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Picketing with UTLA: A Great and Inspiring Morning

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2019 //
18

I had a very exciting morning with teachers, parents and students who were picketing outside Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles.

Teachers and parents walked in front of the majestic exterior building, on the sidewalk where cars could see them. Several people held up signs saying “Honk if you support teachers,” and there was a cacaphony of honking horns as cars and trucks passed by.

As the minutes passed, the crowd grew to be hundreds of people, and they chanted “Hey, hey, Ho, Ho, Austin Beutner’s got to go!” And many other inspiring lines about supporting teachers and public schools.

The UTLA understands exactly what’s going on. Its President Alex Caputo-Pearl and his members understand that the billionaires bought the school board so they could expand the non-union charter presence. Charters now enroll 20% of the district’s children.

A day earlier, the UTLA held a mass rally in front of the California Charter Schools Association, the billionaire-funded lobbyists intent on destroying public schools in the state while prohibiting any accountability for charter schools and fighting any limits on charter school growth.

The billionaire-bought LAUSD has starved the public schools, which helps the charters.

The picketing stopped for short speeches. Parents, teachers, a celebrity (Rock Star Stevie Van Zandt) spoke. So did students, both of whom are seniors at Hamilton. One young man said, “We get it. They are targeting black and brown communities. They are trying to destroy our schools by denying us the education we need and deserve. They are dividing our district into haves and have-nots.” Another senior asked the audience to imagine what it was like to be in classes with nearly 50 students, where there were not enough chairs or desks. She said she took a chemistry class and sat on the floor all year because there was no other place to sit. She couldn’t get into an AP class because there were not enough chairs or desks.

The national media says the strike is about trachers’ pay but they are wrong. No one mentioned salaries except a parent speaker. The really important issues are class size, lack of money for full-time nurses in every school, lack of money for librarians and counselors, lack of money for the arts.

When I had my few minutes to speak, I pointed out that California is probably the richest state in the nation, but the latest federal data show that it spends less than the national average on its schools. California spends about the same, on a per-pupil basis, as Louisiana and South Carolina.

That’s shocking.

The good news today, aspesker said, was that a poll conducted by Loyola Marymount, reported that the strike has the support of 80% of the public.

Even if the national media misses the point, the people of LA understand that teachers are striking for their children and for future generations. They are fighting billionaires like Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and other billionaires, for the survival of public education.

The whole world is watching.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Parents, Privatization, Resistance, Students, Union

Trustees of Houston Independent School District Protest State’s Hostile Privatization Plan

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2019 //
3

Two trustees of the Houston Independent School District strenuously object to the state’s plan to disrupt and takeover the district. It is no accident, they say, that such takeovers target predominantly black-and-brown districts. The state’s goal is to resegregate the district, while enriching charter chains that will swoop in to grab public schools.

The article was written by Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones and Elizabeth Santos.


“Last month the Houston Independent School District Board of Trustees made a difficult decision. At risk of losing the elected positions for which we all campaigned passionately, we rejected an ultimatum created by state law: Privatize four historically black and brown schools or face a hostile state takeover of the entire district. We were elected to see to it that our public schools thrive, not facilitate their transfer to charter managers who can make money off our students.

Now the state is in a position to remove us from office because four schools have been on the “improvement required” list for at least five years.

Some of us reasonably felt that turning these four schools — Wheatley High School, Kashmere High School, Henry Middle School and Highland Heights Elementary — into charter schools would prevent even worse sanctions from the state. While that may have been true for this year, there was no guarantee that we would not face the same dilemma next year and each year after that for different campuses until our district became segregated into two different communities — those that have direct electoral control over their school leaders and those that do not. Such a system of haves and have-nots is simply unacceptable.

The charter vultures are circling.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Houston, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization, Resistance, Texas

Peter Greene: Charter Leader Jeanne Allen Says LA Should “Fire All the Teachers”

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2019 //
31

Talk about a hard line! Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform urges LAUSD to fire all the striking teachers!

PeterGreene writes about it here.

Jeanne Allen is a true rightwinger, out there on the edge.

She looks back nostalgically to 1981, when Ronald Reagan broke a strike by the air controllers union by threatening to fire them all if they didn’t return. To work at once.

