Archives for category: Education Industry
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North Carolina Charter Teachers: We Refuse to Be a Trojan Horse to Destroy Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2018 //
8

http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/article210896254.html

Two charter school teachers in Durham, North Carolina, write that their schools are closing on May 16 to join the protest against the Legislature’s underfunding of public schools.

Taylor Schmidt and Morgan Carney, teachers at Central Park Charter School, reflect on their school’s advantages and point out:

“As the 10th largest economy in the nation, North Carolina is currently ranked 39th for per-pupil spending. Public school teachers often reach into their own pocketbooks to buy essentials like pencils and copy paper for overcrowded classrooms, nevermind having the financial support to take 95 sixth graders on a bus to a local farm for project work.

“Adding to these challenges is the broken system of creating and managing charter schools in our state, a system that includes our own school. Soon after we arrived at Central Park, structural shortcomings became apparent. Students of color comprised 81 percent of the demographics of Durham Public Schools in 2013, while students of color at Central Park comprised only 29 percent of the student population. Whereas 66 percent of students in Durham Public Schools were eligible for free and reduced lunch, only 7 percent of CPSC students were eligible for the program.

“This realization led to greater clarity: regardless of our intentions, we had become part of the problem of school resegregation. We petitioned the state to become the first charter school to give weighted lottery preference to economically disadvantaged families. We have changed our policies to provide free and reduced-price lunches and transportation assistance. While there is more work to be done, each year the socioeconomic diversity of our student body better reflects the strengths found in the rich diversity of our community and delivers on the mandate for NC charter schools to provide increased learning opportunities for those most in need.

“In 2018, Central Park is arriving at another moment of clarity. We recognize that, despite positive intentions, we are still part of the problem. As a charter school, we play into a system that has strayed from the original goals. The charter school system has been turned into a Trojan horse that severely underfunds our state’s public schools, creates competition for resources, resegregates our schools, and provides blinders to cover the increasing privatization of North Carolina’s educational institutions through for-profit charter schools. The mission of our school, and the original mission of charter schools, forbid us from staying silent on these issues.

“We intend to actively fight against resegregation of schools by race and class in North Carolina. We stand against privatization, vouchers, and for-profit charter schools, believing passionately that we must serve in collaboration and partnership alongside our communities’ public schools.”

Read more here: http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/article210896254.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, North Carolina, Privatization, Resistance, Teachers

G.F. Brandenburg: More Scandals in D.C. Schools

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2018 //
18

Remember all the hype about the amazing District of Columbia schools, about how they had improved more than any other urban district thanks to the reforms launched by Michelle Rhee and nurtured by her successor Kaya Henderson? Test scores rising, graduation rates soaring.

The hype seems to be unraveling.

An audit in January reported that fully 1/3 of graduating students had not met minimum standards to graduate.

Now, G.F. Brandenburg says that the scandals continue.

He writes:

“Not in my wildest dreams could I make this stuff up about how completely incompetent and criminal is the leadership of DC Public Schools. But these incidents are all reported in today’s Washington Post.

“1. The flagship DC high school for the performing arts, Duke Ellington, was found to have fraudulently given about 30% of its highly-coveted student slots to kids whose families neither lived in DC nor paid out-of-state tuition. Those fraudulent slots of course meant that hundreds of talented DC students were rejected. (Part of the reason for Ellington leaders getting away with this is the overlapping public and private leadership of the school, allowing them to report much less detail to any central authority. Similar to the situation in charter schools here and elsewhere.)

“2. Somebody has fraudulently erased the records of unexcused first-semester absences for a bunch of students at Roosevelt SHS so they would be eligible to graduate. These students had been absent so much that they had received Fs. However, their records now indicate that they had ZERO absences in the first quarter. Teachers reported the erasures but are afraid of reprisals.”

He goes on to describe the seniors at Roosevelt HS, where only 29% are on track to graduate. He points out that 38% of the class dropped out.

D.C. used to be the reformers’ favorite district, after New Orleans. Not so much now.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, High School Graduation

Denis Smith: The Unexamined Charter Corruption in Ohio

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2018 //
4

Denis Smith oversaw charter schools when he worked for the Ohio Department of Education. Since he retired, he has documented the numerous instances of corruption that have gone uninvestigated.

The recent collapse of ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), which died while owing the state many millions of dollars for inflated enrollments garnered media attention. But the media ignored the numerous times that legislators accepted expensive gifts of foreign travel paid for by the Gulen charter chain.

Cliff Rosenberger, the powerful Speaker of the House, recently resigned because he had accepted junkets from the payday lending industry.

