Archives for category: Education Industry

Puerto Rico: Secretary of Education Is Grateful for the Hurricane That Allows Her to Wipe Out Public Schools

August 4, 2018 //

Remember that Arne Duncan said that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans” because it made it possible to wipe out public schools, fire all the teachers, eliminate the union, and replace them all with charter school?

Well, the Secretary of Education Julia Kelleher in Puerto Rico is grateful for the opportunity that Hurricane Maria has given her to do the same to the public schools there.

Forget the deaths of at least 4,000 people. Think of charter schools and vouchers!

Here she is in an interview.

She’s in the middle of closing 264 schools and working with Betsy Devos on vouchers.

Video of her here: https://twitter.com/GoHedgeClippers/status/1024336534965825536

Full text from full video: https://www.facebook.com/David-Begnaud-108679513654/

David Begnaud 24:07
And I’ll preface the question with this. When I first met Miss Keleher, her at the convention center we were sitting off in a cornerdidn’t actually know who she was, until about 10 minutes before I found out and I thought, Oh, well, she’d be a good person to talk to how are the schools to doing and this was in like, the first few days after the storm. And we sat down and you said to me, I’ll never forget “hurricane Maria Maybe the best thing that’s happened to this island” Do you still feel that way

Julia Keleher 24:37
I think the fact that I have $500 million to improve the quality of a kids academic experience and learning environment, I think that I have four times as much money as I would have to be able to fix the physical plant in which they go to school plus, plus the option to access more, I think that’s a tremendous opportunity that no one wanted the storm, but I’m I’m not going to miss spend, pardon the pun, the the opportunity that I have to, to to redirect these things that would have never been available to Puerto Rico, I would have been short $300 million, I wouldn’t be able to do the things that we’re going to be able to do for teachers and for kids.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Puerto Rico, Vouchers

Jan Resseger on “A Decade of Neglect”

By dianeravitch

August 3, 2018 //

Jan Resseger reviews the AFT report on “A Decade of Neglect,“ a decade in which states cut funding for public schools and diverted the shrinking pie to charters and vouchers. This state-by-state attack on public schools is the match that ignited the teachers’ strikes and may ignite even more in the future. Teachers will be silent no more. They will vote in massive numbers in November for those who support public schools. Many teachers are running for state legislative offices. Good luck to them!

The new report from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), A Decade of Neglect, is one of the most lucid explanations I’ve read about the deplorable fiscal conditions for public schools across the states. It explains the precipitous drop in school funding caused by the Great Recession, temporarily ameliorated in 2009 by an infusion of funds from the federal stimulus (a financial boost that disappeared after a couple of years), compounded by tax cutting and austerity budgeting across many states, and further compounded by schemes to drain education dollars to privatized charter and voucher programs all out of the same budget.

The report delineates the conditions tangled together over the decade: “While some states are better off than most, in states where spending on education was less in 2016 than it was before the recession, our public schools remain nearly $19 billion short of the annual funding they received in 2008, after adjusting for changes in the consumer price index… The recession ran from December 2007 through June 2009 and prompted a crisis setting off a chain of actions that resulted in significant budget cutting by our state governments. When the recession hit, it devastated state budgets. Job losses, lower wages, the crash in housing prices and the panic in the financial markets all worked to lower state tax revenues, while the demand for government services in the form of unemployment benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and housing and Medicaid assistance drove up expenditures. The Brookings Institution estimated that by the second quarter of 2009, income tax collections were 27 percent below their prior-year levels, and total state taxes were 17 percent lower… The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual report of education indicators recently found that U.S. spending on elementary and high school education declined more than 4 percent from 2010-2014…. Over this same period, education spending on average, rose 5 percent per student across the 35 countries in the OECD.”

Many states also adopted an ideology promising that tax cuts would bring the economy back. Sam Brownback’s Kansas experiment in supply side economics, however, exemplifies the failure to confirm these hopes. In Kansas the economy didn’t improve and state revenues collapsed. Only in the past two years has the legislature there raised taxes—beginning an effort to undo the damage. Overall, according to AFT’s report: “In 2016, 25 states were still providing less funding for K-12 schools than before the recession, after adjusting for inflation… Eighteen of the 25 states that provided less funding for k-12 education reduced their tax effort between 2008 and 2015.” The eight states that cut taxes most deeply were: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Virginia. And, “In 38 states, the average teacher salary in 2018 is lower than it was in 2009 in real terms… According to the Economic Policy Institute, teacher pay fell by $30 per week from 1996-2015, while pay for other college graduates increased by $124. The gap between teachers and other college graduates has continued to widen and deep cuts in school funding leave states unable to invest in their state’s teacher workforce… In 35 states, between 2008 and 2016, the ratio of students to teachers grew.”

