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Peter Greene: The Silly Research about Charters That Betsy DeVos is Promoting

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2019 //
22

 

Peter Greene writes here about an exceptionally silly “study” that Betsy DeVos is using to drum up fading public support for charter schools.

The study, by choice advocates Patrick  Wolf and Corey DeAngelis, attempts to measure “success” by return on investment, converting taxpayer dollars into NAEP scores.

Sounds crazy, no?

Greene writes:

This particular paper comes out of something called the School Choice Demonstration Project, which studies the effects of school choice.

A Good Investment: The Updated Productivity of Public Charter Schools in Eight U.S. Cities pretends to measure school productivity, focusing on eight cities- Houston, San Antonio, New York City, Washington DC, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Boston, and Denver. In fact, the paper actually uses the corporate term ROI– return on investment.

We could dig down to the details here, look at details of methodology, break down the eight cities, examine the grade levels represented, consider their use of Investopedia for a definition of ROI. But that’s not really necessary, because they use two methods for computing ROI– one is rather ridiculous, and the other is exceptionally ridiculous.

The one thing you can say for this method of computing ROI is that it’s simple. Here’s the formula, plucked directly from their paper so that you won’t think I’m making up crazy shit:

Cost Effectiveness=Achievement Scores divided by Per-Pupil Revenue.

The achievement scores here are the results from the NAEP reading and math, and I suppose we could say that’s better than the PARCC or state-bought Big Standardized Test, but it really doesn’t matter because the whole idea is nuts.

It assumes that the only return we should look for on an investment in schools is an NAEP score. Is that a good assumption? When someone says, “I want my education tax dollars to be well spent,” do we understand them to mean that they want to see high standardized test scores– and nothing else?? Bot even a measure of students improving on that test. The paper literally breaks this down into NAEP points per $1,000. Is that the whole point of a school?

It gets worse, and Greene explains why.

I am reminded of a fad in the 1920s to compute the dollar value of different subjects. The curriculum experts of the day calculated that teaching Latin was a total waste of time because it was expensive and produced no return on investment.

The whole thing called “education” got left out of the calculus.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Economics, Education Industry, Privatization, Real Education, Research

Bernie: Still Clueless About Charters

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2019 //
196

 

As I reported earlier, I had a long conversation about education policy with top staff in the Bernie Sanders campaign. Among other things, I explained that charters are a first step on the privatization path that leads to vouchers and that charters cause deep cuts to public schools. I emphasized that charter schools are privately managed and areNOT public schools.

I could not have been clearer in warning that charters that get high scores “succeed” by screening out the kids they don’t want.

So Bernie’s campaign issued a statement on public schools this morning. The big message: Reinvest in public schools.

But this is point one:

  • We must make sure that charter schools are truly serving the needs of disadvantaged children.

This ignores the fact that charter schools are not public schools. They are privately managed. They are free to choose their students and free to expel those they don’t want.

This ignores the fact that the NAACP called for a charter moratorium. The ACLU of Southern California criticized charters for discriminating against and excluding students with disabilities and ELLS.  The Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit against charters in Mississippi for seeking to divert public funds from public schools, contrary to the state constitution.

How can the federal government “make sure” that charters are meeting the needs of disadvantaged students when they are free to exclude them and when charter lobbyists write the state laws?

Can Bernie learn?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Bob Braun: The Political Machine That Is Taking Over Newark’s School Board

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2019 //
4

 

Bob Braun is one of the keenest investigative reporters in the nation, who worked for New Jersey’s leading newspaper—the Star-Ledger—for half a century. Now, retired, he keeps watch over the corporate privatization of New Jersey’s public schools, especially those in Newark. That city, it’s schools, and it’s children have been in a Reformer Petri dish for decades.

The schools were taken over by the states in the 1990s. At last, the state has restored an elected board, but the politicians are maneuvering to gain control of the board.

Sadly, Mayor Ras Baraka is leading the effort for a takeover by the charter industry, after running as the anti-charter candidate for mayor.

There is a school board election in Newark on Tuesday.

Read the latest story here. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization

Why Does Betsy DeVos Tolerate Fraud in the Charter Sector?

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2019 //
14

 

That is an easy question. Betsy DeVos believes that parents can choose really dreadful ”schools,” where their children won’t learn anything about the modern world and it’s okay.