Her advice to the LAUSD:

In a post-Janus world, teacher unions cannot exist and continue to gain members unless they demonstrate and prove their value. This strike, like others we’re seeing around the country, is a desperate attempt by the union to maintain relevance in a day and age where they can
no longer require teachers to join.

California needs to break the district up into 100 different pieces, have much smaller units, and allow for the freedom, flexibility, access and innovation that’s happening in charters. If it weren’t for charter schools, education in L.A. would be at the level of Mississippi. The UTLA sees charters
as such a threat to the status quo that it is willing want to hurt students kids even more to score a victory against charters.

My advice to the district: Hold strong. Replace them all. If they want a dramatic impact on education, fire the union and begin to repair the schools, just like Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.

Peter Greene says that Jeanne Allen makes no pretense of being benign and caring. She despises public schools and teachers unions. She has no mask. She believes in privatizing schools, period.

Peter takes her seriously and wonders where LA would find another 30,000 or so teachers to replace the current force.

That’s very kind of him but the reality is that California is a blue state, a state where union-busting is absurd. A new poll by the ABC local station found that the trachers’ Strike has overwhelming public support (about 2/3 support it) and in,y 15% oppose the teachers.

Ain’t gonna happen, Jeanne!

Here’s an idea: how about giving teachers in LA the same salary as Jeanne Allen and call it a day. They work harder and have jobs of far more social value than hers.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Unions

What’s at Stake in L.A. Teachers’ Strike: The Survival of Public Education

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
36

The New York Times editorial and opinion pages have been a cheering section for charter expansion for years. I have tried and failed to get articles about the dangers of privatization on the op-Ed page. The last time I tried, my article was rejected, then posted online by the Washington Post (whose editorial board also favors charter schools). After that rejection, I swore I would never again submit an article because I knew it would be turned down. Imagine my surprise when I opened the New York Times to find the article below. Miriam Pawel, an independent historian and a contributing opinion writer for the Times, was allowed to explain the real dynamics behind the teachers’ strike: demographic change; high poverty rates; overcrowded classes; underfunding of the schools; and an aggressive charter industry, led by Eli Broad and other billionaires, willing to spend vast sums to privatize more public schools and kick out the unions.

Online, thisis the subtitle of the article: “Can California provide sufficient resources to support an effective public education system? Or will charter schools cripple it?”

What is so remarkable about this article is: 1. The New York Times printed it; 2. Pawel connected the dots among demographic change, underfunding of the schools, bloated class sizes, and the district’s deference to charter expansion; 3. Pawel acknowledged that the rapid growth of charters is the direct result of the intervention of billionaires like Broad, who poured $54 million into two losing statewide races last fall. I couldn’t have said it better.

Miriam Pawel writes:

LOS ANGELES — For decades, public schools were part of California’s lure, key to the promise of opportunity. Forty years ago, with the lightning speed characteristic of the Golden State, all of that changed.

In the fall of 1978, after years of bitter battles to desegregate Los Angeles classrooms, 1,000 buses carried more than 40,000 students to new schools. Within six months, the nation’s second-largest school district lost 30,000 students, a good chunk of its white enrollment. The busing stopped; the divisions deepened.

Those racial fault lines had helped fuel the tax revolt that led to Proposition 13, the sweeping tax-cut measure that passed overwhelmingly in June 1978. The state lost more than a quarter of its total revenue. School districts’ ability to raise funds was crippled; their budgets shrank for the first time since the Depression. State government assumed control of allocating money to schools, which centralized decision-making in Sacramento.

Public education in California has never recovered, nowhere with more devastating impact than in Los Angeles, where a district now mostly low-income and Latino has failed generations of children most in need of help. The decades of frustration and impotence have boiled over in a strike with no clear endgame and huge long-term implications. The underlying question is: Can California ever have great public schools again?

The struggle in Los Angeles, a district so large it educates about 9 percent of all students in the state, will resonate around California. Oakland teachers are on the verge of a strike vote. Sacramento schools are on the verge of bankruptcy. The housing crisis has compounded teacher shortages. Los Angeles, like many districts, is losing students, and therefore dollars, even as it faces ballooning costs for underfunded pensions.

California still ranks low in average per-pupil spending, roughly half the amount spent in New York. California legislators have already filed bills proposing billions of dollars in additional aid, one of many competing pressures that face the new governor, Gavin Newsom, as he begins negotiations on his first state budget.

