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An Activist in Indianapolis Mourns the Death of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2026 //
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Nigel Long is a graduate of Shortridge Public High School in Indianapolis and the parents of students in the Indianapolis Public Schools. He lived through the systematic destruction of his city’s public schools. He opposed the so-called reformers, as he watched them erode and finally eliminate democratic control of the public schools.

Here he expresses his outrage at the theft of democratic control of the city’ schools. His article was posted by the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

Nigel Long wrote;

Guest Blog – How to Steal a Public School System: The Indianapolis Playbook

I want to talk about what happened in Indianapolis recently, not just for us, but for every city in America.

The Indianapolis Public Education Corporation board was announced. An unelected body now controls school closures, buildings, property taxes, and transportation across the entire boundaries of Indianapolis’ largest and oldest school district. 

David Harris, the man who founded the Mind Trust in 2006, chairs the board. Janet McNeal leads Herron Classical Schools, a network the Mind Trust incubated. Edward Rangel runs Adelante Schools, another Mind Trust launch. Dexter Taylor leads Paramount Brookside, same ecosystem. The IPS board members included were elected with the same dark money that’s been buying school board seats since 2012. And Micheal O’Connor, the consultant the city paid over half a million dollars in public money to design the process that produced this board is now its acting executive director. This board didn’t emerge from the community. It was assembled by the people who funded the takeover.

“This board didn’t emerge from the community. It was assembled by the people who funded the takeover.”

This is the final chess piece in a 20-year game. And I know that because I was there for the first one.

I was a 9th grader at Shortridge High School when the Mind Trust brought John Legend to Indianapolis. I remember being on that field trip, sitting in that room, caught up in the excitement of a global superstar telling us that the future of our schools was bright. I didn’t know then that I was watching the beginning of the end of IPS as we know it. I was a kid. I didn’t know what any of it meant.

I graduated from Shortridge 13 years ago. And I have spent the years since watching that moment slowly reveal itself for what it was.

John Legend wasn’t there for us. He was there to give community cover to the privatization of Indianapolis public schools: a coordinated decades-long effort involving the Mind Trust, Stand for Children, RISE Indy, the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart), Bloomberg Philanthropies, Reed Hastings (Netflix), John Arnold (Enron), and the political allies who carried their water at the statehouse. The money trail is all public record. You don’t raise $134 million and fly in a Grammy winner because you’re running an education experiment. You do it because you need people to stop asking questions.

Since 2006, the Mind Trust has raised over $134 million (their own number, from their own website) working toward this exact moment. They used dark money to purchase school board seats. They ran a legislative process that was designed from the beginning to land exactly where it landed.

The cruelest part of this privatization agenda is that real parents with real concerns were recruited, conditioned, and in some cases compensated to be the public face of something they were never given the full picture on. Their frustration was real. What was done with it was manipulation. They took the pain of Black and brown families navigating a broken system, pointed it in the direction that served them, and called it community engagement. That’s not parent voice. That’s manufactured consent with a marketing budget.

And long before any institution took an official position, there were everyday people in this city, parents, teachers, neighbors, who saw exactly what was happening and said so out loud. They got dismissed. They got ignored. They got outspent. The community has been screaming about this for years. What happened recently is what it looks like when nobody in power listens or cares about the community they are tasked to serve.  

When nearly twice as many people testified against this plan as those who supported it, it didn’t matter. The votes were already lined up. The legislation was already written. The board members were already chosen.

That’s not democracy. That’s the performance of it.

My grandmother had a saying: fat meat is greasy. It means learning a lesson the hard way after ignoring advice that was right in front of you.

A lot of us have been saying this for years. The receipts have been public. The Mind Trust got exactly what they came for. Now all of us — students, parents, educators, communities — have to live in whatever comes next. If this is the first time you’re hearing it, I hope today is the day it becomes impossible to ignore.

I want to be clear about where accountability lives here because this is not a partisan story. State Republicans wrote the legislation and pushed it through. Local Democrats, on the city council and beyond, had every opportunity to protect democratic governance in this city and chose not to. Mayor Hogsett convened the very process that produced these recommendations and appointed the board that will now run our schools. There is no version of this story where the spineless performance of our local elected officials doesn’t deserve to be named directly.

Both parties failed Indianapolis. Full stop.

IPS spent years being held up as a broken system that needed fixing. What actually happened was a live demonstration of how to take a public school system apart and replace democratic accountability with private control without firing a single shot. The enrollment flight that became the justification for this takeover was engineered by the same organizations now running the solution. And everyone in that room when the final vote was cast knew exactly where it was going.

I say this as someone who cares about every child in this city, Black, brown, white, charter school, public school, all of them. Every student in Indianapolis will feel this. Charter families included. This was never about kids versus kids. It was always about who controls the institution.

This was never about kids versus kids. It was always about who controls the institution.

We are living through modern day colonialism dressed up in innovation language. And the proof is in the outcome. Our schools are more segregated today than they have ever been. That’s not an accident. That’s by design.

