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Trump Turns to Hard-Right Evangelical Congressman to Advise Him on Education

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2024 //
24

Alexandra Berzon and Michael C. Bender report in The New York Times that Donald Trump now relies on Florida Congressman Byron Donalds for advice on education. Think of Byron Donalds as a 2024 version of Betsy DeVos, except that he’s Black, he’s a Congressman, and he’s not a billionaire. In all other respects, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them. Byron Donalds is viewed as a future governor or even Trump’s running mate.

In early 2021, Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, and his wife, Erika, took the stage at an event hosted by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a group that pushes to inject Christianity into public schools and other institutions and whose leader has described homosexuality as Satan’s work.

The couple was warmly welcomed as allies in the cause. Mrs. Donalds was singled out for opening a charter school in Florida. As a state legislator, Mr. Donalds had created a school voucher program that, in the words of one speaker, let children “get a biblical worldview education….”

Mr. and Mrs. Donalds were early activists in an increasingly influential network seeking to transform traditional public education — in Florida and beyond. Long before the recent battles over book bans and critical race theory, the effort cast public schools as failing laboratories for liberal ideas and pushed to funnel public education funds into charter or private schools.

Mr. Donalds backed legislation that gave outside groups a bigger say in school curriculums, years before Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida set off a national debate by making it easier for groups to remove books from school libraries and limiting teaching about sexuality and gender.

The couple has deep ties to leading forces in those debates, including Moms for Liberty, Hillsdale College and the Florida Citizens Alliance, which has pushed to remove books that it deems inappropriate from schools. Both Mr. and Mrs. Donalds have made remarks disparaging homosexuality.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Mr. Donalds described heterosexual relationships as “the natural order that keeps society progressing.” In a tweet in 2017, Mrs. Donalds wrote, “Homosexuality is a sin just like any other sexual sin, and all of us sinners need forgiveness & mercy for our shortcomings.”

The couple’s work has been both advocacy and income. As Mr. Donalds pushed legislation expanding access to charter schools and voucher programs, Mrs. Donalds began to build a company and a nonprofit that took advantage of that expansion.

“Byron and Erika have been known for years in Florida as warriors in the fight for all children to have a quality education,” said Tina Descovich, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a conservative education group that began in Florida but has emerged as a political power broker. “That reputation is spreading nationally.”As Mr. Trump campaigns, he has embraced the new education politics, suggesting that public schools have been overrun by “pink-haired communists” and promising to close the Department of Education if re-elected. And he has surrounded himself with like-minded supporters, such as the Donaldses….

It was Mrs. Donalds, whom he met in college, who drew him into evangelical Christianity. His full conversion came when he was 22, waiting tables at Cracker Barrel. He felt the call and “gave my life to Christ,” he said….

In 2017, Mr. Donalds was sworn in to the Florida House of Representatives, serving a Naples-area district. That same year, Mrs. Donalds started OptimaEd, a charter school management operation.

The couple’s work often intersected. Mr. Donalds was a co-sponsor for a bill that, among many other things, allowed charter schools to secure additional funding from local tax initiatives. He backed term limits for school board members, a proposal that Mrs. Donalds had long sought as a way to force turnover and potentially open up seats for charter school advocates…

In 2022, Mrs. Donalds was managing several charter schools in Florida. According to contracts, her company was paid a share — around 10 percent — of the schools’ public funding to provide human resources, marketing and other services. That year, the company collected about $4 million in public money and put around $2.6 million back into the schools, public records show, while Mrs. Donalds was paid a salary of about $180,000.

Those figures became a source of tension with the schools. Since then, three charter schools managed by OptimaEd ended their contracts with the company amid complaints that it was putting too little money back into the schools, according to public records and three people involved in the schools who asked for anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Mrs. Donalds did not respond to a request for comment.

She has increasingly focused her business on an online academy and virtual classes that accept vouchers. In 2017, her husband led a successful effort to offer the private school tuition reimbursements to students who said they were bullied. Last year, Florida went much further, expanding its voucher programs to all students, regardless of circumstances or income, and opening a new flow of public money to private schools.

Seeding the ‘parents’ rights’ debate

Advocates described how the couple had helped lay the groundwork for pandemic-era policies that put Florida at the center of the education debate.

In 2015, Mrs. Donalds started a network of conservative school board members with women who went on to lead Moms for Liberty. (Mrs. Donalds is a Moms for Liberty adviser.)

The Donaldses were some of the first members of the Florida Citizens Alliance, according to the group’s founder, Keith Flaugh. The alliance has pushed to remove books from schools that it claims indoctrinate children with liberal ideas, including Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and other classics from African American authors.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Trump

Jan Resseger: Why Vouchers Are Disastrous Public Policy

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2024 //
6

Jan Resseger can always be counted on to add the voice of reason into heated issues, relying on research and calm discussion.

She writes:

In a thoughtful commentary, the Economic Policy Institute’s Hilary Wething and Josh Bivens deride as bad public policy today’s state-by-state wave of new and expanded private school tuition vouchers:

“Public education is worth preserving—it should be seen as one of the most important achievements in our c0untry’s history and crucial for the social and economic welfare of future generations… In the 21st century, unfortunately, too many policymakers seem determined to squander this legacy by starving public education of money and legitimacy, often in the name of  ‘school choice.’  Their central claim (when they bother to make one with any clarity) is that public provision of goods or services is ineffective by definition and that a dose of private market-like competition will lead to better schooling outcomes for the nation’s children.”

