada Education Dollars which go to Nevada Charters.

Another is Jana Wilcox-Lavin in Opportunity 180 which spreads charters and gives “grants” to them.

No one wants to be a teacher – seems there will always be an appetite to make six figures and control everyone and everything for an eduphilantrophist like Elaine Wynn.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Nevada, Privatization

Ohio: The Academic Failure of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2022 //
14

Max Londberg of the Cincinnati Enquirer conducted an investigation of the academic results of vouchers in Ohio. His findings were appalling. The legislature doesn’t care about results or evidence or facts. It wants more vouchers, more students to fall behind their peers in public schools. Meanwhile, the public schools lose funding to pay for the vouchers. The story was originally published in August 2020, and I missed it. Scores of school districts in Ohio are suing to block the expansion of vouchers, which will undermine the quality of their schools.

He begins:

Since 2018, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been shifted away from Ohio’s public schools and into private, mainly religious ones in the form of vouchers, all to enhance academic success.

Yet those same private schools mostly failed to meet the academic caliber set by their neighboring public school districts, according to a Cincinnati Enquirer analysis of nearly 2.5 million test scores from schools in more than 150 Ohio cities during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years.

The analysis found that in 88% of the cities in the analysis, a public district achieved better state testing results than those private schools with an address in the same city. A majority of the eight largest urban districts — including Akron and Canton — were among those that outperformed privates.

So Ohio shifts money from successful public schools to underperforming religious and private schools. This is stupid.

Categories Education Industry, Failure, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Newark: Black Students Walk Out of North Star Charter to Protest Mistreatment

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2022 //
24

On Friday, a large continent of Black students walked out of North Star Academy, a high-scoring no-excuses charter school in Newark, New Jersey. The students were protesting the mistreatment of Black students and teachers.

Chalkbeat reports:

Hundreds of students walked out of a Newark charter school and rallied outside City Hall on Friday to call attention to what students said is the frequent mistreatment of Black students and faculty.

Around 9 a.m., students began streaming out of the Lincoln Park High School campus of North Star Academy, which is New Jersey’s largest charter school operator with more than 6,000 students in Newark and Camden. After marching from the Central Ward campus to nearby City Hall, student organizers and a former teacher gave speeches about a culture of anti-Blackness they said pervades the school, while scores of students cheered and waved signs.

“We’re tired and we’ve been fed up,” 12th grader Kwadjo Otoo called out from the steps of the historic building, adding that some Black teachers and students continue to feel disrespected despite efforts by the charter operator’s leadership to address complaintsabout the schools. “Now they’re trying to pretend like something changed, but we know it’s the same school we’ve been going to forever now.”

Several students said multiple Black teachers over the years have left the school, which the students said is because the teachers felt overworked and undervalued. When well-liked Black teachers depart, their absence can leave students feeling isolated, they said.

“It’s very upsetting for us to build bonds with our teachers, to build relationships and connect,” said L. Drummond, a senior at the Lincoln Park campus, “and then see them chased out by the school.”

The school went into lockdown during the protest, and students who left were not allowed back in after they returned from City Hall. Locked out of school, the students began to disperse around 10:30 a.m.; some said they planned to walk home while others set out for a different North Star campus downtown.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Disruption, Education Industry, Newark, Racism, Resistance, Students

USA Today: Charter Schools Collected $1 Billion in COVID Funds They Did Not Need

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2022 //
9

Craig Harris of USA Today wrote a blistering expose of the money grab by charter schools for federal COVID funds. Harris was previously a reporter for the Arizona Republic who often covered charter school scandals in that state where deregulation has enabled grifters to get rich by opening charter schools. This story is a national scandal. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall, so I urge you to run out and buy the Sunday March 20 USA Today.

The story begins:

America’s charter schools received at least a $1 billion windfall during the pandemic, an unneeded cash infusion for most from a federal program intended to bail out struggling small businesses, USA TODAY has found. 

More than 1,000 of the publicly funded but privately operated schools that educate a fraction of U.S. children jumped at the chance to collect forgivable loans up to $10 million after Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program in March 2020.

The hastily launched program was designed to save small businesses during the pandemic by helping them cover employee salaries and other costs.

While more than 90% of all eligible businesses across the country took the roughly $800 billion inloan allocations, charter schools were among the first to get the money — ahead of mom-and-pop shops and minority-owned companies — during the early days of the crisis when the economy was cratering and many business owners scrambled to get a financial lifeline.