Unlike other states where teachers struck last year, California is firmly controlled by Democrats, for whom organized labor is a key ally. And the California teachers unions are among the most powerful lobbying force in Sacramento.

On paper, negotiations between the 31,000-member United Teachers of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District center on traditional issues: salaries that have not kept pace, classes of more than 40 students, counselors and nurses with staggering caseloads. But the most potent and divisive issue is not directly on the bargaining table: the future of charter schools, which now enroll more than 112,000 students, almost one-fifth of all K-through-12 students in the district. They take their state aid with them, siphoning off $600 million a year from the district. The 224 independent charters operate free from many regulations, and all but a few are nonunion.

When California authorized the first charter schools in 1992 as a small experiment, no one envisioned that they would grow into an industry, now educating 10 percent of public school students in the state. To counter demands for greater regulation and transparency, charter advocates have in recent years poured millions into political campaigns. Last year, charter school lobbies spent $54 million on losing candidates for governor and state superintendent of education.

In Los Angeles, they have had more success. After his plan to move half of the Los Angeles district students into charter schools failed to get traction, the billionaire and charter school supporter Eli Broad and a group of allies spent almost $10 million in 2017 to win a majority on the school board. The board rammed through the appointment of a superintendent, Austin Beutner, with no educational background. Mr. Beutner, a former investment banker, is the seventh in 10 years and has proposed dividing the district into 32 “networks,” a so-called portfolio plan designed in part by the consultant who engineered the radical restructuring of Newark schools.

“In my 17 years working with labor unions, I have been called on to help settle countless bargaining disputes in mediation,” wrote Vern Gates, the union-appointed member of the fact-finding panel called in to help mediate the Los Angeles stalemate last month. “I have never seen an employer that was intent on its own demise.”

It’s a vicious cycle: The more overcrowded and burdened the regular schools, the easier for charters to recruit students. The more students the district loses, the less money, and the worse its finances. The more the district gives charters space in traditional schools, the more overcrowded the regular classrooms.

Enrollment in the Los Angeles school district has declined consistently for 15 years, increasing the competition for students. It now educates just under a half-million students. More than 80 percent are poor, about three-quarters are Latino, and about one-quarter are English-language learners. On most state standardized tests, more than one-third fall below standards.

For 20 years, Katie Safford has taught at Ivanhoe Elementary, a school so atypical and so desirable that it drives up real estate prices in the upscale Silver Lake neighborhood. Ivanhoe parents raise almost a half million a year so that their children can have sports, arts, music and supplies. But parents cannot buy smaller classes or a school nurse. Mrs. Safford’s second-grade classroom is a rickety bungalow slated for demolition. When the floor rotted, the district put carpet over the holes. When leaks caused mold on the walls, Mrs. Safford hung student art to cover stains. The clock always reads 4:20.

“I was born to be a teacher,” Mrs. Safford said. “I have no interest in being an activist. None. But this is ridiculous.” For the first time in her life, she marched last month, one of more than 10,000 teachers and supporters in a sea of red.

Monday she walked the picket line outside a school where just eight of the 456 students showed up. Now her second graders ask the questions no one can answer: When will you be back? How will it end?

It is hard to know, when the adults have so thoroughly abdicated their responsibility for so long. Last week, the school board directed the superintendent to draw up a plan examining ways to raise new revenue.

This strike comes at a pivotal moment for California schools, amid recent glimmers of hope. Demographic shifts have realigned those who vote with those who rely on public services like schools. Voters approved state tax increases to support education in 2012, and again in 2016. In the most recent election, 95 of 112 school bond issues passed, a total of over $15 billion. The revised state formula drives more money into districts with more low-income students and English learners. Total state school aid increased by $23 billion over the past five years, and Governor Newsom has proposed another increase.

If Los Angeles teachers can build on those gains, the victory will embolden others to push for more, just as teachers on the rainy picket lines this week draw inspiration from the successful #RedforEd movements around the country. The high stakes have drawn support from so many quarters, from the Rev. James Lawson, the 90-year-old civil rights icon, to a “Tacos for Teachers” campaign to fund food on the picket lines.

If this fight for public education in Los Angeles fails, it will consign the luster of California schools to an ever more distant memory.

Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel), a contributing opinion writer, is an author, journalist and independent historian.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization, Union

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Can We Get Her Involved in the Struggle to Save Public Schools from Plutocrats?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2019 //
57

The New York Timeswrote that the first-year memberof Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was tending bar in the Bronx a year ago, is pushing the Democratic Party to the left.

Alexandria (@AOC) is a remarkable figure in our politics today. By sheer force of personality, she has emerged as a dominant voice. She terrifies moderate Democrats and the entire Republican Party. She has proposed a Green New Deal. She has proposed that people who have an annual income of more than $10 million pay a tax of 70% of everything above $10 million (the marginal tax rate was 90% during the Eisenhower years).

She has two million followers on Twitter.

If anyone knows how to reach her, I would love to get her aid in fighting the privatization of public schools. She would be a powerful ally.

This is part of what the Times wrote about her today:

“Not so long ago, left-wing activists were dismissed as fringe or even kooky when they pressed for proposals to tax the super rich at 70 percent, to produce all of America’s power through renewable resources or to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Then along came Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and her social-media megaphone.

“In the two months since her election, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has had the uncanny ability for a first-term member of Congress to push the debate inside the Democratic Party sharply to the left, forcing party leaders and 2020 presidential candidates to grapple with issues that some might otherwise prefer to avoid.

“The potential Democratic field in 2020 is already being quizzed about her (Senator Kamala Harris praised her on “The View”), emulating her digital tactics (Senator Elizabeth Warren held an Instagram chat in her kitchen that looked much like one of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s sessions) and embracing some of her causes.

“Ms. Warren and Senator Cory Booker, among others, have recently endorsed the idea of a “Green New Deal,” a call to reimagine an environment-first economy that would phase out fossil fuels. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez thrust that issue into the national dialogue after she joined a sit-in protest in the office of then-incoming House speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi, in one of her first, rebellious acts in Washington.

“Her rise has stirred a backlash among some Congressional Democrats, who are seeking to constrain her anti-establishment streak and fear her more radical ideas could tar the party as socialist.

“Back home in New York, she has stoked opposition to a deal with Amazon to set up offices in Queens, putting pressure on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, to justify corporate incentives.

“Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born 29-year-old of Puerto Rican descent, is the youngest congresswoman ever, and Washington veterans say they cannot recall a similar congressional debut.

“A bartender from the Bronx has been able to create a litmus test around climate and economic policy for every 2020 Democrat,” said Waleed Shahid, who was one of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s early campaign advisers and is now the communications director for Justice Democrats, a liberal activist group.

“Far beyond policy, she has emerged as a potent symbol for a diversifying Democratic Party: a young woman of color who is giving as good as she gets in a political system that has rarely rewarded people who look like her. Her mastery of social media has allowed her to connect with audiences who might otherwise be alienated from Washington.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance

How Charter Schools Are Like Subprime Mortgages and May Be Heading for a “Bubble”

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2019 //
25

Scholars Preston C. Green III, Bruce D. Baker, Joseph O. Oluwole, and Julie F. Mead published this article comparing charter schools to subprime mortgages in the University of Richmond Law Review. It appeared in 2016, but it grows more apparent by the day that its warning was prescient. The similarities are striking.

The more authorizers in a state, the less attention is paid to quality. The authorizers have a profit motive to multiply charter schools because they collect a percent of the take. The authors discuss the predatory practices used to lure students to charter schools and the inevitable fraud and embezzlement associated with lack of regulation.

My favorite example of the way that Education Management Organizations profit from charter school rentals:

With respect to fiscal stewardship, charter school boards have the responsibility to ensure that their schools spend market value for the renting of facilities.108 For-profit EMOs have sought to enhance their revenues by charging exorbitant fees for these arrangements.109

For example, the Detroit Free Press reported that the National Heritage Academies (―NHA‖) charged each of its fourteen schools more than $1 million in rent per year.110 The Free Press review of the 2012–13 audits of more than fifty other charter schools run by other for-profit EMOs revealed that only seven charter schools spent more than $500,000 in rent. By contrast, all but one of NHA‘s schools spent more than $500,000 in rent.111 The newspaper also reported that NHA collected $380 million in rent, including nearly $42 million in 2013–14, since the company began running charter schools in 1995.112

The authors may or may not know that National Heritage Academies is owned by J.C. Huizenga, a family friend of the DeVos clan, based in Grand Rapids, affiliated with ALEC and other rightwing groups, and a multimillionaire from his other business interests.