The IPS that shaped me — that shaped generations of Indianapolis kids — has potentially changed forever. That matters beyond politics because schools are not just buildings and test scores. They are where communities build identity, pass down culture, and figure out who they are. This city has a documented history of coordinated institutional action against Black communities that most people were never taught. Crispus Attucks was built in 1927 to keep Black students out of white schools, segregation dressed up as institution building. Indiana Avenue, once a thriving Black cultural and economic district, was deliberately destroyed between the 1950s and 1970s through highway construction, IUPUI expansion, and eminent domain. Over 12,000 people were displaced. 400 acres of Black history erased. Coordinated by universities, hospitals, city leaders, and state government. Busing in 1981 put the burden of desegregation on Black children while white families simply moved further out. And now this. One day this moment will be remembered alongside all of those — another decision about Black children where the outcome was predetermined before the community ever had a real say. Different decade. Different language. Same intention.

IPS was first. This sets a dangerous precedent for every district in this state. The Indianapolis-Marion County townships, the rural districts, the suburban districts. Any community that powerful people decide isn’t capable of governing itself is vulnerable to exactly what happened here. That’s the part that should terrify everyone regardless of where your kids go to school. This isn’t just about Black and brown communities anymore. It’s about who gets to decide that a community isn’t smart enough or capable enough to make decisions about their own children’s education, and then build the infrastructure to take that power away from them. Indianapolis just showed them how.

The only chance we have going forward is making sure our next mayor isn’t full of shit. And it means holding every elected official, Democrat and Republican, local and state, accountable for what they did and didn’t do when it mattered.

Here’s what I know. The ability to elect the people who make decisions about your children’s education is not a bureaucratic detail. It is democracy’s most basic promise. When you erode that at the school board level and nobody stops it, you have established that it can be done. And if it can be done with education, the institution we trust most with our children and our future, then nothing is off the table.

This feels like a loss because it is one. But public schools have survived worse because the communities behind them refused to quit. That community is still here. It has always been here. No appointed board can change that. The fight doesn’t stop today.

Show up for our school boards. Know who represents us. Demand better from our mayor, our city council, our state legislators.Get involved in our local elections like our kids’ future depends on it, because it does.The people making these decisions are counting on our exhaustion. We can’t give it to them.

Nigel Long is a cultural organizer, event producer, and community builder based in Indianapolis. He is the Founder of SoundOff and serves as Chairperson of BLACK: A Festival of Joy. He is a proud graduate of Shortridge High School and an IPS parent.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Indiana, Indianapolis, Inequity, Privatization

The Corporate Takeover of Public Schools in Indianapolis

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2026 //
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So-called reformers continue to pursue a fantasy: they believe that changing the governance of public schools will lead to improvement in the education of children.

And so they advocate for mayoral control, state takeovers, charter schools, vouchers.

They choose to ignore the overwhelming consensus among education researchers that the home lives of children has a far greater impact on children’s school performance than the governing structure.

Here is a case in point, offered by In the Public Interest.

If you’re worried about corporations taking over public schools, this next sentence will not allay your worry: The state of Indiana just turned over much of the responsibilities for the city of Indianapolis’ schools–public and charter–to something called the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation (IPEC).

“This new organization will be charged with building and transportation management for both charter and traditional public schools,” reports Governing. “It will also be charged with creating a single set of evaluation criteria for both types of schools.”

Admittedly, it’s a nonprofit corporation and its nine board members are appointed by the mayor with statutes to determine the corporate board’s membership: three come from the Indianapolis Public Schools [IPS] board of commissioners–which still exists, three from the charter school industry, and three with administrative and financial expertise. 

In reality, however, four board members are from the charter industry. Its board chairman is David Harris, who founded the Mind Trust-Indianapolis, the driving force pushing the charterization of the district. Harris is the President and CEO of Christal House International that operates the Christal House Academy charter chain. According to the organization’s 990 tax form, in 2025, Harris received $554,148 in compensation.

But IPEC inserts a layer of control and bureaucracy beyond–or, better put, around–Indianapolis’ elected school board. At least as troubling as that is the fact IPEC was given the authority to levy property taxes that it can use to fund–with public money–charter schools. This puts charter schools on equal footing–and funding–with public schools–a dangerous precedent that is certain to be attempted elsewhere. 

One of IPEC’s first orders of business is likely to be placing on the November ballot an operating referendum since IPS’ expires at the end of this year. While Indianapolis Public Schools expects a $40 million deficit for the year, that might have been addressed if IPS’s attempt to place an operating referendum on the 2023 ballot hadn’t been derailed by the charter school industry and the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. 

For public school advocates, the implications of the new, non-elected board are clear–and disturbing.

“What is occurring in Indianapolis is part of a growing movement to destroy the neighborhood school governed by the community and replace it with a corporate vision of schooling that sees the marketplace and competition as the primary drivers of quality,” Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, tells In the Public Interest. “We are now more than thirty years into the charter school experiment, and we have yet to see the miracle.”

Jeff Hagan
Communications Director

Categories Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis, Parents, Research, Students

New Hampshire: The Dirty Secret of Vouchers for All

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2026 //
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Garry Rayno, writer of “The Distant Dome” for inDepthNH, has been covering the legislature for many years. The presence of a large faction of libertarians in the legislature make it difficult to predict what they will do.

In this post, he reviews the likely consequences of passing a voucher bill for which everyone is eligible.

Rayno wrote about what vouchers will accomplish: They will subsidize the well-to-do while diminishing the resources of poor districts.