Here is an example of the result: “(W)hile some states are doing better than others, no state is really doing well enough. California is a leader on many of the measures used in this report. But there are less than one tenth the number of school librarians as is recommended. Most school districts don’t have a nurse and there are only about a quarter of the recommended number of school counselors.”

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

Wisconsin: Gubernatorial Candidate Kelda Roys Writes a Letter to Teachers

By dianeravitch

August 3, 2018 //

Here is the voice of a genuine progressive.

Kelda Roys is running for the Democratic nomination for Governor so she can run against Scott Walker.

The primary is August 14.

She released this letter to teachers.

She really gets it. She speaks to the hearts and minds of all who have suffered the insufferable Walker, who has walked all over teachers, students, and public schools. He has bulldozed the Wisconsin Idea.

Wisconsin needs Kelda Roys.

She writes:

This is a message of hope. A promise to you of what kind of governor I will be, and a heartfelt statement to demonstrate that I hear what you’ve been saying and empathize with what you’ve been experiencing.

Throughout the past eight years, you, your pocketbook, and your profession have been under attack.

You are constantly asked to “do more with less” as a result of the historic budget cuts to your classrooms. Without proper funding, the schools you work in, especially in rural communities, continue to close. You are often forced to “‘teach for the test” as opposed to engaging young minds in the joy of learning and helping develop students’ whole selves. Your class sizes are going up, but your professional autonomy is being ratcheted down.

As a result of Act 10, your collective bargaining rights were eliminated, compensation reduced, and work devalued. Your median salaries have continued to fall: as of the 2015-26 school year, your average pay was more than $10,000 lower than it was before the passage of Act 10. The policies of the Walker administration have done serious harm to Wisconsin’s once-great public education system. A record number of your colleagues have left the profession altogether.

In the numbers-driven, high-stakes testing approach that many school districts are taking, your autonomy is lost. This is bad for you and even worse for students. In the ever-expanding push for “accountability,” teachers are too often punished — never administrators, or politicians who fail to remedy the social and economic injustice that follows students into the classroom. Rather than addressing the teacher retention and pipeline problem by increasing pay and restoring joy to the profession, Walker and the DPI are undermining teacher qualifications by enabling fast-track “alternative” licensing for people without teaching degrees. And the expansion of privatization, from the voucher programs to so-called “independent” charters, steals resources away from our public schools and the kids you serve. It’s no wonder so many teachers feel demoralized and are leaving — your ability to practice the profession you love and teach your students is constantly questioned, challenged, and denied by the very people who should be supporting you.

Despite all this, I am asking you to not to leave.

As a small-business owner, as a mother, and as a proud graduate of Wisconsin’s public schools, I know how critical you are to our state and our future. To attract and retain the best teachers, Wisconsin must become a better state in which to be a teacher — we must invest in public schools and educators.

As governor, I pledge I will do everything in my power to restore the funding our schools deserve, the rights, wages, and benefits you lost, and the autonomy and respect you deserve.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Students, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

New Group Created by Rightwing Foundations to Promote More Charters in Cities

By dianeravitch

August 2, 2018 //

Chalkbeat reporter Matt Barnum reports the formation of a new group to push additional charters and the “portfolio model” in cities.

The City Fund is funded largely by the rightwing John and Laura Arnold Foundation; Arnold is the former Enron trader who bailed out before the collapse of Enron.

The group was announced Tuesday morning on the blog of Neerav Kingsland, who leads education giving at The Laura and John Arnold Foundation. According to a separate presentation created by the group and viewed by Chalkbeat, the Arnold Foundation and the Hastings Fund have already given the group over $200 million. It’s unclear if the organization has raised additional funds.

Although the group is likely to start in a small number of cities, that presentation also made its ambitions clear: it aspires to eventually be in “every city in America.”

Others involved include Chris Barbic of the Arnold Foundation; Kevin Huffman, the former Tennessee education chief; David Harris, who previously led the Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based group; and Ethan Gray, the president of the nonprofit Education Cities.

