Archives for category: Education Industry
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City Fund: Another Billionaire-Funded Phony Scheme to Steal Public Schools from the Public

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2018 //
26

You first read about “City Fund” when Tom Ultican wrote about it on August 18. Then four days later, Chalkbeat got the “leaked memo” and told the story that Tom had already broken.

Two billionaires, unhappy with the slow and slowing pace of privatization, have created another organization to spread the gospel of school choice, following in the venerable tradition established by racist Southern governors and senators following the Brown Decision of 1954. In the late 1950s (as Mercedes Schneider wrote in detail in her fine book School Choice), white southerners were mad for choice. They saw choice as the best way to stop racial integration.

Now, under the unesteemed leadership of rightwing zealot Betsy DeVos, the mask of benevolence has been stripped away from the choice movement.

But that doesn’t stop billionaires Reed Hastings (Netflix) and John Arnold (Enron). Education is their game, their hobby, and they are not ready to abandon their dream of privatizing every school in America.

They have hired a “dream team” of failed Reformers, who bring together in one place a long history of stealing democracy and public schools from poor African Americans.

The Reformers tell us that up until now, nothing in reform has worked. But they seem convinced that charter schools work (think Detroit, think Milwaukee). If NOLA is the model, start by closing all the public schools, firing all the teachers, then replacing them with charters and TFA. Crucial to the plan is to add hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending (they forgot that part of the formula).

Peter Greene takes a crack at explaining the grand plan for transforming public schools into a business–and failing as Kevin Huffman and Chris Barbic did in Tennessee’s Achievement School District, where they blew $100 million trying to turn “failing schools” into high-performing schools by handing them over to private operators. Say this for Huffman and Barbic: It was failure on a grand scale!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Tennessee

California: Charter School Borrows Nearly $30 Million for New Building, Then Was Closed Down

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2018 //
6

A charter school in Palmdale, California, raised nearly $30 million in bonds for its new building. But as matters stand, the school will never open. Charters are risky. They open, they close. Sometimes states close more charter schools than they open. That’s business. Where is Enron, Braniff Airlines, all sorts of brands that disappeared? Gone without a trace.


For the last year, construction on the corner of Avenue R and 40th Street East in Palmdale hummed along as a massive school campus took shape.

On its Facebook page, Guidance Charter School posted photos of students holding shovels adorned with yellow ribbons and contractors pouring the foundation for what would be an 87,000-square-foot campus with a swimming pool, library and playing fields — paid for with nearly $30 million in bonds.

Less visible was what was happening behind the scenes, as the local school system raised alarms that threatened Guidance’s existence.

The Palmdale School District’s board of trustees, which first authorized Guidance 17 years ago, voted in January to close the school, citing concerns about poor academic performance and questionable financial operations. As the new campus rose, charter officials launched a series of appeals, the latest of which came before the Los Angeles County Board of Education this week.

On Tuesday, the board rejected Guidance’s last-ditch effort to open for the 2018-19 school year. Unless a court overturns Palmdale’s decision, Guidance Charter School will not be able to enroll students — or receive the state funding that comes with them. But it still will be responsible for repaying the loan.

Supporters say the school is a victim of a process that puts decision-making power in the hands of the very districts that compete with charters for students and funding. Opponents see it as proof that charter schools, regardless of the quality of the education they offer or the extent of oversight they receive, are able to access bond money too easily.

The school’s executive director, Kamal Al-Khatib, blames its closure on the Palmdale School District, which he said purposely set the charter school up for failure in order to win students back. In the spring of 2017, less than a year before voting not to renew the school, the district had declared that Guidance was on solid ground, he said…

Guidance was founded in 2001 by Muslim leaders who promised to offer students a secular education and Arabic instruction.

The school leased space from a mosque owned by the American Islamic Institute of Antelope Valley, a religious organization run by the charter’s founder and its executive director, which would later prompt a host of conflict-of-interest concerns. Guidance’s ties to the mosque — and the thin partitions erected to separate its students from a prayer room — drew criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Anti-Defamation League that there was not enough of a wall between church and state.

Regardless, the school grew. It had opened with 65 students but by last year had about 900 in grades K-12. And every five years, when its right to operate came up for renewal, the Palmdale school board voted to keep it open. Guidance also rented classroom space from the district…

When district officials voted not to renew the charter, they cited Guidance’s lagging academic performance as their primary concern.