He wrote:

This week the House will vote on what is perhaps one of the Republicans’ biggest priorities, universal public school open enrollment or Senate Bill 101.

The bill has changed since it left the Senate with a new funding source so one town’s school property tax dollars are no longer sent to another school district following one of its students.

Under the new plan, the district enrolling another district’s student would receive a $9,000 payment from the state’s often tapped Education Trust Fund which was originally established to hold state tax dollars for public education separately to guarantee the state meets its obligation to provide its students an adequate education and to pay for it.

Over the last five years about $130 million dollars has been drawn from the trust fund to largely subsidize the education of children who were not supported by the state dollars because they are in private, or religious schools or homeschooled and their parents were footing the bill.

Despite two superior court rulings the state is not meeting its obligation to pay for an adequate education for its students, lawmakers have not seen fit to increase state aid to public schools which receive about $4,200 per pupil in state aid, along with differentiated aid for poverty, English language learners and special education making the average per pupil aid around $5,000 per student.

If this bill passes, and it probably will, even more money will be drawn from the Education Trust Fund to pay for students moving from one public school to another.

The State Department of Education declined to predict how many students might take advantage of the new open enrollment policy, so just how much of a hit the trust fund will take is not known.

The trust fund is not the only entity that will experience financial loss with the new policy.

The school district losing the student will lose his or her state aid which ranges from $4,200 on the low end to about $8,000 on the high side.

Chances are the districts losing students will be in property poor communities that can ill afford to lose any state aid for their schools without impacting property taxes. Even if they reduce staff if enough students leave, many costs like buildings, electricity, heating and transportation will remain the same.

The district receiving the students will receive the $9,000 per student state aid but its average per pupil cost is likely to be higher than the state average of about $23,000 per student.

That means the receiving district will have to pick up the difference in theory although adding a few students is not likely to change overall costs much.

And the big issue still hanging over the open enrollment bill is who pays for a student’s special education costs who transfers.

The sending district is responsible for those costs, so some — and it may actually be many — school districts will be sending the receiving districts substantial checks to cover special education services which have been growing steadily more expensive with the state and federal governments not living up to their obligations to pay those bills.

That means local property taxpayers in a sending district will continue to pay the majority of the special education costs for their student if he or she transfers out of the district.

Under the bill, parents are responsible for their student’s transportation to the new school although they can make arrangements with the receiving districts to drop their student at a convenient bus stop, but that is not guaranteed.

Looking at the bigger picture, who will be able to participate in the new open enrollment scheme? Probably not a single parent — most likely a mother — who has to work one or two or three jobs to support her children, or poor families with both parents working.

The largest group served by the open enrollment plan will be children of well-to-do parents who have the time and money to drive their children the 10 or 50 or 100 miles to the school of their choice be it for academics, the theater, music, art or athletic program, or even the special education services, to schools in property wealthy school districts.

Once again it is the reverse Robin Hood concept where the property wealthy districts and wealthy families receive the greatest benefit while the property poor districts and their families will see less state aid and dwindling educational resources for their children.

Much like the state’s voucher program, while it was originally touted as a way for low-income parents to access the best educational environment for their children, the greatest benefit is to those families wealthy enough to send their children to private or religious schools or to homeschool their children.

There is a lot of rhetoric about open enrollment providing the best educational experience for children, but that is only true if you can afford to and have the time to transport their children to another school district.

Since the supporters of the voucher program or Education Freedom Accounts, were able to open the program to any eligible parent in New Hampshire last year regardless of income this year, they have proposed several other ways to expand it beyond the legal cap of 10,000 students this year and 12,500 this coming school year by opening it up to military families and allowing EFA students to take classes at their local public schools at no cost.

When the program originally passed, EFA students were not allowed to go back to their former school for a class or two, there was a bold black line.

Now supporters of the program want to blur the line which is fine for the student and his or her parents but not the school districts which lost the state aid associated with those students.

The proposed changes do not help those low-income parents who were used to finally get the program passed by including it in the budget package during the 2021 session, but are now seldom mentioned. The program did not have the votes to pass on its own five years ago.

If the voucher program were truly helping kids who do not do well in the public school environment from low-income families, there would be a lot less opposition.

Those kids are a small minority and do not receive the vast majority of the benefits.

Those who benefit from the new open enrollment program are the same people who benefit from  the voucher program, those wealthy enough to send their children to private and public institutions and homeschool, not those leaving public schools, who are few and far between and a declining percentage.

The greatest beneficiaries of this “school choice” push are not the ones who need government’s help. They can do quite well on their own.

And all of these changes to public education do nothing to reform it or fund it adequately, but do make it more difficult to provide for the educational needs of 90 percent of the state’s children who attend public schools.

And that is the bigger picture too many people fail to see.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Hampshire, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Arizona: State Supt. Intervenes to Save Failing Charter School owned by Multi-Millionaire

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2026 //
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In Arizona, the state charter board did the right thing: it planned to close an online charter school with a long record of failure. But the owner of the charter school was a big Republican donor. And he was a multi-millionaire, who had been richly rewarded by his ownership of Primavera. He had a meeting of the minds with the State Superintendent of Schools, Tom Horne. Horne is a strong believer in choice. Suddenly, Primavera’s grades were recalculated and closure of the piggy bank was off the table.