But Betsy’s not a pundit on FOX News. She is Secretary of Education. People listen to her incoherent babbling and try to make sense of it.

As the AP reports, Betsy has decided to ignore evidence that her own Department—during the Obama Administration, wasted nearly $1 billion on failed charter schools. She can’t defend this outrage. Where are the other charter cheerleaders?

Why is it okay to fund charters that never open or close within a year?

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

New York City: Public School Parents Tell Mayor DeBlasio to Stop Giving their Children’s Names and Addresses to Charters for Recruitment

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2019 //
11

This is a link to an article on Leonie Haimson’s blog that describes the public school parents’ rally on the steps of City Hall.

You will see a photo of a parent holding up a handmade sign: “MY CHILD IS NOT YOUR CUSTOMER.”

There is a post and a video. The post begins:

This afternoon, in front of the NYC Department of Education headquarters, NYC public school parents told Mayor de Blasio to stop bowing to the charter school lobby and halt the practice of giving charters access to student personal information to market their schools.  Instead, they said, he should listen to parents’ concerns, stop violating their children’s privacy, and cease this practice, which by helping charters expand, causes the loss of funding and space from our public schools.

In recent weeks, Chancellor Carranza has repeatedly promised parent leaders, both publicly and privately, that this practice would be discontinued, but the Mayor has yet to make a commitment to do so, and in the last few days he has said that he has not yet made a decision.  

Said Johanna Garcia, public school parent and President of Community Education Council in District 6 in Upper Manhattan:  “It is unconscionable that this practice continues. For more than a decade, parents and advocates have complained to DOE about the privacy violations incurred by allowing charters to access our children’s personal information without our consent.  I filed a FERPA complaint to the US Department of Education about this practice in November 2017.  Moreover, I am not aware of another school district in the country that voluntarily makes this information available to charter schools and undermines our public schools in the process.”

NeQuan McLean, co- chair of the Education Council Consortium and the President of Community Education Council in District 16 Brooklyn said: “My mailbox is continually flooded with deceptive promotional materials from charter schools.  As a result of expensive marketing campaigns and the damaging co-location policies of the DOE, my district has been overrun by charters.  The Mayor repeatedly says he listens to parents; we are saying loudly and clearly that he should end this practice now.”

“Not only is personal student information unnecessary for appropriate marketing, providing access to it is an unacceptable violation of student privacy,” said Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Counselor of School Supervisors and Administrators.

Shino Tanikawa, the co-chair of the ECC and a member of NYC Kids PAC, agreed: “For years, DOE has ignored parents’ complaints about this practice, which started in 2006 when Joel Klein agreed to help Success Academy charter schools expand their “market share” as Eva Moskowitz put it in an email.  The result is that this year, more than two billion dollars has been diverted from our public schools. Why should our supposedly progressive Mayor continue this practice, when he promised parents he would defend our public schools in the face of charter encroachment? “

Please note that the parents were not wearing matching T-shirts. Their children were not let out of school for the rally. They paid their own way to the rally.

 

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City, Parents, Privatization

Ohio: School Districts Sue Facebook for Helping to Defraud Them

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2019 //
2

Eight school districts in Ohio are suing Facebook for recruiting students for the failing online charter school ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow). Real public schools that enroll and educate real students lost money to the for-profit virtual charter school, whose owner pocketed millions and ultimately went bankrupt rather than pay back any of the millions it collected from the state. Over the nearly 20 years that ECOT operated, it received close to a billion dollars that did not go to public schools where students actually showed up and were counted.

Ohio School Districts Sue Facebook Over Failed Online Charter School

By Doug Livingston, The Akron Beacon Journal Education Week April 14, 2019

Cuyahoga Falls, Woodridge and six other Ohio school districts are suing Facebook for about $250,000 in public education funding lost when the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow imploded last year.

The districts, which may never be made whole for state funding they lost when ECOT inflated attendance, are alleging that Facebook knew the online charter school was financially failing when it sold ads to help ECOT boost enrollment. That, under Ohio law, would be an illegal and “fraudulent transfer.”

Founded in 2000, ECOT grew to be the largest charter school in Ohio, claiming 15,239 students enrolled in 2016 when the Ohio Department of Education ran an attendance audit.

The virtual headcount found students spending as little as an hour a day on home computers. But the state was funding the charter school, using tax dollars diverted from local school districts, as if kids were attending full time.

