Peter Greene has a rapier sharp wit, which he wields so deftly that the object of his attention has been beheaded without knowing what happened. If you want to see him at his best, read this mystery: Who is murdering Charter Schools?
Teachers?
Unions?
Lobbyists?
If you live in the real world, the people fighting privatization are heroic defenders of the commonweal, protecting the public interest against the Waltons, the Koch brothers, DeVos, and other private interests.
Mercedes Schneider summarizes here the story of vouchers in Louisiana, which are now widely recognized as a train wreck.
New Orleans’ public radio station WWNO broadcast a detailed account of this policy failure, which steers students to D and F rated schools. State Superintendent John White, one of the voucher program’s most ardent advocates, refused to be interviewed for the program.
”Multiple local news outlets were involved in the investigation:
‘The Cost of Choice’ is the result of a reporting collaboration between NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, WVUE Fox 8 News, WWNO and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.”
When the program was launched in 2012, Then-Governor Bobby Jindal “beamed with pride” and voucher proponent Betsy DeVos lauded the new vouchers, and the cheerleaders said they
“would free countless lower-income children from the worst public schools by allowing them to use state tax dollars in the form of vouchers to pay tuition at private schools, where they would ostensibly receive a better education. …
“Seven years later, however, the $40-million-a-year Louisiana Scholarship Program has failed to live up to its billing. The nearly 6,900 students who’ve left public schools have instead been placed into a system with numerous failing private schools that receive little oversight, a months-long examination by a coalition of local and national media organizations has found. …
“Two-thirds of all students in the voucher system attended schools where they performed at a “D” or “F” level last school year….
“Bobby Jindal did not set up the Louisiana Scholarship Program for success. He set it up for low-performing schools to get subsidized and to stay open,” said Andre Perry, a fellow at The Brookings Institution….
“Not a single school in the voucher program received an A or B. Three received a C. Of the remaining schools, 19 got a D and 15 got an F, based on the Louisiana Department of Education rating system.”
Thousands of children were sent to low-performing schools on the false promise of a better education. Some of the voucher schools needed the voucher money to survive.
Now, Schneider notes, DeVos is distancing herself from the Louisiana failure.
The remaining ideologues insist that voucher schools should not be judged by their abysmal test scores, the same stick used to beat up public schools.
DeVos is now peddling the same failed model to the nation.
Valerie Strauss reviews the education budget of the House Appropriations Committee and notes that budget proposal increases the programs that Trump and DeVos while endorsing an unprecedented cut for the Charter Schools Program. As she notes in the title of the article, the committee concluded that the Education Department was not “a responsible steward” of the charter fund.
Surely, they must have noticed the daily scandals associated with this unaccountable sector.
“Many public school systems are complaining about losing significant funding to charters. Teacher strikes that began in 2018 and have continued this year throughout the country — including in Republican-led states — have helped change the debate about public education funding.”
Strauss writes:
A 2018 report by the Education Department’s inspector general slammed the agency’s oversight of the federal Charter Schools Program and made recommendations for improvement that the House legislation says DeVos’s team has ignored. The agency was accused of the same thing in a2016 inspector general report.
“The committee is deeply concerned that the department does not intend to be a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars when it comes to [Charter Schools Program] funding,” the legislation says.
The committee has included language that would direct the Education Department to implement the recommendations from the 2018 inspector general’s report within six months of the bill’s enactment and brief legislators on its plan within a month.
The legislation also says lawmakers are “concerned” about a recent report issued by the advocacy group the Network for Public Education, which says that as much as $1 billion in federal money was wasted on charter schools that never opened or that closed because of mismanagement and other issues from 2009 to 2016.
Jeanne Allen, leader of the pro-school choice, anti-public school group Center for Education Reform, asks “Who is killing Charter Schools?” and the answer is clear: the Department of Education’s Inspector General, Congressional appropriators, the daily scandals caused by unaccountable charters, the dedicated work of scores of state and local parent organizations, and the Network for Public Education, which is devoted to fighting privatization and profiteering.
