Mercedes Schneider assesses the strange political maneuvering in Atlanta.
Atlanta has an elected school board and a superintendent. TFA elected at least two of the board members. The superintendent Meria Carstarphen is a data-driven reformer, eager to expand the charter presence in Atlanta.
But, but, but…the mayor has stepped in to name a “chief education officer.” Her choice is a TFA with corporate entrepreneur experience.
I know it’s confusing. I don’t understand it either.
Ed Johnson is an Atlanta community activist who is deeply concerned about the corporate reform takeover of the school board.
He wrote this open letter to the school board:
10 July 2018
Atlanta Mayor’s first-ever Chief Education Officer, an alum of TFA and BCG
Yesterday The Atlanta Voice reported that Atlanta’s new Mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, has hired Aliya Bhatia to be the city’s first-ever Chief Education Officer.
Unsurprisingly, Bhatia comes into the job by way of Teach for America (TFA), Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Harvard University. BCG is known to charge exuberant fees for cookie-cutter-like recommendations to downsize and privatize public services and for being a danger to public education.
According to The Atlanta Voice (my emphasis):
“As Chief Education Officer, Bhatia will work with community stakeholders to improve collaboration and identify and advocate for policies and resources that will improve access to high-quality education for all Atlantans.”
“Bhatia will also be tasked with creating a citywide Children’s Savings Account program for every child entering kindergarten and with working across city government to ensure that public schools are a priority for infrastructure investment and public safety.
“‘Quality education can transform lives. Aliya Bhatia’s experience, passion, and commitment to creating high-quality, accessible educational opportunities will allow her to effectively partner with APS [Atlanta Public Schools] and other education and industry leaders from throughout the community as we work to improve access to education and training for all of our children and residents,’ Bottoms said.
“A native of metro Atlanta, Bhatia started her career as a teacher with Teach for America and later joined the Boston Consulting Group as an associate and consultant. She recently completed her master’s degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University[.]
“The search for this position was led by two members of Mayor Bottom’s transition team: Bill Rogers, Chairman & CEO of SunTrust Banks and Virginia Hepner, former CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center.”
So now we have Mayor Bottoms leading Atlantans to believe it is necessary to “improve access to high-quality education.” Such messaging typically exemplifies the language school choice and school reform proponents so often use to bamboozle and sucker especially Black parents and others into selfishly demanding charter schools on the pretense charter schools are public schools.
Charter schools are not public schools; they are private entities that suckle public school funds for profit and thereby necessarily help destroy public schools and public education. Top priority for charter schools requires making money off children; no profit, no school. Thus saying “high-quality education” is very different from saying “high-quality public education.” Besides, what does “high-quality” mean, anyway? Or even low-quality?
Mayor Bottoms’ messaging implicitly argues that charter schools naturally provide “high-quality education” because, after all, they are like private schools and private schools always provide “high-quality education,” unlike public schools. Therefore, it is never necessary to improve charter schools; it is only necessary to “improve access” to them, which generally means having more of them. In contrast, access to public schools is a given, and public schools have always stood to be improved, continually. Disturbingly, however, charter schools are about replacement of public schools, not about improvement of public schools.
Atlanta City Council President and Members advised what was coming
On 20 April 2018, in a separate email to Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore, Post 1 At Large Council Member Michael Julian Bond, Post 3 At Large Council Member Andre Dickens, and District 4 Council Member Cleta Winslow, my district representative, I wrote:
Today I became aware of the [Mayor’s] “confidential” search for a City of Atlanta Chief Education Officer per the attachment, enclosed by linked reference.
The search bespeaks entangling City of Atlanta in Atlanta Public Schools Leadership’s continuing actions to expand school choice as a consumer good, to include inciting profit-making opportunities for private investors, rather than work on improving public education as a common good. Consequences for Black children, as a category attending Atlanta Public Schools, is education made worse for them and their learning resilience virtually destroyed. These consequences have become quite apparent during just the past three years.
Therefore, I wish to meet with you in your role [on Atlanta City Council]. I wish to share and discuss perspectives and understandings about the matter that otherwise may go unconsidered.
I can be available to meet at a time and a place convenient for you. Kindly let me know, won’t you?
Only Councilman Andre Dickens bothered to respond, explaining he had not “seen the application. The new mayor has stated during her campaign that she plans to hire an education liaison role that reports to her under her office. She has the discretion to hire staff that she sees fit as long as it fits in the budget.”