Wething and Bivens explore the basic economic flaws in pro-voucher ideology and argue that “conditions needed for market competition to lead to better outcomes clearly do not exist in the educational realm.”  In the first place, our nation benefits  from educating all children, and the marketplace can’t be counted on to fill that role: “In other markets, if the private sector is doing a poor job at offering attractive options for a good or service, people can just consume other things.” “Second, competition works well when the cost of switching providers is small,” but “switching schools is an extraordinarily costly decision in time, administrative burden, and severed social networks.”  Third, markets work when the choice of product affects only the buyer and seller, but, “Universal schooling generates positive spillovers to society at large, meaning that individuals would be inclined to underinvest in education relative to the full benefits it provides.”

Wething and Bivins describe voucher supporters presuming that diversion of dollars to vouchers will not harm the essential institution of public schools. In fact, however, public schools in most places are underfunded in terms of the actual cost of needed services: “Newer research with better methods confirms that more money for public schools does improve educational outcomes… In short, the evidence indicates that public schooling in the United States simply needs more resources to deliver even better student achievement—not some radical disruption in how it is delivered and by what institutions.”

Not only does more money improve schooling outcomes for children, but recent academic research demonstrates that by investing more public resources in their public schools, states and localities can “improve schooling outcomes for children… (with) the largest beneficial effects on the performance of particularly disadvantaged students.” Wething and Bivins cite peer-reviewed, 2016, research by Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson, and Claudia Persico on the impact of statewide school finance reforms that increased public school spending between 1972 and 2010: “(A) 10% increase in school spending for 12 years led to increases in high school graduation rates, 7% higher wages, and 10% higher family incomes in adulthood for children from districts that saw the spending increase.”

New research also confirms that vouchers are ineffective as an educational investment. Dollars diverted from public schools often flow to private schools with inferior academics: “Several high-quality studies have investigated the impact of recent voucher programs and have found notably worse outcomes for student achievement… In Ohio, under the EdChoice program, students who went to private schools with a voucher performed worse than they would have had they remained in public schools. In Indiana, students that used the Indiana Choice Scholarship voucher program experienced an average achievement loss of 0.15 standard deviations in mathematics.”

The expansion of vouchers inevitably sets up a long term drain on public resources: “Vouchers reduce public school resources, but introduce large new fiscal obligations overall… Where significant voucher programs have been instituted, the resources available to public school children have decreased…  The failure to increase per-pupil (public school) funding leads to the erosion of public education services in all forms: everything from school meals, extracurricular activities, mental health and counseling services, vocational and technical programs and investments in teacher quality and pay. It is worth noting that flat per-pupil educational spending—even in inflation-adjusted terms—is effectively a decline in the quality of education over time.”

Wething and Bivens sum up the evidence: “Vouchers are not a cost-free policy that simply adds on another education option for children—they are instead an intentional attack on universal public education… Vouchers make no coherent economic sense, and the evidence shows that vouchers harm student achievement and expose state budgets to large future obligations that are hard to forecast, even while they divert spending away from public education.”

The new brief from Wething and Bivens describes in concrete economic terms,what the late political theorist Benjamin Barber formulates as a basic principle of good public policy: “Privatization is a kind of reverse social contract: it dissolves the bonds that tie us together into free communities and democratic republics… Public choices rest on civic rights and common responsibilities, and presume equal rights for all. Public liberty is what the power of common endeavor establishes, and hence presupposes that we have constituted ourselves as public citizens by opting into the social contract. With privatization, we are seduced back into the state of nature by the lure of private liberty and particular interest; but what we experience in the end is an environment in which the strong dominate the weak… the very dilemma which the original social contract was intended to address.” (Consumed, pp. 143-144)

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Louisiana’s Very Bad, Horrible Voucher Plan

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2024 //
9

Mercedes Schneider takes a close look at Governor Landry’s awful voucher plan. He wants a universal voucher plan, one that every student can apply for, no matter how rich they are, no matter if they ever attended public school. And the cost is staggering: more than $500 million a year.

She begins:

Louisiana governor Jeff Landry wants to expand school vouchers in the state. On May 16, 2024, Landry attended two town halls(both at private schools) to push the idea. 

One might think that Landry’s promoting school vouchers at private schools as odd, except that a few years down the road, the legislation Landry is championing could help subsidize private school expenses for Louisiana residents who can already afford to send– and, indeed, are already sending– their children to private school.

And so, the day following Landry’s school voucher speechifying at private schools (and for private schools), on May 17, 2024, the Louisiana senate approved SB 313, “SCHOOLS. Creates the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) Scholarship Program to provide educational savings accounts for parental choice in K-12 education.” Only weeks earlier, on April 30, 2024, the Louisiana senate had sidelined the bill; it seems that Landry’s multifaceted efforts (Louisiana Illuminator notes Landry’s TV ads, town halls, and discussions with individual senators) paid off for him.

As of this writing, the senate’s version of the GATOR bill has moved to the Louisiana House, thereby potentially setting the stage for a universal school voucher program in Louisiana. The Louisiana House had already passed its own version, HB 745, on April 08, 2024. The two versions are similar.