The authors describe how a “bubble” happens, how certain populations are targeted, how they clamor to get in to what appears to be a good deal, then stampede out when the bubble bursts. This may be happening now in urban African American communities. The question that is not addressed is how to restore and rebuild a stable public school system that has been destroyed by predatory charters.

This article is worth your time.

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

New Mexico: Teachers Delighted That New Governor Will Drop PARCC, But Reformers Object

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2019 //
30

After eight long years of punitive Reformer leadership in New Mexico, a new day has arrived. Michelle Lujan Grisham has promised to banish PARCC. Her Lt. Gov. Howie Morales—an experienced educator— is temporarily leading the state’s Public Education Department.

“The governor, who was joined by four teachers at Thursday’s news conference, also said families and students around the state should “expect to see New Mexico transition immediately out of high-stakes testing.”

“Lujan Grisham had vowed on the campaign trail to eliminate PARCC testing in New Mexico if elected, and described it Thursday as a punitive system that has pushed educators to focus on test-taking preparation, not on teaching.”

Over the past eight years, the state’s NAEP scores were stagnant, and it remained near the bottom of all states tested. It also had the second highest rate of child poverty in the nation, exceeded only by that of Mississippi.

Teachers are thrilled. Reformers who supported Governor Martinez and her failed, punitive regime are disappointed. Reformers love high-stakes testing that humiliates teachers and children.

http://www.governing.com/topics/education/tns-new-mexico-parcc-grisham.html

“Amanda Aragon, executive director of the nonprofit group NewMexicoKidsCAN, called Lujan Grisham’s announcement disappointing.

“I think the criticisms of PARCC tend not to be based in real information,” Aragon said. She argued that the rhetoric across the country about PARCC has become politically driven and expressed concern that Thursday’s announcement would leave teachers and students in limbo while they wait for a replacement assessment to be developed.”

I am surprised that “Governing” magazine treats the Reformer group “NewMexicoKidsCAN” as a legitimate education organization when it is obviously tied to the billionaire-Funded 50CAN. The Reformer comment about PARCC is absurd, because PARCC has been a disaster across the country. Of the 26 states it started with, most have dropped out. When New Mexico and eventually New Jersey are gone, PARCC will be down to only four states. It may soon disappear.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Poverty, Privatization, Testing

Florida Education Association Responds to Governor DeSantis on Quality Education

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2019 //
4

This just came in from the Florida Education Association. Ten percent of Florida’s 3 million students attend charter schools. Three percent attend voucher schools, most of which are religious. Another eight percent attendprivate schools without vouchers. Seventy-nine percent attend public schools. Governor DeSantis and the Legislature should not ignore the seventy-nine percent while catering to the wants, needs, and desires of the twenty-one percent.

FEA statement on Gov. DeSantis and education

TALLAHASSEE — Florida Education Association (FEA) President Fedrick Ingram released this statement today following the inauguration of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“Gov. DeSantis has said he is focused on giving every child the opportunity for a world-class education. So are the members of the Florida Education Association, and we hope to work with him toward that goal. We want a great education available to every child, and we want every student to be successful.

“Our state can do the most good for the greatest number of students by investing in the neighborhood public schools that educate the large majority of Florida’s kids. ‘Choice,’ on the other hand, is a code word for draining tax dollars from our neighborhood public schools to fund charter and voucher programs that serve only a small percentage of children.

“Florida’s neighborhood public schools need this administration’s support. Our state ranks 44th nationally in education spending. We are 45th in the nation in teacher pay and 47th in pay for our education staff professionals, and we are facing an unprecedented and growing teacher shortage. An investment in our neighborhood public schools and our educators is an investment in Florida’s future.”

PS: I updated the statistics to include those students enrolled in private schools that do not accept vouchers.

Thanks to Sue Legg of the League of Women Voters.

Click to access Private-School-Report-2016-17.pdf

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, Privatization, Vouchers

Nevada: Internecine Charter Battle Over Accountability

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2019 //
3

There is so much loose money sloshing around charter world, so naturally there are squabbles over the money. Mine! No, mine! Whenever online schools are involved, you can count on the presence of lobbyists and fake parent groups created by K12 Inc. or Pearson’s Connections Academy.