Although its students’ scores on the state English exam in 2017 were roughly comparable to their peers in the district, according to Palmdale, math was a different story. In that subject, scores at Guidance were worse than those at most other schools in the area; none of the charter school’s 11th graders tested at grade level.

Many of Guidance’s students didn’t graduate, according to county officials, who said its drop-out rate was about 23% for the class of 2016. Palmdale officials found that even when students did graduate, many were not prepared to go to four-year colleges. According to the district, of 32 students who graduated from Guidance in 2014 and 2015, 24 had not completed the courses required for admission to the University of California or California State University systems.

The district also flagged Guidance’s fiscal operations and governance structure. It accused Al-Khatib of having financial interests in several of the school’s transactions, including its lease with the American Islamic Institute and a roughly $2-million loan from a related company called Guidance Charter School Services LLC.

Guidance’s lawyers disputed the claims and said Al-Khatib’s role at the mosque was voluntary and unpaid.

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

Ohio: Four Radioactive Politicians Who Helped ECOT Milk $1 Billion from Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2018 //
7

Denis Smith writes here about four elected officials, now standing for re-election, who stood by and watched (or helped) the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) as it drained money from the state’s public schools and its taxpayers. $1 billion since 2000!

If you vote in Ohio, watch out for these four:

As damaging as the charter school’s implosion was on the viability of Republican pols, the corresponding explosion ECOT’s demise is causing in state political circles continues to reverberate, particularly for four GOP ECOT stalwarts named Dave Yost, Mike DeWine, Keith Faber and Andrew Brenner.

They are not your friends. They are not friends of public education. They are not stewards of the public trust and treasury.

Rep. Keith Faber is the first case in point. [When the subject is term-limits and running yet again for some other office, you might want to get a scorecard to follow the runs, hits, and mostly errors of this Republican team.] The former Senate president and now House member is currently running for Auditor, seeking to replace current Auditor Dave Yost, who is, you guessed it, term-limited and running for Attorney General.

Faber’s way to brush off the radioactive fallout is to distribute more than $36,000 collected from ECOT to “high quality” charter schools.

Based upon past history, that’s an oxymoron, isn’t it?

Then comes Mike DeWine, a candidate for governor:

Then there’s the curious case of Mike DeWine. The term-limited Attorney General, who is now running for Governor, has decided to go after ECOT founder William Lager, his companies, and several others in high ECOT circles, including its former superintendent, treasurer, and accounting administrator.

Voodoo economics begets voodoo public policy begets voodoo charter schools begets voodoo accounting.

In DeWine’s case, his lawsuit seeks to recover from the ECOT hierarchy a portion of the $62 million ECOT is accused of over-billing the state in voodoo student attendance data.

Worst of all is Andrew Brenner, who called public schools “socialism.”

The third usual GOP suspect is House Education Committee Chair Andrew Brenner who is, you guessed it, term-limited and running for the Senate. Brenner has apparently learned the use of pejoratives from his idol, Donald Trump, the undisputed king for crafting pejoratives as a tactic to demean opponents.

Louise Valentine, Brenner’s Democratic challenger for the Senate seat asked in May if Brenner was considering returning the ECOT donations he’s received over the years. In his usual attack mode characterized by splitting hairs and deflecting the subject, Brenner said he never received any money directly from the school.

No, of course, Brenner didn’t get any money from ECOT. He got money from ECOT’s owner, William Lager!

His opponent calls him #ECOTAndy.

Last is the Auditor who claims to have brought ECOT to justice!

The final figure of the fast and furious foursome is Auditor Dave Yost who, like his colleagues memorialized here, served ECOT well as a commencement speaker, endorser, and proponent of the corrupt online charter school. In addition to scooping up more than $29,000 in campaign cash from ECOT, Yost is remembered for bestowing not just one but three awards for the school’s financial reporting.

According to a 2016 press release on the Auditor’s website, “The school’s excellent record keeping has qualified it for the Auditor of State Award with Distinction.”

There is something Orwellian in the fact that a public official offers praise for an entity which does not operate in the public interest, convenience, and necessity. Such an award demonstrates once again that voodoo economics begets voodoo public policy begets voodoo charter schools which begets voodoo accounting. Which begets an Auditor’s Award for Voodoo Accounting. With Distinction, no less.