Veteran reporter Craig Harris told the story for Channel 12:

PHOENIX — For more than a year, Arizona’s largest online charter school, Primavera, and its multi-millionaire owner, Damian Creamer, faced the very real possibility of being shut down. 

Plagued by poor academic performance and mounting scrutiny, the State Charter Board had already taken multiple steps toward revoking the school’s charter in 2025.

But in a surprising turn of events, Primavera has been given a lifeline — thanks to an intervention from Republican State Schools Chief Tom Horne.

The decision sparked frustration among board members who had spent months working toward closure.

Longtime board member James Swanson, reflecting the general mood of the 11-member board.

He said the board acted within its authority to hold Primavera accountable after students recorded “D” letter grades for three consecutive years ending in 2024.

Board Chairwoman Jessica Montierth echoed that sentiment after the 9-2 vote, noting the significant time and effort invested in the case. 

“Our authority is based on following through with policy and procedure, and that’s what we have done,” she said, adding that the outcome was difficult to accept given the circumstances.

The controversy surrounding Primavera intensified following a 12News investigation early last year. 

The 12News Investigates report in February 2025 revealed that the school’s owner, Creamer, had paid himself $24 million since 2017.

At the same time, the school consistently underperformed academically as the Charter Board gave Primavera its worst annual rating four times: Falls Far Below Standard. Two times, Primavera got the second-worst rating: Does Not Meet Standard. 

The free-wheeling at Primavera is a byproduct of Arizona’s loosely regulated charter school industry that allows owners to make as much money as possible for years with public funds. 

But in March 2025, the Charter Board formally voted to begin the process of shutting the school down after it received three consecutive annual “D” letter grades.

Creamer, who did not attend Tuesday’s meeting, previously attributed the low grades to administrative errors. 

He argued that Primavera should have been evaluated under alternative school standards rather than traditional ones. 

And he appealed directly to Horne, after having the support of Republican leaders who also lobbied the Charter Board on his behalf. 

“We’re so grateful for Tom Horne,” Creamer, a major GOP donor, said during a press conference in mid-March 2025. “For working with us so that we can correct this administrative error.”

Horne twice that month said he wasn’t going to intervene. 

“My first priority for all public schools is academic success,” Horne said in March 2025. “It is important that charters and district schools alike are held accountable for the quality of education they provide. The Board’s action demonstrates that these are not just words, but actions. Primavera is being held accountable and losing its ability to operate because of poor academic results.”

Horne, however, later allowed Primavera to privately meet with his staff and present new records to his office.

The board accused Horne of taking the “unprecedented steps of retroactively reclassifying Primavera from a traditional school to an alternative school, reopening prior-year data, and allowing the submission of additional information.”

That was key because traditional charter schools are evaluated under higher academic measures, while alternative schools, which typically serve higher-risk or non-traditional student populations, are evaluated with different performance expectations.

It’s unclear when Horne, who is currently in a tight re-election campaign against Treasurer Kimberly Yee for the GOP nomination, made all of the changes. 

But Charter Board officials on Tuesday said Horne’s intervention resulted in the Department of Education indicating the school would have received three Alternative “C” grades instead of three “D” grades under the traditional model. 

The board, in a statement, said this “after-the-fact rewrite of Primavera’s academic performance fundamentally changed the facts underlying the Board’s case long after enforcement had begun, effectively removing the Board’s ability to proceed under its established authority.”

Remember, “it’s all about the kids! No child should be trapped in a failing charter school! Parents know best!”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

Tom Ultican: Billionaire Fads Are Undermining Schools

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2026 //
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Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics in California, says that all the bright and shiny fads have actually harmed students and teachers. I have not posted the entirety of his commentary. To finish reading it, open this link.

He writes:

Trump’s billionaire education leader, Linda McMahon, claimed on Fox News, “We’re doing terribly, I mean, our education system’s failed our kids.” Like a typical oligarch, she bolstered her point by mischaracterizing NAEP assessment levels stating, “only about 30% of high school and eighth graders can read proficiently or do math proficiently.” Maybe that sounds bad, but the reality is those numbers indicate that 30% of students are achieving at a high B or low A grade-level which sounds pretty good to me.

McMahon was promoting her nonpartisan “History Rocks!” tour. The sponsors of the tour are certainly not nonpartisan. They include America 250 Civics Education Coalition, led by pro-Trump America First Policy Institute which is composed of right-wing organizations such as Turning Point USA, Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation.

However, even though standardized testing is a terrible method for evaluating schools and students, it is notable that the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) results have been falling since 2013.

The NAEP data plotted above is for all tested US students in 8th grade and 4th grade reading. Around 2013, results started dropping. Data for math also shows this same trend. Because education has so many variables, establishing a solid cause and effect relationship for this decline is impossible.

Based on my personal experience in the classroom and my years of observing education outcomes, I have developed a theory that at least partially explains the decline.

Education Technology

In the 1990s, I worked in Silicon Valley researching friction problems associated with computer equipment. Part of my assignment was to develop software that ran testing devices, gathered massive data sets and loaded them into a Microsoft data base which created reports that I shared with customers. Once the testing was setup and started, everything from then on was automated. I loved pushing technology and making it do things no one else had.