Related

The attendance scandal forced ECOT founder Bill Lager, who had donated $2.1 million to school choice supporters, to return $2.5 million monthly until taxpayers got back the $80 million the school overbilled the state in just 2016 and 2017.

ECOT folded in January 2018 before making the first repayment.

Now, every public school district in Ohio that lost students and state funding to ECOT is in line for what’s left. Governor and then-Attorney General Mike DeWine announced in August a lawsuit to hold Lager, his companies and top ECOT executives personally liable for the lost public funds.

 

From Bill Phillis, unofficial ombudsman for school funding in Ohio:

School Bus
Facebook ‌ Twitter ‌ LinkedIn ‌
Districts that are attempting to intervene in the Attorney General’s lawsuit against the ECOT gang have added Facebook to their pursuit for recovery of funds
Attorney General DeWine brought suit against ECOT, ECOT companies and some employees of ECOT. Eight school districts are attempting to intervene in the suit. Additionally, the districts are pursuing claims against three companies with which ECOT did business. Most recently the districts added Facebook to the list. They are alleging Facebook knew ECOT was financially failing when it sold ads to help ECOT enroll students.
A lot of individuals and companies were attracted to ECOT for the purpose of making easy money. Taxpayers were the losers.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Mercedes Schneider: Ah, Those Failing Charter Schools in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2019 //
3

 

Mercedes Schneider brings us up to date on the disruption caused by charters in Baton Rouge, most of which are failing schools. 

Apex Collegiate Charter School in Baton Rouge notified parents it is closing. Yet its website announces that it is accepting applications for next year. It has been open three years, and it has an F rating from the state. Two other charter schools in the city are closing, and a third is fighting the revocation of its charter. Local district officials are worried that the costs of the charters is eroding the fiscal stability of the district.

The East Baton Rouge School Board rejected Apex’s proposal in 2015 but the charter was approved by the state board.

“Note that concerns raised surrounding Apex Collegiate’s rejection by EBRSB include chartering goals too lofty to reasonably achieve as well as the reality that most EBR charter schools are graded as D or F schools. According to the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools (LAPCS) “find a charter” search engine (which has not been updated using 2017-18 school letter grades but appears to use 2016-17 data), there are 27 charter schools located in East Baton Rouge; 4 have no grade listed (including Apex Collegiate). Of the remaining 23 charter schools, 14 are graded D, and one is graded F.

“Apex Collegiate may have had lofty goals, but it seems that such goals do not apparently include maintaining an updated website.

“As of April 14, 2019, the Apex Collegiate website includes no information for the public regarding its May 2019 closure. On the contrary, it advertises, “We are now enrolling for the 2019-20 school year. If your child will be entering the 6th, 7th or 8th grade, please Apply now!”

“The application (misinformation in itself) includes the following misinformation for parents: “We will grow by one grade level every year until we are a full 6-12 school.””

The CEO of Apex was previously the state director of Howard Fuller’s Black Alliance for Educational Options, funded by rightwing billionaires to promote school choice among black communities, especially in the South.

Categories Accountability, Black Alliance for Educational Options, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Louisiana, Privatization

NYC: Public School Parents Rally Monday to Demand End to Data-Sharing with Charters

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2019 //
10

 

For years, the charter industry in New York has boasted about its superiority compared to public schools and claimed that there were long waiting lists of students clamoring for admission to charter schools. We now know that there never was a waiting list. The charters were given access to the names and addresses of public school students so they could bombard them with marketing materials in search of new students. Even Success Academy,  the biggest boaster of all the charters, relied on the harvesting of public school lists to recruit new students.

Tomorrow, parents in New York City will Rally to urge Mayor DeBlasio to stop the practice of sharing their children’s data with the charters.

 

Dear Diane,

We need YOU tomorrow at a very important press conference in New York City. Below is an important message from NYC Kids Pac.

___________________________________________________

Please come to a press conference this Monday at 1 PM at Tweed to demand that the Mayor stop providing charter schools access to student personal information to help them market their schools. This not only violates our children’s privacy, but by assisting charters to recruit students, this cannibalizes public schools by encouraging charters to absorb an ever-increasing amount of funding, students and space.

Please come and show your support! Don’t let the Mayor fail to act because of threats from the charter lobby – while he continues to brush aside parent voices, violate student privacy and undermine our public schools.