If it passes in its current form, SB 313 will end Louisiana’s previous school voucher program, the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program, in 2024-25, and begin phasing in the new, eventually-universal, GATOR voucher program. Beginning in 2025-26, all children beginning kindergarten become eligible, as do all students “enrolled in a public school for the previous school year.” Families of students not previously enrolled in public school but “with a total income at or below two hundred fifty percent of the federal poverty guidelines” are also eligible. The major change for year two is the inclusion of students not previously enrolled in public school but “with a total income at or below four hundred percent of the federal poverty guidelines.” After that, the program basically becomes universal.

Universal and expensive.

Categories Education Industry, Louisiana, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Nancy Flanagan: Just Who Is Trashing Public Education?

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2024 //
14

Veteran teacher Nancy Flanagan explores the question of who is trying to destroy our public schools. She nails some of the loudest critics, who have personally benefitted from public schools. She doesn’t explore why they are trying to annihilate the schools that educated them, but that may because we know what the privatization movement has to offer: money. There is a gravy train overloaded with munificent gifts from Betsy DeVos, the Waltons, Charles Koch, Michael Bloomberg, and a boatload of other billionaires. They can endlessly underwrite anti-public school organizations that offer well-paid jobs.

On the pro-public education side, it’s hard to find big spenders or highly compensated jobs. The two big unions have resources, all of which come from the dues of their members. They do not have the funds to support the numerous grassroots groups that are found in every state. Most, if not all of the state and local groups, operate on a shoestring; typically, their employees are volunteers. They do not have six-figure jobs for someone who tweets and writes statements. No one who works for a state “Save Our Schools” group makes big money.

The Network for Public Education is the biggest pro-public education groups; it has 350,000 people who have signed up to support it, but there is no membership fee. NPE has one full-time employee and a few part-timers.

So, Nancy Flanagan asks, just who is trashing public schools?

She writes:

Get ready for a big dump–a deliberately chosen word–of anti-public education blah-blah over the next five months. It’s about all the right wing’s got, for one thing–and it’s one of those issues that everybody has an opinion on, whether they went to public school. have children in public schools, or neither.

Public education is so big and so variable that there’s always something to get exercised over. There’s always one teacher who made your child miserable, one assigned book that raises hackles, one policy that feels flat-out wrongheaded. There’s also someone, somewhere, who admires that teacher, feels that book is a classic and stoutly defends whatever it is—Getting rid of recess? The faux science of phonics? Sex education that promotes abstinence? —that someone else finds ridiculous or reprehensible.

Not to mention—teaching is the largest profession in the country, So many teachers, so many public schools, so much opportunity to find fault.

In other words, public education is the low-hanging fruit of political calculation. Always has been, in fact.

A few years back, when folks were going gaga over Hillbilly Elegy, seeing it as the true story of how one could rise above one’s station (speaking of blahblah)—the main thing that irritated me about ol’ J.D. Vance was his nastiness about public education. Vance has since parlayed a best-seller that appealed to those who think a degree from Yale equates to arriving at the top, into a political career—and putting the screws to affirmative action, in case anyone of color tries to enjoy the same leg-up he did.

J.D. Vance’s education—K-12, the military, Ohio State—was entirely in public institutions until he got into Yale Law School. He doesn’t have anything good to say about public ed, but it was free and available to him, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. When I read Rick Hess’s nauseating interview with Corey DeAngelis in Education Week, I had a flashback to ol’ J.D., intimating that he achieved success entirely on his own, without help from that first grade teacher who taught him how to read and play nice with others.

DeAngelis says:

I went to government schools my entire K–12 education in San Antonio, Texas. However, I attended a magnet high school, which was a great opportunity. Other families should have education options as well, and those options shouldn’t be limited to schools run by the government. Education funding should follow students to the public, private, charter, or home school that best meets their needs. I later researched the effects of school choice initiatives during my Ph.D. in education policy at the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform.

So—just to clarify—Corey DeAngelis went to public schools K-12, for his BA and MA degrees (University of Texas), as well as a stint in a PUBLICLY FUNDED program at the notoriously right-focused University of Arkansas. That’s approximately 22 years, give or take, of public education, the nation-building institution DeAngelis now openly seeks to destroy.

I’m not going to provide quotes from the EdWeek piece, because anyone reading this already knows the hyperbolic, insulting gist—lazy, dumb, unions, low bar, failing, yada yada. He takes particular aim at the unions—although it absolutely wasn’t the unions—shutting down schools during a global pandemic. He paints schools’ turn-on-a-dime efforts to hold classes on Zoom as an opportunity for clueless parents to see, first-hand, evidence of how bad instruction is. He never mentions, of course, the teachers, students and school staff who died from COVID exposure.

Enough of duplicitous public school critics. My point is this:

The people who trash public education—not a particular school, classroom or curricular issue, but the general idea of government-sponsored opportunity to learn how to be a good, productive American citizen—have a very specific, disruptive ax to grind:

I got what I needed. I don’t really care about anybody else.

This goes for your local Militant Moms 4 Whatever on a Mission, out there complaining about books and school playsand songs and health class. It’s not about parents’ “rights.” It’s about control. And never about the other families and kids, who may have very different values and needs.