“Before he left on the series of overseas junkets to China, France, and the UK that sealed his doom, Rosenberger pocketed $36,843 in campaign contributions from ECOT and its founder, William Lager. In 2016, the former speaker served as the commencement speaker for the now-closed charter school in the midst of the Ohio Department of Education audit controversy which ultimately brought down the ECOT empire.

“While all of the current attention about Rosenberger seems to focus on payday lending and foreign travel, there has been zero commentary about a previous all-expense foreign junket the former speaker and several of his fellow Republican legislative colleagues enjoyed just prior to his election as leader of the Ohio House.”

Why is the press alert to the sins of the payday lending lobbyists, but indifferent to the depredations of the charter industry?

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy read Denis Smith’s article and posed these questions:

“The Speaker of the House resigned under a dark cloud precipitated by overseas junkets funded by the payday lender lobby. So why didn’t the Speaker resign after taking a trip to Turkey funded by the Gulen Islamic charter school lobby? Would the Turkey junket have had influence on the fortunes of the Gulen charter industry?

“But there is more, ECOT provided the former Speaker with $36,843 in campaign contributions plus commencement speaker perks. Would these “benefits” have had an influence on the way the former Speaker handled charter legislation?

“If the Speaker resigned due to payday lender lobby-funded trips, should there not be an investigation of those who have been fed a steady diet of ECOT campaign funds? These funds were laundered from tax money that should have been used for the education of students?”

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

Peter Greene: Charter Schools Would Have Been A Great Idea, But….

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2018 //
20

Peter Greene has written a post in honor of Charter School Week. He notes that it was designated to conflict with Teacher Appreciation Week, but that strikes him as somehow apt. Charters might have been a good idea, but they fell into the hands of the wrong people, that is, people who wanted to use them to bludgeon and destroy public schools.

When Al Shanker first spelled out the idea of charter schools, he envisioned them as a way to help public schools, sort of like an R&D laboratory, using union teachers to help try out new ideas. That was in 1988. When he saw that business entrepreneurs were taking over, he turned against charters. By 1993, he denounced charters and declared they were no different from vouchers, that they had turned into something far different from his vision, and that they would be used to smash unions and privatize public schools. Yet reformers still like to point to Shanker as their founding father, forgetting that he renounced what his idea had morphed into.

Greene writes:

At first glance, putting Charter School Celebration Week O’Self Congratulations on the same week as Teacher Appreciation Week may seem a bit obnoxious, but I’ve come to see it as sort of appropriate, a symbol of how the charter business competes with public school teachers for resources and attention. Kind of like putting Fight Cancer Week and Celebration of Tobacco on the same calendar dates, it encourages people to see that there’s a fundamental conflict here.

Not that there needs to be. The irony for me is that even though I write extensively about the many ways in which modern charters are detrimental to public education and just plain bad policy, it doesn’t actually have to be that way. Charters could work. Charters could be a great addition to the education landscape. But instead, charter fans have chosen to pursue them in the most destructive, counter-productive manner possible. It’s like a landscaper says, “Your yard would look so much better with some azalea bushes,” and you think that, yeah, they would, but then the landscaper puts the bushes in by ripping holes in the front wall of the house and planting the bushes directly into the water and sewage lines for your home.

So I’m going to celebrate charter week with a little reader of posts that have run here, laying out the ways in which the charter industry has gotten it wrong.

Categories Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, Privatization

Jeff Bryant: Charter Schools Are an Existential Threat to the Survival of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
16

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that charter schools create an enormous drain on public schools and cause damage to the great majority of children, who lose resources and teachers, so that a small number may attend an alternate school that is privately managed.

Jeff Bryant here points out that the proliferation of charter schools is more than a nuisance. It is an “existential threat” to public education.

New studies from California and North Carolina find charter schools extract millions from the public systems.

The California study, written by political economist and University of Oregon professor Gordon Lafer, looks at three large public-school systems in the Golden State and concludes the annual costs to the three districts run upwards of $142 million. The three districts in the study – Oakland Unified, San Diego Unified and East Side Union – struggle with annual deficits that have led to layoffs, class size increases, and program cuts.

The North Carolina study, written by Duke University economics professor Helen Ladd and University of Rochester professor John Singleton, finds evidence that charter schools come with “fiscal externalities,” or additional costs to the budgets of public schools. In their examination of urban and nonurban districts in the Tar Heel State, the researchers calculate an additional financial cost of about $3,500 per charter school enrollee to the Durham school district and “comparable or larger” costs to two non-urban districts.