Alabama journalist Kyle Whitmire puzzles over how state officials created charters, setrules for openingthem, then broke all their own rules to clear the way for a charter school that no one wants.
Read this story and you will understand why the public is turning against charter schools.
Not hard to figure out. Might be something about an old-fashioned word called “democracy.”
This is good news!
The House Appropriations Committee issued its budget report. Betsy DeVos requested an increase for the federal Charter Schools Program, from $440 million a year to $500 million. But the education appropriations subcommittee cut the appropriation to $400 million. This is a program that is riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, as the Department of Education’s own Inspector General pointed out in the past, and as the Network for Public Education pointed out in its recent report called “Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride.”
Thank you to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), chairperson of the education appropriations subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. She is a deeply knowledgeable member of Congress who is committed to equity and works tirelessly to meet the needs of the American people for well-funded public schools
The NPE report found that one-third of the charter school funded by the federal government either never opened or closed soon after opening, costing taxpayers close to $1 billion in wasted funds.
Here is the report of the House Appropriations Committee. It increased the funding of well-respected programs that DeVos and Trump wanted to slash or kill, while cutting back on the Charter Schools Program (start reading at page 182).
Just in the last year, Secretary DeVos gave $116 million to a single charter chain, IDEA, which intends to flood the small El Paso district with charters; and she gave a grant of $86 million to KIPP. This concentration of funds in the hands of corporate charter chains was certainly not the intent of the program, which was meant to spur start-ups and innovation, not to enlarge established charter chains. KIPP, in particular, is amply funded by the Walton Family Foundation and a dozen other major foundations. It is hard to understand why this wealthy and powerful charter chain needs federal aid.
The Democratic state parties in California and Colorado have denounced DFER as a corporate front that should drop the word “Democrat” from its title.
Real Democrats support public schools, democratically governed and open to all, not corporate charter chains or private management.
By the way, the NPE report had no external funding. It was produced by the research of our brilliant staff and written by Carol Burris and Jeff Bryant.
Former Milwaukee School Board President Michael Bonds was convicted of accepting bribes to help a Philadelphia charter school operator.
As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Bonds, 60, pleaded guilty to two counts in federal court in Philadelphia. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine at his sentencing, tentatively set for September, but which will depend on when he completes his pledged cooperation with an ongoing federal investigation…
Bonds served on the MPS board from 2007 until he abruptly resigned in July 2018, nine months before his term was to end.
He was charged last month with conspiracy and violations of the Travel Act for taking kickbacks in return for votes beneficial to Universal Cos. between 2014 and 2016. Two unnamed Universal executives were implicated in the scheme but have not been charged.
Veteran Milwaukee journalist Alan Borsuk described the affair as “a scandal with few rivals in the recent history of Milwaukee education.” He sums up the details.
Universal Academy. Universal came into Milwaukee riding some celebrity appeal — its founder, Kenny Gamble, was a soul music star — and a reputation for running some decent charter schools, some housing projects and other ventures in its home town, Philadelphia.
Universal also initially named a well-regarded Milwaukee educator as its local leader. Ronn Johnson had founded and led the YMCA Young Leaders Academy. But months before Universal opened, Johnson was charged with sexually assaulting several students years earlier. A few months later, he died in a fire at his home in Brown Deer. His death was ruled a suicide.
The president and CEO of Universal in Philadelphia, Rahim Islam, stepped in to oversee the Milwaukee operation and spent a lot of time in the city. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he is one of the main figures in the bribery scheme involving Bonds.
At one point, Universal schools enrolled 1,000 students.
Perhaps because enrollment didn’t meet expectations and then started to fall, and perhaps because Universal was overextended with the large amount of MPS property it was using, Universal began to slide. Islam became unreachable (he had been glad to talk in early times). Leadership of the schools kept changing. It was clear Universal wasn’t investing in Milwaukee any further.