And charter schools were uniquely positioned to get the loans — even though they continually received funding from taxes, just like traditional public schools. But unlike those schools, which educate the vast majority of American children, charters qualified for what would eventually become pots of free money because they are considered a business. 

A USA TODAY investigation, based on public records,found 93%of the charter schools may not have needed the money because they were in states that continued to fund them at the same level as before the pandemic, or at even higher levels in some cases. These schools also had access to federal COVID grants. 

Records show some of the private companies that operate the charter schools used the money to pad savings accounts or, in one case, hand millions of dollars to an investor.

USA TODAY’s investigation is based on publicly available documents from 1,139 charter schools, as well as federal and state agencies, including 37 departments of education that oversee local funding for charter schools.

“It makes me furious because there was absolutely no reason for those (charter) schools to get that money and take it from small businesses,” said Carol Corbett Burris, a critic of charter schools and executive director of the Network for Public Education Foundation, an advocacy group in New York City. “They successfully double-dipped….”

Charter school advocates said operators were entitled to the loans, which ranged from $150,746 to $9.8 million,because they are technically private businesses. 

“Funding is always difficult to secure but was even more challenging during the pandemic,”  said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Rees added that charter schools typically receive less public funding than traditional school districts and Congress intended for them to get the money because of “the special nature of these unique public schools.”

Critics have a different view. 

A congresswoman who has monitored the program said that while the schools may have done nothing legally wrong, their decisions to take the money were “terrible.” And one superintendent who leads an inner-city San Diego charter operation said that despite the legality, the behavior was unethical because financially strong charter businesses took money from those truly in need. 

“At the time PPP became available, we had not suffered financially,” said David Sciarretta, superintendent of the Albert Einstein Academies, which has 1,450 students from kindergarten to eighth grade at two San Diego campuses. “I saw PPP as a way to help small businesses, especially those in the service sector…There is a fiscal way to look at it, and there’s a moral and ethical way to look at it.”

While Sciarretta declined to call out specifics schools, USA TODAY found, for example, that at least 14 affiliates of the California-based charter chainKnowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) took a collective $28.4 million in loans and had them forgiven at locations around the U.S.

Its national headquarters in San Francisco, meanwhile, saw its bottom line swell 56% to $75 million during the first year of the pandemic….

The concerns about charter schools have spurred critics to pressure the federal Small Business Administration, which is in charge of forgiving the loans if companies used them to save jobs and cover COVID-related expenses, to claw back the money.

The SBA declined repeated requests for interviews in response to questions about financially solid charter schools having their loans forgiven. 

The agency in a late December email told USA TODAY it was committed to helping businesses reopen and that it had removed hindrances for small businesses to have their loans forgiven.

SBA two months later, following additional questions from USA TODAY, blamed the Trump administration for issues of “fraud, waste and abuse” in the program. Yet, nearly all of the loan forgiveness has happened at SBA during the Biden administration.

California Congresswoman Judy Chu is a member of the House Small Business Committee, and she has sought answers about where the money went and which businesses received loan forgiveness. Shamed by media attention in the early days of the pandemic, the Los Angeles Lakers and the national chain Shake Shack returned their multi-million dollar PPP loans.

Congresswoman Chu said:

It was never the intent of Congress to forgive loans to companies, such as charter schools, that experienced no economic loss.

“It’s terrible,” Chu said about the charter schools. “But nonetheless, it is in the realm of what is permissible.”

Permissible, but not ethical. Charter schools got their ”loans” early on because of their relationships with their banks, but minority-owned businesses waited for months.

The PPP program was a boon to the charter industry, which never lost its state funding, but it was ineffective. Harris quotes a study by the National Bureau of Educational Research which found that the program “the program kept up to three million workers employed an additional year at a cost of up to $258,000 per job retained.”

This is a very powerful, well researched article that raises important questions. if charter schools are “businesses,” how can they call themselves ”public schools?” Public schools were not eligible for PPP funds because they are not businesses. Charter schools qualified for public school funding and for PPP funding. They are both fish and fowl. They did not lose money, like the mom-and -pop stores that had to close their doors. But they eagerly took the money that was supposed to save the jobs of people who lost them and save the businesses on the edge of bankruptcy.

Permissible? Perhaps. Ethical? No.


Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Hypocrisy, Privatization
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