In 1999, I got tired of Silicon Valley. That is when I returned to San Diego and sought a teaching credential. At the time, I imagined being able to use my technology expertise in future classrooms. I had become genuinely excited about education technology (edtech).

I wish I could say my expectations were met but I cannot.

I discovered that instead of edtech driving exploration, it was aimed at controlling and replacing teachers.

As part of the master of education program at UCSD, we were sent to local schools to work with students. I went to a local high school to work with struggling math students in a recovery class. Students were assigned to work on computer presented math problems which were then graded by the computer.

As the education technology critic Audre Watters has observed:

“Just because it’s a worksheet on an iPad doesn’t mean it’s transformational or exciting. It’s still a worksheet.”

In retrospect, this experience was an early effort to replace teachers with computer screens. Instead of working on making edtech an exciting addition to education, the effort was pointed toward putting kids at screens instead learning from teachers. The technology industry was promising to reduce the need for costly teachers.

Physics Lab Class

This picture shows an example of using technology to engage students in authentic learning. Two photogates affixed to the ramp were accurate to + or – 0.001 seconds. Here the students were adjusting the ramp to achieve constant velocity when a marble rolled down the ramp. The photogates provided data including the time for test object to roll through the gate and the time between gates. Since students new the diameter of the test ball and the distance between the gates, they were able to calculate three velocities. Once the three velocities were all equal, they changed to a test ball with identical geometry but significantly less mass. They were then able to observe that the mass of the ball did not change the velocity which accords with Galileo Galilei’s 1589 experiment testing mass and gravity.

Unfortunately, only small companies were working to develop engaging technology for learning. Larger companies were developing school management systems that gathered large data sets on all students and teachers. Or they were creating schemes where teachers created lessons on their platforms which then claimed ownership of the lessons.

The school district I was in bought every student an I-pad and then three years later replaced those I-pads with laptop computers. Because these devices were such a classroom distraction, teachers often required students to put them in their backpacks and store them under their desks.

It was worse than a waste of money. It was undermining learning.

 In my AP physics classes, students were not working through the assigned problems. They discovered that almost all physics problems had a worked-out example on line. I was getting the most beautiful work I had ever seen but the students were clueless when tested.

It seems fair to identify edtech as a possible cause for declining test scores. Artificial intelligence will likely make — not working or thinking — an even bigger problem.

Science of Reading

The Orwellian labeled science of reading (SoR) is not based on sound science. In 1997, congress passed legislation calling for a reading study. Establishment of the National Reading Panel (NRP) was a doomed effort from the beginning. It was a massive undertaking, conducted by twenty-one unpaid volunteers over 18-months. NRP fundamentally did a meta-analysis in five reading domains, ignoring 10 other important domains. They did not review everything and there was no new research. Their report is the basis for SoR.

To finish reading the post, open this link.

Categories Billionaires, Education Industry, Literacy, Technology

Shawgi Tell: The Pace of Crime and Corruption in Charter Schools Continues

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2026 //
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With the rapid spread of vouchers, which are busting the budgets of several states and tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, it’s easy to overlook the danger posed by charter schools. Charter schools are a strong step towards vouchers, replacing neighborhood schools with consumerism. Almost 90% of American students attend public schools. We should be funding those schools, not schools operated by private boards and religious groups.

Dr. Shawgi Tell reminds us that charter schools continue to breed corruption and fraud, as they drain resources from public schools. Charter schools are not subject to the same accountability as public schools. They operate under private management, which shields them from the accoubtabilty to which public schools are subject. Without oversight or accountability, bad things happen.

Dr. Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York.

He writes:

Even though they make up only 8% of schools in the country, crimes, scandals, and arrests take place at a robust tempo in the nation’s privately-operated charter schools.

These non-stop wrongdoings usually include fraud, embezzlement, harassment, and a range of sex crimes.

This is not surprising given the weak accountability, transparency, and background checks that have plagued the crisis-prone charter school sector for more than 30 years.

A small sample of headlines from just this year speaks volumes:

·        Cedar Rapids Prep Charter principal terminated this week as second harassment charge is filed (The Gazette, April 3, 2026).

·        Las Vegas charter school assistant principal arrested on child abuse charges (FOX5, March 23, 2026).

·        L.A. charter school teacher accused of assaulting 6-year-old girl (2UrbanGirls, March 21, 2026).

·        Little Elm charter school teacher arrested for child sex crimes (FOX 4, January 30, 2026).

·        $25M swindled by fraudulent charter school recovered for San Diego K-12 students (City News Service, January 30, 2026).

·        Owner of Newark charter school accused of stealing wages from teachers (NBC Bay Area, January 21, 2026).

·        Former New Orleans charter school may have improperly spent more than $600,000, audit says (NOLA, January 21, 2026).

·        Former Midlands charter school teacher arrested for allegedly assaulting student (WIS, January 14, 2026).

·        North Carolina charter school teacher charged with multiple child sex crimes, including against a student (FOX 8, January 3, 2026).

Do such horrible things happen in traditional public schools and private religious schools? Yes they do, but when looking at scale, scope, frequency,  and proportionality, they are considerably more rampant in charter schools, which are deregulated businesses governed by unelected private persons.