Personal cash payments. Drinks and airfare. Government contracts.

Those are the ingredients of a good scandal. But in the case of Nevada’s State Public Charter School Authority, there’s more behind allegations of inappropriate conduct than meets the eye.

Authority staff members are accused of accepting payments and other perks from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. The membership organization guides charter authorizers nationwide on best practices, but it also landed a contract with the Nevada charter authority in 2016. Now, the attorney general’s office is being asked to investigate.

That request came from the National Coalition for Public School Options (PSO). And it’s an action that the group has taken in another state where regulators were moving to hold charter school operators more accountable.

The group claims to fight for a parent’s right to choose the best education for their child. It has pushed back against stronger accountability for online charter schools under its overarching motto: “I trust parents.”

PSO declines to share its financial backers, but it’s commonly believed in the charter world that it receives funding from K12 Inc., one of the biggest operators of online schools nationwide. An IRS filing shows PSO spent over $2 million in 2016.

PSO’s spokeswoman, Susan Hepworth, also works for Woodberry Associates, a firm that has lobbied for K12 Inc.

In an email, Hepworth suggested that the NACSA group is trying to deflect attention from its wrongdoing, writing that “NACSA’s actions are their actions and they cannot blame it on anyone but themselves.”

The South Carolina Public Charter School District is aiming to set the record straight on what it calls “inaccurate and misleading” statements that PSO made about it to the Nevada attorney general.
In that state, the inspector general’s office investigated a PSO allegation that a charter district employee influenced the awarding of a contract to NACSA while simultaneously working as an independent contractor for the group.

But while the investigation found other issues, it concluded there was no evidence that the employee used an official position for financial gain.

“Notably, the South Carolina complaint was filed during a contentious period during which some charter schools sought to escape the (district’s) accountability policies by moving to a newly formed authorizer in a phenomenon known nationally as ‘authorizer shopping,’” attorneys for the district wrote in a letter to Nevada’s attorney general on Dec. 13.

Meanwhile, Nevada’s charter authority has been struggling to hold its own underperforming online schools — Nevada Connections Academy and Nevada Virtual Academy — accountable.

Perhaps not coincidentally, similar conflict-of-interest accusations against the agency’s former executive director, Patrick Gavin, surfaced around the same time that Nevada Virtual Academy’s charter was up for renewal. PSO has denied the timing was intentional.

Now, the group is leveling another accusation that Mark Modrcin, the charter authority’s director of authorizing, accepted “personal cash payments” from NACSA. The authority responded that Modrcin complied with all rules and requirements for state employees in a consulting contract he had with the organization.

Meantime, the Nevada Parents for Online Education — the local PSO chapter — claims it was retaliated against by Pat Hickey, executive director of the Charter School Association, who disinvited them from a recent stakeholder meeting.

They say it’s because they highlighted “unethical and potentially illegal behavior.” Hickey said they were not invited after launching a smear campaign against charter authority Chairman Jason Guinasso.

To be fair, it’s clear there were issues between Gavin and some authority board members regarding transparency and communication. And perhaps it would have been more prudent for him to recuse himself from the request-for-proposals process that resulted in NACSA winning a state contract.

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But there’s a larger issue at play here — a charter-school civil war between those who take a hard line on virtual schools, and those who fight for those schools to stay open. Expect more skirmishes if state regulators continue their accountability campaign.
Contact Amelia Pak-Harvey at apak-harvey@reviewjournal.com or 702-

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

John Thompson: Oklahoma and the Same Tired Privatization Agenda, Part 3

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2019 //
8

This is the third in a series about education politics in Oklahoma by John Thompson, historian and retired teacher.

The Oklahoman no longer dominates Oklahoma politics as it did for generations, but it is still the biggest bear in our woods. Now that legislators and governor-elect are more inexperienced than ever, the corporate school reform-loving newspaper is aggressively pushing its privatization agenda. Since our state government is almost completely lacking in knowledge of how and why the state implemented the entire accountability-driven, charter-driven experiment at the beginning of the decade, who knows who will win the hearts and minds of newly-elected officials?

