Archives for category: Education Industry
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Gary Rubinstein: Success Academy’s Curious Test Scores

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2019 //
9

 

Gary Rubinstein tries to decipher the paradoxical test scores At Eva Moskowitz’s controversial Success Academy.

For years, the No-Excuses charter chain has posted sky-high test scores, which skeptical observers attribute to the chain’s practices of exclusion and attrition.

However, Gary has noted this strange contradiction: SA students get high scores on state tests but low scores on high school Regents exams and on the exams for selective high schools in New York City.

Could it be that they do test prep for the 3-8 grade tests but have not cracked the code for the high school tests?

He writes:

Last year I wrote about how the top charter chain in New York City, Success Academy, only managed to have three students get between 52% and 72% of the questions correct on the Algebra II Regents…

Success Academy had 130 9th graders in the 2017-2018 school year.  Presumably most, if not all, would be taking the Geometry Regents, yet according to the records they had zero students even attempting that test.  For Algebra II I wrote about how in 2016-2017 they only had 13 students out of 16 pass and only 3 of them with grades above 72%.  Well, after seeing this recent story about their 8th graders and Algebra I, I looked that their Algebra II scores for last year (this year’s scores are not out yet on the data site).  Despite having 161 10th graders last year, 31 11th graders, and 17 12th graders, Success Academy had only 22 students even take the Algebra II Regents.  And their scores were the same as they were the previous year with 68% of the students getting between 30% and 52% of the possible points and 14% of the students getting between 52% and 72% of the possible points.

The meat of the story is between the ellipses. Read it.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, New York City, Testing

West Contra Costa Public Schools Lose $27.9 Million Annually to Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2019 //
10

 

According to a study by the watchdog group In the Public Interest, The public schools of the small West Contra School School District in California lose $27.9 million each year due to charter schools, a loss of nearly $1,000 for each student in the public schools. The majority of students suffer budget cuts so a small proportion can attend charter schools that may be no better and may close mid-year.

As of 2016-17, the school year for which the costs in this report were calculated, 28,518 students attended WCCUSD’s traditional public schools, while 4,606 students—14 percent of the total student population—were enrolled in 12 charter schools within the district’s physical boundaries. More recent data indicate an explosion in charter school enrollment. The proportion of WCCUSD students attending charter schools has more than doubled in four years, from 8 percent of the district total in the 2014 -15 school year to 17 percent this year.


The costs of charter schools


When students transfer to charter schools, funding for their education follows—but costs remain. Because charter schools pull students from multiple schools and grade levels, it’s rare that individual traditional public schools can reduce expenses enough to make up for the lost revenue. While WCCUSD schools have 14 percent fewer students to serve, a school cannot adjust expenses by, for example, cutting 14 percent of its principal, heating bill, parking lot paving, internet service, or building maintenance. The district also cannot proportionately cut administrative tasks such as bus route planning, teacher training, grant writing, and budget development. Because these central costs cannot be cut, districts are forced to cut services provided to traditional public school students.


Even if such cuts were possible, districts are legally responsible for serving all students in the community and must maintain adequate facilities to reabsorb students when inherently risky charter schools fail. During the 2016 -17 school year alone, 51 California charter schools either closed or were converted into traditional public schools.3

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

New York Times: Charters in NYC Trying to Reform Themselves as Backlash Grows

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2019 //
30

 

Eliza Shapiro of the New York Times reports on the efforts of some charter schools in New York City to  reform their practices and repair their tarnished image in response to a backlash against them. 

If you can open the comments, you will see that most readers who comment understand the charter hoax. They know that charters are a rightwing ploy created by billionaires like DeVos and Broad to bust unions and divert funding from public schools.

The story has a factually inaccurate headline: “Why Some of the Country’s Best Urban Schools Are Facing a Reckoning.” The story itself does not call these schools “the best urban schools in the country.” Yet the story buys into charter marketing myths. Some, like Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain, achieve high test scores by exclusion, attrition, and test prep. Does that make them among “the best urban schools”? The story falsely claims that these schools have “long waiting lists,” but that is charter propaganda. If they have these long lines hoping to gain admission, why do they demand that the NYC Department of Education turn over their mailing lists for recruitment purposes? Even Success Academy puts advertising on buses and hangs posters in supermarkets; why advertise if there is a waiting list?