It’s about taking the ‘public’ out of public education. And it’s 100% politically driven.

OPEN THE LINK TO FINISH READING THE ARTICLE!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Unions, Vouchers

North Carolina: A Billionaire Who Wants to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2024 //
7

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you are familiar with Jeff Yass. He is a billionaire, the richest man in Pennsylvania. He spends money lavishly to privatize public schools. He gave Governor Abbott of Texas $6 million to promote vouchers and to defeat moderate Republicans who opposed vouchers. He also opposes abortion. The “Center for Education Reform” in DC gives out the Yass Prize for the most successful charter schools. Top prize is $1 million (a school in Harlem, NYC, cofounded by Sean “Diddy” Combs was recently a semi-finalist). Now Yass has decided to buy the Republican Party in North. Carolina to advance his goals.

Bob Hall of NC Newsline reports:

Despite strong opposition, the North Carolina Senate voted this month to boost enrollment in privately run K-12 schools by doubling state funding for tuition subsidies called “opportunity scholarships.” More than $200 million is earmarked for kids in high-income families. 

Why would Republican leaders do this now when polls show voters oppose subsidies for the rich? And when public schools clearly need those funds – North Carolina ranks 48th in per-pupil spending. 

It’s not about helping children. It’s about getting the money to win elections.

Truth be told, public education has long been warped by the corrupting influence of big money.  Generations of North Carolinians suffered because employers profited by exploiting poorly educated workers. Politicians gave pro-education speeches but deliberately underfunded schools – worse in Black communities – effectively pushing students out of class into low-paying jobs.

I’m old enough to remember a textile mill CEO – and top political donor – telling state leaders that the UNC system was vital for training the managerial class but investing in a quality K-12 system was unnecessary. The elite and wannabe elite sent their children to private, all-white academies.  

The mills are now largely gone, and there’s broad support to improve our schools and make real the 1997 NC Supreme Court Leandro ruling that our constitution “guarantee[s] every child of this state the opportunity to receive a sound basic education.” 

The answer is campaign money. GOP leaders are telling the billionaires financing a national movementto privatize public education that the General Assembly will take radical steps to prove that, as one senator said, “North Carolina is at the forefront of school choice and education freedom.”

But an elitist, racist bias against robust public institutions, coupled with a political system tilted to wealthy donors, keeps slowing progress and distorting how legislators address the Leandro mandate. 

For example, from 2010 to 2016, Oregon millionaire John Bryan contributed $700,000 to dozens of North Carolina politicians to gain support for his “school reform” agenda. In 2016, his investment paid off with legislative approval for an “innovative” program to convert low-performing public schools into charter schools, which his corporation would manage for a fee. 

The program became a boondoggle, with no academic progress achieved. Bryan said his goal was to “inculcate my belief in the libertarian, free market, early American Founder’s principles” into schools. He died in 2020.

Sadly, a host of Bryan-like millionaires are now handing out big checks to encourage politicians to privatize rather than strengthen public education. At the top of the list is Jeffrey Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire with a passion for subsidized private schools and gambling. 

In October 2022, Yass gave an eye-popping $1 million to a committee controlled by North Carolina Republican legislative leaders – its largest donation ever from an individual. Several months later, the General Assembly legalized sports gambling and expanded the voucher program to subsidize more private schools. 

Yass is dramatically increasing his donations this year – he’s now the nation’s single biggest donor to federal campaigns and committees. He’s teaming up with other millionaires and Super PACs to finance advocacy groups and candidates who demonize diversity, promote censorship and attack schools. 

He just donated $6 million to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his controversial voucher plan, plus $3.5 million to elect pro-plan legislators. Another $2 million went to a Virginia PAC backing GOP state legislators.

North Carolina Republican leaders also want more money from Yass and his ilk – and that inspires more radical steps, like giving vouchers worth millions to wealthy families. 

Long range, these steps create a two-tier system: subsidized, costly private schools with little government oversight, geared to middle- and upper-class kids, and under-resourced public schools for the low income and poor who are disproportionately people of color. This is the opposite of the civic commitment to mutual uplift embedded in the Leandro decision. 

Republicans will likely get their millions in campaign money from Jeff Yass et al, but at a steep price for the people of North Carolina. 

Categories Billionaires, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Gary Rubinstein: Time to Investigate Success Academy’s SPRINT Program

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2024 //
28

Gary Rubinstein has been following the evolution of Success Academy in New York City for years. it’s the largest charter chain in the state, with the highest test scores. But Gary has documented its high attrition rates and teacher turnover. Others have written about its penchant for pushing out students it doesn’t want. Success Academy is often held up as a model for the accomplishments of charter schools. But other charter chains are dropping the harsh “no excuses” discipline of SA.

In this post, Gary writes about another SA practice that is problematic.

He writes:

About four months ago I received an unusual DM in my Twitter account. Though over the years several different Success Academy parents have reached out to me, this was from someone who claimed to be either a current employee or a former employee. They used an anonymous name and to this day, I have no idea who this person is. But they reached out to me because they had a story to tell and felt, I guess, that I was the best person to tell it to.

Over the months they have provided various internal Success Academy documents, screen shots from internal Success Academy message boards, and so much information about what is truly going on at Success Academy, that I have no reason to doubt their authenticity.