Both studies note that additional costs imposed by charters are most apt to result in local schools cutting funding they need to maintain reasonable class sizes, well-rounded curriculums, and support staff including nurses, counselors, librarians, and special education…

As Lafer writes, “In every case [where charter schools have expanded], the revenue that school districts have lost is far greater than the expenses saved by students transferring to charter schools.”

Ladd and Singleton explain why: “If 10 percent of a district’s students shift to a charter school … the district cannot simply reduce its costs by 10 percent because some of its costs are fixed, especially in the short run.”

The NC researchers also point to costs that result from having parallel sectors of charter and public schools, which “implies duplication of functions and services (e.g., central office operations).” Also, the tendency of charter schools to open or close, often without warning, makes district budgeting uncertain and inefficient.

The costs school districts incur due to charter expansions are “unavoidable,” Lafer writes. “Because districts cannot turn students away, they must maintain a large enough school system to accommodate both long-term population growth and sudden influxes of unexpected students—as has happened when charter schools suddenly close down. The district’s responsibility for serving all students creates costs.”

Despite their protests, charter schools do not collaborate with public schools. They act more like parasites. In courts, they play both sides of the public-private issue. They are public when they demand more funding, but when sued, they are suddenly private, not “state actors.”

The attitude of the charter lobby is simple: “me-me-me.” The policy makers should not act as tools of the charter lobby. They should see the whole picture and ask whether it is wise to create a parallel school system, free to write its own rules and to drain resources from the public schools that open their doors to all students.

Despite what may have been the original intention of the charter school movement, these schools, as they are currently conceived and operate, now pose a severe financial risk to public education. Rather than operating as partners to public schools, they more so resemble parasites.

To address this growing calamity, Lafer recommends in his California study that each school district produce an annual Economic Impact report assessing the cost of charter expansion in its community, and local and state public officials take findings of these impact assessments into account when deciding whether to authorize additional charters.

Ladd and Singleton in their North Carolina study recommend states provide transitional aid to smooth or mitigate revenue losses charter school expansions impose on school districts. They point to examples of these policies in New York and Massachusetts, although they admit, “In neither case does the magnitude of the aid offset the full negative fiscal impacts of charters.”

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

Jesse Hagopian: Teachers and Parents in Puerto Rico Boycott Standardized Tests

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2018 //
2

As the jaws of destruction and disruption approach to privatize their schools, teachers and parents at many schools in Puerto Rico have organized to boycott the standardized tests that will be used to rationalize the closing of their schools.

Jesse Hagopian tells the story here, after interviewing Mercedes Martinez, president of the Teachers Federation of Puerto Rico.

Teachers in Puerto Rico, she told him, were inspired by the historic strike against MAP testing at Garfield High School in Seattle, which Jesse helped organize.

“Another part of the disaster capitalist approach to schooling has been to impose the same high-stakes standardized testing regime that we have in the mainland U.S. on the Puerto Rican education system. High-stakes testing is being used to punish schools, students, and teachers. With teachers living in fear of the consequences low scores, they are forced to teach to the test, not the student, and it is causing a narrowing of the curriculum to what the corporate test makers believe is important to learn (For example, I don’t think the lessons of how to organize your community against corporate education reform will be on the next test). These tests are used as exit exams in high school and are denying thousands of students the chance to graduate. Perhaps worst of all, the testocracy has trained people to believe that wisdom is the ability to eliminate wrong answer choices on a multiple choice exam, rather than to be creative, empathize, or solve real life problems.

“But a mighty movement of parents, students, and teachers has risen up to boycott and opt out of these tests as a way to reclaim public education and fight for authentic forms of assessment.”

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

Arizona Voters: Did You Pay for the $8.4 Million NYC Condo for BASIS Charter Founders?

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2018 //
86

Columnist E.J. Montini of the Arizona Republic is all over the charter scams that are common in his state.

One of his favorite subjects is the BASIS charter chain, which is regularly lauded by the national media as sponsor of the number one high schooling the nation, because of the AP courses that its students pass. Montini knows that BASIS regularly weeds out the students it doesn’t want by setting expectations higher than most students can meet.

He also knows that BASIS is a honeypot for its founders.

Look at the folks who founded Basis Charter Schools, Michael and Olga Block.

These are public schools.

They’re funded with tax dollars. Your money.

In fact, as The Arizona Republic’s Craig Harris pointed out in a May 7 article, Basis receives more in basic per-pupil funding than traditional public schools.

At the same time, Basis asks parents to “donate” at least $1,500 per child each year, which it says is used to improve teacher pay.