The story says that some charter leaders are responding to the backlash against them by taking the critics seriously and trying to reduce their harsh discipline, to accept students with disabilities, and to hire more teachers of color.

When the charter school movement first burst on to the scene, its founders pledged to transform big urban school districts by offering low-income and minority families something they believed was missing: safe, orderly schools with rigorous academics.

But now, several decades later, as the movement has expanded, questions about whether its leaders were fulfilling their original promise to educate vulnerable children better than neighborhood public schools have mounted.

The story perpetuates another myth: that the backlash against charters was created by teachers’ unions. But teachers’ unions are eager to organize charter teachers.

In New York State, the real backlash against charters occurred at the polls last fall, when voters ousted the “Independent Democratic Caucus” which caucused with Republicans in the State Senate, and replaced them with progressive Democrats, who opposed charter invasions of their neighborhoods.

The legislative victories of charters depended on control of the State Senate by Republicans, who collaborated with Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo was the recipient of millions in campaign contributions from the charter lobby, especially hedge funders and Wall Street.

The story focuses on KIPP, the national corporate charter chain, and its national policy director Richard Buery, who previously was Deputy Mayor in the DeBlasio administration.

Mr. Buery, who is black and grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, noticed that black and Hispanic students in KIPP schools were sometimes being disciplined too harshly by their white teachers. The network’s high schools had impressive academic results and graduation rates, but their students then struggled in college. And KIPP executives’ relationships with elected officials were fraying.

In response, Mr. Buery adopted an unusual strategy: He publicly declared that some of the criticism of KIPP — and the charter movement in general — was merited, and announced that KIPP needed to change for it to continue to thrive.

Mr. Buery is part of a growing number of charter school executives to acknowledge shortcomings in their schools — partly in an effort to recast their tarnished image and to counteract a growing backlash that threatens the schools’ ability to influence American public education…

KIPP’s internal reckoning has coincided with a moment in which New York’s elected officials and Democratic presidential candidates have turned decisively away from the charter movement. Both groups are eager to please their allies in teachers unions, which have consolidated power over the last year.

The threat to charters is severe in New York City, which is home to more than 100,000 charter school students and was once seen as an incubator within the movement.

Exactly why the charter sector faces a “severe” threat, when it enrolls 100,000 students, is not clear. Unless the reporter means that the sector’s growth is stymied by the loss of power in Albany. The charter industry wants the Legislature to raise the cap on charters in NYC, and the newly energized Democratic-controlled Legislature won’t do it.

Why do corporate charter chains have to grow? Why can’t they be content to own 10% market share?

Nowhere in this article does it explain why the public should underwrite the costs of two competing school systems, one of which is privately controlled.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Discipline, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization

Andrea Gabor: The Slow But Steady Decline of the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2019 //
8

 

Andrea Gabor is one of the most interesting education writers around. She holds the Bloomberg Chair in Business Journalism at Baruch College. Her articles appear on sites read by people in the business world. Yet she has a firm grasp of education issues. Her latest book, After the Education Wars, has the best discussion of New Orleans education issues that I have seen. Her book The Man Who Invented Quality, about W. Edwards Deming, has a brilliant chapter #9) utterly demolishing merit pay. Follow her articles.

Her latest appears on the website of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Gabor tells the story of the reversals of fortune of the charter industry in California. Its billionaire funders spent heavily on losing candidates in the last election and are now playing defense.

The article was written before the indictment of 11 people in the charter industry in California for scamming the state of $80 million. That got lots of press and increases pressure on the Legislature to plug some holes in its charter laws.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Jersey Jazzman: What You Need to Know About Newark

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2019 //
2

Jersey Jazzman, aka Dr. Mark Weber, teacher, scholar, and blogger, brings the facts about the Newark schools up to date.