The privatization and marketization of education lends itself to such phenomena on a broad scale. Privatization increases corruption and lowers standards across a broad range of operations, roles, and services. Converting public programs and services into capital-centered programs and services usually enriches a handful of people while harming the public interest in the process. When programs and services focused on uplifting people and society are transformed into profit-maximizing entities, the majority suffers.

See here for more examples of charter school crimes and scandals.

Shawgi Tell (PhD) is the author of Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

John Thompson: Beware of the Effort to Revive the NCLB Punishments, by Stealth

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2026 //
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John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, was stunned by some survey results released about parents’ opinions on education. He took a deep dive, read the raw data, and discovered that the survey was conducted by ExcelInEd, Jeb Bush’s organization. Excel promotes high-stakes accountability for public schools but no accountability whatsoever for voucher schools, which they also promote.

ExcelinEd has familiar game plan: they use inaccurate NAEP statistics to defame public schools, demand more accountability to crush the morale of principals, teachers, and parents, then insist that vouchers and charters are the way forward. As Josh Cowen showed in his book The Privateers, voucher schools get far worse results than public schools, and numerous studies have shown that charter schools are usually no better than public schools and often much worse.

Thompson writes:

Patricia Levesque, the executive director of ExcelinEd, recently wrote a commentary about a survey of 500 Oklahoma parents, claiming that more than 80% of them want “a state testing and accountability system to measure student achievement, and they expect honesty and accuracy about their children’s grade level performance.”  

Her stressing honesty is ironic because ExcelinEd is known for spreading the falsehood that reliable NAEP Proficiency test scores correlate with “grade level.” That helps rightwing organizations like the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs proclaim, “Just 14 percent of third-grade students in both the Oklahoma City and Tulsa districts tested proficient or better on state ELA tests.” In fact, NAEP Basic is closer to grade level.

So, I took a dive into the survey. My reading of it was very different than Levesque’s. 

In some ways, the survey she described  is consistent with the Education Department parent survey that State Superintendent Lindel Fields released. But Levesque’s interpretation of the results was very different than Fields’ analysis of the state’s parent feedback.

The survey Levesque cited found that 74% of parents want a pay raise for teachers, and another 74% say we spend too little on education. Her study found that 80% of parents were very or somewhat satisfied with their school but, for some reason, it adds, “While overall positive, this fails to hit the common 95% satisfaction sought in commercial endeavors.”

While 78% of parents support retention by 3rd grade of students who don’t read on “level,” parents estimate that about 83% students read at or above grade level; and 78% are confident in the way their schools teach reading.

FYI, in 1998, 80% of Oklahoma 8th graders read at that level, but now about 59% do. My reading of the research, and classroom experience, attributes the subsequent decline to the way that No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top undermined the teaching of History, Science, Arts, and of the background knowledge that is essential for reading comprehension; huge funding cuts; COVID; and Ryan Walters; as well as the rise of social media.

Yes, 83% of the survey are supportive of student testing, which is no surprise. But, the study doesn’t dig into the difference between testing for tracking student progress, as opposed to high-stakes testing. After all, there is great support for testing for diagnostic purposes, as opposed to the reward-and-punish testing that has been rampant since the NCLB was enacted.

Conversely, the Education Departments’ parent survey seems to be calling for schools to tackle the crucial issues that they were forced to ignore, as districts invested in high-stakes test-prep.

When Superintendent Fields explained that the results of statewide surveys of educators and parents, informed the budget priorities he is seeking. Superintendent Fields reported, “Early literacy, support systems to improve behavior and mental health resources and teacher recruitment and retention are among the top three concerns for all groups surveyed.”

The Education Department survey found that some parents called for a reduction of standardized testing, while others did not address it.  

The parents survey included repeated calls for teaching critical thinking skills, and media literacy; identifying misinformation; and early grade emphasis on literacy.

It explained that parents “highlighted the importance of both academic and life skills, emphasizing the need for students to be well-prepared for real-world challenges.” 

Parents said that misinformation is very prevalent, and children need to be taught how to tell fact from fiction. They understand that learning how to be critical consumers of information is “literally the foundation of a successful life.” They know that social media and A.I. can make kids “susceptible to conspiracy theories and propaganda.” 

What I didn’t see in the parents’ responses was calls for data-driven accountability; online, as opposed to personal tutoring for 3rd graders; or simple “miracles.”

What I saw was a desire to return to personal connections. I saw goals that would require more support for educators, as well as requiring cooperation with social workers, health providers, and mentors that are necessary for preparing children for a full life in the 21st century. 

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Data, Education Industry, Florida, Oklahoma, Standardized Testing

Paul Thomas: The “Reading Crisis” Is Overblown

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2026 //
4

Paul Thomas is a professor at Furman University. He has taken a leading role in refuting claims for the “science of reading.”

There are many successful ways to teach reading. some children arrive at school knowing how to read, because a parent read with them every day. Phonics is important. The joy of reading is important. Comprehension is important. Legislatures should not mandate one way to teach.

In his latest post, he writes:

If you pay attention to the non-stop moral panicking around reading fanned by mainstream media, you may have seen this click-bait headline: Did New York blow $10 million on reading instruction that doesn’t work?