Much of the information was about chaos that is going on behind the scenes at Success Academy. Like how they are struggling to convince elementary students to remain at Success Academy for middle school and to convince middle school students to remain at Success Academy for high school. I even got to see an internal document with talking points to tell families in order to convince they to stay.

The document had the title “Grade 4 Teacher Selling & Persuading Talking Points” and began with the words: “Framing: Unfortunately, over the years we see that after all the hard work of our elementary school teachers and schools, some of our 4th graders leave us and end up attending failing middle schools. We cannot let this happen. And so for the first time really we want to invest our scholars in the “why” behind SA’s magical middle schools. We want our scholars and parents to make truly informed choices about the next leg of their educational journey.”

I had already known based on enrollment numbers that Success Academy was having trouble getting families to continue to trust them after all the years of shady practices, but my source says that things are very dire, especially in the Brooklyn high school, which nearly had to be shut down for low enrollment.

I got a lot of other good insider information from my source. Their description of the morale of the staffs at several of the schools and the extreme turnover definitely made me feel bad for the teachers there but even worse for the students who have to endure such instability. The picture was worse than I had expected. But still I didn’t get what I considered to be a ‘smoking gun’ — something that the school was doing that was illegal.

A topic that this insider kept returning to was something that, at first, I didn’t have much interest in. It is well known that Success Academy used to not have a very high percent of students requiring special education services. My sense was that Success Academy did not want many students requiring special education services because those students would require attention which could take away resources from their test prep gaming system. But my insider often returned to something that really seemed to bother them, and it is about the way that Success Academy identifies students for special education services. The program is called SPRINT.

The way most schools work, a special education referral is initiated by a parent or sometimes a teacher in consultation with a parent and the school administration which might include guidance counselors and social workers will start the process. As a parent of a student who was diagnosed with various learning issues, I know that this is a very difficult time for a parent when they learn that their child qualifies for special education services.

But the way it works at Success Academy is unlike anything I’ve ever heard of at any school before. And according to the insider, many people who work for SPRINT or who used to work for SPRINT feel that they are working for a corrupt division of a corrupt organization. Whether what the SPRINT team is doing is illegal or just immoral or neither will be up to state investigators to decide if they ever have the desire to check into this, but this is the little that I understand about it.

According to my insider, the SPRINT staff are given quotas of special education referrals that they have to meet each week. It is something like five referrals per week. I don’t have all the details, but this is a big numbers game where referrals are driven by these quotas. If this is true and this team is pressured to find students to refer, this would mean that some students and their families go through the arduous referral process unnecessarily.

I asked the insider why would Success Academy want to inflate their special education numbers. The insider wasn’t sure about the motive. They felt it might have had to do with finances as having more special education students enables them to hire more teachers for ICT classes. But they weren’t certain about the motive, just the fact that special education referrals are done to fulfill quotas and not driven by what parents or teachers are noticing.

I asked the insider what the harm is from over referring for evaluations. Isn’t it better to have too many referrals and some students are denied services than to have too few and have students who would qualify but who never get evaluated? The source admitted that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what the malicious intent is but made it seem like this whole SPRINT quota system was very shady. Like they were gaming the system to get some students to qualify for services even if they really didn’t need them. But even if getting supports for student who might not need, the issue is that Success Academy seems to be doing this from a business point of view and not to truly help struggling students.

I know all this is kind of vague and my insider is going to wonder why I didn’t include more of the specific details of the color coding for the different levels of referrals. But they made it clear that to meet these quotas the staffers on the SPRINT team have to be very aggressive. In order for a team to make five referrals a week, they have to hound the families and if the families are resistant they have to step up the pressure. The insider even says they were encouraged once to call ACS on a family that would not agree to go through the referral process.

For sure there is a lot more detail to be filled in on this story. If you are working for SPRINT right now and are having trouble sleeping at night because of it, feel free to reach out to me, I can help you out.

Here is a post on an internal Success Academy message board from an actual employee:

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Georgia: Students Demand Fully Funded Public Schools, Not Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2024 //
23

Seventeen high school students in Georgia marked the 70th anniversary of the Brown decision by writing an article calling on the state’s political leaders to fully fund public schools, instead of funding vouchers. They are members of the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition.

They wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

As young Georgians, we share the belief that all children should have the freedom to pursue their dreams and that our futures depend on receiving a great education. To get there, we must equip every public school with the resources to deliver a quality education for every child, no matter their color, their ZIP code or how much money their parents make.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves in yet another moment of massive resistance to public education with increasingly aggressive efforts on behalf of the state of Georgia to privatize our public schools and return us to a two-tiered system marked by racial segregation. As public school students in high schools across Georgia, we believe that the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education is not just a cause for celebration but an invitation to recommit ourselves to the promise of a public education system that affirms an essential truth: Schools separated by race will never be equal.

Even as our country celebrates the anniversary of Brown this month, we know that our state actively worked to obstruct desegregation, which did not meaningfully take place for another 15 years. Seven years after the Supreme Court’s ruling that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional, the Georgia General Assembly revoked its school segregation law in 1961. Another 10 years later, a court-ordered desegregation plan finally took effect — in 1971.