He does so in part because of Senator Cory Booker’s campaign, which has prompted news stories about the “Newark miracle.”

Bottom line: Don’t believe in miracles, at least secular miracles.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Newark, Privatization

Red Queen in LA: Deciphering the Charter Chaos and Shape-Shifting

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2019 //
6

 

This is another brilliant post by Sara Roos, known as Red Queen in LA.

She read the report of the leaked emails among charter advocates. She notes their double talk, their rhetorical legerdemain, their organizations that pop up like mushrooms, then morph into new organizations.

Behind this seeming chaos is a steady purpose: to disrupt and destroy public education.

Behind the chaos is the steady flow of millions from the billionaires who despise the commons.

The connect between the chaos and the billionaires are outstretched hands for hire.

She begins:

Charter schools in California band together as an embattled group, agitating for hostile takeover of the Public Commons. They serially convene, dissolve and reform a plethora of working groups to bombard public schools with “messaging” and disinformation.  The groups as well as charters themselves of course, drain resources from schools, necessitating capital (monetary and human) defending what should be protected by the people, for the people.

One of these itinerant ideologues is Ben Austin, founder of the “Parent Trigger”, who in 2014 resigned from his astroturf group to foment a new one, Kids Coalition. A collection of emailsmade public by the municipal-transparency site michaelkolhaas.org uncovered a set of strategies developed among this cabal, reported by Howard Blume at the LATimes hereand here.

The collusion, as one of them explains elsewhere, is “all about the messaging”. And the message revealed in aggregate over 5000+ emails, lays out a very stark code-shift. The catchy phrase, “kids first”, is a logical fallacy. Iterated unceasingly by charter advocates, it simultaneously casts aspersions on a presumed alternative (‘a time or place when kids were not first’) even while kids in schools have always been “first”. But consistent with the ideology of long-standing and now charter-mega-fundersKoch and Walton (among others), that term “kids first” effectively codes for “anti-union”. Because if formerly it were true that kids were not first, it would be the fault of the system that transposed their status, their teacher’s union. ‘If the proper order of kids is not upheld, it must be the fault of their teachers’ is the sly message.

Likewise there is a constant drum-beat against “bureaucracy” and “adult issues” but that too is simply code for “anti-regulation”. Charter schools aren’t really about finding a better way around bureaucracy. It is reviled incessantly, but the rules they denounce are precepts of democratic transparency, safety, efficiency, equity – cumbersome perhaps but the tenets of our republic. Instead the path they forge is of non-accountability: government funding without regulation. And this, even while the maxim “another day another charter school scandal” has been commonplace for decadesnow.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Los Angeles, Privatization

Los Angeles: Did Austin Beutner Clear His Major Policy Speech with the Charter Lobby?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2019 //
15

 

Blogger MIchael Kohnhaas says that Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner precleared a major policy speech with charter lobbyists. He provides documentation. Critics feared that the charter majority was choosing Beutner to do their bidding.

This post suggests they chose well.

The story about the secret plan was reported by the Los Angeles Times here.

The Plan is to win control of the board, the Mayor’s office, Sue the district, fight the teachers’ union.

Ben Austin’s email to charter supporters is quoted. Austin, you may recall, founded the billionaire funded Parent Revolution. He likes to pawn himself off as a “liberal,” who just happens to love charters and win Walton funding. His Patent Revolution spent millions trying to persuade poor parents to sign petitions to turn their public schools over to charter chains. It was a bust. The Revolution never happened. But Ben has now moved on and has created another AstroTurf group called “The Kids’ New Deal.”

Howard Blume writes:

The overriding issue of the email is how to overcome setbacks at the hands of the teachers union. Leaders of the union had vilified charters in the lead-up to the strike, saying that rapid charter growth was undermining traditional public schools by siphoning away motivated students and their families — and the public funding that travels with them. One day during the walkout was devoted to a march on the local headquarters of the California Charter Schools Assn.

Meanwhile, at the state level, charter supporters had spent big on losing candidates in the 2018 race for governor as well as Tuck’s bid for state superintendent. A central concern was that the growth of charters would be halted or even reversed.