The article repeats tired and misleading (often false) stories about the failures of balanced literacy, NAEP reading scores, the “success” of Mississippi and Louisiana, the promise of structured literacy, and the National Reading Panel as well as the one research study on phonics that is linked.

Let’s consider these:

*No scientific studies identify a reading crisis in the US causally linked to balanced literacy, reading programs, lack of phonics instruction, or inadequacy of teacher education. (Aydarova, 2025; Reinking, Hruby, & Risko, 2023).

*The media hyper-focuses only on grade 4 NAEP reading scores, but notice how the story changes once we consider grade 8—states behind MS in grade 4 catch and pass MS by grade 8 (primarily because MS inflates their grade 4 scores by excessive grade retention, like FL):

*Structured literacy (scripted curriculum) is whitewashing the reading curriculum and restricting teacher autonomy and professionalism. (Khan, et al., 2022; Parsons, et al., 2025; Rigell, et al., 2022).

*The linked research suggests it replicates findings of the NRP; however, the NRP did not prove systematic phonics outperformed whole language or was a silver bullet. As Diane Stephens explains about the findings on phonics: “Minimal value in kindergarten; no conclusion about phonics beyond grade 1 for ‘normally developing readers’; systematic phonics instruction in grades 2-6 with struggling readers has a weak impact on reading text and spelling; systematic phonics instruction has a positive effect in grade 1 on reading (pronouncing) real and nonsense words but not comprehension; at-risk students benefit from whole language instruction, Reading Recovery, and direct instruction.” Further, while the article quotes from the research report, it doesn’t include this much more tentative hedge: “These findings suggest that SL approaches may yield larger positive effects on student learning compared to BL approaches.” At best, structured literacy is no better or worse than whole language or balanced literacy, but to be clear, there is no “settled science” that is works.

But the bigger problem is not that mainstream media continues to repeat misinformation, but that it fails to offer the full story.

Note that the “literacy experts” quoted in the article are supporting structured literacy programs (scripted curriculum), and some of those experts are co-authors of those programs.

Further, these experts are promoting a different teacher training program than the one being attacked in the article, and many states are spending 10s of millions of dollars on that program—LETRS. (My home state of SC a few years ago allocated $11 million for one year, for example.)

What’s missing in this story?

There are two high-quality studies that were released in 2025 on the effectiveness of LETRS, but so far, there have not been click-bait scare headlines about those findings:

*A review (Rowe & Thrailkill, 2025) of reading policy in North Carolina concludes:

Despite LETRS’ claim that it helps educators “distinguish between the research base for best practices and other competing ideas not supported by scientific evidence” (Lexia Learning, 2022, p. 4), we noticed a pattern of misinterpretation, selective inclusion, and omission of literacy research. LETRS is a prime example of a common problem with the deployment of research for educational policy and instructional decision-making, in that multiple claims are not substantiated by a close reading of the original research cited (cf. Hodge et al., 2020).

*And Gearin, et al. (2025) found:

[Abstract] We investigated whether Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling: 3rd Edition (LETRS) was related to student reading ability by comparing the average third-grade reading achievement of schools that used LETRS to that of schools that used exclusively other professional development experiences in the context of Colorado’s Read Act. Guided by What Works Clearinghouse Standards, we conducted a quasi-experiment with propensity score matching and an active comparison group. We supplemented our primary intent-to-treat analysis with three sensitivity analyses designed to demonstrate the robustness of our claims. Effect estimates for completing a LETRS volume on educator knowledge ranged from 0.82 to 0.94. Students’ third-grade reading achievement did not statistically differ for schools that adopted LETRS compared with other professional development experiences in any model, suggesting that LETRS was comparable to the other programs at improving third-grade reading achievement at the school level.

The “science of reading” movement is a political, ideological, and market-based attack on teachers and public education, and the only people profiting off yet another moral panic are the media, political leaders, education reformers, entrepreneurs, and of course, the education market place.

The full story is never covered, because the real story about reading simply isn’t that profitable.

To get the links to research, open the article.

Categories Education Industry, Literacy, Research

Vermont: Malign Rightwingers Target Public Schools

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2026 //
3

Ken Fredette is a Vermonter who is dedicated to improving the state’s public schools. He is a former President of the Vermont School Boards Association and is currently active in Friends of Vermont Public Education.

A decade ago, when I visited Vermont, I was very impressed by the State Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcomb. She had a vision for public schools that was centered on the well-being of children, not punishments for teachers and schools. She ran for Governor and unfortunately lost. She is currently serving in the Legislature.

The current Governor is Republican Phil Scott. Ken Fredette wrote me that Scott left the Secretary of Education job open for a year (after Holcomb’s replacement Dan French resigned). Then, Ken wrote:

In 2024, following Phil Scott delaying appointing a replacement for SecEd Dan French for a year, he then appointed Zoie Saunders, from Florida, who worked for a for-profit charter school organization, and whose only experience with public schools was closing them. I was in the Vermont Senate chamber when the vote was 19-9 against approving the appointment – that advise and consent thing – and Scott reappointed her to “fill the vacancy” created by that vote before I was out of the building. You can’t make this stuff up.

So, clearly, Vermont has a Governor and Secretary of Education who have no commitment to Vermont’s public schools, attended by 90% of the state’s children.