Given his explanation, Councilman Dickens then intimated disinterest in meeting.
Nonetheless, on 22 April 2018, I followed up to Councilman Dickens, with copy to various others that included all council members:
Yes, I know it is Atlanta Mayor’s personal decision to add to the staff of the Office of the Mayor various positions by whatever title, including the position titled “Chief Education Officer.” And that is the concern. The Mayor’s “Position Description for the Position of Chief Education Officer, City of Atlanta” reads as if the Atlanta superintendent [Meria Carstarphen, Ed.D.], or a devotee of hers, such as the one elected last year to Atlanta City Council from having served one term on the Atlanta school board [that being TFA alum Matt Westmoreland], may have written it or controlled the hand that wrote it.
Atlanta Mayor’s position description for Chief Education Officer, City of Atlanta, is, without question, pregnant with school choice and school reform language the superintendent and her devotee are known to speak and work to make happen. Consequently, the position description strongly intimates the Mayor seeks a person of low moral and ethical integrity who, if hired, will further normalize and expand the superintendent’s school choice ideology and machinations that target especially Black parents to become willing, selfish participants in destroying public education in Atlanta for all children and in destroying Atlanta Public Schools as a public good.
Surely you will agree “education liaison” connotes a very different expectation than does “Chief Education Officer.” The former connotes assisting communications and cooperation and such; arguably, involvement. The latter connotes command and control, as by “governance and outcome targets,” as you say; arguably, entanglement.
Besides, the title “Chief Education Officer” is generally understood to mean, in corporate-speak, the top administrator of a local education agency; for example, Chief Education Officer of Chicago Public Schools. However, City of Atlanta is not a local education agency.
Moreover, alarmingly, Atlanta Mayor’s position description for Chief Education Officer, City of Atlanta, allows a “camel’s nose in the tent” to institute quasi-mayoral control of Atlanta Public Schools in a way that can effectively skirt City Council’s lawmaking authority and responsibility. City of Atlanta quasi-mayoral control of APS will have a structure like that of, for example, DC Public Schools, but without the necessity of being codified, thus allowing for democratic ideals and proceedings to be undermined to benefit private interests at the expense of public interests. Not surprisingly, the politics of mayoral control of DCPS are known to precipitate fraud and ethical and moral lapses as normal behavior, as the recently fired DCPS Chancellor, Antwan Wilson, demonstrates.
Expect City of Atlanta quasi-mayoral control of Atlanta Public Schools to be, at least, a first step for the superintendent to begin doing away with the publicly elected Atlanta Board of Education. After all, the superintendent once brassily intimated to Atlanta school board members during a public board meeting that the school board is in her way.
Finally, it is interesting to note Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, will eventually find itself on the trailing edge of the nation’s emerging rejection of bipartisan Bush-Obama-DeVos school choice and school reform ideology. Witness, for example, recent teacher strikes and walk-outs in several cities and states. This should not come as a surprise. People beaten down will take only so much. Atlanta, especially, should know this, and should have learned the lessons by now.
Why must being on the trailing edge be the case for Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca? Why did Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, even allow the “camel’s nose in the tent” that is Atlanta Public Schools in the first place by hiring a pro-school choice superintendent [Meria Carstarphen]? Why now allow that camel’s nose into the tent that is the Office of the Mayor? What has Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, yet to learn about lack of authentic education that sustains intergenerational cycles of servitude, hence poverty?
Should you change your mind and wish to meet to discuss more about the Mayor’s “Position Description for the Position of Chief Education Officer, City of Atlanta,” I can be available; it’s up to you. In the meantime, I, as a reasonable person, believe the public has a need to know about this, hence my Bcc (which is a way to avoid displaying a very long list of cluttering email addresses and is not meant to imply secrecy; people Bcc’ed may reply or not as they wish).
Perhaps one now knows why one would have been wise to put aside ones Black racialist ideology during last year’s mayoral runoff election in order to cast a rational, well-informed vote for Mary Norwood.
Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA| edwjohnson@aol.com
Bcc: List 2
Governor Chris Christie did his damndest to harm the public schoolsin New Jersey during his eight years in Office. Its public schools are among the best in the nation outside of the so-called Abbott districts, a group of highly segregated, impoverished school districts that Christie determined to hand over to private charter chains.
The Education Law Center provides an update hereon Governor Phil Murphy’s efforts to reverse Christie’s foul legacy.