In 2024, educators across Georgia, from Albany to Atlanta, from Valdosta to Vinings, from Dalton to Dublin, and everywhere in between, are working hard to provide students like us with a quality education, empowering us to build a brighter future in Georgia for all. Yet politicians in the Georgia Capitol seem dedicated to resegregating and privatizing our public schools by taking tax dollars meant to support all of the students in our communities and giving it to unaccountable voucher programs that favor the wealthiest few.

The long and shameful history of vouchers is something that politicians who forced them to become law this year don’t want us to know. In many cities, public education funding was funneled to private “segregation academies” where white children received better resources than children of color. Instead of making our public schools stronger and moving us all forward together, these politicians are defunding our public schools by more than $100 million and working to drag us backward to the days when Georgia was still resisting court-ordered desegregation.

We want our leaders to get serious about what works: fully funding our public schools so that we can improve our neighborhood schools. That’s where 1.7 million public school students in Georgia learn and grow, and where we all can have a say. Research all across the country shows that voucher programs will not improve student outcomes in Georgia, but we know what will best serve students.

Young Georgians like us need investments in our public schools so we have the opportunity to learn and thrive. Gov. Brian P. Kemp has $16 billion of unspent public funds — enough to cover the costs of funding our schools and investing in our communities. Georgia has one of the highest overall rates of child poverty in the nation. Yet our state is one of only six states that provides schools with no specific funding to support children living in poverty. By refusing to give our schools what they need, we are setting our schools and our students up for failure.

Politicians brag about Georgia’s teachers being among the highest paid in the South even though they know they have created a crisis around public education that puts our teachers, our parents and students like us in an impossible position. Right now, nearly every school district in Georgia operates with a waiver to avoid adhering to classroom size restrictions because they cannot afford to hire enough teachers. And though the American School Counseling Association recommends a counselor-to-student ratio of 1:250, Georgia mandates a counselor-to-student ratio of 1:450 students. Many schools cannot even meet that ratio because of a lack of funding. All of that is by design because politicians have refused to update Georgia’s school funding formula for nearly 40 years.

This year, as we celebrate 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education, we invite every Georgian to join us in our call for fully funded neighborhood public schools so that every Georgia student has an inviting classroom, a well-rounded curriculum, small class sizes and the freedom to learn.

The writers are members of the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition. Nia G. Batra is a sophomore at Decatur High School. Hunter Buchheit is a senior at Walton High School. Ava Bussey is a senior at Marietta High School. Keara Field is a senior at McDonough High School. Saif Hasan is a junior at Lambert High School. Jessica Huang is a senior at Peachtree Ridge High School. Shivi Mehta is a junior at the Alliance Academy for Innovation. Bryan Nguyen is a senior at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology. Rhea Sethi is a senior at North Gwinnett High School. Maariya Sheikh is a senior at Campbell High School. Harrison Tran is a junior at Jenkins High School. Sharmada Venkataramani is a sophomore at South Forsyth High School. Thomas Botero Mendieta is a junior at Archer High School. Kennedy Young is a senior at Campbell High School.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Georgia, Inequality, Injustice, Privatization, Racism, Segregation, Students

Steve Suitts: The New Segregation Looks Like the Old Segregation

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2024 //
3

Steve Suitts wrote an important essay on the continuity between the “school choice” movement of today and its roots in the fight against the Brown decision in the 1950s.

Charter schools and vouchers are not innovative. Their most predictable outcome is not “better education,” but segregated schools.

Suitts’ essay delves into the issue, state by state. I encourage you to open the link and read it in full. I skipped over large and important sections. Read them.

He begins:

Overview

On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education—the US Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in the nation’s public schools—Steve Suitts reveals an emerging, seismic shift in how southern states in the United States are leading the nation in adopting universal private school vouchers. Suitts warns that this new “school choice” movement will reestablish a dual school system not unlike the racially separate, unequal schools which segregationists attempted to preserve in the 1960s using vouchers.

INTRODUCTION

On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in the nation’s public schools, the states of the southern US are pushing to reestablish publicly financed, dual school systems—one primarily for higher-income and white children and the other primarily for lower-income and minority children. This seismic shift in how states fund K–12 education through universal vouchers isn’t confined to the South. But it is centered among the states that once mandated racially separate, unequal schools and where segregationists in the 1960s attempted to use private school vouchers to evade the watershed US Supreme Court decision.

More than thirty-five states have created voucher programs to send public dollars to private schools. At least nineteen, including most in the South, have adopted or are on a path to enact legislation making state-funded “Educational Savings Accounts” (ESAs)—the newest type of voucher approach—available to all or most families who forego public schools. These families can use the funds to send their children to almost any K–12 private school, including home-schooling, or purchase a wide range of educational materials and services, such as tutoring, summer camps, and counseling. 

In recent times, private school vouchers were pitched to the public for the purpose of giving a targeted group of disadvantaged children new educational options, but legislatures are now expanding eligibility and funding for vouchers to include advantaged students. By adopting universal or near universal eligibility for ESAs, states will be obligating tens of billions of tax dollars to finance private schooling while creating a voucher system for use by affluent families with children already attending or planning to attend private school.