Wow. You can’t make that one up.

Vote. Sweep out the scoundrels who stood by and applauded the raid on the state’s treasury.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Bill Phillis: Those Poor, Poor, and Very Few Bad For-Profit Charters in Ohio

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2018 //
5

Bill Phillis, retired for many years as deputy state superintendent of education in Ohio and now the state’s most outspoken critic of charter fraud, writes on his blog about the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s lame defense of for-profit charters:

“The myth of Ohio’s ‘for-profit’ charter school system”: A Fordham Institute’s damage control effort

An August 20 Fordham article suggests the charter industry is getting a bad rap because of the cronyism of a few charter operators. The article also attempts to justify the use of for-profit management companies by charter schools.

The notion proffered is that ECOT and the White Hat Management Company are the only bad actors in the charter industry. What about the 250 or so charter schools that took state and federal money and closed or never opened leaving kids in an education lurch? What about the other charter operations that have been reported as fostering gross irregularities, such as the Gulen charters, but not appropriately investigated by state officials? What about the Imagine Schools Inc. charter school chain that requires the charter schools to pay absurdly high rent to a real estate company allied with Imagine?

Corruption in the charter industry in Ohio and elsewhere is not confined to just a few bad actors. The industry is rife with low performance, cronyism and corruption.

In the article, the author equates a charter board hiring a management company to operate its school to a school district purchasing buses, books, etc. from the private sector. An absurd stretch!

A management company that operates charter schools performs a governmental fiduciary function and thus should be subjected to the same accountability and transparency measures as school district officials. Bus and book companies don’t operate the schools to which they sell products.

The Ohio charter industry seems beyond repair but Fordham keeps defending it.

Be it noted that the NAACP report on charter schools not only called for a moratorium on them, but called for the elimination of all for-profit charters and the for-profit management organizations that manage charters.

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

Biased Reporting from the Education Writers Association Blog

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2018 //
32

I was astonished to read a post on the EWA blog today about whether charter schools reduce the funding available to public schools.

https://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/how-much-do-charter-schools-cost-districts?utm_source=salsa&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

“There’s no question that the growth of charter schools presents significant financial challenges for many school systems, especially in cities where they serve a large share of students. Where researchers disagree is how great the costs to districts are, and to what extent charter schools are to blame.”

The author posed the question as a “debate” between the distinguished economist Helen Ladd of Duke University—whose bio is star studded with degrees and honors—and Robin Lake, who is an advocate for the charter industry at the pro-charter Center for the Reinvention of Public Education. Ladd is a scholar. Lake is not.

And yet they are treated as equals by this shoddy reporting.

The writer didn’t bother to contact scholar Gordon Lafer, author of the “One Percent Solution” and of a recent study demonstrating that charters diverted tens of millions of dollars from public schools in three urban districts in California.

Report: The Cost of Charter Schools for Public School Districts

When school districts cut their budgets because of charter schools, they must lay off teachers and cut programs. That affects the education of the vast majority of students. Why is that a debatable issue?

I googled the author, David Loewenberg, and saw that he was TFA and the New America Foundation (funded largely by Google), and it made sense.

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

Great News! The Southern Poverty Law Center is Now Fighting Privatization in Court

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2018 //
9

The Southern Poverty Law Center is one of the most respected names in the nation among groups that fight for justice and civil rights.

They have turned their firepower to fight against the privatization of public schools.

SPLC was instrumental in the court case that ended with the judge striking down a constitutional amendment that hid its true intention–removing the ability of school districts to control the growth of privately managed but publicly funded charter schools.

The Florida League of Women Voters–a steadfast ally of the great majority of students who attend public schools, not charter schools–brought the suit.

There will surely be appeals. The SPLC is a powerful ally. It recognizes that privatization and school choice do not ensure the rights of vulnerable students but are a raid on state treasuries for the benefit of the few.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Carol Burris Finds Good News in Latest EdNext Poll

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2018 //
9

EdNext is a pro-choice, pro-privatization journal of education research. It is not neutral. It is funded largely by the ultra-conservative Hoover Institution. It advocates for charters and vouchers and against public schools and unions.

EdNext conducts an annual poll.