At the end of June, the New Jersey Legislature passed the FY19 State Budget and several other bills impacting the state’s 1.4 million public school students.
“Over the last eight years, lawmakers did little to prevent former Governor Chris Christie from cutting school funding; imposing PARCC exams as the high school exit test in violation of state law; and rapidly expanding charter schools, depleting resources and fueling student segregation in Newark, Camden, Trenton and other districts.
“With Governor Phil Murphy’s election, legislative leaders had the opportunity to reverse course by taking bold steps to restore equity, adequacy and opportunity for public school children, especially those at risk and with special needs.
“So did legislators heed the call for change?”
“Here’s a recap of the major actions taken by the Legislature on public education:
“School Funding: The FY19 Budget contains a $340 million increase in K-12 funding, with much of those funds allocated to districts spending below their constitutional level of adequacy under the SFRA funding formula. Yet other districts, including many below or slightly above adequacy, will have their state aid reduced by a total of over $600 million in seven years under changes to the formula pushed by Senate President Stephen Sweeney. While some last minute changes may mitigate the full impact of the cuts, many districts are facing the grim prospect of laying off teachers and support staff and eliminating needed programs as the reductions in state aid accelerate in the coming years.
“Preschool: The FY19 Budget includes $57 million in SFRA preschool education aid, providing the first increase in per pupil funding for existing preschool programs since 2013-14. It includes $32.5 million to address years of flat funding and adds $25 million for expansion of high quality preschool to low-income students across the state, as promised in the SFRA formula.
“School Construction: In passing a bill to authorize $500 million in school construction funds targeted to county vocational school districts, lawmakers did nothing to address the urgent need for school construction funding in all other school districts across the state. Legislators turned a blind-eye to the stark fact that the state school construction program has run out of money for 381 health and safety, capital maintenance and major projects recently identified by the NJ Department of Education for urban districts, as well as for grants for needed facilities improvements in hundreds of “regular operating districts.”
“Camden Charter School Expansion: Lawmakers bypassed the education committees in both chambers to rush through a bill to allow three out-of-state charter chains – KIPP, Uncommon and Mastery – to continue to expand across the city and, in the process, pave the way for these private charter operators to close and replace most or all of Camden’s public schools.
Private School Vouchers: Legislators decided to table a bill to use public funds to pay the salaries of science and math teachers in private schools. The bill would have added millions more to the over $110 million in public funds already allocated to private schools for textbooks, security, nurses and remedial programs. Lawmakers failed to take action to reduce the millions in taxpayer dollars diverted to private schools and to redirect those dollars to the state’s chronically underfunded public schools.
“The Legislature completely avoided other pressing issues, such as the looming high school graduation testing crisis, the need to reform the state’s charter school law, and the consolidation of K-6 and K-8 districts into unified K-12 districts across the state.
“The scorecard on the Legislature’s actions on public education is decidedly mixed. But one lesson is clear. Advocates for our public school students and their schools must redouble efforts to hold elected officials to account for advancing, and not threatening, the right of all children to a thorough and efficient education, as guaranteed under our state constitution.
“David Sciarra is the Executive Director of Education Law Center and lead counsel for the plaintiff school children in Abbott v. Burke.”
Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24
Tom Ultican pulls together four divergent strands of the effort to undermine public education, and iReady seems to be the tie that binds them together.
He writes:
“iReady is an economically successful software product used in public schools, by homeschoolers and in private schools. It utilizes the blended learning practices endorsed by the recently updated federal education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). iReady employs competency-based education (CBE) theory which is also advocated by ESSA. The outcome is iReady drains money from classrooms, applies federally supported failed learning theories and undermines good teaching. Children hate it.
“Public education in America contends with four dissimilar but not separate attacks. The school choice movement is motivated by people who want government supported religious schools, others who want segregated schools and still others who want to profit from school management and the related real estate deals. The forth big threat is from the technology industry which uses their wealth and lobbying power to not only force their products into the classroom, but to mandate “best practices” for teaching. These four streams of attack are synergistic.”
What does iReady have to do with the big picture?
“Profiting from Education Law
“A group of billionaires with varying motives are using their vast wealth to shape America’s education agenda to their own liking. The last rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 called ESSA was larded up with provisions like the big money for technology which is listed in Title’s I and IV. It also specifies generous grants to promote both “blended learning” and “personalized learning.” (See page 1969 of the official law.) Charter schools, vouchers and social impact bonds are promoted in ESSA. All these initiatives drain money from the classroom and none have been credibly shown to improve education outcomes.”