States are rushing to enact ESAs while they still have the last of huge federal COVID appropriations to distribute among public schools. This timing allows ESAs’ sponsors—Republican legislative leaders and governors—to entice once-reluctant, rural legislators to support vouchers. It also camouflages the severe fiscal impact this scheme will have on routinely underfunded public schools after the special federal funds run out.

The states adopting ESAs are also structuring this emerging, publicly funded, dual system so that private schools and homeschooling remain free of almost all regulations, academic standards, accountability, and oversight. These sorts of rules and regulations are always imposed by state legislatures on public schools and are understood as essential to protect students and to advance learning. Even as legislatures are adding restrictive laws on how local public schools teach topics involving race, sex, ethnicity, and gender they are providing new state funding for private schools and home-schooling that will enable racist, sexist, and other bigoted teaching.

If state legislatures succeed in establishing and broadening this dual, tax-funded system of schools, the tremors will transform the landscape of US elementary and secondary education for decades to come. Calling for “freedom of choice,” a battle cry first voiced by segregationists who fought to overturn the Brown decision,1 predominantly white Republicans will take states back to a future of separate and unequal education.

THE UNIVERSAL VOUCHER SYSTEM

By the seventieth anniversary of Brown, five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) have enacted ESA programs that allow all or a vast majority of families with school-age children to send their children to private schools with state funds that equal or closely match the states’ per pupil expenditures for public schools. South Carolina adopted a “pilot” ESA last year, and a bill making its program permanent has already passed one chamber. The lower house of the Louisiana legislature passed a bill for a statewide universal ESA program to start next year, but the state senate is likely to delay adoption for another year to confirm estimated costs. Both states have governors who are likely to push adoption again next year.2

The Tennessee legislature adjourned in April without passing either of two pending universal ESA bills—only because Governor Bill Lee and legislative leaders failed to agree on which voucher bill to enact. They vow to pass legislation next session. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott used campaign funds from a Pennsylvania billionaire in the state’s Republican primary to defeat a handful of legislators who blocked his ESA bill last year. Abbott expects to defeat the two remaining state house members who failed to vote for his legislation—giving him the number he needs to pass his bill, while sending a political message that will keep his supporters in line…3

The historical context is shameful. Five of the southern states that now have universal vouchers also enacted open-ended vouchers in the 1960s—attempting to defeat Brown’s mandate for school desegregation. All but three of the states that have already embraced publicly financed ESAs were the only states authorizing segregated public schools on the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision.9

The fiscal impact of this rush to fund private schooling will be devastating to public schools. In 2018, all fifty states allocated $2.6 billion to finance private school vouchers. In 2021, legislatures increased the total amount to $3.3 billion and more recently to over $6 billion. If the eleven southern states enact the bills currently adopted or pending in their legislatures, their total funding for vouchers will be as much as $6.8 billion in 2025–26 and, according to independent estimates, as much as $20 billion for private schooling in 2030. This sum would equal the total state funds to public schools among six southern states in 2021.10

In 1950, about 400,000 students in the South attended private schools. By 2021-22, the number of private school students was about 1.8 million.

In 2021-22, 38.9% of white students attended public schools, and 63% enrolled in private schools.

AS VOUCHERS SPREAD, BROWN’S PROMISE DIES

During the last seventy years, the nation’s public schools have struggled in meeting the promise of Brown, despite clear proof that racially integrated, well-funded schools improve outcomes for Black children.39 This promise has been especially important to the South, where the states’ first education laws prohibited Black persons from being taught to read or write; where racially segregated schools offered children of color an inferior education across more than a half century. Due to stubborn, racially defined housing patterns, increasing class disparities, adverse, even hostile Supreme Court decisions, a lack of local, interracial community support, and, as recent research confirms, the growth of school choice, public schools continue to face far too many hurdles in providing all children with a good education.40

Mural by Michael Young celebrating the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision, in the Kansas State Capitol, Topeka, Kansa, May 23, 2019. Photograph by Flickr user Joe Shlabotnik. Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The South’s new dual school system renounces and annuls the mandates and hopes of Brown v. Board of Education. As universal vouchers spread, Brown’s promise dies. By their design, vouchers are an abandonment of Brown’s goal of equality of educational opportunity.

Reestablishing a dual school system will damage the prospects of a good education for all who attend public schools—not just low-income and minority children. The southern states were not able to finance two separate school systems during the era of segregation, even though Black students received a pittance of funding. Today that inability remains. The South continues to be far behind the rest of the nation in state and local funding of public schools. The new schemes of universal Education Savings Account vouchers will exacerbate the lack of sufficient funds for all except those higher-income families whose school-age children can attend private schools or home-schools and enjoy the enhancements and enriching experience that vouchers will subsidize.

Parents, grandparents, and others who support public schools and the democratic promise of public education must raise our voices against this reactionary movement and in furtherance of the importance of public schools. Like democracy itself, public schools may be the worst system for delivering all children an equal opportunity for a good education—except for all the others. We must not betray or abandon public education if we are committed to the democratic goal of a more perfect union and a good society for all. 

Categories Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Funding, Racism, Segregation, Separation of church and state

Houston: Congressmember Calls for Federal Investigation of HISD under Miles

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2024 //
12

After Spectrum News reported that millions of dollars had been sent from Texas charter schools founded by Mike Miles to Colorado charter schools in the same chain, parents and students demanded Miles’ resignation as superintendent of Houston Independent School Disttrict. Elected officials have called for an investigation but recognize that neither the State Commissioner (Mike Morath) nor Governor Abbott are likely to criticize Miles, whom they appointed.