See press advisory with more details below; please share this message with other parents, friends and colleagues.

Hope to see you there,

Naila, Isaac, Fatima, Celia, Leonie, Eduardo, Margaret, Andy, Brooke, Karen, Shino and Tesa

What: Press conference to oppose the Mayor’s practice of sharing personal student information with charter schools

Who: NYC public school parents and parent leaders

When: Monday April 15, 2019 at 1:00 PM

Where: The steps of the Tweed Courthouse, 52 Chambers Street, downtown Manhattan

Why:   NYC public school parents and parent leaders demand that the Mayor cease the practice of allowing charter schools access to student personal information. In response to long-standing parent complaints, Chancellor Carranza has repeatedly promised parents in recent weeks, both publicly and privately, that this practice will be discontinued, but the Mayor has yet to make a commitment to do so and in the last few days has said no decision has yet been made.  

NYC is the only district in the country which voluntarily shares this information to help them charters expand their market share. Parents have long complained that this violates their children’s privacy, and this was the subject of a FERPA student privacy complaint to the US Department of Education in November 2017. Moreover, by allowing access to this information, the DOE has encouraged the rapid expansion of charter schools, which are now costing our public schools more than $2.1 billion per year. As a result, our public schools have less space and fewer resources to educate our neediest students.

While in the past, the DOE has suggested that public schools improve their “marketing”  to compete, they do not have the necessary funds to do so and in any case, most parents do not believe that the public schools  should be forced to divert what precious resources they have for this purpose.

Co-sponsored by NYC Kids PAC and the Education Council Consortium (ECC), made up of elected and appointed Community Education and Citywide Council members, established to address issues that affect schools and communities throughout all five boroughs.  

Thanks for all you do,

Carol Burris

Donations to NPE Action (a 501(c)(4)) are not tax deductible, but they are needed to lobby and educate the public about the issues and candidates we support.
Sent via ActionNetwork.org. To update your email address, change your name or address, or to stop receiving emails from Network for Public Education Action, please click here.

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, New York City, Parents, Privacy, Privatization

Bernie Sanders Blasts Center for American Progress for Undermining Progressive Candidates

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2019 //
63

 

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a stinging letter to the Center for American Progress, the presumptive think tank of the Democratic Party establishment. (Sorry, no link available to me, but the story appeared today in the New York Times.)

”Senator Bernie Sanders, in a rare and forceful rebuke by a presidential candidate of an influential party ally, has accused a liberal think tank of undermining Democrats’ chances of taking back the White House in 2020 by “using its resources to smear” him and other contenders pushing progressive policies.

“Mr. Sanders’s criticism of the Center for American Progress, delivered on Saturday in a letter obtained by The New York Times, reflects a simmering ideological battle within the Democratic Party and threatens to reopen wounds from the 2016 primary between him and Hillary Clinton’s allies. The letter airs criticisms shared among his supporters: That the think tank, which has close ties to Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic Party establishment, is beholden to corporate donors and has worked to quash a leftward shift in the party led partly by Mr. Sanders.

“This counterproductive negative campaigning needs to stop,” Mr. Sanders wrote to the boards of the Center for American Progress and its sister group, the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “The Democratic primary must be a campaign of ideas, not of bad-faith smears. Please help play a constructive role in the effort to defeat Donald Trump.”

“Mr. Sanders sent the letter days after a website run by the action fund, ThinkProgress, suggested that his attacks on income inequality were hypocritical in light of his growing personal wealth. The letter is tantamount to a warning shot to the Democratic establishment that Mr. Sanders — who continues to criticize party insiders on the campaign trail — will not countenance a repeat of the 2016 primary, when he and his supporters believe party leaders and allies worked to deny him the Democratic nomination.”

CAP continues to celebrate and protect the failed education policies of the Obama administration, which were built on the foundation of George W. Bush’s disastrous No Child Left Behind. The Bush and Obama education policies were twins and relied on testing, punishment, choice, and accountability. The Bush-Obama regime is responsible for the closure of hundreds of public schools, mostly in communities of color, and their replacement by privately managed charter schools.

Last year, CAP’s education analyst Ulrich Boser wrote an excellent critique of vouchers. I wrote to congratulate him and asked when he would apply the same critical lens to charter schools, and he replied, “We will have to agree to disagree.”

I interpreted his response to mean, “Never.”