You can help save Vermont public schools! Log in here. Stay informed.

Ken wrote this article, which was published by Weekender Rutland Herald and also the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

If anyone had any doubts that there is a concerted effort to undermine public education here in Vermont and throughout the country, those doubts should have evaporated on March 20, when an assistant U.S. secretary of education — on a tour to visit a school in all 50 states — opted to visit a small (less than 60 students) parochial school in Newport for a good example of schools in Vermont.

The plan to shift support from our constitutionally-mandated public education system to private schools — sometimes religious, sometimes for-profit charter schools in other states — has been orchestrated somewhat quietly for decades by groups employing tactics from a national playbook.

But the campaign is no longer quiet, bolstered by edicts from the White House, such as the federal voucher program; The Heritage Foundation (which carved out the dark caverns of Project 2025); questionable opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the separation of church and state, enshrined in the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and articulated by Thomas Jefferson; and countless other conservative groups.

The never-ending attacks have presented in blatant falsehoods: Remember the absurd claim that Critical Race Theory — a college level course — was being taught in our public schools? Lacking even a shred of evidence, it seems the fallback position of those promoting this was the more times the lie was told, and the louder the bombasts got, the more people would buy into it.

At the height of that hoax, a sitting member of the Vermont Legislature came to a local school board meeting with a list of words and phrases I recognized as having been generated by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (one of the above-mentioned conservative groups). I watched with my eyes growing wider as they rattled off the list, ending by demanding the board immediately issue a directive to all teachers that nothing on it would ever be spoken in a classroom.

When the air let out of the CRT balloon, it merely meant it was time to turn to the next page in the national playbook. That presented as empowering parents. Seriously, what possible argument could be given against parents having a say in their children’s education?

Choice has been a highly charged topic around the country for many years. Here in Vermont, this has reached a point where it is pitting the administration against our Legislature. My faith is placed with our representatives and senators to thoughtfully deliberate such important policy matters, and not afford so much decision-making authority to the governor’s office.

Also on March 20, a commentary from the director of policy and communications at the Vermont Agency of Education sang praises of Mississippi raising their fourth-graders’ reading proficiency dramatically, and relatively quickly; our governor had also pointed to this remarkable achievement during his recent State of the State address.

I’m very glad for the kids of Mississippi, but to imply Vermont students are falling off some sort of educational cliff by cherry-picking numbers and using vague phrases like “… trending downward for a decade” (starting about when our current governor took office) is chicanery. So is skipping over a major piece of the story: Mississippi third-graders who weren’t likely to excel in the fourth-grade assessments were forced to repeat third grade.

Vermont is unique in many ways, including — and perhaps especially — our education system. When 30% of school budgets failed at Town Meeting 2024, Vermonters weren’t saying to tear down our school system — they were saying that property taxes were burying them.

There are some pretty basic steps that could be taken to relieve those tax burdens on longtime working Vermonters. Asking those affluent enough to have a second home here to pay a fairer share is an obvious one, and that’s been a very successful program in a couple of other states already. Following that, let’s update the Common Level of Appraisal system such that if I buy a place in Vermont for $475,000 that was listed at $247,000, I just agreed the new value is $475,000, and my new neighbors’ property tax rates won’t float up to subsidize mine.

There are other steps we could take, but going back to a foundation formula is not among them. When you hear talk from the administration about a plan that is “evidenced based,” please bear in mind that the highly paid outside consultants providing the evidence repeatedly conceded that it didn’t really apply to Vermont, because we are different from any of the places they’d studied.

We need to look at data germane to who and where we are in order to make informed decisions on how to best proceed, because we need to get this right.

Ken Fredette lives in Wallingford.

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Vermont

A Warning about Tech in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2026 //
14

A reader who calls himself “Gitapik” shares his experience with the introduction of new technology into the special education programs for which he was responsible in New York City public schools.

He wrote:

As a former tech guy for our five District 75 special education sites in Brooklyn, I had quite a ride on this tech roller coaster. I was in on it from the beginning.

I applied for and received multiple very large state grants in technology. Once the money was received, I would choose, order, and facilitate installation of what technology went where in all the sites. From classroom computers, iPads, laptops, Attainment Stations, and Smartboards to full scale labs. It was a very big undertaking.

This also included conducting professional  development classes and individual training session sessions…very often to an unappreciative audience.

My sales pitch was always the same: this is a wonderful tool for you to incorporate into your standard every day teaching methods. You can turn it on and off in order to create interest and  spur on new ideas. I would even give examples of how I, a teacher, would do a class, using the different devices.

This would’ve been all well and good if it hadn’t been so naïve on my part. I witnessed firsthand how the technology went from being a tool for the teacher to the teacher being the tool of the technology. Might sound like a catchy phrase, but looking back on it I can’t help but see it for what it was. A planned takeover of the school systems. 

I could go into specifics, but this is getting pretty lengthy as it is.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City recently endorsed the use of AI in the classroom. He said he had met with top officials who had assured him that teachers and administrators would have a voice in how the technology would be applied. I would like to have his ear, knowing what I know. It’s the same sales pitch as was given to me. They just want to get their foot in the door

Categories Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit, New York City, Special Education, Technology
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