One of the most worrisome of the Oklahoman’s recent editorials praised Reason magazine’s prescription for school improvement. Reason’s diagnosis was virtually indistinguishable from that of Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd, which said that underfunded high-poverty urban schools don’t need more money as much as they need to learn from high-performing schools in the rich exurbs.

The Oklahoman then editorialized:

In 2011 and 2012, Oklahoma implemented reforms that have proven effective in Florida, including a third-grade reading law that required retention of students who were two years below grade level, and an A-F school grading system. Lawmakers have since watered down some of those reforms. Instead of backing off, Reason’s education rankings indicate Oklahoma lawmakers should double down.

https://newsok.com/article/5616294/education-report-merits-review-in-spending-debate

The Oklahoman is still angry that moderate Republican State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister led a bipartisan effort that allowed schools to use more discretion when deciding whether to retain 3rd graders who don’t pass their reading test. For years, it has led the chorus for adopting an under-funded replica of the full Florida agenda. Fortunately, the Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer has researched the facts about our Reading Sufficiency Act (RSA) law.

Oklahoma Nearly Tops Nation in Holding Back Early-Grade Students

Palmer reports that 3rd grade is:

the only year educators are required by law to retain students who aren’t reading-proficient — it’s not the most common year for students to be retained. A review of federal data from 2011-12 to 2015-16, the latest available, found that repeating a grade is actually more common in kindergarten and first grade.

Palmer reveals “nearly 10,000 students in kindergarten through second grade were retained in the 2015-16 school year, compared to just over 2,500 in third grade.” That represents 6 percent of those three grades, and “only Mississippi retained a higher proportion of students in those early grades.”

Moreover, she finds that “the high-stakes third-grade test appears to drive many of the early retentions.”

Even sadder for poor children of color, the retention rates are worse in urban schools than in their suburbs. Palmer writes, “Oklahoma City Public Schools and Tulsa Public Schools reported similar numbers for kindergarten through second grade: 833 and 823, respectively. Moore Public Schools, on the other hand, which is about half the size of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, reported just 59 students retained.”

The Oklahoma Watch also chronicled the financial and human costs of the high stakes testing. It explains that, “In some cases, retaining a student is warranted and even beneficial, especially if their struggles are related to age or maturity, educators say. But Oklahoma’s extraordinarily high rate suggests something is out of whack.”

And “one extra year of schooling at Oklahoma’s average of $8,091 per student costs the state $80 million. Advocates say that money would be better spent on extra support for the student within their normal grade progression.”

Palmer then cites Texas A&M University research that followed nearly 800 children for 14 years. Elementary students who were held back “were almost three times more likely to drop out of high school than their peers. In that study, the most common year repeated was first grade.”

She cited another study on Florida students who were retained in third grade, and that being old for their grade didn’t reduce the likelihood the student would receive a diploma. But in contrast to the ExcelinEd lobbyists ubiquitous spin, she added “critics note the researcher in that study and others on retention works for a Harvard research center chaired by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who came up with the retention policy and has been pushing it nationwide.”

Moreover, Florida held back 50 percent fewer students below third grade. And Florida invests more than $130 million per year for supports to improve student literacy, while Oklahoma only provided $6 million for 78,000 at-risk students in the last fiscal year.

It must be stressed that the original 3rd grade high stakes reading test, is one of two policies that were clearly repudiated by almost all Oklahoma stakeholders. I had believed it had mostly been mended, despite not being ended, and there is evidence that retentions have slowed during the Hofmeister administration. I’ve talked with many former students angered that their kids were taught by a string of temporary teachers and subs as their kids tried to avoid being retained. But that was attributable to the combination of extreme budget cuts and the overall reform package that drove teachers out of the system.

The second threat, the expansion of charter schools, has garnered pushback. Even many or most of the choice true believers have realized that it would be impossible to find more charters willing to retain more poor children of color. About the only markets left, small towns and gentrifying neighborhoods, are clearly the new targets. I don’t expect reformers to willingly back off of high stakes reading tests, but clearly their main priority will be blaming the system for failed reforms and, creating portfolios of charters in gentrifying areas, leaving district schools and pushing online charters like Epic CMO as alternative schools to the charter systems.

We’ve been winning, but we can’t back off from the battle to reclaim public education.

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