CAP is in the debt of the corporatist, Wall Street Democrats, who won’t break ranks with Obama, Duncan, DFER, or Wall Street. They are the voice of the past.

Categories Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization

Laura Chapman on the Latest Reformer Inititiative: A Mushroom

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2019 //
27

 

Reformer groups and programs and projects pop up so often that I’m tempted to call them mushrooms, although stinkweeds would work too. I met Matt Gandal, described below, when he worked for Checker Finn at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. As long as the foundations keep pumping money into their hobby, there will be more mushrooms. She wrote this comment a month or so ago:

 

Laura Chapman describes the latest Reformer mushroom:

 

Meanwhile, the self-appointed members of the “Education Strategy Group” will command the National Press Club March 8 for a launch of “Level UP, Aligning for Success.”

The program will focus on “how we are collectively working to improve student preparation and increase success in postsecondary education and training,” especially “the preparation of students of color, students from low-income backgrounds and first-generation college students.”

Level Up is described as a coalition, a collaboration, and effort to provide “a playbook of high-impact strategies that K-12 and higher education leaders can collaboratively use to increase student success.”

The Founder (2012) and President of the Education Strategy Group, Matt Gandal, is not embarrassed to offer a brief resume that reveals his 20 year association with perfectly terrible policies for education. He was as a senior advisor to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan where he led the “Reform Support Network” created as an enforcement arm for compliance (implementation) of Race to the Top.

Before that job, Gandal claims to be a founder and executive vice president of Achieve—infamous for its promotion of the Common Core State Standards—and the antecedent American Diploma Project. If you have not read Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools by Mercedes Schneider please do so. If you know the history of those bad ideas just be aware that they are not dead yet, not by a long shot. Gandal also claims to have held a leadership position in Chester Finn’s Educational Excellence Network. What more do you need to know?

Gandal ”was the author and chief architect of Making Standards Matter, an annual American Federation of Teachers report (beginning in 1992) purporting to evaluate the quality of the academic standards, assessments and accountability policies in every state. He also helped to drum up anxieties about standards in the United States in relation to other industrialized nations.

So, that is the leadership for the “Education Strategy Group.” The group functions as an advocacy shop for varied efforts to sustain the Common Core, with the attached aim of preparation for “college and career,” where career refers to workforce training.

This is a partial list of past and present “clients” for the Education Strategy Group: Delaware Department of Education, Georgia Department of Education, Maryland Department of Education, Rhode Island Governor’s Workforce Board, Indiana Department of Education, Indiana Commission for Higher Education, Ohio Department of Education, Ohio Department of Higher Education, Baltimore City Public Schools.

These are also listed as if clients: Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), National Governors Association (NGA), Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), American Association of State Colleges & Universities (AASCU), United States Chamber of Commerce Foundation, myFutureNC, New America.

Credits indicate support from the Charles A. Dana Center, Collaborative for Student Success; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Helios Education Foundation; Rodel Foundation of Delaware; J.P. Morgan Chase; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Joyce Foundation; Lumina Foundation; Abell Foundation; Strada Education Network; and Belk Foundation,

Two of the service “stories” of the Education Strategy Group focus on “The Collaborative for Student Success,” a project of the New Venture Fund. The Collaborative is also a creature of deep-pocket funding from groups unfriendly to public schools: the Bloomberg Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, ExxonMobil, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.

“The Collaborative for Student Success (CSS)” is a platform designed to reassert the general idea that standards are not high enough and they are a panacea. The CCS is also one among several non-profits (e.g., Bellwether Education Partners) that have elected to review and criticize state ESSA plans. You can see the CCS effort here with a direct link (no surprise) to the charter loving Walton funded 74 Million http://schoolimprovement.the74million.org

In other words, the National Press Club will become a forum for the launch of “Level UP, Aligning for Success.” The question is whether any one in the audience will have done enough homework to grasp this latest effort to shore up failed education policies. The National Press Club is for hire, and the launch of “Level UP, Aligning for Success” provides another venue for billionaire foundations and corporate friends to promote policies and practices that have no basis in professional wisdom. I hope members of the National Press Club will ask pointed questions about this latest PR effort to keep the the standards movement in place–a major effort to discredit public education. The link to the Walton funded 74 Million leaves no doubt about whose interests this PR campign serves.
http://edstrategy.org/level-up-launch/

 

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing
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