Here, Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, analyzes the good news in the new EdNext poll:

The Education Next polls typically read like push polls, with questions carefully worded to elicit an anti-public school, pro-privatization agenda. Nevertheless, there is some good news tucked away for friends of public education in their 2018 results.

The teacher walkouts in six states raised sympathy, not antipathy, for teachers most notably in the states where the walkouts occurred. According to Ed Next’s recent poll, 63% of respondents in the walk-out states support increasing teacher pay and there has been a 7 point increase in support for increased funding for public schools overall.

According to Ed Next polling, in 2014 support for charter schools was at its highest – – 54%. During the past four years, however, that support has dropped. In 2017, 39% percent of those polled supported charter schools with a small uptick this year to 44%. The small rebound for approval of charters has come nearly exclusively from self-identified Republicans. Among Democrats support has remained low with only 31% supporting charters in 2017, and 35% supporting them in 2018. Support for charters among teachers has dramatically declined from 44% in 2014, to only 30% four years later.

The Education Next poll records support for vouchers at the same 44%. However, in 2017 the PDK poll found support for vouchers to be only 39%–a figure that drops to 34% when vouchers for private schools are included. (Apparently about 5% of respondents think that vouchers are used in public schools only.) To understand the difference one only needs only to look how Education Next asks its question:

A proposal has been made that would give all families with children in public schools a voucher allowing them to enroll their children in private schools instead, with government helping to pay the tuition. Would you support or oppose this proposal?

In the question, vouchers are proposed as theoretical. In reality, 15 states plus the District of Columbia have at least one direct voucher program. Second rather than using the word taxpayerto describe who pays for the voucher, Ed Next uses government—cleverly shifting the burden of payment away from those responding to the question. And third, the question limits vouchers to families that are in public schools, despite the fact that nearly all voucher laws have expanded so that attending a public school is no longer a requirement.

What do we learn from the Ed Next poll? Even in a poll with questions biased in favor of school choice, there is still more support for true public education than not. It is now our job to help the public understand the impact of vouchers and charters on their community public schools and their taxes.

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

Oakland: Why is the School Board Trying to Save This Gulen Charter?

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2018 //
13

Oakland, California, has a Gulen problem.

One of its charter schools is a Gulen affiliate, meaning that it has a shadowy connection to a shadowy figure who is an imam who lives in seclusion in the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania.

The imam Fethullah Gullen has the same shadowy association with nearly 200 charter schools, meaning his Gulen movement is collecting hundreds of millions of dollars to run “public” schools in which most of the board and teachers are Turkish. The current authoritarian ruler of Turkey, Recip Erdogan, once Gullen’s ally, blames Gulen for a failed coup and wants him extradited. The U.S. is protecting him. That’s okay, but why is this Turkish national running American “public” schools. He used to give free trips to Turkey to key legislators in states like Ohio and Texas, but he can’t do that anymore since Turkey no longer welcomes him or his movement.

Oakland has at least one Gulen school, called BayTech. The principal (Turkish, of course) revised his contract so that he could collect $450,000 if and when he left, and he quit and took off for Australia with $450,000 of taxpayer dollars.

Now the Oakland school board is scrambling to save the school.

Amid a management crisis and allegations of fraud at Oakland’s BayTech charter school, the Oakland Unified School District is exploring the possibility of appointing an independent director to the school’s board. State law allows public school districts to make board appointments to charter schools under their supervision. BayTech has also hired Kathleen Daugherty, a retired superintendent from Sacramento who runs an education consulting firm, to assist with the school’s recovery. Classes began on Monday at BayTech, even though the school’s principal and several other senior administrators all abruptly quit at the end of the last school year.
Meanwhile, OUSD is continuing to investigate allegations that the school’s former principal, Hayri Hatipoglu, defrauded BayTech by modifying his employment contract to obtain a lucrative three-year payout, instead of a standard six-month severance package. BayTech’s three current board members, Fatih Dagdelen, Kairat Sabyrov, and Volkan Ulukoylu, allege that Hatipoglu made the contract modification without their knowledge.

But Hatipoglu wrote in an email to the Express that the allegations are untrue and have unfairly damaged his reputation.

“This allegation is such a big lie that even OUSD, CSMC (BayTech back office) would be able to refute that immediately as they can view/have access to school finances,” Hatipoglu wrote.