Read the tangled web that Tom Ultican unweaves.
Readers of this blog got the scoop a few days ago in the comment section, as reported by Christine Langhoff. But she did not have the English translation.
Here it is in Politico:
NO GO FOR PRIVATELY RUN CHARTERS, VOUCHERS IN PUERTO RICO: Key elements of the Puerto Rican government’s push to reform education through school choice suffered a blow in court over the weekend — one that leaders say they plan to appeal.
— Tribunal de Primera Instancia Judge Iris Cancio González ruled that privately run charter schools and publicly funded vouchers used in private schools run afoul of the Puerto Rican constitution, which says public funds should only sustain government-run schools. Cancio González wrote that even when regulated, charter schools more closely resemble “a private education system funded by the government, than the public schools we know today.”
— “Their framework creates a financing system that supports private institutions, which the government simply licenses with limited supervision,” Cancio González wrote. She added that the private donations charter schools are allowed to receive could influence their objectives and practice, and agreed with teachers union arguments that charter schools could “dilute” the funding that goes to traditional public schools.
— The ruling makes an exception for charter schools run by local governments and public universities.
— The challenge was brought by Puerto Rico’s largest teachers union in a lawsuit filed in April. The union has for months fought the reform plan pushed by Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, arguing that charter schools and vouchers are a threat to the island’s public schools. “We’ve always said, both charters and vouchers are unconstitutional,” Aida Díaz, president of the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, said in a statement . “Justice has been served for our children and their right to a public education. We continue to fight for them and for our teachers.”
— Ramón Rosario Cortés, Puerto Rico’s secretary of public affairs and public policy, said in a statement that “great changes usually attract resistance” and that the government plans to appeal the ruling.
Imagine if you can, an “online agricultural school” for grades 7-12, where students might occasionally visit a farm, but such visits are not mandatory.
The Fort Wayne Jounal-Gazette, one of Indiana’s best newspapers, wrote an editorial with this example of the wastefulness of school privatization. The editorial was prompted by the NPE-Schott Foundation National Report on privatization. Indiana received a well-deserved grade of F.
The editorial says:
“Indiana’s friendly environment for education privatizers is summed up nicely by an audacious attempt to open an online agriculture charter school for students in grades 7-12. Billing the model as a “real virtual school,” organizers initially said the statewide school would offer occasional farm visits, but they wouldn’t be mandatory.
“The idea of an agriculture program taught entirely online seems ludicrous only if you don’t see the profit potential. Virtual schools are eligible to collect 90 percent of the basic tuition grant for each student enrolled, so the Indiana Agriculture & Technology School – with 100 students now enrolled – was set to collect about $460,000 a year, with limited expenses for instruction, textbooks or equipment. Fortunately, scrutiny of another Indiana virtual school seems to have pushed the state to demand some classes be taught face-to-face. Monthly visits to a Morgan County farm and as little as four hours of computer instruction a day suggest the school won’t be any more successful than the four F-rated online schools now serving about 13,000 Hoosier students, however.
“Indiana’s dismal record for oversight of online charter schools is one reason it earned its own failing grade in a report evaluating the extent to which states divert money from traditional public schools to private schools and charter schools operated by for-profit management companies. The survey, by the Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation, which might be easily dismissed as biased except that its findings are irrefutable, notes:
• Indiana has three separate programs designed to funnel tax dollars from public schools, at a conservative estimate of $171 million a year. “Indiana law has continued to morph over the years so that prior enrollment in a public school is no longer needed to receive a voucher for private school,” wrote Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education. “That means that taxpayers are now funding private school tuition previously paid for by parents.”
• Private schools receiving tax dollars are allowed to discriminate against students for whom English is not their first language by not providing services and can discriminate in enrollment on the basis of religion. “It is a system in which the school, not the parent, does the choosing.” Burris wrote in an email.
• Failing charter schools have been allowed to convert to voucher schools, so that they can “continue indefinitely,” Burris wrote.”
Read it all.
Tim Slekar got ticked off when he read that the Wisconsin State Journal referred to charters as “public schools.” They like to call themselves that to justify getting public money. But they have private boards. They are neither accountable nor transparent. They do not follow state labor laws or state laws governing student discipline. They are not public schools. Calling them that does not make it so.