Sort of a de facto tuition that is way, way cheaper than private school (because taxpayers are funding the rest.)

Essentially, Basis Charter Schools, a tax-exempt non-profit corporation, gets to operate like a private company while using the public’s money. And the founders — among others affiliated with the operation — have done very well.

As Harris so succinctly pointed out:

As Scottsdale parents were receiving yet another solicitation for donations to pay teachers, the Blocks made a $1.68 million down payment on an $8.4 million condominium in New York City, property records show.

Their Manhattan home is in a 60-story building with “breathtaking panoramas” of the city, an infinity pool, and an indoor/outdoor theater, according to a sales brochure. It is located near two private Basis schools controlled by the Blocks. Tuition at those schools is more than $30,000 a year

.

Arizona has little to no accountability for charter schools. They can use public money to build new buildings, which then are private property. They can use public money to pay their family members or themselves. No one cares. The state makes rules, but if no one follows them, that’s okay. The audits are a joke or don’t happen. It’s a scam, Montini writes.

The owners get to pay themselves with your money, hire their relatives, avoid the bidding process for work and make very little of their financial practice available for you to see.

It’s the opposite of regular public schools

It’s a perfect scam. The opposite of regular public schools. Lawmakers and politicians like Gov. Doug Ducey go along with it because they hate teacher unions and because charter owners are big supporters of their careers.

But ask yourself this:

Who was the last person working in a regular public school who could afford a house in Tucson, a house in Scottsdale and an $8.4 million condo in New York City with “breathtaking panoramas?”

As long as their schools produce high test scores, who cares about the money, right?

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

Los Angeles: Teachers at Three Charter Schools Begin Process to Unionize

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2018 //
17

 

As the Walton Family Foundation, ALEC, and Betsy DeVos would agree, the point of charter schools is to eliminate teachers’ unions.

The article says that 89% of charters are non-union, by design. (I think the percentage is even higher, possibly 95%.)

But in Los Angeles, three charters in the city’s largest charter chain are starting the process to unionize. 

This is a very small drop in a lake of charters.

Is it good or bad? It is good that teachers are seeking to have a voice in their workplace. It is good that they can join together to improve working conditions. It is good that they are defeating the billionaires who want to bust unions and privatize public schools.

But…when charter teachers join the NEA and AFT, will those two unions no longer oppose the charter openings? Will they stand back as the Waltons, Koch’s, and DeVos spend hundreds of millions every year to open more non-union schools?

A paradox. I hope to hear what you think.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Reformers Fearful of Unions’ Efforts to Organize Teachers in Charters

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2018 //
15

If you want to read a real tear-jerker, read this story written for the conservative Philanthropy Roundtable, about whether philanthropists should worry about the inroads that unions are making into the charter sector.

Romy Drucker begins with a story about one of the conservatives’ favorite charter chains, the Noble Network in Chicago. This is the same charter chain that some teachers complained about to NPR, saying it has a “dehumanizing culture,” the same charter chain where teenage girls are told to sit still and bleed through their clothes rather than go to the bathroom without an escort. It is a leader nationally in the “no excuses” charter world, where intensive test prep, strict discipline, and high suspension rates produce results for those willing to accept the demands.

Drucker begins:

“Michael and Tonya Milkie decided to start a charter public high school in Chicago in 1999. They drew on their experience teaching in the city’s toughest public schools, and borrowed bright ideas from America’s top charter-school founders and other savvy managers of social enterprises. As both educators and entrepreneurs, they knew that their autonomy, and ability to make tough decisions flexibly, without bureaucracy or inertia, would be essential to their success.

“They wanted a school where “classrooms are sacred.” They wanted to put their full, unhedged support behind instructors “focused on teaching, and getting better at teaching and reaching the kids who are struggling.” Administrators would be “available and resourceful,” says Tonya, and focused on helping the teachers on the front line solve classroom problems.

“In Noble Street College Prep, they set out to create a school culture centered on student results—not the adult preferences, employee desires, neighborhood issues, political burdens, and other subjects that distract administrators of many public schools. Their expectations were high. “We’re constantly saying, ‘How can we have better outcomes for our students?’ ” states Michael. “We have to have great results.”

“With nine out of ten of its disadvantaged students graduating and going to college, and the original school having grown into 17 campuses scattered across Chicago, the Noble Network has hit its high targets. The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation named it the top charter network in America in 2015. Noble now educates around 12,000 students annually—89 percent low-income, 98 percent minorities.

“But the more Noble succeeded, the more it sparked consternation at the Chicago Teachers Union—one of America’s most powerful and militant labor groups. The CTU has gone out on strike twice in recent years, shutting down the nation’s third-largest school district for seven days in 2012 and then again for one day in 2016.