[Ben] Austin asserted in his email: “As Machiavelli says, it’s better to be feared than loved. Right now we are neither.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Pennsylvania’s Expensive, Ineffective Cyber Charters

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2019 //
5

From the Keystone State Coalition, administered by Lawrence Feinberg:

Started in November 2010, daily postings from the Keystone State Education Coalition now reach more than 4050 Pennsylvania education policymakers – school directors, administrators, legislators, legislative and congressional staffers, Governor’s staff, current/former PA Secretaries of Education, Wolf education transition team members, superintendents, school solicitors, principals, charter school leaders, PTO/PTA officers, parent advocates, teacher leaders, business leaders, faith-based organizations, labor organizations, education professors, members of the press and a broad array of P-16 regulatory agencies, professional associations and education advocacy organizations via emails, website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

 

These daily emails are archived and searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org

Visit us on Facebook at KeystoneStateEducationCoalition

Follow us on Twitter at @lfeinberg

 

Reprise Aug. 2017: Pa. charter schools spend millions of public dollars in advertising to attract students

Public Source By Stephanie Hacke and Mary Niederberger AUG. 29, 2017

PART OF THE SERIES The Charter Effect|

If you’re a parent, it’s likely Facebook knows it.

If you’re not happy with your child’s current school, Facebook probably knows that, too. And you are likely to be hit with paid, highly targeted ads offering alternatives. That’s why when you scroll through your news feed on Facebook you may see a sponsored photo of a wide-eyed child and parent thrilled about their tuition-free, personalized education at a Pennsylvania cyber charter school. If you pay property taxes, you likely paid for this ad campaign. See the ad on the side of the Port Authority bus that shows happy students and a message that Propel Montour High School has spaces available in grades 9 and 10. Your property taxes paid for that, too. Television ads, radio promotions, social media ads and billboards promoting cyber and brick-and-mortar charter schools are everywhere. Some charter operators pay for online keyword searches that prompt their school’s websites to show up first when a parent searches for certain terms related to charter schools or a student’s need for an alternative education setting. In the last three school years, 12 of the state’s 14 cyber charter schools spent more than $21 million combined in taxpayer dollars promoting their schools, PublicSource found through Right-to-Know requests. The Commonwealth Charter Academy spent the most of the cyber charters on advertising; it spent $3.2 million in 2015-16 and $4.4 million in 2016-17.

https://projects.publicsource.org/chartereffect/stories/pennsylvania-charter-schools-spend-millions-of-public-dollars-in-advertising-to-attract-students.html

 

Blogger note: Total cyber charter tuition paid by PA taxpayers from 500 school districts for 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 was over $1.6 billion; $393.5 million, $398.8 million, $436.1 million and $454.7 million respectively.

In 2016-17, taxpayers in Senate Education Cmte Majority Chairman .@SenLangerholc’s districts had to send over $10.5.3 million to chronically underperforming cybers that their locally elected school boards never authorized. . #SB34 (Schwank) or #HB526 (Sonney) could change that. 

Data source: PDE via PSBA

 

Bedford Area SD $195,903.70
Blacklick Valley SD $172,928.49
Cambria Heights SD $171,102.13
Central Cambria SD $147,481.76
Chestnut Ridge SD $334,862.00
Claysburg-Kimmel SD $108,164.64
Clearfield Area SD $847,317.65
Conemaugh Valley SD $277,810.82
Curwensville Area SD $165,465.87
Dubois Area SD $781,498.59
Everett Area SD $352,172.57
Ferndale Area SD $231,971.23
Forest Hills SD $248,609.94
Glendale SD $157,426.86
Greater Johnstown SD $2,532,971.00
Harmony Area SD $127,540.41
Moshannon Valley SD $200,674.93
Northern Bedford County SD $225,181.66
Northern Cambria SD $251,658.09
Penn Cambria SD $428,637.20
Philipsburg-Osceola Area SD $697,580.57
Portage Area SD $182,599.03
Purchase Line SD $358,211.18
Richland SD $264,415.85
Tussey Mountain SD $253,595.93
West Branch Area SD $323,061.45
Westmont Hilltop SD $0.00
Windber Area SD $467,326.78
  $10,506,170.33

 

 

Has your state senator cosponsored bipartisan SB34?