Tim wrote:
https://bustedpencils.com/2018/07/are-all-charter-schools-public-schools/
The Democratic Party in Colorado and California have passed resolutions attacking Democrats for Education Reform as a phony, corporate-controlled front organization and demanded that it stop sullying the Democratic Party by using its name.
In New York, where hedge fund money flows freely to DFER, it continues to be a political player, having no popular political base but owning corporate politicians who wants its campaign contributions. It has filled the vacuum left by the collapse of the phony “Families for Excellent Schools,”also funded and owned by billionaires who never set foot in a public school.
Now DFER in New York is speaking out to call for more school closures and more privately owned charter schools.
If only New York’s Democrats had the fortitude of their counterparts in California and Colorado and were brave enough to call out DFER as DINOS, whose only purpose is to destroy public schools in communities of co,or.
Charter schools in Nevada are a national joke. They can fail and fail and fail, and the state doesn’t care. For charter schools, there is no accountability. CREDO Director Macke Raymond said at a national Education Writers Association meeting in 2015, directing her remarks to Ohions, who spend $1 billion annually on charters: “Be very glad that you have Nevada, so you are not the worst.” (https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/03/ohios_charter_schools_ridicule.html)
Clark County first grade teacher Angie Sullivan recently wrote to legislators and journalists:
We need to close the DeVos Charter.
Not in February. Now.
DeVos proclaimed Nevada Virtual Academy an example of success. A direct lie.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/04/513220220/betsy-devos-graduation-rate-mistake
On June 25, the Charter Authority will openly discuss revoking that charter.
Click to access 180625-Notice.pdf
Flooding Nevada with K-12 ads. The for-profit charter proclaimed a success by DeVos while huge number of Nevada Virtual students are not participating, scoring well, or graduating.
Empty threats given on Governor letterhead. Who is accountable for this extreme mess?
Nothing done.
Nevada Virtual Academy is not scared of being closed. Nevada does not close failing charters or even demand regular academic data. Charters will continue to take tax payer money without being accountable. Creating the largest alternative lowest of the low performing school system in the state and possibly the nation.
______________________________
We need an Nevada Charter audit.
Given Nevada’s total disregard for charter school accountability. We are an example to the nation of the extreme distinction which occurs without any accountability.
On-line charters in particular have questionable practices.
Are students actually enrolled? When looking at on-line numbers, how can so many students be supposedly enrolled in on-line instruction but not be taking high stakes testing?
The numbers are telling. We pay. Students do not test. Students do not graduate. Those who do test are scoring lower than everyone else.
Perhaps on-line charters should only be paid for the handful of students actually participating. The tax payer should be concerned. Millions being paid for on-line student learning and it is highly questionable.
An audit should be demanded.
—————————————
Half the Nevada Charters need to be closed. If they are floundering in financial and academic failure, close them. And all campuses need to return and report, not in clumps, site by site.
Zero Failing Nevada Charters have been closed. Not even those without funds to continue – floundering in receivership and demanding money to continue in bankrupt dysfunction. Nevada throwing good money after bad. The tax payer should be disgusted with $350 million in Nevada Charter School waste.
No accountability.
No transparency.
________________________
We should all be disgusted by our political leaders.
One set of rigorous standards for Nevada Public Schools which are ironically turned into charters. Why is that a good idea? The data shows tax payer money will be misused by Nevada Charters. Nevada Charters are a national disgrace. Find a state with worse charters than Nevada. I dare you.
Thank you Nevada politicians and legislators present and former who are heavy advocates on both sides for this embarrassing disgrace. Many hold positions on charter board and groups. You are failures.
Politicians, you have made this incredible mess. I suggest you act quickly to find a remedy. I’m worried this is criminal and your fingerprints are all over it.
The Teacher,
Angie
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom squashed the charter industry’s candidate, Antonio Villaraigosa, in the primaries despite huge spending by the usual billionaires for the latter. Newsom was endorsed by the California Teachers Association. While not anti-charter, Newsom pledged to call for a moratorium until laws are passed for charter accountability and transparency.
Now the same billionaires are dumping cash into Newsom’s campaign, hoping to buy him as their puppet.
Newsom is seen as a shoo-in, since he is running against a Trump Republican in a blue state. He doesn’t need the charter lobby’s money to win.
Here’s hoping it’s too late for them to buy influence.