OUSD hasn’t commented about the school’s situation or the allegations against Hatipoglu except to confirm several weeks ago that the district is conducting an investigation. School district records show that OUSD has obtained detailed financial information from BayTech.

As is usual in a Gulen school, the management is Turkish.

The article goes on to explain that the school required its student to buy uniforms from a Turkish-owned vendor.

Hatipoglu has maintained in emails sent to the Express that Sabyrov’s allegations are false, and that he is instead being retaliated against for breaking ties with the Accord Institute.

Accord is a nonprofit that was founded by members of the Gülen movement, a Turkish religious sect run by the elderly imam Fethullah Gülen.

In an email sent over the weekend, Hatipoglu wrote that Sabyrov, who is originally from Kyrgyzstan and BayTech’s two Turkish board members are part of a “shady network that is exploiting the school’s resources.”

Hatipoglu didn’t specifically identify this “shady network,” but BayTech’s links to followers of Fethullah Gülen are well-known. The school was founded by Gülen movement members, including the current CEO of the Accord Institute, and BayTech has contracted with several companies that are suspected of being owned and operated by Gülenists. BayTech also paid the Accord Institute about $70,000 a year for various education training services.

Why is the school board trying to keep this Gulen school afloat?

Given the allegations of fraud and mismanagement, why doesn’t the board return the school and the students to the public schools?

Sharon Higgins, an Oakland parent who has been tracking the Gulen movement for years, says that Oakland taxpayers are funding the Gulenists.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Gulen Charter Schools, Privatization

Thomas Ultican: The Destroy Public Education Movement Creates a New Vehicle

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2018 //
21

Retired physics and math teacher Tom Ultican continues his investigation of the Destroy Public Education movement with this post about a new organization determined to extinguish public education by privatization.

He begins:

Billionaire Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has joined with billionaire former Enron executive, John Arnold, to launch an aggressive destroy public education (DPE) initiative. They claim to have invested $100 million each to start The City Fund. Neerav Kingsland declares he is the Fund’s Managing Partner and says the fund will help cities across America institute proven school reform successes such as increasing “the number of public schools that are governed by non-profit organizations.”

Ending local control of public schools through democratic means is a priority for DPE forces. In 2017, EdSource reported on Hastings campaign against democracy; writing, “His latest salvo against school boards that many regard as a bedrock of American democracy came last week in a speech he made to the annual conference of The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington D.C., attended by about 4,500 enthusiastic charter school advocates, teachers and administrators.”

When announcing the new fund, Kingsland listed fourteen founding members of The City Fund. There is little professional classroom teaching experience or training within the group. Chris Barbic was a Teach for America (TFA) teacher in Houston, Texas for two years. Similarly, Kevin Huffman was also a TFA teacher in Houston for three years. The only other member that may have some education experience is Kevin Shafer. His background is obscure.

The operating structure of the new fund is modeled after a law firm. Six of the fourteen founding members are lawyers: Gary Borden; David Harris; Kevin Huffman; Neerav Kingsland; Jessica Pena and Kameelah Shaheed-Diallo.

Ready to Pilfer Community Schools and End School Boards

In a 2012 published debate about school reform, Kingsland justified his call for ending democratic control of public education writing,

“I believe that true autonomy can only be achieved by government relinquishing its power of school operation. I believe that well regulated charter and voucher markets – that provide educators with public funds to operate their own schools – will outperform all other vehicles of autonomy in the long-run. In short, autonomy must be real autonomy: government operated schools that allow “site level decision making” feels more Orwellian than empowering – if we believe educators should run schools, let’s let them run schools.”

This is a belief in “the invisible hand” of markets making superior judgements and private businesses always outperforming government administration. There may be some truth here, but it is certainly not an ironclad law.

Please open the post to read the rest of this shocking story of arrogance and contempt for democracy, as well as many links.

If we lived in a society that took democracy seriously, the perpetrators of the City Fund would be ridiculed as agents of plutocracy.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Florida: Peter Greene Explains Amendment 8, Which Was Tossed Out by a Judge This Morning

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2018 //
4

Peter Greene provides an excellent explanation of Amendment 8, which was thrown off the ballot this morning by a Florida judge.

The lawsuit against Amendment 8 was filed by the Florida League of Women Voters.

It will be appealed, so it is important for you to understand what Peter Greene explains in this post.

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