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billInfo/bill_history.cfm?syear=2019&sind=0&body=S&type=B&bn=34

 

Is your state representative one of the over 70 bipartisan cosponsors of HB526?

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billInfo/bill_history.cfm?syear=2019&sind=0&body=H&type=B&bn=526

 

WHYY Radio Times: Cyber charter schools

Air Date: Friday June 21, 2019 10:00 am; Runtime 49:15

Guests: Margaret Raymond, Susan Spicka, David Hardy

A new study shows that many students enrolled in Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools are not getting a quality education. A quarter of Pennsylvania’s charter school students use these virtual learning programs as an alternative to attending brick-and-mortar schools. Today, we’ll hear about the damning report, the pros and cons of digital classrooms, and what the future holds for these types of programs. Joining us will be MARGARET RAYMOND, founding director of the organization, CREDO, that released the report, as well as SUSAN SPICKA of Education Voters of PA, and DAVID HARDY, executive director of Excellent Schools Pa, a school choice advocacy organization.

https://whyy.org/episodes/cyber-charter-schools-are-they-working/

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Michigan: Gov. Whitmer Wants to Impose Deformers on Benton Harbor

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2019 //
10

 

Thomas Pedroni of Wayne State University writes that Governor Gretchen Whitmer wants to impose corporate reform organizations on Benton Harbor to “save” the underfunded district. A cruel hoax. She is carrying forward the foul legacy of Republican Governor Rick Snyder.

 

Michigan Gov Whitmer Grants Benton Harbor Schools a Trojan Horse-load of School Privatizers 
 
Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, propelled to the state’s highest office just eight months ago by Black, Latino, and other progressive voters, is coming out to her electorate— not as a progressive, but as a third term retread of former Republican Governor and Flint Poisoner-in-Chief Rick Snyder.
 
Not only has Whitmer continued Snyder’s penchant for strong-arming and dismantling predominately Black school districts (he gutted Inkster, Buena Vista, Muskegon Heights, Highland Park, and Detroit; she’s “offered” to close Benton Harbor’s only high school in exchange for not immediately dissolving the entire district), but she also shares her predecessor’s fascination with the disruptive possibilities of some of our nation’s foremost corporate education reform companies.
 
While the Governor has responded to statewide outrage over her indecent proposal for Benton Harbor High School by grabbing her political life preserver and offering to consider alternative suggestions by the elected board (which returns to power after five years of state supervision on July 1), her rhetorical softening comes with a new “proposal”— Benton Harbor trustees must now agree to onboard a “turnaround expert” to guide their return to autonomy.
 
As the Benton Harbor trustees learned on Wednesday, June 26, just days before their restoration, the Governor has given them a choice— they must work with one of the four whole district “turnaround” companies she has laid on the table: AUSL (Academy for Urban School Leadership), TNTP (the New Teacher Project), TfC (Turnaround for Children), or ERC (Educational Resource Strategies).
 
AUSL, of course, has consistently failed to reach its promised benchmarks in the schools it’s taken over in Chicago and, remarkably, has underperformed non-AUSL Chicago schools despite receiving large resource infusions from the Gates Foundation. A recent Chicago Teachers Union analysis of AUSL teacher firing and replacement in Chicago found that the largest impact of AUSL takeover may be on the racial composition and experience level of the teaching workforce— fired teachers were disproportionately more experienced and of color.
 
TNTP, which traces its founding to the teacher-bashing Michelle Rhee and TFA’s Wendy Kopp, has been described by Peter Greene as the “big boys and girls” version of Teach for America, in that its objective is to transform people with established non-teaching careers into teachers. TNTP believes in using computer-administered multiple choice questions to identify better teachers.
 
The final two organizations, Turnaround for Children and Educational Resource Strategies, similarly partner with and are funded by a who’s who of the corporate education reform world— TfC by the Bezos Family Foundation, the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Kipp DC, and America’s Promise Alliance, among others; and ERS by the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, TNTP, and the New Schools Venture Fund.
 