Kingsland previously ran New Schools for New Orleans, which kept the money flowing to the Recovery School District in New Orleans, where 40% of the charters are rated D or F and almost completely segregated (black).

Barbic was in charge of the failed Achievement School District in Tennessee, and Kevin Huffman (Michelle Rhee’s ex-husband) was the Commissioner of Education in Tennessee who hired Barbic. Harris is the pseudo-Democrat who is responsible for a swath of destruction in the Indianapolis School District.

What is the “portfolio” model? It is a concept that urges districts to treat their schools like a stock portfolio. Sell the losers, keep the winners.

Has it worked?

Bonafide Reformer Jay P. Greene of the University of Arkansas has written several posts arguing that the portfolio model is a failure and that it is no different from a school district (although it is privately controlled). Read here. and here. The latter post is advice written to the Arnold Foundation about why it should not invest in the portfolio model. Sad. They didn’t listen.

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

Douglas Harris: A Response to Critics of the 2015 New Orleans Study

By dianeravitch

August 1, 2018 //

Douglas Harris of the Education Research Alliance at Tulane University responds here to critics of the 2015 study of New Orleans in which he was the lead researcher. Its findings were the same as his 2018 study.

He summarizes and links to the divergent views about the New Orleans’ adoption of market-driven reforms.

The school system before Katrina was corrupt and dysfunctional. After the hurricane in 2005, the state stepped in to turn most schools into privately managed charters.

He writes:

“In a study I conducted with Matthew Larsen, we found that the city’s test scores rose dramatically because of the post-Katrina reforms. Even the most pessimistic estimates suggest that the reforms significantly increased scores (and probably high school graduation rates and college entry) and more than alternative policies and programs would have. These achievement gains also occurred across the board. In this respect, low-income students were not hurt. They benefited academically.

“That being said, some of the rhetoric of reform supporters has gone overboard. There are some real issues and questions, just not the ones that these critics have set their sights on.

“For example, though disadvantaged students benefited, they seem to have benefited less than other groups. Early on, as this entirely new type of system was being put in place, there were real horror stories about how special education students and others were suspended and expelled at high rates. Under pressure from community groups, state and local leaders took several steps to address the problem, yet it remains unclear whether the problems are solved.

“Critics are concerned that schools under the reforms are too focused on test scores. This is a national concern as well, but the intensity of test-based accountability in New Orleans is even stronger and may reduce focus on other important educational goals like creativity and local cultural knowledge. In the coming years, we’ll get a better sense of the real results by looking at college and beyond.

“One potential weakness of a system of autonomous schools like the New Orleans model is that disadvantaged students can more easily fall between the cracks. With neighborhood attendance zones, a specific school is responsible for each student. With school choice, tens of thousands of students are in the hands of one or two district staff people. And there are signs that high school dropouts are being under-reported.

“Finally, whatever lessons we might draw from New Orleans may be exclusive to New Orleans. Our student outcomes had nowhere to go but up. New Orleans also saw a massive influx of federal and philanthropic funding and skilled people from across the country that other cities are unlikely to experience. Other districts should look to New Orleans, but tread carefully.“

If only the professional Reformers heeded Harris’ words of caution. You can be sure they will use his New Orleans study to tout the advantages of privatization.

For example, David Leonhardt did not write two columns in the New York Times to report the findings and cautions that Harris here reports, but to tout the wonders of charters.

Now that Harris has won $10 million from the DeVos’ Department of Education to establish a National Center for Research on School Choice, perhaps he can help shine a light on how School Choice has worked in Detroit and Milwaukee. Perhaps he can persuade the professional Reformers that the neediest kids are the ones least likely to benefit and most likely, as he put it, to “fall between the cracks.” Then, they might drop their false narrative about “saving poor kids from failing schools.” But that may be too much to hope for.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Orleans, Privatization

Ohio Taxpayers Charged $7.7 Million to Renovate Charter-School Building Valued at $2.4 Million

By dianeravitch

July 31, 2018 //

The Columbus Dispatch reports on the continuing financial misadventures of the Imagine charter chain.

Imagine Schools, a for-profit Charter chain, bought an appliance store in a building valued last year at $2.4 Million. It renovated and passed the bill to Ohio taxpayers for $7.7 Million, triple the buolding’s value.