And things got worse. First two schools closed. Then, the third. It was done abruptly, leaving kids and staff in the lurch.
And now a former Board President is headed to jail. Very sad.
Arthur Camins writes here about two different worlds, two different perceptions of reality.
On one side is money and power, defending privatization, promoting disruption, and ignoring corruption.
On the others are the defenders of the common good, who do not have money and power.
In recent years, people associated with the hedge fund industry, technology titans such as the Gates, Zuckerberg, and Jobs families, and right-wing foundations have all invested financial and political capital to promote charter schools. Their predominant ideological lens– no matter their political party affiliation– is competition and associated risk. That is why the liberal Gates and the conservative Walton families find common cause on charter schools. Long- and short-term triumphs and failures are essential features of their entrepreneurial worldview. Through that lens “start-ups” come and go, IPOs rise and fall, businesses merge, and divisions divested. Lost jobs and careers are collateral damage–especially when the victims are poor and/or not White. That is their normal. It is the world in which they have triumphed. They look at the world through the lens of their personal success. The losers in the process are, well–just part of how things get done. They have wealth and power and seek to impose and extend their will and perspective on everything within their reach. The public sector–including schools–is in their way. Increasingly democracy, and with it, government regulation is in their way too. Hence, they favor private over elected school boards. They are a tiny minority, but their perspective has gained bipartisan political and mass-media traction.
Another lens is the common good and its explicit companion, cross-racial unity. It has no wealth and power to extend its reach. However, it has a distinct advantage. It represents the vast majority of Americans. The questions you ask frame the answers you get. Let’s ask, “Do you favor single a democratically-governed, high-quality public education system for every child or two taxpayer-funded systems: One privately-governed and another democratically governed?” I haven’t seen such a poll, nor have I seen any that ask: “Is it fair to drain money from public schools to fund charter schools?” or “Is it acceptable for schools to frequently open and close?” My best guess is that the stability, the common good, and racial unity will win hands down over the disruptive, market competition, and racially-divisive perspectives.
Read on to see where Camins is going as he explores the two perspectives.
Carl Cohn is one of the most respected figures in American education. He is a problem solver who has been superintendent in several districts in California. He won many plaudits for his leadership in Long Beach. I met him when he was superintendent in San Diego, which was probably the first urban district to be subjected to a heavy, concentrated dose of what was called “reform,” in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Cohn was called in, to clean up the demoralization left behind by top-down leaders who arrived with a script. In my 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, I devoted a chapter to the colossal failure of “reform” in SD. I interviewed Cohn and was pleasantly surprised by his candor and insight. Talking to him reassured me that my reactions were on target.
In this post, he urges the reform of California’s charter law.
He does not lay out a menu of what is needed, but he points to some genuine problems.
Note that one of the members of Tony Thurmond’s Task Force rejected Cohn’s request for some relief from the law. That would be Margaret Fortune, Chair of the Board of the California Charter School Association, which lobbies to protect the status quo.
Florida is controlled by Swamp creatures who want to divert money from public schools and send it to charter schools and religious schools. Jeb Bush is the puppet master who has demanded strict accountability for public schools, minimal oversight of charter schools, and no accountability at all for religious schools.
In this article, Carol Burris—the executive director of the Network for Public Education—examines the charter school mess. Florida has about three million students. About 300,000 attend charter schools. Some members of the Legislature have direct conflicts of interest but nonetheless vote to shower favors and money on the state’s charters.
Burris reports that nearly half of the state’s charters operate for profit. Entrepreneurs have flocked to Florida to get the easy money.
Burris begins:
Schoolsforsale.com claims to be “the largest school brokers in the United States that you will need to call.” Its owner, Realtor David Mope, is a broker for private schools, online schools and preschools. He will also help you start your own virtual school by providing certified teachers, marketing expertise, and assistance in securing accreditation.