“Increasingly, the union drew a bead on the Noble Network. Each new school opening was met with protests. Those Noble could mostly ignore. But then the CTU set out to unionize the charter schools’ teachers.

“In March 2017, a hundred Noble employees organized by activists delivered an open letter to Michael Milkie and the network’s board of directors, expressing an interest in unionizing all 800 of Noble’s educators. “We must be trusted to have a collective voice,” the letter read. Local Democratic politicians endorsed the organizing effort. The campaign was billed in news reports as an attempt to form “the nation’s largest charter teachers union.”

“It’s definitely a big deal,” says Chicago native Peter Cunningham, who worked in the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama administration. “Noble unequivocally has a culture of super hard work and high expectations. It’s hard to establish that culture when you don’t fully control the teachers and the schools.”

Drucker reviews the efforts to unionize and warns:

“Given the vigor with which unions are currently campaigning against Noble, Alliance, and other charter schools, though, it’s hard to imagine a ceasefire. The prudent path for all charter-school leaders and supporters is to prepare for a storm.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Jan Resseger Explains How Charter School Expansion Ruins School District Budgets

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2018 //
24

In case you don’t have time to read the full report released by “In the Public Interest” about the real costs of charter schools, Jan Resseger has done it for you.

Legislators pretend that charters are simply a “choice,” and pay no attention to the fiscal damage they impose on the public schools that educate the majority of children and lose revenue. Thus, the decision to have more charters reduces the quality of education for the majority of children in the district or the state.

She writes:

“What stands out in this report is the perfectly lucid explanation about exactly how charter school funding depletes the budgets of local school districts and what it means for the students left in the traditional public schools when some students carry their per-pupil funding away to a charter school: “To the casual observer, it may not be obvious why charter schools should create any net costs at all for their home districts. To grasp why they do, it is necessary to understand the structural differences between the challenge of operating a single school—or even a local chain of schools—and that of a district-wide system operating tens or hundreds of schools and charged with the legal responsibility to serve all students in the community. When a new charter school opens, it typically fills its classrooms by drawing students away from existing schools in the district. By California state law, school funding is based on student attendance; when a student moves from a traditional public school to a charter school, her pro-rated share of school funding follows her to the new school. Thus, the expansion of charter schools necessarily entails lost funding for traditional public schools and school districts. If schools and district offices could simply reduce their own expenses in proportion to the lost revenue, there would be no fiscal shortfall. Unfortunately this is not the case.”

“The report continues: “If, for instance, a given school loses five percent of its student body—and that loss is spread across multiple grade levels, the school may be unable to lay off even a single teacher… Plus, the costs of maintaining school buildings cannot be reduced…. Unless the enrollment falloff is so steep as to force school closures, the expense of heating and cooling schools, running cafeterias, maintaining digital and wireless technologies, and paving parking lots—all of this is unchanged by modest declines in enrollment. In addition, both individual schools and school districts bear significant administrative responsibilities that cannot be cut in response to falling enrollment. These include planning bus routes and operating transportation systems; developing and auditing budgets; managing teacher training and employee benefits; applying for grants and certifying compliance with federal and state regulations; and the everyday work of principals, librarians and guidance counselors.” As other studies have shown, the greatest fiscal burden for local school districts is for special education, because traditional public schools continue to serve the children with the most serious disabilities, the children who require expensive services most charters elect not to provide.

“What about the problems in school districts where the school population is already shrinking? In recent years charters have somehow been prescribed in places like Chicago and Detroit and Cleveland as a way to attract families to the district. But ITPI’s report explains why such thinking is flawed: “It is true that shrinking student populations cause a fiscal crisis for school districts. However, charter schools exacerbate this problem in unique ways. First, charter schools make it extremely difficult for districts to consolidate schools in the face of falling enrollment… When the creation of new schools is no longer tied to student population growth but rather is open to any number of entrepreneurs aimed at competing for market share, the inevitable result is an increased number of schools for the same population of students. In Albany, New York, over the course of a decade the district went from serving 10,380 students in 17 schools to serving just slightly more students—10,568—but in 24 schools…. And the New York Times reported that in the city of Detroit, ‘the unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation’s poorest students, enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses, laptops, raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles…’ The problem is particularly destructive in communities whose total school population is already shrinking…. In such districts school systems already struggling to meet student needs with diminishing resources are faced with additional dramatic cuts in funding.”

It makes perfect sense to everyone other than legislators and charter lobbyists.

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