The charter, Great Westerm Academy, will have 700 students.

“Under its finance deal, Great Western Academy had to come up with added lease payments totaling $7.7 million over the past decade to cover the renovations — $3.3 million above their actual cost — at times paying nearly $1 million a year in total rent.

“According to the Franklin County auditor, the property was valued at $2.4 million in 2017. In other words, the $7.7 million the school paid for renovations was more than three times the building’s value.

“The deal has raised questions about Great Western’s lease agreement with SchoolHouse Finance, a subsidiary of Imagine Schools. SchoolHouse rents the space and sub-leases to Great Western. SchoolHouse also financed the renovations.”

This is the sweet part of the deal. Imagine rents the space, then subleases it to an Imagine school.

Do Ohio taxpayers care what happens to their money?

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

NYC: Public Schools Ordered to Pay Renovation Costs for Charter Schools: Update

By dianeravitch

July 30, 2018 //

Leeches gonna leech.

Less money for the 90%+ in public schools as a result of this decision, if it is upheld.

This note just in from civil rights lawyer Wendy Lecker: “This decision denied the motion to dismiss. The case is still pending- the actual controversy has yet to be resolved. At the end of the decision, the judge set a schedule for the DOE to file an answer. So NYC has not yet been ordered to pay.”

Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School, 240 Jay Street in Brooklyn. Image credit: CityLaw.

City DOE refused to pay costs to renovate charter school’s rental space. The Education Law requires the City Department of Education, upon the request of a charter school, to provide the charter school with a co-location in a New York City public school for no charge, or to reimburse a charter school for its “actual rental cost” if the charter school is required to rent at a new location in New York City.

The Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School, a charter middle school located in Brooklyn, New York, requested co-location which City DOE denied. The charter school appealed City DOE’s denial to the New York State Department of Education. The State Commissioner found in favor of the charter school and ordered City DOE to pay the school’s rental assistance once the charter school provided proof of its actual rental costs.

The charter school submitted a new rent bill to City DOE accompanied by a copy of its lease and correspondence with its landlord which explained that the landlord had charged the charter school a reduced rent because the charter school had agreed to make alterations to the premises. The landlord agreed to consider the alterations additional rent under the lease.

City DOE refused to reimburse the charter school for the additional costs it incurred in making alterations, and determined that it would only pay the base rent costs. The charter school sued City DOE. The charter school alleged that it was entitled to payments covering the alterations under the State Education Law and under the prior order by the State Education Commissioner. City DOE moved to dismiss the complaint.

Supreme Court Justice Judge Lucy Billings ruled in favor of the charter school on its claim, including the alteration costs, and denied City DOE’s motion to dismiss. In the absence of a definition of “actual rental costs” in the Education Law, Judge Billings construed the phrase to have its ordinary meaning. She held that this meant City DOE was required to reimburse the charter school for all costs it actually incurred in renting its facility, and not just the base rent.

Brooklyn Lab. Charter v. NYC Dept. of Ed., 67 N.Y.S.3d 397 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty. 2017).

By: Danielle Mabe (Danielle is a New York Law School Graduate, Class of 2018.)

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization

Andrew Hartman on “DeVos Democrats”

By dianeravitch

July 30, 2018 //

Somehow I missed this article when it was published in January 2017. It is well worth reading because it explains how the mainstream of the Democratic Party paved the way for the radical rightwing DeVos agenda.

Unless the Democrats regain their pro-public education values, they will cede a significant part of their base. They cheered striking teachers in the spring of 2018, but they long ago abandoned them and their schools.

It is time for Democrats to once again be the party that fights for the common good, the party that supports public schools, not school choice, which is a mighty hoax. Charter schools are partial privatization that lack oversight or accountability, this opening possibilities of waste, fraud and abuse. On average, they don’t get better test scores than public schools. Those that do choose their students and skew the demographics. Voucher schools get worse results and are free of any civil rights laws.

Hartman could have named many more Democrats who abandoned public schools, starting with DFER. Dannel Malloy of Connecticut. Andrew Cuomo of New York. Please feel free to add to the list..

Hartman wrote last year:

“American public schools have some very serious problems. Spend time in the crumbling public schools on the south side of Chicago and then venture over to the plush public schools in the leafy Chicago suburbs, and you’ll experience alternative universes. Schools all over the greater Chicagoland are filled with committed and professional teachers, some quite excellent. But the students who attend the city schools arrive at school with stark disadvantages, unlike their better-off suburban peers. Discrepancies in school funding only exacerbate such class deficits.