How Governor Whitmer’s staff came up with this short list of corporate education reform organizations for Benton Harbor Schools is unclear; but one thing is clear— the Governor is passing over the insights and recommendations she might garner from the Benton Harbor community; from educational researchers and teacher educators; from officials and researchers at the Michigan Department of Education; from rank and file teachers and their unions. Instead she is laser-focused on whoever it is from the corporate education reform world who is whispering in her ear.
 
Benton Harbor Area Schools, its children, and the people who elected Whitmer deserve much better than this, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t get it. But this can only happen if Whitmer chooses to disavow the corporate education Koolaid and actually listen to the people she claims to value.
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Michigan, Privatization

Washington State: “Bold Experiment” with Charters Is Flunking

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2019 //
55

 

Give Bill Gates credit for persistence. He wanted charter schools in Washington State and he wouldn’t give up. The state held four referendums about whether to authorize private charter schools, and the idea was defeated time after time after time. Until 2012. Gates and his billionaire buddies raised a multimillion dollar war chest that completely overwhelmed the opposition of the PTAs, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Washington Education Association, and a long list of civil rights and good government groups.

And in 2012, the referendum passed by less than 1%, bought and paid for by Gates and friends. The opposition sued, and the state’s highest court ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they do not meet the State Constitution’s definition of a “common school,” which is governed by an elected board.

Gates then put up money to try to defeat the judges who ruled against his beloved charters, but they were re-elected.

Then he went to the Legislature and through his surrogates, persuaded the lawmakers to pass a bill to use lottery money to fund Bill Gates’ charters. He could have easily paid for them himself, but he wanted the public to pay.

A dozen or so were quickly set up, some of which were recruited by Gates and given seed money.

And so the bold experiment began.

Things went badly quickly. First, the Walton-funded CREDO from Stanford University evaluated the charters and found that overall they did not get better results from public schools.

Recently, some of the fledgling charters folded because of low enrollments.

Read this equivocal editorial in the Tacoma News Tribune, which alternates between acknowledging the disappointing performance of Tacoma charters, the closure of two of them, the good performance of one, blaming the Legislature for failing to provide facilities funding (why not blame Bill Gates?), reminding readers that “the voters” approved charters, but not reminding them that Gates for the vote and it passed by a hair.

This editorial board once called charter schools a “bold experiment,” but even we need to remember that kids aren’t lab rats; when we experiment with schools, we experiment with kids’ futures. The stakes are high.

Joe Hailey, board chairman of Green Dot Public Schools Washington, the nonprofit charter that ran Destiny Middle School, told the News Tribune that lack of access to local levy funding meant a “permanent structural deficit for our schools.” In other words, with a large funding gap, Destiny Middle School was destined to fail.

Hailey is right. Without levy funding, charters compete with one hand tied behind their backs. If the paramount duty of the state is to educate every child, that’s not happening. Instead of being all-in on charter schools, we’re only half-in, and guess who suffers?

Why didn’t Bill Gates warn voters that they would have to pay facilities funding? Come to think of it, why doesn’t he buy a building for each of the charters, since he wanted them so badly? This would be only crumbs off his table.

Due to the opposition of the teachers’ union and lack of facilities funding, Tacoma’s charters are doing poorly:

Opponents — the Washington Education Association being one of the loudest — have launched lawsuits and a hostile public relations campaign against these voter-approved schools. To counter their claims, charters have to prove themselves by meeting higher benchmarks for success, and at least in Tacoma, that didn’t happen.

Third graders In Tacoma’s SOAR Academy had reading and math scores 28 to 34 percentage points lower than their Tacoma Public School cohorts, and now, due to the school’s closure, some of those students will have to go back into the local district and compete with students who may be miles ahead in terms of academic performance.

With results like that, the WEA needs no PR campaign.

Why was anyone so gullible as to believe that entrepreneurs would be better at running schools than professional educators?

Ask Bill Gates.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Washington State
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