Mope is not a newcomer to the for-profit school world. He was the owner and CEO of Acclaim Academy, a military-style charter chain. Acclaim’s “cadets,” who were predominantly minority students from low-income homes, wore army fatigues and engaged in drills. The schools’ education director, Bill Orris, had previously led a charter school that was shut down after its management company abandoned it.
Warning signs of failure were there from the beginning. The chain aggressively attempted to open new schools in multiple districts before establishing a track record in its two existing schools. Most districts saw red flags, but two did not. In the fall of 2013, two more Acclaim schools were approved, bringing the total schools in the chain to four.
As school grades came in, unsurprisingly, the Acclaim Academy charter schools were rated “F.” In 2015, three closed their doors, leaving families in the lurch in a manner that parents described as chaos. Although Florida’s State Board of Education had allowed the schools to stay open to finish the school year, Mope filed for bankruptcy, sending students out on the street scrambling to enroll in another school with only a few weeks left in the school year. Vendors would never be paid. Parents helped teachers pack up. Nevertheless, Mope pretended the schools were solvent and continued to broker a deal to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment.
How could Acclaim Academy ever open in the first place? Who would give this risky charter chain the seed money to get started? The American taxpayers did. A U.S. Department of Education Charter Schools Program (CSP) grant for $744,198 helped get the Acclaim Academies off the ground.
Acclaim Academy charter schools were among 502 Florida charter schools that received grants from the Department of Education between 2006 and 2014. All but two came from federal money given to the state for distribution. According to the CSP database, these Florida charter schools were awarded a total of nearly $92 million in federal funds between 2006 and 2014.
At least 184 (36.6 percent) of those schools are now closed, or never opened at all. These defunct charter schools received $34,781,736 in federal “seed” money alone.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the New York City United Federation of Teachers, urges the Legislature not to raise the cap on charters but to enact legislation to make charter schools transparent and accountable.
There is a national pushback against untrammeled growth of charters, and New York State is unlikely to give the charter industry carte blanche since Democrats won control of the State Senate last fall. Until now, the charters were protected by the Governor Cuomo, whose campaign was funded by charter-loving financiers, and by the Republican-controlled State Senate, which was happy to expand the number of charters but not in their own suburban districts.
Mulgrew points out that under existing law, charters have room to add as many as 50,000 students. One charter gives the operator the authority to expand to K-12, or three schools. The city currently has 235 charters, which are actually 377 schools, enrolling 123,000 students. These schools divert $2.1 billion from public schools, but do not accept a proportionate share of the neediest students. Success Academy alone has room to add another 10,000 students without lifting the cap.
He writes:
“Charters should be forced to demonstrate that tax dollars are spent in the classroom rather than on inflated salaries of charter executives and overpriced services of charter management companies. The transparency legislation would make wealthy charters — those with $1 million or more in assets — ineligible to receive co-located space in public building, or to get a public rental subsidy for private classroom space. It would also cap compensation packages for the majority of charter executives at $199,000 a year.
“Real transparency would also reveal why charters had only 9% of the school population but 46% of the suspensions; 10% percent of the homeless students, less than the public school average of 15%; and only 7% of the English language learners population, less than half the public school average.”
He concludes:
It is time for state government to freeze their growth, and to put in place measures to ensure that charters take, keep and educate all kinds of students, while they open up their operations to real public scrutiny.
There are two bitter pills in Mulgrew’s proposal:
One is the cap on salaries, which would be anathema to charters, where teacher salaries are artificially low, due to hiring of young teachers and constant turnover as they burn out, and lavish executive compensation, which is sometimes far above that of the School Chancellor, who oversees 1.1 million students.
The other is the idea that rich charters should not get free public space. This will outage the charter industry but please the existing public schools that have been forced to give up computer rooms, resource rooms, rooms for the arts, and other spaces that are not considered classrooms.
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