“Most of the problems with the public schools, in other words, are outgrowths of a deeply unequal society. Yet the solution to this problem — the redistribution of wealth — is inimical to the interests of billionaires like DeVos. The fact that she will soon be in charge of the nation’s schools is a sick joke. Make no mistake: DeVos is a serious threat to public education and should be treated accordingly.

“Unfortunately, many Democrats have long supported the same so-called education reform measures that DeVos backs. Often wrapping these measures in civil rights language, Democratic education reformers have provided cover for some of the worst types of reforms, including promoting the spread of charter schools — the preferred liberal mechanism for fulfilling the “choice” agenda. (Charter schools operate with public money, but without much public oversight, and are therefore often vehicles for pet pedagogical projects of billionaire educational philanthropists like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.)

“DeVos will not have to completely reverse the Department of Education’s course in order to fulfill her agenda. Obama’s “Race to the Top” policy — the brainchild of former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, past CEO of Chicago Public Schools — allocates scarce federal resources to those states most aggressively implementing education reform measures, particularly around charter schools.

“Perhaps the most effective advocate of school choice is New Jersey senator Cory Booker, who many Democrats are touting as the party’s savior in the post-Obama era. Liberals swooned when Booker opposed his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions, the right-wing racist Trump tapped to be the next attorney general. But however laudable, Booker’s actions didn’t take much in the way of courage.

“Booker’s funders — hedge-fund managers and pharmaceutical barons — don’t care about such theatrics. They’re more concerned that he vote Big Pharma’s way and keep up his role as a leading member of Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-privatization group. They want to make sure he continues attacking teachers’ unions, the strongest bulwark against privatization.

“Their aim is to undercut public schools and foster union-free charter schools, freeing the rich from having to pay teachers as unionized public servants with pensions.

“So in the fight against Trump and DeVos, we can’t give Booker and his anti-union ilk a pass. As enablers of DeVos’s privatization agenda, they too must be delegitimized.

“Public education depends on it. The beautiful school where I send my children depends on it.“

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Industry, Privatization

Angie Sullivan: Everybody Is Laughing at Nevada and Its Failing Charter Schools

By dianeravitch

July 29, 2018 //

Angie Sullivan teaches in a high-poverty public school in Clark County, Nevada. She writes letters to every legislator. Here is her latest:

This is who we should laugh at the hardest:

Current Nevada Legislative Leadership with hands directly on charter garbage: Nevada Senator Hammond, Nevada Assemblywoman Bilbray Axel Rod, Nevada Senator Denis, and Nevada Senator Woodhouse.

Tell Democratic Majority Leader Aaron Ford his degree in charter schools did not work.

Tell Harry Reid his relationships especially with Gulen and the airforce base charter did not work.

Tell Adam Laxalt in the Attorney General’s Office to stop protecting failing charters. Close them.

Tell former Assemblyman Pat Hickey his hands in the mess just makes him messy too.

Tell Canavero, Jana and Rebecca of NVDOE to take the charter junk science out of Nevada. Paid huge sums to create trash.

Tell the Nevada State Charter Authority to get a handle on this NOW!

Everyone laughs at Nevada.

Especially reformers who are for school choice.

For good reason.

Not responsible or accountable.

Shame on elected policy makers who took money or are involved in this garbage.

$350 million down the toilet.

Folks better be asking real teachers how to get this education job done because turning it over to a Billionaire Casino Manager Elaine Wynn or Tennis Player Andre Agassi has not and does not work. Stacking the Nevada State School Board with business folks, neoliberals, and TFA has produced garbage. No one questions any of this noticeable criminal type behavior?

Legislators better fix this during the next session. Nevada simply can not afford this.

Do you know how many Magnet Public Schools could be supported with $350 million?

This is your education legacy.

Bottom of the bottom. And then even lower.

Both sides of the aisle should own this. And the legislative session is coming up. Stop turning public schools into gutter dwelling charters. Offer unsuspecting students and parents a worse choice – is not “choice”.

Everyone should be laughing at Nevada Charters.

They are a terrifying and horrific joke.

Nevada: Time to Close Down the Worst, Least Accountable Charter Schools in America

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