HOUSTON — U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia formally requested that the U.S. Department of Education investigate the issues at Houston ISD and the financing of schools in the area, according to a letter obtained by KHOU 11 News.

In the letter dated May 15, the Congresswoman refers to recent news stories that reported Ector ISD near Midland, Texas allegedly sent state funds from Texas to Third Future Schools, a charter school operated in Colorado. She requested that an audit be conducted on Ector ISD.

A Spectrum News Texas report highlighted a pair of million-dollar-plus checks allegedly sent from Third Future Schools in Texas to its campuses in Colorado. The report accused Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Milesof sending Texas tax dollars out of state.

Miles has issued a statement responding to the report, saying the report “either intentionally or through gross incompetence, mischaracterized commonplace financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them.” 

RELATED: HISD Superintendent Mike Miles responds to report he funneled TX taxpayer money to Colorado | TEA commissioner, Third Future Schools also respond

Garcia expressed concerns over the financial stability of HISD following last year’s takeover by the state of Texas. This comes after widespread layoffs were announced leading to protests from those affected and HISD families.

RELATED: More Houston ISD parents protest over principals reportedly being forced out

RELATED: She was principal of the year in 2023. A year later, she said HISD forced her to resign

Texas Education Commissioner Mick Morath has confirmed that the TEA complaints team will look into allegations against Miles. 

The congresswoman also requested the issuance of federal funds by the state from the pandemic that were to be used to supplement public education at HISD be audited.

“It pains me that my home school district has been taken over and is seemingly being intentionally run into the ground and (I) request any additional assistance you can provide to protect our schools and our students,” Garcia said in the letter.

Garcia went on to claim that the state is punishing HISD.

“Houston is a vibrant and diverse community, and our state government is punishing us for that; we need your help,” she said in the letter.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Houston, Texas

Houston: Mike Miles Denies Transfer of Millions to His Colorado Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2024 //
22

Brett Shipp of Spectrum News posted a video asserting that the Texas charter schools in the network founded by Mike Miles sent millions of dollars to Miles’ Colorado charter schools. His report was amply documented.

Miles was imposed as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District after the state took control of HISD, based on the low performance of ONE school, Wheatley High School. Miles was selected by State Superintendent Mike Morath, who served on the Dallas school board when Miles was superintendent for three years and failed to meet any of his lofty goals. Neither Morath nor Miles is an educator. Morath was in the software business, and Miles was in the military before joining Eli Broad’s Superintendent Academy, which emphasized top-down management and disruption.

Ana Hernandez, a Houston legislator, wrote Mike Morath to call for an investigation of Miles. Morath is unlikely to conduct a serious probe since he chose Miles. The State Attorney General Ken Paxton is under indictment for corruption, so he’s not likely to dig deep into Morath’s choice; Morath was picked by Governor Gregg Abbott.

Sam Gonzalez Kelly of The Houston Chronicle reported that Miles denounced Shipp’s charges:

HISD’s appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is vehemently denying reports that his former charter network, Third Future Schools, illegally used money from its Texas campuses to subsidize its schools in Colorado. 

Miles, in a late night email to “friends, partners and board members,” wrote that the story by Spectrum News in Dallas “badly misunderstands, or worse, intentionally misrepresents the financial practices of Third Future Schools.” The story, by reporter Brett Shipp, who covered Miles during his tenure as Dallas ISD superintendent, accuses Third Future Schools of charging fees to its Texas network to subsidize one of its campuses in Colorado, and reported that Third Future Schools Texas had run a deficit due to debts to “other TFS network schools and to TFS corporate.”

The Spectrum report cites recordings of TFS corporate board and investor meetings, as well as the charter network’s financial records. The Houston Chronicle’s review of the documents confirmed that TFS Texas had sent funds to Colorado campuses, which a charter school finance expert said is generally permitted by state law.

“While I have not worked at the Third Future Schools network for more than a year, I find the piece irresponsibly inaccurate, and I cannot let this kind of misinformation go uncorrected,” Miles wrote. 

Miles wrote that Third Future Schools “was always a responsible steward of every public dollar received” and that school finances were approved by local school boards and partner districts. He acknowledged that Texas schools paid “administrative fees” to the central Third Future office, which is headquartered in Colorado, to provide network-wide supports in areas, including finance and human resources, but said that such payments are common practice for charter networks.

“Spectrum News either intentionally or, through gross incompetence, mischaracterized these common place financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them,” Miles wrote. 

Neither Spectrum nor Shipp immediately responded to requests for comment. 

Spectrum’s story immediately prompted outrage among HISD community members and some elected officials, who are demanding the superintendent’s resignation and a federal investigation over the charter network’s use of Texas taxpayer money in Colorado schools. 

The Texas Education Agency said in a statement Tuesday that it was aware of Spectrum’s report and was reviewing the matter.

The “charter school finance expert” consulted by The Houston Chronicle worked for the state charter school association. It is not clear that state law allows charter schools in Texas to send Texas public funds to its offices or other charters in Colorado.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston, Texas
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